Nicholas Confessore at the NY Times on Trump as the racism candidate.

The chant erupts in a college auditorium in Washington, as admirers of a conservative internet personality shout down a black protester. It echoes around the gym of a central Iowa high school, as white students taunt the Hispanic fans and players of a rival team. It is hollered by a lone motorcyclist, as he tears out of a Kansas gas station after an argument with a Hispanic man and his Muslim friend.

The chant is just one word – Trump.

In countless collisions of color and creed, Donald J. Trump’s name evokes an easily understood message of racial hostility. Defying modern conventions of political civility and language, Mr. Trump has breached the boundaries that have long constrained Americans’ public discussion of race.

And that’s why he’s so terrifying. This isn’t some joke or stunt or tv show or publicity move. It may be any or all of those in Trump’s mind, who knows, but that is no guarantee that he wouldn’t act on his message of racial hostility if he were elected. Racist chanting doesn’t stop with racist chanting.

Mr. Trump has attacked Mexicans as criminals. He has called for a ban on Muslim immigrants. He has wondered aloud why the United States is not “letting people in from Europe.”

His rallies vibrate with grievances that might otherwise be expressed in private: about “political correctness,” about the ranch house down the street overcrowded with day laborers, and about who is really to blame for thedeath of a black teenager in Ferguson, Mo.

In cries of “All lives matter.”

“I think what we really find troubling is the mainstreaming of these really offensive ideas,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks hate groups. “It’s allowed some of the worst ideas into the public conversation in ways we haven’t seen anything like in recent memory.”

And not merely “offensive.” People can get over being offended, but the ideas are dangerous as well as “offensive,” and it’s the dangerous part that makes Trump terrifying.

Some are elated by the turn. In making the explicit assertion of white identity and grievance more widespread, Mr. Trump has galvanized the otherwise marginal world of avowed white nationalists and self-described “race realists.” They hail him as a fellow traveler who has driven millions of white Americans toward an intuitive embrace of their ideals: that race should matter as much to white people as it does to everyone else. He has freed Americans, those activists say, to say what they really believe.

Yeah. And that’s a bad thing.

This was last week, but I missed it – Neil deGrasse Tyson, Twitter, a hashtag – #Rationalia.

Oh god. The word all by itself is enough to kick the nausea-mechanism into life. Rationalia: the land where all the self-admiring dudebros wander up and down congratulating each other on their towering Rationality.

Tyson tweeted him a tweet, a tweet tweeted he it, on June 29.

Earth needs a virtual country: #Rationalia, with a one-line Constitution: All policy shall be based on the weight of evidence

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) June 29, 2016

Earth needs a virtual country: #Rationalia, with a one-line Constitution: All policy shall be based on the weight of evidence

Dude. No. What are you thinking?

Well, we know what he’s thinking. He’s thinking what Sam Harris was thinking when he wrote his awful book on morality. He’s thinking what the self-admiring dudebros always are thinking when they tell everyone else to go away and learn how to think. He’s thinking “reason” is all there is to it.

He’s thinking a one-line Constitution is a possible and a desirable thing, and that evidence is the only relevant factor in how people should treat each other. Did you notice the one word in there that overturns that whole idea? It’s the word “should.” What evidence can determine what we should do? Not influence or shape, but determine? “Should” according to what?

A single ten word sentence is not enough for a Constitution. That ten word sentence is not enough for a Constitution or for basic life advice. I can think of better single sentences for the purpose without breaking a sweat. “First, do no harm” is a contender, and that’s only four words. “Be good to each other” is one more word. “Don’t be evil” is a mere three. All of them are more to the purpose than Tyson’s absurdity.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has 30 articles. Most of the articles have numbered items, and most of the rest are several sentences. Actual Constitutions are longer than that, and that’s not just because humanities types like to ramble on while Rational Men of Science know how to cut to the chase.

Some people posed for photos.

Reason is good. Following the evidence is good. Thinking carefully is good. But they are not enough.

More on the looming problem of antibiotic resistance.

The golden age of antibiotics appears to be coming to an end, its demise hastened by a combination of medical, social and economic factors. For decades, these drugs made it easy for doctors to treat infections and injuries. Now, common ailments are regaining the power to kill.

Harvard University infectious disease epidemiologist William P. Hanage cautions that “we will not be flying back into the dark ages” overnight. Hospitals are improving their infection control, and public health experts are getting better at tracking new threats. But in a race against nature, he said, the humans are losing ground.

