Sasha Weiss at the New Yorker on #YesAllWomen. She first reads Rodger’s “manifesto”:

The first half of the manifesto is lucid and reflective—we see glimmers of a happy boyhood and an affectionate, curious personality—which makes his spewings of misogyny and hatred in the second half even more chilling. He wanted to abolish sex, thereby equalizing men and ridding society of women’s manipulative and bestial natures, and to lock women in concentration camps so they would die out. (“I would have an enormous tower built just for myself, where I can oversee the entire concentration camp and gleefully watch them all die,” he wrote. “If I can’t have them, no one will, I imagine thinking to myself as I oversee this. Women represent everything that is unfair in this world, and in order to make this world a fair place, women must be eradicated.”) His idea was to imprison a few select women in a lab, where they would be artificially inseminated to propagate the species.

Rodger’s fantasies are so patently strange and so extreme that they’re easy to dismiss as simply crazy. But, reading his manifesto, you can make out, through the distortions of his raging mind, the outlines of mainstream American cultural values: Beauty and strength are rewarded. Women are prizes to be won, reflections of a man’s social capital. Wealth, a large house, and fame are the highest attainments. The lonely and the poor are invisible. Rodger was crazier and more violent than most people, but his beliefs are on a continuum with misogynistic, class-based ideas that are held by many.

The ones that jump out at you from the tv screen if you pay any attention.

Elliot Rodger earned the fame and infamy he wished for through his act of violence, and now everyone can read about his grotesque ideas. #YesAllWomen offers a counter-testimony, demonstrating that Rodger’s hate of women grew out of attitudes that are all around us. Perhaps more subtly, it suggests that he was influenced by a predominant cultural ethos that rewards sexual aggression, power, and wealth, and that reinforces traditional alpha masculinity and submissive femininity. (This line of thought is not intended in any way to make excuses for Rodger’s murderousness, but to try to imagine him as part of the same social world we all live in and not as simply a monster.) The thread has produced over a million tweets, and they are by turns moving, enraging, astute, sorrowful, and terrifying. Even though most of the tweets do not directly mourn the people Rodger killed, the tweets accumulate into a kind of memorial, a stern demand for a more just society. 

It would be good if we could have that.

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

In that same post of Futrelle’s he does a quick review of Twitter assholes explaining away any connection between the actions of Elliot Rodger and the popular sport of misogyny.

When a white supremacist murders blacks or Jews, no one doubts that his murders are driven by his hateful, bigoted ideology. When homophobes attack a gay youth, we rightly label this a hate crime.

But when a man filled to overflowing with hatred of women acts upon this hatred and launches a killing spree targeting women, many people find it hard to accept that his violence has anything to do with his misogyny. They’re quick to blame it on practically anything else they can think of – guns, video games, mental illness – though none of these things in themselves would explain why a killer would target women.

In the case of Elliot Rodger, who set out on Friday night aiming, as he put it in a chilling video, to “slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up, blonde slut” in a popular sorority house at the University of California, Santa Barbara, some Men’s Rights activists and other manospherians are doing their best to convince the world that misogyny had nothing to do with it.

On A Voice for Men, for example, Janet Bloomfield (who goes by the name JudgyBitch), notes that Rodger killed more men than women…

(more…)

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

More shit news, via the BBC.

Prominent Libyan journalist Meftah Buzeid, known for his fierce criticism of Islamist militias, has been shot dead in the city of Benghazi.

He was the editor of the Burniq newspaper and had regularly appeared on television challenging the rise of such groups since the 2011 revolution.

The choke hold gets tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter.

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

David Futrelle starts a post on Elliot Rodger with a horrible chart he says Rodger posted.

I couldn’t even figure it out at first, but then I did.

But his killing spree had nothing to with misogyny. Never forget that. It was just his own individual quirkiness.

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

Here’s one I didn’t know about – Todd Kincannon, Tea Party honcho from South Carolina. Crooks and Liars is one source for this tweet (and there are others):

I was so impressed by that that I looked him up, and found a Salon article from January.

All the evidence indicates that Todd Kincannon, a former South Carolina GOP operative, is a bad dude. Not only in the sense that he frequently tweets things that are hostile, bigoted and dehumanizing — whichhedoes — but also in the sense that he’s quite likely a sexual harasser, too. A real winner.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, to find that Kincannon, who regards himself as some kind of Twitter provocateur, has caused an outrage on Twitter with his latest barrage of hate-tweets. But instead of focusing his ire on Trayvon Martin, trans* people, or U.S. veterans, Kincannon has set his sights on Wendy Davis, the Texas Democrat who is currently in the midst of running her underdog campaign to become the next governor of the Lone Star State.

