The abuse was global

Jan 28th, 2018 4:44 pm | By

Anything for sport, right? Anything to win.

The Larry Nassar scandal is the biggest sexual abuse scandal in sports history. Nassar’s victims, who include some of the most famous female athletes around today, including Simone Biles and McKayla Maroney, outnumber the alleged victims of Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby combined. The abuse was global: he abused girls in London at the 2012 Olympics; at the Károlyi Ranch, USA Gymnastics’ training centre in Texas; at gymnastics meets in Rotterdam.

Over the course of the week-long sentence hearing, more than 150 women made impact statements in which they described lives crushed by trauma and shame. Shy little girls who briefly found self-confidence through sport became deeply self-loathing teenagers and adults because the man who was supposed to help them do the sport they loved instead molested them, over and over again.

The most obvious word this case sparks is “how”: how could this have ever been allowed to happen? How could USA Gymnastics have required hundreds of girls under its care to submit to mandatory treatment from a man who would give them “pelvic exams” in their hotel or dorm beds at night, wholly unsupervised? And how could the complaints about him have been dismissed for so long, as detailed by the gold medallist Aly Raisman in her unforgettably blistering testimony? “It’s easy to put out statements talking about how athlete care is the highest priority. But [USA Gymnastics] has been saying that for years, and all the while, this nightmare was happening,” Raisman said in court.

Because winning was all. Gold medals were all. The teenagers doing the winning didn’t matter.

“There is no other sport in which this could have happened but gymnastics,” says Joan Ryan, whose 1995 book, Little Girls in Pretty Boxes, about the physical and psychological toll gymnastics takes on girls and young women, is still regarded as one of the seminal books about the sport. “These girls are groomed from an incredibly young age to deny their own experience. Your knee hurts? You’re being lazy. You’re hungry? No, you’re fat and greedy. They are trained to doubt their own feelings, and that’s why this could happen to over 150 of them.”

Ryan’s excellent book is also about figure skaters – the other athletes who are dressed and made up like dolls to do their sport.

Ryan wrote about the notoriously brutal regime at the Károlyi Ranch, run by Béla and Márta Károlyi and where Nassar worked, detailing how girls were so deprived of food and water they would beg their male teammates to smuggle them snacks. Yet as long as the Károlyis brought in medals the media loved them.

Anything to win, baby.



The questions the “research medium” asked

Jan 28th, 2018 4:14 pm | By

Jen Gunter went to a GOOP health event and is here to tell us about it.

I was initially worried they wouldn’t let me register, but some quick homework told me they had offloaded registration to a 3rd party so I thought it highly unlikely there was a no fly list. I did consider that I was just full of myself and they just didn’t care about me attending, however, along the way I received a tip that the GOOPsters hate me more than gluten, cow’s milk, and McChemicals combined so I think they just never thought I would go. Knowing that and managing to get in made it worth every penny.

They hate her the way Trump hates Mueller, I guess. How dare she notice what frauds and quacks they are. How dare she have medical knowledge that contradicts their made-up fluffy Healings.

The event hall was filled with beauty treatments sold as wellness as if a scent or facial cupping could do anything except make you smell or swell. There were B12 injections from an anesthesiologist who looked like an understudy for the show The Doctors. He is apparently both an osteopathic and a medical doctor. Yes, he went to medical school twice. We asked. I watched him give an injection without gloves. Gloves are not required for injections, but it grossed me out, although not as much as the long line of women waiting to pull down their yoga pants and receive a vitamin shot without giving a history or having a physical exam. I spoke with one person who said they were not asked to sign a consent. There was no fucking way I was getting an injection. I’ve read The Stepford Wives.

“Give her the special jab.”

Then the fucking carnival rolled into town. There were back to back sessions where we learned that death IS NOT REAL. And it’s great. Laura Lynn Jackson, a “research medium” (see, words don’t matter), told us how she worked with clients to connect them with their loved ones. She strolled the crowd and her spiritual guide, who I assume is named Cash Only, helped her select three random women (the first was related to a GOOP employee, color me shocked).

Here are the questions the “research medium” asked to prove she was making a connection with relatives from the other side:

Do you have a plant?
Did you dad know anyone in the military or have a military connection?
Does your name or the name of someone you know have an L or an M?
Do you have a dog?
Do you have a cat?
Was your dad a bad communicator?
Do you like shoes?
Do you have a website?
Have your recently bought a purse or thought about buying purse?

Do you like shoes? That made me howl with laughter. Dr Jen points out how well the questions fit the demographic.

The “research medium” then took the stage with a neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander, who died and came back to sell books about heaven, Dr Jay Lombard, a neurologist who could barely get a word in  because Alexander loves the sound of his own voice, and Bryce Dallas Howard.

Dr. Eben Alexander wrote Proof of Heaven and claims he was dead and saw heaven with his dead brain. Shockingly there are some holes in his story. In reality he did not die he had delirium and a medically induced coma, both of which can give vivid dreams and hallucinations. Yes, he was sick and had a great recovery but he did not die and he did not see heaven.

This fascination with death was 50% of the day and not in a productive “lets talk about how we die in America” kind of way, but in death is trip reserved for the privileged, like a cross between the movie Flatliners and cultures that believed in human sacrifice where the class born to be sacrificed were brought up to believe death is a goal and an honor. Monetizing death in this way is clearly profitable. The message seems to be I know you are afraid of dying so read my book or cross my palm with cash and I will share you secrets about death that no one else can.

It’s hilarious but it’s also sickening.

At times I could not distinguish between the words of the neurosurgeon, the neurologist, or the “research medium,” but I guess it doesn’t matter as they all agreed with each other. Some things they said include the following:

The brain is a filter that gets in the way of primordial consciousness.
We don’t need evidence based medicine if we have experiences.
God has pure healing energy.
Consciousness is not a noun it is a verb.
The voice in your head is not your consciousness it is a parlor trick.
We turn into light energy when we die.
Language reduces experience. (I almost fell off my chair, WORDS DON’T MATTER).
We can trust the universe as long as we live in love.
The placebo effect is getting stronger over time, this scares Big Pharma.
Spontaneous healing from cancer and infections can happen with love.
A deep spiritual journey can cure anything.
The person sitting next to you at any time was sent there by the universe so trust that.

