According to the Nigerian Tribune, the US and UK have brought in the high tech equipment to locate the Boko Haram hiding place and the schoolgirls they’ve enslaved.

BOTH the United States and British anti-terror specialists who arrived Nigeria on Friday have started deploying high-grade surveillance technologies to track down the voice, location and the fire power of Boko Haram terrorists who kidnapped over 200 girls of a secondary school in Chibok, Borno State.

According to reports on Friday by Daily Mail of the United Kingdom and other news channels monitored by the Saturday Tribune, the deployment and further operation of the exercise is being overseen by the Special Forces, even as there are indications that the Special Forces may

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Ricky Gervais is so proud of his clever joke about how people will object to your use of sexist epithets EVEN WHEN IT’S HITLER YOU’RE CALLING THEM that he put in some time defending it on Twitter as well – entirely and obliviously missing the point while doing so. God he’s thick. I think I’ve mentioned this before (but then, he keeps illustrating it), but I thought David Brent was satire, when it turns out he was just Ricky Gervais.

Ricky Gervais @rickygervais 4h

Sorry I called Hitler a cunt. I wasn’t thinking. His behaviour just got to me. Soz.

I will continue to use offensive words like cunt, atheism & Derek and post pictures of myself in the bath.

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Another blow struck for the right to call people cunts.

Ricky Gervais
If you grabbed Hitler and shouted “stop killing innocent people you cunt”, someone on Facebook would call you out on your sexist language.

And?

Has Ricky Gervais ever done a Facebook post saying “If you grabbed Hitler and shouted ‘stop killing innocent people you kike’, someone on Facebook would call you out on your anti-semitic language”?

I don’t know for sure, but I seriously doubt it. People like him don’t defend calling people niggers or kikes, but they do defend calling people cunts. Why is that? Because the first is not ok while the second is ok. Why? I can only conclude it’s because hatred of women just … Read the rest

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From Banda Aceh, Indonesia – sexual morality-policing via gang rape.

An Indonesian woman who was gang-raped by men accusing her of having extramarital sex may be caned publicly for violating Islamic law, an official said Wednesday.

The 25-year-old widow said she was raped by eight men who allegedly found her with a married man in her house. The men reportedly beat the man, doused the two with sewage, and then turned them over to Islamic police in conservative Aceh province.

No, the men reportedly beat the man, doused the two with sewage, gang-raped the woman, and then turned them over to Islamic police in conservative Aceh province.

What business was it of theirs what she was doing in … Read the rest

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Michelle Goldberg reported last month on the trial of Cecily McMillan.

Two years ago, a young activist named Cecily McMillan attended a protest at Zuccotti Park marking the six-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. When police moved in to clear the demonstrators, a cop roughly grabbed her breast—photos show an ugly bruise—and she ended up being injured so badly that she had a seizure and ended up in the hospital. In a just world, she would be getting restitution from the City. Instead, in a grotesque act of prosecutorial overreach, she’s currently on trial for assault and facing up to seven years in prison.

According to prosecutors, McMillan, now 25, intentionally attacked her arresting officer, Grantley Bovel, by elbowing

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This seems useful and healthy – this Facebook group called Women Who Eat on Tubes*, which features sneak photos of just that.

Some women had a picnic on the tube last month to mock the whole disgusting thing.

Sarah Hardcastle, in a T-shirt reading “women who eat wherever the fuck they want”, produced a bottle of juice neatly relabelled “bloody feminist cocktail”.

“It’s very bitter,” she explained.

The gathering in a London underground train carriage was a response to a controversial Facebook group entitled Women Who Eat on Tubes, featuring surreptitious mobile phone photographs of just that.

Hardcastle, an advertising copywriter, was already wearing the T-shirt when she heard Lucy Brisbane McKay confront film-maker Tony Burke on the Radio

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Jen Phillips’s 11-year-old daughter wrote a research paper for school which is so good it needs to be published here, which Jen gave me permission to do.

It was first published on J. Robert Deans’s blog in UPDATE #2: Hey, Ladies! (You Are) Comics!

Women in Comics–an Independent Research Report, by Erica

Women In Comics: By Erica

The topic I chose is female superheroes in comics. I’ve always been interested in comics, especially when there is a female main character. I noticed some differences in the way female characters are represented compared to male characters. I think it is important that women and men are represented as equals, so I decided to dig deeper into the creation of the characters. … Read the rest

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Major English language media are now reporting the horrendous news about the new and even more barbaric sentence imposed on Raif Badawi.

The BBC reports.

A Saudi court has imprisoned blogger Raif Badawi for 10 years for “insulting Islam” and setting up a liberal web forum, local media report.

He was also sentenced to 1,000 lashes and ordered to pay a fine of 1 million riyals ($266,000; £133,000).

I would put the 1000 lashes first.

Mr Badawi, the co-founder of a website called the Liberal Saudi Network, was arrested in 2012.

