On April 11, 1945, the American Third Army liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp, near Weimar, Germany, a camp that would later be judged second only to Auschwitz in the horrors it imposed on its prisoners.
Among those in the camp saved by the American soldiers was Elie Wiesel, who would go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.
Shown in photograph: German citizens ushered to the camp by American soldiers, post-conquest.
The author of the Harry Potter and Cormoran Strike series has gotten into trouble. She defied the State by saying that men are men and women are women even when a member of one of these sexes
To some, the author’s statements are “hate” speech. Speech now prosecutable in Scotland, where
On April 1, 2024, legislation went into effect there making it a criminal offense to “stir up hate” against members of a protected group, including transgender individuals. This is a “crime” that can be punished by up to seven years in prison.
The law’s terms are encompassing
So far, Rowling has escaped arrest, though offering herself as the subject of a test case. After the law went into effect, she penned a series of posts declaring that various men who say they’re not men are in fact men: blatant “misgendering.”
“If what I’ve written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested,” she wrote.
When the Scottish police declined, she added: “I trust that all women — irrespective of profile or financial means — will be treated equally under the law.
This trust is, I fear, misplaced. As long as the law exists, Rowling’s very visible defiance cannot protect everybody else who might be targeted under it.
Scotland needs more Harry Potters, er, heroes … to stand up to this terrible law.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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A metafísica é uma consequência de estar mal disposto.
Metaphysics is a consequence of not feeling very well.
Fernando Pessoa, Tabacaria (1928), trans. Richard Zenith.
On April 10, 1998, the Northern Ireland peace talks ended with an historic agreement, dubbed the Belfast, or Good Friday Agreement. The accord was reached after nearly two years of talks and 30 years of conflict.
The agreement was approved by voters across the island of Ireland in two referendums held on May 22, 1998. The agreement came into force on December 2, 1999.
This isn’t my view. But it’s the apparent view of some — I hope not many — Canadian police officers.
At a recent public meeting about coping with crime, a Toronto police officer told people that to reduce the chances “of being attacked in your home, leave your [car key] fobs at your front door. Because they’re breaking into your home to steal your car. They don’t want anything else.”
To reduce the risk to you personally, give up in advance.
Are you following the reasoning? Because I’m not. And I am very disinclined to leave my car keys and cash and my Taiwanese history library in a heap near the front door to buy off home invaders.
Instead, perhaps everybody in high-risk neighborhoods should install a trap door in their vestibule, rigged in such a way that anybody who forcibly breaks into the home is immediately dropped into a vat of
AIER’s John Miltimore sees an “obvious problem” with the policeman’s helpful advice. The problem is that he is asking people to encourage burglary and theft, to make it “easier, not harder, to steal vehicles, diminishing the time it takes to commit the crime, thus lowering the risk involved.” If a lot of people follow the advice, this would tend to increase
It all reminds Miltimore of the movie Robocop and its crime-ridden landscape. “There’s something dystopian in normalizing this kind of violence. . . .”
To avoid dystopia, let’s defend
And our cars. And car keys. And . . .
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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“Someone asked me about cancel culture, and I said, ‘If you’re going to be canceled, this is the culture that you want to be canceled from.’ Because who wants to be part of this culture?”
Woody Allen, as interviewed by Sam Wasson, “All the Romance of Filmmaking Is Gone,” Air Mail (April 6, 2024).
Despite being outnumbered 16 to one, forces of the Old Swiss Confederacy proved victorious over the Archduchy of Austria in the Battle of Näfels, April 9, 1388.
On this date in 1991, Georgia declared its independence from the Soviet Union.
The law of supply and demand applies to tomatoes and also to ideas. Demand for research that bolsters arguments for bad policy leads to supply of research. Truth provides some constraints but doesn’t always prevail.
David Barker, “Climate Alarmists’ Bad Science,” Wall Street Journal (April 3, 2024.
What’s the latest on the prosecution of the January 6th “rioters” at the Capitol?
Well, take the case of Mr. Daniel Goodwyn, 35, of Corinth, Texas. He pled guilty on January 31, 2023, to one misdemeanor count of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds without lawful authority.
“A sentencing requirement that Jan. 6 defendant Daniel Goodwyn have his computer monitored by the government for “disinformation” has been vacated by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit,” explains The Epoch Times:
The court on March 26 published a mandate sending the case back to U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton to remove the computer monitoring requirement he issued as part of the sentencing judgment in the case on June 15, 2023.
“Judge Walton had no legal basis to issue the special condition,” Carolyn Stewart, Mr. Goodwyn’s attorney, told The Epoch Times in an April 3 email.
The judge had also censured the defendant for his interview with Tucker Carlson, who, said the judge, had minimized Goodwyn’s involvement on the fateful day.
As The Epoch Times story relates, it’s been a colorful case, with the judge showing he was misinformed about some of the facts of the case, and adamantine in his error. He also disagreed with the defendant’s contention that Ashli Babbitt had been murdered by the police.
There are people with whom everything they consider a means turns mysteriously into an end.
Friedrich Schlegel, Philosophical Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991) § 428.