Yesssss! Via Twitter –
FreeSpeech&SecularSo @SecularSpeech 6 hours ago
Exhibition of controversial cartoons, now at @ManchesterSU @ChrisMoos_ @THEMANCUNION @Tom_Slater_ #freespeech
And…Jesus and Mo!
I look forward to outrage from the Soft-headed Six.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Nick Cohen – award-winning Nick Cohen – excoriates the Six Soft-heads in the Spectator.
Those who shout the loudest about respecting “diversity” and the culture of others, cannot stir themselves to respect the French enough to learn their language and understand their culture. If they did, they would know that Charlie Hebdo is a left-wing magazine, which used Boko Haram to parody conservatives so lost in paranoia they imagined enslaved Nigerian women were threatening to come to France and steal their money.
Max Fisher of Vox tried to shake up Anglo-Saxon leftists by pointing them to a New Yorker cover showing Barack Obama as a Kenyan Muslim and Michelle Obama as a terrorist. It was a satire of the Tea Party fantasy that Obama was a foreigner, who could not stand for election, his wife was a far leftist and between them the couple married the ideologies of the Mau-Mau and the Black Panthers. No one who understood New York liberal culture could fail to see the satire. Similarly, he continued, as if he were speaking to an unusually stupid child, no one who understood Parisian culture could fail to see that Charlie Hebdo was mocking the prejudices of the French Right.
Levels, in other words; you have to recognize the levels. If you don’t, you make a shaming booboo.
Meanwhile Olivier Tonneau, a French radical, who now teaches at Cambridge, wrote an open letter to the Anglo-Saxon left, and explained :
Charlie Hebdo was an opponent of all forms of organised religions, in the old-school anarchist sense: Ni Dieu, ni maître! It ridiculed the pope, orthodox Jews and Muslims in equal measure and with the same biting tone. It took ferocious stances against the bombings of Gaza. Charlie Hebdo also continuously denounced the pledge of minorities and campaigned relentlessly for all illegal immigrants to be given permanent right of stay. Even if you dislike its humour, please take my word for it: it fell well within the French tradition of satire – and after all was only intended for a French audience. I hope this helps you understand that if you belong to the radical left, you have lost precious friends and allies.
Ah but they’re French, so they don’t count. Or something.
Prose, Carey, the London Review of Books and so many others agree with Islamists’ first demand that the world should have a de facto blasphemy law enforced at gunpoint. Break it and you have only yourself to blame if the assassins you provoked kill you
They not only go along with the terrorists from the religious ultra-right but of every state that uses Islam to maintain its power. They can show no solidarity with gays in Iran, bloggers in Saudi Arabia and persecuted women and religious minorities across the Middle East, who must fight theocracy. They have no understanding that enemies of Charlie Hebdo are also the enemies of liberal Muslims and ex-Muslims in the West. In the battle between the two, they have in their stupidity and malice allied with the wrong side.
Damn right. And it’s not even as if people haven’t been trying to explain this for years.
Most glaringly they have failed to understand power. It is not fixed but fluid. It depends on where you stand. The unemployed terrorist with the gun is more powerful than the Parisian cartoonist cowering underneath his desk. The marginal cleric may well face racism and hatred – as my most liberal British Muslim friends do – but when he sits in a Sharia court imposing misogynist rules on Muslim women in the West, he is no longer a victim or potential victim but a man to be feared.
Give that man an award.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Brendan is coat-trailing again. I’m taking the bait again. I’m too literal-minded not to.
Feminism, sadly, becomes more like Islamism every day.
Uh huh, and as Nate Phelps once told me, I’m like Fred Phelps.
What’s his argument? Islamists are puritanical about women’s bodies, and so are feminists.
Here’s a tip for political activists: if your rabble-rousing echoes the behaviour and ideas of Islamists, then you’re doing something wrong. Consider the Protein World advert which — clutch my pearls! — features a photo of a beautiful, svelte woman in a bikini next to the question: ‘Are you beach body ready?’ Angry women, and probably some men, have been writing outraged slogans on these posters, scribbling on the poor model’s face and body, seemingly blissfully unaware that they’re following in the footsteps of intolerant Islamic agitators.
Or, you know, not unaware at all, but thinking that since their reasons are different, they’re not actually following in those footsteps. Islamists eat and sleep and excrete; so do feminists; news at eleven.
