Crissy Brown describes a nightmare that happened to her.

She was driving to work in Tuscaloosa (Alabama) and got pulled over for having expired license plate tags. The cop told her there was a warrant out for her arrest (for expired license plate tags???), handcuffed her, and searched her car. Then he took her to the police station.

As soon as I arrived at the police station, before I could make it through the metal detectors, I was pushed against a wall and made to stand there until a female officer could take the time to inappropriately touch – I mean frisk – me. As the woman ran her hands down my body and between my legs, three male

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

Ireland is changing.

Traditionally Catholic Ireland has allowed an atheist group to perform weddings this year for the first time, and the few people certified to celebrate them are overwhelmed by hundreds of couples seeking their services.

Demand for the Humanist Association of Ireland’s secular weddings has surged as the moral authority of the once almighty Catholic Church collapsed in recent decades amid sex abuse scandals and Irish society’s rapid secularization.

Ah not just the sex abuse scandals. Don’t forget the enslavement and brutality scandals; don’t forget the industrial “schools” and the Magdalene laundries.

Until now, those who did not want a religious wedding could have only civil ceremonies. Outside of the registrar’s office, only clergy were permitted to

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Here’s a question for you. What’s the relationship between knowledge and understanding? What does epistemology have to say about understanding?

I’m thinking about the role of empathy and experience in understanding and, I think (but I’m not sure), in knowledge. If you experience something and thus come to understand it better than you did, is that knowledge?

I’m not a bit sure it is. If the understanding depends on experience, then it’s not sharable, and I think of knowledge as being generally sharable…but perhaps that’s a mistake.… Read the rest

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Ah it turns out it was all a misunderstanding about Al Mana Interiors and its firing of Marte Dalelv for being slutty enough to get herself raped. Al Mana Interiors behaved impeccably the entire time; it says so itself.

DOHA, Qatar, July 21, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — Hani El Korek, spokesperson for Al Mana Interiors W.L.L., today released the following statement:

“We are sympathetic to Marte Dalelv during this very difficult situation.  Al Mana Interiors has repeatedly offered Marte support and company representatives were by her side throughout the initial investigation and police interviews, and spent days at both the police station and the prosecutor’s office to help win her release.

“Company representatives have been supportive and in communication with Marte

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That’s what Marte Dalelve’s company told her after she was arrested for being raped in Dubai. She behaved improperly, you see.

Ms. Dalelv received a letter from her employer Al Mana Interiors three weeks after she reported the rape, informing her that she was suspended from her position, effective immediately.

The ninth of april she got a new shocking letter: Her contract was terminated due to «unacceptable and improper behavior». This time it was the company’s managing director, Mr. Wissam Al Mana, who himself signed the letter.

It’s a very sweet letter. It doesn’t come right out and call her a whore.

Al Mana writes the following in the letter he personally signed:

Dear Ms. Dalelv,

Further to the suspension

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At least, according to a DC Superior Court decision on Friday, there’s enough evidence that it does to make it ok for Michael Mann to proceed with a defamation suit.

A stunning DC Superior Court decision Friday on behalf of climatologist Michael Mann against the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) found:

There is sufficient evidence presented that is indicative of “actual malice. The CEI Defendants have consistently accused Plaintiff of fraud and inaccurate theories, despite Plaintiff’s work having been investigated several times and found to be proper. The CEI Defendants’ persistence despite the EPA and other investigative bodies’ conclusion that Plaintiff’s work is accurate (or that there is no evidence of data manipulation) is equal to a blatant disregard for

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There was a measles outbreak in Brooklyn in March. That means there was a vaccination problem in Brooklyn.

In March, New York City health authorities saw a sudden rise in measles cases in several densely populated Orthodox Jewish communities.

The disease quickly spread. Among the 58 measles cases reported thus far, a child contracted pneumonia and two pregnant women were hospitalized, according to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. One of the women had a miscarriage.

Very sad, when measles shouldn’t be around at all.

The department traced the outbreak to a person who it concluded brought the virus from a trip to London, says Jay Varma, the department’s deputy commissioner for disease control. Overall,

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Dubai perhaps noticed the bad publicity; anyway it dropped the sentence.

Dubai authorities hope the pardon of the 24-year-old woman will allow them to sidestep another potentially embarrassing blow to the city’s heavily promoted image as a forward-looking model of luxury, excess and cross-cultural understanding.

Yum: luxury, excess and cross-cultural understanding. Actually, make that luxury and excess, without any kind of understanding. Luxury and excess aren’t really the best ways to promote understanding.

