Repainting the break room

So there’s this hospital in Clermont-Ferrand with a mural of what looks like a gang-rape…

A fresco depicting four superheroes committing what has been interpreted as a gang rape is currently the subject of a huge scandal in France. The mural—which is painted on the wall of a hospital in Clermont-Ferrand—depicts Wonder Woman having anal sex with Batman while Superman comes in her mouth. Supergirl is there, fisting, and the Flash is getting a handjob. It’s causing its fair share of controversy in a country still dealing with the emotional fallout of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. [Read more…]

A sweep of the awards

In Australia some awards were handed out.

Rosie Batty has been named Australian of the Year for her campaign against family violence in an award ceremony that saw four women take the nation’s top Australia Day honours for the first time in history.

Ms Batty rose above her personal tragedy and the great loss of her 11-year-old-son, Luke, who was murdered by his father on a cricket oval in February last year.

Her story jolted Australia into recognising that family violence could happen to anyone and she has given voice to many thousands of victims of domestic violence who had until then remained unheard. [Read more…]

Raif’s dream

Ensaf Haidar tells us that Raif is all emotional about the Independent’s campaign for him.

Raif Badawi, the Saudi Arabian blogger whose punishment of 1,000 lashes has led to an international outcry, is mentally “very strong” and taking great heart from the campaign to free him, his wife has told The Independent.

In an email exchange, Ensaf Haidar said she remains hopeful that her husband will be released soon, despite being sentenced to 10 years in prison and 50 lashes a week for 20 weeks for criticising the country’s clerics through his liberal blog. He is still recovering from his first round of flogging.

[Read more…]

UK-Saudi Arabia co-operation on prison service

Meanwhile, in London – a baffling plan is afoot.

The UK Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is hoping to profit from selling its expertise to the prison service in Saudi Arabia, a country notorious for public beheadings, floggings, amputations and courts that regularly violate human rights.

A new commercial arm of the justice ministry, staffed by civil servants, has bid for a £5.9m contract in Saudi Arabia. Just Solutions international (JSi) will also soon start setting up a probation service in Macedonia, and is in the running to build a prison in Oman.

??????????? [Read more…]

Fighting on the outskirts

Bad. Now Boko Haram is attacking Maiduguri, which is not a village but a city.

Fighters from the Islamist militant group Boko Haram have launched an attack on the key city of Maiduguri in north-eastern Nigeria.

Fierce fighting was reported on the outskirts. The military is carrying out air strikes, and a curfew is in place.

Maiduguri is home to tens of thousands of people who have fled Boko Haram attacks and was visited on Saturday by President Goodluck Jonathan. [Read more…]

Such an ambitious project

Seth Shulman, editorial director of the Union of Concerned Scientists, reviews Michael Shermer’s new book at the Washington Post. Remember, the subtitle of that book is “How Science and Reason Lead Humanity Toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom.”

If you read carefully, I think you can detect that he doesn’t think much of it but wants to be polite or encouraging. It’s possible that I’m just reading that in, but…that’s the sense I get.

‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. told a crowd of protesters in Montgomery, Ala., in March 1965. King’s use of that quote stands as one of history’s more inspiring pieces of oratory, acknowledging that victories in the fight for social justice don’t come as frequently as we might like, while offering hope that progress will come eventually.

But is the contention empirically true?

[Read more…]

Locked up in the Potemkin village

Ishaan Tharoor at the Washington Post has the story of Abdullah’s daughters, but he makes clear that he’s reporting reports as opposed to an investigation. He says there are some doubts as to how confined the daughters are. Maybe they’re only a little bit held against their will.

Abdullah’s reforms, writes one commentator, have “all the substance of a Potemkin village, a flimsy structure to impress foreign opinion.”

Closer to home, moreover, there are a few women related to the late monarch who may object to the praise being heaped upon him. Abdullah, like other Saudi royals, had numerous wives — at least seven, and perhaps as many as 30. He had at least 15 daughters. Four of them, according to news reports, live under house arrest. [Read more…]

Five years old

I’m feeling sick now.

From the International Business Times –

A Saudi preacher accused of raping, torturing and killing his five-year-old daughter, has reportedly been released from custody after agreeing to pay “blood money”.

Fayhan al-Ghamdi was sentenced to eight years in prison and 800 lashes in 2013.

The court also ordered al-Ghamdi to pay his ex-wife, the girl’s mother, one million riyals ($270,000) in “blood money”.

According to some reports, al-Ghamdi had suspected his daughter had lost her virginity and had tortured her accordingly.

Al-Ghamdi’s daughter Lama suffered multiple injuries including a crushed skull, broken back, broken ribs, a broken left arm and extensive bruising and burns. [Read more…]