Author: Ophelia Benson

Michael Deacon in the Telegraph:

From 1958 to 1978, the BBC broadcast The Black and White Minstrel Show: a series featuring white entertainers who had caked their faces with ridiculous make-up, in order to impersonate black people. These days, the BBC is understandably rather embarrassed about this. So much so that, in the wake of Black Lives Matter, it published an article on its website, wondering how on earth its past bosses could have been so blind.

“It didn’t seem to occur to anyone in a position of authority at the BBC that the series really was offensive to more than just a few ‘killjoys’,” the article lamented. As a result, “this infamous programme” constituted “arguably the BBC’s most glaring failure to understand the damage it could do when it traded in outdated stereotypes”.

True enough. I’ve got just one question.

If, as the BBC now accepts, it’s wrong to show white people dressing up as grotesque parodies of black people, how come it’s fine – indeed, wonderfully enlightened and progressive – to show men dressing up as grotesque parodies of women?

WHY INDEED???

I’ve asked this question a billion times.

I only ask because the BBC’s peculiar fixation with drag queens shows no signs of abating. Just this week, Newsnight invited one to participate in a discussion of the UK’s floundering economy. Perhaps we could boost quarterly growth if we each buy a pair of size 12 stilettos.

Meanwhile, the BBC has been eagerly plugging the new series of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK. Apparently we can look forward to meeting contestants who use such charming stage names as “Anita Piss”, proclaim themselves to be a “Bikini Bottom Bimbo”, declare that they’re “feeling lit to the tits”, and challenge the “other girls” to “step their pussies up”.

No doubt the BBC would argue that this is harmless, light-hearted entertainment, to which only killjoys could object. But then, 50 years ago, that’s what its bosses said about The Black and White Minstrel Show.

And they know that, so Beeb please do explain to us what the difference is.

Theocracy replaced by genderocracy. You are required to believe in magical spiritual immaterial gender to the exclusion of literal physical sex.

Public bodies will be forced to consider gender identity under a proposed Scottish human rights bill that threatens to undermine the Supreme Court’s ruling on sex.

The draft Human Rights Bill for Scotland, due to be discussed at Holyrood in the coming weeks, contains a clause that would force public bodies to consider “gender identity” when forming policies and delivering services.

Well why stop there? If public bodies have to consider magic gender why don’t they have to consider all the magic ideas people have about themselves? If the law says self-image trumps material reality then all our ideas about ourselves, no matter how grandiose or conceited or absurd, should logically be allowed to trump the humble facts.

Campaigners say this goes far beyond the protected characteristic of “gender reassignment” in the UK’s Equality Act — and fear it would “legislate for a compulsory belief” that people who believe they are women are women.

Equality laws should have nothing to do with in the head ideas about the self such as magic gender, but that ship has unfortunately sailed.

That would directly contradict the Supreme Court ruling in April 2025, which clarified that the definition of a woman is based on someone’s biological sex, not what gender someone feels they are.

And perpetuate this endless stupid childish game we’ve all been forced to play or be punished for refusing to play.

A FWS spokeswoman said: “Putting gender identity into Scots law is hugely problematic. The Equality Act recognises the right not to believe in the concept of gender identity yet the Scottish government plans to legislate for a compulsory belief in it and for public bodies to take it into account.

That’s the thing. This is a belief. It’s not an external objective fact, it’s a fluffy interior idea, and nobody should be forced to pretend to believe it.

Last year the Scottish government reintroduced the idea of a human rights bill. 

…

In addition, there would be an “equality duty” implemented, which would require public authorities, such as councils and the NHS, to consider how they can deliver the ICESCR rights while designing policies and delivering services.

The proposals, ministers admit, “have evolved to explicitly” include “additional grounds of sexual orientation, gender identity, age, ethnic origin and disability”.

Sneaky sneaky sneaky. Those last three are objective external facts. Sexual orientation is the outlier, in being internal and in a sense subjective, but it does have a long well-documented history of persecution, and it doesn’t trespass on other people’s rights. Genner idenniny doesn’t and does.

