A little more on Rushdie:

Salman Rushdie’s “road to recovery has begun” but “will be long” after his stabbing in western New York late last week, the novelist’s agent has said.

“The injuries are severe,” the agent, Andrew Wylie, said Sunday in an email to the Guardian, alluding to stab wounds that the author suffered to his neck, stomach, eye, chest and thigh two days earlier. “But his condition is headed in the right direction.”

So he was actually stabbed in the eye? That’s nightmarish.

The article also quotes Zafar’s tweet but I’ve shown you that already.

Earlier on Saturday, Hadi Matar, the man suspected in Friday’s attack at a literary festival in upstate New York, pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder and assault at a brief court appearance where he was denied bail.

I have to wonder what the point is of pleading not guilty to something you did in front of an auditorium full of witnesses. (But I guess there’s the insanity plea and similar.)

Rushdie had 10 knife injuries: three stab wounds to the right front of his neck, another four to his stomach, one each to his right eye and chest and a cut to his right thigh. He emerged with a damaged liver and severed nerves in an arm and an eye, Wylie said on Friday evening. He was likely to lose the injured eye.

Horrible.

Matthew Syed on the complicity of western liberals with fatwa-issuing clerics:

Many of the comments on the Rushdie affair over the past 24 hours have pointed out that for many years he has been living quite freely, that the fatwa had been revoked by Iran (although the bounty remains) and that society has moved on from the dark days of book-burning, even if lone attackers remain a threat.

I would suggest that this is delusional, a fantasy conjured up by western liberals to distract from a more sinister truth: over 30 years they have worked as the de facto accomplices of the ayatollah, assisting in the task of dismantling free speech, sending fear through those who dare to criticise or ridicule religion or anything else. Rushdie, in this sense, is not — and never was — a historical affair but a live scandal running through the veins of British life, not to mention other western societies.

Indeed. Charlie Hebdo anyone?

As I read about the attack on Rushdie, my mind turned to Louis Smith, another high-profile Briton from an ethnic minority; a gymnast who won three Olympic medals before going on to a TV career. A few years ago, he and his friend Luke Carson, a fellow gymnast, were frolicking around, singing (as they often did together) when Carson lay down on a mat and shouted “Allahu akbar” while Smith laughed. It was a bit of a giggle, nothing nasty, scarcely satirical. But the video, as you have probably guessed, leaked.

And boom, his life was ruined, with the energetic help of “liberal” commentators.

Yet the truly chilling aspect of this affair — which also went largely unreported — is that Smith couldn’t earn a living after his “crime”. Sponsors and broadcasters turned their backs on him. Progressives didn’t want to know. His income vanished and he struggled to pay his mortgage. To be clear: this punishment beating was perpetrated on Smith not by fanatics, not by knife-wielding fundamentalists, but the monolithic liberal ideology that will not tolerate opinions (or even jokes) that breach their antiliberal creed.

It was the same creed that defended those who hounded into hiding a teacher at a school in Batley, West Yorkshire, last year for showing his class a religious cartoon. It is the same creed that equates criticism of the myriad excesses of the Muslim Brotherhood with Islamophobia.

For that matter it’s the same creed that thinks there’s something wrong with hating religions.

Reliably backing the wrong horse, our Jolyon.

Yes that’s Salman, embedding power all over the place, not challenging it at all.

Of course saying that relies on believing that Islam is powerless. Have a think about that for a minute or two.

A little more news:

Ewan Somerville at the Telegraph on more gender Stalinism in academia:

“Far-Left” university bosses have been accused of forcing out their own diversity adviser after staff protested that criticism of transgender activism was “threatening”. 

They’re not “far-left” though. We need a new moniker for this nonsense. Far-Identitarian perhaps. There’s nothing actually lefty about imposing fantasies on the world and punishing people who fail to believe the fantasies. Far-Incloosive. Far-Reality-Denying.

The equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) adviser at the University of Sheffield had been employed for more than two years working on LGBT+ inclusion and a race equality action plan.

No equality or inclusion for women though? Nothing? Not even a crumb?

