A petition to Zuckerberg, which is apparently getting through to Facebook and improving the situation, so worth signing.

This week only, more then 9 of the biggest Facebook groups of atheists and secular Arabs were closed after reports campaigns led by Islamist groups containing hundreds of thousands of members. They are abusing the Facebook report facility to remove all pages that oppose their ideology.

While Arab atheists, with absolutely no exaggeration, already face all kinds of oppression, torture, restriction of speech and even sentences to death in their countries (we mention Raif Badawi, Mohamed Cheikh, Achraf Fayad as examples ), Arab atheists are facing a huge risk of losing the remaining freedoms that are practiced secretly or online, wich are , including the freedom and the right of thinking and discussing freely, a basic right of a human being, hence being alive!

Social media is the only space we can freely speak through, But with Facebook’s policy that signifies reports by the number of reporters, Facebook is allowing Islamists to create groups with the sole purpose of closing our atheist and secular pages, and unfortunately Facebook facebook have being at their side !

We, as secular and Arab atheists, are asking Facebook’s administration to change its policy, to revise it’s Reporting system in order to prevent this from happening again , and to restore all our groups and pages !

There’s an update:

Facebook is Reacting ! Keep your support , you are great !

The petition.

Well that’s awkward.

“Be careful discussing sensitive topics,” professors at the University of Houston were warned in a faculty meeting about the new “campus carry” gun policy.

An unofficial forum of professors suggested that teachers may want to “drop certain topics from your curriculum,” and “not ‘go there’ if you sense anger,” the Houston Chronicle reports.

A new Texas law will allow people to carry concealed handguns on university campuses.

So the academics should draw up a list of topics that could make a student angry, and avoid those topics in favor of other topics that have zero potential to make a student – any student – angry.

Um.

Jeffrey Villines, a Ph.D. student in the university’s English department, shared a photo of what he said is a slide from a “recent campus carry dialogue at UH, in response to faculty concerns about dangers from armed students.”

Jeff

The Houston Chronicle notes that advice given at the faculty forum “echoes concerns voiced by professors across the state that allowing guns into the classroom will limit academic freedoms and inhibit discussion of sometimes touchy subjects.”

Jeff Villines argued that campus carry policies may have a chilling effect on the freedom of expression, silencing “discourse through fear of violence.”

“To be clear,” he wrote, “Step 1 of 3: Terrorism involves the silencing of discourse through fear of violence. Step 2 of 3: Open carry is advertised as a means of resisting or preventing terrorism. Step 3 of 3: Teachers advised that any problems with Open Carry can be resolved by silencing discourse.”

This has worked to destroy access to abortion in much of the US, by the way. Doctors are afraid to provide abortions, and reasonably so. If I were a doctor I would be far too cowardly to provide them.

Texas is a scary place.

The Ex-Muslims of Britain send a message to the NUS:

NUS: Revise Safe Space and No Platform Policies to Facilitate not Restrict Free Expression and Thought

We are deeply concerned by the increasing attempts by the National Union of Students (NUS) and its affiliated Student Unions to silence dissenters – including feminists, apostates, LGBTI rights campaigners, anti-racists, anti-fascists and anti-Islamists – through its use of No-Platform and Safe Space policies.

We stand against all prejudice and discrimination. We agree that free speech does not mean giving bigots a free pass. A defence of free speech includes the right and moral imperative to challenge, oppose and protest bigoted views.

Educational institutions must be a place for the exchange and criticism of all ideas – even those deemed unpalatable by some – providing they don’t incite violence against peoples or communities. Bigoted ideas are most effectively defeated by open debate, backed up by ethics, reason and evidence.

The proviso about inciting violence is of course where the arguments over particulars bite the deepest. I disagree with people who draw the line only at direct orders to go right now and kill specific people…and I also disagree with people who make overwrought claims about violence and genocide. That’s probably the plight of most people. I wish it were the case that relentless demonization never does motivate physical violence against people, but I don’t think it is the case. On the other hand any harsh words could motivate violence, and it won’t do to try to rule out the very possibility by ruling out the harsh words, because that would be the end of free inquiry and discussion.

