One way to make a point about vaccinations…

That was posted on Facebook by an Australian anti-vax group. The SMH reports
:

It is not the first time the group has made the same comparison. In a tweet in January 2011, the group compared a court ordering a five-year-old girl to be vaccinated to “court orders rape of a child”.

Almost immediately, supporters of the group expressed their disgust, with one commentator, Rachelle Taylor, posting: “This is disgusting. Are you saying you believe your child being immunised is as bad as your child being raped? This could also be very triggering for victims of sexual assault.”

The group responded to one comment on its page, defending its decision to liken vaccines to sexual assault.

“This post isn’t tasteless – it is honest. What truly IS tasteless is our elected government trying to tell us that we have to vaccinate our children even if we don’t believe it is best for their health,” the group said.

Right. What if you believed rape was best for your children’s health? How tasteless would it be if the government told you you couldn’t do that.

In January, a nation-wide lecture tour from American anti-vaccine doctor Sherri Tenpenny was cancelled after pressure from doctors and medical groups forced most venues to cancel their bookings for the lectures. The AVKN has strongly supported her aborted tour.

The group was forced to change its name from the ‘Australian Vaccination Network’ over repeated claims the name was misleading.

The New South Wales Fair Trading Department received complaints about its name, with the Australian Medical Association stating it sounded like it could be a government agency.

Despite challenging a direction to change its name, the Administrative Decisions Tribunal forced the group to find a new title.

Oh yes? The Facebook group is still called that.

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

Zoe Williams wrote a good piece about Katie Hopkins on Sunday (which no doubt Brendan O’Neill would call a bad piece, because what she says is so literal and unparadoxical). Hopkins’s piece was two days before that, then came the capsized ship on Sunday, then Williams’s piece.

The controversialist Katie Hopkins, writing in the Sun 48 hours before the latest mass drowning, suggested using gun boats on migrants; her idea proved unnecessary, of course. Why waste the money when you can let people die by doing nothing, for free? But Hopkins’ phrasing was interesting: “These migrants are like cockroaches. They might look a bit ‘Bob Geldof’s Ethiopia circa 1984’, but they are built to survive a nuclear bomb.” The following morning, as an LBC shock jock, she rolled back her position slightly, suggesting the best way to solve the refugee crisis was not to shoot them once they were in the water, but to “burn all the boats in North Africa”.

A rather niche debate is underway about whether “Katie Hopkins” is a construct of its owner – like Mrs Merton, an entertainment turn spun out for money – or whether Katie Hopkins is a real person with an antisocial personality disorder. With more urgent questions and so many people dead, this distinction shouldn’t detain us. The fault is with those who broadcast her: this is serious stuff.

Exactly; she could be a program for all I care; the point is not Hopkins, it’s this kind of propaganda. It’s UKIP and the Front National, it’s Pegida and Golden Dawn.

This characterisation of people as less than human, as vermin, as a “virus” (as she did elsewhere in the article) irresistibly recalls the darkest events in history. It is eerily reminiscent of the Rwandan media of 1994, when the radio went from statements such as “You have to kill the Tutsis, they’re cockroaches” to, shortly afterwards, instructions on how to do so, and what knives to use.

It is no joke when people start talking like this. We are not “giving her what she wants” when we make manifest our disgust. It is not a free speech issue. I’m not saying gag her: I’m saying fight her. Articulate the fellowship, the human empathy, that makes these deaths important. Stop talking about how many children were among the dead, as though only children matter. Start talking about everybody’s life as cherishable, irrespective of anything they might produce.

She goes on to anticipate frivolous shits like Brendan O’Neill (and some soul-brothers of his I know personally), and the feelings of shame and inadequacy attendant on expressing solidarity and compassion.

Compassion is such a rich part of the human experience and yet such a shaming thing to express, because you will always fall short of what your own words demand from you. You will never do enough. It makes you wonder how the concept of human rights was ever born. How did anybody ever overcome the knowledge of their own failings for long enough to establish universal principles that they knew they would probably never do enough to propagate?

