The death toll rises:

Riyadh — The death toll from this year’s hajj has exceeded 1,000, an AFP tally said on Thursday, more than half of them unregistered worshippers who performed the pilgrimage in extreme heat in Saudi Arabia. The new deaths reported Thursday included 58 from Egypt, according to an Arab diplomat who provided a breakdown showing that of 658 total dead from that country, 630 were unregistered.

All told around 10 countries have reported 1,081 deaths during the annual pilgrimage, one of the five pillars of Islam which all Muslims with the means must complete at least once. The figures have come via official statements or from diplomats working on their countries’ responses.

We’re told Allah

Entitlement much?

Kim Tatum dreams of playing Norma Desmond, Sunset Boulevard’s exquisite former star of silent films. Mariah Louca longs to perform as Dangerous Liaisons’ evil schemer Marquise de Merteuil. And for Reece Lyons, it’s the monstrous ambition of Lady Macbeth that makes her the ideal role. But, until attitudes within British theatre shift, it’s unlikely these talented performers will get to play their dream characters. Despite their skill, training and accolades, trans women just don’t seem to get cast in cisgender roles.

Yeah what’s up with that? Why do people who put on plays want women for women’s parts when they could have men instead? What are they thinking??

“I have never seen a trans woman on stage play

Contempt for women never goes out of style.

An independent candidate standing in Birmingham said “70% of hell will be women” and joked about domestic violence on a podcast earlier this year, it has emerged, as polling suggests he is closing the gap with Labour.

Akhmed Yakoob, who came third in the West Midlands mayoral election in May with just over 10% of the vote, is standing against Labour’s Shabana Mahmood in Ladywood, one of the most deprived constituencies in the country.

Shabana Mahmood is a woman.

In March, Yakoob appeared on an episode of the Minted Minds podcast, hosted by the Birmingham-based entrepreneur Abdhul Zaman. Other guests on the episode included Shakeel Afsar, who is running as an

This is both idiotic and evil.

Louisiana will require the 10 Commandments [be] displayed in every public school classroom

The 10 orders are extremely thin morality and they are mostly religious. There is no good reason at all to stick them up in classrooms, let alone to mandate sticking them up in classrooms.

The Sacred Grocery List:

1. I’m the only god
2. Don’t make “idols”
3. Don’t use my name when you swear
4. Make one day every week all about me
5. Honor your father and mother [in that order, of course]
6. Don’t murder
7. Don’t fuck around
8. Don’t steal
9. Don’t lie
10. Don’t long for other people’s stuff

Why put that on the classroom walls? It’s so thin, so impoverished, so minimal – so … Read the rest

Ahem.

Ahem. Cough.… Read the rest

Damn I wish I’d thought to say this. It’s so exactly right.

It is amazing that when males who identify as women don't get what they want, they use the same misogynistic language and "hateful conduct" that males use. I mean, who would have thought? pic.twitter.com/52CjriXQIo

— Prof. Gary Francione (@garylfrancione) June 19, 2024

New boss so astoundingly exactly like the old boss. … Read the rest

What, again??

Met Police hassle Maya Forstater

A leading women’s rights campaigner who tweeted that a transgender GP ‘enjoys intimately examining female patients’ has revealed how police threatened to arrest her before launching a 10-month investigation.

Maya Forstater, 51, the head of the charity Sex Matters, has revealed Scotland Yard has been investigating her for the crime of malicious communications since August 2023.

The alleged crime, which carries a punishment of up to two years in prison, relates to a post Ms Forstater wrote on X/Twitter about trans former GP, Dr Kamilla Kamaruddin.

Who is, of course, a man who pretends to be a woman.

Dr Kamaruddin said that after transitioning, patients allowed her to perform ‘more intimate examinations that

A sciency article by 13 yes 13 authors arguing for “gender inclusive language” in [checks notes] childbirth.

The abstract:

Effective communication in relation to pregnancy and birth is crucial to quality care. A recent focus in reproductive healthcare on “sexed language” reflects an ideology of unchangeable sex binary and fear of erasure, from both cisgender women and the profession of midwifery. In this paper, we highlight how privileging sexed language causes harm to all who birth—including pregnant trans, gender diverse, and non-binary people—and is, therefore, unethical and incompatible with the principles of midwifery. We show how this argument, which conflates midwifery with essentialist thinking, is unstable, and perpetuates and misappropriates midwifery’s marginalized status. We also explore how sex and gender

No.

Two people have been arrested after Just Stop Oil activists sprayed orange powder paint over Stonehenge.

No no no. Not helping.

Members of the public attempted to stop the spraying and a visitor managed to wrestle a spray can from one of the protesters.

Wiltshire police said: “We have arrested two people following an incident at Stonehenge this afternoon. At around noon, we responded to a report that orange paint had been sprayed on some of the stones by two suspects. Officers attended the scene and arrested two people on suspicion of damaging the ancient monument. Our inquiries are ongoing.”

The evidence is pretty strong, on account of how there’s video of them doing it.

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey at Miscellany Room.

Interesting, if a little slow-developing, article in the New Yorker on how psychiatric labels (such as autism, sociopathy, borderline personality disorder) have become entire identities. For example:

Just as personality tests (see, I’m an introvert!), astrological signs (I’m a Libra!), and generational monikers (I’m Gen Z!) are used to aid self-understanding, so are psychiatric diagnoses. When Paige Layle was fifteen, a psychiatrist told her that she had autism spectrum disorder. She describes the rush of clarity she experienced when hearing the DSM-5 criteria: “I’m not crazy. I’m not making it up. I’m not manipulative or trying to fake anything. . . . There’s a reason why I’m the way that

God hates people.

