Maryam posted a Manifesto on Women and Secularism:

International Conference on Sharia, Segregation and Secularism
25 November 2018, London

Today, far-Right movements, including religious fundamentalisms, are seizing power and on the rise in both democratic and authoritarian states. Even in more secularised societies, religious organisations have gained power because they have been considered valuable allies – to provide services as the state shrinks, to oppose radical social justice movements, as part of counter-terror strategies and post conflict ‘stabilisation,’ and as part of the privatisation of law. From development banks to Western aid and human rights organisations, fundamentalists, particularly Islamists, have been promoted in the name of minority and religious rights. The growth of community based ‘Sharia’ and other parallel legal systems is part of this process of acquiescence and promotion by western states and international institutions as much as by fundamentalist regimes and movements.

When far-Right movements, including religious fundamentalists, take power or gain social acceptance, women are the first targets. They erase women from the public space, treat them as second-class citizens and consider them extensions of family and religious and national honour, not individuals with universal human rights.

On the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we recall that the peoples of the world came together in the hope of ending war, colonialism and fascism and ensuring human rights for all regardless of sex, race, citizenship or other status.

These struggles insisted on our common humanity and equality – not difference or superiority. Yet, we are concerned that many of the struggles that constituted universal rights have been erased from history and labelled ‘western’ by regressive identity politics. Those who see human rights and secular values as ‘western’ simply negate the history of local African, Middle Eastern and Asian struggles for secularism and do not recall that secular values were clearly understood to be the only framework which could build multi-ethnic, multi-religious, plural societies based on the emancipation of women and minorities.

Today, we acknowledge that we owe our rights to liberation and civil rights struggles across the globe, which created the foundation of modern human rights, including the right to women’s equality, freedom of expression and freedom of conscience, i.e. freedom of and from religion. We confirm our opposition to the fascist far-Right as we oppose all religious fundamentalisms. One feeds into the other. They are complementary and indispensable to each other. One can never excuse the other. We affirm the centrality of the universality of rights and the principle of secularism – the complete separation of religion from the state – to ensure that religion cannot influence the state and public policy and impose itself on private lives.

‘One Law for All’ stands for the struggle for universalism, secularism and against religious oppression.

More.

Peter Tatchell does keep getting this wrong.

I support both trans rights & women's rights. I deplore threats, intimidation & violence. The best way to resolve this issue is by peaceful protest & by rational, evidence-based ideas that show why trans women are not a threat to non-trans women pic.twitter.com/Iy6XYqRZVg

— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) November 27, 2018

First of all the priority. Trans rights first, women’s rights the also-ran. What the hell. First of all that’s one of the core reasons for this whole conflict: this relentless insistence that trans rights are far more important and urgent than boring old women’s rights. Second, why? Why put trans rights first? Women are half of everyone; trans people are a tiny fraction of everyone. What is it with this constant shrugging weary eye-rolling indifference to women’s rights from people who fancy themselves progressives?

Then there’s calling us “non-trans women.” Fuck right off with that. We’re women. That’s it. We’re not “cis” and we’re no more non-trans than we are non-reptile, non-plaster, non-chocolate, non-asteroid.

And most of all there’s his assuming the conclusion and announcing that “rational, evidence-based ideas” will get us there. There’s his assuming as fact that “trans women are not a threat to non-trans women” and that all there is to do is “show” that.

It’s probably true that most trans women are not a threat to women, but Peter Tatchell can’t possibly know that no trans women can ever be a threat of any kind to women. He can’t know that and we can’t know that and governments can’t know that, so systematically removing all arrangements intended to make women safe from voyeuristic or violent men is not automatically a brilliant plan.

That’s speaking generally, but speaking particularly, there’s also the fact that plenty of trans women are visibly and vocally and publicly a threat to women right now as we watch. Plenty of trans women are working hard to silence women who talk back in the way I’m talking back right here. They got a scalp a couple of days ago when they had Meghan Murphy permanently banned from Twitter. So yes, Peter, some trans women and their “allies” are a threat to women right here and right now.

Mars from a mere 4,700 miles away.

Image of #Mars captured from a distance of 4,700 miles by #Marco pic.twitter.com/RPYWlJewSs

— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) November 26, 2018

Oopsie. You know how Manafort agreed to a plea deal in exchange for getting some charges dismissed? Well he went and lied to the prosecutors after signing the deal, which means they’re filing those charges again.

Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, repeatedly lied to federal investigators in breach of a plea agreement he signed two months ago, the special counsel’s office said in a court filing late on Monday.

Prosecutors working for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, said Mr. Manafort’s “crimes and lies” about “a variety of subject matters relieve them of all promises they made to him in the plea agreement. But under the terms of the agreement, Mr. Manafort cannot withdraw his guilty plea.

