J.K. Rowling hits back at ‘backstabbing' Harry Potter actors who signed pro-trans letter
J.K. Rowling is standing firm in her views on the trans community despite growing backlash. Last week, a number of Harry Potter actors, including Eddie Redmayne, Paapa Essiedu, and Katie Leung, publicly signed a pro-trans open letter following the UK Supreme Court's decision to define "woman" and "sex" strictly in terms of biological sex. The move has reignited the ongoing debate as the author slammed the actors.
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Rowling did not mince her words as she supported the essay in public on X while making blistering remarks on her 'back-stabbing colleagues', adding that their act was 'motivated by fear.' She wrote on X, 'In light of recent open letters from academia and the arts criticising the UK's Supreme Court ruling on sex-based rights, it's possibly worth remembering that nobody sane believes, or has ever believed, that humans can change sex, or that binary sex isn't a material fact.'
She added, 'These letters do nothing but remind us of what we know only too well: that pretending to believe these things has become an elitist badge of virtue.'
In her long message on social media, the author continued, 'Some argue that signatories of these sorts of letters are motivated by fear: fear for their careers, of course, but also fear of their co-religionists, who include angry, narcissistic men who threaten and sometimes enact violence on non-believers; back-stabbing colleagues ever ready to report wrongthink; the online shamers and doxxers and rape threateners, and, of course, the influential zealots in the upper echelons of liberal professions.'
Somewhere in her note, she also commented that the 'court losses' against the trans community, 'are starting to stack up, meanwhile, 'women are fighting back and winning significant victories.' At the end, she called out the people who signed the pro trans letter, however, she did not drop any names, as reported by The New York Post. She wrote, 'I wonder if they ever ask themselves how they got here, and I wonder whether any of them will ever feel shame.'
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The open pro trans letter was decorated with more than 2,000 signatures that argued that the court's ruling 'undermines the lived reality and threatens the safety of trans, non-binary and intersex people living in the UK.' Redmayne, who starred in teh Harry Potter prequel franchise, The Fantastic Beasts, signed the letter. Leung, who was in the original Harry Potter series, was also one of the signatories. Essiedu also signed the letter and is set to play Severus Snape in the upcoming Harry Potter series on HBO.
Other British actors who were part of the signatories included Bella Ramsey, Nicola Coughlan and Joe Alwyn.
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Hindustan Times
8 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
‘Not contempt': SC refuses to quash Chhattisgarh's anti-Naxal law
The Supreme Court has dismissed a plea challenging the Chhattisgarh Auxiliary Armed Police Force Act, 2011, holding that its enactment by the state legislature does not amount to contempt of the court's previous order that outlawed the controversial Salwa Judum militia. While refusing to strike down the 2011 legislation, the top court, however, made it unequivocally clear that it is the constitutional duty of both the Centre and the Chhattisgarh government to ensure peace and rehabilitation for the people affected by violence in the region. 'We note that it is duty of the State of Chhattisgarh as well as the Union of India to take adequate steps for bringing about peace and rehabilitation to the residents of State of Chhattisgarh who have been affected by the violence from whatever quarter it may have arisen,' a bench of justices BV Nagarathna and Satish Chandra Sharma stated in its May 15 order, released recently. The bench noted that though the earlier order dated July 5, 2011 in the Nandini Sundar Vs State of Chhattisgarh case had directed the state to desist from using Special Police Officers (SPOs) in anti-Naxal operations, the 2011 Act did not violate or override that ruling, nor could the enactment of a law be equated to contempt of court. 