Ok. Abortion rights. Women. Feminism. Abortion rights as part of feminism. Opposition to abortion rights as part of misogyny and sexism. All that.

I think it’s a huge political mistake to talk about abortion rights in terms of “pregnant people” and “people who can get pregnant.” I think it’s a huge political mistake to drop women from the discussion in order to be inclusive to trans men (and gender fluid people and yadda yadda). The struggle over abortion rights is the way it is because of misogyny and sexism. It would be a very different struggle, if it existed at all, if women were and always had been considered equals. For that reason, it’s a massive mistake to talk about abortion in terms of “people” instead of “women.”

I said that on Twitter and wheeeeeee the Twitter machine sprang into action.

I’m being told it doesn’t erase women to talk about pregnant people instead of women.

Well if that’s true, it doesn’t erase women to talk about human rights instead of feminism, and we can all get on with our fun hobbies instead of being feminists.

If that’s true, it’s fine to say “ALL lives matter” whenever you see something about Black Lives Matter.

People are so confused about this it’s mind-numbing.

The Ansarullah Bangla Team has published a list of bloggers and writers it wants to murder for refusing to grovel to Islam.

The targets in the list include nine bloggers based in the UK, seven in Germany, two in the US, one in Canada and one in Sweden. Some are Bangladeshi citizens living overseas. Others are dual nationals or citizens of the western nations.

The list was issued in a statement on the internet by the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), a group that has been blamed for a series of murders of bloggers and activists in Bangladesh over the last 18 months. All those killed have been prominent critics of extremist religious doctrines, especially in Islam.

We know they’re not joking and they’re not just empty threatening. They mean it, and they know how to do it. They mean it and they know how easy it is to do it.

Individuals on the new list have told the Guardian they intend to keep writing and blogging.

“Our weapon is [the] pen, and we can use it without hurting anybody. We just want to make people conscious about their rights. So that nobody can use them to fulfill bad intentions,” said Ananya Azad, a Bangladeshi blogger who has been forced into exile in Europe and is on the list.

There has been no previous indication that the ABT was targeting bloggers overseas and the list will worry security authorities in Europe and the US.

It will worry the bloggers and writers even more.

British-based bloggers of Bangladeshi origin named on the list have approached police in London and elsewhere following its publication. They say authorities have have advised them to take precautions to minimise the risk of attack.

It is unclear if the ABT has the capability to carry out their threats, but its call for action may prompt individuals to mount “lone wolf” attacks.

Don’t.be.silly. Of course they have the capability, because it’s easy. This isn’t high tech or complicated. All it takes is the will, and they have that. It’s easy to murder people.

Those on the list say they are aware of the dangers of their activism. “I can’t give you assurance that I can’t be hurt here also. Fundamentalists have threatened that they will come and kill me,” said blogger Azad.

“I can’t say that I am fully safe, as the fundamentalists know where I am residing. I can’t say what will happen in future, but I can give you this assurance that I will write until the end of my life.”

No one is fully safe. It’s easy to murder people.

Via United Humanists and Bernard Hurley.

Originally a comment by Bernard Hurley on Your disease is their cash cow.

This is not industrial capitalism in the sense which Smith, Marx or Ricardo would have understood it, rather it is what Ricardo called “rent seeking.” The point is that the prices do not reflect the value of the product on a competitive free market but rather the “economic rent” you can levy in virtue of “owning” property, in this case so-called intellectual property. Ricardo warned that we may end up in a sort of neo-feudal society run by a few rentiers who own all the property, be it real estate, intellectual property or so-called financial assets. Just as the serf could only exist if he/she paid whatever tithe to the feudal lord demanded, so the ordinary person will only be able to exist by paying whatever rents the rentiers demand.

One of the problems for the left is that Marx argued that this “Ricardian Hell” as one 19th century commentator put it, is impossible because the financial sector could never become more powerful than the industrial sector. This leads to some orthodox Marxists denying that this is happening and actually supporting many neo-liberal policies, after all, if the “iron laws of history” tell you that society cannot revert to some sort of feudalism then it obviously cannot be happening.