That’s a clumsy use of the word “cautions.” One doesn’t “caution” people that things aren’t all that terrible. He clarifies rather than cautions.

Until very recently, few made the connection between antibiotic use in individual cases and the emergence of antibiotic resistance, said Dr. Susan Bleasdale, an infection-control expert at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Patients with earaches, sinus pressure and sore throats demanded antibiotics, and physicians tended to oblige.

The results have been deadly. Each year, more than 2 million people in the U.S. are infected with a bacterium that has become resistant to one or more antibiotic medication designed to kill it, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At least 23,000 people die as a direct result of antibiotic-resistant infections, and many more die from other conditions that were complicated by an antibiotic-resistant infection, the agency says.

But it’s getting worse rather than better.

A survey released in June by the Infectious Diseases Society of America found that only 30% of Americans believe that antibiotic resistance is a significant problem for public health.

Which is probably why so many Americans still demand antibiotics for colds, and some doctors still give them.

The problem goes beyond treating infections. As bacterial resistance grows, Lesho said, “we’re all at risk of losing our access” to medical miracles we’ve come to take for granted: elective surgeries, joint replacements, organ transplants, cancer chemotherapies. These treatments give bacteria an opportunity to hitch a ride on a catheter or an unwashed hand and invade an already vulnerable patient.

We grew up taking powerful medical technologies for granted. It won’t be pleasant watching them weaken and fade away.

ExMuslim flashdance at Kings Cross.

The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain:

On July 5, 2016 a number of ex-Muslims from Bangladesh, Britain, Iran, Kuwait, Morocco, Pakistan and Syria converged on Kings Cross for a flash “dance” in support of freethinkers and “apostates” across the globe. On their faces and chests, they had written of “Ex-Muslim”, “Kafir”, “Atheist”, “Migrant”, “Refugee”, and “Apostate”.
They danced to Shaggy’s “I Need Your Love”** in support of all those who are isolated, intimidated, harassed, and even killed for leaving Islam or thinking freely.
They also danced in memory of Adel Al-Jaf, a young Iraqi dancer, who was killed the day before in a mass suicide bombing in Iraq with over 200 others. He had to dance in secret; they danced for him and all those who cannot dance, think, live and love in public.
Dancers include: Aftab Ahmed, Hana Chelache, Imad Iddine Habib, Mahdi Khalidi, Maryam Namazie, Rayhana Sultan, and Zee Jay.
Dance was organised by the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain.
Filming: Poone Ravi
WE DON’T OWN COPYRIGHT TO THIS SONG.
NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED.
Soundtrack: Shaggy’s I need your love
Artists: Shaggy Feat Mohombi , Faydee and Costi
Music : I NEED YOUR LOVE ( itunes)
With Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB)
ExMuslimBecause
Imad Iddine Habib
Zee Jay
Maryam Namazie
Hana Chelache
Aftab Ahmed
El Mahdi Khalidi
Rayhana Sultan

Trump is angry (or is pretending to be angry) at Ruth Bader Ginsburg because she has said harsh things about him in public. Supreme Court justices aren’t supposed to take sides in political campaigns.

“I think it’s highly inappropriate that a United States Supreme Court judge gets involved in a political campaign, frankly,” Trump told the Times by phone. “I think it’s a disgrace to the court and I think she should apologize to the court. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it.”

Ginsburg in recent days has ramped up her criticisms of Trump’s campaign. She has said he’s a “faker” who should release his tax returns, that she “can’t imagine” a Trump presidency, and that “everything” would be up for grabs with him occupying the White House. Ginsburg’s comments are unique in that a Supreme Court justice typically doesn’t comment on presidential candidates during election season.

I don’t know. I can see why the Supes don’t usually get involved, and why it’s better that they don’t…but Trump is a special case. He’s special because he has no relevant experience or education, and because he’s a reckless pugnacious loose cannon. He’s not a real “presidential candidate” in the normal sense of the phrase. He’s a noisily self-promoting tv personality and “tycoon” – he’s a joke rather than a serious candidate. He’s also a vocal, aggressive racist. He’s not so much a candidate as an emergency. The rules change for emergencies.

The Bookbinder twins are in the Washington Post.

It was nearing 6 p.m. one Sunday last month when Jeremy and Eliana Bookbinder heard about an injured hawk on a hiking trail not far from the camp where they were working.

The 20-year-old twins from Prince George’s were at Camp Marriott, a Boy Scout camp in the Goshen Scout Reservation, about 20 miles from Lexington, Va.

