Category: Notes and Comment Blog

  • Guest post: Like a gift to peasants

    Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Matching the instruments.

    “Make Iran Great Again.”

    Greatness is something that only Trump can bestow, like a gift to peasants too stupid to do things for themselves. With His Royal Touch (and the dropping of a few tons of high explosives), all will be made Good and Right, and the Iranian people will thank him and demand that he be given the Nobel Peace Prize once he finishes bombing them into gratitude.

    Except in Trump’s view, no other country can be (or is ever allowed to be) as “Great” as the United States. This is the whole point behind his attempts at zero-sum trade deals; the United States (read Trump) has to win. A deal in which both sides come out ahead means that America (Trump) has “lost”, that something was left on the table, or given away to the other guy, and that America was somehow “ripped off” and “taken advantage of.” Nobody else is allowed to get ahead, or break even. Mutual advantage precludes American (Trump’s) domination and superiority over everyone else. All other nations are supposed to bow down and worship America (Trump), and give the US (Trump) what it (he) wants. If they won’t do it willingly, he will make them.

    He’s made it personal, too. Everything is actually about him. What’s good for Trump is good for America, and good for the whole fucking world. The brilliance of his achievements self-enrichment and grandiosity is somehow supposed to uplift and awe his own grateful, compliant, peasantry, like a video image of the dim, comfortless glow of a cheap, fake fireplace, viewed through a cracked, dirty window. Always The Most, The Best, Like Nobody Has Ever Seen before, and something only he could ever have done. It’s all part of the Trump Brand. If he could, he’d name the whole goddamn country after himself, and cover the whole thing in trashy gold gewgaws.

  • Thinly veiled misogyny

    The Green Party v Reality:

    The Green Party was once, however briefly, a genuine refuge for people who believed that politics ought to be grounded in material reality: in the physical world, in measurable consequences, in science. It believed in ecosystems and feedback loops; in the hard logic of cause and effect. It understood that you cannot simply wish away inconvenient truths, whether those truths concern carbon emissions or the biological distinction between male and female human beings. That, at least, is what many of its founding members believed they had joined.

    What they discovered instead is something altogether more alarming: a party leadership so in thrall to a well-funded ideological orthodoxy that it is prepared to break its own rules, exhaust its own finances, and silence its own women rather than acknowledge what a unanimous Supreme Court has since confirmed in law. On 16 April 2025, in a ruling that shook every HR department, equality body, and political party in Britain, the Supreme Court declared that the words ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 refer to biological sex. The party’s response was to dismiss the judgment as ‘thinly veiled transphobia.’ You could not, if you tried, design a more perfect illustration of a movement that has ceased to engage with reality.

    Now, the Green Women’s Declaration (GWD), a group of Green Party members who hold what the law explicitly recognises as protected beliefs, has formally commenced legal proceedings against the party for discrimination under the Equality Act 2010. For more than two years they raised formal complaints and asked reasonable questions about the treatment of women who hold gender-critical views. For more than two years they were met with silence, hostility, or expulsion. This is not an internal spat. It is a reckoning.

    Women are not a fantasy or a feeling or a self-image. Women are real just as men are real, just as water and soil and carbon dioxide are real.

  • Narcissist shares his story on Women’s Day

    Yes kids it’s International Women’s Day soooooooooo it’s time to talk about men!

    He does. He actually does.

    For International Women’s Day 2026, the Gazette has been speaking to women across the city. Here is Councillor Amy Kirkby Taylor’s contribution, in her own words.

    I really wasn’t sure what I wanted to focus on here, my first thought was to focus on the barriers that women face in life, and how it feels to have them appearing in my life as I begin my transition. But this year’s Women’s Day theme is Give to Gain, and I want to return the love given by the women around me.

    Because in total opposition to the narrative we are fed about trans people living within their adopted gender, that has been my experience. The vast majority of women have been happy to welcome me into the sisterhood with even my political rivals saying they were pleased to see another woman in the chamber.

