Wait wait, before you buy tickets for Braco in New York, I missed something I should have warned you about.

Please note for ALL GAZING EVENTS: Must be 18 years of age or over to attend and pregnant women are not allowed to attend after their third month of pregnancy due to the intensity of the experience for some. People with illnesses are advised to follow the recommendation of their doctor before and after attending a gazing session.

It is recommended to bring a photo of your child or a person needing help who cannot attend, as this method has been proven to be equally effective and the most balanced way for some to receive help who cannot attend.

Pregnant women might find themselves giving birth to an angel, or Gandhi, or a wreath of flowers, or some other terribly embarrassing and inconvenient thing.

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

Thanks to Josh, who was invited to partake and will not be taking up the invitation, I have learned about a person called Braco, who gazes. Braco’s gaze is said to do magical things.

Braco’s gaze touches his visitors with peace, silence and hope. Amazing transformations happen, and many find new power, vitality and a zest for life resulting from their experience. Braco does not teach, talk or diagnose to give treatments—he simply gazes in silence and offers his gift to visitors—independent from religion, ideology, race, color and culture.

Cool gig, don’t you think? He does nothing – he teaches not, neither does he talk, and he doesn’t diagnose either. I conclude he also doesn’t dance, or turn somersaults, or pivot on his thumb, or do contortionist moves like lifting his feet over his head and then walking on them. I deduce he doesn’t whistle, or sing, or read poetry, or whip up a nice poulet basquaise, or ice skate, or watch tv while you watch him watching tv. He just gazes.

And apparently people give him money to do that!

Watch out though. Be careful. There’s a warning on his website.

Warning: Fraud by Braco Impersonators

It has recently come to our attention that somebody created a Braco Facebook Page, pretending to be Braco himself and contacted people. Please know that Braco never personally contacts people or communicates with people directly. He does not give any interviews and he does not speak in public.

Omigod someone is fraudulently pretending to be Braco and perhaps fraudulently gazing at people!

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

RNS reports via the Washington Post -

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Monday (June 2) warned married couples against substituting cats and dogs for children — a move that he said leads to the “bitterness of loneliness” in old age.

Fraaaaaaaaaaaaaanciiiiiiiiiiiis – aren’t you forgetting something? You’re substituting a bunch of celibate priests for children, so who are you to tell other people to have children instead of dogs?!

Also, it’s none of your business. It wouldn’t be any of your business even if you had 18 children, which for all I know you do, given the funny ways of your funny church. It’s none of your business; your church doesn’t get to tell us what to do any more. Even Catholics don’t have to obey you; you can’t burn them for disobeying any more. You should mind your own business.

He was blessing some married couples in the Vatican chapel next to his bedsitter.

But he went a step further and strongly criticized those couples who choose not to have children, saying they had been influenced by a culture of “well-being” that says life is better without kids.

“You can go explore the world, go on holiday, you can have a villa in the countryside, you can be carefree,” the pope said.

“It might be better — more comfortable — to have a dog, two cats, and the love goes to the two cats and the dog. Is this true or not? Have you seen it?

“Then, in the end this marriage comes to old age in solitude, with the bitterness of loneliness.”

Or not, and also, having children is not automatically a hedge against loneliness or solitude in old age. Also, as I mentioned, you don’t (at least officially) have any yourself, and that’s the policy and indeed the rule of your horrible tyrannical church, so shut up.

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

You know who developed the whooping cough vaccine? No neither did I until I looked it up. Pearl Kendrick.

In 1893, when Pearl Kendrick was a three-year-old growing up in Wheaton, Illinois, she was struck with a case of whooping cough – known as pertussis to scientists, named after the bacteria (Bordetella pertussis) that causes it. Four and one-half decades later she would have her revenge, developing the first effective vaccine to combat the ravenous disease.

Measles, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, diphtheria, polio… These are all dreadful diseases, but none claimed as many young lives in the United States in the 1920s as whooping cough.

