Genuinely Interested

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

Trump is speaking to complete silence at the NASA center. Not a single person is applauding or reacting to anything he says during his brazenly partisan speech.

[EddyFisher Studios @EddyFisher240]

Bo Derek was being asked about what made a woman a “10” while sitting on Johnny Carson’s couch at the exact moment Hollywood was turning her into that idea.

In 1979, Derek appeared on The Tonight Show to promote 10, the film that had made her an overnight sensation. They talked about her private life, the infamous cornrow hairstyle, her husband’s demanding approach to fitness, and eventually the idea of rating women from 1 to 10.

Carson even turns the scale back on himself, asking the audience how they would rate him.

What makes the interview interesting today is the contrast between Bo Derek the person and the image Hollywood was creating around her. She’s sitting there discussing the “perfect woman” label with a surprising amount of ease, while Carson keeps playing with the very idea that helped make her famous.

It’s a fascinating snapshot of how celebrity beauty, and Hollywood image making were talked about on television in the late ’70s.

[Jenny Difficult-Frecklington-Jones 🇵🇸🇱🇧🇮🇷 @JonesHowDareYou]

Mark Humphries highlighting the racism the #Nepal disaster has unleashed online and calling out media for its roll in cultivating this toxic environment. #auspol #racism

[Maple Leaf Fields @FieldsLeaf]

Of course they delted it....... here it is... share it far and wide. SHe should be made to apologize publically everyday for each and everytime she repeated that disgusting lie.

[Nico Mac @Nicomac_666]

LOL. GB News issued a live apology to Meghan’s mom, Doria Ragland, but later deleted the entire show from YouTube to suppress the embarrassment. Share the full clip widely, people. #HarryAndMeghan @I_amMukhtar
Carole Malone was threatened with a lawsuit unless she apologised.😂

[Don't feed the troll! 🇵🇸 @newdepo]

@BrianMcDonaldIE full video (I've had it bookmarked for years).
It's beautiful: at first you can see they're thinking "What the hell! What are they doing?" and then they think about it and say "Fuck you, fucking Krauts! I'll scream it in faces like we did 60 years ago!"
✊
https://t.co/SvKPcIxgxd

[Ms. Kia Farrow's Reali-Tea @MsPerry103]

Royalists try to rewrite history, but Prince Charles set the precedent for airing the Royal Family's private dirty laundry decades before Prince Harry's 'Spare.' What Prince Harry said about Prince Charles is nothing compared to Prince Charle's public condemnation of his parents.

[Carlos @agent_of_change]

Laura Bicker, BBC China correspondent, on the disaster at Gyirong Port on the Nepal–Xizang border: “Shocking footage isn’t being shown in China – and we know little about victims there.”

Numerous people in China have pointed out that the footage is, in fact, all over Chinese platforms; indeed, the very video in the BBC’s own report was released by the Chinese port authorities. So the sequence is: 1) the Chinese state published the clip; 2) the BBC ran the clip; 3) the BBC published a story about how the Chinese state is suppressing the clip.

@AndyBxxx has made another point worth noting: Chinese media doesn’t operate on the basis of “if it bleeds, it leads”. You won’t see grieving relatives and footage of bodies looped for 24 hours. The BBC treats the absence of disaster pornography as evidence of a cover-up rather than a different (and frankly much better) editorial culture.

The article concedes that Beijing has launched “a massive rescue operation involving hundreds of emergency workers”. Even the International Campaign for Tibet, an NED-sponsored Washington-based lobby group, is recorded here “praising the work of first responders”. Xi Jinping personally chaired an emergency meeting to coordinate it. Chinese media has provided “daily updates on the missing and the dead”, plus updates on the rescue operation and on the barrier lake at risk of overflowing. It has shown rescue teams scaling mountains and cliff faces and crossing raging rivers.

Premier Li Qiang was “quickly dispatched to the region” – a level of responsiveness from the top leadership that those of us in the West can only dream of. Compare for example the US response to Hurricane Katrina, or the British government’s response to the Grenfell disaster. From all of that, the article arrives at the phrase “muted response” 🤷🏽

The BBC reports that local CPC members have been asked to step up and help with relief efforts, and provide “emotional guidance or psychological support to affected residents”. This is predictably framed as an operation to “stem any signs of discontent”.

Our intrepid reporter finally reveals her motive with a single clause: “Tibet, which Beijing annexed in the 1950s”. A-ha. It turns out this is a story about British state media, not Chinese state media.

Tibet has been part of China since the 13th century. Taking advantage of the chaos of the collapse of the Qing dynasty, the British invaded Tibet in 1904, at which point they came up with the formula of recognising Chinese “suzerainty” over Tibet while asserting that the region was “independent in internal administration” – which de facto meant that the British could do whatever they wanted there. Incidentally, Britain didn’t abandon that formula until 2008, when it finally recognised China’s sovereignty over the region.

If the BBC is going to insist on a formulation of “Tibet, which Beijing annexed”, it should, for the sake of consistency, also refer to “Cornwall, which London annexed”, since this took place around the same time as Tibet’s absorption into the Yuan Dynasty.

The article goes on to repeat tired tropes about “the Chinese government oppressing and persecuting Tibetans”, albeit without going into the nature of this oppression, which includes raising literacy levels from 5 percent to 98 percent; 15 years’ publicly funded education; the highest per capita central government transfers in China; the elimination of absolute poverty; the provision of modern infrastructure, health care and social services; and impressive efforts to protect and promote Tibetan language and culture.

