So here’s why I don’t get to talk to GSC people until Monday (or part of the reason, weekend conferences probably being another). Edwina Rogers has been fired from the SCA. Laurie Goodstein and Mark Oppenheimer report in the NY Times.

Atheists and nonbelievers from across the country will muster on Capitol Hill next week for a summit meeting organized by the Secular Coalition for America, a growing alliance of groups that has been giving the religious right an intensifying case of heartburn by lobbying for the separation of government and religion.

But what the Secular Coalition has not made public is that last week it fired its executive director, Edwina Rogers, an experienced Republican lobbyist whose conservative pedigree elevated the profile of the secular movement when she was hired just over two years ago.

Ms. Rogers said in an interview that she was given no warning and no reason for her termination, but suspects that she is being blamed for organization funds discovered to be missing and allegedly embezzled by two of her subordinates. An internal audit, obtained by The New York Times, found that two employees who handled the Secular Coalition’s finances embezzled $78,805, mostly by using the coalition’s credit cards to pay for restaurant meals, travel and plastic surgery. Ms. Rogers said she discovered the misuse of funds, reported it to the police, fired the two employees and commissioned the audit with the approval of the board.

[Read more…]

I’m off to hang out with PZ and other friends in a couple of hours. Did I tell y’all about that? In case any of the Seattleites among you want to go? I forget. If not, get in touch with me fast to find out where. It’s secret so that we don’t get any of the assholes who live around here, and there are quite a few.

And then some people just don’t get it. Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Babulal Gaur, for instance, who explains that rape is a social crime, sometimes right, sometimes wrong.

Gaur, who is from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), said on Thursday that the crime of rape can only be considered to have been committed if it is reported to police.

“This is a social crime which depends on men and women. Sometimes it’s right, sometimes it’s wrong,” said Gaur, the home minister responsible for law and order in BJP-run Madhya Pradesh.

[Read more…]

Via Taslima on Twitter – The Times of India reports

A lady conductor of an ST bus was kicked and thrashed till she fell unconscious after she reprimanded a 30-year-old man for trying to board the vehicle from the front, which is meant for exit.

The accused, a 30-year-old factory worker from Navi Mumbai, also beat up the driver and another woman conductor when they came to the victim’s rescue. The incident took place in Dombivli on Wednesday morning and the accused has been arrested.

The drama lasted nearly half an hour but, according to the victim, the commuters watched silently as she and the bus driver Vinayak Nayakwade (59) were being roughed up.

Singh, who tried to board the bus from Dombivli, was on his way to his home in Kalamboli, Navi Mumbai. When Nayakwade asked Singh to get in from the rear door, he began abusing him. On hearing the commotion, the conductor reportedly reprimanded Singh, leading to him turning on her. She was slapped and pushed before being kicked mercilessly. “He kept kicking me like a football,” said the 34-year-old woman.

When Nayakwade stopped the bus and rushed to her rescue, Singh got aggressive with him too. He then pulled the victim out of the bus by her legs, tore up her uniform shirt and beat her till she fell unconscious on the road. According to the victim, the beating lasted almost 30 minutes.

[Read more…]

I get to talk to someone else at the Global Secular Council on Monday. I don’t think there’s a whole lot of talk needed. I want them to

• apologize on Twitter for their rudeness to me on Twitter

 

•  unblock the people they’ve blocked for asking them questions about the GSC

 

•  answer questions about the GSC

That’s all. I don’t see it as needing hours of conversation. They can just do it.

They just can’t refuse to answer questions about their shiny new project. They’re not the Vatican, and they’re not the kind of organization that wants to model itself on the Vatican. They’re the kind of organization that prides itself on being transparent and accountable – that’s a secular value, as opposed to the theistic values of mystery and unquestionable authority. They advertise themselves, so that means they have to respond to questions about themselves. They want our support, so they have to explain themselves to us. It’s just part of the territory.

But…I’m not sure they actually have that kind of mindset. Check out another picture that they use at the top of another page:

Remind you of anything? it reminds me of the Last Supper. [Read more…]

There’s more from the incompetent unresponsive unrepresentative “Global” Secular Council. I hope this will be my last post on the subject (of this particular quarrel, not the Council overall), but who knows – they keep adding to their CV.