At any rate, the NUS has been erring way too far on that side, using peculiar and unreasonable criteria.

I’ve emailed Maryam to add me to the list of signers.

Nathan Lean is harassing Asra Nomani on Twitter. Yesterday she asked him a very pointed question at a forum, and he refused to answer. She asked him why, when he rightly speaks out against hate-speech directed at Muslims, he talks so much smack himself.

Today she tells us this:

After refusing to acknowledge my humanity as I stood before him, Nathan Lean, from Georgetown University’s Saudi Prince Waleed Bin Talal Center, is now harassing me on Twitter, posting a screenshot from my Facebook page, mocking my feminism, casting aspersions on my relationship with Maajid Nawaz, a married man, and on and on. Does Georgetown really support slut shaming?

In the FB post, I stand up for my humanity from personal attacks by a man with the name of David Fox who is also acting unscrupulously on my page. I am sharing all of this with you, my friends, because in the name of saving face, many people have resorted to violent ends, and Mr. Lean’s stability now causes me concern. I have reported my concerns to Georgetown University, which is doing nothing. I will continue to add documentation of the harassment I am receiving so that somebody — you all — know.

He’s got a nasty, ugly way of talking.

Lean is a researcher at the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. The Center, as the name hints, has generous Saudi funding. That doesn’t mean Lean is bought by Saudi cash, but would he be there if he were critical of Saudi Arabia? I doubt it.

Originally a comment by iknklast on She described the situation as feminist because it is her choice.

while (some other) feminists made homemakers ashamed of that choice.

I heard this trope from my mother and sisters for years – but none of them were ever ashamed of that choice! They were proud, because they were real women. I am sure there were women out there who were ashamed of that choice, and perhaps feminists who made them so. I haven’t actually met any, but I haven’t lived in such a way that I know absolutely everyone, or even more than a tiny fraction of everyone, so I can accept that.

The problem is, this is presented as it stands. It never receives the proper response, which is that women who chose to be homemakers have for a very long time done everything they could to make working women ashamed. And since they are usually the ones getting the positive attention in the magazines, newspapers, and other venues (the Mommy wars?), and women are still expected to give birth to, clean up after, and chauffeur children, it is definitely an issue. In addition, there is still a lot of noise about how women “have” to work because of the economy and how horrible that is – usually coming from the left, who (rightly) want a better distribution of wealth and use that old trope to try to shame Washington (men) into propping up the social safety net. There are a lot more support systems for homemakers than for mothers who work outside the home, as well, and almost no support systems for childless women who work outside the home.

So, go ahead and acknowledge the fact that (some) women feel ashamed of making that choice, but please don’t leave it standing as a trope on its own without noticing that a lot of homemakers do their best to shame working women. My mother never let a day go by without throwing some crack out there about “real women”, by which she meant women that were girly women, didn’t do “man” things, did not work outside the home, and had no fewer than six children (conveniently, the number she herself gave birth to). I spent a dozen years in therapy, by the way, and a lot of it was from this sort of crap – being made to feel not just less female (I don’t give a rat’s ass about that), but also a lot less human.

The Independent reports breathlessly on the history-making excitement of more pushing women aside so that trans women can be in the center. It’s the story of Anna Lee running for NUS Women’s Officer, again.

A student at Lancaster University looks set to make history by becoming the first-ever openly trans woman to run for a top national role with the National Union of Students (NUS).

That would be great…if only it were a different top national role.

Anna Lee, who is currently vice president of welfare and community at the university’s students’ union – as well as featuring on the women’s campaign committee (trans* rep) at NUS – is aiming to become women’s officer with the national student campaigner.

But it’s that one.

Isn’t it fascinating how eager people are to shove women out of the picture?

Highlighting her determination to get to where she wants to be, Miss Lee said: “When the transphobic ‘feminists’ come and try to tear me down, I will just fight harder and, with the help of amazing activists, we will show them, together, that the NUS women’s campaign demonstrates a progressive approach to inclusive feminism, not only ensuring the campaign is proudly trans inclusive, but that our campaign is a place where feminist activists can thrive – whether they’ve been involved for five years or five minutes.”

