Oh good god.

A very nice note from Chairman Kim of North Korea. Great progress being made! pic.twitter.com/6NI6AqL0xt

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 12, 2018

A nice note from that nice Mister Kim. Isn’t that nice. Isn’t that nice? It’s so nice. It’s so nice it’s very nice. It’s nice when notes are nice. I like nice things. Nice things are nice. Great progress being made!

The pitfalls of being woke:

Dundee’s children and families convener has apologised after being blasted over a series of expletive-laden outbursts on social media.

Not just expletives though. “Expletive” is a bit of a euphemism, as so many words that name this behavior are. There is swearing, and then there is…that thing there is no one word for, that is about expressing hatred of people for being female or not white or lesbian or gay or foreign and so on. Saying fuck is one thing, and calling people cunts or niggers is another. The Dundee guy did both.

Councillor Gregor Murray launched into a stream of explicit tirades on Saturday following reports of an anti-trans protest at a London Pride event.

The protest wasn’t “anti-trans.” It was anti some of the claims of some forms of the ideology of some trans activists. There’s a big difference.

The councillor, who identifies as gender non-binary, described a group of women blocking the front of the march as “utter cunts” and asked a fellow Twitter user, “where’s your fucking solidarity you transphobic b*****?”. (“bugger”? I’m not sure.)

Cllr Murray added: “Get to fuck with your medieval views, you horrible bigot. Stonewall started with trans people. Don’t you fucking dare sully it with your anti-trans bullshit.” [Asterisks replaced by letters where possible]

The children’s convener has now admitted the use of such crass language “reflects badly upon my city and my party” after facing a backlash over the outbursts.

But “crass” isn’t the real problem. Sure maybe it’s not a great look for a councillor to be throwing the fucks around on Twitter, but it’s a horrendous look for a councillor to be calling women “utter cunts.”

Gregor Murray, naturally, is ignoring that fact entirely.

Cllr Murray said: “Over the weekend, a small minority of Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists attempted to disrupt Pride in London. They misrepresented the history of our LGBTI Community, and attacked many of my friends and colleagues.

They didn’t attack anyone.

“In my anger, I used a lot of crass language which was not appropriate. I took their messages personally, and reacted in a manner which reflects badly upon my city and my party.”

Again: “crass” is not the issue. He’s letting himself off way too easily there.

Councillor Murray’s actions have repeatedly caused chaos for fellow councillors and politicians.

…

Cllr Murray, the authority’s equality spokesperson, was also called out last year by then Scottish Labour Kezia Dugdale for “blatant sexism” after he branded a women’s group campaigning for equal representation as “absolute roasters”.

The Urban Dictionary is helpful on “roasters”:

Scottish slang. Can be used to describe someone who is making a complete cunt of themselves.

Ok then. Councillor Murray is a Scot so there you go.

Lovely wee man.

https://twitter.com/grogipher/status/1017025286888738816

So it all went very well, apparently.

NATO diplomats are dumbfounded by President Donald Trump’s barrage of acidic rhetoric at the annual summit in Brussels on Wednesday.

Trump came out brawling in his first public comments, accusing NATO ally Germany of being “a captive of Russia,” calling members of the alliance “delinquent” in their defense spending and insisting they increase it “immediately.”

“It’s like the world has gone crazy this morning,” one senior European diplomat told CNN. “Trump’s performance was beyond belief.”

Because he’s a genius and an original and a drainer of swamps.

Wendi Winters fought back.

Janel Cooley, a survivor of the shooting that killed Winters and four others, spoke about her experience for the first time in an interview with The Capital. She said she watched from under her desk as the 20-year newspaper veteran rose to meet her attacker.

Winters charged forward holding a trash can and recycling bin, said Cooley, a sales consultant. Winters shouted something like, “No! You stop that!” or “You get out of here!” like she was warding off an unwanted dog.

“She may have distracted him enough that he forgot about me because I definitely stood up and was looking at the door,” Cooley said. “I’m sure he wasn’t expecting … anyone to charge him.”

Winters’ colleagues agree she saved their lives. Of the 11 employees in the office during the attack, six survived.

…

Winters once gave fellow reporter Rachael Pacella the shirt off her back when Pacella spilled gasoline on her clothes before an important interview. She checked in on photojournalist Paul W. Gillespie incessantly after his brother died. Intern Anthony Messenger, who started at The Capital weeks before the attack, said Winters always tried to make him feel comfortable.

