White privilege something something JK Rowling something tethered to something.

Yet, as the inequity of capitalism and its inextricable link to white privilege are brought into focus, JK Rowling instead devoted her enormous Twitter platform to discussing the use of gender-neutral terms last Saturday night.

She what? She chose her own subject to talk about at a particular moment? How shocking! Of course so did most people on Twitter, but, you know – any stick to beat a woman with.

The timing of her social media tirade is telling. In the context of a collective reckoning with how our economic, political and social systems have dehumanised black lives for centuries, it seemed the fantasy-writer turned billionaire had decided an equally pressing issue was making grand claims about the estimated 1 per cent of the population who identify as trans.

It wasn’t a tirade. It was a woman saying some things. It’s funny how men always think women are doing most of the talking when in reality they’re doing about 20%. (There are studies on it.) By the same token, if a woman talks at all, it must be a tirade. Women not supposed to talk, ok?

Transphobia is tethered to the malign structures of white supremacy. 

No it isn’t. That’s just jargon, and it’s not true. Furthermore, what Rowling is saying is not “transphobia.”

So, as we harness this political moment to dismantle centuries of inherited racism, we also have a duty to understand its relationship with the kind of discourse that is, quite frankly, making life hell for trans people.

Do we? Wouldn’t that be changing the subject? Do genuine anti-racism activists actually want to change the subject that way?

Also, if we must change the subject, what about the subjection of women? What about that discourse? Why are trans people the cool kids who are welcome to usurp anti-racism while women are just transphobes who have to be shut up?

The whole piece is dreck and the Independent should be embarrassed for publishing it.

Sigh.

Rowling writes about her reasons, starting by explaining why she is interested in trans issues.

I mention all this only to explain that I knew perfectly well what was going to happen when I supported Maya. I must have been on my fourth or fifth cancellation by then. I expected the threats of violence, to be told I was literally killing trans people with my hate, to be called cunt and bitch and, of course, for my books to be burned, although one particularly abusive man told me he’d composted them.

What I didn’t expect in the aftermath of my cancellation was the avalanche of emails and letters that came showering down upon me, the overwhelming majority of which were positive, grateful and supportive. They came from a cross-section of kind, empathetic and intelligent people, some of them working in fields dealing with gender dysphoria and trans people, who’re all deeply concerned about the way a socio-political concept is influencing politics, medical practice and safeguarding. They’re worried about the dangers to young people, gay people and about the erosion of women’s and girl’s rights. Above all, they’re worried about a climate of fear that serves nobody – least of all trans youth – well.

She didn’t expect the avalanche, because we don’t see much of this kind of thing, and we don’t see much of it because…of that very climate of fear. People are afraid to say it in public because they don’t want the inevitable monstering. We’re caught in this horrible loop. If we point out the horrible loop we are instantly told all about our crusty dusty stinking holes.

[A]ccusations of TERFery have been sufficient to intimidate many people, institutions and organisations I once admired, who’re cowering before the tactics of the playground. ‘They’ll call us transphobic!’ ‘They’ll say I hate trans people!’ What next, they’ll say you’ve got fleas? Speaking as a biological woman, a lot of people in positions of power really need to grow a pair (which is doubtless literally possible, according to the kind of people who argue that clownfish prove humans aren’t a dimorphic species).

…

We’re living through the most misogynistic period I’ve experienced. Back in the 80s, I imagined that my future daughters, should I have any, would have it far better than I ever did, but between the backlash against feminism and a porn-saturated online culture, I believe things have got significantly worse for girls. Never have I seen women denigrated and dehumanised to the extent they are now. From the leader of the free world’s long history of sexual assault accusations and his proud boast of ‘grabbing them by the pussy’, to the incel (‘involuntarily celibate’) movement that rages against women who won’t give them sex, to the trans activists who declare that TERFs need punching and re-educating, men across the political spectrum seem to agree: women are asking for trouble. Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else.

Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else they will be told they are Karens, bitches, cunts, whores, stinking dusty dried-up holes.

I’ve read all the arguments about femaleness not residing in the sexed body, and the assertions that biological women don’t have common experiences, and I find them, too, deeply misogynistic and regressive. It’s also clear that one of the objectives of denying the importance of sex is to erode what some seem to see as the cruelly segregationist idea of women having their own biological realities or – just as threatening – unifying realities that make them a cohesive political class. The hundreds of emails I’ve received in the last few days prove this erosion concerns many others just as much.  It isn’t enough for women to be trans allies. Women must accept and admit that there is no material difference between trans women and themselves.

