Inside Climate News on the depth of the disaster in Puerto Rico:

“It is very bad down there right now,” said Sven Rodenbeck, chief science officer for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2017 hurricane response. “For the vast majority of the island, there is no power. They have had flooding, and the health care system—many of the clinics and hospitals are closed. A lot of the drinking water systems are not operational, along with the waste water systems.”

Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico, gave a blunt assessment of the situation.

“People are dying,” Cruz told CBS news on Tuesday. “This is the reality that we live in, the crude aftermath of a storm, a hurricane that has left us practically paralyzed.”

The disaster facing the U.S. territory—and mirrored to an extent in the nearby Virgin Islands—is exacerbated by long standing environmental justice issues facing a poor, underrepresented minority population on an island where climate experts have long warned of the increasing risks of such a catastrophe.

Witness Trump, not even noticing the problem for days because he was too busy ranting about football players and flags.

A request by several members of Congress to waive shipping restrictions known as the Jones Act to help get fuel and supplies to Puerto Rico was denied by the administration on Tuesday with the argument that it wasn’t necessary, Reuters reported. The administration did waive the Jones Act after Hurricanes Harvey and Irma hit Texas and Florida to help move fuel.

So…it’s not necessary why? Because we care about Texas and Florida but we don’t care about Puerto Rico?

“These storms are big, islands are small; if they get a direct hit it can overcome the entire place,” said John Mutter, a professor of earth and environmental sciences and of international and public affairs at Columbia University. “If all the first responders are unable to respond because the whole place is trashed, it creates a whole new level of disaster.”

Poor communities are always hit the hardest in events like this, Mutter said.

In the case of Puerto Rico, where nearly half the population is below the poverty level, the territory has no vote in Congress, and Texas and Florida are vying with the territory for limited federal disaster resources, inequity in recovery could be exacerbated.

Also a xenophobic racist is running the country.

They can’t even make sure the water is clean enough.

Even when EPA officials are able to inspect the island’s superfund sites, they may not be able to test surrounding floodwaters for toxins, Judith Enck, former EPA administrator for Region 2, which includes Puerto Rico, said.

“Typically they would either use a local lab which won’t be functioning because there’s no electricity, or they would ship the results back to the region 2 lab in Edison New Jersey, but there is no real shipping options,” Enck said.  “They can do inspections, see if there are cracks in oil tanks or thing like that, but I don’t see how they will actually be able to do any sampling.”

Now back to football.

Sunday we read a piece by Gaby Hinsliff about the disproportionate rage directed at BBC reporter Laura Kuenssberg.

Yesterday I read this in the Guardian from last July: Yvette Cooper ‘sick to death of vitriol’ directed at Laura Kuenssberg.

The Labour MP Yvette Cooper has launched a staunch defence of the BBC political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, as she called on Labour to be a “broad-based party” and its supporters to stop engaging in “vitriolic abuse” online.

Cooper defended Kuenssberg, regularly under fire for perceived political bias, as she set out a potential strategy to put Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street and attacked the US president, Donald Trump.

She said Trump’s approach to politics and social media was “normalising hatred” and the problem was not confined to the right wing.

Today I read Helen Lewis on the subject:

During the bit of Jeremy Corbyn’s speech to Labour conference where journalists were just beginning to drift off, Buzzfeed Political Editor Jim Waterson posted about a story on The Canary. The pro-Corbyn “alternative” site had posted an article by Steve Topple headlined: “We need to talk about Laura Kuenssberg. She’s listed as a speaker at the Tory Party conference.”

As Waterson put it, “It took me two mins to call the event organiser and find out this is bollocks. She’s not speaking at Tory conference. Already going viral regardless.”

She’d been invited to speak – as had a lot of people, because that’s what happens.

There are two problems here. The first is the way that The Canary – an independent, reader-funded “alternative” news site – uses Kuenssberg as a traffic-driver for hate-clicks. This is a flimsy story – leftwing journalists speak at Tory conference, and vice versa – even if it were correct. Which it isn’t, as the BBC press office soon made clear.

@bbclaurak is not speaking at this @csjthinktank event. At Labour & Conservative conferences to report impartially for @BBCNews

— BBC News Press Team (@BBCNewsPR) September 27, 2017

The BBC is a target, BBC reporters are targets, but Kuenssberg is especially a target. Now why might that be do you suppose?