The survivors say her charge gave them time to hide or get out.

The Daily Beast reports:

Business Insider removed a post about portrayals of trans individuals in Hollywood after staff complained internally about the column, saying the article did not meet the publication’s standards.

On Friday, conservative columnist Daniella Greenbaum published a piece titled: “Scarlett Johansson is being unfairly criticized for doing her job after being cast as a transgender man.”

…

Several Business Insider staff told The Daily Beast that some employees were offended by the column.

The publication took down the piece on Friday, and appended an editor’s note to the page on Tuesday saying that “Business Insider removed the column because, upon further review, we decided it did not meet our editorial standards.”

So it must have been pretty bad then. Let’s read the archived version:

Scarlett Johansson is the latest target of the social-justice warrior mob. The actress is being chastised for, well, acting.

She has been cast in a movie in which she will play someone different than herself. For this great crime — which seems to essentially define the career path she has chosen — she is being castigated for being insufficiently sensitive to the transgender community.

Johansson is set to play a transgender man in an upcoming film, “Rub and Tug,” a film based on the true story of transgender massage parlor owner Dante “Tex” Gill. The announcement quickly garnered a reaction.

Trace Lysette, a transgender actress who plays Shea on “Transparent” took to Twitter: “And not only do you play us and steal our narrative and our opportunity but you pat yourselves on the back with trophies and accolades for mimicking what we have lived… so twisted. I’m so done.”

Well, the crack about “the social-justice warrior mob” hints that the point of view is conservative, because “social justice warrior mob” isn’t really a popular label on the left, even among people who try to keep the left honest, i.e. criticize it from within. But I don’t see anything shocking enough to spell “withdraw the piece!!”

Her framing of the issue, which has been echoed by other actors and activists, is off base. “Stealing” narratives — or, more charitably, playing parts — is precisely what actors are hired to do. But that reality seems to have been forgotten. CNN wrote a story about the issue entitled, “These trans actors could have been cast instead of Scarlett Johansson in her new movie.”

It’s hard to imagine people having the same reaction in other scenarios — a rich actor being hired to play a poor person; an actor whose real-life parents were still living being hired to play an orphan; a perfectly nice, upstanding member of society being cast as a rapist; or an actor with no scientific experience being cast as a paleontologist.

Yet all of these examples (and dozens more) could also be strangely characterized as “stealing” narratives. I’m sure there’s a class on how to do just that at the Yale school of Drama.

Still not seeing any thought crime.

A New York Times story on the fallout described the online backlash as being “led by transgender actors, who argued that such casting decisions take opportunities away from members of marginalized communities.”

What they fail to acknowledge is that the job of an actor is to represent someone else. Johansson’s identity off the screen is irrelevant to the identities she plays on the screen. That’s what she’s paid for. And if she does her job, she’ll make everyone forget about the controversy in the first place.

And that’s all there is. I don’t see anything that justifies withdrawal of a published piece. It’s not an attack on trans people or even a questioning of the meaning of “gender identity”; it simply questions the idea that you have to be an X in order to play an X (and, implicitly, the idea that Xs should be hired to play Xs because they should get the jobs). That is not a good reason to withdraw a published piece.

People have gone nuts on this subject.

I wrote a piece for @NYMag about why it was a very bad look for Business Insider to pull that @DGreenbaum about Scarlett Johansson playing a trans man. For the health and vibrancy of journalism, all-out retractions need to remain quite rare.https://t.co/pvHejzu56O

— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) July 11, 2018

The Daily Beast is harsher.

The explosion was almost instantaneous—over breakfast, no less—at the beginning of this year’s NATO summit in Brussels. With cameras switched on, and no question they were recording, Donald Trump told his Atlantic Alliance counterparts that Germany is “totally controlled by Russia.” Berlin buys from Moscow more and more of the natural gas it uses. So, in one of his trademark versions of common sense, which commonly ignores basic history and fundamental facts, he asked why the U.S. should spend a lot of money to defend Germany from Russia if Germany was dependent on Russia for energy. Trump incorrectly inflated Germany’s reliance on Russian energy to convey, yet again, a picture of NATO as a protection racket and the U.S. demanding its envelope of cash be heavier.

