The House Intelligence Committee has released the whistleblower complaint.

Today, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released the declassified whistleblower complaint. The complaint can be viewed here, and the Intelligence Community Inspector General letter regarding the complaint can be viewed here.

Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) made the following statement:

“The Committee this morning will be releasing the declassified whistleblower complaint that it received late last night from the ODNI. It is a travesty that it was held up this long.

“This complaint should never have been withheld from Congress. It exposed serious wrongdoing, and was found both urgent and credible by the Inspector General.

“This complaint is a roadmap for our investigation, and provides significant information for the Committee to follow up on with other witnesses and documents. And it is corroborated by the call record released yesterday.

“I want to thank the whistleblower for having the courage to come forward, despite the reprisals they have already faced from the president and his acolytes. We will do everything in our power to protect this whistleblower, and every whistleblower, who comes forward.

“The public has a right to see the complaint and what it reveals.”

I just read it (skipping the footnotes until later) and I’m duly gobsmacked. It wasn’t just Trump flailing around being random, it was a systematic effort over many months. They tried to get rid of all records of that phone call, by stashing them in a system that’s reserved for classified information (which isn’t normally interpreted to mean “the president’s dirty secrets”).

It’s gruesome.

Uh oh, McKinnon is cheating again.

IOC Charter, 4th Fundamental Principle of Olympian: “Participation in sport is a human right.”

You’re wrong. #sorrynotsorry

#factsdontcareaboutyourfeelings

He said it in reply to a tweet that said “I don’t think competing in sport is a human right. Sorry.”

Claim: “I don’t think competing in sport is a human right.”

Counter-claim: “The IOC Charter says ‘Participation in sport is a human right.'”

Where’s the cheating? In the fact that participation is not the same as competing.

That’s especially true of sports/activities like cycling that can be enjoyed perfectly well without other people. Team sports are little fun by oneself; sports like running, cycling, archery, swimming can be plenty of fun by oneself.

That’s the cheating. The silly is treating the IOC as a disinterested source of absolute truth about whether or not sport is a human right. The IOC has an interest in promoting sport, and that might possibly color its interpretation of whether or not it’s a human right. The second silly is treating a random body saying “[participation in] sport is a human right” makes it true. The IOC said it, but the IOC is not a human rights organization or a legislature. McKinnon is all but in “because my dad said so!” territory here. “The IOC thinks it is” would have been a slightly less fatuous response.

McKinnon is remarkably sloppy for someone who teaches philosophy.

Also: the oceans:

As the world’s climate changes, ocean warming is accelerating and sea levels are rising more quickly, warns a new report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The report is a synthesis of the most up-to-date climate science on oceans and ice, and it lays out a stark reality: Ocean surface temperatures have been warming steadily since 1970, and for the past 25 years or so, they’ve been warming twice as fast.

Sea levels are also rising increasingly quickly “due to increasing rates of ice loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets,” the report states.

“For me, it’s the complete picture that’s kind of surprising and, frankly, concerning,” says Ko Barrett, vice-chair of the U.N. panel and the deputy assistant administrator for research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the U.S. “This is, in some ways, a report about water. Water is the lifeblood of the planet.”

Also, there are these ocean heat waves.

“It’s sort of remarkable that prior to 2012 [or] 2013, nobody had thought about heat waves in the ocean,” says Andrew Pershing, chief scientific officer at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland, Maine. “And then, in 2012 we had a huge event here in the Northwest Atlantic, and the Gulf of Maine was right at the center of it. It was a real surprise.”

The abnormally hot water affected animals that live off the coast of Maine, including lobster and other creatures that are crucial to the local fishing economy. What’s more, it quickly became clear that the state wasn’t alone.

There was one here in the Pacific Northwest; it’s thought to be why the orcas are struggling.

Marine heat waves in recent years drove a cascade of changes in marine life off the coast of the Pacific Northwest, which in turn led to disastrous seasons for commercial fishermen.

“We had two federally declared fishery disaster seasons in 2016 and 2017,” says Noah Oppenheim, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations. “The disaster seasons that we’ve experienced lately put a lot of fishermen right on the brink.”

Abnormally hot water supported blooms of algae that polluted the Dungeness crab fishery on the West Coast, shutting it down for months. Meanwhile, the so-called blob of hot water off the coast was associated with drought on land, which decimated salmon runs, raised the risk of wildfires and strained water resources inland.

And starved the orcas, which rely on salmon.

And then there are the floods.

Rising water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico have also affected weather in that region. When sea surface temperatures are unusually high, it helps fuel larger, wetter tropical storms. For example, Hurricane Harvey and Tropical Depression Imelda came inland and dropped incredible amounts of rain on Texas in the past two years.

Now if we slashed carbon emissions right now…

Yeah never mind.

Hilariously, the White House sent talking points about the memorandum to Congress, but they sent it to Democrats by mistake. Ooops!

The White House appeared to accidentally send its talking points on the Ukraine call to House Democrats. The talking points encouraged the president’s allies to argue that there was no direct quid pro quo conveyed in the memo and that the whistleblower complaint was handled “by the book.”

