And speaking of calling women every shitty name you can think of…ManBoobz looks at how Melody puts the bullies to shame.

Futrelle got a piece of hate mail which came from the admin account at mensrightsmelbourne.com, an Australian Men’s Rights site. There he saw yet another stupid hit-piece on Melody.

The post – most of which is plagiarised directly from The Daily Mail, including the title itself – is an attack on Melody Hensley, a feminist and skeptic who is the Executive Director of Center for Inquiry in Washington DC. Hensley, who in the past suffered intense harassment from misogynists in the skeptic movement and other assorted assholes, is now facing a second wave of harassment as

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

Steve Ahlquist has a great post about being invited to be on a right-wing talk radio show and why he said no and why it’s not true that all publicity is good publicity because it’s publicity.

WPRO’s Tara Granahan called me at 5:45pm Monday night to ask me if I would come on and do an interview with her about the May 1st Day of Reason proclamation Governor Chafee was kind enough to sign on behalf of the Humanists of Rhode Island and the Secular Coalition of Rhode Island. I asked her if this was for the “talk side” of WPRO or for the “news side.” Granahan told me that she was covering for Matt Allen’s talk show and that

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Chris Moos looks at the sources the Law Society cited for its guidance on sharia.

…the Law Society has readily admitted that it does neither have the expertise, nor the legitimacy to make verdicts on sharia law. On what expertise is the Law Society then drawing for its practice note?

The answer to this can be found at the very end of the practice note in the ‘further information‘ section, where the Law Society references its sources. There, you will find links to such website as the Islam Channel, which has been fined repeatedly by Ofcom forbreaking the broadcasting code for airing programmes that advocate marital rape and call for the killing of those who ‘insult

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NPR had a piece on bullying a couple of days ago, starting from a British study published this week in the American Journal of Psychiatry. The unsurprising finding? Bullying is not beneficial.

What doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger, right? Well, not when it comes to bullying.

Some may still consider bullying a harmless part of growing up, but mounting evidence suggests that the adverse effects of being bullied aren’t something kids can just shake off.

I can’t say I’ve ever considered bullying a harmless part of growing up. I didn’t have to think about it very hard when I was growing up, because there wasn’t any to speak of in my school. It was a tiny school, … Read the rest

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Also, Cliven Bundy? He doesn’t have some kind of ancestral claim to that land.

Bundy, a multi-millionaire farmer who hasn’t paid for grazing rights on public lands for more than 20 years, also stands to garner substantial support from some very wealthy enemies of President Obama. Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group backed by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch (which spent $122 million trying to defeat Obama and other Democrats in 2012), is already instigating a campaign against the Bureau of Land Management on Bundy’s behalf. It began a social media campaign, using the hashtag #BundyBattle, and is taking to the Internet to mock the time and money the bureau has wasted (some $1 million according to its

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What?

Media Matters on Cliven Bundy:

Bundy has been in conflict with the federal government for decades over his refusal to pay grazing fees for his cattle herd’s use of public lands. A recent attempt by the Bureau of Land Management to enforce court orders allowing the confiscation of Bundy’s cattle to settle unpaid fees and fines was suspended due tosafety concerns after armed militias rallied to Bundy’s cause and some militia members pointed guns at BLM law enforcement.

Despite threats of violence from Bundy and his supporters — and the fact his legal claim against paying grazing fees is incredibly weak – right-wing media have praised Bundy as a conservative champion standing against an outsized federal

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There was a protest in Kolkata of what appears to be the protest Maryam was recently part of.

Kolkata: Several Muslim groups led a protest in Kolkata angered by photographs published in a Bengali Daily of women protesting in nude, with Arabic texts, including names of Allah and Prophet Muhammad.

The tabloid supplement of the Bengali Daily `Khabor 365 Din’ published photographs of women protesting in nude that irked some Muslims groups calling for a protest on March 11 from morning. Angry protesters set ablaze few copies of the newspaper `Khabor 365 Din’ and blocked the road at the Park Street Junction in Park Circus Area for what they termed as an attempt at “hurting the sentiments” of Muslims.

They … Read the rest

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

Also a good blog post on the Mail on Sunday’s amusing prank, at Where’s the Benefit?

