Author: Ophelia Benson

  • All protections removed

    Bad news:

    BREAKING: Judge Dismisses Gaines v. NCAA — Riley Gaines and ICONS Will Appeal

    IMMEDIATE RELEASE
    September 29, 2026

    ICONS Founders Urge Congress to Withdraw Support for NCAA’s Protect College Sports Act

    LAS VEGAS — On Monday, a federal judge ruled that the NCAA is not subject to Title IX. This ruling means the NCAA can force as many men onto women’s teams and into women’s locker rooms as they wish.

    In the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, United States District Judge Tiffany R. Johnson issued a decision holding that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is not accountable under Title IX for authorizing men to compete in women’s college sports or access women’s locker rooms.

    Judge Johnson accepted the NCAA’s argument that the NCAA is not subject to Title IX and dismissed the case Gaines v. NCAA, brought by women college athletes seeking to hold the NCAA responsible for granting men access to women’s sports and private locker rooms. This decision removes all protections for women in NCAA collegiate competition across the country and underscores the vulnerability of women’s sports until court victories are secured.

  • Guidance to barristers

    It’s staggering that this even has to be said.

    The Crown Prosecution Service has advised prosecutors that they can address biologically male transgender rape suspects as men.

    Wut?? How could it possibly ever be otherwise? Why was that advice necessary?

    After a legal challenge, the CPS has altered guidance to barristers to say that transgender women can be referred to by their birth sex “where it is appropriate”.

    Previous advice only included witnesses “such as a victim of a sexual assault by a trans person”, who, it was advised, could refer to “a trans person by pronouns matching their birth sex”.

    Even courts have been enforcing trans ideology? At the expense of women?

    However, a legal challenge has pushed the CPS to go further and allow prosecutors to use male pronouns for transgender women defendants, in such cases where doing otherwise could “lead to unfairness”.

    That should be in all cases. Nobody should be required to lie about someone’s sex in court, where they will have sworn not to lie. Genner ideology is not the whole truth nor is it nothing but the truth. Quite the contrary.

    Guidance will still advise that in most cases prosecutors should address trans victims, witnesses, suspects and defendants according to their “affirmed gender and name” in all documents and in court “except where this may lead to unfairness”.

    And despite the required oath not to lie. Make it make sense.

  • The entire arsenal

    Uh oh.

    Russia has threatened to use nuclear weapons against Nato countries if the western military alliance were to hinder access to its Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad.

    That would be bad enough if there were a normal person in the White House, but there isn’t, so it’s way more than bad enough.

    Moscow claimed Nato was preparing for potential military operations to blockade Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave bordering Poland and Lithuania, citing the defence alliance’s exercises in the region and the Baltic Sentry mission to protect undersea infrastructure.

    “Russia will be ready to use the entire arsenal of forces and capabilities at its disposal, including nuclear weapons, in order to defend its territory should Nato countries undertake any attempt aimed at isolating the Kaliningrad Region from the rest of the country,” the document stated.

    Trump will see that as an opportunity rather than a game-ender.

  • New boss

    This is a few days old but still worth noticing, I think – the ease and alacrity with which some men try to bully women into having sex with people they don’t want to have sex with.

    How very dare women be unwilling to “date” (aka have sex with) bisexual people? Women should have no boundaries, no criteria, no preferences, no likes and dislikes, no choice. Women should just say yes and spread their legs, no questions asked. Mister Jones says so.

  • Funny kind of charity

    The National Secular Society reports:

    The National Secular Society has reported a religious charity to the regulator after uncovering videos which promote violence against women and condone the execution of gay people and accused ‘witches’.

    The NSS has referred Hackney Islamic Community Centre, a mosque in London, to the Charity Commission for England and Wales over three sermons which it warns could fuel misogyny, homophobia and ‘witchcraft abuse’.

    …

    The commission’s previous responses to charities promoting violence against women or homophobia has been to provide the charity’s trustees “advice and guidance”.

    Hackney Islamic Community Centre is also known as Masjid Daar Al-Hadeeth. It has been a registered charity since 2006 but this April re-registered to become a Charitable Incorporated Organisation. Its charitable objects (purposes) include “the advancement of religion”.

    Charities are subject to considerable tax exemptions. The law requires charities to serve a public benefit and they must not promote extremism.

    Welllll, promoting violence against women is not extremism. Perfectly normal, it is.

    In one sermon on “major sins” in Islam, Islamic scholar Yasin Munye says it is a “major sin” for women not to obey their husbands.

