From Cross River State, Nigeria:

Two children age, 10 and 7, were this morning, rescued from being murdered by some members of Divine Zion of God Church Ikot Abasi Effiom district of Akpabuyo LGA.

Led by one Prophet David Effiom Zion and some members of their family, the children were accused by their cousin of being witches and allegedly snatching her baby in a dream.

The stigma that confronted the children since they were branded witches took on a new dimension when the children were taken to the forest, tied to a tree, battered and assaulted with a machete by some members of the family, leaving them with cuts and bruises all over their bodies.

This happened on the heels of the screening of the movie ‘The Fake Prophet’ in Ikot Offiong Ambai community in Akpabuyo Local Government Area (LGA) by Basic Rights Counsel Initiative (BRCI), a child’s rights organization based in Calabar.

Respite came the way of the children when an uncle who arrived from town demanded the release of the children with threats of calling the police and on learning of BRCI’s visit, took the children to the venue where the movie highlighting issues of child abuse and witchcraft branding was being screened.

Ten and seven years old.

Speaking also, Theresa Okpa who is the Executive Director of Mediatrix Development Foundation (MDF), the NGO of the Wife of the Governor of Cross River State, Dr. Linda Ayade said issues of child witch branding is abuse of the rights of children and assured that the Mediatrix Foundation is partnering with organizations like BRCI to address issues relating to the abuse of children’s rights.

I hope they succeed.

The children were given medical attention and allowed to stay with the uncle who rescued them.

H/t James Ibor.

Guest post by Maureen Brian, originally a reply to a question about whether Brexit is binding or not.

The majority in Parliament is certainly for remaining though the whole process seems to have unhinged one or two minds so that it’s difficult to say who would vote which way after the referendum! Some may see it as morally binding: others will not and that’s whichever way the result goes.

All the legislation supposedly “imposed by Brussels” operates through laws passed by Westminster. That includes the treaties at various stages of the EU’s development. In many cases passing that legislation repealed earlier UK legislation so that we can’t just roll them all into a ball and repeal the lot. That would leave us with no laws on things like food safety, exhaust emissions, motorway signage and about a million other things. They would have to be done one by one and given a very small majority already, fractious Tory party and in all probability vast amounts of emotion and pique it could take twenty years! No-one but me seems to have thought of this. It’s not come up in the debates or press coverage.

Then there’s the question of whether Cameron, if still in post, should have preliminary discussions with the other 27 states before he pulls the plug – invokes Section 50 which then gives us two years to get out, nowhere near long enough!

If Parliament should decide to over-ride the referendum result, as it could, then an entirely different set of shenanigans will be triggered, possibly with parties splitting, one or more general elections with unworkable results and a completely impotent government for however long that takes. Not that it’s very competent now.

If you ask me what’s going to happen then sorry but I haven’t the faintest idea. I may get a hint on Thursday night as I’m a Counting Agent at the count in Halifax i.e one of the Labour Party’s official observers. Results will be counted for Calderdale MBC then fed to the regional collation place, then announced. It could be mid-day Friday when we have the full result.

The Leave people seem to be splitting – great criticism of a UKIP poster which was just too close to a well-known and easily found for comparison Nazi propaganda film. Other Leave leaders really do not like it! Then Boris is proposing even more immigration “as long as we control it” plus an amnesty for illegal migrants already here for some time. That will not go down well with many supposedly on the same team. Watch this space.

Ew, a woman. Deutsche Welle:

Social media users flooded German public broadcaster ZDF’s sites after Friday’s Italy-Sweden match, not to voice complaints about the game, but to bemoan the broadcaster’s female commentator.

Claudia Neumann, a reporter for German public broadcaster ZDF, became the first female play-by-play announcer for this year’s men’s European Championships in France.

But her role as the match’s main commentator enraged numerous soccer fans. Many of whom posted complaints about her “annoying voice” while others said women have no place doing sports commentary for men’s soccer. One Twitter user wrote: “Women shouldn’t commentate men’s soccer. It doesn’t fit. Annoying. Period.”

So true. And people who don’t commit murder shouldn’t report on murders, and people not in government shouldn’t report on government, and atheists shouldn’t report on religion, and…you see where this goes? Here’s the thing: journalism is journalism, it’s about reporting on stuff using the skills of the profession. Journalists report on subjects they don’t have personal experience of all the time. It often is useful to have lawyers reporting on legal issues, scientists reporting on science, and so on, but it’s not mandatory, and spectator sports are spectator sports, so they’re pretty open to generalists.

