When I first read news headlines that a yacht belonging to secretary of education Betsy DeVos had been deliberately unmoored by someone and had drifted away causing thousands of dollars in damage, I did not bother to go into the story because I simply do not care about the lifestyles of the wealthy, though the idea that this was a small act of vigilante retaliation against rapacious elites was noteworthy.
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Classical liberalism, as articulated by one of its key proponents John Stuart Mill, was based on general principles that prioritized the freedom of the individual over state and social control. But modern-day liberalism seems to be based more on a set of attitudes on certain issues rather than grounded in deeper principles. This is especially true in the US. Liberals in the US are in general supportive of LGBTQ and women’s rights, affirmative action, and so on but they tend to not be consistent on their attitude towards the national security state and wars and human rights in general.
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I have not been following this story closely but Samantha Bee gives some background on what it is all about.
Early indications from the elections held in Pakistan yesterday indicate that Imran Khan’s party Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI, translated as Movement for Justice) will win a majority and he will be the next prime minister. He has claimed victory but it looks like the outgoing ruling party that has been in power for so long is not going quietly, promising to fight the result, and there could be a continuation of the violence that has plagued this election.
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The American ‘justice system’ is a scandal, laying a heavy hand on the poor and otherwise marginalized communities while allowing the big criminals who create misery on a massive scale to walk free. I have written many times about one of the abuses and that is the bail system that is used punitively, setting bail amounts that defendants clearly cannot afford. This harshly and adversely affects poor people who often languish in jail for long times for even minor offenses even before their trials, simply because they cannot come up with the money to make bail. Spending time in jail, apart from being a traumatic experience for most people, often leads to a whole sequence of other adverse effects such as losing jobs, being evicted from one’s home, and losing custody of their children. All because they do not have a few hundred dollars in cash readily available.
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I had not realized that London’s Heathrow airport was a fully privately owned, profit-seeking enterprise. This video explains what it costs to run the airport, how the company covers the costs, and how the need to make a profit changes the way that the airport is structured and the kinds of flights and destinations that are available, compared to airports that are run by governments.
The US has not privatized its major airports and efforts to do so with smaller ones have not been a success.
The August 2018 issue of Harper’s Magazine has a list of behaviors by black people that have resulted in them being questioned, detained, or arrested by police, usually because of calls made by white people. Many of them I was already aware of but some are new to me.
Sitting in a parked car
Sitting in a chair in a public skyway while waiting to pick up children from school
Napping on a sofa in the common room of a dormitory
Not waving at a white neighbor while staying at an Airbnb
Not giving up a table to a white diner
Not purchasing coffee in a Starbucks
Purchasing breakfast in a Burger King
Barbecuing on a charcoal grill in a public park
Listening to Notorious B.I.G. at home in the afternoon
Using a curse word at a Waffle House
Attempting to use a guest pass at an LA Fitness
Attempting to use a membership pass at an LA Fitness
Golfing at a leisurely pace
Voluntarily picking up litter on the side of the road
Campaigning for a seat on a school board
Canvassing for a candidate for the House of Representatives
Taking a photograph of a house
Purchasing Mentos at a gas station
Asking an employee for sliced cheese at a CVS
Asking a police officer about the arrest of a black person in the parking lot of a CVS
This list is just since 2014. One suspects that this list is going to grow quite a bit more.
As the outrage among Democrats grows about alleged Russian involvement in US elections, Lyle Jeremy Rubin feels that it is time to get a little perspective on the issue.
I was trained at NSA headquarters as a signals intelligence officer in the Marines. This was about a decade ago, and I was by no means an area specialist. That said, I was privy to relevant briefs. At the time I learned that U.S. cyber operations in Russia, across Russia’s periphery, and around the world already dwarfed Russian operations in size, capability, and frequency. It wasn’t even close, and the expectation was that the gap was about to grow a whole lot wider.
This should hardly come as a surprise. Just compare the defense budgets of the United States and Russia. The president recently signed a gargantuan $700 billion gift to the Pentagon, with marginal dissent from either party or their affiliated media outlets. The budget increase alone ($61 billion) exceeds Russia’s entire annual expenditure ($46). The U.S. military budget now equals more than the combined budgets of China, Russia, Britain, Japan, Saudi Arabia, India, and France. As Vice concluded, “it’s 14 times larger than the Kremlin’s budget.”
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Yesterday I posted a clip from Sacha Baron Cohen’s new show that showed Jason Spencer, a Republican Georgia state legislator, speaking and behaving vilely and ridiculously in a manner that has to be seen to be believed. He now faces calls to resign from his own party members in the legislature.
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The effort posed by progressives to get the Democratic party to adopt more progressive polices has clearly alarmed the so-called moderates within the party who are now trying to launch a counter-offensive to retain control. They have organized a ‘summit’ to discuss how best to do so, and in the process they are revealing why they should be rejected.
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