“When someone tells you their pronouns, the only option is to use it.”

Wrong! There are other options. One option is to step away and talk to different people. Another is to say no. Another is to leave the scene altogether. Another is to say “I have no plans ever to refer to you for any reason so I have zero need to know what ‘your’ pronouns are, child.” Another is to say “I didn’t ask and I don’t care.” That’s only the beginning – there are many woundingly indifferent things one can say in reply to such a stupid thing as “telling” someone what “your” pronouns are.

David Gorski is still going “nyah nyah” instead of correcting errors.

Jesse Singal is really not “a hard core GC advocate.” Not even close.

As the man said – very unprofessional.

Sister Outrider on the Rape Crisis Scotland issue:

Very troubling indeed.

And we know why RCS is doing it, of course – we know it is Forbidden to acknowledge that trans women are men, and Mandatory to say that being “inclusive” of trans women is identical to providing women-only services. We know that, but we think RCS has to do better than that, because they’re there for rape victims, not for men who identify as women. Some rape victims are male, for sure, but rape victims who are female need genuine women-only services and RCS should put that need first and men’s need to be “validated” as women not second but nowhere at all. That purported need is irrelevant to female rape victims.

Indeed.

Originally a comment by latsot on Another late anti-vaxxer.

Former Silentbob – can I call you “Former”, I feel like we’re friends? – Former:

As Bjarte said, we’re not the ones who changed. We’re still applying skeptical analysis to unlikely truth claims. You’re the one who stopped doing that. We’re still skeptical of radio hosts who say we shouldn’t get vaccinated and anti-mask podcasters in their rocking chairs. We remain dubious when we’re told that a centuries-dead cult leader can be so upset by a cartoon that slaughter is the only moral recourse. We continue to raise a quizzical eyebrow at homoeopathic cures, ancient prophecies and magical underpants. We still think Bigfoot is probably just made up.

And we impose exactly the same scrutiny on the truthclaims of the trans. We find some of those claims lacking. Skeptical enquiry tells us that humans can’t change sex; that there are no man-brains and lady-brains; that the most effective cure for gender dysphoria is puberty. Along the way we learn of the long-term harms of irreversible puberty blockers; the railway rushing confused children toward life-changing surgery and the political manoeuvring to prevent other therapeutic options being presented. We see the conflict between women’s rights and the demands of gender identity extremists; the compromise of women’s safety and dignity in the removal of their spaces and the very language they use to organise and defend their rights; the opportunities opened by decades of their campaigning being swallowed by the inclusion of men. We see similar rights to safety, dignity and autonomy of homosexual men and women being gleefully eroded and rampant homophobia surfacing again in the name of an ideology that folds like a house of cards the moment you so much as glance at it.

And we question all that. We apply our skeptical enquiry. And we can only conclude the obvious. Now you may question our conclusions, but you cannot argue that we’ve changed. We’re doing the same things we’ve always done: examine extraordinary claims and see where the evidence takes us.

But you have changed. You’re the one like Josh, because you’ve abandoned all skeptical principles entirely in this one area alone. You accept truth claims you’d never have accepted from evangelical Christians or muslims or from the mouth of the Loch Ness Monster itself. But you’ve changed even more than that, because all of this special pleading is in the name of ideology. For you, ideology trumps thought, reason, evidence and compassion.

You’d never have stood for that in the old days, Former, and we won’t stand for it now. We don’t have an ideology. We won’t have one. An ideology would blind us, as it has blinded you.

So why the drive-by, if you’re really reaching out? Hang out. Engage. If you think we’ve fallen to an ideology, show us where it’s compromised our reasoning. If you think there’s a problem with ideas of AGP or social contagion, show us how we’re wrong. You know many of us, we’re mostly friendly. Unlike the commentariat of certain blogs we’ll argue but we won’t dogpile. We’ll pick apart your points, if we can, but we won’t try to stop you making them.

My guess is that you won’t, because you know I’m right. You believe things now that you’d never believe in any other sphere of human foolhardiness. But we’re not the ones scared of a fight, or of being proved wrong. So if you want to discuss these things, I’m sure you’d be welcome. If not, then I hope you remain, forever, Former.

