#civil examination 2019

[bloodsakkar]

academic papers about black sails

Jones, Clint, "Black Sails as Philosophy: Pirates and Political Discourse"

Myrvang, Olav Kjetil, "Because I don’t want to be a pirate" - A Contextual Study of the Representation of Long John Silver in Treasure Island and Black Sails

Carcas, Leyres, “HETEROBAITING”: BLACK SAILS AND THE SUBVERSION OF QUEERBAITING TROPES

Schneider, Elisabeth, "RECLAIMING QUEERBAITING: A CALL TO ACTION"

Friedrich, Kathrin, "‘Evil Heroes’ in Black Sails – A Case Study: How Character Complexity and Nonverbal Actions Invite Positive Viewer Responses"

Razman, D. C. (2020) “Black Sails, Rainbow Flag: Examining Queer Representations in Film and Television” [click for pdf]

Srividhya Swaminathan, (2017) “The New Cinematic Piracy: Crossbones and Black Sails” (in ‘The Cinematic Eighteen Century: History, Culture, and Adaptation’ (2017, 1st ed.) edited by Srividhya Swaminathan and Steven W. Thomas)

Dirksen, S.J. (2019) “Constructing the Identity of the Popular Pirate: The Outlaw, Marginal Identities, and Utopia in Black Sails (2014-2017) and Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (2013)”

Min-Chi Chen (2024) “Weaponizing Monstrosity: Starz’s Black Sails and the Power of Monstrous Narrative” (in Chapter 2 of ‘Monsters and Monstrosity in Media: Reflections on Vulnerability’, 23, 2024, edited by Yeojin Kim, Shane Carreon)

Jessica Walker “Civilization’s Monsters: The Doomed Queer Anti-Imperialism of Black Sails” (in ‘Pirates in History and Popular Culture’ (2018) edited by Antonio Sanna) [entire book in pdf]

“From Dogs to Kings” https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1332062/FULLTEXT01.pdf

[digitalconcept-fl]

Thursday, October 26th, 2023

A woman has been found guilty of handing over a three-year-old British girl for female genital mutilation (FGM) during a trip to Kenya, in the first conviction of its kind.

After a trial at the Old Bailey, Amina Noor, 39, was convicted of assisting a Kenyan woman to carry out the procedure in 2006. The conviction, which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years, is the first for assisting in such harm under the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003.

The only other successful prosecution under the act was in 2019 when a Ugandan woman from Walthamstow, east London, was jailed for 11 years for cutting a three-year-old girl.

Campaigners said the verdict showed that the introduction in 2015 of mandatory reporting of suspected FGM was working.

The senior crown prosecutor Patricia Strobino hailed Noor’s conviction, saying: “This kind of case will hopefully encourage potential victims and survivors of FGM to come forward, safe in the knowledge that they are supported, believed and also are able to speak their truth about what’s actually happened to them.

“It will also send a clear message to those prospective defendants or people that want to maintain this practice that it doesn’t matter whether they assist or practise or maintain this practice within the UK or overseas, they are likely to be prosecuted.”

Strobino added: “Part of the challenge of this type of offence is the fact that these types of offences occur in secrecy. Within specific communities within the UK, although these offences and practices are prevalent, it is often very difficult to get individuals to come forward to explain the circumstances of what’s happened to them because there was a fear that they may be excluded or pushed away or shunned, isolated from their community.”

Previously, the prosecutor Deanna Heer KC said Noor travelled to Kenya with the girl in 2006 and while there took her to a private house where the child was subjected to FGM.

The crime only came to light years later when the girl was 16 and confided in her English teacher at school.

When spoken to, the defendant said she thought the procedure was just an injection and that afterwards the girl was “happy and able to run around and play”. But when examined in 2019, it emerged that the girl’s clitoris had been removed.

Noor appeared “shocked and upset” and said that was not what she had thought was going to happen, Heer said. According to an initial account, Noor described going with another woman to a “clinic” where the girl was called into a room for a procedure.

