^{^} ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Friday 25th September		-		King Harold II of England defeated Harald Hardrada at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, 1066. Writer and poet Mary Sidney died, 1621. Astronomer and instrument maker Ole Rømer born, 1644. The United States Congress passed the ten constitutional amendments known as the Bill of Rights, 1789. Artist, cartographer and founder of the Geographers' A-Z Map Company Phyllis Pearsall born, 1906. Drummer and songwriter John Bonham died, 1980.
Saturday 26th September		-		Francis Drake completed his circumnavigation of the Earth, 1580. American gardener and environmentalist Johnny Appleseed born, 1774. Mathematician August Ferdinand Möbius died, 1868. Einstein's Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper ("On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies") paper was published, introducing what would become known as the special theory of relativity, 1905. Actress Martine Beswick born, 1941. Singer Betty Carter died, 1998.
Sunday 27th September		-		The Duke of Normandy, later known as William the Conqueror, set sail with his army to begin the Norman conquest of England, 1066. Stefan Bathory, King of Poland, born, 1533. Jean-François Champollion announced that he had deciphered the Rosetta Stone, 1822. Archaeologist and historian Margaret Rule born, 1928. Actress Clara Bow died, 1965. World Tourism Day.
Monday 28th September		-		Philosopher Confucius born, 551 BCE. Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia, later commemorated in song as Good King Wenceslaus, murdered, 935. The Siege of Yorktown in the American Revolution, 1781. American socialite and French Resistance member Isabel Pell born, 1900. The medicinal use of cannabis became illegal in the UK with the passage of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, 1971. Novelist Gloria Naylor died, 2016. International Day for Universal Access to Information (UN).
Tuesday 29th September		-		A Viking army captured Canterbury after a three-week siege, 1011. Joan I of Auvergne, Queen consort of King John II of France, died, 1360. Artist and set designer François Boucher born, 1718. Blackpool tramway, the first practical public electric tramway in the world, opened, 1885. Actress Lizabeth Scott born, 1922. Footballer and manager Bill Shankley died, 1981. World Heart Day.
Wednesday 30th September		-		King Louis IV of France died, 954. Mystic and poet Rumi born, 1207. Henry IV was proclaimed King of England, 1399. Actress Deborah Kerr born, 1921. The BBC Light Programme, Third Programme and Home Service were replaced with BBC Radio 2, 3 and 4, and BBC Radio 1 launched, 1967. Research scientist Victoria Braithwaite died, 2019. International Translation Day.
Thursday 1st October		-		Alexander the Great defeated Darius III of Persia at the Battle of Gaugamela, 331 BCE. Dorothy Stafford, Mistress of the Robes to Queen Elizabeth I of England, born, 1526. Artist Maarten van Heemskerck died, 1574. Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management was published, 1861. Comedian, author and presenter Harry Hill born, 1964. Singer-songwriter and actress Lynsey de Paul died, 2014.

^{^} THE WISDOM OF...

This week, Bill Shankley:

A lot of football success is in the mind. You must believe you are the best and then make sure that you are. In my time at Anfield we always said we had the best two teams on Merseyside, Liverpool and Liverpool reserves.

^{^} FILM QUIZ

A selection of quotations from films by the same director. Answers next issue or from the regular address.

• Jack, don't you sometimes just bust to share the joke? Here's your friends thinking we're unmarried and up to all sorts of wickedness, when all along we're married and up to nothing at all.
• Grant us victory, O Lord, before the Americans get here.
• I have friends who keep telling me how much it costs them to keep me in poverty.
• - Why do you people call yourselves black? You look more brown than black.
  - Why do you call yourselves white? You look more pink than white.
• Remember what the general said; we're the cavalry. It would be bad form to arrive in advance of schedule. In the nick of time would do nicely.

