Emily Yoffe on how to adjudicate claims of sexual misconduct

October 9, 2018 • 1:15 pm

Over at The Atlantic, Emily Yoffe, who used to do the Dear Prudence column for Slate (a feature I quite liked), has since moved on, reporting extensively for The Atlantic on sexual assault allegations, particularly in colleges. Like me, she’s worried about the lack of proper adjudication in colleges that arrived after Obama’s well-intentioned “Dear Colleague” letter, and removed many of what I see as the “rights” of accused people. This goes along with my discomfort about the #BelieveSurvivors hashtag, which takes accusations as equivalent to truth. (If a survivor of sexual assault has a credible story, especially in court, then yes, you’d believe them, but “survivors” are lately construed as those who claim to have been assaulted.)

Yoffe walks the line between fairness for both women and the accused; as she notes, she herself has been sexually assaulted more than once.  Her new article in The Atlantic, which you can get by clicking on the screenshot, is worth reading to calm the waters a bit.

Yoffe’s theme isn’t surprising, but is sufficiently inflammatory these days that even saying it makes you subject to accusations of sexism (For instance, calling attention to the deleterious effects of false accusations on men’s lives is verboten):

. . . when a woman, in telling her story, makes an allegation against a specific man, a different set of obligations kick in.

Even as we must treat accusers with seriousness and dignity, we must hear out the accused fairly and respectfully, and recognize the potential lifetime consequences that such an allegation can bring. If believing the woman is the beginning and the end of a search for the truth, then we have left the realm of justice for religion.

. . . Whether an investigation takes place at a school, at a workplace, or in the criminal-justice system, neutral fact-finding must apply, regardless of how disturbing we find the offense, the group identity of the accused, or the political leanings of those involved. History demonstrates that ascribing honesty or dishonesty, criminality or righteousness solely on the basis of gender or race doesn’t increase the amount of equity in the world.

She gives some examples of “the realm of religion”, which involves both parties, but she’s particularly incensed by the preconceived conclusions of Democrats. (I hasten to add here that yes, I found Christine Ford’s accusations credible, but would have voted against Kavanaugh anyway based on his record and his unhinged demeanor on view during the hearings. And Republicans had just as many preconceptions as Democrats.)

In one sense, the hearing was theater, not fact-finding, because except for a handful of undecided senators, the rest had already made up their mind about the accusation based entirely on their desire to either seat or thwart Kavanaugh. Republicans sought to discredit Ford and quash the airing of her story. President Donald Trump, in a speech Tuesday night in Mississippi, openly mocked her.

As for the Democrats, in a Senate floor speech the day before the hearing, Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York announced that it was unnecessary for her to hear Kavanaugh’s testimony. Gillibrand declared, “I believe Dr. Blasey Ford.” Many Democrats, in keeping with #BelieveSurvivors, are taking their certainty about Ford’s account and extrapolating it to all accounts of all accusers. This tendency has campus echoes, too: The Obama administration’s well-intended activism on campus sexual assault resulted in reforms that went too far and failed to protect the rights of the accused.

The impulse to arrive at a predetermined conclusion is familiar to Samantha Harris, a vice president at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (fire). Harris says that under Title IX, students who report that they are victims of sexual misconduct must be provided with staffers who advocate on their behalf. These staffers should “hear them out, believe them, and help them navigate the process,” she said, but added, “When the instruction to ‘believe them’ extends to the people who are actually adjudicating guilt or innocence, fundamental fairness is compromised.” Harris says that many Title IX proceedings have this serious flaw. As a result, in recent years, many accused students have filed lawsuits claiming that they were subjected to grossly unjust proceedings; these suits have met with increasingly favorable results in the courts.

One thing that puzzled me, though, was Yoffe’s reference to the British “scandal” in this bit, which I’ve put in bold:

We don’t even have to imagine the dangers of a system based on automatic belief—Britain recently experienced a national scandal over such policies. After widespread adoption of a rule that law enforcement must believe reports of sexual violation, police failed to properly investigate claims and ignored exculpatory evidence. Dozens of prosecutions collapsed as a result, and the head of an organization of people abused in childhood urged that the police return to a neutral stance. Biased investigations and prosecutions, he said, create miscarriages of justice that undermine the credibility of all accusers.

The legitimacy and credibility of our institutions are rapidly eroding. It is a difficult and brave thing for victims of sexual violence to step forward and exercise their rights to seek justice. When they do, we should make sure our system honors justice’s most basic principles.

