All entries by this author
Mar 28th, 2025 4:47 am |
By Ophelia Benson
The Smithsonian must present US history as one long list of Very Excellent Things.
Trump issued an executive order Thursday evening promising to eliminate “improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology” from the Smithsonian Institution’s museums and restore “monuments, memorials, statues, markers” that have been removed over the past five years.
There can’t be anything “divisive” in Smithy museums. Hmmm. That means Smithy museums have to be empty. Everything is “divisive” to someone. People aren’t clones of each other, so their thoughts can differ, so there is never any guarantee that not one single person will say No.
The institution, the official keeper of the American story, has operated independently as a public-private partnership created by an act of Congress in 1846.
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5 comments
Mar 27th, 2025 3:56 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
More like Nazis every day.
While there is a lot of focus on the major scandals involving Donald Trump’s administration, it’s important we don’t lose sight of what’s happening inside this country, where we are witnessing the federal government snatch people right off the streets for their political speech. The latest, most chilling example of that happened Tuesday outside of Boston, when Rumeysa Ozturk, a Ph.D. student and Fulbright scholar at Tufts University, was taken off a residential street in Somerville, Massachusetts.
At 5:15 p.m., Ozturk, who came to the United States from Turkey on a student visa, had just left her apartment when, as video obtained by NBC News shows, she was approached by a man
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Mar 27th, 2025 3:28 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Also by the way the future fines will be much bigger.
Universities could face multi-million-pound fines for breaches of freedom of speech rules, the Office for Students (OfS) said.
The University of Sussex was fined £585,000 after the OfS said its equality policy – which included rules to “positively represent trans people” – could prevent staff and students voicing opposing views. Sussex was investigated after Prof Kathleen Stock left the university in 2021 accused of transphobia.
Arif Ahmed, OfS director for freedom of speech, said the fine could have been as high as £3.7m and there was “potential for higher fines in the future”.
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The University of Sussex was the first to be fined under new powers given
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2 comments
Mar 27th, 2025 2:46 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
The Defenders of the Holy Genderfaith are vowing revenge.
I wonder what he imagines that “get GC people under oath challenged” can mean. Get them under oath how, where, by what authority, under what circumstances? Is he fantasizing mass arrests, mass incarceration, mass grillings by a heroic prosecutor? For what? On what grounds? Under which dictator?
Stupid little twerp. … Read the rest
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5 comments
Mar 27th, 2025 11:33 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Baddy Kennedy is slashing health agencies, because of course he is.
Robert F Kennedy Jr said the nation’s health agencies will cut 10,000 jobs from their 82,000-person workforce – an enormous reduction the US health secretary characterized as streamlining federal bureaucracy amid internal resistance to the administration’s agenda.
The cuts announced on Thursday, along with previous restructuring and voluntary buy-outs, mean the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will lose roughly 20,000 workers.
Kennedy said the department will also close half of its regional offices and create a new agency called the “administration for a healthy America”, or AHA.
Aha, Kennedy wants us all to rely on quack medicine instead of the real kind.
HHS is among
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4 comments
Mar 27th, 2025 11:13 am |
By Ophelia Benson
In current (outrageous) news –
So Vancouver Coastal Health wants nurses who don’t know that men are not women?
Doesn’t that sound like the very short route to medical malpractice? Doesn’t that sound like “First do all the harm you can”? Doesn’t that sound like the flat negation of any reasonable hiring/keeping criterion for medical professionals?
What next? Firing nurses and doctors who can’t can tell the difference between people and rabbits, cormorants, rattlesnakes, bowls of soup?… Read the rest
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4 comments
Mar 27th, 2025 6:39 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Aw. Nobody wants her to knock on the door.
“American representatives have been walking around, practically knocking on one door after another in the past few days to ask if people might be interested in a visit from the Vice President’s wife. Everywhere, the answer was the same: ‘No, thanks.’” Source; TV2.
My answer would have been “Hell no” at best.… Read the rest
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2 comments
Mar 27th, 2025 5:24 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Still struggling mightily to square the circle:
The University of Edinburgh’s new trans policy could be illegal, leaving the cash-strapped institution open to legal challenge.
The document — a copy of which has been obtained by The Herald — tells staff they can use “the toilet facilities that align with their gender identity” rather than their biological sex, even if they do not have a gender recognition certificate.
As I keep boringly repeating: they’re telling staff the impossible. If you make all the toilet facilities “whatever” then people can’t use the ones that align with their genner idenniny because there are no single genner toilets left. It’s a very simple point: wouldn’t you think people running universities would be … Read the rest
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1 Comment »
Mar 26th, 2025 6:08 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
It’s so touching to see men encouraging men to play hockey – one of the more dangerous sports available – against women. Their skulls and arms and legs will be fine, so who cares if the women’s will be smashed?
… Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
6 comments
Mar 26th, 2025 3:50 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Aw, really, not even one person?? That’s just sad.
https://twitter.com/VikingNAFOFella/status/1904962394142519774
Still, you can see their point of view. She’s married to the vice puppet of the guy who wants to grab Greenland the way he would grab a hamburger at a baseball game. It would be like expecting Londoners to welcome a visit from Goering’s wife in 1941.…
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5 comments
Mar 26th, 2025 10:28 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Still captured.
