The Republicans are such comedians. Hahahahaha they’re sabotaging an agreement that could avert Iran’s development of nuclear weapons, in order to say yaboosucks to Obama. So so funny!

Amy Davidson at the New Yorker has one opinion piece of the many many opinion pieces out there.

Forty-seven senators, all of them Republicans, have sent a letter to Tehranthat might be summarized this way: Dear Iran, Please don’t agree to halt your nuclear-weapons program, because we don’t like Barack Obama and, anyway, he’ll be gone soon.

That may be shorthand, but it is not an exaggeration of either the tone or the intent of the letter, which was signed by the Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, as well as John McCain, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul. The signature drive was organized by Senator Tom Cotton. He is a thirty-seven-year-old Republican, who entered the Senate two months ago, from the state of Arkansas. Senators, as the letter helpfully informs the Iranians—this is an actual quote—“may serve an unlimited number of 6-year terms. As applied today, for instance, President Obama will leave office in January 2017, while most of us will remain in office well beyond then—perhaps decades.”

Or perhaps not. Presidents have term limits and  Senators don’t. That doesn’t mean Senators will necessarily get re-elected over and over again. It also doesn’t mean they can’t be charged with treason. There are a lot of things the absence of term limits doesn’t mean.

The letter opens, “It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system.” As the letter writers tell it, “The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen, and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.” It is a bit more complicated than that: Presidents can make commitments that are difficult to get out of (unless one wants to provoke a crisis), and Congress, instead of just being able to merrily modify, has to deal with things like vetoes. What is more extraordinary is the intent behind this tinny civics lesson—to tell a foreign power, one with which the United States is at odds, not to listen to the American President.

In the hope, perhaps, that Iran will develop nukes and a phalanx of Republican Senators will then vote to nuke the whole country into radioactive rubble. Is that the thinking? Or is it not as long-term as that? Is it really just “Hey, ayatollahs, don’t listen to that uppity guy in the White House, we hate him and you don’t want to piss us off”?

The prospect of Iran getting a nuclear bomb is a grave threat to world peace. The Obama Administration, which is trying to stop that from happening, has only a certain number of cards to play, and yet the Republicans are doing whatever they can to weaken its hand. (Their rationale is that key provisions of the deal on the table would reportedly last for only ten or fifteen years—even though a decade is a lot longer than the possible alternative of no years between now and an Iranian drive to build a bomb.) As with the invitation that John Boehner, the Speaker of the House, extended to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, to speak before Congress, it is not clear whether the primary impetus has to do with foreign policy or with partisan theatrics. Is the intention to scuttle the nuclear negotiations, without regard for the ugliness that it brings to our politics? Or is it to humiliate and insult President Obama, no matter the cost to the goal of nuclear nonproliferation—even if it means another bomb in the world?

Another bomb in the world in the hands of fanatical theocratic clerics, which is absolutely the last place you want such bombs.

Here’s an odd thing – this scenario is basically the same as the plot of the latest episode of the network tv show “Madam Secretary,” in which a rogue diplomat murders the previous Secretary of State and does other bad things in aid of backing a coup in Iran, and it comes to light just as the President has signed a treaty with Iran. It was written well before this letter was sent. Maybe the Senators got their ideas from the tv show.

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

I’m reading Steve Almond’s Against Football: One Fan’s Reluctant Manifesto. There’s an interesting bit on page 98:

And I can tell you exactly what happens to any dude who dares to speak out about the moral complexities of football. Here’s a sampling of the e-mails I received after writing such a piece for The New York Times Magazine, printed here verbatim:

OMG. I am progressive on social issues but dude – you are the biggest fucking pussy on the face of the earth. Change your tampon you woman.

 

I read an article you wrote about football and I couldn’t help but think of a slutty girl I knew growing up. I thought she had the biggest vagina I’d ever seen before until now…congrats dude, you have a bigger one.

