Over Six Million Workers Earning Less than People on Welfare Benefits in Britain

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More than six million workers in Britain are earning less than those living off welfare benefits, a report from the Centre for Social Justice has found.

The think tank’s analysis found that an average welfare recipient benefiting from Universal Credit (UC) subsidies and Personal Independence Payment (PIP) benefits would be given £25,200 per year in taxpayer cash. The CSJ noted that this would be the equivalent to the a pre-tax salary of £30,100.

In comparison, the report pointed to recent job postings for roles paying less than welfare, such as a Leicester prison officer for £28,187, a Birmingham store cleaner for £26,312, and a Manchester nursing assistant for £24,465.

The Centre for Social Justice report found that there are currently 6.2 million full-time workers who currently earn less than the combined benefits package. This would equate to around in four workers.

According to the report, people on the combined benefits package would take home £4,800 more per year than an average full-time worker and £3,400 more than someone on the National Living Wage.

The CSJ said that there are currently more than four million people in Britain claiming out-of-work benefits with no requirement to work.

Commenting on the findings, Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP, CSJ founder and architect of the welfare reforms of the last decade, said that his previous reforms had brought the number of workless households to an all-time low and had made “work pay”.

“But because of the post-Covid collapse in vetting and the explosion in health-related welfare claims, millions of workers could now take home more from welfare than wages after tax,” he said.

“This is an outrageous state of affairs. The system must stop writing off thousands of people every day, and incentives to work must be restored to end this ruinous waste of human potential. Welfare reform is ultimately about transforming lives. The danger now is that Britain becomes a welfare state with a bankrupt country attached.”

The report further warned that the number of working-age people claiming benefits due to supposed disabilities is set to increase by 2.4 million over the coming decade.

This, the CSJ warned, threatens to create a “permanent sickness-based welfare state,” that threatens to have “serious consequences for individual wellbeing, the public finances and long-term economic growth.”

Rt Hon Former Shadow Work Secretary and CSJ Senior Fellow, Jonathan Ashworth, said: “The number of people being abandoned to health-related benefits shows why welfare reform cannot be left on the ‘too difficult’ pile.

Ashworth called on the government to follow the pitched “blueprint for a system that values contribution, protects the most vulnerable, and helps thousands more people gain all of the advantages that come with work.”

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Labour Plans To Make Britain’s Countryside ‘Less White’

Broadway, often described as the “Quintessential Cotswold Village,” England. Wikimedia Commons,Saffron Blaze, CC-BY-SA-3.0

The Labour government has drawn up plans to make Britain’s countryside “less white,” after government-commissioned reports claimed rural England could become “irrelevant” in an increasingly multicultural society.

The proposals, coordinated by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), have been taken up by officials running England’s protected landscapes, including the Chilterns, the Cotswolds, and the Malvern Hills.

Internal documents describe rural England as a “white environment” dominated by the “white middle class”, and argue that urgent action is needed to attract more ethnic minority visitors.

Under the plans, landscape authorities have committed to diversity targets, outreach programmes, and recruitment drives designed to change both who visits the countryside and how it is presented. Marketing material will be altered to feature more ethnic minority visitors, while information will be produced in multiple “community languages.”

In the Chilterns, officials have developed engagement schemes aimed specifically at Muslim communities in nearby Luton. Other areas have pledged to review their facilities and staffing to ensure they better reflect Britain’s “multicultural reality.”.

The push follows a series of Defra-commissioned reports, including a 2019 review overseen by author Julian Glover and a £108,000 (€125,000) study published in 2022. These warned that many first-generation immigrants see protected landscapes as spaces designed for white, middle-class people— and therefore feel unwelcome.

Traditional rural pubs were singled out as a particular problem. According to the research, Muslims from Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds said pubs—associated with alcohol and limited food options—contributed to a feeling of exclusion when visiting the countryside.

Other recommendations focus on everyday rural life. One suggests dogs should be kept under stricter control, citing fears of these animals among some communities. Another claims that while “white English” visitors value solitude and quiet contemplation, ethnic minority visitors tend to prefer social or group activities.

The Malvern Hills National Landscape said many minority families “have no connection to nature in the UK” because previous generations “did not feel safe enough” to visit or had other “survival preoccupations”. Similar language appears across management plans nationwide.

Defra insists the plans are about access rather than ideology. A spokesman said the government wants to support people engaging with nature “in their own ways” and ensure publicly funded landscapes are open to everyone.

However, critics argue the scheme amounts to social engineering of rural England—recasting centuries-old landscapes, village pubs, and countryside traditions as obstacles to be corrected in the name of diversity.

