Interesting. I saw the tweet, and found it exceedingly disgusting, but didn’t quite make the connection. Good thing other people did.

Barr has been putting on a show of indignation.

Attorney General Bill Barr told ABC News on Thursday that President Donald Trump “has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case” but should stop tweeting about the Justice Department because his tweets “make it impossible for me to do my job.”

I can all but hear them planning it. “Pretend you’re pissed off about my tweets.” “Hahahaha sir you’re a genius.”

Barr ignited a firestorm this week after top Justice Department officials intervened in the sentencing of Roger Stone, a longtime friend and former campaign adviser to the president who was convicted of lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstruction of justice.

In a stunning reversal, the Justice Department overruled a recommendation by its own prosecution team that Stone spend seven to nine years in jail and told a judge that such a punishment – which was in line with sentencing guidelines – “would not be appropriate.”

The reality is that it’s Barr’s interference that was and is inappropriate. But hey, blame the tweets.

In the interview with ABC News, Barr fiercely defended his actions and said it had nothing to do with the president. He said he was supportive of Stone’s convictions but thought the sentencing recommendation of seven to nine years was excessive.

And yet…

The filing notes that this recommendation is “consistent with the applicable advisory Guidelines.”

Maybe “excessive” in this case means “excessive for a friend of Donald Trump’s”?

Back to Barr:

Barr said Trump’s middle-of-the-night tweet put him in a bad position. He insists he had already discussed with staff that the sentencing recommendation was too long.

Barr insists a lot of things. Barr is not credible.

When asked directly if he had a problem with the president’s tweets, Barr responded, “Yes. Well, I have a problem with some of, some of the tweets. As I said at my confirmation hearing, I think the essential role of the attorney general is to keep law enforcement, the criminal process sacrosanct to make sure there is no political interference in it. And I have done that and I will continue to do that,” adding, “And I’m happy to say that, in fact the president has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case.”

He doesn’t need to, does he. And as for making sure there is no political interference with law enforcement – do not insult our intelligence that way.

Barr also told ABC News he was “a little surprised” that the prosecution team withdrew from the case and said he hadn’t spoken to the team. He said it was “preposterous” to suggest that he “intervened” in the case as much as he acted to resolve a dispute within the department on a sentencing recommendation.

By intervening. We know.

When asked if he expects the president to react to his criticism of the tweets, Barr said: “I hope he will react.”

“And respect it?” ABC’s Thomas asked.

“Yes,” Barr said.

So how did that work out?

About two hours after the interview aired, the White House issued a statement.

“The President wasn’t bothered by the comments at all and he has the right, just like any American citizen, to publicly offer his opinions. President Trump uses social media very effectively to fight for the American people against injustices in our country, including the fake news. The President has full faith and confidence in Attorney General Barr to do his job and uphold the law,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said.

So Barr must be “disappointed.”

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Define “civil liberty“.

It all comes down to the initial claim that trans people actually are the sex they feel they are. Yet too often rebuttals are dismissed with the insistence that these academic, intellectual debates ignore the suffering and needs of real, live people.

Yet we are told that we must prioritise the suffering and needs of some few, real live trans identified males over the suffering and needs of all real, live women and girls. We are told that there is no actual conflict since, because “transwomen are women”, they are all in fact the same group, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a bigot who desrves to be no-platformed or sacked. This is why the definition of “woman” is so vital. To what group of people are you referring when you use the word “woman?” How is that group defined, by feelings or biology? Being able to convince bystanders and others that this is a conflict within feminism rather than a conflict between “feminisms” (or more acurately, between feminism and something that identifies as feminism), allows TRAs to paint GC feminists as evil TERFs and avoids the much needed discussion of the very real conflicts they are so desperate to deny exist and at the same time paper over.

TRAs are currently in an advantageous tactical position given the rapid and widespread institutional capture in government and media they have been able to engineer or take advantage of, but the fact they have to fight material reality itself means that whatever tactical positions they hold now, they will always have to fight to keep them. Reality isn’t going to change, and it’s not going anywhere.

Well that’s a mess.

Another day another letter.

I haven’t been able to find the letter in non-image form so I’ll just have to proceed with this one. The very first sentence is odd – colleagues at the University of Kent have recently been informed that the university “has chosen to uphold the invitation to Selina Todd” – as if there were something shady about inviting someone to speak and then not withdrawing the invitation. As if the university were supposed to withdraw invitations to external academics upon request. As if the university deserved rebuke for “choosing to uphold” such an invitation. Funny kind of academics these are.

Todd is a “self-proclaimed” [nonsense – that’s a loaded way of putting it] gc feminist “who has been widely criticised” [by people like us] “for her arguments against trans people’s – particularly trans women’s [i.e. men’s] right to self-identify.”

