Due to being abnormally busy over the next two weekends, there will be no “News of the Week” this upcoming Sunday or the Sunday thereafter.  Posting will otherwise be light.

Posted on May 23, 2025 by The Political Hat | 1 Comment

Quick Takes – Gaia’s Rights Get Moist: Whale Rights; Rivers Are People Too; Unalienable Great Lakes

Posted on May 22, 2025 by The Political Hat

     Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.

     The focus this time: Water, water everywhere, nor any rights to keep.

     First, a little mood music:

     Carrying on…

     Whale rights are all the rage in New Zealand…

“The initiative, Te Mana o Te Tohorā (The Enduring Power of Whales), aims to establish whales as legal persons, granting them rights that recognise their ecological importance and sentience. Developed in collaboration with the Pacific Whale Fund and Ocean Vision Legal, the project represents a significant step forward for the giants of the ocean in environmental law.

“The proposed legislation builds on the He Whakaputanga Moana (Ocean Declaration), a treaty signed by Pacific Indigenous leaders earlier this year, which first granted whales and dolphins legal personhood in the Pacific Islands.

“Simmons & Simmons, which has been supporting the project pro bono, hopes the frameworks will pave the way for nations to adopt similar protections, bridging Indigenous environmental values with global legal systems.

“These frameworks centre on the concept of a ‘legal person’ — an entity acknowledged as having ‘standing’ within the judicial system. Traditionally, this status has been reserved for humans, community organisations, and corporations. Granting this designation to whales represents a groundbreaking shift, acknowledging the value of non-human life and redefining how the law engages with the natural world.

“‘This legislation challenges traditional legal frameworks by recognising whales as sentient beings with intrinsic value,’ said Rob Allen, a partner at Simmons & Simmons. ‘It builds on existing protections for cetaceans, offering a more comprehensive approach to safeguarding their habitats and acknowledging their complex ecological roles.’”

     Captain Ahab hardest hit.

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Alienation And The Mythologies Of Fascism And Communism

Posted on May 21, 2025 by The Political Hat

     Leftist ideology preys on the weak, offering balm to lost souls. In fact, “core of both Fascism and Communism as radical ideologies is a sense of alienation” as James Lindsay noted and further opines upon the subject, which is quoted in full full below due to the limitations of Twitter/X embeds.

On alienation and the mythologies of Fascism and Communism. Long post/:

At the core of both Fascism and Communism as radical ideologies is a sense of alienation. In fact, it’s alienation with the injustice of the alienation turned up to 11. This alienation breeds resentment, envy, and radical politics itself.

First, a word about radical politics. What does “radical” mean? It means “at the roots,” or more accurately, tearing out the roots of the existing system to replace them with a new system with totally different roots.

Second, a few words about alienation and the Alien force that alienates. Alienation here ultimately refers to the idea of being made an alien to your own circumstance. That is, there’s a circumstance that fits you, and you belong in that circumstance by some right, and you are removed or estranged from it.

This is usually believed to be the result of having been (actively) alienated because it is generally assumed people would not intentionally remove themselves from their own rightful context. The outside, interloping force that removes the alienated subject from his rightful context and circumstance is an Alien power. It doesn’t recognize the circumstance or people’s rightful claim to it and its inheritance but comes in from outside and imposes itself into and over that circumstance to usurp it for itself.

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Posted in Progressives | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Queer Flag Flap In Idaho

Posted on May 20, 2025 by The Political Hat

     Knee-jerk vexillological legislation against disapproved of flags is not just a Utah thing, but an Idaho one as well. Capital cities in both states are getting around bans on “pride flags” by designating said flags as official city government flags, or otherwise incorporating it into their flags.

“The Democratic controlled cities of Salt Lake City and Boise adopted new city flags this week showing support for LGBTQ+ people in defiance of their states’ Republican-controlled Legislatures, which have banned traditional rainbow pride flags at schools and government buildings.

“Utah’s capital of Salt Lake City created new flag designs while Boise, the capital of Idaho, made the traditional pride flag one of its official city flags. The move in Utah came hours before a ban on unsanctioned flag displays took effect Wednesday.”

Meanwhile… in Salt Lake City…

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Infringing On The Right To Keep And Bear Arms In Nevada

Posted on May 19, 2025 by The Political Hat

     Nevada Democrats are yet again trying to limit where and when you can carry your lawfully owned and kept firearm.   This time, they are trying to use election security as an excuse. While it would be one thing to limit the brandishing of a weapon, or even carrying within the polling place itself, this applies to a full 100 feet around any such polling location. AB 105 reads, in part:

“Except as otherwise provided in subsection 2, a person shall not possess 3 or cause a firearm to be present in, or within 100 feet of an entrance to, a place 4 the person knows or reasonably should know is an election site.”