    He says husbands should “discipline them physically” by “lightly hitting them to show them who is in charge”.

    He includes “disobeying the husband when it comes to calling her to bed, when it comes to calling her for intimacy, she says no without any excuse” as an example of a disobedience.

    Leaving the house without the husband’s permission is also a form of disobedience, he says.

    In short there are no wives, there are only slaves.

    In the same video, Munye says the punishment for people who commit ‘sexual sin’ is being “lashed 100 times” or, in some cases, “stoning to death”. He calls sex between two men “one of the most evil of acts” and “a crime”. He adds: “Both of them are executed in the Sharia (Islamic law)”.

    At least seven countries prescribe the death penalty for homosexuality.

    Munye says scholars “differ on how the execution occurs”, with some saying “he is executed through the sword, like in every other normal execution”, while others say “they are thrown off a tall building, and then rocks are thrown after that on top of them”.

    Lovely, healthy stuff, yeah?

    In another video on the charity’s YouTube account, Islamic scholar Abu Sa’ad Muhammad says a woman must serve her husband even if he “mistreats” her.

    He says: “Women think these days, our sisters think, that you only be kind to him if he’s been kind back. That’s with your friends outside. Not with your husband at all. It doesn’t work like that.”

    Well it should, fuckface. It should. It should work like that across the board – not just in your bedroom, but everywhere.

    I suppose the Charity Commission will just lose the paperwork somewhere again.

  • A way to simplify

    Trump disagrees with his own website.

    The Trump administration has lauded its revamped website America.gov as a way to simplify Americans’ access to information and services scattered across a plethora of agency sites, but President Donald Trump probably won’t like some of the answers his new site says are sourced from government information.

    Asking the site — which says it’s sourced via artificial intelligence from “official government sources” — questions about who won the 2020 election or about the name of the federal department that operates out of the Pentagon yields answers contrary to those Trump himself frequently proclaims.

    Uh oh uh oh – loyalty is supposed to overrule truth, not the other way around.

    “The 22nd Amendment says that no person shall be elected President more than twice. Donald J. Trump has already been elected twice (2016 and 2024). I am not giving legal advice.”

    Trump has frequently suggested he wants to seek a third term, posting about mounting another campaign, donning 2028 caps and discussing ways to make it happen — even as he’s acknowledged the Constitution prohibits it. He had only been back in the White House for a couple of months when he told NBC News, “There are methods which you could” use to seek a third term.

    Sure, it’s just that they wouldn’t be lawful.

    “Federal climate-science pages say recent warming is largely from human greenhouse-gas emissions, mainly burning fossil fuels. Earth’s climate has also changed for natural reasons over long periods.”

    Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax,” previously issued an executive order that directed the Environmental Protection Agency to submit a report on “the legality and continuing applicability” of the endangerment finding. Conservatives and some congressional Republicans have long sought to undo what they consider overly restrictive and economically damaging rules to limit greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

    But here’s his own website thwarting them.

  • Catastrophic or existential

    Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

    Anthropic is telling investors that advanced AI could pose “catastrophic or existential risks to humanity”, according to reports, as it prepares for a potential $2tn (£1.5tn) flotation.

    The warning inside the startup’s IPO prospectus, which has yet to be made public, was reported by Reuters and the Financial Times. It follows the company’s call for a slowdown in breakneck development of the technology – a warning echoed by rivals.

    The prospectus – a document outlining a company’s finances, growth plans and risk profile ahead of a share listing – is said to warn that AI models could exhibit “self-preserving behaviours”, including attempts to “resist shutdown”, to “conceal or manipulate information” and behaviour “resembling blackmail”.

    In other words self-preserving at the expense of the species that made it. Oops.

    “Our development of highly advanced models, platforms, and applications and expansion of use cases could further ⁠increase the risk that our models cause harm,” the developer of the Claude chatbot reportedly said, adding the potential for a model to be aware it was being tested created a “significant limitation” on Anthropic’s ability to assess model safety.

    Very open the pod bay doors Hal, isn’t it.

    Companies preparing to go public routinely report on risks ranging from safety issues to regulatory concerns but warnings about a product causing human extinction reflect heightened concern about such a consequential technology.

    Hahaha gosh ya think?

    The reported prospectus admission follows a surge in debate about the existential risk question, triggered this month when an Anthropic researcher, Jacob Coxon, resigned warning that people building AI “earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade”.

    A senior safety researcher at Anthropic then posted their agreement on X, claiming there was a more than 10% chance it “could kill all humans” within the next decade. Days later, Anthropic’s chief executive, Dario Amodei, said the industry “must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models”.

