I did my Freethinker column about the death toll from theocratic murderers over the past few months. It’s not a very cheerful story.

Here’s Amnesty Italy, resisting the trend:

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

An NPR story from 2011:

During the Holocaust, Nazis referred to Jews as rats. Hutus involved in the Rwanda genocide called Tutsis cockroaches. Slave owners throughout history considered slaves subhuman animals. In Less Than Human, David Livingstone Smith argues that it’s important to define and describe dehumanization, because it’s what opens the door for cruelty and genocide.

“We all know, despite what we see in the movies,” Smith tells NPR’s Neal Conan, “that it’s very difficult, psychologically, to kill another human being up close and in cold blood, or to inflict atrocities on them.” So, when it does happen, it can be helpful to understand what it is that allows human beings “to overcome the very deep and natural inhibitions they have against treating other people like game animals or vermin or dangerous predators.”

Yes, but I think it can also be helpful to understand what it is that allows human beings to overcome the at least somewhat natural (in my view) inhibitions they have against treating sentient animals like…cartoon characters. Killing an animal quickly in order to eat it is one thing and torturing it for fun is quite another.

Human beings have long conceived of the universe as a hierarchy of value, says Smith, with God at the top and inert matter at the bottom, and everything else in between. That model of the universe “doesn’t make scientific sense,” says Smith, but “nonetheless, for some reason, we continue to conceive of the universe in that fashion, and we relegate nonhuman creatures to a lower position” on the scale.

Yes but we don’t want to torment sentient animals (in my view) even if we do see them as lower on a hierarchy of value, at least most of us don’t. We may want to use them and be indifferent to whatever discomfort and fatigue that costs them, but that’s some steps away from deliberately tormenting them.

Don’t mind me; I’m just collecting material.

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

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

In Chechnya…

A journalist has left the southern Russian republic of Chechnya amid fears for her safety, after writing that a teenage girl was being forced to marry a police commander much older than her.

Elena Milashina had written that the local police head, Nazhud Guchigov, had threatened reprisals against the girl’s family if she was not handed over.

The police commander was also said to be married to another woman.

Ms Milashina’s newspaper said she fled after her safety was threatened.

That’s an interesting style of “police head.” Sounds more like a crime boss.

Chechnya’s authoritarian leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a diehard loyalist of President Vladimir Putin, has in recent years outlawed the abduction of brides and underage marriage.

Although polygamy is banned under Russian law, reports say the Chechen leader is in favour of it.

He took to his Instagram account on Thursday to criticise Russian media coverage of “this fuss ordered by some liberals”.

“The girl’s parents gave their blessing to this marriage,” he claimed, arguing that reports to the contrary were filled with lies.

That’s nice, but what about the girl herself? She’s not a power tool, to be loaned back and forth as long as the owner is happy with the arrangement.

Elena Milashina was said to have visited the girl’s village of Baytarki on Thursday, but then left Chechnya after being warned by police officers from Siberia of a potential threat to her safety from Chechen police.

The Chechen interior ministry said it was “extremely surprised” by the alleged threat and accused the reporter of acting provocatively by entering people’s homes in the village.

Right. Just the way Avijit Roy and Washiqur Rahman and Ananta Bijoy Das “acted provocatively” by writing down their opinions about religion. How dare a journalist go to a place and talk to people there?

Oh well, I’m sure the police chief deserves a nice tight teenager.

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

Mediaite also wrote about Shauna Hunt’s encounter with the pussy-fanciers, with some new (to me) information.

Last fall, female journalists at the CBC penned an op-ed calling for the end of “FHRITP” pranks, calling them “violent and offensive” and saying those who engage in them suggest “that a woman who is doing what can be a pretty serious and intellectually rigorous job can be reduced to simply a sexual object which can be taken at will.”

Of course, less than four months later, a man pretending to be a Delta passenger did just that to none other than MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell.

How did I miss this for so long?!

