You can “know” and yet not know

Oct 22nd, 2017 11:26 am | By

Janice Turner in the Times considers knowing and not knowing. Albert Speer claimed not to know about the fate of all those evacuated Jews, but eventually he admitted “sensing” it.

[Gitta] Sereny replies: “You say you sensed something. But you cannot ‘sense’ in a void; ‘sensing’ is an inner realisation of knowledge. Basically if you ‘sensed’ then you knew.” Speer shakes his head and thanks God that Gitta was not prosecuting him at Nuremberg.

The same applies to that much-abused word “intuition.” Intuition is based on what we know, but in such a way that the specific sources aren’t clear to us. “Educated guess” is a much better way of saying it. Sereny is so right that you can’t “sense” (or intuit or make an educated guess) in a void.

What is knowing, how do we know, how do others know, how do we know how they know.

When the horrifying scope of Jimmy Savile’s crimes was exposed I asked a former tabloid executive, a long-time trader in kiss-and-tells, if he’d ever heard rumours. Well, he said, the occasional young woman would pitch up claiming Savile had molested her, without proof, so she was sent away. But, no, he didn’t know. What about those girls? He bristled: look, nobody knew.

Jesus. Says it all, doesn’t it. “We were told, repeatedly, but no, we didn’t know.”

Mind you, I can see how it happens. People say things; people quarrel with each other; work life inevitably involves clashes; it’s not always wise to take every claim as entirely true and accurate.

But at the same time – people with less power are less believed than people with more. Male producers have more power than young female employees; it’s not always wise to ignore every claim, either.

Knowing is a strange business. You can “know” and yet not know. Evidence of dark deeds may present itself, dance right across your path, be the source of gossip and in-jokes; become so enmeshed in everyday life it sets the protocols by which people work. Yet when a scandal breaks people still cover their mouths and cry “Who knew?”

The fact that Weinstein was a running joke was very telling. Then again I think I read (I can’t remember where) that Seth MacFarlane’s “joke” about not having to pretend to be attracted to Weinstein wasn’t a joke but an angry pretend-joke, because MacFarlane knew one of Weinstein’s victims and was in fact angry.

Quentin Tarantino, whose career as a director was made by Harvey Weinstein, has said: “I knew enough to do more than I did. I didn’t take responsibility for what I heard.” No kidding. Not from second-hand rumours either. His drinking buddy Weinstein was preying upon his then girlfriend, Mira Sorvino, and she told him about the hotel room assaults. But Tarantino filed them under an infatuation, “a Svengali thing”, a “1950s secretary being chased around her desk by her boss” jape.

There are plenty of people – men and anti-feminist women – who think we should go on filing such things that way.

In her fascinating book Wilful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at our Peril, Margaret Heffernan examines the prevalence of this mindset. In law, wilful blindness is information you could know, should know, but have chosen not to know. This principle means that if stopped at an airport with a suitcase full of heroin it is no defence to say that you did not look inside. Wilful blindness, Heffernan argues, is how an affair can remain unacknowledged for years, why US troops in Iraq were silent about human rights violations in Abu Ghraib, how the Catholic Church concealed endemic child abuse, why Enron bankers or those flogging sub-prime mortgages did not confront the financial apocalypse they sensed was looming. It was easier not to “know”.

There’s the bystander effect, and groupthink, and all that. It can be damn difficult to be the only one making a fuss. That’s one reason journalists are so useful: making a fuss is what they do. Janice has experience of that.

In Britain, there is no better example of wilful blindness than the Rotherham sex abuse scandal. Jayne Senior, the youth worker who blew the whistle, spent years listening to victims, collating reports. But as she shoved this material in the faces of councillors, police and social services, it was as though she was invisible. They simply refused to know.

Denis MacShane, MP for Rotherham for 18 years, throughout the reign of the grooming gangs, has always maintained he knew nothing about the 1,400 victims. But he does not refute that on March 24, 2006 he attended a conference in Rotherham hosted by Jayne Senior called Every Child Matters where she and other experts gave presentations about the crimes. Indeed MacShane made a speech! Yet after my Times interview with Senior was published, he summoned me to his house to swear on his life that right until it broke he had no knowledge of the scandal. What about that conference? It was just another constituency event. So many, they blur into one. He repeated over and over: he did not know.

It’s the same with Irish industrial schools and Magdalen laundries: people knew but they didn’t know.



Respect for the office

Oct 22nd, 2017 10:21 am | By

Three times now.

The president of the United States.



A simmering resentment of civilians

Oct 22nd, 2017 10:16 am | By

People who research military-civilian relations were not universally thrilled by Kelly’s talk the other day.

Kelly’s defense of Trump — beginning with a vivid description of how dead troops make their way home — turned into a lecture on how Americans do not understand the military community’s sacrifice. And it alarmed some of those who study relations between the military and society.

Former senior officials such as retired Gen. David Petraeus and retired Adm. Mike Mullen have argued that divisions between troops and civilians can exacerbate misconceptions about post-traumatic stress and make obtaining civilian employment difficult for veterans. And they have championed efforts to bridge the gaps in understanding.

Kelly’s remarks work against those efforts, said Kori Schake, a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and co-editor of the book “Warriors and Citizens” with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. “My guess is that military families will pull themselves further into the community because they don’t want to be politicized,” Schake said.

And at the same time some of us civilians will be put off by many of Kelly’s assumptions…as well as his defense of Trump and his refusal to admit his untruths about Representative Wilson.

Kelly’s remarks broaden what had been a relatively insular discussion among military families, veterans and scholars. It begins with a basic premise — that civil society and military circles are culturally, socially and geographically distinct, a form of isolation with real consequences for the country.

“The last 16 years of war have been carried by a narrow slice of the population, and the burden is heavy but not wide,” said Phil Carter, a former Army officer and director of the military, veterans and society program at Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank.

Carter said that Kelly’s comments echo a prevalent attitude in some military and veteran circles — a feeling of pride for taking on a tough job in some of the most dangerous places on Earth, coupled with a simmering resentment of civilians oblivious to their mission.

