Enjoy!

… Algeria, Azerbaijan, and Bosnia, encompassing ethnic, political, sectarian, and geographical diversity in Muslim populations, … have restricted the [burqa] in public spaces. Some of these Muslim states also have bans in place for the hijab, the Islamic head covering, in legal and public institutions that limit the display of all religious symbols. The number of Muslim-majority states outlawing the face veil is increasing.

…  [I]t is ironic that counter-terror laws applied to all citizens are criticised [in Europe] in a way that Muslim-majority states are not when they pass policies aimed specifically at these garbs.

What is also evident is that more Muslim states can deem these sexist coverings, designed to erase female identities, as not belonging to their society than European states. 

… Instead of simply dismissing a burqa ban, the UK government should listen to progressive voices within the Muslim community who condemn such clothing as a tool to suppress women. 

Excitedly, the young reporter warns us that some of the images we’re about to see “are disturbing.” He then shows them to us twice – the gape-mouthed woman in the foreground, the anxious policeman pushing her away from danger, a man standing over a dead body, the repeated sound of gunfire, and (the Don DeLillo Death touch), the glitzy background of the Bellagio at night.

Postmodern deaths happen while people are having fun.

You Tubes are now available showing closeups of the dead lying along the Las Vegas Strip. As Walter Benjamin, quoted in my title, noted many decades ago, our own destruction has become a thing recorded and delectated. Our own close to 50,000 gun deaths a year yield plenty of shared footage — especially when it’s mass murder, as in the 2017 slaughter of sixty people two miles down from the Bellagio.

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Here’s an even better one! Clearly shows the shooter doing his thing.

Bonus point: Since it’s night, we can see his gun shoot off sparks. Coooooool

And listen. Shooter’s a social media personality. Ya gotta assume he got a friend to film him shooting. Fantastic upload.

Louisiana Republican Points to ‘Big White Lines’ From Planes as Proof Government Is Manipulating Weather

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Burnishing its reputation as the dumbest state in the country (okay, fourth dumbest, but this successful legislation may be just what they need to put themselves over the top), Louisiana goes after evil chemtrails.

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While Louisiana faces an insurance crisis, a crumbling coastline, and one of the highest overdose death rates in the country, state lawmakers have decided their latest priority is… chemtrails.

Not fixing the Sewerage & Water Board. Not stopping insurance companies from fleeing the state. Not funding addiction treatment programs. No, instead, our legislature is spending precious time and taxpayer dollars debating a bill—Senate Bill 46—based on a completely debunked internet conspiracy theory that claims airplanes are spraying chemicals like aluminum and barium into the sky to manipulate the weather. The theory has been thoroughly discredited by the scientific community, but that hasn’t stopped lawmakers from pushing it through the House by a vote of 58 to 32.

… We could be talking about how to prepare for another brutal hurricane season. We could be debating how to keep teachers from leaving the profession in record numbers. We could even be discussing how to rein in Entergy as utility bills skyrocket across the state. But instead, our elected officials are chasing clouds—literally.

… If you’re wondering why our roads flood when it drizzles, or why your homeowner’s insurance bill just tripled—look no further. The same people who think Delta Airlines is controlling the weather are the ones writing our laws.

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Not unexpectedly, Louisiana yet again was ranked as the absolutely rock-bottom worst state in America, 2024.

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Baton Rouge and Shreveport are the only other cities of note, and both are crime-ridden. We could throw in Lafayette as well. That’s one reason the magazine ranked the state at #50 in crime and corrections. According to the FBI, New Orleans had the third-highest homicide rate in 2023 of all U.S. cities…

… Crime is heavily weighted in these studies. According to the FBI’s final report of 2022 (the latest available), Louisiana had the worst homicide rate in the country — 16.1 homicides per 100,000 people. Of the 408 homicides that year, 266 took place in New Orleans.

Crime is a symptom of poverty, lack of education, and unemployment, to name a few. And Louisiana falls flat on its face in all dimensions.

The 2023 state budget produced a surplus of $325 million. Much of that will go toward paying down the state’s debt. None of it was allocated for elementary and secondary schools…

Questioned in Parliament about banning burqas, the PM got all How Dare You? flustered, as did a bunch of other politicians. In a country where comfortable majorities support a ban, this was not a brilliant move, because now UD‘s Google News alerts are exploding with BURQA stories out of Britain. Everybody’s talking about it.

The minute a country initiates a serious debate about the burqa, it is on its way to a ban. Talking and reading about it all the time unburies a latency: Latently, millions of modern people really dislike burqas and what they blatantly say about women; and all it takes is manifesting the subject for their dark inchoate messes of feelings about them (pity, guilt, repulsion, studied indifference, helplessness at their small daughters seeing invisible women) to firm up into opposition. I’ve followed this narrative many times; it’s a step by step process into referenda, partial restrictions, etc etc.

