Author: Ophelia Benson

Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? Facebook.

A theatre in Barcelona has been banned from promoting a stage adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own on Instagram and Facebook because the work includes “social topics”.

Erm…I don’t want to alarm anyone but the reality is, a lot of works include social topics. It’s kind of hard to exclude them. People don’t live alone in caves, so social topics tend to be a big part of ordinary life and of the literature and art that expresses or illustrates it.

When the newly reopened Teatre Raval, which seats 193 spectators, asked Meta, the parent company of the two social media sites, why its publicity had been blocked, it was told “any mention of civil rights, feminism or social reform [topics that are central to Woolf’s work] are usually classified as ‘social topics’ by our automatic system” and are filtered out.

Ahhhhh I see. It’s not so much “social topics” as “social topics I don’t like.” Some men don’t like feminism; they prefer their women quiet and obedient.

The stage production, a one-woman show starring Clara Sanchis, is an adaptation of a series of talks Woolf gave in 1928 at Newnham and Girton, which were then the only two colleges at Cambridge University that admitted women.

The talks were published as an essay the following year on the situation of women in society and their access to education. Women had been admitted to study at Cambridge since 1869 but weren’t allowed to graduate with a degree until 1948.

But Facebook wants to draw a tactful veil over all that.

“We don’t know if the publicity has been rejected because of the name of Virginia Woolf or because of the word feminism, or both,” Sanchis told La Vanguardia newspaper.

“In any case, it’s a way of erasing from the map advances that have taken centuries to achieve. We have given social media unlimited power and every day we can see how dangerous this is. It’s bias and manipulation.”

Yes it is. Facebook is not the institution we want telling us what we can read.

H/t Mostly Cloudy

Making us proud.

THE MOST POWERFUL MAN ON EARTH HAS BEEN BROKEN BY KAITLAN COLLINS. pic.twitter.com/KL92YOHHOt

— Governor Newsom Press Office (parody) (@AwesomeNewsom) September 23, 2026

A bit of frivolity: Julie Burchill on her disdain for King Choss.

Charles has quietened down now, but as Heir Apparent, he really was a gob on a stick, with his constant speechifying about the wonders of everything from homeopathy to Islam and the notorious ‘black spider memos’ he bombarded politicians with. From badger culls (in favour) to supermarkets (against), there was nothing this none-too-bright man did not consider himself an expert on – how unlike the hands-off impartiality of our own late queen. Labour MP Paul Flynn called him ‘the lobbyist supreme in the land’, forever ‘putting forward a whole variety of views – including many bad science views and others that should have no more weight than the man down the pub’.

Many many bad science views. I’ve pointed out some of them over the years. He thinks he’s much cleverer than he actually is.

Despite his image of himself as a firebrand intellectual, his love of luxury was remarked on even by other members of a family not known for humble living. He had at one point four valets. The queen reportedly believed that ‘the amount of kit and servants he takes around is grotesque’. In 2002, his 85-strong court prompted several MPs to ask how he could justify such a large number of people waiting on him. 

Since he became king, his ego has been mollified somewhat. He doubtless appears ‘nicer’ than the man who would sneer ‘Diana the Martyr’ at his young wife when she visited hospital patients. But that’s because he finally got to where he wanted – the top of the Ruritanian heap, with all the subjects who used to bow and scrape to his mother now giving fealty to him. Beneath it, he’s still the same ignorant big-head who wrote of Israel in a 1986 letter to Laurens van der Post after a tour of his beloved Gulf, that while there is ‘Much admire [in] some aspects of Islam… the influx of foreign Jews, especially from Poland, has helped to cause great problems… Surely some US president has to have the courage to stand up and take on the Jewish lobby?’

He’s not a million miles from Trumpishness, is he.

Still they pretend not to know what a woman is.

The Liberal Democrats have rejected official guidance by the equalities watchdog on how organisations should implement the supreme court ruling on transgender people, calling it “discriminatory and unworkable”.

The motion, passed overwhelmingly at the party’s annual conference in Brighton, makes the Lib Dems the first of the big three parties in parliament to call for a new approach to implementing last year’s ruling that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex only.

Formal guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), put out in May, is intended to tell service providers and others how they must balance the rights of trans people with the requirement for some spaces to be single sex.

It has attracted criticism for being a de facto bar on trans people being in many public spaces by setting out that single-sex toilets and changing rooms must exclude transgender men and women when gender-neutral facilities are not always available.