Manafort’s lawyers said oh no he didn’t.

[A]fter at least a dozen sessions with him, federal prosecutors have not only decided Mr. Manafort does not deserve leniency, but also could seek to refile other charges that they had agreed to dismiss as part of the plea deal.

So much for making a deal.

Originally a comment by Freemage on There are wheels that have been squeaking for a lot longer.

Religion is an instrument of societal control, but the New Atheist dream that a world without religion would immediately cast off the old chains has been largely and soundly debunked, primarily by the actions and rhetoric of the New Atheists, themselves. Undermining religious conservatives, in particular, does deal with one stumbling block, but it helps to remember there are progressive religionists, too (Quakers, for instance, tend to be a decade or two on the right side of historical changes), who can be counted upon as allies in fights against oppression, at least so long as their atheist counterparts don’t kick things off with, “You’re dumb. Help us.”

I do wonder how much of the extreme trans-woman rhetoric (and yes, it does seem to largely be confined to the transwoman side, with the standard caveats about humans being capable of anything accounting for the handful of transmen extremists) represents the larger body of transwomen, particularly among those who actually seek GRS. I’ve known a small number of transwomen over the years (possibly more, as the ones I KNOW were trans were the ones who transitioned after I’d met them, and I’ve seen enough of them post-transition to realize that I’m not particularly good at telling the difference on sight), and literally none of them have ever spouted off the sorts of nonsense and hateful rhetoric Ophelia regularly quotes here. Instead, they were generally inclined to keep to themselves and were way too busy navigating the assorted difficulties of life to deal with this sort of thing.

The bit that blows my mind is the extreme trans alliance with the ‘non-binary’ movement. The latter absolutely SHOULD be a feminist-adjacent cause, but got co-opted by the trans extremists somehow, even though they always seem to have opposing agendas, to my understanding. To feminist ideology, there’s little difference between ‘non-binary’ and ‘breathing’–a truly ‘binary man’ would be more like a Chuck Norris meme come to life; I’m not even sure I could imagine a genuinely ‘binary woman’, since the definition of femininity is almost always rigged to make sure that no human being could fit all the requirements (because that makes it easier to point out how any given woman is a ‘failure’ to meet the contradictory requirements). Sure, there’s a bit of special snowflake-ism to calling yourself non-binary, but that seems like it could be a window to getting the person to realize that this is the natural human condition, and that the gender roles they’re rejecting shouldn’t be forced on anyone.

The logic of it.

Well done @AlexSharpe64 @BBCWomansHour for articulating the utterly sensible argument that cis women have nothing to fear from changes to the GRA. As Alex clearly stated, trans women have always been present in women’s toilets, refugees etc. That’s because trans women are women.

— Sally Hines (@sally_hines) November 26, 2018

By the same token, men have always been present everywhere. And? Does it follow that women have nothing to fear from men? Hardly. It’s not a vanishingly rare occurrence for men to use their superior size and strength to get violent with women. Even if you think it’s uncomplicatedly true that trans women are women, that doesn’t rule out the possibility that some men will pretend to be trans women in order to assault women. It doesn’t even rule out the possibility that some men could consider themselves trans women while not actually being trans women. (What? What does that mean? Isn’t saying it the same as being it? Well that’s the issue, isn’t it. What, exactly, is the difference between saying it and being it? If it really is just a matter of saying, why can’t people just say it for the moment and then unsay it 30 seconds later? How do we know they mean it? How do we know they’re not just having a laugh? How do we know they’re not being sarcastic? How do we know it’s not a ploy? How do we know anything? When trans is both a profound and intense inner [lived] experience and a simple matter of self-declaration, what is it at all?)

Sally Hines might as well have said men have always been married to women therefore women have nothing to fear from marriage to men. Most women don’t, of course, but some do, and the men who are going to turn violent don’t come with labels saying so.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Questions are rarely settled without debate.

Is it just me, or have certain tennets of trans ideology met with more rapid acceptance than one might expect? I know I’m noticing the effects of my own aging on my perception of time (incipient curmudgeonly relativistic time dilation), but things seem to have moved very quickly. The squeaky wheel may get the grease, but there are wheels that have been squeaking for a lot longer (say WOMEN, for example) that have not gotten their timely share of “lubrication.” To further mix metaphors, the extreme trans activists come across as queue jumping dogs in the manger, preventing women from retaining (or gaining in the first place) rights they’ve been demanding for ever.

