Category: Notes and Comment Blog

  • Not on my watch!

    People can be so absurd. Some of them think just saying loudly that you won’t let anything go wrong=nothing will go wrong.

    A transcript from a key meeting at the firm behind the ill-fated Titan submersible has revealed the CEO said in 2018: “No-one is dying under my watch – period.”

    Like that. He couldn’t know that. Bravado isn’t magic. The fact that it was his watch was not a magic safety guarantee. Saying “period” was not a magic safety guarantee.

    It captures a heated exchange between OceanGate chief Stockton Rush and his former director of marine operations, David Lochridge, plus three other staff.

    The log shows Mr Lochridge raised safety concerns, to which Rush responded: “I have no desire to die… I think this is one of the safest things I will ever do.”

    But people who knew anything about it knew it was one of the least safe things he could do. The dangers were well known and very real.

    People can and do convince themselves of anything. Men can be women and a submersible won’t implode under pressure of 375–400 atmospheres.

  • All she got

    Fella wants to make what he considers “spewing bigotry” a jail-worthy crime.

    It’s a crime to “spew” what he considers “vile hate speech” but it’s not a crime to throw soup over people.

    An additional peculiarity is that he considers it “vile hate speech” to say that a man is not a woman.

    It’s interesting that he has no understanding of human rights or freedom of speech, and that he thinks men can be women. Wrong on the concepts and wrong on the facts.

  • Remains

    There’s a roiling controversy over whether or not there are mass graves of indigenous children in Kamloops, BC.

    The revelation convulsed all of Canada.

    Ground-penetrating radar had found possible signs of 215 unmarked graves at a former residential school in British Columbia run by the Catholic Church that the government had once used to assimilate Indigenous children forcibly taken from their families.

    It’s not as if the Catholic church and its ways with abandoned or poor or otherwise despised and powerless children have always been benevolent and helpful. I say that with deep sarcasm, because the Catholic church has notoriously treated such children with sadistic contempt and brutality. And it has sometimes simply thrown the ones who died in their “care” into garbage pits. Remember the mass grave recently discovered at Tuam?

    Back to Kamloops:

    It was the first of some 80 former schools where indications of possible unmarked graves were discovered, and it produced a wave of sorrow and shock in a country that has long struggled with the legacy of its treatment of Indigenous people.

    But no physical remains have yet been found.

    While there is a broad consensus in Canada that children were taken from their families and died in these schools, as the discussions and searches have dragged on, a small universe of conservative Catholic and right-wing activists have become increasingly vocal in questioning the existence of unmarked graves. They are also skeptical of the entire national reconsideration of how Canada treated Indigenous people.

    Stop right there.

    Finding or not finding unmarked graves is one thing, and how Canada treated indigenous people is quite another. (The same applies to how the US treated indigenous people.)

    “There’s, so far, no evidence of any remains of children buried around residential schools,” Tom Flanagan, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Calgary and an author of “Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth About Residential Schools),” said in an interview.

    “Nobody disputes,” he added, “that children died and that the conditions were sometimes chaotic. But that’s quite different from clandestine burials.”

    “Chaotic.” Now there’s an exculpatory word. Also the indirect, agentless “conditions were” is an evasive tactic. It was worse than “chaotic” and it was people who did it. It wasn’t some vague thing that just happened, it was a system.

    Murray Sinclair, a former judge who headed the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate the residential schools system, estimates that at least 10,000 students never made it home from the schools, which were established by the government and operated from the 1880s to the 1990s.

    During that period the Canadian government forcibly removed at least 150,000 Indigenous children from their communities and sent them to residential schools, most of which were run by the Roman Catholic Church. Indigenous languages and cultural practices were forbidden, sometimes using force.

    And when the children died the government refused to pay to return their bodies to the communities where they came from.

    That’s what matters.

    For Mr. Flanagan and others who share his viewpoint, their disbelief that there are many gravesites is part of a broader argument against the key conclusion of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission: that the residential schools were a system of brutality that led to “cultural genocide.’’