But in October last year, his colleagues from a trade union complained to managers about him signing a “statement of solidarity” with Prof Kathleen Stock…

The anonymous staff in a trade union at the university, who described themselves as “senior LGBT+ champions”, said his signature – alongside 2,800 staff from other UK universities – was “particularly concerning given his role in EDI work at the university”. 

In a letter, staff also protested that his Twitter account had questioned why Girlguiding was allowing trans girls as members…

Equality and inclusion just don’t cover women, sorry. Women don’t need equality and inclusion – women are the enemy, the bosses, the oppressors.

At least Rushdie is off the ventilator and able to talk.

Unfortunately there’s no other new information, but it’s a start. I hope.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Security conscious.

John Kelly tried to limit access to Trump at Maralago but he failed because Trump said no.

Mr. “I-Know-More-About-Everything-Than-Anyone-Else-On-Earth” probably figured he could spot spies because they would be wearing black trench coats and carrying bombs with lit fuses. A man with no theory of mind, who chooses staff because they look the part (rather than being qualified for the position), would think that everyone else hires underlings and minions in exactly the same way. In real life, at a resort, an agent could be a member of caretaking or custodial staff. What matters is access, not rugged good looks, or femme fatale gorgeousity. I’d be amazed if Putin did not have agents in place amongst Trump’s staff well before he entered the White House. He might prefer to have someone on the inside keeping tabs on Trump, rather than having to rely on the self-reporting of the empty-headed toad. (Can you imagine having to debrief Orange Julius? Spare a thought for the poor bastard charged with that job.)

It seems Trump wasn’t too picky about making sure that his employees were even legally allowed to work in the US, meaning he could pay them less. Who better to get into any room than an “invisible” member of the service staff? What better candidate for clandestine work than an unnoticed, underpaid, undocumented immigrant – or someone posing as one – in such a support position? Trump would be looking for a tall, gun-toting, menacing thug with five o’clock shadow*, and completely ignore Maria the maid, Jesus the janitor, or Ivan the electrician. In Trump World, only loser nobodies do joe-jobs like that. Who pays attention to those people? I can imagine a comedy wherein the entire caretaking staff of Mar-a-Lego is made up of Russian, Chinese, and North Korean agents, (mixed in with a few from nervous allies, keeping tabs on the Stable Genius), all trying to stay out of each other’s way. The whole time they’re studiously pretending to dust the furniture or mop the floor; dutifully touching up the paint, watering the plants and changing lightbulbs between taking pictures with their tiny, Secret Spy Cameras. Think of it as a mix of James Bond, “Noises Off” and “Black Comedy.”

* Note that he wouldn’t be looking for a suave, tuxedo-clad playboy, because that’s what the good guy’s secret agents look like.

Now for the essay by Dr Kit Heyam that explains why Joan of Arc & Elizabeth Tudor were too good to be mere women.

Dr Heyam uses the bespoke pronouns right off the bat, and the result of course is confusing meaningless drivel.

Title: ‘It was necessary’: taking Joan of Arc on their own terms

Whose own terms?

Subtitle: We take a look a fresh look at Jeanne d’Arc’s story, and what they tell us about the history of gender

What who tell us about the history of gender?

Pronouns are there for a reason: to convey needed information without having to repeat people’s names a million times. Sticking in “they”s where they don’t make any sense doesn’t convey any information, it just creates clumsy bumps that interfere with comprehension. It’s shit writing.

We start with clothes, because of course we do. Joan of Arc wore men’s clothes. The audience gasped as one.

This is how Joan’s story is often told: as a tale of pragmatic gender nonconformity, men’s dress as a strategy to navigate a patriarchal world. The subtext of this interpretation – increasingly made explicit as our society continues to deny the historical existence of trans experience – is that Joan shouldn’t be seen as part of trans history: that their story is about gender-nonconforming behaviour, not identity.

Bollocks. We can perfectly well think Joan was also gender nonconforming, and I’m pretty sure lots of people have, and we can think that without having to think she was “trans.” I for one think it’s the other way around: idiots like this Kit Heyam person impose their fatuous socially constructed ideas on people who wouldn’t have understood a word she he they is saying, even in translation.

In my new book Before We Were Trans, I take a fresh look at histories like Joan’s, and consider what they tell us about the history of gender. The book tackles histories of gender nonconformity which overlap with other kinds of history, including histories of queer sexuality, intersex embodiment, and defiance of gender roles…

I have to wonder why the Globe is helping this fool market her his their new book.

