I’ve watched the whole thing now.
In the last part he gets more and more shouty and angry about all these pesky interlopers trying to change his “movement” – he shouts angrily about how wonderful TAM is and how important it is that we all stick together - and he never says one word about the ongoing harassment of a few chosen women in the three overlapping “movements.” Not one word.
Unity? Stick together?
No.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
I’m watching the Jamy Ian Swiss video from last Saturday (Orange County freethinkers; you know the drill), trying to figure out what all the fuss is about – his fuss among other fusses.
One claim of his that I don’t understand, though it’s possible that I will once I’ve watched the whole thing. At 23:42:
If you believe in god based on faith, that in and of itself is not a testable claim. We have no debate with that.”
Yes it is. If you “believe in god” then “god” must have some meaning. Once you know what the meaning is in the particular case, then it becomes a testable claim. Even if you say “god” means something large and abstract like Love, it’s still testable. Maybe it’s possible to make “god” so very large and abstract that it no longer is testable, but then…it’s not really “god” that you believe in, you’re simply using that word to name something else, because the word gets respect and deference.
Tell me why that’s wrong.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
It’s so familiar. Sagarika Ghose, an Indian journalist and tv news anchor, got threats to herself and her daughter.
“Targeting me for my journalism is fine. But when it is sexist and foul-mouthed abuse which insults my gender identity I get incredibly angry. In the beginning I used to retaliate, but that would lead to more abuse.”
Ms Ghose says women abused on Twitter in India tend to to be “liberal and secular”.
“The abusers are right wing nationalists, angry at women speaking their mind. They have even coined a term for us – ‘sickular’.”
So many people are angry at women speaking their minds.
Kavita Krishnan, a prominent Delhi-based women’s activist, was attacked viciously during a recent online chat on violence against women on Rediff.com, one of India’s leading news websites.
“It began well. I had answered a few interesting questions. And then one person, with the handle @RAPIST, started posting abusive comments. He then asked me where he could come to rape me using a condom,” she said.
She says she decided to leave the chat after the abuse continued.
So @RAPIST won and she lost.
Writer-activist Meena Kandasamy chose to go to the police when she faced sexist abuse online.
Last year, she had tweeted about a beef-eating festival at a university in the city of Hyderabad after which she was threatened with “live-telecasted gang-rape and being torched alive and acid attacks”.
…
K Jaishankar, a teacher of criminology who has been studying bullying, stalking and defamation of women online, says India’s “patriarchal mindset has pervaded the internet space”.
“Men don’t like women to talk back. Public personalities who express strong opinions are trolled in a bid to force them off line,” he says.
So, very, familiar.
H/t Scr… Archivist
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
And another post on Sylvia Browne from 2004.
I’ve been visiting the Other Side. Well not so much visiting it, I guess, as reading about it. Or researching it, you could call it. Sylvia Browne calls it researching, so I don’t see why I shouldn’t.
And never mind about shooting fish in barrels. Not that you would, most of you, but some of you would and do. Some of you seem to think that the targets are too easy and that there’s no reason to shoot at them. Well the targets are easy all right, I’ll give you that, but there is every reason to shoot at them. I’ll show you why.
So why this current interest and acceptance of the absolute truth that yes, there are Angels among us?…First of all, as the belief in Angels continues to grow, people are less and less reluctant to speak up about their encounters with them.
That’s Sylvia Brown, in The Other Side and Back (page 25). And she’s right. She’s wrong about nearly everything she puts on paper, but she’s right in that last sentence. As belief in angels spreads and gets entrenched and becomes commonplace and meets little opposition – so it spreads and gets entrenched and becomes commonplace even more, and meets even less opposition, and so people are indeed less and less and less reluctant, embarrassed, inhibited, ashamed about believing in angels and speaking up about their ‘encounters’ with them. And that’s a bad thing. A very, very bad thing. It may be getting to the point where we have to worry that bus drivers, airline pilots, dentists, engineers, pharmacists, grocers and countless other people we entrust with our bodies, our health, our food, our safety, believe in angels and listen to advice from their spirit guides. We really, really don’t want that. Trust me on this (or don’t – read for yourself) – we don’t want people who think the way Sylvia Browne does to have jobs of that kind. It’s hard to think of jobs that are harmless enough to entrust them to people who think like that, really.