And I’m just not going to do that. I can’t, and I also don’t want to. I can’t because it isn’t true and I see no way I can convince myself it is true…especially since I don’t want to in the first place.

But, as many women have said before me, ‘woman’ is not a costume. ‘Woman’ is not an idea in a man’s head. ‘Woman’ is not a pink brain, a liking for Jimmy Choos or any of the other sexist ideas now somehow touted as progressive. Moreover, the ‘inclusive’ language that calls female people ‘menstruators’ and ‘people with vulvas’ strikes many women as dehumanising and demeaning. I understand why trans activists consider this language to be appropriate and kind, but for those of us who’ve had degrading slurs spat at us by violent men, it’s not neutral, it’s hostile and alienating.

And the activists’ way of persuading us otherwise? To spit degrading slurs at us! To rant and rave that we stink, we’re crusty, we’re dusty, we need to shut our crusty dusty lips.

It’s funny, in a way (not really haha funny) that they do this, because it betrays the fact that men (all too many of them at least) have a visceral disgust and loathing for women despite wanting to fuck them. Ooh that creepy hole, the one we all get pushed out of, the one straight men like to put their dicks in, but at the same time the one that…who knows…maybe it has toads in it, or rats, or maggots, or razor blades, or rotting smelly fish. Maybe we could genetically engineer it to get away from the horror? Make it smell of lavender or orange peel or cedar shavings?

Just one from Rebecca’s compilation yesterday:

What I wonder now is how people who see themselves as progressive, woke, pro social justice, on the left, reconcile that with the whole “cunt bitch whore skank does ur pussy stink” theme.

I mean I really wonder, not just I say it rhetorically and move on. I really wonder and I would love to know. A lot of former friends of mine who were targets of abuse of exactly that kind, and did not for a second see it as progressive or woke in any way – how do they line these things up in their heads?

Good, Rebecca’s post collecting a sample of the abuse leveled against Rowling is getting attention.

The Washington Post:

Chinese authorities have been trying for three years to reverse the devastating imbalances of their one-child policy and coax couples to have more children.

Trying and failing. The birthrate remains low and – plot twist! – there are far more men than women.

Eh, what? Why’s that? A low birthrate doesn’t equal more men being…oh wait yes it does. If you can only have one it HAS to be a male, amirite? Nobody nobody NOBODY wants an only child who is a [retch gag puke] female. (Why not? Well, come on, I ask you – they’re so disgusting – they do all that gross pregnancy stuff and then milk-producing stuff. Ew. Men are clean and tidy.)

But now, an economics professor at Fudan University in Shanghai has come up with another — and, unsurprisingly, controversial — solution: allow women to have multiple husbands, and they will have multiple babies.

Oh they will, will they. Is he sure about that? Women who wanted no more than one child will automatically want one per husband if they decide to have several? Dream on, bro.

In China today, home to 1.4 billion people, there are 100 million only-children under the age of 40. But the traditional preference for sons — and the associated practice of aborting girls — means that there are about 34 million more men than women.

Oops.

So they prevent about 34 million women from existing, and then they want existing women to make up the slack by pushing out more babies for them. That’s a big NOPE, comrade.

His suggestion to solve the oversupply of men is to allow involuntary bachelors — known as “bare branches” in Chinese because they cannot bear fruit for their family tree — to share the relatively scarce supply of women.

Yes but women aren’t a “supply” and women are not things for real people to “share” among themselves. Thanks anyway.

Plus, it would just be more efficient, he continued, suggesting that women would have no trouble meeting the physical needs of multiple husbands.

Sure. They can just lie there. What difference does it make if it’s one or ten?

“It’s common for prostitutes to serve more than 10 clients in a day,” Ng wrote, before taking off on another offensive tangent. “Making meals for three husbands won’t take much more time than for two husbands,” he added.

How about twenty? Fifty? Let’s get really efficient.

Ng is steeling for a fight. He wrote that his next column aimed at redressing gender imbalances would be about legalizing brothels.

Because China’s gender mismatch has caused a fierce competition among men looking for wives, he said, “a man’s right to achieving sexual satisfaction is being severely violated if legal sex work is not allowed.”

Heyyyyyyyy, that’s what Amnesty International says! Also Elliot Rodger, also incels on Twitter shouting at women for existing.

