Somewhat breathtaking – Trump appears to have tweeted classified intelligence again.

President Trump has tweeted what experts say is almost certainly an image from a classified satellite or drone, showing the aftermath of an accident at an Iranian space facility.

Along with text that someone wrote for him, because he’s not literate enough to have written it himself.

It says:

The United States of America was not involved in the catastrophic accident during final launch preparations for the Safir SLV Launch at Semnan Launch Site One in Iran. I wish Iran best wishes and good luck in determining what happened at Site One.

NPR goes on:

NPR broke the news of the launch failure on Thursday, using images from commercial satellites that flew over Iran’s Imam Khomeini Space Center. Those images showed smoke billowing from the pad. Iran has since acknowledged an accident occurred at the site.

Some of the highest-resolution imagery available commercially comes from the company Maxar, whose WorldView-2 satellite sports 46-centimeter resolution.

But the image shown in the president’s tweet appears to be of far better quality, says Ankit Panda, an adjunct senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, who specializes in analyzing satellite imagery. “The resolution is amazingly high,” says Panda. “I would think it’s probably below well below 20 centimeters, which is much higher than anything I’ve ever seen.”

And some genius puts it on Twitter. What are they doing up in there?

The DNI office referred questions to the White House; the White House said it was too busy tweeting secret intel to answer any damn fool questions.

Panda notes that a small redaction in the upper left-hand corner suggests the intelligence community had cleared the image for release by the president.

But both he and Hanham question whether releasing it was a good idea. “You really risk giving away the way you know things,” Hanham says. “That allows people to adapt and hide how they carry out illicit activity.”

“These are closely held national secrets,” Panda adds. “We don’t even share a lot of this kind of imagery with our closest allies.” In tweeting it out to the world, Trump is letting Iran know exactly what the U.S. is capable of. He’s also letting others know as well, Panda says. “The Russians and the Chinese, you’re letting them know that these are the kind of things that the United States has the capability of seeing,” he says.

Secrets shmecrets, right? Let’s spill all our beans and then make hummus!

Trump continues the Torture Children program:

Migrant girls being held by the Trump administration are being given only very limited access to items as basic as sanitary pads and tampons, according to a lawsuit that claims to put fresh light on the “appalling” conditions being endured by youngsters.

Earlier this year, it was revealed children being held in facilities in Texas operated by immigration authorities, were being detained in circumstances United Nations (UN) human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said appalled her. Children were denied access to showers, adequate food or bedding, allegedly in breach of a 20-year ruling.

Now, in a lawsuit filed by 19 states, further details have been provided by some of those children, who told investigators they were held in rooms too small to sit down in, were repeatedly woken through the night by “roll calls”, and were made to fight for food that guards threw on the floor.

It appears they are trying to rival the SS in 1942.

One young woman told lawyers from Washington state, that menstruating youngsters were permitted only one tampon, or sanitary pad, a day. After that, at least one girl “had no choice but to continue to wear her soiled underwear” and clothes.

Well all menstruating girls would have no choice but to bleed through everything, because the first two or three days just are like that. One tampon or pad for the whole day won’t do the job.

Bob Ferguson, Washington’s attorney general, is among those behind the lawsuit filed in California. He claimed the immigration policies of Donald Trump were “reminiscent of shameful chapters in American history — the internment of Japanese Americans, and the forced separation of Native American families”.

…

The lawsuit includes testimony by Alma Poletti, an investigator in Mr Ferguson’s civil rights division, who said one young woman who was having her period was only permitted to take a shower after 10 days.

“She recalls there was another girl at the facility who was also on her period. They were each given one sanitary pad per day. Although the guards knew they had their periods, they were not offered showers or a change of clothes, even when the other girl visibly bled through her pants,” said Ms Poletti. “This girl had no choice but to continue to wear her soiled underwear and [trousers].”

And continue bleeding, so that her underpants and trousers got ever more bloody sticky wet uncomfortable and shaming.

So that’s the US in 2019. Might as well be Germany 1938.

Even John Bolton can’t keep Trump’s love.

Bolton, who has long advocated an expansive military presence around the world, has become a staunch internal foe of an emerging peace deal aimed at ending America’s longest war, the officials said.

His opposition to the diplomatic effort in Afghanistan has irritated President Trump, these officials said, and led aides to leave the National Security Council out of sensitive discussions about the agreement.

…

At the zenith of his influence, Bolton enabled the president to act on his most aggressive instincts and outmaneuvered other Cabinet officials with less experience in the interagency process. But his tough management style and bellicose worldview have frayed relations with some colleagues.

