Al-Shabab is busy making Somalia a better place by stuffing women into heavy black bags in a hot climate.

Somalia’s al-Shabab militants have rounded up around 100 women and ordered them to comply with a strict Islamic dress code or risk being whipped.

The women were arrested in Buale, about 300km (185 miles) south-west of the capital, Mogadishu.

“Arrested” is a funny word for it. The women didn’t do anything wrong, and Al-Shabab are criminals. Al-Shabab didn’t arrest the women, it unlawfully grabbed them.

The women were arrested in the market, taken away and warned before being released.

Because it was their first offence, they were not punished but they could be whipped in public if caught again.

It wasn’t … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

An imaginary walk, via GoogleEarth.

… Read the rest

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The Guardian reports on two schools in Bradford “under suspicion for practices similar to those seen in Birmingham during the Trojan horse investigation.”

The BBC reported that the previous headteacher of Carlton Bolling college, a state secondary resigned in 2012 after disagreements with the school’s governors, while minutes of governors’ meetings suggest that efforts were made to segregate boys and girls in sex and relationship education classes and in after-school activities.

The head, Chris Robinson, resigned because she felt her integrity and leadership were being questioned by governors, according to documents seen by the BBC.

Faisal Khan, the chair of governors at Carlton Bolling, denied the allegations and said the governors’ aim was to improve academic standards and meet the

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Richard Ackland explains about canon law in the Sydney Morning Herald. Why is the story always the same, always a matter of “protection of clergy against whom allegations of paedophilia have been made and giving victims the most incredible run-around”?

Why has the church taken that course of action instead of expelling these creepy “groomers and touchers” and sending them off to the police with a file note listing all the complaints against them?

It is puzzling, until you read Kieran Tapsell’s just published book, Potiphar’s Wife.

Tapsell is a retired Sydney lawyer who also studied for the priesthood, with canon law as his special interest – and it is here that he locates the problem.

You have to go

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Wow. Jane Hamsher’s comments on that awful “The New Republic publishes a hit piece on Chris Hedges” post are so flippant and irresponsible they need a post of their own. Ethics, people! Journalistic ethics! This isn’t rocket surgery (to plagiarize a phrase I saw a few days ago and don’t remember the source of). Writers and journalists should tell the truth, and they shouldn’t put their names on other people’s work except in the standard way with proper attribution.

Hamsher comments on a suggestion of litigation.

Hedges is a public figure, and they’re pretty careful about what they say so I doubt a suit would get very far. But it’s a piece that they should be ashamed to have published.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Another refugee from the 9th century is running for office.

Scott Esk is running for House District 91 state representative.

On his website, he says he is a conservative who wants to apply biblical principles to Oklahoma law.

But some are saying his views are extreme.

But? What do you mean but? Anybody who wants to apply biblical principles to any kind of law is extreme by definition.

Morris said, “This guy posted on Facebook that homosexuals should be stoned to death. My first response was you’re nuts, nobody would be stupid enough to do that.”

Morris says he found those postings from last summer on Facebook.

At the time, Esk had commented on a story about the pope

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Jacques Rousseau pointed out a jaw-dropping item from South Africa.

Traditional Venda chiefs have given SABC acting chief operations officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng a wife, a cow, and a calf.

That should be a woman, a cow, and a calf. Traditional Venda chiefs gave some guy a woman along with a cow and a calf.

The Sowetan reported on Friday that women were lined up in Thohoyandou, Limpopo, on Wednesday for Motsoeneng to choose one. He and other SABC executives were in the area for a meeting with Mudzi wa Vhurereli ha Vhavenda, a lobby group of traditional leaders and healers.

“The girls were around 10 and they paraded for him to choose. He chose the one he liked,” Mudzi

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Speaking of gender segregation…have an incident in New York from last fall.

Republican mayoral candidate Joe Lhota did not object Wednesday when three women in his group — a Daily News reporter, a campaign aide and a member of his NYPD security detail — were asked to leave a Brooklyn synagogue during a campaign stop.

The Republican mayoral hopeful entered the ultra Orthodox Shomer Shabbos synagogue, in Borough Park, trailed by a gaggle of aides, reporters and security officers, as part of a walking tour of the neighborhood.

A synagogue official hurried over to the three women in the group — a Daily News reporter, a Lhota campaign aide, and a member of his security team — and asked

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The NSS reports that Ofsted has given the thumbs-up to gender segregation in schools.

The National Secular Society has accused Ofsted of “capitulating to oppressive religious demands” after the schools regulator told inspectors that gender segregation in faith schools should not be taken as a sign of inequality.

In recently updated guidance on inspecting publicly funded “faith schools”, inspectors are advised that in Muslim faith schools: “boys and girls may well be taught or seated separately according to the specific context, particularly during collective acts of worship. This should not be taken as a sign of inequality between different genders.”

That’s exactly what it should be taken as a sign of, not least because that’s what it is.… Read the rest

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Firedoglake is helping circle the wagons around Chris Hedges by posting a sneerily dismissive post about the New Republic article. (Don’t get me wrong, TNR can be full of shit and often is, but that doesn’t mean Ketcham’s article was.)

The New Republic has published a hit piece on Chris Hedges that accuses him of plagiarism — without ever really documenting any direct plagiarism as far as I can tell. I’ll admit that my eyes started to glaze over as I read the 5700 word piece, so it may have crept in there and I had simply gone catatonic.

Documentation? What kind of documentation would you expect other than what he provided? Photographs of the original copy? (Granted, he … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The Edinburgh Evening News has more on the abuse of J K Rowling and in particular that contributed by “The Dignity Project.”

