And we call that “theocracy.”

Michael Flynn tonight: “If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God, and one religion under God.” pic.twitter.com/ShGVrsQ9hW

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) November 13, 2021

Sounds great, right? Like Pakistan, like Saudi Arabia, like Iran, like Afghanistan…like Ireland until quite recently, like El Salvador now. Mullahs or priests – always male, of course, and not “identifying as” male either but the real thing – telling you what you can and can’t do.… Read the rest

Oh will they now.

Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson will join filmmaker Chris Columbus and other cast members from all the #HarryPotter films for an HBO Max special to celebrate the anniversary of the franchise’s first film, which premiered 20 years ago today. https://t.co/BtWi5emDKu pic.twitter.com/SKyAvpCM8k

— Variety (@Variety) November 16, 2021

That’s rich seeing as how they’ve all shat on the source of their fame and wealth i.e. JK Rowling.… Read the rest

Two down…

Exactly a week after former New York Times opinion columnist Bari Weiss unveiled the creation of a hypothetical new “university” stacked with advisers united by “a common dismay at the state of academic and a recognition that we can no longer wait for the cavalry,” two riders in that brave regiment have resigned their commissions.

Robert J. Zimmer, the chancellor of the University of Chicago, and Steven Pinker, the Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, quit the University of Austin’s advisory board on Monday.

Just one week. It seems so embarrassing for the project.

“As is often the case with fast-moving start-ups,” a statement from the University of Austin said, “there were

Hm, not going so well.

University of Chicago chancellor Robert Zimmer is distancing himself from the University of Austin, a newly announced institution that’s drawn scrutiny for its critiques of higher education and politicized nature, officials announced today.

Jeez. After a week?

Zimmer was initially listed as a member of the board of advisers when the website was launched last week, but he has since stepped aside, a U of C spokesman confirmed.

The school is being established to combat cancel culture and promote intellectual diversity, its founders say. They also lamented that higher education is fundamentally broken and that elite schools are failing students.

And Bari Weiss is front and center, which…

“University of Chicago Chancellor Robert J.

The Adrian Harrop tribunal started today. The issue: was his Twitter activity inappropriate for a medical doctor? As is only right, there is a Harrop tribunal Twitter account.

Harrop, as this point said the complainant was “transphobic” and he was “using his public platform for good.” Dr Harrop was reminded of guidance and warned further complaints would leave to a referral to GMC.

— Tribunal Tweets (@tribunaltweets) November 15, 2021

General twitter conduct; offensive tweets and insulting individuals through replies for example. Referring to one particular tweet now. It’s a response and states ‘the conclusion is that you are just a bit cognitively impaired… and the anti- trans bigots will take care of you’

— Tribunal Tweets (@tribunaltweets) November

Steve Bannon is starring in The Steve Bannon Turns Himself In show.

Bannon arrived at the FBI Washington field office in a black SUV shortly before 9:40 a.m. He was met by a swarm of media and was defiant when addressing TV cameras outside the building, saying, “We’re taking down the Biden regime.”

Anything for attention.

Moments before turning himself in Monday, Bannon went live on social media and told his supporters to “stay focused.”

“I don’t want anybody to take their eye off the ball from what we do every day, OK,” Bannon said to a camera for his online show “WarRoom.”

“I want you guys to stay focused on message,” he added before walking into the FBI office.

There may be many hooray responses to the LGBTQ+ letter to Middle Temple on Twitter that I’m not seeing because Twitter selects what we see, but the ones I am seeing are not at all impressed. They are especially not impressed that these are people who argue for a living, and yet they pitch a fit because ooooh a dissenter ewwwwww.

The standard of pupil appears to be dropping rapidly.
At the Bar, precious darlings, one not only has to hear, but one also has to make, arguments which are personally unattractive. I’m afraid that if you cannot stand to hear Naomi Cunningham, the Bar is not the career for you. https://t.co/qbrtKDe0U5

— Philip Sinclair (@PipSinks) November 15, 2021

Isn’t

Here we go again.

You can’t do that, you can’t say that, you can’t invite her, you can’t do anything without our prior approval.

This morning, a group of over 100 barristers, pupils and students sent a letter to Middle Temple to express our profound disappointment at the organisation of the inaugural Middle Temple LGBTQ+ Forum. This is the letter in full. Please read it.https://t.co/feUUUSyZWi pic.twitter.com/CoAldn6eky

— LGBTQ+ Solidarity at the Bar (@LGBTQBarristers) November 15, 2021

I did read it. It’s utterly typical and utterly contemptible.

None of them are “LGBTQ+” because no one can be all of those things. By “allies” they don’t mean people who think same-sex attraction should not be ostracized or shamed in any way, … Read the rest

Oops.

Sam Smith, the pop singer whose gender identity is non-binary, has been excluded from the gendered categories at the 2021 Brit awards.

Well he would, wouldn’t he. Or was he expecting to be nominated in both categories as opposed to neither?

The awards system has maintained its usual artist categories, with prizes for British solo male and British solo female. That means there is no room for Smith…

It’s not that there’s no room for him (poor little baby Jesus), it’s that he doesn’t fit. If you’re a sculptor you can’t expect to be nominated for a Booker prize, either. You have to fit the categories.

In a statement on Instagram, Smith said: “The Brits

Hm.

Well, no doubt, because it’s more soothing to be cuddled and flattered than it is to be disputed and asked for reasons, but the fact remains that we can’t have good policies or ideas or institutions if we refuse to think carefully about what they are.

