Nick Cohen said yesterday “I told you so you fucking fools.” He did, yes. Today his article on identity politics appeared at Standpoint.

Everyone everywhere apologises to everyone else. Everyone demands the banning of everyone else. Societies where citizens bite their tongues and retract honestly-meant statements are neither particularly free nor particularly happy. And I don’t think our one will last.

Well racism can be honestly-meant, as can antisemitism. Some statements merit retraction. But I take Nick to mean that there’s a limit you fucking fools, and I agree with him there.

He points out the (absurd) absence of class in most identity check lists, and that an ex-miner with black lung disease is not obviously more privileged than say … Read the rest

And speaking of Bradford – let’s also speak of Liverpool. Suzanne Moore is one of many who wrote about the ugly class prejudice in the lies told about the Hillsborough disaster.

Finally, 27 long years later, the cold class contempt that Hillsborough came to signify is laid out for all to see. Those who died did not die because they were “animals” or drinking too much or behaving badly. They were unlawfully killed. Their families did not grieve too much because they were from Liverpool and therefore emotionally incontinent or full of working-class mawkishness; they grieved because they lost their loved ones in absolutely horrific circumstances. Still, to read the details of how these people died

In the Independent, Ben Judah says that to understand Naz Shah and the things she said you have to understand Bradford.

Because Naz Shah, and everything she said, is normal politics in Bradford.

Had Britain a writer as dark and politically incorrect as Michel Houellebecq, the French author of the dystopian novel Submission, in which France converts to Islam, he would, without doubt, set his first novel in Bradford. This would be his dystopian plot.

Along comes a by-election. A dark and unknowable force with a Dickensian name – Mister Galloway – descends on the unsuspecting, segregated, depressed Northern town. Suddenly he is everywhere, the white Scotsman, and the large and miserable Muslim population apparently think that by

A horrifying observation by Washington Post reporter Christopher Ingraham:

6 people have been shot by toddlers since last Thursday.

Five of the six are dead.

 … Read the rest

Via Science Moms:

… Read the rest

Finally!!

41,000 Doctors to Join Lawsuit Against Catholic Hospital Over Denial of Care

It’s about fucking time.

Religious directives, written by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, forbid doctors at Catholic facilities [to provide] birth control and [perform] common reproductive health procedures.

Even when that could mean the death of the woman. An incomplete miscarriage with its risk of deadly infection? Too bad, must wait until there is no fetal pulse. If the woman develops a raging infection before the pulse stops, that’s just too damn bad, according to the loathsome USCCB. Bishops have ordered hospitals and medical conglomerates not to perform abortions in such circumstances. Not requested, not begged, but ordered.

California’s largest medical association will join a 

How useful: a petition to universities to “Suspend Social Justice Courses” – !

Social justice has become scientifically illiterate, logically unsound, deeply bigoted and openly supremacist. Social justice professors are indoctrinating young people into a pseudoscientific cult behind closed doors that is doing damage to their health, education and future.

Social justice has become a victim of its own good intentions and in the desperate attempt to make the world better for some it is creating a world better for none.  It has become another ideology fit only to pave the road to Hell, so it is time to turn around and choose another path that is concerned with reason, science and improving the lives of every human.

To clarify,

The Independent tells us that the advertising watchdog is going to look into the sexism issue.

The UK’s advertising watchdog has launched an inquiry into the prevalence of negative gender stereotyping in ads. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has announced they are commissioning new research on the topic and invited members of the public and interested organisations to contact them to share their views on the issue in a bid to gauge public opinion.

In the US that would set off agonized protests about free speech. I have some qualms about the state schooling advertisers on sexism, but I also have massive objections to routinely insulting and belittling sexism in advertising. Competing qualms here.

A spokesperson for the ASA

So now Corbyn has suspended Ken Livingstone. The left is so brilliant at eating itself.

Jeremy Corbyn has denied Labour is in crisis after Ken Livingstone was suspended for comments made defending an MP accused of anti-Semitism.

