I don’t know…I see why they had this impulse, but I’m not sure it was a good idea. A university in Calgary canceled a talk by an ex-Muslim, though it said it would welcome him at a later time.

Armin Navabi, who lives in British Columbia, was being brought in by the Atheist Society of Calgary to share his journey and discuss the reasons he doesn’t believe the Islamic faith can be reformed.

But now he says he’s disappointed he won’t get a chance to engage in some passionate discussions with staff and students, including those who still practice Islam, because of MRU’s last-minute decision.

But it’s not even a week yet. Emotions are raw. I get that. I … Read the rest

Trump says the same damn thing three times in the first 23 seconds of this clip: he uses Twitter to get the word out because the news media are fake. Three times.

I didn’t listen to the rest of the seconds, which are Fox News.

pic.twitter.com/UhTjBuWY2h

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 21, 2019

… Read the rest

Now here’s a surprise: for once it’s the violence-threatener who has backed out.

The headline act of a transgender event in Dundee has pulled out after calling on people to “throat-punch” radical feminists.

Peyton Rose, a transgender singer-songwriter from Edinburgh who was to top the bill at the Trans Pride Scotland event in Dundee next week, posted the tweet last Friday.

Above an image of a leaflet distributed last summer by For Women Scotland, a women’s rights group, she wrote: “If you catch one of these assholes in the act, please undo their work or throat-punch them.”

She deactivated her Twitter account afterwards and has since withdrawn from performing at the event.

A spokeswoman at For Women Scotland said

If the Smithsonian declines to display your enormous lurid ugly painting, do you have a legal case against it for declining? My guess would be no, because there is no obligation in law to display all paintings that are offered. Just think what art museums and galleries would be like if there were.

An artist called Julian Raven thinks otherwise.

A Trump portraitist whose lawsuit against the Smithsonian Institution and National Portrait Gallery director Kim Sajet was thrown out in December is appealing the district court’s decision, arguing that his work deserves to be shown in the hallowed institution.

Yeah see I don’t think that’s something you can argue in a legal sense. I don’t think that’s a legal … Read the rest

Julie Bindel on why abused women need women-only shelters:

My first ever volunteer post was back in 1980, at a Women’s Aid refuge for victims of domestic violence. I will never forget the sight of those women coming in through the doors, crying with desperate relief at having escaped abusive husbands; finding comfort in the company of other women who had experienced the same.

Those services saved many lives, Julie says, but now, between the Right defunding them and the Left forcing them to serve trans women, they’re in peril.

This is not actually [a] new problem. It may be a new front in the transgender turf wars in the UK. But Vancouver Rape Relief (VRR) a

Some are more equal than others:

Green and other activists for transgender rights view it as deeply offensive to deliberately use the wrong pronoun for a trans person. Doing so could be an offence under the Malicious Communications Act, which makes it a crime to send messages that are indecent or grossly offensive, threatening, or contain information which is false or believed to be false, if the purpose for sending it is to cause distress or anxiety.

People can view anything as anything; that doesn’t make it true. People can “view” something as deeply offensive when it isn’t, or when reasonable people would agree it isn’t, or when reasonable people would disagree over whether it is or isn’t, … Read the rest

Meanwhile in another part of the forest…

The Open University was forced to cancel a conference on prison reform following threats from the transgender lobby, it has emerged.

Is there really such a thing as the transgender lobby? Not exactly, but there is a mandatory orthodoxy and a large group of people eager to enforce it, so maybe that’s an okay label for it.

The CCJS, an educational charity, has been accused of “transphobia” for its stance that transgender female prisoners should be incarcerated separately from female prisoners.

“The Open University faced quite significant pressure from transgender activists. They received a number of emails where some of the language was extraordinarily overheated,” a source told The Telegraph.

It’s odd … Read the rest

Justin Weinberg at Daily Nous, part 2:

There did not appear to be many such calls to pull the interview, though. This is not to suggest that a certain number of such calls, itself, is sufficient reason to pull an interview, but it does speak, perhaps, to concerns editor and owner Andrew Gallix might have about the survival of his publication.

Besides the feedback on social media, four of the magazine’s editorial board members resigned in protest of the publication of the interview. [Update: they are Eley Williams, David Winters, Hestia Peppe, and Joanna Walsh; for those curious, none of the four is an academic philosopher.]

So four members of the editorial board resigned in protest of the not-silencing … Read the rest

Justin Weinberg of Daily Nous was on it promptly:

Richard Marshall, who has conducted astonishingly rich interviews with hundreds of philosophers for 3:AM Magazine, has resigned from the publication over its editor’s decision to remove one of his interviews from public view.

