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

I’m on duty today, at work, doing my job. One of my jobs. The others involve writing; this one, my main breadwinner, involves being the temporary resident human of a lovable dog. So here I am hard at work, looking out at the Pacific Ocean while the dog sleeps next to me.

We just got back from a long walk on the Pebble Beach golf course. This time I took us all the way to the Carmel end of the course, which I haven’t done before. It’s a long and spectacularly beautiful walk – yes even with golfers and golf carts and sand traps in view.

I was thinking as we walked that for many of the people playing there … Read the rest

Another reason not to run away from home to join Islamic State, besides the fact that they’re murderous woman-hating humanity-hating theocratic horrors: they’ll kill you if you try to leave.

(But really the first is far more important. The first is about countless other people you harm by joining IS; the second is only about you.)

The Times of India tells us of one teenage runaway:

A teenage girl who ran away from her Vienna home to join ISIS in Syria has reportedly been beaten to death by the group after trying to escape.

Samra Kesinovic, 17, travelled to Syria last year with her friend Sabina Selimovic, 15.

The two became a ‘poster girl’ for ISIS, also known as

Via Barry Duke at The Freethinker –

Prayar Gopalakrishnan, above, the new head of the famous Sabarimala temple in Kerala, sparked outrage after saying that women would only be allowed to enter the temple after a machine was invented to check their ‘purity’.

According to this report, Gopalakrishnan told reporters at the Kollam Press Club:

These days there are machines that can scan bodies and check for weapons. There will be a day when a machine is invented to scan if it is the ‘right time’ for a woman to enter the temple. When that machine is invented, we will talk about letting women inside.

That’s so interesting, isn’t it? I wonder if Prayar Gopalakrishnan has any idea how … Read the rest

Vyckie Garrison has an article at Raw Story about godless people giving thanks.

Amanda Marcotte’s is the first (the list is alphabetical by first name):

I’ve been doing Friendsgiving long before they called it that, and I’m grateful to have such wonderful, loving friends to eat a bunch of food with and to chat about our mutual obsessions without judgment. Oh, and without praying. I’m in my 30s and still have no idea what to do when people are praying.

Mine changes “thankful” to “glad”:

I don’t love the word “thankful” in this context, I suppose because it sounds too personal and who would that person be if not some version of “God”? But I’m very glad to live

About ISIS and Joyce Carol Oates and humanity and whether or not there’s anything good to say about groups like ISIS or the people who join ISIS…

Here’s my view. I don’t think there is anything good to say about ISIS as a group. Its purpose and actions are rooted in a theocratic loathing of human beings. Its prxis is about what you would expect from such a loathing.

But the people who make up ISIS? That’s a very different question. Some may be thoroughly horrible yet still redeemable, some may be thoroughly horrible full stop, some may be more deluded than horrible. I don’t know. There are a lot of such people, and it’s all but certain that they … Read the rest

So I’m here on the peninsula again so posting will probably be light for the next few days.

The Pacific ocean is just over there and it’s caaalling me.

I like my job. Both my jobs.… Read the rest

I’m on the road – specifically, on a bench at the San Jose airport which seems to be the only spot next to an electrical outlet in the whole place. (Wouldn’t you think? In the heart of Silicon fucking Valley?) I’m here in the interval before the 4:05 shuttle to Monterey.

Anybody else on the road? Or just out for a walk? Tell us stories of your travels.… Read the rest

The BBC tells us the Archbishop of Canterbury suddenly noticed something.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has said the terror attacks in Paris made him “doubt” the presence of God.

The Most Reverend Justin Welby told BBC Songs Of Praise he had prayed, asking “where are you…” after the attacks.

Really?! The Paris attacks! And nothing before that? None of the Boko Haram attacks, which have killed thousands? Not the murders in the Emanuel AME church in Charleston? Not the genocides in Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia? Europe? Africa? He must be quite astonishingly inattentive…much like god, if his god exists.

He said his reaction to the attacks had been “first shock and horror and then a profound sadness”, heightened because he

Sarah Ditum wrote about gender and her daughter last January.

Not all the encouragement you received has been positive. You did a term of judo, then you stopped because some boys in the class began shoving the few girls who attended. They didn’t tell you this was because you were a girl, but it was because you were a girl: they decided this class was their space, so they pushed you around till they pushed you out. “Push them back, and harder,” I wanted to say – you are going to grow up tall and powerful, and right now most boys your age are smaller than you – but fighting is only going to get you in trouble, and anyway,

Zany madcap Joyce Carol Oates is stirring up the hornets again.

A tweet:

Joyce Carol Oates ‏@JoyceCarolOates
All we hear of ISIS is puritanical & punitive; is there nothing celebratory & joyous? Or is query naive?

Yes, query is naïve.

Puritanism and the punishments that enforce it are what ISIS is all about. There is of course joy and celebration, when for instance they smash ancient monuments and buildings in Palmyra, or when they seize another town, or when they find more women to rape. But the joy and celebration are for the alpha males, not for anyone else, and their source is not what minimally compassionate people consider healthy. They rejoice in violence and cruelty and conquest.

Was … Read the rest

The CBC did a story on the “no yoga for you!” situation at the University of Ottawa, so we no longer have to rely on the right-wing tabloid the Ottawa Sun.

Jen Scharf said she’s been teaching a free yoga class for the university’s Centre for Students with Disabilities, which is run by the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa, for the last seven years.

It’s free, and it’s for students with disabilities…so you’d think it would be an all-around good thing, wouldn’t you?

When she checked back in with the centre in September, she said she was told by them the class wouldn’t be happening because some students and volunteers were uncomfortable with the “cultural issues” involved.

“I