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France: Algerian migrant nurse sentenced to 4 years for sexually assaulting numerous nursing home residents, including 92-year-old woman

In Bédarrides in June 2022, he sexually assaulted a 92-year-old resident Google Maps

In France, Mohamed D., a nurse with Algerian training who has been working in France for 20 years, was sentenced by the court in Aix-en-Provence to four years in prison for sexually assaulting residents of nursing homes, including a 92-year-old woman.

In early July 2023, while working at a facility in Lambesc, a 72-year-old resident reported that “a monster tried to rape her.” She described a nurse matching Mohamed D.’s description kneading her breast for several minutes while telling her she was beautiful. The resident was certain the act was intentional, and medical staff found her testimony “entirely consistent.”

Mohamed D. offered a “bizarre version of events,” according to French newspaper La Provence. He claimed he felt dizzy after picking up medication and accidentally touched her. The facility immediately ordered him to leave and contacted authorities.

Following his arrest, investigations revealed a long history of offenses. During his trial in Aix-en-Provence this January, it emerged that he had prior convictions from 2021 in Rodez and Montpellier. Witnesses described him as someone who frequently made sexually suggestive remarks to colleagues, often staying at facilities for only a few days due to his behavior.

His history of harassment and assault included an incident in Orange, where he sent suggestive texts to an activities coordinator stating: “You really turned me on today, you’re so beautiful.”

In Bédarrides in June 2022, he sexually assaulted a 92-year-old resident who was crying; he reportedly grabbed her waist, pressed her against his erect penis, and tried to kiss her. Later, in Grans in June 2023, he sexually assaulted a fellow caregiver while they were assisting a resident.

Remarkably, these actions occurred despite an initial conviction that prohibited him from practicing as a nurse.

“I didn’t know,” Mohamed claimed during the hearing in response to the allegations. While he had previously denied all charges, he partially admitted to some during the trial, stating, “I behaved inappropriately, it’s regrettable. I’ve realized I have a pain inside me that I couldn’t control, I apologize,” though he characterized his urges as mere “language slips.”

The prosecution and plaintiffs highlighted the “multiplicity of the acts” and noted that he specifically “targets vulnerable people.” The Lambesc resident’s lawyer noted that while the assault lasted minutes, “for her, it lasts an eternity.”

The prosecution sought a seven-year sentence, citing “acts of undeniable gravity.” While the defense argued against “prison frenzy” and “social exclusion,” the court reached a firm verdict. Mohamed D. was sentenced to four years in prison with an immediate warrant for his arrest.

Beyond the prison term, the court imposed a permanent ban on him working as a healthcare professional or in any activity involving minors or people with disabilities. This was accompanied by eight years of post-release supervision, registration as a sex offender, and an order to pay €3,000 in damages to the victim at the Lambesc nursing home.

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Swedish UNHCR chief resigns after Epstein files reveal she visited pedo island

Joanna Rubinstein. Screengrab youtube

The latest unsealing of millions of documents from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation has triggered a wave of resignations and apologies across Europe, with Scandinavian elites particularly hard-hit.

Joanna Rubinstein, chair of Sweden for UNHCR, the fundraising arm of the UN Refugee Agency, stepped down today following revelations that she visited the convicted sex offender’s private Caribbean island in 2012, well after his 2008 prosecution for procuring a minor for prostitution.

Rubinstein, who travelled with her family, later thanked Epstein in an email, describing the stay as positive, according to the newly released files.

“This was not something the organisation or the board was previously aware of,” said Daniel Axelsson, press officer for Sweden for UNHCR, in a statement to Swedish media.

Rubinstein, a prominent figure in international philanthropy and former head of the World Childhood Foundation’s US operations, confirmed she met Epstein on one occasion but denied further contact.

Her resignation underscores the lingering fallout from Epstein’s network, which continues to expose high-level associations long after his 2019 death in custody while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.

The scandal has also engulfed Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit, wife of heir to the throne Crown Prince Haakon.

Newly released emails reveal extensive, flirtatious correspondence between Mette-Marit and Epstein from 2011 to 2013, including discussions on adultery, “wife hunting” and references to young Norwegian women.

She stayed at Epstein’s Palm Beach estate for four days in 2013 when he was absent and expressed boredom with royal duties, calling him a “sweetheart”.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre condemned her “poor judgement”, aligning with Mette-Marit’s own apology: “I showed poor judgement and regret having any contact with Epstein at all.”

The revelations add to ongoing royal woes, including her son Marius Borg Høiby’s recent indictment on sexual assault charges.

Other prominent Scandinavians have been drawn into the fray. Sweden’s Princess Sofia, a former model and reality TV star who married Prince Carl Philip in 2015, met Epstein multiple times around 2005 before his conviction through her mentor, Swedish-US businesswoman Barbro Ehnbom.

