Pure, virtuous Saudi Arabia.

The Ministry of Social Affairs has banned Saudi families from adopting Syrian or other foreign children.

“The ministry does not sponsor Arab children who lost their parents in conflicts, such as in Syria and Iraq. There are global humanitarian organizations that deal with these cases,” said Latifah Al-Tamimi, director of social supervision at the ministry in the Eastern Province.

So their god hates children, too. No surprise there.

Bloomberg reports that refugees from Syria feel more welcome in Europe than in the Gulf states.

Searching for a new home, Yassir Batal says Germany and its unfamiliar voices and customs are more enticing for his wife and five children than the wealthy Arab states whose culture,

Whatever problem it is you want to address…just blame it on women. It makes everything so much simpler. The Malay Mail Online reports on an example of that simplification process:

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 4 — A Friday sermon by Federal Territories’ Islamic authorities today blamed women who do not cover their “aurat,” or intimate body parts, for causing social ills that would affect even those who do.

In its sermon distributed to mosques under its jurisdiction, the Federal Territories Islamic Department (Jawi) also compared uncovered women to uncovered dishes, which it said are bound to frequented by flies, making them unappetising.

Women’s filthy intimate body parts cause all the problems, plus, they draw flies and are just plain disgusting.… Read the rest

Kate Smurthwaite has some thoughts on the pope’s “pardon” for abortions.

As I am the official representative of womb-operators (as well as being a comedian I’m also the Media Spokesperson for Abortion Rights UK – you’d be amazed how much overlap the roles have) every journalist and radio presenter has been tripping over themselves to ask me if I’m PLEASED. One even went so far as to ask whether I couldn’t manage a ‘small hooray’.

But any transitory modicum of elation I might have felt at the news that his Holiness has taken one tiny step away from the misogynist medieval attitude that my uterus is any of his damn business is more than swamped by the fury I’m

Mona Eltahawy tweeted an interesting graphic:

 … Read the rest

Terry Glavin in the Ottawa Citizen yesterday:

“The worst part of it is the feeling that we don’t have any allies,” Montreal’s Faisal Alazem, the tireless 32-year-old campaigner for the Syrian-Canadian Council, told me the other day. “That is what people in the Syrian community are feeling.”

There are feelings of deep gratitude for having been welcomed into Canada, Alazem said. But with their homeland being reduced to an apocalyptic nightmare – the barrel-bombing of Aleppo and Homs, the beheadings of university professors, the demolition of Palmyra’s ancient temples – among Syrian Canadians there is also an unquenchable sorrow.

…

But among Syrian-Canadians, the worst thing of all, Alazem said, is a suffocating feeling of solitude and betrayal. “In

Seen on Twitter:

History of Astronomy ‏@hist_astro 5 hours ago
Lunar eclipse (khusuf) in Turkish version of “Wonders of Creation” by al-Qazwini, 1717 copy @walters_museum.

Lori Watson, Professor of Philosophy and Director of Gender Studies at the University of San Diego, asks: What is a “woman” anyway?

Radical feminism has theorized “woman.” One of its more salient contributions for this context is showing that what it means to be a woman is not an absolute; it’s relative.

The category “woman” and the category “man,” the groups “women” and “men,” are relational. One does not socially exist without the other.   For all the vexing about nature, social categorization is what is being dealt with here.   Men without women don’t exist as socially defined. Women without men don’t exist as such either.   The categories are equal in their relational existence. Unfortunately, such equality doesn’t extend to their

Because people talked about this on the Oliver Sacks – Temple Grandin thread: a website about CAFOs.

In the United States and other parts of the world, livestock production is becoming increasingly dominated by concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). In a CAFO, animals are crammed by the thousands or tens of thousands, often unable to breathe fresh air, see the light of day, walk outside, peck at a plants or insects, scratch the earth, or eat a blade of grass.

Over 50 billion food animals are raised and slaughtered every year (not including massive quantities of farmed fish). Grazing and growing feed for livestock now occupy 70 percent of all agricultural land and 30 percent of the ice-free

Oh but, Christie Wilcox at Discover reports that the dolphin-assisted birth didn’t happen.

According to the documentary, Dorina did not go through with her watery plans. She went into labor at night, and thus had a natural birth on land. But, she did say she could feel the dolphins ‘sending positive energy’.

Below is my original commentary on the practice of dolphin-assisted births, from 2013. But the tl;dr version: Dolphins are wild animals. Wild animals do not make good midwives.

Because wild animals can get bitey and tossy and killy.

But there’s another quite compelling reason, which is that they’re not trained. Midwifery isn’t just hanging around sympathetically you know – midwives have to do things. Swimming isn’t enough.… Read the rest

Apparently this is not something from the Onion.