What was surprising here to many Europeans was not the issue of Germany’s energy supplies or defense budget, which ought to be discussed, but the way it was raised, quite consciously, to be as rude and offensive as possible to America’s richest and most powerful ally on the continent. This after Trump turned the meeting last month in Canada of the G7 most economically advanced democracies into an acrimonious debacle. (He not only insulted German Chancellor Angela Merkel there, he threw a Starburst candy at her.)

Being rude and offensive is his only talent…well, that and being cloyingly sweet and loving to authoritarian shits.

“The mood here is mix of concern, disappointment, anger and disgust,” said retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, who until October led the U.S. Army’s European contingent and who attended the NATO summit.

“I expected bad, and I kept telling people to expect bad, but it is still surreal to see,” one current NATO official told The Daily Beast. “Everyone is in disbelief, worried [NATO’s] credibility is shot, bracing for what comes out of the private sessions—this thing is just getting started and we still have to make it through the substantive sessions, which will be long and boring. We definitely know we’re going to have do clean-up; we just don’t know the extent of the damage or whether anyone will take us seriously. And there is still the UK trip and the Helsinki trip, which will color everything here.” (Trump is headed to England and Scotland before his July 16 summit with Vladimir Putin in Finland.)

We’re on a runaway train. Good luck to all of us.

As François Heisbourg, one of the continent’s most respected defense analysts, noted, Trump has been dissing NATO for decades, but now as president his views count. And Heisbourg’s numerous sources tell him that the G7 meeting last month was, behind the scenes, even worse than most headlines made it seem, with Trump talking about the E.U. essentially as a rival rather like China, only weaker. And in private as as well as public likening NATO to Nafta: a bad deal for America.

“Trump has a vision of the world in which everything is bilateral and the United States can monetize its power,” said Heisbourg. “Turning NATO into a protection racket, that is the best fate that he promises us.”

Well in all fairness, two is as high as he can count.

Trump is at the NATO meeting embarrassing us all, as usual.

President Trump kicked off his trip to Europe with a biting critique of the United States’ longtime allies, declaring at a breakfast meeting that Germany “is captive to Russia.” Next to him, three of his senior officials seemed uncomfortable at times, pursing their lips and glancing away from the table.

I watched the video this morning, feeling ill as always – he looks like an intrusion, an eruption, a mistake. He looks like the one person in the room who does not belong there – a passing Tupperware marketer who wandered in by mistake.

In the clip shown above, Trump begins by citing German imports of Russian gas as evidence that “Germany is totally controlled by Russia.” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg remains stoic as Trump lays out his complaint, but U.S. ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison and White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly look uncomfortable. Hutchinson appears to avert her gaze from her NATO colleagues sitting across from her, while Kelly looks down, then shifts his body and glances away, lips pursed tightly.

Of course, it’s impossible to say exactly what was going through the minds of Trump’s aides.

In a statement to The Post, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “[Kelly] was displeased because he was expecting a full breakfast and there were only pastries and cheese.”

NATO must immediately increase its spending on full breakfasts for visiting Americans, all the way up to 4%.

Why on earth would the Washington Post run a piece by a carpool buddy of Brett Kavanaugh’s letting us know what a super-nice guy he is?

When I saw the title I honest to god thought it was satire:

I don’t know Kavanaugh the judge. But Kavanaugh the carpool dad is one great guy.

It sure looks like satire, doesn’t it, but she’s serious.

Her qualification for writing the piece is that she lives in Chevy Chase.

Much has been written about Brett Kavanaugh as President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, but the discussion has focused on his record as a federal judge and in his legal career. I’d like to talk about him as Coach K. Like the one at Duke University, this Coach K also is a mentor to student-athletes who love basketball. But his players are sixth-grade girls.

STOP.

Stop right there. Not another step.

Yes of fucking course the discussion has focused on his record as a federal judge and in his legal career, because he’s been nominated to be on the Supreme Court. Our only interest in him is because of his nomination to be on the Supreme Court. He’s not our future roommate or next door neighbor or babysitter or blind date. We don’t care about him personally; we shouldn’t care about him personally.

This is not a soap opera or a tv cooking competition. Kavanaugh’s personality and character and taste in literature are not relevant and not our business; his record as a federal judge and in his legal career very much is. It’s insultingly frivolous to pretend that his basketball coaching is worth reading about in the Washington Post.

