Frat boys at the University of Oklahoma chant a racist ditty on a bus, get themselves on YouTube.

University of Oklahoma president David Boren stood with his students Monday in protest of a video that appears to show Sigma Alpha Epsilon members participating in racist chants. The video is “disgraceful,” Boren said at the protest, according to the Oklahoman. “Real Sooners are not bigots, real Sooners are not racist.”

The video, posted to the Twitter and YouTube accounts of the black student alliance Unheard, is just 10 seconds long. In it, a busload of white students — apparently members of the fraternity’s University of Oklahoma chapter — chant: “You can hang ‘em from a tree, but it will never start with me/There will never be a nigger SAE.”

Unheard posted the video Sunday, organizers told The Post. The person who captured the chant on video sent it to the group in a private message on Twitter and has asked to remain anonymous.

That fraternity is now closed by order of both SAE’s national organizers and by Boren himself.

They have until midnight tomorrow to get their stuff out of the frat house, and they’ll have to find their own housing. The university has severed all ties with that chapter of the fraternity.

But the video is just one incident on a campus that was already in the process of confronting larger issues of race and discrimination — something that both Boren and many students said they were determined to change.

Although the video exploded into a national story, some students hope it has the potential to become something different on campus: A teaching moment to discuss what Boren called “more subtle forms of discrimination.”

“We have to look at those more subtle things as well,” he said.

Cue the groans and sneers about microaggressions and hurt fee-fees.

Boren wasn’t the only prominent school official — or, arguably, even the most visible one — stepping out to make their condemnation of the video clear. Bob Stoops, head coach of the university’s football team, also attended a student protest alongside several football players and about 100 athletes. His presence was particularly noteworthy, because he is the face of the school’s powerhouse football program and arguably the state’s most famous employee.

Well, you know, that’s not a healthy arrangement either. Universities should be about education, and the football coach should not be the most important person there.

In a working document, Unheard outlined several issues it wants the university to address. Those include the apparent under-representation of black faculty members in departments beyond the African American studies program; black student recruitment and retention rates; a lack of black scholarship opportunities; and what organizers say is a lack of black student representation in many planning committees for major campus-wide events.

Boren referred to several of these issues on Monday, saying that after meeting with Unheard earlier this year, he plans to work on about “95 percent” of them. “Upon reflection, I found myself agreeing with them; let’s do it,” he said on Monday.

“Sometimes, people can be thoughtless,” the university president added. “They can be insensitive and not even know.” He hopes his campus can work to “make people more aware” of racial insensitivity. “It’s hard work building a family,” he added, “But we’re gonna build one. We’re gonna keep on working on it.”

It’s very easy to not even know, which is why people talk about privilege a lot.

Here’s that chant. Don’t play it at work if you can be heard.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBq4_A9nQvw

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

An Indonesian sports wear manufacturer included witty washing instructions on the shirts it made for a football club.

“Washing instructions: Give this shirt to a woman. It’s her job,” Salvo Sports printed on the shirts of Indonesian Super League team Pusamania Borneo.

Haha. Haha. Isn’t that funny? Isn’t it hilarious? Here’s another. “Make me a sammich.” Are you out of breath yet?

The instructions rapidly drew criticism on social media.

The company offered an apology on Sunday, International Women’s Day, after being inundated with complaints.

“The message is simply, instead of washing it in the wrong way, you might as well give it to a lady because they are more capable,” Salvo Sports posted on Twitter.

“There is no intention to humiliate women. In contrast [we want to tell the men] learn from women how to take care of clothes,” it said.

Oh, I see, it wasn’t even a joke, it was advice. Give it to a woman because estrogen causes you to know how to do laundry and androgen causes you to be completely baffled by the whole concept.

Happy International Women’s Day to you too.

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

What parts of the US have the most to worry about because of climate change? Hm that would be coastal areas, wouldn’t it, especially low-lying, swampy coastal areas, like Louisiana and Florida. And yet…

The state of Florida is the region most susceptible to the effects of global warming in this country, according to scientists. Sea-level rise alone threatens 30 percent of the state’s beaches over the next 85 years.

But you would not know that by talking to officials at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the state agency on the front lines of studying and planning for these changes.

