We’ve heard enough about TERFs for one while, let’s move on to the shouts about SWERFs by way of refreshment. Human rights lawyer Jessica Neuwirth in the Guardian explains:

Has Amnesty International been hijacked by proponents of the global sex trade? When the human rights nonprofit convenes its International Council Meeting next week in Dublin, delegates from around the world will be asked to vote on a proposal to recognize prostitution as a human right.

Amnesty is arguing that prostitution is a matter of free choice, a stance heavily promoted by the multibillion-dollar commercial sex industry. The group is putting forth the view that sex work is compatible with the principle of gender equality and nondiscrimination, as if it were a job like any other.

“By definition,” Amnesty’s proposal states, “sex work means that sex workers who are engaging in commercial sex have consented to do so.” This definition fails to take into account the dire economic need, the childhood sexual abuse, the brutal coercion employed by pimps, and the vast power differences of sex and race that drive the commercial sex industry.

And gender identity, too. Remember that Fresh Air interview I posted about recently? With the trans woman, Mya Taylor, who had to do sex work because she could not get another job because she was trans? She hated the work.

Amnesty contends that “such conditions do not inevitably render individuals incapable of exercising personal agency”. This argument ignores the reality for the vast majority of individuals exploited by the commercial sex industry. When United Nations personnel trade food for sex, these transactions – called “survival sex” – might technically be consensual, but can hardly be considered examples of free will. Almost all prostitution is some form of survival sex. There is no choice in the absence of the freedom to choose otherwise.

That’s a tricky argument, because it applies to most jobs…but still, we know very well that there are some jobs no one would do if they had any other choice at all. That’s why the South relied on slavery – the work in that climate was horrific.

Sweden has made a legal distinction between those driven into the sex industry by poverty and discrimination and those who buy sex as an exercise of power and privilege. Its model law criminalizes only the buying of sex and offers support services to those who are bought. This progressive feminist method aims to decriminalize prostituted women without legitimizing the men who buy them.

In the book Paid For, a compelling analysis of author Rachel Moran’s experience in the sex trade, she describes three types of men who patronize prostitution: those who assume the women they buy have no human feelings; those who are conscious of a woman’s humanity but choose to ignore it; and those who derive sexual pleasure from reducing the humanity of women they buy. Is Amnesty really going to defend the rights of such men to buy women?

It’s a heartbreaking moment for those of us who love Amnesty International. Former US president Jimmy Carter, who made human rights a centerpiece of US foreign policy, has started an online petition urging the group not to endorse commercial sexual exploitation as a right. The concept of human rights itself – not to mention sex equality – is at stake.

Signed.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

A Republican Congressional representative from Iowa, Steve King, holds a strange belief.

Rep. Steve King, R-IA, told an audience while introducing GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee that the Supreme Court’s landmark marriage equality ruling means that now people can marry lawnmowers, journalist Matt Taibbi reported.

Iowa Rep. Steve King, introducing Huckabee, said gay marriage ruling now means “you can marry my lawnmower.”

Matt Taibbi ✔@mtaibbi
Iowa Rep. Steve King, introducing Huckabee, said gay marriage ruling now means “you can marry my lawnmower.”
4:20 PM – 30 Jul 2015

King apparently made the comment at an Iowa campaign event for Huckabee on Thursday, according to Slate.

I don’t see it, myself. So many differences. Possessing sharp blades, is the difference that stands out. Plus being all-metal. Plus having an engine. Plus not having a brain.

King has been stuck on the idea of people marrying his lawnmower since at least July 1, when he first made the comment, which he reiterated Thursday, the Sioux City Journal reports.

“I had a strong, Christian lawyer tell me yesterday that, under this decision that he has read, what it brings about is: It only requires one human being in this relationship — that you could marry your lawnmower with this decision. I think he’s right,” he told the Journal.

Hm. So could you marry a car? Could you marry the Chrysler building? Could you marry Texas? Could you marry a distant planet?

