The NSS is taking nominations for Secularist of the Year.

Who do you think should be the 2015 Secularist of the year?

The Irwin Prize for Secularist of the Year is awarded annually in recognition of an individual or an organisation considered to have made an outstanding contribution to the secular cause.

This year’s prize will be presented on Saturday 28 March at a lunch event in central London so please get your nominations to us by Friday 23 January.

The nomination form is right there on the page, so if you have a candidate, get to it.

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

Some people and institutions do take misogyny seriously. Dalhousie University apparently does.

Dalhousie University in Halifax has launched an investigation into disturbing, sexually explicit Facebook posts attributed to male students in the faculty of dentistry, CBC News has learned.

The men were part of a Facebook group called the Class of DDS 2015 Gentlemen. The group was removed from Facebook late last week.

I wonder by whom. Facebook doesn’t remove groups like that, and no one else could, so I guess the members removed it.

The university is working on what to do about it. Exams have been postponed until next month.

CBC News obtained screenshots of the group’s posts, which are sexually explicit and appear to involve discussions of female classmates.

In one post, members were polled and asked, “Who would you hate f–k?” They were given two names to vote on.

Yeah that hate fuck idea is nice. Jian Ghomeshi told a colleague he wanted to hate fuck her at a meeting, which tells you something.

Another post shows a woman wearing a bikini. The caption says, “Bang until stress is relieved or unconscious (girl).”

You know…I know of several Facebook groups that are way worse than that. That’s mild in comparison. It shouldn’t be, but it is.

Their conversations also include jokes about using chloroform on women.

The words: “Does this rag smell like chloroform to you??” were superimposed on one photo.

In response to another photo of a bikini-clad woman, two members wrote: “Can you tell me what this chloroform smells like?” and “Does this mask smell like nitrous oxide to you?”

Haha – geddit? Gas her unconscious so that you can fuck her – with or without hate – whether she’s willing or not.

One thing the internet has certainly given us is a much deeper knowledge of how many men really hate women, and how taken for granted it is. Not one of my favorite things about the technology.

H/t Ibis.

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

So I had to read John Sauven’s* blog post about how sincerely, deeply, utterly sorry he is about the Nazca lines and how strongly he hopes Peru will just take his word for that and stop bothering them.

Words are never enough, he says in the title, and yet they seem to be all he’s offering.

Words are not enough. I know that. But I want to start by saying how deeply disappointed and sorry I am for the activity undertaken in the name of Greenpeace at the Nazca lines in Peru last week during the climate talks.

The place chosen for holding a banner showed a regrettable disregard for the culture of Peru and the importance of not going to fragile and culturally important sites without authorisation. Greenpeace International’s Executive Director, Kumi Naidoo, has this week met with the Peruvian Minister of Culture, who is responsible for the site, to offer an apology. Kumi has assured the Minister that we will fully participate in any investigation into the activity.

“Fully” of course meaning “not including telling Peru who was involved in the ‘activity’.” (Note the evasive word. Trespass, invasion, damage – those would have been better words.) “Fully participate” meaning “in whatever sense we mean by ‘fully’ and not at all what Peru might mean by it.”

In short, he’s basically told an untruth right at the outset. They’re not fully participating.

Greenpeace International is conducting an investigation into how it was possible for this to have happened. The result of this investigation will inform changes that Greenpeace will make to try and ensure something like this can never happen again.

Like the church, like the military, like the universities. But they committed a crime. They don’t get to keep the investigation in-house. Sure, they need to look at their own organization to find out why someone agreed to such a bad move, but they don’t get to be in charge of the whole investigation, and they shouldn’t be stonewalling.

The first comment says that nicely.

The phrase “hold the people responsible accountable” has been tossed about by Greenpeace, without ever defining what that means. Will you turn them over to Peruvian authorities, or will you just withhold their team T-Shirts? You say words are not enough. When will you actually offer more than words? If it was oil rather than footprints spread out over the sacred desert site, would Greenpeace accept an apology from BP or Haliburton?

Would they and should they? No and no.

*Sauven is the executive director of Greenpeace UK.

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

Peru is planning to extradite the Greenpeacers who scratched up the Nazca hummingbird site.