I’m actually serious. I sound flippant but I’m serious. Browne does have a serious point there, and she is right. It’s a meme thing. A groupthink, conformity, culture thing. Humans do take their cues from each other, and it is becoming ever more Okay to believe and avow belief in ‘paranormal’ or ‘psychic’ or ‘supernatural’ or ‘metaphysical’ entities and events, as more and more people do exactly that. I don’t see any way to resist this dangerous and idiotic trend other than to resist it. Exposing it is the first step.
And then of course a lot of it is also extremely funny.
We on earth are stuck with our dimension’s annoying laws of time and space, laws that contribute concepts like ‘late’ and ‘crowded’ and ‘traffic jam’ and ‘stressed out’ to our vocabulary. The residents of The Other Side joyfully function without those restrictions and instead enjoy the freedom of such universal laws as infinity and eternity.
Cool. Einstein meets the tooth fairy and everybody’s happy.
And how is this for something to look forward to: All spirits on The Other Side are thirty years old…Spirits can assume their earthly appearance when they come to visit us, to help us recognize them, but in their day-to-day lives on The Other Side, not only are they thirty but they can choose their own physical attributes, from height to weight to hair color.
Eeyup, and they can choose their clothes, too, and their jewelry, their shoes, their accessories, their cars, their wine cellars. Yup.
And on and on it goes like that – just a description of anyone and everyone’s fantasy of a perfect world with everything good at hand and all limits and frustrations and undesirables erased – but described as if it were a real place, and as if Browne had the maps and guidebooks and lyrical travelers’ descriptions at her elbow. Of course, she says she does; she says her spirit guide Francine has told her all about it, and that she herself has then ‘validated’ what Francine tells her through ‘meticulous research.’ Right on page 13 she says that – ‘Typically, Francine gives me information about The Other Side, and I then validate it through meticuous research, including regressive hypnosis…’ Ah yes, that’s meticulous research all right. I tell you about a hitherto unknown alternate universe that my spirit guide has given me information about, and which I have validated through regressive hypnosis. Er, you ask, but how can you being hypnotized validate anything about the existence of a place outside you? Tsk – don’t be silly – that’s a physical question, and the information I’m giving you is metaphysical. Or something.
And yet, and yet – the description can be quite of the earth earthy, at times…
The Other Side is a breathtaking infinity of mountains and oceans, and vast gardens, and forests – every wonder of nature that exists here, its beauty magnified hundreds of times. The landscape is punctuated with buildings of brilliant design and variety – classical Greek and Roman architecture for the temples, concert halls, courtyards, sports arenas, and other public gathering places -
Hmm – sound a little like a mix of Disneyland, Celebration, Las Vegas, a wet dream of Prince Charles’, and Nazi Berlin? And now for the real estate agent’s patter:
- and homes designed to meet every entity’s personal preference, so that a stately Victorian mansion might share a neighborhood with a simple log cabin and a geodesic dome.
Yeah right. People are really going to want to go to The Other Side so they can live in a log cabin while other people whoop it up in a ‘stately Victorian mansion’ (a what?) just as if they were still on This Side. No. Look, if we’re just going to sit around dreaming up our fantasy places, let’s get it right, shall we? The deal is, I get to live in the biggest house in the place, and all the people who irritated me on This Side have to live in nasty little shacks nearby enough so that I can see them when I feel like gloating and far enough so that I can ignore them when I want to. That’s the housing set-up on The Other Side, obviously. Not to mention which, picture it, will you? These chaotic neighborhoods? Norman Bates’ house on one lot, Abe Lincoln’s on the next, a McMansion across the street, a yurt next to that, Trump Towers next to that, then a pueblo, then a Frank Lloyd Wright, then Castle Howard, then the Gherkin – oh gawd, I feel sick. The Other Side will be one long festival of nausea.
Okay, that’s enough meticulous research and regressive hypnosis for the moment.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Canada…you’re supposed to be more sensible than the US. You know this. What are you doing?
Health Canada licenses homeopathic vaccines
Come on. Really?
Most Canadians were born too recently to see the night-and-day difference in public health brought about by immunizations—individuals who witnessed the horrors of the polio epidemics of the 1950s first hand are now well into old age, and many have passed away. Good health can be taken for granted when the public does not properly understand the link between that same good health and the measures that made it possible, and unfortunately, history and science cannot always conquer misinformation, mistrust, and fear.
