But now there isn’t.
It is with regret that we advise that the 2018 Global Atheist Convention has been cancelled. More details at www.atheistconvention.org.au.
Thank you to all ticket purchasers and supporters.
They didn’t sell enough tickets so they canceled.
Greg Sargent at the Post on Trump’s nonsense about the Texas slaughter:
(I know, I’m harping on it, but Trump’s disgusting cynical frivolity about this cries out for obsessive finger-pointing.)
It has become an Internet meme that Donald Trump favors extreme vetting for arriving immigrants, but not for would-be gun buyers, and today in South Korea, Trump was confronted by a question about this contrast. It produced a useful answer — one that once again illustrated the deep rot of bad faith at the core of his approach to difficult policy questions.
You can see that bad faith when he closes his eyes. He’s taking a second to think up a way to sell the lies.
It’s being widely reported that the Air Force failed to follow the proper policies that would have barred Devin Patrick Kelley, who killed 26 people in a Texas church, from buying firearms. Kelley was discharged from the Air Force after a conviction for domestic violence — including cracking his toddler stepson’s skull — but this information, which could have stopped him from buying the guns he obtained, was not properly transmitted to the FBI or entered into the federal background check database. The Air Force has launched an internal investigation.
So this morning the reporter asked her question and Trump blatted out his lies.
“If you did what you’re suggesting, there would have been no difference three days ago. And you might not have had that very brave person who happened to have a gun or a rifle in his truck go out and shoot him and hit him and neutralize him. If he didn’t have a gun, instead of having 26 dead, you would have had hundreds more dead.”
The claim that there would have been “no difference” if Kelley had undergone “extreme vetting” is another way of saying that an improved gun background check system would not have stopped this shooting. But Trump has no earthly way of knowing this one way or the other.
But he’s too thick to understand that he can’t know it, and too callous and frivolous to care.
Trump told us that his thinly veiled Muslim ban was necessary so that we could review our vetting procedures and see where they need to be improved. Applying his own logic to the gun debate should lead to a similar place: If our current system of background checks is inadequate, we should review it to see whether it needs to be improved, too.
Trump, of course, does not believe that the gun background check system should be improved. He is entitled to that view. But the notion that this shooting shows that improving the system wouldn’t make any difference is utter nonsense. What it really shows is that Trump views the flaws he sees in our system of vetting new arrivals as a threat worth addressing, but does not view the flaws in our gun background check system as a threat worth addressing.
My point is not that the Texas shooting itself makes the case for any particular set of background check improvements. It doesn’t, and again, seizing on isolated events isn’t how we should be debating policy. The Air Force’s review of its mistakes here is an appropriate response to this particular horror. Rather, my point is this: Either you believe, in a broad sense, that we should be trying to improve our background check system to make it harder for prohibited people to get guns, or you do not. Trump’s silly misdirection tells us that he does not believe this — and that he probably hasn’t thought seriously about the question for even a second.
Exactly, which is what I mean by callous and frivolous. He’s too frivolous to do the work and too callous to care that he’s not doing it. He’s fine with his own lazy ignorance and brutality.
Trump said if there had been “extreme vetting” of the guy who slaughtered all those people in Texas, “you would have had hundreds more dead.” You can watch him close his eyes while he pretends to think. You can see him end triumphantly with his cherished cliché “the great state of” Texas.
Trump, today, at a press conference in South Korea:
Reporter: You’ve talked about wanting to put extreme vetting on people trying to come into the United States, but I wonder if you would consider extreme vetting for people trying to buy a gun.
Trump: Well…you know you’re bringing up a situation that probably shouldn’t be discussed too much right now, we could let a little time go by, but it’s ok if you feel that that’s an appropriate question.
Trump a week ago, immediately after a perp in a truck killed eight people and injured more in lower Manhattan:
In NYC, looks like another attack by a very sick and deranged person. Law enforcement is following this closely. NOT IN THE U.S.A.!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2017
We must not allow ISIS to return, or enter, our country after defeating them in the Middle East and elsewhere. Enough!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2017
I have just ordered Homeland Security to step up our already Extreme Vetting Program. Being politically correct is fine, but not for this!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2017
President Trump said Wednesday that he is considering sending the Uzbek immigrant accused of killing eight people in Tuesday’s terrorist attack in New York to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and that the United States must be “much tougher” with its treatment of terror suspects.
Trump also called on Congress to immediately dismantle the State Department’s Diversity Visa Lottery program, through which authorities have said the suspected attacker, Sayfullo Saipov, came to the United States from Uzbekistan.
“Diversity lottery — sounds nice. It’s not nice,” Trump told reporters at the White House during a meeting with his Cabinet. “It’s not good. It’s not good. It hasn’t been good. We’ve been against it.”
He added, “I am today starting the process of terminating the diversity lottery program. I am going to ask Congress to immediately initiate work to get rid of this program.”