DEP officials have been ordered not to use the term “climate change” or “global warming” in any official communications, emails, or reports, according to former DEP employees, consultants, volunteers and records obtained by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting.

Huh. That’s kind of like telling the Fire Department not to use the terms “fire” or “burn” or “hot.” It’s like telling the health services not to use the terms “bacteria” or “virus” or “infection” or “death.”

“We were told not to use the terms ‘climate change,’ ‘global warming’ or ‘sustainability,’” said Christopher Byrd, an attorney with the DEP’s Office of General Counsel in Tallahassee from 2008 to 2013. “That message was communicated to me and my colleagues by our superiors in the Office of General Counsel.”

Kristina Trotta, another former DEP employee who worked in Miami, said her supervisor told her not to use the terms “climate change” and “global warming” in a 2014 staff meeting. “We were told that we were not allowed to discuss anything that was not a true fact,” she said.

I suppose they’ll be allowed to use the words once Florida is actually under water. That’s a sensible policy. By the same token, we don’t need to fret about falling off great heights until we actually hit bottom. Until then, there’s just no telling what might happen.

This unwritten policy went into effect after Gov. Rick Scott took office in 2011 and appointed Herschel Vinyard Jr. as the DEP’s director, according to former DEP employees. Gov. Scott, who won a second term in November, has repeatedly said he is not convinced that climate change is caused by human activity, despite scientific evidence to the contrary.

Vinyard has since resigned. Neither he nor his successor, Scott Steverson, would comment for this article.

Various flacks said there is no such policy.

But four former DEP employees from offices around the state say the order was well known and distributed verbally statewide.

One former DEP employee who worked in Tallahassee during Scott’s first term in office, and asked not to be identified because of an ongoing business relationship with the department, said staffers were warned that using the terms in reports would bring unwanted attention to their projects.

“We were dealing with the effects and economic impact of climate change, and yet we can’t reference it,” the former employee said.

Climate…progress? Development? Increase? Augmentation? I can think of lots of cheer-up words for it.

Some climate scientists asked for a chance to explain the science to Scott and he said ok, you’ve got 30 minutes. He spent ten of those minutes introducing people, and then sat quietly for the 20 minutes of scientists talking. Then he went back to doing real work.

Scott’s predecessor, Charlie Crist, had been proactive on climate change, forming a statewide task force and convening a national summit in Miami in 2007. But evidence the issue has fallen out of favor during the Scott administration is apparent.

One example is the Florida Oceans and Coastal Council’s Annual Research Plan, put together by DEP and other state agencies. The 2009-2010 report, published the year before Scott was elected, contains 15 references to climate change, including a section titled “Research Priorities — Climate Change.”

In the 2014-15 edition of the report, climate change is only mentioned if it is in the title of a past report or conference. There is one standalone reference to the issue at the end of a sentence that sources say must have slipped by the censors. “It’s a distinct possibility,” said one former DEP employee.

Instead, terms like “climate drivers” and “climate-driven changes” are used.

Climate chocolate sauce, climate flash mobs, climate tight pants.

Christopher Byrd said that he was warned not to use “climate change” and related terms during a 2011 staff meeting shortly after Scott appointed Vinyard as DEP director.

“Deputy General Counsel Larry Morgan was giving us a briefing on what to expect with the new secretary,” Byrd recalled. Morgan gave them “a warning to beware of the words global warming, climate change and sea-level rise, and advised us not to use those words in particular.”

Ah yes sea-level rise – you don’t want to go mentioning that in Florida of all places. God no! The time to mention that is after all the hotels and condos are built, not before. Just issue everyone an inflatable raft and all will be well.

in November 2014, the Coral Reef Conservation Program held a meeting to train volunteers to use a PowerPoint presentation about the threats coral reefs faced. Harper attended the meeting, held at DEP’s Biscayne Bay office in Miami. Doug Young, president of the South Florida Audubon Society and a member of the Broward County Climate Change Task Force, also attended.

Two DEP employees, Ana Zangroniz and Kristina Trotta, showed the presentation to the volunteers and then asked if anyone had a question.

“I told them the biggest problem I have was that there was absolutely no mention of climate change and the affect of climate change on coral reefs,” Young said.

He continued: “The two young women, really good people, said, ‘We are not allowed to show the words, or show any slides that depicted anything related to climate change.’”

