Tag: FTB

Ok I’d seen a couple of mentions of imprisoned Saudi princesses and hadn’t followed up, but thanks to yazikus posting some extracts in comments I now have. I didn’t realize they were Abdullah’s daughters. His own god damn daughters, imprisoned in some dark rooms on his say-so. It’s a tale of horror.

Sahar, Maha, Hala and Jawaher Al Saud are daughters of King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, the Saudi Arabian monarch who is worth an estimated $15 billion.

They grew up rich, and had a nice life. They wanted to study abroad and travel, then marry and have children.

Now they are prisoners.

Not only has the 89-year-old king forbidden any man to seek his daughters’ hands in marriage, he’s confined them, against their will, in separate dark and suffocating quarters at his palace.

The king’s eldest daughter, 42-year-old Sahar, spoke with The Post in a rare and surreptitious phone call.

“We are cut off and isolated and alone,” she says. “We are hostages. No one can come see us, and we can’t go see anyone. Our father is responsible and his sons, our half-brothers, are both culprits in this tragedy.”

Why are the princesses being held captive?

Because they believe women in Saudi Arabia, one of the most oppressive Islamic nations in the world, should be free. Their mother, Alanoud Al Fayez, long ago fled to London.

When the sisters openly spoke in opposition to women being illegally detained and placed in mental wards, the king had enough and no longer considered them his daughters.

“That was it for him. It was the end for us,” Sahar says.

That’s your “reformer” right there. That’s your man of wisdom and vision, Barack Obama. That’s your ally in the war on terror, everyone who said that.

“They once had a normal life for Saudi Arabia, but they are free thinkers, and their father hates that,” mom Al Fayez says. “They are compassionate about the plight of women in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Arab world. The injustices that we see are terrible, and someone must say something.”

She was handed over to him in an arranged marriage. In the first four years she had four daughters – so she was worthless and Abdullah The Reformer divorced her, though he didn’t bother telling her so until two years later. It’s nothing to do with her, after all.

In Saudi Arabia, a husband can divorce his wife without her knowledge.

“Really, he had divorced me a number of times and he’d abuse me, beat me and had me beaten by guards,” Al Fayez says. “And the more I took the abuse, the more I was abused.”

Abdullah the reformer. Abdullah the wise.

In 2001 she fled to London. Her daughters couldn’t go with her because Abdullah had taken their passports. She thought he would eventually let them go, if only to avoid embarrassment.

Nope.

In 2002, less than one year after her escape, Abdullah began tormenting his daughters. They are in intermittent phone contact with their mother and have told her that he’s drugged their food and water to keep them docile.

“They had felt some oppression before I left, but when he found that I had gone, he vowed that he would kill the girls, slowly,” Al Fayez says. “At one point, he tried to get me to come back, saying that he would take away the divorce and release them, but that wasn’t true and I know that I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t trust that.”

It was then, about 2005, that she first began to fear for her daughters’ safety, she said. “That’s when I thought, now he’d do anything, even punish them till they die, which is exactly what he’s trying to do now.”

The king locked Sahar and the youngest, Jawaher, now 38, in one area of the palace, while confining Mahar, 41, and Hala, 39, to yet another closet-size and unkempt room.

Doctors aren’t even allowed in for checkups.

“The rooms they are locked in are so hot, they wilt from the desert heat,” Al Fayez says. They suffer from dehydration, nausea and heat stroke.

Her daughter Sahar says the king is starving them all to death. They haven’t had a full meal in more than a month, she says, and are forced to eat canned goods that they pry open with nail files.

I have to pause and take some deep breaths right now.

Power, running water and electricity are shut off at random, sometimes for days or even weeks at a time. Their rooms are overrun with bugs and rodents.

“Our energy is quite low, and we’re trying our best to survive,” Sahar says. Their “gilded cage” is only gilded on the outside. “We live amid ruins. You hear ‘palace,’ but we don’t feel like we’re in a palace at all.”

Some liar at the Saudi embassy in London told the Post they’re fine, fine. They can go anywhere they want to, it’s just that armed security guards have to go with them. Their mother says that’s a lie.

All four women are routinely tortured, sometimes by their own relatives.

“They come in, the men, our own half-brothers, and they beat us with sticks,” Sahar says. “They yell at us and tell us we will die here.”

