The BBC reports further developments in the Benjamin Cohen/Anthony James story.

PinkNews director Dr Anthony James has been suspended from his job in the NHS, after a BBC News investigation heard allegations of sexual misconduct at the publisher.

Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said they made the decision to suspend Dr James from his role as associate non-executive director pending further information.

…

Following the publication of the investigation, more than 10 former PinkNews staff members have come forward to share their experiences of working there.

Their good experiences of working there, or the other kind?

Is sanity slowly creeping back?

Puberty blockers for under-18s with gender dysphoria will be banned indefinitely in the UK after experts warned of an “unacceptable safety risk”.

The government said that following recommendations from independent medical professionals, existing emergency measures banning the sale and supply of the drugs outside of clinical trials will stay in place.

Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting said there was a need to “act with caution” and “follow the expert advice” in caring for this “vulnerable group of young people”.

Of course both sides of this dispute consider the young people vulnerable, but they seem them as vulnerable to different perils. To the trans ideologues they’re vulnerable to the evil transphobes who want to deprive them of the joy of changing sex. To the trans skeptics they’re vulnerable to trans ideologues who want to convert them.

It apparently didn’t occur to Peter Tatchell that we can all see the quoted bit and the image. They don’t mention any T+.

We can see it. We can read it. It’s right there in the Working Class History tweet. Lesbians & Gays support the miners. NO T IS MENTIONED.

I can’t get past this truth thing. I can’t get past the fact that official bodies are telling us we have to lie about who is a woman and who is not. The IPSO ruling makes it horribly clear that we are under orders to lie. How did we get here?

IPSO itself is incoherent.

Relevant Clause Provisions

Clause 1 (Accuracy)

i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information or images, including headlines not supported by the text.

So, surely, the press must take care not to publish assertions that some men are women.

And yet:

Findings of the Committee

9. The Committee first considered whether the article had breached Clause 1 in reporting that the complainant, who has a Gender Recognition Certificate, was “a man who claim[ed] to be a woman”.

10. When making its decision, the Committee had regard to the context: this was a comment piece, clearly distinguished as such by the inclusion of the columnist’s prominent byline, author’s illustration, and the tone, which expressed the author’s opinions of Nicola Sturgeon and her stance on transgender rights. The publication had explained that the author held gender critical views and asserted that these constituted a philosophical belief and were therefore protected under the Equality Act 2010.

But all that should be beside the point! The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, therefore the press should not be publishing claims that men can be women, nor should it be publishing specific claims by specific men that they are women, because they are not. It’s a question of truth. It’s not true that men can be women. It’s not true that trans women are women. It’s not true that Juno Dawson is a woman because he has a damn certificate.

The Press, while free to editorialise and campaign, must distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture and fact.

Yes and it must also distinguish between lies and truth, between fantasy and reality.

I’m studying the IPSO ruling, and one item jumps out at me.

4. The complainant said the article breached Clause 12 as she considered the claim that she was “a man who claim[ed] to be a woman” to be discriminatory as she legally changed her gender in 2018. The complainant considered she was deliberately misgendered with the intention being to offend her.

No no no no no. That’s what they refuse to get – or what they pretend not to get. The intent is not to “offend” him. It’s not about him. The intent is to say what’s true. The intent is to reject a major societal lie. The intent is to refuse all these orders to pretend a lie is true. The intent is to go on being able to talk about women without being constantly interrupted by men pretending to be women.

The vanity and narcissism and self-obsession keep announcing themselves. You’d think the “activists” would want to hide all that, wouldn’t you, but no, it’s their party piece.

Sometimes one branch of progressive awareness cancels out another branch of progressive awareness, revealing a hierarchy of disprivilege.

For example, the government of Northern Ireland on period products:

Period inequality contributes to the poor mental health and wellbeing experience of those who are unable to access the basic health essentials of period products. This is a growing issue particularly in light of the increased cost of living.

Period products are essential items for personal care to address a normal biological need and should therefore be available to everyone who needs them, regardless of their economic status.

First two paragraphs, and already the problem is obvious. The people who wrote this get that women and girls are disadvantaged by heavy bleeding between the legs every month, but they also get that they’re not allowed to call girls and women “girls and women.”

It can’t be done, chums. You can’t draw our attention to a handicap particular to women and girls while refusing to mention women and girls.

