Nov 10th, 2014 6:11 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
I suppose Andrew Sullivan would think it was “leftist feminists policing speech” if Twitter managed to stop things like harassment of the daughters of a football coach who failed to win a game yesterday?
The Packers manhandled the Bears last night, and Chicago fans have had it with head coach Marc Trestman. Some of these angry, impotent people have access to Twitter, and have decided to direct their rage onto Trestman’s two daughters, Chloe and Sarahanne, two people who have no coaching or playing duties with the Bears.
Ah ah ah – watch it – saying the coach’s daughters have no coaching or playing duties with the Bears sounds perilously close to Policing Speech. In a very dim light it … Read the rest
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Tags: FTB
Nov 10th, 2014 5:43 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Uh huh.
A guy called Karim Metwaly, who clearly gets to wear a T shirt and baseball cap without expecting harassment, did a video of a woman walking in Manhattan first in leggings and a T shirt and then in full hijab and a long black robe. Guess what.
Uh huh.
I strongly believe women have the right to dress in which ever way they want and also believe that guys play a major role, they should not talk in disgusting ways and should lower their gaze. This video was in no way a survey or an accurate representation and should not be considered as such. This video was done as an experiment and these were the results with
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Nov 10th, 2014 4:37 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
So Andrew Sullivan uses “SJW” as a sneer too. I know he’s very conservative, but I’m a little surprised he’s conservative in that particular style. Or maybe I’m not; he’s said plenty of absurd things before.
The SJWs Now Get To Police Speech On Twitter
Uh huh, and we get to steal your testicles, too!
Well, you could see this coming. Twitter announced last Thursday that it was teaming up with a left-feminist activist group to investigate gender-based harassment on the social networking site:
A group called Women, Action, and the Media, which advocates for better representation of women, is testing a new reporting process for gender-based harassment. The group developed a tool for reporting harassment and will
…
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Nov 10th, 2014 3:25 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Another slaughter of school children in Nigeria.
At least 46 students have been killed by a suicide bomber at a school assembly in the north-eastern Nigerian town of Potiskum, police have said.
A suicide bomber dressed as a student is believed to have caused the blast at the boys’ school in Yobe state .
Police suggested the militant group Boko Haram carried out the attack.
Yobe state’s governor has shut all public schools around Potiskum and criticised the government for not tackling the group.
Way to break racism and smash borders and do away with the need for passports!
Boko Haram has targeted schools during a deadly five-year insurgency aimed at establishing an Islamic state.
It is waging a
…
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Nov 10th, 2014 12:56 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Apparently the Catholic church gets to, or thinks it gets to, decide for itself whether it will or will not be held accountable for years and years of child rape in one of its institutions. The NSS reports:
The Catholic Church is refusing to accept “liability” for long-term sex abuse that went on at the Mirfield Junior Seminary, despite paying out £120,000 to eleven victims of child sex abuse.
The seminary, which closed down in 1984, was run by the Verona Fathers (now known as the Comboni Missionaries) and saw sexual abuse perpetrated by priests against children as young as 11.
But the church can just say no, right? It can just say no we didn’t and we refuse … Read the rest
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Nov 10th, 2014 12:28 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain has a report on the Islamic Education and Research Authority aka iERA. It’s a group for Islamist missionaries, basically.
iERA are effectively a pro-active organisation that facilitates missionary activities, and also an aggregating organisation that co-ordinates evangelism and preaching by affiliates. Even though iERA does not have a central constitution, the ideas that its core group aggregates, and its affiliates assert, correspond tightly with the ideas propounded by Islamist organisations and hate groups like Hizb ut Tahrir. In addition, the ideas of iERA and its affiliates fit into a wider stream of Wahaabi / Salafi Islamism.
iERA can be classified as a hate group because of its persistent promotion of
Islamists who preach
…
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Nov 9th, 2014 5:43 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
There’s a documentary tv series in Scandinavia (I haven’t been able to find out if it’s Swedish or Finnish or etc) that did an episode about a US fundamentalist Christian preacher bumbling around Scandinavia getting shocked about how unlike him they are.