Because, fresh from the memory of “barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind”, people knew what the world looked like when nobody stood up to defend “the innate dignity of all the members of the human family”. People knew that insufficient was better than nothing. People knew that you don’t respect the dead by staying silent about what killed them.

The Brendan O’Neills of the world are wrong; ignore them; fight back.

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

I didn’t know who Katie Hopkins was until just now. I’m catching up. She was once on The Apprentice, therefore she’s a “media personality.” She wrote a column for the Sun in which she called migrants such as the ones who drowned in the Mediterranean on Sunday “cockroaches.”

Now the UN High Commission for Human Rights has compared that to propaganda for genocide.

Well, yes. It is comparable. That’s what genocide propaganda sounds like. That’s how it works. It persuades people that certain kinds of humans are not human.

A column in which media personality Katie Hopkins described migrants as “cockroaches” and “feral humans” resembled pro-genocide propaganda, the United Nations has said.

In a strongly worded statement issued on Friday, the UN High Commission for Human Rights said tabloid “misinformation” about immigration was fed into a “nasty underbelly of racism” lurking beneath the migration issue.

“Under the guise of freedom of expression, [negative coverage is] being allowed to feed a vicious cycle of vilification, intolerance and politicization of migrants,” High Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said in a statement.

Better to use the opprobrium, I think.

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

More on Sabeen Mahmood.

Her last tweet must have been moments before she was murdered. It’s only 3 hours old now; it was 2 hours old when I first saw it.

Her self-description on her Twitter profile:

Post Modern Flower Child. Unabashed Mac Snob. Pink Floyd & Bruce Springsteen Devotee. Tetris Addict. West Wing & House MD Fanatic. Will Die for Hugh Laurie

From Dawn in 2013:

T2F Director Sabeen Mahmud never wanted to walk the off-beaten path; she simply walked, or actually ran full speed in the direction she wanted to. Never mind that everyone else seemed to be going in the opposite direction. She barely noticed. She was too busy running.

A rebel’s daughter who gave up a life of Tetris, Mac doodling and professional cricket (after three knee injuries) to start a NGO that promotes the arts, culture, science, technology, activism and advocacy… and she did it all just to make some new friends, and maybe start some interesting conversations. Six years and nearly 600 events later, T2F has to its credit national and international press coverage, countless donations and the kind of cult following typically reserved for rock bands. Mahmud doesn’t see that though.

“I didn’t think this is a big deal, this is just a small little community space.”

But that word ‘community’ still hits home.

“When people say… we really feel at home here… that has been like balloons and ice-cream, I have been living on that for the past six years.”

Now she’s gone. Murdered. Gone.

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

Terrible news out of Pakistan – another valuable person murdered. Sabeen Mahmud was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in Karachi today.

The Mary Sue did a write-up about her two years ago.

Sabeen Mahmud (above, in blue), who says she fell in love with technology the first time she ever saw a Mac, just organized Pakistan’s first ever Hackathon last month, aimed specifically at finding ways to use technology to fix or at least alleviate Pakistan’s political problems. According to a piece by Wired, the gathering was pretty amazing for everyone involved.

Mahmud runs a small technology firm, but hosted the gathering of forty (whittled down from 120 applications) in her café The Second Floor, which she founded because she felt Karachi, the most populous city in Pakistan, needed “a space where people could gather around shared interests, an interdisciplinary space for collaboration and brainstorming.” And even though she’d done no research and was living with family at the time, Mahmud felt that she was the woman for the job.

So, naturally, they killed her. God damn it.

From Dawn:

Sabeen, accompanied by her mother, left T2F after 9pm on Friday evening and was on her way home when she was shot by unidentified gunmen, sources confirmed. She died on her way to the hospital. Doctors said they retrieved five bullets from her body.

Her mother also sustained bullet wounds and is currently being treated at a hospital; she is said to be in critical condition.

T2F had on Friday organised a talk on Balochistan: ‘Unsilencing Balochistan Take 2: In Conversation with Mama Qadeer, Farzana Baloch & Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur.’

