God hates people, it seems.

The Taliban drove an ambulance packed with explosives into a crowded Kabul street on Saturday, setting off an enormous blast that killed at least 95 people and injured 158 others, adding to the grim toll of what has been one of the most violent stretches of the long war, Afghan officials said.

The attack came days after a 15-hour siege by the militants at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul that left 22 dead, including 14 foreigners.

Killed for what? A fascist theocracy.

The large casualty toll was another reminder of how badly Afghanistan is bleeding. Over the past year, about 10,000 of the country’s security forces have been killed and more than 16,000 others wounded, according to a senior Afghan government official. The Taliban losses are believed to be about the same.

United Nations’ data suggests an average of about 10 civilians were killed every day over the first nine months of 2017.

Religion doesn’t seem to be very good for people.

“Today’s attack is nothing short of an atrocity, and those who have organized and enabled it must be brought to justice and held to account,” Tadamichi Yamamoto, the leader of the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan, said in a statement.

“I am particularly disturbed by credible reports that the attackers used a vehicle painted to look like an ambulance, including bearing the distinctive medical emblem, in clear violation of international humanitarian law,” Mr. Yamamoto added.

A filthy move for obvious reasons: you don’t want ambulances to be seen as suspicious.

Chris Sloggett at the National Secular Society on the stupid attacks on Sara Khan.

Today the BBC’s headline about her appointment is: ‘Controversy over new counter-extremism tsar Sara Khan’.

Many of those who claim to speak for Muslims do not like Khan because she promotes a positive message. She encourages a degree of integration into British society. She says Muslims should obey the same laws as everyone else and cooperate with the British state. She has called for honesty among Muslims about hateful ideologies and intolerant practices which are specific to, or particularly prominent among, those who share their religion.

Her organisation Inspire encourages girls and women from Muslim backgrounds to be aspirational. It has done important work countering the narrative of grievance and resentment peddled by so many. And Khan wrote a book, The Battle for British Islam, in which she tackled many of those peddlers, as well as their counterparts on the white far right, head-on.

Is this really work that we should explicitly describe as ‘controversial’? Anyone interested in the future of British society should support the general thrust of what Khan has tried to do.

It’s typical BBC though, to point a censorious finger at people considered “controversial” by reactionary religious men. They’ve been doing it for years.

That doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be reasonable analysis and criticism of her work. But if such a thing exists it has been drowned out today amid a hurricane of apologism. Advocacy groups such as 5PillarsUK, the Muslim Council of Britain and the Muslim Public Affairs Committee have berated Khan. Politicians such as Sayeeda Warsi, Naz Shah and Diane Abbott have cravenly jumped on the bandwagon.

And meanwhile press reports have danced to the Islamists’ tune. The BBC’s initial report on Khan’s appointment was particularly egregious. It described what had happened, included one sentence from Khan in reported speech, and then handed over the stage to a succession of Islamist apologists.

Was the Guardian any better?

The Guardian initially ran a reasonable, descriptive piece. Its headline declared Khan a “leading Muslim campaigner”. Then it decided to change it.

‘Choice of new UK anti-extremism chief criticised as “alarming”‘ was its new headline. ‘Sara Khan is seen as mouthpiece for the Home Office, says former Tory chair Sayeeda Warsi’ was the new standfirst. “The government has been criticised for appointing a divisive counter-extremism campaigner”, read the first line of the article.

Khan was “seen as being supportive of the government’s controversial Prevent programme” (ah yes, the Prevent victim-mongers getting their chance to say their piece without reply again). Warsi, Shah and Harun Khan of the Muslim Council of Britain were quoted before any description of Khan’s work and before anyone mounted a substantial defence of her.

Or the Independent maybe?

The Independent‘s headline read: ‘Government’s appointment of new anti-extremism chief branded “alarming” amid widespread criticism’. The first paragraph said the decision had been “widely criticised and described as ‘deeply disturbing’ by leading figures in the British Muslim community”. Soon we were being told that “Ms Khan has been a strong advocate for the government’s controversial Prevent policy, which has been described as ‘demonising’ Muslims.” (Of course it has also “been described” as many other things). Once again Shah, Warsi and Harun Khan were given the chance to spout their nonsense before the only defence came from Sara Khan herself and the Government.

It’s bizarre. They wouldn’t give this kind of sympathy to white nationalist groups protesting the hire of a BME woman charged with countering racist extremism. They seem to think Islamists are somehow the opposite of white nationalist groups, but they’re not. The two differ only on race; in every other way they match each other in reactionary repression and bullying.

Trump did intend to fire Mueller. He tried to, but his lawyer said he would walk, so the tiny mind was changed.

President Trump ordered the firing last June of Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel overseeing the Russia investigation, according to four people told of the matter, but ultimately backed down after the White House counsel threatened to resign rather than carry out the directive.