Rape Crisis Scotland continues to get comments on its tweets that it no doubt views as yet more “abuse” when in fact the comments are simply reminding RCS that their policy of “including” trans women in their women only spaces makes their women only spaces NOT WOMEN ONLY. Ok I shouted, and they can call that abuse if they like, but they don’t listen.

This tweet in particular:

It calls the discussions “harmful” but what about its “harmful” policy of saying it provides women only spaces when in fact it includes males who say they identify as female? What about that? I think the policy is a good deal more harmful than the discussions.

They say the discussion is frightening people away from RCS, but what about the fact that RCS policy puts women in danger by falsely telling them it provides women only spaces?

Rape Crisis Scotland has joined the fray.

Rape Crisis Scotland is Scotland’s leading organisation working to transform attitudes, improve responses and ultimately to end rape and sexual violence in all its forms. Our helpline is open to anyone – including women, trans and non-binary people, men and boys – affected by sexual violence…

Accessing support is – for many survivors – a daunting and difficult thing to do. We think that all survivors should be supported to access specialist services when they are ready and that these should be available at the point of need.

Sexual violence is a gendered and has a disproportionate impact on women and girls; our services reflect that. Women only spaces are a core principle of the Rape Crisis movement and upheld through our National Service Standards (read these here). These spaces include women with a diverse range of lived experience and views, including trans women and girls.

So, in other words, their women only spaces are not women only spaces. Being a man or a boy is not part of a diverse range of lived experience of being a woman or a girl. Women only spaces are not a core principle of the Rape Crisis movement if men are included in the category “women.”

It’s just such contemptuous defiant out in the open gaslighting to tell women “we provide women only spaces that include men.”

What they’re doing, basically, is putting their own membership in the Approved Thinking Club ahead of the gut-level needs of raped women. They care more about demonstrating their personal orthodoxy than they do about helping actual raped women…which is supposed to be their whole purpose.

Over the weekend we became aware of coordinated and harmful claims circulating about Rape Crisis services in Scotland, stemming from a twitter thread that questioned the provision of women-only spaces in Rape Crisis Centres.

Maybe because you include men in your “women-only” spaces?

We engage, and will continue to do so, in good faith conversations about what support Rape Crisis offers, and what that support looks like in practice, because it helps survivors to know what to expect when they reach out. While we normally refrain from commenting on the abuse we receive on social media, to focus on our vital work, we are responding here to reiterate the principles that guide our work in supporting survivors.

…

We are feminist. Our work is underpinned by a feminist understanding of violence and inequality and our services are committed to being women-led and the provision of women only spaces and services. We are proudly diverse, intergenerational and inclusive and strive to ensure that all survivors in Scotland receive the response and support that they need and deserve.

But by “women only” you mean including men, so that’s an issue.

For Women Scotland has thoughts on the man who runs Rape Crisis Edinburgh and tells women to expect to “reframe” their trauma if they have to use his rape crisis centre.

They transcribed what he said in that interview:

But I think the other thing is that sexual violence happens to bigoted people as well. And so, you know, it is not discerning crime. But these spaces are also for you. But if you bring unacceptable beliefs that are discriminatory in nature, we will begin to work with you on your journey of recovery from trauma. But please also expect to be challenged on your prejudices, because how can you heal from trauma and build a new relationship with your trauma, because you can’t forget, and you can’t go back to life before traumatic incident or traumatic incidents. And some of us never, ever had a life before traumatic incidents. 

So, women who think that men are not women must expect to be told they are bigoted if they are raped and seek help from the Edinburgh Rape Crisis centre. They will also be told, apparently, that men like Mridul Wadwha have never had a life before traumatic incidents, unlike them, Karen-bitches that they are.

But if you have to reframe your trauma, I think it is important as part of that reframing, having a more positive relationship with it, where it becomes a story that empowers you and allows you to go and do other more beautiful things with your life, you also have to rethink your relationship with prejudice. Otherwise, you can’t really, in my view, recover from trauma and I think that’s a very important message that I am often discussing with my colleagues that in various places. Because you know, to me, therapy is political, and it isn’t always seen as that.