RR-C did some collecting – just a small sample, she says. It’s all screenshots, no text. It’s thematic – the themes are

1. shut the fuck up
2. cunt
3. hag
4. suck my dick
5. slag / whore / tart
6. disgust – stink, dried up, stench
7. smack, punch, piss in her cold dead eyes

Do they do this to, say, Graham Linehan? Not that I’ve seen.

There was also this:

Dude tells Cornel she’s wrong, in fact he says she’s lying.

Like this one:

“Other genders” that have labia. Hi, please be quiet while I interrupt you on the subject of female genital mutilation in order to talk about “other genders” i.e. people who have female genitals but are too important and special to be just boring old females. That’s the important thing – not female people with mutilated genitals but preening “activists” who want to talk over them.

“not all labias, clitorises and vaginas belong to women” – so hand them over, you greedy selfish bitches, share them with everyone else!

But but but that never happens, beardy guy said so.

Trump’s evil tweet about Martin Gugino is being widely disputed.

Byron Brown is the mayor of Buffalo.

I wish Trump would just cease to exist. Right now. Just go out like a candle. At least that particular stream of venom would stop.

Chris Cillizza at CNN comments:

In a country on high alert for incidents of unnecessary use of force by police against those protesting in the wake of the death of George Floyd, the video sparked outrage. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called the episode “wholly unjustified and utterly disgraceful.” The two officers involved in the incident were suspended.

But on Tuesday morning, the President of the United States suggested — without offering a shred of evidence — that the entire episode was the result of a broad scam involving Antifa, a protest organization “whose political beliefs lean toward the left — often the far left — but do not conform with the Democratic Party platform.”

Trump appears to have developed this, uh, theory from watching a clip on the One America News Network, the Fox News of Fox News.

They came up with that “Oooh he was scanning the police” nonsense, for which there is no evidence of any kind.

What we also know is that Gugino is a longtime activist and peaceful protester. There is no evidence that he is part of Antifa.

Given all of these facts, the level of irresponsibility here on display by Trump is off the charts — even for him. While Gugino remains hospitalized, Trump is suggesting that this is all some sort of orchestrated fake. That the man “fell harder than was pushed.” That he was “aiming a scanner.” That it “could be a setup.”

We have always been at war with reality.

Daniel Radcliffe’s Do it to Julia don’t do it to me:

I realize that certain press outlets will probably want to paint this as in-fighting between J.K. Rowling and myself, but that is really not what this is about, nor is it what’s important right now. While Jo is unquestionably responsible for the course my life has taken, as someone who has been honored to work with and continues to contribute to The Trevor Project for the last decade, and just as a human being, I feel compelled to say something at this moment.

Translation: Yes, I know, nobody would give a rat’s ass what I think about anything if it weren’t for Jo Rowling but I’m going to throw her under the bus anyway because frankly women just don’t matter, ok?

Transgender women are women. Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either Jo or I.

What’s that supposed to mean? All professional health care associations give advice that any statement that men are not women is bad bad bad and forbidden? That seems highly unlikely. What does saying men are not women even have to do with health care?

Even if we re-word his claim more narrowly it still seems implausible. Do all health care associations advise that trans women must be told they are indeed women? And that they must be told that by the entire world, in public as well as private? That’s not credible, is it.

According to The Trevor Project, 78% of transgender and nonbinary youth reported being the subject of discrimination due to their gender identity. It’s clear that we need to do more to support transgender and nonbinary people, not invalidate their identities, and not cause further harm.

Now we’re just off in clouds of fluffy wool. What is “gender identity”? What is it to “invalidate” anyone’s “gender identity”? How does it cause harm? And, above all, why is it women’s responsibility to “validate” the “gender identity” of men who like wearing dresses?

I get that it’s difficult for men to wear dresses. I get that if, say, Mike Pence has a secret passion for wearing dresses, he would find it pretty much impossible to do so on the job. Mike Pence would not feel psychologically comfortable wearing a dress while standing next to Trump at one of those “press conferences” we keep seeing. What I don’t get is why such a passion would mean Mike Pence is a woman, and why it’s women’s job to make the dress issue go away.

I am still learning how to be a better ally, so if you want to join me in learning more about transgender and nonbinary identities check out The Trevor Project’s Guide to Being an Ally to Transgender and Nonbinary Youth.

