Not something to celebrate.

So you… purchased a human baby? That's fucked up dude. pic.twitter.com/WW9FvrejHo

— Amy Eileen Hamm (@preta_6) January 30, 2021

Single men, adopt by all means. Deliberately set out to take an infant from its mother so that you can have it for yourself, no.

I’m depressed to see what comes up when I google “single dad by choice via surrogacy” – part of the headline in Amy’s tweet.… Read the rest

The Observer’s architecture critic does a little swerve into medical critic in response to the Tavistock ruling:

To be transgender is not a lifestyle choice. It is not a fad or a craze. It is not easy, but requires courage and commitment. It is a part of who you are, like being gay, and, as such, denial of it can be annihilating. Denial of the medical treatments that can help trans people can also be devastating.

Well that’s a bold first paragraph. How does he know? How does he know that to be transgender is never a lifestyle choice? How can he tell? How can he reconcile that claim with the endlessly-repeated mantra “people are who they say they are”? … Read the rest

Well said.

I just couldn't take the constant requests for funding anymore. FFS pic.twitter.com/an3dOBm8En

— Petra (@breakwaterwink) January 30, 2021

… Read the rest

Remember Lauren Boebert’s insulting tweet to David Hogg?

She got a lot of heat for it. No doubt she will transform the heat into energy for her vampire evil.

Boebert faced widespread outrage and calls to resign following her tweet. Many pointed out her role in promoting baseless election fraud rhetoric that incited supporters of former President Donald Trump to storm the U.S. Capitol.

That incited supporters of Trump to smash their way into the Capitol in order to “execute” selected Democrats and install Trump as absolute ruler. This wasn’t a group of over-excited college kids, it was a mob of heavily armed adults intent on violent insurrection in aid of a lawless conscienceless wannabe dictator.

Hogg attributed

Some uppity women responded to Edinburgh University’s “guidance” a couple of weeks ago.

We have become aware of an article on the University of Edinburgh’s official website in the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion section titled “What is transphobia?”. The article presents itself as an authoritative resource for students, and gives the impression that it is the settled, agreed position of the University. In fact it is a political piece, promoting highly contested ideological arguments as though they are undisputed facts. Many students and staff within the university do not share the views of the author and are concerned that one side of an ongoing public debate is being endorsed by the university.

Quite naturally, since it looks exactly … Read the rest

The Scotsman reported on reaction to Edinburgh University’s publication of an amateurish tendentious article about “transphobia” as part of its official guidance on inclusion.

ForWomenScot posted: “We are deeply troubled to see this from @EdinburghUni. Female lecturers are routinely harassed & put in fear on campus for arguing for legal rights. However, the university have chosen to publish a deeply political piece, misrepresenting women’s concerns.”

Susan Smith, a spokeswoman for the group, said the article, which appears on the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion section of the university’s website, was “hugely biased” and much of it was “a low-grade attempt at a smear campaign”.

The article treats the nonsensical doctrine that men can magically become women just by “feeling like women … Read the rest

I’d forgotten about Katie Hill.

Arwa Mahdawi points out that we’re probably stuck with Marjorie Greene:

What do you do with someone like Greene? Like Donald Trump she’s desperate for the limelight: giving her any kind of attention is giving her exactly what she wants. Not to mention, when you amplify her beliefs you risk spreading them. At the same time you can’t just ignore Greene. The woman is dangerous and should not be in Congress. On Wednesday, the Democratic California congressman Jimmy Gomez announced he was drafting a resolution to expel Greene from the House of Representatives, noting: “Her very presence in office represents a direct threat against the elected officials and staff who serve our government.”

Direct … Read the rest

A solidarity too many.

We stand in solidarity with @stonewall @genderintell and the other organisations applying to intervene in the appeal. It's vital that every child receives the highest attainable standard of healthcare without discrimination. https://t.co/qmHLCtvMXy

— Amnesty UK (@AmnestyUK) January 28, 2021

Of course it’s vital that every child receive good health care, but good health care isn’t cutting off the breasts of teenage girls who say they feel like boys. Good health care is not putting such girls on puberty blockers. Good health care is not understanding the child’s needs exactly the way the child does, but rather understanding those needs the way an adult with medical training and experience does.

And what does it actually have to … Read the rest

Time to repair the court system.

President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats are vetting civil rights lawyers and public defenders to nominate as judges, embarking on a mission to shape the courts after Republicans overhauled them in the last four years, according to senior party officials and activists.

They’ve got two years, because the pattern is that Congress flips after one party collars everything. (It’s unfortunate that the Senate ignored that pattern in 2018.)

In addition to forming a new commission to study structural changes to the judiciary, the Biden White House has asked senators to recruit civil rights attorneys and defense lawyers for judgeships. Officials who work on the issue say they’ve seen an outpouring of interest and

Originally a comment by Arnaud on A couple of markers.

In 1957/1958, a flu pandemic (the Hong Kong flu) caused up to 3 million deaths worldwide, 100,000 in France alone. It circled the world in less than six months and caused untold misery. Like COVID19, most of the death occurred among older people (over 65) but, at a time when life expectancy was much lower than it is now, that didn’t shock that much, maybe. How to explain that the devastation was so quickly forgotten?

