Joan Smith has a must-read piece at the Guardian about the often overlooked connection between violence against women and terrorist violence.

Five years ago, I began to notice that the perpetrators of some of the worst terrorist attacks had something in common. A high proportion shared a history of assaulting wives, girlfriends and other female relatives, sometimes involving a whole series of victims, long before they attacked total strangers.

It’s so obvious once she points it out, isn’t it. Of course they do. What do we so often see in angry men? That they love to turn their anger in the direction of women. But it needs to be spelled out explicitly so that law enforcement gets it and acts accordingly. Joan (who is a fucking superhero by the way) has made that happen.

She cites some examples from 2016 and 2017 (do read the whole piece).

There were striking similarities between the histories of Darren Osborne, the rightwing extremist who drove a van into worshippers leaving a mosque in north London, and Khalid Masood, the Islamist who staged an attack on Westminster Bridge. Both men had criminal records for violent offences – and both had abused women.

Officially they were enemies – a right-winger who attacked random Muslims and an Islamist who attacked random walkers on a bridge – but they were bros underneath.

I thought these cases challenged conventional wisdom about terrorism, which holds that it is all about ideology. Many fatal terrorist attacks actually appeared to be an escalation of violence that had been going on, sometimes for years, against members of the perpetrator’s family. I was convinced that the police and MI5 needed to change the way they assessed the risk posed by suspects, treating a history of domestic violence as a very significant red flag.

When I raised this with the authorities, however, I encountered scepticism and disbelief. So I decided to write a book, using published sources to piece together a woeful catalogue of men who had humiliated, beaten and sexually assaulted women long before they became notorious as terrorists. It was published in 2019 and this time senior figures at counter-terrorism policing and the Home Office listened.

See what I mean? Super hero.

The Home Office commissioned research on “adults and children who had caused concern to teachers, social workers and family members because of a possible vulnerability to radicalisation (V2R).” The results are not yet published but Joan has seen them and calls them stunning.

Almost 40% of adult referrals had a history of domestic abuse either as perpetrators, witnesses or victims – or a combination of all three. This is likely to be an underestimate, given that domestic violence is one of the most under-reported crimes, but it provides some idea of prevalence for the first time. The comparable figure for children is 30%, another likely underestimate because under-16s were not routinely questioned about domestic abuse in the home.

Again – one feels “of course” but Joan actually got officialdom to do the research.

As I expected, the link is visible across ideologies, from Islamists and rightwing extremists to the fifth of the sample where no known ideology was identified. This confirms my theory that terrorism is at least as much about male violence as ideology, suggesting that angry young men are attracted to extremist ideas that appear to “justify” their grievances.

So now that they know misogynist violence can be a warning sign for real violence [sarcasm alert] maybe law enforcement could start to take it seriously. Maybe.

The Project Starlight report rightly includes a raft of recommendations, calling for much wider awareness of the link between violent extremism and a history of domestic violence. “All counter-terrorism case officers should consider checking for potential links to a domestic abuse-related incident,” it says.

But this may not be straightforward when so few incidents lead to convictions. A recent report revealed that three-quarters of domestic abuse cases reported to the police in England were closed without the perpetrator being charged. Some organisations have come up with welcome innovations – Croydon in south London, for instance, has a specialist social worker sitting on Channel panels, leading to the disclosure of previously unsuspected domestic abuse in the history of V2R referrals.

But the Cinderella status of crimes against women can no longer be tolerated. The connection between private and public violence is now crystal clear – and the cost of continuing to ignore it is way too high.

Joan Smith is the author of Home Grown: How Domestic Violence Turns Men Into Terrorists and co-chair of the mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls board

Share the piece with everyone you know.

A new scam, not radically different from the old scams.

On August 4, two emails regarding “OFFICIAL TRUMP CARDS” were sent by Save America, a joint fundraising committee of Save America and the Make America Great Again PAC.

Each showed four designs and spoke of Trump’s desire for recipients to decide which one should be chosen.

But what are Trump cards? What do they get you?

I think the answer is that they’re just pieces of cardboard with some words on them. They don’t get you anything.

One included a direct message from former President Trump, in which he said: “We are launching our OFFICIAL TRUMP CARDS soon, and my team asked me to select the design. I’ve always said the only voice that matters is YOURS, which is why I want YOU to be the one to pick our brand new card.

“The card you select will be carried by Patriots all around the Country. They will be a sign of your dedicated support to our movement to SAVE AMERICA, and I’m putting my full trust in you.

“I’ll look for your response first thing tomorrow, Friend. Will I see it?”

This card will be carried by Patriots for what purpose? They will be a sign to whom?

