Interesting. Rukmini Callimachi is a correspondent for The New York Times covering ISIS & al-Qaeda and an analyst for NBC and MSNBC.
So, naturally…
Go
Jan 3rd, 2020 5:02 pm | By Ophelia BensonPeople in south-east Australia are being told to evacuate.
Authorities in Australia have urged tens of thousands of people to move to safety amid concerns that bushfires will burn out of control this weekend.
“If you don’t need to be in the area, you need to leave,” warned New South Wales (NSW) Premier Gladys Berejiklian.
Temperatures are expected to soar above 40C (104F) in parts of south-east Australia on Saturday, with strong winds increasing the fire danger.
…
NSW Rural Fire Service deputy commissioner Rob Rogers warned that fires could move “frighteningly” quickly on Saturday because of the extreme weather conditions.
…
Meteorologists have forecast extreme heat and strong winds in fire-affected areas in south-east Australia on Saturday.
Some of the fires could merge.
Women plus
Jan 3rd, 2020 4:28 pm | By Ophelia BensonI see this from Maya:
So I investigate. The British Library is having an exhibition April 24-August 23 2020 on women’s rights. Unfinished Business, it’s called.
Image: Designed by Shakila Taranum Maan for Southall Black Sisters
It starts out well enough.
From bodily autonomy and the right to education, to self-expression and protest, this new exhibition explores how feminist activism in the UK today has its roots in the complex history of women’s rights.
Be inspired by those who paved the way – from Cornelia Sorabji, the first woman to study law at Oxford University, to Hope Powell, the first British woman to gain the highest European football coaching licence. Meet lesser-known Suffragettes such as Sophia Duleep Singh and challengers of recent years such as the No More Page 3 campaign.
But then…
Take to the keyboard and the streets by exploring the work of contemporary activist groups working online and offline today. Get to grips with the causes they fight for, from ending period poverty and securing abortion rights to telling the stories of women and non-binary people of colour.
STOP
What do “non-binary people” have to do with anything? Why can’t women’s rights be about women’s rights any more? Why do we always have to add an extra, as if women are so fucking trivial that we can’t just have our own damn movement for half the god damn population?
If there are women who don’t want to be called women but prefer to go by “non-binary” then good luck to them, but they don’t get to take a chain saw to women’s movements. They can join the movement as women or they can piss off, but they don’t get to change the women’s movement to the women and non-binary people’s movement. Enough with this pandering bullshit.
Might is not will
Jan 3rd, 2020 12:35 pm | By Ophelia BensonTrump in 2011:
Narcissists are big on projection.
The thing that annoys me most about that clip though is the last thing he says – Isn’t it pathetic.
What is “it”? The thing Trump predicts Obama will do. It’s a prediction, it’s about the future, so Trump can’t know it will happen. He couldn’t know that even if his reasons for thinking so (or pretending to think so) were good as opposed to contemptible. It’s now in the past so we know it didn’t happen, so his stupid prediction based on ludicrous and disgusting assumptions was a bad wrong prediction, but even if it had been a good one, you can’t exclaim “Isn’t it pathetic!” about an action you predict will happen. You need the conditional tense for that, not the future.
That’s not a merely grammatical or aesthetic point, it’s fundamental – it’s about being able to keep track of what you know and what you don’t, what you can know and what you can’t, of reality itself. What is really pathetic is Trump’s apparent conviction that his thoughts are so powerful that his mere venomous prediction about Obama can create a future fact that he then gets to call pathetic.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself
Jan 3rd, 2020 11:57 am | By Ophelia BensonAndy Lewis on what the trans “movement” has done to skepticism:
So, Rebecca Watson of @skepchicks has produced a video calling JK Rowling a ‘bigoted fuckface’. She comes to this conclusion because the Harry Potter author defended Maya Forstater after Maya lost an employment tribunal over her beliefs that sex is binary and immutable.
Don’t go thinking that’s hyperbole. I haven’t watched the video because I value my sanity, but I skimmed the transcript, and “bigoted fuckface” is right there at the beginning.
JK Rowling, who you may know as the author of the theory that wizards don’t need indoor plumbing because they can just shit on the floor and then magic it away, has finally, officially come out as a TERF — aka a trans-exclusionary radical feminist, which is literally just an accurate description of what a TERF believes but apparently they think “TERF” is a slur so I will use a less-loaded term for this video: bigoted fuckface.