A talk. Talks are not allowed, I guess.

T2F, described as a community space for open dialogue, was Sabeen’s brainchild. In an interview with Aurora, she referred to it as “an inclusive space where different kinds of people can be comfortable.”

Conceived as a bookstore and café patterned after the old coffeehouse culture of Lahore and Karachi, The Second Floor — or T2F, as everyone calls it — says on its website that it was born out of a desire to enact transformational change in urban Pakistani society.

And now she’s dead.

Wasay Jalil on Twitter

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

Surprise surprise, comedy that aims at the frat boy crowd turns out to be so obnoxious (aka racist and sexist) that actors actually walk off the set. Surprise surprise, it’s an Adam Sandler movie.

Nearly a dozen Native American actors and a cultural adviser walked off the set of an Adam Sandler movie that’s currently filming because of depictions they found insulting, according to a report by Indian Country Today Media Network.

Actor Loren Anthony said the script, penned by Sandler and his longtime screenwriting partner Tim Herlihy, was insulting to Native women and elders and inaccurately portrayed Apache culture. He said the actors, who were supposed to be playing Apache men and women, were made up to resemble Comanches. Anthony and David Hill were among the actors who walked off the set Wednesday.

Hey it was a joke. Can’t you take a joke? Can’t anybody take a joke?

The film, part of Sandler’s four-picture deal with Netflix, is supposed to be a send-up of “The Magnificent Seven.” It reportedly included characters named “Beaver’s Breath” and “No Bra” and included a scene with an Apache woman “squatting and urinating while smoking a peace pipe.”

“There were about a dozen of us who walked off the set,” Anthony, who is Navajo, told ICMTN. “I was asked a long time ago to do some work on this and I wasn’t down for it. Then they told me it was going to be a comedy, but it would not be racist. So I agreed to it but on Monday things started getting weird on the set.”

How is that possible when they said it would not be racist? Surely they didn’t lie about it. Surely they’re not clueless about what’s racist. Surely they’re not marinated in a culture that thinks it’s funny to shit on people who aren’t like them. Surely.

Multiple people, including hair and makeup artist Goldie Tom, told reporter Vincent Shilling that they implored the film’s producers and director to make changes. But those requests seemed to fall on deaf ears.

“We talked to the producers about our concerns,” said Allison Young, a Navajo filmmaker and actress. “They just told us, ‘If you guys are so sensitive, you should leave.’

Quite right too. Movies probably are not for you. #MPANFY

This is hardly the first time Sandler has faced criticism for inaccurate and stereotypical depictions of racial minorities in his movies.

Writing for the New Yorker, critic Richard Brody called “Blended,” Sandler’s 2014 comedic effort co-starring Drew Barrymore, “grotesquely offensive”:

No sooner do the families arrive at the resort than the obliviously trivializing depictions of black people, based on long-superseded stereotypes, begin. The Friedmans get out of their limo and are greeted by the hotel’s staff, all black, starting with a singing group, called Thathoo (pronounced “Tattoo”). The group leader’s eye-rolling and glad-handing, his lubriciously insinuating and exaggeratedly jiving, all seem to be taken straight from a minstrel show. And, throughout the movie, the group pops up like a Greek chorus to underline the action. There’s also an obsequious greeter whose exaggerated ingratiations would shame the hospitality business. Though his malapropisms are ultimately seen to be a canny joke, his manner is never anything but grinningly servile. And there’s an elderly slacker, sleeping on the job and avoiding responsibility, whose lazy ways are a monstrous and venerable cliché.

Yes but if you’re in the frat boy crowd, that stuff is hilarious. If you can’t handle that, #MPANFY

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

Wow – evil in America. The ACLU blog has the details:

A committee of the US House of Representatives decided that employees in the District of Columbia could be fired for using in vitro fertilization to start a family or for becoming pregnant while unmarried.

That’s right, people of D.C.: members of Congress just voted to let your boss fire you for personal decisions you make at the doctor’s office — because your boss believes those decisions aren’t consistent with his religious beliefs. Now, the whole House may take a vote on this discriminatory measure.