…

At its height, whooping cough claimed over 6,000 lives each year in the United States. Remarkably, during the 1940s, it was responsible for the deaths of more infants than polio, measles, tuberculosis, and all other childhood diseases combined. Chicago officials were so alarmed they required infected children, following a two-week quarantine period, to be accompanied by an attendant and to wear a yellow armband with the words “Whooping Cough” written in large black letters on it.

Kendrick got a PhD in microbiology at Johns Hopkins and developed an effective vaccine.

And guess what else.

In 1936, in desperate need of additional funds to continue her work, Kendrick invited First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to spend the day at her laboratory. Mrs. Roosevelt may have found a kindred spirit in Kendrick, as the First Lady had begun to investigate the practice of using orphans in vaccine research. This practice appalled Kendrick, and she instead used the strong ties she built with the residents of Grand Rapids to find willing volunteers for her research. Mrs. Roosevelt spent a full thirteen hours with Kendrick that day – she later helped find the funding to add several workers to Kendrick’s staff.

No using orphans in vaccine research! Recruit willing volunteers instead!

This allowed Kendrick and Eldering to continue a large-scale trial they had begun in 1934, which eventually involved over 5,800 children. The results were stellar, with the children who received the active vaccine demonstrating a strong immunity. Kendrick also settled the issue of quarantine times, which were being hotly debated, with some isolation periods being as short as two weeks. Her research revealed children were infectious through three weeks but, after five weeks, over 90 percent were non-contagious. Michigan adopted her standard and set a 35 day quarantine.

By 1943, Kendrick’s and Eldering’s vaccine was in routine use throughout the United States, and by the early 1960s the rate of incidence of whooping cough had plummeted to less than 5 percent of the 1934 rate. In 1942, motivated by their concern of “lessening discomfort of the child,” Kendrick and Eldering combined three vaccines into a single shot, the Diphtheria, Pertussis, and Tetanus (DPT) vaccine which became the standard vaccine nationwide.

So that’s Pearl Kendrick.

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

California is being hit with a massive epidemic of whooping cough. Of whooping cough – one of those diseases for which there’s been an effective vaccine for more than 70 years.

California is being hit hard with a whooping cough epidemic, according to the state’s public health department, with 800 cases reported in the past two weeks alone.

The agency says that there were 3,458 whooping cough cases reported between January 1 and June 10, well ahead of the number of cases reported for all of 2013.

This is a problem of “epidemic proportions,” the department said. And the number of actual cases may be even higher, because past studies have shown that for every case of whooping cough that is reported, there are 10 more that are not officially counted.

Nice job, anti-vaxxers.

California has historically had higher vaccination rates than other states, but a recent study found large clusters of parents who did not vaccinate their children close to areas with a large number of whooping cough cases during the 2010 California outbreak.

The current outbreak is too new for scientists to know if there is a similar pattern.

Whooping cough cases have spread rapidly in the United States this year, with a 24% increase nationally in the number of cases, compared to January through April of last year, according to the CDC.

Other states are reporting similar problems. The Mobile County Health Department in Alabama, for example, recently noted an “alarming” rise of cases locally, with 18 cases in May and June. That’s more than all the reported cases in Mobile for 2013, health officials say.

Herd immunity? What’s that?

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

Rachel Holmes in the Guardian names 10 feminist classics. In her introduction to the list she makes the important point that feminism is far from new or exclusively modern.

Gender-based inequality remains the greatest global injustice and the struggle against it spans millennia and continents. These books make us more impatient for change, but they may also be turned to in dark hours when it feels change might never come. Feminism is no impulse or outcome of modernity. As these books show, it has been around for centuries. We don’t need to re-invent the wheel, or number what “wave” we are now riding; we need to harness an atomic rocket to it.

Yes to that.

The list itself is woefully deficient because it doesn’t include Does God Hate Women?

Kidding, kidding.

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

Originally a comment by Robert Smythson on Meeting the needs.

“At the end of the day we have a school that has 90 to 95% Muslim children, we meet their needs”.

This statement is really the key to the whole issue. I’ve lurked here for a fair old time, but I hope I might be able to contribute something, having taught workshops at one of the “Trojan horse” schools in Birmingham.