Pause for laughter that doesn’t occur.
Back to Andy:
Rebecca is quite happy to use slurs to demonise Rowling & Maya because they disagree with her on science. (The mispronunciation is also unforgivable.) But let’s play Rebecca with a straight bat & address her thoughts on the science of sex to see if her views are justified.
He does a science of sex explainer, the upshot of which is that male and female are not some wack new idea.
Sex arises from the fact that we are evolved sexually reproducing organisms. Sex evolved deep in life’s history and has remained remarkably conserved – although there are many sex determination mechanisms in organisms.
…
To suggest that there are more than two sexes, or even more extreme, that somehow sex forms a continuum, a distribution or a spectrum is completely incompatible with this view of life and sexual reproduction. (The idea that ‘sex is a spectrum’ is a core part of the credo of gender ideology.)
So, how does Rebecca attempt this?
In short, she does not. She nods her head to the complexity of sex development, but makes no attempt to suggest there is anything other than two sexes. It is almost as if she does not want you to see lack of rebuttal after just complaining the XX/XY mechanism is ‘too simplistic’.
There is a referenced blog post though on why we should “Stop Using Phony Science to Justify Transphobia.” Like many blog posts in this genre, it makes a number of basic errors.
But but but it was a Scientific American blog post, so how can it be wrong? Scientific American is always right! Except for those think pieces by Michael Shermer, of course…oh look, a squirrel.
Rebecca goes on to a rhetorical trick though to appeal to the ‘diversity of humanity’. She claims that “male” or “female” are just a “shorthand” and that it “simply isn’t enough to account for the diverse array of beautiful human bodies in the world, and it’s anti-scientific to pretend as though it is.”
No justification is given for this & it is another straw-man, since no one is claiming there is not a wide range of variation within people. Even sex characteristics can exist on a wide distribution of scale. Size can vary.
The truth is rather banal – your sex is just one fact about you. An immutable fact. And there are many facts about you that make up the Whole You and “the diverse array of beautiful human bodies in the world”.
…
The core of Maya Forstater’s beliefs in her court case were that sex was a binary and sex was immutable. Despite lots of angry words and invective The @skepchicks have failed to show that this is not true and have instead invoked straw man arguments and thinking errors.
Which is not very…skep.
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”
This was the defining message of Richard Feynman’s address to graduating students of CalTech in 1974.
Feynman was describing the difference between having a scientific outlook in life and being fooled by false beliefs – no matter how much those beliefs were shared by those around you and how much effort you put into living by those beliefs.
A lesson Feynman was called on to reiterate to the honchos at NASA who ignored what the engineers were telling them about the O-rings and cold temperatures, and so insisted the Challenger launch go ahead despite the engineers. An O-ring did indeed fail.
As Feynman said, “So I call these things Cargo Cult Science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential, because the planes don’t land.”
I can’t help thinking we are seeing a lot of Cargo Cult Scepticism too right now about how we understand the nature of sex and gender. Worse, I think we are seeing Cargo Cult Progressiveness.
…
The ideology of gender is one massive ‘just so’ story.
It starts off with the required conclusions such as ‘transwomen are women’ and then works backwards. What must be true for this to be true? One thing that must be true is that our conceptualisation of biological sex must be wrong.
Women cannot be female. Males and females must be mutable and blurred in distinction. All scientific facts must then be shoehorned into this outcome.
But @skepchicks are part of a noble movement that questions authority and relies completely on science to get to the bottom of societies core beliefs!
The problem is that this is easy when it comes to homeopathy and ghosts and gods and vaccine injuries.
But there is a Cargo Cult Progressiveness now that insists you accept without question the New Progressive Movement of Gender. To question any aspect of this will result in instant excommunication. The social cost is high.
And it would [look] like the (almost) entire US skeptical movement has decided to fool itself rather than be on the wrong side of this social movement. The cost to anyone is too high to question it.
We see defenders of evolution such as @pzmyers reacting like the worst frothing mouth evangelical preacher when asked to defend the idea that women can have penises.
