The world’s first humorless comedy festival. Should be a real blast.
Hope everyone's up to date on all the rules for watching a bit of comedy in Glasgow – Glasgow! – these days. pic.twitter.com/Uyo8f0mzW0
— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) January 9, 2025
The national police leader on child protection and abuse investigations has urged officers not to be “distracted” by media coverage of grooming gangs, emphasising it is one element of a wider threat.
Becky Riggs, an assistant chief constable, said analysis of child sex crimes reported to police made it clear that “group-based offending occurs in various forms, in diverse settings, and across different ethnicities”.
She urged a “balanced approach to addressing the threat in all its forms”, adding that “children are at risk from perpetrators of all races, ethnicities and genders”.
Excuse me?
Perps of “all genders” go after children? Really? Women sexually abuse children just as much as men do?
There is nothing in the article … Read the rest
The Liberal Democrats have been ordered to pay £14,000 to a former parliamentary candidate who says she was driven out of the party and barred from standing as an MP over her gender-critical views.
Natalie Bird was removed as a prospective parliamentary candidate for Wakefield after she wore a top bearing the slogan “Woman: Adult Human Female” to a party meeting.
It’s like removing people as prospective parliamentary candidates for wearing tops that say “Rain is wet” or “Fire burns” or “Lions are not frogs” or “Jumping off a tall building is dangerous” or an infinite number of other obvious factual assertions.
… Read the restMs Bird had been critical of the party’s policies online but Judge Jane
It’s not the future any more. Big chunks of Los Angeles are on fire.
Firefighters in Los Angeles are battling a number of blazes in city suburbs, as tens of thousands of residents are forced to flee.
The rapidly changing situation is compounded by Santa Ana winds and extremely dry conditions. Currently authorities say there is no possibility of bringing the fires under control.
The Palisades fire, which is closest to the coast and also the largest, has ripped through picturesque suburbs which are home to many Hollywood stars. More than 1,000 buildings have already been destroyed.
Picturesque and very very very expensive.
LA has always been a mistake. It’s in a desert, and it’s way too big for … Read the rest
“Sophie Molly” tries his hand at argument.
Once again, a festival capitulates to the demands of transphobes. By hosting not one but two notable TERFs. The festival in question is the Oxford Literary Festival.
It’s not clear what the demands are. Did the terfs demand that the Oxford Lit Fest host them? Or did the Oxford Lit Fest simply invite a couple of feminists?
By far, the worst of them is Helen Joyce. Her book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality can only be described as anti-trans propaganda. This book and its author should not be featured at a mainstream literary festival.
But even if it’s true that the book can only be described as anti-trans-[ideology], how is that … Read the rest
No, sir, you can’t sue people for getting it wrong.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, an organization most recognized for its work bolstering conservatives on the nation’s campuses, announced on Tuesday it would represent the pollster J. Ann Selzer, at no charge, against Donald J. Trump’s lawsuit accusing her of consumer fraud for a poll that predicted he would lose Iowa. “Punishing someone for their political prediction is about as unconstitutional as it gets,” said Bob Corn-Revere, the group’s chief counsel. “This is America. No one should be afraid to predict the outcome of an election.”
Trump accusing someone else of consumer fraud is hilarious. Remember Trump University? All those gilded tchotchkes in his … Read the rest
Yet again the respectable mainstream news media pretend Trump may be just messing with us.
… Read the restPresident-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday suggested he would consider using military force to gain control of the Panama Canal and Greenland, and “economic force” to acquire Canada.
During a free-wheeling news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump was asked by a reporter if he could assure the public that he would not use military coercion against Panama or Greenland, a goal he has floated in recent weeks. “No, I can’t assure you on either of those two, but I can say this, we need them for economic security,” Trump said. He said later that he would not use military force
Trump on Tuesday refused to rule out invading Greenland or Panama when asked if the U.S. could use military force to acquire the Arctic island or the Central American canal.
Asked if he would rule out economic or military coercion to gain control of Greenland and the Panama Canal, Trump said, “I’m not gonna commit to that. No. It might be that you’ll have to do something.”
“I can’t assure you — you’re talking about Panama and Greenland — no, I can’t assure you on either of those two,” Trump said in response to the question at a press conference. “But I can say this: We need them for economic security.”
And what we need we help … Read the rest
District Judge Aileen Cannon on Tuesday blocked the release of special counsel Jack Smith’s final report on his investigations into President-elect Donald Trump.
It was so lucky for Trump that he got to appoint the drastically underqualified Cannon while he was drastically underqualified president.
… Read the restIn the filings, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira asked Cannon to block the release of the special counsel report, which is expected in the coming days before Trump is sworn in as president for the second time. The two men, who both worked for Trump and have pleaded not guilty to obstruction-related crimes, argued that Smith does not have the authority to release the report because Cannon previously deemed
Erm.
Remember that guy who hacked a bunch of people with an axe in a 7-11 because a lesbian refused to hook up with him?
… Read the restAxe attacker Evie Amati laughed as she was released from jail, eight years to the day after the horrific attempted murders of customers at a Sydney 7-Eleven outlet.
Amati, a trans woman, smashed an axe into the head of one man at an Enmore service station on January 6, 2017 before attacking a female customer and another man.