I found that in a nominally secular school where the majority of pupils are Muslim, the efforts made to “meet their needs” created a culture which accepts these “needs” as normal and this had conspicuous effects on the relationship between male and female pupils. When we “meet the needs” of children who have been brought up to believe that it is normal that man have hegemony over women, then we simply allow them to act out their poisonous beliefs.

The boys did not mix with the girls, though there was no segregation practiced by the staff.

The boys paid no attention to the female staff.

The girls only talked amongst themselves.

The girls would not proffer answers to questions.

The boys regulated the girls’ behaviour by shouting them down.

Allegedly there was a problem with girls disappearing at “marriageable” age.

If you accommodate the hijab in such a school, then it becomes abnormal not to wear it if you are a Muslim girl.

It doesn’t even take a great uniformity of belief amongst the pupils; just that enough over-indulged boys are allowed to set the tone and cow the rest into living their way. The girls are silent on the matter, so who knows or cares what they think. The children operated in their own, self imposed, self policed culture. No outside pressure from islamists is needed (and may indeed be fictitious). They have been raised to believe this is the way things should be; and have never been challenged by staff who attempt in good faith to accept and accommodate their needs.
I’d be very reluctant to blame the staff for this. They work in an extremely difficult environment and struggle generally heroically against a tide of low expectation, little support, inadequate facilities and insufficient money. I can’t imagine any of them would feel it was their place to tell the assembled school that most of their deeply held beliefs were both crazy and wrong.
(Hence, actually, the conflicting narratives from staff and the government can be resolved by realising that even if the staff were doing great things in terms of raising attainment, this doesn’t mean that they aren’t operating in a culture in which the nastier elements of conservative religion thrive.)
If you think this is only Muslim problem: look to the revelations about faith-based institutions in Ireland. This can happen anywhere the most misogynistic elements of religion are allowed to go unchallenged – they become normal.

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

Bess’s house. You can see her name at the top.

You have to click on it to get the real effect of course.

Credit GoogleEarth

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

Al-Shabab is busy making Somalia a better place by stuffing women into heavy black bags in a hot climate.

Somalia’s al-Shabab militants have rounded up around 100 women and ordered them to comply with a strict Islamic dress code or risk being whipped.

The women were arrested in Buale, about 300km (185 miles) south-west of the capital, Mogadishu.

“Arrested” is a funny word for it. The women didn’t do anything wrong, and Al-Shabab are criminals. Al-Shabab didn’t arrest the women, it unlawfully grabbed them.

The women were arrested in the market, taken away and warned before being released.

Because it was their first offence, they were not punished but they could be whipped in public if caught again.

It wasn’t an offence at all. The offence was grabbing these women and threatening them with violence. It’s strange how easily the BBC falls into language that normalizes the outrageous criminal violence of Al-Shabab and denormalizes the perfectly ordinary act of not wearing “Islamic” clothes.

Our analyst says the temperature can reach 35C (95F) at this time of year and so many women preferred to wear lighter, traditional clothes than those approved by al-Shabab.

The women were told to wear a niqab, which covers all of their body and face, leaving just a small slit for their eyes.

Imagine how suffocating that must be. I wear a lightweight cloth hat on sunny days but I yank it off whenever I’m in the shade even for a few seconds, because it’s hot – in Seattle in the 70s, not in the Somali desert in the 90s. I shudder to think what a niqab would feel like.

A UN-backed government, aided by African Union forces, has pushed al-Shabab out of the country’s main cities but it continues to stage deadly attacks there.

And to persecute people, especially women.

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

An imaginary walk, via GoogleEarth.

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

The Guardian reports on two schools in Bradford “under suspicion for practices similar to those seen in Birmingham during the Trojan horse investigation.”

The BBC reported that the previous headteacher of Carlton Bolling college, a state secondary resigned in 2012 after disagreements with the school’s governors, while minutes of governors’ meetings suggest that efforts were made to segregate boys and girls in sex and relationship education classes and in after-school activities.