What does he mean by “prejudice”? He means not believing that he is a woman. He’s declaring his intention of bullying rape victims who come to the rape crisis centre he runs into pretending to believe that he is a woman. He’s claiming that he’s the oppressed person in this scenario and raped women are his oppressors.

FWS continues:

The passage above is from a podcast featuring Mridul Wadhwa, the Chief Executive Officer of Edinburgh Rape Crisis. The podcast as a whole is a masterclass of gaslighting and features an extraordinary performance by the host Deborah Frances-White, who downplays the harassment women “might” get on a night bus at 1am when compared to the “very structurally violent constant flicks of eyes, and I don’t know, oh, God, and aggressive glares” that she says transwomen are exposed to.

They must be holding her hostage. It makes no sense any other way.

Frances-White’s naive, factually incorrect analysis of violence against women and how women feel in accessing services and support is never challenged by the supposed expert Wadhwa who is happy to allow Frances-White and co-host Kemah Bob to talk about abused women being obliged to “check your privilege”. A podcast interviewing the CEO of a rape centre becomes an exercise in proving that the person in charge of the centre is a more vulnerable person than the women accessing the service.

Which is all the more peculiar when you remember that the person in charge of the rape crisis centre IS A MAN.

Wadhwa’s statement quoted in the opening paragraph has distressed many women who are survivors of violence. The “bigots” Wadhwa identifies are women who want female only spaces in rape or domestic violence shelter and female only counselling.

…

It also concerned those with a background in counselling and mental health who wondered about the professional qualifications of one who apparently failed to understand that therapy must be non-judgemental. They also worried Wadhwa had reinvented or misunderstood the concept of “reframing trauma” which is supposed to enable a survivor to understand their natural response to attack and “reframe” any residual guilt they might feel in not having fought off the attacker or for having frozen. It is not supposed to be a vehicle for re-education or for making victims think they carry “prejudice” as suggested in the opening extract.

But Wadwha is here to change all that.

Ron DeSantis is making every effort to kill as many Floridians as he can.

The Office of Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that the Florida Board of Education could withhold the salaries of superintendents and school board members who defy the governor’s executive order prohibiting mask mandates.

Now…why would school officials impose mask mandates?

To try to reduce the body count among students, teachers and staff. That’s it, that’s the reason. It’s not a personal insult to DeSantis, it’s an attempt to keep casualties down.

It’s extremely odd and unpleasant to see an elected official planning to punish other officials for doing that. Some people are choosing to see it as a political shouting match, but the reality is that it’s an epidemiological precaution. That’s all it is.

“With respect to enforcing any financial consequences for noncompliance of state law regarding these rules and ultimately the rights of parents to make decisions about their children’s education and health care decisions, it would be the goal of the State Board of Education to narrowly tailor any financial consequences to the offense committed. For example, the State Board of Education could move to withhold the salary of the district superintendent or school board members, as a narrowly tailored means to address the decision-makers who led to the violation of law.“

Parents don’t have a “right” to make health care decisions for their children that endanger other people’s children. They don’t have a right to withhold necessary precautions from their children, either. Children have rights too, and if parents violate them, sometimes the state has to step in.

Apologies for reposting this from Facebook (thus boring anyone who’s already seen it) but I discovered it’s not unique so I wanted to share.

I took the bus to a park on another bit of Puget Sound, because today is the nicest the weather is going to be until the other side of the approaching heat wave. It was indeed a perfect day for it – bright, warm but not hot, a cool breeze, interesting clouds.

Across the aisle of the bus from me was a teenage girl or young woman wearing a binder as if it were an item of clothing, like a tube top – but it was a binder. It’s quite a disconcerting sight, especially if you’ve read a lot about how painful they are and the damage they do. At the top edge the tops of the breasts were visible – but then there was this vicious edge, and below it all was flat. Breasts? What breasts? No breasts here…except for those odd swellings up above.

That’s GOT to hurt, and do damage.

