Gulalai at last:

On 12th October, I was detained by FIA and my passport was confiscated because my name had been put on Exit Control List. Apparently, defending human rights has become a crime and security threat in our country. I was released after 9 hours of detention. I am overwhelmed with the support I received after I was detained by FIA. I am very thankful to the political groups, movements, international and national organizations, media, social media activists and individuals who raised their voice for me. I received tremendous organized support from leaders and workers of political groups including Women Democratic Front, Pashtun Tahafuz Movement PTM – پښتون تحفظ موومنټ Awami Workers Party, and Awami National Party.

Pertinent.

 … Read the rest

Saudi Arabia is issuing threats.

Saudi Arabia has said it will retaliate against any sanctions imposed over the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi, as the Riyadh stock market had its biggest fall in years.

…

The French, German and UK foreign secretaries ratcheted up the pressure by releasing a joint statement calling on the Saudi government to give a complete and detailed account of Khashoggi’s disappearance, adding that those found to be responsible must be held to account.

Riyadh vowed to hit back against any action. “The kingdom affirms its total rejection of any threats and attempts to undermine it, whether through economic sanctions, political pressure or repeating false accusations,” it said.

The kingdom affirms its right to murder … Read the rest

Rachel Anne Williams wrote a post on this question of believing what people say about themselves, in addition to that tweet.

Williams’s Twitter/Medium bio:

Author & writer, ex-academic philosopher, Science Nerd. Read more at www.transphilosopher.com Forthcoming book Transgressive with @JKPBooks

I can’t find where Williams was an academic philosopher, and given the quality of argument in this post I have to say I don’t believe it.

What does it mean to say trans people are who we say we are? It means that if a trans woman says she is a woman, then you should believe she is a woman (and likewise for trans-masculine and non-binary identities).

Trans exclusionary radical feminists (henceforth radfems) respond by saying “Why should I

Another Rachel steps up to defend Rachel MacKinnon.

I support @rachelvmckinnon as a trans athlete. She just set a world record in cycling and TERFs are giving her shit about it. But I know Rachel. I've seen how hard she's worked for this. How dedicated she's been. Hitting the gym. Practicing. Working with coaches. She deserved it.

— Rachel Anne Williams (@transphilosophr) October 13, 2018

But the issue isn’t working hard and dedication and hitting the gym and practicing and working with coaches. The issue is doing all that with a huge physical advantage over all your competitors – the issue is doing it while competing against women while having a male body, and quite a large-framed male body at … Read the rest

Nicholas Kristof on Trump on Saudi Arabia and MBS and Khashoggi:

Turkey claims to have audiotape of Saudi interrogators torturing Jamal and killing him in the Saudi Consulate. None of this is confirmed, and we still don’t know exactly what happened; we all pray that Jamal will still reappear. But increasingly it seems that the crown prince, better known as M.B.S., orchestrated the torture, assassination and dismemberment of an American-based journalist using diplomatic premises in a NATO country.

That is monstrous, and it’s compounded by the tepid response from Washington. President Trump is already rejecting the idea of responding to such a murder by cutting off weapons sales. Trump sounds as if he believes that the consequence of such

Why are we so cozy with Saudi Arabia, again?

Each year, Saudi Arabia employs, through consultants or otherwise, a host of retired American generals, diplomats, intelligence experts and others. Until now, they could assure themselves this was a win-win: lucrative for them, to be sure, but also enhancing mutual understanding with an important U.S. ally.

Now, as more and more evidence implicates Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in the reported murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi on Saudi diplomatic property in Istanbul, the equation has changed.

Not really. Saudi Arabia is a theocratic hell-hole that abuses women and girls, foreigners, atheists, dissenters – most people it can reach, in fact. The murder of Khashoggi is … Read the rest

Talk about shameless…

I broke the 200m WORLD RECORD this morning. It was my first indoor 200m and I have to admit that my 11.92 was significantly slower than I was doing outdoors in the summer. I still need… https://t.co/B2AVmn6aDq

— Dr. Rachel McKinnon (@rachelvmckinnon) October 12, 2018

… Read the rest

More shameless voter suppression, this time in North Dakota.

The high court decided 6 to 2 Tuesday to leave in place a state law that requires residents to provide an ID displaying a residential address rather than a P.O. box number to vote. Republican lawmakers who pushed for the measure say the rule is designed to combat voter fraud.

But tribal officials and Democrats say it appears aimed at making it harder for thousands of Native Americans to vote, particularly those who live on reservations without conventional street names. The law specifically bans the use of P.O. boxes as an alternative form of address, rendering many tribal ID cards invalid.

But tribal officials have a plan.

Native American activists

Back in March there were news stories about Jared Kushner sharing intelligence with the Saudi dictators.

Jared Kushner discussed classified information from the president’s daily briefing with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who bragged that he had Kushner “in his pocket,” The Intercept reported on Wednesday, citing an unnamed source.

Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser,had access to the briefing, a highly sensitive intelligence update meant to be seen by only the president and his top advisers, before being stripped of his top-secret security clearance last month.

And, if this is accurate, he blabbed about it. To Saudi assistant-dictator Mohammed bin Salman, who apparently had Jamal Khashoggi killed last week.

When Salman

Jane Clare Jones explains to us about deconstruction and social construction and identity and trans doctrine.

The notion of identity, and what we mean by identity, is key to this whole story. And the infinite irony of the way mangled-post-structuralism is currently washing around in the background of this debate is that if I had to sum up the core of deconstruction in one line, I’d say ‘it’s the critique of identity.’ That is, deconstruction properly interpreted is actually a really useful tool for explaining what’s so wrong with trans rights claims that ‘I AM WHAT I SAY I AM,’ and ‘I am the determinant of my identity,’ and, equally, the idea that identity is ‘a simple case of individual

Originally a comment by latsot on The AI did not like women.

The interesting part (well. at least to people like me) is this:

It penalized resumes that included the word “women’s,” as in “women’s chess club captain.” And it downgraded graduates of two all-women’s colleges, according to people familiar with the matter.

Nobody told it to take notice of the word “women’s”, it worked that out all by itself. This is one of the deeper problems of machine learning: the software can generate unexpected concepts and make decisions based on them and there’s often no way to know this is happening. Sometimes these concepts can perform well in a task, but then start to do badly when input … Read the rest

The Post reports that Turkey says there is video of the torture and murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

The recordings show that a Saudi security team detained Khashoggi in the consulate after he walked in Oct. 2 to obtain an official document before his upcoming wedding, then killed him and dismembered his body, the officials said.

The audio recording in particular provides some of the most persuasive and gruesome evidence that the Saudi team is responsible for Khashoggi’s death, the officials said.

Turkey doesn’t want to share the recordings because they’re not supposed to be spying on other people’s consulates.

Mohammed has billed himself as a reformer and moderating force in Saudi Arabia, and he has become a key strategic

So nice, everyone wants Ivanka Trump to be the new United Nations Ambassador. She would be incredible, but I can already hear the chants of Nepotism! We have great people that want the job.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 12, 2018

Special meaning of “everyone” – everyone he talks to, everyone on Fox, everyone in his administration.

Actually, in reality, probably not even all of them. Trump’s abysmal theory of mind is quite capable of translating one person who nervously said (when asked) that it would be okay into everyone actively wanting it.

Because why would anyone actually want Ivanka Trump as UN ambassador? She’s a fashion marketer with no obvious intelligence and very obviously no expertise or knowledge. … Read the rest