Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Currently not letting women speak

    Happening now –

    Cops hassling women for having a meeting on International Women’s Day.

    Apparently the Council summoned the cops.

    It’s like this, you see – women aren’t people enough to be equality on their own. There have to be some real people there to bring them up to the right level.

  • Planning a study

    Kennedy’s woo infects the CDC:

    The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is planning a large study into potential connections between vaccines and autism, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, despite extensive scientific research that has disproven or failed to find evidence of such links.

    In other news, NASA is planning a large study into the potential flatness of the earth.

    The CDC’s move comes amid one of the largest measles outbreaks the U.S. has seen in the past decade, with more than 200 cases and two deaths in Texas and New Mexico. The outbreak has been fueled by declining vaccination rates in parts of the United States where parents have been falsely persuaded that such shots do more harm than good.

    Kennedy, whose role includes authority over the CDC, has long sowed doubt over the safety of the combined vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR). In a cabinet meeting last week, Kennedy initially downplayed news that a school-aged child had died of measles in Texas, the first such death in a decade, calling such outbreaks ordinary and failing to mention the role of vaccination to prevent measles.

    In other words Kennedy is a reckless self-involved idiot who thinks he knows better than the people who have actual medical training and that it’s just fine for him scare people away from getting vaccinated. Let the dangerous disease run rampant!

  • Assbackwards

    That’s the way to do it: smash everything in sight and then pause to decide to take a more nuanced approach.

    President Donald Trump convened his Cabinet in person on Thursday to deliver a message: You’re in charge of your departments, not Elon Musk.

    According to two administration officials, Trump told top members of his administration that Musk was empowered to make recommendations to the departments but not to issue unilateral decisions on staffing and policy. Musk was also in the room.

    …

    The president’s message represents the first significant move to narrow Musk’s mandate. According to Trump’s new guidance, DOGE and its staff should play an advisory role — but Cabinet secretaries should make final decisions on personnel, policy and the pacing of implementation.

    Now he tells them. The government looks like Stepney at the height of the Blitz and now he tells them Musk doesn’t get to drop bombs.

    Musk joined the conversation and indicated he was on board with Trump’s directive. According to one person familiar with the meeting, Musk acknowledged that DOGE had made some missteps — a message he shared earlier this week with members of Congress.

    Yeah missteps, that’s what they were – missteps wearing boots the size of a container ship.

    Trump stressed that he wants to keep good people in government and not to eject capable federal workers en masse.

    Well that’s odd, seeing as how it’s what he’s been doing for the last several weeks.

    Trump posted about the meeting on Truth Social after this story posted, promising to hold similar meetings every two weeks.

    “As the Secretaries learn about, and understand, the people working for the various Departments, they can be very precise as to who will remain, and who will go,” he wrote. “We say the ‘scalpel’ rather than the ‘hatchet.’ The combination of them, Elon, DOGE, and other great people will be able to do things at a historic level.”

    That fucking imbecile. He’s telling this as if we’re the ones who didn’t know it, when his little South African buddy used the hatchet and the axe and the nuclear weapon on the entire civil service for weeks on end.

    The president later told reporters he wants Cabinet members to “keep all the people you want, everybody that you need.”

    But he also said he wanted cuts, and that Musk would remain a power center: “If they can cut, it’s better. And if they don’t cut, then Elon will do the cutting.”

    You can keep all the people you want, but you can’t keep all the people you want. You can keep your legs, but Elon will chop them off. You can keep your children, but Elon will slice them up. You can keep your house, but Elon will burn it down.

  • The treaty is somewhat obscure

    Trump’s side hustle of trying to annex Canada:

    When U.S. President Donald Trump last spoke with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trump pointed to a 1908 treaty as apparent ammunition to support his threats of a tariff war and his envisioned takeover of Canada.

    Trump’s reference to the 116-year-old treaty regarding the Canada-U.S. border reportedly took Trudeau and his office by surprise, sending staff searching for the pact online as the leaders spoke on the phone. That’s not a surprise. The treaty is somewhat obscure in terms of the historical relationship between the former British colonies that became Canada and the United States of America.