End of Facebook post. Comments on the post spurred me to see if wearing binders like tops is a thing and of course it is.

Endlessly versatile, the binder-as-shirt look can be deployed in many ways. … “Most people don’t notice a difference between a binder and a crop top,” explains Fallon. “But I’ll get nods or winks of approval from passing queer people from time to time.” Like any good flag, those who are meant to get it, get it.

Aug 29, 2019

Aw yeah. Wink wink nod nod – good on you, babe, crushing your breasts for the flag. So awesomely queer!

There’s an article. Of course there is.

TRANS PEOPLE ARE PROUDLY WEARING THEIR CHEST BINDERS AS STYLISH OUTERWEAR

Why proudly? What’s to be proud of? Smashing your own twits? Showing the world how stupid you are? Hating your own body so much that you torture it? Doesn’t that sound more like shame than pride?

Of course it does, but the ideology suppresses all awareness of that.

And while I’m choosing to frame my 24/7 white T-shirt policy as “A Style Choice” instead of “Being Lazy,” I’m also hyper-aware that there’s an undershirt-forward summer style much more powerful than my bum-ass James Dean impression: Binders as a shirt.

Powerful? Wearing a binder is powerful?

It isn’t you know.

I invite you to run a quick Twitter search for the phrase “binder as a shirt,” or its equally powerful relative, “binder as a crop top.” Both searches result in dozens and dozens of pictures of trans, non-binary or otherwise gender-expansive people sporting chest binders as the central part of their ensemble. And while this isn’t an exclusively warm-weather phenomenon, the summertime definitely increases the frequency with which folks who regularly bind opt to shed their topmost layers in favor of displaying the minimum-effective amount of clothing required to appear in public.

Like a bathing suit top or a bra but painful. Progress!

That binders are typically used to minimize unwanted contours, or feelings about said contours, makes people wearing them as a statement all the more wonderful. “Why yes, I am wearing this chest-concealing tank top” is a terrific, counterintuitive gesture, one that can transform something often done covertly into a symbol of pride — or at least an obvious marker of membership in the tribe of People Who Bind. In any case, it’s much cooler than my white T-shirt thing. 

Dear god these people are pathetic.

The CEO of Edinburgh Rape Crisis, you may recall, is a man. From the Glinner Update May 5:

Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre has just appointed its new CEO. He’s a man.

But “she” is a man.

Mridul Wadhwa is a trans-identified male. He has no gender recognition certificate so, not only is he biologically male, he’s also legally male.

He was formerly the manager of Forth Valley Rape Crisis Centre, a job he appears to have secured by lying about his sex.

Now he’s telling women how they get to react to their own rapes.

The 56 there is 56 minutes, not seconds, so if you want to hear Wadhwa complaining about mostly cis women seeking rape services that starts at almost an hour in. Yes he really does say that.

The part where he talks about women who show up at the Rape Crisis centre with “prejudices” i.e. who see men as men starts at 1:12:30. At 1:13:56 he says “sexual violence happens to bigoted people as well.” He goes on to tell such women to expect to be challenged.

Great situation here. Women who’ve been raped go to the Edinburgh Rape Crisis centre where the male CEO has made it policy to “challenge” them if they stray from male-centered trans orthodoxy.

Lionel Shriver on the incendiary tuber:

When conceiving Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, Helen Joyce anticipated a rough ride. Sure enough, an initially interested literary agent who considered her proposal “well-argued”, “persuasive” and “timely” eventually demurred that Joyce would need an advocate to “weather the storm that publishing this book will create. I am sorry to say that I am not that person.”

One sceptical British editor wrote, “Debate over trans issues is incredibly polarised and siloed, and if we are going to torch our own credentials as woke members in good standing we would prefer to do it for a book that has some chance of selling.”

Oops. The book is selling like crazy. It’s doing so despite the best efforts of bookshops to sandbag it.

