June Bazaar
The round up of what's around
Dear friends,
Once again, I’ve loaded a shotgun full of interesting (and sometimes disturbing) stories and I’m firing it up against the wall of the internet to see what patterns they make. I’ll get to the L.A. riots later, but let’s start with a topic we cannot afford to be distracted from: free speech…
Free Speech: UK
Two depressing stories from the land of my birth…
Andrew Doyle writes that “No citizen should be in prison for offensive tweets” which feels like a sentence nobody should have to write.
One of the most sinister aspects to the Lucy Connolly case is how it reveals the widespread complacency that currently exists when it comes to freedom of expression. I have had endless arguments regarding her sentence, and the identical point is repeatedly asserted: that Connolly said a horrible thing and must be punished. What makes anyone believe that free speech only applies to benign and innocuous statements? It’s as though none of these people have ever read their Mill, Milton or Orwell. Noam Chomsky had it exactly right when he wrote: “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all”.
Amen to that!
Meanwhile, C.J. Strachen reports on the bizarre choices the UK is making about who to prevent visiting and who to allow into the country in “Renaud Camus Out, Julius Malema In: What Britain Bans Tells Us Who We Are Now”:
Camus, an elderly intellectual with no history of violence, was treated like a threat to national security. Malema, who has stood before crowds chanting genocidal slogans, was treated like a minor celebrity inconvenienced by airport queues. This isn’t policy. It’s ideology masquerading as law.
Once again, the UK has exposed the workings of its two-tier system. British citizens have been arrested for quoting Churchill, misgendering someone online, or holding placards in silence. But a foreign politician calling for racial uprising is welcomed, because his fury flows in the right direction.#
Scotland
Also from C.J. Strachen, the disturbing story of how Gaelic has been annointed and Scots marked for extinction, for entirely political reasons. If the topic interests you, C.J. has more to add in the comments. Check out “The Lang Sidlin o Scots: Cultural Revisionism in Bilingual Roadsigns”.
Free Speech: Germany
More depressing news from Germany via Eugyppius, who has also been feuding with C.J. Hopkins, in a depressing and pointless set of exchanges that I won’t bore you about.
…and bizarrely: “The European Union is paying NGOs millions of dollars to conduct what amounts to soft economic warfare against its own member states”
Malaysia
As is often the case when odd countries pop up in the Bazaar it’s because US companies are behaving despicably. Check out “Nothing Stops Goldman Sachs” by Eric Salzman at Racket:
Goldman learned their lessons well in the 2000s: They can do just about anything they want and if they are caught, all they have to do is pay a fine, maybe give a half-hearted mea culpa and then get right back to business as if nothing happened. Because nothing does happen.
US: Legal Battles
One of the key situations in the US right now is the ongoing (and escalating) conflict between the Judicial and the Executive branches. Frankly neither can hold their heads up high when it comes to separation of powers, but also note that this conflict predates President Trump…
Battle of the Branches
I have a lot of respect for legal scholar Jed Rubenfeld, and enjoyed his take on Harvard vs Trump, which he sees partly as a grim consequence of the unconstitutional ‘lawfare’ that the Biden Administration directed against Trump:
During the Biden years, I excoriated the state and federal prosecutions of Trump because they so obviously weaponized the legal system against the leading presidential candidate from the other party. That was an overwhelming threat to democracy and hence much worse than what Trump is doing to Harvard. But it’s a similar kind of unconstitutionality. The government cannot single out and target anyone for their First Amendment-protected activity. Trump may feel that he has a right to do that because it was done so repeatedly, and so blatantly, to him. But it has to stop.
Discrimination is Not Conditional
I have to say, I’m a big fan of the current Supreme Court in the US, which from my perspective is nicely balanced, with three judicial conservatives (Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch), three progressives (Sotomayor, Kagan, Jackson), and three centrists (Roberts, Barrett, Kavanaugh). The popular impression that this is a ‘conservative’ court is based on entrenched political biases, and not upon the actual opinions drafted or sided with. This really is the Supreme Court in the best shape I’ve seen it in my lifetime, and it is doing good work hanging onto our imperilled principles.
