Originally a comment by Tim Harris on It’s almost as if there’s a pattern.

I do not think it was ‘vast swathes’ of Japanese intellectuals who suppressed or discounted the Nanking Massacre. Certainly a number of nationalists, many of whom could barely be called ‘intellectuals’, did (and do). Modern Japan had the misfortune to be re-born as a modern nation at the height of Western imperialism and racism, and was one of the only Asian nations never to be made a colony. In 1919, Japan proposed a ‘racial equality’ clause to be included in the Treaty of Versailles. This was turned down by Anglo-Saxondom – the British because of the Empire, the Australians because of the ‘White Australia’ policy, … Read the rest

Also Trump is playing the “not you” game with Fauci.

… as the Trump administration has strayed from the advice of many of its scientists and public health experts, the White House has moved to sideline Fauci, scuttled some of his planned TV appearances and largely kept him out of the Oval Office for more than a month even as coronavirus infections surge in large swaths of the country.

Because Trump’s personal grudges are way more important than the survival of hundreds of thousands of people.

During a Fox News interview Thursday with Sean Hannity, Trump said Fauci “is a nice man, but he’s made a lot of mistakes.” And when Greta Van Susteren asked him last week about

Dipshit has allowed himself to be persuaded to wear a mask this one time, but he’s not going to go all politically correct and say they should be worn whenever necessary. Dipshit must get his way! Ok so it costs millions of lives, but Dipshit don’t care.

President Donald Trump — who has stubbornly refused to wear a mask in public, ridiculed those who have and done little to encourage his supporters to embrace the common sense public health measure — has said he will wear a mask during a visit to Walter Reed National Medical Center on Saturday.

He is also expected to be photographed wearing it, a photo opportunity that some of the President’s aides practically begged

I’m reading some of the comments on Sophie Grace Chappell’s letter to Rowling, and # 7 by Jean (comments don’t have separate links there) is…informative.

I am so exhausted by all this. I’m disappointed that you only engaged with one point of the 5 Rowling made, but OK, I’ll meet you on the ‘bathroom’ issue. It’s extraordinarily disingenuous for you and others to assume that the ‘bathroom’ issue is about ordinary women going about their days. It is not. It’s about trauma and whose rights matter more.

I live on the west coast of Canada, where Trans dreams have largely all come true. And here is what I know:

I used to volunteer extensively at a charity for vulnerable

“Sophie Grace” Chappel wrote an open letter to Rowling last month; it was posted at Crooked Timber.

There are several paragraphs about the way Chappel derived understanding of his trans nature from reading fantasy novels including Rowling’s, and an expression of sympathy for Rowling’s experiences of abuse, and then the “but you’re wrong” part.

But I urge you to look a little more closely, and from a different angle, at some of the issues that you’re raising.

First, a quick harrumph of exasperation. You wrote on twitter that “If trans people were suffering discrimination on the basis of being trans then I would march with them”. To be honest, that tweet took my breath away. If we were suffering

The headline:

UK’s only trans philosophy professor to JK Rowling: Harry Potter helped me become a woman

So a trans philosophy professor is not a professor and knows nothing of philosophy?

Anyway, tell us a story.

In the autumn of 1969, a five-year-old boy called Timothy Chappell, in his first term at school, had an idea. Could he, he asked his mum, go to class as a girl? “My mother looked at me,” says Timothy – now Sophie-Grace – “and there was both terror and fury in her eyes. And she said to me: why?”

“Sophie-Grace.” Ffs. It’s as bad as “Sophie Labelle” who does that gruesome “Assigned Male” cartoon. Man becomes woman, names self wise-grace. But hey this movement … Read the rest

Glamour magazine had a long talk with that most glamour lady of all, Munroe Bergdorf. Glamour asks a profound question:

How have you learnt to become at one with yourself in that sense what have been some turning points in your kind of discovery of your sense of self?

In other words tell us more about your Self, which Bergdorf is only too happy to do.

As a trans person you’re forced to find who you are in a world that really doesn’t have any space for you. You’re forced to exist within the world that constantly wants to tear you down and invalidate your feelings, invalidate your identity, invalidate your contributions, invalidate your possibility of having what we would

The Post’s editorial board on Trump’s criminal pardoning of a criminal who crimed on behalf of Trump, who pardoned him:

Though Attorney General William P. Barr moved to reduce Mr. Stone’s sentencing recommendation after conviction, even he called the case against Mr. Stone a “righteous” prosecution. [Stone] was sentenced to 40 months in prison and was due to surrender on Tuesday — thus prompting Mr. Trump’s Friday night action.

As Mr. Trump discussed granting clemency to his criminal friend, Mr. Barr publicly defended the sentence, perhaps to prevent a mutiny among Justice Department staff who signed up because they believe in the rule of law, not the arbitrary rule of an unusually petty man in the White House.

The arbitrary rule of … Read the rest

These sleazy fucks.

Attorney General William Barr persistently pressured Manhattan’s former top federal prosecutor to resign during a June 18 meeting at a New York hotel and in a subsequent phone call, the ousted prosecutor, Geoffrey Berman told lawmakers Thursday, detailing for the first time the series of events that led to his removal the next day.

