November 9, 2026

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE:

Don’t trust your kids to people who hate them.

Posted at 6:23 pm by Stephen Green

THE INTERNET OF DANGEROUSLY CONNECTED THINGS: Iran blamed for fridge hacks.

France has accused Iran of being behind an “unprecedented” cyber attack on its supermarket fridges that spoilt food worth millions of pounds.

Jean-Noël Barrot, the country’s foreign minister, vowed to retaliate against Tehran as he blamed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for the Oct 11 and 12 hacks. He also summoned the Iranian ambassador.

“I can confirm that this attack was carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” said Mr Barrot.

“This attack is unprecedented in both its scale and its level of aggression,” he said, adding: “We will implement sanctions at the European level against all those responsible for this attack.”

From August: Iran-Linked Cyberattack on US Water Systems Explained. “The cyberattack on US water supply systems has once again shown how severe lapses in critical infrastructure security can be. At least seven states, including Michigan and Minnesota’s Water and Wastewater Sector (WWS) companies, reported issues to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). There has been degraded water operations caused as a result of the activity.”

As Glenn likes to say, I do not trust the Internet of things. Particularly very big things, such as supermarket freezers and the control of local water supply systems.

Posted at 5:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE DEMS UNDERSTAND TAKING AND EXERCISING POWER:

Posted at 5:36 pm by Stephen Green

BRENDAN O’NEILL: Russell Brand and the tyranny of the Greater Good.

Brand is the Jimmy Savile of the liberal elite. He’s the pig whose sexist blather and misogynistic behaviour they were ‘willing to overlook’, just as their stiffer, posher forebears of the 1980s media establishment overlooked the tsunami of rumours about Savile. In both instances, a blind eye was turned in the name of the Greater Good. In Savile’s case, that ‘good’ was his charity work, his primetime ratings, his position as an elder statesman of BBC pop and his chuminess with royalty. In Brand’s case, it was his saucy leftism, his frisson of ‘revolution’ in an era of Cameroon Toryism, his sprinkling of debauchery at a tired BBC and his chuminess with the bourgeois press. The result was the same, though: female safety traded in for fleeting moral gain.

[Owen] Jones [of the Grauniad] is not alone. There are numerous reports and allegations that media bigwigs were ‘willing to overlook’ Brand’s comments and behaviour on the grounds that he was a cash cow, the great spicer-up of their bland output. It is alleged that as early as 2013, Channel 4 executives considered reducing the number of female production staff on Brand’s shows, so that they wouldn’t be victimised. The BBC failed to investigate Brand after he flashed his penis at a female member of staff in its LA offices in 2009. As Konstantin Kisin says, ‘the fact that Brand [was] a rapist’ was an ‘open secret’ in British comedy circles, yet little was done.

This is pure Savile territory. The wilfully blind might be different – younger, less stuffy and more ‘hip’ than the BBC suits who ignored whispers about Savile’s depravity. But their instinct was the same: to stare at their shoes as rumours swirled because their man was just too damn useful, whether because he was making gains for the crappy Labour left or money for TV execs. In both cases we witnessed the tyranny of the Greater Good – the horrors that can flow, or at least go under the radar, when elites prioritise riches or ideology over decency.

“This is pure Savile territory,”  for several reasons, as Kisin tweeted today. “[A] lot of people commenting on the Russell Brand case don’t understand how defamation law works in Britain…If you publicly make a claim about another person, that person can sue you for defamation and you will reliably lose and have to pay them huge damages, as well as their legal costs and your own, unless you can prove that your claim is true. Large media organisations like major newspapers will sometimes risk publishing claims they believe to be true on the basis that a story is in the public interest and an honest opinion but they regularly lose defamation cases and pay out millions in lost and settled cases. So, when I say that Russell Brand being a rapist was an ‘open secret’ on the British comedy circuit – that is a fact that is perfectly compatible with the fact that people didn’t say anything about it in public. From memory, some tried and were threatened or even sued into submission.”

Posted at 5:17 pm by Ed Driscoll

SAY, FRANCE…:

…does this seem like maybe a good time to reevaluate your Middle East and/or immigration policies?

Posted at 4:34 pm by Stephen Green

STAY TUNED…:

If Hegseth is out, it’d be a big win for the Swamp.

Posted at 3:32 pm by Stephen Green

JENNIFER SEY: Generation Sacrifice: How Feds And The Media Buried The Devastating Truth.

I pushed back on school closures and lockdowns from the beginning, in deep-blue San Francisco. For that, I lost a career I had spent 30 years building, including 23 years at Levi Strauss & Co., where I rose to global brand president. I eventually left my city so my children could attend school. I lost friends who treated reasoned dissent as something dangerous.

On the day I resigned in 2022, I opened a production company with one goal: make a documentary about what had been done to children. Even then, two years into the COVID response, children in many cities were spending entire school days masked and undergoing regular testing. Unvaccinated kids were excluded from activities and teams. Students were sent home after outbreaks. In some places, normal schooling was disrupted for years. Private-school students played sports while public-school athletes lost seasons, opportunities and, in some cases, their shot at college.

When we began making the film, families wanted to talk. We met parents who lost a teenage son to suicide, a mom who nearly lost her daughter to drugs, kids who never graduated and athletes whose college opportunities disappeared. We spoke with parents who went to school-board meetings and were vilified or threatened professionally, as well as doctors, teachers, and journalists who said they were punished for questioning prevailing policies. Their stories were heartbreaking, and they wanted to tell them.

What turned out to be much harder than making the film was finding anyone willing to show it.

“Generation COVID” begins streaming on SalemNow November 13.

Posted at 2:46 pm by Stephen Green

MORE OF THAT WHITE MAN’S PRIVILEGE I KEEP READING ABOUT:

“Make no mistake that the only reason Russel Brand got a rightfully deserved punishment, is because he’s white and the government doesn’t fear “community tensions” for jailing him.”

Posted at 2:28 pm by Stephen Green