Speaking generally, Trump said U.S. immigration laws and the criminal justice system’s handling of suspects are “a joke” and “a laughingstock.”
“We have to get much tougher,” he said. “We have to get much smarter. And we have to get much less politically correct. We’re so politically correct that we’re afraid to do anything.”
Trump said the United States needs a system of “punishment that’s far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting right now. They’ll go through court for years… We need quick justice, and we need strong justice.”
Referring to Saipov as an “animal,” Trump said the 29-year-old was responsible for the entry of 23 immigrants, many of them family members. The president said this “chain migration” endangers national security.
“This man that came in, or whatever you want to call him, brought in with him other people, and he was the primary point of contact for — and this is preliminarily — 23 people that came in or potentially came in with him,” Trump said. “That’s not acceptable.”
Asked whether Saipov’s family members represent a security threat, Trump said, “They certainly could. He did. They certainly could represent a threat.”
When a reporter asked whether Saipov should be sent to Guantanamo Bay, Trump replied, “I would certainly consider that, yes. Send him to Gitmo. I would certainly consider that.”
It wasn’t too soon for all of that the same day and the next day when it was some Mooslim immmmigrant, but it’s too soon two days later when it’s a white guy with a gun.
Oxford is apparently making a dog’s breakfast of the Tariq Ramadan situation. Tendance Coatesy gathered some reporting:
Here is the Telegraph’s report on the latest developments.
Oxford professor accused of sexual misconduct with Swiss minors
An Oxford University professor and government adviser on tackling extremism is facing new allegations including sexual misconduct with minors.
Prof Tariq Ramadan was accused of rape last month by a French feminist author. He has denied the allegation and said he will sue for libel.
He is now facing new accusations from four Swiss women who say he made sexual advances to them when they were studying under him as teenagers in Geneva.
One of the women told Tribune de Geneve newspaper Prof Ramadan made unsuccessful sexual advances to her when she was 14 years old.
Another alleged he had sexual relations with her in the back of his car when she was 15 years old.
The other two women said they were 18 when they had sexual relations with him, but accused him of abusing his position of power as their teacher.
Prof Ramadan was accused of rape by the French author Henda Ayari last month.Since then two more women have accused him of rape. He has denied the accusations and filed a case for libel in the French courts.
In statements posted on Facebook, he claims he is being targeted by “a campaign of slander clearly orchestrated by my longtime adversaries” and says he has been advised by his lawyers not to comment further.
Currently Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford, he was chosen by Tony Blair to work on a task force to help tackle extremism in the UK following the 7/7 attacks in London in 2005.
Not, mark you, Gita Sahgal or Maryam Namazie or any other human rights-oriented activist but Tariq “moratorium on stoning” Ramadan. Why? Because of the inch-deep veneer of “sophistication” and academic cred? Because he’s a dude? I really don’t know.
We learnt this last week, (Cherwell 3rd of November).
Students at the Oxford Middle East Centre have reacted in anger to the University’s response to the mounting accusations of rape against Islamic professor Tariq Ramadan, accusing senior figures of acting “as if nothing had happened”.
Ramadan is currently being investigated by French authorities over two allegations of rape, sexual assault, violence and harassment. Ramadan has described the allegations as a “campaign of lies” and said he is suing the alleged victims for “slander”.
Since the first allegation of rape surfaced two weeks ago, the professor has reportedly taught a seminar in Oxford and been seen “laughing” with faculty members.
In response to requests from students, senior figures in the faculty held a meeting on Tuesday “to address implications for student welfare arising from the allegations”.
The faculty told students they intend Ramadan to continue to both tutor and supervise on his return to Oxford from Qatar – although students may ask for another faculty member to be in the room if they wish.
At the meeting, held at St Antony’s College, several students expressed anger at the “lack of communication” from the University, claiming they had heard of the allegations by “word of mouth” without any acknowledgement from the department.
Director of the Middle East Centre Eugene Rogan repeatedly apologised to students for taking ten days to respond to the allegations, blaming the delay on the fact that the controversy was happening in another country with a different legal system.
This is worth noting,
Rogan reminded students: “It’s not just about sexual violence. For some students it’s just another way for Europeans to gang up against a prominent Muslim intellectual. We must protect Muslim students who believe and trust in him, and protect that trust.”
Oh dear god, there it is. He’s Muslim, therefore we have to let him rape girls and women, because otherwise we would be Europeans ganging up on him. As for “prominent Muslim intellectual” – Oxford itself is helping him be a prominent intellectual by employing him. Why him? Why not someone better? Less compromised? Less theocratic? More intellectually honest? Someone who wouldn’t refuse to say that stoning is bad?
Many staff members encouraged those present not to speak to the media about the furore. Professor Rogan told students: “We can’t tell you what you should say. But I encourage everyone to use their moral judgement about how they voice their concerns – not to victimise the women who’ve made the allegations or the men who’ve been accused of things they’ve not yet had the chance to defend themselves against.”