    Spoiler: it nowhere says the US gets to swallow Canada.

  • Sweet secret santa

    The Telegraph on antisemitic abuse in the NHS:

    The file includes a Jewish doctor being given a hijab as a secret santa present and a patient having pro-Palestine stickers plastered across his room as he lay fighting for his life.

    Meanwhile, a group of therapists who complained about a colleague posting messages supporting Hamas online were subject to a countercomplaint for “micro-aggressions”. A patient waiting to be discharged from hospital was told: “Get your Jewish ambulance to come and get you.”

    The Community Security Trust found that the number of complaints of antisemitism in the NHS had tripled from 29 to 86 in the 17 months before and after October 7, 2023.

    It’s so interesting that antisemitism increased after the Hamas (aka Islamist) slaughter of civilians at a rave.

  • Personal journey

    Oliver Brown in The Telegraph:

    … when I described Blair Hamilton, a transgender goalkeeper signed for Sutton United Women by a transgender manager, as a biological male in these pages last September, the player complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) that the label constituted a “transphobic dog whistle”. According to this argument, the description disregarded Hamilton’s “lived experience and affirmed gender identity”, not to mention “personal journey as a transgender woman”.

    Six months on, the press watchdog has rejected this complaint, instead determining that The Telegraph’s use of the term was “genuinely relevant” to the issues raised by a biologically male goalkeeper competing for a female football team. “The committee did not consider that the term in the context in which it had been used was belittling or demeaning to the complainant, nor insulting in a manner that it considered pejorative or prejudicial,” it added.

    Well hallefuckingjulah. At last.

    The verdict marks a significant watershed. It can seem sometimes in this debate as if we have passed through the looking glass, with years of pandering to self-ID lobbyists threatening a situation where athletes had to be accepted as whatever sex they purported to be. Somehow, this fallacy reached the highest levels of global sport, with the International Olympic Committee’s former medical director Dr Richard Budgett infamously declaring in 2021: “Everybody accepts that trans women are women.”

    Nuh UH. Lots of us don’t. Most of us don’t. And you know why? Because they aren’t.

    Welcoming The Telegraph’s vindication, Reem Alsalem, the United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, said of IPSO’s “genuinely relevant” finding: “Sports encapsulate the relevance in very compelling ways. I still can’t believe that biological sex is considered in many circles to be equivalent to the N-word: heretical, outdated, delusional, irrelevant, and hateful. This in 2025.”

    …

    The IPSO ruling places the immutable laws of human biology above emotive personal testimony. Hamilton, who in addition to being a goalkeeper in a women’s team is an academic specialising in the impact of gender-affirmative care on the athletic performance of transgender athletes, had appealed for a definition of womanhood “beyond mere anatomy”…

    “Mere” anatomy ffs. Ok buster, get rid of all your bones, see how “mere” anatomy is then. Go on, I dare you.

    For too long, there has been a form of coerced speech on this subject, where pronouns mattered more than practicalities, where affirmation was prized above accuracy. It is still enraging to recall Thomas Bach, the outgoing IOC president, declaring at the height of last summer’s boxing scandal at the Paris Olympics that womanhood could somehow be validated by an “F” in an athlete’s passport.

    Yeah it is. Just ask Angela Carini.

    Now journalists should no longer feel cowed into toeing the activists’ line. It is critical that all reporters seeking to report the science are not intimidated into falsifying reality or into fooling their readership. I hope, too, that this IPSO decision has repercussions beyond the industry. I know of academics who have been furiously rebuked within their profession for going down the “biological male” route, even when they are guilty of nothing more than the faithful recording of facts. So, let us throw out the reflexive accusations of transphobia once and for all. This, ultimately, is about honest and transparent reporting of an issue at the heart of fair play. “Transphobic dog whistle”? How about just settling for the truth?

    Goddam right. Truth matters.

  • Every single neuron in his head is on permanent vacation

    When Trump is lost at sea without a life jacket or a paddle.

