Hillary Clinton said something very startling in an interview for the New York Times last June.

If you had to name one book that made you who you are today, what would it be?

At the risk of appearing predictable, the Bible was and remains the biggest influence on my thinking. I was raised reading it, memorizing passages from it and being guided by it. I still find it a source of wisdom, comfort and encouragement.

At the risk of appearing predictable, that’s an astonishingly fatuous thing to say. She must be pandering, but it’s fatuous anyway. Mind you it’s also a fatuous question, so maybe it’s forgivable to give a fatuous answer…but honestly.… Read the rest

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Kate Mayberry at Al Jazeera talks to the Malaysian political cartoonist Zunar.

Zulkiflee Sm Anwar Ulhaque, better known by his pen name of Zunar, is one of Malaysia’s most acerbic and controversial cartoonists, picking apart the government in a country where deference to those in power has long been the norm.

Well let’s get real – deference to those in power has long been the norm everywhere, or almost everywhere. What’s the point of power if you can’t use it to make underlings deferential?! It’s not some quaint eccentricity of Malaysia to make deference to those in power a norm. But over the past couple of centuries that norm has had a rival norm of egalitarianism to deal … Read the rest

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Via A Mighty Girl –

At the Paris Marathon last Sunday, Siabatou Sanneh of Gambia stood out from the other racers — in addition to her race number, she wore traditional Gambian garb and carried 45 pounds of water on her head. Sanneh, who had never left her home country before, participated in the marathon as part of an effort to raise awareness of the difficulties African women face in accessing clean water. While she walked the race, she also wore a sign that read: “In Africa, women travel this distance everyday to get potable water. Help us shorten the distance.”

Sanneh, a mother of four, lives in a small village of 300 people and started carrying water when she

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Here’s something I didn’t know about Israel, via Failed Messiah:

Does Israel really have religious freedom?

Many observers believe it does not, and the country’s secular High Court of Justice showed again last week that those observers are correct when it ruled that official state rabbinical courts can blacklist women – but not men – they believe have committed adultery, putting their names on secret lists that  prevent them from marrying ‘pure’ Jews of unblemished linage and effectively preventing them from marrying at all.

In response to a petition filed against that blacklisting, Ha’aretz reported the High Court ruled that Israel’s haredi-controlled state chief rabbinate had sufficiently fixed the problems with the blacklist and, based on that it tossed

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More on that mass drowning in the Mediterranean last night, from the CBC.

Italian prosecutors said a Bangladeshi survivor flown to Sicily for treatment told them 950 people were aboard, including hundreds who had been locked in the hold by smugglers. Earlier, authorities said a survivor told them 700 migrants were on board.

It wasn’t immediately clear if they were referring to the same survivor, and Italian Premier Matteo Renzi said authorities were “not in a position to confirm or verify” the death toll.

Locked in the hold. [shudder]

By nightfall Sunday, rescuers on 18 ships had found 28 survivors and “alas, 24 dead,” he said.

The premier of Malta, whose island nation participated in the search and rescue

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Daesh is at it again, apparently. (I wouldn’t want Daesh suing me for defamation, now would I.) The Washington Post reports that they claim to have killed two groups of Christians.

Islamic State militants in Libya shot and beheaded two groups of Ethiopian Christians, a video purportedly from the extremists showed Sunday, according to the Associated Press.

…

The new 29-minute video showing captured Ethiopian Christians starts with what it called a history of Christian-Muslim relations and includes scenes of militants destroying churches, graves and icons.

“Despite the cross, we have returned,” the narrator says.

The video shows Islamic State militants marching their victims, in orange jumpsuits, along a coastline. The second group, dressed in black jumpsuits, is executed in

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One of those pictures that says more than a lot of words.

… Read the rest

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Maajid Nawaz pointed to an article about

Ohio school students asked to “cover” for a day in “solidarity” with “Muslims”. Thankfully cancelled. Where do I even begin?

The article, in the Washington Post, explains the idea:

A public high school in Mason, Ohio, has apologized for an event called the “Covered For a Day” that encouraged all girls to wear a hijab — a head scarf worn by Islamic women — as a cultural awareness activity.

The event was supposed to take place at the 830-student, high-performing school on Thursday, but has been canceled. It was sponsored by the Mason High School Muslim Student Association…

I have an idea. How about the Mason High School Haredi Student Association encourages … Read the rest

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A fishing boat packed with an estimated 700 people capsized in the Mediterranean last night.

Bloomberg reports:

Italy and Malta immediately deployed navy and coast guard ships in an effort to rescue survivors. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said Sunday that 28 bodies had been recovered and that the number is “bound to increase.” Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said 49 people had been rescued.

“If confirmed, this would be the largest tragedy ever in the Mediterranean involving migrants,” Muscat said in a telephone interview. “Nobody should be allowed to die this way.”