The defendant said she was invited in but refused because she was “scared and worried”. Afterwards, the girl appeared quiet and cried the whole night and complained of pain, according to the account.

In a later police interview under caution, Noor denied that anyone had made threats against her before FGM was done to the girl.

Heer said: “She was asked whether, when she arrived at the clinic or even before then, she felt she did not want it to happen. She said: ‘Yeah I thought about it but then, you know, got it done.’”

Jurors were told the defendant was born in Somalia and moved to Kenya at the age of eight during the civil war in Somalia. She was 16 when she came to the UK and was later granted British citizenship.

The defendant described what had been done to the girl as “Sunnah”, meaning “tradition” or “way” in Arabic, and said it was a practice that had gone on for cultural reasons for many years.

Giving evidence in her trial, Noor, from Harrow, in north-west London, said she was threatened with being “cursed” and “disowned” within her community if she did not take part. She told jurors that the threat gave her “pain”, adding: “That was a pressure I had no power to do anything about.”

The alleged victim, who is now 21, cannot be identified for legal reasons.

Nimco Ali, an FGM survivor who founded the Five Foundation, a global partnership to end the cutting of girls, welcomed the verdict.

She said: “It is incredible that the mandatory reporting by teachers and healthcare professionals – that we have fought hard for – is starting to pay off. A girl was obviously failed. She was let down by the system but she got some form of justice today thanks to the policies that we now have in place.”

She added: “We have to address FGM in the UK and everywhere by working together to address the root causes of the issue.”

Research in 2014 estimated that 137,000 women and girls are affected by FGM in England and Wales. Ali said this estimate needed updating urgently.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 30, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAY 01, 2024

This morning, Time magazine published a cover story by Eric Cortellessa about what Trump is planning for a second term. Based on two interviews with Trump and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisors, the story lays out Trump’s conviction that he was “too nice” in his first term and that he would not make such a mistake again. 

Cortellessa writes that Trump intends to establish “an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world.” 

He plans to use the military to round up, put in camps, and deport more than 11 million people. He is willing to permit Republican-dominated states to monitor pregnancies and prosecute people who violate abortion bans. He will shape the laws by refusing to release funds appropriated by Congress (as he did in 2019 to try to get Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to smear Hunter Biden). He would like to bring the Department of Justice under his own control, pardoning those convicted of attacking the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and ending the U.S. system of an independent judiciary. In a second Trump presidency, the U.S. might not come to the aid of a European or Asian ally that Trump thinks isn’t paying enough for its own defense. Trump would, Cortelessa wrote, “gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.”

To that list, former political director of the AFL-CIO Michael Podhorzer added on social media that if Trump wins, “he could replace [Supreme Court justices Clarence] Thomas, [Samuel] Alito, and 40+ federal judges over 75 with young zealots.” 

“I ask him, Don’t you see why many Americans see such talk of dictatorship as contrary to our most cherished principles?” Cortellessa wrote. No, Trump said. “‘I think a lot of people like it.” 

Time included the full transcripts and a piece fact-checking Trump’s assertions. The transcripts reflect the former president’s scattershot language that makes little logical sense but conveys impressions by repeating key phrases and advancing a narrative of grievance. The fact-checking reveals that narrative is based largely on fantasy. 

Trump’s own words prove the truth of what careful observers have been saying about his plans based on their examination of MAGA Republicans’ speeches, interviews, Project 2025, and so on, often to find themselves accused of a liberal bias that makes them exaggerate the dangers of a second Trump presidency. 

The idea that truthful reporting based on verifiable evidence is a plot by “liberal media” to undermine conservative values had its start in 1951, when William F. Buckley Jr., fresh out of Yale, published God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of “Academic Freedom.” Fervently opposed to the bipartisan liberal consensus that the federal government should regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, protect civil rights, and promote infrastructure, Buckley was incensed that voters continued to support such a system. He rejected the “superstition” that fact-based public debate would enable people to choose the best option from a wide range of ideas—a tradition based in the Enlightenment—because such debate had encouraged voters to choose the liberal consensus, which he considered socialism. Instead, he called for universities to exclude “bad” ideas like the Keynesian economics on which the liberal consensus was based, and instead promote Christianity and free enterprise.

