Shame-based double standards make people think that girls who drink themselves blotto deserve what they “get“.… Read the rest
Soraya Chemaly on Steubenville and systematic tolerance for rape
Mar 14th, 2013 | Filed by Ophelia BensoniERA Investigates
Mar 14th, 2013 5:01 pm | By Ophelia BensoniERA has issued a press release with the heading
iERA Investigates Complaints about Seating Arrangements at the debate, “Islam or Atheism: Which Makes More Sense?”
It reports that UCL doesn’t want iERA doing any more talks at UCL, because of the gender segregation.
UCL’s reasoning is that they do not allow enforced segregation on any grounds at meetings held on campus and their assertion is that “attempts were made to enforce segregation at the meeting (sic).” iERA complied with the request from the University to cater for all preferences by having seating that was open for all attendees, male or female, and two sections to accommodate those that wished to adhere to their deeply held religious beliefs.
Ahhhhhh look how … Read the rest
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Allen Esterson on Maintaining Scholarly Standards
Mar 14th, 2013 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIt is now quite widely believed that Mileva Maric, Einstein’s first wife, played an active role in Einstein’s early scientific work.… Read the rest
Tzortzis is on the schedule
Mar 14th, 2013 1:16 pm | By Ophelia BensonChris Moos updated us a couple of days ago, and I missed it until now.
… Read the restI would like to inform you that UCL has banned the iERA, Hamza Tzortzis
organisation, from holding further events on campus:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0313/11032013-meeting?utm_source
=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitterWe are now informing all universities that Hamza Tzortzis is set to
speak at, according to his website (
http://www.hamzatzortzis.com/events-media/events/islamic-awareness-tour-
2013/ ) on the issue.Next are:
11 Mar: Kings College London – “The Existence of God”
12 Mar: Salford University – “Muhammad: Liar, Truthful or Deluded?”
Chapman Building, 5PM.
13 Mar: Medway University – “Has Evolution Been Misunderstood?”
18 Mar: Aston University – “Atheism or Theism?”
21 Mar: Brunel University – TBA
King’s College London has not responded yet.
Salford University
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Personnel
Mar 14th, 2013 1:02 pm | By Ophelia BensonWait there’s more. Abishek Phadnis found a conference a year ago called The Seeds of Change.
Lauren Booth – sister of Cherie Booth.
Then there’s the Deen Institute, with its “who we are” page.
You’ll have to click the link to get the full effect. I’ll just say it’s not an accident that you see men first and then women. Last of all is the brazen slut with no hijab.… Read the rest
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Meet our speakers
Mar 14th, 2013 11:29 am | By Ophelia BensonAllen Esterson alerted me to a real gem – iERA’s page “Meet our speakers”…
Classic, isn’t it?… Read the rest
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Told that security would remove him from the premises
Mar 14th, 2013 11:21 am | By Ophelia BensonThe UCL student paper reports on Saturday’s exciting events.
… Read the restThe event, held as part of Hamza Tzortzis ‘Islamic Awareness Tour’, featured the public speaker Tzortzis debating against cosmologist and professor of Physics, Lawrence Krauss on the topic of ‘Islam or Atheism: Which Makes More Sense?’ However, attendees soon began to question the organisation of the event when an email sent by the Islamic Education and Research Academy (IERA) and the organisers of the event, informed attendees that seating allocation would be decided by “when the ticket was booked and gender”. However, when concerned students contacted UCL, they were assured by Fiona McClement, the university’s Equalities and Diversities Adviser, that all attendees were “free to sit wherever they feel comfortable”,
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The prospects for Francis
Mar 14th, 2013 10:36 am | By Ophelia BensonCFI issued a press release on the prospects for a better future with a new pope.
Ron Lindsay’s hopes are not stratospherically high.
… Read the restAs with anyone taking on a position of substantial responsibility, in which decisions can affect the lives of millions, we sincerely hope for the best for Pope Francis. However, even leaving aside the fact that the institution he oversees is based on a fundamentally false understanding of reality, at this stage one cannot be too optimistic about the prospects of Francis bringing the Church into the 21st century. Indeed, even the Church’s dipping a toe into the 20th century seems unrealistic.
Like much of the Church’s hierarchy, his views stem from beliefs and myths formed in previous
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Con du jour
Mar 13th, 2013 5:57 pm | By Ophelia BensonEarlier this afternoon Twitter – always helpful, always tugging on the elbow – told me to follow Cunt of the Day. Huh. No, Twitter, I’m not going to do that.
The current winners.
… Read the restCunt of the Day
@cuntofthedayA new pope as Cunt of the Day goes to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles as it pays out $10m to victims of sexual abuse. http://bit.ly/cFK35R
Cunt of the Day
@cuntofthedayNorth Korea’s tiny twat tinpot dictator Kim Jong Un is Cunt of the Day for making tiny dick threats of imminent war. http://bit.ly/cFK35R
Cunt of the Day
@cuntofthedayCunt of the Day goes to officials in Fiji, condemned by the UN, who were filmed brutally
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Pick a country with a military junta in its recent past
Mar 13th, 2013 5:12 pm | By Ophelia BensonChris Clarke at Pharyngula quotes a comment:
… Read the restAs an Argentinian I can confirm your “rumours” and add that this guy was a collaborator with the military during the last coup d’etat during the 70′s : Among many things, he informed to the military that two monks that were working in a low income neighbourhood were no longer protected by the catholic church, facilitating their detention and posterior disappearance.