…saying Joan’s gender nonconformity was motivated by practicality doesn’t prevent us from also saying that it had other, deeper motivations – or that it had other, deeper, unexpected consequences for how Joan felt.

No shit. Of course it could have had other motivations! Of course she could have wanted a wider more interesting life than the one that was allotted to women. Lots of girls and women want that and always have – that doesn’t mean they’re “trans.”

The ninth-century English ruler Æthelflæd, who governed Mercia after the death of their husband, was later described as ‘conducting…Armies, as if she had changed her sex’: to take on a male-coded military role was, in some sense, for Æthelflæd to become male. Elizabeth I, similarly, described themself regularly in speeches as ‘king’, ‘queen’ and ‘prince’, choosing strategically to emphasise their female identity or their male monarchical role at different points.

Still doesn’t make them “trans.”

This person is an idiot. I’m finished with her him them.

Could they be any more insulting? The Telegraph tells us “academics” say Queen Elizabeth I wasn’t a woman. Gee, I wonder why they think that – because she was powerful and tough and clever perhaps? Can’t be no girl because girls are weak and soppy and stupid? Thanks, academics, you’re doing brilliant work.

Elizabeth I has been presented as possibly non-binary in an essay published by the theatre, which refers to the female monarch with the gender-neutral “they/them” pronouns.

The essay was written by a “transgender awareness trainer” in defence of the Globe’s decision to stage a new play featuring a non-binary Joan of Arc, but both the play and the essay have raised concerns that famous females are being written out of history.

Probably because that’s exactly what’s happening.

I’ve found the essay, but that will be for a separate post.

Imagine the Globe writing an essay saying Frederick Douglass probably identified as white, because look how clever he was. They wouldn’t do that, would they, but for some reason this “strong women were not women” crap is ok?

Philosopher Dr Jane Clare Jones said: “This is a really great example of the inherent gender conservatism in gender identity ideology. Traditional gender conservatism says that men must do ‘manly’ things, and women must do ‘womanly’ things.

“Gender identity ideology reverses that and then we end up with the idea that anyone who does ‘manly’ things must be a man, and anyone who does ‘womanly’ things must be a woman.

“This is how we end up in a situation in which historical women who have performed traditionally ‘masculine’ roles end up being re-categorised as ‘trans men’ or ‘non-binary’ or ‘not-women’ in some way. This is a really regressive message to be sending out, especially to young women.”

Joan Smith, author of the feminist volume Misogynies, said: “Women and girls are entitled to reject stereotypes without losing our sex. We didn’t have enough female role models to start with, we have spent decades rediscovering women artists, authors, leaders. And now a regressive ideology is trying to take them away.”

It makes me livid.

But what’s the point of it?

A children’s story hour run by a drag queen in Cardiff was targeted by protesters claiming it was “sexualising their children”.

The Drag Queen Story Hour Tour arrived in Wales this week with the final event being held in Cardiff Central Library.

Story-teller Sab Samuel said it provided a “positive experience” and said there was no sexual content.

But in what way is it a positive experience? What’s the point of it? Why drag queens and not drag kings? Why men dressed up as women and not women dressed up as men? What is it all supposed to mean?

What does it mean? What are children supposed to take from it? What does a man dressed and made up as an extremely flashy flarey overdressed parody of a woman teach children? Why is it only women being mocked this way? Why are there no parody men wearing flashy flarey military dictator uniforms and massive handlebar mustaches?

All genuine questions. I don’t get what the cover story is – what is supposed to be either fun or educational about it, and what explanation is given for the fact that it’s only women who are mocked.

There were about 15 protesters in attendance with many more in support of the event, wearing clothes adorned with the rainbow flag.

Why the rainbow flag? Isn’t the rainbow flag supposed to be for women and men? Not just men?

Sab, whose drag character is Aida H Dee, says the intention was to provide a positive experience about queer culture and providing a positive role model for people to look up [to].

But if that’s the intention why is it only men mocking women?

