Posts Tagged ‘ FTB ’

London, Tunisia, Jordan

Jan 22nd, 2015 5:46 pm | By

Via Elham Manea on Twitter

London –

Tunisia -

Jordan -

The people

united

shall never be defeated.

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



Belfast and Dublin

Jan 22nd, 2015 5:40 pm | By

More protests in more places for Raif.

Via Amnesty on Twitter –

Belfast City Hall –

Via Amnesty Ireland -

The Saudi embassy in Dublin -

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Salman takes over from Abdullah

Jan 22nd, 2015 5:08 pm | By

The king of Saudi Fascist Arabia has died and his half-brother has replaced him. The New York Times gives some background.

Abdullah’s reign was a constant effort to balance desert traditions with the demands of the modern world, making him appear at times to be shifting from one to the other.

When popular movements and insurgencies overthrew or threatened long-established Arab rulers from Tunisia to Yemen in 2011, he reacted swiftly.

On his return from three months of treatment for a herniated disk and a blood clot in New York and Morocco, his government spent $130 billion to build 500,000 units of low-income housing, to bolster the salaries of government employees and to ensure the loyalty of religious organizations.

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In Houston

Jan 22nd, 2015 1:58 pm | By

Another protest, this time in Houston yesterday.

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The other 15 women

Jan 22nd, 2015 1:37 pm | By

However, one piece of better news – though I can’t really call it good news, given the eight years wasted…

A pardon granted by El Salvador’s Parliamentary Assembly to a young woman imprisoned after suffering a miscarriage is a triumph of justice and gives hope to the other 15 women languishing in jail on similar charges, said Amnesty International.

In 2007 “Guadalupe” received a 30 year jail sentence after authorities wrongly suspected she had terminated her pregnancy. She was only 18 years old.

Now she’s 25 or 26. She lost eight years because she had a miscarriage.

El Salvador has one of the most draconian abortion laws in the world, criminalizing abortion on all grounds, even when a woman or

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What Amnesty actually said

Jan 22nd, 2015 1:31 pm | By

Hm. We have a discrepancy in what people are saying about Raif. As I posted a few hours ago, Amnesty says the doctors have said he shouldn’t be flogged again, but they also said

Raif Badawi is still at risk, there is no way of knowing whether the Saudi Arabian authorities will disregard the medical advice and allow the flogging to go ahead.

But the BBC is reporting that as Amnesty saying “Saudi Arabia has postponed the flogging” – which is inaccurate. Did the Beeb just misread it?

They go on –

Amnesty said the decision was made after doctors advised against this week’s 50 lashes on health grounds.

But Amnesty didn’t say that. They said the opposite, … Read the rest

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Known for his analytic approach to the complex plight of humanity

Jan 22nd, 2015 1:05 pm | By

Michael Shermer is on the book tour for his new book explaining morality.

Morality? Shermer?

Yes. Bemusing, isn’t it.

Known for his analytic approach to the complex plight of humanity, New York Times bestselling author Michael Shermer (Skeptic Magazine) brings his characteristic insight to the nuanced relationship between science and morality in his latest book, The Moral Arc. From paying ransom to Somali pirates and the dilemmas of being a Nazi, to an analysis of the Bible’s basic principles, Shermer unpacks the philosophies behind some of today’s greatest moral questions. He’ll explain how beginning with The Age of Reason and the Enlightenment, scientific ways of thinking have made society more moral and in turn, created a freer,

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That offend the Prophet of mercy

Jan 22nd, 2015 11:59 am | By

Now have some revolting kakk from the International Union for Islamic Scholars.

(That’s not “scholars” as normally understood, of course. It means not people who have read and understood many books, but people who have read and memorized one book.)

IUMS calls for the Islamic nation to continue in the legal peaceful demonstrating to defend the great messenger, and calls for the West to protect Muslim communities from attacks.

Defend him from what? He’s dead. It’s too late to defend him because he has no life to defend any more.

IUMS had received with deep sorr[ow], the insistence of some of the re-deployment of graphics or movies that offend the Prophet of mercy, the Great Prophet Muhammad – peace

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#Free Raif in Berlin

Jan 22nd, 2015 10:55 am | By

Via Twitter

FgN @felooz_tweets · 4 hours ago
Protesting with @SAIDYOUSIF in Berlin to demand freedom & end to the flogging of Raif Badawi. #FreeRaif .@amnesty_de

Another -

Cem Özdemir @cem_oezdemir · 7 hours ago
Jetzt vor Botschaft von #SaudiArabien in Berlin. Stoppt die Folter! Freiheit für #RaifBadawi! – Danke, @amnesty!

Another-

Conflict News @rConflictNews · 5 hours ago
Protest now infront of #saudi embassy in #Berlin demanding to stop the flogging of .@raif_badawi via @SAIDYOUSIF

One more -

FgN @felooz_tweets · 5 hours ago
With @SAIDYOUSIF protesting infront of Saudi Embassy in Berlin demandin freedom for Raif Badawi #FreeRaif @amnesty_de

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She will greet him at the Montreal airport

Jan 22nd, 2015 10:42 am | By

The Guardian talks to Ensaf Haider.

A few days before his birthday, the liberal Saudi blogger Raif Badawi received 50 lashes in front of a mosque in Jeddah, his hometown. Thousands of miles away, in her modest basement flat in Québec, his wife decided to avenge his cruel treatment with a birthday party. She put a piece of cake aside to be frozen for him, just in case.

“I feel destroyed. But I don’t want to sit in a corner and cry,” says Ensaf Haidar softly, sitting on her eldest daughter’s bed. “That would be letting Raif and my children down.”

I so badly want him to get to eat that piece of cake…before it gets freezer burn.

