The Times on the bad behavior of Joanne Harris:

JK Rowling and fellow writers have accused the bestselling novelist Joanne Harris, who is head of the Society of Authors, of betraying the principle of freedom of speech in her stance on gender identity.

Rowling said that Harris, who wrote the award-winning novel Chocolat, had “consistently failed” to defend female authors who disagreed “with her personal position on gender identity ideology”, allowing the women to be intimidated into silence.

She cited the cases of two authors, Rachel Rooney and Gillian Philip, who had suffered “severe personal and professional harm” because they dared to “challenge a fashionable ideology which has been remarkably successful in demonising those who protest against the

Scotland is drunk.

Scotland has just appointed the first Period Dignity Officer… and it’s a man.

You couldn’t make this stuff up. pic.twitter.com/yFfdIFLwGJ

— Samantha Smith (@SamanthaTaghoy) August 15, 2022

Obviously men know more about periods than women do.

Dundee man and former personal trainer Jason Grant is the newly appointed period dignity officer for the Tay region – who has the task of promoting access to free sanitary products across schools and colleges – where he will also discuss issues around the menopause.

…

Mr Grant gushed of his new role as he claimed it affects men and boys too and people regardless of gender in a nod to inclusivity toward a minority of young trans men.

No it doesn’t. … Read the rest

Trump’s having a busy day. He’s also been telling the FBI what to do via his personal social media platform. That should work.

Donald Trump has demanded the return of some documents seized by the US justice department in an FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida last week – apparently under the impression that posts on his Truth Social platform carry legal weight.

Or any other kind of weight.

In a post on Sunday, the former president wrote: “By copy of this Truth, I respectfully request that these documents be immediately returned to the location from which they were taken. Thank you!”

Woman man person camera tv.

On Saturday, citing anonymous sources, Fox News reported that

Trump is told he should hurry up and declare he’s running so that he can…make the world a better place? No, of course not; so that he can avoid criminal investigation. That’s a good reason to run for president!

Donald Trump “has to” announce a campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 in the next two weeks, a senior Trumpworld source said, if the former president wants to head off being indicted under the Espionage Act after the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago last week.

Awesome campaign slogan. “The Feds were hot on the trail so I announced my campaign to be president to foil them!”

In communications reviewed by the Guardian, the source indicated Trump needed to announce because

Kenan Malik on the attack on Rushdie and free inquiry:

The Rushdie affair was a watershed in British political and cultural life, thrusting to the surface issues such as radical Islam, terrorism, the boundaries of free speech and the limits of tolerance. It was also a turning point in the way many thought about these issues. There developed in its wake both a greater hostility to Muslims and a stronger sense of the moral unacceptability of giving offence to other cultures or faiths in a plural society.

…

Rushdie was charting this new terrain, capturing the sense of displacement and dislocation, which he found exhilarating. The Satanic Verses was, he wrote while in hiding, “a love-song to our mongrel

Jolyon deploys the irregular verbs.

…especially the ones who spout off about “relative power” without seemingly understanding what it means in the real world.

— Kenan Malik (@kenanmalik) August 14, 2022

Oh but I’m sure posh rich smug pale Jolyon knows far more about it than mere community-havers like Kenan.

Jolyon, your view seems to be that you criticising my article is “conspicuously polite” but me challenging your criticism can only be the product of “hostility or personal animus”. Let’s just say that I conspicuously politely disagree.

— Kenan Malik (@kenanmalik) August 14, 2022

Honestly. You couldn’t make it up. Maugham tweets a stupid ignorant criticism of Kenan’s piece on Rushdie and free speech, and then whines about “hostility or … Read the rest

The Hunger Stones have appeared.

Severe drought has caused water levels of the river Elbe to drop, exposing centuries-old “hunger stones”.

One stone, now visible in Děčín, where the Elbe flows from the Czech Republic into Germany, was carved with a warning in 1616 which reads: “If you see me, weep.”

The stones, embedded into the banks to mark water levels during famines, have been exposed as drought continues to afflict Europe. Other stones, which were common in German settlements from the 16th to the 19th century, were inscribed with similarly macabre warnings in the event of falling water levels.

Water levels during famines – not something we can technology our way around. Crops need water, and if the … Read the rest

It’s bad to threaten and/or attack writers to punish them for what they write.

Mostly.

If the writer is JK Rowling though…

Writer Joanne Harris is facing calls to resign as chairman of the Society of Authors after she was accused of mocking JK Rowling with a ‘tasteless’ Twitter poll about death threats.

After tweeting her support for Sir Salman Rushdie in the wake of his stabbing on Friday, Rowling received this response: ‘Don’t worry, you are next.’

Police are now investigating a report of an ‘online threat’ made to Rowling. Harris, 58, wrote: ‘Fellow-authors… have you ever received a death threat (credible or otherwise).’ 

The response options were ‘Yes’, ‘Hell, yes’, ‘No, never’ and ‘Show me, dammit’, suggesting

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Trans identitarianism benefits principally upper-class white men.

A current example might be the critique of “colorblindness”. While colorblindness is the desired state of affairs, adopting radical colorblindness prematurely renders one insatiable of recognizing racism. An intermediate state is required in which we “see color”.

Funny how this phase of “blindness” was reached so quickly with regards to women’s rights and equality. We never really “fixed” sexism. There was a little bit of a start, but it was interrupted by a combination of “choosie-choice feminism” and gender identitarianism. We skipped right over equal pay, equal political participation, freedom from male violence, etc. to “Sex Work is Work” and “Trans Women Are … Read the rest

Boston Children’s Hospital is truly scary.

