Yesssss! Via Twitter –
FreeSpeech&SecularSo @SecularSpeech 6 hours ago
Exhibition of controversial cartoons, now at @ManchesterSU @ChrisMoos_ @THEMANCUNION @Tom_Slater_ #freespeech
And…Jesus and Mo!
I look forward to outrage from the Soft-headed Six.
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Nick Cohen – award-winning Nick Cohen – excoriates the Six Soft-heads in the Spectator.
… Read the restThose who shout the loudest about respecting “diversity” and the culture of others, cannot stir themselves to respect the French enough to learn their language and understand their culture. If they did, they would know that Charlie Hebdo is a left-wing magazine, which used Boko Haram to parody conservatives so lost in paranoia they imagined enslaved Nigerian women were threatening to come to France and steal their money.
Max Fisher of Vox tried to shake up Anglo-Saxon leftists by pointing them to a New Yorker cover showing Barack Obama as a Kenyan Muslim and Michelle Obama as a terrorist. It was a satire of the Tea
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Brendan is coat-trailing again. I’m taking the bait again. I’m too literal-minded not to.
Feminism, sadly, becomes more like Islamism every day.
Uh huh, and as Nate Phelps once told me, I’m like Fred Phelps.
What’s his argument? Islamists are puritanical about women’s bodies, and so are feminists.
… Read the restHere’s a tip for political activists: if your rabble-rousing echoes the behaviour and ideas of Islamists, then you’re doing something wrong. Consider the Protein World advert which — clutch my pearls! — features a photo of a beautiful, svelte woman in a bikini next to the question: ‘Are you beach body ready?’ Angry women, and probably some men, have been writing outraged slogans on these posters, scribbling on the poor model’s
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One piece of better news out of Nigeria – not fantastic news, just correcting a bad thing news, but still, something.
… Read the restNigeria’s military says it has rescued 200 girls and 93 women from a notorious Boko Haram stronghold, but an army spokesman says the hostages were not those kidnapped from Chibok a year ago.
“The troops rescued 200 abducted girls and 93 women,” Colonel Sani Usman told Reuters in a text message.
They were not, however, from Chibok, the village from which more than 200 girls were abducted in April 2014, he said.
“So far, they (the army) have destroyed and cleared Sassa, Tokumbere and two other camps in the general area of Alafa, all within the Sambisa Forest.”
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And then there’s Anheuser-Busch, with its oh so funny slogan for Bud Light beer: “The perfect beer for removing ‘no’ from your vocabulary for the night.”
GEDDIT?
The slogan, which was captured in a photo and posted onto Reddit Monday, sparked a wave of anger from social media users who took to Twitter to blast the language for promoting a culture of rape.
What could possibly go wrong?… Read the rest
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Alex Massie takes on the Six Soft-heads with the kind of gritted disdain they deserve.
… Read the restI wonder if these people also think the Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses also had it coming? I wonder if they think there would be something unseemly about awarding Salman Rushdie – and all those involved in publishing his novel – awards for their courageous defence of liberty? People died and many others risked assassination to bring The Satanic Verses into print. Perhaps, however, there is a feeling that this was a noble enterprise because it was somehow a more literary enterprise? (Except, of course, plenty of people failed the Rushdie test too.)
And I wonder if these novelists would be appalled if they
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The Malay Mail Online went to a talk by Hizbut Tahrir Malaysia. HTM explained about rape.
Women are required to prove rape under Islamic criminal law, Hizbut Tahrir Malaysia (HTM) said today as the hardline Islamist group claimed that most sexual assault cases involve false accusations.
HTM also told a seminar on hudud that Islam does not accept DNA evidence and that one of the ways of proving rape instead is by obtaining either two male witnesses, or one male and two female witnesses.
Because as we all know it takes two women to be as much value as one man.
… Read the rest“The danger is that if the woman wants to betray other people, she commits adultery with a man,
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Le Monde, February 24 – No, Charlie Hebdo is not obsessed with Islam.
What does it make fun of?
… Read the restDe qui se moquait le journal satirique Charlie Hebdo, avant que deux terroristes islamistes assassinent cinq caricaturistes et six autres personnes présentes à la conférence de rédaction du 7 janvier ? Est-il vrai que ce journal faisait preuve d’une « obsession » à l’encontre des musulmans, comme cela a pu être dit à la suite des attentats, notamment dans une tribune du Monde du 15 janvier 2015, à laquelle ont contribué plusieurs chercheurs ?
What did the satirical mag Charlie Hebdo make fun of before two Islamist terrorists assassinated five cartoonists and six other people at an editorial conference January 7th?
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Oh isn’t that sweet – Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are in love. Truly madly deeply.
Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif on Sunday said the love and affection for the Saudi leadership and people could not be explained in words.
Pakistan and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) are tied in unbreakable bonds of religion and brotherhood and both the countries are standing shoulder to shoulder with each other.
Speaking at a function held in honour of Imam-e-Kaaba Shaikh Khalid al Ghamidi at Chief Minister’s House, he remarked that even if the world goes topsy-turvy, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan could not be separated from one another.
They will wrap their legs around each other and hold on for dear life … Read the rest
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Amy Schumer’s hit video Last Fuckable Day.
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPpsI8mWKmg… Read the rest
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The Guardian on Rushdie on the Soft-headed Six.
[Francine] Prose told the Associated Press that while she was in favour of “freedom of speech without limitations” and “deplored” the shootings at Charlie Hebdo, the award signified “admiration and respect” for its work and “I couldn’t imagine being in the audience when they have a standing ovation for Charlie Hebdo”.
She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
… Read the restAndrew Solomon, president of PEN, told the Guardian that aside from brief exchanges with Carey and writer Deborah Eisenberg, no one had indicated they would not attend the gala over the award before the six letters.
