This one in particular…

The Fake News Media is working overtime to blame me for the horrible attack in New Zealand. They will have to work very hard to prove that one. So Ridiculous!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2019

What a filthy human being he is. He couldn’t possibly care less, could he. All he cares about is what people say about him.

It’s not ridiculous. Race hatred is race hatred; xenophobia is xenophobia. Trump holds frequent rallies at which he spews both at a screaming audience, and that stuff is not inert. Trump absolutely is encouraging and fostering racist xenophobic rage, and that has effects. That doesn’t make the Christchurch slaughter all his fault, of course, but it sure as hell does make him blameworthy.

But he’s such a callous selfish narcissistic toad that he can’t pause to think about that for a second.

Oh my I bet Trump is really jealous of Volodya now.

This week, Russian lawmakers advanced a package of new legislation aimed at curtailing internet freedom. Among the laws awaiting the president’s eventual signature is a measure that would allow authorities to jail individuals for insulting government officials online.

Yeah. That’s what Trump would like to see.

Russia is not China, and the country still has a relatively boisterous online culture. But the proposed laws would widen the definition of restricted speech, calling for penalties of up to 15 days in administrative detention for those found guilty of posting information that shows “disrespect for society, the state, (and) state symbols of the Russian Federation,” — including, presumably, Putin himself.

Well that’s fine. There’s plenty to talk about besides society, the state, and state symbols. There’s cooking, and knitting, and…cooking, and…

The UN Women’s Conference is on.

The Trump administration is lining up with less liberal nations such as Saudi Arabia and Malaysia at a major United Nations conference on women this month to roll back international consensus on climate change and migration, while seeking to prevent the expansion of rights for girls, women, and LGBT people.

…

The U.N. women’s conference, focused on empowering women and girls through social protection programs and promoting access to public services, runs from March 11 to March 22. Negotiations on the final outcome document are expected to resume on Thursday.

The U.S. delegation, which includes anti-abortion conservatives in line with the Trump administration’s broad policy stances, is seeking to weaken international support for the Beijing Declaration, a landmark 1995 agreement that stands as an internationally recognized progressive blueprint for women’s rights.

…

“Their efforts to undermine global commitments to gender equality and sexual and reproductive health and rights should lay to rest any notion that the Trump Administration cares about women or their human rights,” said Shannon Kowalski, the director of advocacy and policy for the International Women’s Health Coalition. “Instead they are trying to use the Commission to strip women and girls of their ability to exercise control over their lives.”

Does it matter? Yes.

For civil society advocates and smaller U.N. member countries, these changes to U.N. documents are more than just words on paper. “A lot of other countries look to these agreements as a framework. They are using these agreements and outcomes to advance national laws and policies,” said one source familiar with internal CSW negotiations, who declined to speak on record.

The U.S. delegation is also seeking to chip away efforts by other states to elevate international issues anathema to the Trump administration, including language on climate change and collective bargaining as well as sexual and reproductive health, in the final outcome documents.

For instance, the United States proposed that references to “sexual reproductive health and rights” be removed from a section addressing human rights. Social conservative advocates who follow these international negotiations have long viewed such language as implicitly condoning abortion.

If women don’t have the right to stop being pregnant, they don’t have reproductive rights.

Mostly Science on Facebook:

32,000 yrs ago an Arctic ground squirrel cached some fruit in its burrow, which was later sealed by sediment & frozen.

In the 2000s scientists unearthed the fruit & cultivated its tissue. It grew into this: a Pleistocene ancestor of the narrow-leafed campion (Silene stenophylla)

Wow. Thirty two thousand years ago. Pretty damn amazing.

Some of the excavated squirrel burrows contained hundreds of thousands of ancient fruit & seeds. All that genetic information the ungerminated generations, the apparitions of Ice Age Earth frozen in time & place, preserving the possibility of resurrection.

H/t Vanina

Representative Steve King is such a jokester.

Rep. Steve King of Iowa posted a meme on Saturday to an official Facebook account that seemed to revel in the idea of people in more conservative states killing those in more liberal states in an armed conflict.

“Folks keep talking about another civil war,” the meme said. “One side has about 8 trillion bullets, while the other side doesn’t know which bathroom to use.”

King captioned the image with a smirking emoji. “Wonder who would win….” he wrote.

Hurr hurr. So funny. The last civil war was hilarious too – killed 620,000 people.

He deleted it but of course there are screenshots.