Is there a guide to being a better ally to women anywhere? Anyone? Bueller?

To all the people who now feel that their experience of the books has been tarnished or diminished, I am deeply sorry for the pain these comments have caused you.

Oh fuck off. I’m not a fan of Potter but it’s not Daniel Radcliffe’s job to apologize for what Rowling says.

If these books taught you that love is the strongest force in the universe, capable of overcoming anything; if they taught you that strength is found in diversity, and that dogmatic ideas of pureness lead to the oppression of vulnerable groups; if you believe that a particular character is trans, nonbinary, or gender fluid, or that they are gay or bisexual; if you found anything in these stories that resonated with you and helped you at any time in your life — then that is between you and the book that you read, and it is sacred. And in my opinion nobody can touch that. It means to you what it means to you and I hope that these comments will not taint that too much.

So I guess Daniel Radcliffe is the author now, and that pesky Karen who wrote them is just an old newspaper we can put under the litter box?

Howtobeabetterally.

More tendentious naming and framing.

Radcliffe “voices his support for the transgender community” – and voices his hostility to the feminist community, but of course the headline doesn’t say that, because We Have Chosen Our Side, and it ain’t women.

“Transgender women are women,” Radcliffe said. “Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people.”

No it doesn’t. It’s kind of the opposite, really. Humoring people this way doesn’t really promote their dignity. It’s not promoting the dignity of people to pretend they are furries or Star Wars characters or Cleopatra, so why is it promoting their dignity to pretend they are women when in fact they are men? If adults want dignity, they have to lay aside the fantasies and pretend-games of childhood in public. If they want to be humored and indulged in their fantasies, they can’t very well claim dignity at the same time.

But even if it were true, even if Radcliffe were right that trans people’s dignity rests on everyone else’s endorsement of their fantasies, there’s still the issue of everyone else. What about the dignity of women? Why doesn’t Radcliffe pause to think about that at all? Why is it so easy for him to throw women overboard for the sake of “the transgender community”?

There’s also the fact that many tweeps are pointing out: his fame and fortune are entirely the product of JK Rowling, so…this public “do it to her not me” move is disgusting.

A comedian named Sarah Keyworth writes a letter to JK Rowling and asks everyone to share it.

From that letter:

There is no attack on what it means to be a woman, or a lesbian. There is simply a movement to expand what those words mean.

But that is an “attack” on what those words mean, isn’t it. It is a campaign to change the meaning of a word that picks out…well, what does it pick out. Let’s see.

1. Half or rather more than half of all humans
2. The sex that gives birth to all humans
3. The sex that has historically been dominated by the other half
4. The “weaker” sex – the sex that in a dimorphic species is overall the smaller, less muscular, less aggressive one
5. The sex that thanks to 2-4 has always been conceptualized as inferior to the other one
6. The sex that feminism exists to establish as not inferior to the other one

Those are the people the word “women” picks out.

If you “expand” that word to include people who are not described by 2-6 then you are making 6 impossible.

At the end our wise comedian writes

I hope you read this. If you do I hope you take some time, maybe a day before respond [sic] with some scathing quip about sex, butch lesbians or periods. Maybe read it out loud, maybe send it to your editor and ask your husband what he thinks.

Now let’s talk about the word “patronizing.”

Trump’s Fox News spokesperson says they can’t do a thing about all that fencing, it’s not their decision, they have nothing to do with it, they’re helpless.

When asked about the barriers around Lafayette Square during her White House briefing, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the matter was not in White House control.

Trump has absolute powers of all kinds, he keeps telling us, but when it comes to all this hardware, no, it’s a higher power that decides when it stays and when it goes.

House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer are now calling on Trump to remove the barriers, arguing Lafayette Square “has long been a venue where Americans can gather to freely exercise their constitutional rights in close proximity to the White House.”

I didn’t know this.

So I found a Guardian article by Michael Safi from March 2019.

The Bengal famine of 1943 was the only one in modern Indian history not to occur as a result of serious drought, according to a study that provides scientific backing for arguments that Churchill-era British policies were a significant factor contributing to the catastrophe.

The study looked at moisture in soil for several famines and found an outlier.

However, the 1943 famine in Bengal, which killed up to 3 million people, was different, according to the researchers. Though the eastern Indian region was affected by drought for much of the 1940s, conditions were worst in 1941, years before the most extreme stage of the famine, when newspapers began to publish images of the dying on the streets of Kolkata…

Rain levels were above average during the peak of the famine.