Brett’s older daughter and mine have been classmates at Blessed Sacrament School, a small Catholic school in the District, for the past seven years. On evenings and weekends, you’re likely to find Brett at a local gym or athletic field, encouraging his players or watching games with his daughters and their friends. He coaches not one but two girls’ basketball teams. His positive attitude and calm demeanor make the game fun and allow each player to shine. The results have been good: This past season, he led the Blessed Sacrament School’s sixth-grade girls team to an undefeated season and a citywide championship in the local Catholic youth league.

I don’t care. Nobody should care.

Except for the Catholic part. That is relevant, and it continues the trend of filling the court with Catholics. There are liberal Catholics who don’t do what the Vatican tells them to do, of course, but it’s still worth paying attention to – but as a matter of world view and judicial philosophy, not as a matter of basketball coaching. Yes even for girls.

I’ll leave it to others to gauge Judge Kavanaugh’s qualifications for the Supreme Court as a jurist. But as someone who would bring to his work the traits of personal kindness, leadership and willingness to help when called on, he would receive a unanimous verdict in his favor from those who know him.

I repeat – what is the Post doing publishing childish drivel like that?

They can dish it out but they can’t take it.

Americans in the UK have been warned to “keep a low profile” during this week’s visit of their president, Donald Trump, as the US embassy in London says demonstrations against the event could turn violent.

Oh  yes, definitely, and when they do turn violent they will attempt to exterminate Americans. Furthermore, all Americans in the UK are visibly unmistakably American, thanks to the neon YANK sign they are required to have permanently screwed onto their heads as a condition of entry. It’s a scary scary scary time to be a person of USitude in the UK.

“Be aware of your surroundings [and] exercise caution if unexpectedly in the vicinity of large gatherings that may become violent,” the US embassy warned.

WATCH OUT

Stay home.

Lock the doors and windows.

Hide under the bed.

In their warning on Tuesday, the embassy told American citizens to expect the largest demonstration in central London on Friday 13 July, when organisers hope tens of thousands of people will be on the streets. A “Trump baby” balloon is also due to fly over central London that morning.

And it will probably be dropping bombs on the people it detects as American.

US officials in London added that, besides keeping their heads down, people should also keep an eye on local media and heed any police advice. “Several of the events are expected to attract large crowds and there will be road closures in connection with those events,” they said.

Really they’d better nip over to the Continent for a few days.

Raw Story in January 2016:

In a Raw Story exclusive, former and current employees of the Malheur Refuge have provided new revelations on the conflict between Dwight and Steve Hammond, two local ranchers who have clashed with federal government agencies for decades. The employees claim the Hammonds illegal grazing was damaging the refuge that’s home to 320 bird and 58 mammal species. They allege the Hammonds lawbreaking ranged from aerial hunting of animals in the refuge to death threats against employees and their families to cattle grazing that was altering the entire species composition of critical ecosystems.

…

The beef the Hammonds currently have with the feds is over access to land under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management. More than 20 years ago the Hammonds also had a permit for grazing on the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. That was canceled in the mid-90s because of what officials say was the Hammonds’ constant violation of the permit’s terms. Today, the [Fish and Wildlife Service] is still caught in the middle because the Hammonds need to cross the 187,700 acres of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge to access the BLM land on which their cattle are allowed to graze.

Marvin Plenert, 80, who served as Northwest regional director for the Fish and Wildlife Service from 1986 to 1994, says the agency tried to accommodate the Hammonds. “We gave them a day to cross through the refuge and they took two or three weeks to do it. They were in your face about everything. They kept pushing the envelope, cut fences, cattle wound up in the refuge illegally.”

…

It’s now well-known that Malheur, an oasis in the arid Great Basin that spans six states, is called “one of the crown jewels of the National Wildlife Refuge System.” It’s a “crucial stop along the Pacific Flyway and offers resting, breeding and nesting habitat for hundreds of migratory birds and other wildlife.” But the little-known story is how years of uncontrolled grazing by Hammonds and other ranchers were sending shockwaves through the refuge.

Cameron says when he arrived at Malheur in 1989, relations were “fairly good” with local ranchers, and about 30 of them had permits for grazing and haying on refuge land. Prior to his arrival changes had been made to match grazing policies with enforcement. He says National Wildlife Refuges allow public recreation in any way feasible. “That can be hunting, fishing, birdwatching, hiking — as long as it’s compatible with the wildlife on the refuge.” Cattle had been grazing year-round on Malheur, but the policy has a higher threshold for economic uses like grazing. “It has to be beneficial to wildlife or otherwise we don’t allow it.”

