Originally a comment by Acolyte of Sagan on Frenzy intensifying.

J.A.:

It’s almost impossible to win in the court of public opinion with respect to how gender ideology has practically eliminated the material reality of sex.

Funny you should say that because there was a transgender boxer competing in this Olympics who appears to have flown under the trans activists’ radar – or they are deliberately ignoring her for very obvious reasons.

Hergie Bacyadan is a Filipino who has won World Championship medals in two separate martial arts and is now a boxer, and she was eliminated from the Women’s 75kg class boxing tournament by China’s Li Quan four days ago. Bacyadan is a male-identifying female, albeit not medically … Read the rest

Deepening feud time.

Elon Musk’s claim that race riots in the U.K. are “inevitable” is “pretty deplorable,” a government minister said Tuesday, amid a deepening feud between the U.K. administration and the tech billionaire.

Heidi Alexander, the U.K. courts minister, slammed the social media boss for a series of posts on the violent disorder gripping Britain in recent days.

…

Musk has come under fire from government figures after he suggested Sunday that “civil war is inevitable.” The X owner has also described the U.K. police response as “one-sided” and has been directly critical of Starmer’s explicit condemnation of the far-right for attacking mosques.

“I think Elon Musk’s comments are totally unjustifiable,” Alexander told the BBC Tuesday morning. “I

Lots of words, no clear meaning.

Sebastian Coe has taken a thinly veiled swipe at the hugely controversial Olympic gender policy in boxing, saying that all sports governing bodies must tackle the issue head-on with a clearly defined stance.

Well yes but it also needs to be the right stance. A clearly defined stance that men can invade women’s competitions would not be an improvement. The problem with the “hugely controversial” policy that lets men punch women is not that it’s not clearly defined.

Coe is the president of World Athletics, which introduced a new gender policy last year that means any athlete with differences in sexual development (DSD) must reduce their testosterone to 2.5 nanomoles per litre

Nobody needs to hear what Musk thinks.

Downing Street has criticised comments by Elon Musk who posted on X that “civil war is inevitable” under a video of violent riots in Liverpool.

Keir Starmer’s spokesperson said the violence came from a small minority of people who “do not speak for Britain” and said the prime minister did not share the sentiments of the billionaire, who has previously been criticised for allowing far-right figures back on to his social media platform.

…

Musk was responding to a video posted on X by the Libs of TikTok account, originally posted by the far-right activist Tommy Robinson, who has been spreading videos of rioting that has targeted mosques and hotels housing asylum

Clarence Thomas found pocketing bribes again.

Justice Clarence Thomas took a previously undisclosed flight on a private jet owned by GOP megadonor Harlan Crow in 2010, a top Senate Democrat said Monday – the latest in a series of revelations that come as the high court is under pressure to strengthen its ethics practices.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden said US Customs and Border Protection records reviewed by the committee showed Thomas and his wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, flew from Hawaii to New Zealand on Crow’s jet on November 19, 2010, and then returned on the jet a week later.

The flight was not listed on Thomas’ financial disclosure reports and is the most recent example of the

Round and round we go with the same old obfuscations.

Olympic boxer Imane Khelif said the wave of hateful scrutiny she has faced over misconceptions about her gender “harms human dignity,” and she called for an end to bullying athletes after being greatly affected by the international backlash against her.

…

The vitriol stems from claims by the International Boxing Association, which has been permanently banned from the Olympics, that both Khelif and Lin failed unspecified eligibility tests for the women’s competition at last year’s world championships.

Khelif declined to answer when asked whether she had undergone tests other than doping tests, saying she didn’t want to talk about it.

Ah, well, that’s it then. If he doesn’t … Read the rest

It’s hilarious that Mark Adams huffily says the sex of Olympic athletes is PRIVATE when Olympic sports are divided by sex.

How can they have male and female categories in sport if competitors' sex is a private matter? Are they complete idiots?

— Joan Smith (@polblonde) August 5, 2024

Beyond belief that they would have a category for women and think that sex tests are illegitimate or the results confidential. It's open season on women without such tests.
They test for doping. What is the procedure if an athlete fails? Surely they announce why they've DQed her?

— Alex Smith (@AlexSmith90014) August 4, 2024

Also – why does Mark Adams always have two bottles of Coke in front of him … Read the rest

Good lord. The head of the IOC is shocked, shocked, that people are publicly talking about the sex of competitors in Olympic sports. That’s PRIVATE. How very dare you. It’s PRIVATE. You filthy meddling bad people talking about who is or is not a woman; it’s PRIVATE.

New and important from morning presser: @marq and @iocmedia condemn whistleblowing as an invasion of the boxers’ human rights.

Indicates that the competitors’ sex should remain private.

Context: This is a common or garden trans advocate position, not a sports science position. https://t.co/mKxpXS3EkA

— SEENinJournalism (@JournalismSEEN) August 4, 2024

… Read the rest

Riots, clashes, two-tier policing, communinnies, violence, fires, cops.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said violent protesters who had targeted Muslim communities would swiftly face the “full force of the law” as he sought to quell days of anti-immigration rioting.

The stabbing to death of three young girls in the northwest English town of Southport last week has been seized on by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim groups, with disinformation spread online and amplified by high-profile far-right figures to spark disorder in towns and cities.

