Originally a comment by Enzyme on No YOU decolonize.

My tuppence-worth on the “whitness” of Shakespeare:

Let’s allow, for the sake of the argument, that there is racism in his plays. Well, OK; but that’s not enough. We need to know more about whether that putative racism maps on to today’s definition of racism; and I don’t think it does. And I take Othello as my case-in-point.

Here’s a trivial starting-point: Othello is a tragedy. This means that, in Shakespeare’s handling of the form, the titular character is brought down by a flaw in his own character. For Macbeth it’s ambition; for Hamlet it’s over-thinking; for Othello it’s jealousy. But the titular characters of a tragedy are all high-status people: people you’d want to be, in effect. Were they just plebs like you or me, their ignominy would not be tragic, because they’d’ve been ignominious from the beginning.

What else do we know about Othello? He’s black. So he’s an admirable black man. More than that: he’s not just a visiting prince from Egypt, and so a passing curiosity or noble savage character; he holds high military office in a European state. This means he must command respect both from his peers and from the men he commands, skin-tone notwithstanding.

And this must have made sense to Shakespeare’s audience. This stands spelling out. It must have been perfectly straightforward to a 17th-century costermonger that a black guy could have been in charge of a European army, and been worthy of respect, and married a nobleman’s daughter, because if any of that were not true, the tragedy simply wouldn’t have worked. One might as well have written a play about Caliban or a dog holding a place among the Venetian nobility. In that case, his being brought low would not be a tragedy, but the restoraton of order. Othello would be a kind of comedy; it would never have succeeded as a tragedy. But it isn’t, and it did.

Now imagine another world, in which Shakespeare lived in (say) the nineteenth century. Could he have written Othello then? That’s not nearly as clear, because racism – as we see it – was by that point A Thing. There would have been something faintly obscene about the premise of the play.

And so I think it’s fair to deduce that even if you want to say that Shakespeare was racist, you can’t just help yourself to it. You’ve got to be able to say precisely how, and you’ve got to be alive to the possibility that you’re being deeply anachronistic.

The threats to Canada seemed to be too absurd to be real, but it turns out that plenty of people think it’s all too real.

After President Trump imposed tariffs on Canada on Tuesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made an extraordinary statement that was largely lost in the fray of the moment.

“The excuse that he’s giving for these tariffs today of fentanyl is completely bogus, completely unjustified, completely false,” Mr. Trudeau told the news media in Ottawa. “What he wants is to see a total collapse of the Canadian economy, because that’ll make it easier to annex us,” he added.

This is the story of how Mr. Trudeau went from thinking Mr. Trump was joking when he referred to him as “governor” and Canada as “the 51st state” in early December to publicly stating that Canada’s closest ally and neighbor was implementing a strategy of crushing the country in order to take it over.

Could we just not? Could we go back to being a deeply flawed but still serious grown-up country that doesn’t attack its own allies?

Mr. Trump and Mr. Trudeau spoke twice on Feb. 3, once in the morning and again in the afternoon, as part of discussions to stave off tariffs on Canadian exports.

But those early February calls were not just about tariffs.

On those calls, President Trump laid out a long list of grievances he had with the trade relationship between the two countries, including Canada’s protected dairy sector, the difficulty American banks face in doing business in Canada and Canadian consumption taxes that Mr. Trump deems unfair because they make American goods more expensive.

He also brought up something much more fundamental.

He told Mr. Trudeau that he did not believe that the treaty that demarcates the border between the two countries was valid and that he wants to revise the boundary. He offered no further explanation.

Yeah see announcing you want to revise the boundary is like saying “I want your house and everything that’s in it.” Trump could mean he wants to push the boundary 500 miles north…where it’s 99% ice.

Canadian officials took Mr. Trump’s comments seriously, not least because he had already publicly said he wanted to bring Canada to its knees. In a news conference on Jan. 7, before being inaugurated, Mr. Trump, responding to a question by a New York Times reporter about whether he was planning to use military force to annex Canada, said he planned to use “economic force.”

Trump hates Canada and loves Russia.

We’re doomed.

That’s not hyperbole any more. It looks horribly likely that we really are doomed – stuck with a crazed megalomaniac who will destroy everything, like a reincarnation of Hitler.

Met Police hate women, love men who playact being women.

A Met Police training officer called anti-transgender women a “bunch of lesbians”, a tribunal has heard.

Sgt Karl Eccott, an LGBT+ training officer, allegedly made the comments in a session with trainee Melanie Newman, who is now bringing harassment and direct discrimination claims against the Met.