 

Why do libs have to ruin everything we do for fun or to take our minds off the world? I don’t even like the Redskins but if that kind of stuff offends the large vagina crowd, I am a fan now.

Dispiriting, isn’t it. Those aren’t people we know, people pissed off at “FTB” or “SJWs” or Anita Sarkeesian. Those are a whole different bunch of people. But there’s all the same disgust and loathing of women. It’s a miracle we aren’t all at each other’s throats every minute of every day, with that kind of thing saturating the atmosphere.

Also, that first guy? Hahaha that’s funny, what he said. No, he’s not “progressive on social issues.” It’s funny that he thinks he is.

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

Nick Cohen says there’s a scandal at the BBC that nobody dares talk about.

The scandal is simply this: the BBC is forcing out or demoting the journalists who exposed Jimmy Savile as a voracious abuser of girls. As Meirion Jones put it to me: “There is a small group of powerful people at the BBC who think it would have been better if the truth about Savile had never come out. And they aim to punish the reporters who revealed it.”

Jones was one of the BBC’s best investigative producers. He had suspected that Savile was not the “national treasure” the BBC, NHS, monarchy and public adored, ever since he had seen Savile take girls away in his car from an approved school his aunt ran in the 1970s. He broke the story which showed that Savile was one of the most prolific sex abusers in British history, and handed the BBC what would have been one of its biggest scoops. If it had run it. Which, of course, it did not. The editor of Newsnight banned the report. Thus began a cover-up which tore the BBC apart.

Close ranks, boys!

They fired Jones last week, and they forced his reporter on the Savile film, Liz MacKean, out too.

“When the Savile scandal broke,” she told me, “the BBC tried to smear my reputation. They said they had banned the film because Meirion and I had produced shoddy journalism. I stayed to fight them, but I knew they would make me leave in the end. Managers would look through me as if I wasn’t there. I went because I knew I was never going to appear on screen again.”

The BBC seemed to have gotten it right at one point…

Panorama responded magnificently to the news that the BBC had killed the Savile scoop. It broadcast a special documentary, which earned the highest audience in the programme’s history. Jones and MacKean described how their journalism had been suppressed, and Panorama went on to document Savile’s crimes. How open the BBC is, I thought. What other institution would subject itself to the same level of self-criticism?

What a fool I was. Since then, BBC managers have shifted Tom Giles, the editor ofPanorama, out of news. Peter Horrocks, an executive who insisted throughout the scandal that the BBC must behave ethically, announced last September that he was resigning to “find new challenges”. Clive Edwards, who as commissioning editor for current affairs oversaw the Panorama documentary, was demoted. The television trade press reported recently that his future is “not yet clear” (which doesn’t sound as if he has much of a future at all).

There are more demotions and promotions that fit the pattern.

I could go on, but I am sure you are weary of bog-standard jobsworths. The wider point is that the interests of those at the top of an organisation and the interests of the organisation can be miles apart.

If the BBC had exposed Savile, viewers would have admired its honesty. If it had bent over backwards to ensure that Jones and MacKean did not suffer for speaking out, everyone would say that it was behaving as a free institution should, rather than looking like the official broadcaster of a paranoid dictatorship or the board of directors of HSBC.

In the banks, the NHS, the police or the BBC, the greatest threats to those in charge, however, are not threats to the institution but threats to their status. If subordinates can contradict them, how can they justify their salaries and the prestige that goes with them? The Pollard review into Savile showed that status anxiety was generating real hatred at the top of the BBC.

That sounds familiar. We are up here, peasants; we can’t hear you. Leave your tribute in a basket and we’ll haul it up.

The power of hierarchies is hard to break. But if you want to fight fraud in the City or the rape of children, it has to be broken. A start can be made by insisting that everyone from John Humphrys in the morning to Evan Davis at night tells the truth about the purge of the BBC’s truth tellers.

But without hierarchies, what would the peasants have to ogle at?

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

The president of the University of Oklahoma posted his statement on Facebook.