Well for one thing the “mission” is only as good as it is. A bad or dubious mission isn’t the fault of the military, but “civilians” shouldn’t be expected to cheer every mission simply to cheer up the military. For another thing the danger of being in the military is not the only occupational danger there is.

Kelly’s words Thursday worried Carter and others. His somber ordering of how a dead service member is moved from battlefield to burial was a helpful glimpse for Americans who have not experienced that trauma. But Carter said he paired the idea with a belief that most civilians could not conceive — or intentionally fail — to understand that burden.

“It was odd. The military does not have a monopoly on loss and hardship,” Carter said.

Exactly. Kelly was basically bullshitting us, in a somewhat Hollywood way – as Trump always intended. He chose people who “look the part,” so he chose steely John Kelly rather than some moon-faced guy with a friendly smile. Kelly knows loss and hardship but so do most civilians; it shouldn’t be a tool for bullying people into not objecting when a president bullies black women he dislikes.

Another moment also struck a dissonant note. When Kelly ended his remarks by accusing Rep. Frederica S. Wilson (D-Fla.) of using a dead soldier for political points, he told reporters he was only interested in questions from those who had a direct connection to those killed in combat.

“Is anyone here a Gold Star parent or sibling? Does anyone here know a Gold Star parent or sibling?” Kelly asked before taking a question about Niger.

Analysts were taken back by his stance, which they said suggested discourse about those killed in action can only reasonably occur in the walled-off segments of society where losses on the battlefield are most directly and painfully felt.

Which would translate directly into: civilians cannot question the military. No good.

That portion of Kelly’s reaction nagged at Phil Klay, an Iraq War veteran who wrote the short story collection “Redeployment,” winner of the National Book Award.

“Veterans feel very keenly that America is disengaged from these wars. The problem is not going to be fixed with the idea only people who are personally involved have the right to ask questions,” Klay said. “It’s the exact opposite.”

The notion of military service as the purest form of public virtue, at the cost of other kinds of service to others, is an alarming development, he said.

“Military courage is something society needs to have and we need to valorize it,” Klay said. “But we also need a civic body that makes this a country worth fighting for.”

In particular, Klay said, the politicized discourse around service, and who understands its burdens, obscures legitimate questions that all citizens need to engage with, beginning, in this moment, with why U.S. forces were in Niger in the first place.

Why indeed. From what I can gather it was something to do with assisting local resistance to Islamist groups (Boko Haram type groups), but it doesn’t seem to be clear what the something was and is.

Civilians get to ask.



Never mind

Oct 22nd, 2017 8:35 am | By

The WHO has changed its mind about Mugabe.

The World Health Organization has revoked the appointment of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe as a goodwill ambassador following a widespread outcry.

“I have listened carefully to all who have expressed their concerns,” WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.

He had previously praised Zimbabwe for its commitment to public health.

But critics pointed out that Zimbabwe’s healthcare system had collapsed under Mr Mugabe’s 30-year rule.

To say nothing of his dire human rights record.

The about-face will raise questions over the leadership of the WHO’s new director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

The decision to honour Mr Mugabe is likely to have been taken several weeks ago, and at no point did Mr Tedros seem aware that appointing as goodwill ambassador a man who has been accused of human rights abuses, and of neglecting to the point of collapse his own country’s health service, might be controversial.

The WHO was supposed to be embarking on a new era of reform. Instead, it is mired in a public relations disaster.

There’s a lot of that about.



They’re holding her hostage

Oct 21st, 2017 5:40 pm | By

Michelle Goldberg has more on the government’s effort to force a teenager to have a baby she doesn’t want to have.

In early September, a 17-year-old girl from Central America was apprehended trying cross the border between the United States and Mexico. After being taken to a shelter for unaccompanied minors in South Texas to await immigration proceedings, she learned she was pregnant. The girl, referred to as Jane Doe in court filings, was adamant that she wanted an abortion. Because of Texas’ parental consent law, she needed to go to court to get a judge’s permission, which she did with help from Jane’s Due Process, a nonprofit legal organization that provides representation to pregnant minors in Texas. Jane’s Due Process collected money for the procedure from local abortion funds. It was scheduled for Sept. 28, near the end of Doe’s first trimester.

Then the Trump administration stepped in. Repaying his loyal supporters on the religious right, Donald Trump has given federal appointments to a number of anti-abortion activists. They’ve been working quietly to dismantle access to reproductive health care while the country is distracted by the president’s pyrotechnic outrages…

E. Scott Lloyd had little professional experience with refugees when Trump put him in charge of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which falls under the Department of Health and Human Services, in March. He did, however, have a long history of anti-abortion activism, and had written several articles decrying birth control. (One piece was subtitled, “Why You Can’t Be Pro-Life and Pro-Contraception.”)

What does anti-abortion activism have to do with refugee resettlement? Oh, nothing, but refugee resettlement does offer rich opportunities to persecute women, so naturally President Pussygrabber gave the job to Scott Lloyd.

At O.R.R., which operates the shelters that house unaccompanied minors like Doe, Lloyd was given authority over uniquely vulnerable pregnant girls. Experts estimate that around 60 percent of female migrants have been raped. Brigitte Amiri of the A.C.L.U., the lead attorney on Doe’s case, told me that at any one time, several hundred to a thousand pregnant unaccompanied minors are in U.S. custody. Under Lloyd, O.R.R. has banned shelters from helping any of these girls get abortions, instead mandating that they receive “life-affirming options counseling.”

So the Texas Jane Doe is one of hundreds, by now maybe thousands. Scott Lloyd must be so happy.

Evidently, word went down to the shelter where Doe was housed that, despite the judicial authorization she’d received, the staff was not to cooperate with her abortion. On Sept. 23, her lawyers say, she was taken to an anti-abortion crisis pregnancy center, where she was forced to view an ultrasound. One of her lawyers told me that Lloyd had the shelter call Doe’s mother in her home country to tell her about the pregnancy, even though she said her mother was physically abusive. Throughout all this, Rochelle Garza, Doe’s court-appointed guardian, told me that the girl remained “unwavering in her decision to terminate the pregnancy despite the emotional abuse that she is enduring.”

