Blog

  • A day of American infamy

    Bret Stephens in the NYT:

    If Roosevelt had told Churchill to sue for peace on any terms with Adolf Hitler and to fork over Britain’s coal reserves to the United States in exchange for no American security guarantees, it might have approximated what Trump did to Zelensky. Whatever one might say about how Zelensky played his cards poorly — either by failing to behave with the degree of all-fours sycophancy that Trump demands or to maintain his composure in the face of JD Vance’s disingenuous provocations — this was a day of American infamy.

     

  • Climax Loco

    April 12, 1912. Atlanta, Georgia. "Southern Iron & Equipment Co. — Locomotive SIECO 807. (West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company Locomotive 1; Dobbins, West Virginia. Climax Loco #534, 1904)."

    image from www.shorpy.com
    [Photo: Shorpy/Marre Rail Transportation Photo Collection]

  • 2025 Sydney Local Woman Of The Year

    Yes, we know how this goes. The winner, of course, is a man. 

    This year’s Sydney Local Woman of the Year has been announced, with MP Alex Greenwich presenting the award on Wednesday afternoon.

    T Brianna Skinner has been working with Greenwich for more than a decade, first meeting with him in 2014 to discuss concerns about people in NSW being unable to change their gender on identification documents such as birth and marriage certificates.

    “Brianna’s own experience of transitioning from male to female highlighted to her the discrimination and bureaucratic discrepancies that outdated NSW laws imposed on Trans and gender diverse people,” said Greenwich….

    Chosen by members of parliament, The Local Woman of the Year Awards is an annual NSW Government award that gives parliamentarians the opportunity to recognise and celebrate the contributions of local women.

  • Zelensky in London

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Full text:

    During our talks, we discussed the challenges facing Ukraine and all of Europe, coordination with partners, concrete steps to strengthen Ukraine’s position, and ending the war with a just peace, along with robust security guarantees.

    A principled statement of support from the Prime Minister and an important decision: today, in our presence, Ukraine and the United Kingdom signed a Loan Agreement. This loan will enhance Ukraine’s defense capabilities and will be repaid using revenues from frozen Russian assets. The funds will be directed toward weapons production in Ukraine. This is true justice – the one who started the war must be the one to pay.

    I thank the people and government of the United Kingdom for their tremendous support from the very beginning of this war. We are happy to have such strategic partners and to share the same vision of what a secure future should look like for all.

  • The Zhdanov Museum

    he opening of the museum. “These memories will remain for ever in the hearts of our people. In liberated Mariupol, we honour and remember the true history of our country.”

    In liberated Mariupol! "Liberated" by the bombing and killing and destruction done by Zhdanov's heirs.

    To Kyiv this looks like Orwellian doublespeak because it was Russian forces that encircled and attacked Mariupol in 2022. The UN concluded that up to 90 per cent of residential buildings were damaged or destroyed and 350,000 people forced to leave the city.

    An estimated 8,000 people died as a result of the siege, hundreds in a single incident when a Russian airstrike hit a theatre where civilians were sheltering. They had written “children” in huge letters in Russian on the ground outside….

    Russian liberals are also angry about his rehabilitation. Nina Popova, a former director of the Anna Akhmatova museum in St Petersburg, called Zhdanov’s return “a violation of the moral norms of society” and “revenge” for his erasure during the 1980s.

    “Zhdanov is being raised on a shield,” wrote the columnist Andrei Kolesnikov. “And not just anywhere but in Mariupol, a city whose fate is tragic whichever side of the trenches you’re on. They want to underline that tragedy by re-mythologising a Stalinist hangman. Why such cynicism?”

    Because Putin. And now, because Trump.

  • Betraying everything America has tried to defend

    after Trump dismissed Zelensky from the White House, Putin’s homunculus, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, posted on X: “The insolent pig finally got a proper slap down in the Oval Office.”)

  • As macabre as it is irrational

    man guinea pigs. This study cannot be allowed to proceed….

    Originally developed to treat prostate cancer, and occasionally used in the chemical castration of male sex offenders, puberty blockers act on the pituitary gland to shut off the natural production of sex hormones. They have never been licensed for use by children suffering feelings of cross-sex identification, but little in the way of medical expertise is needed to imagine their potential harms.

    Puberty is not an optional extra in a healthy human being’s biological life plan. It is a extended physiological process involving a range of fundamental cognitive and psychological changes. Suppressing it is a disaster for the individual concerned. The notion that an ethical trial should be undertaken to establish the possible downsides of chemically sterilising children is as macabre as it is irrational. That research could be conducted over a long enough time-scale to establish informative results, while remaining experimentally well-controlled, is just as dubious.

    Recent data from GP records suggests the number of children diagnosed with gender dysphoria has increased 50-fold over ten years. That trend, however, bears all the hallmarks of a social contagion, one aided and abetted by social media. Confronting such developments, adults, not least doctors, have a responsibility to prevent, rather than collude in, the mistaken choices children are liable to make about their own best interest.

  • Bipartisan

    atorShaheen and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democrats condemn President Trump and Vice President Vance’s disgraceful Oval Office outburst during their meeting with @ZelenskyyUa.@SFRCdems stand united in our support of our ally, Ukraine. Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/4Ffrvg5hPo

    — Senate Foreign Relations Committee (@SFRCdems) February 28, 2025

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  • Plaza Hotel

    New York ca. 1907. "Plaza Hotel from Fifth Avenue at W. 58th Street."

    image from www.shorpy.com
    [Photo: Shorpy/Detroit Publishing Company]

    Just completed – A hotel of the same name was built from 1883 to 1890. The original hotel was replaced by the current structure from 1905 to 1907.

  • At King’s College

    Israel.”

    The topics to be discussed at the event included the difficulty of living within the Islamic Republic of Iran, the treatment of women there, the line between safety and freedom of expression, and Iranians’ view of Israel.

    The Pahlavi era flag with a Lion and Sun emblem, mentioned by Alavi, was replaced by an Islamic emblem with the Takbir written across the flag after the Revolution of 1979.

    In their statement, KGF wrote: “In an event that is supposed to foster unity and conversation between two opposing sides – Israel and Iran – the instigators have shown their true colours through an aggressive form of silencing.”

    Alavi recognised a bigger threat. She said: “Unfortunately, this destructive ideology has already reached the UK. I am frequently attacked by these people even here. This should alert the West to how dangerous it could become.”

    How dangerous it already has become. The flag reference makes it clear: this was an Islamist silencing of debate. Which worked. In a UK university.