Remember Andy Wightman? Resigned from the Scottish Green Party last December over the tension between women’s rights and (purported) trans rights. Now he’s been bullied into explaining his reasons.

I never intended to write further about my resignation from the Scottish Green Party. When I resigned, I agreed with the Party not to say anything further.

However, I am now aware that there has been some significant misinformation circulated by members and officials of the Party alleging to explain why I resigned.

I have seen emails, Slack channel communications, information from protected Twitter accounts and the Party’s Q&A following my resignation They make wild allegations about my motivations and character. Some of the claims being made are now being

… Read the rest

Another last minute tune-changer:

An anti-vaccine right-wing radio host in West Palm Beach, Florida died Wednesday from COVID-19 complications.

Dick Farrel, 65, used his local talk show and social media to rail against Dr. Anthony Fauci, who he called a “power tripping lying freak,” and say that no one should get the coronavirus vaccine. When COVID-19 sent him to the hospital for three weeks, though, he changed his tune, urging friends to get vaccinated, friends told local station WPTV.

Of the two, which is more of a power-tripping lying freak? The medical expert with decades of experience with lethal viruses and how to prevent and treat them? Or the bloviating radio host who took it all back once … Read the rest

Speaking of no it’s not a matter of if, it’s already happening, Mendocino is running out of water.

For the past century, misty, forested Mendocino – despite being nestled along a number of major rivers, creeks and springs – has relied on shallow wells for water. But amid a historic drought dessicating the US west, the aquifers beneath the town’s damp fog layer have rapidly declined, threatening to sink the region’s tourism industry and the residents who rely on it.

Café Beaujolais, which normally draws all its water for cooking and cleaning from two small wells on its property, has already been shelling out thousands of dollars to have water trucked in from nearby towns and cities.

Restaurants … Read the rest

When marketing discovers trans rhetoric and cannot believe its luck.

Bobbie, a milk formula company, wants to 'evolve the conversation' surrounding breastfeeding, and that entirely means removing the word 'breast'. Because 'those who can not are made to feel second best.. Let's start by supporting every kind of feeding journey' pic.twitter.com/RCJe1tBDBn

— ripx4nutmeg (@ripx4nutmeg) August 5, 2021

If you were marketing baby formula wouldn’t you be hugging yourself with glee? You get to talk about “putting breastfeeding on a pedestal”!! Without shame! In fact with a glow of righteous fervor, because you’re on the side of the downtrodden! Those selfish arrogant bitches, I mean cows, who can nurse their babies have lorded it over the men who identify as women … Read the rest

A new report on climate change will say (no surprise ahead) that the trend is not good. Not good at all.

The planet is odds-on to hit 1.5C of global warming within 20 years, the world’s leading climate scientists will warn in a milestone report tomorrow.

…

A 1.5C rise in average global temperatures on pre-industrial levels is widely considered to be the point beyond which climate change will become increasingly dangerous. 

Eh? It’s already becoming increasingly dangerous – it’s been doing that for decades, or ever since we started burning coal and oil at steadily escalating rates.

The cabinet minister Alok Sharma, president of Cop26, said countries must work harder to reduce emissions and ensure the threshold is not

… Read the rest

Nick Cohen on Tucker Carlson:

Carlson is the dependable voice of the dominant force on the right that will destroy democracy in the name of “the people”.

Last week, Carlson’s Fox News beamed an admiring show from Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, even though there is every indication that Orbán will make it Europe’s first rightwing dictatorship since the fall of Franco’s Spain in 1975.

Or rather because Orban is the next Franco. Fox News doesn’t have any scruples about such things.

Like the unforgivably overrated Roger Scruton, Trump’s mentor Steve Bannon, that part-time defender of free speech Jordan Peterson, and until recently the leaders of Europe’s nominally anti-dictatorial Christian Democrat parties, Carlson was comfortable with

… Read the rest

So the UK has its own Tucker Carlson, in the shape of Toby Young. Last January he got caught telling a whopper about the virus.

The Daily Telegraph must publish a correction over a “significantly misleading” column written by Toby Young, press regulator Ipso has ruled.

The July 2020 article claimed the common cold could provide “natural immunity” to Covid-19 and London was “probably approaching herd immunity”.

But on Thursday Ipso found the paper had “failed to take care not to publish inaccurate and misleading information”.

About a pandemic that kills.

I still find it hard to believe that people happily spout off on medical issues in ways that encourage people to catch a lethal virus, for the … Read the rest

In our next episode of The War on Feminist Women, we have Index on Censorship publishing an article by a Gender-Special person saying that oh yes Maya Forstater is too so twanzphobic.

In @IndexCensorship 's magazine P Andrews writes that they think I am guilty of the public order offence of Threatening Behaviour.

This is a crime that attracts up to 6 months in prison
https://t.co/dfRKHvXXKz pic.twitter.com/jpb4h0w5No

— Maya Forstater (@MForstater) August 7, 2021

It feels like some kind of self- flagellation by @IndexCensorship, doing atonement for supporting my case by publish this flaccid, nonsensical, tripe.

But of course its not their reputation they are (directly) beating up on, its mine.

— Maya Forstater (@MForstater) August 7, 2021

I

… Read the rest

Owen Jones wrote a long “I never did!!” post in response to Douglas Murray in The Spectator. He took pains to accuse Suzanne Moore of lying.

Suzanne Moore wasn’t targeted or bullied, and nobody tried to get her fired – yet she’s been able to pose as a free speech martyr silenced by the misogynist mob.

This entirely fictitious episode is a classic example of a “debate” in which truth is banished. https://t.co/krPWSLDGW3

— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) August 7, 2021

Hadley Freeman was in the room and she says it did happen, as Suzanne says it did.