See that’s one glaring reason she shouldn’t be the Women’s Officer – she hates feminists. Not a good fit.

Highlighting how mainstream feminism constantly forgets about trans women, she added: “Let alone a queer trans disabled lesbian woman.”

First priority: bash feminism.

This is both hilarious and disgusting – the New York Times solemnly reporting on a male composer who gets extra super-duper creative by dominating his wife. The Times says this is “kink” but it sounds much more like the same old arrangement there always was.

The OkCupid message Mollena Williams received in December 2013 was, in some ways, standard. It was complimentary: “Wow — your profile is great.” It was confident: “I am an artist, very successful (probably member of the top 10 or 20 in my genre in the world).” It was polite, signing off with “warm wishes.”

But something was a bit out of the ordinary, speaking to its author’s interest in domination and submission. The central desire? “I would like to tame you.”

The writer was Georg Friedrich Haas, whose powerfully emotional, politically chargedmusic and explorations of microtonality make him one of the world’s leading composers. His work had brought widespread acclaim, but his personal life was troubled, with three failed marriages in his wake, when he met Ms. Williams, a writer and sex educator who specializes in alternative lifestyles. Shortly after he messaged her, the two began a relationship and were married last fall.

I hate to be the one to break bad news, but a man dominating a woman isn’t an alternative lifestyle. It’s about as conformist as a lifestyle can possibly be.

In a joint appearance with his wife, who now goes by Mollena Williams-Haas, late last year at the Playground sexuality conference in Toronto, then in an interview this month in the online music magazine VAN, he has “come out,” as he put it, as the dominant figure in a dominant-submissive power dynamic. Mr. Haas has chosen to speak up, both because Ms. Williams-Haas’s sexual interests are widely known (her blog, The Perverted Negress, is not shy about kink and bondage) and because he hopes to embolden younger people, particularly composers, not to smother untraditional urges, as he did.

But the urges aren’t untraditional. They’re so.very.traditional.

Their marriage can seem, in this regard, distinctly old-fashioned, and not in a Marquis de Sade way. While the terms they negotiated at the start of their relationship do not prevent her from pursuing her own professional and personal life, Ms. Williams-Haas devotes much of her time to supporting the work of a man — “Herr Meister,” she has nicknamed him — for whom a “good day” is one in which he composes for 14 or 15 hours.

Ah they finally noticed!

“She makes my life as comfortable as possible,” Mr. Haas said.

Ms. Williams-Haas, who described the situation as feminist because it is her choice, said, “I find intense fulfillment in being able to serve in this way.”

And that right there is what’s so fucked up about “choice” feminism, aka libertarian or liberal or third wave feminism. No, not every “choice” is feminist just because it’s a woman making it. Michelle Duggar isn’t a feminist.

She conceded the discomfort many may feel with a black woman willingly submitting to a white man. “It’s a struggle to say, ‘This is genuinely who I am,’” she said. But she added, “To say I can’t play my personal psychodrama out just because I’m black, that’s racist.”

Right. So if she started actually calling herself his slave, and he called her that too, it would be racist to give that the stink-eye? Please.

And that’s especially true when they’re out there proselytizing. If it were just their private games at home then whatever, but here they’re making a case for it – and I say that’s revolting.

Mr. Haas said that he felt liberated after what he described as a lifetime’s and three divorces’ worth of suppressing what he once considered “devilish” desires. The change has altered his music in ways both quantifiable and more ineffable. He said that his productivity had roughly doubled since meeting Ms. Williams-Haas, which will delight his fans.

Well as long as he feels liberated, that’s what counts.

So we can’t escape the influence of the Duggars after all. The “Learning Channel” is still advertising them to us as wholesome fresh-faced Good People who keep women chained to the stove and permanently pregnant.

After costarring on TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting, Jill and Jessa Duggar have landed their own series Jill and Jessa: Counting On, premiering on the cable channel on Tuesday, March 15, Us Weekly has learned exclusively.