Item: they apologized fulsomely to Rebecca Watson yesterday.

In itself, of course, that’s good – an apology was owed. But they refuse to apologize to me, so offering an energetic apology to someone else for a small part of the very thing they should apologize to me for…looks pointed.

Item: they still refuse to apologize to me.

The refusal is now taking the form of pretending not to know how to do it, not to know what they did that’s apology worthy, not to know how apologies work, not to know that they are an organization and thus responsible for what branches of their organization do. They are demanding that I write the apology for them.

Here is how our correspondence on that subject went:

To me:

Would the following Tweet meet your current request:

We are sorry we called @OpheliaBenson “Ofie”.

If so, I will have staff implement promptly.

My reply:

“We apologize” would be better than “We are sorry.”

For the rest, it’s a grudging ungenerous minimum, but if you want to look grudging and ungenerous, go ahead.

To me:

What else would you like me to have the account say?

My reply this morning some 14 hours later:

This is ridiculous. That’s a ridiculous question. It’s not a matter of “the account” – it is your organization. The account isn’t a separate thing; it speaks for your organization, and your organization is accountable for what it says. You’re the press contact person. If you can’t figure out how to apologize for grotesque rudeness, you have a problem.

There has been no response. The press contact person is probably extra busy dealing with the departure of Edwina Rogers, but there it is – the press contact person is hopelessly bad at her job.

Compare

We sincerely apologize, @rebeccawatson! We did not look closely and had no idea that a photo of you had been abusively doctored. Horrible.

with

We are sorry we called @OpheliaBenson “Ofie”.

It’s pretty staggeringly rude, isn’t it. You can almost see the sullen defiant child, delivering the forced apology as rudely as it dares and longing to blow a huge raspberry instead. And the press contact officer thought it a good idea to offer me that.

Item: they blocked @VitaBrevi too.

She was asking them questions, so they blocked her.

A shiny new secular organization that’s a subset of a less shiny less new secular organization is blocking people who ask it questions on Twitter.

How, exactly, are we supposed to go about asking them questions? Do we have to petition them? Go through channels? Pay a bribe? Disable the guards? What?

I’m serious here. They seem to think they don’t have to answer questions, so much so that they can malign and taunt and silence people who ask them questions. That is a very peculiar and sinister position for a secular non-profit to stake out.

Maajid Nawaz on Newsnight arguing with an Islamist called Ibrahim Hewitt who would love it if Britain became a sharia state and who won’t condemn or reject the stoning of “adulterers.”

There’s a bit starting at 4:30 where Maajid tries to get Ibrahim Hewitt to answer the question – “If there’s due process, stoning to death is ok?” – but the latter dodges and feints and Jeremy Paxman helps him get away with it.

Good. The discoveries about the Tuam mortality figures are making a stink in Ireland. Good.

There is growing pressure on the Government to hold a full historical inquiry into the deaths of almost 800 children in a mother and baby home in Tuam, Co Galway between the 1920s and the 1960s.

There were numerous calls from TDs, Senators and councillors yesterday for a full inquiry following the disclosure that many infants and children who died in the home run by the Bon Secours order were buried in an unmarked plot.

Minister for Children Charlie Flanagan said yesterday that he was giving “active consideration to the best means of addressing the harrowing details emerging regarding the burial arrangements for children who died many years ago in mother and baby homes”.

[Read more…]

Huh. The Global Secular Council’s contact person told me in her first replies (before the ones where she refused to tweet an apology)

I have instructed the Social Media team for future to take less liberties in this regard, and to run similar challenges by me before “tweeting” in defensiveness, rather than diplomacy.

I guess her standard isn’t exactly what mine is.

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Here’s me “bullying” or “internet trolling” the Global Secular Council.

Secular Council @SecularCouncil May 24

Sorry you missed this, @VitaBrevi. We responded many times to Ms. Ophelia. We are many women, & more joining soon. www.secularcouncil/team

Ophelia Benson @OpheliaBenson May 24

@SecularCouncil @VitaBrevi

Actually you didn’t. You typed words but they were consistently non-responsive. [Read more…]