Case in point, a recent unanimous ruling, with an opinion authored by lefty justice Ketanji Brown Jackson (link opens PDF). The opinion is explicit that:
Title VII’s disparate-treatment provision draws no distinctions between majority-group plaintiffs and minority-group plaintiffs. Rather, the provision makes it unlawful “to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”
That is, discrimination is prohibited on principle, and is not something that can only happen to certain classes of people, so the same standards for discrimination apply to everyone. Those who are opposed to the ugly term ‘reverse discrimination’, or to DEI in general, have reasons to rejoice about this opinion, but really anyone who has an interest in principles over politics should be delighted both with this ruling and that it was unanimous.
If you want to read about the specifics of the case, I recommend this summary from Amy Howe at SCOTUS Blog, but you can also get all the details in the actual opinion, linked above.
“Not a Denny’s”
Of course, not every ruling hits the spot… Here’s a link to an amazing order issued by Fifth Circuit Appelate Judge James Ho, castigating the Supreme Court for confusing a law court for a late night diner (I kid you not)! Note that this link will open a PDF. Judge Ho is pretty miffed about a motion being filed at half-past midnight, and then the filers demanding a response within less than an hour the following day, without any chance for the other party (the Executive branch) to respond:
We seem to have forgotten that this is a district court - not a Denny’s. This is the first time I've ever heard anyone suggest that district judges have a duty to check their dockets at all hours of the night jkust in case a party decides to file a motion.
If this is going to become the norm, then we should say so: District judges are hereby expected to be available 24 hours a day—and the Judicial Conference of the United States and the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts should secure from Congress the resources and staffing necessary to ensure 24-hour operations in every district court across the country.
If you have any interest in US law, check this order out, it’s really quite a classic!
US: Red vs Blue
This interesting paper actually landed last year, but was just published in the journal Social Psychology in January this year. It’s clunkily entitled “Attitude networks as intergroup realities: Using network-modelling to research attitude-identity relationships in polarized political contexts”. What does that mean? It mapped the conformity of political opinion between the red and the blue teams. Figure 4 says it all:
Here’s what the authors say:
According to the present findings, Democrats (more than Republicans) tightly centre their belief-system around a set of positions at the extremes… It is possible that holding extreme (and thus unnegotiable) attitudes on important social-political issues has become increasingly identity defining for Democrats, not least in response to Donald Trump’s controversial presidency.
US: Media Bias
Honestly, it beggars the imagination some of the things that go on in what used to be news services…
Here’s another piece from Jed Rubenfeld via The Free Press, entitled “NPR and PBS Aren’t Entitled to Your Tax Dollars”. He makes what is to my mind the obvious point that the government is not obligated to fund any kind of media, it is simply prohibited from requiring a particular viewpoint in the media it supports.
NPR is right that taking action against a news organization because of its biased political news coverage is what First Amendment jurisprudence calls a “content-based” distinction, and it would usually be flat-out unconstitutional. But again, some free speech basics: When the government is subsidizing speech, the normal rule against content-based discrimination doesn’t apply. “It is well established,” as the Supreme Court held in 2007, “that the government can make content-based distinctions when it subsidizes speech.”
And while we're talking the slant in the legacy media, there's this piece, “New York Times’ Carl Zimmer Lies to You About Scientific Research and COVID Origins” from Paul D. Thacker at The Disinformation Chronicle. It’s about the New York Times flatly refusing to stay abreast of the evidence regarding the lab leak origin hypothesis. But I just love this first paragraph, and wanted to share it in the context of free speech and propaganda:
It’s probably not a shock to most readers that the New York Times has morphed into a slanted media outlet that seems more concerned with promoting specific narratives than reporting facts. A year and half ago, former Times editor James Bennet described his former paper this way: “The Times is becoming the publication through which America’s progressive elite talks to itself about an America that does not really exist.”
And to lead us into the next section, here’s Alex Berenson on the unreliable reporting on the current L.A. riots:
Now the Times and other liberal legacy media outlets are again claiming protests over an issue dear to the heart of the left are controlled and, yes, mostly peaceful. They’re claiming again that a crackdown is the real risk… Maybe so. I’d like to believe them. But the way the Times framed the situation in its piece today — all of Los Angeles isn’t burning, so everything is fine — doesn’t give me much confidence. What really got torched in 2020 was the legacy media’s credibility. And, sadly, it’s still on fire.