'Any law made by the Parliament or a State legislature cannot be held to be an act of contempt of a Court, including this Court, for simply making the law…The passing of an enactment subsequent to the order of this Court by the legislature of the State of Chhattisgarh cannot, in our view, be said to be an act of contempt of the order passed by this Court,' held the bench. The bench added that the legislative action undertaken by the State was an exercise of its legitimate power under the Constitution. 'Every State Legislature has plenary powers to pass an enactment and so long as the said enactment has not been declared to be ultra vires the Constitution or, in any way, null and void by a Constitutional Court, the said enactment would have the force of law,' it said. Led by senior advocate Nitya Ramakrishnan, the petitioners — sociologist Nandini Sundar, historian Ramachandra Guha, former bureaucrat EAS Sarma, had argued that the enactment of the 2011 law was in contempt of the apex court's July 2011 judgment, which held that the practice of appointing tribal youth as SPOs and arming them to fight Maoists was unconstitutional. They contended that the new law merely gave legislative backing to an arrangement that had already been struck down by the court. However, the court noted that while the earlier directions in the Nandini Sundar judgment prohibited the use of SPOs for counter-insurgency operations and ordered disbanding of armed vigilante groups like Salwa Judum, the enactment of a new law by the state legislature could not, by itself, be equated to contempt. It added that the petitioners must mount an appropriate legal challenge if they sought to assail the validity of the 2011 law because the 'interpretative power of a constitutional court does not contemplate a situation of declaring exercise of legislative functions and passing of an enactment as an instance of a contempt of a court.' The region has witnessed a decades-old Maoist insurgency, marked by frequent clashes between security forces and armed rebels, and has claimed thousands of lives over the years, including those of civilians, security personnel, and insurgents. The present litigation arises out of the Supreme Court's landmark 2011 judgment that had declared the use of tribal civilians as SPOs to combat Maoist insurgency as unconstitutional and violative of human rights. The top court had categorically banned the use of SPOs, many of them minors, and ordered disbanding of private militias like Salwa Judum and Koya Commandos, terming their activities as 'unconstitutional'. In that order, the apex court directed the immediate cessation of using SPOs in any form of counter-insurgency operations, withdrawal of all firearms issued to SPOs, prosecution of those responsible for criminal acts committed under the aegis of Salwa Judum and NHRC and CBI probes into grave human rights violations, including alleged arson and killings in some identified districts in Chhattisgarh. However, soon after the 2011 verdict, the state government enacted the Chhattisgarh Auxiliary Armed Police Force Act, purportedly to legitimise the appointment of locals in auxiliary armed forces, prompting fresh litigation and a contempt plea by the petitioners, who argued that the enactment was an 'attempt to nullify' the Supreme Court's binding directions and that the state's move to reintroduce civilian combatants under a new statutory garb amounted to willful disobedience. They also flagged non-compliance with the court's directive to rehabilitate former SPOs, prosecute members of Salwa Judum for past atrocities, and investigate attacks on activists such as Swami Agnivesh, who was assaulted in 2011 while trying to visit affected villages. Rejecting these arguments, the bench held that enacting a law is a legislative act and must be challenged accordingly, not via contempt jurisdiction. It also took note of the Centre's and Chhattisgarh government's submission that they had complied with the directions issued in 2011 and had filed the requisite compliance reports. The Salwa Judum was a state-sponsored civil militia movement initiated in 2005 as a counter-insurgency strategy against Maoist rebels in southern Chhattisgarh. Comprising largely tribal youth armed with basic training and firearms, the movement rapidly became notorious for serious human rights abuses, including extra-judicial killings, sexual violence and forced displacement of villagers. The Salwa Judum was disbanded officially following the 2011 judgment.
