Facebook’s confusing community standards

Jun 27th, 2017 4:03 pm | By

Facebook is banning people – women mostly – for causing the word “dyke” to appear, while words like “cunt” and “whore” are of course sacrosanct. Perhaps you think Facebook is doing that only when “dyke” is being used as a pejorative? Ha no.

Lesbians are getting banned from Facebook in droves for posts that include the word “dyke.”

On Friday, in the days leading up to the annual Pride marches that take place in many North American cities, reports that lesbians were being banned from Facebook began to surface.

See the post for screenshots.

So, while the rash of bans over the weekend appeared to be targeted and connected to Pride, it’s not a new phenomenon. At Slate, Trish Bendix reported that Facebook removed a popular New York-based group called “Dyke Bar Takeover,” claiming the use of dyke in their name constituted “hate speech.” Even the term “lesbian” itself is not permitted on Facebook, as part of a username. Lisa A. Mallett and Liz Waterhouse report that posts arguing that lesbians are female have been removed by Facebook, as well.

Not allowed, huh? When the fact that lesbians are female is basic to the definition? Does Facebook disallow saying apples are fruit, spiders are arachnids, daffodils are flowers, cars are machines, cats are felines? I’m assuming a big no, here. So why would they remove a post saying lesbians are female?

The great irony in all of this is that Facebook refuses to take action against groups and individuals who post and share pornography or who engage in hate speech against feminists. I have personally reported dozens upon dozens of threats and hate speech directed at myself, other women, and posted on the Feminist Current Facebook page. The posts reported have included words like “cunt,” “whore,” and “bitch.” Many have paired the anti-feminist slur, “TERF,” with death threats. Not a single one of these incidents has ever qualified for any form of action, according to Facebook. Not once has Facebook removed the post in question or banned the user.

Meghan posts a few examples:

There are more. Facebook wrote back and said that’s very sad for you but we don’t care.

I am not alone in this. Many women report having experienced abuse or threats that Facebook has ignored, and having reported content including revenge porn, child exploitation, and other forms of sexual violence that did not go against the company’s “community standards.”

When asked about this lack of action on misogyny and male violence on their platform, Facebook will often claim dealing with the amount of flagged content is too challenging to get it right — employees must make decisions so quickly that errors are common. The company has also told users that reporting posts is the only way to deal with abusive content, that “every single report of abuse is read and acted upon by a human being,” and that Facebook does not scan for and remove content. Yet they managed to ban dozens of female users within a matter of days — most of whom are not public figures, do not necessarily have enormous followings, who clearly aren’t being reported through nefarious means, but are in fact being sought out by the company itself.

It’s beyond infuriating.



Send the pollution downstream

Jun 27th, 2017 11:50 am | By

The National Resources Defense Council reports:

When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers issued the Clean Water Rule in May 2015, they clarified, after decades of confusion and debate, that tens of millions of acres of smaller waterways across the United States were, in fact, eligible for protection under the Clean Water Act. Less than two years later, in February 2017, after several failed attempts by Senate Republicans to kill the rule, President Trump signed an executive order directing the EPA and the Army Corps to begin the process of repealing the Clean Water Rule, with the aim of eliminating it altogether. Today, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt indicated that the two agencies will send a proposal to repeal the rule.

“This proposal strikes directly at public health,” said NRDC president Rhea Suh. “It would strip out needed protections for the streams that feed drinking water sources for one in every three Americans. Clean water is too important for that. We’ll stand up to this reckless attack on our waters and health.”

The Clean Water Rule, also known as the Waters of the United States (WOTUS), limits pollution in the streams and wetlands that feed our larger waterways—critical for safeguarding the drinking water that more than 117 million Americans rely on and for ensuring that people across the nation can continue to swim in and otherwise enjoy these bodies of water. “The Clean Water Rule provides the clarity we need to protect clean water. Its repeal would make it easier for irresponsible developers and others to contaminate our waters and send the pollution downstream.” Suh said.

Well that’s the goal, isn’t it – to take the burden off developers and corporations and put it back on the streams and wetlands and all the animals and people who depend on them.



Scum

Jun 27th, 2017 8:56 am | By

Politico reports:

Mitch McConnell is delivering an urgent warning to staffers, Republican senators and even the president himself: If Obamacare repeal fails this week, the GOP will lose all leverage and be forced to work with Chuck Schumer.

HEY MITCH

If Obamacare repeal succeeds this week (or any week) millions of people will lose health insurance.

WHICH OF THOSE IS MORE IMPORTANT YOU MISERABLE FUCK?



They know an empty suit when they see one

Jun 27th, 2017 8:40 am | By

In news that will surprise no one, Pew has found that Trump does not inspire confidence around the world.

Faith in American leadership has plunged in many nations around the world in the months since President Trump took office, according to a new survey, underscoring the challenges facing the new president as he prepares to make his second overseas trip next week.

Just 22 percent of those interviewed outside the United States expressed confidence in Mr. Trump to do the right thing, compared with 64 percent who had similar confidence in the late stages of President Barack Obama’s administration, according to the Pew Research Center. In only two of 37 countries in the survey did Mr. Trump fare better than Mr. Obama: Russia and Israel.

