150

Apr 30th, 2015 1:30 pm | By

NPR reports that Francine Prose tells NPR that 150 writers have joined the anti-Charlie Hebdo protest.

The protest over a free speech award to Charlie Hebdo continues to grow.

Earlier this week, six authors withdrew from the PEN American Center’s annual gala in response to the organization’s decision to give the French satirical magazine its Freedom of Expression Courage Award.

Former PEN American President Francine Prose was one of the original six. She tells NPR that as of Thursday afternoon, she’s been joined by nearly 150 other writers — such as Junot Díaz, Lorrie Moore and Rick Moody — who’ve signed on to an open letter critical of the decision.

Disgusting.

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What the act says is that you judge CH as being at fault

Apr 30th, 2015 12:58 pm | By

Prose v Rushdie on social media, as told by The Guardian. Drama, deep rifts, clickbait, etc etc etc.

Rushdie, who has been vehement in his support of PEN’s choice and who tweeted earlier this week that “the award will be given. PEN is holding firm. Just 6 pussies. Six Authors in Search of a bit of Character”, responded to Prose’s post, pointing to his already-stated regret in using the word “pussies”.

But he made it clear he wasn’t backing down on another allegation, made in a letter to PEN earlier this week, in which he described Prose and the five other authors to have withdrawn as “the fellow travellers” of “fanatical Islam, which is highly organised, well funded, and which seeks to terrify us all, Muslims as well as non-Muslims, into a cowed silence”.

I don’t think they intend to be fellow travelers, which makes that not quite the right term for them. I don’t think they realize the extent to which they’re buying into the most theocratic brand of Islam at the expense of the more liberal brands.

His Facebook post repeated the allegation: “‘Fellow travellers’, yes. No question of that. As for ‘fine distinctions’, here’s what I see. Our fellow artists were murdered for their ideas and you won’t stand up for them. I’m very sorry to see that. I think you’ll find the vast majority of the PEN membership will be sorry, too.”

Prose said the phrase had “attained great currency during the Army-McCarthy hearings, when it was used to smear and ruin the lives of many innocent people by suggesting a relation with the communists plotting to bring down our country”, and that while she “sympathise[s] with the dead cartoonists … if I am going to stand up, I feel that my time is more usefully spent standing up for the living: the journalists throughout Latin America and the Middle East risking their lives to tell the truth about the world we live in”.

Describing himself as “immensely saddened” by the situation, Rushdie told Prose he used the phrase knowingly, because Prose, Carey, Ondaatje, Cole, Kushner and Selasi had chosen to “make a political ACT”, by pulling out of the gala.

“What the act says is that you judge CH as being at fault. And by making that public judgment, the act, not any words you say, places you in the enemy camp. It just does,” he wrote.

“In politics you can’t both be for and against. Your act says you are against. And that makes you (plural) fellow travellers of the fanatics. I wish it were not so, but it is, and when Peter Carey asks if it’s even a free speech issue, and calls PEN self-righteous for taking it up, and then attacks the entire nation of France for its arrogance; and when Teju Cole says that Israel is the cause of anti-semitism; then you have some very unfortunate bedfellows indeed. I hope that our long alliance can survive this. But I fear some old friendships will break on this wheel.”

It makes them at least supporters of the fanatics.

I hope the fellow traveling strange bedfellows don’t persuade many more to join them.

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Guest post: On dealing with street harassment

Apr 30th, 2015 11:17 am | By

Guest post by Alicia LeeLee Thompson, originally a comment on a public Facebook post by Lawrence Mahmood.

I gotta say, I cannot stop laughing at some of these comments! I find it odd that the majority of people defending the act of the Merrett are men… Duh.

I’ve had this kind of bullshit behaviour, from building sites and the like, for as long as I can remember. Up until recently, I never responded or did anything about it, I simply put my head down, grumbled an insult under my breath and kept walking in the hopes that the irritating pricks would just go away.

It’s intimidating enough as it is for a lone woman to walk past a group of ‘men’ without them all gaggling together to shout stupid stuff at you. That’s no different to Eg: a young boy walking past a group of older boys, he keeps his head down and tries to pass quickly without incident but alas, the lads start shouting things at him.

It’s intimidation and bullying no matter how you look at it.

Yes, there are a small minority of women out there who thrive on this kind of behaviour, but for the vast majority of us it’s embarrassing, threatening and fucking shameful to be on the receiving end of. And NO man on this earth can know what that feels like, especially when it plagues most of the years of your life. (So ANDY can fuck off!)

As I said, I always used the ignore button until recently.

My 16yr old daughter, who is 4 foot 11 and looks no older than 12, was with me in town one day.

The workman on a local site starting shouting to her. I quickly told them to stop and told them she was a child.
Their reaction was “so?” and I was told to lighten up…

This was my daughter’s first encounter with such behaviour and she was upset and frightened by it – “why are these grown men shouting at me? What did I do?”

