IS “fighters” are now apparently selling sex slaves on Facebook. As one does.

The woman is young, perhaps 18, with olive skin and dark bangs that droop onto her face. In the Facebook photo, she attempts to smile but doesn’t look at her photographer.

The caption mentions a single biographical fact: She is for sale.

“To all the bros thinking about buying a slave, this one is $8,000,” begins the May 20 Facebook posting, which was attributed to an Islamic State fighter who calls himself Abu Assad Almani. The same man posted a second image a few hours later, this one a pale young face with weepy red eyes.

“Another sabiyah [slave], also about $8,000,” the posting reads. “Yay,

Speaking of menstruation…the Independent reports:

Teenage Nepalese girls from Sindhuli, 130 kilometres southeast from Kathmandu, took pictures to document the restrictions imposed upon them during their periods as part of a campaign by charity WaterAid, challenging taboos and improving female sanitation.

Every month in Nepal, the girls are separated from their families, forbidden [to look] at the sun, touch fruit and flowers and even stay in their own homes.  In Nepal girls during their periods are considered to be ‘impure’ or ‘contaminated’.

The tradition is called Chhaupadi, popular in  western-nepalese hindu communities; it is common for girls to remain excluded from interaction with the family for up to 6-10 days, childbirth can also result in a 10 day

A couple of weeks ago Meghan Murphy did a detailed examination of Emily Bazelon’s NY Times article on prostitution.

Over the weekend, Emily Bazelon, a staff writer at the New York Times, published an article called“Should Prostitution Be a Crime?” What she didn’t say was that she had already answered her own question, and that she chose to distort (or outright ignore) facts and interviews in order to push a narrative in support of full decriminalization, under the guise of neutral reporting.

Her bias becomes clear early on to anyone who is familiar with the politically loaded term, “sex work,” which she adopts uncritically, claiming this is “the term activists prefer.” While Bazelon admits that most of

I’m upset this morning because of something that happened at the Cincinnati Zoo yesterday.

After a 4-year-old boy slipped into the gorilla enclosure on a crowded day at the Cincinnati Zoo, a security team killed the gorilla to save the child.

The zoo said in a statement that the boy “fell into the exhibit’s moat.” A male Western Lowland gorilla was in the yard with the child – and “the Zoo’s Dangerous Animal Response Team responded to the life-threatening situation and made the difficult decision to dispatch the gorilla (Harambe).”

Harambe was agitated and aggressive and injuring the child, so the zoo had no real choice. But it makes me livid and sad. The adults who let the child … Read the rest

A gang-rape in Brazil has caused outrage.

Brazilians reacted with shock after the May 21 assault came to light last week. Graphic photos and videos of the unconscious, naked teenager were posted on Twitter, and several men joked online about the attack.

Of course they did. Women are a joke, girls are a joke, rape is a joke, the degradation of women and girls via rape and social media is the most hilarious joke ever.

The authorities said the teenager had been raped in the São João shantytown on the west side of Rio de Janeiro as she was visiting her boyfriend, The Associated Press reported. The girl told the police that she was briefly alone with him but

Oh god oh god oh god sometimes it’s time to just tell people to sit down and be quiet and stop writing anything for awhile, until they know something. It’s for their own good as much as anything. Nobody wants to be haunted forever by whatever idiotic thing she thought she believed at age 17 or 12 or whatever the age is of this tragically lost young person. It’s someone called V. Tanner at The Establishment, explaining Why We Must Stop Calling Menstruation A ‘Women’s Issue.’

That’s easy: we mustn’t. There is no “must” there. We don’t have to stop that.

For one thing who calls it that anyway? It’s not an “issue” (except in a rather antiquated sense … Read the rest

RT talked to Maryam Namazie and Mohammed Shafiq yesterday. It was quite a disgusting display by Shafiq, and at the beginning even by the presenter – Shafiq would not stop interrupting Maryam.

Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, and Maryam Namazie, human rights activist, discussed the issue of Sharia law practices in Britain.

Mohammed Shafiq said that there are no Sharia courts: “They are Sharia councils, where people on a voluntary basis can go to get advice and get recourse according to Islamic principles.”

He added that every person of any religion is free to do that.

However, Maryam Namazie, human rights activist, said the UK government should reach a position where any type of religious arbitration,

Don’t roofie your “friend” in front of these women. Or any other women, or anyone, or at all.

GUESS WHO STOPPED A RAPE LAST NIGHT?! THESE GALS!