That’s a tendentious way of putting it. Single-sex toilets and changing rooms are not single-sex if they don’t exclude one of the two sexes. It’s that simple, and we managed to understand it for a century or more. (Before that women just had to stay home, too bad, sucks to be you.) If you let some men in, then they are not single-sex any more. Women need the single-sex facilities.

Proposing the motion, the party member Lucas North condemned the EHRC guidance and noted a rise in anti-trans hate crimes. They added: “The rights of women and the rights of trans people do not have to be placed on opposite sides of a manufactured culture war.”

They do when people are insisting that the purported rights of trans people to ruin things for women cancel the rights of women.

Another speaker for the motion, Rebecca Jones, said that as a trans woman she was “tired of being a culture war prop”.

She said: “You now fear using public spaces. You fear anyone that looks at you too much in case they hate trans people enough that they put you at risk. All whilst your government repeats the words ‘dignity’ and ‘respect’, whilst doing everything in their power to ensure trans people do not have them.”

Oh shut up. Put your big-boy pants on and deal with it. Stop making women pay for your playacting.

Zoe Hollowood, a party activist, said the party should accept the supreme court ruling: “If we pass this motion, we are telling women we think they are second-class citizens … This policy is totally out of touch with both public sentiment and public priorities.”

The mood in the conference hall was strongly in favour of the motion, which was passed easily on a show of hands.

Earlier in the day the party leader, Ed Davey, told the BBC he broadly supported the motion, calling the EHRC guidance not “fit for purpose”.

Women don’t matter, episode 40 billion.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? at Miscellany Room.

My wife and I went to a presentation and concert sponsored by conservation group Ontario Nature, the final stop in the “Together for Nature” Tour, which visited Ottawa, Toronto, Kitchener and my home town of London.

The first part of the evening was given over to a number of First Nations speakers from Northern Ontario whose land and way of life are threatened by the provincial government’s drive to “develop” an extensive belt of mineral deposits that has been dubbed the “Ring of Fire,”. We also heard from a member of the legal team that has been working on their behalf.

One of the things that struck me about these speakers, both young (early to mid twenties) and old ( 50’s or so) was how un-angry they were. In fact one of the older speakers, a member of Friends of the Attawapiskat River said he felt badly for having spoken “too aggressively” at an earlier venue. I would have found it hard to not be angry, given what they’re facing, what has happened, and what they stand to have taken from them, all in the name of “progress” and “development”, but really, on the altar of greed and limitless, heedless growth in appeasement to the gods of the market. The younger speakers in particular were very moving and inspirational, despite their relative inexperience to public speaking.

They told their stories and asked for our help, to follow their posts on social media (links below, for those who want to look further into this), saying that no effort or gesture was too small, that every bit helps. I got the t-shirt for the event, and the hoodie emblazoned with the logo of the legal team. (To start with, I decided that I would write a letter to Ontario Premier Doug Ford, about more of which below.)

The speakers were from:

Friends of the Attawawapiskat River

Okinawak

Here We Stand

LAND (Legal Advocates for Nature’s Defence)

The second part of the evening was a performance by Inuit singer Susan Aglukark, who, between songs told stories of her parents living through the 1953 action by the Canadian government to remove the Inuit from their traditional, nomadic life on the land and place them in fixed, permanent “settled” communities, and her own search for her family’s past. She ended the night with her 1995 hit O Siem, which brought me to tears, and Hina Na Ho, which brought me to my feet to join the circle dance that wove its way around the concert space. Altogether a very powerful evening, which opened my eyes and heart.

So, as part of my “every little thing helps,” I’ve written a letter to Ontario Premier Doug Ford. But in keeping with the spirit of the Indigenous speaker who regretted having come across as aggressive, I removed my more usual tone of snark, anger and sarcasm in favour of something more open and concilliatory. I don’t pull any punches, but I’m leaving out the venom and vitriole, despite my initial thought to compare Ford’s use of s0o-called “Special Economic Zones” to Trump’s opening of huge protected areas to “resource development.” It’s still me, but my writing is wearing a virtual suit and tie, rather than throwing rhetorical Molotov cocktails. Know your audience. Framing is important!