Enter “alternatives.”
It is disheartening enough that misinformation about vaccines is spread by voices ranging from outspoken celebrities like Jennifer MacCarthy[5] to various alternative medicine trades,[6] but it is cause for urgent concern when public institutions entrusted with the health of Canadians enable misinformation about endemic communicable diseases to go forward with the imprimatur of science.
Health Canada is responsible for ensuring that remedies sold to the public are both safe and effective. In recent years, however, Health Canada has allowed various natural health products to enter the market without requiring rigorous proof of effectiveness. Indeed, there are many remedies and homeopathic preparations currently licensed for sale that do not contain any of the allegedly active ingredient. A number of these are homeopathic “nosodes.” These are ultradilute (typically diluted far beyond the point where anything is left except solvent) preparations of infectious agents or infected tissue, and are administered as an “oral vaccine.”[7]
Although real vaccines use low doses of part of an infectious agent to prevent disease, homeopathic preparations typically are diluted beyond the point where a single molecule remains.
I don’t know if the US allows that or not. Even if it doesn’t, we can’t brag, because it does allow “religious exemptions” in the majority of states, which basically just means it allows exemptions on request. That’s pretty much the same thing as an “oral vaccine” with nothing in it but solvent.
Remarkably, at the same time as Health Canada focuses on influenza education, flu shots, and other proven prevention measures, that same body has licensed 10 products with a homeopathic preparation called “influenzinum.”[8] According to providers, influenzinum is for “preventing the flu and its related symptoms.”[9]
Homeopathic vaccines are available for other infectious diseases as well. Health Canada licenses homeopathic preparations purported to prevent polio,[10] measles,[11] and pertussis.[12]
Oh dear god. Canada, shame on you.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Sylvia Browne is getting a lot of flack now, not surprisingly. I can’t manage to feel very sorry for her.
I searched ur-B&W for her name and found quite a lot. That Jon Ronson article I pointed out yesterday is there, in 2007 when it was first published. Below that there’s an article by James Randi, but the link is a dud. There’s one from Stop Sylvia Browne, but that link too is a dud. The very first one is from December 2004 (jeezis) and is about Sylvia Browne’s angelology.
Here it is again.
___________________
Ever read any books about angels? No? No, I hadn’t either, but I’ve read bits of one now, and I must say, if you’re looking for a good laugh, books about angels (if this one is anything to go by, at least) are pretty damn funny. Books about Wicca are quite mirth-inducing, too.
With the angel book, I keep opening it at random, and the first thing I read is so absurd I find myself cackling before I’ve read ten words. I’m beginning to think that every single line of the book is packed full of unintentional humour. Shall I give you a taste? These are just random, mind – I haven’t actually searched out the most risible stuff.
The first one actually isn’t entirely funny, but the basic failure to connect the dots that underlies it, is.
At the time of 9/11, there were many stories of people seeing angels, which of course shows that God sent his legions of blessed angels to escort those dearest of souls to the Other Side and to bring the rest of us a message of hope.
Oh dear kind sweet thoughtful God, sending his blessed angels. Um – why didn’t he just send his blessed angels to stop the God-lovers in the airplanes? Or stop them himself? Because he has a Purpose, which is Inscrutable to us mere mortals. Okay, but in that case, we don’t know anything about it, do we, so why make factual statements of that kind? Because it’s fun, obviously. But the idea behind it – well really. So – little Kevin likes to torture small animals to death, and then when he’s done it he sends blessed angels to escort the souls of his victims to the Other Side. Do we think well of little Kevin? Dear Violet likes to set fire to people’s houses in the middle of the night and watch while the residents are immolated, then in the morning she sends her blessed angels to smooth their way to the Other Side (where, who knows, what greets them may be serried ranks of Kevins and Violets, all grinning fiendishly). In other words, how people can unite the idea of a kind helpful deity sending angels with one who just got through allowing a slow-motion mass murder to happen in the first place, is simply…beyond my humble understanding.
The very next bit:
The Archangels can heal, and they can carry messages, and they can do one more thing as well. They can take us out of our bodies and take us away on an astral trip. To go on an astral trip…we can call on the Archangels to help us, because these messengers can be the ones who come forward and whisk us right up.
