Representative Ilhan Omar is the latest target in a trend of conservatives attacking women of color.
All posts by nedhamson
Beware those who, like Ukip’s leader, excuse lies and rape threats as ‘satire’ | Matthew d’Ancona

As the political temperature soars, those who seek to govern Britain have a responsibility to speak with care
In what moral universe is the statement “I wouldn’t even rape you” categorised as “satire”? For this is how – in an interview on Sunday with the BBC’s Andrew Marr – Gerard Batten, Ukip’s leader, described a tweet sent to the Labour MP Jess Phillips in 2016 by Carl Benjamin, now one of his party’s principal candidates in the European elections.
According to Batten, Benjamin is a “classical liberal”, “not a bad person”, “a proponent of free speech” and “wasn’t actually making a literal statement”. And there we were, thinking that he was just a vile misogynist, using social media to declare whether, in his opinion, a member of parliament should be raped or not.
MPs tell Nancy Pelosi of antisemitism claims in Labour party
Unless you rubber stamp Israel’s foreign and Palestinian polities, you are open to question?

Powerful US Democrat meets ex-Labour MPs to discuss why they left the party and Brexit
The senior US Democrat Nancy Pelosi met three former Labour MPs on Sunday and discussed their concerns about antisemitism in the party before a meeting with the party’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn.
The House Speaker said she had met Mike Gapes, Chris Leslie and Ian Austin “to hear their perspective on Brexit, why they left the Labour party, and the importance of standing unequivocally against antisemitism wherever it is found”.
Trump fixed on sanctuary city idea amid opposition and doubts over legality
When he starts wearing little boy pants to go with his little boy tantrums!

Consternation over move meant to exact revenge on Democrats sees House committee chairs dismiss Trump’s claim
Donald Trump appears determined to send migrants arrested at the southern border to “sanctuary cities” around the US, a scheme meant to exact revenge on his Democratic foes, despite fierce political opposition and doubts over the legality of such a move.
Related: Buttigieg v Pence: Indiana politicians put faith on the election front line
Bernie Sanders Accuses Liberal Think Tank of Smearing Progressive Candidates
He is setting his supporters against other Democrats? Russian cyber-warriors job just made easier… The Vermont senator’s criticism of the Center for American Progress threatens to inflame the ideological divisions that roiled the Democratic Party in 2016.
Trump wishes ‘no ill will’ with Tweet on Muslim lawmaker: White House
Ilhan Omar’s 9/11 comments spark more false outrage — and expose anti-Muslim bias
On April 12, 1997 I received a call from my brother, Private First Class Tayyib M. Rashid, a newly minted U.S. Marine. He had called to tell us he had just graduated from boot camp. Ours is an immigrant family, and his service was a source of pride and validation for all of us. We were Americans in a new sense now. This year I filed to run for Virginia Senate — an extension of the American dream my immigrant family and I have cherished. But the fact is that Muslims have been in the United States before the states were created — let alone united. Historians believe that 15 to 30 percent of Africans enslaved and trafficked here were Muslim. Yet, some 400 years later we’re still considered outsiders. Conservative outrage over Rep. Ilhan Omar’s recent comments at a civil rights banquet hosted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) exemplify this exclusion. Speaking about the need for strong civil rights protections, especially for Muslim Americans, Omar said: “CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something, and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.”
Source: Ilhan Omar’s 9/11 comments spark more false outrage — and expose anti-Muslim bias
gallusrostromegalus: the-awkward-turt: cyanocoraxx: with summer coming fast i just wanna share a…
via Sophia, NOT Loren!
with summer coming fast i just wanna share a psa on wasps and why they’re good too.
– they do serve a purpose in the ecosystem. wasps are vital predators of aphids and blackflies. with no predation,
one cabbage aphid could cover our planet in 822 million tonnes of bugs
because they’re so fertile, as estimated by zoologist mark carwardine.
not only do wasps eat for themselves, but they need to provide for their
grubs too, so that’s even more aphids getting picked off every day. parasitic wasps of the family trichogrammatidae are used in
horticulture for biological control of pests. trichogramma galloi is
used to control sugarcane borers and encarsia formosa is used to control
whitefly, a pest of tomato, cucumber, aubergine and strawberry. on some
farms they even replace chemical pesticides.