Also? Be rich.

Then we had a two-hour break during which time the people who forked over $2,0000 could have lunch with GP and special guests.

Two thousand bucks to have lunch with Gwyneth Paltrow. No peasants need apply.

Read the whole extraordinary thing.



He asks the agents point blank: What makes you different?

Jan 28th, 2018 11:58 am | By

I did not know this.

https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/957432596832620544

Wow. So I looked for more. CNN in July 2014:

The FBI is well aware about the threat to your civil liberties — especially in an age of unwarranted, mass surveillance of our emails and video calls.

It’s why all FBI academy trainees learn about the rise of Nazi Germany and the transformation of law enforcement into a tool of oppression.

“We send every one of our agents to the Holocaust Museum before they’re agents to know and understand what happens when an agency goes rogue,” ex-FBI director Robert Mueller explained recently.

Agents take a private, guided tour of the museum. Then there’s a specialized class that highlights how everyday law enforcement played a key role in Germany’s descent into authoritarianism. It wasn’t only elite military units, like the infamous Schutzstaffel, or SS.

The presentation includes the slide below, which shows how German police accompanied Nazi bureaucrats as they compiled information about minorities who would later be hunted down and killed. That information was tabulated as punch cards by some of the earliest computers.

Very professional, very technologically sophisticated.

A portion of the class at the museum is led by the program’s creator, David Friedman, the Anti-Defamation League’s director of law enforcement initiatives. He asks the agents point blank: What makes you different? Pointing at the U.S. Constitution isn’t enough.

“Look, it’s an amazing document. But sometimes there’s a separation between the principles expressed and how law enforcement conducts itself at the street level,” Friedman said.

Then he brings up dark moments in American history. Japanese-Americans were sent to World War II internment camps. Civil Rights protestors were beaten by cops. And the FBI’s own covert surveillance program, COINTELPRO, targeted athletes, journalists, politicians and grassroots movements for being “subversive.”

Exactly, which is why many of us have very mixed feelings about the FBI’s role in the effort to keep Donald Trump from destroying everything. It’s good to know they’re thinking about it and including it in their training.

From the FBI archive 2010:

Every year, the FBI Training Academy graduates about 1,000 new special agents following 20 weeks of intense preparation. In countless tactical and analytical scenarios, the trainees learn how to respond appropriately under the most trying conditions.

But there is also a rigorous moral and ethical component to the training. In a poignant culmination of 21 hours spent defining the line between right and wrong, all new agents are escorted through the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. to see in horrific detail what can happen when law enforcement loses sight of what is right. The program—called Law Enforcement and Society: Lessons of the Holocaust—is a joint partnership between the Anti-Defamation League and the museum.

“It makes our people think about morality, ethics, and how to maintain those during turbulent times,” said Special Agent Douglas B. Merel, who teaches the Academy’s ethical leadership course for new agents that includes the museum program. “It shows how important it is for law enforcement to maintain their core values.”

In one visit on a recent Friday morning, about 50 agents-to-be filed into the museum. Over the next four hours they toured the exhibits—led in some cases by Holocaust survivors—and discussed what separates them from the law enforcement officers in Germany who were systematically co-opted by the Nazis.

In a museum conference room, Elise Jarvis, associate director of Law Enforcement Outreach for the Anti-Defamation League, whose mission is in part to secure justice and fair treatment for all citizens, is purposefully blunt in her line of questions. “So the question I’m putting out there is: What makes you different?” Jarvis asked the class. “What, at the end of the day, is going to keep you all anchored? What keeps you from sliding down that slippery slope? What keeps you from abusing your power?”

As answers bubble up—the Constitution, personal morals, compassion, laws—instructors challenge the students to support and defend their positions.

“It’s really our hope that the law enforcement officers who come to the museum see this program, see this history, and really reflect on their professional core values and their role in society today,” said Marcus A. Appelbaum, who coordinates the museum’s community and leadership programs.

The law enforcement program was developed in 1999 after D.C. Metropolitan Police Chief Charles Ramsey toured the museum and recognized the value of teaching trainees about law enforcement’s integral role in the Nazis’ rise to power. In 2000, then-FBI Director Louis Freeh incorporated the tour into the Bureau’s new agent training. In 2005, Director Robert S. Mueller said the training has never been more relevant. “At a time when law enforcement must be aggressive in stopping terror, these classes provide powerful lessons on why we must always protect civil rights and uphold the rule of law,” he said.

So it was Freeh rather than Mueller who started it, but either way it’s good to know.



Fastidious

Jan 28th, 2018 10:56 am | By

See update at the end.

They really do think they’re royalty.

Celebrity chef, activist, and Trump agitator José Andrés was reportedly asked to leave a party Saturday night because his presence was making First Daughter Ivanka Trump uncomfortable.

A party at a restaurant, not at someone’s house.

Former Mexican ambassador to China Jorge Guajardo said on Twitter Sunday morning that Andrés was in fact asked to leave because “his presence made Ivanka Trump uncomfortable.”

According to Guajardo, when Ivanka arrived at the party, Cafe Milano owner Franco Nuschesse asked to speak with Andrés outside and then Andrés was not allowed back in.

That’s literal princess behavior. Empty-headed shoe-marketer Ivanka Trump mustn’t be “uncomfortable” therefore pesky foreigners with Spanish names must be thrown out.

José Andrés is that guy who backed out of a restaurant deal with Donald because Donald is such a racist pig. If Princess Ivanka feels “uncomfortable” about that maybe she should focus on what it is about her daddy that makes her feel not as comfy as she likes. If she can’t do that she should suck it up rather than using her unearned and unmerited influence to get people thrown out of parties.

