An interesting comment at PZ’s by Keith Monaghan.

Irish Atheist here. I used to be a supporter and paying member of Atheist Ireland until all this went down and Nugent went off the rails. He has poisoned the entire organisation with his willingness to defend abusers and provide a forum to known harassers. Not to mention his embarrassing brown nosing of our great “thought leaders” Dawkins, et al. It’s a real shame because many in Atheist Ireland have been doing great work regarding raising awareness about our ridiculous blasphemy law and the overwhelming control of our schools by the Catholic Church among a great many other abuses committed in the name of religion.

But just as the charitable acts of the Catholic Church do not outweigh the many abuses it allowed and in many ways fostered under its watch, AI does not get off the hook either. With the organisation choosing to side with Nugent in all this I had to question their commitment towards fighting against sexism and abuse within our community and for the well-being of atheists in general.

Do they only care about sexism and harassment when it comes to achieving their goals against religion only to turn a blind eye when it happens within our own community? I suspect that they do care but are unaware (and possibly unwilling to see) how their recent actions call that into question. The blind hypocrisy from an organisation, and from Nugent in particular, that has criticised the church for its culture of silence and abuse is rather appalling.

So when it came time for my membership to be renewed I emailed them asking that I be taken off their membership lists and I cited Michael Nugent’s behaviour and how it reflects on AI as my reason for leaving. Given Nugent’s insistence on professionalism and maintaining the right tone you will be shocked by the nature of the response I got from their head of Membership, Kevin Sheehan… Or more likely you won’t be shocked at all.

Basically all I got was this quote from the Chair of the UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva:

Then there remain the many social issues that have been raised by colleagues. The Magdalene laundries, the Mother and Baby homes, the child abuse, the symphysiotomy. It is quite a collection, and it is a collection that has carried on beyond any period that it is hard to imagine any State Party tolerating.
And I can’t prevent myself from observing that all of them are not disconnected from the institutional belief system that has predominated in the State Party, and which occasionally has sought to dominate the State Party.

… and a link to a related article on the AI website.

And that’s it.

There was no attempt to address my concerns or even acknowledge that I had any in the first place. No confirmation that my membership had been ended at my request. No “We’re sorry to see you go”. Just the quote and link that, to my mind, clearly implies (whether through simple foolishness or malicious design) that, by discontinuing my support, I no longer care about those horrendous injustices. As though AI is the only organisation fighting for justice in those cases.

I find it very difficult to believe the message was a good faith attempt to change my mind (how could anyone think think something as dismissive and insulting as that would bring me back into the fold?). Rather I suspect that it was a pathetically childish (not to mention wholly unprofessional) attempt to have the last word. It only served to confirm my initial conclusions about the organisation and my decision to leave.

It would be great if they could clean up their act. That we need coordinated efforts to root out religious privilege and abuses in this country is without question but I am not prepared to sacrifice my fellow atheists’ well being as well as my own integrity in the pursuit of such and it saddens me that AI has seemingly chosen to do so.

It is sad.

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

Nick Cohen looks at the way Lutfur Rahman exploited leftwing ideas to protect his own personal power.

[H]e rigged the vote by using “undue spiritual influence”, an accusation unheard of in a British court since the 19th century. Rahman persuaded clerics to go far beyond saying they thought he was the best candidate. Islam is under threat, they said in so many words. It was the duty of all Muslims to vote for Rahman. If Bangladeshi voters did not, they would be siding with their Islamophobic enemies, perhaps even defying god’s will.

We are used to thinking of racism as Nigel Farage or the Tory tabloids egging on their readers to see the Aids-afflicted foreigner as the enemy. Indeed, it often appears that this is the only way we can think about it. The mirror image is just as foul and its foulness reached a nadir in London. The worst of Rahman’s corruption was not the purloined money, but the way he corrupted leftwing values.

Anyone who criticised the mayor was a racist. When councillors said the mayor must answer questions, his supporters accused them of “racism”. When an opponent appeared at a meeting in a black cardigan – the poor woman was in mourning for her dead husband, incidentally – Rahman’s fixer roared that where once the East End had been terrorised by Blackshirts, it was now terrorised by Blackcardigans.

Nick won a big award last weekend. He’ll never let us forget it, either. It was the European Press Prize, Commentator division. Chiz chiz Nick.

