Terry Firma, though born and Journalism-school-educated in Europe, has lived in the U.S. for the past 20-odd years. Stateside, his feature articles have been published in the New York Times, Reason, Rolling Stone, Playboy, and Wired. Terry was the founder and Main Mischief Maker of Moral Compass, a now-dormant site that pokes fun at the delusional claim by people of faith that a belief in God equips them with superior moral standards. He was the Editor-in-Chief of two Manhattan-based magazines until he decided to give up commercial publishing for professional photography... with a lot of blogging on the side. These days, he lives in an old seaside farmhouse in Maine with his wife, three kids, and two big dogs.
People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Zakia Belkhiri, 22, a Muslim woman in Belgium, has just discovered the truth of that saying. A week ago, Belkhiri became a social-media sensation with a sassy, self-empowering selfie she took at an anti-Muslim demonstration in Antwerp, Belgium, defiantly duckfacing in front of the 40-or-so protesters. For that no doubt beautiful message, she was celebrated as a badass, a hero, et cetera. But now it turns out that Belkhiri isn’t entirely about living in peace and harmony. She would like to make an exception for Jews. Four years ago, on Twitter, she cheered their extermination. Read more
We’ve heard of acid attacks against Muslim and girls women who have drain cleaner or similar substances splashed in their face when they smile at a man who isn’t their husband, or who don’t return romantic affection, or who disobey Allah and the will of the clan. ISIS has just raised that already-unspeakable cruelty to a whole new, systematic level. Read more
In India’s Tamil Nadu state, men with trained parakeets happily take bird-brained patrons’ money. The parakeets are supposed to tell people’s futures by selecting Tarot-like fortune cards containing pictures of Hindu gods, Buddha, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and so on. The Atlantic has a short film about the generations-old phenomenon. Read more
