An authoritarian state boss abusing his power who isn’t Trump:

A British Indian author and journalist has been stripped of his Indian citizenship after he wrote an article criticising the regime of the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi.

Aatish Taseer, who was born in the UK but raised in India and spent a further decade living there from the age of 25, was stripped of his overseas citizenship of India (OCI) status on Thursday.

Taseer, who has written multiple books on India, described the government’s move as “highly suspicious and systematic”. He added: “They are making an example of me and sending a warning message to other journalists.”

Wouldn’t Trump love to do that.

The decision followed the

To the surprise of no one we learn that Mick Mulvaney too is implicated in the Ukraine extortion.

Acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney approved a White House meeting for the Ukrainian president – if Ukraine announced investigations tied to Joe Biden, a political rival of Donald Trump, according to testimony unveiled on Friday by the congressional committees pursuing an impeachment inquiry.

Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, “blurted out” that Mulvaney had approved the meeting if the Ukrainians announced an investigation of Burisma, a gas company that formerly employed Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s son, said Fiona Hill, a national security council member who was deposed by the committees last month.

Hill’s account was corroborated

And speaking of special rules for women – a conversation among some feminists on Twitter brought up the familiar issue of Why is it always women who have to wear the torture shoes or tight lacing or tiny dress in freezing cold?

Jennifer Lawrence has criticized “sexist” media coverage of her fashion choices in a new Facebook post.

The Oscar-winning actor, currently on a press tour for thriller Red Sparrow, responded to comments suggesting that the sleeveless Versace outfit worn during a photocall in London implied that she was being mistreated alongside her coat-wearing male co-stars.

“Wow. I don’t really know where to get started on this ‘Jennifer Lawrence wearing a revealing dress in the cold’ controversy,” she wrote.

cazz pointed out this Harvard Business Review article.

Susan Fiske and her colleagues have shown that people seem to universally use two dimensions to judge others: competence and warmth. We decided to test for both of those in addition to confidence. As a proxy for the likelihood of being promoted, we also tested for influence, on the theory that people who are seen as influential are more likely to be promoted to leadership roles.

We conducted a study analyzing the judgments that colleagues made regarding the competence and warmth of 236 engineers working in project teams at a multinational software development company. As part of their performance evaluation, the engineers were evaluated online by their supervisor, peers, and collaborators

Well, I guess women at work don’t need to see.

Wearing glasses at work has become an emotive topic in Japan following reports that some firms have told female employees to remove them.

Several local news outlets said some companies had “banned” eyewear for female employees for various reasons.

Among them, some retail chains reportedly said glasses-wearing shop assistants gave a “cold impression”.

If they’re women. Only if they’re women.

I’m going to make a wild guess that it’s not actually a “cold” impression the chains are worrying about, but something more like a “clever” impression. Glasses remind us of reading – so obviously that’s a total turnoff and a waste when it’s a woman. Nobody wants to see … Read the rest

God, it’s almost funny. You know those fundraising ads that political candidates run? Saying donate to my campaign and get a chance to have a beer with the candidate? I’ve seen a lot of them from Warren. Trump must think they’re a cool idea, because he has lots of them too…but in his case it’s a fraud, because nobody ever wins. He cheats even at that. How hard would it be to meet with a fan? Not very, but he doesn’t do it, he just takes their money.

A heavily-promoted contest to win breakfast with President Trump in New York City on September 26 was a fraud. The purported winner of the contest, Joanna Kamis, did not have

Giuliani is running the State Department, apparently.

A State Department official told lawmakers that Rudy Giuliani’s attacks were part of a “campaign of lies” against the former Ukraine ambassador, according to a transcript released Thursday.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent testified that President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer’s actions contributed to his decision not to speak out internally about Giuliani in the run up to the July phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian President. Kent, who oversees US policy on Ukraine, told lawmakers that he did not the speak to anyone at State to express his concerns about Giuliani because he had previously been told to “keep my head down” after Giuliani attacked him by name.

Kent … Read the rest

Via Louise Moody on Twitter: a woman writes to the Liberal Democrats:

I am gender critical – that means that whilst I believe transgender people should not face and discrimination or abuse for their transgender status, I do not believe people can change biological sex.

