More ugly behavior:

Ireland women’s basketball team refused to shake hands with Israel before their EuroBasket 2025 qualifier in Riga.

Israel player Dor Saar said on Wednesday that the Ireland team is “quite anti-Semitic”. Basketball Ireland said the comments were “inflammatory and wholly inaccurate”.

Ireland players also lined up for their anthem beside the team’s bench rather than the centre of the court before the game, which Israel won 87-57.

But it’s the Israel players who are being “inflammatory.” I see.… Read the rest

Climate change can’t be stopped, the male takeover of everything that belongs to women can’t be stopped, Trump can’t be stopped.

The Supreme Court seems poised to reject attempts to kick former President Donald Trump off the 2024 ballot.

A definitive ruling for Trump, the leading Republican candidate for president, would largely end efforts in Colorado, Maine and elsewhere to prevent his name from appearing on the ballot.

Conservative and liberal justices alike questioned during arguments Thursday whether Trump can be disqualified from being president again because of his efforts to undo his loss in the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden, ending with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

His “efforts to undo … Read the rest

A whole year.

For the first time, global warming has exceeded 1.5C across an entire year, according to the EU’s climate service. World leaders promised in 2015 to try to limit the long-term temperature rise to 1.5C, which is seen as crucial to help avoid the most damaging impacts. This first year-long breach doesn’t break that landmark Paris agreement, but it does bring the world closer to doing so in the long-term.

Urgent action to cut carbon emissions can still slow warming, scientists say.

But urgent action is not happening and is not going to happen.

El Niño is part of the picture, but the picture remains grim anyway.

An end to El Niño conditions is expected in a

The knots get tighter and tighter.

Transgender Irish dancers can compete in categories that match their gender identity, An Coimisiún Le Rincí Gaelacha (CLRG) has decided. Irish dancing’s governing body made the ruling following legal advice and weeks of debate.

Late last year a teenage transgender girl based in the US qualified to compete in this year’s upcoming world championship. The success of the dancer, who is understood to have previously competed in a male category, prompted some complaints from parents and discussion within the world of Irish dancing.

I don’t know enough about Irish dancing to know if being male makes much of a difference in competitions, but even aside from that…what is the point of adding a … Read the rest

Parkrun deletes everything.

Parkrun has abruptly removed all gender, course and age records from its websites after rejecting a campaign to compel transgender runners to record their sex at birth.

With backing from former Olympic athletes such as swimmer Sharron Davies and marathon runner Mara Yamauchi, groups including Women in Sport and the Policy Exchange have been urging Parkrun to stop allowing entrants to self-identify their gender, accusing event organisers of “sex discrimination”.

What kind of sex discrimination? The kind where you allow, indeed encourage, men to infiltrate women’s sports and thus ruin the sports for women. That kind.

The Policy Exchange found that at least three Parkrun female records were held by transgender women and campaigners said

When will the trendies learn to stop giving material to the Daily Mail?

The British countryside is a ‘racist, colonial’ white space, wildlife charities have insisted in a report to MPs. The claim was made by Wildlife and Countryside Link, a group with 80 members including WWF, the RSPCA and National Trust.

…

The group said ‘our policy recommendations ensure that all people have the right to a healthy natural environment – all people must have access to nature’. But it added: ‘Racist colonial legacies continue to frame nature in the UK as a ”white space” and people of colour as ”out of place” in these spaces and environmental sector.’

Do they? Where? How?

It continued: ‘Cultural barriers

Originally a comment by Artymorty on The T is not the LGB.

Tatchell’s wrong, of course, about bisexuality.

Sexual orientation is not culture-bound, and it doesn’t change with the political tides. There doesn’t appear to be all that much variation in the amount of same-sex sexual behaviour across times and cultures (despite what the artsy elites of ancient Greece and Rome wanted us to believe). There are two instinctual factors in sexual behavour: sexual attraction and sexual aversion, and both are almost universally polarized along the sex axis.

