Mental Floss: Creepy Clown Sightings Are a Nightmare for the World Clown Association

From Connecticut to California, creepy clowns are a national problem. It all started in August in Greenville, South Carolina where, according to Vocativ, the local police received reports of a group of people dressed up as clowns attempting to lure kids into the woods. (One rogue clown in the same area reportedly waved at a woman from the street; she waved back.)

Since then, creepy clowns have been a trending topic both in the news and on social media, with 23 states now reporting some type of unusual clown activity. While it sounds like a story pulled from your own personal nightmares, the trend is even more frightening to members of the World Clown Association, a worldwide organization for professional clowns, who are disturbed by the fact that these hellraisers are being referred to as “clowns” at all.

WCA president Randy Christensen took to social media to address the growing creepy clown concern with a three-minute video, aimed at his fellow clowns, in which he made it clear that, “Whoever is doing this crazy stuff is not a clown. This is somebody that’s trying to use a good, clean, wholesome art form and then distorting it. This is not clowning, this person is not a clown."

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The Guardian: Syria isn’t a cold war conflict: the US and Russia can’t just fix it

If the fiercest measure the US has taken is to break off somewhat fitful talks on Syria, and the strongest response Russia has chosen to offer is the suspension of a single arms agreement that Moscow anyway accuses Washington of breaking, that says a lot in itself. It could reflect how little the two countries currently have to talk about, in which case a break makes little difference. Or, more likely, it shows their concern to spare other areas of cooperation, such as wider arms control or the space station. Indeed, the US said talks about avoiding bilateral clashes in Syria would continue, while the conditions Moscow has set for resuming the plutonium deal suggest it is open to bargaining even as it stamps its foot.

To an extent both sides are playing to their domestic galleries. This is an often neglected aspect of many a diplomatic spat, but it is especially true of this one. The US is in the grip of a highly unusual presidential campaign that has barely a month to run. While Barack Obama is not running, the charges of foreign policy weakness levelled against him, not just by Donald Trump and the Republicans but by some on his own side, are a factor in the campaign. It is important for Obama and his legacy, but still more so for Hillary Clinton’s prospects, that the Democratic administration does not appear spineless – especially not before its old Russian foe. [...]

If the conflict has demonstrated anything, it is that neither erstwhile superpower has the clout to control its clients on the ground. The latest ceasefire failed not only because the US mistakenly bombed a contingent of Syrian troops, and not only because an aid convoy was destroyed, but because the sponsors of the deal – the US and Russia – were unable to control what happened next.

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The Guardian: We are witnessing nothing less than a Tory reformation

Once you have seen Theresa May tell a hall full of Conservative conference delegates that she will lead them out of the European Union, it is very hard to imagine how David Cameron could ever have stood before the same people to say the opposite.

Ripples of ecstasy washed across the Birmingham Symphony Hall as the prime minister affirmed her commitment to Brexit. It doesn’t matter that May backed the losing side in the referendum. It might even have helped, because she now compensates with born-again zeal. There is more rejoicing in the kingdom of Euroscepticism at one remainer who repenteth than over 99 righteous leavers who have no need of repentance. [...]

All that May has to offer is symbols, but symbols are a more powerful currency with true believers than is ever understood by agnostics. Likewise, the prime minister’s repeated assertion that “Brexit means Brexit” has attracted more ridicule than it deserves. (May has now added a second line to the mantra: “It means we are going to leave the European Union.”) To the cynical ear this is vacuity dressed in tautology. But that objection presumes that slogans are meant to transmit information. Often their function is performative – a signal of belonging to the tribe. There is a liturgical quality to May’s Brexit creed. You can imagine it as a call-and-response prayer, with the congregation supplying the new follow-up verse. [...]

This is nothing less than a reformation in the Church of Conservatism, with the authority of Brussels cast as a modern-day Rome. Cameron tried to manage the old schism but the suspicion lingered that his loyalties were divided; that he read from a vernacular Tory bible at home and then jumped on the Eurostar to kiss the papal commission’s ring. Now Theresa May stands before her party like Elizabeth I: a true, Protestant queen, their own Gloriana.

