Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Insipid meets the other kind

    Suzanne Moore wipes the Telegraph floor with Emma Watson.

    Without JK Rowling, I doubt any of us would have heard of Emma Watson. If Rowling and her franchise hadn’t been such a behemoth, it would be also tough to care about the confused views of a 30-something former child star.

    Without JK Rowling, Emma Watson, who played Hermione Grainger in the Harry Potter film series, would not be worth an estimated $85 million (£63 million) or still be considered worth interviewing, even though she has not acted since 2019.

    It’s all but certain that without JKR Watson would be nowhere. Would she have landed a part in some other movie that made as much money and had as many passionate fans as the Harry Potter series? No, because there is no such other movie from the past quarter century.

    Watson and her fellow Harry Potter actor, Daniel Radcliffe, both sheltered stars who speak out on matters beyond their intelligence, decided to turn on the woman who had made them.

    Without digesting or comprehending a single sentence of Rowling’s deeply researched objections to the child mutilation of reassignment surgery, the harms of self-identification, the closing down of free speech or the dangers of housing vulnerable women with biological men, they decided not to think for themselves, but to follow the herd with their public pro-trans responses.

    It was probably a matter not so much of deciding not to think for themselves as deciding they didn’t want to deal with endless yammering and bullying from people who wanted them to denounce JKR. I don’t know for a fact that there were such people yammering and bullying, but my long and nauseating experience of trans “activists” tells me there almost certainly were. They don’t let anyone even slightly famous get away with even the tiniest dissent from the ideology. It could well be that Watson and Radcliffe had to choose between Rowling and a pack of noisy bullies and they chose the noisy bullies. They chose to avoid the yammering and bullying by passing it on to Rowling, who had made them rich and famous. How sharper than a serpent’s tooth.

    Watson’s latest “apology” – in an interview on Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast, Watson said she still “loves” and “treasures” Rowling – isn’t an apology.

    It is neither fish nor fowl, with some psychobabble about holding space for Rowling in her heart. It is cognitive dissonance dissolved into meaningless platitudes. Watson’s expensive education clearly did not cover emotional intelligence.

    Or avoidance of meaningless platitudes. That’s actually a really important thing to learn, because the more entangled in meaningless platitudes you are, the worse your thinking is and the less likely you are to treat other people decently. I should declare this a rule and name it after myself.

    There really are two sides here, as Rowling once again demonstrates: one of kindness, imagination and principle, and one of faddishness, dogma and betrayal. One creates. One destroys. Watson stupidly chose the wrong one. Her spell is in tatters.

    And the spell was never really hers to begin with. It was a loan from That Woman.

  • A couple of points

    JKR lets rip.

    I’m seeing quite a bit of comment about this, so I want to make a couple of points.

    I’m not owed eternal agreement from any actor who once played a character I created. The idea is as ludicrous as me checking with the boss I had when I was twenty-one for what opinions I should hold these days.

    Emma Watson and her co-stars have every right to embrace gender identity ideology. Such beliefs are legally protected, and I wouldn’t want to see any of them threatened with loss of work, or violence, or death, because of them.

    However, Emma and Dan in particular have both made it clear over the last few years that they think our former professional association gives them a particular right – nay, obligation – to critique me and my views in public. Years after they finished acting in Potter, they continue to assume the role of de facto spokespeople for the world I created.

    When you’ve known people since they were ten years old it’s hard to shake a certain protectiveness. Until quite recently, I hadn’t managed to throw off the memory of children who needed to be gently coaxed through their dialogue in a big scary film studio. For the past few years, I’ve repeatedly declined invitations from journalists to comment on Emma specifically, most notably on the Witch Trials of JK Rowling. Ironically, I told the producers that I didn’t want her to be hounded as the result of anything I said.

    Whereas Emma was fine with JKR being hounded, including because of things she Emma said. She has to have been fine with it, because otherwise she would have refrained.

    The television presenter in the attached clip highlights Emma’s ‘all witches’ speech, and in truth, that was a turning point for me, but it had a postscript that hurt far more than the speech itself. Emma asked someone to pass on a handwritten note from her to me, which contained the single sentence ‘I’m so sorry for what you’re going through’ (she has my phone number). This was back when the death, rape and torture threats against me were at their peak, at a time when my personal security measures had had to be tightened considerably and I was constantly worried for my family’s safety. Emma had just publicly poured more petrol on the flames, yet thought a one line expression of concern from her would reassure me of her fundamental sympathy and kindness.

