the obsession with trans women in sports is, apart from the abject bigotry, a symptom of how we take amateur sports participation way too seriously in this country.

the Scottish Labour leadership contest coming down to a choice between two men because the woman who put herself forward wasn't sufficiently transphobic feels completely ridiculous yet entirely predictable

Nobody ever tells you that self-respect and bravery sometimes feels like being sick to your stomach, but sometimes you gotta stand up for yourself even if it makes you puke!

My beloved mutuals / followers and siblings in literacy. If you could, out of all the books you have read in your life, recommend just one or two to me, which would you pick?

I want to point out that it's both legally and ethically irrelevant who was sovereign over a territory (like Ceuta) "first". Whatever its political history, this is an internationally recognised part of the de jure territory of Spain in the post-WWII international legal system,

Previously if you said even the slightest criticism, you were tarred and effectively banned from political advancement. It is silly to pretend otherwise. This stifling formula will never work again on this topic and the paradigm is totally upended.

The very fact that the discourse is now fluid scares a lot of people

This is what a lot of the reheated arguments on here come down to. This status quo is already over and we're walking around in the unknown figuring out where things might land. This is extremely uncomfortable for the most pro-Israel to the hilt people because they don't know where bottom is.

The conventional wisdom that you had to be ironclad in support of Israel and even genuflect to a series of absurd, exceptional demands like "right to exist as a Jewish state" and "right to [offensively] defend itself" is dead. A lot of people are just mad that it's dead. Sorry.

Beast mode

Jonathan Larsen@jonathanlarsen.bsky.social · 4d ago

NEW: Corporate media zero in signs of antisemitism on the left. Meanwhile, one of Rep. Haley Stevens's most powerful backers in her Senate race attends a Bible study that teaches that the Jews killed Jesus...

It's always funny when israel calls for a """ceasefire""" where it would retain the power to operate militarily within the territory of a foreign state, because that happens to be a thing in international law, which we normally call "belligerent occupation".

If all of those 40k moroccans wanted to and could and did enter the schengen area, this wouldn't matter one bit or be felt at all in a *half a billion* strong european community. This was just a coordinated media attack on spain for that one obvious reason that's irrelevant to migration.

I saw a really remarkable tweet about the signalis situation, and I want to point out that "talking to underage people" is not "grooming" lmao. In point of fact, enclosing underage people in a social isocube is a good way to render them extremely vulnerable to manipulation.

I watched a bit of the piker interview of Finkelstein and it's kinda hilarious how often the editor has to cut to make it seem like they're talking at a tolerable pace. I had to tab out and listen to the rest because of how distracting it was. Fink's head teleporting around lol

it's called strategic litigation because you should have a well-supplied tank corps

Without naming him, I know an investigative journalist that has had something like 9 new defamation suits pending against him every year for a decade, refuses to ever settle or drop his stories, and has literally never had a judgment of conviction affirmed on appeal. SLAPPs aren't legally strong!

So why should Amnesty have just fought it legally if they lose? For one, it breaks terfs confidence that they can simply steamroll every single organisation in favour of trans rights. It also works to create continuous media exposure that looks bad for them because of Amnesty's good reputation.

1. Amnesty chose to soften their language to describe authoritarian far right (or fascist) orgs as anti rights and still backed down, this signals to everyone that it simply isn't a viable to say the truth and to terfs that vexatious lawsuit based lawfare continues to work.

Sidenote for a more limited audience, Rowling threatened to facilitate a lawsuit against Amnesty over the exact same thing Stock threatened to sue Oseroff, the description of their anti-rights agenda as an effort to restrict the rights of trans people.

Amnesty also making their own job harder as they demonstrate that every tinpot dictator and murderous oligarch simply has to issue a legal writ of "It was actually very HURTFUL when you described me as genocidal despot" and they fold like an origami coward

ergopraxis@ergopraxis.bsky.social · 4d ago

Amnesty's capitulation is unacceptable, because a human rights NGO is not simply a discount think tank (viz. a double discounted research university). It's part of its job description to specifically leverage its resources to stand its ground against actual and threatened SLAPPs from bad actors!

Amnesty's capitulation is unacceptable, because a human rights NGO is not simply a discount think tank (viz. a double discounted research university). It's part of its job description to specifically leverage its resources to stand its ground against actual and threatened SLAPPs from bad actors!

ANTHROPIC: Our son loves humanity and for the low price of trillions and trillions of dollars will usher in an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity! OPENAI: Our horrible oafish son is hacking web sites without our permission. ANTHROPIC: (eyes narrowing) Our son is also evil

A dark day for human rights.

"anti-imperialism" in defense of israel, now i've seen everything

The Local Crank@thelocalcrank.bsky.social · 5d ago

So in other words, the correct answer is that the US is an imperialist power that gets to decide how other countries govern themselves?

Treating any overreach by Israel-critical voices as an opportunity to leap in and secure through trickery some kind of implicit endorsement for what Israel has actually been doing in Gaza and Lebanon is deeply unhelpful. I’d go as far as saying this behavior is symbiotic with the antisemitism.

Okay, but stop and think for a second. Why THIS specific phrase? Has Israel been defending itself the last few years, or doing things that extend considerably beyond “defense”? Asking candidates to ritually affirm this idea despite events on the ground is a trick infected to back them into a corner.

If the response from centrists to a prominent Arab American endorsing Kamala Harris in 2024 despite her conceding nothing on Gaza or not endorsing Kamala Harris in 2024 is the same in both instances it sort of gives away the gams about what the problem is.

Whenever I see one of rowling's asinine posts, I go back to thinking about the epilogue with the rich aunt in Arundhati Roy's god of small things.

I have a lot of views that I'm basically entirely convinced are correct, but I'm often uncertain that they're also all consistent with each other (or under what interpretation they would be). That's an underappreciated, common issue people tend to discount in criticism of others.