All entries by this author

It worked for Pretoria

Sep 7th, 2024 1:20 am | By

Janice Turner on the Taliban’s gender apartheid:

The Afghan men’s cricket team is one of 12 Test match sides. The limited-overs team competed in last year’s World Cup — with prestigious victories over Pakistan and England — and on Monday in India the Test side will play New Zealand. Why? The only possible answer is that the international community cares not a damn for Afghan women.

Why isn’t there a global boycott?

The Taliban is certainly thorough. First it stopped girls attending school and university, removed women from most jobs and demanded they cover themselves in chadors head to toe. Then it pondered other female pleasures, barring women from gyms, beauty salons, hairdressers and public parks, and making shopping

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Words of wisdom

Sep 6th, 2024 4:34 pm | By

Liz Cheney endorsed Harris for president the other day. She also had some thoughts on the other candidate.

The former Republican Wyoming representative spoke with Atlantic writer Mark Leibovich in Texas on Friday, following her endorsement of Harris for president this week. In her conversation, she shared words of wisdom for Harris—and a brutally honest condemnation of Donald Trump and J.D. Vance.

Well there’s no point in being gently dishonest about those two, is there. They want to destroy everything. They’re bad men. They have to be stopped.

When asked how Harris should approach Tuesday’s presidential debate against Trump, Cheney responded by saying that Harris should relish the fact that this is an “opportunity [where] Donald Trump gets to

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Attention deficit tantrum

Sep 6th, 2024 4:17 pm | By

Trump is throwing hissy fits.

Former President Donald Trump, frustrated by the state of the race and his continued legal troubles, on Friday sought to claim the spotlight for himself.

Wedging a hastily called press conference into an otherwise packed day of campaign events and court-related issues, he angrily complained to reporters inside the lobby of Trump Tower about his appeal in a sex abuse and defamation case. He criticized his legal team’s performance. Trump accused the moderators of the upcoming ABC debate of being unfair — and slammed Harris for not addressing reporters as often as he has.

In other words, wah wah wah wah wah wah wah.

Very edifying.

“This is a disgraceful case and disgraceful, in

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Mere amateurs

Sep 6th, 2024 10:09 am | By

It turns out you have to have expertise in “gender” to be able to say that men are not women.

It’s a very complicated, difficult, technical subject. You can’t just rock up and say that man is not a woman. You need to have, at least, read a book by Sally Hines first.… Read the rest



Soft targets

Sep 6th, 2024 9:26 am | By

Vance thinks mass shootings are just a fact of life, like the weather. Nothing we can do about it, folks!

Vance’s comments – in the wake of the latest deadly shooting, at Apalachee High School in Georgia – ignited a political row after Democrats depicted them as evidence of a lack of empathy while Republicans claimed the remarks had been taken out of context.

Vance called for more security measures in schools without mentioning gun control, while Democrats including Kamala Harris and the US president, Joe Biden, want a ban on assault-style rifles, more background checks, and other gun safety action.

Asked about the Georgia shooting while speaking at a campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona, on Thursday evening, Vance

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Just a guy who likes to have some fun

Sep 6th, 2024 8:39 am | By

Aw yeah, Donald Trump as the guy who “isn’t stodgy, who likes to have some fun, and likes to tell some jokes” about women and other inferiors.

It’s telling that Vance’s notion of a freewheeling, lighthearted campaign involves disparaging political opponents with baseless slander and sexist screeds.

For example, Vance took a typically cheap shot at Harris prior to her interview with CNN’s Dana Bash. He posted a 2007 clip of Miss South Carolina Teen USA Caitlin Upton bombing an answer to a question about why Americans couldn’t find their own country on a map. He wrote: “BREAKING: I have gotten ahold of the full Kamala Harris CNN interview.”

Vance’s “joke” was lousy politics that distracted from any actual gaffes

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and we’re sitting down

Sep 6th, 2024 2:58 am | By

Massive collective cringe.

https://twitter.com/joncoopertweets/status/1831808799767965995

Daily Kos sweetly transcribed the incoherent jabber, but for the full effect it’s necessary to watch him jabbering. It’s as if he’s been wound up like a clock and has to make a noise until he winds down. His only concern is to keep saying words, so he does keep saying words, without any meaning or connection to each other at all.