US: ‘Mostly Peaceful’ Arson
Los Angeles is burning again. I support everyone’s freedom to peacefully protest the crackdown on illegal immigration (although it is worth remembering that the majority of US citizens voted to support this restoration of border control). However, the moment it turns violent it ceases to be effective protest and becomes deeply counter-productive, and frankly abhorrent. In this case, a small minority of protestors came out with the express aim of violence at the very beginning. This is not ‘protest’, as the blue team insist, nor is it ‘insurrection’ as the red team occasionally resort to calling it… as ever, the truth lies somewhere in between the extremes.
“Delete That Photo or We’ll F— You Up” by Leighton Woodhouse at The Free Press is a sobering piece of field reporting that wasn’t behind a paywall earlier, but sadly seems to have had one added now. That’s a shame, as it details the key point that a minority of rioters arrived with violence in mind. This is a crucial point to understanding what’s going on: whatever peaceful protests are taking place, they are accompanied by instigators of violent action that completely de-legitimise these protests. Non-violent protestors ought to withdraw under these circumstances - they are harming their own cause by participating further at this time.
Via The Times of India, a summary of events on the third day of rioting (Tuesday), includes this quote from the chief of police:
Los Angeles police chief Jim McDonnell, while initially hesitant to welcome national guard support, acknowledged on Sunday night that “a reassessment” was needed. “This thing has gotten out of control,” McDonnell said. “We have great cops in Southern California... but the level of violence we saw tonight is beyond anything we anticipated.”
The Alex Berenson piece quoted above also quotes chief McDonnell:
The violence I’ve seen is disgusting; it has escalated now since the beginning of this incident. What we saw the first night was bad, but what we're seeing on subsequent nights have been increasingly worse and more violent.
Tonight, we had individuals out there shooting commercial-grade fireworks at our officers—fireworks that can kill you. We have adapted our tactics to be able to take these people into custody and hold them accountable. We are overwhelmed as far as the number of people engaging in this type of activity... There’s no limit to what they’re doing to our officers.
Theo Burman at Newsweek reported on the burning of LA’s robot rickshaws (pictured above), which provided news-friendly images that have travelled far. Hey, even I couldn’t resist sharing the image. I hope it goes without saying that I categorically do not approve of arson.
ABC had a frankly bizarre soundbite that various right-of-centre outlets have picked up: “just a bunch of people having fun watching cars burn.” Even though I think I understand what they were trying to get at, this is sloppy reporting at best, and propaganda at worst, and it all brings to mind the dreadful lack of journalistic standards behind the reporting of “fiery, but mostly peaceful protests” back in 2020. If you’re interested, Eugyppius has a round up of the legacy media’s use of “mostly peaceful” in connection with these riots that is eye-rolling.
Here’s a news story that blue-team legacy media has declined to mention: Chris Nesi at New York Post reports on accusations that an NGO funded by the State of California has helped fund the riots. The NGO in question, CHIRLA, denies responsibility… but there’s something about this whole situation that feels depressingly familiar.
On the political stage, what I fear we are witnessing is a key step forward in Gavin Newsom’s attempt to run for blue team Presidential candidate in 2028. And frankly, I’d say it is going very badly for him (although never underestimate President Trump’s ability to utterly mess up a situation simply by losing his temper). Just as a question of political optics, what do you think the moderate centre of the United States thinks about violent riots and arson caused by people waving Mexican flags…?
…and a day or so after I wrote the above bullet point, Batya Ungar-Sargon echoed my sentiments at The Free Press in “Why Gavin Newsom Will Never Be President”. Do better blue team! The US deserves a functioning opposition party.
Medical Research and ‘the Nonsense’
Things are starting to happen!
“HHS Moves to Restore Public Trust in Vaccines” is an OdEd at the Wall Street Journal from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It’s behind a paywall, although I got to the key talking points via right-of-centre news service The Daily Wire. Kennedy has fired all 17 members of the useless and compromised Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP), who have rubber-stamped every vaccine candidate presented to them, including several that had to be withdrawn later for their appalling safety profiles. The most shocking thing, as Kennedy mentions, is this (emphasis mine):
Committee members regularly participated in deliberations and advocated products in which they had a financial stake… The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) issued conflict-of-interest waivers to every committee member.
Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson of Trust the Evidence have commented on the new changes at the FDA, signally a lurch towards evidence-based medicine at long last. They have some practical complaints, but it’s still a small step back in the general direction of sanity.
