Tag: media

End Of An Era: Pro-Democracy Icon Jimmy Lai Found Guilty Of Sedition In Hong Kong

The high profile trial of Hong Kong’s foremost pro-democracy media tycoon has just wrapped up, and it puts a symbolic cap on the end of an era in terms of prior large scale anti-China activism in the city.

Jimmy Lai, who long spearheaded huge protests and local media criticism of Beijing, was found guilty on Monday in a landmark national security case, marking an end to the 156-dady trial. He could spend the rest of his life in prison based the series of sedition-related convictions.

Prosecutors accused him of conspiring with senior executives of the fiercely pro-democracy and independent Chinese-language newspaper Apple Daily and others to request foreign forces to impose sanctions or blockades to thwart Beijing influence in Hong Kong. 

Further, he’s alleged to have engaged in other hostile activities against Hong Kong or China, which hearkens back to prior years of long-running street protests which sometimes descended into violence and vandalism, or at times large student takeovers of entire university buildings.

China had long alleged a foreign intelligence ‘hidden hand’ behind the protests. This was in part due to student activists being in semi-regular communication with Western officials and NGOs, and sometimes even honored at events hosted in Europe or the US.

A panel of three government-approved judges convicted the 78-year-old, after Lai had consistently denied all charges. He was first detained in August 2020 under Hong Kong’s Beijing-imposed national security law.

The security law has been widely seen as the final nail in the coffin of Hong Kong’s long-running autonomy, and was a response to the major 2019 protests which were widely covered in international press reports.

Lai upon the verdict being read appeared upbeat, as he waved to supporters in the public gallery, which included his wife, son, and Hong Kong’s Catholic Cardinal Joseph Zen.

Western leaders, including of the US and Britain, are expected to lobby for his freedom, especially given that this is being viewed as ultimately a crackdown on Western values in influence on one of the globe’s main financial hubs.

Sebastien Lai, one of his children, issued a statement on behalf of the family, saying they are saddened by the verdict, describing it as a twisting of justice. “In the 800-page verdict they have there is essentially nothing, nothing that incriminates him,” Lai told reporters in London. “This is a perfect example of how the national security law has been molded and weaponized against someone who essentially said stuff that they didn’t like.”

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French Public Broadcaster Claims Christmas Markets Are a Tradition Tied to the Nazis

A French public broadcaster has been accused of spreading anti-Christian messaging by saying that the tradition of Christmas markets is tied to Adolph Hitler and the Nazis.

This week, taxpayer-funded Franceinfo published a video titled “Christmas markets, a tradition rehabilitated by the Nazis” on social media, which, according to Le Figaro, opened with the question: “Did you know there’s a link between the Nazis and our beloved Christmas markets?”

The broadcaster went on to claim that the tradition was “largely revived” by the National Socialist German Workers’ Party under Adolph Hitler in the 1930s as a means of promoting economic growth by encouraging the purchase of goods made in Germany at Christmas markets.

While Franceinfo journalist Antoine Milan Depeuille acknowledged that Christmas markets predate the formation of the Nazi party by hundreds of years during the Holy Roman Empire and spread widely across the continent during the Industrial Revolution, he claimed that they made a “strong comeback” in Hitler’s Germany in the 1930s after being pushed to the periphery of cities by “elites”.

“With the Nazi dictatorship, Christmas became a nationalist holiday. Christmas markets helped promote German heritage,” and “stimulate the economy with products made in Germany,” he said, claiming that the Nazis “decided to reinstate Christmas markets in city centres”.

Amid steep backlash on social media, with the broadcaster facing accusations of anti-Christian bias, Franceinfo removed the video from its accounts.

The public broadcaster’s move to tie Christmas markets to the Nazis was hailed by the French Communist Party-aligned L’Humanité newspaper, which declared: “Franceinfo is right: our Christmas markets do indeed have a link with the Nazis! Much to the dismay of the far right, which seeks to rewrite history while also attacking public service in the process.”

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Substack expands censorship to Australian users

Last week, we noted that Substack had caved into the UK censorship regime and was restricting the content that UK users can access unless they verified their age with either a selfie or a government-approved ID.

Age verification is not about keeping children “safe,” it is about control: age verification online is increasingly being integrated with digital ID systems, particularly through government-backed digital identity wallets, and is becoming a foundational component of digital ID systems with several countries, including the US, European Union member states, the UK and Australia, advancing digital ID frameworks where age verification is a core function. 

For example, the GOV.UK Wallet is under development and will be used for identity verification, with age verification being a key application. And in Australia, the Digital ID Act 2024 established the Australian Government Digital ID System, allows users to prove identity online.

The example we used in our previous article to demonstrate the type of content being censored for UK users on Substack, unless we comply with the rolling out of the digital ID agenda, was the article ‘UK’s open border policy is not normal; nor is it acceptable’.

Along similar lines, yesterday, a Substack user re-stacked our article ‘London Primary school teacher is banned from working with children for telling a Muslim pupil that Britain is a Christian country’.  Substack has censored the article for non-paying users who have not complied with age verification.