I’m surprised at the number of governmental and business bodies that have accepted/swallowed/caved in to trans ideologies demands without much in the way of question or debate. I can’t imagine it’s strictly out of the goodness of their hearts, or wanting to appear to do the right thing, because many of these same governments and businesses have been glacially slow or downright shitty at that sort of empathic response in the past. I’m not sure that all these institutions could learn to be so responsive to pressure and demands that quickly by simply learning from past mistakes. I can see some elements on the Left vying to be the mostest, bestest and wokest tof rans allies, but not so much government and business. What’s behind this slight, unexpected, change of gears in the workings of power? Are trans rights a way of undercutting feminism that these non-Left institutions have latched onto, just like New Atheism used women’s rights as a cudgel against Islam (and to a lesser degree Christianity) but quickly forgot about them domestically and within its own organizations once their rhetorical value had been spent against foreign, brown theists? Just curious…

The AP reports:

12:15 p.m.

Central American migrants, mostly men, appear to be trying to breach the border crossing between Tijuana and California.

U.S. Border Patrol helicopters flew low overhead, while U.S. agents held vigil on foot beyond the wire fence. The Border Patrol office in San Diego said via Twitter that pedestrian crossings have been suspended at the San Ysidro port of entry at both the East and West facilities.

Trump meanwhile was running his mouth. Of course he was.

Would be very SMART if Mexico would stop the Caravans long before they get to our Southern Border, or if originating countries would not let them form (it is a way they get certain people out of their country and dump in U.S. No longer). Dems created this problem. No crossings!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 25, 2018

The AP 15 minutes later:

Migrants approaching the U.S. border from Mexico have been enveloped with tear gas after a few tried to breach the fence separating the two countries.

U.S. agents shot the gas, according to an Associated Press reporter on the scene. Children were screaming and coughing in the mayhem.

On the U.S. side of the fence, shoppers streamed in and out of an outlet mall.

And Trump played a round of golf.

Kenan Malik points out that discussion is more productive than silencing:

On perhaps no issue has the question of what can or cannot be debated been more sharply contested than that of transgenderism. How should society, and the law, look upon people who were born male but see themselves as female? Trying to answer that question has led to bitter confrontations between trans activists, determined to secure full rights for trans people, and “gender critical” feminists worried that the notion of what it is to be a woman is being transformed to the detriment of women’s rights.

The thing is, those two items don’t have to be in tension, and they shouldn’t be. Gender critical feminists don’t want to deny trans people full rights. It hasn’t generally been considered a “right” to be able to impose one’s own personal “identity” on the rest of the world. That still isn’t considered a “right” except when it comes to a gender that differs from a sex. It’s a new and peculiar “right,” this right to be validated as the gender that doesn’t match your sex. It’s becoming apparent as time goes on that such a right does in fact conflict with women’s struggle to obtain equal rights with men. If affirmative action for women (hire more women, invite more women to speak, give awards to women) starts applying to men who identify as women…that’s a tension.

Woman’s Place is a feminist group dedicated to defending the idea of women-only spaces. Its meetings have been disrupted by protesters and banned by local councils as “providing a platform for hate speech”. When another feminist group, Liverpool ReSisters, put up stickers proclaiming “Women don’t have penises” on Anthony Gormley statues on Crosby beach, they were investigated by the police for possible hate crimes and condemned by the city’s mayor, Joe Anderson, for their “hateful” actions.

The Canadian feminist Meghan Murphy recently tweeted “men aren’t women” and asked: “What is the difference between a man and a trans woman?” Twitter shut down her account for “violating our rules against hateful conduct” and forced her to delete her tweets.

The issue is not whether Stock or Murphy or the ReSisters are right in their views. I agree with some of their arguments, disagree with others. The issue, rather, is whether it is valid for them to raise the issues they do or whether the very act of doing so constitutes “hatred”.

There are, obviously, ways of talking about trans people (and any category of people) that do constitute hatred, but it doesn’t follow and it isn’t the case that all discussion of what we mean by “gender” and whether or not anyone’s identity can be treated as binding on everyone else constitutes hatred.

To suggest that the kinds of questions posed by Stock or Murphy should not be asked is to suggest, contra Joubert, that it is better to settle questions than debate them. The trouble is, questions are rarely settled without debate. Stock and Murphy raise certain issues not because they are bigots but because of the realities facing women in society. Whatever one thinks of their arguments, these realities will not disappear simply by labelling critical feminists “hatemongers”.

Is there a formula that debate plus time equals settled? There isn’t literally but there can be in practice, to some extent. There can be ratchets in what is still debatable and what isn’t, although strong enough pressure (in the form of Trumps and Bannons and the like) can break even the ratchets – but the ratchets don’t drop into place overnight. I would like it if it were not seen as debatable whether or not women get to work at Google, but we’re not there yet. It’s way too early in the process for any dogma on “gender identity” to be settled.

This is a strange one.

pic.twitter.com/WvAdUoWCuK

— Katelyn Burns (@transscribe) November 24, 2018

Impressive biceps for women.

