Sabika Sheikh’s funeral was yesterday.

Sabika, 17, dreamed of being a diplomat, of working to empower women. A Muslim exchange student from Karachi, Pakistan, she had come to the United States through a State Department-funded study program, excited to leave behind the dangers posed by extremists at home to experience a country that represented all that was possible.

…

Outside the mosque here, long before hundreds of people gathered to mourn, two men wondered what had become of America, their adopted homeland.

“I’m aghast,” said Abdul Khatri, 60. “People come here because they are told there is peace here. You have the right to be protected here. It’s why I came. But to have this happen not in India

Guest post by Lady Mondegreen.

A little while ago, thinking of Jordan Peterson, I flashed on a book I read thirty years ago or so: Klaus Theweleit’s Male Fantasies.

Theweleit, a German sociologist with a Freudian bent, wrote about the men of the Freikorps, paramilitary bands of anti-Communists active in Germany between the World Wars. Many of them went on to be committed Nazis.

The Freikorps had their own subculture, including pulp fiction. Theweleit examined their novels, along with their letters and other documents, and found–brace yourselves for a surprise here–a profound fear of women and sexuality. The subtitle of the first volume of Mannerphantasien is “Women, Floods, Bodies.”

The Freikorps associated women with sex and sex with water … Read the rest

This is blood-chilling.

On Monday morning, the White House press office released a remarkable statement detailing violent crimes allegedly committed by members of the criminal gang MS-13. That alone isn’t remarkable; President Trump has been railing against MS-13 for months, using it as a foil to bolster his rhetoric about the risk posed by immigrants to the United States.

What was remarkable about the statement was the White House’s enthusiastic embrace of the term “animals” to describe those alleged gang members. Over the course of 480 words, the subjects of the statement were described as gang members nine times and as “animals” 10 times. The statement was direct about its aim, titled, “What You Need To Know About The

Glosswitch in the Independent:

If only Shana Fisher had said yes. This is the implication of countless headlines following Dimitrios Pagourtzis’ decision to slaughter her along with nine of her teachers and classmates.

According to a Facebook post by Fisher’s mother, Fisher “had four months of problems from this boy” where “he kept making advances on her and she repeatedly told him no. He continued to get more aggressive”. So a girl endures several months of harassment, until her harasser kills her. How are we supposed to see this?

“Spurned advances spark Texas shooting.” “Texas school shooter ‘killed girl who turned down his advances’.” “Spurned advances provoked incident at Santa Fe high school.

Really?

Really??

There's now a White House Military Office coin for the upcoming Trump Kim Jong Un summit. The North Korean dictator is referred to as "Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un." pic.twitter.com/tFAmE813Y1

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) May 21, 2018

… Read the rest

Sometimes the rage and disgust is overwhelming.

In a case involving the rights of tens of millions of private-sector employees, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote, delivered a major blow to workers, ruling for the first time that workers may not band together to challenge violations of federal labor laws.

Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said that the 1925 Federal Arbitration Act trumps the National Labor Relations Act and that employees who sign employment agreements to arbitrate claims must do so on an individual basis — and may not band together to enforce claims of wage and hour violations.

5 to 4. Guess which 5 and which 4. Mitch McConnell should burn in hell.

“The

The DoJ is jumping because Donald said “jump.”

In a statement, the Department of Justice said it would ask the Inspector General “to expand the ongoing review of the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] application process to include determining whether there was any impropriety or political motivation in how the FBI conducted its counterintelligence investigation of persons suspected of involvement with the Russian agents who interfered in the 2016 presidential election.”

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein added that “if anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action.”

Or maybe it’s not so much jumping as allowing Trump to make a fool of himself, because there is … Read the rest

The people in charge of news headlines and first paragraphs and the like really need to stop doing this:

Spurned advances provoked Texas school shooting, victim’s mother says

“She provoked me so I killed her and nine other people.”

Also? Simply saying no to a guy’s invitation or request is not “spurning” anything. It’s just not accepting an offer you don’t want. Women are allowed to do that. Women are allowed to say no. Women are allowed to say no without being killed or raped or beaten up or blamed for it. Women are not walking talking merchandise that is there for the use of other, more important people called “men” – women are themselves people, and they are … Read the rest

Oh good, now Playboy is telling us how to feminism. Thank god; we’ve been wondering all along how we could do it more Playboyishly.

"How can we move forward with an educated, true version of feminism when the media pushes watered-down feminism, led by a fictional celebrity narrative, without actual answers or—god forbid—solutions to our ongoing, uphill battle?"

Read the full story. https://t.co/qbKYgqCQc8 pic.twitter.com/ApnOIiMV2h

— Playboy (@Playboy) May 16, 2018

… Read the rest

No I didn’t watch the RoYal WedDing, and I was pretty staggered last night to see CNN “covering” it (to the exclusion of anything else) at 5 a.m. London time when all there was to say was “Well the sun is coming up and the crowds aren’t here yet but THEY WILL BE by god”…but all the same I’m getting a kick out of the sermon the royal stiffs got to listen to.

The sermon-giver was Michael Curry, the presiding bishop of the US version of the Anglican church, aka the Episcopalian. (I was dragged to Episcopalian church a few times as a kid. It didn’t take.) He’s the first African-American head of the church. His sermon was a … Read the rest

An exchange student from Pakistan was killed in the Santa Fe school shooting.

Sabika Sheikh, aged 18, had been on the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange & Study Abroad programme (YES). The programme is run by the US state department, and was set up in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks to bring students from Muslim-majority nations to the US on a cultural exchange.

That’s something the US and Pakistan have in common: plenty of lethal violence.

Sabika Sheikh family

Her parents, Abdul Aziz and Farah Sheikh, told the BBC they heard about the shooting through television news.

They said they confirmed their daughter’s death within an hour by speaking to school administrators. Ms Sheikh’s body would be returned

More people killed in a school shooting in Texas.

Between eight and 10 people have been killed in a shooting at a Texas high school, say police.

Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez told reporters the majority of the dead at Santa Fe High School were students.

A student is in custody after the attack at the school, which is about 40 miles (65km) south of Houston.

The death toll makes this the deadliest school shooting since the one in February at Parkland, Florida.

We rank them now. They’re so regular and frequent and routine that we rank them by body count and don’t bother with the ones that kill only two or three. Shootings in schools are just a … Read the rest