Month: June 2011

  • Grayling, Dawkins et al. start new college

    Grayling will be the first Master of the New College of the Humanities, which will give a degree from the University of London.

  • PZ in Dublin: Maryam Namazie rocks the conference

    She made a fierce, impassioned, reasoned criticism of Islamism and its degradation of humanity — she was wonderfully clear and humane.

  • Oh is that so

    Texas governor Rick Perry called a court ruling that banned school prayers at a public high school graduation

    “reprehensible.”

    “The First Amendment prohibits governments from interfering with Americans’ rights to freely express their religious beliefs, and accordingly the U.S. Supreme Court has maintained that Congress may convene every day with a prayer,” Perry said in a statement.

    Oh yeah? But then governments are interfering with Americans’ rights to freely express their beliefs that there is no god, aren’t they. My religious belief is that god is a non-existent imaginary agent. I don’t get to say that at public school graduation ceremonies or Congress’s morning prayer. Since other people do get to say that god is a real, non-imaginary agent, the state is interfering with my rights to express my religious beliefs.

    It is also, of course, interfering with the religious beliefs of Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Wiccans, Scientologists, Crefto Dollarians, and so on.

    I look forward to your letter, Governor Perry.

  • Poet and publisher summoned to appear in court

    For saying that Ponnar and Shankar, two figures revered by the kongu vellala gounder community as deities, are dalits. Srsly.

  • The discovery of arsenic-based Twitter

    The true significance of the aliens-that-weren’t will be how it helped change the way scientists do science, Carl Zimmer reports.

  • Chicago Cubs to make It Gets Better video

    The Cubs have contributed to several gay groups and hosted an annual Pride Day at the Cubs’ home park, Wrigley Field.

  • Boston Red Sox make It Gets Better LGBT Video

    Joining the San Francisco Giants and the Chicago Cubs. Booya!

  • Nigerian ‘baby farm’ raided

    The proprietor is undergoing interrogation over allegations that he normally sells the babies to people who may use them for rituals.

  • Nigeria: “baby farm” girls rescued

    Aged between 15 and 17 years, the girls were locked up and used to produce babies, said Abia state’s police chief.

  • ‘Baby Farm’ Girls and the Sale of Children in Nigeria

    The rescue by the Nigeria Police of 32 pregnant girls allegedly held by a human trafficking ring in Aba in south-eastern Nigeria has literally shocked the world. But to anyone acquainted with the ‘culture’ of women and child rights abuses in the country, it should not come as a surprise. The police raid has brought to global attention and knowledge new layers of horrific abuses and exploitation of women and children in the country.

    According to the report, these girls, between the ages of 15 and 17 years, were locked up and used to ‘produce’ babies, who were then allegedly sold for ritual witchcraft purposes or adoption. Unicef estimates that at least 10 children are sold daily across Nigeria.

    This estimation is on target. The sale of children is a painful and unfortunate reality in Nigeria. Particularly in south-eastern Nigeria, this criminal practice is not new. The sale of babies has been going on for some time. But bad governance, corruption in the police and justice system, a failure of human rights, lack of rule of law, selfishness, criminal silence and hypocrisy have all made it difficult and dangerous to tackle and address these atrocious schemes. The babies that are sold are often those delivered by teenagers or those babies of the so called higher caste girls whose fathers are from the lower caste.

    • In a region where teenage pregnancy is regarded as a taboo and many girls who get pregnant resort to unsafe abortion or to throwing away their babies after delivery
    • In a country where abortion is frowned on by most families, criminalized by the state and inaccessible to most girls, particularly those from poor homes
    • In a situation where efforts to decriminalized abortion and improve the reproductive health and rights of women and girls are hampered by the churches and religious dogma
    • In a society where childlessness is percieved as a ‘curse’ and childless couples are often desperate to pay or do anything to get a child
    • In communities ravaged by poverty, desperation and get-rich-quick mentality

    girls who get pregnant often find themselves in a very difficult situation. They are vulnerable and susceptible to abuses and exploitation.

    Before now, many girls who became pregnant prefered procuring unsafe abortions from quacks – which often led to their death or to some irreparable health damage – or they threw away the babies after delivery, instead of giving birth and keeping children who would be ostracized and treated as ‘bastards’ and outcasts in the communities.

    But today the trend has changed. Teenage pregnancy is no longer such an abomination. Teenage pregnancy is now a big deal and a thriving business. Teenage pregnancy is an income-generating scheme for some unscrupulous elements, syndicates and rings which sadly include the parents of these girls.

