Survivors of the Magdalene laundries are calling on Catholics to boycott mass tomorrow to protest the refusal of the church to pay compensation to the women.

I would love to say “do it!!” but I doubt that I have many readers who normally attend Catholic mass. Well, to tell the truth, I doubt I have any.

The group Magdalene Survivors Together asked people to stand with them and to withhold donations to local churches as a show of solidarity.

A spokesperson for the group said it was disappointed that the nuns are not contributing financially to a fund set up to provide compensation. The four orders have instead said that they will provide access to their records to allow for claims to be processed, and will continue to provide accommodation for the women who remain in their care.

Oh how generous. They’ll do what they should do anyway (how could they withhold access to “their” records?) but they won’t do what they ought to do if they had a shred of conscience.

The four orders involves are the Good Shepherd Sisters, the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, the Sisters of Mercy and the Sisters of Charity.

One survivor said it would be a “simple but powerful way” of sending a message to the four congregations.

“Why can’t they do the right thing? Why do they want to make us suffer like this?” asked Marina Gambold. “They made us suffer behind closed doors may years ago and now they are doing it in public that is shocking, disappointing and disgusting.”

But not surprising.

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

As requested…and I’ve been thinking I would do more of it anyway, because I like it too, and they’re public domain.

I’ve had a big poster of this one on my bathroom wall for years. Monet, Apple Trees in Bloom.

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

The BBC talked to the Norwegian woman punished for being raped in Dubai. She is Marte Deborah Dalelv.

Ms Dalelv says she had been on a night out with colleagues on 6 March when the rape took place.

She reported it to the police, who proceeded to confiscate her passport and seize her money. She was charged four days later on three counts, including having sex outside marriage.

That certainly strikes an outsider as a very odd criminal justice system – one that grabs the passport and money of a foreign woman who reports being raped.

Her alleged attacker, she said, received a 13-month sentence for extra-marital
sex and alcohol consumption.

No no no, try to focus. The issue isn’t marital or non-marital, the issue is rape. Forcible sex, sex without consent, assault.

According to the Emirates Centre for Human Rights, UAE law states a rape conviction can only be secured after a confession or as the result of testimony from four adult male witnesses to the crime.

In other words, only in accordance with stupid fucking sharia.

Dubai has undergone a rapid transformation in recent years, emerging as a five-star trade and tourism destination with its tax-free salaries and year-round sunshine.

It is now one of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities with foreign workers and visitors greatly outnumbering the local population.

But it remains a deeply conservative region, and its strict laws have caught out foreigners in the past.

Or to put it another way – stay the fuck out of Dubai.

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

When I signed this petition my signature was number 24, and it needs a LOT more than that. So please both sign it and publicize it on social media.

63-year old Josephine Komeh is a courageous fighter against FGM/Cutting in Sierra Leone who opposed it in the most practical way – by refusing to cut girls and young women herself. She was severely tortured because she had defied the traditional authorities that maintain this brutal practice.

Josephine sought asylum in Britain, where the Government condemns FGM, but the Home Office plans to deport her on 24th July. She will face further torture back in Sierra Leone unless she agrees to cut. There is no-one there to protect her: her husband is dead, a son & daughter live in Britain, and her other children were killed during the 11-year Civil War.

Josephine’s grandmother and mother were traditional ‘cutters’ and trained her as next-in-line. She opposed FGM and felt it clashed with her responsibility for the girls she taught as a head teacher. When her mother died she tried to avoid
taking her place, but the women’s society that organises FGM forced her to cut young girls until she refused to continue. That is when she was tortured.

On 29th May Josephine was taken from Leeds where she lived, to Yarl’s Wood detention centre. Her asylum claim was rejected despite a medical report from Freedom From Torture, but she successfully resisted an attempt to deport her on 5th June. Since then she has gathered more evidence, but the Home Office plans to deport her before a fresh claim can be considered. Her deportation is set for Wednesday 24th July at 6.30am from Heathrow on Brussels Airlines flight SN2104.

Well good god what are the UK authorities thinking? I don’t know, but let’s hope a petition prompts them to think better.

Sign here.

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

A Norwegian woman went to Dubai on a business trip. It didn’t go well.

She was raped.

Thinking that the police would help her, she reported the rape to them… and  ended up in jail, her passport stripped from her. She spent three days there  before she was allowed to use a phone to call her family. They, in turn, called  the Foreign Ministry and the Norwegian Consulate, who were able to get the woman released into their custody. They took her to the local Norwegian Seaman’s Center, where she stayed for 6 months until her sentencing.