Buckley soon began to publish his own magazine, the National Review, in which he promised to tell the “violated businessman’s side of the story,” but it was a confidential memorandum written in 1971 by lawyer Lewis M. Powell Jr. for a friend who chaired the education committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that insisted the media had a liberal bias that must be balanced with a business perspective. 

Warning that “the American economic system is under broad attack,” Powell worried not about “the Communists, New Leftists and other revolutionaries who would destroy the entire system.” They were, he wrote, a small minority. What he worried about were those coming from “perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians.” 

Businessmen must “confront this problem as a primary responsibility of corporate management,” he wrote, launching a unified effort to defend American enterprise. Among the many plans Powell suggested for defending corporate America was keeping the media “under constant surveillance” to complain about “criticism of the enterprise system” and demand equal time. 

President Richard Nixon appointed Powell to the Supreme Court, and when Nixon was forced to resign for his participation in the scheme to cover up the attempt to bug the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate Hotel before the 1972 election, he claimed he had to leave not because he had committed a crime, but because the “liberal” media had made it impossible for him to do his job. Six years later, Ronald Reagan, who was an early supporter of Buckley’s National Review, claimed the “liberal media” was biased against him when reporters accurately called out his exaggerations and misinformation during his 1980 campaign. 

In 1987, Reagan’s appointees to the Federal Communications Commission abandoned the Fairness Doctrine that required media with a public license to present information honestly and fairly. Within a year, talk radio had gone national, with hosts like Rush Limbaugh electrifying listeners with his attacks on “liberals” and his warning that they were forcing “socialism” on the United States. 

By 1996, when Australian-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch started the Fox News Channel (FNC), followers had come to believe that the news that came from a mainstream reporter was likely left-wing propaganda. FNC promised to restore fairness and balance to American political news. At the same time, the complaints of increasingly radicalized Republicans about the “liberal media” pushed mainstream media to wander from fact-based reality to give more and more time to the right-wing narrative. By 2018, “bothsidesing” had entered our vocabulary to mean “the media or public figures giving credence to the other side of a cause, action, or idea to seem fair or only for the sake of argument when the credibility of that side may be unmerited.”

In 2023, FNC had to pay almost $800 million to settle defamation claims made by Dominion Voting Systems after FNC hosts pushed the lie that Dominion machines had changed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, and it has since tried to retreat from the more egregious parts of its false narrative. 

News broke yesterday that Hunter Biden’s lawyer had threatened to sue FNC for “conspiracy and subsequent actions to defame Mr. Biden and paint him in a false light, the unlicensed commercial exploitation of his image, name, and likeness, and the unlawful publication of hacked intimate images of him.” Today, FNC quietly took down from its streaming service its six-part “mock trial” of Hunter Biden, as well as a video promoting the series. 

Also today, Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over Trump’s criminal trial for election fraud, found Trump in contempt of court for attacking witnesses and jurors. Merchan also fined Trump $1,000 per offense, required him to take down the nine social media posts at the heart of the decision, and warned him that future violations could bring jail time. This afternoon, Trump’s team deleted the social media posts. 

For the first time in history, a former U.S. president has been found in contempt of court. We know who he is, and today, Trump himself validated the truth of what observers who deal in facts have been saying about what a second Trump term would mean for the United States.

Reacting to the Time magazine piece, James Singer, the spokesperson for the Biden-Harris campaign, released a statement saying: “Not since the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault at home as they are today—because of Donald Trump. Trump is willing to throw away the very idea of America to put himself in power…. Trump is a danger to the Constitution and a threat to democracy.” 

