Dave Richards gave me blanket permission to post his photos so here’s another one of Merlyn that I’ve always loved – this one from when he was a brand new arrival.
Magic Merlyn is magic
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Martin Wagner posted this on Facebook. The names of 177 of the schoolgirls kidnapped and enslaved by Boko Haram.
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The Supreme Court ruling handed down yesterday is inspiring new efforts, just as everyone knew it would. The Board of Supervisors of Roanoke County, Virginia, for instance:
… Read the restRoanoke County’s Board of Supervisors may be headed toward another discussion of prayer following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling handed down Monday. The board dealt with the matter in 2012, eventually passing a nonsectarian prayer policy that Supervisor Al Bedrosian is ready to strike from the books.
“The freedom of religion doesn’t mean that every religion has to be heard,” said Bedrosian, who added that he is concerned about groups such as Wiccans and Satanists. “If we allow everything … where do you draw the line?”
The supervisor campaigned on the idea
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The Borowitz Report* on the Supreme Court ruling in Greece v Galloway.
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) — In what legal experts are calling a landmark decision, on Monday the United States Supreme Court struck down what many believe to be the main reason the country was started.
By a five-to-four vote, the Court eliminated what grade-school children have traditionally been taught was one of the key rationales for founding the United States in the first place.
“The separation of church and state has been a cornerstone of American democracy for over two hundred years,” said Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority. “Getting rid of it was long overdue.”
Hahasob. Yeah.
*satire… Read the rest
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The BBC has more on the enslavement in Nigeria.
In the video, Abubakar Shekau said the girls should not have been in school in the first place, but rather should get married.
“God instructed me to sell them, they are his properties and I will carry out his instructions,” he said.
Yes that sums it right up, doesn’t it – girls are inferior beings, therefore they should not be in school, they should be enslaved in “marriage” because that’s all that inferior beings are good for.
… Read the restMeanwhile, a woman who helped organise protests over the abduction was detained and later released.
Naomi Mutah was taken to a police station after a meeting called by First Lady Patience Jonathan.
Mrs
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As promised, fucking Boko Haram has grabbed more girls.
Of course it has. It’s easy. Soft targets. Villages of ordinary people; it’s dead easy to burst in with guns and grab a bunch of the girls. Anybody could do that at any time. But decent people don’t do that. We’re all soft targets; we don’t all prey on each other just because we can.
… Read the restSuspected Boko Haram gunmen kidnapped eight girls aged 12 to 15 from a village near one of their strongholds in northeast Nigeria overnight, police and residents said today.
“They were many, and all of them carried guns. They came in two vehicles painted in army colour. They started shooting in our village,” said Lazarus Musa,
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This beautiful cat’s human takes the most beautiful pictures of him – and this one that he posted yesterday (the human, not the cat) I couldn’t stop gazing at. So I got permission to share the pleasure of it with you all.
The cat is Merlyn. The genius with the camera is Dave Richards.… Read the rest
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Climate change is already here and already messing things up.
… Read the restClimate change has moved from distant threat to present-day danger and no American will be left unscathed, according to a landmark report due to be unveiled on Tuesday.
The National Climate Assessment, a 1,300-page report compiled by 300 leading scientists and experts, is meant to be the definitive account of the effects of climate change on the US. It will be formally released at a White House event and is expected to drive the remaining two years of Barack Obama’s environmental agenda.
…
Gary Yohe, an economist at Wesleyan University and vice-chair of the NCA advisory committee, said the US report would be unequivocal that the effects of climate change
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New news: Boko Haram now says it’s planning to sell the schoolgirls “in the marketplace.”
Abubakar Shekau for the first time also claimed responsibility for the April 15 mass abduction, warning that his group plans to attack more schools and abduct more girls.
“I abducted your girls,” said the leader of Boko Haram, which means “Western education is sinful.”
He described the girls as “slaves” and said, “By Allah, I will sell them in the marketplace.” The hourlong video starts with fighters lifting automatic rifles and shooting in the air as they chant “Allahu akbar!” or “God is great.”
ABC News says it’s not clear when the video was made.
… Read the restIn the video, Shekau also said the students “will remain
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Hey remember the Catholic church? That pretends to be the source of truth and morality and true morality and moral truth? That Catholic church?
It’s been busy at the UN lately. Helping out? Offering assistance to victims of war and earthquakes? Knitting balaclavas for the homeless?
No. Trying to convince the committee against torture that it – the church – doesn’t have to enforce the UN convention against torture because it – the church, or rather the Vatican – has borders, and the convention is outside it.
That’s moral truth and true morality for you.
… Read the restThe Vatican has been given another hostile interrogation by a United Nations committee over its record on clerical sex abuse.
One member after another of
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Originally a comment on Help keep God’s name in America!!
Apparently, [In God we trust] was named the national motto by Eisenhower in 1956. It was challenged in 1970 and the case made it to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The decision was very similar to today’s – it was fine because “It is quite obvious that the national motto and the slogan on coinage and currency ‘In God We Trust’ has nothing whatsoever to do with the establishment of religion. Its use is of patriotic or ceremonial character and bears no true resemblance to a governmental sponsorship of a religious exercise….” They quoted an earlier decision: “Short of those expressly proscribed governmental acts there … Read the rest
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What the hell, let’s just go the whole hog, right? Why not join In God We Trust – America in their wholesome plan to get that “national motto” (whatever the fuck that is) plastered all over every public building in the country.