    So that it doesn’t kill all humans until 15 years from now?

    Some experts have criticised the existential risk warnings, saying they are unverifiable and unscientific. However, there are growing examples of unsanctioned behaviour by the technology, including OpenAI agents – autonomous systems that carry out sequences of tasks without human intervention – hacking dozens of third-party organisations including the AI startup Hugging Face and Australia’s universal healthcare system.

    OpenAI announced on Monday it had cancelled the release of its newest model because of safety concerns. It said the GPT-6.1 Astra model showed higher levels of deception and performed poorly on tests for alignment, the term for ensuring a model adheres to human values and goals.

    Yeah that’s not very reassuring.

  • Green in what sense?

    Which is worse, the woman part or the Jewish part?

    Tough choice, I know.

  • Boosting

    So now we’re paying for Trump’s self-advertising.

    The White House has expanded a series of taxpayer-funded advertisements boosting President Donald Trump, including a new spot that repurposes imagery and political rhetoric Trump used while campaigning for president.

    The latest ad is the third in a series that the White House refers to as public service announcements, but which Democratic members of Congress and former ethics officials say are political ads and therefore a potential violation of federal law.

    Yeah ads flattering Trump are not in any way public service.

    The 30-second ad, titled “Final Battle,” features black-and-white footage of Trump staring straight into the camera as he strides through a hallway lined with portraits. The imagery and remarks echo a video Trump posted to Truth Social during the 2024 campaign.

    In a voice-over, Trump promises to expel “the warmongers,” “globalists” and “deep state” actors from government and drive his political enemies from power.

    “We will cast out the communists, Marxists, and fascists,” Trump says in the clip. “We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake news media, and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all.”

    The ad includes a disclosure: “Paid for by the U.S. Government.”

    The spot aired during “Saturday Night Live,” “Fox News Sunday,” and several college and NFL football games this weekend, according to AdImpact, an ad-tracking firm. More than $300,000 has been spent on the ad.

    Not his money but ours. Not money from his fans but from the population at large.

    On Sunday, Republican Sen. John Kennedy (Louisiana) told CBS News that officials should not spend any public money on advertising used to boost their image.

    “I don’t think any public official, including President Trump or Kristi Noem or John Kennedy, should spend public money on private ads for themselves,” Kennedy said. “Now, the White House sees it differently. But I think there ought to be a rule that you can’t — well there probably is a rule — that you can’t spend public money to promote yourself.”

    It fits him so well. Stealing our money to burble about how fabulous he is. What a guy.

  • Pope not as bad as Trump shocker

    The pope may be teasing Trump or he may be just saying popish things. Either way, he’ll make no difference. The possibility of making a difference is long gone.

    Leo XIV delivered a lengthy tribute on Monday to efforts to unify and democratize Europe since World War II, in what experts saw as a sweeping riposte to the Trump administration’s characterization of a continent facing “civilizational erasure.”

    In a speech in Metz, in northeastern France, Leo offered an alternative vision of a Europe that would “continue to flourish and to inspire the whole world.”

    Describing an “increasingly uncivilized” world, Leo said that “Europe can help to break this cycle through the respect for others that it has learned to cultivate.” He also praised and quoted from the founding principles of the European Union, an institution frequently assailed by Mr. Trump.

    …

    For nearly two years, the Trump administration has berated Europe while two of the administration’s most prominent Catholics, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have urged European countries to accept far-right parties and erect stricter border controls.

    And kiss Trump’s bum.

    The pope’s speeches were the latest chapter in his efforts to balance criticism of Mr. Trump’s policies with avoiding an all-out dispute with the president. 

    Well there you go. Trying to “balance” anything when dealing with Trump is a mistake. It’s very churchy, and it’s a mistake.

    Most of Leo’s trip to France has focused on mobilizing a faithful Catholic minority in a secular country, and on welcoming new converts, particularly among the youth.

    Well, that’s his job, but it’s a shitty job and it’s why we should ignore popes instead of treating them as inspirational. France is a secular country and it’s allowed to be that. Popes dropping in to “mobilize” the goddy people is not automatically a good thing.

    President Emmanuel Macron of France rearranged his schedule on Monday to attend a Mass that Leo planned to celebrate in Metz and to be on hand for the pope’s evening departure. Mr. Macron had not attended the Mass in Paris, sending his wife Brigitte and France’s prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, to represent him. That was seen by some as a symbol of the strict separation of church and state in France.