A Scottish government spokesman said: “The Scottish government accepts the Supreme Court judgment. The proposed human rights bill will not overturn this decision.

“Since April last year we have been taking the necessary steps in response, making changes to policies and guidance impacted by the judgment.”

And yet here we are.

Reduxx reports:

A veteran University worker in Brazil has been sentenced to 1 year in prison for “misgendering” a trans-identified male student. Luís Adripaulo Mendes Barros was charged under the nation’s notorious “social racism” law after a trans-identified male student reported him to police for “transphobia.”

The incident occurred on October 14 of 2022 at the Federal University of Paraíba, one of the two main public Universities in the coastal eastern state of Paraíba, Brazil. That day, a male student named Odara Moraes entered one of the women’s washrooms on campus only to be confronted by a female janitor who challenged his presence in the women’s facilities.

Speaking to Reduxx last year, the female janitor noted that she was initially confused by Moraes, seeing him as a biological male wearing a “crop top and mini skirt.” But the janitor, whose name Reduxx is withholding for her privacy, politely informed him that he was not in the correct washroom, a statement she said had not been intended to cause offense.

Doesn’t matter what it was intended to. What matters is the feefees of the man in the crop top and miniskirt.

Moraes immediately became combative, pulling out his phone to begin filming her and calling her “transphobic.” He also demanded that she refer to him with feminine pronouns.

He was thrilled. A victim!

Upon realizing that the janitor was a contracted employee at the University, he demanded to speak with campus administration. Unsure of what else to do, the janitor brought Moraes to the office of Luís Adripaulo Mendes Barros, the school’s administrative director. During the short journey to the office, Moraes continued to lambast the female janitor, calling her names and accusing her repeatedly of transphobia.

Barros attempted to de-escalate the situation, but Moraes refused and instead repeatedly asserted that he would call the police and press charges against the janitor for “transphobia” – a criminal offense in Brazil.

Unsure of what to do, Barros asked Moraes if he had any documents proving he was legally a woman, but Moraes responded that his “word” should simply be enough. As Moraes continued to insist he was a ‘woman,’ Barros attempted to calmly clarify: “You are trans, not a woman.”

Moraes then stormed out of the office screaming that he had been “discriminated against.”

Four days later, both the janitor and Barros were contacted by police, informing them they were under investigation for criminal transphobia.

…

The female janitor ultimately lost her job after the school refused to renew her contract, and she was left unemployed after almost more than a decade. After being made aware of their situation, MATRIA Brazil, a women’s rights organization, stepped in to offer legal assistance to the two workers and launched a fundraiser to assist the janitor support her family.

Both the janitor and Barros were formally charged in October of last year with aggravated prejudice under the classification of “social racism,” an offense created by Brazil’s Supreme Court in 2019 when it found that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity was in fact covered under already pre-existing anti-discrimination laws relating to race or national origin. The trial itself began in March of 2025, and concluded in June of 2026.

15 months! Because a man invaded a women’s toilet and then bullied the two people who told him he was in the wrong toilet!

The female janitor was acquitted of her charges, with Judge Manuel Maia de Vasconcelos Neto determining that he was unsatisfied that her conduct, in her particular role and circumstances, met the standard for criminal conviction.

Barros, however, was found guilty because the court determined that he knowingly and authoritatively denied the transgender student’s “right to use the bathroom” corresponding to his self-declared gender identity, and rejected his explanations that he was merely protecting women or following his duties.

It’s insane and disgusting and evil.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on If the rationally indefensible is the point.

I think the rationally indefensible behaviour is seen more among the activists who defend “trans” than by trans-identifying people themselves.

The trans population itself is small and mostly a hodgepodge of people in various states of mental disarray, disorder, and distress. (Well, plus a lot of horny chancers and charlatans.)