    A one line expression of concern from her in private, having backstabbed JKR in public. Yeah sure kid: trash your benefactor when the cameras are on, and then later brazenly slap your benefactor on the back and hoot “Love ya, mean it.” That’ll work.

    Like other people who’ve never experienced adult life uncushioned by wealth and fame, Emma has so little experience of real life she’s ignorant of how ignorant she is. She’ll never need a homeless shelter. She’s never going to be placed on a mixed sex public hospital ward. I’d be astounded if she’s been in a high street changing room since childhood.

    Unlike Rowling. JKR made Watson rich very early, and Watson appears to have conveniently forgotten.

    Has she had to strip off in a newly mixed-sex changing room at a council-run swimming pool? Is she ever likely to need a state-run rape crisis centre that refuses to guarantee an all-female service? To find herself sharing a prison cell with a male rapist who’s identified into the women’s prison? I wasn’t a multimillionaire at fourteen. I lived in poverty while writing the book that made Emma famous. I therefore understand from my own life experience what the trashing of women’s rights in which Emma has so enthusiastically participated means to women and girls without her privileges.

    Rich people can swim in their own pools. Rich people can get luxury support rather than having to rely on state-run facilities. Rich people are unlikely to be locked up with violent criminals. The rich are different from you and me, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said.

    The greatest irony here is that, had Emma not decided in her most recent interview to declare that she loves and treasures me – a change of tack I suspect she’s adopted because she’s noticed full-throated condemnation of me is no longer quite as fashionable as it was – I might never have been this honest. Adults can’t expect to cosy up to an activist movement that regularly calls for a friend’s assassination, then assert their right to the former friend’s love, as though the friend was in fact their mother. Emma is rightly free to disagree with me and indeed to discuss her feelings about me in public – but I have the same right, and I’ve finally decided to exercise it.

    And here’s the thing: JKR wields a wickedly effective pen, and the callow movie star wields banal woke-speak.

  • What women are for

    He’d better idennify as a trans woman pretty fast.

    Retired US financier Howard Rubin was arrested Friday on sex-trafficking charges for allegedly trafficking dozens of women, including former Playboy models, to be sexually and physically assaulted during encounters in his New York City penthouse in a soundproofed room described in court papers as “The Dungeon”.

    Authorities announced the arrest of Rubin and his former personal assistant, Jennifer Powers, on charges in an indictment unsealed in Brooklyn federal court.

    …

    Prosecutors said Rubin and Powers abused the women between 2009 and 2019 after recruiting them to fly to New York to engage in sex acts with Rubin in exchange for money.

    They said Rubin and Powers targeted women who were desperate, including women who had previously been sexually abused, along with women who were financially desperate or who suffered from addiction. Once they were in New York, the women were encouraged to use drugs or alcohol to prepare for their sexual encounters, and they sometimes engaged in conduct beyond the scope of their consent, prosecutors said.

    During the encounters, women suffered significant pain, including bruises and psychological trauma, and sometimes required medical treatment, according to court papers.

    So it’s not sex trafficking so much as sadism trafficking.

    Prior to 2011, the commercial acts usually occurred at luxury hotels in Manhattan, but from 2011 to 2017, the encounters usually occurred in a two-bedroom penthouse near Central Park, the letter said.

    The penthouse contained “The Dungeon”, a soundproofed room painted red that had a lock on the door and was outfitted with bondage and discipline instruments, prosecutors said.

    Much safer than a luxury hotel, where people might hear the screams.

  • National Guard at war with 29 people

    Trump has declared war on Portland; the invasion begins tomorrow.

    Oregon’s Attorney General Dan Rayfield announced Sunday that the state has filed a lawsuit to block President Donald Trump from deploying the National Guard to Portland, a day after Trump authorized federal troops to protect what he dubbed “War ravaged Portland.”

    He received notice from the governor’s office at 9:32 a.m. Sunday that the U.S. Department of Defense had sent an email revealing that Trump had invoked a section of federal law to call 200 members of the Oregon National Guard into federal service in the city for 60 days, under the U.S. Northern Command.

    Rayfield, appearing with Kotek and Portland Mayor Keith Wilson during a virtual news conference, decried any attempt to send military troops to an Oregon city, calling it an infringement of state and local sovereignty and a violation of federal law as the suit was filed.