…

A Maltese military official, who asked not be identified, confirmed Italian news reports that about 700 migrants were on board when the boat left the

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Just saw this, which I hadn’t seen before. I’m glad to have seen it.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKcmnrE5oY… Read the rest

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Capitalism at its finest. Ian James of the Desert Sun did an investigative report in March:

In a rocky canyon in the San Bernardino National Forest, pipes carry water from springs high on the mountainside down to a roadside tank and from there to tanker trucks which haul it to a bottling plant to be sold as Arrowhead 100% Mountain Spring Water to the profit of Nestle. How sweet and bucolic, except for a few tiny things – there’s a drought; the Forest Service hasn’t been monitoring the environmental impacts, and oh yes Nestle’s permit expired 28 years ago.

Nestle Waters North America holds a longstanding right to use this water from the national forest near San Bernardino. But

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Gee, it’s all rape and harassment and more harassment day. Here’s a shocker:

Jeremiah True, the Reed College student who made headlines in March for protesting his professor’s decision to remove him from class, was arrested on Thursday by the Portland, Oregon police for alleged sex abuse, harassment, and disorderly conduct.

…

According to an employee at Rugby Oregon, a youth rugby organization based in Portland, True was arrested for disrupting a high school girls’ rugby practice. He was restrained by a coach who called the police, the employee said.

In March, True drew national attention after he started an online petition claiming he was unfairly removed from the seminar portion of his humanities class for questioning statistics on

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Originally a comment by M can help you with that on Cunningly disguised as their own.

Once there we will start distributing the totalitarian message that nerd and gamer culture is… perfectly wonderful just as it is and should be left alone to go it’s [sic] own way.

…except that’s not their message. Their message is that only the reactionary parts of nerd and gamer culture are “perfectly wonderful.” We know this from their positions: when one part of nerd or gamer culture (a more feminist, less racist, less cis-centric and/or heterocentric part) tries to influence what it means for the culture of which they are a part to “go its own way”…then that part, the honey … Read the rest

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The Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo is happening this weekend. Jill Pantozzi at the MarySue fills us in on some doings there.

First, she tells us they have an excellent anti-harassment policy.

They also have a campaign going called #ExpoEquality, in cooperation with Calgary Communities Against Sexual Abuse.

Yay. For equality, against harassment and abuse.

So, naturally, we can’t have that.

A Gamergate affiliated group known as Honey Badger Radio procured a booth for Calgary Expo through a crowdfundng campaign specifically geared toward gaining attendance under false pretenses. The people representing them are Karen Straughan, Mike Stephenson, Alison Tieman, and Sage Gerard, and of their campaign they wrote:

In April of this year, the Honey Badgers plan to

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The CBC tells us there’s a report saying the CBC did a bad job of dealing with Jian Ghomeshi.

CBC failed to provide its staff a workplace “free from disrespectful and abusive behaviour,” says the report of an independent investigator hired to examine the corporation’s handling of the behaviour of former radio and television host Jian Ghomeshi.

Janice Rubin, a Toronto employment lawyer with expertise in the field of workplace harassment, says in the report that Ghomeshi’s behaviour violated CBC standards, and that his behaviour was “considered to create an intimidating, humiliating, hostile or offensive work environment.”

The report says that as information was shared “upwards,” it had a tendency to become “diluted.”

“Less prevalent, but also present in a

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WalesOnline reports on theocratic efforts to discourage people from voting:

Stickers encouraging people not to vote because “none have the right to vote but Allah” have appeared in Cardiff.

The stickers have been put up on lampposts around the Corporation Road area of Grangetown.

Via Twitter

The yellow warning sticker reads: “Democracy is a system whereby man violates the right of Allah.

“Islam is the only real workable solution for the UK”.

They carry the hashtag #Dontvoteformanmadelaw.

It also says “None have the right to legislate except Allah.”

Oh really. How does that work then? What’s the line of transmission? How does Allah tell us what legislation Allah has passed?

If the answer is the Koran, that won’t do, … Read the rest

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I spent too many minutes today arguing with a very “spiritual” person who is a vocal supporter of Raif Badawi on Facebook but who keeps putting her support in inappropriately “spiritual” terms. Since it’s one version of “spirituality” that is so determined to keep torturing him, I think that’s inappropriate at best.

I especially think it’s inappropriate to talk about “joy” in response to another Friday with no flogging, as she does every week. That’s not joyful. It’s a brief partial respite for Ensaf and their children, I hope, but it can’t very well be joyful when he could still be flogged next Friday and every Friday after that until all the remaining 950 lashes have been dealt out. It’s … Read the rest

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Get special rules, that is.

In Tennessee:

In an effort to get around recently passed zoning laws the owners of [a] Tennessee swingers club are rebranding their proposed establishment as a church, according to WSMV.

Previously the owners of the proposed club in Madison had submitted plans to convert a former medical building, situated next to a Christian school, into a sex club only to meet with stiff public resistance.

Following a packed and contentious meeting last month — with one audience member shouting “we don’t want this darkness to extinguish this beacon of light that has been here for years and years” –  the Metro Council amended the zoning laws to prevent the club from being developed.

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