Alber Saber is out on bail, Paul Fidalgo tells us. On the other hand, bail was posted a week ago, but he was kept in jail for another week just for shits and giggles, apparently. That’s nice.
Daily News Egypt also notes that these kinds of charges about offending religious feelings have been on the rise under the presidency of Mohamed Morsi.
Imagine my astonishment.… Read the rest
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Well the four archbishops of Ireland have given their opinion of this radical new suggestion that it should be legal for hospitals to perform abortions when necessary to save the woman’s life. (H/t to Marie-Therese)
… Read the restThe four Catholic Archbishops of Ireland: Cardinal Seán Brady, Archbishop of Armagh; Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin; Archbishop Dermot Clifford, Archbishop of Cashel & Emly; and Archbishop Michael Neary, Archbishop of Tuam, have issued the following response to the decision today by the Government to legislate for abortion:
Today’s decision by the Irish Government to legislate for abortion should be of the utmost concern to all.
If what is being proposed were to become law, the careful balance between the equal right to life
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I’m going to piss off some people with this, but…
I think the reaction to what happened at Newtown is a little bit out of proportion. Wait, I can explain. I don’t mean it wasn’t absolutely horrible. But the reaction seems to imply that it’s terribly out of the ordinary, and the fact is…it’s not nearly as out of the ordinary as it should be except in the fact that it was 20 children in one go.
The US has a shamefully high rate of violence against children. The BBC reported on this more than a year ago.
… Read the restOver the past 10 years, more than 20,000 American children are believed to have been killed in their own homes by
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Cristina Odone is worried. What’s she worried about? She’s worried that Ireland is planning to change its abortion law – to legalize abortion when it’s necessary to save the woman’s life – on the basis of a mistake about what happened to Savita Halappanavar. Oh noes!
… Read the restI’m a Catholic but I believe abortion has to be legal. Yes, it is a sin; and yes, there are women who use it as contraception. But the risk of having a long roll call of tragic deaths like Savita’s is too cruel to contemplate. Like divorce, abortion should be available, but reserved as a last-resort nuclear option – and when the mother’s life is in danger is precisely such a scenario.
The Irish
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Because when in doubt, let the woman die.… Read the rest
Up until now the government has not enacted legislation to give certainty to doctors as to when terminations can be carried out and under what circumstances.… Read the rest
First, do no harm.
First, don’t be evil.
It’s strange how easily a lot of people lose sight of that basic thought, or never entertain it in the first place.
What would be high on a list of harms not to do? Killing people who are working to prevent polio in a country where 35 children have been infected with polio this year, when nearly all other countries in the world are polio-free.
High high high on the list. One, polio is bad; very very bad. Immunizing people against it is an unqualified good. Two, people who are working to immunize children against polio are doing a good thing, and don’t deserve to be killed for doing it.
And yet, … Read the rest
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Four women killed, one man injured for helping the “infidel” campaign against polio. At least 35 children in Pakistan have been infected this year.… Read the rest
The Islamists in Northern Mali are getting more unpleasant.
On a sweltering afternoon, Islamist police officers dragged Fatima Al Hassan out of her house in the fabled city of Timbuktu. They beat her up, shoved her into a white pickup truck and drove her to their headquarters. She was locked up in a jail as she awaited her sentence: 100 lashes with an electrical cord.
“Why are you doing this?” she recalled asking.
Hassan was being punished for giving water to a male visitor.
Grabbed, beaten up, abducted, “sentenced” to 100 lashes with an electrical cord, for giving water to a man. Fatima Al Hassan does something ordinary and sociable, and a bunch of men commit a whole set … Read the rest
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A woman is sentenced to 100 lashes with an electrical cord for giving water to a male visitor.… Read the rest
The woman was travelling with a male friend on Sunday night when they were attacked. They were brutally beaten, stripped and thrown out of the vehicle.… Read the rest
The pope has his message of peace for the new year all written and typed up and translated and posted online. The pope is way ahead of the game! The pope can kick back and watch some football.
Well it won’t have been very difficult. It doesn’t break any new ground. Somebody could have put it together by cutting and pasting from previous messages of peace for the new year.
It’s not very rich in what you might call self-awareness or self-knowledge.
… Read the restIn addition to the varied forms of terrorism and international crime, peace is also endangered by those forms of fundamentalism and fanaticism which distort the true nature of religion, which is called to foster fellowship and reconciliation among
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It’s got pictures of people on it. Carmen Miranda would be jealous. Oh and btw same sex marriage threat to peace blah.… Read the rest
Kuwaiti MPs approved a death penalty for Muslims who curse God, the Koran, all prophets and Mo’s wives. Non-Muslims get a minimum of 10 years.… Read the rest
“I have not set myself up to be a role model for women, but it does seem to be more of an issue than it used to be,” cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Brenda Milner explains.… Read the rest
I re-read some of Michael Shermer’s Why People Believe Weird Things this morning, to refresh my memory. I’ve read that and Why We Believe and the odd article here and there. I’ve never liked his writing much. It’s not bad, but it’s a little loose and lazy. Characterless. Journalistic.
I was interested to see that chapter 7 is titled Epidemics of Accusations: Medieval and Modern Witch Crazes. The modern ones are the panics about “Satanic” abuse in the 1980s and about “recovered memory” in the 90s. They’re interesting subjects and ones I’ve read a fair bit about, thanks to Frederick Crews and Elizabeth Loftus among others. It’s terrible stuff – people’s lives ruined by ridiculous beliefs about Satanic rapes … Read the rest
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An Egyptian blogger wrote about Waleed Al Husseini more than two years ago, when he was arrested by the Palestinian authorities.
… Read the restPalestinian blogger Waleed Al Husseini has been detained by the Palestinian authorities for creating a Facebook page named “Allah”! it was reported and shut down and Waleed created this page, that page, and that page, that is already hacked, to fight those who keep censoring his thoughts.
Waleed Khalid Hasayen is a 26 year old blogger who was arrested in the West Bank city of Qalqilya by the Palestinian authorities on the grounds of religious contempt and promoting atheism. On his blog “Nour Al Akl” or The enlightened Mind, he refuted all religious
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Well this sums it up…
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It’s not just mouthy atheist feminist women. It’s not just mouthy atheist feminist me. It’s not just mouthy feminist gamers, or programmers, or columnists. It’s everywhere.
Like theology, for instance, I see via Marlowe Filippov. JTB at rudetruth:
… Read the restI’ve been following with some interest, given my previous interaction with the blog on the limerick thing, the conversation on Theoblogy in response to Tony’s question, “where are the women.” My first reaction to this post was positive–despite what some criticized as a prejudicial phrasing of the question–because, after all, concern about the unintended homogeneity of our communities, particularly our Christian communities, is a commendable concern. Moreover, it seemed clear from the post that Tony felt the absence of
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Meet Waleed Alhusseini.
… Read the restI ran a blog in Arabic called Nour Alakl. I was also active on Facebook, running a satirical page under the pseudonym of Allah. In October 2010 I was arrested in the street near an internet cafe. I had believed that I had a right to the freedom of speech and to the freedom of belief.
But in jail I was told that my online statements about religion and Islam were illegal. I was told that society didn’t accept such criticisms. I was beaten by prison guards who demanded to know who had made me write against Islam. In their minds, I could only say these things as the result of some plot, some conspiracy. That
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