More on Trump’s plans for when he returns:

Donald Trump’s talk of punishing his critics and seeking to “weaponize” the US justice department against his political opponents has experts and former DoJ officials warning he poses a direct threat to the rule of law and democracy in the US.

Trump’s talk of seeking “retribution” against foes, including some he has branded “vermin”, has coincided with plans that Maga loyalists at rightwing thinktanks are assembling to expand the president’s power and curb the DoJ, the FBI and other federal agencies. All of it has fueled critics’ fears that in a second term Trump would govern as an unprecedentedly authoritarian American leader.

And a second term is looking way too likely.… Read the rest

Natalia Mehlman Petrzela points out a certain gap in the discussion of October 7.

Many feminist organizations rushed to express support for the Palestinian cause while eliding the plight of Israeli victims. The organization UN Women issued a four-page report last month exclusively addressing the impact of the war on women and girls in Gaza but made only a brief condemnation of the Oct. 7 attack that made no mention of the sexual violence that had been reported. A group of prominent scholars circulated a letter under the title “Feminists for a Free Palestine,” without explicitly condemning the sexual violence against Israeli women.

So some women deserve it? War crimes are not war crimes if you hate the victims? … Read the rest

It’s not a book advocating genocide, or torture, or apartheid, or rape, or colonialist exploitation, or slavery, or racism, or sadism, or eating babies, or speeding up global warming, or burning down the Blue Mosque or the Forbidden City or the Sydney Opera House. And yet…

https://twitter.com/Glinner/status/1728425735453315255

The “sensitive content”:

… Read the rest

A nice little earner.

As a royal author, I have come across plentiful examples of royal greed. It is standard practice for the royals to seek to minimise their personal expenditure while maximising their income from other sources, normally the public purse.

I think by “minimise their personal expenditure” he means not “spend less” but “spend other people’s money.”

But the revelation that King Charles III’s personal slush fund, the Duchy of Lancaster, is having its already bulging coffers augmented by the estates of people who die in parts of England with historical links to the royal estate plumbs new depths of disgusting avarice.

Like many so-called traditions, the feudal hangover that is bona vacantia should have been

… Read the rest

Tech bros are weird.

Unlike their forebears, contemporary billionaires do not hope to build the biggest house in town, but the biggest colony on the moon. In contrast, however avaricious, the titans of past gilded eras still saw themselves as human members of civil society. Contemporary billionaires appear to understand civics and civilians as impediments to their progress, necessary victims of the externalities of their companies’ growth, sad artefacts of the civilisation they will leave behind in their inexorable colonisation of the next dimension. Unlike their forebears, they do not hope to build the biggest house in town, but the biggest underground lair in New Zealand, colony on the moon or Mars or virtual reality server in the cloud.

… Read the rest

UN Women (the organization) is…alarmed.

Alarmed.

So alarmed that they said nothing for seven weeks.

https://twitter.com/MichalMaayan/status/1728349343139127411 https://twitter.com/Leyanelle/status/1728376405690294545

There are many quote-tweets saying the same.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by tigger_the_wing on Over in seconds.

As an Irish citizen who was born abroad and moved here over twenty-three years ago, I’ve seen the growth of the population and it really hasn’t been a problem for anyone except the racists and xenophobes, who would object to any immigration whatsoever. The total population is still little more than half what it was before the mass emigration due to the potato blight and subsequent deliberate starvation of the Irish people; Irish people still emigrate to other countries in large numbers.

The population of Ireland during the 2002 census (near enough twenty years ago) was 3,858,495. That same year, there were over half a million Irish-born people living in … Read the rest

Julie Bindel doesn’t want to be lectured by late arrivals.

Another day, another virtue signaller standing by their ‘trans siblings’ and taking a pop at feminists. Sandi Toksvig, she of the unfunny Radio 4 shows more recently known for her involvement in the Women’s Equality Party (WEP) – has denounced feminists who are ‘anti trans’.

Toksvig says she’s been an activist all her life, but Julie is not convinced.

When feminists were battling to set up single sex services to support women that had experienced rape and domestic violence, was she there? Was Tokvsig on the feminist frontline in the 1960s and 1970s? If so, what did she achieve? If not, perhaps she should pipe down about those feminists

… Read the rest

Immigrant steps up:

DELIVEROO DRIVER CAIO Benicio was on his motorbike this afternoon, on a job, when he saw a man with a knife attacking a young girl on Parnell Square East.

Immediately, the 43-year-old Brazilian dismounted his bike, took off his helmet, and hit the attacker with it.

“I didn’t even make a decision, it was pure instinct, and it was all over in seconds. He fell to the ground, I didn’t see where knife went, and other people stepped in,” he told The Journal tonight.

So immigrants aren’t all demonic?

Now Benicio is exhausted – all day he has been running on adrenaline. He doesn’t know where his bike is as he left it at the scene

… Read the rest

Just think: a year from now we may be doomed to have this malevolent lunatic in power again:

Donald Trump went after his political enemies in a Thanksgiving message posted on Truth Social on Thursday.

The former president focused his attacks on those involved in his civil fraud trial as well as on President Joe Biden.