One postgrad said: “There should have been a more open and frank discussion with female students about how to make them feel safer,” she said. “Women won’t come forward here and say how they feel.”
A number of students expressed concern about Ramadan continuing to teach and be present in the faculty. One claimed that immediately following the first allegation, Ramadan was seen “walking and laughing in the hall as if nothing had happened.”
Well, he’s prominent Tariq Ramadan. He’s protected.
University of Oxford: Suspend Tariq Ramadan until allegations of sex attacks investigated https://t.co/3r3UI2ki89
— Gita Sahgal (@GitaSahgal) November 5, 2017
I signed yesterday.
So maybe it wasn’t that the guy with the big gun wasn’t cray cray after all, despite Trump’s confident assertion that it was. (Where did he get that, by the way? Law enforcement wasn’t saying that, the media wasn’t saying that. Did Trump have Special Inside Presidential Intelligence about it? Or was he just talking at random as usual because he wanted us to shut up about guns.) It maybe was that he had a big mad for his mother-in-law. Angry domineering men often do, I think. Sheds a whole new light on all those mother-in-law jokes, doesn’t it. (Actually no, it doesn’t – it sheds the same old light. Mother-in-law jokes are classic misogyny. Why mother-in-law and not father-in-law? Oh, you know – because they’re too old to fuck, and they’re all bitches.)
The massacre of more than two dozen churchgoers — the youngest of whom was just 18 months old — occurred amid an ongoing “domestic situation” involving the gunman and his relatives, some of whom had attended the church, law enforcement officials said Monday.
While authorities have not publicly identified a motive for the attack, they emphasized that the shooting did not appear to be fueled by racial or religious issues, as has been the case with other rampages at U.S. houses of worship. Instead, they pointed to the gunman’s issues with his relatives, saying Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, had been sending “threatening texts” to his mother-in-law, who was not at the First Baptist Church when he opened fire on the congregation Sunday morning.
I suppose she wasn’t entirely friendly toward him because of the way he abused her daughter? Women are so annoying, aren’t they?
Precisely how Kelley obtained his guns remained a key question for investigators. Kelley had been court-martialed in 2012 and sentenced to a year in military prison for assaulting his then-spouse and her child, making him part of a long line of mass attackers or suspects with domestic violence in their pasts. He was reduced in rank and released with a bad-conduct discharge in 2014.
So if you’re mad at your mother-in-law, the thing to do is shoot up a church full of people?
Too much anger.
Trump says it’s not a guns situation. Nope nope nope. Not at all. It’s a bats in the belfry situation. It’s a MenTal HeAlth SituAtion. That’s what it is. The guy was cray cray. Nothing to do with guns at all. Could just as well have been a poisoned amuse-bouche. Could have been flung rocks. Could have been a rabid dog smuggled in under his coat. It just happened to be a semi-automatic rifle. Totally random.
Asked at a press conference in Tokyo what policies he might support in response to the shooting, Mr Trump said preliminary reports suggested the gunman was “a very deranged individual, [with] a lot of problems.”
Actually he said “a lot of problems over a long period of time.” He used that stupid canned phrase of his that signals how radically impoverished his vocabulary and mental activity are. The Indy left it out no doubt because of how stupid and knee-jerk it is.
“We have a lot of mental health problems in our country, as do other countries. But this isn’t a guns situation,” he said. “Fortunately somebody else had a gun that was shooting in the opposite direction.”
He said that. He did. He actually said that.
“This is a mental health problem at the highest level,” he added. “It’s a very, very sad event.”
The highest level? What highest level? The highest level of what?
More filler. More filler to attempt to disguise the emptiness of his mind and the nonexistence of his human feeling.
Earlier this Mr Trump signed a bill blocking plans that would have prevented an estimated 75,000 people with mental health disorders buying guns. The proposals were part of former president Barack Obama’s push to strengthen the federal background check system in the wake of the 2012 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School…
Well that’s just Radical Left Craziness, because shootings are never caused or enabled or assisted by guns. Of course not. If it were not guns it would be strangling people one by one, which is not at all more difficult to carry out on a mass scale than shooting with a semi-automatic rifle.
The Times on Devin Patrick Kelley, the guy who murdered 26 people in a small town church in Texas:
Mr. Kelley was clad in all black, with a ballistic vest strapped to his chest and a military-style rifle in his hands, when he opened fire on parishioners, turning this tiny town east of San Antonio into the scene of the country’s newest mass horror.
He had served in the Air Force at a base in New Mexico but was court-martialed in 2012 on charges of assaulting his wife and child. He was sentenced to 12 months’ confinement and received a “bad conduct” discharge in 2014, according to Ann Stefanek, the chief of Air Force media operations.
What a coincidence – he was a violent bully to the people closest to him, and he went on to be a violent bully to people at more of a distance.
