Alber Saber is out on bail, Paul Fidalgo tells us. On the other hand, bail was posted a week ago, but he was kept in jail for another week just for shits and giggles, apparently. That’s nice.

Daily News Egypt also notes that these kinds of charges about offending religious feelings have been on the rise under the presidency of Mohamed Morsi.

Imagine my astonishment.… Read the rest

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Well the four archbishops of Ireland have given their opinion of this radical new suggestion that it should be legal for hospitals to perform abortions when necessary to save the woman’s life. (H/t to Marie-Therese)

The four Catholic Archbishops of Ireland: Cardinal Seán Brady, Archbishop of Armagh; Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin; Archbishop Dermot Clifford, Archbishop of Cashel & Emly; and Archbishop Michael Neary, Archbishop of Tuam, have issued the following response to the decision today by the Government to legislate for abortion:

Today’s decision by the Irish Government to legislate for abortion should be of the utmost concern to all.

If what is being proposed were to become law, the careful balance between the equal right to life

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

I’m going to piss off some people with this, but…

I think the reaction to what happened at Newtown is a little bit out of proportion. Wait, I can explain. I don’t mean it wasn’t absolutely horrible. But the reaction seems to imply that it’s terribly out of the ordinary, and the fact is…it’s not nearly as out of the ordinary as it should be except in the fact that it was 20 children in one go.

The US has a shamefully high rate of violence against children. The BBC reported on this more than a year ago.

Over the past 10 years, more than 20,000 American children are believed to have been killed in their own homes by

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

The Islamists in Northern Mali are getting more unpleasant.

On a sweltering afternoon, Islamist police officers dragged Fatima Al Hassan out of her house in the fabled city of Timbuktu. They beat her up, shoved her into a white pickup truck and drove her to their headquarters. She was locked up in a jail as she awaited her sentence: 100 lashes with an electrical cord.

“Why are you doing this?” she recalled asking.

Hassan was being punished for giving water to a male visitor.

Grabbed, beaten up, abducted, “sentenced” to 100 lashes with an electrical cord, for giving water to a man. Fatima Al Hassan does something ordinary and sociable, and a bunch of men commit a whole set … Read the rest

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An Egyptian blogger wrote about Waleed Al Husseini more than two years ago, when he was arrested by the Palestinian authorities.

Palestinian blogger Waleed Al Husseini has been detained by the Palestinian authorities for creating a Facebook page named “Allah”! it was reported and shut down and Waleed created this page, that page, and that page, that is already hacked, to fight those who keep censoring his thoughts.

Waleed Khalid Hasayen is a 26 year old blogger who was arrested in the West Bank city of Qalqilya by the Palestinian authorities on the grounds of religious contempt and promoting atheism. On his blog “Nour Al Akl” or The enlightened Mind, he refuted all religious

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

Well this sums it up…

via Dr Jim’s Thinking Shop.

… Read the rest

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