    This illicit trade has many dimensions involving childless couples and ritualists. In some cases, some childless couples and their scouts prowl the villages and rural communities looking for girls with unwanted pregnancies whom they would pay peanuts to have their babies after delivery. As soon as they track down any girl who is pregnant, they provide her and her family with some money – an advance payment -and gifts, and encourage her to keep the pregnancy and not to abort it. This is after they had agreed on the price of the baby with the parents of the girl. In most cases some middlemen are involved in the negotiation of prices, and they recieve some commission at the end of the business. Usually, male babies cost more than female. The prices of babies range from hundreds to thousands of dollars, depending on the bargaining power of both parties and the middlemen. Another dimension involves the hospitals and clinics. Unfortuately many hospitals in the region have become ‘baby farms’. Some smart ‘childless couples’ now connive with hospital authorities to buy babies after delivery. These babies could be those whose mothers died after in the course of delivery or ‘unwanted’ babies of girls who became pregnant by chance – or those commissioned to carry such pregnancies at a fee like the girls recently rescued by the police.

    There have been cases where some doctors and nurses reportedly claimed that some babies died immediately after delivery, while in fact, they stole and sold the babies as soon as they were delivered.

    The discovery of the baby farm in south-eastern Nigeria is a clear indication of social and moral rot in the society. It underscores the need for cultural renewal and transformation. I hope the Nigerian authorities will take all the necessary measures to stamp out this evil immmediately.

  • Punjab state tells women what to do

    Says newly-married women should cut down on phone use. Doesn’t say newly-married men should do that.

  • Giles Fraser finds a new way to snipe at new atheism

    Something about not hating humanism enough, and not caring that Freud said humans are etc.

  • Obey moar

    Oh good – there are some women in Malaysia who have figured out how to make the world all better. How, you ask, all aflame. By telling wives to be more obedient.

    “We just want to ask all the wives to be obedient wives so that there will be fewer problems in our society,” such as infidelity, divorce and domestic violence, she told AFP.

    “Obedient wife means they are trying to entertain their husbands, not only taking care of their food and clothes,” Maznah said. “They have to obey their husbands. That’s the way Islam also asks.”

    Right. We know. That’s why we hates it, precious.

    Maznah is already involved in another controversial venture — the Ikhwan Polygamy Club, which was launched in 2009 to promote polygamy. Muslim men in Malaysia can take up to four wives.

    She is herself in a polygamous marriage, as the second of her husband’s two wives.

    In 2010, a study by a Muslim activist group found men in polygamous relationships find it difficult to meet the needs of all their wives and children, and that the result is often unhappy and cash-strapped families.

    Golly, what can one say? She sounds like a real tool. In every sense.

  • Malaysia: women launch ‘The Obedient Wife Club’

    “We just want to ask all the wives to be obedient wives so that there will be fewer problems in our society.”

  • Nonchurchgoers save a church

    That’s what I call generous.

  • Appeals court lifts ban on Texas graduation prayer

    The school’s valedictorian had filed an intervention lawsuit that claimed she was being deprived of her right to pray for her classmates and community during her speech.

  • Felice Gaer asks pointed questions

    “I think that voluntary means that one is free to leave,” she tells the Irish government.

  • Women politicians urged to support Magdalenes

    One Department of Justice official said most women entered the laundries voluntarily. Srsly!

  • Spam spam spam bacon flattery and spam

    I’m getting a hilarious new type of spam which consists of a single sentence complimenting me for all-cognitive reasons – basically “oooh you’re so clever.” One said “sbutle [sic] must be your middle name.” Hahahahahahahahahaha.

    Seriously, what do they do, have bots that scan websites and figure out what kind of flattery will go down best?

  • The real bullies

    Let’s take a look at who is really being bullied and shouted into silence. Let’s take a look at a case where in real life

    the mob arrives; insults are flung around; the character flaws, motivations, psychological makeup, etc., of the original [dissident] are dissected at length

    and a high school kid is disowned and thrown out of the house by his parents for attempting to stop his public high school from having an unconstitutional official prayer at graduation.

    A student’s public prayer at a pre-graduation “Class Night” event was turned into an opportunity for the school and community to gang up on Fowler and publicly close ranks against him — teachers as well as students. (Here’s video).

    Check out that video. This isn’t a blog post; this isn’t a set of comments on a blog post; this is an auditorium full of people baying their majoritarian triumph at a lone student who in fact has the law on his side. This is a real example of “we can mobilise large numbers of people and use scorn in order to communicate our “community’s” disapproval of a particular kind of “harmful” behaviour.”

    Why are there so many secular liberals so eager to pretend that the worst bullies and majoritarian silencers around are atheists when in the real flesh and blood world (and the online world too, in fact) this kind of thing has us beat by orders of magnitude?