PZ has an amusing post about his latest excommunication from something he wasn’t part of in the first place.

Next time I’m waiting for a bus I think I’ll fantasize about all the groups and organizations I’m not part of that could excommunicate me. The Air Force. Focus on the Family. The League of Left-handed Botanists. God-lovers United for Cheese-flavored Dog Food.

Read PZ’s post for the full entertainment package, but I just want to poke at the excommunication a little myself because it’s so…classic.

It’s handed down by the Secular Policy Institute, which started life as the Global Secular Institute (which was so funny because it was neither global nor an institute) and then morphed into something … Read the rest

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

Another cartoonist being punished for being a meanie to people in power. (I thought that was what political cartoonists were supposed to do.)

Malaysian cartoonist Zulkiflee Anwar Alhaque has been charged with nine counts of sedition for criticising the country’s judiciary in a series of tweets.

Alhaque, known for ridiculing the ruling coalition, had criticised the judiciary in a series of posts on Twitter on 10 February, when opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was due to start a five-year prison sentence on sodomy charges.

He had tweeted: “The lackeys in black robes are proud of their sentence. The rewards from the political masters must be plenty.”

In another post he said: “Today Malaysia is seen as a country without law.”

According

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

There’s this article at the Gatestone Institute – a source I’m wary of, because I don’t know how reliable it is, but it provides some material I don’t see anywhere else.

After weeks of diplomatic wrangling and recrimination, the Saudi government on March 27 announced that it would reinstate its ambassador, Ibrahim bin Saad bin Ibrahim al-Brahim, to Stockholm. The ambassador had been recalled on March 11 as a protest against Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström’s criticism of Saudi Arabia’s legal practices and treatment of women.

“Weeks” of diplomatic wrangling is a strange way to put it, because March 11 to March 27 is 16 days. It’s two weeks; “weeks” sounds like more than that. Anyway, Saudi said the … Read the rest

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

Originally two comments by Tom Foss on The words spoken.

“We need to stop spending our money on military and police and start spending it on education.”
“He wants to eliminate the whole military and all police! It’s exactly what he said!”

There’s a phrase missing from your strawman here that would actually make your “charitable” reading accurate: “so much.” We need to stop spending so much of our money on military and police and start spending it on education.

We keep hearing all this about charitable readings and giving people the benefit of the doubt when the people in question have given no indication that they deserve it. Regardless of whether or not she meant the actual words … Read the rest

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

A news story from what must be a colleague (so to speak) of the Onion.

The catering team on BBC quiz Have I Got News For You have been placed on ‘high alert’ after increased chatter surrounding Jeremy Clarkson’s appearance later this month.

With the risk of serving cold food higher than ever before, the catering team are said to be undergoing extensive training and new performance drills ahead of his 29th April appearance to ensure all food in the green room remains warm at all times.

Caterer Simon Williams told us, “This is not normally a dangerous job, but frankly we can’t afford to make the terrible mistake of serving Jeremy Clarkson cold food. Real human lives are at

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

C J Werleman claims that New Atheism – all of it, not just Sam Harris and Bill Maher – is pro-white supremacy.

[The New Atheist movement has] become a pro-white supremacy movement. New Atheism is anti-Muslim, anti-Arab bigotry dressed up with a thin veneer of fancy sounding words.

That’s not a very effective way of making his claim, since white-supremacy isn’t the same thing as anti-Muslim bigotry which is not the same thing as anti-Arab bigotry. There’s overlap, but it’s possible to be one of those things without being the others, and it’s possible to be two of those things without being all three.

Individually, and on a personal level, however, New Atheists can be good people. Collectively and unwittingly,

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

Jeremy Clarkson is baaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaack.

Jeremy Clarkson is set to make his first appearance on the BBC since losing his job as co-presenter on Top Gear.

The controversial broadcaster will appear as the guest host of Have I Got News for You on 24 April.

“Jeremy’s contract has not been renewed on Top Gear but he isn’t banned from appearing on the BBC,” a BBC spokesman said.