Statement:

To those who have misused their free speech in such a reprehensible way, I have a message for you. You are disgraceful. You have violated all that we stand for. You should not have the privilege of calling yourselves “Sooners.” Real Sooners are not racist. Real Sooners are not bigots. Real Sooners believe in equal opportunity. Real Sooners treat all people with respect. Real Sooners love each other and take care of each other like family members.

Effective immediately, all ties and affiliations between this University and the local SAE chapter are hereby severed. I direct that the house be closed and that members will remove their personal belongings from the house by midnight tomorrow. Those needing to make special arrangements for possessions shall contact the Dean of Students.

All of us will redouble our efforts to create the strongest sense of family and community. We vow that we will be an example to the entire country of how to deal with this issue. There must be zero tolerance for racism everywhere in our nation.

President Boren

Definitely.

I wonder if he would have reacted as strongly as that if it had been sexism or homophobia rather than racism. I’m afraid I doubt it, mostly because frat boys and other brands of sexist boys at universities do talk shit about women and we don’t see their fraternities or football teams being shut down. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely think he should have reacted the way he did, it’s just that I think people should react just as strongly to the sexist or homophobic equivalent.

(The trouble is people think there is no such equivalent, and that talking shit about women or LGBT people isn’t the same as that loathsome ditty on the bus, for complicated subtle historical reasons that they can’t quite explain. So we just have to put up with the sexism, because hey, it’s only women.)

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

5Pillars thinks the murdered people at Charlie Hebdo had it coming.

There are also no prizes for guessing the winner of the “International” category.

The French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo which was the target of a murderous attack in January won the prize here for its continual stoking of Islamophobic sentiment by caricaturing Muslims as terrorists and ridiculing their beliefs.

Charlie Hebdo’s repeated mocking of Muslims is part of a culture of hate that is intended to marginalise, further alienate and further endanger a community that has effectively been “otherised” in much the same way that Jews were in Nazi Germany.

No it isn’t.

I wonder how much attention 5Pillars pays to the way Ahmadiyya Muslims are treated in Pakistan. I wonder how much attention it pays to the way Christians are treated in Pakistan and Egypt and Nigeria. I wonder what it makes of the fact that the vast bulk of the victims of Boko Haram and Daesh are Muslims, killed dead by Islamists like the ones at 5Pillars.

What disgusting shits they are.

H/t Tendance Coatesy

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

Frat boys at the University of Oklahoma chant a racist ditty on a bus, get themselves on YouTube.

University of Oklahoma president David Boren stood with his students Monday in protest of a video that appears to show Sigma Alpha Epsilon members participating in racist chants. The video is “disgraceful,” Boren said at the protest, according to the Oklahoman. “Real Sooners are not bigots, real Sooners are not racist.”

The video, posted to the Twitter and YouTube accounts of the black student alliance Unheard, is just 10 seconds long. In it, a busload of white students — apparently members of the fraternity’s University of Oklahoma chapter — chant: “You can hang ‘em from a tree, but it will never start with me/There will never be a nigger SAE.”

Unheard posted the video Sunday, organizers told The Post. The person who captured the chant on video sent it to the group in a private message on Twitter and has asked to remain anonymous.

That fraternity is now closed by order of both SAE’s national organizers and by Boren himself.

They have until midnight tomorrow to get their stuff out of the frat house, and they’ll have to find their own housing. The university has severed all ties with that chapter of the fraternity.

But the video is just one incident on a campus that was already in the process of confronting larger issues of race and discrimination — something that both Boren and many students said they were determined to change.

Although the video exploded into a national story, some students hope it has the potential to become something different on campus: A teaching moment to discuss what Boren called “more subtle forms of discrimination.”

“We have to look at those more subtle things as well,” he said.

Cue the groans and sneers about microaggressions and hurt fee-fees.