According to another mailing they’re special.

“We’re about to launch our Official Trump Cards, which will be reserved for President Trump’s STRONGEST supporters, and we have some very exciting news to share with you,” a message from Save America read.

STRONGEST meaning gave the most $$$ to Trump? Packs the biggest guns? Breaks the most laws?

“We recently met with the President in his Florida office and showed him four designs. Originally we were planning on releasing just one design, but when President Trump saw the cards on his desk, he said, ‘These are BEAUTIFUL. We should let the American People decide – they ALWAYS know best!'”

Within each email people could click on the designs to select which they preferred. Doing so then took them to a donation page where the selected card was shown and “RESPONSE RECORDED!” written.

Can you imagine the thrill??!

After clicking the selection, there was then a form calling for donations to the Save America Joint Fundraising Committee.

The emails did not detail other specific uses for the cards. It was also not specified how they could be obtained or would be allocated. Newsweek has contacted the office of the former president for comment on the cards and their potential usage.

Isn’t that just so radical left, wanting to know what the cards are for and how people can get them and petty shit like that? Make America Great Again!

Each of the proposed cards [was] deep red and gold in color. They all had Trump’s signature on, as well as a space for name and an ID number.

Two featured eagle designs, another had a plain background and the other had a U.S. flag in the background. Each said “Official Trump Card” and was emblazoned with the Save America logo.

One of the card designs had a typo which read “offical” rather than official.

Cool. Nice mashup of offal and fecal.

They don’t scream “Nazi” at all. No no.

Woe that too late repents.

Governor Asa Hutchinson on Tuesday expressed regret for signing Act 1002 into Arkansas law. The new law bans the state and local officials from enacting any mask mandates.

Any other laws like that on the books in Arkansas? Bans on calling the fire department when the house goes up in flames? Bans on vaccinating children? Bans on teaching toddlers not to run across the street? Bans on ducking when someone throws a brick?

During a press conference, Hutchinson answered questions about why he signed the proposal into law. He said that when he initially approved it a few months ago, both COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations were at a “low point” in Arkansas and were declining.

That’s a stupid reason.

He is concerned that since students ages 12 and under are not approved to receive the COVID-19 vaccinations they could be put at risk of contracting the virus when school returns in the fall.

Oh never mind that, it’s much more important to play these idiotic murderous games with the population’s health.

How romantic.

He asked WHAT????

Are you a member of the nation in question, asks Morgane Oger, a man who pretends to be a woman. Yo, “Morgane,” are YOU a member of the nation of women? No, you’re not, so you should stop trying to bully us into saying you are.

Guess what: like all groups facing oppression, we – women – loathe performative allyship, to say nothing of actually pretending to be one of us.

Chapter 47 million of Women Are Fair Game (as long as you can pin some other label on them like “white” or “cis” or “gender critical” or “Jewish” – the list is long):

Ohhhh they shed white women tears – well let’s wipe them all out then. First let’s nod vehemently in agreement, that they do indeed shed white women tears, and then let’s all jump on top of them until they stop breathing.

These Jewish women knowingly play the role of summoning white mobs to lynch black and brown women’s voices.

In other words Noah Strauss hates women.

Singal’s dry “mazel tov” refers to the fact that Herzog isn’t Jewish. I know, I know, how can that be when there’s a whole novel by Saul Bellow titled Herzog, but nevertheless, it is so. (I’ve always found Herzog unpleasantly misogynist, ironically enough.)

The resistance begins!

On Friday, the Justice Department ordered the Internal Revenue Service to hand over former president Donald Trump’s tax returns to Congress. On Monday, Ronald Fischetti, a lawyer for Trump, said that Trump intends to fight the order.

“There is no evidence of any wrongdoing here and I object to the release of the returns not only on behalf of my client but on behalf of all future holders of the office of the president of the United States,” Fischetti said in statement. He added that “this politicization and harassment of Mr. Trump is uncalled for and outrageous” and that he had “never seen anything like this.”

He doesn’t really object on behalf of all future presidents though. That’s just window dressing, and self-flattery. He couldn’t care less about that, and neither could Trump. If anything Trump would probably like it to happen to future presidents, out of spite.

One problem with the statement, Teri Kanefield says, is that of course there’s evidence of wrongdoing. Remember all those news stories about the unreported apartments and cars and school tuitions? Evidence of wrongdoing. And then there’s Michael Cohen’s testimony. And there’s that massive story the Times did.

Fischetti’s “no evidence of wrongdoing” is an insult to Americans who have been bombarded with such evidence for years.

To be expected from Trump and his enablers.

