Via Kashif Chaudhry:

This is Junaid Hafeez. He is from Rajanpur, Pakistan. He is an F.Sc Gold Medalist, a Fulbright Scholar who studied at Jackson State University where he majored in American literature, photography and theater. He was serving as a visiting lecturer at the English Department of Bahauddin Zakariya University in Multan (Pakistan) when in 2013, he was accused of blasphemy by the students of the extremist Islami Jamiat Tulaba and Tehrik-Tahafuz-e-Namoos-e-Risalat groups.

Consequently, he was expelled from the university and arrested by Pakistani authorities. A case was registered under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws and Junaid has since been rotting in a Multan Jail. His first defense lawyer, Mr. Rashid Rahman, was gunned down by extremists for merely

Conor Friedersdorf suggests that Ann Coulter has been displaced by someone even more disgusting.

This ought to be a challenging time for the right-wing polemicist, who only recently found herself in much the same position as Madonna: Both provocateurs exploited cultural boundaries, stoking outrage to give their work reach beyond their talent, and profited—only to wane in relevance as their industries became crowded with imitators. Then Donald Trump got into politics. He was unsurpassed in his willingness to state odious beliefs, and really, truly the best at stoking ethnic tensions to benefit himself. Coulter couldn’t beat him in the attention economy—he was maximally shameless, denying her a key advantage she has over many rivals. Nor would she oppose a

Oh Spicey.

The press corps is asking him why did the Trump people like about the aircraft carrier heading for the Korean peninsula when in fact it was going in the opposite direction, and he is struggling to get them to believe him when he says that it was true the Carl Vinson was heading for the Korean peninsula when it was going in the opposite direction because it’s going to go there eventually and so it’s totally true to say it is heading there now. Like, if you have kids who want dinner it’s entirely fair to tell them you’re making their dinner when in fact you’re heading to the bar but you have every intention of making their … Read the rest

Via Editorial & Political Cartoons on Facebook:

Dana Summers, Tribune Content Agency… Read the rest

The sleaze.

On April 6, Ivanka Trump‘s company won provisional approval from the Chinese government for three new trademarks, giving it monopoly rights to sell Ivanka brand jewelry, bags and spa services in the world’s second-largest economy. That night, the first daughter and her husband, Jared Kushner, sat next to the president of China and his wife for a steak and Dover sole dinner at Mar-a-Lago, her father’s Florida resort.

That’s not a good look. The two facts may have nothing to do with each other, but that’s beside the point. It makes the administration look like sleazy hacks (which they are, but that doesn’t make their looking like that any less destructive), and it makes the … Read the rest

Mike Pence is super mad at North Korea.

Brrr. I wouldn’t want to defy his orders.

The Borowitz Report says it worked.

PYONGYANG (The Borowitz Report)—In a major foreign-policy coup for the Trump Administration, North Korea offered to unconditionally abandon its nuclear program on Monday, after Mike Pence spent several minutes angrily squinting at the nation from just across the border.

Warning North Korea that the United States had jettisoned its policy of “strategic patience” and that “all options were on the table,” Pence fixed his steely glare on the isolated Communist nation and began furiously staring it down.

After Pence spent between five and six minutes demonstrating U.S. resolve by squinting indignantly, the government in Pyongyang released

Women are like shoes, or gloves. Shoes don’t make any sense by themselves, they make sense only on feet. Women don’t make any sense by themselves, they make sense only owned by men.

At least that’s how most people in Afghanistan see it.

To escape an abusive marriage, Wida Saghari struggled for five years to finalize a divorce. When it was done, she thought, finally, she could get some peace. Instead, she had stepped into a different kind of hell.

Ms. Saghari, 31, a mother of two who has worked for years as a television host, found that neither Afghan society nor the government sees young divorced women as adults who can function independently of men.

And women also

Originally a comment by morganmine on Why no outrage?

If this was a discussion about how, say, factory workers were exploited (low pay, long hours, dangerous working conditions, etc.) would the “choice” argument still come up? It seems pretty uncontroversial to talk about the exploitation of people working minimum-wage jobs among the left. There seems to be a pretty good understanding that these people are working in these jobs because their options are limited; that having limited options shouldn’t condemn one to unsafe working conditions (because you always have the “choice” to quit, right?); and that these industries should be criticized and held accountable for the way they treat their workers. Why is porn different?

Adult film actresses have talked … Read the rest

Gulalai Ismail a couple of hours ago:

No sane mind should defend blasphemy law onwards, after seeing the implication of making blasphemy a punishable crime no one should ever suggest that their feelings are more worthy than human life. This brutal murder would have never happened if we had taught our children it’s totally okay if someone say something blasphemous, don’t feel hurt with it, it says nothing about your religion or Faith. Engage with them in dialogue and if they don’t listen to you – move on! Your Prophet’s respect won’t be at stake, your religion won’t be at stake with someone doing blasphemy.

I wish more believers listened to fellow believers like Gulalai.

 … Read the rest

Why the March for Science?

Because an unprecedented attack on science, scientists and evidence-based policymaking is underway in the US federal government.

Nowhere is the attack more ferocious than on the issue of global warming, where the Trump administration has taken a wrecking ball to the modest but important policies put in place by President Obama. First among them is the Obama administration’s signature Clean Power Plan, the nation’s first-ever limit on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, which Trump has vowed to repeal.He has also pledged to “reopen” (which could well mean “weaken”) hard-won vehicle fuel economy standards that have already begun lowering carbon emissions and oil consumption. Meanwhile, in a tragic example of wilful blindness, Trump has

Gail Dines wonders why the outrage of what was done to David Dao is so obvious while the outrage of what’s done to women in porn is so obscure.

People saw the video, put themselves in Dao’s place, and came to the very sensible conclusion that what they were watching was a level of callous brutality that is unacceptable in a civil society. Andrea Dworkin would not have found our empathy strange because, despite her sadness and anger at the cruelty in the world, she always had faith in the ability for people to do the right thing.

What is strange, however, is that there is no public outcry over porn. You can type “porn” into Google and in 10

I was chatting with latsot on Twitter about worrying or weird or cryptic song lyrics and mentioned Emmylou Harris’s “If You Were a Bluebird” as the most random song lyrics of my acquaintance. So then I decided I needed to revisit them to see, and yes, they’re still that random.

If you were a bluebird you’d be a sad one.
I’d give you a true word
But you’ve already had one.

If you were a bluebird,
You’d be crying
You’d be flying home.

The way Emmylou sings it, it seems to mean something…but then when you think about the words with your brain, you see that there is no something that the words mean. You’ve already had one? You’d be … Read the rest