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Trump: Putin actually said to me, ‘If you don’t mind, friend, I hate to see you as my enemy.’ He said it very strongly. I had a very good relationship with Putin. I had a very good relationship with President Xi. A very good relationship with Kim Jong Un
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— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) March 18, 2025

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“>The thing that most characterises Trump’s business career is that he is a huge borrower, occasionally toppling over into hopeless debt. Sometimes he does this on instinct. He took on one disastrous loan of hundreds of millions of dollars without even setting foot in the business he was buying. A borrower is a better way of understanding him than merely thinking of him as a dealmaker.

As president of the United States, Trump has inherited a vast amount of power, built up through investment in the military and in political diplomacy. His country has achieved leadership of the free world by establishing alliances and offering security to other nations in return for their allegiance and co-operation. He is now borrowing against that, essentially consuming the US stock of power, friendships and credibility. He is trying to turn those long-term relationships into immediate cash, either by reducing defence expenditure or even forcing former allies effectively to lend to the US at favourable rates. Any risk to liberal democracy he prices very cheaply.

It is not hard to see why this might prove immediately successful. The US has a lot of power and in a single transaction — you do this or I will impose a tariff on you; you do that or I will stop arming Ukraine — its position is hard to resist. But any real theory of the art of the deal would note that most transactions are not isolated events. They are the result of repeated engagements. And for repeated engagements you require trust. Trump is consuming the trust that so many of his predecessors invested in.

Once, the Trump casino business was a wonder to behold. But Trump Plaza closed in 2014 and was demolished in 2021, the Trump Marina was sold in 2011 and became the Golden Nugget, and the Trump Taj Mahal closed in 2016. Roll up, roll up — and place your bets on the future of the Trump White House.

He is, in old parlance, a con-man. A huckster. He talks the MAGA talk, but he's selling all the goodwill the US has accrued over the years in the cause of his own ego.

Manhattan ca. 1901. "Sixth Avenue up from Fourteenth Street, New York."

[Photo: Shorpy/Detroit Photographic Company]

g-left: 40px”>The report’s findings also reiterate those by the UN’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence, Pramila Patten on allegations of Conflict Related Sexual Violence (CRSV) and says that on October 7 “members of Palestinian armed groups crossed the Israeli border and committed acts of CRSV. These include acts of rape, gang rape, forced mutilation, sexualised torture, forced nudity, and posting sexualised images of victims on social media without consent.”

Roberts said he wanted to “lay down incontrovertible proof – for now and for the years to come – that nearly 1,200 innocent people were indeed murdered by Hamas and its allies, and very often in scenes of sadistic barbarism not seen in world history since the Rape of Nanjing in 1937.”

The full report can be accessed here. Andrew Roberts writes about the report today in the Spectator.

The circumstances of all the 1,182 deaths that took place on that horrific day are documented in our report, which at times necessarily makes somewhat gruesome reading. But it reminds us of the sheer sadism, rapine and viciousness that was planned and premeditated.

In San Francisco:

“Women need the protection of laws that were written in the 70s. We need them back. We need your help with this. We do not need to be silenced again. I appreciate those of you who are looking me in the eye 'cause it's not easy to say.”@SF_TERF_CENTRAL brings 🔥 to the Commission pic.twitter.com/kaPyoVMQSf

— WomenAreReal (@WomenAreReals) March 17, 2025

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o think that while it’s good to become a party member, it’s even better not to be one.”

Despite harsh crackdowns on accessing outside media following laws like the 2020 “Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Act” and 2021 “Youth Education Guarantee Act,” public consumption of foreign content hasn’t decreased.

The impurity keeps creeping in. The battle must be intensified. The people must be protected.

ld be completely inappropriate for [a trans woman] to try to access men’s services. We wouldn’t allow any other minority women to be just cast aside completely like that.”

Ah, I think I see the flaw in his argument: trans women are not "any other minority women", but are, in fact, men. That's the problem, right there.

Asked whether a separate service for trans-indentified people might be a solution, Staniforth said: “Would we want separate refuges and services for people of colour?"

But how would he feel if a service for "people of colour" was invaded by people who blacked up?

re worrying, especially those which Camera appealed to the Executive Complaints Unit (ECU), the corporation’s highest internal court.

Consider the ruling this week concerning a BBC Arabic report of the Amsterdam riot last November, when Israeli football fans were violently attacked by mobs yelling antisemitic abuse and saying they were on a “Jew hunt”. Five Israelis were hospitalised, and four of those responsible were later jailed. According to BBC Arabic, the attackers were merely “chanting slogans against Israel”. Yet after Camera appealed the BBC’s initial dismissal of its complaint, the ECU rejected it, saying that although BBC Arabic had indeed mentioned only “shouting”, this did not mean “violence did not occur”. Moreover, “the violence in Amsterdam was considered in much more detail elsewhere on the BBC” — which, given that the complaint was about BBC Arabic, could be said to be missing the point.

