This isn’t a country, it’s an insane asylum.
Watch that clip. Your jaw will dislocate, but watch it.
https://twitter.com/riotwomennn/status/966808353749000192
Performative hatred of a woman
Feb 23rd, 2018 11:26 am | By Ophelia Bensonhttps://twitter.com/sadydoyle/status/967108557618507779
They didn’t.
Did they?
They did.
No transparent public debate allowed
Feb 23rd, 2018 10:01 am | By Ophelia BensonThe Women’s Equality Party have dismissed a feminist academic at the centre of a transgender row, after she challenged whether children should be labelled trans.
Dr Heather Brunskell-Evans – a research fellow at King’s College London – was until this morning a spokeswoman for the Women’s Equality Party. Now she has resigned her membership after being sacked from that role.
It follows her appearance on Radio 4’s Moral Maze in November last year, where she argued that while adults could define themselves ‘in whichever way they want’, society and parents should avoid encouraging children to see themselves as being ‘in the wrong body’ – particularly if it led to surgery or treatment which would could have long-term implications.
So a party that – laughably – calls itself the Women’s Equality Party kicked her out of her role as spokeswoman. What sense does that make? How is it a good idea to make it taboo to discuss what kind of drastic measures should be taken with children who “see themselves as being ‘in the wrong body’”? Surgery and drugs are drastic things, so reasons for prescribing them should be open to reasoned discussion and research.
She added that some trans advocates were ‘abusive’ and ‘reactionary’.
Some are, staggeringly so – so much so that since reading Mueller’s indictment I’ve started to think many of them could be Russian trolls. They advocate sadistic violence, especially sadistic sexual violence, against women they label “TERFs,” which seems more like something Russian trolls would do than like something genuine lefty activists would do. Some trans activists are indeed highly abusive and reactionary, so saying that is no reason to kick anyone out of a role in a women’s equality party.
At the time, Dr Brunskell-Evans responded to the claims by denying any prejudice:
“I refute that I have promoted prejudice against the trans community either on the programme or through my writing and social media.
“I have called for transparent public debate, without fear of reprisal, of the social, psychological and physical consequences of the narrative that children can be born in ‘the wrong body’.”
However, the WEP have now completed their investigation into Dr Brunskell-Evans – and have sacked her as a spokesperson after determining the academic ‘breached articles of the constitution and our volunteer agreement’.
This is not a healthy situation. It’s the kind of thing Putin likes, but it’s not the kind of thing reasonable people should like.
The empathy deficit
Feb 23rd, 2018 9:13 am | By Ophelia BensonWhat does Trump’s List of Things to Say to Kids Whose School Was Just Shot Up tell us about Trump?
Mr. Trump’s use of notes, captured by news photographers who covered the extraordinary listening session with parents, students and teachers who lost loved ones in the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., was not unusual.
But the nature of Mr. Trump’s written prompts was atypical. Composed beneath a heading that read “The White House,” they seemed to suggest that the president needed to be reminded to show compassion and understanding to traumatized survivors, an impression that Mr. Trump has sometimes fed with public reactions to national tragedies that were criticized as callous.
The Times, being (according to the Times) the Paper of Record, hedges everything. “Seemed to suggest,” “an impression,” “sometimes,” “were criticized as.” The written prompts were both horrifying and laughable because they underlined what a callous brutal narcissist he is.
[C]onsoler in chief has been a role that the president has been slow and somewhat reluctant to embrace — especially in contrast to his predecessor. Images of Mr. Trump hurling rolls of paper towels at hurricane victims in Puerto Rico last year and grinning broadly for photographs with emergency medical workers from Parkland have illustrated the challenge.
To put it mildly.
Samantha Fuentes, who was shot in both legs during the Parkland assault, said she had felt no reassurance during a phone call from the president to her hospital room last week.
“He said he heard that I was a big fan of his, and then he said, ‘I’m a big fan of yours too.’ I’m pretty sure he made that up,” she said in an interview after being discharged from the hospital. “Talking to the president, I’ve never been so unimpressed by a person in my life. He didn’t make me feel better in the slightest.”
Ms. Fuentes, who was left with a piece of shrapnel lodged behind her right eye, said Mr. Trump had called the gunman a “sick puppy” and said “‘oh boy, oh boy, oh boy,’ like, seven times.”
The account of the call was reminiscent of the last time Mr. Trump drew public scrutiny for his reaction to a tragedy, with his private condolence call to Myeshia Johnson, the widow of Sgt. La David T. Johnson, one of four American soldiers killed in an attack in Niger.
