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.

State officials still mark Confederate Memorial Day on their

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

Originally a comment by Marcus Ranum on Don’t change a god damn thing.

Nobody is immune to critique.

Ultimately, if they don’t respond to critique, the “invisible hand of the market” may correct them, anyway. Don’t anyone break it to the gamer geeks but half the gamers in the world are women, now. Sure, there is a smaller market for ‘hard core’ (i.e.: guy) gamers but it risks being marginalized out of the mainstream, which will mean that those games won’t be very well-funded or good. Sort of like how cis porn split off from the Hollywood mainstream and maintained its ‘independence’ in return for acquiring an unenviable cachet.

I thought these guys liked the “invisible hand of the … Read the rest

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

Arthur Chu has a brilliant piece at Salon about why the Internet is so susceptible to throngs of obsessive bullies who won’t ever ever ever go away.

The “vote” doesn’t end up being among everyone but among the tiny subset of people who really care about that question, which isn’t necessarily correlated with being right about that question–often, in fact, it’s the opposite.

The people who pay the most attention to these questions are the people who have some deep emotional investment in the issue at hand combined with a great deal of time and emotional energy to burn making their “voices heard” about it. That can happen on any end of the political spectrum, but in practice? It

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

The Armenian genocide. A century ago. At least humans have outgrown genocide since then.

Oh wait…

Widely accepted historical accounts say that between 1 million and 1.5 million Armenians lost their lives at the hands of Ottoman forces in what was then eastern Turkey.

Between 1915 and 1922 the Teskilat e-Mahsus (special organisation) carried out a campaign of mass murder, deportation, pillage and rape against the minority Christian Armenians.

What does that sound like? Oh…Yazidi, Ahmadiyya, Uyghur, Jews, Christians, Muslims, immigrants, foreigners, natives, aboriginals…

The Guardian received more than 500 responses to a callout for first-hand experiences of persecution. Some are based on transcripts and audio recordings, others are stories recited through the generations.

While it is impossible to

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

David Futrelle pays attention to Vox Day so that the rest of us don’t have to. That’s a service. He finds him admitting something about GamerGate.

[T]he interview also featured a few striking moments of candor. One of these came when Day — a sometime gave developer as well as the biggest asshole in Sci Fi — offered his answer to the question: “What is Gamergate really about?”

Suggesting that the issue of “corruption in game journalism” was little more than “the spark that set the whole thing off,” Day declared that

what Gamergate is fundamentally about is the right of people to design, develop and play games that they want to design, develop and play without being

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

Rosie DiManno at the Star is repulsed by the rejoicing over the “clarification” by Justice Edward. She is rude enough to point out that it’s a good outcome for JJ but not for her predecessor.

It is nothing less than a tragedy that a second family lost their own similarly afflicted 11-year-old daughter, Makayla Sault, after chemotherapy was spurned.

The two cases are linked because, in both instances, Brant Children and Family Services refused to intervene and compel chemo by taking the girls into agency care.

In the J.J. matter, Justice Gethin Edward ruled last November that the child was not in need of removal from the bosom of her loving family and, further — shockingly — that the

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

Remember? The ruling by Justice Gethin Edward of the Ontario Court of Justice that it was ok for parents to take their child off chemotherapy for leukemia because they’re First Nations people  and

Maybe First Nations culture doesn’t require every child to be treated with chemotherapy and to survive for that culture to have value.

Well now he’s “clarified” that ruling.

The clarification of a controversial court ruling that allowed the mother of an 11-year-old First Nations girl to pull her out of chemotherapy says the best interests of the child are “paramount,” but traditional medicine must be respected.

It is a “significant qualification” of Ontario court Judge Gethin Edward’s November 2014 ruling, according to one legal expert, which

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

Guest post by Leo Igwe.

The photos of UK Prime Minister David Cameron shaking hands with the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Rev Enoch Adeboye at the Festival of Life program holding in London must disgust anyone who knows about the teachings and positions of Adeboye and his church, particularly on issues of homosexuality and witchcraft. Rev Adeboye was one of the pastors who openly canvassed support for the anti gay marriage bill stating that homosexuality would wipe out humanity.

He said:

Same-sex marriage is an anathema to the will of God for human beings to be fruitful, replenish and multiply on earth. Anything contrary to that is evil.

How can a man who marries

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

An interesting comment at PZ’s by Keith Monaghan.

Irish Atheist here. I used to be a supporter and paying member of Atheist Ireland until all this went down and Nugent went off the rails. He has poisoned the entire organisation with his willingness to defend abusers and provide a forum to known harassers. Not to mention his embarrassing brown nosing of our great “thought leaders” Dawkins, et al. It’s a real shame because many in Atheist Ireland have been doing great work regarding raising awareness about our ridiculous blasphemy law and the overwhelming control of our schools by the Catholic Church among a great many other abuses committed in the name of religion.

But just as the charitable acts of

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

Nick Cohen looks at the way Lutfur Rahman exploited leftwing ideas to protect his own personal power.

[H]e rigged the vote by using “undue spiritual influence”, an accusation unheard of in a British court since the 19th century. Rahman persuaded clerics to go far beyond saying they thought he was the best candidate. Islam is under threat, they said in so many words. It was the duty of all Muslims to vote for Rahman. If Bangladeshi voters did not, they would be siding with their Islamophobic enemies, perhaps even defying god’s will.

We are used to thinking of racism as Nigel Farage or the Tory tabloids egging on their readers to see the Aids-afflicted foreigner as the enemy. Indeed, it

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

Well so much for Labour.

From the Indy:

Labour leader Ed Miliband has said his party will make Islamophobia an aggravated crime, toughing existing hate crime legislation.

Mr Miliband also said that his party intended to ensure that instances of Islamophobia were marked on peoples’ records, in an interview with The Muslim Times.

Although Islamophobia already falls under the Racial and Religious Hatred Act of 2006, whereby it is punishable by up to seven years imprisonment, Mr Miliband’s proposal would allow authorities to hand down tougher sentences for similar crimes.

“We are going to make it an aggravated crime. We are going to make sure it is marked on people’s records with the police to make sure they root

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