From Fair Play for Women:

The Inner Court of Session in Scotland has ruled that guidance issued alongside the census, which informs transgender people they can register as male or female regardless of their legal status, was lawful.

So what does the legal system in Scotland think a census is? Just a kind of diary? A thingy where people get to tell us about their innermost selves? While we pay no attention because we’re too busy talking about our own innermost selves?

It seems pretty silly to throw away money on a “census” that isn’t a census, and it also seems pretty silly to have an inaccurate “census” – that isn’t a census because it permits counterfactual answers.

This means that the census in Scotland in 2022 will not collect clear and reliable data on sex.

In the words of the Scottish Government’s counsel “the census is a ten yearly collection of data from the population used to inform strategic policy and allocation of resources and understanding of the country’s population”. The ability of public authorities and researchers to use the data from this year’s census for this purpose has now been damaged.

It’s a collection of data – not a collection of fee-fees. You can’t inform policy and allocate resources and understand the country’s population if you tell people “Go ahead and lie about yourself on the census.”

Awwww nuts.

The two prosecutors leading the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into former President Donald J. Trump and his business practices abruptly resigned on Wednesday amid a monthlong pause in their presentation of evidence to a grand jury, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The stunning development comes not long after the high-stakes inquiry appeared to be gaining momentum, and throws its future into serious doubt.

The prosecutors, Carey R. Dunne and Mark F. Pomerantz, submitted their resignations after the new Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, indicated to them that he had doubts about moving forward with a case against Mr. Trump, the people said.

There’s still the state case, but nuts all the same.The more cases the better.

The pause coincides with an escalation in the activity of a parallel civil inquiry by the New York state attorney general, Letitia James, whose office is examining some of the same conduct by Mr. Trump….Mr. Trump has disputed the notion that he inflated his property values or defrauded his lenders, and has accused Mr. Bragg and Ms. James, both Democrats who are Black, of being politically motivated and “racists.”

Ah yes, racism, which is when black prosecutors investigate white trumps.

David Aaronovich looks at a disparate (not to say eccentric) group of populist Putin fans/NATO dislikers.

There’s Stop the War, Nigel Farage, Alex Salmond, and of course the RCP/Spiked gang.

In that strangely influential nexus created by the implosion of the Revolutionary Communist Party and its re-communion in the Brexit Party, the Institute of Ideas, Spiked Online, numerous discussion programmes and the House of Lords, the view was the same. Through January Spiked warned of western “meddling” in Ukraine, and mocked the “disarray of the West” and its insistence on an outmoded alliance. Last week their leading columnist on this subject denounced western warnings concerning Putin’s intentions. Despite all the hyperbole concerning hostilities, “of course, nothing happened. Russian soldiers didn’t cross the border.” Spiked’s authors then went back to talking and tweeting about the foreign issue most exercising them — the authoritarian regime of Justin Trudeau of Canada.

Maaaaaaaasks.

Meanwhile on another Russian TV station, this time in Russia, Donald Trump’s former secretary of state and putative Republican candidate Mike Pompeo was shown saying of Putin that he is “very shrewd, very capable. I have enormous respect for him.”

Pompeo calls him shrewd, Trump calls him savvy. The boot in the face and its fan clubs.

Weeks away from the presidential election in France the far-left and far-right candidates were also agreed. Marine Le Pen opined that “like it or not, Ukraine belongs to the Russian sphere of influence” and the EU and Nato should butt out, while Eric Zemmour advocated the dropping of all sanctions against Russia, including those imposed after the Salisbury attack. The main left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon defended the Russian military build-up, given that Ukraine was “associated with a hostile power”, ie America.

And then Putin gave his speech, explaining that Ukraine belongs to Russia, end of story.

The speech might have been rambling and emotional but its motivation was clear. And it immediately created a quandary for many West-blamers and Putin-understanders. How would you square your belief in national sovereignty and the effective declaration by the Russian president that Ukraine shouldn’t have any? Over on Spiked the headline suddenly appeared: “Hands off Ukraine: Russia must immediately withdraw from Ukrainian territory”. The territory, you will recall, that days earlier was only threatened in the West’s imagination. For softer Corbyn supporters the condemnation of Putin by their other great hero Bernie Sanders allowed an opportunity for a quiet retweet and you could almost hear the sigh of relief as the “send” button was pushed.

For over a decade now left and right populists alike have opposed western policy towards Russia. Corbyn famously, like Salmond and the Spiked outfit, questioned whether Russia was behind the Salisbury poisonings. On the left Russia stood as a flawed bulwark against imperialism, on the right against the supranational machinations of the New World Order (the EU, Nato, the UN, whatever). 