    “The facts cannot justify this overreach,” says the 41-page suit filed by the State of Oregon and City of Portland against Trump.

    It notes that protests outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland have been small in recent weeks, typically drawing [fewer] than 30 people.

    And the facility is small and not central. It’s like declaring war because a suburban drugstore ran out of bandaids.

    Trump has moved to federalize National Guard troops under federal law, known as Title 10, Section 12406. That says the president can call up the National Guard in federal service when the president is unable with regular forces to “execute the laws of the United States,” repel an invasion by a foreign nation, or suppress a rebellion or the danger of a rebellion against the authority of the U.S. government.

    Are any or all of those happening in Portland? No. Trump is brazenly flouting the law.

    Rayfield’s office moved to file the suit as soon as possible and will be filing a temporary restraining order within the next 24 hours to try to block an arrival of troops. He said he hopes to get a hearing before a judge later this week.

    “In America, we don’t use our United States military on our own citizens, except in extreme circumstances,” Rayfield said.

    The only extreme circumstance here is Trump’s determination to be a dictator.

  • Gold

    The new William the Conqueror.

  • Guests

    Because we need it – something nice for a change.

  • Donny wants in on the fun

    Of course he has.

    Trump has decided he’s going to the last-minute global gathering of the nation’s top generals in Quantico, Virginia, that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered last week.

    It’s getting all this press attention, so of course he’s not going to let Hegseth hog the camera.

    Trump’s appearance not only upstages Hegseth’s plans but adds new security concerns to the massive and nearly unprecedented military event.

    But it’s the upstaging that’s the funniest.

    Notice went out to offices around the Pentagon that the decision will “significantly change the security posture” of the speech, set for Tuesday morning.

    Yeh, all that brass and the Secretary of Defense are expendable but the prezzy has to have all the bells and whistles.

    H/t What a Maroon

  • Dinosaur bro strikes again

    David Lammy continues to ignore women.

    David Lammy has been accused of ignoring women’s rights as he comes under pressure to remove transgender prisoners from a female jail.

    The newly appointed Justice Secretary – an outspoken supporter of trans rights whose recent comments to concerned voters can be revealed today – has been urged to shut down a special unit inside HMP Downview in light of the Supreme Court ruling on biological sex.

    He has been told by the local MP that E Wing, which currently houses five biological males who have legally changed sex, represents a ‘clear breach’ of the provisions for single-sex spaces in the Equality Act.

    What the Daily Mail for some reason fails to make clear is that Downview is a women’s prison. It’s because it’s a women’s prison that the five males shouldn’t be there.

    It comes after inspectors found that there is no longer one-to-one supervision of the trans inmates when they mix with female prisoners for education, religious services or social visits in the Surrey prison.

    Good grief, what a waste of resources to assign handlers to male inmates so that they can “mix with” female inmates.

    Rebecca Paul, Conservative MP for Reigate, told the Mail: ‘I welcome David Lammy to his new role as Justice Secretary, and I implore him to do the lawful and responsible thing and remove all biological males from women’s prisons. We are a heartbeat away from a terrible tragedy.

    Why does she welcome him to his role when he’s allowing men to threaten women in women’s prisons? He’s doing a bad job, so why welcome him? I know, diplomacy, etiquette, conventions, yadda yadda, but that’s part of why we get stuck in this endless god damn loop. We mustn’t be rude to the poor dear man in a dress, so women just have to put up with him, it’s the polite thing to do.

    This newspaper can also reveal that when asked recently if he accepted the Supreme Court judgment on single-sex spaces – which ruled that the definition of a woman is based on biological sex – Mr Lammy replied instead: ‘I strongly believe that trans people’s safety and wellbeing must be protected.’

    Which is to say he strongly believes that men should be pampered at the expense of women.

    Helen Joyce of women’s rights charity Sex Matters said: ‘David Lammy’s response to his constituents on the Supreme Court ruling demonstrates a serious blind spot on women’s sex-based rights.

    ‘It is deeply concerning that the new Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary, who is responsible for prisons, repeatedly emphasises support for trans-identifying people without any acknowledgement that the trans lobby’s demand for gender self-identification means the destruction of women’s rights.’