Ms Newman claimed in her witness statement to the tribunal, held in Croydon, south London, that the Met Police was a “hostile environment” for anyone with gender-critical opinions.

In other words the police=a hostile environment who know that men are not women.

How is that a tenable situation?

Ms Newman is now a detective constable with the Met, based in the child abuse investigation team in Croydon, the tribunal heard.

She listed several “symptoms” of what she called an anti-gender-critical narrative at the Met, including the invitation of trans activists to speak who she said were “extremely hostile” to gender-critical people.

Eva Echo, a transgender activist, told a 2023 Trans Day of Visibility (TDOV) seminar that trans people needed to be “saved” from gender-critical people, who had “warped, twisted views”, Ms Newman claimed.

The police host “seminars” where men announce that people who know that men are not women have warped, twisted views. That certainly seems healthy and sane.

Ms Newman – who describes herself as gender-critical, having a belief in only two sexes – claimed speakers at the event delivered a one-sided “invective” and she “couldn’t believe” what she was hearing.

For the billionth time, it’s not a belief that there are only two sexes, it’s just a dull basic obvious fact. It’s not like belief in Baby Jesus, it’s like belief in gravity – which if you don’t have it you will die very young.

Det Chief Insp Charlotte Cadden, who is a lesbian, agreed the event was “discriminatory”.

She said: “The homophobic terminology used by two of the speakers is classed as offensive by many gay people and felt specifically oppressive to me as a lesbian officer.”

Aileen McColgan KC, acting on behalf of the Met, told Ms Cadden the purpose of the TDOV event was to “celebrate trans identity”.

Why? Why have events to celebrate trans idenniny? Especially why do the police have such events? Why? Trans idenniny is a stupid destructive fiction; why celebrate it??

Originally a comment by YNnB on Not far from how it started in Donetsk.

This is a sign of madness and a policy objective at the same time. The repeated utterance of the “51st State” bullshit by yet another official is an indication that this is something Trump is serious about. This is 25th Ammendment level insanity. It amazes me that this is a cabinet-level official behaving like this. It is as clear an indication as any that Trump has surrounded himself with empty-headed sycophants whose only talent is fellating his ego. America is now threatened by its own government. Not only by the erosion of its democratic institutions, and Trump’s accelerating authoritarianism, but also by the installation of idiots in key positions. Mass firings of experienced civil servants is lobotomizing the country’s institutional memory. Getting rid of people who know how things work is a great way to get the things to stop working, and since Trump (and Musk) haven’t bothered to learn how the systems they’re destroying work, they are going to find out the hard way. They actually need some of the people they’re getting rid of, but those who are still around (or who are hurriedly being rehired once the need for their talents is accidentally discovered) are now working for a very different government, a very different country, from the one which originally hired them. How much of the original America will they be able to preserve and protect in the face of Trump’s MAGAmerica? Can they work for America without working for Trump? Working for Trump is working against America. It is clear that you cannot be loyal to both. This is the dilemma that many of those fired are going to be facing.

America’s enemies can see as plainly as the rest of us, that Trump is weakening America. Filling posts with people whose only qualifications are personal loyalty to him, rather than any experience or talent for the jobs they’ve been handed, means the United States is being run by people who don’t know what the fuck they’re doing, who don’t know that they don’t know what fuck they’re doing. His all-consuming narcissism keeps him from seeing beyond his own ego-gratification, and his government reflects and is directed by his petty grievances, and his pathological need to “win.” How can you see where you’re going if all you’re paying attention to is your own reflection in the rear view mirror?

It’s all play-acting from the top down. Trump is the stupid person’s idea of a tough guy. He thinks he’s a tough guy. (I rest my case.) He’s a parody of himself, a living, breathing cartoon character, armed with nuclear weapons. He thinks he only has to issue orders for things to happen, that his words have the power to shape reality. He can certainly shape reality, but not in the way he thinks he can, not even in the way he would like. His botching of the pandemic left hundreds of thousands more dead than should have died. The raking of forests, the “watering” of Califiornia to stop wildfires, his delusions about “developing” Mar-a-Gaza, are all symptoms of his detachment from reality, and his grandiose belief in his ability to control it. Trump thinks he can change the world with an Executive Order and a Sharpie. Canute would like to have a word with him; he knew he did not have the power to stop the rising tide.