Feminism, sadly, becomes more like Islamism every day. Alongside the ad-defacing antics, there’s also the campaign to put saucy tabloids and lads’ mags in black bags, echoing an ugly sight I beheld in Dubai once: Western magazines whose covers had been defaced with black gaffer tape by religious censors determined to hide women’s cleavage from the masses. And there was the war against Page 3 (RIP): a boob-hiding project that Muslim Patrol would be proud of. Too much modern feminism depicts women as fragile, as unable to cope with rude pictures or rough words, as requiring protection from the banter and imagery of everyday life. In the words of the anti-Page 3 campaign, such stuff can have a ‘negative impact’ on women’s ‘self-esteem’. It’s so alarmingly patronising, and it really does bring to mind the cloying over-protectionism of Islamists, who likewise see women as dainty, easily damaged, in need of constant chaperoning when they venture into the jungle of public life.
Can’t we try to resuscitate the spirit of the old sexually liberated feminism, when the likes of Germaine Greer didn’t want to ban photos of bikinis but instead posed for them? Look at Germaine: brainy, radical and beach-ready.
Can’t women go on being consumer goods for smug men like Brendan?
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
One piece of better news out of Nigeria – not fantastic news, just correcting a bad thing news, but still, something.
Nigeria’s military says it has rescued 200 girls and 93 women from a notorious Boko Haram stronghold, but an army spokesman says the hostages were not those kidnapped from Chibok a year ago.
“The troops rescued 200 abducted girls and 93 women,” Colonel Sani Usman told Reuters in a text message.
They were not, however, from Chibok, the village from which more than 200 girls were abducted in April 2014, he said.
“So far, they (the army) have destroyed and cleared Sassa, Tokumbere and two other camps in the general area of Alafa, all within the Sambisa Forest.”
The women and girls were rescued from camps “discovered near or on the way to Sambisa,” one army official said.
I wonder what the total number of enslaved women and girls is. It must be massive, since these 300 are apparently only a fraction.
Nigerian forces backed by warplanes invaded the vast Sambisa Forest late last week as part of a push to win back territory from Boko Haram.
The group, notorious for violence against civilians, controlled an area roughly the size of Belgium at the start of the year but has since been beaten back by Nigerian troops, backed by Chad, Niger and Cameroon.
While the Nigerian army maintains Boko Haram is now hemmed in Sambisa Forest, militants have managed to launch attacks in the neighbourhood including chasing soldiers out of Marte town and an island on Lake Chad.
Islamist groups making life hell all over the planet.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
And then there’s Anheuser-Busch, with its oh so funny slogan for Bud Light beer: “The perfect beer for removing ‘no’ from your vocabulary for the night.”
GEDDIT?
The slogan, which was captured in a photo and posted onto Reddit Monday, sparked a wave of anger from social media users who took to Twitter to blast the language for promoting a culture of rape.
What could possibly go wrong?
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Alex Massie takes on the Six Soft-heads with the kind of gritted disdain they deserve.
I wonder if these people also think the Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses also had it coming? I wonder if they think there would be something unseemly about awarding Salman Rushdie – and all those involved in publishing his novel – awards for their courageous defence of liberty? People died and many others risked assassination to bring The Satanic Verses into print. Perhaps, however, there is a feeling that this was a noble enterprise because it was somehow a more literary enterprise? (Except, of course, plenty of people failed the Rushdie test too.)
And I wonder if these novelists would be appalled if they or their translators were targeted and perhaps killed for the ‘crime’ of offending someone, somewhere? Would they deplore any awards made in their memory? Somehow, I doubt it.
No, because you see they would know that they are good people, while they don’t know that about the Charlie people. (Can you say fundamental attribution error? I thought you could.)
Is it really too much to suppose that blame for this atrocity might be apportioned to the people who did the machine-gunning? This should not be a difficult matter. It really shouldn’t. Nor should recognising, however inadequately, the deaths of these journalists be controversial.
If writers cannot make a stand on this, what can they make a stand upon?Charlie Hebdo was not the first and I fear it will not be the last either. Reality is a bloody business but that’s no reason to avoid trying to look it in the face.
But someone’s cousin’s friend’s sister-in-law’s neighbor’s dog’s psychoanalyst said Charlie is racist, therefore it must be true.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
The Malay Mail Online went to a talk by Hizbut Tahrir Malaysia. HTM explained about rape.
Women are required to prove rape under Islamic criminal law, Hizbut Tahrir Malaysia (HTM) said today as the hardline Islamist group claimed that most sexual assault cases involve false accusations.
HTM also told a seminar on hudud that Islam does not accept DNA evidence and that one of the ways of proving rape instead is by obtaining either two male witnesses, or one male and two female witnesses.
Because as we all know it takes two women to be as much value as one man.
