Hi everyone and welcome to this week's edition of Laura's Links.

As I mentioned last week, the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, will be celebrated this weekend. It's a two-day sucker and starts this year on Friday evening and goes till Sunday evening. So it's Shabbat and Rosh Hashanah, which kind of doubles the prep work but also doubles the celebration.

As you can imagine, it's been a pretty busy time for me and mine, but I did want to put a little Rosh Hashanah primer in here so you'll know what I'm up to for the next few days.

Mark is still convalescing and building up strength for the upcoming trial of the century – well, decade anyway – against Michael Mann and the battle with Ofcom. Therefore, this past week there was a Yankee occupation of the mic for the Clubland Q&A and our very own Melissa Howes took questions on all things legal from Mark Steyn Club members around the world. If you missed it, check out the replay as she explains a lot of background information about these cases and she did a bang-up job as hostess.

I listened to the whole show and it definitely refreshed my memory about the Mann case in particular. What a mess, and what an extraordinary amount of mental energy and money has been sucked up by such a completely innocuous blog post. When Mark talks about the dirty rotten, stinking, corrupt American "justice" system, this is exactly what he's talking about. Wishing Mark et al godspeed with the trial and of course with the Ofcom case as well.

To be moderately optimistic in a very minimalistic sort of way, I guess the only silver lining that I can see in the Mann case is that Mark's not fighting the government, because generally speaking, the American government has a Saddam Hussein-like conviction rate and the American government hates Americans (more from Mark here).

However, every once in a while regular people fight the government and win, so perhaps I shouldn't be completely pessimistic? Up here in Canada, Ezra Levant scored a W against the government here as well. Still, I think these are exceptions. We in the West are, unfortunately, trending towards tyranny, not away from it.

This week was also the week that contained September 11th, and, like Mark, I don't commemorate it any more. I can't really say it better than he did, but I'll add that when it happened, a friend of mine who worked in the news business said to me, "Laura, at least now they'll finally understand" – they being 'the world' and the nature of evil being the thing 'they' would finally understand.

That was wishful thinking, then, and there is so much more wishful thinking and avoidance now. Covid was just a taste of what other "theys" want to do to us, and they are already putting it on replay: masks nudging, new booster initiatives and scary new variant stories are all over the place. They got away with it and they liked it, so all of us deplorables are being told to get ready for more. Of course, I hope I'm wrong about this and I hope that people will start to grow a spine at some point and not comply.

Anyway, that's all I got for this week. I'm zonked. Time to put my feet up for a bit.

Wishing our Jewish readers a happy and healthy New Year and I will see you in the comments as I'm able and "next year" in next week's column!

Shana Tovah!

~

North America:

When Mark talks about the Republic already being dead, he means stuff like this.

This is almost unbelievable, but it's Canada, so it's believable.

You get what you vote for. He sounds like a Rethuglican, no? More here.

"The ADL's real mission is leveraging antisemitism to advance Democratic Party goals..." EXACTLY.

Good.

This is not suicide. It's murder by government. America: your government hates you.

They absolutely hate you and feel they are superior to you unwashed peasants in every way.

OH I SEE.

"Unsubscribe from everything".

~

The Great Walkbackening, Reckoning and Accounting:

Yup.

"Only non-violent resistance can halt irrational public health actors"

"No matter how they manipulate the data though, they cannot hide the escalating Excess Deaths that continue in 2023 worldwide..."

"Three years ago today I was given 15 minutes, because of COVID regulations, to say goodbye to my brother. Fifteen minutes to say everything I couldn't have even fit into a lifetime. Whether he heard me or not wasn't the point."

Regrets, she's had a few...

OH I SEE. SOUNDS LEGIT.

~

The Formerly Great Britain:

As per Neil Oliver: this is happening because your leaders want it to happen.

Aren't you Brits so glad that you clapped and banged pots for the NHS?

~

Europe:

The ear according to Gaugin.

Barbarians.

~

Jews and Israel:

Yup. Pretty much all of this.

~

Jewish Wisdom:

"It is not always clear that good behavior leads to blessings and life and that bad behavior leads to curses and death""

~

Human Grace:

What we have lost.

It's open thread time! Log into SteynOnline and let Laura know what you think of these stories or other happenings from week that was. Commenting privileges are among the many perks of membership in The Mark Steyn Club. While going off topic is permitted on Laura's Links, do stick to the other rules as you engage: no URLs, no profanity, and no ad hominem attacks.