The Pakistani Taliban hasn’t fallen asleep on the job. It wants everyone to know it still plans to murder Malala Yousafzai.

Islamabad: The Pakistani Taliban on Monday said it would target 16-year-old rights activist Malala Yousafzai again…

Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan spokesman Shahidullah Shahid said Malala was targeted because she was used in propaganda against the militants.

There is no “because” for murder.

The Taliban would target her again if given the chance, just as it would target anyone who opposes the group, Shahid told a news channel.

“She accepted that she attacked Islam so we tried to kill her, and if we get another chance we will definitely kill her and that will make us feel proud,” he was quoted as

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The Nebraska Supreme Court has ruled that a 16-year-old foster child may not have an abortion because she’s not mature enough to decide on her own whether or not to have one.

Well if she’s not mature enough for that how is she mature enough to bear and raise a child? Oh that’s ok, they might say, she’ll just hand her baby over for adoption. How is she mature enough for that? If she’s not mature enough to decide whether or not to have an abortion she’s surely not mature enough to be pregnant at all. Children shouldn’t have babies, even babies they intend to give up for adoption.

The 5-2 decision denied the unnamed child’s request for an abortion,

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Via PZ – Scalia explains heaven and hell and the devil to an incredulous journalist, and then bullies the journalist for being incredulous. Yeah, gee, how dare anyone be surprised that an adult intelligent Supreme Court justice thinks there’s such a thing as The Devil.

Whatever you think of the opinion, Justice ­Kennedy is now the Thurgood Marshall of gay rights.

[Nods.]

I don’t know how, by your lights, that’s going to be regarded in 50 years.

I don’t know either. And, frankly, I don’t care. Maybe the world is spinning toward a wider acceptance of homosexual rights, and here’s Scalia, standing athwart it. At least standing athwart it as a constitutional entitlement. But I have never

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Question for the day, from Mike Booth @somegreybloke:

 Would you rather fight a thousand wasp sized mountain lions or one mountain lion sized wasp?

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Originally a comment by Eamon Knight on She is too enraptured by the mystery of the divine.

I’ve occasionally found myself caught up (the literal meaning of “enraptured”) in a bit of mathematics or physics, such that I would ponder on it during otherwise mindless moments (like long drives, or when falling asleep at night). And there’s this sense of exploring a mysterious, fascinating territory. Eventually I either figure it out, or write a program to brute-force it, or (these days) consult Google and find that real mathematicians and physicists (ie. people who aren’t me) have already been there and devised tools to describe it. Sometimes I get into a similar mindset when trying to figure out how to … Read the rest

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Amnesty International issued a new report a few days ago, Education under attack in Nigeria.

In the week that saw more than 50 students killed by gunmen in an agricultural college in Yobe State, Amnesty International publishes a new report assessing attacks on schools in northern Nigeria between 2012 and 2013.

“Hundreds have been killed in these horrific attacks. Thousands of children have been forced out of schools across communities in northern Nigeria and many teachers have been forced to flee for their safety,” said Lucy Freeman, Amnesty International’s deputy Africa director.

“Attacks against schoolchildren, teachers and school buildings demonstrate an absolute disregard for the right to life and the right to education.”

According to the report Education under

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There’s another odd thing that Meghan Florian said in that Religion Dispatches/Salon article that’s been nagging at me.

I can’t pull off atheism. I am too enraptured by the mystery of the divine, too convinced of human limitations, too busy continuing this life of faith seeking understanding.

In a way it’s not worth trying to make sense of it or pointing out why it doesn’t make sense, because it’s just normal religious bafflegab – just a string of poeticky words that don’t actually mean much, but sound nice. That’s what they do. They have license to do that, because religion. That’s one of the many reasons I dislike religion: because it not only allows, it encourages empty bafflegab, and … Read the rest

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Meghan Florian in Salon (via Religion Dispatches) notes that Teresa MacBain isn’t a reason to bash atheists. What she goes on to say after that got my rather annoyed attention.

(I haven’t said anything here about Teresa. That’s because I don’t want to. I like her a lot, so I don’t feel like it. I’m assuming that you already know the story.)

Florian recounts the recent events and disclosures first.

What strikes me as inappropriate is to use this as an opportunity to bash atheists—even those who we might feel misrepresent the Christian faith. Did it irk me when MacBain said, in an interview on Religion Dispatches,“I’d always been a thinker so when questions relating to my faith

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Ok you wanted a Sunday afternoon quiz, so here is one.

