The European parliament, defying opposition from the US and its own conservative bloc of center-right parties, has invited Edward Snowden to testify before them about the issues involved in his revelations of widespread government spying. [Read more…]
It turns out that it is not just journalists like David Miranda and Laura Poitras who are detained and questioned at length when they arrive at airports in the US and the UK. Now comes a report that even reporters from establishment media like the New York Times have suffered the same fate. [Read more…]
As a result of protests it looks like the body Universities UK, comprising the heads of British universities, has reversed its decision to allow British universities to host events in which the audiences are separated by gender if such a request is made on the basis of ‘genuinely held’ religious beliefs of the speaker.
The body that represents Britain’s universities has withdrawn guidance on the gender segregation of audiences in lectures and debates after an intervention from David Cameron.
Universities UK (UUK) said on Friday that the controversial policy which allowed the voluntary separation of men and women at events such as lectures on Islam by visiting speakers was being dropped pending a review.
The body had sought guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which said that, while the law allows segregation by gender in premises being used for religious purposes, it was not permissible in an academic meeting or in a lecture open to the public.
…The U-turn is an embarrassment for UUK, which has attempted to fight off criticisms over the policy for several days. The body had insisted that it had sought legal advice from a senior QC, who said that gender segregation should be allowed if requested by the lecturer and students.
The protest and the resulting publicity, in which FtB’s Maryam Namazie was actively and tirelessly involved, seem to have done the trick. Ophelia Benson has also been all over this story.
What the UUK did was to withdraw the controversial ‘case study’ (see here for more) that led to their decision. So it looks like my cunning plan on how to subvert the policy by mocking it using cross-dressing will not be necessary after all, though there is no reason why it could not be adopted anywhere else someone imposes a similar separation.
I love the Muppets, and the Sesame Street parodies using them are often hilarious. Parodies tend to be better appreciated if you are familiar with the items being made fun of but I found this parody of the newly released The Hunger Games: Catching Fire to be enjoyable because even though I have not seen the original films, I had read enough about them to be aware of the story. [Read more…]
Well, actually he is still dead. But the story about the friend and aide to the Clintons who tragically committed suicide in 1993, and which the right wing got into a lather about claiming that he had been murdered by the Clintons because he harbored some dark secret about them, has now received a new incarnation with a new dastardly plot. [Read more…]
Edward Snowden tops the list of Foreign Policy journal’s list of Global Thinkers for 2013. The top ten people were all associated with the NSA scandal, almost all of them critical of it, except for one (NSA director Keith Alexander) who came second and was immediately followed by Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. [Read more…]
Remember when you were a child and were having a silly fight with your siblings or friends and the best part was when the other person became so sensitive to the smallest slight that all that it took to get them riled up about something was to make the slightest gesture (like a look) without even having to actually do anything substantial? [Read more…]
There are some news headlines that are irresistible and that one simply has to follow up on. I do not as a rule track the activities of the parasitic British royal family but when I saw the BBC news headline Police ‘told to leave Queen’s nuts alone’, I had to read more. [Read more…]
All of us are so immersed in religious nonsense that even skeptics like me take these religious rules at face value and do not probe them enough to show how unsustainable they are in modern society. These rules were invented by people living in much more primitive times and they simply cannot be sustained today. A little thought will soon uncover ways to expose how ridiculous they are. [Read more…]