Nick Cohen looks at the hatred of the nationalist right for George Soros.

During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump ruled that Americans protesting against him were “professional” agitators. Roger Stone, who has worked for the filthy wing of the right since Nixon’s day, followed up by announcing he had discovered the agitators were “paid for” by none other than Soros.

Now it is commonplace for right-wing Americans to say that only Soros’s corrupt influence can explain why their fellow citizens take to the streets. A typically sly report in the Washington Times said one in three Trump voters believed Soros paid protesters to join the women’s march on Trump’s inauguration day.

One in three Trump voters believe a panoply of absurd things. Most of them appear to believe it’s possible to live in a small Appalachian town and have a wide range of job opportunities, in defiance of the obvious fact that small towns by definition don’t have a wide range of job opportunities, because they’re small towns. But hey, this is Murrika, people can believe whatever they like, and you’re not allowed to tell them they’re wrong.

It’s not just Putin who goes for Soros. Macedonia’s former autocratic prime minister, Nikola Gruevski, has called for a “de-Sorosisation” of society, as the country’s right uses every trick it can think of, including the threat of street violence by “patriotic associations”, to stop the opposition taking power.

In Hungary, Viktor Orbán’s self-proclaimed illiberal democracy is threatening the Soros-funded Central European University. Its president, the former Canadian Liberal party leader and former Observer columnist Michael Ignatieff, is bewildered. He protests that he is running a university, not an opposition political party that might take Orbán’s power away.

I could go on. Romania’s socialist elite imitates Trump and claims Soros pays citizens to take to the streets to demonstrate against corruption. The supposedly reputable financial analysts at Zero Hedge claim Soros “singlehandedly created the European refugee crisis”. Steve Bannon’s Breitbart says Soros’s funding of Black Lives Matter was part of an agenda to swing the US presidential election. The European far right claims he is trying to destroy Christian white Europe by importing Muslim refugees.

Why all this? Nationalism, aka xenophobia.

Billionaires shouldn’t be able to give money to politicians, Nick says, but the demonization of Soros isn’t about that.

Soros is the recipient of a hatred far beyond normal partisan rancour. The satanic influence attributed to the man who escaped the Holocaust as a child and resolved after the fall of the Berlin Wall to use his wealth to stop xenophobia returning to Europe isn’t normal. Not remotely so. It is one of the most striking signs of the crisis in conservatism, which is threatening free societies across what we used to call “the west”.

Most of Soros’s charitable efforts are not devoted to funding politicians, but values conservatives once claimed to believe in: transparency, free elections, free speech and a free press. Instead of upholding them, the dominant faction on the right has turned to a nationalism that treats opposition as treason. To learn about its antecedents, listen to the antisemitic echoes of the Nazi and communist eras in the vilification of Soros. They are so loud they deafen.

Orbán says he is against “the globalists and liberals, the power brokers sitting in their palaces with ivory towers” and “the swarm of media locusts”. Behind them all stands the “transnational empire of George Soros, with its international heavy artillery and huge sums of money”. March against Orbán in Budapest or Trump in Washington, DC, and you are a hireling of Soros’s cosmopolitan conspiracy.

Nope; just a cosmopolitan. Cosmopolitanism is a good thing, and xenophobia is a bad one.

Alt-right fake news impresario Mike Cernovich is threatening everyone in sight if anything bad happens to that wonderful guy Steve Bannon.

Cernovich made the claims that he’d release a series of “scoops” if Bannon is officially pushed out of the White House on an eleven-minute, self-recorded Periscope Thursday night.

“If they get rid of Bannon, you know what’s gonna happen? The motherlode. If Bannon is removed, there are gonna be divorces, because I know about the mistresses, the sugar babies, the drugs, the pill popping, the orgies. I know everything,” said Cernovich.

“If they go after Bannon, the mother of all stories is gonna drop, and we’re just gonna destroy marriages, relationships—it’s gonna get personal.”

Yes but sexism is over, women have all the rights and freedoms men have now, there is nothing left to object to or campaign for and anyone who thinks otherwise is just playing victim and a horrible tribal SJW and Regressive Leftist. Sexism is over.

