Originally a comment by Michael Haubrich on Belatedly hearing the voices.

There are a great many issues that can never be fixed when it comes to indigenous poeple in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Obviously the bells can’t be unrung, no matter how many land trusts are bought up and donated to tribal governments. The economies of the people before us have been disrupted, and they long ago began adapting to the new ways.

But what we can do is learn and understand who they were and who they are. The idea that indigenous people were savages that we civilized is not only patronizing, it is wrong. There were some advanced civilzations that waxed and waned over the millenia, doing science in their ways that is just as effective in discovering natural truths as those ways developed by the Royal Society and the French academies of the enlightentment.

There was a recent brouhaha over a New Zealand academic who was brought up on ethics charges, but also had criticized the science standards of New Zealand education because they included Maori cultural inputs in science. The standards have been in place since at least 1993, but they have been newly decried as “wokism gone made” to make sure that Maori “ways of knowing” are included. You can probably guess who complained about it without checking the actual standards. I checked them out and they are actually pretty good and are not equivalent to creationism.

So, we need to know who the indigenous people are, what they had made, and acknowledge their contributions to our societies without assuming they were functionally savages until we came along and led them to civilization (by kidnapping their children.) We can never reconcile, true, but we can move forward with them as participants. We need to acknowledge what he have done to their people, and we can’t just look back and say it was ancient history.

There are pipelines that are being laid in their lands (so-called reservations) that can destroy their water supply, Uranium mines on land that we ceded to them in Treaties, people protest when the decision to honor fishing rights in a treaty signed by the government are going to “hurt the tourism industry.” We can stop this stuff from going on, even if we can’t go back and return the Great Plains to the bison herds that roamed for days.

If we don’t teach a history that includes places such as Cahokia, that Mexican indios developed corn from teosinte, and that the Maori knew their fungal networks long before the British came along, then people will continue to think that Injuns are lucky we saved them from their savagery and that we were justified in slaughtering those who got in the way. They will think of those children buried without markers in the Residential Schools as collateral damage for property. They will continue to think of the Water Protectors as superstitious selfish cretins who deserve the firehoses in the winter or 25 years in prison for trying to stop the pipeline in North Dakota.

We need to admit our own savagery towards the people who came first (“hohogum” in the Pima native language) before we can civilize ourselves.

“Well then I just won’t hold a press conference, so there. That’ll show them. They’ll be sorry.”

Former President Donald Trump has canceled a press conference at Mar-a-Lago scheduled for Jan. 6, the one-year anniversary of his supporters’ insurrection. Trump now says he will discuss the Capitol riot during a rally in Arizona on Jan. 15 instead. The press conference, he said in a statement, was canceled over the work of the House Select Committee investigating the violent mob’s attack. “In light of the total bias and dishonesty of the January 6th Unselect Committee of Democrats, two failed Republicans, and the Fake News Media, I am canceling the January 6th Press Conference at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday, and instead will discuss many of those important topics at my rally on Saturday, January 15th, in Arizona—It will be a big crowd!” he said.

What sense does that make? He talks as if it’s a punishment for him not to give a press conference. He’s just a stupid boring jobless guy in Florida who wants us to pay attention to him. Talk, don’t talk; we don’t care.

And why’s he holding a “rally”? Besides to hear himself talk? Well I guess that’s the answer – he’s holding a “rally” to hear himself talk, and bask in the approval of a few hundred imbeciles.

Updating to add: yes that sounds more like it.

Live tv coverage for “Trump says stuff” – ha!

They want to ask Sean Hannity some questions.

The 6 January committee is seeking information from Fox News’s Sean Hannity, the group’s chair Bennie Thompson and vice-chair Liz Cheney have announced.

In a letter to Hannity, they wrote:

The Select Committee now has information in its possession, as outlined in part below, indicating that you had advance knowledge regarding President Trump’s and his legal team’s planning for January 6th. It also appears that you were expressing concerns and providing advice to the President and certain White House staff regarding that planning. You also had relevant communications while the riot was underway, and in the days thereafter. These communications make you a fact witness in our investigation.

The House select committee investigating the 6 January insurrection last month revealed that Hannity had messaged former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows during the riot at the Capitol. Hannity has been a major supporter of Trump on his Fox show, as well as an adviser to the former president.

Not that there’s any conflict of interest or impropriety there at all. Hannity would think it was perfectly fine if Jake Tapper were “an adviser” to Joe Biden.

