Okay I guess all of you have already read the story where a woman in Saudi Arabia was sentenced to 200 lashes and six months jail after getting gang-raped. In case you haven't, you can read the BBC report where the woman's lawyer, obviously in possession of good sense and not a cultural relativist, HERE.
She wasn't punished for the rape itself, but a highly retarded law against sitting in an unrelated man's car. It's her own fault. What made her think she should go out unless you're accompanied by a male relative or a husband or something anyway. Clearly a Westernised dog. She might even think herself an individual.
Maybe in Saudi Arabia, the Wahhabist wonderland, men cannot be trusted to not rape women, who really shouldn't be walking around showing their ankles unescorted by their uncles anyway, and so we need laws like that, and we should viciously punish women who violate these laws.
It's for the greater good.
It's what God would have wanted.
Maybe in a country where men can actually come up with positively evil laws like this, it may be needed. Maybe indeed such laws are needed in a country where men have a free hand when it comes to raping women.
And why not? Why not rape?
Imagine finding four witnesses, men of good repute, to witness penetration! (We should be glad she found such men!)
Imagine a woman standing forward to report a rapist when you see rulings like this!
Of course, the problem is, the "strange person" was an ex-boyfriend she was sitting in the car with, and had nothing to do with rape. In fact, he too was raped.
At least she didn't steal one of the guy's underwear or something. She would have lost her arm.
To quote from the BBC report her lawyer, a Muslim by birth but a decent man by reason:
Abdel Rahman al-Lahem told the BBC Arabic Service that the sentence was in violation of Islamic law:
"My client is the victim of this abhorrent crime. I believe her sentence contravenes the Islamic Sharia law and violates the pertinent international conventions," he said.
"The judicial bodies should have dealt with this girl as the victim rather than the culprit."
Imagine that.
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Addendum: This is some judges do not deserve to be judges.
(If you think that the normal punishment is 200 lashes and six months jail, and that her punishment wasn't aggravated by the fact that she was gangraped, and the judge doesn't have a giant cock stuck up his beard, or that 200 lashes and six months jail is somehow appropriate punishment for sitting in an unrelated male's car... you probably didn't read the New York Times report.)
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Also in case some of you think it's just one retarded judge and absolutely nothing to do with culture, religion and how powerful the fundie element is, I'd like to remind you that this is the country where the police stopped schoolgirls from escaping a burning building because they weren't in proper Islamic dress.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/mi...ast/1874471.stm
"Help mum the house is on fire!"
"Okay let's run wait you are showing the hair on your head that is not proper let's put on the tudung first."
"Oh yes mum you're right my chastity OHGOD I AM BURNING."
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If Malaysia gets any more rightwing Islamic I'm getting outta here before the next teargassing of yellow-wearing protestors
Okay, I can't help it. Everytime I meet Goo I turn into this preachy mother. He's this tall, huge dude, with a tiny, tiny ego. He's a guy who denigrates himself every chance he gets. You can be talking about anything and he'll insert things like I'm fat or I'm not as smart as you guys when he's clearly not fat and he's just as dumb as we are.
So we're at J's church reception, a grand thing, and sat through a long sermon that had enough wit in it that I am seriously wondering whether the pastor really meant his pet theory that Chinese letters came from God and that each character represents Biblical truths (this is the second time I've heard it from the same church, man they sure try hard to nativise a Middle-Eastern religion to us Chinese). I was rolling my eyes so hard I had to stop rolling my eyes.
When it's done, Goo and I take the same route home.
As ever, we talk about women. Since I currently have a girlfriend, I am the learned one. I tell him, it's not surprising women cheat, especially with white dudes (in Singapore it makes sense really). I tell him, he's huge and tall and not ugly nor fat, so get over it. And start going for girls who actually give a shit.
Girls like assholes, not wimps.
Wimp.
J is the most married man I know, even if he wasn't yet. Soon though he will be making it official, "tying the knot", so to speak, with his fiancee, whom we shall call A. This Saturday, he shall go through the rites, say the vows and become the head of a new family - if not in a practical sense then in the Christian tradition at least. The wedding band goes around the finger. The marital knot goes at the end of a noose.
There will be no alcohol at the wedding. But there is a 'yam seng' party - a group of men tasked to do what inebriation usually does by accident: Making a roomful of people yell loudly and merrily good cheer and good health to everybody.
Before then, though, there's the bachelor party. It is on this Wednesday, though one wonders if he ever was really a bachelor, so married was he to church, soon-to-be wife and a (stereo)typical middle-class Singaporean existence.