“Trump and many of his key policies are broadly unpopular around the globe, and ratings for the U.S. have declined steeply in many nations,” the center said in a report released on Monday. “The sharp decline in how much global publics trust the U.S. president on the world stage is especially pronounced among some of America’s closest allies in Europe and Asia, as well as neighboring Mexico and Canada.”

The findings come despite concerted efforts by Mr. Trump to build relationships with world leaders. On Monday, he met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India at the White House and he is scheduled to host President Moon Jae-in of South Korea for a two-day visit starting on Thursday. As president, he has brought the leaders of China and Japan to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and telephoned other world leaders dozens of times.

Yes, he apparently loves to call them up and shmooze, just as he did with Comey. He apparently thinks this is effective and winning, on account of how he has such a lovable charismatic personality. Me? I think world leaders must dread hearing that Donnie is on the phone again.

He’s off to Poland and Germany next week. Vlad will be there, so maybe the BFFs will finally get the chance to huddle together and really cement their bromance. Trump will have no clue that Vlad is toying with him.

Mr. Trump’s first international trip, last month, won him praise from Arab and Israeli leaders in the Middle East but alienated America’s traditional allies in Europe over issues like trade, climate change and the role of NATO.

Not to mention his unbelievably bad manners, and his ignorance, and his stupidity.

Sixty-two percent of those surveyed by Pew disapproved of the travel restrictions and more than 70 percent opposed the United States’ withdrawing from major trade and climate change agreements. Ninety-four percent of those interviewed in Mexico opposed Mr. Trump’s proposal for a border wall.

But it is not just his specific policy agenda that creates antipathy in other countries. Seventy-five percent of those surveyed described Mr. Trump as arrogant, 65 percent called him intolerant and 62 percent said he was dangerous. Still, in a metric that may appeal to Mr. Trump, 55 percent characterized him as a strong leader.

Not necessarily a compliment of course. A strong leader can be an authoritarian leader. Trump is not really strong, but he by god is authoritarian.

The collapse in confidence in the president echoed that of the last phase of President George W. Bush’s tenure, when the Iraq war and the global financial crisis had sapped international faith in American leadership.

The falling support was most pronounced among longtime American friends. While 93 percent in Sweden had faith in Mr. Obama to do the right thing, only 10 percent had such confidence in Mr. Trump, a drop of 83 percentage points. The drop was also large in Germany and the Netherlands (75 percentage points), South Korea (71 points), France (70 points), Spain (68 points) and Britain (57 points).

In Mexico, only 5 percent expressed positive feelings about Mr. Trump, the least in any of the 37 countries. In Canada, confidence in the president fell from 83 percent to 22 percent, the lowest it has been in the 15 years that the survey has been conducted. In addition to the border wall, Mr. Trump’s threat to rip up the North American Free Trade Agreement unless it is renegotiated to his liking has soured America’s closest neighbors.

Make America great again, eh?



Carnival

Jun 26th, 2017 4:46 pm | By

We need something cheerful and pretty, and fortunately there is the Handmade Parade in Hebden Bridge, which happened yesterday.



All 75

Jun 26th, 2017 3:26 pm | By

Ok that’s not good:

All 75 high-rises in Britain that have been tested for fire safety since the Grenfell Tower tragedy have failed, a leading government official said on Monday, raising concerns that even more buildings may have to be evacuated while emergency repairs are undertaken.

Addressing the House of Commons, Sajid Javid, the minister for communities and local government, said all 75 towers in Britain whose cladding had so far been tested for combustibility had failed. He said hospitals and schools would also be tested to ensure they had not been built with cladding that could easily catch fire.

It’s pretty remarkable. Someone in charge chose the slightly cheaper but more combustible cladding every single time. It’s almost as if the ruling class just really does not give a fuck about the lower orders. So they can’t get health insurance, so their apartment block goes up like a torch one midnight, who cares? The rich still have their SUVs and their houses in Aspen.

The United States, a world leader in fire safety standards, forbids the application of the sort of highly flammable materials used on Grenfell Tower. But under the regulatory system in force in Britain, builders and property owners faced less strict restrictions and may have wrapped hundreds of buildings in the potentially risky cladding.

John McDonnell, the opposition Labour Party’s spokesman on economic issues, said those killed in Grenfell Tower had been “murdered” by “political decisions” made over recent decades.

Wow, for once something at which we’re not shamefully worse than all other developed nations.

As many across the political spectrum have criticized the regulatory shortcomings that may have led to the Grenfell fire, members of the insurance industry have said they warned the government about the risks of flammable cladding just a month before it happened.

Malcolm Tarling, a spokesman for the Association of British Insurers, said the industry was closely watching the response to the fire. “We have been calling for the U.K. government to review fire regulations since 2009,” he said. “As recently as May, we made a submission to the government which referenced the need to consider the fire risk posed by combustible cladding.”

In its submission to the government, the association warned that “external cladding made from combustible material can often cause significant fire spread upward and between buildings, which is a particular concern for areas of high building density.”

And they were right.



15 million over the next year

Jun 26th, 2017 3:16 pm | By

Good news, the Senate bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act would throw fewer people off health insurance.

The Senate bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act would increase the number of people without health insurance by 22 million by 2026, a figure that is only slightly lower than the 23 million more uninsured that the House version would create, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Monday.