Yes or no.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

It never hurts to remind ourselves of the fundamental attribution error.

Wotcha mean “attribution”?

In social psychology, attribution is the process of inferring the causes of events or behaviors. In real life, attribution is something we all do every day, usually without any awareness of the underlying processes and biases that lead to our inferences.

For example, over the course of a typical day you probably make numerous attributions about your own behavior as well as that of the people around you.

And the dogs around you.

If you do something crappy, it’s because that person over there did something crappy x2 to you.

If that person over there does something crappy, it’s because that person is a crap.

See? You have reasons, they have bad natures.

The Fundamental Attribution Error

When it comes to other people, we tend to attribute causes to internal factors such as personality characteristics and ignore or minimize external variables. This phenomenon tends to be very widespread, particularly among individualistic cultures.

Psychologists refer to this tendency as the fundamental attribution error; even though situational variables are very likely present, we automatically attribute the cause to internal characteristics.

The fundamental attribution error explains why people often blame other people for things over which they usually have no control. The term blaming the victim is often used by social psychologists to describe a phenomenon in which people blame innocent victims of crimes for their misfortune.

In such cases, people may accuse the victim of failing to protect themselves from the event by behaving in a certain manner or not taking specific precautionary steps to avoid or prevent the event.

Examples of this include accusing rape victims, domestic violence survivors and kidnap victims of behaving in a manner that somehow provoked their attackers. Researchers suggest that hindsight bias causes people to mistakenly believe that victims should have been able to predict future events and therefor take steps to avoid them.

Here’s an interesting fact. Being aware of this error doesn’t prevent you from making it.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

A friend remarked yesterday, in a conversation about the – what to call it – the Official Ostracism of Me, that we’re all learning and it might be quite a good idea to be patient and not-horrible while we’re learning. Not the exact words, but that’s the gist.

It made me realize that one of the things I like most about having a blog is that I can write about what I’m learning, as I’m learning it. I can think aloud about what I’m learning. It’s note-taking, and discussion, and sharing. That’s what I like in other people’s blogs, too.

But, weirdly, we’re not allowed to learn about this subject. We’re supposed to have accepted particular conclusions, which is quite different from learning something (even if your learning takes you to the same place). We’re supposed to utter particular formulas, and answer yes to abrupt simplistic yes-or-no questions. That’s antithetical to learning, and to thinking as well.

Mind you…as I spelled out last week, I am willing, and more than willing, to answer yes to moral and political questions, even some yes-or-no ones. “Will you treat people as they ask to be treated?” “Yes, of course.”

But questions about what we mean by identity, the self, experience, mental states, conformity, stereotypes, gender roles, gender expression, performance…those I want to discuss rather than affirm or deny.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

I wrote a column for the Freethinker a couple of days ago about Shakespeare and undermotivated evil, via Hamlet and then Iago, with an observation on one way Shakespeare violated the conventions of his time.

There’s one Shakespeare character, though, who stands out for the flimsiness of his stated reasons compared to the malice and cruelty of what he does. He’s pissed off that he didn’t get a promotion, maybe possibly his wife has the hots for Othello. Othello is a good guy and that makes Iago look bad – blah blah. He claims all these at different times, so they cancel each other out, and seem like rationalizations instead of reasons. Really he just does it because he wants to, and he can. Desdemona and Othello are happy, so he’ll make them not happy, and not alive either.

It’s interesting how he goes about it, because it’s a classic literary theme, especially popular in Shakespeare’s time but still pervasive. It’s the theme that’s behind the phenomenon of “honour” killings. It’s all that, except that Shakespeare does what no one else does, and turns the theme on its head.

The theme is the happily married man who discovers that his wife is a whore. Remember the frame narrative of The 1001 Nights? It’s that. The Agamemnon? That. Most of Elizabethan and Jacobean revenge tragedies? That.