Last fall, in the weeks after 21st Century Fox struck settlements with two women who said that Bill O’Reilly had sexually harassed them, the Fox News host went on morning television and offered a harsh assessment of women who had come forward with complaints about the network.

“Look, it’s open season,” he said, visibly irritated, when asked about a recently published book by Megyn Kelly, his colleague at the time. In the book, Ms. Kelly provided an account of being sexually harassed by Roger Ailes, the network’s former chairman. Later Mr. O’Reilly added, “Let’s whack the Fox News Channel. I’ve had enough of it. It’s a good place to work. All right?”

Yes indeed. Who do those bitches think they are, wanting to be treated as colleagues and not pussies there for the grabbing?

The comments set off a media firestorm and frustrated Ms. Kelly, who sent an email to Fox News executives complaining about his behavior and the chilling effect it could have on women at the company and beyond, according to four people with knowledge of the email who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.

What a snowflake. Women just need to lean in and get on with it. You didn’t see Eleanor Roosevelt whining about chilling effects did you?!

So O’Reilly showed her: he went ahead and shouted at the women some more that very night.

Don’t undermine the company that pays you! Go to human resources – or leave! Because hey, it should totally be a secret that Fox is a hostile work environment for women.

That’s part of why she moved to NBC.

Ms. Kelly’s frustrations with Fox News intensified on the morning of Nov. 15, when Mr. O’Reilly appeared on “CBS This Morning” to promote “Give Please a Chance,” his new children’s book about manners. Norah O’Donnell, one of the show’s hosts, asked Mr. O’Reilly about Ms. Kelly’s book, which had been published that day and included sexual harassment accusations against Mr. Ailes. Mr. O’Reilly said he wasn’t “interested.”

“You’re not interested in sexual harassment?” Ms. O’Donnell asked.

“I am not interested in basically litigating something that is finished that makes my network look bad,” Mr. O’Reilly responded.

Shortly after hearing those comments, Ms. Kelly sent her email to Jack Abernethy and Bill Shine, who had recently been named the co-presidents of Fox News. In the email, Ms. Kelly said that Mr. O’Reilly’s comments on “CBS This Morning” were in bad form, according to the people with knowledge of the email who described its contents to The Times.

Ms. Kelly said that a man with Mr. O’Reilly’s history had no business publicly lecturing women inside or outside the company about sexual harassment, the people said. (In a highly publicized 2004 dispute, Mr. O’Reilly had settled sexual harassment allegations made by a young producer for about $9 million.)

Ms. Kelly added in the email that the push for blind loyalty was the reason the network had gotten into the mess with Mr. Ailes. Several people at the network became aware of the email.

Later that day, a producer on Ms. Kelly’s show learned that Mr. O’Reilly planned to revisit the issue during his show’s “Tip of the Day” segment, according to some of the people familiar with the episode. The producer called Mr. Shine, urging him to pull the segment, the people said.

That did not happen.

Bill O’Reilly’s a man. He’s not going to let some bitch tell him what to do.

Today in measles outbreaks:

Three in Hennepin County, Minnesota.

The Minnesota Department of Health is investigating three measles cases.

All three patients are toddlers from Hennepin County. State health officials say they haven’t figured out how the children contracted the disease and are trying to track down anyone who may have had contact with them.

Most people who get measles in the United States have contracted the disease while traveling abroad or from someone who has recently traveled overseas. That’s not the case for these children, said Kris Ehresmann, the state health department’s infectious disease director.

They had not been vaccinated.

Most people in Minnesota are vaccinated against measles. But the state health department said immunization rates among some communities have declined in recent years.

Stinchfield said that the current outbreak should serve as a warning to parents who decline to have their children immunized.

“People who have opted out of vaccinating need to catch up and get themselves vaccinated now,” she said.

Stinchfield said the consequences of measles are dire.

“We’ve had children at our hospital even as recently as 2011 who were in our intensive care unit, on a ventilator. It can get into your brain, it can get into your lungs, it can cause permanent brain damage,” she said. “There is no medical reason not to get MMR vaccine unless you have a severe immune deficiency.”