“Whatever the apparent motivation, this is not protest, it is pure violence and we will not tolerate attacks on mosques or our Muslim communities,” Starmer said on Monday after an emergency meeting with police and prison chiefs.

More entrenched than ever.

This is a frenzy intensifying by the day, the further Khelif advances towards an Olympic title and the more desperate the IOC obfuscation becomes. Just a few hours after Thomas Bach appeared confused as to the basic differences between transgender athletes and those with differences in sexual development, Khelif continued to cut a swathe across the competition, demolishing Hungary’s Anna Luca Hamori.

The sense of extreme polarisation at ringside was uncomfortable. Outside the venue, public disquiet increased over how an apparently biological male had been permitted to punch women. Inside, a 600-strong Algerian contingent made sure the dynamic was sharply different, bedecking an entire stand in the green, red and white of their national flag.

Still stuck in the playpen.

Donald Trump broadsided Kamala Harris in a string of derisive social media posts on Saturday, focusing his attacks on the vice president’s intellect after a week that saw her both out-fundraise him and surpass him in some battleground state polls.

In a succession of Truth Social posts after calling off his planned ABC debate with Harris, Trump called Harris “low IQ,” “dumb,” and said she lacked the “mental capacity” to debate him.

Hm. I don’t know either of them personally, but just going by what I’ve seen of the two, I would not give him the job of evaluating her intelligence.

The former president’s remarks indicated a sustained ratcheting up of the rhetoric

The cheating continues.

Trying to burn migrants alive:

A far-right mob have set fire to a Rotherham hotel used to house migrants as police brace for more violence across the UK on Sunday.

Masked rioters, some draped in England flags, assembled outside a Holiday Express hotel in Manvers, South Yorkshire, as they clashed with police. After thugs threw bricks and smashed windows, footage emerged of a fire raging from a bottom-floor window as hotel guests looked on from the top floor. It is unclear if they were migrants.

It comes after at least 90 people were arrested after riots rocked major cities including Manchester, Liverpool, Hull and Stoke on Saturday, leaving destruction in their wake.

A library was torched in

Trump says no let’s have the debate at my house.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump proposed to debate Democratic U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Fox News on Sept. 4, and the Harris campaign said Trump is trying to back out of a debate that had been set to run on ABC.

…

Trump and Biden had agreed to a second debate on Sept. 10 on ABC News which the former president had suggested should be moved to Fox, the most popular network with his followers. Harris, who on Friday secured the delegate votes needed to clinch the Democratic nomination for the Nov. 5 election, said on Saturday that she plans to participate in the originally planned debate.

Now this is how you do it.

[Updating to add: from 2012]

Kenyan runner Abel Mutai was just a few feet from the finish line, but became confused with the signage and stopped, thinking he had completed the race.

A Spanish runner, Ivan Fernandez, was right behind him and, realizing what was happening, started shouting at the Kenyan to… pic.twitter.com/3TRUQ3kjzt

— African Hub (@AfricanHub_) August 1, 2024

A Spanish runner, Ivan Fernandez, was right behind him and, realizing what was happening, started shouting at the Kenyan to continue running. Mutai didn’t know Spanish and didn’t understand. Realizing what was taking place, Fernandez pushed Mutai to victory.

A journalist asked Ivan, “Why did you do that?”

Ivan replied, “My dream is

Janice Turner explains:

After taking questions on the women’s boxing furore with his usual huffy condescension, the International Olympic Committee spokesman Mark Adams strived for a little consensus. “I hope,” he said, “we are all agreed we aren’t going to go back to the bad old days of sex testing.”

Actually, we are not. Adams was perpetuating the myth that sex testing was archaic, cruel and degrading, involving athletes dropping their pants for doctors to check they had the “right” genitals. In fact, a sex test was conducted only once in a female athlete’s career: a quick cheek swab with a cotton bud revealing biological sex was added to her permanent record. Anti-doping tests are far more intrusive and

And the winner is

Khelif has secured a medal with that win against Hamori/15 pic.twitter.com/SSCwOscrT9

— FairPlayForWomen (@fairplaywomen) August 3, 2024

… Read the rest

The IOC was warned.

A Hungarian sports official has come out and stated that Algerian boxer Imane Khelif is not female. István Kovács, the European Vice President of the World Boxing Organization and former Secretary General of the International Boxing Association, told Hungarian press that he had warned the International Olympic Committee about males participating in women’s boxing as early as 2022, but that nothing was done.

In a shocking statement made to Magyar Nemzet yesterday, Kovács confirmed the speculation surrounding the Algerian boxer, adding that it had been known as early as 2022 that Khelif was biologically male.

You’d think two years would be enough to come to terms with the news and then act on it.… Read the rest

This is so ridiculous it’s hard to believe.

How do we know he’s a woman? Because we keep saying so. What more could anyone possibly need?

Thomas Bach, IOC President, on the boxers, in the last few minutes.

Professional analysis: this is unlikely to calm the situation. pic.twitter.com/g4JHNx5eqP

— SEENinJournalism (@JournalismSEEN) August 3, 2024

… Read the rest

Patronizing creep. “The lady who” ffs. Dude, the word is “woman” and you are not one.