Rape prosecutions are complicated in the United Arab Emirates because — as in some other countries influenced by Islamic law — conviction requires either a confession or the testimony of adult male witnesses.

In a twist that often shocks Western observers, allegations of rape can boomerang

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Salon just woke up and rubbed its eyes and realized it had forgotten to publish an article asking why all the New Atheists are men, so a mere five years late it has now done so.

“New Atheism” is old news. Enter “New, New Atheism”: the next generation, with its more spiritual brand of non-belief, and its ambition to build an atheist church. It is an important moment for the faithless. Will it include women?

Wait wait wait. New, New already? No I don’t think so. We’re really not through with the Old New yet. Also – the atheists I know are not “more spiritual,” nor do they want to build an atheist church. Mostly. Maybe Chris Stedman and … Read the rest

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Kathryn Hamen heaves a large sigh and wonders why the London Review of Books has such a very hard time finding women.

Having been asked, I told them: the ridiculously low number of women who are represented in each edition of your otherwise worthy journal is, well, ridiculous. The reply: It’s complicated, “as complicated as it gets”. The response was genuine in its bafflement and its hand-wringing consternation, and ended by stating that the editors at the LRB were desperate to change the situation.

To which I replied: then change it.

And then I posted the exchange on my blog, where it was retweeted and picked up by Salon.com in the US. Many people responded with, “I’ve been

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There’s an 11-year-old girl in Yeman, Nada al-Ahdal, who has a lot of courage and good sense.

A video, posted on YouTube, shows an 11-year-old Yemeni girl called Nada al-Ahdal recounting how she escaped her parents who wanted to force her to marry. Nada comes from a modest family and is one of eight siblings. Fortunately for her, her uncle Abdel Salam al-Ahdal, a montage and graphics technician in a TV station, decided to take her in when she was three years old, to live with him and his aging mother, away from her parents.

Here is that video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J7_TKgw1To

I would have had no life, no education. Don’t they have any compassion?

That is indeed the question.… Read the rest

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I had a poster of this on a wall once. Via Wikimedia Commons.

… Read the rest

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You know what’s funny? When people rage about “keyboard warriors” and “slacktivists” who don’t do things that matter and don’t make things happen, but just hide behind their keyboards and rage emptily online…

…and they do this raging…

(can you guess?)

…on Facebook and Twitter!

It’s like calling someone on the phone to complain about phones.

It’s like driving to the supermarket and on the way raging about all the god damn people out here in their cars cluttering up the place.

It’s like taking a trip to Florence and raging about all the tourists in Florence.… Read the rest

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Survivors of the Magdalene laundries are calling on Catholics to boycott mass tomorrow to protest the refusal of the church to pay compensation to the women.

I would love to say “do it!!” but I doubt that I have many readers who normally attend Catholic mass. Well, to tell the truth, I doubt I have any.

The group Magdalene Survivors Together asked people to stand with them and to withhold donations to local churches as a show of solidarity.

A spokesperson for the group said it was disappointed that the nuns are not contributing financially to a fund set up to provide compensation. The four orders have instead said that they will provide access to their records to allow for

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As requested…and I’ve been thinking I would do more of it anyway, because I like it too, and they’re public domain.

I’ve had a big poster of this one on my bathroom wall for years. Monet, Apple Trees in Bloom.

… Read the rest

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The BBC talked to the Norwegian woman punished for being raped in Dubai. She is Marte Deborah Dalelv.

Ms Dalelv says she had been on a night out with colleagues on 6 March when the rape took place.

She reported it to the police, who proceeded to confiscate her passport and seize her money. She was charged four days later on three counts, including having sex outside marriage.

That certainly strikes an outsider as a very odd criminal justice system – one that grabs the passport and money of a foreign woman who reports being raped.

Her alleged attacker, she said, received a 13-month sentence for extra-marital
sex and alcohol consumption.

No no no, try to focus. The issue isn’t … Read the rest

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When I signed this petition my signature was number 24, and it needs a LOT more than that. So please both sign it and publicize it on social media.

63-year old Josephine Komeh is a courageous fighter against FGM/Cutting in Sierra Leone who opposed it in the most practical way – by refusing to cut girls and young women herself. She was severely tortured because she had defied the traditional authorities that maintain this brutal practice.

Josephine sought asylum in Britain, where the Government condemns FGM, but the Home Office plans to deport her on 24th July. She will face further torture back in Sierra Leone unless she agrees to cut. There is no-one there to protect her: her husband

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