    Also he apparently never says the same thing about women – never bothers to emphasize support for women. He seems to view and treat women as the enemy – the privileged domineering powerful enemy.

  • More sweeps

    Dirty dirty dirty.

    The FBI has fired agents who were photographed kneeling during a racial justice protest in Washington that followed the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, three people familiar with the matter said Friday.

    The bureau last spring had reassigned the agents but has since fired them, said the people, who insisted on anonymity to discuss personnel matters with The Associated Press.

    The number of FBI employees terminated was not immediately clear, but two people said it was roughly 20.

    So FBI agents should not object to the use of excessive force in arrests? They should support lethal violence from law enforcement? Is that really a good idea in the long run?

    The photographs at issue showed a group of agents taking the knee during one of the demonstrations following the May 2020 killing of Floyd, a death that led to a national reckoning over policing and racial injustice and sparked widespread anger after millions of people saw video of the arrest. The kneeling had angered some in the FBI but was also understood as a possible de-escalation tactic during a period of protests.

    And/or a possible disavowal of excessive force in policing. Are they supposed to approve of excessive force?

    The FBI Agents Association confirmed in a statement late Friday that more than a dozen agents had been fired, including military veterans with additional statutory protections, and condemned the move as unlawful. It called on Congress to investigate and said the firings were another indication of FBI Director Kash Patel’s disregard for the legal rights of bureau employees.

    …

    The firings come amid a broader personnel purge at the bureau as Patel works to reshape the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency. Five agents and top-level executives were known to have been summarily fired last month in a wave of ousters that current and former officials say has contributed to declining morale.

    One of those, Steve Jensen, helped oversee investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Another, Brian Driscoll, served as acting FBI director in the early days of the Trump administration and resisted Justice Department demands to supply the names of agents who investigated Jan. 6.

    A third, Chris Meyer, was incorrectly rumored on social media to have participated in the investigation into President Donald Trump’s retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla. A fourth, Walter Giardina, participated in high-profile investigations like the one into Trump adviser Peter Navarro.

    Trump systematically kneecapping everyone who might stop him.

  • Ask not for whom the bell tolls

    Trump is firing people for upholding the law.

    Donald Trump fired a top federal prosecutor in Sacramento just hours after she warned immigration agents they could not indiscriminately detain people in her district, according to documents reviewed by the New York Times.

    Because, of course, Trump wants to detain people indiscriminately.

    Beckwith had received a phone call from Gregory Bovino, who leads the Border Patrol’s unit in El Centro, a border city 600 miles south of Sacramento. Bovino was planning an immigration raid in Sacramento and asked Beckwith who in her office to contact if his officers were assaulted, the Times reported, citing Beckwith.

    600 miles is a lot of miles. One has to wonder why a Border Patrol unit on the actual border is planning a raid 600 miles from said border. Maybe that’s what they do, I don’t know, but Beckwith apparently didn’t think so.

    She informed Bovino that agents were not allowed to indiscriminately stop people in her district, north of Bakersfield, per a federal court order issued in April that prevents the agency from detaining people without reasonable suspicion. The US supreme court overturned a similar court order issued in Los Angeles earlier this month.

    The Supreme Court is totally down with detaining people at will. There will be fewer but better Trumpier Californians.

    In a 10.57am email on 15 July, Beckwith repeated her message, telling Bovino she expected “compliance with court orders and the constitution”. Less than six hours later, her work computer and cellphone no longer functioning, she received a letter to her personal email account notifying her that she had been terminated.

    Two days later, Bovino proceeded with his immigration raid at a Sacramento Home Depot.

    The dragon is out of the cage and coming for all of us, slowly but surely. It’s immigrants now and it will be his critics in a few months or weeks. It will be all of us who don’t kiss the ring.

  • Guest post: The Edward R. Murrow de nos jours

    Originally a comment by Pliny on Trump’s impression.

    DATELINE PORTLAND

    (Your man in the streets Pliny)

    Large numbers of people out in the streets – and parks, and by the river, and on the river. Lots of families apparently using children as human shields.

    Smoke rising from many backyard barbeques.

    Coffee shops fomenting with – patrons

    Biggest thing about ICE is the video showing them pepper spraying peaceful protestors who were not interfering w operations.

    Many Portlanders fear that military will not bring enough trash bags like in DC. Some areas could use their help.

