I only heard about the people who call themselves as incels (standing for ‘involuntarily celibate’) late last year when I wrote about them after their 40,000-strong Reddit group was banned from the site. What started out as a support group for men who could not find women who were willing to have sex with them turned into rampant misogyny, even on occasion leading to the advocacy of rape.
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May 12th is the date for Donald Trump to recertify that Iran is complying with the terms of the deal negotiated between Iran and the US, Germany, Russia, China, UK, and France. Trump has been threatening to scuttle this deal previously and then grudgingly agreed to continue it but there are indications that this time he will carry out his threat, even though the other five signatories are saying they will stick with it. Israel, its lobby in the US, and the neoconservatives like newly appointed National Security Advisor John Bolton hate the deal.
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People being arrested or harassed for doing something innocuous while being black seems to be getting worse. We now have a case where a group of black women at a golf course had the police called on them for playing too slowly, a charge they vigorously denied.
Sandra Thompson and four friends met up Saturday to play a round of golf at the Grandview Golf Club, where they are all members, she told the newspaper.
At the second hole, a white man whose son co-owns the club came up to them twice to complain that they weren’t keeping up with the pace of play. Thompson, an attorney and the head of the York chapter of the NAACP, told the newspaper it was untrue.
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The lurid tales of media mogul Harvey Weinstein keep coming out. Apart from the abusive way he treated actors, the way he treated his immediate employees is also a scandal. The April 2018 issue of Harper’s Magazine has this little item. It is from a complaint filed in a New York district court against Weinstein by Sandeep Rahal who was employed as his personal assistant from 2013 to 2015, where she describes some of her ‘duties’ in that role.
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Some of you may have seen this news report where a resident of a small rural town in southwestern Ohio near Cincinnati had some blatantly racist lawn and porch ornaments plus confederate flags flying. When questioned by the reporter, he and his friend denied that they were in any way being racist and gave other reasons for their actions that defy belief.
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It happens all the time. You agree to meet with someone at a coffee shop but for some reason you arrive early or the other person is late. You think it would be rude to order before the other person arrives because that might look like a rebuke for lateness so you wait, perhaps for some time. While waiting, you may use the bathroom. Then the person arrives and life goes on. One thing that you probably don’t worry about is that the police are going to be called by the store manager and have you arrested for not ordering something.
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The wait staff at restaurants have much lower mandated minimum wages than other workers, based on the argument that tips supplement their income. Whenever the issue of raising their wages comes up, the argument frequently given by the restaurant industry is that doing so would increase prices and drive customers away and thus actually harm the workers, though it is clear that the real reason is that it might affect profits.
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The answer to that question may be revealed on May 8th in North Carolina. Lee Fang writes about an interesting Republican primary race in a congressional district where Walter Jones, the Republican incumbent who has bucked his party and Donald Trump on several issues, is being challenged by a lobbyist who accuses him of being disloyal to Trump.
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India seems to breed a constant stream of so-called ‘holy men’. These are people who preach some kind of religious mish-mash that followers find appealing enough to give them lots of money. They are not unlike the pastors of the megachurches in the US in fleecing the believers. The main difference is that these Indian mystics tend to run residential programs at places called ashrams where people live 24/7 while the megachurch followers live in their own homes.
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