A Saudi newspaper close to the government reported that he had lost his appeal against an earlier, more lenient sentence of seven years and three months in jail and

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Well thank fuck somebody is asking the real question about the kidnapped and enslaved schoolgirls in Nigeria. Noah Rothman at Medialite is asking it.

This focus on Boko Haram from both the media and the government is an unqualified good. The press arguably increased the pressure on global governments to do something about this backwards group of terrorists. But Boko Haram is not a new phenomenon. It was not long ago that some – including this author – were asking why this group’s atrocities were not generating any attention in the press.

On February 25, between 40 and 59 children were killed by the fundamentalist militant group. Early that morning, Boko Haram terrorists attacked a boarding school and shot many

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Malala Fund’s photo.

 … Read the rest

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A Pakistani human rights lawyer was shot to death in his office, AFP and Dawn report.

Human Rights Advocate Rashid Rehman Khan was gunned down by unidentified attackers in Multan, DawnNews reported late on Wednesday night.

Initial reports suggest that Khan was targeted by two gunmen inside his office at Kachehri Chowk.

Because of the human rights I suppose? That’s blasphemy, is it? Yes, of course it is. Lawyers should be defending the prophet’s rights, not human rights.

Advocate Rashid Rehman Khan was a coordinator for the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP). The senior lawyer was defending a university lecturer accused of blasphemy and had complained that he had been receiving threats on his life.

The HRCP

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Luke O’Neil at Medialite warns that there are risks in mocking the self-satisfied obliviousness of haplessly privileged college kids, who could become embittered Republicans as a result.

But screw it, let’s do it anyway. It’s unlikely we’re going to find a better candidate for a ideological stoning than Tal Fortgang, of the New Rochelle Fortgangs, who courageously struck out against the oppressive climate of basic cultural awareness and bare minimum human decency that has despoiled college campuses everywhere by penning a whinging invective against the concept of “checking your privilege” in The Princeton Tory. The piece was republished by Time, and a profile of the Rosa Parks of Ivy League white guys was published by The

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One thing Kennedy said in the Greece ruling -

That the First Congress provided for the appointment of chaplains only days after approving language for the First Amendment demonstrates that the Framers considered legislative prayer a benign acknowledgment of religion’s role in society.

Well if so, the Framers were wrong. One, it’s not automatically “benign”; two, it’s a lot more than a mere acknowledgment; three, religion’s role in society is not necessarily something that should be encouraged, let alone imposed.

I for one don’t consider it at all benign for a major branch of government to give its imprimatur to the fanciful idea that there’s a Big But Absent Person in charge of us all and paying attention to our … Read the rest

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CNN reports:

Details emerged Wednesday of an apparent Boko Haram attack on a Nigerian village in which at least 150 people died, the latest in a series of attacks and abductions of schoolgirls attributed to the group.

Militants dressed in military uniforms, backed by armored personnel carriers and shouting “God is great” attacked Gamboru Ngala Monday afternoon, firing rocket-propelled grenades and tossing improvised bombs into a crowded outdoor marketplace, witnesses told CNN Wednesday.

They then set fire to buildings where people had tried to take shelter from the violence, the witnesses said.

The fighters also attacked the police station during the 12-hour assault, initially facing stiff resistance. They eventually used explosives to blow the roof off the building, witnesses

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It’s been reported – indirectly so far, which is to say, no English language news sources – that today Saudi Arabia changed Raif Badawi’s sentence to an even harsher one.

Amnesty International reports:

Amnesty International is calling on Saudi Arabia’s authorities to quash the outrageous sentencing today of Raif Badawi in connection with an online forum for public debate he set up and accusations that he insulted Islam.

Raif Badawi, co-founder of the “Saudi Arabian Liberals” website, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, 1,000 lashes and a fine of 1 million Saudi riyals (about US$266,631) by Jeddah’s Criminal Court.

A THOUSAND LASHES.

Not to mention ten years – 120 months, 3,560+ days – in prison.

Corporal punishment,

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Dave Richards gave me blanket permission to post his photos so here’s another one of Merlyn that I’ve always loved – this one from when he was a brand new arrival.

Magic Merlyn is magic

… Read the rest

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Martin Wagner posted this on Facebook. The names of 177 of the schoolgirls kidnapped and enslaved by Boko Haram.

… Read the rest

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The Supreme Court ruling handed down yesterday is inspiring new efforts, just as everyone knew it would. The Board of Supervisors of Roanoke County, Virginia, for instance:

Roanoke County’s Board of Supervisors may be headed toward another discussion of prayer following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling handed down Monday. The board dealt with the matter in 2012, eventually passing a nonsectarian prayer policy that Supervisor Al Bedrosian is ready to strike from the books.

“The freedom of religion doesn’t mean that every religion has to be heard,” said Bedrosian, who added that he is concerned about groups such as Wiccans and Satanists. “If we allow everything … where do you draw the line?”

The supervisor campaigned on the idea

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