“The danger is that if the woman wants to betray other people, she commits adultery with a man, but when she regrets it, she reports to the police saying she was raped,” HTM spokesman Ustaz Abdul Hakim Othman said at HTM’s headquarters here today.
“As you see, most rape cases involve people known to the victims, especially their boyfriends. So making out with the boyfriend is fine, and then she turns around and says she was raped when she regrets it.
The man will say it wasn’t rape; it was consensual. So Islam imposes careful conditions. You don’t just accuse a person of raping you, you have to come up with proof,” he added.
Yeah, cool, and the fact that it’s so very difficult to come up with “proof” of rape (let alone “proof” of rape by person X) is not a problem because most sexual assault cases involve false accusations, which we know because they just said so.
HTM’s Abdul Hakim stressed today that rape and adultery are separate offences under the Islamic criminal justice system.
“If an unmarried woman is pregnant, definitely she’s committed an offence but she must explain. So if we ask her and she says she was raped, she’ll be released because she’s innocent,” he told the seminar.
“Islam doesn’t accept DNA evidence because obtaining witnesses is one of the conditions. Even if you can prove that male DNA was in the woman’s vagina, it doesn’t prove rape because DNA can enter by accident. DNA is not proof of rape. Other evidence like wounds in the vagina that show penetration is still not proof that it’s rape,” the HTM spokesman added.
Why would anyone not want to live under a system like that?
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Le Monde, February 24 – No, Charlie Hebdo is not obsessed with Islam.
What does it make fun of?
De qui se moquait le journal satirique Charlie Hebdo, avant que deux terroristes islamistes assassinent cinq caricaturistes et six autres personnes présentes à la conférence de rédaction du 7 janvier ? Est-il vrai que ce journal faisait preuve d’une « obsession » à l’encontre des musulmans, comme cela a pu être dit à la suite des attentats, notamment dans une tribune du Monde du 15 janvier 2015, à laquelle ont contribué plusieurs chercheurs ?
What did the satirical mag Charlie Hebdo make fun of before two Islamist terrorists assassinated five cartoonists and six other people at an editorial conference January 7th? Is it true that the mag displayed an “obsession” with Muslims, as was said after the attacks, including at a Le Monde forum January 15th to which several researchers contributed?
Well, look at the graphic. That doesn’t look like obsession to me.
Parmi les 38 « unes » ayant pour cible la religion, plus de la moitié vise principalement la religion catholique (21) et moins de 20 % se moquent principalement de l’islam (7). Les juifs, quant à eux, sont toujours raillés aux côtés des membres d’au moins une autre religion, comme l’islam dans le n°1057.
Among the 38 front pages that target religion, more than half are mostly Catholicism (21) and under 20% make fun mostly of Islam (7). The Jews, for their part, are always made fun of along with the followers of at least one other religion, such as Islam in number 1057.
Francine Prose and Michael Ondaatje please note.
Update: the “dont” at the top of the column on the right means “of which.”
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Oh isn’t that sweet – Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are in love. Truly madly deeply.
Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif on Sunday said the love and affection for the Saudi leadership and people could not be explained in words.
Pakistan and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) are tied in unbreakable bonds of religion and brotherhood and both the countries are standing shoulder to shoulder with each other.
Speaking at a function held in honour of Imam-e-Kaaba Shaikh Khalid al Ghamidi at Chief Minister’s House, he remarked that even if the world goes topsy-turvy, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan could not be separated from one another.
They will wrap their legs around each other and hold on for dear life as the world bounces and flips and lurches.
He pointed out that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif visited Saudi Arabia recently and held talks with Custodian of the two Holy Mosques King Salman, crown prince and other Saudi Leaders. He said the world saw two brothers meeting and speaking heart to heart like family members. He said earlier he visited the kingdom and held talks on important issues with the Saudi leadership.
Shahbaz said the meetings were a clear message for the enemies that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are tied in inseparable bonds and no one could cause any hurdle or differences between them.
He didn’t say anything about Raif Badawai, or Indonesian domestics, or beheadings, or women not allowed to leave the house without male permission and escort.
On the occasion, Imam-e-Kaaba said it was an important occasion as he was present among people with whom he has close relationship. He said the sentiments expressed by Shahbaz would always remain in his heart. He said after coming here he has realised the love of Pakistanis for him and Saudi Arabia. He said the relations between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are everlasting.
Would they like sheets and towels, or a silver coffee set?
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Amy Schumer’s hit video Last Fuckable Day.
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPpsI8mWKmg
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
The Guardian on Rushdie on the Soft-headed Six.
[Francine] Prose told the Associated Press that while she was in favour of “freedom of speech without limitations” and “deplored” the shootings at Charlie Hebdo, the award signified “admiration and respect” for its work and “I couldn’t imagine being in the audience when they have a standing ovation for Charlie Hebdo”.