Emails show Ehnbom introducing Sofia as an “aspiring actress” and suggesting Epstein might like to meet her, with offers to fly her to the Caribbean, which she reportedly declined.

The Swedish Royal Court confirmed the brief social encounters, emphasising they occurred two decades ago and involved no further ties.

Sofia was notably absent from the 2025 Nobel Prize ceremony amid the scrutiny.

In Norway, former prime minister Thorbjørn Jagland, who later chaired the Nobel Peace Prize committee and served as Council of Europe secretary-general, planned a family holiday on Epstein’s Little Saint James island in 2014 but cancelled it.

Norwegian diplomat Terje Rød-Larsen resigned from the International Peace Institute in 2020 after admitting to securing donations from Epstein-linked foundations and maintaining a personal financial relationship with him.

Børge Brende, current President of the World Economic Forum and a former Norwegian foreign minister, is also named in the files, although details remain limited.

These Scandinavian connections highlight how Epstein’s web extended into Europe’s northern establishment, often through philanthropy, diplomacy and social circles.

Internationally, the 2026 file releases have sparked fresh turmoil. In Britain, Peter Mandelson – sacked as UK ambassador to the US in 2025 over Epstein ties – resigned his Labour Party membership yesterday after documents revived scrutiny of his friendship with the financier.

Former Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor faces renewed calls from UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer to co-operate with US investigators following photos showing him in compromising positions and offering invitations to Buckingham Palace dinners.

In Slovakia, diplomat Miroslav Lajčák stepped down as adviser to Prime Minister Robert Fico over mentions in the files, despite no accusations of wrongdoing being made against him.

Los Angeles Olympics chief Casey Wasserman, who co-chaired a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016, apologised for “flirty” emails with Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.

Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak apparently also had deeper connections with Epstein than already known.

Barak kept contact with him until 2017, visiting him in his Manhattan property.

In a leaked 2013 audio recording, Epstein advised Barak to “look at” tech defence firm Palantir. Epstein also facilitated introductions, such as meetings with figures such as Ariane de Rothschild or others tied to finance and China.

Epstein’s foundations provided investment for a start-up Barak chaired.

Critics argue the scandals expose a broader failure of accountability among elites, with European Union and UN-linked figures facing particular questions about due diligence in international networks.

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Former British Ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson Resigns From Labour Party After Epstein Revelations, Money Transfer and Underwear Photo – Will Be Summoned by Oversight Committee

Lord Peter Mandelson, half-naked in the DOJ-released Files, is experiencing the ‘Epstein curse’ in a big way – and it can get worse.

Out of all the political players whose involvement with the Jeffrey Epstein ring is being revealed by the 3 million new documents released by the US DOJ, Lord Peter Mandelson is one of the most affected so far, second only to former Prince Andrew.

One by one, all the lies Mandelson has been telling about his deep and long-standing Epstein ties are crashing down in flames.

Now, with the last shameful and vexatious revelations, including money transfers and a picture of a member of the House of Lords in his underwear.

As a consequence, Mandelson was forced to resign his membership of the Labour Party so as to ‘not cause further embarrassment’ to the party by his Epstein links.

BBC reported:

“The former cabinet minister, who was sacked as US ambassador last year because of his past connections to Epstein, appeared in the latest release of files by the US Department of Justice on Friday.

Documents suggest Epstein made $75,000 (£55,000) in payments to Lord Mandelson in three separate $25,000 transactions in 2003 and 2004.

In his letter to Labour’s general secretary on Sunday, Lord Mandelson said: ‘I have been further linked this weekend to the understandable furor surrounding Jeffrey Epstein and I feel regretful and sorry about this’.”

If all that was not enough, Lord Mandelson will reportedly be summoned to give evidence before the US House Oversight Committee on his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

The Telegram reported:

“Sources close to the US House oversight committee, which has spearheaded the release of millions of government-held files on the pedophile financier, said it was poised to issue the peer with a demand to testify in Washington.

It believes Lord Mandelson, who was sacked as British ambassador to Washington in September over revelations about his relationship with Epstein, may have crucial information about co-conspirators and enablers of Epstein’s crimes.”

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How the Sharia Trojan horse quietly conquered “Minnesota Nice”

Some time ago, the Wall Street Journal published an article titled “Sharia in Minnesota”:

“The land of 10,000 lakes and that welcoming attitude we call ‘Minnesota Nice’ is becoming a window on America’s potential future. Here in Minneapolis, one of the country’s most livable cities, Muslim activists are introducing an element that is anything but pleasant. The troubling episodes began when taxi drivers at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport-three-quarters of whom are Muslim-started refusing to transport passengers with alcohol. A woman returning from France with wine was turned away by five taxis in a row. Refusals now number 100 per month, and heated discussions have erupted.

