In Pakistan too.

A gunman on a motorbike shot dead a Pakistani journalist in the country’s restive northwest on Tuesday and hours later the Taliban claimed the killing, bringing to 71 the number of journalists and media workers killed in Pakistan since 2002.

Zaman Mehsud, 38, was a journalist working for the Pakistani Urdu newspaper Daily Umet and SANA news agency, and also worked for the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

A journalist and a human rights worker. Of course they killed him.

Taliban commander Qari Saif Ullah Saif told Reuters: “We killed him because he was writing against us … we have some other journalists on our hit list in the region, soon we will target them.”

Katha Pollitt on Germaine Greer and the fatuous attempt to no-platform her and the absurd demand that a feminist be 100% perfect (in the sense of: agrees with me in all particulars) or be banished.

She starts with the fact that Greer has always been all over the place. There’s always plenty to disagree with in what she writes and says. Nobody could agree with everything she says.

Still, when I was invited to interview her a few years ago about Shakespeare’s Wife, her biography of Anne Hathaway, I was delighted. I did not start a petition to have her invitation canceled on the grounds that anyone who approves of cutting off little girls’ clitorises has no place on

Guest post by Josh Spokes. An email from Consumers Union to members, and his reply.

Policy and Action from Consumer Reports

If you want the right to know, speak out now.

Monsanto is telling Senators you don’t need to know about GMOs in your food. We think you have the right to make up your own mind! Tell your Senators to support GMO labeling.

Take action

Dear Joshua,

If you want the right to know what’s in your food, now is the time to speak out. If you wait, you may forever be kept in the dark.

As you read this, Senators are writing a bill that could determine the fate of GMO food labeling. They will decide whether you … Read the rest

Journalism again treating violent unreasonable reactions to other people’s reasonable actions as “provoked” or “sparked” or “ignited” by the people who did nothing wrong. Charlie Hebdo “sparked” the violence that left nine of them dead; Lars Vilks “set off” outrage; Raif Badawi “triggered” his own ferocious punishment.

This one is the New York Times:

An actress from Iran has gone on the run after igniting a backlash by posting photos of herself on social media showing her not wearing a hijab…

Seriously: journalists need to be more careful with the way they write these stories. She didn’t “ignite” anything.

Sadaf Taherian began posting the controversial photos on Facebook and Instagram over the last two weeks and the response

Suzanne Moore says remember who brung ya.

Everyone now is bisexual, pansexual, agender (without a gender). It’s all so wild. Miley, Cara, various models. Young people are coming out of the closet into a hall of mirrors. For this “coming out” often says my insides feel different to my outsides. Hear me roar. Welcome to the world, friends, for who does not feel like that?

Exactly. This isn’t some hot new thing, it’s just how people are. Granted it is more talked about now, but that doesn’t mean it’s a new invention.

Now that there is a new set of identities for people to pick’n’mix, it would be gracious not to erase those who lived and died with more

I saw a very bizarre remark – by a woman – on Twitter today.

Sick and tired of cis & white feminists thinking they own feminism.

Leaving aside the “white” part, the remaining claim is pretty staggering. “How dare women think feminism is about women?!”

What other oppressed class is subject to this kind of bullshit? What other oppressed class gets shouted at for thinking its own liberation movement is not “owned” by someone else?

It’s only women who are willing – in fact eager – to erase themselves this way.

Maybe that’s enough to tell me I’m not a woman after all. I’m not a fucking political masochist.… Read the rest

Another woman stoned to death in Afghanistan.

The men surround the woman as she stands in a hole dug into the stony ground, only her head pokes above the surface. Then they begin to pick up rocks and hurl them at her again and again from close range.

Her agonized cries grow louder as the barrage of stones intensifies.

They like that. They like her agonized screams.

The 19-year-old woman, identified as Rokhshana, had been forced to marry against her will and recently fled with another man, said Seema Joyenda, the governor of Ghor province. The couple were caught after two days, and the Taliban leader of the village ordered that Rokhshana be stoned to death for adultery, Joyenda

The Economist tells me something I didn’t know: Jeremy Corbyn is an advocate of justice for Dalits.

Specifically, Mr Corbyn wants British law to prohibit discrimination on grounds of caste, a step which the government seems reluctant to take, and one which some prominent British Hindus adamantly oppose. These opponents insist that the existence of caste discrimination in Britain is unproven, and that outlawing it would be an insult to the Indian community.

Except of course for the Dalit portion of “the Indian community.”

All this matters more than ever because a political battle over the Dalit question may soon come to a head in Britain after simmering for a long time.  Arguments over whether Britain should explicitly outlaw

Julie Bindel and Rachel Jolley were on BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking tonight talking about no-platforming and radical feminism – “not the fun kind that men love, pole dancing your way to liberation,” Julie said.

Their segment starts at 30 minutes.… Read the rest

Via Riasat Ahsan on Facebook:

Reporters sans frontières / Reporters Without Borders / RSF renamed the road of the Bangladeshi embassy in Paris to “RUE AVIJIT ROY” today, in honour of Avijit Roy, the first to be slain as part of a series of fatal attacks on outspoken secularists in Bangladesh this year, which still continues today.

Congratulations you “soldiers of Allah”, members of Ansarullah Bangla Team! Thanks to you, whenever people think of Bangladesh, they’ll be reminded of a brave people, voices of dissent who were so powerful, the only thing you could do to stop people from listening was to silence them forever. But alas, they speak on! They live on. Thanks to you, their voices

I hate to use the Daily Mail as a source, but every now and then I do. This story on Saturday reports that an organization called Gendered Intelligence runs workshops in a few primary schools in the UK. Very few – the Mail says “up to 20” schools a year get the workshops. Well 20 is a tiny number. Minuscule. The issue I have isn’t with the quantity but with the content.

In one class, Year Six boys at Hotspur Primary in Newcastle are asked to describe the ‘girlish’ things they like to do, while the girls say what ‘boyish’ pursuits they enjoy.

Gendered Intelligence’s founder Jay Stewart, who is giving the class, asks the pupils if they think ‘life