Oh dear. As many people predicted but Trump apparently forgot to consider, he can’t go bopping off to Scotland for some golf because there’s a wee pandemic on.

US President Donald Trump — just like anyone from outside the country — would not be welcome in Scotland at the moment due to coronavirus-related restrictions, Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said Tuesday.

Sturgeon was asked during a news conference about unconfirmed Scottish media speculation that Trump could be planning a trip to one of his golf courses in Scotland around the time of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20.

The White House is very indignant over these tyrannical rumors.

“Anonymous sources who claim to know what the President

… Read the rest

Misogynist philosophy bro strikes again.

A open statement regarding transphobia in philosophy.https://t.co/lLjrSFe3t6

— Jonathan Ichikawa (@jichikawa) January 5, 2021

Womanphobia on the other hand will be firmly ignored on pain of further punishment from Jonathan Ichikawa.

The Letter:

We are professional academic philosophers committed to the inclusion and acceptance of trans and gender non-conforming people, both in the public at large, and within philosophy in particular. We write to affirm our commitment to developing a more inclusive environment, disavowing the use of professional and cultural authority to further gendered oppression.

So we’re supposed to think that feminist women are “using professional and cultural authority to further gendered oppression.” Meaning what? Feminist women are bullying men? That’s what he’s saying?… Read the rest

Interesting…

The murk surrounding Donald Trump’s likely whereabouts on his last day as president has thickened considerably with news that an official plane he has used in the past is due to fly to Scotland the day before Joe Biden’s inauguration.

…

Scotland’s Sunday Post has reported that Prestwick airport, near Trump’s Turnberry golf course resort, has been told to expect a US military Boeing 757 that has occasionally been used by Trump, on 19 January.

He’s more than stupid enough to think he’ll be able to order up the plane again a few days or weeks later. He’s also more than stupid enough to think rules about travel during the pandemic don’t apply to him. … Read the rest

O…..kay.

"If we have a Democratically-controlled Senate, we're now basically at full-scale hot conflict in this country, whereas right now we're in a cold civil war" — @chiproytx https://t.co/VZ0H6jaoId

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 5, 2021

…the American people – regular people that are out there working every day, hard-working Americans – they’re getting trampled by a system that is rigged against them.

So it’s the Democrats who grind the faces of the poor, and the Republicans who have their interests at heart. (Mind you, the Democrats do very little more than Republicans to help working people, but that’s partly because they keep having to claw back a little of the ground Republicans have grabbed.)… Read the rest

The other day I saw a bit of the Mississippi Declaration of Secession, and stared with the usual surprise. The things people can convince themselves of: they surprise me.

Let’s see:

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical

… Read the rest

https://twitter.com/tibby17/status/1346179829734002688… Read the rest

Another step into the sunshine of utopia: we now get to know what pronouns courtroom lawyers “use.” Well, we don’t, but the lucky people of British Columbia do.

In an effort to be more inclusive of transgender people, the Provincial Court of B.C. has created a new policy asking lawyers to provide pronouns when introducing themselves and their clients in court.

While some lawyers have already started including pronouns in their introductions, the court will now expect everyone to share how they wish to be referred to.

In a press release, the provincial court provided an example of such an introduction: “My name is Ms. Jane Lee, spelled L-E-E. I use she/her pronouns. I am the lawyer for Mx.

… Read the rest

Hindu nationalists are still trying to bully the much-admired historian Romila Thapar.

Romila Thapar is the preeminent historian of ancient India, an octogenarian feted the world over for her scholarship excavating answers to questions at the heart of the country’s past. She holds honorary doctorates from top universities including Oxford, is the recipient of the Kluge Prize — akin to the Nobel in social sciences — and has lectured at colleges across the world.

All this makes her a fine target for religious fanatics.

At the age of 89, Thapar is the subject of attacks by supporters of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, who view her as an opponent to be discredited.

“In the early days, I used

… Read the rest

Yo FBI listen up.

The President, in a phone call with GA Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, appeared to solicit election fraud by asking him to “find 11,780 votes.” Our letter with @RepKathleenRice making a criminal referral to @FBI Director Wray to open an investigation: pic.twitter.com/9FZeVKN07Y

— Rep. Ted Lieu (@RepTedLieu) January 4, 2021

… Read the rest

Well then.

New – Statement from new Fulton District Attorney Fani Willis on Trump/Raffensperger pic.twitter.com/9AWJQYc5yV

— Justin Gray (@JustinGrayWSB) January 4, 2021

A felony violation of Georgia law, she says (to underline the obvious). State crime. State crime=not federal crime. Trump can’t pardon himself out of this even if he does try the self-pardon thing (the legality of which is a matter of dispute).

And…you know…it’s not as if this is some triviality. It’s actually very non-trivial. He committed the felony in aid of trying to steal an election.… Read the rest

This is amusing:

The blockbot that blocks all the terven:

The column farthest to the right is followers. You can see that Keir Starmer and the Labour Party have quite a few.… Read the rest

Did Trump break the law by making that call? Well, yes, but don’t go getting any wild ideas that he’ll be charged.