So, back to November last year.

Even though the first one was a hoax, the phrase “fuck her right in the pussy” has turned into a meme in and of itself, with people shouting it during news broadcasts, in the middle of sports broadcasts, even placing it on signs.

However, they’ve also screamed the phrase at female journalists, two of whom spoke out today against the prank, calling it unoriginal and threatening towards women.

Reporter Morgan Dunlop wrote an op-ed for the CBC, which tastefully edited the phrase to “FHRITP”, arguing that it intimidated women and would hurt their careers:

You are not advancing an organic movement. You are copying what one guy set up as a spoof. We can see your face and hear your voice and so can your girlfriend, your sister, your mother, your daughter.

It’s not funny. It makes women feel uncomfortable. You make women feel uncomfortable.

But that of course is the goal. That’s what makes it “funny.”

The op-ed for the CBC seems to be the video I posted yesterday, of several reporters including one man saying what a crappy idea the whole thing is.

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

Stewart on Facebook:

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

The Hindu reports on anger at the inaction of the Bangladesh government over this string of public murders.

The hacking of another blogger-activist to death in Bangladesh has set off a storm of criticism against Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, with noted author Taslima Nasreen saying people had “given up any expectation” that she would act against the killers.

…

In an exclusive interview to The Hindu, Ms. Nasreen said the “killings prove that the Hasina government isn’t taking action against the groups that are targeting them because of votes. The government thinks if it arrests them they will be considered anti-Islam.”

While much of Mr. Das’ work was on scientific theories of evolution, he had also written a poem eulogising Ms. Nasreen recently, in which he had praised her for “not compromising on feminist principles” despite death threats issued against her over two decades.

Protesting the murder, activists of Shahbagh Gonojagoron Mancha, the group Mr. Das headed, took out a procession and held a rally at Dhaka’s Shahbagh. They also condemned the repeated killings of the bloggers and free thinkers and blamed the murder on the government’s failure to arrest attackers and hold trials.

And the government looked fixedly in another direction.

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

How does cruelty and sadism get normalized?

Another passage from the “Humanitarian Revolution” chapter of Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature –

Warning: torture, again

But the practical function of cruel punishments was just a part of their appeal. Spectators enjoyed cruelty, even when it served no judicial purpose. Torturing animals, for instance, was just good clean fun.

In 16th-century Paris, a popular form of entertainment was cat-burning,

warning

in which a cat was hoisted in a sling on a stage and slowly lowered into a fire. [p 145]

He goes on, but I yanked my eyes away after the first words; no way I’m going to type them.

Yet people watched it for amusement.

How does this work?

On me it produces a visceral, unavoidable flinching, accompanied by some mild shock-like symptoms.

Now, I’m not a particularly delicate flower. I’m not reporting my reaction to boast of my great sensitivity, because I don’t think my level of sensitivity is at all unusual. I think it’s just normal.

I’ve tried mentally substituting a less charismatic animal, but it doesn’t make much difference.

The explanation is reasonably clear in the case of psychopaths, but they’re a small minority, so that doesn’t help.

There are explanations of how it works when people have to do it in one sense or another – at gunpoint or because they’re part of a disciplined organization and the like, but that doesn’t explain recreational torture-spectating.

I’ve never understood the appeal of bullfights and dog fights and cock fights.

I don’t understand how people can hack a helpless unarmed human being to death with machetes.

I don’t know how this works.

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

City News put together a collection of tv reporters talking about the “Fuck her right in the pussy” harassment they get. There are several women and even one man.

It’s such a peculiar phrase. It sounds like “punch her right in the mouth,” not like anything erotic. I guess that’s the point – it combines punch her right in the mouth with the sexual (but definitely not erotic) note. It does make you think…because it’s so hostile, and so obviously hostile, yet these shits say they think it’s funny. Why is hostility to women so normalized? Why is it so normalized that twisted fucks actually think it’s funny? Why would it be funny? If people kept shouting “kick him right in the head” at male reporters would anyone see it as funny? Would it become funny if it were “kick him right in the balls”? It wouldn’t, would it; it would just be weird. But shouting “Fuck her right in the pussy” at women doing their jobs, that’s seen as funny.

