Another Saturday in northern Nigeria.

At least five blasts have killed 50 people and injured 56 in the city of Maiduguri in north-eastern Nigeria, an official has told the BBC.

Two crowded markets and a busy bus station were targeted by suicide bombers, witnesses said.

Witnesses in one of the markets described gory scenes with men, women and children lying on the ground.

In pieces, no doubt.

Boko Haram hasn’t said anything yet, but no one will be surprised when they do. They were pushed out of Maiduguri last year, and since then they’ve been in a forest nearby, making life hell for everyone.

The attacks took place over about three hours – the first one targeting the city’s Baga

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I wonder why this seemed like a good idea.

An Egyptian-born imam who in 2007 said that Somali-born activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali should receive the death penalty for her criticism of Islam is now a Department of Justice contractor hired to teach classes to Muslims who are in federal prison.

According to federal spending records, Fouad ElBayly, the imam at Islamic Center of Johnstown in Pennsylvania, was contracted by the DOJ’s Bureau of Prisons beginning last year to teach the classes to Muslim inmates at Cumberland Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Md.

Does the DOJ’s Bureau of Prisons also contract Nazis and KKKers to teach Christians?

It was April 2007 when ElBayly, the imam at the Islamic Center of

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Here’s a good Indiegogo project:

A book of Nigerian LGBT stories, told in their own words, in hopes that their voices will be heard.

Interview-based stories, so like Studs Terkel’s Hard Times for instance.

On the 7th of January, 2014, the Nigerian government passed a law that practically approved state-sanctioned homophobia. Since then, Nigeria’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) population have lived in mortal fear and damaged self-worth. They believe that if their stories could be heard, maybe they would draw empathy and understanding from their fellow compatriots.

My name is Unoma Azuah, a professor of English at Lane College, USA and a Nigerian by birth. Please help me fund “Blessed Bodies,” an anthology of Nigerian LGBT stories,

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A Cambridge archaeologist, Augusta McMahon, tells us more about Nimrud and why it mattered.

Ancient Iraq is famous for many global “firsts” – Mesopotamia gave us the first writing, the first city, the first written law code, and the first empire.

The people of Iraq are justifiably proud of this ancient heritage and its innovations and impact on the world.

The first writing. This thing I’m doing now – it was invented by the Mesopotamians.

Trashing Nimrud, McMahon says, is trashing the Iraqi people.

Nimrud was the capital of the world’s first empire, the Neo-Assyrian Empire of the 1st millennium BC.

Lying 35km (22 miles) south of the modern city of Mosul in north Iraq, Nimrud covers some 3.5

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Deutsche Welle reports that German Vice Chancellor and Economics Minister Sigmar Gabriel may have an uncomfortable trip to Saudi Arabia and its little neighbors in a few days, what with one thing and another.

From Saturday, he will be on a four-day journey through Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar – all countries where Germany has significant business interests. Representatives from 140 German companies will be accompanying him.

Less exhilirating, however, is the fact that each of these countries is guilty of significant human rights atrocities in the name of Islamic law – including beheadings and brutal corporal punishment.

Oh, that. Well sure, but SIGNIFICANT BUSINESS INTERESTS.

The most notorious of these is Saudi Arabia, the first stop

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I watched part of a thing on the Smithsonian Channel last night about the excavation of an unusually near-intact woolly mammoth in Siberia. It’s interesting.

At the beginning where they showed the excavation and what a lot of the mammoth there was, we got lots of shots of all the exciting bits there were. At one point there was excited exclamation about the freshness of the meat (which sounded odd – I’d expect “tissue” rather than “meat”), and we got to see a bit of mammoth flesh (or “meat”) that was pink instead of grey or ice-color. Then another guy showed us another, bigger bit, and he moved it back and forth a little, and then…he took a bite … Read the rest

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There seems to be quite a lot of good news for Raif Badawi today.

Desmond Tutu has sent a note to King Salman.

A human rights lawyer based in London has taken on his case and Waleed’s, pro bono, according to Nicolya Christi on Facebook.

And there is this -

It will be out April 1.

I’m hoping there will be an edition in English. I’ve done some string-tugging to that effect.… Read the rest

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The UNESCO Director General has a statement on the vandalization of Nimrud.

“I condemn in the strongest possible manner the destruction of the archaeological site of Nimrud site in Iraq. This is yet another attack against the Iraqi people, reminding us that nothing is safe from the cultural cleansing underway in the country: it targets human lives, minorities, and is marked by the systematic destruction of humanity’s ancient heritage,” said UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova.

© Creative Commons Nimrud Lamassu’s at the North West Palace of Ashurnasirpal, Iraq

“We cannot remain silent. The deliberate destruction of cultural heritage constitutes a war crime. I call on all political and religious leaders in the region to stand up and remind everyone

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The BBC has more on the destruction of Nimrud.

IS began demolishing the site, which was founded in the 13th Century BC, on Thursday, according to Iraqi officials.

