Open Labour is a group or organization or faction or ______ that aims to make the Labour Party more wonderful. Or something. What they stand for:

We represent Labour’s open Left: a practical, open-minded and tolerant type of democratic socialism. Our ideas and campaigns are based on a simple strategy: creating broad and diverse alliances behind policies which transform society.

We are realistic about public opinion, but we believe that Labour’s democratic left must seek to lead it. This will only happen if our party is vibrant and democratic – if it can include a wide variety of views and groups without intolerance or bigotry keeping members away.

So I guess the rest of Labour is impractical, closed-minded, and intolerant? And they don’t aim to create broad and diverse alliances behind policies which transform society?

I don’t know. It all seems quite vague to me, but I’d never heard of them before. I heard of them just now because they issued a statement on Twitter. It’s not on their website, just on Twitter – I don’t know if that makes it more official or less or if there is no difference.

Sadly, we need to clarify our position around transphobia. Our National Committee have decided unanimously to issue the below statement. pic.twitter.com/c4yAmBREnc

— Open Labour (@OpenLabour) July 29, 2019

The reason it caught my attention, along with the fastidiously prurient denunciation of “one of our committee members,” is the unmarked oddity of the first sentence.

At Open Labour we seek to stand in solidarity with LGBTQ+ people, and with trans people in particular in the struggle for respect and equal rights.

The unmarked oddity is “and with trans people in particular.” Why with trans people in particular? Seriously, why? That’s constantly implied and occasionally spelled out like that but it’s never (that I see) explained. Why are we endlessly told, implicitly or explicitly, that trans people are due particular, extra, emphatic, special solidarity?

If we understood that we would have a better grip on why it’s seen as acceptable and even admirable to single out women for threats and abuse if we fail in this duty to give particular solidarity. We would have a better grip on what they think they mean and why they think it, so then we might be able to make a dent in this idiotic claim.

Of course there is nothing at all in the statement itself that would help with that. It’s pathetic how this whole branch of activism relies on empty slogans endlessly repeated and just utterly fails to ground any of it in comprehensible reasons.

Great. Trump is replacing the Director of National Intelligence (Dan Coats) with a party hack.

President Donald Trump’s just-announced nominee to replace Dan Coats as director of national intelligence had already drawn national attention earlier this week, when he delivered an aggressive diatribe against former special counsel Robert Mueller.

…

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, called Ratcliffe’s questioning of Mueller “demagogic” and said the White House selected him for intelligence director because he “exhibited blind loyalty to President Trump.”

“It’s clear that Rep. Ratcliffe was selected because he exhibited blind loyalty to President Trump with his demagogic questioning of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller,” Schumer said in a press release Sunday. “If Senate Republicans elevate such a partisan player to a position that requires intelligence expertise and non-partisanship, it would be a big mistake.”

They’ll do it.

This is not a good argument.

Imagine for a moment how this allegation would read (and what the reaction would be) if the word "trans" was replaced with the name of any other minority group within our society: https://t.co/F2Dicb7zKC

— Stop Funding Hate (@StopFundingHate) July 28, 2019

It’s not a good argument because, first, any minority group? But that could be rapists, or psychopaths, or serial killers, or greedy landlords who don’t make repairs (hello Jared Kushner!), or members of the KKK. Being part of a minority group doesn’t automatically make people right about everything. And second because the trans lobby is in fact a special case, so swapping in for instance “feminist lobby pressure” wouldn’t do the work Stop Funding Hate wants it to do. The trans lobby does in fact apply fierce pressure to everyone it can reach to accept and echo and flatter the dogma about what it is to be trans.

I’ll quote again a bit from that Guardian piece that I quoted from yesterday:

Evans said that since his resignation he had become concerned that the debate around transitioning had been shut down by a vocal minority. “The mind that is free to think or ask difficult questions is treated as a real threat; TV producers and journalists continually report that while people are willing to speak in confidence to them about their reservations about treatment in these areas, they shy away from being named, for fear of being accused of being bigoted and transphobic and sometimes either disciplined or even sacked for speaking their mind.”

