The wider conditions of vulnerability

Apr 10th, 2019 12:56 pm | By

Brian Leiter reports:

Anti-lesbian discrimination at LGBT Facebook group for philosophers

Two lesbian philosophers–Holly Lawford-Smith and Louise Moody–are removed from the group by Rebecca Kukla (Georgetown) after merely mentioning philosopher Kathleen Stock (Sussex).

The group is both closed and secret, so I haven’t seen any posts from it firsthand, only summaries of what’s going on. Someone asked how to learn more about…gender critical feminism? One of the pejorative labels for same? I don’t remember, but one of those or something like it. Holly and Louise suggested reading Kathleen Stock. Kukla kicked them out without further ado.

But wait, there’s more. Of course there is; there always is; there is the festering hatred of various men who have to share their festering hatred with the world. Trans ideology has been such a gift to those men.

UPDATE:  Two different readers sent along the unhinged reaction of Keyvan Shefiei, another charming PhD student self-destructing on social media:

Keyvan defaming Lawford-Smith

A “bigoted piece of shit” and a “vile fucking human.” Why? Because she doesn’t subscribe to the doctrine that men can magically become women simply by saying the words “I identify as.”

ADDENDUM:  An amazing response to being called out for their unhinged behavior.  Among the philosophers sympathizing with Shalfiei, who apparently think it’s fine to call another philosopher a “piece of shit” and a “vile fucking human,” are Daniel Silvermint (Connecticut), Fiona Schick (CUNY), Amy Marvin (Oregon), Audrey Yap (Victoria), Joshua Habgood-Coote (Bristol), and Nathaneal Smith (Rochester), among others.

I don’t know anything about the last five, but I saw Daniel Silvermint’s sympathizing before Brian’s update, and it’s a gem of its kind – its kind being a combination of ostentatiously professorial wording with intensely stupid content.

The “on the record” is laughable for a start, because what record? What godly recorder is seeking David Silvermint’s official opinion?

But the rest of it is infuriating, because what “attack”? There was no “attack.” Not agreeing to bizarre metaphysical claims is not an “attack.” And because what “wider conditions of vulnerability”? Are we supposed to assume that trans women are in a condition of vulnerability while women are not? If so, why? I asked him that, then after some hours I asked him again; all I got was a block. He pretends to be making a reasoned argument but he declines to argue.

“A swear.” Calling someone a “bigoted piece of shit” and a “vile fucking human” is not a mere swear. A man calling a woman those things is doubly not a mere swear. Daniel Silvermint is helping another dude bully a woman on Twitter, and pretending he’s doing serious philosophy in the process.

Guess what he teaches. Go on, guess.

I joined the University of Connecticut in 2013 as an Assistant Professor, jointly appointed in Philosophy & Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Yeah. Women’s Studies, that guy.

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A number of offences of dishonesty

Apr 10th, 2019 11:56 am | By

Following up on a question of Screechy Monkey’s, I learn more about belligerent trans activist Stephanie Hayden, who likes suing people.

Do trans women have more to fear from loss of anonymity on social media than gender critical feminists do?

Hayden is Stephanie Hayden, the one who sued to get the personal details of a woman on Mumsnet.

Jamie Hamilton did some digging last November and found a not very dainty past:

The transgender lawyer who has accused Father Ted scribe Graham Linehan of transphobia and is suing him for harassment was once convicted of affray for threatening a man with a golf club, as well as for a number of other offences.

Stephanie Hayden, who is also suing Mumsnet and recently sued a transsexual solicitor, now identifies as a lawyer. But in 1999, when Hayden was a 28-year-old man known as Anthony Halliday, Halliday was charged with assault and affray. In court documents seen by RollOnFriday, the prosecutor in the Preston Crown Court case described how Halliday became embroiled in an argument after he refused to move his car from outside a man’s house in Burnley. When the man said he would use a fork lift truck to remove the car, Halliday “became abusive”, said the prosecution, and threw a punch after calling the victim a “big fat bastard”.