Will things get better for them now?

What do you think.

“Sahar is very bright and has always made us laugh. She’s the eldest, and she’s an artist and a free thinker,” Al Fayez says.

“Maha is sensitive but has a penchant for business and politics. Hala is compassionate and brilliant; she majored in psychology and graduated at the top of her class. She loves to play the piano and compose music. Jawaher, my youngest, is very similar in character to Maha. She also loves music and hopes to earn a degree in sound engineering.”

Her daughters, she says, have much to offer. She says she taught each of them to be strong, to stand up to their powerful father, and now that has backfired.

She tried lawyers, but – surprise! – Abdullah refused to be questioned.

Sahar tells The Post that she’s constantly threatened by her father and has been told that death is the only way out.

“My father said that after his death, our brothers would continue to detain us and abuse us,” she says.

Al Fayez is frantic. Time, she says, is running out.

“My daughters want the right to see their mother, and I want to see my daughters,” Al Fayez says. “They are just trying to hold on to their sanity.

“They are suffering . . . with no hope for salvation.”

It’s a god damn outrage. We’re sucking up to these shits while this is going on.

Raif, Sahar, Maha, Hala, Jawaher.

Nice work, Wikipedia –

Guardian headline: Wikipedia bans five editors from gender-related articles.

Wikipedia’s arbitration committee, the highest user-run body on the site, has banned five editors from making corrections to articles about feminism, in an attempt to stop a long-running edit war over the entry on the “Gamergate controversy”.

The editors, who were all actively attempting to prevent the article from being rewritten with a pro-Gamergate slant, were sanctioned by “arbcom” in its preliminary decision. While that may change as it is finalised, the body, known as Wikipedia’s supreme court, rarely reverses its decisions.

Right, because articles about feminism have to be impartial, so they should be edited only by people who are opposed to feminism. That makes sense.

The sanction bars the five editors from having anything to do with any articles covering Gamergate, but also from any other article about “gender or sexuality, broadly construed”.

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Editors who had been pushing for the Wikipedia article to be fairer to Gamergate have also been sanctioned by the committee, but one observer warns that those sanctions have only hit “throwaway” accounts.

“No sanctions at all were proposed against any of Gamergate’s warriors, save for a few disposable accounts created specifically for the purpose of being sanctioned,” said Mark Bernstein, a writer and Wikipedia editor.

In contrast, he says, “by my informal count, every feminist active in the area is to be sanctioned. This takes care of social justice warriors with a vengeance — not only do the Gamergaters get to rewrite their own page (and Zoe Quinn’s, Brianna Wu’s, Anita Sarkeesian’s, etc); feminists are to be purged en bloc from the encyclopedia.”

Will there be show trials?

The byzantine internal processes of Wikipedia are incomprehensible for many, but they serve to shape the content on the site, the seventh biggest on the internet. Its reportedly unpleasant internal culture and unwelcoming atmosphere for new editors has long been blamed for an overwhelmingly masculine make-up – just one in ten editors are thought to be female – which in turn contributes to which topics get featured on the site.

As the Wikipedia article on Wikipedia’s systemic bias explains, “research suggests that the gender gap has a detrimental effect on content coverage: articles with particular interest to women tend to be shorter, even when controlling for variables that affect article length. Women typically perceive Wikipedia to be of lower quality than men do.”

Oh well, it’s only Wikipedia…

Human Rights Watch sees Saudi Arabia rather differently from the way the people running the governments and sitting on the thrones do.

King Abdullah’s reign brought about marginal advances for women but failed to secure the fundamental rights of Saudi citizens to free expression, association, and assembly. Abdullah’s successor, King Salman, should halt persecution of peaceful dissidents and religious minorities, end pervasive discrimination against women, and ensure greater protections for migrant workers.

Over King Abdullah’s nine-and-a-half year rule, reform manifested itself chiefly in greater tolerance for a marginally expanded public role for women, but royal initiatives were largely symbolic and produced extremely modest concrete gains.

And that’s in a place where women are treated like disease-ridden vaginas – alluring and filthy, with no brain and no rights.

