The footage of the race is shocking. How people can cheer this on confounds me.
When she refused, they set her on fire
Apr 18th, 2019 11:43 am | By Ophelia BensonMir Sabbir reports from Dhaka:
Nusrat Jahan Rafi was doused with kerosene and set on fire at her school in Bangladesh. Less than two weeks earlier, she had filed a sexual harassment complaint against her headmaster.
Her courage in speaking out against sexual assault, her death five days after being set alight and everything that happened in-between has gripped Bangladesh and brought attention to the vulnerability of sexual harassment victims in this conservative South Asian country.
The vulnerability of female people in general.
“Conservative” isn’t really the right word for setting a woman on fire because she reported sexual abuse. (I’m going out on a limb here and surmising that “harassment” also doesn’t quite cover what the headmaster did.) … Read the rest
Permission to go outside
Apr 18th, 2019 9:13 am | By Ophelia BensonOn a different part of the planet:
One of four women who was recently subjected to a brutal public lashing by armed Taliban fighters in Afghanistan has spoken about her experience, amid an increase of violent punishments given to those violating its strict interpretation of religious law.
Aziza, who like many other Afghan women only uses one name, was rounded up by the Taliban’s shadow police for being out of her house without her husband and not being fully veiled. She was beaten so badly she lost consciousness.
Not punishments and not any kind of police, just a group of criminal men committing extreme violence against a woman.
… Read the restAziza said she was arrested by armed Taliban fighters after they
Evidence about the president’s actions and intent
Apr 18th, 2019 8:46 am | By Ophelia BensonMeanwhile the report is out.
The Guardian (like everyone else) is racing through it and sharing some highlights. Like the part where it’s less exculpatory than Barr told us it was:
… Read the restIn his introduction to the second part of his report, on obstruction of justice, Robert Mueller goes much further than attorney general Bill Barr has suggested and points to serious wrongdoing on Trump’s part that could amount to criminal activity.
Mueller states that had his team concluded that the president had committed no crime, they would have said so. Instead, Mueller writes:
Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment.
There’s more trouble for Trump in the
He does not want to
Apr 17th, 2019 4:31 pm | By Ophelia BensonTrump is very very very mad about the subpoenas and the committees and the subpoenas and everything. Just fit to be tied.
… Read the restThe slew of demands from the House committees has infuriated Trump, who has told aides that he does not want to cooperate with the inquiries, according to people familiar with his thinking.
He is particularly angry about the efforts by the Ways and Means Committee to obtain his tax returns, telling aides he will fight that demand all the way to the Supreme Court and adding that, by then, the 2020 election will be over.
“You’re never going to see his tax returns,” Anthony Scaramucci, a former White House official and Trump adviser, said on MSNBC on Tuesday.
The churches of St. Landry Parish
Apr 17th, 2019 4:12 pm | By Ophelia BensonEugene Scott at the Post points out that Trump tweeted about Notre Dame twice but had said nothing about the three Louisiana black churches that burned down.
… Read the restOn Tuesday, state authorities charged Holden Matthews, a 21-year-old white man and the son of the local police deputy, with hate crimes in the Louisiana church attacks. He was earlier charged with arson.
Of course, the churches in Louisiana are significantly younger than Notre Dame. But they also have a rich history and played a significant role in St. Landry Parish’s black community. At least one hosts a cemetery containing graves of black people enslaved in Louisiana.
“My church has a lot of history,” the Rev. Gerald Toussaint of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church,
Flying while self-involved
Apr 17th, 2019 12:33 pm | By Ophelia BensonSpare a thought for the flying trans people.
Flying while transgender — a term that increasingly includes not just those who are male or female but also those who identify as both or neither, like me — is undeniably improving.
So transgender means being the sex opposite the one “assigned at birth” and being neither sex and being both sexes. So it’s entirely incoherent. Could its real meaning be just “more special than you”?
Anyway, at least the flying part is improving. Because? Airlines no longer give pink drinks to women and blue drinks to men? But they’ve never done that. It’s hard to see what difference it could make.
… Read the restLast month, United Airlines expanded its gender options:
Which item doesn’t belong?
Apr 17th, 2019 11:53 am | By Ophelia Bensonhttps://twitter.com/AliceStrudel/status/1118419181781815301… Read the rest
When he thinks about feminism, he thinks “TERF”
Apr 17th, 2019 10:58 am | By Ophelia BensonWell that’s us told:
Nonbinary Femmes Must Be Included in the Feminist Movement.
“Must” on whose orders? There is no such “must.”
But besides that, what the hell is a nonbinary femme supposed to be? I think I’ve asked that before, possibly to the point of tedium, but nobody seems to be able to explain. It’s having it both ways, if you ask me.
At any rate it’s clearly nothing to do with women, dreary old humdrum commonplace neither trans nor nonbinary women. They’re too boring to bear, so feminism needs to be livened up by being ordered to include men who identify or present or perform or pirouette or show off “as” women.
Our author Tre’vell [sic] … Read the rest
Muh authoriteh
Apr 16th, 2019 5:56 pm | By Ophelia BensonTrump says he can do whatever he wants:
President Donald Trump issued the second veto of his presidency Tuesday, stopping a congressional resolution that would have sought to end US involvement in the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
“This resolution is an unnecessary, dangerous attempt to weaken my constitutional authorities, endangering the lives of American citizens and brave service members, both today and in the future,” Trump wrote to the Senate Thursday.
His constitutional authority – as if it were personal to him as opposed to attaching (or not) to the office. I’m pretty sure normal presidents use the third person in statements of that kind – they talk of the executive branch or the president but not their personal … Read the rest
Why care
Apr 16th, 2019 5:00 pm | By Ophelia BensonKatie Herzog notes a commonality in mourning cultural destruction:
As I watched Notre Dame burn yesterday, I was reminded of the fire at the National Museum of Brazil last year and the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan by the Taliban in 2001. You didn’t have to be a Brazilian or a Buddhist to care about those losses, and you don’t have to be a Catholic or a Parisian to care about Notre Dame now.