Some hikers had told a camp staff member that they had found an injured hawk, and the information had been passed along to the twins.

You know the story from Eliana’s write-up. Eliana found the bird – a juvenile bald eagle – and found that it was in bad shape.

It was “very, very still and quiet,” she said, and it was “covered in flies.”

Bookbinder called her boss, Matt Anderson, and told him about the eagle. She also texted him a photo of the bird. But from the other end of the line came an order: She was not to call the wildlife rehabilitation center, nor was she to transport it to a wildlife veterinarian.

“I pointed out that this was a massive violation of the Scout law,” Bookbinder said. “Part of the Scout law is to be thoughtful and to be kind, and this was neither.

“I have never been so angry that I cried,” she said. “At that point I just thought okay, I’m just going to do it anyway.”

She called Jeremy for backup.

She also called the emergency after-hours phone number of the Wildlife Center of Virginia. She was told that if she could safely capture the eagle, she should do so and bring it to the center, located about 45 miles away.

That’s the part that makes the firing impossible to understand. She called the correct experts, and the correct experts told her to bring the eagle in if she could do it safely. I don’t know why that isn’t all there was to it.

At the Wildlife Center, the two handed over the eagle and filled out paperwork, and staff at the center started assessing the bird’s condition.

It was about 11 p.m. by the time the Bookbinders arrived back at camp. They were called to Anderson’s office. According to Eliana Bookbinder, Anderson berated them for having done a “terrible” thing and said that their actions had “endangered the reputation of the Boy Scouts.”

Next morning they were fired.

The people in charge act as if they’re running the Pentagon or something, and refuse to explain.

Contacted by The Washington Post for comment, Barbash deferred to his chief spokesman, Aaron Chusid.

“We have no comment at this time as it is our policy not to comment on employment matters,” Chusid wrote in an email. “At Goshen Scout Reservation, our first priority is always to promote the health and safety of our campers while adhering to Scouting’s values as stated in the Scout Oath and Law.”

Blah blah blah; question not answered.

The Srebrenica massacre was 21 years ago today.

The United Nations had declared Srebrenica a safe haven for civilians, but that didn’t prevent Serb soldiers from attacking the town they besieged for years. As they advanced on July 11, 1995, most of the town’s Muslim population rushed to the nearby UN compound hoping that the Dutch peacekeepers would protect them.

But the outnumbered and outgunned, peacekeepers watched helplessly as Muslim men and boys were separated for execution, while the women and girls were sent to Bosnian government-held territory. Nearly 15,000 residents tried to flee through the woods, but were hunted down and also killed.

The victims were buried in mass graves, which were dug up shortly after the war by the perpetrators and relocated in order to hide the crime. During the process, the half-decomposed remains were ripped apart by bulldozers. Body parts are still being found in more than 100 mass graves, put together and identified through DNA analysis.

21 years ago. Not more than 70, like the Holocaust, but just 21.

Peter Popham looked back a couple of months ago.

In late-1991 I spent a few days under bombardment in Croatia reporting on the civil war for The Independent, then moved on to Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, to see if something similar was brewing there.

The locals were expansive, charming, bibulous and comprehensively reassuring. “What? Serbians, Bosniaks and Croatians turning on each other and killing each other?” The idea was laughable, I was told. This was a modern, sophisticated town full of mixed couples and families, where the bloody borders dividing Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim which had scarred the Balkans for centuries had been swallowed up and forgotten in happy modernity: first Tito, then European liberalism, had buried the region’s ugly history.

Yet within months the siege of Sarajevo was under way.

It can happen any time. It can happen anywhere and any time – no country or set of people is immune. It’s dreadful to admit that, and to be aware of it…but it’s dangerous not to.

Bosnian Serbians could not have picked up their guns and trained them on their Muslim and Croatian neighbours without believing they were doing something right and necessary.

The man who provided that belief, Radovan Karadzic, is now beginning the 40-year sentence handed down this week in The Hague. Charismatic, theatrical, a poet with something of the prophet and much of the charlatan about him, Karadzic was the right man in the right place, infusing his Serbian brethren with an intoxicating belief in their high racial destiny, involving a millennial conflict with the Muslims who, under the banner of the Ottomans, had inflicted that never-to-be-forgotten defeat at the Battle of Kosovo Polje in 1389.

