Europe doesn’t like Trump.

When President Donald Trump lectured NATO members on their contributions to the trans-Atlantic alliance, he demonstrated a lack of understanding about how the group works and potentially alienated the US’ closest allies, analysts said.

The speech comes at a time when Washington’s longstanding partnerships with the UK and Israel have endured friction over intelligence gaffes by the new administration.

“Diplomatically, the speech was inept at best and deliberately insulting at worst,” said Jeff Rathke, deputy director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

I’m going to go with both inept and deliberately insulting. That’s very Trump, after all.

Trump’s remarks Thursday, alongside his continued misrepresentation of how the alliance works and his failure to reaffirm US commitment to the group, is likely to further unsettle US allies, sowing doubt about US leadership and possibly making it harder for NATO leaders to convince their people of the need to spend more on defense.

Ivo Daalder, a former US ambassador to NATO, said that “this was a perfectly scripted event to deliver a very simple message that every president of the United States has delivered at the first possible opportunity, which is that the United States stands firmly behind its commitment to the defense of NATO.”

“We signed a treaty, we uphold it. It was really easy,” Daalder said. “And the fact that he didn’t do it was disturbing and will take a long time to overcome in Europe.”

They did their best. They were warned that he’s a giant baby, so they arranged things for a giant baby.

NATO leaders had envisioned this summit as an introduction to the new US President, adjusting the format to make it more accommodating for Trump, changing the date, shortening the day-long proceedings — in part by telling leaders to make speeches briefer — and making a casual dinner the centerpiece of the gathering.

They had someone pre-chew his food for him; they put stuffed animals in his chair; they ordered gallons of Diet Pepsi and all the ice cream in Belgium.

In Brussels, Trump charged that “many of these nations owe massive amounts of money from past years” and implied that these countries owed that money to the United States.

“This idea that countries owe money is flat-out wrong,” said Rathke. Countries commit to the 2% target for defense spending — a goal only five NATO members currently meet — within their own countries. The money is not paid to a central fund, though Trump continues to allude to a system like that, raising questions about his ability or willingness to listen and learn.

“Anybody with NATO expertise knows that there is no such thing as ‘debts’ owed by NATO allies for what they haven’t spent in the past,” Rathke said.

Well you’ll have to excuse him: he’s very stupid.

Sean Hannity is losing advertisers because of his relentless flogging of a nasty made-up conspiracy theory about the random murder of Seth Rich last summer. Good.

The automotive classified site Cars.com and several other companies pulled advertising from Sean Hannity’s Fox News show after he came under fire for promoting a conspiratorial account of the slaying of a former Democratic National Committee staffer.

“We don’t have the ability to influence content at the time we make our advertising purchase,” Cars.com said in a statement Wednesday. “In this case, we’ve been watching closely and have recently made the decision to pull our advertising from Hannity.”

The mattress maker Leesa Sleep, the exercise company Peloton, and the military financial services company USAA said they, too, were no longer advertising on Hannity’s show. Crowne Plaza Hotels, online mattress retailer Casper, and the video doorbell company Ring told BuzzFeed News on Wednesday that they were backing out as well.

Money talks.

Hannity had been one of the main purveyors of a widely discredited theory that DNC staffer Seth Rich was shot and killed near his home in Northwest Washington last year because he had supplied DNC emails to WikiLeaks. District police say Rich died in a botched robbery. His parents have pleaded with news outlets to stop speculating about his death.

Newt Gingrich helped Hannity flog the claim over the weekend. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Contract With America Newt Gingrich.

Rich, a 27-year-old data analyst, was gunned down in the early hours of July 10 in Washington’s Bloomingdale neighborhood. Later that month, WikiLeaks published a cache of DNC emails, leading some commentators to speculate that Rich’s death was somehow related.

Later that month. How is that not good enough for you libtards? Obviously later that month means connected. That’s science.

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Teaching about sexual and reproductive anatomy.

Belief in word-magic is certainly alive and well in the 21st century. In my militant atheist days I frequently ran into some version of the following “argument” (this is going to be pretty philosophically sophisticated, so you better be ready):

1. The word “God” refers to X (X = Life, the Universe and Everything etc.).

2. X exists.

3. Therefore the word “God” refers to something that exists.

Of course by the time we arrived at 3, Life, the Universe and Everything had invariably mutated into a supernatural, intelligent creator of the universe who, by the way, was the father of Jesus, had authored the Bible etc. After all, we had already established that something called “God” existed, and the biblical Yaweh was indeed something called “God”. Never mind that this rather obvious redefinition directly contradicted 1, thus invalidating the argument that got us to 3 in the first place.