Mind you, to “dissapear” at that time meant to be detained by the military, held without rights or trial, possibly (and often) tortured under suspicions of being a Marxist/ “terrorist”, being completely incomunicated with your family and finally be killed and buried on an unmarked grave, or thrown form a plane into
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Oh gee the cardinals made a booboo
Mar 13th, 2013 4:51 pm | By Ophelia BensonOk here we go. Stewart posted the link to a piece from January 2011 in the Guardian, on what the high-ups in the Catholic church in Argentina did to help the miliatary dictatorship get away with crimes against humanity. Is the new pope there? Does a bear shit in the woods?
… Read the restThe extent of the church’s complicity in the dark deeds was excellently set out by Horacio Verbitsky, one of Argentina’s most notable journalists, in his book El Silencio (Silence). He recounts how the Argentinian navy with the connivance of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, now the Jesuit archbishop of Buenos Aires, hid from a visiting delegation of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission the dictatorship’s political prisoners. Bergoglio was hiding them
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“We’ll follow whatever the church says”
Mar 13th, 2013 4:16 pm | By Ophelia BensonSo maybe the new pope will be a little less ruthlessly murderous about condoms. Or maybe he won’t; at any rate we know he won’t be any less convinced that he gets to tell everyone what to do.
… Read the restWhile the new pope is reportedly orthodox on matters of sexual morality, “he takes a slightly more pragmatic view on contraception, believing that it can be permissible to prevent the spread of disease,” according to a report in The Guardian.
What that might mean for groups like Catholic Relief Services, a humanitarian organization based in Baltimore that works to stem the spread of communicable diseases, isn’t clear. But the pope has an enormous power to shape the doctrine followed by
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Plus ça change
Mar 13th, 2013 2:50 pm | By Ophelia BensonSo, it’s a guy from Argentina, and he’s calling himself Francis 1.
It’s still the Catholic church though. Still the Vatican. Still a ridiculous archaic intrusive institution.… Read the rest
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Jesus and Mo on trying to explain
Mar 13th, 2013 11:46 am | By Ophelia BensonAtheists lack a sensus divinitatus, you see.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Yemisi Ilesanmi on “other grounds”
Mar 13th, 2013 11:12 am | By Ophelia BensonYemisi Ilesanmi commented on Peter Tatchell’s Huffington Post article yesterday about the inadequacy of the queen’s putative “support” for LGBT rights in the Commonwealth. Her comment is a valuable short article in itself.
… Read the restThere is a reason many government officials especially politicians prefer the ‘other grounds’ clause to a more specific mention of sexual orientation, it gives them a leeway to squeeze out of any obligation not to discriminate, jail or kill on the grounds of sexual orientation.
Speaking as a Lawyer, Advocate and solicitor, I know from experience that ‘Other grounds’ clause could be held to mean so many things and also held to exclude so many things by government not willing to respect the rights of others. New
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Leo Igwe giving a talk in London March 25
Mar 13th, 2013 | Filed by Ophelia BensonNigeria’s most prominent humanist, and a human rights activist, will be giving a ground-breaking talk on ‘Breaking the Taboo of Atheism in Black Communities’.… Read the rest
Leo in London
Mar 13th, 2013 10:02 am | By Ophelia BensonYou people in and near London are in luck – you have a chance to go to a talk by Leo Igwe. Grab it!
… Read the restBreaking the Taboo of Atheism in Black Communities
Monday, March 25, 2013 6:30 PM to 9:30 PM
270 Mare Street, E8 1HE London, London
Leo Igwe, Nigeria’s most prominent humanist, and a human rights activist, will be giving a ground-breaking talk on ‘Breaking the Taboo of Atheism in Black Communities’ during a short visit to London to attend the NSS Secularist of the Year Award event before returning to Africa to continue his research into witchcraft.
People ‘of all hues’ who are sceptical of religion are encouraged to show their interest
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Backward and in high heels
Mar 12th, 2013 5:46 pm | By Ophelia BensonMy friend Mary Ellen Foley – who blogs at M E Foley’s Anglo-American Experience Blog - shared a story with me.
… Read the restSo I went to a Tai Chi class today, taught by an Englishwoman who has studied Tai Chi for years, including various stints in China (one as long as 6 months), and she told some stories, including the one about how she went over there to study with a particular master and found that he didn’t like her, didn’t like women, probably didn’t like foreigners — he clearly could teach her a lot of stuff, but she wasn’t welcome and he made sure she knew it. But she was determined to win him over, so one day she came
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Women’s Day versus Islam
Mar 12th, 2013 | By Jahanshah RashidianWomen’s Day on March 8 was declared by the International Socialists. In a conference in Copenhagen in 1910, it was declared an International Working Women’s Day (IWD). The idea was proposed by Clara Zetkin, a Marxist woman of the then Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).
The battle for equal rights of women to hold public offices, their right to vocational training, and an end to inequity in other conditions was the goal. Therefore as a historical day, Women’s Day is since commemorated and is a national holiday in many countries. It symbolises an age-old struggle of women of all ethnic, cultural and social backgrounds against the long existing gender discriminations further expanded by the Abrahamic religions from which Islam … Read the rest
I agree with this sentiment
Mar 12th, 2013 3:20 pm | By Ophelia BensonOh hai, I found that photoshop of me – the one that Michael Nugent reported on last week in his post Slymepit members struggle with the ethics of removing photoshopped naked image. I wasn’t looking for it, I was looking for something else, but the location of the something else was the location of the photoshop. I had vaguely thought it was gone, but no, it’s just that it’s not embedded there any more. That was clear from Michael’s post, but I had read it somewhat hastily.
… Read the restMembers of the Slymepit website have spent the last few hours struggling with the ethics of whether to remove a photograph, newly posted, of an identifiable person’s face photoshopped onto the body
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)