A legal battle ensued. While it was fought, Garza said, the girl was placed under constant one-on-one supervision, and barred from all physical activity. When the shelter’s residents were taken on an outing to the park, Doe was made to sit on a bench while the other kids played. “They’re holding her hostage,” Amiri told me. “This is the most insane case I’ve ever worked on in my career.”

Hatred of women just never goes out of fashion.



Only men have rights

Oct 21st, 2017 4:57 pm | By

Meanwhile Trump is getting his jollies by forcing women to have babies they don’t want to have.

Jane Doe is a 17-year-old undocumented immigrant detained in Texas who is 15 weeks pregnant and is seeking an abortion. The Constitution grants her that right, but the Trump administration is determined to subvert it as part of its war on women’s reproductive rights.

Late Friday, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled that the teenager must be allowed to have an abortion, but it gave the federal government until Oct. 31 to find her a sponsor so that the government itself does not have to arrange for the procedure.

She’s in Texas. Texas has passed a law outlawing abortion after 20 weeks.

The ruling came hours after the court heard the case, in which the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement said that if it released her to see a doctor it would “facilitate” an abortion, an action it said would contradict its interest in “promoting child birth and fetal life.”

What interest? Since when does the Office of Refugee Resettlement have an interest in promoting child birth? Let alone “fetal life”?

It doesn’t seem to matter to the government that adult women in detention by law have access to abortion, or that this teenager has followed Texas law and obtained a waiver from a state court allowing her to get an abortion without her parents’ consent. And while the Office of Refugee Resettlement refuses to let employees at the shelter where she is being held take her to get an abortion, it ordered them to bring her to a “crisis pregnancy center” with the goal of talking her out of the procedure.

Why? Because Trump put an anti-abortion maniac in charge of the ORR, and the maniac is using his new job to force women to bear children they don’t want to bear.

To all who wondered why religious conservatives struck a Faustian bargain with a morally compromised candidate, this case provides one answer. Anti-abortion advocates, from Vice President Mike Pence on down, find President Trump useful for converting their beliefs into policy.

At the health department, Teresa Manning, a former analyst with the conservative Family Research Council who opposes abortion and most forms of contraception, is deputy assistant secretary for population affairs, in charge of the Title X program. The program provides family planning funding for four million poor or uninsured Americans. Charmaine Yoest, former president for Americans United for Life, is the department’s assistant secretary of public affairs. Matthew Bowman, who worked for Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian anti-abortion legal advocacy group, is now a lawyer at the department, and a reported architect of new Obamacare rules making it easier for some companies to claim religious or moral exemptions to requirements that they cover the cost of birth control. Katy Talento, an abortion foe who wrote an article beginning, “Is chemical birth control causing miscarriages of already-conceived children? What about breaking your uterus for good?” is now a health policy adviser on the White House Domestic Policy Council.

Trump doesn’t give a rat’s ass about The Holy Fetus but he does love making life hell for women.



Another one

Oct 21st, 2017 12:48 pm | By

Tariq Ramadan is accused of rape.

A rape and sexual assault complaint was filed on Friday in France against Swiss Islamist and Professor Tariq Ramadan by former Salafist Henda Ayari.

The complaint filed with the Rouen prosecutor’s office in northwestern France, by the Salafist turned secular activist, detailed criminal acts of rape, sexual assault, violence, harassment and intimidation, according to document reviewed by AFP.

The Liberators Association, which Henda Ayari is president of, said on Facebook that she was “a victim of something very serious several years ago” but did not reveal the name of her aggressor for safety reasons.

In her book “I Chose to be Free”, published in November 2016, she described her aggressor as Zubair.

She said in her writings that she met him at his hotel in Paris after the Islamist thinker gave a lecture.

“I will not give precise details of the acts he has done to me. It is enough to know that he has benefited greatly from my weakness,” Ayari wrote.

She said in her book that when she rebelled against him at one point he screamed at her, insulted her, slapped her and treated her violently.

“I confirm today, that the famous Zubair is Tariq Ramadan,” Ayari published on Facebook.

According to Jonas Haddad, Ayari’s lawyer, the plaintiff did not report the assault earlier, out of fear.

“After revelations over the past few days of rape and sexual assault claims in the media, Henda has decided to say what happened to her and take legal action,” he told AFP.

Ramadan has denied it.

Ayari’s police report was filed as millions of women across the globe in the past week have come forward to share personal accounts of sexual assault and sexual harassment following allegations recently made public against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.

Iceberg; tip.



What military discipline in the White House sounds like

Oct 21st, 2017 12:12 pm | By

We worried from the start about Trump’s penchant for hiring military people for his top jobs. We were wary about the excitement when Kelly took over as chief of staff…but we were also so sick of Trump’s rages and tantrums and explosions that we perhaps hoped it was worth the risk.

It wasn’t. Masha Gessen does a great job of saying why. She argues that Kelly’s press briefing was like a preview of what a military coup here would look like.

First Kelly argued that people who criticize Trump don’t know what they’re talking about because they haven’t served in the military.

Fallen soldiers, Kelly said, join “the best one per cent this country produces.” Here, the chief of staff again reminded his audience of its ignorance: “Most of you, as Americans, don’t know them. Many of you don’t know anyone who knows any of them. But they are the very best this country produces.”

Yes well they should have gotten a gardener up there to tell us gardeners are the best one per cent, or how about a fashion marketer or a real estate tycoon?

No, soldiers aren’t the best one per cent. A strong military is an unhappy necessity (or not), but they don’t become as gods.

Workers in construction and farming risk death too.

A total of 4,836 fatal work injuries were recorded in the United States in 2015, a slight increase from the 4,821 fatal injuries reported in 2014, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.

Also I don’t believe Kelly’s claim that soldiers are all doing exactly what they wanted to do. The military is also a job with some good benefits; that’s part of the motivation too.

