The self-pity of godbotherers never ceases to amaze.

Pop open the mulled wine, fill-up on minced pies, enjoy the office parties, swap presents, take a holiday – but whatever you do, don’t mention Jesus. In fact, don’t even mention the word ‘Christmas’ – say festive season, winter break, or happy holidays.

Sounds like a joke, right? Wrong. It’s Christmas in Britain 2016. No, it’s not all pervasive, but it’s happening, the fist-in-a-velvet-glove reality for any number of people, particularly Christians, in workplaces up and down the country.

And it has led the British Prime Minster, a Catholic bishop, and the UK’s equality commissioner to speak out about this sort of nonsense – it has to stop.

Ah there it … Read the rest

Throwdown. 35 Russian diplomats have 72 hours to get out of Dodge.

The US has expelled 35 Russian diplomats as punishment for alleged interference into last month’s presidential elections, giving them 72 hours to leave the country.

It will also close two compounds used for Russian intelligence-gathering.

President Barack Obama had vowed action against Russia amid US accusations it directed hacks against the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Well at least no harm was done, because Clinton’s opponent is a responsible, thoughtful, reasonable, compassionate guy who will do a good job.

Or, rather, he’s the opposite of all that, as well as a liar and a thief and a pussygrabber, so I don’t admire the Russians’ prank.

The

News from Afghanistan:

A woman has been beheaded for visiting a city without her husband, officials in Afghanistan have said.

The 30-year-old was decapitated and stabbed to death on Monday evening in Lati in the Sar-e-Pul province of northern Afghanistan.

The Middle East Press claims a government spokesman told them Taliban militants killed her for the “infidelity act” of going shopping without a male guardian.

…

National broadcaster Tolo News reports that the provincial governor spokesman Zabiullah Amani said the woman’s husband is in Iran, and that they do not have children.

No doubt they did the stabbing first, to make sure she would feel it.… Read the rest

The Bundy gang issued a “press release” on Facebook – in other words they wrote a short Facebook post. But they wrote PRESS RELEASE at the top so that we’d know it’s not an ordinary Facebook post. Still has comments like a Facebook post though.

PRESS RELEASE

Bundy Ranch Response to Gold Butte National Monument Designation

We, the Bundy Family, would like to say to President Obama that we are saddened, but not surprised, by the your decision to make our ranch and home a national monument. If any of this were really about protecting the land, you would come here, work with the local people who love this land, those who have a vested interest in this land,

The US has a new national monument, and no it’s not Trump’s Ego. It’s Gold Butte, in Nevada.

The declaration places 300,000 acres of land under the protection of the Bureau of Land Management. Obama used the Antiquities Act to shelter land between Lake Mead and the Grand Canyon.

In addition, Obama declared the Bears Ears region of Utah a national monument under the same law.

“I am designating two new national monuments in the desert landscapes of southeastern Utah and southern Nevada to protect some of our country’s most important cultural treasures,” Obama said in a statement released by the White House.

They have Native American artifacts, such as petroglyphs. Gold Butte also has a difficult neighbor: Cliven … Read the rest

Michelle Goldberg is wondering if maybe men will always rule. Yeah same here.

For the last couple of years, feminism has been both ubiquitous and improbably glamorous, its pop culture currency symbolized by Beyoncé silhouetted before a giant glowing FEMINIST sign at the 2014 Video Music Awards. On television, women went from ornaments to protagonists, starring in a slew of raunchy comedies in which men were often afterthoughts.

Erm no. That’s overstating it. The fact (if it is a fact) that there are a number of such comedies doesn’t demonstrate that women have become protagonists across the board. They haven’t.

But that’s a detail. Her larger point is that it’s not looking good. She’s right about that.

Before Nov.

One thing people can do to promote freedom and equal rights for girls and women is destigmatize menstruation. Behold one such effort:

This comic book is helping girls combat the shame around periods in India.

Menstruation is still a taboo topic in the country, with millions of girls having no knowledge of the process until it happens to them.

It’s seen as a creepy disgusting contaminant. In reality it’s discarded nutrients for a future human, which you would think would be sacred rather than disgusting.… Read the rest

The Washington Post on Vera Rubin:

Dr. Rubin’s groundbreaking discoveries, made primarily with physicist W. Kent Ford, have revolutionized the way scientists observe, measure and understand the universe.

The concept of “dark matter,” an unknown substance among stars in distant galaxies, had existed since the 1930s, but it was not proved until Dr. Rubin’s studies with Ford in the 1970s. It is considered one of the most significant and fundamental advances in astronomy during the 20th century.

“The existence of dark matter has utterly revolutionized our concept of the universe and our entire field,” University of Washington astronomer Emily Levesque told Astronomy magazine this year. “The ongoing effort to understand the role of dark matter has basically spawned entire

Susan Cox argues that lesbian spaces are still needed.

We’re told we live in an era of greater acceptance of homosexuality, yet the loss of hard-won lesbian spaces and events is a growing trend. San Francisco, known as one of the most prominent LGBT communities in the world, doesn’t have a single lesbian bar, and New York City’s lesbian spaces have dwindled severely. There are no explicitly lesbian bars in Vancouver (Lick — once the city’s only lesbian bar — closed in 2011), though there are a number of bars for gay men and “queer nights” that take place within various venues.

Well you see gay men need to have bars but lesbians don’t. Lesbians are women, and women … Read the rest

I wrote this column for the Freethinker. Barry found a couple of great cartoons to illustrate. I chose the tweet at the end, because it’s so very Hitler.

… Read the rest

Turkey doesn’t allow any lèse-majesté when people mention Erdoğan. People who lèse the majesté of Erdoğan get busted.

The boss of a cafeteria at a Turkish opposition newspaper has been detained after saying he would refuse to serve tea to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Senol Buran, cafeteria head at Cumhuriyet, was remanded accused of insulting the president. He denies the refusal was an insult, his lawyer said.

Trump would do the same thing if he could, but fortunately he can’t. He can’t stop us calling him a short-fingered vulgarian, a fascist, a bully, an ignorant shallow conceited stupid loudmouth, a tiny-fisted Nazi, a Cheeto, the pussygrabber-in-chief, a sexist racist pig, a fraud, a thief, a very bad man.

Mr