Author: Ophelia Benson

  • A scientist would not threaten critics and try to silence them

    Andy Lewis of Quackometer wrote about his concerns about the Burzynski clinic, where Dr Burzynski charges people hundreds of thousands of dollars for an unproven urine-based cancer therapy. Within 24 hours he was in receipt of a threatening message from said clinic.

    You have a right to freedom of speech, and you have a right to voice your opinion, but you do not have the right to post libelous statements regardless if you think its your opinion or not.  You are highly aware of defamation laws. You actually wrote an article about defamation on your site.  In addition, I have information linking you to a network of individuals that disseminate false information.  So the courts will apparently see the context of your article, and your act as Malicious.  You have multiple third parties that viewed and commented on your article, which clearly makes this matter defamation libel. Once I obtain a subpoena for your personal information, I will not settle this case with you.  Shut the article down IMMEDIATELY.

    GOVERN YOURSELF ACCORDINGLY.

    Hm. I bet law schools teach prospective lawyers never to write ALL IN CAPS on the first day. I bet that message IS NOT FROM A LAWYER.

    Andy Lewis replied civilly asking for specifics of what he got wrong. The reply sounded much less lawyerly.

    FINAL NOTICE TO CEASE AND DESIST

    I am not here to grade your article, or play games with you.  You fully understand what you’re doing, which is why you are trying to hide behind your so-called “opinion”.  You have a history of lying in your articles since 2008. All articles and videos posted from your little network are being forwarded to local authorities, as well as local counsel.  It is your responsibility to understand when you brake[sic] the law.  I am only obligated to show you in court.  I am giving you final warning to shut the article down.  The days of no one pursuing you is over.  Quackwatch, Ratbags, and the rest of you Skeptics days are numbered.

    …

    So, when I present to the juror that my client and his cancer treatment has went up against 5 Grand Juries which involved the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), Aetna Life Insurance, Emprise, Inc., Texas State Medical Board, and the United States Government, and was found not guilty in all 5 cases, you will wish you never wrote your article.  In addition, my client has treated multiple cancer patients around the world, which is fully documented by the FDA, NCI, and Kurume University School of Medicine in Japan, and has finished Phase II clinical trials with FDA approval to move forward with Phase III.  I suggest you spend more time with your new child then posting lies and false information on the internet that will eventually get you sued, which will hurt you financially.  I am going to pursue you at the highest extent of the law.

    Oooh ya that doesn’t look lawyerly at all. That “has went” is fatal, as is “you will wish you never wrote.” Dr Burzynski should get his assistant some help with the grammar parts.

    Andy Lewis had a similar thought.

    This foam-flecked angry rant did not look like the work of a lawyer to me. And indeed it is not. Marc Stephens appears to work for Burzynski in the form of PR, marketing and sponsorship.

    Lewis made further attempts to get specifics, Stephens sent more threats, and Lewis said what all this looks like.

    I believe my article was raising serious issues concern on matters of public health and the ethical issues of charging hundreds of thousands from the desperate parents of terminally ill children. It is an important set of issues that the Observer failed to pick up on in an uncritical piece that may well send more parents down a path that has the potential to do serious harm.

    In science, the truth emerges after ideas have been subjected to thorough experimental testing, and the results critically appraised by peers. This process can be harsh – and it needs to be. In medicine, despite the best of intentions, it is possible to do great harm when you believe you are doing good. Ideas only emerge as bad because of intense critical appraisal.

    Dr Burzynski presents himself as a man of science. But, I would say to him and his associates, a man of science would welcome critical appraisal, would publish all the data he has, and allow the world to come to conclusions based on how good that evidence is. A man of science would not threaten critics and try to silence them. That is a sure and certain way that you will end up harming patients.

    Stay tuned.

     

     

  • Nick Cohen on the defeaning silence about Rafiq Tagi

    Compared to what liberals must face in the Middle East and beyond, what right do westerners have to put their paltry fears first?

  • Burzynski Clinic threatens Andy Lewis of Quackometer

    Via a PR guy who sounds like Sonny Corleone.

  • Sigh ents 4 gur ulls

    Oh look, science for girls – how kind of the boys to make some science for girls so that the stupid weak fluffy pink little things won’t feel left out. You’ve come a long way baby!