Shakespeare used the theme in several of his plays, but in nearly all of his, the jealous husband is wrong. The later the play, the more wrong the jealous husband is. By the time we get to A Winter’s Tale, he’s such a jackass that he makes up the story that his wife is cheating on him out of thin air.

Have you ever noticed that? I was helped to realize it by reading a lot of Shakespeare’s contemporaries: with them the husband was never wrong, the wife was always a whore. Given what Shakespeare did with that theme, I have a feeling he found the theme annoying. That’s odd, isn’t it.

Othello is nudged into it by Iago, but he’s nearly as bad. He believes the poison Iago tells him, and he refuses to trust Desdemona – and that’s bad.

It’s so bad that Shakespeare gives the job of telling him off to a woman, Iago’s wife. It’s a violation of every possible Jacobean convention: she is officially Othello’s inferior in every way – married to his subordinate, and a woman. Yet she denounces him, and not only that, she addresses him as “thou” – the most insultingly outrageous thing a subordinate can do. She goes from “you” to “thou” in an instant, when he calls Desdemona a whore.

OTHELLO:  She’s, like a liar, gone to burning hell:
‘Twas I that kill’d her.
EMILIA: O, the more angel she,
And you the blacker devil!
OTHELLO: She turn’d to folly, and she was a whore.
EMILIA: Thou dost belie her, and thou art a devil.
– Act 5, scene 2

See that? Phewwwww that’s some outrageous behavior. Thou is for intimates, but it’s also for subordinates. However intimate they may be, a subordinate mustn’t thou a superior. Falstaff does it to Hal, if I remember correctly, but that’s part of Falstaff’s transgressiveness. Horatio never thous Hamlet, despite their deep friendship. Falstaff is being a bad boy. Emilia’s not doing that, she’s doing something much fiercer.

Shakespeare liked the effect he did it all over again in The Winter’s Tale.

Act 3 scene 2:

Leontes, the king, has accused his wife Hermione of adultery in court, then news arrives that their young son has died of grief, then Hermione faints and is carried out (the guy rushes things in this scene, I have to say) – and her attendant, Paulina, goes with her, then in a few minutes (during which Leontes berates himself for being such a shithead) she comes back. She’s a high class servant – upper class, but a servant to the royals – and she lets the king have it:

[Re-enter PAULINA]

• Paulina. Woe the while!
  O, cut my lace, lest my heart, cracking it,
  Break too.

• First Lord. What fit is this, good lady?

• Paulina. What studied torments, tyrant, hast for me?
  What wheels? racks? fires? what flaying? boiling?
  In leads or oils? what old or newer torture
  Must I receive, whose every word deserves
  To taste of thy most worst? Thy tyranny
  Together working with thy jealousies,
  Fancies too weak for boys, too green and idle
  For girls of nine, O, think what they have done
  And then run mad indeed, stark mad! for all
  Thy by-gone fooleries were but spices of it.
  That thou betray’dst Polixenes,’twas nothing;
  That did but show thee, of a fool, inconstant
  And damnable ingrateful: nor was’t much,
  Thou wouldst have poison’d good Camillo’s honour,
  To have him kill a king: poor trespasses,
  More monstrous standing by: whereof I reckon
  The casting forth to crows thy baby-daughter
  To be or none or little; though a devil
  Would have shed water out of fire ere done’t:
  Nor is’t directly laid to thee, the death
  Of the young prince, whose honourable thoughts,
  Thoughts high for one so tender, cleft the heart
  That could conceive a gross and foolish sire
  Blemish’d his gracious dam: this is not, no,
  Laid to thy answer: but the last,—O lords,
  When I have said, cry ‘woe!’ the queen, the queen,
  The sweet’st, dear’st creature’s dead,
  and vengeance for’t
  Not dropp’d down yet.

A torrent of thous, coupled to the harshest of insults – from a woman and a servant, to the king.

That dude Shakespeare was up to something.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

It’s Sayre’s law.