Plus a comment on the Facebook post of Your disease is their cash cow.

Ayn Rand did not advocate a free market as it would be understood by the Classical economists Smith, Ricardo or Marx nor as understood by the neo classical economists sudh as Hayeck, Friedman or Bernanke; she just advocated naked greed whether through the market or through rent-seeking or probably through anything else. Neo-liberal theory says you should try to prevent rent-seeing in order to protect the free market. This is the rationale for ant-trust laws and for breaking up monopolies.

The problems the Western economies have are much greater than those that would be posed by a neo-liberal government that consistently followed neo-classical economic principles. The greater problem is that the FIRE (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate) sector has become so powerful that it can, if politicians let it – and not many seem to want to stand up to it, control the economy. Meanwhile “free market” has just become an expression of approval/disapproval and is banded about by economic ignoramuses in the media. When something is baptised as being in accordance whith the “free market” it shuts down rational discussion of the issues.

Consider this: in the nineteenth century the USA refused to recognise European patentents because “free market.” Now it is attempting to impose, through international trade deals, its own patents on the rest of the world. Again because “free market.”

Hahaha oh dear no it’s not nut-ella, it’s nu (noo but sharper) tella. I must have first encountered it in the UK because I’ve always pronounced it that way. Apparently Americans think the first three letters mean nut.

I didn’t know its history though.

Nutella® spread, in its earliest form, was created in the 1940s by Mr. Pietro Ferrero, a pastry maker and founder of the Ferrero company. At the time, there was very little chocolate because cocoa was in short supply due to World War II rationing.

So Mr. Ferrero used hazelnuts, which are plentiful in the Piedmont region of Italy (northwest), to extend the chocolate supply.

It was just to extend the chocolate. But it’s so delicious. Extend shmextend, bring on the hazelnuts.

Here’s an Italian ad for it, so you can hear how they pronounce it. Nu, not nut.

https://youtu.be/XtMBzszF4JA

If you want to feel completely nauseated at capitalism in a matter of seconds, you could do worse than to read the New York Times article by Andrew Pollack on price gouging in life-saving drugs.

It starts with the jacking up of the toxoplasmosis drug Daraprim from $13.50 a table to $750, which is not an isolated example.

Although some price increases have been caused by shortages, others have resulted from a business strategy of buying old neglected drugs and turning them into high-priced “specialty drugs.”

Cycloserine, a drug used to treat dangerous multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, was just increased in price to $10,800 for 30 pills from $500 after its acquisition by Rodelis Therapeutics. Scott Spencer, general manager of Rodelis, said the company needed to invest to make sure the supply of the drug remained reliable. He said the company provided the drug free to certain needy patients.

It’s not just “needy” people who can’t afford 11 grand for 30 pills. Also, commodities that are necessary for life should not be price-gouged in that way. It’s immoral. Capitalism has no truck with morality, which is why stuff like this can make you so nauseated so fast.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America and the HIV Medicine Association sent a joint letter to Turing earlier this month calling the price increase for Daraprim “unjustifiable for the medically vulnerable patient population” and “unsustainable for the health care system.” An organization representing the directors of state AIDS programs has also been looking into the price increase, according to doctors and patient advocates.

Daraprim, known generically as pyrimethamine, is used mainly to treat toxoplasmosis, a parasite infection that can cause serious or even life-threatening problems for babies born to women who become infected during pregnancy, and also for people with compromised immune systems, like AIDS patients and certain cancer patients.

Martin Shkreli, the founder and chief executive of Turing, said that the drug is so rarely used that the impact on the health system would be minuscule and that Turing would use the money it earns to develop better treatments for toxoplasmosis, with fewer side effects.

Pardon me if I fail to believe that.

In 2011, Mr. Shkreli started Retrophin, which also acquired old neglected drugs and sharply raised their prices. Retrophin’s board fired Mr. Shkreli a year ago. Last month, it filed a complaint in Federal District Court in Manhattan, accusing him of using Retrophin as a personal piggy bank to pay back angry investors in his hedge fund.

But hey, he totally just wants to make better versions of existing drugs. It’s his dream.