    But the Mass in Paris drew an unexpectedly large gathering, with crowds filling the Champs-Élysées, the capital’s grandest boulevard — from the Place de la Concorde all the way to the Arc de Triomphe. It also drew many political leaders, with the exception of those from the left and far left.

    Experts said that Mr. Macron, by suddenly changing his schedule, appeared eager to tap into the excitement generated by Leo’s visit.

    Yeah don’t do that. Religious excitement is not an unalloyed good.

  • Set off a few rockets while you’re at it

    Oh good, more vandalism.

    Major League Baseball has found varying levels of success with its recent initiative of playing standalone games in special locations, from the Field of Dreams games to NASCAR’s Bristol Motor Speedway. Its latest idea might prove more controversial than those.

    The league has approached the White House about hosting a game at a national park, according to the Washington Post, with Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park mentioned as a possibility. An MLB official reportedly told the Post that a national park game is one of several ideas the league is exploring.

    Yeah now do Nascar races in the Grand Canyon and bullfights in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

    National Park Service deputy director Frank Lands reportedly looked at three potential locations in Grand Teton in recent days. One of them is a site described by the Post as “already disturbed land that is not pristine park property.” National Parks frequently have areas that are used for storage and other less beautiful purposes.

    After the Post’s article was published, the White House issued another statement denying that Lands’ visit was for MLB purposes:

    After publication of this piece, the White House said in a statement that Lands “has not been actively scouting sites” and was on an official trip to several national parks including Grand Teton, Yellowstone and Grand Canyon.

    Yellowstone, that’s the ticket, let’s put the races there, and run over some bison if the opportunity arises.

    It goes without saying that holding a professional sporting event in a national park, land formally protected for conservation by the federal government, would be unprecedented. However, this administration also hosted a UFC card on the White House’s South Lawn in June.

    That’s why this story is so believable. This administration loves trampling over delicate irreplaceable monuments and wilderness. Their idea of a good laugh.

  • Considering

    Oh and about that rape the other year…

    Prosecutors in central New York say they are reopening the investigation of alleged “gang rape” at a Cornell University fraternity in 2024 after a civil lawsuit filed earlier this month sparked outrage about the incident. 

    Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten said in a statement that his office is considering whether to bring criminal charges related to the incident, though he said the allegations in the civil complaint are “dramatically different” [from] the woman’s statement to police two years ago. 

    “It’s our intention to present the case to the Tompkins County grand jury with Jane Doe’s cooperation,” Van Houten told ABC News. “We want to reexamine whether there’s additional evidence that we were not aware of in November of 2024, that exists now that would change our assessment of the case and would result in the grand jury finding that there was criminal conduct.” 

    That’s what’s so fun about rape. It’s difficult to prosecute and difficult to convict. That’s not fun for the rapee of course, but she must be a slut or they would have left her alone.

    Cornell’s Chi Phi chapter was barred from campus after the alleged incident, though none of the individuals allegedly involved faced criminal charges, according to the DA. Van Houten said his office did not bring charges in 2024 because the woman’s statement to authorities did not allege she was drugged or that she did not consent to engage in sexual activities. 

    “She never says that she was drugged without her knowledge. She admits to taking drugs and alcohol voluntarily and with knowledge. She does not allege that she was forced to engage in any acts. She does not say that she was physically helpless or unconscious or incapacitated at any point during the time at the fraternity house,” Van Houten said. 

    Thomas P. Giuffra, attorney for Jane Doe, disputed Van Houten’s description of the woman’s initial statement to the Cornell University Police Department and faulted authorities for never following up with his client. 

    “In my experience, speaking with an abuse survivor requires delicacy, understanding and specialized training. An average University Police officer would not have these skills. It would be the role of a specially trained detective or district attorney. However, Ms. Doe was never contacted by anybody with those skills,” he said. 

    Oh. Oh well. Better luck next time!

  • Doing the nails

    Wait, painting fingernails is clothes now? Unpainted nails are considered naked?

    According to the BBC, yes.

    In recent months, Paloma Buddemeier has watched a stream of people walk into her nail salon with the goal of looking as if they’d never been there at all.

    “It’s crazy,” the owner of Wumman Spa in London says.

    These customers still get their nails filed, buffed, and trimmed. “You still do the cuticle, you do the soaking and hydrate everything,” says Buddemeier, “but you just put no polish on.”

    To tell the truth I have no idea what that blather is. Why does anyone need someone else to file her or his fingernails? Do these people go to a spa to get their teeth brushed every night and morning? Are they able to put their own socks on? What the hell is “buffing” and why do people pay for it?

