Ayman El Kaissi reports on Facebook’s censorship of atheist groups and the resistance to same.

In the middle of April, Facebook removed more than six Arabic-speaking atheist pages due to “violations” of Community Standards. This is not the first time that Facebook has censored atheists and freethinkers in the MENA region. In response, the Atheist Alliance – Middle-East and North Africa (AA-MENA) has decided to speak out, demanding that Facebook change the way it addresses violation reports, so as to preserve members’ freedom of speech.

In February 2016, ten of the largest Arabic-speaking atheist groups, with a total of about 100,000 members, have been deactivated for the same reason: heavy reporting campaigns that are organized by “cyber jihadist” fundamentalist Islamic groups, especially for the removal of any anti-Islamic group or page. In such coordinated campaigns, very large numbers of people, and possibly automated scripts, simultaneously file reports falsely claiming that a page, group, or personal account has violated Community Standards.

There’s a petition and a campaign to get Zuckerberg to do better.

AA-MENA has adopted #FacebookVSFreeSpeech as the hashtag of its Facebook event, Atheism: Campaigning to regain the right to free speech within Facebook Pages. The campaign’s goal is to rally atheists and freethinkers of the MENA region and to attract the attention of relevant nongovernmental organizations and irreligious social media activists to their cause.

But this attack on free speech spilled out of Facebook and resulted into a cold-blooded murder. On April 22, 2016, Yemeni activist Omar Bataweel was abducted in front of his home in the city of Aden. Police reports stated that he was shot and left to die on the street; locals discovered his body the next morning. Omar had received death threats prior to his execution for posting criticism of Islamic clergy and heritage on Facebook and was accused of apostasy and atheism. His case remains open and no suspects have been apprehended till now.

(I think by “till now” he means as of now, i.e. so far or yet.)

For irreligious people of the MENA region, social media outlets—especially Facebook—have become the only platform that they can safely use to express their thoughts and opinions, share their stories, and come together without feeling threatened. In most Arab countries, the demographic majority is Muslim; many regimes are actual theocracies while the others are very deeply influenced by Islamic religious authorities at all levels of public life.

…

Freethinkers, atheists, and freedom activists in the MENA region live under such oppressive regimes and communities. Most of them cannot express their religious, political, cultural, or social views and thoughts freely. This ever-growing segment of people living in the Arab World is still operating with a “low profile” and with minuscule traditional media coverage. This is the main reason for their enormous investments in social media platforms, such as Facebook, which are viewed by them as the last resort for freedom of thought and expression.

It’s deeply ironic that this thing that started out as Zuckerberg’s tool for ranking female Harvard students according to degree of hotness is now a last resort for freedom of thought and expression in oppressive theocratic countries, but there it is.

Meghan Murphy wishes the mayor of Vancouver would uphold the law.

At 5:30 on Tuesday evening, just over 100 people gathered on the front steps of Vancouver City Hall to demand Mayor Gregor Robertson follow through on his commitments to women and girls. The event, organized by Creating John-Free Communities, Asian Women Coalition Ending Prostitution, and REED, was clear in its aims: Make Vancouver a john-free zone.

In 2009, Robertson signed a declaration naming prostitution as violence against women. Just last year, he signed a second declaration, committing to end “abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of modern slavery, which are crimes against humanity, including forced labor and prostitution.” Today, the Mayor has a real opportunity to keep his word, and to follow through on his promises.

In 2014, Bill C-36: The Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act passed, and, under Canada’s new law, paying for sex became illegal. While a number of other cities and provinces have taken action in accordance with the new law, cracking down on pimps and johns, the Vancouver Police Department, under the guidance of the Mayor (who acts as Chair of the Vancouver Police Board, the body that employs and oversees the Vancouver Police Department), have opted to simply ignore the law, stating they will only enforce it as a “last resort.”

Bros before hos, eh?

Since the new law came into effect, women’s groups have urged Robertson to take action. On May 5th, feminist activist Jindi Mehat addressed the Police Board, saying, “Prostituted women are most harmed by the decision to not arrest johns,” but that as a resident of Vancouver, “this decision [to ignore the law] harms all women.” She also pointed out to the Mayor and the Board that holding men accountable means addressing men’s beliefs about entitlement to women’s bodies, exemplified through sexual harassment and assault, as well as through buying sex. In other words, prostitution exists as part of a larger continuum that reinforces rape culture and sends the message that women’s humanity matters less than male pleasure.

Read the whole thing. Murphy has a lot of detail about the protest.

Judge Aaron Persky now has to deal with the fact that prosecutors don’t trust him.

Santa Clara County prosecutors on Tuesday blocked Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky from hearing another sex crime case, citing his decision in the Turner case.

“We are disappointed and puzzled at Judge Persky’s unusual decision to unilaterally dismiss a case before the jury could deliberate,” Dist. Atty. Jeff Rosen said. “After this and the recent turn of events, we lack confidence that Judge Persky can fairly participate in this upcoming hearing in which a male nurse sexually assaulted an anesthetized female patient. In the future, we will evaluate each case on its own merits and decide if we should use our legal right to ask for another judge in order to protect public safety and pursue justice.”

They can do that.

California court procedures allow prosecutors or defense lawyers to file a motion to remove a judge from a case and have it reassigned to another jurist.

Legal experts described the move, known as papering, as unusual but hardly unheard of.

…

Prosecutors sought to have Persky removed after several jurors refused to serve in the judge’s courtroom because of his actions in the Turner case.

Persky could not be reached for comment.

An effort to recall Persky is gaining steam, with several political groups vowing to raise money for the campaign.

One of the jurors who voted to convict Turner of sexual assault wrote a letter to Persky saying he was “absolutely shocked and appalled” at the six-month sentence.