Early in his reign, King Abdullah promoted modernization of Saudi Arabia’s state apparatus, making it more efficient and transparent; encouraged a modest public re-evaluation of the enforced subservient status of women and religious minorities; allowed greater debate in the media; and promoted some degree of judicial fairness. After 2011, the authorities subordinated the king’s reform agenda to a campaign to silence peaceful dissidents and activists who called for religious tolerance and greater respect for human rights.

King Salman should take steps to prohibit discrimination against women and religious minorities and institute protections for free speech. A significant first step would be to repeal vague legislation used to prosecute Saudis for peaceful speech and create a written penal code that includes comprehensive human rights protections. He should also order the immediate release of Saudi citizens jailed solely for calling for political reform.

Nonsense. Look at all the tributes to Abdullah pouring in from the heads of state. Obviously there’s no need to improve anything, or they would have mentioned it.

The most concrete gains for women under King Abdullah included opening up new employment sectors for women. In February 2013, King Abdullah appointed 30 women to the Shura Council, a consultative body that produces recommendations for the cabinet.

Systematic discrimination against women persists, however. Authorities have not ended the discriminatory male guardianship system. Under this system, ministerial policies and practices forbid bar women from obtaining a passport, marrying, travelling, or accessing higher education without the approval of a male guardian, usually a husband, father, brother, or son. Employers can still require male guardians to approve the hiring of adult female relatives and some hospitals to require male guardian approval for certain medical procedures for women. Women remain forbidden barred from driving in Saudi Arabia, and authorities have arrested women who dared challenge the driving ban. [tweaks mine]

The place is a nightmare for women, and for men who think women are human beings. Abdullah’s death doesn’t change that, not even for a few days.

The Guardian also reports that the new Saudi monarch promises continuity with the previous monarch. What a surprise.

Salman’s first public remarks as monarch, even before Abdullah’s burial, were designed to send a bland and reassuring message of stability. “We will continue adhering to the correct policies which Saudi Arabia has followed since its establishment,” he said in a speech on state TV.

“The Arab and Islamic nations are in dire need of solidarity and cohesion.” He used the phrase “the straight path” – language taken directly from the Qur’an.

Yeah cool – so they’ll keep on whipping and fining and imprisoning secular liberals, and looking the other way as citizens torture their foreign servants, and oppressing and suppressing women in every way they can think of. What a relief.

The presence of kings and emirs from Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar demonstrated the solidarity of fellow western-backed autocrats banding together to preserve their own positions in the polarised aftermath of the Arab spring. The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, also took part in funeral prayers at the giant Imam Turki bin Abdullah mosque in Riyadh.

Theocrats convene.

Wtf?

Why would flags in the UK be lowered in tribute to the king of Saudi Torturer Arabia?

Some MPs are wondering.

A decision to mark the death of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia by flying flags in Whitehall at half-mast has been criticised by MPs.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) said it had asked government buildings to fly the union flag at half-mast for 12 hours in line with protocol that says this is appropriate following the death of a foreign monarch.

Any monarch, all monarchs? No matter what? Even when the country the monarch was monarch of just beat a man with 50 blows of a stick as punishment for having a website that advocated liberal values? Even then?

The Ukip MP Douglas Carswell said it was an “extraordinary misjudgment” in the light of the kingdom’s human rights record.

Well it’s too bad it was the Ukip MP, because he’s damn well right…except that I wouldn’t call it a misjudgment.

The houses of parliament and Westminster Abbey are among the buildings in London where the government guidance has been followed after King Abdullah’s death early on Friday.

The tribute was paid even though the sentencing of a Saudi blogger to 10 years in jail and 1,000 lashes for insulting Islam has thrust Saudi Arabia’s dismal human rights record into the spotlight in recent weeks.

It has rather.

Labour MP Paul Flynn said the tribute was “liable to bring infantile fawning over royalty into disrepute”. It was evidence of the establishment’s “extraordinary subservience” to foreign royals, he added.

In a statement, the DCMS said that it learned of the death of King Abdullah “with great regret” and that government buildings were “requested” to fly flags at half-mast from 8am this morning until 8pm.

It continued: “Any other UK national flags flown alongside the union flag when it is at half-mast should also be at half-mast. If a flag of a foreign nation is normally flown on the same stand as the union flag, it should be removed.”

Very punctilious. Nice attention to detail. Elaborate concern over proper attention to a man who is no longer alive. Callous toward a man who is still alive, and is in prison awaiting 950 more blows of a stick.