Also, Congress does get to ask the Executive questions; the two branches are supposed to be equal.

This brings me to the third hole in Fischetti’s defense: the idea that Trump is objecting on behalf of “all future presidents.” Rule of law literally means that the law applies to the president as much as it does to anyone. Anything else is autocracy.

Plus they don’t mean it anyway.

Would the pardon have been forthcoming if the roles had been reversed?

A US couple who gained nationwide notoriety after they pointed guns at Black Lives Matter protesters last year have been pardoned.

Mark and Patricia McCloskey were filmed holding weapons outside their home in St Louis, Missouri. They were fined after pleading guilty to misdemeanour charges this year.

But Missouri’s Republican Governor Mike Parson has now pardoned them, something he had promised after US conservatives began to support the couple.

They weren’t filmed just “holding their weapons,” they were filmed (as the first paragraph says) pointing them at protesters who were marching past. Pointing them. That’s threatening. I’d be petrified if someone pointed a gun at me.

“When the angry mob came to destroy my house and kill my family, I took a stand against them,” he reportedly said in a recent campaign video. “I will never back down.”

Except that’s not what the angry mob came to do.

Very even-tempered.

The small-minded bigoted fuckwittery of course is skepticism about a magical ability to change sex.

There are a lot of things I don’t care for, but I don’t threaten to push people down a set of stairs and laugh at the bounce because of them.

It’s all in the bounce.

Originally two comments by Seth on Fair and includey.

If you believe that he really does have gender dysphoria

See, this was the first step on the road to getting where we are now, this notion that someone having “gender dysphoria” makes them “really trans”, as opposed to a faker. But in its own terms, “gender dysphoria” is a mental illness, a delusion, either very starkly akin to or actually the same as the body dysmorphia which afflicts anorexics or compulsive exercisers.

The proper treatment for the latter two expressions of body dysmorphia, you’ll note, is not to completely reform society to give the stick-thin girl the “validation” that she is “in the wrong (obese) body” and is a hero for making radical changes to show the “real authentic” waif she is “on the inside”, nor the muscle-bound boy the “validation” that he is “in the wrong (shrimpy) body” and is a hero for making radical changes to show the “real authentic” hulk he is “on the inside”.

It is highly unlikely that the proper treatment for the former is to reform society to the extent being done now in order to indulge their delusions. Of course, someone being delusional is not in itself a moral failing, and it *is* worth treatment, with compassion and respect and empathy. But compassion and respect and empathy are sorely lacking by the TRAs and their “allies”, even (or perhaps most especially) for and toward the very dysmorphic people whose mental illnesses were exploited to catapult us into where we are in the first place.

So, even if one does believe that Hubbard has gender dysphoria (or body dysmorphia expressed through secondary sex characteristics), the appropriate response is almost certainly not to humour him in his delusions for the rest of his life. And it’s certainly not to turn people who refuse to humour him into thought-criminals and pariahs simply because they cannot pretend to believe in the impossible.

We

gave away the ballgame when we collectively allowed TRAs to recategorise gender dysphoria as indicative of something like a physical birth defect rather than a mental illness. That seems to me to have been the first step over the line, imperceptible as it was for most of us at the time, which has led us to this cultural moment. And most of us were more than willing to nod along with this at the time, in the hope of being good and supportive and decent people if for no other reason.

This is, I believe, the “root” of the trans issue, the floodgate-opener that precipitated the deluge which has swept away the skepticism and thoughtfulness of so many self-professed free-thought-loving skeptics. This is the “radix” which the original trans-exclusionary radical feminists excluded from their feminism, and which set them up as the assailable Other for all right-thinking progressives circa 2014 or so. It is a demand to believe the impossible, a leap of faith, a mental hurdle so high that every subsequent demand is all the easier for having already surmounted it. In hindsight, we should have listened more to the radical feminists, and less to the faith-based activists.

The Telegraph:

Male-born sex offenders who self-identify as women can be placed on female-only NHS wards, hospital trusts have said in guidance.

Devon, Oxford and Nottinghamshire hospitals all tell staff that a criminal history should be part of a risk assessment when placing male-born people on female-only wards, but do not say it is a bar to admission.

There’s a funny thing going on here…Men can be placed on women-only wards, but women can’t. Men can request women-only but women have to put up with women and men who claim to be trans.

I’m not sure that’s entirely fair.

It comes as The Telegraph has found that NHS Trusts across the country have issued guidance that says patients should be admitted based on the gender they identify with and therefore can choose which ward, lavatory and shower facilities they use.

Which means that women can’t choose. “Women-only please.” “We don’t cater to TERFs here, bitch.”