Unlike Ryan Anderson’s similarly “radioactive” When Harry Became Sally, Joyce’s terrifying book is still available on Amazon. But would-be book buyers object on Twitter that their local Waterstones shops are suppressing sales. The shops stock one or two copies at most — often shelved in bizarre locations like media studies or stashed under the counter. Customers are obliged to special-order or told that the print run was puny (a lie; warehouses have never run short of a book already in its third printing).

Mainstream broadcasters such as the BBC have spurned interviews. Intelligence Squared, which prides itself on addressing contemporary controversies, pulled its podcast invitation on the day of recording.

It’s funny how anti-feminist books never got this kind of treatment. Not really “funny,” more like disgusting.

Of all ostensibly “marginalised” groups, trans people are supposedly the most persecuted, though this small (if growing) cohort has received a unique degree of celebrative cultural attention for a decade, featuring in a deluge of uncritical documentaries, films, novels and television dramas. Irresistibly, too, this is a victim group that even men and white people can join.

Not only can join, but also (and this is key) damn well dominate. This is white men’s chance to be The Most Marginalized at last, and by god they’re seizing it. (White women are a very very distant second. Still women, you see – not the same kind of fun at all.)

Having documented the descent into ideological cannibalism in improbable niches like online knitting circles, Gavin Haynes coined the useful expression “purity spiral”, whereby the test of political sanctity amid a once-likeminded group grows ever stricter, until the very originators of a school of thought are eaten by their own. The French Revolution, the Salem witch trials and Mao’s cultural revolution all got sucked into purity spirals. Our so-called elite are caught up in the same take-no-prisoners, circling-the-drain self-destruction.

Couldn’t they just give all that up and focus on the climate emergency instead? That one isn’t going to disappoint them by becoming old news or too successful, so it doesn’t need any purity spiral to keep going – plus it’s a genuine emergency, plus (I can’t stress this enough) it’s real.

Virtually everyone wants transgender people treated with respect and granted their civil rights. But for activists, that’s not the goal. It’s no coincidence that the subtitles of three recent books on this lightning-rod subject — Gerard Casey’s Hidden Agender: Transgenderism’s Struggle Against Reality, Kathleen Stock’s Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism, and Joyce’s Trans — all use the same word: reality.

This is what I’m saying. Move over to climate advocacy and you’ll never run out of reality again.

The blessings of religion:

An eight-year-old Hindu boy is being held in protective police custody in east Pakistan after becoming the youngest person ever to be charged with blasphemy in the country.

Not a record Pakistan should be trying to set.

The boy’s family is in hiding and many of the Hindu community in the conservative district of Rahim Yar Khan, in Punjab, have fled their homes after a Muslim crowd attacked a Hindu temple after the boy’s release on bail last week. Troops were deployed to the area to quell any further unrest.

Muslims and Hindus duke it out again! Nostalgia for Partition or the Babri Masjid riots or both?

The boy is accused of intentionally urinating on a carpet in the library of a madrassa, where religious books were kept, last month. Blasphemy charges can carry the death penalty.

Ffs. It’s a room, a carpet. Get the carpet cleaned or get a new one. Move on. If the story is even true, which it probably isn’t.

If gods are real they can’t be harmed by humans pissing or saying things. Gods don’t need humans to punish other humans on behalf of the gods. The whole idea is stupid as well as murderous.

Blasphemy laws have been disproportionately used in the past against religious minorities in Pakistan. Although no blasphemy executions have been carried out in the country since the death penalty was introduced for the crime in 1986, suspects are often attacked and sometimes killed by mobs.

All because people choose to invent irritable gods who pick on smaller weaker beings – to invent them and then to worship them. Religion is like an instruction manual for bullies. Delete and start over.

Nowhere to hide:

The repeatedly ignored warnings of scientists over past decades have now become reality. Humanity, through its actions, or lack of action, has unequivocally overheated the planet. Nowhere on Earth is escaping rising temperatures, worse floods, hotter wildfires or more searing droughts.

…

The key aspect of the IPCC report is that the 42-page summary is agreed, line by line, by every government on the planet, with the scientists vetoing any politically convenient but unscientific proposal.

