Now the bad news, from the same source –

Our urgent action is needed over the next three days to stop the deportation of another Yarl’s Wood lesbian asylum seeker, this time to Uganda. Aisha N has lived here for 11 years. Like most LGBT people seeking a sanctuary in Britain she did not claim asylum on sexuality grounds – you don’t know if it is safe to ‘come out’, and indeed sexuality was not clearly or securely established as a possible basis for asylum at that time. [Read more…]

First, the good news – Josephine Komeh’s deportation was canceled on Tuesday, the day before she was due to be sent back to Sierra Leone. That’s tremendous news. And it’s possible that all of you who signed and shared the petition helped make it happen.

This week the fight by asylum seekers, women detainees in Yarl’s Wood detention centre, refugees and supporters organised by the Movement for Justice, and the determination and leadership of Josephine Komeh and Mariama N themselves stopped the deportation of both these courageous women. [Read more…]

In honor of the conviction for fraud of one of the guys who sold empty boxes as “bomb detectors,” a post from January 2010.

Flashing lights, and a beeping noise

Call me sentimental but I do think this is a quotation for the ages. It’s from the guy who made the ‘bomb detector’ thingy out of an antenna and a hinge and a plastic tag, and sold lots of them for $40,000 each, and got arrested on suspicion of fraud for doing that.

We have been dealing with doubters for ten years. One of the problems we have is that the machine does look a little primitive. We are working on a new model that has flashing lights.

Do admit. The sunny innocence, the tenderly confiding honesty of that brings tears to the eyes, does it not? [Read more…]

That guy who put handles and antennae on boxes and sold the result as “bomb detectors” has been found guilty of making and selling fake bomb detectors. There are some things you really don’t want fakes of – bridges, medicine, fire trucks – stuff like that. Bomb detectors are high up on that list if you live in an area where bombs are a real possibility. Lots of people do. Many many many people live in places like that.

The Old Bailey heard the devices made by Gary Bolton, 47, were nothing more than boxes with handles and antennae. [Read more…]

The Family Research Council doesn’t like Nina Pillard.

Unfortunately for Americans, the Senate won’t have to dig too deep to uncover some of Pillard’s shockers. Among some of her greatest hits, the former Deputy Assistant Attorney General argues that abortion is necessary to help “free women from historically routine conscription into maternity.”

Yes – and? Can Tony Perkins really think it’s not true that sometimes women have been made pregnant when they didn’t want to be? Really? Can he even think it wasn’t very common before contraception became widely available, and still is in many parts of the world where women don’t have the right or ability to say no?

As if her militant feminism wasn’t apparent enough, she takes the opportunity in some of her writings to slam anyone who opposes the abortion-contraception mandate as “reinforce[ing] broader patterns of discrimination against women as a class of presumptive breeders.”

The Family Research Council should be called the Family Is Mandatory Council.

Amanda also points out something I too have been pointing out for years – “radical feminism” isn’t.

There is no such thing as a “radical feminist” anymore.

Don’t get me wrong! There was. In the 60s and 70s, there were radical feminists who were distinguishing themselves from liberal feminists. Radical feminists agreed with liberal feminists that we should change the laws to recognize women’s equality, but they also believed that we needed to change the culture. It was not enough to pass the ERA or legalize abortion, they believed, but we should also talk about cultural issues, such as misogyny, objectification, rape, and domestic violence.

And media representations of women, and sexist jokes, and who does the housework, and cookies don’t just bake themselves you know. [Read more…]

Georgia – not the Paula Deen one, the other one – has a “test the bride for virginity” service, the BBC tells us.

Maintenance of virginity before marriage is deeply entrenched in the Orthodox
Christian country, although not everyone’s happy with the idea of it being
documented. One young interviewee branded it “disgusting”. She told the TV
reporter: “I would say no if I were asked to do this… if I am to spend my
whole life with him, he should trust me.” Web users also mocked the inspection
service, circulating a digitally-altered image of an ID card with an added
“virginity status” parameter.

Yes I don’t see that being a very pleasant conversation with the future mother-in-law.

Amanda Marcotte takes on the much-recycled nonsense about “radical feminism” – which as used by people who hate feminism means everything beyond the right to vote, and certainly any wild talk about stereotypes or the image of women in popular culture.

For anyone who wants proof that the conservative Republican tendency to accuse liberals and feminists of being “radical” or “militant” is pure projection, Wednesday’s confirmation hearings for Nina Pillard, Obama’s pick to sit on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, served nicely. [Read more…]

Alabama. Alabama’s really pushing the envelope these days.

The Alabama Public Service Commission apparently begins all of its meetings with a prayer session, but a recent one from last week took on what some consider an unusually political message, lamenting the “sinful” ways of those who allow gay marriage, abortion, and the “removal” of God from public schools.

APSC commissioner Twinkle Cavanaugh introduced her friend, John Delwin Jordan, a member of her local baptist church and an active Prattville Tea Party leader. [Read more…]

Aha, clever. There’s a priest high up in the Catholic church in Australia, Brian Lucas, who is also a barrister (non-practicing), who thought of a good dodge for occasions when he had to talk to priests accused of child-rape: don’t take notes.

…the senior figure within the Catholic Church on Wednesday told an  inquiry  into sexual abuse he never made notes when dealing with about 35 priests accused  of sex crimes.

The inquiry also heard that Father Brian wrote advice for clergy that it was  a good idea not to take notes during interviews with accused priests to avoid  the material being exposed during any ”subsequent legal process”.

Attaboy, Father Brian. Always protect your institution at the expense of its victims. [Read more…]