If that’s not enough to outrage you, her sentence will be: she will be spending 16 months in jail. Alone, in a foreign jail, serving a sentence for having the temerity to get herself raped. Oh, and for drinking alcohol.

 One of the things Islam prides itself on is hospitality (and when I say “prides itself on” I mean “boasts of”).

The true concept of hospitality is not something that is widely practiced in most non-Muslim countries.

For many non-Muslims, the entertainment of guests is of primary importance in many cases for worldly reasons only, not rooted in real hospitality for the sake of God.

In Islam, however, hospitality is a great virtue that holds a significant purpose. Being hospitable to neighbors and guests can increase societal ties as well as unite an entire community. Most importantly, God commands Muslims to be hospitable to neighbors and guests. There is a great reward in doing so. Hospitality in Islam is multi-faceted and covers many different areas in addition to the hospitality that we show guests who visit our homes.

Oh yes? Is that a fact? Is it hospitable to charge, convict and sentence to prison a foreign woman for being raped? Is it hospitable to charge, convict and sentence to prison a foreign woman for such a minor “crime” as drinking alcohol (an act which is not a crime at all in her native country)? Is that a friendly, generous, compassionate, reasonable, kind way to treat strangers? No it is not. It is thuggish, sexist, brutal, and stupid.

One of the things Allah is called is “the merciful.” Really? Is it “merciful” to thrown a foreign woman in jail for being raped? No, it is not. It’s harsh, cruel, and spiteful.

Allah is not a friend to women.

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

A blazer of trails.

When Ms. Thomas took a job as a radio writer for United Press in 1943 (15 years before it merged with the International News Service to become U.P.I.), most female journalists wrote about social events and homemaking. The journalists who covered war, crime and politics, and congratulated one another over drinks at the press club were typically men.

Covering war, crime and politics was mostly a guy thing.

She worked her way into full-time reporting and by the mid-1950s was covering federal agencies. She covered John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1960, and when he won she became the first woman assigned to the White House full time by a news service.

Ms. Thomas was also the first woman to be elected an officer of the White House Correspondents’ Association and the first to serve as its president. In 1975, she became the first woman elected to the Gridiron Club, which for 90 years had been a men-only bastion of Washington journalists.

Ms. Thomas was known for her dawn-to-dark work hours, and she won her share of exclusives and near-exclusives. She was the only female print journalist to accompany President Richard M. Nixon on his breakthrough trip to China in 1972.

Lots and lots of trails. Thank you Helen Thomas.

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

An end of the day amusement. Don’t be drinking anything when you watch this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6W2NNCUilo

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

And speaking of don’t do that, Bruce Gorton did a column about geek sexism yesterday.

When it comes to sexism geeks have a serious problem just talking about it.

We have such a huge problem talking about it that the fact that women gamers are talking about it is seen as censorship. Think about how twisted the logic has to be, that so many arguments amount to some guy telling women to shut up – for the sake of free speech.

And gaming isn’t the only place where this happens. The atheist community was rocked by women in atheism calling for an end to sexual harassment at conventions not that long ago.

Atheist activism currently focuses heavily around breaking the taboo of “You can’t talk about that.”

This was the point to the out campaign, to people wearing t-shirts inviting debate etc…

Yet when it came to addressing real feminist concerns – talking about it was treated as some great taboo.

It was, and is. Really. I’m still getting people solemnly telling me I had no business saying Michael Shermer said something sexist when Michael Shermer said something sexist. Really? Why would that be, exactly? I didn’t say he should be flayed alive, after all, I simply said he said something sexist, which he assuredly did. (Don’t believe me? Try changing it to “it’s more of a white thing.” Not racist? Ha. And “more of a guy thing” is sexist.)

It’s pathetic that we still have to fight this battle. But there it is.

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

SpokesGay has joined the More Than Men blog and done a debut post. It’s titled Gays, Don’t Do That (see what he did there?) and it says really, don’t.

Now. Let’s get right to the pissing-off-of-gay-doodz. Mainly white gay doodz. Before you wrap your peaches in freezer paper, though, understand this: All the things I list below I’ve been guilty of. Every one of us ambles about in an oblivion bubble about something(s). It’s part of the human condition. Doucheitude doesn’t have to be a terminal disease, but managing it requires acknowledging the illness.

