All entries by this author

The old KGB tactics

Feb 24th, 2022 12:15 pm | By

What I’m wondering though is what on earth is in this for Putin? I could see what’s in it for him when it’s the slow creeping whittling away, but a full-on invasion? Isn’t that awfully risky? Doesn’t it remind him at all of Hitler’s big mistake going in the other direction?

Looking to see who is explaining, I find again Anne Applebaum three weeks ago.

But of all the questions that repeatedly arise about a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine, the one that gets the least satisfactory answers is this one: Why?

Why would Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, attack a neighboring country that has not provoked him? Why would he risk the blood of his own soldiers? Why would

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Controversial how?

Feb 24th, 2022 11:39 am | By

I’ll never understand why people can’t (or refuse to) think clearly about this. It’s not as if it’s subtle or obscure. From the Guardian Australia:

Liberal MP Bridget Archer has blasted fellow Tasmanian senator Claire Chandler’s controversial legislation allowing sporting groups to exclude transgender people from single-sex sports as “a vanity bill” and “not government policy”.

Why is it even “controversial”? Obviously men need to be kept out of women’s sports. Everybody knows perfectly well why. If women’s sports aren’t limited to women then there are no women’s sports. Why shouldn’t women have sports?

Archer – who crossed the floor in an effort to secure protections for transgender children during the recent parliamentary debate about religious discrimination – characterised

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“Petty” isn’t the right word

Feb 24th, 2022 10:12 am | By
“Petty” isn’t the right word

The malice and spite know no bounds. Ever.

Rachel Rooney alerted us.

Did what?? So I had to go searching.

https://twitter.com/alibelle/status/1496796254617145345

And here’s her work:

Just looks normal, right? But the actual list has four writers.

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“Gender-affirming care”

Feb 24th, 2022 9:10 am | By

The ACLU might be right about this.

It might be, but it might not.

It’s not a slam-dunk that it’s right though. It’s not just obvious that it’s right to allow and even encourage teenagers to do irreversible things to their bodies because they believe there’s a mismatch between their bodies and what sex they are. It’s not just obvious that it’s better to let a teenager take puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones years before her … Read the rest



Change of plans

Feb 24th, 2022 6:02 am | By

Putin is speedy, we have to give him that. A couple of days ago he was just declaring a couple of bits of Ukraine not bits of Ukraine, and now it’s straight up invasion. I suppose Trump is watching tv full of chuckles, exclaiming at how savvy and impressive his buddy is.

Putin says don’t worry, “Russia” has no plans to occupy Ukraine. Apparently it plans to smash it instead.

In a pre-dawn TV statement Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia did not plan to occupy Ukraine and demanded that its military lay down their arms. Moments later, attacks were reported on Ukrainian military targets. Ukraine said that “Putin has launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine”.

Russia’s military

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Regardless of their legal status

Feb 24th, 2022 5:18 am | By

From Fair Play for Women:

The Inner Court of Session in Scotland has ruled that guidance issued alongside the census, which informs transgender people they can register as male or female regardless of their legal status, was lawful.

So what does the legal system in Scotland think a census is? Just a kind of diary? A thingy where people get to tell us about their innermost selves? While we pay no attention because we’re too busy talking about our own innermost selves?

It seems pretty silly to throw away money on a “census” that isn’t a census, and it also seems pretty silly to have an inaccurate “census” – that isn’t a census because it permits counterfactual answers.

This

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The perp escapes again

Feb 23rd, 2022 5:54 pm | By

Awwww nuts.

The two prosecutors leading the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into former President Donald J. Trump and his business practices abruptly resigned on Wednesday amid a monthlong pause in their presentation of evidence to a grand jury, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The stunning development comes not long after the high-stakes inquiry appeared to be gaining momentum, and throws its future into serious doubt.

The prosecutors, Carey R. Dunne and Mark F. Pomerantz, submitted their resignations after the new Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, indicated to them that he had doubts about moving forward with a case against Mr. Trump, the people said.

There’s still the state case, but nuts all the same.The more … Read the rest



Very shrewd, very capable

Feb 23rd, 2022 5:22 pm | By

David Aaronovich looks at a disparate (not to say eccentric) group of populist Putin fans/NATO dislikers.

There’s Stop the War, Nigel Farage, Alex Salmond, and of course the RCP/Spiked gang.

In that strangely influential nexus created by the implosion of the Revolutionary Communist Party and its re-communion in the Brexit Party, the Institute of Ideas, Spiked Online, numerous discussion programmes and the House of Lords, the view was the same. Through January Spiked warned of western “meddling” in Ukraine, and mocked the “disarray of the West” and its insistence on an outmoded alliance. Last week their leading columnist on this subject denounced western warnings concerning Putin’s intentions. Despite all the hyperbole concerning hostilities, “of course, nothing happened. Russian soldiers didn’t

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All amenities

Feb 23rd, 2022 12:41 pm | By

Ok seeing the headline on the BBC main page Police take budgie lost in storm under their wing I had to click on it, just for the headline. It’s a different headline on the article itself, not as winsome or amusing, but since I’m there anyway you might as well learn about the budgie rescue.

