By embertine in a comment on You say tomato I say mascarpone.

My preferred version of feminism is pretty fundamentally different from the equity flavour, and I don’t think that’s a minor squabble. The conversation generally goes something like this:

Equity Feminists (EFs): Equality of opportunity does not equal equality of outcome.

Me and Mine (Ms): Hard to say until we have equality of opportunity.

EFs: We DO have equality of opportunity!

Ms: I don’t think we do.

EFs: The law says we do.

Ms:  That’s a good start!  But the law can’t erase bias and harmful stereotypes.  Those still exist.

EFs:  No they don’t!  You see sexism everywhere because you have a victim mentality.  You’re the REAL misogynist.

Ms: *sigh*

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

New from Atheist Ireland -

The Dublin Declaration on Secularism Empowering Women 2013

and the closing talk by Kate Smurthwaite, which I loved.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx1MFyXhj6k

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

There’s a well-known bit from Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier – a bit which motivated Victor Gollancz to disown the book, if I remember correctly. It was written as a Left Book Club selection and Gollancz inserted a disclaimer because of remarks like this one:

One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.

He prided himself on that kind of philistine “good old bluff Englishman” scorn – but at any rate it’s always struck me as significant that he lumped feminism in with sandal-wearing and fruit-juice drinking. Significant and also unpleasant. I’m not fond of that kind of unembarrassed contempt for the rights of other people.

Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter With Kansas? quotes US Senator John J Ingalls in 1890:

For a generation, Kansas has been the testing ground for every experiment in morals, politics, and social life. Doubt of all existing institutions has been respectable. Nothing has been venerable or revered merely because it exists or has endured. Prohibition, female suffrage, fiat money, free silver, every incoherent and fantastic dream of social improvement and reform, every economic delusion that has bewildered the foggy brains of fanatics, every political fallacy nurtured by misfortune, poverty and failure, rejected elsewhere, has here found tolerance and advocacy. [p 34]

Uh huh. Women voting – you can’t get much crazier than that.

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

A follow-up to Not if but where from last week. Dave Silverman is doing a Twitter survey to find out how people define “ally.” This has nudged me into realizing that the minimal sense (at least) is working together for a specific goal or cause; in other words it doesn’t necessarily mean an ally in all things, it can mean an ally for just one thing.

And I find I choke on using it that way. It has overtones of more…and I’m wondering how legitimate that is, and whether we need another word that would avoid that problem.

I choke on thinking of [people whose views on most things I detest] as allies of any kind.

I’ve been choking on this especially, lately, with the categories of atheists and skeptics. Well lots of us have. Lots of us have been finding out lately that many atheists are not our allies – except on atheism itself, and that turns out to be not enough for the purpose. It feels like a bad fit. Atheists who call us cunts at the drop of a hat don’t feel like allies of any kind.

Now if a meteor were approaching the earth then we could all be allies in trying to figure out how to survive. If the Nazis came back and started building nuclear weapons, we could all be allies in stopping them. But in issues that are not quite so urgent…it’s much more difficult.

I’m just talking about priorities, I suppose; about salience; about mattering. Atheism’s spot on my mattering map can change size, depending on what’s going on.

Or, to boil it down even further, I can just quote @splendisaurus:

Alright, so racists say they don’t like Islam. I also don’t like Islam. Should I “ally” with racists on this?

That’s a good example, and the answer is no – should not and must not; must do the very opposite.

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

Perusing Jessica Ahlquist’s Twitter timeline, where the small-minded and nasty go for exercise.

Texas Pride @TXPride80

@jessicaahlquist typical spoiled brat. Wanted attention along with her tree hugging, Obama worshipping parents. Just another welfare junky.

That one’s impressive for touching a lot of bases in a small space.

LibTURDS r Heartless @carrietony35

jessicaahlquist  YOU ARE A DISGRACE TO THE HUMAN RACE…YOU AND YOUR PARENTS HAVE DEEP ROOTED ISSUES

Interesting idea of what “heartless” and its opposite might be.

Jesterfaze @Jesterfaze

.@jessicaahlquist – It’s so sad that the selfishness of atheists has led to a persecution like political atmosphere for Christians.

Uh huh.

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

Cranston High School West has a new mural, and it had a party to celebrate.