Tomorrow, May 1, is “Law Day,” established in 1958 by Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower as a national recognition of the importance of the rule of law. In proclaiming the holiday today, Biden said: “America can and should be a Nation that defends democracy, protects our rights and freedoms, and pioneers a future of possibilities for all Americans. History and common sense show us that this can only come to pass in a democracy, and we must be its keepers.” 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Matt Shuham at HuffPost:

Donald Trump has no greater enemy than the United States’ federal bureaucracy — what he calls the “deep state.” And he has a plan to bend it to his will if he’s elected in November. The plan, to create something called “Schedule F,” would make tens of thousands of civil servants easier to fire, fundamentally changing the nature of the federal government — and, some worry, paving the way for authoritarianism.

Schedule F is a new category, or schedule, of federal workers who are exempt from codified job protections, like being hired and fired based on merit and having the ability to appeal disciplinary action. The majority of federal civil service employees, from climate scientists to bank examiners to IT specialists, are covered by these protections; some positions, like postal workers and intelligence officers, are currently exempt. That system ensures that experience and skill, rather than political favoritism or personal connections, guide hiring and firing decisions within the federal government. But conservatives have long complained that the president should exercise more control over the federal bureaucracy, and Trump in particular has said it needs to be “brought to heel.” Trump created Schedule F in an October 2020 executive order. Under that order, federal workers involved in “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making and policy-advocating positions” — a vague description that would include at least tens of thousands of people — would be stripped of their civil service protections and reclassified as “at-will” appointees, meaning they could be hired or fired for any reason, or none at all.

Because the order came so late in Trump’s presidency, only a handful of agencies created lists of specific jobs that would be eligible for conversion to Schedule F. And President Joe Biden reversed the order before any jobs could actually be converted. But Trump has explicitly said he’ll pursue Schedule F again if he’s elected. In a campaign video last year, Trump referred to Schedule F as an effort to “remove rogue bureaucrats.” “I will wield that power very aggressively,” he said.

Federal employees, political scientists, union leaders and watchdog groups told HuffPost that Schedule F could lead to a “chilling” effect. At-will employment, they said, would make it harder for government workers to raise concerns that go against their bosses’ political loyalties. That could lead to a degradation of public services like disaster relief, financial regulation and the administration of government benefits. “You can see where it can grind work to a halt, because even people who are trying to do the right thing [would] be afraid that if they do something wrong, they’ll be out of a job,” said Joe Spielberger, a policy counsel at the Project on Government Oversight who has raised alarms over how the implementation of Schedule F would harm key welfare programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Schedule F would be the “fundamental element of an authoritarian agenda,” he said, allowing Trump to take control of the vast federal bureaucracy and reverse generations of reforms.

Donald Moynihan, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University, signed on to an open letter in April arguing Schedule F would open the door to “politicization and patronage throughout the federal workforce.” He told HuffPost, “This feels like the biggest problem that the fewest people understand about a potential second Trump administration.”

[...]

The ‘Lightbulb Moment’

The push for Schedule F started with what one Trump staffer called a “lightbulb moment.” In 2019, James Sherk, a top White House adviser on civil service and labor policy, was frustrated by reports of federal workers pushing back against the Trump policy agenda. He started reading through existing U.S. law on federal labor rights, and realized that the language about exceptions from civil service protections could actually be interpreted quite broadly. Such a change in interpretation would be a break from decades of precedent. Presidents only bring around 4,000 political appointees with them at the start of a new term, and many additionally require Senate confirmation. These appointees are generally classified as “excepted” — they aren’t required to complete standardized competitive civil service exams, but they also aren’t afforded standard civil service protections. (The “excepted” portion of the federal workforce includes more than a million federal workers under various schedules, though the vast majority of them come from the United States Postal Service, the military, and Department of Veterans affairs.)