Castillo told the Guardian that Peruvian authorities had identified six members of the group who participated in the protest at the Unesco world heritage site last week, adding that prosecutors have filed charges of attacking archaeological monuments – a crime punishable by up to six years in prison.

But the minister said Greenpeace had refused to name all the protesters – leaving Peru no choice but to pursue it “through our legal means”.

“Greenpeace says it wants to take responsibility but in not giving us the names so that those responsible can appear before a judge in Peru it is refusing to do that,” he told the Guardian. “It’s a contradiction in terms.”

“It makes you wonder if they really are as ashamed as they say they are.”

That sounds consistent with their stunted non-apology that carefully avoided mentioning damage or harm and just talked about having “offended,” as if that were all they’d done.

Archaeologists say footprints left by the activists could remain in the arid desert ground for decades. Castillo said that footage of the protest showed the activists acting as if they were on a “picnic”.

The still photographs certainly show them taking no care at all about how they treated the site – standing on it in their trainers and kneeling on it in their blue jeans, as if it were the sturdy linoleum floor of their kitchen.

“It’s not a matter of money. The destruction is irreparable,” said Ana María Cogorno, president of the Maria Reiche Association, named after the German archaeologist whose groundbreaking research on the Nazca lines from 1940 onwards saw them gain recognition and protection.

The hummingbird etching on which the Greenpeace stunt was laid was the “only one of the lines which was completely untouched and perfectly conserved,” she said. “It’s one of the symbols of Peru,” she added.

Siiiiigh. I didn’t know that. I didn’t know it was the only completely untouched site.

After a meeting with Greenpeace’s executive director, Kumi Naidoo, on Monday, Peru’s minister for culture, Diana Álvarez-Calderón, said the group’s failure to reveal the protesters’ names amounted to a “ kind of cover-up”.

And adds insult to injury, if you ask me.

In a blogpost on Tuesday John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK,made clear his disapproval of the stunt, which was apparently organised to highlight the slow progress of the United Nations climate talks in Lima.

“For many years, Greenpeace offices around the world have been making concerted efforts to reach out to and collaborate with communities everywhere. We understand the importance of being a respectful ally who can learn from our partners and ensure the work we do reflects and supports all communities. This action did not measure up to that commitment. But this activity is not who we are. It is not what we believe in, and this is not what I believe in,” Sauven wrote.

That’s disgusting. It’s just a bunch of PR babble saying how nice they are and how well they mean. Obviously they don’t  understand the importance of being a respectful ally; if they did they wouldn’t have pulled this stupid stunt.

Kyle Ash, a Greenpeace spokesman, said that the group had taken “every care” to avoid any damage. “The surprise to us was that this resulted in some kind of moral offence. We definitely regret that and we want to figure out a way to resolve it.”

The group did not take “every care”; you have only to glance at any of the photos of them in action to see that. Stop telling self-admiring lies!

Greenpeace sucks.

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

The Taliban released pictures of the gunmen who killed 148 children and teachers in Peshawar and injured 121 more. The Taliban is proud of them, apparently.

The Times of India reports.

The Pakistani Taliban released the pictures as they issued a statement claiming the attack was justified because the Pakistani army had long been killing innocent children and families of their fighters.

Pakistani Taliban spokesman Mohammad Khurasani also vowed more attacks as he warned civilians to detach themselves from all military institutions.

In photos released by the group, between six and seven men carrying guns can be seen pictured in front of a white banner.

Brave heroes.

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

A laugh, because we need one these days.

I wish Cooper knew how to do that.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5Wbx-aqtYk

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

Michigan has a dangerously low vaccination rate.

That’s the warning from public health experts as more and more schoolchildren are not getting basic vaccinations to protect them — and all of us — from preventable disease.

Michigan makes it easy to avoid immunization and after years of increasing public concerns over side effects and government intervention, the rate of those going unvaccinated is dangerously high.

After millions of years of being vulnerable to infectious diseases, the moderately clever humans engineered a way to avoid many of them. What a boon to humanity! And now, we’ve gone the next stage, and become so pseudo-clever that we deliberately and knowingly reject that engineered fix, so that we can have more infectious diseases again.

How fucking stupid are we.

A recent outbreak in Traverse City shut down a 1,200-student charter school for a week, infected students at 14 other school buildings in the region, and has sickened dozens of people and forced hundreds into quarantine.

