Traz Mac retweeted
An Iranian man left this comment on my YouTube channel. This is without a doubt the single best explanation of the reality facing Iranian people today👇
"As an Iranian, I can tell you the situation is no longer just political—it's existential. We are trapped between two collapsing structures: one internal, one external. On one hand, we face a deeply dysfunctional government, led by the Supreme Leader and the Islamic Republic’s unelected institutions.
Decades of economic mismanagement, suppression of dissent, and brutal ideological control have alienated multiple generations. No one believes in reform anymore—because every attempt has either been co-opted or crushed. But here's the paradox: We are also terrified of regime collapse—because we've watched the aftermath of Western intervention in countries like Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan. Each was promised freedom; each descended into chaos, civil war, or foreign occupation.
So no, we don't trust the U.S. or Israel. Not because we support our regime—but because we know how imperial powers treat ‘liberated’ nations in the Middle East.
Freedom, in their language, often means vacuum, fire, and permanent instability. Right now, many Iranians live with three truths at once: The Islamic Republic is morally and politically bankrupt. The alternatives offered by foreign actors are not liberation—they’re collapse.
A bad government is survivable. No government is not. We are not silent because we agree. We are cautious because we’ve learned—too well—what happens when superpowers decide to "help." In a sentence: Iran is a nation held hostage by its own regime, but haunted by the fate of its neighbors. We are stuck in a house we hate, surrounded by fires we fear more."
Traz Mac retweeted
On the last day of my radiotherapy, I found myself alone in the treatment room with two male radiographers - one either side of me. One was starting to undo the top of my gown.
In every previous session, this part of the procedure had been done by two women, or a man and a woman. (And of course, it was immediately obvious who was who.)
My face must have given something away because one of them quickly asked whether I was comfortable with two male radiographers. I said yes - mainly because they were already running late after a machine had broken earlier that morning. Saying no would have meant stopping everything while they found a female member of staff, delaying the whole clinic.
If you’re having whole-breast radiotherapy, the first 5–10 minutes is spent lining up your body to millimetre precision. You lie there with your breasts exposed while the radiographers gently move you into position.
It’s intimate.
And requires trust.
These two men were kind, professional and put me at ease. But they also *almost* didn’t ask whether I was happy with two males carrying out that part of the procedure. And “they were both men” was still the first thing I told my husband afterwards.
I was thinking about this yesterday while reading the Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife tribunal ruling. Dr Beth Upton is described as presenting as female for a number of years - with feminine clothes, makeup and a higher-pitched voice.
But no amount of makeup would have persuaded me that either of those radiotherapists was female. I consented to the procedure on the basis of my own understanding that the people handling my body (including my breasts) were men - not on the basis of how they ‘identified’.
And it made me wonder: what would have happened if I’d asked for a female to be present and got a Dr Beth Upton or
a Rose Henderson?
Which isn’t far-fetched. Because that same hospital handed me several forms that used gender identity, not sex, to collect patient information - including a question about pregnancy.
And something gets lost in the discussion around these cases (including the Darlington nurses). Something that genuinely chills me:
Patients.
It’s bad enough that female staff are being pressured to share spaces with male colleagues.
But another key question we should be asking is: how are patients impacted by NHS Trusts who appear to think being a woman is about clothes or makeup?
Would these trusts also prioritise the feelings of male staff over the dignity, consent and safeguarding needs of female patients - including women undergoing intimate medical procedures, and even children?
Because that is the logical destination of replacing sex with “gender identity” in healthcare.
Traz Mac retweeted
At some point we have to accept that for the rampant corruption to stop we will require prosecution and prison time for those responsible.
Traz Mac retweeted
The piss artist formally known as Prince Andrew is still not in prison, Michelle Mone is still sailing in her Covid yacht, Farage is still freeloading off Russia and Netanyahu continues to bomb innocent people in Gaza whilst pretending he’s not. The world is fucking bleak.
