Social Issues

Blackpool council has approved plans to add fluoride to school milk. More than 8,000 primary schoolchildren will soon be given fluoridated milk intended to help tackle “poor dental health” despite all the damning evidence showing how dangerous the poison fluoride is. Ingesting fluoride has adverse health affects, and it is simply not true that drinking it helps to prevent tooth decay. The move is part of the town’s free school breakfast scheme and parents will be able to opt out of allowing their children to be given the drink.

If you read nothing else today, make it this brilliant column by Michael Brendan Dougherty, who says the late far-right nationalist writer Sam Francis wrote the script for Donald Trump’s campaign 20 years ago, for Pat Buchanan, but Buchanan was too much a Republican Party man to follow it. Excerpts:

Last month we were amused to learn that a petition to have Donald Trump banned from Britain managed to garner enough support to force the UK parliament to consider the measure. 

"The UK has banned entry to many individuals for hate speech. The same principles should apply to everyone who wishes to enter the UK," the petition reads. "If the United Kingdom is to continue applying the 'unacceptable behaviour' criteria to those who wish to enter its borders, it must be fairly applied to the rich as well as poor, and the weak as well as powerful." 

Authored by Shamil Shams, op-ed via DW.com,

Cologne’s xenophobic assaults on Muslims are disgraceful. But DW's Shamil Shams feels that they just show how Germans feel increasingly threatened by a culture that is not compatible with their norms.

As a Pakistani journalist working in Germany, I have been very skeptical about the German government's decision to allow thousands of refugees into the country without much scrutiny of their backgrounds.