The culprit was pertussis — also known as whooping cough — a disease once thought to be nearly eradicated.

But Grand Traverse County has an undervaccination rate six times the national average. And nearly 1 in 5 of the kindergarteners (17 percent) at the charter school, Grand Traverse Academy, had parents who signed waivers exempting the children from required vaccinations.

Whooping cough. That’s a horrible disease.

Last week, the other shoe dropped in Grand Traverse: Two residents were diagnosed with measles, the most contagious disease known to man and one that can have serious complications.

It happened in Traverse City. It could easily happen in communities throughout Michigan.

Michigan has one of the highest vaccine-waiver rates for kindergartners in the country, three times the national median, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And the number of kindergartners getting vaccine waivers is growing. In five years, it’s increased 23 percent, the CDC says.

Not clever.

The CDC warns outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases are most likely to occur where “unvaccinated persons cluster in schools and communities.”

Such clusters exist in a third of Michigan public and private schools housing kindergartners — that’s more than 800 school buildings scattered across 68 of the state’s 83 counties, according to the MLive analysis.

Many of those clusters are in affluent and well-educated communities, such as Traverse City, Troy, Grosse Pointe and Clarkston.

Well-educated enough to read woo about medical subjects but not well-educated enough to realize they’re bullshit.

Those opting out of vaccines tend to be health-conscious families who buy organic food, give their children health supplements and are drawn to alternatives to Western medicine. They cite internet websites skeptical about immunizations and worry the risk of vaccines outweigh the benefits.

Yeah that kind. The Prince Charles kind. They’re “health-conscious” so they buy into bullshit.

“Michigan is one of the worst states in the country” in terms of vaccine-waiver rates, and communities with high waiver rates should be “very concerned,” said Dr. Paul Offit, a leading authority on vaccinations in the United States and chief of the infectious diseases division at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

“When you have a fairly large number of people who are choosing not to vaccinate, that puts not only their own children at risk, but also everyone else’s,” Offit said.

A little learning is a dangerous thing.

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

The Telegraph shares a bunch of photos of the scene at that Peshawar army school. Be warned: they’re heart-wrenching to look at – no bodies, but lots of blood. But most heart-wrenching are the pictures of the victims in life.

The full devastation of the Taliban attack in which 148 people – the vast majority children – were massacred in a Pakistan school yesterday is laid bare in images showing pools of blood and bullet-ridden walls.

Upturned desks and torn exam papers scattered across the floor give evidence of the unexpected terror that struck 500 children and staff on Tuesday morning as nine gun-wielding militants stormed the building.

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

Mother Jones tells us about an exciting new idea from a Missouri state legislator: a new way to make women non-people under the law.

A Missouri Republican is pushing a bill that would allow a man who gets a woman pregnant to stop her from having an abortion. The measure would force a woman who wants an abortion to obtain written permission from the father first—unless she was the victim of “legitimate rape.”

Rick Brattin, a state representative from outside Kansas City, filed the bill on December 3 for next year’s legislative session. The proposed measure reads, “No abortion shall be performed or induced unless and until the father of the unborn child provides written, notarized consent to the abortion.”

Cool. So if they’ve split up in the interim, she has to go to him to beg permission to get an abortion, which he can refuse to give. If they’ve split up and she doesn’t know how to contact him, she’s stuck with that baby she doesn’t want to have. If they were never together in the first place and she doesn’t know how to contact him, same deal. If he got her drunk and then had sex with her and she doesn’t know how to contact him, same deal. She has no rights at all, and he can mess with her rights.

The bill contains exceptions for women who become pregnant as the result of rape or incest—but there are caveats.

“Just like any rape, you have to report it, and you have to prove it,” Brattin tells Mother Jones. “So you couldn’t just go and say, ‘Oh yeah, I was raped,’ and get an abortion. It has to be a legitimate rape.”

Damn right! None of this just saying you were raped shit – none of this wicked smearing of good men by slutty women just saying they were raped. They have to prove it, which is easy to do if you actually were legitimately raped. Nobody ever says “but he says it was consensual” or “you’re a lying whore,” so there will be no problem getting an abortion if you were legitimately raped.

Brattin adds that he is not using the term “legitimate rape” in the same way as former Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.), who famously claimed that women couldn’t get pregnant from a “legitimate rape” because “the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.”

