I’m reading through Craig Murray’s blog – about his appeal of his sentence, his bad health, his fury at Nicola Sturgeon – and finding some interesting parallels.

May 21, 2021:

Dave Llewellyn sat next to me in the public gallery of the Salmond trial as we witnessed the defence witnesses – largely female – who shredded the prosecution case. A few weeks ago, seven detectives of the Serious Crime Squad raided Dave’s home at 5am, handcuffed him and questioned him over conspiracy to murder – in relation to a public Facebook post. Dave has now been charged with a lesser but still imprisonable offence.

You will recall Mark Hirst, friend of both Dave and I [me], being charged with

So this is who Craig Murray is. The BBC March 25, a mere three weeks ago:

A former diplomat has lost a legal challenge against a jail sentence imposed on him over blogs he wrote about the trial of Alex Salmond.

Craig Murray posted a series of articles online about the former first minister’s high court case in 2020.

He was jailed for eight months for contempt of court after prosecutors raised concerns that complainers could be identified by his writing.

The 63-year-old served four months in prison before being granted parole.

So his verbal abuse of the lunch-having women wasn’t a one-off but part of a pattern.

Scotland’s senior judge, the Lord Justice General Lord Carloway, said: “The

Women Are Human last November on that Brighton “women-only” refuge that’s not women only:

A woman who survived multiple incidents of sexual violence sought female-only group support from a charity, only to be driven away in panic when a tall man with a “deep voice” and “men’s clothes” became a member. The charity, which is funded by the Government, local authorities and the NHS, told the woman it does not “police gender,” and the male individual has every right to be present at the sessions.

If it doesn’t “police gender” i.e. offer women-only spaces for rape victims then what good is it?

“When I first went, it was all women and we all had similar experiences so I was reassured

I see we’ve heard about this women-only refuge that inclooods men before – I wrote about it just last November. All-female including men:

It’s all “shut up and take it, bitch” at the rape therapy support group.

A rape victim who thought she had found a safe all-female space to help her come to terms with the sexual violence she endured has told how she was left deeply troubled by the arrival of a biologically male trans woman ‘with no obvious female attributes’.

Jay Breslaw of the pious whispery voice made an appearance:

Brighton. They’re not fond of women in Brighton. Just ask Kathleen Stock.

In written evidence to a Commons select committee last year, [Survivors’ Network’s] chief

“Women need women-only spaces, therefore we’re including men.”

I should warn you, the clip is horrible to listen to, even apart from the content. I think the content is the reason for the horribleness of the listen: the woman reading the statement finds it necessary to use the most sanctimonious soporific voice in her repertoire, the kind of voice that always makes me want to scratch my armpits and make fart noises. She speaks very s l o w l y and clearly, in a very Soft and Warm and Soothing and Condescending voice, as if we’d all just been pulled from the rubble of a collapsed apartment block.

Women-only spaces are uplifting and empowering. They offer a place

York Vision, one of two student papers at the university of same, has a think piece on Julie Bindel and student censorship. It’s not very good.

An event with Julie Bindel hosted by Uni of York’s Free Speech Society was postponed at the last minute amid safety concerns and outrage from staff and students at the University.

What “safety concerns”? Did someone – anyone – think Julie was going to throw a bomb or pull out a handgun or poison the refreshments? As for “outrage” – pull your fucking pants up and stop whining.

Inviting Julie Bindel to a free speech event was always going to end with protest and uprisal. 

“Uprisal”? Anyway, the only reason it’s true that … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on The harm suffered.

This isn’t super-complicated stuff. One wonders why it’s so hard for people to see.

It’s willful blindness in this one claim particularly. If it were just the blindness, that would be one thing. It’s the coercion to collude that takes it that much further. It’s not usually suggested, as a matter of course, that society at large affirms and goes along with people’s mistaken beliefs about themselves. We don’t agree with dangerously underweight anorexics that they are in fact horribly obese. We do not humour people, suffering from very particular brain injuries, by going along with their sincerely held (but mistaken) belief that one of their own … Read the rest

The lies they tell.

But when public figures like Rowling and O'Hanlon normalise hatred of queer people and legitimise extremists who want trans people to stop existing (like those with whom Rowling was mixing the other day), it creates an environment where even more extreme bigots feel emboldened

— Jack Kennedy (@kackjennedy) April 14, 2022

I don’t know who O’Hanlon is, but Rowling doesn’t “normalise hatred of queer people” or “legitimise extremists who want trans people to stop existing,” nor are the women who joined Rowling for that lunch the “extremists” he points out. They don’t want trans people dead. If we accused him of libel for saying they do he would “explain” that by “stop existing” he meant “stop … Read the rest

Oh just shove them in with the women. Again. Always.

WOMEN who want to use a public toilet in Camden Town have been asked to share the underground conveniences with men – leading to protests that they feel unsafe.

It’s not just that they feel unsafe, it’s that they are unsafe.

A campaign has now been launched to try and persuade the Town Hall to provide women with their own set of toilets, but the council says it needs to find funds to repair broken men’s facilities close to the Tube station – meaning the “ladies” is now gender-neutral.

Aka unsafe for women.