Those two dirty words never appear in this government summary of provision of free period products.

To address this gap the Period Products (Free Provision) Act (NI) was made by the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2022 and requires that period products will be made available from May 2024. The requirements of the Act go beyond seeking to make provision for those in financial difficulty. Rather, as stated above, there is a recognition that period products are necessary and essential items that should be available free of charge and accessible by all persons who need to use them.

This consultation seeks your views on how best the Executive Office (TEO) can ensure that period products are “obtainable free of charge” by “all persons who need to use them”, “while in Northern Ireland”.

My view: step one: delete “persons”; substitute “women and girls.”

Too late, of course; the consultation is over.

Michael Gove, the new editor of The Spectator, on truth and prejudicial or pejorative reference:

On 21 May this year we published an article by the brilliant writer Gareth Roberts headlined ‘The sad truth about “saint” Nicola Sturgeon’. Gareth was reporting on the former Scottish first minister’s appearance at a literary festival in Sussex. Ms Sturgeon was discussing the controversies which had attended her time in office – including her views on independence and gender recognition laws. Gareth noted that she ‘was interviewed by writer Juno Dawson, a man who claims to be a woman, and so the conversation naturally turned to gender’. 

Dawson complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation aka Ipso.

It was claimed the words were inaccurate, a breach of section 1 of the Editor’s Code, which governs inaccuracy; a breach of section 3, which covers harassment; and a breach of section 12.1, which holds that ‘The press must avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual’s race, colour, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or to any physical or mental illness or disability’. 

Ipso found there was no breach of section 1 or 3. Gareth’s words were not inaccurate and were not harassment. But Ipso concluded they were a breach of section 12.1. In its judgment, the article had included a reference to the complainant’s gender identity that the committee considered to be both pejorative and prejudicial.

As a general thing that is of course entirely possible. It can be true that someone is X and still be pejorative and prejudicial to say so. Imagine a dialogue:

“Why didn’t I get the promotion?”

“You’re a woman.”

But the thing about trans ideology is that there is no context in which it’s permissible to tell the truth about the sex of a person who claims to be trans. It’s never not seen as a provocation or insult or act of aggression.

The committee had expressed its concern that this reference was personally belittling and demeaning toward the complainant.

But that’s because the ideology has ruled that any and all such reference is personally belittling and demeaning. We don’t ever get to say it, even though it’s true.

Respecting the right of people to live as they wish, and exercising consideration and sensitivity towards them, is a virtue.

Well, that depends. What if people wish to live as murderers or rapists or abusers of children? What if men wish to live as women and thus take their jobs, promotions, prizes, competitions, and even their feminism? Gender ideology has taught us that there is no blanket rule that people have “a right to live as they wish.” As with most things, it depends.

Society has, understandably, sought to accommodate and make changes to ensure people who wish to live as trans women, even though they were born biological males, have every opportunity to find the happiness they seek in their assumed identity.

Quite so, and that’s a problem. It’s not all that “understandably” when you pause to remember that it entails giving away everything women have been fighting for for the last half-century and more.

The BBC takes a break from promoting trans ideology to report on the pair of bullies who run Pink News:

The couple who run PinkNews, the world’s largest LGBT news website, have been accused by staff of multiple incidents of sexual misconduct.

Several former staff members told the BBC they saw Anthony James, a director at the UK-based company and husband of its founder, kissing and touching a junior colleague who they say appeared too drunk to consent.

And more than 30 current and former members of staff said a culture of heavy drinking led to instances when founder Benjamin Cohen and his husband behaved inappropriately towards younger male employees.

I’m sure they identify as having behaved flawlessly.

Run by family members of Mr Cohen – his husband and former GP Dr James is chief operating officer, and his father Richard is the chief lawyer – PinkNews says its mission is “to inform, inspire change and empower people to be themselves”.

I didn’t know Pink News was a family op. I thought it was…you know…a news outlet, like other news outlets.

…multiple former staff members have told the BBC they had experienced bullying and sexual misconduct which made some of them feel unsafe to be alone around Mr Cohen and Dr James. Allegations of misogyny have also emerged and several people told us that some young female members of staff had been asked to act as the couple’s surrogates.

That is disgusting. The surrogacy craze is disgusting, and this illustrates why. Women are not machines that can be rented for purposes of gestating other people’s babies.