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Arkansas will become first state to end PBS affiliation

Arkansas’ statewide public television network will end its affiliation with PBS starting in July 2026, the Arkansas Educational Television Commission announced this week.

The station, formerly known as Arkansas PBS, will also rebrand as Arkansas TV.

The commission cited a $2.5 million reduction in annual federal funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the cost of PBS membership fees as factors in its decision. A news release announcing the move called the dues “simply not feasible.”

Programming is expected to remain largely unchanged through June 30, 2026. After that date, the network plans to introduce locally produced programming, including children’s, food and history series currently in development, as well as “favorites from the last 60 years.”

“Public television in Arkansas is not going away,” Executive Director and CEO Carlton Wing said in the release. “In fact, we invite you to join our vision for an increased focus on local programming, continuing to safeguard Arkansans in times of emergency and supporting our K-12 educators and students. … We are confident that we can secure ongoing and increased support from individual donors, foundation partners and corporate sponsors who see the value in investing in new local programming that serves our state.”

PBS content will continue to be accessible to Arkansas residents through other platforms, Arkansas TV said.

In response to the announcement, a PBS spokesperson told Nexstar’s KNWA that Arkansas TV’s decision to end membership “is a blow to Arkansans who will lose free, over-the-air access to quality PBS programming they know and love.”

The spokesperson cited a June 2025 YouGov survey, which PBS said showed strong support for the network in the state. According to the company, the survey found a majority of survey participants opposed limiting funding for PBS and agreed that its programming was beneficial for children and the community.

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Half of U.S. has hepatitis B? Media’s go-to vaccine expert gets fact-checked for puzzling interview

One of the most media-savvy vaccine advocates in the U.S., perhaps second only to record-breaking federal pensioner Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director, has allegedly been caught falsely claiming he was not invited to address a federal vaccine advisory panel’s recent meeting and spreading wildly inflated numbers on hepatitis B infections, a subject of the meeting.

The perceived gotcha on Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia but also a skeptic of COVID-19 boosters for healthy young people, prompted critics to flag other instances in which Offit allegedly refused to engage and to pick apart his media appearances and choice of venues, such as entertainment-focused TMZ.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials “repeatedly” contacted Offit to present at its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ meeting last week, “via emails, phone calls and a speaker-request form,” physician-turned-investigative journalist Maryanne Demasi wrote this week, contradicting Offit’s claim to CNN on Dec. 5 on day two of ACIP’s meeting.

“I actually wasn’t invited to present at today’s meeting” but rather invited in October “to speak about vaccines to this group,” Offit told the host in the 9-minute interview when she asked why he declined to speak. (He has appeared on CNN several times this year.)

Offit then tried to redirect the conversation toward how ACIP had become an “anti-vaccine advisory committee” that threatens children’s health by no longer recommending COVID vaccines by default. He didn’t elaborate on how young children “clearly … benefit” from COVID vaccination, given their near-nil risk of serious harm from the virus. 

When the host pressed Offit to clarify what he thought the October invitation meant, he said he received a “vague recommendation to come speak to us” but not to speak “about this subject” – hepatitis B vaccination, whose recommendations ACIP changed later that day to wait two months to vaccinate newborns whose mothers test negative for the virus.

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Another Faulty ‘Climate Change’ Study Gets Busted

This time of year, it’s not unusual for parents of younger elementary school kids to start having discussions of when their son or daughter will get wise to the reality of Santa Claus. At some point, one parent may say to another, “How old were you when you quit believing?” 

That brings me to the same question, different myth. How old were you when you quit believing in man-made climate change? Or man-made global warming? Or man-made global cooling? 

Before going any further, since we do have our share of lib readers, I want to make one thing absolutely clear to them before the fake misinterpretations happen. Conservatives don’t dispute that the client shifts day to day. That’s called “the weather.” And we don’t dispute that the planet’s climate isn’t constantly evolving. We are not Ice Age deniers. 

But when you come out every presidential cycle and predict the end of the world in the next ten years (conveniently the time it takes for a run-up campaign and two presidential terms), we’re skeptical. Not because we’re scientists or science experts. Rather, it’s because we are used to being lied to, and we know how that goes. The tip-off for us, usually, is when all of your climate solutions focus on raising taxes and increasing government restrictions on American citizens. Then later, when we see all this money going to NGOs and a whole “climate change” economy, it kinda feels like a massive grift. 

So excuse us if we’re nonplussed when we see that the journal Nature has had to retract a 2024 study that sought to estimate the amount of harm global warming will do to the global economy in the decades to come. I mean, the very premise of the study already raises a red flag. Did the study seek to estimate actual climate impacts on the economy, and how do you do that? Or did it seek to estimate the impact climate alarmists would have on the global economy through their own push for increased regulation and higher taxes? 

That’s like when people talk about how the pandemic impacted the economy, when in fact it was government’s overreaction to a novel cold virus that actually devastated the economy. 

As for Nature, here’s what happened. Researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) contributed a paper to Nature, and it was published April 17, 2024 under the title “The Economic Commitment of Climate Change.” The paper projected the economic costs of climate change by the middle of this century by relying on historical temperature, precipitation and economic data. 