With the price now high, other companies could conceivably make generic copies, since patents have long expired. One factor that could discourage that option is that Daraprim’s distribution is now tightly controlled, making it harder for generic companies to get the samples they need for the required testing.

The switch from drugstores to controlled distribution was made in June by Impax, not by Turing. Still, controlled distribution was a strategy Mr. Shkreli talked about at his previous company as a way to thwart generics.

Nothing sleazy about that.

Who better to head an important panel on the UN Human Rights Council than that paragon of human rights, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia?

UN Watch, an independent campaigning NGO, revealed [Faisal bin Hassan] Trad, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador at the UN in Geneva, was elected as chair of a panel of independent experts on the UN Human Rights Council.

As head of a five-strong group of diplomats, the influential role would give Mr Trad the power to select applicants from around the world for scores of expert roles in countries where the UN has a mandate on human rights.

Such experts are often described as the “crown jewels” of the HRC, according to UN Watch, which has obtained official UN documents, dated 17 September, confirming the appointment.

UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer said the appointment, made in June but unreported until now, may have been a consolation prize for the Saudis after they withdrew their bid to head the 47-nation council following international condemnation of the kingdom’s human rights record.

So they withdrew their bid after (and probably because) the world was noticing how horrifically bad they are at human rights, and the UN gave them a consolation prize? In the shape of a different but still very influential position?

Why?

The Saudis’ bid emerged shortly after it posted a job advertisement for eight new executioners, to cope with what Amnesty International branded a “macabre spike” in the use of capital punishment, including beheadings, this year.

Raif Badawi could not be reached for comment.

Capitalism at its worst.

A former hedge fund manager turned pharmaceutical businessman has purchased the rights to a 62-year-old drug used for treating life-threatening parasitic infections and raised the price overnight from $13.50 per tablet to $750.

Next up: fire departments start charging $100,000 for every house fire they respond to.

Daraprim is used for treating toxoplasmosis — an opportunistic parasitic infection that can cause serious or even life-threatening problems in babies and for people with compromised immune systems like AIDS patients and certain cancer patients — that sold for slightly over $1 a tablet several years ago.  Prices have increased as the rights to the drug have been passed from one pharmaceutical company to the next, but nothing like the almost 5,500 percent increase since Shkreli acquired it.

People just need to cure their own toxoplasmosis like responsible adults instead of relying on pharmaceutical investors not to charge extortionate prices.

Something Dawkins said reminded me of the Secular Policy Institute’s upcoming event, that I blogged about last June. It’s this fall, isn’t it, I thought – I wonder what events and speakers they’ve lined up, I thought. The program was rather thin when I blogged about it, you may remember, with only two people named, Laurence Krauss and Gregory Copley. It did have a day of events though, even though it was unclear who would be doing the talking:

9:00-10:30 am – Future of Earth’s Climate (Ballroom)
How will global warming affect life as we know it? Will climate interventions become commonplace mechanisms to save our planet?

10:30-10:45 am – Break

10:45-12:15 pm – Future of Violence and Terrorism (Ballroom)
How will violence reconfigure earth’s geopolitical borders, boundaries, and relationships? Is civilization heading in the direction of greater or lesser violence over the history of its evolution?

12:15-3:30 pm – Future of Space Exploration
Will humans colonize other planets? Will space travel become commonplace? Will time travel become possible?

3:30 – 4:00 pm – Conclusion

7-9 pm – World Future Forum Conversations & Considerations – The George Washington University Lisner Auditorium
The world’s foremost experts convene to talk about the future of everything. This event is ticketed separately and not included in conference registration.

Ok not so much a day of events as a day of questions, but anyway. I was curious about the added speakers so I looked it up. The page now looks different. There are no scheduled events listed, there’s not even a date or location. Gone are Krauss and Copley, gone is the Phoenix Park hotel, gone is the October 25-26. All that’s left is a description.