It’s strange; even though as a Canadian, I feel threatened by Trump’s insanity in a way that I have never felt threatened before (not even during the mid 80’s with Reagan’s rhetoric, tens of thousands more nuclear weapons, etc*), and I have no idea what’s going to happen, I have come to realize that Americans have it worse. We might live next door to him, but Trump lives in your house. He’s your monster, and he’s not alone. Tens of millions of Americans voted for him, and are cheering him on.

Canadians are uniting and rallying around our shared rejection of Trump’s unasked-for “offer” to make us part of the United States. America is dangerously divided, with Trump well on the way to criminalizing dissent and oppostion to his regime, both of which are unacceptable obstacles to the MAGA project. Trump and his “movement” represent the greatest threat to the United States since the Civil War, because he is a domestic enemy with frighteningly widespread support. A homegrown dictatorship like his is a greater danger to America than overseas dictatorships ever could be. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan could never have been the kind of existential threat that Trump is; yes, the USSR threatened nuclear annihilation, but none of these foreign totalitarian regimes was ever going to invade, take over, and destroy the country. America could only ever do that to itself. And now it has. With any luck, Trump’s greed, narcissism, and stupidity can be turned against him by Americans themselves, that they might save their country from its descent into tyranny. Like I said, America has it worse.

Trump is so easily fooled and so easily led. He has no long game; he has no grasp of subtlety or nuance, no sense of public service, sacrifice, duty, or honour. He is not a genius, he is not a good or decent human being. He is not good for America. His personal corruption goes far beyond Nixon’s, his continuing crimes are more widespread, and corrosive to the very fabric and foundations of America itself. And those who work for him are as corrupt and shallow as he is, otherwise they wouldn’t be working for him. It is naive to think that America’s enemies will not encourage and take advantage of the spreading brain-rot and ineptitude in the American government. Trump and his cronies won’t see it coming, because they’ll all be too busy looking at him.

*My mom, who experienced the Depression as a child, and saw her dad march off to war overseas in WWII, once told me that the only time she was ever really scared was during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I’m not “there” yet, but I can feel things edging closer.

Now from the other main branch of looney tunes – the people running the Shakespeare Trust announce that Shakespeare wasn’t all that and besides he was white so let’s all stop paying any attention to his stupid old plays and poetry.

William Shakespeare’s birthplace is being “decolonised” following concerns about the playwright being used to promote “white supremacy”.

Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust owns buildings linked to the Bard in his home town of Stratford-upon-Avon. The trust also owns archival material including parish records of the playwright’s birth and baptism.

It is now “decolonising” its vast collection to “create a more inclusive museum experience”.

Hang on. Wait just a second. I have a better idea. How about the people doing this get different jobs so that people who actually see the point of Mr S can take over. Wouldn’t that be both simpler and less destructive?

The trust has stated that some items in its collections and archives may contain “language or depictions that are racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise harmful”.

Well yes. Things have changed over the past four centuries, so naturally Shakespeare’s thoughts won’t be identical to our much purer thoughts…and yet, if you actually pay attention to the plays, you eventually notice that he wrote a lot of very meaty roles for the cross-dressed boys to play. You eventually notice that he created a lot of highly intelligent, witty, brave, mouthy female characters. If you read his contemporaries at all you’re struck by the contrast. There aren’t a whole hell of a lot of Rosalinds or Violas or Cordelias in Webster or Jonson.

The process of “decolonising”, which typically means moving away from Western perspectives, comes after concerns were raised that Shakespeare’s genius was used to advance ideas about “white supremacy”.

The claims were made in a 2022 collaborative research project between the trust and Dr Helen Hopkins, an academic at the University of Birmingham.

The research took issue with the trust’s quaint Stratford attractions, comprising the supposed childhood homes and shared family home of Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, his wife, because the Bard was presented as a “universal” genius.

This idea of Shakespeare’s universal genius “benefits the ideology of white European supremacy”, it was claimed.

The best thing about this is how strikingly original it is.

No Voice of America for you.

All full-time staffers at the Voice of America and the Office for Cuba Broadcasting, which runs Radio and Television Martí, were affected — more than 1,000 employees. The move followed a late Friday night edict from President Trump that its parent agency, called the U.S. Agency for Global Media, must eliminate all activities that are not required by law.

In addition, under the leadership of Trump appointees, the agency has severed all contracts for the privately incorporated international broadcasters it funds, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.

Gosh it seems like only yesterday that Republicans were enthusiastic about broadcasting pro-US content all around the planet.

The termination notices for grants for the funded networks, two of which were reviewed by NPR, carried the signature of Trump’s senior adviser Kari Lake, whom he placed at USAGM, not the agency’s acting chief executive. Lake does not appear in her current job to have the statutory authority to carry out that termination.

