“The encampment helped pressure the admin at Evergreen State College!”

From that link:

‘…the college has committed to not approving study abroad due to safety reasons in “Israel, Gaza, or the West Bank,” continuing by saying “Evergreen will not approve study abroad programs to regions where our students are denied entry based on their identity as Palestinians or Jews.” This means that while Palestinians are denied the right to return to their own country, no study abroad programs [there?] will be approved.’

Great! Actually going to a place and experiencing it for oneself is a terrible way to learn! Students can learn all they need to know about the region from eliminationist speakers, like the ones student protest leaders at elite universities have recently invited to their campuses (or have been themselves).

Great work, Evergreen students! Depriving your future selves (and Evergreen’s future students) from studying in the region will certainly enhance your (and their) educations.

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Demanding UW cut ties with Boeing? Good luck; enjoy camping until the quarter ends.

@1. WAR IS PEACE
You would think a Big Brother loving double plus good duckspeaker such as yourself would grasp the irony of quoting Orwell.

“…and stop repressing Palestinian students and faculty.”

Not going make the obvious Monty Python joke. Not going make the obvious Monty Python joke. Not going make the obvious Monty Python joke.

“As if the City Seattle Council cannot get any worse…”

Glad to know that the definition of hyperbole will have a picture of Ms. Krieg.

One of my 'favorite' recent learnings was that the popularity of keffiyehs amongst American hipsters has cost Palestinians living on the West Bank their jobs: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/06/your-intifada-made-china/

Congrats everyone.

@4 Great call out on MP and my exact question. How exactly are Palestinian students and faculty being repressed? Last time I checked no one is limiting their ability to do anything unlike their fellow Jewish students who are being stopped from accessing public buildings and the education they are paying for in other institutions. I think the UW will leave the camp alone as long as it stays as is but the minute is crosses the line (which seems likely as there are now black hooded figures roaming around) and they start discriminating against other students or try to "take over" a building as some of their other comrades have done them by all means the police should be sent to clear this out.

"Now, the Governor just has to sign it (she likely will) and Arizona will go back to having a 15-week ban. Don’t get me wrong, that sucks too."

and what exactly is the right number? If look around globally almost all countries have a limit on abortion with exceptions for certain things.

@6 The obvious standard would be at fetal viability (~20-24 weeks), with exceptions for later abortions as necessary to preserve the life/health of the mother and/or if the fetus is nonviable. Weirdly, that was more or less the standard pre-whackadoodle-Supreme-Court-majority. So it's not like it's an unfamiliar standard.

@6: Repressed, you know, like the student occupiers of Hamilton Hall at Columbia U. not getting free meals delivered.

“and what exactly is the right number? If look around globally almost all countries have a limit on abortion with exceptions for certain things.”

No need to leave the United States. Vermont allows no restrictions upon abortion at any stage of pregnancy, and funds medically-necessary abortions via Medicaid. After the Dobbs decision, the citizens of Vermont amended their state’s Constitution, to forbid any future legislative changes to these rights.
(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Vermont#:~:text=In%20November%202022%2C%20voters%20overwhelmingly,include%20protections%20for%20abortion%20rights.)

4 - I need a refresher. Which Monty Python scene was that

Dr. Pangloss, Dr. Pangloss
Dr. Pangloss, Dr. Pangloss
Dr. Pangloss, Dr. Pangloss
Oooooooooooooooooooo
Dr. Pangloss!

(Dr. Pangloss! Dr. Pangloss!)

@9 Oh FFS. so you're going to no abortions no way no how because you can't define exactly to a second when an individual fetus is viable? Awesome. And typical of you to move the goalposts.

Per NIH, chances of fetal survival are around 10% at 23 weeks, with substantial chances of lifelong disability. Survival at 24 weeks is ~50%. And "viability should be understood in terms of both biological and technological factors" since fetal survival at any gestational age depends heavily on the level of health care available. Even more so at the extreme end of viability.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11753511/#:~:text=In%20the%20United%20States%20viability,of%20Perinatal%20Medicine%2C%201998).

Of course, gestational age is also an inexact science since it's measured from the beginning of the last period rather than from actual conception. But as you keep harping on in other threads, a clear legal standard is needed. That will almost certainly be defined by gestational age (informed by viability statistics) because that's the commonly used measure.

It is beyond bullshit that my district narrowly averted corporate shill Tanya Woo from ousting Tammy Morales, and YET WOO GOT APPOINTED ANYWAY. Truly disgusting.