Oh! I didn’t know that. Dang, silly me, I just wasted all that money on a plane ticket. I didn’t know one could just call on an Archangel instead. Okay, I see – so if one wants to take a plane one visits Expedia or some such, and if one wants to take an astral trip, one calls an Archangel. Got it. Next time I’ll know.
Another bit, under the heading Angels: Fact and Fiction:
Before we go any further, let’s clear up a few myths about angels. Since we’ve spent so much time talking about what angels are, it’s equally important to go over what they are not.
First of all, contrary to belief, there are no dark angels.
Oh. You know, you’ll hardly believe me, but there’s no footnote for that statement. In fact there are no footnotes in the whole book. Nor is there an index, nor a bibliography. So one’s strong curiosity to know exactly how Sylvia Browne (for it is she) knows this, is doomed to remain unsatisfied. No doubt she has stacks of scholarly references, or perhaps notes of her extensive experimentation and research, but her citation method is a little primitive. Which is to say she left it out entirely. Odd that an angel didn’t remind her. Well, I say ‘entirely’ – but to be fair there is a kind of blanket citation at the beginning, in the ‘Author’s Note.’ She has a guide named Raheim, ‘from India’ (well of course – where would he be from, Trenton N.J.?), and another named Iena, an Aztec-Inca woman (another no-show for the Trentonians), and the two of them have ‘conveyed countless hours of information’ to her. So consider that one big mega-meta-footnote for all factual statements. Astral trips, no dark angels[1]
[1] Iena, Raheim
Kind of pedantic, isn’t it.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Hey guess what – it turns out that the Castro brothers (the Cleveland ones, not the Havana ones) are bad PR for misogyny. You don’t say!
Daniel, meanwhile, is angry that Ariel Castro’s alleged crimes have done real damage to … men. That is, if the whole thing isn’t a big false-flag fake:
The truth is, this was the worst that could happen for anti feminist public relations at the moment. If this guy – Mr Castro – only knew how much damage he has done to men by doing this.
The case is such a gift basket for feminism, that I almost suspect it is fabricated.
That’s right! Feminists fabricated the whole thing. Which was totally easy to do – just persuade three women and their families and friends and the news media and the FBI and the Cleveland police…wait…
H/t Jackie Paper
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
I do not want to be in unity with atheists who say that I’m an ugly dyke and therefore nobody should take me seriously. I do not want to be in unity with atheists who post their opponents’ home addresses on the Internet; who hack into their opponents’ private email lists and make content from those emails public. I do not want to be in unity with atheists who alert the Westboro Baptist Church to atheist events, and ask if they plan to attend. I do not want to be in unity with atheists who bombard other people with a constant barrage of hate and threats of rape, violence, and death. I do not want to be in unity with atheists who call me a cunt, who call other women cunts, again and again and again and again and again. And I do not want to be in unity with atheists who consistently rationalize this behavior, who trivialize it, who make excuses for it.
That is how I feel about the matter too, likewise, also.
There is literally no way that the atheist movement can be inclusive of everybody. We can’t be inclusive of atheist women… and also be inclusive of atheists who publicly call women ugly, fat, sluts, whores, cunts, and worse. We can’t be inclusive of atheists of color… and also be inclusive of atheists who think people of color stay in religion because they’re just not good at critical thinking, or who tell people of color, “You’re pretty smart for a…” We can’t be inclusive of trans atheists… and also be inclusive of atheists who think trans people are mentally ill or freaks of nature. We can’t be inclusive of atheists who are mentally ill… and also be inclusive of atheists who think mental illness is just a failure of willpower. Etc.
And when people, however well-meaning, make generic calls for unity — when they tell all of us to stop fighting and just get along — they’re basically telling those of us on the short ends of those sticks to shut up.
Which many of them probably don’t realize precisely because they’ve never been on the short ends of those sticks – or at least not on the very shortest ends of the short ends. There’s nothing quite like being a target of a hate campaign to sharpen one’s awareness of what it’s like to be a target of a hate campaign. In that sense I kind of see why so many people get it wrong, and think it’s far better to say “let’s all just get along” than it is to say “knock off the hate campaign.” I kind of see it, but that doesn’t make me like it.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Ok, here we go…
Ropes and chains have been found inside the Cleveland home where police say
three women spent close to a decade in captivity, city officials said Wednesday.