    A reporter asks about TPS (Temporary Protected Status)—a major immigration policy affecting thousands of people. And this mush-brained idiot thinks they said GPS. GPS. This man has been in politics for years and still doesn’t understand basic policies that his own administration has to enforce. It’s actually incredible—every single neuron in his head is on permanent vacation. And yet, Republicans still worship him like a god while he fumbles through basic conversations like a drunk toddler trying to explain quantum physics. America is literally being run by a convicted, incoherent rapist who doesn’t know the difference between immigration policy and Google Maps. We are living in a national disgrace.

    It’s crystal clear that he has absolutely no idea. The tell:

    We’re not looking to hurt anybody, we’re certainly not looking to hurt them, [quarter second pause for thought] and I’m looking at that, and there are some people that think that’s appropriate and some people don’t and I’ll be makin’ a decision pretty soon, k?

    That’s Trumpspeak for “I have absolutely no idea.”

    A veteran called Frank C remarks

    It’s actually incredible—every single neuron in his head is on permanent vacation. And yet, Republicans still worship him like a god while he fumbles through basic conversations like a drunk toddler trying to explain quantum physics.

    Words well chosen.

  • There will be a slight delay

    Wait a second I forgot my shoes. Hang on, I have to eat lunch first. Sorry, I’ll be right with you, as soon as I find my wallet. Sit down for a minute, enjoy yourself, I have to do my taxes before we go.

    US President Donald Trump has said Mexico will not be required to pay tariffs on goods that come under the trade pact between the two countries and Canada until 2 April.

    Trump has not confirmed if the suspension also applies to Canada, but its northern neighbour is expecting an exemption of the “same nature”, a Canadian government source told the BBC.

    The latest move is the second climbdown in two days from Trump on his tariffs.

    Hey hey hey it’s not a climbdown, it’s just a slight delay while he figures out which is his right hand.

    Ontario Premier Doug Ford told CNN that the province would go ahead with a 25% tariff on the electricity it provides to 1.5 million homes and businesses in New York, Michigan and Minnesota from Monday.

    What??? No fair! Trump paused so you have to pause! That’s the rule!

  • Getcher ass back here immediately

    Or to put it another way…oops.

    Oh gee you mean the CDC actually does vital work? Who could possibly have known that? What does “disease control” even mean?

  • Genuinely relevant

    A bit of good news for a change.

    I’d like to read/quote the ruling but it won’t open; maybe later. Meanwhile Jon Pike enlightens:

    There’s a particular feature of this that I want to bring out. Blair Hamilton is an academic sports scientist who publishers in this area: Hamilton researches, in particular, the effects of T-reduction and cross sex hormones on performance. This research project has an enormous blind spot, because it focuses on performance metrics and not body metrics. Body metrics – like height – are set by sex, and are not affected by T-reduction. Because BH is biologically male, BH has a huge, male-generated height advantage. And BH plays in goal, where body metrics like height and reach play a very big part. It serves the political interests of Hamilton’s research to switch the emphasis from (eg) muscle strength, where there is a small reduction, and away from height where there is no change, and no diminution of male advantage.

    We can see, from the submission to IPSO how Hamilton thinks about this. I am struck by the term ‘mere anatomy’. YES. It is ‘mere anatomy’ that means that Hamilton is much taller than almost all women goal keepers. It is ‘mere anatomy’ that will drive some women goalkeepers out of the game. Because it is ‘mere anatomy’ – the fact that there are two types of human body – that justifies female sport.

    ‘Mere anatomy’ is absolutely fundamental to this argument.

    And Hamilton’s “personal journey as a transgender woman” is – how to put it? – neither here nor there.

    Indeed. It’s also grotesquely self-involved to think it is either here or there. All this “mai journey” shit canceling women’s rights and interests and needs is so childish as well as outrageous. It needs to go away!

  • Leverage shmeverage

    The NY Times muddies the waters in the approved fashion.

    The headline is muddy:

    Democrats Block Bill to Bar Transgender Girls From Female Sports Teams

    “Transgender girls” are not girls. No doubt most NYT readers know that, but all the same, the word “girls” does its work. When we see the word “girls” we don’t correct it to “boys” automatically; it takes extra time and attention to remember that the subject here is boys in girls’ sports. Mostly we don’t read that slowly. Referring to boys as transgender girls is conditioning, and journalism really ought to stop doing it.

