The Eyjafjallajökull eruption in 2010, via NASA.
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Trophies
Aug 2nd, 2016 2:01 pm | By Ophelia BensonTwo of Trump’s sons have paid big bucks to slaughter charismatic megafauna in Africa.
Animal rights activists are revolted by a series of trophy photos that have emerged showing Eric and Donald Trump Jr. posing with a dead elephant, kudu, civet cat and waterbuck while on a big game safari in Zimbabwe last year. In one photo, Donald Jr. proudly holds a dead elephant tail in one hand and a knife in the other.
“Look at me! I made this animal dead because I have a big gun! Animals are losers, they don’t have guns.”
… Read the restThe big game safari was organized through a company called Hunting Legends. The Daily Mail reports that there are trophy fees for the deer-like
You don’t like abuse? Here’s more abuse
Aug 2nd, 2016 10:45 am | By Ophelia BensonMore on the endless loop of misogynist abuse of women who campaign against misogynist abuse:
… Read the restMelanie Jeffs and Lydia Rye led research into hate crime in Nottingham which resulted in the city’s police becoming the first in the country to recognise street harassment as a hate crime earlier this month.
Both have since been subjected to personal threats, claims they were “not attractive enough” to talk about street harassment and posts telling them to “get cancer” at the rate of up to 100 messages a day.
One commenter told the pair he wanted all women to feel like “the retarded gutter trash that they are”, after a BBC reporter had sexual obscenities hurled at her while reporting on sexism on
Loving the juxtaposition
Aug 2nd, 2016 9:27 am | By Ophelia BensonThe circle of abuse. There’s no escape, because if you try to do anything about abuse, the abuse intensifies. The abusers are busy demonstrating that to Melanie Jeffs in Nottingham.
… Read the restA woman who helped launch a police campaign to record misogyny as a hate crime has received hundreds of abusive messages.
Melanie Jeffs said one person “threatened to put a machete” through the back of her head.
Nottinghamshire Police has received 22 reports and made two arrests since recording misogynistic hate crimes.
They included verbal abuse, threats of violence, assault and unwanted physical contact.
Ms Jeffs, centre manager at Nottingham Women’s Centre, said she was “stunned” by the volume of tweets and messages posted on Twitter and Facebook.
Has no one told Johnny Walnuts that Donald Trump IS the Republican Party’s official nominee?
Aug 1st, 2016 4:31 pm | By Ophelia Benson(No, it’s not going to be all Trump all the time from now on. But…clear and present danger, and all that.)
Jim Wright says what I say – McCain doesn’t get to say Trump doesn’t represent the Republican Party, because he obviously and absolutely does.
… Read the restJohn McCain said this morning Donald Trump does not “represent the views of our Republican Party, its officers, or candidates.”
Donald Trump doesn’t NOT represent the views of our Republican Party.
Its Officers.
Or its CANDIDATES.
Has no one told Johnny Walnuts that Donald Trump IS the Republican Party’s official nominee for President of the United States and in point of fact DOES represent the Republican Party, its Officers, its members, and all its Candidates
He comes back with a certain bravado
Aug 1st, 2016 4:00 pm | By Ophelia BensonFareed Zakaria called Trump a bullshit artist on CNN this morning.
Zakaria pointed to the pattern that has emerged in Trump’s efforts to defend or clarify his controversial statements.
“Every time it is demonstrated that Donald Trump is plainly ignorant about some basic public policy issue, some well-known fact, he comes back with a certain bravado and tries to explain it away with a tweet or a statement,” Zakaria said.
“Bravado” is a very sweet way of putting it. Psychopathic shamelessness is how I would put it.
“It’s entertaining,” Zakaria said of Trump’s shtick, “if the guy is trying to sell you a condo or a car. But for the president of the United States, it’s deeply worrying.”
It was … Read the rest
And the government will no longer be the government
Aug 1st, 2016 3:19 pm | By Ophelia BensonAt a Monday campaign event in Columbus, Ohio, Donald Trump teed up for a potential challenge to the integrity of the fall general election, an escalation of his rhetoric about the “rigged” primary system.
“I’m afraid the election’s gonna be rigged, I have to be honest,” Trump told the crowd.
While Trump has often questioned the integrity of the primary contests in both parties, his newest remarks seemed to begin laying groundwork for him to contest the Nov. 8 election results.
