Posts Tagged ‘ FTB ’

Help keep God’s name in America!!

May 5th, 2014 12:01 pm | By

What the hell, let’s just go the whole hog, right? Why not join In God We Trust – America in their wholesome plan to get that “national motto” (whatever the fuck that is) plastered all over every public building in the country.

PROGRESS REPORT:

IN GOD WE TRUST~AMERICA continues to make exciting progress:

OUR NEW TOTAL – 349, “Yes Vote” cities and counties across America, now displaying our National Motto.

To view the update list. Click here.

WE NEED YOUR HELP:  

JOIN THIS MISSION – HELP US KEEP GOD’S NAME IN AMERICA:  Is our National Motto displayed in your city and every city in your county??? We are asking Patriots like you, across America, to get involved with 

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



Majority privilege and the Supreme Court

May 5th, 2014 10:44 am | By

Naturally I hastened to Twitter to see what Ron Lindsay has to say about the ruling in Greece v Galloway – because Ron is both a lawyer and a philosopher, and much involved with legal issues to do with secularism. The first thing he had to say was “Damn.” Yes.

He went on to point out that 5 of 6 Christian justices saw no problem with Christian prayers, and added

SCOTUS decision in Town of Greece shows one is unlikely to be sensitive to oppression of majority religion when one is in the majority.

Yes, thought I. Exactly. Then I noticed something, and couldn’t resist saying it.

Those justices should check their privilege. (Both a joke and a bitter

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



Greece v Galloway

May 5th, 2014 10:20 am | By

So Kennedy sided with the four reactionaries and ruled that the town of Greece, New York did not violate the Constitution by starting its public meetings with a prayer from a “chaplain of the month” who was almost always Christian. Why not? Because the prayers are “merely ceremonial.”

Excuse me, prayers delivered by a chaplain from the majority religion (or, in fact, any other religion, but this case is this case) are not “merely ceremonial.” That’s bullshit of the purest kind – calculated, insulting, unreasonable, unabashed.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in a 5-to-4 decision that divided the court’s more conservative members from its liberal ones, said the prayers were merely ceremonial. They were neither unduly sectarian

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



TentEd

May 5th, 2014 9:21 am | By

Here’s a good cause, in case you were looking for one. It comes recommended by Digital Cuttlefish.

Help raise $27,000 in 60 days!

Contributions will be used quickly to purchase school materials and supplies for the educators and students in Domiz and Gawilan refugee camps. These purchases will be made locally to stimulate the surrounding economy. These seemingly “minor” needs, when left unmet, add up to a significant negative impact on the quality of education that each boy and girl receives. No child should have to go to class without school supplies and no teacher should have to teach students without adequate tools. Based on our experience in the refugee camps and our study of the crisis, we are

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



Thank you Lord!

May 5th, 2014 8:45 am | By

Dayum. Why did no one tell me about Mrs Betty Bowers, America’s Best Christian?

From Mrs Betty Bowers:

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



Nigerian police arrest…a protest leader

May 5th, 2014 8:20 am | By

Yes that’s right. Nigerian police arrest not a kidnapper or an army of kidnappers; not a Boko Haram bigwig; a protest leader. Why? Because the kidnapped girls are not really her daughters. She said they were her daughters! They’re not! Bust her!

A source in the presidency said Naomi Mutah Nyadar had been detained over allegations of falsely claiming to be the mother of one of the missing girls.

Nyadar was arrested on Sunday after a meeting she and other campaigners had held with President Goodluck Jonathan’s wife, Patience, concerning the girls.

She was taken to Asokoro police station, near the presidential villa, said fellow protester Lawan Abana, whose two nieces are among the abductees.

“Ms Naomi was arrested

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



Saratu’s father fainted

May 4th, 2014 4:58 pm | By

I read the Guardian article again (I read it the first time a few days ago when I did a post about it) and I don’t think the Guardian is being euphemistic here. The way the story is set up, the news that the girls “are being shared out as wives among the Boko Haram militants” was taken very hard – the news was worse than they were hoping, not better. I assumed that was because 1. it confirmed they were being raped (but there can’t have been much doubt of that in any case) and 2. it meant they were all the more firmly trapped.

Let’s look at it again.