Fifteen in Nova Scotia.

An additional case of measles has been confirmed on the province’s south shore, requiring notification to parents and guardians of students at Hebbville Academy. The current outbreak of measles now has 15 confirmed cases; one other case was identified since last public release on April 4.

“We are currently investigating this particular measles case to determine how it is linked with the other cases of measles we’ve been managing the past few weeks,” said Dr. Ryan Sommers, medical officer of health. “The person in this case, a student, attends Hebbville Academy and we have notified parents/guardians, students and staff at the school.”

Dr. Sommers notes that due to the large number of potential exposures in the school environment, Public Health decided to host a vaccination clinic for students and staff whose vaccination for measles is not up to date.

“This clinic will ideally help us prevent additional cases of measles and ensure that those whose vaccinations weren’t up to date are covered. While we may see other cases due to this exposure, this vaccination clinic along with our investigation should greatly reduce those numbers.”

This is the current outbreak; there was another in January / February, with seven cases.

Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Earlier today, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services has confirmed a second case of measles in a Michigan adult. The first case was discovered in late March.

The two individuals, who are not members of the same family or otherwise related, were both passengers on the same airline flight when the first individual was contagious, the agency said.

One of the infected individuals dined at two Ann Arbor restaurants on Thursday and Friday of last week…

Maybe all the people who ate there at those times are vaccinated. Maybe.

So we’re playing “Let’s Relive the Cuban Missile Crisis!” these days. I’d so much rather not.

China has warned that “conflict could break out at any moment” as tension over North Korea increases.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi said if war occurred there could be no winner.

I wonder if possibly it was a mistake to elect a narcissistic ignorant bully president at this particular moment.

Adding to Chinese unease, President Donald Trump said on Thursday that “the problem of North Korea” would be “taken care of”.

“If China decides to help, that would be great. If not, we will solve the problem without them! U.S.A.”

That was a tweet. It wasn’t something he said in a press release or an address to the nation or even at a press conference. It was a tweet. I wonder if possibly it’s not ideal for the president to be threatening wars on Twitter.

In an interview with the Associated Press, North Korea’s Deputy Foreign Minister Han Song Ryol accused the Trump administration of “becoming more vicious and more aggressive” in its policy towards the North.

An institute linked to the North Korean foreign ministry also warned that “thermo-nuclear war may break out any moment”.

Not something for North Korea to look forward to, I would think.

In Livonia, Michigan:

A Michigan doctor has been accused of performing genital cutting on two 7-year-old girls at a medical clinic, in a case that federal officials believe to be the first prosecution under a law banning the brutal practice.

The doctor, Jumana Nagarwala, 44, was arrested on Wednesday on charges that she performed the genital cutting at an unnamed medical clinic in Livonia, Mich.; transported minors with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity; and lied to federal agents.

“Cutting” aka mutilation.

One of the girls told investigators that she thought she and the other girl had gone to the doctor because “our tummies hurt.” The other said the cutting procedure was so painful that she screamed and could barely walk afterward.

Yeah I’ll bet it was painful. 7 years old.

“Dr. Nagarwala is alleged to have performed horrifying acts of brutality on the most vulnerable victims,” Kenneth A. Blanco, an acting assistant attorney general with the Justice Department’s criminal division, said in a statement on Thursday. “The Department of Justice is committed to stopping female genital mutilation in this country, and will use the full power of the law to ensure that no girls suffer such physical and emotional abuse.”

She’s been placed on leave from a medical center named after Henry Ford.

The Michigan case is significant because it can help to raise awareness of an issue that often flies under the radar, said Shelby Quast of Equality Now, an international women’s rights advocacy organization.

She said people who might see evidence of genital cutting, such as teachers and health care providers, are not always aware of obligations to report it. “We need better information about exactly where they are,” Ms. Quast said of practitioners of genital cutting. “We know that this is a child abuse issue, and we know that we need to start training our child protection folks better.”

Slicing children’s genitals off: not ok.

Well that figures.

The new acting head of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights once complained that she experienced discrimination because she is white.