What’s next? Will this committee vote to let employers fire people for being atheist, for reading Dan Savage, for not reading the bible, for not going to church, for going to mosque, for dancing, for cheering the wrong football team, for eating falafel? Will this committee vote to let employers imprison employees, or beat them, or withhold their pay, or confiscate their property, or pour boiling water on them?

At the same time, a separate measure introduced in the House would block the Human Rights Amendment Act, another D.C. bill that would ensure that LGBT student groups at religiously affiliated schools and universities have access to the same facilities and resources as their peers. And similar measures on both bills are still pending in the Senate.

In both of these cases, proponents of these congressional actions are stripping these protections in the name of religious liberty.

Of course they are; it’s the hot new thing. Religions are full of ugly rules and laws and taboos that treat sets of people like dirt, so they make a great alibi for being evil. Not that I’m saying that’s why people are religious, but people who demand the right to treat people like dirt because religious liberty – those people have bad priorities.

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

Of course. [Some of] Gamergate is picking up Dawkins’s cool hashtag. Make #‎UPINFY‬ trend wooha!

DragonKing ‏@BahamutDKing 6 hours ago
#gamergate Earthquake time make #UPINFY trend and show these there are no safe spaces we can’t prove are not safe from facts.

Kozi ‏@SergeantKozi 8 hours ago
@_Icze4r Check the #UPINFY tag for the latest culture war front, (University Probably Is Not For You) in response to Based Mom’s treatment

Video Culture Replay ‏@VCR_Blog 8 hours ago
If you are triggered by clapping and different opinions than those taught by mainstream “academic feminists”, #UPINFY

Ross The Boss ‏@gigagiga333 8 hours ago
#Gamergate please boost this tag #UPINFY

Akashi ‏@Onetailedfox3 8 hours ago
We should really just start replying to any SJW with #UPINFY. It is amazing.

Thanks, Richard. It’s lucky for us you’re such a feminist, isn’t it.

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

Originally a comment by quixote on California has the “personal belief” exemption.

Some little municpal health department near Vernal, Utah, was trying to figure out how to up the vaccination rate. The vaccination cost $25. A personal belief exemption involved ticking a box on a form.

Well, a local live wire figured they should reverse the incentives. They made the vaccination free and charged $25 for administrative costs to fill out a more time-consuming exemption form.

Presto, vaccination levels shot up into herd immunity levels (above 95%) and the problem was solved.

What struck me about this story that I heard from a relative is how little it took for people to decide their deeply held personal beliefs were totally negotiable.

Add to that the entirely justifiable costs of billing anti-vaxxers for all the contact tracing and unnecessary medical expenses incurred by their BS, and I bet you could get vaccination rates back up where they belong.

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

This is unfortunate.

Richard Dawkins @RichardDawkins · Apr 22
University is about confronting new ideas, unfamiliar, un-“safe”. If you want to be “safe” you are not worthy of a university education.

Sadly, it didn’t stop there. It went on.

Richard Dawkins @RichardDawkins 12 hours ago
If you can’t handle challenging questions like “What’s wrong with incest, or cannibalism?” University Probably Is Not For You (#UPINFY)

That one set off a little hashtag storm, which is still going on.

The originator helped.

Richard Dawkins @RichardDawkins 12 hours ago
If you can’t handle challenging questions like “Could rape be a Darwinian adaptation in wild animals?” university may be not for you #UPINFY

A philosopher suggests that children will one day sue their parents for bad genes. Another asks when nuclear 1st strike justified. #UPINFY

If you boycott a lecture because scared it may challenge your existing beliefs & “trigger” un-“safe” feelings #UPINFY

If you are implacably convinced that all knowledge & wisdom is contained in one centuries-old book, #UPINFY

And then, the conclusion:

Richard Dawkins @RichardDawkins  11 hours ago
If, for any of the reasons given, it looks as though #UPINFY, why not go to University anyway? It just might open your mind.

Nice of him to throw that minimal lifeline at the end, but…not really.