Boren wasn’t the only prominent school official — or, arguably, even the most visible one — stepping out to make their condemnation of the video clear. Bob Stoops, head coach of the university’s football team, also attended a student protest alongside several football players and about 100 athletes. His presence was particularly noteworthy, because he is the face of the school’s powerhouse football program and arguably the state’s most famous employee.

Well, you know, that’s not a healthy arrangement either. Universities should be about education, and the football coach should not be the most important person there.

In a working document, Unheard outlined several issues it wants the university to address. Those include the apparent under-representation of black faculty members in departments beyond the African American studies program; black student recruitment and retention rates; a lack of black scholarship opportunities; and what organizers say is a lack of black student representation in many planning committees for major campus-wide events.

Boren referred to several of these issues on Monday, saying that after meeting with Unheard earlier this year, he plans to work on about “95 percent” of them. “Upon reflection, I found myself agreeing with them; let’s do it,” he said on Monday.

“Sometimes, people can be thoughtless,” the university president added. “They can be insensitive and not even know.” He hopes his campus can work to “make people more aware” of racial insensitivity. “It’s hard work building a family,” he added, “But we’re gonna build one. We’re gonna keep on working on it.”

It’s very easy to not even know, which is why people talk about privilege a lot.

Here’s that chant. Don’t play it at work if you can be heard.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBq4_A9nQvw

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

An Indonesian sports wear manufacturer included witty washing instructions on the shirts it made for a football club.

“Washing instructions: Give this shirt to a woman. It’s her job,” Salvo Sports printed on the shirts of Indonesian Super League team Pusamania Borneo.

Haha. Haha. Isn’t that funny? Isn’t it hilarious? Here’s another. “Make me a sammich.” Are you out of breath yet?

The instructions rapidly drew criticism on social media.

The company offered an apology on Sunday, International Women’s Day, after being inundated with complaints.

“The message is simply, instead of washing it in the wrong way, you might as well give it to a lady because they are more capable,” Salvo Sports posted on Twitter.

“There is no intention to humiliate women. In contrast [we want to tell the men] learn from women how to take care of clothes,” it said.

Oh, I see, it wasn’t even a joke, it was advice. Give it to a woman because estrogen causes you to know how to do laundry and androgen causes you to be completely baffled by the whole concept.

Happy International Women’s Day to you too.

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

What parts of the US have the most to worry about because of climate change? Hm that would be coastal areas, wouldn’t it, especially low-lying, swampy coastal areas, like Louisiana and Florida. And yet…

The state of Florida is the region most susceptible to the effects of global warming in this country, according to scientists. Sea-level rise alone threatens 30 percent of the state’s beaches over the next 85 years.

But you would not know that by talking to officials at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the state agency on the front lines of studying and planning for these changes.

DEP officials have been ordered not to use the term “climate change” or “global warming” in any official communications, emails, or reports, according to former DEP employees, consultants, volunteers and records obtained by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting.

Huh. That’s kind of like telling the Fire Department not to use the terms “fire” or “burn” or “hot.” It’s like telling the health services not to use the terms “bacteria” or “virus” or “infection” or “death.”

“We were told not to use the terms ‘climate change,’ ‘global warming’ or ‘sustainability,’” said Christopher Byrd, an attorney with the DEP’s Office of General Counsel in Tallahassee from 2008 to 2013. “That message was communicated to me and my colleagues by our superiors in the Office of General Counsel.”

Kristina Trotta, another former DEP employee who worked in Miami, said her supervisor told her not to use the terms “climate change” and “global warming” in a 2014 staff meeting. “We were told that we were not allowed to discuss anything that was not a true fact,” she said.

I suppose they’ll be allowed to use the words once Florida is actually under water. That’s a sensible policy. By the same token, we don’t need to fret about falling off great heights until we actually hit bottom. Until then, there’s just no telling what might happen.

This unwritten policy went into effect after Gov. Rick Scott took office in 2011 and appointed Herschel Vinyard Jr. as the DEP’s director, according to former DEP employees. Gov. Scott, who won a second term in November, has repeatedly said he is not convinced that climate change is caused by human activity, despite scientific evidence to the contrary.