The head, Chris Robinson, resigned because she felt her integrity and leadership were being questioned by governors, according to documents seen by the BBC.

Faisal Khan, the chair of governors at Carlton Bolling, denied the allegations and said the governors’ aim was to improve academic standards and meet the needs of the local community.

“At the end of the day we have a school that has 90 to 95% Muslim children, we meet their needs – whether it is halal food, whether it is prayer within school [or] wearing the hijab,” he told the BBC.

Wearing the hijab? What would a school need to do to “meet the needs” of girls wearing the hijab? I wonder if that’s really what he means, or if he means the needs of parents who want to enforce wearing the hijab on daughters who don’t want to. The two are quite different.

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

Richard Ackland explains about canon law in the Sydney Morning Herald. Why is the story always the same, always a matter of “protection of clergy against whom allegations of paedophilia have been made and giving victims the most incredible run-around”?

Why has the church taken that course of action instead of expelling these creepy “groomers and touchers” and sending them off to the police with a file note listing all the complaints against them?

It is puzzling, until you read Kieran Tapsell’s just published book, Potiphar’s Wife.

Tapsell is a retired Sydney lawyer who also studied for the priesthood, with canon law as his special interest – and it is here that he locates the problem.

You have to go back to the book of Genesis to work out who Potiphar and his wife were. Mrs Potiphar must have been the first recorded person to have accused her victim of rape, after unsuccessfully trying to seduce him.

Or perhaps she is in one of the first stories – told by men – of women who accuse their victims of rape after trying to seduce them. It’s a popular story. Gee I wonder why that might be.

Anyway. The church used to kick rapey priests out and hand them over to the state for punishment.

It was not until 1904 that Pope Pius X created a commission with the job of unifying the canon law code and tossing out unwanted bits. One of the discarded decrees was the one requiring priests who abused children to be sacked and prosecuted.

In 1922, Pope Pius XI issued Crimen Sollicitationis, which imposed the secret of the holy office. Priests who were meddlesome in the worst ways imaginable were to be kept under wraps.

This was subsequently confirmed in 1962. In 1974 the “secret of the holy office” was rebadged as the “pontifical secret”.

It was confirmed again in 2001 by Pope John Paul II. Later Benedict XVI (the German pope) conveniently declared the secrecy provisions extended to allegations of priests having sex with intellectually disabled people.

It must be so convenient to be able to pass your own laws that are the opposite of the real laws, and be able to follow your special laws instead of the real laws, and get away with it.

The response of the Vatican to the report of the Irish commission of investigation into priestly abuse of children, headed by Judge Yvonne Murphy, was instructive.

Benedict XVI had given the Dublin report “careful study” and was “deeply disturbed” by its contents.

Three months later, the Pope released a pastoral letter in which he laid the blame at the feet of the Irish bishops for not applying “the long established norms of canon law”.

Yet it was those very norms of secrecy that the bishops had sworn to uphold to protect abusing priests.

Certainly, there was no mention in the pastoral letter that the canon law was largely responsible for protecting these abusers. Nor was there any suggestion that this particular part of the code would be abolished, including the bit that makes it almost impossible to dismiss a priest without the priest’s consent.

The church does what it likes.

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

Wow. Jane Hamsher’s comments on that awful “The New Republic publishes a hit piece on Chris Hedges” post are so flippant and irresponsible they need a post of their own. Ethics, people! Journalistic ethics! This isn’t rocket surgery (to plagiarize a phrase I saw a few days ago and don’t remember the source of). Writers and journalists should tell the truth, and they shouldn’t put their names on other people’s work except in the standard way with proper attribution.

Hamsher comments on a suggestion of litigation.

Hedges is a public figure, and they’re pretty careful about what they say so I doubt a suit would get very far. But it’s a piece that they should be ashamed to have published. At 5,700 words it’s like the War and Peace of online journalism.

Do you see the full stupidity of that? First she admits the article probably tells the truth, then she says TNR should be ashamed of publishing it because it’s so long! Godalmighty.

For the record, TNR does sometimes publish long pieces. That just is something it does. Paul Berman has had very long articles published there, like the one on Tariq Ramadan.