The vast majority of people exhibit a very strong preference for the opposite sex, and a moderate-to-significant aversion to the same sex. A tiny minority exhibit the same pattern but … Read the rest

This is pretty much a straight-up lie.

What most people will understand by “criminalizing life saving health care” is that people are being denied medicines or surgeries or both to treat life-threatening illnesses. What the ACLU of course means by “life saving health care” is surgeries and/or cross-sex hormones to create an artificial resemblance to the opposite sex. The latter is, obviously, not life-saving in any ordinary sense. The underlying idea is that without help in trying to change sex, trans people will kill themselves. That’s not what “life-saving” means.

Think of a scenario in which a man threatens to kill a woman if she won’t have sex with him. Would the ACLU whine at the recalcitrant woman that she … Read the rest

There’s a lesbian visibility week? Who knew?!

DIVA is all worked up about it.

Who else is excited for Lesbian Visibility Week 2024? Taking place between 22 April – 28 April, next year’s celebration of the wonderful lesbian community and all LGBTQIA women and non-binary people is set to be bigger than ever. Therefore, DIVA needs some reinforcements! 

Oh I see, so it’s not a lesbian visibility week, it’s a lesbians and some men visibility week. Kind of a different thing.

We are delighted to be bringing the legendary activist Nancy Kelley onto the DIVA team for Lesbian Visibility Week 2024. Nancy has spent her career campaigning for human rights and social justice on issues ranging from poverty and

Originally a comment by Bruce Gorton on They.

They censor our speech. They undermine our governments with bribery and blackmail. They’ve captured our media, banks, and virtually all of academia.

According to Politico, pro-Palestinian content is much more widely available on social media than pro-Israel content.

Israel has a history of being the most actively condemned nation by the UN. In 2020, al Jazeera reported that Israel was 3 times more likely to be condemned by the UN than other nations.

Member States:

Member States select people to represent them at United Nations meetings and conferences. The individuals selected present credentials to the UN to show that they are legitimate representatives of their country. The credentials are

If women don’t include men in everything there will be a billion suicides every day until there are no men left. No really, there will, and it will be women’s fault.

Below is one of the arguments used by the AHRC that we will be challenging at our appeal. It implies that lesbians holding events for lesbians only, will cause 86% of trans identified people to suicide or think of suicide. It implies a direct link. pic.twitter.com/DVnXRK34QW

— Lesbian Action Group (@ActiveLesbians) February 7, 2024

“The Commission notes that the grant of this exemption may lead to the further exclusion of and discrimination against trans women who are lesbians.”

But women are allowed to “exclude” men sometimes. We need to … Read the rest

This is how the trick is done. And done and done and done, a billion times every day.

I agree that here in the uk Peter homophobia is generally in decline. Yet in America this year alone there are 398 anti LGBT+ laws in State legislates going through. We can’t let our guard down in the rise of the right..https://t.co/YwgWQsIAMi

— classicalet (@classicalet) February 6, 2024

Eeeeeeeek attacks on LGBTQ rights everywhere eeeeeeeek – when what they mean is bills to keep men from taking everything women have or bills to protect children from adults who urge them to ruin their lives. Supergluing the T to the LGB is all for the T, and disastrous for the LGB.… Read the rest

Hur hur shark geddit hur hur a shark bit her arm off, what a funny joke, very activist, much progressive.

Trans activists turn up to protest against a womens surfer speaking at a Library event in Missouri.

Bethany Hamilton, a reknowned Australian women’s surfer who lost her arm to a shark attack in 2003 was recently replaced as an ambassador for Rip Curl Women’s Surfing with a… pic.twitter.com/xg2x8FuLRY

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) February 6, 2024

Bethany Hamilton, a reknowned Australian women’s surfer who lost her arm to a shark attack in 2003 was recently replaced as an ambassador for Rip Curl Women’s Surfing with a transgender man – simply because she spoke out against men in women’s sports. One activist

Poor Trump, he can’t even get Brett Kavanaugh to agree that he has the powers of an absolute monarch.