As a result, governments that continue to fail to take action have nowhere left to hide – the crystal-clear report has bust all of their alibis. “Too many ‘net-zero’ climate plans have been used to greenwash pollution and business as usual,” says Teresa Anderson at ActionAid International.

Isn’t it enough to wring our hands? Surely we don’t have to change how we do things too?

The IPCC’s report means all the evidence that will ever be needed is now in place. “The continued dithering to address climate change is no longer about the lack of scientific evidence, but directly tied to a lack of political will,” says Kristina Dahl of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

That means political leaders are now in the dock and the vital UN Cop26 summit in Glasgow in November may be the last hearing at which they can avoid the judgment of history.

They won’t care though. They care about now, not the future and not history.

Originally a comment by Holms on Misinformation circulated.

…I was expected to agree that scientific facts such as sex are to be sidelined. This position has never been debated and agreed by Conference but appears to be an implicit consequence of the Party’s stance on trans rights.

An ‘implicit consequence’ is exactly right. Rejection of the very existence of sex is not a stance that any of them would have held ordinarily, it is a stance that they were forced to hold – or pretend to hold – as part of the support structure of beliefs build around TWAW/TMAM. This central belief is in need of such support specifically because it is untrue: when it clashes with some other aspect of reality, the believer is confronted with a choice between incompatible sets of information. TWAW is only true if sex is rejected, and so sex is rejected. The concomitant beleifs then creep outward, as more conflicts are encountered.

Some people overcome their better judgement for the first few of such rejections, but reach a point where they simply cannot reconcile what they are expected to support with other sense and information they have. At that point, for me at least and I suspect many others, there is a kind of a snap-back or rebound – the support structure of beliefs become too much, something gives way and the whole thing unravels rapidly. The person is back more or less where they were before the creeping acceptance of misinformation began, but with greater knowledge of what is going on. They have been peaked.

For others, it seems the acceptance of misinformation gets easier with practice.

Remember Andy Wightman? Resigned from the Scottish Green Party last December over the tension between women’s rights and (purported) trans rights. Now he’s been bullied into explaining his reasons.

I never intended to write further about my resignation from the Scottish Green Party. When I resigned, I agreed with the Party not to say anything further.

However, I am now aware that there has been some significant misinformation circulated by members and officials of the Party alleging to explain why I resigned.

I have seen emails, Slack channel communications, information from protected Twitter accounts and the Party’s Q&A following my resignation They make wild allegations about my motivations and character. Some of the claims being made are now being circulated and are having a negative impact on my reputation at a time when I am seeking work. I therefore wish to set the record straight.

It’s all too familiar, isn’t it. Of course they’re now lying about him. It’s what they do. (Who? Which “they”? The trans-fanatics, i.e. the real fanatics about trans ideology and the trans “right” to tell everyone what to think and say.)

Immediately prior to my resignation, Patrick Harvie wrote to me saying that my resignation would be a “huge loss to the Party and to Parliament”. Weeks later he was on national TV denouncing me as a transphobe.

Sigh. In a much much tinier and less consequential way, been there. One minute please don’t leave, the next minute beware the foul transphobe.

What led up to and prompted his resignation is a long story – long but interesting. I’ll share just an excerpt or two.

On reflection that evening I decided to resign from the Party for the simple reason that I could not work in an environment with such a censorious, bullying and intimidatory culture and where I was expected to agree that scientific facts such as sex are to be sidelined. This position has never been debated and agreed by Conference but appears to be an implicit consequence of the Party’s stance on trans rights.

I resigned the following Friday (resignation letter here). Party members whom I had regarded as good colleagues immediately denounced me as a transphobe, accusing me of wanting to participate in a moral panic about transpeople. One Edinburgh Councillor thanked me for all that I had done but, on learning of the circumstances of my resignation, recalled the message and said I was disgusting.

That too is entirely familiar.

The Q&A for Party members and other public statements are insistent that my fault was to have wanted to vote against Party policy on trans rights. This has never been the case. What has been the case is that the Green Group of MSPs insisted that this vote on an amendment to a Bill concerning victims of sexual assault should be viewed through the lens of trans rights and queer theory, and that there was a hostile and bullying culture within the Party.

