Russians protest.

Thousands of people protested President Vladimir Putin’s attacks on Ukraine in cities across Russia on Thursday, a striking show of anger in a nation where spontaneous mass demonstrations are illegal and protesters can face fines and jail.

More than 1,700 people were arrested in at least 47 cities across the nation, according to rights group OVD-Info. The group was declared a foreign agent last year, when Putin launched a sweeping crackdown on activists, rights groups and opposition figures.

The protests came with an outpouring of horror from liberal Russians, social media influencers, athletes, actors, television presenters and others.

Brave people.

The breathtaking bravery of the Russians who know they’ll be arrested for protesting this war and do

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

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

The malice and spite know no bounds. Ever.

Rachel Rooney alerted us.

Imagine running a literary agency & thinking that it's fine to remove a muslim woman author from the shortlisted image, circulate it & then boast about this on twitter.
Grow up. pic.twitter.com/2QYLVFMSvJ

— Rachel Rooney (@RooneyRachel) February 24, 2022

Did what?? So I had to go searching.

And here’s her work:

Congrats to @kereengetten on the MANGOES shortlisting for the Phoenix Book Award! @LambethPhoenix #phoenixbookaward pic.twitter.com/4CnDKad1cl

— ASH Literary (@ashliterary) February 24, 2022

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

The four shortlisted books for the 2022 #PhoenixBookAward are:

– Boy in the Tower by Polly Ho-Yen
– When Life Gives You Mangoes

The ACLU might be right about this.

Dylan is one of the many children who has had to take legal action to stop his government from taking away his right to accessing gender-affirming care.

Like Dylan, we will never stop fighting for trans youth. pic.twitter.com/EkKM0gBj9j

— ACLU (@ACLU) February 24, 2022

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

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