    Also having troops in town has raised fears that it’s just what we need – more people living in tents…

    From War-torn Portland

  • Trump’s impression

    In Portlandia the streets are not running with blood.

    A visit to downtown Portland, Oregon, on Saturday, hours after Donald Trump falsely declared the city “war ravaged” to justify the deployment of federal troops, made it plain the US president’s impression of the city, apparently shaped by misleading conservative media reports, is entirely divorced from reality.

    There were just four protesters outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) field office in an outlying residential neighborhood that the president had claimed was “under siege” by antifascists and “other domestic terrorists”. Jack Dickinson, 26, wore a chicken costume draped in an American flag and held a sign that read “Portland Will Outlive Him”. Passing motorists honked in appreciation.

    Well…um…he could be wearing a chicken costume in order to smuggle in pamphlets on human rights. It’s possible.

    “There’s no justification, no reason for the national guard or military to be using ‘full force’ on people,” Dickinson said, “but they have this narrative about Portland that’s been helped by selectively edited videos to set themselves up for a crackdown.”

    The Ice field office, which the city of Portland recently accused of illegally using for detentions, is also attractive to protesters because it sits directly next to a Tesla dealership. Another protester held up a sign that read “Tesla Funds Fascism/Stop Buying Teslas”.

    There’s your terrorism right there. Telling people not to buy something is the worst crime on the books.

  • Inch by inch

    Jeez I go offline for a few hours and all hell breaks loose.

    President Donald Trump has ordered the deployment of US troops to Portland, Oregon, authorising use of “full force” if needed, to suppress protests targeting immigration detention centres.

    But we’re allowed to protest. It’s called a right.

    Trump said he was “directing Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland”.

    Mushbrain draft-dodger pretends protesters are great big scary sojers and he alone can stop them.

    And Hegseth is Secretary of Defense. His job is not to help Trump unleash the military on protesters.

    The announcement drew pushback from Democratic lawmakers, who said there was no need for federal troops to be deployed to the city.

    O reason not the need – our basest beggars are in the poorest things superfluous. Trump needs to deploy federal troops to a city full of lefties because he’s a flabby lazy makeup-slathered couch potato who wants to feel all steely-man-like.

    The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Portland has been targeted by protesters since early June, sometimes leading to violent clashes.

    As of 8 September, the US Attorney’s Office had brought federal charges against 26 people for crimes including arson, assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest. On Friday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that demonstrators had “repeatedly attacked and laid siege to an ICE processing centre” in Portland.

    In a post on the social media platform X, the department stated that several individuals had been arrested and charged with federal offences. “Rose City Antifa, a recently designated domestic terrorist organization, illegally doxed ICE officers. They published their home address online and on public flyers. Individuals associated with Antifa also sent death threats to DHS personnel,” DHS wrote on X.

    Yes well that’s no good, but it’s still not an actual war.

    Earlier this week, Trump signed an order formally designating antifa as a domestic terrorist organisation. Antifa, short for “anti-fascist”, is a loosely organised movement of primarily far-left activists.

    Legal experts have pointed out that there is no legal mechanism in the US that would formally establish any group as a domestic terror organisation. Such efforts, they said, could face constitutional challenges under the First Amendment, which protects free speech and assembly.

    Yes but Trump doesn’t care and he’ll just do whatever he wants.

  • A show of force

    It turns out Hegseth is summoning the top brass from all over the planet to his office because he’s making a moooovie.

    New details are leaking about why Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called top military officials from around the world for an in-person meeting in Virginia next week.

    The former Fox News personality, now a top Trump official, reportedly wants to make a video of his brief speech. Hegseth will be addressing military standards and the “warrior ethos,” multiple people familiar with the planned event told The Washington Post.

    One has to wonder why he couldn’t have done the usual online meeting type of thing, rather than spending millions (to say nothing of the risks) to make the brass watch him perform for the cameras.

    A White House official separately told CNN that the meeting is meant to be a show of force, demonstrating what the military looks like under Trump.

    In the speech, Hegseth will reportedly discuss the Trump administration’s reinvention of the Defense Department as the “Department of War” and address new readiness, fitness, and grooming standards.

    Grooming standards. Yes that’s a very sufficient reason to summon the top brass from all over the planet. Teach them how to look like Fox News talking heads.

    As it was put to CNN, the “guys with the stars on their shoulders make for a better audience from an optics standpoint.”