I don’t know why people are still talking about this, but unlike a lot of people talking about this, I was at the

… Read the rest

Rebecca Solnit addresses this constant puzzle of the politicization of death-avoidance in a pandemic:

Some of the most powerful conservatives in the United States have, since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, chosen to sow disinformation along with mockery and distrust of proven methods of combating the disease, from masks to vaccines to social distancing. Their actions have afflicted the nation as a whole with more disease and death and economic crisis than good leadership aligned with science might have, and, in spite of hundreds of thousands of well-documented deaths and a new surge, they continue. Their malice has become so normal that its real nature is rarely addressed. Call it biological warfare by propaganda.

It’s true and I … Read the rest

Marjorie Taylor Greene urges her fans to murder more federal workers.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., suggested at a recent Republican fundraiser in Alabama that Southerners could threaten President Joe Biden’s “police state friends” with guns if they show up at their homes asking about their coronavirus vaccination status.

The late-July event in Dothan was closed to the media, but a video clip of some of her comments leaked, according to the Alabama Political Reporter.

What’s the world coming to when a pro-fascist member of the House can’t foment insurrection in private?

“You lucky people here in Alabama might get a knock on your door, because I hear Alabama might be one of the most unvaccinated states,” Greene

… Read the rest

The guy dressed as a baby at the “trans rights” protest is very indignant that people noticed he was dressed as a baby.

This photo was posted online by an extreme far right bigot.

But joke is on them, it's a great photo.#TransRightsProtest pic.twitter.com/oPkc2Nm7SB

— Felix F Fern – Writing 'Steel & Embers' (@Felix_F_Fern) August 6, 2021

Is it?

I don’t know; maybe. For a day at the beach or a pool party it may be. For other purposes? I would think not. Mostly, adults don’t want to be seen as pretending to be children, or dressing up to look like children, for a whole host of reasons. Maybe that’s unfair, maybe we should be more relaxed about the … Read the rest

Oops.

https://twitter.com/CarolynEast2/status/1423734721276571654… Read the rest

Oh how special: Fox News rodent Tucker Carlson is on a jaunt to Hungary to hang out with good ol’ boy Viktor Orban.

US guest of honour and Fox News host Tucker Carlson was granted a lightning visit by military helicopter to Hungary’s 175km (109-mile) high-tech, high-cost razor-wire border fence with Serbia this week.

Border wall! To keep the Untermenschen out! Makes a proud boy proud!

He liked what he saw. After praising the fence for being so “clean and orderly”, in contrast to the “chaos” on the US-Mexican border, he told his viewers: “It doesn’t require a GDP the size of the US, it doesn’t require high-tech walls, guns, or surveillance equipment. All it requires is the will to

… Read the rest

Sorry to cite Andy Ngô but sometimes it can’t be helped.

The recital of the creed:

https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1423634909986443271

I think the guy in the pastel play clothes identifies as a baby. For real.

https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1423679216181207042

There’s the trans baby again. I wonder what his demands are.… Read the rest

Oh the irony when even Woman’s Hour avoids the word.

WOMAN’S HOUR FFS.

A drug that has been used to treat critically ill Covid patients may also help people who struggle with heavy periods. A trial has found that the steroid Dexamethasone could help reduce heavy menstrual bleeding. Dr Pamela Warner joins us to discuss https://t.co/YmXvJ8C4Gg pic.twitter.com/JMLfc2BcFq

— BBC Woman's Hour (@BBCWomansHour) August 6, 2021

… Read the rest

Douglas Murray does an OJ-tease:

Does male privilege really exist? I did not used to think so. But in recent years, I’ve come to realise that not only might it exist, but that, at least in one respect, I may also benefit from it. That is, I have the privilege of being able to write about certain contentious issues without being singled out and demonised for doing so.

Quite.

On gender, for instance, as he goes on to say. He can be critical, women not so much.

After all, countless female authors have written articles expressing scepticism towards the transgender movement — many of them more moderate than my own. Yet almost every time, I have watched in horror as

… Read the rest

What can these crazy evil feminist women possibly mean?

If someone felt that they didn’t fit within the categories of ‘male’ or ‘female’, what would be the best way for them to live their lives- in the better world that ‘gender critical’ feminists imagine?

— Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) August 6, 2021

So this is a thing, is it? People feeling that they “don’t fit” within some category or other, and thus needing to move to a different one, and thus having a right to order the rest of the world to “validate” them as being in that category as opposed to the one they were “assigned” to at birth? It works across all categories, does it?

Well, no, it doesn’t. … Read the rest

Ron DeSantis seems to want to kill off most of the people who vote for him.

With the highly contagious Delta variant spreading, a state comprising little more than 6% of the US population was accounting for one in five of the country’s new cases, recording 50,997 in the three days to Tuesday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

DeSantis says the spike is “seasonal” and opposes lockdowns or new restrictions. The Republican governor followed up his executive order banning mask mandates in schools by dismissed the burgeoning crisis in Florida’s hospitals as “media hysteria”.

So it’s hysteria to report the stats?

“Our hospitals are open for business. We’re not shutting down. We’re

… Read the rest

This is scary: Scientists spot warning signs of Gulf Stream collapse

That won’t be good at all.

It’s one of the main potential tipping points.

The research found “an almost complete loss of stability over the last century” of the currents that researchers call the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). The currents are already at their slowest point in at least 1,600 years, but the new analysis shows they may be nearing a shutdown.

Such an event would have catastrophic consequences around the world, severely disrupting the rains that billions of people depend on for food in India, South America and West Africa; increasing storms and lowering temperatures in Europe; and pushing up the sea level in the

… Read the rest