    “The narrative that’s been constructed pulls out all the bad stories and retails those and minimizes the benefit of residential schools,” Mr. Flanagan said, adding that converting Indigenous people in nations colonized by Europeans to Christianity and eradicating their cultures was once common worldwide.

    Why yes, it was, and that was a bad thing.

  • Holocaust not diverse enough shocker

    In which we learn that fables about the Holocaust are “controversial books by white male authors” and need to be replaced by books that are “more representative.”

  • What is a Graduate Associate?

    Solent University wants to separate itself from Ben Lindsay but it’s struggling.

    If they really want to get the facts straight, why on earth say “for a number of years” instead of just saying precisely how many years? Using the vague term suggests that they don’t know how many years it’s been, which in turn suggests that they’re just making it up.

    Anyway that’s not what he says, so it will be interesting to see what (if anything) happens next.

  • Won’t someone please think of the Brindleys?

    JKR demolished the dreadful sycophantic Times article about poor persecuted Sandy Brindley yesterday, but I just want to add a kick or two of my own, because that’s how I roll.

    After years on the wrong end of online campaigns hashtagged #BrindleyMustGo and as the subject of criticism from very prominent online warriors, Brindley, 50, has had enough. She says that she does not expect to be in her post by this time next year.

    You probably think the Times goes on to say why there are campaigns saying Brindley must go along with criticism from “very prominent online warriors” (a slightly deceptive way to describe JK Rowling). If you think that, you’re wrong. The Times never bothers to say clearly what the criticism is about.

    Her job, as head of a national body with 17 member centres, means she works with survivors, “making a change for the better in the world”. It is, she says, “wonderful in so many ways” but the flipside is the “real vulnerability” that comes from her public position.

    Yes it’s just because of her public position. It’s the publicness that’s the problem, you see, not what she did and continues to do.

    The closest the Times gets to saying why Brindley has been getting hostile attention is:

    She is at pains to stress that she will not be leaving her post because of the furore surrounding Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, where Mridul Wadhwa, a trans woman and activist, quit this month amid allegations that she harassed staff with gender-critical views. A review found that the chief executive had not grasped “the limits on her role’s authority”.

    If you don’t already know all about it, that’s a very opaque account. Where who quit? Quit what? Who is this Wadhwa person? Why was she harassing staff? Who’s the chief executive and whose role’s authority did the chief executive not grasp? A reader not already up on the subject would derive no information from that evasive paragraph. What furore? What’s it about? Who is Wadhwa? What was he doing there? Remind us who the chief executive is?

    There’s a lot more of the same. It’s annoying.

  • Not all rape activism

    While exploring Rape Crisis Edinburgh’s website I began to wonder if all UK rape crisis centers are for everyone as opposed to for women.

    A look at Rape Crisis South London promptly dispels that worry.

    Specialist South London sexual violence support for women and girls who have experienced rape and/or childhood sexual abuse.

    Boom.

    Our services are in response to the needs of survivors and the disproportionate nature of sexual violence committed by men against women and girls. We believe sexual violence to be both a cause and a consequence of gender inequality and are committed to a feminist, empowering model of working.

    Thank fuck for that.

    There is such a thing as rape of boys and of men, but that doesn’t mean that raped women can’t or shouldn’t have somewhere to go that is just for women.

    For one thing it’s men doing the raping of boys and men, and for another thing it’s nothing like the onslaught against women. Men are bigger and stronger than women, so 1. it’s much easier for men to rape women than vice versa and 2. it’s much easier for men to resist being raped than it is for women. In short men don’t need rape services the way women do, and promoting the fiction that they do is profoundly insulting to women.

    I’m relieved that some rape crisis workers understand this.

  • 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. every other Tuesday

    In case you’re thinking Edinburgh Rape Crisis has improved in the wake of all this attention –

    Who[m] We Support And Our Services

    Women only services

    We have been trans inclusive since 2008. This means that we have a diverse group of women and non-binary workers and volunteers.

