From Pliny:

Milo Yiannopoulos is having money problems.

The far right activist Milo Yiannopoulos was more than $2m in debt during 2018, according to a collection of documents assembled by his former Australian tour promoters and seen by Guardian Australia. Creditors listed in the documents include employees of his company, a wedding venue and his former sponsors, the billionaire Mercer family.

The documents indicate that as of April 2018, Yiannopoulos owed $1.6m to his own company, $400,000 to the Mercers, $153,215 to his former lawyers, $76,574 to former collaborator and Breitbart writer Allum Bokhari, and $20,000 to the luxury jewellery brand Cartier.

As of 2 October, Yiannopoulos owed sums of several thousand dollars to far right writers including Ian Miles Cheong, anti-Islamic ideologue Pamela Geller and science fiction writer Theodore Beale, aka Vox Day, the documents indicate, amongst others.

It seems so unfair, doesn’t it. Here’s Jordan Peterson getting 80k a month on Patreon while poor Milo can’t even get out of debt.

The cache details the deterioration in the relationship between Yiannopoulos and his former promoters, Gold Coast-based Australian Events Management, run by brothers Ben and Dan Spiller.

What does that sound like? Oh yes, Travis Pangburn, who was doing all these Events with Dudely Atheists Talking and who suddenly stopped paying everyone and closed up shop, leaving Sam Harris and others squawking plaintively for their money. Maybe being a jackass doesn’t pay all that well after all.

Yiannopoulos and the promoters made successive failed attempts to organise speaking tours to Australia in 2018.

The British-born former Breitbart writer was to be accompanied by various guests, including the rightwing US commentator Ann Coulter, the English Defence League founder Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson, the Australian senator Fraser Anning, who once called for a “final solution to immigration in Australia”; and the Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes, who was himself refused a visa to enter Australia late last week.

Selling racism and sexism for BIG BIG CASH PRIZES.

Andrew Gilligan in the Times (the real one):

An official who agreed a policy allowing male-bodied sex offenders into women’s prisons was a sex offender who hoarded 22,000 indecent pictures of children.

Gordon Pike, a senior official of the Scottish Prison Service, was one of those responsible for its “gender identity and gender reassignment policy”, documents seen by The Sunday Times show. The policy is significantly more liberal than England’s, stating that transgender prisoners must normally be housed according to the “social gender” with which they self-identify, “whether or not” they have legally changed it.

“Liberal” (in the sense of generous) from the point of view of transgender prisoners but not necessarily anyone else.

Two years after approving the policy, Pike, 57, was arrested at prison service headquarters in Edinburgh. Searching his home, police found 45 discs containing 22,100 indecent images of children, including 500 of “penetrative sexual activity” with minors. He was convicted of possession of sexual images of children in a trial ending last year and remains on the sex offenders’ register.

The prison policy, which also covers healthcare, is being used by a transgender sex offender and murderer, Paris Green, to make a 900-mile round trip from her Edinburgh prison to Sussex for private gender reassignment surgery, funded by taxpayers.

Green is serving life after she and two accomplices sexually assaulted a man with a rolling pin, tied him up, tortured him and beat him to death.

So typical of women, that kind of thing.

Born Peter Laing, Green identified as a woman in 2011, and was convicted two years later. Initially she was sent to a women’s jail but was moved back to a men’s wing after making advances to female prisoners.

Her surgery will be carried out at the private Nuffield hospital in Brighton, since there are no NHS facilities for it in Scotland. It will cost the NHS about £20,000, with the prison service facing a bill of up to £40,000 for transport and guarding during Green’s two-week stay.

Then will “she” go back to a women’s jail? To make more advances?

Some 48% of transgender prisoners are sex offenders, the Ministry of Justice said in a freedom of information answer earlier this year, compared with less than 20% of the prison population as a whole.

They include Karen White, born Stephen Wood, a double rapist who was sent to New Hall women’s jail last year, where she assaulted two female prisoners. She was returned to a male jail after the assaults.

Jessica Winfield, born Martin Ponting, another double rapist put in a women’s prison, was reportedly segregated after she made advances to other inmates.

Gender surgeons and prison governors have said that some male-born sex offenders are transitioning in order to gain access to women prisoners, or to appear less dangerous in the hope of earlier parole.

Or, indeed, both.

Ministry of Justice figures show the number of women in prison for sex offences has risen by 40% in three years, from 93 in 2015 to 130 this year. The figures do not distinguish between biological women and trans women.

