Grim news from Afghanistan:

A law meant to protect Afghan women from a host of abusive practices, including rape, forced marriage and the trading of women to settle disputes, is being undermined by spotty enforcement, the UN said in a report released Wednesday.

Afghanistan’s Law on the Elimination of Violence Against Women was passed in August 2009, raising hopes among women’s rights activists that Afghan women would get to fight back against abuses that had been ignored under Taliban rule.

The law criminalised many abuses for the first time, including domestic violence, child marriage, driving a woman to resort to suicide and the selling and buying of women.

Yet the report found only a small percentage of reported crimes

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TLC, the “Yay religion!” channel, has a new show called All-American Muslim. Guess what it’s about! Guess what its take is!

Well in one way its take is fine. Good, show people that Mulims aren’t some weird alien species; excellent; promote fellow-feeling and peace; great. But…

Well I’ve only managed to watch a few minutes of it, a couple of times, because it’s so annoying. It may be more annoying than it needed to be – it may have gone out of its way to be annoying, by seeking out hyper-observant Muslims. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s normal in Dearborn.

Anyway my point isn’t actually about TLC or the show overall, it’s about the bits that I … Read the rest

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Jason collected some photoshopped pepper-spraying cops.

My favorite is

Check them all out. Commenters have more. Don’t miss George W’s.

 … Read the rest

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I haven’t been paying enough attention. (So often the case. There is so much to pay attention to, and it’s very difficult to pay attention to everything – ok it’s not very difficult, it’s impossible – so in paying attention to L, M and N, you miss S, T and U.) I missed David Coleman Headley. I missed the fact that an American

was one of the leading planners of the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which killed 166 people over three days at two five-star hotels, a train station and a small Jewish community center.

I missed the fact that

Headley gave specific evidence about the close alliance between the ISI,
Pakistan’s intelligence force, and the Lashkar terrorist

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Via Gnu Atheism at Facebook – a new bus ad -

… Read the rest

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The UC Davis police chief has been placed on leave after the pepper spraying of students on Friday.

On Sunday, the university said that two police officers had been placed on administrative leave with pay pending an investigation into Friday’s incident. In videos that were widely distributed over the Internet, two police officers in riot gear were seen dousing about a dozen protesters with pepper spray as they sat on a sidewalk with their arms entwined.

Yup. That’s what happened.… Read the rest

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A new thing for Christianists to worry about.

Girls wanting to become Guides, Brownies or Rainbows currently promise to “love” God when signing up to the 101-year-old organisation.

However, the association is considering reviewing the wording of its affirmation for new members, to remove religious references.

The NSS says the story is bogus, but taking it as true for the moment…What of it? Why should children have to promise to love “God” in order to join a group that does fun things? Why should even children who do in fact love “God” have to do that? Why should even children of “devout” parents have to do that? Why have a requirement of that kind at all? It seems surplus to … Read the rest

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Via Dana’s open letter to Nature amiably titled “There is a Crucial Difference Between Being Contentious and Being a Misogynistic Asshole,” we read Anne Jefferson’s open letter to Nature amiably titled “You got a sexist story, but when you published it, you gave it your stamp of approval and became sexist too.”

Dear Nature,

“Womanspace” by Ed Rybicki is the most appalling thing I have ever read in a scientific journal. When I read the Futures (science fiction) piece you published on 29 September 2011, about how the hero and a man friend were unable to cope with a simple errand and how that led them to discover the existence of parallel universe inhabited by women that naturally endowed women

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And another thing. What does this remind you of?

The rise of the Haredim  has been disastrous for the country’s economy,  according to Gershom Gorenberg, author of The Unmaking of Israel.

Gorenberg writes that  Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community is becoming ever  more dependent on the state and, through it, on other people’s labour.

”By exempting the ultra-Orthodox from basic general educational  requirements, the democratic state fosters a burgeoning sector of society that  neither understands nor values democracy.

Quiverfull, and the homeschool movement. The democratic US state is fostering  a burgeoning sector of society that  neither understands nor values democracy – or secularism or human rights.… Read the rest

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How do you know when the theocrats are winning? Women start to disappear, and at the same time, the ones who haven’t disappeared yet are subject to spittle-flecked hatred…including those who are six years old.

 Like that. Posters that feature women have been “defaced” in Jerusalem, the SMH article says, and by defaced it means defaced, as you can see. That poster says, “You think you’re pretty, bitch? I’ll give you pretty, you whore. How pretty do you think you’ll be after I stick a razor in your eyes, you cunt?”

That’s not “segregation”; it’s not “modesty”; it’s not “religious obligations”; it’s just loathing.

 ”Shut your filthy mouth, bitch.”

Not content with segregated streets, queues and buses, extremist members

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And we’ll never never never leave you again.

Not if we can help it anyway.… Read the rest

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