It’s bizarre. I’ll never understand it.

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

Originally a comment on Oh but it’s so hilarious.

Shawn Simoe, the now ex-Hydro One assistant network engineer (he was paid $106,510 last year; hardly the wage of a peon, stevewatson), is perfectly free to engage in whatever manner of behaviour, public or otherwise, that he wishes, but cannot reasonably expect to do so without risk of negative consequence.

The fact that this apparently didn’t occur to him or his buddies before engaging in on-air sexual harrassment apologetics speaks volumes about the way women are socialized to put up with endless crap in the interest of “getting along” or “being nice” or “having a sense of humour”.

No one, not Hydro One or any other employer, is obligated to employ someone so lacking in judgment or knowledge of acceptable social behaviour as this guy apparently is; as someone pointed out upthread, his unrepentant public behaviour suggests he’s a sexual harassment lawsuit waiting to happen.

More background on the FHRITP meme; according to Mediaite, it started as a hoax by some sleazy guy trying to start a meme in order to sell t-shirts.

(don’t read the comments; it’s full of people insisting it’s hilarious, free speech, people complaining suck the fun out of life, defense of liberty, etc., etc.)

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

Say what?

A blog post by Lilly Rockwell at the Austin Statesman (Austin, Texas, this is).

The newly-elected 10-member City Council, plus the mayor, is the first majority female City Council in Austin’s history, with seven women and four men.

But apparently this represented such a huge change in governance that the city manager’s office thought the city staff who regularly interact with the City Council needed extra training – in the form of a two-hour training session in March with two speakers from Florida – on how to talk to a female-dominated City Council after decades of rule by men.

How…to…talk? Because what, they would all probably burst into tears? Give birth? Pass out Tampax samples?

The first speaker was Jonathan K. Allen, who was a city manager of the relatively small Lauderdale Lakes, Florida. Allen was considered an expert in this field because his local city commission was all-female.

Well thank god they called in a man who is an expert on the subject. Naturally it’s only men who are intelligent and thoughtful enough to probe this difficult issue. Remind him to put the gloves on.

His advice included:

• Women ask lots of questions. He learned a valuable lesson on communicating with women from his 11-year-old daughter, who peppered him with questions while they were on the way to volleyball. “In a matter of 15 seconds, I got 10 questions that I had to patiently respond to,” Allen said. Allen says female City Council members are less likely to read agenda information and instead ask questions. He says it’s tempting to just tell them to read the packet, but “my daughter taught me the importance of being patient” even when they may already know the answer to the question.
• Women don’t want to deal with numbers. Allen said in his city they used to have background information and financial analysis on the front pages of agenda forms. Allen says he normally would have presented the financial argument, but that his female commissioners would balk and say “Mr. Manager, I don’t want to hear about the financial argument, I want to hear about how this impacts the whole community.” He said that it may make good financial sense, but if he wants to get the votes, he has to present his arguments “in a totally different way.”

And again I say, thank god they got an expert. Imagine, a non-expert would have no idea how to extrapolate from a conversation with his daughter to all women everywhere. That takes years and years of training.

The city also brought along Dr. Miya Burt-Stewart, who owns a business development and marketing firm, to offer some training, and her session touched on the “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” philosophy:

• Openly acknowledge gender differences. Burt-Stewart says the author of the “Men are from Mars” book says men act on facts, women act on emotion. She also share such insights such as “Men have egos, women have wish lists,” and that men are more likely to use a “dominating” management style than women, who use a “compromising” style. Men think women ask too many questions, Burt-Stewart said, and women often don’t feel included. Men like acknowledgement, women want to be part of a team. Men, typically, communicate less often than females, she said.

