Blowing past Charlottesville

Aug 23rd, 2018 6:10 pm | By

Stewart at Gnu Atheism:

If you haven’t been lurking in far-right groups in recent years, this may not have jumped out at you, but this Trump tweet is, in its signalling to the most extreme racist elements in society, a quantum leap more serious than just saying “on many sides” and “some very fine people” after Charlottesville. It is a dog-whistle of far more piercing intensity than anything we have yet heard from him.

That full statement:

New York, NY, August 23, 2018 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today issued the following statement concerning President Trump’s tweet on alleged land and farm seizures, and “large scale killing of farmers,” of white farmers in South Africa:

It is extremely disturbing that the President of the United States echoed a longstanding and false white supremacist claim that South Africa’s white farmers are targets of large-scale, racially-motivated killings by South Africa’s black majority.

White supremacists in the United States have made such claims for years.  In early 2012, ADL’s Center on Extremism documented how white supremacists in the United States were gearing up for protests as part of something they termed the “South Africa Project (SAP).” The goal of the organizers, which included representatives from major neo-Nazi, racist skinhead, “traditional white supremacist,” Christian Identity groups, as well as racist prison gangs, was to stop the alleged ‘genocide of Whites’ in South Africa. The protests originated in 2011 at the hands of Monica Stone, a long-time member of the Louisiana-based white supremacist Christian Defense League and immigrant from South Africa.

Since then, white supremacist references to “genocide” in South Africa have been common. Richard Spencer, for example, focused on the plight of the “Boers” in South Africa in his March speech at Michigan State University, suggesting the United States might see something similar.

We would hope that the President would try to understand the facts and realities of the situation in South Africa, rather than repeat disturbing, racially divisive talking points used most frequently by white supremacists.



Glub

Aug 23rd, 2018 5:15 pm | By

TIME’s new cover:

Image may contain: one or more people and swimming



The victims of the priests should watch out

Aug 23rd, 2018 5:11 pm | By

Lifesite News reports there’s a new Cardinal in Mexico who blames the victims of Catholic priests for what the Catholic priests did.

Reacting to the recent avalanche of reports of clerical sexual abuse around the world, a newly minted Mexican Cardinal has suggested that victims who accuse priests should be “ashamed” because they too have skeletons in their own closets.

Those who “accuse men of the Church should [be careful] because they have long tails that are easily stepped on,” said Cardinal Sergio Obeso Rivera according to a report in Crux.

Sounds like a threat.

“I’m here happy to talk about nice things, not about problematic things, it’s an accusation that is made, and in some cases it’s true,” said Obeso Rivera.

The cardinal’s remarks to journalists came after the release of a sweeping, two-year-long Pennsylvania Grand Jury investigation into sexual abuse by Catholic priests.  That report has sent shockwaves around the globe.

But the victims should be ashamed.



Revulsion

Aug 23rd, 2018 12:59 pm | By

Oh god look at this cheap crook in action. Seeing it written down is bad enough but watching him saying it with his filthy lips is orders of magnitude more disgusting. This sleazy little hoodlum is the president of the US.



Born in the wrong body

Aug 23rd, 2018 12:07 pm | By

Tanith Lloyd posted a letter to a friend who thinks trans women are women a couple of days ago.

I recently sent you an article by a lesbian who has been documenting homophobia within trans activism. You, my otherwise compassionate, patient and warm friend, replied with “sorry, not interested”. You told me that you didn’t want to read an article which referred to transwomen as ‘male’. You said that transwomen suffer from an “accident at birth” — transwomen are women born in the wrong body.

Seeing my principled friend (with a first-class undergraduate and a masters degree) actively adopt such a bizarre, anti-materialist and anti-scientific position really worries me. How can ‘you’ be ‘born into’ a body? You are a body. The ‘born in the wrong body’ idea goes beyond poststructuralist ideas about gender onto quasi-religious terrain. How can anyone have an innate, pre-experience knowledge of what it means to be the other sex? What does that even entail? Being male or female refers to your reproductive sex. To argue otherwise is akin to arguing for gendered souls.

It is, in short, dualism, and let’s not go there.

It’s reminiscent (as I think I’ve mentioned before) of those excitable people a couple of decades ago who talked about immortality via uploading our minds into computers. Wtf? That’s not immortality, it’s a nightmare.