Like, what does Bartram mean about being LGBTQ+? Does it mean being all those things? Some of which are incompatible with each other?

And if we don’t know the answer to that question, how can we know what it is that’s being loved and affirmed? You don’t want to go around loving and affirming pure evil, so you really do have to know what you mean before you say it, instead … Read the rest

Uh huh. What I said. They can’t and won’t. They can’t because we won’t – we won’t give up the luxuries we’re used to, and if they try to force us they’ll lose.

China and India will have to explain themselves to climate-vulnerable nations, COP26 President Alok Sharma has said as the summit ends. It comes after the two nations pushed for the language on coal to change from “phase out” to “phase down” in the deal agreed in Glasgow.

By which they mean “do as little as possible.”

Mr Sharma said the deal struck in the Glasgow climate pact was a “fragile win” and urged China and India to “justify” their actions to nations that are more vulnerable

The post by Naomi Cunningham that Maugham calls “profoundly offensive to trans people and their allies”:

Mridul Wadhwa is the CEO of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre. The job was advertised as being restricted to women, under schedule 9 of the Equality Act 2010. 

So they hired a man.

At this point I must digress briefly. I have written before about “misgendering” (here and here). In writing about Wadhwa’s appointment to this role, I will use the nouns and pronouns appropriate to his biological sex. I do not apologise for doing so. I do so because I am writing about a situation in which sex matters. I have a serious point to make, and I intend to make it

The arrogance of this guy.

This isn’t Maugham talking to Middle Temple, this is Maugham bullying Middle Temple in public.

A tweet Jolyon Maugham seems to have thought better of – but for anyone interested the blog post he took such strong exception to is here: https://t.co/vz60tpmtlq pic.twitter.com/VzKvnC7bTO

— Legal Feminist (@legalfeminist) November 13, 2021

It clearly doesn’t concern him at all that appointing a man CEO of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre is profoundly offensive to women.

Now to discuss that Naomi Cunningham post.… Read the rest

A BBC boss had to tell staff to get used to encountering ideas they don’t like. One wonders what job they thought they were in, if they needed to have that spelled out to them.

Fran Unsworth, who is due to leave the corporation in January, was speaking on an often-hostile Zoom call with the BBC’s Pride network on Friday morning.

The meeting, in which Tim Davie, the director-general, also tried to reassure staff that he was concerned about LGBT inclusivity, was held in the wake of the corporation’s departure from Stonewall’s diversity champions scheme, under which it paid for advice and assessment from the charity.

There’s no such thing as “LGBT inclusivity” though. You can’t be incloosive of all … Read the rest

It gets stupider and stupider by the day.

Why this Mandurah surfer is TRULY making a difference in her sport.https://t.co/UrrzySF2Ht pic.twitter.com/KwaYaWce20

— PerthNow (@perthnow) November 13, 2021

You’ll never guess – never never never never.

Sasha Jane Lowerson doesn’t identify as a transgender woman, just simply a woman with a “trans-experience”.

Just simply a man wearing a dress and doing a stupid thing with his foot.

But the Mandurah surfer is making a difference for all transgender people with her quest for more equality in her sport. In her former life, Lowerson was among the top longboard surfers in the country and the world but now living her full truth, as her authentic self, she said the sport that

More on those “jokes” of the Unite the Right crowd:

Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt told a jury in Charlottesville Wednesday that she was shocked by the extent to which antisemitism defined the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally.

She’s the historian David Irving sued for libel because she called him a Holocaust denier in her book Denying the Holocaust. He lost. He lost because Richard Evans was able to show that he was in fact a Holocaust denier, via minute checking of Irving’s evidence.

“There was a great deal of overt antisemitism and adulation of the Third Reich throughout the evidence I looked at,” said Lipstadt, an expert witness in a case against rally organizers.

…

Defendant Christopher Cantwell,

Dahlia Lithwick tells us the Charlottesville defendants are pretending it was all a joke.

The federal civil trial of the 20 alleged organizers of Charlottesville’s 2017 Unite the Right rally features a grab bag of white supremacists, some of whom are representing themselves in court. This has meant that from the first day of opening arguments, we’ve heard white supremacist Chris Cantwell, the “Crying Nazi,” hold himself out as a purveyor of a podcast “product” (sign up now!), cite Mein Kampf, and use the N-word. He’s described himself as a “professional entertainer,” “talented,” and “good-looking.” As part of his opening statement Cantwell told the jury he’d dabbled in stand-up comedy, then read out the URL

Even Boris Johnson’s people are pushing the Stonewall line.

A group of Boris Johnson’s most senior advisers are allowing government policy on trans rights to be dictated by Stonewall, a former aide to the prime minister has warned.

It seems that Stonewall are viewed as The Experts when in fact they’re The Quacks.

Nikki da Costa, who stood down as Johnson’s director of legislative affairs in August, claimed the prime minister was being presented with “skewed” advice by a powerful lobby in No 10 that was undermining women’s rights.

Maybe that’s the appeal.

She alleged this extended to deciding what Johnson saw in his red boxes and refusing to arrange meetings with people who would present opposing views. She

Law and order! Respect for authority! Duty!

No not that kind.

Former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows did not appear for a deposition on Friday in front of the House select committee investigating January 6, sources familiar with the investigation tell CNN, setting up a potential showdown that could lead to the panel beginning a criminal referral process against him.

Committee staffers had been prepared to go forward with the interview and waited in a room on Capitol Hill with a stenographer, but started to file out of the room nine minutes after the deadline passed.

Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, and Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, said in a statement