Malala Yousufzai spoke at the UN today. I’ve found two videos so far, which cover different sections of her speech.

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

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

 … Read the rest

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RTÉ follows the Dáil abortion legislation debate as it happened.

17:00

And we’re off again … with our second live blog as another round of discussions on the abortion legislation gets under way in the Dáil.

17:25

Clare Daly TD said where a woman believes that it is in her best interest to have a termination, that option should be available to her.

• 17:23

  Joan Collins TD said we should not allow women to be treated as second and third class citizens.

Clare Daly TD – I was on a panel with her less than two weeks ago – a panel on reproductive rights.

This one, in fact -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtlxP5mvo_8

I’m amazed at the things I get to … Read the rest

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Aodhán Ó Ríordáin TD thanks supporters and rejoices that Ireland has been brought into the 1950s tonight.

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

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It’s done. Shortly after midnight the Dáil passed the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill.

The Government has passed legislation for the first time allowing for abortion in limited circumstances.

Shortly after midnight, TDs voted by 127 to 31 in favour of the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill.

The landmark legislation enshrines a woman’s right to a termination if her life is at risk, including from suicide.

It’s about stinking time, and it’s also obviously very inadequate, but it’s something.

 … Read the rest

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Some tweets:

Gavin Reilly @gavreilly

Applause from the Labour benches, and from Alan Shatter, as the Dáil adjours at 12:25am.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin TD @AodhanORiordain

Its done. #actiononx

Owen Corrigan @owencorrigan

FINALLY! And all it took was 21 years. #disgrace #XCase #abortionvote #Dail #Ireland pic.twitter.com/aeW2z6BCQq

             Retweeted by Jen Keane

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Men’s Rights Edmonton has issued an Official Statement gloating over its new fame and glory and explaining how urgent it is to change the subject from rape to false accusations of rape. (H/t hjhornbeck for the link.)

Hello Everyone,

We at Men’s Rights Edmonton have become a national topic of discussion due to our recent poster campaign calling attention to false allegations of rape.

For the people that want a quick answer to the question of why the campaign, we would respond, What is wrong with advocating against both rape and false rape accusations?

Both are abhorrent means of manipulation and power.  As for our campaign, not once did it advocate or apologize for rape.  It is very clearly worded

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More on the Edmonton MRAs and their “don’t be that girl” poster campaign.

The CBC story on Tuesday.

Posters that mimic the well-known “Don’t be that guy” campaign against sexual assault have gone up around Edmonton bearing a very different message.

The “Don’t be that girl” poster reads: “Just because you regret a one night stand, doesn’t mean it wasn’t consensual. Lying about sexual assault = a crime.”

Late Tuesday night a group called Mens Rights Edmonton, a local anti-feminism group, claimed responsibility for the posters.

…

New data released Tuesday by the Canadian Women’s Foundation show that less than 10 per cent of sexual assaults are reported to the police.

The survey suggests about 19 per cent of

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Well isn’t that adorable - a men’s rights group in Edmonton put up a bunch of posters claiming women lie about rape.

After a story aired about the controversial posters on Tuesday, CBC News received an email from an unknown member of the group.

“Thank you for your interest in our activist group,” the person going by the name MR-E wrote. “Yes, we have been very busy with postering our town.”

The posters, which mimic the well-known “Don’t be that guy” campaign against sexual assault, recently popped up in downtown Edmonton and around the University of Alberta, where they have since been taken down by campus police.

The “Don’t be that girl” poster reads: “Just because you regret a

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Ivana Bacik thinks that bishops shouldn’t be telling legislators what to do.

A call by Labour Senator Ivana Bacik for a Seanad debate on the separation of church and State led to sharp exchanges.

Ms Bacik said she looked forward to the debate on the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill, adding that she welcomed the fact that after 21 years legislators were facing up to their responsibilities.

“I call on the leader, in the aftermath of the Bill, perhaps in the autumn, to arrange a debate on the separation of church and State, given the rather robust interventions by the bishops, essentially seeking to tell legislators what to do, which, I believe, is not appropriate in a republic.’’

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Here’s a new one, via a comment by Marie-Thérèse. From the Irish Independent in August 2010:

A CLERICAL child abuse victim revealed the full horror yesterday of the ‘human guinea pig’ drug trials carried out in church-run children’s homes.

Hundreds of children are feared to have been subjected to the experimental trials while in the care of the Catholic Church.

Now the victims’ cases could be reopened, as calls for the Government to deal with the scandal intensifies.

Legal action is being planned against  GlaxoSmithKline and the Sacred Heart Order, which allowed the tests at the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in Cork.

Campaigner and abuse survivor John Barrett, who was born at the home outside Cork city,

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Oh now that’s satisfying to read…

A United Nations panel is demanding that the Vatican hand over detailed information on child sex abuse cases involving Catholic clergy.

In a document published online, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has asked the Vatican to come clean with how it addresses children’s rights around the world, including what measures it takes when dealing with sexual violence.

See what I mean? No bowing, no scraping, no apologies, no deference, no reverence, no extra “respect”; instead, demanding that the secretive lawbreaking self-serving bastards hand over the information. It is about.fucking.time.

The panel, which polices the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, wants the Catholic Church to reveal

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For the first time in Bangladesh someone has been prosecuted and convicted for the murder of a journalist.