    If that’s true they’re either brainwashed or terrorized. Adding a man is not seeing another woman in the chamber. Adding a man is seeing another man in the chamber. Hope that clarifies.

  • Move over, sluts

    Trans “activists” invade a women’s march on Women’s Day. Of course they do.

  • Alarmed and distressed by questions

    I saw this

    So I decided to seek information on this centre. On its home page you get enormous corporate Memphis balloon women and two headlines.

    Run by women for all women.

    We provide a supportive space to help all self-identifying women achieve their goals.

    Got that? All women, by which they mean including the ones who are men. All self-identifying women, by which they mean including the ones who are men.

    On their About us page they boast some more about how expansive their welcome is.

    We exist to help all self-identifying women in Nottinghamshire reach their full potential, have their voices heard, and overcome barriers to create a better future for themselves and their children.

    They even have a drop-in space. You can drop in!

    We’re also a free, safe community space in Nottingham City Centre where any self-identifying woman can drop in for a cup of tea in our Welcome Space or relax and browse our Women’s Library. There’s no need to book unless you’re coming along for a specific service or activity, so pop in any time during our opening hours to have a look around.

    Just pop in dahling! They’re here for you!

  • Matching the instruments

    Tom Nichols explains that having a highly competent military in the hands of a highly incompetent idiot is not a good thing.

    Strategy is about matching the instruments of national power—and especially military force—to the goals of national policy. The president and his team, however, have not enunciated an overarching goal for this war—or, more accurately, they have presented multiple goals and chosen among them almost randomly, depending on the day or the hour. This means that highly effective military operations are taking place in a strategic vacuum.

    Worse, Donald Trump is now pointing to these missions as if the excellence with which they have been conducted somehow constitutes a strategy in itself. He appears so enthralled by the execution of these missions that he has enlarged the goals of this war to include the complete destruction of the Iranian regime, after which he will “Make Iran Great Again.”

    In other words he’s like a little kid playing with a fancy new toy bomber plane with real smoke and bangs.

    This kind of thinking is an old problem, and it has a name: “victory disease,” meaning that victory in battle encourages leaders to seek out more battles, and then to believe that winning those battles means that they are winning the larger war or achieving some grand strategic aim—right up until the moment they realize that they have overreached and find themselves facing a military disaster or even total defeat.

    And if there’s anyone on the planet likely to fall victim to victory disease it’s Donald Trump.

    American military operations have for the most part been astonishingly well executed. Years of training, study, and planning, along with careful use of intelligence, have all contributed to the rapid elimination of much of Iran’s capacity to project power, and almost all of its ability to resist allied attacks.

    Operational competence, however, cannot answer the question of national purpose. What is the war about, and when will America know it’s done? Trump, when pressed, dodges the issue of war aims by pointing to the excellence of the military. “I hope you are impressed,” Trump said on Thursday to ABC’s Jonathan Karl. “How do you like the performance? I mean, Venezuela is obvious. This might be even better.” Trump then repeated, “How do you like the performance?” Karl noted that no one is questioning the success of military operations, and he asked the president what happens next. “Forget about ‘next,’” Trump answered. “They are decimated for a 10-year period before they could build it back.”

    Yuh huh. That’s our boy. “Fagett about next. Just admire the bangs.”

    Meanwhile, despite the successes of the military overseas, Trump now admits that a regime that was supposed to be eliminated quickly could reach the United States with terrorist attacks. He told Time this week that “we expect some things. Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die.” 

    Yes but we didn’t go to war, you did.

  • In wrong place

    Are they just impossibly stupid?

    Starmer ‘in wrong place’ on trans rights, says Thornberry

    Sir Keir Starmer has “ended up in the wrong place” on trans issues, Dame Emily Thornberry has said.

    The senior Labour MP, who was Sir Keir’s shadow attorney general before the general election, claimed the party had not been “following our hearts” when it came to trans people.

    So trans people=following hearts and women=not following hearts? Why would that be? Are women as a group strikingly unlovable? Or what? Please explain.

    The Prime Minister’s public position on trans issues has significantly changed since he became leader of the Labour Party in 2020, backtracking last year on his previous stance that “trans women are women”.