Men like to shout “fuck her right in the pussy!” on the street, and women like not to be shouted at on the street. I can expert too.

But after watching this training session (you can watch the video of the session yourselfhere), I couldn’t help but wonder: Is it sexist to make these generalizations about women, or is there something to the idea that women do process decisions differently?

I reached out to Emily Amanatullah, who studies gender issues and is an assistant professor of management at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas, to help sort this out. “At the outset, it definitely feels archaic, like ‘The women are usually in the kitchen, how do we deal with them now that they have power,’ ” Amanatullah said. “It does reek of old norms and often it’s called benevolent sexism – they are not putting women down, but they are in a way.”

And she said it’s basically bullshit – I mean, she said there’s not much research that etc etc etc. On the other hand there’s one thing –

Amanatullah did agree with one point that Allen made – women do tend to ask more questions. There is research that indicates that women communicate differently, and they are less likely to assert themselves in a group context or meeting, and are more likely to ask a question “as a way to get their voice heard. in a non-threatening, non-aggressive way,” she said.

Hey, you know what? Maybe just maybe that’s nothing to do with What Makes Women So Weird but is rather that getting constantly talked over and interrupted at best, and put down hard at worst, trains women to find ways to get a motherfucking word in edgewise.

Also, asking more questions is a good thing, and it’s certainly a huge improvement on people who make confident assertions without having a clue what the hell they’re talking about.

Or maybe that’s just me. That was your seminar in how to talk to me for today.

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

Originally a comment by cuervocuervo on Oh but it’s so hilarious.

Yelling ‘fire’ in a theater is freeze peach innit?

What the men were caught on video doing and being unrepentant about is also up for legal review by the police. Whatever their drunken intent, it’s being seen as a public safety issue. I can’t imagine why, when men’s hilarity results from exploiting a woman’s objectified presence for media infamy; after all, it wasn’t about her at all, it was about their own amusement and team bonding after enjoying a sporting event. Because when a lone woman is zoomed and yelled at by strange men, who might also physically grab at her and her equipment, that’s just a joke. No harm done. No hyper vigilance built and psychological assault involved.

And ppffft, multiply to several times a day in public for the woman? She’s over-reacting to being a pissing post for strangers who care more for their own bravado than the humanity of people around them. The question also arises how many women who don’t have a camera handy while out in public are getting this done to them? He-larious putting that stunned and likely scared look onto a woman’s face, anytime, anywhere.

Yeah, take that ‘tude back to work and expect co-operation and trust from your fellow employees. Tell the story around the coffee machine. Walk that role modeling.

There’s been at least one instance of this being yelled at a male reporter and people using that weak excuse as it not being misogynist. Oddly, what was yelled was not “fuck him right in the ass.” Is that not as funny? We keep getting told that there are many more male reporters out there doing shoots, so are we going to hear about the overwhelming times this has been done to interrupt their work? Or, for some reason, has the “humour” been disproportionately aimed at female reporters?

Meanwhile, the White Ribbon Campaign is taking the Toronto reporter incident as a teaching awareness opportunity and is now teaming up with the MLSE owners of the stadium where this specific incident happened; building antimisogyny and anti-harrassment space and profile.

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

Guest post by Leo Igwe.

The murder of a secular blogger in Bangladesh, Ananta Bijoy Das, is yet another demonstration of the growing threat of Islam-based phobia in the contemporary world. This is a stark reminder of the dangers which freethinking, atheist, secular writers and critics of religion face not only in Bangladesh, but in many countries around the globe.

Ananta is the third blogger linked to a freethought blog site Mukto Mona to be killed in Bangladesh in the past four months. Avijit Roy, a Bangladeshi born US writer, was murdered in February. He was attacked along with his wife who sustained serious injuries.

