DISPATCHES FROM AL-BRIṬĀNIYĀ:

Somali jailed for raping FIVE women wins a case against the NHS because his painkillers were dispensed during Ramadan fasting hours with the court ruling that his ECHR rights had been breached.

Five rape victims, and he’s the one winning a human rights case. https://t.co/liG1tP03vp

— Driftwood (@buc97552) October 13, 2026

Madeline Grant adds: “This landed on the same day we learnt a migrant raped a dead homeless woman, before a judge deemed him too low IQ to enter a plea. Tragedies and scandals that would once have attracted days/weeks of national attention are instead memory-holed when the next appalling thing happens.”

THE KIMCHI HAS HIT THE FAN: The South Korean stock market is in free fall, and these are the reasons*.

The Korean stock market is in free fall once again. Fears of cheaper Chinese competition making up ground and criticism leveled at investors in AI stocks by Broadcom’s chief executive combined to wipe more than 5% off its benchmark Kospi index.

After suffering heavy losses on Friday and Monday, the Kospi’s losing streak stretched to five sessions, and the market now languishes more than a third below the all-time high set in June of this year. Korea’s two largest companies by market capitalization, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix bore the brunt of the selloff with falls of 10% and 7%, respectively, and the pair was responsible for roughly half the market’s decline.

Korea’s stock-market fortunes are often taken as a proxy by investors for the AI trade as a whole. Nasdaq-100 futures fell by 0.5% on Tuesday.

*Additional reasons may apply:

This is what happens Larry. This is what happens when you elect a “progressive party” of communist sympathizers to government Larry. https://t.co/yjD4RUjG1K

— John Ʌ Konrad V (@johnkonrad) October 13, 2026

NOVEMBER PREVIEW (PERHAPS): Why the Midterm Polling Is Absolutely, Positively, 100% Wrong. (Maybe.)

FROM CELIA HAYES:  My Dear Cousin: A Novel In Letters (Adelsverein.)

When Peggy Becker married Englishman Tommy Morehouse in San Antonio in the spring of 1938, her cousin and best friend Venetia “Vennie” Stoneman was her bridesmaid. After the wedding, Peg and Tommy traveled across the Pacific to Malaya, where Tommy managed his family’s rubber plantation. There they expected to raise a family and live a comfortable and rewarding life among the British expatriates in the tropics, while Vennie returned to Galveston to continue training as a nurse.
The start of the Second World War changed those comfortable, settled lives: Tommy Morehouse became a prisoner of war, Peg barely escaped the fall of Singapore with her small son, and Vennie Stoneman was a nurse in the US Army Nurse Corps, tending to battlefield casualties in North Africa, Italy, and France. In Australia, Peg waits out the war, wondering if her husband will survive brutal captivity by the Japanese, and Vennie risks her own life as an air evacuation nurse. Throughout all, the two women write to each other, of their lives, loves, of Vennie’s patients and comrades, and Peg’s children and the woes of running a wartime household among rationing and shortages of shoes for her children.

THE USUAL PRE-ELECTION BS:

The funny thing is that this is ALL fake.

The Cornell 7 thing turned out to be scuzzy on all sides, but no kind of prosecutable rape. The other #NewMeToo cases ("62 million man rape academy") ALL fell apart or duly ended with the men in jail. Gillis didn't say women ARE working… https://t.co/DqgdVGg10C

— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) October 13, 2026

AH, YES, BUT THE MEDIA WILL KEEP LYING:  America Is Winning, Whatever the Media Tell You. Iran crushed, Maduro toppled, Panama reclaimed: far from being outsmarted by Xi Jinping, Trump has put America back on top.

THE LEFT DOESN’T WANT TO HEAR ANYTHING THAT DEBUNKS THEIR THEORIES:  Singapore Has a Lesson for America’s Affordability Crisis, and The Left Won’t Want to Hear It.

IT’S GDP THAT IS FLAWED, IT COUNTS GOVERNMENT SPENDING AS IF IT WERE PRODUCTIVE:  ‘I Dig a Hole, GDP Goes Up’: A French Socialist Just Revealed the Left’s Flawed View of Economics.