Last issue's piratical quotations were:

• Dying's the easy way out. You won't catch me dying. They'll have to kill me before I die!
      -- Yellowbeard [1983]
• - "Take a cruise," you said. "See the world," you said. Now here we are, stuck on the front of this stupid ship.
  - Well, it could be worse. We could be stuck in the audience.
      -- Muppets Treasure Island [1996]
• - Goodbye, matey! Good luck to ye! Ha ha!
  - Blast him! I could almost find it in my heart to hope he makes it.
      -- Treasure Island [1950]
• You're off the edge of the map, mate. Here there be monsters.
      -- Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl [2003]
• I don't think you're real and I don't think that sword is real. I'm going to walk straight through it and go to bed!
      -- Blackbeard's Ghost [1968]

^{^} WEIRD WORLD NEWS

Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...

• When Malaysian student Zackrydz Rodzi woke up one Saturday earlier this month he realised that his phone was missing. There was no sign of a break in and the case was under his bed but no phone. His father found it covered in mud behind the house the next day and a series of selfies and videos revealed the thief. It was a monkey, who probably mistook the phone's colourful case for food; a video apparently accidentally recorded from the top of a nearby tree showed the monkey trying to eat the phone, while pictures showed close-ups of the monkey's face. ● Earlier this year over 100 dead elephants were sighted from planes in Botswana's Okavango Delta with no apparent cause of death and the only linking factor being proximity to watering holes; poaching was quickly ruled out as none of their tusks had been removed. After months of testing in laboratories around the world the cause has been determined as toxic cyanobacteria in the water, likely a result of the warming climate raising the water temperature. Once the watering holes had dried up no more mass deaths were observed. ● A suspected arson attack at Little Woolden Moss in Salford last weekend has resulted in the destruction of ancient oak trees preserved in the peat for around 10,000 years. ● The US Department of Agriculture has warned of a ticking 'feral swine bomb' [We prefer 'impending swinepocalypse' -Ed] in Texas, the worst-hit of at least 39 states across which some 9 million feral pigs are roaming free. The pigs have become hybridised with wild boar giving them thicker, heavily furred hides, an enhanced sense of smell and increased intelligence as well as higher reproductive rates from their domestic pig genes.


• Earlier this week Surrey Police and paramedics were called out after a women fell from a moving car on the M25 in the early hours of the morning. She had been leaning out of the front passenger window to record a video for the Snapchat multimedia sharing app. Police tweeted that she had fallen into a "live lane" between Junction 6 and the Clacket Lane Services at 01:30 BST, and that paramedics had treated her at the scene. She was not seriously injured and no arrests were made.


• Emily Bendell, founder of the Bluebella lingerie brand, is threatening to sue London's Garrick Club for denying her membership in March. The Garrick has only admitted women visitors into its building as guests of male members since it was founded in 1831. If the case goes to court Bendell will claim that the male-only membership violates the Equality Act 2010. The Garrick was founded by a group of "literary gentlemen" to bring together actors and supporters of the theatrical arts, with previous members including Sir Laurence Olivier and Charles Dickens. While it does not presently allow women to become members it does employ them; its current secretary is Ann Robie.


• Residents of Swallowcliffe, a village near Salisbury in Wiltshire, have reacted with delight after it was revealed that television presenter James May (Top Gear, The Grand Tour) has bought a 50% share in their local pub. The Royal Oak had faced a planning appeal to convert it into a house in 2012 which was successfully fought off before local investors bought it and reopened the pub in 2015. It has been closed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.


• The Voyager 1 space probe has reached another milestone, passing the 14 billion mile (22.5bn km) mark from Earth. Dr Garry Hunt, who belonged to NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's original Voyager imaging team commented that discussions about the proposed mission began fifty years ago "and... blimey, it's still going!" Communication with the probe now takes almost 21 hours each way, and it still has four instruments functioning although they will shut down for lack of power within the next five years, but it is possible that engineering data will still be transmitted after that, and communication could last until 2036 when it finally passes beyond the range of the Deep Space Network. In about 300 years it should reach the Oort cloud, the cosmographic boundary of the Solar System (it has already passed beyond the heliopause, the edge where the Sun's solar wind can no longer overcome the surrounding stellar winds).