The progressives who back the movement are much more numerous than the trans-identifiers themselves, and this group, a great, rabid cheerleading squad, seems to be caught up in a spiral of tribalist-identitarian loyalism, and this spiral seems to be fueled in large part by the fact that the tenets at the heart of trans are plainly unbelievable.

Belief in extraordinarily unbelievable things is a remarkably consistent feature across cults and extreme religions. That’s probably got something to do with how it pits the rational part of the brain — the one that can detect bullshit if it actually applies itself to analyzing the thing — against the tribal part of the brain — the one that says anything that might threaten your tribe or separate you from it is a threat that must be shut off. Ergo: if your tribe believes something crazy, you must shut off your critical thinking function or you could be ousted from the group.

The internal conflict between the two impulses of the mind is like a Chinese finger trap: the harder your critical thinking mind tries to pull out, the more your tribal-loyalty mind tightens its grip.

Originally a comment by Papito on An academic project.

It could never be enough to “intellectually dispel” ideas like evolution or laws of physics. Intellect is not the route through which one may dispel such ideas. Inevitably, violence is the route through which these ideas will be dispelled.

The first step towards this inevitable violence is the installation at the university of an individual who wants to guide the university away from intellect and towards submission. The second step is for that individual to tell students that when the university tries to encourage them towards intellect and away from submission that this is harm done to them. The third step is to compare the harm done by, say, stabbing a professor who teaches evolution with the supposed harm done to students whose minds may be lead away from submission by hearing about evolution. After that, it’s just a matter of time and probability.

Ahmed’s purpose in being there is to destroy the university, and her colleagues think that’s really cool. She wants to get one of her colleagues killed, and she will succeed. That murder will be hailed as liberatory by the people who celebrated October 7.

Ahmed wasn’t just making coffee at the terrorist group, she wrote the part of their doctrine about education. Ahmed: “the Muslim community as a whole in Britain needs to recognise that western education is a threat to our beliefs and values”. The university is so dedicated to free expression that they accept the expression of the idea that there should be no freedom of expression, and no university.

Hey kids, it’s time to learn about the “assumption” of “the blessed Virgin Mary” (the one that had a baby, ya know).

So get ready for the treat because heeere’s Vatican News:

The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was already being celebrated on 15 August in the 5th century. It bore the sense of Our Lady’s “Birth into heaven”, or in the Byzantine tradition, her “Dormition”.
 

The feast began to [be] celebrated in Rome in the middle of the 7th century. It was not until 1 November 1950, that Pope Pius XII proclaimed the Dogma of Mary’s assumption body and soul into heaven.
 

Wull…why? Why did it take so long? Why did it take six or seven (depending on how you count) centuries before the feast began to be celebrated? Why didn’t they get right down to celebrating it the minute Jesus zoomed up to sit on the left hand (or was it the right?) of Mr God? What was the holdup? Six (or seven) centuries is a long time! Imagine Mary sitting up there all disgruntled and irritated at being ignored. So typical. They probably made her clean up after dinner, too.

In the Apostles’ Creed, we profess our faith in the “Resurrection of the body” and in “life everlasting”. This is the ultimate goal and meaning of our life’s journey.

Well sure; it naturally would be if it were true. It isn’t true though. Bodies don’t get resurrected and life is very much not everlasting. Go visit an active battlefield some time and you’ll see.

This promise of faith is already accomplished in Mary, who is the “sign of sure hope and comfort” (Preface). It is a privilege granted to Mary, and closely connected to her being the Mother of Jesus.

Oh. Well if Preface says she is the sign of hope and comfort, who are we to dispute it? As for its being closely connected to being Jesus’s mommy, well no shit. What the hell else would it be connected to? Her talent for basket-weaving as a schoolgirl? Her secret recipe for fig ice cream? Her dancing?

Since death and the corruption of the human body are consequences of sin, it was not right that the Virgin Mary – who is free from sin – should be affected by this natural law.