The head of the UN’s cultural agency condemned the “systematic” destruction in Iraq as a “war crime”.

IS, which controls large areas of Iraq and Syria, says shrines and statues are “false idols” that have to be smashed.

“They are erasing our history,” said Iraqi archaeologist Lamia al-Gailani.

They really aren’t “false idols” now; they’re ancient artifacts. They’re history, they’re art, they’re mythology, they’re archaeology, they’re anthropology, they’re part of the rich exciting story of human creativity. They don’t have to be smashed. There’s no human need that smashing them meets. … Read the rest

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IS is still busy destroying Assyrian sites and their artifacts.

Islamic State fighters have looted and bulldozed the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud, the Iraqi government said, in their latest assault on some of the world’s greatest archaeological and cultural treasures.

A tribal source from the nearby city of Mosul said the jihadis, who dismiss Iraq’s pre-Islamic heritage as idolatrous, had pillaged the 3,000-year-old site on the banks of the Tigris river.

…

“Daesh terrorist gangs continue to defy the will of the world and the feelings of humanity,” Iraq’s tourism and antiquities ministry said, referring to Isis by its Arabic acronym.

“In a new crime in their series of reckless offences, they assaulted the ancient city of Nimrud

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A press release from Amnesty International –

WASHINGTON–On the eve of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to Saudi Arabia, Representatives Peter Roskam (R-IL 6th District) and James McGovern (D-MA, 2nd District) have sent a bipartisan letter to Saudi Arabia’s new ruler, King Salman. The letter urges the new King to free all prisoners of conscience—including blogger Raif Badawi and attorney Waleed Abu al-Khair—and to allow women, religious minorities and peaceful political reformers to freely express themselves and fully participate in public life in Saudi Arabia.

The letter garnered 67 congressional signers and endorsements from 17 women’s, human rights, religious freedom, and advocacy organizations, including Amnesty International USA and Human Rights Watch.

“Saudi Arabia’s new King has a critical

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Another atheist woman who says no thanks to the atheist “movement” because it’s such a shit-show.

But as defensive as I’ve gotten with believers, I’ve never actually been tempted to join an atheist group. Partly, that’s because it’s hard to avoid the white men ruining it for the rest of us by using atheism as just another platform for a macho power struggle. Atheism offers no guarantee of other shared ideas or philosophies – and when white male atheist leaders and communities act racist, Islamophobicand misogynistic, I find myself wishing that there were another way to describe my non-beliefs.

It’s sad. The “movement” could have been good, but it took a wrong turn and then a whole … Read the rest

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So people set up a Twitter account for Galloway’s victims.

A Twitter account has been set up to offer free legal advice to those apparently being sued by George Galloway.

…

A number of people reported being sent a letter written by lawyers acting on behalf of the Respect MP, informing them that they need to pay over £6,000 each, according to The Times.

In response the @SuedByGalloway account has sprung up purporting to put people in touch with solicitors and lawyers who can offer them free legal advice on the issue.

Those behind the account – who wish to remain anonymous – told the Huffington Post UK: “We are doing this because we are disgusted with the way

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Well this is just a damn disgrace – Robert Kennedy Junior wants to show Oregon state senators a movie about mercury-containing preservative in some vaccines. Why? Because

He plans to urge them to vote against a bill that — with an amendment — would eliminate nonmedical exemptions from Oregon’s school immunization law.

The invitation came via emails to senators on Monday. Sens. Laurie Monnes Anderson, D-Gresham, Elizabeth Steiner Hayward, D-Beaverton, and Tim Knopp, R-Bend, confirmed to the Statesman Journal that they were invited to the screening.

Knopp said on Tuesday that Kennedy reached out to him on Sunday — presumably because Knopp is leading the opposition against Senate Bill 442 — and said he was interested in talking with the

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Priyamvada Gopal adds more to the picture of the rape and murder of Jyoti Singh and the documentary and the reactions against it. I’ve disagreed with Gopal in the past and thought I was going to again, but in the end she makes good points.

She does some rather annoying sneering at Udwin on the way there though.

Udwin’s elevation to the status of free speech martyr and the ensuing controversy is likely to boost the viewing figures in Britain for a film that she describes as having been made through enormous personal sacrifice. She has stressed her abdication of home comforts to travel with Conradian determination to explore “the blackest recesses of the human heart”. Indian feminists, on the

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Leslee Udwin is appealing to Narendra Modi not to ban her documentary about the gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh – but of course Modi is not the guy to undo that kind of ban. Modi is a Hindu nationalist, a right-wing patriot; of course he’s not going to listen to some liberal woman from the UK who is sullying India’s good name.

Shortly before her statement was released, the parliamentary affairs minister, M Venkaiah Naidu, declared: “We can ban the film in India. But this is an international conspiracy to defame India. We will see how the film can be stopped abroad too.”

Yeah good luck with that.

In her appeal on Wednesday, Udwin said: “India should be

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