The victim told police that the pair scuffled, and as he walked back to his house he felt a blow to the back of his head. He said he turned around to see Halliday wielding a golf club. After another scuffle in the street, the victim returned to his house, “bleeding from the head”. His wife grabbed a video camera and recorded Halliday as he “picked up his golf club and brandished it, tapping on the glass of the victim’s house”.

The charge of assault was left on Halliday’s file after he pled guilty to the lessor offence of affray. He was sentenced to 150 hours community service, which he subsequently appealed on the basis of another case which he said was similar. It was dismissed as having “no merit” by the Court of Appeal in 2002. The judge noted that Halliday had appeared in court and been convicted in respect of several other crimes, which included disorderly behaviour and “a number of offences of dishonesty”.

A fine upstanding lawyer.

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Not just a pointless semantic argument

Apr 10th, 2019 11:29 am | By

Barr is doing what Trump hired him to do.

At a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday morning, Barr confirmed that he is looking into what he called “spying” on the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.

“I am going to be reviewing both the genesis and the conduct of intelligence activities directed at the Trump campaign during 2016,” Barr said. “I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal.”

When pressed by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) on whether he indeed viewed it as “spying” on Trump’s campaign, Barr said, “I think spying did occur.”

“The question is whether it was adequately predicated,” he said. “I’m not suggesting it was not adequately predicated, but I need to explore that.”

Aaron Blake points out that “spying” is a highly contested word for what the FBI did relative to Trump’s campaign.

When Trump alleged that the FBI had spied on his campaign, former FBI director James B. Comey said this was simply an information-gathering effort — emphasizing that the “actual” term is “the use of Confidential Human Sources.”

Former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. was asked around the same time, “Was the FBI spying on Trump’s campaign?” and he responded directly. “No, they were not.”

At another point in the same interview, Clapper seemed to momentarily borrow the term Trump was using. “They were spying on — a term I don’t particularly like — but on what the Russians were doing,” Clapper said. Trump has misleadingly used that quote to argue that Clapper was confirming that spying did exist.

The word “spying” implies things that are not the case.

As I wrote after that Clapper interview, this is more than just a pointless semantic argument. Trump’s use of this term implies a much more nefarious-sounding effort, and the idea that it was targeted at his campaign is a big piece of that:

The definition of spy … generally includes an adversarial relationship between the government and the organization that is being “spied” upon. Merriam-Webster defines spying as “to watch secretly usually for hostile purposes.” Oxford defines a spy as “a person employed by a government or other organization to secretly obtain information on an enemy or competitor.”

This is what Trump wants. It feeds his “witch hunt” narrative. For special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s findings to be rendered invalid with Trump’s supporters (which would guard Trump from impeachment), this needs to have been a targeted effort to bring Trump down. “Informant” doesn’t exactly drive that home; “spy” certainly does.

And here we have the Attorney General using that word.

On Wednesday, Barr emphasized that the “spying” might have been warranted and A-okay. But he also essentially subscribed to both of those highly disputed Trump talking points. And that lends legitimacy to what, at this point, is essentially a Trump conspiracy theory.

It’s like Watergate with Nixon winning every round.

Updating to add:

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You’ve got to put your name on stuff

Apr 10th, 2019 10:58 am | By

So little Donald went to Mount Vernon one day with his friend Manny. Little Donald was bored, and he thought George Washington was stupid.

During a guided tour of Mount Vernon last April with French president Emmanuel Macron, Trump learned that Washington was one of the major real-estate speculators of his era. So, he couldn’t understand why America’s first president didn’t name his historic Virginia compound or any of the other property he acquired after himself.

“If he was smart, he would’ve put his name on it,” Trump said, according to three sources briefed on the exchange. “You’ve got to put your name on stuff or no one remembers you.”

Yeah. Just put your name on stuff, one way or another, and that way people will remember you. It could be on books you wrote or music you composed, or it could just be pasted on something to memorialize your vanity and presumption.