    In a survivors initial meeting, the worker will give a clear overview of the services that we offer, including our trans inclusivity. This meeting will be held by a woman who has always lived as a woman and will include exploration of the type of support a survivor wishes and would benefit from. This conversation will also explore any concerns or preferences a survivor has around the support, and who they receive it from. The survivor is then supported by someone who meets their needs. It is important to us to provide safe access to all survivors of sexual violence, and we will continue to do so.  

    It’s fascinating, this sniffy from a great height pitying categorization of half the population as “women who have always lived as women.” In an organization that exists for the purpose of supporting rape victims.

    Then the real spit in the eye:

    Our women only times at our centre located at 17 Claremont Crescent are:

    • Mondays 5pm -7 pm,
    • Tuesdays 9am – 1pm,
    • Fridays 9am – 12pm/noon .

    Golly, nine whole hours every week. How very generous.

  • Dear Sandy

    Ouch. That’s gotta sting.

    I particularly like “Perhaps you should reframe your trauma.”

    I think “Dear Sandy” should become the instantly recognizable label for a decisive, lethal retort.

  • To make the campus that little bit more tolerant and friendly for everyone

    The guy who dumped soup on a woman yesterday because he doesn’t like her opinions is…you’ll never guess…in the Equality & Diversity trade. I guess it’s the “but not for you” kind of equality & diversity.

    A recent Southampton Solent graduate, I have remained at the university as their first Student Equality & Diversity associate – in short it’s my job to engage with students about their experiences of university and hopefully help to make the campus that little bit more tolerant and friendly for everyone.

    Unless they’re feminist women, in which case he’ll assault them. That little bit more tolerant and friendly for everyone.

    In my personal life I am a working stand-up comic, amateur journalist and committed social justice activist – all passions which feed into the work I am currently lucky enough to be doing.

    It’s amazing to me how glibly this goon trots out the Platitudes of Virtue while priding himself on not letting women speak up to defend our rights.

    He has a BA in comedy writing and performance.

  • How generous

    She WHAT???

    Why not just give the journalist keys to the rape victims’ front doors?

  • Soup around and find out

    He’s out on conditional bail.

    A Yorkshire man charged has been charged with assault during a demonstration in Sheffield city centre.

    Ben Lindsay, 34, of Fitzwilliam Street, Barnsley, was arrested and charged with two counts of assault by beating during a demonstration in Barkers Pool, earlier today (Saturday, September 21).

    He will appear before Sheffield Magistrates’ Court on November 25, after being released on conditional bail. South Yorkshire Police issued the following statement, it said: “Man charged with assault after incident in Sheffield city centre.”

    It’s almost as if men are not allowed to assault women for saying things the men don’t like. Is there any justice in the world?

  • Just that simple thought

    Oh for godSAKE.

    Mommy: “Frus iss noneven a question, she’s a girl, she’s a female, so of course she’d use the locker room, why would you send another female into the men’s locker room? That……it………iss juss that simple thought.”

    Not the sharpest person on the planet, but hey, she’s onboard with the ideology, so that’s what counts.

  • Brave Sir Robin ran away

    Brave 7 foot hero caught and handcuffed.

    Way taller than you mate, way taller than you.

    And that, gang, is what we call the money shot.

  • What “equality” doesn’t mean

    The Charlotte Observer:

    Liam Johns, the transgender man known for his LGBTQ activism in Charlotte and for sharing his pregnancy journey in a 2019 Charlotte Observer series, died on Sept. 14. He was 35. Johns was undergoing dialysis for kidney failure and was on the national kidney and pancreas transplant list when he passed away, said Chase Hayes, a friend and former partner, in an interview with the Observer.

    Maybe the kidney failure was nothing to do with any “trans health care” he had, I don’t know, but it’s difficult not to suspect a connection.

    In 2018, Johns gave birth to his first child with his partner at the time, who now goes by Freya. In 2022, he gave birth to their second.