    An even more sensible adult reason.

    The gathering, which is scheduled to take place Tuesday, was described as a “pep rally.” But bringing hundreds of generals to Quantico, including those stationed abroad, could prove extremely expensive.

    So what! It’s not his money!

    Hegseth has remained largely tight-lipped about the upcoming meeting, but appeared to address some concerns about it on Friday morning with a sarcastic post on X.

    The defense secretary wrote “Cool story, General” in response to a tweet from retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges about Adolf Hitler gathering Nazi generals in 1935 and them being “required to swear a personal oath to the Führer.”

    When no reason was given as to why Hegseth was ordering top generals to gather, multiple retired military officials raised questions.

    The not-retired ones of course can’t.

  • People in Portland are not immortal shocker

    A man of wisdom.

    Trump said Saturday that he was directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “provide all necessary Troops” to Portland, Oregon.

    In a post on Truth Social, the president wrote that the troops would “protect War ravaged Portland” and protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities that he claimed are “under siege from attack by Antifa and other domestic terrorists.”

    Yes, it’s World War 4 out here on the left coast.

    The president has repeatedly spoken negatively about [trashed] Portland, including saying on Thursday that “anarchy” is taking place in the West Coast city.

    Yeah there are no laws here, we just run over each other with our tanks.

    “You go out to Portland, people die out there. Many people have died over the years in Portland. Portland is, I don’t know how anybody lives there. It’s amazing, but it’s, it’s anarchy out there. That’s what they want. They want anarchy,” Trump said during remarks in the Oval Office on Thursday.

    It’s shocking, isn’t it. Many people have died in Portland. Compare that to your Los Angeles or San Diego, where nobody dies.

    Last week, in separate comments in the Oval Office, the president said people in Portland are “out of control.”

    “Have you seen Portland at all? If you take a look what’s happening in Portland. It’s, it has been going on for years. Just people out of control, crazy. We’re going to stop that very soon,” Trump said.

    Can you be just a little more precise Mister P? Out of control how? Crazy how? Stop what?

    The president has long been outspoken about his negative views toward Portland, a city that he declared in his first term to be an “anarchist jurisdiction.”

    Hey you know what? I resent that! What about Seattle?! We’re every bit as anarchist and out of control and crazy as Portland, and we have huge bodies of water on two sides, and we have mountains on those two sides, and we have Mount Rainier.

    Portland. Honestly. We’re much cooler.

  • To limit

    Gender news from Texas:

    LUBBOCK — In a first for Texas higher education, the Texas Tech University System has ordered faculty across its five universities to limit classroom discussion of transgender and nonbinary identities, but gave little guidance on how academic endeavors or instruction should proceed.

    What guidance is needed? Trans and nonbinareee idenninies are not academic endeavors or instruction. They’re political/ideological as opposed to epistemic or academic, so banishing them makes room for academic endeavors as opposed to hindering them. If students were insisting on talking about football or ballet in physics classes and faculty were cheering them on rather than teaching physics, the bosses would be within their rights to say stick to physics in physics classes. It doesn’t take any particular guidance to figure out how academic endeavors or instruction should proceed in that scenario. The usual way is how they should proceed.

    The vague directive rattled Texas Tech students and professors, many of whom expressed fear that they will face academic or professional repercussions for pushing back. Free speech groups quickly characterized the unclear limits as unconstitutional censorship. 

    Really? It’s an attack on free speech for universities to teach the advertised subject matter? I’m assuming that the order to limit classroom discussion of transgender and nonbinary identities applies to classes in subjects other than trans ideology. If the class is a trans ideology class it’s a different story, but it seems unlikely that all or most Texas Tech classes are trans ideology classes. The Tech part must get in somewhere.

    And LGBTQ+ advocates said the move will only further marginalize already-vulnerable trans and nonbinary students and faculty.

    No it won’t. It doesn’t “marginalize” people to talk about other things. It doesn’t “marginalize” people for tertiary education to focus on specific subject matter instead of chatting about personal idenninies. It doesn’t “marginalize” people to stop talking about themselves for the length of a college class.

    “Everyone is terrified,” said a professor at the flagship Tech campus in Lubbock, who asked not to be named over fear of losing their job.

    Terrified of what? Being told to limit discussion of irrelevant subjects is not a death threat.