@10: The Constitutional Peasant, informing King Arthur he has ridden onto the territory of an “autonomous collective”:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t2c-X8HiBng

A few months ago I'd heard where some whiny GOP dolts were screeching about Dems who wanted to allow for "post-birth abortions." Obviously this is nothing but standard and utterly predictable histrionics on their part, and noone ever actually advocated for it. I gotta say though that the more I think about it, the more I think it's an idea worthy of consideration. Give women the right at least through their child's early years, and preferably until puberty sets in, by which time I think they'd have a pretty solid grasp on whether or not the kid's gonna be worth keeping around or not.

regressives
going full speed in reverse—
impressive!

@16 That's perilously close to Kristi Noem territory.

But yes, post-birth abortions has to be one of the more laughable talking points the GOP has come up with lately.

@9, @12: Simply do as Vermont did. No restrictions, Medicaid for medically-necessary abortions, no backsies.

Dobbs’ repeal of Roe left this up to each state. Elect the necessary legislators and governors, and get it done. No need to waste time arguing with a minority who believe answers to in-depth questions about human reproductive biology can be found in their Wonder-Bread translations of Bronze-Age fairy tales.

@7 that seems to in line with most countries who allow abortion. I don't think Roe specified that which allowed some states to allow abortion later and it lost a lot of people philosophically, in reality I don't think those cases occurred much, if at all. I'd love to see the Dems propose something like that in states that are creating more restrictions. It would be a winning strategy.

@8 I would hope you agree traveling to Vermont is not realistic for most people

@9 fetal viability is actually the standard here in WA state and I think its written rather well. Instead of setting an arbitrary number for everyone it's on a case by case basis. From the DOH website:

"Abortions are legal up to the point of fetal viability (as determined by a provider) or to protect the life or health of the pregnant individual"

@13 give it a rest. Woo barely lost that election in a heavily progressive district to an incumbent. She is qualified for the role. The only reason you and TS don't like her is because you don't agree with her politics. In any case you'll have your chance to vote against her in Nov but based on the challengers I've seen so far I get a sense you're going to be stewing about this for another 4 years.

@10- I keep being reminded of the Peoples’ Front of Judea. Looking forward to seeing “Boeing ite domum” written all over the quad.

@19: life begins before conception -- gametes are alive. Similarly, there is no question that a fertilized egg is alive. The important question is to when it becomes a person.

Our society considers it neither morally nor legally troubling to kill any number of things which are unquestionably alive; it is legal to eat a ham sandwich, or set a mouse-trap, or excise a tumor. That last one is of particular interest, because cancer cells have human DNA. Which means if your test for "is it a person?" is something like "does it have human DNA?" you would be forced to grant tumors the full rights of personhood. Why is a tumor not a person? I don't know, because it doesn't have a brain, or a nervous system, or moral agency, or... well, you get the idea.

@19 You should read up on all of the ways that people are neither one gender nor the other by birth and genetics. You act like it's black and white, but there are shades of gray all over even before dysphoria enters the chat.

I think the "demand" that the UW cut ties with Boeing is hilarious. Boeing and the UW have been cozy for a century. Thousands of UW alum have gone on to work for Boeing. Thousands of jobs in the Puget Sound are dependent on Boeing. Boeing coughed up a huge chunk of change for the Mechanical Engineering Building, and it looks like they are now building another building.

Boeing is no angel, that's for sure. But they're not going anywhere. That bed was made decades ago.

@27. Yeah, but Boeing has dropped the ball and is deploying defective aircraft. Maybe they should be divested from so they step their game up, geopolitics notwithstanding, and live up to that legacy instead of shitting the bed.

FYI-the Arizona repeal, by law, goes into effect 90 days after the AZ legislature session ends. This will probably be a couple of months from now. So the Civil War era law will still be in effect until then.

@29 Ah yes, so recognizing that there are at least 40 varieties of naturally-occurring intersex characteristics, some of which don't manifest until puberty, is indoctrination?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9355551/

Nature is nowhere near as binary as you think.

And at the bottom of it all, what does it matter to you? As long as you aren't in a care-or-romantic relationship, why does the particular genital configuration of another person matter to you?

Although I agree with you about the questionable business practices of the commercial division of Boeing, CDrizzle dear, that's an entirely different discussion than the products that the "defense" division of the company churns out. Products, it should be noted, that are presumably being used to help the Ukrainians in their fight against Russia. In the case of the commercial division, a return to the rigors of academia should be welcomed. Not only engineering but also business ethics and labor law.

Raindrop, you’re an idiot.

Yes, but Raindrop is OUR Idiot, Bmleon dear. We're all one big happy family here on the Slog.

@13: CM Mosqueda quit her job, so the remaining Council had to appoint her replacement. Why should (barely) half the voters in one single district get a veto over the entire Council’s choice? That doesn’t sound very democratic, now does it?