So the latest thing is an important Conservative party member announcing that “employers should be able to ban their staff from wearing face coverings.” Also, she will not talk to constituents in “surgeries” if they are fully covered. These announcements will activate religious and political indignation, which will in turn inflame the other side, and so it goes.

The problem is that there’s absolutely no reason for a modern democracy to tolerate gender-based repression and a total refusal to join civil society, and even good people who pride themselves on their tolerance know this. This is why so much of the world already bans/restricts this garment.

… an old post of mine about one of his poems.

“Is it caring for people’s different experiences and making sure no one is mistreated because of them, which I will always fight for?” [Pete Buttigieg] said in a forum at the University of Chicago earlier this year. “Or is it making people sit through a training that looks like something out of ‘Portlandia’? …. [This] is how Trump Republicans are made.”

[T]he gunmen positioned themselves on elevated ground in a wooded area and fired down at the crowd. Some partygoers returned fire, which may have prevented further injuries.

[Danish PM Mette] Frederiksen emphasized that while individuals have the right to practice their religion, democracy must take precedence. “God has to step aside. You have the right to your faith and to practice your religion, but democracy takes precedence,” she told Danish news agency Ritzau.

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The Danes are probably going to extend their full face ban to schools and universities; the PM is also working to shut down prayer rooms there.

The police chief can come out with all the horseshit he likes about isolated incident/no threat to the neighborhood, but groups of armed teenagers hiding behind cars while gunfighting on your street – and don’t matter none if your street is a hoitsy toitsy historic district – is A THREAT TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD. Any idiot knows that.

And isolated? Like, don’t worry cuz it won’t happen again?

Let’s see. Elmwood Park SC has twenty Airbnbs, one of which hosted this mass shooting. Neighbors have tried hard to rid the place of short term rentals, but SC seem to like these as much as it likes guns.

Guns, guns, guns. Among the best states in the union to stockpile and shoot ’em. Jest about the best state to kill/die from ’em. Tykes can strut around openly carrying ’em on their way to kiddie party shootouts. It’s a fuckin way of life.

Now yall wanna add that the long hot summer is upon us, which brings out much more bangbang.

“No motive is known at this time” lolololol. Motive. You’d think the cops would have some knowledge of the phenom.

… or else.

The Indiana Bible College has caught hell for plagiarizing (it seems a clear case — listen to two performances) Auburn University professor Rosephanye Powell’s The Word was God.

Instead of doing the Christian thing and taking it down, IBC has sued Powell for defamation. And the beat goes on.

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UD thanks Andrew.

It’s part of this (for sale!) wonderland.

‘As for Trump, I find it difficult to hold him morally responsible for anything. He’s a creature of appetite and instinct who hunts and feeds in a dark sub-ethical realm. You don’t hold a shark morally responsible for mauling a swimmer. You just try to keep the shark at bay—which the American people failed to do.‘

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Dark sub-ethical realm is beautiful. It’s very very good writing. Maybe all the way to poetic.

It’s banned in Cameroon, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Tunisia,  China, Kyrgyzstan, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. There are also tons of partial bans, in Muslim and non-Muslim countries. Burqa bans have regularly been upheld by the courts.

In short, however you personally feel about the burqa, its restriction has become a routine and largely uncontested part of the life of many countries and territories, and discussions about banning, or further banning, are ongoing in lots of locations.

It’s a thing, babe, in Morocco as much as in Italy.

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Now, UD‘s own US, largely because it’s so large (most people here don’t ever encounter burqas), hasn’t had anything to say about burqas; but, well, England. Now England…

England’s the big holdout; no burqa bans here!

Many of its neighbors, as we see, have gone the total or partial ban route.

And at the very least, these neighbors don’t consider mere debate about the burqa to be an abomination. How can it be, considering what’s going on in the world with the garment? Do you really want to hold yourself snobbily aloof from this widely shared/discussed concern?

Embarrassingly, yes. An MP brought the matter up in PM’s Questions the other day – the sort of thing one would expect to happen, and one would want to be prepared for – and got a fierce appalled Lady Bracknell put-down from the PM and others.

I mean how dare you. How dare you.

It is amusing – embarrassingly so – that England continues to feign indignation that anyone, anywhere, would have the nerve…

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Here’s the deal. The story is now all over the British press, which means the latent unhappiness in much of the population with full facial veiling is now being made manifest.

Dig. You’re supposed to shut up about the burqa and keep it out of the press precisely because the moment you break the uncomfortable national silence about it, millions of Brits will realize that now that you mention it they are quite unhappy with the thing.

I mean, uh, strong majorities, when asked, support a ban.

It’ll be interesting to see whether the government’s attempt to strangle vox populi through incredulous contempt will work.