Some legislators are saying the laws on rape need updating.

Oxford Pro-Choice on Twitter:

Oxford Pro-Choice ‏@OxProChoice
What message does this send to Oxford’s female students, @OUSUCouncil?

The Oxford Student Union has not re-affiliated to Abortion Rights because “it has made no effort to become inclusive to trans people” – meaning, presumably, that it continues to talk about women in connection with abortion rights, when any fule kno the correct thing to do now is talk about people who need abortion rights rather than women who need abortion rights. Women are just cis-privileged bitches and everyone should stop talking about them.

Maajid Nawaz takes the opposite view from Mariella Mosthof:

The atrocious attack in Orlando, Florida, was an act of ISIS-inspired jihadist terrorism that targeted gays. It must concern us all.

Before any of our assumed multiple identities, we are human beings first and foremost. You don’t have to be black to condemn racism, nor Jewish to condemn anti-Semitism, nor Muslim to condemn anti-Muslim bigotry, and you certainly don’t have to be gay to condemn the evil that just descended upon Orlando.

Sadiq Khan has an interesting plan.

Adverts promoting negative body images will be banned across the Transport for London (TfL) network from next month.

As part of his mayoral election manifesto Sadiq Khan pledged to ban adverts promoting “unhealthy or unrealistic” body images.

The advertising watchdog received 378 complaints in 2015 about a weight-loss advert that asked customers if they were “beach body ready?”

Mr Khan has now asked TfL to set up its own advertising steering group.

The ASA rejected the complaints.

The Protein World “beach body ready” promotional posters were defaced in Tube stations and a petition was started calling for the adverts to be banned, however the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) watchdog later ruled the advert depicting a bikini-clad female model was neither offensive nor irresponsible.

Being a Yank, I feel unease about setting up official bodies to manage advertising…but being a woman, I also feel unease about the drip drip drip effect of the way women are displayed in advertising, including the Protein World posters.

Mr Khan said: “As the father of two teenage girls, I am extremely concerned about this kind of advertising which can demean people, particularly women, and make them ashamed of their bodies. It is high time it came to an end.”

Graeme Craig, TfL commercial development director, said: “Advertising on our network is unlike TV, online and print media.

“Our customers cannot simply switch off or turn a page if an advertisement offends or upsets them and we have a duty to ensure the copy we carry reflects that unique environment.”

Getting someone at Transport for London to take the issue seriously is better than having outsiders do it, I think – although I also hate it that London transport went private under Thatcher.

On the BBC London Facebook page many people were quick to praise the mayor’s initiative. Magdalena Michalik who lives in Greenwich said: “Please ban it. I don’t want my children to look at it!” but others warned it was the start of the “Islamification” of London and said the mayor was adopting this policy because of his religious values.

That’s the other tricky bit. I’ve seen reporting saying this is just Khan telling women to cover up.

Nick Little has a blistering post on hell and the slaughter in Orlando. Like me, he takes the idea of hell seriously as an evil harmful concept.

…like many people, what moved me away from religion (including a brief sojourn in Universalism) was the concept of hell as understood by the general believer, not by the academic or apologist. Hell was, I was taught, an unspeakably bad place. A place of torture, torment, and pain that would last for all eternity. And so I became unable to hold the existence of such a place, where people were actually sent, as consistent with the idea of a loving God.

Exactly. It’s not.

But it’s a mainstream belief – which is another compelling reason for taking it seriously. The belief has consequences.

The preachers who shouted from the pulpit that these 49 people, whose sole crime was going out to a club to have a good time, were deviants, were sodomites, were perverts, and would be tortured for all eternity by a loving God for no reason other than who they chose as sexual partners, cannot now cry crocodile tears and pretend to mourn their violent deaths. While the ministers and imams who rail weekly against homosexuality did not pull the trigger on the AR-15 – that was done willingly by Omar Mateen, whose individual responsibility shall not be understated – they loaded the magazines he used.

Preaching a deserved eternity of torture against a group of people dehumanizes that group. If God, or Allah, the perfect, unflawed, ever-loving Father, himself is willing to torture a group for all time, how worthless must that group be? How valueless is their life, their happiness? When firebrand religious ministers and radicalized Imams spout attacks on abortion providers as baby murders, accuse homosexuals of targeting children for abuse, or blame Jews for killing Jesus or murdering Islamic children, they lay the foundations for the next murder like that of Dr. Tiller, the next Pulse Nightclub Massacre, or the next Kristallnacht.

When you dehumanize a group by damning them to never ending pain and torture, you legitimize attacks on them.

And that includes attacks on their rights and civil liberties.

It isn’t enough to condemn the murders in Orlando (though some religious groups are, sickeningly enough, refusing to do even that and are celebrating it). As long as homosexuality is seen as a sin worthy of eternal torture, the LGBT community will be seen as less than human by religious extremists across the spectrum. It is the job of faith (and non-faith) leaders to consider the true impact of their rhetoric, to stop dehumanizing others. Hate crimes such as this do not occur in a vacuum. So forgive me for doubting the sincerity of your prayers and condolences when next Friday, or next Sunday, you will go back to decrying the sodomites and seeking to deny LGBT people basic civil rights.

Saudi Arabia had the gall to claim it condemns the Orlando slaughter:

Saudi Ambassador to the United StatesAbdullah Al-Saud issued the following statement on Sunday:

“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia condemns in the strongest terms the attack on innocent people in Orlando, Florida, and sends its deepest condolences to the families and friends of the victims and to the people of the United States. We stand with the American people at this tragic time. We pray for the recovery and the healing of all those injured in the attack, and we will continue our work withthe United States and our partners in the international community for an end to these senseless acts of violence and terror.”

That is a tasteless joke.