Programming note: Tomorrow, Wednesday, I'll be here for our regular Clubland Q&A taking questions from Steyn Club members live around the planet at 3pm North American Eastern - which is 8pm Greenwich Mean Time/9pm Central European. Hope you can swing by.
~I'm still enjoying immensely the new Administration's daily flood-the-zone approach to the news cycle as it moves into its second month - including all the petty stuff, like Trump not bothering to come to the front door for Macron and delegating it to the White House Deputy-Assistant-Under-Director of Janitorial Services.
However, I confess a little disquiet about the ongoing access to the President of Doctor Moobs. From Paula Jardine at The Conservative Woman:
On January 17, 2025, it was reported that Gates and an unnamed Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) staffer had a three-hour dinner with President-elect Trump and his new chief of staff Susie Wiles during which Gates was apparently lobbying Trump to back accelerating an HIV vaccine project. The meeting became public after Gates gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal.
'I spoke a lot about HIV and that the Foundation is literally working on a cure for that. We're at an early stage,' said Gates. 'He [Trump], in the covid days, accelerated the vaccine innovation. I was asking him if maybe the same kind of thing could be done here.'
Thanks for reminding us. Trump did a great thing by withdrawing America from the World Health Organisation, which the US and the west fund but which China controls. But, having done that, why then grant private dinners to the megalomaniac Gates who provides ten per cent of the WHO's funding? He's able to do that because Windows 98 made him fabulously wealthy, and enabled him to appoint himself Public Health Commissar for the entire planet. Every forty-eight hours in some newspaper or other he's photographed jetting in to some or other middle-rank power to be received by whoever the designated Fawning Prime Minister of the Day is. Just because he's rich enough to buy deference that, apparently, the President of the French Republic can't.
The chief executive of the United States should not be among their number.
It's depressing also that, four years after the deaths of the first vaccine victims, Bill Gates can still get away with lines like "accelerating the vaccine innovation" without The Wall Street Journal feeling the need to qualify it. Are you quaking in terror at this new measles epidemic?
True story. pic.twitter.com/8RAXXGGsbu
— Dr. Ben Tapper (@DrBenTapper1) February 20, 2025
The point is well-taken. But thanks for "accelerating the vaccine innovation":
Yale scientists link Covid vaccines to alarming new syndrome causing 'distinct biological changes' to body
The Yale research suggests the Covid vaccines may be responsible for so-called "Long Covid". So just to frame it within the parameters of the evolved narrative:
*Fauci's illegal "gain-of-function" researches gave us common-or-garden Covid;
*Gates's "accelerated" vaccine innovation gave us Covid-for-life.
Enough. Trump should not be dining with this man.
~DON'T BET ON THE BARONESS: For any UK readers still pinning their hopes on Baroness Bollocks' joke of an inquiry with Hugo Smug-Tosspot KC, I was interested to discover that His Majesty's Government's approved compensation of 120,000 pounds has, as of this day, been paid out to fewer than two hundred victims of the Covid vaccine. As you may recall, the first person in the UK to receive the payment was our friend Vikki Spit, who came on our show a lot - and, as she put it, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. The Steyn Show's second vaccine victim, Charlotte Wright, also received the payout. Both Vikki and Charlotte were widowed in their thirties by the vax. A hundred and twenty grand isn't a lot, but as Charlotte said on the show it was enough to enable her to keep her house and to keep her kids in the same local school, and thus ensure that, in addition to losing their dad, they didn't lose all their friends as well.
Six of the first ten compensated victims had been guests on the Steyn Show. That was over two years ago. I would have thought we'd have been up to a thousand payouts by now, but, oddly enough, once GB News yanked the show, the squeaks of the squeaky wheels got a lot less audible. At the present rate of adjudication, if you put in your claim today, you'll get the 120 grand in the mid-24th century. I'm being serious here. No exaggeration for comic effect.
So sick of baronesses. Notice how all the grooming-gangs outrage of a month ago has gone away? As Sammy Woodhouse says, she's so bored of living in Groundhog Day.
On the other hand, vax damage is apparently now safe enough for Captain Conventional to mention:
🚨 PIERS MORGAN: "I was with one of the top cancer experts in Britain for lunch a couple of days ago, who was utterly scathing about the long-term impact of the mRNA vaccines ... and says that they're reaping a whirlwind in the world of cancer as a result of the vaccines." pic.twitter.com/9HPkIgBlRV
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) February 18, 2025
~CEREMONIAL BURIAL OF ELECTION PLEDGE: What do you make of this Merz guy, the new German chancellor? He sounds so fabulously super-butch:
Merz vows migration crackdown on Day 1 as German chancellor
From the BBC:
The conservative opposition leader tipped to lead Germany following next month's elections has promised far-reaching changes to border and asylum rules after a group of children were targeted in a deadly knife attack in Bavaria.
Friedrich Merz promised in effect to close Germany's borders to all irregular migrants, including those with a right to protection.
Ah, but that was during the "election campaign", when it is traditional for the respectable parties to offer some boob bait for the rubes. What was I saying just yesterday?
The threat from the 'far right' prompted Merz to butch up for the election on immigration... However, the campaign's over, and it's time to butch down again.
Well, that didn't take long:
"I've won the election now, so anything I said during the campaign is now null and void". https://t.co/Upy5taXebz
— Alan (@A1an_M) February 24, 2025
Merz vs Scholz was so exciting, wasn't it? A battle for the soul of the nation between Tweedleleft and Tweedleright. But you've had your fun, and now it's over. Half the country voted for the "right": in East Germany they voted for the "far right", but in West Germany they're a little more squeamish so they stuck with the "respectable right" ...which is now in coalition talks with the left to ensure that for the umpteenth time you saps are reminded of the essence of post-democratic democracy: no change can be permitted on anything that matters.
~DIVERSITY STABBING OF THE DAY: Over the weekend, a Portuguese tourist was killed and seven other persons were wounded in the Alsatian city of Mulhouse, about five miles from the German border.
Was the stabber Muslim? Check.
Did he yell "Allahu Akbar"? Check.
Was he known to the authorities? Oh, yeah. He was an Algerian national, and the French Republic made ten attempts to deport him. And ten times the Algerian consulate in Paris refused to take him back. From Le Point:
Selon Bruno Retailleau, l'Algérie a refusé « à dix reprises » de récupérer son ressortissant. « Aucun pays n'a un droit de tirage pour humilier la France », a-t-il dit au JT de 20 heures de TF1, quelques heures après l'attentat. Il faut « instaurer un rapport de force » avec l'Algérie, sur les visas et les accords bilatéraux.
Which means:
According to Bruno Retailleau [the French Interior Minister], Algeria has refused 'ten times' to take back its national. 'No country has an ongoing right to humiliate France,' he told TF1's Eight O'Clock News, a few hours after the attack. It is necessary to 'establish a balance of power' with Algeria, on visas and bilateral agreements.
No country has a right to humiliate France? Any itinerant Mohammedan can humiliate France, and does so on a daily basis. And, in fact, you, M Retailleau, humiliate France with reactions such as these. And this guy's supposed to be the butch boy in the French cabinet: the more emollient Foreign Minister walked back his colleague's remarks a few hours later.
Do you remember when Europe had a polity called "Austria-Hungary"? Then they went their separate ways - and how. Now Austria has stabbings-a-go-go and Hungary has none. How does that happen?
Gee, could it be because Austria, like France, has lots of Muslims - and Hungary doesn't?
It's not Algeria "humiliating" France. It's France humiliating itself.
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