I agree, to some degree, that reporting it to police is a bit weird. Mainly because it’s not a crime that I think deserves the tax payers money going through the courts, and judicial system. But you’re damn right it needs addressing!

For intimidating my daughter I felt the ‘eye for an eye’ treatment was fairer so I attempted to climb the scaffolding and show him what ‘intimidation’ felt like.

I loudly named and shamed the main culprit and asked all the other men to stop making him feel so insecure. This man clearly feels threatened by the other males in his environment, and true to form, announced himself to the world by proving his heterosexuality in the loudest form. By shouting at girls in the street, he’s exclaiming “I’m a man! I like girls!”. A real man would already know that, and not feel the need to ‘impress’ the others. Every woman thinks this and knows this as she walks past, which is mainly why things aren’t reported, because the female feels pity for the idiot, even though she is afraid and uncomfortable. Oh, and people like DICKHEAD ANDY, who make them feel like shit for reporting problems! Yeah, that really helps mate! (And if girls are giving you a hard time then I suggest you report the issue and put a stop to idiots instead of condemning someone else suffering the same thing!)

I threatened the man who threatened my daughter and I embarrassed and harrassed him as he did my little girl.
I’m NOT saying for a second that that’s the right reaction, but if reporting it is wrong, and ignoring them doesn’t stop them then what are we supposed to do? I certainly felt great satisfaction from tearing the prick a new one, and my daughter saw a woman stand up against it and administer justice right there and then. I dont care what you think of me for it, I’m 38yrs old and I’ve been ignorant and patient about it forever, but doing it to my little girl? Fuck no!

I later reported it to the building site company Medlock. I was honest with them about my initial reaction but they were still very supportive of me and disgusted that their company logo was being degraded by their workers. The men were condemned and the main culprit was swiftly dealt with.

Big plate of justice, and still probably better than going to the police…..

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Fine distinctions

Apr 30th, 2015 10:47 am | By

Francine Prose on Facebook on Monday:

Why is it so difficult for people to make fine distinctions? The writers opposing the PEN award support free speech, free expression, and stand fully behind Charlie Hebdo’s right to publish whatever they want without being censored, and of course without the use of violence to enforce their silence. But the giving of an award suggests that one admires and respects the value of the work being honored, responses quite difficult to summon for the work of Charlie Hebdo. Provocation is simply not the same as heroism. I do hope that the audience at the PEN gala will be shown some of the cruder and more racist cartoons that CH publishes, so they will know what they are applauding and honoring. I’m disheartened by the usually sensible intelligent Salman Rushie’s readiness to call us “fellow travelers” who are encouraging Islamist jihadism, and also to label us, on Twitter, as “six pussies.” I can only assume he meant our feline dignity and was not implying that we are behaving like people who have vaginas. It would be sad to think that a writers organization cannot discuss free speech without resorting to political accusations and sexual insult.

Well, speaking of fine distinctions, what about the fine distinction between actual racism and satirical meta-racism? What about using racist tropes as a way of mocking racism?

That seems to be a fine distinction that Prose is ignoring or unaware of.

You can argue that that’s a bad idea; you can argue that that kind of satire doesn’t travel well, because customs differ from place to place; you can argue that it’s risky; you can argue a lot of things. But it’s just silly to pretend there actually is no distinction between racism and satirical meta-racism.

 

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More and more Soft-heads

Apr 30th, 2015 10:14 am | By

Boris Kachka at The Vulture has that letter to PEN.

This afternoon, a letter went out to members of the PEN American Center — not an official communique but a letter of dissent, boasting 35 signatories and soliciting many more. It concluded, “We the undersigned, as writers, thinkers, and members of PEN, therefore respectfully wish to disassociate ourselves from PEN America’s decision to give the 2015 Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award to Charlie Hebdo.”

So they think the Kouachi brothers were right, then – not right to murder, but right in their reasons to murder.

For all its swiftness, the minor PEN revolt over Hebdo’s offensive depictions of Muslims had been brewing for some time. Ever since the attack and the subsequent outpouring of “Je Suis Charlie” solidarity, a vocal minority of writers have distanced themselves from the magazine, usually on the grounds that its secular satire was needlessly provocative — perhaps to the point of hate speech — and aimed at dispossessed French Muslims.

Which is just ignorant of them.

On March 27, two days after PEN announced the Hebdo honor, PEN member Deborah Eisenberg (not a table host) wrote to executive director Suzanne Nossel to object at length. A revered short-story writer with a strong leftist-activist bent (along with her partner, actor and playwright Wallace Shawn), Eisenberg attacked the paper’s crude illustrations as offensive not just to fundamentalists but to all Muslims (particularly those marginalized in France).

So she thinks she knows what all Muslims think? And she thinks they’re all fanatically theocratic? And she thinks that’s not crude and offensive?