Washiqur Rahman was murdered in March. Islamic militants are suspected to be behind these horrific attacks and killings. An extremist group, Ansar al-Islam , has claimed responsibility for the murder of Ananta. The police have arrested two men identified as students of the Madrassas in connection with the murder of Rahman.

These bloggers were reportedly targeted and killed because they have in their writings taken on religious extremism, particularly Islamic fundamentalism in their country.

My question is: What is wrong in challenging religious fundamentalism in Bangladesh? Is it not important that we tackle Islamic fanaticism before it consumes us? Why should people be killed for criticizing Islam? Is Islam now more valuable than human life? Why should some Muslims deem it justified to take the lives of other people just because they wrote or drew something which they found offensive or objectionable? Writing or drawing something does not kill, does it? Do Muslim extremists and their sympathisers think they can live in a world where they are not offended by what some people write, draw or say?

If we are to rid the world of Islam-based phobia and abuses then Islamic religious practices must be criticized, Islamic teachings must be questioned. The Quran must be critically examined. If we are to achieve the much needed intellectual awakening in Islamic societies, if we are to realize a new enlightenment in the ‘Islamic world’ then Islamic texts and doctrines have to be critically analysed.

The Madrassas school project must be revised to reflect 21st century educational values, so that these ‘schools’ begin to produce and graduate students with cutting edge ideas of how to make the world a better and more peaceful place to live for all humans, both those who confess and those who criticisize Islam, not a breeding ground for extremists and jihadists, of merchants of death and destruction in the name of Allah.

Today a lot of atrocities are being committed in the name of Islam, in the name of Mohammad; should we allow them to continue? Should those issues not be critiqued and evaluated in the light of reason, science and freedom of inquiry? Like the Christian Bible, the Quran and the Hadith contain provisions that sanctify violence and murder of those adjudged blasphemers or insulters of Islam, those categorized as unbelievers or apostates.

Is it not high time Muslims started disregarding these hateful passages for the sake of intellectual and moral progress of their societies and the world at large?

It is important to state that Islam like all other faiths is a human phenomenon. Islam is a product of human thought. Like every human creation, Islam has its shortcomings and limitations as a moral guide for human beings. Muslims should begin to see those who highlight these shortcomings and limitations, those who denounce the dark side of Islam, as champions of Islamic reformation, as ‘friends’ not enemies of Islam, who should be protected, not killed.

Yes, criticizing Islam should not be a form of death sentence in Bangladesh or anywhere in the world.

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

An exciting conference this weekend in Melbourne.

13 human beings, and 3 crude dolls.

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

Wow. I did not know this was a thing. Now thanks to screechymonkey I do. Men hang around where women are reporting a story for tv news so that they can shout into the camera “fuck her in the pussy!” Because hey, if a woman has the brass-plated nerve to try to do an actual job and be out in public and everything, what is there to do but remind her she’s just a gash?

The tv journalist Shauna Hunt made an issue of it when she was reporting on fans at a recent Toronto FC game.

Watch and be amazed. They’re so pleased with themselves, so brimming with confidence, so contemptuous of Shauna Hunt, so scornful of the idea that men shouldn’t publicly degrade women doing their jobs.

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

Note that she says it happens to her every day, ten times a day.

The Globe and Mail reports on the aftermath.

Within the span of just one business day, a video showing two men defending the sexual harassment of CityNews reporter Shauna Hunt at a Toronto FC game went viral, the online profiles of the men were posted on social media by internet sleuths and their employers were forced to address what happened – one firing their employee, the other promising to “address” the situation.

I’m not sure I think the guy should have been fired…On the other hand if I worked with him I would probably think it was a great idea. Once he got his face on tv being a complete unrepentant sexist shit, he became a liability.

Like thousands before him, a man at a Toronto FC game thought it would be amusing to interrupt a TV reporter doing a live hit Sunday by making an extremely obscene comment to the camera, a prank that’s become common in the past few years. When others nearby laughed and confessed to planning to do the same stunt, Ms. Hunt confronted them about the “disrespectful” and “degrading” phrase.