• Since its discovery by nighthawks (illegal metal detectorists) near Nebra in Germany, in 1999, the 11¾" (30cm) 4.9lb (2.2kg) bronze disk known as the Nebra sky disk, with gold symbols of either the Sun or full Moon, a lunar crescent, stars resembling the Pleiades and other symbols has been hailed as "one of the most important archaeological finds of the twentieth century" by UNESCO, which added it to its Memory of the World Register. The disk was dated to the Bronze Age, about 3,600 years ago, making it the earliest-known depiction of the night sky. A new study has cast doubt on its age, however. The location where the nighthawks claimed to have found the disk had not given up any archaeological finds before, and none have been found since. The disk's date was set by the objects the nighthawks said they had found with it, but analysis of soil fragments on the disk and other objects suggests that they were not found together. Furthermore the presence of a crescent shape on the disk suggests that rather than the Bronze Age it was created perhaps a thousand years later, during the Iron Age.


• NS8, a Las Vegas cyber fraud prevention company was founded in 2016 and quickly raised investment funding from several venture capital sources. Its co-founder and former CEO, CFO and member of its board of directors Adam Rogas, 43, has been charged by federal investigators with securities fraud and wire fraud relating to allegedly fictitious financial affirmations, allowing him to walk off with nearly $17.5m (£13.7m). Until he stepped down Rogas was the only person at the company with access to its customer bank account and financial tracking data. The non-cyber fraud came to light last month after an employee in the finance department discovered the business had only tens of thousands of dollars in its account balance. FBI Assistant Director William F. Sweeney Jr told reporters that "it seems ironic that the co-founder of a company designed to prevent online fraud would engage in [offline] fraudulent activity."


• A rare 1634 edition of The Two Noble Kinsmen, Shakespeare's last play, written with John Fletcher, has been discovered in the library of the Royal Scots College in Salamanca, Spain. in the 17^th Century the college, then in Madrid, was a seminary and a source of English literature for Spanish intellectuals, and the volume is thought to now be the oldest Shakespearean work in the country. It was discovered by a researcher studying the writings of 18^th Century economist Adam Smith. ● A cache of about 200 stolen rare books including first editions of works by Isaac Newton and Galileo has been found under the floor of a house in the Romanian countryside. Police hunting a gang who abseiled into London warehouses to evade sensors tracked them to the house after raiding 45 addresses across the UK, Italy and Romania. In addition to the books the hoard contained sketches by Francisco de Goya.


• Children's building toy Lego is probably not the first company you think of when it comes to reducing plastic, with its multitude of plastic bricks, but - while continuing to research alternative materials for its basic product - there is one other area where it aims to cut plastic. After receiving "many letters from children asking us to remove single-use plastic packaging", according to CEO Niels B Christiansen, the company is investing up to $400m (£310m) in switching the plastic bags (typically 2-4 for smaller sets) that its bricks come in, inside cardboard boxes, for recyclable paper bags. Lego bricks, while not currently recyclable, are one of the best examples of reusable toys and can be recombined to make numerous models or, for more devious children, left in the middle of the floor for their parents to step on...


• This year's Ig Nobel awards, for honouring "achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think" have been announced, with each winning team taking home $10tn - Zimbabwe dollars, that is, worth about US$0.04 (£0.03). The 2020 winners were:
  • ACOUSTICS: Stephan Reber, Takeshi Nishimura, Judith Janisch, Mark Robertson, Tecumseh Fitch, for getting a female Chinese alligator to bellow while in an airtight chamber full of helium-enriched air.
  • PEACE: The governments of India and Pakistan, for having their diplomats ring each others' doorbell in the middle of the night then run away before anyone came to the door.
  • PSYCHOLOGY: Miranda Giacomin, Nicholas Rule, for devising a means of identifying narcissists by studying their eyebrows.
  • PHYSICS: Ivan Maksymov, Andriy Pototsky, for determining, by experiment, how the shape of an earthworm changes when subjected to high-frequency vibrations.
  • MANAGEMENT: Xi Guang-An, Mo Tian-Xiang, Yang Kang-Sheng, Yang Guang-Shen, Ling Xian Si, five professional hitmen who subcontracted a murder to one another with the result of nobody attempting to kill the target.
  • ECONOMICS: Christopher Watkins, Juan David Leongómez, Jeanne Bovet, Agnieszka Żelaźniewicz, Max Korbmacher, Marco Antônio Corrêa Varella, Ana Maria Fernandez, Danielle Wagstaff, Samuela Bolgan, for attempting to quantify the relationship between different countries' national income inequality and the average amount of mouth-to-mouth kissing.
  • ENTOMOLOGY: Richard Vetter, for collecting evidence that many entomologists (scientists who study insects) are afraid of spiders (which are not insects).
  • MATERIALS SCIENCE: Metin Eren, Michelle Bebber, James Norris, Alyssa Perrone, Ashley Rutkoski, Michael Wilson, Mary Ann Raghanti, for showing that knives made of frozen human faeces do not work well.
  • MEDICINE: Nienke Vulink, Damiaan Denys, Arnoud van Loon, for diagnosing the long-unrecognised condition of Misophonia, the distress at hearing other people chewing.
  • MEDICAL EDUCATION: Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom, Narendra Modi of India, Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico, Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, Donald Trump of the USA, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow of Turkmenistan, for using the COVID-19 pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors.

