It could be fatal to drive a car with expired tabs in Detroit if you’re not white.

A veteran Detroit police officer has been demoted and reassigned after posting a Snapchat video showing a black woman whose car he had just impounded walking home alone while he and another officer make derogatory remarks about her to each other in the background.

Meanwhile, pre-made captions that say “What black girl magic looks like” and “celebrating Black History Month” appear at the bottom.

A very young woman: a teenage girl. And this was Tuesday night, during the polar vortex.

The Snapchat video, which was first published by ABC affiliate WXYZ, shows the woman walking away down a snow-covered street.

“Priceless,” one of the officers says.

“Walk of shame,” the other responds.

“In the cold,” the first one says again. Later one of the two says, “Bye, Felicia.”

The temperature low on Tuesday was 2 degrees in Detroit, according to AccuWeather.

People died in the polar vortex.

Steele* has had issues with the law himself. In 2008, he was charged with attacking an ex-girlfriend and firing a gun near her head, according to the Detroit News. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and was able to keep his job at the police department, the newspaper reported.

*one of the cops

Maybe he shouldn’t have been able to keep his job at the police department, huh? Maybe violent people don’t make the best cops?

It’s time for Bangladesh’s annual book fair…but watch out.

DMP chief warns against publishing books that hurt religious sentiments

Legal action will be taken against writers and publishers if any book hurting religious sentiment or disrupting communal harmony is published at this year’s Amar Ekushey Book Fair, Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) Commissioner Asaduzzaman Mia has said.

He made the comments while inspecting the security measures at the annual event’s venues—Bangla Academy and Suhrawardy Udyan in Dhaka—on Thursday morning.

“We have requested writers and publishers not to bring any book that can hurt religious sentiments, or instigate communal violence,” he said.

Any book that can hurt religious sentiments? That would be almost any book, because people who are determined to find something that Hurts their Sentiments can nearly always do so.

More to the point, if any place needs books that challenge religious sentiments, it’s Bangladesh (along with a lot of other places). If any subject in the world needs challenging, it’s religion, especially patriarchal religion. Is Islam a patriarchal religion? Yes, it is. Islam in many places has a nasty habit of grinding women into the dirt. This is, ultimately, human beings giving themselves permission slips in the form of “religious sentiments,” but that’s exactly why such sentiments need challenging.

A committee under Bangla Academy, aside from police detectives, has been formed to monitor books scheduled to be published for the month-long book fair that is slated to start on February 1.

“If we receive information about any such book, the committee will evaluate them first. Then, legal measures will follow, if necessary, in line with the law, related to the type of crime,” he said.

Yeah great. Brilliant. Treat it as a crime to challenge religion, and set the police to sniffing out this bogus crime.

I was alerted this by a tweet from Taslima.

National Book Fair started in Bangladesh. Police checking whether anybody has written anything against Islam in any of the books. It is kind of mobile-'fuck-freespeech'-court. Cry, the beloved democracy! pic.twitter.com/KKAx9DgUzf

— taslima nasreen (@taslimanasreen) February 2, 2019

It was “World Hijab Day” yesterday.

What shall we do next? World Yellow Star Day? World Bound Feet Day? World Chains Day?

I know; many non-Muslims who observe the day don’t think they’re celebrating patriarchal religion and the subordination of women; they think they’re expressing solidarity with Muslims who are subject to racism and xenophobia. In a sense they are doing that, but they’re also expressing solidarity with theocrats who force women to wear hijab, and they’re expressing unsolidarity with women and girls who refuse to wear hijab and those who want to refuse but can’t.

And in the process they are sometimes teaching very young girls that female people need to Cover Up.

I was going to post the Grade 6 tweet but it disappeared while I was typing, so I guess those 149 replies weren’t all approving. (I saw a few disapproving ones before I left to start typing.)

Don’t do that. By all means be in solidarity with despised minorities, but do that without telling the girls in your class to wrap a large cloth around their heads and necks. Do that without telling the girls in your class to muffle and conceal and shroud themselves while the boys remain free to run around without thick fabric wrapping their heads and necks. Do that without telling the girls in your class they are so radically different from boys that they require wrapping, like a piece of meat that will attract flies.