Ah well. Nasty man, but a genius producer. Where to start? Let's go with this – so full of joy:
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-qqi7-Q19k&w=550&h=309]
And this:
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KH6e_6O_dE&w=550&h=309]
Or the song Spector himself considered his greatest – and I wouldn't disagree.
0px”>But one hour later he changed his mind and said, because the man identified as a woman, he should be immediately released. This would enable society to fulfil its promise of ‘embracing diversity’, which now presumably includes that misunderstood minority who threaten people with hammers.
Last year in Australia a 61-year-old transwoman, ‘Susan Willan’, gave a 14 year old runaway drugs, and took her to his home. The girl then collapsed and was taken into intensive care.
Willan's lawyer argued that ‘Susan’ should avoid jail because his ‘gender identity’ makes him vulnerable.
Susan’ was jailed and then immediately freed on appeal, and given a community correction order instead.
The same week in Australia, another trans-identified male, Olivia Sindel, who had been charged with a string of disturbing offences, including torturing and killing his ex-partner's dog, told a court he’s suffering from 'significant issues' as a result of his gender reassignment.
The judge jailed ‘Olivia’ – but gave him a lighter sentence due to his ‘ongoing body dysphoria’.
Again in Australia, police executed a search warrant of a TiM’s house and discovered 15 images of children as young as five being raped by adults on his phone.
In court he said he wasn’t a paedophile, he just had low self-esteem due to issues surrounding his ‘sexual identity’.
The judge agreed and wiped the conviction. Even the local press expressed sympathy with the offender and refused to name him.
In Canada, a 29 year old man who identifies as a woman was jailed for raping a woman at knifepoint.
‘Lucy’ Blackplume ‘is a dangerous offender who can’t control her sexual impulses’ with a history of violently sexually assaulting victims. In this, he meets the criteria for a ‘dangerous offender designation’, which means he should be locked up indefinitely.
However, Judge Anne Brown said a life sentence would be unfair because Blackplume is in a male prison, so sentenced him to ten years in order not to be ‘cruel’.
In New Zealand, Rose Beaumont was armed with two large knives and an ice axe when he entered a tattoo parlour, yelling "I'm going to kill you" as he approached a victim and swung the axe towards his head, causing significant injuries.
However, he was only jailed for four years, 10 months, with the judge saying: "I consider that given the issues you have been facing, including your gender dysphoria, there is a risk that imprisonment will be more difficult for you than for other people and a lengthy prison sentence will impair your ability to be rehabilitated.”
In the USA, convicted child rapist Joseph Matthew Smith, now Josie Smith, was released from prison last year after identifying as a woman. The Iowa State Attorney General claimed Smith no longer has a “male sex drive” after undergoing hormone replacement therapy and is now at a ‘low risk of reoffending’.
Smith was jailed in 2014 for raping 15 children whose ages ranged from 1 to 15….
See the original post for links.
thered to read them). You were kind to quite a few very unpleasant people who told JK Rowling and many other “uppity women” that they should die or suffer extreme sexual violence for the sin of believing that the word “woman” has to represent a biological sex class in order for the rights of that class to remain protected in law. No, what you mean by “getting some kindness out there” is that women standing up for the rights of women and girls is not kind, and those women need to be stopped. Or perhaps you didn’t think at all?
And so on, and on. Relentless.
Poor Rupert. Thought he was being so nice and all…
le nation:
In an 480-page indictment prosecutors laid out charges including sexual abuse, fraud and organised crime that reached deep into Turkey’s elite.
On Monday Oktar, 64, who denied the charges against him, was sentenced to 1,075 years and three months in jail. Thirteen of his acolytes, including high-ranking kittens, were convicted on a wide range of charges. Their total jail time ran to almost 10,000 years.
Yet the lure of the group is still strong: Facebook and Twitter are awash with messages of support from kittens and lions who pledge their loyalty to Oktar and denounce the “traitors” who put him behind bars.
Kittens and lions are the names Oktar gave to his female and male supporters. Here he is with some kittens, in happier times:
As I noted in 2018 when he was first charged, Oktar, aka Harun Yahya, is a megalomaniac whose achievements include The Atlas of Creation, a lavishly-produced magnum opus which claims to have finally defeated Darwinism. In 2010 he was selected as one of the top fifty of The 500 Most Influential Muslims in the World by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre of Jordan, for his dissemination of creationism in an Islamic context, and other extensively distributed publications on Islamic topics. He also, unsurprisingly, dabbles in Holocaust denial and various antisemitic and Freemasonry-related conspiracy theories.
What brought about the man's spectacular fall from grace? Clearly not his opinions. Perhaps Turkey's President Erdogan decided there was only room for one megalomaniac in the country.
From the Guardian, March 2020 – Brexit means coronavirus vaccine will be slower to reach the UK:
The UK faces having to wait longer and pay more to acquire a coronavirus vaccine because it has left the EU, health experts and international legal experts warn today.