For two weeks, retired teacher Samson Dawah prayed

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Oh sorry, that was about cartoons

May 4th, 2014 11:51 am | By

Maajid Nawaz is furious at the Guardian for the way it worded its reporting on the kidnapped and enslaved Nigerian schoolgirls.

Maajid Nawaz @MaajidNawaz May 1

Typical. @Guardian uses “mass marriage” instead of “rape” describing jihadist enslavement of 230 Nigerian schoolgirls.

The 230 schoolgirls kidnapped in Nigeria by jihadist terrorists Boko Haram, forcibly turned into ‘brides’ ie: raped

Furious. @guardian cannot even call it enslavement & rape but calls it “mass marriage”? Has our cultural relativity gone that far?

He’s also furious about comparative outrage.

Maajid Nawaz @MaajidNawaz May 3

Kidnapping,enslavement&mass rape of 230 Nigerian schoolgirls by jihadist Boko Haram led to worldwide riots..oh sorry,that was about cartoons

Zing. Yeah.… Read the rest

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



Labels at a distance

May 4th, 2014 11:00 am | By

Proshant at Nirmukta talks about the label “hate hag” currently trendy in India.

The term ‘hate hag’, used to describe “women supporters of Narendra Modi” in an Outlook Magazine article recently gained currency, especially on social media…

In this essay I critique the term ‘hate hag’ through three broad arguments: first, I argue the term ‘hate hag’ is inherently sexist and misogynistic, and in using the term to ‘shame’ women because of their political ideology, we reinstate another form of a the medieval witch-hunt. Second, I look at the irreconcilable contradictions in the ‘women’s question’ and the Political Right, especially in light of the Janus-faced patriarchy that the BJP and the Sangh Parivaar represent. Here I underscore the

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Finally paying attention

May 4th, 2014 10:01 am | By

Nick Cohen points out – as I’ve been pointing out – that the Nigerian schoolgirls haven’t been kidnapped but enslaved. They weren’t just yanked away to be hostages or bargining chips or shields, but to be sexual slaves and, no doubt, labor slaves as well.

A desire for sexual supremacy accompanies their loathing of knowledge. They take 220 schoolgirls as slaves and force them to convert to their version of Islam. They either rape them or sell them on for £10 or so to new masters. The girls are the victims of slavery, child abuse and forced marriage. Their captors are by extension slavers and rapists.

As you can see, English does not lack plain words to describe the

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



Late night, alcoholism, punching down

May 4th, 2014 8:54 am | By

It’s bad news for insomniacs, you know, Craig Ferguson’s divorce from The Late Late Show. I’ve never watched any of the other – the normal – late shows, but if I had an attack of the wide-awakes then Craig Ferguson was just the ticket.

Slate says some of why (although much of my why is somewhat different):

Still, this is bad news for fans of late night television. It’s even bad news for haters of late night television: Ferguson was an irreverent genius, a consistent and consistently surprising comic who took the genre’s tiresome format and threw it out the window. He had no in-house band. He had no in-house announcer. His co-host was a robot. His monologues eschewed

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



A printing error by an external company

May 4th, 2014 8:10 am | By

The University of East London’s Islamic Society is attempting the “you are victimizing us” ploy, after UEL canceled a gender-segregated Isoc event in mid-April, according to the Newham Recorder.

The University of East London’s Isoc claimed the segregation, which would have meant separate seating for men and women, was advertised by mistake due to a printing error by an external company.

However, it defended the policy on its Twitter feed with the hashtag “SegregationIsNotHate”, and said the hastily re-arranged April 17 dinner went ahead in a North London mosque with segregated seating.

An Isoc spokesman said: “We are very disappointed that the university did a U-turn less than 24 hours prior to the event.

“They listened to external right-wing groups

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



Did he get his law degree at Walmart?

May 3rd, 2014 6:31 pm | By

The Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Roy Moore – a guy you would expect to know something about the Constitution, given his job – says the First Amendment protects only Christians.

Speaking at the Pastor for Life Luncheon, which was sponsored by Pro-Life Mississippi, Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court declared that the First Amendment only applies to Christians because “Buddha didn’t create us, Mohammed didn’t create us, it was the God of the Holy Scriptures” who created us.

“They didn’t bring the Koran over on the pilgrim ship,” he continued. “Let’s get real, let’s go back and learn our history. Let’s stop playing games.”

