Ah this is nice – Cubans in Havana are lining up in their tends of thousands for a free concert by the Rolling Stones, who used to be banned as “decadent.”

Fans travelled from many parts of Cuba and other countries to witness what some described as a historic moment.

“It was forbidden. We couldn’t have the Beatles or some singers from Latin America. Now we are allowed to hear what we want to hear,” a fan told the BBC.

“The visit from Obama [earlier this week], and now the Rolling Stones. It’s just unique and historic. So, yeah, nice to be here,” said another one.

The Rolling Stones released a short video saying their concert was a sign of change in Cuba.

“Time changes everything. So we’re very pleased to be here,” said Mick Jagger.

“It would have been surprising for this to happen 10 years ago,” he added.

At least a million people are expected to watch the British band’s first concert in Cuba from 00:30 GMT (20:30 local).

The Beeb has lots of happy photos.

Alice Dreger has posted an open letter to Tony Valenzuela, ED of the Lambda Literary Foundation.

She thought a tweet telling her about the nomination was a joke at first, because this nominating for an award and then rescinding the nomination routine has happened before. Dreger wrote about it in her book.

In my book—as in the earlier article that led to the misery that led to me to doing that book—I had traced out what happened in 2003 to J. Michael Bailey’s book, The Man Who Would Be Queen, when it had been named a finalist for a “Lammy”: A group of transgender activists upset with Bailey for writing about autogynephilia—a sexual orientation that reasonably motivates some natal-male’s transition to women—had launched a campaign against the Lambda Literary Foundation.

Deirdre McCloskey objected to Bailey’s book, the then ED Jim Marks asked the committee to vote again and they voted to keep it on the finalist list.

McCloksey and her two chief collaborators in the smear campaign on Bailey, Lynn Conway and Andrea James, upped their efforts. As I and Dr. Anne Lawrence (a transgender woman) have explained, the real “problem” was that Bailey’s book put forth ideas about women like McCloskey, Conway, and James that they didn’t want disseminated. They wanted to kill the book to stifle the ideas and stories in it, presumably also to stop others from talking about autogynephilia.

At the time of this mess, writer Victoria Brownworth, who was on the committee, said she saw the withdrawal as akin to censorship. But facing increasing harassment, the committee voted a third time, one vote flipped, and Bailey’s book had its finalist status withdrawn.

Harassment works. Bullying works. People are harassing Alice on Twitter right now, such that she has stopped looking at notifications.

Naturally, given the shitstorms I’ve been in with Bailey’s detractors since I showed in excruciating detail what they did to try to shut him up with a host of patently false charges, I had been assuming my book would never be named a finalist for the same award. Why would the Lambda Literary Foundation take that risk, particularly given that Andrea James had relentlessly harassed Jim Marks online even long after it was all over?

But it was true: my book was named a finalist in the non-fiction category. Learning it was real, I felt enormously honored and happy. I thought this was a sign that perhaps the foundation had decided that there was no way to make everyone in the LGBT world happy, and I’d done good enough work that even if some were unhappy, my work—on the Bailey book controversy, on the abuse of intersex children, on attempts to medically prevent lesbianism with prenatal treatments—was well worth recognizing.

Wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could have reasonable disagreements? I’m not talking about unreasonable disagreements, I’m not talking about making common cause with people who think all Xs are scum – but reasonable disagreements.

When I wondered who might have advocated for the book to receive a Lammy, I am happy to say that so many people I respect came to mind: Jim Marks, Victoria Brownworth, Dan Savage, Anne Lawrence, and others. The more I thought about it, the more finalist status made sense to me. Why should the Foundation, thirteen years after it was harassed unjustly, do anything other than march on without cowardice?

So I joyfully answered the congratulatory email I received from Lambda and started making plans to attend the awards ceremony in New York. Not too surprisingly, Conway and James soon launched a campaign against my book’s finalist status, but I pretty much ignored this. I figured the Foundation knew this would happen and was prepared to weather the storm.

