Good bye Sunila Abeysekera

Human Rights Watch reports:

Human Rights Watch mourns the death of Sunila Abeysekera, a prominent and highly respected Sri Lankan activist who spent more than two decades documenting human rights violations in Sri Lanka. Abeysekera passed away in Colombo on September 9, 2013, following a long illness.

With a rare ability to act as researcher, advocate, and spokesperson within Sri Lanka and abroad, Abeysekera was internationally recognized as one of South Asia’s preeminent human rights activists.

During Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war, Abeysekera refused to take sides, denouncing abuses by both the government and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. [Read more…]

At least one

So Elysium is a movie about social inequality, yet it’s almost all-male. Oops. Funny how they just can’t get that right, isn’t it. Well no not funny. That’s not the word.

Just one question then, isn’t it ironic that a film about segregation contains only one fully-rounded female character, and even that role was originally written as male?

Ironic? No, not really, not at this point. By now it’s just abjectly contemptible. Catch the fuck on, will you? [Read more…]

Well good morning to you too

I go to Twitter and what greets me?

aa2

Phalacrocoracidae@CommonCormorant

Loser, hypocrite, bitch, #cuntbucket AND #douchecanoe: @OpheliaBenson < fuck you ruiner of things. >> look: http://www.atheistrev.com/2012/12/michael-shermer-is-latest-to-be.html … think!!

.@OpheliaBenson is a horrible person.

.@OpheliaBenson makes me think I should avoid Seattle. (Even though I was born in Tacoma.)
#douchecanoe
#cuntbucket

Total stranger to me, that person. I thought I would RT the first one, but got the “you can’t” message – so that person tweeted that shit at me and then blocked me. I don’t do this “that feminazi blocked me just because I called her a cunt!!” routine, I don’t do the “you may not block anyone” routine at all – but I do think that throwing a bunch of shit at a stranger and then blocking is chickenshit.

Anyway. That was my Twitter “good morning.”

Update: A couple of hours on –

aa3

Phalacrocoracidae‏@CommonCormorant

Not sure I understand how “oh no someone called me the c-word on twitter” is even something adults talk about.

That’s great, isn’t it? Calling a total stranger a cunt is perfectly adult, but talking about the fact that some random thug called me a cunt – that’s not something adults talk about.

Let’s take lessons in ethics from that guy!

Be suspicious

aa

Hahahaha yeah tell that to Dave Silverman and Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker and Greg Epstein and JT Eberhard and Teresa MacBain and the staff of the SSA and –

oh you meant just the ones you don’t like. Ohhhhhh.

Of course, almost none of them actually do have a “career” in atheism or make a primary income from atheism. So that makes your advice kind of pointless.  But never mind, the spirit of it is clear enough.

One down

So the bullies won at least part of their war with Caroline Criado-Perez – she got a new wave of hahaha rape-threats, so she deleted her Twitter account.

Caroline Criado-Perez, who led the campaign to reinstate a woman on an English banknote, took to Twitter on Thursday to vent frustration at the police’s apparent loss of information related to previous death and rape threats, which Scotland Yard has since denied.

The journalist deleted her account after receiving further threats on the site in recent days.

Bullies win, everyone else loses.

 

If she says her drink is big, you can say “so’s my dick”

You know, MRAs and their fans think (or pretend to think) feminists hate men and say outrageous things about men, but take a look at “Ask Men,” which bills itself an advice site for men. Just the front page is insulting – it’s insulting the way things aimed at women are insulting to me. Sports grunt grunt. Cars grunt grunt. And then there’s “how to get a woman to put out” sorry I mean “top ten ways to flirt with a woman sexually.”

1 Find the double meanings

The English language is literally packed with words you can twist around to create sexual meanings. Wet, juicy, hard, fast, hot — the possibilities are endless. For example, if she says her drink is big, you can reply with something like: “Big can be a good thing, don’t you think?” You’ll be surprised how easy it is to add a bit of sexuality to everyday conversations once you start looking for opportunities. [Read more…]

One tent and a stack of Bibles

There’s a new documentary, Mission Congo by Lara Zizic and David Turner, that alleges some very dubious activities by Pat Robertson. Charity bait-and-switch fraud allegations.

Robertson has a non-profit organization, Operation Blessing International (OBI). He’s in a position to raise a lot of money for it, given the 700 Club and the Christian Broadcasting Network and all. He can just say send money, and people send money. He said send money specifically to aid refugees from the Rwandan genocide who fled to camps in DR Congo.

Chris McGreal, a journalist for The Guardian who was stationed at the refugee camp in Goma, recalled a strange sight. The camp was plagued by a cholera epidemic, which claimed over 40,000 lives. As victims were rushed to medical tents on stretchers, he witnessed a preacher running alongside the stretcher clenching a Bible and preaching to the victim. The Bible-thumper was a member of OBI.

“They had one tent and a stack of Bibles,” said a member of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which provided actual aid to the refugree camp in Goma, in the film. [Read more…]