Yes but a million is a million. Nothing to sneeze at.

Next year, 15 million more people would be uninsured compared with current law, the budget office said.

They should have thought of that before they decided to be those people, shouldn’t they.

Before the budget office released its report on Monday, the American Medical Association officially announced its opposition to the bill, and the National Governors Association urged the Senate to slow down.

Now, the budget office’s findings will give fodder to Democrats who were already assailing the bill as cruel. It could give pause to some Republican senators who have been mulling whether to support the bill — or it could give them an additional reason to come out against the bill altogether.

Or they could just say hey it’s the luck of the draw and support it anyway.



Too complicated

Jun 26th, 2017 11:51 am | By

Meanwhile, in Turkey

Evolution will no longer be taught in Turkish schools, a senior education official has said, in a move likely to raise the ire of the country’s secular opposition.

Alpaslan Durmuş, who chairs the board of education, said evolution was debatable, controversial and too complicated for students.

So if a subject is complicated, the thing to do is stop teaching it. Interesting. They might find that working against them over the long haul.

Critics of the government believe public life is being increasingly stripped of the secular traditions instilled by the nation’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

The secular opposition has long argued that the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is pursuing a covert Islamist agenda contrary to the republic’s founding values. Education is a particularly contentious avenue, because of its potential in shaping future generations. Small-scale protests by parents in local schools have opposed the way religion is taught.

What a lot our two great nations have in common.

The Islamist-secularist debate is just one of a series of divides in a country that two months ago narrowly approved a referendum granting President Erdoğan broad new powers.

Many in the religiously conservative element of the president’s support base admire his piety and see his ascension as a defeat of the elite “White Turks” – a westernised elite that used to dominate the upper echelons of society and was accused of looking down with disdain on poorer, more religiously inclined citizens.

Yes, that’s another thing we have in common.

H/t Ian



Ivanka Trump tries to stay out of politics

Jun 26th, 2017 11:26 am | By

Oh lordy the disconnect, the obliviousness, the lost up a tree with no map itude.

Ivanka Trump, special assistant to the president, told Fox News on Monday: “I try to stay out of politics.”

Trump was speaking to Fox & Friends, the morning show which this weekend broadcast an interview with Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump.

“I try to stay out of politics,” Ivanka Trump said in answer to a question about her father’s use of Twitter to bypass most normal channels of presidential communication. “His political instincts are phenomenal. He did something that no one could have imagined he’d be able to accomplish.

“I feel blessed just being part of the ride from day one and before. But he did something pretty remarkable. But I don’t profess to be a political savant.”

Hey, here’s a fun fact – it’s not a ride. It’s not a family gig. It’s not perks and positions for the whole clan. Ivanka and the rest of the kids are not supposed to be on that ride. It’s a very serious job and the job is the job of one person, not one person and family. Ivanka Trump is in her 30s and was not living at home when Don was elected and she has no business setting herself up in the White House as if anybody had voted for her. Hello? Did no one ever bother to tell them this?

Asked in the interview broadcast on Monday if she ever disagreed with her father – who has, for example, pursued policies on climate change, pulling out of the Paris agreement, that might be thought anathema to a registered New York Democrat, which she until recently was – the first daughter said: “So naturally, there are areas where there is disagreement.”

Climate change, with women’s rights, is part of Ivanka Trump’s White House brief.

“We’re two different human beings,” she continued. “I think it’s normal to not have 100% aligned viewpoints on every issue. I don’t think anyone operates like that with a parent, or within the context of an administration.

“And I think that all different viewpoints being at the table is a positive thing. And I think one of the things that, in this country we

And one thing we have a great deal too much of is the presence of random relatives of a raging narcissist incompetent in the White House.



A massive breach in the wall of separation between church and state

Jun 26th, 2017 9:59 am | By

The other ruling today is a loss for the separation of church and state.

In the church-state case, the court ruled 7-2 that it violates the Constitution’s protection of the free exercise of religion to exclude churches from state programs with a secular intent — in this case, making playgrounds safer.

Missouri’s state constitution, like those in about three dozen states, forbade government [to spend] any public money on “any church, sect, or denomination of religion.”

Trinity Lutheran Church in Columbia, Mo., wanted to participate in a state program that reimburses the cost of rubberizing the surface of playgrounds. But the state said that was not allowed.

The exclusion has raised big questions about how to uphold the Constitution’s prohibition on government support for religion without discriminating against those who are religious.

“The exclusion of Trinity Lutheran from a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified, solely because it is a church, is odious to our Constitution … and cannot stand,” wrote Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

Oh come on. That’s the whole point of the Establishment Clause: that religious bodies are a special case that government needs to stay away from. Churches don’t want the Feds telling them what to do, but they do want to pocket the federal funding when they can. It shouldn’t work that way.

The two dissenting votes came from Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.

Sotomayor issued a stinging dissent, and made clear her displeasure by summarizing it from the bench after Roberts announced the decision.

She said the ruling “weakens this country’s longstanding commitment to a separation of church and state beneficial to both.”

She concluded: “If this separation means anything, it means that the government cannot, or at the very least need not, tax its citizens and turn that money over to houses of worship. The court today blinds itself to the outcome this history requires and leads us instead to a place where separation of church and state is a constitutional slogan, not a constitutional commitment.”

