Celebrating their 200th anniversary, famed debating society in England invites Sarah Palin, among other notables, to speak. Wait, that can't be right.

"Debate? Oh yeah I debate awesome! Debate is where I speak and nobody challenges me right?"

Courtesy of The Cambridge Student:  

Celebrating its 200th anniversary, the Cambridge Union Society has released a sneak preview of the Lent Term 2015 termcard, with highlights including Stephen Fry and Sarah Palin. 

Reflecting on the varied fields of the revealed speakers, Amy Gregg, President of the Union for Lent 2015, commented: “I’m extremely pleased that we have begun our Bicentenary year with such a diverse range of prominent speakers. As ever, the Union strives to offer members the opportunity to engage with some of the world’s most significant and influential public figures.”

So let me get this straight.

This renowned  debating society is inviting the amazing Stephen Fry, an incredibly intelligent and humorous gentleman, AND Sarah Palin, a vapid, infamously unintelligent conservative nitwit?

Seriously?

I have to admit that at first I thought this must be yet another article from a humor magazine, but nope. It is legit.

Here is their description of Palin:

Controversial American politician Sarah Palin will then speak on the 2nd of March. The first female Republican to be nominated for the Vice Presidency, during the 2008 Presidential election, Palin has more recently spent time as a political commentator for Fox News, and has starred in ‘Sarah Palin’s Alaska’, her own reality show. Her book, ‘Going Rogue’, has sold over two million copies.

They are also inviting to speak, along with Fry and Palin,  FEMEN "sextremist" Innan Shevchenko. Who you all may remember as the Ukrainian activist who likes to protest topless.

 
Yep, Palin is going to fit in great.

This is what I found on their home page about the organization:

Founded in 1815, the Cambridge Union is the oldest continuously running debating society in the world, and the largest and most famous society at the University of Cambridge. In 2015, the Union will celebrate 200 years of free speech and the art of debating.

So they are a debating society that likes to invite controversial and eclectic guests to discuss their points of view in front of the students. The appearances also feature provocative questions from the audience which the speaker is assumed to possess the ability to respond to without preparation or relying on notes written on their palms.

In other words they are going to eat Sarah Palin alive.

Here take a look at some video of Russell Brand's appearance in front of the Cambridge Union.

Now Brand possesses quite a nimble mind and has little difficulty responding to questions off the cuff. Those are NOT the qualities that come to mind when one thinks of Sarah Palin.

Oh yeah, they are going to eat her alive.

The topless militants of Femen have a new target, Fox News and Sean Hannity.

Courtesy of Salon:

Femen’s manner of protesting has not proved to everyone’s liking, to put it mildly, but one thing is certain: In an era of rising political disaffection and apathy, people pay attention. Bare breasts are not incidental to Femen’s struggle. The movement has aimed to wrest conceptions about women’s bodies from the clutches of the three (doctrinally prudish and phallocratic) Abrahamic religions that would shroud them, partly or in full, in cloth as well as in shame. Toplessness is, in Femen’s view, a means of boldly violating gender- and faith-based societal norms; and atheism has formed a part of the Femen canon since the movement’s inception in 2008. 

Atheism has been dear to (Inna) Shevchenko in particular: Her own life has been shaped and even upended by her fight for secularist ideals. In protest against the harsh, Orthodox Church-supported prison sentence Pussy Riot received from the Russian authorities, in August 2012 she chainsawed a towering wooden cross in central Kiev in her native Ukraine. Publicly threatened as a result by Ukraine’s conservative President Viktor Yanukovych (deposed last year) and facing charges of “criminal hooliganism” for her deed, she fled to France and established Femen’s first outpost abroad. There, she soon rocketed to fame (better said, infamy), leading her militants in a multitude of fiercely faithless demonstrations in favor of women’s rights and same-sex marriage that pushed Gallic tolerance of free speech to the limit. Perhaps most controversially, she inspired the depiction of the revered (and bare-breasted) heroine of the French Revolution Marianne now gracing the country’s postage stamps, becoming the only foreign woman to do so. This still infuriates France’s nationalistic (and ascendant) far right, which has called (unsuccessfully) for the stamp to be withdrawn.

The Salon reporter, Jeffrey, Taylor, asked Shevchenko why she is so aggressive in criticizing the new pope, her answer was rather interesting: 

“The pope said he recognized the Big Bang,” she answered. “He sees how his doctrine doesn’t accord with progress, so he says things like this. He also said, ‘Who am I to criticize gay people?’ Just for this, we’re ready to hand over Parliament to him? This is just his strategy so he can come and speak at the Parliament. He says God isn’t a magician and wins great popularity even with some atheists. But if we believe him, we’re twice foolish; we become slaves of the most powerful religious institution, the Vatican, and then we invite him to Parliament. This just shows how stupid we [atheists] are and how clever they are.” She paused. “Not many Americans know that the Vatican received its statehood from Mussolini … It’s highly symbolic that Vatican statehood was created by a fascist.”

Very good points all. Clearly this is yet another Atheist who thinks the Pope is a little too good to be true.

(Nudity below the fold.)