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Independent: Islamic communities contain 'tsunamis of atheism' that are being suppressed, says leading ex-Muslim

Thousands of ex-Muslims in Britain are living in fear of violent revenge for abandoning the Islamic faith while others are afraid to admit they no longer believe, a support group for ex-Muslims has said.

Maryam Namazie, founder of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, described a “tsunami of atheism” in Muslim communities and urged that more needs to be done to recognise the dangers often faced by those who choose to renounce their faith. [...]

“It’s a hidden challenge for people here in Britain. It’s framed in this context of identity politics, racism and any criticism means you’re racist. But we are minorities within minorities and we have a right to speak and live our lives the way we want the same as anybody else,” she said. [...]

Exposure, which will be be aired on 13 October, reveals the dangers ex-Muslims face after they renounce their faith, with many at risk of suicide or self-harm as well as physical and psychological abuse from family members. [...]

The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, established in 2007, has grown in recent years. Last year it launched a Twitter campaign ahead of Human Rights Day under the hashtag #ExMuslimBecause, which went viral in 24 hours, with 120,000 people from 65 countries using it to express their experiences.

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Mashable: Same-sex marriage in the Philippines gets personal support from a top government official

Pantaleon Alvarez, Speaker of the House of Representatives, said Monday he will file a bill legalising same-sex marriage in the Philippines. He intends to sponsor it himself too, and his staff has already begun drafting it, he told local press.

The Speaker of the House is a powerful position — third in line to the presidency, behind the vice president. The post is an elected role by the majority of the representatives in congress.

He was reported saying: "If you look at the Constitution, there is a provision guaranteeing happiness for the Filipinos. Why would we deprive them of that? If they are happy with that, shouldn’t we support them?" [...]

Still, Alvarez is confident that his bill isn't asking for the Church to bend. "My proposal is about civil union. We do not meddle with the affairs of the Church. There’s no problem if they don’t want it," he was quoted saying in a press conference.

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CBC Radio: Poland's proposed ban on abortion part of broader push to turn back history

In considering the ban, the government has the firm backing of the Catholic Church, which now rejects the compromise it accepted in 1993 when the current restrictive abortion regime was adopted.

It ignores polls showing that 74 per cent of those surveyed said they were satisfied with the present law and don't want it changed. And it dismisses estimates that suggest that more than 100,000 women annually get an illegal abortion in Poland or go to neighbouring countries for terminations. [...]

"The Law and Justice party questions the very foundation of liberal democracy which is the reciprocal limitation of power," said Jaroslaw Kurski. "The party wants to create a new sort of citizen — a nationalist-patriot type — who is ready to renounce his or her civil liberties." [...]

The new government insists that Poles didn't kill Jews, only German Nazis did.  Anyone who uses the banned phrase may be liable to prosecution.

A Polish historian, Jan Gross, who has written about the killing of Jews in Poland by Poles, notably in his book Neighbours: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne — the story of a massacre in 1941 in which several hundred Jews were murdered by fellow townspeople — has been denounced by this government. It wants to try him for libel and to strip him of the Polish Order of Merit.

All of this, particularly the attacks on the constitutional court and the takeover of public broadcasting, have been severely criticized by the leaders of the European Union. Ironically, the new public broadcasting boss, Jacek Kurski, will soon lose his job. The ratings of the public channels have dropped sharply — propaganda isn't necessarily great entertainment. But tight government control will remain.

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Associated Press: "I had to:" Inside the mind of an 'honor' killer in Pakistan

The killers routinely invoke Islam, but rarely can they cite anything other than their belief that Islam doesn't allow the mixing of sexes. Even Pakistan's hard-line Islamic Ideology Council, which is hardly known for speaking out to protect women, says the practice defies Islamic tenets.

It doesn't matter: in slums and far-off villages, away from the cosmopolitan city centers, people live in a world where religion is inextricably tied to culture and tradition, where tribal councils can order women publicly punished, and a family can decide to kill one of its own, even to avenge a wrongdoing committed by someone else. [...]