In 2015, after Trump announced his candidacy and made racist comments about Mexicans, Andrés pulled out of a restaurant deal. He had planned to open a new Spanish-Japanese joint in D.C.’s Trump hotel, and he had reportedly worked on the restaurant design with Ivanka Trump herself. But it fell apart after Trump’s racist remarks, and the Trump Organization sued.

The parties reached a settlement last spring.

In the months since, Andrés has been spending much of his time feeding people in need in Puerto Rico, where the island is still feeling the effects of a devastating hurricane season. The chef developed a network of kitchens, supply chains, and delivery services, serving up more than 2.2 million warm meals to people in Puerto Rico.

As The New York Times put it, “No other single agency — not the Red Cross, the Salvation Army nor any government entity — has fed more people freshly cooked food since the hurricane, or done it in such a nurturing way.”

And that’s the guy the plastic princess kicked out of a party.

God I hate them.

Update: Think Progress updated:

UPDATE: Cafe Milano owner Franco Nuschesse tweeted Sunday afternoon in response to claims that José Andrés was removed from a party at the restaurant, saying that Andrés “is always welcome” and that Ivanka Trump played no role in the “misunderstanding” that resulted in Andrés being removed.

Princess Ivanka apparently told him it wasn’t her doing, but not on Twitter so we can’t see.



Tongue in whose cheek?

Jan 28th, 2018 10:17 am | By

In the latest news causing SurpriseOMeters to break all around the world, Trump shyly confides that he’s not a feminist. My god who could have seen that coming?!

In an interview airing Sunday, Trump unapologetically told British journalist Piers Morgan that he is not a feminist.

Morgan, a former “Celebrity Apprentice” winner, tweeted: “BREAKING NEWS: President Trump has declared he is NOT a feminist.”

Morgan continued: “He tells me: ‘No, I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist. I mean, I think that would be, maybe, going too far. I’m for women, I’m for men, I’m for everyone.’ “

He’s such a kidder. He’s for himself. He’s a Donald First guy.

He’s also, of course, stupid and uninformed. Being a feminist ≠ being against men or being Not For men. Feminism doesn’t translate as “for women to the exclusion of everyone else.” But it’s silly even to bother pointing that out, because Morgan was trolling and Trump trolled back. Nobody on earth has ever thought Trump was a feminist.

Morgan’s announcement was a bit tongue in cheek, as the president’s words weren’t breaking news to anyone who has paid attention. Trump has repeatedly criticized the Women’s March and other initiatives protesting and critiquing his presidency on the basis that his policies and worldview harm women.

Trolling, in other words. It’s not a joke, it’s not “tongue in cheek” – it’s that the president of the US has noisy, vocal, explicit hostile contempt for women along with a history of assaulting them. That’s not actually funny.



Your sandwich awaits you

Jan 28th, 2018 9:52 am | By

Wanna sammich?

At 16 years old, Australian explorer Jade Hameister is the youngest person to ever complete the polar hat-trick by reaching the North and South Poles and crossing Greenland, but even she has to deal with loudmouth critics who have opined that her place is in the kitchen. In 2016, after the then-14-year-old become the youngest person to ski to the North Pole from outside the last degree of latitude (a distance of about 60 miles), she gave a TEDx talk in Melbourne in which she encouraged young women to embrace an adventurous mindset, and to resist societal pressures that discourage them from their ambitions. Male YouTube commenters took offense to Hameister’s message, as users flooded the page with the phrase, “Make me a sandwich,” an internet meme that mocks women for having ambitions aside from making food for a man.

Well let’s not be too restrictive about it. The meme mocks women for any form of doormat-status-refusal. The meme mocks women for having the bad taste to consider themselves fully human and not inferior to the male version.

So a couple of weeks ago she posted on Facebook:

We spent this morning cleaning out our sleds to be ready to fly out to Union Glacier tomorrow morning (depending on weather). Then we skied over to the Ceremonial South Pole (probably the Pole that everyone knows as the only South Pole – the barbers Pole with the flags) and the actual Geographic South Pole (which moves around 10m each year), which is marked separately. In the afternoon we were given a tour of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. It is seriously as close to what a Base on another planet would be like than anything else on the planet – a mini-town based around the scientific work of the National Science Foundation. Tonight (it never gets dark this time of year) I skied back to the Pole again… to take this photo for all those men who commented “Make me a sandwich” on my TEDX Talk. I made you a sandwich (ham & cheese), now ski 37 days and 600km to the South Pole and you can eat it  @natgeo @natgeoau @australiangeographic

Image may contain: 1 person

Burn.



A classic intent case

Jan 27th, 2018 11:46 am | By

Jeffrey Toobin says it’s all about intent. Intent cases are about what’s in people’s heads, what they knew and how that related to what they did. Selling stocks in your company? Fine. Selling stocks in your company when you know it’s tanking and others don’t? Fraud.

The issue of whether President Trump obstructed justice centers on his decision to fire James Comey, the F.B.I. director, last May. This is a classic intent case. The President clearly had the right to fire Comey, but he did not have the right to do so with improper intent. Specifically, the relevant obstruction-of-justice statute holds that any individual who “corruptly . . . influences, obstructs, or impedes, or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede, the due administration of justice” is guilty of the crime. “Corruptly” is the key word. Did Trump act “corruptly” in firing Comey?

It’s funny, in a warped way, how Trump has been artlessly telling us he did all along. It’s warpedly funny how he artlessly told Lester Holt and the rest of us he did the very next day.

It is this question of corrupt intent that makes the Times’srecent blockbuster scoop so important. According to the article, the President tried to fire Robert Mueller, the special counsel, last June, but he stopped when Don McGahn, the White House counsel, threatened to resign if Trump insisted on the dismissal.

Well quite. It seemed obviously corrupt when he fired Comey, and it seemed obvious that it would be corrupt if he went on to fire Mueller. It seemed as if we talked about little else for weeks.

