I didn’t know him but I have many friends who did and I can see that Josh Kutchinsky is a great loss.

The IHEU:

Josh Kutchinsky, one of the greatest friends to international humanism, died last night. He had been suffering from an interstitial lung disease diagnosed in 2016.

Josh was a committed organiser and phenomenal personality within the humanist movement, both at home in the UK, and internationally.

During many years of activism, he served as a trustee of Humanists UK, and then Humanists UK’s international representative to the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), as well as joining IHEU’s Uganda Humanist Schools Advisory Group. He was a founding trustee of the Uganda Humanist Schools Trust. In 2013

From the Financial Times:

At 10pm last Thursday night, Jonny Gould took to the stage in the ballroom at London’s Dorchester Hotel. “Welcome to the most un-PC event of the year,” he roared. The sports broadcaster was there to host a charity auction — the centrepiece of a secretive annual event, the Presidents Club Charity Dinner.

The purpose is to – wink wink – raise money for Good Causes…but – nudge nudge – not really.

It’s for men only; the “entertainment” included 130 women who were told to wear “skimpy black outfits with matching underwear and high heels.” At a party afterwards, to the astonishment of everyone, many of the women were groped and propositioned.

The event has been … Read the rest

Women journalists covering Pence’s trip to Israel are being subjected to gender segregation.

[O]n Tuesday, female journalists were particularly perturbed to discover that they had been relegated to covering Pence’s spiritual stop at the Western Wall, one of Judaism’s holiest sites, from the other side of a fence.

The Western Wall — the outer wall of the raised esplanade that is called the Temple Mount by Jews and al-Haram al-Sharif by Muslims — is currently under the authority of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Western Wall Heritage Foundation. According to custom, the plaza is divided by gender, with men praying on one side of a barrier and women on the other.

“According to custom,” of course. It’s always “according to custom.” That’s … Read the rest

Terrifying.

Republicans may be on the verge of publicly releasing a secret memo compiled by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), one of President Trump’s most devoted bodyguards against accountability on Capitol Hill, that purports to show serious misconduct by the FBI and Justice Department toward the Trump campaign. The memo is the latest effort to build an alt-narrative that casts the FBI’s Russia probe — which became special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe — as a Deep State Coup to remove Trump from power.

Trump’s goons have been demanding its release.

Adam Schiff says the memo is bullshit.

“It’s highly distorted spin by Nunes,” Schiff told me. “The Nunes spin memo distorts the underlying materials and has presented Members

Speaking of people saying that comments not directed at them are Inoffensive, there’s also Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas.

No one “expressed offense” during a recent Oval Office meeting on immigration where President Donald Trump allegedly used the term “shithole countries” to describe Africa, said Senator Tom Cotton, a shift from comments he made last week.

“I was not offended,” Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Nobody in the meeting expressed their offense.”

That’s so stupid it’s almost funny. The fact that white Republican Tom Cotton was not “offended” by Trump’s racist dismissal of all of Africa really tells us nothing about what we should think of Trump’s racist dismissal of all of Africa. If … Read the rest

From the Committee to Protect Journalists:

Sao Paulo, January 19, 2018–Authorities in the Brazilian state of Goiás must undertake a thorough investigation into the murder of local radio show host Jefferson Pureza Lopes, and bring those responsible to justice, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Lopes was killed on the night of January 17 when two men drove on motorcycles to his house in Edealina, a town of around 4,000 people southwest of Brasilia, and shot him dead as he was sitting near a half-open door watching television, police and news reports said.

Friends and colleagues told the local news site Globo and CPJ that Lopes, who was frequently critical of local politicians on his radio show, faced

Robert Reich hours before the shutdown:

I was Secretary of Labor during the first government shutdown in 1996, and, believe me, it’s not pretty. I recall people in tears because they wouldn’t be able to pay their bills, piles of unopened letters, uncollected data, frustrated workers, a mystified and angry public.

What happens when the government shuts down? Millions of people who work for the government are put on unpaid furlough. They don’t get their paychecks, and will never be repaid for the time lost. Millions of federal contractors are also left out in the cold. Essential government functions protecting public health and safety continue, but much of the enforcement of government regulations comes to a grinding halt.

Congressional

Trump and his gang are “getting tough” on immigrants and getting results…results like locking up a busy doctor in an area with a shortage of doctors due partly to the spike in flu cases.