“The Metropolitan Airports Commission proposed a pilot project with lights to indicate which taxi drivers would accept passengers with alcohol. The proposal, later abandoned, would have marked the first time a U.S. government agency officially recognized Sharia and distinguished individuals who observe it from those who do not. Then some Muslim cashiers at Target stores began refusing to scan pork-based products, like bacon and pepperoni pizza, insisting that other cashiers or customers do it themselves. These events suggest a broader strategy.”

Minneapolis is the closest thing America has conceived to Scandinavian social democracy: a social project in the deep North made of bike paths, recycled materials, and courteous contracts-a welfare nirvana where the forced marriage between Islam and the Western way of life is the rule.

In Minneapolis, the Trump administration has just delivered the hardest blow to illegal immigration and the double tragedy has been consummated. The media narrative shows us only good immigrants and activists against the bad president. The true story is a bit more complicated.

Two years ago, the state of Minnesota introduced its new flag.

Gone are the European settlers who drained the swamps and built civilization with calloused hands and wooden churches. Replaced by an abstract shape that seems taken from an Islamic prayer rug.

Then Minneapolis became the first city in America to broadcast the Islamic call to prayer five times a day starting at 5 a.m. It then unanimously decided to amend the noise ordinance.

Progressivism, steeped in ethical relativism indebted to thinkers like Derrida and Foucault, confuses tolerance with submission, allowing pre-modern religious norms to dictate the rhythm of civil coexistence.

It is a Trojan horse strategy, where multiculturalism serves as the breach.

The West, in its universalist hubris, imports incompatible paradigms, believing that liberal democracy can digest everything, like an omnivorous Leviathan.

Trump has just taken the stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos to declare that Western civilization must defend itself from an existential attack: “The situation in Minnesota reminds us that the West cannot mass-import foreign cultures that have never succeeded in building a successful society of their own. The explosion of prosperity and progress that built the West did not derive from our tax cuts. Ultimately, it derived from our very special culture. This is the precious heritage that America and Europe have in common.”

The activist and Somali-born writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali declared: “The situation in Minnesota reveals a subversive program in the United States to transform and Islamize it using American institutions and the American vocabulary of civil rights.”

Long a refuge for progressives (Minnesota is the only state not to have voted for Reagan in 1984), the city radicalized after George Floyd’s death in May 2020, killed right there. Riots, calls to “defund” the police, and a wave of violence transformed its image as a social-democratic paradise into an urban nightmare. Since the mid-2010s, murders have increased by 110 percent.

Minneapolis has acquired a new nickname: “Murderapolis.”

The Somali community-10 percent of Minneapolis’s total population according to the American Community Survey-has meanwhile gained decisive electoral influence. Fleeing the civil war of the 1990s, then the jihadist chaos of the 2000s, these migrants rebuilt a life in the skyscrapers of Cedar-Riverside, a neighborhood also known as “Little Mogadishu” or “West Bank” (a play on Israel’s ‘West Bank’ bordering the Jordan), because it borders the Mississippi River.

For months, Minnesota has been at the center of the corruption scandal over services provided to help the elderly, drug addicts, disabled, and mentally ill find housing. Hundreds of millions of dollars were stolen from welfare by Somali NGOs.

In one case, they recruited children of Somali parents for autism therapy services, even if the child had no autism diagnosis, facilitating fraudulent claims. Parents received monthly kickbacks ranging from $300 to $1,500 per child.

Part of the funds ended up in the hands of al-Shabaab, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Somalia, with the result that Minnesota’s good, tolerant, and generous taxpayers ended up serving as the main financiers of the terrorist group.

This is not ordinary corruption: it is asymmetric economic warfare conducted by clans using the public funds of the state hosting them.

In Minneapolis, the first street patrols have also appeared to enforce Sharia: no alcohol, no drugs, no mixing of sexes.

Here Sharia did not arrive with caliphal proclamations, but with Target cashiers refusing to touch bacon, taxi drivers dumping ladies with Bordeaux bottles as if they were radioactive, nighttime patrols patrolling sidewalks to prevent men and women from looking at each other too long.

As Barbara Jordan, the African-American congresswoman and civil rights pioneer who chaired the Clinton-era Immigration Reform Commission, argued, assimilation breaks down when numbers accumulate: when they are 1 or 2 percent you can integrate them, when they reach 10 or 20 percent, society implodes. And when migrant communities can mass-import their own relatives through the so-called “family preference program,” the result is ghettoized enclaves where newcomers can pretend to still live at home, only with a colder climate and more generous welfare networks.