A Washington, D.C., appeals court issued a blistering takedown Tuesday of Donald Trump’s arguments that he has “presidential immunity” against criminal proceedings—including a savage citation from Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Trump has repeatedly insisted that he cannot be prosecuted for trying to change the 2020 election results because he has presidential immunity. One of his arguments is that the separation of powers prevents state and federal officials from judging official presidential acts. He claims that the 1803 Supreme Court case Marbury v. Madison established this precedent.

But “former President Trump misreads Marbury and its progeny,” the three-judge panel said in

Republicans say Trump had every right to try to steal the presidency via insurrection.

As officials across the country consider whether to bar former President Donald J. Trump from the ballot over his role in the events of Jan. 6, 2021, a contingent of House Republicans are trying to bolster his claim that he did nothing wrong.

More than 60 Republicans — led by Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida and Representative Elise Stefanik of New York — said Tuesday they had signed onto a resolution declaring that Mr. Trump “did not engage in insurrection.”

Babes we all saw him do it; he did it on live tv.… Read the rest

Pushing gay men to be inclooosive of women who call themselves men: peak progressiviosity.

Generations of gay men were taught to be ashamed of desiring male bodies specifically – and now @LNER is pushing its own version of this old homophobia. A 'non-cisgendered gay man'? That's a woman. We know the difference and we are not ashamed to state it. pic.twitter.com/xNVRq977E6

— Jonny Best (@JonnyWorst) February 6, 2024

[Mimsy voice] “This version has different shades of green and blue to include non cisgender gay men.”

Well dudes whatcha waitin for?… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Seanna Watson on Mandatory Xianity.

Canada still has one too:

The purpose of the National Prayer Breakfast is to unite leaders in our capital in order to pray together, build relationships, and seek to walk together in the spirit of Jesus Christ. The National Prayer Breakfast is an annual Christian event and is historically offered under the auspices of the Speaker of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Commons on behalf of the Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast Group.

It’s also sponsored by the Canadian Fellowship Foundation, which appears to be related to the US group of the same name (though details are sparse, and I occasionally have wondered if Sharlet might know … Read the rest

Khadija Khan at the Freethinker:

The culture of intolerance that has grown over time in the UK has undermined the ethos of British schools. As Islamist zealots grow stronger in influence in our society, a number of schools known for their secular, inclusive and apolitical approach, such as St Stephen’s Primary School, Parkfield Community School, Batley Grammar School, Kettlethorpe High School, and Barclay Primary School, have been caving in to their demands one after the other.

There has been an attempt by Muslim fundamentalists in the UK to politicise educational institutions, in order to gain clout in [the] social and political sphere.  And now these nefarious elements have come out in force to assert their intolerant

Good news but with a catch.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected former President Donald J. Trump’s claim that he was immune to charges of plotting to subvert the results of the 2020 election, ruling that he must go to trial on a criminal indictment accusing him of seeking to overturn his loss to President Biden.

We should damn well hope so. But he’ll just take it to the Supremes and they’ll roll over for him.

The unanimous ruling, by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, handed Mr. Trump a significant defeat. But it was unlikely to be the final word on his claims of executive immunity: Mr. Trump,

Another win.

🚨🚨Dundee Women's Festival🚨🚨

Please see attached our statement regarding our exclusion from the Dundee Women's Festival 2024 Programme of Events. pic.twitter.com/Sz16Kxl4VD

— Women Won’t Wheesht (@WWWheesht) February 5, 2024

More from The Courier:

A campaign group controversially excluded from Dundee Women’s Festival is now being invited to take part in the programme.

Women Won’t Wheesht, a grassroots women’s rights organisation in Scotland, heard on Monday from solicitors acting on behalf of the festival to confirm their inclusion.

The climbdown comes after the group claimed it would consider legal action after being told by festival organisers last month that their application had been rejected.

It’s so inspiring when feminist women are excluded from women’s events because they’re not … Read the rest