In that case, in October, Ms. Johnson said she had been deeply offended by Mr. Trump’s words and tone, saying that he had not referred to her husband by name, calling him only “your guy,” and had upset her by saying that Mr. Johnson “knew what he signed up for, but it hurts anyway.”
Mr. Trump quickly lashed out on Twitter, saying he had spoken respectfully to the widow.
I wonder if he’ll lash out at Samantha Fuentes today.
On the other hand the father of Meadow Pollack says he was great.
Mr. Pollack, who brought his wife, two sons and Meadow’s longtime boyfriend, said Mr. Trump signed his son’s white and gold “Make America Great Again” trucker hat and spoke at length with the family. The president insisted that he and his family, who had not planned to attend the listening session, accompany him through the iconic White House colonnade and into the event.
Fair’s fair. He doesn’t treat everyone like a representative of the peasantry.
But another participant in the White House session, Samuel Zeif, an 18-year-old student at Stoneman Douglas High School who survived the shooting and spoke tearfully at the White House on Wednesday of the experience, said Mr. Trump had done little to comfort or console him.
He said he had been particularly stung to see pictures of the notecard after it was over.
“Everything I said was directly from the heart, and he had to write down ‘I hear you,’” Mr. Zeif said in an interview. “Half the time during that meeting, his arms were crossed — I kept wanting to say, ‘Mr. President, uncross your arms.’ To me, that is the international sign for closemindedness; it’s really just a big ‘no.’”
At least when Trump does it it is. He does it in combination with that scowl, and it does indeed look like the international sign for “fuck off.”
Gods walk among us
Feb 22nd, 2018 6:10 pm | By Ophelia BensonBow down, mortals.
Too bad you missed it.
But don’t worry – there’s more!
In god we do not trust, neither do we believe
Feb 22nd, 2018 5:36 pm | By Ophelia BensonSeparation of church and state? What’s that?
Next they’ll be forcing us to do so.
By the way? I don’t trust their “god” – not for a second. Their god is a hateful shit and a bully.
If the Florida House of Representatives has its way, all public schools in the Sunshine State will soon be required to post the words “In God We Trust” — the state’s motto — on all campuses where students and staff can see them.
The House voted on the legislation Wednesday — 97 to 10, with members standing and applauding the results — after finding time to debate and approve a bill declaring pornography a “public health risk.”
Yet the House refused, 71 to 37, to take up a bill this week to ban assault weapons, which had been supported by student survivors of the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, where a gunman killed 17 people. The students had gone to the state capital to push for gun control and were in the gallery when the gun legislation was raised. Some were dismayed by the legislators’ inaction.
It’s so profoundly insulting to all of us, even to themselves. No, we can’t do the thing that would actually make school shootings stop, but we can force you to bend the knee to a made-up magic spook in the sky. Say no no no to the real world fix, and then force a fantasy on everyone.
Rep. Kim Daniels (R), who runs a ministry, said it would help provide needed “light” in the state’s schools, according to the Tampa Bay Times. It quoted her as saying: “He is not a Republican or a Democrat. He is not black or white. He is the light, and our schools need light in them like never before.”
But “he” is, apparently, a he. Funny how he’s not these other polarities but oh yes indeedy he most certainly is a boy person.
Humans have been a mistake.
No separation of church and state for you
Feb 22nd, 2018 5:18 pm | By Ophelia BensonEvangelist Billy Graham, who died Wednesday, will lie in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda from Wednesday, Feb. 28, to Thursday, March 1, according to an announcement from House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky). Members of the public are invited to pay their respects. Ryan and McConnell will take part in a service upon the arrival of Graham’s casket.
What the hell? Billy Graham wasn’t a government official, he was a conservative religious huckster. What business does he have lying in the Capitol Rotunda as a stiff? What business do McConnell and Ryan have putting him there?
Graham was a personal friend to several presidents, and preached to tens of millions of people in person and myriad others through radio, television and the Internet.
So what? How does that mean he gets a state ceremony as a corpse?
Over nearly a century, he became an icon, an entrepreneur, a pastor and a key architect of American evangelicalism — the largest religious body in America today that makes up a quarter of the American electorate. Graham’s influence on key religious leaders, institutions, political activism and cultural engagement helped shape a large chunk of America.
For the worse, but anyway, so what? People don’t get to lie around dead in the Capitol Rotunda simply because they have “influence.”
Sickening.
Tix still available
Feb 22nd, 2018 1:22 pm | By Ophelia BensonA bit more on the BuzzFeed story (read the whole thing to get the grim details).