As well as interviewing 33 people who worked at PinkNews between 2017 and 2024, we have also seen a variety of evidence including official written complaints, private emails and WhatsApp messages sharing staff members’ concerns, plus doctors’ records referring to stress and mental health struggles attributed to the work environment at PinkNews.

Other than that, it’s been a fun ride.

Originally a comment by Sackbut on How about panvomit?

The city of Prattville AL is near Montgomery, and is populated by a lot of people who decided that Montgomery is too dangerous and crime-ridden. (Prattville is 73% white, compared to 29% in Montgomery; make of it what you will.) A common sentiment is that they don’t want to go to Montgomery for any reason, because of the danger. The city had a municipal Christmas parade recently, and Prattville Pride had a float. The city was not going to allow the float, because, they said, there were threats, and it would be dangerous.

At this point, liberal columnist Josh Moon chimed in, with a mostly well-put column about the cowardly actions of the city government. Clearly the Prattville police could not be spared to guard the parade, because they were busy fighting all the crimes in Prattville. So Montgomery residents are advised not to go to Prattville, because it’s too dangerous. Har, good turnabout.

Now, we know about the nature of the national Pride organization, and how it pushes “trans” everything at the expense of actually representing gay and lesbian constituencies. I don’t know Prattville Pride, but I assume they are not especially distinct from the national organization. Certainly there is a lot of trans advocacy in the area. But I agree that there is no particular reason Pride should not have had a float in the Christmas parade; I have more problems with there being a municipal Christmas parade in the first place. So long as other groups that might disagree are welcome, and they were, I don’t object.

A federal court intervened and required Prattville to allow the Pride float. The Catholic Church also was going to have a float (more reason I don’t like the idea of a municipal Christmas parade), but the Church decided to withdraw their float because of the presence of the Pride float. The parade happened, there were no problems.

Back to Josh Moon. He is very much captured by gender ideology, and he does not understand the nature of the opposition. What I find especially irritating about his viewpoint is something that he expresses on some other issues as well: those who disagree with him are derided as simply bigots of some variety or another, or perhaps all bigots are the same, and he has no interest in trying to understand where those opponents are coming from. On the parade issue, Moon posted on Facebook a transcript of a comment or a message from someone (I’ll call this the “correspondent”) who gave a very calm and reasonable explanation about their opposition to the Pride float, along with some opinions about keeping certain books out of the hands of small children, and keeping drag queens from reading stories or giving shows to young children. I don’t agree with everything this person said, but I agree with a lot of it, and I thought it was perfectly politely worded and well-expressed. The correspondent also complained about being called a bigot for expressing these opinions. How did Moon respond? By mocking the correspondent with something like “DoNT cAlL mE a BigOt”, and failing to address the actual statements in any way. The response seemed to me totally uncalled for and the opposite of what I’d expect from a decent journalist. He’s usually much better than this.

Aaaand we’re off.

Former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney has clapped back at [retorted to] President-elect Donald Trump after he threatened to imprison her and other members on the congressional committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, Capitol riots.

In an interview on NBC’s Meet The Press that aired Sunday morning, Trump claimed that Cheney, along with a “committee of political thugs” deleted all the evidence from their investigation.

Another four years of endless stupid lying.

“Cheney did something that’s inexcusable, along with Thompson and the people on the un-select committee of political thugs and, you know, creeps,” the President-elect said, referring to Mississippi Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (the committee’s chairman). “They deleted and destroyed all evidence.”

…

In a statement reported by The New York Times, Cheney responded to Trump’s claims, describing them as an “assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.”

“Here is the truth: Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power,” Cheney said. “He mobilized an angry mob and sent them to the United States Capitol, where they attacked police officers, invaded the building and halted the official counting of electoral votes. Trump watched on television as police officers were brutally beaten and the Capitol was assaulted, refusing for hours to tell the mob to leave.

This was the worst breach of our Constitution by any president in our nation’s history,” she continued. “Donald Trump’s suggestion that members of Congress who later investigated his illegal and unconstitutional actions should be jailed is a continuation of his assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.”

And we can’t get rid of him.

He makes us all dirty.

The ACLU insists that “Gender-Affirming Care is Essential” – which is ridiculous.