What if Putin is just a bad guy, like Trump? Just an alumnus of the KGB who likes power and bullying?

Ok seeing the headline on the BBC main page Police take budgie lost in storm under their wing I had to click on it, just for the headline. It’s a different headline on the article itself, not as winsome or amusing, but since I’m there anyway you might as well learn about the budgie rescue.

Transport Police in Essex have named their new recruit Barry after finding him “slightly shaken up” at Southend Victoria station on Monday.

Naturally he was shaken up. Budgies don’t take trains.

No don’t ask those people, ask the experts!

Lia Thomas, a 22-year-old senior on the Penn women’s swim team, holds the fastest swim times in the country among NCAA women in two freestyle events. She also happens to be a trans woman.

Happens to be? That’s ridiculous; being trans is something no one “happens” to be. It’s something you do, not something that happens to you.

Her success has put her in the center of a national debate on trans women’s right to play sports.

No, the debate is about men’s “right” to play women’s sports. There is no such right. It’s women who have the right: the right to have women’s sports.

Michael Phelps, Caitlyn Jenner, and Jordan Peterson are being asked to weigh in on an issue that they haven’t worked on in any substantial way.

…

My recommendation is that those having conversations about trans people — whether at home, in the news, on the deck of a swimming pool, or in a state legislature — consult experts with a known track record in what they are talking about. There are many fantastic voices to choose from.

Veronica Ivy has done a stellar job addressing inexpert arguments about unfair advantages in sports.

“Veronica Ivy” is Rhys McKinnon, a massive bully of a man who stole prizes from women in cycling races. He’s not the guy to consult on this subject.

The true conversation has nothing to do with testosterone or science, and everything to do with fear — specifically, people’s fear about their own gender identity and fear of people who don’t have a gender identity that’s easy to read.

Nope. Next question?

Yes please do look into that.

Britain’s leading equalities watchdog has been urged to scrutinise the appointment of a trans woman as head of a Scottish rape crisis centre after a legal ruling over the definition of “what it is to be a woman”.

It never should have happened in the first place. Of all the ways to insult and shame and intimidate women, putting a man in charge of a rape crisis center is a real standout.

You want to know why? Apart from the obvious? Men who call themselves women don’t like women. Most of them seem to hate us. It’s a massive mistake to think that because they call themselves women therefore they feel friendly toward women and are in solidarity with women. On the contrary – they resent us and want us to get out of their way. It’s like ordinary unthinking male superiority but with added envy and venom.

Feminist campaign groups want the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to examine the appointment of Mridul Wadhwa as chief executive of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, a position that was advertised as open to women only.

Appeal judges at the Court of Session ruled last week that an attempt by the Scottish government to expand the definition of “woman” to include trans women breached equality law. A 2021 ruling had backed the government, but appeal court judges ruled that the definition in the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018 could only cover biological women.

Imagine attempting to “expand the definition of black people to include white people.” It makes just as much sense.

Bodies play sport, not identities.

Trump made so many messes they’re still having to fix them.

The Biden administration has halted a Trump-era plan to approve a mining road in Alaska that would cut through indigenous land and alter one of the last roadless wildernesses in the US.

That’s so Trump. How he must have loved it – indigenous land and roadless wilderness to harm and damage and ruin. Not one act of destruction but two; what larks!

The road “represents a fundamental threat to our people, our subsistence way of life and our cultural resources,” said Brian Ridley, president of the Tanana Chiefs Conference, which represents 42 tribes in Alaska. “We appreciate that the federal government recognized the flaws in the previous administration’s decisions to permit the road.”

One more bin to empty.

In Brighton the other day –

Brighton and Hove News reports:

A newly-selected Green party candidate has announced they have quit the party after reportedly accusing another member of “intimidating” questions over the campaign against a philosophy professor.

“They” – he’s a he.

Tom Pashby was widely quoted supporting the campaign against Professor Kathleen Stock, which led to her quitting the University of Sussex.

…

Some Green party members objected after Mx Pashby, who identifies as non-binary, was selected as a candidate for the Regency ward for next year’s elections.

He can identify as a clock tower if he wants, but that doesn’t make him a clock tower. Or a “Mx” either.

On Saturday, the local party met to be introduced to all its new candidates.

But Mx Pashby walked out after being questioned by another member, Steve Moses, as to whether he was critical of the campaign against Professor Stock.

This afternoon, he posted on Twitter: “I have resigned my membership of the Green Party of England and Wales, and from my role as a candidate for Regency ward in Brighton for the 2023 elections.

It turns out you can harass and abuse women at university but not everywhere.

Don’t report rape in Qatar.