In December, after BuzzFeed News contacted him about allegations of sexual harassment, Krauss tweeted a link to an article that argued the #MeToo movement was morphing into a “Warlock Hunt.” A month after that, he tweeted a story about French women denouncing #MeToo, writing, “I find their statement brave and thought-provoking, representing free-thought and skepticism at its best.”
Speaking out against a popular movement can provoke vicious reactions, but I find their statement brave and thought-provoking, representing free-thought and skepticism at its best. Agree with it or not, I am glad they spoke out. https://t.co/t5twA2VIud
— Lawrence M. Krauss (@LKrauss1) January 10, 2018
Science!
The rise of online movements such as #MeToo has increasingly divided the skeptics into two camps: those who campaign for social justice and those who rail against identity politics.
Not really; it was already divided that way.
Several women — and men — interviewed by BuzzFeed News said they have stopped attending skeptic events because of this hostility.
“I’ve just become so disappointed and disillusioned with a group of people who I thought at one point were exemplars of clear thinking, of openness to new evidence, and maybe most importantly, being curious,” philosopher Phil Torres told BuzzFeed News. “This movement has tragically failed to live up to its own very high moral and epistemic standards.”
What’s particularly infuriating, said Lydia Allan, the former cohost of the Dogma Debate podcast, is when male skeptics ask how they could draw more women into their circles. “I don’t know, maybe not put your hands all over us? That might work,” she said sarcastically. “How about you believe us when we tell you that shit happens to us?”
Or not telling us that atheism and skepticism are more of a guy thing? Or not pitching huge public fits when we object to being told that? Just a thought.
Tomorrow evening Krauss meets up with Mister “Estrogen Vive” for a public event in Phoenix. If only Shermer and Dawkins could join them.
Next event in Phoenix is Dialogue with @SamHarrisOrg is Feb 23rd. Last chance to see us wrestle (verbally) on stage this year. :) Tix still available. https://t.co/0NQKBjsxa9
— Lawrence M. Krauss (@LKrauss1) February 17, 2018
Editing to add: Sean Carroll is not making excuses for him.
Another famous scientist – Lawrence Krauss- revealed as a sexual harasser. As a field we should be ashamed at the existence of such behavior. https://t.co/DzmebuLDfk
— Sean Carroll (@seanmcarroll) February 22, 2018
Want to actually wrestle?
Feb 22nd, 2018 12:42 pm | By Ophelia BensonOops. This could be awkward.
Next event in Phoenix is Dialogue with @SamHarrisOrg is Feb 23rd. Last chance to see us wrestle (verbally) on stage this year. :) Tix still available. https://t.co/0NQKBjsxa9
— Lawrence M. Krauss (@LKrauss1) February 17, 2018
Tomorrow.
https://twitter.com/SamHarrisOrg/status/965026062500380672
On a hotel bed? No thank you.
https://twitter.com/SamHarrisOrg/status/965028666705981440
Ohhhh – no wonder his method is pinning women to beds.
God these bros are repulsive.
Another one
Feb 22nd, 2018 11:55 am | By Ophelia Benson
The BuzzFeed story is out at last.
Lawrence Krauss is a famous atheist and liberal crusader — and, in certain whisper networks, a well-known problem. With women coming forward alleging sexual harassment, will his “skeptic” fanbase believe the evidence?
Or will it just continue ranting about “SJWs” and “Cultural Marxism” and “witch hunts” and “going too far”?
The authors (Peter Aldhous, Azeen Ghorayshi, and Virginia Hughes) start with Melody Hensley’s story of Krauss’s Harvey Weinstein routine – moving a dinner invitation to his hotel room and then assaulting her.
Krauss told BuzzFeed News that what happened with Hensley in the hotel room was consensual. In that room, “we mutually decided, in a polite discussion in fact, that taking it any further would not be appropriate,” he told BuzzFeed News by email.
But Hensley said that is untrue. “It was definitely predatory,” she said. “I didn’t want that to happen. It wasn’t consensual.”
Later that night, Hensley told her boyfriend, now husband, that Krauss had made her feel uncomfortable, her husband confirmed to BuzzFeed News. Years later, she told him — as well as several employees at CFI — the full story.
I heard the story from her too.
BuzzFeed News has learned that the incident with Hensley is one of many wide-ranging allegations of Krauss’s inappropriate behavior over the last decade — including groping women, ogling and making sexist jokes to undergrads, and telling an employee at Arizona State University, where he is a tenured professor, that he was going to buy her birth control so she didn’t inconvenience him with maternity leave. In response to complaints, two institutions — Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario — have quietly restricted him from their campuses. Our reporting is based on official university documents, emails, and interviews with more than 50 people.