Being ‘trans’ is no longer characterised by the material state of having surgically changed your body, but is now characterised by an immaterial, subjective sense of self. Is Danielle Muscato a woman? How about Stonewall activist, Alex Drummond? Again, where do you draw the line? Is it based on ‘passing’? Do women have to look a certain way? What about Jess Bradley, NUS trans spokesperson, who has been suspended from their position for allegedly flashing ‘her’ erect penis in public? Is this a female crime? Are we as a society prepared to accept that it is now possible for a woman to flash her erect penis in public? To extend this further: are we to now accept the possibility of a woman raping another woman with her penis? If nothing else, this is a huge assault on female solidarity and trust.

All the more so because of the relentless and out of control abuse of women who don’t fall into line with the dogma.



The mafia had “omerta,” and Trump has the NDA

Aug 23rd, 2018 11:41 am | By

More on Trump as mob boss:

Today, the president is testing the limits of his supporters’ moral flexibility yet again. Simply put, he has never sounded more like a mafioso than he did in an interview with Fox News on Thursday, reacting to a question about why Michael Cohen had turned on him:

Because he makes a better deal when he uses me, like everybody else. And one of the reasons I respect Paul Manafort so much is he went through that trial, you know they make up stories, people make up stories. This whole thing about “flipping,” they call it. I know all about flipping, for 30, 40 years I’ve been watching flippers. Everything is wonderful, and then they get 10 years in jail and they flip on whoever the next highest one is or as high as you can go. It almost ought to be outlawed. It’s not fair. …

If somebody defrauded a bank and he is going to get 10 years in jail or 20 years in jail but if you can say something bad about Donald Trump and you will go down to two years or three years, which is the deal [Cohen] made, in all fairness to him, most people are going to do that. And I’ve seen it many times, I’ve had many friends involved in this stuff, it’s called “flipping” and it almost ought to be illegal.

All the outrageous and appalling things you’ve heard Trump say shouldn’t keep you from being shocked at this. First, note that Trump says, “I’ve had many friends involved in this stuff” — “this stuff” meaning being accused of a crime and being offered leniency in exchange for cooperating with law enforcement to help them secure convictions on more significant criminals. I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t have many friends involved in that stuff, because I haven’t spent “30, 40 years” associating with apparent criminals.

And then there’s the part where he says it’s not fair, it ought to be illegal – using plea deals to prosecute other criminals. The president of the US is saying that oughta be illegal. He’s adopting, without apparently even noticing, the point of view of the criminal.

But Trump is big on people keeping their mouths shut. As head of the Trump Organization, as a candidate and as president, he has forced underlings to sign nondisclosure agreements forbidding them from revealing what saw while in his employ. In many cases, those agreements includednon-disparagement clauses in which the signer had to pledge never to criticize Trump or his family for as long as they lived. The mafia had “omerta,” and Trump has the NDA.

And that’s disgusting and shocking but it’s not surprising. Why not? Because this is who Trump is and that has always been obvious.

The thing about a cult of personality is that its character depends on the personality in question. Republicans sometimes mocked Democrats for worshiping Barack Obama, and you might argue that some of his supporters got a bit starry-eyed at times, particularly in 2008. But Obama never asked them to suddenly offer a full-throated defense of something morally abhorrent simply because the president thought it might be good for him.

The contrast could hardly be more stark.

I wouldn’t say the same about Bill Clinton. Jimmy Carter, yes, but Clinton, no. But Obama? Hell yes. He’s too conservative in some ways for my taste but as a human being…no comparison.



Language more familiar to a police procedural

Aug 23rd, 2018 10:36 am | By

Trump’s mobster mentality is drawing attention.

President Trump on Wednesday praised his just-convicted former campaign chairman for refusing to “break” and cooperate with federal prosecutors investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, expressing appreciation for the personal loyalty of a felon found guilty of defrauding the United States government.

In a series of tweets the morning after an extraordinary day in which Paul Manafort, his former campaign chief, was convicted of tax and bank fraudand his longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations he said were directed by Mr. Trump, the president appeared to suggest he was more concerned with the fallout for himself than with the crimes.