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

Well so much for Labour.

From the Indy:

Labour leader Ed Miliband has said his party will make Islamophobia an aggravated crime, toughing existing hate crime legislation.

Mr Miliband also said that his party intended to ensure that instances of Islamophobia were marked on peoples’ records, in an interview with The Muslim Times.

Although Islamophobia already falls under the Racial and Religious Hatred Act of 2006, whereby it is punishable by up to seven years imprisonment, Mr Miliband’s proposal would allow authorities to hand down tougher sentences for similar crimes.

“We are going to make it an aggravated crime. We are going to make sure it is marked on people’s records with the police to make sure they root out Islamophobia as a hate crime,” he said.

Labour wants to make it an aggravated crime to dislike Islam.

Since we know that Islamists like to pin the label of “Islamophobia” on every kind of criticism of and disagreement with Islam, the prisons of Britain will be overflowing if Miliband is elected.

I saw this via Maajid Nawaz, who commented

Ed Miliband favours a ‘ban’ on “Islamophobia”.
My take: No idea is above scrutiny. No people are beneath dignity.

Quite. Discourage anti-Muslim bigotry by all means, but do not forbid us to dispute or criticize Islam.

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

Guest post by Simon Trepel, MD. He has more essays at Simon’s Creative Behavioural Therapy.

Truthfully, I probably would not have cared so much, about the shitty thing that Lubitz did, but I was literally stranded on a desert island, thousands of miles across the ocean from home, when he crashed the plane. Now, stranded is a relative term, the island was Hawaii, and I could only be less stranded while being on a desert island, if I was in Australia. But that is where I received the parcel of hate that he chose to deliver to my meme mailbox, that elephant part of your brain that never forgets, yet we call it the hippocampus. That would be a crowded university.And knowing that I needed to fly home, with my 2 daughters, ages 3 and 5, in less than a week, meant I was going to binge watch the entire miniseries, ping ponging between a fox, an spf, and a cnn.

And while it was a mystery on TV, for me, I knew early, why he splattered a plane, and 150 living, breathing, loving people, into a Jackson Pollock original, against the wall, of a new gallery of death. He loved to fly, and he hated to be sad. And, he loved what he loved, in his mind, more than you love what you love. He made the calculation that, since he could not complete his bucket list, neither could 150 people that contributed to his sadness in no way. So he exchanged a b for an f, and practiced relaxation exercises, so no one would think he was scared, for about 8 minutes.

There is no such thing as clinical depression. There is the depression your doctor diagnoses you with, and then there are the diagnoses we give ourselves. And it is different from sadness. Depression sucks, its worst feature is not the rewallpapering of your mind into a room you never want to be in, yet you are afraid to leave, because it’s even worse out there. The worst feature is, after a while, you want to die, but your body still thinks it’s its actual age. So then, you get suicidal. And here is where your personality finally gets a say. How do you want to kill yourself?

My first experience with suicide happened about 20 years ago, when my friend told me he came home to find his pilot father hanging in the bathroom, and my mind went blank after that. There are some sentences you hear in your life, cnacer is one of them, if you have read my only other essay since 1990, that act like instantaneous rohypnol is coursing through your brain. Once back online, I processed the story, learning that if you have depression, and you are a pilot, you are likely to lose your career. And if you have depression but it is well controlled on an antidepressant medication, you are likely to lose your career.

That, passengers, is the secret that they struggled with.

You may argue, that there are selfish sides to suicide, like there are selfish sides to suffering. There certainly are more and less selfish ways, in how you go about actually ending your life. I realize to him, the pressurized cockpit of the mask of happiness was becoming overwhelming. I see him that morning, sitting in his kitchen, drinking coffee on self appointed death row, shredding the doctor’s note excusing him from school that day. He has finished his homework, but he is still not good enough.

And, as he’s tearing the plane into little fragments, he’s thinking about the slaughter in its carriage, the meat luggage of strangers he does not care about. He is not enough of a man to be a pilot, as if gender matters, so saddling his daily resolve, he gives himself permission to be weak. The next domino is cowardice, and then tragedy.

It’s not Lubitz, but the mask, that we really have to worry about. The costume that helps us hide from the haunting stigma. We wear it so we are not judged, or perhaps have our very childhood dreams, that began gliding freely as a teenager, marvelling at more powerful engines, end up dashed like salt and pepper going 500km/h, on the side of a hill.

