Joel Diaz recounts a remarkable experience in Columbus, Ohio when he and a gay friend started being harassed when they were holding hands and chatting while waiting in line at a popular pizza truck. A man in front of them told them to stop doing stuff that indicated that they were gay. This is when things got interesting. [Read more…]
Not being very technology savvy, I had never heard of Aaron Swartz before his suicide yesterday at the age of 26. It turns out that he was a computer whiz who had developed at a very young age, among other things, RSS and Redditt. His main passion was to enhance the free flow of information and he was a fierce advocate of internet freedom and critic of those who would privately profit from the free work of others, which is what eventually led to actions that put him in the cross hairs of the legal system. (See the history of the case here.) [Read more…]
I wrote recently about religious people getting freaked out the introduction of yoga in the elementary schools of a California school district because of its associations with non-Christian religions such as Hinduism. [Read more…]
The so-called ‘debt crisis’ has spawned a lot of groups ostensibly for the purpose of suggesting ways to reduce it. But as this news report suggests, the members of one such group known as ‘Fix the Debt’ may not be as disinterested as they claim to be, because they simultaneously serve other businesses that are directly affected by the measures they propose. [Read more…]
News has emerged that a young Sri Lankan housemaid Rizana Nafeek in Saudi Arabia was executed by beheading on the charge of killing a four month old baby in her care even though she was under 18 when the crime was allegedly committed, she denied that she was guilty, and had been denied access to a lawyer. [Read more…]
The ability of rich people to convince ordinary people to go against their own interests to benefit the wealthy is quite extraordinary. It seems like all you have to do is appeal to dark conspiracies and xenophobia and significant numbers of people, even above the 27% crazification factor, will sign up for your cause. In this episode of the The Daily Show, Al Madrigal examines the strange case of the proposed new bridge to be built between Detroit and Windsor, Canada. [Read more…]
One of the qualities of large institutions like churches is that they are incapable of making sudden changes in their policies even if they know that their current policy is wrong. Instead what they do is slowly edge towards a new policy by incremental steps, each time claiming that it is as far as they can go or is theologically justified. [Read more…]
Some have sought to argue that Bradley Manning was not a mere whistleblower exposing government wrongdoing but someone who deliberately revealed classified secrets that benefited the enemies of the US, thus making his actions more akin to espionage. While this may not necessarily excuse his treatment, it definitely makes him a less sympathetic figure to the public than other whistleblowers and may explain why there has not been greater outrage at the way he has been treated.
But Glenn Greenwald takes that argument apart, showing that leaks of classified information by high government officials occurs routinely in the US. In fact, the government routinely advances its own agenda by selectively leaking secrets and Bob Woodward of the Washington Post is one of those people who has built almost his entire career by receiving and publishing such secrets. Greenwald argues that if Manning is being prosecuted, why not Woodward? In fact, Woodward even published information classified as ‘Top Secret’, something that neither WikiLeaks nor Manning are accused of doing. [Read more…]
You would think that with Barack Obama’s re-election, those who had sought to deny his legitimacy to hold the office for the last four years would have finally given up. But you would be wrong because they are convinced that they are fighting for truth and justice and have a tenacity that defies all reason. And in this cause, lo! lawyer/dentist/real estate agent/Birther Queen Orly Taitz’s name, like Abou Ben Adhem‘s, leads all the rest. [Read more…]
