It’s not Iraq, it’s the dream of a revolutionary state that will ‘bring Islamic justice to the world.’… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Ed Husain Tries to Reason With Ken [audio]
Jul 2nd, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonLivingstone refuses to distinguish Muslims from Islamists. [10 minutes in]… Read the rest
Biologists Dream of a Paradigm Shift
Jul 2nd, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIn the past few years every element of the modern synthesis has been attacked. … Read the rest
Abu-Ghanem Women Speak to the AP
Jul 2nd, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Police and social services aren’t willing to take on this battle, and the first victims are women.’… Read the rest
Kurdish Officials Support Campaign to Ban FGM
Jul 2nd, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Honour violence,’ like genital mutilation, is a common but silenced problem of the region.… Read the rest
Six Basic Scientific Questions
Jul 1st, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDunno. I forget, 100 million? 60 billion? It closes a circuit. Something about entropy?… Read the rest
The New Age of Ignorance
Jul 1st, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonNatalie Angier, John Brockman, James Watson all say interesting things. A must read.… Read the rest
Blair Disses Islamists at Last
Jul 1st, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘It’s not just your methods that are wrong, your ideas are absurd. Nobody is oppressing you. Your sense of grievance isn’t justified.’… Read the rest
Dawkins Reviews Behe’s Sad Second Book
Jul 1st, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonGenerations of mathematical geneticists have shown that evolutionary rates are not limited by mutation.… Read the rest
Review of Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran
Jul 1st, 2007 | By Max DunbarPicking up this tiny book from a little-known university press, I am reminded of Thomas Paine, Karl Marx, and their fellow pamphleteers of revolution. Even the cover, with its pale blue and declarative font, looks like samizdat. Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore would like to think of themselves as dissident writers in a totalitarian state, but their polemics are widely available and sell by the bucketload. Moore, in particular, has added considerably to Rupert Murdoch’s fortune. But Danny Postel is the real deal.
The first half of Postel’s little book comprises a series of essays in which he attempts to answer the question: why is the Left of the rich world ignoring comrades in the poor world?
Iraq tore the … Read the rest
The Assault on Freedom of Speech in China
Jul 1st, 2007 | By Edmund StandingAccording to Article 35 of the Chinese Constitution, Chinese citizens have the right to freedom of speech and freedom of the press. In reality this is utterly false. Consistently, China has shown total contempt for the concept of freedom of speech, and, most worryingly, it is being aided in this by major Western corporations. Throwing aside the pretence of responsible and ethical business, well known corporations including Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and Cisco Systems are actively assisting the Chinese government’s campaign against human rights, motivated by the promise of potentially huge financial returns.
In contemporary China, journalists, bloggers, academics, and political opponents of the Government routinely face harassment and imprisonment. A brief summary of recent developments makes for sobering reading.
2000:… Read the rest
Crackdown on Tehran’s Thugs
Jul 1st, 2007 | By Jahanshah RashidianPhotos and news published in Iranian media describe continuous crackdowns in Iran. To “increase public security”, the regime’s Security Forces have now started clamping down on “thugs” in Tehran. The drive is a follow-up to the commonplace plan that traditionally starts in the springtime with nationwide morality crackdowns on women labelled “bad hijab” (badly veiled).
Authorities in Iran speak of a steadily increasing number of arrests and claim that “Our decisive confrontation will continue in Tehran down to the very last thug,” said the head of the capital’s metropolitan police force, Ahmad Reza Radan, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.
According to different sources, pictures taken by the Fars news agency and reproduced by several moderate dailies showed a … Read the rest
The two cultures and how they met
Jul 1st, 2007 10:49 am | By Ophelia BensonA beautiful piece (thanks to Allen Esterson for sending me the link). Studded with gems.
… Read the rest[Natalie] Angier’s book is called The Canon, and subtitled ‘A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science’. It is not a long book and it contains, as the title suggests, a breathless Baedeker of the fundamental scientific knowledge Angier believes is the minimum requirement of an educated person…The result is the kind of science book you wish someone had placed in front of you at school – full of aphorisms that help everything fall into place. For geology: ‘This is what our world is about: there is heat inside and it wants to get out.’ For physics: ‘Almost everything we’ve come to understand about
More on disgust
Jul 1st, 2007 9:45 am | By Ophelia BensonMore on that Jonathan Haidt interview. Tamler Sommers asked him:
… Read the restLet’s take a more concrete question. Gay marriage. You brought this up in your talk at Dartmouth…You say that conservatives in America employ all four of the modules, whereas liberals only employ two. You said that liberals have an impoverished moral worldview, and that conservatives somehow have a richer moral life…You said that we as liberals have pared down our moral foundations to two modules, fairness and do-no-harm—whereas perfectly intelligent conservatives have all four modules…So if you take gay marriage…and you have people who have the intuition that gay marriage is really wrong, it’s impure Because they have that purity module that liberals lack. Do you want to say
Beheading isn’t a haircut, either
Jul 1st, 2007 9:40 am | By Ophelia BensonWhy does the Guardian call female genital mutilation ‘circumcision’? It uses the word six times in this very short piece – even while admitting that it ‘involves the removal of the clitoris, and is also called female genital mutilation.’ Removal of the penis isn’t called circumcision, so why should removal of the clitoris be called that?! Because the Guardian is tho thenthitive, because the Guardian is staffed entirely by cultural anthropologists, because the Guardian thinks men matter and women don’t, or what? What is up with this relentless passion to euphemize things that should not be euphemized? Auschwitz should not be called a Polish spa, My Lai should not be called a prank, the Rwanda genocide should not be called … Read the rest
Guardian Calls Glasgow Attack ‘al-Qaeda inspired’
Jun 30th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSecurity sources believe the attack is linked to two car bombs in London.… Read the rest
Burning Car Rams Glasgow Air Terminal
Jun 30th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWitnesses describe a car being driven at speed towards the building with flames coming out from underneath.… Read the rest
Toronto Woman Returns to Iraq to Fight for Women
Jun 30th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Nobody has the right to tell us that we are second-rate citizens,’ Yanar Mohammed said.… Read the rest
The CIA’s ‘Family Jewels’ Released June 26
Jun 30th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDocuments catalog domestic wiretapping, assassination plots, and spying on journalists.… Read the rest
Janet Afary and Kevin Anderson on Iran
Jun 30th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonA feminist activist told us she feared a return visit to “Hotel Evin” – Evin Prison, where she had been tortured. … Read the rest