Emphasis added. We know that’s not a foolish or empty fear; we know it happens. We just saw it happen to another blog at Freethought Blogs earlier in the week. We saw it happen to the Vancouver Public Library, told it can’t be part of Pride because it allowed Meghan Murphy to give a talk in its building. We know it happens. The allegation is not a false one.

Guest post by Josh Slocum

Lesbians and gays had to ask, beg, plead, protest, and keep it all up for decades just to get:

• The right not to be fired for being gay
• The right not to be evicted for being gay
• The right to participate in the same tax incentive system that straight married people had

That’s all. That’s all we asked for. Nothing that took from, or imposed on, anyone else.

Trans comes along and is required to do exactly zero work. All they have to do is be a straight man in a wig and scream that they’re oppressed, and instantly laws are changed to make women’s space their legal property.

This is fucking obscene.

Even the Guardian has started to notice.

School counsellors and mental health service providers are bowing to pressures from ‘highly politicised’ transgender groups to affirm children’s beliefs that they were born the wrong sex, a leading expert has warned.

Marcus Evans, a psychotherapist and ex-governor of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, whose Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) is the only NHS clinic to provide gender counselling and transitioning, said many experts were living in fear of being labelled transphobic, which was having an impact on their objectivity.

Because it’s not just a matter of “being labelled transphobic” and then walk away – it’s a matter of being labelled transphobic and then being shunned and demonized and berated on social media, of losing friends and publication opportunities and even jobs, of being treated as a thousand times more evil and harmful than even Donald Trump or Boris Johnson.

The number of children referred annually to GIDS has risen from 468 in 2013 to 2,519 in 2018. Some claim social media is a factor in the increase.

Ya think?

Evans said that since his resignation he had become concerned that the debate around transitioning had been shut down by a vocal minority. “The mind that is free to think or ask difficult questions is treated as a real threat; TV producers and journalists continually report that while people are willing to speak in confidence to them about their reservations about treatment in these areas, they shy away from being named, for fear of being accused of being bigoted and transphobic and sometimes either disciplined or even sacked for speaking their mind.”

Because it happens. We’ve watched it happen. We’ve watched it happen many many times by now.

Since his high-profile resignation, Evans’s concerns have broadened as parents approach him for advice about their children.

“They confirm that a gender-affirmative approach is being adopted by many school counsellors and CAMHS (Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services),” Evans notes.

“These parents all expressed alarm that, after their children suddenly announced they believed they were the wrong sex, practitioners were immediately endorsing the belief that this was the cause of the child’s distress, rather than offering time to explore perhaps long-standing psychological/developmental issues.”

Satanic panic all over again.

Powerful.

President Trump tweeted that Rep. Elijah Cummings’ district is a “rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live.”

It’s @VictorBlackwell’s home district.

“When he tweets about infestation, it's about black and brown people,” Blackwell says. pic.twitter.com/YFCvPCFhFk

— CNN News Central (@NewsCentralCNN) July 27, 2019

Wait, what?

The Scotsman reports on payments from the US State Department to Donald Trump’s golf resort in Scotland. So far so corrupt and so familiar. But there’s an extra twist.

Last summer, The Scotsman, detailed a series of payments made by the State Department to SLC Turnberry Limited.

The first, for $10,113 (£8,112), was approved on 5 April 2018, followed by $39,602 (£31,768) and $30,074 (£24,125) on 10 and 11 July respectively.

The latter two payments were for hotel accommodation for Mr Trump and key members of his administration. The president was photographed playing two rounds of golf during his two night stay at Turnberry, part of his visit to the UK.

It is understood the April payment related to a visit to Turnberry by Eric Trump. the executive vice president of development and acquisitions at the Trump Organisation.

By Eric Trump? What does that have to do with the State Department? State shouldn’t be pouring money into Trump’s businesses anyway, but the usual scam is for them to book half the administration into Trump hotels while on official business. But Eric Trump is in no way part of the administration, so why are his bills being added to the tab? It’s second-level graft.

