The BBC returns to the subject of Malawian “hyenas” – men who are paid to “initiate” young girls into sex.

In July the BBC wrote about a Malawian man paid to have sex with young girls from his village, as part of a sexual initiation ritual. Later a Malawian woman, Natasha Annie Tonthola, contacted the BBC to explain how her experience of the ritual helped inspire her to campaign for the protection of women and girls. This is her story.

I’m the oldest of five children and I grew up in a village in the central district of Malawi, near the capital, Lilongwe, and I was 13 years old when the initiation ceremony happened.

My father was from a village

Ken Silverstein wrote a piece in Harper’s in 2000, The Church of Morris Dees. A site with a dubious name posted a copy.

Cofounded in 1971 by civil rights lawyer cum direct-marketing millionaire Morris Dees, a leading critic of “hate groups” and a man so beatific that he was the subject of a made-for-TV movie, the SPLC spent much of its early years defending prisoners who faced the death penalty and suing to desegregate all-white institutions like Alabama’s highway patrol. That was then.

Today, the SPLC spends most of its time–and money–on a relentless fund-raising campaign, peddling memberships in the church of tolerance with all the zeal of a circuit rider passing the collection plate. “He’s the Jim

The Atlantic has a rather tepid piece on the SPLC’s target-placement on Maajid Nawaz.

Nawaz’s work has earned him detractors—critics claim he has embellished or neatened his narrative, some attack him for opportunism, and others question his liberal bona fides—but calling him an “anti-Muslim extremist” is a surprise. Unlike the likes of Gaffney and Geller, he doesn’t espouse the view that Islam itself is a problem; unlike Ali, who now describes herself as an atheist, Nawaz identifies as a Muslim.

That’s what I mean by tepid. Calling him that is more than a surprise, it’s a reckless and untrue calumny.

When I spoke to Nawaz on Thursday, he was both baffled and furious.

“They put a target on

A lawyer and law professor says the FBI director did a bad and possibly illegal thing.

The F.B.I. is currently investigating the hacking of Americans’ computers by foreign governments. Russia is a prime suspect.

Imagine a possible connection between a candidate for president in the United States and the Russian computer hacking. Imagine the candidate has business dealings in Russia, and has publicly encouraged the Russians to hack the email of his opponent and her associates.

It would not be surprising for the F.B.I. to include this candidate and his campaign staff in its confidential investigation of Russian computer hacking.

But it would be highly improper, and an abuse of power, for the F.B.I. to conduct such an investigation

Taslima tweeted this BBC feature:

Purnima Shil was gang-raped in northern Bangladesh at the age of 13 and she has not been allowed to forget it. Twelve years later, because of the stigma that attaches to rape victims in some parts of the country, someone shamed her by creating a pornographic Facebook page in her name – with her photograph and telephone number. This story is part of the BBC’s Shame series, which examines a disturbing new phenomenon – the use of private or sexually explicit images to blackmail and shame young people, mainly girls and women, in some of the world’s most conservatives societies.

The video is only 3 minutes. It’s powerful.… Read the rest

A tiny history lesson via Kevin Lamarque at Newsweek/Reuters.

Clinton’s email habits look positively transparent when compared with the subpoena-dodging, email-hiding, private-server-using George W. Bush administration. Between 2003 and 2009, the Bush White House “lost” 22 million emails. This correspondence included millions of emails written during the darkest period in America’s recent history, when the Bush administration was ginning up support for what turned out to be a disastrous war in Iraq with false claims that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and, later, when it was firing U.S. attorneys for political reasons.

Like Clinton, the Bush White House used a private email server—its was owned by the Republican National Committee. And the Bush administration failed to

Russia has lost its seat on the UN Human Rights Council.

Russia narrowly lost its seat on the main United Nations body devoted to human rights on Friday, signaling international dismay over the military power’s conduct in Syria.

The vote was to select countries to represent Eastern Europe on the United Nations Human Rights Council. Russia lost by two votes to Croatia and by 32 votes to Hungary. All 193 members of the United Nations General Assembly voted, and when the results were announced, there was a “small intake of air” in the large hall, said the New Zealand envoy, Gerard van Bohemen.

He said he believed that Russia’s conduct in the war in Syria, including the aerial

Silentbob alerted us to a juvenile elephant (not a baby) making sure her favorite human isn’t getting swept down the river.

… Read the rest

Of course the first thing that everyone said, including me, when the Bundy verdict came out was that it will send a message to all the other “public lands are for us to exploit!!” crowd that they can get away with it. Of course.

The shocking acquittals of Ammon and Ryan Bundy, along with five other militants, in the armed takeover of an Oregon wildlife preserve is already emboldening anti-government extremists.

Two of the Bundy militants’ loudest cheerleaders, Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore and blogger Gavin Seim, are already signaling that additional actions may be taken against the federal government.

Let’s secede! And have a civil war! That was so much fun last time, and now the carnage would be … Read the rest

No, the investigation into Clinton’s emails hasn’t “re-opened.” The FBI is trying to fuck with the election.

FBI Director James Comey alerted Republican members of Congress on Friday that bureau investigators would review some additional emails that might relate to Hillary Clinton’s email server. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), the chairman of the House Oversight Committee who has already vowed to spend the next several years investigating Clinton should she be elected president, quickly rushed to announce the news, falsely claiming that the case had been “reopened.”

https://twitter.com/jasoninthehouse/status/792047597040971776

And other Republicans followed suit, and news outlets took the bait, and Trump  gloated, and yadda yadda.

Though nothing in Comey’s letter said the case was being reopened, an array of news

Via Pink News on Twitter:

Russia's UK embassy mocks Westerners as 'gay pigs' https://t.co/UmFaritp8S

— PinkNews (@PinkNews) October 24, 2016

Gay pigs in a concentration camp, at that – and cowering before a huge, biceps-displaying Russian bear.… Read the rest

Sarah Haider on the SPLC and that list.

Nuance is lost where the religion of peace is concerned, and the SPLC paints its targets with a broad, clumsy brush.  Those profiled range from pundits who believe that radicals have “infiltrated the CIA, FBI, Pentagon, and State Department” to activists who offer compassionate, empathetic, and exceedingly balanced views on the faith. The latter is exemplified by the Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz, who spent his formative years in the service of an Islamist organization working to re-establish a global caliphate. After disavowing his former associates, he has spent the past decade working to encourage reform and secularization in Muslim countries and communities.

Nearly every charge against him in the report is