    Blah blah blah position blah blah backtracking blah blah stance – if you just think about it instead of racing around trying to find a stance, you will realize how fatuous it is. Whether or not men are women is not a stance, it’s a fact, and the answer is no.

    [Dame Emily] told the BBC’s Political Thinking podcast: “I think we’ve ended up in the wrong place on trans and I think we’ve ended up treading very self-consciously and not ending up following our hearts.”

    She added: “Trans people are on the margins, they are vulnerable. If the Labour Party doesn’t look after trans people, what are we about?”

    I don’t know, what are you about? Are you not aware that women are vulnerable? Are you not aware that women are even on the margins, when it comes to power and being heard and not being shoved out the window the minute a man in drag shows up? Why are you sobbing and whining about trans people at the expense of women? As Basil Fawlty put it: Is this a piece of your brain?

  • were fizzikkly SIKK

    Via Humans of Dewsbury:

    A primary school teacher from Batley has caused uproar today after they refused to teach two 9 year olds who had dressed up as Harry Potter characters for World Book Day!

    Ze Berry who does not use conventional pronouns and uses ‘Ze’ instead, says were [sic] physically SICK after seeing the two pupils walk into the classroom who were dressed as Harry Potter and Dobbie The Elf.

    Despite parents of the children saying it was an insane overreaction, Ze Berry stood by her decision and said;

    “JK Rowling is a transphobic bigot and any character she has created therefore has transphobic undertones which are not tolerated in the classroom.”

    Ze Berry is a reasonablepeoplephobic bigot who should not be teaching anyone of any age any subject.

    The Mayor Of West Yorkshire, Tracy Brabin has lept to the teacher’s defence and stated; “Teachers should feel safe in the classroom. Ze Berry’s actions were justified.”

    Well of course teachers should feel safe in the classroom; what’s that got to do with a kid dressing as Harry Potter? Even if you think JKR is wrong about everything, how do you get from there to freaking out over a Harry Potter costume?

    We’ll never know.

  • Well, Johnny

    He rates it? As one would rate a movie or a coffee shop? We’re grading these things now? Will there be tourism guides that rate the local wars for the convenience of tourists?

  • You’ve been thinking

    Oh dear god.

    Click play.

  • Just days

    Huh. What a surprise. It turns out not to be easy to slap a country and make it do what you want.

    Trump insists he’s willing to wage war on Iran “forever.”

    But just days into the fight, many of those around him are already itching to get out.

    Just days, eh? So what were they thinking just days ago? That Iran would go belly-up like a giggling puppy? That it would be a very fun day out and then all would go back to normal?

    “It’s a political risk, no ands, ifs or buts,” one Trump adviser said of an attack that the president has forecast could continue for weeks. “Let’s just hope something doesn’t go really wrong. Because if that happens, it’s going to be a problem.”

    Jesus christ. What do they think going really wrong looks like? What did they think this was going to look like?

    Those troubling dynamics are only likely to worsen as the death toll rises and the risk of a wider regional war remains front and center, allies and advisers have warned, further jeopardizing Trump and Republicans’ already-grim chances of avoiding a wipeout in November’s midterms.

    Also – by the way – just a tiny little additional fly in the ointment here – people are being killed. The fact that “the death toll rises” isn’t just a troubling dynamic for Trump’s whatever, it’s people being killed.

    “What’s going to matter to normal people is where we are three to four months from now,” a Trump adviser said. “And as always, it’s the same: Is the price of electricity going down, are the price of groceries going down?”

    For sure. Normal people don’t care about people being killed, they care about the price of groceries.

  • “Potential” doing a lot of work there

    There’s no other source for this, so treat it with caution. But if it’s real…hooboy.

    If it’s real…I’m guessing the idea is that conservatives are more likely to defend and/or read Shakespeare and Chaucer and so on, but even so. Come on.

    And Beowulf? It’s my bet that no one is likely to read Beowulf.

  • Grab nearest bucket

    Ewwwwwwwww

    There isn’t enough bleach in the world.