Berman, in a written statement to the House Judiciary Committee, said Barr repeatedly attempted to coax Berman into resigning his post by suggesting he consider other positions in government, including the chairmanship of the Securities and Exchange Commission or the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division.

That’s interesting, because it means not only is Barr corrupt and sleazy, but also he … Read the rest

Trump is so excited about “acing” that cognitive test.

In a live phone interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Trump bragged about his test score on a cognitive exam at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after Hannity invoked presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, asking the president whether he believed Biden had the “mental alertness” to be president.

Trump said he didn’t think the Democrat could pass the cognitive exam like [as] he did.

“I actually took one very recently when, you know, the radical left was saying, ‘Is he all there? Is he all there?’ I proved I was all there, because I aced it,” Trump told Hannity. “I aced the test. … He should take the

Fabulous.

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro is leading a Trump administration effort to demand the Food and Drug Administration reverse course and grant a second emergency authorization for the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

They’re not medical experts. They shouldn’t be demanding any drug be authorized, because they don’t know what they’re talking about. They should stay out of it.

Navarro, armed with a controversial new study that he says shows the drug’s effectiveness, is being cheered on by President Donald Trump, who has long touted the drug as a “game changer” and even used himself as a possible preventive measure. Trump praised the study on Twitter earlier this week,

How to cognitive pic.twitter.com/YM51OJ58qA

— Sarah Cooper (@sarahcpr) July 10, 2020

… Read the rest

Desecularization in Istanbul:

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has ordered the Hagia Sophia museum, one of Istanbul’s most famous landmarks, to be converted into a mosque.

He made the announcement Friday, hours after a top court cleared the way for him to make the change.

The Hagia Sophia, a major draw for tourists, has a long and complicated history. The architectural marvel was built as a church by the Byzantines in the 6^th century and then converted to a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453.

In 1934, Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s cabinet decreed that it be turned into a museum. It is widely regarded as a symbol of peaceful religious coexistence.

But we don’t … Read the rest

A letter in response to the letter.

On Tuesday, 153 of the most prominent journalists, authors, and writers, including J. K. Rowling, Malcolm Gladwell, and David Brooks, published an open call for civility in Harper’s Magazine. 

First sentence; doesn’t bode well. Badly written. “the most” out of what?

Plus the 153 didn’t publish the letter, of course, they signed it. Big difference.

So from the very first sentence we know we’re dealing with sloppy writing and weak grasp of the facts.

The signatories, many of them white, wealthy, and endowed with massive platforms, argue that they are afraid of being silenced, that so-called cancel culture is out of control, and that they fear for their jobs and free

Originally a comment by iknklast on Strict supervision.

It seems that JK Rowlings’ tweets may be the top 10 list all by themselves. But really, when you look at what the trans lobby talks about as harm:

Tweets saying men aren’t women

Tweets saying women don’t have penises

Being called sir by a clerk

Being asked to leave a women’s room

Being told they aren’t really a woman just because they’re wearing a dress

Feminine hygiene products bearing the woman symbol

Women’s health clinics being called women’s health clinics

Not being able to get bustiers in their size (I haven’t actually heard this one, but I have heard some related)

Women writing books that say women are vulnerable to … Read the rest

if people today were on the titanic pic.twitter.com/7Lu3zKDgQ9

— Matt Buechele (@mattbooshell) July 8, 2020

… Read the rest

A different style of silencing in a different part of the world –

Sueko Urasaki, 82, who came forward as the “trembling girl” in an image from the Battle of Okinawa, was, according to sources contacted on June 25, visited by a man who made accusatory remarks doubting her story. Urasaki has been avoiding contact with the outside for the past year. There have been other similar incidents involving the individuals who testified to the mass forced suicides in Zamami during the battle. The lasting inheritance of the Battle of Okinawa has become a topic of late, and someone familiar with the effort to suppress the testimonials of survivors raised the alarm bell, saying, “We cannot allow survivors to become

Adam Schiff sent a letter to Lt. Colonel Vindman.

A letter to Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman:

Right does not matter to Donald Trump. But it matters to you. It matters to this country and to its people. It will always matter.

And with those words, you have left an indelible mark on our nation’s conscience and history. pic.twitter.com/sysJxdRQpU

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) July 8, 2020

… Read the rest

Jesse Singal on the reaction to that Harper’s letter:

I watched a sizable subset of the online progressive intelligentsia respond with intense fury, disbelief, and indignation to an open letter published online yesterday by Harper’s magazine. The letter, which will also appear in the magazine’s October issue, was simply a stout defense of liberal values from people primarily on the left at a time it feels like these values are under threat. It made no bones of the fact that President Donald Trump and right-wing authoritarianism in Europe are both major threats to liberal society. It simply said that in addition to these threats, it’s probably time to get our own house in order. “The free exchange of information

If the chairman of the Joint Chiefs can see it…

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley criticized Confederate symbols before the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday, and called the Civil War an “act of treason.”

Milley said that minority service members — which he noted make up 43% of the U.S. military — may feel uncomfortable that Army bases are named for Confederate generals who “fought for an institution of slavery that may have enslaved one of their ancestors.”

“For those young soldiers that go on to a base of Fort Hood, Fort Bragg, whatever, named after a Confederate general, they can be reminded that that general fought for an institution of slavery.”

“I