One would have thought that Myers would have taken the opportunity to use this as a quirky way to explain how evolution works and ends up with counterintuitive results. But no. Shouting and screaming instead.
…
We appear to have ended up with Cargo Cult Scepticism where all that is left is just the precepts and forms of debate but none of the challenging, debate, evidence gathering and – most importantly – thought.
Slogans and epithets instead of thought.
Blocking is the tool of the Cargo Cult Scepticism crowd. Blog posts the sources of evidence – not the primary literature. Denouncing heretics is the cry rather than questioning and discussion.
We are now at a place where scepticism is an Identity and not a set of tools. It is about belonging to the right crowd – ‘on the right side of history’. It is no longer about informing policy and social ideas with well founded science based on robust evidence.
Maybe it was always like this. Maybe it was always just about screaming at homeopaths. But this is not good enough.
In fact, it’s downright bad.
Unanswerable
Jan 3rd, 2020 11:06 am | By Ophelia BensonBut, hey, we’re in good hands. Serious, responsible, thoughtful, grown up.
Wagging
Jan 3rd, 2020 10:31 am | By Ophelia BensonTrump’s cunning plan to avoid impeachment? Or just the normal reckless aggression and urge to smash everything not-self?
George Packer asks some questions:
But the main question about the strike isn’t moral or even legal—it’s strategic. Soleimani was a supremely powerful leader of a state apparatus, with his own cult of personality, but he was not a terror kingpin. His death doesn’t decapitate anything. He had the blood of tens of thousands of people—overwhelmingly fellow Muslims—on his hands, but he was only the agent of a government policy that preceded him and will continue without him. His deeds are beside the point; so is the display of American resolve. The only reason to kill Soleimani is to enter a new war that the United States can win.
What would that war look like? How will Iran fight it? How will the U.S. respond? What credible allies will we have, after Trump’s trashing of the nuclear deal thoroughly alienated Europe? Who will believe any intelligence about Iran’s actions and intentions from an administration that can’t function without telling lies? How will American officials deliberate when Trump has gotten rid of his experts and turned his government into a tool of personal power? What is the point of having a Congress if it has no say about a new American war?
And many more questions.
There’s no sign that anyone in power, least of all the president, has even asked these questions, let alone knows how to answer them. No one seems to have thought past the action itself. The initial statements from the administration have been alarmingly ludicrous. “This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans,” the Defense Department announced afterward. “The world is a much safer place today,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo intoned, sounding like the Minister of Truth. “I can assure you that Americans in the region are much safer.”
Mike Pompeo can’t assure me it’s January 3, because he’s Mike Pompeo. There’s a cost to having an administration packed with criminals and incompetents.
The outlook is grim.
The role of a social worker is not to please bullying adults
Jan 2nd, 2020 5:59 pm | By Ophelia BensonTalk about real world consequences.
Needs and wants: discuss
Jan 2nd, 2020 5:32 pm | By Ophelia BensonRachel Veronica has the new year spirit.
Again – so sloppy for a philosopher.
Who is “you”?
Why is a generalized population supposed to care what Rachel Veronica needs?
What business is it of Rachel Veronica’s what a generalized population is willing to do?
What are transphobes?
What business is it of Rachel Veronica’s what friends other people have?
What benefit of the doubt is he talking about?
And the last item is just classic male bullying.
All in all pretty gruesome for a working tenured philosopher.
In redacted form until now
Jan 2nd, 2020 12:47 pm | By Ophelia BensonKate Brannen has a long and hair-raising explanation of exactly what happened between the White House and the Pentagon during the struggle over getting the Congressionally approved funding for Ukraine released.
The basic story: the Pentagon tried like hell to get the OMB to release the money and the OMB refused and also blew smoke about what it was doing, and the Justice Department redacted the most damning evidence, not for reasons of national security or national anything else but to cover Trump’s ass.
Lemme repeat that.
The Justice Department redacted the most damning evidence not for reasons of national security or national anything else but to cover Trump’s ass.
“Clear direction from POTUS to continue to hold.”
This is what Michael Duffey, associate director of national security programs at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), told Elaine McCusker, the acting Pentagon comptroller, in an Aug. 30 email, which has only been made available in redacted form until now. It is one of many documents the Trump administration is trying to keep from the public, despite congressional oversight efforts and court orders in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation.
