London police believe they have a colorable claim against Yafet Askale, 28, for breaking into the vehicle. Askale insisted that he was not guilty and then the police brought in an ultraviolet light.
Al Arabiya is reporting a bizarre warning issue by a leading Muslim cleric that women who drive risk damaging their ovaries and pelvises and birth defects. The announcement from Sheikh Saleh bin Saad al-Luhaydan comes as women continue to demand to be able to drive in the Kingdom and international pressure is growing for Saudi to make fundamental reforms. Judging from today’s other Saudi story, I thought the greatest danger was the religious police on the roads.
We have long covered the abuses of the Saudi Arabian religious police known as the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. These are the religious fanatics who reportedly forced girls back into a burning school in Mecca because they were not sufficiently covered in public — 15 died as a result. When they are not apparently burning girls, they are forcing women to cover up “attractive eyes” or shutting down dinosaur exhibits or shutting down lingerie stores or arresting women having coffee. When it comes to their own crimes, however, they appear less committed to harsh Sharia punishment. A young Saudi was killed in a car chase last week trying to flee the religious police. After he crashed, the police fled the scene.
There is another lawsuit over a family dog shot by police. In Austin, Julian Reyes has sued over the killing of Shiner Bock, his German Shepard. He claims in the lawsuit that police were responding to a burglary call and shot Shiner Bock when the dog challenged them by barking.
Continue reading “The Killing of Shiner Bock: Artist Sues Austin Police In Death Of Dog”
The hatred for educators by Islamic extremists is well-known. It is difficult to keep people in a pre-historic mindset if they attend schools that open them up to the world and different ideas. For that reason, students and academics are routinely targeted in various Muslim countries for acid attacks, bombings, and shootings. However, even with this history, the slaughter last week in Nigeria is breathtaking. Some 50 students are dead, including some burned to death in the name of Islam by these extremists who use religion as an excuse for murder.
Continue reading “Islamic Militants Kill Dozens Of Students and A Priest in Nigeria”
If you recall, last week we discussed how NBC Sports Network was airing an episode of “Under Wild Skies” that showed NRA lobbyist Tony Makris shooting an elephant in the face and then celebrating with champagne. NBC has issued a convoluted statement that promises not to air the episode but the far more interesting statement came from Makris who reportedly condemned those who object to shooting elephants for fun.
Submitted by Darren Smith, Guest Blogger
In accordance of a new strategy to protect the citizens from bad things happening, London Police Services has instigated last fall Project L.E.A.R.N. Quoting from the police website:
“Successive L.E.A.R.N. Projects have addressed quality of life issues and targeted specific geographic areas traditionally plagued with nuisance type behaviours. L.E.A.R.N project members have provided strict but fair enforcement of by-laws related to parties, parking, open fires, noise, litter and public urination. Provincial offences were strictly enforced in relation to excess alcohol consumption, open alcoholic containers in public, public intoxication, illegal sale of alcohol and any related offences. The most severe behaviours warranted criminal charges such as causing a disturbance and mischief.”
Well it seems that this includes now such broken windows type nuisances as the University’s Cheerleading Squad on its way to the game.
Continue reading “Police in London, Ontario Cite Cheerleaders for Public Nuisance.”
By Mike Appleton, Guest Blogger
“A government’s allowing people to starve when it is preventable reflects a lack of concern for human rights, and well-ordered regimes…will not allow this to happen.”
John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (1999)
It ought not be a matter of serious debate that every human being is entitled to nourishment sufficient to sustain life. The right to sustenance is subsumed within the right to life. We acknowledge in our founding documents that protection of that right is a primary function of government. No rational person would choose to live in a society that permitted its members to die for lack of food. Nevertheless, the food stamp program, now called the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), is under attack by Republican members of Congress. The recent vote in the House of Representatives to cut funding for the program, and the arguments advanced in support of the cuts, suggest that the GOP believes that providing the poor with enough to eat is a discretionary exercise , demanded by neither law nor morality. It appears that the Republican Party has adopted what I call the Bauer Theory of Behavior Modification. Continue reading “SNAP and the Bauer Theory of Behavior Modification”
by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
“O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on; that cuckold lives in bliss
Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger.”