Some trusts have labelled those patients who express discomfort as transphobic, compared them to racists in official guidelines and ordered staff to report them to police for hate crimes.

But all they’re doing is choosing women-only wards, which you just said…

Until 2019, one hospital group instructed medics to withdraw treatment if a female patient refused to accept a physically intact male on women-only wards.

They what???????????

Dr Jane Hamlin, president of the Beaumont Society, a trans support group, said: “If anyone starts off with an assumption that a trans person is a sex offender – or even a potential sex offender – that is discrimination and transphobia.”

The hell it is. Trans women are men, and men are potential sex offenders when it comes to protecting vulnerable women. That’s the whole point. It’s not that all men are, it’s that men are the ones who potentially are. There’s a reason parents tell their daughters not to get into a car if a man they don’t know invites them to.

Devon Partnership NHS Trust says that patients “will be admitted based on the gender which they identify as at the point of admission” and it will not be based on physical characteristics or the person proving they have legally changed their gender or name, as they claim this is illegal.

It states that risk assessments must be carried out but indicate that this does not prevent male-born sex offenders being placed on a female-only ward.

“Where a transgender woman is admitted and has a history of sex offending, decisions regarding risk should include consideration of whether they are being prescribed anti-libidinal medication that would be expected to reduce sexual risk,” the document states.

Oh would it, well that’s fine then. It would be expected to but hey it might not but that’s fine, because it’s the feelings of the sex offending man who says he is a woman that count. Nothing else matters, especially not the safety and peace of mind of a bunch of stupid women.

Oxford states that “if the service user has a sex-offending history, risk should be managed in the same way as it would be with any other client, irrespective of gender”.

Right, because sex-offending is notoriously gender-neutral. No difference in the stats at all. In fact women probably do it more, because they’re such good liars.

When hospitals were ordered to eliminate mixed-sex wards more than a decade ago, patients were hopeful it would mean that they would have privacy and dignity during a difficult time.

But hahaha no it was all a trick.

But since then female patients have been accused of hate crimes, placed in seclusion and even threatened with their treatment being withdrawn for questioning why men who self-identify as women are placed in single-sex accommodation.

TERFs should just die.

Dr Lucy Griffin, a frontline clinician, has warned MPs and peers that doctors “are really worried about the toolkits that have gone out within individual organisations largely about things like single-sex wards”.

“Some of them are so punitive,” she said. “One organisation is suggesting that any woman who objects to a male on a single-sex ward is put in seclusion, as in a psychiatric setting.”Other policies state that trans people have “equal access” to single-sex facilities, which includes “male or female-only support groups”…

And the extra problem with that is, a man who goes along with that policy is a shitty human being, and who the fuck wants to be in a bed next to or a support group with a fake woman who is a shitty human being? It takes a real sadist and egomaniac to force himself on women in a hospital in that way, so how can it possibly be fair to force such men on women who are ill?

[D]espite acknowledgement of the risks, the documents suggest that any patients who question the decision will be treated as “bigots”, a practising nurse who has asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals has said.

Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust states that “concerns alone are insufficient” to justify moving wards, adding: “Just as the Trust will not adapt practice in light of Racist concerns expressed as discomfort, so the Trust will not adapt practice in light of Transphobic concerns expressed as discomfort.”

It’s not the same thing.

I wrote a column for The Freethinker about stupidity that’s not genuine involuntary stupidity but chosen stupidity, deliberate stupidity, stupidity in aid of ideology or tribe or hatred. That’s what much of the anti-vax bullshit is: not really about the vax and not really a mistake, but just a kind of point-scoring.

It’s incredibly cut off your nose to spite your face, but it seems millions of people find it entirely worth it for the sake of irritating the libbruls.

Some of them stop finding it worth it once they’re gasping for breath though.

Here we are again.

Covid-19 hospitalizations are surging across the US and stretched hospitals are warning that the overwhelming majority of coronavirus patients are unvaccinated and their serious sickness preventable.

Preventable, yes, but then you turn into a Democrat and your dick falls off. (Applies to both sexes.)

Health officials are especially concerned about Florida, where cases are the highest they have been since the pandemic began.

On Monday, there were more Covid-19 hospitalizations in Florida than at any time in the pandemic. The chief executive of the Florida Hospital Association, Mary Mayhew, told MSNBC that about 95% of those hospitalized were unvaccinated.

Look, it’s Florida. Trump country. DeSantisland. Collapsing condo towers built on sand as sea level rises. Vaccination is for wimpy pinheads in places like New York and Yurrup.

What do you know, it turns out there’s a price to pay for disvaluing female people.