    Texas Tech Chancellor Tedd Mitchell late Thursday said that when faculty are acting as employees and instructors, they must follow President Donald Trump’s executive order recognizing only male and female genders as assigned at birth, Gov. Greg Abbott’s letter directing state agencies to “reject woke gender ideologies” and House Bill 229 requiring a strict binary definition of gender for the collection of vital statistics.

    Oh honestly. I don’t see how Trump’s EO has anything to do with it at all. Surely teaching the advertised subject matter is a basic expectation. The liberal arts are more squishy that way, because they can be said to apply to almost anything, but a tech school?

    “This is an egregious attack on academic freedom,” said Chloe Kempf, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Texas. “The bottom line is that the Constitution requires — and Texans deserve — free and open learning environments in institutes of higher education.”

    So students at a tech school can sign up for tech classes only to find that they all use class time to chat about social issues instead of their purported subject? Because that’s their civil liberty?

  • Bill the what now?

    Cringecringecringe

    Donald Trump’s trip to Windsor last week was a history lesson, albeit one from which the president drew worrying conclusions. He has been raving about all of the things he learnt while in the castle, but one name stood out in particular. “William the Conqueror… that’s the coolest name I ever heard,” the commander-in-chief ominously told the American Cornerstone Institute. “He was known for winning wars,” Trump added, proving that there are no flies on him, but he also said he’d asked the current King “Why don’t we call you Charles the Conqueror?” The sovereign and sometime biscuit-maker told Trump that this wasn’t really his style.

    He was unfamiliar with the name William the Conqueror. CRIIIIIIIIINGE

  • It’s a pep rally

    Oh my god. Seriously?

    CNN:

    Pete Hegseth’s surprise gathering of hundreds of generals and admirals in Virginia next week is being called so he can describe the administration’s reinvention of the Department of Defense as the “Department of War” and outline new standards for military personnel, according to half a dozen people familiar with the planning.

    Are you SERIOUS???

    He could do that with technology. There is no reason to gather them all in one room as if it were 1820.

    It is reckless, expensive, pointless, grotesque, dangerous, boneheaded to gather them all in one room, so Pete from the television gathers them all in one room.

    It’s as if the planet is slowly but steadily forming itself into a plank and we’re all going to be forced to walk it, not over a period of decades but all at once.

    “It’s meant to be a show of force of what the new military now looks like under the president,” a White House official told CNN.

    The meeting is expected to resemble “a pep rally” where Hegseth will underscore the importance of the “warrior ethos” and outline a new vision for the US military, said three of the sources. He is expected to discuss new readiness, fitness and grooming standards the officers are expected to adhere to and enforce.

    Grooming?????

    All that money and time and risk to scream at them about how they cut their hair?????

    “It’s about getting the horses into the stable and whipping them into shape,” said a defense official familiar with the planning. “And the guys with the stars on their shoulders make for a better audience from an optics standpoint. This is a showcase for Hegseth to tell them: get on board, or potentially have your career shortened.”

    Excuse me, defense official, but Hegseth doesn’t need a “showcase” at a cost of however many millions it will take to stuff all the brass from all over the planet into one room.

    Hegseth’s team is planning on recording his speech and releasing it publicly later, three of the sources said, and the White House is planning to amplify it, the White House official said.

    As of Friday, there were no plans for Hegseth to make a major national security-related announcement as part of the meeting, all of the sources said, making it even more surprising that he has ordered the officers to attend in person and leave their posts for what will essentially be a major speech.

    To put it much much much too mildly.

    The original idea for the unprecedented gathering of generals and admirals was Hegseth’s, the White House official and one of the sources familiar with the planning said. Hegseth later let the White House know about the plans, but Trump himself knew very little about the details when he was asked about it in the Oval Office on Thursday, the White House official said.

    The hundreds of generals and flag officers who were invited were also not told why they were ordered to drop everything and travel to Virginia, CNN has reported. One of the sources, a defense official, told CNN that it has been made very clear to the general and flag officers summoned by Hegseth that if they can’t attend, they will need to provide an extremely good reason for their absence.

    Ah well there’s a hint at why he’s doing this. It’s because he can. It’s because he’s a jumped-up little shit who can’t believe his luck in getting to scream at people who are better than he is. “Annn I made them all come back annn I didn’t let them say no, Daddy!!”

    Unbelievable.