The VIPs’ tour guide for the evening, Mount Vernon president and CEO Doug Bradburn, told the president that Washington did, after all, succeed in getting the nation’s capital named after him. Good point, Trump said with a laugh.

America’s 45th president is open about the fact that he doesn’t read much history.

Much? Make that any. He doesn’t read anything at all; not newspapers, not daily intelligence briefings, nothing. He sure as hell doesn’t read any history.

The president’s disinterest in Washington made it tough for tour guide Bradburn to sustain Trump’s interest during a deluxe 45-minute tour of the property which he later described to associates as “truly bizarre.” The Macrons, Bradburn has told several people, were far more knowledgeable about the history of the property than the president.

A former history professor with a PhD, Bradburn “was desperately trying to get [Trump] interested in” Washington’s house, said a source familiar with the visit, so he spoke in terms Trump understands best — telling the president that Washington was an 18th century real-estate titan who had acquired property throughout Virginia and what would come to be known as Washington, D.C.

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Fined £90 for wasting police time

Apr 10th, 2019 10:06 am | By

A woman reported her stalker to the police five times in six months.

And then he murdered her.

Officers are facing disciplinary action after Shana Grice was fined for wasting police time before she was murdered by her stalker.

Two police officers, one of whom has retired, will face gross misconduct proceedings in front of an independent chairman at public hearings on 7 and 10 May, Sussex Police confirmed. Another police officer will face internal misconduct proceedings, which are carried out in private.

Several others will get retraining, while others still get no further action.

The 14 were investigated by the police watchdog after 19-year-old Miss Grice was murdered in Portslade, near Brighton, East Sussex, in 2016. Michael Lane slit her throat in her bedroom then tried to burn her body.

She had previously reported her ex-boyfriend to officers five times in six months, but was fined £90 for wasting police time.

…

Lane’s trial prompted widespread calls for action to ensure victims are taken seriously by police. He pursued Miss Grice by fitting a tracker to her car, stole a house key to sneak into her room while she slept and loitered outside her home. It later emerged 13 other women had reported him to police for stalking.

…

At Lane’s sentencing, Mr Justice Nicholas Green said officers “jumped to conclusions” and “stereotyped” Ms Grice.

It’s almost as if the cultural messages about women have real world effects.

The news comes on the same day the IOPC announced a police call handler from the force was given “management advice” after failing to record a woman’s reports of escalating violence by her ex-husband who shot her dead eight days later.

Michelle Savage spoke to Sussex Police three times before she was murdered alongside her 53-year-old mother Heather Whitbread in an execution-style killing at almost point-blank range in St Leonards on March last year.

She had told officers former soldier Craig Savage was dangerous and she feared for her life.

Sarah Green, co-director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, said of both cases: “The police watchdog findings that Sussex Police failed and that there will be misconduct hearings are welcome, but much more is needed.

“Numerous inquests and inquiries have found that multiple police forces have failed to protect women who were murdered. There is a massive failing in police leadership on domestic and sexual violence which is not simply about cuts. The Home Secretary should call time on the promises to do better and require improvement or removal of leaders in forces where women are not being protected.”

Oh well, it’s only women.

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The real winners in Trump’s tax cuts

Apr 9th, 2019 4:29 pm | By

Speaking of Republicans and pharmaceutical corporations and filthy practices…

Opens Axios article:

Four pharmaceutical companies — Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Merck and Abbott Laboratories — collectively kept $7 billion in tax savings in 2018 due to Republicans’ 2017 corporate tax overhaul, according to a new Oxfam report.

The bottom line: Oxfam’s results mirror our reporting, which shows pharmaceutical companies in particular have benefited from bringing back billions of dollars in overseas profits that have sat untaxed. However, this report says the tax savings have not led to other social goods, like more research investment in new drugs or lower drug prices.

Of course not. That’s not what money is for. Money is for buying bigger and bigger houses, cars, yachts, private jets.

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Leaders of the corruption caucus

Apr 9th, 2019 3:54 pm | By

Profits first! Profits first, Republicans second, people last. Take prescription drugs for instance…

In an unusual move, House Republicans are warning drug companies against complying with a House investigation into drug prices.