In other words you’re making up the rules, so the rules are what you’re making up. Everybody else does sinning, but this one woman doesn’t do sinning because we want to make her The Top Best Shiny Holy one, therefore we solemnly declare that she is freefromsin. Yes really. We promise! We swear! Well not swear exactly, but we say very seriously and loudly and with no giggling.

The fact that Mary has already been assumed into heaven is a reason to celebrate, to rejoice, to hope in the “already and the not yet”.

To hope? Aren’t you supposed to be certain of all this? Isn’t that the whole ballgame? What’s this shit about hope? We don’t put chewing gum wrappers in the collection plate for hope, you know, we want cash on the table.

One of God’s creatures – Mary – is already in heaven. With her, and like her, we too, who are God’s creatures, will one day be there too.

Yeah but what about all those other people in between? You forgot to mention them. All the people who lived between Mary and now.

And when you say “one day” what do you mean? How far off is one day? Like, ten years? Hundreds? Millions? Do you actually mean it the way parents mean “Yes yes we’ll get you a race car one day” just to shut little Billy up?

The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, body and soul, is an eloquent sign of how not only the “soul” but also the “body” is included in the biblical observation that “God found it very good” (Gn 1:31), so much so that in the Virgin Mary, “our flesh” would be assumed into heaven.

Uh huh. Sure it will. We know all this is true, because you keep saying it.

Andrew Gilligan at The Spectator:

An academic project hosted by Cambridge University platforms creationism, the belief that the world was created by God in seven days. It promotes an academic paper demanding that schoolchildren be taught to “actively resist” the science of evolution.

At Charles Darwin’s old university, where a college is named after him, Darwin’s discovery is now described by one Cambridge researcher as an example of “potential challenges posed by Eurocentric monoculture.”

Well it’s a “monoculture” kind of thing, in a yes or no sort of way. Is everything that exists the product of one supernatural guy who gave an order? (If so, doesn’t that require another supernatural someone, and another for that one, and infinite regress?) If we think that can’t be right, and we point to all the reasons for thinking so, is that monoculture or is it just…well, thinking? Why is One Magic Dude more polycultural than a more detailed body of knowledge about the origins of matter, of stars and planets, of biological creatures?

It is the latest sign of fundamental problems at Cambridge’s education faculty, the same department which hired Jason Arday.

[To belabor the obvious, this was written before Arday’s suicide.]

The project which platforms the creationist claims, the Islamic Educator Learning Community (IELC), is led by Cambridge’s assistant research professor of education, Farah Ahmed, a former activist in the since banned terror group Hizb ut-Tahrir. Ahmed’s extraordinary CV, and her long record of grossly bigoted, extremist and separatist views, were revealed by a 2002 pamphlet exposed by The Spectator on Tuesday.

That takes my breath away a bit. What is Cambridge doing making a religious fanatic an assistant research professor of education?

IELC is “hosted by” and “partners with” a university body called the Cambridge Teacher Research Exchange, Camtree. Camtree is a project of Hughes Hall, the Cambridge University college where Ahmed is a governing fellow. Ahmed is also an “affiliate” of Camtree.

IELC publishes on its website, with a Camtree address, a paper on “Islamic scientific critical consciousness” which asks: “Does the common modern biological assumption that humans have common ancestry with other life forms conflict with [Islamic] religious beliefs about God creating Adam and Eve?”

Note the word “assumption”. It’s not actually an assumption. It’s the “Islamic religious beliefs” that are based on assumptions, aka one book written by one ignorant fanatic hundreds of years ago. Putting the word “religious” in front of the word “beliefs” does not make the beliefs true or well-founded.

The paper says that “countering colonial hegemony in science education for Muslims” could include “identifying gaps in fossil records to make the case that the evidence of humans descending from apes is inconclusive.”

Note the words “colonial hegemony”. Some forms of “hegemony” are good to have. The hegemony of science in science education is one of those forms.

It adds that “fitna” (trial or temptation) “may occur, for example, when a Muslim student in the science classroom begins to believe that humans emerged on Earth without any role played by the Creator.”