That is why Denmark-which liberals like only when it opposes Trump on Greenland-announced that in high-density migrant neighborhoods it will limit the number of “non-Western” residents. Too many non-Western foreigners “increase the risk of the birth of parallel religious and cultural societies.” The Danish government has classified 30 suburbs inhabited mostly by foreigners of Muslim religion.

Minneapolis has come under the scrutiny of American intelligence for the first wave of Americans joining al-Shabaab, the Somali franchise of al Qaeda. It is from here that the first American suicide bomber, Shirwa Ahmed, came. Douglas McCain, the first American killed while fighting with the Islamic State, had studied in New Hope, not far from Minneapolis.

There were three terrorists from Minnesota in the commando group that in 2013 besieged the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, killing 67 people. The largest contingent of American ISIS volunteers departed from Minneapolis.

Meanwhile, the Catholic Church of San Giovanni in Minneapolis is now a mosque.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Somali-born essayist, this week explains that clan cultures do not dissolve in the American melting pot. They replicate, they shield themselves, suck up resources, and wait for the host to weaken to take over.

If it is in Minneapolis that they want to realize a new version of the American dream, I would say it will not end well. Here Third World does not impose itself by force, but insinuates itself through rights, accommodations and demography. “Minnesota Nice” tolerates, welcomes, modifies norms so as not to offend, resists: but at what price?

Minneapolis has become the trophy of an ideological surrender: America’s most “inclusive” city is the most segregated, the most infiltrated by Islamist networks, and the most drained by fraudulent welfare.

But liberals who whistle against ICE do not want to talk about this.

Minneapolis represents the vanguard of something, and the rest of America and the West will have to choose: adapt or resist. And in this case, not to Trump, but to self-destruction.

But I am starting to think that for those who believe “fascism” has returned to the West, even ending their days in a horrible Somali slum made of full veils, segregation, adhan broadcast from loudspeakers installed on old churches converted into mosques, halal butchers, and front NGOs that suck money from taxpayers, all in all, is fine with them.

But when they wake up at 5 a.m. to the muezzin’s cry and Islamized schools, are forced to eschew alcohol and non halal purchases, and more, let them remember that it was not Trump who imposed it on them. It was they themselves, with their false “tolerance,” who handed over the keys to the city.

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UK: Afghan national charged with rape, kidnap and sexual assault in historic market towns

One attack occurred on Grove Road, in Wantage | 3 A338 – Google Maps

An Afghan national has been charged with rape, kidnap, and sexual assault after attacks on two women in the historic market towns of Wantage and Grove, near Oxford.

Najeebullah Arab, 39, of Mayfield Avenue, has been charged with one count of kidnap, one count of rape and one count of sexual assault, Thames Valley Police confirmed.

They said a woman had been kidnapped and raped near Mably Way in Wantage, Oxfordshire, on January 27.

Another woman was sexually assaulted on Cane Lane on January 21, the force added.

“Najeebullah Arab is an Afghanistan national. He did not self-define his ethnicity when he came into police custody,” a spokesman said.

Arab has been remanded in police custody and will appear at High Wycombe Magistrates’ Court on Monday.

The first reported attack, at 9.30pm on Wednesday, January 21, was on a woman in her late 20s.

After she was reportedly approached and had a brief interaction with the perpetrator, the woman continued walking along Main Street, police said.

The man followed her and sexually assaulted her, it was claimed.

The second incident Arab is charged with is said to have occurred at around 11.15pm on January 27, when a woman in her late teens was approached by an unknown man riding a bike while she was walking alone along Grove Road.

Police confirmed the man briefly spoke with her before leading her towards an area behind Mably Way, where she was raped.

The offender then allegedly fled the scene on his bike.

The man followed her and sexually assaulted her, it was claimed.

The second incident Arab is charged with is said to have occurred at around 11.15pm on January 27, when a woman in her late teens was approached by an unknown man riding a bike while she was walking alone along Grove Road.

Police confirmed the man briefly spoke with her before leading her towards an area behind Mably Way, where she was raped.

The offender then allegedly fled the scene on his bike.

gbnews

English Lit Students Can’t Read Novels, Film Students Can’t Watch Movies: Believe it or not, movies are joining novels as a niche art

You may remember the stories about how college students, even English Lit ones, had lost the ability to read novels.

Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University’s required great-books course, since 1998. He loves the job, but it has changed. Over the past decade, students have become overwhelmed by the reading. College kids have never read everything they’re assigned, of course, but this feels different. Dames’s students now seem bewildered by the thought of finishing multiple books a semester. His colleagues have noticed the same problem. Many students no longer arrive at college—even at highly selective, elite colleges—prepared to read books.