@22: Better yet, before you go, smoke some serious Island cannabis, and then upon arrival, belt out your best imitation of Bob Marley singing, “O Holy Zion!” Then the kaffiyeh-wearing crowd can explain to the cops how they felt ‘threatened’ by a stoner. ;-)

@37: A few years ago, a lifelong friend of mine had gender-reassignment surgery. She has since described the entire process required to bring her body to a point where it matches her gender, sufficiently so she can pass in public as a cis-female. The main point I learnt was not how many changes she had done, but how few. There are very few attributes about an adult human body which are strictly male or strictly female.

@37 Intersex is by definition neither wholly male nor wholly female.

@34 Your lack of understanding of biology is breathtaking. You cannot make a single unambiguous definition that will apply to all biological situations. Infinite diversity in infinite combinations and all that. You can, however set a standard based on viability, when a fetus could plausibly survive after birth. That standard will be somewhere in the the range of 20-24 weeks of pregnancy. Before 22 weeks, fetal survival is vanishingly rare. After 24 weeks, survival is relatively common. And yes, I believe that being able to survive independently (with medical assistance) is a perfectly reasonable way to determine when a fetus gains personhood. And gestational age is a fairly reasonable means of testing that, with some exceptions for severe diagnosable fetal and parental health issues later in pregnancy. And that gestational age is a reasonable standard to write a law around since it is, in fact, a standard.

To both of you: embrace the fact that biology is messy and gray.

@40 its less than half when you consider turnout was only around 40% for the 2023 election. Morales had 13,123 votes cast for her vs Woo's 12,720. The city of Seattle population is around 760K so that means TS and their fellow complainers think the choice of 1.7% of the city's population should somehow dictate who is eligible. By comparison 1.67% of the city preferred Woo, the difference between the two is statistically insignificant.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/02/israel-gaza-lies-western-backers

@43. You should really take a physiology class and study growth and development of the fetus. All precursor tissues differentiate based on exposure to hormones, but spring from the same base.

Also, there is no such thing as a "pure" science. If something is unfalsifiable, then by definition it is unscientific. Every scientific principle is an extremely refined functional placeholder approximation of reality, but its existential essence can never truly cross the asymptote of universal explanation. We are mere humans with a very limited resolution of perception of frequencies, waves, dimensions, and energy. Our best science is a myopic flashight shined upon a mere corner of a gargantuan cave of hidden truth.

‘Elp, I’m bein’ repressed!

“Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) have been issued a €214k fine by College for financial losses incurred by disruptive protests by the union throughout the year.”

(https://trinitynews.ie/2024/05/college-hits-students-union-with-e214k-fine-for-disruptive-protests/)

@43 Tell me you don't understand biology without telling me you don't understand biology. All kinds of weird stuff happens when life gets involved, from spontaneous morphological changes in plants (aka sports) that sometimes reverse themselves later to species that look completely different depending on where they grow (eg lodgepole pines and shore pines) to animals that defy categorization (eg platypus).

I remember learning about intersex in college and thinking it was nothing more than an interesting piece of scientific trivia that demonstrates the limits of classification. I never would have imagined decades later it would make bigots’ heads explode.

The irony is that intersex people are often forced into non-consensual sex reassignment surgeries and hormone treatments before they are old enough to know it’s happening. These treatments can cause loss of sexual sensation and sterility, the very concerns transphobes claim to worry about for trans youth, who are actively involved in their own, incremental and reversible medical care. But transphobes don’t care that intersex children are being medically transitioned against their will because it is being done to preserve the illusion that biological sex is binary and immutable.

Thanks, I’ll make a note of your concern but I’m going to keep calling them exactly what they are and not worry about offending them by accurately describing their beliefs.

Nitpicking over the precise definitions of words is the last bastion of the bigot. If you can’t defend your position on its merits you just accuse your opponents of using the wrong words as though that changes the moral stakes. I can omit transphobe from my comment but your position is still motivated by hatred and fear so I fail to see what is achieved by dancing around it. Your discomfort is not my problem.

I’m just calling it as I see it, but if you prefer I can chalk it up to ignorance combined with a general sense of attention-seeking hostility. We’re only talking about biological sex because you dragged “gender begins at conception” into a discussion about abortion and you got the reaction you were trolling for so you could try to be a better sport about it.

I didn’t even reference you in my first comment but you started @ing me defensively about accusations of transphobia that were never leveled at you. If you only brought it up because it’s a hot topic you could have just read my comment and moved on knowing it doesn’t apply to you. Needless to say you seem pretty prickly about it so maybe I was being too kind when I said you were just an ignorant, attention-seeking troll.