…doesn’t happen in New Zealand! Continue reading
Category Archives: Family members
US: To all atheists who insist on your legal rights…
…tell your little sisters to expect intimidation. Continue reading
US: Second child of faith-healing couple dies
A Philadelphia couple — serving 10 years’ probation for the 2009 death of their toddler after they turned to prayer instead of a doctor — has violated their probation now that another of their children has died. Continue reading
Pakistan: Taliban terrorists kidnap ex-PM’s son
GUNMEN last night kidnapped a son of a former Pakistani prime minister canvassing for votes on the final day of campaigning for landmark elections, which have been marred by bloody attacks. Continue reading
Global: The huge scale of the Islam problem
Jerry Coyne passes on a report about just how many Muslims worldwide are opposed to justice, tolerance and an open society. Continue reading
Afghanistan: Woman killed for ‘dishonouring’ family
The public killing of a woman in Afghanistan is further proof that the authorities are still failing to tackle the shocking levels of gender-based violence in the country, Amnesty International said today. Continue reading
Australia: Female guru recommends self-immolation
Well, what else does ‘ignite your own spirit’ mean? Continue reading
Australia: A ‘mature child of high intelligence’…
…prefers to die rather than get a blood transfusion. Continue reading
Australia: Protecting a cultural right to abuse
Yes, there are reasons why people from tribal cultures move out, go to cities and emigrate to the West. They’re not just being silly. Continue reading
UK: Green policy champion also an abusive husband, court told
Disgraced MP [ex-Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change] Chris Huhne pressured his ex-wife into having an abortion because it was “bad timing”, she has told a court. Continue reading
Saudi Arabia: Islamist cleric rapes, tortures, kills 5-year-old daughter…
But it’s OK — they made him pay a fine. Continue reading
US: Oh noes! I forgot to have children, and now my womb is full of dead babies!
It seems that talk show host Kevin Swanson has talked to “some doctors” who believe that if you take birth control, tiny little dead babies are simply hanging around, embedded into the lining of your womb. Continue reading
US: Almost TOO easy…
…getting fundamentalist Christians to make stupid misogynistic comments.
…[Pat] Robertson draws the woman-hating card, throws it on the flower-decorated glass table in the 700 Club’s studio and suddenly it’s the mother’s fault.
“You know, it may be your mom isn’t as sweet as you think she is; she may be kind of hard-nosed. And so, you say, it’s my father, he’s not paying attention to mom, but you know mom …” he trails off and offers a spiteful little chuckle.
All great advice for a 17-year-old boy growing up in the United States’ enduringly patriarchal society. But wait — there’s more: Now it’s not only mom’s fault for being “hard-nosed,” it’s also her fault for being God-forsakenly ugly.
He launches into another story: “A woman came to a preacher I know — it’s so funny. She was awful looking. Her hair was all torn up, she was overweight and looked terrible …”
Angola: Evangelical crowd stampedes, kills 10
TEN people, including four children, have died in a stampede during a religious gathering at a sports stadium in Luanda, the Angolan capital.
Angop, the Angolan news agency, cited officials as saying on Tuesday 120 people were also injured.
The incident happened on New Year’s Eve when tens of thousands of people gathered at the stadium and panic ensued.
Faustino Sebastiao, spokesman for the national firefighters department, says those who died were crushed and asphyxiated.
The event in the southern African nation was organised by the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, an evangelical group founded in Brazil.
Mali: The lunatics are running the asylum
After the United Nations Security Council authorized a military campaign to retake the region last week, Islamists in Gao, Mr. Touré’s town, cut the hands off two more people accused of being thieves the very next day, a leading local official said, describing it as a brazen response to the United Nations resolution. Then the Islamists, undeterred by the international threats against them, warned reporters that eight others “will soon share the same fate.”
This harsh application of Shariah law, with people accused of being thieves sometimes having their feet amputated as well, has occurred at least 14 times since the Islamist takeover last spring, not including the recent vow of more to come, according to Human Rights Watch and independent observers.
Yemen: US air strike kills 13, including children
A rickety truck packed with 14 people rumbled down a desert road from the town of Radda, which al-Qaeda militants once controlled. Suddenly a missile struck flipping the vehicle over. Then a second missile hit the truck.
Within seconds, 11 of the passengers were dead, including a woman and her seven-year-old daughter. A 12-year-old boy also died that day, and another man later died from his wounds.
The Yemeni government initially said that those killed were al-Qaeda militants and that its own Soviet-era jets carried out the September 2 attack. But last week US officials acknowledged for the first time that it was an American strike and that the victims were civilians.
France: Idiot mothers, Part 2
The mother and uncle of a three-year-old boy named Jihad have appeared in a French court for sending him to school in a top bearing the words “I am a bomb”.