Indian Express
15 minutes ago
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What Trump America needs to understand: A country is not a corporation
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Firms engaged in market-based competition play a 'zero-sum game' — one gains at the expense of the other. Disciplining errant firms has been accomplished by a combination of market creativity and intervention of anti-trust authorities, but it has been a hard task. Do nations jostle for competitive advantage on the global stage the same way that firms do locally? Krugman thinks not. International trade, significantly, is not a zero-sum game. According to him, 'If the European economy does well, it need not be at US expense; indeed, if anything a successful European economy is likely to help the US economy by providing it with larger markets and selling it goods of superior quality at lower prices.' Historically, that has been the case for all economic development, and most recently in East Asia. Global interdependence and the emergence of deeply integrated value chains are proof that trade increases the size of the global economic pie. The whole point of modern trade is not to impoverish either partner(s), it is to enrich both; or else why trade at all? Colonists engaged in coercive trade; today's trade is entirely voluntary. A popular phrase attributed to George Mallory, a British mountaineer of the 1920s, captures the core motivation behind mountaineering. Why do people climb mountains? 'Because they are there,' he is famously believed to have retorted. Monopolies exploit their power because it's there; CEOs have the clout along with the capacity to get away with it. Doing the same as a country — that is, flexing muscles on the global economic stage because you have power — is entirely different. Because modern trade is a matter of choice, no one holds a gun to and forces nations to trade. Blaming 'unfair' foreign competition, therefore, for trade deficits as Donald Trump has been relentlessly doing, is politically expedient but economically disingenuous. Are trade deficits the right measure of a country's competitiveness? Krugman ponders that competitiveness cannot simply be measured by staring at trade balances and their changes. If you do that, the implications are quite dangerous — they lead to harmful steps like trade wars to promote so-called competitiveness. Trade wars often make the situation worse. Evidence of the recent madness emanating from the US in the form of tariff impositions on countries that it runs a deficit with shows that contrary to expectations, the tariffs actually weakened the US dollar. It lost nearly 10 per cent of its value since January, with over half the decline in April. The tariffs also disrupted the bond market by triggering a sell-off in the US treasuries, spiking yields and challenging its safe-haven status. This volatility forced a temporary tariff pause, highlighting the bond market's power. Interestingly, on May 28, the US Court of International Trade struck down Trump's 'Liberation Day' tariffs, ruling that they exceeded presidential authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977. According to the verdict, these tariffs involved significant economic and political issues, requiring explicit congressional authorisation, which was absent. Poignantly, on the same day, Elon Musk officially quit his advisory role in the US administration, concluding his tenure at the Department of Government Efficiency. Even so, looming on the US horizon are inflation, recession and policy unpredictability. The Trump administration has already appealed the decision (it has been stayed by the appellate court) and the case may progress to the US Supreme Court, by which time data on the impact on the US trade deficit will be available. Economists refer to this lag as 'the J-curve effect', reflecting a nuance where financial markets adjust almost instantaneously to shocks, while goods markets adjust with a lag. In all likelihood, with the tariff retaliations we have witnessed from China, Canada, and Mexico among others, the US trade deficit could become worse. Own goal, anyone? Besides, the Triffin thesis suggests that the US must run trade deficits to provide the necessary dollars for global liquidity. So, if the US wishes to remain the hegemon and continue to enjoy the exorbitant privilege of printing dollars and importing goods and services for a song, it will need to run deficits. In fact, since 1971 when the US dollar was brusquely decoupled from gold by President Richard Nixon (the so-called 'Nixon shock'), effectively ending the gold standard and the Bretton Woods system, the US dollar has continued to meet the bulk of the global demand for liquidity. In only two years since 1973 has the US trade balance been positive. In this half-century, the US has been a most productive nation, innovation-intensive, 'competitive' and creative, enterprising and illustrious, all achieved in the presence of growing trade deficits. Blaming trade deficits for unemployment and low wages is therefore ineffective and, in many cases, unequivocally wrong, especially when they are caused by domestic factors. The US is a services-based economy — education, insurance, healthcare, banking, real estate, information technology, among other sectors contributing almost 80 per cent of GDP. Getting manufacturing back by erecting tariff walls is a futile scheme, destined to fail. The CEO of a country running economic policy must, therefore, distinguish between politically expedient rhetoric and the harms of making policy decisions based on careless arithmetic. The existence of trade deficits (or surpluses) reflects a complex interaction of many factors, especially for a country that provides global liquidity. These need to be understood clearly. Krugman's warning and the embedded advice, therefore, must be taken seriously, above all by the country that nurtured his clarity of thought. (The writer is dean, School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Shiv Nadar University, and professor of Economics. Views are personal)
Hindustan Times
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Rijiju reaches out to Oppn on Justice Varma impeachment
NBEMS seeks Supreme Court approval to conduct NEET-PG on August 3 in a single shift, after the court rejected its two-shift model. The exam requires over 1,000 centres, technical infrastructure, and coordination with various authorities to accommodate 242,679 candidates.