*************************************************************************

Premier Ford;

On the evening of September 18, my wife and I had the privilege of seeing a remarkable presentation in London by a group of people from the James Bay, Hudson Bay region of Northern Ontario. It was part of a tour sponsored in part by Ontario Nature, called Together for Nature. It featured speakers from Friends of the Attawapiskat River, Okinawak, Here We Stand, and LAND (Legal Advocates for Nature’s Defence). They had travelled to Southern Ontario in order to tell us their stories, and ask for our support in their efforts to protect the land, air, and water of their home, upon which they depend to maintain their way of life. They asked us to help them protect all their relations; the birds, fish, animals and plants with whom they live. These places and beings are threatened by development of the so-called “Ring of Fire,” the project to extract the minerals that lay under the land on which they live. They are afraid that the mining and processing of these minerals will damage or destroy their way of life. And with good reason.

The “Special Economic Zones” which “relax” rules and regulations do not sound like very good or safe ideas. I wouldn’t want to ride in a car, or fly in an airliner built in a factory where the rules and regulations have been removed or “streamlined.” Sometimes “red tape” saves lives. All this streamlining is in aid of speeding up approval. That sounds a lot like guaranteeing approval, and bypassing standards and oversight that might otherwise lead to the rightful delay or rejection of a project. Maybe, sometimes, the answer should be “No.”

We should not curtail, short-circuit, or bypass thorough, careful investigation and evaluation of projects that have a potentially large ecological footprint. All such projects need open, democratic consultation, oversight and accountability. No exceptions. Why the rush? The minerals aren’t going anywhere. They can wait; forever if necessary. The “urgency” and “criticality” in this equation is the desire of some to make lots and lots of money. That is not a good enough reason to proceed with this project in this manner, or maybe at all. Just because someone stands to make money from an idea does not automatically make that idea a good one. We can no longer afford “business as usual.” This way of thinking has brought us to the combined global crises of climate disruption, toxic contamination of air, water, and land, and the cascading loss of biodiversity that has become a human-created mass extinction event. This short-sighted attitude of spending tomorrow for the bottom line today has resulted in the Anthropocene.

We need to think in longer time frames. Our responsibilities are greater than we realize, because the decisions we make today have an impact, for good or for ill, that carries on in perpetuity. We are “deciding” for all who come after us. This calls for a longer view, a wider view, and a recalibration of both our values and our priorities.We need a reality check.

We operate within a world view that tells us that everyone and everything has its price, and that puts a price on everything. We plan and act as if all costs are strictly monetary, or mere “externalities” that can be disregarded, written off, and forgotten. We might forget, but the Earth does not. We might think we’re throwing refuse away, or that we can leave our problems for the future to solve. But our world is not infinite. It has limits. We must learn to live within them. There is no “away,” and “the future” is now. The entire world is our back yard. We all live downwind or downstream of somewhere, places where others like us, caught in the same blinkered view, are throwing things “away”, and bequeathing their troubles to generations yet to come, committing them to shoulder a burden they never asked for, and do not deserve. This cannot last.

Some things are beyond price. Some things are not for sale. And the costs of losing some things are not simply out-of-pocket expenses that can be balanced in the ledger later on. We all need air to breathe, water to drink, land to provide food. And because of the streamlining and deregulation of the “Ring of Fire” area, we are taking away these very things from the people who live there. As one of the speakers from Okiniwak said, “It was never about money.” The true bounty of this land is not under the ground. It is all the life that arises from it, the home and safety it provides. This is what is at risk. This is what they are protecting.

Again and again, these fearful, brave people, both youth and Elders, spoke of the Seventh Generation, and of stewardship. And of love: the love for and of their people, their love of the land, their love of all their relations- the animals, birds and fish that surround and sustain them. And the love of Creator, supporting and guiding them on their journey to ask for our witness, and our help. They described “legacy” as planting seeds you will never live to see bloom, of making decisions and acting on behalf of people whose faces you will never see. They spoke of leaving the world a better place for their children, and their children, in turn, leaving the world a better place for theirs. They cannot do this if we take their way of life from them, if we poison their water, air, and land.

Some might say that by opposing development of the “Ring of Fire,” these people are “standing in the way of progress.” Well, I stand with them. To me, they are the way of progress. We should listen to them and learn from them. They have asked for our help. By doing so, they are helping us. And we do need help. We are being given a chance to stop and see where we are heading, and decide if it is somewhere we want to go. We have choices to make, a path to choose. Looking around, we can see signs that our current way leads to a dead end. Theirs is a Good Path, and it is one we can all follow, together, looking Seven Generations ahead. We need to safeguard the Seventh Generation. They are not here to speak, so we must speak for them. We must choose carefully, wisely, and lovingly, so that our choices will be a blessing, not a curse.