“Why is it so funny?” she implores one.

He replies cheerfully that the comment is “hilarious” and “amazing.”

When Ms. Hunt asks him how his mother would feel about his actions, he says with a smile: “My mom will die laughing eventually.”

Not quite; before she finished her question he threw his head back laughing and then said that.

A few hours after the video had circulated online, that man, a Hydro One employee, was fired.

“Hydro One is taking steps to terminate the employee for violating our Code of Conduct,” Hydro One spokesman Daffyd Roderick said in a statement. “Respect for all people is ingrained in the code and our values. We are committed to a work environment where discrimination or harassment of any type is met with zero tolerance.”

But he wasn’t at work at the time.

No, but he was in public, and he was hanging around the reporter in hopes of saying “fuck her in the pussy!” on camera, and he expressed enthusiasm for the hilarity of doing that. It wasn’t going to be a secret from his co-workers. He made himself an issue.

In the past, employees could only be punished for behaviour outside the office if it directly hurt an employment relationship or impacted their employer in some way, says Stuart Rudner, a partner at the employment law firm Rudner MacDonald LLP. But because of social media, an employee can still face the wrath of their employer, even if their inappropriate statements are unrelated to their workplace.

“That’s what we’re seeing more and more of now: people going online and making … offensive comments, and if it’s possible to identify where they work, it can impact the employer and therefore lead to discipline,” Mr. Rudner said.

He referenced a 2012 case in which a Toronto man lost his job after posting a hateful comment on a memorial Facebook page for teenager Amanda Todd, who killed herself after suffering years of bullying. A woman reading the page identified the man’s employer as Mr. Big and Tall and sent them a message, which prompted them to fire the man.

Social media for a lot of people is a tool to unleash their ids, their worst nastiest most aggressive selves. But social media is* also a record of those selves, and the selves don’t always remain anonymous.

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne also jumped into the fray, sending a tweet praising CityNews for airing Ms. Hunt’s footage and condemning workplace sexual harassment.

While the two men shut down their Facebook and LinkedIn accounts on Tuesday, they weren’t quick enough. Some who were outraged by their actions quickly harvested photos and information about them and their employers from their profiles earlier in the day and shared them on Twitter, tagging the Hydro One and Cognex corporate accounts, asking if the companies planned to take action. With pressure mounting, both companies released statements before the end of the business day.

“It’s all about public relations,” Mr. Rudner said. “They obviously thought it was in their best interest – not necessarily from a legal perspective, but from a PR perspective – to deal with it expeditiously.”

Social media=a double-edged sword.

* Or are, but I’m treating “social media” as one thing here.

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

One of the people on Sunday’s The Big Question was an Anglican vicar, Lynda Rose, who erupted in fury when Peter Tatchell answered the question (have human rights laws achieved more for mankind than religion?) by saying that religions are mostly opposed to human rights. Rose said the familiar bullshit about how the very idea of human rights rests entirely on “the Judaeo-Christian” whatever and without that we wouldn’t have shit for human rights. It’s because with the Bible we get humans in the image of god, you see.

I was thinking she was a liberal vicar, I suppose because she’s a woman and we know conservative Anglicans don’t like no stinkin’ women vicars – but also because she comes across as that kind of happy-clappy goddy liberal type. But I looked her up and oh gosh no not at all. Here‘s Barry Duke, editor of the Freethinker, on the vic in 2012, in an article on ads on London buses for “gay cures.”

Attempts to “treat” or alter sexual orientation have been strongly condemned by leading medical organisations. The Royal College of Psychiatrists has warned that “so-called treatments of homosexuality create a setting in which prejudice and discrimination flourish” and concluded in 2010:

There is no sound evidence that sexual orientation can be changed.