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee sent letters to a dozen CEOs of major drug companies warning that information they provide to the committee could be leaked to the public by Democratic chair Elijah Cummings in an effort to tank their stock prices.

Or perhaps in an effort to inform the public on a subject they badly need to be informed about: why prescription drugs are so eye-wateringly expensive.

Cummings requested information from 12 drug companies such as Pfizer Inc., Johnson & Johnson, and Novartis AG in January as part of a broad investigation into how the industry sets prescription drug prices.

In their letters, Reps. Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows — leaders of the hardline conservative House Freedom Caucus — imply that Cummings may be attempting to collect the information in order to bring down the industry’s stock prices.

Yeah, or maybe he’s doing it to help the lizard people team up with the illuminati to take over our precious bodily fluids. You just never know.

Democrats expressed bafflement at the letters. While politicians routinely spar over committee work, warning companies not to comply with an investigation is unconventional — perhaps even unprecedented, Democrats say.

Heh heh heh, “unconventional” – they’re such kidders. They mean contemptibly filthy and low.

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Public support for reforming gendered laws

Apr 9th, 2019 11:32 am | By

Saudi Arabia responds to international criticism of its bullying of women by bullying more women’s rights advocates.

Saudi Arabia jailed another group of women’s rights advocates on Thursday.

The advocates and writers weren’t politically active, but they had opposed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s regime and expressed public support for reforming gendered laws, according to the Associated Press. The 12 people arrested — 11 men and one woman — reportedly have loose connections with a group of activists who were arrested in 2018 for campaigning to end the country’s ban on women driving and its male guardianship system.

Most of the activists were arrested in the country’s capital city, Riyadh, on Thursday, though one was taken by authorities in the city of Dammam. Among them are two US-Saudi dual citizens — Badr al-Ibrahim, a writer and physician, and Salah al-Haidar, whose mother is prominent women’s rights activist Aziza al-Yousef.

Officials also detained married writers Khadijah al-Harbi, who is pregnant, and Thumar al-Marzouqi, along with writers Mohammed al-Sadiq and Abdullah al-Dehailan, and women’s rights activist Fahad Abalkhail.

…

The Saudi government imprisoned the activists for being “traitors,” alleging that they conspired with international media and human rights groups, and spread “bad morale.” The government denies the activists were tortured or harassed, despite accusations of abuse.

Prince Jared’s buddies.

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He just wants to

Apr 9th, 2019 10:16 am | By

Well, you have to see it from Trump’s point of view. He’s never had any respect for the rule of law; it’s the way he was raised. His father was a crook, so that’s what he saw growing up.

Jake Tapper tells us it’s been boiling over lately:

Three Thursdays ago, in a meeting at the Oval Office with top officials — including Nielsen, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, top aides Jared Kushner, Mercedes Schlapp and Dan Scavino, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and more — the President, according to one attendee, was “ranting and raving, saying border security was his issue.”

Senior administration officials say that Trump then ordered Nielsen and Pompeo to shut down the port of El Paso the next day, Friday, March 22, at noon. The plan was that in subsequent days the Trump administration would shut down other ports.

Nielsen explained why that would not be a good idea, and Trump said he didn’t care.

Ultimately, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney seemed to have been able to talk the President out of closing the port of El Paso. Trump, however, was insistent that his administration begin taking another action — denying asylum seekers entry. Nielsen tried to explain to the President that the asylum laws allow migrants from Central America to come to the US and gain entry. She talked to the White House counsel to see if there were any exceptions, but he told her that her reading of the law was correct.

But Trump doesn’t care about that, because he considers himself better than the law.

Last Friday, the President visited Calexico, California, where he said, “We’re full, our system’s full, our country’s full — can’t come in! Our country is full, what can you do? We can’t handle any more, our country is full. Can’t come in, I’m sorry. It’s very simple.”