BBC editors receive constant complaints from politicians and their teams about their reporting. Why? Because they reach so many people. What is reported on the BBC matters.

However, it’s not hard to spot that some BBC staff get more flak than others. Those in front of camera are instantly recognisable, and so make better targets. So – let’s be honest – are women. There is a strain of misogyny which delights in being told that there are some women it’s OK to hate.

A huge strain. That joy in Socially Approved hatred of women seems to take up most of the oxygen in trans activism these days, which means it’s also taking over the left as a whole, especially when combined with the right-on hatred of Hillary Clinton.

The media should not give license to that impulse, and neither should anyone who calls themselves progressive. Internet arguments over the exact calibration of condemnation given to vitriol against Diane Abbott vs Laura Kuenssberg miss the fact that both left and right are united in finding some women acceptable targets for sexist abuse. Do as you would be done to.

The demonisation of Kuenssberg, which the Canary has taken such delight in, has had real world effects. The BBC political editor was given a bodyguard for Labour party conference, presumably as a result of threats. When the story was reported, a sizeable section of the online left, instead of believing that the BBC would make a sensible decision based on duty of care to an employee, decided to question whether it was an anti-Corbyn plot. Where were these threats? Why won’t you tell us what they are? The tone was conspiracist, which is frankly boggling to anyone who has ever clicked on the replies to a Kuenssberg tweet. The hate for her is real, it is often wildly divorced from anything she’s actually done, and it often takes overtly misogynist forms.

In fact, look at one of the first responses to the Canary’s own tweet of the story.

Same old same old.

Of course.

Louise Brealey tweets a Guardian article about the misogyny aimed at women who say or do things.

Missed this from @suzanne_moore on the grim misogyny trying to silence women in UK politics. https://t.co/EaufI27lIS

— Louise Brealey (@louisebrealey) September 25, 2017

Then she makes an observation about misogyny in history.

Men have been trying to shut us up since 2350 BC: punishment for a woman speaking out of turn was having her teeth smashed by a burnt brick.

— Louise Brealey (@louisebrealey) September 25, 2017

So of course a man dives in to say you’re calling us evil. Brealey says no she’s not, she’s saying men have silenced women throughout history.

https://twitter.com/mlbfan190/status/912412531653840896

Isn't you announcing that an article written by an eminent woman academic is bs a pretty good example of a man silencing a woman?

— Louise Brealey (@louisebrealey) September 26, 2017

He told her “go & slit your throat bitch” in a tweet that either he or Twitter deleted.

Silencing? What silencing?

Also, he thinks telling a woman “go & slit your throat bitch” is arguing facts with her, and that it’s reprehensible for her to block someone who tells her that.

https://twitter.com/mlbfan190/status/912800308023226374

The NSS points out that several schools in the UK are requiring girls to wear religious dress as part of their school uniform.

Girls in dozens of schools in England are forced to wear hijabs, according to National Secular Society research published in the Sunday Times today.

The NSS examined uniform policies on the websites of registered Islamic schools in England and found that girls potentially as young as four are instructed to wear the hijab as part of the official uniform policy.

Out of 142 Islamic schools that accept girls, 59 have uniform policies on their website that suggest a headscarf or another form of hijab is compulsory. This includes eight state-funded schools and 27 primary schools ­– three of which are state-funded.

In some cases the requirement is very explicit. At Feversham College in Bradford the policy states: “It is very important that the uniform is loose fitting and modest and that the hijaab is fitted closely to the head. The College uniform is COMPULSORY” (sic). Tayyibah Girls’ School in Hackney states: “The school is not willing to compromise on any issues regarding uniform.”

Girls at Al-Ihsaan Community College in Leicester are told they must wear either a “jilbaab or niqab.” The jilbaab is a long loose-fitting garment which covers the body except the hands, face and feet. Redstone Educational Academy in Birmingham includes the jilbaab as part of the compulsory uniform. Olive Secondary in Bradford says that girls’ faces “must be covered” outside.

Boys are people, and have freedom. Girls are objects, and have no freedom.

The NSS sent a letter.

Text of letter send to Justine Greening, Secretary of State for Education, Minister for Women and Equalities

We write with concerns that British school children are being forced to wear the hijab and other items of religious clothing whilst at school.