He compared Mr. Cohen unfavorably with Mr. Manafort, attacking Mr. Cohen as a bad lawyer who had caved to pressure from biased federal prosecutors while lauding Mr. Manafort as a “brave man” with a “wonderful family” who had stood strong.

Yeaaaaah, he stood up ta dem, see? He ain’t no snitch, see? He’s a straight-up guy, see?

Mr. Trump’s Twitter posts on Wednesday seemed to raise the possibility of a presidential pardon for Mr. Manafort, and appeared intended to be a reminder of how highly he values loyalty.

And in them, the president resorted to language more familiar to a police procedural than to the Oval Office, describing Mr. Manafort’s refusal to “break” under pressure to cut a deal with prosecutors.

He never can keep straight what movie he’s pretending to be in.

In recent days, he has also referred to John Dean, the White House counsel who worked with Watergate investigators to reveal Richard M. Nixon’s role in the crimes and cover-up, as a “RAT.” And he has alluded to the possibility that Mr. Cohen might “flip,” or switch his loyalties away from the president and cooperate with prosecutors.

Calling John Dean a RAT is particularly striking. Apparently he’s a RAT for telling the Justice Department the truth about Nixon’s illegal actions. It’s helpful of him to inform us so bluntly of where he thinks his duties lie.

Some legal experts said the president’s words and his view on the predicaments of members of his inner circle were striking for their similarity to the culture of organized crime.

“By crediting Paul Manafort for not ‘breaking’ and chastising Michael Cohen for showing an interest in cooperating, he’s really adopting the language and the sentiment of prizing what the mob would call a ‘stand-up guy’ — someone who takes your rap and goes to jail because of your loyalty to the mob, rather than to your own family,” said Daniel S. Goldman, a former federal prosecutor who worked on organized crime cases in the Southern District of New York. “The parallel is to a mob boss who expects the loyalty oath from his soldiers.”

Not the Hollywood mob, not the Bugs Bunny mob, but the real mob, that does real harm to real people – that’s where Trump is placing himself.



The news has been all over South African media for months

Aug 23rd, 2018 10:14 am | By

Trump last night:

Bruce Gorton emailed me about it this morning and I requested and got permission to share what he wrote.

Even before that claims of “white genocide” have been considered largely the ramblings of a lunatic fringe within South Africa, considering how high the murder rate is generally.

Anyway it looks like it is in response to a report by Tucker, the man whose only expression is ‘confused’, Carlson which otherwise I would have written off as being from a man who doesn’t know what the words “exclusive” or “investigative” mean. The news has been all over South African media for months, I don’t think typing “Ramaphosa” into Google news quite cuts it as investigative work.

This report is wrong. The constitution has not been amended, and land seizures have not begun yet. What has happened is that some farms have been identified for expropriation without compensation as test cases to see if the constitution even needs to be amended to allow for that.

I suspect a lot of what I’m feeling right now is the sort of thing you Americans have to deal with on a daily basis. I don’t know where it is a sort of tired “No, that is not what is going on” or a sinking dread that this is what is leading the world’s largest nuclear power.

Yes, both of those – weary disgust mixed with terror.



Let’s increase greenhouse gas emissions

Aug 23rd, 2018 9:30 am | By

Amid everything else we mustn’t lose sight of Trump’s dedicated work to make climate change worse faster.

Amid heat waves, wildfires, droughts and Arctic ice melt, President Trump has taken aim at the two central pillars of his predecessor’s ambitious efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. After proposing in early August to freeze a scheduled increase in fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks, the Trump administration on Tuesday said it would seek to significantly weaken the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants.

Because climate change is already so pleasant and healthy and salubrious, he’s working to intensify it and speed it up. Thanks, Don.

In taking on the Clean Power Plan, Mr. Trump says he wants to save coal, but the reality is that coal is not coming back. Market forces conspire against it. Even without any policy, the economic imperatives driving the transition to cleaner fuels are expected by 2030 to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the power sector by 33 percent of their 2005 levels, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. With the Obama plan, the reduction would be 36 percent; with the Trump administration’s new Affordable Clean Energy Rule, it would be 33 to 34 percent.

Not a huge difference, so why does it matter?