I want Marty McFly to appear, so we can go back, and I can talk to Lubitz, so we can all avoid this feeling of hate that he has projected into us, his last tantrum in a world where he did not get all the toys that he wanted, so he took his plane away. I want to know the shape of the face of the hero woodsman, more than I want to know Lubitz’s, even though the goods were never delivered. I want to meet all the people that he killed, and tell them not to fly that weekend, or to live their life like they are going to die at 35, or soon after 35000ft.

I want to plead with him not to usher down the aisle of his mind this villain, who is to take the final curtain call of his polymorphous perverse existence.

Not him, not now.

But what I really want to tell him, is that I know he was suffering alone. And that I know there are narcissistic aspects to depression, and even suicide. And that he does not have to lock himself in the cockpit of his life, but rather, stand up and say, I am a Pilot, and I have depression. And I don’t like how it steals my very ability to find joy and meaning in my life, so I have chosen to have it treated.

And if my doctor tells me that I need time off, to heal from an episode? Then, just like every other illness, I have that right, without the fear that my job, career or dream is up in the air.

Because I don’t want to be a suicidal Pilot.

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

Another “uh oh no you can’t make jokes about erm you know that one guy” episode, this time at the University of Bath.

[“]According to CWIPS” was the title of the performance that had the cramped, upstairs-corner of the Bath Brew House roaring with laughter. The show combined pop culture, Richard Dawkins, and the bestseller of all time – the Bible – to construct an amusingly witty performance. However, prior to the opening night, the society was met with some rather strong requests to edit the show.

…

[D]uring the opening week one of the SU officials quietly attended one of the rehearsals. Just four hours prior to opening night the committee of CWIPS was told that a sketch involving the depiction of the Prophet Mohammed titled ‘Cooking with Christ’ should be cut. “The SU couldn’t give more of an explanation,” recalls one of the members of the committee regarding the lack of justification given for the changes being made the show, especially on such short notice.

It became known that the Chaplaincy of the University had become involved in the decision making process of the SU. “We were told that the chaplaincy had read it and pronounced that sketch too graphic”, the committee member said, “we come under the authority of the SU, so whilst we don’t necessarily agree with what they asked us to cut we have to respect them as they are elected to their position, however the chaplaincy is not part of the SU.”

Why would a chaplain be vetting a student show?

Also, I frankly don’t understand the role of the SU in these things. I don’t think US universities have an equivalent – a student body that has the authority to censor student plays and sketches, authority that the students have to obey. I don’t see why being elected to their positions gives them authority to say “you can’t perform that sketch.”

The Chaplaincy claimed that the show would have caused “great offence” as the scenes that were cut were “extreme”, it was also added that “the concept of freedom of speech is important and should be respected”.

Spoken like a true chaplaincy.

During a conversation with the SU official, it was made clear that the decisions communicated to the CWIPS committee had been made so as to avoid complaints. Since the show was taking place in a public domain, the inclusivity of the Students’ Union had to be “maintained”.

“We worked very hard in order to make sure our material was enjoyable and pleasant for people of all faiths and backgrounds,” both members of CWIPS highlighted.

The freedom of expression is an important principle to maintain intact at university, especially regarding the arts. Even though the SU has had little experience with censorship of the arts at the University of Bath, the recognition that artistic expression is essential for students to feel free and creative needs to be maintained.

In other news…Kate Smurthwaite has just remarked on Facebook that she’s at QED to talk on a panel about free speech…

I was invited because of the issues raised by my show being cancelled at Goldsmiths because of my views on the sex trade. And – guess what – someone has complained I shouldn’t have been on the panel because of – wait for it – my views on the sex trade. You could not make this shit up!!

We live in interesting times.

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

More from Siobhan Heanue, because she’s a journalist (for ABC, the Oz one) and she was looking at temples when the earthquake hit, so she’s tweeting these heartrending photos.

12 hours ago there was this

LIVE on #Periscope: Patan Durbar Square Kathmandu Nepal https://www.periscope.tv/w/Vxxh_zkyNDU5fDcwMDA0MjN-CfrLnC9NHLD72y5BqYsxHoOM8DxADi3oiGWyFeAi9w== …

Then an hour later

Huge earthquake in Kathmandu. I’m terrified.