I have never understood why one has to subscribe to queer theory and gender identity theory in order to improve the lives of trans people. But that’s the bar that has been set in the SGP.

To conclude, I resigned because I could no longer work in such an environment. That others can and do is fine and I am not seeking a debate as to whether I was right or wrong. But for me, I need an environment that is more tolerant, more questioning, more critical, more empathetic, and more willing to listen.

The Green Party loses good people because of a bullying loyalty to queer theory, and the forests continue to burn.

He commented on this post of mine from June 2019, in which I berated him for apologizing to the bullies for attending a meeting where Julie Bindel spoke while not saying anything about the attack on her at that meeting. He commented to say he’d done so on Twitter, and I replied to say yes but not in the statement and then added what, sadly, he now knows all too well.

I don’t know what to tell you. I think it’s pretty appalling that you threw Julie under the bus yesterday, even though you condemned “all such violent incidents but especially when directed at women” the day before. I know very well the kind of pressure the trans army applies, but I think it has to be resisted rather than obeyed.

Harsh, and I think I felt guiltily harsh about saying it, but at the same time what about Julie? But he took it in impressively good part, and now…well, he’s resisted instead of obeying. The trans army is good at pushing people over the cliff that way.

Another last minute tune-changer:

An anti-vaccine right-wing radio host in West Palm Beach, Florida died Wednesday from COVID-19 complications.

Dick Farrel, 65, used his local talk show and social media to rail against Dr. Anthony Fauci, who he called a “power tripping lying freak,” and say that no one should get the coronavirus vaccine. When COVID-19 sent him to the hospital for three weeks, though, he changed his tune, urging friends to get vaccinated, friends told local station WPTV.

Of the two, which is more of a power-tripping lying freak? The medical expert with decades of experience with lethal viruses and how to prevent and treat them? Or the bloviating radio host who took it all back once the virus bit him in the ass?

I’m fed up with this shit. I’m fed up to the back teeth with lying grifting shouting screaming know-nothing murderous MEDIA HACKS busily undoing the work of people like Fauci. I’m all the more fed up because I’ve just been reading the Twitter rants of a former friend, someone who used to comment here, someone who used to be sane, who has now joined the campaign to persuade people that Fauci is evil, that vaccination is evil, that people who urge vaccination are evil. In the choice between urging people not to get COVID and urging people to get COVID, he’s chosen the second. It’s gruesome.

Back to dead radio host:

Farrel wrote in early July, “Vaccine Bogus Bull Shid!, Two peeps I know, got vaxed, now have Corona, hospitalized critical. Thank you Moderna, FOR NOTHING!” He erroneously told his followers they would not need the vaccine if they had already survived COVID-19. The CDC has advised former coronavirus patients to get vaccinated.

Two days later, he wrote, “Why take a vax promoted by people who lied 2u all along about masks.” He called Fauci “FOOT-chee” and said that the infectious disease expert and “power trip libb loons” Democrats were conspiring to make it seem like the pandemic was ongoing so they could grab more power.

In late June, he wrote, “So, u think it wasn’t a SCAM DEMIC? NOT ONE ELECTED DEMOCRAT ever tested positive.” He called masks “face diapers” and “face pantys.”

…

Farrel is one among several recent deaths of anti-vaccine advocates who have succumbed to COVID-19. Just this week, a Republican city councilman in Texas fought rapid and fatal bout with the virus that saw him hospitalized and dead within three days. He had used his position to advocate against vaccines and face masks.

People should stop doing that. They should stop using any position (including a Twitter account) to advocate against vaccines and masks. Doing that is evil and people should stop it.

Speaking of no it’s not a matter of if, it’s already happening, Mendocino is running out of water.

For the past century, misty, forested Mendocino – despite being nestled along a number of major rivers, creeks and springs – has relied on shallow wells for water. But amid a historic drought dessicating the US west, the aquifers beneath the town’s damp fog layer have rapidly declined, threatening to sink the region’s tourism industry and the residents who rely on it.