In this province, in this country, we are all Treaty people. A broad, open-minded, and generous interpretation of the Treaties we have signed, the binding commitments our forebears made to the First Nations, is the right thing to do, so that we might truly share this land that we share already. This is the way forward. This can be our legacy. This can be the seed we plant. This is the future we can create together. We need to leave the world a better place than we found it. Better for all, not just for some. Better for the land, the air, the water. Better for the plants, the animals, the fish, the birds, the insects, and all of the other Beings amongst who we live, and upon whom we depend. Premier Ford; I ask you to visit the people and communities of the Attawapiskat River, and the James Bay lowlands. Let them show you what they showed us in their presentation. Not just projected on a screen, but with your own eyes. Listen to them. See their home through their eyes. Let them open your heart as they have opened mine.

With respect,

Originally a comment by Ian Hargreaves on Can you make the smile any bigger luv?

Speculation: the archbish is grinning broadly because she’s just interacted with the person on the right. Spoken with them, agreeably. Has had – mask notwithstanding – a friendly conversation with them. She’s not coming to this image without context – she is fully aware of the humanity of the person under the shroud. It hasn’t occurred to her what the image will look like to someone not well-disposed towards people of her ilk, and indeed one might reasonably asked why she should. After all, in her position there’s practically nothing she could do that would earn her the respect and admiration of any thinking atheist… so why bother?

Another thought: there’s a racist/sexist/culturalist(?) assumption commonly made about people who dress like the one on the right. (I’m careful not to say “women”, because from that picture I’ve exactly zero evidence that that’s a woman). The assumption is that they are, firstly, women, and secondly that such women are universally cowed, submissive slaves, quiet and unassuming, barely daring to speak in public.

I’ve had reason to interact with just a few such people in a variety of scenarios, and have found them to be, almost without exception, remarkably loud, hostile and rude. Shockingly so, the first time. In fact, the very epitome of the average obnoxious religious nutjob of any stripe, just in a mask. Their dress is, in my experience, not (for them) a symbol of submission to their husband or their god so much as it is a violent public rejection of what they think of as the disgusting, inferior culture they find themselves surrounded by. And again in my experience, they absolutely don’t mind telling you this, in fact they’ll go out of their way to make it clear, even unasked.

Never make the mistake of thinking of those people as victims. They’re into it, as much if not more so than the men. And if you argue that they’re only into it because they’ve been indoctrinated – I agree with you. But take care where you direct your pity. They have none for you.

Gosh I hope he didn’t hurt his hand.

An “obsessed” boy who stabbed a girl multiple times with a 6in knife after she refused to date him has been handed a three-year restraining order.

A restraining order. Not a custodial sentence but a restraining order. How will the poor lad bear it?

The boy, 14, briefly dated the girl, 14, before she ended the relationship. He then carried out a “horrifying” attack in a shop in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, in March.

The boy, from Wiltshire, admitted wounding with intent, inflicting grievous bodily harm and possession of a bladed article in a public place. He was also handed a one-year referral order at Gloucester Crown Court.

In a statement read out in court, the girl said: “I’ve been having nightmares since. I relive the incident, but in these dreams it happens in different places.”

She added: “I sleep in the dark but when I wake, I constantly feel like there is a presence in the room. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

Never mind, toots. You’ll get over it someday, or if you don’t, it doesn’t matter, because you’re just a girl.

Sentencing the boy, Judge Ian Lawrie told the court the stabbing was a “very troubling event” but he did not take the view that the offender was a “danger”.

He said: “He’s still young. And he is capable of learning.”

The judge told the court he was “surprised” the boy had spent three months in custody as “while the offences are serious”, it was “inconsistent” with the usual process for youth cases.

So adolescent boys are more or less allowed to beat up or stab or throw rocks at girls? They might get a stern talking to, but other than that, we don’t want to interrupt their lives too drastically. Boys are important. Girls, not so much.

There’s are downsides to being a monster.

China has long struggled to compete with the United States in soft power because the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarianism, human rights abuses, and “wolf warrior” diplomacy limit its appeal. Under Trump, the gap has begun to narrow—not because China has overcome these liabilities, but because of the sharp deterioration of the United States’ image abroad.

