Back in May 2015 I wrote this post about the Cannes film festival’s banning women from film screenings if they were not wearing high heels.

Annals of Gender Policing. Anna Merlan at Jezebel reports:

The Cannes Film Festival is reportedly not allowing women into screenings if they’re wearing flat shoes.

Into screenings. It would be bad enough if it were the Top Gala Codfish Ball, but it’s screenings. People go to screenings as part of their work, as well as for entertainment and enlightenment. The Cannes Film Festival is a professional event as well as social and festive and so on.

And then there’s the issue of what high heels are, which is a form of

Meanwhile at the UN:

The United States blocked a United Nations Security Council statement drafted Monday that called for an independent investigation into Monday’s killing of at least 58 Palestinians along the Israeli-Gaza border. The deaths, alongside some 2,700 people who were injured, made Monday the deadliest day in Gaza since 2014. The protests erupted on the same day as the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem—a move that outraged Palestinians and many in the Muslim world. The statement, vetoed by the U.S., said in an initial draft: “The Security Council expresses its outrage and sorrow at the killing of Palestinian civilians exercising their right to peaceful protest. The Security Council calls for an independent and transparent investigation

MSF issued a statement on the bloodbath in Gaza yesterday:

MAY 14, 2018—As teams from Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) treat people wounded today in Gaza, Marie-Elisabeth Ingres, MSF representative in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, provided the following statement:

What happened today is unacceptable and inhuman. The death toll provided this evening by Gaza health authorities—55 dead and 2,271 wounded—including 1,359 wounded with live ammunition, is staggering. It is unbearable to witness such a massive number of unarmed people being shot in such a short time.

Our medical teams are working around the clock, as they have done since April 1, providing surgical and postoperative care to men, women, and children, and they will continue to do

Not just trolling:

In December 2016 Diep Saeeda, an outspoken human rights activist from the Pakistani city of Lahore, received a short message on Facebook from someone she didn’t know but with whom she had a number of friends in common: “Hy dear.”

She didn’t think much of it and never got round to replying.

But the messages weren’t coming from a fan of Mrs Saeeda’s activism – instead they were the start of a sustained campaign of digital attacks attempting to install malware on her computer and mobile phone to spy on her and steal her data.

She got many more messages from that account, which pretended to be that of a young woman who worked for the … Read the rest

Who cares about Ebola, anyway? Not Trump.

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Tuesday that a new Ebola outbreak has emerged in the Democratic Republic of the Congo — and thanks to the Trump administration, we are woefully under-equipped to deal with it.

Just as news broke about the resurgence of the deadly disease, the Trump administration made a series of moves that could severely hamper America’s capacity to respond to disease outbreaks.

Hours before the announcement from WHO, Trump called on Congress to rescind $252 million that had been set aside specifically for the purpose of dealing with Ebola outbreaks. The money was left over from the funds that Congress appropriated to fight the 2015 Ebola

And there was this today:

Breaking News: Israel responded with rifle fire to a mass attempt by Palestinians to cross a border fence, killing at least 28, Palestinian officials said https://t.co/25VosS3vAv

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 14, 2018

Ann Coulter retweeted with the question:

Can we do that? https://t.co/yVOYYEdZYB

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) May 14, 2018

Geddit? She’s asking if we can shoot down people who try to cross the border (the one with Mexico of course – not the one with Canada! God no).… Read the rest

This again. “It’s all the fault of you libbruls for thinking you’re so smart and being such smartybootses and making everyone else feel dumm. It’s nothing to do with money or power or hacking or bribery or lies or celebrity or misogyny or disenfranchisement or gerrymandering or the disproportionate clout of barely-populated states like Montana and Wyoming, NO, it’s all you liberals poncing around thinking you’re so so clever.”

I know many liberals, and two of them really are my best friends. Liberals make good movies and television shows. Their idealism has been an inspiration for me and many others. Many liberals are very smart. But they are not as smart, or as persuasive, as they think.

And a

Paul Waldman in the Post:

Monday marked the moment when the policy of the United States government toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict lost all complexity, all ambiguity and all nuance.

On Monday, we were confronted with two sets of pictures. On one side, thousands of Palestinians gathering at the Gaza border to protest are being shot down by Israeli snipers. As I write, at least 43 people have been killed and more than 2,000 wounded, according to the Gaza Health Ministry; those numbers will undoubtedly rise.

On the other side, representatives of the Trump administration, including Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, some Republican donors and a couple of evangelical megachurch pastors who have said vile, bigoted things about Islam and

Another side by side:

Celebrating the US embassy opening in occupied Jerusalem, precisely while IDF troops are murdering scores of innocent, unarmed Palestinians in Gaza:
The appalling juxtaposition of these two jarring events, unfolding in synchronicity, screams total disregard for human suffering. pic.twitter.com/JTg3tOaXCI

— Rula Jebreal (@rulajebreal) May 14, 2018

… Read the rest

While Princess Ivanka blesses the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem, Palestinian officials say at least 52 people have been killed in protests.