Implementing the prescribed grazing practices led the Hammonds and Fish and Wildlife Service to butt heads in the early 1990s over the Bridge and Mud creeks and a watering hole for birds. Cameron says Hammonds’ cattle would get into Bridge Creek, a deep canyon, “until someone drove them out.” The cattle would devour woody plant species crucial to the ecosystem.

With the loss of the anchoring trees, the banks started eroding. Cameron says the creek would “become like a drainage ditch and the water table in the meadows around the creek would start dropping.” The effects rippled through the meadow, altering the entire species composition. Unable to reach water, grass would die off, sagebrush and other undesirable species would take root, and ground-nesting birds would lose breeding sites. He says, “Studies show 80 percent of the wildlife that lives in the Great Basin depends on a healthy riparian habitat, and that’s what was along Bridge Creek.”

Cameron oversaw the rebuilding of fences around the refuge that had been wiped out by floods in the 1980s, removing some corrals for cattle that were of little use under the new grazing guidelines, and restoring habitat. He claims corrals in areas where cattle grazed “enticed the Hammonds to leave them there and they would get into the riparian areas, rather than moving them through the refuge.” Both Cameron and Plenert, the former regional director, say the Hammonds would leave their cattle on the refuge for weeks at a time, damaging the land despite the clear rules.

Cameron says, “The cattle like to eat the young plants, willows, elderberries we were trying to introduce in the creek banks, it’s like candy for them.” An entire replanting was wiped out by the Hammonds’ cattle and “a year or two later we would go back and try to restore the habitat to stabilize the creek banks.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service built new corrals for ranchers. Cameron says, “It was on dry land, had a water supply, and trucks could get in and out to haul cattle if needed.” As for the 30 other permittees, “We were able to work with them very well. It was really mainly Dwight Hammond. We tried to work with Hammonds but they didn’t want to lose the free grazing they had for a long time. But the grazing was illegal to begin with because it’s wasn’t their property.”

In 1994 the Hammonds disabled a Caterpillar the FWS was using to fence a watering hole, and they were arrested and charged with felonies.

The charges were lessened and eventually dropped after the Hammonds entered into an agreement with provisions including a halt to interfering with fence construction and moving their cattle through the refuge in one day, which Cameron says is doable.

Leading up to the 1994 incident were the death threats. Cameron says, “My wife would take these phone calls, it was terribly vulgar language. They said they were going to wrap my son in barbed wire and throw him down a well. They said they knew exactly which rooms my kids slept in, in Burns. There were death threats to my wife and two other staff members and their wives. My family went to Bend rather than be in the community because it was so volatile at the time. The families of my biologist and my deputy manager family had to relocate as well for a short time.”

“At the refuge headquarters, one of the Hammonds said they would tear my head off and shit down the hole. One of the Hammonds told my Deputy Manager, Dan Walsworth, they were going to ‘put a chain around his neck and drag him behind a pickup.’” Cameron says it became practice “never to meet with the Hammonds alone and usually to have a law enforcement officer present.”

No wonder Trump likes them.

Peter Walker on Facebook:

I have no personal stakes here but I deeply dislike history being whitewashed. People who are the “salt of the earth” don’t threaten federal employees to “tear your head off and sh– down the hole,” nor do they say if they don’t get their way someone better “call the sheriff and an undertaker.”

Law? What law? Trump is all the law anyone will ever need. He’s pardoned the Hammonds.

President Trump on Tuesday pardoned a pair of Oregon cattle ranchers who had been serving out sentences for arson on federal land — sentences that set off an armed occupation of a wildlife refuge in 2016.

Dwight L. Hammond, now 76, and his son, Steven D. Hammond, 49, became a cause célèbre that inspired an antigovernment group’s battle with the federal government over its control of rural land in Oregon. The occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge resulted in the death of a rancher from Arizona.

And a lot of damage to our publicly-owned national wildlife refuge by some violent reactionaries who want to steal our public land for their cattle to graze.

“The Hammonds are devoted family men, respected contributors to their local community, and have widespread support from their neighbors, local law enforcement, and farmers and ranchers across the West,” Ms. Sanders said in the statement, which was issued while Mr. Trump was en route to Brussels for a NATO meeting.