When I asked Grania, she me a link to the article below, which gives the details. Click on the screenshot; I’ve put an excerpt below;

Police should refer to people who report rape as complainants rather than victims, senior legal figures said last night, amid warnings that the policy is undermining impartiality and leading to miscarriages of justice.

MPs and members of the judiciary have also called for an overhaul of the current guidelines which demand that officers automatically believe complainants from the outset.

Scotland Yard has ordered an urgent review of scores of sex abuse cases, including 30 which are about to go to trial, after it emerged that crucial material had been withheld from defence lawyers.

Two rape cases collapsed in the last week, because a detective constable in the Met’s Child Abuse and Sexual Offences (CASO) unit, failed to disclose texts messages undermining the complainants’ stories.

It raises concerns that dozens more cases could be thrown out by the courts and could potentially spark a raft of appeals by convicted rapists.

Here the police construed “survivors” as “those who complain,” which is the sense it’s been used with respect to the Kavanaugh hearings. Of course we should take every accusation seriously and investigate them (if the accuser so requests) to the limit of our ability. Just remember that “accuser” is not synonymous with “survivor.”

h/t: Grania

What’s with the blue hair?

October 9, 2018 • 10:30 am

This is just a question to dispel my ignorance. A lot of the kids, and some adults, are dyeing their hair fluorescent colors like blue, red, and green. I’ve seen it on both men and women.

Now I think it’s ugly, but that’s their choice, and I’m not going to hair-shame. Often the dyed-hair crowd comprises social-justice warriors, like the famous “Big Red” below, but I’m not sure that’s always true. My question is this.

What’s with the colored hair? Is it to show adherence to a particular ideology, or are there other reasons?

 

Palestinian murders two Israeli civilian coworkers; Palestinians celebrate by dispensing sweets and hailing the killer; Western media largely ignores the murders

October 9, 2018 • 9:15 am
Imagine, if you will, that Israeli civilians crept over the border into Palestine, where they’re not allowed to live, and killed Palestinian civilians by shooting or stabbing them, or hitting them with cars. Imagine, too, that Israelis rejoiced in the streets when this happened, and even handed out sweets to fellow Israelis in celebration. Finally, imagine that if the Israeli terrorists were caught and killed, or jailed in Palestine, the Israeli government would give their families a handsome stipend in reward for the murders.

If the world knew this to be true, Israel would (rightly) be excoriated even more than it is now. For rewarding the killing of civilians, and celebrating it in public, is beyond odious. But, in fact, this is exactly what happens in Palestine when Israeli citizens are subject to terrorist attacks and murders. Palestinians celebrate, hand out sweets, and then, in the infamous “pay for slay” program, Mahmoud Abbas and his PLO hand out generous stipends to the families of Palestinian terrorists who are jailed or killed by Israelis after terrorist attacks (see here and here).

This is exactly what happened two days ago when two Israelis who worked in a West Bank factory were shot by a Palestinian coworker (who also injured another Israeli), in a terrorist attack that has been praised by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah (see the New York Times report here). The gunman, Ashraf Naalwa, 23, is still on the loose, and the IDF is trying to track him down. He first handcuffed 28-year old-Kim Levengrond Yehezkel, a secretary, and shot her to death. He then shot another Israeli, not killing her, before dispatching Ziv Hagbi, 35, an accountant, with a shot to the head. All these people worked for the Alon Group, a waste-management company in the West Bank. Ironically, the company was well known for employing Palestinians and Israelis together, and for the (up to now) harmonious workspace.

Here are the dead:

Ziv Hagbi was also married and had children:

World reaction was predictable: Fatah (a part of the PLO, whose chairman is Abbas, also head of the Palestinian Authority) said this, blaming the incident on Israeli policy:

On the official Facebook page of Abbas’ Fatah Movement, a Fatah official blamed Israel for the murders, stating that “Israel… is incapable of protecting anyone that steals the Palestinian land” and announced that no Israeli is safe until the Palestinian people gain “its rights in its homeland.” Israel, he said, uses “terror and murder,” while he himself coined yesterday’s killing of two Israeli civilians an “operation.” [Official Fatah Facebook page, Oct. 7, 2018]

Other Palestinian organizations chimed in:

The terror organization Hamas called the murders “a heroic operation” and a “natural response to the Israeli occupation’s crimes.” The terror organization Islamic Jihad also justified the attack as “natural,” and added that “the settlements are a legitimate target for people of the resistance.” The movement also called for more attacks, encouraging people to “carry out intifada against the settlement terror, until its removal and the liberation of the West Bank from the settlements and the settlers.” [Ma’an, independent Palestinian news agency, Oct. 7, 2018]

While both the Washington Post and New York Times have reported on the story, the initial Times headline gave accurate details of the incident but then carried a headline that cast some doubt on the story (they changed the headline, but if the first report was accurate, why the headline?):

I find no mention of this killing in Salon, Slate, or HuffPo, though it does appear in Breitbart, the Daily Wire, and The Daily Mail.  But of course had it been an Israeli who killed two Palestinian civilians, it would have been everywhere.