No strippers or hooker or porn or alcohol or the hint of sin there. Only computers. On one of the last nights of him as a single man, with a group of friends he has known for more than a decade, he will be shedding the final vestiges of youthfulness with a computer gaming session, and sober.
"How long will it be?" one friend asked, about the gaming
"A few hours," he replied.
"What? Just a few hours? Shouldn't it be overnight?"
"Overnight?" he said. Then he finished, as he so often finishes: "Um. Let me ask A first."
SLEEPY
Work is life. Production is meaning.
I meet lots of people who are as interesting as they are false in my line of work, but I am not allowed to blog about it. Not truthfully anyway. It might even be in the contract somewhere. Strange to be a journalist who can't actually write a journal online, which is what a blog is. But thems the breaks. I'm too lazy to write anyway.
I'm not sure older people in middle management fully understand the implications of new technology. I mean this in a general sense. I was about to poke fun at some of the things that were given as reasoning for not blogging, but that may well constitute an assertion in which no right of reply is possible. (What does that even mean?)
Anyway it's been a couple of late nights for me. I had to call a couple of people for comments. I called a a woman in her 50s, a friend of my mother's.
"Here I am calling you again, since you have such great quotes," I began, in Mandarin.
"Ha. But I only say nonsense," she replied.
"That's alright," I said, too loudly. "Everyone only says nonsense anyway."
My colleagues nearby sputtered and cackled. It's funny, because truths are funny things. And I'm a funny guy, because I -- I am sure of this -- have a massive frontal lobe malfunction.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2007/08/liars_loans.html
Here's a great summary of what went wrong with the financial system.
Liar's loans indeed.
Fucking investment banks...
Harvey the bear went salmon fishing in his favourite stream, just below the great white cliffs and green trees of what bears called the Gruffyhuff. It was spawning season and the waters seethed with fish. Brown and big and with paws that could smash small tree trunks Harvey went about his business.
--
One great big brown paw smashed through the water and Simon so intent on fighting the current and dazzled by the sun and so goddamned horny in this freshwater migration didn't even try to swerve. Stunned and with a possibly ruptured spleen the next thing he saw were great big teeth.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" screamed Simon.
--
Holy shit the salmon was screaming. Harvey looked at it and yes the salmon, tasty thing it was, in fact, was emitting a high pitched noise from a gaping mouth.
"Holy shit you're screaming," said the bear.
"What the christ," said his prey.
"What the, you can speak," said Harvey.
This was, Harvey realised, a very odd situation.
--
Either the bear is speaking salmon or the concussion is, thought Simon.
--
"Please don't kill me, Mr Bear," said Simon. He lay very still. Simon thought that if he tried to flop away the hairy bastard would probably just spear it with one of its huge-ass nails and rip out his entrails and there goes his one chance at mating.
"Francis. Harvey Francis. My name is not Bear. Bear is a species," said Harvey.
"My name is Simon," said the salmon.
"Simon the Salmon. How original," said Harvey.
"I don't want to die," said Simon.
"You prefer to be eaten alive?" said Harvey.
"No," said Simon.
"I really don't understand how we're understanding each other," said Harvey. "It doesn't make sense. What could this mean."
"Metaphysics for another time please, I can't breathe," said Simon.
TO BE CONTINUED
The Wrong Girl
As young men are wont to do, Ham fell in love. She was the wrong girl but he didn't know that. The right girl was dead. She accidentally ingested hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) when she was three and vomited her insides out. He didn't know that either. All he knew was that he was in love and love was in him. The girl (the wrong one) had a pretty name. It was Lily. When he saw her he thought of gardens and sweet smells and butterflies.
He had butterflies in his stomach too.
Ham first saw her in the canteen on one of the long benches opposite the chicken rice store. She had just finished physical education class and her hair was wet and tangled like dawn grass. She was a year younger than him. She was in the school band so he joined the school band too, even though he had no rhythm. They became friends and she liked him.
One day he asked her: "Will you go to the movies with me?"
She said: "Only if you pay."
"Ok."
They kissed that night and it felt like love.
But she grew bored because he was tone deaf and couldn't play and music was her life. She couldn't imagine someone being alive without melody in one's soul. It was like fire without heat or angels without wings or beer without foam. It wasn't right. She couldn't stand it. And she loved too much the feeling of a stranger's hand on her waist, furtive trysts with handsome boys with baritone voices and the delicious lies that flow from her tongue the morning after.
"I know you love someone else," he said to her one day.
"Don't be silly," she said.
"Is there something wrong with me?" he asked.
She left him and she never told him why and all considered it was better for everyone.