It says that fitna “boil[s] down to two beliefs being inculcated in students that are problematic from an Islamic standpoint,” namely that “the meaning of existence is socially constructed as an evolutionary response. There is no afterlife or soul; and the universe exists by chance, and runs according to mindless laws of physics…. To counter these hegemonic ideas, it is not enough just to intellectually dispel them. Rather… it is necessary to also instil within students a capacity to actively resist the influence of this monoculture.”

Ah yes, resist the influence of the scientific monoculture and replace it with the Islamic monoculture. Such an upgrade.

No more water, the fire next time.

Millions of people across England and Wales received an emergency alert to their phones on Friday as the government warned against activities that could start fires.

The deputy prime minister, Louise Haigh, said it was the most extensive use to date of the emergency alert system, with phones beaming a siren noise about 7pm, with the warning: “There is a serious risk of wildfires nationally.”

People have been urged not to light barbecues, campfires, fireworks or anything else that could spark a blaze while the wildfire risk remains high. They have also been urged to call 999 immediately if they spot a fire.

…

It has been a record year of wildfires in England and Wales: the number so far this year has passed the 1,017 recorded in 2025. Fire services have declared 11 major incidents in a 24-hour period starting on Thursday.

So last year was a record and this year is a new record. Not a good trend.

Kennedy Center still crawling on its belly for Trump.

CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins sounded the alarm on Donald Trump’s obsession with his vanity projects after the president’s handpicked Kennedy Center board voted to put his name back up on the building.

The board’s vote is a workaround for a federal judge’s order that the center remove Trump’s name from the building’s exterior. The resolution the board approved would go beneath the signage for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, saying: “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump.” The proposed lettering will likely be resolved in court as well.

It’s so stupid and pathetic. It’s the Kennedy Center because Kennedy was assassinated. Trump has not been assassinated. It’s that simple.

“The president’s focus has not just been on the Kennedy Center in terms of his broader push to remake Washington. It’s also his penchant for branding everything in his name,” Collins, 34, began. “That includes the gold coins, the Trump passports, the National Park passes, the Palm Beach airport—I’m not done—the banner at the Justice Department, the new class of battleships. There are many things, not just in Washington, but all across the nation now bearing the Trump name.”

In other words he’s insanely needy and greedy and desperate for attention and incapable of seeing how all this looks to people who aren’t Donald Trump.

But…

"Jones is doing the classic progressive two-step: shield the ideology, then smear anyone who notices the conflict as bigots." https://t.co/DzMFFgGjkX

— Shahrar Ali (@ShahrarAli) August 14, 2026

But what even is a “queer Muslim”? You can’t really be both, just as you can’t really be a Muslim feminist. The religion in question explicitly despises you, and absolutely does not count you as one of its own. It will put you to death if it can get its hands on you.

There are no “queer Muslims” just as there are no menstruating men.

This is a fun game! Anyone can play!

Travel Advisory Issued for LGBTQIA+ people on the UK. Thanks to JK Rowling and her think tank terfs.

— Daniel Lismore (@daniellismore) August 13, 2026

Notice anything missing?

That’s right: any agent!

Who issued this “advisory”? He doesn’t say. He probably issued it himself. We can all do that. I’m issuing a travel advisory for Daniel Lismore. I advise him to take a trip to Antarctica.

Always remember, kids: if there’s no agent in the putative action, the whole thing may be just made-up bullshit.

Pig-ignorant Trump meddles with childhood vaccinations again.

 President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order calling for revamped childhood vaccine recommendations that promote his long-held but discredited theory that childhood shots should be spaced out into separate medical visits.

His “theory” – it’s not a theory, it’s just a permanent brain-fart. He doesn’t do theory, he just talks.

The order advocates separating the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine into three different single-disease shots and administering all childhood immunizations at separate appointments whenever possible. It also directs the nation’s health department to improve research on vaccines, which are already extensively studied, and present a plan to offer separate measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines for children, since that is not currently an option in the United States.

It ain’t broke so he’s busy breaking it.