You won’t find many left-wing bloggers dealing with this. Indeed, the screenshot below (click on it to go to article) shows three other UK sites that have ignored the incident as well as a recent and similar attack:

It’s especially bad because, as usual, Palestinians handed out sweets in the street to celebrate the killings. This is disgusting and reprehensible behavior, but unfortunately ubiquitous in Palestine. (See other pictures of Palestinians celebrating terrorism by giving out sweets here.) The Palestine-loving Left ignores this behavior as part of the racism of low expectations. But of course if Israelis did it, or rewarded the killing of civilians, it would be all over the media.

 

If Naalwa is caught, as he almost certainly will be, his family will get lots of money (see here, here, here, and here for descriptions of the “pay for slay” program (aka “The Martyrs Fund”) of the PLO, which is subsidized by foreign donations that free the PLO to use its own money for paying “martyrs”.

The celebration of the murders by Abbas’s organization and by Hamas, and the payment of stipends to Palestinian murderers who are caught or killed, does nothing less than encourage further murders, as does the religiously-promoted notion that one achieves “martyrdom” by killing Jews. (The PLO stipends are given out to Palestinians who kill Jews, Jewish tourists, and even non-Jewish American tourists in Israel.

When I posted a notice about this on my personal Facebook page, decrying the hypocrisy that celebrates all that is Palestine while demonizing all that is Israel, and that also ignores these nefarious Palestinian deeds and policies, I got a comment typical of many American liberals (poor grammar and spelling were in the original comment):

Am I supposed to believe that the thousands of Palestinian families that have be killed by the IDF are of no value by comnparison with these people? That is the most blatantly racism possible.

This, my friends, is the racism (or bigotry if you will) of low expectations. This kind of belief means that any killing of Israeli civilians can be justified. (I said nothing in my original post about the value of Palestinian lives.) Just say that “the IDF kills civilians” (it tries desperately to avoid doing that, by the way), and you’re home free: any Palestinian terrorism and murder can be justified by saying “Israel does it too.”

I am no diehard booster of Israeli policy, and I favor a two-state solution (not the one Palestinian state envisioned by groups like the BDS movement), but I am sickened by the hypocrisy of the British and American Left, who resolutely ignore officially sponsored or remunerated Palestinian terrorism and murder of civilians.

Oh, and please don’t bother to comment if you want to say that these two Israelis had it coming because of their government’s policy. That is a monstrous attitude—just as monstrous as it would be to justify the deliberate killing of Palestinian civilians by Israeli terrorists because of the PA and Hamas’s policies.

 

h/t: Malgorzata

Readers’ wildlife photos

October 9, 2018 • 7:45 am

Be sure to send me photos, but please not between this Thursday and a week from Friday, as I’ll be in Croatia then.

Today’s swell photos of birds (and a squirrel as lagniappe) are from reader A. W. Savage, whose comments and IDs are indented.

Here are some photos from a few years back, all taken during a holiday spent in the area around Naples in Florida. The first two are of Loggerhead Shrikes (Lanius ludovicianus), perched out in the open, probably looking for prey.

Next, a Carolina Wren (Thryothorus ludovicianus). The bird was singing loudly and took no notice as we crept up closer to get a better view.

The next five photos were all taken at Corkscrew Swamp, a wonderful reserve with boardwalks to let you thread your way amongst the swamp cypress trees without getting your feet wet! They are, in order, a Painted Bunting (Passerina ciris), a Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus), a Wood Stork (Mycteria americana), a Tricoloured Heron (Egretta tricolor) and a Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus).

Finally, knowing your fondness for squirrels, here’s an unusual one, photographed in a small stand of trees not far from the entrance to Corkscrew Swamp. It’s a Sherman’s Fox Squirrel (Sciurus niger shermani), a subspecies of Fox Squirrel found mostly in Florida and Georgia, in fire-prone areas of longleaf pine and wiregrass, especially around sandhills.  The colour is very variable, but this one was a most attractive gingery hue underneath and dark on the back. They are also very large squirrels. It was much bigger, to my eyes, than the common American Grey Squirrels now infesting most of the British Isles, or our native Red Squirrel. It appeared to be nearly three feet from the tip of its nose to the tip of its tail and bulkier to match.