She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
Andrew Solomon, president of PEN, told the Guardian that aside from brief exchanges with Carey and writer Deborah Eisenberg, no one had indicated they would not attend the gala over the award before the six letters.
Solomon said that PEN distinguished between the right of free speech and much of what Charlie Hebdo actually published. “The award does not agree with the content of what they expressed,” he said, “it expressed admiration for that commitment of free speech.”
He compared the controversy to PEN’s inclusion of Pussy Riot at last year’s gala, saying that the Russian activists’ “content is in many instances juvenile, and many people had felt that remove large parts of your clothing in an Orthodox church was offensive, but in standing up to the Putin regime they did something worth admiration.”
That’s a much better (fairer) comparison than neo-Nazis. It’s understandable to be lukewarm about Charlie’s style, and that of Pussy Riot too; it’s not understandable to claim they’re comparable to any kind of Nazis.
Solomon also provided several letters of support to PEN’s decision, including from Rushdie.
“It is quite right that PEN should honour [Charlie Hebdo’s] sacrifice and condemn their murder without these disgusting ‘buts,’ Rushdie wrote.
“This issue has nothing to do with an oppressed and disadvantaged minority. It has everything to do with the battle against fanatical Islam, which is highly organised, well funded, and which seeks to terrify us all, Muslims as well as non Muslims, into a cowed silence.
“These six writers have made themselves the fellow travellers of that project. Now they will have the dubious satisfaction of watching PEN tear itself apart in public.”
Exactly. The Soft-headed Six seem to have no clue that there is any space between Muslims and Islamists. That’s a very basic mistake.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
A heart-rending item in the Sydney Morning Herald a few days ago, about girls at an Islamic school being banned from running.
Girls at Al-Taqwa College have been banned from running at sporting events because the principal believes it may cause them to lose their virginity, former teachers claim.
The schools regulator, the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority, is investigating the allegations, which have been referred to the state and federal education ministers.
…
In a letter sent to the education ministers this week, a former teacher said female students were being discriminated against at the Truganina school.
“The principal holds beliefs that if females run excessively, they may ‘lose their virginity’,” the letter said.
“The principal believes that there is scientific evidence to indicate that if girls injure themselves, such as break their leg while playing soccer, it could render them infertile.”
He probably believe if they study too hard they will get “brain fever.”
The SMH has a picture of a sad letter from the students about their disappointment.
Concerned female students expressed their concerns in a handwritten letter to the principal, saying it was unfair that the cross country event had been cancelled.
“It was really shocking to find out it has been cancelled because of the excuse girls can’t run,” the students said.
“Just because we are girls doesn’t mean we can’t participate in running events. It also doesn’t say girls can’t run in the hadith (the sayings of Muhammad).”
The students said parents were annoyed by the decision and “think that girls and boys should both be allowed to participate equally.”
Another former Al-Taqwa College teacher backed the claims. “I was told the girls weren’t allowed to participate. The reason was they might over-exert themselves and lose their virginity or be rendered infertile.”
What about the boys? If they over-exert themselves, their balls explode. That’s a scientific fact.
H/t Kausik
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
What was that about Dawkins’s never having “proclaimed himself as any kind of atheist ‘leader'”?
What about this then – what about Join the Dawkins Circle?
Reason Circle: $1,000 to $2,499 annually (or $85/month)
- Invitation to Dawkins Circle member-only event with RDFRS personalities
- Member-only discount for all purchases in the richarddawkins.net store
Science Circle: $2,500 to $4,999 annually (or $210/month)
All the benefits listed above, plus:
- One ticket to an invitation-only Dawkins Circle event with Richard
Darwin Circle: $5,000 to $9,999 annually (or $420/month)
All the benefits listed above, plus:
- Two tickets to an invitation-only Dawkins Circle event with Richard
For as little as one thousand dollars a year, you can attend a Dawkins Circle member-only event with RDFRS personalities. Wow!! Only a grand, and you get to go to a Dawkins Circle member-only event!! Gollywolly I can hardly breathe at the thought. Granted, there are conferences that charge much less than that where you can probably encounter “RDFRS personalities” or at least be in the same air-space with their majesties. But still, it’s totally worth it to shell out the whole one thousand dollars to get the real deal brand-name authentic Dawkins Circle member-only event.
And even more thrilling, if you spend just another $1,500 for a very modest total of two thousand five hundred dollars per year you get that plus a ticket to an invitation-only Dawkins Circle event with…gasp gasp gasp choke…with Richard. With holy sainted sacred Richard. I know people who would queue in the rain for a month to get a ticket like that. I know people who would throw their first-born children into a bonfire to get a ticket like that.