Just an elected official joking on his verified Facebook account over the weekend about a civil war and how his side would be more heavily armed pic.twitter.com/DrzHr0q4V5

— Tim Mak (@timkmak) March 18, 2019

King, a notably racist member of Congress, has in the past openly voiced support for white supremacist ideas. An incomplete list of things he has said and done includes calling white people the “subgroup of people” who have contributed the most to the world; tweeting that “we can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies;” blaming immigrants for ISIS and Ebola; displaying the Confederate flag, despite his state, Iowa, not having been a part of the Confederacy; blaming abortion for killing “millions” of white babies; and complaining that for every child of undocumented immigrants “who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.”

How we live now.

George Conway makes a point.

Don’t assume that the things he says and does are part of a rational plan or strategy, because they seldom are. Consider them as a product of his pathologies, and they make perfect sense. https://t.co/k9rAK3tGFT

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) March 18, 2019

I always do. Not that I can brag about it; he’s nothing if not obvious. The Twitter blurts are so nuts they can’t possibly be part of a rational strategy.

pic.twitter.com/sDGW8nrEft

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) March 18, 2019

Ah, okay, we’re going there.

pic.twitter.com/k40Z2oJR2P

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) March 18, 2019

1, check, 2, check, 3, check, 4, check, 5, check, 6, check.

pic.twitter.com/54ffIL0zcg

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) March 18, 2019

1 through 7, check.

He ticks every single box, and not with a light tick in pencil but with a loud heavy one in his beloved sharpie. He doesn’t just show all the behaviors, he flaunts them, he performs them in tights and a spangled leotard, he hires planes to pull a banner advertising them. He’s the most florid narcissist most of us will ever see in action.

Chris Cillizza at CNN is also amazed at Trump’s prolific crazy on Twitter yesterday.

He summarizes:

1. The Federal Communications Commission or Federal Election Commission should investigate whether “Saturday Night Live” and late-night talk shows are in collusion with Democrats and/or Russia because they attack him so consistently.

3. Urged Fox News Channel to reinstate host Jeanine Pirro after she was suspended for questioning the patriotism of Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who is Muslim.

4. Urged FNC to stand up for host Tucker Carlson, who has seen some advertisers pull out of his show following the release of a series of caustic and offensive remarks he made on a radio show between 2006 and 2011.

6. Attacked FNC anchor Shep Smith and two other weekend anchors at Fox, alleging they had “been trained by CNN prior to their ratings collapse.”

7. Alleged that Democrats tried to “steal a presidential election,” calling it “the biggest scandal in the history of our country.”

8. Retweeted Jack Posobiec, who among other things, is a leading promoter of the Pizzagate and Seth Rich conspiracy theories.

All of this — and lots, lots more — in the space of a single day.

He’s always tweeted crazy shit, but (Cillizza says) not this much this crazy in one day.

[W]hat we witnessed on Sunday is somewhere between concerning and absolutely terrifying. The most powerful man in the county — and maybe the world — spent his day touting unproven conspiracy theories about stolen elections, suggesting collusion between Democrats and comedians, attacking a military hero and Republican senator, and trying to program his favorite cable network’s broadcasts. And he did all of this while failing to send even a single tweet about the tragic mass shooting in New Zealand.

George Conway, the husband of White House senior counselor Kellyanne Conway,tweeted an image to the diagnosis for “Narcissistic Personality Disorder” and said bluntly of Trump: “His condition is getting worse.” Brian Klass, a political scientist at UCL, was slightly more expansive: “We have a seriously dangerous normalcy bias, where we move on because we desperately want to pretend it’s okay. Trump’s Twitter meltdown today—which shows a deranged and unhinged person—will just be forgotten by Monday afternoon. But the deranged man will still control the nukes.”

I don’t move on and I don’t forget and I don’t want to pretend it’s okay. I want it to be okay, but that has nothing to do with pretending it’s okay.

On and on it goes.

https://twitter.com/SurvivorsnetBtn/status/1106539921060319234

Survivors’ Network Brighton used to be a feminist organization, for women – until they woke. Their what we stand for page hasn’t bothered to acknowledge the contradiction:

Feminism

We live in a patriarchal society and believe that sexual violence should be challenged from a feminist perspective. Because sexual violence is a gendered crime, we are a women-led organisation committed to offering women-only spaces and services. However, we recognise that sexual violence impacts on people of all genders in unique ways and work to build our services accordingly. We consider a trans inclusive feminism to be key to our values and central to our service. We consider the lack of services and funding for people of all genders to also be a feminist issue and look to build partnerships to address this.

So, women-only, but not women-only. Clear?

I for one would like to know how a feminism that “includes everyone” can be feminism.

I Googled for the phrase “my BLM includes everyone” but Google doesn’t recognize it.