Vinyard has since resigned. Neither he nor his successor, Scott Steverson, would comment for this article.

Various flacks said there is no such policy.

But four former DEP employees from offices around the state say the order was well known and distributed verbally statewide.

One former DEP employee who worked in Tallahassee during Scott’s first term in office, and asked not to be identified because of an ongoing business relationship with the department, said staffers were warned that using the terms in reports would bring unwanted attention to their projects.

“We were dealing with the effects and economic impact of climate change, and yet we can’t reference it,” the former employee said.

Climate…progress? Development? Increase? Augmentation? I can think of lots of cheer-up words for it.

Some climate scientists asked for a chance to explain the science to Scott and he said ok, you’ve got 30 minutes. He spent ten of those minutes introducing people, and then sat quietly for the 20 minutes of scientists talking. Then he went back to doing real work.

Scott’s predecessor, Charlie Crist, had been proactive on climate change, forming a statewide task force and convening a national summit in Miami in 2007. But evidence the issue has fallen out of favor during the Scott administration is apparent.

One example is the Florida Oceans and Coastal Council’s Annual Research Plan, put together by DEP and other state agencies. The 2009-2010 report, published the year before Scott was elected, contains 15 references to climate change, including a section titled “Research Priorities — Climate Change.”

In the 2014-15 edition of the report, climate change is only mentioned if it is in the title of a past report or conference. There is one standalone reference to the issue at the end of a sentence that sources say must have slipped by the censors. “It’s a distinct possibility,” said one former DEP employee.

Instead, terms like “climate drivers” and “climate-driven changes” are used.

Climate chocolate sauce, climate flash mobs, climate tight pants.

Christopher Byrd said that he was warned not to use “climate change” and related terms during a 2011 staff meeting shortly after Scott appointed Vinyard as DEP director.

“Deputy General Counsel Larry Morgan was giving us a briefing on what to expect with the new secretary,” Byrd recalled. Morgan gave them “a warning to beware of the words global warming, climate change and sea-level rise, and advised us not to use those words in particular.”

Ah yes sea-level rise – you don’t want to go mentioning that in Florida of all places. God no! The time to mention that is after all the hotels and condos are built, not before. Just issue everyone an inflatable raft and all will be well.

in November 2014, the Coral Reef Conservation Program held a meeting to train volunteers to use a PowerPoint presentation about the threats coral reefs faced. Harper attended the meeting, held at DEP’s Biscayne Bay office in Miami. Doug Young, president of the South Florida Audubon Society and a member of the Broward County Climate Change Task Force, also attended.

Two DEP employees, Ana Zangroniz and Kristina Trotta, showed the presentation to the volunteers and then asked if anyone had a question.

“I told them the biggest problem I have was that there was absolutely no mention of climate change and the affect of climate change on coral reefs,” Young said.

He continued: “The two young women, really good people, said, ‘We are not allowed to show the words, or show any slides that depicted anything related to climate change.’”

Young and Harper said they could not participate if climate change was not mentioned. “The women kept saying, ‘Work with us; we know you are frustrated,’” Harper said.

On Nov. 19, 2014, the DEP’s Zangroniz wrote Harper and Young an email stating she had talked to her manager about their concerns.

“Unfortunately at this time,” she wrote, “we can’t make any alterations or additions to the presentation. … If you do choose to continue as a volunteer, we would have to request that you present the information as is. If you choose to add in an additional presentation or speaker that addresses climate change and coral reefs, there would have to be a very clear split between the two.”

Trotta left her position as a field and administrative assistant in January. She told FCIR that when it came to scrubbing the term “climate change” from projects, she was following orders. Those orders came from Regional Administrator Joanna Walczak during a staff meeting in the summer of 2014.

“We were instructed by our regional administrator that we were no longer allowed to use the terms ‘global warming’ or ‘climate change’ or even ‘sea-level rise,’ ” said Trotta. “Sea-level rise was to be referred to as ‘nuisance flooding.’”

