The Labour Party doesn’t want Naz Shah to go overboard in apologizing, according to BuzzFeed.

Labour MP Naz Shah’s apology was edited by the party’s HQ to remove all mentions of the term “anti-Semitic”, along with references to wider problems of anti-Semitism in left-wing politics, after it was submitted for approval, BuzzFeed News has learned.

…

On Wednesday, Shah released a statement billed as a “full apology” to Jewish News.

But BuzzFeed News has seen the draft of the statement written by Shah’s team and sent to the party for approval, in which she went much further than the version that eventually was released.

For instance, the original draft included this admission by Shah: “I helped promote anti-Semitic

Jonah Mix on Facebook:

A sign outside a Hong Kong brothel, advertising (likely trafficked) women to white male travelers on a race-based pay scale, with indigenous women at the bottom and white women at the top.

Prostitution is an industry based on colonialism, white supremacy, and male violence.

China Girl 250

Hong Kong Girl 250

Malay Girl 180

Philippine Girl 200

Russian Girl 500

No further comment needed, I think.… Read the rest

The New Statesman has disappointing news:

Naz Shah resigns from Labour frontbench

The Bradford West MP has stepped down following the emergence of remarks made prior to her election as an MP.

Damn. I was so happy when she trounced Galloway.

Shah has resigned as parliamentary private secretary to John McDonnell, after the political website Guido Fawkes revealed that, prior to becoming an MP, she argued that Israelis should be relocated to the United States.

Or Madagascar or Poland? That’s not fair, but…Damn, this is disappointing.

Shah released the following statement on Monday afternoon: “I deeply regret the hurt I have caused by comments made on social media before I was elected as an MP. I made these posts

From the You have got to be kidding department:

The head of a Cleveland police union said the family of a 12-year-old black boy shot dead by a white police officer while playing with a pellet gun should use money from a $6 million settlement to educate children about the dangers of handling real and replica firearms, while an attorney representing the boy’s family blasted the comments.

You cannot be serious.

A Cleveland cop killed Tamir Rice, not out of malice but out of grossly reckless incompetence, and the police union chief thinks it’s a good idea to tell his family how to spend the settlement money? And not only that but to imply in the “advice” that the … Read the rest

You get your ideological beheadings, and then you get your cash beheadings. A Canadian man who was beheaded yesterday represents a failed transaction.

The Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has condemned the beheading of a Canadian hostage kidnapped by Islamist militants in the Philippines.

John Ridsdel, 68, was taken from a tourist resort with three others by the Abu Sayyaf group in September 2015.

In November, the Islamist militants released a video showing Mr Ridsdel and three other captives, and demanded a ransom of $80m (£55m).

Now, ideology gets a look-in too, since it was Islamists demanding the cash to buy back John Ridsdel, but it’s still a matter of no-pay no-return.

A Philippines army spokesman said Mr Ridsdel’s severed

Sarah Ditum and Julie Bindel were on Victoria Derbyshire’s chat show this morning to talk about free speech and no platforming. Behold a clip:

Student tells feminist Julie Bindel why her comments on transgender people are offensive #VictoriaLIVEhttps://t.co/WXVAMr2Isr

— Victoria Derbyshire (@VictoriaLIVE) April 25, 2016

I haven’t seen the rest of what they say yet, assuming Derbyshire kept her promise to return to Julie after the news, but this on its own is worth discussing.

There are people, there are people who are incredibly vunnerable [sic] who do feel very specific types of harm. Tell the family of trans people, the families of queer people who have committed suicide because of the likes of people who have invalidated their

The BBC reports:

Police in Bangladesh say two people including a leading gay rights activist and editor at Bangladesh’s only LGBT magazine have been hacked to death.

The US ambassador to Bangladesh condemned the killing of Xulhaz Mannan, who also worked at the US embassy.

Another person was also injured when the attackers entered a Dhaka flat.

People who like violence and murder have that advantage over people who like better things.

BBC Bengali Service editor Sabir Mustafa said staff at Roopbaan, which had not been condemned by the government and received some support from foreign embassies, had been careful to protect their identities but had not believed their lives were at risk.

Suspected extremists in Bangladesh are gaining

In case the murder of Professor Rezaul Karim Siddique wasn’t enough, there was also the murder of a provincial Pakistani minister for minority affairs.

PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN:  A provincial Pakistani minister for minority affairs was shot dead in his car by on Friday [by] men on motorbikes in the country’s restive northwest, officials said.

Sardar Soran Singh, who was a Sikh, had held one of several seats reserved for religious minorities in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provincial assembly.

“Gunmen riding on two motorbikes came in front of the car and started indiscriminate firing which killed the minister on the spot,” Khalid Hamadani, district police chief told Agence France Presse.

All gunmen all the time.… Read the rest

Meghan Murphy says no, Prince was not trans. Prince was a guy who defied gender stereotypes. Defying gender stereotypes ≠ trans.

As Prince is mourned by millions across the world, his life and artistry are rightly being embraced as unconventional and as boundary-pushing in many ways, including in terms of gender. But, whereas 10 or 20 years ago, a man like Prince would have been celebrated, in death, as someone who did not conform to gender norms, today he is instead being transed. And this is a problem.

Well, to be precise, he would have been celebrated for that by some and ridiculed or excoriated by others. It’s not as if defiance of gender stereotypes was universally celebrated … Read the rest

Yesterday Samantha Power visited the refugee camp in Yola, Nigeria for women and girls fleeing Boko Haram. Here’s one story from one refugee:

When the boy next door joined Boko Haram, Mummy Ibrahim knew she had to run.

For the past few months, her next door neighbor had been telling everyone in their village just outside of Maiduguri that he was going to force Mummy, a soft-spoken girl with large eyes, to be his bride.

And, she said, he had finally figured out the way to do it: by pledging allegiance to Boko Haram and then taking, by force, the girl he had watched grow up into a gorgeous 15-year-old.

This is what I’m always saying – religion is such … Read the rest

Paul Fidalgo and Michael De Dora wrote a piece for CNN the other day on the murders of atheists in Bangladesh. It’s good to see them on such a mainstream site.

An innocent young man is brutally hacked to death in the street by marauding thugs with machetes, and the government’s response is to effectively blame the victim. This is the outrageous and absurd situation in the supposed democratic state of Bangladesh, where a bloody campaign of terror is being waged against secularists and atheists who have criticized radical Islam. But rather than act to protect the rights and safety of its people, Bangladesh’s leaders are coddling the killers and chastising the dead.

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One would expect in a civilized

A mosaic dating to 2,400 years ago was dug up in what was Antioch in Turkey in 2012.

AA Photo

The inscription translates as “Be cheerful, enjoy your life.”

 … Read the rest

Another one – except that this time the murdered person is not an atheist.

A university professor has been hacked to death in Bangladesh, in an attack police say is similar to killings of secular bloggers and atheists by suspected Islamist extremists.

AFM Rezaul Karim Siddique, 58, was a professor of English at Rajshahi University in the country’s north-west.

He was attacked with machetes as he left home to go to work.

So-called Islamic State militants say they killed him for “calling to atheism” in Bangladesh.

The claim was made by IS-linked Amaq Agency, cited by US-based SITE Intelligence Group which monitors jihadist groups.

But Siddique’s colleagues say he was not an atheist and did not write on controversial subjects. … Read the rest