After realizing the error, the White House tried to recall the email to House Democrats. At the risk of stating the obvious: it seems a bit late for that.

Yeah there’s no such thing as “recalling” email, White House. That’s not how any of this works.

Sure Tori!

makes busy hand gestures as if recalling something

There you go, all done! Message totally recalled!

I hope they understand how not to launch the nukes better than how not to send their talking points to the Dems.

Derrick Jensen posted this on Facebook and told us to share widely. I’m making it a guest post for ease of reading.

i just got deplatformed here in Crescent City. the left is insane, cult-like, and authoritarian.

i was asked to do a talk as part of the climate strike. i said yes.

i was volunteering my time.

today i got a note from the “Del Norte Climate Justice Alliance” disinviting me.

here is their note.

Dear Derrick and Heather,

We are cancelling your talk this week for the Week For Future Generations. We would like to be transparent about the reason, the room that you would be using is a room used by students of color, trans, and queer students. This is a community gathering and meeting space that is all inclusive. There was new information brought to our attention that might jeopardize the space, values and standard we have created in this inclusive space.

Sincerely,

i responded

this is appalling.

we can’t talk about the murder of the planet?

Congratulations for continuing to destroy free speech in this country.

you should be ashamed of yourselves.

leftists like Mario Savio who once stood for free speech would certainly be ashamed of you.

and don’t rope ‘people of color’ into your excuse. i’ve written extensively about racism.

yes, i disagree with queer theory and transgender ideology because i stand in support of women.

i can provide cogent critiques of both. i would be delighted to debate you or the person of your choice on those issues.

but of course you won’t agree to that, because deep in your gut you know your positions are indefensible. This is a primary reason queer theorists and transactivists _must_ deplatform anyone who disagrees with them, anyone who participates in any form of wrongthink, which big brother says is double-plus-ungood.

have you even read any of my work?

of course not.

Can you point to any place in any of my books where I even mention those issues?

of course not.

you are deplatforming someone whose books you haven’t read, whose books don’t even mention the issues over which you are deplatforming me, who was not going to speak about the issues over which you are deplatforming me.

yes, your position really is that absurd.

you should be utterly ashamed of yourselves.

it might not be a bad idea to remove the name ‘justice’ out of your ‘justice alliance,’ and ‘inclusive’ from your description below, because your use of those words are Orwellian.

Welcome to 1984.

derrick

i then received this note back from the person who first invited me.

I’m replying to you personally.

Yes, we can talk about the murder of the planet. And that’s exactly why we reached out to you. But we cannot risk you diving into your ideologies, the ones steeped in hate of an “other” while you are presenting. I hope you can respect this. We have a transgender teen doing coverage of the event, and I couldn’t imagine him feeling attacked by your views.

You’re right. There are probably many things we don’t agree on. And most of the time I am okay with that…but not when you are given a public platform from which to speak on whatever you want.

This is not about deplatforming you. This is about protecting trans people and making sure any risk of folks feeling threatened is not part of our work.

Climate Justice work is about much more than environmental justice…you know that.

####

The left is completely fucking insane. please broadcast widely. This sort of outrageous behavior needs be recognized for what it is.

McKinnon again, shouting about his human right to compete against women.

Dysphoria Joe introduces him:

“Rachel” McKinnon says he has “human right” to race women because, well, he can’t win against men:

He’s quoting himself, probably because no one else would say something so stupid.

“Who the fuck am I going to race? There’s no other trans woman on my level. By creating a trans only category you’re denying me competition. If sport is a human right then you’re actively excluding me from that right.”

I don’t know why he keeps recycling that claim when it’s so OBVIOUSLY shifty. A right to sport is not a right to formal competition with prizes. The whole point of competitions is that they filter out most aspirants. There’s no “right” to play with Manchester United or the Yankees and there’s no “right” to compete in the Olympics. MacKinnon has the right to cycle his ass off, and to compete with people who want to compete with him, but he has no right to compete against women in official women’s races that are supposed to be for women. If he can’t find anyone else to compete with that’s just too bad – he can still train and cycle and get better and better: that’s his “right to sport.” Nobody is excluding him from that right but he wants to exclude women from competing in women’s races by displacing them.

Trump of course also found it necessary to jeer at Greta Thunberg. He retweeted WIRED:

”People are suffering, people are dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth.” Watch Greta Thunberg speak at the UN Monday morning.

And commented:

She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!

Yes it’s all so hilarious. He’s doing what he can – which is quite a lot – to make the futures of everyone her age bleak and horrible.

Another comment on the Get the L Out post:

This is a wider issue with our police and criminal justice system. This is the Advice & Information page of the Sussex Police website. You will notice that the term sex is almost eradicated and replaced by gender. Even for crimes that largely affect women and girls (Domestic Abuse and Rape), there is not one reference to that fact. See the Hate Crime section and note that, despite sex being one of 9 protected characteristics, the abuse of a person based on their sex is not considered a criminal act. And there you have the core of the issue here….men banging on windows and obstructing women is not a criminal act. If any of those women had misgendered any of those men then she would have been guilty of a crime.
This appears to be a standard police Advice page so this is a nationwide problem. When will sex become a truly protected characteristic?