But Sherk argued that the “excepted” service should grow much larger, to include “the most important” federal workers — “the people who are telling all the rest of the bureaucracy what to do,” he said in a 2022 interview. In his view, the change would make the federal government more accountable to the White House, and therefore, the American people. “Nothing in [federal law] says that you can only take away the civil service protections of political appointees,” Sherk said. Sherk estimated that Schedule F would have applied to 1% to 3% of the federal workforce, or about 50,000 workers, had Biden not unwound it. But the number actually affected if Trump pursues Schedule F again could be much larger. A Government Accountability Office review of the few agencies that did start making Schedule F conversion lists found that agencies thought anywhere from 2% to 68% of their employees were eligible to be “rescheduled.”

[...]

Project 2025, the 900-page right-wing agenda-in-waiting for Trump cooked up by the Heritage Foundation and dozens of other arch-conservative organizations, refers to plans to reintroduce Schedule F in several sections. And one member of the project’s three-person leadership team is Paul Dans, the former chief of staff at the OPM during the Trump administration. The Project 2025 team has signaled that potential staffers in a second Trump White House would need to be on board: A questionnaire for potential new hires in a Trump administration asks applicants if they agree that “the President should be able to advance his/her agenda through the bureaucracy without hinderance from unelected federal officials.”

HuffPost has a story on how Project 2025 and Schedule F could chill dissent against a potential 2nd Trump.

This is why Americans should vote Joe Biden to stop Project 2025 from taking effect!

Read the full article at HuffPost.

[justforbooks]

Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright, essayist and screenwriter in the 20th-century American theater. Among his most popular plays are All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), and A View from the Bridge (1955). He wrote several screenplays, including The Misfits (1961). The drama Death of a Salesman is considered one of the best American plays of the 20th century.

Miller was often in the public eye, particularly during the late 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s. During this time, he received a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and married Marilyn Monroe. In 1980, he received the St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates. He received the Praemium Imperiale prize in 2001, the Prince of Asturias Award in 2002, and the Jerusalem Prize in 2003, and the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize in 1999.

Miller's writing career spanned over seven decades, and at the time of his death, he was considered one of the 20th century's greatest dramatists. After his death, many respected actors, directors, and producers paid tribute to him, some calling him the last great practitioner of the American stage, and Broadway theatres darkened their lights in a show of respect. Miller's alma mater, the University of Michigan, opened the Arthur Miller Theatre in March 2007. Per his express wish, it is the only theater in the world that bears his name.

Miller's letters, notes, drafts and other papers are housed at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Miller is also a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame. He was inducted in 1979. In 1993, he received the Four Freedoms Award for Freedom of Speech. In 2017, his daughter, Rebecca Miller, a writer and filmmaker, completed a documentary about her father's life, Arthur Miller: Writer. Minor planet 3769 Arthurmiller is named after him. In the 2022 Netflix film Blonde, Miller was portrayed by Adrien Brody.

Miller donated thirteen boxes of his earliest manuscripts to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin in 1961 and 1962. This collection included the original handwritten notebooks and early typed drafts for Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, All My Sons, and other works. In January, 2018, the Ransom Center announced the acquisition of the remainder of the Miller archive, totaling over 200 boxes. The full archive opened in November, 2019.

Christopher Bigsby wrote Arthur Miller: The Definitive Biography based on boxes of papers Miller made available to him before his death in 2005. The book was published in November 2008, and is reported to reveal unpublished works in which Miller "bitterly attack[ed] the injustices of American racism long before it was taken up by the civil rights movement". In his book Trinity of Passion, author Alan M. Wald conjectures that Miller was "a member of a writer's unit of the Communist Party around 1946", using the pseudonym Matt Wayne, and editing a drama column in the magazine The New Masses.

In 1999, the writer Christopher Hitchens attacked Miller for comparing the Monica Lewinsky investigation to the Salem witch hunt. Miller had asserted a parallel between the examination of physical evidence on Lewinsky's dress and the examinations of women's bodies for signs of the "Devil's Marks" in Salem. Hitchens scathingly disputed the parallel. In his memoir, Hitch-22, Hitchens bitterly noted that Miller, despite his prominence as a left-wing intellectual, had failed to support author Salman Rushdie during the Iranian fatwa involving The Satanic Verses.