    Democrats on Monday blocked a Republican-written bill aimed at barring transgender women and girls from school sports teams designated for female students, thwarting consideration in the Senate of the G.O.P.’s latest move to use transgender people as leverage at the dawn of President Trump’s second term.

    So the reporter, Annie Karni, makes the story a matter of Republicans “using” trans people as opposed to a matter of not grotesquely cheating women in their own sports. Never mind about move and use and leverage and dawn and even Trump – focus on the unfairness to women, god damn it. But of course she doesn’t.

    With Democrats opposed, the measure stalled on a vote of 51 to 45, falling short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster and be brought up for consideration. The bill, which passed the House in January on a largely party-line vote, would prohibit federal funding from going to K-12 schools that include transgender students in women’s and girls’ athletic programs.

    Male students, you quisling. The issue is not that they’re trans, it’s that they’re male.

    Senate Republicans argued it was essential to protecting girls from predatory men encroaching on their private spaces and seeking to gain an unfair athletic advantage on the basis of sex, even as they hinted that the measure was intended to lay a political trap for Democrats.

    But what about the unfair advantage? Don’t just hop over it as if it were a fake issue; it’s a very real issue.

    But hopping over it is the done thing.

  • A cult of cruelty

    Anne Applebaum on The Rise of the Brutal American:

    Quite apart from their politics, Trump and Vance are rude. They are cruel. They berated and mistreated a guest on camera, and then boasted about it afterward, as if their ugly behavior achieved some kind of macho “win.”

    That’s putting it mildly. Even “rude” and “cruel” and “ugly” fall short of describing the grotesque nightmare of that performance.

    Europeans can also see that this alternative reality is directly and profoundly shaped by Russian propaganda. I don’t know whether the American president absorbs Russian narratives online, from proxies, or from Putin himself. Either way, he has thoroughly adopted the Russian view of the world, as has Vance. This is not new. Back in 2016, at the height of the election campaign, Trump frequently repeated false stories launched by Russia’s Sputnik news agency, declaring that Hillary Clinton and Obama had “founded ISIS,” or that “the Google search engine is suppressing the bad news about Hillary Clinton.” At the time, Trump also imitated Russian talk about Clinton starting World War III, another Russian meme. He produced a new version of that in the Oval Office on Friday. “You’re gambling with World War III. You’re gambling with World War III,” he shouted at Zelensky.

    And Putin is…?

    In reality, the Russians have said nothing publicly about leaving Ukrainian territory or stopping the war. In reality, they have spent the past decade building a cult of cruelty at home. Now they have exported that cult not just to Europe, not just to Africa, but to Washington too. This administration abruptly canceled billions of dollars of food aid and health-care programs for the poorest people on the planet, a vicious act that the president and vice president have not acknowledged but that millions of people can see.

    But seeing it is all we can do. Stopping it is way out of reach.

    H/t Tim Harris

  • A new daily minimum

    Still melting.

    Global sea ice fell to a record low in February, scientists have said, a symptom of an atmosphere fouled by planet-heating pollutants.

    The combined area of ice around the north and south poles hit a new daily minimum in early February and stayed below the previous record for the rest of the month, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said on Thursday.

    The fun thing about this is that it’s both a symptom and the thing itself. It’s a sign of warming and it is warming. A twofer.

    Scientists had already observed an extreme heat anomaly in the north pole at the start of February, which caused temperatures to soar more than 20C above average and cross the threshold for ice to melt. They described the latest broken record as “particularly worrying” because ice reflects sunlight and cools the planet.

    “The lack of sea ice means darker ocean surfaces and the ability of the Earth to absorb more sunlight, which accelerates the warming,” said Mika Rantanen, a climate scientist at the Finnish Meteorological Institute.

    Quick tip: accelerating the warming is not helpful.

    Richard Allan, a climate scientist at the University of Reading, said the long-term prognosis for Arctic sea ice was grim.

