May 8, 2024

Why have student protests against Israel's war in Gaza gone global?

University campuses around the world have been the stage of a growing number of protests by students demanding academic institutions divest from companies supplying arms to Israel.

The protests, which first spread across college campuses in the US, have reached universities in the UK, the rest of Europe, as well as Lebanon and India.

The students say they are voicing their opposition to, what they describe as, their university’s “complicity” in Israel’s assault on Gaza that has killed more than 34,700 people. Israel said its military offensive was a response to the attack by Hamas militants on 7 October, when about 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage.

More than 2,500 demonstrators have been arrested in the US so far, with protests on college campuses attracting global media attention and reaction from Palestinians trapped in the besieged Gaza.

More protests are expected, with the Israeli assault on Rafah drawing international condemnation. Some students have begun hunger strikes in protest against their university’s “silence and inaction”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/08/have-student-protests-campus-israel-war-gaza-global

May 7, 2024

Missouri man says he killed wife because of her costly medical treatment

A 75-year-old Missouri man strangled his wife to death in a hospital bed while claiming that he could no longer afford to pay for her ongoing kidney dialysis treatment, according to authorities.

Ronnie Wiggs has been jailed on a count of second-degree murder in connection with a femicide that starkly demonstrates how US women in general face disproportionately high levels of violence at the hands of intimate partners and family caregivers.

According to a statement that prosecutors published on Saturday, Wiggs had accompanied his wife to a hospital in Independence, Missouri, so that she could receive a new medical port device allowing her to continue undergoing kidney dialysis.

Wiggs then fatally strangled her – covering her nose and mouth to keep from screaming – while she was in bed, prosecutors and local news outlets reported.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/07/missouri-man-wife-medical-treatment

But let's not talk about the elephant in the room, which is the exorbitant cost of US medical care.....

May 6, 2024

Want to show teachers appreciation? This top school gives them more freedom

When teachers at A.D. Henderson School, one of the top-performing schools in Florida, are asked how they succeed, one answer is universal: They have autonomy.

Nationally, most teachers report feeling stressed and overwhelmed at work, according to a Pew Research Center survey of teachers last fall. Waning job satisfaction over the last two decades has accompanied a decline in teachers’ sense of autonomy in the classroom, according to a recent study out of Brown University and the University of Albany.

But at this South Florida school, administrators allow their staff high levels of classroom creativity — and it works.

A public school of 636 kindergartners to eighth graders on the campus of Florida Atlantic University, Henderson scored in the top 1% to 3% in every subject and grade level on the state’s latest standardized tests, with the exception of sixth grade math, where students scored in the top 7%. In almost every subject, 60% or more of Henderson students score significantly above the state average.

https://apnews.com/article/teacher-appreciation-week-henderson-school-florida-103044d32bde4d4a756409c34b9a2c82

Unfortunately, this is a "selective" public school, and parents must apply for their child(ren) to attend. That means less state interference from DeSatan.

May 6, 2024

New York state sues group over abortion pill reversal claims

New York state's top prosecutor on Monday sued Heartbeat International, an anti-abortion group, and 11 crisis pregnancy centers, accusing them of misleading and potentially endangering women by claiming that they can provide a treatment reversing the effect of the abortion pill mifepristone.
In the lawsuit, opens new tab, New York Attorney General Letitia James asked a state court in Manhattan to block Heartbeat International and the centers, located across New York state and whose mission is to discourage women from having abortions, from advertising abortion pill reversal on their websites or anywhere else and award an unspecified amount of money damages.

"Abortions cannot be reversed," James said in a statement. "Any treatments that claim to do so are made without scientific evidence and could be unsafe."
Heartbeat International in a statement called the lawsuit "a clear attempt to censor speech, leaving women who regret their chemical abortions in the dark, and ultimately forcing them to complete an abortion they no longer want."

Mifepristone is the first part of a two-drug regimen used for medication abortion, which is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to terminate pregnancy in the first 10 weeks. Medication abortion accounted for more than 60% of U.S. abortions last year.
Proponents of medication abortion reversal say mifepristone's effects can be blocked by a high dose of the hormone progesterone. There are no controlled clinical trials showing the procedure is safe or effective, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says that it is not supported by science.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/new-york-state-sues-group-over-abortion-pill-reversal-claims-2024-05-06/

Heartbeat International et al are delusional.