Traz Mac retweeted
Dear @bbc I know you are doing a survey, a pointless ‘seen to be consulting us’ survey. Do you know what I want on my BBC?
A proportional representation of political parties. Based on their seats in parliament, not their click bait ratio. 1/2
Traz Mac retweeted
Louis Theroux has more of a backbone than anyone in our media or government. He knew what he would get, but he did the right thing anyway and he'll be remembered for that.
I'm sure the lobby is apoplectic but who cares - the documentary #TheSettlers is a must-watch.
Traz Mac retweeted
if @UKLabour want to save money on disability benefits they could stop the DWP from re-assessing people with lifelong/genetic/degenerative conditions every 3 - 5 years & reinstate the lifetime award, instead of wasting money/bureaucracy on hounding disabled people for a pittance
Traz Mac retweeted
Trump has as much blood on his hands as any dictator. He has no regard for how his policies affect others or who they hurt or even kill. The guy's a true psychopath with no understanding of mercy or compassion.
Traz Mac retweeted
Thoughts from the US
"In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and and say, "And we shall overcome." I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress that our long national nightmare was over. I saw Jimmy Carter talk about malaise and Ronald Reagan talk about a shining city on a hill. I saw George H.W. Bush deliver the eulogy for the Soviet bloc, and Bill Clinton comfort the survivors of Timothy McVeigh's madness in Oklahoma City. I saw George W. Bush struggle to make sense of it all on September 11, 2001, and I saw Barack Obama sing 'Amazing Grace' in the wounded sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
"These were the presidents of my lifetime. These were not perfect men. They were not perfect presidents, god knows. Not one of them was that. But they approached the job, and they took to the podium, with all the gravitas they could muster as appropriate to the job. They tried, at least, to reach for something in the presidency that was beyond their grasp as ordinary human beings. They were not all ennobled by the attempt, but they tried nonetheless.
"And comes now this hopeless, vicious buffoon, and the audience of equally hopeless and vicious buffoons who laughed and cheered when he made sport of a woman whose lasting memory of the trauma she suffered is the laughter of the perpetrators. Now he comes, a man swathed in scandal, with no interest beyond what he can put in his pocket and what he can put over on a universe of suckers, and he does something like this while occupying an office that we gave him, and while endowed with a public trust that he dishonors every day he wakes up in the White House.
"The scion of a multigenerational criminal enterprise, the parameters of which we are only now beginning to comprehend. A vessel for all the worst elements of the American condition. And a cheap, soulless bully besides. We never have had such a cheap counterfeit of a president* as currently occupies the office. We never have had a president* so completely deserving of scorn and yet so small in the office that it almost seems a waste of time and energy to summon up the requisite contempt.
"Watch how a republic dies in the empty eyes of an empty man who feels nothing but his own imaginary greatness, and who cannot find in himself the decency simply to shut up even when it is in his best interest to do so. Presidents don't have to be heroes to be good presidents. They just have to realize that their humanity is our common humanity, and that their political commonwealth is our political commonwealth, too.
Watch him behind the seal of the President of the United States. Isn't he a funny man? Isn't what happened to that lady hilarious? Watch the assembled morons cheer. This is the only story now."
- Charles Pierce
Traz Mac retweeted
This false narrative of "no free speech" grinds my fucking gears. We have free speech in the UK, you can say whatever you want. If what you're saying, however, is that a hotel full of people should be burned to the ground, you should rightly expect to be punished for that!
Traz Mac retweeted
After bullying & expelling international war hero Volodymyr Zelenskyy from the White House, Trump returns to Mar-a-Lago, where he’ll play some golf & wine/dine with fellow rapist and child sex trafficker, Andrew Tate.
Motherfucker can rot in hell.
Traz Mac retweeted
I rarely have violent thoughts, but watching that conference in which those talentless, classless, psychopathic scum attempted to undermine Zelenskyy, one of the most courageous leaders since WWII, whilst simping for the dictator that invaded Ukraine, made my fucking blood boil.