Following their three-part special of the same name that aired on TLC last year, the series will follow the lives of the two sisters as they deal with life’s challenges, including raising their own families. The episodes will show Jessa and husband Ben Seewald bonding with son Spurgeon, 3 months, while Jill and husband Derick Dillard balance caring for son Israel, 10 months, with working as missionaries in Central America.

Missionaries – as if anyone anywhere has anything to learn from narrow, ignorant, indoctrinated zealots like them.

A Gujarat village has forbidden unmarried female humans to use cell phones.

The Gujarat village of Suraj in India has reportedly banned girls and unmarried women from the use of cell phones, threatening fines for possessing or using a phone unless the call is from a relative and received on a parent’s phone, according to Hindustan Times.

Because they could use their phones to make appointments for fucking.

“Why do girls need a cell phone? Internet is a waste of time and money for a middle-class community like us. Girls should better utilize their time for study and other works,” said Devshi Vankar, sarpanch (elected head) of the village.

Oh yes? Why just girls then? I suspect Mr Vankar is bullshitting us there, trying to pretend he has a respectable reason for treating girls but not boys like infants.

Read the full story at Hindustan Times.

The Senate Republicans yesterday formally announced that they’re refusing to do their job.

President Obama, don’t even bother.

That was the clear message from Senate Republicans on Tuesday as they decided to formally ignore any nominee the president appoints to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. GOP members of the Senate Judiciary Committee—the panel responsible for vetting court picks—emerged from a private meeting Tuesday afternoon and declared there was a “consensus view”among them not to grant an Obama nominee a hearing, much less a vote, before the presidential election. The committee members then sent a letter to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell putting their decision in writing.

They should be impeached. They’re violating their goddam oath to uphold the Constitution.

McConnell’s second-in-command, Senator John Cornyn, said members of the Judiciary Committee were “unanimous” in their view that there should no hearing for Obama’s nominee. “The reason for that is, it’s not about the personality, it’s about the principle,” Cornyn said.

There is no such “principle.” It doesn’t exist. They’re making it up, aka lying.

It’s not a surprise, Russell Berman goes on, they said all along they wouldn’t, but it wasn’t clear at what point they would refuse to do their job. Would they hold hearings and then say No?

Or would they ignore the nominee altogether rather than risk giving an otherwise qualified person an opportunity to make their case in public? On Tuesday, they confirmed they would follow the advice of conservative activists, who are urging senators to avoid any discussion of the merits of Obama’s choice and stick to the principle that because the presidential campaign is already underway, the public should decide who gets to replace Scalia on the court.

That’s not a “principle.” The presidential campaign is always underway, and there is no rule or practice about not filling a court vacancy during a campaign.

I guess not lying isn’t in the Book of Republican Virtues.

Tarek Fatah wonders what on earth the city of Ottawa thinks it’s doing “celebrating” the hijab.

This Thursday, the City of Ottawa will be holding a public event celebrating the Islamist hijab; an article of cloth that many Muslim women consider akin to the medieval chastity belt.

He says we need to understand the history of the Islamist revolution in Iran to get what this is all about.

On March 7, 1979 the Islamic Republic declared that henceforth all Iranian women would not be allowed to step outside their homes if they did not have their heads covered by a chador (a black, blanket-like shawl) or a hijab.

Many Iranians first thought of this decree as a joke, but when it became clear the ayatollahs meant business and would imprison any woman found “naked” with her head not wrapped in cloth, there were spontaneous protests across the country.

But the mullahs had the power, and the protests failed.

The hijab had come to stay, and over the years spread its tentacles across the globe as a political statement, hated by many Iranian women, but loved by Islamist followers of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and Pakistan’s Jamat-e-Islami in North America.

This Friday, Iranians will go to the polls to elect a new parliament.

Not up for discussion or a vote in this election is the oppressive hijab that many Iranian Muslim women have been fighting against, risking arrest — and even lashings.

If it were, few doubt the law of the hijab would die an instant death. But no opponent of the hijab is permitted to stand for election.

But there is Facebook now.

