From Kabul:

Early on Sunday morning I was heading to university for a class when a group of women came running out from the women’s dormitory. I asked what had happened and one of them told me the police were evacuating them because the Taliban had arrived in Kabul, and they will beat women who do not have a burqa.

We all wanted to get home, but we couldn’t use public transport. The drivers would not let us in their cars because they did not want to take responsibility for transporting a woman. It was even worse for the women from the dormitory, who are from outside Kabul and were scared and confused about where they should go.

Meanwhile,

… Read the rest

A freelance foreign correspondent writes

As the Taliban prepare to take over Kabul…
I was in the Afghan capital in 1996 at the time the Taliban arrived for the first time. They had no idea where they were going back then and stopped at the Red Cross HQ in the city to ask directions to the parliament building.

— Kim Willsher (@kimwillsher1) August 15, 2021

It was catastrophic for women and girls in the city. Within days all women were ordered back into their homes and told not to come out without a male relative accompanying them. Working women, even those in high ranking positions including judges and magistrates, were ordered to stay home. Women who did venture out were

… Read the rest

Sigh. I was interested, I wanted to read this, but then –

Mine is a predictable photo album – a baby transforms across a camera roll from limpid mole to Ian Hislop in leggings, kittens simper beside screengrabs of news stories, pink cake, a very big plum. It was the juxtaposition of three pictures that documented April though, that pricked my fury. A photo taken from our car of one of the anti-vaccine marches that shut down London sat beside a headline that pregnant people were finally being offered the coronavirus vaccine, then a picture of my son’s first birthday party.

Her son gets to be her son, Ian Hislop gets to be Ian Hislop, but pregnant women aren’t … Read the rest

I don’t think Owen Jones is the right guy to talk about it.

In fact I think he’s absolutely the wrong guy to talk about it. Not the only or the most wrong guy, but still the wrong guy.

https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1426836683685773314

It’s entitled men who hate women, that’s what it is and what’s driving it. Owen too is entitled and Owen too hates women. The up front reasons for the hatred are different, but the gut instinct is the same.

Incel culture is driven by male entitlement Owen.

That is, male ppl thinking female ppl should centre their needs and wants, and that if women refuse, they are nasty, and what was it, oh yes, 'sadistic' bitches who should be punished.

… Read the rest

Solution to the problem of violent men found at last.

https://twitter.com/v_alalz/status/1426226545933291525

Make sure that women are given to these men – like so many apples or hats or tennis rackets.

Of course that is the arrangement in all too many places, like Afghanistan for instance, but that doesn’t mean we like to see men saying it as if it were just common sense.

And given to them for what purpose? For the purpose of sticking the penis is. Without a living breathing female human to stick the penis in, the man is too likely to step outside and kill some people.

You’d think by now the engineers could have come up with a reliable replacement, a nice programmable vagina to … Read the rest

Not then but now.

Heatwaves and the heavy rains that cause flooding have become more intense and more frequent since the 1950s in most parts of the world, and climate change is now affecting all inhabited regions of the planet. Drought is increasing in many places and it is more than 66% likely that numbers of major hurricanes and typhoons have risen since the 1970s…

And the consequences of humanity’s massive act of atmospheric interference are now clear: what is hot today will become hotter tomorrow; extreme floods will become more frequent, wildfires more dangerous and deadly droughts more widespread. In short, things can only get worse.

And they can only get worse faster. It’s happening fast. The … Read the rest

From Pliny:

See the original for sharper image.… Read the rest

Siberia is hot. Not just hot for Siberia, but hot – which makes it terrifyingly hot for Siberia.

It’s not just the Western region of the US that’s sweltering right now. Siberia in Russia is baking, and satellites are bearing witness to a brutal heat wave above the Arctic Circle. Copernicus Sentinel-3A and Sentinel-3B satellites captured a snapshot of land surface temperatures on June 20, and it was hot.

According to NASA, “Land surface temperature is how hot the ‘surface’ of the Earth would feel to the touch in a particular location.” The Sentinel image shows a peak ground temperature of 118 degrees Fahrenheit (48 degrees Celsius) near Verkhojansk, a small town usually known for its extreme cold

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Remember that Times article I quoted from yesterday about Trump’s plan to fire the DoJ guy who wasn’t helping him steal the election? Remember how cautiously worded it was, so that it took extra effort and attention to grasp that they were reporting on Trump’s effort to steal the election?

On the other hand, today, we get Maureen Dowd:

Jay Gatsby gave big, lavish, new-money parties at his sprawling mansion on the water because he wanted to seem cool. He wanted Daisy to notice him.

Barack Obama gave a big, lavish, new-money party at his sprawling mansion on the water because he wanted to seem cool. Being cool is important to him.

On the one hand corrupt criminal evil … Read the rest

Debbie Hayton on Scotland’s “guidance” on how best to trans children:

Revelation, we are told, can come early in life:

Some young people are exploring their gender identity in primary school settings.

If a young person in the school says that they now want to live as a boy although their sex assigned at birth was female, or they now want to live as a girl, although their sex assigned at birth was male, it is important to provide support and listen to what they are saying.

Is it the same if they say they now want to live as a tiger? A dolphin? A tomato? Will it be important to take the children to the sea and throw them … Read the rest

This, exactly.

Every time I see this on the Tube, I wonder why women & girls’ daily experiences of male harassment and violence don’t count. pic.twitter.com/oLlpYdRRtp

— Janice Turner (@VictoriaPeckham) August 14, 2021

So do I, and I see the lists all over the place. Race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity – the end.