“It seems to me like what he did clearly violates Georgia statutes,” said Leigh Ann Webster, an Atlanta criminal defense lawyer, citing a state law that makes it illegal for anyone who “solicits, requests, commands, importunes or otherwise attempts to cause the other person to engage” in election fraud.

Which is what he did; we heard him do it.

But the meandering nature of the phone call and the fact that the president made no apparent attempt to conceal his actions as other call participants listened could allow Mr. Trump to argue that he did not intend to

… Read the rest

Oh good, Ichikawa the Good has a new Open Letter in the works. Of course he does.

Dear philosophers, it’s a disgrace that Stock got an honour, we must support our darling beloved fragile trans siblings at all costs and drive transphobic philosophers out of the profession entirely, yours, Jon the Pious.

https://twitter.com/Docstockk/status/1345775629485092864

I know, that’s why I said what a patronizing self-important smug goon he is here, instead.

https://twitter.com/Docstockk/status/1345773414922014721

It seems to be pretty normal for Jonathan Ichigawa at least. His level of smugness would break the smugness meter if there were such a thing.

Brian Leiter calls him smarmy.

Professor Antony Duff (emeritus, Stirling), a distinguished philosopher of law, sent me the letter, with this apt observation:

… Read the rest

This again. Yet again. No, dude, it’s not your call. We don’t need your permission. You’re not the boss of us.

This is your periodic reminder, in case anyone still needs reminding, that feminist philosophers (like feminists generally) are trans-inclusive.

Recent trans-exclusionary discourse attempts to co-opt the feminist label, but is discontinuous with real feminism

(Thread from 2019) https://t.co/8ZBRp4MLWO

— Jonathan Ichikawa (@jichikawa) January 3, 2021

Feminism has nothing to do with being trans, so there is zero reason for feminism to be “trans-inclusive.” If the claim being smuggled in is that feminism has to “include” men who identify as women in feminism then it’s obviously bullshit, because feminism doesn’t have to “include” men any more than BLM has to … Read the rest

Here’s the audio.… Read the rest

Trump the hit man tries again.

President Trump urged fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat in an extraordinary one-hour phone call Saturday that election experts said raised legal questions.

That’s the restrained journalistic version. The reality is that Trump bullied and leaned on Raffensperger and his lawyer in an overtly “an offer you can’t refuse” kind of way. I listened to a four minute sample from the recording on Twitter just before it (apparently) got removed from everywhere, including the Post itself. I felt sick as I listened.

The Washington Post obtained a recording of the conversation in which Trump alternately berated Raffensperger, tried to flatter him, begged

… Read the rest

Ugly.

As the world ramps up what is already on track to become a highly unequal vaccination push – with people in richer nations first to be inoculated – the situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories provides a stark example of the divide.

Israel transports batches of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine deep inside the West Bank. But they are only distributed to Jewish settlers, and not the roughly 2.7 million Palestinians living around them who may have to wait for weeks or months.

What does that sound like?

Israeli officials have suggested they might provide surplus vaccines to Palestinians and claim they are not responsible for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, pointing to 1990s-era interim agreements that

… Read the rest

Maya Forstater on gender fluid people in the workplace:

The case of Taylor v Jaguar Land Rover has been trumpeted as a “landmark”  employment tribunal decision recognising that people who identify as non-binary or gender-fluid can be covered by the Equality Act protected characteristic of “gender reassignment”.  

The case concerns Mr/Ms Taylor, a man who began to wear women’s clothing to work in 2017 as part of a process of exploring his gender.

It makes me feel tired already. Work is work, it’s not therapy, it’s not your living room, it’s not a place to “explore” your anything. Do your exploring and navel-gazing and self-actualizing and diary-keeping and mirror gazing on your own time, away from the job and … Read the rest

Republicans continue the effort to break what’s left of democracy in the US.

Ted Cruz of Texas, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and nine other Republican US senators or senators-elect said on Saturday they will reject presidential electors from states where results are contested by Donald Trump’s campaign, “unless and until [an] emergency 10-day audit is completed”.

Which is anti-democracy, because they’re “contested” because Trump wants to steal the election. It’s like going into someone else’s house and screaming “This house is mine!!!” and then announcing that the ownership of the house is contested.

Cruz and Johnson were joined in issuing a statement on Saturday by Senators James Lankford (Oklahoma), Steve Daines (Montana), John Kennedy (Louisiana), Marsha Blackburn (Tennessee) and Mike

… Read the rest

It started earlier. It started Thursday.

Too many of you fail to rage daily about transphobia when as everyone knows it’s BY FAR the most urgent brand of phobia in the entire world. Fear and hatred of women, of infidels, of other races, of immigrants, of workers, of lesbians and gays, of foreigners, of Jews, of socialists, of witches – all those are trivial compared to transphobia.

And of course by transphobes he means not people who harass others in public places, but people who disagree with the truth claims about men who say they are women and women who say they are men.

I doubt that he has the power to make gender skeptics unwelcome anywhere he works (how … Read the rest