She is a sister who falls in love with a man not of her family's choosing. She is a daughter who refuses to agree to an arranged marriage, sometimes to a man old enough to be her father. She is a wife who can no longer stay in an abusive marriage and divorces her husband.

He is a brother, like Rajhu, who cannot bear the taunts of other men brought up as he was, believing that women are subservient and must be kept in the shadows, their worth often measured by the number of sons they can produce. He is a neighbor, like Raza at the plant, who doesn't think his friend did anything wrong in taking his sister's life. He is a father, like Tasleem's, who is angry about her killing not because she is dead, but because her death will reveal her "shame" to other members of the family and beyond.

As modernity pushes against tradition, Pakistan has seen an increase in the number of women and girls killed in the name of honor: last year, 1,184 people died, only 88 of them men. The year before, the figure was 1005, and in 2013 it was 869, according to the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. The true numbers are believed to be higher, because many cases go unreported.

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Time: The Enduring Lessons of the Battle of Cable Street, 80 Years On

The successful defeat of Nazi sympathizer Oswald Mosley’s march through the East End, known as the Battle of Cable Street, is being commemorated this year by marches, talks and other events in this corner of London. The anniversary is being recognized at a timely moment, after Britain has endured a summer of increased hate crime reports following the EU referendum in Britain, and charges of an anti-Semitism problem in the opposition Labour Party. Coming also as far-right parties are gaining in electoral successes across Europe, it’s a good time to re-examine the forces behind the Battle of Cable Street. [...]

On Sunday Oct. 4, 1936, Mosley led his Blackshirt supporters on a march through the East End, following months of BUF meetings and leafleting in the area designed to intimidate Jewish people and break up the East End’s community solidarity. Despite a petition signed by 100,000 people, the British government permitted the march to go ahead and designated 7,000 members of the police force to accompany it. The counter-protest from the Cable Street community involved members from the Jewish and Irish communities, local workers and local Labor and Communist parties, who succeeded in disbanding the BUF march. As TIME reported in the magazine’s Oct. 12 issue 1936, in an article called “Mosley Shall Not Pass!” [...]

The battle took place when fascism seemed to be on the rise in other European cities, led by Hitler, Franco and Mussolini. “The fact that so many different communities came together and resulted in such huge numbers turning out against countervailing pressures tells us something”, Rosenberg says. “It was a victory for the united people of the East End.” It was also an awakening for some in the British left, says London School of Economics research fellow Richard Baxell, only months after the outbreak of the Spanish civil war. “For some people that were involved in the protest, Cable Street was the road to Spain, and many would go on to volunteer as soldiers for the Republicans there”, he says.

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The Daily Beast: Mike Pence: Postmodern Evangelical Catholic Conservative

Kaine, as is well known, is a progressive Catholic whose focus on the church’s social gospel was sharpened during a year’s mission in Latin America. But while media coverage of Indiana Governor Mike Pence has tended to depict him as a standard right-wing conservative Christian, this label belies the complexity of his own spiritual journey. [...]

But Pence is also very much a creation of the last half century of American political-religious life. Born and raised Catholic, he became a Catholic youth minister and reportedly wanted to be a priest. But according to interviews Pence has given over the years (interestingly, he has more recently declined to talk specifically about his spiritual evolution), while in college from 1978-81, he began blending his Catholicism with Evangelical Protestantism. “I made a commitment to Christ,” Pence said. “I’m a born again, evangelical Catholic.” [...]

Indeed, much of the twentieth century’s supposedly liberal, Protestant-led campaigns for the separation of church and state were, in fact, bitterly anti-Catholic. In the first half of the twentieth century, Protestants railed against Catholic parochial schools, claiming that they taught not just superstition but sedition as well. The Protestant-led temperance movement associated Catholicism with alcohol abuse. [...]

Both sides adjusted their doctrines. Evangelicals swiftly adopted Catholic teaching on abortion, both as a matter of political expediency and as part of their anti-feminist “pro-family” agenda. Catholics stopped crusading against the death penalty. And both sides abandoned their earlier positions that religion should stay out of politics. (Jerry Falwell, another founder of the Christian Right, had said in 1964 that “preachers are not called to be politicians, but soul-winners.” Then times changed.)

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