The Trump administration is trying to hide this from us because it is so incriminating. That’s all. There’s nothing cleaner or less incriminating to say about it, it’s just Trump’s filthy enablers doing his filthy work.
Congress passed the aid overwhelmingly, Republicans as well as Democrats. Trump put a hold on it to extort Ukraine. The Pentagon kept trying to get it released, the trumpers kept refusing to release it, and the DoJ tried to cover the whole thing up. It’s filthy.
Last month, a court ordered the government to release almost 300 pages of emails to the Center for Public Integrity in response to a FOIA lawsuit. It released a first batch on Dec. 12, and then a second installment on Dec. 20, including Duffey’s email, but that document, along with several others, were partially or completely blacked out.
Blacked out because they incriminate Trump. Hey, isn’t there an election coming up? Don’t we need to know what Trump has been doing (barring national security secrets) to make an informed choice? Is it cool for Trump to hide information that makes him look criminally indifferent to anything but his own desire to damage a rival? Is it cool for Trump to use the powers of the office we need to kick him out of, to hide information that would get him kicked out of it?
The punchline at the end is that the Trump stooge told the Pentagon the hold was all their fault.
Duffey, adding OMB and Pentagon lawyers to the recipients list, and in a formal and lengthy letter that was quite different from the way he’d addressed McCusker all summer, chastised her and the Defense Department for dropping the ball, saying that if and when the hold is lifted, and DOD finds itself unable to obligate the funding, it would be DOD’s fault.
“As you know, the President wanted a policy process run to determine the best use of these funds, and he specifically mentioned this to the SecDef the previous week. OMB developed a footnote authorizing DoD to proceed with all processes necessary to obligate funds. If you have not taken these steps, that is contrary to OMB’s direction and was your decision not to proceed. If you are unable to obligate the funds, it will have been DoD’s decision that cause any impoundment of funds.”
Essentially: You guys screwed up. Not us.
McCusker responded:
“You can’t be serious. I am speechless.”
It’s how they roll.
Reasoned?
Jan 2nd, 2020 10:24 am | By Ophelia BensonThe unpleasant Dawn formerly Don Ennis, managing editor of OutSports, posted a New Year’s message to TERFS, starting with admitting he was name-calling.
The subhead tells us what to think in advance.
Outsports Managing Editor Dawn Ennis offers this reasoned response to hateful messages targeting trans women athletes and all transgender people.
We’ll decide for ourselves whether it’s reasoned or not, thanks. Talk of “hateful messages” and “targeting” in the subhead is not a good start if you want us to think the response is “reasoned.”
Dear TERFs, anti-trans activists and transphobes:
Again: not a good start.
It’s a new year, and I’m using this occasion to address you directly.
I know, you’re not keen on being called “TERFs” or any of those other names, or “labels,” as you call them; Which is odd since you seem to have absolutely no problem labeling me and people like me “transgender,” “trans” and “biological male.”
Yes, that’s a really bad start. Cheerily agreeing that you’re calling us by pejoratives that we reject is not a good start. Adding “but you started it!” is not a good start. Treating “transgender,” “trans,” and “biological male” as all one category is not a good start.
For the record, the label I choose for myself is “woman.”
For what record? At any rate, choosing a label for oneself is one thing and trying to force the entire world to adopt your chosen label is very much another.
We get that you call yourself a woman. That doesn’t mean we have to agree that you are one. Donald Trump could call himself a Guatemalan child separated from her asylum-seeking mother by ICE, but that wouldn’t make it true. Labels do not make reality. Assertion is not a magical power to make something true. Just saying is just saying.
Anybody can choose any label, but there are plenty of situations in which doing so can lead to a quarrel or an arrest. Fraud is a crime, and it’s not unknown for people to perpetrate fraud by labeling themselves something they’re not. We can choose the label “doctor” but if we start taking patients without the requisite training, we can get ourselves in big trouble.
Then he says yes yes I’m transgender but you care about that more than I do.
So, as a gesture of goodwill, for the rest of this post, I will refrain from using words that might provoke further animosity. Provocation is not why I’m reaching out.
Oreally? Then why start with the provocation and then agree that it’s provocation?