Let me guess – he gave careful explanations for his disagreement with her policy proposals?

Ok that’s enough of a sample for me. There’s plenty more there.

Good that we don’t live in a misogynist culture, isn’t it.

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

Another horrible news item from Pakistan – Dawn reports that a US-based doctor in Pakistan to do humanitarian work was murdered as he visited an Ahmadi cemetery.

The doctor was in Pakistan on a short visit to do voluntary work at the Tahir Cardiac Hospital, a private institution that he himself helped build a few years back.

And that’s his reward.

The Wall Street Journal has more.

An American doctor of Pakistani origin was shot dead in central Pakistan by unidentified gunmen on Monday, police said, in an attack that appeared to target him because of his membership in the minority Ahmadiyya religious community.

Dr. Mehdi Ali, 50, was walking with family members in the town called Chanab Nagar, also known as known as Rabwah, in the Punjab province, at around 5 a.m. when two gunmen on motorcycles shot and killed him, police official Tariq Warraich said.

Good old religion, motivating outgroup hatreds for thousands of years. Thank you, religion; that’s so useful.

The Ahmadiyya community’s spokesman, Saleem Uddin, said Dr. Mehdi, an Ohio-based cardiologist, had arrived in Pakistan on Saturday for a week of volunteer work at the Tahir Heart Institute, a hospital run by the community.

“He was a gentle, charitable man with no enemies. We don’t know who could have done this, but everyone is aware of the campaign against our community,” Mr. Uddin said. “They have killed someone who came back to Pakistan to help the people here, regardless of their faith.”

Mr. Warraich, the police official, said there had been no threats to Dr. Ali or the Tahir Heart Institute recently. However, another police official in Chanab Nagar, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said extremist organizations regularly distributed fliers against the hospital.

“We often see pamphlets and posters that say it is against Islam to be treated at this hospital because it is run by Ahmadis,” the police official said.

Dr. Ali is survived by his wife and three sons. His wife, his wife’s cousin, and one of his sons were walking with him when he was killed, said police and community members.

That’s so sickening, and heart-rending. Dr Mehdi does a good thing, so fanatics tell everyone not to make use of that good thing because of a trivial meaningless religious difference, and for good measure they murder Dr Mehdi.

People, do good things, not bad things.

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

This is a good one…

Sophie Rose @SophieT_UK · May 25

#YesAllWomen because the media present men as people but present women as sexual objects pic.twitter.com/UeQ0CMT9xd

Now of course that could in theory be a misleading because unrepresentative selection of Rolling Stone covers. It could be that a representative selection of Rolling Stone covers would show an equal number of men posing with strategic clothes left off and a seductive facial expression, and an equal number of women head and shoulders face front with shirt on looking thoughtful/sullen. That could be, in principle. But in reality?

You be the judge.

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

Laurie Penny has an angry piece in the New Staggers about misogyny and the rush to deny that misogyny makes any difference to anything.

This is not the first time that women and unlucky male bystanders have been massacred by men claiming sexual frustration as justification for their violence. In 1989, 25-year-old Marc Lépine shot 28 people at the École Polytechnique in Quebec, Canada, claiming he was “fighting feminism”. Fourteen women died. In 2009, a 48-year-old man called George Sodini walked into a gym in the Pittsburgh area and shot 13 women, three of whom died. His digital manifesto was a lengthier version of Rodger’s, vowing vengeance against the female sex for refusing to provide him with pleasure and comfort. Online misogynists approved.

“When men kill women, the underlying reason is almost always an unfulfilled psychosexual need . . . to men celibacy is walking death, and anything is justified in avoiding that miserable fate,” wrote “Roissy in DC” of the Pittsburgh killing, as reported by Jezebel in 2009.  “At least it is implied that feminism is to blame and he is taking a last stand,” said another. “I had been waiting for this (almost thinking I had to do it myself) and I am impressed. Kudos.”

