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Nov 11th, 2014 3:09 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Huh. “Dapper Laughs” is in the shitcan.
ITV has decided not to commission a second series of the controversial comedy series Dapper Laughs: On the Pull, following criticism of the show.
The decision was made after around 60,000 people signed a petition calling on Adam Crozier, the network’s chief executive, to pull the ITV2 show, and after footage emerged of a gig hosted by Daniel O’Reilly – who plays Dapper Laughs – which made a reference to the rape of women and which mentioned ITV2’s show.
Notice the story (reported by Tara Conlan) carefully says “after” not “because.” Post not propter. Following, not on account of. But anyway it’s good news. (Spare us the cries of free speech and … Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB
Nov 11th, 2014 12:31 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown provides us with another discussion of bogus accusations of “political correctness.”
In truth, it is racism that is the forbidden subject. If you object to that evil, you are “politically correct”, an oppressor and a threat to free speech. Missiles are fired at those of us who speak up. Some internet abuse is worse than being spat at. I am told by some leading lights that preference for one’s own sort is “natural” and that minorities have been spoilt by having protective laws and “special privileges”.
Same old same old same old, eh? You should just deal with it; you don’t get special favors; you don’t want equality you want to be dominanat; yadda yadda.
I blame
…
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(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB
Nov 11th, 2014 11:30 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Julien Blanc is scheduled to visit the UK for a “lecture” series on how to assault women, but there’s a petition drive urging the government to deny him a visa.
Thousands of people have called on the Home Office to deny a visa to a controversial US “pick-up artist” who holds seminars that critics say teach men sexually abusive and racist tricks to attract women.
Well, you know, it’s not really “critics say” – it’s just an obvious fact. It’s no good pretending that grabbing strangers by the back of the head and pushing them onto your crotch is not sexually abusive. It’s no good pretending that’s just “banter” or “flirtation” or “seduction.”
The City worker who started the
…
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(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB
Nov 11th, 2014 10:16 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Oh, fabulous – a Florida court has ruled that a mother has to have her 4-year-old son circumcised because his father wants it. A court has ordered a mother to get her son mutilated because that’s what his father wants.
As we reported in the spring, Boynton Beach mom Heather Hironimus was ordered by the court to have her then-3-year-old child circumcised, in accord with a parenting agreement she’d signed in 2011. However, in the intervening years, Hironimus had read up on the practice and come to learn it was not medically necessary and even risky.
She went to court to fight the father’s wish to have the procedure completed and was granted an emergency injunction.
Now, however, she
…
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(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB
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
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
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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(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB
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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(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB
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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(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB
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
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB
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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(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB
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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(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB
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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(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB
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
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB
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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(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB
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
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
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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(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB
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