And if you shell out a mere five thousand dollars per year you get two of those. Two!! Two chances to share air-space with…Richard. Hallowed be thy name.
But never let it be said that he’s ever proclaimed himself any kind of atheist “leader.”
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Francine Prose expanded on her thoughts in the CBC interview, in a piece for Comment is Free. Her expanded thoughts make my skin crawl.
When I learned that PEN had decided to award the Freedom of Expression Courage Award to Charlie Hebdo, I was dismayed. I had agreed to serve as a literary table host and I wondered what I would do when the crowd around me rose to its feet to applaud an award being given – in my name – to what I felt was an inappropriate recipient.
She still doesn’t understand what Charlie is. She thinks it’s a right-wing racist rag.
Let me emphasize how strongly I believe in the ideals of PEN; for two years I was president of the PEN American Center. I believe in the indivisibility of the right to free speech, regardless of what – however racist, blasphemous, or in any way disagreeable – is being said.
Why is she pairing racist with blasphemous?
I believe that Charlie Hebdo has every right to publish whatever they wish.
But that is not the same as feeling that Charlie Hebdo deserves an award. As a friend wrote me: the First Amendment guarantees the right of the neo-Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois, but we don’t give them an award.
She likes that disgusting and dead-wrong comparison so much she uses it again. I repeat: Charlie Hebdo is not comparable to neo-Nazis!
The bestowing of an award suggests to me a certain respect and admiration for the work that has been done, and for the value of that work and though I admire the courage with which Charlie Hebdo has insisted on its right to provoke and challenge the doctrinaire, I don’t feel that their work has the importance – the necessity – that would deserve such an honor.
So that’s a reason to back out of the ceremony? That’s a reason to cringe at the thought of people applauding Charlie? That’s a reason to throw Charlie under the bus weeks after ten members of its staff were slaughtered?
Perhaps my sense of this will be clearer if I mention the sort of writers and whistleblowers whom [sic] I think would be appropriate candidates: Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, the journalists who have risked (and in some cases lost) their lives to report on the wars in the Middle East. Or the extremely brave Lydia Cacho, who has fearlessly reported on government corruption in Mexico, along with the dozens and dozens of Mexican journalists who have been murdered for reporting on the narco wars.
No, that’s not clearer, because being able to think of people you would prefer to see get the award is not at all the same thing as backing out of a commitment to be a host at the award ceremony. Not even close. You’re not just sitting out the award because you don’t like Charlie, you’re canceling an appointment to be there because you don’t like Charlie.
I have been deeply shocked to read and hear some critics say that the position I have taken, along with other writers, amounts to an endorsement of terrorism. Nothing could be further from the truth. But I also don’t feel that it is the mission of PEN to fight the war on terrorism; that is the role of our government.
That, frankly, is an idiotic thing to say. The “war on terrorism” is Bush-era propaganda, and has nothing to do with writers and journalists and cartoonists being in solidarity with colleagues who are murdered by theocratic terrorists. The fact that the Kouachi brothers fit the label “terrorist” is not a good reason to cancel an appointment to host at the PEN awards ceremony. It certainly is the mission of PEN to publicize and resist violent attacks on writers, journalists and cartoonists.
Our job, in presenting an award, is to honor writers and journalists who are saying things that need to be said, who are working actively to tell us the truth about the world in which we live. That is important work that requires perseverance and courage. And this is not quite the same as drawing crude caricatures and mocking religion.
Wait. What? So a novelist who writes fluffy comedies, for example, is not eligible for a PEN award? PEN covers only writers and journalists who do serious, truth-telling work? Poets, mystery writers, fantasy writers – they’re all out? Fiction is out? Satire is out? (Prose herself has written satirical fiction. Is she ineligible?)
The bitterness and rage of the criticism that we have received point out how difficult people find it to think with any clarity on these issues and how easy it has been for the media – and our culture – to fan the flames of prejudice against Islam.
Is it ok if I criticize the Vatican? Or is that forbidden too?
The narrative of the Charlie Hebdo murders – white Europeans killed in their offices by Muslim extremists – is one that feeds neatly into the cultural prejudices that have allowed our government to make so many disastrous mistakes in the Middle East. And the idea that one is either “for us or against us” in such matters not only precludes rational and careful thinking, but also has a chilling effect on the exercise of our right to free expression and free speech that all of us – and all the people at PEN – are working so tirelessly to guarantee.
