June 5, 2025

OPEN THREAD: Because I love you and want you to be happy.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

SPACE LAW: Europe’s far-reaching Space Act nears launch. “While details of the incoming law remain under wraps, legal experts anticipate a move away from voluntary guidance toward binding obligations in key areas such as space sustainability, safety, resilience and security. . . . It would stand in contrast to current approaches in the United States and those of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), which tend to favor non-binding codes of good practice over rules with teeth.”

Oh, there’s a surprise. The Europeans like to make rules regarding things they can’t really do.

Posted at 9:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds 10

THAT’S A WRAP FOR GRETA THUNBERG:

It must have been an amazing high for Thunberg to be the center of so much adulation. I suspect this because she has been chasing that high ever since, long after the media gaze moved on. In the Biden era, the media were no longer interested in highlighting the urgency of youth apocalypticism. (That was more important to emphasize when Trump was president.) And so the spotlight vanished.

Hungering for continued relevance, Thunberg responded by escalating her tactics, seeking arrest at anti-mining and anti-oil protests across Europe to garner headlines. But the media reaction was tepid, and the thrill was gone. It surprised me not the slightest bit when she instantly transitioned from environmental activism (old and busted) to pro-Palestinian activism (new and sexy with the kids these days) in the wake of the October 7 massacre. A year later, she was performatively arresting herself on podcast appearances to signal her solidarity with Hamas.

And now, apparently, she’s on a boat as part of an activist flotilla headed towards Gaza for . . . no particular reason, really. They claim they’re carrying relief supplies to “lift the siege of Gaza,” but that’s obvious pretext for what is transparently a low-stakes international publicity stunt. Israel will almost certainly seize Thunberg’s boat and interdict the rest of “Freedom Flotilla” before it reaches land. Those aboard will assuredly have their iPhones out to film the affair. Slogans will be shouted, clips will be posted. And when the day is over, all involved will congratulate themselves on a job well done: Way to go, making real change in the world.

I’m at least mildly impressed by the brazenness of it all: Thunberg is inserting herself into the frame of a picture unrelated to her, because she is an important person whose mere presence must be given appropriate deference. The self-regard would be inexplicable were we not talking about a coddled activist who also briefly became the most important teenager in the world — and has been haunted by it for the rest of her life.

As for myself, I couldn’t care less about Thunberg’s fate. If the Israeli Navy wants to hole her boat below the waterline as the French did to sink the Rainbow Warrior, then it’s no problem of mine. I don’t ever want to write about her again, and unless she escalates to suicide bombing, I intend not to. For as much as her astringent mien and unearned pretense make her a figure of comedy, I find her morally repulsive.

But I confess that I also love Greta in at least one way: I’m thankful for her existence as an almost novelistically perfect “character type.” Thunberg is the fulfillment in the flesh of an intellectual conceit: the brutally perfect embodiment of an entire younger left-wing generation’s hopeless attachment to the politics of gesture as opposed to the politics of hard work; politics as little more than an externalized expression of narcissism; politics as a plea for attention from an otherwise indifferent world.

Julie Burchill adds: Greta Thunberg’s pathetic Gaza voyage.

Her origins are interesting. Thunberg was born into a showbiz family – actor father, singer mother who represented Sweden in the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest, finishing 21st. With the eye-catching middle name of ‘Tintin’ – she apparently stopped talking at the age of 11 on hearing about climate change, a condition known as ‘selective mutism.’ Thunberg has declared that this condition means that she ‘only speaks when necessary’ – if only that were true! After being diagnosed with Aspergers and autism – with a soupçon of OCD sprinkled on top – she suffered with depression for four years until the idea of playing truant – or ‘school strike’ as she chose to call it – occurred to her.

It’s striking how her activism seems inseparable from her own personal fulfilment, something which is not always the case; indeed, many activists throughout history have seen their personal lives worsen due to their political commitment. But whether it was her father saying ‘She can either sit at home and be really unhappy, or protest and be happy’ or her own declaration that the best things to have come out of her activism have been friendships and happiness, there does seem to be an unusual amount of ego invested in her eye-catching antics.

Attention is a very pleasant thing for a certain sort of person – I’m one of them. Attention-seeker, scenery-eater, show-off – it’s good to ‘own it’, as the kids say. But it’s a rather odd look to wallow so unapologetically in the plaudits of the fashion world, an industry responsible for an unimaginable level of pollution and pointless air travel. Should she really have appeared on the cover of British Vogue in 2019 or on the cover of the inaugural edition of Vogue Scandinavia in 2021 or accepted the Glamour Woman of the Year Award? Shouldn’t she have used the opportunity to denounce the fashion industry for its huge contribution to global warming and criminal waste of resources? But logic has never been Thunberg’s strong suit, as her current boat trip to Gaza proves. The stated aim of the trip is to ‘raise awareness’ of what’s happening in Gaza – but can it really be possible that anyone on earth isn’t aware already?

If Greta’s goal is also “famine relief,” she’s gonna need a bigger boat:

Posted at 8:31 pm by Ed Driscoll 90

MRNA AND LEUKEMIA: More evidence of COVID’s man-made lethalities.

Posted at 5:14 pm by Mark Tapscott 32

I THOUGHT THE FIRST RULE OF AI FIGHT CLUB WAS TO NEVER TALK ABOUT AI FIGHT CLUB: Lockheed Martin launches ‘AI Fight Club’ to test algorithms for warfare. “The initiative comes amid Pentagon efforts to accelerate AI adoption as military competitors, particularly China, invest heavily in autonomous weapons systems and AI-powered warfare capabilities.”

Posted at 4:53 pm by Stephen Green 18

HMM:

We’ve seen “Gaza uprising against Hamas” stories that never panned out, so we’ll see what becomes of this one.

Posted at 3:51 pm by Stephen Green 76

DEVELOPING:

 

Posted at 3:36 pm by Ed Driscoll 79