The whole notion of “gender-affirming care” is silly jargon, in the first place. By “gender” they mean voluntary changeable personality label, and by “care” they mean medical care. There is no genuinely medical care for personality labels, because personality is not a medical issue to begin with.

There’s no such thing as gender-affirmation so there’s no such thing as medical care labeled “gender affirmation.” Deluded narcissistic people obsessed with their own glorious personalities don’t need surgeries or cross-sex hormones, they need to think better. They need to peel away the layers of trendy and pseudo-political and fake-lefty and histrionic junk that has built up in their brains.

Families should not be forced to move out of their home state to access the care their child needs. 

Indeed they shouldn’t, but trying to change a child’s sex is not care and their child emphatically does not need it. Their child needs to be safe from it.

Many don’t have the resources to move, and those who do should not have to leave their jobs, family, and community behind in search of essential health care.

It’s not health care, so it’s not essential, and in fact what’s essential is to be protected from it.

Sadism or stupidity or both?

A trans-identified male serving a life sentence for murder who was quietly transferred in to a women’s prison is now sharing a shower with female inmates, causing them to feel “violated.” Bradley Richard Sirvio, 53, was transferred into Minnesota women’s prison MCF-Shakopee at the end of last year after claiming to identify as transgender and adopting the name “Aurora.”

In November of 1995, Sirvio beat a man to death with a hammer before setting the victim’s house on fire. According to court records, Sirvio was checking himself into a detoxification center when he “volunteered to a staff member during the intake process that he may have murdered someone named George and then set the house on fire to cover up what he had done.”

So, clearly, the Minnesota prison system has every reason to think it’s a good idea to put him in a women’s prison so that he can terrorize them instead of the poor helpless people in the men’s prison.

Sirvio has several other convictions that include multiple charges of assault, burglary, and theft. He was quietly transferred to MCF-Shakopee, Minnesota’s only women’s prison, in November of 2023. The move was made a full five months ahead of the date that a newly-drafted gender identity prison policy was set to take effect, meaning that the state of Minnesota voluntarily chose to transfer Sirvio.

Well, even states like a good joke.

He hasn’t had any surgeries. He was put in a women’s wing that has only one shower. There’s no lock on the shower door.

[Sirvio] added that since he was moved into MCF-Shakopee, female prison staff, rather than male guards, are required to perform strip searches and pat downs on his person. This is done as a result of the new gender identity policy, which states, “pat and unclothed body searches of incarcerated people who are transgender, gender diverse, intersex, or nonbinary must be done in accordance with the gender of the facility in which they are assigned… Incarcerated people who are transgender, gender diverse, intersex, or nonbinary may request that they receive pat or unclothed body searches from security staff of a specific gender.”

While women may not have a shower to themselves.

Commenting on Lusk’s transfer last November, Aaron Swanum with the Minnesota DOC remarked, “Minnesota has now joined 10 other states and the District of Columbia in approving transfers to facilities matching an inmate’s gender identity. The DOC is committed to providing supportive and safe environments for people of all gender identities and our new policy reflects this commitment.”

No no no no no it isn’t. That’s not true at all. The DOC is all too clearly not committed to providing supportive and safe environments for people whose genner idenninny is just the boring old woman variety. Fake women get those supportive and safe environments at the expense of actual women.

Trump doesn’t have a great big huge sky-concealing mandate. He barely has a grocery list.

On Election Night, with characteristic modesty, Donald Trump claimed an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.” He certainly won the contest legitimately, if more narrowly than many observers initially thought. With nearly all the votes counted, the most complete tabulation, from Cook Political Report, shows Trump’s popular-vote margin over Kamala Harris has dropped from around 3 percent on the evening of November 5 (or about two-thirds of Joe Biden’s margin in 2020) to 1.47 percent (about one-third of Biden’s margin) today. That’s also about 0.6 percent smaller than Hillary Clinton’s national popular-vote margin over Trump in 2016. To make some other comparisons: Barack Obama won the popular vote by 3.9 percent in 2012 and 7.2 percent in 2008, and George W. Bush won the popular vote by 2.4 percent in the very close 2004 election.

…

Given that perilous hold on power, Trump might want to reconsider his current strategy of ruling Washington like a devastated and occupied enemy city with a Cabinet largely composed of men and women who appear to intensely dislike the departments and agencies they are supposed to oversee, in addition to a governing plan that may rely on testing the tolerance of the federal judiciary for totally unparalleled assertions of supreme presidential powers. And Trump’s MAGA activists should also cool their jets a bit. There’s certainly a degree of triumphalism in the air that really isn’t justified by the election returns.