So being devoted family men makes it ok to torch public land?

Liu Xia is free at last. HRW reports:

The Chinese government permitted Liu Xia, the widow of dissident Liu Xiaobo, to board a plane to Germany on the morning of July 10, 2018, nearly a year to the day since her husband’s death, Human Rights Watch said today. The German government negotiated Liu Xia’s release, whose health significantly deteriorated during nearly eight years of house arrest.

“It is a tremendous relief that Liu Xia has been able to leave China for freedom abroad,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. “Ever since her late husband received the Nobel Peace Prize while in a Chinese prison, Liu Xia was also unjustly detained. The German government deserves credit for its sustained pressure and hard work to gain Liu Xia’s release.”

Liu Xia, 57, an artist, photographer, and poet, was never charged with a crime. However, since October 2010, when Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, she had been held arbitrarily under house arrest. Throughout Liu Xiaobo’s hospitalization till his death on July 13, 2017, Liu Xia was prevented from speaking freely to family, friends, or the media.

In the past year since her husband’s death, authorities continued to closely guard her home, allowing only a few friends and family members to speak to her on the phone or visit her. Liu Xia is reportedly suffering from severe depression and a range of physical ailments, including a heart condition. In April, she said to a friend in an emotional phone call, “If I can’t leave, I’ll die in my home… It would be easier to die than to live.”

They are still persecuting her brother, who has not been allowed to leave.

Since President Xi Jinping took office in March 2013, China’s government has tightened its control over society and stepped up its campaign against independent activists, lawyers, and others deemed a threat to the Chinese Communist Party. Authorities have arbitrarily detained countless people for their peaceful work or views. Several human rights defenders have either died in detention or shortly after being released. China’s deteriorating rights record is also being felt beyond its borders as it seeks to undermine international human rights institutions.

Liu Xia’s release and her departure from the country show that sustained international pressure can bring about positive human rights developments in China, Human Rights Watch said. There are important opportunities in the upcoming months, including the European Union-China summit and the Asia-Europe Meeting summit, during which sustained public pressure should focus on other Chinese activists and lawyers wrongfully detained or imprisoned.

Donald? Anything?

Silke-Maria Weineck in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Is there anything more gratifying to a nice, liberal academic than turning on NPR and hearing them talk about a book you have written? In that lovely, calm, reasonable NPR voice that makes you think all will be well with the world, if only we can all learn to talk to one another in that lovely, calm, reasonable voice?

Not a lot, I would guess, although I myself have gone all the way off the NPR voice, because to me it sounds not so much lovely calm reasonable as soporific, exaggeratedly slow, and determinedly middlebrow. In reality I would of course rejoice at the publicity and expansion of readership, but I bet I wouldn’t much relish the actual discussion. If NPR had ever done a chat about Does God Hate Women? for instance? It would have been massively (however calmly-soporifically) censorious about it. It would have had a nice liberal priest and Linda Sarsour on to discuss and they would have shredded it for being so blunt and unkind and hostile to religion. Come to think of it, I’ve actually done the BBC version of that chat; they had Madeleine Bunting and Humera Khan to do the shredding.

Anyway, that aside, yes it’s highly gratifying to have one’s book discussed on Serious Radio.

And is there anything more aggravating than hearing that voice attribute the book you wrote to your male co-author? The very same voice that interviewed you for half an hour about this very book, of which you wrote the introduction, the first chapter, the last chapter, and the conclusion?

Here is what happened. Over the last year, I teamed up with Stefan Szymanski, a wildly successful sports economist at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, to explore a very odd phenomenon: the screeching fury that, across the globe, greets the word “soccer.”…

So of course we were thrilled when Anders Kelto said he wanted to do a segment on it for All Things Considered. Stefan is an old hound at this kind of thing, but I got a huge kick out of going to the little studio in Ann Arbor to get my visitor’s badge, sit down in front of one of those big microphones, put on my headphones, and hear that soothing NPR voice in my ears.

They had a good long detailed conversation.

Saturday morning, we got an email: “Hey Stefan and Silke, Just a quick heads up that NPR is planning to run the ‘football vs. soccer’ story today on Weekend All Things Considered, in case you want to listen live. It’s slated for 5:41 p.m., but just keep in mind that breaking news can cause schedules to change….. Oh, and because of the way the story came together, I was only able to use clips from Stefan — sorry, Silke!!!!!”