Question: If you win in November, can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make child care affordable?

And if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?

Trump’s Answer:

Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down, you know, I was somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka

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Miscellany Room 12

Sep 6th, 2024 2:07 am | By
Miscellany Room 12 Read the rest


Cabbage every day

Sep 5th, 2024 5:25 pm | By

What no leprechauns?

The schoolbook publisher, The Educational Company of Ireland (Edco), has apologised for some content in one of its Junior Cycle curriculum books, adding that upon “closer inspection”, it will remove it.

In a section entitled “All Different, All Equal”, an Aran-jumper wearing Irish family is described as eating bacon, cabbage and potatoes every day and not liking change or difference, while a mixed-race family is depicted as eating more varied foods and travelling internationally.

In other words the Irish family are boring bigoted hicks while the “mixed-race” family are fascinating and cosmopolitan. No doubt there are plenty of families who fit both descriptions, but didactic tales about them can…shall we say, go wrong.

The publisher issued a

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23 years into the marriage

Sep 5th, 2024 2:37 pm | By

Reduxx tells us:

A Canadian man in his sixties who abandoned his wife and children to live as a six-year-old girl is currently promoting his memoir about his transition. Stefonknee Wolscht, formerly known as Paul Andrew Wolscht, is a father to seven children and was married to his wife for 23 years before claiming to be transgender in 2009.

I call fake on his claim to be trans. If he were serious he wouldn’t name himself Stefonknee. He might as well have named himself Pederast.

Prior to “coming out” as transgender, Wolscht was a father to seven children and had been married to a woman for over two decades. In his memoire, he claims that after telling her his

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Prergnernt perple

Sep 5th, 2024 11:41 am | By

God damn it Guardian.

Pregnant people and fetuses not being protected from wildfire risks – report

Wildfires pose serious risks to pregnant people and their developing fetuses, including low birth weight and preterm birth. But public health officials are not doing nearly enough to keep these vulnerable populations safe, according to a new report.

“While we know that wildfires are continuing to intensify in the US, and we’re increasingly clear on what damages wildfires represent to maternal and newborn health, we’re still not seeing the kind of response from policymakers and public health officials that we need,” said Skye Wheeler, a researcher at Human Rights Watch and one of the report’s authors.

Maternal health? How did that get … Read the rest



Repeat the lie or else

Sep 5th, 2024 10:05 am | By

Punishing women for refusing to compete against men:

Female darts players have been threatened with disciplinary action if they refuse to play transgender opponents.

Male opponents, they mean. I suppose there could also be an issue of playing women on testosterone, but that doesn’t seem to happen, maybe because women aren’t as shameless as men who pretend to be women.

Almost four months after a British female player forfeited a match against a trans woman at a World Darts Federation event, the governing body has begun a controversial crackdown on such protests.

Ahead of announcing the provisional fields for this year’s World Championship, the WDF said in a statement: “The WDF wishes to clarify its position on player withdrawals.

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Fetish gear in the workplace

Sep 5th, 2024 9:04 am | By

Sigh. Gosh, yes, why shouldn’t men be allowed to dress up as parody prostitutes at work?

A minister has told civil servants that they are not allowed to come into work wearing ‘fetish clothing’, after a war erupted over dress code regulations.

Employees in the Department for Work and Pensions are said to have objected to the ‘highly inappropriate’ workwear of a fellow official which prompted a Tory peer to ask the Government about its ‘policy on civil servants wearing fetish clothing in the workplace’.

It is understood that Baroness Jenkin of Kennington tabled the unusual question to reflect her general concerns about the dress code and also in response to the specific issues raised by civil servants about one

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Uh, Jefferson

Sep 5th, 2024 2:20 am | By

Speaking of incoherent incontinent babbling

The words below were taken verbatim  from a campaign speech former President Donald Trump delivered in Potterville, Michigan, Thursday when he was attempting, at least initially, to criticize Kamala Harris’ record in San Francisco, presumably referring to her tenure as district attorney there:

She destroyed the city of San Francisco, it’s — and I own a big building there — it’s no — I shouldn’t talk about this but that’s OK I don’t give a damn because this is what I’m doing. I should say it’s the finest city in the world — sell and get the hell out of there, right? But I can’t do that. I don’t care, you know? I

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Return of the northern bald ibis

Sep 5th, 2024 1:32 am | By
Return of the northern bald ibis

Jaw-dropping – for once not in a bad way.

