The “who cares?” people were saying “who cares?” in response to Peter Boghossian for one. I’m not a fan of Peter Boghossian’s, but this time I’m on his team as opposed to theirs.

People across the world, with diverse political beliefs, acknowledge the moral horror of Putin’s war. This is a reason for hope and optimism. It shows that it is possible to agree on basic moral principles.

— Peter Boghossian (@peterboghossian) February 27, 2022

Well, it shows it’s possible to agree on some of them, some of the time – but as I mentioned, there are people being ostentatiously indifferent and scornful. But broadly speaking, yes, there are some things that very few people will celebrate or shrug off … Read the rest

I’m seeing a weird little pocket of people on Twitter bragging about how much they don’t give a shit about Ukraine and how fake it all is and how people who are talking about it are just ____ – you know, showing off, virtue signaling, following the woke herd, that kind of thing.

Well, first of all, nukes.

Second – why wouldn’t we give a shit? Why is it wrong to give a shit, and enlightened not to?

I suppose one answer could be that we can’t do anything about it, and paying attention and giving a damn is just self-indulgent or showing off or whatever. But I don’t think that’s right. I think paying attention and giving a damn … Read the rest

India Willoughby has no shame.

https://twitter.com/IndiaWilloughby/status/1497557363393503235… Read the rest

I read this anorexia-child celebrity story in the Guardian because anorexia interests me, and the intersection of it with women, celebrity, fashion, conformity, the pressures on women to be hot and emaciated both at once interests me a lot. So I read down and read down and – get to this ironic juxtaposition.

Gee, I wonder why so many young women are anorexic. I just can’t figure it out, can you?… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Pliny the In Between on Special Alert.

My actual earliest childhood memory is of my parents whispering to each other when they thought my brother and I were asleep. Dad consoling my mother that being as we lived only a handful of miles from the US Navy’s primary ordinance depot that building a fallout shelter was probably a waste of time. That was during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I was staying at my grandma’s house the night that Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia.

I was in high school when Nixon set our strategic alert status to its highest level since the Cuban Missile Crisis in response to Soviet threats to intervene in the 1973 Arab Israeli … Read the rest

As a flying horse, I know it’s not just horses that get Streptococcus equi.

As a nonbinary person, I know it’s not just women who get endometriosis

She doesn’t know that though, because she can’t, because it’s not true. Of course it’s “just” women who get endometriosis, on account of how it’s women only who have the endometrium. Just as you can’t have a broken leg unless you have at least one leg, you can’t have endometriosis if you don’t have a uterus. Men don’t have them; women do.

Imagine going to a specialist doctor and looking around the waiting room to see everyone is a different gender to you. They’re all staring at you, wondering why you’re there.

On

… Read the rest

It’s all about _______

https://twitter.com/cjsnowdon/status/1497553538175614978 https://twitter.com/cjsnowdon/status/1497555294297149448 https://twitter.com/cjsnowdon/status/1497557859227348992

I do love the low carb one, I have to say.

https://twitter.com/cjsnowdon/status/1497583450097913861

Putin is allowed to do this because white privilege.

https://twitter.com/cjsnowdon/status/1497875013868867591

Bicycles forevaaaaaaaaaaaa… Read the rest

Putin has again threatened to use the nukes.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the Russian military to put its nuclear forces on “special alert” – the highest level of alert for Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces.

Speaking to top military officials, including Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, he said Western nations had taken “unfriendly actions” towards Russia and imposed “illegitimate sanctions”.

And what does he think he’s doing? Other than taking “unfriendly actions” toward Ukraine? And imposing “illegitimate” bombing and shooting and destroying?

But don’t worry, he’s just threatening to use them, not actually saying he’s going to.

The very public shift to high alert status is a way for Moscow to send a warning. Moving to alert status is

… Read the rest

More on the “what is a woman?” non-question:

The Tate Modern has become engulfed in a transgender rights row after promoting a short film about the definition of “woman”.

Isn’t it interesting that it’s about the definition of woman? Not man? Not woman and man? Just woman? I think it’s very interesting. I think it’s fascinating that it’s only women who are up for debate in this intrusive, patronizing way. I just can’t take my eyes off the fact that men are allowed to go right on being men, but women are constantly interrogated and rebuked and hounded for continuing to know what women are and refusing to be told that we’re suddenly something else.

Some women protested, as … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Der Durchwanderer on 14 million people.

The war in the East was terrible, likely the worst three years of human conduct that ever has or ever will be enacted; the horrors that the Germans and Soviets committed upon one another and the millions of civilians across the battlespace are unimaginable even to historians who’ve documented them.

The Red Army was particularly brutal to women in the territories it clawed piece by piece from the Wehrmacht, during the three years it took to reconquer the territories lost to Operations Barbarossa and Blue. The German authorities estimate that at least two million East German women were raped, not a few of them to death, and eyewitnesses in … Read the rest

One reason “surrogacy” is not the sweet touching altruistic fairy tale some would like us to think:

Nine-day-old baby Luke Moynihan woke up on Thursday morning safely at home in Co Kerry with his parents Dermot and Dorothy, after a frantic mission to bring him home succeeded just ahead of the Russian invasion. 

