Blog

t in the struggle for implementing the decisions of the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) and the 2nd Plenary Meeting of the 8th WPK Central Committee.

Marion Post Wolcott – September 1941. "Grocery store on main street of Ranchester in the Big Horn Mountains, Wyoming."

[Photo: Shorpy/Marion Post Wolcott for the Farm Security Administration]

even sadder history for the Jews: From Babylon to Baghdad over 2500 years. All gone in 25.  […]

The exile of the Jews from Arab lands is one of the great tragedies of modern history — for both the Jews and their non-Jewish neighbours. So much was lost. But now, perhaps, there is a new hope. Last year’s signing of the Abraham Accords between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain, and which weas followed by normalization deals with Morocco and Sudan, has raised the prospect of an official Jewish return to Arab lands for the first time in almost 70 years.

hts to trampling over the rights of others. Immediately after Starmer apologised, calls went out once again to remove the party whip from Rosie Duffield, Labour MP for Canterbury who was accused of transphobia last summer when she declared that “only women have a cervix.”

Hiding under the glitter and sparkles of the LGBT+ rainbow lies a misogynistic campaign to dismantle the rights of women. It took only six minutes for Panny Antoniou (pronouns he/him) — co chair of Open Labour — to launch his salvo: “This is a good start. Now can we tackle transphobia in the party? You can start by removing the whip from Rosie Duffield”.

Grovelling apologies are not the answer. Starmer’s tweet pandered to the extremists who replied with condescension: ‘We are pleased that you have recognised and apologised for this mistake’.

If Starmer does not take on the LGBT lobby, it will end up tearing the Labour party apart. Rosie Duffield is not an outlier: the public knows the difference between men and women.

Now is the time for decisive leadership. A generation ago, Neil Kinnock had the guts to take on the Militant tendency that was eating the 1980s Labour Party from the inside. Keir Starmer would be wise to follow Kinnock’s example. The alternative, like then, is political oblivion for his party.

It's not going to happen though. This kind of issue matters to the left-liberal middle class who now dominate the Labour Party, but not all to the "red wall" that Labour are leaving behind. And for Starmer, despite his rhetoric, it's still the former who pull the strings.

ut Elvis, but he's funny, and he's polite.

No filming below the waist in case that thrusting pelvis should get people all excited, so instead we get to focus on the Jordanaires in the background, bopping away. Literally bopping – going "bop, "bop", "bop". Those check sports jackets mark them out as irredeemable squares – they made their name on the Southern Gospel circuit – but they're spot on with the bops. It's a strange combination, the established gospel singers and the young star trading on his sex appeal, but Elvis was a big fan:

On October 3, 1954, a teenaged Elvis Presley made the drive from Memphis to Nashville to make his only performance on the Grand Ole Opry. Debuting his high-energy brand of rockabilly with "Blue Moon of Kentucky", it was his first live performance on a radio broadcast. He had just recorded his first record at Sun studios, "That's All Right", just a few weeks prior. In 1955, The Jordanaires played a show in Memphis with Eddy Arnold to publicize their new syndicated TV series, Eddy Arnold Time (for the program the group used the name Gordonaires). They sang "Peace in the Valley", and when the show was over, Elvis Presley, an emerging singer, talked with them and said, "If I ever get a recording contract with a major company, I want you guys to back me up." He was on Sun Records at that time.

On January 10, 1956, Presley recorded his first session for RCA with guitarist Scotty Moore, bassist Bill Black, and drummer D. J. Fontana. "I Got a Woman", "Heartbreak Hotel", and "Money Honey" were recorded. Presley asked his new label RCA Victor if The Jordanaires could appear on the recordings.

The group changed personnel over the years. I think who we have here are Gordon Stoker, Neal Matthews, Hoyt Hawkins, and Hugh Jarrett.

imported_image_1758335797.jpg” style=”width: 550px” title=”Covid-hospital7″ />
Eleonora Hulsof, Intensive Care Unit nurse

Maria Trillini, Intensive Care Unit nurse

Vincenzo Siciliano, Intensive Care Unit nurse

Margherita Lambertini, First Aid doctor
[Photos © Alberto Giuliani]

The 3rd place series in the Lens Culture Portrait Awards 2021.

adding-left: 40px”>Arkansas has become the first US state to outlaw gender confirming treatments and surgery for transgender people under the age of 18.

The bill also in effect bans doctors from providing puberty blockers, or from referring them to other providers for the treatment.

The Republican state governor had vetoed the bill, calling it a "vast government overreach".

But the state's Republican-controlled House and Senate overruled him.

The bill has faced much opposition from groups including the American Academy of Pediatrics, which said the law would block trans youth from important medical care and increase their already high risk of suicide.

An old canard that's regularly trotted out, that suicide line – deeply irresponsible, and without evidence.

Supporters of the bill, who are almost all Republican, say they want to protect children from life-changing procedures they will later regret. They also point to side-effects of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, and cite occasional cases where transgender people reverse their decision to transition.

But experts say each step is undertaken with the consultation of doctors, therapists and social workers, often over extended periods of time.

Ha. Ask Keira Bell.

The Beeb's Washington correspondent Shrai Popat adds more on the same lines:

Over the past few weeks Arkansas has played a game of legislative ping-pong, with gender-affirming care hanging in the balance. Now, the state has become the first to prohibit physicians from providing gender-affirming healthcare to trans youth. Medical experts have said this will likely have disastrous consequences for trans youth, particularly when it comes to mental health.

Dr Jack Turban, a fellow in child and adolescent psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine, told the BBC that access to gender-affirming care for trans youth is "consistently linked to better mental health outcomes".

He added that much of the political discourse around this care has been shrouded in unscientific misinformation that implies "transgender youth are 'confused' or invalid."

That would be the same Jack Turban who recently wrote a piece for the Scientific American claiming that there's no scientific reason for excluding trans women – ie men – from women's sport. And the same Jack Turban who's reputedly taken at least $15,000 from a pharmaceutical company that makes puberty blockers.

As a paid-up member of Stonewall UK's Diversity Champions scheme, the BBC is no doubt guided on its trans reporting with the same diligence that the ACLU and its leading ideologue Chase Strangio guides CNN.

And now we hear that trans activists, including Chelsea Manning (remember him?), are actively encouraging the smuggling of puberty blockers and other such chemicals into Arkansas. 

There's just no end to the fun.

Walker Evans – July 1935. "Scott's Run mining camps near Morgantown, W.Va. Domestic interior. Shack at Osage."

[Photo: Shorpy/Walker Evans for the Resettlement Admin.]

ntial customers to choose what they want to buy. In short, the merchants are circumventing restrictions on their businesses by selling their wares from their homes or storage facilities.

So it's all going underground. Inevitably. And with underground trading, and a possibly sympathetic police force, you've got a crack in the monolithic state control.

e=”padding-left: 40px”>Due to this new photographic evidence explained here, it seems that the last word should belong to the Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal, who asserted that the grand mufti met Hitler several times and that the mufti had visited a concentration camp as part of a commission or group. Wiesenthal has been proven correct—although he may have had yet another group visit in mind.