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

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

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

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

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.

The lost Budgie is now know as PB Barry

We've upgraded Barry from his cardboard box & given him ample food & water

We're still looking for Barrys rightful owner, but until then

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

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

Bodies play sport, not identities.

As Irish Olympian Ellen Walshe faces into the impossible task of competing against trans identified male swimmer, Lia Thomas, in the coming weeks, Senator Sharon Keogan addresses the need to protect women’s sport:#SaveWomensSportshttps://t.co/ufdKNRvtm1

— The Countess (@TheCountessIE) February 23, 2022

… Read the rest

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

In Brighton the other day –

Today I attended a Green Party ward meeting here in Brighton. It was to introduce our candidates for next year’s local elections.
One of the candidates, Tom Pashby, a mature student at Sussex Uni had been spokesperson for the campaign against Prof. Kathleen Stock at Sussex.

— Steve Moses (@laplandlongspur) February 19, 2022

Another member then asked if he’d read Stock’s book ‘Material Girls’ I’m told he replied ‘No way’.
He then stated that my questions to him had constituted intimidation and left the meeting himself.

— Steve Moses (@laplandlongspur) February 19, 2022

But I won’t support a @TheGreenParty candidate who was spokesperson for a campaign of harassment and intimidation against a woman who’s

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

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

H/t Rev David Brindley… Read the rest

TraitorTrump is the hashtag.

Here is the audio from today in which Trump called Putin's invasion of Ukraine 'genius' and 'very savvy' and referred to him as a 'peacekeeper.' #TraitorTrump pic.twitter.com/GZnG7Vhqvk

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) February 22, 2022

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,

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

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

One of those random headlines you see, and almost don’t notice, and then back up to look at again…

Why Gascón reversed himself on sentencing of woman who assaulted 10-year-old

Wait, woman who what? What who assaulted a 10-year-old? What was that again?

Of course. The headline lies about it, the body tells the truth.

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.

Right. So don’t call him “woman” in the headline. Women don’t sexually assault children in Denny’s restrooms. They … Read the rest

Paul Farmer:

Dr. Paul Farmer, global health champion, Harvard Medical School professor, anthropologist and co-founder of the nonprofit health organization Partners in Health, has died at age 62. PIH confirmed his death in a tweet on Monday.

According to the tweet, Farmer “unexpectedly passed away today in his sleep while in Rwanda,” where he had been teaching for the past few weeks at the university he co-founded. A source close to Farmer said he had been in Rwanda for the past several weeks teaching at the University of Global Health Equity, the medical school that he helped found with the country’s former minister of health, Dr. Agnes Binagwaho.

…

In addition to starting hospitals in Rwanda and Haiti, Farmer

The Free Speech Union writes to the Minister for Education about a situation at Cardiff University:

We’ve written to Jeremy Miles MS, Minister for Education, urging him to intervene in the situation at Cardiff University where several of our members and their colleagues, all academic staff, have been targeted by trans activists in a long-running campaign of intimidation. It began in June 2021 after the academics urged Cardiff to reconsider its continuing participation in the Stonewall Diversity Champion scheme. Following this, a leaflet was distributed on campus picturing a woman holding a gun, the names and pictures of the signatories, and the caption “ACT NOW”. A student whistleblower then revealed violent threats being made on the Facebook page of the

Originally a comment by Papito on People’s Republics.

“Me,” the most charitable interpretation anyone could make of your remarks is ignorance. I will try to be charitable. I will lay out the fundamental reasons, as I see it, that opposing Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is in the national interest of all Western democracies.

Nobody here believes Washington always has the interests of everybody in the world at heart. Such a belief would not be supported by historical events. The American government has done terrible things the world over. However, nobody except the most insular of right-wing zealots believes that Biden – a man who has spent his life in service to his country – hates America. If one claims … Read the rest