Food supplies to Bengal were reduced in the years preceding 1943 by natural disasters, outbreaks of infections in crops and the fall of Burma – now Myanmar – which was a major source of rice imports, into Japanese hands.

But the Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen argued in 1981 that there should still have been enough supplies to feed the region, and that the mass deaths came about as a combination of wartime inflation, speculative buying and panic hoarding, which together pushed the price of food out of the reach of poor Bengalis.

More recent studies, including those by the journalist Madhushree Mukerjee, have argued the famine was exacerbated by the decisions of Winston Churchill’s wartime cabinet in London.

Mukerjee has presented evidence the cabinet was warned repeatedly that the exhaustive use of Indian resources for the war effort could result in famine, but it opted to continue exporting rice from India to elsewhere in the empire.

Bengali lives matter.

Rice stocks continued to leave India even as London was denying urgent requests from India’s viceroy for more than 1m tonnes of emergency wheat supplies in 1942-43. Churchill has been quoted as blaming the famine on the fact Indians were “breeding like rabbits”, and asking how, if the shortages were so bad, Mahatma Gandhi was still alive.

Yes but food costs money, you know.

During a famine in Bihar in 1873-74, the local government led by Sir Richard Temple responded swiftly by importing food and enacting welfare programmes to assist the poor to purchase food.

Almost nobody died, but Temple was severely criticised by British authorities for spending so much money on the response. In response, he reduced the scale of subsequent famine responses in south and western India and mortality rates soared.

But money was saved.

George Conway points out that Trump is now busy failing to deal with not one but two crises.

Lacking in humanity, Trump has had no idea how to handle either one. He has responded to the police-brutality protests only by making matters worse. Faced with circumstances warranting calls for calm and restraint, he answered with almost sadistic invitations for more violence, fulminating about “THUGS” and extrajudicially “shooting” looters, issuing threats about “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons,” and celebrating “Domination” and “Overwhelming force.”

I’m not sure what that “almost” is doing in front of “sadistic,” unless it’s just the usual “must be careful in major mainstream newspaper” type of qualm. Maybe an editor inserted it. Trump’s sadism is of course all too obvious and complete.

Tweeting about “LAW AND ORDER!” and “Anarchists,” and ignoring the distinction between peaceful, aggrieved citizens and the relatively few lawbreakers among them, Trump castigated governors in a phone call as “weak,” effectively upbraiding them for not spraying more fuel on the fire. And then, after he was wounded by mockery about having been hustled to a White House bunker as protests mounted, his administration used chemicals and projectile munitions to disperse peaceful demonstrators so that this morally deficient, scripturally ignorant payer-off-of-porn-stars could awkwardly pose with a borrowed Bible as a stalwart defender of public order and Christian values in front of a Lafayette Square church.

And almost nothing pulling in the other direction – just a couple of perfunctory mentions that someone must have persuaded him to make.

And with the virus? A complete failure.

And all without appreciation by the president of the human toll exacted not only by the virus itself, but also from his own inattentiveness to it. On Memorial Day weekend, as the death count approached 100,000, he indulged himself with two days of golf. When asked during a March virus briefing a simple question that any humane politician could have knocked out of the park — “What do you say to Americans who are watching you right now and are scared?” — he responded not to the American people, but with an angry attack on the journalist: “I’d say that you’re a terrible reporter, that’s what I’d say.”

It’s his off the charts narcissism, but there’s more to it.

However difficult they can be, even extreme narcissists can have consciences. They don’t necessarily cast aside behavioral standards or laws, or lie ceaselessly with reckless abandon. Trump’s behavior is conscienceless, showing utter disregard for the safety of others, consistent irresponsibility, callousness, cynicism and disrespect of other human beings. Contempt for truth and honesty, and for norms, rules and laws. A complete inability to feel remorse, or guilt.

That’s why I can’t shut up about him, I think. The spectacle of all that, in a president, all laid out in public – I can’t not keep recording it. The depth of his shallowness, to put it paradoxically but I think truly, just can’t be not noticed.

Gender Heretic wrote up the JK Rowling shock-horror.

…the calls of “TERF!” and “transphobe!” did not begin with anything Rowling said about trans people.

No, Rowling’s great sin was to push back against the erasure of the word “women” and its replacement with “people who menstruate.”

