Putin to gays: you’re welcome here but hands off the kids

And that’s not a joke. That’s what he said. From the Washington Post:

President Vladimir Putin said Friday that gay people have nothing to fear in Russia as long as they leave children alone.

Putin met with a group of volunteers in the Olympic mountain venue at Krasnaya Polyana on Friday to wish them success at the Games. During a question-and-answer session, one volunteer asked him about Russia’s attitudes toward gays, a subject that has provoked worldwide controversy, and Putin offered what was apparently meant to be a reassuring answer for visitors to the Olympics.

“One can feel calm and at ease,” he said. “Just leave kids alone, please.” [Read more…]

Imagine if he’d portrayed him as coffee and a croissant

Remember the Greek guy who mocked a Greek Orthodox monk by pretending to call him a pasta dish? And was charged with blasphemy? Well he’s been convicted of that stupid non-crime, and sentenced to ten months in prison.

A man who created a Facebook page poking fun at a revered Greek Orthodox monk has been sentenced to 10 months in prison in Greece after being found guilty of blasphemy. [Read more…]

Flora Jessop

Almost exactly a year ago ABC News reported that Flora Jessop had managed to rescue her sister Ruby and Ruby’s six children from Colorado City and the FLDS. The linked report is annoying because it autoplays, but it’s worth it for the content.

It’s all there, just as it is in the Learning Channel episode, right down to the intimidation by theocops in grey SUVs.

Flora Jessop had been trying to get Ruby Jessop out for twelve years. The Arizona Attorney General stands in front of the cameras and says that women are held hostage by the FLDS.

If you have a copy of Under the Banner of Heaven handy, check out pp 49-50. Krakauer describes the nightmare situation of Ruby Jessop and Flora Jessop’s attempts to rescue her. The publication date on the book is 2003. Two thousand fucking three – eleven years ago. [Read more…]

Central African Republic

It’s not good news.

A UN humanitarian official has warned against the risk of genocide in Central African Republic, where an ethnic conflict has caused over 1,000 deaths and left thousands uprooted.

“It has all the elements that we have seen elsewhere, in places like Rwanda and Bosnia. The elements are there, the seeds are there, for a genocide. There’s no question about that,” John Ging, director of operations for the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told a news conference in Geneva.

Ging described the situation in CAR as a “mega-crisis” where humanitarian needs are urged for thousands of displaced people.

The two groups that hate each other are Muslims and Christians.

Whatever. Serbs and Bosnians; Hutus and Tutsis; Hindus and Muslims; Thises and Thatses.

Don’t.

 

Backing away

From September 2008, a New York Times editorial on libel tourism and Khalid bin Mahfouz’s lawsuit against Rachel Ehrenfeld.

When Rachel Ehrenfeld wrote “Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed and How to Stop It,” she assumed she would be protected by the First Amendment. She was, in the United States. But a wealthy Saudi businessman she accused in the book of being a funder of terrorism, Khalid bin Mahfouz, sued in Britain, where the libel laws are heavily weighted against journalists, and won a sizable amount of money. [Read more…]

All of the Shaykh’s demands

Because it came up, I thought I might as well take a look back at those grotesque libel cases from the recent past.

One is the suit against Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World (Cambridge University Press, 2006), by J. Millard Burr and Robert O. Collins. Collins wrote it up at History News Network.

On April 3, 2007 Kevin Taylor, Intellectual Property Manager for the Cambridge University Press (CUP), contacted Millard Burr and myself that the solicitors for Shaykh Khalid bin Mahfouz, Kendall Freeman, had informed CUP of eleven “allegations of defamation” in our book Alms for Jihad: Charities and Terrorism in the Islamic World and requested a response.  [Read more…]

In the lab, studying screenplays

Ashley Miller is getting legal threats, from someone who says “From this point forward our attorney will be the only contact” and then promptly sends another email. The threats look very empty, but to be polite I will be careful not to cast aspersions on the enterprise in question. I won’t make any effort not to laugh, though.

The enterprise in question is called Cinematic Appraisals. I’d never heard of it before and now I have, so I hope they’re thanking Ashley for the free advertising.

Cinematic Appraisals has Science. It has a page about the Science, complete with a photo of Science In Action.

[Read more…]

Guest post: libel threats in Ireland

Originally a comment by mudpuddles on You can’t say that?

There have been a number of cases here in Ireland where politicians and other high-profile people (high-profile here, not necessarily anywhere else) have successfully sued individual broadcasters and / or their programmes or hosting company (which has in the past included RTE) over allegedly libelous or defamatory statements or programme content. A number of those cases have been valid, but some have been nothing short of bullying tactics aimed at silencing dissent or criticism. [Read more…]

Oh no not again

I saw someone on Twitter complaining about feminists complaining about Peta and its use of the female body yet again so I decided to be one of those feminists complaining about Peta and its use of the female body yet again. So I looked it up: what is it this time?

This time it’s women wearing bikinis made of lettuce (actually made of cloth but with lettuce or cabbage stuck onto the cloth). It’s women wearing lettuce bikinis in Minneapolis during the polar vortex.

So there you go: I’m complaining about it. [Read more…]

Allergy Treatment Spr

Now that’s a really horrifying use of “homeopathy” – that haha medical “treatment” that takes care to wash away every trace of the active ingredient.

Fake asthma remedy

It’s insulting on top of recklessly endangering, charging $15.99 for a tiny amount of water. But the reckless endangerment is the horrifying part. Asthma can kill! How can a “spray” with no active ingredient offer any kind of relief, temporary or otherwise, for asthma symptoms? It’s not going to shrink the swollen inflamed airways, so what relief can it offer?

It’s criminal.