Read the whole damn thing.

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

Meet Labour’s Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Bradford West, Naz Shah.

I was only 6 when my father abandoned my mother with two young children and pregnant with a third when he eloped with the neighbour’s 16 year old daughter. I remember been thrown into the back of a taxi with black bin liners full of our belongings and packed off from the family home on Hartman Place to my granddads home in Kirkham Road. We never really saw the end of black bin liners over the next few years as we moved from squalor to squalor, 14 times in less than 2 years, from back to back houses where the toilet was outside to rat infested damp houses where we lived and slept in just one room.

Then her mother bought a house with the proceeds from selling her wedding jewelry, but the house was in the name of a man, Azam.

My mother’s attempt to provide her children with the security of a home came at the expense of being abused by Azam over years. A man that she thought would save her children from an uncertain and insecure future, little did she know he would be the exact opposite. My mother had sent me to Pakistan at the age of 12 when she felt I was at risk of his abuse. When my younger sister was growing up and my mother felt she was now at risk, and following years of anti- depressants, failed suicide attempts and feeling desperate and destitute she snapped.

She killed the man who abused her.

I remember how my days and nights became one, how my world was turned upside down, how I became a mother to my two siblings who were 11 and 13 at the time. Up until then the worst I had known personally was my own forced marriage through emotional blackmail when I was just 15 years old whilst in Pakistan.

Oh is that all.

She worked a crap job, then a slightly less crap one, then one where she could actually use her talents.

I became a carer for children with disabilities as my mother had also been a carer. I then went on to become an advocate for women with disabilities and their carers. I felt my calling was to help people and I then joined the Samaritans. I didn’t realise how much anger I carried inside me towards the ‘systems’ that failed me and my family because I had turned it into this force to change people’s lives. I would get emotional about the families I was helping and angry if they weren’t getting the right services, until one day my mentor pulled me to one side and asked me why was I so upset when families didn’t get the services they needed , how much of this is really about the failure you experienced? That conversation was a game changer for me.

I quickly realised to effect change I must be able to influence decision making and that’s when I joined the NHS. To begin with I managed giving out grants and ‘Patient and Public Involvement’ and we then started ‘commissioning services’. I found my niche when my manager recognised my talent and invested heavily in my leadership development. I fell in love with the idea of ‘Leadership’ and am still in love with the notion of it being the key to change society for the betterment of humanity

Beyond my own career I continued to fly the flag around violence against women through speaking at conferences and contributing to discussions. I didn’t really appreciate exactly how much I was using my own natural leadership and passion to influence policy and change.

Now, she’s running for Galloway’s seat. Let’s hope she wins!

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

A god-loving type resorts to sending bullying hate-mail to an elected official to demonstrate the glory of god. Or something.

All they wanted was a mash note to god inside a government building, and here’s this elected official whining about the separation of church and state. Get out the epithets!!

An Oregon city councilwoman who voiced her opposition to displaying “In God We Trust” inside a government building received a death threat from an individual calling himself an “American Citizen for saving Americans for America.”

Cool title. It sounds like irony, but given the nature of the message, I don’t suppose it actually is irony.

Klamath County Commissioner Tom Mallams mentioned displaying the motto in the county’s public hearing room last December, and David and Carol Warren ran with the idea. “We believe God wants us to do this,” Carol toldThe Oregonian.

Commissioner Mallams said he did not anticipate posting the motto to be a problem, since “it doesn’t say ‘the God of the Bible.’ It’s not ‘Allah.’ It’s not ‘the God of the Jews.’ It’s just acknowledging that there is a higher power out there that sets boundaries for what’s right and wrong.”

Oh “just” that, is it. “Just” “acknowledging” something that there’s no reason to think is true. There’s a hell of a lot more reason to think there isn’t any higher power out there that sets boundaries for what’s right and wrong than there is to think there is one. If there is such a higher power it’s doing a damn bad job of setting those boundaries.