It’s nasty stuff. It’s also fatuous. It’s not true that universities are packed to the rafters with academics asking silly “provocative” deliberately rude questions. Dawkins gives the impression of wanting them to be like that, but they’re not like that.

There’s a germ of truth in what he’s saying, which is that students shouldn’t dogmatically refuse to consider any ideas they don’t already hold – but there’s a whole silo full of truth in what I’m going to say now, which is that crude slogans are not the best way to convey that kernel of truth.

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

George Skelton at the LA Times observes that we all tend to value health very highly, and that that makes it surprising that so many people are hostile to vaccinations.

You parents who won’t permit vaccinations because of a personal belief, well, you’re free to practice that belief any way you’d like — as long as it doesn’t threaten other people’s kids.

Americans do have freedom of religion — but not the freedom to jeopardize the health of other Americans.

That’s the way it should be, anyway, and how a bill struggling through the Legislature would make it in California.

It passed one Senate committee; it has to pass two more; if it’s passed by the Senate it will get a stiff fight in the Assembly. If it passes Jerry Brown might sign it.

Besides polio, kids are required, before entering school or child care, to be immunized for such communicable diseases as diphtheria, measles, mumps, whooping cough, chickenpox and hepatitis B.

But California has the “personal belief” exemption that increasingly has resulted in parents refusing to inoculate their children. Besides a religious belief, many are scared that vaccinations can cause other ailments.

Many mistakenly believe, for example, that a measles shot can lead to autism — a discredited theory promoted in 1998 by a lying researcher. His study later was retracted by the journal that published it. And many studies since have shown there is no link between vaccinations and autism.

But Wakefield injected it into the memestream, and it may never get out.

Experts say that low vaccination rates fueled the measles outbreak that started at Disneyland in December, sickening 157 people and inspiring the legislation.

“Each year we’re adding to the number of unvaccinated,” Pan says. “If it gets low enough, that’s when disease is able to spread. Because so many people haven’t experienced these diseases, they don’t know how serious they are.”

I haven’t experienced falling off a tall building, but I know how serious it is. People should pay better attention.

During the Senate Education Committee’s fiery hearing last week — attended by hundreds of angry parents — a polio survivor told about being stricken at age 7. She urged passage of the bill, speaking in a voice apparently weakened by respiratory problems.

Later, she was mocked on Facebook by two opponents of the bill. “Lisa” referred to “the hysterical polio survivor” and added: “Poor woman needs emotional therapy.” “Annika” responded: “Polio was really DDT poisoning.”

Oh, man, that’s revolting.

In 1951, before there was a vaccine, more than 10,000 Americans were afflicted with paralytic polio. I was one. My strong single mom guided me through the ordeal. She was a saint.

But if there had been a polio vaccine that she had prevented me from receiving, I never would have forgiven her.

Parents who won’t allow their children to be vaccinated are — let’s put it politely — misguided. That’s their problem — and their kids’.

The Legislature should gather enough courage to make sure it’s not also everyone else’s problem.

It should indeed.

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

Not getting it.

A godbotherer claims that Obama is driving all the Christians out of the military and sowing their fields with salt. His claims are short on citations, apart from a link-free date-free mention of the Washington Times.

But he does give a couple of examples.

If you are in the military today, you have got to be so careful about any expression of faith.

Even the slightest slip up can cause the authorities to crack down on you.

Just consider the following two examples which come from Newsmax…

In December, a chaplain for a Ranger training battalion was sent an administrative letter of concern after a soldier complained that he had promoted Christianity and used a Bible during a mandatory suicide-prevention training session.

Last month, a Navy chaplain was removed from his job and may lose his career after complaints about his private counseling during which he discouraged homosexuality and sex outside of marriage.

You mean a Christian chaplain actually “used a Bible” and “promoted Christianity”?

Not too sharp, is he. It was a mandatory suicide-prevention training session. That’s the issue. Obviously Christian chaplains can use a bible and promote Christianity, but they shouldn’t be doing it for mandatory training sessions. I’d prefer to be able to say they’re not allowed to. but that’s the very point at issue. Chaplains should be available but not mandatory.