  • Jesus and Mo chat about modesty

    And the relativity of distance.

    eyes

  • Tacit consent

    Nick Cohen ponders the absence of news coverage of the murder of Rafiq Tagi.

    Emin Milli, a liberal Azerbaijani writer, told me that Tagi appeared to be recovering from his injuries in a state hospital and then took a turn for the worse. He wondered how that could be. He was as suspicious about the failure of westerners to take an interest in the murder of a writer, whose “crime” had been to speak his mind. He’d tried the BBC, newspapers… everyone he could think of and no one apart from Index on Censorship was interested. “Why don’t they care?”

    Milli has a touchingly simple belief in the power of free speech, but his question was not as naive as it sounded. He knew from experience how effective democratic opinion can be when mobilised. He was one of the Azerbaijani “donkey bloggers,” whose persecution became a cause celebre in 2009.

    …

    The world did not stand by and say that Azerbaijan was none of its business. Barack Obama, the EU, the media and human rights groups took up the donkey bloggers’ cause and persuaded the regime to free them.

    Milli is now studying in London and cannot understand why those who shouted with such passion about his conviction ignored Tagi’s murder. I tried to explain that Europe was not the brave continent that Tagi imagined. It would defend the victims of political oppression but not of religious oppression. Ever since the persecution of Salman Rushdie, many have been frightened of denouncing Islamism for fear of reprisals. Others were frightened of being accused of orientalism, neoconservatism or some other sinful religious or racial phobia.

    To put it another way: there are no “communities” of corrupt officials living in neglected corners of Bradford or Birmingham, so it doesn’t feel like bullying to give support to their critics. The same cannot be said of “communities” of Muslims. It’s a mistake to think that resisting political Islam is a way of bullying Muslims, but it’s a mistake that a lot of people make. It would be nice if those people could learn to make the necessary distinctions.

  • Welcome to Kalispell

    I guess Kalispell, Montana is off the list of places I want to live in. (Was it on the list in the first place? No, but now it’s on the Do Not Add list.) It seems it’s being colonized by white supremacists and anti-government right-wing lunatics.

    The Pioneer Little Europe movement has brought dozens of white supremacists to the Flathead Valley. They are increasingly making their presence known by staging public events, openly recruiting and distributing racist literature, stocking up on firearms at area gun shows while dressed in neo-Nazi clothing, working for local anti-gun control and anti-abortion campaigns (according to Gaede), and issuing violent threats to perceived enemies, including Media Matters, which is now under “indictment” for treason to the white race.

    The growing numbers of PLE white supremacists in the Flathead Valley parallels a recent influx to the area of ultra right-wing “Patriot” movement leaders and their followers. Their combined forces are rapidly transforming the region into the hottest flash point of right-wing extremism in the country.

    …

    In addition to calling on fellow right-wing extremists to move to the Flathead Valley, leaders of both the PLE and the Patriot movements in the region are urging followers to exploit Montana’s weak firearms regulations by stocking up on guns, including .50 caliber sniper rifles and assault weapons, says Travis McAdam, executive director of the Montana Human Rights Network, which closely follows PLE and Patriot activity, including online communications.

    Oh goody, sounds like another Ruby Ridge or Waco in our future.

  • Movement brings white supremacists to Kalispell

    Pioneer Little Europe invites “racially conscious” white Americans to relocate to Montana’s Flathead Valley to help create a heavily-armed Aryan homeland.

  • Take a deep breath before reading

    I don’t know how some people live with themselves. People who claim to be able to cure HIV through God, for example, and thus tell patients to stop taking their medication.

    At least six people have died in Britain after being told that they had been healed of HIV, and could stop taking their medication.

    There is evidence that evangelical churches in London, Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow are claiming to cure HIV through God.

    …

    The healing process involves the pastor shouting, over the person being healed, for the devil to come out of their body, and spraying water in their face.

    One of the pastors, Rachel Holmes, told our reporter, Shatila, who is a genuine HIV sufferer, they had a 100% success rate.