The long-sleeved T-shirt had the words “Jihad, born on September 11″ emblazoned on the back when he turned up at his nursery school in the southern town of Sorgues near Avignon on September 25.
Nepal: Girl set on fire for rejecting marriage proposal dies
16-year-old Shiwa Hasmi of Bardia district, who suffered serious burn injuries after being set on fire by an Indian national following her decision not to accept his marriage proposal, breathed her last at Bir Hospital in Kathmandu on Wednesday.
Family sources said Shiwa died at 7 am today morning while undergoing treatment at the hospital. Ninety percent of her body was severely burnt in the fire and doctors treating her had said that their was little chance she will survive. It is learnt that the family is taking Shiwa’s body to her hometown Gulariya today to burry [sic] her according to proper Muslim tradition.
Because ‘proper Muslim tradition’ had served her so well.
India: Man beheads sister in street, maims other woman — for ‘honour’
Another ‘honour killing’ — or ‘religiously-motivated murder’, as we should be calling it.
In the first honour killing in Kolkata in decades, a 29-year-old youth dragged his sister out on the street and cut off her head with one stroke of the sword in Ayubnagar locality of Nadial, barely 13km from [Kolkuta] centre, on Friday.
Scores of residents looked on in horror as Mehtab Alam walked to a police station with the head in his left hand and the sword in his right, dripping blood all along the way…
…Mehtab told the numbed police officers that he had killed his sister for “running off with a lover and dishonouring the family”, say sources. Nilofar was married for eight years and had two children. It was “immoral” for her to live with her former paramour, Firoz Hossain, Mehtab apparently told police.
…He had even attacked Firoz’s sister-in-law, Saboo, who tried to save Nilofar. Saboo’s right arm is nearly severed and she is battling for life in hospital, said joint commissioner-crime Pallab Kanti Ghosh.
UK: Idiot mother endangers son
And not just by giving him a stupid name.
A mother who ran away with her seven-year-old son to prevent him having life-saving radiotherapy last night claimed that a doctor told her the treatment would ‘fry his brains’.
Sally Roberts, 37, has been giving her seriously ill son Neon alternative therapies as he recovers from surgery to remove a brain tumour.
But doctors disagree with her decision to use only natural medicine and have started legal proceedings, arguing that Neon’s chances of surviving will be ‘dramatically reduced’ if he does not undergo radiotherapy soon….
A High Court judge made the extremely rare ruling that Neon could be named in an attempt to find him after Mr Roberts, 34, became concerned at having not heard from his wife and son in four days.
But Mrs Roberts said she was out of contact because she was in Sussex taking Neon for treatment in an oxygen chamber and does not carry a mobile phone in case it affects his health….
However, Mrs Roberts, who lives near Tiverton, Devon, claims that when a doctor explained this, he referred to the procedure as ‘frying his brains’.
Mind you, the doctor didn’t help matters any.
US: Blame the victim! (and pay the perpetrator)
For more than a week, spectators and members of the press have been packing the Brooklyn courtroom where a prominent chasidic man is on trial for sexually abusing a girl from the Satmar community who was sent to him for counseling. The case is noteworthy for a number of reasons, chief among them the fact that the young woman pressed charges in the first place.
Indeed, ever since she reported the abuse, the alleged victim of Nechemya Weberman — an unlicensed “therapist” to whom, testimony has indicated, Satmar schools referred “wayward” girls for “help” — has been subjected to intense pressure to withdraw her claim, including intimidation, harassment, social ostracism of her family and even a reported $500,000 bribe. Last spring, members of the Satmar community held a lavish fundraiser for Weberman’s defense. Not long after, four men were arrested and charged with witness tampering in connection with the case. And last Thursday, four chasidic men were arrested for taking the young woman’s picture — which was then posted online — as she testified in the courtroom…
However, many people with ties to the chasidic community believe there is something even more important about the Weberman case — namely, what it exposes about the larger communal role played by chasidic “modesty committees” in communities like Williamsburg, Borough Park and Kiryas Joel. These groups — to which, sources say, Weberman was connected — originated years ago to guard the “purity” of the community by enforcing strict dress and behavior codes that characterize the insular chasidic lifestyle. But, insiders say, the tactics of these self-appointed, freelance modesty patrols have evolved from public shaming to extortion and threats.
The narrative to emerge from the trial testimony so far is that a chasidic girl, perceived as “acting out” by the standards of her chasidic school and family — defying the community’s dress code, communicating with boys, asking questions about the existence of God — was sent to Weberman for therapy. She was 12 at the time, and the move apparently came at her school’s insistence and under threat of expulsion.