You’d think it would endear him to Trump, though, but nah.

Bolton’s isolation on Afghanistan became particularly apparent this month when the president’s top officials descended on Trump’s New Jersey golf resort to discuss the peace deal that would be presented to Afghan and Taliban officials in Kabul and Doha, U.S. officials said. In addition to the president, the Aug. 16 meeting included Secretary of Defense Mark Mark T. Esper chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., [Vice-] President Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, CIA Director Gina Haspel and Khalilzad. Bolton was not originally invited out of concern that his team would oppose the agenda and leak the details later, several officials said.

So that’s totally normal. All administrations omit their national security chiefs when discussing national security issues because they fear leaks. Kidding; not normal at all.

Amid the tensions, Bolton has sought to amplify the diplomatic nature of the national security adviser job, withtrips this week to Moldova, Ukraine and Belarus. Despite his differences with Trump, he has found a way to achieve some of his lifelong goals, defunding various United Nations organizations and ripping up international treaties he views as a constraint on American power, such as the Reagan-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

Cool cool. Even though the two assholes can’t get along because they’re such assholes, they’re still managing to break everything.

Bolton’s pugnacious views on military force are matched with a fiery temperament. Earlier this year, he got into a confrontation with White House Staff Secretary Derek Lyons in the West Wing, according to people familiar with the incident. The president had signed off on a statement concerning the International Criminal Court, and Bolton didn’t want to give Pompeo or other senior White House officials a chance to look at it or make comments, the people said. With Pompeo out of Washington on a trip at the time, the disagreement over the statement’s release escalated.

One person familiar said Bolton was merely trying to execute the president’s orders. Others said he taunted Lyons, asking him, “Did you have fun today?”

“You better watch out, buddy,” Bolton added, the people said.

He has a “fiery temperament” aka he’s a raging bully, just like his boss.

Girls’ schools will probably go the way of the coral reefs.

Girls schools would have to admit transgender pupils under proposals being considered by the equalities watchdog.

The confidential Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) draft guidance, leaked to The Telegraph, reveals that schools could be set to consider admissions of trans students to single-sex schools on a “case-by-case approach”.

There were supposed to be guidelines by 2018 but the process has bogged down. Quel surprise.

The Telegraph however has a draft and is sharing from that.

It says that: “A refusal to admit a trans pupil to a single-sex school which is the same as the trans pupil’s sex recorded at birth would be direct sex discrimination. Admitting such a pupil will not affect the school’s single-sex status.

“A pupil who has transitioned, or wants to, must be allowed to continue to attend the school; to remove them would amount to direct gender reassignment discrimination.”

So you put sex discrimination and gender reassignment discrimination together and you get…girls lose?

The document also says: “An admission policy of only admitting pupils in accordance with their sex recorded at birth would particularly disadvantage trans pupils, and would be indirectly discriminatory against trans pupils, unless it could be demonstrated to be a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.”

Would it though? That seems to be true only if you buy the full ideological package, and if you assume that children have infallible knowledge about their “gender identity” and how it can be opposed to their sex. If instead you simply say that girls don’t have to conform to gender conventions to attend your school, then you can continue admitting girls who are girls without discriminating against “trans pupils.”

On the controversial area of sex categories in sports, the leaked EHRC document encourages schools to “consider ways of enabling all pupils to participate in sports, including competitive events that align with their gender identity.”

Meaning, girls’ schools have to admit boys and let them compete against the girls?

The leaked document has prompted controversy among the feminist academic and women’s rights campaigners, with critics claiming that it will have controversial implications for single-sex schools and “shows what a mess we create when we conflate sex and gender”.

Meanwhile trans rights and childrens charities say it is paramount that transgender children can “ live their life freely” and that all schools take steps to create “inclusive environments” for vulnerable students.

Well children are not generally able to “live their lives freely” in every sense, because they’re children. I chafed against this endlessly as a child, because I wanted to wander off by myself and there were limits on how far I was allowed to go. This idea of “living their lives freely” as the sex they are not is a very adult one and a very disruptive one. Let them pretend and fantasize freely, by all means, but put every fantasy into literal practice, no. We don’t give children real guns or real swords or real cars; we let them pretend.

Kathleen Stock, professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex, said that educational guidance should not be based on a “usually transitory feeling”.

She said: “We have to remember that literally the only criterion of telling who is a trans child and who isn’t is that they say so. It’s based on a feeling.

“Moreover it’s a feeling that we know most will grow out of. Assuming that there are good reasons to retain single sex provision in certain schools, it’s incomprehensible that these reasons should be overidden in favour of a usually transitory feeling.”