Kelly also argued that Trump did the right thing because he did exactly what his general told him to do.

A week earlier, Kelly had taken over the White House press briefing in an attempt to quash another scandal and ended up using the phrase “I was sent in,” twice, in reference to his job in the White House. Now he seemed to be saying that, since he was sent in to control the President and the President had, this time, more or less carried out his instructions, the President should not be criticized.

It’s just foolish to think that telling Trump what he should do is adequate. Trump is not equipped to make that kind of phone call, not equipped in any way.

It was his last argument that was the worst.

At the end of the briefing, he said that he would take questions only from those members of the press who had a personal connection to a fallen soldier, followed by those who knew a Gold Star family. Considering that, a few minutes earlier, Kelly had said most Americans didn’t even know anyone who knew anyone who belonged to the “one per cent,” he was now explicitly denying a majority of Americans—or the journalists representing them—the right to ask questions. This was a new twist on the Trump Administration’s technique of shunning and shaming unfriendly members of the news media, except this time, it was framed explicitly in terms of national loyalty. As if on cue, the first reporter allowed to speak inserted the phrase “Semper Fi”—a literal loyalty oath—into his question.

Before walking off the stage, Kelly told Americans who haven’t served in the military that he pities them. “We don’t look down upon those of you who haven’t served,” he said. “In fact, in a way we are a little bit sorry because you’ll have never have experienced the wonderful joy you get in your heart when you do the kinds of things our servicemen and women do—not for any other reason than that they love this country.”

Nonsense. They are bound to have other reasons. Loving the country may be the overriding reason for many or most, but it can’t be the only reason for all of them. Kelly is talking as if they all do become a Higher kind of human by joining the military, and yes, that is a bordering-on-fascist way of thinking.

When Kelly replaced the ineffectual Reince Priebus as the chief of staff, a sigh of relief emerged: at least the general would impose some discipline on the Administration. Now we have a sense of what military discipline in the White House sounds like.

Discipline is necessary but not sufficient. So not sufficient.



Speaking of character

Oct 21st, 2017 11:32 am | By

Bottom line: Kelly should have apologized to Representative Frederika Wilson the minute the video surfaced. He should have admitted that he badly misrepresented what she said and did at that FBI event, and did it in a damaging harmful way. He claimed she did bad, shocking things that she didn’t do, and he claimed that he and many others there were stunned, stunned by those things – those things that she didn’t do. He’s the White House chief of staff, he said those things about a Congressional representative (and by the way a black woman, and his boss has quite a record of publicly trashing black women), he said those things that are harmful to her reputation, and they were false. He should have copped to it immediately and apologized energetically.

He has not done that.

So now what he said about her becomes a bunch of lies. He may well have thought they were true when he said them, but he knows they’re not true now – and he’s not admitting it and not apologizing. Conduct unbecoming, if you ask me.

In fact conduct cowardly and weaselly and self-serving.

Also – he may have thought they were true when he said them, but then we have to ask where did they come from. Why did his imagination conjure up such an ugly fiction about Frederika Wilson? We have to wonder.

Ryan Lizza says Kelly is paying the price for taking a job with Trump.

As was quickly reported, the video of Wilson’s nine-minute speech is online. Wilson did tell a story about how she; John Boehner, the House Speaker at the time; and Obama worked together to make sure that the building was named after the two slain F.B.I. agents in time for the event. She said nothing about securing funding (she was, in fact, not in Congress when the money was authorized) and nothing about “how she took care of her constituents.” She asked law-enforcement officials present to stand up “so we can applaud you and what you do,” adding, “we’re proud of you, we’re proud of your courage.” She then told the tragic story of the two agents who lost their lives. The speech bears no resemblance to the speech Kelly described. The White House chief of staff maligned a congresswoman, whose only crime seemed to be criticizing Trump, with a series of lies.

When a reporter at the White House on Friday asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders about the glaring discrepancy between Kelly’s account and the actual speech, she said that the White House stood by his remarks. “There was a lot of grandstanding,” she said. “He was stunned that she had taken that opportunity to make it about herself.” The reporter pressed: “He was wrong yesterday in talking about getting the money. The money was secured before she came into Congress.”

He was wrong that she didn’t mention the agents who were killed; wrong that she bragged about it; wrong that she took the credit; entirely wrong about the emphasis of what she said.

Sanders shot back with the kind of statement that would be normal in an authoritarian country, suggesting that Kelly’s previous military service placed him beyond criticism. “If you want to go after General Kelly, that’s up to you,” she said. “But I think that that—if you want to get into a debate with a four-star Marine general, I think that that’s something highly inappropriate.”

No, it is not. Kelly is the chief of staff and a political operative. He held a press conference and told a lie that smeared one of Trump’s political opponents. No government official’s military background, no matter how honorable, makes him immune to criticism, especially given the subject at hand. Sanders’s response was unnerving. But the bigger lesson of the episode is that no matter how good one’s intentions are, when you go to work for Trump, you will end up paying for it with your reputation. For Kelly, not even his four stars prevented that.

It’s morally revolting that he refuses to withdraw what he said and ap0logize.



Hedgerows

Oct 21st, 2017 10:59 am | By

A little about hedgerows from The Wildlife Trusts:

Criss-crossing the countryside, hedgerows – long rows of bushes, often with trees rising among them – can be seen dividing up our farmland and landscapes. They may be planted or they may be the remnants of ancient wooded areas, but they are mainly used as barriers to prevent livestock from escaping from the fields or to form boundaries between parishes.

Two thirds of England has been continuously hedged for over a thousand years, so many of our older hedgerows are a window into our past. They can range in date from medieval boundaries to the results of the 19th century Enclosures Act when many of the open fields and commons were divided up into smaller pockets. These older hedgerows support an amazing diversity of plants and animals and often have archaeological important old banks and ditches associated with them.

In the UK, there are currently about 450,000 km of hedgerow left. Of this, about 190,000 km are thought to be ancient or species-rich. These hedges are mainly found in southern England and southern Wales, and are much scarcer in Scotland.

