Salman takes over from Abdullah

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.

He also created a Facebook page, where citizens were invited to present their grievances directly to him, although it was not known how many entries actually reached him.

[Read more…]

The other 15 women

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. [Read more…]

What Amnesty actually said

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, and I’m not seeing any update on their site.

Confusing.

Known for his analytic approach to the complex plight of humanity

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, more just world.

Not by themselves they haven’t.

The subtitle of his book is

How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom

They don’t; that’s how. Not on their own. They can help; they can help a lot; they can correct a lot of mistakes. But they don’t just lead humanity toward justice, like a beacon in the night. Science and reason on their own can’t, for instance, convince someone that it’s immoral to get someone drunk and then steer her into your hotel room and then have sex with her. You need more than science and reason for that.

Shermer on morality. Funny old world, isn’t it.

 

That offend the Prophet of mercy

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. [Read more…]

She will greet him at the Montreal airport

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. [Read more…]