Ghislaine Maxwell arrested in Jeffrey Epstein case

Maxwell was Jeffrey Epstein’s close associate and sometime lover and was accused by his victims as being the person most involved in procuring and grooming young girls to be abused by him. Geoffrey Berman was the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York who arrested Jeffrey Epstein and he had said that Epstein’s death in jail while awaiting trial did not mean the end to the investigation. But when US attorney general Bill Barr fired Berman last month for reasons that are still murky, it was not clear what would happen to those investigations. Now Berman’s replacement Audrey Strauss has ordered the arrest of Maxwell and charged her with conspiracy to entice minors to engage in illegal sex acts and also with perjury. Berman had refused to resign as demanded by Barr until he agreed to appoint Strauss, Berman’s deputy and a respected career prosecutor, as his replacement. (You can read the 17-page indictment here.)
[Read more…]

More changes caused by the recent demonstrations

One of the things that struck me about the recent moves to remove monuments honoring leading figures of the confederacy is how many such symbols there are all over the country, especially, of course, in those states that formed part of the confederacy. It is encouraging that even deep Republican states are reconsidering their identification with such symbols. A good example is Mississippi where I was surprised to learn that the confederate flag forms part of the current state flag. But this solidly Republican state has just voted to start the process to remove it.
[Read more…]

Jon Stewart talks about the current unrest

In an interview about his new film Irresistible, Stewart gives his opinion on the current situation.

Early on in the interview, he addressed the police killing of George Floyd: “I’d like to say I’m surprised by what happened to him, but I’m not,” he said. “This is a cycle, and I feel that in some ways, the issue is that we’re addressing the wrong problem. We continue to make this about the police — the how of it. How can they police? Is it about sensitivity and de-escalation training and community policing? All that can make for a less-egregious relationship between the police and people of color.”

“But the how isn’t as important as the why, which we never address,” he continued. “The police are a reflection of a society. They’re not a rogue alien organization that came down to torment the black community. They’re enforcing segregation. Segregation is legally over, but it never ended. The police are, in some respects, a border patrol, and they patrol the border between the two Americas. We have that so that the rest of us don’t have to deal with it. Then that situation erupts, and we express our shock and indignation. But if we don’t address the anguish of a people, the pain of being a people who built this country through forced labor — people say, ‘I’m tired of everything being about race.’ Well, imagine how [expletive] exhausting it is to live that.”

Yep, that’s right.

“No shirt, no shoes, no masks – no service”

The above sign, without the mask requirement, is commonly found posted at the entrance to many business establishments in the US and has been so for a long time. As far as I am aware, it has not caused any controversy and shirtless or shoeless people have not threatened the businesses with lawsuits. And yet, because mask wearing has been made into a culture war issue by Donald Trump, we now have the bizarre spectacle of people doing just that. Take this case:

Hugo’s Tacos, a beloved LA chain, announced Sunday that it was temporarily closing both its taco stands after its employees reported increasing harassment from customers who refused to wear masks during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The harassment – ranging from racial slurs to food and objects being thrown at employees – “has taken a toll” on staff, CEO and part-owner Bill Kohne told BuzzFeed News. Kohne said he wants to give his employees a break as the company works toward solutions to better protect them.

[Read more…]

How newspapers are being destroyed

Hasan Minhaj has another excellent show about how private equity firms are destroying the newspaper industry the way they have destroy so many other companies, by borrowing money to buy troubled companies, saddling those companies with that debt, squeezing as much money as they can by cutting jobs and selling assets and paying themselves huge fees, and then walking away leaving the companies to die.

Ah, the glorious working of capitalism!

The racist counter attacks begin

One of the encouraging signs about the recent demonstrations against police brutality and systemic racism is that they have not been confined just to the big cities but have also extended to small towns across the country. However, it was only a matter of time before there was a backlash against this and we saw one such incident in Bethel, Ohio when a woman in that town decided to organize a rally to show solidarity with the demonstrations that were taking place in cities across the country.
[Read more…]

Yesterday’s abortion ruling was underwhelming

On the surface, the ruling by the US Supreme Court in the case of JUNE MEDICAL SERVICES L. L. C. ET AL. v. RUSSO to strike down Louisiana’s law that made access to abortion very difficult was a big win for abortion rights. But a closer examination reveals that it may have just set up the next legal challenge.

To understand the ruling, we must note that the Louisiana law under scrutiny was just the latest in a long line of so-called ‘trap’ (targeted regulation of abortion providers) that anti-abortion legislators pass that try to circumvent the right to abortion not by banning them but by imposing regulations on providers that are highly burdensome and unnecessary under the guise of protecting the health of the women seeking abortions. The aim of these laws is to shut down as many abortion clinics as they can because they cannot meet the requirements. This would primarily affect poor people since rich people will be able travel long distances or out of state or even out of the country to get abortions.
[Read more…]

Rich people fight!

The recent protests and demonstration have largely featured young people of diverse backgrounds facing off against the police or Trump-supporting counter protestors. But Saturday saw something different at The Villages, a retirement community in Florida that has very wealthy, almost exclusively white, residents. It is seen as a reliably very right-wing Republican stronghold and has hosted many fundraisers for such candidates including Trump.
[Read more…]

Another sign of the new player solidarity on racism

NPR had this interesting story.

Last week, softball was in the spotlight, and not because anybody broke ranks and knelt but because the general manager of the Scrap Yard Dawgs, an independent professional softball team, tweeted a picture of the players standing at President Trump from the organization’s official Twitter account. The last portion of the tweet under the picture read, quote, “everyone respecting the FLAG!” with flag in all caps and an exclamation mark.

[Read more…]

New York Police Department is the poster child for abuse

If you want to know how bloated US police departments are and how militarized they have become and how blatantly they disregard civil liberties, the NYPD is the place to look. This article by Tana Ganeva and Laura Gottesdiener from back in 2012 lists the “nine frightening things about America’s biggest police force.”

The NYPD is the biggest police force in the country, with over 34,000 uniformed officers patrolling New York’s streets, and 51,000 employees overall — more than the FBI. It has a proposed budget of $4.6 billion for 2013, a figure that represents almost 15 percent of the entire city’s budget.
…

What has the NYPD been doing with all that cash and manpower? In addition to ticketing minorities for standing outside of their homes, spying on Muslims who live in New Jersey, abusing protesters, and gunning down black teens over weed, the NYPD has expanded into a massive global anti-terror operation with surveillance and military capabilities unparalleled in the history of US law enforcement.

In an email published by WikiLeaks, an FBI official joked about how shocked Americans would be if they knew how egregiously the NYPD is stomping all over their civil liberties. But what we already know is bad enough. Here’s a round-up of what the department has been up to lately.
[Read more…]