From last week, the BBC reports another political murder in northwest Pakistan.

On a hot and humid night in late August, a small group quietly scales the wall of a mud-brick house in a village near Pakistan’s north-western town of Akora Khatak.

In the dim, starlit courtyard, they make out the figures of a man and a woman lying in two separate charpoy cots, sleeping. About 15 minutes later, they walk out through the main door, leaving the couple in pools of blood.

So we know roughly what’s coming. The two were of the “wrong” family or ethnic group or caste for each other; or the woman had been ordered to marry someone else; or the woman’s younger brother … Read the rest

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And in Mauritania – another journalist, another criticism of Mo, another “apostasy” claim, another potential death sentence. “Mo is the best thing ever and if you deny it we’ll kill you!” Well that sure convinces me.

A young journalist in Mauritania faces a possible death sentence after being convicted of apostasy for an article criticising the prophet Mohammed, AFP reported Monday (January 6th).

Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mohamed was arrested January 2nd in Nouadhibou and “was convicted of lack of respect for the prophet”, a judicial source told AFP.

And then the private sector got involved.

In Nouadhibou, a businessman even offered up money to anyone willing to kill Ould Mohamed.

In describing the January 3rd incident, Nouadhibou-based journalist Mostafa

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Via Yemisi - Gay Cameroonian, Roger Jean-Claude Mbédé, imprisoned for sending love text message to same-sex person, dies.

That’s appalling.

He was sent to prison in March 2011 for sending a text message declaring his love for another adult human.  The message was a simple “I’m very much in love with you”. How does such a message constitute harm? Why should this lead to imprisonment?

Cameroonian activist, Lambert Lamda, said Mbédé had been out of hospital for about a month before he died and had received no medical care during that period.  ’”His family said they were going to remove the homosexuality which is in him. I went to see him in his village. He could

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Here are Chris and Abhishek on the BBC show The Big Questions. The question, you will remember, was “Should human rights always outweigh religious rights?”

There’s also Tina Beattie, and a guy called Davis Mac-Iyalla saying yes they should, and (I skipped ahead) hot disagreement about (male) circumcision.

I skipped all the way ahead to get to the Chris and Abhishek part at about 50 minutes. They unzipped their jackets as requested to reveal the (shock-horror) Jesus and Mo T shirts.

Do they have the right to wear such T shirts? No, the woman in a hijab sitting (reluctantly) next to them says. No, another woman in a hijab in the back row says. “When you’re threatening our religion,” she … Read the rest

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Ah the tragedy of manhood today, having to live in a “feminized” atmosphere in which being a bully isn’t unreservedly admired by 100% of everyone. Britt Hume of Fox “News” is sad and upset about the tragedy. He blames women.

During a panel discussion on the Fox News show Media Buzz, host Howard Kurtz asked if [Governor Chris] Christie’s “bully image” was hurting him after his administration was accused for closing part of the busiest bridge in the world to hurt his political opponents.

“I have to say that in this sort of feminized atmosphere in which we exist today, guys who are masculine and muscular like that in their private conduct and are kind of old-fashioned tough guys

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Dave Ricks posted the link to Emily Lakdawalla’s post on why rocks are evenly spaced on Mars so I read it so now I have to share it More.

On Mars there are rocks everywhere. The difference is that Mars’ landscape is shaped in large part by impact processes. Far-away impacts can toss rocks for miles, and they fall where they land. So it’s not particularly surprising that you see rocks everywhere, even in flat places on Mars. What is a bit surprising is their even spacing. Here’s an example of a rock-strewn landscape selected more or less at random from the early part of Spirit’s mission, when it was dashing across the flat plains to the east of its

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More from Ann Elizabeth Mayer’s long article A “Benign” Apartheid: How Gender Apartheid Has Been Rationalized.

Taking advantage of the failure of CEDAW expressly to rule out any culture-based justifications for gender discrimination and playing to cultural relativist sympathies, states have frequently resorted to culture to defend discriminatory laws and policies. For example, many Muslim countries have entered reservations when ratifying CEDAW, saying that they must qualify their obligations in order to uphold Islamic law and speaking as if it were obvious that women’s rights had to be sacrificed where conflicting religious precepts were at stake.87 Appeals to Islam may be used in combination with appeals to the complementarity thesis, with claims being made that countries are obliged to

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Smithsonian Magazine offers snapshots taken by Spirit and Opportunity over the past ten years.

Another bow to the engineers. They figured the two Rovers would last three months. Spirit lasted six years and Opportunity is still working, a decade in.

Check out the rounded rocks. A long-gone river?

A closeup of tiny spherical rocks clustered in a square inch of the Martian surface, captured by Opportunity. Full size version. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/USGS/Cathy Weitz)

 … Read the rest

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Seen on Twitter:

… Read the rest

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The facts

The story of Ryan J. Bell has created quite a bit of buzz these past few days. For those that aren’t familiar, on December 31, Bell -the former senior pastor at the Hollywood Seventh-Day Adventist Church- announced he would be “trying on” atheism for a year. As he said in a blog post announcing this:

So, I’m making it official and embarking on a new journey. I will “try on” atheism for a year. For the next 12 months I will live as if there is no God. I will not pray, read the Bible for inspiration, refer to God as the cause of things or hope that God might intervene and change my own or someone else’s

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The Ottawa Citizen did its “ask the religion experts” question on the winter Olympics and Russia a couple of days ago. Kevin Smith of CFI Canada spoke for the nones.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is participating in the same race as many third-world countries, where attacking homosexuality is all the rage; people motivated by goodwill for themselves rather than towards others.