  • Buhbye

    Noem out.

    Trump on Thursday announced he was replacing Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary, after the killing of two US citizens by immigration agents and mounting reports of her questionable personal conduct attracted bipartisan criticism.

    After or because of?

    A Republican former congresswoman and governor of South Dakota, Noem was considered a potential running mate for Trump as he sought re-election in 2024, but ultimately passed over after she admitted in a memoir to killing a dog she owned. The president instead nominated her to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the border patrol and other agencies that took to the streets of major US cities during Trump’s second term to carry out his mass deportation agenda.

    Noem became a public face of the crackdown, which ensnared immigrants with documentation and without as well as US citizens, appearing regularly on conservative television networks as well as in promotional material on DHS social media accounts.

    After federal agents deployed to Minneapolis killed Renee Good and then, weeks later, Alex Pretti, Noem accused both US citizens of being involved in “domestic terrorism”. But the allegation appeared to fly in the face of what was known about both’s participation in anti-ICE protests, and Democrats along with some Republicans called for Noem to resign after Pretti’s death.

    But it was the blanket that really did her in.

    Simultaneously, reports began to emerge of Noem and Corey Lewandowski, a former Trump campaign manager who was her senior adviser, engaging in a personal relationship, despite both being married, amid turmoil at the department.

    In February, the Wall Street Journal published a lengthy report into her leadership of the DHS that found Noem and Lewandowski had done little to obfuscate their personal relationship, while berating staff and administering polygraph tests to those they did not trust.

    The pair had been traveling on a luxury 737 Max jet equipped with a private cabin, which the department has been seeking to acquire for around $70m for “high-profile deportations”. In one instance, Lewandowski fired a US Coast Guard pilot who left a blanket belonging to Noem on a plane, but then reinstated him because there was no one else to fly them back.

    Oh well, back to South Dakota. It won’t be quite the same after all that, but hey, at least it’s not North Dakota.

  • When crazy people

    Yes, we know.

    We know. It’s even worse when crazy stupid corrupt sadistic ignorant impulsive conceited slobbery people have a nuclear weapon.

    (What is it with the slobber? Possible symptom of dementia is one answer.)

  • We include you, get out

    And another thing about that gender-critical lawsuit. The final paragraph:

    A spokeswoman for the Green Party said: “The Green Party always strives to be a welcoming and inclusive place. After careful consideration, we were unable to grant GWD a stall at our autumn conference 2025, for reasons we explained to them at the time. As this matter is now the subject of threatened court proceedings, it would not be appropriate to comment further at this time.”

    Do they even see it? ““The Green Party always strives to be a welcoming and inclusive place, so we banish women who know which people are women.”

    You can’t do both. You can’t preen yourself on how welcoming and inclusive you are and exclude people who know which sex people are, aka the vast majority of all people. You can’t boast about your inclusiviosity and your keenness to keep genner critickal women out in consecutive sentences.

  • Easy being green

    What is “Green” about banning and punishing women?

    Green Party faces gender-critical group lawsuit over trans ‘witch-hunt’

    The Green Party has been accused of carrying out a “witch-hunt” against people with gender-critical views after it allegedly refused to allow campaigners a stall at party conference.

    Lawyers for Green Women’s Declaration claim the decision was “a deliberate and unlawful attempt to prevent women from expressing gender-critical views”.

    Well what else would it be? That’s not a claim, it’s a definition.

    The gender-critical group also plans to sue over the party’s definition of “queerphobia”, which rules it is transphobic to suggest trans women are “not real women”. In a pre-action letter sent last week, the group claimed the definition “precisely encapsulates a gender-critical view”.

    Confusion and conflation always. Accurate definition is not phobia. There’s nothing “phobic” about saying men are not women. For that matter there’s nothing affectionate about saying men are women. It’s just a lie or a mistake; it needn’t involve any emotion at all. We may sound exasperated when we say it, but that’s because it’s so basic and obvious and we shouldn’t have to keep repeating it.