With nectar-rich blossom in the spring, insects buzzing in the dense thickets in summer and red berries abound in autumn, hedgerows provide wildlife with a rich larder. In fact, they are so good for wildlife that 130 UK BAP (Biodiversity Action Plan) priority species are associated with them.

Hedgerows are often a mix of shrub and tree species such as hawthorn, blackthorn, hazel, ash and oak, interwoven with climbers like traveller’s-joy and honeysuckle. Banks and ditches fill with flowers like hedge bedstraw and red campion, and butterflies, such as the rare black and brown hairstreaks, purple emperor and pearl-bordered fritillary, use them for nectar or to lay their eggs.

Image result for hedgerows

Image result for hedgerows

 



Character

Oct 21st, 2017 10:18 am | By

Trump last week put out a proclamation declaring October 15 through October 21 National Character Counts Week.

The first, tone-setting paragraph:

We celebrate National Character Counts Week because few things are more important than cultivating strong character in all our citizens, especially our young people.  The grit and integrity of our people, visible throughout our history, defines the soul of our Nation.  This week, we reflect on the character of determination, resolve, and honor that makes us proud to be American.

Note the impoverished idea of “character.” Note how militaryesque it is. Note how easily it can be adopted by bullies. Strength, grit, integrity, determination, resolve, and honor. Those are all useful qualities, to be sure, but only used for the right purposes, only combined with better, more generous, more other-regarding qualities. They’re useful qualities for bullies and fascists and criminals, too.

As President Reagan declared, “There is no institution more vital to our Nation’s survival than the American family.  Here the seeds of personal character are planted, the roots of public virtue first nourished.”  Character is built slowly.  Our actions — often done first out of duty — become habits ingrained in the way we treat others and ourselves.  As parents, educators, and civic and church leaders, we must always work to cultivate strength of character in our Nation’s youth.

Emphasis added. That’s the only mention so far of what should be the core of character: treating others decently.

Character can be hard to define, but we see it in every day acts — raising and providing for a family with loving devotion, working hard to make the most of an education, and giving back to devastated communities.  These and so many other acts big and small constitute the moral fiber of American culture.  Character is forged around kitchen tables, built in civic organizations, and developed in houses of worship.  It is refined by our choices, large and small, and manifested in what we do when we think no one is paying attention.

As we strive every day to improve our character and that of our Nation, we pause and thank those individuals whose strength of character has inspired us and who have provided a supporting hand during times of need.  In particular, we applaud families as they perform the often thankless task of raising men and women of character.

Emphasis added. Those three bolded bits are the only mentions of altruism as character.

Maybe it had to be this vague and empty because of the guy who was signing it. Trump has a gruesomely selfish and belligerent character, so maybe his speech people were trying to keep the ironies to a minimum.

Anyway, this past week was National Character Counts Week. That went well.



Insect holocaust

Oct 21st, 2017 9:25 am | By

Alarming.

The abundance of flying insects has plunged by three-quarters over the past 25 years, according to a new study that has shocked scientists.

Make that terrifying. That’s a huge tanking in such a short time.

Insects are an integral part of life on Earth as both pollinators and prey for other wildlife and it was known that some species such as butterflies were declining. But the newly revealed scale of the losses to all insects has prompted warnings that the world is “on course for ecological Armageddon”, with profound impacts on human society.

The new data was gathered in nature reserves across Germany but has implications for all landscapes dominated by agriculture, the researchers said.

And thus for nearly all humans, since nearly all of us depend on agriculture to some extent.

“Insects make up about two-thirds of all life on Earth [but] there has been some kind of horrific decline,” said Prof Dave Goulson of Sussex University, UK, and part of the team behind the new study. “We appear to be making vast tracts of land inhospitable to most forms of life, and are currently on course for ecological Armageddon. If we lose the insects then everything is going to collapse.”

Previous reports of insect declines have been limited to particular insects, such European grassland butterflies, which have fallen by 50% in recent decades. But the new research captured all flying insects, including wasps and flies which are rarely studied, making it a much stronger indicator of decline.

The fact that the samples were taken in protected areas makes the findings even more worrying, said Caspar Hallmann at Radboud University, also part of the research team: “All these areas are protected and most of them are well-managed nature reserves. Yet, this dramatic decline has occurred.”

Blanket use of pesticides is thought to be one reason; the disappearance of flowers and weeds bordering farmland is thought to be another.

Lynn Dicks at the University of East Anglia, UK, and not involved in the new research said the work was convincing. “It provides important new evidence for an alarming decline that many entomologists have suspected is occurring for some time.”

“If total flying insect biomass is genuinely declining at this rate – about 6% per year – it is extremely concerning,” she said. “Flying insects have really important ecological functions, for which their numbers matter a lot. They pollinate flowers: flies, moths and butterflies are as important as bees for many flowering plants, including some crops. They provide food for many animals – birds, bats, some mammals, fish, reptiles and amphibians. Flies, beetles and wasps are also predators and decomposers, controlling pests and cleaning up the place generally.”

It doesn’t sound like a problem we can easily fix.



Say hello to the new goodwill ambassador

Oct 20th, 2017 4:47 pm | By

The World Health Organization has made Mugabe a “goodwill ambassador” to help deal with non-communicable diseases.

The appointment of 93-year-old Robert Mugabe will cause astonishment among many WHO member states and donors.

A goodwill ambassador may be a largely symbolic role, but the symbolism of giving it to a man whose leadership of Zimbabwe has, critics say, coincided with a collapse of its health service, and major human rights abuses, will be very unpopular.

Or to put it more bluntly than the BBC does, Mugabe is a notorious tyrant and human rights abuser, so making him any kind of “good will ambassador” for the WHO is insulting to nearly everyone on the planet.



We’re told not to question the general

Oct 20th, 2017 4:29 pm | By

And then there’s what Sarah Huckabee Sanders said about Wilson’s untruths. The Times piece reported it:

“General Kelly said he was ‘stunned’ that Representative Wilson made comments at a building dedication honoring slain F.B.I. agents about her own actions in Congress, including lobbying former President Obama on legislation,” Ms. Sanders said in a statement. “As General Kelly pointed out, if you’re able to make a sacred act like honoring American heroes about yourself, you’re an empty barrel.”

