The NRA is fighting with itself and New York state

The National Rifle Association is one of the most powerful lobbies in the US, successfully thwarting many attempts at serious gun control laws. It started out as an organization dedicated to the responsible use of guns but over time was taken over by zealots who opposed any and all attempts at controlling the spread of even the most lethal weapons, even if the net result was that seriously disturbed people could get their hands on them.
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Saudi Arabia helps accused criminals flee the US

Saudi Arabia has one of the worst governments in the world, ruthless and oppressive. It is however a close ally of the US and because of the value it provides as a friendly source of oil and its willingness to act as a regional surrogate power against Iran and Yemen, the US turns a blind eye to even the most outrageous actions. The most obvious recent example is of course the way that the country and its de facto leader Mohammed bin Salman have suffered no consequences at all for the brutal murder of reporter Jamal Khashoggi.

But that is not all. The Saudi government brazenly allows its citizens in the US to escape the consequences of their crimes by paying their bail and spiriting them out of the country before they can be tried, even if their passports have been impounded. It is hard to imagine how this could only happen unless the US government has decided to look the other way. The right to justice for the victims of the crimes is simply ignored.
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A new documentary about Satanists and the Satanic Temple

I have written many times before about the Satanic Temple and their efforts to keep the public square secular and open to all beliefs and not have it become the domain of those who favor one religion over other religions or religion in general over non-religion. Their demand that their statue of Baphomet be allowed in any public space that allows religious symbols has proven to be a potent political and legal argument against religious exclusivity but their broader goals are to promote social justice and equality.
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Meanwhile, violence closer to home continues

Yesterday a 19-year old man armed with an assault rifle attacked a synagogue in California, killing one person and wounding three others. Murtaza Hussain writes that the person arrested for this act had written a manifesto admitting that he had also been responsible for a recent arson attack on a mosque and that he had been inspired to act by the man who carried out the recent mass attacks on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.
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Update on Sri Lanka

The situation in Sri Lanka is worse than I thought. I had initially thought that the simultaneous attacks on three churches and three luxury hotels that killed so many people might be a one-off plot by a small but tightly knit group of Islamist extremists. But subsequent events seem to suggest a much wider scope. Police and army raids on many locations around the country have unearthed caches of weapons and uniforms that suggest that this group is much larger and that the attacks may have been seen as just the first wave of a much larger plan.
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Why do people broadcast film and book spoilers? (No spoilers!)

Yesterday saw the release of the film Avengers: Endgame, the latest in the franchise of superhero films based on the Marvel comic books. These films have been roaring commercial successes. I myself am not a fan of the genre and have watched just a couple (The Avengers and Spiderman: Homecoming) to see what all the fuss was about. I had not planned on seeing the latest film.

But last evening I got an email from someone I do not know in which the subject line, all in upper case, revealed what is apparently a major plot twist in this film. The person who had sent out the spoiler had gone to great lengths to make sure that every single person who might in any way be connected to my university (including alumni) was made aware of the spoiler. The address line contained the addresses of about 250 email address lists (not individual addresses) that seemed to cover pretty much everyone. I think my address was in the list of physics faculty, staff, students, and emeriti. This person had gone to great lengths to obtain all these email address lists, presumably by hacking into the university server that has the database that contains all of them.
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Third federal judge strikes down anti-BDS laws

There have been moves to pass laws in various states that seek to punish people who support the BDS movement by denying them access to government contracts. Glenn Greenwald provides a map that shows the extent of those efforts.

Greenwald writes that a federal judge in Texas has become the third, after judges in Kansas and Arizona, to rule that such state laws punishing people for advocating boycotts of Israel are unconstitutional. The case was brought by five people who were denied contracts with schools and universities in Texas under the law H. B. 89 because they refused to sign contracts that contained anti-BDS clauses.
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College democrats urge boycott of DCCC

The DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) announced recently that they would boycott all vendors who worked with any candidate who challenged a Democratic party incumbent. This move at protecting incumbents, however bad they are like Dan Lipinksi, was seen as an attempt by the party leadership to protect their power that was being challenged by the new young progressives some of whom, like Ayanna Pressley and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, got into Congress by challenging long-term incumbents. Now the DCCC itself is being boycotted by some college Democratic groups who are angered by this move.

YOUNG DEMOCRATS AT 31 colleges across the country are boycotting the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee over its decision to cut off vendors working for primary challengers.
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The students also call out the DCCC for releasing the vendor rule alongside diversity standards it will hold vendors to. They cite Pressley, who said that Democrats “cannot credibly lay claim to prioritizing diversity & inclusion when institutions like the DCCC implement policies that threaten to silence new voices and historically marginalized communities.”

Alienating young people is not a good strategy for any party.

A poignant story

I have just finished reading How to Hide an Empire by historian Daniel Immerwahr. It is an excellent book about the complex relationship of the US with the concept of empire and the great lengths it has gone to hide the fact that it is an imperial power. In the early part (p. 56-58) he recounts a poignant story. He tells it so well that to summarize and paraphrase it would be to do a disservice to the story so I give it below.

He sets it up by saying that industrialized agricultural practices had greatly depleted the soil and up to the beginning of the 20th century, the main sources of fertilizer to revive soils were natural sources that were mined from rocky islands in the Pacific ocean that were made of out of hardened bird droppings called guano.
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