Mary Margaret McCabe

What links Jeffrey Epstein and Keir Starmer’s government? A thick seam of contempt | Nesrine Malik We’re often told the PM is a ‘decent’ man. But in appointing Peter Mandelson he chose political convenience over doing right by trafficked women and girls, says Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik

What links Jeffrey Epstein and Keir Starmer’s government? A thick seam of contempt | Nesrine Malik

“Female victims, the law, the public, are all remote and potentially treacherous things that need to be kept as far as possible from infringing on this vast, self-contained and sophisticated reciprocal system of power.” Brilliant. And the truth.

I've been singing this to myself all day

How do you legislate to make those with power respect those without it? The reporting of the Epstein scandal has given the women no voice. Try the small remedies. Listen to others (don’t just wait your turn). Censure those who interrupt. Call out the use of physical presence to establish power…

PM says he knew when giving Mandelson US job he had kept ties with Epstein after conviction Starmer defends ambassador appointment, saying he was lied to ‘repeatedly’ about extent of contact between pair

Will Starmer and McSweeney really survive this? And the 'one rotten apple/we didn't know much' is a rotten, empty defence in face of the extensive networks of so many in or with power selling their souls (if they had any) for girls, women, money, trips. So shallow
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

‘It’s an absolute bloodbath’: Washington Post lays off hundreds of workers Former Post executive editor blasts owner Jeff Bezos’s ‘sickening efforts to curry favor’ with Trump

Bigger things going on today i know but watching Bezos buy, wreck, and now basically gut a media institution at a time when America really needs a free press is just such a grotesque waste. If you don’t know how to run it, sell it to someone who can www.theguardian.com/media/2026/f...

This.

Don't think I've ever felt as sick reading a newspaper story as I have looking at this morning's Epstein coverage. Just the open amorality of all the powerful people involved for so long.

Lebedev is still a Lord...

I think there is a long shopping list of small things like these which might change the position of victims in ways that matter, in a timescale that is not trivial. Talking more about it, even on BlueSky! , makes a tiny difference. Perhaps. As I say, happy to talk more in real life!

You may think this is too ‘soft’ and you may be right. But calling out abuses of power as they occur in public is a beginning. Ditto repudiating the currency of complicit gossip in institutions. The casual violence of inappropriate touching often goes unremarked by the men in the room: call it.

Yes agreed. If what you have in mind is ways to change the situation in law, I am not sure I can offer anything at all (the present difficulties of the CJS cause agonies all over the place as I have seen). But there are ways to change the conversation, and doing that may change a good deal.

I completely agree! The obligation to stand up and be counted is vital; we just disagree about how… I worry that creating victims out of the perpetrators just may make things worse. But I concede that standing up and being counted *alone* is terrifying, and often power wins anyway.

It is horribly slow and cruel for individuals. And shameful, I regret to say. Giselle Pelicot had it right, I think — shame needs to change sides. There are perhaps ways to do that that do not allow putative offenders to claim victimhood, nor allow genuine victims to be created anew.

What means would those be? In universities things are better than they were, but still, as everywhere, power exploits. And the powerful are adept at creating themselves as victims. But perhaps publishing gives them too much of a pretext? Then the silencing starts up all over again.

The formal — institutional or legal — means for redress are so lamentably either missing or impossibly slow. I am not at all sure that publication is the way round that ( although I do see the argument to do so) rather than other ways of fixing what I called the silencing of putative victims.

Thanks: and very happy to talk about this further in discussion. Yes of course in good faith. And yes you did only talk about guilty men in one context. My intervention was simply to draw attention to the problems with that, and then to reflect further on how to deal with the dismal fact that …

The point here is about the language in which truths are expressed. Silencing is an injustice. It is important, in giving those who suffer a voice, not to give those who do the silencing *any* ammunition against them or their advocates, including the measures of counter-suing. End.

But then it becomes more and more important that the language we use to discover what has happened be as careful as possible. Blurring those outlines does not help the silenced. Happy to talk about truth any time, including the strange legal notion that truth is exactly what a court has said, but …

…a process which itself makes heard the voices of those silenced. Bullies work in the grey areas, and it is important that they do not find refuge in language which is *in the context* falsifiable. You are right that most of these cases are rushed out of sight. That in itself does the silencing 3/?

Further— as I have implied — I suffered (long ago!) from such men. And the silencing that went with it is still familiar. I know how hard that is, and how having the names of such men made public would have helped me then. My concern is that using the expression ‘guilty’ preempts a process….2/?

Your article uses the expression ‘said to be’ repeatedly. But your first comment speaks of ‘guilty men’. The elision is there — in a context that talks about ‘law’ ( as in ‘Good Law’, a project I support) the expression ‘guilty’ invokes just that context. 1/?

I know well how horrific sexual harassment is, and how hard to find words and courage to say what has happened. Where power is uneven, the victim’s voice may be inaudible. But will eliding the distinction between what is alleged and what has been decided in a court help her or those who come after?

The Melania movie is an American obscenity The vapid, corruption-soaked film, which celebrates the myth of the "good immigrant," is more revelatory than it seems.

"What a uniquely American obscenity to hear this woman employ the language of shared humanity, as the Trump administration kills Americans and systematically kidnaps immigrants and their kids."

Read @inaeoh.bsky.social on "Melania."

Really weeping for the patriarchy….

How Kenya’s jailhouse lawyer turned a life sentence into a legal career behind bars After being incarcerated for murdering her partner, Ruth Kamande studied the legal system to understand her own case. Now she is fighting to reform Kenya’s laws

Brilliant story about what can be done to improve the lives of the incarcerated, with huge credit to www.justice-defenders.org
www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

‘Said to have’? Or ‘guilty of’? I am very much in favour of doing something about the way academic privilege can work and especially — having experienced it — about the way it can damage the academic career of the victim. But please can we do it by the legal book?

Republican senators join calls for fuller investigation into Minneapolis killing Trump says his administration is

GOP senators, governor call for full investigation into ICE murder www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c3...

They murdered a nurse who cared for military veterans & then called him a terrorist.