As I said yesterday – bullshit. Complete bullshit. Avijit Roy wasn’t a white European. Washiqur Rahman Sabeen Mahmud wasn’t a white European. Taslima Nasreen isn’t a white European. Salman Rushdie isn’t a white European. This stuff is insulting garbage.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Speaking of thought leaders…I was looking for something and happened on this article by Jerry Coyne in The New Republic last October. It’s a riposte to an article by John Gray, also in TNR, trashing Richard Dawkins. I can easily believe Gray’s is a crap article, because John Gray seems to specialize in crap articles. But I read the first paragraph of Coyne’s article, and found a claim that I think is absurd.
It’s not a good time to be Richard Dawkins, for he alone, like the scapegoat of Leviticus, must bear the brunt of everyone’s hatred of atheism. (Sam Harris sometimes serves as a backup goat.) Even though Dawkins has never proclaimed himself as any kind of atheist “leader”—his eminence among nonbelievers is purely a byproduct of his books and talks—he is the poster child for atheism, and everyone who hates atheists, including some other atheists, comes down on him.
The claim I think is absurd is that
Dawkins has never proclaimed himself as any kind of atheist “leader”
You must be joking!
I can easily believe it’s true that Dawkins has never said “I am an atheist leader” – but that’s not the only way of proclaiming oneself as a leader. Here’s the thing: RD set up a foundation for science and reason, with his own name in the title. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that is decidedly proclaiming oneself as a leader.
And he acts as a leader, too. He throws his weight around. He does what he can to exclude people he dislikes from conferences and rallies. He tells women how to feminist. He ranks degrees of bad in discussions with feminists about what they get to object to. He complains of witch hunts. He promotes his friends. He scolds the world on Twitter.
So, no. However unfair the John Gray article is, it’s not the case that Dawkins has never proclaimed himself as any kind of atheist “leader.”
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Geoff Nunberg told us yesterday on Fresh Air about the fad for the word “disruption,” which I didn’t know was a fad. It reminds me of the fad-word in literary “theory” some years ago, “transgressive.” Same basic idea, innit – we’re new, we’re happenin’, we’re Rebels.
HBO’s Silicon Valley is back, with its pitch-perfect renderings of the culture and language of the tech world — like at the opening of the “Disrupt” startup competition run by the Tech Crunch website at the end of last season. “We’re making the world a better place through scalable fault-tolerant distributed databases” — the show’s writers didn’t have to exercise their imagination much to come up with those little arias of geeky self-puffery, or with the name Disrupt, which, as it happens, is what the Tech Crunch conferences are actually called. As is most everything else these days. “Disrupt” and “disruptive” are ubiquitous in the names of conferences, websites, business school degree programs and business book best-sellers.
“Little arias of geeky self-puffery” – good one. It’s reminiscent of Tom Frank and the Baffler – the conquest of Cool.
Buzzwords feed off their emotional resonances, not their ideas. And for pure resonance, “disruptive” is hard to beat. It’s a word with deep roots. I suspect I first encountered it when my parents read me the note that the teacher pinned to my sweater when I was sent home from kindergarten. Or maybe it reminds you of the unruly kid who was always pushing over the juice table. One way or another, the word evokes obstreperous rowdies, the impatient people who are always breaking stuff.
For good and ill. You can disrupt oppressive hierarchies and illegitimate power and unjust arrangements…and you can disrupt campaigns to disrupt oppressive hierarchies and illegitimate power and unjust arrangements. Who is the disrupter and who is the disrupted? The game changes sides every couple of seconds. Sometimes you’re the obstreperous rowdy letting in blasts of fresh air, and sometimes you’re the target of obstreperous rowdies shouting you into silence.
Disrupt or be disrupted. The consultants and business book writers have proclaimed that as the chronic condition of the age, and everybody is clambering to be classed among the disruptors rather than the disruptees. The lists of disruptive companies in the business media include not just Amazon and Uber but also Procter and Gamble and General Motors. What company nowadays wouldn’t claim to be making waves?
And what social movement wouldn’t claim to be making waves? Feminism does, but so does anti-feminism.
Then he said something that startled me and made me laugh.
The wonder is that “disruptive” is still clinging to life out there. There’s a market in language, too, and jargon starts to lose its market share when its air of novelty fades. “Thought leader,” “change agent” and “disruption,” too — as the words get stale, they’re in line to be disrupted themselves by scrappy new buzzwords that can once again convey an illusion of fresh thinking. That’s why jargon always has to replenish itself, the same way slang does — though like slang, it takes a while to work its way from the cool kids’ table to the outskirts of the lunchroom.