World Future Forum

The Secular Policy Institute convenes some of the world’s most prestigious scholars and scientists to develop and disseminate compelling resources to influence the world’s decision makers. Open to policymakers and the public alike, this inaugural World Future Forum provides an unparalleled opportunity for an informed discussion of authoritative perspectives on the critical issues facing contemporary societies across the globe.

Panel Topics Under Current Consideration

• Future of Earth’s Climate
• Future of Violence and Terrorism – Michael Semple
• Future of Religion
• Future of Humanity
• Future of Space Travel
• Future of the Multiverse
• Future of Space Exploration
• Future of Morality
• Future of World Security
• Future of World Economies
• Future of World Resources
• Future of Life Expectancy
• Future of Transportation
• Future of World Health
• Future of Technology

Speakers and Experts

Secular Policy Institute will present speakers who are distinguished scientists and scholars, and who are dedicated to policymaking informed by the most current, accurate information available. Through proactive education and ongoing collaboration, SPI Fellows and Experts offer leverage to their allies and lobby for political and societal change around the world.

So…what happened?

Oh honestly.

I saw this on Twitter but didn’t feel like doing another seen-on-Twitter post, so I’m grateful to the Evening Harold for doing a parody.

Eminent scientist turned huffy, proselytizing sideshow, Richard Dawkins, has had his motives for taking to Twitter to heap shit on a fourteen year old boy questioned, with many believing that he knew exactly what he was doing and that it was a pre-meditated attack carried out purely for attention.

“Assembling a Twitter rant is fine. Making it look like it was done as part of some great crusade for truth, and isn’t a famous 74 year old man picking on a boy is not fine. Which is true?” said the first villager we found in the Squirrel Lickers, Phil Evans.

Wait, what, you’re thinking – he didn’t, did he? Yes, he did. He did it repeatedly. He defended it.

What’s his objection? That Ahmed Mohamed called his clock an invention when he may have simply disassembled and reassembled an existing clock.

Yes really.

Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins 12 hours ago
Assembling clock from bought components is fine. Taking clock out of its case to make it look as if he built it is not fine. Which is true?

Why do you ask?

Nick Cohen has extensive and complicated experience of the purity-sniffing Left. He’s done with it.

The one prophesy I can make with certainty amid today’s chaos is that many on the left will head for the right. When they arrive, they will be greeted with bogus explanations for their ‘betrayal’.

Conservatives will talk as if there is a right-wing gene which, like male-pattern baldness, manifests itself with age. The US leftist-turned-neocon Irving Kristol set the pattern for the pattern-baldness theory of politics when he opined that a conservative is a liberal who has been ‘mugged by reality’. He did not understand that the effects of reality’s many muggings are never predictable, or that facts of life are not always, as Margaret Thatcher claimed, conservative. If they were, we would still have feudalism.

The standard explanation from left-wingers is equally self-serving. Turncoats are like prostitutes, they say, who sell their virtue for money. They are pure; those who disagree with them are corrupt; and that is all there is to it.

Let me emphasize that last point.

They are pure; those who disagree with them are corrupt; and that is all there is to it.

Charlotte Proudman reports on the harassment she’s getting, and why she’s not apologizing.

Why all the fuss? Should women not be grateful that they’re being complimented on their looks by strangers, particularly by powerful, senior men? Let me be clear: the compliments I receive from friends or family, and those I choose to give, are a private matter. I do not welcome unsolicited remarks about my body from someone I don’t know and who, in a professional context, is in a position of authority over me. Sexist comments are part of the process that seals and cements women’s subordinate position to men in the workplace.

Yet many professional women believe that because of their relative disempowerment they simply have to tolerate such intrusive and oppressive behaviour. After all, it is just casual, everyday sexism – just a bit of “fun”. Properly understood, however, it constitutes social policing, gender control, and – in its darker manifestations – a hidden form of social violence. We have to fully recognise this fact and take it seriously before we can change it.

The right wing media trashed her, and inspired extra levels of harassment and abuse.

But it’s necessary to fight back.

A woman messaged me to say that a man in a senior position at her work made sexist comments about her physical appearance. When she informed her boss, she was told not to take it seriously. Other women are contacting me to ask how they can call out sexism without fear of recrimination.