She added that PEN’s decision to salute Hebdo “almost looks less like an endorsement of free expression than like an opportunistic exploitation of the horrible murders in Paris to justify and glorify offensive material expressing anti-Islamic and nationalistic sentiments already widely shared in the Western world.”

Which just underlines how uninformed she is.

News stories on Sunday referenced Eisenberg’s letter as an unrelated example of brewing dissent. In fact, her exchange had made the rounds of sympathetic writers, and she shared her dismay with others early on. Her letter had proposed Edward Snowden go-between Glenn Greenwald as an alternative PEN honoree, and Greenwald was looped into conversations this past weekend. Cole and Greenwald had both written pieces questioning the lionization of Charlie Hebdo. They and Kushner are vocal critics of Western policies that, they argue, kill and suppress far more people than terrorists in Europe; their protest is a dissent of the literary left from the liberal middle.

Nope. I’ve never accepted the claim that those people are to the left of people who oppose theocracy. There is nothing left-wing about theocracy. Secularism is or at least should be a pillar of the left.

Here’s the letter with the signatories:

Dear colleague,

If you are in sympathy with the following statement from some of your fellow members of PEN, please reply, and your name will be added to the list of signatories.

Thank you.

—

April 26, 2015

In March it was announced that the PEN Literary Gala, to be held May 5th 2015, would honor the magazine Charlie Hebdo with the PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award in response to the January 7 attacks that claimed the lives of many members of its editorial staff.

It is clear and inarguable that the murder of a dozen people in the Charlie Hebdo offices is sickening and tragic. What is neither clear nor inarguable is the decision to confer an award for courageous freedom of expression on Charlie Hebdo, or what criteria, exactly, were used to make that decision.

We do not believe in censoring expression. An expression of views, however disagreeable, is certainly not to be answered by violence or murder.

However, there is a critical difference between staunchly supporting expression that violates the acceptable, and enthusiastically rewarding such expression.

In the aftermath of the attacks, Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons were characterized as satire and “equal opportunity offense,” and the magazine seems to be entirely sincere in its anarchic expressions of disdain toward organized religion. But in an unequal society, equal opportunity offense does not have an equal effect.

Power and prestige are elements that must be recognized in considering almost any form of discourse, including satire. The inequities between the person holding the pen and the subject fixed on paper by that pen cannot, and must not, be ignored.

To the section of the French population that is already marginalized, embattled, and victimized, a population that is shaped by the legacy of France’s various colonial enterprises, and that contains a large percentage of devout Muslims, Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons of the Prophet must be seen as being intended to cause further humiliation and suffering.

Our concern is that, by bestowing the Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award on Charlie Hebdo, PEN is not simply conveying support for freedom of expression, but also valorizing selectively offensive material: material that intensifies the anti-Islamic, anti-Maghreb, anti-Arab sentiments already prevalent in the Western world.

In our view, PEN America could have chosen to confer its PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award upon any of a number of journalists and whistleblowers who have risked, and sometimes lost, their freedom (and even their lives) in service of the greater good.

PEN is an essential organization in the global battle for freedom of expression. It is therefore disheartening to see that PEN America has chosen to honor the work and mission of Charlie Hebdo above those who not only exemplify the principles of free expression, but whose courage, even when provocative and discomfiting, has also been pointedly exercised for the good of humanity.

We the undersigned, as writers, thinkers, and members of PEN, therefore respectfully wish to disassociate ourselves from PEN America’s decision to give the 2015 Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award to Charlie Hebdo.

Chris Abani

Russell Banks

Peter Carey

Teju Cole

Junot Díaz

Deborah Eisenberg

Eve Ensler

Nell Freudenberger

Keith Gessen

Francisco Goldman

Edward Hoagland

Nancy Kricorian

Amitava Kumar

Rachel Kushner

Zachary Lazar

Patrick McGrath

Rick Moody

Lorrie Moore

Joyce Carol Oates

Michael Ondaatje

Raj Patel

Francine Prose

Sarah Schulman

Taiye Selasi

Kamila Shamsie

Wallace Shawn

Charles Simic

Rebecca Solnit

Linda Spalding

Scott Spencer

Chase Twichell

Eliot Weinberger

Jon Wiener

Dave Zirin

I’m surprised to see Kamila Shamsie there. Just the other day she was mourning the murder of her friend Sabeen Mahmud.

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Now it’s 35 shits

Apr 29th, 2015 6:37 pm | By

This is absolutely disgusting.

More than two dozen writers including Junot Díaz, Joyce Carol Oates and Lorrie Moore have joined a protest against a freedom of expression award for Charlie Hebdo, signing a letter taking issue with what they see as a “reward” for the magazine’s controversial cartoons.

A protest. A fucking protest against giving an award to a strongly anti-racist and left wing magazine because they think in their ignorance that it’s racist.

In their letter the writers protest against the award from PEN America, the prominent literary organization of which most of the signatories are members, accusing the French satirical magazine of mocking a “section of the French population that is already marginalized, embattled, and victimized”.

