Have just learned, chatting on Twitter, that a friend has never seen Casablanca. The tragedy of it!

Nearly all the bit players in that scene are refugees from the Nazis.

Casablanca made its debut two-and-half years after Germany marched into France, triggering a massive refugee exodus. As the Nazis advanced, the population of France fled south, hoping to avoid being swallowed up by Hitler’s burgeoning empire. Hungarians, Poles, Russians, Austrians, and Spanish Republicans who had fled their homelands to seek sanctuary in France before the war, once again found themselves on the run. Thousands would end up in Casablanca.

In July of 1940, more than two hundred ships arrived off the coast of Casablanca, the largest port in Africa on the Atlantic coast. The captains stocked only enough supplies to transport their passengers from Marseille, Bordeaux, or Oran. They didn’t plan on baking under the scorching North African sun for weeks as they waited to disembark their passengers. Both refugees and sailors suffered from dehydration and illness as water and food ran out. Once the refugees made it ashore, they had to find housing and navigate the French Protectorate of Morocco’s bureaucracy.

To deal with refugee influx, the Protectorate established an internment camp at Aïn Chok, an area approximately five miles southeast of the city center. George Kelber, a passenger on the SS Chateau Yquem, was shunted into its makeshift quarters along with seven hundred other recently arrived refugees. “People are getting exhausted, many of them are ill, and hygienic conditions are far from being satisfactory,” he wrote. “All these people have suffered a lot since four weeks and many of them are morally and physically broken.”

The film Casablanca is crowded with refugees. There’s Carl, the affable German-speaking waiter, and Sascha, the Russian bartender. A Dutch banker boasts of having run “the second largest banking house in Amsterdam.” Annina, a Bulgarian bride with doe eyes, resigns herself to selling her virtue to obtain the exit visas she and her husband need.

No one should be going to sleep tonight never having seen Casablanca.

From the Venomous Thugs on Twitter files:

Updating to add a few later tweets:

His venomous unprovoked attack was on Helen Lewis. He probably didn’t expect that the result would be fellow journalists and editors saying how brilliant she is and how zero she deserves this venomous unprovoked misogynist attack. Dude has now apologized and set about deleting his shitty tweets, all too late.

End of update.

The Independent should fire him, but leaving that aside – what I’m interested in is the (all too typical) loose analogy that, if you think about it for .5 second, is complete bullshit. “Imagine a “left wing” magazine publishing this sort of thing [meaning: the sort of thing he doesn’t like] about any other minority – you can’t.” Oreally? Any other minority? What about rapists? Political campaigners who tell brazen lies by the truckload? Executives of tobacco companies? Daily Mail reporters? Scabs? Owners of oil tankers that spill oil all over wetlands? Dirty cops? Corrupt heads of state? Torturers? KKKers? The staff of Breitbart? The Proud Boys?

You get the idea. He doesn’t mean minority, he means oppressed minority, or marginalized, or [insert preferred adjective here], but he’s too aroused by his bullying spree to notice he’s talking sloppy meaningless jargon.

Also of course there’s the whole “guy wanting to see intelligent women he disagrees with punished” phenomenon, which is like the leitmotif of our era.

If you’re going to make a case for something, try using a little care in the way you make it. For instance:

I was going to argue with the column, so as a preliminary step I read it, which is just as well because I found I don’t disagree with it all that much. If particular person X asks to be called “them” I’m not going to go to war over it. The issue is when you try to generalize that into a Big Rule that applies everywhere – as Clarke did in that tweet. It’s laughably easy to think of exceptions to Clarke’s Big Rule, so it won’t work as a Big Rule.

And this is part of the issue between feminists and ideologues of All Things Trans. Sure, we may be willing to call friends or family or colleagues what they ask to be called, but that doesn’t translate to agreeing to that for everyone on the planet no matter what the specifics. What we’re willing to do to be “polite” or kind or sympathetic toward particular nearby individuals is not necessarily what we’re willing to do universally as a matter of political and social justice.

Graham Linehan explained some of this.

We (women) could probably afford to “be nice” too if it were purely local and the people requesting it were not belligerent misogynists, but it isn’t and they are, so we can’t.

Originally a comment by latsot on Hands.

Of course he has posted a passive-voice notpology about how mistakes were passively made when she was passively “touched” on the “back” in an incident involving a hand, which might or might not be connected to his arm, as opposed to her being deliberately slapped on the arse by his hand, which is what happened. And happened because he thought she was his to use. And because he thought he’d get away with it, because you can grab them by the pussy.

Of course the part of the not-pology about how he is a loving husband and father is not in the passive voice. That part is very clear about how it’s him doing the loving and fathering. “Children were fathered” but “arses weren’t deliberately slapped, by [him]”, apparently.

