Bye bye, have fun

I accidentally saw the last few minutes of the everlasting CBS news show 60 Minutes last night, and was horrified. It was about one Damian Aspinall and his Exciting Adventure of taking some captive-raised gorillas to Africa and abandoning them there. At the end Leslie Stahl said, “I wish we could end on an optimistic note but we can’t. A month later all five adult females were found dead” and so was the one juvenile.

Five adult female gorillas killed by the actions of their “owner” – a critically endangered species. I went incandescent with rage. I know, I’m always doing that, but then I’m always being given reasons, aren’t I.

I used to work up close and personal with gorillas at the zoo.

Daily Kos has a story. [Read more…]

They pushed the whole world to subscribe to Charlie Hebdo

More from that long interview with Caroline Fourest.

What about Charlie Hebdo now?

The irony of this crime is that those jihadists have killed the journalists of Charlie Hebdo because they wanted to silence this newspaper, but today they pushed the whole world to subscribe to Charlie Hebdo. The cartoonists who have been killed, we grew up with them. They made us laugh since we were very young, about the actuality, about religion, about politicians, about everything! To see this pure violence, fanaticism, this completely stupid brutality against these sweet, smart and funny people, it created a big shock in France.  Today, Charlie Hebdo is the symbol of the progressive people who want to continue to be free to criticize religion, to defend a secular republic and democracy. It’s the symbol of those people who are fighting against the extreme-right, the conservatives who want to divide people and create hatred against Muslims. This was, is and will be the symbol of Charlie Hebdo. This is the balance, which we want to keep alive for many years.

[Read more…]

The hallowed existence of women in the Islamic State

From last month – life for women under Daesh control.

Residents of Mosul, Raqqa and Deir el-Zour have told the Guardian in interviews conducted by phone and Skype that women are forced to be accompanied by a male guardian, known as a mahram, at all times, and are compelled to wear double-layered veils, loose abayas and gloves.

Their testimonies follow the publication this month of an Isis “manifesto” to clarify the “realities of life and the hallowed existence of women in the Islamic State”. It said that girls could be married from the age of nine, and that women should only leave the house in exceptional circumstances and should remain “hidden and veiled”.

That’s a “hallowed existence” all right – handed over to be sex slaves at age 9, and muffled in head-to-foot bags for life. The only thing more hallowed is a rotting corpse. [Read more…]

The reason why they killed my colleagues

Dilara Gürcü talks to the amazing Caroline Fourest.

Let’s begin by talking about Charlie Hebdo. How would you define Charlie Hebdo?

Charlie Hebdo is a satirical newspaper, it’s a paper known to make people laugh about all types of power, domination and ideology. It’s very important to understand that no cartoon in Charlie Hebdo goes to publication without context. The fanatics and the literalists cannot or do not want to understand this. It probably did a hundred times more caricatures of the Pope, the Catholic Church then of Islam. They’re making caricatures about politics a lot, all types of politicians but especially the extreme right. The worst enemy of Charlie Hebdo is National Front and Marine Le Pen. There were lots of caricatures about Nicholas Sarkozy as well because it’s a leftist newspaper. It defends another type of economy, a less capitalistic one. Charlie Hebdo defended Palestine as well, yet it is less known. Charb and Tignous who got killed were strong pro-Palestine activists and there were many caricatures about Israeli soldiers at Gaza in Charlie Hebdo. It’s a newspaper reacting to the actuality. It means that if a Rabbi would kill in the name of defending Moses, then probably Moses would be the cover, as that would be the current actuality.

[Read more…]

A prize for courage

A good thing today – Lars Vilks won an award.

A Swedish cartoonist who depicted the Prophet Muhammad as a dog has made his first public appearance since attending a debate that was targeted in a gun attack in Copenhagen last month.

Lars Vilks received a prize for courage from a free press group, at a heavily secured event in the Danish parliament.

His cartoon offended many Muslims and he now lives under guard in Sweden.