IN BRIEF: This summer the observed amount of sea ice in the Arctic shrank to its second lowest-ever extent since satellite observation began 42 years ago; it is declining by about 13% per decade. ● Research by the UK Geoenergy Observatory in Glasgow has found evidence of 300-million-year-old fossils of mussels in core samples drilled from up to 653' (199m) below the city street level. ● Failure in the broadband provision to the Welsh village of Aberhosan, which routinely went down every morning at 7am, even after all the cabling had been replaced, was finally traced to electrical signals from an old second-hand television. ● Scientists monitoring the sound of undersea earthquakes in the Indian Ocean over the last 10 years have analysed how fast the sound propagated to measure the warming of the ocean (sound travels faster as water warms up). ● A 42.5 square mile (110km²) section of the Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden, the Arctic's last remaining ice shelf, has broken away from Greenland and shattered. ● Two people have been attacked by alligators in Florida in separate incidents; both were treated for leg injuries. ● Nikola have admitted that a promotional video of their hydrogen-powered lorry showed it rolling downhill rather than moving under its own power. ● A full-size autonomous ship called the Mayflower Autonomous Ship has set off from Plymouth, England, to cross the Atlantic, hopefully arriving at Plymouth, Massachusetts in April after gathering data about the ocean. ● A third earthquake in as many weeks has hit the Bedforshire town of Leighton Buzzard.

CORONAVIRUS ROUND-UP: Vehemently pro-Trump and anti-mask, anti-lockdown Republican former Nashville Council Member Tony Tenpenny has died of COVID-19. ● Convicted fraudster televangelist Jim Bakker has claimed that facemasks are satanic and part of an attempt to suppress Christianity, asking "do you think God can hear your prayers through a mask?" [I am both an atheist and an ordained minister, but am pretty sure most believers would say 'yes he can' -Ed] ● A German soccer team that faced a fine if they did not play a game against a team which had come into contact with someone infected by COVID-19 fielded the smallest-allowed team, just 7 players, all socially distancing on the field. They lost the 11^th tier match 37-0. ● With less shipping traffic in the water off Hong Kong a 30% increase in sightings of Chinese white dolphins has been reported. ● An autopsy on a dead penguin washed up on a Brazil beach has found that it had swallowed an entire facemask. ● A passenger on a bus in Swinton, Manchester, was filmed using a live snake as a facemask. ● A man thrown out of Disney's Hollwood Studios theme park in Orlando, Florida, for not wearing a facemask screamed misquotations from A Bug's Life in a failed attempt to get others to join him in protesting the policy.

^ TRUMPWATCH

Twitter has flagged another Trump tweet, this time decrying that the November election result "may NEVER BE ACCURATELY DETERMINED", as "potentially misleading". ● Trump has suggested that the Oracle/Walmart deal to run TikTok in the US might not be approved because the new TikTok Global company will still be majority owned by Bytedance, TikTok's Chinese owners. Bytedance has said that it was unaware that Trump planned to divert $5bn (£3.9bn) of the sale to his planned "patriotic education" initiative, more on which below. ● After a group of American users of the WeChat private messaging and payments app challenged Trump's executive order banning it from sale, a San Francisco judge has ruled that "while the general evidence about the threat to national security related to China (regarding technology and mobile technology) is considerable, the specific evidence about WeChat is modest" and blocked Trump's executive order.