As an undergraduate studying calculus at Stanford University in the mid-1990s, Candice Jackson “gravitated” toward a section of the class that provided students with extra help on challenging problems, she wrote in a student publication. Then she learned that the section was reserved for minority students.

“I am especially disappointed that the University encourages these and other discriminatory programs,” she wrote in the Stanford Review. “We need to allow each person to define his or her own achievements instead of assuming competence or incompetence based on race.”

I don’t see color! All lives matter! Stop talking about racism! By all means talk about racism but don’t obsess over it!

A longtime anti-Clinton activist and an outspoken conservative-turned-libertarian, she has denounced feminism and race-based preferences. She’s also written favorably about, and helped edit a book by, an economist who decried both compulsory education and the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Jackson’s inexperience, along with speculation that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos will roll back civil rights enforcement, lead some observers to wonder whether Jackson, like several other Trump administration appointees, lacks sympathy for the traditional mission of the office she’s been chosen to lead.

Ya think?

Jackson takes over an office that has been responsible for protecting students from racial, gender, disability and age discrimination for decades. Under the Obama administration, the office increased its caseload. It emphasized to colleges that they could give preferences to minorities and women to achieve diversity, and advised them to be more aggressive in investigating allegations of rape and sexual harassment on campus. Some of the guidance from the office provoked controversy, particularly among Republicans who have long called for the office to be scaled back.

It looks as if now they’ll get what they want.

In another article Jackson penned for the Review during her senior year, entitled “How I Survived Stanford Without Entering the Women’s Center,” she condemned feminism on campus.

“In today’s society, women have the same opportunities as men to advance their careers, raise families, and pursue their personal goals,” she wrote. “College women who insist on banding together by gender to fight for their rights are moving backwards, not forwards.”

Sure they do. There is no discrimination, no harassment, no failure to promote, no obstacle of any kind. Perfection has been achieved.

Michael Shermer’s been shedding his light on the world again.

Sure, by all means, talk about it, but don't obsess over it, don't assume everyone is a racist, & don't try to find racism in everything. https://t.co/g2QcyiQBkR

— Michael Shermer (@michaelshermer) April 12, 2017

The “it” in “talk about it” is race and racism. Shermer with his 118 thousand followers says sure by all means talk about race and racism but do it within these limits prescribed by him.

That’s not a good look. It’s not a good look for a prosperous white guy to issue short sharp instructions on how much and in what manner people can talk about racism.

But it gets worse.

No! If you are against racism then stop classifying people by race. If you insist on racial classification don't be surprised when others do https://t.co/qSUIomLLW1

— Michael Shermer (@michaelshermer) April 12, 2017

Right and if you’re against sexism just stop classifying people by sex oh wait

So naturally I did a couple of snotty retweets-with-comments, which automatically showed up on Facebook, which resulted in a tedious argument with someone of the “Shermer has a right to his opinion and you’re an SJW” school of thought. It felt like 2013.

What can I tell you? Shermer has those 118 thousand followers (see above). He’s a Name; he has influence. He’s also shallow, and pugnacious, and not as clever as he thinks he is. For all those reasons I think it’s ok for us underlings to annotate his tweets now and then. But the “You SJW” guy on Facebook thinks I’m wrong and harmful for doing so. “Great way to build a movement,” he told me. Say what? I’m not trying to build a movement. A movement of what? Libertarians? No thank you, we already have plenty of those.

So they can just say anything, and then say its opposite a few months later, and not be held to account – even when the “anything” in question involves existential threats to the polity and the country.

In his first speech as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Mike Pompeo, the former Republican congressman who once applauded disclosures by WikiLeaks, attacked the group on Thursday as a stateless hostile intelligence unit eager to do the bidding of Russia and other American adversaries.

“WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service,” Mr. Pompeo said. To support his assessment, he cited how the group had encouraged followers to join the C.I.A. and steal secrets, and how “it overwhelmingly focuses on the United States while seeking support from antidemocratic countries.”

But Mr. Pompeo’s harshest words were reserved for Julian Assange, calling the WikiLeaks founder a “narcissist” and “a fraud — a coward hiding behind a screen.”