“Soft power” is one way of putting it. Another is “not being a shit” or “doing good things instead of bad things.”

It’s infinitely depressing that we’re now a country that does nothing but bad things. It’s not even like the Cold War mix of guns and roses; there are zero roses. “The sharp deterioration of the United States’ image” is a euphemistic way of saying “the violent plunge of the United States into mass deportations, mass impoverishment, and mass murder.”

Trump’s policies have weakened three pillars of American soft power. They have undercut the appeal of the country’s political values, damaged its reputation as a reliable and generous partner, and eroded the long-standing perception that U.S. power by and large operates within rules and restraints, including honoring formal agreements.

All that but it has also just plain done those things. That would be bad even if the “soft power” somehow remained intact. It’s bad in itself as well as bad for self-interested reasons.

At home, Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown, pressure on universities and left-leaning civil society organizations, and attacks on the press have damaged the global standing of the U.S. as a model of political freedom.

Yes and they have also made the US not a model of political freedom. It’s appearance but it’s also reality. All this shit Trump does is bad not just because it makes us look bad, but also because it makes us bad. Trump’s US looks like a horror show, and that’s because it is a horror show. Appearance is not everything.

Trump’s MAGA political culture has also weakened the image of the United States as a multicultural society in which people of different races, religions, and national origins can belong and succeed. Trump’s nativist rhetoric and its effort to draw tighter boundaries around American identity undermines Washington’s credibility when it condemns intolerance and repression abroad.

Again. Instrumentally bad and also bad in itself.

Foreign aid was once another important source of American influence and goodwill. The Trump administration’s abrupt dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development disrupted development and humanitarian programs around the world. In 2025, U.S. aid fell by 57 percent. It now provides less international aid than Germany. The human toll aside, this chaotic withdrawal carries its own political cost: It tells countries that America no longer believes that economic development, public health, education, and poverty reduction around the world ultimately benefit the United States.

See above. The human toll remains, aside or not. Our reputation is in the toilet, and that’s because we’re doing terrible things.

I will never understand how people like this can be so obtuse about it.

Lib Dems embroiled in new trans rights row as leader Ed Davey says he backs conference vote on scrapping protection for women-only spaces https://t.co/SXz1CMB0eq

— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) September 21, 2026

Starting at 33 seconds:

Trans people are some of the most discriminated against in our society, they suffer violence, they suffer harassment, and if you’re in favor of equality, as I am – I’m in favor of equality for everyone in the LGBTplus community, and everyone in the black and minority community, no holds barred, you know I – one reason I’m a liberal is I want to treat every individual with respect.

Except women. Except, of course, women. This communinny, that communinny, but not women. Women don’t get respect, because of being women.

What a revolting man.

Lib Dems shit on women.

Liberal Democrats have voted in favour of scrapping a ban on transgender women using female lavatories.

That is, Liberal Democrats have voted to let men stalk and terrorize women in women’s toilets. Gee thanks, Liberal Democrats.

The party has been accused of treating biological women like “second-class citizens” after backing a motion calling for more “inclusive” single-sex spaces at its annual conference in Brighton.

Yeah let’s be more inclusive. Let’s make public life more dangerous for women so that they will stay inside more, thus freeing up public spaces for men to enjoy. Men win, women lose; that’s inclusion.

The Lib Dem motion, which received overwhelming support in the conference hall on Monday evening, proposed scrapping new guidance banning transgender women from female lavatories and changing rooms.

It also stated unequivocally that “trans women are women” and “trans men are men”, and argued that “the rights of women and of trans people are not in competition”.

It can state bullshit unequivocally all it wants, but it’s still bullshit. Of course trans women are not women. That’s what the word “trans” is there for.

Last April, the Supreme Court ruled that the word “sex” in the act referred to biological sex, not gender identity, and the word “woman” meant biological woman.

Earlier this year, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) brought out guidance making it clear this meant that only biological women should be able to use female lavatories.

The Lib Dem motion stated that the EHRC code was “discriminatory and unworkable” and should be replaced with more “inclusive” rules. It called for Parliament to appoint a cross-party committee to review how the law should be changed to better protect trans people’s rights.

Blah blah blah. You can’t. There are only two options. You pretend men can be women, or you don’t. Changing the law to protect trans people’s demands necessarily means removing some of women’s rights.

It will now become party policy, committing the Lib Dems to lobbying for a new version of the EHRC guidance that is “inclusive, workable and ensures everybody can safely access public facilities and providers are protected from legal risk”.