To celebrate its 50-year reunion, the Class of 1963 gave the school the 5-by-10-foot mural on Saturday to replace the one that was taken down last year after a federal judge ruled that its references to religion made it unconstitutional.

It was the Class of ’63 that made a gift in 1959 of the original banner, which contained the words “Our Heavenly Father” and “Amen,” as well as a message to grow mentally, morally and physically.

On Saturday afternoon, before an invitation-only ceremony at the school to unveil the new mural, representatives of the class said the new gift was a way of moving on from the conflict stirred up by the old one, which drew national media coverage.

“The community is healed,” said Janice Bertino. “There is no more controversy.”

That’s sweet. Mind you, the community didn’t need to be sick in the first place.

In 2011, the Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union sued the school district and the city on behalf of Jessica Ahlquist, a 16-year-old student at Cranston West who is an atheist, challenging the banner’s constitutionality.

U.S. District Court Judge Ronald R. Lagueux ruled in January 2012 that the banner was unconstitutional and ordered it removed. That March, school officials complied, taking down the banner and the section of auditorium wall to which it was attached.

You know who wasn’t invited to the unveiling party for the new mural?

Jessica Ahlquist.

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

Al Stefanelli responded on Twitter with an example of someone talking about acid in the face.

Al Stefanelli @Stefanelli

@OpheliaBenson asks “Who’s been telling Stefanelli he deserves to have acid thrown in his face?” Here you go, Ophie: http://goo.gl/WyXig8

“Ophie”? Really? I don’t call him Ally or Steffie.

The link is to a Storify. There indeed is a tweet.

So there it is: he did get such a threat. I was wrong, he didn’t confabulate it.

(I have no idea who “Misandry Bee” is.)

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

I spotted this on a long and heated Facebook discussion of free speech and Freeze Peach (and the conflation of attack with disagreement, and the duty to educate people who keep uttering familiar backlash tropes over and over again, and the need or desire to have more interesting and productive discussions as opposed to squandering time educating people in the basics ad infinitum, and other related subjects), and it got my attention.

And so the dance continues. Free speech in regard to government is not the issue, but the ability to discuss all ideas and opinions without censorship, regardless if they make us uncomfortable or particularly disagreeable. I’ve no issue with someone not holding to my opinions or agreeing with whatever facts I put out in any given course of debate. I don’t even necessarily mind being told I can no post on someone’s personal blog. What I do mind is when my points of view are met with personal attacks or being told I deserve to have acid thrown in my face.

Well naturally; who wouldn’t mind being told that?

Wait. What? Has anyone ever told Al Stefanelli he deserves to have acid thrown in his face? Ever? I’ve certainly never heard of it – and it’s not the kind of thing that decent people say. It would be a surprising and non-routine thing to happen. If it did happen, wouldn’t the people who spend all day on Twitter blaming “FTBullies” for everything except the weather have told us all about it at least seven million times? Wouldn’t it be its own hashtag by now? Wouldn’t we all know about it?

I don’t think anyone has ever told Al Stefanelli that. I think he must have remembered that someone said that to someone, and confabulated that into someone saying it to him.

Which is pretty pathetic from my point of view, because you know who the someone is who was told that? I am. I was told that. Not Al Stefanelli; me. I was told it would be an improvement, too.

Interesting, isn’t it? They’ll not only deny that we get any harassment, not only endlessly insist that it’s not harassment it’s just disagreement aka criticism – they’ll even steal the actual harassment and pretend it was done to them.

Update: I was wrong, it did happen to Al Stefanelli. Details on the follow-up post.

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

Last week in Piraeus, a member of Golden Dawn murdered an anti-fascist activist and rapper, Pavlos Fyssas, aka Killah P.

A suspect was later arrested, and admitted to the killing. The man also identified himself as a member of Golden Dawn, an extreme far-right party that’s become hugely popular in Greece in recent years.

Fyssas, who grew up in the working class suburbs of Piraeus, often penned tracks that described his neighborhood, and the struggles of the people who lived there.

…

Greece’s Prime Minister, Antonis Samaras, condemned the killing. Samaras said he was determined not to let “the descendants of Nazis” undermine the country that gave birth to democracy.

For its part, Golden Dawn denied, again, that it’s a neo-Nazi party, and said it had no connection whatsoever with the murder.

Still, numerous Greek cities erupted in protests last night. Anti-fascist demonstrators clashed with police, and more than 100 people were detained by the authorities.