… Read the restPROGRESS REPORT:
IN GOD WE TRUST~AMERICA continues to make exciting progress:
OUR NEW TOTAL – 349, “Yes Vote” cities and counties across America, now displaying our National Motto.
To view the update list. Click here.
WE NEED YOUR HELP:
JOIN THIS MISSION – HELP US KEEP GOD’S NAME IN AMERICA: Is our National Motto displayed in your city and every city in your county??? We are asking Patriots like you, across America, to get involved with
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Naturally I hastened to Twitter to see what Ron Lindsay has to say about the ruling in Greece v Galloway – because Ron is both a lawyer and a philosopher, and much involved with legal issues to do with secularism. The first thing he had to say was “Damn.” Yes.
He went on to point out that 5 of 6 Christian justices saw no problem with Christian prayers, and added
SCOTUS decision in Town of Greece shows one is unlikely to be sensitive to oppression of majority religion when one is in the majority.
Yes, thought I. Exactly. Then I noticed something, and couldn’t resist saying it.
… Read the restThose justices should check their privilege. (Both a joke and a bitter
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So Kennedy sided with the four reactionaries and ruled that the town of Greece, New York did not violate the Constitution by starting its public meetings with a prayer from a “chaplain of the month” who was almost always Christian. Why not? Because the prayers are “merely ceremonial.”
Excuse me, prayers delivered by a chaplain from the majority religion (or, in fact, any other religion, but this case is this case) are not “merely ceremonial.” That’s bullshit of the purest kind – calculated, insulting, unreasonable, unabashed.
… Read the restJustice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in a 5-to-4 decision that divided the court’s more conservative members from its liberal ones, said the prayers were merely ceremonial. They were neither unduly sectarian
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Here’s a good cause, in case you were looking for one. It comes recommended by Digital Cuttlefish.
… Read the restHelp raise $27,000 in 60 days!
Contributions will be used quickly to purchase school materials and supplies for the educators and students in Domiz and Gawilan refugee camps. These purchases will be made locally to stimulate the surrounding economy. These seemingly “minor” needs, when left unmet, add up to a significant negative impact on the quality of education that each boy and girl receives. No child should have to go to class without school supplies and no teacher should have to teach students without adequate tools. Based on our experience in the refugee camps and our study of the crisis, we are
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Dayum. Why did no one tell me about Mrs Betty Bowers, America’s Best Christian?
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Yes that’s right. Nigerian police arrest not a kidnapper or an army of kidnappers; not a Boko Haram bigwig; a protest leader. Why? Because the kidnapped girls are not really her daughters. She said they were her daughters! They’re not! Bust her!
… Read the restA source in the presidency said Naomi Mutah Nyadar had been detained over allegations of falsely claiming to be the mother of one of the missing girls.
Nyadar was arrested on Sunday after a meeting she and other campaigners had held with President Goodluck Jonathan’s wife, Patience, concerning the girls.
She was taken to Asokoro police station, near the presidential villa, said fellow protester Lawan Abana, whose two nieces are among the abductees.
“Ms Naomi was arrested
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I read the Guardian article again (I read it the first time a few days ago when I did a post about it) and I don’t think the Guardian is being euphemistic here. The way the story is set up, the news that the girls “are being shared out as wives among the Boko Haram militants” was taken very hard – the news was worse than they were hoping, not better. I assumed that was because 1. it confirmed they were being raped (but there can’t have been much doubt of that in any case) and 2. it meant they were all the more firmly trapped.
Let’s look at it again.
… Read the restFor two weeks, retired teacher Samson Dawah prayed
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Maajid Nawaz is furious at the Guardian for the way it worded its reporting on the kidnapped and enslaved Nigerian schoolgirls.
Maajid Nawaz @MaajidNawaz May 1
Typical. @Guardian uses “mass marriage” instead of “rape” describing jihadist enslavement of 230 Nigerian schoolgirls.
The 230 schoolgirls kidnapped in Nigeria by jihadist terrorists Boko Haram, forcibly turned into ‘brides’ ie: raped
Furious. @guardian cannot even call it enslavement & rape but calls it “mass marriage”? Has our cultural relativity gone that far?
He’s also furious about comparative outrage.
Maajid Nawaz @MaajidNawaz May 3
Kidnapping,enslavement&mass rape of 230 Nigerian schoolgirls by jihadist Boko Haram led to worldwide riots..oh sorry,that was about cartoons
Zing. Yeah.… Read the rest
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Proshant at Nirmukta talks about the label “hate hag” currently trendy in India.
… Read the restThe term ‘hate hag’, used to describe “women supporters of Narendra Modi” in an Outlook Magazine article recently gained currency, especially on social media…
…
In this essay I critique the term ‘hate hag’ through three broad arguments: first, I argue the term ‘hate hag’ is inherently sexist and misogynistic, and in using the term to ‘shame’ women because of their political ideology, we reinstate another form of a the medieval witch-hunt. Second, I look at the irreconcilable contradictions in the ‘women’s question’ and the Political Right, especially in light of the Janus-faced patriarchy that the BJP and the Sangh Parivaar represent. Here I underscore the
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