Behind the scenes, two sources told CNN, the President told border agents to not let migrants in. Tell them we don’t have the capacity, he said. If judges give you trouble, say, “Sorry, judge, I can’t do it. We don’t have the room.”

After the President left the room, agents sought further advice from their leaders, who told them they were not giving them that direction and if they did what the President said they would take on personal liability. You have to follow the law, they were told.

So. The president told federal agents to break the law and to tell judges to take a hike. He thinks he is the boss of the law as well as all of us. We all have to do what he says, and he doesn’t have to do what anyone says.

There’s also been an ongoing struggle over the past four months over Trump’s urgent desire to resume the practice of taking children away from their parents.

According to multiple sources, the President wanted families separated even if they came in at a legal port of entry and were legal asylum seekers. The President wanted families separated even if they were apprehended within the US. He thinks the separations work to deter migrants from coming.

Sources told CNN that Nielsen tried to explain they could not bring the policy back because of court challenges, and White House staffers tried to explain it would be an unmitigated PR disaster.

“He just wants to separate families,” said a senior administration official.

He just wants to. He really really wants to. He wants to the way normal people want to go to the beach or eat ice cream or see a movie. He wants to for the pleasure of it. He likes doing it because it’s fun for him. That’s what he is.

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Barr wants to let the courts “do their job”

Apr 9th, 2019 9:27 am | By

CNN is live updating on Barr’s conversation with Congress.

Attorney General William Barr just echoed one of President Trump’s recent talking points, highlighting what the two men view as Democratic hypocrisy when it comes to releasing the Mueller report.

That’s because some of the Democrats who want Mueller’s full report released actually spoke out against the full release of the Starr report in the late 1990s. Ken Starr’s investigation led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment proceedings.

“Many of the people right now who are calling for the release of this report were basically castigating Ken Starr and others for releasing the Starr report,” Barr said.

Ken Starr’s investigation was about non-marital sex and lying to conceal the non-marital sex. Mueller’s investigation is about rather more weighty and consequential matters than marital fidelity.

How about that whole health insurance thing? How about the Trump administration’s move to get rid of it, so that we can go back to the situation where a large chunk of the population has no health insurance?

Rep. Matt Cartwright asked Attorney General William Barr about the Affordable Care Act, which the Trump administration recently said should be struck down.

Barr said he wants to let the courts “do their job” when it comes to the lawsuit.

Here’s how the exchange went down:

CARTWRIGHT: Let me be the one to inform you that should the law be struck down, millions of people who get their coverage through the ACA marketplace would lose their coverage, and tens of millions more would see their premiums skyrocket. In addition if you are successful, 12 million people nationally and 750,000 in my home state of Pennsylvania who have coverage under the Medicaid expansion would also likely lose that coverage. Am I correct in that, sir?

BARR: I do think it’s likely we’re going to prevail.

CARTWRIGHT: If you prevail — well, you’re devoting scarce resources of your department to that effort, are you not Attorney General?

BARR: We’re in litigation — we have to take a position — we take position in litigation…

CARTWRIGHT: The answer is yes. You are trying to get it invalidated and if you succeed, that many people will lose their coverage nationally from Medicaid, and 750,000 from Pennsylvania alone, right?

BARR: I’m just saying, if you think it’s such an outrageous position, you have nothing to worry about. Let the courts do their job.

But it’s not about “letting the courts do their job.” The Trump admin didn’t have to bring this suit.

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With no benefits or overtime pay

Apr 8th, 2019 4:48 pm | By

Like Dario Angulo, for example.

At his home on the misty slope of Costa Rica’s tallest mountain, Dario Angulo keeps a set of photographs from the years he tended the rolling fairways and clipped greens of a faraway American golf resort.

Angulo learned to drive backhoes and bulldozers, carving water hazards and tee boxes out of former horse pastures in Bedminster, N.J., where a famous New Yorker was building a world-class course. Angulo earned $8 an hour, a fraction of what a state-licensed heavy equipment operator would make, with no benefits or overtime pay. But he stayed seven years on the grounds crew, saving enough for a small piece of land and some cattle back home.