The Scotsman doesn’t explain.

Rex Murphy wonders where the Canadian reporting is.

From my perspective the core of the story is not Yaniv, who, from what I have read, presents as opportunistic, cruel and delusionally self-entitled, who manipulates the ever-changing fixations of identity and gender politics for (a) notoriety, (b) possible gain, and (c) some delight in pushing and insulting hard-up people, especially Asians and newcomers (see last week’s column) as a very questionable personal amusement.

Where is this yarn — outside the National Post and Toronto Sun — in the large media of this country? CTV, CBC, The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star? Silence. (The Post Millennial has covered the story, as has Blaire White, herself a transgender woman — she posted her work on YouTube.)

He then says the tv networks are too busy reporting on Trump, which I think is nonsense.

Is it not Canadian news that the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal is giving this apparently aggressive and eagerly litigious person such specialized and respectful attention? At the same time as 16 women are going through what must be to them a frightening, perplexing and tormenting legal grinder? Why are the Canadian media not at least reporting on what they are going through?

Is it simply because even the word “transgender” is kryptonite to the brave media who are always otherwise anxious to write and broadcast “truth to power”? The silent passing over of this story is journalistic cowardice, the fear of offending the passing pieties of militant progressivism.

There are competing pieties here though. Normally militant progressivism is quick to stand with persecuted immigrants, and rightly so, but for some reason one narcissist’s claimed transitude is more piety-worthy than 16 persecuted immigrants women.

Did the tribunal’s members think maybe if 16 — 16! — women unanimously turned Yaniv down, the problem was more likely with the would-be customer, not the provider? Did they consider the upheaval in their lives as solemnly as they presided over this transparently noxious, trivial, illogical and indulgent complaint?

In my column last week, I lamented the Tribunal’s lack of common sense. This week I ask where’s their sense of human sympathy, compassion for the newcomer — and to use one of their most-beloved terms, for the marginalized? The woman from Brazil has lost her income while Yaniv enjoys the publicity.

He’s not wrong. I suspect I disagree with him on most things, but he’s not wrong on this one.

Ahhhhhhhh shut up.

Arwa Mahdawi at the Guardian on The Yaniv Question:

The answer to that is clearly “no”, right? If a female beautician has only been trained to wax female genitalia and only wants to offer these services to women then that should be her prerogative. But, hang on a minute, what if the person who wants their intimate areas to be waxed is a woman with male genitalia? What happens then?

Nothing happens then, because there is no such thing. Women don’t have male genitalia. The question would be “what if the person who wants their intimate areas to be waxed is a man who says he is a woman?”

Then Mahdawi gets down to the serious business of poisoning the well.

While the Yaniv case has been going on for a while now, you may not have heard much about it, as it has largely been covered by the rightwing press. The sort of outlets that normally joke about consent and women’s rights are now outraged that women are being forced to handle male genitalia against their will. The sort of writers that are normally whipping up hate against immigrants are now outraged and concerned that at least one of the beautificians that Yaniv has filed complaints against is a poor migrant. In short there has been a hell of a lot of bad faith and transphobia involved in the reporting around the case.

To put it another way, the leftwing and mainstream press has shamefully failed to cover this story because hey it’s only women being bullied out of their jobs and into a lawsuit.

The press has looked away, but lefty feminist women on social media have not.

A number of the world’s worst people have used the story as an example of “political correctness gone mad” and as a way to stoke hatred against trans people.

The world’s worst people? Seriously??

Sometimes the brainwashing cleans everything away.

I do like a headline that begins with “Scrotum waxing human rights complainant”…

The Toronto Sun on an encounter yesterday between a citizen journalist and J. Yaniv:

Groin waxing human rights complainant and transwoman Jessica Yaniv and her mother got in a heated verbal argument with a citizen journalist at a courthouse in downtown Vancouver on Friday.

“I was there to support these ladies who have the law being used against them in such a ridiculous way,” Dan Dicks told the Sun. “So I was just going to politely ask (Yaniv) a few questions.”