And yet Pompeo was saying quite different things a few months ago.

Mr. Pompeo, speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, an independent research group, appeared to have no compunction during the campaign about pointing people toward emails stolen by Russian hackers from the Democratic National Committee and then posted by WikiLeaks.

“Need further proof that the fix was in from Pres. Obama on down? BUSTED: 19,252 Emails from DNC Leaked by WikiLeaks,” he wrote in a Twitter post in July that included a link to a conservative blog. The emails to which the post referred showed that Democratic Party officials favored Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the primary.

But hey, they won the election, so now they can drop the lies.

In deploring leakers, Mr. Pompeo opened his remarks on Thursday with an anecdote about Phillip Agee, the former C.I.A. officer who turned against the agency and spent years exposing undercover American spies overseas. He died in Havana in 2008.

Like Mr. Agee, leakers “choose to see themselves in a romantic light,” Mr. Pompeo said. “They cling to this fiction, even though their disclosures often inflict irreparable harm.”

He then turned to WikiLeaks, citing its release of Democratic Party emails stolen by Russian hackers — the same stolen emails he was promoting in July — as evidence of its hostile intent.

“It’s time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: a nonstate hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia,” he said.

It’s time now…but it wasn’t last July? Last July it was just fine to let Wikileaks and Russia break the knees of the Democrats?

The intel people at the talk didn’t press him on this question.

Mr. Pompeo also escaped any direct questions about how he was managing to heal the rift between the C.I.A. and Mr. Trump, who during the presidential transition compared American intelligence agencies to Nazis.

Asked about his own relationship with the president, Mr. Pompeo said, “it’s fantastic,” adding that he personally delivered Mr. Trump’s intelligence briefing on most days.

Which wouldn’t be the case if it weren’t for Wikileaks and Russia.

The death of Judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam is desperately sad news.

She called her chambers on Tuesday to say she wasn’t coming in. The next day she was found in the Hudson, with no signs of trauma.

The unexpected death was shocking and saddening and even set off some suspicions among Judge Abdus-Salaam’s friends and colleagues, many of whom said she had given no indication that anyone — including herself — would want to do her harm.

In the hours after her body was found, the police said they were treating her death as a suicide. The judge, 65, had recently told friends and a doctor that she was suffering from stress. And tragedy had followed her closely: On Easter in 2012, her mother committed suicide at age 92, according to two law enforcement officials. Two years later, around the same holiday, her brother shot himself to death, the officials said.

She s0unds like someone we can’t afford to lose.

Since 2013, Judge Abdus-Salaam had been one of seven judges on the high court. Before that, she served for about four years with the First Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court, and for 15 years as a State Supreme Court justice in Manhattan. She was previously a lawyer in the state attorney general’s office.

Judge Abdus-Salaam was known for her steadfast liberal voice, regularly siding with immigrants, the poor, and people with mental illnesses against established interests. She also leaned toward injured parties who brought claims of fraud or misconduct against wealthy corporations.

She was admired by her colleagues for her thoughtfulness, candor and finely crafted writing style. And she was not one to use her decisions as a soapbox even when they set precedents.

…

After law school, Judge Abdus-Salaam became a public defender in Brooklyn and then served as an assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Bureau of the state attorney general’s office. In one of her first cases, she won an anti-discrimination suit for more than 30 female New York City bus drivers who had been denied promotions.

Last summer, Judge Abdus-Salaam wrote an important decision, in the Matter of Brooke S.B. v. Elizabeth A.C.C., that expanded the definition of what it means to be a parent. For 25 years, the court had held that the nonbiological parent in a same-sex couple had no standing to seek custody or visitation rights after a breakup.

But that, Judge Abdus-Salaam wrote, had become “unworkable when applied to increasingly varied familial relationships.” In a tightly reasoned decision, she wrote that nonbiological parents did have standing to seek custody if they showed “by clear and convincing evidence that all parties agreed to conceive a child and to raise the child together.”