Locals dragged her into a cafe, she said, but she was still afraid; aftershocks.

Then the first photo

Devastation in patan. Kathmandu earthquake.

Then more photos

Kathmandu patan district. Old royal square devastated.

Looking for survivors:

Kathmandu quake aftermath. Clearing rubble to search for survivors.

She has lots more. Good luck to her.

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

Meanwhile in Nepal…

(I must say I was disgusted to go to Google News for earthquake news and find at the top of the page headlines about ten dead on Everest rather than the hundreds dead in Nepal. A little too katiehopkinsesque, that.)

CNN has accounts from people in Kathmandu.

Kashish Das Shrestha in Kathmandu

“Some of the historical sites are completely devastated.

“Most of the people — a lot of the people — are walking through the city. They’re confused and scared. A lot of people are crying.

“They’re out with their pets and their families and a lot of locals are volunteering in rescue operations.

“In several parts of Kathmandu, a lot of people seem trapped under the rubble. Locals are trying to rescue these people because they can still hear them.”

Journalist Kanak Mani Dixit, Kathmandu

“I see many cracked buildings and people are panicked and all running down to the streets.

“The main landmark in Kathmandu is a spire, Dharahara, and it has fallen down, it is about 140 feet high in the center city.

“Another aftershock is hitting now, it is really strong.

“Airplanes are circling now overhead and helicopters are flying and not clear if the airport is open. We hear it is damaged.”

And a pair of startling, tragic before and after photos via Siobhan Heanue on Twitter:

Siobhan Heanue ‏@siobhanheanue
I took these photos an hour apart. Was wandering when quake demolished temples before my eyes. Heartbreaking.

She reports there are crumbled temples all over the central area of Kathmandu.

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

I’ve seen the name Eboo Patel often in discussions of “interfaith” activities, but I haven’t (that I recall) read anything of his until now. He has a long piece at Religion Dispatches arguing that we should be more accommodating toward haredi men who refuse to sit next to women on airplanes. That’s where “interfaith” takes you, I guess. It’s where privileging “faith” over more reasonable and careful ways of thinking takes you.

He starts by pointing out that people often do change their seats to be helpful to others – parents traveling with children for instance.

The obvious question: why is exchanging seats on an airplane with a senior citizen, a mother with children or a uniformed veteran considered a noble gesture while doing the same for an Orthodox Jewish man viewed as acquiescing to patriarchal oppression?

Actually no, the question is not obvious at all. It’s obvious in this context only because Patel carefully set it up that way. The two kinds of situation are not comparable. Parents’ wanting to sit with their children is entirely reasonable, and understandable, and universalizable. Parents’ wanting to sit with their children is in no way prejudicial to anyone else – it’s not an expression of hostility or contempt or disgust toward people who are not their children. (There’s also the fact that parents don’t generally demand that other passengers accommodate them.)

Patel’s next move is to try to frame this conflict as identity politics.

I have found it interesting to look at this situation in light of the influential identity politics formulation that ‘the personal is political’. First advanced by women in the feminist movement, it now serves as a pretty good one-line definition of cultural progressivism more broadly. I have heard it referenced in arguments for everything from Ethnic Studies departments to LGBT safe spaces.

That the personal is political centers on two chief ideas: 1) that identities matter (the personal); and 2) that those identities express themselves in public forms (the political).

No. That’s a misunderstanding of the phrase – which I’m not convinced really is still all that influential. It’s more a second wave catchphrase, as far as I know. What it meant was that issues that affected women were not trivial merely because they were domestic or “personal” – that who washes the dishes is in fact political. I don’t recognize Patel’s version at all.

It was certainly the way many of those who commented on the Times story framed their views. As a woman (the personal), I interpret your request as patriarchal and will not move to accommodate it (the political). 

No. That’s just all wrong. Being a woman isn’t “personal” in that sense. Nobody ever talked about the Montgomery bus boycott or the sit-downs at lunch counters as “the personal is political.” He’s confused.

Women have long been marginalized by men. A man asking a woman to move on a flight may reasonably be interpreted as another chapter in a seemingly never-ending story.