…

We make a mistake if we see Karadzic as a unique monster. Figures like him are springing up and prospering right across the world, wherever the old state structures nourished by the post-war order totter. The viciousness of the historic divisions in the southern Balkans lent a fire-and-brimstone quality to the Karadzic rhetoric, just as the medieval touchstone of fundamental Islam justifies the barbarities promulgated by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of Isis. France’s Marie le Pen, Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Matteo Salvini of Italy’s Lega Nord each know how to apply the flame of rhetoric to the blue touchpaper of atavism. Each is as different as the clans to which they appeal, but all appeal to blood and soil. Civilisation as we know it was an awakening from such nightmares. These people lead us back into the dark.

Nigel Farage, Donald Trump.

Yarl’s Wood is cutting costs. We know what that means…

Staff are being replaced by “self-service kiosks” at the troubled Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre as the main way of driving through a £42m cut in the costs of a new Home Office contract to run the centre, it has been disclosed.

A report by the National Audit Office (NAO) published on Thursday also reveals that some women have refused to go on “humiliating” hospital visits after a tougher Home Office policy made it more likely they would be handcuffed on outside visits.

Handcuffs – as if immigration were a violent crime.

Let’s take a look back.

A former senior Serco official who worked inside the Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre has alleged that an anti-immigration culture was “endemic” among staff, and that vulnerable women have been deported without their mental health being properly assessed.

The claims came after the Observer revealed last week that the private outsourcing giant is to be investigated by MPs when it was forced to disclose a secret internal report revealing evidence that it failed to properly investigate a claim of repeated sexual assaults by one of its staff against a female resident.

The whistleblower also claimed that another alleged case of sexual assault by a Serco member of staff occurred in August 2012, involving a particularly vulnerable detainee with profound psychological issues. It is understood she has since been deported.

The claims come from the first senior employee to have broken rank since the immigration detention centre – which is so tightly guarded that the Home Office recently banned the United Nations from entry – opened in 2001.

The whistleblower claims Yarl’s Wood is not fit for purpose and that he detected a culture of disbelief towards female detainees, claims which are rejected by Serco.

He said: “Officers would say openly: ‘They need to go back, they need to leave the country, they’re only coming here to use NHS resources.’ A common phrase was: ‘They’re only putting it on to block their removal.’ I’ve actually heard [senior staff] say: ‘These people are putting it on.’ It was endemic … even the senior management structures were saying this, it was a mindset.”

Oh well – now it’s all kiosks, so problem solved.

On Fresh Air a few days ago:

We’re going to talk about new ways of understanding and treating addiction. My guest, Maia Szalavitz, is the author of a book that examines scientific, behavioral and medical research about addiction. She says the methods of treatment and punishment haven’t caught up with the research.

Szalavitz is a journalist who’s been covering addiction and drug-related issues for nearly 30 years. She writes a column for VICE and has been a health reporter and columnist for Time magazine. She was addicted to cocaine and heroin from the age of 17 to 23. She stopped using in 1988, about two years after she was arrested and charged with cocaine possession. She faced a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years to life. A little later, she’ll explain why she never served time. Her new book about addiction is called “Unbroken Brain.”

…

GROSS: OK. So you were 17 when you started using hard drugs. And what do we know now about the brain development of teenagers and why teenagers are more vulnerable to becoming addicted?

SZALAVITZ: Well, there are three critical periods of brain development in the human. The first one is obviously prenatally. The second one is 0 to 5. And the third one is adolescence into young adulthood.

And what’s going on in the brain at that time is that the areas that give you drive and motivation and that get you out of the house and that get you seeking boyfriends and seeking friends and, you know, seeking to interact with your peers more than your parents – those areas are growing really strong.

And you are learning, you know, how to seek thrills and pleasure and how to maneuver amongst your peers and how to have relationships. Unfortunately, the stuff that develops later are the regions that are involved in self-control and in reining in that motivation and reining in that desire. So when you’re a teenager, you have sort of a very strong engine with weak brakes.

And the brakes don’t really develop until your 20s or so. And that means that if you are engaging in a highly pleasurable or highly comforting experience as a teenager, you’re going to be more likely to get addicted because your brakes aren’t developed that much yet.

Ah yes. I remember that teenage engine – that surge. I remember the way it used to rev itself sometimes with no road to run on. You know? Wild feelings with no very clear referent? “I want to…something…run away…somewhere…what do I want?” The link to addiction seems to make a lot of sense.

GROSS: So you quote a couple of things. You say 90 percent of all addictions begin during adolescence. And addiction is less common in people who use drugs for the first time after they’re 25. And addiction often remits with or without treatment among people in their 20s just as the brain becomes fully adult. What do you extrapolate from those statistics?

