In watching an earlier Democratic debate, I mentioned how surprised I was to see an ad featuring Ron Reagan, former president Reagan’s son, on behalf of the Freedom From Religion Foundation that argued for the separation of church and state. He began by describing himself as an “unabashed atheist” and ended with him declaring himself to be a ” lifelong atheist, not afraid of burning in hell.”
This is going to be one hell of a year in the US as we have deranged, narcissistic, vain, lying, cruel, mean, insecure, xenophobic, sexist, transphobic, racist, petty, (did I miss any descriptor?) person running for re-election as president, solidly backed by a Republican party filled with sycophants who abjectly grovel before him, evangelical Christians who have given up on all their principles, and wealthy people who care more about increasing their already massive share of the wealth than doing anything of value with it.
It is going to be a really ugly year.
My wish for everyone is that we manage to stay sane during this tumultuous year and that it ends with us replacing this sociopath in the White House with Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or, failing that, with a halfway decent person who cares at least a little for those who are at the bottom of the economic and social ladder.
Chelsea Manning is currently being held in prison since May 16 for refusing to testify to a grand jury against WikiLeaks and her treatment amounts to torture, according to the UN’s special rapporteur on torture.
In the missive, [Nils] Melzer says Manning is being subjected to “an open-ended, progressively severe measure of coercion fulfilling all the constitutive elements of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.
Manning, who was detained on 16 May after refusing to testify before a grand jury, is currently being held at the Alexandria detention center in Virginia until she agrees to give evidence or until the grand jury’s term expires in November next year. She also faces fines currently running at $1,000 a day.
[Read more…]
This is the time of year when we get bombarded with ‘best of’ and ‘worst of’ lists, increased by the fact that it could be for the year or for the decade. The only lists I pay attention to are of films by critics I respect to get tips on what might be worth watching.
This list of Things We Hope Will Die in 2020 is a little more interesting but the item that really jumped out at me and I wholeheartedly agree with is the suggestion by Jacob Rosenberg.
Malcolm Gladwell’s career: Let’s thinslice: Malcom Gladwell needs to stop writing. Gladwell’s theories are wrong (stop and frisk) or obvious (1,000 hours) or dumb (talking to strangers is the problem with everything). He made his bones at a time when glib, crypto-conservative contrarianism was the reigning media ethos. Today, the shtick has been worn so smooth as to be transparent. Flip through his latest book and you’ll find an easy-pass treatment of the Jerry Sandusky scandal at Penn State and a determinedly apolitical reading of the death of Sandra Bland—two cases of institutional pathologies that Gladwell turns into parables about a quirk in human nature. Powerful people thus get excused for their mistakes, under the guise of Gladwell’s interrogating some orthodoxy or another. You don’t need to be a bestselling author of pop-science airport books to come up with a word for this stuff: bullshit.
I have long been mystified by Gladwell’s popularity.
When members of the Jewish community are attacked because they are Jewish, one immediately thinks that the attacker will be found to be a white man motivated by neo-Nazi ideology because it is such groups that have seen a recent resurgence in the US. And that usually does turn out to be the case. But two events recently have disturbed that pattern because they were committed by black men with unclear motives
Just two days ago an attacker entered the home of an Orthodox Jewish rabbi in Monsey, New York during a Hanukkah dinner and viciously attacked everyone present with a machete before running away. He was later captured in Harlem, covered in blood. He is suspected to have a history of mental problems
[Read more…]
Last week I favorably reviewed the Brazilian comedy The First Temptation of Christ that has drawn protests from Christian groups because of its suggestion that Jesus may have been gay. Now the protests have spawned violent offshoots that have attacked the filmmakers’ offices with firebombs.
Police are investigating a fire-bomb attack on the Rio de Janeiro office of a production company behind a controversial Christmas special aired on streaming service Netflix.
[Read more…]
The fallout over the editorial in the evangelical magazine Christianity Today calling the impeachment and removal of Donald Trump continues with an editor from another publication The Christian Post resigning after the magazine decided that they would write an editorial in support of Trump.
Evangelical support for US President Donald Trump is back in the spotlight after the resignation of a leading journalist for Christian Post magazine.
Journalist Napp Nazworth’s departure follows an op-ed from another Christian outlet calling for Mr Trump’s removal.
On Monday, journalist Napp Nazworth announced he was “forced to make the difficult decision to leave The Christian Post”.
Mr Nazworth – a political editor and near 10-year veteran of the Christian magazine, whose Twitter biography includes the hashtag #NeverTrump – said the publication “decided to publish an editorial that positions them on Team Trump”.
He continued: “I can’t be an editor for a publication with that editorial voice.”
Donald Trump panders shamelessly to the US military and one of the things he has done is pardon those people who have been disciplined by the military for doing awful things. This despite the fact that the military is very reluctant to punish wrongdoing done to the victims of US wars and invasions and even when it rarely does so, the punishments are very mild. The case of Eddie Gallagher is particularly striking.
Video recordings of testimony given by Gallagher’s troops have emerged where they say that he was ‘evil’.
A Navy Seal platoon leader controversially cleared of war crimes by Donald Trump was a “toxic” character who was “OK with killing anything that moved”, according to fellow Iraq veterans who reported his conduct to military investigators.
…Gallagher was convicted in July of posing with the dead body of a teenage Islamic State captive he had just killed with a hunting knife. He was granted clemency by the president in November in a decision that angered military chiefs.
In the interviews, conducted by navy investigators looking into Gallagher’s conduct during a tour of duty in Iraq in 2017, fellow platoon members told of a ruthless leader who stabbed the captive to death for no reason then forced his troops to pose for a photograph with the corpse.
…At his court martial, Gallagher was acquitted of murder but demoted in rank for the lesser charge of posing with the body – a decision Trump reversed.
…Another platoon member, medic Corey Scott, said: “You could tell he was perfectly OK with killing anybody that was moving.”
Note that the only punishment Gallagher suffered for his atrocities was a demotion in rank but even that was too much for the panderer-in chief.
Imagine what would be the reaction if some Iraqi or Afghan person had done something similar to a US soldier occupying their country and had then been pardoned by the political leadership.
But the US has never cared about the fact that it is a rogue state that has double standards. It takes that for granted.
I came across this article about a clash between supporters of fox hunting and protestors.
Police are investigating after a man appeared to use a dead fox to attack a vehicle containing anti-hunting activists.
As dozens of hunts took place across the UK on Boxing Day, a man alleged to be a supporter of a hunt in North Yorkshire was filmed hitting the window of a van with the animal’s body.
Blood and hair were left smeared across the glass and a group from the Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA), activists who monitor and disrupt purported illegal hunting, claimed the vehicle was damaged.
The apparent attack occurred at midday on Thursday when a group of people approached the activists before a man was seen sprinting towards the van attempting to hide his face and brandishing the dead fox, which he then used as a weapon.