No doubt he’ll say “Shan’t” and nobody will do anything and we’ll just keep ambling toward the fascist takeover.

Originally a comment by Pliny on Risks.

As a retired surgeon I can offer a couple of thoughts. When I was teaching residents I used to tell them that we didn’t have a healthcare system but rather a methodology for treating middle-aged white guys. Much of the medical literature of my formative years described signs in symptoms in men predominantly. One of my proudest moments was when an AI system I was developing identified a variant presentation of a deadly condition in a woman because it recognized the significance of sex and ethnicity in disease and injury presentation.

I also told the residents that if men had to carry a fetus to term our species would be long extinct. Despite the cliches associated with such things, women in both my experience and the literature, tend to have much higher tolerances for symptoms like pain. Higher tolerance can lead to diagnostic delays which lead to more advanced disease and hence higher mortality.

Also, up until recently, many women had their symptoms pooh-poohed as well which lead to the same delays and consequences.

One of these is not like the others.

She’s a barrister, who specializes in women’s rights, including FGM cases, so she can’t actually be stupid, but…come on. Being literally [the thing that makes you not-privileged in the first place] can’t possibly be a form of privilege! Being literally Black as opposed to being another Rachel Dolezal is not a form of privilege. Obviously. Everybody knows this…except, suddenly, when it’s women. Then somehow everything becomes its own opposite and we rapidly lose track of where we are. Is that the sky over there, or is it the water?

Rich women have privilege compared to poor women, for sure. Able-bodied women over disabled women, same again. Education, location, health, influence – lots of things can convey or withhold privilege on women or anyone else. Actually being a woman cannot, because being a woman is not separable from the disprivilege of being a woman. It’s ludicrous to claim otherwise.

“We fight for all women” doesn’t mean we fight for men (men can do their own fighting). “We fight for all women” doesn’t mean we fight for men who say they are women.

I’ll never understand how intelligent people can buy into this nonsense.

This is startling:

Women who are operated on by a male surgeon are much more likely to die, experience complications and be readmitted to hospital than when a woman performs the procedure, research reveals.

Women are 15% more liable to suffer a bad outcome, and 32% more likely to die, when a man rather than a woman carries out the surgery, according to a study of 1.3 million patients.

Yikes. I wonder what would even explain that.

The findings have sparked a debate about the fact that surgery in the UK remains a hugely male-dominated area of medicine and claims that “implicit sex biases” among male surgeons may help explain why women are at such greater risk when they have an operation.

…

“On a macro level the results are troubling. When a female surgeon operates, patient outcomes are generally better, particularly for women, even after adjusting for differences in chronic health status, age and other factors, when undergoing the same procedures.”

Hmm maybe that hints at an explanation – women have to be better at it to get in the door at all. Good-enough men get to be surgeons but women have to be spectacular. Except no, because it’s only women who have worse outcomes; men do the same no matter what the sex of the surgeon.

Scarlett McNally, who has been a consultant orthopaedic surgeon for 20 years, said there was “increasing evidence of a different experience for women surgeons, with many being put off surgery and reporting historical ‘microaggressions’”. In addition, female patients may feel more at ease talking to a female surgeon before the operation, including steps they should take to improve their chances of a good outcome, such as stopping smoking to help ensure a bone graft takes, she added.

If surgery is one of those occupations that promotes a kind of macho culture, that could make male surgeons that little bit more off-putting to women patients. What a dismal thought.

From Reporters Without Borders:

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is appalled by the suspended prison sentences passed yesterday on two Nigerien journalists who published an international report about drug trafficking and corruption in Niger. These totally unjustified sentences send a shocking signal about the state of justice and the fight against corruption in this country, RSF says.

In a terrible start to the year for journalists in Niger, L’Événement news website editor Moussa Aksar was given a two-month suspended jail sentence and freelance reporter Samira Sabou got a one-month suspended jail sentence for publishing a report by the Geneva-based Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (GI-TOC) in May.

Describing Niger as a “nerve centre” of regional drug trafficking, the GI-TOC report said that, according to multiple sources, part of a big hashish haul seized by the Nigerien authorities in March 2021 had been reacquired by the traffickers, and blamed this on close links between traffickers and part of Niger’s political and military elite.

Therefore: jail sentences.

What petty childish performative bullshit.

A secondary school specialising in performing arts has quietly cancelled Harry Potter author JK Rowling – replacing her as a house name over her ‘comments and viewpoints surrounding trans people’.