Beyond the horror that they did this to a charity, we need to be very aware of exactly what was done here, and it is a far murkier story than many will realise. The Trussell Trust has been flagging up the massive growth in people seeking their help for the last year or more, and this is not a narrative that the government is happy with, in particular it seems to be driving Iain Duncan Smith towards apoplexy, and this week saw the launch of a coordinated attack on the Trussell Trust in the pages of, surprise, surprise, The Daily Mail with the claim

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More sarcasm:

Tom Copley @tomcopley

NEXT WEEK’S MAIL ON SUNDAY EXCLUSIVE: How fire engines turned up at our reporter’s home when he reported a fire that DIDN’T EXIST

David Whitley @mrdavidwhitley

NEXT WEEK’S MAIL ON SUNDAY EXCLUSIVE: How the RNLI sent out three lifeboats in a perilous storm to rescue our reporter’s NON-EXISTENT boat.

hrtbps @hrtbps

In tomorrow’s Mail, as our reporter is given a full course of chemotherapy after faking cancer, we ask is the NHS wasting taxpayers’ money?

Crusading journalism forever!… Read the rest

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

The manager of the scammed food bank comments:

… Read the rest

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Of course there’s also satire.

… Read the rest

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The good news is, the loathsome Mail on Sunday hit piece motivated a lot of people to give money to the charitable trust that funds many UK food banks. Yaboosucks Daily Mail!

The largest provider of food banks in Britain has seen a huge surge in donations after a newspaper article criticising the charity sparked a social media funding drive.

The Trussell Trust says it is “overwhelmed by the public’s generosity” as a new appeal has now topped £38,000, a rise of well over £35,000 since before the article was published.

The Help Crack UK Hunger campaign launched at the start of the year and by 19th April had raised roughly £2,000, with 238 donations made. The total stands at

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

About that Daily Mail on Sunday story that was all over the place yesterday -

Yes, what about it? Just, how horrible it is; how perfectly hateful it is.

What the hell is that even for? To demonstrate that someone who goes to considerable trouble to ask for help eventually gets help to the tune of a few bags of food items? Why is that supposed to be a bad thing?

Why do so many people make a point of being so hateful?… Read the rest

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David Cameron threw a little Easter party the other day. He stood on a box and addressed a bunch of people who stood facing him with their hands folded tidily in front of them like subdued schoolchildren, and what he said was, there should be more of this kind of thing all around.

LAST week I held my fourth annual Easter reception in Downing Street. Not for the first time, my comments about my faith and the importance of Christianity in our country were widely reported.

Some people feel that in this ever more secular age we shouldn’t talk about these things. I completely disagree. I believe we should be more confident about our status as a Christian country, more

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

Here’s someone I’ve never read – the historical novelist Philippa Gregory. She has a history PhD but got it just in time for Thatcher’s cuts to university courses, when jobs teaching 18th century history became scarce. She wrote a novel for the fun of it and whoops it was a best-seller so the university job was no longer required.

Her nose for a good story continued to serve her well, however; when Gregory “discovered” Mary Boleyn, she had been all but forgotten.

“There wasn’t a single book or essay about her. She was in the footnotes of other, allegedly more interesting, lives and only very occasionally at that. It took an exjourno and a woman historian to spot that actually

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This is very cool. A panel discussion in 2009, with Dawkins, Tyson, Druyan, and Stenger, moderated by Grothe. At the Q and A there’s a question about genetic differences between women and men and their representation in science. Tyson takes it, and makes the point that we keep keep keep making. Druyan, on his left, is enthusiastic. Dawkins, on his right…maybe not so much.

That part starts at one hour one minute fourteen seconds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEeBPSvcNZQ… Read the rest

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Heyup, there’s a new conference on the horizon. Here are details via Ed Brayton:

Foundation Beyond Belief, the nation’s largest humanist charitable organization, is holding its first national conference, “Humanism at Work,” July 18-20, 2014 at the Hilton Rosemont in Chicago, Illinois.

This conference, the first of its kind in the freethought community, centers on how nontheists can put their compassionate humanism to work for a better world. It will include TED-style presentations on philanthropy, volunteering, and community building, as well as practical workshops, panels, and hands-on volunteer opportunities.

Speakers include:

• Evidence-based giving expert CAROLINE FIENNES
• Nigerian humanist and human rights activist LEO IGWE
• Atheist homelessness activist SERAH BLAIN
• HEMLEY GONZALEZ, a humanist at work with the poor in Calcutta

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

Passengers on a plane in Sweden went on seat belt strike and saved a refugee from deportation to Iran.

Last week, an Iranian man reluctantly boarded a plane in Sweden. The refugee was being forced to return to his native country, where his life would likely be in danger, even though he had a wife — a Swedish resident — and two young children in Östersund.

So, before the flight, Ghader Ghalamere’s family and friends informed other passengers of his situation. Once aboard, the plane passengers banded together and refused to fasten their seat belts in a moving display of solidarity. The flight did not take off with Ghalamere aboard, the Independent reported.

According to local reports, though Ghalamere

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