They also offer this commentary on a familiar broken record in “The Times is a victim of its one-track reporting”. Much like its New York-based namesake, The Times of London is complaining about ‘vaccine hesitancy’, yet bizarrely refusing to report on the incredibly obvious reasons why trust in public health institutions has run rampant. ‘To save vaccination we must lie about vaccine candidates’ is an unspeakably foolish strategy, yet here we are! Heneghan and Jefferson conclude:
Dear readers, it is evident that the pitfalls of one-sided reporting, pervasive censorship, and an alarming unwillingness to examine the evidence are undermining the credibility of governments, pharmaceutical companies, and public health institutions. As for the mainstream media, they are so lost in their own narratives that it is difficult to believe they grasp the complexities of the issues at hand. Their failure to provide balanced and trustworthy information hinders informed decision-making in health. We find ourselves at a troubling juncture, witnessing a complete erosion of trust that once connected the public with vital institutions.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you want a return to responsible vaccination, first there must be an accounting for the horrendous excesses brought about by zealots who put politics (or in some cases money…) ahead of scientific process.
History
I have to share this piece by US centrist Robert F. Graboyes, not for the main body of the article (which provides reasons why the Democrats deserved to lose the election in November) but for the brilliant ‘lagniappe’ (a free gift) near the end entitled “On the F-word and the N-word”, meaning ‘Fascist’ and ‘Nazi’. Here’s the juicy bit:
Compare Trump and Republicans (or Biden and Harris) to Fascists, and I’ll roll my eyes and, if you’re open to learning, gently explain Fascism to you. Quick summary: Fascism was a variant of Socialism. Orthodox Socialism seeks to exert iron control over society and all its individuals via a centralized, corporate HQ model (like In-N-Out Burger); Fascism seeks to do the same thing using a franchise model (like McDonald’s). Neither Trump nor Biden nor Harris has the organizational vision or wherewithal to do either.
Compare Donald Trump and the Republicans to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, and our conversation has ended. In uttering this comparison, you exhibit a staggering ignorance of history and a disgraceful predilection for demagoguery. By trivializing the uniquely horrific nature and legacy of Hitler and Nazism, you defecate on the ashes of six million murdered Jews.
Rickety Robots
The investment may be keen to plug AI, but honestly, how foolish can people be? Answer: extremely foolish.
From Elizabeth Blair at NPR, “How an AI-generated summer reading list got published in major newspapers”:
Some newspapers around the country, including the Chicago Sun-Times and at least one edition of The Philadelphia Inquirer have published a syndicated summer book list that includes made-up books by famous authors. Chilean American novelist Isabel Allende never wrote a book called Tidewater Dreams, described in the “Summer reading list for 2025” as the author’s “first climate fiction novel”… Percival Everett, who won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, never wrote a book called The Rainmakers, supposedly set in a “near-future American West where artificially induced rain has become a luxury commodity.”
Only five of the 15 titles on the list are real.
Meanwhile this story struck me as an attempt for Anthropic to gin up interest in their own Large Language Model: “Anthropic faces backlash to Claude 4 Opus behavior that contacts authorities, press if it thinks you’re doing something ‘egregiously immoral’” by Carl Franzen at VentureBeat:
If it thinks you’re doing something egregiously immoral, for example, like faking data in a pharmaceutical trial, it will use command-line tools to contact the press, contact regulators, try to lock you out of the relevant systems, or all of the above.“ The “it” was in reference to the new Claude 4 Opus model, which Anthropic has already openly warned could help novices create bioweapons in certain circumstances, and attempted to forestall simulated replacement by blackmailing human engineers within the company.
By default, I recommend distrusting everything you read about so-called AI - even apparently negative stories like this one can be attempts to manipulate your perceptions. Large Language Models are interesting artefacts, but they’re not that much more sophisticated than optical character recognition and facial recognition tech that’s old hat, it’s just that we’ve stumbled upon another use case for the same technology I studied in my Masters degree in the 1990s.
Puppies and Kittens
Finally, I’d like to share this wonderful picture of my mother-in-laws three kittens, staring at ‘Feline Television’ i.e. a screen door, through which they watch in rapt attention as all the wildlife that lives around here goes about its business.
With unlimited love,
Chris.