Because that’s what you do when you’re three guys – you capture three women and chain them up so you can fuck them whenever you want to without having to do anything like win their affection, be kind and thoughtful, take a shower now and then.
Ariel Castro’s wife might have been a clue, if anyone had been able to combine things.
According to court documents, Ariel Castro’s former wife accused him of repeatedly abusing her, including breaking her nose twice, breaking two ribs, dislocating her shoulder twice and knocking out a tooth.
Grimilda Figueroa also accused Castro of causing a blood clot on her brain, according to the 2005 documents.
A judge granted a protection order, but lifted it three months later after repeated court delays and hearings Castro did not attend, according to the documents.
Excuse me? Castro stonewalled the court so the court lifted the restraining order on him? That’s how that works?
Meanwhile let me expand the cheery advantages of chaining women up. You can fuck them whenever you want to without having to do anything like win their affection, be kind and thoughtful, take a shower now and then, or refrain from beating the shit out of them.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
First he tells a story of one of her exercises in lost child finding.
A six-year-old, Opal Jo Jennings, had a month earlier been snatched from her grandparents’ front yard in Texas while playing with her cousin. A man pulled up, grabbed her, threw her into his truck, hit her when she screamed and drove off. Her distraught grandmother went on Montel’s show and said, “This is too much for my family and me to handle. We want her back. I need to know where Opal is. I can’t stand this. I need your help, Sylvia. Where is Opal? Where is she?”
Sylvia said, “She’s not dead. But what bothers me – now I’ve never heard of this before – but she was taken and put into some kind of a slavery thing and taken into Japan. The place is Kukouro.”
“Kukouro?” Montel Williams asked, after a moment’s stunned silence.
“So she was taken and put on some kind of a boat or a plane and taken into white slavery,” Sylvia said.
Opal’s grandmother looked drained and confused. Opal’s body was eventually found buried in Fort Worth, Texas. She had, the pathologist concluded, been murdered the night she went missing. A local man – Richard Lee Franks – was convicted.
Nice.
She doesn’t give interviews any more, apparently not wanting to answer journalists’ questions about such things.
So Jon Ronson decided to go on a cruise where she was a guest lecturer. He went to her first lecture.
The next woman walks to the microphone.
“I have a strained relationship with my daughter,” she begins. “And I want to know …”
“Your daughter is strange,” interrupts Sylvia.
Sylvia doesn’t pause. Other psychics will often reach around for some inner voice, but Sylvia answers the question instantly, in a low, smoky growl, sometimes before the person has even finished asking it.
“Your daughter is stubborn,” she says. “She’s selfish, narcissistic. Leave her alone.” The woman reluctantly nods. Tears roll down her cheeks.
“Don’t get too involved with her,” Sylvia says. “She’ll hurt you. Leave her alone. I don’t like her.”
“Thank you, Sylvia,” the woman says.
I want to yell out, “Don’t listen to her! Sylvia doesn’t know anything about your situation! She’s just saying the first thing that comes into her head!” But I don’t.
There are some situations where skepticism really is the one thing necessary.
Famous sceptics such as James Randi say Sylvia is not a silly, deluded person who believes herself to be psychic. They say she’s a callous fraud. She’s just a good cold reader.
Why isn’t that kind of thing prosecuted?
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
This is painful to read:
Amanda Berry is dead, psychic tells her mother on Montel Williams’ show (republished)
The picture is painful to look at, too – Berry’s mother Louwana Miller sitting on her daughter’s bed, which is bedecked with yellow ribbons. Well she did come back, but too late for Louwana Miller.
For 19 months, Louwana Miller refused to give up hope that her missing daughter might still be alive.
Not anymore.
Desperate for any clue as to Amanda Berry’s whereabouts, and tired of unanswered questions from authorities, Miller turned to a psychic on Montel Williams’ nationally syndicated television show.
The psychic said what the FBI, police and Miller hadn’t.
“She’s not alive, honey,” Sylvia Browne told her matter-of-factly. “Your daughter’s not the kind who wouldn’t call.”
Sylvia Browne says a lot of things, based on nothing whatever.
With those blunt words, Browne persuaded Miller to accept a grim probability that has become more likely with each passing day.