A female World Cup official is facing a sentence of 100 lashes and seven years in jail for ‘extramarital sex’ after she reported being raped while working in Qatar. 

Paola Schietekat, 28, from Mexico, was working for the World Cup organising committee when she complained that she was raped by an associate who broke into her apartment and threatened to kill her.

She reported the June 6, 2021 attack to the Qatari authorities, which responded by accusing her of having an affair and charged her with ‘extramarital sex’, which is illegal in the Gulf state.

Lawyers told her she could marry the rapist, but for some reason she decided to get out of Qatar instead. Rapist goes on his way rejoicing, she loses a job she loved.

The news media just will not report it honestly.

Scott Morrison backs ‘cruel and divisive’ bill excluding transgender people from single-sex sport

No, that’s wrong. The issue is “excluding” men from women’s sport. That’s it. Nobody is trying to exclude trans people from sport, or from “single-sex sport” in general. Nobody.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been accused of supporting a “cruel and divisive” push from a Liberal Senator to allow sporting groups to exclude transgender people from single-sex sport.

No. Men from women’s sport.

Mr Morrison on Tuesday threw his support behind Tasmanian Senator Claire Chandler’s proposed private member’s bill titled “save women’s sports”, which aims to amend the Sex Discrimination Act.

See? Women’s sports. Not all sports, not sports in general, but women’s.

National LGBTIQ+ group Equality Australia have responded by renewing calls for the Senate to oppose the laws, claiming they would “exclude trans and gender diverse kids and adults.” 

But that’s a lie.

“It seeks to ensure that women’s single-sex sport is protected and encouraged, and that a male person is not entitled to demand inclusion into women’s sport on the basis of gender identity.” 

See? It’s simple, and it’s fair. It would be nice if news outlets would report it accurately.

H/t Rev David Brindley

TraitorTrump is the hashtag.

I listened. It’s sick-making as always. Braindead overstuffed pillow talks hoarsely about genius Putin and how it neva woulda happppened on his watch.

He was talking to a right-wing pod person called Buck Sexton, who asked him what went wrong.

Well what went wrong was a rigged election, and what went wrong is a candidate that shouldn’t be there, and a man that has no concept of what he’s doing I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, “This is genius.” Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine — Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful.

It may look as if I punctuated that oddly but that’s how he said it – there was no pause between “what he’s doing” and “went in yesterday.” And “went in”? Went in where? He talks like a small child. Small children assume people know what they’re talking about without being told, because small children don’t have theory of mind yet. Trump is 75. “There was a television screen” – where? Whose? There was a tv screen, and he said oh this is genius. You do the math.

So Putin is now saying it’s independent, a large section of Ukraine.

Yes, he said the whole thing twice. The exact same thing, twice.

“I said, ‘How smart is that?'” the former U.S. president continued. “And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s the strongest peace force… We could use that on our southern border. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re gonna keep peace all right. No, but think of it. Here’s a guy who’s very savvy. I know him very well, very very well, by the way this never would have happened with us had I been in office, not even thinkable, this would never have happened, here’s a guy that says, you know, ‘I’m gonna declare a big portion of Ukraine independent,’ he used the word ‘independent’ and ‘we’re gonna go out and we’re gonna go in and we’re gonna help keep peace.’ You gotta say that’s pretty savvy. And you know what the response was from Biden? There was no response. They didn’t have one for that. No, it’s very sad. Very sad.”

Yes we all saw how firmly Trump drew the line with Putin when he had the job.

Blockhead has issued a “statement” saying Volodya would never have done it while he was prezzedennt.

Be sure to click on Shop and Contribute.

Oh look, the LA Times even knows and admits that the guy convicted of assaulting a child could be faking the trans thing but still it refers to him as a woman.

As he’s faced increased criticism from law enforcement, elected officials and his own staff, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón has staunchly defended his handling of a politically fraught case: the prosecution of a transgender woman charged with sexually assaulting a child in a Denny’s restroom.

…

In an interview Monday afternoon, Gascón said he first learned of the recordings Thursday through an email from a Fox News journalist. He described himself as “very, very upset” and disgusted with Tubbs, who he said had taken advantage of his office, by among other things, potentially identifying as transgender in a bid to get more lenient treatment.

Gee, ya think???

Who wouldn’t do that? For more lenient treatment and being locked up with women instead of men? It’s a win-win for the violent man who does it. Not so much for the women he’s locked up with, but for him it’s all good. So why do we keep referring to men who do this as women?

“It’s unfortunate that she gamed the system,” Gascón said. “If I had to do it all over again, she would be prosecuted in adult court.”