The ideology behind these attacks – and there is ideology – is simple. Women owe men. Women, as a class, as a sex, owe men sex, love, attention, “adoration”, in Rodger’s words. We owe them respect and obedience, and our refusal to give it to them is to blame for their anger, their violence - stupid sluts get what they deserve. Most of all, there is an overpowering sense of rage and entitlement: the conviction that men have been denied a birthright of easy power.

And it is what it is. It’s not something else. It’s absurd to be in denial about it. When people create public rage-rants about X set of people and say they’re going to kill X set of people and then immediately go out and kill some of X set of people, it’s not delusional or “ideological” to connect the rants and threats with the killing.

Why can we not speak about misogynist extremism – why can we not speak about misogyny at all – even when the language used by Elliot Rodger is everywhere online?

We are told, repeatedly, to ignore it. It’s not real. It’s just “crazy”, lonely guys who we should feel sorry for. But as a mental health activist, I have no time for the language of emotional distress being used to excuse an atrocity, and as a compassionate person I am sick of being told to empathise with the perpetrators of violence any time I try to talk about the victims and survivors. That’s what women are supposed to do. We’re supposed to be infinitely compassionate. We’re supposed to feel sorry for these poor, confused, vengeful individuals. Sometimes we’re allowed to talk about our fear, as long as we don’t get angry. Most of all, we mustn’t get angry.

We have allowed ourselves to believe, for a long time, that the misogynist subcultures flourishing on- and offline in the past half-decade, the vengeful sexism seeding in resentment in a time of rage and austerity, is best ignored. We have allowed ourselves to believe that those fetid currents aren’t really real, that they don’t matter, that they have no relation to “real-world” violence.

I haven’t. I haven’t allowed myself to believe that at all, and I don’t believe it. I don’t think it is best ignored; I think it’s best challenged and defeated, including driven underground if that’s possible. No, I don’t think it’s “healthier” to let it expose itself so that people can argue with it; I don’t think that’s how it works. I think the more it “exposes itself” the more recruits it gets and the hotter the rage gets. I think the whole thing needs to be fucking stopped, by shame and lost jobs and ostracism and every other social tool in the arsenal.

We have been told for a long time that the best way to deal with this sort of harrassment and violence is to laugh it off. Women and girls and queer people have been told that online misogynists pose no real threat, even when they’re sharing intimate guides to how to destroy a woman’s self-esteem and force her into sexual submission. Well, now we have seen what the new ideology of misogyny looks like at its most extreme. We have seen incontrovertible evidence of real people being shot and killed in the name of that ideology, by a young man barely out of childhood himself who had been seduced into a disturbing cult of woman-hatred. Elliot Rodger was a victim – but not for the reasons he believed.

Misogyny is nothing new, but there is a specific and frightening trend taking place, and if we’re not going to accept it, we have to call it by its name. The title of the PUA bible belies the truth: this is not a game. Misogynist extremism does not exist in a mystical digital fairyland where there are no consequences. It is real. It does damage. It kills.  And this is no longer a topic where abstraction is anything approaching appropriate.

But…still we are told to shut up about it. Even by some women.

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

There’s a nice article at The Humanist about the Women in Secularism conference.

Lindsay’s opening remarks stressed CFI’s commitment to equality and added that “stirring up trouble…is how we advance as a movement.” A panel of writers and bloggers discussed online activism and the power and pitfalls of a viral hashtag like #bringbackourgirls. While some criticize the passing along of a Twitter hashtag as superficial activism, panelists saw it as using one’s privilege to elevate the voices of the less privileged (in that case raising awareness of the missing Nigerian school girls).

Moderated by Lindsay Beyerstein, the panel included Soraya Chemaly, Amy Davis Roth, Zinnia Jones, and Miri Mogilevsky in one of the best discussions of the conference. A successful panel can happen as if by magic sometimes, but I think really relies on an integration of expertise, personal experience, and articulation. That chemistry was working here as the panelists discussed online campaigns they’d led or been part of and the backlash they endured as a result.

…

Chemaly, a media critic and activist, made sharp points, one being that websites should see the comments to articles as part of their content and moderate responsibly or consider abolishing the comments section altogether, as Popular Science has done. After presenting a talk on gender and free expression (“It’s not that women talk too much. People expect us to talk less”), she led a panel on intersectionality and humanism with Jones, Mogilevsky, Heina Dadabhoy, and Debbie Goddard.

Does intersectionality—examining intersections between forms of oppression—spell mission creep for humanist organizations? Certainly people who join groups seek unity. For atheist and humanist organizations, anti-religious topics achieve that, but does discussing things like immigration, racism, and—yes—sexism disrupt it?

