Art distills.

Why should she have anything to do with the so-called laws of so-called Switzerland? This, mes petites, is what people mean when they refer to the failure of (cough) ‘integration.’ She’s like the ultraorthodox in Israel, who see that “country” as the enemy against which God commands them to resist.

Deep Salafist pockets will pay her fines – she will continue to rack them up – until the state decides that the system of fines isn’t working. Next step: A social worker tries to reason with a fanatic. Then jail?

Chicago.

‘[A gun control advocate in Mississippi] said Tuesday that he often reminds his colleagues in other parts of the country that “what they go through don’t even compare to what we have to go through in the South. Because in the South, guns is like having a bottle of water [sic]. Everybody got it. And then it’s a right-to-carry state. It’s a castle doctrine state. It’s constant gun shows every other week in Mississippi somewhere. So guns are just bloody in Mississippi…. Get us all together. You bring in alcohol. Then you bring in all the crazy drugs they got these days, and you got a state where everybody got at least 10 guns. What you asked for? You asked for violence.”’

… and one of its political leaders uses remarkably strong language against the thing.

“[I do not accept that women should be forced to] walk the streets as if they were animals or merchandise.”

“If there are no changes within the Haredi community that succeed in bringing them into the 21st century and making them understand that without core curriculum studies, a modern society cannot function, in 30-40 years, Israel will be a theocratic state.“

 “Lucky Hank,” starring Bob Odenkirk, based on the 1997 novel “The Straight Man,” by Richard Russo, [offers a familiar] vein of disdain, one in which characters say things like: “My book of sonnets on Jonathan Swift has become the benchmark in early feminist 18th century response poetry.”

[Arab women] are allowed access to the public sphere only if they renounce their bodies: To let them go uncovered would be to uncover the desire that the Islamist, the conservative and the idle youth feel and want to deny. Women are seen as a source of destabilization — short skirts trigger earthquakes, some say … [T]oday, with the latest influx of migrants from the Middle East and Africa, the pathological relationship that some Arab countries have with women is bursting onto the scene in Europe... People in the West are discovering, with anxiety and fear, that sex in the Muslim world is sick, and that the disease is spreading to their own lands.

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An essential companion piece.

CONTENT WARNING: Everything.

A Spanish human rights activist argues for restrictions on various forms of Islamic dress in her country.

… you can’t argue with these containers.

On my morning walk through Garrett Park.

They’re pretty much the last holdout in Europe on allowing the burqa, and like idiots they pride themselves on their tolerance even of cultural vileness.

Years ago, this blog covered the efforts of Muslim students to impose strict gender segregation in British universities, with the enthusiastic backing of the official body in charge of such matters. It took a lot of screaming and crying for this scandal to end.

And after all, having tolerated a branch of Islam rigidly determined to erase women, the Brits constantly have to tamp down further discrimination.

Things like a recent foot race which barred women from participating, for instance, continue to make the Brits look idiotic. The race went off without a hitch and without any women, and only after the thing happened did it occur to someone or other that there weren’t any women in it. So now oh yeah NOW we’re gonna appoint a committee to review that and for sure we shall do er something.

An article about the emergent scandal of medicalized FGM is much too coy: The point of the procedure is to assure that, their whole lives long, the women of Africa and Asia (230 million of them are currently walking around without sex organs) are guaranteed never to have even a teeny weeny blip of sexual pleasure. Total erotic numbness is the prescription, which your local doctor will happily fill for you. You can talk morals, virginity, the community, all you like. It ain’t none of that, really. It’s the amputation of the clitoris, and with it the death of erotic sensation forever. Some docs will sew your vagina shut too, just for good measure.

Until you understand that for hundreds of millions of human beings around the globe the thought of their daughters having the capacity to experience sexual pleasure is such an atrocity that they’d rather rip out their genitalia than run that risk, you’ll never get anywhere with this vile behavior. It really is there that you have to work: Just as public disgust with smoking decreased its prevalence, so disgust with violent hatred of female sexuality must be publicly expressed.

‘Some say that education consultants provide valuable skills and services to ensure schools can find the right leaders and focus on the right goals. Others say the business is a racket that wields too much influence and lines too many pockets.

[Des Moines Public Schools] has spent six figures of taxpayer money on that business. Now, it will spend boatloads more on attorneys to comb through the damage and shield the district from as much blame as possible for the [Ian] Roberts fallout.

And that’s to say nothing of the expenditure required to find a new superintendent.‘

The ed consulting racket is one of many rackets that made the world safe for Donald Trump. Here’s hoping the current notoriety of its most high-profile racketeer will help shut it all down.