Florida’s a scary place. If you ever have the bad luck to be taken hostage there by a guy armed with a gun and a knife, you might find yourself being prosecuted if you survive.

A Florida woman is being accused of not defending her two children as their father stabbed them in the midst of a SWAT team standoff at an RV park.

On Monday, Deanna DeJesus pleaded not guilty to aggravated manslaughter and child neglect in the attack that left her 9-year-old son dead, NBC Miami reports. The 7-year-old, along with the defendant herself, were both severely wounded.

Her husband flipped out, see. He forced the woman and their two kids into the car and drove them … Read the rest

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

In re-reading Maryam’s talk and the comments on it I saw a link to a post by someone who attended the NSS Conference.

Nick was good, he says.

Nick was a fantastically eloquent and inspiring speaker – talking about self-censorship and imploring us to always be free to criticise “divinely inspired bigotry and facism”. His passion for free speech and how we should never be deterred from our right to it even in the face of threats of violence was fabulous, and evocative of Hitch in his refusal to back down to fascist terror threats in his robust rebuttals to religious lunatics. There is no greater compliment I can grant him than that.

But then there was Maryam…

Maryam’s

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

As I mentioned, in my horrid sarcastic mocking horrid way, I’m getting called Islamophobic a good bit these days. I’m getting called it here and even on the chat threads at Pharyngula, The Lounge and Thunderdome. (On the other hand it’s by the same people, so it doesn’t add up to more, it just adds up to repetition.)

I think this is frankly stupid. It’s as if the people who call me that had never heard of Maryam Namazie. Surely it can’t be the case that they’ve never heard of Maryam, can it? They don’t go round to her place and call her Islamophobic do they? Or do they.

Here’s Maryam at the National Secular Society conference in London last … Read the rest

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

You know how Islamists say that jokes are unIslamic? Apparently one result of that is that Islamists don’t get practice in knowing when a joke is present. That means that sometimes they think a joke is actually a serious news item.

Fars News Agency, a semi-official mouth piece of the Iranian regime, earnestly published a word-for-word duplicate of an article from the Onion, a spoof news organisation based in Chicago.

The satirical article cited a fake Gallup poll which found that 77 per cent of white, rural voters would rather go to a baseball game or have a beer with Mr Ahmadinejad than with the US president.

It went on to cite a made-up West Virginian named Dale Swiderski,

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

Check it out: a stirring promo for the American Atheists 50th birthday bash next March, at which I will be there.

The first voice is Anthony Grayling. The second one you probably recognize. The third of course is Dave.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUFNsUn9nxc

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

Sometimes an organization doesn’t speak for its members when it speaks. Sometimes an organization (or someone at the top of it) says something that’s abhorrent to many or most or almost all of its members. That can happen.

There’s SlutWalk London for instance. Sarah Ditum asks what it’s doing lining up behind Julian Assange.

Oh dear, SlutWalk London. On Saturday you’re marshalling crowds of women in fishnets and bras to chant “my dress is not a yes” and promoting petitions insisting that the Home Office should prosecute rapists. Come Tuesday, you’re taking to Twitter to issue statements objecting to the extradition of Julian Assange to face rape charges in Sweden. Rapists should be prosecuted, but according to SlutWalk London,

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

Secular Coalition for Pennsylvania to Officially Launch Sunday

Thu, 09/27/2012 – 14:42

Washington, D.C—The Secular Coalition for America is excited to announce the official launch of the Secular Coalition for Pennsylvania, expected to officially launch on Sunday. The Secular Coalition for Pennsylvania is the third chapter to launch as part of the SCA’s greater effort to establish 50 new state chapters throughout the country this year.

The Secular Coalition for America is a lobbying organization representing nontheistic Americans and advocating protecting and strengthening the secular character of our government. The Secular Coalition for Pennsylvania will lobby state lawmakers in favor of a strong separation of religion and government.

Secular Coalition for Pennsylvania Executive Board Co-Chairs, Justin Vacula, 24 of Scranton … Read the rest

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

Salman Rushdie, on the other hand, is not a cultural relativist. He too talked to the New York Times, in his case about his new memoir about the fatwa years.

I found myself caught up in what you could call a world historical event. You could say it’s a great political and intellectual event of our time, even a moral event. Not the fatwa, but the battle against radical Islam, of which this was one skirmish. There have been arguments made even by liberal-minded people, which seem to me very dangerous, which are basically cultural relativist arguments: We’ve got to let them do this because it’s their culture. My view is no. Female circumcision — that’s a bad thing.

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