As for atheists, Mallams and Warren said, “they don’t have to look at it.”

Well now that’s just an outright lie. Look again at what the plan is – Klamath County Commissioner Tom Mallams mentioned displaying the motto in the county’s public hearing room. Displaying. What does that mean? It means you do have to look at it. It means it’s forced on your attention. You can try to ignore it once you’ve seen it, but it’s flat-out not the case that you don’t have to look at it. The plan is to stick it in that hearing room so that everyone who enters it does have to look at it.

Seiler responded that it’s disingenuous to talk of a generic god when it obviously isn’t generic at all, and she mentioned the separation of church and state. Treason!

But according to the author of a letter Seiler received after penning the editorial, the United States was founded on “Christian morality.” The author then wrote, “Maybe we could have the privilege of seeing your wonderful Muslims behead your [expletive] ugly [expletive]!!!”

The author confuses atheists with Muslims. Nope. Atheists aren’t Muslims, and Muslims aren’t atheists. That’s just silly.

Anyway – god is love; that’s the important thing.

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

It’s an honor, coming from them.

5Pillars @5Pillarsuk 15 hours ago
Maajid Nawaz won the “UK category” at the Islamophobia awards @ihrc #IslamophobiaAwards2015

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

Why is PBS showing “Wheat Belly Total Health”?

I suppose for the same reason they show Deepak Chopra saying things, but can’t anyone get them to stop? They’re supposed to be in some sense educational tv, so they shouldn’t be broadcasting woo.

William Davis is certainly chuffed:

Join me for a provocative and enlightening discussion about why the Wheat Belly lifestyle, coupled with the newest strategies revealed in the Wheat Belly Total Health, can help you achieve levels of health and weight control that you didn’t think were possible!

Here is the November schedule for the Wheat Belly Total Health public television special beginning Saturday, November 29th.

Be sure to show your support for your local public television station by making a generous pledge to allow them to continue to air programs like Wheat Belly Total Health. Special, exclusive-to-public-television Wheat Belly Total Health DVDs will be available to contributors to the local stations.

Many more stations, many more cities to come in December, 2014 and in 2015. Also, Canadians: Watch for the border cities that broadcast into your viewing region!

Massive free advertising, courtesy of public television. How nice for him.

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

Another sinister document, this one the brainchild of the group MEND, formerly iENGAGE. It’s a “Muslim Manifesto” which the Telegraph reports was launched yesterday by Azad Ali of MEND,

joined in Parliament by the Labour MPs Yasmin Qureshi, Andy Slaughter and Gerald Kaufman and Sayeeda Warsi, the former Tory communities minister.

Behold the draft Manifesto.

The Institute for Muslim Community Development suggests the following points in no particular order for a Muslim Manifesto. Note where the suffering of the British Muslim community and its demands mirror those of other communities we would fully support them in achieving their rights.

That’s a tidy bit of obfuscspeak. Which “suffering” exactly? “Mirror” in what sense? What is meant by “communities”? What kind of “rights” exactly? Does that cash out to mean that the “we” in that sentence would support the demands of feminists and LGBT activists? What about secularists and atheists? Where exactly does the mirror intervene to exclude the wrong kinds of demands and rights? It must be somewhere, because demands of religious believers qua believers are going to be in tension with many of the demands and rights of feminists and LGBT activists, let alone secularists and atheists.

The manifesto offers many examples of how that is true. The very first item for instance is full of such tensions.

We would ask our parliamentary friends to:

1. Defend the right to a Muslim way of life, including halal meat; religious clothing; circumcision; and flexible working to accommodate Ramadan and festival observance.

“Halal” meat is a problem for people who give a shit about the suffering of animals. “Religious clothing” in the context of “a Muslim way of life” refers to women’s clothing, which is treated inside the circle not as a right but as a command. We are of course meant to think of it as the “right” of girls and women to wear hijab or a burqa or abaya or niqab – but it also includes the “right” of fathers and brothers and husbands to insist or demand that girls and women under their jurisdiction wear hijab or more. This “right” is in tension, at the very least, with the right of girls and women to refuse to wear hijab or more.