Transport Police in Essex have named their new recruit Barry after finding him “slightly shaken up” at Southend Victoria station on Monday.

Naturally he was shaken up. Budgies don’t take trains.

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Happens to be

Feb 23rd, 2022 9:43 am | By

No don’t ask those people, ask the experts!

Lia Thomas, a 22-year-old senior on the Penn women’s swim team, holds the fastest swim times in the country among NCAA women in two freestyle events. She also happens to be a trans woman.

Happens to be? That’s ridiculous; being trans is something no one “happens” to be. It’s something you do, not something that happens to you.

Her success has put her in the center of a national debate on trans women’s right to play sports.

No, the debate is about men’s “right” to play women’s sports. There is no such right. It’s women who have the right: the right to have women’s sports.

Michael Phelps, Caitlyn Jenner, and Jordan

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Kindly scrutinize

Feb 23rd, 2022 9:13 am | By

Yes please do look into that.

Britain’s leading equalities watchdog has been urged to scrutinise the appointment of a trans woman as head of a Scottish rape crisis centre after a legal ruling over the definition of “what it is to be a woman”.

It never should have happened in the first place. Of all the ways to insult and shame and intimidate women, putting a man in charge of a rape crisis center is a real standout.

You want to know why? Apart from the obvious? Men who call themselves women don’t like women. Most of them seem to hate us. It’s a massive mistake to think that because they call themselves women therefore they feel friendly … Read the rest



The spectre of humiliation is never far away

Feb 23rd, 2022 8:41 am | By

Bodies play sport, not identities.

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Last wilderness

Feb 23rd, 2022 8:14 am | By

Trump made so many messes they’re still having to fix them.

The Biden administration has halted a Trump-era plan to approve a mining road in Alaska that would cut through indigenous land and alter one of the last roadless wildernesses in the US.

That’s so Trump. How he must have loved it – indigenous land and roadless wilderness to harm and damage and ruin. Not one act of destruction but two; what larks!

The road “represents a fundamental threat to our people, our subsistence way of life and our cultural resources,” said Brian Ridley, president of the Tanana Chiefs Conference, which represents 42 tribes in Alaska. “We appreciate that the federal government recognized the flaws in the previous administration’s

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Another spokesperson exposed

Feb 23rd, 2022 7:00 am | By

In Brighton the other day –

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Justice

Feb 23rd, 2022 6:45 am | By

Don’t report rape in Qatar.

A female World Cup official is facing a sentence of 100 lashes and seven years in jail for ‘extramarital sex’ after she reported being raped while working in Qatar. 

Paola Schietekat, 28, from Mexico, was working for the World Cup organising committee when she complained that she was raped by an associate who broke into her apartment and threatened to kill her.

She reported the June 6, 2021 attack to the Qatari authorities, which responded by accusing her of having an affair and charged her with ‘extramarital sex’, which is illegal in the Gulf state.

Lawyers told her she could marry the rapist, but for some reason she decided to get out of Qatar instead. … Read the rest



Neither cruel nor divisive

Feb 22nd, 2022 4:15 pm | By

The news media just will not report it honestly.

Scott Morrison backs ‘cruel and divisive’ bill excluding transgender people from single-sex sport

No, that’s wrong. The issue is “excluding” men from women’s sport. That’s it. Nobody is trying to exclude trans people from sport, or from “single-sex sport” in general. Nobody.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been accused of supporting a “cruel and divisive” push from a Liberal Senator to allow sporting groups to exclude transgender people from single-sex sport.

No. Men from women’s sport.

Mr Morrison on Tuesday threw his support behind Tasmanian Senator Claire Chandler’s proposed private member’s bill titled “save women’s sports”, which aims to amend the Sex Discrimination Act.

See? Women’s sports. Not all sports, … Read the rest



The Cis Song

Feb 22nd, 2022 3:35 pm | By

H/t Rev David Brindley… Read the rest



Savvy

Feb 22nd, 2022 2:33 pm | By

TraitorTrump is the hashtag.

I listened. It’s sick-making as always. Braindead overstuffed pillow talks hoarsely about genius Putin and how it neva woulda happppened on his watch.

He was talking to a right-wing pod person called Buck Sexton, who asked him what went wrong.

Well what went wrong was a rigged election, and what went wrong is a candidate that shouldn’t be there, and a man that has no concept of what he’s doing I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said,

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Would never have done during the

Feb 22nd, 2022 11:45 am | By
Would never have done during the

Blockhead has issued a “statement” saying Volodya would never have done it while he was prezzedennt.

Be sure to click on Shop and Contribute.… Read the rest



Even when they know it’s a ploy

Feb 22nd, 2022 11:19 am | By

Oh look, the LA Times even knows and admits that the guy convicted of assaulting a child could be faking the trans thing but still it refers to him as a woman.

As he’s faced increased criticism from law enforcement, elected officials and his own staff, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón has staunchly defended his handling of a politically fraught case: the prosecution of a transgender woman charged with sexually assaulting a child in a Denny’s restroom.

In an interview Monday afternoon, Gascón said he first learned of the recordings Thursday through an email from a Fox News journalist. He described himself as “very, very upset” and disgusted with Tubbs, who he said had taken advantage of

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