    As millions of men do every day.

    Johns in 2016 protested against House Bill 2 — North Carolina’s “bathroom bill” — which said people had to use the public bathroom that matched the sex on their birth certificate.

    As people had been doing all along, until trans ideology popped up to shout that we have to do it differently now.

    “I won’t back down ’til HB2 is gone. I’m 100 percent human and deserve 100 percent equality,” Johns said in a 2016 interview with the Observer. “When our community’s lives are under attack, we stand up and fight back.”

    Yes but it’s not about equality. Nobody is saying trans people don’t deserve equality. It’s not “equality” for men to use women’s spaces or for women to use men’s. Notice, for instance, that in both of those scenarios it’s women who are at risk. Men in women’s “public bathrooms” put women at risk, and women in men’s put women at risk. See how that works? And talking about equality is irrelevant.

  • However bad our day

    Janice Turner on why men who like to look at child abuse don’t go to prison:

    Anyone shocked that Huw Edwards didn’t go to prison hasn’t been paying attention. The sentencing magistrate wasn’t dazzled by his BBC stardom or cutting him slack because of his liberal politics or long-repressed homosexuality. To put it bluntly, the newsreader’s offences were at the very bottom of the paedophile league table.

    Edwards had 41 child abuse images on his phone, seven of which were category A, the very worst kind. Compare him with other recent cases: a TV comedian found with 35,000 images on multiple devices, a rabbi from Pinner with 1,694 (189 category A), or the Chesterfield scout leader with 6,440 images (756 As). They all, like Edwards, received suspended sentences.

    In fact eight out of ten stay out of prison. That’s because there aren’t enough prisons.

    There are 850 arrests a month for child abuse image offences and, according to the child safety institute Childlight, 1.8 million British men have admitted to viewing such material online.

    It is almost entirely a guy thing, Turner says.

    The problem is not just too big for the criminal justice system to absorb but too endemic for most of us to comprehend: your old boss, your friend’s husband (who seemed such a great guy), the man who announced the Queen’s death are secretly aroused by grotesque crimes.

    Their excuses are legion. Edwards cited variously an overbearing father, attending Cardiff University not Oxbridge, a health condition that narrows his arteries and — since a woman must be culpable somehow — emotional estrangement from his wife.

    So random. He might as well have said octopus, Plato, spinach, North Dakota. What in literal hell is the connection? You’re unhappy or stressed or overworked so the solution is…to look at images of children being tortured? Not drink or coconut cream pie or drugs or long walks in beautiful scenery but…staring at tortured children? HOW DOES THAT HELP?

    How is that consoling or pleasurable or compensating or cheerfully distracting or a happy reward? How is it in any way a consolation for misery or exhaustion? I do not get it.

    But read court reports and several excuses recur: mental health, depression, overuse of prescription meds, alcohol and, above all, “stress”. At which women shake our heads, since however bad our day, we don’t think it would be improved by watching naked, terrified little girls.

    Or naked terrified little anythings. If these incomprehensible men are comforted by pictures of boys being tortured they probably also like seeing animals tortured. The rest of us, meanwhile, literally cannot bear such pictures, of boys or girls or animals or anyone sentient.

    The reason men who’d claim to be loving fathers can pore over images of abused children is because they delude themselves they’re not “real”. Professor Fry says they commonly say “but I didn’t hurt the child myself” as if it is a victimless crime. “But many survivors say that knowing their images are being traded millions of times is as traumatic as the abuse itself.” Sometimes, a clip becomes such a dark-web viral hit that grateful paedophiles send money to its creators in jail or try to track down the children who appeared in it. (If they haven’t “disappeared”, as many do.)

    Surely Huw Edwards, a man who appeared on primetime TV in millions of homes, must know better than anyone that a person on screen is human too — that they suffer, because they are as real as you.

    Screen goes dark.

  • Potage

    The tomato soup boys are at it again.

    Big man arrested.

    Sheffield, city of steel.
    Tomato soup is a badge of honor.

