Whichaya gonna choose, human rights or the ability to gas up the ol’ SUV every couple of days?

It’s the SUV every time, of course.

A US national held in Saudi Arabia has received a 16-year jail sentence for writing tweets critical of the government, his son has told the BBC.

Saad Ibrahim Almadi, 72, who also has Saudi citizenship, was arrested in November after he travelled from Florida to Riyadh to see his family. His son has now spoken out for the first time publicly, going against what he says has been US official advice.

Ibrahim Almadi said he did not want to see his father die in prison. He alleged that Saad had been held in conditions

Even Amnesty International stopped short of calling it a right, in fact it explicitly disavowed calling it a right.

Amnesty International has formally adopted a policy calling for the decriminalisation of adult sex work and repeal of most laws around the world controlling prostitution.

The organisation’s stance on protecting sex workers is set out in a global programme published on Thursday that draws on fresh research about the industry in Argentina, Hong Kong, Papua New Guinea and Norway.

“This policy does not argue that there is a human right to buy sex or a human right to financially benefit from the sale of sex by another person,” Amnesty said. “Rather, it calls for sex workers to be protected from

Oh good, another man reports on a man in charge of a rape crisis center and the evil women who don’t want men running rape crisis centers. The man reporting is Adam Ramsay at Open Democracy, and the man in charge of the rape crisis center is Mridul Wadhwa. Adam Ramsay just can’t say enough about how evil these women are for objecting to men forcing their way into women’s spaces.

Warning: this piece discusses transphobia.

Warning: this piece is hostile to women.

“It’s only recently that I’ve really stopped looking over my shoulder or not thinking actively that I could be harmed,” Mridul Wadhwa, the [Edinburgh] centre’s director, told us. “But that doesn’t mean that I don’t think I

Dammit.

An Iranian athlete who made headlines for refusing to wear a hijab while competing overseas has reportedly gone missing.

Elnaz Rekabi, 33, shunned the Islamic Republic’s restrictions while representing her country at the Asian Sport Climbing Championships in Seoul on Sunday.

Sources close to Rekabi told the BBC that they had been unable to contact her since Monday night.

I was listening to BBC World Service just now and they reported that she’s on a plane bound for Tehran, and the betting is she’ll be arrested on arrival.

All because she doesn’t wear a fucking blanket over her head while climbing a rock wall.… Read the rest

Another friendship broken over the endlessly escalating demands of trans ideology:

A schism has erupted in environmental politics after the Scottish Greens voted to cut ties with the UK party over claims of “trans abuse”.

Meaning abuse that identifies as abuse but is actually just a non-conforming opinion?

Members overwhelmingly backed a motion to suspend “formal association” with the Green Party in England and Wales on the second day of their Scottish party’s conference in Dundee.

Terfs in the sugar bowl was it?

The Rainbow Greens, a group representing LGBTQ+ members of the Scottish Greens, submitted the motion, accusing the Greens of “transphobic bigotry”, “homophobic bigotry” and disrespecting the devolution settlement.

I’m beginning to wonder of Scottish trans … Read the rest

The New Scientist last week:

Men who played rugby union at an international level are more than twice as likely to develop dementia as the general population and three times more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease https://t.co/PqnMxoDx6U

— New Scientist (@newscientist) October 9, 2022

New Scientist today:

Among people who menstruate, the length of their menstrual cycle may vary according to their ethnicity. https://t.co/PLviWf625w

— New Scientist (@newscientist) October 17, 2022

… Read the rest

Willful, determined stupidity from David Futrelle:

Does J.K. Rowling believe that trans people — or at least trans women — don’t deserve the presumption of innocence? That seems to be the clear implication of an op-ed she wrote for the Times (UK) today. But she is cagey enough in her wording that she can and probably will figure out a way to say, my goodness, I wasn’t saying anything of the kind.

Or to put it another way, she’s precise enough in her wording that she is in fact not saying anything of the kind.

Before we get to her wording – presumption of innocence isn’t a magic talisman that applies to everyone on all occasions in all … Read the rest

Jennifer Rubin says don’t go thinking forced birthism isn’t part of Trumpism:

Pundits and politicians tend to observe a bright distinction between the Donald Trump MAGA movement’s assault on democracy and the right-wing evisceration of women’s reproductive rights.

Do they? I hadn’t noticed. I don’t. I suppose if asked I would say I think any opposition to abortion Trump claims is basically opportunistic, but then that’s true of nearly everything Trump says. I’m sure he’s quite happy to stick it to the bitches along with sticking it to the feminists and lefties and Democrats and yadda yadda, but I doubt he has a systematic worked-out plan as opposed to a determination to do whatever he feels like doing in the … Read the rest

We must not keep males out of women’s sports unless a male actually smashes a girl to the ground leaving her concussed.

“A wise legislature does not go out looking for social issues to tap,” said [North Carolina] Republican House leader Tim Moore when he declined to put the Save Women’s Sports Act up for a vote last year. Moore said the House would not consider legislation prohibiting biological males from competing against girls in school sports without examples.

Now the House has its example (but it said examples – how many does it need?).

During a girls’ tournament last month, a Highlands High volleyball player pelted a Hiwassee Dam High player in the forehead with the ball during a

When the cops are criminalish themselves:

Metropolitan [London] police officers suspected of serious criminal offences including sexual assault and domestic abuse have been allowed to escape justice, a damning review has found, with the force’s leader admitting that hundreds of racist, women-hating and corrupt officers have been left in the ranks.

Not really what you want in a police force. Cops who hate women aren’t the ideal people to call if you’re a woman reporting a rape.

Massive failings in how Britain’s biggest force roots out wrongdoing were exposed in a report by Louise Casey, which found “systemic” racism in the Met, and misogyny.