YOU MISSED ONE

THE BIG ONE

THE ONE THAT APPLIES TO HALF OF HUMANITY… Read the rest

The recurring question – why are Republicans so hell bent on killing off themselves and their own fellow party-members?

Some Republican leaders are seeking to support Joe Biden’s efforts to beat the pandemic by encouraging the public to get vaccinated as soon as possible. But others are actively trying to undermine the president’s offensive by embracing what critics regard as [a] lethal mix of ignorance, irrationality and nihilism.

And that lethal mix is going to bite them in the ass a lot harder than it bites us.

These Republicans seem intent on scoring political points by appealing to a pandemic-weary’s public yearning to get back to something like normal life. Still in thrall to former president Donald Trump, they fiercely

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It’s women’s fault.

The gunman who killed five people in a mass shooting in Plymouth ranted at a 16-year-old girl that “women are arrogant and entitled beyond belief” in some of his final online exchanges just a few days before he embarked on Britain’s worst mass shooting in more than a decade.

Arrogant and entitled in the sense of not offering to have sex with him?

His comments and membership of the incel community again raise questions over the police’s decision not to treat the worst mass shooting in Britain since 2010 as terror-related.

It depends on how you’re defining “terror-related.” If you decide that it means having explicit demands addressed to specific governments, then the Plymouth slaughter doesn’t … Read the rest

Nazir Afzal straight up says it.

As we learn about murderer in Plymouth, the more we understand that they will say it’s his “mental health” rather than his “misogyny”

Misogyny is the oldest & most prevalent bigotry

You won’t see Cobra meetings, it’s not even a national policing priority, but it kills millions

— nazir afzal (@nazirafzal) August 13, 2021

Others also say it.

https://twitter.com/suzanne_moore/status/1426153659960864773

Joan Smith has been saying it and saying it.

https://twitter.com/polblonde/status/1366320332374704130

From the Telegraph:

‘In another video, uploaded three weeks before the shooting, Davison goes on a 10-minute misogynistic rant about biological attraction.

He accuses most women of being “very simple-minded” and only being drawn to attractive men.’#Keyham #misogyny

— Joan Smith (@polblonde) August 13,

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How to Empower Birth: say that everyone can give birth.

Full text:

Most people who become pregnant and give birth will identify as women. There are some trans men who get pregnant and give birth, and they are not women. There are also some non-binary people who get pregnant and give birth, and they may not be women. There are some intersex people who get pregnant and give birth, and they may not be women either.

In recent history white people were very worried that a small number of black people might grow in number and influence, and somehow dilute the whiteness of their society. There were academic papers written about the ‘problem’. We now thankfully realise that black … Read the rest

The College Fix wrote about the Carol Hooven/Laura Simone Lewis clash on Twitter a couple of weeks ago:

“I am appalled and frustrated by the transphobic and harmful remarks made by a member of my dept,” wrote Laura Simone Lewis following the appearance by Human Evolutionary Biology colleague Carole Hooven on “Fox & Friends.”

Lewis continued: “Let’s be clear: if you respect diverse gender identities & aim to use correct pronouns, then you would know that people with diverse genders/sexes can be pregnant incl Trans [sic] men, intersex people & gender nonconforming people. That isn’t too hard for medical students to understand.”

Yes let’s be clear. People with “diverse sexes” can’t be pregnant. Only one of the two sexes can … Read the rest

As the Taliban swallows Afghanistan…

In many districts captured by the Taliban, new rules have already been imposed, including restrictions on women’s movement. Women are not allowed to leave the house unless in the company of a male guardian and fully covered in the traditional burqa.

Why? You know why. Because men are people, and women are nothing but gaping holes. Men make the rules, women wear bales of cloth to hide their obscene gaping holes. Men can’t avoid raping women, so women have to be walking shrouds on the rare occasions they’re allowed to go outside. Men matter, and women are garbage. Men need children, and women are the only way to get children, so women must … Read the rest

Katie Benner at the Times reported a couple of days ago:

Byung J. Pak, a former U.S. attorney in Atlanta, told congressional investigators on Wednesday that his abrupt resignation in January had been prompted by Justice Department officials’ warning that President Donald J. Trump intended to fire him for refusing to say that widespread voter fraud had been found in Georgia, according to a person familiar with his testimony.

To put it another way, Trump tried to coerce a US attorney [i.e. a DoJ employee] in Atlanta to lie about voter fraud in Georgia, and was going to fire him for refusing to comply. Trump was going to fire a DoJ attorney for refusing to lie for Trump.

While he

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There’s a story going around that Trump was supposed to be “reinstated” today. Cool word choice: it suggests that he was uninstated illegitimately when in fact this time he lost the electoral vote along with the popular (aka actual) vote.

“The morning of August 13 it’ll be the talk of the world,” Mike Lindell, the MyPillow impresario and purveyor of discredited conspiracy theories about a stolen presidential election, warned during a recent appearance on a conservative podcast. Lindell, who is being sued for billions in damages by Dominion, a maker of voting machines that the right-wing bedding entrepreneur has called fraudulent, promised a day of reckoning, when the “Communists” would be kicked out of power and Donald Trump

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One of the more annoying thought-terminating clichés of the moment is the “please, let’s not talk about the roots of misogynist violence now when the news is fresh, lets give the families time to mourn” one.

I say this because I’m grinding my teeth over one I just saw.

On Monday, I argued on @BBCWomansHour that extreme misogyny should be regarded as a form of radicalisation. Now I’m reading that the perpetrator of a mass shooting in Plymouth was a misogynist, obsessed with guns & described himself as an incel. Not terror-related? Really?

— Joan Smith (@polblonde) August 13, 2021

Joan was on Womans Hour because she has a new book on the subject, and because the Home Office has … Read the rest