CHARITY regulators are investigating after a voluntary group appeared to post a Twitter message abusing JK Rowling over her £1 million donation to the No side in the independence referendum.

The tweet, from the account of The Dignity Project, read: “What a #bitch after we gave her shelter in our city when she was a single mum.”

It was one of many strongly worded posts attacking the Capital-based writer for supporting the Better Together campaign.

A later statement posted on the charity’s website claimed its account had been hacked. It said: “We are not responsible for any tweets

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The Independent reports on the verbal abuse flung at J K Rowling for daring to oppose Scottish independence, but it does so without ever mentioning sexism or misogyny. Hi, sorry to bother you, but calling a woman a bitch or a cunt or both because you disagree with her is sexist and misogynist, both.

Senior figures on both sides of the Scottish Independence debate have called for an end to online vitriol in the wake of the torrent of abuse directed at the Harry Potter author JK Rowling.
…
…nationalists who Rowling described as “Death Eaterish” for “judging [her] ‘insufficiently Scottish’” scrambled online to tell her to “get to f***”, calling her “politically corrupt”, a “b****” and a “c***”.

Very … Read the rest

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Jaclyn Glenn has another video. In this one she’s replying to someone else’s video which is replying to her video berating people who said Elliot Rodger’s adventure in murder was motivated by misogyny. (Video to video to video. It’s so cumbersome. Why can’t they just type it all, as humans were meant to do?) She starts off with a sarcastic apology for saying Rodger’s adventure was caused solely by mental illness, then drops the sarcasm to say that’s not at all what she said. Huh. She certainly did say it was definitely not misogyny, it was mental illness. She said that with great emphasis and certitude. The bit where she says “there were also other factors” didn’t take up nearly … Read the rest

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Wow.

I’ve thought Chris Hedges is a terrible writer and human being ever since I read his terrible book I Don’t Believe in Atheists which came out in 2008. I found it to be both sloppy and vulgarly abusive; both lazily written and dishonest about the people he was abusing.

Well color me prophetic then, in light of a long piece in The New Republic reporting several instances of fairly shameless plagiarism. And then for good measure there’s Hedges’s belligerence when the plagiarism is pointed out to him, and then there’s also the circling of the wagons by his friends and colleagues, who swear up and down that he’s just a great guy so please shut up and go … Read the rest

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There’s another one, and there was one more yesterday.

A teenager has been found hanging from a tree in a village in northern India, the fourth woman to die in such a way in recent weeks in Uttar Pradesh state.

The family of the 19-year-old say she was raped. A post mortem is under way.

It comes just one day after a woman’s body was found hanging from a tree in a remote village elsewhere in the state.

The gang rape and murder of two girls found in similar circumstances last month sparked outrage. Correspondents say more cases are now being reported.

Such attacks have long taken place in Uttar Pradesh, reports the BBC’s Geeta Pandey in Delhi, but

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

J K Rowling is opposed to Scotland’s going independent, and has said so. Open the misogynist floodgates.

What’s The Dignity Project?

The Dignity Project

@DignityProject

Scottish charity working in Africa with a CBCC programme Community Based Childcare Programme for orphans and vulnerable children.

But a woman has The Wrong Opinion? Good-bye dignity.… Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Reading the tweets at #womenaretoohardtoanimate is very funny.

Why it’s almost worth being the despised superfluous tiresome hard to draw alien sex, just to be able to read such hilarious tweets!

One of Soraya’s -

#womenaretoohardtoanimate because, really, in our idealized worlds, isn’t it just better if they don’t exist? They’re SO COMPLICATED.

A few others -

#womenaretoohardtoanimate i can never get the hundred flailing tendrils right

#womenaretoohardtoanimate with all the crying, menstruating, and nagging. How can we draw it ALL?!

#womenaretoohardtoanimate cos you have to start from scratch, unlike with male forms that spring whole from the designers cloven forehead.

#womenaretoohardtoanimate and it’s not historically accurate b/c everyone knows during the french rev. women

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Why aren’t there any female characters in this new video game? Well because it would be too much trouble, that’s why. It would take too long. It would be too difficult.

So says Ubisoft about the new Assassin’s Creed.

The next game in the Assassin’s Creed series will not allow you to play as a female character because it would have “doubled the work” for the game’s developer Ubisoft. Speaking to VideoGamer, Ubisoft technical director James Therien said female assassins were on the company’s feature list until “not too long ago,” but were cut as a matter of “focus and production.”

“A female character means that you have to redo a lot of animation,” Therien

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Oh, Andrew Brown. Wrong in the very first sentence.

He’s writing about the Tuam babies.

Why is it that we are more shocked by what happens to dead babies than to live ones?

We’re not.

There, that’s done; no need to write the rest of that piece.

But of course he did write it.

The story that almost 800 dead babies were buried in a disused sewage tank outside Tuamin rural Ireland turns out to be problematic. It is certain that 796 babies did die under the care of nuns in a home for unmarried mothers there between 1925 and 1961 and that is in itself a shocking statistic. But what gave the story wings was the claim that

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When I flagged up the #TwitterTheocracy campaign yesterday I forgot to link to the petition, and I forgot to sign it myself. Sign the petition!

It’s authored by Ex Muslims of North America.

Twitter has agreed to use its ‘Country Withheld Tool’ to block “blasphemous” tweets in Pakistan. Blasphemy laws are used in Pakistan and elsewhere to suppress dissent and persecute minorities who face state and vigilante violence at the mere accusation of blasphemy. Twitter is  being complicit in suppressing free speech, and in aiding Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.

—

We urge Twitter and all other international companies and organizations to uphold human rights-based standards of conduct, particularly when it comes to freedom of expression.

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Article 19 of the Universal

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)