Twitter has now permanently banned Meghan Murphy. For what? For having an Unapproved View on sex and gender. What next? Banning, say, Walter Shaub and Norm Eisen for being critical of Trump? Banning Human Rights Watch for reporting on violations of human rights? Banning scientists for talking about global warming?

Why is it Twitter’s job to enforce orthodoxy on trans dogma? Why is that Twitter’s job when it’s not Twitter’s job to do anything about years-long harassment campaigns against women?

So, we need to make her thoughts even more widely available on Twitter.

"I choose to consider facts and take what I consider to be ethical positions based on those facts, even if those facts and positions don’t fit whatever is considered to be politically correct." I stand with #MeghanMurphy and #FreeSpeech. https://t.co/TLQR3WmvHU

— Tara Nykyforiak (@TCbytheriver) November 24, 2018

https://twitter.com/K_IngalaSmith/status/1066239395009835008

I will happily relay tweets from #MeghanMurphy until they ban me too. So if anyone knows her, please pass that on.

— Graham Linehan (@Glinner) November 24, 2018

https://twitter.com/Ginger1383/status/1066392765104218112

Words from #MeghanMurphy, banned from Twitter again: "Imagine if we were asked not to debate war or capitalism or climate change, lest it hurt the feelings of warmongers and capitalists and climate change deniers?" https://t.co/wY9KQrCVWh

— Shona Craven (@shonacraven) November 24, 2018

The fact that @Twitter @TwitterSupport @jack have PERMANENTLY banned a principled, eloquent woman like @MeghanEMurphy proves just how anti-feminist and morally bankrupt they really are. #MeghanMurphy https://t.co/kRbyzNE8RY

— Renarde🦊Gender-Free🏁Not-Cis (@renarde) November 24, 2018

Karen White is a man who raped and sexually assaulted women #twitterhateswomen #MeghanMurphy #WarOnWomen

— 🤐 🦖 Dr Lesley (Ancient Dyke) Semmens KPSS 🦖 (@LesleySemmens) November 24, 2018

There was a horrendous E. coli outbreak last year.

The culprit turned out to be E. coli, a powerful pathogen that had contaminated romaine lettuce grown in Yuma, Arizona, and distributed nationwide. At least 210 people in 36 states were sickened. Five died and 27 suffered kidney failure. The same strain of E. coli that sickened them was detected in a Yuma canal used to irrigate some crops.

For more than a decade, it’s been clear that there’s a gaping hole in American food safety: Growers aren’t required to test their irrigation water for pathogens such as E. coli. As a result, contaminated water can end up on fruits and vegetables.

After several high-profile disease outbreaks linked to food, Congress in 2011 ordered a fix, and produce growers this year would have begun testing their water under rules crafted by the Obama administration’s Food and Drug Administration.

Would have. Note the conditional. Would have, but didn’t.

But six months before people were sickened by the contaminated romaine, President Donald Trump’s FDA – responding to pressure from the farm industry and Trump’s order to eliminate regulations – shelved the water-testing rules for at least four years.

Eliminate regulations!! All of them!!! Including the ones that would keep people from eating E. coli on their lettuce and dying!!!! Preserve our god-given right to eat shit-contaminated lettuce.

Despite this deadly outbreak, the FDA has shown no sign of reconsidering its plan to postpone the rules. The agency also is considering major changes, such as allowing some produce growers to test less frequently or find alternatives to water testing to ensure the safety of their crops.

The FDA’s lack of urgency dumbfounds food safety scientists.

Oh well – maybe the wildfires or the floods will kill us first.

I missed this last August. I was alerted to it just now by Walter Shaub.

https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1066406575647195137

Waiver? thought I. What waiver? So I looked it up.

Oh. That waiver.

It is “in the public interest” for the White House’s top communicator to be excused from federal ethics laws so he can meet with Fox News, according to President Donald Trump’s top lawyer.

Bill Shine, Trump’s newly minted communications director, and Larry Kudlow, the White House’s top economist, who worked at CNBC before his White House post, have both been excused from provisions of the law which seeks to prevent administration officials from advancing the financial interests of relatives or former employers.

So, administration officials, go ahead and advance the financial interests of former employers.

“The Administration has an interest in your interacting with Covered Organizations such as Fox News,” wrote White House counsel Don McGahn in a July 13 memo granting an ethics waivers to Shine, a former Fox executive. “[T]he need for your services outweighs the concern that a reasonable person may question the integrity of the White House Office’s programs and operations.”

Kudlow, a former CNBC host, received a similar waiver allowing him to communicate with former colleagues.

In other words, we want you to do these unethical corrupt things for us, so we’re giving you a waiver from the rule that says you can’t do these unethical corrupt things for us. Slick.