Sayre’s law is named after Wallace Stanley Sayre (1905–1972), U.S. political scientist and professor at Columbia University.

On 20 December 1973, the Wall Street Journal quoted Sayre as: “Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low.” Political scientist Herbert Kaufman, a colleague and coauthor of Sayre, has attested to Fred R. Shapiro, editor of The Yale Book of Quotations, that Sayre usually stated his claim as “The politics of the university are so intense because the stakes are so low”, and that Sayre originated the quip by the early 1950s.

There’s also the narcissism of small differences.

The narcissism of small differences (der Narzißmus der kleinen Differenzen) is “the phenomenon that it is precisely communities with adjoining territories, and related to each other in other ways as well, who are engaged in constant feuds and ridiculing each other” – “such sensitiveness […] to just these details of differentiation”.^[1]

How, exactly, do you pronounce shibboleth, again?

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

I’ve just realized something very worrying – it’s possible that this laptop I’m typing on is a man’s laptop. I didn’t check when I bought it. It’s black and chrome, no pink anywhere – that’s not a good sign.

Also the coffee I drink. It could be Coffee for Men for all I know.

And my toothpaste. Oh gosh.

And my lightbulbs?

My books? I have a few thousand, so that’s scary.

I have some peaches though. They’re probably Girl Fruit.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

There was a re-run of a Jon Stewart interview on Fresh Air yesterday. He said something that made me think “oh yes, I have that too.”

DAVIES: You grew up in, I guess, Lawrenceville, N.J.

STEWART: That is correct.

Ok that’s weird because I grew up very near there myself – in and near Princeton, N.J. My cousins went to Lawrenceville the school.

But that’s not it.

DAVIES: Were you a class clown? Did you have the sort of persona that made fun of everybody in a kind of playful and endearing way?

STEWART: (Laughter). Yes, I was very playful and endearing.

DAVIES: That was you.

STEWART: Yeah. People always say, you know, when did you realize you were funny? And I think it’s not that you realize you were funny. It’s that you’re brain works in a certain way.

That’s it. My brain works in that certain way too. I almost always have something facetious to say, even if I don’t say it every single time I have it. My brain works that way. The facetious thing just turns up.

And I don’t think that that’s – I think in some respects it’s uncontrollable, and you can either accept it and deal with it and hone it or you can try to fight it. And I was too weak to fight it. And so I just sort of went with it. And the big thing to learn was how to turn obnoxiousness into wit. And that was the hardest probably lesson. Obnoxiousness is what gets your butt kicked and wit is what makes people go oh, that’s endearing. And it’s trying not to get your butt kicked while still having your brain work in the way that you’re comfortable with.

Often I’m obnoxious rather than witty, and sometimes I get my butt kicked.

But I’ll tell you, I wouldn’t want my brain not to work this way. If it’s a choice between that and never getting my butt kicked? I go with the facetiously-oriented brain.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Salman Rushdie talked to L’Express the other day; the Guardian shares some highlights in translation.

Salman Rushdie believes that if The Satanic Verses had been published today, the members of the literary elite who rounded on Charlie Hebdo in the wake of the French satirical magazine winning a PEN prize for courage would not have defended him.

I think he’s quite right. Things have moved on since the fatwa, and not in a good way. The very awfulness of theocratic Islamism (that’s a tautology, but people get confused about what Islamism is) has helped to make it harder to resist theocratic Islamism. The thinking goes: Islamists do terrible things, and that makes people be horrible to Muslims in general, so we have to redouble our efforts to stand up for Muslims in general, which means we have to hide or deny or minimize or obfuscate the reality of theocratic Islamism.

You can understand the reasoning for each part, but where it ends up is a mess.