Democrat Jonah Wheeler stood alone before a capacity crowd in the Peterborough Town Hall as critics, leaders in his own party, and even some childhood friends railed against the 22-year-old state representative’s vote for legislation deemed “transphobic” by progressive activists.
Wheeler (D-Peterborough) was unapologetic during Tuesday night’s question and answer session sponsored by the Peterborough League of Women Voters as he explained why he broke with his party and voted for HB 148. The bill protects the right of local institutions to keep biological males out of women’s locker rooms and bathrooms.
“Nobody should be discriminated against because of who they are,” Wheeler said. “We can respect trans women, and we can respect the rights of women who object to
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10 comments
Mar 26th, 2025 8:56 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Bad BBC. Bad. Sit. SIT. You’re a very bad BBC.
University of Sussex fined £585k in transphobia free speech row
That’s on the main page. If you click on the link you get “University of Sussex fined £585k in transgender free speech row”
Spot the difference? Transphobia v transgender free speech.
Bad bad BBC.… Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
1 Comment »
Mar 26th, 2025 6:22 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Breaking news in Sussex rebuke drama – our good friend latsot has turned up one of those sinister Connections that can explain so much.
Oh of course she was. The only thing as of course would be Hines being Roseneil’s PhD supervisor. The professors of transology train each other to preach the gospel of transology wherever gullible students are found, and they link arms to bully Enemy Women out of academia altogether.
… Read the rest
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5 comments
Mar 26th, 2025 5:51 am |
By Ophelia Benson
The Financial Times on Sussex and Stock and all that:
An English university is set to be fined a record £585,000 over allegations it failed to uphold free speech and academic freedom, in a landmark ruling in the debate over student rights on campus.
England’s higher education regulator found “significant and serious breaches” of free speech and governance issues at the University of Sussex, according to a draft press release seen by the Financial Times.
The Office for Students press release, to be published on Wednesday, said a policy intended to prevent abuse or harassment of certain groups on campus had created “a chilling effect” that might cause staff and students to “self-censor”.
Well that’s the thing, isn’t … Read the rest
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Mar 25th, 2025 5:24 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Big news!
An English university is set to be fined a record £585,000 over allegations it failed to uphold free speech and academic freedom, in a landmark ruling in the debate over student rights on campus.
England’s higher education regulator found “significant and serious breaches” of free speech and governance issues at the University of Sussex, according to a draft press release seen by the Financial Times.
The Office for Students press release, to be published on Wednesday, said policies intended
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4 comments
Mar 25th, 2025 10:57 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Originally a comment by KB Player on In the wake.
I absolutely don’t get this. In our imperial days (British variety) we were known as perfidious Albion for betraying our allies (actually we were no more perfidious than France, the Habsburgs, Russia, or any of our rivals) but we were polite to them before stabbing them in the back. It’s sheer prudence to be so, just in case perfidiousness is no longer in your interest. This blatant rudeness serves no purpose at all.
If you have vassals – and we in Britain have been a servile vassal to our imperial overlord – there’s no point in humiliating them unnecessarily. Humiliate them in deed if it serves your purposes, but … Read the rest
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Mar 25th, 2025 9:54 am |
By Ophelia Benson
From the NY Times Ethicist column, currently provided by philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah:
44 year old woman has been unable to conceive.
After three years of trying and multiple I.V.F. attempts (fortunately covered by insurance), my doctors have said that, at 44, I won’t be able to get pregnant with my own eggs. My husband and I have decided to pursue egg donation, which, unlike adoption, is covered by our insurance.
Ah right – they want to go the cheaper route.
I’d like the donation process to be as open as possible, ideally knowing our donor so our child could have a relationship with her. Most clinics, however, still use anonymous donation. Private donor-egg agencies that facilitate communication are
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8 comments
Mar 25th, 2025 9:28 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Europe just isn’t one of the cool kids any more.
The European Union is, in many ways, the antithesis of the principles that Mr. Trump and his colleagues are championing. The bloc is built around an embrace of international trade based on rules. It has been at the forefront of climate-related regulation and social media user protections.
Well rules are for peons. The best people do whatever they want all the time, because they’re the best people. Regulation and protections are horrible things, because they hinder the best people for the sake of peons.
If the relationship between the United States and Europe were merely transactional, it would be relatively easy for Europeans to just spend more on the
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8 comments
Mar 25th, 2025 4:22 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Let’s zoom in on that 37 second chat with former Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, now the Secretary of Defense in the Trump regime. The reporter asks him about the grotesque security breach (or rather annihilation) and he reacts with a smirk and a chuckle and
You’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called “journalist” who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again, to include the, I don’t know, the hoaxes of Russia Russia Russia, or the fine people on both sides hoax, or the suckers and losers hoax – this is a guy that peddles in garbage [sic], it’s what he does.
What. a. scumbag.
He’s asked about a massive security breach in his department … Read the rest
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17 comments