Her Euro 2016 debut was the June 11 match between Wales and Slovakia. Following that first game, users insulted and attacked her with misogynistic slogans about “the place of women” and even rape threats.

Despite expecting some criticism following the games, the head of ZDF’s sports department said he couldn’t believe the “harsh formulation” of comments that appeared on ZDF social media sites.

“I’m shocked,” said Dieter Gruschwitz on Saturday to sports news agency SID, calling some of the social media comments “asocial critique.”

In a post on the broadcaster’s Facebook site, ZDF editors said numerous “offensive” comments had been deleted.

Yeah well – there are a lot of men who will seize any pretext to talk shit to and at a woman. Any pretext at all.

H/t Stewart

News from Lahore:

Relatives slit the throat of a young mother who was pregnant with her second child after she married against their will near Lahore, officials said Friday, the latest in a spate of so-called “honour killings”.

Muqaddas Bibi, 22, married Taufiq Ahmed three years ago in defiance of her family, who considered a marriage for love — rather than an arranged marriage — shameful, police investigator Mohammad Arshad told AFP.

Bibi’s ties with her family were severed after the marriage, Arshad said, but her mother and brother allegedly approached her at a clinic where she was having a check-up on Thursday and convinced her to come home, saying they accepted her decision.

Local police station chief Gohar Abbas said that when Bibi reached her parents’ house, her father, brother and mother cut her throat with a knife and she died on the spot.

Her mother, and her father, and her brother – three people who should love her.

What’s the point of marrying and having children if you’re not going to love your children enough to recoil in horror at the very idea of killing them? What’s the point of families at all if there’s no love involved? What’s the point of making it a rule that marriage should not involve love? A rule that in fact making marriage depend on love is a reason for killing your own daughter? The whole thing is so sick and anti-human it makes one despair.

Hundreds of women are murdered by their relatives in conservative Muslim Pakistan each year on the pretext of defending what is seen as family honour.

Last week sixteen year-old Zeenat Bibi was killed in Lahore by her mother for marrying a man of her own choice in a case that sparked condemnation throughout the country.

It was swiftly followed by another killing, of a couple in Lahore who married without their family’s consent.

On Sunday a young girl was killed by her brother for insisting on marrying the man of her choice in the city of Sialkot, also in Punjab.

Parents shouldn’t think of their children as like toasters or printers, that are things which are expected to do a job on command, and that get thrown out if they fail at that one duty. That shouldn’t be what having children is about. If you’re not going to love them don’t have them; skip that whole thing.

Clementine Ford on Facebook:

Catherine Deveny has just been given a 30 day ban for posting this status. Something like this is removed while posts celebrating violence against women are just a laugh m8.

Maybe if Dev had made a horrible joke about rape or beating women, it would have been considered okay by the ‘community standards’.

Facebook Community Standards are a sour joke.

Jo Cox wrote a public Facebook post on Tuesday.

If, as the foreign secretary claims, “close relations with Gulf countries are vital in keeping Britain safe”, isn’t it also time to use our close relationship with Saudi Arabia to end the slaughter of Yemeni children?

Fifteen months ago the Yemeni conflict escalated, when the Saudi led-coalition launched a military operation in support of the government against Houthi opposition forces. Half of Yemen’s population now lack access to the most basic items – food, water and medicine. And with violence rife across the country, the death toll continues to rise.

Life for children in Yemen has always been tough but the recent conflict has made it unbearable. Children represent one third of civilian casualties and on average six children have been killed and injured every day since March last year. Children have also been raped, abducted and recruited as child soldiers. And as in Syria, even places that should be safe, such as schools and hospitals, are under continuous attack. There is nowhere to hide.

In 2015 the UN attributed 60 per cent of child casualties and 48 per cent of attacks on schools and hospitals to Saudi-led coalition airstrikes. And last week the UN secretary-general’s annual report on Children and Armed Conflict for the first time put the coalition on the “list of shame” for the killing and maiming of children. They joined other state armed forces and non-state armed groups known for their appalling record of grave violations against children, including the South Sudanese and Syrian governments as well as Isis and Boko Haram. The Houthis were also listed, as they have been for the past several years.

However, in an unprecedented and deeply shocking move, on Monday night the secretary-general temporarily removed the Saudi-led coalition from the list after heavy lobbying from the Saudis and their allies. The removal is meant to be temporary pending a joint review of the UN and Saudi-led coalition, but Saudi Arabia’s permanent representative to the UN has already declared the decision “irreversible and unconditional”.