Let’s think about that. Let’s think about why feminist women would object to the fact that we are being deleted from public conversation. Why would we object to that? Is it because we’re Karens?

I don’t think so. I think it’s because, if we can’t say “women” when we talk about women’s issues now, how can feminism even exist? Shouldn’t feminism be deleted from public conversation too? (Many are working on that very project even as we speak.) Shouldn’t we be required to say peopleism instead of feminism now? Now that the word “women” has been declared exclusionary?

If women’s issues have been found to be not exclusive to women, then it turns out feminism has been a big mistake all this time, right? Especially since after all, if women don’t like it, all they have to do is be men. That’s way easier than trying to get people to understand that women aren’t uniformly stupid and helpless and inferior.

Oppression begins with language.

When the meaning of the word “woman” includes men, and the women become “menstruators,” then women lose the power to speak clearly about their lived experience of oppression.

Imagine the Black Lives Matter movement being told to stop using the word “black” and start referring to themselves as “melanins,” and you have some idea what has happened to feminism lately.

Actually what women are being told is starker than that. The analogy would be the Black Lives Matter movement being told to stop using the word “black” and use the word “all” instead. It’s interesting how activist types despise that demand but love and obey and enforce the equivalent that’s addressed to women.

The Independent wants to make it very clear how strongly it disapproves of JK Rowling’s…badditude. It can’t explain more clearly than that, but why would you need it to? Badditude is bad.

Harry Potter fans are tearing into JK Rowling after she posted a series of “transphobic” tweets.

Are the tweets “transphobic”? Or are they transphobic? Does the Indy take the claim seriously or not?

Theauthor was met with a backlash after calling out an article’s use of the phrase “people who menstruate”. While many Twitter users supported Rowling for her tweet, there were plenty – including numerous celebrities – who criticised her comment as “anti-trans” and “transphobic” arguing that transgender, non-binary and non-gender conforming people can also menstruate.

Yeah no kidding, because women can call themselves transgender or non-binary or non-gender conforming (aka gender-non-conforming), but they’re still women, which is what Rowling said. The point is that people are what sex they are and giving themselves various fancy names for More Interesting Than You doesn’t mean they’re not that other sex. The point is that gender-nonconformity is not a reason to stop calling women “women.” We can’t have feminism if we can’t say “women.” We need feminism.

Guest post by Leo Igwe PhD, CEO of AFAW (Advocacy for Alleged Witches)

Malawi is one of the countries in Africa where witch persecution is pervasive. Alleged witches suffer egregious human rights abuses including stoning, lynching and murder. In the late 2000s, courts jailed alleged witches. And some court officials claimed that the imprisonment was for their safety. Local humanist and human rights activists campaigned and helped release many alleged witches from state prisons. But recent news suggests that little has changed regarding the plight of alleged witches in the country. Accused persons are still taken into custody but this time by the Sing’anga, as traditional priests/priestesses and witch hunters are called in the country.

Witch hunts in Mzimba

On May 31, 2020, an AFAW associate in Malawi drew attention to a story on the Sunday edition of The Nation (Malawi), “30 ‘Witches Held Hostage in Mzimba”. The story recounted how a local priestess and witchcraft exorcist, Bernadette Tembo, popularly known as Berna detained many alleged witches in her compound in Northern Malawi. The report acknowledged that witchcraft accusation was against the law in Malawi. But it attributed the witch-hunting activities of Berna to lack of law enforcement. Berna detain alleged witches from various constituencies who are unable to pay her fine. And the police do not intervene to rescue victims. In Malawi, those who suspect witchcraft invite witch hunters to come and exorcise and cleanse their communities. And in return for her ‘service’, Berna fines alleged witches the equivalent of 200 to 300 US dollars, and those who are unable to pay the fine are abducted and detained at her compound. 

Police inaction and witchcraft act

The report noted that the police in the area knew about these criminal activities but did not intervene to stop them because they feared a backlash from the communities. The report noted that a legal expert blamed the situation on a British colonial law that was not into tune with reality. The report did not explain what this legal expert meant by “not in tune with reality”. Malawi had its independence in1964 and has had ample opportunities to revise the law but did not use them. In Malawi and some African countries, there has been agitation to enact legislation that recognizes the reality of witchcraft. It is pertinent to note that there is nothing wrong with the witchcraft act that legislates against witchcraft allegations and pretensions to having magical powers. The major problem in Malawi and other African countries where this provision applies is mixing religion and politics and lack of necessary and enabling educational and social structures that are compatible with the spirit of this provision.

