QED has released the video of the panel “A Question of God” from last March. The panel is moderated by Paula Kirby and has Maryam Namazie, DJ Grothe, and me. Ironic, isn’t it.
It’s as I remembered it – fun, congenial, entertaining, interesting. That’s why I was so surprised when a few months later Paula Kirby called me a Feminazi and Femistasi. Watching that panel, she doesn’t seem like that kind of person.
How…quirky. Brazil’s House of Representatives elected a racist homophobe as the new chair of its Commission for Human Rights and Minorities. Kind of defeats the purpose.
Marcos Feliciano is known for his homophobic and racist declarations: “Africans descend from an ancestor cursed by Noah. This is a fact,” he wrote. “Noah’s curse on his grandson, Canaan, lingers in Africa, therefore leading to all the hunger, diseases, ethnic wars.”
This is a fact? What would a fiction look like then? If an old story in an old book is “a fact” then what criteria do you use to detect a fiction?
Marcos Feliciano’s image has been further tarnished by the exposure of his behavior during his fund-raising sermons at the ‘Resurrection Cathedral’ (Catedral do Avivamento) for his church ‘The Assembly of God’ in Riberão Preto, in São Paulo state. Feliciano accepts donations in cash, check, credit cards. Even motorbikes can be used to pay for ‘divine rewards’, he announces.
In this video (not subtitled), Feliciano says: “This is the last time I’ll say it. Samuel de Sousa has donated using his credit card, but hasn’t provided the password. This is not fair. Then he is going to ask God for a miracle, and if God doesn’t reply he’s going to say God is evil.”
Even more quirky. Racist, confused about what a “fact” is, and venal to the point of embarrassment.
Bjarte’s stick figure has discovered “civility.”
1. So you think you should not be treated like a public toilet and I disagree. [butterfly, flower, smiley]
2.Surely that’s a legitimate difference of opinion over which we can have a polite conversation. [birdie, musical note]
3. *@! no, because:
context
facts
values
analysis
logic
conclusions
4. #FTBullies blabla “*@!” blablabla uncivil blablabla uncharitable blabla tone blablabla rather than engage in civil dialogue!
There’s a gallery in a little neighborhood shopping area about half a mile from where I live, not the main top of the hill shopping area, but a smaller one, with a miniature grocery store, and the dentist I go to, and a great bakery-coffee shop called Macrina, and a taco place, and an orthodontist with witty signs (“if you have more tattoos than teeth, come see us”), among other things – quite a humming little spot really.
The gallery is the Fountainhead Gallery. I went past it yesterday and looked in the windows as I always do, and then looked some more and then went inside. They’re having an exhibit called Frontline Heroines, by Judith Larsen. The heroines are journalists killed on the job.
For instance –
NEDA Neda Agha Soltar was an Iranian student demonstrator who was gunned down during the 2009 student protest. She has since become an icon and martyr for democracy in Iran.
ANNA Anna Politkovskaya, born in the USA, was a Russian newspaper editor, journalist, human rights activist and an award-winning author who was shot to death near her Moscow apartment, allegedly for her coverage of the Chechen conflict and her investigative articles.
MARGARET Margaret Moth, CNN photo journalist, was shot and critically wounded while covering the Bosnian War. She died later from related health issues.
SHAIME Shaime Rezayee, host of an Afghan MTV show, was executed for her role in that program.
An important subject.
How do you demonstrate that you are too wise and grown up and sensible to feed internet drama? By ignoring it bringing it up out of the blue for no apparent reason when no one was talking about it.
The CBC doesn’t seem to consider internet harassment just “drama” or “playing the victim card” or similar. The CBC takes it seriously enough to report on it, at least.
An Alberta man found out just how ugly an online debate can become when someone hijacked his identity and went on a crude Facebook rampage.
He joined a Facebook page about preserving an Edmonton airport – whoa, controversial, right?! – and things got heated.
One of the users started harassing him, using profane language, so Ken blocked him.
This only angered the man and he recreated Ken’s Facebook profile, stealing his real profile pictures, his name and even where he worked. [Read more…]
Legal reform is not enough to end violence against women, Katherine Brickell observes.
Despite what Unifem (the UN agency for gender equity) claims have been 20 years of “unprecedented progress” on the issue – including an increase in the number of laws – many women around the world still have no knowledge of their rights and even fewer of how to lay claim to them.
Brickell leads a research team in Cambodia, which has a law (passed in 2005) on the Prevention of Domestic Violence and the Protection of the Victims.
The law starts by defining its dual purpose as protecting victims of violence, and “preserving the harmony within the households in line with the nation’s good custom and tradition”. [Read more…]
Soraya Chemaly has some trenchant thoughts on the Steubenville rape case and the culture that enables such cases.
While teaching people about consent isn’t going to change the behavior of predatory serial rapists, it will cultivate a culture that encourages effective bystander intervention and teaches both women and men how to reduce risk. What we have now and by default are subtle and overt messages that teach children, like the two Steubenville boys and the kids who watched them, to treat other human beings — disproportionately female ones — as dehumanized prey instead of as people for whom they should feel compassion.
Seriously, what is that? Why did everyone else just let it happen? Why didn’t anyone stop it? [Read more…]
What we’re learning from the Steubenville rape trial.
We’re learning that there were text messages. Lots of text messages.
A state forensics investigator, Joann Gibb, methodically quoted from text messages that she said came from the phone of one of the defendants, Trent Mays, 17, and from the phones of friends and classmates. The messages described the inebriated girl as “dead” or as a “dead body” and stated that Mr. Mays acknowledged penetrating the girl with his fingers.
Because that’s what you do. If there’s a girl at a party who passes out from drinking too much, you stick your fingers up her. [Read more…]
The new idea about the Neanderthals is that they had very big eyes, so they had a lot of visual processing equipment which means they had little room for higher order thinking. It’s like eagles. Eagles have enormous eyes and most of their headspace is devoted to visual processing. They can see like demons but they’re lousy conversationalists.
It was dark up north in Europe, see.
The research team explored the idea that the ancestor of Neanderthals left Africa and had to adapt to the longer, darker nights and murkier days of Europe. The result was that Neanderthals evolved larger eyes and a much larger visual processing area at the backs of their brains. [Read more…]