I am sympathetic to such a view. But haven’t Orthodox Jews experienced a long history of oppression? As far as who feels marginalized in the specific context of a typical commercial flight, consider that separation of sexes is far more common in traditional religious environments. Does the Orthodox Jewish man have a case that secular modernity is marginalizing his identity, and that all those comfortable with the current system are complicit in his marginalization?

No, and neither do racists who “feel marginalized” in the specific context of a typical bus or plane trip in which they do not get to demand segregated seating. We’ve been over this. Plessy v Ferguson. Brown v Board of Education. Separate but equal turns out to be not equal. We’ve been over this, decades ago. Try to keep up. We don’t need to re-litigate this every time a haredi man gets on an airplane. We need to not do that.

Perhaps the central difference is that religion is a choice. One cannot help being a woman but one can choose not to be the kind of Jew who refuses to sit next to women. But cultural progressivism has long defined identity based not on straightforward physical features such as skin color or genitalia but on assigned meaning. A core value of the cultural progressive worldview is that people get to select the identities that matter to them and assign the meaning they choose.

Oh no it isn’t. Oh hell no. Not in the sense that people get to do that and then deploy those “identities” as the foundations for rights to push other people around. Nope nope nope.

For example, cultural progressives frequently advocate for minority ethnic groups to speak their native languages or dialects if they wish, and dress and wear their hair in ways that are meaningful and comfortable for them. It seems to me the Orthodox Jewish man on the plane can make the same argument. Just like the African American who chooses to wear an afro and the woman who does not shave her legs—both common expressions of the personal as political—he is assigning a particular meaning to his identity as a Jew. It just so happens that the expression of the meaning he assigns to his religious identity is in conflict with the meaning that the woman sitting in the airline seat assigns to her gender.

Give me strength. No it doesn’t “just so happen” – the difference is crucial. The haredi man’s demand for segregated seating is not comparable to choices about hair (what bizarre examples!), because it’s a demand for other people to do something for him. The haredi man gets to wear whatever he wants to (within reason – clothes with sharp spikes won’t do on sardine-can airplanes), just as Afro guy and hairy-legs woman do. None of them gets to control who sits where.

Then he goes on to an extended and annoying bleat about the putative marginalization of religion from all this identity-mongering, and how unfair it is. It’s not persuasive.

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

Originally a comment by latsot on Actual dehumanization.

As awful as Hopkins is, the UK media are at least equally to blame (I’d argue they more to blame than Hopkins herself) for all her hateful nonsense. I don’t just mean outlets like The Sun. If anything, the more liberal outlets are even more complicit.

Hopkins has set herself up as a professional troll: professional with a capital P. According to an article I now can’t find, she has a team of people scouring news stories and (it’s presumed) coming up with the objectionable responses they can think of, which are then announced by Hopkins. Media outlets call her office for a rent-a-bigot quote. I wouldn’t be surprised if they called several times a day, regardless of whether they’re working on an article then building an article about whatever fresh horrible opinion she has on something.

One article about her is by a reporter who followed her about for a day. She was due to appear on the wishy-washy mid-morning show This Morning to say blithering things about some issue of the day. She and her staff met with the producers and presenters (and presumably lawyers) of that show and they discussed what she’d be saying. The presenters then feigned outrage on screen at what they’d earlier agreed she would say.

This is the very archetype of manufactured outrage. Her statements are cheap and guaranteed to sell so Hopkins caters to lazy journalists. They get to say awful things that they know will hurt people and blame someone else. It’s a great deal for them.

I don’t know (or much care) whether Hopkins really holds the views she announces. It doesn’t make her any less horrible if she doesn’t. But the press ought to be even more ashamed than she.

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

A Catholic girls’ school in Croydon is telling students a bunch of bullshit about what secks will do to them.

Students at a Catholic girls’ school have been warned that sex outside marriage can “destroy their soul” and “make their bodies sick”.

The “warnings” were handed out to 17 and 18-year-olds during a Sixth Form talk at Coloma Convent Girls’ School, in Shirley, Croydon.

Leaflets handed out during a personal, social and health education session (PSHE) warned that condoms and the morning-after pill put people “at risk” and make them “isolated”.

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

One way to make a point about vaccinations…

That was posted on Facebook by an Australian anti-vax group. The SMH reports
:

It is not the first time the group has made the same comparison. In a tweet in January 2011, the group compared a court ordering a five-year-old girl to be vaccinated to “court orders rape of a child”.