Of course not; it’s only women who are expected to include everyone even in their own movements to challenge patriarchy, and only women who are forced to do so whether they agree or not.

https://twitter.com/BrightonResist1/status/1107358520582778882

Roy Greenslade reports on Iran’s persecution of journalists who work for the BBC:

Too little attention has been paid to an insidious long-run campaign of persecution by the Iranian authorities against the staff of the BBC Persian service. It is marked by cowardice and a lack of humanity.

Concerned at the lack of publicity about the situation, the BBC recently staged a special press conference chaired by its world affairs editor, John Simpson. It highlighted what its lawyers regard as “an unprecedented collective targeting and punishment of journalists”. Result? Few, if any, headlines in mainstream media.

Doubtless that failure to heed what Simpson called Iran’s “contemptible behaviour” did not go unnoticed by the tyrants in Tehran. So, they will take heart from that and their under-reported attempts to silence BBC Persian will continue and, possibly, escalate.

So, spread the word.

As they stand, the facts are shocking. Unable to get their hands on BBC Persian’s London-based staff, Iran’s police intimidate their relatives inside Iran. They freeze their assets, which has the effect of preventing them buying and selling property. They confiscate passports, which denies them a chance to travel. They arrest them arbitrarily, interrogating them for hours at a time and often detaining them for days in prison.

According to an internal survey completed by 96 BBC Persian staff, 45 reported that their parents had been questioned by the authorities and 40 said the same had happened to their brothers or sisters.

Government-affiliated media in Iran have published photographs of London staff, calling them “a mafia gang” and portraying BBC Persian as an arm of the British state. In addition, journalistic sources within Iran have been targeted.

The authorities also deny the staff the right to travel from Britain into Iran to attend family funerals or to visit ailing relatives and friends. “We are living through a daily nightmare,” says Rana Rahimpour, BBC Persian’s senior presenter. “When a parent dies we cannot go out there to mourn. They arrested my loved ones to force me to leave my job. A judge told my parents you have to stop her [from broadcasting for the BBC].”

And they don’t stop there.

Two months ago, Iran was accused by the Dutch government of directing two political assassinations in the Netherlands. The victims were Dutch nationals of Iranian origin. For Gallagher, these allegations suggest that there is “a very grave risk here to individual journalists”.

A year ago, the BBC appealed to the United Nations over the BBC Persian harassment. It led to a statement two months later by UN secretary-general António Guterres in which he acknowledged that Iran had been guilty of persecuting staff.

Last week, the European parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour of a resolution criticising Iran’s treatment of journalists, and all human rights defenders. It criticised the targeting of BBC Persian staff and demanded Iran “stop the surveillance, arrest, harassment and prosecution of journalists, online activists and their families.”

It is to be hoped that this development helps to push the subject higher up the mainstream media’s agenda. More, much more, should be done ensure that Iran’s assault on press freedom gains greater public attention. To ignore it is to condone it. And allowing it to fester may well encourage other tyrannies to follow suit.

Let’s make a noise.

Kellyanne Conway says journalists should shut up and pray.

Kellyanne Conway has a message for media covering last week’s New Zealand mosque shootings: dial back the scope of coverage.

During a Fox News appearance on Saturday, the White House counselor chided reporters for what she said she viewed as a politicization of the Christchurch massacre in which at least 50 people were killed by an alleged attacker who appears to have shared a manifesto online about his hatred for Muslim immigrants.

“They insert themselves ― ‘I must speak! I must say something!’” she said of journalists. “No, you don’t. You can actually shut up and pray for people and wait for the authorities to make their judgments.”

She says, while the guy she works for flings shit at “the authorities” 50 times a day.

But more to the point, journalists aren’t supposed to shut up, or to pray for people (though they’re free to do that on their own time, of course). They’re supposed to “say something” – that’s their job, and it’s a necessary and indeed valuable job.

The claim that the massacre in Christchurch wasn’t political is jaw-droppingly callous. What else wasn’t political? The massacre in Charleston, the one in Pittsburgh – the ones in Rwanda, in Srebrenica, in Cambodia, in My Lai, in Warsaw, in Nanking, in Armenia, in Amritsar, at Wounded Knee?

Massacres are always political; of course they are. What the hell else would they be? Just random happenings?

But she has to pretend, doesn’t she, because of the pile of infected matter she works for.

Of course she did.

If we are now equating possession of natal vagina to being lesbian then there's a deep irony there.

— Priyamvada Gopal © (@PriyamvadaGopal) July 7, 2018

Vancouver Rape Relief has a statement on the city council’s defunding:

1. On March 14, 2019, at the end of a flawed and unfair process, Vancouver City Council voted to terminate the yearly grant given to us in support of our public education work.