Pfffff. Statutory shmatutory, who cares. She works for the Big Boss and what the Big Boss says=law.

“The cancellation of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s grant agreement would be a massive gift to America’s enemies,” Steve Capus, the president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, said in a statement today shared with NPR. “The Iranian Ayatollahs, Chinese communist leaders, and autocrats in Moscow and Minsk would celebrate the demise of RFE/RL after 75 years. Handing our adversaries a win would make them stronger and America weaker. We’ve benefitted from strong bipartisan support throughout RFE/RL’s storied history. Without us, the nearly 50 million people in closed societies who depend on us for accurate news and information each week won’t have access to the truth about America and the world.”

Sorry, we’re now on team Ayatollahs and Autocrats.

Taken together, the federally-funded broadcasters and their sister networks covering the Middle East and Cuba reach 420 million people in 63 languages and more than 100 countries each week, according to the agency. They are fully funded by federal dollars.

The networks’ mission is to deliver news coverage and cultural programming to places where a free press is threatened or doesn’t exist. They are also designed as a form of soft diplomacy, modeling independent journalism that incorporates dissent from government policy.

Or you could call it propaganda, or capitalist propaganda, or imperialist propaganda. We are daily being instructed in how much worse angry self-dealing plutocratic propaganda is.

The Voice of America sparked Trump’s ire in his first term in office over reporting on Covid-19. His appointee as chief executive for U.S. Agency for Global Media embarked on a series of suspensions, visa revocations and investigations that were found, in some instances, to violate the law and federal policy.

This time, Trump’s budget-slashing adviser, Elon Musk, and other administration officials have called for Voice of America and some of the sister networks to be shut down. The scope and legality of these acts are not yet in full focus, but they appear to be designed to gut them and place whatever coverage survives under tighter control of politically appointed officials.

Aka TrumpMusk stooges.

The broadcasters’ reporting has angered some powerful figures abroad, including those who have close links to Trump.

The reporting of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, for example, has vexed autocratic-minded leaders in Russia and Hungary, as well as their allies. The network’s journalists have been imprisoned or detained in Russian-controlled Crimea, Belarus, Azerbaijan and Russia itself.

Trump has struck warm relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Premier Viktor Orbán.

Autocrats gotta stick together – except when distributing the spoils of course.

Radio Free Asia’s reports on the oppression of Uighur Muslims by Chinese authorities helped to bring their plight to international attention. In 2020, North Korean officials executed the owner of a fishing fleet for secretly listening to broadcasts by Radio Free Asia while at sea, the network reported. Authorities brought in 100 of his peers to watch the execution as a warning of the dangers of tuning in.

How long before Trump is doing the same thing?

I missed Kristi Noem’s stunt last week.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem recently toured a library that straddled the United States-Canada border, and one remark she made repeatedly is angering both Americans and Canadians.

The Boston Globe reported that Noem made the remark during an appearance at the Haskell Free Library and Opera House in Stanstead, Quebec and Derby Line, Vermont. The library has both American and Canadian flags and a line of black electrical tape on the floor that marks the international border for visitors.

During her visit, the Globe reported that Noem stood on the American side of the library and said “USA number one,” before stepping to the Canadian side and saying: “The 51st state.” 

What is she, six? Does she know how to tie her shoes yet?

Noem’s comments garnered outrage on social media. University of Ottawa professor Roland Paris called it “insulting, shameful and professional. But most of all… childish.” Reason editor-at-large Matt Welch lamented: “We are governed by four year-olds.” Former Obama administration appointee Bart Acocella characterized it as “utterly deranged behavior.” And Doug Saunders, who is an international affairs columnist for the Canadian publication Globe and Mail, grimly made a comparison to the Ukraine war, tweeting: “This is not too far from how it started in Donetsk.”

Well that would explain it. Trump wants to make war on a neighbor just like his buddy Vlad the Impaler.

So so so so so so sorry.

A BBC radio presenter apologised for “misgendering” Eddie Izzard on air – despite the comedian not caring about pronouns and gender labels.

Anita Anand said she was “very very sorry” after referring to Izzard as “the man” while presenting Radio 4’s PM programme on Friday.

Yet Izzard, 63, who identifies as gender fluid and uses she/her pronouns, has previously confessed an indifference to such labels, telling The Telegraph last year: “He, she – it doesn’t matter.”