Miller went back to the West Side home where she had been keeping Amanda’s things in careful order and cleaned up. She gave away her daughter’s computer and took down her pictures. “I’m not even buying my baby a Christmas present this year,” she said.
Miller said she returned devastated from the show, taped this month in New York.
“I lost it,” she said.
Miller is dead, but Browne is not. I hope she’s having a good hard think right now.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Tiny little barely-detectable Delaware has just become the 11th state to approve same sex marriage.
The rhetoric today was heated, as religious leaders invited to speak by the bill’s opponents condemned homosexuality for multiple hours. Conservative witnesses and senators alike repeatedly sought explanations for why people should not be free to discriminate against same-sex couples, even though such discrimination is already illegal under Delaware law.
Why should we not be free to discriminate against same-sex couples? Why, why, WHY?
It’s a tide.
Rhode Island became the 10th state to legalize same-sex marriage just last week, Minnesota may be primed to become the 12th state perhaps as soon as later this week, and Illinois is also within “striking distance” of passing legislation.
If Minnesota and Illinois can, surely Kansas and North Dakota will not be far behind.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
First of all, please stop saying things like that.
“Prayers have finally been answered. The nightmare is over,” said Stephen Anthony, head of the FBI in Cleveland. “These three young ladies have provided us with the ultimate definition of survival and perseverance. The healing can now begin.”
Dude. Prayers were not answered, finally or otherwise. Berry finally, after ten miserable years (during which her mother died, believing her to be dead), got a chance to escape and get the others rescued. That’s what happened. Prayers had nothing to do with it – and if they did, by the way, fuck the piece of shit who answered them. What took so long? Was the prayer-answerer too busy sending earthquakes and hurricanes and droughts?
But they had nothing to do with it, so shut up about them.
And then…
Two neighbors said Tuesday that they were alarmed enough by what they saw at the house to call police on two occasions.
Elsie Cintron, who lives three houses away, said her daughter once saw a naked woman crawling on her hands and knees in the backyard several years ago and called police. “But they didn’t take it seriously,” she said.
Another neighbor, Israel Lugo, said he heard pounding on some of the doors of Castro’s house, which had plastic bags on the windows, in November 2011. Lugo said officers knocked on the front door, but no one answered. “They walked to side of the house and then left,” he said.
Why weren’t the prayers powerful enough at least to make the cops do a more thorough job on one of those occasions? That’s not asking much. Most of the heavy lifting is already done – the cops are there, on the scene. Why didn’t the prayers cause the cops to take it seriously? To get a warrant and break the door down?
I’m not rushing to blame the cops. They probably get a lot of calls based on vague or could-be-mistaken” things, and they can’t get a warrant and break the door down every time – we’d be yelling about police brutality if they did. But why couldn’t the prayers have put a heavy thumb on the scales when it would have been useful?
Causality. It’s so easy to get it wrong.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
A long time ago, when the world was young, John Fowles wrote a fascinating novel called The Collector. It was about a socially inept young man who collected butterflies and then inherited some money and hit on the bright idea of collecting a young woman, which he did. He bought an isolated house and fitted up a bunker in the basement, then collected the woman he’d been stalking and locked her up in it. After a year or so she developed pneumonia and died in the bunker (after begging him to get a doctor) and the novel ends with his stalking a new candidate.
Much of the novel is the diary of Miranda Grey, the collected woman, and she’s a wonderfully rich, complicated, interesting person.
It occurs to me now that I always thought of it as bordering on fantasy. Nobody would actually do that. It was a kind of thought experiment (though I wasn’t familiar with the concept of thought experiments when I read it).
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Well not exactly new, because this was last January, but it’s new to me. I’m quite amazed by it.
Karla Porter tweets
@wbcshirl Have u heard of Women in Secularism 2 and if so, will u grace it with your presence? http://womeninsecularism.org#wiscfiShirley Phelps-Roper tweets
@karla_porter Where do they show themselves? Is there a schedule?
Karla Porter tweets
@wbcshirl schedule not up yet May 17-19 wash DC
That’s Shirley Phelps-Roper of the Westboro Baptist Church. She’s the spokesperson of the Westboro Baptist Church.
That is, indeed, a novel way to stir up trouble.
Update May 7
Justin Vacula tweets
If Ophelia Benson really wants WBC at Women in Secularism 2, I can call Steve Drain and maybe have that arranged…but I have no plans to.