McGahn recognized the key fact—that Trump wanted to fire Mueller for the wrong reasons. Trump wanted to fire Mueller because his investigation was threatening to him. This, of course, also illuminates the reasons behind Trump’s firing of Comey, which took place just a month before the President’s confrontation with McGahn regarding Mueller. Trump and his advisers have offered various tortured rationalizations for the firing of Comey—initially, for example, on the ground that Comey had been unfair to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign. Trump himself came clean in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt and in a meeting with Russia’s foreign minister. In both, Trump acknowledged that he fired Comey to stall or stop the Russia investigation—that is, the investigation of Trump himself and his campaign.

Bozo is corrupt and Bozo is performing his corruption daily before our wondering eyes. He’s making life very difficult for any lawyer who tries to defend him.



Corrupt intent

Jan 27th, 2018 11:35 am | By

Painter and Eisen on the whole obstruction thing.

Now there are reports that President Trump ordered the firing of Mr. Mueller last June. This is yet more evidence that the president is determined to block the investigation at all costs. It suggests Mr. Trump has something to hide about himself, his family or another associate. Therefore it goes to an element in any obstruction case, that of “corrupt intent” — whether a person’s actions were motivated by an improper purpose. An effort to fire Mr. Mueller would be particularly incriminating because it replicates the key moment when mere disgruntlement may have soured into illegality: Mr. Trump’s termination of Mr. Comey.

All of this is persuasive, but not conclusive, proof of obstruction. Mr. Mueller is surely aware of additional evidence, of aggravating or mitigating facts, that the public does not know. He has most likely not made up his mind, because the most critical element of the analysis is still missing: Mr. Mueller’s sitting down with the president, looking Mr. Trump in the eye and judging his words, demeanor and credibility as the president answers questions about the matter, including his intent. (Those questions would most likely be posed by one of the other prosecutors on the team, so Mr. Mueller can observe and judge.)

I wonder how tricky that is. I wonder if Trump is both stupid enough and egomaniacal enough to have the demeanor of innocence, simply because of his unshakable love of himself. Ya know? Trump is bottomlessly conceited, and to all appearances incapable of ever seeing himself as in the wrong.

But then again he comes across as crooked as fuck anyway, so maybe that won’t make any difference.

Then Mr. Mueller would make his decision about the obstruction of justice question under the criminal law after he concludes his investigation. He could elect to refer the matter to Congress, which has the power to decide that same question by applying its own separate standards under the impeachment clause of the Constitution.

Whether that happens remains to be seen. We do know this: The argument that President Trump has the absolute right to fire Mr. Mueller is just plain wrong.

It had better be. If he’s free to fire anyone who investigates him, he can do anything he wants to, and that’s called a dictatorship.

Mr. McGahn knows that if Mr. Mueller or any subsequent prosecutor were to determine that such conduct did amount to obstruction of justice, he would be complicit if he relayed these shocking orders from Mr. Trump to the Justice Department, as Mr. Trump apparently requested him to do. He need only talk with one of his predecessors as White House counsel, John Dean, about the consequences of getting sucked into a president’s efforts to obstruct justice.

Even if a White House lawyer were not prosecuted and sent to prison for obstruction of justice, he could still lose his bar license for assisting a client in a crime. Indeed, Mr. Trump himself might accuse Mr. McGahn of malpractice after the fact for failing to stop him.

Yet Mr. McGahn’s forbearance in this instance offers only limited comfort to lawmakers and the public. He is reported to have pressured Mr. Sessions not to recuse himself, despite a clear legal duty to do so. He may have played a role in the misleading statement from Mr. Trump about the Trump Tower meeting. Moreover, Mr. McGahn has failed to prevent, or perhaps even enabled, other unethical or illegal behavior in the White House, from Kellyanne Conway’s promotion of Ivanka Trump’s clothing on television to high-ranking administration officials’ financial conflicts of interest.

In short, he’s crooked. He’s Trump’s bought lawyer.

Finally, these latest revelations make us even more worried that President Trump will in fact fire Robert Mueller, particularly as the investigation closes in on White House officials and perhaps members of the Trump family. Mr. Mueller gave Mr. Flynn a very favorable plea deal in exchange for cooperation against someone more senior, and that must mean those around the president or the president himself.

When that shoe drops, or is about to, Mr. Mueller’s job will again be at risk. It is critically important that Congress act now to pass legislation protecting the special counsel from being fired before his investigation and the ensuing prosecutions are concluded.

Will they? It’s not looking likely.



Nothing short of an atrocity

Jan 27th, 2018 10:54 am | By

God hates people, it seems.

The Taliban drove an ambulance packed with explosives into a crowded Kabul street on Saturday, setting off an enormous blast that killed at least 95 people and injured 158 others, adding to the grim toll of what has been one of the most violent stretches of the long war, Afghan officials said.

The attack came days after a 15-hour siege by the militants at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul that left 22 dead, including 14 foreigners.

Killed for what? A fascist theocracy.

The large casualty toll was another reminder of how badly Afghanistan is bleeding. Over the past year, about 10,000 of the country’s security forces have been killed and more than 16,000 others wounded, according to a senior Afghan government official. The Taliban losses are believed to be about the same.

United Nations’ data suggests an average of about 10 civilians were killed every day over the first nine months of 2017.

Religion doesn’t seem to be very good for people.

“Today’s attack is nothing short of an atrocity, and those who have organized and enabled it must be brought to justice and held to account,” Tadamichi Yamamoto, the leader of the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan, said in a statement.

“I am particularly disturbed by credible reports that the attackers used a vehicle painted to look like an ambulance, including bearing the distinctive medical emblem, in clear violation of international humanitarian law,” Mr. Yamamoto added.

A filthy move for obvious reasons: you don’t want ambulances to be seen as suspicious.



Putting out the hits

Jan 26th, 2018 5:07 pm | By

Foreign Policy reports that last June Trump’s lawyer told him that Comey had talked to other senior FBI officials about Trump’s attempts to pressure Comey, and that Trump has as a result made a concerted effort to discredit them.