Last Friday was National POW/MIA Recognition Day in America, and Trump tweeted that he and Melania "honor the men & women of our Armed Forces who have selflessly served our Country & made tremendous sacrifices to defend our liberty." He was promptly reminded of how he had previously declared that he did not consider the late Arizona Senator John McCain a hero because of a preference for "people who weren't captured", called American servicemen killed in World War I "losers" and "suckers" and had ordered the removal of the POW/MIA flag from the White House flag pole on 9/11.

Trump's FlunkyAttorney General William Barr has reportedly instructed federal prosecutors dealing with protesters to "seek a number of federal charges, including under a rarely used sedition law, ever when state charges could apply." Yes, Barr wants protesters charged with organising to attempt to overthrow the government. In 1938 the German government enacted Wehrkraftersetzung, making criticism of the Nazi Party and military leadership, from within the military, an act of sedition. It was extended to civilians the next year. The First Amendment to the US Constitution, which we can accept that Trump has little knowledge of, but Barr must, guarantees "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." While there has been some violence at demonstrations, some of which was started by far right counterprotesters, the vast majority have been peaceful. ● National Guard Major Adam DeMarco, who was in Lafayette Square before protesters were cleared with tear gas ('pepper balls' according to Park Police) for Trump's shameful photo-op, has revealed that police had requested an Active Denial System (ADS) 'heat ray' to clear the square. The ADS works like a high powered, targeted microwave (but at shorter, less-penetrating wavelengths), causing its targets to feel as if their skin is on fire. The National Guard did not possess an ADS so one was not deployed.

    Barr has also come in for criticism for his repeated support for Trump's criticism of lockdowns as a measure to constrain the spread of COVID-19. At celebrations for Constitution Day at the conservative Hillsdale College Barr said "Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, [a lockdown] is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history." As House majority whip James Clyburn (D-SC) commented, "I think that statement by Mr Barr was the most ridiculous, tone deaf, God awful thing I have ever heard. It is incredible the chief law enforcement officer would equate human bondage to expert advice to save lives." ● Trump told a rally in Ohio on Monday that COVID-19 "affects elderly people. Elderly people with heart problems and other problems. [..] Below the age of 18, like nobody... But it affects virtually nobody. It's an amazing thing." as the US death toll passed 203,000, with nearly 10% of infections in young people (but far fewer fatalities; less than 200 to date in the 0-17 age group). ● After Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director James Redfield testified to a Sentate committee that a vaccine might not be available until mid-2021 world-renowned virologist Donald J. Trump weighed in, saying "I think he made a mistake when he said that. It's just incorrect information" before suggesting, with the usual zero evidence, that a vaccine will be available to every American by April. America is not a part of the Global Access Facility collaboration between 172 countries to develop a vaccine because Trump refuses to work with the World Health Organization (WHO) and has given notice to the UN that he will withdraw the US from the WHO. ● Protesters in front of the White House on Sunday night held up a large neon sign reading "Trump lied, 200,000 died". The sign was paid for by the Democratic National Committee.
    The Washington Post has reported that in April the US Post Office - currently embroiled in Trump's baseless war against mail-in voting - developed a plan to distribute 650 million reusable facemasks, five for each household, to the American public only for the White House to spike it because, according to an official in the administration, "there was concern from some in the White House Domestic Policy Council and the office of the vice president that households receiving masks might create concern or panic." At the time the virus was already widely known about, thousands were dying every week and the stock market was tanking, but the White House (i.e. Trump) withheld a simple safety precaution so as not to cause concern. ● After Vanity Fair published an article criticising Trump's disastrous response to the COVID-19 pandemic, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh "I will never lie to [the press]. You have my word on that" McEnany tweeted "This Vanity Fair story is another inaccurate and disgusting partisan hit job. President Trump has consistently put the health of all Americans first" and was promptly slammed, with replies including "You misspelled health. It should be death" (@MarkDickens), "According to Trump the last administration's handling of the H1N1 virus (12,469 deaths) was "a disaster." His handling of the coronavirus (197,472 deaths and counting) has been an "incredible job"" (@wheels616) and "he knew in January covid was airborne and deadly. he never warned or prepared the nation. 200,000 are dead, over 6 million sick and suffering. He STILL has no national strategy" (@jenifer__5).