Public health experts have raised concerns that spacing out shots as Trump suggests can lead to an increased risk that children become infected with a vaccine-preventable disease before returning for another visit. Childhood vaccines — and how and when to give them in combination — go through rigorous studies, and safety tracking continues for years as the shots are used.

But Trump thinks he knows better, and has no inhibition about meddling with life or death medical issues that he knows NOTHING about.

Speaking about the order at the Oval Office on Monday, Trump repeatedly suggested the number or timing of vaccines could play a role in rising rates of autism spectrum disorder, even as scientific consensus and decades of studies have firmly concluded there is no link. 

Never mind your elitist scientific consensus and decades of study, Trump’s credulous ignorant loudmouth opinionizing gets to throw all that out.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Republican chair of the Senate health committee, slammed the executive order in a social media post, saying vaccines are safe and do not cause autism.

“I’m a doctor. This executive order is wrong,” the Louisiana senator wrote. “The President does not have the expertise to make these changes.”

…

Asked on a call with reporters why the president was advocating splitting MMR into three single-disease vaccines, the White House official did not provide any studies supporting the decision. They said that was Trump’s long-held view and that some countries provide individual measles vaccines in certain circumstances.

The hell with Trump’s “long-held view”! Trump is a brainless uninformed moron and he has no business imposing his stupid “views” on all of us.

This looks like a joke but isn’t.

BBC Newsnight last night devoted more than half the programme to a discussion about the UK's economy.

And that meant speaking to drag queen for five minutes about clubbing. pic.twitter.com/9FUmRv4UK2

— ripx4nutmeg (@ripx4nutmeg) August 13, 2026

Yes clubbing, that essential pillar of the economy.

This is a very very very very important point.

Sometimes I wonder if the rationally indefensible is the point. Cults are irrational by design, because rhey need to cultivate loyalty, not reason.

— Eli Braille (@megawhelmed) August 13, 2026

This is why I keep talking about expensive beliefs.

NHS Scotland ignored the law.

NHS Scotland advised health boards not to ban biological men from women’s spaces despite last year’s Supreme Court ruling, documents show.

In April last year five judges unanimously agreed that the legal definition of a woman was based on biological sex. It confirmed that men who identify as women were not allowed to access single-sex spaces, including lavatories and women-only hospital wards.

Yet legal advice issued by NHS Scotland’s Central Legal Office to human resources departments in May 2025 — one month after the ruling — warned boards not to change single-sex policies. Citing “the hard reality” that any shift could prompt legal action, it said HR departments needed to consider “employee relations” and the “reputational risks” of following the judgment.

When in doubt always err on the side of shafting women. What about legal action if there is no “shift”? Why is the resistance of team trans-everything important while the resistance of women is just fluff?

Another memo from the health board flagged “a number of concerns” about an interim update from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which said men who identify as women should not be allowed in women’s spaces.

It instead advised staff to follow its existing policy around “supporting trans staff and gender-inclusive workplaces”, which states “staff should treat trans people according to the gender role they present”.

These are medical people, who work with bodies not spirits, with sex not gender, yet they chose the fantasy over the reality.

For Women Scotland (FWS), the campaign group that secured the Supreme Court clarification of the law and a legal victory banning male prisoners from female jails, said it would sue the Scottish NHS unless it protected women’s single-sex spaces.

Susan Smith, a director of the group, said it “beggars belief” that more than 15 months after the Supreme Court ruling, Scottish health boards were “carrying on as if nothing has changed”.

“We are putting the NHS on notice that if they do not urgently scrap their unlawful ideological policies and start following the law, we will take them to court and force them to do so,” Smith said.

“It should go without saying that women, and especially those who have found themselves in need of medical care, should be entitled to the privacy of single-sex spaces where necessary.”

Yet medical carers refuse to see it. It’s grotesque.

The Supreme Court ruling explicitly cited changing rooms or female-only hospital wards as settings where women “might reasonably object” to the presence of men. However, the Lothian policy stated “staff should treat trans people according to the gender role they present”.