Wtf? If I want them there? What the hell does he even think he’s saying? I didn’t tweet at Shirley Phelps-Roper to ask if she was going to WiS, and then give her dates and location.
Not to mention the whole quasi-threat thing. I have no [current] plans to, but I can. You want WBC at your event? I can maybe have that arranged. Nice little place you got here, shame to see it messed up.
Dig dig dig.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Jim Underdown puts in a good word for this funny new-fangled plan of having a conference that puts secularism and women together, and for the general idea of reaching out to particular groups by, you know, reaching out to them.
I look forward to being at the Women in Secularism conference next week. The line-up is chock-full of smart, interesting speakers, many of the attendees are friends and colleagues, and D.C. is a great place to spend a weekend.
Not everyone feels that way. Some of the people who are not going are not just passing on the conference, they’re also criticizing that it’s happening at all. It’s not needed; it’s a waste of resources; it dilutes our mission, they say.
That’s a polite version of what they say. The versions I see feature a lot of phrases like “professional victims” and “sisterhood of the oppressed” along with claims that we all (all we crazy feminazis) say all men are rapists, call nearly all women “sister punishers,” and steal all the money.
Underdown points out that religion has been shitty to women and there is every reason to encourage women to fight back.
ANY large group who feels like they have a particular beef with religion (or pseudoscience, or other wacky beliefs) has a legitimate interest in addressing that problem as a group.
At CFI-L.A., we’ve hosted Black Skeptics, Spanish-speaking atheists, gay and lesbian humanists, and others who’ve had specific troubles in our society based on who they fundamentally are. And I say, welcome to our tent.
And why not? Eh? Never heard of outreach? There are a lot of ways to do outreach. I say let’s have more outreach, not less.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Is skepticism a “movement” or is it not?
When I read PZ’s post saying goodbye to skepticism yesterday I first thought no, it isn’t, but then thought of all those conferences and events and thought well ok maybe it is. But – I’ve now reverted to “no, it isn’t,” not in the sense that a “movement” is usually understood.
Massimo Pigliucci and Michael DeDora exchanged some tweets about it just now, in the wake of Massimo’s post on PZ’s post and the larger subject. They compared the Civil Rights Movement and the specificity of its goals.
Michael De Dora @mdedora
@mpigliucci Civil Rights Movement had specific and widely agreed upon social and political goals. Can same be said for skeptics?Massimo Pigliucci @mpigliucci
@mdedora How is that different from the Civil Rights movement? A community, local groups, national leaders…
True, and that’s why yesterday I thought “well, maybe.” But the Civil Rights movement is a good choice to illustrate why skepticism isn’t really “a movement” as we usually understand it – no sit ins, no marches, no voter registration drives, no firehoses, no mass arrests.
Skepticism just isn’t a good fit with that kind of thing. Atheism is much more so, I think – witness the Reason Rally. (But, you cry, the Reason Rally could be seen as a skeptical event more than an atheist one – it wasn’t the Atheist Rally after all! Well it kind of was, though.)
Then again I’m being nitpicky, or I’m ignoring Wittgenstein and family resemblances and all that. Do cricket and chess belong in the same category? If they do, then surely skepticism can be a movement too.
I guess, but it feels a bit off. I think maybe it’s too much like “brave hero” – it’s too much like wrapping oneself in the flag of real, hazardous struggles when in fact all one is doing is typing. I said the other day – correcting one of the many falsehoods about me out there – that I never call myself an “activist.” Well that’s why. Hey, writing is a fine thing to do – but it’s not the same kind of thing as activism. Skepticism isn’t a very movementy movement.
Whatcha think?
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Oh, ew. Sometimes people are so gross that I’d prefer to be a tortoise. Like the people who made Obama-resembling targets to sell at gun conventions. You can see the images at Talking Points Memo – I don’t want them garbaging up this place.
It’s disgusting, that kind of shit, but it’s also dangerous. Whipping up people’s murderous rages is dangerous, because guess what, sometimes people act on their murderous rages.
At its convention in Houston, over the weekend, the National Rifle Association asked a vendor to take down a mannequin target that looked like President Barack Obama, Buzzfeed reported on Sunday.