“Trifles light as air
Are to the jealous confirmations strong
As proofs of holy writ.”
– Wm. Shakespeare, Othello, Act III, Sc. 3
Shakespeare had a lot to say about human nature. He was particularly fond of addressing jealousy. Indeed, jealousy is the axis around which his play Othello revolves although it features prominently in some of his other works as well. He so profoundly understood human nature, one has to wonder what he would make of the NSA surveillance state. To go to the other end of the literary scale, but to a no less valid observation and aspirational goal, Spiderman’s prime operating principle is a lesson he learned both directly from and from the death of the character of his uncle, Ben Parker. “With great power comes great responsibility.” Not all people behave responsibly, let alone consistently responsible. This is why we build systems that allegedly contain oversight mechanisms – to prevent, catch and rectify irresponsible behavior as quickly as possible. When these systems fail, we must evaluate the wisdom of creating such a power to begin with. Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should do something. Which brings us to the NSA’s total information awareness strategy, their employees and policies for dealing with abusive employees and the tools to implement this ongoing violation of our 4th Amendment right “to be secure in [our] persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures”. An NSA employee was found to have twice collected communications of an American and had been secretly intercepting the phone calls of nine foreign women for six years (1998-2003) without ever being detected by his managers. The consequences of this criminal abuse of power upon discovery?
Nothing of substance.
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)- Guest Blogger
You may be wondering who is this person named Rouhani and why would it be hard to call him/her on the phone? Would you think differently if you knew that Rouhani is Hassan Rouhani and he is the current President of Iran? As reported this past week, after President Obama and President Rouhani had both spoken at the United Nations in New York City, it was rumored that the two might actually meet in person.
While that meeting did not take place, it was reported that President Obama actually called President Rouhani on the telephone. As you can imagine, it was considered a big deal in the media that the Presidents of the United States and Iran had actually spoken on the telephone. On one level, I can understand the importance of the first direct contact between the heads of these two countries since 1979. Additionally, in light of the level of sabre rattling over Syria recently and Iran constantly, I guess it is a big deal..sort of. Continue reading “Was It Really So Hard To Pick Up The Phone And Call Rouhani?”
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
Know much about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)? If you don’t, it’s not your fault. According to Zoë Carpenter (The Nation), Congress hasn’t heard much about TPP either. That’s because this so-called “free trade” agreement is being negotiated in “extreme” secrecy by representatives of twelve different countries—the United States, Japan, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. Carpenter says that the Obama administration has ignored “repeated calls from legislators to make the process more transparent, while pressing to finalize the agreement this year.”
In his article titled Multinationals Are Plotting to Steamroll What’s Left of Our Democracy to Make Huge Profits, Dave Johnson says that the TPP negotiating process “has been rigged from the start.” While hundreds of representatives of corporate-interest groups have been providing their input— “representatives of labor, human rights, civil justice, consumer, environmental and other stakeholder groups have been kept away from the negotiating table.” Members of Congress have not seen the agreement yet. United States Senators “have been barred from seeing negotiation points or drafts.” The public has been denied any access to TPP negotiating texts. We the people—as well as our elected representatives—are being “kept in the dark” as to what is going on behind closed doors. Yet, “600 corporate advisers” have been involved in the negotiation process. Multi-national corporations like Monsanto and Walmart are helping to craft the agreement.
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Margaret Mary Vojtko, an adjunct professor who had taught French at Duquesne University for 25 years, died of a massive heart attack at the age of 83. Adjunct professors at Duquesne make between $3000 and $3500 per semester per course. In the best of times, Margaret Mary, teaching three course, wasn’t even clearing $25,000 a year with no benefits and no job security. After Duquesne reduced her to one course, Margaret Mary couldn’t afford to pay the electricity bill and her home became uninhabitable in the winter.
