Reading Time: 5 minutes Knoesen, head of the National Christian Resistance Movement (NCRM)—also known as The Crusaders—is accused of planning to overthrow the South African government. He is on trial for high treason in a case currently taking place in the Mpumalanga High Court. According to the Middelberg Observer, his trial began at the end of April with the submission […]
South Africa
Posted inDeep Dive
Killing for church and country in apartheid South Africa
Reading Time: 7 minutes Imagine being restrained while someone stretches the inner tube of a car tire over your head and gradually pulls it down. The tube first covers your eyes so that you cannot see, then comes over your nose, and finally covers your mouth – you can no longer cry out or breathe. You struggle silently until […]
Posted inBooks
Censorship and book-burning
Reading Time: 9 minutes Asked last year during a Zoom talk I gave to a UK Humanist group what book, if any, had the greatest influence on my life, I got blank stares when I proffered the name of a publication none had ever heard of: Jacobsen’s Index to Objectionable Literature. By around 1970, Jacobsen’s comprised a list of […]
Posted inNews
The religious threat to global human rights must be taken seriously
Reading Time: 4 minutes UN EFFORTS to challenge violations of human rights should consider both oppressive laws which theocrats uphold in former colonies and efforts to impose similar agendas further afield. The United Nations recently asked NGOs with whom it works about the legacies of colonialism that still had adverse implications for human rights. Some of the worst systemic […]
Posted inEducation, The Secular
South Africa Outlaws Promotion of Any One Religion in Schools
Reading Time: 2 minutes This is from Humanists UK. Good to see Jacques Rousseau in on the action (I used to blog with him at the Skeptic Ink Network): A High Court judge in Johannesburg has outlawed state-funded single-faith schools in South Africa, following a human rights case brought by the Organisation for Religious Education and Democracy. The court found that […]