Mermaids, on the other hand, talked the usual bullshit.

A thing I saw.

H/t Josh

Julie Bindel on the Blame Women trick:

Men blaming women for ‘getting themselves raped/murdered/beaten’ is certainly nothing new. But women being blamed for male violence towards other vulnerable groups, such as trans-women of colour, is the latest pernicious tactic by misogynists. Feminists are blamed for the murder of trans-women, including those killed by intimate male partners.

Apparently, we whip up hatred and fury that leads men to decide to kill trans women. Doubtless these violent male murderers will have been sitting reading me, Janice Turner, Janice Raymond, and watching Magdalen Berns videos before deciding to take a gun, knife, fists or whatever and brutally kill a trans-woman. Not being satisfied with having total permission, indeed praise, for screaming TERF, bigot, fascist, homophobic, evil witch at us feminists, the woke blokes who get regular pats on the dick for putting bitches in our place, the dudes now put the blame on others for fatal male violence. Despite the fact that we are the ones at risk from violence by trans-extremists.

It is the most ingenious tactic of misogynistic men’s rights activists I have ever seen in 40 years of feminism. But we see you, boys, and I swear to god we will have you.

The health of The Great Barrier Reef isn’t just bad, it’s very bad. That’s official.

The Great Barrier Reef’s outlook has been officially downgraded from poor to very poor due to climate change.

Rising sea temperatures thanks to human-driven global warming remain the biggest threat to the reef, a five-year Australian government report says.

They mean from bad to very bad. For some reason officials think we can’t deal with the word “bad” but we’ll be ok if they change it to “poor,” but “bad” is what they mean. In short the GBR is doomed, which is very bad (not poor) news.

Rising sea temperatures caused “mass bleaching events” in 2016 and 2017 that wiped out coral and destroyed habitats for other sea life. While some habitats remain in a good state, the condition of the site as a whole is worsening.

“Threats to the reef are multiple, cumulative and increasing,” the report says. “The window of opportunity to improve the Reef’s long-term future is now.”

Scientists say the number of new corals plummeted by 89% on the reef thanks to recent bleaching events, which affected a 1,500km stretch.

Why does it matter if we kill off the coral reefs? Because they support so much marine life:

Coral reefs are the most diverse of all marine ecosystems. They teem with life, with perhaps one-quarter of all ocean species depending on reefs for food and shelter. This is a remarkable statistic when you consider that reefs cover just a tiny fraction (less than one percent) of the earth’s surface and less than two percent of the ocean bottom. Because they are so diverse, coral reefs are often called the rainforests of the sea.

It’s the biodiversity:

Biodiversity is the variety of living species that can be found in a particular place—region, ecosystem, planet, etc. Coral reefs are believed by many to have the highest biodiversity of any ecosystem on the planet—even more than a tropical rainforest. Occupying less than one percent of the ocean floor, coral reefs are home to more than twenty-five percent of marine life.

Why is that important? A highly biodiverse ecosystem, one with many different species, is often more resilient to changing conditions and can better withstand significant disturbances.

In addition, ecosystem services—benefits that humans receive from natural environments—are often greater in highly diverse places. Coral reefs, thanks to their diversity, provide millions of people with food, medicine, protection from storms, and revenue from fishing and tourism. An estimated six million fishermen in 99 reef countries and territories worldwide—over a quarter of the world’s small-scale fishermen—harvest from coral reefs.

And those estimated six million fishers feed six million x whatever people. Thirty million? Sixty? Six hundred?

Peter Tatchell’s decision to blame feminists for the fact that a man murdered a trans woman continues to annoy everyone who sees it.

What he said:

Tracy Single is 15th trans woman of colour murdered in US this year. The tiny minority of feminists who demonise trans women as a threat to non-trans women contribute to the toxicl atmosphere that fuels prejudice, discrimination & violence

Janice Turner:

A man killed Tracy. It is overwhelmingly men who commit murder and violence against trans people. As they kill far, far greater numbers of women. Yet somehow feminists are the cause of male violence. Why not challenge men, Peter Tatchell? Your misogyny is disgraceful.

Sarah Ditum:

Tracy Single was killed by a man. Not a feminist who accepts sex is real, a man. I’m not sure why Peter is so attached to blaming women for male violence, but it gives the strong impression that he cares more about attacking women than protecting victims.

Holly Lawford-Smith:

was she murdered by a feminist, @PeterTatchell? you absolute muppet.