Then someone else complains about the length, and Hamsher responds again.

It just kept going on. And on. And on. I finally just put it in a word counter. It’s clearly an attempt at “where there’s smoke there’s fire” insinuation, but I can’t imagine anyone who didn’t hate Hedges righteously would have the patience to read through.

Not clearly at all, because it’s not smoke. Also there’s that bit about doubting a lawsuit would get very far? Because it’s probably true?

And yet more of the “it was too looooooong and too hard to reeeeeeead” commentary from the person announcing it was a hit piece. (Maybe this explains her sympathy for Hedges; she’s a lazy reader so she has sympathy for his laziness as a writer.)

I confess to giving up about 2/3 of the way through when it was apparent it was never going to end, so if anyone takes the trouble to read through that and finds some actual proof, let us know. Then we can all sit and scratch our heads at why they buried their lede 4000 words down.

It would be kind of funny if Ketcham decided to sue Hamsher for accusing him of lying when she doesn’t even believe he did lie.

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

Another refugee from the 9th century is running for office.

Scott Esk is running for House District 91 state representative.

On his website, he says he is a conservative who wants to apply biblical principles to Oklahoma law.

But some are saying his views are extreme.

But? What do you mean but? Anybody who wants to apply biblical principles to any kind of law is extreme by definition.

Morris said, “This guy posted on Facebook that homosexuals should be stoned to death. My first response was you’re nuts, nobody would be stupid enough to do that.”

Morris says he found those postings from last summer on Facebook.

At the time, Esk had commented on a story about the pope saying “Who am I to judge?” on homosexuality.

Esk posted some old testament scripture that referred to homosexuality being punished.

Someone asked – “So just to be clear, you think we should execute homosexuals (presumably by stoning)?”

Esk responds – “I think we would be totally in the right to do it. That goes against some parts of libertarianism, I realize, and I’m largely libertarian, but ignoring as a nation things that are worthy of death is very remiss.”

Worthy of death. That’s biblical principles for you.

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

Jacques Rousseau pointed out a jaw-dropping item from South Africa.

Traditional Venda chiefs have given SABC acting chief operations officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng a wife, a cow, and a calf.

That should be a woman, a cow, and a calf. Traditional Venda chiefs gave some guy a woman along with a cow and a calf.

The Sowetan reported on Friday that women were lined up in Thohoyandou, Limpopo, on Wednesday for Motsoeneng to choose one. He and other SABC executives were in the area for a meeting with Mudzi wa Vhurereli ha Vhavenda, a lobby group of traditional leaders and healers.

“The girls were around 10 and they paraded for him to choose. He chose the one he liked,” Mudzi executive secretary Humbelani Nemakonde was quoted as saying.

“All the girls were there with their parents. Their parents knew what was going to happen and they all agreed.”

The woman Motsoeneng chose was pictured in the newspaper bare-breasted next to him. She is a 23-year-old human resources management student.

And a cow available for purchase or donation.

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

Speaking of gender segregation…have an incident in New York from last fall.

Republican mayoral candidate Joe Lhota did not object Wednesday when three women in his group — a Daily News reporter, a campaign aide and a member of his NYPD security detail — were asked to leave a Brooklyn synagogue during a campaign stop.

The Republican mayoral hopeful entered the ultra Orthodox Shomer Shabbos synagogue, in Borough Park, trailed by a gaggle of aides, reporters and security officers, as part of a walking tour of the neighborhood.

A synagogue official hurried over to the three women in the group — a Daily News reporter, a Lhota campaign aide, and a member of his security team — and asked them to leave while the men were allowed to stay.

Lhota emerged from the synagogue less than a minute later.

Asked about the incident afterward, he defended the synagogue.

“Throughout the Orthodox world, the Orthodox Jewish world as well as the Orthodox Muslim world, there are certain places that women are not involved in,” he said. “I will not as mayor violate their First Amendment constitutional rights for their religious practices.”

Imagine if it had been three black people or three Asians instead of three women. Would Lhota have been so compliant and so glib? I doubt it.

