The BBC profiles pastor and state senator Clementa Pinckney.
A church pastor and a state senator, Clementa Pinckney spoke of his politics as an extension of his religious mission, as another way of serving the people around him.
“Our calling is not just within the walls of the congregation,” he said. “We are part of the life and community in which our congregation resides.” [Read more…]
Murdered in the Charleston AME church shootings.
Shaun King @ShaunKing 24 minutes ago
This is TyWanza Sanders. Killed in the #CharlestonShooting.A great young brother. Recent Allen University grad.
I’m reminded of the photos of the Garissa victims – so many young vibrant hopeful students with plans and dreams.
Dylann Roof has been arrested. As many of my friends are pointing out on Twitter and Facebook, he won’t be tortured or raped or murdered in custody. He’ll be safe and sound.
The Post and Courier @postandcourier 2h2 hours ago
.@FBI confirms that Dylann Roof, 21, of #Columbia area is suspect in #CharlestonShooting. #chsnews
Photo of #CharlestonShooting suspect Dylann Roof shows patch of South African apartheid era flag
Update: this could be faked; see karmacat’s comment.
The butterfly on Taslima is no fake though. I was there, and they really were landing on people.
Another item from the Annals of Bigotry – the kind of bigotry that leads, at the extremes, to murders like the ones at the Charleston AME church, and the ones at Charlie Hebdo, and the ones in Bangladesh.
My friend found this note taped to her door after hanging some colorful jar lights in her yard with her daughters. She’s responding to this nonsense with whimsy and has started a campaign to paint her whole house in rainbows — is there any chance you might share her info? http://www.gofundme.com/x6dkw9h — with Julie Baker in Baltimore, Maryland.
The New York Times is doing live coverage.
What We Know
- A gunman identified by city and federal law enforcement officials as Dylann Storm Roof, 21, opened fire at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the nation’s oldest black churches, on Wednesday evening, killing nine.
- The Rev. Clementa Pinckney, the church’s pastor and a state senator, was killed, according to the minority leader of the State House of Representatives.
- The police said the other victims were six women and two men.
- The Charleston police chief, Greg Mullen, called the attack a hate crime.
And then – a completely nauseating eyewitness account: [Read more…]
Now it’s just getting funny – all the bolts and sprockets flying off the “Secular Policy Institute” and landing in the middle of the banana cream pie.
Last week I was busy getting rid of a whole bunch of assholes so I missed Edwina Rogers’s comment at Almost Diamonds. I wish I’d seen it then, because if I had I would have known about it when I was accidentally introduced to her at the conference. (I did mention that I was accidentally introduced to her, right? I was. Her smile shrank quite a lot when she heard my name. I wasn’t very effusive myself.)
Rogers starts off by saying the post is fiction – which is amusing, given all the references in the post.
The blogger spins a story of the transformation of GSC into the GSI and its eventual emergence as the Secular Policy Institute (SPI). This is a breezy reconstruction of the actual events that almost suggests that the Secular Policy Institute is the latest incarnation of what began as the Global Secular Council, the end stage of a metamorphosis in which the idea took final flight. The account reads as an improbable and serpentine transformation of projects and organizations precisely because it is improbable and, well, untrue, too.
Oh yes? Then why is there so much overlap? So many of the same “experts” and “thought leaders” and “Fellows”? So many of the same photographs of the same people? [Read more…]
Nostalgia time. Let’s look back at the first blushing days of the new Global Secular Council, later to be the Secular Policy Institute – by which I mean, let’s look back at what I had to say about it starting in May 2014.
In Global shmobal, for instance, the first whisper of its arrival.
Oops. There’s a thing called the “Global Secular Council.”
First? It’s not so global. They’re nearly all American or Ukanian, and the whole thing is clearly Anglophone.
Last? Its team of experts – 23 of them. Five women. Five. [Read more…]
I plan to post a few bits and pieces about the conference last weekend, if I get around to them.
One item…Saturday afternoon between the sessions and the evening events, Taslima and I went outside to the pool area to talk. We found a nice table under a tree and sat there in the shade gabbing away…and after we’d been there a good while a woman came up to us. I was thinking she was someone attending the conference who wanted to greet Taslima, but no – she was part of Taslima’s security detail, come to ask what her plans were for the evening and how to find her or (while she was on a break) another officer.
She was very…I’m not sure what to call it. Very firm, calm, fit – soldierly, you might call it. I liked her.
I wanted to post about it at the time but didn’t; I waited until we were all long gone.
I hadn’t noticed any security before that day, but at the start of the afternoon sessions I got off the elevator and approached the hall and there were two burly guys with guns at each side of the doorway.
All weekend I kept reminding myself not to mention that Taslima had decided to join me on the Niagara Falls trip until after it was well over.
We live in strange times.
Michael Eisen took a look at the angry reaction to the angry reaction to Tim Hunt’s “joke” a few days ago (the day I was staring at Niagara Falls and gossiping with Taslima, to be exact – Sunday).
I happened to met Tim Hunt earlier this year at a meeting of young Indian investigators held in Kashmir. We both were invited as external “advisors” brought in to provide wisdom to scientists beginning their independent careers. While his “How to win a Nobel Prize” keynote had a bit more than the usual amount of narcissism, he was in every other way the warm, generous and affable person that his defenders of the last week have said he is. I will confess I kind of liked the guy. [Read more…]