Games? What games would those be? The First Amendment says … Read the rest

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ReMorePlusAgain sophistification

May 3rd, 2014 11:25 am | By

This time it’s a piece in the Irish Times, by Joe Humphreys, about a new book by Richard Kearney, who is a professor of philosophy at Boston College. What the article neglects to mention is that Boston College is Catholic.

The subject is familiar – the current discussion of theism and atheism is simplistic and boring; we need something more sophisticated than that. Enter the guy from the Jesuit college.

The philosopher is trying to move the discussion onwards through his writings and The Guestbook Project, which is described as an “experiment” in hospitality and inter-faith dialogue and is sponsored by his employer, Boston College. In his book Anatheism: Returning to God after God,

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



In the forest

May 3rd, 2014 10:48 am | By

Bodunrin Kayode gives us some useful background on the Sambisa Forest.

A few months ago, the name Sambisa Forest meant nothing to many Nigerians. Not anymore. It has come to signify terror and home to the terrorist group Boko Haram. The forest is now almost mythical for so many people within the Lake Chad basin who have come to align the complex north-eastern vegetation with Boko Haram, instead of the game reserve the colonialists meant it for.

The colonial government had marked the forest out as a game reserve. Today, Sambisa has become one of the strongest bases of the Boko Haram insurgents who run back into its dark recesses anytime they have finished their slaughter of harmless

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



Her voice breaking as she recounted the nightmare

May 2nd, 2014 5:53 pm | By

The Guardian reports that the families of the enslaved schoolgirls are losing hope.

Hamma Balumai, a farmer whose 16-year-old daughter Hauwa was snatched, pooled his savings with other parents and ventured on a two-day trek into the forest this week. “Even my wife was begging to come as she is so disturbed she hasn’t been able to eat anything. Our daughter Hauwa is only 16 years old and she has been missing for 11 days now,” he told the Guardian.

The parents turned around only after being warned by communities in the forest that their rag-tag group, armed with machetes and knives, would be gunned down by the militants, who wield sophisticated weapons.

The ones who escaped are struggling … Read the rest

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



He knows some knowing people who know things

May 2nd, 2014 4:57 pm | By

Oh good grief, a conspiracy theorist about the Nigerian kidnapped schoolgirls. Yes really. He says he’s getting flags (by which he seems to mean warnings) from “those familiar with events inside Nigeria.” Oooooooooooh that sounds important – until you look at it and realize it doesn’t. He says (this is in a Facebook group) “some” compare it to the Kony 2012 campaign. Oh yes, I totally see that, except that that was a movie and this is a whole bunch of news reports, including from people who are actually there, like the BBC’s correspondent and CNN’s reporter and the local history teacher whose article I blogged about a few hours ago.

I asked some questions, like who are these people … Read the rest

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But always allow for exceptions

May 2nd, 2014 4:33 pm | By

Morocco is considered fairly liberal compared to most of its neighbors, but what liberality there is may be more formal than real.

There’s that 2004 revision of the family code that raised the legal age of marriage from 15 to 18. The trouble is it allowed for “exceptions” where a judge could rule that young Miss 15 was actually old enough – and guess what. Lots of judges are ruling just that.

A 2014 World Bank report entitled “Ten Years After Morocco’s Family Code Reforms: Are Gender Gaps Closing?” indicates that of the 44,134 underage marriage petitions in 2010, 99 percent involved underage girls and 92 percent of said requests received judicial approval.

As the World Bank report succinctly states:

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



Living in fear of Boko Haram

May 2nd, 2014 11:40 am | By

Kyari Mohammed, who is a teacher in north-east Nigeria – Boko Haram territory – writes in the Guardian about what it’s like to live in fear of Education Forbidden.

I live in fear of Boko Haram. The group’s insurgency began in Nigeria in 2009. Yola in Adamawa state, where I live and teach history, is relatively calm at the moment. But following the imposition of a state of emergency in 2013 many of my colleagues have fled.

The University of Maiduguri in neighbouring Borno state is in a worse situation. At least three of its professors have been killed and one abducted within this period. Many students have withdrawn, teachers relocated, and academic exchange even with other Nigerian

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



Bring Back Our Girls

May 2nd, 2014 11:20 am | By

There’s a vocal #BringBackOurGirls protest outside the Nigerian Mission at the UN right now.

Via braden@detroitred9Read the rest

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