President Donald Trump pressed senior aides last June to devise and carry out a campaign to discredit senior FBI officials after learning that those specific employees were likely to be witnesses against him as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, according to two people directly familiar with the matter.

Not long after Comey’s Senate testimony, Trump hired John Dowd, a veteran criminal defense attorney, to represent him in matters related to Mueller’s investigation. Dowd warned Trump that the potential corroborative testimony of the senior FBI officials in Comey’s account would likely play a central role in the special counsel’s final conclusion, according to people familiar with the matter.

Since Dowd gave him that information, Trump — as well as his aides, surrogates, and some Republican members of Congress — has engaged in an unprecedented campaign to discredit specific senior bureau officials and the FBI as an institution.

The FBI officials Trump has targeted are Andrew McCabe, the current deputy FBI director and who was briefly acting FBI director after Comey’s firing; Jim Rybicki, Comey’s chief of staff and senior counselor; and James Baker, formerly the FBI’s general counsel. Those same three officials were first identified as possible corroborating witnesses for Comey in a June 7 article in Vox. Comey confirmed in congressional testimony the following day that he confided in the three men.

Round and round and round we go. Trump’s efforts to pressure Comey started days after he was inaugurated, and his efforts to slime McCabe et al. probably began minutes after that conversation with Dowd.

In the past, presidents have attacked special counsels and prosecutors who have investigated them, calling them partisan and unfair. But no previous president has attacked a long-standing American institution such as the FBI — or specific FBI agents and law enforcement officials.

Trump loves to innovate.

Mueller has asked senior members of the administration questions in recent months indicating that prosecutors might consider Trump’s actions also to be an effort to intimidate government officials — in this case FBI officials — from testifying against him.

Ya think?

I suppose we should be grateful that Trump is stupid enough to do his intimidating on Twitter so that we can all see it. On the other hand…Trump is that stupid. It’s hard to be really grateful for that.



Press reports have danced to the Islamists’ tune

Jan 26th, 2018 4:25 pm | By

Chris Sloggett at the National Secular Society on the stupid attacks on Sara Khan.

Today the BBC’s headline about her appointment is: ‘Controversy over new counter-extremism tsar Sara Khan’.

Many of those who claim to speak for Muslims do not like Khan because she promotes a positive message. She encourages a degree of integration into British society. She says Muslims should obey the same laws as everyone else and cooperate with the British state. She has called for honesty among Muslims about hateful ideologies and intolerant practices which are specific to, or particularly prominent among, those who share their religion.

Her organisation Inspire encourages girls and women from Muslim backgrounds to be aspirational. It has done important work countering the narrative of grievance and resentment peddled by so many. And Khan wrote a book, The Battle for British Islam, in which she tackled many of those peddlers, as well as their counterparts on the white far right, head-on.

Is this really work that we should explicitly describe as ‘controversial’? Anyone interested in the future of British society should support the general thrust of what Khan has tried to do.

It’s typical BBC though, to point a censorious finger at people considered “controversial” by reactionary religious men. They’ve been doing it for years.

That doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be reasonable analysis and criticism of her work. But if such a thing exists it has been drowned out today amid a hurricane of apologism. Advocacy groups such as 5PillarsUK, the Muslim Council of Britain and the Muslim Public Affairs Committee have berated Khan. Politicians such as Sayeeda Warsi, Naz Shah and Diane Abbott have cravenly jumped on the bandwagon.

And meanwhile press reports have danced to the Islamists’ tune. The BBC’s initial report on Khan’s appointment was particularly egregious. It described what had happened, included one sentence from Khan in reported speech, and then handed over the stage to a succession of Islamist apologists.

Was the Guardian any better?

The Guardian initially ran a reasonable, descriptive piece. Its headline declared Khan a “leading Muslim campaigner”. Then it decided to change it.

‘Choice of new UK anti-extremism chief criticised as “alarming”‘ was its new headline. ‘Sara Khan is seen as mouthpiece for the Home Office, says former Tory chair Sayeeda Warsi’ was the new standfirst. “The government has been criticised for appointing a divisive counter-extremism campaigner”, read the first line of the article.

Khan was “seen as being supportive of the government’s controversial Prevent programme” (ah yes, the Prevent victim-mongers getting their chance to say their piece without reply again). Warsi, Shah and Harun Khan of the Muslim Council of Britain were quoted before any description of Khan’s work and before anyone mounted a substantial defence of her.

Or the Independent maybe?

The Independent‘s headline read: ‘Government’s appointment of new anti-extremism chief branded “alarming” amid widespread criticism’. The first paragraph said the decision had been “widely criticised and described as ‘deeply disturbing’ by leading figures in the British Muslim community”. Soon we were being told that “Ms Khan has been a strong advocate for the government’s controversial Prevent policy, which has been described as ‘demonising’ Muslims.” (Of course it has also “been described” as many other things). Once again Shah, Warsi and Harun Khan were given the chance to spout their nonsense before the only defence came from Sara Khan herself and the Government.

It’s bizarre. They wouldn’t give this kind of sympathy to white nationalist groups protesting the hire of a BME woman charged with countering racist extremism. They seem to think Islamists are somehow the opposite of white nationalist groups, but they’re not. The two differ only on race; in every other way they match each other in reactionary repression and bullying.



Extreme liberal

Jan 26th, 2018 3:23 pm | By

Here we go again – the UK government appoints a liberal feminist Muslim woman to head a counter-extremism campaign and news media on the right and left rush to say oh noes she’s a liberal, that will never do. The Guardian for instance:

The government has been criticised for appointing a divisive counter-extremism campaigner to lead a fresh campaign to stamp out radicalism in Muslim communities.

Sara Khan will lead the new Commission for Countering Extremism, the home secretary, Amber Rudd, announced, adding that Khan was “expertly qualified”.

The move was welcomed by some, including the former terror watchdog David Anderson QC.