Ohhhhhhh, “thought leader” is business jargon! I did not know that.
It makes sense, since the Global Secular Policy Whizbang is Edwina Rogers’s toy, and she comes from the World O’ Business. It makes sense, but it’s also that much more nauseating.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Kamila Shamsie writes about her lifelong friend Sabeen Mahmud.
“Be careful,” I said to my childhood friend Sabeen Mahmud when I saw her in London in 2013, soon after she’d received a death threat – neither the first nor last. “Someone has to fight them,” she replied.
…
Sabeen was always a woman made of different stuff, thanks in large measure to the two great influences of her life: her mother, Mahnaz (shot twice during the attack), from whom she inherited her socialist tendencies, and her friend and mentor Zaheer Kidvai (Zak) who introduced her to the idea of counterculture, via everything from Abbie Hoffman to revolutionary Urdu poets. While most of us at our elite school in Karachi lived in a fairly apolitical bubble, Sabeen was developing class-consciousness and identifying political heroes. Post-university, when most of her schoolfriends were choosing not to return to an increasingly embattled city, she decided to take another approach.
In 2007, the community space T2F (originally called The Second Floor, after its location in an office building) was born. It quickly became the city’s leading venue for concerts, readings, science courses, coffee drinking, art exhibitions, Pakistan’s first Civic Hackathon, and, of course, political activism. Everything that went on at T2F represented some facet of Sabeen’s own, astonishingly wide-ranging interests. While she was far from being a national figure, with every year, she and T2F gained prominence and credibility for fighting to make civil society matter – whether the issue was minority rights, opposition to religious extremism or freedom of expression – she brought these issues into T2F, taking to the internet and the streets in protest and solidarity.
I can’t think of a single thing to make this any less horrible.
This was a woman equally at home soldering wires, discussing Urdu poetry, playing cricket, attending every progressive political demonstration in Karachi, singing the back catalogue of Pink Floyd, and being my self-proclaimed “geek-squad for life”. In 2013, she took on the religious fundamentalists by countering their “say no to Valentine’s Day” propaganda with posters saying “Pyaar hone dein” (Let there be love). Later that same year, she helped form a human chain around a church in solidarity with Pakistan’s Christian community after an attack on a church in Peshawar.
Those of us who loved and admired Sabeen now find ourselves asking: why?
I can’t think of a single answer.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Originally a comment by freedmenspatrol on Very much a part of many white Southerners’ identity.
For quite some time, white Southerners actually refused to observe the national Memorial Day. In various places they also didn’t celebrate the Fourth of July. Not so many wave the flag or the other totems as have done in past generations, but plenty of white Americans still do. It’s worked deep into how the culture operates, inside and outside the South. The Second Klan controlled Indiana and Oregon for a while. White Northerners could be absolutely vicious even when they had slavery around for contrast, passing laws excluding black Americans from even living in entire states and demanding those present leave.
It’s what we get for developing our ideas of freedom in the context of the evolving slave society in the Chesapeake. Freedom became white, slavery black, and black Americans thus permanent outsiders. It didn’t matter that they fought in the Revolution (for the last time until the Emancipation Proclamation, in fact) and black voters helped ratify the Constitution. A free black person was just a weird exception that roused considerable fears, never one of “us”. Whites had built an an “us” on their skin color, where all imagined themselves equal not by their material condition, not by their personal talents or potential, but rather by the peerless achievement of not choosing for themselves black skin.
This no longer informs us as much as it once did, but we have a long way to go to raze the house that slavery built. Some of us will fight that effort all the way to the bitter end, as they have before. That probably doesn’t mean armies again, but it didn’t take armies to reduce freedpeople back to near-slavery either. White terrorism suffices.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
The CBC talked to Francine Prose about her hostility to Charlie Hebdo today.
Prose tells As It Happens host Carol Off that despite her objections, she supports the magazine’s right to free speech.
“Free speech is indivisible. If you believe in free speech you believe in any sort of free speech — that you can say anything you want. And that’s absolutely what I believe in and I would include in that everything Charlie Hebdo has done.”
But she says that doesn’t mean Charlie Hebdo deserves the award.
No, it doesn’t; she’s right about that much. They are two separate things.
“We defend the right of neo-nazis to march through Skokie, Illinois but that doesn’t mean we give them an award.”
I’m not even sure I do defend the right of neo-Nazis to march through Skokie, because that’s direct intimidation. I’ve always had reservations about that.
Prose says that there are other journalists who are more deserving of the award.