“I’m just saying if there was a legitimate rape, you’re going to make a police report, just as if you were robbed,” Brattin says. “That’s just common sense.”

Absolutely! Totally common sense. So if you don’t make a police report, obviously you weren’t raped, and that’s all there is to it.

Under his bill, he adds, “you have to take steps to show that you were raped…And I’d think you’d be able to prove that.”

Oh yes? How? How would you be able to prove that?

Missouri is home to only one abortion clinic, based in St. Louis. Each year, legislators target the clinic with dozens of new restrictions. In 2014, the GOP-controlled legislature approved a bill requiring women seeking an abortion to wait 72 hours between the initial consultation and the procedure. It’s the longest abortion waiting period in the county.

This isn’t about “the unborn child.” It’s about hatred of women. It’s about hatred of the smallest hint that any particular woman is not the wholly owned subordinate of a man. It’s about hatred and punishment of women.

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

A code of conduct? Who needs a code of conduct? This community is too fabulous to need a code of conduct!

A couple of years ago, I was asked to help put together a code of conduct for the IA Summit. I laughed.

We need a code of conduct here? The IA Summit is the nicest, most community-friendly conference ever! Those problems happen at other conferences! And they want me to help? There are sailors jealous of my cussing vocabulary—surely I was not PC enough to be part of such an effort. But the chairs insisted. So, being a good user-centered designer, I started asking around about the idea of a code of conduct.

I found out design conferences are not the safe meetings of minds I thought they were.

One woman told me that she had been molested by another attendee at a favorite conference, and was too scared to report it. “No one will ever see me as anything but a victim,” she said. “I’ve worked too hard for that.”

And there was more, Christina Wodtke writes. The idea of a code of conduct didn’t seem so silly any more.

Unfortunately, it still seems silly to others. Recently I was talking to another conference organizer about setting up codes of conduct, and he said, “That doesn’t happen at our conferences. People know me, and they know they can talk to me. A code of conduct will make people nervous that we have a problem. And we don’t.”

I wonder how he knew that, since most victims don’t come forward. They don’t want to be seen as a “buzzkill,” or be told that what they wore or what they drank meant that they asked for it. This is not unusual; every day we see examples of women whose reputations are trashed for reporting rape and harassment. On Twitter, women who talk about sexism in games or even think a woman should go on a stamp are given death threats. Reporting carries consequences. Reporting is scary.

Availability heuristic. We don’t see it, so we assume that means it’s not there. Ding ding ding – wrong! We don’t see police brutality if it never happens to us, so we assume it isn’t there. We don’t see sexism or harassment if it never happens to us, so we assume it isn’t there.

H/t Harald.

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

Karima Bennoune says what’s needed now is firm rejection of violent religious fanaticism.

As many Australians themselves have already clearly demonstrated in the wake of the attack through the wonderful anti-racist hashtag #I’llridewithyou, the correct response to such atrocious events is not blind discrimination against people on the basis of real or presumed religious identity or refugee status. However, unconditional condemnation of the extreme Islamist political ideology that may be behind this terrible attack — and at least was used to justify it — is absolutely essential, and is in no way discriminatory.

In fact, any tolerance of such intolerance does not produce tolerance, but rather has paradoxical and dangerous results — allowing illiberalism to flourish and letting violent events proliferate. No one knows this more than those who have lived on the frontlines of Islamist terror.

She was in Australia last May to talk about her book.

After my lecture about the book at the Sydney Writer’s Festival, which ended with the story of Amel Zenoune-Zouani, an Algerian law student killed by the Armed Islamic Group in 1997, I was surrounded and embraced onstage by a group of people of Muslim heritage — all women and many in tears. They were refugees from Algeria and Afghanistan who had been driven from their own countries by fundamentalist violence, like that the Sydney hostage taker Man Haron Monis appeared to be mimicking. Some of the Algerians later told me how loyal and grateful they were to Australians generally for being so welcoming to them when they were forced to flee there in the 1990s, and that they were disturbed to occasionally encounter Muslim fundamentalists in their adopted country who reminded them of the ideology that had forced them from their homes.

Rejection of that ideology does not equate to rejection of Muslims in general.