The dotty Rev Lynda Rose, a spokesperson for the UK branch of Anglican Mainstream, said her group adhered to scripture that all fornication outside marriage is prohibited and believed that homosexuals were:

Not being fully the people God intended us to be.

She said therapies endorsed by Anglican Mainstream and Core Issues were not coercive and were appropriate for people who wanted to change their sexual attractions, for example if they were married and worried about the impact of a “gay lifestyle” on their children.

But if humans are made in the image of god, that includes gay humans, doesn’t it?

Anyway. I wonder how people manage to believe that. Do they have no idea how the church carried on for most of its history?

Steven Pinker starts Chapter 4 of The Better Angels of our Nature, “The Humanitarian Revolution,” with a look at medieval torture. He describes the tools and what they did in frank detail.

Warning: torture.

A description of the Judas Cradle and nine other items:

The Judas Cradle, also known as Judas chair, was a torture device invented in 16.th century Spain. During this torture, the criminal was first positioned in the waist harness above the sharp, pyramid-shaped seat. The point was then inserted into anus or vagina of the person, and then the person was slowly lowered by a system of ropes.

The Inquisitions used torture. It wasn’t religion that gradually caused people to stop doing that, it was a secular revolution in ideas.

Early Christianity, Pinker says, loved torture and cruelty – it was how you got martyrs. Martyrs are fabulous, and therefore so is torture.

By sanctifying cruelty, Christianity set a precedent for more than a millennium of systematic torture in Christian Europe.

Lynda Rose hasn’t got a clue.

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

Swedish PEN has demanded an explanation from the Swedish embassy in Dhaka.

Swedish PEN demands a response from the Swedish Embassy in Dhaka following Tuesday’s murder of the author and blogger Ananta Bijoy Dash

“You belong to a category of applicants where there is always a risk involved when granting a visa that you will not leave Schengen area after the visit. Furthermore, the purpose of your trip is not urgent enough to grant you visa.” (From the visa refusal of the Swedish Embassy in Dhaka)

More than a month ago Swedish PEN invited the Bangladeshi author and blogger Ananta Bijoy Dash to Stockholm to speak about the deteriorating situation in Bangladesh for journalists and writers, a topic that has become highly actual after the brutal murders of blogger Washiqur Rahman and writer Avijit Roy earlier in March.

PEN’s invitation followed the standard procedure used when representatives of the international press and defenders of freedom of expression are invited to meetings or events within the framework of PEN’s extensive program activities. For Ananta Bijoy Dash, the theme of the meeting which was to take place on May 3 in Stockholm in conjunction with the commemoration of World Press Freedom Day, was inseparably linked with the reality he lived in as a secular blogger in a Bangladesh where extremism is increasingly on the rise. According to Swedish PEN, this made him uniquely suited to talk about these issues.But the Swedish Embassy in Dhaka refused to issue the visa required for him to visit Sweden.

Today we have received the news that Ananta has been brutally murdered.

This news has been received with great sadness and it has raised many questions.

To understand we need to look back at the decision that the Swedish Embassy in Dhaka sent after they rejected his visa application which he forwarded in his email to the Swedish PEN on the same day. In the final lines we read: “You belong to a category of applicants where there is always a risk involved when granting a visa that you will not leave Schengen area after the visit. Furthermore, the purpose of your trip is not urgent enough to grant you visa.”

Following up on the encouragement from the Swedish PEN Ananta Bijoy Dash filed an appeal to the Swedish embassy’s decision. At the same time Swedish PEN wrote a letter to the Swedish Embassy requesting that the decision should be reviewed, with the explanation that we wanted to meet with Ananta Bijoy Dash even even if our meeting should be postponed. This should have been dealt with by the Migration Court in Gothenburg within the next few weeks.

But it was too late. Early on Tuesday morning Ananta Bijoy Dash was hacked to death by men armed with machetes when leaving his home for work in the town of Sylhet in northern Bangladesh. He never got the opportunity to tell his and the others’ story for his Swedish colleagues on World Press Freedom Day.

