A war on information now?

As I mentioned, Richard Dawkins has an informative post about the UCL debate yesterday at RDF. Very good. I tried to add to the information Richard provided by linking to the information I had provided on Friday, but a moderator removed the link to my post almost instantly.

Why?

I took a look at the Terms & Conditions, and I can’t find anything that forbids links to blog posts. I’m not surprised not to find such a thing, because that would be an incredibly stupid policy for a website to have. Blog posts can be informative, so it would be ludicrous to make a general policy against links to blogs.

So then why?

I have no idea. The Friday post is relevant because it documents that the organizers were on the record as having agreed to Krauss’s insistence that there be no gender segregation. It documents that this was public information on Friday.

Why on earth remove that?

I did another comment explaining the (obvious) relevance and asking for the link to be left, but that whole comment was deleted.

What is wrong with them? If they have an ironclad rule against posting blog links, why isn’t it visible somewhere? And if they do, why do they, when it would be such a stupid rule?

Then I wrote the post that quoted Chris Moos’s new letter to UCL, and commented at RDF to say I had new information and posted that link – and it was instantly removed.

What is wrong with them?

Krauss says no

Dana Sondergaard attended the debate at UCL yesterday, and she recorded a video of Lawrence Krauss packing up his things and leaving because the gender segregation he’d objected to was still being enforced. It’s a public post on Facebook.

“No!” he says, making the “no” gesture with his hands. “No gender segregation or I’m out of here.”

More on yesterday at UCL

Chris Moos has written again to UCL, and urges others to do the same. He gives a detailed account of how the gender segregation was enforced and what a crap job UCL did of interfering with it. Hello world, it’s 2013, and University College London is allowing segregated events on its campus. Chris has given me permission to quote his letter.

Following up on the emails I had sent you on Thursday and Friday, I am writing to inform you that I was shocked about the manner in which the Islam or Atheism: The Big Debate event was carried out yesterday.

1) The organisers clearly and repeatedly violated UCL’s Equality and Diversity policy. Not only did they enforce gender segregation, but five security guards of the organiser intimidated and attempted to physically remove audience members who refused to comply, falsely claiming that these attendees had been disruptive. Both male and female audience members felt intimidated by the actions of the organiser’s security guards.

Only after Professor Krauss threatened thrice to leave the debate if the organisers should continue to enforce gender segregation (follow this link: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151324574843231 ), the organisers cleared one row of the women’s area and allowed the male attendees to sit there, thereby maintaining forced gender segregation. Notably, the women who were sitting in that row were not asked by the security guards whether they would feel comfortable with a man sitting next to them, or whether they would be willing to move. Forced gender segregation was thus maintained. [Read more…]

Yesterday at UCL

Richard Dawkins has a fuller account of what happened yesterday at the “Islam or Atheism?” debate at UCL, via Krauss himself.

A few days ago, I had received a tip-off from somebody who had made an inquiry about tickets: ‘We contacted the organizers today and learnt that “as for seating, it is according to when the ticket was booked and gender”.’

I’m guessing that somebody was Chris Moos, since he’s been all over this and I don’t know of anyone else who has. Chris does great work.

I passed this on to Lawrence, with the suggestion that he might consider withdrawing from the whole affair. He immediately asked the organizers, who assured him that the audience would not be segregated by sex, and Lawrence agreed to go ahead. [Read more…]

“Don’t get involved – don’t speak – it’s pointless.”

Guest post by Simon Davis.

On Thursday March 7, an Athens court acquitted Greek neo-nazi Golden Dawn MP Ilias Kasidiaris on charges of assault. Outside the courthouse, Kasidiaris stated:

I am rubbing this decision in the faces of the media and sad politicians. I have a lot of opposition that today would like me to be in jail and a lot of people who want Chrysi Avgi to be on the sidelines, but we are here, we are very powerful and soon we will be dominant.

The Greek site Luben published the following account from a person who “had the misfortune of living through this seven year ordeal from the beginning”, which I have translated to English. I have spoken to several people familiar with the case who have vouched for the veracity of the account. The original in Greek is here.

———–

You are a graduate student.

You are on campus.

A car stops at a location where you are alone.

Five muscle-bound men with shaved heads and sticks beat you to a pulp and stab you in the leg.

They steal your police ID and therefore know where you live.

The only reason for their actions is your appearance.

Despite your fear, you decide to fight back. [Read more…]

It was about Reddit

There’s an event this weekend, called SXSW, at which there was a panel on Reddit. It was somewhat fraught, apparently.

By the end of the first hot-ticket panel at SXSWi, things had gotten tense. The panel was made up of Slate‘s Farhad Manjoo, Gawker‘s Adrian Chen and Rebecca Watson of Skepchick. It was about Reddit.

The discussion of the site was largely critical — over the past year, the site has wrestled with its first real identity crisis, induced in large part by Chen’s outing of ViolentAcrez, who moderated, among other subreddits, a section called “jailbait.”

The concerns raised by the Violentacrez controversy were real and worthwhile: the value and pitfalls of anonymity, the overbearing abundance of white male voices on the site, the limits of free speech on the internet. The panel, perhaps predictably, tracked along those lines. Attendees — many avid Reddit users — were not happy.

That sounds familiar.

A guy voiced some unhappy from the floor. Check him out.

[Read more…]

No VAW Act for you

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops covers itself with glory again by finding stupid pettifogging reactionary reasons to refuse (officially, publicly, in a statemently) to support the Violence Against Women Act. Anything to be conspicuous, eh guys?

The chairmen of four committees and one subcommittee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issued a joint statement to voice their concerns on the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013, passed recently by the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. These concerns, as the bishops state, prevented the USCCB from supporting this version of the act.

Aw. Concerned, are you? Poor things. Tell us all about it. [Read more…]

A large crowd from a nearby mosque

What’s new in Pakistan? Oh, the usual – a mob enraged over some alleged “blasphemy” torches dozens of houses in a neighborhood of Lahore. Rageboys just wanna have fun.

The mob attacked the houses in Joseph Colony in Badami Bagh police precincts in the provincial capital following allegations of blasphemy against a Christian man. The man was booked under Section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).

It appeared that the man had been falsely accused of blasphemy but the police was forced to register a case to placate the mob, a local police official said.

Allah is wise, merciful. [Read more…]

What about dentists?

Good thinking, South Dakota – pass a law allowing teachers to carry guns. That will for sure prevent the extremely rare phenomenons of a mass school shooting, and will for sure never lead to any commonplace oops situation in which a teacher flips out or fires the gun by accident. Uh huh.

Under the Republican-sponsored bill, school staff given permission to carry firearms on campus will be known as “school sentinels”. The state has given a law enforcement commission the task of establishing a training programme for the sentinels.

Several representatives of school boards, teachers and other staff spoke against the bill in legislative hearings, arguing guns would make schools more dangerous.

But sponsor Representative Scott Craig said this week had heard from a number of school officials who back it.

Mr Craig said rural districts do not have the money to hire full-time police officers.

Plus it’s like a love letter to the second amendment.