This development puzzled Dames until one day during the fall 2022 semester, when a first-year student came to his office hours to share how challenging she had found the early assignments. Lit Hum often requires students to read a book, sometimes a very long and dense one, in just a week or two. But the student told Dames that, at her public high school, she had never been required to read an entire book. She had been assigned excerpts, poetry, and news articles, but not a single book cover to cover.

“My jaw dropped,” Dames told me. The anecdote helped explain the change he was seeing in his students: It’s not that they don’t want to do the reading. It’s that they don’t know how. Middle and high schools have stopped asking them to.

Faced with this predicament, many college professors feel they have no choice but to assign less reading and lower their expectations. Victoria Kahn, who has taught literature at UC Berkeley since 1997, used to assign 200 pages each week. Now she assigns less than half of that. “I don’t do the whole Iliad. I assign books of The Iliad. I hope that some of them will read the whole thing,” Kahn told me. “It’s not like I can say, ‘Okay, over the next three weeks, I expect you to read The Iliad,’ because they’re not going to do it.”

Can they watch movies? No, and while this is more about the study of film, film audiences are aging and it’s not just that Gen Z is less likely to go to theaters, they’re less capable of watching a conventional ‘film’ as opposed to the 300,000 spliced together fight scenes, close ups, special effects shots overlaid with ironic music choices and quips that make up a Marvel movie and have no coherent plot.

They watch podcasts and clips of things. Not movies.

Everyone knows it’s hard to get college students to do the reading—remember books? But the attention-span crisis is not limited to the written word. Professors are now finding that they can’t even get film students—film students—to sit through movies. “I used to think, If homework is watching a movie, that is the best homework ever,” Craig Erpelding, a film professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told me. “But students will not do it.”

I heard similar observations from 20 film-studies professors around the country. They told me that over the past decade, and particularly since the pandemic, students have struggled to pay attention to feature-length films. Malcolm Turvey, the founding director of Tufts University’s Film and Media Studies Program, officially bans electronics during film screenings. Enforcing the ban is another matter: About half the class ends up looking furtively at their phones.

Akira Mizuta Lippit, a cinema and media-studies professor at the University of Southern California—home to perhaps the top film program in the country—said that his students remind him of nicotine addicts going through withdrawal during screenings: The longer they go without checking their phone, the more they fidget. Eventually, they give in. He recently screened the 1974 Francis Ford Coppola classic The Conversation. At the outset, he told students that even if they ignored parts of the film, they needed to watch the famously essential and prophetic final scene. Even that request proved too much for some of the class. When the scene played, Lippit noticed that several students were staring at their phones, he told me. “You do have to just pay attention at the very end, and I just can’t get everybody to do that,” he said.

Many students are resisting the idea of in-person screenings altogether. Given the ease of streaming assignments from their dorm rooms, they see gathering in a campus theater as an imposition. Professors whose syllabi require in-person screenings outside of class time might see their enrollment drop, Meredith Ward, director of the Program in Film and Media Studies at Johns Hopkins University, told me. Accordingly, many professors now allow students to stream movies on their own time.

You can imagine how that turns out. At Indiana University, where Erpelding worked until 2024, professors could track whether students watched films on the campus’s internal streaming platform. Fewer than 50 percent would even start the movies, he said, and only about 20 percent made it to the end. (Recall that these are students who chose to take a film class.)

After watching movies distractedly—if they watch them at all—students unsurprisingly can’t answer basic questions about what they saw. In a multiple-choice question on a recent final exam, Jeff Smith, a film professor at UW Madison, asked what happens at the end of the Truffaut film Jules and Jim. More than half of the class picked one of the wrong options, saying that characters hide from the Nazis (the film takes place during World War I) or get drunk with Ernest Hemingway (who does not appear in the movie). Smith has administered similar exams for almost two decades; he had to grade his most recent exam on a curve to keep students’ marks within a normal range.

Everyone grades them on a curve. And that’s the problem.

Matt Damon, the star of many movies that college students may not have seen, said that Netflix has started encouraging filmmakers to put action sequences in the first five minutes of a film to get viewers hooked. And just because young people are streaming movies, it doesn’t mean they’re paying attention. When they sit down to watch, many are browsing social media on a second screen. Netflix has accordingly advised directors to have characters repeat the plot three or four times so that multitasking audiences can keep up with what’s happening, Damon said.

Believe it or not, movies are joining novels as a niche art. The future will be some sort of interactive videogame that can be watched distractedly or interacted with in bite size segments. Movies, like novels, will be for a smaller and more discerning audience.

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ROYAL FAMILY TROUBLE: Norwegian Crown Princess Under Fire for Being Featured in Hundreds of New Epstein Files, While Her Son Is on Trial Accused of Raping Four Women

Norway Crown Princess Mette-Marit and her son Marius Borg Hoiby.Screenshot X

The Princess is apologizing for her close Epstein ties, just as her son is on trial for rape.