Young and Harper said they could not participate if climate change was not mentioned. “The women kept saying, ‘Work with us; we know you are frustrated,’” Harper said.

On Nov. 19, 2014, the DEP’s Zangroniz wrote Harper and Young an email stating she had talked to her manager about their concerns.

“Unfortunately at this time,” she wrote, “we can’t make any alterations or additions to the presentation. … If you do choose to continue as a volunteer, we would have to request that you present the information as is. If you choose to add in an additional presentation or speaker that addresses climate change and coral reefs, there would have to be a very clear split between the two.”

Trotta left her position as a field and administrative assistant in January. She told FCIR that when it came to scrubbing the term “climate change” from projects, she was following orders. Those orders came from Regional Administrator Joanna Walczak during a staff meeting in the summer of 2014.

“We were instructed by our regional administrator that we were no longer allowed to use the terms ‘global warming’ or ‘climate change’ or even ‘sea-level rise,’ ” said Trotta. “Sea-level rise was to be referred to as ‘nuisance flooding.’”

Read the whole damn thing.

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

Meet Labour’s Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Bradford West, Naz Shah.

I was only 6 when my father abandoned my mother with two young children and pregnant with a third when he eloped with the neighbour’s 16 year old daughter. I remember been thrown into the back of a taxi with black bin liners full of our belongings and packed off from the family home on Hartman Place to my granddads home in Kirkham Road. We never really saw the end of black bin liners over the next few years as we moved from squalor to squalor, 14 times in less than 2 years, from back to back houses where the toilet was outside to rat infested damp houses where we lived and slept in just one room.

Then her mother bought a house with the proceeds from selling her wedding jewelry, but the house was in the name of a man, Azam.

My mother’s attempt to provide her children with the security of a home came at the expense of being abused by Azam over years. A man that she thought would save her children from an uncertain and insecure future, little did she know he would be the exact opposite. My mother had sent me to Pakistan at the age of 12 when she felt I was at risk of his abuse. When my younger sister was growing up and my mother felt she was now at risk, and following years of anti- depressants, failed suicide attempts and feeling desperate and destitute she snapped.

She killed the man who abused her.

I remember how my days and nights became one, how my world was turned upside down, how I became a mother to my two siblings who were 11 and 13 at the time. Up until then the worst I had known personally was my own forced marriage through emotional blackmail when I was just 15 years old whilst in Pakistan.

Oh is that all.

She worked a crap job, then a slightly less crap one, then one where she could actually use her talents.

I became a carer for children with disabilities as my mother had also been a carer. I then went on to become an advocate for women with disabilities and their carers. I felt my calling was to help people and I then joined the Samaritans. I didn’t realise how much anger I carried inside me towards the ‘systems’ that failed me and my family because I had turned it into this force to change people’s lives. I would get emotional about the families I was helping and angry if they weren’t getting the right services, until one day my mentor pulled me to one side and asked me why was I so upset when families didn’t get the services they needed , how much of this is really about the failure you experienced? That conversation was a game changer for me.

I quickly realised to effect change I must be able to influence decision making and that’s when I joined the NHS. To begin with I managed giving out grants and ‘Patient and Public Involvement’ and we then started ‘commissioning services’. I found my niche when my manager recognised my talent and invested heavily in my leadership development. I fell in love with the idea of ‘Leadership’ and am still in love with the notion of it being the key to change society for the betterment of humanity

Beyond my own career I continued to fly the flag around violence against women through speaking at conferences and contributing to discussions. I didn’t really appreciate exactly how much I was using my own natural leadership and passion to influence policy and change.

Now, she’s running for Galloway’s seat. Let’s hope she wins!

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

A god-loving type resorts to sending bullying hate-mail to an elected official to demonstrate the glory of god. Or something.

All they wanted was a mash note to god inside a government building, and here’s this elected official whining about the separation of church and state. Get out the epithets!!

An Oregon city councilwoman who voiced her opposition to displaying “In God We Trust” inside a government building received a death threat from an individual calling himself an “American Citizen for saving Americans for America.”

Cool title. It sounds like irony, but given the nature of the message, I don’t suppose it actually is irony.

Klamath County Commissioner Tom Mallams mentioned displaying the motto in the county’s public hearing room last December, and David and Carol Warren ran with the idea. “We believe God wants us to do this,” Carol toldThe Oregonian.