SZALAVITZ: Well – that this is a developmental disorder. And that there is a period of extreme risk. And this is not to say, of course, that you cannot become an addict later in life. But the most common time and the most likely time for you to develop an addiction is your teens and early 20s.

The teenage person isn’t the real person yet. Or, you could argue, the teenage person is the real person, before the fakery and caution and hypocrisy of the developed prefrontal cortex have tamed and limited her. I don’t buy the romantic view, myself: I prefer people with judgement and self-control over people with strong but self-centered feeeeeeeelings. I do think people are more their real selves as they gain judgement and experience.

And another thing that’s going on at that time is – if you aren’t using drugs or escaping into something else excessively at that time, you are developing social skills and self-soothing skills and other skills that allow you to live comfortably in your body. And if you spend that time escaping with drugs, you aren’t learning those other things – so that when you try to stop, you won’t have those ways of dealing available to you.

They go on to talk about “tough love,” and Szalavitz says it’s a crock of shit.

This notion of tough love and hitting bottom. It was two years after I got arrested that I got into treatment. After I got arrested, I got worse and worse. I didn’t hit bottom when I had the insight that allowed me to seek help. What I got at that point was some kind of hope that I could change.

And we have this idea that if we just are cruel enough and mean enough and tough enough to people with addiction that they will suddenly wake up and stop. And that is not the case. Addiction is actually defined by the DSM and by the National Institute on Drug Abuse as compulsive behavior that continues despite negative consequences. That’s the definition of addiction. So therefore, if punishment, which is just another word for negative consequences, worked to fight addiction, addiction actually wouldn’t exist.

And so we just have this thing so wrong. Addiction is a problem with learning from punishment, and we expect punishment to fix it. There’s something deeply wrong with that.

The harm reduction approach is much better, she says. Needle exchanges and respect; those work much better than “tough love.” Interventions can backfire – Kirt Cobain killed himself after an intervention. I did not know that, even though I drive past his house when I take Cooper for walks along Lake Washington. (You’d think I’d have picked it up as local knowledge, I mean.)

Then there’s a part where they talk about 12 step programs, and Gross keeps saying they’re very successful, which annoyed me because the stats for 12 step are terrible. It’s a huge myth that they succeed – they rarely do.

GROSS: So, you know, a lot of people have been able to give up their addiction, whether it’s drugs or alcohol, with the help of 12-step programs. And I think it’s fair to say a 12-step program helped you, although there are things that you found were not helpful within the program.

But you say, like, just relying on 12-step programs is the equivalent of saying to somebody who has cancer, we’re not going to give you any drugs. But here’s a self-help group. It’s really going to help you.

SZALAVITZ: I think the 12-step programs are fabulous self-help. I think they can be absolutely wonderful as support groups. My issue with 12-step programs is that 80 percent of addiction treatment in this country consists primarily of indoctrinating people into 12-step programs. And no other medical care in the United States is like that. We don’t tell people with cancer that you must learn to surrender to a higher power, to pray, to confess to your sins, to make restitution.

If you went to a doctor for cancer and you were told that, you would think that you had found a quack. But in addiction, if you go to a treatment center, you will be told this is the only way. And the alternative is jails, institutions or death. So what I think is that we need to have within professional treatment no 12-step content.

That too is a problem, but I don’t think they should be called fabulous self-help when they seldom work. I think I blogged about a long article on the subject in The Atlantic last year, including this stark passage:

In his recent book, The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry, Lance Dodes, a retired psychiatry professor from Harvard Medical School, looked at Alcoholics Anonymous’s retention rates along with studies on sobriety and rates of active involvement (attending meetings regularly and working the program) among AA members. Based on these data, he put AA’s actual success rate somewhere between 5 and 8 percent. That is just a rough estimate, but it’s the most precise one I’ve been able to find.

Szalavitz explains why 12 step programs shouldn’t be pushed on people some more, and Gross just repeats the myth about their success.

That doesn’t mean that professional treatment can’t refer people to AA as a support group. But professional treatment should consist of things that you cannot get for free elsewhere. So it should consist of cognitive behavioral therapy or motivational enhancement therapy or any of a number of different talk therapies that help people with addiction. I am not saying if 12-step programs work for you, you should quit them and do something else.

I am saying that your oncologist is not your breast cancer support group.

GROSS: But, I mean, 12-step programs do help so many people.

No. They don’t. That’s a myth. (What’s the source of the myth? Why, 12-step programs!)