Yes, and? There is no such thing as a “right to self-identify.” Suppose you come to my door right now and “self-identify” as a friend of mine and invited to lunch. Do I have to “validate” your identity and give you lunch? I do not. Suppose I go to your children’s school and “self-identify” as a physics teacher; does the school have to let me teach classes? It does not. There is no such right.

Blah blah blah. Third paragraph – “The power dynamics” of letting Selina Todd (a historian of working class women) speak puts trans and non-binary people in the position “of having to defend their right to exist.” No it doesn’t. Why? Because no gender critical feminist is saying such people should not exist, or anything like it. Because no gender critical feminist is a threat to anyone’s existence. Because it’s not about existence. This constant framing of gender critical feminists as genocidal is both ludicrous and intensely insulting.

Then they quote Sara Ahmed saying “some at the table are, in effect or intent, arguing for the elimination of others at the table.”

The elimination – in other words the genocide. Again.

Todd’s views, they say, in a powerful surge of reasoning, “refuse to acknowledge that trans women ARE women, and that trans women’s rights ARE women’s rights.” Oh well ok then, if you put it in all caps there is nothing left to say.

Then they say it doesn’t matter that she wasn’t invited to talk about trans issues, she’s infected all the same. These are academics, remember.

Then they say there is precedent, because look, the University of East Anglia postponed a seminar with Kathleen Stock. Good argument: hit this person, because we hit that other person before. (Also, last I heard, the UEA didn’t postpone that seminar, nor did it cancel it or object when Kathleen refused to agree to a different format at their request.)

What a gang of craps these “academics” must be.

The ACLU’s Staff Attorney on their National LGBT & HIV Project:

They’re not “cis” girls. Chase Strangio doesn’t get to other them from their own sex like that. They’re just girls. They didn’t choose it, they were born it, as we all were. That doesn’t make them a subcategory of their sex.

But even more dishonest is that “because their trans peers are able to participate fully in school life.” Strangio lies like that constantly, and it’s infuriating, especially coming from the ACLU. That is not why the girls are suing, and Strangio knows it. They are suing to prevent boys from competing on the girls’ team and thus depriving girls of medals and scholarships. Those boys don’t have to compete on the girls’ team to participate fully in school life. They could compete on the boys’ team (since they are boys). They wouldn’t come in first, but there is no “right” to come in first, especially by cheating.

How would those two boys – Yearwood and Miller – like it if all the boys in the school joined them on the girls’ team? Not much, because they would lose again.

It’s a sanctimonious and kind-of-racist lie to say this is about “urging the state to police young Black women.” Yearwood and Miller are not young Black women, because they are not women.

Chase Strangio is despicable.

Why do this?

Why hedge it? Why say “self-identifying woman” instead of just “woman”?

Why can’t women just be women any more?

God damn ACLU.

“Andraya,” who is a boy, “just wants to run” against girls, so that he will have a nice big unfair advantage.

Even if Andraya really does think of himself as a girl, and really does think that he “feels like a girl” on the inside (the meaning of which is impossible to pin down), he still should not, and should not be allowed to, compete against actual girls. It’s grossly unfair and it should not be allowed.

Ahhhhhhh that is such bullshit. What does “echo” mean? Nothing. This isn’t a poetry class. The arguments used to keep men who say they are women out of women’s sports are the opposite of those used to keep women out of sports. We argue that men should not be invading women’s sports because they have a sizable physical advantage; that is not why women were kept out of sports until the past few decades.

Men cheating women out of prizes in sport are not exercising their civil rights but trampling on those of women. The ACLU should change its name if it’s going to keep on with this garbage.

Here’s the exchange between Selina Todd and Lloyd Russell-Moyle: just the audio.

So, Russell-Moyle didn’t say: “If people don’t consider transwomen to be women then that is against the law and they should face disciplinary procedures.” He said, beginning at about 6:30:

Well if they say a trans woman is not a woman and I will never recognize that, that’s against the law, and actually they should either have to explain themselves in great detail, and if they were unable to do that, then yes they should look at disciplinary procedures

Similar but not the same, and especially he didn’t say “consider” but “say,” and that’s a very important difference.

That said – he still has a hell of a nerve announcing that we can’t say that trans women are not women without explaining ourselves in great detail or facing “disciplinary procedures.” Trans dogs are not dogs, trans houses are not houses, trans tulips are not tulips. Nobody should be disciplined for saying that.

There’s a French schoolgirl who had the audacity to film “an anti-religious diatribe on social media,” to use the Guardian’s terminology.

The Guardian also buried what inspired her to do so halfway down the page.

Mila, 16, from near Lyon, became a cause célèbre in January after she made a live broadcast on her Instagram account in which she spoke about her homosexuality. A Muslim commentator responded she was a “dirty lesbian” and a “dirty whore”. She responded by posting a video diatribe against Islam.