Commissioner Mallams said he did not anticipate posting the motto to be a problem, since “it doesn’t say ‘the God of the Bible.’ It’s not ‘Allah.’ It’s not ‘the God of the Jews.’ It’s just acknowledging that there is a higher power out there that sets boundaries for what’s right and wrong.”

Oh “just” that, is it. “Just” “acknowledging” something that there’s no reason to think is true. There’s a hell of a lot more reason to think there isn’t any higher power out there that sets boundaries for what’s right and wrong than there is to think there is one. If there is such a higher power it’s doing a damn bad job of setting those boundaries.

As for atheists, Mallams and Warren said, “they don’t have to look at it.”

Well now that’s just an outright lie. Look again at what the plan is – Klamath County Commissioner Tom Mallams mentioned displaying the motto in the county’s public hearing room. Displaying. What does that mean? It means you do have to look at it. It means it’s forced on your attention. You can try to ignore it once you’ve seen it, but it’s flat-out not the case that you don’t have to look at it. The plan is to stick it in that hearing room so that everyone who enters it does have to look at it.

Seiler responded that it’s disingenuous to talk of a generic god when it obviously isn’t generic at all, and she mentioned the separation of church and state. Treason!

But according to the author of a letter Seiler received after penning the editorial, the United States was founded on “Christian morality.” The author then wrote, “Maybe we could have the privilege of seeing your wonderful Muslims behead your [expletive] ugly [expletive]!!!”

The author confuses atheists with Muslims. Nope. Atheists aren’t Muslims, and Muslims aren’t atheists. That’s just silly.

Anyway – god is love; that’s the important thing.

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

It’s an honor, coming from them.

5Pillars @5Pillarsuk 15 hours ago
Maajid Nawaz won the “UK category” at the Islamophobia awards @ihrc #IslamophobiaAwards2015

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

Why is PBS showing “Wheat Belly Total Health”?

I suppose for the same reason they show Deepak Chopra saying things, but can’t anyone get them to stop? They’re supposed to be in some sense educational tv, so they shouldn’t be broadcasting woo.

William Davis is certainly chuffed:

Join me for a provocative and enlightening discussion about why the Wheat Belly lifestyle, coupled with the newest strategies revealed in the Wheat Belly Total Health, can help you achieve levels of health and weight control that you didn’t think were possible!

Here is the November schedule for the Wheat Belly Total Health public television special beginning Saturday, November 29th.

Be sure to show your support for your local public television station by making a generous pledge to allow them to continue to air programs like Wheat Belly Total Health. Special, exclusive-to-public-television Wheat Belly Total Health DVDs will be available to contributors to the local stations.

Many more stations, many more cities to come in December, 2014 and in 2015. Also, Canadians: Watch for the border cities that broadcast into your viewing region!

Massive free advertising, courtesy of public television. How nice for him.

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

Another sinister document, this one the brainchild of the group MEND, formerly iENGAGE. It’s a “Muslim Manifesto” which the Telegraph reports was launched yesterday by Azad Ali of MEND,

joined in Parliament by the Labour MPs Yasmin Qureshi, Andy Slaughter and Gerald Kaufman and Sayeeda Warsi, the former Tory communities minister.

Behold the draft Manifesto.

The Institute for Muslim Community Development suggests the following points in no particular order for a Muslim Manifesto. Note where the suffering of the British Muslim community and its demands mirror those of other communities we would fully support them in achieving their rights.

That’s a tidy bit of obfuscspeak. Which “suffering” exactly? “Mirror” in what sense? What is meant by “communities”? What kind of “rights” exactly? Does that cash out to mean that the “we” in that sentence would support the demands of feminists and LGBT activists? What about secularists and atheists? Where exactly does the mirror intervene to exclude the wrong kinds of demands and rights? It must be somewhere, because demands of religious believers qua believers are going to be in tension with many of the demands and rights of feminists and LGBT activists, let alone secularists and atheists.

The manifesto offers many examples of how that is true. The very first item for instance is full of such tensions.

We would ask our parliamentary friends to:

1. Defend the right to a Muslim way of life, including halal meat; religious clothing; circumcision; and flexible working to accommodate Ramadan and festival observance.