He said: “I came to Cardiff to join, what I know is a large LGBTQ community and large Drag Queen community. I don’t think Drag Queen Story Hour would have thrived as it has without the support Wales gives with its culture and community.

“It makes me feel depressed that these hateful people exist in dark corners of every country. These people do exist and they inspire me to keep going and to write more stories. This is the exact reason I do what I do.”

But what do you do? You dress up as a parody of women. I’m not seeing the inspiration.

The BBC represents the protests as entirely homophobic, but I don’t think it knows that. The BBC of course does not ask why there are no lesbians dressed up as men at these story hours.

It appears Trump may have leaked the names of two FBI agents who searched Maralago to Breitbart, thus putting them at risk from Trump’s lunatic treasonous fans.

CNN senior justice correspondent Evan Perez suggested on Friday that former President Donald Trump‘s office was responsible for leaking a search warrant to Breitbart News and other outlets.

…

The warrant authorizing an FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence was provided to Breitbart on Friday before a federal judge in Florida formally unsealed it at the request of the Department of Justice (DOJ).

The unsealed warrant redacted the names of the agents. The leaked warrant did not.

It is not known at this time how Breitbart News obtained the warrant on Friday and Perez’ suggestion is speculation, but he is not alone in suggesting that Trump’s team may have been responsible for providing the document to Breitbart.

Just a hunch.

Nick Cohen in the Spectator:

Like online trolls, religious totalitarians want their targets to think about them constantly. If some cannot physically harm their enemies, they will accept mentally crippling them as the next best option. The threats against Rushdie never went away. A few days before we met in 2012, the organisers of the Jaipur Literary Festival had cancelled a booking. They feared that the mere sight of him might lead to assassination attempts, riots, injuries and deaths.

I wrote about it at the time.

I asked why John le Carré had said, ‘My position is that there is no law in life or nature that says great religions may be insulted with impunity’.

‘I gave one of his novels a bad review,’ Rushdie replied ‘Novelists never forgive or forget’.

And as for religious fanatics…

Until 1989, liberal-minded writers thought they could challenge religions that claimed dominion over minds and bodies. No one expected demagogues to whip up mob-hatred against a novelist. Penguin, his publisher, and Rushdie himself had no inkling of the violence that was about to descend on them.

Now writers and publishers know it, and that knowledge changes everything. Try to imagine a liberal or-ex Muslim writer attempting a modern version of The Satanic Verses. And then try to imagine an editor at a mainstream publishing house accepting it. They would be too scared. But they would also be scared to admit they were scared because the macho ideology of publishing, the arts and journalism insists that we are brave taboo-busters, who speak truth to power without fear of the consequences. Instead of admitting their fear, they would say that they did not want to give comfort to the Islamophobic right. When I first heard that argument in the last century I thought it a specious evasion. Now it’s become a self-fulfilling prophecy. When liberals cordon off debates in no-go areas the right and far right has the opportunity to dominate the discussion.

When I made this point to Rushdie he found it too pessimistic. Cowardice resided almost exclusively in the offices of publishers, broadcasters and newspaper editors, he said. Writers should be braver and challenge them.

Now a would-be assassin has done his best to end Salman Rushdie’s challenge to the totalitarian and the obscurantist. Like many others I woke up early this morning to check how he was, and the news from his hospital was grim.

The would-be assassin’s best was much much much too “good.”

This is very good.

Funny to see Boris Johnson in the background.

Ok ok ok so Trump stole top-secret documents and kept them at his resort hotel, big deal. What harm could that possibly do?

The Justice Department’s search warrant raises concerns about national security, said former DOJ official Mary McCord.

“Clearly they thought it was very serious to get these materials back into secured space,” McCord said. “Even just retention of highly classified documents in improper storage – particularly given Mar-a-Lago, the foreign visitors there and others who might have connections with foreign governments and foreign agents – creates a significant national security threat.”

What, you mean a big resort hotel isn’t the most secure place you could possibly stash highly classified documents? Huh. Who knew?

“It’s a nightmarish environment for a careful handling of highly classified information,” said a former U.S. intelligence officer. “It’s just a nightmare.”

It could be worse though. He could have just thrown them out a window.

In a high profile example, Trump huddled in 2017 with Japan’s then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at an outdoor dinner table while guests hovered nearby, listening and taking photos that they later posted on Twitter.