But Yaniv wasn’t having it.

“He called the police, he threatened to pepper spray me, he pulled the alarm in the elevator,” Dicks said of Yaniv.

https://twitter.com/DanDicksPFT/status/1154779615346302976

Notice with what speed he jumps out of that scooter.

Yaniv also asked to be escorted by security and have Dicks removed from the courtroom, both requests were denied.

Will his scrotum ever be hairless and silky smooth? Tune in again tomorrow for more As the Wax Melts.

Trump blames Obama for the air conditioning.

Trump offered the new gripe about his predecessor as he explained in the Oval Office Friday why he’ll be spending some time at his New Jersey resort in August.

The president says “it’s never a vacation” when he goes to Bedminster, New Jersey, and that he would rather be at the White House.

He says that some of his time away from the White House gives crews time to do maintenance work.

He says, for example, “The Obama administration worked out a brand new air conditioning system for the West Wing. It was so good before they did the system. Now that they did this system, it’s freezing or hot.”

How would he know what the system was like before? It’s not as if they had him over for lunch every day.

Also he’s pretending to think Obama is as crooked as he is.

“We want to find out what happened with the last Democrat president,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, for no apparent reason. “Let’s look into Obama the way they have looked at me from day one. They looked into everything that we’ve done. They could look into the book deal that President Obama made. Let’s subpoena all of his records.”

Trump floats investigating Obama's book deal pic.twitter.com/N1ILGaqmjg

— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) July 26, 2019

Yes, it’s an outrage, both Obamas actually know how to write. Isn’t that unAmerican?

Another libel case bites the dust:

A federal judge has thrown out a Kentucky teen’s lawsuit accusing the Washington Post of falsely labeling him a racist after an encounter with a Native American man at the Lincoln Memorial.

Nicholas Sandmann, a student at Covington Catholic High School, sued the newspaper for $250 million in February, alleging that it had engaged in “targeting and bullying” and modern “McCarthyism.”

The actions of Sandmann and his classmates were intensely debated after video and photographs emerged of them wearing “Make America great again” hats near a Native American man playing a drum. President Trump cheered the lawsuit, posting to Twitter: “Covington student suing WAPO. Go get them Nick. Fake News!”

Federal Judge William O. Bertelsman ruled that there may have been “erroneous” opinions published by the Post, but that they are protected by the 1st Amendment.

But but but it was all because they’re Trump-haters.

“The Post ignored basic journalist standards because it wanted to advance its well-known and easily documented, biased agenda against President Donald J. Trump … by impugning individuals perceived to be supporters,” according to the complaint.

Yes, only bias could explain any opposition to Donald “Mob Boss” Trump.

H/t Screechy Monkey

Jim Wright points out something very important:

“You know you hear that, uh, that Nancy Pelosi and others say walls are unchristian. They’re immoral. If that’s true, then God’s immoral because he told Nehemiah to build a wall around Jerusalem. There’s going to be a wall around Heaven Revelation 41 says. You know I got to preach the inauguration sermon for President Trump and I preached on Nehemiah when God selects a leader and I stopped and said, you see Mr. President, God’s not against walls.”

That’s Robert Jeffress, Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church, Dallas Texas, Fox News religious expert, one of the most influential Evangelicals in the country.

Now, lest you think what I am about to say is an inaccurate representation of this religion, note that Jeffress has said this same bit over and over, from the pulpit, in speeches in front of colleges, and on Fox News in front of the nation.

Here he is on January 6th of this year on Fox News, and note in this clip he very specifically says, “there’s a wall around Heaven. Not everybody is getting in.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOW4KKPz4v8&fbclid=IwAR0p1XwhsTFBkDx8haB6Il0ad45UVac967DtGRXyTNd9tkCrzlo-9bgKYKM

See?

This is what shapes the Conservative worldview, right here. This horrible selfish religion. Evangelicals see America the same way they see the Christian heaven: It’s not paradise if everybody gets to go. Only the special people get in, and the very best part is sitting up there with Jesus, laughing at everybody else burning FOREVER down below.