Mr. Kelley started firing at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs not long after the Sunday morning service began at 11 a.m., officials said. He was armed with a Ruger military-style rifle, and within minutes, many of those inside the small church were either dead or wounded. The victims ranged in age from 5 to 72, and among the dead were several children, a pregnant woman and the pastor’s 14-year-old daughter. It was the deadliest mass shooting in the state’s history. At least 20 more were wounded.
Will we do anything about it? No.
Speaking at a news conference in Japan, the first stop on his tour of Asia, President Trump called the shooting a “mental health problem at the highest level” and not “a guns situation,” adding the gunman was a “very deranged individual.”
And President Trump knows that how, exactly?
Isn’t it interesting that the truck slaughter in Manhattan was all about bad people getting into the country while the gun slaughter in Texas was all about a mental health problem.
The authorities said Mr. Kelley used an Ruger AR-15 variant — a knockoff of the standard service rifle carried by the American military for roughly half a century.
Almost all AR-15 variants legally sold in the United States fire only semiautomatically, and they were covered by the federal assault weapons ban that went into effect in 1994. Since the ban expired in 2004, the weapons have been legal to sell or possess in much of the United States, and sales of AR-15s have surged.
Ruger’s AR-15s made for civilian markets sell for about $500 to $900, depending on the model.
Institute Extreme Vetting for immigrants, but don’t even think about the surge in sales of AR-15s. If you’re killed by some rage-boy with an assault rifle, enjoy the experience knowing he’s a native son of the dear old USofA.
What was that we were saying about how it doesn’t work to send someone a furious abusive email and then announce that it’s confidential? How you can’t just send people shit they didn’t ask for and then order them to keep it secret? Behold Marc Randazza in 2014 saying exactly that, and unlike me he’s a lawyer.
This happens to all of us, from time to time. A lawyer sends you a letter with some threatening language on it that he thinks accomplishes his goal of making it “confidential.” You know, like this:
CONFIDENTIAL LEGAL NOTICE
PUBLICATION OR DISSEMINATION IS PROHIBITEDThe correct legal response is “suck my ass” or whatever you want to say. Ok, fine, how about “your point is invalid”. Let’s go with that. It is nicer, after all. And I’m all about being nice.
Now here’s one thing you can rest assured of: If someone puts that foolishness on their letter, it is because they’re afraid of that letter getting out there. They can’t possibly have confidence in what’s in it. Look, I write a letter, I expect that it might wind up getting slapped on Simple Justice, with Greenfield making fun of it. Even then, I can’t seem to catch every typo. But you know what? If my name is on it, you can bet your ass that I’ll own it.
And here’s why you can make the chucklefuck who signed YOUR letter own it by publishing the shit out of it, if you want.
For starters, saying “This letter constitutes confidential legal communication and may not be published in any manner.” is about as legally compelling as Michael Scott yelling “I DECLARE BANKRUPTCY.” Lawyers do not have magic powers that turn letters into confidential communications. You’re more likely to find a lawyer who can turn water into funk than a lawyer who has the magic spell to make a letter confidential. Sure, there might be some rules that make them inadmissible for certain purposes in litigation. But, you wanna share that letter? Go right the fuck ahead. Unless you’ve agreed to confidentiality, it ain’t confidential.
And have you agreed to confidentiality? No you have not.
Here’s Michael Shermer trying it on that post of Phil Torres’s yesterday:
As for our email correspondence Torres, at the bottom of every email I’ve sent you appears this statement below. I have nothing to hide at all, but privacy laws exist for a reason and our correspondence is private. You asked if you could make it public and I declined. If you do not understand why the law protects peoples’ privacy, or why people want privacy, then you don’t understand what privacy means. Here is the statement that appears in every email I send out:
This private email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential information. Any unauthorized publication, broadcast, review, use, disclosure or distribution of its content, substance or meaning, by email, social media or any other means, is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.
So ridiculous. “Is prohibited” – it sounds so official but is so meaningless. Prohibited by whom, Kemosabe? You can’t just slap “is prohibited” on things you don’t want other people to do and expect them to obey. The “unauthorized” is equally ludicrous. We don’t have to be “authorized” to talk about stupid shit people have said to us without our inviting them to.
Marc Randazza again:
Bottom line, no court has ever held I DECLARE CONFIDENTIALITY to be valid, nor has any court supported the “DON’T MAKE FUN OF ME BECAUSE COPYRIGHT” position – but an undisturbed case, relying on mountains of precedent, refutes it.
Bottom line: you send me unsolicited insults, don’t expect me to protect your “privacy.”
Big thanks to Screechy Monkey for citing the Randazza post.
Trump stopped in Hawaii on his way to Japan.
But on his way back to the airport, Trump made another stop — this time at the Trump Hotel in Waikiki.