“Halal” meat is a problem for people who give a shit about the suffering of animals. “Religious clothing” in the context of “a Muslim way of life” refers to women’s clothing, which is treated inside the circle not as a right but as a command. We are of course meant to think of it as the “right” of girls and women to wear hijab or a burqa or abaya or niqab – but it also includes the “right” of fathers and brothers and husbands to insist or demand that girls and women under their jurisdiction wear hijab or more. This “right” is in tension, at the very least, with the right of girls and women to refuse to wear hijab or more.

“Circumcision” refers not at all to the “right” of someone to be circumcised or mutilated, but to the “right” of parents to impose circumcision or mutilation on their infants or young children. That’s not really a “right” as normally understood. Parents don’t have a “right” to carve random little chunks out of their infants’ arms or buttocks for no good reason, and it’s not clear why they should have a “right” to carve random little chunks out of their infants’ or young children’s genitals for no good reason.

The “flexible working” item is the only one that’s a nuisance but not exactly a violation of the rights of others…although it could be, given the demands of Ramadan, if non-Muslim workers have to pick up all the slack given to Muslim workers during Ramadan, in other words if Muslim workers basically get a month off that no one else gets.

And that’s just item # 1.

Some of the items are anodyne or empty or both. But others aren’t.

6. Affirm the importance of faith schools within the overall provision.

If “within the overall provision” is supposed to mean state schools, then no, don’t. “Faith schools” should be the job of religious bodies, not the state.

9. Celebrate and support Muslim heritage and cultural institutions.

All of it, no questions asked? No.

17. Introduce more robust legislation to curb media hate campaigns against Muslims.

Like this post I’m writing now, for instance? No, don’t be doing that.

18. Guarantee the Muslim community the opportunity to evolve independently of government social engineering programmes.

Social engineering programmes like preventing domestic violence for instance? No.

19. Acknowledge that the holy scripture of Muslims (the Qur’an) does not endorse terrorism and the murder of innocents.

Forget it. And what do you mean “innocents,” anyway? Does the Qur’an endorse the murder of guilties? Who decides who the guilties are? You? Daesh? Boko Haram? The Jeddah Criminal Court?

22. Encourage enquiry into the effects of oversexualisation of public spaces upon young people.

You mean, “tell all those sluts to cover up.” Nope.

28. Recognise Muslims have a distinct ‘way of life’ (deen) which opposes any understanding of religion or faith as separate from other aspects of life.

Oh no. No no no no no no.

Jeezis, dude, do you not even realize that that one demands a kind of separation and specialitude that would inevitably marginalize Muslims in exactly the way this manifesto complains of?

In any case it’s basically a demand to be allowed to do whatever you want to do because religion, and that’s not possible. Basic human rights make that demand impossible to grant. No can do.

It’s creepy as hell that Warsi signed up to this.

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

Nazir Afzal has resigned his job as head of the Crown Prosecution Service for the north west. Too bad; he was apparently very good at the job.

The region’s top prosecutor has been in the spotlight for his high-profile comments on child sexual exploitation and grooming.

A CPS spokesman said: “We are continuing to reduce the number of staff employed across the organisation and Nazir Afzal is leaving the Service as part of this ongoing drive for efficiency.

…

He was responsible for all criminal prosecutions across Greater Manchester, Lancashire, and Cumbria.

He led about 700 lawyers, legal staff, and administrators.

…

Nazir has pioneered work to tackle honour-based violence and forced marriage, initially bringing this issue to the top of the public agenda through a CPS conference in 2004.

He has the national CPS lead on tackling these crimes and on tackling Violence Against Women (domestic violence, rape and other violent offences in which women are predominantly the victims).

That’s why it’s a pity he’s going.

Nazir was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s New Years Honours List in 2005 for his public service and involvement with the local community and was named Legal Personality of the Year by the Society of Asian Lawyers, which represents around 15,000 professionals.

In 2007, he received the CPS Public Servant of the Year award, the UK Government’s Justice Award and the Daily Mirror newspaper ‘People’s Award’, voted for by readers.

In recent years he has also received the Law Society/Bar Council Mentoring award and was selected for the Asian Power 100 along with the Muslim Power 100 list.

Seems like an efficiency too many.