But this idea that you can take whatever’s applicable to X and make it applicable to Y by renaming Y as X is so ubiquitous that it’s hard to imagine how modern ideological newspeak could possibly go on without it. We see the same thing with “free will” and pretty much anything to do with “gender”. As I have previously written it’s a bit like arguing that clubs for hitting baseballs (let’s call them “bats₁”) can fly because Chiroptera (let’s call them “bats₂”) can fly. After all Chiroptera prove that things called “bats” can fly, and clubs for hitting baseballs are indeed things called “bats”.

There is a major difference between talking about a specific (kind of) thing whatever you prefer to call it, and talking about whatever it is that people call “[insert name here]”. E.g. in the case of bats₂ we’re referring to a specific order of mammals that just happens (in this particular context and for this particular purpose) to be called “bats”. They share certain anatomical and genetic features as well as a common evolutionary ancestor that they don’t share with any non-bats₂ etc. The fact that people in the English speaking world happen to call them “bats” rests on an arbitrary cultural convention and doesn’t say anything about the actual animals themselves, therefore “Fledermaus”, “chauve-souris” etc. are neither more nor less “correct” ways of referring to them. If English speakers collectively decided to start calling them “abts” or “tabs”, they would still be talking about the same creatures. And, conversely, no amount of (re)labeling other things (clubs for hitting baseballs etc.) as “bats” can turn them into instances of the kind of thing we are talking about, or even make them relevant to our topic. If you change the definition of “bats”, then a statement like “bats can fly” no longer applies. If, on the other hand, we’re referring to whatever it is that someone happens to call “bats”, then all those bets are off, and it’s hard to see how any non-circular/non-trivial statement can be generally true, or even meaningful, on the subject.

Almost all of modern gender apologetics seems to boil down to statements of this latter kind. As far as I’m concerned, being “female₁” means something like having physical traits more representative of egg-producers than sperm-producers within one’s particular species, a “woman₁” is a female₁ human being, the word “gender₁ itself refers to a difference in the way women₁ and men₁ (i.e. people with physical traits more representative of sperm-producers than egg-producers) are viewed/treated in a society, and “feminism₁” is a movement that seeks to end the discrimination of women₁ based on such gender₁ differences.

In the vocabulary of gender apologists, on the other hand, being “female₂” generally means something like thinking or feeling about oneself in ways X,Y,Z etc., a “woman₂” is any person who qualifies as a female₂ (i.e. who does indeed think/feel in ways X,Y,Z etc.), regardless of physical traits, the word “gender₂” refers to a perfectly real and vitally important difference in way people think/feel about themselves, and “feminism₂” is a movement that seeks to end discrimination against “women₂” by validating all genders₂.

However, since there are no clearly identifiable “ways X,Y,Z…” of thinking/feeling that are common to all who call themselves “women” while being distinct from the way those who call themselves “men” think/feel, they might as well say that the definition of “female₂”/”woman₂” is whatever it is that people call “female”/”woman”. As I have previously pointed out, gender apologists are also faced with the awkward fact that there is no way of specifying “ways X,Y,Z…” without – that’s right – excluding [insert scary music] anyone who fails to think or feel the required ways about themselves, thus depriving them of a much cherished stick for beating up “TERFs” and “SWERFs” (who are supposedly alone in the exclusion business).

As I have commented on elsewhere, the real problem arises when some people insist on acting as if we were still all talking about the same thing and demand to have it both ways. One example that strikes me as particularly revealing is the demand that women₂ be allowed to compete in sporting events that are reserved for women₁ specifically to make up for biological differences. Why women₂ would need separate sporting events from men₂ (i.e. people who think/feel about themselves in the unspecified ways P,Q,R… rather than the equally unspecified ways X,Y,Z…) is unclear to say the least. And even if one managed to come up with a reason, it would no longer be true that women₁ were automatically qualified to compete, and we would need some kind of screening process to make sure that only people who really did think/feel the required ways about themselves were allowed to participate.

The Manchester police aren’t waiting on what May and Trump say to each other in Brussels; they’ve closed the door themselves.