I’ve blogged about both of those, and a lot more – the shrines in Timbuktu, the statues in Palmyra, the mosques in Gujarat.
Art works aren’t people, but art works matter to people, so it’s not devaluing people to give a damn when examples … Read the rest
Walking beside his mother
Apr 16th, 2019 4:00 pm | By Ophelia Bensonhttps://twitter.com/DoctorChristian/status/1118168023406395394
The replies are even funnier.
Damn!
I thought it was real too.
At least this Cockenoserous is real. pic.twitter.com/7WRfEgiMpw— Nige Rudd (@nigelrudd) April 16, 2019
https://twitter.com/nigelrudd/status/1118256741748285440… Read the rest
Alors oui, nous rebâtirons la cathédrale Notre-Dame
Apr 16th, 2019 3:35 pm | By Ophelia BensonNotre Dame Cathedral was within “15 to 30 minutes” of complete destruction as firefighters battled to stop flames reaching its gothic bell towers, French authorities have revealed.
A greater disaster was averted by members of the Paris fire brigade, who risked their lives to remain inside the burning monument to create a wall of water between the raging fire and two towers on the west facade.
Merci, pompiers.
The cathedral is owned by the state and has been at the centre of a years-long dispute between the nation and the Paris archdiocese over who should finance restoration work to collapsed balustrades, crumbling gargoyles and cracked facades.
How about both? Or maybe a 75/25 split, with the … Read the rest
But we are waiting
Apr 16th, 2019 11:49 am | By Ophelia BensonDahlia Lithwick points out many things Trump has done in full public view that amount to the various kinds of wrongdoing Mueller’s team investigated.
There’s the alleged telling an official to close the southern border and promising a pardon in advance, there’s the lying about Wikileaks, there’s the spreading filth.
… Read the restLast week, as professor David Rothkopf ably summarized here, Attorney General William Barr testified that he was able to be the arbiter of whether the president obstructed justice, which is actually not the case. He also reversed a long-standing Department of Justice policy to defend statutes because the president told him to. The treasury secretary has refused to abide by a law that on its face demands that
Dry timber
Apr 16th, 2019 11:19 am | By Ophelia Benson… Read the restA heritage fire safety expert has said his heart sinks and he fears for the worst every time he sees scaffolding on a historic building.
Stewart Kidd said all construction sites were inherently dangerous places, but the danger was so much higher in a heritage building.
“We’re talking about timber, we’re talking about very dry buildings because they are old, we’re talking about nooks and crannies, we’re talking about voids and ducts where fire can spread unseen and pop out a long way from where it started.”
He said data from Scotland suggested that about 8-12% of fires in heritage buildings occured when contractors were present.
“What we know is that any kind of hot
Change of location
Apr 16th, 2019 11:02 am | By Ophelia BensonThat shindig with Jair Bolsonaro at the Museum of Natural History? It’s off.
… Read the restPlans to honor Brazil’s far-right president with a black-tie gala at the American Museum of Natural History have been scrapped after a public outcry that saw New York’s mayor brand Jair Bolsonaro “a very dangerous human being”.
Bill de Blasio was among those to speak out after plans for the 14 May event emerged last week, claiming Bolsonaro’s “overt racism and homophobia” and his hostility to the environment mean it would be wrong for such a museum to host him.
Museum staff and scientists in both the United States and Brazil also blasted the decision to pay tribute to a rightwing populist who critics
Red line
Apr 16th, 2019 6:02 am | By Ophelia BensonHouse Democrats issued subpoenas Monday for records from Deutsche Bank and other financial institutions, seeking information regarding President Trump’s business ventures as several congressional panels took steps to intensify their scrutiny of the president’s personal accounts and corporate dealings.
The subpoenas, first reported by the New York Times, were issued by the House Intelligence and Financial Services committees, which have been leading the Democrats’ probe of Trump’s finances. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Financial Services Committee, said in a statement Monday that Trump’s “potential use of the U.S. financial system for illicit purposes is a very serious concern.”
… Read the restThis was reportedly one of Trump’s red lines for Mueller—Trump was so angry over reports that
Profiles in cheating
Apr 16th, 2019 5:55 am | By Ophelia BensonHighly decorated track athletes Andraya Yearwood of Cromwell High School and Terry Miller of Bloomfield High School have been selected co-recipients of the 2019 Bob Casey Courage Award by the Connecticut Sports Writers’ Alliance.
And why are they “highly decorated”? Because they have male bodies but race against girls and so they win all the races. I’m not at all sure I consider that “courage”…
Both juniors, Yearwood and Miller are transgender athletes in girls track who have won individual Connecticut state track championships in multiple sprint events. Miller, who previously attended Hartford’s Bulkeley High School, recently won New England indoor track championships in the 55 and 300 meters.
Yes, of course they … Read the rest
Nail-biting in Trumplandia
Apr 16th, 2019 5:26 am | By Ophelia BensonOne for the “least worrying worry ever” file: some Trump people who talked to Mueller are in a sweat that Trump might get mad at them. Waa waa; we’re in a sweat that Trump might kill us all.
… Read the restOf particular concern is how Trump — and his allies — will react if it appears to be clear precisely what specific officials shared with Mueller, these people said.
“They got asked questions and told the truth and now they’re worried the wrath will follow,” one former White House official said.
Some of those who spoke with Mueller’s team, such as former White House counsel Don McGahn, witnessed Trump’s actions up close and were privy to key moments in the obstruction