I can’t sugar-coat this. I would never want any woman to face what I have endured in challenging sexism. But if we genuinely want to eradicate everyday sexism at work, we need a zero-tolerance policy. And I encourage women and men to support one another in identifying and challenging sexism in all professional contexts. We will only get the equality we fight for. It will not come easily, and it will not be painless. But if we are to value and respect women in the workplace, that fight is ahead of us.

We’ve only been trying for fifty years or so.

Another dispatch from Alison Criado-Perez of MSF, from a search and rescue boat in the Mediterranean run jointly by @MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station and @MSF. She joined a few days ago.

The call has come in from the MRCC, the organisation in Rome that coordinates the rescues: we’re being directed to help two wooden boats with about 700 people on board. So it’s happening. Our adrenalin starts pumping. What are we going to find? What kind of a state will the refugees be in?

The MOAS crew – Igor, Antoine, Mimmo – lower the rescue boat (RHIB) into the water and set off with Simon, our Canadian doctor, to assess the situation. The rest of us, the small MSF team, stay on board the Phoenix to help prepare for the embarkation. I check the clinic to make sure everything is in order: the drugs, the oxygen concentrator, the monitors – we have no idea what we’ll need.

“Ali, Ali!” I hear someone call. I rush to the embarkation gate at the side of the boat – and Mimmo hands a tiny child up to me from the RHIB, his big brown eyes wide open in stunned amazement. (I later learn that at about the time I am holding this little boy in my arms, the world is being shocked by the photo of little Aylan Kurdi, drowned on a beach in Turkey.) The small boy is quickly followed by a seemingly endless stream of exhausted, bedraggled women and children. We welcome them on board: life-jackets off, hands filled with a rescue package containing water, nutritional biscuits, a protective onesie, towel and a pair of thick socks.

The rescue boat goes back and forth, the lower deck fills up, they start placing people on the upper deck.

Soon we have 332 people on board, nearly all Eritrean, 28 of them young children. They trickle into the clinic for medical attention: dehydration, general exhaustion, headaches, insulin for a diabetic who hasn’t had any for too long. They are escaping from a country with political repression and arbitrary arrests, of enforced national service that lasts a lifetime. To get onto that leaky boat on the shores of Libya, they have already travelled thousands of miles, and many of them will have suffered in detention centres in Libya as they wait for their last chance saloon, an unseaworthy boat in which they will risk their lives in the hopes of a better future.

The next day the clinic is busy from 6 a.m. on.

One young girl stays in my mind. She is sixteen, and she is travelling alone. I will call her Miriam. She has a high fever due to pneumonia, but we can treat that with antibiotics. It’s not too severe. What is worse, what worries me more, is that she can hardly walk. She is limping, dragging her right leg. She speaks little English, but manages to convey to me where it hurts, and why: “I was beaten, here and here and here,” pointing to the back of her calf, her thigh, the bottom of her foot, “In Libya.” I am told that this happens in the detention centres, where the smugglers are attempting to extort more money from these already poverty-stricken and oppressed people.

Yes, maybe if you hit them enough, they will start bleeding money.

The next day they approach Italy.

Will, our emergency coordinator, is giving a talk to the crowded group: information on what happens on arrival, and some indications of what the process for them will be. The decks begin to buzz with excitement.

And then something happens that takes my breath away. A young woman, her head swathed in a bright pink scarf, stands up in the centre of a group and starts a rhythmic chanting as she sways and moves in time to the tune. She is joined by another woman, and another; soon the whole deck seems to be clapping and singing this repetitive tune. Their faces are wreathed with smiles; they are singing of hope, of relief, of joyful expectation. I can control the lump in my throat no longer, and tears pour down my cheeks.

Later, when everyone has safely disembarked, I go to the upper deck and stand in the stern, looking out to sea. And suddenly spot a small padlock, locked onto the protective netting. This is the deck where the refugees have been. One of them has put it there. Like the padlocks lovers lock onto bridges in Paris, in Stockholm, it glistens there in the evening light as a symbol of hope, of hope that a new and better life is beginning.

Good luck to them.