Lukasz Niec was 5 years old when his parents brought him and his sister to the United States from Poland. With two suitcases in tow, his parents — both doctors — left behind a country on the verge of social turmoil. It was 1979, about two years before the country’s authoritarian communist government declared martial law.

Niec received a temporary green card and, in 1989, became a lawful permanent resident. He grew up in Michigan, went to medical school, became a doctor, and raised a daughter

Russia still helping.

As lawmakers wage a messaging war over who caused the government shutdown, Republicans and the White House are getting a big boost in their efforts to blame Democrats for the mess ― from the Russians.

#SchumerShutdown ― the hashtag that GOP leaders and the White House are using to accuse Democrats of causing the shutdown ― on Sunday night became the top trending hashtag being promoted by Russian bots and trolls on Twitter, according to the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a project led by former top national security officials from both parties.

…

#SchumerShutdown has surpassed #ReleaseTheMemo as the highest trending hashtag among Russian influence campaigns. They seized on that hashtag earlier this month in an

Making America great again? Maybe not so much.

The US has suffered a jarring “crash” in trust in its institutions in the first year of the Trump presidency, according to a new study, with its elites now as disparaging as the wider public of government, business and media.  The collapse in trust seen in the US was the most stark any country has seen in the 17-year history of the Edelman Trust Barometer, a survey of 33,000 people in 28 countries, and came despite a growing economy, stock markets hitting record highs and a president vowing to make America great again.

It’s not surprising, is it. Our inability to function is right out there in the open for all … Read the rest

The Times has pictures from women’s marches all over the planet. I find them quite moving.

Jackson, Mississippi:

Elijah Baylis/The Clarion-Ledger, via Associated Press

San Francisco:

Jim Wilson/The New York Times… Read the rest

From the AAUP (American Association of University Professors), a story by Joshua Cuevas about the lengths far-right cyberbullies will go to harm people they perceive as enemies.

A 2017 Pew poll regarding Americans’ views on higher education, specifically those of Republicans, should alarm educators and, indeed, all citizens. Pew found that nearly 60 percent of Republicans currently believe that colleges and universities are having a negative effect on the country. One would expect that most parents would want their children to complete some form of postsecondary education, if only out of concern for their future earning potential. But among many on the right there is a pal­pable hostility toward the basic concept of higher education, as if college attendance made

From Boston Common:

Twitter

 … Read the rest

By the way, if you're wondering why coverage of the huge marches yesterday seems kind of muted, it's because those hundreds of thousands weren't sitting in diners in small-town America, and therefore don't count. Also many of them were women.

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) January 21, 2018

CNN reports:

Thousands of demonstrators gathered in cities across the United States on Sunday for a second day of Women’s Marches, calling for equality and respect while urging supporters to make their voices heard by voting in this year’s midterm elections.

Sunday’s marches were held one year from the day hundreds of thousands of women, donning pink hats, took to the streets of Washington in a stunning display of resistance to President

One wag issued instructions yesterday on what women at the women’s marches were allowed to think.

I also want to stress that if you do attend, it is CRUICIAL that you do with an INTERSECTIONAL mindset. Centering reproductive systems at the heart of these demonstrations is reductive and exclusionary.

The replies are a tad caustic. One included this eloquent cartoon.

… Read the rest

And in case you’re thinking it’s just the Coastal Elites aka Jews & feminazis – behold Omaha.

Chris Machian/The World Herald

The little girls carried signs and clutched pink balloons. They perched atop their fathers’ shoulders and walked alongside their mothers. They joined in chants of “This is what democracy looks like!” and “Strong women, strong world!”

They were among the youngest of the more than 8,000 people of all ages who marched through downtown Omaha on Saturday for the 2018 Omaha Women’s March. Last year’s local march, held the day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, drew 12,000.

Sweat, Donnie.… Read the rest

President Pussygrabber is attacking Planned Parenthood now.

U.S. health officials on Friday said they were revoking legal guidance issued by the Obama Administration that had sought to discourage states from trying to defund organizations that provide abortion services, such as Planned Parenthood.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) officials also said the department is issuing a new regulation aimed at protecting healthcare workers’ civil rights based on religious and conscience objections.

The regulation protects the rights of healthcare workers [to refrain] from providing abortion, euthanasia, and sterilization, the officials said during a media call with reporters.

But refusing to do one’s job is not a civil right. If you don’t want to be involved in abortions then … Read the rest