NO, because that gets you right back to men in women’s spaces. Staff should treat women as if women were human beings too.

It added that refusing to allow a trans person to use facilities they feel “comfortable” with “could be unlawful discrimination on grounds of gender reassignment”.

But letting men use women’s facilities could be unlawful letting men use women’s facilities.

An admissions policy for the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, which caters for severely ill mental health patients, said trans patients had “equal rights to access single-sex wards as any other male or female patient and therefore should be admitted to a ward in accordance to their preferred gender”.

Oh come on. They can’t be that stupid. The logic is toddler-level. Yes, they have “equal” aka the same rights to access single-sex wards as any other male or female patient. What they don’t have is the right to access the wrong single-sex wards. Will they ever stop with these idiotic word games?

When mansplaining rape goes wrong.

A “groundswell” of anger has developed within the Scottish Greens over remarks made by MSP Q Manivannan describing rape as existing on a “spectrum” and referring to the “demonisation of rape”, The Herald understands.

…

Manivannan, who was elected as an Edinburgh and Lothians East regional MSP in May, made the remarks during an appearance on The Subjective Space podcast recorded before their election.

Whose election?

See, this is one reason luxury pronouns are such a bad idea. The guy is a guy, and the news media shouldn’t be hiding that fact by calling him a they.

Discussing rape and the rehabilitation of offenders, Manivannan said there was “definitely” a “demonisation of rape” and described it as “a spectrum”, although they added that none of the acts within that spectrum was “less or more worse”.

Then what kind of “spectrum” is it? Taller or shorter? Richer or poorer? Hotter or colder?

The Herald understands the Scottish Greens’ party executive met on Tuesday night and discussed improving candidate vetting procedures. However, a party source stressed that the issue had been tabled “long before” Manivannan became an MSP and was not initiated in response to the current controversy.

The discussions come as members press the leadership to distance the party more clearly from remarks they fear could undermine the progress made at May’s election.

Close that barn door now that all the horses have escaped.

The mouthing-off chronicles:

Trump hardly needs anyone else to serve as his mouthpiece.

The most clamorous president in modern history always gets his message out — in a daily riot of online posts, interviews and rancor with reporters.

It’s about 90% of his working day, right? And it’s his favorite part, with making life hell for other people a close second.

 Trump is a master media manipulator. He’s demonized, flattered and played reporters for decades. He relished the role of 1980s New York tabloid villain as he built his brand as a real estate tycoon and celebrity. He intuits the media’s craving for constantly evolving headlines and uses it as a tool of distraction.

I wouldn’t call him a master manipulator, exactly, because I can’t believe he’s intelligent enough to do it calculatedly. It’s more that he’s a master asshole. He doesn’t so much “intuit” media whatsits as he just does what he wants to do, which is be a master asshole. The media attention is a byproduct of the master assholery.

Trump’s zeal for conflict, disdain for etiquette and willingness to say outrageous things forged alchemy when his political ascent coincided with the explosion of social media. 

That’s more like it. He’s naturally a rude aggressive insulting piece of crap, and now he gets to be that on social media when he’s not too busy randomly bombing people.

[Karoline Leavitt’s] operation took over control of the pool system long administered by the independent correspondents’ association. She decided who got into presidential events and flew on Air Force One. She added streaming services, local conservative radio hosts, and podcasters and MAGA personalities to the permanent press corps.

Critics saw an attempt to introduce propagandists who’d go soft on Trump. His supporters cheered what they saw as an overdue dilution of what they regard as the liberal elite media.

Yeah let’s get rid of “elite” news media because why the hell would we need education or expertise or a functioning brain in the people who report and interpret the news?

Trump’s war with Canada is coming along nicely.

More than 70,000 Canadians have signed a petition calling for the US ambassador in Ottawa to be expelled for undermining diplomatic relations between the two neighbours.