Oh damn, Beeb, you were doing so well. Two whole sentences you managed before blaming Lars for being almost murdered for drawing cartoons about religion.

And I doubt that it’s even true that his cartoon “offended many Muslims”; I think it offended a few, and those few are of the type who try to kill people who “offend” against their religion.

Mr Vilks, who has been associated with the Swedish left, received the Sappho award from the right-wing Danish Free Press Society.

Receiving the prize, Mr Vilks said he had not aimed to become a symbol of freedom of speech.

“I am an artist and my artwork is probably difficult to understand. Many have tried to understand what that dog is about. But I don’t even understand it myself.

“Some believe that it is a form of blasphemy, but I say that it is what art is all about. I show my things to the world and then the world must interpret it.”

It’s not an obviously “offensive” cartoon; the dog-human hybrid is rather handsome.

Wikipedia

The armed security around the prize-giving – as well as its location in parliament – shows how much Denmark has changed since the February attack, says the BBC’s Malcolm Brabant in Copenhagen.

Our correspondent says the show of force is something of a culture shock for what has been a peaceful and relatively secure country.

Of course; it’s horrible.

Why external and independent?

Amnesty International issued a statement two days ago when it decided it was no longer “appropriate” to work with Cage.

Further to our statement below, Amnesty International UK’s Director Kate Allen today said:

“Amnesty no longer considers it appropriate to share a public platform with Cage and will not engage in coalitions of which Cage is a member.

“Recent comments made by Cage representatives have been completely unacceptable, at odds with human rights principles and serve to undermine the work of NGOs, including Amnesty International.”

She continued: “We had engaged with Cage together with several other organisations on the specific issue of UK complicity in torture abroad, on which they had particular expertise.

“At the time that Gita Sahgal left Amnesty International, we commissioned an independent external review into our work with Cage and Moazzam Begg which concluded that it was reasonable for Amnesty to campaign with Cage and Moazzam Begg in his capacity as a former detainee at Guantanamo Bay.”

[Read more…]

Their choices need to be consistent with a universal human rights agenda

Rahila Gupta discusses Amnesty International and Cage at Open Democracy.

[W[hen Asim Qureshi, Research Director of Cage, alleged that harassment from MI5 was responsible for Emwazi’s journey to IS (Islamic State) in a Channel 4 interview with Jon Snow, they overreached themselves and opened themselves up to general ridicule and incredulity.

The ensuing outrage at Cage’s arguments appears to have pushed Amnesty International (AI) to put more distance between itself and Cage than it has ever done before, even though it was widely called upon to do so at the time of Gita Sahgal’s suspension from her post as head of the Gender unit at AI in 2010. [Read more…]

Guest post: Canada needs to fight sexism, not import new forms of it

Guest post by Saba Farbodkia.

The comments made by Justin Trudeau and Stephen Harper have caused a national conversation to form about niqab. The fact that Stephen Harper can use this to collect votes shows that many Canadians do find niqab an anti-woman practice. Even many lefties express their support for Harper “on this one”. So if there are so many people against this practice, how is that we don’t hear much debate and conversation on this at other times? Is that because people rely on law to limit undesirable cultural practices?

But banning someone from doing something that doesn’t harm anyone and is not against the law is not the way to fight an anti-woman or oppressive practice. Talking about it, is. [Read more…]

A complex network of ideological and cultural norms

The actor Frieda Pinto gave a speech at the New York premiere of India’s Daughter. The Huffington Post reports:

“Today in 2015 despite the vast improvements in the lives and rights of women across the world in the last century, there still seems to exist this very complex network of ideological and cultural norms that still plague our society and that make global misogyny, in my opinion, a great scourge and most pressing issue of our age,” Pinto said.

That’s why we’re still battling – because of that network of ideological and cultural norms. The ones that put women in various inadequate pigeonholes that all function to diminish and constrain them. [Read more…]