My view? Yes, it can, but what are ya gonna do? It’s inevitable, that kind of disruption. Why? Because when you work in a group for awhile, if you’re one of the kinds of people who gets more or less politely shoved aside, you end up noticing. That can’t be helped, nor should it be. Unity is good, but not always at the expense of equal treatment. (I say “not always” because there can be emergencies, when it may be reasonable to postpone equal treatment concerns.)

Erm ok warning for inclusion of erm complimentary reference to dear Self but I can’t help it because of all the others. (“Seasoned” is a lovely euphemism for “ancient”; I’ll have to use that more.)

If day one was driven by younger secular women working largely in the digital trenches, day two was carried by the more academic and seasoned rabble-rousers. Barbara Ehrenreich, Rebecca Goldstein, Ophelia Benson, Taslima Nasrin, Susan Jacoby, and Katha Pollitt made an all-star cast of secular women writers in discussing their own exits from the religious traditions of their childhood, their thoughts on why women are so polite when it comes to religion, and even delving boldly into the conundrum of multiculturalism. Joining them were former charismatic minister Candace Gorman, Americans United for Separation of Church and State’s Sarah Jones, Huffington Post Associate Editor Mandy Velez, Jezebel columnist Lindy West, and American Atheists’ managing director and The Citizen Lobbyist author Amanda Knief. (Comedian Leighann Lord performed at the evening banquet, which, unfortunately, I had to miss).

I’m not going to lie; that second sentence makes me feel all warm and fuzzy, however absurd it may be.

Other notable quotes from WIS III:

“[When considering Muslim feminists] I used to think, why are you trying to fix this mess? Just leave it! But now I realize their value in de-fanging religion. I view them with admiration as they try to fix the hot mess I left behind.” – Heina Dadabhoy

 “I have no respect for any religion.” –Taslima Nasrin

“There are bigger problems facing woman than Internet trolls, but who will continue to write about those women if female bloggers are driven off the Internet?” –Lindy West

“The degree to which [religions] aren’t dangerous to women is the degree to which they have been infiltrated by secularism.” –Susan Jacoby

I wrote some of those down too.

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

There’s a police officer in Tulsa, Oklahoma – an officer officer, a captain – who thinks he has a “duty to proselytize” – even in uniform, even on duty – anyone who doesn’t have the same religious beliefs as his. Huh. I would think he has a duty not to, because separation of church and state. If there’s any branch of government you don’t want proselytizing you, it’s the police or the military.

Fortunately, a federal appellate court saw it the same way. The ACLU explains:

In 2011, the Islamic Society of Tulsa organized a Law Enforcement Appreciation Day to show its gratitude for protection provided after threats to its mosque. As part of its longstanding community-policing initiative, the Tulsa Police Department requested some of its officers to attend, as they had for hundreds of other outreach events hosted by various religious organizations over the years.

One officer – Captain Paul Fields – refused, however, claiming his attendance would pose a “moral dilemma.” Even when in uniform, Fields argued, he had a “duty to proselytize” anyone who doesn’t share his Christian beliefs. Despite his supervisors’ assurances that no one at the event would be required to participate in any religious observations or express or adopt any beliefs, and despite their offers that he send a subordinate in his place, Fields wouldn’t follow orders.

In a unanimous decision yesterday, a federal appellate court rightly found Captain Fields’s claims to have no merit, agreeing with the Tulsa Police Department and theACLU. Though certainly entitled to his own deeply held beliefs, as a police officer, Captain Fields is bound to serve all members of the community, regardless of their faith.

Including, I might add, no faith at all.

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

Another screenshot. Must stop with all these screenshots. But…

This is from the comments on the Ex-Muslims of North America Facebook page’s posting of the New York Times article. It explains things so neatly…

Zubair Changaiz

shoot them all who leave islam

no concept of Ex Muslim or parallism, those people who leave islam there is no place in islam just shoot them

Hos Loftus Thanks for shooting down the “Islam is the religion of peace” and “there is no compulsion in Islam” crap!

Sam Al-Nahi Yeah, this must be that Muslim peace and serenity I keep hearing about.

Zubair Changaiz yup i know islam is the religion of peace and we muslim love humanity but those people who left islam are called “murtad” and there is clear cut order “shoot them”

Ok

It’s Peace But. It’s Love Humanity But. It’s Those Who Leave My Religion Are Not Human And.