The content that’s labeled “sensitive” is just a hospital bureaucrat talking absolute bullshit about how to know a child “is trans.”

Her title is Director, Gender Multispecialty Service. Specialty how? Service how?… Read the rest

The crime family members are eyeing each other suspiciously.

Theories about Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, are swirling online following the FBI’s seizure of classified documents that were at the former president’s Florida estate.

After Newsweek reported that a confidential source had tipped off the FBI about what classified documents Donald Trump was keeping at his Mar-a-Lago home, Mary Trump— Donald Trump’s niece—theorized that the mole could be Kushner.

…

“I think we need to look very hard at why Jared got $2 billion,” Mary Trump said, referring to the investment Kushner secured from a fund led by by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman about six months after leaving the White House.

Well, yes, we do, and … Read the rest

One is never enough.

Police are investigating an online threat to JK Rowling, after she tweeted support for Salman Rushdie following his attack in the US. The Harry Potter author, 57, shared screenshots of a message stating: “Don’t worry, you are next”.

The same Twitter account also posted messages praising the man who attacked Mr Rushdie on stage at an event in New York state. Ms Rowling said she felt “very sick” at the news and hoped he would recover.

She shared a screenshot of the threat, writing: “To all sending supportive messages. Thank you. Police are involved (were already involved on other threats).”

The tweet, from an account in Pakistan, had been removed on Sunday morning. A Police

Originally a comment by Papito on His colleagues complained.

Nullius, I agree with your statement:

Action within the constraints of egalitarianism (treating none as lesser or greater than oneself) is incapable of exerting the power over others necessary to bring about egalitarian conditions. Egalitarianism cannot bring itself about. Thus, a Leftist politics must necessarily incorporate some other non-egalitarian mechanism for changing the state of affairs obtaining in the world.

This can be substantiated by looking at leftist theory, e.g. Marcuse, who states openly that a bias should be instituted in favor of leftist ideas, to contradict a naturally existing bias towards conservative ideas. So it’s true that leftism has a propensity towards identitarianism, at least as an intermediate stage … Read the rest

A little more on Rushdie:

Salman Rushdie’s “road to recovery has begun” but “will be long” after his stabbing in western New York late last week, the novelist’s agent has said.

“The injuries are severe,” the agent, Andrew Wylie, said Sunday in an email to the Guardian, alluding to stab wounds that the author suffered to his neck, stomach, eye, chest and thigh two days earlier. “But his condition is headed in the right direction.”

So he was actually stabbed in the eye? That’s nightmarish.

The article also quotes Zafar’s tweet but I’ve shown you that already.

Earlier on Saturday, Hadi Matar, the man suspected in Friday’s attack at a literary festival in upstate New York, pleaded not guilty

Matthew Syed on the complicity of western liberals with fatwa-issuing clerics:

Many of the comments on the Rushdie affair over the past 24 hours have pointed out that for many years he has been living quite freely, that the fatwa had been revoked by Iran (although the bounty remains) and that society has moved on from the dark days of book-burning, even if lone attackers remain a threat.

I would suggest that this is delusional, a fantasy conjured up by western liberals to distract from a more sinister truth: over 30 years they have worked as the de facto accomplices of the ayatollah, assisting in the task of dismantling free speech, sending fear through those who dare to criticise

Reliably backing the wrong horse, our Jolyon.

So frustrating to read, even well intentioned like this, pieces on free speech that don't engage with relative power. Who actually has a platform to speak – and for what purpose do they use it, to challenge or to embed power? https://t.co/uPy2UpFssX

— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) August 14, 2022

Yes that’s Salman, embedding power all over the place, not challenging it at all.

Of course saying that relies on believing that Islam is powerless. Have a think about that for a minute or two.… Read the rest

A little more news:

A family statement… @SalmanRushdie #SalmanRushdie pic.twitter.com/tMrAkoqliq

— Zafar Rushdie (@ZafRushdie) August 14, 2022

… Read the rest

Ewan Somerville at the Telegraph on more gender Stalinism in academia:

“Far-Left” university bosses have been accused of forcing out their own diversity adviser after staff protested that criticism of transgender activism was “threatening”. 

They’re not “far-left” though. We need a new moniker for this nonsense. Far-Identitarian perhaps. There’s nothing actually lefty about imposing fantasies on the world and punishing people who fail to believe the fantasies. Far-Incloosive. Far-Reality-Denying.

The equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) adviser at the University of Sheffield had been employed for more than two years working on LGBT+ inclusion and a race equality action plan.

No equality or inclusion for women though? Nothing? Not even a crumb?

But in October last year, his colleagues from

At least Rushdie is off the ventilator and able to talk.

Unfortunately there’s no other new information, but it’s a start. I hope.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Security conscious.

John Kelly tried to limit access to Trump at Maralago but he failed because Trump said no.

Mr. “I-Know-More-About-Everything-Than-Anyone-Else-On-Earth” probably figured he could spot spies because they would be wearing black trench coats and carrying bombs with lit fuses. A man with no theory of mind, who chooses staff because they look the part (rather than being qualified for the position), would think that everyone else hires underlings and minions in exactly the same way. In real life, at a resort, an agent could be a member of caretaking or custodial staff. What matters is access, not rugged good looks, or femme fatale gorgeousity. I’d be amazed … Read the rest