On Dec. 3 of this year, not even two weeks ago, Nature officially announced the paper was retracted, because “post-publication reviews” found the results were so off-target that a simple correction of the paper’s errors wouldn’t suffice. 

In other words, the paper was a joke, and once it saw the light of day, some smart people caught some glaring errors, and Nature couldn’t cover for it. 

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NY Times Columnist Claims Trump Lies About Democrats Wanting Healthcare for Illegals – Then Admits it’s Happening

California Governor Gavin Newsom recently appeared on the podcast of New York Times columnist Ezra Klein. During the episode, in addition to saying that he ‘wants to see trans kids’ Newsom talked about providing healthcare for illegal aliens in his state.

Ezra Klein followed up their discussion by tweeting about it, but in his tweet he says two things that completely contradict each other.

He begins by saying that Trump lies about Democrats wanting healthcare for illegals. Then he says triumphantly that Gavin Newsom is actually doing it!

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Covid Porn Is Back

The tireless hacks at the BBC have emerged from their bunkers once again to terrorise the public by bravely touring the hospitals and whipping up hysteria about the latest outbreak of flu. It seems “literally hundreds” of patients have been bombarding A&E departments, according to Health Editor Hugh Pym and Chloe Hayward who have been courageously touring the front line:

As one patient leaves his room at Leicester Royal Infirmary’s acute unit, cleaning staff are waiting outside.

He is barely out of the room before the bed is stripped and bleach is sprayed. The next patient is already waiting to come in.

Over two days the BBC was given access to the hospital to witness first-hand how it is coping with an early surge of winter bug cases.

Flu season has hit a month earlier than normal this year, with experts warning there appears to be a more severe strain of the virus – mutated H3N2 – circulating.

Hospitals around the country, like this one in Leicester, are doing all they can to avoid becoming completely overwhelmed.

“Completely overwhelmed.” Sounds familiar?

They’re at the Royal Infirmary in Leicester, and after citing some choice case studies, miss no opportunity to make it sound like the end of the world is imminent:

“There are patients in every cubicle,” Consultant Saad Jawaid says, as Paige is wheeled in. “Another ambulance has just rocked up.”

We watch as he works with colleagues in the resus unit to find desperately needed bed spaces.

“When beds are full we have to move people – sometimes that means those who can sit are moved out of beds and into chairs,” he says.

Regardless of the situation in the hospital and the range of conditions people are turning up with, on closer examination it things aren’t quite as bad as the story’s florid copy suggests:

Richard Mitchell has been the Chief Executive of University Hospitals Leicester NHS Trust since 2021 – and has witnessed first-hand how it gets harder to cope with each winter that passes.

”We are already seeing very high levels of flu,” he tells us. He expects numbers to climb into January. “That is one of the many things I am concerned about at the moment.

“At this point I feel we are working at the limits of our ability.”

What exactly was he expecting? An idle coast through to April before going on a well-unearned summer break? It raises the interesting question of what people who work for the NHS think they are likely to be confronted with in 21st century Britain.

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NYT Editorial Board Urges US To Prepare For Future War With China

The New York Times editorial board released a video this week calling for the US to “prepare for the future of war” and urged the Pentagon to take drastic steps to be better prepared for a potential fight with China, a conflict that could quickly turn nuclear.

“US politicians often boast that America has the ‘Strongest and most powerful military in the history of the world’ but behind closed doors, they’re being told a different story,” the editorial board said. “New York Times Opinion has learned that the Pentagon has been delivering a classified, comprehensive overview of US military power called the Overmatch brief. The report shows what could happen if a war were to break out between China and the United States. The results are alarming.”

The video said that a war with China might seem “purely hypothetical,” but claimed that Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered the Chinese military to be ready to seize the island of Taiwan by 2027. However, that timeline is based on claims from the CIA and has never been confirmed by Chinese officials. Xi reportedly told President Biden last year that there were “no such plans” to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027.

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The billionaire family poised to rewire U.S. media in Israel’s favor

In early September, the Hollywood producer Lawrence Bender — known for his work with Quentin Tarantino on films including “Pulp Fiction” and “Inglourious Basterds” — had what he later described as “a really tough conversation” with the investors in “Red Alert,” an Israeli miniseries that dramatizes the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023.

With just weeks remaining before the anticipated release on the second anniversary of the attacks, the show, produced by Israeli mass media company Keshet Media Group, was struggling to secure distribution outside of Israel. The news environment was far from favorable: Israeli fighter jets had just attacked a residential compound in Qatar, and a pledge to boycott Israeli film institutions that were “implicated” in the genocide in the Gaza Strip had collected thousands of signatures in Hollywood.

“No one’s going to want to buy something from the Israelis,” Bender, an executive producer of “Red Alert,” told the investors, as he recalled on stage at a Jewish National Fund–USA conference the following month. Among those investors was the Israel Entertainment Fund, which JNF–USA established last year with the Israeli streaming service Izzy to produce television and film for international audiences, with a focus on projects filmed in the “Gaza Envelope” region of southern Israel. “We were pretty stressed about what we were going to do,” Izzy CEO Nati Dinnar‏, interviewing Bender on stage, recalled.

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