He quotes Leiter then shares some tweets by the deeply unpleasant Christa Peterson (which poisons the well a good deal, in my view). Then:

There were also a handful of calls for the interview to be deleted, ranging from the thread that begins with

disappointed/disgusted at @3ammagazine choosing to amplify transphobia in a fawning, uncritical interview. in a world where trans comrades are regularly attacked, the publication of this piece is an act of violence. yr

More of the same:

i've just woken up to the news that @3ammagazine has de-platformed me by removing my interview with richard marshall, because of the comments i made about gender. and even though the bulk of the interview was about my other work. h/t @BrianLeiter. https://t.co/HQa4tlOBsI

— Dr Holly Lawford-Smith (@aytchellesse) March 19, 2019

Leiter Reports:

3AM Magazine’s radical chic motto–“whatever it is, we’re against it”–turns out to be bollocks

Their real motto is “whatever right-thinking zealots in our little corner of the universe agree on, we’re for it.” The magazine has withdrawn Richard Marshall’s interview with philosopher Holly Lawford-Smith (Melbourne) because in the course of the interview she denied that trans women are women, and expressed

Michelle Goldberg asks a very good question: why don’t Princess Ivanka and Prince Jared have impostor syndrome when they are in fact impostors? Why indeed?

According to “Kushner, Inc.,” Gary Cohn, former director of the National Economic Council, has told people that Ivanka Trump thinks she could someday be president. “Her father’s reign in Washington, D.C., is, she believes, the beginning of a great American dynasty,” writes Ward. Kushner, whose pre-White House experience included owning a boutique newspaper and helming a catastrophically ill-timed real estate deal, has arrogated to himself substantial parts of American foreign policy. According to Ward, shortly after Rex Tillerson was confirmed as secretary of state, Kushner told him “to leave Mexico to him because he’d

Aww Trump has a new twin.

President Trump hosted Jair Bolsonaro, the Brazilian president, at the White House on Tuesday, and it was something like looking in the mirror.

Like other authoritarian leaders that Mr. Trump has embraced since taking office, Mr. Bolsonaro is an echo of the American president: a brash nationalist whose populist appeal comes partly from his use of Twitter and his history of making crude statements about women, gay people and indigenous groups.

Isn’t that sweet? They’re simpatico.

Since taking office, Mr. Trump has repeatedly confronted and challenged the United States’ closest democratic allies, including the leaders of Canada, Germany and France, while speaking with glowing admiration of America’s adversaries.

At the top of Mr.

Oh, gawd, here’s a book no one needs: The Four Horsemen: The Conversation That Sparked an Atheist Revolution.

Noooooooooo no no no please no.

But it’s too late, it already exists.

This meandering, unmoderated discussion among Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and Dennett, a group dubbed the New Atheists, presents their unique positions in provocative but underdeveloped arguments. Composed mainly of transcriptions of a conversation among the four that was posted to YouTube in 2007, the book opens with introductory essays highlighting key points from the three surviving thinkers (Hitchens died in 2011).

I saw it via a tweet from CFI.

Today is the U.S. release of "The Four Horsemen: The Discussion that Sparked an Atheist Revolution," with new essays by

Devin Nunes is suing, suing I tell you!

Stung by obscene and pointed criticism, Representative Devin Nunes, a Republican from California, has sued Twitter and three users for defamation, claiming the users smeared him and the platform allowed it to happen because of a political agenda.

Poor man. Has no one ever told him that politicians have to expect a lot of harsh criticism?

Though absorbing criticism comes with the territory for politicians, the complaint described the objectionable tweets from the three users as something “that no human being should ever have to bear and suffer in their whole life.”

Welllll, Dev, you kind of signed up for it.

To make his case, he cited a wide variety of

Morgane Oger continues to peak trans anyone who is paying attention.

The Cost Of Prejudice:

Vancouver Rape Relief would need 9000 donors giving $10 per month each to replace their $1.1 million annual income that relies on govt contracts and a charitable status – both incompatible with discrimination against women on any basis whatsoever.

— Morgane Oger M.S.M. (@MorganeOgerBC) March 18, 2019

The replies are universally hostile.

Wait, not quite, one trans woman is on Team Oger.

Are there any inclusive organizations in the area that this funding might be better suited for? This seems like a great opportunity for a more inclusive service provider to grow and become the primary care center in Vancouver.

— Julie Rei Goldstein (@JulieRei)

This one in particular…

The Fake News Media is working overtime to blame me for the horrible attack in New Zealand. They will have to work very hard to prove that one. So Ridiculous!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2019

What a filthy human being he is. He couldn’t possibly care less, could he. All he cares about is what people say about him.

It’s not ridiculous. Race hatred is race hatred; xenophobia is xenophobia. Trump holds frequent rallies at which he spews both at a screaming audience, and that stuff is not inert. Trump absolutely is encouraging and fostering racist xenophobic rage, and that has effects. That doesn’t make the Christchurch slaughter all his fault, of course, … Read the rest

Oh my I bet Trump is really jealous of Volodya now.

This week, Russian lawmakers advanced a package of new legislation aimed at curtailing internet freedom. Among the laws awaiting the president’s eventual signature is a measure that would allow authorities to jail individuals for insulting government officials online.

Yeah. That’s what Trump would like to see.

Russia is not China, and the country still has a relatively boisterous online culture. But the proposed laws would widen the definition of restricted speech, calling for penalties of up to 15 days in administrative detention for those found guilty of posting information that shows “disrespect for society, the state, (and) state symbols of the Russian Federation,” — including, presumably,