Dorina Rosin, a “spiritual healer,” plans to give birth in the sea with the aid of dolphins. Among other benefits, Rosin and partner Maika Suneagle believe that their baby will speak dolphin.

Really? They believe that how? If they had a Chinese midwife, would they believe their baby would therefore speak Chinese?

Also, what kind of aid do they think the dolphins will give?

Do they pause to recollect that dolphins are carnivores? Do they know what a carnivore is? Would they consider giving birth on the savanna with the aid of lions?

“In 2011 and 2014 I had the privilege to learn from and with wild and free dolphins and

Aylan Kurdi’s father says what happened – the tiny boat flipped in five-foot waves, and his two little boys and their mother drowned over the course of three hours.

The father of Galip and Aylan Kurdi, the young refugee boys from Syria whose drowning off a Turkish beach has touched a global nerve, said Thursday that his family had paid smugglers more than $2,000 for a voyage to a Greek island in a 15-foot boat that was quickly upended by five-foot waves. His wife also drowned.

“The waves were high, the boat started swaying and shaking. We were terrified,” said the father, Abdullah Kurdi, 40, a Syrian Kurd from the town of Kobani near the Turkish border. “I rushed to

Listen up – you have to stop saying “poly” when you mean “polyamorous.” Aida Manduley says so.

In case you haven’t stumbled upon this (I just heard about it two days ago myself),  here’s the scoop—a Polynesian person on Tumblr made the following call to action:

Hey, can any polyamory blogs with a follower count please inform the palagi portion of the community that “poly” is a Polynesian community identifier, and is important to our safe spaces.
Using “polyamory” is cool just like using “polygender” and “Polyromantic” and or Polysexual” is cool. But the abbreviation “poly” is already in use.

Oh well then, that settles it. An abbreviation that’s already in use can never be used by other people … Read the rest

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/threeyearold-ultraorthodox-jewish-children-told-the-nonjews-are-evil-in-worksheet-produced-by-school-10481682.html

British three-year-olds have been told “the non-Jews” are “evil” in a Kindergarten worksheet handed out at ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools in north London, it can be revealed.

Documents seen by The Independent show children are taught about the horrors of the Holocaust when they are still in kindergarten at the Beis Rochel boys’ school in north London.

A whistle-blower, who wished to remain anonymous, has shown The Independent a worksheet given to boys aged three and four at the school…

The document refers to Nazis only as “goyim” – a term for non-Jews some people argue is offensive.

The issue isn’t so much that it’s “offensive,” I would think, but that it implies that all non-Jews are genocidal fascists.

Emily

A PEN event in Brooklyn September 16 –

Roulette, 509 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11217

Free and open to the public.

As the fight for freedom of speech in Bangladesh continues, artists of Bangladeshi origin take the stage to commemorate the voices of four recently slain bloggers, and protest the threat looming over more than 70 other Bangladeshi intellectuals, many of whom are in hiding. Join them at Roulette for an evening of solidarity, live music, and readings to condemn the assassinations of Avijit Roy, Oyasiqur Babu, Ananta Bijoy Das, and Niloy Neel, and to celebrate writing. Featuring Farah Mehreen Ahmad, Abeer Y. Hoque, Majib Hoque, Tanwi Nandini Islam, Javed Jahangir, and Anik Khan. The evening will also

The pope cleans up.

VATICAN CITY—Hurrying outside after hearing a disturbingly loud thud against the side of the church, Pope Francis was reportedly left to clean up the remains of a dead angel Monday that flew straight into one of the Sistine Chapel’s windows. “It’s really sad; it seems like one of these guys crashes into a window at least once a week,” said the pontiff, who appeared visibly distressed while sweeping up the feathers scattered around the angel’s lifeless body.

They should put pieces of tape on the windows, or tint them, or do something so that the poor angels don’t think they’re apertures in the walls.

At press time, the Bishop of Rome was attempting to scrape

Oh dear, Josh Duggar is being unsubmissive and disobedient. That’s not very quiverfull of him.

Former “19 Kids and Counting” star Josh Duggar went into a Christian rehab after he was exposed for cheating on wife Anna in the Ashley Madison hack, but now his whereabouts might be unknown, Radar Online reported Tuesday. Duggar reportedly entered the Reformers Unanimous treatment center, in Rockford, Illinois, which his parents publicly have supported, to treat his admitted porn addiction, but the eldest Duggar sibling has not shown up to church services and meetings mandated by the program.

Well, his messing around on the side without his wife’s knowledge or submission (we have to assume there’s no such thing as “consent” from a … Read the rest