One Westminster source said the decision to fly flags at half-mast, which was widely criticised on social media, was taken at the behest of Buckingham Palace.

Monarchist solidarity, eh? Ugly.

Asked to justify its decision to fly its flag at half-mast, Wesminster Abbey said in a statement: “We always fly a flag. It is at half-mast because the government has decided to fly their flags at half-mast today.

“For us not to fly at half-mast would be to make a noticeably aggressive comment on the death of the king of a country to which the UK is allied in the fight against Islamic terrorism.”

Ahhhhhh no, that’s where they’re wrong. So, so wrong. Saudi Arabia is the source of Islamist terrorism, not an ally in a fight against it.

They know it, too. It’s not a secret. Information about the Saudi billions poured into Wahhabist institutions and groups around the world has been available for years.

You know those people who say measles is just a harmless little childhood disease? Epidemiologist Tara Smith has a few things to tell them.

Last year was the worst year for measles in two decades. While we’ve seen fewer than 100 cases of measles in most years since the turn of the century, that number spiked to 644 cases in 2014, from 23 separate outbreaks in 27 states.

Before the vaccine, the United States saw approximately 4 million cases of measles each year and 400 to 500 deaths. These are the stats that vaccine-deniers tend to emphasize—a relatively low number of deaths compared with the number of infections. However, those statistics alone leave out a big part of measles infections. Prevaccine, almost 48,000 people were also hospitalized each year because of measles and measles complications. One in 20 of those infected developed pneumonia. More rarely but more seriously, each year 1,000 became chronically disabled due to measles encephalitis.

Measles is not a benign disease.

A cartoon via Universalist Muslims on Facebook –

Obama’s statement when Hugo Chavez kicked it.

Obama’s statement when King Abdullah kicked it.

That makes me want to vomit.

H/t Ahmed Akeel

Uh huh. “Worldview Academy” appears to be mostly a website, along with a program of “camps” it offers around the country. Judging by the “camp” in my state, which lasts 5 days and charges $745, these camps are really just quick proselytizing jaunts.

We are drawn together by the conviction to live out a biblical worldview in heart, mind, and life. Each summer, we gather in camps across the country to pursue the Reason for living. Just as iron sharpens iron, our faculty and students dialogue and search the scriptures to deepen our knowledge of Christ and come together in following Him.

Whatevs.

They say their faculty will come along and fix you up, but they don’t say who their faculty are. I suspect it’s whoever is sucker enough to apply.

Christianity & Culture Conferences are designed to bring the faculty from Worldview Academy into your church or school for a series of lectures and breakout sessions. We present customized conference schedules that will inspire, challenge and encourage families, youth groups, schools, and churches to stand for truth in an ever-shifting culture.

The faculty, only there’s no place on the site that…you know…lists them.

Worldview Academy faculty speak and present at homeschool conventions across the country. To invite faculty members to your local conference, call the Worldview Office at 1-800-241-1123 or email Amelia Capo at acapo@worldview.org.

Faculty members speak at church or school conferences by invitation. To invite a Worldview Academy faculty member to speak at your church, call the Worldview Office at 1-800-241-1123 or email Amelia Capo at acapo@worldview.org.

Super impressive stuff. The real deal. All professionally-like. The phone number and email contact given twice right together like that, just in case you doze off.

No wonder he has to fake up a lawsuit.

Oh here we go – “they are persecuting me because of my faaaaaaaaith when I all I want to do is say God hates everyone I disapprove of.”

A Colorado bakery is under investigation for religious discrimination after a baker refused to write anti-gay words on a cake.

In March of 2014, a customer named Bill Jack requested several cakes in the shapes of Bibles from the Azucar Bakery in Denver, Colo., according to the bakery owner, Marjorie Silva.

Silva says Jack pulled out a piece of paper with phrases like “God hates gays” and requested her to write them on his cakes.

A Fred Phelps wannabe; just what this world needs.

“After I read it, I was like ‘No way,’” Silva said. “‘We’re not doing this. This is just very discriminatory and hateful.’”

In a statement to 9NEWS Jack said, “I believe I was discriminated against by the bakery based on my creed.”

As a result, Jack filed a complaint with the Civil Rights division of the Department of Regulatory Agencies.

