Even John Bolton can’t keep Trump’s love.

Bolton, who has long advocated an expansive military presence around the world, has become a staunch internal foe of an emerging peace deal aimed at ending America’s longest war, the officials said.

His opposition to the diplomatic effort in Afghanistan has irritated President Trump, these officials said, and led aides to leave the National Security Council out of sensitive discussions about the agreement.

…

At the zenith of his influence, Bolton enabled the president to act on his most aggressive instincts and outmaneuvered other Cabinet officials with less experience in the interagency process. But his tough management style and bellicose worldview have frayed relations with some colleagues.

You’d think it would endear … Read the rest

Girls’ schools will probably go the way of the coral reefs.

Girls schools would have to admit transgender pupils under proposals being considered by the equalities watchdog.

The confidential Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) draft guidance, leaked to The Telegraph, reveals that schools could be set to consider admissions of trans students to single-sex schools on a “case-by-case approach”.

There were supposed to be guidelines by 2018 but the process has bogged down. Quel surprise.

The Telegraph however has a draft and is sharing from that.

It says that: “A refusal to admit a trans pupil to a single-sex school which is the same as the trans pupil’s sex recorded at birth would be direct sex discrimination.

A thing I saw.

H/t Josh… Read the rest

Julie Bindel on the Blame Women trick:

Men blaming women for ‘getting themselves raped/murdered/beaten’ is certainly nothing new. But women being blamed for male violence towards other vulnerable groups, such as trans-women of colour, is the latest pernicious tactic by misogynists. Feminists are blamed for the murder of trans-women, including those killed by intimate male partners.

Apparently, we whip up hatred and fury that leads men to decide to kill trans women. Doubtless these violent male murderers will have been sitting reading me, Janice Turner, Janice Raymond, and watching Magdalen Berns videos before deciding to take a gun, knife, fists or whatever and brutally kill a trans-woman. Not being satisfied with having total permission, indeed praise, for screaming TERF,

The health of The Great Barrier Reef isn’t just bad, it’s very bad. That’s official.

The Great Barrier Reef’s outlook has been officially downgraded from poor to very poor due to climate change.

Rising sea temperatures thanks to human-driven global warming remain the biggest threat to the reef, a five-year Australian government report says.

They mean from bad to very bad. For some reason officials think we can’t deal with the word “bad” but we’ll be ok if they change it to “poor,” but “bad” is what they mean. In short the GBR is doomed, which is very bad (not poor) news.

Rising sea temperatures caused “mass bleaching events” in 2016 and 2017 that wiped out coral and destroyed

Peter Tatchell’s decision to blame feminists for the fact that a man murdered a trans woman continues to annoy everyone who sees it.

What he said:

Tracy Single is 15th trans woman of colour murdered in US this year. The tiny minority of feminists who demonise trans women as a threat to non-trans women contribute to the toxicl atmosphere that fuels prejudice, discrimination & violence

Janice Turner:

A man killed Tracy. It is overwhelmingly men who commit murder and violence against trans people. As they kill far, far greater numbers of women. Yet somehow feminists are the cause of male violence. Why not challenge men, Peter Tatchell? Your misogyny is disgraceful.

Sarah Ditum:

Tracy Single was killed

Meghan Murphy has more on the activism vandalism against VRR:

On Tuesday, Vancouver Rape Relief & Woman’s Shelter (VRRWS) tweeted images of vandalism left on their storefront — a space used for meetings, events, and support groups. ‘Kill TERFs,’ ‘Fuck TERFs,’ ‘TERFs go home, you are not welcome,’ ‘Transwomen are women,’ and ‘Trans Power’ had been scrawled across the windows and door in black marker. ‘TERF,’ for the blissfully ignorant, is an acronym that stands for ‘trans-exclusionary radical feminist.’ This is, of course, a misnomer. Radical feminists are not interested in ‘excluding’ trans-identified people from anything. What they are interested in is protecting certain spaces designated for women and girls.

Not because trans people are trans, but … Read the rest

Stella Nyanzi is in prison for criticizing a guy.

A prominent Ugandan academic has bared her breasts and screamed obscenities in protest as a magistrate sentenced her to 18 months’ prison on controversial charges of “harassing” President Yoweri Museveni.

The verdict against Stella Nyanzi on Friday drew the ire of rights activists who accused the government of using laws about electronic communications to stifle political dissent.

Nyanzi, a university lecturer and researcher who once called Museveni “a pair of buttocks”, is expected to serve nine months in prison after having already spent nine months behind bars.

…

A second charge of “offensive communication” was dropped against Nyanzi, who has vowed not to relent in her barbed criticism of Uganda’s

Erm…

Replying to @JeanHatchet @MorganeOgerBC and @FeministaCanada
I have always believed that a woman is a woman is a woman. Does not matter if she was born a man. Trans women get raped and need help too.

A woman is a woman is a woman, dammit, including if she was born a man. How many times do we have to say it? A woman is a woman is a woman is a woman is a woman is a woman is a woman is a woman is a woman. Get it now?… Read the rest

Trump is determined to burn it all down.

President Donald Trump has reportedly ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to open Alaska’s 16.7 million-acre Tongass National Forest—the planet’s largest intact temperate rainforest—to logging and other corporate development projects, a move that comes as thousands of firesare ripping through the Amazon rainforest and putting the “lungs of the world” in grave danger.

The Washington Post, citing anonymous officials briefed on the president’s instructions, reported late Tuesday that Trump’s policy change would lift 20-year-old logging restrictions that “barred the construction of roads in 58.5 million acres of undeveloped national forest across the country.”

The move, according to the Post, would affect more than half of the Tongass National

This guy…

Ah – reducing ‘females’ to their anatomy. What stellar feminist thinking. 😍 Really top notch. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: a cluster account of ‘femaleness’ can include cis and trans people, but also exclude both. It doesn’t make sense. Much like the GC agenda.

Who is it that he’s setting straight with such authority?

Boodleoops – you know, an actual philosopher.

The only “gender identity” I have is knowledge that my body is female, and an awareness of what that body means for how I am treated by others. If you don’t have a female body, then you and I don’t share any gender identity, and therefore we can’t both be women. Sorry.

Originally a comment by Pliny the in Between on Magic with words.

When I was a general surgeon (eons ago it seems), I had been highly trained in surgery for diseases of the breast as part of my residency. I was an early advocate of less invasive surgery for breast cancer and was the first I know of who worked with a team of physicians to council women about their options. When I saw a woman with breast cancer in my office I coordinated the visit with oncology, radiation therapy and plastic surgery in one visit so the individuals I saw could make the best choice for their needs. When surgery was part of the therapy, I worked with … Read the rest

David Karpf on the translucently thin skin of Bret Stephens:

Bret Stephens is above me in the status hierarchy. He knows this. I know this. He has won a Pulitzer Prize and has a regular op-ed column in the New York Times. I am just some professor. I’ve written two books, but unless you are professionally involved with digital politics, you probably have never heard of me.

We have now though.

Karpf was surprised to get an email from Stephens, and surprised to see the provost of his university was cc’ed on the message.

He shares the email. I neglected to quote the whole thing yesterday so why don’t I do that now.

Dear Dr. Karpf,

Someone just