This sets an extremely damaging and dangerous precedent, weakens the report’s credibility and substantially undermines one of the only concrete international mechanisms for monitoring abuse against children in war. It also ignores the now overwhelming evidence of international humanitarian law violations in Yemen – some of which may even constitute as war crimes.

In light of this, the government’s position is indefensible and they must act with urgency to deliver on three asks. First, they should use all their influence – including our membership of the UN Security Council working group on children and armed conflict – to get the Saudis back where they belong on the “list of shame”.

Second, it’s time to stop dithering and work with the international community to set up an independent investigation into alleged violations of international humanitarian law by all parties to the conflict.

And finally, the government should immediately suspend arm sales to any party that risks using them in violation of international law. The UK is one of the largest suppliers of arms to Saudi Arabia with sales reaching £6 billion last year. If the government continues to sell weapons to the Kingdom who then use them to cause indiscriminate and disproportionate damage to civilians and infrastructure, then they are doing so illegally according to domestic, EU and international law.

We heard again from the government this week that only by working with Saudi Arabia can we influence them. I accept this. But it is surely now time for the government to prove that this influence can help Yemen’s children, as well as keep Britain safe.

Tonight, children in Yemen will go to sleep in fear of today, and hoping for a better tomorrow. These children desperately need the UK government to deliver on the three asks. We cannot continue to let them down.

It would be nice if they honored her by doing that.

Juliet Samuel at the Telegraph – yes really – says the murder of Jo Cox is far-right terrorism.

The Quilliam Foundation, one of Britain’s foremost anti-extremism think tanks, has been the first major organisation to call this dreadful event by its name: an act of nationalist far-Right terrorism.

Why does it matter what we call it?

Because calling it by its name shakes us out of our complacency and it helps us to understand how we should react. There’s a tendency to think of Britain as a moderate, sensible, reasonable place. Until yesterday, we had been spared the horrifying extremist attacks that have recently been taking place in other western countries. And Britain is mostly a safe and moderate place.

No you hadn’t, not entirely. She must have forgotten the London bombings, and the foiled plan to bomb a London nightclub, and the attack on Glasgow airport, and the slaughter of Lee Rigby…Or she’s defining “recently” as the last couple of years or so.

But our society is not immune from extremist hatred, whether it’s Islamist or fascist. There is an ongoing and energetic discussion about Islamic extremism. There is very little discussion of our enduring fascist heritage. Yet Britain has been home to fascist groups for decades. There was a strong vein of support for Adolf Hitler in this country before the Second World War. The first lists of banned speakers drawn up by university student unions were populated by hateful fascists, not Islamist hate preachers or mildly controversial Right-wingers.

Those lists still don’t include Islamist hate preachers. Those are mostly welcomed and fêted.

Mr Mair might be a mentally ill loner. But he is also a loner who took inspiration from neo-Nazism, just as other mentally ill loners have been inspired by Isil propaganda. It seems increasingly clear that Mr Mair belongs to a vile tradition of the murderous far-Right that includes Anders Breivik and Timothy McVeigh.

It’s interesting how much they have in common with the Islamist brand.

Originally a comment by Claire on A noxious brew.

When I moved from the UK to the US, several years ago, I was genuinely shocked at the amount of open racism I saw from just people on the street right up through the rhetoric of politicians. I was appalled and admittedly a little complacent – I didn’t think the UK was some racism-free utopia, but it seemed considerably better by comparison.

The EU referendum campaign has opened my eyes to a seething morass of racial animosity that apparently was right there beneath the surface the whole time. It’s horrifying – what has happened to my country of birth in the years since I moved away? I hadn’t even planned to vote in the referendum since I’m living in the US permanently and have no plans to return to the UK to live. So it seemed perhaps I should just let the people who actually do live there to make that decision.

The campaign changed my mind, and I have now voted Remain. I actually do think we are better off in Europe than out. But even if I did not, I could not stand idly by and let racists and demagogues annex and corrupt democracy into an exercise in beating up Johnny Foreigner.

Maybe I feel it acutely because I myself am a foreigner now, and know something of the challenges that face a person who decides to emigrate. And I’m ‘lucky’ to be white and come from a country my adopted nation has a very favorable view of, so I don’t face the kind of crap that some immigrants encounter.