Café Beaujolais, which normally draws all its water for cooking and cleaning from two small wells on its property, has already been shelling out thousands of dollars to have water trucked in from nearby towns and cities.

Restaurants trucking in water: not sustainable. (Also, of course, simply adds its bit to the problem.)

A few minutes from Lopez’s restaurant, the Good Life Café and Bakery recently closed its restrooms. The throngs of tourists who line up down the block to sample the café’s quiches, cappuccinos and organic salads are directed instead to the portable toilets set up in the back parking lot. The owners of the local Harvest grocery market have brought in portable toilets as well.

Few things enhance the tourist experience quite like a visit to one of those smelly tin cans.

When marketing discovers trans rhetoric and cannot believe its luck.

If you were marketing baby formula wouldn’t you be hugging yourself with glee? You get to talk about “putting breastfeeding on a pedestal”!! Without shame! In fact with a glow of righteous fervor, because you’re on the side of the downtrodden! Those selfish arrogant bitches, I mean cows, who can nurse their babies have lorded it over the men who identify as women for too long, so buy our formula and strike a blow for justice. #ShakeTheStigma

Remember the Nestlé scandal? Mike Muller in The Guardian in 2013:

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, I gave Nestlé chair Peter Brabeck, a present – an original, signed copy of The Baby Killer, the 1974 report that I wrote for War on Want.

The Baby Killer explained how multinational milk companies like his were causing infant illness and death in poor communities by promoting bottle feeding and discouraging breast feeding.

Our Swiss associates were less subtle. They titled the report “Nestlé Toten Babies” (or Nestlé Kills Babies), which a Swiss court found was libelous. On the substance of the argument, however, the judge warned Nestlé that if the company did not want to face accusations of causing death and illness through sales practices such as using sales reps dressed in nurses’ uniforms, they should change the way that they did business.

No more need for that, now they can just burble about supporting every kind of Feeding Journey.

A new report on climate change will say (no surprise ahead) that the trend is not good. Not good at all.

The planet is odds-on to hit 1.5C of global warming within 20 years, the world’s leading climate scientists will warn in a milestone report tomorrow.

…

A 1.5C rise in average global temperatures on pre-industrial levels is widely considered to be the point beyond which climate change will become increasingly dangerous. 

Eh? It’s already becoming increasingly dangerous – it’s been doing that for decades, or ever since we started burning coal and oil at steadily escalating rates.

The cabinet minister Alok Sharma, president of Cop26, said countries must work harder to reduce emissions and ensure the threshold is not breached. “This report will be a big wake-up call for countries to do even more,” he said.

Even more than what? Countries aren’t really doing anything, are they? Other than talking? Cars, planes, container ships, cruise ships – they’re all still out there doing their thing.

Professor Ed Hawkins, a climate scientist at Reading University and a lead author of the report, declined to discuss the content of the paper, but said: “Every fraction of the degree matters. There’s no cliff edge where impacts suddenly go from being fine to being disastrous. It’s a gradual worsening of the impacts as global temperatures rise.”

What I’m saying. It’s not as if everything’s ok now, because we haven’t hit the 1.5 mark yet. Greece and California are in flames; everything’s not ok.

Nick Cohen on Tucker Carlson:

Carlson is the dependable voice of the dominant force on the right that will destroy democracy in the name of “the people”.

Last week, Carlson’s Fox News beamed an admiring show from Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, even though there is every indication that Orbán will make it Europe’s first rightwing dictatorship since the fall of Franco’s Spain in 1975.

Or rather because Orban is the next Franco. Fox News doesn’t have any scruples about such things.

Like the unforgivably overrated Roger Scruton, Trump’s mentor Steve Bannon, that part-time defender of free speech Jordan Peterson, and until recently the leaders of Europe’s nominally anti-dictatorial Christian Democrat parties, Carlson was comfortable with his own hypocrisy. The right he represents says it believes in freedom of speech when liberals threaten it. Yet in Hungary, freedom of the press is in its death agonies.

If Fox and Carlson really believed in a free press they wouldn’t tell so many lies. A press that mostly lies isn’t really a free press, it’s more like a tool press.