It’s like Weinstein – it was secret but many many many people knew about it. It was secret but it wasn’t secret. But even though it wasn’t really secret, Krauss was still invited everywhere. Time’s Up?
Many of his accusers have requested anonymity, fearing professional or legal retaliation from Krauss, or online abuse from men in the movement who have smeared women for speaking out about other skeptics. A few allegations about Krauss made their way onto skeptic blogs, but were quickly taken down in fear of legal action. So for years, these stories have stayed inside whisper networks in skepticism and physics.
And Krauss stayed inside the world of celebrity skeptoatheists, while that world lost woman after woman after woman because No Thank You.
In lengthy emails to BuzzFeed News, Krauss denied all of the accusations against him, calling them “false and misleading defamatory allegations.” When asked why multiple women, over more than a decade, have separately accused him of misconduct, he said the answer was “obvious”: It’s because his provocative ideas have made him famous.
Science!
Krauss offers the scientific method — constantly questioning, testing hypotheses, demanding evidence — as the basis of morality and the answer to societal injustices. Last year, at a Q&A event to promote his latest book, the conversation came around to the dearth of women and minorities in science. “Science itself overcomes misogyny and prejudice and bias,” Krauss said. “It’s built in.”
Pause for incredulous laughter. Take as long as you need.
Online, you can buy “Lawrence Krauss for President” T-shirts and find his quotes turned into inspirational memes. He writes essays for the New Yorker and New York Times, helps decide when to move the hand of the Doomsday Clock, and has almost half a million followers on Twitter. He made a provocative (if criticallypanned) documentary, The Unbelievers, with the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, another celebrated skeptic.
The skeptics draw heavily from traditionally male groups: scientists, philosophers, and libertarians, as well as geeky subcultures like gamers and sci-fi enthusiasts. The movement gained strength in the early 2000s, as the emerging blogosphere allowed like-minded “freethinkers” to connect and opened the community to more women like Hensley. It acquired a sharper political edge in the US culture wars, as skeptics, atheists, and scientists — including Krauss — joined forces to defend the teaching of evolution in public schools.
But today the movement is fracturing, with some of its most prominent members now attacking identity politics and “social justice warriors” in the name of free speech. Famous freethinkers have been criticized for anti-Muslim sentiment, for cheering the alt-right media personality Milo Yiannopoulos, and for lampooning feminism and gender theory. Several women, after sharing personal accounts of misogyny and harassment by men in the skeptic community, have been subjected to Gamergate-style online attacks, including rape and death threats. As a result, some commentators have accused parts of the movement of sliding into the alt-right.
And many of us have largely abandoned the movement as a result.
Nevertheless, Science.
Krauss’s reputation took a hit in April 2011, after he publicly defended Jeffrey Epstein, a wealthy financier who was convicted of soliciting prostitution from an underage girl and spent 13 months in a Florida jail.
Epstein was one of the Origins Project’s major donors. But Krauss told the Daily Beast his support of the financier was based purely on the facts: “As a scientist I always judge things on empirical evidence and he always has women ages 19 to 23 around him, but I’ve never seen anything else, so as a scientist, my presumption is that whatever the problems were I would believe him over other people.”
Uh…what? I missed a step there. Where’s the empirical evidence part? Especially where’s the empirical evidence part that demonstrates Epstein’s non-solicitation of an underage girl? Is it supposed to be the “19” part? Are we supposed to understand that as “Krauss has abundant empirical evidence that Epstein never solicits underage girls, to wit, Krauss has never seen him with women under the age of 19”? That’s the science part? And then what about “as a scientist I always believe him and not anyone else”? I’m not seeing the science part in that claim.
On her Skepchick blog, Watson slammed Krauss for not acknowledging his obvious bias — and thus violating a core value of skepticism. “Krauss’ statement is extremely disturbing and makes scientists look like ignorant, biased fools who will twist data to suit their own needs,” she wrote.
“I remain skeptical, and I support a man whose character I believe I know,” Krauss responded in the post’s comments. “If you want to condemn me for that, so be it.”
The dust-up was part of a broader discussion among feminist skeptics about what they saw as the misogyny of some of the old guard. In June 2011, Watson posted a YouTube videomentioning her experiences with men in the movement.
In the resulting furor, Watson was publicly mocked by Dawkins and received a torrent of online abuse. Over the next couple of years, she posted a sample of the abusive comments she received on her blog.
With these issues dividing skeptics, Hensley, by then executive director of CFI’s Washington DC branch, organized a new conference called “Women in Secularism,” which debuted in May of 2012. It was a space to celebrate the history and accomplishments of secular women, Hensley said, “but also to give a platform so that we could talk about the issues and problems we were facing.” In now-deleted comments on CFI’s blog post announcing the event, some skeptics argued that the movement didn’t have a problem with women, and that the event would amount to “man bashing.”