 

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

October 9, 2018 • 6:45 am

It’s Tuesday, the Cruelest Day, and October 9, 2018: National Dessert Day as well as World Post Day, commemorating the anniversary of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) which began in Switzerland in 1874. Before that, international delivery between two countries required a separate treaty and arrangements between those countries. The UPU, peace be upon them, has obviated all that.

On this day in 768, Caloman I and Charlemagne were crowned as kings of the Franks. And on October 9, 1582, according to Wikipedia, “Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar, this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.” The day does not exist!  On this day in 1701, the antecedent of Yale University, called “The Collegiate School of Connecticut” was chartered in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.  On this day in 1874, the General Postal Union (the same as the UPU) was created by the Treaty of Bern.  On October 9, 1919, the Cincinnati Reds won the World Series, but, in the “Black Sox Scandal”, it was because members of the Chicago White Sox took money to lose the Series on purpose. While none of the players were convicted in court, eight of them, including “Shoeless Joe” Jackson, were permanently barred from baseball.

On October 9, 1969, the U.S. National Guard was called out to control demonstrations and crowds protesting the trial of the “Chicago Eight” that began September 24.  If you were alive then, how many of the eight can you name? (I got six). On this day in 1981, capital punishment was abolished in France.  On this day in 1986, the original production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical The Phantom of the Opera opened in London. It became London’s second longest-running musical, and can you name the first? On October 9, 2006—a day that will live in infamy—North Korea conducted its first nuclear test.  Finally, on this day six years ago, the Pakistani Taliban tried and failed to assassinate the activist schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai (Nobel Laureate)

Notables born on October 9 include Camille Saint-Saëns (1835), Alfred Dreyfus (1859), Max von Laue (1879, Nobel Laureate), Aimee Semple McPherson (1890), Horst Wessel (1907), Jill Ker Conway (1934, died this year), John Lennon (1940), Jackson Browne (1948), David Cameron (1966), and we can’t leave out Bella Hadid (1996), whose video on Nike shoes (below) always cracks me up. Rich girl as gangsta! Sex for shoes!

“If homeboy is coming through with these, it’s quiet for him. But if he comes through in like, these, you got some Air Maxes out here, you got some Jordans, homeboy’s gonna, like … get it.”

(See the memes here.)

Those who died on October 9 include only one person of note: Oskar Schindler (1974).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is hungry (surprise!):

Hili: As the shadow moves my hunger is growing inside me.
A: Has it grown much?
Hili: Half a meter.
In Polish:
Hili: W miarę jak się przesuwa cień we mnie narasta głód.
Ja: I bardzo już narósł?
Hili: O pół metra.
Courtesy of reader Nilou, here are the parts of a duck. Note especially the crown, “nail,” and speculum. There will be a quiz. (James, by the way, was still here yesterday, waiting in vain for Honey. . . .)
Grania sent this, commemorating a birthday that was yesterday (watch the video; he’s singing through the guitar!):

A tweet from reader Blue, showing amazing feline paternal care:

https://twitter.com/videocats/status/1049004393880637440

Tweets from Heather Hastie. About the first one she says, “We used to do this when we were kids.”

https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens/status/1048529806609055744

Her take on this: “It’s a dog, but it’s a GOOD one!”

From Ann German, fancy bricklaying:

https://twitter.com/ZonePhysics/status/1047689488191967232

Tweets from Grania. The HappyCow machine resembles the “self-hugging machine” that Temple Grandin built for herself.

These poor dudes!

The Russian regime is odious, but this still surprises me:

Tweets from Matthew. This first video of reunited swans (who mate for life) is ineffably sweet:

https://twitter.com/serenepoker/status/1049140930547261440

The big one probably weighs at least four times as much as the small one:

https://twitter.com/MakoPeggy/status/1049226216992112641

“I understand.”

No comment.

https://twitter.com/ThatIgboBooy/status/1048787089180045314

 

Trump apologizes?

October 8, 2018 • 7:39 pm

When I saw the header below in my email inbox, I thought, “Whaaaaat? Trump apologizes? He never apologizes!” (I assumed he was apologizing to Christine Ford for what he just said about her, but that would be out of character.) I was flummoxed.

When I clicked on the email to open it, though I found typical Trumpian blather. As with his former advisor Steve Bannon, Trump never apologizes for anything he’s done wrong or said wrong. Sure enough, here’s the content:

Well, Kavanaugh was found “credible” by Trump and the Republicans (though not by me), but really, an apology? Why not apologize to Christine Ford for her ordeal, at least in being grilled by the Senate, for getting death threats that drove her from her home,  for being demonized by the Right for the rest of her life, and, especially for Trump himself making fun of Ford’s testimony in public the other day.