American Christian evangelicals, their influence waning at home, have invaded god-fearing Uganda to spread the morals of their homophobic creator, one whose every command must be obeyed if they are to have eternal life. They have been victorious, although the punishment for being gay is merely life in prison and not, as some had prayed for, the death penalty.

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Glendale California has a statue to “comfort women” which was unveiled on July 30 last year.

Photo by Melissa Wall

Three far-right Japanese politicians want Glendale to remove the statue.

Three members of Japan’s House of Representatives called on Glendale to remove an 1,100-pound statue honoring an estimated 80,000 to 200,000 “comfort women” from Korea, China and other countries who were forced into prostitution by the Japanese army during World War II.

The trio, Mio Sugita of the Hyogo Prefecture, Yuzuru Nishida of Chiba, and Hiromu Nakamaru of Hiroshima, are members of the Japan Restoration Party, a 1-year-old conservative political party that prefers a smaller central government, tax cuts and a hard-line approach to national security.

And no statues … Read the rest

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Ann Elizabeth Mayer points out something very significant in her article A “Benign” Apartheid” How Gender Apartheid Has Been Rationalized [pdf].

As the foregoing comparisons between the international human rights documents on racial and gender discrimination have illustrated, the former is far more harshly condemned than the latter. Among other things, there is nothing in CEDAW expressly admonishing that gender discrimination is impossible to justify regardless of motive.

No, I’m sure. That’s because so many people think it is possible to justify. But wouldn’t it be nice if that could change? If we could finally drop all the bullshit about women being “complementary” and having their own “role” and about “family values”?

Although the parallels between racial and gender apartheid

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I missed this when it first aired, but saw it when it was recycled the other day. I think I’ll watch it again online…maybe a few times.

It’s Nova on engineering Curiosity Rover.… Read the rest

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Jill Filipovic on harassment of women online. (Hey have you ever noticed that this seems to happen to quite a lot of women? That’s interesting, isn’t it.)

We want to believe that the Internet is different from “real life,” that “virtual reality” is a separate sphere from reality-reality. But increasingly, virtual space is just as “real” as life off of the computer. We talk to our closest friends all day long on G-Chat. We engage with political allies and enemies on Twitter and in blog comment sections. We email our moms and our boyfriends. We like photos of our cousin’s cute baby on Facebook. And if we’re writers, we research, publish and promote our work online. My office is

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Sheema Khan is not keen on the idea of “accommodating” requests for exemption from class participation with the Wrong Gender.

In Muslim communities, gender segregation has led to the marginalization of women, as they are shut out of debate, discussion and decision-making. Under the pretext of “religious purity”, women are discouraged from full participation in community development. At some events sponsored by Muslim campus groups, women are relegated to the back of the hall. At such events, men may freely ask questions; women are encouraged to write their questions on paper, so their voices won’t be heard. Some groups even forbid women speakers, or offer the excuse that there are no qualified females to address the audience. As in the

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Yes I’m all over Russia like a bad rash today. This business of calling for people to be burned alive gets on my nerves.

Human Rights Watch reported on the ECHR’s ruling in October 2010.

In a stinging ruling issued against Russia, the European Court of Human Rights rebuked the Moscow authorities for repeatedly denying activists the right to hold gay pride marches, Human Rights Watch said today. The court, ruling on October 21, 2010, said the ban violated the right to freedom of assembly. It also ruled that the Moscow authorities had unlawfully discriminated against activist Nikolay Aleksandrovich Alekseyev and the organizers of gay pride events on the basis of sexual orientation, and had denied them a

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From the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights on October 21, 2010, in the case of Alekseyev v Russia – a useful note.

63.  Referring to the hallmarks of a ‘democratic society’, the Court has attached particular importance to pluralism, tolerance and broadmindedness. In that context, it has held that although individual interests must on occasion be subordinated to those of a group, democracy does not simply mean that the views of the majority must always prevail: a balance must be achieved which ensures the fair and proper treatment of minorities and avoids any abuse of a dominant position (see Young, James and Webster v. the United Kingdom, 13 August 1981, Series A no. 44, § 63, and

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You think that’s a joke? Satire? Hyperbole?

It’s not.

Gay Star News quotes AFP:

 ‘There is no question that society should discuss this issue since we live in a democracy,” [Church spokesman] Chaplin told pro-government Izvestia daily.

‘For this reason, it is precisely the majority of our people and not some outside powers that should decide what should be a criminal offence and what should not.’ he said.

Chaplin said he was ‘convinced’ homosexuality should be ‘completely excluded from the life of our society’.

Christopher Stroop has more at Religion Dispatches:

There are few bright spots in LGBT issues in Russia today. A recent media hubbub over the (as yet remote) possibility of recriminalizing “sodomy” may in fact be

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Originally a comment by flippyshark on Meryl Streep the rabid, man eating feminist.

He formed and supported an Anti-Semitic industry lobby

There is no turning Walt Disney into a liberal hero. But as far as I can tell, this claim is just plain not factual. After the animator’s strike in the 1940s, Walt Disney was most certainly anti-union, and happy to help the McCarthy witch hunt. But I cannot find any credible evidence that he harbored any specific animus against Jews. The worst I can find are some anecdotal accounts of him using insensitive phrases in casual conversation (“Have the accountants Jew up the numbers”) – and animator Art Babbit (who was Jewish and active in the unionizing of … Read the rest

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