I’ve had my disagreements with CFI over the years. Mostly because they have an unfortunate tendency to give a balanced perspective through false equivalency, what Mike the Mad Biologist would call “Compulsive Centrist Disorder”. This manifests itself in trying to give equal time to bigots and non-bigots. They are particularly prone to this when it comes to islamophobes and misogynists.
Over the years I have sometimes let my membership lapse because of this, only to have a new membership be included in the purchase price for various events. So I’ve kind of been an involuntary member, I guess.
Today, though, they did something we can all be really proud of. They got Taslima Nasrin out of India!
This is probably not the best picture available of Taslima, but it’s my favourite for some reason.
Taslima is one of the writers most threatened by the Ansar Bangla death cult. The Bangladeshi police are ignoring their activities, not responding to the attacks as they happen and leaving all the writers unprotected. They’ve killed three other writers so far, and she’s on their list.
They’re establishing an emergency fund to help her get settled in New York, and any excess will be used to help get other writers out. I’ve just donated, although it took a few tries. Hopefully that means their servers are overwhelmed by all the donations.
By all means go and chip in if you are able. I’m eager enough to call out CFI when they do lousy things, I might as well help bring them some donations when they do good things.
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