Our research indicates that girls as young as four are being made to wear the hijab as part of an official school uniform policy. The wearing of the hijab appears to be compulsory in eight of the 23 publicly funded Islamic schools that accept girls – including in three primary schools.

The majority of independent Muslim schools also require the hijab to be worn, including one school that further requires children’s faces to be covered outside of the school.

All schools have a duty to ‘actively promote’ individual liberty, to ensure young people leave school prepared for life in modern Britain.

In our view, the forcing of a child to wear the hijab, or any other item of religious clothing, is entirely at odds with this fundamental British value and with wider human rights norms on children’s rights. This conflict needs to be addressed.

We are further concerned that a number of non-Islamic schools appear to be acceding to fundamentalist pressure to incorporate the hijab into their uniform. Whilst we fully support efforts to allow children from Muslim backgrounds to better integrate, a desire to be ‘inclusive’ should not automatically lead to the accommodation of illiberal and repressive cultural norms.

Given the ‘justifications’ that lie behind so called ‘modesty’ codes, and its implicit sexualisation of children, we regard it as a matter of deep regret that so many schools are facilitating young girls being dressed in the hijab.

Whilst policies permitted the wearing of the hijab are so often framed in terms of choice and freedom, we urge you to recognise that this ‘freedom’ is often dictated by social pressure.

Education policy should empower girls and help them to make their own decisions once they are ready to do so. We therefore call on you to work alongside Ofsted to ensure that girls from Muslim backgrounds are supported to have free choices, rather than having so called ‘modesty’ codes imposed on them. No child should be obliged to wear the hijab, or any other article of religious clothing, whilst at school.

With regard to accommodations made by other schools, we urge you to issue guidance that makes it clear that a decision not to incorporate the hijab into a school uniform will be supported by the Government. The guidance should also make clear that the freedom to make accommodations to allow the wearing of the hijab does not extend to primary schools.

Stephen Evans, Campaigns Director, National Secular Society

Sara Khan, Director and Co-founder, Inspire

Amina Lone, Co-Director of the Social Action & Research Foundation

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Journalist

Pragna Patel, director of Southall Black Sisters.

Gina Khan, Spokesperson, One Law for All

Yasmin Rehman, Women and Human Rights Activist

Iram Ramzan, Journalist

Zehra Zaidi, Director of Stand up, social activist and former Conservative PPC

I hope the minister takes it seriously.

Philip Bump at the Post also notices Donald’s slightly out of proportion obsession with The Flag while Puerto Rico runs out of oxygen and everything else.

Since last Friday, he’s tweeted about anti-police violence protests at NFL games some two dozen times — far more than he’s tweeted about North Korea or about health-care revision or about the special election in Alabama. It has consumed him. Four tweets on Saturday. Seven on Sunday. Eight on Monday. Four before 9 a.m. on Tuesday.

It’s astonishing to behold – that someone in his position can be that petty and childish, and proud of it.

After the contrast between his eager tweets about the NFL and apathy about Puerto Rico was raised by journalists on Monday, Trump tweeted several times about the island.

“Texas and Florida are doing great,” he wrote, “but Puerto Rico, which was already suffering from broken infrastructure and massive debt, is in deep trouble. Its old electrical grid, which was in terrible shape, was devastated. Much of the Island was destroyed, with billions of dollars owed to Wall Street and the banks which, sadly, must be dealt with. Food, water and medical are top priorities — and doing well.”

Wall Street and the banks – that’s the important thing here.

The message Trump is trying to convey with those tweets (which we cleaned up a bit for legibility) is pretty clear: If Puerto Rico is going badly, it’s not my fault. Why the territory’s debt was worth mentioning is hard to understand outside of the context of Trump portraying it as a place that is responsible for its own problems.

So DON’T LOOK AT HIM, ok?

Long-haul recovery efforts that bear no immediate signs of reward are not the sort of struggle Trump enjoys. It’s hard not to draw an obvious conclusion: Trump tweets more about the NFL than Puerto Rico because he is more interested in talking about the NFL than talking about Puerto Rico. I mean, they haven’t even paid their debts to Wall Street!

Plus…don’t forget…they speak Spanish there.

