Author: Ophelia Benson

  • This is totally alien to the spirit of Tahrir

    Well how sodding depressing.

    Women hoping to extend their rights in post-revolutionary Egypt were faced with a harsh reality Tuesday when a mob of angry men beat and sexually assaulted marchers calling for political and social equality, witnesses said.

    …

    The demonstration on International Women’s Day drew a crowd only in the hundreds to Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the popular revolt that drove President Hosni Mubarak from power. Gone, organizers said, was the spirit of equality and cooperation between the sexes that marked most of the historic mass gatherings in the square.

    As upwards of 300 marchers assembled late Tuesday afternoon, men began taunting them, insisting that a woman could never be president and objecting to women’s demands to have a role in drafting a new constitution, witnesses said.

    That’s no good.

    “People were saying that women were dividing the revolution and should be happy with the rights they have,” said Ebony Coletu, 36, an American who teaches at American University in Cairo and attended the march, as she put it, “in solidarity.”

    The men – their number estimated to be at least double that of the women’s – broke through a human chain that other men had formed to protect the marchers. Women said they attempted to stand their ground – until the physical aggression began.

    “I was grabbed in the crotch area at least six times. I was grabbed in the breasts; my throat was grabbed,” Coletu said…Egyptian women say that sexual harassment has long been rampant here and that they grow up expecting to be fondled in public by men with impunity.

    That’s no good that’s no good that’s no good.

    The “revolution” is worthless if that’s the kind of world it settles for. It’s worthless if it’s content with treating half of its people (or any of them, but especially half of them) as objects of contempt.

  • Cairo: women’s rights marchers report attacks

    A mob of angry men beat and sexually assaulted women marching for political and social equality, witnesses said.

  • Sally Feldman on shiny new anti-feminism

    Catherine Hakim of LSE recently caused a furore with her “Feminist Myths and Magic Medicine,” in which she condemns moves towards gender equality.

  • The Catholic Herald interviews Paul Sims

    CH: “Not only did most people warm to the Holy Father but his opponents often seemed shrill and intolerant.” Discuss.

  • Soldiers punished for not attending Xian concert

    Two soldiers said they felt pressured to attend the Christian rock concert as part of what was billed as the “Commanding General’s Spiritual Fitness Concerts.”

  • NPR head resigns in wake of sting video

    A different executive told people “posing as Muslim philanthropists” that Tea Party supporters were racist.

  • His hand slipped

    Jen Phillips pointed out another item from Wally in October 2009. A spot of quote-mining.

    What PZ wrote:

    “I have zero sympathy for intelligent people who stand before a grandiose monument to lies, an institution that is anti-scientific, anti-rational, and ultimately anti-human, in a place where children are being actively miseducated, an edifice dedicated to an abiding intellectual evil, and choose to complain about how those ghastly atheists are ruining everything.

    Those people can just fuck off.”

    What Tom Johnson chose to quote:

    “I have zero sympathy for intelligent people who stand before (religion)…Those people can just fuck off.”

    (Yes, we saw that quote again a few days ago, in another “oh sweet jesus the new atheists” jeremiad.) Wally said oh gosh sorry, I took it from another source. Sigmund (yes, our friend Sigmund) said really, because I’ve searched for it and can’t find it, Wally said how dare you, I said I was sorry, grow up. Yes really.

    Two apologies from me should be more than enough to clear up the ambiguities for others reading this post. It’s done, Sigmund. I made a mistake by posting a second-hand quote without checking its original source (there’s a third!). Grow up.

    Wally also, in the very act of “apologizing,” said “but I could find plenty of quotes of PZ bashing religion.” Yes really. Twice.

    I wonder if he’s busy doing that even now, inside his own spooky head. “But it is all completely totally true, even though I did make it all up.”

  • Waving the saffron flag

    Meera Nanda is critical of myths about the timeless Hindu nature of yoga.

    By and large, the US yoga industry does not hide the origins of what it teaches. On the contrary, in a country that is so young and so constantly in flux, yoga’s presumed antiquity (‘the 5,000-year-old exercise system’, etcetera.) and its connections with Eastern spirituality have become part of the sales pitch. Thus, doing namastes, intoning ‘om’ and chanting Sanskrit mantras have become a part of the experience of doing yoga in America.

    I’m reminded of Kelly on The Office, dressing up in a sari and piously saying “namaste” when she was applying for a Minority Training Program, which was funny precisely because the rest of the time she’s hyper-American and the opposite of pious.

    One would think that yoga’s popularity and Hinduisation would gladden the hearts of Hindu immigrants.

    Wrong.

    The leading Hindu advocacy organisation in the United States, the aforementioned Hindu American Foundation or HAF, is hardly beaming with pride. On the contrary, it has recently accused the American yoga industry of ‘stealing’—even ‘raping’—yoga by stripping it of its spiritual heritage and not acknowledging its Hindu roots.