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

The Saudi legal system, not surprisingly, subscribes to the same legal theory as does the most talkative rapist in the Jyoti Singh case: that women are committing a crime if they are outside on their own, and should be punished for being raped in those circumstances. The IBT reports that

A 19-year-old woman, who was reportedly violently gang-raped by seven men in Saudi Arabia, has been sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in prison…

Well, women are supposed to keep themselves safe from rape by never leaving home. Obviously if they are raped it’s their fault.

The so called punishment that the woman received was according to the Sharia law, which dictates a Saudi Arabian woman not to be in public without a male guardian – the rule that the 19-year-old apparently did not follow.

Other Muslims wouldn’t recognize that as Sharia, but then that’s the problem with goddy law; the supreme court is in some other dimension where living humans can’t appeal to it.

In the incident, which reportedly took place in 2006, two men got into the vehicle where she was present along with her friend. She was then driven far away to a secluded place and raped by seven men. Three of the rapists also roughed up the friend in question.

Initially, the woman was sentenced to about 90 lashes because of the “crime” of not following the reclusive country’s rules. The men who raped her, however were given minor custodial sentences, which led to the woman’s lawyer appealing to the Saudi General Court.

However, instead of overturning the punishment to the woman, the court reportedly more than doubled the punishment to the woman, and the same was done for the accused men.

I remember that case. I blogged about it at the time.

Allah is merciful.

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

The BBC did a conversation with Asim Qureshi of CAGE this week, and before the conversation they did a clip where he makes his case on his own. I hit pause because I wanted to interrupt him. After telling us that he worked with celebrity beheader Mohammed Emwazi, starting at 1:30 he says

What role does our society play in relation to the disenfranchisement of these young men, to make them feel like they don’t have the ability to actually use the system in order to effect change in the grievances that they have with British domestic and foreign policy?

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=afdeFuJbK3E

I wanted to interrupt him to say bullshit.

There is no enfranchisement that could enable “these young men” (such as Mohammed Emwazi) to “use the system” to achieve their goals, because their goals are not attainable in a liberal democracy. Their “grievances” with British domestic policy for instance have to do with all the wicked infidel freedom that women have to walk around and make their own decisions without monitoring and control by men. There is no “enfranchisement” that will allow young men like Emwazi to change that. It’s not enfranchisement that could possibly make that happen, but only ruthless violence and destruction.

Qureshi is revoltingly, unctuously adept at using the vocabulary of liberal discourse to draw a thin veil over the disgusting mess of what Islamism is really about. He’s not talking about real disenfranchisement or legitimate grievances; he’s bullshitting.

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

Well that’s Iraq for you: it’s rich in historic sites, so Daesh has lots of fun projects. This time the ancient city is called Hatra.

Islamic State militants have destroyed ruins at the ancient city of Hatra, Iraqi officials say.

A tourism and antiquities ministry official said the extent of the damage at the Unesco world heritage site was unclear, but they had received reports that it had been demolished.

Hatra was founded in the days of the Parthian Empire over 2,000 years ago.

And now the Empire of Islam is obliterating everything that’s not itself.

Hatra, located about 110km (68 miles) south-west of Mosul, was a fortified city that withstood invasions by the Romans thanks to its thick walls reinforced by towers.

Said Mamuzini, a Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) local official, said the militants had used explosives to blow up buildings and were bulldozing other sections.

“The city of Hatra is very big and many artefacts of that era were protected inside the site,” he said, adding that the militants had already taken away gold and silver.

Here’s some background on Hatra, with a slew of photos by Thomas Twohey.

The ruins of ancient Hatra lie about three kilometers west of Wadi Al-Tharthar and about 105 kilometers southwest of the city of Mosul, in Iraq.

The site of the city is a gentle depression in a semi desert land between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates known as Al Jazirah. Due to it being in a isolated, near desert location little to no excavation work had been done on the site, until in 1951 the Iraqi government decided to begin examining the site. Prior archaeological expeditions had only measured and mapped the ruins. The excavations of the 1950’s resulted in the discovery of at least twelve further temples and since 1960 restoration work has been underway to preserve the structures, as well as continued archaeological excavations.

Most structures are built in limestone an gypsum and are a mixture of Assyrian, Hellenistic, Parthian and Roman styles.