British police have stopped sharing evidence from the investigation into the terror network behind the Manchester bombing with the United States after a series of leaks left investigators and the government furious.

The ban is limited to the Manchester investigation only. British police believe the leaks are unprecedented in their scope, frequency and potential damage.

Downing Street was not behind the decision by Greater Manchester police to stop sharing information with US intelligence, a No 10 source said, stressing that it was important police were allowed to take independent decisions.

Again, imagine the fury if they did this to us.

British officials were infuriated on Wednesday when the New York Times published forensic photographs of sophisticated bomb parts that UK authorities fear could complicate the expanding investigation, in which six further arrests have been made in the UK and two more in Libya.

It was the latest of a series of leaks to US journalists that appeared to come from inside the US intelligence community, passing on data that had been shared between the two countries as part of longstanding security cooperation.

I have to wonder why they’re leaking it. If keeping the details secret is likely to help find other perps, then what can possibly be the motivation for leaking it?

Whitehall sources reported a sense of deflation among UK security staff at the amount of detail coming out of America. The UK had shared the material with US police and intelligence in the expectation it would remain secret. The amount released is hampering at least part of the investigation, they believe.

Manchester’s mayor, Andy Burnham, said the leaks were arrogant and disrespectful, and police chiefs also criticised the actions.

A national counter-terrorism policing spokesperson said: “We greatly value the important relationships we have with our trusted intelligence, law enforcement and security partners around the world.

“When that trust is breached it undermines these relationships, and undermines our investigations and the confidence of victims, witnesses and their families. This damage is even greater when it involves unauthorised disclosure of potential evidence in the middle of a major counter-terrorism investigation.”

I just read the Times article, and those photos and descriptions certainly do look like potential evidence. I can’t figure out what they were thinking.

Maybe it’s a free press thing run amok:

Ian Blair, who was Metropolitan police commissioner during the London underground bombings on 7 July 2005, said his investigation had also been troubled by leaks from US intelligence.

Blair said he was sure the leaks had “nothing to do with Trump” given that similar leaks had happened during his own time investigating a terror attack.

“I’m afraid this reminds me exactly of what happened after 7/7, when the US published a complete picture of the way the bombs had been made up. We had the same protests.

“It’s a different world in how the US operates in the sense of how they publish things. And this is a very grievous breach but I’m afraid it’s the same as before.”

Not clever.

CNN reports:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions did not disclose meetings he had last year with Russian officials when he applied for his security clearance, the Justice Department told CNN Wednesday.

Well. It’s hard to see how he can explain that away. “Oh, I didn’t realize I was supposed to.” “Sir, you’re the nation’s top law enforcement official. It’s your job to know.” “Oh it was just a little slip.” “Sir, this is Russia we’re talking about. Vladimir Putin’s Russia.”

Sessions, who met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at least two times last year, didn’t note those interactions on the form, which requires him to list “any contact” he or his family had with a “foreign government” or its “representatives” over the past seven years, officials said.

Ok but when it says “any contact” it surely doesn’t mean something as trivial as meeting with the Russian ambassador…

Turkey called in the US ambassador to complain about how the US treated those nice Turkish security people who kicked and beat up protesters in DC last week.

Turkey summoned the American ambassador on Monday to protest what it called “aggressive and unprofessional actions” by American security personnel against Turkish bodyguards during a violent incident last week in Washington. The U.S. ambassador told Turkey’s government its guards violated U.S. laws, a senior U.S. official said.

Turkey’s action appeared to represent retaliation for the forceful U.S. criticism of the Turkish guards’ behavior in the American capital, where they accompanied President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on his visit. The U.S. summoned Turkey’s U.S. ambassador last week after the Turkish security officers were seen hitting and kicking protesters outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence; one video shared on social media even showed Erdogan watching the melee.

It’s true. At 1:14 he gets out of the car, and watches the attack.

Not to mention plain old laws against assault. The protesters weren’t attacking Erdoğan, they were protesting. People aren’t allowed to assault them just because they don’t like the protest. Erdoğan’s security people don’t have jurisdiction in DC.

Pressure has been mounting on the Trump administration not to let the violence on U.S. soil go unpunished. Last week’s incident wasn’t the first such case during an Erdogan visit. Last year, a similar scuffle erupted outside a nuclear security summit that Erdogan attended in Washington.