On one panel, Jen McCreight, then a biology PhD student, spoke out about the whisper network. Before going to her first big atheist meeting, she said, “unsolicited I got many emails from different individuals basically warning me which male speakers not to interact with as a young woman.”
I remember that. I was about six inches away from Jen when she said it.
Some of us asked her to name names later, so I knew Krauss was on the list.
A. was an undergraduate who had first met Krauss in 2008 at the annual American Atheists Convention through her work as a student atheist activist. Three years later, when she and other students walked into the bar at the same meeting in Des Moines, Iowa, A. recalled, Krauss pulled over a chair for her and started running his hand up her leg under the table.
“I kind of shifted away,” A. said. “He put his hand on again. I crossed my legs. He put his hand on again. And eventually I had to like physically turn my entire body.”
A. was shocked, but didn’t want to make a scene, she said. “The last thing I need to do is, you know, yell at Lawrence and then have to deal with any potential fallout.”
Krauss denied A.’s account, and said that it was A. who had come on to him, inviting him to join her in the hotel’s hot tub. Robin Elisabeth Cornwell, a friend of Krauss’s and then executive director of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, was also there, and backed his account. A. denied mentioning the hot tub or flirting with Krauss. Benjamin Wurst, one of her student companions, told BuzzFeed News that, as they left the bar, A. told him Krauss had put his hand on her.
Friends stick up for each other, don’t they. Krauss sticks up for Epstein, and Cornwell sticks up for Krauss. Result? Women leave “the movement” in droves and it moves ever more briskly to the right (and the mostly male).
There’s a great deal more, but I need a break.
Must be offensive
Feb 22nd, 2018 9:40 am | By Ophelia BensonOh god oh god oh god.
I never said “give teachers guns” like was stated on Fake News @CNN & @NBC. What I said was to look at the possibility of giving “concealed guns to gun adept teachers with military or special training experience – only the best. 20% of teachers, a lot, would now be able to
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 22, 2018
….immediately fire back if a savage sicko came to a school with bad intentions. Highly trained teachers would also serve as a deterrent to the cowards that do this. Far more assets at much less cost than guards. A “gun free” school is a magnet for bad people. ATTACKS WOULD END!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 22, 2018
….History shows that a school shooting lasts, on average, 3 minutes. It takes police & first responders approximately 5 to 8 minutes to get to site of crime. Highly trained, gun adept, teachers/coaches would solve the problem instantly, before police arrive. GREAT DETERRENT!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 22, 2018
I will be strongly pushing Comprehensive Background Checks with an emphasis on Mental Health. Raise age to 21 and end sale of Bump Stocks! Congress is in a mood to finally do something on this issue – I hope!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 22, 2018
….If a potential “sicko shooter” knows that a school has a large number of very weapons talented teachers (and others) who will be instantly shooting, the sicko will NEVER attack that school. Cowards won’t go there…problem solved. Must be offensive, defense alone won’t work!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 22, 2018
I will be strongly pushing Comprehensive Background Checks with an emphasis on Mental Health. Raise age to 21 and end sale of Bump Stocks! Congress is in a mood to finally do something on this issue – I hope!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 22, 2018
What many people don’t understand, or don’t want to understand, is that Wayne, Chris and the folks who work so hard at the @NRA are Great People and Great American Patriots. They love our Country and will do the right thing. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 22, 2018
Will be meeting with Lawmakers today at 11:30 A.M. to discuss School Safety. Next week it will be with our Nation’s Governors. It’s been many years of all talk, no action. We’ll get it done!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 22, 2018
Arm all the teachers
Feb 21st, 2018 3:42 pm | By Ophelia BensonTrump held a “listening session” with survivors of school shootings, but judging by the reporting on Twitter, it was a sour joke – carefully packed with Trump fans, and no naughty rebels allowed.
To help him simulate human reactions, Trump's minders gave him a cheat sheet that prompted him to say things like "I hear you" during the WH listening session on the #Parkland shootings. [@AP Photo by Carolyn Kaster] pic.twitter.com/cEyVNDlvjU
— Steve Silberman (@stevesilberman) February 21, 2018
https://twitter.com/poniewozik/status/966438137936384002
I want to know why Emma Gonzalez and the Parkland students in the national spotlight aren’t at the President’s listening session. The focus seem to be focused on everything but easy access to guns.
— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) February 21, 2018
Frame it however you like, this White House "listening session" is an organized institutional cover up for gun lobby–to blunt criticism, pay lip service and do as little as possible to protect the children and people of America. It is murder in a gilded setting.
— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) February 21, 2018
This is really something – Trump's most enthusiastic proposal, in his "listening session" on school shootings, is: A) encouraging teachers and coaches to carry guns; B) sending a company of armed veterans into schools.
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) February 21, 2018
Please someone write a story as to how the students and parents were screened for this sham of a listening session. Listening to these kids praise Trump in the context of all this is beyond appalling. They're human shields for an industry that is literally killing our children.
— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) February 21, 2018
Oh god. Oh god. This listening session just got terrifying. Trump is now fully advocating concealed carry for teachers and staff. That's what this was about.
— Maureen Johnson (@maureenjohnson) February 21, 2018
Because he sinks so low, so often
Feb 21st, 2018 3:03 pm | By Ophelia BensonMargaret Sullivan, media columnist at the Washington Post, is disgusted at the things the Twisted Right is saying about the surviving students from Stoneman Douglas high school.
Here is the often-appalling pundit Dinesh D’Souza, outright mocking the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, after they showed their disappointment in a state legislature vote on assault weapons on Tuesday: “Worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs.”
Recall for a moment: These are teenagers whose friends were brutally murdered less than a week ago.
D’Souza, who has a huge social-media following precisely because he sinks so low, so often, also tweeted out his cynical scorekeeping: “Adults: 1. Kids: 0.” And he took a shot at what he called their “politically orchestrated grief.”
There was a backlash, and today he tried to say he was talking about the media, but no one believed him.
But there was far worse out there. Emma Gonzalez, the Douglas High student who made an impassioned speech last week, became the object of the worst kind of racism and sexism.
One Twitter user called her a “brown bald lesbian girl” — disparagement that got some approval from a state legislator’s aide, the same aide who was fired Tuesday for telling the Tampa Bay Times the students were paid and coached actors.
“Both kids in the picture are not students here but actors that travel to various crisis when they happen,” wrote the aide, Benjamin Kelly, speaking of Gonzalez and David Hogg (whom I interviewed last week). That was, of course, a lie.
I wonder how much of this is being fanned or even started by our new companions the Russian Troll Army.
D’Souza’s apology and the legislative aide’s swift firing suggest the wind is blowing in a new direction.
That’s encouraging.
It would also be encouraging to see news organizations who employ those who spread lies taking some remedial action, too.
CNN, for example, pays former Congressman Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) as a political commentator. Here is his point of view, as expressed in a tweet: “O really? ‘Students’ are planning a nationwide rally? Not left wing gun control activists using 17yr kids in the wake of a horrible tragedy? #Soros #Resistance #Antifa #DNC.”
Those hashtags. The trolls have gotten to him.
But also – what does he even mean? What does he think he means? “Left wing gun control activists using 17 year old kids in the wake of a horrible tragedy” for what sinister hidden purpose? What is the concealed motive supposed to be? Using them how? We want gun control in order to reduce the number of gun deaths. Why does Jack Kingston pretend that’s sinister? Why shouldn’t we want to reduce the number of gun deaths? What other bizarro motive could there be? Why does Soros have to be roped into it?
And yes, why the fuck does CNN pay him? There are conservatives who don’t talk stupid shit like that; why not pay them instead?
We have met the Troll Army and it is us.
Rapid response team
Feb 21st, 2018 11:26 am | By Ophelia BensonI didn’t realize the Russian trolls had pounced on the Florida shooting that fast. The Times reported a couple of days ago:
One hour after news broke about the school shooting in Florida last week, Twitter accounts suspected of having links to Russia released hundreds of posts taking up the gun control debate.
An hour.
So not only do we have a brain-fryingly stupid politics around issues such as gun control and abortion and women’s claim to be actual people, but also the brain-frying stupidity of our politics is like rotting meat to flies. We get the authentic stupid politics and then we get even more of it courtesy of Putin.
That is not fair.
The accounts addressed the news with the speed of a cable news network. Some adopted the hashtag #guncontrolnow. Others used #gunreformnow and #Parklandshooting. Earlier on Wednesday, before the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., many of those accounts had been focused on the investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
“This is pretty typical for them, to hop on breaking news like this,” said Jonathon Morgan, chief executive of New Knowledge, a company that tracks online disinformation campaigns. “The bots focus on anything that is divisive for Americans. Almost systematically.”
Almost?
Any news event — no matter how tragic — has become fodder to spread inflammatory messages in what is believed to be a far-reaching Russian disinformation campaign. The disinformation comes in various forms: conspiracy videos on YouTube, fake interest groups on Facebook, and armies of bot accounts that can hijack a topic or discussion on Twitter.