Ms. Sanders escalated the messaging a few hours later: “As we say in the South: all hat, no cattle,” she said. Ms. Wilson is known in the Capitol and in South Florida for her colorful hats.

Ms. Sanders also told a reporter who questioned Mr. Kelly’s veracity that “if you want to get into a debate with a four-star Marine general, I think that that’s something highly inappropriate.”

That made my hair stand on end all right – so much so that I left it for a separate post (this one). Excuse me? We’re not allowed to argue with the White House chief of staff, because he’s a four-star Marine general? This is not a military dictatorship. It’s always been creepy that Trump put so many military guys in top jobs, though also unsurprising given how crude his thinking is. This just confirms how genuinely creepy it is. Kelly is not the general of us, just as he’s not the daddy of us or the boss of us. We are not Kelly’s subordinates. Kelly doesn’t get to tell us what to do. We don’t owe him one bit of extra deference because he’s a general. People may feel extra respect for him, and that’s their right, but we don’t owe him obeisance. Trump, most emphatically, does not get to hide behind his generals so that we can’t contradict him.

Chris Cillizza at CNN was also taken aback.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said something during her daily press briefing Friday that actually took my breath away.

CBS News’ Chip Reid asked Sanders about a factual inaccuracy in White House chief of staff and retired Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly’s attack on Florida Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson on Thursday. Here’s how Sanders responded:

“If you want to go after General Kelly, that is up to you. If you want to get into a debate with a four-star Marine general, I think that is something highly inappropriate.

Just in case you don’t get what Sanders is suggesting, it’s something like this: General Kelly is a highly decorated soldier. As such, questioning things that he says is “highly inappropriate.”

That wouldn’t be true even if he were speaking in his military capacity – but he wasn’t. He has a civilian job in a civilian government now, and he does not get to use his rank as a silencing tool.

Start here: General Kelly’s military service and the sacrifices he and his family have made for our country are beyond question. It is impossible to suggest otherwise.

But that military service does not mean that questioning Kelly’s statements is wrong or inappropriate. Quite the opposite! Kelly is the chief of staff to the President of the United States. He is, in that role, arguably the second or third most powerful person in the country. A person with that sort of power must be held to account for what he says and how he acts.

And not only that – Kelly is the chief of staff to the most chaotic, reckless, idiotic, malevolent, corrupt piece of shit who has ever held the office, so questioning is all the more urgent.

Another remark Sanders made later in the briefing would suggest that her comments about questioning Kelly weren’t simply a slip of the tongue.

Asked about the ongoing back-and-forth between Trump/Kelly and Wilson regarding comments the President made to Myeshia Johnson, a woman whose husband, Sgt. La David Johnson, was killed serving in Niger, Sanders said of the story: “It should have ended yesterday after General Kelly’s comments. But it didn’t. It continued.”

First of all, one of the big reasons it continued is because Trump himself tweeted this just before 11 p.m. on Thursday night: “The Fake News is going crazy with wacky Congresswoman Wilson(D), who was SECRETLY on a very personal call, and gave a total lie on content!”

We are not Kelly’s grunts.



Which one is the empty barrel?

Oct 20th, 2017 4:03 pm | By

Oh gawd. I was put off by much of John Kelly’s tirade yesterday, and Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC was downright angry at the parts that belittled Florida Representative Frederica Wilson. Now we learn that what he said about her was not true. That’s especially ugly because he said it not in passing but lingeringly and with angry emphasis. He said he’d been stunned, stunned at what she said at an event honoring two FBI agents killed on the job. He conveyed fury and disgust…and she hadn’t said it.

Video of a 2015 speech delivered by Representative Frederica S. Wilson revealed Friday that John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, misrepresented her remarks when he accused her of bragging about securing $20 million for a South Florida F.B.I. building and twisting President Barack Obama’s arm.

Mr. Kelly, escalating a feud between Mr. Trump and Ms. Wilson, had cast the congresswoman on Thursday as a publicity-seeking opportunist. However, the video, released by The Sun Sentinel, a newspaper in South Florida, showed that during her nine-minute speech, Ms. Wilson never took credit for getting the money for the building, only for helping pass legislation naming the building after two fallen federal agents.

She never mentioned pleading with Mr. Obama, and she acknowledged the help of several Republicans, including John A. Boehner, then the House speaker; Representatives Mario Diaz-Balart and Carlos Curbelo; and Senator Marco Rubio.

He was spitting fury and disgust at her yesterday because, according to him, she bragged about her own success at getting the money instead of honoring the FBI agents…only she didn’t do the thing he was spitting fury and disgust about.

He’s a man and she’s not…he’s white and she’s not…and he’s military and she’s civilian government. He has that ugly resentment of civilian government that many military people have, and he seized the opportunity to vent it, while defending the most morally contemptible man most of us have ever seen in public life.



Never apologize

Oct 20th, 2017 10:11 am | By

Brendan O’Neill, dismissive as ever.

In Britain a journalist can now have his career destroyed on the basis of one accusation.

So, a journalist is automatically a he? There are no journalists who are she? I could swear there are – I could swear I’ve read journalism by them.

Just like in the GDR. Yes, just as the Stasi and its myriad snitches could dispatch from public life writers and reporters they didn’t like simply by accusing them of something, simply by pointing a bony finger at them and saying, ‘I saw that person do a bad thing’, so in Britain in 2017 journalists can be hounded out of their profession by allegation alone.

Nothing hyperbolic there.

Consider the cases of Sam Kriss and Rupert Myers. Don’t worry if you haven’t heard of them. Most of us who are too busy and too given to self-respect to spend our lives on Twitter hadn’t heard of them until this week, and what bliss that was. The former is apparently a Corbynista pseud who writes for Vice, the bible of Shoreditch shitheads, and the latter is reportedly political correspondent for GQ, which last published an interesting article when John, Paul, George and Ringo were still a thing. Well, that’s what they used to do. They don’t anymore. Mr Kriss has been dumped by Vice after someone wrote a Facebook post accusing him of being a creep. And Mr Myers has been let go by GQ because he’s married and yet letches after female journalists (allegedly).