I’m betting that’s what he did it for. I’m betting it wasn’t his little nephew’s birthday, I’m betting he didn’t order that cake for his little nephew’s birthday, I’m betting he ordered the cake in hopes of being refused so that he could make a stink and get attention. Ok, Bill Jack, we see you. You’re an odious little turd.

Jack is a founder of Worldview Academy, which is a “non-denominational organization dedicated to helping Christians think and live in accord with a Biblical worldview,” according to the organization’s website.

Jack’s biography on the website says he is currently an educator who used to teach in public schools in the past, adding that he has appeared on numerous national radio and TV programs.

An educator? I seriously doubt that. I seriously doubt that he ever educated anyone.

Gotta take a look at that “academy”…

Sunny Hundal on the BBC blasts the UK government’s hugging of the Saudi regime.

Blogger Raif Badawi has been sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for criticising Saudi Arabian clerics on his internet blog.

British blogger Sunny Hundal said this case, and others like it, mean the UK should stop “hugging” the Saudi regime.

In a personal film, he said it was time for the UK to cut these ties and “treat the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with the contempt it deserves”.

Via Tehmina Kazi, a brilliant piece at Open Democracy by a friend of hers, Akmal Ahmed Safwat, an oncologist in Denmark.

Instead of verbally denouncing terror, many Muslims in the West are now challenging the radical, ultra conservative and violent Wahhabi/salafi version of Islam that gives religious justification for hideous crimes. They are doing so through a growing movement of progressive Muslims such as British Muslims for Secular Democracy, Muslims for Progressive Values (USA) and the Liberal Muslim Network (Norway).

We progressive Muslims do not distinguish between atrocities committed by radical movements like Al-Qaida or Boko Haram and those committed by despotic dictatorships that dare to call themselves “Islamic” governments; the ones that administer the death penalty for apostasy and homosexuality; that practice stoning and flagellation; that legitimize child marriage. Both justify their atrocious practices through selected, outdated interpretations of primary Islamic scripture and a so-called “irrefutable authority” of ancient scholars and books.

Yessssss. I’ve been saying this for years – it’s not just terrorism, it’s also the brutally reactionary theocratic rules and practices that we need to oppose and resist. The latter affects vastly more people than the former can.

Wahhabi/salafi Islam is a literal way of looking at religious texts, taking it out of historical context and extending straight lines to current times. Its authority is often external to the Qu’ran, using things that are claimed to have been spoken(hadith) or performed (sunnah) by the prophet. These claims and interpretations are man-made.

Progressive Muslims, on the other hand, believe that history matters and that these claims can be challenged. The ancient Islamic Scholar Al-Shafi’i, changed his fatwas when he moved from one Islamic country to another because he acknowledged how his previous ideas did not suit the new environment. Yet today’s salafists insists on applying Al-Shafi’s old fatwas unchanged, more than 1000 years after his death.

Progressive Muslims essentially differ from traditionalists in the way we approach the Qur’anic texts. In his book, The Place of Tolerance in Islam, UCLA scholar Khaled Abou El-Fadl says “It is impossible to analyse any verse, except in the light of the overall moral thrust of the Qur’anic message. TheQur’an commands Muslims to do the good and it is not accidental that the word used for ‘the good’ is ma’aruf, meaning ‘that which is known to be good.’ Goodness in the Qur’anic discourse, therefore, is a lived reality, the product of human experience and constructed normative understanding.”

As an atheist, I don’t really think any religion is the best place to look for the good, but since most people are not atheists, that’s somewhat beside the point. I think it’s urgent and beneficial for theists to shape their religion in such a way that it helps them to do the good. I think we should all try to do the good, using whatever paths can get us there. But it has to be the good – so hatreds and repressions are right out.

So, when we progressives say Islam is a religion of justice, tolerance andcompassion, we approach the holy texts with these values and vision and let the Qur’an guide us to an understanding of contemporary life. Consequently, we support women’s rights and agency and human rights for all. We support the civil rights of the LGBT community. We reject the idea that shari’a is immutable. We support procedural secularism and the separation of church and state. We oppose capital punishment.

This is how we distance ourselves from Islamists’ crimes, by trying to livema’aruf on a day-to-day basis.