However, the appointment of Khan, who is seen as being supportive of the government’s controversial Prevent programme, was immediately criticised by some, including from within the Conservative party.

The former Tory chairwoman Sayeeda Warsi described it as “a deeply disturbing appointment”.

Because Sara’s too liberal and secular and feminist, yet the Guardian doesn’t defend her.

Harun Khan, the secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: “The fight against terrorism requires equal partnership between all parties, including Muslim communities.

“This appointment risks sending a clear and alarming message that the government has no intention of doing so. Sadly it will be seen as a move to placate those small sections of society who see Muslims as foreign, alien, rather than as equal citizens in this country.”

Of course the head of the MCB said that, because the MCB is very religious and conservative and male-dominated. The MCB speaks for very conservative Muslim men, not Muslims in general.

Naz Shah talked crap about her on the Today program, but Amina Lone defended her:

“It’s quite incredible we have elected officials decrying an appointment which should be welcomed – which is of a young British woman, Muslim woman, when we say there aren’t enough women in leadership.”

A young British woman, Muslim woman, liberal woman, who thinks Islam too can be liberal and tolerant and non-patriarchal. Wouldn’t you think the Guardian would welcome that?

Khan, who describes herself as a counter-extremism and women’s rights activist, said she was “honoured and humbled”. She added: “I recognise the scale of the challenge we face in confronting extremism and I am deeply committed to this role.

“I will create a commission that is forthright in challenging extremism in the name of our shared values, fundamental freedoms and human rights. To those in our country who recognise the harm and threat extremism continues to pose in our society, I am eager to collaborate and engage.”

Khan, whose official title will be lead commissioner, is co-founder of the counter-extremism organisation Inspire. Her website describes her as “one of the UK’s leading Muslim female voices on countering Islamist extremism and promoting human rights”.

Yet here’s the Guardian saying ewww she’s not conservative enough.

The BBC too:

Downing Street has insisted Ms Khan is “expertly qualified” for the new role – but a number of Muslim organisations are understood to be calling for her to be sacked and saying they will not work with her.

A petition by anti-Islamophobia campaign MEND, saying her appointment “will further damage relations between the government and Muslim communities,” is being circulated, the BBC understands.

See what they did there? Implied Sara is “Islamophobic.”

Nice job of making her job harder from the outset.



How do we build Omelas, minus the tortured child?

Jan 26th, 2018 12:19 pm | By

Margaret Atwood on Ursula Le Guin:

A wealthy city sustained by the mistreated — this is what the ones who are walking away from Omelas are walking away from. My question was therefore: Where in the world could we find a society in which the happiness of some does not depend on the misery of others? How do we build Omelas, minus the tortured child?

Neither Ursula K. Le Guin nor I knew, but it was a question that Le Guin spent her lifetime trying to answer, and the worlds she so skillfully created in the attempt are many, varied and entrancing. As an anarchist, she would have wanted a self-governing society, with gender and racial equality. She would have wanted respect for life-forms other than human. She would have wanted a child-friendly society, as opposed to one that imposes childbirth but does not care about the mothers or the actual children. Or so I surmise from her writing.

But now she’s gone, and Atwood feels a strong urge to call her to come back, because we need her.

Especially now, in the land of normalized pussy-grabbing, the rollback of women’s rights on so many fronts but especially in health care and contraception, and the effort to squeeze women out of the workplace by those who, having failed to compete through skill and intellectual superiority, have weaponized their penises.

What would Ursula K. Le Guin have said about #MeToo and #TimesUp?

She had seen a similar explosion of women’s anger in the early 1970s, at the time of the second-wave feminist movement, a time of high creative energy for Le Guin. She knew where outrage came from: suppressed anger. In the ’60s and ’70s, that anger came from many directions, but in general from being treated as lesser — much lesser — even though the work done and the contribution made were as great, or greater.

Some people thought Atwood was rejecting the whole of #MeToo the other day because she wrote an article about evidence and due process in one case. I think the above clears that up.

We can’t call Ursula K. Le Guin back from the land of the unchanging stars, but happily she left us her multifaceted work, her hard-earned wisdom and her fundamental optimism. Her sane, smart, crafty and lyrical voice is more necessary now than ever.

For it, and for her, we should be thankful.

Margaret Atwood is the author of many novels, including “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Alias Grace.” Her book “In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination” is dedicated to Ursula K. Le Guin.



From the magic box

Jan 26th, 2018 11:41 am | By

Richard Wolffe at the Graun points out another cognitive deficit that hinders Trump.

Donald Trump has a problem with reality. To be specific, he has a problem distinguishing reality television from reality. With each passing news cycle, it’s alarmingly clear that he believes in his own character from the fantasy show known as The Apprentice.

Now, most viewers above the age of four have already figured out there’s a certain artifice to the world of TV. There’s the dramatic music and the heavy editing, the make-up and the lights, and of course the word “show”, which gives away the whole game.

But our commander-in-chief sees something else when he stares into the screen during his many daily hours of executive time inside the White House. He sees a window on the world in which he can utter his catchphrase and people just disappear, along with all their problems.

“You’re fired!” worked so well on The Apprentice. Why shouldn’t it work so well with the multiple investigations into all these allegations of collusion with the Russian government, money laundering through his real estate business, obstruction of justice and his chaotic management of the executive branch of government?

Remember that time he got to say the magic words when he was raging about the kneeling football players?

“He’s fired. HE’S FIRED.”

There is a precedent for this kind of presidential delusion: Ronald Reagan. The now-beloved conservative hawk served in the second world war at a motion picture unit in Los Angeles. But he watched the footage of the liberation of the concentration camps, and later told several people that he personally had filmed at Buchenwald.

One of Reagan’s favorite stories, retold multiple times, was about a heroically doomed tail gunner. It was almost certainly ripped from a wartime movie he loved.

Both Reagan and Trump are figures from show biz, not politics or law or government or human rights or any other line of work that involves laboring for the greater good as opposed to self.