The “someone” who wrote the post about Sam Kriss is of course a woman, and she didn’t accuse Kriss of “being a creep” but of persistently refusing to take ‘no’ for an answer. Kriss admitted it and apologized (while also “providing context”), so it’s not true that Vice dumped him simply on the basis of a Facebook post.

There are two extraordinary things about these cases. The first is the accusations themselves. All they really add up to is that these two men are tossers and losers who aren’t very good at dating. Mr Kriss is accused by an anonymous person of repeatedly kissing and fondling her when they were on a date. She didn’t like it, which means he should have stopped or she should have gone home earlier. That’s a bad night out with a weirdo who doesn’t know how to court, not sexual assault.

He sounds like Trump with an enhanced vocabulary.

But he also sounds like Classic Contemptuous Man belittling and dismissing the concerns of some stupid bitch of a woman. He sounds like John Kelly at the White House yesterday calling a Congresswoman “that woman” and “an empty barrel” but never by her name. He sounds like all hostile men ridiculing women who object to being grabbed and poked without consent.

And the second extraordinary thing is what has happened on the back of these accusations. For saying ‘I want to fuck you’ to a woman and then trying to kiss her (allegedly), Mr Myers has lost his journalistic jobs and been turned into a pariah. One writer tweeted that he should be ‘blacklisted’ by the media. There. This is what we are dealing with. A swirling sexual McCarthyism, a now out-of-control instinct to crush alleged sexual deviants, or simply people who – shock, horror – ask other people if they want to have sex. And Mr Kriss has been brought down, too. He’s lost some writing gigs, but of course not enough. Some are calling on other publications – like the Guardian and Atlantic – to promise never to publish him again. Maybe we should tear his tongue out and be done with it. That’s what they used to do to evil people in the past they no longer wanted to hear from. Do you know a journalist who’s rude or rubbish on dates or sexually arrogant? Well, now you can destroy him with one accusation! With one tweet! You don’t even need any evidence. Do it. Bring him down. Kill his career. Murder his prospects. This is the toxic climate we now live in. It’s grotesque.

Says the man, in complete indifference to the toxic climate women have lived in forever. What about the toxic climate Harvey Weinstein created for women in the movie industry? Well Brendan wouldn’t care about that, because he’s not stupid enough to go and be a woman.

Let’s remember something very important. These men face mere accusation, not proof of wrongdoing. (The two muppets in question haven’t helped themselves one bit by issuing instant and craven apologies rather than saying, ‘I challenge the way my behaviour is being discussed’.)

Yeah! Never apologize! Grab or demand a fuck from women whenever you feel like it, and never apologize if they talk about it in public! Women are all bitches anyway, and men who apologize for groping them without invitation are letting down other men everywhere.



Interviews

Oct 20th, 2017 9:12 am | By

Of course he did.

Trump personally interviewed 3 people for US attorney jobs…ones that just happened, in a startling coincidence that means nothing at all, to be in districts where Trump has an interest.

Trump has interviewed Geoffrey Berman, who is currently at the law firm Greenberg Traurig for the job of U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Ed McNally of the firm Kasowitz Benson Torres for the Eastern District post, according to the sources.

(One wonders what that can have been like. On the one hand an educated grownup with specialized professional training and experience, on the other hand a guy who can’t utter a coherent sentence and knows nothing about anything – and the latter is interviewing the former.)

The White House did not deny that Trump had personally conducted the interviews with those two candidates. A White House official noted: “These are individuals that the president nominates and the Senate confirms under Article II of the Constitution.”

“We realize Senate Democrats would like to reduce this President’s constitutional powers,” the White House official said. “But he and other presidents before him and after may talk to individuals nominated to positions within the executive branch.”

They may, apparently, but it’s far from routine, and then when there’s a glaring conflict of interest – are we really so sure they may?

The Southern District of New York is an especially notable position since it has jurisdiction over Trump Tower. Preet Bharara, the former U.S. attorney there, has said he had been told that Trump would keep him on despite the change in administrations. Yet he was among those abruptly fired by Trump in March.

“It is neither normal nor advisable for Trump to personally interview candidates for US Attorney positions, especially the one in Manhattan,” Bharara tweeted Wednesday.

It’s unusual for presidents to interview candidates for US attorney jobs. Obama never did.

But documents submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year showed Trump met with Jessie Liu, the candidate for U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, earlier this spring as she was being interviewed for the federal prosecutor post.

Liu has since been confirmed, but not without questions from Democrats. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein raised concerns that she had personally met with Trump before she was nominated to the position that would be in charge of investigating the Trump administration.

“To be very blunt, these three jurisdictions will have authority to bring indictments over the ongoing special counsel investigation into Trump campaign collusion with the Russians and potential obstruction of justice by the president of the United States,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in an interview Thursday. “For him to be interviewing candidates for that prosecutor who may in turn consider whether to bring indictments involving him and his administration seems to smack of political interference.”

Which Trump has a known history of trying to do.

Also…why else would he be interviewing them? How would he be interviewing them? What would he be asking them? What would he want to discuss with them? He’s pig-ignorant of the law and has no apparent interest in it, apart from deploying the enforcement branch to terrorize people he dislikes. What would he or could he talk about in such interviews? Other than himself and how the candidate could be expected to treat that sanctified personage?

Other U.S. attorneys who have been nominated to posts around the country do not appear to have had similar interviews with Trump, according to Democrats who have been asking that of all nominees.

“The U.S. attorney for the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York — like the U.S. attorney for Washington D.C. — would have jurisdiction over many important cases, including those involving President Trump’s personal and family business interests,” Feinstein said in a statement Thursday.