CNN on the current situation in Puerto Rico:

Nearly a week after Hurricane Maria slammed Puerto Rico, the US commonwealth looks something like this: Most are without power and phone service, with little hope of having it restored soon. Food and medicine are dwindling, especially for those isolated by impassable roads. And rescuers still are finding and removing desperate people from their demolished communities.

It is, in short, a humanitarian crisis, San Juan’s mayor told CNN on Tuesday.

You put all those together – roads impassable, power out, communications down, food and medicine running out – and you can’t help but have a humanitarian disaster. Emergency services are finding dialysis patients near death, people running out of oxygen.

Residents in remote areas are stranded with shrinking supplies, and some haven’t been able to contact their families to tell them they survived.

Coffee growers Gaspar Rodriguez and Doris Velez said the food they had left has spoiled.
“You work, work and work, and it’s for nothing,” Rodriguez said after losing everything.

Rescuers still are “removing people from hazardous conditions — (people who) are ill, that can’t move on their own,” said Carl Levon Kustin, a Federal Emergency Management Agency task force leader from California.

Trump tweeted about the situation this morning, but over the past several days he’s had a lot more to say about football players not respecting the flag enough than he has about the emergency in Puerto Rico.

Let’s start with something funny for a change.

Kate Smurthwaite did a tv chat thing this morning along with “Celebrity Big Brother star” Kim Woodburn where they discussed whether or not it’s annoying to be called “darling” in shops.

It wouldn’t be all that funny/interesting perhaps were it not for the fact that Kate reports that Kim Woodburn pitched a fit at her in the corridor afterwards.

I’m not even joking. Kim Woodburn (from How Clean Is Your House who I was just on This Morning with) completely flipped out at me in the corridor as we left the studio. Got right in my face. Called me “crazy”, “a nutter” and all sorts of other not-very-PC terms. I was like “the debate’s finished, why are you still shouting?”. Then she screamed (really screamed, loud) “And shave your armpits, you look disgusting. It’s not feminine.”

Optional essay topic: is it Trumpism, or would people be carrying on this way even if Trump had returned to private life last November?

Gaby Hinsliff on the abuse aimed at BBC reporter Laura Kuenssberg.

SNOWFLAKE. Pathetic. Fake news. “Not exactly Kate Adie in a war zone.”

And that’s just a flavour of the way some people on social media greeted the news that the BBC’s political editor has been assigned a bodyguard to protect her at Labour party conference: by blaming the victim, not those who threaten violence against her. She’s making it up for attention! She was asking for it, what with her wilful refusal to report the news in a manner more to people’s liking! She should have known it was provocative even to set foot there!

Evidently many Labour supporters will be as horrified as any other sane individual by the idea of journalists being physically intimidated at work, a thuggish phenomenon repeatedly observed at Donald Trump’s rallies, and associated with totalitarian regimes the world over. Many MPs and activists, including some close to Jeremy Corbyn, will doubtless go out of their way this week to show Laura Kuenssberg she is welcome in Brighton, and that those who mean her harm are cranks with no place in a democratic movement.

But there is a small, self-righteous and aggressively entitled minority within the left who clearly don’t feel that way, and whose behaviour now risks tarnishing that wider movement.

I’m familiar with the type, and the fact that it likes nothing better than a chance to abuse a woman while still feeling that righteous lefty glow.

The rage against her in some quarters is visceral, frenzied, beyond all reason.

Some of it is doubtless rooted in a refusal to accept her professional judgment, an almost subconscious rejection of the idea that a woman – even a woman whose life’s work is covering politics – might know what she’s talking about. It’s striking that neither previous male holders of her job, nor the largely male political editors of titles overtly hostile to Corbyn, have been so singled out.

Isn’t it though?

You don’t have to like someone to know that physical intimidation of this kind has no place in a democracy. Kuenssberg is a good journalist doing a sterling job under pressure the like of which no other political editor at the BBC has ever experienced. But even if she wasn’t, the same statement of the bleeding obvious would hold true: threatening to kill someone merely because their opinions annoy you is wrong. It doesn’t matter if those threats are against Diane Abbott, or Jess Phillips, or Anna Soubry, or Nigel Farage, it is never acceptable to settle a political argument by threatening to hang one’s opponent or harm their children. Belittling and refusing to believe those on the receiving end of such threats, or contriving lame excuses for them, is if anything almost more depressing, because it legitimises violence and emboldens the genuinely dangerous.

