The talaq

PZ has an amusing post about his latest excommunication from something he wasn’t part of in the first place.

Next time I’m waiting for a bus I think I’ll fantasize about all the groups and organizations I’m not part of that could excommunicate me. The Air Force. Focus on the Family. The League of Left-handed Botanists. God-lovers United for Cheese-flavored Dog Food.

Read PZ’s post for the full entertainment package, but I just want to poke at the excommunication a little myself because it’s so…classic. [Read more…]

But he backtracked after he was elected

Another cartoonist being punished for being a meanie to people in power. (I thought that was what political cartoonists were supposed to do.)

Malaysian cartoonist Zulkiflee Anwar Alhaque has been charged with nine counts of sedition for criticising the country’s judiciary in a series of tweets.

Alhaque, known for ridiculing the ruling coalition, had criticised the judiciary in a series of posts on Twitter on 10 February, when opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was due to start a five-year prison sentence on sodomy charges.

He had tweeted: “The lackeys in black robes are proud of their sentence. The rewards from the political masters must be plenty.” [Read more…]

“I have your nikah in my pocket”

Great god almighty – a new low for George Galloway. You wouldn’t think that possible, would you, but it is. Helen Pidd reports in the Guardian:

George Galloway has admitted ordering an intermediary in Pakistan to dig out the marriage certificate of his Labour rival in order to try to prove she had been 16, not 15, when she claims to have been forced into marriage.

…

Officials from his Respect party dispute that Naz Shah, Labour’s candidate in Bradford West, was forced into marriage, on the grounds that her mother was at the ceremony.

[Read more…]

Do not let silence become your legacy

Another petition you can sign – this one Amnesty International to Obama, urging him to stand up for Raif.

Saudi Arabian blogger Raif Badawi was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for his blog Saudi Arabian Liberals. More than one million actions have been taken on his behalf – yet some key world leaders have remained silent. Now, Raif’s wife Ensaf Haidar has asked President Obama to add his voice to the call to Free Raif. In a recent Washington Post Op-Ed, Ensaf wrote:

“More than a million people around the world have demanded that the Saudi Arabian authorities release my husband, including more than 60 members of Congress…I beg members of the administration to follow their congressional colleagues’ lead and demand that Raif be released immediately. The United States presents itself as a champion of human rights throughout the world. It cannot allow its important strategic relationship with the kingdom to overshadow its moral standing. Raif must be returned to my arms, not dragged to his death.”

It is critical that President Obama heeds Ensaf’s call, and puts human rights at the center of foreign policy. Remind him that silence on Raif should not be his legacy!

I second that.

We regret if there is something that has been perceived as if

There’s this article at the Gatestone Institute – a source I’m wary of, because I don’t know how reliable it is, but it provides some material I don’t see anywhere else.

After weeks of diplomatic wrangling and recrimination, the Saudi government on March 27 announced that it would reinstate its ambassador, Ibrahim bin Saad bin Ibrahim al-Brahim, to Stockholm. The ambassador had been recalled on March 11 as a protest against Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström’s criticism of Saudi Arabia’s legal practices and treatment of women.

“Weeks” of diplomatic wrangling is a strange way to put it, because March 11 to March 27 is 16 days. It’s two weeks; “weeks” sounds like more than that. Anyway, Saudi said the ambassador could go back. Did Sweden do any backing down to make this happen? Hard to say. [Read more…]

Guest post: Funny how charity and benefit of the doubt never go both ways

Originally two comments by Tom Foss on The words spoken.

“We need to stop spending our money on military and police and start spending it on education.”
“He wants to eliminate the whole military and all police! It’s exactly what he said!”

There’s a phrase missing from your strawman here that would actually make your “charitable” reading accurate: “so much.” We need to stop spending so much of our money on military and police and start spending it on education.

We keep hearing all this about charitable readings and giving people the benefit of the doubt when the people in question have given no indication that they deserve it. Regardless of whether or not she meant the actual words that she said, her claim about the “worst thing that can happen” to a gay person in the US is insultingly, dismissively false. There is literally no reason for her to so blatantly distort the actual situation for gay people in the US to make her point, because the death penalty as actual policy is worse whether American gays are being denied cake or being denied employment. The same is true for her comments about women’s rights. Why dismiss these issues if your point isn’t to say that we need to switch our focus to the real problems? Which, again, is what she actually said. [Read more…]

Not normally a dangerous job

A news story from what must be a colleague (so to speak) of the Onion.

The catering team on BBC quiz Have I Got News For You have been placed on ‘high alert’ after increased chatter surrounding Jeremy Clarkson’s appearance later this month.

With the risk of serving cold food higher than ever before, the catering team are said to be undergoing extensive training and new performance drills ahead of his 29th April appearance to ensure all food in the green room remains warm at all times. [Read more…]

A sample of bad writing

C J Werleman claims that New Atheism – all of it, not just Sam Harris and Bill Maher – is pro-white supremacy.

[The New Atheist movement has] become a pro-white supremacy movement. New Atheism is anti-Muslim, anti-Arab bigotry dressed up with a thin veneer of fancy sounding words.

That’s not a very effective way of making his claim, since white-supremacy isn’t the same thing as anti-Muslim bigotry which is not the same thing as anti-Arab bigotry. There’s overlap, but it’s possible to be one of those things without being the others, and it’s possible to be two of those things without being all three. [Read more…]