Exactly as titled.I live in Boston.
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The New York Post goes after Hillary Clinton’s (completely awesome) performance yesterday with a blatantly sexist cover.
Yeah, because if there’s one thing New Yorkers don’t like, it’s Hillary Clinton. Oh, wait.
Mass shootings in the US are on the rise—and ordinary citizens with guns don’t stop them.
6 Things the NRA Didn’t Blame for Mass Shootings
Despite an outpouring of anger at a student’s gang-rape, observers say misogyny remains widespread in India where sex assaults are often dismissed as “teasing” and victims find themselves blamed for attacks.
The Sunday night assault on a bus in New Delhi, which left the 23-year-old victim fighting for her life, has triggered nationwide revulsion and protests.
But campaigners say India has been slow and complacent in its response to what they call a rising tide of sexual violence against women.
Official figures show rape cases alone more than doubled between 1990 and 2008, though part of the rise could be attributed to better reporting.
“Our streets reflect an extreme misogyny,” Brinda Karat, a Communist Party lawmaker, told AFP.
“Women are objectified, harassed or sexually assaulted all the time, but no one does anything about it.
“Why should it take such a horrendous crime to wake us up to the fact that crimes against women keep increasing while conviction rates remain very low?”
National crime records show that 228,650 of the total 256,329 violent crimes recorded last year targeted women, with conviction rates for rape cases at 26 percent.
Campaigners say such figures are a direct consequence of a failure to tackle a culture in which sexual harassment is often dismissed as little more than a joke.
(via bmoburns)
The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. “Events like this,” I said, “if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn’t have messed with me. I’ll go out in a blaze of glory.”
In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of “explaining” them. I commended the policy at the Sun-Times, where our editor said the paper would no longer feature school killings on Page 1. The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. Of course the interview was never used. They found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy. — Roger Ebert (via buttsexattiffanys)
(via snarkpopotamus)
Woops.
h/t Rocky Anderson
remember that time President Obama ordered the military to fire indiscriminate missile attacks on populated areas?
LTMC: Frankly it would be better if it was indiscriminate, given that Obama has ordered the military, quite discriminately, to “double tap” drone targets by shooting missiles at civilian rescue workers attempting to tend to the wounded from drone attacks in Pakistan. I suppose this could somehow be justified in a Machiavellian paradigm if we were killing lots of terrorists. But America currently kills 49 people with drones for every known terrorist in Pakistan. And that too, quite discriminately, it would seem.
The whole thing is made even more grand by the fact that Pakistani political leaders have asked Washington to stop doing this. But they haven’t, despite the fact that the Pakistani government publicly opposes the program, which the State Department’s top lawyer says may make U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan an act of war under international law.
Oh, I forgot to mention that a 2007 report by the Homeland Security Institute called the “double tap” a “favorite tactic of Hamas,” and the FBI considers it to be a tactic chiefly employed by terrorist organizations. I suppose it takes one to know one, in the War on Terror.
Quality post right here. For all the interest that drone strikes draw in the current political climate, rarely do I see such a concise critique of not only the bloodshed itself but the immorality of the specific tactic, and the double speak that comes out of Washington during the rare times that it is discussed in public.
Damn. Props to NixonPlumbingCo for the research. Click the link that he/she posted saying: “Obama has ordered the military, quite discriminately, to “double tap” drone targets by shooting missiles at civilian rescue workers attempting to tend to the wounded from drone attacks in Pakistan.”
Oh no, don’t thank me for the research, that was Letterstomycountry. I don’t do shout outs very often, but I feel it’s necessary to thank them for their great research and fantastic blog in general. If you’re not following them, you’re missing out.
(via politicalnighties)
Abdul Waheed, who lives in North Waziristan
When a Drone Flies Over Waziristan, Does It Make a Sound?
This report got a lot of U.S. press coverage. But one thing you didn’t see in the press coverage was any official U.S. government response. And that is a severe problem. The normal situation would be: someone raises a criticism, the government responds, and then as a citizen and news consumer you can attempt to weigh and judge the criticism and the response. But you couldn’t have done that in this case, because there was no official U.S. government response to the report.
However, a group of Americans just had a slightly different experience, because we went to Pakistan on a peace delegation against the drone strikes, and the Acting U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, Richard Hoagland, agreed to meet with us, and answered questions on the record about the drone strikes. So we experienced a deviation from the U.S. government’s official policy of no public dialogue on the drone strikes.
And here is a disturbing fact that we learned: the U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, who appears in general to be is a well-intentioned and informed person, is either ignorant or is in denial of basic facts about U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan which have been reported in mainstream press accounts.
[..]
In our second meeting with Ambassador Hoagland, we asked about the impact on the civilian population of Waziristan of having U.S. drones constantly flying over them, poised to strike. Leah Bolger, President of Veterans For Peace, asked: “Would you concede that the constant buzzing of drones overhead 24 hours a day, is a form of psychological warfare?”
(via jayaprada)
(via theeducatedfieldnegro)
NYPD officers stop-and-frisk black teen for being ‘a f*cking mutt’
New York Police Department officers berated a young African-American man named Alvin during a so-called stop-and-frisk in 2011, an audio recording obtained by The Nation revealed.
