Soon after independent tv stations went blank, dozens of cops surrounded the Supreme Court building.… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Telephone Services Cut in Islamabad
Nov 3rd, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonMusharraf declared a state of emergency just before a crucial Supreme Court ruling on his election.… Read the rest
Musharraf Imposes Emergency Rule
Nov 3rd, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonTroops in radio and tv stations; Supreme Court held; detention orders served; constitution suspended. … Read the rest
Can’t We All Just Get Along?
Nov 3rd, 2007 | By Tim Goot-BrennanAt universities today, the most popular potential US presidential candidate is smart, young, black, good-looking, likeable. His events draw frenzied crowds (a bad sign); pundits say he’s a rock-star (another bad sign).
Why is Senator Barack Obama so popular? His healthcare plan is pedestrian; his foreign policy outlook is interchangeable with Hillary Clinton’s, or Mitt Romney’s for that matter. It’s partly to do with his image as a young charmer and partly because he opposed the Iraq War “from the beginning”, as he likes to remind people. But his position on Iraq is not as hardline as Bill Richardson’s, for example. And laying claim to being the most charismatic Congressmen is really only like claiming to be the most open-minded … Read the rest
Submit, and what’s for dinner?
Nov 3rd, 2007 10:55 am | By Ophelia BensonOh the joy of learning at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. How the world opens up before the eager student, how the riches of human knowledge spill out before her excited gaze.
It offers for instance ‘classes in homemaking.’
The academic program, open only to women, includes lectures on laundering stubborn stains and a lab in baking chocolate-chip cookies. Philosophical courses such as “Biblical Model for the Home and Family” teach that God expects wives to submit graciously to their husbands’ leadership.
So that all female students will realize they mustn’t get married? Does it work? What are the stats?
… Read the restSeminary President Paige Patterson and his wife, Dorothy – who goes by Mrs. Paige Patterson – view the homemaking curriculum
Aznar and Bush, February 2003
Nov 2nd, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonBush: I am an optimist, because I believe that I’m right. I’m at peace with myself.… Read the rest
Evidence for Nonhuman Primate Language
Nov 2nd, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe point here is not to deny Kanzi’s achievements but to quantify them correctly. … Read the rest
What is Debate Really For?
Nov 2nd, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPlato, Rousseau, Mill, Arendt and Habermas discuss with Cmdr Taco.… Read the rest
Murder of Uzbek Reporter Condemned
Nov 2nd, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonCPJ urges a thorough inquiry into the murder of outspoken journalist Alisher Saipov.… Read the rest
Katha Pollitt Skeptical of Horowitz’s Feminism
Nov 2nd, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAyaan Hirsi Ali gets bad press on the left. Why?… Read the rest
The Eye of the Storm is in sub-Saharan Africa
Nov 2nd, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe largely unnoticed collision of HIV and TB has exploded to create a deadly co-epidemic.… Read the rest
Co-epidemic Spreading in Sub-Saharan Africa
Nov 2nd, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHalf of all new TB cases in sub-Saharan Africa are now HIV co-infected.… Read the rest
Pik and Ab
Nov 1st, 2007 1:13 pm | By Ophelia Benson… Read the rest[I]t would be a simple matter to send out for professional reinforcements, thus demonstrating to King Abdullah that, whatever the Prince of Wales may have told him in the dunes, our shared values do not, currently, feature male supremacy. Instead of Prince Charles fawning on the airstrip, one pictures, say, Sandi Toksvig, heading a welcoming party composed of adulterers, gays, Jews, Catholics, apostates, immodestly dressed women and a variety of other law-abiding sinners who would be dead, or at least severely incapacitated, if they lived in King Abdullah’s country. After inspecting a battalion of beautifully turned out slags (replacing the Welsh Guards), he and his companions would be driven – by women drivers of Filipina extraction
Science Pursues Truth, not Consensus
Nov 1st, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonGood science involves open debate, in which dissents are sharpened and clarified, not smoothed over. … Read the rest
Mearsheimer and Walt
Nov 1st, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThey acknowledge that realist theory fails to explain the outsize influence of the Israel lobby.… Read the rest
Anthony Giddens on Debating Diversity
Nov 1st, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonFacts should be brought out in the open, not dismissed for ideological reasons. … Read the rest
Catherine Bennett on ‘Shared Values’
Nov 1st, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIs it because only half its population is oppressed that we share values with Saudi Arabia but not with Burma?… Read the rest
Plato’s Nephew
Nov 1st, 2007 | By R. Joseph HoffmannSkepticism is a funny thing, even among the Greeks – especially among the Greeks. The “original” skepticism would have been completely palatable to modern religionists, because it challenged pre-Socratic efforts to attain a true picture of the world and stoic claims to have the map to true knowledge. To the early practitioners of skepticism Thales’ notions just didn’t hold water, and if Heraclites was right today, he might well be wrong tomorrow. “‘What I may think after dinner is one thing,’ returns Mr. Jobling, ‘my dear Guppy, and what I think before dinner is quite another thing.’” A little healthy skepticism never hurt anyone, except those with fixed and final positions, those who claim to possess the whole and unvarnished … Read the rest
Just ask a pundit
Nov 1st, 2007 10:12 am | By Ophelia BensonSo as part of this here ‘Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week’ the very scholarly and thoughtful Ann Coulter spoke at USC.
“There’s always a conflict of interest when people who hate America are asked to lead it,” Coulter said about the Democrats’ midterm election victory…Organizers of the week, both at USC and across the country, said the goal of such speeches is to increase discourse on an issue of national importance.
By inviting Ann Coulter? She’s a (bad) stand-up comic; she doesn’t do discourse, she does silly trash-talk.
… Read the restThough organizers praised Coulter for her brash personality and bold, attention-grabbing statements, some critics say these characteristics are a detriment to promoting thoughtful discourse on controversial issues…Some attendees said Coulter’s polemic remarks are
All religions are good and kind
Nov 1st, 2007 10:06 am | By Ophelia BensonOn the one hand, it’s a very good thing that Cherie Booth QC is saying that culture and religion cannot be used as an excuse for discriminating against women. (Mind you, she could have waited for JS and me to write our book saying that and then used the opportunity to plug our book, but never mind.) On the other hand she says some absurd counter-factual things in the process.
The human rights lawyer, wife of former PM Tony Blair, said all the major world faiths shared “an insistence on the dignity of all God’s people”.
The hell they do. They share the opposite, that’s what they share. Yes, Christianity too – there are places where it decidedly fails to … Read the rest