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Pagan News Beagle: Fiery Tuesday, May 10

A comparison is made between Europe's current refugee crisis and the moral failings of a past age. Women in Japan struggle to achieve equality in the workplace. And the nature of "white privilege" is examined and explained. It's Fiery Tuesday, our weekly segment on political and societal news from around the globe! All this and more for the Pagan News Beagle!

Recently, the British Parliament rejected a plan that would have seen the UK accept 600 child refugees a year. As fear of refugees and foreigners in general spreads through Europe, commentator Patrick Kingsley wonders if the world has forgotten the lessons of the 1930s, when most countries refused aid to Jews and other vulnerable groups because it wasn't their problem.

Compared to many parts of the world, Japan is fairly egalitarian. But that doesn't mean it doesn't have room for improvement. NHK News reports on continuing inequality in Japan between men and women and the pressures exerted on the latter to prioritize family-making over a career.

Though Daesh has everyone's attention these days, they're not the only extremist organization still active in the world. German newspaper Der Spiegel takes a look at how Boko Haram is continuing to wreak havoc in Nigeria, using young women as suicide bombers.

"White privilege." For many, those two words evoke enormous discomfort and instinctive defensiveness. But white privilege isn't meant to be so much an accusation as a wake-up call. On Twitter, one activist explains what white privilege really means and what it doesn't.

One of the most subtly pernicious forms of misogyny to persist in modern society is so-called "revenge porn," pornography of sex between former partners that is posted online by jilted boyfriends as a way of shaming or humiliating their ex-girlfriends. In Taiwan, hundreds of women are raising their voices to try and put an end to the practice and erect legal barriers against it.


Top image by Danny Choo

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Aryós Héngwis (or the more modest Héngwis for short) is a native of the Pontic-Caspian steppe, born some 5000 years ago, near the village of Dereivka. In his youth he stood out from the other snakes for his love of learning and culture, eventually coming into the service of the local reǵs before moving westward toward Europe. Most recently, Aryós Héngwis left his home to pursue a new life in America, where he has come under the employ of BBI Media as an internet watchdog (or watchsnake, if you will), ever poised to strike the unwary troll.

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