One officer faced 11 claims including sexual assault, harassment and domestic abuse, but remains in

Originally a comment by Sastra on It’s a war on multiple fronts.

The identity theft of an entire sex (both of them) could never have been pulled off without guilt: guilt over the way we for so long refused to accept homosexuality as a perfectly normal and natural orientation; guilt over the way we for so long put women and men into restrictive “boxes” of attitude and behavior; and guilt over the way we for so long allowed children to be mercilessly bullied on the supposition that it made them “toughen up.” By “we,” I mean modern Western society. We ought to have known better. We should have been heroes.

And so we — some of us, that is … Read the rest

Leicester Police issue a Statement on a previous Statement (or collection of tweets) about Hate Crime:

Temporary Chief Constable Rob Nixon said: “Over the past week, a number of social media posts were issued on our Leicestershire Police Stay Safe account aiming to raise awareness of hate crime. This was as part of National Hate Crime Awareness Week.”

Twitter, that is. He means “our Leicestershire Police Stay Safe Twitter account” but forgot to say so. “Social media” isn’t just another word for Twitter. It includes Twitter but it isn’t limited to Twitter.

“While we recognise that people have strong and often conflicting views regarding this issue, we should not forget the seriousness of hate crime and the devastating crimes that

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on It’s about an innate sense of self.

You may ask how anyone can assess the authenticity of somebody else’s “innate sense of self”. I haven’t a clue.

No one has a clue, because it’s inherently meaningless and impossible. Trans ideology is wholly dependent on the worship of a magical Self, but only for some people. Feminist women don’t get to claim any kind of magical self; we’re just a kind of donkey, or system of pulleys.

Nobody has direct, unmediated access to what is going on inside anyone’s head. There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about people’s self image and self understanding. People suffering from anorexia. Rachel Dolezal. … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Cluecat on Six out of ten.

As is mentioned in the other posts, this is a huge problem with industrial livestock raising all over the world.

There are a few antibiotic agents designated as the absolute “last line of defence” – to only ever be used in human treatment when literally nothing else has had any effect, and to never ever be routinely prescribed because of that critical designation.

These medications treat bugs that are resistant to every other antibiotic on the market, infections that cause horrible, drawn-out death. These meds are the reason we no longer have Sepsis Wards in healthcare settings in Western countries – although it looks like we might be … Read the rest

Originally a comment by iknklast on They’re gone.

I remember even as recently as 15 years ago my husband and I would sit on the porch watching fireflies. They were abundant. Bullfrogs croaking in the distance, and crickets chirping somewhere unseen…and we live in the city. A small city, to be sure, but a city. Now what I see is squirrels, domesticated pets, and the roar of automobiles.

I’ve been talking about this a long time. People want to focus solely on global warming, and I’ve had this argument – what good is a world where we’ve solved global warming and there are no animals left? We need to focus on the big picture, but we are not good … Read the rest

OJ has a gotcha.

The attacks on Eddie Izzard really blows apart ‘Gender Critical’ claims not to be transphobic.

Izzard hasn’t been particularly vocal on trans issues. She’s not competing on an All Women’s Shortlist.

She’s literally just a trans person standing for public office. That’s it.

— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) October 16, 2022

He’s literally a man running for public office while claiming to be a woman. That’s it. That “it” is not nothing. Imagine a white man running against Raphael Warnock while claiming to be black – imagine how well that would go over. Consider why that would not go over well. Now apply that to a man running for public office while claiming to be a woman. … Read the rest

Say goodbye to wetlands?

On Oct. 3 — the first day of its new term — the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, a case that could dramatically reduce the number of wetlands and other waters across the United States that are protected under the landmark Clean Water Act.

And the court being what it is, it seems very likely to be team Sackett and not the EPA that wins.

The Sacketts started their dispute with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2007, after purchasing a parcel of land that was subject to Clean Water Act protections. The parcel — which included sensitive wetlands a stone’s throw from Priest Lake, one of the

The transports continue.

The Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, plans to continue flying undocumented migrants to Democratic strongholds, his spokeswoman said on Saturday, a day after released records showed the state paid nearly $1m to arrange two sets of flights to Delaware and Illinois.

But worth every penny, to make a point and torment the migrants.

The flights would be a follow-up to 14 September flights from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, that carried 49 mostly Venezuelan migrants to the island where the former president Barack Obama owns a home. Local officials were not told in advance that the migrants were coming.

DeSantis claimed responsibility for the flights as part of a campaign to focus attention on

More precision or less precision? It depends on who is talking.

A transgender science teacher has become the subject of criticism after a video of him insisting it was important to “clean up” language, like “women produce eggs” and “males are more likely to be colorblind,” in order to be more “accurate” and “precise,” resurfaced from a webinar series held earlier this year.

Sam Long, an activist for “gender-inclusive” policies and “trans/non-binary” educators, teaches science at Denver South High School, part of the Denver Public Schools (DPS) system. Long, along with other science teachers, has previously spent time establishing “gender-inclusive biology” curriculum resources, which he promotes to educators across the country.

Science teachers teaching magical nonsense.

During an April webinar

Bill McKibben writes:

A vast new study finds there are 70 percent fewer wild animals sharing the earth with us than there were in 1970.

Ouch.

I notice a lot of missing wild animals even here in big city Seattle. It used to be commonplace to see mergansers and coots and buffleheads on lakes and ponds here, lots of them, and now I walk along Lake Washington and see none at all. None at all. Sometimes I see one or two, but not often. And swallows. Swallows used to come back in the spring, and you’d see a lot of them. Now? Zip. None. Very occasionally one lone pair, but that’s all. They’re just gone.… Read the rest