Progressive Muslim voices are actually everywhere, what is missing is critical mass. The problem with challenging the status quo is that you are marching into an unequal battle. Progressive Muslims are individuals and academics facing radical movements as well as whole countries moving towards political domination.

The rest of us need to help them and signal boost what they say.

Furthermore, we are competing with Saudi Arabia’s unlimited petro wealth, a nation that has spent close to $100 billion dollars to export Wahhabi Islam into Islamic societies and thus assert its political influence. Through monopolizing satellite media and infiltrating religious institutions previously known for its progressive views, Saudi Arabian Wahhabism has managed to grip the hearts and minds of millions of Muslims. El-Azhar in Egypt is just one example.

Despite an appalling human rights record, the Saudi regime can always count on the West’s unconditional support in its quest for dominating the Muslim world.

In fact, a closer look would clearly show the striking resemblance between Saudi Arabia and the newly born Islamic State. It defies credibility and fundamental logic that Western nations would ally themselves with Saudi Arabia to fight ISIS, since the latter is the brainchild of the first and any difference between them is only in scale but not in kind.

At the end he says something very like what Maajid said on Fresh Air last week –

Legal philosopher, Abdullahi An-Na’im has taught us that the divide is not between Islam and western society but between people who have different values. He counsels us to promote connections between people who want to contribute to human values because people who share that commitment can collaborate effectively, irrespective of their own culture.

That. It’s not The West versus The Rest or West v Islam; it’s universal human rights versus fascism.

Padraig Reidy at Index on Censorship explains about the Sun’s page 3.

The Page 3 girl was a typical product of the British sexual revolution. What started, with the availability of contraception to women in the 1960s, as a liberation, quickly became another way to reduce them. Freed from the terror of unwanted pregnancy, women and girls were now expected to be in a permanent state of up-for-it-ness. The popular films of the late 60s and early 70s, the On The Buses, the Carry Ons, the Confessions…, portrayed British society as a parade of priapic middle-aged men, always attempting to escape their middle-aged, old-fashioned wives, in pursuit of seemingly countless, always available, young women.

It was fun, it was cheeky, it was vampiric — depending on how you wanted to look at it.

Page 3 was part of this culture; this idea that sweet-natured young women with absolutely no qualms about sex were out there, just needing a wink and a Sid James cackle to persuade them into a bit of slap and tickle. Slap and tickle, though, is not the same as sex, or at least not sex as we might hope to understand it. The slap and tickle of the British imagination owes more to the pre-pill “sort of bargaining” described by Philip Larkin. In spite of the poet’s hopes, sexual intercourse hadn’t really begun in 1963.

Page 3 models were (are? Who knows?) very rarely erotic creatures. They were “healthy” and “fun”, perhaps a little “naughty”; always girls and never women.

Why not just inflate a couple of balloons and let it go at that?

In the 90s, new laddism, spearheaded by James Brown’s Loaded magazine, somewhat rehabilitated the Page 3 girl, or, more accurately, made looking at topless models seem respectable to men who would never buy the Sun (“men who should know better” as Loaded’s tagline went).

As the post-Loaded rush for young men’s money descended into boasting of nipple counts, the focus of feminist campaigning switched to the weekly Nuts and Zoo magazines. The Sun’s Page 3 carried on, outliving the rise and fall of Nuts (somehow, Zoo is still going), but is now taking a severe battering from the No More Page 3 campaign, led by young feminists. The very fact that there is uncertainty over the future of the feature is testament to that campaign’s success.

It would be easy to look for a free speech angle on this and come up with “killjoy feminists” versus, decent honest yeomen of England.

But it would be bullshit, he says. Calling for No More of something is more free speech.

Meanwhile, with hot and cold running porn in every kitchen, what’s the point of Page 3 at all? No one knows.

Huh. I normally have zero interest in Jay Leno, but he said something good the other day. Emily Yahr at a Washington Post blog shares the details:

Just a couple of months ago, it seemed like some kind of taboo for high-profile entertainers to address the allegations that Bill Cosby raped dozens of women. But in the past two days, a couple of famous names in the tight-knit world of comedy have broken the silence — and spoken out in support of the women who have come forward.

The most surprising voice may be Jay Leno, the former “Tonight Show” host who essentially spent his entire career on NBC, home of “The Cosby Show.” Leno is also known for avoiding controversy to the point of blandness — but he bluntly discussed the situation and didn’t defend the comedian.