I get five exclamation marks! I suspect he would have dotted his i’s with hearts, if he could have. Not that he had anything to do with my erasure: The story just came together that way, you understand; there was no human involvement.

Also, women’s voices are so irritating, right?

I spent the day quietly fuming, but resigned to my fate. After all, I do not have NPR voice, whereas Stefan has a British accent and an established reputation. All I have to show for myself is a measly book prize from the Modern Language Association. Nobody ever wants to hear from the humanities, anyway, including people who say that the humanities are really, really important.

Then I get a text from a colleague who is listening to the story. It starts with “O god,” and informs me that not only are there no quotes from me in the story, as I already know, but that the book is now attributed exclusively to Stefan. My friend has already written to NPR in protest. He thinks I should ask for a retraction.

That cannot be, I think; surely he misheard. Kelto talked to me for half an hour. He has the book. My name is on the cover. Because I wrote half of it…So I go online and find the segment, and there it is: “Stefan Szymanski is the author of a new book, ‘It’s Football, Not Soccer….’”

I listen to the segment in mounting disbelief. It turns out that Kelto wasn’t satisfied to air just one voice on this segment. One guy with a British accent won’t do. Whom else could he possibly ask to comment, to make this an appropriately diverse NPR segment? Yes, he finds another guy with a British accent, who repeats what the first guy with the British accent said.

But there wasn’t room for the other author.

I share this new development with what is by now my Facebook support group. Pretty much all of them write books, so they all understand what it means to hear on NPR about a book you have written but has now been written without you. A bunch of them write to NPR, including the formidably kind (and kindly formidable) Rebecca Solnit of Men Explain Things to Me fame, who knows a thing or two about how this stuff works. One of them demands that Kelto be suspended, but I think he should simply be sentenced to reporting only on women’s work for a year…

Oh, I think for the rest of his career, don’t you?

Not such good news. Sylvia Acosta on Facebook:

I just experienced a Handmaidens Tale moment at the DFW airport by Customs and Border Protection. I was traveling back from Rome and stopped by US customs. I was asked if Sybonae was my daughter and I said yes. Then they asked why if she was my daughter I didn’t have the same last name. I told them I had already established my career and earned my doctorate with my last name Acosta so I had decided not to change it. That is why we had different names. Then the customs office said, well maybe you should have taken your husbands last names so you could prove you were her mom. I told him I had a lot of proof she was my daughter without having had his last name. He then took me to another room where they proceeded to interrogate me and my daughter to prove I was her parent. I had to reexplain why we didn’t share last names and again one said well maybe you should consider changing your name to reflect that you are her mother. I then proceeded to tell them that they were perpetuating an institutionalized misogynistic system which required that a woman take her husbands name and after that and a whole lot more about what I thought about what they had said to me that they let us go. I am furious.

It’s had 13,584 shares as of this moment.

A nice piece of news for a change. Reirani Kiri Taurima on Facebook:

This is The Prime Minister Of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern. She’s 37. She’s the youngest head of government in the world. She’s also the first western woman to give birth while in power. 2 days after the baby was born – with midwives, standard in NZ hospitals – she introduced her to the country during a press conference on the nightly news. It was really lovely. She named her Neve Te Aroha. Te Aroha means “The Love” in Maori. It represents ALL the names that were submitted (upon her request) from various tribes throughout the country, and was her attempt at capturing them all.

This is her and her partner, no, he’s NOT her husband (gasp!), walking to the press conference. He’s TV fishing show Host Clarke Gayford, and HE will be staying at home with baby Neve when his lady goes back to running the country in 6 weeks. Clarke sports a snazzy sweater he picked up at the op-shop (second-hand store) in Gisborne, and thinks its just kinda logical that he gives up his day job to stay home and look after the baby.

A week after the birth on July 1st Jacinda introduced a $5billion Families Package that she’d drafted on the floor of her friends house in Hastings – before her pregnancy. It’s based on the knowledge that the first few years of a babies life are the most important. The package gives an extra $75 a week to low-income families with new babies, and an extra $700 to families for winter heating costs as well (it’s cold as hell down there in the winter). It also increases the Paid Leave for all new parents from 20 weeks to 22 weeks. She announced the details via Facebook live, from her couch, right after she’d finished breastfeeding the baby. Because Kiwis. Some of the most down-to-earth, no-drama-having, just-do-it kind of people you’ll ever meet.