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

To my surprise – I’m always surprised, no matter how repeatedly I see these things; I seem to be incurably naïve – I’m seeing people on Twitter complaining about “radical feminists” making connections between Elliot Rodger’s noisy explicit hatred of women and his murder of some women. It turns out it’s “selfish” and “grandstanding” to make this connection, even though Elliot Rodgers made it himself.

Steve Zara @sjzara

I see a really important question – can the extremely common harassment of women be enabling of violence? I have no idea.

Miranda Celeste Hale @mirandachale

@sjzara Plus, the #YesAllWomen thing is a fear-mongering stunt that encourages women to see themselves as perpetual victims. Fuck that.

Steve Zara @sjzara

@mirandachale My particular concern is that it’s grandstanding fuelled by tragedy.

Miranda Celeste Hale @mirandachale

@sjzara Exactly. People who take advantage of a tragedy in that way are extremely selfish. It’s heartbreaking to see, really.

“Grandstanding fuelled by tragedy”? What does that even mean? People are making the connection between noisy misogyny and violence to…show off? Why would that be the case? How would that work?

Am I “grandstanding” for instance when I pay a lot of attention – public, blog post and social media attention – to the kidnapping and enslavement of schoolgirls in Nigeria by a violently misogynist group of Islamists? Is that “grandstanding”? Is it grandstanding to make a connection between Boko Haram’s misogynist theocratic views and its actions?

And what is “extremely selfish” about making a connection between misogyny and violence? What is even a little bit selfish about that? I don’t see it; I can’t see it.

These aren’t the scruffy pseudonymous photoshoppers, these are serious people, yet here they are fretting (or raging) about the “grandstanding” and “extreme selfishness” of people who see a connection between pervasive misogyny and an incident of violence against women.

It’s baffling.

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

There’s also a good article in The Bell Jar on Elliott Rodger and his hatred of women and misogyny in general.

He was an active member of the “PUAhate, an online forum (which has been down since the shootings) dedicated to “revealing the scams, deception and misleading marketing techniques used by dating gurus and the seduction community to mislead men and profit from them.” And just to clarify, they’re not revealing these scams because of how vile and misogynistic they are, but rather because these men have tried these techniques and still failed to trick women into sleeping with them. These are men who both feel entitled to have sex with women and also blame all women everywhere for not fucking them. See, they want to have sex with a woman because that’s what they deservejust for being dudes, but they also hate women for withholding what they view as rightfully theirs. And I mean, boy do they ever hate women. The PUAhate forum has, according to an article on The Hairpin, threads with titles like “Are ugly women completely useless to society?” and “Have any hot women ever committed suicide?”

Most men like that don’t kill women. I bet most of them don’t treat women very well though.

Last night, shortly before going on his killing spree, Rodger posted a video on YouTube to serve as his manifesto. In it, he declares that he’s a 22 year old virgin, and then goes on to say:

‘College is the time when everyone experiences those things such as sex and fun and pleasure. But in those years I’ve had to rot in loneliness. It’s not fair. You girls have never been attracted to me. I don’t know why you girls aren’t attracted to me. But I will punish you all for it,’ he says in the video, which runs to almost seven minutes.

‘I’m going to enter the hottest sorority house of UCSB and I will slaughter every single spoilt, stuck-up, blonde slut that I see inside there. All those girls that I’ve desired so much, they would’ve all rejected me and looked down on me as an inferior man if I ever made a sexual advance towards them,’

‘I’ll take great pleasure in slaughtering all of you. You will finally see that I am, in truth, the superior one. The true alpha male …’

Once at a book group, years ago, we asked about the roots of misogyny, and a guy there gave exactly that explanation. He gave it as one who experienced it that way, too, which was slightly unnerving.

This is what the Men’s Rights Movement teaches its members. Especially vulnerable, lonely young men who have a hard time relating to women. It teaches them that women, and especially feminist women, are to blame for their unhappiness. It teaches them that women lie, that they cheat, trick and manipulate. It teaches them that men as a social class are dominant over women and that they are entitled to women’s bodies. It teaches them that women who won’t give them what they want deserve some kind of punishment.