Nick Little at CFI had this to say:

“The Supreme Court has detonated a massive breach in the wall of separation between church and state,” said Nicholas Little, Legal Director of the Center for Inquiry. “In fact the justices have laid the groundwork for additional confusion and conflict, as they have they provided no real method for deciding whether future applications by churches for taxpayer subsidy will be acceptable or not.”

In a split decision, the Supreme Court ruled that excluding the playground of Trinity Lutheran Church from a public grant program offered by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources to fund the purchase of recycled tires to resurface playgrounds violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. The Court held that Trinity Lutheran was excluded from the program because it was a church, which constituted religious discrimination.

“This case was never really about a playground or recycled tires,” said Little. “This was about whether religious institutions can be eligible for public funds for what they claim are secular purposes. The Court has long held that the direct cash funding of religious organizations violates the Constitution. In paying for the renovation of its playground, the state of Missouri relieves Trinity Lutheran Church of a financial burden, which frees the church to use those funds for explicitly sectarian purposes. That is unacceptable.

“It is all the more confounding that the plaintiffs were not even willing to say that the playground had no religious purpose, as the preschool for which it is used is considered part of the church’s religious mission,” said Little. “We are deeply concerned about what happens next, as other sectarian organizations find new and novel ways to siphon taxpayer dollars into their churches, temples, and mosques.”

The money they save on secular sundries that the Feds pay for can go into buying books that say evolution is a lie and children should be whipped for impudence.



The Government’s compelling need to provide for the Nation’s security

Jun 26th, 2017 9:30 am | By

The Supreme Court has upheld parts of Trump’s travel ban.

The Supreme Court says it will decide the fate of President Trump’s revised travel ban, agreeing to hear arguments over immigration cases that were filed in federal courts in Hawaii and Maryland, and allowing parts of the ban that’s now been on hold since March to take effect.

The case centers on the president’s move to block new visas for travelers from six majority-Muslim countries for 90 days, and to suspend the U.S. refugee program for 120 days. Challengers to the ban said it would harm people who have legitimate reasons to be in the U.S. — including through family ties, work and education.

The justices removed the lower courts’ injunctions against the ban “with respect to foreign nationals who lack any bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States,” narrowing the scope of two injunctions that had put the ban in limbo.

With today’s Supreme Court order, the travel ban will remain on hold for plaintiffs who challenged the executive order and for anyone who is “similarly situated,” the justices say — in other words, foreign nationals who have relatives in the U.S., or who plan to attend school or work here.Refugees will face similar criteria, with anyone lacking connections in the U.S. denied entry. In its order, the court stated, “the balance tips in favor of the Government’s compelling need to provide for the Nation’s security.”

But the ban has no clear connection to the Government’s compelling need to provide for the Nation’s security. The ban is not on Islamists, it’s on anyone from a small number of majority-Muslim countries. Islamists who want to commit terrorist acts are a tiny fraction of Muslims, so banning everyone from a random selection of majority-Muslim countries just really does nothing much to provide for the nation’s security. The reality is it might do more to inspire other Islamists to commit terrorist acts here and thus actually harm the nation’s security (and other nations’ security).

I guess the court is arguing from a level up from that, which doesn’t consider particulars but just considers the executive branch as having a largely free hand in protecting the nation’s security – so that it’s inappropriate for the court to inquire into whether Trump’s ban is actually any use or in fact harmful or anything of that kind. I guess the idea is that Trump says this is for security, and that’s a legitimate part of the executive role, so the court doesn’t get to second guess him on the details.

I guess, because otherwise the ruling just seems ridiculous.

The ruling from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals focused on federal law. The court found that the president likely exceeded his statutory authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

“The order does not offer a sufficient justification to suspend the entry of more than 180 million people on the basis of nationality,” the 9th Circuit judges wrote. “National security is not a ‘talismanic incantation’ that, once invoked, can support any and all exercise of executive power.”

The Supreme Court seems to be contradicting that. “If Trump says it’s for national security, that’s his job and we have to take his word for it.”



The sorrows of young famous nonbinary femmes

Jun 25th, 2017 11:50 am | By

Brilliant piece in Vice titled Why Can’t My Famous Gender Nonconforming Friends Get Laid? Oooooh gosh I don’t know – is it because they’re famous for smelling funny? Because they’re so frantically busy being famous no one can volunteer to get them laid? Because being famous isn’t automatically the same thing as being sexually alluring?

It’s a cool Saturday night in my East Village apartment, and Alok Vaid-Menon has just created a Tinder account for me, while Jacob Tobia bats their eyelashes in the background.

Poor Jacob, no takers for the batted eyelashes in the background.

Alok and Jacob are two of the most publicly visible gender nonconforming femmes I know. As a performance poet, Alok has just gone solo after touring in dozens of cities in the US and abroad as one half of the poetry duo Darkmatter. Jacob was named to 2016’s OUT 100, has made a web series for NBC, and been the subject of a GLAAD-nominated episode of MTV’s True Life. Both are trans-identified, but belong somewhere in between genders, and they’ve amassed huge social media followings as gender nonbinary, femme, and fabulous human beings. They’ve become celebrities in their own right, with Jacob regularly walking down the red carpet at LGBTQ galas and Alok featuring in the Janet Mock–narrated HBO documentary The Trans List.

