Greetings one and all and welcome back to another edition of Laura's Links. I had a grand old time last Friday virtually warming up the great Mark Steyn's chair in the Clubland Q&A. Mark often mentions the official toilet seat warmer positions rather involuntarily assumed by the younger boys at his British boarding school for the older boys especially in the dark, dank days of the English winters.
I can assure you, this was a WAY WAY better seat warming gig! It was lots of fun and a great honour to guest host for the regular guest host, Andrew Lawton, and rattle on for just over an hour about free speech, the Wokestapo and a bunch of your very Jewy questions. You'll be happy to know that Mark himself will be back in the Q&A hot spot this week so Mark Steyn Club members can officially start thinking about questions to serve up to the Grand Poobah himself.
A few of you have commented on or emailed me about something I wrote in a previous column about the Covid tyranny – about how difficult it is for me to describe the real feeling of dread that I have about what we are facing. I may have called it the evil blob, or described it as World War 3, or as a cloud of darkness. I still don't have a good name for it or a perfect description of it, but I clearly hit a nerve because so many people still feel "it", even though some things have just ever so slightly started to go back to a barely recognizable facsimile of normal. "It" is out there.
I think we have to prepare ourselves for the fact that some things will never go back to "normal" (including a lot of broken human brains). Too much territory has been ceded. Some facets of the life we knew are just not going to come back because we let them slip away from us. There already is a "new normal". They did it. It's here. As a result, we will have to keep fighting tooth and nail all the time to try to expand the breadth of our freedom because we are all still being constrained. We can now see world leaders, like Mark Steyn's favourite dinky metrosexual Frenchman, are confirming their next set of plans for us. They will live comfortably. You, unfortunately, will have to do with less and it will cost you more. You will stay at home and EAT ZE BUGS!
As always, courage is the antidote. If people don't buck up, we are all going to be hooked up to Pfizer IVs for the rest of our lives, have our babies vaccinated in utero for monkeypox, get social credit points for listening to the Meghan Markle's new craptacular drooly goobery podcast while we eat cockroach bolognese by the romantic light of our our drone delivered Anthony Fauci novena candles.
Courage! We need more courage!
On that note: please listen to this excellent interview that CBC's Natasha Fatah conducted with the wonderfully inspiring and brave John Moore of North Carolina, who jumped on stage to help Sir Salman Rushdie as he was attacked on stage in New York. At 85 years of age, he has more courage than people half or a quarter of his age. They just don't make them like Mr. Moore any more, do they? And listen to Mr. Moore's sage warning in that spectacularly charming drawl: "if we allow the voices like Mr. Rushdie to be silenced then I believe our voices will be next".
Don't. Let. Your. Voice. Be. Next.
(Can we get Mr. Moore a medal?)
Have a great weekend and I'll see you in the comments.
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North America:
"I regret being a slut." This is a very powerful essay. Lots of Kathy Shaidle vibes in here.
Rex Murphy: "A foul mouthed 'anti-racist' worth of the Liberal government."
VDH: The worst and the stupidest.
As Mark always says: terrible people must be forced to stop doing the wrong thing, they will never be shamed into 'doing the right thing'.
This thoughtful Canadian physician, Dr. Benoit, was banned from Twitter for the usual reasons (no speaky myocarditis/vax injury) but you can follow his excellent work on Substack.
"Welfare for the Wealthy Woke". Wish I had thought of that!!
Reason 48 gazillion million to love DeSantis.
What the hell is really going on here? America is broke. This is insane.
"Last night I was SWATTED just after 1:00 AM." America, you know I love you but this is intolerable lethality.
Why are Trudeau's creepy feds taking soil samples illegally from Saskatchewan farms?
Canadian journalist Keean Bexte has a theory.
Trudeau really wants to starve us.
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Jews and Israel:
Why is nobody talking about this?
SCRAMBLE THE PATTERN EXPERTS. Are we allowed to talk about it? The "pattern"? Or nah?
"A mass murderer of Jews goes to Berlin."
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Middle East:
I cannot speak Arabic, but I can still translate this from Saudi Sunni Speak to English realpolitik : Yo Biden, stop f--king us over and cozying up to those bats--t crazy, genocidal Shiia fanatics otherwise known as Iran. I imagine not a small number of Saudis are praying for Bibi to win the upcoming Israeli elections. Strange times indeed!
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The Formerly Great Britain:
I am not a great expert in British culture, but I definitely do not recall "machete mayhem" being a big part of it. Tea and crumpets, yes. Fish and chips, sure. But MACHETE MAYHEM???? Are we allowed to talk about this?
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Europe:
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Down Under:
A retrospective on the utter hell of Covid Australia.
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Left Wing Kooks:
"The sanctification of George Soros." Leftist only protect their pet lefty Jews. Live ones, conservative ones not so much.
"You can't sit out the culture wars." True.
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Human, Simian and Canine Grace:
Israeli app helps the deaf community engage and cope in war and peace.
This is great advice. Actually did a variation of this myself when breaking into the writing game many moons ago. I reached out and met with editors and journalists of all kinds, bought them lunch or coffee and asked if I could pick their brains for an hour. Without fail, they were polite and generous with their time. I got exceptional career and professional advice and also found out what they were looking for in terms of news and opinion stories that worked for them. I'm still in touch with many of these people today. Expand your network this way! It's a solid, solid life hack. Nowadays, it's even cooler with the whole world being open to even more via the Internet. Gift cards or charitable donations are an easy thank you, as are simple and dignified handwritten thank you notes (still the classiest).
This was basically me and Kathy Shaidle most days on email.
It's open thread time! Log into SteynOnline and let Laura know what you think of these stories or other happenings from week that was. Commenting privileges are among the many perks of membership in The Mark Steyn Club. While going off topic is permitted on Laura's Links, do stick to the other rules as you engage: no URLs, no profanity, and no ad hominem attacks.