He knows nothing

Jan 26th, 2018 11:13 am | By

Yasmeen Serhan at the Atlantic has more details:

Morgan tweeted triumphantly late Thursday night that “President Trump has publicly apologized for retweeting far-right group Britain First.” But when the preview came out Friday morning, it wasn’t quite that. The four-minute clip showed Morgan pressing Trump on his controversial retweets of the far-right ultranationalist British political group “Britain First” in November—a move that prompted outrage in the U.K., and a rare rebuke from Trump’s British counterpart, Prime Minister Theresa May. But Trump’s response was more deflection than admission.

Morgan: You retweeted an organization called Britain First, one of the leaders, three times.

Trump: Well, three times. Boom, boom, boom. Quickly. Yeah.

Morgan: But this caused huge, huge anxiety and anger in my country because Britain First is basically a bunch of racist, fascist—

Trump: Of course I didn’t know that.

Morgan: Well that’s what I wanted to clarify with you. What did you know about them when you did those retweets?

Trump: Well I know nothing about them and I know nothing about them today, other than I read a little bit. And I guess—and again I’m in the United States so I don’t read as much about it. Perhaps it was a big story in Britain, perhaps it was a big story in the U.K., but in the United States, it wasn’t a big story.

Yes it was. He means it wasn’t a big story with his “base,” it wasn’t a big story on Fox News, it wasn’t a big story in his tiny brain. It’s his crap theory of mind yet again – he thinks what he knows is what everyone knows and what he doesn’t know is what everyone doesn’t know, with the possible exception of some weirdo foreigners far away somewhere over there [waves in a direction].

While Trump insisted in his conversation with Morgan that his retweets were not an endorsement of the group —“I wasn’t endorsing anybody, I knew nothing about them”—he stopped short of actually apologizing. The regret he offered was hypothetical and conditional.

Morgan: Can I get an apology out of you just for the retweets of Britain First? I think it would go a long way.

Trump: Here’s what’s fair: If you’re telling me they’re horrible people, horrible racist people, I would certainly apologize if you’d like me to do that. I know nothing about them.

Morgan: And you would disavow yourself of people like that?

Trump: I don’t want to be involved with people. But you’re telling me about these people, because I know nothing about these people.

Or about anything else.



He would apologize, if only he could find the time

Jan 26th, 2018 10:47 am | By

Question of the hour: can Trump apologize? Answer: no. If he tried his head would snap off his neck and roll away.

The ineffable Piers Morgan asked him to in a cozy little chat they had.

In an interview with the “Good Morning Britain” television program, Trump was pressed by Piers Morgan, the presenter, about his November retweet of three videos by a far-right fringe party called Britain First. The retweets caused outrage in Britain and brought a rebuke from Prime Minister Theresa May, who described the president’s posts as “wrong.”

Trump said repeatedly Friday that he knew “nothing” about the group’s politics. He said the tweets showed his concern over the threat of radical Islamic terrorism.

His exact words were pure Trump:

It was done because I am a big believer in fighting radical Islamic terra. This was a depiction of radical. Islamic. terra.

It was done because – not I did it because, but it was done because. That’s the weasel right there: he will not use the first person pronoun when he’s talking about a shitty thing he said or did. The first person pronoun is The Holiest Word to him, and he will not sully it with any vocalization of wrongdoing. The Trump “I” cannot do a Bad Thing. The Bad Thing he did always becomes a thing that was done, with no agent present.

When Morgan outright asked him to apologize, he didn’t. He did another verbal feint – this time the sacred “I” was uttered but the tense changed to the conditional. He would apologize…some far off day when we’re all dead and gone.

“If you are telling me they’re horrible people, horrible, racist people, I would certainly apologize if you’d like me to do that,” the president told the ITV broadcaster.

Morgan didn’t have the wit to say “When?” or “Do it now.”

Reaction in Britain was mixed to Trump’s rare offer to concede a mistake. Many Britons noted that it wasn’t really an apology; others said it was close enough.

Well the actual apology never did take place, unless it happened off camera and out of anyone’s hearing. Trump just said he would apologize and then proceeded not to. That’s definitely a notpology.

Trump listened as the interviewer described Britain First, which presents itself as a political party but is widely seen as an extremist group targeting Muslims, as “racist.”

He denied having any knowledge of the group when he shared three videos from Jayda Fransen, its deputy leader.

“Of course I didn’t know that. I know nothing about them, and I know nothing about them today other than I read a little bit,” Trump said. “I don’t know who they are. I know nothing about them, so I wouldn’t be doing that.”

He added, “I am often the least racist person that anybody is going to meet.”

He always says that (without the “often” qualification), and he’s not. Nope. He’s not the least racist person that anybody is going to meet, not often, not ever. Of course nobody knows what that would even be, but given the ease with which we can find scorching examples of Trump’s explicit racism, we don’t need to understand what “least racist” would be; we know he’s not it.



Test flight

Jan 25th, 2018 6:24 pm | By

Trump did intend to fire Mueller. He tried to, but his lawyer said he would walk, so the tiny mind was changed.

President Trump ordered the firing last June of Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel overseeing the Russia investigation, according to four people told of the matter, but ultimately backed down after the White House counsel threatened to resign rather than carry out the directive.

The West Wing confrontation marks the first time Mr. Trump is known to have tried to fire the special counsel. Mr. Mueller learned about the episode in recent months as his investigators interviewed current and former senior White House officials in his inquiry into whether the president obstructed justice.

Funny how Trump provides new examples of obstruction of justice as Mueller is looking for the slightly older ones.

After receiving the president’s order to fire Mr. Mueller, the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, refused to ask the Justice Department to dismiss the special counsel, saying he would quit instead, the people said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing a continuing investigation.

Mr. McGahn disagreed with the president’s case and told senior White House officials that firing Mr. Mueller would have a catastrophic effect on Mr. Trump’s presidency. Mr. McGahn also told White House officials that Mr. Trump would not follow through on the dismissal on his own. The president then backed off.