That’s an ignorant uninformed mistaken accusation.

“There is a critical difference between staunchly supporting expression that violates the acceptable, and enthusiastically rewarding such expression,” the letter reads.

“The magazine seems to be entirely sincere in its anarchic expressions of disdain toward organized religion. But in an unequal society, equal opportunity offense does not have an equal effect.

“Power and prestige are elements that must be recognized in considering almost any form of discourse, including satire.”

The writers go on to say that to the certain segments of French society – “a population that is shaped by the legacy of France’s various colonial enterprises, and that contains a large percentage of devout Muslims” – Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons of the prophet “must be seen as being intended to cause further humiliation and suffering”.

Must be? Must be? Must according to whom?

In a statement, PEN said it will hold a “public dialogue” on Tuesday at New York University, with a panel that will include an NYU professor, PEN’s executive director and two Charlie Hebdo staffers.

Novelist Salman Rushdie, who hid for years after Iran’s highest religious leader issued a fatwa against him, upbraided his peers. On Twitter, Rushdie called the six other writers “just six pussies. Six Authors in Search of a bit of Character.” (He later said he should not have reused the word “pussies” from another’s tweet.) Ina letter to PEN, he accused them of having “made themselves the fellow travellers” of extremists who seek to censor writers “into a cowed silence”.

I’m sure he’ll be delighted that 29 more Soft-heads have joined the pioneer six.

Journalist Amitava Kumar, a signatory to the letter, told the Guardian that he knows “a bunch of overdressed writers in a large room getting up to applaud or, for that matter, not applaud an award isn’t going to change much in the world. Not the number of people getting killed by drones, or getting drowned in the Mediterranean, or dying at the hands of the police in the US.

“That said, one of the things that folks like Salman Rushdie taught me when I was coming of age as a writer was that you have to take sides. On the Charlie Hebdo question, I wish I had the triumphant certainty of those who are all gung-ho about the award. I mean, fuck the killers who gunned down the cartoonists.

“But as I think of the wars unleashed upon whole peoples and the brutal realities of occupation as well as theocratic rule in the Middle East, you have to ask yourself if one shouldn’t instead be championing those who see the greater violence and who rebel against our own cravenness and our complicities.”

What utter garbage. Don’t give Charlie Hebdo an award because of  wars unleashed upon whole peoples and the brutal realities of occupation as well as theocratic rule in the Middle East – what sense does that make??

Philip Gourevitch, a staff writer for the New Yorker and PEN host, said he thought the protest ill-founded and part of a debate that had “lost track of the reality of how Charlie Hebdo functioned in French society.” He said that in France, the paper “was not seen as a racist paper or as an enforcer to the French establishment hegemony.”

“The real test of support for free speech is not whether it’s speech that you approve of,” Gourevitch said, noting the magazine’s “puerile, gross, often offensive” style. “It’s whether it’s speech that has faced a crushing threat.”

He said he finds it “very sad” that the protest “seems now to be turning into a broader rift that’s very reminiscent of the way that some people basically said Salman Rushdie shouldn’t be killed, but he never should’ve written the Satanic Verses.”

Well at least we’ll know who the assholes are.

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How feminists are not like Islamists

Apr 29th, 2015 6:17 pm | By

From a comment on a Facebook post of mine about Brendan O’Neill’s malicious comparison of feminist objections to advertising that uses a woman in a bikini to sell a product to Islamist objections to women not wearing burqas:

I don’t know of a single person who has been killed by feminists for political reasons. Not even one. Or a single terrorist attack where a feminist group claimed responsibility. If there were a single such victim their name might as well be engraved in stone, they would not likely ever be forgotten because of the sheer rarity. There are so many victims of Islamists and so many terrorist attacks perpetrated by Islamist groups that not even an expert could possibly hope to remember them all.

…

To instead resort to an absolutely unjustifiable comparison in a pitiful attempt at scare-mongering against an obviously peaceful political group not only discredits the article, as it calls the author’s grip of reality into serious question, it is also frequently used as a tactic to minimise the atrocities of Islamists by drawing completely false equivalences, such as when the Index on Censorship reacted to the murder of Theo van Gogh by comparing the chilling effect on free speech of his murder to the effect he himself had on free speech by “intimidating” Muslims with his movie.

The message is either that feminism is an existential threat to us, and the tube is in danger of being bombed by feminist fanatics to punish us all for the bikini adverts – which is plainly ludicrous – or that Islamism is just another political movement, no different and no more threatening than Take Back the Night or Greenpeace, and we have no reason to treat it differently – which is also plainly ludicrous, but there are plenty of leftists who do their utmost to get you to take it seriously, regardless.

Well said.

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Controversial cartoons in Manchester

Apr 29th, 2015 11:14 am | By

Yesssss! Via Twitter –

FreeSpeech&SecularSo @SecularSpeech 6 hours ago
Exhibition of controversial cartoons, now at @ManchesterSU @ChrisMoos_ @THEMANCUNION @Tom_Slater_ #freespeech

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And…Jesus and Mo!