He. He gamed the system. He gamed it partly by claiming to be a she.

And by the way he wasn’t claiming to be a she when he ruined that girl’s life.

The victim, who has moved out of state and is still receiving therapy, released a statement Sunday describing the assault as “beyond horrible.”

“Not only do I have to live with that awful memory for the rest of my life, but I’m also given no true justice as to what happened to me,” she said.

Tubbs assaulted the girl in the restaurant bathroom in 2014, grabbing her by the neck and locking her into a stall. At the time, Tubbs had not transitioned to female and went by a male name. She was also charged under that name. The crime went unsolved until 2019 when DNA evidence pointed to Tubbs, who had by then amassed an adult record of arrests for battery, assault, drug possession and other crimes.

Emphasis added.

Yet the DA and the Times still piously refer to this loathsome man as “she.”

One of those random headlines you see, and almost don’t notice, and then back up to look at again…

Why Gascón reversed himself on sentencing of woman who assaulted 10-year-old

Wait, woman who what? What who assaulted a 10-year-old? What was that again?

Of course. The headline lies about it, the body tells the truth.

As he’s faced increased criticism from law enforcement, elected officials and his own staff, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón has staunchly defended his handling of a politically fraught case: the prosecution of a transgender woman charged with sexually assaulting a child in a Denny’s restroom.

Right. So don’t call him “woman” in the headline. Women don’t sexually assault children in Denny’s restrooms. They just don’t. Men’s crimes don’t become our crimes just because one of the men claims to be trans.

The sudden reversal came after Gascón’s staff learned that Fox News was preparing to publish jailhouse recordings in which Tubbs crowed about receiving a light sentence and spoke derisively about the victim, a 10-year-girl she attacked in a Palmdale bathroom.

He. He attacked a 10-year-old girl.

Paul Farmer:

Dr. Paul Farmer, global health champion, Harvard Medical School professor, anthropologist and co-founder of the nonprofit health organization Partners in Health, has died at age 62. PIH confirmed his death in a tweet on Monday.

According to the tweet, Farmer “unexpectedly passed away today in his sleep while in Rwanda,” where he had been teaching for the past few weeks at the university he co-founded. A source close to Farmer said he had been in Rwanda for the past several weeks teaching at the University of Global Health Equity, the medical school that he helped found with the country’s former minister of health, Dr. Agnes Binagwaho.

…

In addition to starting hospitals in Rwanda and Haiti, Farmer helped bring lifesaving HIV drugs to the people of Haiti in the early 2000s. But those who work with him say his legacy is even more sweeping than that.

…

In 1987, Farmer co-founded Partners in Health in Haiti with the mission to provide high-quality care to patients from impoverished backgrounds and those living far from health care facilities. Over the next three decades, PIH expanded to countries across Africa and Latin America, to Russia and to the Navajo Nation in the United States. Writer Tracy Kidder profiled Farmer in his 2003 book, Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World, which later became required reading for many a student and practitioner in global health.

The Free Speech Union writes to the Minister for Education about a situation at Cardiff University:

We’ve written to Jeremy Miles MS, Minister for Education, urging him to intervene in the situation at Cardiff University where several of our members and their colleagues, all academic staff, have been targeted by trans activists in a long-running campaign of intimidation. It began in June 2021 after the academics urged Cardiff to reconsider its continuing participation in the Stonewall Diversity Champion scheme. Following this, a leaflet was distributed on campus picturing a woman holding a gun, the names and pictures of the signatories, and the caption “ACT NOW”. A student whistleblower then revealed violent threats being made on the Facebook page of the Cardiff LGBT+ Society. This evidence was all presented to the University and the police, but neither Cardiff University authorities nor the police responded robustly to protect these academics. The University failed to conduct a thorough investigation in a timely manner and misplaced evidence. It defended messages referring to academics as an ”ignorant fuckface” and a call to kneecap them as legitimate expressions of free speech, even after one of the signatories had his car window smashed.

Incitement of violence is not a legitimate expression of free speech.

I suspect the University would confirm that if anyone were threatening to kneecap trans activists.

Originally a comment by Papito on People’s Republics.

“Me,” the most charitable interpretation anyone could make of your remarks is ignorance. I will try to be charitable. I will lay out the fundamental reasons, as I see it, that opposing Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is in the national interest of all Western democracies.

Nobody here believes Washington always has the interests of everybody in the world at heart. Such a belief would not be supported by historical events. The American government has done terrible things the world over. However, nobody except the most insular of right-wing zealots believes that Biden – a man who has spent his life in service to his country – hates America. If one claims that Biden’s actions are not intended to protect America, that is an extraordinary claim which would require extraordinary proof.