Yes but Trump likes Erdoğan, as he likes all bullies as long as they leave him alone.

And a group of nearly 30 Democratic lawmakers led by Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York wrote Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Monday demanding that the Turkish guards be “arrested, prosecuted and jailed.” The prospect of arrest is unlikely — many of them have already returned to Turkey, immunity for those posted in the U.S. is an issue, and the countries are already in an unrelated spat over extradition.

The Democrats also faulted Tillerson for what they suggested was his failure to speak out loudly against the Turkish actions.

Tillerson doesn’t care.He’s lost in the fog.

This is what incompetent government looks like.

Amanda Marcotte also wrote about the dud hoax, along with the fakenews story about the murder of Seth Rich.

The authors claimed in Skeptic that the publication of their fake and silly article demonstrated that the “echo-chamber of morally driven fashionable nonsense coming out of the postmodernist social ‘sciences’ in general, and gender studies departments in particular,” is damaging academia.

This is, as Phil Torres explained for Salon, also utter nonsense. Torres pointed out that the authors had their bogus paper rejected from a reputable, peer-reviewed journal and published instead in a pay-to-play one that isn’t even about gender studies. In fact, these two guys demonstrated only their inability to have their fake article accepted by a reputable publication — which is the opposite of what they were trying to prove. But, as was the case for the Seth Rich story, the lack of evidence did nothing to slow down the rapid spread of the hoax across the anti-feminist internet.

…

Both these stories were promulgated mainly through right-wing media. Fox News, especially host Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh have been pushing the Seth Rich story, no doubt as a bit of counterprogramming to the real news about Trump’s ties to Russia. The “conceptual penis” hoax was trumpeted mostly by right-wing clickbait sites like College Fix, Daily Caller and Breitbart.

But unlike a lot of other fake stories pushed by right-wing media, these two stories gained serious traction in supposedly liberal and even left-wing circles.

Or semi-liberal, or liberal-except-about-women.

[T]he “conceptual penis” story was trumpeted by a number of self-proclaimed rationalists, including scientist Richard Dawkins, author Sam Harris and scientist Steven Pinker. The editor of Skeptic, Michael Shermer, argued that the hoax was necessary to “rein in extremism” among feminist academics.

“[T]he hoax reveals not the ideological dogmatisms of gender studies, but the motivating prejudices of the authors and their mostly white, mostly male supporters against social justice,” suggested Torres in his Salon article. Or to put it in another way, in an effort to prove feminists are a bunch of dum-dums, these men abandoned the critical thinking they supposedly love so much.

This is not the first time we’ve seen them do that.

Golly. Planned Parenthood Ottawa tweets:

PPO supports the right of every person to determine their identity for themselves. We fully support implementation of #BillC16. pic.twitter.com/15Gj2IXGcn

— Planned Parenthood Ottawa (@PPOttawa) May 17, 2017

So now Trump is sucking up to the pope, and we’re being nudged to do the same.

Pope Francis welcomed President Trump to the cradle of Roman Catholicism on Wednesday, delivering a message of peace even as the pontiff emphasized his role as the world’s moral counterpoint to the president’s nationalist agenda.

No. The pope is not “the world’s moral counterpoint to the president’s nationalist agenda” or the president’s anything else. The pope is not the world’s anything. He’s the top official of a global organization, but many people can claim that title. There’s no such thing as a single human moral counterpoint to Trump or Trump’s agenda, and if there were it most certainly would not be the boss of the Catholic church. The Catholic church is the Catholic church; it doesn’t speak for the population of the world.

Furthermore, much of the morality of the Catholic church is bad.

Moving on.

A brief Vatican communique later called the meeting “cordial,” and expressed hope for collaboration with the administration on “health care, education and assistance to immigrants.”

Health care should be right out. The Catholic church wants to prevent women from having access to contraception and abortion in all circumstances without exception no matter what. I don’t know what use they are on education, either, especially if the education is laced with religious dogma.

It said Trump and Francis had exchanged views on “international affairs and the promotion of peace in the world through political negotiation and interreligious dialogue, with particular reference to the situation in the Middle East and the protection of Christian communities.”

Ah but Trump doesn’t know where or what the Middle East is. He said in Israel that he’d just left the Middle East…

The president told the pope that their states share “many fundamental values,” such as promoting human rights, combating global famine and protecting religious freedom, the White House said.