Those automated Twitter accounts have been closely tracked by researchers. Last year, the Alliance for Securing Democracy, in conjunction with the German Marshall Fund, a public policy research group in Washington, created a website that tracks hundreds of Twitter accounts of human users and suspected bots that they have linked to a Russian influence campaign.
They find us stupid and they make us stupider. And Trump, of course, is gold for them.
Facebook, Google and Twitter have, to varying degrees, announced new measures to eliminate bot accounts, and have hired more moderators to help them weed out disinformation on their platforms.
But since the election, the Russian-linked bots have rallied around other divisive issues, often ones that President Trump has tweeted about. They promoted Twitter hashtags like #boycottnfl, #standforouranthem and #takeaknee after some National Football League players started kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice.
The automated Twitter accounts helped popularize the #releasethememo hashtag, which referred to a secret House Republican memorandum that suggested the F.B.I. and the Justice Department abused their authority to obtain a warrant to spy on a former Trump campaign adviser. The debate over the memo widened a schism between the White House and its own law enforcement agencies.
…
Intelligence officials in the United States have warned that malicious actors will try to spread disinformation ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. In testimony to Congress last year and in private meetings with lawmakers, social media companies promised that they will do better in 2018 than they did in 2016.
But the Twitter campaign around the Parkland shooting is an example of how Russian operatives are still at it.
All so that oligarchs can get even more oligarchy.
Which twin likes junk news the best?
Feb 21st, 2018 10:47 am | By Ophelia Benson(It’s fun writing headlines that would have been gibberish 10 or 15 years ago.)
The hashtag #TwitterLockout has trended after an apparent purge of suspected malicious bots on the social network.
Dozens of users report having had their accounts suspended until they provided a telephone number which they then had to verify, to prove they were real.
Some members have raised concerns about their amount of lost followers, and claimed discrimination against right-wing political beliefs.
Is it the right-wing aspect or the deranged aspect? To put it another way, when so much right-wing pro-Trump discourse is batshit crazy and sounds like trolling whether it’s out of Russia or not, how can one tell whether it’s a bot or just some batshit crazy frothing Trump fan? How, I ask, how?
One researcher who has studied digital disinformation campaigns said a Twitter crackdown should come as no surprise.
“This is a company that’s under a lot of heat to clean up its act in terms of how its platform has been exploited to spread misinformation and junk news,” said Samantha Bradshaw from the University of Oxford’s Computational Propaganda Project.
“It now needs to rebuild trust with users and legislators to show it is trying to take action against these threats against democracy.”
She too notes the overlap between Trump fans and troll-like bullshittery.
Ms Bradshaw suggested that any appearance of Twitter’s partisanship might be better explained by the different news sources that left and right-wingers prefer.
“Our work indicates a lot of the more conservative Americans were consuming more junk news,” she explained.
“Filter bubbles and echo chambers are more dominant on the right compared to on the left.
“So, I don’t necessarily think it’s an attack on the right, it’s just a reflection about the different ways different kinds of people consume information.”
Especially in the case of the pro-Trump right. Plenty of conservatives detest Trump – Richard Painter, David Frum, Bill Kristol to name just three – while remaining conservatives. Admiring and endorsing Trump is not consistent with being rational and informed.
Hijacked and exploited
Feb 21st, 2018 9:56 am | By Ophelia BensonTrump’s pet ex-sheriff (who still calls himself “Sheriff” even though he’s an EX-sheriff), back from his Twitter suspension:
https://twitter.com/SheriffClarke/status/965962123535966208
Really. Why would Florida students want gun control? What possible reason could they have to want fewer people wandering the landscape with an AR-15 and a backpack full of ammo? There surely is no such reason, therefore it must be Soros. Quod erat demonstrandum.
Not glib at all
Feb 21st, 2018 9:39 am | By Ophelia BensonHow graceful our new royal family is. Don 1 goes to visit survivors of the school shooting and grins like a partying frat boy for the cameras. Don 2 goes to peddle Luxury Properties in India and rejoices at the smiling faces of The Poor.
Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, is in India this week to promote his family’s real estate empire and more than $1 billion worth of luxury Trump Tower projects in four cities, but he still had time to praise India’s poor for their smiles.
“I don’t mean to be glib about it, but you can see the poorest of the poor and there is still a smile on a face,” Trump said Tuesday in an interview with CNBC’s Indian affiliate. “It’s a different spirit that you don’t see in other parts of the world … and I think there’s something unique about that.”