“I don’t know why it’s so hard to believe women,” Leno said in a Q&A during a television conference in Miami. “You go to Saudi Arabia and you need two women to testify against a man. Here you need 25.”

Zing.

But making even more waves is Larry Wilmore, who debuted his new series “The Nightly Show” on Comedy Central this week, filling Stephen Colbert’s old time slot. Wilmore devoted most of the second episode to Cosby and did not hold back.

Watching it. He plays a clip from Cosby’s gig in Ontario in which a guy in the audience shouts “Arrogant piece of shit! Rapist!” and Cosby goes “Stop it…Sssh, sssh…That’s all right, no clapping, nothing.” Wilmore responds: “‘Shush shush stop it’?Are you trying to quiet a heckler, or is that your pillow talk?”

“People are innocent until proven guilty in the court of law. However, this is the court of public opinion and this is my show, and that [expletive] did it,” Wilmore said.

“To me, it really is a simple case of: Here’s a famous guy who people protected, and because of his fame, nobody wanted to believe it,” Wilmore said. “I think it’s really that simple.”

I have a suspicion this is not a unique event.

Booooooooo. Wrong. Bad move. Go back and start over. Lose a turn.

“Continuity” for Saudi Arabia means more fanatical religiosity governing everything, more theocratic meddling, more sadistic punishments for the utterance of liberal thoughts, more frenzied efforts to conceal the existence of women, more criminally bad treatment of foreign workers, more crawling before “god” and stamping on perceived inferiors.

Within hours of acceding to the throne of the oil-rich kingdom, King Salman, 78, vowed to maintain the same policies as his predecessors.

“We will continue adhering to the correct policies which Saudi Arabia has followed since its establishment,” he said in a speech broadcast on state television.

The new king’s profile was updated on his official Twitter account, where he wrote: “I ask God to help me succeed in my service of the dear [Saudi] people.”

Ha, that’s silly – he doesn’t mean people, he means men, and only some of those. He’s not doing any service to Raif Badawi.

Protocol permits no official mourning period, government offices stay open and flags remain at full mast.

The reason is that the House of Saud practises one of the strictest codes of Islam – known as Wahhabism – in which followers try to emulate precisely the behaviour of the Prophet Muhammad and avoid anything seen as un-Islamic “innovations”.

Public displays of grief are frowned upon by a religious establishment which views every aspect of life and death as a submission to God’s supreme will.

That means funerals are very austere and puritanical in character, with a strong impression of egalitarianism in death.

Because humanity has learned nothing in the last 1400 years, so it’s better to try to emulate precisely the behaviour of a guy who died 1400 years ago than to try to improve things for everyone as we learn more about human beings and their needs and wants and how to harmonize them.

Not.

You know that measles outbreak that started at Disneyland? Pediatricians say yo, that’s a hint that people should be vaccinated.

The leading U.S. pediatrician group on Friday urged parents, schools and communities to vaccinate children against measles in the face of an outbreak that began at Disneyland in California in December and has spread to more than 50 people.

The American Academy of Pediatrics said all children should get the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine between the ages of 12 and 15 months old and again between 4 and 6 years old.

No, this is not like people who make Fords saying all people should buy Fords. It’s different from that.

“A family vacation to an amusement park – or a trip to the grocery store, a football game or school – should not result in children becoming sickened by an almost 100 percent preventable disease,” Dr. Errol Alden, the group’s executive director, said in a written statement.

“We are fortunate to have an incredibly effective tool that can prevent our children from suffering. That is so rare in medicine,” Alden said.

So rare and so so valuable. Wouldn’t we love to have an incredibly effective tool that can prevent AIDS or diabetes or cancers or Crohn’s or arthritis or Alzheimer’s?

Imagine having that and refusing to avail yourself of it.

The California Department of Public Health has reported 59 confirmed measles cases among state residents since the end of December, most linked to an initial exposure at Disneyland or the adjacent Disney California Adventure Park.

Nine more cases linked to the two Walt Disney Co-owned parks, were reported out of state – one inMexico, three in Utah, two in Washington state and one each in Oregon, Colorado and Arizona.