But no. You caved. And quickly—much more quickly than the Foundation did under Marks in 2003. In spite of all the LGBT people who have actively praised my book, who have thanked me for the work, you quickly caved to a small group of bullies who have proven time and time again that they will do anything they can to get attention and to force everyone to adhere to their singular account of transgenderism, even when it negates the reported childhoods of gay and lesbian people, even when it denies the reality of many transgender people and attempts to force them into closets because of their sexual orientations.

It’s tragic.

I wonder if Tony Valenzuela will even reply. I wonder what he can possibly say.

Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon:

There are not two sides to every story. Not every issue requires us to legitimize an opposing view. Like, for instance, when the other perspective is totally crackpot. For example, if you’re a disgraced fraud, maybe you’re really not the best source for information about vaccines.

Totally crackpot and harmful as well. The crackpot in question is Andrew Wakefield.

This week the Tribeca Film Festival announced it’s debuting a provocative new documentary with the flamboyant name “Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Controversy.” The film’s description promises, “Digging into the long-debated link between autism and vaccines, ‘Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe’ features revealing and emotional interviews with pharmaceutical insiders, doctors, politicians, parents, and one whistleblower to understand what’s behind the skyrocketing increase of autism diagnoses today.” It is directed by Andrew Wakefield. Yeah. That Andrew Wakefield.

The one who’s done more than anyone else to bring back measles.

In 2000, measles had been considered virtually eliminated in the U.S. — and in 2014 there were 644 measles cases spanning 27 states — more than than the previous four years put together. In Orange County the same year, 41 percent of kindergarteners were not vaccinated. Oh and here’s the thing: In 2011, Wakefield’s stunner of a report was fully retracted as “an elaborate fraud.” The British medical journal BMJ’s editor said at the time that “It’s one thing to have a bad study, a study full of error, and for the authors then to admit that they made errors. But in this case, we have a very different picture of what seems to be a deliberate attempt to create an impression that there was a link by falsifying the data.” Wakefield is now barred from practicing medicine in the UK.

Now that’s a guy who actually merits no-platforming.

From last month – the Independent reports on a Danish aid worker who rescues Nigerian children who’ve been abandoned because someone thinks they’re “witches.”

An aid worker whose rescue of an emaciated two-year-old boy made headlines around the world has spoken about how she gave up everything in Denmark to help “the witch children of Nigeria”.

Anja Ringgren Lovén was pictured offering water and biscuits to a small and very thin little boy called Hope, who had been abandoned by his family because of local superstitions about witchcraft.

Ms Lovén took Hope in, and he is now one of 34 children being cared for at the African Children’s Aid Education and Development Foundation (ACAEDF) which she founded with her husband David.

Brace yourself.

Speaking in an interview with the Huffington Post, Ms Lovén said she first saw the problems created by superstition in rural Nigeria when she travelled there alone three years ago and met children “who had been tortured and beaten almost to death because they were accused of being witches and therefore left alone on the street”.

…

“Being rejected by your own family must be the loneliest feeling a child can experience, and I don’t believe that anyone can imagine how that must feel like.”

…

“We rescue and we give love and support to the vulnerable children accused of witchcraft in Akwa Ibom. But to put an end to superstition, exorcism and black magic performed by pastors and the so-called witchdoctors, advocacy work must be carried out,” she said.

Also some law-enforcement would be useful.

Some nasty posturing self-righteous goon on Twitter is claiming to be one of the people who sabotaged Kate Smurthwaite’s Goldsmiths show yesterday, starting with a “statement” (actually just some screen grabs of a bunch of assertions) about how right they are and how much good they did by sabotaging Kate’s show.

Have you ever seen the like?

The goon is complaining that Kate didn’t RT that ridiculous “statement” and that no one is publicizing it so I told the goon I would publicize the fuck out of it. Here I am doing that now. There it is, in all its brainless glory.