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I look forward to outrage from the Soft-headed Six.

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They have in their stupidity and malice allied with the wrong side

Apr 29th, 2015 10:57 am | By

Nick Cohen – award-winning Nick Cohen – excoriates the Six Soft-heads in the Spectator.

Those who shout the loudest about respecting “diversity” and the culture of others, cannot stir themselves to respect the French enough to learn their language and understand their culture. If they did, they would know that Charlie Hebdo is a left-wing magazine, which used Boko Haram to parody  conservatives so lost in paranoia they imagined enslaved Nigerian women were threatening to come to France and steal their money.

Max Fisher of Vox tried to shake up Anglo-Saxon leftists by pointing them to a New Yorker cover showing Barack Obama as a Kenyan Muslim and Michelle Obama as a terrorist. It was a satire of the Tea Party fantasy that Obama was a foreigner, who could not stand for election, his wife was a far leftist and between them the couple married the ideologies of the Mau-Mau and the Black Panthers. No one who understood New York liberal culture could fail to see the satire. Similarly, he continued, as if he were speaking to an unusually stupid child, no one who understood Parisian culture could fail to see that Charlie Hebdo was mocking the prejudices of the French Right.

Levels, in other words; you have to recognize the levels. If you don’t, you make a shaming booboo.

Meanwhile Olivier Tonneau, a French radical, who now teaches at Cambridge, wrote an open letter to the Anglo-Saxon left, and explained : 

Charlie Hebdo was an opponent of all forms of organised religions, in the old-school anarchist sense: Ni Dieu, ni maître! It ridiculed the pope, orthodox Jews and Muslims in equal measure and with the same biting tone. It took ferocious stances against the bombings of Gaza. Charlie Hebdo also continuously denounced the pledge of minorities and campaigned relentlessly for all illegal immigrants to be given permanent right of stay. Even if you dislike its humour, please take my word for it: it fell well within the French tradition of satire – and after all was only intended for a French audience. I hope this helps you understand that if you belong to the radical left, you have lost precious friends and allies.

Ah but they’re French, so they don’t count. Or something.

Prose, Carey, the London Review of Books and so many others agree with Islamists’ first demand that the world should have a de facto blasphemy law enforced at gunpoint. Break it and you have only yourself to blame if the assassins you provoked kill you

They not only go along with the terrorists from the religious ultra-right but of every state that uses Islam to maintain its power. They can show no solidarity with gays in Iran, bloggers in Saudi Arabia and persecuted women and religious minorities across the Middle East, who must fight theocracy. They have no understanding that enemies of Charlie Hebdo are also the enemies of liberal Muslims and ex-Muslims in the West. In the battle between the two, they have in their stupidity and malice allied with the wrong side.

Damn right. And it’s not even as if people haven’t been trying to explain this for years.

Most glaringly they have failed to understand power. It is not fixed but fluid. It depends on where you stand. The unemployed terrorist with the gun is more powerful than the Parisian cartoonist cowering underneath his desk. The marginal cleric may well face racism and hatred – as my most liberal British Muslim friends do – but when he sits in a Sharia court imposing misogynist rules on Muslim women in the West, he is no longer a victim or potential victim but a man to be feared.

Give that man an award.

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Brendan wants his women brainy, radical and beach-ready

Apr 29th, 2015 10:33 am | By

Brendan is coat-trailing again. I’m taking the bait again. I’m too literal-minded not to.

Feminism, sadly, becomes more like Islamism every day.

Uh huh, and as Nate Phelps once told me, I’m like Fred Phelps.

What’s his argument? Islamists are puritanical about women’s bodies, and so are feminists.

Here’s a tip for political activists: if your rabble-rousing echoes the behaviour and ideas of Islamists, then you’re doing something wrong. Consider the Protein World advert which — clutch my pearls! — features a photo of a beautiful, svelte woman in a bikini next to the question: ‘Are you beach body ready?’ Angry women, and probably some men, have been writing outraged slogans on these posters, scribbling on the poor model’s face and body, seemingly blissfully unaware that they’re following in the footsteps of intolerant Islamic agitators.

Or, you know, not unaware at all, but thinking that since their reasons are different, they’re not actually following in those footsteps. Islamists eat and sleep and excrete; so do feminists; news at eleven.

Feminism, sadly, becomes more like Islamism every day. Alongside the ad-defacing antics, there’s also the campaign to put saucy tabloids and lads’ mags in black bags, echoing an ugly sight I beheld in Dubai once: Western magazines whose covers had been defaced with black gaffer tape by religious censors determined to hide women’s cleavage from the masses. And there was the war against Page 3 (RIP): a boob-hiding project that Muslim Patrol would be proud of. Too much modern feminism depicts women as fragile, as unable to cope with rude pictures or rough words, as requiring protection from the banter and imagery of everyday life. In the words of the anti-Page 3 campaign, such stuff can have a ‘negative impact’ on women’s ‘self-esteem’. It’s so alarmingly patronising, and it really does bring to mind the cloying over-protectionism of Islamists, who likewise see women as dainty, easily damaged, in need of constant chaperoning when they venture into the jungle of public life.

