Cracks in evangelical support for Trump

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.”

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Film review: The Lobster (2016)

This is one truly weird film. I watched it because the capsule description said it was a comedy and it had many well-known good actors such as Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Olivia Colman (who seems to be in everything these days), Ben Whishaw, and John C. Reilly. I did not laugh even once. Instead I watched it with a kind of curious fascination, trying to figure out to what the hell it was all about, what message the film makers were trying to convey. I still don’t know.
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Trump pardons a murderer and war criminal

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.
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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.
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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.
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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.

Fox hunting is apparently still a thing in the UK

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.

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The internet can undermine one’s faith in humanity

In general, I tend to be optimistic about the human condition but on occasion, I come across stories that shake that sense of positivity. The radio program The World had a segment on December 12th about the trauma suffered by content moderators tasked by Facebook with viewing videos on the site to see if they should be removed. Having to watch video after video of the most appalling things in rapid succession resulted in many of them suffering psychologically and Facebook did not seem to have in place sufficient resources to help them deal with it. Some of the moderators, who are contractors and not Facebook employees, are now suing Facebook. One of them Chris Gray, who worked in its Dublin office, was interviewed on the program.
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Corbynizing Sanders

Recent events in the UK have resulted in a new word being added to the political lexicon and that is ‘Corbynizing’. This is the label given to the concerted effort orchestrated by the right wing Israel lobby in the UK, the Conservative party, much of the establishment media, and Blairite neoliberal members of the Labour party to discredit and undermine Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn by suggesting that he is an anti-Semite and/or a coddler of anti-Semites, in an effort to remove him from the party leadership and also to distract attention from the progressive platform that the party put forward.
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Protest, demonstration, revolt, uprising, rebellion, or riot?

The First Amendment to the US constitution lists five freedoms, two of which are expressed as “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances”. But what happens when the people cease, for whatever reason, to be ‘peaceable’ in their petitioning? Then what the situation is called becomes a critical element in how it is viewed and responded to. Each of the words protest, demonstration, revolt, uprising, rebellion, and riot can be used characterize a situation in which a large number of people have assembled in public in defiance of the authorities because the normal channels through which those grievances can be redressed are deemed to be ineffective. But which label is used is important in creating general public perceptions.
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How the US is exporting bad food and eating habits around the world

In his last episode of the season of his show Patriot Act, Hasan Minhaj looks at how the US, through the World Trade Organization, bullies other countries to force them to open their markets to unhealthy foods exported by the US so that the problems associated with such foods that we are so familiar with in the US, like diabetes, are now increasing globally.

At the end of the show, he spends a few minutes giving advice on how to deal with all the problems that his show raises and he recommends that each person focus on just a few things to act and be activists on, so as to avoid being overwhelmed into a state of inaction on everything.

Bogus productivity cost estimates

My attention was drawn to this article that said a manufacturer was marketing to businesses a toilet that was tilted. The idea was to make sitting on it uncomfortable in order to discourage workers from using their toilet breaks to relax and avoid quickly going back to work.

While this was yet another example of the extremes some companies will go to to squeeze more work out of their employees, what grabbed my attention was this part: “Well, apparently going to the toilet is just not productive. In its advertising, StandardToilet estimates that £4bn is lost yearly answering Mother Nature’s call.”

One often sees these estimates about the losses due to some factor (say due to being stuck in traffic or power outages, and so on) but they rarely specify how they arrived at the cost. One method is to take the time that was lost and multiply by the number of workers and the wages per unit time. But how realistic is that as a true estimate of loss? Surely the employee who lounges for a few extra minutes on the toilet will have to still do their work when they get back? Isn’t what we are seeing just a time-shifting of the costs, rather than an actual loss?

It may be that the main purpose of such estimates is as a scare tactic to get employers to buy some product.