Men are set to dramatically outnumber women in coming decades, new global modelling of birth sex ratios has found.

Of course they are. Now that technology can tell people what sex the baby is, girls can be Prevented. Amartya Sen famously pointed this out decades ago.

Researchers warn that global long-term stability could be at risk due to the “cultural preferences” for boys in certain countries. Nations with skewed sex ratio at birth are set to “lose” another 4.7 million girls by 2030 — a figure that could reach 22 million by 2100.

The study, published in the journal BMJ Global Health, found that prenatal sex selection has helped skew the sex ratio at birth in favour of boys in several countries from southeast Europe to southeast Asia since the 1970s.

Result? More incels, more violence, most of it against women.

Janice Turner is doing her best to get Owen Jones to listen though.

(My surmise: because he doesn’t give a fuck, because he just doesn’t think women matter. It’s not an unusual take.)

What Owen Jones always ignores:

What? What is it that Owen Jones always ignores? What are these tweets examples of Owen Jones ignoring?

Women. Women’s rights. The rights of women. The fact that women have rights, and are constantly having to defend them.

He interprets everything gender critical feminists say as “transphobia” and “anti-trans activism” when in fact for feminists it’s women’s rights that are crucial. We say that our point is that much of trans ideology is in direct conflict with women’s rights, and he invariably ignores that and just calls it “transphobia.” We reply a billion times that it’s not, it’s about women’s rights and how much of trans ideology tramples all over our rights. We might as well save our breath and our typing, because he never ever pays the slightest attention.

Originally a comment by latsot on Define “hate”.

The BBC ran a piece on Hubbard yesterday, which I overheard from another room. NOTE: distance from source does not mute rage. They were doing the usual dance around all of this to avoid screaming, wide-eyed into the camera “IT’S A BLOKE!!!! WE CAN ALL SEE IT’S A BLOKE!!!!! IT’S OBVIOUSLY A GADGIE!!!* HE’S JUST CHEATING!!!!!”

Then they seemed to change the subject and had a correspondent phoning in to talk about something else and they asked him what they thought of the whole men cheating in women’s sports thing. The correspondent was very careful to explain that he didn’t know anything about the subject and couldn’t possibly comment but that inclusion is good.

I won’t go into everything wrong with that statement, preaching to the choir. But the BBC knew that he wasn’t going to say something like “well, I don’t think women should be forced to compete against men, because that’s obviously grossly unfair.”

It was a setup, in other words, deliberately constructed to make it look as though some supposedly independent sport expert agreed with their pretend-neutral attitude.

This is what we get for the license fee that so many women are in prison for not paying, probably because their male partners insist the women have their names on the register but won’t cough up their fair share of the bills so the women have to make tough decisions about whether to let their kids go hungry or go to jail, where there’s a chance they will be raped by a man who says he’s a woman.

That license fee.

* Geordie for “man”.

Oh it’s all so complex.

As the first openly transgender female athlete to compete at the Olympics, Laurel Hubbard was making history and huge controversy in the Tokyo International Forum. It certainly looked like the weight of the world was on her shoulders.

If you believe that he really does have gender dysphoria. If you believe he’s just cheating, it looks a bit different.

Hubbard had met all the requirements set by the International Weightlifting Federation, though those rules — requiring athletes to demonstrate their total testosterone level in serum has been below 10 nanomoles per litre for at least 12 months before their first competition — are regarded as wholly inadequate by a battery of sports scientists. At the most basic level, they point out that the normal testosterone range for women is between 0.3 and 2.4 nmol/L.

The most basic level is the one that counts.

Fiddling nervously with a tracksuit top, she made a short speech of gratitude to journalists — an unusually large amount were present for women’s weightlifting — which did serve as a reminder that there is a human story here of an athlete seeking a place in the sporting world, and in the world in general.

Again, only if you believe that he believes all the nonsense, and isn’t just taking advantage. I don’t believe that, so I don’t think that’s the human story here at all. And for that matter even if you believe he believes, you damn well ought to keep in mind the woman he displaced. What about her human story? She not rich or white or male.

Hubbard thanked the IOC for reaffirming “their commitment to the principles of Olympism”, but the organisation could hardly hail this as a triumph as it grapples awkwardly with the science and talks of a shift away from a framework based on testosterone.

There is also the hard reality that it will never please everyone. Fairness and inclusion can never be fully reconciled in this debate.

But the Olympics are all about exclusion. That’s the whole entire point. They’re about the very best, and they exclude everyone else from competing. That’s how athletic competitions work.

How about a little feel-good item for a change.

US right-wingers are rejoicing that the US women’s soccer team lost.

All because they kneeled (or knelt). The horror.