2. Vancouver City Council’s decision is intended to coerce us to change our position and practice of offering some of our core services only to women who are born female. Our organization’s status as an equality-seeking group and our entitlement to serve women who are born female was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court of British Columbia in 2003, by the British Columbia Court of Appeal in 2005 and by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2007.

3. Vancouver City Council’s attempt to undermine our autonomy as a women’s group — to decide who we serve, who our membership is and who we organize with — also undermines the protections the law has granted us. Such conduct has no place in a democratic society.

4. Vancouver City Council’s decision to cut funding from Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter is discriminatory. Many Vancouver City grants are given to organizations that deliver programs and support to specific groups of people such as Aboriginal youth, Chinese seniors, deaf persons and migrant workers. Rightfully, none of these groups have been challenged with the demand that they demonstrate “accommodation, welcomeness and openness to people of all ages, abilities… and ethnicities.” Such a demand of these organizations would be incomprehensible, as it would contradict the essence and purpose of their work. Yet, this is what is being asked of us under the guise of inclusivity.

And it very much is a guise, too. It’s a mask, a trick, a ploy. It’s not about “inclusivity” at all, it’s about validation. It’s about forcing people to agree or pretend to agree (and if it’s forced it’s bound to be pretend to, isn’t it) that trans women are literally women. The problem is that trans women aren’t literally women, but the more vocal of them (like Morgan Oger for instance) want to force everyone to say they are. The problem with VRR isn’t that they don’t include everyone, it’s that they don’t pretend to think trans women are literally women in every sense. Validation is everything.

Men who “feel like” women on the inside working to force women to agree that they are women even in contexts such as counseling rape victims are doing a massively narcissistic thing: one guy’s feefees are more important than the safety and peace of mind of a whole bunch of raped women. That’s not politics, it’s self-love.

But free speech, choice, choosing, freedom, liberty, choice!

From the Guardian:

McDonald’s has been accused of launching a “grotesque marketing strategy” that endangers public health by encouraging customers to eat more fast food in exchange for prizes such as fries, desserts and fizzy drinks.

Tom Watson, the shadow culture, media and sport secretary, has urged the company to ditch its Monopoly at McDonald’s promotion in light of the childhood obesity crisis in the UK, branding the competition “a danger to public health”. His demand comes as the government tries to tackle childhood obesity with a plan to reduce the amount of advertising for foods high in fat, sugar and salt seen by children. Options being examined include a ban on such adverts on television, online streaming sites and social media until after the 9pm watershed.

There’s a lot of childhood obesity in the UK (as there is in the US).

Watson has written to McDonald’s UK chief executive Paul Pomroy calling for the forthcoming Monopoly promotion to be cancelled. “The UK has an obesity crisis,” he writes. “Almost two-thirds of adults in England are overweight or obese. A quarter of children in England are overweight or obese by age five, rising to over a third by the end of primary school. Obesity and a sugar-filled diet cause a variety of serious health conditions, including Type 2 diabetes which costs the NHS 10% of its budget every year to treat.

“In this context, it is appalling that your company’s Monopoly marketing ploy encourages people to eat more unhealthy foods by offering sugar-filled desserts as rewards.”

But McDonald’s has a reply.

A McDonald’s spokesperson said: “Customer choice is at the heart of everything we do, including our popular Monopoly promotion. This year’s campaign sees customers receive prize labels on carrot bags, salads and our Big Flavour Wraps range, and we have removed the incentive to ‘go large’, providing the same number of prize labels and chances to win on a medium meal as you get on a large.”

Ahhhh yes, it’s all about choice…that is, choice shaped by relentless advertising and years of research on what flavors get people to come back for more and more and more. In other words it’s not about choice at all, it’s about getting people to buy as much of the product as possible by whatever concealed methods the corporations can come up with. They advertise for a reason, they put on contests for a reason, they use a lot of salt, sugar and fat for a reason, and the reason is the opposite of choice: the reason is they want people to buy their product.

Don’t insult us.

The SPLC has booted Morris Dees.

The center, which is based in Montgomery, gave no clear indication as to why it had let Mr. Dees go, but the president of the group, Richard Cohen, said in a statement that “a comprehensive assessment of our internal climate and workplace practices” was imminent, suggesting the dismissal was tied to conflict among the staff.

On Thursday, the same day the S.P.L.C. announced that Mr. Dees had been fired, employees sent a letter to the center’s leaders citing claims of mistreatment of staff, sexual harassment, gender discrimination and racism.

So that sounds as if the two were coordinated, with the letter being documentation of the reasons.