In an article published today on the Guardian website, the academics and lawyers say Boris Johnson’s determination to “go it alone”, free of EU regulation, after Brexit means the UK will probably have to join other non-EU countries in a queue to acquire the vaccine after EU member states have had it, and on less-favourable terms.
From the Guardian, July 2020 – UK plan to shun EU vaccine scheme ‘unforgivable’, say critics:
The UK’s decision not to join an EU plan to distribute a potential coronavirus vaccine to its most vulnerable citizens has been described as “unforgivable” and condemned by health charities and opposition politicians.
Number of COVID-19 vaccination doses administered in Europe as of January 14, 2021, by country (per 100 population):
[Via]
nking career at N M Rothschild & Sons as early as 1972, when he first became an MP, but he has a long track record of opposition to sanctions and external meddling in Iranian affairs, saying in a 2006 interview: “The history of Iran has been interfered with by foreign countries”. An Anglo-Iranian group he formerly directed, Balli Group, is still under investigation in Britain for selling aircraft to Iran in 2010 in defiance of US sanctions.
Ha. A cunning cover, obviously, to throw off suspicions as to his real motives.
If Lamont's wrecking of the British economy was at the behest of his Rothschild banking masters, then how to explain the wrecking of the Iranian economy under the ayatollahs? Who are the real shadowy figures behind Khomeini and Khamenei? I think we should be told.
At Shorpy, another old publicity photo from Ford. Dearborn, Michigan. "1956 Ford Customline Fordor Sedan in Meadowmist Green."
[Photo: Shorpy/Ford Motor Co. photographic archives]
ing. In Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, the crumbling of the state allowed Soleimani to plant his client groups, building covert Iranian strength.
In all of these countries, the goal was the same. Tehran did not seek to capture official state power. Rather, it wanted to transform the state into a weakened host body, allowing its parasitic militia to act with impunity. The long list of its armed groups shows the scale of the threat: the Ansar Allah movement in Yemen, Kata’ib Hezbollah — Muhandis’ organisation — in Iraq, the Lebanese Hezbollah, the Afghan Fatemiyoun group and the Pakistani Liwa Zainebiyoun — not to mention the myriad of militia in Syria.
Over the last two years, however, their advance has been halted, if not reversed. Largely, this has been achieved by the US, and is one of Donald Trump’s most notable foreign policy legacies.
The assassinations were followed by dire threats from Tehran of the consequences for America. All talk, though. Nothing has actually happened to back up the endless rousing speeches. And it's become clear that, in the case of Soleimani at least, his particular twisted genius has not been replaceable.
Alongside the drone strike that killed Soleimani and Muhandis came the US policy of “maximum pressure”. The sanctions imposed on the Iranian oil, financial and banking sectors in 2018 starved the economy of funds. This meant the closing of the tap for the militias. Hezbollah in Lebanon, for example, suffered a 40 per cent reduction funding in 2020. Similarly, the four top pro-Iran militias in Iraq saw their income fall from £3-4m per month to £1-2m.
The absent leadership and lack of money is having a dramatic affect. In Syria, where there is no large Shia population, Iran has had to use cash to entice recruits. This is no longer available. In Iraq, discipline and unity have begun to break down. In their own right, the powerful militias control oil fields, checkpoints, property and land. They are not prepared to mutely follow orders from fresh commanders for whom they have little respect.
There is now a real possibility that the winds are about to change once again in Iran’s favour. President-elect Joe Biden has made clear his desire to re-negotiate the 2015 nuclear accords with Iran. As a prerequisite, the theocracy is insisting on the lifting of all sanctions. In an attempt to focus American minds, it has threatened to expel international nuclear inspectors from the country on 21 February unless the money starts to flow again.
It's up to Biden now. If he carries through with his stated plan to renew the JCPOA in some form – which would seem likely given his reinstatement of so many key Obama figures in his new administration – then all the advances of the past few years may be lost, and Iran may once again have the power to wreck the neighbourhood.
I was watching an old episode of Vera last night, as one does during a pandemic, and this came on. It was on an old tape Vera dug up, recorded by her dad's "other woman". And I thought, yes, that is a powerfully evocative piece of pop music. I was thinking the Seekers, and yes, they did record it, but of course it was the Springfields who did it first.
And here they are:
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhF-Mqn-HEQ&w=550&h=309]
Written by Tom Springfield, Dusty's brother on the right there. It's a great piece of songwriting, and surely owes more than a little, it strikes me now, to the Skye Boat Song, with the escape to the island theme, and that "bird on the wing" phrase. He retired from the music business in his thirties, apparently, Tom – born Dionysius O'Brien – presumably making a decent enough living off his songwriting royalties.
Dusty already looks a little constrained by the two blokes either side. Great harmonies and all that, but she was clearly ready to break out as a solo act – which she did the next year, in 1963.
It's funny, but I doubt I would have posted this if it had been the Seekers. They were frankly a bit naff at the time, when the Beatles and the Stones and Dylan were starting to create a new world out there. With Dusty, though, I think I can post this and still maintain my hipster credentials…