Zero for rhetorical skill, here. Take the class again.
The rest of the letter is too boring to deal with.
110 fires
Jan 1st, 2020 4:57 pm | By Ophelia BensonMore.
Tens of thousands of people are fleeing NSW’s south coast, where a ‘humanitarian crisis’ is developing. In many towns there’s no fuel, no food and no power, as dangerous bushfire conditions are tipped to kick in on Saturday.
It’s all about friendship
Jan 1st, 2020 4:31 pm | By Ophelia BensonOh about that North Korea thing…
Q Mr. President, can you — what is your message tonight for — what is your message tonight for North Korea?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we’ll see. I have a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un. I know he’s sending out certain messages about Christmas presents, and I hope his Christmas present is a beautiful vase. That’s what I’d like — a vase —
Cute. I love it when he makes jokes about nuclear war.
Q Do you think it will be, sir?
THE PRESIDENT: — as opposed to something else. I don’t know. I — look, he likes me; I like him. We get along. He’s representing his country. I’m representing my country. We have to do what we have to do.
Yes, sure, that’s what it’s about, whether or not he “likes” you, as if this were high school.
But he did sign a contract. He did sign an agreement, talking about denuclearization. And that was signed. Number-one sentence: denuclearization. That was done in Singapore. And I think he’s a man of his word. So we’re going to find out, but I think he’s a man of his word.
Yes, certainly. Thank god it’s all that simple.
Energized
Jan 1st, 2020 3:49 pm | By Ophelia BensonIn case you were feeling any impulse to think Princess Ivanka isn’t as bad as her rotting-from-the-head father, watching this will cure you.
All they could have been getting done were it not for the impeachment.
The escalating bushfires threaten to trap them
Jan 1st, 2020 3:15 pm | By Ophelia BensonYesterday the Sydney Morning Herald reported on the danger of being trapped by fires on the coast.
Thousands of holidaymakers between Ulladulla and Culburra Beach including Jervis Bay on the NSW South Coast have been warned that the escalating bushfires threaten to trap them.
NSW Rural Fire Service is warning that spot fires from stray embers could impact the Broulee and Batemans Bay regions further south. Following intensifying bushfires overnight, on Tuesday the Princes Highway was closed in multiple locations. The Kings Highway has already been closed for sometime.
When Paradise California burned up there were, I think, only three roads out. They were choked with traffic and then engulfed in flames. People died in their cars.
In Mallacoota, Victoria – where thousands fled to the beach on Tuesday – police boats arrived with 1.6 tonnes of water for residents. They also brought food, a paramedic and medical supplies. At the same time, police warned people in Sunbury, Victoria – about 40km (25 miles) north-west of Melbourne – to leave the area, as an emergency fire warning was in place.
The NSW fire service says get out while you can.
“You need to leave before Saturday” – that’s stark enough.
In Mallacoota, many people spent the night sleeping in their cars or on deckchairs. Victoria Emergency Commissioner Andrew Crisp said – as well as the police vessels – “a large barge” was sailing from Melbourne to the town with food, water and 30,000 litres of fuel. In Cann River, a town about 80km (50 miles) inland from Mallacoota, residents warned that food supplies were running low. Further north in Ulladulla, New South Wales, people were queuing outside supermarkets – while cuts to mobile networks and landlines meant people also waited to use payphones. The military said amphibious ships were setting off from Sydney and would arrive in fire-hit coastal areas of New South Wales and Victoria by Friday.
The effort to rescue thousands of people stuck in isolated towns in Victoria’s fire-ravaged east has started. The military arrived in East Gippsland on Wednesday and Black Hawk helicopters are helping to get evacuees off of the Mallacoota beach. “Our focus today is we’ve got 4000 people in and around the beach there at Mallacoota and we’re working with the [Australian Defence Force] and all the authorities, Victoria Police, SES, all the agencies are working together and our primary effort is to get those people out of Mallacoota,” CFA chief officer Steve Warrington told ABC News.
This isn’t the future, this is now.
Behold the majestic smoke-filled valleys
Jan 1st, 2020 2:43 pm | By Ophelia BensonA climate scientist visiting the Blue Mountains in New South Wales points out that climate change is here and this is it.