Her outburst sparked death threats and social media users posted her personal information online, including where she was attending school. The public prosecutor has opened an investigation for “death threats, threats to commit a crime and harassment” against her attackers and a separate inquiry into whether she had “provoked religious hatred”, which is punishable by the law.

Abdallah Zekri, general delegate of the French Council for the Muslim Faith (CFCM), told French radio: “This girl knows exactly what she has done … they who sow, reap.” Zekri added that the teenager’s comments were not covered by freedom of expression but were insulting and provocative. Afterwards, Mohammed Moussaoui, the new head of the CFCM, said criticism of Islam had to be accepted and no remarks justified death threats. “We have to accept all the debates and refuse all violence,” Moussaoui wrote.

“Insulting and provocative” does not mean “deserving of death threats.” Note, also, that the Guardian did what it so often does: said “Her outburst sparked death threats” rather than, say, “some people responded to her video with death threats.” Notice it didn’t say the guy who called her a dirty whore “sparked” her video.

The case has brought echos of the Charlie Hebdo massacre in 2015, which the perpetrators claimed was in retribution for the satirical newspaper publishing cartoons several years previously of the prophet Mohammed that were considered offensive by many Muslims. In a 2007 legal case against the paper, judges declared: “In France it is possible to insult a religion, its figures and its symbols … however, insulting those who follow a religion is outlawed.”

But many believers take the view that insulting the religion is insulting those who follow it.

Politics Live on the BBC today:

I’ve seen a couple of clips but I’m not sure I’ll be able to see the whole thing. I haven’t seen the bit where he says that so I can’t confirm that he did say it, but if he did…oy. He’s an MP.

From the Committee to Protect Journalists:

The New York City Police Department should drop all charges against photojournalist Amr Alfiky and provide a public explanation for his arrest, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Police arrested Alfiky, a photo editor at ABC news and a contributor to Reuters and The New York Times, at about 7 p.m. yesterday in New York’s Lower East Side neighborhood as he was filming the arrest on the street of another individual, according to the journalist’s friend, Mostafa Bassim, who captured Alfiky’s arrest on video and spoke with CPJ in a phone interview.

Police held Alfiky at Manhattan’s seventh precinct station for about 3.5 hours, where he was given access to a lawyer and was released after being charged with disorderly conduct, according to Bassim and a report by the New York Daily News, a local daily.

We know Trump considers journalism “disorderly conduct” but you’d hope New York cops would know better. (I know, probably a feeble hope.)

Officers confiscated Alfiky’s press credential, a card issued by the city’s police to grant journalists’ access to restricted spaces, during the arrest and have not returned it, Bassim said.

…

According to the New York Daily News, an NYPD spokesman said that Alfiky “refused to comply with repeated requests to step back” and did not identify himself as a journalist until after he was in custody. However, in Bassim’s video of the arrest, Alfiky can be heard repeatedly and loudly telling police officers that he is a journalist and offering to show his press credentials as the officers handcuffed him.

Sure enough – you can hear him saying it. Repeatedly.

He thinks he has “the absolute right” to interfere in criminal prosecutions. He thinks wrong. It would be nice if he knew the basics of this job he decided to pretend to do.

Also, “aberition.”

So much for law and order, which used to be a Republican lodestar.

The entire team prosecuting Roger Stone abruptly resigned from the criminal case on Tuesday after the Justice Department said it planned to reduce the recommended sentence for Stone, a longtime Trump associate.

The Justice Department on Tuesday said it was pulling back on its request to sentence Stone to seven to nine years in prison after President Donald Trump blasted the sentencing proposal as “a miscarriage of justice.”

…

After reports that a softer sentencing recommendation was imminent, lead prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky withdrew as a prosecutor in the case. A footnote in his court filing noted that “the undersigned attorney has resigned effective immediately.”

Zelinsky, who was a part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team investigating Russian election interference, is not resigning from the Justice Department but is leaving the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office and returning to his old job with the U.S. attorney in Maryland.

Another prosecutor, Jonathan Kravis, also resigned — both from the case and as an assistant U.S. attorney. Kravis on Tuesday filed a notice with the judge saying he “no longer represents the government in this matter.” The other two prosecutors, Adam Jed and Michael Marando, also withdrew from the case.

Never mind, we’re still dealing out long prison sentences to black people and poor people.

Have YOU signed?

Labour leadership contender Rebecca Long-Bailey has signed up to a pledge to expel party members who have expressed “transphobic” views.

#ExpelMe.

It is part of a 12-point plan by the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights.

The plan has also been backed by deputy leader hopeful Angela Rayner – but critics say it could lead to a “witch hunt” of party members.

It could and it will. You know it will.

