Justin E. H. Smith on the higher bullshit:

Derrida means nothing without his Parisian institutional setting, but once that setting comes into focus, he continues to mean nothing, though now in a different way: he means nothing, individually, because the tricks he was encouraged to perform that so dazzled the crowds at Johns Hopkins and Irvine were taught to many others just like him, who would all of course insist on their own uniqueness, would claim they were always outsiders to the true French intellectual elite, but only because you cannot enter the tightest nucleus of this elite if you do not claim to be an outsider to it, all the while, all of them, yielding up only minor

The BBC tells us:

Victims of forced marriages overseas will no longer have to take out loans to pay for their return to the UK.

It emerged last week in an investigation by The Times that those unable to cover flights, food and shelter were made to take out an emergency loan.

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the policy was changing as victims “may have endured particular suffering”.

Existing loans will be written off and the women’s passports returned.

The Foreign Office is going to try to get the money back from the people who arranged the forced marriage, which seems only fair.… Read the rest

Deutsche Welle reports that the Trump administration has downgraded the diplomatic status of the EU delegation to the US.

The unannounced move by the US State Department, which has not previously been reported, downgraded the EU delegation’s diplomatic status in Washington from member state to international organization.

“We don’t exactly know when they did it, because they conveniently forgot to notify us,” an EU official who is familiar with the matter told DW in an interview.

“I can confirm that this has not been well received in Brussels,” the person said, adding that the issue and an official EU response was still being discussed.

Welllll who needs Europe when we can have Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia? Europe is for … Read the rest

Russell Berman in the Atlantic:

Eric Young is the president of the union that represents the approximately 30,000 employees of the Federal Bureau of Prisons who are working during the government shutdown.

Young’s members, scattered at 122 facilities located in largely rural areas across the country, aren’t being paid and don’t know when their next paycheck will come. Like the leaders of virtually every federal-employee union during the past three weeks, he has condemned the shutdown and its toll on innocent workers as “unconscionable.”

“My personal opinion,” Young told me over the phone from his office in Arkansas, “is that it constitutes involuntary servitude.”

Neither Young nor any of his partners in union leadership, however, will urge their members

Meanwhile this vehicle we’re trapped in is racing toward the cliff.

President Trump slammed his hand on a table and stormed out of a White House meeting with congressional leaders on Wednesday after Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said she would not fund a wall along the southern border, dramatically escalating the confrontation over the government shutdown.

Stunned Democrats emerged from the White House meeting declaring that Mr. Trump had thrown a “temper tantrum.” The president’s allies accused Democrats of refusing to negotiate. Then he tweeted that the meeting was “a total waste of time.”

As opposed to rage-tweeting, and withdrawing emergency aid to victims of wildfires, and watching Fox News for 8 hours a day? Those are valuable … Read the rest

But, in much better news –

Incredible news for Saudi teen @rahaf84427714.

The UN says she should be granted asylum in Australia as a refugee.
This the power of a Twitter campaign and the bravery of one young woman.#SaveRahaf #رهف_محمد_القنون pic.twitter.com/2x06dFYrRe

— Natasha Fatah (@NatashaFatah) January 9, 2019

https://twitter.com/rahaf84427714/status/1082961242979938304

Kudos to the Government of Australia !!! @Liam_Cochrane @australian @SkyNewsAust @westaustralian @PravitR #RahafMohamed #RahafMohammedalQunun #RahafMohammed #Rahaf #Saudi #SaudiWomen @veen_th @JeromeTaylor @RichardBarrow @leunigcartoons pic.twitter.com/JbisWws7GE

— stephff cartoonist (@stephffart) January 9, 2019

… Read the rest

Make America demonic again.

Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg… Read the rest

I neither watched nor listened. I’m not a masochist.

Let us read.

My fellow Americans: Tonight, I am speaking to you because there is a growing humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border.

Every day, Customs and Border Patrol agents encounter thousands of illegal immigrants trying to enter our country.  We are out of space to hold them, and we have no way to promptly return them back home to their country.

Big lie right there. Many or most of them are not “illegal immigrants” but asylum seekers. It is fully legal and a human right to seek asylum. Trump doesn’t like that, but Trump’s dislike doesn’t make something not true.

Over the years, thousands of Americans have

Ed Pilkington at the Guardian reports a very bad thing:

The Trump administration has stopped cooperating with UN investigators over potential human rights violations occurring inside America, in a move that delivers a major blow to vulnerable US communities and sends a dangerous signal to authoritarian regimes around the world.

Quietly and unnoticed, the state department has ceased to respond to official complaints from UN special rapporteurs, the network of independent experts who act as global watchdogs on fundamental issues such as poverty, migration, freedom of expression and justice. There has been no response to any such formal query since 7 May 2018, with at least 13 requests going unanswered.

Nor has the Trump administration extended any invitation

A sobering thread:

If you are currently working without pay during the shutdown, or are furloughed and willing to share please comment and let people know what you do. I think it is important for everyone to understand the families and services that are currently impacted. It is VAST.

— Amanda Deibert at Comic Con Revolution #E2 (@amandadeibert) January 6, 2019

I am an attorney in the Division of Enforcement at the Securities and Exchange Commission. I am currently NOT investigating violations of the securities laws (meaning they are not currently being enforced). I would really like to review the subpoenaed docs on my desk right now.

— Hocca McFendel (@HoccaMcFendel) January 6, 2019

https://twitter.com/BonnieKRobinson/status/1081930516469899264

https://twitter.com/LRow15/status/1082065241993891840

You don’t even have … Read the rest

James Gheerbrant wrote a profile of a trans woman, Sandra Forgues, which is getting some attention on Twitter, not all of it warmly complimentary.

Beneath the surface, she was fighting currents unseen. The face that periodically appeared in local newspaper articles, the name proudly emblazoned on lacquered clubhouse boards, were pieces of an identity that did not match the self she felt deep in her soul.

“At the core of my being, I have always felt like a woman,” she says. “I have a woman’s mind, but I did not have the body of a woman.”

I have to wonder if anyone would feel like that in a world where sex differences were not so exaggerated and value-laden and … Read the rest