Why are there “certain places that women are not involved in”? Because women are viewed as secondary at best, that’s why. It’s because women are viewed as NotMen and thus Not As Good, i.e., inferior. By accepting the demand, Lhota is accepting that view. It’s not just some random arbitrary inexplicable religious quirk, it’s official god-ordained literal male supremacy.

H/t AnotherAnonymouse for prompting me to find this story.

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

The NSS reports that Ofsted has given the thumbs-up to gender segregation in schools.

The National Secular Society has accused Ofsted of “capitulating to oppressive religious demands” after the schools regulator told inspectors that gender segregation in faith schools should not be taken as a sign of inequality.

In recently updated guidance on inspecting publicly funded “faith schools”, inspectors are advised that in Muslim faith schools: “boys and girls may well be taught or seated separately according to the specific context, particularly during collective acts of worship. This should not be taken as a sign of inequality between different genders.”

That’s exactly what it should be taken as a sign of, not least because that’s what it is.

The guidance also cautions inspectors to be mindful to not misinterpret the wearing of the ‘hijab’ or headscarf as a sign of repression but instead to “understand that Muslim females see this as a part of their identity and a commitment to their beliefs within Islam”.

Except of course for the ones who don’t. But that’s fine, Ofsted, just pretend them out of existence. Let them grow up thinking of themselves as pollutants. What could possibly go wrong?

The guidance says most schools have a uniform for boys and girls which represents the “Islamic principle of modesty”.

Inspectors are advised that art and music lessons in Muslim schools can be “restricted”, that health and sex education will be taught within Islamic studies and that daily prayers will often “dictate the shape of the school day”.

In a section on “etiquette”, female inspectors are advised to “wear a trouser suit or longer skirt and jacket to cover their arms”. Female inspectors are also recommended to “carry a scarf in case they enter the prayer room”.

According to the guidance “Muslim men do not usually shake hands with women, and Muslim women do not shake hands with men”. Ofsted advise the “best policy is not to offer to shake hands unless someone offers their hand to you”.

It says inspectors also need to be aware that they may find themselves providing feedback from a lesson to a teacher that may be wearing a full ‘niqaab’ (face and head cover). In some schools male inspectors are told they will need another female present in order to give feedback to a female teacher.

In short, it will be like a little corner of Saudi Arabia. Just play along; it’s all good.

In mixed sex Jewish schools, inspectors are told that boys and girls are “in reality” taught separately – sometimes on two different sites some distance from one another.

When inspecting Jewish schools female inspectors are advised to wear a skirt rather than trousers and a blouse, but that any blouse worn should cover the collar bone. When inspecting strictly ultra-orthodox schools, inspectors are warned to “avoid wearing bright colours, and red in particular”.

The guidance appears to be at odds with Department for Education policy. A spokesperson for the DfE, said: “We are clear that segregation in the classroom is wrong. The Equalities Act applies to all types of school and it is unlawful for schools to discriminate against a pupil by treating them less favourably because of their sex.”

The National Secular Society called on Ofsted to reconsider its guidance.

I should think so.

To be continued.

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

Firedoglake is helping circle the wagons around Chris Hedges by posting a sneerily dismissive post about the New Republic article. (Don’t get me wrong, TNR can be full of shit and often is, but that doesn’t mean Ketcham’s article was.)

The New Republic has published a hit piece on Chris Hedges that accuses him of plagiarism — without ever really documenting any direct plagiarism as far as I can tell. I’ll admit that my eyes started to glaze over as I read the 5700 word piece, so it may have crept in there and I had simply gone catatonic.

Documentation? What kind of documentation would you expect other than what he provided? Photographs of the original copy? (Granted, he did ask for that in the case of the Harper’s piece, and was refused, so maybe that is the kind you’d expect.)

In mainstream journalism, with editors and fact-checkers, you assume that they’re not going to publish something of this kind unless they know it’s solid. That’s in fact part of why the Harper’s fact-checker kept on checking those facts: the reputation of Harper’s depends on not blithely publishing mistakes or lies or plagiarism. I really doubt the editors of TNR just read Ketcham’s article and said “cool story” and published it.