Other ECU decisions also look questionable. One concerned a BBC Arabic report in November 2023 saying 31 “journalists and media workers” had been killed in the Gaza conflict. It failed to state that 11 of them worked directly for Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) propaganda units, and another nine for outlets that hailed the October 7 attacks as “heroic” and “legitimate”. Yet although other BBC services had made all this clear, the ECU decided BBC Arabic’s omission was not misleading….

Meanwhile, it appears that an old ECU decision helps to explain one of the most controversial aspects of How to Survive a Warzone: the repeated translation of the Arabic word yahud as “Israeli”, not Jew — its usual, dictionary meaning. In 2013, it ruled on a complaint made by Camera over the use of the same mistranslation in an item on Radio 4, determining that this did not breach the BBC’s duty to provide “due accuracy”.

This set a precedent, for in 2019 the TV documentary One Day in Gaza included a segment in which a young man said in Arabic that when he listened to “revolutionary songs”, they “excite you, they encourage you to rip a Jew’s head off”. Here too, yahud was translated as “Israeli”, a decision condemned by the Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt as “not translation” but “#antisemitism denial”. Labour politician Wes Streeting also pitched in, saying the BBC’s action was “totally unacceptable”. As so often, the BBC stuck to its guns, claiming its usage was “true to the speaker’s intentions”.

In other words, the BBC decided for us that the speaker wasn't being antisemitic, when quite clearly he was. They're distorting the truth.

Camera is left unimpressed. “With every single complaint that reached the ECU having been rejected, this putatively independent body appears to function as a rubber stamp for the whim of BBC Arabic editors,” its spokesman told me. This, he went on, was part of a trend whereby “a small group of BBC officials have marked their own homework.”

It's part of the continuous BBC effort to present the Palestinian cause as entirely about land: a classic case of freedom fighters against colonialism. In fact, if we were allowed to hear what Hamas and the Palestinians in Gaza are actually saying, we'd see that it's all about Islam, it's all about Jew-hatred, and it's all about refusing to countenance the existence of a Jewish state.

style=”padding-left: 40px”>In the latest development of Scotland’s single-sex scandal, the Care Inspectorate says looked-after transgender children ‘should not be made to use the toilet or bedroom of their sex assigned at birth’.

The edict adds that trans youngsters should be able to ‘share a room with other young people who share their gender identity’.

Astonishingly, it also states there is ‘no law in Scotland’ that protects single-sex spaces.

Scottish Conservative equalities spokesman Tess White said: ‘It’s frankly ludicrous that Scotland’s care watchdog doesn’t recognise there are legal obligations to provide single-sex spaces.’

Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at human rights charity Sex Matters, called the guidance ‘a terrifying failure of the state’s duty to protect some of Scotland’s most vulnerable young people’.

She added: ‘This policy is grossly negligent, putting young people who deserve so much better at significant risk.’…

In a move which critics believe displays a chilling lack of understanding of equalities legislation, it goes on to say: ‘The provision of gendered facilities such as toilets is social convention. There is no law in Scotland about this.’

Susan Smith, of campaign group For Women Scotland, said: ‘Various pieces of legislation do mandate single-sex toilet provisions.

‘Care Inspectorate officials must be naive to the point of abject idiocy if they think gender identity will preclude children indulging in dangerous sexual behaviour.

‘Children’s human rights and physical safety matter: unless the Care Inspectorate want another child abuse inquiry on their hands, they will stop deliberately putting children at risk.’

A spokesman for the Care Inspectorate said: ‘It is for care services to decide on the appropriate provision of facilities to meet the individual needs, rights and wishes of those experiencing care.'

Well yes, no doubt. And they're making a horrendous mess of it – bending the knee, as always, to gender ideology ahead of the safety of troubled young girls.

In Illinois – Deerfield middle school administrators force teen girls to change in front of boy in school locker room:

After receiving a complaint from girls in early February that a boy was in their locker room while they were changing for gym class, District 109 “Assistant Superintendent for Student Services” Joanna Ford, “Assistant Principal” Cathy Van Treese and “Director for Student Services” Ginger Logemann reprimanded the girls, then escorted them to the locker room and tried to force them to change in front of the boy.

Parent Nicole Georgas, whose daughter refused and ran out of the locker room, described her daughter’s experiences to the school board Thursday.

“The male student was present in the girls locker room,” Georges said. “Feeling violated, the girls made the choice not change into their PE (physical education) clothes with a biological male present.”

The next day, Georgas said, Ford, Van Treese and Logermann tried to bully them into to changing in front of the boy.

“(The administrators) all came into the girls locker room, making them change into uniform. This went on all week,” Georgas said. “My daughter refused to take part in her privacy being violated. How dare they!”

She said Shepard School Principal Rob Wegley told her daughter that any male student can use any girl’s bathroom or locker room at his school so long as they claim to “identify as female.”

Middle school girls are 11 and up to 15 years old. They're going through puberty. They're having their first periods. They're ultra-sensitive about their bodies and about getting undressed anywhere – let alone being forced to undress in front of boys.

These people…