“A lot of people here in Greece are realizing right now what the real face of this neo-Nazi party is,” Christos Michaelides, a current affairs editor for an Athens daily newspaper, told the BBC.

Learning very late.

“It is so, so sad that it took the death of a Greek person in order for the Greek society to wake up,” says Leonidas Oikonomakis.

And that’s the difference here, it seems. Fyssas was a native Greek.

Oiknomomakis points out that Golden Dawn members have been implicated in numerous deaths and beatings of immigrants in the past few years. He says both the Greek government, and its European creditors, have been turning a blind eye.

“For three years now, immigrants have been suffering, dying, being attacked by Golden Dawn. They all know about it. As long as the debts are paid, everyone is happy. They don’t care if people are dying on the streets.”

Immigrants are metoikoi, you see. Home-changers, foreigners, strangers, xenoi. We all do it; it’s not just the Greeks, not just anyone. Distance always dilutes empathy.

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

I got another fun piece of email! I’m in luck these days. It came in via the Contact Form, so it’s from someone (or somebot) who trawled for B&W specifically, as a suitable market.

To whom it may concern,

We specialise in modest P.E kit for Muslim school girls. Our sportswear is ideal for various physical activities such as swimming, aerobics and gymnastics. We currently supply 3 schools in the UK and are growing rapidly due to demand.

We would like to become your uniform supplier in order to encourage participation in P.E without religious boundaries.

I look forward to your response.

Kind regards

[redacted]

Well spotted! I’m just the person to invite to buy modest P.E kit for Muslim school girls. Got any cut-price crucifixes while you’re at it?

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

The death toll is at at least 68 in Nairobi, with 175 injured. So that was Saturday’s work; Sunday’s work was at least 75 people killed in Peshawar, in two suicide bombings at a church. And good morning to you too, religion of peace.

Two bombers blew themselves up as worshippers were coming out of the city’s historic All Saints church after attending Sunday Mass, police say.

Relatives of the victims gathered at the scene to protest against the government’s failure to protect them.

Militants linked to Pakistani Taliban have said they carried out the bombing.

The religion-testosterone cocktail strikes again.

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

Fun’s over.

Nick Cohen wonders

how many lives will be lost so that the Fifa World Cup™ can live up to its boast that it is the most successful festival of sport on the planet.

It’s not a rhetorical or playful question.

Qatar’s absolute monarchy, run by the fabulously rich and extraordinarily secretive Al Thani clan, no more keeps health and safety statistics than it allows free elections. The Trade Union Confederation has had to count the corpses the hard way. It found that 83 Indians have died so far this year. The Gulf statelet was also the graveyard for 119 Nepalese construction workers. With 202 migrants from other countries dying over the same nine months, Ms Burrow is able to say with confidence there is at least one death for every day of the year. The body count can only rise now that Qatar has announced that it will take on 500,000 more migrants, mainly from the Indian subcontinent, to build the stadiums, hotels and roads for 2022.

Not all the fatalities are on construction sites. The combination of back-breaking work, nonexistent legal protections, intense heat and labour camps without air conditioning allows death to come in many guises. To give you a taste of its variety, the friends of Chirari Mahato went online to describe how he would work from 6am to 7pm. He would return to a hot, unventilated room he shared with 12 others. Because he died in his sleep, rather than on site, his employers would not accept that they had worked him to death. There are millions of workers like him around the Gulf.

Nick cites Human Rights Watch, so let’s take a look at what they say about Qatar.

Qatar has the highest ratio of migrants to citizens in the world, with only 225,000 citizens in a population of 1.7 million. Yet the country has some of the most restrictive sponsorship laws in the Persian Gulf region, leaving migrant workers vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Forced labor and human trafficking remain serious problems.

Wow. That sounds like the parts of the slaveholding South where slaves vastly outnumbered non-slaves, and were brutalized accordingly. That in turn sounds like Sparta, where the helots were brutalized because they vastly outnumbered the ruling class. (HRW’s “yet” would make more sense as “therefore.”)