Speaking about the decision by PEN’s American branch to award Charlie Hebdo with a freedom of expression courage award in May, which led to more than 200 writers putting their names to a letter protesting the decision for valorising “material that intensifies the anti-Islamic, anti-Maghreb, anti-Arab sentiments already prevalent in the western world”, Rushdie said the conflict had left “deep divisions” in the literary world. He would never have imagined that writers such as Michael Ondaatje, Peter Carey and Junot Díaz “would have taken this attitude”, and he had written to one of the key dissenters, Teju Cole, about the situation, he revealed.

“[Cole] replied with a bizarre letter: ‘My dear Salman, dear big brother, everything I know I learned it at your feet,’” Rushdie said. “But his reply was mostly full of false claims: Teju assured me that he would never have taken this part against The Satanic Verses because, in my case, it was to do with an accusation of blasphemy, but in the case of Charlie Hebdo, it was about the alleged racism of the magazine against the Muslim minority.”

Rushdie told L’Express that he disagreed, saying that the 12 people murdered at Charlie Hebdo’s offices were killed because their words were seen as blasphemous. “It’s exactly the same thing,” he said. “I’ve since had the feeling that, if the attacks against The Satanic Verses had taken place today, these people would not have defended me, and would have used the same arguments against me, accusing me of insulting an ethnic and cultural minority.”

Quite; they would. They do, some of them. Remember the stink when Rushdie got his K? There were a lot of those accusations then.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Aw shucks, as so often happens, once you look it up it’s not quite as fatuous as it looked.

Stonemill explains:

Thank you to all of our customers who have provided feedback on the recently launched Men’s and Women’s Wellbeing breads. We’ve had many positive comments about these new breads, but have also had some customers express concern about the gender-specific labelling.

As background, our intention when creating the Wellbeing breads was to support the unique and different nutrient needs of men and women. We worked under the guidance of a registered dietitian to identify the specific nutrients men and women require on a daily basis and what they may fall short on. For example, Health Canada indicates that up to 50% percent of men fall short of magnesium, while 80% of women may not get enough calcium. Therefore the Wellbeing bread for women was enhanced with calcium and for men with magnesium. Since bread is a staple food in many diets, we felt it was a smart place to add more nutritional value.

We now fully understand that while our intention was focused on nutrition, we appreciate and respect our customer concerns over the marketing of the product and have therefore decided to remove any gender-specific labelling. These highly nutritious products will still be available to you, but with new labelling.

Ok. Honestly though, you’d think someone in their marketing department or their customer relations department or their what color shall we make the labels department would have realized how silly it looks to add gender to bread.

I demand unisex bread for all. The bread’s preferred pronouns are they / fzzms.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

No, no, no, no…this can’t be real…

Sarah Nyberg ‏@srhbutts 21 hours ago
that tragic feeling when you’re at the grocery store but they’re all out of your gender’s bread

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Wow. A new low every day.

Marian Melby’s blog. Post by HJ Hornbeck.

I’m currently away, with only a scattered internet connection.

If you’re looking for M.A. Melby, you have the wrong extension. Please hang up and try again.

If you’re a blogger in the middle of a meltdown over accusations of transphobia, I spotted that post of yours thanks to a commenter. Nice troll, but I’m not biting.

If you’re wondering why I haven’t approved your comment or made one myself, technical reasons are conspiring to prevent it. About all I can do from here is write or edit blog posts, and only then when I catch a spare moment and/or build up sufficient outrage.

For all other inquiries, please leave a comment and I’ll get back to you.

…. Oh wait. Hmmm. Maybe try carrier pigeon?

beeeeep

Seriously?

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

StevoR left us some treats in the Withdrawing Room:

Rosetta and Philae awesomeness :

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Science_on_the_surface_of_a_comet

Stick with that first photo – its an animation with some pretty impressive reality in it.

Plus :

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-31/philae-lander-photo-shows-there-is-more-to-comets-than-soft-dust/6662378

Also a good radio segment on Pluto, Kepler 452b ad more here as well :

http://www.abc.net.au/science/audio/2015/07/29/4282396.htm#.Vbr7rjD0D8U.facebook

Hope these are interesting & informative for folks here.