RIYADH/MINA, June 18 (Reuters) – Hundreds of visitors have died during the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca amid scorching heat, according to press reports and foreign ministries.

At least 550 people have died on haj, diplomats told French outlet Agence France Presse (AFP) on Tuesday. Three hundred and twenty-three of the dead were Egyptians, most of whom perished due to heat-related illness, AFP reported, citing two Arab diplomats.

Wouldn’t you think a loving all-powerful god would either change the weather during the haj or issue an update saying it’s forbidden to go on the haj when it’s too hot?

Saudi state TV said temperatures rose on Monday as high as 51.8 degrees Celsius (125.2 Fahrenheit) in

Trump is trying to use Republicans in Congress to get rid of his guilty verdicts. The act of a dictator determined to destroy the institutions that get in the way of his peremptory commands.

It’s a campaign he orchestrated in the days after his May 31 conviction on 34 felony counts in New York, starting with a phone call to the man he wanted to lead it: Speaker Mike Johnson.

Trump was still angry when he made the call, according to those who have heard accounts of it from Johnson, dropping frequent F-bombs as he spoke with the soft-spoken and pious GOP leader.

“We have to overturn this,” Trump insisted.

Who’s “we” Kemosabe?

The speaker didn’t really need to

Now they’re doing it to the Brontes, because of course they are. The Bronte Parsonage Museum announces:

It’s week three of our series celebrating Pride at the Museum! This time, we’re exploring gender identity and the Brontës.

Well don’t. Explore how the Brontes (Branwell apart) dealt with being female by all means, but leave genner idennniny out of it.

Throughout their lives, the sisters never settled for society’s expectations for women, and – as scholars discuss – the female (and male) characters in their novels explore what life beyond gendered barriers could be like…

Bollocks. Did Rochester “explore what life beyond gendered barriers could be like”? Give me a break.

Oh SHUT up.… Read the rest

The Telegraph on the Deep Rifts:

It was an inauspicious start to Britain’s biggest LGBT celebration.

In a social media post featuring the rainbow flag and entitled “Can men get ovarian cancer?”, the charity Ovarian Cancer Action said it was marking the start of Pride Month by reminding its followers that “anyone with ovaries, regardless of gender identity, can be at risk for ovarian cancer”.

…

Last year, Oxfam was forced to apologise after posting an animation for Pride Month featuring a character who many said resembled JK Rowling, depicted with red eyes and wearing a badge bearing the word “Terf”…

Such disputes may on the surface appear minor, but there are worries among those who were there

Michael Cashman admits that his brief vague pseudo-apology to Rosie Duffield was not even an attempt at an apology but merely an attempt to get away with being a woman-hating pig.

There you go. He wasn’t apologizing at all; he thinks he’s the one who’s been wronged. He thinks he deserves “support” for rudely publicly insulting Rosie Duffield. What a horrible man.… Read the rest

Urgent news from the BBC:

Fire boss says he was abused over Pride image

Seriously? With all the horrors there are in the world, the BBC finds time and space to report on public reactions to a “Pride” image?

A senior fire service official says he was sent “reprehensible and homophobic” messages after he posted a picture of Pride-themed epaulettes.

Simon Tuhill, Northamptonshire’s deputy chief fire officer posted the image on X, formally known as Twitter, last week. He said he was “appalled and shocked” at the overwhelmingly negative messages he received. He said the fire service remains committed to supporting diversity.

Nonsense. It’s not “supporting diversity” to focus on one purported marginalized communinny while ignoring all the others. … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? at Miscellany Room.

Vignettes of corporate capture; neighbourhood incursions.

Last week I recounted some of my feelings around a local Pride event. Here are some thoughts around neighbourhood examples of corporate Pride “celebrations.”

Our neighbourhood bank has its windows decorated for its nationwide Pride Month campaign, featuring the LGB rainbow + trans colours. One of the windows is filled with the slogan “Nothing beats the feeling of being accepted for who you really are.” That’s all well and good, but what they’re promoting, and enforcing through said promotion, is forcing everyone to accept a very small, specific subset of people for who they are not, to be precise, Trans … Read the rest

If you do a Google news search for Rosie Duffield Michael Cashman you find headline after headline after headline on Cashman’s delayed punishment. It’s all so familiar, isn’t it – the endless bullying bullying bullying, and the impunity of the bullies. Cashman got away with it for days; it’s only because a lot of people screamed themselves hoarse that Starmer finally realized the poisonous sneer wasn’t just going to fade out of the collective memory.

So here’s some happier news.

Trans-Identified Male Who Exposed His Breasts At The White House Now Accused Of Sexually Assaulting Another Transgender Person

Ok so not better exactly, but…a little different.

The trans activist who received criticism for exposing his augmented breasts at the White

The Beeb:

Labour peer suspended for ‘frit or lazy’ post

A Labour peer has been suspended from the parliamentary party after calling a candidate “frit or lazy” for withdrawing from local husting events over safety concerns. Lord Cashman had made the comment on social media after Rosie Duffield, who is standing to be reelected as Labour MP for Canterbury, said “constant trolling” made her attendance at hustings “impossible”.

The former EastEnders actor and Labour MEP apologised “unreservedly” for the post on Sunday.

Well he did and he didn’t. He did apologize and he did say it was unreservedly, but he also did fail to mention Rosie Duffield, so it wasn’t in fact a full or “unreserved” apology.

Labour leader Sir

I tried to watch it but couldn’t; too annoying. But in case you want to, here it is:

The US "Skeptics" break their silence on Cass with Rebecca Watson coming out to bat for batshit. What an excellent example of motivated reasoning in this 15 minute YouTube video. https://t.co/IAqsRTvMOI

— Andy (@lecanardnoir) June 17, 2024

… Read the rest