The dinner was disrupted by a North Korean missile test, and guests listened as Trump and Abe figured out what to say in response. After issuing a statement, Trump dropped by a wedding party at the club.

It’s hard not to laugh.

“What we saw was Trump be so lax in security that he was having a sensitive meeting regarding a potential war topic where non-U.S. government personnel could observe and photograph,” said Mark Zaid, a lawyer who specializes in national security cases. “It would have been easy for someone to also have had a device that heard and recorded what Trump was saying as well.”

White House aides did set up a secure room at Mar-a-Lago for sensitive discussions. That was where Trump decided to launch airstrikes against Syria for the use of chemical weapons in April 2017.

Progress!

The decision made, Trump repaired to dinner with visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping. Over a dessert of chocolate cake, Trump informed Xi about the airstrikes.

Oops. Scratch the progress.

John Kelly tried to limit access to Trump at Maralago but he failed because Trump said no.

Since The Religious Veto is on our minds at the moment, I was reminded of the last minute “wait let’s think about this some more” a week before Does God Hate Women? was published.

I wrote a quite furious post about it on May 25, 2009.

About this non-ecumenical book that Jeremy and I wrote, that is due out at the end of this week. Yes, what about it, you’re thinking, all agog. For reasons which I will explain another day, the publisher became nervous about it last Friday. The publisher phoned us on Friday, and talked of changes, or delays, or would we like to drop a chapters. We would not like to drop a chapter, and if we had liked to drop a chapter, the time to discuss that would have been several months ago, not now, a week before the book is supposed to appear. The publisher sent the can-we-drop-it chapter to an ecumenicist to get his opinion.

The publisher sent the chapter to an ecumenicist to get his opinion.

The ecumenicist will not like it. The ecumenicist will hate it. The ecumenicist specializes in Muslim-Christian relations. This book is not about Muslim-Christian relations, and it did not set out to improve Muslim-Christian relations, and it was not shaped in such a way as to improve Muslim-Christian relations. That means the ecumenicist is the wrong kind of person to be vetting our chapter. One might as well send a book on animal rights to a butcher for vetting. One might as well send a book on workers’ rights to someone at the American Enterprise Institute for vetting. One might as well send a book on wetlands preservation to a cement manufacturer for vetting. For that matter one might as well send our book to the pope for vetting. We did not write this book to please ecumenicists, or popes or mullahs or heads of bible colleges or ‘spiritual leaders’ of any kind. If the publisher wanted their imprimatur, the publisher should have turned the book down from the outset, in the same way that Verso did. Verso was interested at first, then decided that after all it wasn’t, because it was uneasy about the subject matter. Verso publishes the messages to the world of Osama bin Laden so naturally it’s uneasy about our subject matter – but it said so before we took the trouble to write the book, which was civil of it. Our publisher, on the other hand, let us write it, and make a few minor changes at their suggestion, and go on our way rejoicing, and did not get to the bit about being uneasy until, as mentioned, last Friday, a week before the book is supposed to come out.

A less furious post followed, regretting some of the fury of the first post.

Okay, now you know all. I said last week ‘For reasons which I will explain another day, the publisher became nervous’; now you know the reasons. I must say, given the way the article is worded, and given the headline, I understand the publisher’s reaction better, and I regret the slightly acid tone of my post.

The article is, frankly, worded in a rather peculiar way. There’s a very noticeable lack of attribution throughout – there are free-floating feelings and reactions with no actual people having them or expressing them or taking ownership of them. There are fears and concerns and suggestions, but the reader can’t tell whose fears and concerns and suggestions they are.

Well I can tell you. I have privileged information here, so I can tell you. No one’s. They are no one’s fears and concerns and suggestions. This is not altogether surprising, since the book is not out yet, and very few people have read it. I suppose it could be that some people could have read about the book, and developed fears and concerns, and told the journalist, Christine Toomey, about them – but it seems very unlikely, and the fears and concerns would have to be awfully vague and amorphous. The article makes it sound as if (without actually saying) there are real people who have real fears and concerns about the actual content of the actual book – but there can’t be any such people, because they can’t have read the book. You see what I mean? Of course you do. So that makes it odd to talk about fears and concerns and suggestions.