That’s totally celebrity. Absolutely. It puts them right up there with Alec Baldwin and Beyonce. They are so so so famous. And yet nobody wants to date them.

It’s a reliable source of ennui in our group chats, and as the elder among my nonbinary pals, I’ve been giving Jacob and Alok dating advice for weeks.

And yet, even with the ennui, they still can’t get anyone to knock boots with them.

[W]hat I learned during the social experiment that followed is that Jacob and Alok, like many gender nonconforming femmes, live in a world where admirers applaud them for their radical politics on social media, and people they’re attracted to associate with them because of their slayworthiness and social capital, but refuse to make love to them, or at least fuck them well.

Thus for the first time in human history we are confronted with people who cannot persuade anyone to have sex with them. This is unheard of! It’s unnatural!! People should be forced to have sex with them!

This piece will make them even more famous, so maybe that will do the trick.



Epithets

Jun 25th, 2017 10:13 am | By

Sometimes…I don’t know, I just want Donald Trump to be tied hand and foot to a chair while each of us is given five minutes to explain into his face exactly what is so terrible about him.

It’s this.

“Crazy” Bernie Sanders. “Crooked” Hillary. “Cryin'” Chuch Schumer. “Pocahontas.”

That man. That man with the hideous facial expressions, the ludicrous hair sculpture, the flapping too-long tie, the inability to utter an intelligent sentence, the non-stop lies, the pushing people out of his way, the bullying handshakes, the mockery of a disabled reporter, the abuse of women he considers not attractive enough, the corruption, the incompetence, the fraud – the extra scoop of ice cream Just For Him – that man has the gall to use insulting epithets for other people.

I would like 5 minutes to tell a pinioned Trump exactly why that makes him so contemptible and disgusting.



Talk to the women

Jun 24th, 2017 4:37 pm | By

Terry Sanderson shared an excellent Times piece (the London one) by Lucy Bannerman on Muslim (and ex-Muslim) women fighting to be heard.

There’s a myth that Aliyah Saleem would like to debunk immediately. It is the myth of the “Muslim community leader”. If we really want to fight extremism, she argues, we should start by puncturing the idea that self-appointed male “leaders” represent a homogenous bloc of British Muslims. “Stop and ask 1,000 Muslims in the street, ‘Who’s your community leader?’ They’ll say, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’,” said Ms Saleem, 27, one of a growing number of female activists standing up against Islamism.

After four terrorist attacks in the UK in as many months, she is fed up of hearing politicians’ platitudes about “working with Muslim leaders”. There has been little talk about working with Welsh “community leaders” after the Finsbury Park attack, over which Darren Osborne, from Cardiff, has been charged.

Welsh people aren’t exotic enough for that.

“Work with people who are qualified, as opposed to people you believe to be ‘authentic’,” she said. “If you’re putting money into a programme, bring in a qualified project manager. Recruit the right talent. They [imams] are scarecrows, being propped up as if they present power and authority, when in fact they have very little influence over most British Muslims’ lives.”

Every time she sees imams condemning the latest attack, she wonders where the women are. “If half the population is missing, then how effective can [any strategy] be? Misogyny and homophobia are like two pillars supporting Islamic extremism. If you knock them down, the whole thing collapses.”

This is what I said last week when the BBC was up to its old tricks quoting the MCB again, as if they “represented” all British Muslims.

I love this part:

Ms Saleem, who is now vice-chairwoman of Faith to Faithless, a community support network for “apostates”, and describes herself as a former Muslim, recalls how a mother recently approached her for advice about a teenage daughter she feared was being radicalised.

“She said, ‘What shall I do?’ I said, don’t talk about religion at all. Find out what she enjoys to do — whether it’s sport, music, drama — and distract her with that. Because when your brain is filled with music, art, literature, ideas and culture, why would you be tempted? When I was radicalised, it was feminism that opened my eyes. I had always felt suffocated, forced to wear the hijab. But when I discovered feminist perspectives, it blew my mind. I started to challenge things. If you can challenge the notion that women must do this, women can’t do that, or else they’ll end up in a fiery pit, it forces you to challenge all the rest.

“Once you start to have a wider, scientific understanding of sexuality, you start to connect to the real world, and the fundamentalist argument starts to pale in comparison.”

Yes, exactly. It’s a big big world, full of interesting things; once you know that the thin gruel of religion becomes far less seductive.

Poisonous ideas need a breeding ground, said Amina Lone, 45, a community activist, mother of four and co-director of the think tank the Social Action and Research Foundation. A recent conference, supposedly for a cross-section of British Muslims, left her furious. Not only were there about 18 women to 180 men, she was ignored by many imams, who refused to address a woman. This was not a mosque in small town but a digital summit at Google HQ in London — “a progressive, forward-thinking event, completely let down by lack of women. It drives me insane.

“I know a school in Birmingham that has just cancelled its swimming lessons for everyone because it was getting so much kickback from Muslim parents. I’ve been at a talk at a university campus when a young man challenged me because I refused to sit in segregated seating.” Sexism in the name of Islam has been tolerated for too long, she said.