    Jude English, 60, a director of the group, told The Times: “The way the Green Party has been acting is akin to a witch-hunt, purging people with gender-critical views. We were middle-aged ladies with leaflets who wanted to go inside the conference last year and talk about these issues. The cancellation of our stall was simply the party’s leadership saying, ‘We can’t allow these women’s voices inside [the leader Zack Polanski’s] big conference.’

    There’s always some reason to push women’s voices out the door.

  • Told to cool off

    Oops.

    Kelly Wilkinson was turned away from Southport police station and told to “cool off, give Brian a break” while seeking help just four days before her estranged husband, Brian Earl Johnston, burned her to death in 2021, an inquest has heard.

    The allegation was made in an extraordinary 11th hour submission by the lawyer acting for her family as they successfully applied to adjourn the coronial inquiry to hear additional evidence about the allegation.

    Their lawyer, Mitch Rawlings, said Queensland police’s claim during the inquest that 12 April 2021 was the last time Wilkinson engaged with police was false. He said that she also attended the police station on 16 April – four days before her murder – but that there is no record of this attendance in the internal police system.

    “One of Kelly’s sisters drove her to the Southport police station, where she remained in the car while Kelly got out of the car with some documents,” Rawlings said. “She returned to the car moments later and complained that the person at the front desk turned her away saying words to the effect of, ‘Just cool off, give Brian a break,’ words to that effect.”

    To be fair, the police must have to make decisions of that kind all the time, and treating every irritable quarrel as a step away from murder would have its downsides. Hindsight is 20/20 doncha know.

    Thursday was scheduled to be the final day of a three-day hearing into Wilkinson’s 2021 murder, when Johnston stabbed her, doused her with petrol and set her on fire at her Gold Coast home.

    I guess because she didn’t give him a break?

    The coroner has heard that Wilkinson contacted police on four occasions before her murder, not including 16 April.

    She was flagged as a high-risk aggrieved party, meaning “proactive police response to risk is recommended”. But a referral to a specialist domestic violence liaison officer was never opened, and she never had a safety plan prepared.

    And her risk turned out to be high indeed.

  • Guest post: There’s a smuggle going on here

    Originally a comment by Artymorty on Is versus labeled as.

    Gender identity is a term used by some people to describe their sense of who they are.

    But where did this term come from? When did it emerge? And what material thing does it point to, if anything?

    Thetan is also a term used by some people — namely, Scientologists — to describe their sense of who they are.

    Indigo Child is another term used by some people to describe their sense of who they are.

    I could pick out a thousand terms various cults use to describe their deeply felt inner sense of self. The whole fucking point of religion is that it gives people deep feelings about their inner selves. How does anyone not already know this?

    Just because there’s a group of people who have a term for something they feel doesn’t mean that thing has any fucking credibility in the secular world.

    Some people do not accept the concept of gender identity and argue only biological sex can determine whether someone is a man or a woman.

    It’s not so much that we don’t accept the concept but that we disagree about what the concept is, what it means, what it refers to. I don’t disbelieve that trans-identifiers believe they have a gender identity. I disbelieve that their sense of gender identity points to any kind of innate, material, natural kind of thing, and I certainly don’t believe that one’s sense of a gender identity points to an innate, material, natural thing that is so profound that I should be compelled to pretend I can’t see people’s biological sex because of it.

    But wait, let me revisit that quote again:

    Some people do not accept the concept of gender identity and argue only biological sex can determine whether someone is a man or a woman.

    There’s a smuggle going on in there. They’re not denying that people have biological sexes; they’re slyly insinuating that some people — i.e., good people — have been trained to act like they can’t see biological sex when they’re prompted to — i.e., when they’ve been cued about someone else’s beliefs about his or her gender identity. And some other people — bad, suspicious people, outsiders, boo hiss — haven’t learned the rules.

    This isn’t about truth, it’s about social rules. In other words, it’s a new religion.

  • Wait WHO is stupid and incompetent?

    Ok that’s disgusting.

    You know what else was stupid in Leavitt-world? Lend-lease! The US should have just let Hitler win!