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.

Miranda Green in the Financial Times points out a disquieting statistic.

[N]ews this week that one in four 14-year-old girls (and one in 10 boys of the same age) are experiencing the symptoms of depression should detain us.

I think the fact that far more 14-year-old girls than boys are experiencing the symptoms of depression should detain us a good deal longer.

It may be tempting to dismiss today’s adolescent moods, blithely, as something we have all endured. But the sources of young people’s anxiety seem to have changed quite fundamentally as growing up migrates online. The worst cases have serious real-world consequences. One MP told me of a visit from a family who wanted help to move not just out of the local school, but out of London completely. Images of their daughter, aged 13, engaged in what used to be called heavy petting, had been shared so widely that the neighbourhood had become a hostile environment.

Ah there it is. Images of a boy engaged in sexual activity don’t trash his life the way such images do a girl’s. It’s almost as if the double standard is not one bit less double than it ever was, decades of feminism notwithstanding.

“Teenagers live their life more in public,” ponders Justine Brian, director of schools at the education support network Civitas: “They are always one Snapchat picture or Facebook post away from someone slagging them off.” She and I shared the peculiar frustration of judging a debating competition for secondary schools, supposedly on a motion about fake news. It instead unleashed a torrent of anxiety from the teenagers about managing their online personas. Our attempts to steer the sixth formers back on to the topic failed — they were possessed, as Ms Brian puts it, by “the idea that something terrible might happen online at age 16 and the rest of your life is ruined”.

And they’re not wrong – it might and it could be.

This week’s report, part of government-funded longitudinal studies, shows that parents are no good at working out what is going on: they overestimate how depressed and anxious their sons feel, and seriously underestimate their daughters’ distress.

Decades of feminism, and still we don’t get it.

Planned Parenthood does sex ed. It has a section on “how pregnancy happens.” It’s a little…odd.

Pregnancy is actually a pretty complicated process that has several steps. It all starts with sperm cells and an egg.

Sperm are microscopic cells that are made in testicles. Sperm mixes with other fluids to make semen (cum), which comes out of the penis during ejaculation. Millions and millions of sperm come out every time you ejaculate — but it only takes 1 sperm cell to meet with an egg for pregnancy to happen.

Eggs live in ovaries, and the hormones that control your menstrual cycle cause a few eggs to mature every month.

Wait what? Millions of sperm come out every time you ejaculate and at the same time you have a menstrual cycle? That’s a novel kind of sex ed.

When a sperm cell joins with an egg, it’s called fertilization. Fertilization doesn’t happen right away. Since sperm can hang out in your uterus and fallopian tube for up to 6 days after sex, there’s up to 6 days between sex and fertilization.

If a sperm cell does join up with your egg, the fertilized egg moves down the fallopian tube toward the uterus. It begins to divide into more and more cells, forming a ball as it grows. The ball of cells (called a blastocyst) gets to the uterus about 3–4 days after fertilization.

…

When a fertilized egg implants in the uterus, it releases pregnancy hormones that prevent the lining of your uterus from shedding — that’s why people don’t get periods when they’re pregnant. If your egg doesn’t meet up with sperm, or a fertilized egg doesn’t implant in your uterus, the thick lining of your uterus isn’t needed and it leaves your body during your period. Up to half of all fertilized eggs naturally don’t implant in the uterus — they pass out of your body during your period.

What are early pregnancy symptoms?

Many people notice symptoms early in their pregnancy, but others may not have any symptoms at all.

So people impregnate themselves nowadays, is that it? What an exciting time we live in.

Hmmm. There’s the left, and then there’s…this other thing. I don’t know what to call it. The fight-picking left, the eat-your-own left, the thought-police left, the bully left.

FRESHMEN crowded the lecture hall at 9am for Humanities 110, the first class of their college careers. Elizabeth Drumm, the head of the programme, made some introductory remarks, her voice quavering. As some faculty members moved to take their places at a panel discussion, three demonstrators emerged from the wings of the auditorium. “We’re protesting Hum 110 because it’s Eurocentric,” one began. “I’m sorry, this is a classroom space and this is not appropriate,” Ms Drumm said, immediately cancelling the lecture. Thus began another academic year at Reed College, a liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon.

Last academic year, a dozen or so students continuously occupied the three-day-a-week lecture series by sitting in front of the auditorium with cardboard signs, sometimes taping their mouths in protest at the absence of non-white voices in the syllabus. One even took to lecturing the freshman class on the podium from an alternate curriculum before the start of each session.

This year the president said no we’re not doing that again.

The protesters argue that the Humanities programme is racist because it ignores many of the world’s great civilisations and because its authors are overwhelmingly male and white.

And cis, don’t forget cis.

Assistant professor Lucia Martinez Valdivia, who describes herself as mixed-race and queer, asked protesters not to demonstrate during her lecture on Sappho last November. Ms Valdivia said she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and doubted her ability to deliver the lecture in the face of their opposition. At first, demonstrators announced they would change tactics and sit quietly in the audience, wearing black. After her speech, a number of them berated her, bringing her to tears.