“Why are we [not defending] our secular values? Where does it stop? These are hard-won freedoms. I live in Manchester, Suffragette City — why are we letting religious rights override gender rights? It is bonkers.”

Ms Lone, a British Pakistani born in Birmingham, also derided the idea of “Muslim community leaders” who claim to represent Islam. “The people in my council estate in Manchester — these people are my community, not some male ‘leaders’ who are self-appointed and self-interested.”

Then there’s my friend Gina Khan. Remember Gina Khan’s Diary?

Gina Khan, a mother of two who had to beg Sharia courts to grant her a divorce from an abusive husband, has also had enough. “There’s a growing army of Muslim women who are standing up, but we are still being ignored. The politicians and some parts of the media are ignoring the sensible, secular Muslim women like me and going to these self-appointed male leaders, who are making a mockery of our own secular laws on equality. Why? We have given people power simply because they are Muslim, not because they deserve it.”

Ms Khan learnt to her cost the danger of not registering her Islamic marriage at a British register office. A few years later her husband was pressurised by his family to take a teenage cousin from Kashmir as a second wife. “My husband was crying in my arms the night before his wedding,” she said.

After the relationship became violent, she said it took her two years to be granted an Islamic divorce. “I put the blame on the doorsteps of the mosques. All these men, sitting on chairs, acting in judgment. I went around all the Sharia courts — I remember sitting crying in front of the imams after all the beatings and black eyes — but all they wanted was money. We [Muslim women] end up sitting in front of extremists to get a divorce. It makes me very angry.”

Ms Khan, spokeswoman for One Law For All, a campaign to end parallel legal systems, said: “Hands up who wants more religion? I don’t . . . We’re not telling [our children] how powerful this country is, we don’t shout loudly enough about how much protection our laws give us.”

If only the BBC would talk to women like these instead of the everlasting MCB. If only.



Failing to address basic human needs

Jun 24th, 2017 3:08 pm | By

What is the US good for?

At present I would say very little. We’re good at some things, but as a country we’re turning out to be decidedly second rate.

America leads the world when it comes to access to higher education. But when it comes to health, environmental protection, and fighting discrimination, it trails many other developed countries, according to the Social Progress Imperative, a U.S.-based nonprofit.

The results of the group’s annual survey, which ranks nations based on 50 metrics, call to mind other reviews of national well-being, such as the World Happiness Report released in March, which was led by Norway, Denmark, and Iceland, or September’s Lancet study on sustainable development. In that one, Iceland, Singapore, Sweden, and the U.S. took spots 1, 2, 3, and 28—respectively.

Of course we did. No social health insurance, endemic angry racism, a low minimum wage, massive private debt, a gruesomely high poverty rate, chronic gun violence, and an overall fuckyou attitude to anyone who’s not rich white and powerful. I’m not impressed by our performance in “access to higher education,” either, when it comes with such terrible strings attached.

The Social Progress Index released this week is compiled from social and environmental data that come as close as possible to revealing how people live. “We want to measure a country’s health and wellness achieved, not how much effort is expended, nor how much the country spends on healthcare,” the report states. Scandinavia walked away with the top four of 128 slots. Denmark scored the highest. America came in at 18.

Of course it’s easy enough to dismiss or belittle these occasional reports, each with their unique methodologies and almost identical conclusions. Another approach, however, would be to look at them all together and conclude that they represent “mounting evidence.” In that case, Houston (and Dallas, New Orleans, Tulsa, St. Louis, Baltimore, Chicago, and New York), we have a problem.

SPI produces the report in part to help city, state, and national policymakers diagnose and (ideally) address their most pressing challenges. The group’s chief executive, Michael Green, said America “is failing to address basic human needs, equip citizens to improve their quality of life, protect the environment, and provide opportunity for everyone to make personal choices and reach their full potential.”

We give much better chances of going to prison though.



Ordered to target financial weaknesses

Jun 24th, 2017 11:52 am | By

Trump might have to testify in court about Trump “University” after all.

If the ninth circuit court of appeals – one of two courts that ruled against Trump’s travel ban in June – decides in her favor, Simpson intends to sue the president independently for fraud, which she hopes could see him give evidence before a jury.

“I believed in a jury trial,” Simpson told the Guardian. “It looked like we had such a strong case for trial after seven years of litigation.”

Simpson, a bankruptcy attorney who took courses at Trump University in 2010, had planned to sue on her own before learning of, and joining, one of the three class action suits.

She wasn’t told about the settlement in time to get out of the class action suit.

Trump University, a for-profit company that was not an accredited university or college, launched in 2005 with Trump promising that “students” would be mentored by hand-picked staff.

A Trump University “playbook” released in May 2016 showed that one of the pledges to enrollees read: “Only doers get rich. I know that in these three packed days, you will learn everything to make a million dollars within the next 12 months.”

The fraud lawsuits alleged that students learnt nothing of the sort, despite being encouraged to pay tens of thousands of dollars to attend weekend seminars.

Simpson, who lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, said she received a leaflet through the mail in 2010 and eventually ended up spending $19,000 on tuition.

“What I found from the very beginning was that it was just all upsell,” she said. “It was all a scam. It turned out it was a lot of cheerleading for Donald Trump and his successes.”

Just like the current US government. Can we sue for fraud now?