But at 9.30am on Monday, Amati, 32, walked out of the Bolwara Transitional Centre at Emu Plains women’s prison smiling, sporting a new look and a ghoulish jail tattoo.
S
Maryam remembers.
Right to blasphemy, a cornerstone of free expression & democratic societies, is universal right & demand. It’s not limited to or dependant on one’s ‘identity’ or lottery of birth. It matters most to those living under totalitarian & theocratic states. #thankyouCharlie#RireDeDieu pic.twitter.com/DnqPAXqh9z
— Maryam Namazie مریم نمازی (@MaryamNamazie) January 7, 2025
Ten years ago today.
Ten years ago today, two Islamist gunmen burst into the Charlie Hebdo office and murdered 12 people in cold blood for depicting Mohammed in a series of satirical cartoons. They were butchered for disrespecting Islam. pic.twitter.com/SJaQwr2Efz
— Jonny Best (@JonnyWorst) January 7, 2025
Dominic Green at The Free Press has the details.
The grooming and serial rape of thousands of English girls by men of mostly Pakistani Muslim background over several decades is the biggest peacetime crime in the history of modern Europe. It went on for many years. It is still going on. And there has been no justice for the vast majority of the victims.
That’s a very large claim. Is it really Europe’s biggest peacetime crime? Bigger than what Anders Breivik did for instance? Bigger than the July 7 bombings in London? These things are hard to measure.
… Read the restBritish governments, both Conservative and Labour, hoped that they had buried the story after a few symbolic prosecutions in the
Well clearly this business of Musk and the grooming gangs is going to run and run, so let’s remind ourselves of the background.
… Read the restThe row between Mr Musk and Starmer centres around a series of high-profile cases where groups of men – mainly of Pakistani descent – were convicted of sexually abusing and raping predominantly young white girls around the UK.
In 2012 The Times newspaper investigated Rotherham grooming gangs, which led to a major inquiry. At least 1,400 children were subjected to appalling sexual exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013, according to a 2014 report written by Prof Alexis Jay. The report made headlines in the UK and around the world and led to major debates in
… Read the restTrudeau, the latest incumbent to be driven out amid rising voter dissatisfaction worldwide, said it had become clear to him that he cannot “be the leader during the next elections due to internal battles.” He planned to stay on as prime minister until a new leader of the Liberal Party is chosen.
…
The political upheaval comes at a difficult moment for Canada internationally. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to impose 25% tariffs on all Canadian goods if the government does not stem what Trump calls a flow of migrants and drugs in the U.S. — even though far fewer of them cross into the U.S. from Canada than from Mexico, which Trump has
It seems that Labour made a slight error. It’s tricky finding an ordinary news story on it, because of the taboo on slang words for the female genitalia. Yet again social meeja has to substitute.
These are the actual lyrics of the song Labour used for their latest Tiktok advert. https://t.co/1G9crXLtqW pic.twitter.com/BdpCEB6pGO
— Alex Webster (@alexmaccaroon) January 6, 2025
What was that about grooming again?… Read the rest
… Read the restEmmanuel Macron took a not-so-thinly veiled swipe at Elon Musk on Monday, accusing him of meddling in European politics and backing what the French president called a “reactionary movement” across the world.
While Macron did not name the controversial tech billionaire in his annual speech to French ambassadors gathered in Paris, the description was unmistakable.
“Ten years ago, who could have imagined it if we had been told that the owner of one of the largest social networks in the world would support a new international reactionary movement and intervene directly in elections, including in Germany,” Macron said in a wide-ranging foreign policy speech at the Elysée Palace.
Macron’s comments, however, did not go
… Read the restWhen the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, was asked in an interview about the barrage of insults being directed at him and other German leaders by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, his reply was: “Don’t feed the troll.”
Speaking to the German weekly Stern, Scholz described the criticisms as nothing new. “You have to stay cool,” he said in the interview. “As Social Democrats, we have long been used to the fact that there are rich media entrepreneurs who do not appreciate social democratic politics – and do not hide their opinions.”
He said he would make no efforts to engage with Musk, who has endorsed the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)
Musk sez: Declare war on the UK, or no?
Elon Musk has questioned whether the United States should “liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government” after
hitting out[raging] at top U.K. lawmakers.…
Musk accused the U.K. Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips of being a “rape genocide apologist” on Friday, before publishing a series of posts calling for Prime Minister Keir Starmer to be ousted and face jail time over how child grooming gangs and other criminals who targeted children have been prosecuted.
His criticisms of the U.K. government over the weekend culminated in a poll, where he posed the concept of “liberating the people of Britain” to the platform’s users.
… Read the restAmerica should liberate the people of
The Pissed Off Lawyer, aka the lawyer who claims to be a man but is a woman, has a pattern. It’s not a good pattern.
When I hear “I want to eradicate gender ideology,” the translation is “I want to eradicate trans people.” Full stop.
— The Pissed Off Lawyer (@legaltweetz) January 2, 2025
No. That’s wrong. The issue really is the ideology. Nobody wants to genocide the people who believe trans ideology, we want to get rid of the ideology. Those really are two different things.
But, the next day…
Translation: “If there were no trans people, there would be no problem.” pic.twitter.com/qLfF5wdlLb
— The Pissed Off Lawyer (@legaltweetz) January 4, 2025
No. Again. It’s not about getting rid … Read the rest