Thanks!

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Guest post by Bruce Everett

CN: Talk of spousal murder. And Nazis.
…
You know what I’d do if I were compulsively obsessed to fine-parse the ideas and beliefs of a certain group of people in order to find them guilty-by-association? I’d start looking for links to the works of Louis Althusser – because while the work of Althusser may have been picked up and expanded upon by some feminists, the guy strangled his wife to death. (And let’s not forget debate over his supposed turn towards neo-conservatism in his later years).

Then I’d start looking for links to Heidegger… because, well… Godwin’s Law. The work of Heidegger, and its derivatives (i.e. a lot of Left Bank philosophy) do turn up in theory in the Humanities, and not at all infrequently. It’s also become increasingly clear in recent years that no, his work isn’t entirely disentangled from the the politics of his friends in the jack-booted Halloween costumes.

It’s really easy to play this game. I have no intention of playing it. It’s a puerile game for puerile minds with puerile wants.

It’s not that these things can’t be discussed, or that they’re not relevant. And it’s not that Anglophone philosophers don’t deserve criticism along similar lines to the mentioned Continentals (e.g. see Locke and slavery).

But the fact that you can draw associations between philosophers of dubious character, with not a few bad ideas, and some of the ideas of the person in the same conversation as you, at base tells you nothing at all about the character of the person you’re presently engaged with.

The selective application of this kind of fine-parsing risks making a person a hypocrite. Applying it universally to imply guilt results in absurd results – suddenly throngs of feminists become misogynists, and some of the most dedicated anti-racist academics become Nazi sympathisers. This is obviously silly.

It’s a lack of consideration of this kind of thing that increasingly has me wondering just how much of the theory being invoked by some people has actually been read and comprehended, and just how seriously it’s being taken.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

This is a comment that I deleted, by someone using the nym “Leum” who won’t be commenting here again.

I find it quite staggering.

And this time this stuff is coming from supposed allies. Progressives. People of the left.

This is what the people whipping up the hatred of me are fomenting:

Leum @58

Do you think Ophelia is not physically safe for a trans woman to be around?

Full disclosure: I am a cis male. I have the same reservations as Ophelia about a “yes” answer. I have spent some time in the company of a trans woman and felt no desire to attack her, physically or emotionally.

Since I’m a) not a trans woman and b) have not been able to follow how everything that’s been said by everyone in this discussion, I don’t really feel comfortable answering that question beyond saying that as an amab nonbinary person I would have no problem with, say, eating dinner with Ophelia. It’s also important to recognize that physical safety means more than “this person won’t directly attack me.” There are indirect forms of attack, primarily political in nature, that were actually initiated by cis feminists (a lot of the requirements for medical transition were first promulgated by cis radical feminists).

To my knowledge, Ophelia doesn’t support political violence against trans women, but since literally everyone in a transmisogynist society (including trans women) will manifest transmisogyny at times, it wouldn’t surprise me if she unknowingly supported (or failed to oppose) some policy that physically harms trans women.

In other words, yes, Leum does think I’m dangerous to trans women.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Oh god what an unbearable story. Be warned: this is an unbearable story.

A young woman has spoken of her “living hell” as her abusive ex-husband was jailed for life with a minimum of 28 years for shooting her mother as an act of revenge.

Tariq Rana, 31, travelled from his home in Wolverhampton to Pakistan intent on tracking down relatives of his 28-year-old wife Ayesha Riaz, who split up with him a year after their arranged marriage.

So for that he killed her mother. For a wound to his precious ego, he killed the mother of the woman who didn’t like being married to him. I like my ego as much as the next person, but I don’t kill people to avenge slights to it.

He shot his mother-in-law, Ghulam Asia, at her house in Lahore with an unnamed accomplice, dressed as a delivery man.