The unprecedented (for Australia) Sydney hostage-taking is yet another reminder of the urgent need to discredit Islamist ideology, and to effectively counter the narratives that promote extremist violence. One of the best ways to do this is to support people of Muslim heritage — like those I lectured about while in Australia — who are fighting back against the fundamentalists. Meanwhile, the stories of the Muslim immigrants and refugees I met down under are also a reminder of the urgent need to prevent the manipulation of this terrible event in support of an anti-refugee narrative — a development which would only harm many who have already been victims of Islamist violence and who are allies in the battle against extremism.

H/t Tehmina.

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

I’ve been getting a barrage of hostile tweets and comments today about four fatal words in the post I did when I first learned of the Sydney siege, soon after it started. The one or ones I got that day – Sunday here – were reasonable and accepted my explanation and apology for clumsy wording. The ones today not so much.

D.J. Grothe ‏@DJGrothe 8h
Ugh. Tells you everything you need to know about the worldview there: “privileged rich coffee drinkers” http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2014/12/hostages-in-the-window-with-their-hands-up/ … #sydneysiege

Shane Walsh ‏@mountainsRhigh 7h
@DJGrothe so bitter about everything. It must be miserable to be her.

D.J. Grothe @DJGrothe
@mountainsRhigh When I knew her she seemed pleasant enough. People change with age, I guess.

Geddit? I’m old and rotting.

K. R. Marlo ‏@KRMarlo 8h
@DJGrothe I see she backpedalled after being called out, but …. gross.

D.J. Grothe ‏@DJGrothe 8h
@KRMarlo Yeah. I imagine she feels proud of the display of compassion for the “apron wearing” proletariat victims.

That’s such an ugly thing to say. No, I don’t feel “proud” and it wasn’t a “display” – it was a feeling put into words, obviously not well enough but all the same that’s what it was.

This isn’t weird, or peculiar to me. After 9/11 I remember a lot of commentary about the “proletariat victims” who were in the towers along with the bankers and stockbrokers – that is, about the restaurant workers and maintenance staff and cleaners and security guards and all the unglamorous not very highly paid people who were doing support work that morning.

After 7/7 I was particularly upset about Gladys Wundowa. She was a cleaner on the night shift at UCL, on the bus on her way to school, the number 30 bus that blew up in Tavistock Square.

Mrs Wundowa, 51, finished her early morning shift at 9am on Thursday before heading for a college course at Shoreditch, east London.

I don’t apologize for being particularly upset about her. That doesn’t mean I think everyone else deserved to be blown up, it just means I find it particularly poignant when underlings get it. I’m not “proud” of it; it’s not particularly rational; it’s just a feeling. I get that sometimes.

And it’s not “ideology,” either.

D.J. Grothe ‏@DJGrothe 6h
@OpheliaBenson Nah, something far less sensational. How about just blinded by messy ideology? Or is it just being anti-coffee.

Ophelia Benson ‏@OpheliaBenson 6h
.@DJGrothe Well, as I explained, it was a combination of sarcasm abt likely motives of the perp and gut-level pang for the guy in the apron.

.@DJGrothe Not really “ideology” at all, just an emo reaction.

D.J. Grothe ‏@DJGrothe 6h
@OpheliaBenson Right. For the wage earning apron wearer but not for the “privileged coffee sippers.” I think that’s an ideological bias.

I’d seen the photo of the “apron wearer” in the window. The photo got to me. I hadn’t seen photos of the other people. Those photos got to me too when I saw them yesterday, after the siege had ended. I’m human; I react to pictures.

So that’s been today. I did apologize for wording it badly, and I still do. But for having a not completely rational reaction to that picture? No.

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

Drone footage maps the damage done to the Nazca site by Greenpeace, io9 reports.

As PBS Newshour reports:

The Nazca figures were drawn between 500 BC and 500 AD by removing a thin patina of dark rocks covering light sand. This is one of the driest regions of the world, and the lack of water and wind has helped preserve the lines for centuries.

But they’re still quite fragile. “When you step on it, you simply break the patina and expose the bottom surface,” said Peru’s Deputy Culture Minister Luis Jaime Castillo . “How long does it take for nature….to again create a patina? Hundreds of years? Thousands of years? We really don’t know.”

Watch the video and pause it at 1:15 to take a good look at the Greenpeace footprints – you can see the sole-patterns very clearly. Lots of them.