At least 1,700 Palestinian demonstrators were also wounded on Monday along the border fence with Gaza, the Health Ministry reported, as the mass protests that began on March 30 and that had already left dozens dead erupted anew.

The Times juxtaposes the two:

Tens of thousands of Palestinians took part in the Gaza protests, which spread on Monday to the West Bank, where the focus was on opposition to the embassy move.

By 7 p.m., 52 Palestinians, including several teenagers, were dead and at least 1,700 were injured in Gaza, the Health Ministry said. Israeli soldiers

Gail Dines also wrote, in the Guardian, about strangulation as sexy fun play.

Since the #MeToo movement, we’re learning just how many men seem to see choking women as a legitimate form of “sex play,” as it is often euphemistically referred to in porn.

Eric Schneiderman, New York State’s Attorney General, who announced he was pursuing a lawsuit against Harvey Weinstein for what he described as “despicable” behavior, was just forced to resign after four women accused him of choking them, as well as other types of physical assault. Schneiderman disputed the allegations, claiming that he had only consensual sexual relations.

Is there also consensual stabbing, consensual shooting, consensual beating to a pulp?

In mainstream media targeted

Kate Manne, author of Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, in the Times Friday:

It doesn’t take much to cut off someone’s oxygen supply, or to restrict blood flow to and from her brain. Around 10 seconds of pressure on the carotid artery, either constant or intermittent, is usually enough to render the victim unconscious, and it requires less pressure than it takes to open a can of soda.

This act is often labeled “choking,” as it was in an article this week in The New Yorker, by Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow, in describing the multiple occasions on which Eric Schneiderman, New York’s former attorney general, allegedly assaulted women in this manner.

But experts on domestic violence don’t … Read the rest

What could go wrong?

An anti-gay, pro-Trump pastor from Dallas will give the opening prayer Monday night at the introduction ceremony of the new US embassy in Jerusalem. Pastor Robert Jeffress, a Fox News contributor and supporter of President Donald Trump, will add to the controversy surrounding the diplomatically awkward event.

Jeffress, who serves as an informal faith adviser to Trump, has maligned most world religions and condemned homosexuality, while on Fox he spouts biblical justifications for Trump’s agenda.

Sounds perfect.

Jeffress, who runs the First Baptist Dallas megachurch in Texas, has referred to both Islam and Mormonism as “a heresy from the pit of hell.” He believes Islam, Mormonism, Hinduism, and Buddhism are all cults, and that Catholicism

Even George Will.

Donald Trump, with his feral cunning, knew. The oleaginous Mike Pence, with his talent for toadyism and appetite for obsequiousness, could, Trump knew, become America’s most repulsive public figure. And Pence, who has reached this pinnacle by dethroning his benefactor, is augmenting the public stock of useful knowledge. Because his is the authentic voice of today’s lickspittle Republican Party, he clarifies this year’s elections: Vote Republican to ratify groveling as governing.

Feral, oleaginous, toadyism, and lickspittle all in one paragraph. I like it.

Then there was Pence’s lickspittling of Joe Arpaio last week.

Noting that Arpaio was in his Tempe audience, Pence, oozing unctuousness from every pore, called Arpaio “another favorite,” professed himself “honored” by Arpaio’s

Federal employees are working for TRUMP now and they will watch Fox News at work and like it.

CBS News has confirmed an email was sent to researchers at the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research responding to apparent efforts to change the channel on internal television screens. The email from “[White Oak] Digital Display” sent on Wednesday, May 3, was sent to inform the researchers of the “reason for the change from CNN to Fox.” White Oak is the name of the FDA’s campus.

The email goes on to inform employees that the decision came from the Trump administration.

“The reason for the change is that a decision from the current administration administrative officials has requested that all

This one is getting a whole lot of mockery.

If you don't like "Intellectual Dark Web" call it something else. "Intellectual Free-Thinkers" "The New Enlightenment" "The Intellectual Free Enlightenment" whatever. The name isn't important, nor are the people leading it. It's the idea of free thought that counts.

— Michael Shermer (@michaelshermer) May 11, 2018

If you don’t like “Intellectual Dark Web” call it something else. “Intellectual Free-Thinkers” “The New Enlightenment” “The Intellectual Free Enlightenment” whatever. The name isn’t important, nor are the people leading it. It’s the idea of free thought that counts.

Wait – if neither the name nor the people named is/are important, then what’s left? With neither the people nor the name there’s…nothing, so what are … Read the rest

NBC reports:

North Korea can look forward to “a future brimming with peace and prosperity” if it agrees to quickly give up its nuclear weapons, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pledged on Friday ahead of a historic summit between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un.

Er…isn’t that what the Iran deal was? The Iran deal that Trump just yanked the US out of? Rewards and incentives to a highly authoritarian and repressive regime in exchange for denuclearization with strict oversight?

Why is it ok to do that with North Korea but not with Iran?… Read the rest