The journalist from The Nation newspaper went undercover and interviewed witch exorcist, Berna. She denied fining alleged witches. Berna stated that she was providing “services” at the invitation of families and communities and with the permission of local leaders. She claimed that she kept some of the alleged witches in her compound for their safety. Incidentally, the police have advanced the same reason for keeping alleged witches in custody in the past. Judges have used the same excuse to sentence alleged witches to prison. This safety narrative has been used and abused over the years and needs to be unpacked. The place that alleged witches are safe is not in the custody of witchfinders or at the police stations or at state prisons. The place that alleged witches are safe is at their cultural homes and efforts must be made to ensure their safety in their communities. More importantly, efforts must be made to dismantle structures that threaten and endanger their lives and help bring to justice those who undermine the safety of alleged witches in the communities.

After reading the story, I rang up the office of The Nation in Lilongwe, and through a staff member, I got through the person who covered the story. He recounted how challenging it was to report stories on witch persecution. He noted that journalists preferred political stories to witchcraft related reports. This journalist traveled down to Mzimba He met with one of the alleged witches who was abducted but later released after he paid the ransom. He also met with families of another victim who is still held captive by the Sing’nga. Here are stories of these two persons, Yembe and Kundi (not their real names) as recounted by the journalist.

In the case of Yembe, 35, the cousin in South Africa complained that he was bewitching him; that Yembe used to appear in his dream threatening to kill him. Family members consulted Berna, the most powerful Sing’anga in the area. Berna said that Yembe was not a witch, that witches were using his face for their operations and his house for their meetings and conferences. The elders agreed that the Sing’anga should come and perform an exorcism and cleanse the community of witchcraft. Berna arrived with her battalion of assistants. They beat the drums and later broke into the house of Yembe. They removed the witchcraft paraphernalia. Yembe asked if they could disclose the names of the people who were using his face to perform witchcraft but the Sing’anga declined. She asked Yembe to pay an equivalent of 200-300 US dollars. But Yembe could not afford the fine. The Sing’anga abducted and detained him in her compound for three weeks until the relatives came and paid the fine and he was released. The journalist said Yembe was still traumatized at the time of the interview. 
The journalist noted that Yembe was fortunate to have been released. Other alleged witches were still trapped at the compound of Berna due to their inability to pay the fines. The journalist visited the family home of another victim, Kundi. A family member told him that Kundi’s nephew died and the family consulted the Sing’anga. The Sing’anga stated that Kundi was responsible for the death. Family members reported the matter to the chief. They sort and got approval from the chief for Berna to come and cleanse the community. The Sing’anga arrived with her team of witch-finders and broken into the house of Kundi. Sing’anga removed all the items in the apartment that witches allegedly used for their meetings and operations in the house. She fined Kundi an equivalent of 200 US dollars. Again, Kundi could not afford it. Berna confiscated Kundi’s cupboard which was valued at a hundred dollars. Kundi also has a maize farm and the Sing’anga asked that Kundi’s maize be harvested and used in settling the outstanding bill. Berna’s assistants took Kundi away after beating him. The Sing’anga said that Kundi was not completely free of witchcraft and could destroy the community if left behind. According to the journalist Kundi has been working as a clerk for the Sing’anga for the past two years. As the journalist noted this practice has been going on for years. And Berna was not the only Sing’anga perpetrating these criminal activities in the region. The journalist contacted the police in the area and they claimed to be aware of the activities of Berna and other Sing’anga. The officers noted that the police were ill-equipped to stop them. There was a limited police presence in the communities. In fact, at one police post, there were only six officers on duty. The police claimed that if they tried to stop these criminal activities of the Sing’anga, the community members would attack and sack them.

Meanwhile, AFAW associate in Malawi also drew attention to another incident of witch persecution in Dowa. An angry mob killed three suspected witches and burnt down their houses. The victims, which included the village head were accused of being responsible for the death of a boy in the community.