Women’s campaigners said it was highly likely that much of the increase was accounted for by male-born transgender sex offenders such as White and Winfield, who are counted as female in the statistics.

Nicola Williams, of Fair Play for Women, which has begun a parliamentary petition to change the policy, said: “These latest disclosures are deeply disturbing. MPs should be asking why the prison system is turning a blind eye to the abuse of women in its care.”

And the abuse of statistics.

Oh well, it’s only women.

Very good point.

The current crisis raises some very important questions when it comes to feminism and the Global North/Global South divide. We cannot have a women's rights movement that denounces breast ironing of brown and black girls but supports breast binding for white girls, as "a right".

— RaquelRosarioSánchez (@8RosarioSanchez) December 2, 2018

Women's organisations and feminists in Global North can't act shocked when feminists are jailed and prevented from speaking "in developing countries" when we are seeing leftist politicians and political parties in the Global North veer towards making feminism a hate crime…

— RaquelRosarioSánchez (@8RosarioSanchez) December 2, 2018

And feminist like #MeghanMurphy in Canada or @Womans_Place_UK in UK, face onslaughts of abuse for having meetings. If you ever wondered, "wow, how does a society gets to a point were jailing feminists becomes accepted?" then, this is it. We are watching that shift, as we speak.

— RaquelRosarioSánchez (@8RosarioSanchez) December 2, 2018

FGM…footbinding…corsets…Jimmy Choo shoes…breast inserts…Brazilians…anorexia…and binders: it’s all the same shit, it’s all about treating women as mindless clay that needs to be shaped and pinched and peeled and sculpted to be any good for anything.

I think the whole trans obsession is very much like warped ideas about menstruation and female genitalia: it’s equally based in fantasy, equally impervious to reason, equally prone to maiming, equally destructive. Feminists disagree with it because the way out is not to mutilate your body or take leave of your mind but to change the rules: keep the body you have but refuse to accept that your body means you have to either submit or dominate. Move sideways: refuse to accept your place in a hierarchy: blow the hierarchy up. See it as a political issue, not a medical or cosmetic one.

A Vancouver radio station talked to Meghan about the latest bullying:

Meghan Murphy, who is at the centre of a controversy over a talk on transgender rights scheduled for Jan. 10 at the Vancouver Public Library, says a report of a cancellation are not true.

“The only news I have heard of this cancellation upon waking up and reading my email, which informed me that I had sent an email in the middle of the night and cancelled — it sounds like somebody is playing a joke on the media,” Murphy tells NEWS 1130.

The founder and editor of The Feminist Current adds that a report of her receiving a large number of critical emails leading to a decision to cancel the event are also untrue. She says, instead she received a lot of correspondence in support of the event, but also a number of letters threatening violence on the event’s site.

Meghan wants to open the conversation up; it’s the violence-threateners who want to shut it down.

“A couple of the organizers contacted me after I did a similar talk in Ontario that went really, really well, and said let’s try to do this in Vancouver. I was happy to,” she says.

Journalists may begin to see which side of this “controversy” is more reasonable now.

Originally a comment by iknklast on Shut her up.

It’s so tiresome to discuss who is a woman and who is a man, you see

The problem is, we are determined to keep a huge distinction between women and men, so we’ll know who is pink and who is blue, who is thinky and who is feely, who has testosterone toxicity and who has that estrogen vibe. We are not ready to get rid of rape culture, so women would feel less need to have women only spaces. We are not prepared to pay women equally, allow them equal access to the corridors of power, and not grope, ogle, or grab them by the pussy, so women need to worry about who is who and where everyone dresses, sleeps, and relieves themselves.

The problem is not the women. It may not even be the transwomen. The real problem is a society that insists on dividing us into these two separate, distinctly unequal groupings based solely on our genitalia, and now we have some people who claim that they want to be the other in spite of having the wrong genitalia, and insist that the unequal group give up what protections they have put in place, and open up all the spaces that allowed some measure of safety, not to mention opening up women’s sports and women’s lists for hiring to people who were born into the gender that has had all the advantages.

Until we clear away all the gender baggage, there is no way to get around the question of who is woman and who is man, because women need safe spaces, equal opportunities, and decent human treatment.