In the clip, the officers tell Alvin that he is being stopped because he kept looking at them with his hood up. As he was being searched, one officer threatened to arrest Alvin for “being a fucking mutt.” Another officer added: “Dude, I’m gonna break your fuckin’ arm, then I’m gonna punch you in the fuckin’ face.”
But the officers were apparently unable to find anything illegal on Alvin and he was not arrested.
“He grabbed me by my bookbag and he started pushing me down. So I’m going backwards like down the hill and he just kept pushing me, pushing me, it looked like he we was going to hit me. I felt like they was trying to make me resist or fight back,” Alvin told The Nation.
New York City’s controversial stop-and-frisk policy allows police officers to stop, question and search anyone who looks suspicious. The policy is aimed at finding illegal guns and drugs, but has face a slew of criticism from those who contend the aggressive searches target ethnic minorities.
The NYPD detained 684,330 people in 2011 under the city’s stop-and-frisk policy. At least nine out of 10 people stopped were innocent, and 87 percent of them were either black or Latino.
(via bmoburns)
From POGO’s Director of Public Policy Angela Canterbury
President Obama picked up the whistleblower protections Congress had left by the wayside, finally providing intelligence community workers with specific free speech rights and some protections against retaliation when they legally report waste, fraud, and abuse.
…
We have raised concerns about the possible infringement of rights and the chilling effect on would-be whistleblowers of the aggressive prosecutions and certain post-WikiLeaks policies. We have repeatedly urged that anti-leak efforts include authentic protections for those who make lawful disclosures of wrongdoing in the intelligence community. With the stroke of his pen today, President Obama did just that and took unparalleled action to protect whistleblowers, for which we are truly gratified and grateful.
While this directive is not a panacea, it begins to fill a large void in whistleblower protections and lays the framework for more government accountability where it is sorely needed.
(via abaldwin360)
Shame? We don't know the meaning of the word!
- Mitt Romney a few weeks ago: You know, in the past, when people pointed out that something was inaccurate, why, campaigns pulled the ad. They were embarrassed. Today, they just blast ahead.
- Mitt Romney today: We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.
![thedailywhat:
Lemonade Stand of the Day: Joshua Smith was determined to help Detroit ease its desperate financial burden. So he did what any industrious 9-year-old would do — he launched a successful lemonade stand.
Joshua’s new business, which he ran with his pals for five days last week, garnered more than $3,340 in donations, with “sales” pouring in from as far as Canada, South Africa, Uganda, and the U.K.
By Friday, he had received an award for outstanding achievement from the Detroit City Council, sold lemonade to members of the University of Michigan’s men’s basketball team, and been awarded a $2,000 college scholarship from the Rosa L. ParksScholarship Foundation.
“I’m really happy that a lot of people supported me,” Joshua said. “It was successful but tiring.”
Detroit will use the proceeds from Joshua’s stand to maintain a park and playground near his house.
[nydn]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8ch8g6NvX1qzpwi0o1_500.jpg)
Lemonade Stand of the Day: Joshua Smith was determined to help Detroit ease its desperate financial burden. So he did what any industrious 9-year-old would do — he launched a successful lemonade stand.
Joshua’s new business, which he ran with his pals for five days last week, garnered more than $3,340 in donations, with “sales” pouring in from as far as Canada, South Africa, Uganda, and the U.K.
By Friday, he had received an award for outstanding achievement from the Detroit City Council, sold lemonade to members of the University of Michigan’s men’s basketball team, and been awarded a $2,000 college scholarship from the Rosa L. ParksScholarship Foundation.
“I’m really happy that a lot of people supported me,” Joshua said. “It was successful but tiring.”
Detroit will use the proceeds from Joshua’s stand to maintain a park and playground near his house.
[nydn]
(via ethiopienne)
Dante Basco, best known for his roles as Rufio in Hook and Prince Zuko in Avatar: The Last Airbender the animated series, has joined the Leviathan team to provide voice talent for Project Lodus!
We’re incredibly excited to announce Dante’s involvement in the game. He not only brings his star power to our team, but extensive experience in voiceover work for both TV and videogames. Just check out his IMDB page! When we presented Project Lodus to him, he got really excited about the game, its potential, and his ability to get in on it early. We look forward to working with him soon!
If you want to find Dante on the web, his Twitter is @dantebasco and his Tumblr is rufiozuko.tumblr.com. Let him know how excited you are about Project Lodus!
RUUUUUFFFIIIIOOOOOO!
For all the gamers out there who have been asking me to do a voice for a game… I just joined the “Project Lodus” team… this game is going to be dope!!!
Check out out…
FDA approves pill to prevent HIV infections
The drug, Truvada, is the first medication intended to prevent HIV infections in people having sex with infected individuals.
(JEFF CHIU/AP)
IT JUST GOT REAL
What good news for the world.
(via bmoburns)
FDA approves pill to prevent HIV infections
The drug, Truvada, is the first medication intended to prevent HIV infections in people having sex with infected individuals.
(JEFF CHIU/AP)