The party leader said there were “grave concerns” about language used in a BBC interview by the former London mayor.

But he said: “There’s no crisis. Where there is any racism in the party… it will be rooted out.”

MP John Mann, who called Mr Livingstone a “Nazi apologist” in a public confrontation, has been reprimanded.

The Labour MP had been referring to comments Mr Livingstone made about Adolf Hitler.

Comments Livingstone made when he was defending Naz Shah on BBC Radio … Read the rest

So have some Georgia O’Keefe:

The Red List

The Whitney

The Whitney… Read the rest

A Michigan news outlet reports that a substitute teacher was fired a few days ago for uttering the word “vagina” in an art history class while talking about interpretations of Georgia O’Keefe paintings. (The vagina interpretation is pretty hard to miss.)

If you ask Allison Wint why she was fired from Harper Creek Middle School, she will tell you it’s because she uttered the word ‘vagina.’

“Yes, I did say that word however I was saying it in the context of art history; I wasn’t being vulgar,” she said.

Well you know when it’s a matter of being vulgar, “vagina” isn’t the word of choice. You’ve got cunt, twat, pussy, snatch, gash, minge, to name a few – vagina just … Read the rest

Naz Shah has been suspended by the Labour party pending an investigation. Earlier today Corbyn said he had accepted her apology, but it turned out that his acceptance wasn’t the only issue.

But later in the day, Labour announced that the Bradford West MP had been suspended, “by mutual agreement,” while claims against her were investigated by the compliance committee of Labour’s national executive committee.

The allegations centre around a 2014 Facebook post, in which Shah shared a graphic of Israel’s outline superimposed on a map of the US under the headline “Solution for Israel-Palestine Conflict – Relocate Israel into United States”, with the comment: “Problem solved.”

And Buzzfeed said its article about the party’s drastic editing of Shah’s apology … Read the rest

The Labour Party doesn’t want Naz Shah to go overboard in apologizing, according to BuzzFeed.

Labour MP Naz Shah’s apology was edited by the party’s HQ to remove all mentions of the term “anti-Semitic”, along with references to wider problems of anti-Semitism in left-wing politics, after it was submitted for approval, BuzzFeed News has learned.

…

On Wednesday, Shah released a statement billed as a “full apology” to Jewish News.

But BuzzFeed News has seen the draft of the statement written by Shah’s team and sent to the party for approval, in which she went much further than the version that eventually was released.

For instance, the original draft included this admission by Shah: “I helped promote anti-Semitic

Jonah Mix on Facebook:

A sign outside a Hong Kong brothel, advertising (likely trafficked) women to white male travelers on a race-based pay scale, with indigenous women at the bottom and white women at the top.

Prostitution is an industry based on colonialism, white supremacy, and male violence.

China Girl 250

Hong Kong Girl 250

Malay Girl 180

Philippine Girl 200

Russian Girl 500

No further comment needed, I think.… Read the rest

The New Statesman has disappointing news:

Naz Shah resigns from Labour frontbench

The Bradford West MP has stepped down following the emergence of remarks made prior to her election as an MP.

Damn. I was so happy when she trounced Galloway.

Shah has resigned as parliamentary private secretary to John McDonnell, after the political website Guido Fawkes revealed that, prior to becoming an MP, she argued that Israelis should be relocated to the United States.

Or Madagascar or Poland? That’s not fair, but…Damn, this is disappointing.

Shah released the following statement on Monday afternoon: “I deeply regret the hurt I have caused by comments made on social media before I was elected as an MP. I made these posts

From the You have got to be kidding department:

The head of a Cleveland police union said the family of a 12-year-old black boy shot dead by a white police officer while playing with a pellet gun should use money from a $6 million settlement to educate children about the dangers of handling real and replica firearms, while an attorney representing the boy’s family blasted the comments.

You cannot be serious.

A Cleveland cop killed Tamir Rice, not out of malice but out of grossly reckless incompetence, and the police union chief thinks it’s a good idea to tell his family how to spend the settlement money? And not only that but to imply in the “advice” that the … Read the rest