Everything else he says is, frankly, bullshit.

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

Guest post by Monette Richards, President of CFI – NE Ohio and a Director of Secular Woman.

I am being frustrated at the priorities we set in the secular movement. The amount of restrictions being passed against bodily autonomy, restrictions that have strong, deep roots in religion, are depending on bad and/or faulty science and yet are being outright ignored by most of the secular organizations. It is infuriating.

The slow but seemingly thorough takeover of hospitals by the Catholic Church is a growing problem that is hardly addressed. The directives set by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops set limits on the care they may provide. Already, we see this endangering women, especially those without the means to travel to another, non-religious, hospital.

Public funding for Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) has been an ongoing trend. CPCs are notoriously religion-backed clinics that use lies and tricks to try to keep pregnant individuals from having abortions. Public money is going toward groups that then try to push their religious views on pregnant people.

The entire anti-abortion movement, even the secular one, is totally and completely based on religion and bad science. And yet, Hemant Mehta thinks giving them a platform, twice, to present this argument is a great idea! Even Silverman bought into it. We need to hold their feet to the fire and not let them fudge these arguments. Anti-abortion arguments are based on either religion or bad science.

And this bad science is being worked into bills, forcing doctors to outright lie to patients. Healthcare coverage is being denied by redefining contraceptive to abortifacient.

So, why haven’t these facts brought our movement to its feet to grab the torches and pitchforks? Why would a movement that jumps on any chance to make sure creationism isn’t taught in public schools not also work just as hard to keep bills based on junk science from becoming laws?

We are a movement built by, mostly, white middle class men and, therefore, are structured to focus on white middle class men issues. We are a movement who can find the time and money to support a man who wants to “try atheism for a year” but can barely find the funds for a program for young, black female humanists.

Secular Woman’s origin is due to much of this. We needed an organization that put these issues as our focus. We should not have to depend on organizations which will not focus on the religious aspect of these issues, like NARAL, PP, and NOW, to protect us from the onslaught. And it should be obvious that they are not enough, anyway. It should be obvious that when religion invades the lives of some of us, it is a problem for all of us.

This is not to say we shouldn’t ALSO work on other things. This is no Dear Muslima. I’m a big believer in ending microagressions as well as hugely obvious transgressions of the First Amendment. Getting Jesus pictures out of schools and ten commandment plaques off of courtroom walls are important tasks.

For the past few years, we have been facing very awful laws that are getting passed in lot of states, with poor women suffering the most. And these very awful laws are being mostly ignored by the secular movement.

We have organizations paying to court the most conservative, the people who are behind these same laws, these same encroachments, these same directives which are actively harming women.  When we should all be working together to stop them.

I’m frustrated. I’m angry. Why isn’t everyone?

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

The theocratic Islamist campaign to convince UK Muslims that “VOTING FOR MAN-MADE LAW IS SHIRK” has popped up in Leicester, the BBC reports.

Bright yellow stickers have been posted in areas of Leicester with large Muslim communities saying voting is “shirk”.

Shirk is the sin of worshipping someone other than Allah and is considered the most grievous crime for a Muslim.

Which just goes to show how anti-human and revolting religion can be at its worst. The most grievous crime, ahead of murder, rape, genocide, torture. Plus of course there’s the fact that voting for X≠worshipping X.

Dr [Ather] Hussain, an imam in Leicester and surrounding cities, said: “It’s laughable. Logically and religiously speaking they haven’t got a leg to stand on.

“I fail to see how voting would be considered as the most grievous crime possible for a Muslim to commit.

“The argument is shallow, baseless and it has absolutely no standing religiously or theologically in our religion.”

And he added that those who posted the signs probably did not believe it themselves.

“If they had a sound argument perhaps they would operate in mosques and in the right public spaces.

“But quite cowardly, all they have done is put stickers all over the place without any context, without telling us who they are, without giving us any indication about where we can find more about these ridiculous beliefs.”