Julie Bindel

our misogyny is off the scale. MEN kill, rape & abuse trans women, NOT feminists. Neither do we ‘provoke’ such violence. We campaign AGAINST it. One woman is killed every 3 days by ex or current MALE partners for example. To blame us for the actions of violent men is outrageous.

Hadley Freeman:

Are you seriously blaming feminists for male violence, Peter?

It’s not helping him that a man was arrested on suspicion of murdering Tracy Single.

Meghan Murphy has more on the activism vandalism against VRR:

On Tuesday, Vancouver Rape Relief & Woman’s Shelter (VRRWS) tweeted images of vandalism left on their storefront — a space used for meetings, events, and support groups. ‘Kill TERFs,’ ‘Fuck TERFs,’ ‘TERFs go home, you are not welcome,’ ‘Transwomen are women,’ and ‘Trans Power’ had been scrawled across the windows and door in black marker. ‘TERF,’ for the blissfully ignorant, is an acronym that stands for ‘trans-exclusionary radical feminist.’ This is, of course, a misnomer. Radical feminists are not interested in ‘excluding’ trans-identified people from anything. What they are interested in is protecting certain spaces designated for women and girls.

Not because trans people are trans, but because male people are not female.

VRRWS has been targeted not only with vandalism, but with dead animals nailed to their door and stuffed through their mail slot, on account of their women-only policy. They operate a transition house for women and their children, which aims to protect abused women and help them to heal from horrific violence and sexual assault. To most, it makes sense that a space for extremely vulnerable women escaping male violence would exclude men. For trans activists, it makes sense to disembowel a skunk and string it up by its neck — noose-like — to hang it on the door where victims of rape and domestic abuse will find it and read it as (yet another) violent threat.

I didn’t know about that one.

It’s hard to take sides on this one, but local would-be politician, Morgane Oger, managed to, tweeting:

‘Regrettably but predictably, VRR choosing to ignore Canada’s civil rights laws causes blow-back. I empathize VRR feel threatened by the predictable response to their conduct. As I have previously offered, I am ready to help VRR get out of their mess if they wish to.’

In other words, those bitches deserved it.

Many progressives like Oger have accused the women involved in Vancouver Rape Relief and their supporters of being ‘hateful’. Oger also led a (successful) campaign to end a $30,000 City grant the organization had been receiving for education purposes, claiming their practice of serving women alone and hiring only female counselors discriminated against men. Well, to be specific, men who announce they are women. During a City hearing to determine the continuation of this grant, Oger accused VRRWS of ‘having a history of discrimination against transgender women on the basis of their gender identity or gender expression.’ This is untrue, as services and spaces that are women-only don’t care about a person’s gender identity or gender expression.

Many women don’t do a particularly orthodox gender expression ourselves, after all.

Any person who would go so far as to intimidate and threaten women who stand up for other women in this particularly disturbing way is on the wrong side of politics, never mind history. It is beyond unacceptable that the left is not only remaining silent on these kinds of attacks, but is continuing to fuel them, by claiming it is feminists who are guilty of ‘hate’ and ‘violence,’ not their comrades-in-arms.

Looking at you Peter Tatchell.

Stella Nyanzi is in prison for criticizing a guy.

A prominent Ugandan academic has bared her breasts and screamed obscenities in protest as a magistrate sentenced her to 18 months’ prison on controversial charges of “harassing” President Yoweri Museveni.

The verdict against Stella Nyanzi on Friday drew the ire of rights activists who accused the government of using laws about electronic communications to stifle political dissent.

Nyanzi, a university lecturer and researcher who once called Museveni “a pair of buttocks”, is expected to serve nine months in prison after having already spent nine months behind bars.

…

A second charge of “offensive communication” was dropped against Nyanzi, who has vowed not to relent in her barbed criticism of Uganda’s long-serving ruler.

“I planned to offend Yoweri Museveni Kaguta, because he has offended us for 30 plus years,” she told the courtroom on Thursday before being found guilty.

“We are tired of a dictatorship.”

…

In a statement on Friday, Joan Nyanyuki, director for East Africa at human rights group Amnesty International, said: “This verdict is outrageous and flies in the face of Uganda’s obligations to uphold the right to freedom of expression … and demonstrates the depths of the government’s intolerance of criticism.”

The verdict should be quashed and Nyanzi, who has been in jail since November last year, freed immediately, she said.

English Pen:

Earlier this month, writer and academic Dr Stella Nyanzi was convicted of cyber harassment in relation to a poem she shared on Facebook. She is now serving 18 months in prison. Join us in sending her letters and books and calling on Uganda to #FreeStellaNyanzi.