First there’s the brazen claim that they didn’t intend to silence Kate by making sure she had no audience, because she could have gone ahead and performed to an empty room. Then there’s the snotty insinuation that she’s used to performing to empty rooms. (Absolute bullshit. As I’ve said before, I’ve seen her perform: the place was packed, and the audience laughed itself sick.)

Then there’s the insulting claim that “this was a form of peaceful protest against someone who’s [sic] views we find abhorrent.” It is not peaceful protest to grab up all the free tickets to a gig so that no one else can go! And it is not anyone’s job or duty or even right to prevent people from attending a show on the strength of a claim that the performer’s views are “abhorrent.”

And then it’s just a pack of lies. Kate’s not any of the things this scumbag calls her. Kate’s comedy doesn’t harm vulnerable people. Kate’s on the side of vulnerable people.

If this is the left, we’re all fucking doomed.

The CBC reports (on its former employee):

Jian Ghomeshi has been acquitted on four counts of sexual assault and one count of choking by an Ontario Court judge who says the “deceptive and manipulative” evidence of the complainants raised a reasonable doubt in the guilt of the former CBC Radio host.

In a searing rebuke of the complainants, Judge William Horkins said the evidence from all three not only suffered from inconsistencies, but was “tainted by outright deception.”

“The harsh reality is that once a witness has been shown to be deceptive and manipulative in giving their evidence, that witness can no longer expect the court to consider them to be a trusted source of the truth,” Horkins said.

That will encourage more women to report rapes. Not.

Karadzic has been found guilty.

A former Bosnian Serb leader was found guilty of genocide and other charges Thursday for his role in deadly campaigns during the Bosnian war in the 1990s, including the massacres of thousands in Srebrenica, as an international tribunal announced a long-awaited reckoning in Europe’s bloodiest chapter since World War II.

Radovan Karadzic was found guilty of 10 charges including genocide in connection with the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Srebrenica enclave near the close of a three-year war.

Extreme nationalism is no more healthy or benevolent than theocracy or racism. All three motivate and justify loathing of The Other, and from there it’s just a step to persecution and, ultimately, elimination.

The court’s ruling placed widespread blame on Karadzic for directing murders, purges and other abuses against civilians, including the 44-month siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, in which Serb gunners and snipers fired nearly daily from surrounding ridges.

Karadzic — both a Bosnian Serb political leader and commander of military forces — claimed he was seeking only to protect ethnic Serbs during the war.

Of course he did. That’s what Turkey claims about the Armenians, too. That’s what Hitler and the gang claimed about the Jews. It’s always self-defense.

Karadzic — who was indicted in 1995 but on the run until his capture in 2008 — was the most senior Bosnian Serb figure to face prosecution at the court, which has spent more than two decades probing the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia.

The trial also reopened memories of the horrors of Srebrenica, in which Bosnian Muslims where herded from U.N.-designated “safe havens” into killing fields over several days in July 1995, and their bodies dumped into shallow pits. Investigators later uncovered many bodies with the hands still bound behind their backs, and showing evidence of execution-style slayings with shots to the back of the head.

Only to protect the Serbs.

Following the verdicts Thursday, the top U.N. human rights official, Zeid Raad al-Hussein, said the decisions also send a wider message about the dangers of nationalism and ethnic vilification.

In a statement, he said the trial “should give pause to leaders across Europe and elsewhere who seek to exploit nationalist sentiments and scapegoat minorities for broader social ills.”

What I’m saying. That shit is dangerous.

Donald Trump please note.

Pink News has reported on the NUS LGBT move to abolish gay male reps.

The National Union of Students’ LGBT Campaign has passed a motion calling for the abolition of representatives for gay men – because they “don’t face oppression” in the LGBT community.

The NUS LGBT+ Campaign discussed the issue at its annual conference, which took place in Sheffield this week.

At the event, delegates passed a motion that blames “cis gay men” for “misogyny, transphobia, racism and biphobia”.