Solomon said that PEN distinguished between the right of free speech and much of what Charlie Hebdo
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A heart-rending item in the Sydney Morning Herald a few days ago, about girls at an Islamic school being banned from running.
… Read the restGirls at Al-Taqwa College have been banned from running at sporting events because the principal believes it may cause them to lose their virginity, former teachers claim.
The schools regulator, the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority, is investigating the allegations, which have been referred to the state and federal education ministers.
…
In a letter sent to the education ministers this week, a former teacher said female students were being discriminated against at the Truganina school.
“The principal holds beliefs that if females run excessively, they may ‘lose their virginity’,” the letter said.
“The principal believes that there
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What was that about Dawkins’s never having “proclaimed himself as any kind of atheist ‘leader'”?
What about this then – what about Join the Dawkins Circle?
Reason Circle: $1,000 to $2,499 annually (or $85/month)
- Invitation to Dawkins Circle member-only event with RDFRS personalities
- Member-only discount for all purchases in the richarddawkins.net store
Science Circle: $2,500 to $4,999 annually (or $210/month)
All the benefits listed above, plus:
- One ticket to an invitation-only Dawkins Circle event with Richard
Darwin Circle: $5,000 to $9,999 annually (or $420/month)
All the benefits listed above, plus:
- Two tickets to an invitation-only Dawkins Circle event with Richard
For as little as one thousand dollars a year, you can attend a Dawkins Circle member-only event … Read the rest
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Francine Prose expanded on her thoughts in the CBC interview, in a piece for Comment is Free. Her expanded thoughts make my skin crawl.
When I learned that PEN had decided to award the Freedom of Expression Courage Award to Charlie Hebdo, I was dismayed. I had agreed to serve as a literary table host and I wondered what I would do when the crowd around me rose to its feet to applaud an award being given – in my name – to what I felt was an inappropriate recipient.
She still doesn’t understand what Charlie is. She thinks it’s a right-wing racist rag.
… Read the restLet me emphasize how strongly I believe in the ideals of PEN; for two
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Speaking of thought leaders…I was looking for something and happened on this article by Jerry Coyne in The New Republic last October. It’s a riposte to an article by John Gray, also in TNR, trashing Richard Dawkins. I can easily believe Gray’s is a crap article, because John Gray seems to specialize in crap articles. But I read the first paragraph of Coyne’s article, and found a claim that I think is absurd.
… Read the restIt’s not a good time to be Richard Dawkins, for he alone, like the scapegoat of Leviticus, must bear the brunt of everyone’s hatred of atheism. (Sam Harris sometimes serves as a backup goat.) Even though Dawkins has never proclaimed himself as any kind of
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Geoff Nunberg told us yesterday on Fresh Air about the fad for the word “disruption,” which I didn’t know was a fad. It reminds me of the fad-word in literary “theory” some years ago, “transgressive.” Same basic idea, innit – we’re new, we’re happenin’, we’re Rebels.
… Read the restHBO’s Silicon Valley is back, with its pitch-perfect renderings of the culture and language of the tech world — like at the opening of the “Disrupt” startup competition run by the Tech Crunch website at the end of last season. “We’re making the world a better place through scalable fault-tolerant distributed databases” — the show’s writers didn’t have to exercise their imagination much to come up with those little arias of geeky self-puffery, or
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Kamila Shamsie writes about her lifelong friend Sabeen Mahmud.
… Read the rest“Be careful,” I said to my childhood friend Sabeen Mahmud when I saw her in London in 2013, soon after she’d received a death threat – neither the first nor last. “Someone has to fight them,” she replied.
…
Sabeen was always a woman made of different stuff, thanks in large measure to the two great influences of her life: her mother, Mahnaz (shot twice during the attack), from whom she inherited her socialist tendencies, and her friend and mentor Zaheer Kidvai (Zak) who introduced her to the idea of counterculture, via everything from Abbie Hoffman to revolutionary Urdu poets. While most of us at our elite school in Karachi
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Originally a comment by freedmenspatrol on Very much a part of many white Southerners’ identity.
For quite some time, white Southerners actually refused to observe the national Memorial Day. In various places they also didn’t celebrate the Fourth of July. Not so many wave the flag or the other totems as have done in past generations, but plenty of white Americans still do. It’s worked deep into how the culture operates, inside and outside the South. The Second Klan controlled Indiana and Oregon for a while. White Northerners could be absolutely vicious even when they had slavery around for contrast, passing laws excluding black Americans from even living in entire states and demanding those present leave.
It’s what we … Read the rest
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The CBC talked to Francine Prose about her hostility to Charlie Hebdo today.
Prose tells As It Happens host Carol Off that despite her objections, she supports the magazine’s right to free speech.
“Free speech is indivisible. If you believe in free speech you believe in any sort of free speech — that you can say anything you want. And that’s absolutely what I believe in and I would include in that everything Charlie Hebdo has done.”
But she says that doesn’t mean Charlie Hebdo deserves the award.
No, it doesn’t; she’s right about that much. They are two separate things.
… Read the rest“We defend the right of neo-nazis to march through Skokie, Illinois but that doesn’t mean we give them an
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There’s such a thing as Confederate Memorial Day. I did not know that. It’s today in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi. Woohoo. Is there also a Hooray for Slavery Day? A Glorify Racism Day? A Steal Other People’s Labor Day?
Alabama closes its government offices today in observance of Confederate Memorial Day, along with Mississippi and Georgia. On May 10, South Carolina government offices will close in observance of the state holiday.
Of the 11 Southern states that made up the Confederate States of America during the Civil War, few agreed on what date was best for remembrance once the war officially ended in 1865.
I suggest the 32d of December, myself.
… Read the restState officials still mark Confederate Memorial Day on their
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