It’s good that forms of group-hatred like racism and sexism and xenophobia and homophobia don’t really matter, because they never make anything bad happen. It’s good that they’re all just words, just being “offended,” and basically just a kind of fluff blowing around on the surface of life.

Right?

Buddhist residents in western Burma have killed at least nine Muslims as sectarian tension worsens in the region, police say.

…

Rakhine is home to Burma’s largest concentration of Muslims, including much-persecuted Rohingya Muslims, and their presence is often deeply resented by the majority Buddhist population.

In a joint statement quoted by Reuters, eight Rohingya rights groups based outside Burma condemned the attack on the Muslims on the bus, whom they

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Football fan racism.

Uefa has confirmed there were “isolated incidents of racist chanting” aimed at Netherlands players during an open training session.

But the governing body has not revealed whether it is investigating the incident in Krakow, Poland.

Dutch captain Mark van Bommel said monkey chants were directed at players.

…

While Van Bommel complained specifically of racist abuse, the Dutch FA had earlier said this was mixed with anti-Euro 2012 chanting believed to have been prompted by the fact the city has not been given any matches in the tournament.

When this was put to Van Bommel on Thursday, he said: “Open your ears. If you did hear it and don’t want to hear it, that is even

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Via Kylie – a brilliant thank you note to The Footsoldiers of Commenting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz2jbCJXkpA

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You know it’s Secular Student Alliance week, right?

Right now, SSA supporters Jeff Hawkins and Janet Strauss have pledged a $250,000 matching offer. That means that every contribution is matched dollar-dor-dollar up to a quarter of a million dollars.Hitting the Hawkins/Strauss match means we can offer previously unimagined levels of support for our affiliates during the coming fall semester.  But we need help from the non-students to get there.

The goal of SSA Week is to raise $100,000.  Is it ambitious?  Yes.  Can we do it?  Yes.  Surely there are 20,000 people out there who support the cause of empowering secular activists at the college and high school level.  $5 apiece from each of them gets us to

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Via Christopher Moyer – women tennis players are given their own special court to play on.

…the revered Stade Roland Garros, which first hosted a national women’s  tennis tournament in 1897, had turned a court bright pink and set up an on-site salon and spa for female sportswriters in honor of “Ladies Day.”

Well good good good good. And female surgeons will get their own special bright pink OR, and female pilots will get their own special bright pink cabins, and female judges will get their own special bright pink robes.

More from Joanne Gerstner, who was there.

The carpet is hot pink. The tennis court is rose pink. The champagne is pale pink. The nail polish is cotton

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The panel I did at Women in Secularism with Rebecca and Jen and Sikivu is now posted.

In case you look at it, just a note – I’m really not as furious and grim as I look, that’s just the way my face goes. In my head I’m actually as mostly-amused as Rebecca looks (and is).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhYKlEggiNY

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There’s a report that the women in Pakistan haven’t been killed after all. That would be a relief! Thank you for not killing some women for singing and dancing at a wedding. You are very kind.

Pakistani campaigners say they have made contact with two out of five women previously feared murdered for singing in a wedding video.

Dr Farzana Bari met the two women after travelling with officials to a remote village in north-west Pakistan.

The team did not meet the other three women, but said local elders had given assurances that they were also alive.

Well good. I’m glad there’s one less horror in the stack of horrors.

After several hours climbing, human rights activists – travelling with

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Ed has a great post replying to a hilariously absurd one by John Loftus wondering what the Freethought blogs “mission statement” is. That question is swiftly answered: there ain’t one.

Ed points out a certain confusion.

On the one hand, if several FTBers agree on a subject and each write about it expressing a similar perspective, that’s bad and it’s obviously all orchestrated behind the scenes; on the other hand, when we disagree we’re drowning each other out and undermining atheism in the process.

Don’t I know it. I’ve just seen a little knot of people on Twitter agreeing with each other that FTB thinks as one and is horribly messily anarchic. If I’ve seen it once I’ve seen it … Read the rest

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Hilarious headline department:

Pope praises Britain’s Queen Elizabeth’s “noble vision” of a Christian monarch

You don’t say!

Well he would, wouldn’t he. She’s praised his “noble vision” of a Christian pontiff, too, for the same kind of reason. They’re colleagues. They both work in the unelected unaccountable head of an absurd hierarchy business. They both draw their illegitimate magical pseudo-authority from a non-existent “god.” They both wear expensive outfits when appearing to worshipful crowds. They both tell people what’s what, based on nothing in particular.

In a message released Wednesday by the Vatican, Benedict said the British monarch has over the past 60 years been an “inspiring example of dedication to duty and a commitment to maintaining the principles of

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Another petition for you, via the New Humanist:

We call on the Catholic Archdiocese of Bombay to withdraw their complaint against Indian Rationalist Sanal Edamaruku

You bet; I certainly call on the Catholic Archdiocese of Bombay to do that. Seriously? Edamaruku investigated a claim that a little statue of Mary was leaking tears, and he found that it was seepage from sewer water under the statue. That’s not a crime, to put it mildly, and the Catholic archdiocese has no business complaining about it.

Hey Catholic archdiocese of Bombay – I say the guy named Yeshua who was executed by the Romans 20 centuries ago is still dead, because dead people stay dead. Come and get me!… Read the rest

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Katha Pollitt reports bad news about the woman in Indiana who is being prosecuted for murder because she attempted suicide when she was 33 weeks pregnant.

The state Supreme Court has refused to review charges of attempted feticide and murder against Bei Bei Shuai. Just before Christmas 2010, Shuai, who was thirty-three weeks pregnant, attempted to kill herself by consuming rat poison after her boyfriend, father of the baby, abruptly announced he was married and abandoned her to return to his family. Rushed to the hospital, she had a Caesarean section, but her newborn daughter died after a few days of life. (Here’s my column on the case.) Despite amicus briefs from eighty respected experts and relevant medical and

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