The royal family in Norway is reeling with the repercussion of the latest – and probably last – document release on the Epstein files.

The three and a half million additional documents were released by the DOJ pursuant to the approval of the House Resolution 4405, the ‘Epstein Files Transparency Act’.

The released files cast a very negative light on Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit.

DPA reported:

“According to media reports on Saturday, the 52-year-old is mentioned several hundred times in the documents published by the US Department of Justice on Friday. It became known years ago that Mette-Marit had contact with Epstein.”

A visit to Epstein’s estate in Palm Beach, Florida, in 2013, is creating waves, as the Royal Palace confirmed that Mette-Marit had ‘borrowed Epstein’s house’ through a mutual friend, staying there for four days.

Guri Varpe, spokeswoman for the Norwegian royal family made a point to add that the crown princess ‘never stayed on the multimillionaire’s private island, Little Saint James’.

“On Friday evening, the crown princess apologized. She had ‘not checked Epstein’s background more thoroughly’, she explained in a statement released to several Norwegian media outlets. She said she had shown ‘poor judgement’ and regretted ‘having had any contact with Epstein at all’.

‘It’s just embarrassing’, she continued. She expressed her ‘deep sympathy’ and solidarity with the victims of the sex offender.”

Norwegian media says Mette-Marit met Epstein ‘several times’ in the United States and in Oslo in 2011 and 2013.

If that wasn’t enough, an email has surfaced from the trove in which former Bill Gates advisor Boris Nikolic appears to suggest that the woman who would become Norwegian Crown princess is pregnant with a baby from Epstein.

Email correspondence between Jeffrey Epstein and Boris Nikolic discussing scheduling a trip and mentioning a conversation about a person named Mette.

But as bad as the Epstein situation is for the Norwegian royals, the worst is yet to come, as Mette-Marit’s son goes on trial Tuesday (February 3) accused of raping four women, as well as drug and assault offenses.

CBS News reported:

“Marius Borg Hoiby, Mette-Marit’s 29-year-old son from a relationship before she married Crown Prince Haakon, has been charged with a total of 38 counts, some of which date back to 2018.”

Hoiby faces up to 16 years in prison if found guilty.

“’When it comes to the Norwegian royal family, it is without a doubt the biggest scandal’ in its 120-year history, Trond Noren Isaksen, a historian and expert on Norway’s monarchy, told AFP. ‘There have been controversies surrounding the choice of spouses, about renovations of the palace and these kinds of things, but never any real scandals involving criminal offences, let alone so many’, he said.”

Besides the four rape charges, Hoiby is also accused of physical and psychological abuse of several ex-girlfriends.

thegatewaypundit

Frankfurt, considered Germany’s most diverse city, reveals how multiculturalism is failing

The train station area in particular is considered a crime hotspot. Google Maps

Frankfurt am Main has long championed its reputation as a “melting pot of cultures,” priding itself on being Germany’s most international and diverse hub, but the reality is that crime has soared and the city is more unlivable than ever.

As Bild newspaper reports, “No German city is more diverse, more international, or more colorful. But here, too, something has slipped in the last ten years – the cityscape has changed noticeably.”

Frankfurt’s main train station neighborhood is now notorious

One of the first sights newcomers see is the 53-hectare area surrounding the main train station, known as the Bahnhofsviertel, which has transitioned from an upscale commercial district to a focal point for social friction.

Jens Spahn noted in a Bild interview: “Look at a main train station, in Duisburg, in Hamburg, in Frankfurt. Neglect, drug dealers, young men, mostly with a migration background, mostly from Eastern Europe or Arab-Muslim cultural areas. This also has to do with irregular migration, as it looks in our city centers, in the marketplaces,” he said.

Local business owners have felt this shift firsthand. Bernhard Hahn, who moved his historic music store “Cream Music” in 2017 after over a century in the district, previously stated: “The most accomplished figures are coming to Taunusstrasse, seriously addicted people, drug tourists. The dealers are waiting for them. Our customers have to run slalom to come to us,” he said.

Today, authorities estimate that roughly 5,000 addicts are supplied by 300 dealers in the area, leading to 36 major police raids since 2024.

Four months ago, public broadcaster BR launched a documentary about the chaos in this district detailing how police are dealing with violent offenders often willing to use a knife or weapon, including on the officers themselves.

Famed Youtuber Kurt Caz also descended on the area, revealing just how brutal, violent, and dirty it has become, with his video earning nearly 8 million views. In other words, the problems of Frankfurt have gone mainstream to the point that they are attracting a global audience.