According to White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump wanted to greet the employees and thank them for their hard work in making the Trump Hotel a “tremendously successful project.”
Oh did he. Is that what he wanted to do. But the trouble is, he’s the chief executive, and he’s supposed to be doing that job, not promoting his own business on our time and our money, and not using his public service job to make more money go into his bank account.
This stop, which happened amidst a taxpayer-funded trip, was both unexpected and unannounced, according to reporters travelling with the president.
Also unlawful and unappropriate and unacceptable and unwhatheshouldbedoing.
Kyle Griffin of MSNBC reports that this is Trump’s 97th day at a Trump property since his inauguration on January 20th.
97th day in under ten months – that’s a stunningly high percentage.
The Trump Hotel in Waikiki says on its website that it is “not owned, developed, or sold by Donald J. Trump, the Trump Organization, or any of their affiliates.” But Trump’s taxpayer-funded detour to the property proves that the only connection Trump finds important is the branding — and that despite any vocalized separation between Trump and the Trump Organization, he still views himself as the organization’s owner and its ultimate brand ambassador.
After thanking his hotel employees, Trump boarded a plane to Asia, where he will presumably spend the next 12 days trying to ward off a looming nuclear war with North Korea.
Or more likely threatening to start one.
Peter Hitchens in the Daily Mail above a photo of a woman in heavy eye makeup with carefully groomed eyebrows and flawless skin, wearing a niqab.
Behold my proposed new autumn look for women in politics. The black, I think, is flattering and it radiates an air of cool unapproachability. No Minister would put his hand on the knee of anyone dressed like this; indeed, he’d have trouble finding her knee, or anything else.
Well, isn’t this what you want, all you squawking flapping denouncers of groping men and ‘inappropriate’ jokes?
You have lots in common with Militant Islamists on this subject. They, too, believe that all men must be assumed to be slavering predators.
And these beliefs lie behind the severe dress codes and sexual segregation which modern liberals claim to find so shocking about Islam.
Yet on this, it turns out that you agree with them. Any male action, any form of words you choose to disapprove of can and will be presumed to be guilty because, well, men are like that. The culprit will be ruined for ever.
Yes, certainly, if we denounce men who unilaterally grope women, then we are endorsing and even demanding imposition of the niqab on women.
Or not.
Those aren’t the only possible options, actually. We all probably have experience of them: of working (niqab-free) with men who don’t grope without an invitation. I think that’s much of the point: women should be free to work and play and walk around in the world without wearing buckets over their heads and without being groped (or worse) by men who apparently think women are a public utility.
Hitchens is coat-trailing, as right-wing assholes so often do. (See: Brendan O’Neill.) He can’t really be stupid enough to think that objecting to sexual harassment=believing that all men must be assumed to be slavering predators. Harvey Weinstein appears to be a slavering predator; it does not follow that all men are. That’s not very difficult, surely.
Trump gave a talk to American troops in Japan this morning, wearing a bomber jacket. Sure, Bone Spurs, that’s all it takes to look Military. His words at many points did not match his actions.
“No one — no dictator, no regime and no nation — should underestimate, ever, American resolve,” Mr. Trump said, having shed his suit jacket for a leather bomber jacket as he addressed hundreds of fatigues-clad women and men. “You are the greatest threat to tyrants and dictators who seek to prey on the innocent.”
But he is a tyrant and dictator. He bullies and lies to the press, he’s working to suppress voting, he demands loyalty to himself from people who are supposed to be serving the country, he uses his office to enrich himself, he hires relatives, he attacks judges and the justice system in general – he does what tyrants and dictators do.
He also preys on the innocent whenever it suits his purpose.
The president used his speech on Sunday to call for building a “free and open Indo-Pacific” region, a new approach to Asia that is likely to be seen by China as a challenge. The idea, first proposed by the Japanese and adopted in recent days by Mr. Tillerson, envisions the United States strengthening ties with three other democracies in the region — Japan, Australia and India — to contain a rising China.
But he is an enemy of democracy. He battles it and resists it and attacks it every day of his life.
Mr. Trump also makes the trip hobbled by new questions about the Russia investigation back in Washington, sharpened in recent days by revelations that his aides sought to arrange meetings between him and Mr. Putin during the campaign. In contrast, Mr. Abe and Mr. Xi are newly empowered, with their countries handing them sweeping mandates.
Mr. Trump denied being at a disadvantage when reporters noted on Sunday that Mr. Xi was in a particularly powerful position.
“Excuse me, so am I,” Mr. Trump said, citing stock market gains and low unemployment in the United States, and asserting that “ISIS is virtually defeated in the Middle East.”
“We are coming off some of the strongest numbers we’ve ever had, and he knows that and he respects that,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Xi. “We’re going in with tremendous strength.”
Well, except for the poll numbers, which are record-breakingly low. Excuse me, his “tremendous strength” is illusory.