DEMS ONLY LIKE THE SUPREMACY CLAUSE WHEN THEY ABUSE IT:  Here’s How Many ICE Detainers Sanctuary State New York Has Rejected.

I ALSO DON’T BELIEVE THE NOW YOU SEE HIM NOW YOU DON’T HOMUNCULUS WILL CLOSE THE DEAL:  A Blue Ripple in Texas?

It appears that one James Talarico is the present big blue hope for Democrats who have a passionate interest in turning Texas blue by somehow wedging him into a seat in the US Senate. This in spite of being someone which hardly anyone seems to have heard of, six months ago. He’s young, slick-appearing, superficially polished, makes all the right noises and voices all the correct progressive platitudes … I swear, they must order up these candidates by the dozen, from some central Dem Party clone factory/distribution warehouse full of test tubes. They are all youngish, sleek, shallow, did all the right colleges and socially-responsible early jobs, have an appealing but not too exotic background, get fawning national press coverage, do fundraising events outside of Texas, raise the hopes that this time around they will get somewhere with Texas voters as a whole … and then somehow before the big day, it all goes flat. The air goes out of the bubble. It happened with Wendy Whats-her-name in the pink tennis shoes, to Robert Francis the Fake Hispanic O’Rourke, and it looks as if James Talarico is also about to fizzle out in a similar manner.

But Celia and I could be wrong. So kindly all y’all get off your duffs and vote. We don’t want to lose Texas like we lost Colorado.

OH, THIS AGAIN:  Activist Federal Judges Seek to Hamstring the President.

I VOTED FOR THIS:  DHS Says Immigration Fine Blitz Helped Spur 82,000 Self-Deportations.

TODAY I LEARNED THAT OHIO IS IN GREAT BRITAIN:  Jury Convicts Blogger After Ohio Senator Reports Crude Political Joke. In Ohio, an insult aimed upward came back down as a criminal case.

RUSSIA IS NOT THE SICK MAN OF EUROPE. RUSSIA IS THE CHINA OF EUROPE:  Russia Denies Second Illness, Lifts Quarantine After Unexplained Death at Plague Research Lab.

WHICH IS TO SAY A MALICIOUS CRETIN OF THE FIRST WATER:  QotD: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, wokester avant la lettre.

MORE AND BETTER SHIPS?  What do you give your Navy for its 251st Bday?

READ BOOKS OF THE FORTIES. MEN DID PUNCH EACH OTHER. THEN WE WENT TO LAWSUITS. PUNCHING WAS BETTER. IT DIDN’T DISCRIMINATE ON WEALTH OR ABILITY TO FIND A LAWYER:  fighting words and needed beatings. a society without violence will soon need it.

GOOD:  Billionaire Donors Behind Idaho Prop 1 Did Not See the LDS Church Coming.

Idaho is a big LDS state.

OPEN THREAD: I disagree with your philosophy. What killed the cat’s not curiosity.

GROUND THYSELF: The moon could turn astronauts into ‘walking, high voltage capacitors’ that accidentally zap spacecraft.

HMM: Ilhan Omar Was 37 When She Entered Congress. Soon, She Became 36. “Omar became a year younger, you see, because she has stated publicly that she entered the U.S. as a minor, under the guardianship of her father, but if she was actually 18 when she entered the country, she was not actually a minor at all.”

SAME: “I can’t imagine looking to Hillary Clinton to satisfy a hunger for real conversation.”

SCIENCE: Scientists Collected Deep-Sea Rocks. They Spontaneously Caught Fire in The Lab.

MICROBIOME NEWS: Your Mouth’s Bacteria May Be Linked to How Quickly You Think.

THE NET OF A MILLION LIES:

Following Ukrainian strikes on Russian data centers:

Tucker Carlson's views dropped 71%
Douglas Macgregor's views dropped 62%
TCN views dropped 34% https://t.co/bzlx2QKUfG pic.twitter.com/ekkReqo33O

— Matt Tardio (@angertab) October 13, 2026