    Another sexual assault allegation has been made against Trump, this time by former model Amy Dorris who alleges that Trump assaulted her outside the bathroom in his VIP suite at the US Open in 1997, backed up with evidence including her ticket to the event and six photographs of herself with Trump, who was married to Marla Maples at the time (he would trade her in two years later while taking the younger Melania model out for test drives). ● After Trump launched a racist attack on Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn) at a Pennsylvania rally on Tuesday, telling the crowd "She's telling us how to run our country! How did you do where you came from? How is your country doing?" Omar - whose family fled conflict in Somalia when she was a child, and has been a US citizen for 20 years, tweeted back "Firstly, this is my country & I am a member of the House that impeached you. Secondly, I fled civil war when I was 8. An 8-year-old doesn't run a country even though you run our country like one." ● At the same rally he described National Guard officers' violence against a reporter covering demonstrations in Minneapolis as "actually a beautiful sight. It's a beautiful sight" and mocked another reporter at a different protest who was hit on the knee by a rubber bullet. Trump then claimed that protesters have progressed from throwing "bags of soup" at police to tins of tuna... ● The parents of two children featured in a doctored video shared by Trump in February are suing him, his campaign and Logan Cook, the Trump supporter who doctored the video, for using their video without permission and for "inflicting emotional distress". The video appeared to show a White child chasing a Black child with a faked CNN chyron reading "breaking News; Terrified Todler [sic] Runs from Racist Baby". It was not, and the children were playing together; later, in the original video, they embraced. Twitter later disabled the doctored video for copyright enfringement.
    The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg six weeks before the election has brought the question of her successor to the fore, with Trump determined to name his choice and have her (he has stated that he wants to appoint another female judge) approved by the Senate as soon as possible. In 2016 Republicans in the Senate blocked President Obama from appointing a Supreme Court Judge because it was an election year. With the hypocrisy prevalent in today's GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said that a vote will be held on any nomination by Trump. If the liberal Ginsburg is replaced by a judge on the right (and all Trump's suggestions have been right-wing and pro-life) the balance of the nine-person Court will tip to the right and longstanding civil rights, including the right to legal abortion resulting from the famous Roe v. Wade case, could be ended. Ginsburg's granddaughter released a statement after her grandmother's death, quoting her as saying "My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed." Trump was widely condemned for saying that "I don't know that she said that, or was that written out by Adam Schiff and Schumer and Pelosi. I would be more inclined to the second... But that sounds like a Schumer deal or maybe a Pelosi or Shifty Schiff." There is a delaying tactic that Democrats could bring to bear to halt the Senate voting on a replacement. If new impeachment proceedings were brought against Trump, or were brought against FlunkyAttorney General William Barr, it would take precedence over a judicial nomination. Asked about the possibility on This Week Congressional Speaker Nancy Pelosi said "We have our options. We have arrows in our quiver that I'm not about to discuss right now..."
    Trump has announced that he will sign an executive order "establishing a national commission to promote patriotic education. It will be called the 1776 Commission." He plans to fund it with $5bn (£3.9bn) of the sale price for TikTok [above]. Given that he has previously said that teaching children about racism "is child abuse", his own stated views on Black people and his criticism of the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times Magazine's 1619 Project which puts the contributions of Black Americans and the consequences of slavery at the centre of US history it is easy enough to see how revisionist Trump's view of history would be (i.e. White Americans always had Black people's best interests at heart, even while regarding them as mere chattel), and his desire to indoctrinate it into children is summed up by a single word, used in response across Twitter: fascism. For more on Trump's views on race see below.

