Author: Ophelia Benson

  • “How dare you” aka “Patrick’s fallacy”

    P makes an analogy between X and Y. A spots a way in which X is not like Y, and expresses shock-horror.

  • Atheists and freethinkers in Africa

    Leo Igwe and Adebowale Ojowuro in Nigeria, Kwadwo Obeng from Ghana, Ayaan Hirsi Ali from Somalia, Annette Nalunga and Betty Nassaka in Uganda.

  • Rushdie on Pakistan and bin Laden

    Excellent, no need to quote Facebook updates any more; Salman has written an article on the subject.

    Many of us didn’t believe in the image of bin Laden as a wandering Old Man of the Mountains, living on plants and insects in an inhospitable cave somewhere on the porous Pakistan-Afghan border…Bin Laden was born filthy rich and died in a rich man’s house, which he had painstakingly built to the highest specifications. The U.S. administration confesses it was “shocked” by the elaborate nature of the compound.

    Died in a rich man’s house, with women and children carefully placed around him as shields. What a guy.

    Osama bin Laden, the world’s most wanted man, was found living at the end of a dirt road 800 yards from the Abbottabad military academy, Pakistan’s equivalent of West Point or Sandhurst, in a military cantonment where soldiers are on every street corner, just about 80 miles from the Pakistani capital Islamabad. This extremely large house had neither a telephone nor an Internet connection. And in spite of this we are supposed to believe that Pakistan didn’t know he was there, and that the Pakistani intelligence, and/or military, and/or civilian authorities did nothing to facilitate his presence in Abbottabad, while he ran al Qaeda, with couriers coming and going, for five years?

    Well when you put it like that…it doesn’t seem very credible, does it.

    Pakistan’s neighbor India, badly wounded by the November 26, 2008, terrorist attacks on Mumbai, is already demanding answers. As far as the anti-Indian jihadist groups are concerned—Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Muhammad—Pakistan’s support for such groups, its willingness to provide them with safe havens, its encouragement of such groups as a means of waging a proxy war in Kashmir and, of course, in Mumbai—is established beyond all argument. In recent years these groups have been reaching out to the so-called Pakistani Taliban to form new networks of violence…

    Pakistan needs to get its act together.

  • Salman Rushdie on Pakistan’s deadly game

    We are supposed to believe that Pakistan didn’t know he was there, while he ran al Qaeda, with couriers coming and going, for five years?

  • Questions arising

    Who owned the land on which the house was constructed? How was the land acquired, and from whom? Who designed the house, purpose-built to secure bin Laden?

  • Jeffrey Toobin: was the killing of ObL legal?

    If it was an assassination, then no.

  • Nick Cohen on Charles the Meddler

    To say that Prince Charles’s views are reactionary is to libel honest conservatives.

  • Red faces in Pakistan

    Salman Rushdie’s Facebook page is an interesting place today. He noticed right off the bat that the location of bin Laden’s vacation home raises some tricky questions. So did William Dalrymple. 13 hours ago – which was 9 last night Pacific Time, so before Obama made the announcement.

    Dalrymple: In Abbotabad next to the Pakistan’s main military academy. Funny that.

    Rushdie: That’s right. Army town. Just the place for the world’s most wanted man to live unobserved.

    Quite. I’ve been trying to picture it. Giant compound, 8 times the size of anything else in the neighborhood; 12 to 18 foot walls; mystery occupants; important military academy a few hundred meters away; retired military people all around. Nobody notices; nobody worries; nobody asks questions; nobody investigates.

    Really?

    I think not.

    Rushdie in an update today, with a link to Simon Tisdall’s Guardian article:

    Damn right it’s “embarrassing.” Osama purpose-builds a high-security luxury compound in a Pak military cantonment, 800 yards from Pakistan’s equivalent of West Point or Sandhurst, and for YEARS runs al-Qaeda from it, his couriers coming and going… and we’re supposed to believe Pakistan wasn’t protecting him? (Mullah Omar, it’s widely rumoured, is in another ISI safe house.)

    On Salil Tripathi’s page, a friend of Salil’s said

    Per the NYT the ISI are claiming it was a joint operation. Ha ha

    Salil replied

    Yes, they were rolling joints, I suppose!

    We live in interesting times.

  • ObL’s location an embarrassment for Pakistan

    Oh gee, there’s a huge mysterious walled compound a few hundred meters from a military academy – what could possibly go wrong?

  • It’s all about a beautiful dress

    Oh yes child (that is, girl) beauty pageants, one of my favorite things. It’s so obviously a good idea to train girls from infancy to act, move, walk, and look as much like prostitutes as possible. Australia had, in its innocence, forgotten to have such things, but they are now on their way their thanks to the helpful interventions of US pageanters.

    The anti-pageant groups claim pageants sexualise children

    But the pro-pageant people, absurdly, say they don’t. No no, it’s

    a positive and fun-filled family occasion that will boost participants’ self-confidence.
    Self-confidence at what? Attracting sexual attention? Why would anyone want to boost a six-year-old girl’s confidence at attracting sexual attention? If it’s so positive and fun-filled, why don’t they dress up little boys the same way?
    I’ll tell you why. Because it’s degrading and slavish, that’s why, and it would be an outrage to train little boys to do something degrading and slavish, but it’s perfectly all right to train little girls to do that. Why is it? Well because that’s supposed to be their job, and it’s ok to start teaching to be good at it before they can read.

