Tahrir Square. Another live broadcast, another reporter attacked and groped by a mob. The French journalist Sonia Dridi was the target this time.

A mob of about 30 men has turned “crazy” and groped and robbed a French  television journalist near Tahrir Square in Cairo, in the latest case of  violence against women at the epicentre of Egypt’s protests.

She’s ok now, but it was frightening and nasty.

Ashraf Khalil, a colleague who works with France 24′s English language service,  said the crowd was closing in on him and Dridi while they were doing live  reports on a side street off Tahrir.

…

Khalil said they retreated into a fast food restaurant called Hardee’s, which  had a metal door,

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

I hadn’t heard of Backbone Zone before. Ant Allan informed me via tumblr. They have some great posters.

You can order them at their site.

I like this one, too:

I like it because I detest the “shame men by calling them girls” trope. It makes me feel murderous.

Another good one (they’re all good):

 … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

About Polk County and the 14-year-old girl charged with first degree murder of her newborn…and about Amanda Todd, and many other people and incidents, and a way of thinking.

From the Handmaid’s Tale, chapter 13. The scene is a Testifying session during the re-education phase of Gilead.

It’s Janine, telling about how she was gang-raped at fourteen and had an abortion. She told the same story last week. She seemed almost proud of it, while she was telling. It may not even be true. At Testifying, it’s safer to make things up than to say you have nothing to reveal. But since it’s Janine, it’s probably more or less true.

But whose fault was it? Aunt Helena says, holding up

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

A 14-year-old girl in Lakeland, Florida has been charged with first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse in the death of her newborn infant. You probably know the story: secret pregnancy, birth in the bathroom of mobile home with mother a few feet away, dead infant in shoebox under the bed.

They’re trying her as an adult, which is moronic, since that’s just what she isn’t. But no surprise – this is Lakeland, Florida. It’s Polk County. It’s Sheriff Grady Judd.

Polk County, where Cassidy attended high school, teaches community-based abstinence-only-until-marriage curricula in its schools. Nurse Jamie Kress facilitates Polk County’s Prevention Program that brings registered nurses to schools to cover a variety of subjects that might fall under the

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

This is a nice story. Huge map collection not thrown in the garbage, given to Los Angeles public library instead.

The occupant of the 90-year-old cottage had died in February. Greenberg’s job was to empty the home so it could be demolished and its 18,000-square-foot lot, near the top of Canyon Vista Drive, divided into two parcels. His clients had told him to rent a Dumpster and throw away whatever he found inside.

But Greenberg couldn’t bring himself to do that, especially after he read a recent Los Angeles Times article about the Central Library’s map collection. Instead, he invited its map librarian, Glen Creason, to Mount Washington to look at the trove.

Creason called the find unbelievable. “I

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Summer 1983. A Massachusetts woman, Carrel Hilton Sheldon, was eight weeks pregnant and had a life-threatening medical problem. Alternet goes on:

Sheldon’s doctor advised her that the overdose of Heparin might have also harmed her 8-week-old fetus and, given the possible fatal repercussions to her, he recommended that she abort her pregnancy.

Sheldon, a mother of four at the time (a fifth child had died as an infant), was then a practicing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), outside of Boston. The LDS leader in Massachusetts at that time, called the “stake president,” was a Harvard-trained physician, Dr. Gordon Williams, and he counseled Sheldon to follow her doctor’s advice to terminate the pregnancy and

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

From Janet L. Factor

Hello fellow freethinkers! My local group, Springfield Area Freethinkers, is undertaking an action this Sunday that we would like more of the secular community to be aware of. We are going to picket an honest-to-goodness cathedral! Since you are a person in a position to spread the word, I am sending this information to you in hopes that you will blog or otherwise report about this event in advance. Feel free to forward this info if you have contacts who might be interested in writing about this as well.

While our group has existed here for years, this will be our first venture into public protest. It’s important that it be a success. We would like … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Yes Malala may be doing better, but gurlz still must not be allowed to go to school in Pakistan. Everyone knows the whorey little sluts only want to go to school so that they can fuck all the boys there. Bitches.

Another school was blown up today, bringing the total for the year to 18.

On September 7th a school was blown up by suspected militants in Swabi, northern Pakistan.

Two improvised devices had been planted in the veranda of the school which went off one after the other during night.

Two classrooms of the school building developed cracks and were rendered useless. The watchman of the institution survived the attack.

On September 9th militants blew up a government

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Janet Stemwedel has a sharp and to the point post on sexism among scientists, The point of calling out bad behavior.

There’s a blog discussion of a particular guy and his particular sexism, with lashings of sexism-denial Bingo. Free speech! Whassa big deal?! Give the guy a chance to grow!

It’s almost like people have something invested in denying the existence of gender bias among scientists, the phenomenon of a chilly climate in scientific professions, or even the possibility that Dario Maestripieri’s Facebook post was maybe not the first observable piece of sexism a working scientist put out there for the world to see.

The thing is, that denial is also the denial of the actual lived experience

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)