Friendly wags on Facebook have been creating new “Should Miri Mogilevsky…” pages – be given a goldfish, be given a cheesecake, be given a goldfish, a cheesecake, and a tardis. So on the goldfish one, I commented

Yes but make sure she remembers where the car is before the fish goes into the plastic bag.

What is the reference?

… Read the rest

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Oh great, the return of the great push to enact global blasphemy laws. This time it’s not the OIC but a group of Arab countries.

Manama: Arab countries are working on a draft law that bans the defamation of religions and empowers them to take abusers to court even if they are not residents.

The draft, presented by Qatar, is being reviewed by delegates from several Arab countries at the Arab League.

Under its provisions, all forms of defamation, derision or denigration of religions and prophets will be considered crimes.

Is that sweeping enough? Under that wording, anything could be considered a crime – something that doesn’t explicitly mention religion could just be treated as allegory or sarcasm.

Oh … Read the rest

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It’s ironic. On the one hand we get Facebook going “no, a page that threatens a named college student is not a problem, we won’t take it down,” and on the other hand we get the LSE student union going “omigod tshirts with Jesus and Mo cartoons on them, you have to take them off or get out immediately.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong - completely backwards. Death threats and passive-aggressively veiled death threats are the thing to resist. Cartoons that make jokes about the tenets of religions are not the thing to resist.

It’s so simple. Do try to pay attention.… Read the rest

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So as I mentioned, this Mike Shaver, an engineering director at Facebook – he generated a whole bunch of tweets last night explaining that the title of the Facebook page, Should named person be murdered?, was not a threat. Offensive, yes, tasteless, yes, but not a threat.

A small sample of his explanations, in chronological order.

Mike Shaver @shaver

[to Miri and a couple of other people] I was disputing your point of it being necessarily a threat. law on threatening statements pretty clear here, IMO

[to Miri and a couple of other people] to be clear, I find the page title offensive too, but I don’t want my tastes mandatory for 1B people either

[to someone else] I

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Right. Facebook. Let’s take a look at that.

It has a Safety page, which has a Safety Philosophy page.

There we find:

Our Part
In reviewing reports of abusive content, we remove anything that violates the Facebook Terms or Community Standards.

So we look at the Rights and Responsibilities page, which is also a Terms page, aka a TOS page. I assume that “terms of service” means what it says – these are the terms on which we let you use the service.

Item 3 on that page is Safety.

Safety
We do our best to keep Facebook safe, but we cannot guarantee it. We need your help to keep Facebook safe, which includes the following

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More on that law that lets Iranian men marry and fuck their own adopted daughters, from the Guardian.

Parliamentarians in Iran have passed a bill to protect the rights of children which includes a clause that allows a man to marry his adopted daughter and while she is as young as 13 years.

In a bill to protect the rights of children? How…paradoxical.

To the dismay of rights campaigners, girls in the Islamic republic can marry as young as 13 provided they have the permission of their father. Boys can marry after the age of 15.

In Iran, a girl under the age of 13 can still marry, but needs the permission of a judge. At present, however, marrying

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The hinges of my jaw are not large enough to accommodate the drop it wants to do.

Support Dashboard

Here you’ll find the status of content you’ve reported, inquiries or requests you’ve made, or your content that someone else reported.

We’ll let you know if we need any information from you or when we’ve made a decision. History

• You reported Should Miri Mogilevsky be murdered ? for harassment.

  This page wasn’t removed

  Details

  Status	This page wasn’t removed
  Details	Thank you for taking the time to report something that you feel may violate our Community Standards. Reports like yours are an important part of making Facebook a safe and welcoming environment. We reviewed the page you reported for harassment

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Rory Fenton, president of the National Federation of Student Atheist, Humanist and Secularist Societies (in the UK), made a statement on the way officers of the LSE Student Union bullied the LSE ASH group on Thursday and Friday.

For the second day in a row our affiliated society, the LSE Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society, have faced intimidation and threats from its students union and university for their refusal to remove t-shirts featuring the cartoon Jesus and Mo. Their statement on today’s events can be read below. For their statement on yesterday’s event please click here.

The LSESU’s statement, which omits any reference to the use of security guards, can be read here.

The National Federation of Atheist,

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A petition:

On 22 September 2013, one day before the start of the school year in Iran, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Majlis or parliament passed a law permitting a stepfather to marry his adopted child.

In defence of the law, one Member of Parliament said: “According to Islam, every child who is accepted as an adopted child is not considered a real child. Islamic jurisprudence and Sharia law allow the guardian of the child to marry and have sex with his step-child.”

This shocking law will encourage child ’marriages’ and is nothing more than legalised paedophilia and child rape. It will further endanger the welfare of the child and violate her basic rights. It will deny the child any

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