     The exceptions are limited to law enforcement, private security, locked cars, and private residences.   Of course, it was pointed out that this would mean you couldn’t go to or leave private property with a firearm within the 100 foot victim disarmament zone.

     To address this glaring error, the bill was amended to offer an affirmative defense if you are going to or leaving from such private property within the 100 exclusion zone.   This means that even if you are simply lawfully going to and from your own residence, you can still be arrested and tried with only the opportunity to provide an affirmative defense, which shifts the burden of proof onto the the person arrested.

     Additionally, the fig leaf of requiring signage indicating that firearms is prohibited does not allow for the lack of signage, in violation of the law, to be used as an affirmative defense. Furthermore, this does not protect someone who must sojourn through that zone in order to access private property.

     This bill is a “solution” in search of a problem.

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Posted in Gun Rights, Progressives | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

News of the Week (May 18th, 2025)

Posted on May 18, 2025 by The Political Hat

 

News of the Week for May 18th, 2025


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Firing Line Friday: Where Are We Headed in Nicaragua?

Posted on May 16, 2025 by The Political Hat

     In the hopes of encouraging a more civil, and illuminating, discourse, here is another episode of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s “Firing Line”.

     With conflicts heating up around the world and the question of American involvement lingering, let us look back forty years ago at another conflict whereabout similar questions were asked as William F. Buckley, Jr. discussed the question of where are we heading in Nicaragua with Manuel Alzugaray and Otto Reich.

     A little bonus mood music:

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Posted in War & Terror | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Quick Takes – Purportedly Peer Reviewed Madness: Queer Canine Becomings; Butch Dyke Earth; Dyconsious Racism

Posted on May 15, 2025 by The Political Hat

     Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.

     The focus this time: As someone who has peer reviewed actual science articles about actual science, which I still found lacking, the following is beyond parody. What follows are the actual titles and abstracts of three such WTF-level journal articles, without further commentary.

     First, a little mood music:

     Carrying on…

From the graphical abstract for: “A Special Topic Class in Chemistry on Feminism and Science as a Tool to Disrupt the Dysconcious Racism in STEM”

     Queer canine becomings: Lesbian feminist cyborg politics and interspecies intimacies in ecologies of love and violence

“This article offers a queer lesbian feminist analysis attuned to lesbian-queer-trans-canine relationalities. Specifically, the article places queer and lesbian ecofeminism in conversation with Donna Haraway’s work on the cyborg and companion species to theorize the interconnected queer becomings of people, nature, animals, and machines amidst ecologies of love and violence in the 2020s. It takes two key case studies as the focus for analysis: first, the state instrumentalization of dogs and robot dogs for racialized and imperial violence, and second, quotidian queer and lesbian-dog relationalities and becomings. In the first, the article traces how dogs are weaponized as tools of state violence and proposes a queer lesbian feminist critique of white supremacy and militarization that can also extend to a critique of the violence committed through and toward the dogs. In the second, the article analyzes how, within lesbian, non-binary, and trans-dog intimacies, dogs help articulate queer gender, sexuality, and kinship formations, and as such, queer worlds for gender, sexual, and kin becomings. The entanglements of violence and love in these queer dog relationalities provide insights into the complexities of queer and lesbian feminist worldbuilding. Lesbian and queer feminist cyborg politics can help theorize the potentials and challenges of these interspecies entanglements.”

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Brainwashing The Subconscious

Posted on May 14, 2025 by The Political Hat

     A mistake of the Marxist Left is the belief that society is systemically created and manipulated in order for the oppressors to opressively oppress the oppressed oppressingly. A mistake of many Marx (and Gramsci) appreciating Right is to fall into the same delusion, adopt the same framework/worldview, and engage in the same Praxis while expecting different outcomes.

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Trans-Zodiac

Posted on May 13, 2025 by The Political Hat

     Much of transgenderism boils down to the idea of “right mind in the wrong body”, and that rather than have the mind conform to the body, the body must be sculpted to the mind, or the mind’s own self-image. To put it in more spiritual terms, it’s the “right soul in the wrong vessel”. But just as there are somehow many different “genders” there are many different facets… such as one’s Zodiac sign. And yes, one can apparently be “trans-Zodiac”.

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