Can’t we try to resuscitate the spirit of the old sexually liberated feminism, when the likes of Germaine Greer didn’t want to ban photos of bikinis but instead posed for them? Look at Germaine: brainy, radical and beach-ready.

Can’t women go on being consumer goods for smug men like Brendan?

 

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293

Apr 29th, 2015 9:36 am | By

One piece of better news out of Nigeria – not fantastic news, just correcting a bad thing news, but still, something.

Nigeria’s military says it has rescued 200 girls and 93 women from a notorious Boko Haram stronghold, but an army spokesman says the hostages were not those kidnapped from Chibok a year ago.

“The troops rescued 200 abducted girls and 93 women,” Colonel Sani Usman told Reuters in a text message.

They were not, however, from Chibok, the village from which more than 200 girls were abducted in April 2014, he said.

“So far, they (the army) have destroyed and cleared Sassa, Tokumbere and two other camps in the general area of Alafa, all within the Sambisa Forest.”

The women and girls were rescued from camps “discovered near or on the way to Sambisa,” one army official said.

I wonder what the total number of enslaved women and girls is. It must be massive, since these 300 are apparently only a fraction.

Nigerian forces backed by warplanes invaded the vast Sambisa Forest late last week as part of a push to win back territory from Boko Haram.

The group, notorious for violence against civilians, controlled an area roughly the size of Belgium at the start of the year but has since been beaten back by Nigerian troops, backed by Chad, Niger and Cameroon.

While the Nigerian army maintains Boko Haram is now hemmed in Sambisa Forest, militants have managed to launch attacks in the neighbourhood including chasing soldiers out of Marte town and an island on Lake Chad.

Islamist groups making life hell all over the planet.

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#Up for whatever

Apr 28th, 2015 5:07 pm | By

And then there’s Anheuser-Busch, with its oh so funny slogan for Bud Light beer: “The perfect beer for removing ‘no’ from your vocabulary for the night.”

GEDDIT?

The slogan, which was captured in a photo and posted onto Reddit Monday, sparked a wave of anger from social media users who took to Twitter to blast the language for promoting a culture of rape.

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What could possibly go wrong?

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Would they deplore any awards made in their memory?

Apr 28th, 2015 4:52 pm | By

Alex Massie takes on the Six Soft-heads with the kind of gritted disdain they deserve.

I wonder if these people also think the Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses also had it coming? I wonder if they think there would be something unseemly about awarding Salman Rushdie – and all those involved in publishing his novel – awards for their courageous defence of liberty? People died and many others risked assassination to bring The Satanic Verses into print. Perhaps, however, there is a feeling that this was a noble enterprise because it was somehow a more literary enterprise? (Except, of course, plenty of people failed the Rushdie test too.)

And I wonder if these novelists would be appalled if they or their translators were targeted and perhaps killed for the ‘crime’ of offending someone, somewhere? Would they deplore any awards made in their memory? Somehow, I doubt it.

No, because you see they would know that they are good people, while they don’t  know that about the Charlie people. (Can you say fundamental attribution error? I thought you could.)

Is it really too much to suppose that blame for this atrocity might be apportioned to the people who did the machine-gunning? This should not be a difficult matter. It really shouldn’t. Nor should recognising, however inadequately, the deaths of these journalists be controversial.

If writers cannot make a stand on this, what can they make a stand upon?Charlie Hebdo was not the first and I fear it will not be the last either. Reality is a bloody business but that’s no reason to avoid trying to look it in the face.

But someone’s cousin’s friend’s sister-in-law’s neighbor’s dog’s psychoanalyst said Charlie is racist, therefore it must be true.

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DNA can enter by accident

Apr 28th, 2015 4:25 pm | By

The Malay Mail Online went to a talk by Hizbut Tahrir Malaysia. HTM explained about rape.

Women are required to prove rape under Islamic criminal law, Hizbut Tahrir Malaysia (HTM) said today as the hardline Islamist group claimed that most sexual assault cases involve false accusations.

HTM also told a seminar on hudud that Islam does not accept DNA evidence and that one of the ways of proving rape instead is by obtaining either two male witnesses, or one male and two female witnesses.

Because as we all know it takes two women to be as much value as one man.

“The danger is that if the woman wants to betray other people, she commits adultery with a man, but when she regrets it, she reports to the police saying she was raped,” HTM spokesman Ustaz Abdul Hakim Othman said at HTM’s headquarters here today.

“As you see, most rape cases involve people known to the victims, especially their boyfriends. So making out with the boyfriend is fine, and then she turns around and says she was raped when she regrets it.