And hoo-boy, is there a problem. These past two to three years have been a horrific. . . enlightenment. . . about the pervasive, unexamined, toxic sexist-misogynist-gender-policing-shit-on-the-guy-below-you sewer we soak in. Foolishly, I was shocked to see fellow gay men perpetrating as much gutter behavior as any prototypical FratBro. Turns out doodz are doodz.

So, from my back catalogue of assholery, here are some of the things you’re not to do anymore, gays.

• Do not think you’re incapable of being sexist/misogynist/racist because you’re gay and you know what it’s like. You don’t know what it’s like to be anything but what you are. If I had a nickel for every time I used to joke about “rice queens” and “jungle fever” I’d have enough bank for facial reconstruction to Cover My Shame.

It’s an outrage that it’s taken Spokesie this long to blog. The dude can write. Read the rest.

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

The Texas Taliban continues its war on women, Amanda Marcotte reports. Fetal heartbeat this time. Got a heart beat? Abortion forbidden! Slut leaves the fetus there long enough to develop a pulse, she’s stuck with it, the slut.

Like the lush at the bar who can’t stop himself from ordering one more round, some Texas Republicans don’t know when it’s time to give it up for the night. Drunk off the win of passing a bill into law that will shut down most abortion clinics in the state and ban abortions after 20 weeks, three Republican state legislators introduced yet another anti-abortion bill Thursday.

This one, which is even less likely to get far in the lower courts than the one Rick Perry just signed, would ban all abortions after a heartbeat can be detected through a transvaginal ultrasound. That means it could ban abortions as early as six weeks, though functionally, I can’t imagine many doctors would be willing to practice abortion at all for fear that anti-choicers would claim that they didn’t try hard enough to find the heartbeat.

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

Alex Gabriel reports on Creationism and fundamentalism in Keswick.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5w0DzQEBIjE

Alex transcribed much of it. AM=audience member; P=preacher.

AM #10: No no no no no, I’m asking, d’you not think you are scared – you are scared?

P: I’m telling you what I think. I think that atheism is a crutch for people who are scared of Judgement Day, and they… they cling to the… the… the ridiculous lie of evolution in order to silence their conscience that tells them they are guilty before God, and that they know that they’re accountable because they’ve lied, stolen, looked at porn on the internet, when they’ve slept around, sinned outside of marriage. All sex outside of marriage of one man, one woman, is a sin against God. That’s what God says. Now that’s unpopular today. People in churches believe and tell us that homosexuality’s okay, they were just born that way – that’s a lie from the pit of Hell.

AM #10: Oh, really?

P: Yes.

AM #10: Really?

AM #5: Oh don’t even start…

P: [Inaudible] They feel in their heart, they’re not born that way. They’re not helpless. Homosexuality is an abomination-

[Booing]

Unknown sources: Shut up! Disgusting!

P: -sin against God! And Jesus Christ said unless you repent, you will perish, so…

Then someone from the town council shuts him down.

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

Turkey is now going to have halal blood.

Wut?

I don’t know. That’s what they say.

A recent Turkish Red Crescent initiate is set to be turned into a factory-supported production process, making medicine out of Turkish people’s blood in order to rule out any risk of non-Islamic dietary impact, according to the organization’s head, Ahmet Lütfi Akar.

Akar told daily Hurriyet that the move could both eliminate dependence on drugs imports, as well as providing Muslim Turks with assurances that their medicine complies with their religious codes.

Uh huh. Because if it’s Turkish blood, it’s clean, and if it’s kaffir blood, it’s dirty. That’s always a great way to think about people.

“For instance, if we are buying medicine from Britain, it is made out of the blood and plasma of the blood of the people of that country. We have different dietary habits from those countries. Being a Muslim nation, we do not eat pork. We don’t eat some of problematic foods, but these exist in the medicine that we import,” he said.

Akar said treatment through one’s own national production would be healthier. “We will eliminate imports, and create an opportunity to export to Islamic countries. There will be no change in the regulation of receiving blood donations; no one will be asked whether or not they eat pork. 95 percent of Turkish people already don’t eat port anyway,” he told daily Hurriyet.

It’s not the pork, you see, it’s the Turkishness. Turkish people are just cleaner, that’s all.

Turkish Medical Association head Özdemir Aktan, however, ruled out any chance of his association offering scientific facts to support the Red Crescent’s point.