Shortly before his murder in November 2005, Das published a series of reports for the Dhaka-based daily Samakal, detailing corruption by BNP officials, according to news reports. His body was found strangled in his bureau in the town of Faridpur, 40 miles outside the capital. The following day, Das’ colleague filed a complaint with local police, accusing 10 individuals in connection with the murder, many of whom were members of the then-ruling BNP, according to reports.  

But the long road to justice was pitted with potholes. One of the accused died during the course of the trial. Others were released on

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Via Fidalgo, First Things spots some scary atheist existentialism in the new Smurfs movie.

[pause to laugh very much for a long time]

It’s someone called Collin Garbarino who spotted this smurf atheist existentialism.

This weekend I saw the new trailer for Smurfs 2. It looks to be a fun romp. Gargamel is back, and he’s got a new plan for catching those little blue people who are two apples high. If the trailer accurately represents the film, we’ll be entertained by nonstop shenanigans and high jinks. We’ll also get a healthy dose of atheistic existentialism.

Watch the trailer below. At the 1:45 mark Papa Smurf says, “It doesn’t matter where you came from; what matters is who

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The cult of Sylvia Plath has always been creepy, you have to admit. Now this year is the [sharp intake of breath] 50th anniversary of that time she stuck her head in the oven, so the cult has to get even creepier. (Why? I mean, why? Fifty years; so what? Why is that more significant than 49 or 51? Humans are so stupid sometimes. Honestly.)

Terry Castle thinks it’s stupid too. Terry Castle is right.

A clutch of new biographies (including the two reviewed here) are likewise among the morbid tie-ins. “Sylvia Plath may be the most fascinating literary figure of the twentieth century”—so the publisher’s copy for one of them gushes. “Even now, fifty years after her death,

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Garry Wills takes a jaundiced look at the current pope’s fastracking of “sainthood” for a recent one.

He starts with John Paul’s beatification of the horrible Piux IX.

Pius IX was a polarizing figure. He wrested from the Vatican Council a declaration of his own infallibility; he condemned such modern heresies as democratic government; he took a Jewish child, Edgardo Mortara, from his family—on the grounds that Edgardo’s Christian nurse had baptized him as an infant, making him belong to the church, not to his infidel parents.

So he beatified someone a little bit nicer at the same time. Clever wheeze.

Now Pope Francis has come up with another ablutionary pairing. He is canonizing John Paul II in record

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Jen Keane (@zenbuffy) tweeted a freezepage of the hacked Youth Defence site. Youth Defence is the horrible far-right US-funded ”pro-life” group making so much trouble in Ireland. The hacked page makes interesting reading.

This is not the hate-filled truth-distorting website you’re looking for.

Note: We the Irish do not appreciate US organisations pouring money into shady groups here to try change our rules and society for their own gains. Youth Defence has been the seed of more hatred here that any group in a long time. It has to stop.

Youth Defence is not what you think it is. Youth Defence is an extremist group who actively hide their links to shady right-wing connections and where their funding comes

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Maryam is annoyed by channel 4′s “provocative” call to prayer during Ramadan.

What about all the Muslims (and ex-Muslims) who can’t stand to hear the call to prayers? or who don’t fast during Ramadan? There is a movement of eating during Ramadan as a way of challenging laws that make it an offence to eat in public. Here’s one example of people being arrested for “inciting public eating during Ramadan” but of course none of these will be shown on Channel 4.

Rather than being provocative, Channel 4 is feeding into the narrative that all Muslims are religious and conservative and fast during Ramadan. Something Islamists insist upon thereby justifying their attacks on those who refuse to fast

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

The guy who made death threats on Facebook has been jailed.

A British man who threatened to kill 200 people in the US, in posts he made under a false name on Facebook, has been jailed for more than two years.

Reece Elliott, 24, of Foss Way, South Shields, made the threat in February on online memorial pages for two Tennessee girls killed in car accidents.

About 3,000 pupils in Warren County missed school the next day as a result.

Elliott, who pleaded guilty at Newcastle Crown Court in April, was jailed for two years and four months.

Huh. Isn’t he just a troll? Aren’t we supposed to ignore trolls? Isn’t that the rule?

Sentencing Elliott to 28 months

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Religion News Service reports that African religious leaders are very annoyed at Obama for telling them not to shit on gay people. Well yes that makes sense – how dare Obama tell good god-fearing clerics not to shit on people? Shitting on people is a god-given right of clerics.

In a news conference in Senegal during his three-nation tour, just as the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on same-sex marriage, Obama said African nations must grant equal protection to all people regardless of their sexual orientation.

“My basic view is that regardless of race, regardless of religion, regardless of gender, regardless of sexual orientation, when it comes to how the law treats you, how the state treats

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The new pope is helping some previous ones get to be saints.

Showing more of his sprightly personality and his priorities, Pope Francis sped two of his predecessors toward sainthood on Friday: John Paul II, who guided the Roman Catholic Church during the end of the cold war, and John XXIII, who assembled the liberalizing Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.

In approving the sainthood of John XXIII even without a second miracle attributable to the pontiff, Francis took the rare step of bypassing the Vatican bureaucracy.

Ok but so how does all this work? Are there rules, or is it just whatever the pope feels like? And if popes can speed other popes, why mess around, … Read the rest

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