First, firm policy direction from the government provides investors and utilities with certainty about the investment outlook and ensures emissions reductions even if the market shifts. Just as few predicted the collapse in natural gas prices a decade ago, there is a wide range of uncertainty about what energy prices will look like in the future.

Second, the right way to assess whether a policy makes sense is not just to look at its emissions impacts but also to compare its costs with its benefits. Even by the current E.P.A.’s own analysis, which makes assumptions that play down the climate benefits and increase the implementation costs, the Clean Power Plan delivered far more net benefits for the American people than the proposed replacement. That is because reducing coal use in the power sector not only delivers carbon emission reductions but also lower levels of local pollutants like particulate matter.

Third, and most important, even though the Clean Power Plan fell far short of the emission reductions needed to avoid severe climate change impacts, it was a starting point to clean up the power sector. It would send investment signals and provide a foundation for deeper reductions in carbon dioxide emissions to meet the globally agreed upon target of limiting temperature rise to well below two degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

Whereas now the signals are all “Oh fuck it let’s just do whatever we want and let the future take care of itself.”

Neutering the Clean Power Plan is a major step backward. But what’s most important to remember is that even if a future president puts back in place Mr. Obama’s climate policies, more comprehensive and stringent policies are still needed to deal with the rising threats of climate change that we see all around us. That reality is understood by the American public and increasingly even among oil companies and some Republicanswho have come out in favor of a carbon tax.

The damage done by the Trump administration’s reversal of Mr. Obama’s climate policies is less a sharp rise in carbon emissions than it is the loss of American leadership and missed opportunity to save future generations from climate change’s severe impacts.

But future generations are future generations and we care only about our own selves right now – that’s Trump’s message.



Fiends

Aug 22nd, 2018 4:07 pm | By

I’ve been seeing tweets about this since Sunday but couldn’t find any reliable sources reporting it, until now:

The story:

Reports suggest that the women’s rights defender Israa al-Ghomgham and four other activists face execution. They’re currently on trial in front of a terrorism tribunal on charges including “taking part in protests”.

Saudi Arabia’s powerful young Crown Prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, has enacted some high profile social and economic reforms in recent years. But they’ve been accompanied by a crackdown on dissent with dozens of clerics, intellectuals and activists arrested in the past year, including women who had campaigned for the right to drive.

Execution. For social protest. Never let anyone tell you Saudi Arabia is a friend or ally.



Sewer rats

Aug 22nd, 2018 3:49 pm | By

This is monstrous even for them.

Vox comments:

This isn’t just an off-the-cuff Trump tweet; it’s from the official White House account and features official-looking video. It’s deliberate political messaging, meant to turn a case that had attracted nationwide attention for weeks into an opportunity to reiterate Trump’s very favorite rhetorical theme: that many immigrants, specifically unauthorized immigrants, are criminals who want to kill you.

The man arrested for Tibbetts’s murder is Cristhian Bahena Rivera, a 24-year-old farmworker. Authorities have told reporters that Rivera is an unauthorized immigrant from Mexico, and that he was able to work on an Iowa farm because he presented a stolen ID.

So Trump’s thugs howled with joy and rushed to capitalize on the news.

Some of Tibbetts’s relatives have urged the public not to focus on Rivera’s immigration status. Tibbetts’s aunt posted on Facebook that “Evil comes in EVERY color”; her cousin attacked conservative activist Candace Owens on Twitter for “generaliz(ing) a whole population based on some bad individuals.”

But the fact that Tibbetts (a photogenic young white woman whose disappearance was already a national story) was allegedly killed by an unauthorized immigrant is exactly what made the White House’s interest in the story inevitable.

Because one potential murdering unauthorized immigrant means all unauthorized immigrants are suspect, is that it? Well ok then: guess who the Nazis were. Germans! Guess who Trump’s grandfather was. A German immigrant! Let’s deport him to Germany right this second.

Most recently, in late June — as the Trump administration’s policy of family separation at the US-Mexico border was dominating the headlines — the White House convened a gathering of such relatives who had been “permanently separated” from their families, implying that the separation of thousands of families (many of them seeking asylum) was justified because it was an effort to save American families from seeing their loved ones killed.

