Also in the Times – Andrew Gilligan:

The government has said the term “pregnant woman” should not be used in a UN treaty because it “excludes” transgender people.

Feminists reacted with outrage to what they said was the latest example of “making women unmentionable” in the name of transgender equality.

The statement comes in Britain’s official submission on proposed amendments to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the UK has been a signatory since 1976. The UN treaty says a “pregnant woman” must be protected, including not being subject to the death penalty.

Yet in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office submission, Britain opposes the term “pregnant woman” because it may “exclude transgender people who have

Janice Turner in the Times considers knowing and not knowing. Albert Speer claimed not to know about the fate of all those evacuated Jews, but eventually he admitted “sensing” it.

[Gitta] Sereny replies: “You say you sensed something. But you cannot ‘sense’ in a void; ‘sensing’ is an inner realisation of knowledge. Basically if you ‘sensed’ then you knew.” Speer shakes his head and thanks God that Gitta was not prosecuting him at Nuremberg.

The same applies to that much-abused word “intuition.” Intuition is based on what we know, but in such a way that the specific sources aren’t clear to us. “Educated guess” is a much better way of saying it. Sereny is so right that you can’t “sense” … Read the rest

People who research military-civilian relations were not universally thrilled by Kelly’s talk the other day.

Kelly’s defense of Trump — beginning with a vivid description of how dead troops make their way home — turned into a lecture on how Americans do not understand the military community’s sacrifice. And it alarmed some of those who study relations between the military and society.

Former senior officials such as retired Gen. David Petraeus and retired Adm. Mike Mullen have argued that divisions between troops and civilians can exacerbate misconceptions about post-traumatic stress and make obtaining civilian employment difficult for veterans. And they have championed efforts to bridge the gaps in understanding.

Kelly’s remarks work against those efforts, said Kori Schake, a

Meanwhile Trump is getting his jollies by forcing women to have babies they don’t want to have.

Jane Doe is a 17-year-old undocumented immigrant detained in Texas who is 15 weeks pregnant and is seeking an abortion. The Constitution grants her that right, but the Trump administration is determined to subvert it as part of its war on women’s reproductive rights.

Late Friday, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled that the teenager must be allowed to have an abortion, but it gave the federal government until Oct. 31 to find her a sponsor so that the government itself does not have to arrange for the procedure.

She’s in Texas. Texas has passed a law outlawing abortion after 20 … Read the rest

Tariq Ramadan is accused of rape.

A rape and sexual assault complaint was filed on Friday in France against Swiss Islamist and Professor Tariq Ramadan by former Salafist Henda Ayari.

The complaint filed with the Rouen prosecutor’s office in northwestern France, by the Salafist turned secular activist, detailed criminal acts of rape, sexual assault, violence, harassment and intimidation, according to document reviewed by AFP.

The Liberators Association, which Henda Ayari is president of, said on Facebook that she was “a victim of something very serious several years ago” but did not reveal the name of her aggressor for safety reasons.

In her book “I Chose to be Free”, published in November 2016, she described her aggressor as Zubair.

She

Bottom line: Kelly should have apologized to Representative Frederika Wilson the minute the video surfaced. He should have admitted that he badly misrepresented what she said and did at that FBI event, and did it in a damaging harmful way. He claimed she did bad, shocking things that she didn’t do, and he claimed that he and many others there were stunned, stunned by those things – those things that she didn’t do. He’s the White House chief of staff, he said those things about a Congressional representative (and by the way a black woman, and his boss has quite a record of publicly trashing black women), he said those things that are harmful to her reputation, and they were … Read the rest

A little about hedgerows from The Wildlife Trusts:

Criss-crossing the countryside, hedgerows – long rows of bushes, often with trees rising among them – can be seen dividing up our farmland and landscapes. They may be planted or they may be the remnants of ancient wooded areas, but they are mainly used as barriers to prevent livestock from escaping from the fields or to form boundaries between parishes.

Two thirds of England has been continuously hedged for over a thousand years, so many of our older hedgerows are a window into our past. They can range in date from medieval boundaries to the results of the 19th century Enclosures Act when many of the open fields and commons were divided

Alarming.

The abundance of flying insects has plunged by three-quarters over the past 25 years, according to a new study that has shocked scientists.

Make that terrifying. That’s a huge tanking in such a short time.

Insects are an integral part of life on Earth as both pollinators and prey for other wildlife and it was known that some species such as butterflies were declining. But the newly revealed scale of the losses to all insects has prompted warnings that the world is “on course for ecological Armageddon”, with profound impacts on human society.

The new data was gathered in nature reserves across Germany but has implications for all landscapes dominated by agriculture, the researchers said.

And thus for … Read the rest

The World Health Organization has made Mugabe a “goodwill ambassador” to help deal with non-communicable diseases.

The appointment of 93-year-old Robert Mugabe will cause astonishment among many WHO member states and donors.

A goodwill ambassador may be a largely symbolic role, but the symbolism of giving it to a man whose leadership of Zimbabwe has, critics say, coincided with a collapse of its health service, and major human rights abuses, will be very unpopular.

Or to put it more bluntly than the BBC does, Mugabe is a notorious tyrant and human rights abuser, so making him any kind of “good will ambassador” for the WHO is insulting to nearly everyone on the planet.… Read the rest

And then there’s what Sarah Huckabee Sanders said about Wilson’s untruths. The Times piece reported it:

“General Kelly said he was ‘stunned’ that Representative Wilson made comments at a building dedication honoring slain F.B.I. agents about her own actions in Congress, including lobbying former President Obama on legislation,” Ms. Sanders said in a statement. “As General Kelly pointed out, if you’re able to make a sacred act like honoring American heroes about yourself, you’re an empty barrel.”

Ms. Sanders escalated the messaging a few hours later: “As we say in the South: all hat, no cattle,” she said. Ms. Wilson is known in the Capitol and in South Florida for her colorful hats.

Ms. Sanders also told a reporter who

Oh gawd. I was put off by much of John Kelly’s tirade yesterday, and Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC was downright angry at the parts that belittled Florida Representative Frederica Wilson. Now we learn that what he said about her was not true. That’s especially ugly because he said it not in passing but lingeringly and with angry emphasis. He said he’d been stunned, stunned at what she said at an event honoring two FBI agents killed on the job. He conveyed fury and disgust…and she hadn’t said it.

Video of a 2015 speech delivered by Representative Frederica S. Wilson revealed Friday that John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, misrepresented her remarks when he accused her of