    Josh Venable, former chief of staff to Trump's unqualified Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has joined REPAIR (Republican Politicial Alliance for Integrity and Reform), an anti-Trump group led by former White House officials, which is actively campaigning against his reelection and working as "a cleanup crew for the Republican Party" according to Miles Taylor, its co-founder, who served in the Department of Homeland Security between 2017 and 2019. Taylor wrote in an op-ed piece "It is more than a little ironic that Trump is campaigning for a second term as a law-and-order president. His first term has been dangerously chaotic. Four more years of this are unthinkable." ● Olivia Troye, a former senior adviser to Mike Pence has also declared her intention to vote for Joe Biden because of the way Trump would blindside his advisers and spent 45 minutes of the only pandemic task force meeting he attended ranting about Fox News personalities who had started criticising him.
    At a rally in Minnesota Trump praised the state's "good genes [..] A lot of it is about the genes, isn't it, don't you believe? The racehorse theory. You think we're so different? You have good genes in Minnesota." reminding more than a few of Nazi eugenics ideals. Minnesotans are 84% White with a predominance of German and Scandinavian ancestry. The "racehorse theory" states that some humans are genetically superior to others, and was fundamental to eugenics. It is widely thought that Trump's father backed the theory and indoctrinated it into his children, with Donald in particular being receptive, but this was the first time Trump, a would-be authoritarian who hero worships dictators, praises the idea of martial law and would lock up anyone who criticised him if he could, has publicly endorsed the concept of eugenics.
    Trump tweeted a photograph of a yard full of Trump-Pence signs as evidence of his support, without crediting the photographer. ProPublica journalist Alec MacGillis recognised it as a picture he had taken - in 2016. The Twitterati were unsurprised that Trump not only stole [actually the photograph was licensed to be freely reusable with proper attribution, which was missing] the photo but is living in the past. ● Trump continues to ramp up his completely baseless claim that the election will be affected by widespread voter fraud via mail-in ballots (but of course they are OK for him and Melania). As we have reported before, there is very little evidence of attempted voter fraud in US elections, and most of the cases that have been uncovered were committed by Republicans. It is becoming somewhat obvious that he wants to quickly appoint a new Supreme Court Justice who will back him when he tries to claim that the election was rigged and hence invalidated.

At a rally in North Carolina last Saturday Trump attempted sarcasm, telling his supporters "If I lose to him [Biden], I don't know what I'm gonna do. I will never speak to you again. You'll never see me again." A clip of him saying that was promptly used for a campaign ad - by the Biden team, who appended Trump's opponent saying "I'm Joe Biden and I approve this message" You can see it here [Twitter]. ● RT, the Russian state-owned propagandamedia outlet has posted a satirical deepfake video with Trump's face superimposed on an actor's body as he apparently spends his first day of work at the channel days after losing the election, with an accompanying statement that "The mainstream media has accused RT and Trump of working together to swing elections for years. So they might as well do it for real. Seriously though, Mr President, if you do want a job let us know, the canteen is very reasonable." You can see it here [YouTube].

More form Dumbest-spawn-of-Donald Eric Trump, who blamed church burning, Black Lives Matter protests and the response to the pandemic on... the Obama administration, which left office four years ago. Eric also claimed that, after being elected, Obama "didn't even go back to Chicago. He was literally never there. He never mentioned the violence." As was promptly pointed out, Barack Obama visited Chicago 19 times while in office and even served jury duty there in 2017. Twitter user @BluesPetal reminded Eric that "If Pres Obama goes back to Chicago, even for a visit, he will have crowds of adoring fans to greet him. Your father was essentially run out of town - and should he try to visit NY he will be greeted by protesters. Stop comparing them. It's a losing proposition."

Mary Trump has revealed a handy tip for Joe Biden in the upcoming debates. "I hope Vice President Biden refers to Donald as Donald just because that's an easy way to get under his skin and nobody's disrespected the office as much as Donald has, so he doesn't deserve the cover of the respect of the office of the presidency." She also called for Biden to call out Trump's lies to his face if the moderators do not challenge them. ● Appearing on Fox & Friends recently Trump was asked about Bob Woodward's book Rage, based on interviews conducted with Trump, some of which have been released including the admission that he knew about the danger of COVID-19 but kept it secret from the American public. Trump said "I actually got to read it last night. I read it very quickly and it was very boring." Trump is noted for not reading, even intelligence briefings that have been reduced to three bullet points fail to hold his attention, and it has long been suspected that he never read The Art of the Deal, the book he supposedly co-wrote. Rage is 466 pages long. It is unlikely Trump would have got much further than the cover blurb let alone read the whole book in a night (Amazon Kindle gives it a reading time of 10 hours 18 minutes).