In any case it doesn’t matter what pronouns he “uses”; accuracy trumps faddish luxuries. Izzard is a man, so BBC Radio 4 shouldn’t pretend he isn’t. It’s not the BBC’s job to lie to us.

Izzard appeared on the afternoon news and current affairs programme to promote a new production of Hamlet, which is set to tour the UK with all 23 roles played by the comedian.

During the pre-recorded interview, Mrs Anand had asked Izzard to perform a snippet of the play for listeners…

Wait wait wait. What’s this “Mrs Anand” crap? Why is Izzard Izzard while Anand is “Mrs”?

Last February, the BBC upheld a complaint against Justin Webb, the Today presenter, after he called trans women “males” on the BBC Radio 4 programme in 2023.

A listener complained that the comment amounted to Mr Webb giving his personal view on a controversial matter in breach of the BBC’s requirements on impartiality. The BBC’s editorial complaints unit agreed, saying it “gave the impression of endorsing one viewpoint in a highly controversial area”.

Oh get a grip. It’s controversial only because a bunch of pests have systematically and tiresomely made it controversial.

Another consignment of ugly:

Arlington National Cemetery has scrubbed information about prominent Black, Hispanic and female service members and topics such as the Civil War from its website, part of a broader effort across the Defense Department to remove all references to diversity, equity and inclusion from its online presence.

Well…all references that the Trump people at the Defense Department consider “references to diversity, equity and inclusion.” There are other ways of naming information about women and non-white people.

A cemetery spokesperson confirmed Friday that it removed internal links directing users to webpages listing the dozens of “Notable Graves” of Black, Hispanic and female veterans and their spouses.

On these pages, users could read short biographies about the people buried in the cemetery, including Gen. Colin L. Powell, the youngest and first Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Hector Santa Anna, a World War II B-17 bomber pilot, Berlin Airlift pilot and career military leader; members of the Tuskegee Airmen, the country’s first Black military airmen whose accomplishments include completing more than 1,800 missions during World War II; and members of the6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only all-Black, all-female Women’s Army Corps unit to serve overseas during World War II.

Users could also read about Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first Black person to sit on the high court, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is buried alongside her husband, Martin Ginsburg, an Army veteran.

Ugly ugly ugly.

It’s a great pity that the UK doesn’t have separation of church and state.

A religious school leader has been appointed as chairman of Ofsted for what is believed to be the first time.

Sir Hamid Patel will take up the interim role until a successor is found for Dame Christine Ryan at the schools regulator.

He is the chief executive of Star Academies Trust, which runs nearly 40 primaries and secondaries, including several Islamic schools.

Ah, Islamic schools. So girls have to wear hijab? So girls are called sluts if they don’t wear hijab? And the people who make these appointments are ok with that?

Sir Hamid has been on the board of Ofsted since 2019 and has led Star Academies since its inception in 2010. He was previously the headteacher of Tauheedul Islam Girls’ High School in Blackpool.

While [he was] in that role, the school became one of the first in the country to urge pupils to wear a hijab outside of school.

Oh outside of school too – that’s a nice touch. The little sluts have to be taught not to tempt the poor helpless boys. They must emulate their sisters in Afghanistan.

Guidance reportedly told pupils to “recite the Koran at least once a week” and “not bring stationery to school that contains un-Islamic images”, such as pictures of pop stars.

The school was criticised over a visit in 2010 from Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Sudais, a Saudi Arabian cleric who had described Jews as “pigs”.

Sheikh Sudais also prayed for God to “terminate” the Jews and, discussing his visit, Sir Hamid told The Sunday Times in 2013: “The girls wanted to see this guy with 5 million followers. They had seen him on YouTube. He stayed 20 minutes.”

Cool cool; that’s fine then.

Gender-critical documentary makers take UCU to tribunal

Two academic filmmakers are taking their union to an employment tribunal, arguing that it treated them unfairly because of their gender-critical beliefs.

Deirdre O’Neill and Michael Wayne faced a backlash from campaigners amid claims that their 2022 film Adult Human Female was “transphobic”. It defines sex as being determined by biology and claims that women’s rights have been damaged by the trans movement.

Reporting on this subject is always such a mush of fact and opinion. It’s not a “belief” that sex is determined by biology, it’s just a fact. The words are human creations but the facts themselves are not.

O’Neill and Wayne, who are academics at the University of Hertfordshire and Brunel University of London respectively, have lodged a tribunal claim against UCU.

At the hearing, due to get under way on 31 March, they are expected to argue that the union treated them detrimentally due to their philosophical beliefs about sex and gender.