Well, Trump might want to do that, in another universe, if he were a completely different person, but in this one, of course he won’t. When does he ever? He just says what he wants to say and does what he wants to do until/unless forcibly prevented. He doesn’t pause to consider the odds or ponder the realities, he just says and does whatever he wants. That’s all there is to The Story of Trump.

You know, we’re told, endlessly and loudly, that trans is innate, it’s built-in, it’s real, it’s an infallible inner sense.

Well then why is it being advertised?

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Which twin has the propaganda coup?

From the article

But Alito, true to form, did not confine his opining to the notion that discrimination against trans people does not count as sex-based discrimination: he went on to suggest that trans people are not quite real, peppering Strangio, in a scene that seemed intended to humiliate the trans attorney, with questions about whether trans identity was truly an “immutable” characteristic.

Well, is it? The Supreme Court could have called upon Sally Hines as a hostile witness. She has authoritatively* written

‘Gender identity refers to each person’s internal sense of being male, female, a combination of the two, or neither; it is a core part of who people know themselves to be.’

‘Genderfluid people experience their gender identity as changing over time or between different situations.’

‘Agender people identify as having no gender, or feel that their gender is absent or neutral.’

Doesn’t sound very immutable to me. And, given Donegan’s dishonest framing (see OP above), I wouldn’t trust her characterization of any of these proceedings. From the context, I’m guessing that Alito was doubtful if transness is “real” or “immutable” not that people claiming to be trans aren’t “real” . There is a big difference, and one which transactivists (and captured journalists) have a history of confusing and substituting. It’s the familiar trans cry wolf tactic of accusing critics of gender ideology of denying trans people’s “right to exist.” But refusing to accept a given putative explanation or hypothesis for some human behaviour or characteristic does not negate the existence of anyone. If it did, rejection of astrology would entail the denial of the right of all human beings to exist, as nobody is really a “Scorpio,” or a “Leo,” or anything else in astrological terms, because astrology is crap. That doesn’t mean that people born in the time periods ascribed to those “star signs,” or any other, somehow don’t exist, just that astrology’s explanatory scheme is invalid. Nobody makes that kind of “genocidal” accusation in regards to the defence of the validity of astrology, but trans activists mischaracterize any pushback against gender ideology in exactly this way all the time, having successfully used this excuse to float their “NO DEBATE” strategy for years. Here, it looks like Donegan is doing more of the same.

And as for “politicizing” and “weaponizing” trans “kids”, trans activists have been doing this for years, using them as human shields to deflect attention from the white male fetishists and unethical “clinicians” leading the trans “movement.” Even calling these disphoric children “trans kids” is political, because it’s jumping immediately from whatever type or degree of sexual or “identity” discomfort they might have, to a diagnosis of “born in the wrong body” that is supposedly only treatable through drastic pharmeceutical interventions and extreme body modification. This leap of terminology, and its accompanying rush to irreversible “treatments,” allows activists to ignore the existence of desistance, which would reduce the numbers of supposedly “trans” youth by approximately 75%, robbing the movement of future, committed activists, and the clinicians life-long customers. What was that about “innateness” and “immutability” again? One gets the distinct impression that the haste involved in pushing these children into the gender abbatoir is in order to prevent desistance. They don’t want these children to get away. Why else outlaw the “talk therapy” that would aid children’s personal growth and acceptance of their bodies just as they are as “conversion therapy”? Why else enforce “affirmation only” as the sole path of therapy? Why condemn so many children to a lifelong debilitation that they could have avoided by just growing up? If that’s not politicization and weaponization of children, I don’t know what is.

So there’s actually a whole lot of truth behind the (supposedly) “right wing” accusation of “They’re coming for your kids!” It turns out that they are. If not their actual bodies, then at least their minds. On the flag pole of the public school just a few blocks from where I live, more often thanot, “Pride Day/Week?Month or not, the “Pride Progress” flag flies right beneath the Canadian one. (And this is the “Intersex Inclusive” version with the yellow triangle and purple circle at the left hnd edge. Even though “intersex” is considered to be an inaccurate and offensive term for DSD conditions. That doesn’t matter if the old, inaccurate term is usefull to trans activism.) The teaching of important civic virtues such as tolerance and respect is being used as cover for teaching bullshit.)