So I went to the page and found the Hate Crime section and sure enough – very first paragraph:

A hate crime is when someone commits a crime against you because of your disability, gender identity, race, sexual orientation, religion, or any other perceived difference.

So “gender identity” is the second item and “sex” is nowhere – it’s so minor it’s stowed away (aka invisible) under any other perceived difference. Trans people so vulnerable, women meh.

If that really is how they see it then what their minds were telling them about that meeting in Brighton is that the Trans Activist protesters kicking the windows were like Freedom Riders and the women at the meeting inside were like…Bull Connor and his cops.

It doesn’t always include physical violence. Someone using offensive language towards you or harassing you because of who you are, or who they think you are, is also a crime. The same goes for someone posting abusive or offensive messages about you online.

If it happens to you, you might be tempted to shrug it off. But if you tell us, we can investigate and stop it from getting worse – either for you or someone else.

They can, but they don’t – not when it’s women.

Then they spell it out again.

A hate crime is defined as ‘Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a person’s race or perceived race; religion or perceived religion; sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation; disability or perceived disability and any crime motivated by hostility or prejudice against a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender.’

Oh. Um. So…not motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a person’s sex, then?

Can we ask why not?

A hate incident is any incident which the victim, or anyone else, thinks is based on someone’s prejudice towards them because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or because they are transgender.

Why not sex?

Why is sex simply left out?

It’s appalling.

Get the L Out UK:

TRA’s best friends in Brighton = MRA police! #WPUKLab19

A comment:

Never ever seen one police station flying the women’s liberation flag on IWD … yet they fly this baby pink/blue nonsense without reference to the fact it’s making political statement, which is not the police role. It discriminates against all other members of the public. Because they only fly selected flags.

Well we don’t want them flying white supremacy flags or UKIP flags, but still, yes – the zeal for “Trans Pride” from institutions that have never shown much enthusiasm for Black Pride or Female Pride is puzzling and, at this point, alarming.

Another:

This is very serious. If this is the reason why women were not protected yesterday then the police have allowed the public to be endangered on ideological grounds. They don’t get to pick and choose who to protect. We are tax payers too.

If the police have been trained to see feminist women as “TERFs” and “TERFs” as evil monsters, that’s a problem.

H/t Dave Ricks

New in Trump:

Donald Trump ordered his staff to withhold nearly $400m in aid to Ukraine days before he repeatedly pressured the country’s president to investigate a political rival, it emerged on Monday night.

The revelation has further intensified demand among Democrats for the president to be impeached.

As news of Trump’s personal intervention broke, an influential group of seven Democrats, all first-term members of Congress with military or national security backgrounds, said that “if true”, the president’s actions regarding Ukraine, Joe Biden and the former vice-president’s son Hunter would “represent an impeachable offense”.

…

The Washington Post first reported Trump’s freezing of $391m in aid to Ukraine. Trump ordered acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, it said, to suspend the almost $400m payment “at least a week” before the 25 July call with Volodymyr Zelenskiy in which he reportedly asked the Ukrainian leader to investigate the Bidens – eight times, according to the Wall Street Journal.

So that’s how the call went. “Hi Volodymyr – wondering where that $400 million payment went? Yes? Ok here’s what I need you to do if you want to see the money.”

The US began providing military aid to Ukraine shortly after Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014. With Ukraine’s new president still grappling with separatist rebels in the east, the aid has long been viewed as a measure of Washington’s determination to push back against Russian president Vladimir Putin.

So Trump doesn’t want to send the aid in the first place, and the kneecap-Biden motivation is just a luxurious extra.

The police just stood by at the WPUK meeting in Brighton, doing nothing while “activists” kicked the windows and shouted.

The meeting was disrupted by continual loud banging on the windows and chanting, to the point where there was a fear some windows might be broken and the excellent speech by
@rebelyarns was almost drowned out #WPUKLab19

I have never experienced such a level of threat, and I’ve been to a lot of feminist meetings. This was not a peaceful protest, it was an attempt to prevent the meeting going ahead, and it persisted throughout the equally excellent talk from @OnjaliRauf

The response from @sussex_police was inadequate to the point of negligence. Women’s right in law to congregate peacefully was not upheld by the police, who allowed a physically aggressive mob to continue their actions unopposed

It seems like the @sussex_police have been rainbow-washed to the point that the rights of women in Brighton are no longer being upheld and protected by the police. We have no law on our side in this city and we have no women-only services left either

I challenged several police officers on my way out as to why a woman’s right to hold a peaceful meeting was not being enforced by the police in attendance, and I can only report that the response was that they didn’t give a shit

I can also report that the meeting was a huge success and that the mob outside only doubled our resolve to talk and be heard. Brilliant women talked brilliantly. You can never stop us doing that.

Trump still thinks he should get a Nobel Prize…”for a lot of things.”