A UN official in northern Iraq is claiming that ISIS has ordered female genital mutilation for all women in Mosul between the ages of 14 and 46. But others are disputing the veracity of her claim or suggesting that she was unwittingly passed on a false claim. The current Middle East is a mix of horrific developments and agitprop and hoaxes aimed at inflaming various audiences in the region and the West. The fact that it is a UN official making the claim gives it weight. But it makes sense to treat this as yet as unconfirmed.
Glenn Beck: That innocent Boston Bombing bystander I called a terrorist can’t sue me for libel because he became a public figure when I accused him of being a terrorist.
Gov. Brewer: Inmate who gasped and snorted for almost two hours before dying in botched execution “did not suffer.”
A Penny from British Mandate Palestine, struck 1927. Arabic, English, Hebrew.
Southwest Airlines removes man from flight after he tweets that airline staff were rude.
After a botched execution that reportedly left Joseph Wood gasping and gagging for almost two hours before he finally died, Arizona officials followed up with a further sickly comical indignity: sending out an email announcement that got Wood’s name wrong. State officials appear to have accidentally resent an execution announcement from last year since the email announced the execution of Robert G. Jones who was in fact executed in October of 2013.
“A condemned Arizona inmate gasped and snorted for more than an hour and a half during his execution Wednesday before he died, his lawyers said, in an episode sure to add to the scrutiny surrounding the death penalty in the U.S.” Details here.
As much as it’s treated as sick or a joke, firing squad really would be a vastly more humane form of execution than the one we now have.
Another reader testimonial on the emerging phenomenon of phone line regeneration. From TPM Reader TF …
Just thought I’d share my own similar experience with a zombie phone line. Many years ago when I moved from LA to NYC to pursue my graduate degree, I cancelled my LA phone service (then with MCI, remember them?).