Trump's much-vaunted Space Force has seen its first deployment. Not to the Moon, not to the ISS, not even to a launch pad or rocket base. Twenty troops were sworn in as Space Force recruits in... Qatar. ● At a rally in Northern California Trump spoke as if he had already been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. He was nominated for it - by a far-right Norwegian politician. Being nominated is not the same as being awarded the Prize. Stalin and Hitler were both nominated in their time. At least this time Trump was nominated legitimately; he previous two nominations were determined to have been forgeries. As noted above though, Trump has indeed won a Nobel Prize of sorts - an Ig Nobel Prize, along with a number of other world politicians " for using the COVID-19 pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors." ● Trump boasted on Twitter that he had "great reviews of @ABC News [town hall] show". The programme, in which undecided voters asked him about issues and caused fact checkers across America to work overtime discrediting his rambling, often-irrelevent responses, was widely panned as a disaster. ● Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) was mocked on Twitter for describing Trump as "the most transparent president in history"; as many pointed out, we are still waiting for Trump's tax returns and financial records, his high school and college degrees, his medical records, White House visitor logs and transcripts of his phone calls with Vladimir Putin.

Bob Woodward, one of the reporters who broke the Watergate scandal and author of Rage, mentioned elsewhere in this and previous issues, asked on CNN about the Trump presidency, said "This impulse decision-making, I've never seen anything like it in the presidecy or any other institution, where it's this one-man band, and he's going to say and do exactly what he wants, often giving no warning to his closest aides [..] The historians, I know, are going to write about this for decades, and they're going to say, what the f*** happened to America in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020?"

^{^} OBITUARIES

Singer Pamela Hutchinson (The Emotions, collaborations with Earth, Wind & Fire and Snoop Dogg, 61), actor Shiro Kishibe (Monkey, The Tigers, 71), author Terry Goodkind (Wizard's First Rule, The Sword of Truth series, Rahl Racing, 72), drummer Lee Kerslake (Ozzy Osbourne, Uriah Heep, Toe Fat, 73), author Winston Groom (Forrest Gump, Gump and Co, 77), author Sam McBratney (Guess How Much I Love You, Will You be My Friend?, 77), art director Alan Tomkins (The Empire Strikes Back, Batman Begins, Saving Private Ryan, 80 or 81), prop and set designer Ron Cobb (Back to the Future, Conan the Barbarian, Star Wars, 83), cinematographer and film director Michael Chapman (Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, The Fugitive, 84), US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg (co-founder of the ACLU's Women's Rights Project, first tenured female professor at Columbia Law School, appointed to the Supreme Court in 1993, 87), actor Michael Lonsdale (Moonraker, Ronin, The Day of the Jackal, 89), former Canadian prime minister John Turner (91), singer Tommy DeVito (The Four Seasons, 92), actress Juliette Gréco (The Night of the Generals, Belphegor, or Phantom of the Louvre, The Sun Also Rises, 93), celebrity astrologer Jackie Stallone (mother of Sylvester, G.L.O.W.: Gorgeous Women of Wrestling, Celebrity Big Brother, 98).

^{^} DUMBLEDORE BEAR'S LOTTERY PREDICTOR!

Dumbledore Bear, our in-house psychic predicts that the following numbers will be lucky:

21, 27, 46, 48, 49, 58

[UK National Lottery, number range 1-59]
You can get your very own prediction at http://www.simonlamont.co.uk/tfir/dumbledore.htm.

^{^} AND FINALLY...

    The vicar was walking along the pavement near Little Jennifer's home when he heard a small voice shouting "Out of the way!" before something hit him from behind, knocking him to the ground. Getting up he saw Little Jennifer standing with her bicycle. "I'm very sorry," she said politely.
    "Well, no harm done, Little Jennifer," the vicar replied, dusting himself off, "Are you learning to ride your bike?"
    Little Jennifer smiled as only she could. "Oh no, I know how to ride it, but I haven't learned how to ring the bell or use the brakes yet!"

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^{^} ...end of line