I’d forgotten all this. What happened is that Toomey wrote this piece citing fears and concerns but they were her fears and concerns. It was all laughably circular, except not really all that laughable, especially in light of what just happened to Salman Rushdie. It’s preemptive self-censorship, which is a really bad idea. The Taliban would love it, but no one else would.

Check out the comments. Kenan Malik is there, David of Mediawatchwatch is there, Sastra is there.

Taliban attacks women:

About 40 women marched through the Afghan capital demanding rights, before the Taliban broke it up by firing into the air.

The fighters seized their mobile phones, stopping one of the first women’s protests in months.

Male insurrectionists attack women and steal their phones.

Never forget the Taliban are in no sense a legitimate government. They’re violent thugs who overthrew the government. They represent government by the gun.

Afghanistan is the only country in the world that officially limits education by gender – a major sticking point in the Taliban’s attempts to gain international legitimacy.

But “officially” only according to the Taliban, who are a group of criminals. They have no legitimacy.

Oh is that how it works.

His own family’s religion – so he’s not allowed to critique and satirise other people’s families’ religions?

Plus of course Rowling’s not “peddling hate speech at a minority group” – she’s disputing the truth claims of a new and deranged belief system that’s carving up children and calling it “gender-affirmation surgery.”

Yo, transgenderism is a human-made belief system, and a very destructive one, and we all get to “pick it apart” aka say what’s wrong with it.

Writers say it’s not good to try to murder writers:

Fellow authors such as JK Rowling and Stephen King have written messages of support, calling the news “horrifying”.

Booker-prize winning author, Ian McEwan, called it an “appalling attack” that “represents an assault on freedom of thought and speech”.

“Salman has been an inspirational defender of persecuted writers and journalists across the world. He is a fiery and generous spirit, a man of immense talent and courage and he will not be deterred,” he added.

He was an absolute torch of a defender of the Charlie Hebdo people, which meant quarreling with some of his own friends, because they shamefully took the other side.

Afghan-American author, Khaled Hosseini, wrote: “I’m utterly horrified by the cowardly attack on Salman Rushdie. I pray for his recovery. He is an essential voice and cannot be silenced.”

Writer Taslima Nasreen, who was forced to flee her home in Bangladesh after a court said her novel Lajja offended Muslim’s religious faith, said she now feared for her own safety.

Not for the first time. I was at a CFI conference in 2015 when murderers were picking off prominent Bangladeshi atheists one by one, and Taslima was there too, and so was armed security. We were chatting outside on a terrace on the Saturday afternoon when her armed security came along to say she was the new armed security after a shift change and she’d be right over there. An unusual experience.

The Beeb reports:

Salman Rushdie’s agent has said “the news is not good” after the author was stabbed at an event in New York state.

He was attacked on stage, and is now on a ventilator and unable to speak, Andrew Wylie said in a statement, adding that the author will lose one eye.

…

“Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged,” his agent, Andrew Wylie said.

A day that will live in infamy.

Reuters:

FBI agents in this week’s search of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s Florida home removed 11 sets of classified documents including some marked as top secret, the Justice Department said on Friday, while also disclosing it had probable cause to conduct the search based on possible Espionage Act violations.

The bombshell disclosures were made in a search warrant approved by a U.S. magistrate judge and accompanying documents released four days after agents searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach. The Espionage Act, one of three laws cited in the warrant application, dates to 1917 and makes it a crime to release information that could harm national security.

Trump is saying it was all declassified, but Reuters says that’s beside the point.

Although the FBI on Monday carted away material labeled as classified, the three laws cited as the basis for the warrant make it a crime to mishandle government records, regardless of whether they are classified. As such, Trump’s claims that he declassified the documents would have no bearing on the potential legal violations at issue.

…

The Justice Department said in the warrant application approved by U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart that it had probable cause to believe violations of the Espionage Act had occurred at Trump’s home.

That law was initially enacted to combat spying. Prosecutions under it were relatively uncommon until the Justice Department ramped up its use under both Trump and his predecessor Barack Obama to go after leakers of national security information, including leaks to the news media.

Well it’s ok when it’s Trump doing it.