Erm…

Replying to @JeanHatchet @MorganeOgerBC and @FeministaCanada
I have always believed that a woman is a woman is a woman. Does not matter if she was born a man. Trans women get raped and need help too.

A woman is a woman is a woman, dammit, including if she was born a man. How many times do we have to say it? A woman is a woman is a woman is a woman is a woman is a woman is a woman is a woman is a woman. Get it now?

Trump is determined to burn it all down.

President Donald Trump has reportedly ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to open Alaska’s 16.7 million-acre Tongass National Forest—the planet’s largest intact temperate rainforest—to logging and other corporate development projects, a move that comes as thousands of firesare ripping through the Amazon rainforest and putting the “lungs of the world” in grave danger.

The Washington Post, citing anonymous officials briefed on the president’s instructions, reported late Tuesday that Trump’s policy change would lift 20-year-old logging restrictions that “barred the construction of roads in 58.5 million acres of undeveloped national forest across the country.”

The move, according to the Post, would affect more than half of the Tongass National Forest, “opening it up to potential logging, energy, and mining projects.”

Because hey, short term profits for a few always outweigh long term health of the planet.

The logging restrictions have been under near-constant assault by Republicans since they were implemented, but federal courts have allowed them to stand. As the Post reported:

Trump’s decision to weigh in, at a time when Forest Service officials had planned much more modest changes to managing the agency’s single largest holding, revives a battle that the previous administration had aimed to settle.

In 2016, the agency finalized a plan to phase out old-growth logging in the Tongass within a decade. Congress has designated more than 5.7 million acres of the forest as wilderness, which must remain undeveloped under any circumstances. If Trump’s plan succeeds, it could affect 9.5 million acres…

Meh, it’s just a bunch of trees. You’ve seen one tree you’ve seen them all.

This guy…

Ah – reducing ‘females’ to their anatomy. What stellar feminist thinking. 😍 Really top notch. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: a cluster account of ‘femaleness’ can include cis and trans people, but also exclude both. It doesn’t make sense. Much like the GC agenda.

Who is it that he’s setting straight with such authority?

Boodleoops – you know, an actual philosopher.

The only “gender identity” I have is knowledge that my body is female, and an awareness of what that body means for how I am treated by others. If you don’t have a female body, then you and I don’t share any gender identity, and therefore we can’t both be women. Sorry.

Family Planning @FPNewZealand· Aug 26
Everyone has a gender identity—a feeling or sense of being male, female or somewhere in between. Sometimes people’s gender identity matches their bodies, and sometimes it doesn’t. https://youtu.be/i83VQIaDlQw

I honest to god think one huge reason trans ideology is so popular with guys like Liam is because it gives them (what they think is) an excuse to sneer at and correct and lecture women this way, very much including women who are more intelligent and more educated than they are. I certainly think that applies to the ineffable Morgane Oger, telling us over and over and over that women have no right to say that men are not women.

Originally a comment by Pliny the in Between on Magic with words.

When I was a general surgeon (eons ago it seems), I had been highly trained in surgery for diseases of the breast as part of my residency. I was an early advocate of less invasive surgery for breast cancer and was the first I know of who worked with a team of physicians to council women about their options. When I saw a woman with breast cancer in my office I coordinated the visit with oncology, radiation therapy and plastic surgery in one visit so the individuals I saw could make the best choice for their needs. When surgery was part of the therapy, I worked with a highly skilled plastic surgeon on all my cases who would help design the incision sites (without compromising the cancer surgery) and we would perform immediate reconstruction surgery at the same time in most cases (so the women never woke up without a breast). Lastly, all my patients were referred to a female surgeon I respected and worked with for a second opinion. The purpose of this was twofold- one to make sure all questions and doubts were addressed and 2 – allow for the possibility that my patient might prefer a woman surgeon (we informed them that this option was completely understandable and that no one would be offended). Sometimes they did – sometimes not.

Here’s the thing – I was completely qualified to handle the clinical needs of any of these patients. But as I tried to instill in our residents – it’s not about us – it’s about what they (the patient) need. Sometimes what they needed was something I could never be – a women who could exactly empathize with them and who provided them with a bit more comfort in a horrible time in their lives. And guess what, that’s what they got. Care, comfort, and security – the things we tried to provide to all our patients.

I bring this up because this should be the only perspective on the issue of advocacy services – what do these women need. They’re not looking to part of any would-be counselor’s agenda or be part of any social movement. They have trauma and pain and helping them find care, comfort and security is all that matters. Anyone who can’t adjust to that shouldn’t be a counselor because empathy is pretty much a must have in that role.