    Tall fella.

  • And everybody blames the Jews

    Classy, Don – he blamed Jewish voters for his hypothetical loss of the election (you know, the one that hasn’t happened yet).

    Former President Donald Trump said Thursday that “the Jewish people” would be partially to blame if he loses in November, escalating his persistent campaign trail criticism of Jewish voters and insisting that Democrats hold a “curse” over them.

    “I’m not going to call this as a prediction, but in my opinion, the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss if I’m at 40%” support in the polls, Trump told Republicans in Washington at an event billed as opposing antisemitism. “If I’m at 40, think of it, that means 60% are voting for Kamala (Harris), who, in particular, is a bad Democrat. The Democrats are bad to Israel, very bad.”

    …

    In the first of two speeches to Jewish groups on Thursday, Trump warned an audience that included GOP megadonor Miriam Adelson, who introduced him onstage, that the upcoming US election is “the most important” in Israel’s history. He claimed that the Jewish state would be “eradicated,” “wiped off the face of the earth” and “cease to exist” if Harris wins the presidency. But the former president appeared preoccupied with what he described as ingratitude from Jewish voters…

    Yeah, he gave them everything, and what did they do in return? We don’t know, because they haven’t done it yet, but let’s get good and mad at them anyway, just in case.

  • Guest post: The ridiculousness of it is inherently dangerous

    Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on You can’t turn the world upside down by forcing people to stand on their heads.

    Very cathartic comment. There’s just one eensy expansion I’d add to this bit:

    It’s not the “ridiculousness” of “identifying as something that you’re not” that’s the issue. It’s the fact that that it is unhealthy and dangerous to do so that is the problem.

    The thing is, the ridiculousness of it is per se inherently unhealthy and dangerous. Why? Because the ridiculous identification isn’t its own, separate, isolated thing. It isn’t devoid of connection to the rest of the world, as it might be if it occurred in a literal dream. No, this identification is by its nature something that affects perceptions and actions. In other words, it’s among the premises in the logic of our daily lives. And there’s a serious problem with truly ridiculous premises: the existence of even one demolishes the entire system. No, really, admit even a single contradictory premise into your logical system, and the whole thing explodes. From the premises (i) Socrates is a man and (ii) all men are mortal, we conclude that (iii) Socrates is mortal. But if we add (iv) Rachel Levine is a woman, then ex falso quodlibet Socrates is immortal and drinking bleach is a great home remedy for constipation. (And simultaneously not a great home remedy for constipation!) Accepting the ridiculous is necessarily dangerous, because it destroys our ability to recognize danger.

    It’s exactly the sort of danger that trans activists bully women and girls into accepting. Markers of possible and probable threat must be ignored, women. Repress your natural instincts for self-defense, girls. Act as if nothing is out of the ordinary when the bearded manwoman in fetish gear enters your intimate spaces. If you react at all before the actual moment of a violent attack, you prove that you’re a retrograde, transphobic bigot. You wouldn’t want to be one of them, would you? That’s a good little lady.

  • Spelling catastrophe

    The outlook is grim.

    Scientists using ice-breaking ships and underwater robots have found the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is melting at an accelerating rate and could be on an irreversible path to collapse, spelling catastrophe for global sea level rise.

    Since 2018, a team of scientists forming the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, has been studying Thwaites — often dubbed the “Doomsday Glacier” — up close to better understand how and when it might collapse.

    Their findings, set out across a collection of studies, provide the clearest picture yet of this complex, ever-changing glacier. The outlook is “grim,” the scientists said in a report published Thursday, revealing the key conclusions of their six years of research.

    Because sea level rise. Much sea level rise.

    The scientists predict the whole of Thwaites and the Antarctic Ice Sheet behind it could be gone in the 23rd Century. Even if humans stop burning fossil fuels rapidly — which is not happening — it may be too late to save it.

    It’s so not happening. What humans are doing instead is enthusiastically burning more and more and more fossil fuels, as fast as they can, before something stops them.