“Circumcision” refers not at all to the “right” of someone to be circumcised or mutilated, but to the “right” of parents to impose circumcision or mutilation on their infants or young children. That’s not really a “right” as normally understood. Parents don’t have a “right” to carve random little chunks out of their infants’ arms or buttocks for no good reason, and it’s not clear why they should have a “right” to carve random little chunks out of their infants’ or young children’s genitals for no good reason.

The “flexible working” item is the only one that’s a nuisance but not exactly a violation of the rights of others…although it could be, given the demands of Ramadan, if non-Muslim workers have to pick up all the slack given to Muslim workers during Ramadan, in other words if Muslim workers basically get a month off that no one else gets.

And that’s just item # 1.

Some of the items are anodyne or empty or both. But others aren’t.

6. Affirm the importance of faith schools within the overall provision.

If “within the overall provision” is supposed to mean state schools, then no, don’t. “Faith schools” should be the job of religious bodies, not the state.

9. Celebrate and support Muslim heritage and cultural institutions.

All of it, no questions asked? No.

17. Introduce more robust legislation to curb media hate campaigns against Muslims.

Like this post I’m writing now, for instance? No, don’t be doing that.

18. Guarantee the Muslim community the opportunity to evolve independently of government social engineering programmes.

Social engineering programmes like preventing domestic violence for instance? No.

19. Acknowledge that the holy scripture of Muslims (the Qur’an) does not endorse terrorism and the murder of innocents.

Forget it. And what do you mean “innocents,” anyway? Does the Qur’an endorse the murder of guilties? Who decides who the guilties are? You? Daesh? Boko Haram? The Jeddah Criminal Court?

22. Encourage enquiry into the effects of oversexualisation of public spaces upon young people.

You mean, “tell all those sluts to cover up.” Nope.

28. Recognise Muslims have a distinct ‘way of life’ (deen) which opposes any understanding of religion or faith as separate from other aspects of life.

Oh no. No no no no no no.

Jeezis, dude, do you not even realize that that one demands a kind of separation and specialitude that would inevitably marginalize Muslims in exactly the way this manifesto complains of?

In any case it’s basically a demand to be allowed to do whatever you want to do because religion, and that’s not possible. Basic human rights make that demand impossible to grant. No can do.

It’s creepy as hell that Warsi signed up to this.

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

Nazir Afzal has resigned his job as head of the Crown Prosecution Service for the north west. Too bad; he was apparently very good at the job.

The region’s top prosecutor has been in the spotlight for his high-profile comments on child sexual exploitation and grooming.

A CPS spokesman said: “We are continuing to reduce the number of staff employed across the organisation and Nazir Afzal is leaving the Service as part of this ongoing drive for efficiency.

…

He was responsible for all criminal prosecutions across Greater Manchester, Lancashire, and Cumbria.

He led about 700 lawyers, legal staff, and administrators.

…

Nazir has pioneered work to tackle honour-based violence and forced marriage, initially bringing this issue to the top of the public agenda through a CPS conference in 2004.

He has the national CPS lead on tackling these crimes and on tackling Violence Against Women (domestic violence, rape and other violent offences in which women are predominantly the victims).

That’s why it’s a pity he’s going.

Nazir was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s New Years Honours List in 2005 for his public service and involvement with the local community and was named Legal Personality of the Year by the Society of Asian Lawyers, which represents around 15,000 professionals.

In 2007, he received the CPS Public Servant of the Year award, the UK Government’s Justice Award and the Daily Mirror newspaper ‘People’s Award’, voted for by readers.

In recent years he has also received the Law Society/Bar Council Mentoring award and was selected for the Asian Power 100 along with the Muslim Power 100 list.

Seems like an efficiency too many.

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