And it’s absolutely ubiquitous.

I’m sure this will work out well.

North Korea’s foreign minister has accused US President Donald Trump of declaring war on his country.

Ri Yong-ho told reporters in New York that North Korea reserved the right to shoot down US bombers.

This applied even when they were not in North Korean airspace, the minister added.

This is not the first time that North Korea has used the phrase “a declaration of war” in relation to the United States.

But Mr Ri’s comments are a response to the US president’s tweet that Mr Ri and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un would not “be around much longer” if they continued their rhetoric.

Trump needs to be removed from office because he’s unfit.

Recently a student at Edinburgh, Robbie Travers, made a lot of headlines over his claim that EU was investigating him for mocking ISIS. I saw several friends of mine pressing him on this claim on Facebook, and I saw him blowing smoke rather than answering.

Now Nick Cohen has found out what really happened.

On 12 May, Robbie Travers sent Esme Allman, a fellow student at Edinburgh University, a Facebook message.

“Hey Esme, just to let you know multiple news agencies have been delivered [sic] your comments on calling black men trash. You might want to think about saying that in future, some have been linked it [sic] to neo-Nazism.”

The ill-crafted words were at best half-truths and at worst outright lies. But there was a nugget of fact beneath them, which Travers could melt and remould. Allman had indeed said “trash”. But the context, which Travers did not mention, could not have been further from neo-Nazism. Allman was in a Facebook group for black and ethnic minority students at Edinburgh. Its members talked about the abuse Serena Williams receivedwhen she announced she had fallen in love with a white man. Black men who insulted a black woman for marrying the love of her life were “trash”, Allman declared. Harsh words, but understandable in the circumstances.

Nick says Travers seems to have been monitoring Allman like a secret cop, and that he told his thousands of Facebook followers he would be “unveiling” Allman as a racist.

In view of what was to happen next, it is worth noting that Travers was the prig. He was trying to punish Allman for her words and thoughts, not the other way round. Allman thought he was harassing her and reported him to Edinburgh University for allegedly breaking its code of conduct (he was eventually cleared of this charge).

But, Nick asks, why should we care? Because so many newspapers did, is the answer.

The Mail, the Sun, Trump’s propaganda network Fox News, Putin’s propaganda network Russia Today, the Express, the Times, which broke the “story”, and the far-right US sites Infowars and Breitbart assured their gullible readers that Travers was the victim of the latest politically correct insanity. It wasn’t just the rightwing press. The Independent, the Mirror, and papers across Europe loved the story.

They repeated every word of Travers’ new allegation that Allman had accused him of Islamophobia for “mocking Islamic State on Facebook”. There was no mention of Serena Williams. Travers was no longer the creepy censor trying to make others suffer. He was now the victim of political correctness gone, well, mad.

Somewhat similar things do happen, as we know – Maryam Namazie for instance is regularly accused of “Islamophobia” because she defends universal human rights as opposed to particularist rights tied to religions. Travers was hitching a ride on that train.

Imagine. Even Isis can’t be criticised now. A black student and a “self-proclaimed feminist” to boot was supporting barbarism and trying to turn its critics into hate criminals. Every rightwing suspicion was confirmed with suspicious ease. In a revealing interview recorded for the Sunday Times, Rod Liddle told Travers: “If it wasn’t for insanities like this, I wouldn’t have a job, so thank you.”

Just so. And it’s not only rightwing journalists who are grateful. With headcounts hacked back and finances in free fall, many news organisations don’t have the resources to check a story. When it so neatly tells their readers what they want to hear, the seductive question arises: do we want to check at all?

Allman told me she never mentioned Isis and the transcript of her complaint bears this out. The university covered its back by saying it wouldn’t “consider bringing charges of misconduct against any student for mocking Isis”. But it left Allman in the lurch.

It told her not to talk to journalists, while refusing to correct the record itself.

Allman has broken her silence now, and given an interview to Edinburgh’s student newspaper. JK Rowling performed a public service by tweeting a link. But it remains the case that for the rest of her life any employer Googling Allman’s name will see dozens of news organisations suggesting that she was a fellow traveller with Isis. They will have to search very hard to find her side of the story.