She added: “There’s no reason for President Trump to be meeting with candidates for these positions, which create the appearance that he may be trying to influence or elicit inappropriate commitments from potential U.S. attorneys. U.S. attorneys must be loyal to the Constitution — not the president.”

Well that’s why he needs to interview them: so that he can ask if they will be loyal to him, just as he persistently asked Comey.



They require interpretation

Oct 19th, 2017 4:59 pm | By

Right?

Why?

Also, if god is so great, why couldn’t god have delivered a decent morality then? Why is all this nervous updating necessary? Hmmmmmm?

We know why. Plato (or Socrates, or both) knew why. It’s obvious why.

You can support Author here.



PinkNews Broadcaster of the Year Award

Oct 19th, 2017 12:52 pm | By

A press release from the Quilliam Foundation:

Last night, Maajid Nawaz won the 2017 PinkNews Broadcaster of the Year Award for his LBC radio show. The award was shared with Lorraine Kelly of ITV.

Other nominees in the category included: Coronation Street (ITV), Doctor Who (BBC), Loose Women (ITV), Lorraine (ITV), Orange is the New Black (Netflix), Sense8 (Netflix), Transparent (Amazon Prime), and Victoria Derbyshire (BBC).

The annual PinkNews Awards has become one of the UK’s most significant LGBT+ events, recognising the contributions of politicians, campaigners, charities, businesses, public sector employers, broadcasters and journalists towards achieving LGBT+ equality both in the UK and overseas.

Southern Poverty Law Center PLEASE NOTE.

Also at the event was London Mayor Sadiq Khan who said, “London is open to all people regardless of race, gender and sexuality and open to love,” and called for a zero-tolerance attitude towards hate crime in London. He also announced that he would be the first mayor ever to lead the annual Pride parade.

Other attendees including Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Education Secretary Justine Greening, and Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow.

On winning the award, Nawaz said:

“When I saw that 0% of British Muslims surveyed believed that being gay was ever morally acceptable, when I saw that 52% of British Muslims wanted homosexuality to be criminalised, when I saw that the only 10 countries in the world that punished being gay with death were all Muslim-majority, I was ashamed, infuriated, outraged, and angry all at the same time. But I knew Muslims who were gay, and so I realised that these results were also due to fear of speaking out.

It requires leadership. The sort of leadership that the British Muslim Mayor of London provided here tonight. The sort of leadership that Imam Muhammad provided here tonight by offering prayers for everyone here. And that’s the sort of leadership I, and my producer Sandra, wanted to offer through my LBC show. My show aims to be a home for you all. Thank you for this great honour in being able to speak out on your behalf.”

Nawaz dedicated his win to all the people around the world who are persecuted in the name of religion for being LGBT+.

You can catch Maajid Nawaz on his LBC radio show live every Saturday and Sunday from 12:00 – 15:00.

LISTEN UP, Southern Poverty Law Center.



The “casual cruelty” he sees in public discourse

Oct 19th, 2017 11:29 am | By

Jeb Bush’s brother George gave a talk in New York this morning rebuking the many flaws of Donald Trump without actually saying he was talking about Donald Trump.

It’s funny about George. He’s the pretend folksy guy, and Trump is the real thing. George is from the upper crust, and Trump is from Queens. George fakes a Texas drawl, and Trump is stuck with a Queens snarl. Both grew up rich; both profited from a big boost from their daddies.

Former President George W. Bush never mentioned his name but delivered what sounded like a sustained rebuke to President Trump on Thursday, decrying nationalism, protectionism and the coarsening of public debate while calling for a robust response to Russian interference in American democracy.

In a speech in New York, Mr. Bush defended free trade, globalization and immigration even as Mr. Trump seeks to raise barriers to international commerce and newcomers from overseas. He condemned the “casual cruelty” he sees in public discourse and denounced white supremacy two months after Mr. Trump suggested that “both sides” were to blame at a neo-Nazi rally that turned violent in Virginia.

Bush and his friends prefer a more genteel form of conservatism, that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer but is polite about it. I have to admit that so do I; probably so do most of us.

His speech on Thursday seemed a clear rejoinder to Mr. Trump in various ways. Asked by a reporter as he left the hall whether his message would be heard in the White House, Mr. Bush smiled, nodded slightly and said, “I think it will.”

The Bush family has never been fond of Mr. Trump, who beat former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida for the Republican presidential nomination last year. Neither the former president nor his father, former President George Bush, voted for Mr. Trump last November. But advisers said the younger Mr. Bush has been deeply troubled by the state of the national debate under a president who routinely demonizes his adversaries on Twitter.

“Bullying and prejudice in our public life sets a national tone, provides permission for cruelty and bigotry and compromises the moral education of children,” Mr. Bush said in his speech. “The only way to pass along civic values is to first live up to them.”

Mr. Bush, who issued a statement with his father condemning white supremacists after the violence in Charlottesville, Va., in August, returned to the theme. “Bigotry or white supremacy in any form is blasphemy against the American creed,” he said.

Well, that depends which American creed we’re talking about. For centuries of course white supremacy in the most literal form imaginable was at the core of the American creed.

But still. What he said is welcome.

Also interesting: Rice and Albright explained that diplomacy is not some frivolous luxury.

The conference also featured a panel with two former secretaries of state, Condoleezza Rice and Madeleine K. Albright, joining Nikki Haley, Mr. Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations.

Ms. Rice, who served under Mr. Bush, and Ms. Albright, who served under President Bill Clinton, seemed to gently coach Ms. Haley, urging the Trump administration to rethink its cuts to the State Department budget and its approach to the United Nations, to protect rather than attack the news media and to make a stronger response to Russian meddling in last year’s election.

Ms. Albright said the disparity between the Pentagon and State Department budgets was “crazy” and deprived the president of necessary resources. “We do not have a lot of tools,” she said. “It is necessary to have a functioning diplomatic service.”

Ms. Haley said the president’s budget proposal to slash the State Department budget by one-third was not meant to be enacted in its original form. “It was just his conversation point,” she said. “He was starting a conversation.”

Oh stop that. Pouring contempt on the value of diplomacy is not “starting a conversation.”