The US government has never proposed protecting America by sending American troops to fight Russian troops in Ukraine; that has neither strategic nor tactical value, and is just a red herring in a long series of red herrings. The US government, however, does have an inherent interest in stopping the progress of totalitarianism in Europe and in supporting the spread of democracy. Ukraine is a democratic country, with competitive elections, and Russia is a totalitarian state with the penalty for political participation frequently being death.

Much to our surprise, history did not end with the fall of the Soviet bloc. Instead, though the periphery of the former Soviet bloc turned to a variety of systems of government, some more democratic and others more authoritarian, the centre of that bloc, Russia, turned to an authoritarianism that would make former fascists envious. Based on a concept of historic grievance, Russia turned itself towards the destruction of Western democracy – in a way a continuation of the Soviet project, but this time with more appeal to a fifth column within Western countries, which was never comfortable with the extension of the franchise to all. Divisions within Western democracies have been exploited and amplified by a remarkably competent psyops war waged by Russia.

The historic Soviet infiltration pales in comparison to the effectiveness of the new Russian fascist infiltration. America has a more divided society than at any time since the Civil War, and that has a lot to do with Russian influence. America suffered, for the first time in its history, a coup attempt, led by a president who was not wanted as president by the majority of Americans, and who would not have secured that position without Russia’s help. The Soviets never accomplished so much; their attempts to draw attention to the divisions in American society were clumsy at best.

Internationally, Russia’s goal is to bring an end to the relatively peaceful period of history, during which Western democracies have grown. After WWII, no armed conflict emerged among major Western nations, and no nuclear weapons were used in open conflict. The lack of major conflict in Europe sets this period of history apart from all previous. After the collapse of the USSR, the Pax Americana had a chance to live up to Kennedy’s dreams:

I have, therefore, chosen this time and place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth too rarely perceived. And that is the most important topic on earth: peace. What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, and the kind that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and build a better life for their children—not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace in all time.

The formation of international institutions such as NATO and the European Union was fundamental to the maintenance of this peace, a peace which has allowed democracy to grow. To the autocrat, such as Putin, nothing can be so threatening as the prospect of democracy – democracy ends in a noose for the tyrant. Thus it is in the autocrat’s interest to undermine democracy wherever possible – in America by fomenting division and propping up a patsy; in Britain by supporting its separation from the EU, and in those wavering nations close to Russia’s borders by supporting autocracy or insurrection. The goal is as much inward as outward: in order to maintain power, Putin must prove that democracy is impossible in Russia.

For the person who believes in the classical liberal values on which Western democracies were founded, support of democracy abroad appears desirable. For the person who can read the room, and sees it rapidly filling with autocrats (to Putin, add Orban, Lukashenko, Maduro, Erdogan…), support of democracy abroad appears essential to the survival of democracy at home.

The Western interest in Ukraine isn’t about coal mines in Donetsk or trains in Luhansk. It’s about the idea that democracy should be growing now, instead of autocracy, about the idea that Ukrainians should be able to elect their own government and decide how their country belongs in the world. There is a new global struggle now, and it’s a struggle for the survival of democracy. Putin has no intention of stopping at the line of control in Donetsk and Luhansk, no intention at stopping at the borders of those two oblasts, and no intention of stopping with Ukraine. His goal is the recreation of a Russian sphere of influence – this time more fascist than communist – and, ultimately, the destruction of the West.

Which side are you on?

Suzanne Moore rebukes the New York Times:

[T]his New York Times ad is more than idiotic – it is dangerous. Imagine a world in which JK Rowling did not write the books we know she did. What happens to the author in this scenario, her intellectual property? Will her creation be removed in some Maoist obliteration? Imagine she does not exist. What does that actually mean? Let me spell it out.

Every death threat I have ever had, every woman I have spoken to about being stalked or abused, has heard these words. They have “no place”, they have “no right to exist”. It is a threat, and I felt sick when I saw that fox-killing egomaniac lawyer, Jolyon Maugham, tweet about the Labour MP Rosie Duffield, who is already anxious about her own security, saying: “There should be no place for her in progressive politics.” 

Fox-killing egomaniac piggy misogynist Jolyon Maugham.

Not everyone is happy to see the demonisation of a woman who stands up for women, which is all JK Rowling has ever done. That someone should whip up more hatred against her to sell newspapers shows a complete loss of moral fibre and a condescending attitude to readers. If you want publications edited by Twitter, then all you will get are publications without analysis, reportage and argument.

That this, again, involves tying a woman to the pyre and asking for a match – and thinking this is attractive – is a new low.

There seems to be no bottom.