It’s all the fault of that mouthy woman.

When misfortune hits a village, there is a tendency in some countries to suspect a “witch” of casting a spell. In Ghana, outspoken or eccentric women may also be accused of witchcraft – and forced to live out their days together in witch camps.

…

The witch camps appear to be unique to northern Ghana. But Ghana shares with other African countries an endemic belief in witchcraft with illness, drought, fires and other natural disasters blamed on black magic. The alleged witches are nearly always elderly.

An ActionAid report on witch camps, published this week, says that more than 70% of residents in Kukuo camp were accused and banished after their husbands

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Fun and games in the LAPD – headline -

Woman dies after genital kick from LAPD officer

Huh. That can’t be right. Kicking women between the legs is just a joke, as any fule kno.

The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating at least five officers after one of them allegedly stomped on a woman’s genitals and she later died of suffocation.

Patrol car video camera captured a struggle between police and Alesia Thomas and several officers on July 22, according to the Los Angeles Times.

LAPD Cmdr. Bob Green admitted to the Times that a female officer had followed through with a threat to kick Thomas in the genitals when she resisted being put into the patrol car.

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Since we’re talking about it – Las Meninas.

From the Wikimedia Commons.… Read the rest

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Village life in Punjab.

Five men allegedly shaved off the hair and eyebrows of a young woman and paraded her in the streets of a village in Pakistan’s Punjab province, police officials said Tuesday.

The incident occurred yesterday in Layyah district, 350 km from Lahore, after the married woman was accused of having “illicit” relations with a man.

According to an FIR registered by police, Parveen Bibi, 25, the wife of Sabir Husain, had a quarrel with her sisters-in-law.
Yesterday, her brothers-in-law Muhammad Pervaiz and Muhammad Zafar and three other men shaved off her hair and eyebrows. They then blackened her face and paraded her through the streets of their village.

Five men bullying one woman. How picturesque.… Read the rest

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Here’s the source painting, by the way.

Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain

http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/jacob-jordaens/pieta… Read the rest

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A blast from the past at the Richard Dawkins Foundation (of which Paula Kirby is the UK head), December 15, 2006.

The following is an email sent by William A. Dembski to Richard Dawkins along with other prominent Darwinists, particularly those who defended Darwinism during the Dover Trial.

There’s a Christmas present for you at my website.

– a flash animation that features each of you prominently (some of you are probably aware of it already). We’re still planning a few enhancements, including getting Eric Rothschild in there and having Judge Jones do the actual voiceovers himself (right now it’s me speeded up though it’s his actual words). In return for the judge doing himself, we’ll drop some of the

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Gosh. Paula Kirby made a funny on Twitter.

Paula Kirby‏@PaulaSKirby

Ladies and gentlemen, may I request a moment of silence in honour of CrucifixionPlus (Restored). pic.twitter.com/17wLZhof

That’s kind of startling. As I said before, when she called me a Feminazi and Femistasi and part of the Sisterhood of the Oppressed, I liked her a lot when I met her at QED. She was friendly to me, and I thought we’d had a good rapport – or to put it another way, I thought the liking was reasonably mutual. Clearly it wasn’t.

Fine; nobody has to like anybody. On the other hand, calling people totalitarians and Nazis and Stasi (when they’re not)? And circulating sneery caricatures? … Read the rest

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One nice thing.

There’s a transcript of a hangout PZ did with Rebecca and Jen and Brownian and Louis. (I’m not sure I know Louis.)

Louis is apparently in the UK, and he said a thing I liked.

So I see the vitriol, I see the vehemence of it. And I can understand Brownian’s point, of the, fuck you assholes [Unintelligible] misogynist skeptics. I can see it, because, you know, it’s so apparent to me as an outsider from that angle.

But when I’ve been to Skeptics in the Pub in the UK, or when I’ve been to skeptic events in the UK, or when I’ve dealt with, I don’t know, the Simon Singhs or these sorts of people over

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Seen the picture of Mount Sharp?

Postcards from Mars, eh.… Read the rest

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