Pastor Marty McLain, who describes his religious belief as deriving from a literal interpretation of the Bible, was given the opportunity to see how secular Scandinavia is by a documentary series called The Norden.
What he found came as a shock, apparently. (He could have just gone to New York or Seattle and been shocked there. I suspect he doesn’t get out of Georgia much.)
McLain, who’s favorite expression is “wow,” is wowed a lot. Almost
…
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Nov 9th, 2014 4:47 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Here’s a scary thing. The temperature rise due to climate change is making bees start flying earlier in the spring, before flowers have bloomed, and that makes pollination less likely. Guess what pollination is necessary for – food production. Hello famine. (There’s also the horror of shrinking snow pack in the Himalayas, which will cut the water flow to the massive rivers in Asia that originate in that snow pack.) This story is just one particular bee and one plant – the miner bee and the early spider orchid – but if the pattern applies elsewhere, well – that’s ominous.
“We have shown that plants and their pollinators show different responses to climate change and that warming will
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Nov 9th, 2014 1:55 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
The BBC also reported on that proposed independent school in Kent with links to “witch” hunter David Oyedpo.
The church, whose leader Bishop David Oyedpo was filmed accusing a woman of being a witch, declined an interview.
The organisation, which has its headquarters in Nigeria, is known as Living Faith Church Worldwide and also Winners’ Chapel International (WCI).
Bishop Oyedepo, its leader in Nigeria, has been shown on YouTubeslapping a woman and accusing her of being a witch.
His son David Oyedepo Junior is the pastor at WCI’s European headquarters in Dartford, where the church organisation wants to open Kingdom Heritage Model School for children aged four to seven.
That’s what the UK needs more of – churches … Read the rest
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Nov 9th, 2014 1:38 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Another one of these. Another murder to defend a long dead “prophet” against another putative insult. There’s a bit of “political correctness” for Sam Harris.
A policeman in Pakistan hacked a man to death for allegedly making derogatory remarks about the companions of the Prophet Muhammad, police said, just two days after a Christian couple was lynched over blasphemy in the same province.
It’s understandable though. The guy wouldn’t stop.
The man, Tufail Haider, 55, was taken into custody late on Wednesday in the city of Gujrat after a group of people allegedly overheard him making the remarks, beat him up and handed over to police.
“Officer Faraz Naveed brought him to the police station and sent him to lock-up.
…
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Nov 8th, 2014 4:23 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
There’s SPAM ‘n’ Limas.
No don’t interrupt me, I’m laughing too hard.
Via foodiggity.com
Boy doesn’t that Spanish sauce sound fabulous? The lard is a nice touch.
I wonder what the white substance you can see around the lima beans is. The recipe doesn’t mention anything like that so is it…some kind of horrid foam we don’t want to think about? Something the lima beans and spam give off as they bake?
… Read the rest
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Tags: Fine dining, FTB, Haute cuisine, Sophistication
Nov 8th, 2014 3:53 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Iram Ramzan interviewed Nazir Afzal for the Oldham Chronicle a few days ago.
Mr Afzal hopes Stockport MP Ann Coffey’s report into child abuse in Greater Manchester won’t deter victims from coming forward. But he doesn’t think the report does enough to highlight the achievements of his service.
Ms Coffey’s report suggested that the perceived attitudes of jurors caused the CPS to fail to charge suspects. She reported that in some cases the CPS highlighted the victim’s clothing, or that members of her own family had been derogatory about her behaviour, and that these facts had persuaded the CPS not to prosecute.
In the last six years 12,879 sexual offences against children were reported to GMP, but only 2,341 defendants
…
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Nov 8th, 2014 12:17 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
There’s a long and informative Storify by A Man In Black on YouTube, Patreon, and the Rise of the Professional Victimizer. There are people who make a very nice living out of cranking out videos that harass particular women – Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian to name two.