The pledges include accepting that there is “no material conflict between trans rights and women’s rights” – and supporting the expulsion of Labour members who “express bigoted, transphobic views”.

The group states that “trans women are women, trans men are men”.

But they’re not and they’re not, which is why they’re called “trans.”

They also back the fight against what the group alleges are “transphobic organisations”, naming two in particular; Woman’s Place UK and the LGB Alliance.

Woman’s Place UK, which says it campaigns to defend women’s “hard-won rights”, said it “absolutely refutes” claims their organisation is transphobic, describing the allegations as “scurrilous” and “defamatory”.

Yes but they’re just women, so what do they know.

What about women? Do women matter at all?

#ExpelMe is trending on Twitter. What’s it about?

There’s this:

Which we can read here.

Below find our founding statement and pledges for all Labour Party members who support trans rights to sign.

Meaning, I guess, if you don’t sign, you don’t support trans rights.

The Labour Campaign for Trans Rights has been founded by transgender and non-binary Labour members in order to advance trans liberation through the Labour Party. Trans people today are disproportionately affected by the evils of homelessness, unemployment, poverty and hate crime. We live under a Conservative government which restricts our rights and puts those with transphobic views in positions of power; whilst we are attacked relentlessly by a reactionary press.

Liberation from what, though?

Obviously no one should suffer homelessness, unemployment, poverty, or hate crime. But what’s this about restricting rights? What rights exactly?

As the party which stands for socialism, the Labour Party must play an active and crucial role in the fight for transgender liberation. Although Labour is the party which has worked hardest to advance LGBT+ rights, when considering the level of oppression trans people face, our commitment to trans liberation has often been equivocal or inadequate. There are still transphobes in our ranks, and we have often failed to act as transphobia has gained ground within our party. Now that trans people face the onslaught of a Conservative majority, this must change, and it is this campaign’s goal to create a Labour Party which stands firmly on the side of trans people.

That’s just more of the same, and it clarifies nothing. Liberation from what? What is transphobia? What does “standing firmly on the side of trans people” entail?

We firstly urge all allies and sympathetic Labour members to sign our founding pledges, and to encourage your comrades, and especially your representatives in the Labour movement, to do so as well. These pledges have been written to outline some of the actions required to rid the Labour Party of transphobia and to stand up for trans people.

Ok, finally we get to specifics.

1. Accept the material reality that trans people are oppressed and discriminated against in British society, facing a rising risk of hate crime, and difficulty accessing public services, healthcare, housing and employment.

I don’t know how true any of that is, but it’s not outlandish.

2. Believe that trans liberation must be an objective of the Labour Party, and that transphobia is antithetical to our collective aims.

Before I know what “liberation” we’re talking about and what “transphobia” is? No.

3. Commit to respecting trans people as their self-declared gender, and to ensure that the Labour Party is an inclusive environment for trans people.

Ah, there we go, finally something we can grasp.

And no, I’m not going to do that. It doesn’t matter, because I’m not in the UK and so not in the Labour Party, but if I were I wouldn’t. No. I’m not going to “commit” to respecting anybody as their self-declared anything. It’s much too general and sweeping an order to obey. No.

4. Accept that trans women are women, trans men are men, and non-binary people are non-binary.

No. They’re not, they’re not, and that doesn’t mean anything.

5. Accept that there is no material conflict between trans rights and women’s rights, and that all trans women are subject to misogyny and patriarchal oppression.

No, and fuck off.

6. Listen to trans comrades on issues of transphobia and transmisogyny, allowing trans people to lead the way on our own liberation.

I might, if I hadn’t been paying close attention for the past five or so years, but I have, so no.

7. Support the work of trans members and organisers within the Labour movement, including supporting motions on a local, regional and national level which are presented for the furthering of trans liberation.

See above.

8. Oppose transphobic motions which run contrary to our own party equalities policy, and support the NEC striking down such motions on this basis.

On whose say-so? What if we think they don’t run contrary to our own party equalities policy? So that’s another No.

9. Organise and fight against transphobic organisations such as Woman’s Place UK, LGB Alliance and other trans-exclusionist hate groups.

Oh hell no. Meanwhile – how about trans comrades listen to women more? There’s an idea.

10. Support the expulsion from the Labour Party of those who express bigoted, transphobic views.

Hence #ExpelMe.

Go on then.

11.Support reform of the Gender Recognition Act to improve transgender rights, as well as supporting policies which would improve trans people’s access to necessary healthcare, housing, and employment.

What rights? Improve them how? Better access to necessary healthcare, housing, and employment would be good for everyone, trans people included – included, not especially included, or singled out for extra.

12. Organise against and oppose any further transphobic policy from our own party or any other.

Clearly “transphobic” here just means not taking orders from entitled narcissists who want to kick feminists out of Labour.

So that’s why #ExpelMe is trending.