He’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, is he.



Can we interest you in a toilet?

Jan 25th, 2018 6:02 pm | By

A fine fine story from the Washington Post:

The emailed response from the Guggenheim’s chief curator to the White House was polite but firm: The museum could not accommodate a request to borrow a painting by Vincent van Gogh for President and Melania Trump’s private living quarters.

Instead, wrote the curator, Nancy Spector, another piece was available, one that was nothing like “Landscape With Snow,” the 1888 van Gogh rendering of a man in a black hat walking along a path in Arles, France, with his dog.

The curator’s alternative: an 18-karat, fully functioning, solid gold toilet — an interactive work titled “America” that critics have described as pointed satire aimed at the excess of wealth in this country.

Do admit.

Pleasingly, they had been exhibiting the toilet in a working restroom for the public to use. I hope it was a gender neutral restroom because otherwise no fair.

But the exhibit was over and the toilet was available “should the President and First Lady have any interest in installing it in the White House,” Spector wrote in an email obtained by The Washington Post.

We know Trump loves to slap gilt all over everything – in fact maybe he was the inspiration for the satire aimed at the excess of wealth in this country.

On the face of it, President Trump might appreciate an artist’s rendering of a gilded toilet, given his well-documented history of installing gold-plated fixtures in his residences, his properties and even his airplane. But the president is also a self-described germaphobe, and it’s an open question whether he would accept a previously used toilet, 18-karat or otherwise.

Probably not. But I’m sure he was deeply flattered by the offer.

Image result for golden toilet



The president had strong views on all of them

Jan 25th, 2018 2:20 pm | By

Speaking of Don and Terry…Bloomberg revisits their first meeting a year ago.

Over a meal of blue cheese salad and beef ribs in the White House banqueting room, Trump held forth on a wide range of topics. “The president had strong views on all of them,” recalls Chris Wilkins, then May’s strategy director, who was among the aides around the table. “He said Brexit’s going to be the making of us. It’s going to be a brilliant thing.”

Oh god oh god can’t you just see it? We’ve all been stuck next to that guy – the one who Holds Forth on a Wide Range of Topics that he knows nothing about. The pompous bore who thinks he has valuable opinions on every subject and that he gets to force them on anyone within range. The guy who thinks a loud voice is all that’s required for an interesting opinion. The guy who has Strong Views and insists on making you a present of them.

Trump turned to May and told her he believed there were parts of London that were effectively “no-go areas” due to the number of Islamic extremists. May chose to speak up to “correct him,” Wilkins said.

Trump no doubt thought she was flirting with him as opposed to correcting him.

Trump also discussed his British golf courses and his hopes that the relationship with May would be stronger than the Thatcher-Reagan alliance. “It was an hour of the president holding court and the PM being very diplomatic and not many other people saying anything,” Wilkins said.

Mr Empty-Head “holding court” while everyone else listened and prayed to die soon.

It shows the contrast in personalities that make for an unusual relationship, albeit one still underpinned by enduring strategic military cooperation and cultural links. As one British official observed, Trump is a larger than life character and May is almost the complete opposite.

Well, “larger” in the way a Macy’s parade balloon character is larger. He’s loud, he’s noisy, he’s shouty – but so is a thunderstorm.

During formal phone calls between the two leaders, May finds it almost impossible to make headway and get her points across, one person familiar with the matter said. Trump totally dominates the discussion, leaving the prime minister with five or ten seconds to speak before he interrupts and launches into another monologue.

He loves to talk. One of his people said that the other day, I forget who or where. You might think he wouldn’t, since he has so little to say and so few words…but then again we all know people like that, so there you go.

There are few things that drive me crazier, I have to say. WHY are you talking so much when you have so NOTHING to say, I always think. The ones with oft-repeated Anecdotes are the worst.

It all goes back to Barney Frank’s rule: be interesting or shut up.



Angus Deaton on absolute poverty

Jan 25th, 2018 1:45 pm | By

Speaking of poverty and inequality in the US and how that (along with other faults) makes us not a shining city on a hill – the US has a deep poverty problem.

According to the World Bank, 769 million people lived on less than $1.90 a day in 2013; they are the world’s very poorest. Of these, 3.2 million live in the United States, and 3.3 million in other high-income countries (most in Italy, Japan and Spain).

But if you factor in needs, it’s even worse than that.

An Indian villager spends little or nothing on housing, heat or child care, and a poor agricultural laborer in the tropics can get by with little clothing or transportation. Even in the United States, it is no accident that there are more homeless people sleeping on the streets in Los Angeles, with its warmer climate, than in New York.

The Oxford economist Robert Allen recently estimated needs-based absolute poverty lines for rich countries that are designed to match more accurately the $1.90 line for poor countries, and $4 a day is around the middle of his estimates. When we compare absolute poverty in the United States with absolute poverty in India, or other poor countries, we should be using $4 in the United States and $1.90 in India.

Once we do this, there are 5.3 million Americans who are absolutely poor by global standards. This is a small number compared with the one for India, for example, but it is more than in Sierra Leone (3.2 million) or Nepal (2.5 million), about the same as in Senegal (5.3 million) and only one-third less than in Angola (7.4 million)…

This evidence supports on-the-ground observation in the United States. Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer have documented the daily horrors of life for the several million people in the United States who actually do live on $2 a day, in both urban and rural America. Matthew Desmond’s ethnography of Milwaukee explores the nightmare of finding urban shelter among the American poor.

To put it succinctly, we abandon far more people to abject poverty than do most developed countries.

Even for the whole population, life expectancy in the United States is lower than we would expect given its national income, and there are places — the Mississippi Delta and much of Appalachia — where life expectancy is lower than in Bangladesh and Vietnam.

Hmm, the Mississippi Delta, what’s that – oh yes, it’s that place where hundreds of thousands of slaves were imported so that white people could get rich on cotton.

Not much shine.