It’s almost a cliché at this point for the White House to answer every criticism of its immigration policy, from its handling of DACA to its separation of families, with the fact that some unauthorized immigrants have killed some Americans. The use of Mollie Tibbetts as another excuse to hammer on this theme, despite the wishes of some family members, may seem callous.

But really it’s calculatingly disgusting beyond anyone’s ability to describe.



No you’re ridiculous

Aug 22nd, 2018 2:48 pm | By

This is how shameless they are. The clip of Trump on AF1 saying to reporters he knew nothing about the payments to Stormy Daniels and they should ask Michael Cohen – that clip is available for anyone to see. The clip of Trump telling Fox News today that he made the payments himself is also available for anyone to see. That means he lied.

But here is Sarah Sanders, who calls herself “Christian” on her personal Twitter, lying to our faces. (It’s not that I think Christian is incompatible with lying, it’s that people like Sanders do and that’s why they call themselves that.)



One strike and you’re out

Aug 22nd, 2018 12:54 pm | By

Another one of these Shut Up, Bitch items:

The news outlet Stuff reported on August 19 that “A company has pulled posters commemorating women’s suffrage after pressure from LBTGI youth groups who say the feminist blogger behind the poster campaign holds transgender exclusionary beliefs.” The feminist artist and writer concerned is Renée Gerlich.

The feminist blogger “holds beliefs” that some trans activists don’t like and therefore she must be entirely silenced in every medium and venue.

A non-political small business was engaged by Gerlich to put up some posters she had produced. In New Zealand cities, a large proportion of public and private billboard space available for publicity posters is owned or used by this company, called Phantom Billstickers. According to a promotional article in Ponsonby News, the company was founded in 1982 “mainly to give musicians, the arts and creative people in New Zealand a voice.”

When the posters appeared, Phantom Billstickers was inundated with ‘complaints’…

…so no more posters for her.

Some of the censored posters are reproduced here. They consist of portraits of leaders of the worldwide fight for women’s suffrage in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including Emmeline Pankhurst in the United Kingdom, Sojourner Truth, Sarah Grimké and Susan B Anthony in the United States, and Mary Ann Müller in New Zealand, together with handwritten quotes from their speeches and writings. Across the bottom of each poster is a statement from the artist: “Suffragists fought for the female sex. Stop re-writing history.” A related series of posters does a similar thing with contemporary feminists.

Here’s one:

The post goes on:

The Phantom Billstickers’ director also appeared to acknowledge that there was absolutely nothing in the content of these posters that could possibly be considered objectionable, or that could justify the censorship in any way, when he said, “The core issue was not the posters themselves, but Gerlich’s blog.”

It’s worth taking a minute to consider the implications of that statement (which evidently reflects the attitude of the censors.)  Artwork is to be censored, not because of the content of the artwork itself, but because of something the artist has said in another forum, at another time. In other words, it is not just the artwork that is being banned, but the artist herself.

That is indeed how this works. Feminists labeled “transphobic” are to be banished entirely, regardless of how distant their subject matter may be from trans issues. Women who want to talk in public have two choices: agree with and repeat every claim made by trans activists, no matter how batshit crazy, or be banished from every outlet the activists can bully into complying. There’s no middle ground where you can decide to bracket trans issues and talk about other things; you are a Forbidden Person.

To find a historical precedent for this sweep of censorial powers it is necessary to go back to the personal ‘banning orders’ imposed on individuals in Apartheid-era South Africa, or the Soviet Union in the depths of the Stalinist counter-revolution. Or, perhaps more appropriately given its deeply misogynist character, to the witch-trials of dead centuries. Today’s self-appointed liberal censors, who use the slur TERF against women in much the same way that the accusation of ‘witch’ was used in the past, will be satisfied with nothing less than a confession of witchcraft.

And in fact, Gerlich has been targeted by continuous pile-on campaigns to silence her for the past two years. She was hounded out of her job, banned from the 2016 Wellington Zinefest, and had a petition signed by 120 people calling for her to be barred from access to the media and academic research. Comments threatening violence have been left on her blog, such as “I hope you get hit by a truck, bitch.”

Very left wing, much progressive.

A guy called Don Franks did a radio interview with Gerlich.