And because Women. We really do know how to lead, and to do it well.

#ManaWahine

Welcome to the world Neve Te Aroha.

Another religious maniac heard from:

I agree. Leaders must once again acknowledge the importance of submission to God in a free society. What good are God given rights in America if people do not acknowledge God? #History #Truth #Bible pic.twitter.com/H9EhBNPbJN

— Jason Rapert (@jasonrapert) July 8, 2018

Leaders must once again acknowledge the importance of submission to God in a free society.

If “leaders” must acknowledge the importance of submission to God then we’re not talking about a free society, are we. The mandate is not free, the “acknowledgement” of a lie is not free, the citation of a non-existent entity is not free, and above all the demand for submission to a god is the very opposite of freedom. It’s the opposite of freedom in its arbitrary substitution of fictions for reality, in its assumption of shared beliefs when no such assumption is warranted or fair, and in its valorization of submission, of all things.

A free society spits on the whole idea of submission.

A CFI press release:

The Center for Inquiry has filed a lawsuit in the District of Columbia on behalf of the general public against drug retailer CVS for consumer fraud over its sale and marketing of useless homeopathic medicines. CFI, an organization advancing reason and science, accused the country’s largest drug retailer of deceiving consumers through its misrepresentation of homeopathy’s safety and effectiveness, wasting customers’ money and putting their health at risk.

Click here to access the official complaint (PDF).

Homeopathy is an 18th-century pseudoscience premised on the absurd, unscientific notion that a substance that causes a particular symptom is what should be ingested to alleviate it. Dangerous substances are diluted to the point that no trace of the active ingredient remains, but its alleged effectiveness rests on the nonsensical claim that water molecules have “memories” of the original substance. Homeopathic treatments have no effect whatsoever beyond that of a placebo.

“Homeopathy is a total sham, and CVS knows it. Yet the company persists in deceiving its customers about the effectiveness of homeopathic products,” said Nicholas Little, CFI’s Vice President and General Counsel. “Homeopathics are shelved right alongside scientifically-proven medicines, under the same signs for cold and flu, pain relief, sleep aids, and so on.”

“If you search for ‘flu treatment’ on their website, it even suggests homeopathics to you,” said Little. “CVS is making no distinction between those products that have been vetted and tested by science, and those that are nothing but snake oil.”

I did a post back on January 17 2014 about the homeopathic asthma remedy for sale at my local chain drugstore. The bogus “remedy” for a disease that can kill you.

It clearly suggests it’s a treatment for shortness of breath, wheezing, tightness in chest – yet it has no active ingredient. It’s water. Strength to Nick’s sword arm.

Apart from being a waste of money, choosing homeopathic treatments to the exclusion of evidence-based medicines can result in worsened or prolonged symptoms, and in some cases, even death. Several products have been found to contain poisonous ingredients which have affected tens of thousands of adults and children in just the last few years.

“CVS is taking cynical advantage of their customers’ confusion and trust in the CVS brand, and putting their health at risk to make a profit,” said Little. “And they can’t claim ignorance. If the people in charge of the country’s largest pharmacy don’t know that homeopathy is bunk, they should be kept as far away from the American healthcare system as possible.”

“We made a number of efforts to discuss this situation with CVS, but the concerns we raised were ignored,” said Robyn Blumner, president and CEO of CFI. “Homeopathy is a multi-billion dollar consumer fraud. If CVS would rather line its pockets than protect Americans’ health, we have no choice but to take this fight to the courts.”

CFI has for many years lobbied for tighter regulation of homeopathic products, and has been invited by the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission to provide expert testimony. As a result, the FTC declared in 2016 that the marketing of homeopathic products for specific diseases and symptoms is only acceptable if consumers are told: “(1) there is no scientific evidence that the product works and (2) the product’s claims are based only on theories of homeopathy from the 1700s that are not accepted by most modern medical experts.” And last year, the FDA announced a new “risk-based” policy of regulatory action against homeopathic products.

“CVS should be warned, the evidence for our case is extremely strong,” said Blumner. “And if CVS’s endorsement of homeopathy is any indication, evidence will not be their strong suit.”

Git’em.