The pair rang the doorbell and when Asia, 49, went to the gate to sign for the delivery, Rana shot her twice at short range.

Fifteen minutes later, he texted his sister in the UK, saying: “Yeah I shot the bitch fully I think she expired.”

He then made a series of angry and aggressive telephone calls to Riaz’s brothers, threatening to kill them all unless she came back to him.

I begin to get some idea of why she left him.

I wonder whose idea it was to arrange that marriage, and whose idea it was to choose him as the husband.

On Friday, the victim’s family sat in the Old Bailey behind a screen obscured from the dock, as Riaz’s emotional victim impact statement was read out on her behalf.

In it, she said: “Words cannot begin to describe the way it feels knowing my mother has been killed by my ex-husband. Not a day passes where I do not regret marrying him and becoming a victim of his physical abuse.”

She said that the family lived in fear that he would attempt to kill us all to the point where they were even too scared to open the door.

She told how her sisters in Pakistan had been devastated by the “ghastly crime” and the family home had been sold because they could not bear to stay.

She said: “They watched their mother covered in blood and dying in front of their eyes on the doorstep of their home. It was not her time to go. This incident has become a nightmare.”

They were left in a “living hell”, she added: “Just to satisfy his own dirty ego, Tariq Rana has killed the mother of six children. Now we will spend the rest of our lives feeling afraid and vulnerable.”

It’s an unbearable story.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Nimisha Jaiswal points out that witches are not a form of cosplay in India.

Last week, a mob of 200 people in the Indian state of Assam dragged a 65-year-old woman out of her house, stripped her and beheaded her with a machete. They did so because a self-proclaimed “goddess,” who asked them to gather at a local temple, proclaimed that the woman was a witch and would bring bad luck and illness to the village.

People hate old women.

In a country teeming with IT graduates and higher-education institutes, such attacks are sadly and strangely common. Ninety people in Assam, a majority of them of them women, lost their lives in the last six years because they were branded as witches. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, 2,097 murders between 2000 and 2012 were committed when the victims were accused of practicing witchcraft.

It’s not clear if that’s in Assam or all of India, but it’s a large number in either case. 2,097 horrific events.

Earlier this year, a woman in the state of Odisha was force-fed human excrement for practicing witchcraft. Last October in Assam, hundreds tied up an athlete in a fishing net and tortured her for being a witch. She had represented Assam in several national meets, and won a gold medal for javelin. In 2011, a mother and daughter in Assam were accused of witchcraft, and raped as punishment.

…

Non-governmental and social organizations, some founded by victims of witch-hunting themselves, have been working on raising awareness against these beliefs. Brothers, an organization that promotes development in Assam, has worked on in areas where such superstitions are rampant, and has assisted in rescuing and providing medical services to victims. Over the last few years, the organization has also initiated its own awareness campaigns against beliefs in witchcraft.

“People who make these accusations know the victim is not a ‘witch,’ but they do so because of political rivalries, property disputes or personal feuds,” said Dibyajyoti Saikia, the general secretary of Brothers. “The superstitious believe that the witch may have reduced crop production in the village, spread illnesses, or caused a death.”

Because crop failures, diseases, and death never happen unless witches cause them to happen.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

I can’t figure out what I think about this. I just go on a parade of “on the other hands” that never end up at a settled opinion. I do that a lot. I’m not very good at resolving ambivalence. That’s a problem when you have to make a decision – when you’re a judge, for instance – but I don’t think it’s entirely bad when you’re just thinking. It’s not always terrible to see merit on both (or several) sides of an issue. One of the things that annoys me most about the current campaign to expel me from the Community of Good People is the fervent loathing of ambivalence.

The “this” is the prosecution and conviction of Oskar Gröning for crimes against humanity.