When Franks started promoting the upcoming interview, he received a strong warning from the station’s Community Liaison and programme development officer, Esther Taylor. “Renée Gerlich has a history of publishing transphobic and anti-sex worker comments on public forums, and targeting people in these communities,” Taylor said. “Freedom of speech, the ability to express different views, and the facilitation of discussion are fundamental cornerstones of Access Radio. However, we are wary that some of Renée Gerlich’s  views could be seen as an attack on minority groups or as hate speech… We will not broadcast parts of the interview which are deemed transphobic or anti-sex worker.”

I’m betting the “anti-sex worker” claim is a complete lie, even accepting the premises about what constitutes “anti” and “phobic.” It’s customary to treat the two as inextricably linked, with no need to show examples of both.

H/t Lady Mondegreen in Miscellany Room.



Fresh fruit

Aug 22nd, 2018 12:27 pm | By

Stewart at Gnu Atheism:

Image may contain: one or more people, people standing and text



Full page headline

Aug 22nd, 2018 11:47 am | By

Now there is a front page.



Ten is a very large number

Aug 22nd, 2018 10:59 am | By

Trump’s mature and level-headed response to yesterday’s double whammy:

Not a crime? Cohen pleaded guilty to two felonies. In what dictionary are felonies not a crime?

But overall it’s really very restrained for Trump. I wonder how many staffers had their faces bitten off to make that restraint possible.



Imagine considering threats abusive

Aug 22nd, 2018 10:36 am | By

The Daily Dot tells us, with great indignation, that trans activists are getting Twitter suspensions or bans merely for threatening women they dislike. What is the world coming to when people aren’t free to threaten women on social media?

Trans Twitter has witnessed a spike in transgender users having their accounts suspended or banned on Twitter, and people are searching for answers. Given the apparently related manner in which these suspensions are happening, the community suspects a targeted effort against them. But who?

Some think it has to do with the word “TERF” while others think it takes more than that.

One trans Twitter user, who wished to remain anonymous, shared her evidence with the Daily Dot for TERF itself not being the sole key to this censorship. “Anecdotally I’ve been using TERF constantly without consequence, and so have many others,” she said. She pointed to the Twitter account Your Fave Hates TERFs as further evidence that just using the acronym is not enough to have action taken against you.

Yet the combination of TERF and any keyword that could be considered violent seems to be all it takes to get Twitter’s algorithms to designate a tweet as abusive.

Ohhhh…mere violence. Gee, how dare they.

That and a big push from mass organized reporting. “A tweet that said ‘kick TERFs out of your spaces’ is actionable because of the word kick. They’re mass reporting tweets like that,” she said. Another blatant example of this is the following tweets, which were labeled “abusive”:

We are shown some tweets that talk about giving TERFs some punch and mixing the punch “real good” and giving them straws to make sure they do not choke.

Rather than an explicit policy change, it seems to be TERFs abusing an automated system that sees words like “kick” and “punch,” but not the words that give them context, and certainly not the societal context that informs how trans people talk about TERFs.

Ahhhhhhhh yes the “societal context” that makes it perfectly all right for “activists” to talk publicly about punching kicking stabbing killing feminist women who object to being shoved out of their own spaces, political movements, realities, histories, experiences, everything, to make way for men who are determined to take them over.

Talk about reversing victim and offender.

Discussions of the harm TERFs do to the trans community, or even light-hearted jokes at their expense, might be enough to get someone removed from the platform altogether.

Oh yes those lighthearted jokes about punching stabbing killing women. If only women had a sense of humor, knowutImean?



Free Shahidul Alam

Aug 22nd, 2018 10:21 am | By

Tasneem Khalil reports:

*Appeal for urgent medical attention for Dr Shahidul Alam*

Dhaka, Wednesday 22 August 2018.

Today, as Eid-ul-Azha is being celebrated across the country, we went to Keraniganj Central Jail in the morning to meet Dr Shahidul Alam. He has been imprisoned there for 10 days now, since 12 August, when he was taken there after being produced before the magistrate, and following 6 days in remand in the custody of the Detective Branch of the Police.

Dr Alam informed us that he is suffering from breathing difficulties, has pain in the jaw and gums and is facing eyesight problems. Shahidul did not have any such health-related complaints before he was taken into police custody on the night of 5th August 2018. We appeal to the government and more specifically, the jail authorities to ensure immediate medical attention for Dr Shahidul Alam by transfer to a hospital.