Maybe the Donald Trump effect has thrown it all into sharp relief. But I barely recognize the Britain where an MP can be assassinated in the street, where campaigners can stand up and say blatantly racist things or where images of refugees fleeing for their lives can be turned into a fear-baiting poster about intra-European movement of people.

Speaking of ugly climates…there’s this private school in Texas…

The parents of a 12-year-old black girl have sued her Texas school after a group of white classmates allegedly wrapped a rope around her neck and “violently jerked” her to the ground, leaving burns in her skin that are documented in graphic photos included in the complaint.

The incident, which reportedly left the girl with a “severe and painful” rope cut on her neck, has brought national attention to Live Oak classical school, a largely white private school in Waco, Texas, that has been accused of having a history of bullying problems.

The lawsuit filed this week – which seeks damages of $3m for medical bills, physical pain, disfigurement and suffering – alleges that the school was negligent in its failure to protect the girl and in its response to the injuries.

The school has denied the allegations, arguing that the incident was an accident.

White male classmates – they were all boys.

Such a strange accident, a group of boys putting a rope around a girl’s neck and yanking her to the ground.

The suit also claims that a series of bullying incidents precipitated the rope injury.

Starting in the fall, the suit alleges, KP “began to come home with disturbing reports that her classmates did not accept her, would not talk with her, and even physically bullied her”.

One boy pushed her to the ground in the cubby room and kicked and shoved her during a class assignment when a teacher was not looking, according to the complaint. That boy was involved in the rope incident, the suit says.

When the girl’s mother asked Live Oak for help last fall, the “school’s response was that the bullying had been an ‘accident,’ and the boy had not meant to push KP to the ground”, the suit says.

I suppose it was KP’s fault for tipping over so easily.

Other families have come forward to raise concerns about bullying since the story went public, according to the complaint.

Imagine my surprise.

Ayman El Kaissi reports on Facebook’s censorship of atheist groups and the resistance to same.

In the middle of April, Facebook removed more than six Arabic-speaking atheist pages due to “violations” of Community Standards. This is not the first time that Facebook has censored atheists and freethinkers in the MENA region. In response, the Atheist Alliance – Middle-East and North Africa (AA-MENA) has decided to speak out, demanding that Facebook change the way it addresses violation reports, so as to preserve members’ freedom of speech.

In February 2016, ten of the largest Arabic-speaking atheist groups, with a total of about 100,000 members, have been deactivated for the same reason: heavy reporting campaigns that are organized by “cyber jihadist” fundamentalist Islamic groups, especially for the removal of any anti-Islamic group or page. In such coordinated campaigns, very large numbers of people, and possibly automated scripts, simultaneously file reports falsely claiming that a page, group, or personal account has violated Community Standards.

There’s a petition and a campaign to get Zuckerberg to do better.

AA-MENA has adopted #FacebookVSFreeSpeech as the hashtag of its Facebook event, Atheism: Campaigning to regain the right to free speech within Facebook Pages. The campaign’s goal is to rally atheists and freethinkers of the MENA region and to attract the attention of relevant nongovernmental organizations and irreligious social media activists to their cause.

But this attack on free speech spilled out of Facebook and resulted into a cold-blooded murder. On April 22, 2016, Yemeni activist Omar Bataweel was abducted in front of his home in the city of Aden. Police reports stated that he was shot and left to die on the street; locals discovered his body the next morning. Omar had received death threats prior to his execution for posting criticism of Islamic clergy and heritage on Facebook and was accused of apostasy and atheism. His case remains open and no suspects have been apprehended till now.

(I think by “till now” he means as of now, i.e. so far or yet.)

For irreligious people of the MENA region, social media outlets—especially Facebook—have become the only platform that they can safely use to express their thoughts and opinions, share their stories, and come together without feeling threatened. In most Arab countries, the demographic majority is Muslim; many regimes are actual theocracies while the others are very deeply influenced by Islamic religious authorities at all levels of public life.

…

Freethinkers, atheists, and freedom activists in the MENA region live under such oppressive regimes and communities. Most of them cannot express their religious, political, cultural, or social views and thoughts freely. This ever-growing segment of people living in the Arab World is still operating with a “low profile” and with minuscule traditional media coverage. This is the main reason for their enormous investments in social media platforms, such as Facebook, which are viewed by them as the last resort for freedom of thought and expression.

It’s deeply ironic that this thing that started out as Zuckerberg’s tool for ranking female Harvard students according to degree of hotness is now a last resort for freedom of thought and expression in oppressive theocratic countries, but there it is.