We need to talk about this. The media, especially, needs to address this. We live in a culture that constantly devalues women in a million little different ways, and that culture has evolved to include a vast online community of men who take that devaluation to its natural conclusion: brutal, violent hatred of women. And I don’t mean that all these men have been physically violent towards women, but rather that they use violent, degrading, dehumanizing language when discussing women. Whose bodies, just as a reminder, they feel completely entitled to.

It’s not a good arrangement.

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

Simon collected posts by Elliot Rodger on the Bodybuilding.com forum in a Storify. Rodgers is the guy who shot a bunch of people in Santa Barbara because nobody liked him and because women are shit. Be warned.

Women don’t deserve rights. They are evil, sadistic beasts who whore themselves out to degenerate men and ignore the men who actually deserve them.

I’m tired of seeing losers with hot chicks Seriously, today at my college I saw this short, ugly Indian guy driving a Honda civic, and he had a hot blonde girl in his passenger seat. What on earth is up with that?!?!? I would climb mount Everest 10 times just to have a girl like that with me. I drive a BMW coupe and I’ve struggled all my life to get a girlfriend. What’s wrong with this world? Does anyone else get disturbed and offended when you see sights like this? Someone make sense of this ridiculousness.

Well, it makes a good point. It’s been my life struggle to get a beautiful, white girl; while that guy seemed to get one to hang out with him easily, despite having a worse car and being less white than me. I deserve her more. She should be in my passenger seat.

No hot blonde in his car, so out come the guns.

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

So now I’ve looked at it.

This is what it is; it is this.

Policy Recommendations on Tax Policy

[an image of a tax form with a pen lying across it]

The same tax rules should apply to all non-profit organizations, whether religious or secular. Because of separation of church and state, government should not provide tax loopholes to religious organizations, or excuse them from the disclosures that non-religious organizations must make.

Find an overview of our public policy recommendations touching on:

• Tax Loopholes for Religious Organizations

• Political Endorsement from the Pulpit

That’s it, that’s what there is. There’s nothing more. That’s their resource for us on the subject of policy on tax policy.

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

So you go to the Global Secular Council’s Issues section, which it has seven of which.

Constitutional Law
Discrimination
Education
Health and Safety
International
Military
Tax Policy

Already that looks odd, because how can constitutional law be global? And are they pronouncing on tax policy for the whole world? And the global military? And if they’re global, isn’t is all supposed to be international, so why is there an International section?

So we’ll look at them.

Constitutional Law

Uh oh. Bad start. The image, for one -

I recognize it. Lots of people will recognize it. It’s not global. It’s Murkan.

And the first paragraph -

The first freedom protected by the Bill of Rights is the right of every American to a secular government that does not subscribe to religious beliefs or prohibit citizen engagement in private religious practices. It is the first of several pronouncements in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. A religion having many members, or an action being popular, provides no constitutional argument in favor of entangling religion and law.

Guys guys guys guys – what are you thinking? This is strictly American; United Statesean. Have you completely forgotten that you called yourself global? This is not global.

It’s also, frankly, not interesting or useful. Why do we need this new thing to teach everyone the alphabet? We’ve already got lots of secular and atheist lawyers. We don’t need to start at the beginning.

They tell us to go look at their recommendations.

Find an overview of our public policy recommendations touching on:

-a menu of six items. Ok, I pick The Free Exercise Clause. What do I get? Three short bland paragraphs. Guys guys guys guys the subject is bigger than that, more complicated than that, more interesting than that. What on earth is the point of this supposed to be?

And, as I mentioned, it’s entirely American. There’s nothing global about it.

This gets more embarrassing the more I look at it. It’s like the “Brights” fiasco blown up into a whole pseudo-”Council” thingummy.

Ok going back a step what do we find under the “Issue” where they do turn their attention to the “global” – the Issue called “International.”

Policy Recommendations on International Issues

Freedom of religion, belief, and expression are fundamental American values. They are enshrined in the Constitution and echoed in international human rights law. As a leader in the international community, the U.S. should actively participate in global efforts to protect these vital freedoms.

That’s it. That’s all there is. I swear; I’m not making it up. You can see for yourself. Well there is a graphic of a world map, so at least we can see that they know there’s a world outside the US.

I wouldn’t mind if they’d just set up a blog for themselves. Of course not! I think everyone should have a blog. But they tell us they’re YOUR RESOURCE CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL POLICY. This isn’t much of a resource center. They tell us they’ve got a lock on the smartest people in the world to do this thing. They tell us they’re global.

Nope, nope, nope, nope.

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