The ‘lone wolf’ theory implicates us all

The murder of the nine people in a church in Charleston, SC has of course prompted discussions of why anyone would commit such a terrible act. If the killer had been a Muslim, there would be no debate. He would have been immediately branded a terrorist and his motive would have assumed to be that it was driven by his religious beliefs and was part of the war waged by Muslims against the US and civilization in general and Christians in particular.
[Read more…]

Why the Snowden revelations enraged the US government

Computer security expert Bruce Schneier says that the allegations that the Russians and Chinese have access to the documents that are in the trove that Snowden took may well be true but that is not because they got them from Snowden, as was the charge made by the smear article in the Sunday Times. Instead it is likely because the US, Russian, and Chinese governments have each penetrated each other’s networks because “while cryptography is strong, computer security is weak”.
[Read more…]

The clown car overflows

Donald Trump’s grandiose announcement that he is entering the presidential race created some consternation within the Republican party and their supporters in the media, with concerns expressed that his buffoonish style will make the Republican primary race even more of a clown show than it already is. His announcement was typical, all spectacle and stream of consciousness nonsense.
[Read more…]

Taking aim at those who stoke the fires of racism

Jeb Lund catalogues in great detail all the people who have contributed to the racist paranoia in the country that poison the minds of people like the murderer in Charleston, and have constantly emitted “the long low dog whistle that entered the mainstream of American conservatism with Nixon and the Southern Strategy in 1968 — a toxic mixture of anti-government resentment, absolute refusal to recognize the left as legitimate, and racial loathing.”
[Read more…]

The pope’s encyclical on climate change and inequality

I have not read pope Francis’s 40,000 word encyclical Laudato Si’ dealing with climate change and its relationship with inequality. But Joshua J. McElwee, the Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, has read it and summarizes some of the key points. There is no doubt that this document is going to infuriate conservatives in the US even though the basic message would be considered uncontroversial in most parts of the world.
[Read more…]

Our strange and conflicted attitudes towards marijuana

The state of Colorado has legalized the recreational use of marijuana and also allowed it to be used for medicinal purposes. But that does not mean that people whose use fits into those categories are exempt from being punished. Take the case of Brandon Coats, an employee of the Dish Network company, who in 2010 was fired for using marijuana legally outside of work hours to deal with the muscular spasms he suffered after he became paralyzed as the result of a car crash. They fired him two weeks after he informed his company of his use and gave them a copy of his medical marijuana card.
[Read more…]

Changing racial identities

The Rachel Dolezal story (the 37-year old woman president of the Spokane, Washington NAACP with white parents who for some time since leaving college has presented herself as black) has certainly got people’s attention. Given that at bottom it seems to be a story of one person’s attempt to start a new life with a new identity in a new community, something that is not at all unusual given the mobile nature of modern society, the media buzz is extraordinary. The reason is of course because questions of race are always hot-button ones and also because of this story’s man-bites-dog nature. Stories of black people passing as white are not uncommon and, given the history of slavery and anti-black racism in the US, quite understandable. But white people adopting a black identity, while not unprecedented, is certainly unusual.
[Read more…]