    …

    “We’ve had people come back before saying ‘Oh I’m not healed. The diarrhoea I had when I had HIV, I’ve got it again.’ I have to stop them and say ‘no, please, you are free.’”

    That makes me very very angry. It makes me want to have a very stern conversation with Rachel Holmes.

    The Synagogue Church of All Nations is wealthy. It has branches across the globe and its own TV channel.

    On its website it promotes its anointing water, which is used during the healing, and it also makes money from merchandise, such as DVDs, CDs and books.

    Sky News asked them to respond to the investigation.

    We are not the Healer; God is the Healer. Never a sickness God cannot heal. Never a disease God cannot cure. Never a burden God cannot bear. Never a problem God cannot solve.

    Nothing to do with them, you see, it’s all God. That’s why it’s all right for them to tell people to stop taking medication.

  • Churches told dying “patients” they were cured

    There is evidence that evangelical churches in London, Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow are claiming to cure HIV through God.

  • Mona Eltahawy on her beating and arrest 2

    “What happened to me is the tip of the iceberg.”



    www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW1HqS3Cmr8

  • Mona Eltahawy on her arrest in Tahrir Square

    They beat her, they sexually assaulted her, they called her a whore – whore whore whore, over and over.



    www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7eL9VcrH5s

  • Jehane Noujaim on her arrest in Tahrir Square

    “All it takes is one military guy, one police person, who decides he’s going to mess with you…”



    www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN4r0cIp4ok

  • PEN on the murder of Rafiq Tagi

    Rafiq Tagi first came to PEN International’s attention when he was arrested on 1 November 2006 for an article comparing European and Islamic traditions.

  • Index on Censorship on murder of Rafiq Tagi

    In Azerbaijan, those who physically attack journalists are never brought to justice and the cycle of impunity there is truly shocking.

  • To make the world a better place

    The New Humanist has a fascinating piece by Paul Sims about Robert Lambert, the retired Special Branch officer who was head of the Muslim Contact Unit.

    I’ve had some critical things to say about Lambert and his colleague Jonathan Githens-Mazer in the past – in June 2010 and April 2009. They talked evasive deceptive nonsense about the wonderfulness of Islamism and the badness of “Islamophobia.” They completely ignored the issues of women’s rights and homophobia. The stuff they wrote was extremely misleading – like this, for instance:

    While British Islamists are as diverse as British socialists, the interviews do reveal important unifying characteristics, most notably a devotion to social justice and a concern for community needs over individual or corporate ambitions. British Islamists are typified by a sense of moral obligation to confront injustice, and they strive, in their own ways, to try to make the world a better place. These are messages which have more power than ever in modern Britain.

    “Social justice” according to whom? “Community needs” and “individual ambitions” according to whom? Ditto injustice, ditto a better place. (Notice that careful “in their own ways” – yes, patriarchal misogynist punitive theocratic ways.) It’s sneaky, illiberal, irresponsible stuff, and it makes me angry (me and a good many other people).

    Sims is doing journalism, so he does a better job than I would have of seeing the point of what Lambert was trying to do.

    …where the MCU diverged from the mainstream was in the view that the most suitable groups for standing up to Hamza and his ilk were those which themselves adhered to strict Islamic principles or held strong political views on the “War on Terror”. In Finsbury Park, the MCU entered into a partnership with the Muslim Association of Britain and the Muslim Welfare House, local groups with links to the international Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, while in Brixton they worked with adherents to a literalist Salafi interpretation of Islam. Both partnerships, in Lambert’s view, succeeded in reducing the influence of extremists, and he takes particular pride in the way the MCU and the Finsbury Park Islamists were able to engineer the removal of Hamza’s supporters from Finsbury Park Mosque in 2005 through the installation of a new board of trustees.

    Point taken, but even if Lambert’s right that his work “succeeded in reducing the influence of [some] extremists,” Hamza and his ilk aren’t the only extremists there are, and Lambert’s work may also have increased the influence of the MAB and other Islamist groups. Lambert, to be blunt, doesn’t seem to pay any attention at all to the people who are subordinated (if not punished or killed) by Islamist men.