Or rather due to their recognition of the reality of sex and the social nature of “gender”.

UCU’s trans’ rights policy states that the union “supports trans rights” and that “debating trans gender identity puts trans people’s being into question and creates fear and distress”. 

You know what else creates fear and distress for some people? Science classes. Remember the Scopes trial? Remember Judge Jones’s ruling in the Dover School Board case? Fear and distress, baby.

Edinburgh’s UCU branch previously claimed that “free speech [and] academic freedom” were being used to “justify questioning the validity or the rights of people with marginalised identities”.

Opposing the film screening, the branch said: “This event represents an echo chamber of one specific viewpoint that is very clearly a vilification of trans people, questioning their right to exist, under the guise of academic freedom.”

Liar. It’s no such thing. People exist independently of other people’s deference to their luxury idenninnies. If I claim to be Charles Darwin and you don’t believe me, I don’t instantly puff out of existence when I learn that you don’t believe me.

Magic gender is no more real than magic sky daddy.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Nice LGBT+ training, Karl.

A Met Police training officer called anti-transgender women a “bunch of lesbians”, a tribunal has heard. Sgt Karl Eccott, an LGBT+ training officer, allegedly made the comments in a session with trainee Melanie Newman, who is now bringing harassment and direct discrimination claims against the Met.

Wait. This is, supposedly an LGT+ training officer, using “lesbian” in a way that can only be considered as pejorative? Hello, lesbians are supposed to be part of the “community” you’re allegedly doing training for and about. Remember the L? (Hint: it’s right there in front.) And what if they were all lesbians? What would be wrong with that?. Obviously you think something is wrong with that because you’re dismissing and vilifying them, and saying that they can and should be ignored and disregarded, that their views are vile and disgusting.

Ms Newman is now a detective constable with the Met, based in the child abuse investigation team in Croydon, the tribunal heard.

Good thing it’s her and not Eccott in this post, as she’s going to be better at determining exactly who needs protection than Karl ever will.

I guess the Met hasn’t been keeping track of all those other employment tribunals that have pointed out and critisized trans over-reach and bigotry in the organizations being held to account, finding in favour of women who have stood up against the poisonous atmospheres permitted and enforced by their employers. Not satisfied with learning from the highlighting of pervasive, deliberate discrimination practiced by other captured institutions, the Met decided to forge ahead and put themselves through this embarrassing spectacle of having their noses rubbed in their own bigotry.

She added: “The impression I had was of someone who deeply loathed [gender-critical] women. I did not perceive Echo as a woman but as an angry man.”

Newman can count. She saw four lights. Good thing she didn’t write a limerick.

I guess “Eva Echo” didn’t read How to Win Friends and Influence People. But with the power of the Met behind him, and officers like Karl, why argue and persuade, when he can just use bullying and intimidation. Who needs to marshal facts when you can yell and scream and point? What’s good for the public is good for the Force, right?

Do read Mike B’s article.

In a kindergarten classroom in the mid-1960s, a kid named Mikey steered clear of the boys stacking large toy blocks on top of one another and knocking them down again–so obnoxious—and instead went and sat at the table of girls making beads out of salt dough and stringing them together on a thread. These girls were not averse to tasting the salt dough and smacking their lips in disgust. The teacher had wisely settled on salt dough because she knew it wouldn’t poison the students should they eat it. At least the girls were smart and funny and didn’t continually knock each other to the floor.

Mikey preferred these sober, artsy activities–making necklaces of salt dough beads, pressing hand prints into soft clay disks, tracing the profiles of silhouetted heads projected via lamp light onto sheets of construction paper–over the rough-and-tumble of block stacking, fat-ball tossing, and floor hockey, because–well, he just did. Thus developed the central themes of his boyhood–hates sports; likes art and language; hangs out with the girls.

Throughout grade school, gym class gave him a terrible knot in his stomach and he longed to be elsewhere, a disposition cemented into place by an incident during a game of “battle ball,” in which boys stood at opposite walls and hurled large pneumatic balls at each other for God knows what reason, and a ball smacked him square in the face and knocked his glasses off his head.

I always longed to be elsewhere during gym class too. A long walk through fields for preference.

Wait, how does that work?

Vatican News:

Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin celebrates Mass for members of the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See, recalling the anniversary of Pope Francis’ pontificate and inviting everyone to continue praying for his health.