“At home” is stretching it, since his life up to that point was spent in Ukraine. He wasn’t kidnapped and taken to Ukraine by criminals, he was born there.

Just two days before, the Moynihans were in Lviv, scrambling for emergency travel documents to bring their baby home before the military invasion began.

Charming – “their baby”…that some random Ukrainian woman had carried and pushed out for … Read the rest

White supremacist and pro-Putin – what’s not to like?

Republican leaders are facing fresh demands to expel the Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, after she spoke at a conference of white nationalists and sympathisers with Vladimir Putin.

The event in Orlando, Florida, on Friday night was organised by the far-right extremist Nick Fuentes, who told attendees: “Now they’re going on about Russia and Vladimir Putin is Hitler – they say that’s not a good thing.”

Fuentes, eh – is he aware that most white supremacists probably consider him non-white?

Liz Cheney, a member of the House select committee investigating the January 6 riot, tweeted: “As Rep[resentative] Marjorie Taylor Greene and Rep[resentative] Paul Gosar speak at this white supremacist, antisemitic, pro-Putin

… Read the rest

Edward Lucas suggests some background reading:

The first book on anyone’s reading list should be Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. This revisionist history, which explores the overlap between Nazi and Soviet atrocities in the “bloodlands” of Poland, Ukraine and Belarus, shows that between 1930 and 1945 14 million people were shot, gassed or starved. The book is the best rebuttal to Putin’s Soviet-centred, cod-imperialist approach to the past displayed in his rambling essay last summer and his even more incoherent speech on Monday. It is also a corrective to the simplistic western-focused approach to history, which involves neat starting and finishing dates to the Second World War, and frames it as a simple contest between

… Read the rest

Yes we need to have an endless dialogue about “what is a woman” because we still after all these thousands of years just can’t seem to figure it out.

Tate Modern has become engulfed in a transgender rights row after promoting a short film about the definition of “woman”.

The gallery screened What is a Woman? by Norwegian director Marin Håskjold on Friday evening as part of an evening focused on female artists.

In it, a trans woman is drawn into an argument in a women’s changing room over whether she should be there.

Over whether he should be there. These “arguments” and “discussions” and “debates” are always distorted from the outset by the fact that the trans “woman” is … Read the rest

Surprising.

With the tragedy and destruction unfolding so distressingly in Ukraine, we should remember the values and hard won freedoms that distinguish us from Putin, none more than LGBT+ rights. So let’s resume our series of tweets to mark #LGBTHM2022

— Richard Moore (@ChiefMI6) February 25, 2022

What? Why single out “LGBT+”? Why them and not women, immigrants, refugees, disabled people, workers, unemployed people, people with no money?

Oh that’s why.

pic.twitter.com/BYQ1CGlcPS

— Simon Edge (@simonjedge) February 26, 2022

… Read the rest

We’re not the conspiracy theorists, you’re the conspiracy theorists! Aaron Rabinowitz in (ironically) The Skeptic:

As conspiracy communities continue to interconnect and produce complex conspiracism ecosystems, it’s worth keeping track of the common themes that facilitate the slide from one conspiracy to another. This month, I want to look at conspiracies centered around creeping transhumanism, a theme with a rich history that unsurprisingly involves accusations of malevolent Jewish influence, and seems to be gaining market share in conspiracism communities.

You’ll never guess whose conspiracism is in his sights. Never. It’s all been covered up too carefully.

This month though I want to focus on the way that anti-transhumanism conspiracies with clear antisemitic roots have been laundered and mainstreamed in 

… Read the rest

The ACLU obsessing over trans issues again/still/always:

Using people’s names and pronouns is a matter of respect.

We all want to be respected and seen for who we are. When a young person’s name and pronouns are respected, they do better in school, have more confidence, and have lower rates of suicide.

There’s no such thing as “a person’s pronouns.” The ACLU doesn’t give any source for the claim about doing better in school and having more confidence and lower rates of suicide.

“Cisgender women should be concerned whenever an alleged concern for ‘protecting’ our well-being is invoked to justify exclusion.”

There’s no such thing as “cisgender” women. There’s no need for a special word to distinguish women from men … Read the rest

Erm……..what?

https://twitter.com/JJM_1994/status/1497196839812145180

Shahrar Ali didn’t mention trans women, and what he said is not about trans women.

Imagine using violence against women to say “fuck feminism.”… Read the rest

https://twitter.com/olex_scherba/status/1497284583284301824… Read the rest

How kind: Putin is “offering talks.”

A little earlier we told you the Kremlin had signalled Russia was willing to hold talks with Ukraine.

Blamblamblam ready to hold talks yet?

But as the Russian military pounds targets across Ukraine, it’s hardly an olive branch.

In fact, the Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, insisted the Ukrainian army would have to lay down its arms first and surrender. And his boss, Vladimir Putin, called on Ukrainian troops to overthrow their leader, President Zelensky.

Ya that’s not offering talks, it’s ordering surrender.

Meanwhile, also from BBC Live, Russia is unimpressed by UK “sanctions.”

The BBC understands that this will take the form of an asset freeze, but not a travel ban – which

… Read the rest