SZALAVITZ: The data shows that cognitive behavioral and motivational enhancement therapy are equally effective. And they have none of the issues around surrendering to a higher power or prayer or confession. I think that one of the problems with the primary 12-step approach that we’ve seen in addiction treatment is that because the 12 steps involve moral issues, it makes people think that addiction is a sin and not a disease.

The only treatment in medicine that involves prayer, restitution and confession is for addiction. That fact makes people think that addiction is a sin rather than a medical problem. I think that if we want to de-stigmatize addiction, we need to get the 12 steps out of professional treatment and put them where they belong as self-help.

And not very effective self-help at that. I think they should be seen as support groups and nothing more.

Joanne Payton pointed out this article by Afak Afgun to me, on that issue of women being banned from funerals in some Muslim countries or cultures or both.

She starts with the loving relationship she had with her father, and his death at the age of 46.

It was after his death that I became more aware of my gender. I cannot forget the day I saw his dead body. This was not to be the worst part of my day. Random Pakistani adults were coming up to me, as the eldest child, and telling me that now I have to be the ‘son’- as if a daughter couldn’t do what a son could. My father had never made me feel inferior because of my gender. All of a sudden everyone around me was communicating that I should feel bad because I was a girl and not a boy. It was devastating to hear such insensitive comments thrown at me, disguised as ‘sincere advice’ when this tragedy had befallen my family. There was not just sorrow, but pity in people’s eyes. Why? Because our nuclear family now consisted of just females, and a five-year old boy. I had never felt so insecure, frustrated and helpless. The day my father died was the day when I became exposed to the misogyny and hypocrisy engrained within the patriarchal culture I belong to.

He protected her from the patriarchal culture, but once he was gone, it came crashing down on her. It takes a whole world to resist patriarchal culture.

Our voices were sidelined in all the decisions around the funeral. My father’s wish for a quiet grave by a lake was ignored because the men in my extended family preferred a funeral in Pakistan. My sisters and I protested, but we were told not to quibble over such a ‘trivial matter’. My mother, raised in this very traditional, conservative and patriarchal society, complied with the men of the family. She had her own fears to deal with. Fear of exclusion from the family, fear of being stranded in Pakistan, fear of losing the custody of her children: a sad reality of countless young divorcees and widows in Pakistan.

So she left the girls with an aunt in Norway while she and the boy went to the funeral in Pakistan.

Funerals are an essential ceremony in many cultures. Even though funerals might be a traumatizing experience for some, for many, it is a chance to say farewell, pay respects and take final goodbye with the loved ones. For my sisters and me, having this opportunity taken away from us was not just gross discrimination, but I believe also caused unnecessary suffering.

Like many religious ceremonies across the globe, traditional Islamic funerals are also influenced by androcentric interpretations. Traditionally, the women do not attend the gravesites nor take part in the burial rituals in many countries. A few years ago, I learned about Afghan women who buried a woman without men present, and how an American Muslim woman flouted at her local imam and attended her father’s funeral. This is when I fully understood the unfairness of male-centered ceremonies and its negative impacts on women. Sadly, many women from Muslim heritage unquestionably accept such forms of exclusion from meaningful ceremonies and rituals of life. I find this profoundly worrisome.

So do I. It’s an exclusion I hadn’t been aware of before, and I find it dreadfully sad.

It was my mother, sisters and I, who nurtured my sick father, and who loved him. It still doesn’t make sense to me that we had to leave him in hands of strangers just because we were women. Those men did nothing for him when he was alive. So why should they get the privilege of burying him? Just because they are men?

We need to do better.

Irshad Manji says why it’s not enough for apologists for Islam such as CAIR to condemn the slaughter at Pulse.

I mentioned yesterday that the BBC photo of the crowd at Edhi’s funeral seemed to show only men. I’m now learning that in some majority-Muslim countries women are barred from all funerals, period. The Muslim Women’s League puts it this way:

The custom of excluding women from funeral ceremonies is a cultural tradition garbed in Islamic clothing that varies from one place to another, applied for example in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia but not necessarily in Egypt or Syria. Iran, considered by several media in the West as the most fundamentalist state in the Middle East, does not bar women from attending funeral services.

I find that heart-breaking.

Kashif Chaudhry on Facebook:

Extremist “Khatme Nabuwwat” group warns Muslims against Abdul Sattar Edhi and donating to his charities. In another message three years ago (attached), they prayed for his death and cursed him, calling him a disbeliever and blasphemer. Reason: He helped everyone without distinction and praised the Ahmadiyya Muslim community’s humanitarian work across the world.