AMIB says thunderf00t is the top worst at this.
A Man In Black @a_man_in_black
Phil “thunderf00t” Mason is a scientist and somewhat (in)famous blogger/vlogger from the freethought/atheist community.
thunderf00t makes videos about science and anti-feminism, and has long attacked Anita Sarkeesian.
His videos usually range in the low six digits for views.
He’s cashed in on attacking Anita Sarkeesian, however. He has two videos from last July attacking her, at 500K
…
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Tags: #gamergate, #thequinnspiracy, FTB
Nov 8th, 2014 11:29 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Coolio, some people are sending their responses to Sam Harris’s request for examples of Political Correctness run amok publicly, so that we can read them. This fella on Facebook for example.
Sam Harris, remember back when Richard Dawkins “ranked rape”?
Well, he tried to make a point about logic and then everyone said they understood what he meant, but still did the exact opposite of what a person who understood would.
The media wrote about how he ranked rape, even though rape was only a hypothetical example in his argument about logic, not at all the main point of what he said.
We’re not allowed to have logical discussions about anything that’s emotionally sensitive, or even use it
…
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Nov 8th, 2014 10:55 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Sam Harris is getting help, or at least psychological support, in his quest for political correctness run amok. Bill Dembski Denyse O’Leary at Uncommon Descent is all sympathy.
Guy made the mistake of actually challenging something serious now.
Like, he could have been a pop sci celeb, with articles like “Ten reasons you go to church that you wish you never knew,” or “Ten reasons you give to charity that have nothing to do with caring,” or “Why the government really does know what is best for you.”
Legacy media editors can’t get enough of that stuff, even if readers are dropping away like fleas off a dead moose.
Instead, unaccountably, the guy decided to take on the
…
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Nov 7th, 2014 5:59 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Last July in Malaysia a fatwa was issued on Sisters in Islam; the New York Times gives some facts:
In July, the official religious council in wealthy and populous Selangor State issued a fatwa, or religious decree, against Sisters in Islam, a Malaysian group that advocates women’s rights.
The fatwa declared Sisters in Islam “deviant” and also denounced “any individual, organization or institution that upholds the belief of liberalism or pluralism in religion.”
The fatwa did not define liberalism or pluralism, but called on the authorities to ban and seize books that promote the ideas and to “censor and block any social website contrary to Islamic teachings.”
Rosli Dahlan, a Malaysian lawyer who has represented clients challenging the power
…
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Nov 7th, 2014 5:04 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Sam Harris is looking to set a trend again.
Sam Harris @SamHarrisOrg · 6 hours ago
Looking for examples of political correctness run amok. Please send links/stories here: http://www.samharris.org/contact
That trend has been set already, back around 1985 or so, but Sam was probably too busy studying the biology of gender differences to notice.
So, yay. The atheist movement can throw a big ol’ party with Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins as the hosts and everybody else dressed up as various kinds of political correctness run amok. Hilarity will ensue. And the atheist movement will continue to watch bemusedly as sensible people head for the exits.… Read the rest
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Tags: FTB
Nov 7th, 2014 12:10 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Remember that excellent, well-argued, informative comment by the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain on a post by Andrew Brown at CiF yesterday? That I re-published here for your convenience and edification? It’s all the more convenient now, because the wises ones at CiF have deleted it, claiming – absurdly – that it doesn’t meet their community standards. CEMB tweeted the news a few hours ago.
Ex-Muslims Forum @CEMB_forum · 5 hours ago
We wrote this at Guardian about how Exmuslims are silenced http://www.councilofexmuslims.com/index.php?topic=27640.0 … … its now been silenced & deleted
Maajid Nawaz asked the wise ones why.
Maajid Nawaz @MaajidNawaz · 18 hours ago
.@Guardian publish http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2014/nov/05/islam-muslims-hate-ideology-racism … then @CEMB_forum comment http://www.councilofexmuslims.com/index.php?topic=27640.0 … Enforcing a blasphemy code, Guardian
…
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