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

CBS and the AP have more about the two people who were murdered at the Lindt Cafe yesterday.

Dawson was the mother of three young children, Chloe, Sasha and Oliver, and a highly respected commercial lawyer. She was remembered as “one of our best and brightest” by New South Wales Bar Association president Jane Needham.

Andrew Powell, head of the Ascham School, which Dawson attended in her youth, said she was a well-respected and giving woman who excelled at her studies. Dawson’s daughter Chloe is a student at the school and Sasha will be attending next year.

Dawson was the school’s debating captain and played hockey and basketball. After she became a lawyer, she helped teach senior students at her former school how to prepare for mock trials.

Johnson was remembered as a selfless man who put others first.

“By nature he was a perfectionist and he had a genuine passion for the hospitality industry and people,” Lindt Australia CEO Steve Loane said in a statement. “His loss is absolutely tragic.”

Johnson’s parents issued a brief statement, thanking the public for its support.

“We are so proud of our beautiful boy Tori, gone from this earth but forever in our memories as the most amazing life partner, son and brother we could ever wish for,” they said.

Those are the people that Man Haron Monis took away.

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

Another piece of global warming underestimated, the Guardian reports.

Melting ice from the coast of Greenland could make a much bigger contribution to rising sea levels than has previously been thought, a new study suggests.

Scientists believe a previously overlooked side-effect of global warming could greatly increase the rate of melting of the vast Greenland ice sheet.

That sounds bad.

The ice covers 1.7m sq km (656,000 sq m), an area three times the size of Texas. If all the ice melted and flowed into the sea, oceans around the world would rise by as much as six metres (20ft), causing extensive damage to coastal communities.

While such a disaster is not expected to happen, ice losses from Greenland are predicted to contribute 22 cm (8in) to global sea levels by 2100.

But the new findings related to lakes formed from melted ice and snow indicate that this figure may be significantly too low.

The study shows that as Arctic temperatures rise, Greenland will develop a rash of these “supraglacial” lakes which are expected to spread much further inland.

And what will that do?

One key effect the lakes have, once they reach a critical size, is to drain through fractures in the ice to reach the ice sheet base. Like a lubricant, the lake water causes the melting ice to slide more rapidly into the ocean.

The lakes also have a direct impact on ice sheet melting because, being darker than ice, they absorb more of the sun’s heat.

Lead researcher Dr Amber Leeson, from the University of Leeds’ School of Earth and Environment, said: “Supraglacial lakes can increase the speed at which the ice sheet melts and flows, and our research shows that by 2060 the area of Greenland covered by them will double.”

It will make everything a lot worse, that’s what it will do.

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

It’s a rough day. I think we need a baby Jesus cat.

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

A survivor of the Taliban massacre in Peshawar describes his experience.

Speaking from his bed in the trauma ward of the city’s Lady Reading Hospital, Shahrukh Khan, 16, said he and his classmates were in a careers guidance session in the school auditorium when four gunmen wearing paramilitary uniforms burst in.

“Someone screamed at us to get down and hide below the desks,” he said, adding that the gunmen shouted “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest) before opening fire.

“Then one of them shouted: ‘There are so many children beneath the benches, go and get them’,” Khan told AFP.

“I saw a pair of big black boots coming towards me, this guy was probably hunting for students hiding beneath the benches.”

Khan said he felt searing pain as he was shot in both his legs just below the knee.

He decided to play dead, adding: “I folded my tie and pushed it into my mouth so that I wouldn’t scream.

“The man with big boots kept on looking for students and pumping bullets into their bodies. I lay as still as I could and closed my eyes, waiting to get shot again.

“My body was shivering. I saw death so close and I will never forget the black boots approaching me — I felt as though it was death that was approaching me.”

It was.

Warning: this next bit is even more gruesome.

As his father, a shopkeeper, comforted him in his blood-soaked bed, Khan recalled: “The men left after some time and I stayed there for a few minutes. Then I tried to get up but fell to the ground because of my wounds.

“When I crawled to the next room, it was horrible. I saw the dead body of our office assistant on fire,” he said.

“She was sitting on the chair with blood dripping from her body as she burned.”

If Allahu akbar, what is this? What is in any way “great” about this? Or is “greatest” just a euphemism for “most powerful”? It’s true that men with big boots and guns are more powerful than schoolchildren and school teachers and office assistants. They are more powerful but in this case they are certainly not greater.