Both the girl’s mother and a principal at the school, Benzion Feuerwerger, testified that the school, United Talmudical Academy at one point required the family to pay $12,800 in advance for Weberman’s “therapeutic” services before they would accept her into their summer camp and back into the school the following year. According to her testimony, the mother challenged the propriety of Weberman taking the girl, alone, on a long drive in his car, a clear violation of the chasidic prohibition against a man and a woman who are not married to each other being alone. The mother claimed that Weberman demanded an apology from her and that the school ordered the family to go along with it, according to the mother’s testimony.
The young woman, now 17, alleges that Weberman, who often “treated” her in a locked room with a bed, began touching her sexually during their sessions, which also came to include forced oral sex. The alleged abuse went on for years and was reported to the authorities only after the young woman disclosed it to a counselor at a new school she was attending….
According to Yerachmiel Lopin, who blogs at FrumFollies and has been reporting on the case for two years, “UTA was in effect, extorting money for Weberman. I strongly suspect they kept some of it. Given widespread rumors about his sexual misconduct, Satmar was in effect pimping its girls to Weberman, adding insult to injury by making the victim pay to be victimized.”
Getting paid $150 per hour to commit rape on a 12-year-old girl. Not a bad gig, if you can keep out of jail.
India: Who made YOU the boss of me?
Oh, that’s right — God did.
A village council in eastern India has banned women from using mobile phones, saying they “pollute the social atmosphere” by encouraging women to elope with lovers.
The order was issued by the village council in Suderbari, in the Kishanganj district of impoverished Bihar state, after a formal meeting on Sunday. The measure was designed to check “the breakdown of the institution of marriage”, council leaders said…
“Unrestricted use of mobile phones is promoting premarital and extramarital affairs and destroying the great institution of marriage. We are extremely worried,” said Manuwar Alam, the president of the social advisory committee, explaining that at least six girls and women had eloped in the past year.
Women aren’t satisfied with their lives here in the village, so let’s take away something they value … yes, nice piece of religious logic there.
“We had to hide our faces out of shame,” Alam said. “We decided to do something that could firmly curb such cases, which were earning a very bad name for all of us.”…
Sorry, dude. If you’re ashamed, that’s your problem. Get over it.
And now the good news:
Sandeep Kumar R Pudakalkatti, the most senior bureaucrat in the district, said: “We have ordered a probe into the unlawful diktat, and those found guilty during the course of inquiry will be sternly dealt with.”
Go, Sandeep!
Global: 50 reasons to boycott the Catholic Church
Adam Lee has done the research, so you don’t have to.
“Just give back the plate, Kate.
Sock the man in the frock, Jock.
Walk out of the church, Lurch!
And set yourself free…”
– apologies to Paul Simon.
Afghanistan: 15-year-old girl killed over refusal to wed
Two men have been arrested for slitting the throat of a 15-year-old Afghan girl after her family refused a marriage proposal, police say.
The girl was carrying water from a river to her village home in northern Kunduz province on Wednesday when she was murdered, police spokesman Sayed Sarwar Hussaini said.
“The two men attacked her and slit her throat with a knife,” he said. “They were arrested and are in police custody.”
Mr Hussaini said one of the suspects had proposed marriage to the girl, but her family had rejected the offer.
Extreme violence against women and girls remains a major problem in the conservative Muslim nation more than a decade after US-led troops brought down the notoriously brutal Taliban Islamist regime.
According to figures by British charity Oxfam, 87 per cent of Afghan women report having experienced physical, sexual or psychological violence or forced marriage.
Expecting outrage and horror from the Islamic authorities? Don’t hold your breath.
Ireland: Catholic bishops show that total ignorance is no obstacle to dictating medical procedures
The Irish Catholic Bishops have seen fit to clarify the church’s view on gynecology given Savita Halappanavar’s death from sepsis at 17 weeks in her pregnancy and the concern that evacuating her uterus was delayed because the fetus still had a heart beat. The full statement is here, but this is the excerpt I find most troubling:
- Whereas abortion is the direct and intentional destruction of an unborn baby and is gravely immoral in all circumstances, this is different from medical treatments which do not directly and intentionally seek to end the life of the unborn baby. Current law and medical guidelines in Ireland allow nurses and doctors in Irish hospitals to apply this vital distinction in practice while upholding the equal right to life of both a mother and her unborn baby.
I spent quite sometime trying to understand how one could possibly translate this statement into medical care. I’ve been a doctor for 22 years and an OB/GYN for 17 years and I admit that I am at a bit of a loss…
That’s polite medical-speak for ‘these people are barking mad’.
UK: Baby bleeds to death after circumcision
A four-week-old boy bled to death after a home circumcision carried out by a nurse, a court has heard.
Goodluck Caubergs died the day after nurse Grace Adeleye carried out the procedure without anaesthetic, Manchester Crown Court was told.