He wrote: “Happy Thanksgiving to ALL, including the Racist & Incompetent Attorney General of New York State, Letitia ‘Peekaboo’ James, who has let Murder & Violent Crime FLOURISH, & Businesses FLEE; the Radical Left Trump Hating Judge, a ‘Psycho,’ Arthur Engoron, who Criminally Defrauded the State of New York, & ME, by purposely Valuing my Assets at a ‘tiny’ Fraction of what they

… Read the rest

Credit where it’s due.

Last night I saw bodycam footage by #Hamas terrorists who massacred civilians on 7 Oct

I saw them shoot children in cold blood, behead victims & burn people alive in their homes & cars

They spewed antisemitism & rejoiced at killing “Jews”

Hamas = ISIS https://t.co/oJJFDNihRW

— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) November 24, 2023

… Read the rest

What counts as controversial, and who decides?

Sometimes the BBC decides.

BBC staff have accused the corporation of double standards after they were told not to attend a march against anti-Semitism this weekend. Staff working in current affairs and factual journalism who have sought permission to go to the Campaign Against Antisemitism march in London have been referred to guidelines that tell employees not to take part in public gatherings about controversial issues.

They have told bosses that “racism is racism” and that if the BBC believes racism is not acceptable in any form, it should allow staff to show their opposition to it. They point out that BBC staff are allowed to take part in marches supporting other

… Read the rest

Sandi Toksvig has definitely done some good things.

When Toksvig came out in 1994, she became one of the most visible lesbian women in British public life. She tells me coming out was about setting an example to her children with former partner, Peta Stewart. “I had three small children and my youngest had just been born. My then-partner and I were not prepared for them to grow up in the shadow of a secret,” she says.

At the time, Section 28 prohibited their own children from learning about LGBTQ+ people in school. “It was more important to me to be a good mum than it was for me to have a career. Everyone told me that my

… Read the rest

That Malott guy praises himself for being all nuanced and shit.

To each of you who resist acknowledging nuance:

On Tuesday I shared a video with thoughts about childhood medical transition and passability, in particular the strong draw for transitioning young because biological males in particular know that they will be treated quite a bit… pic.twitter.com/qd2tjwJS5i

— Julia Malott (@AlottaMalotta) November 24, 2023

To each of you who resist acknowledging nuance:

On Tuesday I shared a video with thoughts about childhood medical transition and passability, in particular the strong draw for transitioning young because biological males in particular know that they will be treated quite a bit more kindly and humanely if they ‘pass’.

I put forward that if we

… Read the rest

Why the gag order on Trump just might be a good idea:

The Department of Justice submitted a court filing on Thanksgiving arguing that a gag order against the former president must remain while pointing to documents filed as part of the $250 million civil fraud trial in New York.

On Thursday, November 23, Cecil Vandevender, an assistant special counsel for the Department of Justice, notified the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals of a document which said that a gag order needs to be reinstated against Trump during the civil proceedings in New York, where state Attorney General Letitia James has accused the former president of fraudulently inflating the value of his properties in financial statements.

The government’s court

… Read the rest

Charles Clymer attention-seeking as usual.

https://twitter.com/Jonnywsbell/status/1727809094214410752… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Artymorty on This period of maximal disruption.

It’s off topic, but you make an interesting point about immigration and benevolence. In Canada, immigrants are not usually poor, and they’re admitted strictly on terms related directly to their suitability to the labour force.

Unlike Western European nations who are saddled with waves of migrants and asylum seekers of all kinds of education, language, and work skills, making their way from the Middle East, Northern Africa and elsewhere, and the US with its porous border with Mexico, Canada has the luxury of naturally strong border protection, flanked on both sides and above by vast oceans, with the US below. This means the topic of immigration is, to … Read the rest

Andy Lewis on the Brighton “skeptics”:

So, Brighton Skeptics were to hold a talk in January between Hannah Barnes and Helen Lewis. Barnes was the journalist who wrote a book exposing the debacle of the Tavistock gender clinic and how it was desperately failing vulnerable children.

What a perfect topic for a public critical thinking meeting! It involves the failure of evidence-based medicine, the ideological capture of institutions, and popular ideological beliefs that turn out not to be true. That is bread and butter for the ‘skeptic movement’.

Or so you would think. But as @helenlewis tweets, the event has been cancelled despite selling out immediately. It looks like Brighton Skeptics failed to “compromise”. With whom though, and why?

… Read the rest

There’s been a surge in anti-Semitism in France.

Thousands of marchers joined French lawmakers in Paris on Sunday to condemn a surge in anti-Semitism in France during the conflict in the Gaza Strip, but arguments over political participation clouded an intended show of unity. 

The protest, called by the leaders of France‘s two houses of parliament, was prompted by a three-fold increase in the number of anti-Semitic incidents compared with the whole of 2022, according to French authorities, since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

Hamas attacks Israel so anti-Semitism increases. Seems fair.

Political figures, including Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne and former presidents François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy, headed the march, holding a banner with

… Read the rest

Thomas Schlachter at CNN tells us:

The International Cricket Council (ICC) announced Tuesday that “any Male to Female participants who have been through any form of male puberty,” will not be allowed to partake in international women’s cricket.

In the announcement, the ICC did not define its criteria for “male puberty.” CNN has reached out to the ICC seeking more detail.

CNN doesn’t know what male puberty is?

“The new policy is based on the following principles (in order of priority): protection of the integrity of the women’s game, safety, fairness and inclusion, and this means any Male to Female participants who have been through any form of male puberty will not be eligible to participate in the international

… Read the rest