See this is why Trump and guys like Trump love people from points south who come up here to work for Trump and people like him: they cost a fraction of what state-licensed heavy equipment operators cost. He calls them animals but he wants them to work for him – and then go sharply away when he’s through with them.

It’s a common story in this small town.

Other former employees of President Trump’s company live nearby: men who once raked the sand traps and pushed mowers through thick heat on Trump’s prized golf property — the “Summer White House,” as aides have called it — where his daughter Ivanka got married and where he wants to build a family cemetery.

“Many of us helped him get what he has today,” Angulo said. “This golf course was built by illegals.”

Of course Princess Ivanka got married in a place built by people working for her daddy for cut-rate wages. Of course she did.

The brightly painted homes that line the road in Santa Teresa de Cajon, many paid for by wages earned 4,000 miles away, are the fruits of a long-running pipeline of illegal workers to the president’s course, one that carried far more than a few unauthorized employees who slipped through the cracks.

Soon after Trump broke ground at Bedminster in 2002 with a golden shovel, this village emerged as a wellspring of low-paid labor for the private club, which charges tens of thousands of dollars to join. Over the years, dozens of workers from Costa Rica went north to fill jobs as groundskeepers, housekeepers and dishwashers at Bedminster, former employees said. The club hired others from El Salvador, Mexico and Guatemala who spoke to The Post. Many ended up in the blue-collar borough of Bound Brook, N.J., piling into vans before dawn to head to the course each morning.

But he doesn’t want us to know that.

The company’s recent purge of unauthorized workers from at least five Trump properties contributes to mounting evidence that the president benefited for years from the work of illegal laborers he now vilifies.

What illegal laborers? Do you see any illegal laborers?

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Thwarted again

Apr 8th, 2019 4:29 pm | By

Oh gee will you look at that, a federal judge says Trump doesn’t have total absolute power after all.

A federal judge today halted the Trump administration’s “remain in Mexico” policy, which forces certain non-Mexican asylum seekers to wait in Mexico during their court proceedings.

The plaintiffs — a group of asylum seekers and organizations represented by the American Civil Liberties Union — argued the policy violates U.S. asylum law, international treaty obligations and federal regulatory requirements.

But doesn’t Trump have the absolute right and power to ignore all that? No? Huh.

ACLU asserted in a February court filing that the policy — formally known as the “Migrant Protection Protocols” — put migrants at risk of kidnapping, sexual assault, trafficking and murder in Mexico.

Seeborg, nominated to the district court in 2009 by former President Barack Obama, found the policy was not supported by federal immigration law and did not sufficiently safeguard the lives and freedom of migrants.

Well no, that was the point. Trump wants bad things to happen to them, so that they’ll go away…or else become temporary workers at one of his golf resorts, subject to deportation at any time. One of those.

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Shall means shall

Apr 8th, 2019 4:08 pm | By

Prosecutor in the house.

 

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The option

Apr 8th, 2019 3:58 pm | By

Trump just really really really wants to take children away from people who try to move to the US without his permission.

President Donald Trump has for months urged his administration to reinstate large-scale separation of migrant families crossing the border, according to three U.S. officials with knowledge of meetings at the White House.

Trump’s outgoing Homeland Security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, resisted — setting her at odds with the president.

According to two of the sources, Nielsen told Trump that federal court orders prohibited the Department of Homeland Security from reinstating the policy, and that he would be reversing his own executive order from June that ended family separations.

Federal court orders, pah! Why should Trump care about that? He’s the president, remember? He can do whatever he wants to. Presidents have absolute and total power, except when they were born in Kenya and are smarter than Trump.

Three U.S. officials said that Kevin McAleenan, the head of Customs and Border Patrol who is expected to take over as acting DHS secretary, has not ruled out family separation as an option.

The policy McAleenan would consider, according to the officials, is known as “binary choice” and would give migrant parents the option between being separated from their children or bringing their children with them into long-term detention.