It’s a sort of graffiti. But, unfortunately, it’s a sort that some people will find impressive and convincing.

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

Election fraud in Tower Hamlets.

An east London mayor has been removed from office and a poll declared void after he was found guilty of electoral fraud.

An Election Commissioner concluded Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman breached election rules and must vacate his post immediately.

Four voters alleged he used “corrupt and illegal practices” in last year’s election, which must now be re-run.

Mr Rahman, who denied any wrong-doing, has been banned from standing again.

Election Commissioner Richard Mawrey said it was a big mess, caused by one guy’s ruthless ambition.

Mawrey also described Bangladesh-born Mr Rahman as an “evasive and discursive witness whose evidence was untruthful on occasion” and suggested he had played “race” and “religious” cards.

Mr Rahman ran a “ruthless and dishonest campaign to convince electorate his rival John Biggs was a racist”, Mr Mawrey said.

That sounds familiar. It sounds like George Galloway, among others.

BBC News correspondent Sarah Campbell said the Election Commissioner had upheld a number of the allegations, including:

• Voting fraud: ballots were double-cast or cast from false addresses
• False statements made against Mr Rahman’s rival Mr Biggs
• Bribery: grants approved to organisations which Mr Rahman favoured, most of which were run by Bangladeshi groups
• Treating: providing free food and drink to encourage people to vote for Mr Rahman
• Spiritual influence: voters were told that it was their duty as Muslims to vote for Mr Rahman.

That’s interesting. I wonder if that allegation has ever been made about an Anglican candidate, and if so if it has ever succeeded. In the US candidates do that as a matter of routine, of course.

[T]he Election Commissioner said that Tower Hamlets First was “never really a party but the alter ego of Lutfur Rahman”.

Again, reminiscent of Galloway and “Respect.” And some other examples I can think of.

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

The National Football League has to give former players a whole lot of money.

A federal judge gave final approval on Wednesday to a settlement in a lawsuit brought by about 5,000 former National Football League players who accused the league of covering up the dangers of concussions.

The settlement, approved by Judge Anita Brody, includes allowing for monetary awards of up to $5 million per retired player for serious medical conditions associated with repeated head trauma and could cost the league $1 billion over 65 years.

Which they can well afford, considering how profitable the whole racket is.

The NFL is accused of covering up the dangers of concussions to keep players on the field. The league and the players union estimate that 30 percent of former players will develop brain conditions like Alzheimer’s or a less debilitating form of dementia.

Concussions have become a major issue for America’s most popular sports league, causing some players to cut short their careers, including Chris Borland, a 24-year-old linebacker for the San Francisco 49ers, who recently retired over concerns about long-term head injuries.

The game is violent not incidentally but intentionally. The violence is an important part of the game. Fans like it. Advertisers play it up.

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

Almond milk. I already knew this from looking at the ingredients and the bit where it says how much protein and so on per serving – almond milk isn’t a useful thing.

People drink almond milk for a variety of reasons, but many have no idea how devoid of nutrients their trendy dairy milk alternative actually is.

Each half-gallon carton contains very few actual almonds. Evidence shows there may be just over a handful.

Well if they don’t know they didn’t look, because if you look, it’s obvious. Almonds aren’t the main ingredient. It’s mostly water and sweeteners.

While the amount of almonds in each brand of the beverage vary, an analysis of UK almond milk brand Alpro showed that nuts make up just 2% of the drink.

Doesn’t surprise me a bit. It’s like Nutella – Nutella is fabulous, but it has very little hazelnut in it. It’s dessert, it’s not a nourishing food. Same with almond milk.

A typical serving of almonds has 160 calories per serving. By comparison, a cup of almond milk contains just about 30 calories. And while a serving of almonds has 14 grams of total fat and 6 grams of protein, a serving of the milk has 2.5 grams of fat and just one gram of protein.

In other words, a single serving of almond milk has almost no protein. Compared with plain old almonds, it fares even worse.

It’s basically syrup. Drink it if you like it, but don’t be thinking it’s food.

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