Let there be a smile on every face! The rich man in his gold-painted penthouse and the poor woman being raped on a bus – let both of them beam a happy smile out on the world. The corrupt fraudulent millionaire and the underpaid domestic worker each can make our lives a little brighter with a happy grin.
Trump arrived on his family’s private jet Monday for a week of schmoozing and dinners with India’s top business leaders and to wine and dine buyers in the Trump Organization’s latest project. The Trumps have a licensing deal with two Indian developers for two towers outside the capital, New Delhi, where luxury apartments range in price from $780,000 to $1.6 million and have private elevators and concierge service.
Full-page glossy newspaper ads trumpeting Trump’s arrival also tempted buyers to reserve an apartment (paying a booking fee of about $38,000) by Thursday to “join Mr. Donald Trump Jr. for a conversation and dinner” on Friday. The buyers’ dinner has raised conflict of interest concerns and charges by watchdog groups.
“These ads illustrate the importance of Trump divesting from his business and the danger brought by his failure to divest. Trump’s company is literally selling access to the president’s son overseas,” said Jordan Libowitz, communications director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which is frequently critical of the first family.
Never mind all that – just keep smiling.
Florida to students: Nope, we don’t care
Feb 20th, 2018 5:37 pm | By Ophelia BensonFlorida legislators aren’t going to ban assault weapons just because a bunch of sissy kids think they should.
The Florida House rejects a motion to take up a bill banning assault rifles.
State Representative Kionne McGhee, a Democrat from Miami, asked for an unusual procedural move to consider his legislation, which had been filed earlier in the session but was never scheduled for a hearing.
“The shooting in Parkland demands extraordinary action,” Mr. McGhee said Tuesday on the House floor, as a group of Stoneman Douglas High students, who had previously arrived, peered down from the gallery.
The motion failed, 36 to 71, in a vote along party lines. At least one student burst into tears, Mr. McGhee said. One girl covered her mouth in despair, as a woman patted her arm to comfort her. The episode lasted 2 minutes and 38 seconds.
As the news began to spread aboard a bus of students headed to the capital, Anthony Lopez, 16, a junior, slammed his head back on the bus seat. He placed a hand on his forehead. “That’s infuriating,” he said. “They’re acting inhuman.”
“The one we fear we have is that nothing will change,” he added.
A similar proposal filed last year in the wake of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando also went nowhere.
The right to buy an assault weapon, or a hundred assault weapons, is our most sacred right of all. You can take our freedom of speech, our right to assemble, our freedom of association, but our right to amass enough firepower to kill everyone at the next town meeting, don’t even think about it.
Really?
Feb 20th, 2018 5:16 pm | By Ophelia BensonThe tweet
A woman I don’t know and, to the best of my knowledge, never met, is on the FRONT PAGE of the Fake News Washington Post saying I kissed her (for two minutes yet) in the lobby of Trump Tower 12 years ago. Never happened! Who would do this in a public space with live security……
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 20, 2018
The tweet in response
Please, by all means, share the footage from the hallway outside the 24th floor residential elevator bank on the morning of January 11, 2006. Let’s clear this up for everyone. It’s liars like you in politics that have prompted me to run for office myself. https://t.co/ir7EEKoXRU https://t.co/GmkkZ5jUc7
— Rachel Crooks (@RachelforOhio) February 20, 2018
Trump’s tweets come at a time when his interactions with women over the years are in sharp focus. Last Friday the New Yorker published a piece detailing how the National Enquirer bought exclusive rights to and then never published the story of a former Playboy Playmate, Karen McDougal, who says she had a consensual sexual relationship with Trump in 2006.
This followed a New York Times story a week ago where Trump’s longtime lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen said that shortly before the election, he paid $130,000 to a porn actress named Stephanie Clifford, who goes by the professional name of Stormy Daniels. Cohen has released a statement for Clifford denying she had an affair with Trump in 2006. But in 2011 she detailed the alleged affair in an interview with In Touch magazine that wasn’t published at the time but was released earlier this year.
…
Crooks and two other women were featured on NBC’s Today and held a news conference in New York in December. At the time, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked about it in the daily White House press briefing.
“Look, the president has addressed these accusations directly and denied all of these allegations,” said Sanders. “And this took place long before he was elected to be president. And the people of this country, at a decisive election, supported President Trump, and we feel like these allegations have been answered through that process.”
Now what I want to know is…
“Decisive”? A decisive election? One in which the popular vote differed from the electoral vote by 3 million votes? That’s “decisive”? What’s decisive about it? More than for instance one in which the winner has a majority of both kinds of vote? Especially a large majority of both? That’s normally what’s meant by a decisive vote in a US presidential election with its gruesomely unfair electoral college.
Just one of those puzzles.