Demonstrators said Ms Valdivia was guilty of a variety of offences: she was a “race traitor” who upheld white supremacist principles by failing to oppose the Humanities syllabus. She was “anti-black” because she appropriated black slang by wearing a T-shirt that said, “Poetry is Lit”. She was an “ableist” because she believes trigger warnings sometimes diminish sexual trauma. She was also called a “gaslighter” for making disadvantaged students doubt their own feelings of oppression.

It sounds like a complete festival of stupid, if that really is how it went.

A few weeks later, the college invited Kimberly Peirce, the gender-fluid director of “Boys Don’t Cry”, which was widely praised as the first sympathetic portrayal of trans people in cinema. Protesters ripped down posters promoting the event and put up their own posters that said: “Fuck this cis white bitch”…

Remember that? I wrote about it last year. “Fuck this cis white bitch” – it says it all, doesn’t it.

Many students have said privately that the campus has become a place where they are afraid to express dissenting opinions. Students who disagree with the protesters’ views, on social media, have been denounced as racists by activist leaders. A newly accepted international student was mocked when she asked her future classmates if there were any libertarian groups on campus. White students have complained that they have been told by other students that they are unjustified in speaking about race and identity in class. When one student voiced a dissenting opinion on social media, his classmate threatened to get him fired from his job at the college bookstore. “It’s an environment with limited representation of opinion, and it can be hostile to students who hold other views,” says Yuta Kato, a sophomore.

It’s as if they think they’re in receipt of Holy Writ, and everyone else is a Sinner.

Puerto Rico is in trouble.

A dam in northwestern Puerto Rico suffered structural damage on Friday, the governor said at a news conference, prompting evacuationsof areas nearby in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

“Close to 70,000 is the estimate of people that could be affected in the case of a collapse,” the governor, Ricardo Rosselló, said about the Guajataca Dam, which is operated by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority. “We don’t know the details. It’s time to get people out.”

A flash flood warning was previously issued by the National Weather Service for the municipalities of Isabela and Quebradillas. “This is an extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation,” the service said in an advisory.

We’ve been hearing for decades that global warming was going to hit poor people in coastal areas very hard. Now we get to watch those predictions played out before our eyes.

Gee it’s almost as if Trump’s people see a job in his administration as an opportunity to milk taxpayers for those sweet luxuries that corrupt rich people enjoy so much.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price will face an inspector general’s investigation into his reported use of chartered jets for at least two dozen flights in recent months at taxpayer expense.

A spokeswoman for HHS Inspector General Daniel R. Levinson told The Washington Post on Friday that the agency will request records of Price’s travel and review the justification made by Price and his staff for the trips, which reportedly cost taxpayers a combined $300,000.

House Democrats wrote to Levinson, an appointee of President George W. Bush, on Wednesday requesting the investigation. They said the flights appeared to violate federal law designed to make sure executive branch officials use the most economical travel available.

There’s a federal law about that? I guess nobody remembered to give Price the pamphlet.

Price’s office this week sought to justify his use of chartered jets, saying that the secretary’s office evaluates the most effective way for him to travel and finds that it is sometimes necessary to charter planes to allow Price to both manage one of the largest executive branch agencies and stay grounded with voters.

“This is Secretary Price, getting outside of D.C., making sure he is connected with the real American people,” said Charmaine Yoest, his assistant secretary for public affairs.

The real American people are accessible only via chartered jet? Why is that exactly?

On Friday, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform panel called on House Republicans to hold a hearing into Price’s travel and asked Price for details on the number of non-commercial flights that he or other agency officials took, how much they cost and any documents justifying the private-jet travel.

“If these recent reports are accurate, this would be a stunning and hypocritical breach of trust, given that the Trump Administration at the same time is trying to take away healthcare from millions of Americans and is proposing to slash funding at HHS — negatively affecting critical programs to provide early-childhood education, fund Medicare for seniors, and conduct medical research and development,” wrote Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) in his letter to HHS.

Maybe they aren’t the real American people.

Just a small point.

I’m seeing an amazing flood of headlines exclaiming that Kim called Trump this weird insult, “dotard.” Like, at the top of the Washington Post’s list of Most Read right now is “A short history of ‘dotard,’ the arcane insult Kim Jong Un used in his threat against Trump.”

But that’s absurd, because of course he didn’t. Are all these headline writers forgetting that Kim didn’t say what he said in English? Someone translated what Kim said as “dotard” – and that’s just not a very interesting fact, is it.

From what I’ve seen the literal translation of what Kim said is just crazy old guy or the like – pejorative but not “arcane.” And also not “dotard.”

Kim did not literally call Trump a dotard on account of how that’s an English word and Kim is Korean and spoke Korean.

Lordy, people, get a grip.