The reply is not very inclooosiv.

By the sounds of your email it appears that your values are not aligned with ours so we are probably not the right the party for you.

That’s not telling her she can’t join, which parties probably can’t do at the membership level, but it sure as hell is giving her reason not to. “If you don’t believe that people can change their biological sex your values … Read the rest

Oh no, an academic – at Goldsmiths no less! – pretended to be non-binary. Pretended! Would you believe it?!

A university academic has sparked outrage after claiming to be transgender and asking students to call her ‘Mx Tippy Rampage’ before admitting it was a satirical character for a book.

Dawn Mellor, who was ‘the preferred tutor for transgender and non-binary students’ at Goldsmiths University in south-east London, inhabited the ‘toxic and unpleasant’ character online for several years.

Mellor, who demanded the use of gender neutral pronouns, has now been blasted by the LGBTQ+ community for ‘treating transgender lives as a… performance piece.’

A performance piece – how could nonbinary identity possibly be seen as a performance piece?!

An

Age won’t save you, political office won’t save you, time at Auschwitz won’t save you.

An 89-year-old Holocaust survivor in Italy has been assigned police guards for protection after receiving hundreds of threats on social media.

Liliana Segre, who was sent to the notorious Auschwitz death camp at 13, has been subjected to a barrage of anti-Semitic messages in recent days.

Auschwitz was a work camp as well as a death camp. She necessarily must have been sent to the work camp, because if she hadn’t she wouldn’t be alive now. There was no waiting period: it was straight from the train to the Zyklon B room. Anne and Margot Frank were also in the work camp, where they … Read the rest

The Star Vancouver reported that protesters showed up outside Meghan Murphy’s talk on Saturday despite the last minute announcement of the location.

Some protesters carried signs proclaiming that “Trans rights are human rights” and “Trans women are women.”

The event was originally scheduled to take place at Simon Fraser University, but was moved after the senior director of campus security said there was a high safety concern.

The talk included Meghan Murphy, a freelance writer who opposes trans rights, saying they threaten the rights of cisgender women.

Oh but that’s wrong – she doesn’t “oppose trans rights” – not the ones that comport with everyone else’s rights. She opposes special, new, invented “rights” like the “right” to be affirmed and … Read the rest

Well now here’s a turnup for the books: Scottish Labour has deselected a candidate for tweeting an image that calls Joanna Cherry a TERF and implies she should be shot.

The Scottish Labour candidate who posted a controversial image on Twitter involving her SNP rival has been dropped by the party.

Frances Hoole, a care and support worker, had been chosen to stand as the Labour candidate in the General Election in the Edinburgh South West constituency, attempting to unseat incumbent MP Joanna Cherry.

However last week Ms Hoole, who has been part of Labour’s Jo Cox leadership programme, posted an image on Twitter in which she and Ms Cherry had been photo-shopped, with the caption “Bang! And the

We may hate him but the Russians don’t.

Russian experts, government officials, and prominent talking heads often deride the American president for his Twitter clangor, haphazard approach to foreign policy, clownish lack of decorum, and unfiltered stream of verbalized consciousness. But all the reasons they believe Trump “isn’t a very good president” for America are precisely their reasons for thinking he is so great for Russia.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a Russian client whose regime teetered on the brink of collapse only to be saved definitively by Trump’s chaotic approach to the Middle East, recently said that “President Trump is the best type of president for a foe.” The Russians heartily agree. The Trump presidency has been wildly successful

Some months back “Jessica” Yaniv was Twitter-promoting a municipal pool party for teenagers and making it creepily obvious he was being creepy and pervy about it, and then he got suspended from Twitter for awhile and was preoccupied with losing his suit against the women who didn’t want to pull the hairs out of his scrotum. But now! It’s all happening all over again.

Yaniv:

THANK YOU to the @CityofSurrey for putting on an All Bodies Youth Swim Pool Party for #LGBTQ youth ages 13-18. Taking place at the Newton Recreation Centre on Nov 10th! All my LGBTQ2 allies please call (604) 501-5540 to show your support! So happy! https://surrey.ca/culture-recreation/30270.aspx #Surrey

So I follow the link, and: he’s not … Read the rest