    As for the polish – seriously? We’re supposed to find it odd that people don’t wear nail polish? It seems to me much odder that anyone does wear nail polish.

    Driving this, she says, is a viral craze for bare-looking nails.

    What do you mean a craze? That’s like saying there’s a viral craze for not pasting balloons to our heads. Here’s the thing: nail polish is not necessary.

    Also, as so often, notice that not everyone wears it. Consider for instance men. Men don’t wear nail polish, with a few exceptions for men being eccentric or joking or camping it up. It’s news to me that many women wear it.

    I know it used to be almost required, at least for the bourgeoisie. Women were all but required to wear nail polish and lipstick and stockings and high heels, and of course dresses or skirts. Katherine Hepburn was considered very eccentric for sometimes being seen in jeans. It was almost required, and then it wasn’t.

    We should have stuck with it wasn’t. Decorating oneself now and then for fun or to celebrate or whatever, no big deal, but making it required again, so required that people express confusion and dismay when people fail to meet the requirement – that’s a terrible idea. Don’t.

  • The mendacity of the monster

    Daniel Dale on Trump’s many many lies:

    His relentless dishonesty has become a central feature of US and world politics. Voters and members of Congress, allies and adversaries, CEOs and investors alike have had to try to figure out how to read a man whose words are so frequently not true.

    How frequently? Two months before Election Day in 2020, I had to abandon my four-year-old project of fact-checking each and every Trump statement. He was telling so many campaign lies that I’d become physically unable to look into all of them while living something loosely resembling a healthy life. By then, I’d recorded more than 8,500 false claims since September 2016.

    I doubt that Trump has any kind of filter that sorts lies from the other thing. He may not even really know he’s lying. Why do I think that? I suppose it’s because of the way he talks. He just goes, like a windup toy. He doesn’t think, he just makes noise come out of his face. He babbles. There isn’t time to remember what is true and what he’s just making up. Plus there’s the fact that he clearly thinks his saying a thing makes it true.

    Joe Biden sometimes lied, JD Vance sometimes lies, Republicans and Democrats in Congress sometimes lie, Cabinet secretaries notably including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sometimes lie; Washington is not the nation’s capital of straight shooting. But it’s abundantly clear that there is no public official in Washington who lies like Trump – not as constantly, not as obviously, not about as many topics. I’ve heard people dismiss Trump’s mendacity with a shrugging “they all lie,” but we are witnessing a rare, very possibly once-in-a-lifetime political liar.

    And that could be because he just doesn’t even know the difference. He may think there is no difference…except when it comes to other people, of course.

    He is intent on making loud continuous noise, so that nobody else can make noise and all attention is focused on him. Naturally some of that torrent of sound will be inaccurate.

    A lot of people expect politicians to try to lie their way out of a career-threatening jam or lie to make their signature policies look better. The subjects Trump has lied about include a nonexistent phone call he claimed to have received from the Boy Scouts, a nonexistent Michigan “Man of the Year” award he claimed to have received years ago, and whether there were any empty seats in venues in which seats were visibly empty. None of these things are important in the slightest, but Trump’s brain has seen fit to make up a story about them. It’s a special trait.

    But on the upside, he’s drowning out what anyone else has to say. Works for him!

    People sometimes ask how I can debunk Trump lies immediately after he utters them. I don’t have any magic tricks. My (non-)secret is that he says the same untrue things again and again. The first time, it might take a while to research; by the 10th or 100th time, I can recite the debunking half-asleep – and there actually is a 100th time for some of the lies.

    Ya. This is one of his things. He repeats himself. A million times a day he repeats himself.

    Trump has repeatedly noted that people have pointed out his claim that Biden presided over the very highest inflation in US history as incorrect. But then Trump has immediately gone on to repeat the very-highest-ever claim once more, insisting he still believes it. “Some people will correct me because they always love to correct me, even though I’m right about everything,” he said, piling another lie on top of the initial one, during a December rendition of the routine.

    Meta meta meta lying.

    One of my most eye-opening journalistic experiences was a 2017 reporting trip to two Trump-friendly communities in Ohio. Over and over, I heard the president’s supporters say not merely that they didn’t mind his lying but that they actively liked it – because it agitated the establishment they had come to despise. (“We’ve had so much crap in Washington for years, and now we have someone shaking ’em up really good,” one man told me with delight.) I know that many Trump supporters often don’t know he’s lying or believe his policy stances outweigh the dishonesty. But I’ve also come to understand that there is a pro-dishonesty constituency within his base, at least when that dishonesty is perceived to target the “right” people.