    Annette Hill, owner of the Texas parent company Universal Royalty Beauty Pageant, who arrives in Australia a week before the pageant, said…”I don’t like golf but I am not going to go to a golf tournament and protest.”

    Not relevant. It’s not about liking to do something oneself, it’s about doing things to very young children – very young girls.

    ”If you are looking at children in a sexual way, you should be ashamed of yourself and something is wrong with you. It’s all about a beautiful dress, a beautiful child with lots of personality performing on stage.”

    Right, because the whole thing has nothing whatever to do with sex; the little girls are not dressed in a sexualized way, they are not loaded with makeup, they are performing on stage like any other child singing or reciting a poem.

    However, Glenn Cupit, senior lecturer in child development at the University of South Australia, believes the young pageant participants are instructed to dress and behave in an adult way.

    ”The title is ‘child beauty pageant’ but if you look at the way the children are dressed and required to act, it’s actually a child sexualisation pageant,” he said. ”The children are put into skimpy clothes, they are taught to do bumps and grinds. It’s not looking at children’s beauty. It’s a particular idea of what beauty is, which is based on a highly sexualised understanding of female beauty.”

    Exactly like the highly sexualized understanding of female beauty that mandates that female ballet dancers, gymnasts and ice skaters all have to wear the equivalent of bathing suits while male ballet dancers, gymnasts and ice skaters wear long tights and often long sleeves. Women have to look as naked and vulnerable as possible while men have to look as different from that as possible.

    I’m off to play some golf.

  • Child “beauty pageants” arrive in Australia

    ”The title is ‘child beauty pageant’ but if you look at the way the children are dressed and required to act, it’s actually a child sexualisation pageant.”
  • Mr. Obama: We, the Real Americans, Demand That You Show Us More Stuff

    President Obama (if that is your real name), we are real Americans, the ones who’ve patiently demanded that you release your long-form birth certificate – a demand you have apparently now met thanks to the counterfeiting skills you learned in your true birthplace of Kenya. Your clever forgery may quell the suspicions of some Americans, but not us. We’ve already swapped demands for your long-form birth certificate for demands that you show your college records. But that’s just the beginning. We demand that you show us more stuff, and that you show us now.

    Here is a list of what we will need to see, at a minimum, if we are ever going to stop drawing Hitler mustaches on your pictures and shouting “Terrorist!” at your likeness on our TV sets.  Or, maybe not completely stop, but at least pause to catch our breath in between hateful, face-reddening screams.

    First, we need a list of every book you read as a child, both inside and outside of school.   Did you read “Hardy Boys” books, and if so, did they teach you that the world is a mysterious, complicated place, and undermine your faith in America? Or did you reject the Hardys in favor of Nancy Drew, which may show an unhealthy belief that girls were your equals, or (although it’s much the same thing) a latent homosexuality? Did you write any comments about hating America in the margins of your books, or deface your history books by drawing a schlong in Washington’s mouth? We also need you to fork over any book reports you completed, so that we can scan them for seditious sentiments, and while we’re at it, we’ll independently review the teacher’s evaluation of your grammar and reading comprehension skills. It goes without saying that you’d better also show receipts for all books you owned, or we’ll have to assume you stole them. And while you’re at it, why don’t you explain to us how a Kenyan boy even knew what “reading” and “books” were.

    We’ll also need to see all of the art projects you completed as a grammar school student. We’ll be evaluating them for form as well as content. For instance, if you didn’t color within the lines, that could be a sign of an aggrandized ambition to conquer, one the American people should know about. A preponderance of grey colors could indicate a desire to destroy white America by engaging in interracial sex on a massive, frightening scale. And will we see any disturbing images in the work from your crayon and Elmer’s glue period, Obama? Perhaps drawings of Satan giving a roundhouse kick to the face of Jesus? Or drawings of the founding fathers being eaten by a pack of hungry Muslims? You were REALLY sick if you drew that, Obama.

    We want written testimony from each and every student you ever attended classes with, from kindergarten to college. Did you sit at the popular tables, or off by yourself like some kind of geek? (Note: all possible answers to this question can and will be used against you). Did you recite the Pledge of Allegiance properly, or did you whisper a few things about Allah during the middle of it? Did you fold the American flag using the traditional protocol, or did you crumple it up and shove it down the front of your pants? Did any students ever remember you having an odor, and did they have any playground rhymes about it? What if anything did you do about that odor, Obama? You should know that if you yourself reported any gaseous odors in your vicinity back then, Obama, that he who smelt it probably dealt it. You may have fooled your classmates, but you can’t fool the American people.

    Also, did you go to your high school prom? If so we need to see the pictures. Were you smiling? Did your pants make your butt look big? Did you carpool in a limo, as someone who believes in global warming should, or did you rent a whole limo for you and your date, and laugh as you let several gallons of gasoline flow onto the street while you fueled it up? More importantly, was your date someone we’d consider attractive? We’re going to show her picture to the American people and let them decide if they’re happy with their president’s prom date.