Sad news: The Daily Caller has caved to pressure and cancelled my weekly column after a day, claiming, falsely, they never planned to run weekly contributions from me. They were perfectly happy having my name and face on their site when we were paying for ads for my New York Times bestselling book, DANGEROUS. The Daily Caller is also throwing its opinion editor Rob Mariani under the bus: we are told he has just been fired. I’m disappointed, to put it mildly. Never mind book publishers — even right-wing media these days are spineless in the face of outrage mobs, Twitter protests and frothing establishment Republicans. Where will it end? So: no new MILO column for now. This sort of cowardice is why the Right in America loses and will keep losing the culture wars.
I wonder what he thinks those screenshots establish. A midlevel editor wanted to make him a regular [but unpaid according to CNN] columnist but was overruled. Yes, and?
So it seems that Milo Yiannopoulos is too much even for the Daily Caller.
The Daily Caller on Saturday, facing backlash, fired its opinion editor and canceled a weekly column he had offered right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos.
“Sad news: The Daily Caller has caved to pressure and cancelled my weekly column after a day, claiming, falsely, they never planned to run weekly contributions from me,” Yiannopoulos wrote Saturday on Facebook, adding that he was “disappointed, to put it mildly.”
Just a day prior, the Daily Caller, a conservative news and opinion website, had published a column by Yiannopoulos on the topic of the sexual harassment allegations against actor Kevin Spacey.
The opinion editor offered him a regular weekly unpaid column; the editor in chief said Nope.
A note at the bottom of his Spacey column indicated it was the “first installment” in a “new weekly column.” The note is no longer attached to the column.
The news of a regular column from Yiannopoulos did not go over well.
The Daily Caller came under immediate fire on social media for giving platform to Yiannopoulos, a controversial figure associated with white nationalism who resigned from the right-wing Breitbart website earlier this year over comments he made about pederasty. Robert Mercer, the billionaire conservative donor, said earlier this week that he was “mistaken” to have supported Yiannopoulos and that he was severing ties.
Okay…any second thoughts about Trump?
Phil Torres wrote a post yesterday about censorship among the atheists and skeptics.
As some of you know, after I published an article that was critical of what I would describe as a strain of anti-intellectualism among some skeptic leaders, Michael Shermer sent me an email complete with vulgarities, personal insults (e.g., you’re a bad scholar and you’ll never be a good scholar!), and basically a threat to harm my career because I’m a “backstabber” (search The Moral Arc for some fun reading about how Shermer sometimes fantasizes about murdering “backstabbers”! Seriously).
Similarly, after writing a critique of Peter Boghossian and James A. Lindsay‘s gender studies “hoax,” both blocked me on social media and the former even blocked my phone number! I have also been permanently banned from Jerry Coyne’s blog for literally asking, “So, why not focus on something else?,” which he angrily claimed was a violation of the blog’s rules (it wasn’t).
So what happened? Shermer popped in to rain down more vulgarities, insults, and threats. A brief shower yesterday, and then one deluge after another today.
Shermer and Douglas Murray should write a book together.
Douglas Murray at the Spectator says there can’t be any sex any more because of all these women persecuting men for THE TINIEST THINGS.
We are in the middle of a profound shift in our attitude towards sex. A sexual counter-revolution, if you will. And whereas the 1960s saw a freeing up of attitudes towards sex, pushing at boundaries, this counter-swing is turning sexual freedom into sexual fear, and nearly all sexual opportunities into a legalistic minefield.
The phrase “sexual opportunities” is interesting. Often that’s the issue: the way some men see women in a work environment as “sexual opportunities” when the women are there to work and don’t want to be seen as “sexual opportunities” rather than competent colleagues.
The rules are being redrawn with little idea of where the boundaries of this new sexual utopia will lie and less idea still of whether any sex will be allowed in the end.
Don’t be schewpid.
But it is away from the law — tied up in the ‘#MeToo’ movement that followed Weinstein’s downfall — that the real revolution is happening. Accusations of genuine and monstrous abuse are being mixed with news that a cabinet member touched a woman’s knee many years ago. This week The Crown actress Claire Foy was forced to issue a statement saying she had not been offended after angry Twitter users pointed out that actor Adam Sandler had touched her knee — twice — during their appearance on The Graham Norton Show.
I don’t believe she was forced to. Who would have forced her, and how? He means she felt like it. She is free to say she doesn’t mind, and we are free to say that assuming women are fair game for casual touching is part of the problem.
A new generation is being encouraged to redraw the lines of acceptability in a way that goes too far. What once was gauche has now become unacceptable.
God, the smug blindness.
Yes, the people with more power considered sexual harassment merely “gauche,” but that’s the whole point. What’s “gauche” to the groper is not necessarily merely “gauche” to the gropee. Murray is talking as if the only point of view is the male one, and women are just objects – objects can’t have a point of view.