You can’t. If you let men use women’s public facilities then women can’t safely access them. You can’t square the fucking circle so just admit that you’re trashing women’s rights and safety for the sake of men who pretend to be women.

Liberal Voice for Women, a Lib Dem group campaigning for sex-based rights, insisted the vote was “not reflective of the broader membership” and warned it would “not go down well on the doorstep” in target areas.

Zoe Hollowood, who chairs the group and spoke against the motion on Monday, told The Telegraph: “I think what we’ve done today is a massive act of self-harm. For all Ed’s claim to care, he certainly does not seem to care about women.”

Yup that is definitely not what I would call caring about women.

Trump is babbling at the UN.

Trump said that warnings about the dangers to humanity of A.I. — which have been heard from countless top A.I. programmers, executives and experts — were coming from the “same group of people” who promoted what he called “the Russia hoax.” “We will only encourage super intelligence,” Trump said. “We’re going to encourage it, not rein it in.”

So he fully grasps the issues then.

He also said the warnings came from those he claimed had overstated the dangers of a warming planet. “The very same people who all said we’ll be dead in 12 years because of global warming — a name since reborn to climate change because the planet was cooling, not warming, and no one was dead — these are the same people saying A.I. is going to kill us all,” he said.

Nobody said that. Nobody said we’ll all be dead in 12 years. It’s the kind of thing he might say; it’s not the kind of thing reasonable people would say.

Trump claimed responsibility for the U.N.’s budget crisis, saying that he had slashed its budget by some 15 percent and that as a result the organization had to lay off 4,000 staff members. The U.S. is the top donor to the U.N., but Trump ’s budget cuts hit humanitarian programs. The United States has also withdrawn from multiple U.N. agencies, including from the World Health Organization and UNESCO, the cultural heritage agency.

Good good good. Who needs health? Who needs cultural heritage?

“To the victor belong the spoils,” Trump says as he celebrated the outcome of his military operation in Venezuela, speaking just a couple miles away from the prison where that country’s former president, Nicolás Maduro, is being held after the U.S. captured him in January. Since then, the United States has expanded access and control over Venezuela’s oil reserves.

…

Trump’s boast that “To the victor belong the spoils” shatters yet another international norm. For generations, American leaders took pains to insist that U.S. foreign interventions were not motivated by material gain — especially control of foreign oil.

And then along came Mister Wouldn’t Recognize a Norm if it Bit Him on the Ass.

In a repeat of last year’s speech, Trump said, “While others have talked, I have acted.” He turned to Iran, which he called “the No. 1 sponsor of terror.”

…

“I have a big decision to make,″ he said: to make a deal with Iran, or “annihilate the Islamic republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destory people and countries again.” It was a remarkable moment: a threat from the U.N. floor, by a world leader, to wipe out an entire nation.

It was jarring to hear the president of the United States openly threatening to annihilate a nation, considered a war crime, from the podium of the United Nations.

Yes, that is jarring. The reporter who wrote the first two paragraphs is David Sanger; the reporter who wrote the third is Farnaz Fassihi. Perhaps Trump would like to take her out while he’s at it.

And today’s prize for peak patronizing misogyny and telling women what to do goes to……………..Benjamin Ryan!

One of the most frustrating things we confront in this fight is being driven past the point of politeness by ever increasing infringements on our rights and boundaries and then being called a bully when we lose our temper over it.

— Amy E. Sousa, MA Depth Psychology (@KnownHeretic) September 21, 2026

All that seething pointing you do with your index finger says a lot as well.

— Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter) September 21, 2026

We’re so lucky to live in a time when patronizing dweebs like Benjamin Ryan think they get to tell us what and how to write and talk.

I see the problem here, he’s misidentified the cause.

Trump’s pronouncement, which came after a string of setbacks in the courts and Congress, caught many advisers — including those who deal with the press on a daily basis — by surprise. Trump did not point to any particular story or tension point as the cause when asked about it later that day.

“No reason,” he said Friday, when asked about the ban, adding, “It’s a very simple ban. I don’t want them in my office. I don’t want them here. I would say the ban would go as far as you can.”

Yes, well, we have laws about that, Bubba, so you have to have a reason, and even then the Constitution may tell you no. Either way just saying you don’t feel like it is not suffish.

The president said his frustration stemmed from coverage dating back years. “It’s really just cumulative stories over the last two years. You get sick of it,” he said.