The man will say it wasn’t rape; it was consensual. So Islam imposes careful conditions. You don’t just accuse a person of raping you, you have to come up with proof,” he added.

Yeah, cool, and the fact that it’s so very difficult to come up with “proof” of rape (let alone “proof” of rape by person X) is not a problem because most sexual assault cases involve false accusations, which we know because they just said so.

HTM’s Abdul Hakim stressed today that rape and adultery are separate offences under the Islamic criminal justice system.

“If an unmarried woman is pregnant, definitely she’s committed an offence but she must explain. So if we ask her and she says she was raped, she’ll be released because she’s innocent,” he told the seminar.

“Islam doesn’t accept DNA evidence because obtaining witnesses is one of the conditions. Even if you can prove that male DNA was in the woman’s vagina, it doesn’t prove rape because DNA can enter by accident. DNA is not proof of rape. Other evidence like wounds in the vagina that show penetration is still not proof that it’s rape,” the HTM spokesman added.

Why would anyone not want to live under a system like that?

 

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De qui se moquait le journal satirique Charlie Hebdo?

Apr 28th, 2015 3:59 pm | By

Le Monde, February 24 – No, Charlie Hebdo is not obsessed with Islam.

What does it make fun of?

De qui se moquait le journal satirique Charlie Hebdo, avant que deux terroristes islamistes assassinent cinq caricaturistes et six autres personnes présentes à la conférence de rédaction du 7 janvier ? Est-il vrai que ce journal faisait preuve d’une « obsession » à l’encontre des musulmans, comme cela a pu être dit à la suite des attentats, notamment dans une tribune du Monde du 15 janvier 2015, à laquelle ont contribué plusieurs chercheurs ?

What did the satirical mag Charlie Hebdo make fun of before two Islamist terrorists assassinated five cartoonists and six other people at an editorial conference January 7th? Is it true that the mag displayed an “obsession” with Muslims, as was said after the attacks, including at a Le Monde forum January 15th to which several researchers contributed?

Well, look at the graphic. That doesn’t look like obsession to me.

Parmi les 38 « unes » ayant pour cible la religion, plus de la moitié vise principalement la religion catholique (21) et moins de 20 % se moquent principalement de l’islam (7). Les juifs, quant à eux, sont toujours raillés aux côtés des membres d’au moins une autre religion, comme l’islam dans le n°1057.

Among the 38 front pages that target religion, more than half are mostly Catholicism (21) and under 20% make fun mostly of Islam (7). The Jews, for their part, are always made fun of along with the followers of at least one other religion, such as Islam in number 1057.

Francine Prose and Michael Ondaatje please note.

Update: the “dont” at the top of the column on the right means “of which.”

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Get a room

Apr 28th, 2015 3:26 pm | By

Oh isn’t that sweet – Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are in love. Truly madly deeply.

Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif on Sunday said the love and affection for the Saudi leadership and people could not be explained in words.

Pakistan and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) are tied in unbreakable bonds of religion and brotherhood and both the countries are standing shoulder to shoulder with each other.

Speaking at a function held in honour of Imam-e-Kaaba Shaikh Khalid al Ghamidi at Chief Minister’s House, he remarked that even if the world goes topsy-turvy, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan could not be separated from one another.

They will wrap their legs around each other and hold on for dear life as the world bounces and flips and lurches.

He pointed out that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif visited Saudi Arabia recently and held talks with Custodian of the two Holy Mosques King Salman, crown prince and other Saudi Leaders. He said the world saw two brothers meeting and speaking heart to heart like family members. He said earlier he visited the kingdom and held talks on important issues with the Saudi leadership.

Shahbaz said the meetings were a clear message for the enemies that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are tied in inseparable bonds and no one could cause any hurdle or differences between them.

He didn’t say anything about Raif Badawai, or Indonesian domestics, or beheadings, or women not allowed to leave the house without male permission and escort.

On the occasion, Imam-e-Kaaba said it was an important occasion as he was present among people with whom he has close relationship. He said the sentiments expressed by Shahbaz would always remain in his heart. He said after coming here he has realised the love of Pakistanis for him and Saudi Arabia. He said the relations between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are everlasting.

Would they like sheets and towels, or a silver coffee set?

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Or the poster for your movie is, like, a kitchen

Apr 28th, 2015 12:16 pm | By

Amy Schumer’s hit video Last Fuckable Day.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPpsI8mWKmg

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She couldn’t imagine being in the audience when they have a standing ovation for Charlie Hebdo

Apr 28th, 2015 11:54 am | By

The Guardian on Rushdie on the Soft-headed Six.

[Francine] Prose told the Associated Press that while she was in favour of “freedom of speech without limitations” and “deplored” the shootings at Charlie Hebdo, the award signified “admiration and respect” for its work and “I couldn’t imagine being in the audience when they have a standing ovation for Charlie Hebdo”.

She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

Andrew Solomon, president of PEN, told the Guardian that aside from brief exchanges with Carey and writer Deborah Eisenberg, no one had indicated they would not attend the gala over the award before the six letters.