“Contest” it as in inciting a coup to overturn it. That’s the logic of what he’s saying, whether he realizes it or not.
… Read the restIt was a line of attack that longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone
Albatross
Aug 1st, 2016 12:58 pm | By Ophelia BensonJohn McCain isn’t happy with Trump’s attacks on Khizr and Ghazala Khan.
Mr McCain, a war veteran and the party’s 2008 presidential nominee, thanked the Khan family for immigrating to America, adding “we’re a better country because of you.”
“I cannot emphasize enough how deeply I disagree with Mr. Trump’s statement,” Mr McCain said in a statement.
“I hope Americans understand that the remarks do not represent the views of our Republican Party, its officers, or candidates.”
Ah no. Sorry but that claim is dead in the water. You can’t say that when the guy who made the remarks is the Republican candidate for president. You’re stuck with them, because you’re stuck with him.
… Read the restMr Trump took to Twitter
An aura of crude strength and machismo
Aug 1st, 2016 12:22 pm | By Ophelia BensonRobert Kagan on Trump back in May:
… Read the restWe’re supposed to believe that Trump’s support stems from economic stagnation or dislocation. Maybe some of it does. But what Trump offers his followers are not economic remedies—his proposals change daily. What he offers is an attitude, an aura of crude strength and machismo, a boasting disrespect for the niceties of the democratic culture that he claims, and his followers believe, has produced national weakness and incompetence. His incoherent and contradictory utterances have one thing in common: They provoke and play on feelings of resentment and disdain, intermingled with bits of fear, hatred and anger. His public discourse consists of attacking or ridiculing a wide range of “others”—Muslims, Hispanics, women, Chinese, Mexicans,
“That’s a witch that needs to be arrested and put to death”
Aug 1st, 2016 11:40 am | By Ophelia BensonAnother rung on the fascism ladder:
An official adviser to the Trump campaign has escalated the attacks on Khizr Khan, the gold star father who was critical of Trump at the Democratic convention, baselessly accusing him of being a “Muslim Brotherhood agent.”
The adviser, Al Baldasaro, tweeted a link to an article from Shoebat.com, a fringe anti-Islam conspiracy website. The article also suggests (without any evidence) that Humayun Khan, who was awarded a Purple Heart and Bronze, was a jihadist who joined the military to kill Americans.
…
The piece, written by Theodore and Walid Shoebat, is less of an article and more of a fever dream of conspiracies strung together.
Tell us more about Theodore Shoebat.
… Read the restIn recent
Scholars and social butterflies
Aug 1st, 2016 10:36 am | By Ophelia BensonAgain. Clothes, advertising, children. This time it’s Gap UK.
Thanks, Gap UK.
(Also, note the spelling on the boy’s shirt.)… Read the rest
This monstrous clown
Jul 31st, 2016 7:02 pm | By Ophelia BensonHistorians speak out on Trump.
[David] McCullough and Ken Burns, the filmmaker and author, have assembled a group of distinguished American historians to speak about the candidacy of Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, in videos being posted to a Facebook page, Historians on Donald Trump.
It is a diverse, honored group — including, among others, Robert A. Caro, Ron Chernow, David Levering Lewis, William E. Leuchtenburg, Vicki Lynn Ruiz — that speaks with alarm about Mr. Trump’s candidacy and his place in the march of American history.
I plan to work my way through that whole page.
… Read the restMr. McCullough, raised in a Republican home and now aligned with no party, said the prospect
He doesn’t think we should be against the NFL
Jul 31st, 2016 6:22 pm | By Ophelia BensonTrump is going to find that one drawback to being a major party candidate is that news organizations will report that he’s telling whoppers. He told whoppers about how the NFL wrote to him to complain about the debates, which the NFL says it never.
… Read the restIn an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, Trump complained that two of the debates are up against NFL games, and claimed that the organization sent him a letter calling the schedule “ridiculous.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what I don’t like. It’s against two NFL games,” Trump said. “I got a letter from the NFL saying, ‘This is ridiculous. Why are the debates against—’ ‘cause the NFL doesn’t wanna go against the debates. ‘Cause the
He’s not worried about it
Jul 31st, 2016 5:12 pm | By Ophelia BensonHey, did you know that women actually don’t want to climb the ladder, they’d rather be happy? Did you know women have more sense than those silly men with their higher salaries, and prefer to go around in a circle rather than up? It’s true: the CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi said so.