Almost immediately, supporters of the group expressed their disgust, with one commentator, Rachelle Taylor, posting: “This is disgusting. Are you saying you believe your child being immunised is as bad as your child being raped? This could also be very triggering for victims of sexual assault.”

The group responded to one comment on its page, defending its decision to liken vaccines to sexual assault.

“This post isn’t tasteless – it is honest. What truly IS tasteless is our elected government trying to tell us that we have to vaccinate our children even if we don’t believe it is best for their health,” the group said.

Right. What if you believed rape was best for your children’s health? How tasteless would it be if the government told you you couldn’t do that.

In January, a nation-wide lecture tour from American anti-vaccine doctor Sherri Tenpenny was cancelled after pressure from doctors and medical groups forced most venues to cancel their bookings for the lectures. The AVKN has strongly supported her aborted tour.

The group was forced to change its name from the ‘Australian Vaccination Network’ over repeated claims the name was misleading.

The New South Wales Fair Trading Department received complaints about its name, with the Australian Medical Association stating it sounded like it could be a government agency.

Despite challenging a direction to change its name, the Administrative Decisions Tribunal forced the group to find a new title.

Oh yes? The Facebook group is still called that.

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

Zoe Williams wrote a good piece about Katie Hopkins on Sunday (which no doubt Brendan O’Neill would call a bad piece, because what she says is so literal and unparadoxical). Hopkins’s piece was two days before that, then came the capsized ship on Sunday, then Williams’s piece.

The controversialist Katie Hopkins, writing in the Sun 48 hours before the latest mass drowning, suggested using gun boats on migrants; her idea proved unnecessary, of course. Why waste the money when you can let people die by doing nothing, for free? But Hopkins’ phrasing was interesting: “These migrants are like cockroaches. They might look a bit ‘Bob Geldof’s Ethiopia circa 1984’, but they are built to survive a nuclear bomb.” The following morning, as an LBC shock jock, she rolled back her position slightly, suggesting the best way to solve the refugee crisis was not to shoot them once they were in the water, but to “burn all the boats in North Africa”.

A rather niche debate is underway about whether “Katie Hopkins” is a construct of its owner – like Mrs Merton, an entertainment turn spun out for money – or whether Katie Hopkins is a real person with an antisocial personality disorder. With more urgent questions and so many people dead, this distinction shouldn’t detain us. The fault is with those who broadcast her: this is serious stuff.

Exactly; she could be a program for all I care; the point is not Hopkins, it’s this kind of propaganda. It’s UKIP and the Front National, it’s Pegida and Golden Dawn.

This characterisation of people as less than human, as vermin, as a “virus” (as she did elsewhere in the article) irresistibly recalls the darkest events in history. It is eerily reminiscent of the Rwandan media of 1994, when the radio went from statements such as “You have to kill the Tutsis, they’re cockroaches” to, shortly afterwards, instructions on how to do so, and what knives to use.

It is no joke when people start talking like this. We are not “giving her what she wants” when we make manifest our disgust. It is not a free speech issue. I’m not saying gag her: I’m saying fight her. Articulate the fellowship, the human empathy, that makes these deaths important. Stop talking about how many children were among the dead, as though only children matter. Start talking about everybody’s life as cherishable, irrespective of anything they might produce.

She goes on to anticipate frivolous shits like Brendan O’Neill (and some soul-brothers of his I know personally), and the feelings of shame and inadequacy attendant on expressing solidarity and compassion.

Compassion is such a rich part of the human experience and yet such a shaming thing to express, because you will always fall short of what your own words demand from you. You will never do enough. It makes you wonder how the concept of human rights was ever born. How did anybody ever overcome the knowledge of their own failings for long enough to establish universal principles that they knew they would probably never do enough to propagate?

Because, fresh from the memory of “barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind”, people knew what the world looked like when nobody stood up to defend “the innate dignity of all the members of the human family”. People knew that insufficient was better than nothing. People knew that you don’t respect the dead by staying silent about what killed them.

The Brendan O’Neills of the world are wrong; ignore them; fight back.

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

I didn’t know who Katie Hopkins was until just now. I’m catching up. She was once on The Apprentice, therefore she’s a “media personality.” She wrote a column for the Sun in which she called migrants such as the ones who drowned in the Mediterranean on Sunday “cockroaches.”