Foremost propeller of this is a form of modern feminism which is in fact barely disguised misandry. Take an essay from the sociology professor Lisa Wade, which argues that ‘We need to attack masculinity directly. I don’t mean that we should recuperate masculinity — that is, press men to identify with a kinder, gentler version of it — I mean that we should reject the idea that men have a psychic need to distinguish themselves from women in order to feel good about themselves.’ Or, as Lara Prendergast has noted in this issue, other women writers have taken it upon themselves to issue strict instructions for men on how they must behave. This ‘feminism’ isn’t producing guides for helping men. It is producing manifestos for torturing them.
By expecting them to treat women like fellow human beings as opposed to “sexual opportunities.”
Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern report at Slate:
On Friday, the Department of Justice filed an astonishing appeal with the Supreme Court, urging the justices to intervene in the Jane Doe case that seemed to have ended last week. Doe, an undocumented 17-year-old in a federally funded Texas shelter, was denied abortion access by the Trump administration, which argues that it can force undocumented minors to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. On Oct. 24, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that Doe must be allowed to terminate her pregnancy, which she did the next day. Now the DOJ is urging the Supreme Court to vacate that decision—and punish the ACLU attorneys who represented Doe.
Gee. Here I thought we had an adversarial system, in which attorneys are allowed to dispute the government.
Make no mistake: With this filing, Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ Justice Department has declared war on attorneys and groups who dare to oppose it in court.
The Justice Department is doing three things here.
First, it wants the Supreme Court to punish the D.C. Circuit for issuing a decision that it believes to be egregiously wrong by wiping the entire ruling off the books. Second, the DOJ wants to eradicate a decision that sets a legal precedent it despises. Doe’s lawsuit was initially brought as part of a class action, and the ACLU will continue to litigate its broader claim against the Trump administration’s absolute bar on abortion access for undocumented minors. As long as the D.C. Circuit’s decision remains on the books, those lawsuits are almost guaranteed to succeed. The Justice Department wants it gone so that it can litigate this issue anew.
Third, and most importantly, Friday’s appeal is a flagrant effort to crucify the individual attorneys who represented Doe, and to terrify likeminded lawyers into acquiescence. The DOJ thus asks the Supreme Court to force Doe’s lawyers to “show cause why disciplinary action should not be taken” against the ACLU—either by the court itself or by state bars—for “material misrepresentations and omissions” designed to thwart an appeal.
What were those? The ACLU attorneys didn’t keep the DOJ informed on when Doe would get her abortion – her legal abortion.
Put differently, the government argues that the ACLU owed government lawyers a notification of when Doe’s legal abortion would occur. The end goal here seems to have been to try to continue to block the abortion until it would be illegal to terminate, even though she had secured an unqualified right to do so. (Doe was 16 weeks pregnant by that point; Texas bans abortion after 20 weeks, and the government had already delayed the abortion by a month.) The DOJ also claims that Doe’s lawyers had the responsibility to keep answering their phone calls to update them on her status: “Efforts to reach respondent’s counsel were met with silence, until approximately 10 a.m. EST, when one of her lawyers told the government that Ms. Doe had undergone an abortion.”
…
This week-late effort to blame the ACLU for its “arguable” responsibility to ensure that the government could continue to harm their client is not just an effort to save face, but also an attempt to warn attorneys that zealous effectuation of their duties to the clients will now be punished.
The Justice Department’s crusade against the ACLU is especially galling in light of the fact that there was sanctionable misconduct here—on the part of the government itself. Scott Lloyd, the official who blocked Doe and other minors from abortion access, likely violated a long-standing federal settlement agreement in his anti-abortion crusade. Under this agreement, undocumented minors like Doe must be allowed access to family planning services, which Lloyd intentionally and repeatedly withheld. He even instituted his anti-abortion views as official government policy in obvious violation of the federal settlement.
Hatred of women can never be appeased.
H/t Screechy Monkey
Harvey Weinstein could have more problems than just the disappearance of his career.
The police in New York on Friday said that they have developed a strong criminal case against Harvey Weinstein after an actress’s claim that he raped her seven years ago.
Speaking at a news conference at Police Headquarters in Lower Manhattan, officials in the Police Department said they were gathering evidence with an eye toward preparing a warrant to arrest Mr. Weinstein, whose representatives have said is undergoing therapy outside of New York.
Undergoing therapy, forsooth, as if it were a medical problem as opposed to a moral one. He treated women with contempt, which is all too normal; “therapy” seems like an easy escape.
The claims of the actress, Paz de la Huerta, have been a focus of investigators in the department’s Special Victims Division for several days, since Mr. Weinstein’s long history of sexual harassment of women was detailed in reports by The New York Times and other news organizations early last month. Those reports prompted a mountain of tips to the police in New York and London about other episodes.
A mountain of tips. He’s been a busy busy guy, with his bathrobe and his “massages” and his “come up to my room.”