    Please produce all of your immunization and dental records, ASAP. A president who’d let himself get impacted molars is a president who will let the terrorists play hopscotch on the lawn of the White House. And we need to be sure that you’re not going to give the American people the Black Death, Obama. We want Americans to die as Americans should: from American diseases, without viable health care coverage.

    Yes, you’ve shown us what you claim to be your birth certificate. But what about testimony from those who remember you being born? What we really would like to know is if anyone got an icy sensation of evil as they gazed into your infant eyes. Or if anyone had any disturbing or portentous dreams about you, such as one in which you walked through a field of skulls while flaming dead bald eagles fell from the sky. Certainly the American people deserve to know about those dreams, Obama, if we are to have any chance at all at preventing them from coming true.

    While we’re on the subject of evil, it occurs to me that we have no definitive proof that you are not a witch. In the interests of the American people, we demand that you place a spoon under your pillow at night, so that we can see if it rusts by morning. I also propose to place you in a burlap sack and toss you into the nearest river to see if you float. If you don’t, good news! You’re innocent, and this whole sorry mess will be behind you.

    Oh, one another thing. In the interests of properly vetting you, we absolutely are going to need to see your penis. What are you hiding in your pants, Obama? It’s time to pull down your pants and your presidential boxers and be honest with the American people. If your penis is too small, we cannot properly respect you as Commander in Chief. If on the other hand, it is very large, that’s bad too, because you might literally use it to fuck our deepest values. As taxpaying citizens who want transparency in government, we demand that this transparency be extended to your pants and underpants. The era of secrets must end.

    You and some of your liberal defenders always try to say that this movement of birthers/schoolers/penis gawkers is racist. That’s an absolutely appalling and dishonest charge, and frankly, it’s just the kind of thing that lazy, lying blacks would say. The important thing is that we need to calm the fears of the American people about you, and as you know, nothing calms Americans quite as much as making numerous demands for information to rule out the fact that there might be a bomb under your vest RIGHT NOW!!!!

    Mr. Obama, we are simply trying to make sense of the fact that you, an American whose name and skin tone are so different from ours, is president instead of one of us.  If you really want to be treated with the respect your office has traditionally commanded, you will comply with each and every request we make of you, no matter how belittling it may seem. Any disrespect you get either way, Obama, whether by complying with demands that make you look like a buffoon or by refusing to comply with them, will in our opinion be the result of your own actions, only.

    As one of the grammar school bullies we plan to grill for information about you might put it: Stop hitting yourself, Obama. Stop hitting yourself.

    About the Author

    Phil Molé is a freelance writer who lives in Chicago, Illinois, and often writes about science, skepticism, and society.
  • A mystery solved; Behe please note

    Researchers unravel the molecular mechanism whereby sickle cell hemoglobin confers a survival advantage against malaria.

  • The high cost of low teacher salaries

    It’s grueling work, for low pay, with little respect and lots of blame. Surprise surprise: lots of teachers quit!

  • How Goldman Sachs created the food crisis

    The more the price of food commodities increases, the more money pours into the sector, and the higher prices rise.

  • Jill Lepore on Ben Franklin’s sister

    Bright but uneducated, married early, constantly pregnant. She wanted more and never got it.

  • Despised is despised

    I sometimes see indignation about claims that atheists are a despised minority, on the grounds that other despised minorities had it much worse. That was one of Karla McLaren’s many claims.

    As you may recall, this word [“accommodationist”] was first used by black Americans in the Voting Rights era against people who were seen as being too subservient and too accommodating to whites. I could write a whole ‘nother post about how interesting it is for atheists to imagine that their struggle is similar to that of African Americans.

    But not everyone considers the comparison obviously wrong.

    Long after blacks and Jews have made great strides, and even as homosexuals gain respect, acceptance and new rights, there is still a group that lots of Americans just don’t like much: atheists.

    That’s the first line of the piece. Well: is it false?

    It seems to me to be obviously not false. The air is thick with complaints about atheists, considered as a group and considered guilty as members of the group. This is not to say that atheists are as despised as any other group, nor is it to say that they are as badly treated as any other group. It’s just to say that they are despised as a group. It’s funny, in a way, that it’s often the very people who are calling atheists names are the ones scorning the idea that atheists are despised. McLaren is a good example of that, too. A torrent of atheist-bashing plus a smug dismissal of the idea that atheists get bashed.

    As with other national minority groups, atheism is enjoying rapid growth…designed to overcome the understandable reluctance to admit atheism have found that as many as 60 million Americans — a fifth of the population — are not believers. Our nonreligious compatriots should be accorded the same respect as other minorities.

    I’ll look forward to that.

  • Blood of pope JP2 to go on display

    It will be used for his “beatification” tomorrow. The blood is from his body, so it is a “relic of the first degree.”

  • Why do Americans still dislike atheists?

    “Our nonreligious compatriots should be accorded the same respect as other minorities.”