And in the end there’s always this:

That’s so distorted it borders on lying. It’s not “organized animus” to try to stop people mutilating children at the behest of an ideology that claims sex is switchable. The rage is not, of course, directed at the children, but at the adults messing up the children’s bodies. Donegan can’t really be unaware of that.

What’s in it for her? What’s in it for the Guardian? What can trans activism give them in return for their souls? How can they not see the destructive, misogynistic, regressive, and fundamentally dishonest movement. In the normal course of events, you’d have expected crusading, investigative reporters and their courageous, supporting editors to sink their teeth into this kind story of a broad, multi-institutional, mutually-reinforcing, corruption rather than become cheerleaders and apologists for it. But what’s in the trough for them?

*Or at least as “authoritative” as anyone can get in the fields of Unicorn Husbandry, or the biogeography of Snarks

Oh come on.

The US Department of Health and Human Services seems to have accidentally hired a befuddled teenager to do its social media messaging.

National Organization for Women aka NOW being incloosive of men in the category “women” again.

Guess how many times I’ve shared a bathroom with a trans person? No clue, because I just mind my own business.

Oh yes? Does it work the same way with “man”? Would NOW proudly smirk “Guess how many times I’ve shared a public toilet with a man? No clue, because I just mind my own business”? Would NOW tell us to guess how many times a man has followed them late at night and NOW wasn’t worried about it at all?

NOW doesn’t like it when we push back.

NOW has “limited who can comment on this post.” Of course it has. Women who know that men are not women are The Enemy, while men who say they are women are the pampered cuddled darlings. So there is no actual national organization for women any more, because the one that has the name is not for women.

Take back the night 4 men.

Guardian US columnist Moira Donegan waves the flag for Magic Gender:

The politicization of transgender children in the US is one of the most astounding coups of propaganda and organized animus in recent history. Rarely has so much attention and rage been directed at such a minuscule number of people, and more rarely, still, have those people been the most vulnerable and blameless among us: kids and teens.

That’s so distorted it borders on lying. It’s not “organized animus” to try to stop people mutilating children at the behest of an ideology that claims sex is switchable. The rage is not, of course, directed at the children, but at the adults messing up the children’s bodies. Donegan can’t really be unaware of that.

The first state to pass a ban on transition-related care for minors was Arkansas, in April 2021; less than four years later, more than half of states have such a ban on the books.

It’s not care. It’s tampering at best and destruction at worst. There is no “transition” so “transition-related care” is not care; it’s a horrible mistake.

These changes in public attitudes towards trans youth – from a broad if imperfect sentiment of tolerance to a widespread and politically weaponized attitude of hostility toward a small minority of kids – did not emerge by accident. It was the product of a deliberate, conscious effort to radicalize large swaths of the United States, and significant chunks of state policy, into a hostility towards a few children.

It’s just a lie to claim that not mutilating children is hostility toward those children. Nobody is trying to “radicalize” people into hostility towards the children being mutilated.

Donegan should be embarrassed to have written this dishonest crap.

Now there’s a headline.

Syrian government falls in stunning end to 50-year rule of Assad family

(If only we could say the same about the Trump family.)

The Syrian government fell early Sunday in a stunning end to the 50-year rule of the Assad family after a sudden rebel offensive sprinted across government-held territory and entered the capital in 10 days.

Syrian state television aired a video statement by a group of men saying that President Bashar Assad has been overthrown and all detainees in jails have been set free.

…

Soldiers and police officers left their posts and fled, and looters broke into the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense.

“My feelings are indescribable,” said Omar Daher, a 29-year-old lawyer. “After the fear that he (Assad) and his father made us live in for many years, and the panic and state of terror that I was living in, I can’t believe it.”

Daher said his father was killed by security forces and his brother was in detention, his fate unknown. Assad “is a criminal, a tyrant and a dog,” he said.”

Then again…

The rebels’ moves into Damascus came after the Syrian army withdrew from much of southern part of the country, leaving more areas, including several provincial capitals, under the control of opposition fighters.

The advances in the past week were by far the largest in recent years by opposition factions, led by a group that has its origins in al-Qaida and is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the United Nations.

Dictatorship or theocracy…kind of a narrow menu.