“There is no scientific fact that says national blood is more helpful. Being a doctor, how can I possibly say that one blood is halal, and the other isn’t? We are just watching events unfold in complete shock,” Aktan said.

I feel sympathy for Özdemir Aktan. It sounds rather like watching events unfold in Texas.

H/t Torcant.

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

Via Taslima – a study shows that chimps and orangs can have episodic memories after three years.

It has been well established in humans that sensory cues like songs and smells can help transport our minds back to the past.

The team, led by Gema Martin-Ordas of Aarhus University, Denmark, used the same principle. They found that cues – keeping the experimental set up the same – triggered the apes’ memories.

They observed that 90% of the apes who experienced the event three years earlier found the tool in the correct location almost instantly.

“Our data, and other emerging evidence, keep challenging the idea of non-human animals being stuck in time,” said Dr Martin-Ordas.

“We show not only that chimpanzees and orangutans remember events that happened two weeks or three years ago, but also that they can remember them even when they are not expecting to have to recall those events at a later time.

“What this shows is that the episodic memory system in humans is not as unique as we thought it was, as we share features with non-human primates.”

National Geographic has more.

In 2009, the team ushered 12 of the apes into the middle of several connected cages. In full view, they hid two tools in different boxes within the adjacent rooms. Their job was to remember where these tools were—they would need them to reach an inaccessible piece of food in a later test. They had four shots at doing this.

Over the next three years, the apes went about their lives. They ate, slept, socialised, and took part in many more studies. Then, in 2012, eleven of them were led into the same set of rooms with tool-containing boxes in the same locations. And all of them, except for one, went straight to boxes and retrieved the tools. They remembered.

Call was surprised at “how quickly they retrieved the tools as soon as we opened the doors”. They all did this on their first attempt, without prompts or trial-and-error. They didn’t know this test was coming—in 2009, even the researchers hadn’t planned to repeat their experiment three years later. And by contrast, seven individuals that weren’t part of the original experiment didn’t head for the boxes; they just explored the rooms randomly.

Three years. That’s impressive.

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

For dessert at the end of the day – another painting that’s not in a stove. Flowering Orchard, from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

I’ve been there once, years ago. That’s one museum that really impresses on you the difference between the real thing and pictures in books. The real paintings practically vibrate on the walls. It’s a wonderful, overwhelming experience.

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

Atheist Ireland has made a submission to the Irish Constitutional Convention, looking to get blasphemy out of the Irish Constitution.

3. Why the Irish blasphemy law in particular is harmful

…

(ii) The preamble to our Constitution states that all authority of the State comes from, and all actions of the State must be referred to the Most Holy Trinity. It also humbly acknowledges all of the obligations of the people of the State to Our Lord Jesus Christ.

That’s just a bonkers thing to have in a constitution. Just nuts. That’s not the kind of thing it’s reasonable to expect an entire population to agree to or submit to! You can’t demand agreement on something that’s not decided by rational means in the first place. It’s not right.

(ii) Under the Irish Constitution, you cannot become President or be appointed as a Judge unless you take a religious oath under God asking god to direct and sustain you in your work. These religious declarations are contrary to Ireland’s obligations under the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

And the reason for that is as above – people have differing views on it and there is no rational way to decide among them and it’s not reasonable to demand that people assent to supernatural claims.

(iv) In Article 44, the State acknowledges that the homage of public worship is due to Almighty God. This is not even an assertion of the right of citizens to worship this god. It is an assertion of the right of this god to be worshipped by citizens.

Hah! I love that one. That’s very elegant.

(xi) It has been suggested that the law as constructed was made deliberately unworkable to ensure it was never enacted. Even if this was true, such a stance relies upon a prevailing and consistent attitude amongst those in government considered sensible enough to ensure this remains the case. This is a dangerous assumption. We have already seen from the X Case, when the State sought an injunction to prevent a raped pregnant child from leaving the country, that religiously-inspired Constitutional provisions can be implemented when nobody expects it to happen.

Again: bonkers. Don’t make a “deliberately unworkable” law so that it won’t be enacted; just don’t make the law. Don’t play chicken with laws.

(xii) Likewise, if the law was constructed with such assumptions, this is parochial in the extreme and neglects the wider global implications of its existence. Indeed Ireland’s law has explicitly been cited as a precedent that should allow other countries to develop laws against blasphemy. Ireland’s stance on the matter runs counter to what is occurring in other western countries, and its own actions no longer occur in isolation and convey signals to the rest of the world. Blasphemy laws oppress ALL religious believers and non-believers as demonstrated by the actions taken by governments listed in Section 2(b).