So quickly forgotten that when what was pretty much the same virus came back in 1968, the same mistakes were made, the same complacency prevailed and the same results were seen: a worldwide … Read the rest

Why are universities letting angry teenagers write their policies?

Who wrote the definition of "transphobia" that appears on @EdinburghUni's website? And what were they thinking of? https://t.co/h9zCq1LICa

— Legal Feminist (@legalfeminist) January 30, 2021

Naturally I was curious so I went to read it, and again found the familiar combination of aggressive ignorance and baseless assertion, rather than something composed by informed academics.

Then I went back a category, to the Learn More section of Edinburgh’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion whatever this is – instruction book, explanation, authoritative setting out of the facts – and found the all too predictable Forgotten Item indeed not there.

Nothing about women then? No need to worry about including women? Women not a … Read the rest

The Telegraph:

Psychiatrists fear that transgender children are being “coached” into giving rehearsed answers when trying to access puberty blockers, the Court of Appeal has heard.

Dr David Bell, a former governor at a gender identity NHS trust, expressed concern that children may be pressured by parents, friends or websites when trying to address feelings of gender dysphoria. 

How could children not be at least influenced by friends or websites or both when trying to address feelings of gender dysphoria in this climate? When the whole subject is so saturated with bullying and righteous fury and social pressure that would get juice out of a brick?

Dr Bell, who was a psychiatrist at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation

Another one.

Biology denial will become absolutelty dominant in social and political discourse unless you stand up to it. pic.twitter.com/mIwjxX9Mbu

— Andy (@lecanardnoir) January 29, 2021

No. This is such a beginner’s error. The words are “something we created” but the underlying reality is not. Calling the moon the moon is social, but that rocky roundish object is not. Naming is human and cultural, but not everything we name is a human artifact.

Only people who lived near it knew about what we now call the Grand Canyon until well into the 19th century, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.… Read the rest

David Hogg isn’t the only Parkland survivor that Marjorie Greene harassed and abused.

Another student activist who was present that day said Greene’s behavior had been “scary” and had left her shaken. Linnea Stanton, a college student and March for Our Lives activist from Wisconsin, recalled that Greene had first confronted the students as they delivered letters to lawmakers inside a Senate office building.

“All of a sudden, this blonde woman was yelling, and someone was recording us with an iPhone,” Stanton said.

After the students started chanting to get the Capitol police to intervene, Greene left, but she waited for the group outside the building, where she continued to harass and film them once they exited, Stanton said.

Stanton

Jonathan Freedland wonders why did the 1918 Flu disappear from the collective memory so swiftly?

Look around almost any British town or village and you will see a war memorial, usually first built to honour the fallen of 1914 to 1918. But scour this country and the rest of the world, and you will struggle to find more than a couple of markers for the event that, globally and at the time of the war’s end, took many more lives. The first world war killed some 17 million people, but the “Spanish” flu that struck in 1918 infected one in three people on the planet – a total of 500 million – leaving between 50 million and 100 million dead.

There’s this village in France that has a history of taking in people who are fleeing persecution or genocide.

An Austrian man who fled the Nazis with his family during the second world war has bequeathed a large part of his fortune to the French village whose residents hid them from persecution for years.

Eric Schwam, who died aged 90 on 25 December, wrote the surprise gift into his will for Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, located on a remote mountain plateau in south-east France that historically has a large Protestant community known for offering shelter to those in need.

…

Schwam and his family arrived in 1943 and were hidden in a school for the duration of the war, and remained until

It’s Jewish space lasers now.

In November 2018, California was hit with the worst wildfire in the state’s history. At the time, future Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) wrote a bizarre Facebook post that echoed QAnon conspiracy theorists and falsely claimed that the real and hidden culprit behind the disaster was a laser from space triggered by some nefarious group of people. 

A LASER from SPACE. Cue ominous theme music.

Greene’s post, which hasn’t previously been reported, is just the latest example to be unearthed of her embracing conspiracy theories about tragedies during her time as a right-wing commentator. In addition to being a QAnon supporter, Greene has pushed conspiracy theories about 9/11, the Parkland and Sandy

No actually let’s not spend months looking at their records.

The Pentagon has suspended the processing of a number of former President Donald Trump’s last-minute appointees to defense advisory boards as the new administration looks to weed out loyalists to the former president.

He shouldn’t have been making last-minute appointments. He should have been packing up.

The move effectively prevents a number of Trump allies, including his 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and deputy campaign manager David Bossie, from actually serving on panels tasked with providing advice to the defense secretary, at least for the time being.

Make it permanent.

The freeze announced on Wednesday pertains only to appointees who have not yet been sworn in or have [not] completed

This is so. weird.

The gun, first of all, but by no means last. The nail polish. The wedding ring. The 45 cap. The…crotch. I didn’t notice at first but the camera is zeroed in on her crotch, and she’s all but pointing at it.

Is it just me or is that some bizarre semiotics?… Read the rest

The fascism (the literal kind) ratchets up by the day.

David, please. We all saw how tough you were when questioned face to face.

Give your keyboard a rest, child. https://t.co/DDnpmkyfIS

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) January 28, 2021

… Read the rest