It says: “Misogyny, transphobia, racism and biphobia are often present in LGBT+ societies. This is unfortunately more likely to occur when the society is dominated by white cis gay men.”

The only truly progressive people on earth are trans women. Trans women are so progressive that they’re not even white.

Via Edna Adan University Hospital on Facebook:

Generosity means sharing the last drops of water with your baby sister during the ongoing drought in Somaliland…

Only about one-third of the Somaliland population has access to safe drinking water. In recent months, devastating drought exacerbated by El Nino weather patterns has left over 240,000 of our people without enough food and killed 35% to 40% of our country’s precious livestock.

For this little girl, her sister, and all of us, ‪#‎WaterGives‬ life. Health and hope depend on it. ‪#‎WorldWaterDay‬

The Guardian asked “young people” around the world how they “define” their “gender.” The result is what you would expect from such a ridiculous question directed at such a demographic.

Some days Daniela Esquivel Asturias, 21, wakes up feeling feminine and puts on a dress or lipstick. But on others Asturias feels much more masculine and the thought of wearing a skirt induces an overwhelming sense of dysmorphia.

“I would be equally comfortable with a male or female body. My male personality is more outgoing than my female one. It’s like having both male and female energies and some days a mix of both,” Asturias says.

GASP

Oh my god have you ever heard anything so original and fascinating and new ever in your life before? Have you ever encountered a human being who had different moods before??

The student from Costa Rica is gender fluid, and doesn’t identify with one gender, instead fluctuating between feeling more male or female.

Unlike all the rest of us dull plodding not-young people who have always 100% “identified” with one “gender” our whole lives.

It’s hard to explain, Asturias says, before referring to the way society tends to define gender, on a spectrum. “At one end is being male and the other female, and you kind of move between the two, and usually remain in the middle.”

This is just one of the individual stories sent to the Guardian as part of a survey inviting millennials to define their gender.

Next up, the Guardian will report on an astounding new trick you can do where you add yeast to flour and make something they’re calling “bread”…

Young people are increasingly challenging conventional gender stereotypes

Let me stop you right there. No they’re not. They may think they are, you may think they are, but they’re not. Much of the time what they’re actually doing is reifying conventional gender stereotypes so that they can boast about being outside them.

This idea that nobody challenged gender stereotypes and rules until a couple of weeks ago is so clueless it’s a scandal.

Jesse Singal on Twitter yesterday, with four tweets run together. (I still think it’s absurd that people use Twitter this way.)

@LambdaLiterary has withdrawn @AliceDreger’s book from consideration for its nonfiction literary award. The (very strongly) implied message here is that you can’t simultaneously be an advocate for social justice and care about the principles of truth, accuracy, and fairness in argument. It was a message I heard loud and clear after my Zucker/GIC article, and one that will, in the long run, harm all of us greatly. @LambdaLiterary @AliceDreger

He’s right you know. It is absolutely not permitted to try to get at the truth on certain subjects – trans issues in particular, right now – by thinking and inquiring and reading and talking about them in your own way. The guardians of purity make that very explicit.

Singal included this email in his first tweet:

Dear Dr. Dreger,

Lambda Literary, a nonprofit corporation, was founded in 1989 with the express objective of promoting literature and art that increase knowledge, understanding, and acceptance of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. Fundamental to that objective is the belief that LGBTQ lives are affirmed when our stories are written, published, and read.

After reviewing Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science, the organization has concluded the book is inconsistent with its mission of affirming LGBTQ lives. As a result, the decision was made to rescind the nomination for a 2016 Lambda Literary Award in the LGBT Nonfiction category.

Lambda Literary extends its apologies for any inconvenience caused by withdrawal of the nomination and wishes you well in your career endeavors.

Sincerely,

Tony Valenzuela
Executive Director

 The ugliness of that email is breathtaking.

Social justice? Don’t make me laugh.