Karen Attiah on why it’s not a brilliant plan for NPR to invite professional racists on to make their pitch.

Ahead of the one-year anniversary of Charlottesville, NPR decided to give an on-air lesson on the proper care and feeding of white nationalists and neo-Nazi ideology.

On Friday’s Morning Edition, NPR’s Noel King interviewed Jason Kessler, the organizer of Sunday’s Unite the Right 2 rally in Washington. There were a lot of troubling spots in the soft-focus mess of interview, but perhaps the most stunning was when King asked Kessler what he believes about the differences between races. Kessler proceeded to literally rank various races on the basis of debunked bell-curve myths about intelligence differences between groups on national public

Aw yeah – white nationalists threw a rally and nobody showed up.

Almost nobody. It was a pathetic dud.

A year after the race-fueled violence in Charlottesville, Va., a small group of white nationalists marched through downtown Washington on Sunday on their way to a rally in front of the White House.

It was over almost as soon as it began.

The white supremacists were met along their march route and at the rally site by thousands of counterdemonstrators denouncing racism and white supremacy. The white nationalists, who numbered about two dozen, stayed in Lafayette Square, a park just north of the White House, for a short time and left before 6 p.m.

They had been scheduled to hold

Zowie.

Archaeologist Ticia Verveer on Facebook:

This beautiful tiny woolly mammoth figure, measuring just 3.7 cm long and weighing a mere 7.5 grams, was skilfully carved with a flint tool ca. 35,000 years ago. It was found at the site of the Vogelherd Cave in southwestern Germany.

Thirty five THOUSAND years ago.… Read the rest

Oh now look, this is just unfair to poor Mr Trump.

Kellyanne Conway, the chief counselor to President Donald Trump, had difficulty on Sunday naming the top black aide working in the White House following the firing of former “Apprentice” contestant Omarosa Manigault Newman late last year.

…

Conway, asked on ABC’s “This Week” who would now rank as the highest-level black among personnel stationed in the West Wing, initially faulted host John Karl for not focusing on Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson. “The president works with the secretary every day,” she said.

The former renowned neurosurgeon, however, does not physically work or advise the president from an office in the White House.

Working in … Read the rest

Iram Ramzan has a piece in the Sunday Times reminding us that criticizing the niqab is something a great many Muslims do, so we’re not automatically being More Virtuous by defending it as A Woman’s Choice.

I was surprised at the furore last week when Boris Johnson wrote that Muslim women who wear the face veil “look like letter boxes” and compared them to bank robbers. Quite rightly, he doesn’t think we should ban the niqab in all public places, as Denmark has done, but described them as “absolutely ridiculous”.

There are many Muslims — including many of my relatives — who hate the niqab and what it stands for, and will use much worse language than “letter box”

Oh look at that now. Remember Gregor Murray? The Dundee councillor who “identifies as gender non-binary”? And had to apologize last month for calling some women “utter cunts”?

Not the first time he’s had to apologize. Pink News back in May 2014:

The former chair of the Scottish National Party’s LGBT group has attacked First Minister Alex Salmond’s plan for a 40% female quota in boardrooms.

SNP Councillor Gregor Murray, the deputy convener of education on Dundee City Council, was previously convener of the SNP’s LGBT group, Out for Independence, when it was still an unofficial organisation within the SNP.

The Herald reports Cllr Murray wrote on Facebook that the quota was “the biggest load of piss I have

Suspiciously…erm…foreign people are being denied visas for the Edinburgh book festival, because you can’t be too careful with…erm…foreign people. Certain kinds of foreign people that is. Foreign people from Norway are fine, but people who are not quite so…erm…northern are not entirely welcome.

A dozen authors who were planning to attend this year’s Edinburgh international book festival have had their visas refused, according to the director, Nick Barley, who warned that the “humiliating” application process would deter artists from visiting the UK.

The festival, which starts on Saturday and includes appearances from 900 authors and illustrators from 55 countries, routinely provides assistance for visa applications. It has reported a jump in refusals over the last few years.

Life in Murika. A white guy followed a black guy to the latter’s house to call him a nigger.

Jeff Whitman drove two miles out of his way to follow a black man to his house and call him a “n***er” in a now-viral racist tirade caught on video. The consequences for his racism were immediate.

Last week, Whitman — owner and operator of Uriah’s Heating, Cooling, and Refrigeration — made the news for taking his road rage way too far. Charles Lovett, who lives in Columbus, recorded Whitman on his phone when the latter arrived outside of Lovett’s house in his company truck, angry that Lovett didn’t allow him to go straight in a right-turn-only lane.