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

Originally a comment by Misty Griffin on What Amish life is really like, by an eyewitness.

This seems a little akward but I left the Amish 9 years ago. Reading some of these comments makes my blood absolutly boil. I beleive that people who are constantly saying that they have such nice Amish neighbors, they never see anything out of place, they are so well mannered and so on are just plain ignorant!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you know anything about the Amish you will know that they are a closed society and they will not let you see anything they don’t want you to see.

The things I have seen and heard would leave you truamatized for the rest of your life. Mainly the Amish practice of silenceing thier sex abuse victims, while many may say that this happens in every cultutre it is not true, not like in the Amish. In the Amish if you are raped by your Father you are not taken out of the home, you are made to forgive him and must live in the same house with him till you marry and more than likely he will continue to rape you your whole life.

This practice and many like it make me want to vomit and that is why I ran to a police station a little over 9 years ago. I am sorry but I have no love for the Amish and while some may say that I am biased I will tell you I saw to many victims to care what anyone would retort to me becuase I would tell you in return” If you were never Amish you dont have a clue what you are talking about, end of story!”

To learn more about my story you can see it on Amazon (Tears of the Silenced).

I was not born Amish but was taken to them after being held captive by my crazy mother and stepfather. I was held prisoner on a mountain until I was eighteen and after nearly being killed by my step-father I was dropped off at an Amish community. My sister and I had been raised by Amish tradition so the transition was not very difficult. My sister is still Amish and the sting of being shunned is immense. Anyone who says we should learn from the Amish must be not thinking clearly, if we all lived like the Amish we would still be living in the 1600s, people would be dying of the plague, there would be no vaccines no freedom of religion, no freedom at all pretty much. People would be dying in their mid thirties and so on. Sometimes people just do not know what they are talkinng about I guess.

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

The Taliban killing as many children as it can at an army-run school in Peshawar.

Scores of survivors are being treated in hospitals as frantic parents search for news of their children.

The attack is the deadliest ever by the Taliban in Pakistan.

There has been chaos outside hospital units to which casualties were taken, the BBC’s Shaimaa Khalil reports from Peshawar.

The BBC’s live update page says 132 children and 9 staff members were killed.

Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid tells the BBC the Taliban raid was “a revenge attack, as many children in the school are sons and daughters of army officers”. Mr Rashid adds it was also “an attempt to unify the Taliban, who are currently divided”.

Both BBC stories have pictures of crowds outside the hospital, and they’re weirdly almost all male (I could see two women in one photo and that’s all). Maybe that’s because it’s a military hospital – but lordy you would think the anguished mothers would be there along with the anguished fathers. (The Beeb says the school teaches girls and boys.)

The militants made no demands; they started killing children as soon as they entered the school, the Pakistani army is quoted as saying by Reuters.

No kidding. That’s what they do.

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

The Sydney Morning Herald tells us a little about Man Haron Monis.

Self-described cleric, Man Haron Monis, 50, first came to attention of police when he penned poisonous letters to the family of dead Australian soldiers seven years ago.

Last year he was charged with being an accessory to the murder of his ex-wife and mother of two.

Most recently, he was charged with more than 50 allegations of indecent and sexual assault relating to time allegedly spent as a self-proclaimed “spiritual healer” who dealt with black magic at a premises in western Sydney more than a decade ago.

He was out on bail on those last two cases.

He was charged in November 2013 with being an accessory before and after the fact to the murder of his ex-wife Noleen Hayson Pal.

Ms Pal was stabbed and set alight in a Werrington apartment block.

Droudis has been charged with the murder.

And then in April this year, Monis was charged by sex crimes squad detectives with the indecent and sexual assault of a woman in western Sydney in 2002.

Police allege that Monis was a self-proclaimed “spiritual healer” who operated out of premises on Station Street at Wentworthville.

News of his arrest prompted more victims to come forward and Monis was hit with an additional 40 charges in October.

It is alleged that Monis placed ads in local newspapers offering “spiritual consultation”.

He claimed to be an expert in astrology, numerology, meditation and black magic.

Monis has posted online that the police charges are part of a witch hunt against him.

Right, it was all trumped up. Obviously.

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