The Guardian on Saba and Gulalai Ismail of Aware Girls:

Aware Girls was founded in 2002 and operates in the face of severe violence, not just in Peshawar but also in Pakistan’s tribal areas and other troubled parts of the country. It trains young women on their rights – and, through its Youth Peace Network, makes efforts to encourage more women into politics – who then try to stop their peers being radicalised, leaving Peshawar for villages and towns where they try to dissuade others from joining extremist groups.

In Peshawar, this is highly dangerous work – not least because Aware Girls is run mainly by women. One of its attendees in 2011 was Malala Yousafzai, whose own

Eiynah at Nice Mangos is feeling more than annoyed at the way ex-Muslims are ignored by nearly all political directions.

As the Canadian federal election date draws closer, I can’t get my mind off the niqab debate. I can’t stop thinking about the fact that this one issue demonstrates how voices like mine – fromwithin the Muslim community are routinely ignored, cast aside, betrayed by the illiberal ‘liberal’ West …simply for the crime of not fitting the simplistic tribalist narratives.

Zunera Ishaq – a Pakistani immigrant to Canada just like myself ….took on the government regarding the issue of niqabs during the citizenship oath and won the right to wear a mask in court when no one else is

So that’s a great journalist gone – Lyse Doucet on Sue Lloyd-Roberts.

BBC journalist Sue Lloyd-Roberts, who forged a career in secret filming in secretive states, has died of leukaemia at the age of 64. Her courage, compassion and commitment to expose injustice the world over was an irritation to human rights abusers, and an inspiration to many journalists, including me. I’ll miss her as a loyal friend and colleague. And her brave journalism will be missed by many.

I always wondered : “How does Sue Lloyd-Roberts do it?”

How did she keep her nerve when she posed as a European gems importer and filmed with a hidden camera in Rangoon, under repressive military rule, in 2007?

How did

At the Faber & Faber blog, Kat Banyard tells the story of a trafficker who is also VP of an organization that heavily influenced the UN and Amnesty International in their moves to decriminalize pimping.

On Thursday 12th March 2015, 64 year old Alejandra Gil was convicted in Mexico City of trafficking and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Gil reportedly controlled a pimping operation that exploited around 200 women. Known as the “Madam of Sullivan”, she was one of the most powerful pimps of Sullivan Street, an area of Mexico City notorious for prostitution. Gil and her son were connected with trafficking networks in Tlaxcala state – site of Mexico’s “epicenter for sex trafficking.”

…

In

Pamela Gay was in San Francisco on Friday for a board meeting of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the day the BuzzFeed story about Geoff Marcy broke.

By the end of the day, I was done with reality. I was ready to go back to my hotel room and just play Carcassonne on my iPad and wish for something I thought was impossible – a world that that didn’t hurt. But as we were packing up and sorting rides, I was offered a sweet distraction. Fellow board member Chris Ford offered me a chance to take a ride with him in his Tesla Model S over to his offices at Pixar.

What I didn’t know was he was asking

News from New Zealand: the ban on Ted Dawes’s novel Into the River has been lifted.

The New Zealand Film and Literature Board has lifted the ban on Ted Dawe’s controversial teen novel Into the River.

That little word “controversial” is a bit of cautious well-poisoning. Surely the fact that it was banned was enough of a cue to readers that it was in some way “controversial.”

In a decision that was far from unanimous, the president of the board expressed the collective felt the actions of the censor were “illegal”.

Board president Don Mathieson delivered a dissenting minority report but the remainder of the board voted to allow the book to be sold without restriction, saying a

Azeen Ghorayshi, who broke the Geoff Marcy story on BuzzFeed, now reports that faculty and students at Berkeley are steaming.

The astronomy faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, released a statementlate on Monday saying that famed astronomer Geoff Marcy should no longer be a professor at the university.

…

“We urge the UC Berkeley administration to re-evaluate its response to Marcy, who has been found in violation of UC sexual harassment policy,” the 23 faculty members said in the statement. “We believe that Geoff Marcy cannot perform the functions of a faculty member.”

They’re pissed off that the university has done nothing about Marcy.

Grad students and postdocs want him to be put under restrictions.

“The University’s

Maryam has a piece replying to David Shariatmadari in the Guardian today…eleven days after she asked them for a right of reply. They heavily edited her piece, so she published the unedited version in a post. She introduces it:

On 8 October, the Acting Editor for Comment is Free wrote to say a “very light edit” had been done on my article including “a few tweaks for flow, house style, and to make the piece as accessible as possible for non-expert readers.”

Shockingly, the “light edits” included substantial changes, including the removal of references to Ali Shariatmadari and CAGE prisoners as well as all the relevant links, which would have helped “non-expert readers.”

Moreover, where I mentioned Islamism as

Ross Andersen at the Atlantic is also underwhelmed by Geoff Marcy’s notpology.

In Marcy’s account, he was just moving through the world, giving unsolicited massages to undergraduates, according to the complaints, without the slightest inkling that his actions were causing pain and distress. But in practice, Marcy had leveraged his considerable fame and power in the world of astronomy to build a nearly consequence-free bubble around himself, so that he could avail himself of pleasures that rightfully require the consent of others.

That’s one reason this story is so familiar – the way that fame and power can create that bubble.

Given that reality, Marcy’s intentions aren’t that important. The important intentions here belong to the women he victimized,

From the Guardian:

The children of a British man have called on David Cameron to intervene to save their father from being subjected to 350 lashes in Saudi Arabia. Karl Andree, 74, faces being publicly flogged as part of a punishment imposed after bottles of homemade wine were reportedly found last year in his car by Saudi police enforcing strict laws prohibiting alcohol.

The family of the oil executive, who is being held at Jeddah’s Briman prison, say he is already weak as a result of cancer and fear that the flogging will kill him.

Once again, words fail me. The guy is 74 years old and has cancer. He had some wine – and for that they want … Read the rest

Middle East Eye says it has evidence that the death toll from the Hajj disaster is much higher than the Saudis have said.

We have seen evidence suggesting that at least 2,432 people were killed on 24 September when pilgrims were crushed to death at a crossroads in Mina, inside Mecca and not far from the holy city.

Photos displayed at the Muaism Medical Emergency Centre in Mina, where people are being permitted to search for missing relatives until 30 October, appear to reveal a numbering system of those killed.

A Saudi source travelled to Mina on 30 September and spent four days visiting the centre, where he covertly took photos of what he found and sent them to Middle

Edinburgh University Student Association is holding an election. The EU Feminist Society interviewed the candidates for the Women’s Liberation Group Convenors.

We also sent this email to the candidates for Women’s Liberation Group Convenor to ask them some questions. Before you read their replies below, we’d like to remind everyone that FemSoc passed a policy stating we support sex workers’ rights, which means we back the decriminalisation of sex work and condemn all forms of whorephobia.

Two candidates have answered so far. The first to answer gets a trigger warning at the top.

Magdalen Berns

TW: whorephobia

“Whorephobia”? Really? She expresses hatred of prostitutes in her reply? No, of course  not.

3. EUSA and Femsoc both passed policies supporting sex-workers.