Edhi is Pakistan’s supreme pride. The shameless & extremist Khatme Nabuwat group should be called out for spreading hate and poison in young minds against one of the world’s leading humanitarians. He is far more Muslim in my mind than all these ignorant mullahs combined. ‪#‎EdhiMyHero‬

Religion, eh? Tribalism first, universalist humanitarianism nowhere.

From A Mighty Girl:

A young Afghan street artist is helping transform Kabul’s war-torn walls into colorful canvases filled with messages of peace, hope, and female empowerment! 28-year-old Shamsia Hassani, Afghanistan’s first female street artist, hopes to use her art to “cover all the bad memories of war from people’s minds with colors,” while at the same time promote women’s rights. “I want to show that women have returned to Afghan society with a new, stronger shape,” she says. “It’s not the woman who stays at home. It’s a new woman. A woman who is full of energy, who wants to start again.”

Hassani, who was born in Iran to Afghan refugee parents, moved to Afghanistan in 2005 to study Fine Art at Kabul University. She first started creating street art after a British graffiti artist named Chu held a workshop in Kabul in six years ago. Street art, she says, appealed to her because it is so accessible to the general public; “I think that graffiti is better because all people can see it and it is available for all time.” Although the Western world often considers graffiti a crime, in Afghanistan, where there are few art galleries but plenty of blank walls, graffiti and street art are embraced as an opportunity to make cities more beautiful.

There’s a difference between graffiti and street art aka murals, isn’t there?

Hassani, who also teaches graffiti at the University of Kabul, adds that “life as a female street artist poses particular problems when people who believe women should be in the home see her at work. “I worry all the time about security problems when I am in the street,” she says, “and maybe that something will happen, and I am afraid that I should leave.” But she is determined to continue spreading her art as a message of hope: “If I color over these bad memories, then I erase [war] from people’s minds. I want to make Afghanistan famous because of its art, not its war.”

In particular, Hassani intends to continue using her art to highlight women’s issues. “In the past, women were removed from society and they wanted women to stay only at home and wanted to forget about women,” she says. “Now, I want to use my paintings to remind people about women… I am painting them larger than life. I want to say that people look at them differently now.”

You can see more images of Hassani’s graffiti series on HuffPost — or follow her on Facebook at Shamsia Hassani.

A matador was gored to death by a bull today.

Victor Barrio, 29, a professional bullfighter, was killed when the bull’s horn pierced his chest.

The fight, in the eastern town of Teruel, was being broadcast live on TV.

Bullfighting really pisses me off. National tradition, skill, artistry, blah blah – yes but all of that is in aid of torturing an animal to death in front of a crowd, as entertainment. It’s fucked up six ways from Sunday, and it should just stop.

About 2,000 bullfights are still held every year in Spain, but the numbers are falling. In 2010, Catalonia became the second Spanish region after the Canary Islands to ban the tradition.

Opponents describe the blood-soaked pageants as barbaric, while fans – including Mr Rajoy – say the tradition is an ancient art form deeply rooted in national history.

So what? “Ancient” doesn’t excuse anything. “Art form” doesn’t excuse torture. “Deeply rooted in national history” doesn’t excuse anything.

Erica Wood

“Cat, what’s your opinion on the UK leaving the EU?”

“I think you should repeatedly ask to leave, then when the door opens just sit there and stare at it. That’s what I would do.”

There’s a thing on imgur being passed around: a letter from “Concerned Students” – which probably just means A Student – to a law professor, and the law professor’s reply. The letter is both fatuous and objectionable, but the reply is a joy. The LP takes it as a teachable moment, and teaches the fuck out of it.

Mavaddat Javid posted it on his blog, which makes it easy to quote from it.

Here’s the beginning of the letter, to give a taste of its bullying tone and its faulty logic:

We write this letter to you with concern about your inappropriate conduct at ████ Law School.
Specifically you have presented yourself on campus, on at least one occasion, wearing a “Black Lives Matter” t-shirt. We believe this is an inappropriate and unnecessary statement that has no legitimate place within our institution of higher learning. The statement you represented and endorsed is also highly offensive and extremely inflammatory. We are here to learn the law. We do not spend three years of our lives and tens of thousands of dollars to be subjected to indoctrination or personal opinions of our professors.
████ Law School has prided itself on the diverse demographics represented within the student body. Your actions however, clearly represent your view that some of those demographics matter more than others. That alienates and isolates all non-black groups.