    Hanging over the whole debate is the lack of clarity over the term “Islamism”. When I ask Lambert to tell me what he means when he uses it, he explains that Islamists tend to have “a stronger sense that Islam encourages them to be politically active”. But for others, “Islamism” clearly means much more than this, and has become a demon term that describes those Muslims who reject secular democracy and aspire to live in an Islamic state ruled by Sharia law, with all the detrimental effects to women’s and minority rights that would entail. Lambert tells me that the MCU “would not have partnered with anyone if they exhibited any hostility or hatred toward any other community, whether it be the Jewish community, gay community or women”, but it is still legitimate to ask whether groups which take inspiration from the Muslim Brotherhood, which has a controversial history on all of those counts, make suitable partners for the British state.

    What Lambert says is either absurdly naïve or disingenuous. Apparently the criterion was people going purple in the face and shouting about women (a Kyle Sandilands type of thing) or gays; he didn’t see that so that was good enough. Pu-leeze.

    Props to Paul Sims for drawing him out.

     

  • Paul Sims talks to Robert Lambert

    The problems with recruiting reactionary patriarchal homophobic theocrats in order to prevent violence.

  • Jonathan Rée on dissing God

    When Stendhal said “God’s only excuse is that he does not exist,” he was continuing a tradition of angry piety handed down from the Hebrew Bible and medieval Islamic poetry.

  • An atmosphere where a slide towards violence against women is enabled

    Kyle Sandilands says it’s free speech and also that it’s quite all right and reasonable and why not? He explains carefully.

    I’ll attack any journalist that attacks me that I think’s unfair.

    Well what he means is, if a journalist says something about his show that he doesn’t like, he will not respond with an explanation of why she is wrong or a criticism of her reasoning, but rather, he will call her a fat slag, a fat bitter thing with a nothing job, and a piece of shit, and then he will tell her to watch her mouth or he’ll hunt her down. In other words he’ll say the most degrading things he can think of and then he’ll threaten her.

    That’s not what free speech is for. That’s not what’s meant by “free speech.” A large man shouting insults and threats at a woman over the radio is not “free speech” except in the barest minimal sense that it is not quite against the law (although the threat quite possibly is). Some kinds of bullying are not illegal but they are or should be socially shunned.

    John Birmingham of the SMH gets this.

    …if blame lies anywhere for the faint, continuing stench on the airwaves wherever  this man opens his opens his mouth, it is not with him, but with the corporations that continue to support and employ him. Sandilands is not a  political orator, whose freedom to put forth odious opinions we must tolerate for the greater good. He is merely a bully employed in the service of profit by Austereo and occasionally by the TV networks. That is why it was so pleasing to see Holden pull their support for his show yesterday.

    That’s exactly it: he’s a bully employed in the service of profit, because somehow it has been decided that bullying is edgy and hip and funny.

    By seeking an audience for Sandilands, Austereo and the TV networks who very  occasionally call on his … er … talents, endorse the deeper message and dangerous stupidity of his public performances. What are these underlying attitudes?

    Well, they seem to be based on a Hobbesian belief that the natural human condition is short, nasty and brutish, and that success comes not from being led  by the better angels of our nature, but from embracing as fully as possible a crude ugliness appealing to as large and degraded a mass audience as possible.

    Part of this routine is an apparently shameless misogyny where any women who do not fawn and flutter at Sandilands’ approach, who dare to question or cross  him, are belittled and subject to thinly-veiled coercion – whether credible or  not. It would be interesting to ask him exactly what he meant when he threated to “hunt down” News Limited’s entertainment reporter Alison Stephenson.

    More interesting, though, would be to seek from Austereo a figure for the income Sandilands generates for them with his noxious productions and what responsibility, if any, the radio network feels it should accept for the poisoning of the public mind it enables by giving him such an amplified voice. Because while Sandilands himself is a blowhard whose sins are entirely rhetorical, the continued exposure and promotion of those sins in the name of entertainment, and the service of profit, is a much greater wrongdoing. It creates an atmosphere where a slide towards violence against women, at least by some, is enabled.

    QFT.

  • Mona Eltahawy tells of sex assault in Cairo ministry

    She told CNN: “My left hand and my right arm are broken. This is as a result of a brutal beating by the Egyptian riot police who surrounded me.”