Jeremy Corbyn won a landslide victory in the election for Labour Party leader, defeating his opponent Owen Smith by a margin of 61.8% to 38.2%. This leadership contest was because of yet another effort by the Blairite neoliberal elements in the party that dominate its parliamentary membership to regain control. They passed a no-confidence motion against Corbyn following the Brexit vote.
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It is becoming increasingly clear that for a person who likes to boast so much about his wealth, Donald Trump is really cheap. He stiffs people to whom he owes money and uses his so-called charitable foundations to help himself, all the while boasting that he is a philanthropist but refusing to release his tax returns that would provide proof of his generosity.
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People who attempt suicide are clearly having a very difficult time in their lives. The practice of extended solitary confinement has been known to create deep psychological trauma in prisoners. So how can it make sense to punish someone with solitary confinement when they try to commit suicide?
And yet Cory Doctorow tells us that this is what has happened to Chelsea Manning. Is the US military so determined to destroy her that they would go to such lengths?
The sudden recurrence of a spate of police shootings of black people has once again raised the question of the relationship between the police and the public. The slogan of many police departments in the US consists of variations on “To Serve and Protect”. So you would think that if you were being threatened or attacked by someone and the police were called, they would be obliged to come to your defense. But I learned recently that that is not the case. The duty of the police is to protect only the public at large and that may or may not include protecting you as an individual.
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The interview show where guests have extremely awkward encounters with host Zach Galifianakis had on Hillary Clinton.
Jordan Klepper visits a rally for Donald Trump and encounters people who believe the weirdest things. Many of the people shown are Ohioans, my peeps.
(This clip aired on September 20, 2016. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show outside the US, please see this earlier post. If the videos autoplay, please see here for a diagnosis and possible solutions.)
Usually what we see in the news are stories about how local communities are riddled with superstitions and oppose efforts to combat popular form of it. Hence I was intrigued by this story about the opposition to a woman who wanted to teach a course on astrology in the town of Canyonville, Oregon. It turns out that there is a local ordinance dating back to 1982 that “prohibits fortunetelling, astrology, phrenology, palmistry, clairvoyance, mesmerism and spiritualism”.
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With the release of the film Snowden, there have been renewed calls for president Obama to pardon him or at least provide some means so that he can return to the US. Currently he faces draconian charges under the Espionage Act that could enable the Obama administration to immediately take him out of circulation and prevent him from any contact with the outside world and deny him all due process rights. Snowden himself has made a moral case for a pardon, saying that people had benefited from his actions.
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There is truly weird fundamentalist pastor named Steven Anderson of the Faithful Word Baptist in Tempe, Arizona who has long been on an anti-gay crusade but also takes time to tell women that they should shut the hell up in church and be banned from voting and confined to their homes.
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There has been uproar over the shooting deaths of yet another two black men by police. One is the case of Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, Oklahoma who was gunned down after his car broke down on a road. The link has a video but I have not watched it.
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