With the advent of social media, however, the fight against the hijab has taken a new form.

Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad created a Facebook page “My Stealthy Freedom” where thousands of Iranian women are posting videos and pictures of themselves, without the mandatory head covering.

The page has garnered more than 750,000 likes and has drawn the ire of the Iranian government.

So why is Ottawa “celebrating” the fiendish thing?

Let’s have a few photos from My Stealthy Freedom:

Celebrate that, Ottawa.

Peter Walker posted about a new occupation of Malheur.

There’s a new occupation of Harney County. They’re here to take back the land. They’re calling on millions to flock to their cause.

Follow the link to see all his photos of the occupiers.

The linguist Deborah Cameron asks an important question:

The question feminists should be asking about women calling each other ‘dude’ or ‘you guys’ isn’t why they’re talking like men (they aren’t), it’s why they can only express cool solidarity with other women by using prototypically male address terms. Aren’t there any female terms that would serve their purpose just as well?

In principle there are, sure. In practice, there aren’t any yet.

I propose Bletchley.

The Guardian reports:

In Australia, 853 people have made a claim or substantiated complaint of child sexual abuse against one or more Christian Brothers, with 75% of victims under the age of 13 at the time, a royal commission has heard.

The royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse has turned its attention to the Christian Brothers as the third round of its hearings into the diocese of Ballarat began on Monday. A religious community within the Catholic church, the Christian Brothers primarily worked in educational facilities for children.

Where they had a selection of children to predate on, and a veil of piety to hide behind. Perfect setup, innit.

The commission’s data showed that the highest number of claims of child sexual abuse were against a brother identified only as Brother CCK, who had 46 complaints made against him about incidents in Victoria and Tasmania. The average age of his victims was 11 years old and the abuse occurred between 1963 and 1987, including in Ballarat.

Another Brother, Stephen Farrell, a Christian Brother at St Alpius Boys’ School in Ballarat East, had allegations of sexual abuse made against him from six people, with the abuse allegedly occurring between 1971 and 1974. In 1997, Farrell was convicted of nine counts of indecent assault against two boys aged nine and 10 at the school but his two-year prison sentence was wholly suspended.

If you’re a guy with a taste for raping children…what do you do? You have a think about where a lot of children can be found, then you have a think about how to get away with it.

One, Brother Edward Dowlan, “made little attempt to conceal his behaviour”, Barlow said, frequently placing his hands down boys’ pants while they walked around. In a previous commission hearing about Ballarat held last year, the commission heard from a witness that he was raped by Dowlan.

It was a survival of the fittest environment, Barlow said, describing how the Brothers beat him, including bashing him on the head, when he was 15 years old.

He said he tried to stick up for the younger children who he knew who were being abused by the Brothers but was not taken seriously, even when he called his mother from the school and told her what was happening.

“Looking back at my time at St Patrick’s we were in a dysfunctional and closed environment where the abnormal was normal,” Barlow said.

“As 15 to 16 year olds, we had no idea really of the outside codes of ethics, morality and justice, so it was not a notable thing for us to see that these things were happening.”

So perfect for the predators. Not so great for the prey.

From the Huffington Post UK:

A transgender student is set to make history and represent the UK’s female students by running to become the National Union of Students’ women’s officer.

Anna Lee, a student at Lancaster University who describes herself as a “queer trans disabled lesbian woman”, is the first openly trans woman to stand for election in a national role. Lee is currently her students’ union’s vice president for welfare and community, and says she is “passionate” about equal rights.

There’s a Facebook page for her campaign.

“I never believed that running to be national women’s officer was a possibility,” she said in a Facebook post. “I felt that I had hit a glass ceiling. Now, I find myself in unchartered waters, and some shards of that glass ceiling will undoubtedly hit me.

“I know the Women’s Campaign is ready. I know NUS is ready. I’m not convinced that the rest of society is.”

I don’t see why it should be. Why not have a national trans people’s officer instead? Or two of them? I don’t think a trans woman should seek to represent women, because trans women don’t have the common or garden version of the experience of growing up female in a still sexist world. They have the experience of being trans, instead.