  • A single room

    Timothy Snyder writes:

    My historian colleagues might correct me, but I do not think anyone at least in recent history has done what Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is about to do: put all of the American generals and admirals from around the world into a single room (next week, in Virginia) just to say something to them.

    There is no practical reason to do this: he has easier and more secure ways to communicate with the commanders. And there are obvious risks: the entire armed forces of the United States, spread around the world, will be without its leaders. Given that the government could well shut down the next day, the separation of commanders from their command might be indefinite.

    And if Hegseth has his way, those generals and admirals will all be in one site, announced in advance, which means that the entirety of the American command structure will be more vulnerable, physically, than in any conceivable military scenario, including nuclear war. There is no scenario other than this one in which they would all be in the same place at the same time.

    First thing I thought and then said yesterday when I saw the headlines. That’s not how this works. You never put all the top brass in one place, let alone doing that with noisy public fanfare. Is Trump just telling his whole crew to find out what the usual procedure is and then do the opposite? Across the board? Without any thought about why it’s the usual procedure?

    So why might Secretary Hegseth do such an extraordinary thing? Only four solutions to the puzzle come to mind.

    1. He has some trivial thing to say and does not understand the risks.
    2. He wishes to endanger the lives of the generals and admirals.
    3. He will stage a purge, perhaps involving a loyalty oath or something similar that requires personal presence.
    4. He will tell the commanders that henceforth their assignment will be to oppress American citizens (“homeland defense”). This could be combined with the third scenario: those who refuse will be fired.

    The first one doesn’t make any sense even in Trumper terms. If it’s trivial they wouldn’t blow all that money to get everyone in the same physical room. And really even having something important to say still doesn’t make any sense, for the same reason. Communication doesn’t require physical proximity these days so it can’t be that.

    Maybe the idea is that the something to say is so profound and urgent and important that it has to be in person, so that the Magic can have its full effect. Can they be that dumb? Oh yes.

    On the other hand Hegseth’s previous job was saying stuff on tv, which is the opposite of saying it in person, so is it likely that he thinks you can’t get a point across unless you’re in te Real Presence?

    I think the closest is 3. I suspect it’s an all hands meeting to hear the message that Trump is never to be questioned or disobeyed, and it has to be in person because that’s more intimidating.

    Except, is it? Really? In this case? Some dork from Fox News laying down the law to every single top brass person in the military? They don’t get there by being either stupid or weak, I’m guessing.

    Whatever it is, it isn’t good.

  • Age of no consent

    Peak crazy.

    Registered sex offender Richard Cox was back in an Arlington, Virginia, courtroom Thursday for a lengthy preliminary hearing.

    Cox is accused of exposing himself to multiple women and children in Arlington Public Schools’ girls’ locker rooms. Those facilities have pools that are open to the public outside of school hours.

    A dozen witnesses testified in the preliminary hearing for the Cox case, including women who said they saw him naked in the women’s locker rooms in Arlington County‘s Wakefield High School, Washington Liberty High School, and Barcroft Sports and Fitness Center.

    One witness said when she and her five-year-old daughter went into the girls’ locker room after swim class, Cox – who identifies as a woman but is still physically male – was standing naked in a shower stall with the curtain open, touching himself.

    Aka masturbating. Yes that’s definitely something you want a five-year-old girl to see. It’s definitely fine to force that sight onto non-consenting women and girls including girls as young as 5. Nothing wrong with that at all. He is being his Whole Self. He is living his womanhood.

    On another occasion, a woman and her five and six-year-old daughters were at Barcroft Sports and Fitness Center for a gymnastics class, and when they went into the girls’ locker room, Cox was in there naked.

    Arlington County and Arlington Public Schools allow people to use locker rooms and bathrooms of their choice based on their chosen gender identity, and they allowed Cox to use the women’s locker rooms.

    Because the revolting sleazy man is all-important and his female victims are so much incidental trash by the side of the road.

    Arlington County and Arlington Public Schools allow people to use locker rooms and bathrooms of their choice based on their chosen gender identity, and they allowed Cox to use the women’s locker rooms. A 17-year-old lifeguard who worked at one of the Arlington pools said she witnessed Cox naked in a school locker room, as did other women who testified.

    In court Thursday morning, Cox repeatedly insisted he is a woman, and insisted the judge order the prosecutor to stop misgendering him and to use female pronouns.

    And a pony.