Of course his lawyers are saying that he didn’t intend to commit an illegal act despite the fact that he committed an illegal act which he fully intended to do. And of course, no mention is made of whether what he did was wrong, just whether or not he intended to do something illegal, which he did.

Of course a lot of people have surfaced to tut at his being “doxxed”, as it is being framed. In a different universe where I wasn’t me I still wouldn’t have had even a tiny speck of sympathy about the doxxing, even if he had come forward without being caught to admit what he had done and apologise in a genuine fashion. Which he didn’t. He waited until someone tracked him down (he was wearing a number and it was on TV) and then communicated his ‘apology’ via his lawyers.

Name and shame.

Life lesson: if you’re running in an event and you spot a reporter doing a live bit, and you’re a man and the reporter’s a woman, don’t take the opportunity to slap her bum on the way, because the thing is, since she is a reporter doing a live bit, you will be on camera. 

A Georgia man who was videotaped slapping a female reporter’s bottom on live TV was arrested on Friday on a misdemeanor charge of sexual battery.

A Savannah police spokeswoman, Bianca Johnson, confirmed that Thomas Callaway, 43, of Statesboro was charged in connection with the incident that occurred while WSAV-TV reporter Alex Bozarjian was broadcasting live as runners streamed past her on a prominent bridge in the coastal city.

Bozarjian tweeted the footage last weekend. You can see her shock when it happens, right there on camera. Remember, bum-slappers: not on camera!

Video from Bozarjian’s live broadcast last Saturday posted online showed one of the passing runners appearing to swat her from behind. The video shows the stunned woman stop talking for a moment and stare. The clip had been viewed more than 11 million times on Twitter by Friday.

The video also shows the guy who did it as he approaches, so his face is there for all to see. Learn a lesson from this, bum-slappers.

Who is Thomas Callaway? He’s a “youth minister.” Of course he is.

They cannot be serious.

Using someone’s preferred pronoun is a simple way to show respect…so the driver should say “Where do them want to go?”

Ask the passenger what their pronoun is. Do not assume someone’s pronoun because of their appearance or name on the app. If you do not want to ask, you can ask what they prefer to be called –

So if you do not want to ask, ask. Mkay.

Introduce yourself and share your pronouns.

What planet are these people on? A taxi trip isn’t a long-term relationship, it’s a transaction in which A drives B to point C for $X.xx. That’s it. The pronouns involved are I/we, and you. The end. Third person pronouns don’t come into it. Even if the precious passenger with the lemonade hair and the lemur-skin boots does have a bespoke pronoun, there is not going to be any occasion to use it for that transaction.

And even if there were…again, it’s a short-lived relationship, and it really doesn’t need to be anxiously hand-clutchingly inclooosiv in that way. It doesn’t. Even if the driver does use a “wrong” pronoun for some weird reason…it doesn’t matter. Passenger can deal with it.

These poor pathetic narcissistic dweebs must be horribly jealous of us older dweebs who lived in the distant past when we had to struggle to get basic respect for women and black people. They must feel left out of a giant party, and the only way they can think of to have their own party is to run around screeching about their pronouns.

But that’s ok. Trump is destroying everything, the Tories will destroy whatever’s left, the Arctic is melting, Australia is on fire – but please please please do tell us more about your Special Pronouns.

She really doesn’t care.

Her cause is anti-bullying, which is making the first lady’s silence deafening.

Melania Trump has yet to speak out in the wake of President Donald Trump’s mocking tweet directed at 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg, in which he told the teenager to “work on her anger management” and “chill” out.

This is 72-year-old millionaire president of the US using his Twitter account to jeer at a teenage girl. It doesn’t get much more “bully” than that.

Just last Wednesday, Melania Trump tweeted a defense of her own child, whose name was referenced in a pun by an impeachment inquiry witness.

“A minor child deserves privacy and should be kept out of politics. Pamela Karlan, you should be ashamed of your very angry and obviously biased public pandering, and using a child to do it,” Melania Trump tweeted after Karlan, a law professor, mentioned Barron Trump during impeachment hearings on Capitol Hill. Karlan later apologized for making reference to the youngest Trump child’s name.

But when huge powerful rich man Donald Trump does it it’s perfectly fine.

Stephanie Grisham, who serves as top communication aide for both the first lady and the President, defended the first lady’s silence in a statement on Friday.

“BeBest is the First Lady’s initiative, and she will continue to use it to do all she can to help children. It is no secret that the President and First Lady often communicate differently — as most married couples do. Their son is not an activist who travels the globe giving speeches. He is a 13-year-old who wants and deserves privacy,” Grisham said.

Oh, I see, so it’s being an activist that makes it ok for huge powerful rich man to tweet his bullying of her to his millions of followers, only about half of whom are fake.

For the past 24 hours, Twitter has been filled with memes and statements mocking the first lady’s Be Best platform in light of the bullying of a child demonstrated by the President, and the first lady’s ongoing silence on the matter.