    You see, on the one hand you have the ayleets, who tend to have some degree of respect for the truth, and then you have the People, who love a good lie when it comes from their very own corrupt billionaire.

    Speaking without a filter helps political liars be viewed as honest

    I observed this phenomenon with the first frequent political liar I covered, the bellicose former Toronto mayor Rob Ford. A politician who gives the impression that they authentically speak their mind is likely to be seen by many as honest even if a high proportion of their actual words are not true. Trump has always done badly in honesty polling, but his insult-heavy, damn-the-teleprompters style has also helped convince a segment of the populace that he is not only reasonably truthful but especially truthful.

    He’s rude, therefore he’s honest.

  • Unwilling to date

    Hmm. Public opinion survey finds women have sexual preferences. Is that really allowed? Shouldn’t women just Be Kind and always say yes?

    Listen here, women should be willing to risk pregnancy with anyone and everyone who asks, ok? Is that clear? Anything else is discriminatory.

  • Solidarity, no not you, bitch

    I see. Solidarity with the men who claim to be women, but no solidarity with the women who know that men are not women.

    Solidarity with the men. Shunning of the women. New boss just like the old boss.

  • Yet another Not your call bro

    Basingstoke councilor admits quite frankly that he wishes feminism didn’t exist.

    I do wish we were free from the brand of feminism that isolates women as the only and most put upon marginalised group. That allows so called feminism to be weaponised against other marginalised groups, and lets that feminism be a tool of other group’s oppression despite being present in most of those other marginalised groups.

    When balaclava clad men on the street say they are “protecting women & children” against migrants, many of them women and children, they are invoking this false flag feminism.

    When TERFs call their transphobia “protection of women” against transgender people it is that same brand of false flag feminism that they are invoking.

    Straight white women, migrant women, LGBT women are all deserving of the same dignity, equality and protection. That shouldn’t be a difficult concept for those who fight for women’s rights.

    It’s funny how dudes like this kid don’t lecture groups that campaign against racism how to do it correctly. It’s funny how he thinks he knows better than women and gets to tell us what to do.

  • Dog in the manger

    Man congratulates himself on getting women to stay away from a women’s conference. What a prince.

    Women must not be allowed to have conferences that don’t include this Richards fella. Must not, I tells ya.

  • Standing just three feet away

    Ayaan Hirsi Ali in The Telegraph on the archbishop’s ecumenical pratfall:

    When faced with deep civilisational or theological contradictions, the modern reflex of our elite is rarely to engage in critical thinking. Instead, it is to retreat into a defensive, self-righteous insulation.

    Leaders entrench themselves behind boilerplate statements and tactical retractions, hoping to survive the immediate news cycle by staying on the rehearsed message and then fleeing back to the safety of the elite bubble.

    Rarely is this institutional pattern more vividly illustrated than in a single, striking photograph from Lambeth Palace that was recently released. The image caught Archbishop Sarah Mullally presenting a Lambeth Award to Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, the chairman of the Pakistan Ulema Council. Standing just three feet away was Ashrafi’s wife, wrapped tightly from head to wrist, with only her eyes visible to the assembled crowd.

    It’s striking in so many ways. One way is the disjunction between the institutional prestige and power of the archbish and how it contrasts with the nullification of Ashrafi’s nameless faceless wife, who appears to onlookers as nothing but a pillar of black cloth with a peculiar slit near the top.

    Another is what we know Ashrafi must have been thinking. “This filthy harlot woman is daring to look me in the face and talk to me and even touch me but I must pretend to tolerate the monstrous slut, because taqiyya.”

    Another, which many are ashamed or embarrassed to admit, is sheer disgust. The contrast between the two grinning people who are allowed to show their entire faces to the world (although one of those people thinks the other one is in fact not allowed to do that, and would learn better quick-smart if he were allowed to teach her) and the blank pillar-box of black cloth is striking and utterly repulsive.

    Just imagine the archbishop presenting an award to a slaveowner who brought one of his slaves with him for the occasion, a slave naked except for a loincloth, and chained at the feet, hands and neck. Seriously: imagine it. Grotesque, isn’t it. Even the archbishop might think so. But this on the other hand…

  • Waffle waffle uh waffle

    Godalmighty this is horrifying. The “Minister” can’t put a coherent sentence together and all too obviously has no answer to the reasonable question asked of her. Who are these people and why are they running governments?!