– they are effective pollinators with some species contributing
massively to the maintenance of plant populations.
there are over 800 species of fig tree and each one has its own specific
fig wasp. without one another, neither the fig nor fig wasp can
complete their
life-cycle – a clear example of co-evolution that has been successful
for over 60 million years. Figs are a keystone species in
tropical regions worldwide – their fruit supports the diets of at least
1,274 mammals and birds, meaning that the extinction of fig wasps would
therefore be
catastrophic in tropical ecosystems. furthermore,at least 100 orchid species rely on european wasps and common wasps for
pollination.
– paper wasps and potter wasps make amazing artists. they can construct flawless nests made of wood and create stunning miniature pot nests out of nothing but mud and saliva. in one amazing case, a colony of paper wasps constructed a rainbow-coloured nest using coloured sheets of paper as shown on the right. (menchetti 2016)
– wasps are socially intelligent. not only can paper wasps recognise each other by the colour patterns on their faces, but they can still do so after at least one week apart. (sheehan and tibbetts 2008) european wasps can learn to recognise human faces. despite having no evolutionary reason for doing so, they construct holistic representations of complex images to remember a specific human face. (avarguès-weber et al 2018) sand wasps tend to two or three chambers each day. each chamber is in a
different location and each larva is at a different developmental
stage. it was found that they learn the configuration of landmarks
around each concealed chamber in order to find them. this means that the
wasp learns where the chambers are and which action is needed at each.
(baerends 1939)
– the world’s smallest known insect is a fairy wasp! at only 139-240 micrometres long, dicopomorpha echmepterygis is smaller than some paramecium and amoeba species. the fairy wasp family also contains the smallest flying insect, kikiki huna. adult lifespans are very short, only lasting for a few days. several species are used as biological pest control agents. some species are even aquatic, using their wings as tiny paddles to swim around.
– social wasps are frequent models for batesian mimicry and müllerian mimicry. this means that non-stinging insects use wasps as a base to appear threatening to predators. their presence thus changes how other insects evolve. even bees such as the nomad bee have evolved to mimic wasps. (yellowjacket wasp on the left, clearwing moth on the right.)
Thank you thank you thank you!
Wasps are such important regulators of plant pests that some plant species will release a chemical message to summon nearby wasps when they are being heavily eaten by pests.
Wasps are friends just as much as bees!!
Look I got stung in the face yesterday but I ain’t even mad about it because as much as this sucks, having a pest free garden and not having my house doused in chemicals is super rad.
How The Rats Were Fucked And Where It Got Us
via Sophia, NOT Loren! 
Russia and their alt-right collaborator Julian Assange worked to suppress the Clinton vote, and there’s some evidence that it was effective:
The Twitter database shows the impact. The tweets sent from Russia, cloaked to look as though they came from Americans, included: “Bernie Sanders looks to black voters to boost his underdog campaign”; “Hillary Clinton’s summer of drama creates openings for Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden”; and “I’m for Bernie all the way!”
Then, in July 2016, WikiLeaks released emails from the Democratic National Committee that suggested the party machinery was tilted against Sanders. The DNC computers were later revealed to have been hacked by Russia.
The hack prompted Trump to stoke the divide among Democrats. “Leaked e-mails of DNC show plans to destroy Bernie Sanders,” Trump tweeted July 23, 2016. “ . . . On-line from Wikileakes [sic], really vicious. RIGGED.”
Russian trolls significantly increased their efforts to persuade Sanders supporters to oppose Clinton in the general election. One of their methods was to try to convince African Americans that they couldn’t trust her.