This bird came back from extinction – now scientists in an aircraft are teaching it to migrate

I could stare at that photo all day.

The northern bald ibis was extinct in central Europe for 300 years. Now, it has returned – and scientist “foster parents” aboard a tiny plane are teaching the birds to fly their long-forgotten migration routes.

Thirty-six of these endangered birds are now following an ultralight aircraft 1,740 miles (2,800km ) from Austria to Spain, on a trip that could take up to 50 days to complete.

During the flight, human foster parents sit on the back of the microlight, waving and shouting encouragement to the birds

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What if?

Sep 4th, 2024 7:15 pm | By

Tucker Carlson and the Hitler Fanboy:

Tucker Carlson is just asking questions. Questions like: what if Andrew Tate’s camgirl harem is actually the height of masculinity? And: isn’t the Russian grocery equivalent of Aldi absolutely incredible, just as the Moscow train station is perhaps the most beautiful thing mankind has created? And this week: why don’t we fully appreciate the total bind Adolf Hitler was in when he had just so many prisoners of war thanks to German success on the battlefield?

Carlson’s interview with Darryl Cooper, an amateur revisionist historian and podcaster, attempted to rewrite the history of World War Two with Winston Churchill cast as a malevolent villain and Adolf Hitler as a misunderstood man of

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Decades of failures

Sep 4th, 2024 11:29 am | By
Decades of failures

If you’re going to put people in very tall buildings, you need to make sure those buildings are safe.

A damning report on a deadly London high-rise fire concluded Wednesday that decades of failures by government, regulators and industry turned Grenfell Tower into a “death trap” where 72 people lost their lives.

The public inquiry into the 2017 blaze found no “single cause” of the tragedy, but said a combination of dishonest companies, weak or incompetent regulators and complacent government led the building to be covered in combustible cladding that turned a small apartment fire into the deadliest blaze on British soil since World War II.

The search for answers focused on a refurbishment completed in 2016 that

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Manipulated content

Sep 4th, 2024 9:54 am | By

CNN on Musk’s lying and bullying:

On Monday, Musk posted an AI-generated image on his social media platform that depicted Harris as a communist, wearing a red uniform complete with hammer and sickle emblazoned hat.

Musk, who has endorsed former President Donald Trump for president and poured millions into a super PAC supporting the Republican, captioned the image with the false assertion, “Kamala vows to be a communist dictator on day one. Can you believe she wears that outfit!?”

The image, which appeared to violate X’s policy on manipulated content, resembled an AI-generated image posted by Trump last month during the Democratic National Convention, envisioning Harris addressing a crowd under communist symbols.

Musk’s post came a day after he shared another post with a

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Fist v keyboard

Sep 4th, 2024 8:39 am | By

Multiple tiers. Joan Smith writes:

A childminder is facing a prison sentence for threatening asylum seekers in a social media post. Lucy Connolly, 41, who pleaded guilty to stirring up racial hatred, has been remanded in custody and told to expect a “substantial custodial sentence” when she next appears in court.

“Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care […] if that makes me racist, so be it,” she wrote.

A horrible thing to say, no question, but she deleted it and apologized – Joan says “quickly” but we don’t know if that means in seconds or minutes or hours.

On the other hand, violent assault is not ambiguous.… Read the rest



Petunia

Sep 4th, 2024 6:53 am | By

Without brazen lies, where would this “movement” be?

https://twitter.com/ZJemptv/status/1830956597163831440

“Tearful transgender athlete Valentina Petrillo unrepentant amid Paralympics scandal”

What would “she” have to be repentant for, asks “Zinnia.” Disingenuous question. For being a man cheating a woman by competing in a women’s race, as he knows perfectly well.

Nobody is expecting him to apologize for existing. Lying about what sex you are is not a synonym for “existing.” Lying about what sex you are is lying about what sex you are.

Nobody is expecting him to apologize for participating in society, either. Of course he can participate in society. What he can’t reasonably or fairly do is participate in society as a woman.

And in conclusion, calling him unapologetic is … Read the rest