The vendor, Zombie Industries, produces “life-sized tactical mannequin” targets that “bleed” when shot. Photographs of the company’s booth at the convention taken by Buzzfeed show that the company had several sample mannequins displayed for sale, including a clown, a “terrorist,” and a Nazi.
“Someone from the NRA came by and asked us to remove it” a Zombie Industries booth worker told BuzzFeed, referring to the company’s “Bleeding Rocky Zombie” target. “They thought it looked too much like President Obama.”
Buzzfeed asked the worker if the resemblance was intentional.
“Let’s just say I gave my Republican father one for Christmas,” the worker replied.
Oh hahahaha, that’s so funny.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
So now I’m reading up on Hefazat-e-Islam. The Guardian had a useful piece on April 16.
It starts with tensions, clashes, religious conservatives versus more moderate, progressive voices.
The most recent development is the emergence of a radical conservative Muslim party, Hefazat-e-Islam, as the standard bearer of the religious right. Earlier this month, at a huge rally in Dhaka attended by more than 100,000 according to police, the party issued 13 demands. They included the introduction of measures to stop “alien culture” making inroads in Bangladesh, the reinstatement of the line “absolute trust and faith in the Almighty Allah” in the nation’s constitution, which is largely secular, and a ban on new statues in public places.
They want it in the constitution that there should be absolute trust and faith in an imaginary being whom no one on earth has ever met. That’s inane. It’s the last thing anyone should demand absolute faith and trust in. “It’s not here, you can’t talk to it or hear it or touch it, no one can, and you must have absolute faith and trust in it, because we order you to.”
But I digress.
But it was Hefazat-e-Islam’s demand that men and women not mix in public – seen by many as a bid to stop women working outside the home – that most worried Akhter, one of tens of millions of female labourers in Bangladesh’s booming garment industry.
“If we are not allowed to work, how will we survive?” asked Akhter, who supports her elderly parents on her monthly wage of 6,500 takas (£55). “Many of our coworkers were abandoned by their husbands. Some families only have daughters, whose parents are old. What will a single mother do? We will not have any means for a living.”
Well, you starve. So do your children, and so do your parents. Sorreee.
They explain that it’s all a misunderstanding though.
“The idea that Hefazat-e-Islam is taking the country back to the medieval age through its demands is propaganda,” said Moinuddin Ruhi, joint secretary of the party. “We are not opposing women’s development … Hefazat demands women refrain from free mixing in society to avoid sexual harassment and incidents such as rape. This does not … mean we want them to refrain from going to work or study. They should go to work and study following the principles of Islam.”
Ohhhh – oh well that’s completely different. You don’t oppose women’s development, you just demand that they refrain from free mixing in society. No problem then! As long as women stay home they can “develop” as much as they want to.
More hell on earth for more people. Fabulous.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Well this is scary. Not to say terrifying. As many as half a million Islamists protested in Dhaka to demand the death penalty for everybody who irritated them, according to the BBC.
Clashes between police and Islamist protesters in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka have left at least three people dead and 60 injured.
Up to half a million Hefazat-e Islam supporters gathered in the city, where rioters set fire to shops and vehicles.
The activists are calling for those who insult Islam to face the death penalty.
God damn. That’s the whole population of Seattle! Imagine a whole big city’s worth of people out in the streets to demand death for people who refuse to suck up to a particular religion. Why are human beings so good at stupid and vicious?
On Sunday, throngs of protesters blocked main roads, isolating Dhaka from other parts of the country.
Chanting “Allahu Akbar!” (“God is greatest!”) and “One point! One demand! Atheists must be hanged”, the activists marched down at least six main roads as they headed for Motijheel, AFP news agency reported.
Ya I call that scary.
Hefazat-e Islam wants greater segregation of men and women, as well as the imposition of stricter Islamic education.
The group’s opposition to a national development policy for women has angered women’s groups.
Hefajat-e-Islam draws its strength from the country’s madrassahs, or religious schools.
They’re not schools. All they do is rote memorization of the Koran in Arabic; that’s not teaching and the buildings where it happens aren’t schools.
On Friday, Sheikh Hasina said the government had already met many of the group’s demands.
“Many of these have already been implemented while some are in the process,” she was quoted as telling the Daily Star.
She said the government had already arrested four bloggers for making “derogatory comments” against the Prophet Muhammad and they would be punished if found guilty.
Hell and damnation.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