This is exactly how they see America. Exactly the same.

Only a select few are allowed in. Build a wall and keep everybody else out. So what if they are forced back to hellish conditions in their own countries? So what? That’s THEIR fault. Why should we feel guilty about that? Let ’em burn. We’re saved. In fact, if they didn’t have it so terrible, WE wouldn’t have anything to compare our own condition to. Let ’em burn.

He’s absolutely right; it’s a horrible ungenerous cruel way of looking at things, and the fact that they ascribe it to their god is tragic. Why the hell would there be a wall in heaven? Why would a god put some people in heaven and some in hell? What do perfection and eternity have to do with walls and neener-neener I get in and you don’t?

I’m with Huck Finn. I’d rather go to hell than that loathsome heaven.

FFRF on that stupid new South Dakota law:

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is damning an exclusionary new South Dakota law that mandates displaying an “In God We Trust” logo in all public schools.

I guess that’s a free from religion inside joke, “damning” a theocratic law. We noreligionists don’t believe “damning” things is really a meaningful concept. Sarcasm! I like it!

“A new state law that took effect this month requires all public schools in the state’s 149 districts to paint, stencil or otherwise prominently display the national motto,” the Associated Press reports. “The South Dakota lawmakers who proposed the law said the requirement was meant to inspire patriotism in the state’s public schools.”

The law — insultingly confusing patriotism with piety — is part of the nationwide legislative push by Project Blitz, which is a stealth campaign to inject religious bills into state legislatures across the country. The campaign, FFRF avers, is an unvarnished attack on American secularism and civil liberties, imposing the theocratic vision of a powerful few on We The People.

I think the FFR is not wrong about that. Kids in public school are captive audiences; they have to be there, and the fact that they have to be there should not be an opportunity to force religion on them. Religion is not a kind of thing that should be forced on people, because it’s too heavily dependent on idiosyncratic made-up beliefs that are presented as true.

“In God We Trust” was belatedly adopted as a motto when President Eisenhower signed legislation at the behest of the Knights of Columbus and other religious entities, which undertook a national lobbying campaign during the height of 1950s zealotry.

The zealotry is back. I do not like the zealotry.

For some reason the US has something called “the national motto.” Since when does a country need a “national motto”? What else does it need? A national joke, a national friendship ring, a national slogan, a national pet, a national keychain, a national ring tone? Why do we need laws imposing such things? You may think “oh it’s not an actual law, it’s just some custom-type item” but you’d be wrong, there’s an actual law.

Wikipedia:

The modern motto of the United States of America, as established in a 1956 law signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, is “In God we trust“.

That is so stupid. We don’t need a “national motto” and if we did it wouldn’t be that one. Who’s “we,” kemosabe?

The change from “E Pluribus Unum” to “In God we trust” was generally considered uncontroversial at the time, given the rising influence of organized religion and pressures of the Cold War era in the 1950s. The 1956 law was one of several legislative actions Congress took to differentiate the United States from atheistic communism. Earlier, a 1954 act added the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. Some states also adopted mottos with religious overtones during this time, for example Ohio‘s “With God, all things are possible“.

Mandatory goddism whether we like it or not.

So, for added thrills, now we get states mandating the stupid “motto” be prominently displayed in public schools. The land of the free that tries to force all of its people to believe in a made-up god. South Dakota is god-pasting the schools even as we speak.

Public school students in South Dakota will notice something different on their first day back to school — the national motto, “In God We Trust,” prominently inscribed on walls in stencil or paint.

A new state law that took effect this month requires the message to be displayed in an area where students are “most likely” to see it, such as a cafeteria or entryway.

Gov. Kristi Noem signed the requirement into law in March. It says the motto must be at least 12-by-12-inches in size and easily legible.

No escape! You can’t ignore it! The state can force it on you whether you like it or not! Now down on your knees.

Within the last couple of years, six states — Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Florida, Alabama and Arizona — have approved similar legislation, enforcing or allowing public schools to post the U.S. motto.

Anybody who doesn’t like it, tough shit.