Solomon said that PEN distinguished between the right of free speech and much of what Charlie Hebdo actually published. “The award does not agree with the content of what they expressed,” he said, “it expressed admiration for that commitment of free speech.”

He compared the controversy to PEN’s inclusion of Pussy Riot at last year’s gala, saying that the Russian activists’ “content is in many instances juvenile, and many people had felt that remove large parts of your clothing in an Orthodox church was offensive, but in standing up to the Putin regime they did something worth admiration.”

That’s a much better (fairer) comparison than neo-Nazis. It’s understandable to be lukewarm about Charlie’s style, and that of Pussy Riot too; it’s not understandable to claim they’re comparable to any kind of Nazis.

Solomon also provided several letters of support to PEN’s decision, including from Rushdie.

“It is quite right that PEN should honour [Charlie Hebdo’s] sacrifice and condemn their murder without these disgusting ‘buts,’ Rushdie wrote.

“This issue has nothing to do with an oppressed and disadvantaged minority. It has everything to do with the battle against fanatical Islam, which is highly organised, well funded, and which seeks to terrify us all, Muslims as well as non Muslims, into a cowed silence.

“These six writers have made themselves the fellow travellers of that project. Now they will have the dubious satisfaction of watching PEN tear itself apart in public.”

Exactly. The Soft-headed Six seem to have no clue that there is any space between Muslims and Islamists. That’s a very basic mistake.

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No running for girls

Apr 28th, 2015 11:28 am | By

A heart-rending item in the Sydney Morning Herald a few days ago, about girls at an Islamic school being banned from running.

Girls at Al-Taqwa College have been banned from running at sporting events because the principal believes it may cause them to lose their virginity, former teachers claim.

The schools regulator, the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority, is investigating the allegations, which have been referred to the state and federal education ministers.

…

In a letter sent to the education ministers this week, a former teacher said female students were being discriminated against at the Truganina school.

“The principal holds beliefs that if females run excessively, they may ‘lose their virginity’,” the letter said.

“The principal believes that there is scientific evidence to indicate that if girls injure themselves, such as break their leg while playing soccer, it could render them infertile.”

He probably believe if they study too hard they will get “brain fever.”

The SMH has a picture of a sad letter from the students about their disappointment.

Concerned female students expressed their concerns in a handwritten letter to the principal, saying it was unfair that the cross country event had been cancelled.

“It was really shocking to find out it has been cancelled because of the excuse girls can’t run,” the students said.

“Just because we are girls doesn’t mean we can’t participate in running events. It also doesn’t say girls can’t run in the hadith (the sayings of Muhammad).”

The students said parents were annoyed by the decision and “think that girls and boys should both be allowed to participate equally.”

Another former Al-Taqwa College teacher backed the claims. “I was told the girls weren’t allowed to participate. The reason was they might over-exert themselves and lose their virginity or be rendered infertile.”

What about the boys? If they over-exert themselves, their balls explode. That’s a scientific fact.

H/t Kausik

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Spin in the Dawkins Circle

Apr 28th, 2015 10:56 am | By

What was that about Dawkins’s never having “proclaimed himself as any kind of atheist ‘leader'”?

What about this then – what about Join the Dawkins Circle?

Reason Circle: $1,000 to $2,499 annually (or $85/month)

  • Invitation to Dawkins Circle member-only event with RDFRS personalities
  • Member-only discount for all purchases in the richarddawkins.net store

Science Circle: $2,500 to $4,999 annually (or $210/month)

All the benefits listed above, plus:

  • One ticket to an invitation-only Dawkins Circle event with Richard

Darwin Circle: $5,000 to $9,999 annually (or $420/month)

All the benefits listed above, plus:

  • Two tickets to an invitation-only Dawkins Circle event with Richard

For as little as one thousand dollars a year, you can attend a Dawkins Circle member-only event with RDFRS personalities. Wow!! Only a grand, and you get to go to a Dawkins Circle member-only event!! Gollywolly I can hardly breathe at the thought. Granted, there are conferences that charge much less than that where you can probably encounter “RDFRS personalities” or at least be in the same air-space with their majesties. But still, it’s totally worth it to shell out the whole one thousand dollars to get the real deal brand-name authentic Dawkins Circle member-only event.

And even more thrilling, if you spend just another $1,500 for a very modest total of two thousand five hundred dollars per year you get that plus a ticket to an invitation-only Dawkins Circle event with…gasp gasp gasp choke…with Richard. With holy sainted sacred Richard. I know people who would queue in the rain for a month to get a ticket like that. I know people who would throw their first-born children into a bonfire to get a ticket like that.

And if you shell out a mere five thousand dollars per year you get two of those. Two!! Two chances to share air-space with…Richard. Hallowed be thy name.

But never let it be said that he’s ever proclaimed himself any kind of atheist “leader.”

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