A major barrier to redressing labor abuses is the kafala (sponsorship) system, which ties a migrant worker’s legal residence to his or her employer, or “sponsor.” Migrant workers cannot change jobs without their sponsoring employer’s consent, except in exceptional cases with permission from the Interior Ministry. If a worker leaves his or her sponsoring employer, even if fleeing abuse, the employer can report the worker as “absconding,” leading to detention and deportation. In order to leave Qatar, migrants must obtain an exit visa from their sponsor, and some said sponsors denied them these visas. Workers widely reported that sponsors confiscated their passports, in violation of the Sponsorship Law.

So Qatar has a form of slavery.

Back to Nick.

Fifa strikes me as a decadent organisation in the political rather than literary meaning of the word. It is an institution whose behaviour contradicts all of its professed purposes. If it cared about football, it would not even have thought of staging a tournament in the Qatari summer. If it cared about footballers, it would take up the case of Belounis. And if it respected human life, it would say that the kafala system could not govern World Cup contracts.

I don’t know how much longer sports journalists can ignore the abuse Fifa tolerates. The World Cup is overturning all the cliches. People say that “football is a matter of life or death”, said Bill Shankly. “It’s more important than that.” Shankly was joking. Qatar and Fifa appear to mean it. Sport is “war minus the shooting”, said Orwell. There may not be any actual shooting in Qatar but workers will die nonetheless.

The quote that ought to haunt all who love football is CLR James’s paraphrase of Kipling: “What do they know of cricket that only cricket know?” James was writing about how sport was bound up in the Caribbean with colonialism, race and class. Anyone writing about the World Cup must also acknowledge that the beautiful game is now bound up with racial privilege, exploitation and the deaths of men, who should not be forgotten so readily.

It’s horrifying.

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

This is an interesting test to take – it’s a shades of color discrimination test.

I like shades of color, especially among the reds and purples. I’m not great on the test though.

Update: link removed because of reports of malware.

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

So now that you’ve had time to rest after the first dog video here is the next one, dog wants a kitten.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kI4yoXyb1_M

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

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

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

I got an email telling me to stop it at once! It’s a real gem. It’s from someone called Matt Wykoff. He tells me:

www.vaticancatholic.com I hereby declare- you to be – - an unlawful obstructionist. I order all those assembled to immediately disperse. I repeat- to immediately disperse. I order all your activity to immediately cease. I repeat-to immediately cease. It is not in accord with the ordinances of Canon Law. Due to your catalytic tendency of disseminating objectives adverse to Christendom – you are therefore ordered to discontinue your illegal profession. Failure to do so will result in proactive, responsive, and co-active measures. I judge, adjudge, adjudicate, deem, determine and declare your thoughts, words, actions, public or secret, and omissions, biological and spiritual property, subject to the Jurisdiction of the Unfathomable, Infinite, and Ineffable Excellence of OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST. Further, your humanist anachronism, obscurantism, absurdum, intent, mission, and schemes, are henceforth proscribed and condemned. You may be arrested and or subject to other police action!

It has so been declared: It is declared that all non-Catholic government exists in a state of inauthenticity. It is thenceforth declared that all modern constitutional states lack canonical legitimacy. It has therefore been thenceforth declared that their existence is an offense to the Divine Majesty and a crime against humanity. The aforesaid Freemasonic corporations are hereby declared anachronical to true human progress. It is decided in order for modern constitutional states to gain authenticity they must recognize the Supreme Jurisdiction of the Papacy and all Papal Dogmas. As a failure to do so will only inflame the Catholic against such blasphemous tyrannical backwards regimes. Lord God is due to make Visitation to such blighted and noxious governments and tyrannies. He will Visit the iniquities upon the infidels and the Anti-Church bigots. Terror will overtake the faces of the unwashed masses. These exquisite bigots against the Papacy will know that the Lord God Himself has done it. The infidel are richly fattened for such Visitation.

It is hereby determined. ‘Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo, et in terra’. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven. Libertarianism (and the constitution) are simply tyrannical failures and instruments that lead to false flag attacks and government-run pedophilia through their Manual (and Visual) Body-Cavity Searches of Juvenile Hall youth. A Catholic Monarchy simply is the answer to today’s varied and many problems. There is Absolutely No Salvation Outside the Catholic Church see www.vaticancatholic.com

I like it. I like all the orders. I like the claim that I may be arrested, also that he lectures me about libertarianism and freemasonry. I like the passive voice with the complete lack of an agent – “It is declared” – Ya mean, “I say”? Matt Wykoff says, and I don’t listen.

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

The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain Forum remembers Pharbin Malik.