May 5, 2024

Boeing's problems were as bad as you thought

Boeing went under the magnifying glass at not one, but two Senate hearings on April 17 examining allegations of deep-seated safety issues plaguing the once-revered plane manufacturer. Witnesses, including two whistleblowers, painted a disturbing picture of a company that cut corners, ignored problems, and threatened employees who spoke up.

The hearings were convened just four months after a door plug blew out of a Boeing-made Alaska Airlines plane mid-flight in January, sparking further concerns about a precipitous downslide in Boeing’s reputation for safety and quality in recent years. The first April 17 hearing, held by the Senate Commerce Committee, questioned aviation experts who put together an FAA report published in February. It concluded that the company had not made enough strides in improving its safety culture since the deadly 2018 and 2019 737 MAX crashes that killed 346 people.

“There exists a disconnect, for lack of a better word, between the words that are being said by Boeing management and what is being seen and experienced by employees across the company,” said witness Javier de Luis, an aerospace engineer and lecturer at MIT.

The FAA report conducted hundreds of interviews with Boeing employees across the country, and the authors found staff often didn’t know how to report concerns or who to report them to. “In one of the surveys that we saw, 95 percent of the people who responded to the survey did not know who the chief of safety was,” said Tracy Dillinger, manager for safety culture and human factors at NASA.

The second hearing put the spotlight on two whistleblowers — Boeing quality engineer Sam Salehpour and former Boeing engineer Ed Pierson — alongside aviation safety advocate and former FAA engineer Joe Jacobsen and Ohio State University aviation professor Shawn Pruchnicki. The whistleblowers slammed Boeing for allegedly knowing about defective parts and other serious assembly problems, and choosing to ignore or even conceal them. Such problems could slow down production and be expensive to fix — and internal and external critics say that Boeing’s priority was maximizing its profits.

https://www.vox.com/money/2024/4/17/24133324/boeing-senate-hearings-whistleblower-sam-salehpour-congress

Yeah, I thought so.

May 4, 2024

Domestic violence victims are often criminalized. A California bill wants to change that

In 1995, on the day before Kelly Savage-Rodriguez planned to flee her abusive husband, she ran some final errands while her children, ages three and one, napped. She hoped to take them on the early morning Amtrak from Porterville, California, to Los Angeles and stay with her brother, but when she returned, she said, she found that her husband had beaten and killed her three-year-old son, Justin. She called 911. The police arrested her along with her husband.

Savage-Rodriguez was jailed as she awaited trial, and said her lawyer did not have training in advocating for clients who suffered domestic violence. The judge used her history of abuse against her, she said, and said she was equally at fault for her son’s death under California’s “failure to protect” charges that can criminalize the non-abusive parent in a domestic violence case because she had not fled. She was later convicted and sentenced to life without parole, same as her abuser.

In the United States, survivors who are criminally charged often do not have their history of abuse taken into account during court to help judges and juries understand the circumstances, and they can face scrutiny or disbelief when they do share their stories.

“It didn’t matter what I did or didn’t do, it didn’t matter how much I was trying,” said Savage-Rodriguez, who was released in 2018 following a pardon and is now a coordinator for California Coalition for Women Prisoners. “None of it mattered. They wanted a conviction and that’s all that they were concerned with.”

Across the country, advocates are pushing for sentencing reforms that would provide a more trauma-informed approach to survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking. In the past five years, lawmakers in New York, Louisiana, Georgia, Virginia and Wyoming have passed legislation to vacate the sentences of survivors.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/may/04/california-domestic-violence-legislation

This should be federal law, not state.

May 3, 2024

Canada police charge three with murder of Sikh leader Nijjar, probe India link

Canadian police on Friday arrested and charged three Indian men with the murder of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar last year and said they were probing whether the men had ties to the Indian government.
Nijjar, 45, was shot dead in June outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, a Vancouver suburb with a large Sikh population. A few months later, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cited evidence of Indian government involvement, prompting a diplomatic crisis with New Delhi.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police named the three men as Karanpreet Singh, 28, Kamalpreet Singh, 22 and Karan Brar, 22.
"We're investigating their ties, if any, to the Indian government," Mandeep Mooker, an RCMP superintendent, told a televised news conference.
The Indian mission in Ottawa did not respond to requests for comment.
Nijjar was a Canadian citizen campaigning for the creation of Khalistan, an independent Sikh homeland carved out of India. The presence of Sikh separatist groups in Canada has long frustrated New Delhi, which had labeled Nijjar a "terrorist".