Rahnuma Ahmed
(Shahidul Alam’s wife, anthropologist)

Saydia Gulrukh
(Shahidul Alam’s colleague, journalist)



The noose tightens

Aug 21st, 2018 6:00 pm | By

The CREW guys and another lawyer explain some things about the Manfort convictions.

The conviction conclusively and publicly demonstrates what many of us have said since the start of the investigation: This is no “witch hunt.” It instead is one of the most successful special counsel investigations in history. Coming alongside the guilty plea by Michael Cohen, the president’s former lawyer, implicating the president in campaign finance violations, it was a very bad day for Mr. Trump.

Mr. Manafort’s conviction cannot be diminished by arguing, as Mr. Trump and his coterie are fond of doing, that the misconduct was unrelated to the Trump campaign or Russian “collusion.” On the contrary, the trial evidence included Mr. Manafort’s close ties to pro-Russia forces and his desperate financial straits as he “volunteered” his time for the next president. The trial revealed how willing Mr. Manafort was to corruptly leverage his position of influence over Mr. Trump during the campaign for his own personal benefit. He offered briefings to a pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarch and dangled a position in the Trump administration in front of a banker who provided him a loan for which he would not otherwise have qualified.

That in particular is useful – I’ve been unclear on what use Manafort made of his internship with the Trump campaign.

Mr. Manafort’s conviction should also send chills down the spines of other potential defendants, possibly including the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. and his informal adviser Roger Stone. As far as we know, they have been excluded from the hundreds of witnesses the special counsel has interviewed. That fact, and the public evidence about their conduct, signals that they may be facing Mr. Mueller’s scrutiny.

Oh really. Interesting.

The conviction is also bad news for the president because it increases the pressure on Mr. Manafort to cooperate with investigators. He has a second trial coming shortly in Washington, D.C., which could add even more time to what will likely be a substantial sentence — and Mr. Mueller reportedly has much more evidence to present to jurors in that trial than he did in the trial that just concluded.

Nor can Mr. Manafort simply wait for a presidential pardon. Mr. Trump hinted at one in his inappropriate tweets while the jury was deliberating, and has otherwise signaled his readiness to use his pardon pen. But should Mr. Trump pardon him, Mr. Manafort should expect state attorneys general to pick up under applicable state laws the threads of corruption and tax fraud that Mr. Mueller has already woven together. Unlike the federal crimes for which he has been convicted, state crimes cannot be wiped away with a presidential pardon. The risk of state charges maintains the pressure on Mr. Manafort to cooperate — especially after Tuesday’s conviction revealed what jurors think of his questionable business practices and other activities.

Bad day for Trump; good day – at last!! – for us.



Oops we broke it

Aug 21st, 2018 5:03 pm | By

Uh oh.

The oldest and thickest sea ice in the Arctic has started to break up, opening waters north of Greenland that are normally frozen, even in summer.

This phenomenon – which has never been recorded before – has occurred twice this year due to warm winds and a climate-change driven heatwave in the northern hemisphere.

One meteorologist described the loss of ice as “scary”. Others said it could force scientists to revise their theories about which part of the Arctic will withstand warming the longest.

In other words it’s happening much faster than the most pessimistic predictions.

The sea off the north coast of Greenland is normally so frozen that it was referred to, until recently, as “the last ice area” because it was assumed that this would be the final northern holdout against the melting effects of a hotter planet.

Oops.

As well as reducing ice cover, the ocean intrusion raises concerns of feedbacks, which could tip the Earth towards a hothouse state.

Freakish Arctic temperatures have alarmed climate scientists since the beginning of the year. During the sunless winter, a heatwave raised concerns that the polar vortex may be eroding.

This includes the Gulf Stream, which is at its weakest level in 1,600 years due to melting Greenland ice and ocean warming. With lower circulation of water and air, weather systems tend to linger longer.

A dormant hot front has been blamed for record temperatures in Laplandand forest fires in Siberia, much of Scandinavia and elsewhere in the Arctic circle.

As they say…scary.

H/t Acolyte of Sagan in Miscellany Room