    “The region continues to rapidly heat up, and can only be saved with rapid and massive cuts to greenhouse gas emissions,” he said. “That will also limit the growing severity of weather extremes and long-term sea level rise across the world.”

    Would. Not will, but would. That’s the problem. It’s never will, it’s always would. We can’t do the will part.

  • We’d like to bunce your pips bro

    A guy called Pips is “honored and excited” to have been given a role that should have gone to a woman, because of course he is.

    Pip Bunce to be exact. We’ve heard of him before.

    Honoured and excited to have been chosen as a delegate for this years United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW69) Previous years events attended have been incredible and I know that this years will be as good, if not even better!! Spending time with all the amazing delegates is always a pleasure, as too is working with like-minded individuals working to progress inclusion, equality and equity. Our shared ethos being that together we can make a change and equality and equity for ALL women and girls is long overdue.

    And of course by “ALL women” he means including men like him.

    The fact that he’s invited means there’s a woman who would have been but isn’t. He’s good with that. He loves being in a position to lecture us about ALL women and girls as if he knew more about female people than we do.

    What an asshole.

  • Part of a pressure campaign

    Trump has halted intelligence sharing with Ukraine.

    The Trump administration has paused intelligence sharing with Ukraine alongside a military aid freeze, officials said on Wednesday, part of a pressure campaign to force its government to cooperate with the White House’s plans to end the country’s war with Russia.

    A U.S. official said that military targeting information was no longer being shared with Ukraine.

    …

    Some U.S. officials said the hope was that any pause in intelligence sharing would be very short, with little practical impact. A senior Trump administration official said the initial plan was to pause military and intelligence sharing for a week or two as part of the campaign to pressure Mr. Zelensky.

    Oh that’s fine. Just pressure Zelensky and cause more people to be killed so that Trump can show everyone what a boss he is.

    While the Trump administration has steadily increased pressure on Ukraine, it has not done so to Russia to halt its attacks. The Russian military has continued to bombard Ukrainian cities daily.

    Of course not. Trump has a toad-crush on Putin and he hates Zelensky for being so mean to his toad.

  • Yuk it up

    What this ideology does to wannabe progressives. Noisily laughing at a high school girl receiving a brain injury.

  • Nobody has ever heard of

    Ah yes, that infuriating tic.

    It’s safe to say U.S. President Donald Trump isn’t exactly endearing himself to many foreign leaders these days.

    In the last few days alone, he’s clashed with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and paused its U.S. military aid, launched a trade war with Canada, Mexico and China, and mocked Lesotho in his first speech to Congress, claiming “nobody has ever heard of” the country.

    That last one – that toddler cognition that tells him what he is unaware of, everyone is unaware of. He lacks that mechanism that adults have, that reminds them of the variety of what different people know. Trump is pig-ignorant therefore everyone is exactly as pig-ignorant as he is. He’s ignorant in himself and ignorant of his own ignorance.

  • As the federal government grapples

    Now Trump is playing “Let’s negotiate.” Howzabout I skip the tariff on cars, ok? Yeah sure bro, howzabout I torch 90% of your house instead of all of it?

    Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to speak to his U.S. counterpart Wednesday after the Americans launched a trade war yesterday with devastating tariffs on all Canadian goods.

    A senior government official told CBC News that the call is expected sometime around midday. It’s the first time Trudeau has spoken to U.S. President Donald Trump since his administration torpedoed free trade between the two countries by imposing steep levies on imports.

    The call comes as the federal government grapples with the usual chaotic situation out of Trump’s Washington with the president’s advisers suggesting at different points over the last 12 hours that there could be a compromise on tariffs only to say later that tariffs will still apply but maybe at a lower rate.

    Or with a box of chocolates, or only every other month, or upside down, or in suspendies and a bra.

    After U.S. stock markets plummeted once Trump slapped tariffs on Canada and Mexico, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick appeared on Fox News Business Tuesday saying he’s working on a plan to “meet in the middle” on tariffs, without offering any clarity on what exactly that means.

    Genius, sheer genius. “After the house burst into flames, the arsonist said he’s working on plans to put half the fire out.”