AFAW 

Condemns witch-hunting activities and other human rights abuses linked to the belief in witchcraft in Malawi

Calls on the police and government of Malawi to arrest and prosecute Bernadette Tembo and others involved in witch-hunting activities including assault, abduction, extortion, kidnapping, and hostage-taking of alleged witches in Mzimba and other regions in Malawi

Appeals to the government to convene a meeting of Sing’anga and community leaders in Malawi and get them to commit to stopping witch finding activities nationwide

Suggests that the government of Malawi organizes training sessions for judges, magistrates and police officers on the enforcement and interpretation of the Witchcraft Act and other relevant provisionsUrges the government of Malawi to increase police presence in the communities especially in areas prone to witch persecution and murder

Asks the government of Malawi to establish community clinics/health centers that provide evidence-based diagnosis and treatment of diseases, and put in place health education programs that provide evidence-based explanations of dreams, diseases, and deaths.

Requests the government of Malawi to compensate and rehabilitate victims of witch persecution in the country.AFAW reminds the government of Malawi that it is their primary responsibility to protect the lives and property of Malawians and end rampant cases of witch persecution and killing in the country.

AFAW is of the view that there is nothing wrong with the Witchcraft Act as contained in the criminal code of Malawi and other African countries. Authorities in Malawi need to muster the political will to enforce this important provision and use it to tackle crimes linked to the belief in witchcraft. AFAW is committed to working with the government of Malawi and other relevant agencies to stamp out witch persecution and related abuses before 2030.

Please help us publicize this. AFAW is committed to working and campaigning to end witch persecution in Africa before or by 2030. Thanks for partnering with us. Please visit our web site for more info https://advocacyforallegedwitches.law.blog/ about our activities

Colin Powell is not impressed with Trump.

“I certainly cannot, in any way, support President Trump this year,” Powell said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “I’m very close to Joe Biden on a social matter and on a political matter. I’ve worked with him for 35, 40 years, and he is now the candidate, and I will be voting for him.”

Powell’s support for Biden, who clinched the Democratic presidential nomination on Friday, marks a continuation of his drift from the Republican Party. The retired four-star general and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff endorsed Hillary Clinton over Mr. Trump in 2016, and voted for President Barack Obama in 2012. He endorsed Mr. Obama over Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee, at a pivotal moment in the 2008 campaign.

So that’s a 12 year drift.

On Sunday, Powell criticized the president for his response to nationwide protests over the death of George Floyd and police brutality, saying Republican members of Congress were failing to hold Mr. Trump accountable.

“The Republican Party, the president, thought they were sort of immune — they could go say anything they wanted. And even more troubling, the Congress would just sit there, and not in any way resist what the president’s doing,” Powell told CNN’s Jake Tapper. 

Resist, or distance themselves from, or criticize. Nothing.

“And the one word I have to use with respect to what he’s been doing for the last several years — it’s a word I would never have used before, I never would have used with any of the four presidents I’ve worked for — he lies. He lies about things,” he continued. “And he gets away with it because people will not hold him accountable.”

Trump wasn’t taking that lying down. Oh hell no – he tweeted. Take that, miscreant.

“Colin Powell, a real stiff who was very responsible for getting us into the disastrous Middle East Wars, just announced he will be voting for another stiff, Sleepy Joe Biden,” Mr. Trump tweeted. “Didn’t Powell say that Iraq had ‘weapons of mass destruction?’ They didn’t, but off we went to WAR!”

Such a vulgar little man. Bulky, yes, but little.

Fences. Fences fences fences. Trump wants ALL the fences, to keep the scary hordes away from him and his plastic fantastic daughter-wife.

Protesters arriving in the nation’s capital for the ninth consecutive day of demonstrations found the White House encircled by more than a mile of tall metal fencing.

The previous day, work crews had erected enough fencing — reinforced by white concrete barriers — to bar entry to Lafayette Square and to outline half of the Ellipse, the sloping green lawn that abuts the executive residence. But between Friday night and Saturday afternoon — on a day expected to draw tens of thousands to protest in the District — they added enough fencing to block the rest of the Ellipse.

In total, Google Maps analysis suggests, roughly 1.7 miles of fencing now surrounds the White House, forming a gigantic metal cocoon. There are only two portions of the White House perimeter, on the northeast and northwest corners, that do not have additional fencing and concrete barriers.

Fine, let’s lock it from the outside.

The security perimeter around the executive complex started to expand early this week after nighttime demonstrations in Lafayette Square turned violent last weekend. The eight-foot tall black chain-link fence first materialized outside the White House on Tuesday, barring demonstrators from the square.

The square is public land, as far as I know. It’s a park. It’s across the street from the White House, but it’s still a public park.