The West Wing confrontation marks the first time Mr. Trump is known to have tried to fire the special counsel. Mr. Mueller learned about the episode in recent months as his investigators interviewed current and former senior White House officials in his inquiry into whether the president obstructed justice.

Funny how Trump provides new examples of obstruction of justice as Mueller is looking for the slightly older ones.

After receiving the president’s order to fire Mr. Mueller, the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, refused to ask the Justice Department to dismiss the special counsel, saying he would quit instead, the people said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing a continuing investigation.

Mr. McGahn disagreed with the president’s case and told senior White House officials that firing Mr. Mueller would have a catastrophic effect on Mr. Trump’s presidency. Mr. McGahn also told White House officials that Mr. Trump would not follow through on the dismissal on his own. The president then backed off.

He’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, is he.

A fine fine story from the Washington Post:

The emailed response from the Guggenheim’s chief curator to the White House was polite but firm: The museum could not accommodate a request to borrow a painting by Vincent van Gogh for President and Melania Trump’s private living quarters.

Instead, wrote the curator, Nancy Spector, another piece was available, one that was nothing like “Landscape With Snow,” the 1888 van Gogh rendering of a man in a black hat walking along a path in Arles, France, with his dog.

The curator’s alternative: an 18-karat, fully functioning, solid gold toilet — an interactive work titled “America” that critics have described as pointed satire aimed at the excess of wealth in this country.

Do admit.

Pleasingly, they had been exhibiting the toilet in a working restroom for the public to use. I hope it was a gender neutral restroom because otherwise no fair.

But the exhibit was over and the toilet was available “should the President and First Lady have any interest in installing it in the White House,” Spector wrote in an email obtained by The Washington Post.

We know Trump loves to slap gilt all over everything – in fact maybe he was the inspiration for the satire aimed at the excess of wealth in this country.

On the face of it, President Trump might appreciate an artist’s rendering of a gilded toilet, given his well-documented history of installing gold-plated fixtures in his residences, his properties and even his airplane. But the president is also a self-described germaphobe, and it’s an open question whether he would accept a previously used toilet, 18-karat or otherwise.

Probably not. But I’m sure he was deeply flattered by the offer.

Speaking of poverty and inequality in the US and how that (along with other faults) makes us not a shining city on a hill – the US has a deep poverty problem.

According to the World Bank, 769 million people lived on less than $1.90 a day in 2013; they are the world’s very poorest. Of these, 3.2 million live in the United States, and 3.3 million in other high-income countries (most in Italy, Japan and Spain).

But if you factor in needs, it’s even worse than that.

An Indian villager spends little or nothing on housing, heat or child care, and a poor agricultural laborer in the tropics can get by with little clothing or transportation. Even in the United States, it is no accident that there are more homeless people sleeping on the streets in Los Angeles, with its warmer climate, than in New York.

The Oxford economist Robert Allen recently estimated needs-based absolute poverty lines for rich countries that are designed to match more accurately the $1.90 line for poor countries, and $4 a day is around the middle of his estimates. When we compare absolute poverty in the United States with absolute poverty in India, or other poor countries, we should be using $4 in the United States and $1.90 in India.

Once we do this, there are 5.3 million Americans who are absolutely poor by global standards. This is a small number compared with the one for India, for example, but it is more than in Sierra Leone (3.2 million) or Nepal (2.5 million), about the same as in Senegal (5.3 million) and only one-third less than in Angola (7.4 million)…

This evidence supports on-the-ground observation in the United States. Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer have documented the daily horrors of life for the several million people in the United States who actually do live on $2 a day, in both urban and rural America. Matthew Desmond’s ethnography of Milwaukee explores the nightmare of finding urban shelter among the American poor.

To put it succinctly, we abandon far more people to abject poverty than do most developed countries.

Even for the whole population, life expectancy in the United States is lower than we would expect given its national income, and there are places — the Mississippi Delta and much of Appalachia — where life expectancy is lower than in Bangladesh and Vietnam.

Hmm, the Mississippi Delta, what’s that – oh yes, it’s that place where hundreds of thousands of slaves were imported so that white people could get rich on cotton.

Not much shine.

Trump in Davos is trying to convince us all that he and Theresa May are best friends, best best best best dear close intimate best friends. May is simply saying the UK and the US remain allies.

His elegance and cogency were as usual striking.

“We’re on the same wavelength, I think, in every respect,” Mr. Trump said. “And the prime minister and myself have had a really great relationship, although some people don’t necessary believe that, but I can tell you it’s true.” He expressed respect for Mrs. May, and said he thought “the feeling is mutual from the standpoint of liking each other a lot,” adding that the two were “very much joined at the hip” on military matters.