The fortress city of Hatra arose in Al Jazirah, where it guarded the two main caravan routes connecting Mesopotamia with Syria and Asia Minor. The date of its foundation is subject of some debate. Most likely it was the Assyrians, but by the first century BC it had undoubtedly grown into a fortified city.

The present day remains date back to between the first century BC and the second century AD.

Fortification was immense. The city is guarded by two city walls. Once any enemy had crossed the first wall, he’d still be faced with a moat and the second wall. In fact the heavily fortified gates of the second wall can only be reached by ascending up ramps which run parallel to the wall.

Thomas Twohey

Excavated and restored, and now fascists have destroyed it.

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

Another Saturday in northern Nigeria.

At least five blasts have killed 50 people and injured 56 in the city of Maiduguri in north-eastern Nigeria, an official has told the BBC.

Two crowded markets and a busy bus station were targeted by suicide bombers, witnesses said.

Witnesses in one of the markets described gory scenes with men, women and children lying on the ground.

In pieces, no doubt.

Boko Haram hasn’t said anything yet, but no one will be surprised when they do. They were pushed out of Maiduguri last year, and since then they’ve been in a forest nearby, making life hell for everyone.

The attacks took place over about three hours – the first one targeting the city’s Baga fish market.

The explosion was caused by a suicide bomber in a rickshaw, eyewitnesses told the BBC.

It was not clear if the bomber was male or female.

Later Monday Market came under an attack. A trader there told the BBC that two other female bombers seemed to have exploded devices.

One had a bomb strapped to her body that detonated as she was being scanned at the gate leading into the market, he said.

Another woman exploded the bomb she was carrying in a bag a few feet away, he added.

There was another bomb at a bus station. Markets and bus stations – not where the rich and powerful hang out, not where soldiers hang out, but the easiest of easy pickings. A school in Peshawar, a girls’ school bus in Mingora, markets in Maiduguri.

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

I wonder why this seemed like a good idea.

An Egyptian-born imam who in 2007 said that Somali-born activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali should receive the death penalty for her criticism of Islam is now a Department of Justice contractor hired to teach classes to Muslims who are in federal prison.

According to federal spending records, Fouad ElBayly, the imam at Islamic Center of Johnstown in Pennsylvania, was contracted by the DOJ’s Bureau of Prisons beginning last year to teach the classes to Muslim inmates at Cumberland Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Md.

Does the DOJ’s Bureau of Prisons also contract Nazis and KKKers to teach Christians?

It was April 2007 when ElBayly, the imam at the Islamic Center of Johnston, protested Ali’s scheduled appearance at the University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown.

Because she’s critical of Islam.

Those comments have angered many, including ElBayly, who called Ali’s statements “poisonous.”

“If you come into the faith, you must abide by the laws, and when you decide to defame it deliberately, the sentence is death,” the imam told a local newspaper ahead of her university visit.

No, actually, that’s not how that works. You can be a socialist and then change your mind and criticize socialism. You can be a libertarian and then change your mind and criticize libertarianism. You don’t get so much as a ticket for doing that, let alone a death sentence. What a terrible religion Islam must be, to feel compelled to kill people for rejecting it.

And in any case Ayaan Hirsi Ali didn’t “come into the faith.” She was drafted into it at birth.

ElBayly was heavily criticized for his comments, which gained national attention at the time. He apologized in a letter to the newspaper and seemingly resigned his post.

But that resignation was temporary, it turns out.

The federal Bureau of Prisons requires religious services contractors to provide credentials and other background information in their applications. One section asks applicants to list their associations with established religious organizations. According to recent news reports, ElBayly is once again the imam at the Islamic Center of Johnstown.

An interview is optional, so the Bureau may have skipped its chance to get ElBayly to unburden himself of his thoughts on apostates and critics of Islam.

Besides the credentials, applicants have to provide two personal references and a letter of recommendation from their local religious organization.

Perhaps the highest hurdle for ElBayly to clear would be the program’s requirement to affirm, ”I do not endorse nor will I practice or use language in the institution that will support violence, terrorism, discrimination against other inmates.”

Oh well he will have just done the usual rationalization – it wasn’t language that would support violence or terrorism because reasons – she’s an apostate and a kafir so calling for her to be killed is entirely justified. That’s how it’s done.

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