Urtica Ferox

How Mind Control of the Masses Works According to Computing Forever : Television channel ITV briefly went off air to encourage people in the UK to take part in the weekly clap for the NHS event. Yes really. “No TV allowed during worship”, remarked a Twitter user, who took a photo of the message, which said, “We’ll be back soon − #ClapForCarers”. What is it to have freedom, to act freely, in a free society? North Koreans freely clapping. British citizens freely clapping. Think about it.

Wild Drug Lord Hippos Roam Free in Colombia I do apologise. I hate click bait, but that headline was irresistible. So: Colombia, in South America, has its own population of wild hippos, thousands of kilometres from their native  range in Africa. The hippo invasion can be traced straight back to the cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar. As reported by DW.com: "At the height of Escobar's criminal heyday in the 1980s and 1990s, the drug lord built a zoo on his vast Hacienda Napoles ranch between Medellin and Bogota. When he was finally killed by government forces in 1993, the ranch was left to ruin." "Other exotic species from the private menagerie, such as zebras, were moved to international and Colombian zoos, but zoos were unwilling or unable to give massive, aggressive hippos a home." "With no one knowing quite what to do with them, the semi-aquatic giants have flourished and multiplied and now number between 65 and 80, according the local...

You Know Something's Wrong When a Teenager is Threatened with Imprisonment for Talking about Climate Change When Naomi Seibt first appeared above the media horizon a year ago I have to admit my heart sank. She seemed to be saying some very sensible things about climate change and climate alarmism, and her "conversion" to scepticism after exploring the topic was interesting,  but I thought, "Is this what it takes to combat Greta Thunberg? A young woman (she is now only 19) taking an opposing stance? Is that the only thing the world will take notice of?" Well, the world has taken notice, and has roused the intense ire of many, including Wikipedia, long known to be ardently alarmist. Its entry begins " Naomi Seibt (born 18 August 2000) is a German climate change denier ". You can't get much more brutal than that. Wikipedia notes that the  Guardian  has accused her of being influenced by alt-right, white nationalist Stefan Molyneux, and says tha...

What a Surprise: YouTube Found an Excuse to Take Down Planet of the Humans According to James Delingpole: "Finally, YouTube has found the flimsy pretext it needed to cancel the controversial Michael Moore-produced eco-documentary which has been infuriating greenies with its anti-renewables message: ‘copyright infringement’." "Planet of the Humans , the documentary executive-produced by Moore and written and directed by his friend Jeff Gibbs has racked up over 8 million views on YouTube since its launch last month."  Read more.

Cause and Effect: Covid-19 or the Response to Covid-19? I read the Otago Daily Times , not because I live in Otago, or because it is a particularly good or insightful newspaper, but because it is not owned by Fairfax Media, who dominate the New Zealand news landscape in a way that is more reminiscent of authoritarian theocracies than a Western liberal democracy. Here is a selection of excerpts from recent stories. See if you can detect a pattern. 15 May: Coronavirus has taken a toll on Michael Hill International which said this morning it was closing nine stores, of which three are in New Zealand. 17 May : Hospitality chain the Good Group − owners of upmarket Queenstown restaurants such as Botswana Butchery and White & Wong's − has made half of its more than 300 staff redundant amid the Covid-19 crisis …. Good Group says the pandemic has decimated its business, and it kept as many staffers as it could. 18 May : Furniture and electronics retailer Smiths ...

Is it Better to Suppress Misinformation or Publicly Critique it? The best way to foster a conspiracy theory is for the authorities to try to suppress it. This has long been well known. Take UFOs. Even the Pentagon seems to have grown tired of the whole thing. In April they released videos , taken by naval aviators, of unidentified flying objects in order to “clear up misconceptions”. There’s nothing like turning the light on to dispel fears or suspicions about whatever it was that went bump in the night. But in the 21 st century social media platforms have meant that a bizarre range of conspiracy theories and misinformation take on a life of their own. Should they be allowed to fester and spread? It doesn’t seem practical to address them all publicly, and whose responsibility would that be? A government body? The Ministry of Misinformation? Please no. And, let’s face it, not all theories and misinformation could be addressed adequately, because they spawn too fast, ...

Who Gets to Control How the World Thinks? Carl Benjamin, who began his online life with the gamer name Sargon of Akkad and then got stuck with it, has a YouTube channel called Akkad Daily . He produces daily YouTube videos on a range of topics, which tend to focus on British political and cultural life but have a common theme of being anti-woke, anti-social justice warrior, and anti-feminist. He has been particularly strident in decrying the cover-up of the Muslim grooming gangs scandal, but has also launched into the more aggressive aspects of the transgender lobby, and has a particular dislike of the Communist regime in China. I have watched quite a number of his videos, and while I don’t agree with everything he says, and sometimes his thoughts about what women think are truly wince-inducing, he is still a welcome and refreshing antidote to major left-wing media outlets such as the BBC, the Guardian and the New York Times . A bit of balance, one might say, to the ...