    And so another bogus grievance is born.

  • Wendy Doniger on the real roots of yoga

    Yoga is a rich, multi-cultural, constantly changing interdisciplinary construction, far from the pure line that its adherents often claim for it.

  • BHA census campaign ads deemed too “offensive”

    For railway stations, on the grounds that they could “cause widespread and serious offence.”

  • Desk chair tourism

    Do you play with Google Earth enough? I’m not sure it’s possible to play with Google Earth enough. I’d forgotten to install it until fairly recently, so I’m still excited about it…Then again I doubt that I’ll get less excited about it as time goes on.

    Check out the Amalfi coast some time. Or Capri. Or Norway and those notorious fjords. Or Vancouver. Or Stockholm. Or Paris. Or Edinburgh. Or Cornwall.

    At the moment I’m working on the Yorkshire Dales. I took a little break there about an hour ago. I went to Gunnerside, in Swaledale; found a very local but blue-lined road partway up a moor to the west of Gunnerside, and just traveled along it pausing to do a 360 every few yards. Staggering!

  • 12,000-year-old fishing tackle found off California

    “This pushes back the chronology of New World seafaring to 12,000, maybe 13,000 years ago.”

  • Maryam Namazie on International Women’s Day

    Women in Iran and in many other countries today continue to be deprived of many very basic human rights.

  • International Women’s Day

    We need to understand and tackle social institutions, such as discriminatory family codes, son bias, and limited resource rights and entitlements.

  • Jesus and Mo apply for a Templeton Prize

    They have a winna.

  • Liars don’t know when they’re lying to themselves

    This tells us a little about the mindset of people who fake their research, who build careers on plagiarised work or who wave around spurious credentials.

  • Building bridges

    Wally Smith wrote an article on a forthcoming book in October 2009. In fact it’s dated October 26, 2009, which happens to be the date of Chris Mooney’s “My Thanks to ‘Tom Johnson’” post. The opening paragraph of Mooney’s article, given all that we know now, is so richly ironic that one feels dizzy reading it.

    Last week, the New Atheist comment machine targeted the following post, in which I republished a preexisting blog comment from a scientist named “Tom Johnson” (a psuedonym). In the comment, Johnson had related  how some of his New Atheist-inspired scientist colleagues had behaved toward religious folks at bridge-building conservation events.

    You see what I mean, I’m sure. Mooney insults us for being skeptical about a post that smelled like dead fish at the time and is known to be certified, thrice-rotten, hypertoxic dead fish now, a post by a dedicated liar and trash-talker and one-man “comment machine.”

    Let’s take a look at the fragrant work of the trash-talking comment-machine writing (for once) under his own name.

    He says he hasn’t read the book yet, which is fine, because he’s not reviewing it, he’s discussing the collaboration of the co-authors, a pastor and a scientist (who are also married), and the general collaboration of what he calls “the faith-based community” and science. He’s in favor of the collaboration. He’s against what he sees as obstacles to the collaboration. He spots one in particular…

    …engaging the religious seems to be low on the list of scientists’ priorities. Instead, some leading scientists are running (quickly) in the opposite direction, holding contests to come up with the most mocking labels for scientists and others willing to engage the faithful. Blog exchanges on the topic by respected scholars have reached zero consensus and read like they belong more on an elementary school playground than in any serious, forward-looking public forum. As a scientist speaking about his own field, there’s little more to call this than a disgrace – especially so if we ever expect to apply science effectively beyond peer-reviewed journals.

    Oh what do you know – it’s all about Jerry Coyne. As it was in the beginning, so it was at the end – it was all about that pesky Jerry Coyne. (If it hadn’t been, I might not have sniffed him out. Think about that, Wally. Your obsessions give you away.) Jerry Coyne, unlike our author, belongs on an elementary school playground…far away from the scatological fantasies Wally engaged in as the YNH bloggers.

    His conclusion is stirring:

    Hopefully Hayhoe and Farley’s book will be a welcome change of pace in terms of building bridges – not breaking them down – and will help us realize that, if we spend all our time fighting “enemies” in a culture war, all of us are going to lose.

    Wally has invested quite a lot of time in fighting his perceived enemies over the past year and a half, but it’s nice to have his advice anyway.

  • The difference between journalism and churnalism

    Publishing other people’s press releases is not journalism.

  • Hitchens on 60 Minutes

    “But don’t let the word ‘intellectual’ scare you off.” I wasn’t going to.

  • Mohammed Hanif on Pakistan’s celebrity maulanas

    They are there on prime time TV, they thunder on FM radios between adverts for Pepsi and hair removing cream.