Oh. There was me thinking the BBC actually didn’t want him around any more, on account of that thing he does where he hits underlings in the face and calls them fucking cunts at the top of his lungs in posh hotels. But no, they just didn’t want him around on that one … Read the rest

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

I too have a very low opinion of Karen Armstrong, Debbie Schlussel, Fred Phelps, Rush Limbaugh, and Ronald Reagan. I’m likely to use harsh adjectives and/or swear words to describe them.

I’m just saying.… Read the rest

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

Good to know sexism is dead and we can all move on n shit.

Via Peter Cohen on Twitter –

Me? No. No, you’re not.

 … Read the rest

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

Polly Toynbee pointed out last December that everybody’s favorite soap opera Downton Abbey is staggeringly dishonest about the reality of servants’ lives in the early 20th century.

To control history by rewriting the past subtly influences present attitudes too: every dictator knows that. Downton rewrites class division, rendering it anodyne, civilised and quaintly cosy. Those upstairs do nothing unspeakably horrible to their servants, while those downstairs are remarkably content with their lot. The brutality of servants’ lives is bleached out, the brutishness of upper-class attitudes, manners and behaviour to their servants ironed away. There are token glimpses of resentments between the classes, but the main characters are nice, in a nice world. The truth would be impossible without turning the

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

And here’s more background from last September, by Qasim Rashid in the Huffington Post.

It is no secret I’ve been critical of Muslim leadership for their deafening apathy and silence over the 125-year worldwide persecution of Ahmadi Muslims. To add insult to injury, every time a new atrocity emerges I’m bombarded with standard anti-Ahmadi talking points in a shameless attempt to justify the violence. Just recently in Gujranwala, Pakistan where four Ahmadi Muslims (including three young children) were murdered when their homes were burned down, insults followed the anemic condemnations. Those who bothered acknowledging the attack refused to recognize Ahmadis as Muslims, thus holding the same view as those who attacked and murdered the young children in the first

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

In 2010 the BBC offered some background on the Ahmadi movement, aka the Ahmadiyya community.

[I]t is regarded by orthodox Muslims as heretical because it does not believe that Mohammed was the final prophet sent to guide mankind, as orthodox Muslims believe is laid out in the Koran.

Well there’s your problem right there: thinking “heretical” is a meaningful and useful word. Let’s face it, nobody knows whether Mohammed was the “final prophet” or not, or whether he was a “prophet” at all, or how they would know he wasn’t one. It’s all just claims all the way down. That, I suppose, why there’s so much venom about the claims.

The Ahmadiyya community takes its name from its founder

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

We have a crappy public sphere in the US, as any fule kno. Public schools, public libraries, public parks, public broadcasting – they all have to struggle and beg to get minimal funding. They’re public, you see, and that’s socialism, and that’s the devil.

Norman Lear in the New York Times points out that PBS is starving its documentary shows in favor of soapy entertainment like Downton Fucking Abbey.

At issue are PBS’s two flagship independent documentary series: “POV,” founded in 1988, and ITVS’s “Independent Lens,” started in 2003. Both take on huge topics of public urgency. “Food Inc.” (2010), from “POV,” exposed harms in the food industry. “Me Facing Life: Cyntoia’s Story” (2011) cast a spotlight on harsh

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

Kashif Chaudhry is tired of seeing his friends and relatives jailed for being Ahmadis.

Yesterday, a very close family friend – someone I have always considered an uncle – was arrested in Pakistan. His crime: he had printed verses from the Holy Quran in an Urdu publication.

My uncle is an Ahmadi, and under Pakistan’s notorious anti-Ahmadi laws, he committed a ‘crime’ punishable by at least three years imprisonment and a fine. The law states that an Ahmadi who “poses as a Muslim hurts the religious feelings of Muslims”.

In the late 80s, three of my maternal uncles spent time behind bars under these same anti-Ahmadi laws for the crime of saying the Kalimah. Thousands of Ahmadis – and

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