[…]
In an effort to demonstrate how inaccurate information makes its way into the mainstream, the survey asked respondents about three demonstrably false articles that had been widely distributed. A quarter of respondents believed the false story that Clinton was in “very poor health,” 10 percent believed that Trump had been endorsed by the pope, and 35 percent (including 20 percent of Obama supporters) believed that Clinton had approved weapons sales to Islamic militants, “including ISIS.”
The Ohio State team concluded in its soon-to-be-published final report that “belief in these fake news stories is very strongly linked to defection from the Democratic ticket by 2012 Obama voters.” Obama voters who recognized all three stories as false voted for Clinton at a rate of 89 percent, while 61 percent who believed one of the false stories voted for her, and 17 percent of those who believed two of the false stories supported Clinton.
The good news is that they have every incentive to do it again. It would help if our ostensibly liberal media doesn’t contribute dumber versions of the material generated by ratfuckers to the same extent this cycle.
Why I stand with Planned Parenthood
via Sophia, NOT Loren!
Multiple gynos refused me an IUD because “oh, it hurts so much to put in when you’ve had kids! We don’t want to put you in pain!!”
I was at a 7-9 on the pain scale regularly for my periods, and the docs were determined to make me run the gauntlet.
“But what about the pill?”
“Symptom-swap.”
“Have you thought about depo?”
“Mood drop.”
“And the patch?”
“Family history of breaking out in rashes.”
“Well, what about the nuva ring?”
“How will that NOT give me the same symptom-swap issues?”
“…”
“Look, I’m in pain so bad I wake up in the middle of the night. I’m in pain so bad I didn’t know I had appendecitis. I need SOMETHING.”
“Have you tried an ibuprofen protocol?”
“YES.”
“There are yoga poses that help with cramping.”
“I can’t uncurl from the ball of pain I’m in. How the hell am I supposed to hold position?”
“Well, how much caffeine do you drink? That could be a factor.”
“I have three cups of coffee a day and drink lots of water.”
And so on.
Then, one day, I made an appointment and went to Planned Parenthood.
“Yeah. Hi. I have incredibly painful periods that are fucking crippling me, and I need an IUD.”
“Okay. Do you have a chart of your periods I can look at?”
“Yup.”
“Okay. Looks like you have regular, heavy periods where the pain is worsening. Is that right?”
“Yup. And the fatigue. And the mood swings. And all of it.”
“Fatigue and mood swings, too?”
“Yup.”
“…is there any history of endometriosis in your family?”
“Yup. I’ve never been diagnosed, though. They say it takes a biopsy.”
“The biopsy can confirm tissue, but if you don’t have excess tissue, it doesn’t really help. You can have endo without excess tissue.”
“Okay. So, what are my options?”
“I suggest Mirena. Paraguard can make period symptoms worse even though it’s got no hormones while Mirena has a low-dose hormone that should help with all your pain and other issues. Here’s all the info on both of them. Here are models of both of them. Why don’t you take everything with you, read through it, then call if you have any questions? We can go ahead and schedule for insertion before you leave, and you can just call and say which type you want after you’ve read up. Is that okay?”
“…Yeah. That’s. That’s fine.”
“Do you have any questions right now?”
“Um, I got told a bunch I shouldn’t get an IUD because the insertion will hurt too much because I haven’t had kids.”
“Looking at the pain you’re usually in, I think you can handle it. It will definitely hurt, but it should only last about twenty seconds.”
“Twenty seconds?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been refused the best option for dealing with my symptoms because of TWENTY SECONDS?!”
“Sadly, we hear that a lot.”
Planned Parenthood treated me like a PERSON who was in pain, not a walking uterus bitching and moaning about womanly things. Planned Parenthood showed me respect and kindness and respected the knowledge I brought of my own medical history to the conversation. Planned Parenthood respected my autonomy where other doctors rarely had and paid attention when I explained why I felt the IUD was the best choice. Planned Parenthood showed me I mattered, and I want to show how much they matter to me.
^ the difference between a person’s symptoms being diminished versus believed.




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