So Maryam gave her talk at Goldsmiths…and “brothers” from ISOC did their best to disrupt it.

After my talk began, ISOC “brothers” started coming into the room, repeatedly banging the door, falling on the floor, heckling me, playing on their phones, shouting out, and creating a climate of intimidation in order to try and prevent me from speaking.

I continued speaking as loudly as I could. They repeatedly walked back and forth in front of me. In the midst of my talk, one of the ISOC Islamists switched off my PowerPoint and left. The University security had to intervene and remain in the room as I continued my talk.

Eventually the thug who had switched off my PowerPoint

News from our beloved ally Saudi Arabia, so very different from that horrid Islamic State that’s always killing people for no reason.

Sri Lanka has urged Saudi Arabia to pardon a domestic worker, sentenced to death by stoning after she admitted committing adultery while working in the Arab kingdom.  An official from Sri Lanka’s Foreign Employment Bureau said the married 45-year-old, who had worked as a maid in Riyadh since 2013, was convicted of adultery in August.

She had sex with someone. Saudi Arabia is going to throw stones at her to kill her, because she had sex with someone. This is our “ally.”

(You know how the stoning works, right? The woman is buried up to her shoulders, … Read the rest

Kamel Daoud in the New York Times on November 20:

Black Daesh, white Daesh. The former slits throats, kills, stones, cuts off hands, destroys humanity’s common heritage and despises archaeology, women and non-Muslims. The latter is better dressed and neater but does the same things. The Islamic State; Saudi Arabia. In its struggle against terrorism, the West wages war on one, but shakes hands with the other. This is a mechanism of denial, and denial has a price: preserving the famous strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia at the risk of forgetting that the kingdom also relies on an alliance with a religious clergy that produces, legitimizes, spreads, preaches and defends Wahhabism, the ultra-puritanical form of Islam that Daesh feeds on.

Scott Kelly sends a snapshot of California from the ISS.

… Read the rest

I was running around outside most of last week so I didn’t see Dawkins’s latest adventures in publicly chastising a 14-year-old boy for saying he “made” a clock when he didn’t really “make” a clock in the strictest sense of “making” something. I’ve seen some of his previous adventures in that exciting field, and blogged about some of those, but I missed the latest, in which he really outdid himself. He outdid himself by such a margin that CNN took the trouble to report on it.

Eminent British scientist Richard Dawkins has drawn criticism on social media for what some say is an unfair comparison between Ahmed Mohamed, the Texas teenager whose school project was mistaken for a bomb,

#SueMeSaudi… Read the rest

Via Josephine Liptrott:

Greatest designer:

1. man
2. man
3. man
4. man
5. man

Greatest comedian:

1. man
2. man
3. man
4. man
5. man

Greatest author:

1. man
2. man
3. man
4. man
5. man

Greatest woman:

1. woman
2. woman
3. woman
4. woman
5. woman

Men do, women just be.… Read the rest

I happened to see this while looking for something else, and couldn’t resist it. It’s from a BBC feature on vintage railway posters.

 … Read the rest

The New York Times apparently perpetrated one of the most oxymoronic lines one could dream up in its initial reporting on the guy who killed three people and injured nine more at Planned Parenthood. Gawker has the record.

After what was likely a heated debate around the editorial desk, The New York Times decided to rework a story that described Robert Lewis Dear, the man who killed three people and wounded nine others at a Planned Parenthood clinic on Friday, as “gentle.”

A story published on Saturday about Dear’s background used that adjective, defined as “[a person of] a mild in temperament or behavior; kind or tender” to describe Dear, following that adjective with details about how he harassed

Via Ali Rizvi on Twitter:

In 2015 SArabia’s beheaded 150+ people, incl for “crimes” like sorcery: @SaudiEmbassyUSA @SaudiEmbassyUK #SueMeSaudi

Sue me.

Adam Taylor at the Washington Post reports that Saudi Arabia considers itself profoundly different from IS, and that it plans to persuade everyone of this by suing people who say otherwise.

Authorities in Saudi Arabia have long been annoyed that everyone keeps suggesting they are anything like the Islamic State. Sure, they say, perhaps some of the laws on the books may look similar to the punishments in the extremist organization, but the Saudi kingdom is a sovereign state that abides by the rule of law and uses these punishments with discretion.

Yes, it’s a “sovereign state,” for what that’s worth – which in their case is pretty much nothing. So it’s a sovereign state, so what? It’s a sovereign … Read the rest

You wanted visuals of the walk to the Carmel end of the Pebble Beach golf course the other day. I didn’t take pics myself so here are a few from Pebble Beach the company and a blogger.

This is the famous and infamous 9th hole. You can see how it would be rather tricky to play – and hot damn it’s a pretty place to take a stroll.

Here’s how it looks as you approach it.

At the base of those cliffs there’s a little beach called Stillwater Cove.

This is approaching the far end – those houses are in Carmel, not on the course, and the beach is Carmel Beach.

This one is near the beginning rather than the … Read the rest

Yet again the BBC treats Maryam Namazie and the ExMuslims as some kind of horrid contaminant if not just plain traitors.

I was interviewed by Anne-Marie Tomchak for thirty minutes for BBC Trending on 26 November. Despite my also having referred 4 ex-Muslims, including those who maintained anonymity whilst Tweeting for#ExMuslimBecause due to fears for their safety, the programme spoke to Mobeen Azhar and Rashid Dar, two men who identified themselves as Muslims, about my segment which was highly edited for BBC World Service on 28 November.

The presenter Tomchak and the two Muslim men framed the entire discussion about apostasy and the basic human right to leave and criticise Islam without fear into one that was “hateful,”

Human Rights Watch on the murder of Tahir Elçi:

The November 28, 2015 assassination of Tahir Elçi, one of Turkey’s most prominent human rights lawyers and defenders, is a huge loss for the human rights community and all those who seek rule of law, democracy and justice, Human Rights Watch said today.  Human Rights Watch offered sincere condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Elçi, head of the Diyarbakir Bar Association.

“This is a very dark day for Turkey – the murder of Tahir Elçi is a devastating blow not only to human rights activists but to all who want to see justice and rule of law prevail in Turkey,” said Emma Sinclair-Webb, senior researcher at Human Rights

Shaheen Hashmat on Facebook:

My face when someone comes to an event on forced marriage and asks why we’re not campaigning against male circumcision 😂 ‪#‎fuuseforum‬ Photo by Julie Tørrissen

 … Read the rest

Apparently the “Vatican,” i.e. the pretend state that is actually just the Catholic church telling everyone what to do, can prosecute people for saying things. Reuters has the details:

Five people, including two Italian reporters, went on trial in the Vatican on Tuesday, to outrage from rights groups, on charges arising from publication of books in which the Holy See was portrayed as mired in mismanagement and corruption.

At the first session, dominated by procedural issues and dubbed “Kafkaesque” by one of the defendants, journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi said they had done nothing wrong and had simply fulfilled their professional duty.

“I am incredulous in finding myself here as a defendant in a country that is not

I’ve been thinking I should do a little dictionary of Social Justice Bullshit. I say “little” because there wouldn’t be much to put in it…more of a page than a dictionary. But there are some words and phrases, and they could do with some beady-eyed interrogation. Intent isn’t magic; check your privilege; my feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit – you know the ones.

One word I really hate is “schooling.” Use it in a sentence, you say, so that we all know what we’re talking about. “I schooled her on the issue but she doubled down and went right on asking her terrible questions.”

You recognize it now, right? Used by “activists” entranced with their own … Read the rest