    In an interview with CBC’s The National late Tuesday night, LeBlanc said Canada is “not interested in some sort of reduction of the tariffs. We want the free trade agreement with the United States and Mexico respected.”

    Oh that. Well…the agreement was not our idea so we don’t have to respect it. That’s how this works, right? If you didn’t make the law or treaty or agreement, you don’t have to obey it?

    In his address to Congress last night, Trump doubled down on the value of tariffs, including on allies like Canada.

    “Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again, and it is happening and it will happen rather quickly. There will be a little disturbance, but we are OK with that,” he said.

    That’s so elegant, that “rather quickly.” I just marvel at his brilliance.

  • To reckon with the mess

    David Frum in the Atlantic:

    The Trump administration’s elimination of PEPFAR, the American program to combat HIV infection in Africa, symbolizes the path ahead. President George W. Bush created the program because it would do immense good at low cost, and thereby demonstrate to the world the moral basis of American power. His successors continued it, and Congresses of both parties funded it, because they saw that the program advanced both U.S. values and U.S. interests. Trump and Vance don’t want the United States to be that kind of country anymore.

    The thing about this demonstrating the moral basis of one’s power is that you can’t do it without actually having the moral basis. The ulterior motive is there, but so is the immense good being done. Immense good is good.

    The American people need to reckon with the mess Trump and Vance are making of this country’s once-good name—and the services they are performing for dictators and aggressors. There may not be a deep cause here. Trump likes and admires bad people because he is himself a bad person.

    And not just a bad person but a kind of paradigm of a bad person – a bad man, specifically. Bad so thoroughly; bad in so many ways; bad to the total exclusion of any good. There are no stories of Trump doing something benevolent. None. Everything he does is about enriching and empowering and flattering himself; there is nothing left over for people who are not trump.

  • Guest post: Other markets, other customers

    Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Prank.

    Will nobody tell Trump how tariffs work? He’s under the impression (or giving the impression) that the countries he’s targeting with these tariffs are going to pay him for the privilege of selling in the US. Canada isn’t going to pay a dime; it’s US customers of Canadian goods who are going to be stuck with the bill, or needing to scramble to find alternate sources for the products we can sell more profitably elsewhere. Trump seems to think that, like some hoity- toity credit card with exorbitant annual fees, we’ll pay through the nose in order to be permitted to bow and scrape our way back into his good graces.

    “It’s going to be very costly for people to take advantage of this country. They can’t come in and steal our money and steal our jobs and take our factories and take our businesses and expect not to be punished,”….

    Wait. We’re talking about trade, right? Where does the “steal our money” happen? Are these countries shoplifting on a massive scale, stuffing their diplomatic bags with items they’ve pinched from Walmart? Traditionally, tariffs were used to protect domestic production from foreign competition. But what if there are few (or no) domestic producers left to protect? What’s the point? As for “stealing our jobs” and “taking” factories and businesses, wasn’t it American companies moving to those countries? Are they not permitted to do that? Isn’t it the goal of corporations to seek out the cheapest source of labour, the least regulated and profitable locations for their facilities? This corporate strategy has been used to roll back wages and working conditions in a race to the bottom. This is how the game is played, and if it were going in Trump’s favour, he would have no problem at all with it; he’d say he was “winning.”

    Corporations have no loyalty to anything but profit; this is a stance which Trump should appreciate, as he follows it himself (albeit, given his record, with limited success). Taxing the corporations that claim to be “American” while doing all of their manufacturing overseas would make more sense. Fighting for a level playing field internationally in terms of worker pay, environmental protection, and carbon pricing for shipping would, in the long run, make a lot more sense and make the world a better place for everyone. But that’s not what Trump wants. He wants obedience and gratitude, and he doesn’t care how many Americans have to suffer until he gets it. Good luck with that. The US isn’t in a position to dictate in this way any more. Trump can’t make anyone trade with him if they don’t want to. Beating with the tariff stick won’t really help. It might be awkward or difficult, but the world can bypass or ignore the US much more easily than in the past. There are other markets, and other customers.