We can hope Nick’s story will show up at the top of the Google results.

The dozens of news sites that spread the fake news about him could not have been expected to know Travers’ reputation. But any journalist making the most cursory of checks would have noticed that his website bears the vainglorious title: The Office of Robbie Travers. As well as saying he is an authority on global politics, the law and just about everything else, Travers claims to be the media manager for the Human Security Centre, an influential foreign policy thinktank. As no one else had bothered to phone, I gave it a call.

“We let him go many months ago,” a senior figure told me. “He was a complete liability. He was never the media manager. He was just junior comms staff, who ran our Twitter account very badly. He’s one of the most bizarre people I’ve ever encountered. Strange so many otherwise smart people still support him.”

The senior figure was probably Julie Lenarz, who went very public on Twitter a couple of hours ago.

Our media manager was Dannika. You worked under her as as *junior*, as was reflected in your title.

— Julie Lenarz (@MsJulieLenarz) September 25, 2017

When we *asked* you to leave you were listed as a junior staff in our comms. That was your last position with HSC. Same old lies and excuses

— Julie Lenarz (@MsJulieLenarz) September 25, 2017

Why you think ended up as junior? Because of all the plagiarism, lies, exaggerations. You are a fraud. Sad to say as someone who liked you.

— Julie Lenarz (@MsJulieLenarz) September 25, 2017

1) We decided to let you go quietly and on good terms to protect the org because we know what a bully you can be when you are exposed.

— Julie Lenarz (@MsJulieLenarz) September 25, 2017

2) It was a tactical decision at the time but we felt it was time now to speak up when others had guts to come forward as well.

— Julie Lenarz (@MsJulieLenarz) September 25, 2017

3) You are strongly disliked by ex-colleagues. They call you a fraud and a liar. That's your reputation. I don't care if you don't care.

— Julie Lenarz (@MsJulieLenarz) September 25, 2017

I hope all that can do Esme Allman some good.

David Remnick is lucidly disgusted at Trump’s racist demagoguery.

In the midst of an eighty-minute speech intended to heighten the reëlection prospects of Senator Luther Johnson Strange III, Trump turned his attention to N.F.L. players, including the former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, and asked a mainly white crowd if “people like yourselves” agreed with his anger at “those people,” players who take a knee during the national anthem to protest racism.

“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these N.F.L. owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, out, he’s fired!’ ” Trump continued. “You know, some owner is going to do that. He’s gonna say, ‘That guy disrespects our flag, he’s fired.’ And that owner, they don’t know it. They don’t know it. They’re friends of mine, many of them. They don’t know it. They’ll be the most popular person, for a week. They’ll be the most popular person in the country.”

“People like yourselves.” “Those people.” “Son of a bitch.” This was the same sort of racial signalling that followed the Fascist and white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. It is no longer a matter of “dog whistling.” This is a form of racial demagoguery broadcast at the volume of a klaxon.

Remnick says Trump is desperate to distract everyone from his failures, and no doubt he is, but he also really likes doing this shit. It makes him happy; it’s the best fun. He gets to stand up on a stage with thousands of people watching him, and do his asshole performance while the crowd cheers. He loves it. He loves it the way musicians love playing music, actors love acting, dancers love to dance. It’s a high for him.

Also, he wants the players to just suck up the damage from concussions.

At a rally in Lakeville, Florida, during the Presidential campaign, Trump aroused the crowd by insisting that the N.F.L., which has hardly gone to great lengths to protect its players, was “ruining the game” by inflicting penalties on players who, say, hit the quarterback too late. “See, we don’t go by these new and very much softer N.F.L. rules. Concussion? Oh! Oh! ‘Got a little ding in the head—no, no, you can’t play for the rest of the season.’ Our people are tough.”

Right? See also farmworkers not wanting to be sprayed with pesticide in the fields, factory workers not wanting to be injured on the line, chicken processors not wanting to have their arms torn off – sissy shit like that.

What Trump is up to with this assault on athletes, particularly prominent black ones, is obvious; it is part of his larger culture war. Divide. Inflame. Confuse. Divert. And rule. He doesn’t care to grapple with complexity of any kind, whether it’s about the environment, or foreign affairs, or race, or the fact that a great American sport may, by its very nature, be irredeemable. Rather than embody any degree of dignity, knowledge, or unifying embrace, Trump is a man of ugliness, and the damage he does, speech after speech, tweet after tweet, deepens like a coastal shelf. Every day, his Presidency takes a toll on our national fabric. How is it possible to argue with the sentiment behind LeBron James’s concise tweet at Trump: “U Bum”? It isn’t.