Now the UN High Commission for Human Rights has compared that to propaganda for genocide.

Well, yes. It is comparable. That’s what genocide propaganda sounds like. That’s how it works. It persuades people that certain kinds of humans are not human.

A column in which media personality Katie Hopkins described migrants as “cockroaches” and “feral humans” resembled pro-genocide propaganda, the United Nations has said.

In a strongly worded statement issued on Friday, the UN High Commission for Human Rights said tabloid “misinformation” about immigration was fed into a “nasty underbelly of racism” lurking beneath the migration issue.

“Under the guise of freedom of expression, [negative coverage is] being allowed to feed a vicious cycle of vilification, intolerance and politicization of migrants,” High Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said in a statement.

Better to use the opprobrium, I think.

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

More on Sabeen Mahmood.

Her last tweet must have been moments before she was murdered. It’s only 3 hours old now; it was 2 hours old when I first saw it.

Her self-description on her Twitter profile:

Post Modern Flower Child. Unabashed Mac Snob. Pink Floyd & Bruce Springsteen Devotee. Tetris Addict. West Wing & House MD Fanatic. Will Die for Hugh Laurie

From Dawn in 2013:

T2F Director Sabeen Mahmud never wanted to walk the off-beaten path; she simply walked, or actually ran full speed in the direction she wanted to. Never mind that everyone else seemed to be going in the opposite direction. She barely noticed. She was too busy running.

A rebel’s daughter who gave up a life of Tetris, Mac doodling and professional cricket (after three knee injuries) to start a NGO that promotes the arts, culture, science, technology, activism and advocacy… and she did it all just to make some new friends, and maybe start some interesting conversations. Six years and nearly 600 events later, T2F has to its credit national and international press coverage, countless donations and the kind of cult following typically reserved for rock bands. Mahmud doesn’t see that though.

“I didn’t think this is a big deal, this is just a small little community space.”

But that word ‘community’ still hits home.

“When people say… we really feel at home here… that has been like balloons and ice-cream, I have been living on that for the past six years.”

Now she’s gone. Murdered. Gone.

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

Terrible news out of Pakistan – another valuable person murdered. Sabeen Mahmud was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in Karachi today.

The Mary Sue did a write-up about her two years ago.

Sabeen Mahmud (above, in blue), who says she fell in love with technology the first time she ever saw a Mac, just organized Pakistan’s first ever Hackathon last month, aimed specifically at finding ways to use technology to fix or at least alleviate Pakistan’s political problems. According to a piece by Wired, the gathering was pretty amazing for everyone involved.

Mahmud runs a small technology firm, but hosted the gathering of forty (whittled down from 120 applications) in her café The Second Floor, which she founded because she felt Karachi, the most populous city in Pakistan, needed “a space where people could gather around shared interests, an interdisciplinary space for collaboration and brainstorming.” And even though she’d done no research and was living with family at the time, Mahmud felt that she was the woman for the job.

So, naturally, they killed her. God damn it.

From Dawn:

Sabeen, accompanied by her mother, left T2F after 9pm on Friday evening and was on her way home when she was shot by unidentified gunmen, sources confirmed. She died on her way to the hospital. Doctors said they retrieved five bullets from her body.

Her mother also sustained bullet wounds and is currently being treated at a hospital; she is said to be in critical condition.

T2F had on Friday organised a talk on Balochistan: ‘Unsilencing Balochistan Take 2: In Conversation with Mama Qadeer, Farzana Baloch & Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur.’

A talk. Talks are not allowed, I guess.

T2F, described as a community space for open dialogue, was Sabeen’s brainchild. In an interview with Aurora, she referred to it as “an inclusive space where different kinds of people can be comfortable.”

Conceived as a bookstore and café patterned after the old coffeehouse culture of Lahore and Karachi, The Second Floor — or T2F, as everyone calls it — says on its website that it was born out of a desire to enact transformational change in urban Pakistani society.

And now she’s dead.

Wasay Jalil on Twitter

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

Surprise surprise, comedy that aims at the frat boy crowd turns out to be so obnoxious (aka racist and sexist) that actors actually walk off the set. Surprise surprise, it’s an Adam Sandler movie.

