As long as she lives, she will not be silenced

This is from April. I didn’t see it then. I’m glad I didn’t – I was freaking out enough as it was. It’s the Daily Mail:

There is no hint of fear in her eyes as feminist writer Taslima Nasreen tells Mail Today that Bangladeshi terror group Ansarullah Bangla Team is plotting to cross over to India and then travel to the Capital to kill her.

The group takes its ideology from Anwar Al-Awlaki, a Yemen-based al-Qaeda activist, and has been involved in the murders of America-based writer Avijit Roy and blogger Washiqur Rahman last month for “criticising Islam”.

Taslima, if Indian intelligence agencies are to be believed, may very well be their next target.

[Read more…]

Mezon, who hopes to be a journalist one day

This is a nice change from surly pig-headed anti-feminist science dudes – A Mighty Girl on another mighty girl.

Dubbed the ‘Malala’ of Syrian refugees, 16-year-old Mezon Almellehan goes from tent to tent each morning to encourage girls in her camp to go to school. “We have the right to attend school and I feel I have a responsibility towards the community,’ Almellehan told the Malala Fund. ‘As a girl, I can find friendly ways to convince a girl to continue with her studies.'”

Today marks World Refugee Day, an annual observance to raise awareness of the plight of the nearly 60 million refugees in the world today — more than any time in recorded history. Like four million of her fellow Syrians, Mezon fled from her war-torn country with her family and now lives in the Azraq refugee camp in Jordan. According to the UN, half the world’s refugees are children like Mezon.

Last year, Mezon had the opportunity to meet Malala Yousafzai during the girls’ education activist’s visit to the Zaatari refugee camp where Mezon was living at the time. Malala was so impressed by Mezon’s passion for education that she invited her to be one of her guests when she received the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway last December.

[Read more…]

Tradition

Originally a comment by MrFancyPants on But we have to wait.

A related personal anecdote.

My mother’s family is Estonian, with a tradition of Saturday evening sauna baths. It starts in the early afternoon, with the women of the family preparing a large meal while the men do whatever. Just about the time the meal is being finished, the men go into the sauna and spend 30-40 minutes there. It’s a wet sauna, so they enter into a warm, dry, very comfortable sauna room, and proceed to get the benches very wet. After the hot sauna, we men then wash up in a connected anteroom, getting that room soaking wet as well, and then get dressed and begin the untouched meal that the women had set out while the women proceed down to the sauna. The men then finish their meal, and retire to have coffee (also preprepared by the women) in the adjacent room. The women then finish their sauna to come up to what is left of the meal, and then they clean up the dishes and join the men. The next day, they cleaned up the sauna. [Read more…]

Ooops

Rick Perry called the terrorist shooting at Emanuel AME church an “accident” while complaining about Obama’s suggestion that unrestricted availability of guns is not a fabulous idea.

The former Texas governor was asked about the mass shooting at Emanuel AME church during an interview with the conservative NewsmaxTV. A spokesman for Perry later clarified that the Republican presidential candidate meant to say “incident,” but the soundbyte drew immediate attention and backlash.

Hi, just an ordinary citizen here, but I think “incident” is a pretty callous word to use too. That was no incident, that was a racist mass murder.

In addition to steering the conversation away from race and terrorism, Perry also accused Barack Obama of trying to take firearms away from the American people by pushing for stricter gun laws in the wake of mass shootings like the one in Charleston.

“This is the MO of this administration, any time there is an accident like this, the president is clear. He doesn’t like for Americans to have guns and so he uses every opportunity, this being another one, to basically go parrot that message,” Perry said.

Right. Obama probably told Roof to kill those people, just so that he could be harsh about guns. Let’s not forget, this is America, where the right of white men – not black anyone, don’t be silly – to have all the guns they want is way more important than the right of black people to go on living.

Guest post: Atheism in Zambia

Guest post by Leo Igwe.

Like other countries in Africa, Zambia is a very religious nation and has the dubious of distinction of being officially declared a Christian nation by President Federick Chiluba in 1996. One need not look far to see where Chiluba got the political will to establish this Christian nation. Eighty seven percent of the population is Christian and only twelve percent profess other faiths. The number of non-believers is too low to measure. Apparently, Zambia is 100 percent religious and theistic.

But recently, the country’s religious demography has begun to change. Atheists are leaving their closets and are starting to organise. Atheists in Zambia are becoming assertive and are making their voices heard. They are standing up and identifying as atheists in public. An atheist group has just been formed in Zambia and a Facebook page has been created. It is called the Atheists in Zambia. This group is the first of its kind in the country and signals a bright and promising future for freethought in this Southern African country.

It is not clear why the members of this group chose to identify as atheist, rather than sceptics, freethinkers, humanists or rationalists. Why didn’t they choose other labels which engender less stigma?

Their eagerness to state unambiguously that they are people without God speaks volumes for the group’s vision, passion and conviction. Members want to tell the world that there are godless people in the ‘Christian state’ of Zambia. The situation in Zambia is not too different from that found in Nigeria or Ghana where almost the entire population self-identify as God believers yet atheist groups exist and are active. [Read more…]

Strange fruit

Dawkins called the women scientists who object to Tim Hunt’s contemptuous remarks “lynch mobs.” He should read – and pay attention to – this piece from a few weeks ago by Charles Blow.

Last week, the Baltimore police union president, Gene Ryan,compared those protesting the death of Freddie Gray to a “lynch mob.”

Freddie Gray was the 25-year-old Baltimore man who died of grave, mysterious injuries after being taken into police custody. Gray’s family, citizens of Baltimore and indeed those of the nation have questions. And yes, there is a palpable frustration and fatigue that yet another young person of color has died after an encounter with police officers.

So, there have been protests.

Aaaaaaaand of all things not to call them, you would think “lynch mobs” would be right at the top of the list. It’s not police officers who have been the historic victims of lynch mobs, is it.

[Read more…]

Dawkins complains of a lynch mob

The great man is still on the job.

daw

Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins
Tim Hunt. Eight Nobel scientists condemn “lynch mob”
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/science/article4475398.ece … “Chilling effect on . . . academic freedom” #ReinstateTimHunt

There is no lynch mob, not even in scare quotes. Tim Hunt hasn’t been harmed. He hasn’t been beaten or stabbed or dragged behind a truck or thrown in a river or hanged from a tree. He hasn’t lost a job. He lost honorary positions, and respect. [Read more…]

Looking north

For a spot of refreshment – Taslima tweeted me one of the landscape photos she took on Sunday. It’s a view of the gorge, looking north toward Lake Ontario – I think that might be the lake in the distance, but I’m not sure. I loved this view.

It had rained like hell most of the afternoon, but had stopped at this point.

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UCL has a commitment to gender equality

It seems timely and necessary to post UCL’s press release about Tim Hunt’s resignation.

10 June 2015

UCL can confirm that Sir Tim Hunt FRS has today resigned from his position as Honorary Professor with the UCL Faculty of Life Sciences, following comments he made about women in science at the World Conference of Science Journalists on 9 June.

UCL was the first university in England to admit women students on equal terms to men, and the university believes that this outcome is compatible with our commitment to gender equality.

See that? That’s important. The people squawking about witch hunts and packs of baying women with pitchforks seem to think that UCL pushed Tim Hunt out to punish him for expressing his contempt for “girls.” That’s fatuous. UCL didn’t want to keep an honorary professor who had expressed his contempt for “girls” to a group of women scientists at a professional conference. Of course it didn’t! If UCL had kept him on then it would have seemed to endorse, or at least refuse to reject, his publicly professionally expressed contempt for “girls” in the lab. That would be an abysmal outcome. [Read more…]