What’s the point of praying for his health? Especially for those guys to pray for his health? It’s an inside job. They’re all supposed to be on the same page. What’s the agency they’re praying to? The Big Kahuna, obviously – Mister God himself. They’re servants of Mister God. They bow to Mister God. They recognize Mister God as the big boss, and they flatter him and tell others to flatter him every chance they get. So what do they think they’re doing, trying to coax him to overrule himself?

What does praying for the pope’s health do other than beg Mister God to change his mind? Well what kind of hideous blasphemy is that?! I ask you! Have they no faith? Have they never heard of obedience? They’re the Catholic church, so they’re all about obedience – at least, obedience to priests, who just want to pull your pants down when no one is looking.

What they’re doing by praying for the pope’s health is begging Mister God to change his mind. Jeezus christ it’s as if they’re a bunch of whiny women who refuse to understand the rules.

Whatever happened to “thy will be done”?

A second ruling saying “Not so fast” to Trump:

A second federal judge has ordered the mass reinstatement of fired federal workers, reversing the Trump administration’s terminations of probationary employees at 18 major agencies.

The agencies covered by U.S. District Judge James Bredar’s sweeping order, issued Thursday night, include the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Labor, State, Transportation and Treasury, among others.

Bredar’s order sweeps even more broadly than a ruling earlier in the day from a different federal judge, who directed six Cabinet departments to immediately rehire probationary employees who were fired under President Donald Trump’s plan to cut the federal workforce.

Both judges concluded that the Trump administration used false allegations of “performance” issues as a pretext to justify the large-scale firings and ignore legally mandated procedures for slimming the workforce.

Allegations which can’t have deceived many people, given the fact that Trump couldn’t possibly have known anything about any “performance issues” across multiple agencies.

Bredar’s ruling came in a lawsuit brought by Democratic state attorneys general. The earlier ruling — from San Francisco-based Judge William Alsup — came in a lawsuit brought by federal employees’ unions.

Stand by for Trump to eliminate state attorneys general and federal employee unions.

Both rulings emerged on the same day the Trump administration urged the Supreme Court to rein in the authority of district court judges to issue so-called nationwide injunctions limiting or block federal policies. The Justice Department is also urging the high court to narrow the circumstances in which states can pursue challenges to federal actions.

One way Trump has sought to push back against a flood of litigation against his executive actions is by encouraging judges to require that states, individuals or organizations seeking injunctions against those policies post financial bonds designed to compensate the federal government if the government eventually prevails in the cases.

Bredar agreed to impose such a bond in the case he is handling over the mass firings of probationary employees. He ordered the 19 states and the District of Columbia to post $100 apiece.

Oooh sarcasm. Wicked.

Do people just not recognize a flat contradiction when they see one? I mean a really blatantly obvious one, like “It’s raining it’s not raining”?

Apparently.

But of course they don’t. They don’t respect the choice of their members to use the changing rooms based on the gender they identify with: they don’t respect the choice of their members to use the changing rooms for women, because there are no such changing rooms. They refuse to provide women with women-only changing rooms, and then they boast a smug boast about respecting all the choices. If men get to use the men’s changing rooms and the women’s changing rooms then women are denied the right to use the women’s changing room – because there isn’t one.

Agh bad news.

Dammit to hell.

Sex Matters has more.

An employment tribunal in South London has rejected the Metropolitan Police’s application to anonymise the identity of a witness in a gender-critical belief case.

Sex Matters intervened to object to the Met Police’s anonymity (“rule 49”) application on open-justice and public-interest grounds. We were recognised as having a legitimate interest, and Kerenza Davis made legal submissions and addressed the tribunal on our behalf.

The case of Melanie Newman v The Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis is the third recent gender-critical employment tribunal case where an anonymity order has been refused. Similar orders were applied for by the employers and refused by the tribunal in the cases of Sandie Peggie v Fife Health Board and the Darlington Nurses.

They all want to bully women in secret, eh?

Melanie Newman is bringing a claim of harassment and discrimination based on gender-critical beliefs. The complaint dates back to 2023 when as a trainee police constable she was a virtual attendee at the official Trans Day of Visibility event being held at New Scotland Yard. 

The event featured outside speakers Eva Echo, Shea Coffey, Stephanie Robinson and Saba Ali, and organiser and Metropolitan Police employee Kit Moore.

Funny how all four outside speakers are men pretending to be women. Rubbing the real women’s noses in it, eh?

Newman found Eva Echo’s talk in particular shocking, upsetting and highly politicised. According to her notes, Echo referred to those who raise concerns about single-sex spaces and women’s sports as “motivated by hate”, showing “cult-like behaviour” and having “twisted, warped views”.