Ironically, these very women’s toilets at the end of Parkway, now designated as gender-neutral while the

How to get a free “prom dress”:

Non-binary teen turned away from Monsoon’s female changing rooms offered free prom dress as shop ‘committed to inclusivity’

Charlie Moore, who identifies as non-binary, was shopping for a prom dress with their friend.

It seems he’s male “non-binary” as opposed to female “non-binary.”

Monsoon has insisted the shop is “committed to inclusivity” and issued an apology after a non-binary teenager was stopped from using the female changing rooms while shopping for a prom dress.

What does Monsoon mean by “inclusivity”? That anyone and everyone should be “included” in their female changing rooms? But that would exclude most women.

Charlie Moore, 18, said they were left “humiliated” after being instructed to leave the retailer’s

So now I’m exploring further the dimness and hostility to women of this Craig Murray fella and it’s astonishing. He comes across as weirdly clueless, even childish. He’s a former ambassador? To where, his local park?

A number of people have queried me on this.
It is quite simple.
To characterise these particular women as victims of "pain hate and injustice" should be derided as ludicrous.
By the standards of the vast majority of the women in this world, they are extremely privileged. https://t.co/KZmBB2FDdD

— Craig Murray (@CraigMurrayOrg) April 11, 2022

Like that, for instance. It’s childishly stupid. (No offense to children intended. We’re all stupid as children, because of being children.) Even if all the women at that lunch … Read the rest

Julie Bindel gives us the back story:

It was late August 2019 when a message popped up in my Twitter inbox from J.K. Rowling. I had noticed that she had begun to follow me on Twitter a few months earlier, along with a number of feminists, and I was delighted to hear from her.

“I’ve just seen that you’re in contact with Magdelen Berns,” she wrote. Berns was a young lesbian who, after being silenced at her university, made YouTube videos tackling the absurdity of transgender ideology. She was popular, hilarious and informative. I say was; Berns, in her 30s, was dying of a brain tumour. I planned to visit her at a hospice in Edinburgh and had put

Jean Hatchet on the misogyny in some of the reactions to that lunch in Hammersmith:

These women are very well aware that simply gathering in this way is a political act which will cause trans activists to seek to punish them for their audacity, for daring to show openly their love for other women. Predictably the backlash from trans activists to these photos was swift and it was vicious. Deep misogyny dripped through the internet like poison.

In the photos posted JK Rowling, in a flowery tea dress with a low-cut neck, looks stunning — elegant and graceful. She wears her 56 years happily, with pride. The tweets focused on her body and her looks, however. One user @effingfaded wrote

Enough of all this seriousness.… Read the rest

Sweden has made The Big Swerve.

The Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare released new recommendations that effectively halt “gender-affirming” medical interventions in minors and prioritize psychotherapy for the treatment of gender-dysphoric youth. This is confirms the direction taken by the leading children’s hospital in Sweden last year, after a series of investigative reports exposed the harm suffered by children and young people who were medically “transitioned” using hormones and surgery.

The link is dated February 2022 (and is in Swedish). I suppose now the “activists” will be accusing Sweden of embracing “conversion therapy.” One person’s “refraining from extreme surgeries and/or drugs for dysphoric children” is another person’s “extreme cruelty via conversion therapy.”… Read the rest

NOVA did an episode last year on coral reef bleaching and attempts to speed up the evolution of heat-resistant corals.

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has been hit by widespread coral bleaching repeatedly in recent years, where marine heat waves have turned large parts of the reef a ghostly white.

…

Back-to-back bleaching events are expected to become more common as the climate gets hotter, but it’s happening sooner than expected in Australia – a worrying sign that the vast majority of the world’s coral reefs are at risk of disappearing.

“Climate change is a whole host of bad things for corals,” says Emily Darling, director of coral reef conservation at the Wildlife Conservation Society. “If they’re getting bleached and

Monitoring the rebellious women 24/7.

Oh please do bore off. I have no clue who you are but you really really need to spend less time worrying about a group of women you will never meet talking and eating together…

— Rosie Duffield MP (@RosieDuffield1) April 13, 2022

What?! How dare she! How dare she talk back to a man that way!

Your bio says New Zealand – I do have a large constituency but not quite that large!

— Rosie Duffield MP (@RosieDuffield1) April 13, 2022

Well when he says “your constituents” immediately followed by “we” he of course doesn’t mean he is one of her constituents, he means [ explanation goes here ].… Read the rest

This sensible and discerning fella at the blog Learning From Dogs got permission from Free Inquiry to republish my think-piece in the current issue titled Cruising Over the Edge.

The fine editors at FI found the perfect photo to illustrate it. [Updating: but this illustration isn’t that one.]

It’s not fake. Just so you know.

“Veronica Ivy” enters the race. Burnaby Velodrome.

Here's some new footage of Veronica Ivy / Rachel McKinnon getting ready for a women's cycling race earlier this year pic.twitter.com/yQN7NIBTL1

— ripx4nutmeg (@ripx4nutmeg) April 13, 2022

Updating to add, h/t Dave Ricks:

Oh really.

The source is Private Eye News, she says in a followup tweet.

The Guardian kept it secret. So interesting.… Read the rest