“This is an award that should be given to equally brave journalists…There are journalists being killed in the Middle East. There are journalists being killed every day in Mexico, who are doing work that needs to be done because people need to hear about the truth they are reporting and what’s happening in other parts of the world. I don’t quite understand the absolute necessity of the work that Charlie Hebdo did.”
Nobody said it was an absolute necessity. That’s not the issue.
Then they get to Salman Rushdie’s tweet, which I saw this morning and wish he hadn’t worded the way he did.
Salman Rushdie @SalmanRushdie
.@JohnTheLeftist @NickCohen4 The award will be given. PEN is holding firm. Just 6 pussies. Six Authors in Search of a bit of Character.
Sigh. Please don’t do that. Please don’t use epithets for women to signify cowardice. Please don’t.
I didn’t say anything about it this morning because it was a distraction. But Prose did, and on this I agree with her.
Rushdie tweeted: “The award will be given. PEN is holding firm. Just 6 pussies. Six Authors in Search of a bit of Character.”
In response, Prose, tells Off that the writers are standing up for what they believe in — and says Rushdie’s tweet is sexist.
“I think it’s a sexual insult…And think it was careless and I think Salman regrets it. It was in a tweet. But nonetheless I think it’s an unfair word to use…Why is our behaviour a sign of weakness? We’ve all caught a great deal of flack for this. If we wanted to be weak we could have just said, you know what I have another engagement I forgot about that night.”
Fair point. I think it’s cluelessness rather than cowardice.
Rushie, who spent years in hiding after a fatwa was issued against him, had a message for the authors speaking out against the award.
“What I would say to both Peter (Carey) and Michael (Ondaatje) and the others is, I hope nobody ever comes after them.”
But Prose tells Off her message is that a central question needs to be asked about why the award is being given to Charlie Hebdo now.
“I think it very conveniently feeds into the larger political narrative which is the narrative of white Europeans being killed by Muslim extremists…”
Oh, please. What’s convenient about it? What’s “white” got to do with it? Avijit Roy and Washiqur Rahman and Sabeen Mahmud weren’t white or European. The larger political narrative is that authoritarian Islamist fascists want to silence secular voices, so they’re murdering journalists and cartoonists and bloggers and activists, and not just white ones. By turning their backs on Charlie, the six writers are turning their backs on Avijit and Washiqur and Sabeen too.
I’m not coming out in favour of terrorism obviously. (But this idea) is such a popular one in the media and politically. That fear has been used so well to justify various political policies of our government and other governments. The popularity of that narrative, and the easiness of that narrative, and also the emotionality that surrounds it means it’s a very different story than other stories that could have been honoured and awarded.
Bullshit. Callous, stupid bullshit. Tell that to Raif Badawi and to Ensaf Haidar.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
There’s such a thing as Confederate Memorial Day. I did not know that. It’s today in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi. Woohoo. Is there also a Hooray for Slavery Day? A Glorify Racism Day? A Steal Other People’s Labor Day?
Alabama closes its government offices today in observance of Confederate Memorial Day, along with Mississippi and Georgia. On May 10, South Carolina government offices will close in observance of the state holiday.
Of the 11 Southern states that made up the Confederate States of America during the Civil War, few agreed on what date was best for remembrance once the war officially ended in 1865.
I suggest the 32d of December, myself.
State officials still mark Confederate Memorial Day on their calendars, but it makes sense why they may not want to embrace the holiday publicly, said John Neff, director of the Center for Civil War Research at the University of Mississippi and a scholar of Civil War death and remembrance.
Dating back to 2000, the debates about whether states should fly the Confederate battle flag could be partially to blame, he explained. Several Southern states were embroiled in these fights, holding legislative votes and public referendums that revived the Confederacy as a politically sensitive issue.
That year in South Carolina, state legislators agreed to remove the Confederate battle flag from the capitol dome in Columbia. In a 2001 statewide referendum, a majority of Mississippi’s voters chose to keep the Confederate battle flag emblem on the state’s banner as it remains today. In 2003, Georgia rid itself of the Confederate battle flag from its state flag, following a legislative action and a public referendum.
All those words, yet PBS never manages to spell out why things Confederate are “a politically sensitive issue.” [whispers: it’s because of slavery.]
“It seems odd in many ways, but you don’t have to live in the South very long to know this is a deep connection that many people still feel,” he said.
Many people across the South claim the Confederacy as part of their heritage, he said.
“I can say this is very much a part of many white Southerners’ identity. This is how they feel connected to their place, their time, their families,” Neff said. “I think it’s going to be a long, long time before there’s no one in the South that feels those connections.”
We get it, and that’s kind of the issue, isn’t it. It’s part of many white Southerners’ identity, and that fact is fraught with all kinds of horrors.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