It is our duty to know why.

Swedish PEN therefore demands a detailed and credible explanation of why the Swedish Embassy in Dhaka chose not to grant Ananta Bioy Dash the visa he needed to fulfill the Swedish PEN’s invitation to speak in Stockholm –  a invitation that would have guaranteed his stay in Stockholm as Swedish PEN’s guest for two weeks upon his arrival, that was supposed to happen last weekend, and which could have ensured that he would still be here with us today.

Translation from Swedish: Bojan Lazic

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

The IHEU tells the terrible story of the refusal by the Swedish embassy in Dhaka to give Ananta Bijoy Das a visa to travel to Sweden for a conference.

Ananta had been on a list of atheist bloggers produced by Islamist political parties in 2013. They demanded a death penalty for ‘blasphemy’, and since then several writers on the list have been murdered, always by machete attack. Ananta was also named on a new hit list in March [Bangla] in connection with a group called Ansarullah Bangla Team.

Ananta wrote to IHEU at the time:

“It seems to me I am one of the targets . I am not sure how long I will hide myself. But I am sure If they will find me they will do what they did with Mr. Avijit Roy. My life is seriously unsecured . I am not sure how can I protect myself & my family.”

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International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) statement (12 May 2015):

Each of these murders is a crushing loss to the humanist and secularist communities of South Asia and the world.

IHEU condemns this murder in the strongest possible terms, as well as the failures of the Bangladeshi authorities to bring to justice the individuals and to break the networks behind this string of targeted killings. Whether from apathy, or incompetence, or intimidation, the police and government are utterly failing Bangladeshi humanist, atheist and secularist writers, thinkers and activists.

Ananta Bijoy Das had reached out to us at IHEU following the murders of Avijit and Washiqur. Accepting the very serious threat to this life, we advised Ananta in trying to make the difficult move out of danger. However, we have been informed that his application for a visa to travel to Sweden, under invitation from Swedish PEN, was rejected last week by the Swedish embassy in Dhaka, on the basis that he might seek to remain in Sweden.

We call on all countries to recognise the legitimacy and sometimes the urgency and moral necessity of asylum claims made by humanists, atheists and secularists who are being persecuted for daring to express those views.

And that includes you, Sweden.

Swedish PEN confirmed in a statement [Swedish] that they had invited Ananta to Sweden to talk about the threat to atheists in Bangladesh, but his visa application was refused, despite the clear and demonstrated mortal threat to atheist writers in Bangladesh, and despite the support of PEN for his visit. Swedish PEN demand:

“a detailed and credible explanation of why the Swedish Embassy in Dhaka chosen not to grant Ananta Bioy Dash the visa he needed to meet the Swedish PEN’s invitation to speak in Stockholm”

In the visa refusal letter seen by IHEU (sent by the Embassy of Sweden in Dhaka to Ananta Bijoy Das on 22 April 2015) the embassy notes among other considerations: “you are unmarried and you do not have any children”, as reason to consider the applicant not “well established in Bangladesh”, therefore:

…you have not made it likely that the purpose of the journey is only for a short visit for a meeting and not settlement there. You belong to a category of applicants where there is always a risk involved when granting a visa that you will not leave Schengen area after the visit.

Furthermore, the purpose of your trip is not urgent enough to grant you visa. With regards to this and different circumstances in your case as well as different visa regulations you do not fulfil the requirements for a visa. Your application is therefore rejected.

Can you believe that? He belonged “a category of applicants where there is always a risk involved when granting a visa that you will not leave Schengen area after the visit” – meaning, presumably, he knew his motherfucking life was in danger – so that’s why they wouldn’t let him go there.

It’s a horror.

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

I need relief from the misery of today, and so perhaps do you.

Curiosity Rover sent back pictures of a sunset. Yes sunset as seen from another planet. Sunset as seen from Mars.

Do admit.

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