“But – when the transphobic ‘feminists’ come and try to tear me down, I will just fight harder and with the help of amazing activists we will show them, together, that the NUS Women’s Campaign demonstrates a progressive approach to inclusive feminism.”

The maths student’s pledges include fighting for a “statutory, gender neutral sex education” for students, decriminalisation of sex workers, and lobbying for a debate in parliament over tampon tax in SUs.

Lee accuses mainstream feminism of “constantly” forgetting about trans women, and says the NUS should be fighting for all women, “not just a few”.

She wants to be the women’s officer and the very first thing she does is bash feminism. What good is an anti-feminist women’s officer? She wants to be the women’s officer and she considers women to be “just a few”? She wants to be the women’s officer and she thinks women are some tiny trivial minority that doesn’t count?

This is where trans activism is right now: constantly bashing women and feminism, and demanding that feminism put trans women first. It doesn’t have to be that way, it never had to be that way, but that’s how it’s playing out. It’s sad and destructive and pathetic.

You probably saw about the meta-study of all the studies the other day that found – surprise! – that homeopathy is as worthless as it says on the tin. The guy who chaired it did so much meta-studying he got bored.

Professor Paul Glasziou, a leading academic in evidence based medicine at Bond University, was the chair of a working party by the National Health and Medical Research Council which was tasked with reviewing the evidence of 176 trials of homeopathy to establish if the treatment is valid.

A total of 57 systematic reviews, containing the 176 individual studies, focused on 68 different health conditions – and found there to be no evidence homeopathy was more effective than placebo on any.

Homeopathy is an alternative medicine based on the idea of diluting a substance in water.

According to the NHS: “Practitioners believe that the more a substance is diluted in this way, the greater its power to treat symptoms. Many homeopathic remedies consist of substances that have been diluted many times in water until there is none or almost none of the original substance left.”

But why would more water than there is in the known universe have power to treat symptoms? Unless the symptoms are all thirst, I suppose. But I don’t grasp the basic principle that more dilution equals more power. Dilution should make the power less, not more. If you dilute coffee it doesn’t make you more awake. I suspect a practical joke lasting centuries here.

Writing in a blog for the British Medical Journal, Professor Glasziou states:

“As chair of the working party which produced the report I was simply relieved that the arduous journey of sifting and synthesising the evidence was at an end.

“I had begun the journey with an ‘I don’t know attitude’, curious about whether this unlikely treatment could ever work… but I lost interest after looking at the 57 systematic reviews which contained 176 individual studies and finding no discernible convincing effects beyond placebo.”

Poor guy. It does sound deadly boring.

H/t Omar

This piece by Bailey Lamon, Why This Radical Leftist is Disillusioned by Leftist Culture, is being passed around. I certainly recognize the culture she’s talking about.

I’m tired of the cliques, the hierarchies, the policing of others, and the power imbalances that exist between people who claim to be friends and comrades. I am exhausted and saddened by the fact that any type of disagreement or difference of opinion in an activist circle will lead to a fight, which sometimes includes abandonment of certain people, deeming them “unsafe” as well as public shaming and slander. It is disgusting that we claim to be building a new world, a new society, a better way of dealing with social problems — but if a person makes a mistake, says and/or does something wrong, they are not even given a chance to explain their side of what happened because the process of conflict resolution is in itself driven by ideology rather than a willingness to understand facts. Actually, in today’s activist circles one is lucky to be given any sort of due process at all, while everyone is put under social pressure to believe everything they are told regardless of what actually occurred in a given situation. This is not freedom. This is not social justice. There is nothing “progressive” or “radical” about it, unless you are referring to fascism.

I would expand her description, because it’s not even limited to when “a person makes a mistake, says and/or does something wrong” – it also covers when a person says something perceived as wrong, like for instance when she dissents from a local bit of dogma that’s only been dogma for about five minutes and will probably be overturned by tomorrow. It also covers when the only mistake the person made was letting the policers into the room. It also covers when the person flatly refuses to believe things simply because someone said them. It covers a whole lot of situations that people have no business policing at all.