I did not see vast expanses of rainforest framed by distant blue-tinged mountain ranges. Instead I looked out into smoke-filled valleys, with only the faintest ghosts of distant ridges and peaks in the background. The iconic blue tint (which derives from a haze formed from “terpenes” emitted by the Eucalyptus trees that are so plentiful here) was replaced by a brown haze. The blue sky, too, had been replaced by that brown haze.
Been there – not the Blue Mountains, but the blue mountains turned brown experience. Summer 2018 here on the western edge of the US: wildfires—>heavy smoke for weeks. The sky was brown, the mountains were brown, everything was brown.
The brown skies I observed in the Blue Mountains this week are a product of human-caused climate change. Take record heat, combine it with unprecedented drought in already dry regions and you get unprecedented bushfires like the ones engulfing the Blue Mountains and spreading across the continent. It’s not complicated.
…
The continent of Australia is figuratively – and in some sense literally – on fire.
Yet the prime minister, Scott Morrison, appears remarkably indifferent to the climate emergency Australia is suffering through, having chosen to vacation in Hawaii as Australians are left to contend with unprecedented heat and bushfires.
Morrison has shown himself to be beholden to coal interests and his administration is considered to have conspired with a small number of petrostates to sabotage the recent UN climate conference in Madrid (“COP25”), seen as a last ditch effort to keep planetary warming below a level (1.5C) considered by many to constitute “dangerous” planetary warming.
Hey, which is more important, the survival of the whole planet or the short-term enrichment of people in oil and coal businesses? Be reasonable.
Women are to be colonised, erased, silenced and put at risk
Jan 1st, 2020 12:27 pm | By Ophelia BensonGraham Linehan on JK Rowling and The Outrage:
The response to Rowling’s statement demonstrates what women with less power, but just as much compassion and sense, have been trying to tell us for a number of years. Namely, that gender ideology is bad for women. That it erases them and insults them and endangers them, and when they dare to discuss this issue—and ONLY this issue—they are subject to disproportionately severe penalties. Maya Forstater lost her job, remember.
…
Rowling chose her words carefully. The first four sentences are almost an apology for speaking out at all, because she knows how her support for Maya will be received. She front loads the statement with mollifying phrases to protect her central point, which is inarguable.
But as these women know, and the response to the tweet proves, it’s never enough. Women are to be colonised, erased, silenced and put at risk, and if they protest in any way, even in the most careful and civil terms, they are putting their faces to a blowtorch.
It’s never enough, and it’s never over. The demands keep ratcheting up and up and ever up. Five years ago we weren’t being told that we had to rejoice when men who claim to be women started stealing athletic prizes from women, but we are now. What will the demands be this year, and five years from now? What will be grabbed away from women amid a torrent of threats and abuse next?
The current fashion amongst celebrities who like being invited to parties is to dismiss and deride the women who dare step up. Men like Jon Ronson, Jolyon Maugham, Michael Cashman and Owen Jones, and women like Dawn Butler, Mhairi Black and Alice Roberts, the Professor of Public Engagement in Science who blocks everyone, have all been disappointing.
The most ironic thing about trans activists is that they are depending on women to act according to their gender ‘role’; to be nice, to budge up, to quietly accept the destruction of their sports, their safe spaces and even the language they use to describe themselves.
And! And! The men are acting according to their gender “role” happily, eagerly, with vindictive joy: entitled, intrusive, domineering, seething with hatred of women.
So if 2020 is the year you decide to step in to this debate, to risk the blowtorch to the face, remember the lessons of the Rowling tweet.
If no amount of capitulation is enough, why capitulate at all? Stand firm, speak out and let’s begin the process of winning back what has already been lost.
It’s the truth. No surrender ever is enough in this dispute, so why bother?
Because
Jan 1st, 2020 8:24 am | By Ophelia BensonDawn Ennis, trans woman and Managing Editor of http://Outsports.com, explains why trans woman CeCé Telfer was such a slam dunk choice for athlete of the year:
They chose a man who “identifies as” a woman as female athlete of the year because it’s such an excellent poke in the eye to all female athletes, and because they’re all about the male entitlement, and because they like taking away the few prizes women are eligible for, and because they’re malicious shits.