The online petition accuses Pete Hoekstra of “making repeated interventions in Canadian political discourse” and of having “normalised the Trump administration’s threats to annex Canada as the ’51st state’” of the US.

That will be because he’s a Trump appointee. Anyone else Trump appoints will be just as bad. Trump doesn’t appoint decent people to anything.

A Republican and a Trump ally, Hoekstra has been a fierce defender of US President Donald Trump’s trade policies, saying they are meant to secure the safety and prosperity of Americans.

Yeah no we get that part – Trump’s policies are meant to do things Trump wants to do. We know that. It doesn’t make them reasonable or fair to other parties.

…the ambassador has been criticised for reposting Trump’s comments about Canada becoming the 51st state and telling reporters it would be a “great discussion to be had” by the leaders of the two countries.

Of course it wouldn’t. One of those two leaders is Trump. No great discussion is possible.

Seen on Facebook:

Ali Kashif, a 25-year-old Pakistani imam who had reportedly lived in Brescia, Italy, for six years, was deported to Islamabad shortly after an undercover television report aired footage of him defending the marriage of girls as young as nine. Italian authorities moved to expel him under immigration provisions related to public order and security.

The controversy began with an undercover investigation by the Italian television program Fuori dal Coro on Rete 4. Reporter Francesco Leone posed as an Italian man interested in converting to Islam and questioned Kashif about marriage. During the conversation, Kashif reportedly argued that a girl should be considered an adult after experiencing her first menstrual cycle and said that girls aged nine or older could marry significantly older men.

The remarks sparked widespread outrage after the footage was broadcast. Brescia police commissioner Paolo Sartori subsequently ordered Kashif’s expulsion. Authorities reportedly cited provisions of Italy’s immigration law allowing foreign nationals considered a threat to public order or security to be removed. Officials also said Kashif did not have a valid residence permit at the time.

Setting aside the rights or wrongs of deporting him, what does that first menstrual cycle criterion tell us?

It’s unpleasantly, brutally, harshly obvious what it tells us. Female people are breeding stock, and nothing else. A nine-year-old girl is not a person, with her own dreams and hopes and potential; she’s a cow, a mare, a sow, a hen. Once she has her first menstrual cycle we know she can breed, and that’s all we need to know. Once she can breed, two realities come into play.

One, the guy who “marries” her can get her pregnant. Two, all other guys have the potential to get her pregnant so she has to be locked up. Marriage for her is that being locked up. All those other guys who could rape her can’t get at her, because she’s been imprisoned at the age of nine.

Such a benign, idealistic, humane religion.

And it’s not just the heat. It’s also the water drying up.

Europe braced on Wednesday for a fifth heat wave of a record-breaking summer that has already spurred wildfires of rare ferocity, caused water shortages across the continent and, for many Europeans, sapped the joy from a season they once savored.

The heat is expected to sweep from the west, with a high of 109 degrees Fahrenheit, or 43 degrees Celsius, predicted in Spain on Thursday, before hitting more eastern countries like Germany over the weekend.

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In more than 70 percent of mainland France, water use is limited because of the widespread droughts. Groundwater levels have declined in more than 90 percent of underground water reserves in mainland France, the country’s national geological service reported this month. In some regions, people could be fined for using water in certain contexts, like washing their cars or filling swimming pools.

Across the channel, nearly three-quarters of England is now in drought, according to officials, with tens of millions of people in Britain under a hose ban.

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The new heat wave comes after Western Europe recorded its hottest June-to-July period on record, according to Copernicus, the European Union’s climate monitoring service.

Droughts, magnified by climate change, are crippling some of the continent’s critical waterways, including the Rhine. In Serbia, the Danube River’s receding water levels exposed ships from a Nazi fleet that sank at the end of World War II.

Droughts and hail produced by uncharacteristically violent rainstorms have played havoc with agricultural land, harming farming revenues. Coldiretti, Italy’s largest agricultural trade association, estimates that climate-related damages have exceeded three billion euros, or nearly $3.5 billion.

Oh well, it’s only the food supply.