U Bum. It’s poetry.

The AfD has done better than expected in the German election.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been re-elected for a fourth term in federal elections, exit polls suggest.

Her conservative CDU/CSU alliance has won 32.5% of the vote, remaining the largest party in Germany’s parliament, according to the ARD poll.

Its coalition partner, the social democratic SPD, has gained 20%.

Meanwhile, the AfD, a right-wing nationalist, anti-Islam party, was on track to win 13.5%, emerging as Germany’s third-strongest party.

…

AfD’s performance, better than what opinion polls had forecast, means that the right-wing party will have a seat at the Bundestag for the first time.

The party’s leader, Frauke Petry, said on Twitter (in German) that Germany has experienced an incomparable “political earthquake”.

Trump will be pleased, if anyone can explain to him what the AfD is.

Another one of those customs we’re so used to we forget to ask why they’re customs – why is it the custom to sing “the national anthem” at sporting events? It’s not a universal custom, so why is it ours?

Oh well that’s easy – because we’re vainglorious and boastful and we love violence, basically.

Back in 2011 ESPN reminded us the US “national anthem” is a war song, taunting the enemy (flag still there, nyah nyah).

That’s why, in a country that loudly lauds actions on the battlefield and the playing field, “The Star-Spangled Banner” and American athletics have a nearly indissoluble marriage. Hatched during one war, institutionalized during another, this song has become so entrenched in our sports identity that it’s almost impossible to think of one without the other.

Our nation honors war. Our nation loves sports. Our nation glorifies winning. Our national anthem strikes all three chords at the same time.

…

Of course, in American sports, the flag — and the anthem — is always there. At the biggest events, pregame festivities surrounding the song provide as much spectacle as the games themselves. The anthem is a show, and a show of force. Every year, the Pentagon approves several hundred requests for military flyovers (even if that means five F-18s buzzing the closed roof of Cowboys Stadium, as was the case at this year’s Super Bowl). At lesser events, even at the high school level, a color guard is often on hand with the flag as the anthem is played.

So we see sports as an arm of the military.

And then there’s the fact that a university is afraid of being called a TERF on social media.

A researcher has been refused permission to study cases of people who have surgery to reverse gender reassignment by a university that said it risked generating controversy on social media sites.

The proposal was rejected with an explanation noting that it was a potentially “politically incorrect” piece of research and could lead to material being posted online that “may be detrimental to the reputation of the institution”.

Many subjects are potentially “politically incorrect”; it seems like an excess of caution for a university to squeal “Ewww!” and refuse permission to research them.

James Caspian, a psychotherapist, who wanted to conduct the research for a master’s degree in counselling and psychotherapy at Bath Spa University, accused it of failing to follow “the most basic tenets of academic and intellectual freedom of enquiry”.

Mr Caspian, 58, a counsellor who specialises in therapy for transgender people, embarked on the research after speaking to a surgeon who had carried out operations to reverse gender reassignment surgery, as people came to regret their decision.

Why wouldn’t that be of interest? If being trans is of interest, if becoming trans is of interest, if coming out as trans is of interest, why isn’t changing the mind also of interest?

Are we deciding now that being trans is the only really worthwhile thing to be? That people who aren’t trans, or at least enby, are kind of missing the zeitgeist boat? Is “cis” really what it has always seemed to be, just another word for conservative and old and boring?

Caspian got permission on his first try but then had trouble finding willing subjects so he asked to change his proposal to seek women who had transitioned to men and reverted to living as women, but without reversing their surgery. At that point Bath Spa said no.

On the sub-committee’s rejection form, it said: “Engaging in a potentially ‘politically incorrect’ piece of research carries a risk to the university.

“Attacks on social media may not be confined to the researcher but may involve the university.”

Under a section on ethical issues needing further consideration, it added: “The posting of unpleasant material on blogs or social media may be detrimental to the reputation of the university.”

So Twitter trolls are now making universities’ decisions for them. Awesome.

Oh darn, I must have been out.