There’s your problem right there. They’re not “stories”; they’re reporting. The problem is not the coverage; the problem is you doing these things. You’re shooting the messenger. It’s not the messenger who is doing the things, it’s you.

The president said his frustration stemmed from coverage dating back years. “It’s really just cumulative stories over the last two years. You get sick of it,” he said.

See this is what I’m talking about. We get sick of it: we get sick of what you are doing. The reporting is just information about what you’re doing; it’s the doing that’s the problem, not the reporting.

He’ll never get it, of course.

Nice graphic.

I’m not the only one who’s surprised that Fox is on Team Free Press instead of Team Trump. Occupy Democrats writes:

BREAKING: OMG. Fox News announces it REFUSES to cover Trump’s events in stunning show of solidarity with CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO after Trump BANS them from the White House Press Pool!

Wow, did not see THIS coming…

In a truly remarkable development, Fox News’ Washington bureau chief Bryan Boughton announced this morning that “This is to advise that, effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President.”

“This follows the White House’s position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties. There will be no replacement pool put in place.”

This means no press coverage of any White House events, no press coverage of Trump’s trip to the UN, nothing.

All five networks – CNN, FOX, NBC, ABC, CBS – are refusing to participate in the press pool, meaning there will be no coverage for any of the affiliate stations across the country.

This also means the only coverage we will see will come from the White House, essentially creating Trump-regime state media.

But we know Donald Trump very well at this point, and we know he LOVES the media and he won’t be able to stand knowing that his stupid words and stupid face aren’t being blasted into every TV screen across America.

We anticipate a very short resolution to this standoff. Trump’s ego will not be able to stand not being on TV for more than six or so hours.

We hate to hand it to them, but good for Fox News for standing up for the First Amendment and our right to a free press.

And standing down for the wannabe dictator.

The NY Times is doing live reporting on the backlash against Trump’s attempt to stifle the news media.

CNN, MS NOW and Politico on Monday sued the Trump administration for barring them from the White House grounds, saying it was a violation of their First Amendment rights to cover the president.

The five networks that have suspended their pool coverage of President Trump — ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC — just issued a joint statement: “The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.”

Interesting to see that Fox has some principles.

Bryan Boughton, the Washington bureau chief at Fox News and the acting chair of the television pool consortium, wrote in a note to pool members on Monday that the decision to halt TV pool coverage “follows the White House’s position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties.”

I’m guessing Trump is amazed and furious that Fox is not with him on this one.

Game on.

MS NOW, CNN and Politico are set to sue President Donald Trump on Monday morning and to ask a federal judge to reverse his total ban on those three media outlets from the White House.

Journalists from the outlets were prevented from entering the White House on Saturday, a day after Trump announced he would bar them from working there.

I have an idea – let’s bar him from working there.

“This ban could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles,” the lawsuit says.

“Presidents from the earliest days of the Republic have disagreed with and complained about the tenor and content of press coverage of their administrations,” the complaint, set to be filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, notes.

But “the Constitution protects the liberty and property interests that news organizations and White House reporters have in their press credentials and the access those credentials afford them to cover the White House for the benefit of the public,” the suit says. “No official can deprive Plaintiffs of those interests on a whim — with no notice, no process, and no warning—as the President did here.”

He can, but he’s not allowed to. The trick is getting the “not allowed to” to result in not being able to. Trump just wholesale ignores rules and laws that say he’s not allowed to do X; it’s only force that can stop him.

Trump in announcing the ban on Friday accused the outlets of writing fiction and lies about him, and warned, “Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow,” in a Truth Social post announcing the ban. The president cited what he called “cumulative stories” by the three news organizations, adding, “You get sick of it.”

Yes but you don’t get to shut down the press because you get sick of it, dumboy. You’re doing it, but you’re not allowed to. There may come a time when you will be forced to stop. I’m not holding my breath.

In a joint statement on Monday, the three outlets said, “This morning, we notified the government that we are filing a lawsuit today to protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes.”

This lawsuit needs to win. We need it to win. If Trump gets to ban journalists…well, you do the math.

The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, in a statement after Trump’s announcement, suggested he would lose a legal challenge to the ban because of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protections for the media.

“The First Amendment prohibits the president from punishing journalists because he doesn’t like their coverage, just as it prohibits him from punishing universities because he doesn’t like the courses they offer, or from punishing law firms because he doesn’t like the clients they represent,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the institute.