The Boswells School in Chelmsford, Essex, had honoured the writer for one of its in-school groups, which had also been labelled with the quality of ‘self-discipline’.

But it emerged today she had been replaced over the summer with Olympic hero Dame Kelly Holmes.

The school had announced plans to review Rowling’s name in July after ‘requests from students and staff’. 

…

The school’s issues with Rowling, 56, were laid bare in a newsletter seen by MailOnline, which featured an image of the house logo with the writer’s name erased.

See? See? We blanked her! Aren’t we clever and grown-up.

It said: ‘The Boswells House System embeds a sense of community, friendship and healthy competition amongst both students and staff.

A strong house identity empowers our students to participate and thrive in all aspects of school life, both in and out of the classroom. Here at the Boswells we have 6 Houses which are represented by British citizens who have excelled in an area of our Boswells Learning Bridge which includes integrity, emotional intelligence, grit, resourcefulness, self-discipline and bravery.

‘However, following numerous requests by students and staff we are reviewing the name of our red house ‘Rowling’ and in light of J.K Rowling’s comments and viewpoints surrounding trans people. Her views on this issue do not align with our school policy and school beliefs – a place where people are free to be.’

Implying that Rowling thinks people should not be “free to be,” which of course is bullshit.

It’s ironic, to me at least, that they share her approval of this idea of school “houses” and how they foster Healthy Competition or something. I don’t think that’s true at all, I think it’s a crappy idea for schools to promote rivalries among the students. I also think it’s crude and silly to portray a house system in which one house calls itself “Slytherin.” It’s always reminded me of the Monty Python bit in which a burglar rings the doorbell and announces himself: “Burglar, madam.”

La lutte continue.

So I read the other guy’s 6 and 7 so that I’d know what Andy was replying to. I became very tired when I got to this bit:

In my first letter, I gave a definition of gender that highlights that it is a complex construction involving a wide range of inputs and outputs, and that we are still actively involved in the process of understanding how those factors interact.

No it isn’t complex, except in the sense that it’s become fashionable to misunderstand it and try to make a personality out of it.

Andy’s response to that part:

I am not going to pick apart your ideas on gender, but for the record, it looks as if you gave up on trying to define what a “gender” is and resorted to a “it’s complicated” type non-argument. And that leaves me with not a clear target to address. Science requires precision. And your approach, to be honest, looks more like mysticism and hiding behind the supposedly ineffable. 

Precisely. It’s tiresome.

Yet another guy cheerily giving away women’s rights.

He’d rather destroy women’s sports than “erase” trans people (by which he means not allow men to compete against women). Easy for him, it’s not his ability to compete fairly in a sport that’s being waved away.

He would rather erase women. So many of them would. It’s astounding.

Jess DeWahls sees it too.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Connections found.

“The idea that history stands still is nonsense because you keep finding new things.”

It’s not just a matter of things being “found” or “discovered.” It’s that new information is being disclosed or officially acknowledged, instead of being hidden, or swept under the rug. It completes the story, telling it more fully and honestly.

On this side of the Atlantic, the official acknowledgement of the foundations of Canada and the United States in genocide, and the disposession of the Original inhabitants, along with the importation of kidnapped, enslaved Africans, is a work in progress.* It’s not that this was ever really secret (certainly not to those on the receiving end of colonial power), but these aspects of the founding mythos of the political administrative units concerned have been purposefully left out, ignored, or glossed over. That the perspective of peoples whose perception of and part in “official” histories differs from, or contradicts these mythologies, is a sign of hope. We are now, belatedly, hearing the voices of people who were forced to pay the price for power and luxuries that they were not permitted to share. This includes not only the examination of historical injustices, but their continuation into the present. It’s not just “history.” Too often the idea of “moving forward” from the past is just a euphemism for ignoring, or running away from it.

I’ve just started reading the book Unreconciled by Jesse Wente, a combination of personal memoire set within a broader picture of the experiences of Indigenous Peoples within Colonial Canada. I’ve already been given one head-slapping reality-check moment from the inner flap of the dust jacket: “Wente argues that ‘reconciliation’ is a flawed concept: peace between First Nations and the state of Canada can’t be recovered through reconciliation because no such relationship ever existed.” Holy shit. I’d never thought of it like this. Of course, I’ve never had to. Now that is White privilege (unironic, without scare quotes) in (in)action. More of the same, please, Mr. Wente.