Well then he told yet another lie. He doesn’t promote human rights. He just told the Saudis he doesn’t care about human rights.

Trump called the meeting “great” and “fantastic.”

“He is something,” Trump said of Francis. “We’re liking Italy very, very much, and it was an honor to be with the pope.”

Eloquent as always.

And despite being told to stop, they’re still doing it.

US officials disclosed fresh details of the investigation into the Manchesterbombing to journalists within hours of Amber Rudd warning them to stop the leaking.

The steady drip of details from the US – as well as from France – is hampering the investigation by British police, who are trying to control the release of information for operational reasons.

The home secretary reflected the frustration and dismay of the UK security services in a series of interviews on Wednesday morning. She described the leaks as “irritating” and said she had made it clear to the US that it should not happen again.

However, within hours, American reporter Richard Engel of NBC tweeted details not released by the UK.

Imagine the reaction here if the UK intelligence people did that to us.

The intelligence community has long been uncomfortable about revelations from its recent past made in books and articles, but the release of details of a live investigation on the scale of those by the US and France is a relatively new phenomenon.

It comes on top of Donald Trump’s release of intelligence to Russia that had been passed on by Israel, which had obtained it from an Arab country.

The leak of the British information, as well as demonstrating a lack of respect for a US ally at an emotional time, will have hindered the investigation, where it is essential to control the release of details.

Hindering the investigation is surely in no one’s interest.

Anger about the extent of the leaks is not confined to the UK. Senior members of the US Congress also expressed concern.

The top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, Adam Schiff, said he did not know the source but insisted it was not from Congress, as members and their staffs had not been briefed.

Schiff, who is a driving force behind the congressional investigation into the Trump campaign’s links with Russia, said: “We should have been very careful and respectful of the British investigation and the timing which the British felt was in their investigative interests in releasing that. That should have been their discretion not ours. If that is something we did, I think that’s a real problem.”

The UK intelligence agencies, he said, would have passed on information about the bomber and possible associates to see if the US had any further intelligence on them.

“If we gave up information that has interfered in any way with their investigation because it tipped off people in Britain, perhaps associates of this person that we had identified as the bomber, that’s a real problem and they have every right to be furious.”

…

Chris Coons, a Democratic member of the Senate foreign affairs committee, said questions were being raised about whether the Trump administration understood what it meant to treat highly classified intelligence responsibly.

He told MSNBC: “Our alliance with the people of Great Britain is one of our closest, strongest, oldest – and our prayers are with them, the families who lost loved ones in Manchester … We’ve got a very close intelligence and defence partnership with the UK and that news is troubling and it suggests that we have even more close allies who are questioning whether we can be trusted with vital intelligence.

“This is a key part of what keeps us safe, a global network of allies with whom we share intelligence and strategic and planning and defence resources … I am hearing real questions raised about whether this administration, in particular President Trump, understands what it means to treat highly classified intelligence carefully and responsibly.”

He’s draining the swamp.

Yes, the US really did blab the name of the Manchester suspect yesterday even though they’d been told not to. Yes the UK really is pissed off at us. Yes that really is a staggeringly stupid and irresponsible thing to do. Yes I really am ashamed of this country; yes so are most of us.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd has said she is irritated with the US for releasing information about the Manchester bomber before UK police would have liked.

Ms Rudd said the British had wanted to control the flow of information to “keep the element of surprise”.

She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme she had been very clear with Washington “that it should not happen again”.

I’m sure Washington listened, but Trump and his people, not so much.

Counter-terrorism detectives have spoken in the past about how important it sometimes is for them that names of suspects do not make it into the media. They say a delay of around 36 hours, before the public know who they are investigating can allow them to arrest known associates of the suspect before they know police are looking for them.

Information about the bomber’s identity first emerged in the US – with American TV networks CBS and NBC naming Abedi as the suspect.

Ms Rudd was asked whether she would be looking at how information sharing may have resulted in the premature release of details the British police and security services had not wanted in the public domain.

The home secretary told Today: “Yes, quite frankly.

“The British police have been very clear they want to control the flow of information in order to protect operational integrity – the element of surprise – so it is irritating if it gets released from other sources, and I’ve been very clear with our friends that that should not happen again.”

With friends like us, who needs enemies?