If Mr. Weinstein had been in the city, the Police Department’s chief of detectives, Robert K. Boyce, said that his investigators would have sought to arrest him immediately. But with him out of the jurisdiction of the New York police, and with seven years having elapsed since the attacks are said to have taken place, the police will instead continue gathering evidence.
“We have an actual case going forward,” Chief Boyce said. “If this person was still in New York and it was recent we would go right away and make the arrest, no doubt. But we’re talking about a seven-year-old case. And we have to move forward gathering evidence.”
The DAs office says they haven’t decided anything yet.
“We are taking it seriously and we are investigating it,” an official with the district attorney’s office said. “We are hoping to build a case. If we can build one, we will build one.”
In general, the Manhattan district attorney’s office will not go forward with a sex crimes prosecution unless prosecutors in its sex crimes unit are absolutely convinced they have enough evidence. This high bar for sex crimes exists largely to avoid subjecting a victim to a humiliating cross-examination that would doom the case and deter other victims from coming forward, prosecutors say.
That is one reason Mr. Vance has said he decided not to prosecute Mr. Weinstein in 2015, when Ambra Battilana, an Italian model, accused him of groping her during a job interview at his office.
Maybe Harvey can proceed with his therapy in peace.
It’s hard to imagine a more ironic choice for America’s next ambassador-at-large for women’s issues.
The position is tasked with overseeing State Department programs to end gender-based violence and empower women and girls around the world. So, naturally, President Donald Trump is reportedly considering Penny Young Nance, a far-right Christian activist who opposed reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act; recently cheered on an attempt to block a pregnant teen immigrant from an abortion; and has called on Hollywood to write more scripts featuring strong male leads.
She can be an ambassador for helping women around the world to be more submissive and helpful to their Husbands.
Nance is the CEO and president of Concerned Women for America. The group’s agenda, according to its website, includes “protecting and supporting the Biblical design of marriage,” “protecting the sanctity of human life,” “ending sexual exploitation by fighting all forms of pornography, obscenity, prostitution, and sex trafficking,” and “defending religious liberty.”
Trump doesn’t believe any of that shit – but he does hate women, and he is a sadist, so this is his idea of a fun thing to do.
Yet another way Trump has been and continues to be unprecedentedly disgusting and cruel:
Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who walked off his Army base in Afghanistan in 2009 and was held captive by the Taliban for five years, was ordered to be dishonorably discharged from the Army by a military judge on Friday, but received no prison time for desertion or endangering troops.
At a sentencing that took only minutes, the military judge, Col. Jeffery R. Nance of the Army, also reduced Sergeant Bergdahl’s rank to private and required him to forfeit $1,000 a month of his pay for 10 months. Prosecutors had sought 14 years in a military prison.
President Trump, who has labeled Sergeant Bergdahl a “dirty rotten traitor,” quickly criticized Friday’s sentence, calling it “a complete and total disgrace to our Country and to our Military.”
…
Politics have dogged the case from the start. The Obama administration embraced Sergeant Bergdahl — the national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, said that he had served with “honor and distinction” — a portrayal that angered many Republicans. Then, last year, Donald J. Trump made Sergeant Bergdahl a staple of his campaign speeches, denouncing him and calling for him to be executed.
Calling for him to be executed. That’s such a squalid brutal horrible look in a president.
Outside the military courthouse here, Sergeant Bergdahl’s chief defense lawyer, Eugene R. Fidell, called the sentence a “tremendous relief,” and said his client was still absorbing it after an “anxiety-inducing” day waiting for the decision.
Mr. Fidell then took sharp aim at President Trump, whose harsh comments about Sergeant Bergdahl may have contributed to the decision not to sentence him to prison: Colonel Nance had ruled earlier this week that he would consider the president’s statements as mitigating evidence.
“President Trump’s unprincipled effort to stoke a lynch-mob atmosphere while seeking our nation’s highest office has cast a dark cloud over the case,” said Mr. Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School. “Every American should be offended by his assault on the fair administration of justice and disdain for basic constitutional rights.”
And he did it again today, making it more likely that someone will go after Bergdahl.
Once Mr. Trump was inaugurated, Sergeant Bergdahl’s defense team demanded that the case be dismissed. There was no way the sergeant could receive a fair trial, his lawyers said, since everyone in the military justice system now reported to President Trump as commander in chief.
Colonel Nance labeled President Trump’s comments about Sergeant Berdahl “disturbing” but declined to throw out the case. Then, last month, President Trump seemed to endorse his earlier sentiments about Sergeant Bergdahl, saying, “I think people have heard my comments in the past.”
After another protest by the defense, Colonel Nance ruled that he would consider the president’s comments as evidence in mitigation as he deliberated on a sentence.
People could conclude, the judge explained, that the president had “wanted to make sure that everyone remembered what he really thinks should happen” to Sergeant Bergdahl.
And now we know what he thinks should happen to Saipov.