Nearly a dozen Native American actors and a cultural adviser walked off the set of an Adam Sandler movie that’s currently filming because of depictions they found insulting, according to a report by Indian Country Today Media Network.

Actor Loren Anthony said the script, penned by Sandler and his longtime screenwriting partner Tim Herlihy, was insulting to Native women and elders and inaccurately portrayed Apache culture. He said the actors, who were supposed to be playing Apache men and women, were made up to resemble Comanches. Anthony and David Hill were among the actors who walked off the set Wednesday.

Hey it was a joke. Can’t you take a joke? Can’t anybody take a joke?

The film, part of Sandler’s four-picture deal with Netflix, is supposed to be a send-up of “The Magnificent Seven.” It reportedly included characters named “Beaver’s Breath” and “No Bra” and included a scene with an Apache woman “squatting and urinating while smoking a peace pipe.”

“There were about a dozen of us who walked off the set,” Anthony, who is Navajo, told ICMTN. “I was asked a long time ago to do some work on this and I wasn’t down for it. Then they told me it was going to be a comedy, but it would not be racist. So I agreed to it but on Monday things started getting weird on the set.”

How is that possible when they said it would not be racist? Surely they didn’t lie about it. Surely they’re not clueless about what’s racist. Surely they’re not marinated in a culture that thinks it’s funny to shit on people who aren’t like them. Surely.

Multiple people, including hair and makeup artist Goldie Tom, told reporter Vincent Shilling that they implored the film’s producers and director to make changes. But those requests seemed to fall on deaf ears.

“We talked to the producers about our concerns,” said Allison Young, a Navajo filmmaker and actress. “They just told us, ‘If you guys are so sensitive, you should leave.’

Quite right too. Movies probably are not for you. #MPANFY

This is hardly the first time Sandler has faced criticism for inaccurate and stereotypical depictions of racial minorities in his movies.

Writing for the New Yorker, critic Richard Brody called “Blended,” Sandler’s 2014 comedic effort co-starring Drew Barrymore, “grotesquely offensive”:

No sooner do the families arrive at the resort than the obliviously trivializing depictions of black people, based on long-superseded stereotypes, begin. The Friedmans get out of their limo and are greeted by the hotel’s staff, all black, starting with a singing group, called Thathoo (pronounced “Tattoo”). The group leader’s eye-rolling and glad-handing, his lubriciously insinuating and exaggeratedly jiving, all seem to be taken straight from a minstrel show. And, throughout the movie, the group pops up like a Greek chorus to underline the action. There’s also an obsequious greeter whose exaggerated ingratiations would shame the hospitality business. Though his malapropisms are ultimately seen to be a canny joke, his manner is never anything but grinningly servile. And there’s an elderly slacker, sleeping on the job and avoiding responsibility, whose lazy ways are a monstrous and venerable cliché.

Yes but if you’re in the frat boy crowd, that stuff is hilarious. If you can’t handle that, #MPANFY

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

Wow – evil in America. The ACLU blog has the details:

A committee of the US House of Representatives decided that employees in the District of Columbia could be fired for using in vitro fertilization to start a family or for becoming pregnant while unmarried.

That’s right, people of D.C.: members of Congress just voted to let your boss fire you for personal decisions you make at the doctor’s office — because your boss believes those decisions aren’t consistent with his religious beliefs. Now, the whole House may take a vote on this discriminatory measure.

What’s next? Will this committee vote to let employers fire people for being atheist, for reading Dan Savage, for not reading the bible, for not going to church, for going to mosque, for dancing, for cheering the wrong football team, for eating falafel? Will this committee vote to let employers imprison employees, or beat them, or withhold their pay, or confiscate their property, or pour boiling water on them?

At the same time, a separate measure introduced in the House would block the Human Rights Amendment Act, another D.C. bill that would ensure that LGBT student groups at religiously affiliated schools and universities have access to the same facilities and resources as their peers. And similar measures on both bills are still pending in the Senate.

In both of these cases, proponents of these congressional actions are stripping these protections in the name of religious liberty.

Of course they are; it’s the hot new thing. Religions are full of ugly rules and laws and taboos that treat sets of people like dirt, so they make a great alibi for being evil. Not that I’m saying that’s why people are religious, but people who demand the right to treat people like dirt because religious liberty – those people have bad priorities.

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