The letter, cited in the Los Angeles Times, said it was prompted by the departure this month of a respected African-American employee whose “worrisome parting words, hardly belies her frustration and disappointment.”

That’s unclear.

The letter starts with a sober warning: “S.P.L.C.’s integrity is on the line.” It demands that management, “create a work environment untainted by instances, allegations, and fears of sexual harassment, assault, and racial and gender discrimination.”

That on the other hand is quite clear.

It remains to be seen exactly why Mr. Dees was fired after such a long career. One thing is clear: It will be hard for the group to continue carrying out its mission of identifying and rooting out extremists while its own staff is up in arms over allegations of injustice.

It will, yes.

H/t Dave Ricks

Have a useful backgrounder on the efforts of male trans activists to dominate and subdue Vancouver Rape Relief:

In 1995 Kimberly Nixon, a transwoman, filed a human rights complaint after applying to be a counsellor and being rejected on the grounds that Nixon was not born a woman and had not experienced oppression from birth. Vancouver Rape Relief offered a formal written apology, and suggested that Nixon could support the shelter by joining a fundraising committee. The shelter also offered $500 in acknowledgement of Nixon’s hurt feelings and requested mediation in order [to] make amends. Nixon rejected this offer and escalated the complaint to the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, which was heard in 2000. Two years later the tribunal released the decision that they found in favour of Nixon and awarded $7,500 in compensation. However Vancouver Rape Relief sought a judicial review as they argued that discrimination was not present. The British Columbia Supreme Court set aside the decision of The Human Rights Tribunal, finding that the Tribunal had made an error as the shelter has the right to freedom of association as a women-only space, irrespective of gender identity. Nixon appealed to the British Columbia Court of Appeal who unanimously upheld the Supreme Court’s decision in 2007. Nixon appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada who dismissed the request. Arguments built by the shelter in this case have since been used by Aboriginal groups in Canada to maintain their freedom of association.

It’s a tricky thing. There’s been pushing and pulling about it in the US for years over the issue of campus groups that exclude white people. How do you say “no whites invited to this particular group” without giving aid and comfort to whites who want to do the same thing with the terms flipped? It’s tricky (but the answer is not to do what Kimberly Nixon did).

Even supporting the shelter can get you ousted in some activist circles, as anti-poverty campaigner Yuly Chan found out last year when she was removed from an urban renewal panel at a Vancouver Crossroads conference after retweeting Vancouver Rape Relief and expressing support for working class women.

In May 2018 Trans Rights Activists targeted The Licorice Parlour, a sweet shop in Vancouver who had put up a poster advertising the Vancouver Rape Relief annual community fundraiser. The shop’s social media platforms were flooded with fake 1* reviews accusing the shop and the owner, Mary Jean, of transphobia. Mary Jean took to Facebook to assert her support of the shelter and disclose her own experience of sexual assault. She received many messages of support but the accusations of transphobia and fake reviews continued for some time.

And yet…are there any parallel stories about gay men? Do they get bullied the same way? If they do they seem oddly quiet about it.

It has not escaped the notice of many onlookers that the continual targets of this harassment appear to be women, often lesbians. When organisations that help vulnerable women are targeted then it is the women most in need who lose out. Male violence continues to be the biggest threat to trans people, and feminists seek to end male violence in all its forms. In the midst of these political disagreements it is women, not violent men, who are bearing the brunt of Trans Rights Activists’ animosity.

Well, you see, violent men are kind of scary.

It’s ok though, Trump says white nationalism is a minor thing.

Asked by a reporter on Friday if he sees an increase globally in the threat of white nationalism, the US president responded: “I don’t really. I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems. I guess, if you look at what happened in New Zealand, perhaps that’s a case. I don’t know enough about it yet.”

He says it’s terrible though. Yes yes. Terrible. Terrible thing. He says it two times, not just one.

There has been a documented rise in anti-Muslim hate groups in the US in the last three years, and the FBI has reported a steady increase in reports of hate crimes. Just last year, a shooter with far-right views killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue.

But that’s not because they take inspiration from Trump and Bannon and Miller and Gorka; no no no no no. It’s for other reasons entirely. Trump’s use of the presidency to bray racism at us day in and day out has had no effect of any kind.

Trump made the remarks about white supremacy at the Oval Office while announcing his decision to overrule Congress in his effort to protect his declaration of a national emergency and secure funds for a US-Mexico border wall.

Announcing his veto, the president said, “People hate the word invasion, but that’s what it is.”

That’s our boy – he sticks with the racist white nationalist bullshit about the wall and the “invasion” no matter how many mass shootings are going on in the background.