Oskar Gröning is a 94-year old German who came to public attention ten years ago when he appeared in a BBC documentary to refute Holocaust deniers; as a former member of the SS, he verified the existence of the Auschwitz gas chambers.  Gröning, a trained bank clerk, had joined the SS as a 20-year old in September 1942; he was assigned to remove the luggage from the loading ramps of the train station at the Auschwitz- Birkenau camp and to count the bank notes in the luggage and send them to the Reich security office in Berlin.  Gröning was not accused of any violence against those incarcerated.

I happen to have seen part of a documentary about Auschwitz on one of the cable channels the other night, that incorporated parts of that BBC documentary in which Gröning appeared. First there was a bit in which an interviewer asked him if he felt guilt for his involvement, and he said no, on the grounds that he was just a cog. Callous, I thought. But then later there was another bit, in which the narrator explained that Gröning had gone public to talk about his role in order to counter the Holocaust deniers. That changed the picture somewhat.

And I just don’t know. On the one hand it was Nazi Germany. On the other hand he joined the SS. On the other hand it was more than 70 years ago. On the other hand it was Auschwitz. On the other hand what good is revenge? On the other hand I think Bill Cosby should still be accountable. On the other hand Gröning is 94. On the other hand what about the victims, very much including the survivors? And so on.

Although Poland wanted to try Gröning after the war for suspicion of war crimes at Auschwitz, the Americans closed down the pursuit of low-ranking Nazis because it interfered with their priorities of rebuilding of Germany and fighting Communism in Europe.  Between 1945 and 2005, 172,294 people were investigated for war crimes in Germany; 6,656 were convicted.  Sixty-five hundred Auschwitz guards have stood trial, and up until this trial, there were only 49 convictions; only a handful served prison terms.

That seems all wrong. Then again is punishment anything other than revenge?

For many decades, the German legal system would not prosecute former members of the SS or concentration camp guards unless there was evidence that linked them directly to the mass killings of the Holocaust.  The situation changed with Germany’s 2011 conviction of John Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian guard at the Sobibor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland; the court ruled that Demjanjuk had aided and abetted mass murder just by working at a concentration camp.  Demjanjuk died in 2012, before his appeal could be heard; but from then on, an individual’s employment at a concentration camp could be considered adequate to pursue a war crimes conviction at this court.

It almost seems like a cynical game. “Well we’ll leave you alone for six decades or so, but then we’re coming after you.”

At the start of Gröning’s April, 2015 trial for complicity in the deaths of 300,000 Holocaust victims,     he stated: “This moral guilt I acknowledge here, before the victims, with regret and humility;” it was up to the court to decide his legal guilt.  The trial raised the issue of whether those who did not personally participate in the Nazi machine’s killings were still guilty of the crimes.  Prosecutors argued that Gröning’s actions as a bookkeeper make him criminally complicit in the regime responsible for mass murder.

I do think cogs are complicit. I think we’re all complicit in all sorts of things – living off the cheap labor of other people, for example. But complicit is one thing and deserving punishment is another. There’s also the fact that he was 21 when he joined the SS; he’s now 94. He’s not the same person.

The twelve-week trial in Germany ended on July 15, 2015 when Gröning was found guilty of being an accessory to the murder of 300,000 Hungarian Jews and he was sentenced to four years in prison.  Judge Frank Kompisch delivered the verdict, making it plain that every German had a choice about how far to go along with the Nazi government.  The judge said that while Gröning had not been directly involved in the killings he had been an integral cog in the machine of the Auschwitz extermination apparatus…. “a machinery designed entirely for the killing of humans” that was “inhumane and all but unbearable for the human psyche”.  To join the SS and take “a safe desk job” at Auschwitz “was your decision.” he said, ”but it was not because you were unfree.”   “Mr Gröning, don’t tell me you did not see the suffering, of course you saw it.”   The verdict will be appealed.

Saying he saw it is why he came forward in the first place. He came forward to tell the deniers that he had been at Auschwitz, he had seen the gas chambers, he knew it had happened – he was there. (That was in the documentary I saw.) He took a risk by doing it.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)