In May 2016 a federal judge, Gonzalo Curiel, made public more than 400 “playbooks”, which showed how staff were instructed to get people to accrue credit card debt to pay for tuition fees, and ordered to target financial weaknesses in a bid to sell further courses.

In other words pretty much the shittiest meanest scuzziest kind of financial crime you can engage in, cheating vulnerable individual people out of huge sums of money. Trump is scum.



Hundreds of mattresses had been laid out

Jun 24th, 2017 11:16 am | By

People living in council flats in Chalcots estate on Adelaide Road in Swiss Cottage, London, were evacuated in the middle of the night last night after fire inspectors said five tower blocks were at risk of going up like torches the way Grenfell Tower did.

Those affected described scenes of confusion as they were told the council was unable to guarantee residents’ safety, They are asked to find alternative accommodation or report to a local leisure centre, where hundreds of mattresses had been laid out. Others were offered hotel rooms for the night.

Speaking on Saturday morning, the leader of Camden council, Georgia Gould, said: “We’ve had a huge effort overnight to evacuate people. We have had 650 households who have moved out of the tower blocks. We’ve had everyone, council staff, volunteers, different councillors, all coming together with the fire service to move people safely out of their accommodation.”

It seems bizarre, not to wait until morning, but it’s a very human thing to react to the most recent disaster.

She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The last thing I wanted to do was ask residents late on a Friday night to leave their homes. I have been with them all night and people are distressed, angry and scared. It’s such a difficult decision.

“But I said to fire services, is there anything I can do to make this block safe tonight? I offered to pay for fire services to be stationed outside those blocks just so we could have a couple of days to get the works done, but the message was [that there was] nothing to do to make blocks safe that night.”

I wondered that same thing, before I read the article – wouldn’t it be simpler to station fire trucks outside for the night? But then I remembered that the Grenfell fire was out of reach of the fire trucks, so no, I guess that wouldn’t be a useful response.

Sajid Javid, the communities secretary, told Sky News early on Saturday morning that the evacuation was forced not by the cladding alone, but “multiple other fire safety failures”, including problems with insulation on gas pipes and missing fire doors.

The council initially announced on Friday that only one tower, Taplow, which contains 161 households, was to be “temporarily decanted”. Within the hour, however, Gould said the decision had been taken to evacuate the whole estate.

She said a rest centre for residents had been set up at Swiss Cottage library and efforts by council staff to process residents’ cases there were beginning immediately.

That gives me a bit of a turn. I know that library. I had a bedsitter in Hampstead once, years ago, and had Camden library tickets; Swiss Cottage and Camden were the two largest branches, and I used the Swiss Cottage one a lot.

The council earlier said it would immediately start preparing to remove cladding from five towers on the estate after an inspection ordered following the Grenfell disaster, which killed at least 79 people, found it could be a fire risk.

Gould said residents had since shared fire safety concerns that she had not previously been aware of and experts who inspected the estate on Friday informed her they could not guarantee the tenants’ safety.

“We realise that this is hugely distressing for everyone affected and we will be doing all we can, alongside London fire brigade and other authorities, to support our residents at this difficult time. The Grenfell fire changes everything, we need to do everything we can to keep residents safe,” she said.

It’s just so awful that it took the Grenfell fire to change everything.



The page’s repeated use of the term “women”

Jun 24th, 2017 10:16 am | By

Morning Star reports:

FACEBOOK stands accused of censoring feminist content after one of London’s most popular left festivals was barred from promoting its page on the site.

The annual Matchwomen’s festival commemorates the 1888 strike by women and girls at the Bryant & May match factory. This week it tried to boost the page inviting people to attend this year’s event, which takes place on July 1 in Camden — only to be refused.

Bewildered organiser Louise Raw was told Facebook would not promote pages that contain “profanity, harassment, or references to your audience’s personal characteristics (such as gender, race, age or name)” — and the page’s repeated use of the term “women” fell foul of the condition, even though it makes clear that men and children are equally welcome to attend.

The mind reels.

NUT executive member Kiri Tunks was appalled by the social media giant’s stance.

“How can minority or oppressed groups self-organise if they are barred from naming the basis of their oppression?” she asked.

“This event is about educating people on the amazing role played by women in establishing the labour movement, and we can’t talk about that?

“Young women rose up, took on a patriarchal system and won, and now women are being written out of history.

“Would they apply the same principle to the ‘personal characteristic’ of race? Would they agree with the critics who snipe that the Black Lives Matter movement should rename itself All Lives Matter, though that fails to recognise the particular oppression black people face and therefore prevents them from challenging it?”

They asked Facebook to comment but of course it hasn’t responded.



Early morning venting session

Jun 24th, 2017 9:55 am | By

The Post looks in the windows of the White House again and finds a lot of people worrying about how to manage the angry Toddler in Chief.

President Trump has a new morning ritual. Around 6:30 a.m. on many days — before all the network news shows have come on the air — he gets on the phone with a member of his outside legal team to chew over all things Russia.

The calls — detailed by three senior White House officials — are part strategy consultation and part presidential venting session, during which Trump’s lawyers and public-relations gurus take turns reviewing the latest headlines with him.

Again, it’s interesting and significant that three senior people were willing to tell the Post that. As commentators have been commenting for months, it shows what a hot mess this administration is.