Haidar

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At the King Fahd Hospital in Jeddah

Jan 22nd, 2015 10:20 am | By

The doctors have again said Raif should not be whipped tomorrow, Amnesty reports.

The planned flogging of Raif Badawi is likely to be suspended this Friday after a medical committee assessed that he should not undergo a second round of lashes on health grounds. The committee, comprised of around eight doctors, carried out a series of tests on Raif Badawi at the King Fahd Hospital in Jeddah yesterday and recommended that the flogging should not be carried out.

Nothing surprising about the assessment – deep cuts caused by repeated blows of a stick would of course not heal completely in two weeks.

“Instead of continuing to torment Raif Badawi by dragging out his ordeal with repeated assessments the authorities

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Attention people in or near Ottawa

Jan 22nd, 2015 10:12 am | By

CFI Canada is holding weekly protests at the Saudi embassy in Ottawa in conjunction with Amnesty International  Canada.

CFI Canada calls its volunteers and supporters to join or lend support to weekly 30-minute demonstrations at the Saudi embassy in Ottawa (201 Sussex Drive).  Amnesty International  Canada  is leading this initiative on Thursday January 15, 2015  at 4:00 pm.  Raif Badawi is expected to receive lashes every Friday for a total of twenty weeks.    For further information, contact the CFIC office at ned@cficanada.ca.

That’s from last week but theobromine tells us there is one today:

Note to anyone in or near Ottawa, Canada: Atheist and Humanist groups (CFI-Canada and Humanist Canada) are joining the weekly protests sponsored by Amnesty international –

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Culture clash

Jan 21st, 2015 6:20 pm | By

Watch Shazia Mirza speak up for the value of humor and Nabila Ramdani speak up for…other things.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuQZwZhFJawRead the rest

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5 stages of “community leader”

Jan 21st, 2015 5:42 pm | By

Another item from Maajid on Twitter:

Maajid Nawaz @MaajidNawaz · 13 hours ago
Adam Lowisz on my Facebook page applied Kübler-Ross ‘5 stages of grief’ onto outdated Muslim “community leader” types

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Systematically cited less than their male peers

Jan 21st, 2015 4:32 pm | By

More from that Washington Post article about the overlooking of female scholars of the Middle East when events are being organized. I ran out of time before.)

The problem isn’t going to fix itself, even though women are the majority at some graduate schools of international affairs now.

The paucity of women’s voices in public discussion comes not just from thoughtless conveners, but also from long-standing problems in the professional “pipeline” that carries individuals to the top levels of the field. Inequities in hiring and promotion often reflect, and help perpetuate, the unconscious bias of a male-dominated field.

Women are systematically cited less than their male peers, for example. Even when women are active scholars, as they are in

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150 events, not a single woman speaker

Jan 21st, 2015 12:06 pm | By

Are.you.kidding.

Last year, six leading Washington think tanks presented more than 150 events on the Middle East that included not a single woman speaker. Fewer than one-quarter of all the speakers at the 232 events at those think tanks recorded in our newly compiled data-set were women. How is it possible that in 2014, not a single woman could be found to speak at 65 percent of these influential and high-profile D.C. events?

They all figure it’s more of a guy thing?

Pretty much.

Such questions are increasingly common in other fields, including the natural sciences. In our experience, organizers of all-male events reply to challenges with one of two answers: “I didn’t even notice there weren’t any women!”

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Maajid raises the issue with Nick Clegg – #FreeRaif

Jan 21st, 2015 11:51 am | By

Now this is good – Maajid Nawaz on Twitter

Maajid Nawaz ‏@MaajidNawaz 2h
I personally raised flogging @raif_badawi & @WaleedAbulkhair with UK Dep.Prime Minister @nick_clegg today #FreeRaif

Here’s hoping.… Read the rest

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Nobel laureates speak up for Raif Badawi

Jan 21st, 2015 11:39 am | By

Good – another ratchet in the protests to Saudi Arabia about its brutal torture and rights-abrogation of Raif Badawi.

The international outcry over  restrictions on freedom of speech in Saudi Arabia escalated last night as an array of Nobel prizewinners published an open letter calling on the country’s academics to condemn the public flogging of the blogger Raif Badawi.

In their letter, passed to The Independent, the 18 Nobel Laureates urge their Saudi peers to be “heard arguing for the freedom to dissent” by standing up for Mr Badawi, whose case they say has “sent a shock around the world”.

They also hint that if the country’s academics are unable to stand up for free speech they risk being

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51 percent of students

Jan 21st, 2015 10:59 am | By

Shocking but not really surprising – more than half of students in public schools in the US come from families in poverty.

This week, the Southern Education Foundation reported that 51 percent of students in grades K through 12 received a free or reduced-price school lunch in 2013, meaning that their families lived on less than 185 percent of the poverty line. According to the Washington Post, it is “the first time in at least 50 years” that more than half of the country’s public school kids have qualified as low income. In 1989, the figure was under 32 percent. In 2006, it hit 42 percent, and by 2011, it had ratcheted up to 48 percent.

Why … Read the rest

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Limited warranty

Jan 21st, 2015 10:35 am | By

James Croft asked an interesting question in a public Facebook post.

Interesting question which came up at this Clergy Care Summit: what is a Humanist version of “Know that God Loves you?”

There’s a string of comments offering substitutes but they’re not fully convincing. My answer is that there isn’t one. (Ian Cromwell’s is good though – “We’re all in this together”. That has the advantage of being true, along with the disadvantage of being not nearly as comforting as the original.)

There can’t be a humanist or Humanist version of “Know that God Loves you” because people are free to project onto this imagined god the most perfect satisfying consoling love possible. They’re free to reconcile mutual impossibilities … Read the rest

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