Good luck to them. I very much hope they succeed.

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

Mohammed Hanif warmly thanks Adnan Shaheed for his generous letter to Malala Yousafzai.

Thanks for owning up that your comrades tried to kill her by shooting her in the head. Many of your well-wishers in Pakistan had been claiming the Taliban wouldn’t attack a minor girl. They were of the opinion that Malala had shot herself in order to become a celebrity and get a UK visa. Women, as we know, will go to any lengths to get what they want. So thanks for saying that a 14-year-old girl was the Taliban’s foe.

Then he moves on to theology.

Like you, there are others who are still not sure whether it was “Islamically correct or wrong”, or whether she deserved to be “killed or not”, but then you go on to suggest that we leave it to Allah.

There are a lot of people in Pakistan, some of them not even Muslims, who, when faced with difficult choices or everyday hardships, say let’s leave it to Allah. Sometimes it’s the only solace for the helpless. But most people don’t say leave it to Allah after shooting a kid in the face. The whole point of leaving it to Allah is that He is a better judge than any human being, and there are matters that are beyond our comprehension – maybe even beyond your favourite writer Bertrand Russell’s comprehension.

Well actually whole point of leaving it to Allah is that he is supposed to be a better judge than any human being, but what that turns out to mean is always just what the perpetrator decides Allah thinks or wants or decides – in other words it’s just what the perp thinks or wants or decides, dressed up as what “Allah” does. “Leaving it to Allah” doesn’t actually mean anything, because Allah isn’t around and doesn’t send or receive messages, so there really isn’t any way to leave it to Allah.

Allow me to make another small theological point – again about girls. Before the advent of Islam, before the prophet gave us the holy book that you want Malala to learn again, in the times we call jahilia, people used to bury their newborn daughters. They probably found them annoying and thought it better to get rid of them before they learned to speak. We are told Islam came to put an end to such horrendous practices. If 1,400 years later, we have to shoot girls in the head in an attempt to shut them up, someone like Russell might say we haven’t made much progress.

Zing.

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

A new Dan Cardamon.

How can you tell what a woman wants at any particular moment, I mean, come on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Efcqo1r4NCw

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

One article from the Asian Human Rights Commission leads to another, like this one from July 3 about the murder of one woman who was a women’s rights activist, followed by the murder of her sister who was trying to pursue the murder case.

Dear friends,

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received updated information regarding the murder of Ms. Shamim Akhter (50), who worked for the Social Welfare organization in Tando Jam, Sindh province. She was brutally chopped to death by her husband Mr. Sajid Mahmood and Police Constable Usman Lodhi on 4 June 2013 (For further information, please see our recent urgent appeal: AHRC-UAC-092-2013).

Now, we have learned that Shamim’s younger sister, Ms. Tasleem Akhter, who was pursuing the murder case against the police and her deceased sister’s husband, has been murdered by three persons riding on a motor bike. Within 25 days, both sisters were murdered by an official of the same police station and his henchmen. The police still refuse to investigate both cases of murder. Tasleem and her nephew Ehtesham were constantly under threat by the local police officials to withdraw their case demanding an inquiry into the murder of her sister.

UPDATED INFORMATION:

Ms. Tasleem Akhter (40), younger sister of slain women’s rights activist Ms. Shamim Akhter (50), was gunned down by three armed men at 11: 30 a.m. on 29 June when she was coming back from a court hearing for her petition filed to demand an inquiry into the murder of her sister. Her nephew Ehtesham (brother’s son) was travelling back with his aunt by rickshaw and, as they reached the densely populated area of Sabzi Mandi (Vegetable Market) Station Road, Hyderabad, he saw four persons, including police constable Usman Lodhi, Shahzad, Abdul Hameed and Shahid, come towards the rickshaw. Suddenly the four assailants stopped the rickshaw, dragged Tasleem out and shot her at close range, leaving her injured. She stood up immediately and shouted for help but the constable saw her standing and came back. He shot eight bullets into her body and ran away firing into the air.

The victim’s elder sister, Shamin Akhter, was punished by the police because she was always fighting against the police brutality. Shamim had raised awareness of the murder of a Hindu young man in the Gulashan Hali police station by brutal torture. She was also raising her voice against the police ill-treatment of young women.

Read on, if you can bear it.

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