They also devise their plan for battling his avowed enemies: the special counsel leading the Russia investigation; the “fake news” media chronicling it; and, in some instances, the president’s own Justice Department overseeing the probe.

His advisers have encouraged the calls — which the early-to-rise Trump takes from his private quarters in the White House residence — in hopes that he can compartmentalize the widening Russia investigation. By the time the president arrives for work in the Oval Office, the thinking goes, he will no longer be consumed by the Russia probe that he complains hangs over his presidency like a darkening cloud.

In other words, they’re desperate to find some way to manage Mr Angry’s moods and tantrums and fits. They’re so desperate that they chat to the Washington Post about it.

And is it working? Ha, no, of course not.

It rarely works, however. Asked whether the tactic was effective, one top White House adviser paused for several seconds and then just laughed.

Uh huh.

Trump’s grievances and moods often bleed into one another. Frustration with the investigation stews inside him until it bubbles up in the form of rants to aides about unfair cable television commentary or as slights aimed at Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his deputy, Rod J. Rosenstein.

Not to mention the endless infantile tweets.

Interviews with 22 senior administration officials, outside advisers, and Trump confidants and allies reveal a White House still trying, after five months of halting progress, to establish a steady rhythm of governance while also indulging and managing Trump’s combative and sometimes self-destructive impulses.

Well what did they think would happen? Did they think this was an adult, responsible, disciplined, thoughtful guy? Proverbs about making silk accessories out of pigs’ ears come to mind.

West Wing aides are working to keep the president on schedule, trotting him around the country in front of the supportive crowds that energize him.

Ouch.

Some in the White House fret over what they view as the president’s fits of rage, and Trump’s longtime friends say his mood has been more sour than at any point since they have known him.

They privately worry about his health, noting that he appears to have gained weight in recent months and that the darkness around his eyes reveals his stress.

Others say oh no he’s perfectly fine, better than ever, brimming with optimism.

“What’s playing out is a psychological drama, not just a political drama or a legal drama,” said Peter Wehner, who was an aide in George W. Bush’s White House and has frequently been critical of Trump. “The president’s psychology is what’s driving so much of this, and it’s alarming because it shows a lack of self-control, a tremendous tropism. . . . He seems to draw psychic energy from creating chaos and disorder.”

Quite, and that was obvious before he was elected.

After Trump fired James B. Comey as FBI director in May and scrutiny over Russia by investigators and journalists intensified, the president and his inner circle settled on a combative strategy to discredit critics, undermine the probe itself and galvanize his most loyal supporters.

Much like Bill Cosby doing a lecture tour on how not to get accused of rape. It’s the Roy Cohn Doctrine – always attack no matter what. Never mind ethics, truth, fairness, accountability, legality – just fight fight fight, the dirtier the better.

Trump is most bothered by what he views as the one-sided portrayal and overall unfairness of the Russia investigation, senior White House officials said. He thinks media reports automatically treat Comey’s version of events as superior to his own and have not focused enough on Mueller’s hiring of some investigators who have donated to Democratic candidates.

Yes well there’s a reason for that. It has to do most basically with presentation: with what we see when we look at them. It has to do, for instance, with how they talk. We compare what we saw and heard when Comey talked to that committee with what we see and hear when Trump talks to anyone. This is why we see Comey’s version of events as superior to Trump’s.



Too late, honey, you said yes

Jun 23rd, 2017 6:20 pm | By

Mother Jones reports:

In North Carolina, women can’t legally withdraw their consent in the middle of sex, even if things get violent—and attempts to change that reality at the Legislature aren’t going well.

According to a 1979 state Supreme Court ruling, State v. Way, a man isn’t guilty of rape if he continues to have intercourse with a woman who asks him to stop, so long as she agreed to the encounter at the outset.

Hmm. So once she says yes he can discard the mask of a decent human being and treat her like a prop or a slave or a captured enemy or whatever other abusive fantasy turns him on? No matter how psychotic he may turn out to be, her “yes” is permanent and binding? Because…what, when you get right down to it she’s just a thing?

North Carolina is the only state with such a law on the books, and efforts to change it have been unsuccessful, even as women have spoken out about how the law has harmed them. On Thursday, the Fayetteville Observer highlighted the story of Aaliyah Palmer, a 19-year-old who  says she initially consented when a man pulled her into a bathroom to have sex at a party, but asked him to stop five minutes later after he allegedly started yanking out her hair. “You’re hurting me,” she said. But he kept going, she says, despite multiple demands that he stop, while others at the party allegedly slipped a cellphone under the door to tape the incident.

The tape corroborates her account but the guy hasn’t been charged; she has dropped out of college because of panic attacks. Heads he wins tails she loses.

Democratic state Sen. Jeff Jackson has recently sponsored a bill to change the law, after hearing from women who were affected. SB 553 would make it illegal to have sex with someone who initially agreed but then changed her mind, but the bill is currently stuck in committee and will likely be dead for the rest of the session, Jackson told the Fayetteville Observer. “North Carolina is the only state…where no doesn’t mean no,” he said. “There’s no reason for this to be partisan.”

Meanwhile Bill Cosby is going to lecture on how to avoid being accused of sexual assault.