The piece was passed on by the American Prospect and Salon before TNR decided to pick it up. I started reading it thinking “okay, plagiarism, Chris Hedges, I’ll read this,” expecting to find some legitimate examples. But the best they could do was one section of a Harper’s Magazine article Hedges said he used with permission, and the original author wouldn’t comment. Then the article goes on to document times where Hedges’ writing was “close” to other pieces.

This story was maybe worth 500 words. Maybe. Apparently the Prospect and Salon didn’t think the Harper’s story wasn’t worth of publication without some sort of confirmation, and I have to say I’d make the same call. The only reason you’d publish a 5700 word long screed like this is if you really, really hated the guy and wanted to defame him and tarnish his image. (The next step will be to consistently refer to the fact that Hedges has been “accused of plagiarism in the past” — typical Neocon circle-jerk disinformation hatchet job).

Ah, no. That’s bullshit. Those places where Hedges’s writing was close to other pieces? They count. You cite people when you quote them, at least in non-fiction. (Allusions are part of the conventions of literature, including sticking them in without identifying them.) It can be just three words – “to paraphrase Hemingway.” But you’re supposed to say at least those three words rather than pass off an idea as your own if you’re imitating it as closely as Hedges did.

Maybe Prospect and Salon did think the story was worth publication but just didn’t feel like publishing it themselves. Maybe they said oh damn, Hedges plagiarizes, but we love him so…we’re not going to be the ones to go with this.

Regardless of whether the section was lifted or not, it does not take away from the fact that Hedges is a remarkable writer and a very original thinker. If you’re going to take the time and energy to read something, I’d highly recommend his “Rules of Revolt” published earlier this week, where he ruminates on the lessons of Tiananmen Square. I tweeted it out when I first read it, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

I’m sorry I wasted my time reading the TNR piece. It’s just juvenile neener-neener link bait.

Well he’s clearly not “a very original thinker” and from what I know of his writing he’s a terrible writer. Maybe I Don’t Believe in Atheists was unusual in its badness, maybe all his other stuff is well-written, but I found his ragey dishonesty in that book way too repellent to want to read anything else he wrote.

And at the end there it is, just as I said – “neener-neener link bait.” Uh huh. Jane Hamsher knows that how? Maybe the same way Chris Hedges knew all the untrue things he said in I Don’t Believe in Atheists.

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

The Edinburgh Evening News has more on the abuse of J K Rowling and in particular that contributed by “The Dignity Project.”

CHARITY regulators are investigating after a voluntary group appeared to post a Twitter message abusing JK Rowling over her £1 million donation to the No side in the independence referendum.

The tweet, from the account of The Dignity Project, read: “What a #bitch after we gave her shelter in our city when she was a single mum.”

It was one of many strongly worded posts attacking the Capital-based writer for supporting the Better Together campaign.

A later statement posted on the charity’s website claimed its account had been hacked. It said: “We are not responsible for any tweets that have been sent. As a charity we do not take any political stance and our opinion is people are free to donate to whoever they choose.”

But other Twitter users said the message had been auto-posted from the personal Facebook account of the charity’s founder, William Wood.

Oh dear, naughty, it turns out The Dignity Project was telling an untruth about that tweet. Not much dignity there, is there – call J K Rowling a bitch and an ungrateful scrounger for having an opinion you don’t like, then pretend it wasn’t you what said it. Booo.

According to its website, The Dignity Project, based in Belgrave Terrace, Corstorphine, was set up by William and Barbara McDonald-Wood and is linked to projects in East Africa, including a nursery school, a primary school and a computer training centre.

The Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator said it was aware that a number of concerns had been raised about the tweet. It added: “We are making urgent inquiries into the matter and will be seeking further information from the charity trustees.”

That’s interesting really, because here in the US it’s become normalized to call women bitches in anger or contempt or both. The reaction to this charity seems to indicate that it’s not altogether normalized in the UK. I’m a little surprised by that.

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