The man is. . . well, you know what I think. If you look in the dictionary under “odious,” you’ll find his picture.

 

Tom Nichols explains why he’s leaving the GOP to become an Independent

October 8, 2018 • 1:45 pm

Tom Nichols is (or was) a “never Trumper” Republican who is a professor at the U.S. Naval War College and teaches at the Harvard Extension School. (Wikipedia also informs us that he’s “a five-time undefeated Jeopardy champion.”) He writes a lot for The Atlantic, and in its pages this week he tells us why he’s leaving the GOP (he left once before in 2012, but now is leaving for good). He’s not becoming a Democrat, but an Independent; still, this shows that some Republicans can change their minds.

And the article has a lot to say about both parties, with Nichols not leaving the Democrats unscathed. Click on the screenshot to see what he said:

His reasons are multifarious, but center on the Kavanaugh affair, which made Nichols realize that the GOP has no substantive goal beyond power itself.

It was Collins, however, who made me realize that there would be no moderates to lead conservatives out of the rubble of the Trump era. Senator Jeff Flake is retiring and took a pass, and with all due respect to Senator Lisa Murkowski—who at least admitted that her “no” vote on cloture meant “no” rather than drag out the drama—she will not be the focus of a rejuvenated party.

. . . Politics is about the exercise of power. But the new Trumpist GOP is not exercising power in the pursuit of anything resembling principles, and certainly not for conservative or Republican principles.

Free trade? Republicans are suddenly in love with tariffs, and now sound like bad imitations of early-1980s protectionist Democrats. A robust foreign policy? Not only have Republicans abandoned their claim to being the national-security party, they have managed to convince the party faithful that Russia—an avowed enemy that directly attacked our political institutions—is less of a threat than their neighbors who might be voting for Democrats. Respect for law enforcement? The GOP is backing Trump in attacks on the FBI and the entire intelligence community as Special Counsel Robert Mueller closes in on the web of lies, financial arrangements, and Russian entanglements known collectively as the Trump campaign.

And most important, on the rule of law, congressional Republicans have utterly collapsed. They have sold their souls, purely at Trump’s behest, living in fear of the dreaded primary challenges that would take them away from the Forbidden City and send them back home to the provinces. Yes, an anti-constitutional senator like Hirono is unnerving, but she’s a piker next to her Republican colleagues, who have completely reversed themselves on everything from the limits of executive power to the independence of the judiciary, all to serve their leader in a way that would make the most devoted cult follower of Kim Jong Un blush.

. . . But whatever my concerns about liberals, the true authoritarian muscle is now being flexed by the GOP, in a kind of buzzy, steroidal McCarthyism that lacks even anti-communism as a central organizing principle. The Republican Party, which controls all three branches of government and yet is addicted to whining about its own victimhood, is now the party of situational ethics and moral relativism in the name of winning at all costs.

These are truefacts, but, as I said, Nichols doesn’t spare the Democrats. And I have to admit that, as a registered Democrat, I was embarrassed at my own party’s behavior at the hearings, especially that of Dianne Feinstein, who seems to be in her dotage. For my party, too, it seemed to be more about getting revenge for their own failed Supreme Court nomination than about getting at the truth. It was grandstanding. Here’s Nichols, and I agree with him here on the Democrats’ behavior during the hearing.

As an aside, let me say that I have no love for the Democratic Party, which is torn between totalitarian instincts on one side and complete political malpractice on the other. As a newly minted independent, I will vote for Democrats and Republicans whom I think are decent and well-meaning people; if I move back home to Massachusetts, I could cast a ballot for Republican Governor Charlie Baker and Democratic Representative Joe Kennedy and not think twice about it.

But during the Kavanaugh dumpster fire, the performance of the Democratic Party—with some honorable exceptions such as Senators Chris Coons, Sheldon Whitehouse, and Amy Klobuchar—was execrable. From the moment they leaked the Ford letter, they were a Keystone Cops operation, with Hawaii’s Senator Mazie Hirono willing to wave away the Constitution and get right to a presumption of guilt, and Senator Dianne Feinstein looking incompetent and outflanked instead of like the ranking member of one of the most important committees in America.

Well, I won’t dwell on the Democrats’ missteps, as at least they were on the right side. And I’ll still keep voting for them. But if they ever want to regain power in at least one branch of the government, they have to clean up their act. Who’s running that railroad?

Lesson: there are some Republicans capable of reason and adhering to principle. They’re just very few.