If he does he’ll be violating both international law and US law, plus it’s disgusting. The nightmare deepens by the hour.

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Purge

Apr 8th, 2019 12:03 pm | By

The Times has more on the purge (which they call a purge right up front):

President Trump moved to sweep out the top ranks of the Department of Homeland Security on Monday, a day after pushing out its secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, accelerating a purge of the nation’s immigration and security leadership.

Government officials said three more top department leaders were expected to leave soon: L. Francis Cissna, the head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; Randolph D. Alles, the Secret Service director; and John Mitnik, the agency’s general counsel.

…

All were viewed as allies of John F. Kelly, the president’s former chief of staff and his first Homeland Security secretary, who left late last year after months of tension with Mr. Trump.

In other words they were horrible, as Kelly was horrible, but they weren’t horrible enough. Horrible enough is an elusive prize for Trump.

The departures appeared to be part of a housecleaning of officials involved in the Trump administration’s immigration agenda as the president demands a harder line on border security. Mr. Trump on Friday said Mr. Vitiello would be replaced with someone who would move ICE in a “tougher” direction. All of the departing officials were appointed by Mr. Trump.

More grabbing children away from their parents, never to see them again; more talk of “shithole countries” and “not people, animals.”

We’re in a bad place.

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Editing

Apr 8th, 2019 11:27 am | By

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He’s executing his plan

Apr 8th, 2019 11:10 am | By

More firings from the White House:

United States Secret Service director Randolph “Tex” Alles is being removed from his position, multiple administration officials tell CNN.

President Donald Trump instructed his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to fire Alles. Alles remains in his position as of now but has been asked to leave.

The USSS director was told two weeks ago there would be a transition in leadership and he was asked to stay on until there was a replacement, according to a source close to the director.
Secret Service officials have been caught by surprise with the news and are only finding out through CNN, according to the source.

Like the day Trump fired Comey and the first Comey knew of it was a chyron on CNN.

The Secret Service director reports directly to the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, who resigned on Sunday amid growing pressure from the President. The director oversees the Secret Service’s work on both protection and investigations.

“There is a near-systematic purge happening at the nation’s second-largest national security agency,” one senior administration official says.

United States Citizenship and Immigration Services director Francis Cissna and Office of the General Counsel’s John Mitnick are expected to be gone soon, and the White House is eyeing others to be removed.

The President in recent weeks empowered Stephen Miller to lead the administration’s border policies “and he’s executing his plan” with what amounts to a wholesale decapitation o[f] the Department of Homeland Security leadership, the official says.

Now that’s what I call burying the lede. Trump has handed over control of national security to Stephen Miller of all people.

That’s frightening.

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A call to prayer can never be too loud

Apr 8th, 2019 10:41 am | By

Be careful not to complain of noise if you’re in Indonesia:

The Supreme Court has upheld a blasphemy verdict against a Buddhist woman convicted for complaining about the volume of adzan (call to prayer).

In a ruling dated March 27 and posted on the court’s website on Monday, the panel of justices rejected the appeal by Meiliana, a women of Chinese descent and resident of Tanjung Balai, North Sumatra, and upheld her 1.5-year prison sentence.

A year and a half in prison for objecting to a loud “call to prayer.” Too bad for people who work the night shift or the swing shift in Indonesia; they just have to put up with being woken up a lot.

Meiliana’s case dates back to 2016 when she reportedly said an adzan was “too loud” and “hurt” her ears. She is the first person to be sentenced to prison for complaining about the volume of a mosque’s speakers.

Her alleged remarks were believed to have triggered the worst anti-Chinese riot in the country since 1998, with Muslims who claimed to have been offended by her words setting fire to several Buddhist temples.

It’s a good thing religion makes people nicer, because otherwise we might think it did the exact opposite.

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In response to pressure from transgender lobby groups

Apr 8th, 2019 9:27 am | By

Lucy Bannerman reports that five specialists have quit the Tavistock for reasons of conscience over the past three years.