Changing demographics

Frankfurt’s population has surged to over 776,000. While foreigners made up 27.3 percent of the population in 2015, that figure rose to nearly 32 percent by late 2024. When including those with a migration background, the proportion reaches 58 percent.

Religious demographics have also drastically shifted, with Muslim residents now totaling 137,000 people while Christian residents are 218,000, down from 300,000 in 2010.

The city’s culture is also rapidly changing, with Ramadan street decorations now in place while traditional Easter customs have largely faded from public areas.

Crime has soared

Since 2015, crime has soared in Frankfurt, with foreigners responsible for the vast majority of serious crimes, amounting to 57.4 percent. It must also be noted that all Germans with a migration background are also not counted in these statistics, underlining that the problem is likely far worse when second-generation migrants are taken into consideration.

Since 2015, the number of brutality cases has gone from 9,115 to 14,258 in 2024. At the same time, rapes have nearly quadrupled, going from 436 to 1,623.

Police data shows that non-German suspects dominate in the crime data. They are responsible for 64.1 percent of all rapes and 100 percent of cases of serious sexual assault.

In addition, 51.5 percent of all bodily harm cases, 61.5 percent of human trafficking cases, and 83.3 percent of all forced prostitution.

When it comes to murder, foreigners are also killing at extremely high rates relative to Germans. Foreigners are responsible for 60 percent of murder cases, 54 percent of manslaughter cases, and 100 percent of serious sexual assaults.

Shopping districts in ruin

On the major shopping streets, including the famous Zeil, migrant youth gangs are making it more difficult for retailers to operate than ever.

Joachim Stoll of the Hessen-Süd Trade Association said that space is less and less in demand, with the famous Zeil now dotted with more and more vacancies.

In the evening, migrant youth gangs, known as “Talahons,” descend to these public areas, such as the Zeil, where they wear designer clothing and act “gangster” for TikTok videos.

A police investigator who spoke to build said it is “a completely new phenomenon that didn’t exist ten years ago. There were always teenagers, but this is different.“

Public spaces face increasing issues with littering and public urination. In response, Lord Mayor Mike Josef has significantly increased fines, including a €1,000 penalty for illegally dumping bulk waste.

The presence of police is now a common sight in these hot spots, leading to an atmosphere where residents often feel unsafe or even unwilling to venture out into shopping districts. The Frankfurt Christmas market is another once safe space that now requires millions of euros worth of bollards and security barriers.

“Frankfurt should become cleaner and more livable. Anyone who violates the rules will face noticeable consequences in the future,” claimed Mayor Josef.

However, for the people living in Frankfurt, there is little evidence of consequences.

Jewish life threatened

Jewish residents have also noted that there is an increasingly intense environment in the city. Since Oct. 7, 2023, there have been increasing anti-Israel demonstrations and anti-Semitic incidents.

“I pay close attention to what I wear – my clothes make it clear that I belong to the Jewish faith. There is an Islamist-motivated anti-Semitism that worries me. Because of this threat, I don’t always feel safe,” said Rabbi Zalmann Gurevitch.

Soaring rents

Frankfurt’s influx of hundreds of thousands of migrants has sent rent costs soaring to record levels while pushing many people to the periphery of the city. Although mass immigration is one factor of many, it is a primary driver of housing and rental price increases across Germany. After all, the population of Germany would have long since fallen to more sustainable levels if newcomers were not consistently arriving.

In fact, the rental situation is so bad in Frankfurt that documentaries from German public broadcasters declaring “Rental Madness” are appearing on Youtube.

Segregation is high

Frankfurt is often ranked inconsistently, with some surveys noting it is a great city to live in, while others, such as this one, report it is ranked as the second-worst city for expats to live in. However, like many cities across the West, there are tremendous differences between neighborhoods and living areas.

This has to do with segregation, with wealthier White Germans and other well-off foreigners, many from other EU countries, congregating in the suburbs and certain upscale neighborhoods. In fact, in one study from the journal Frontiers of Sociology, Frankfurt was determined to be the most segregated city in Germany, with foreigners tending to congregate in certain low-income neighborhoods.

If segregation is a sign of a failure of multiculturalism, then by this metric, Frankfurt is the greatest failure.

However, this is nothing new to the West. Often, the most multicultural and liberal cities, many of which pride themselves on being anti-racist, feature the highest levels of segregation. New York City, for instance, has the highest segregation in the educational system of any city in America, a fact that would surprise many who believe New York City is a “melting pot.”

If Frankfurt is the most diverse and international city in Germany, it does not bode well for the future of the country. Unless severe immigration policies restricting immigration come into play, this could be the norm in every corner of Germany within the next 10 to 20 years. In other major cities like Hamburg and Berlin, this reality is already mostly in place.

rmx