This more complete disclosure is akin to the relatively recent requirement to provide ingredient lists and nutritional analyses on food products, or the enumeration of the totality of a medication’s actions, including so-called “side effects”, which are simply inconvenient, unwanted, yet inevitable consequences of its use. Perhaps, more importantly it is like an attempt to find out a patient’s complete medical history before committing to a course of treatment for present ailments. Accurate, honest information is more likely to result in an effective outcome. Of course, the first step is admitting you have a problem.

*Not to mention the historical, and ongoing, exploitation and destruction of other living beings and biomes, redefined as “resources,” in the name of “development.”

We keep seeing them, men breezily giving away women’s rights. There’s an endless supply of such men.

Yes, how dare girls’ schools continue to be girls’ schools. Never mind the fact that girls flourish in girls’ schools – add some boys to the mix anyway, because Tom Harwood is fine with it.

Sean Gunn, of course, absolutely merits being listened to. I wonder what the difference might be.

But clearly Sean Gunn knows far more about why JK Rowling should STFU than JK Rowling knows about what a woman is.

Why is Devin Nunes walking? To take up an awesome opportunity to run a new Media Thingy invented by Donald Trump! (Actually because redistricting has made it hard for him to get re-elected.) Who is better at inventing awesome new media thingies than Donald Trump??? He’s invented about six of them since he lost the election, and they’re all so successful that they make Twitter and Facebook look like the local coffee shop’s noticeboard.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) officially resigned from Congress on Monday to become the CEO of ex-President Donald Trump’s new media venture, Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG).

…

The California Republican’s plans for resignation were revealed in early December. Trump claimed in a statement at the time that Nunes would be an “excellent” CEO for the company, which has been working on the launch of a new social network called “TRUTH Social” as an alternative to Twitter.

Ah yes. Trump thinks “social” is short for “social media.”

Nunes, a former dairy farmer with no professional experience in media, touted his new role as an opportunity to “allow for the free flow of ideas and expression without censorship” on the Internet.

Including planning genocides, yes?

While in Congress, Nunes filed multiple goofy lawsuits against his critics on Twitter, including people pretending to be his mom and a cow in order to troll him.

How about TRUTH COW Social?

Devin Nunes has resigned.

Buh-bye.

Graham Douglas in a comment told us about a statue that has been moved from a prominent place in front of the National Trust property Dunham Massey Hall.

The Dunham Massey Hall sundial is a lead sculpture depicting a kneeling Black man holding a sundial on his head. It was created during the early 18th century, and until 2020 stood outside Dunham Massey Hall, a stately home in Cheshire, England.

Its subject matter attracted criticism and in 2020 the National Trust removed it amid the global wave of statue removals connected with the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. It is currently held in storage.

The sundial sculpture is a black, polychromed cast-lead statue. It depicts a life-size kneeling figure of an African man wearing a feathered loincloth and holding a stone and brass sundial on his head. The figure’s eyes are painted white with blue pupils, and the loincloth is painted blue and green. It dates from the 18th century and has been attributed to Andries Carpentière (1677–1737). It is thought that it was cast after a model by Jan van Nost (c.1660-1711-13) which was installed in 1701 in the Privy Garden of Hampton Court Palace.^[1] It was probably commissioned by George Booth, 2nd Earl of Warrington (1675-1758).

The figure is an example of a tradition in western European art called the “blackamoor“. These caricatures appeared in a wide range of arts including sculpture, painting, architectural decoration, ceramics, silverware and furniture, and generally depicted a generic black person in exoticised costume and posted in a servile position, holding an object.^[1]

Close to the sculpture was a plaque containing the words: “This sundial is in the style of one commissioned by King William III. It represents Africa, one of four continents known at the time. The figure depicts a Moor, not a slave, and he has knelt here since before 1750.”^[2

But “a Moor” and “a slave” are not mutually exclusive, I think. Some “Moors” owned slaves but others were slaves. A kneeling figure with a sundial on his head doesn’t look like a free citizen to me.

In June 2020, the National Trust announced that it was “reviewing” the statue amid the global wave of statue removals during the Black Lives Matter protests.^[2][3]

Shortly afterwards, the Trust took the decision to remove the statue from its prominent location outside Dunham Massey Hall, stating that the sculpture “caused upset and distress because of the way it depicts a black person and because of its prominence at the front of the house”. The National Trust also stated that it did not plan to “censor or deny” colonial history, but intended to devise a new way of displaying it “in a way that fully acknowledges the appalling histories of slavery and the slave trade”. Historic England noted that that the National Trust had not requested listed building consent prior to the removal of the Grade II-listed sundial.^[4]

In a way, of course, the removal sanitizes history, and makes Dunham Massey Hall look more innocent than it was. In a way that’s unfortunate. At the same time, leaving it there feels like an insult to every non-pale visitor to the place.