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canadian-police-have-made-arrests-case-killing-sikh-leader-nijjar-says-cbc-2024-05-03/

You can argue that Nijjar was a separatist, but I will argue that Modi is a Hindu nationalist and would-be dictator.

April 30, 2024

Why are US campuses facing an orgy of state repression in the 'land of the free'?

Cas Mudde

Across the world people have been shocked by social media footage of heavily armed law enforcement officers arresting peacefully protesting students and professors at university campuses around the United States. The so-called “land of the free and home of the brave” looks neither free nor brave – except for the brave protesters who continue to stand up to state and university repression.

Although government repression of student protests is not unique to either the US or this particular period, the current orgy of state repression is very much an illustration of the current crisis of liberal democracy as it is squeezed by both illiberalism and neoliberalism.

But let’s take a step back. Ever since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October, many university campuses have been on edge. As Israel’s retaliation in Gaza reached what the United Nations has called genocidal levels, student protests started to appear at some university campuses. Although there were troubling incidents of antisemitism – and Islamophobia – the protests, overall, are neither antisemitic nor violent. This notwithstanding, the far right has jumped on them to intensify its attack on universities.

The far right has portrayed universities as “hotbeds of terrorist sympathizers” and “wokeness” that threaten core “American values” like freedom of speech. In far-right propaganda, universities are the dystopian future of the whole country, where women, non-whites and LGBTQ+ people oppress “real Americans”, ie white, Christian conservatives. And their propaganda has paid off. When Donald Trump launched his campaign, the public image of universities in the US was already not in great shape.

In 2015, a modest majority of 57% of Americans had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education. Since then, it has plummeted to just 36% in 2023. Although the biggest drop was among Republicans (-37%), confidence also decreased among independents (-16%) and Democrats (-9%). This is not that surprising, given how far-right talking points are feverishly amplified by “liberal” media like the Atlantic and the New York Times.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/30/us-campus-peace-protests-overreaction-gaza

Echoes of the Nixon years....and even before....

April 27, 2024

Cop Slammed Emory Professor's Head Into Concrete, Then Charged Her With Battery

An economics professor at Emory University whose needlessly violent arrest was captured by a news crew on Thursday at the school’s pro-Palestine protest, is now facing charges for battery against a police officer.

In a disturbing video captured by CNN, Professor Caroline Fohlin approached several police officers as they wrestled one protester to the ground, forcefully shoving their head into the concrete sidewalk. “Oh my God, what are you doing?” Fohlin asked, horrified.

Fohlin yelled at the officers to “get away” from the student. She leaned down closer to the student, but did not touch them, or any of the officers.

One cop raced up to her, grabbing her wrists. “Get on the fucking ground,” he yelled, pulling her away from the student. “Get on the ground, I said,” he repeated.

Fohlin opened her mouth to protest as the officer kept his grip locked on her wrist. “Do not, I’m a ...” she said, before the cop violently flipped her onto the ground, smashing her head into the sidewalk.

“Ow my head, you just hit my head on the concrete!” Fohlin yelled. Another cop joined to help press her into the ground. The two pinned her hands behind her back, as they proceeded to secure her hands with zip ties.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/cop-slammed-emory-professor-caroline-fohlins-head-into-concrete-then-charged-her-with-battery

Echoes of 1968....deja vu all over again

April 26, 2024

Utah 'Karen' in Viral Video Is Charged With Sexual Battery

A woman in Utah who was dubbed a “Karen” after video of her losing it over a young woman wearing a miniskirt went viral has been charged with sexual battery in connection with the incident.

Ida Ann Lorenzo, 48, allegedly pulled down the woman’s mini skirt as she complained that it was too small and threatened to call child protective services.

In a video with over 3 million views on TikTok, Lorenzo was filmed defending her decision to pull down the skirt, moments after the encounter in the lobby of the Sakura Japanese Steakhouse in St. George, Utah.

“I happen to work for the state and if I have to watch your ass cheeks hanging out again, I will call CPS,” Lorenzo said. According to the caption of the TikTok, the veritable “Karen” “aggressively” grabbed the skirt before yanking it down, and commented that the girl was probably underage.

Several young women jumped to their friend’s defense. “She’s over 18,” one said, and the woman filming confirmed that she was 19 years old.

“You do not get to touch her,” said another one of the women. “Really?” Lorenzo asks incredulously. Lorenzo then whispered something inaudible, before saying, “No, it’s not appropriate.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/utah-karen-who-pulled-down-teens-skirt-charged-with-sexual-battery

Damn Karens.