Ok, so we’re still recovering from the events, but we wanted to tell the story. And if it seems like the photo is making light of a heavy situation, it’s because we know FB prioritizes pics AND we needed to get your attention. This is no joking matter.

Monica, Marla, and I were at Fig at the Fairmont for their delicious happy hour (“Fig at 5.” Treat yourself). I was going on about something and saw Monica staring behind and making a funny face. I stopped. “What’s going on?” After

A piece in the Guardian on menstruation by Bibi van der Zee and Katherine Purvis starts with this uncomfortable fact:

“Girls are literally selling their bodies to get sanitary pads,” says Dr Penelope Phillips-Howard. “When we did our study in Kenya, one in ten of the 15 year old girls told us that they had engaged in sex in order to get money to buy pads. These girls have no money, no power. This is just their only option.”

The joys of being a girl – you have this mess to deal with, and you have to engage in unwanted sex to get the money to deal with the mess.

“The persistent taboo around menstruation means that limited information is

Like a lot of people, I don’t even know how to express my disgust and fear and shame-as-an-American that Donald Trump could be elected president of the US. How is this possible. How can so many people embrace such a loathsome sexist racist self-aggrandizing know-nothing fascist-leaning bully?

I don’t know the answer to that. I have no illusions about influencing anything, but I’ll probably point out some of his egregious awfulness now while I can. If he is elected we might not be able to.

From the Washington Post:

The Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee gave a fiery speech in San Diego and sought to leverage the power of his pulpit to shame one of this city’s federal judges,

Originally a comment by James Garnett on Help that never came.

I’m not going to pass any judgement on this poor woman. She was clearly doing something that she loved and made a mistake. That could describe any one of us, but most of us don’t pay this kind of price.

Instead, I’ll offer some information. I have been a hiker, backpacker, climber, and outdoorsman since I was a child. As an adult, I’ve taught classes on backcountry survival, especially in situations where you get lost (which is REALLY easy to do). I’ve also been a Mountain Rescue volunteer in the past, for many years (albeit not anymore).

To correct one thing in the article right away: SAR (search … Read the rest

Ars Technica says hang on, there’s some bad reporting of the “nightmare” “superbug” going around. Read the whole thing; I’ll share a few takeaways.

It’s important to note that we don’t know exactly how long mcr-1 has been hanging around in bacteria or where it first came from. It may have spread around the globe in months or been lying low and spreading quietly for years. Either way, it was inevitable and expected that mcr-1-carrying bacteria would pop up in the US. (Although, in weeks of testing other bacteria from the Pennsylvania clinic where the patient was identified, no other mcr-1-carrying bacteria have been found.)

While concerns still stand, the alarmist headlines are unnecessary—and so are the

This is a very cool story. I heard about it yesterday, before it was in the papers, on Facebook via my friend Janet Heimlich, author of Breaking Their Will. Her name has always reminded me of The Maneuver, of course, but I always assumed it was just coincidence. It’s not.

Dr Henry Heimlich uses Heimlich manoeuvre for first time at 96

The surgeon who gave his name to the simple but dramatic procedure used to rescue people from choking saved someone’s life with the Heimlich Manoeuvre for the first time this week aged 96.

Dr Henry Heimlich’s technique for dislodging food or objects caught in people’s throats has been credited with saving untold thousands of lives around the world

Amnesty made it official yesterday.

Amnesty International has formally adopted a policy calling for the legalization of prostitution around the world. The organization’s senior director for law and policy, Tawanda Mutasah, said:

“Sex workers are at heightened risk of a whole host of human rights abuses including rape, violence, extortion and discrimination. Far too often they receive no, or very little, protection from the law or means for redress.”

He fails to mention that, under legalization, these human rights abuses are amplified, nor does he consider how or why the law would address said abuses, once sanctioned under law.

It’s a bizarre thing to say. Sex workers are at heightened risk of a whole host of human rights abuses … Read the rest

Cartoonists for peace:

Cartoonists Gado and Zunar were presented the 2016 Cartooning For Peace award on World Press Freedom Day at a ceremony in Geneva’s Palais Eynard.  The award is given out every two years by Cartooning For Peace to cartoonists who have shown courage in their fight for freedom of expression.  Zunar, who has seen his books banned and confiscated by the Malaysian government since 2010, is now facing a possible 43-year prison sentence for a series of tweets in 2015.  Gado, who has been called “the most important cartoonist in Africa,” was fired by the Kenya-based Nation Media Group newspaper chain because of — in Gado’s words — “corporate and political pressure.”

An open-air exhibition of cartoons