The clinic used to get about 50 referrals a year, mostly boys, but now thousands of girls are turning up wanting to change their sex.

Until now the specialists struggling to keep up with caseloads have stayed silent, but alarm over the number of adolescents being prescribed body-altering drugs, has prompted five former clinicians to speak out for the first time.

All five have resigned from the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) in the past three years as a matter of conscience.

“This experimental treatment is being done not only on children, but very vulnerable children, who have experienced mental health difficulties, abuse, family trauma, but sometimes those [other factors] just get whitewashed,” one female clinician said. “If someone was suggesting plastic surgery or any other permanent change we’d be saying, hang on a minute.”

And plastic surgery is pretty trivial in comparison to trying to trade in your sex.

Clinical psychologists used to be able to spend months evaluating the children, but now they can be referred for hormone therapy after only three hour-long sessions.

They believe that physically healthy children are being medicated in response to pressure from transgender lobby groups and parental anxieties.

So many potentially gay children were being sent down the pathway to change gender, two of the clinicians said there was a dark joke among staff that “there would be no gay people left”.

“It feels like conversion therapy for gay children,” one male clinician said. “I frequently had cases where people started identifying as trans after months of horrendous bullying for being gay,” he told The Times.

“Young lesbians considered at the bottom of the heap suddenly found they were really popular when they said they were trans.”

And what better reason can there be to alter your body in drastic ways than the chance to be more popular as a teenager? When one of the first things you realize as you become an adult is that the teenage years are just that: they’re a short period that ends, not a template for your whole life.

Several clinicians suspected that some of the “transgender” adolescents were reacting to homophobia at home.

“For some families, it was easier to say, this is a medical problem, ‘here’s my child, please fix them!’ than dealing with a young, gay kid,” the third female clinician said. At the service’s “family days”, a parent was allegedly heard saying that they did not want their child to have gay friends because they “didn’t want them mixed up in that hedonistic lifestyle”. “It is converting people into heterosexuals,” one of the clinicians said. “We had so many families who would talk about not wanting their daughters to be lesbian.” Young people “repeatedly” confided their own “disgust” that they may be gay, according to the clinician.

Again: this is something that can end; it can be a transient thing that becomes insignificant over time; “It Gets Better.” It’s not a reason to make drastic changes to your healthy body.

Another clinician described how youngsters entered his room enthusing about Alex Bertie, a transgender YouTuber, and My Life: I Am Leo, a documentary about a transgender teen broadcast in a teatime slot on CBBC.

“These are very simplified stories about how easy it would be to transition into being trans. . . that transition is a solution to feeling shit. That is very appealing to lots of teenagers,” the first male clinician said.

Aw yeah, that’s a great reason to make irreversible changes to your healthy body: a cool kid on YouTube did it.

What began in 1989 as a specialist clinic for gender issues is now under intense scrutiny. A report by David Bell, a former governor at the trust, revealed ethical concerns over “woefully inadequate care”. Staff were furious with the GIDS executive’s response to the report, which stated that its own review found no safeguarding concerns.

The whole service should have been halted when the number of “transgender” cases first exploded, one of the clinicians said. “That’s the point we should have stopped because we didn’t know what we were doing. Are we a service for kids with gender dysphoria, a medical disorder? Or are we a service for ‘transgender kids’?”

A GIDS spokesman said: “We are aware of tensions between different perspectives. These differences are inevitable in such complex work.”

One clinician said it was understandable if her former employer was defensive, saying: “If they are getting it wrong, you have to ask, are they making kids infertile by mistake? Because if they are to truly acknowledge [our concerns], then they will have to ask themselves, what the fuck have we done to thousands of children?”

Oops.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 7 comments


The meeting didn’t go well

Apr 7th, 2019 4:31 pm | By

Kirsten Nielsen has quit (“resigned”). Jake Tapper was watching.

He’s frustrated with the laws, and he wants people who work for him to break them.

So, she quit or Trump told her to “resign.”

So that’s where we are.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 3 comments
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