Remember his visit to the White House during the transition, when he said afterwards that he liked Obama and Obama really really liked him?

Don’t bother watching after 53 seconds in. Anyway: that’s how detached from reality he is. He spent years giving oxygen to the lie that Obama wasn’t born in the US and isn’t a citizen and was therefore a fraudulent president…and then he says “he likes me” like a huge baby. And he says the same thing about May.

Maybe that’s because he doesn’t have the discipline or theory of mind to be polite to people he doesn’t like, so he can’t grasp that other people do.

Anyway. The chances that May actually “likes” him are nil.

Mrs. May was polite but less effusive and offered no personal testimonial to Mr. Trump, keeping her comments focused on their mutual national interests. “We, too, have that really special relationship between the U.K. and the United States,” she said. “It’s at each other’s shoulders. We face the same challenges across the world, and as you say we’re willing to go and to defeat those challenges and meet them.”

That’s how the adults do it; they don’t go prancing around the room exclaiming that Terry or Angie LIKES them.

Missouri dude runs for nomination to Senate on Eww Feminism ticket.

Republican Courtland Sykes posted a statement to Facebook in response to questions about his stance on women’s rights. In the post, he said his wife had “ordered” him to respect women’s rights, but she knows that “I want to come home to a home-cooked dinner at six every night – one that she fixes and one that I expect one day to have daughters learn to fix after they become traditional homemakers and family wives”.

The candidate expanded on what he expected of his daughters, saying he didn’t want them to grow up into “career obsessed banshees who forego home life and children and the happiness of family to become nail-biting manophobic [sic] hell-bent feminist she devils who shriek from the tops of a thousand tall buildings they think they could have leaped over in a single bound – had men not ‘suppressing them’.”

Tragically I can’t find the post now; perhaps he took it down because it got too much attention from banshees and she devils.

Mr Sykes criticised what he called “mean-spirited radical feminists”…

Being so genial and sweet in his own way of speaking.

Mr Sykes is one of four Republican candidates jockeying for the chance to challenge two-term Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill in the November general election. The candidate previously drew condemnation for posting a photo comparing Ms McCaskill and other Democratic women to Disney villains.

He should read some Marina Warner.

At least there’s a screen grab in circulation.

https://twitter.com/CharlotteAlter/status/956599629025628161

“Their own nasty, snake-filled heads” – come on, tell us what you really think.

Russia threat should unite us, not divide us: “It’s not about Republicans or Democrats. They’re coming after America, which I hope we all love equally… And they will be back, because we remain…that shining city on the hill, and they don’t like it. “ Me (Senate Intel 6/8/17)

— James Comey (@Comey) January 25, 2018

Comey:

Russia threat should unite us, not divide us: “It’s not about Republicans or Democrats. They’re coming after America, which I hope we all love equally… And they will be back, because we remain…that shining city on the hill, and they don’t like it.” Me (Senate Intel 6/8/17)

Well, we don’t, really. One, we never were, because slavery and genocide just for a start, and two, we’ve gotten worse in some ways instead of better. Russia is much worse still, yes, but that’s not much of a standard.

One huge flashing-sign reason we are not any kind of shining city on a hill is the disgusting fact that we have a larger proportion of our people locked up than any other country on earth. Our nearest rival is Russia.

There’s also the gulf between rich and poor which has grown in recent decades as opposed to shrinking – that’s not my idea of a shining city on a hill. There’s the shambolic health care non-system; there’s rising homelessness; there’s high infant and maternal mortality; there’s an inadequate social safety net; there’s entrenched poverty and neglect; there’s racism and police violence; there are far too many guns and too many outbursts of violence; money is allowed to decide elections.

All that doesn’t add up to a shining city on a hill, I’m sorry. Putin stinks, the Russian oligarchy stinks, but that doesn’t make us a shining city.

Brendan O’Neill. Spiked. The Presidents Club. Calm down.

Moral outrage…outrage entrepreneurs…raging loudly against the wicked…Britain’s chattering class…the utterly non-shocking news…sassy young women who early in life use their nous and looks to earn a buck…not the most decorous of annual affairs…pink-hued Guardian wannabe…posh fury with Brexit…to jump on the trending bandwagon…grovelling apologies…heads on platters…arrogant instinct…every little thing that displeases them.

…freedom of association…mixing with whomever they choose…a less than PC fashion…whiter than white…the new moral guardians…infantilised the women…the possibly sad or old-fashioned men…hapless, slave-like creatures needing to be saved by the middle-class, clever women…the skills necessary to deal with dickheads…today’s media women…national scandal…men touched their knees…the political and media classes…safe-spaced and prudish…

Every fucking cliché in the book innit. They don’t need Brendan, they could just chop up his old columns and paste the bits in.