“With so many courts having ruled against him on exactly this point, you’d think President Trump would have learned this lesson by now,” Jaffer said.

Well, no, you wouldn’t, because it’s Trump. We’ve learned by now that Trump never learns anything.

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Bring back toxic lead!!

I haven’t read it yet, but End Times Fascism by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor seems both interesting and highly relevant. Here are some of the main points from what I have gathered so far:

• What the authors call “End Times Fascism” consists of 3 main strands (all part of the MAGA coalition): the Christian Right, the tech oligarchs, and the white supremacists.

• The Christian Right are longing for the apocalypse, and actively seeking to bring it about, because they see it as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy and the precursor to Jesus’ long awaited return.

• The tech oligarchs, many of them deeply influenced by trans-humanist philosophy, are hoping to make an obscene profit from devouring the Earth’s last resources and think they personally can escape the resulting mass-extinction by going for the Dr. Strangelove solution, colonizing Mars, uploading their souls to the cloud etc.

• The white supremacists are longing for a cataclysm that will purge the Earth of undesirables and hope to emerge from the resulting carnage as the planet’s undisputed rulers.

• Like the older forms of fascism, this latest iteration is a reaction to a perceived threat to the power and status of the dominant, but whereas the old fascists all had their own versions of “Der Untermensch”, the End Times Fascists see humanity itself as the inferior race, to be replaced by AI, cyborgs, disembodied ghosts living in the cloud etc.

• Since what these people are advocating is not in most people’s best interest, they needed an authoritarian leader prepared to push their agenda through by force and found it in Donald Trump.

As the authors point out, it’s easy to dismiss these ideas as silly, and indeed they are. Yet the fact of the matter is that they are now enormously influential at the highest levels of the American government. As both the older forms of fascism and the MAGA movement itself have demonstrated all too clearly, an idea doesn’t have to be intellectually respectable to be consequential, and the potential for self-fulfilling prophecies is only too obvious.

Seems worth a read.

The reaction hasn’t died down yet. From a feverish discussion on social meeja which I won’t bother to share:

One does have to wonder what the thinking was. Why share that photo, as if it’s perfectly normal, very friendly, very gemütlich?

There’s the archbish, in priestly robes but otherwise just a regular person such as you’d encounter in the beans aisle at Waitrose, and there’s a person dressed to look like one of the pillars upholding a tomb. There’s the archbish grinning broadly while the other party stands there blotted out, hidden, concealed, shrouded, made part of the night. Given what the party in the black shroud looks like, why is the crazy lady smiling so broadly?

Really, why is she? The whole thing is an atrocity and an insult, so what is she beaming about? Did it not cross her mind, for instance, that the black pillar’s husband/owner must have nothing but disgust and contempt for the beaming archbish? That he thinks she too ought to be dressed like a bale of fabric and forbidden to say a word? What is the point of this photo op?

We will never know.

Eleanor Mills on Rory Stewart:

His remarks on a Spectator podcast about Britain’s grooming gangs (a polite euphemism for the mostly Pakistani-origin men who preyed on and gang-raped vulnerable, predominantly white girls in care, in the most horrendous, nightmare-inducing ways) now place him, for me, beyond the pale.

“Do I think that [the grooming gangs scandal] is a big problem for Britain? No,” he told host Michael Gove. “What are the real problems facing Britain? Not this.” He then went on to name the economy and a lack of innovation in public services as far more pressing.

Well grooming gangs are not a problem for him, so…

Anyone who has watched the BBC drama Three Girls, based on the true stories of victims of grooming gangs in Rochdale, or read any of the official reports into what happened to children in Rotherham, Telford, Oxford or any of the other cities where these depraved men operated, wouldn’t be human if they didn’t feel angry and “bang on” about it. It is a massive stain on our society that so many young girls were abused for so long and the authorities did nothing about it.

They didn’t want to be accused of Islamophobia, you see.

What makes Stewart’s dismissive remarks, made in the context of defending the Muslim community, even worse is that they are an exact echo of the attitudes that allowed this abuse to continue for so many years. Local authorities didn’t take action for fear of being thought “racist”, even though many of the abused girls were in their so-called “care”.

Is Stewart aware that even “the Muslim community” consists of female people as well as male people? Does he think he’s showing solidarity with that “community” by being conspicuously indifferent to women and girls?