Officials say the outbreak appeared to begin when an infected person, likely from out of the country, visited the Anaheim resort from Dec. 15 to Dec. 20.

Among those infected are at least five Disney employees and a student at Huntington Beach High School, some 15 miles (24 km) from the park. Earlier this week, the school ordered its unvaccinated students to stay home until Jan. 29.

There shouldn’t be any unvaccinated students in school apart from the small number who can’t get vaccinated for medical reasons.

International Business Times has an exciting story dated a few hours ago…but sadly it seems to be based on a misreading of a Facebook post, so not so exciting after all. Ludovica Laccino reports that a Saudi official has said Raif won’t be flogged any more.

Saudi Arabian activist blogger Raif Badawi, sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison for advocating free speech, may not have to serve the full decade in prison.

Badawi family’s spokesperson, Dr Elham Manea, who is also an associate professor specialising in the Middle East at University of Zurich, said on Facebook that the news was delivered by a Saudi ambassador in Germany.

She wrote: “Saudi ambassador in Germany informed NDR-TV that flogging will not continue and‪#‎RaifBadawi‬ maybe not have to serve the whole time in prison.”

Fantastic – but if you follow the link to Facebook, you find that Elham didn’t say that; the link is to a post that someone else wrote. The post is in German, with an automated translation below –

Noch mit Vorsicht zu genießen, es gibt noch keine offizielle Bestätigung. BBC meldet gleichzeitig den Tod von König Abdullah. Der Botschafter Saudi-Arabiens in Deutschland soll gesagt haben: “Die Bestrafung von Herrn Raif Badawi wurde, wie ich verstanden habe, gestoppt. Er wird keine Peitschenhiebe mehr erhalten. Ich nehme an, dass Herr Badawi, nachdem die Auspeitschung gestoppt wurde, nicht zehn Jahre in Haft bleiben wird.”
Elham ManeaJérôme SegalEnsaf Haidar

Even with caution to enjoy, there is still no official confirmation. At the same time, BBC reports the death of King Abdullah. The Ambassador of Saudi Arabia in Germany is supposed to have said: “the punishment of Mr Raif Badawi was, as I understand it, stopped. He will receive no more lashes. I suppose that, after the whipping stopped, Mr Badawi will remain not ten years in prison.”
Elham ManeaJérôme SegalEnsaf Haidar

Followed by a link and headline and extract –

Prügelstrafe für saudischen Blogger offenbar gestoppt

Laut der saudi-arabischen Botschaft in Berlin soll der Blogger Raif Badawi offenbar keine Peitschenhiebe mehr erhalten. Außerdem könne auch die Haftstrafe verkürzt werden.

Google translate gives me –

Flogging for Saudi blogger apparently stopped

According to the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Berlin blogger Raif Badawi is apparently no longer to receive lashes. In addition, the sentence could be shortened.

The source is NDR.de, which is Norddeutscher Rundfunk, about which Wikipedia tells us –

Norddeutscher Rundfunk is a public radio and television broadcaster, based in Hamburg. In addition to the city-state of Hamburg, NDR transmits for the German states of Lower Saxony, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Schleswig-Holstein.

So, that sounds like a reliable source.

But why is it only the ambassador to Germany who is saying this?

I don’t know, but at least he is apparently saying it.

Ziauddin Sardar says Islam has a history full of freethinkers.

“This has nothing to do with Islam,” say the imams. “These callous and fanatic murders have nothing to do with us,” say the mullahs. “Islam means peace,” say the worshippers. These disclaimers, and variations on them, have been repeated countless times by Muslim commentators since the Charlie Hebdo killings. They are designed to distance people from guilt by association with those who kill and maim in the name of Islam.

But what about the sentence recently handed down to the (mildly) liberal blogger Raif Badawi in the Islamic state of Saudi Arabia? Ten years in jail, a massive fine, 1,000 lashes over 20 weeks (currently suspended because the first 50 lashes have rendered him “medically unfit”)? Does this have “nothing to do with Islam”? Does the hashtag “Je suis un couteau” – referring to this week’s stabbing of 11 Israelis on a bus – have “nothing to do with Islam”? Not to mention the 10 Christians killed during Charlie protests in Niger last week, or the ongoing depredations of al-Qaeda, Isis, Boko Haram, the Taliban and the Laskar Jihad of Indonesia?