Welp. That’s clear enough.

My statement on the Capitol bomb threat: pic.twitter.com/yCuTNTbJyP

— Mo Brooks (@RepMoBrooks) August 19, 2021

Although this terrorist’s motivation is not yet publicly known, and generally speaking, I understand citizenry anger directed at dictatorial Socialism and its threat to liberty, freedom and the very fabric of American society.

There is no socialism, let alone dictatorial socialism. There’s no such thing as “Socialism’s march.” Centrist Democrats are not socialists, nor are they dictators.

It’s true that the US’s future is at risk, but that’s because of climate change and authoritarian conservatives like Mo Brooks, not because of phantom “socialism” red in tooth and claw.… Read the rest

Surprise surprise the Taliban appear unlikely to protect women’s rights. You don’t say.

Taliban guarantees that women and girls will be able to study and work under their rule have been thrown into doubt after one of their leaders said that the decision would be left to a council of Islamic scholars.

“Thrown into doubt” – who believed them in the first place? Don’t be silly. They included the proviso “as long as/to the extent that they are compatible with sharia.” Sharia is not a human rights respecting system of laws. Sharia perceives women as inferior and as constantly on the verge of spreading their legs for any man who approaches.

“Our scholars will decide whether girls are allowed

Troublesome women object.

Maybe replace the phrase 'cancel culture' with loss of status if that is more tolerable.Joan Smith @polblonde fantastic and long time campaigner for women's rights removed as advisor to @SadiqKhan because she wants single sex spaces in refuges. Open your eyes . This is madness.

— suzanne moore (@suzanne_moore) August 19, 2021

That an independent chair of the Mayor’s Violence Against Women & Girls Board of Joan Smith’s calibre was brought in by a Tory mayoral administration and dumped under a Labour one is further evidence that Labour really do not prioritise women’s issues including men’s VAWG. https://t.co/34xLO5uHNG

— Karen Ingala Smith (@K_IngalaSmith) August 19, 2021

Joan Smith sacked for speaking the truthhttps://t.co/NMpJ4MNDGo

— LesbianLabour (@LesbianLabour)

The deputy mayor in charge of the pesky women responds with oh no we didn’t.

This is simply not true. The structure of all our boards at City Hall is being changed. It has nothing to do with any views Joan has expressed. https://t.co/3fbHG9tkIO

— Sophie Linden (@SophieKLinden) August 19, 2021

But it is true – she was sacked after expressing those concerns. After; notice it doesn’t say because. Maybe the Times’s cautiousness wasn’t so excessive after all.

Joan Smith @polblonde was nominated by the women's sector as @MayorofLondon's #VAWG Board Chair & was happy to continue.
Your joint refusal to even listen to us @UKLabour women or answer her letters or ours, then replacing her independent scrutiny with

The Times on the sacking of Joan Smith:

A violence against women campaigner has claimed that she was sacked by Sadiq Khan’s administration after expressing concerns about transgender women being allowed into refuges for victims of rape and domestic abuse.

Joan Smith said she was removed by City Hall after raising the issue on behalf of charities funded by the mayor that were said to be concerned about the prospect of vulnerable women and girls having to share the spaces.

Smith also believes that she fell out of favour after calling for improvements in how the Metropolitan Police identified sexual predators in its ranks, and repeatedly highlighting “endemic misogyny” after the case of Sarah Everard, who was raped and

My rage thermometer just broke.

I've been sacked as Co-chair of the Mayor of London's Violence Against Women and Girls Board. By email. After eight years.
Story in today's Times. pic.twitter.com/NfAjc4TsqM

— Joan Smith (@polblonde) August 19, 2021

She only wrote the book on the subject, literally THE book on the subject.

But please, tell us again how the trans craze in no way impinges on women’s rights.… Read the rest

Imran Khan is delighted at the Taliban win.

A day after the Taliban seized power in Kabul and President Ashraf Ghani fled the war-torn country, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday said Afghans have “broken the chains of slavery in the country”.

Unless, of course, you think women are people, and included under the label “Afghans.” For women and girls the chains of slavery have very much been re-forged.

“When you adopt someone’s culture you believe it to be superior and you end up becoming a slave to it. It is more difficult to free your mind from mental slavery. Afghans have broken the shackles of slavery,” Imran Khan said.

Maybe. But “someone’s culture” is a complicated thing. … Read the rest

If there was a "stirring up hatred" offence against women, we'd probably have cause against Heather, Hannah and @TheScotsman tonight. Think about that.

We don't believe in that, but today has been terrifying.

— For Women Scotland (@ForwomenScot) August 18, 2021

I had to go digging to find out what happened.

Hannah is Hannah Brown, who wrote a venomous piece in The Scotsman misrepresenting what For Women Scotland said.

For Women Scotland – which claims to campaign ‘for sex-based rights’ in Scotland – posted on Twitter on August 15: “Horrific regimes and movements like the Taliban also know what same-sex attraction is. They don’t check whether it’s “same gender” attraction like Stonewall and BBC. They hang, behead or shoot men

When it counts.

I agree. What I'm confused about is why you think it's "harder for women to leave (more dangerous to travel alone, caring responsibilities, less able to find work quickly and send money home)"..?

Is it because women are adult human females, or because they "identify" as women?

— Jack Appleby (@jackappleby) August 16, 2021

Well? Which is it?… Read the rest

Stop the presses:

British supermodel Lily Cole has revealed that she identifies as “queer” adding that she sees other labels of sexuality as too “rigid”.