Because we don’t think men can be women.

It’s just non-stop bullying, is what it is.

The Telegraph:

A Met Police training officer called anti-transgender women a “bunch of lesbians”, a tribunal has heard. Sgt Karl Eccott, an LGBT+ training officer, allegedly made the comments in a session with trainee Melanie Newman, who is now bringing harassment and direct discrimination claims against the Met.

Ms Newman claimed in her witness statement to the tribunal, held in Croydon, south London, that the Met Police was a “hostile environment” for anyone with gender-critical opinions.

That’s so Met Policey. Women are horrible and deserve whatever they get, while trans women are saints and deserve endless flattery and the chance to abuse women.

Ms Newman is now a detective constable with the Met, based in the child abuse investigation team in Croydon, the tribunal heard.

She listed several “symptoms” of what she called an anti-gender-critical narrative at the Met, including the invitation of trans activists to speak who she said were “extremely hostile” to gender-critical people.

Eva Echo, a transgender activist, told a 2023 Trans Day of Visibility (TDOV) seminar that trans people needed to be “saved” from gender-critical people, who had “warped, twisted views”, Ms Newman claimed.

There it is again. Trans “women” are invited to give seminars, while actual women are called names.

Imagine the Met bringing in white people in blackface to give seminars while abusing actual black people as warped and twisted.

The Met doesn’t do that, but it does do the equivalent to women. Why?

Ms Newman – who describes herself as gender-critical, having a belief in only two sexes – claimed speakers at the event delivered a one-sided “invective” and she “couldn’t believe” what she was hearing.

She doesn’t have a “belief” in only two sexes. The “belief” is the one that says men can be women and women can be men. Two sexes is just a very obvious fact.

She added: “The impression I had was of someone who deeply loathed [gender-critical] women. I did not perceive Echo as a woman but as an angry man.”

She later complained internally but was told no further action would be taken because the transgender activist was not an employee.

Again, I have to wonder – would she have been told that if she had complained about a blatantly poisonously racist speaker? In the past, yes, but now, I don’t think so.

Ms Newman said she did not challenge New Scotland Yard’s TDOV event at the time because senior officers had “effectively endorsed” it.

On why she was now suing the Met, she added: “I feel only a public ruling that TDOV was discriminatory and an act of harassment in the context of all these facts will persuade the MPS that its reaction to my complaint to this date has been inadequate and that more decisive management action in support of [gender critical] staff is needed.”

Det Chief Insp Charlotte Cadden, who is a lesbian, agreed the event was “discriminatory”.

She said: “The homophobic terminology used by two of the speakers is classed as offensive by many gay people and felt specifically oppressive to me as a lesbian officer.”

Aileen McColgan KC, acting on behalf of the Met, told Ms Cadden the purpose of the TDOV event was to “celebrate trans identity”.

Well yes, that’s quite clear, but why? Why do the police need to celebrate trans idenniny”? Especially at the expense of female idenniny? Why are men who pretend to be women saints while actual women are garbage? Why can we never get out of this pit of loathing and contempt?

What’s the thinking process here?

Greenland’s likely new prime minister on Wednesday rejected U.S. President Donald Trump’s effort to take control of the island, saying Greenlanders must be allowed to decide their own future as it moves toward independence from Denmark.

Jens-Frederik Nielsen’s Demokraatit, a pro-business party that favors a slow path to independence, won a surprise victory in Tuesday’s parliamentary election, outpacing the two left-leaning parties that formed the last government. With most Greenlanders opposing Trump’s overtures, the campaign focused more on issues like healthcare and education than on geopolitics.

But on Wednesday Nielsen was quick to push back against Trump, who last week told a joint session of Congress that the U.S. needed Greenland to protect its own national security interests and he expected to get it “one way or the other.”

What’s the thinking process behind need/want=entitlement? We all need or want lots of things, but that doesn’t mean we automatically get to have them.

Trump is focused on Greenland because it straddles strategic air and sea routes in the North Atlantic and is home to the U.S.’s Pituffik Space Base, which supports missile warning and space surveillance operations. Greenland also has large deposits of the rare-earth minerals needed to make everything from mobile phones to renewable energy technology.

Trump said during the meeting with Rutte that “Denmark’s very far away” from Greenland and questioned whether that country still had a right to claim the world’s largest island as part of its kingdom.

“A boat landed there 200 years ago or something. And they say they have rights to it,” Trump said. “I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t think it is, actually.”

How does that translate to WE have rights to it???