On Thursday night, former first lady Michelle Obama tweeted support to Thunberg: “@gretathunberg don’t let anyone dim your light. Like the girls I’ve met in Vietnam and all over the world, you have so much to offer us all. Ignore the doubters and know that millions of people are cheering you on.”

Ignore the doubters and the rich powerful famous orange male bullies.

At least we know whose fault it is that the Tories won.

It was the Jews the Communists the Masons the feminists!!

I BEG you pardon?

For an encore how about he “explains” how he’ll pluck the moon out of the sky and use it for a lawn ornament.

Also note that “will be eligible.” Not so fast, sonny. It doesn’t become true just because you use the future tense.

Also note that ludicrous “eligible” as if he’s talking about some well-established law as opposed to a stupid fantasy cooked in the meth lab that is Fox News. “Trummp will be eljabl for a extra turrrrm because we sed so.”

But cool that Huckabee was “named” to head up this non-existent eligibility-election, let’s hope it keeps him busy and out of trouble.

No thank you. No really, that’s ok, we’ve got this.

Empowered Trans Woman:

I think it’s super important for trans gals to learn about the feminist movement. Here’s Jude reminding us of the First Wave — the women’s suffrage movement. The Women’s Suffrage movement flourished concurrently in the United States and in the United Kingdom. Thanks to the efforts of such courageous women, the 19th Amendment, giving women the vote, passed in the U.S. in 1919, and got ratified in 1920.

Ah Princess Ivanka – she’s so sneaky.

If your family leave is paid for by your own Social Security then it’s not paid family leave. That’s not how we use the word “paid.” Paying for it ourselves isn’t “paid.” A job we pay ourselves for isn’t a paid job, and family leave we pay for from our Social Security isn’t paid leave.

Remember kids – if you pay for it yourself then that’s you paying for it yourself. Don’t be fooled.

Another episode of Trump Behaving Badly:

In the days following the release of a viral video showing world leaders at the NATO meeting in London making fun of him, Donald Trump shot back at his counterparts. The famously sensitive American president lashed out during a closed-door meeting at the White House with more than a dozen ambassadors to the United Nations present, according to three sources with knowledge of the gathering.

Oh he’s not famously “sensitive.” He’s famously touchy, famously quick to go nuclear at any insult to him while freely insulting anyone and everyone else whenever he feels the urge. That’s quite another thing. “Sensitive” would include other people’s feelings as well as his own. Trump never, ever, ever does that.

In doing so, he made a number of foreign officials noticeably on-edge and also upended a portion of the meeting meant to focus on world powers’ security cooperation, not personal gripes.

As he so often does. Everything is always about him; he is always the most, or only, important subject. An insult to him is far more important than world security cooperation.

During this private airing of grievances, President Trump repeatedly denigrated the Canadian prime minister behind his back and called the French president a “pain in the ass” while referring to him as “short,” according to an individual who was present for the meeting. Trump also bashed the French leader for not doing enough to help in recent Iran negotiations.

The press was allowed into the room for the beginning of the meeting, during which time the ambassadors each thanked the president for inviting them to the White House and underscored their interest in working with the U.S. on trade, foreign policy, and national security. The permanent representatives hailed from countries such as France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Poland, South Africa, Russia and China.

Oh, cool, so the French rep was there for Trump’s sneers at Macron. Excellent; that’s grown-up diplomacy and head of stateing.

Trump waited for the press to leave to unleash about his whiny grievances.

Over lunch with the ambassadors, President Trump again addressed the video and went on a prolonged tangent, complaining to the diplomats about Trudeau and Macron, according to two sources briefed on the meeting. This lasted several minutes and was enough to derail the ongoing conversation about NATO countries contributing more money to security. 

Another individual in the meeting told The Daily Beast that Trump’s comments made ambassadors present “visibly uncomfortable,” especially those whose leaders were involved in the hot-mic video.

Yes but who cares about their discomfort? It’s all about Trump’s comfort, don’t you understand?

Trump’s bromance with Macron went south a long time ago, but Trudeau has always grossed him out. Trump thinks Trudeau is a god damn girl, that’s what. Ew.

Aides and longtime associates of Trump say that over the years he has often brought up the Canadian leader in the context of deep annoyance and derision, whether the conversation is about trade negotiations or the president’s displeasure at Trudeau’s insufficiently kind demeanor toward Trump. 

In late 2017, Trump sat in the Oval Office, with senior officials such as Ivanka Trump and National Security Council staff, preparing for an upcoming meeting and joint press availability with Trudeau. Soon enough, the president began making fun of the Canadian prime minister and stating how he wished Canadian citizens could see how Trudeau acted in their private discussions, according to a source who was in the room. Trump then clasped his own hands together, began imitating Trudeau using a stereotypically feminine voice, and said, “Oh, Mr. President, we must be sweet to each other, we must play nice,” calling the Canadian leader “such a child” and a “total baby,” the source recounted.