As someone who is charged to teach criminal law, it should be abundantly clear to you and beyond any question that ALL lives matter, as it is expressed unequivocally in the law. Furthermore, the “Black Lives Matter” statement is racist and anti-law enforcement and has been known to incite violence in this country. As someone who is paid to teach the law, you should be ashamed of yourself.

And for the fun part, some of the LP’s teaching. Do read the whole thing.

When your argument is based on a series of premises, you should be aware of them. You should also be aware that if any of these premises are factually flawed or illogical, or if the reader simply doesn’t accept them, your message will collapse from lack of support. Here is a short list of some of the premises in your memo, and my critique of them.

Premise: You have purchased, with your tuition dollars, the right to make demands upon the institution and the people in it and to dictate the content of your legal education.

Critique: I do not subscribe to the “consumer model” of legal education. As a consequence, I believe in your entitlement to assert your needs and desires even more strongly than you do. You would be just as entitled to express yourself to us if the law school were entirely tuition free. This is because you are a student, not because you are a consumer.

Isn’t that beautifully done? LP doesn’t accept CS’s premise that students’ rights can be bought and sold, and thus LP has a stronger belief in CS’s student rights than CS does. Very very elegant.

Premise: You know more about legal education than I do.

Critique: You don’t.

Most of the critiques are detailed and argumentative. That one isn’t.

Premise: There is an invisible “only” in front of the words “Black Lives Matter.”

Critique: There is a difference between focus and exclusion. If something matters, this does not imply that nothing else does. If I say “Law Students Matter” it does not imply that my colleagues, friends, and family do not. Here is something else that matters: context. The Black Lives Matter movement arose in a context of evidence that they don’t. When people are receiving messages from the culture in which they live that their lives are less important than other lives, it is a cruel distortion of reality to scold them for not being inclusive enough.

I would make one small edit there – it should be “If one says something matters, this does not imply that nothing else does.” Two more words. And no, it does not, just as if one says women are people this does not imply that men are not. I’m getting very bored with people ignoring that obvious truth.

Premise: What you think something means is the same as what it actually means.

Critique: We are all entitled to (and should make every effort to) discern meaning. There can be reasonable differences of opinion about what something means. Something can even carry a meaning that has a larger life of its own, regardless of the meaning ascribed to it by a particular person. For example, the flag of the Confederacy carries the meaning of white supremacy, even if a particular person thinks it only means “tradition.” One person, or even a group of people, cannot take away the flag’s odious meaning just by declaring that it means something else. Similarly, ascribing a negative meaning where none exists does not bring that meaning into being.

As a factual matter, I’m not sure that last sentence is accurate. Ascribing a negative (I would call it pejorative) meaning can bring that meaning into being if there’s a receptive audience for it. Lies can be believed. It’s more accurate to say that ascribing a pejorative meaning does not automatically change what people originally meant.

Anyway – read the whole thing.

Many of my friends are mourning the death of Abdus Sattar Edhi. The BBC has details:

Renowned Pakistani philanthropist Abdul Sattar Edhi, who dedicated his life to the poor, has died at the age of 88.

Mr Edhi’s family said he died on Friday at a medical centre in Karachi where he had been having treatment for weeks.

The Edhi Foundation now provides a broad range of free social services, including ambulances, orphanages and support for the elderly and disabled.

His funeral was today. Thousands of people went. The Beeb has photos of the crowd. (Sadly it appears to be pretty much all men.)

Nobel peace laureate Malala Yousafzai described Mr Edhi as a “legendary figure”.

“He lived his life for the lives and happiness of others and that is why he is a role model. I haven’t seen anyone else like him,” she told the BBC.

She also repeated her call for him to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

…

Mr Edhi came from a family of Gujarati traders and arrived in Pakistan in 1947.

But he decided to take up philanthropy after seeing how the state failed to help his family care for his paralysed and ill mother, Dawn newspaper reported.

He opened his first clinic in 1951 and the Edhi Foundation grew to be the country’s largest welfare organisation, running schools, hospitals and ambulance services across the country, often plugging gaps in services which the state simply fails to provide.

Which is somewhat surprising, given the status of Islam in Pakistan and what we’re always told about Islam’s concern for the poor.

Correspondents say Mr Edhi was Pakistan’s most respected figure and was seen by some as almost a saint.

In 2014 he told the BBC that simplicity, honesty, hard work and punctuality were the cornerstones of his work.

“It is everyone’s responsibility to take care of others, that’s what being human means. If more people thought that way, so many problems could be solved,” he said.

The truth in a nutshell.