The chairman of advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi has been put on leave for saying the debate on gender bias in the industry is “all over”.
British-born Kevin Roberts told Business Insider he did not think the lack of women in leadership roles “is a problem” in the advertising industry.
The reason it’s not a problem is because women like it. They like it, I tell … Read the rest
He’s not going to go into Ukraine, all right?
Jul 31st, 2016 5:03 pm | By Ophelia BensonTrump goes on tv, attempts to talk to grownups, fails dismally.
Donald Trump said Sunday that Russian President Vladimir Putin won’t make a military move into Ukraine — even though Putin already has done just that, seizing the country’s Crimean Peninsula.
“He’s not going into Ukraine, OK, just so you understand. He’s not going to go into Ukraine, all right? You can mark it down. You can put it down. You can take it anywhere you want,” Trump said in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on “This Week.”
“Well, he’s already there, isn’t he?” Stephanopoulos responded, in a reference to Crimea, which Putin took from Ukraine in early 2014.
At this point I see Basil Fawlty in my … Read the rest
Boko Haram triggers famine in Borno state
Jul 31st, 2016 1:31 pm | By Ophelia BensonMeanwhile Boko Haram, as always.
Suspected Islamist Boko Haram militants have ambushed a UN humanitarian aid convoy in north-eastern Nigeria which had a military escort, officials say.
The military said three civilians, including UN staff, and two soldiers were wounded in the attack.
It has prompted the UN to temporarily suspend aid deliveries in Borno state, where more than two million people have been displaced by the insurgency.
The UN says thousands of children are severely malnourished in the region.
Emphasis added. Boko Haram wants thousands of children to starve to death.
Doubtless thousands of adults are also malnourished and in danger of starving to death.
… Read the restEarlier this month the UN’s children agency warned that tens of thousands
Vichy Republicans
Jul 31st, 2016 12:26 pm | By Ophelia BensonNick Cohen calls the Trump-supporting Republicans – which is most of them – collaborators.
Anglo-Saxon democracies, which were never invaded in the 20th century, have produced a rich series of alternative histories of resistance. When the Nazis win the Second World War, audiences can flatter themselves that they would never have collaborated with Robert Harris’s Fatherland or Amazon’s Man in the High Castle.
No one is more prone to imagining how well they would have behaved in conflicts that they never experienced than American conservatives. The cult of Churchill in the US would embarrass even his most devoted British admirers.
Do they? That’s bizarre. I do the opposite – I always suspect I would be cowardly and selfish. … Read the rest
The legislature requested data
Jul 30th, 2016 4:44 pm | By Ophelia BensonAri Berman on the North Carolina ruling:
… Read the restThis is a huge victory for voting rights—the most significant in the country since the Shelby County v. Holder decision—that will make it easier for hundreds of thousands of voters to cast a ballot this November. It comes just a week before the 51st anniversary of the VRA on August 6, and is especially welcome because there were widespread voting problems during North Carolina’s presidential primary in March that offered a disturbing preview of what to expect in the general election—students waited in three-hour lines, foreign-born US citizens were asked to spell their names to poll workers for no reason in an apparent literacy test, and elderly voters born during Jim Crow
Moral defibrillators
Jul 30th, 2016 4:04 pm | By Ophelia BensonAri Berman in the Nation on William Barber’s speech at the DNC on Thursday:
Nation readers are well acquainted with Dr. Rev. William Barber II, this magazine’s civil-rights correspondent, but most Americans have never heard of him. Last night was his coming-out party, when he brought down the house with an incredible speech at the DNC just an hour before Hillary Clinton took the stage.
So I watched it. It’s a stem-winder all right.
… Read the restAs the leader of the North Carolina NAACP and the Moral Monday movement, Barber is leading a multi-racial and multi-issue struggle for racial and social justice that the South hasn’t seen since the 1960s. He’s been traveling the nation in recent months calling for a
Lemony Salmon Tower
Jul 30th, 2016 3:06 pm | By Ophelia BensonAn entry in the Nightmare Food Illustrations game that I just can’t not share. Via Jeffrey on Facebook:
Salmon with lemon jello.
SALMON WITH LEMON JELLO.
Not to mention the mouthwatering bowl of whole anchovies, and the side dish of sweet potato balls in raspberry jello with oysters on a bed of arugula.… Read the rest