Thank god Trump is not at all a child and baby.

Trump’s Twitter is an explosion this morning, not surprisingly – he must have 20 people or so assigned to posting Republican talking points, or screaming points rather.

But his personal sneer at Greta Thunberg stands out.

Yes how dare she be named Time’s person of the year instead of Trump.

The Guardian live comments:

As we await the impeachment hearing that starts at 9am ET today, the president has had a manic morning on Twitter so far.

Most of it does not need national and international news coverage. But the blog must pause to note that the President of the United States has just taken a spiteful pop at teen climate crisis activist Greta Thunberg.

That really is breathtaking in its meanness. One can only conclude that, apart from Trump being outraged about someone telling him to listen to the science on global heating, it’s about the attention. Any year that Trump is not Time magazine person of the year, he is shocked and affronted, it seems. So the fact that a kid, the youngest Time person of the year ever, made the cover this year and it’s a darn girl from Sweden telling him what to do, well that’s beyond the pale.

She’s a teenager. She’s a girl. She’s Swedish. She’s not stupid. She’s not ignorant. She’s not a Trump fan. So many reasons for him to hate her and try to attack her. I say “try” on purpose, because in reality all he does is make himself look even more of a sadistic clown than he already did.

Stone the crows. Green Party Women on Facebook:

On the day before a general election, Green Party Women are shocked and deeply saddened at the investigation by Fair Play for Women that discloses several Green Party prospective parliamentary candidates using a misogynist slur on public platforms.

Our campaign launch, to ‘Make Misogyny a Hate Crime’, feels very hollow when we cannot set an example within our own party.

This reprehensible behaviour by a handful of candidates does not represent the values of the wider Green Party membership, nor the Party’s core values, and is completely unacceptable. Green Party Women are raising formal complaints against all party members involved.

We will never convince others to reach consensus in the fight against climate change or any issue, with such hostility and poor leadership and judgement. Bullying is NEVER acceptable.

Green Party Women unequivocally condemns the use of misogynist slurs and hate speech against women. We call upon prospective parliamentary candidates of ALL parties to conduct themselves in a civil and respectful manner during the election campaign, and beyond.

Lots of comments defending the practice of calling women ‘TERFs” though.

The bit of Twitter that I see is not impressed with Owen Jones this morning.

Just two of many.

OJ’s tweet:

The Washington Post makes an important point:

Our research finds that Trump has attracted a disproportionate (and unprecedented) number of ‘low-information voters’ to his campaign. Furthermore, these voters are more likely to respond to emotional appeals — whether about the economy, immigration, Muslims, racial relations, sexism, and even hostility to the first African American U.S. president, Barack Obama. They are the ideal constituency for a candidate like Trump.

We define low-information voters as those who do not know certain basic facts about government and lack what psychologists call a ‘need for cognition.’ Those with a high need for cognition have a positive attitude toward tasks that require reasoning and effortful thinking and are, therefore, more likely to invest the time and resources to do so when evaluating complex issues. Those with a low need for cognition, on the other hand, find little reward in the collection and evaluation of new information when it comes to problem solving and the consideration of competing issue positions. They are more likely to rely on cognitive shortcuts, such as ‘experts’ or other opinion leaders, for cues.”

Well, not so much experts and opinion leaders, more just Fox News.

More on the AA Doesn’t Work story:

Wood was working as a registered nurse on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside when he was diagnosed with substance use disorder after a psychotic break in the fall of 2013.

His professional college was informed, along with his union and Vancouver Coastal Health, his employer at the time.

He was referred to a doctor specializing in addictions, who created a plan that Wood would need to follow if he wanted to return to work. AA was a mandatory component.

As an atheist, Wood suggested alternatives to the 12-step program, including secular support groups like SMART Recovery and LifeRing Secular Recovery, but his doctor rejected them, according to emails Wood provided to CBC News.

He also asked to see a new doctor but the union told him nope, it’s 12 steps or nothing.

The AA meetings didn’t help, Wood said, and he lost his job as well as his registration as a nurse when he stopped going.

Since then, he’s been fighting to get his job back while dealing with his addictions using a drug called naltrexone, which blocks the intoxicating effects of alcohol and opiates. He says he is healthy and no longer meets the criteria for substance use disorder.

Better living through chemistry, that’s what I say.

While many people say AA has been instrumental in their recovery from addiction, scientists have long questioned the overall effectiveness of the program, and say choice in treatment plans is key to recovery.

Wood’s complaint to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal was bolstered by letters of support from scientists, doctors, psychotherapists, lawyers, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, the B.C. Humanist Association, and the Centre for Inquiry Canada, an Ontario-based humanist charity.

Good.