Cleveland police now under close scrutiny

In the case of the deaths of two black men Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in New York at the hands of police officers, we had grand juries fail to indict them and thus avoid having the cases go to trial. It is not for nothing that it is asserted that any competent prosecutor could, if they wished, indict a ham sandwich, so the lack of indictments, coupled with the extremely unusual situation in both cases in which the prosecutor allowed the officers to give unchallenged testimony in their defense suggests that the fix was in and the prosecutor was using the grand jury to avoid taking personal responsibility for the decision.
[Read more…]

St Louis police whining

The Daily Show continues its excellent coverage of the recent deaths of black people at the hands of the police and ridicules the absurd whining of the St. Louis County Police Association that the raised arms ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ stance of five Rams football players as they on the field before a game constitutes some grievous insult to them that requires the NFL to apologize and punish the players. To their credit, the Rams coach and management have refused to do so.
[Read more…]

If god is inscrutable, how do they know what god wants?

The Vatican actually has an observatory and actual astronomers working in it. The observatory apparently came about because of the church’s deep interest in creating accurate calendars since the fixing of some holy days such as Easter depend upon the positions of stars and planets. Maybe they also secretly hoped that they might get a glimpse of god as he wandered around in the sky.
[Read more…]

The Satanists again rise to the occasion

Whenever religious people in the US claim some privilege for themselves, unbelievers like us warn them that they would not like it if the tables were turned and minority religions take advantage of those same privileges. It turns out that our friends at the Satanic Temple (the ones who proposed putting up a Satanic statue on the Oklahoma state capital grounds) are the ones taking the lead on this, taking steps to advance their religion using the same legal arguments that Christians have used in achieving their recent victories.
[Read more…]

How seriously should internet threats be taken?

It is not uncommon for people to take advantage of the immediacy of the internet to issue threats to others, often anonymously but sometimes not. Prominent people routinely receive threats from the general public and this requires a judgment as to when to take them seriously and how best to respond. While vague threats from an anonymous person are troubling enough, concerns tend to rise when the threat comes from a known person who is in a position to actually carry out the action and has a motive for doing so. But what can one do in such a situation?
[Read more…]

Deteriorating race relations in the US

Today saw another grand jury, this time in New York, fail to indict a white police officer Daniel Pantaleo in the July 17 death of Eric Garner, a 43-year old black man, a father of six, who had been stopped for peddling loose cigarettes. The police put him in a chokehold, a practice that is actually prohibited by the New York City and many other police departments, and he died despite his cries that he could not breathe. So a man died for the trivial offense of selling cigarettes.
[Read more…]

Snowden wins Swedish Human Rights award

The famed whistleblower continues to garner international praise even as the US government continues to claim that he is a traitor who must be punished.

Whistleblower Edward Snowden received several standing ovations in the Swedish parliament after being given the Right Livelihood award for his revelations of the scale of state surveillance.

Snowden, who is in exile in Russia, addressed the parliament by video from Moscow. In a symbolic gesture, his family and supporters said no one picked up the award on his behalf in the hope that one day he might be free to travel to Sweden to receive it in person.

His father, Lon, who was in the chamber for what was an emotional ceremony, said: “I am thankful for the support of the Right Livelihood award and the Swedish parliament. The award will remain here in expectation that some time – sooner or later – he will come to Stockholm to accept the award.”
…

The awards jury, in its citation, said Snowden was being honoured “for his courage and skill in revealing the unprecedented extent of state surveillance violating basic democratic processes and constitutional rights”.

We love motherhood. We just don’t like the inconvenience.

ProPublica has a review of a case that is being heard by the US Supreme Court today in which a woman driver for UPS was forced to take seven months unpaid leave, losing her health benefits in the process, because she requested that she not be asked to lift weights greater than 20 lbs during her pregnancy, as advised by her doctor, even though her job description requires her to be able to lift 70 lbs. However her normal duties rarely required her to do so and a colleague had said that he was willing to step in when necessary.
[Read more…]

Review: Doc Martin

A colleague recommended this British TV series to me a long time ago but I only got around to watching it over the past long weekend and I was immediately hooked, ending up watching the better part of the first two seasons, about 12 episodes in all. I plan to watch the remaining ones in the days to come. The series began in 2004 and there have been a total of 46 episodes spread over six seasons and the coming season is supposed to be the last one.
[Read more…]