Or to put it less excitingly, a model says she calls herself “queer.” Nobody cares, and life goes on.

In a new interview with the Sunday Times Style to discuss her debut book, Who Cares Wins, the mother of one, 33, said the choice of the word queer allows her to be open while protecting her private life.

Yes indeed, and it allows her to be bold while remaining cautious, it allows her to be frank while remaining bashful, it allows her to be trendy while doing nothing at all.

“If I were

No, he can’t just pop back in, “reinstated.” That’s not how any of this works.

During an event in Dallas on Sunday that was also attended by prominent peddlers of the QAnon conspiracy theory, [Sidney] Powell suggested Trump could be reinstated as president even now, saying that “it should be that he can simply be reinstated, that a new Inauguration Day is set.”

Yes definitely “it should be that” a wannabe dictator can just magically be “reinstated” despite the whole losing the election thing and the inciting a violent insurrection thing.

According to CNN legal analyst Steve Vladeck, “Powell is just making stuff up. There’s no regulation, rule, statute or constitutional provision that comes within a million light-years of

Meanwhile in Pakistan –

A woman was violently assaulted, thrown into the air and had her clothes ripped from her while filming a TikTok video in Pakistan, police say.

The unidentified woman said she was filming at a park in the city of Lahore when a crowd of up to 400 hundred men attacked her on Saturday.

Video of the incident circulating over social media shows a woman being forcibly picked up and dragged through a mob of hundreds gathered at Minar-e-Pakistan to celebrate Independence Day, an event marking the end of British colonial rule.

Yay, end of colonial rule, what better way to celebrate than to have hundreds of men assault a woman?

What is colonial rule?

A power … Read the rest

A letter to the WSJ from Mark Boslaugh and Michael Mann:

In “Climate Change Brings a Flood of Hyperbole” (op-ed, Aug. 11), Steven Koonin put himself in the unenviable position of playing down climate change precisely while we are experiencing unprecedented heat waves, storms, fires, droughts, and floods that exceed model-based expectations.

Yes but these are some other kind of heat waves, storms, fires, droughts, and floods, the kind that have nothing to do with climate change.

Mr. Koonin claims that regional projections are “meant to scare people.” But the paper he cites for support addresses the “unfolding of what may become catastrophic changes to Earth’s climate” and argues that “being able to anticipate what would otherwise be

The Glinner Update on Owen Jones’s hatred of women:

No Owen, what is gruesome is your obsessive monstering of feminist women who have an analysis of sex class oppression, and who understand the structure of gender and how it harms women far better than you.

What is gruesome is your complete and unrelenting contempt for women’s expertise and knowledge about their own oppression.

I am not an ‘anti-trans obsessive jumping on the Plymouth tragedy.’

I am a feminist thinker who wrote a PhD on male entitlement, and have published and been interviewed on MRA culture, what it tells us about the structure of misogyny, the relation between male entitlement and male violence, and the narcissistic rage that is visited

University of Chicago research finds that it’s worse than we thought.

The researchers assessed how consistently respondents answered certain questions that were written differently but belonged to the same category. What they found was a high degree of stability among answers related to insurrectionist sentiments — equating to well over 10 million people.

“That’s a very worrisome finding,” [Robert] Pape said. “This is not just people randomly ticking boxes, but they’re consistently ticking similar boxes, meaning they are adamant about this feeling.”

Much like the Taliban.

Rather than a dying movement, the team found the insurrectionist sentiments were larger and more dangerous than they believed the movement was in March.

“We would have thought that since June is months

Taliban says women can have all the rights Islam allows.

Yes, we know, that’s not even worth reporting. Of course they say that. All the rights Islam allows to women add up to

ZERO.

The Taliban’s Islam at any rate. Of course people can invent their own Islams, but it’s idiotic or cynical to think the Taliban’s Islam is anything but a life sentence for all women. No freedom no education no choice. Women are objects to be owned by men and beaten or killed if they step out of line in any way.

Taliban say they will guarantee women’s rights under the ‘limits of Islam’ following takeover of Afghanistan

Rich and poor alike are free to live under bridges.… Read the rest

So, let’s make the pandemic worse, yes?

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) on Monday issued an executive order blocking local governments from requiring COVID vaccinations for worker, AZ Central reports.

What to do – reduce the spread of a lethal virus? Or increase it? Let’s go with increase.

Ducey’s move follows the Tucson City Council’s sweeping 6-1 vote that would “require that city employees must show proof of at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by Aug. 24, or face a five-day suspension without pay and possibly higher health-insurance premiums.”

Why would the City Council do that? To reduce the spread of the virus. Apparently that’s a bad thing to do?

Matt Burdick, a Tucson city spokesperson,

It’s surprising it’s taken this long.

The federal government has declared a water shortage on the Colorado River for the first time, as climate change-fueled drought pushes the level in Lake Mead to unprecedented lows. https://t.co/pnhnYtkkwp

— CNN (@CNN) August 16, 2021

The Colorado River has been shrinking for years. It’s all been a pretty massive mistake.

CNN goes on:

The federal government on Monday declared a water shortage on the Colorado River for the first time, triggering mandatory water consumption cuts for states in the Southwest, as climate change-fueled drought pushes the level in Lake Mead to unprecedented lows.

States in the Southwest include Arizona, where the population of Phoenix continues to grow at speed, which is … Read the rest

Owen Jones pretending not to be a misogynist.

The thing about OJ is that he wants to pretend to be a feminist while still dismissing women’s concerns and protests at being appropriated or pushed aside or both by…guys like him.… Read the rest