The jury heard the 66-year-old only used scissors, forceps and olive oil at an address in Chadderton, Greater Manchester in April 2010.
Mrs Adeleye denies manslaughter by gross negligence.
The court heard the medic and Goodluck’s parents are originally from Nigeria, where the circumcision of newborns is the tradition for Christian families.
If it was a Christian ‘tradition’ to jump off a cliff, would you do it?
Australia: Man who thinks that blobs of cells are human and sick people should be compelled to remain alive is ‘sociopath’
So what else is new?
Cardinal George Pell showed a ‘‘sociopathic lack of empathy, typifying the attitude and response of the Catholic hierarchy’’ to parents whose daughters were repeatedly raped by a priest, the Victorian inquiry into child abuse has been told.
Anthony Foster told how they met the cardinal – now Archbishop of Sydney – when he was Melbourne Archbishop, in a furniture storage room at a Melbourne presbytery. They were squeezed on to a narrow wooden bench, while he sat in a ‘‘grandiose’’ padded leather chair.
He expressed no emotion when shown a picture of the Fosters’ daughter Emma harming herself – she later killed herself – and told them: ‘‘If you don’t like what we are doing, take us to court.’’
Indonesia: Hundreds of girls annually suffer genital mutilation
During the morning, 248 Indonesian girls undergo the same ordeal. Suminah is the oldest, the youngest is just five months. It is April 2006 and the occasion is a mass ceremony to perform sunat perempuan or “female circumcision” that has been held annually since 1958 by the Bandung-based Yayasan Assalaam, an Islamic foundation that runs a mosque and several schools. The foundation holds the event in the lunar month of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday, and pays parents 80,000 rupiah (£6) and a bag of food for each daughter they bring to be cut.
It is well established that female genital mutilation (FGM) is not required in Muslim law. It is an ancient cultural practice that existed before Islam, Christianity and Judaism. It is also agreed across large swathes of the world that it is barbaric. At the mass ceremony, I ask the foundation’s social welfare secretary, Lukman Hakim, why they do it. His answer not only predates the dawn of religion, it predates human evolution: “It is necessary to control women’s sexual urges,” says Hakim, a stern, bespectacled man in a fez. “They must be chaste to preserve their beauty.”
Can’t argue with that, can you?
Ireland: Time to press murder charges?
Hey Bernie! Because of your insane beliefs, a beautiful healthy young woman is dead. How do you sleep at night?
A YOUNG woman died of septicaemia in Ireland after Catholic doctors refused to terminate her miscarriage because abortion was against the country’s law and religious beliefs.
Savita Halappanavar, 31, died last month in University Hospital Galway after three days of agony, the Irish Times reported on Wednesday.
Doctors told her she was losing her 17-week pregnancy, as her cervix had dilated and the amniotic sac had broken, and that the foetus would not survive.
Her husband told the newspaper she begged for birth to be induced but was told this was not possible because the foetal heartbeat was still present “and this is a Catholic country”.
Praveen Halappanavar said that his wife, a Hindu, said, “I am neither Irish nor Catholic,” but they said there was nothing they could do.”
Mr Halappanavar said his wife was left in extreme pain for another two-and-a-half days until the foetal heartbeat stopped. The dead foetus was then removed but Mrs Halappanavar was soon taken to intensive care where she died on October 28.
Update: An inquest reveals more details of this poor woman’s horrific ordeal.
Philippines: God will provide, says Catholic church…
…because we sure as hell won’t.
…The children huddle together waiting for breakfast, which on a good day is pan de sal, or Filipino salt bread, which they dip into hot instant coffee. Mrs Cabiya-an works part-time as a laundry woman and home help.
”It’s tough when you have so many children,” she says, with a shy smile. ”I have to count them before I go to sleep to make sure no one’s missing.”
At one time Mrs Cabiya-an had access to contraceptives but the Manila mayor, Jose Atienza, a devout Catholic, swept them off the shelves of city-run clinics in 2000. Since then she has struggled to limit the size of her family, resorting to illegal abortion more than once.
Mr Aquino, a Catholic, is strongly backing a reproductive health bill before the Philippines Senate that aims to give poor couples free access to family planning methods, including contraceptives and condoms, and would require schools to teach sex education.
The legislation was first drafted 14 years ago but proved too difficult for previous governments as the country has grown to be the world’s 12th most populous nation with almost 100 million people…
But the Catholic Bishops Conference has vowed to oppose the bill, even though legislators have watered it down to appease the church, removing references to a two child per family policy. ”We are still for scrapping the bill. It is not necessary,” Archbishop Jose Palma, the conference president, says. Some priests have even branded support for the bill a ”serious sin” punishable with excommunication, reflecting how conservative the church has remained in the Philippines, the sole Catholic nation without a divorce law.
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