“Is there

NPR is doing its bonehead “both sides” thing again.

In a “Morning Edition” segment, the radio host Noel King interviewed Jason Kessler, a white nationalist who is planning a rally in Washington this weekend on the anniversary of last year’s rally, which was the scene of racist chants and deadly violence.

Ms. King preceded the discussion, which was part of a weeklong series about the anniversary of the Charlottesville rally, with a warning: “Some of what you’re about to hear is racist and offensive.”

Why talk to a white nationalist at all? Why give a white nationalist a huge respectable platform? Why promote white nationalism on NPR?

In the interview on Friday, which lasted about five minutes, Mr.

The Times reports on the recurring issue of the Catholic takeover of hospitals in the US and the fact that Catholic hospitals both refuse to perform procedures they have a goddy objection to and conceal this fact up front. This by the way is yet another reason to prefer a national health service: the fact that it’s national as opposed to Catholic.

The opening personal story:

After experiencing life-threatening pre-eclampsia during her first two pregnancies, Jennafer Norris decided she could not risk getting pregnant again. But several years later, suffering debilitating headaches and soaring blood pressure, she realized her I.U.D. had failed. She was pregnant, and the condition had returned.

At 30 weeks, with her health deteriorating, she was

But also in the Atlantic is Franklin Foer’s cover story on how Trump radicalized ICE. He starts with people fleeing murderous violence in Mauritania:

The country is ruled by Arabs, but these refugees were members of a black subpopulation that speaks its own languages. In 1989, in a fit of nationalism, the Mauritanian government came to consider these differences capital offenses. It arrested, tortured, and violently expelled many black citizens. The country forcibly displaced more than 70,000 of them and rescinded their citizenship. Those who remained behind fared no better. Approximately 43,000 black Mauritanians are now enslaved—by percentage, one of the largest enslaved populations in the world.

I didn’t know about that. I’m horrified that I didn’t know about … Read the rest

Where does this bias come from?

Two scientists have launched a campaign to get a copy of a book that debunks accepted scientific “facts” about women into every state school in the UK.

The physicist Jess Wade, best known as “chief troublemaker at Imperial College London”, and Claire Murray, a chemist and beamline scientist at a UKsynchrotron, are raising funds to buy copies of Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong and the New Science That’s Rewriting the Story by Angela Saini. The actor Daniel Radcliffe has described it as one of his favourite books.

The pair are hoping to raise £15,000 via a crowdfunding campaign in an effort to encourage more girls and young women to educate themselves

Conspiracy theories meet arson and a friendship is born.

Southern California’s Holy Fire, sparked on Monday, has already scorched more than 18,000 acres as of Friday morning and forced over 20,000 residents to flee.

Now, authorities have identified the man suspected of igniting the massive blaze.

On Wednesday, local officials arrested 51-year-old Forrest Gordon Clark, charging him with two counts of felony arson, as well as another felony charge of threatening to terrorize.

…

A glimpse through his social media presence also offers a clue into the world of conspiracy in which Clark, who claimed he could read minds, lived.

JJ MacNab, who covers anti-government extremism for Forbes, first identified Clark’s Facebook profile. A quick skim reveals just how

I saw a lot of uproar yesterday about Boris Johnson’s column dissing the burqa, and now he’s being “investigated” over it.

Former British foreign secretary Boris Johnson will face an internal investigation over complaints that he violated the ruling Conservative Party’s code of conduct when he wrote in a newspaper column last week that women in burqas resemble “bank robbers” and “letter boxes.”

…

His most recent column noted his opposition to a new ban on face veils in Denmark but veered away to critique traditional Islamic garb, calling niqabs and burqas “oppressive and ridiculous.”

Well guess what, they are oppressive and ridiculous. That’s not to say Tory provocateurs need to insult powerless women for wearing them, but let’s … Read the rest

Space Force all the way!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 9, 2018

… Read the rest

Michelle Bachelet will be the next UN high commissioner for human rights.

Ms. Bachelet, 66, who was imprisoned and tortured during Chile’s right-wing dictatorship and years later became a pediatrician and politician, will be stepping into a particularly difficult and contentious role at the 193-member organization.

The Times tried to talk to her but she hasn’t gotten back to them yet.

The change comes as the Trump administration has taken an increasingly dim view of human rights diplomacy at the United Nations. The administration withdrew from the Human Rights Council in June, partly over the frequent criticism of Israel and other actions that the administration described as two-faced.

After Mr. al-Hussein’s office criticized the White House over the practice