What doesn’t get a single mention is the cause of the disaster. This was a flash flood in the fastest-warming mountain range on earth, in a region where glacial lakes are multiplying and bursting. There is a genuine story here about climate change coming for the Himalayas and the hundreds of millions who depend on their rivers, but the BBC instead chooses to run with the usual anti-China rubbish.

Solidarity with the people of China and Nepal affected by this disaster, and with everyone working to save them. And shame on a state broadcaster that chooses slander over solidarity.

[GBC @GBC_Press]

🚨 BREAKING:

Professor John Mearsheimer:

"If we held Nuremberg-style trials, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and their top aides would have been hanged."

[The Independent @Independent]

What to stockpile for an emergency and how long bottled water lasts

[Alfie @alfie_t8]

Noel Gallagher summed all this up perfectly 15 years ago

[Francis McRae @FrankMcRae]

Its hard to imagine now but in the 1990s murdering 8000 civilians was frowned upon

[Anthony Shaw @anthonyfdshaw]

Sent this on a group. So true.

Welcome to the modern Premier League.

[T. Bernadetti @MrsRoyKeaneo]

Arrogance v Humility.

Have a watch. #israel #Palestine

[WCN @AJMD556]

Another history lesson you were never taught and is easily verified.

[Forrest Miller 🎥🏆 @AlwaysFlacko]

Here is @SamSeder on with @mehdirhasan making the exact same point about how the ADL conflating Judaism and Zionism is a problem for American Jews that will result in more antisemitic violence.

[Janette Strachan @BraidseaQuine]

@LBC Nail on the head.

Where are the protests,silence from Farage,Lowe,Brooks and Yaxley-Lennon’s mob?

[Kerry Burgess @KerryBurgess]

Iran's tribute to Dolly. Just incredible.

[Jeremy Corbyn @jeremycorbyn]

Britain has been complicit in genocide - and Burnham's apology will mean nothing if he doesn’t take decisive action to right this wrong.

[shameen suleman @shameensuleman]

🟥 THEY CALLED IT A “BOARD OF PEACE”. ATHENA RAYBURN JUST EXPOSED THE SMOKESCREEN.

▪️27 August 2026.🧵🧵🧵

🔳Finally, someone with the position, the evidence and, frankly, the guts to stand inside the UN Security Council and say what Palestinians and humanitarian workers on the ground have been documenting all along.

🔳Athena Rayburn is Executive Director of the Association of International Development Agencies (AIDA), representing more than 100 humanitarian and development NGOs working across occupied Palestine. She did not walk into that chamber with slogans. She walked in with the reality of what this so-called “peace” has actually delivered.

▪️And that is the question that matters: what has changed for Palestinians?

🔳Since the October 2025 ceasefire was announced, more than 1,200 Palestinians have been killed and more than 4,000 injured. Around two-thirds of Gaza remains inaccessible or under severe access restrictions. Approximately 1.9 million Palestinians remain displaced. Even the UK told the Security Council yesterday that “averting starvation cannot be the benchmark”.

▪️Rayburn went much further.

🔳She described approximately two million Palestinians trapped and dependent upon humanitarian assistance “controlled and restricted by the State that has designed this scarcity”. More than 30 international humanitarian organisations have been deregistered by the israeli authorities. The humanitarian organisations capable of independently witnessing, documenting and treating what is happening are themselves being restricted.

▪️And then you get to the details that expose just how grotesque this system has become.

🔳Scissors. Crutches. Wheelchairs. Prosthetic limbs.

▪️Items needed by a population in which thousands have been maimed, amputated and permanently disabled have been rejected as supposed “dual-use” goods. Specialist medical personnel have faced restrictions. Engine oil has been restricted to the point Rayburn said its price reached 45 times normal levels, pushing humanitarian operations towards breaking point.

🔳And then there are WATERMELONS AND ONIONS.

▪️Fresh produce for a population recovering from what Rayburn herself called an “engineered famine”, rejected under an israeli “humanitarian policy”.

🔳You could not write the obscenity of this if you tried.

But perhaps the most important part of these nine minutes is not the watermelon, the scissors or even the prosthetic limbs.

It is CONTROL.

Control what enters Gaza. Control who enters Gaza. Control which NGOs remain. Control where they operate. Control the food. Control the fuel. Control the medical equipment. Control movement. Control humanitarian access. And create an environment in which organisations know that speaking publicly about what they witness can jeopardise their ability to continue operating.

🔳That raises the obvious question:

What are they so frightened of the world seeing?

More than 400 humanitarian workers have been killed during this catastrophe. Those who remain are not random observers parachuting into Gaza with opinions. They are trained professionals embedded within Palestinian communities, documenting conditions with their own eyes.

🔳And still the space in which they can operate is being squeezed.

This is why the argument about “more aid entering Gaza” is such a spectacular distraction.

You cannot destroy a population’s ability to sustain itself, reduce roughly two million human beings to dependence upon humanitarian assistance, retain control over that assistance and then demand applause because some of it was permitted through.

That is not humanitarian success.

It is managed dependency.

And this is where Rayburn went directly for the Board of Peace.

“By these basic measures, the Board of Peace is failing.”

No.

Failing suggests something was genuinely implemented and then went wrong.