Pharbin Malik was sixteen years old when she died on a street in Birmingham, England, in 1989. She was killed by her father because she did not follow his religion anymore.

We could find no photograph of her anywhere online, or in newspaper archives.

It seems the world has forgotten her. And yet, her story reaches forward in time to touch raw and exposed nerves today.

Like there is no picture we can associate with her, so it is that we who leave Islam are somehow faceless, erased from history and kept hidden away.

The absence of her picture, and the silence accompanying her death, reflect the experiences of many of us who choose to leave Islam, and for that choice are forced to live in fear and silence.

Leaving Islam is the worst crime there is.

We hear the echoes of her story as they resonate in our own lives and in the lives countless apostates of Islam today.

The stigma surrounding apostasy, leaving Islam and openly saying so, is difficult to understand for people who have never had to face these taboos.

Apostates are seen in Islamic canon as sub-human, as the lowest of the low. When an Islamic extremist wants to threaten a Muslim they often carry outtakfir, a pronouncement that their rival is no longer a Muslim, and is thus deserving of punishment and violence, and even death.

The taboo against leaving Islam and the ever present fear and threat of violence deny people the most basic right of free conscience. Because of the fear of being labelled an apostate, criticism of Islam is stifled from within Muslim families and communities, leading to the oppression of individuals, and the suppression of dissent and questioning within Islam.

We ask people to remember the stigma faced by ExMuslims, and the intimidation, ostracism, violence and death threats that so often pressure ExMuslims to remain silent and ‘closeted’.

Stand with them. Remember them. Help them when you can.

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

You know that thing where you knock a bowl of soup off the counter with your elbow? The US Air Force almost did a larger version of that in 1961, when it accidentally knocked a couple of hydrogen bombs onto North Carolina. Oops, what a mess, and that was my favorite bowl.

A secret document, published in declassified form for the first time by the Guardian today, reveals that the US Air Force came dramatically close to detonating an atom bomb over North Carolina that would have been 260 times more powerful than the device that devastated Hiroshima.

The document, obtained by the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser under the Freedom of Information Act, gives the first conclusive evidence that the US was narrowly spared a disaster of monumental proportions when two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina on 23 January 1961. The bombs fell to earth after a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air, and one of the devices behaved precisely as a nuclear weapon was designed to behave in warfare: its parachute opened, its trigger mechanisms engaged, and only one low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage.

Oh gee. That would have been bad.

Each bomb carried a payload of 4 megatons – the equivalent of 4 million tons of TNT explosive. Had the device detonated, lethal fallout could have been deposited over Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and as far north as New York city – putting millions of lives at risk.

Watch the elbows.

The document was uncovered by Schlosser as part of his research intohis new book on the nuclear arms race, Command and Control. Using freedom of information, he discovered that at least 700 “significant” accidents and incidents involving 1,250 nuclear weapons were recorded between 1950 and 1968 alone.

“The US government has consistently tried to withhold information from the American people in order to prevent questions being asked about our nuclear weapons policy,” he said. “We were told there was no possibility of these weapons accidentally detonating, yet here’s one that very nearly did.”

Never mind, it’s totally worth it for the chance of wiping out all mammalian life on the planet.

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

Al-Shabaab has killed at least 30 people at a shopping mall in Nairobi.

Somalia’s militant group al-Shabaab is claiming responsibility for the attack on a Nairobi mall on Saturday that has killed at least 30 people, saying it was retribution for Kenyan forces’ 2011 push into Somalia. The group threatened more attacks.

…

Al-Shabaab, on its Twitter feed, said that it has many times warned Kenya‘s government that failure to remove its forces from Somalia “would have severe consequences”. The group claimed that its gunmen had killed 100 people, but its claims are frequently exaggerated.

“The attack at #WestgateMall is just a very tiny fraction of what Muslims in Somalia experience at the hands of Kenyan invaders,” al-Shabaab said. Another tweet said: “For long we have waged war against the Kenyans in our land, now it’s time to shift the battleground and take the war to their land #Westgate.”

They were nice about it though. They did their best to exempt Muslims.

The gunmen told hostages that non-Muslims would be targeted, said Elijah Kamau, who was at the mall at the time of the midday attack.

“The gunmen told Muslims to stand up and leave. They were safe, and non-Muslims would be targeted,” he said.

Thoughtful.

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