Yes? Yes.

Apparently learning more about history is excessively “woke.”

The head of the National Trust has said she received anonymous death threats during a “culture war” row over the organisation’s perceived “wokeness”.

Oh no, what did they do? Rename themselves the Critical Race Theory Trust?

The row was sparked by NT efforts to learn more about the history of its properties, including a report published last year that found connections between 93 of its historic places and colonialism and slavery.

Oh. They reported on the fact that the money that built those historic places came from somewhere.

What was the thinking before that? That it’s all just a miracle? Somehow a few men designated “aristocrats” were rewarded with prodigy houses and large estates by means of a secret magic mechanism that has never been explained?

The NT plans to build on work after the report published last year detailing connections between 93 of its properties and colonialism and historical slavery.

“Every day we uncover another bit of history. We have an obligation to tell this huge, complex, layered story of the history of the three countries we’re responsible for. The idea that history stands still is nonsense because you keep finding new things.”

And, it’s interesting. Yes it’s about a hideous historic injustice, as is a lot of history, but that doesn’t make it not worth knowing about.

She insisted: “No one is forcing this down your throat. No one is trying to make you read this stuff. There’s no sense that we’re trying to preach and, certainly, definitely not judge. We’re trying to provide layers of information; we’re taking nothing away. We’re adding to the complexity of the information available. But if [people] want to come along and walk around the garden and have a lovely cup of tea, I am delighted about that. Why would I be prescriptive as to how people should engage with the National Trust?”

A cup of tea AND a biscuit.

Whew it’s been a weather here. A week ago today, early in the morning, it started snowing as if being blasted from a fire hose, and the temperatures went down way below freezing and stayed there until today.

So now there is slush everywhere, but even so walking is easier than it’s been for a week, and tomorrow it will be more so. I just walked up and down the block 8 times because the sidewalk is naked from one end to the other and that’s still a rarity. Before that I walked to the library – it had been closed for the whole week.

Your Chicago and Minneapolis don’t close down when it snows but then it snows a lot more there, and also Seattle is all hills.

It was 108 Fahrenheit here during the heat dome, and 17 F during the snow week. I think that’s a record temperature spread for one year.

Harry Miller v College of Policing might as well not have happened.

Finally – a NO!

A group of the UK’s leading girls’ schools will not accept transgender pupils because they are worried it will ‘jeopardise’ their status as single-sex institutions. 

Stupid place to put scare quotes. Yes, jeopardise; what’s wrong with that word?

The Girls’ Day School Trust, which represents 23 private schools and two academies, updated its gender identity policy guidance document last month and shared it with its members. 

In a new section on admissions, the GDST said its schools do not accept applications from pupils  who are legally biologically male, even if they identify as women [girls].

They said that having a policy on ‘gender identity’ rather than the sex recorded on a pupil’s birth certificate would ‘jeopardise the status of GDST schools as single-sex schools’ under the 2010 Equality Act. 

However, a female pupil who begins to transition while already at one of the GDST’s schools should be supported to remain there for as long as they want to, the document adds.

Let’s have more of this.

Marjorie Taylor Greene joins Trump is being permanently booted off Twitter.

Twitter on Sunday permanently suspended the personal account of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican of Georgia, after the company said she had violated its Covid-19 misinformation policies.

Twitter suspended Ms. Greene’s account after she tweeted on Saturday, falsely, about “extremely high amounts of Covid vaccine deaths.” She included a misleading chart that pulled information from a government database of unverified raw data called the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, a decades-old system that relies on self-reported cases from patients and health care providers.

Twitter said that Ms. Greene had a fifth “strike,” which meant that her account will not be restored. The company had issued her a fourth strike in August after she falsely posted that the vaccines were “failing.” Ms. Greene was given a third strike less than a month before that when she had tweeted that Covid-19 was not dangerous for people unless they were obese or over age 65, and said vaccines should not be required.

It’s like telling people to drive drunk during a blizzard.

On the alternative social messaging platform Telegram, Ms. Greene said that Twitter “is an enemy to America and can’t handle the truth.”