More on the relentless campaign to silence Meghan Murphy:

This guy is the president of BCTF, the union representing BC’s public school teachers. He’s very “active” in the anti-Meghan campaign.

https://twitter.com/glenhansman/status/1068347392133451776

He retweeted this

To those upset that Meghan Murphy had her Twitter account suspended for constant transphobic harassment, and who are threatening to also leave twitter in transphobic solidarity with her, I definitely think you should do so. Do fight for your terrible principles… somewhere else.

— Jake Pyne #Free Palestine (@JakePyne) November 24, 2018

and this

Dear @VPL, I am adding my voice to those calling for the cancellation of Meghan Murphy’s upcoming event.
I strongly urge you to furthermore publicly respond with dignity and transparency to your many trans and allied patrons, staff and members. https://t.co/kdUmSYeoQs

— Amber Dawn 🇵🇸 (@AmberDawnWrites) November 28, 2018

and this

I agree that women’s voices need to be heard. But we have a responsibility to ensure that public spaces are safe for all women. Hate speech from a woman is still hate speech & does not belong @VPL

— Rae Figursky (she/her) (@RaeFigursky) November 30, 2018

and this

Trans women are women. Full stop. Libraries and schools wouldn't rent to individuals or groups that stigmatize other women because of their faith or race or ability. Hate wouldn't be okay in those cases. It's not okay when it's hate directed at women who also happen to be trans.

— Carole Gordon (@CaroleGordonBC) November 30, 2018

And lots more.

And, again.

Shame that a diversity of views not allowed at an anarchist bookfair. @helensteel12 and I just chucked out. Literally. What a mess. We'll never be able to reach a compromise on trans rights and women rights if only 1 view is heard.

— Catherine B (@toddybann) December 1, 2018

https://twitter.com/beyondbarsuk/status/1068953501491974144

So anarchists are upset by disruption?

But, more to the point, were the two women disrupting at all? From what I can see they were distributing pamphlets…at a book fair. It doesn’t sound all that disruptive. It could be, in theory; racists distributing pamphlets calling for lynching at an anti-racist or feminist book fair would be disruptive, but feminists don’t call for lynching.

They “had to be carried out” – in other words they were assaulted.

And don’t let Matt Whitaker try to tell you he thought the company was on the up and up.

(And even if he really did think that, it would be no excuse, because he should have done due diligence.)

He knew damn well it wasn’t.

Months after joining the advisory board of a Miami-based patent company in 2014, Matthew G. Whitaker began fielding angry complaints from customers that they were being defrauded, including from a client who showed up at his Iowa office to appeal to him personally for help, records show.

Yet Whitaker, now the acting attorney general, remained an active champion of World Patent Marketing for three years — even expressing willingness to star in national television ads promoting the firm, the records show.

I guess the deal with these guys is that they admire a successful con. (Maybe they all think they’re Henry Gondorff.) They think it’s smart and impressive and – as Trump so wisely said today – “cool.”

Internal Federal Trade Commission documents released Friday in response to a public records request reveal the extent of Whitaker’s support for World Patent Marketing, even amid a barrage of warnings about the company’s behavior.

The FTC eventually filed a complaint against World Patent Marketing, accusing it of cheating customers and falsely promising that it would help them patent and profit from their inventions, according to court filings. Some clients lost their life savings, the agency alleged.

Last May a federal court ordered the company scam to to pay a settlement of more than 25 million and shut the scam down. When the Feds subpoenaed Whitaker for his records he missed the deadline, and when they caught up with them he explained he was working for the Justice Department now so that’s why he forgot his homework and how he’s very important. He never did give them any records, saying they were privileged because legal matters.

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking Democrat and future chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said the records show Whitaker was alerted early to the alleged fraud and should have taken action.

“These new documents suggest that Mr. Whitaker was personally aware of allegations of fraud by World Patent Marketing and its CEO at the same time he was receiving payments as a member of the Advisory Board,” Cummings said in a statement. “If true, this is extremely troubling and raises serious concerns about his fitness to serve as acting Attorney General and whether he was properly vetted for this critical position.”

In other words it’s just one more giant can of sleaze that we’ve got oozing all over us.

As the FTC was investigating the company, agency officials examined whether Whitaker played a role in trying to help the company silence critics by threatening legal action, as The Washington Post previously reported.

When investigators learned about Whitaker’s new posting in Washington, they were stunned, the new records show.

“You’re not going to believe this,” James Evans, an investigator in the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection wrote in late October 2017, several weeks after the agency issued Whitaker a subpoena. “Matt Whitaker is now chief of staff to the Attorney General. Of the United States.”

And now he’s the Acting AG! Is this a great country or what?!