Continue reading “Duquesne University Professor Dies In Abject Poverty”
Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
When 1965 dawned I was about to be twenty one years old and in my Junior Year in college. My parents were dead years past and I lived in a furnished room off campus, supporting myself by working 35 hours per week in a liquor store. The Viet Nam War was heating up and the civil rights of Black people, then called “negroes”, was the big issue of the day thanks to the inspired leadership of Martin Luther King. My parents had been Leftists in both words and deeds, which of course influenced my political leanings, because I loved and admired them greatly. JFK had been the great hope for a country recovering from the conformity of the 50’s, but he was murdered. Yet working and going to school full time, dating and hanging out with friends, gave me little time for political activity. The year before I had attended the organizing meeting for Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) on my college campus, but while I found the ideas stimulating, the organizer from national SDS seemed to be quite full of himself and an ass to boot. My economics professor had discussed Viet Nam disparagingly and predicted a costly war being pursued because of mineral rights off the coast of that country. His foreboding about the War proved to be correct. People peacefully demonstrating for an end to “Jim Crow” were being beaten and being murdered. The seamy underpinnings of our “exceptional” society were being exposed and the hypocrisy of it all was running rampant
Musically, the Beatles had pushed Folk Music somewhat to the side, yet there was still great popularity for it among the “intelligentsia”, or those who thought themselves “intellectuals”. The “enfant terrible” of folk music was of course young Bob Dylan, who scandalized the “folkies” when he moved to electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival in Forest Hills Stadium. He released a song that year becoming his first single record to hit the “Top Forty” charts. I think this song ranks among his most prescient works and that I’ve used part of it to title this piece. The song was listed by Rolling Stone Magazine as the 332nd “Greatest Song of All Time”, but in my life it has had much greater influence. I was a young adult orphan, without the guidance and love of my parents, living in a world of ever-increasing complexity. Many of my generation, myself included, turned to popular music for guidance. The Bob Dylan song “Subterranean Homesick Blues” not only offered guidance for navigating this ever stranger land that America was becoming, but also predicted many of the “changes” to this country that we discuss here on this blog and to my mind achieves greatness because of Dylan’s foresight. Let me explain. Continue reading ““You don’t need a weatherman, To know which way the wind blows””
http://www.contactmusic.com/video/bob-dylan-subterranean-homesick-blues
Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
The hearing this week on the massive surveillance programs targeting the communications of all citizens was the latest in the increasingly bizarre world of American politics. We have a Constitution that prohibits warrantless searches and seizures. We have a government — and a President — who previously misled us about the existence of such programs. We have Senators who knew of the prior deception and even perjury sitting in a hearing on the latest account from our leaders. Now, these same politicians are speaking openly about seizing every single telephone call. Rather than denying the program, they now refer to it as a harmless “lock box,” the way that Al Gore once referred to the social security accounts. What was particularly interesting is the statement of General Keith Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency, that disclosures by Edward Snowden “will change how we operate”. Indeed, in light of the Snowden disclosures, Alexander has stopped the prior denials of the Administration and is now speaking of “reforms.” That is precisely why most people view Snowden as a whistleblower despite the demands of the President and members of Congress that he be tracked down and put away for good. Even more interesting is the appearance of James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, who previously acknowledged perjury before the Senate. Rather than raise the perjury or demand his prosecution, Senators engaged in friendly exchanges with Clapper as if nothing had happened. This is clearly under the belief that the public has a remarkably short attention span and the media will follow the lead of the White House. Indeed, reporters for the most part did not even mention that Clapper is thought by many to be an unprosecuted felon due to his prior testimony or that his last major testimony on this very subject was to deny such programs. There was not even laughter when Clapper said that he was working to find ways to “counter the popular narrative” of any dangers in this surveillance. That “popular narrative” of course also includes his prior false testimony.
Continue reading “Change The Narrative: Clapper Returns To The Senate And Is Joined By Senators In Denouncing The Media and Snowden”