In an interview in 2014 about black history, Judge Abdus-Salaam said that she had become interested in her family’s history as a young girl in public school and that her research had led her to discover that her great-grandfather was a slave in Virginia.

“All the way from Arrington, Va., where my family was the property of someone else, to my sitting on the highest court of the State of New York is amazing and huge,” she said. “It tells you and me what it is to know who we are and what we can do.”

So, damn.

God the BBC can be infuriating. In its reporting on the murder by torture of Mashal Khan for instance.

A university student in Pakistan accused of blasphemy against Islam has been killed by a mob of fellow students on campus, police say.

Many students have been arrested after the brutal attack in the northern city of Mardan, and the campus has been closed.

Reports suggest that two young men were accused of posting offensive content on Facebook. One survived with injuries.

It’s not for the BBC to call the content of Khan’s posts “offensive.” It’s not for the BBC to agree with the idea that skepticism or mockery of religion is “offensive” – especially not hours after someone was violently battered to death over such accusations.

Blasphemy is a highly sensitive and incendiary issue in Pakistan.

Critics say blasphemy laws, which allow the death penalty in some cases, are often misused to oppress minorities.

Critics say that, but others might disagree. And what do they mean “misused” – how could laws against blasphemy be properly used?

Last month Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif voiced his support for a wide-ranging crackdown on blasphemous content on social media.

In a statement on his party’s official Twitter account, he described blasphemy as an “unpardonable offence”.

An official at Abdul Wali Khan University who spoke on condition of anonymity said Mr Khan was disliked by other students for his liberal and secular views.

At least 65 people have been murdered in Pakistan after being accused of blasphemy since 1990, a recent think tank report said.

And it serves them right for being so “offensive”?

Ari Berman in The Nation:

My grandmother Sylvia moved from Brooklyn to Iowa when she was 89 years old. It was a culture shock, to say the least. When my mom took her to vote, she complained of the candidates, “There isn’t anybody who’s Jewish!”

I thought of my grandmother, who passed away in 2005 at 99, when the Iowa Legislature passed a strict voter-ID law today. She didn’t have a driver’s license because she never drove (she’d frequently walk two miles from her apartment to the grocery store). Her passport expired long ago. She never had a US birth certificate because she was born in Poland and fled the Holocaust. She used her Medicare card as identification. She didn’t possess any of the forms of government-issued photo identification that Iowa will soon require to vote.

The ACLU of Iowa reports that 11 percent of eligible Iowa voters—260,000 people—don’t have a driver’s license or non-operator ID, according to the US Census and the Iowa Department of Transportation, and could be disenfranchised by the bill. My grandmother, if she were still alive today, would have been one of them.

But maybe they have to because Iowa is full of people who vote eight times using aliases? Nope.

There were only 10 alleged cases of fraud out of 1.6 million votes cast in 2016 and no cases of voter impersonation that a voter-ID law might’ve stopped. The only conviction was a Trump supporter who voted twice because she thought the election was rigged and her first vote wouldn’t count.

But Iowa Republicans are justifying the move by saying there’s a perception that there’s a lot of voter fraud. That’s super fascinating, because where does the perception come from? Republicans who keep shouting about it!

The fact that Republicans are pointing to the mere “perception” of fraud as a reason to disenfranchise thousands of voters shows why Trump’s baseless assertions that millions are voting illegally is so damaging.

There will be more of these.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan…

The US military has dropped the biggest non-nuclear bomb ever used in combat on an Islamic State group tunnel complex in Afghanistan, the Pentagon says.

The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB), known as “the mother of all bombs”, was first tested in 2003, but had not been used before.

The Pentagon said it was dropped from a US aircraft in Nangarhar province.

The news came hours after the Pentagon admitted an air strike in Syria mistakenly killed 18 rebels.

…

The 21,600lb (9,800kg) bomb was dropped in Achin district on Thursday evening local time, the Pentagon said. It is more than 9m (30 feet) in length.

“We targeted a system of tunnels and caves that ISIS fighters use to move around freely, making it easier for them to target US military advisers and Afghan forces in the area,” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said, using another name for IS.

Headlines say the stock market has fallen.