Free Gillian

I do have to appeal to all right minded and tolerant people everywhere to protest the punishment that looks to be inflicted upon Gillian Gibbons. True, she's escaping the lash, but she is still in prison and will then be deported. I've read some of the comments on news sites, and on other blogs, and I must say I'm appalled.

People have suggested that she isn't at fault, that the children should be punished. So you are going to flog four and five year olds with a whip? How does that teach anyone anything, other than make you look like a backwards, barbaric, inbred moron?

Others have suggested that the teacher deliberately named the bear Muhammad, thus inciting the Wrath of Allah. Balderfreakingdash. As I was perusing Bock's page, I noted that someone else had suggested that they name the bear Jesus. Hello? We live in a country where every sixteenth man's name is Jesus (and that's Hay Zeus for those of you who aren't familiar with Latin American Spanish). No one would care.

What's curious to me is that Gillian teaches in the Sudan. Why anyone in their right mind would want to go to such a...backwards country? A country where letting a bunch of four year olds call a bear Muhammad would have folks practically declaring a fatwah, because this poor lady is out to destroy Islamic culture?

So I propose that we do what any plain ole average joe would do to help out a fellow human being in peril.

We're going to have a bear raiser.

That's right, folks, I want everyone to take a teddy bear, and mail it to President Umar Hassan Ahmad Al-Bashir of Sudan. Or, since it's easier to get an address for this one, courtesy of the United Nations, Sudan's representative to said United Nations Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad.

We're going to call it "Bears for Islam".

Now, onto Sudan.

In my perusing of the world wide internet, I have often used the CIA World Factbook site. It contains lots of lovely, practical information about countries around the globe.

Hm. Sudan's legal system is based on English common law AND Islamic Law. Sudan wasn't always an Arabic nation; it was Christian until the fourteenth century. Only 2.4% of the population lives past the age of 65 - which implies to me that they have no healthcare system and crappy life expectantcies. They have a population of roughly 39 million people. The population contains roughly one male and the arm of another for every female. An average of four kids, two legs and one arm are born to any woman. They have a low rate of HIV infections, but they have some really dangerous other little air, soil and waterbourne beasties to even that out. 71 % of the men over 15 can read; the number drops to 50% for women. A good bit of the population lives below the poverty line. Oh, I love this bit "Sudan is a source country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation". Did I mention that it smells like a military dictatorship, with elections "planned" for next year?

Now I see why the clerics got so excited about Ms. Gibbons naming the bear Muhammad. It has the potential to be international press, which will SURELY distract everyone from the pending (rigged?) election.

That's a good way to get your poor and ignorant population fired up. Beat an outsider.

Lovely. See what we get for trying to do good works?