Works

Stage plays

No Villain (1936)

They Too Arise (1937, based on No Villain)

Honors at Dawn (1938, based on They Too Arise)

The Grass Still Grows (1938, based on They Too Arise)

The Great Disobedience (1938)

Listen My Children (1939, with Norman Rosten)

The Golden Years (1940)

The Half-Bridge (1943)

The Man Who Had All the Luck (1944)

All My Sons (1947)

Death of a Salesman (1949)

An Enemy of the People (1950, adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's play An Enemy of the People)

The Crucible (1953)

A View from the Bridge (1955)

A Memory of Two Mondays (1955)

After the Fall (1964)

Incident at Vichy (1964)

The Price (1968)

The Reason Why (1970)

Fame (one-act, 1970; revised for television 1978)

The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972)

Up from Paradise (1974)

The Archbishop's Ceiling (1977)

The American Clock (1980)

Playing for Time (television play, 1980)

Elegy for a Lady (short play, 1982, first part of Two Way Mirror)

Some Kind of Love Story (short play, 1982, second part of Two Way Mirror)

I Think About You a Great Deal (1986)

Playing for Time (stage version, 1985)

I Can't Remember Anything (1987, collected in Danger: Memory!)

Clara (1987, collected in Danger: Memory!)

The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991)

The Last Yankee (1993)

Broken Glass (1994)

Mr. Peters' Connections (1998)

Resurrection Blues (2002)

Finishing the Picture (2004)

Radio plays

The Pussycat and the Expert Plumber Who Was a Man (1940)

Joel Chandler Harris (1941)

The Battle of the Ovens (1942)

Thunder from the Mountains (1942)

I Was Married in Bataan (1942)

That They May Win (1943)

Listen for the Sound of Wings (1943)

Bernardine (1944)

I Love You (1944)

Grandpa and the Statue (1944)

The Philippines Never Surrendered (1944)

The Guardsman (1944, based on Ferenc Molnár's play)

The Story of Gus (1947)

Screenplays

The Hook (1947)

All My Sons (1948)

Let's Make Love (1960)

The Misfits (1961)

Death of a Salesman (1985)

Everybody Wins (1990)

The Crucible (1996)

Assorted fiction

Focus (novel, 1945)

"The Misfits" (short story, published in Esquire, October 1957)

I Don't Need You Anymore (short stories, 1967)

"Homely Girl: A Life" (short story, 1992, published in UK as "Plain Girl: A Life" 1995)

Presence: Stories (2007) (short stories include "The Bare Manuscript", "Beavers", "The Performance", and "Bulldog")

Non-fiction

Situation Normal (1944) is based on his experiences researching the war correspondence of Ernie Pyle.

In Russia (1969), the first of three books created with his photographer wife Inge Morath, offers Miller's impressions of Russia and Russian society.

In the Country (1977), with photographs by Morath and text by Miller, provides insight into how Miller spent his time in Roxbury, Connecticut, and profiles of his various neighbors.

Chinese Encounters (1979) is a travel journal with photographs by Morath. It depicts the Chinese society in the state of flux which followed the end of the Cultural Revolution. Miller discusses the hardships of many writers, professors, and artists during Mao Zedong's regime.

Salesman in Beijing (1984) details Miller's experiences with the 1983 Beijing People's Theatre production of Death of a Salesman. He describes directing a Chinese cast in an American play.

Timebends: A Life, Methuen London (1987). Miller's autobiography.

On Politics and the Art of Acting, Viking 2001 an 85-page essay about the thespian skills in American politics, comparing FDR, JFK, Reagan, Clinton.

Collections

Abbotson, Susan C. W. (ed.), Arthur Miller: Collected Essays, Penguin 2016

Kushner, Tony, ed. Arthur Miller, Collected Plays 1944–1961 (Library of America, 2006).

Martin, Robert A. (ed.), "The theater essays of Arthur Miller", foreword by Arthur Miller. NY: Viking Press, 1978

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[theoutcastrogue]

Over the past year or two, the news has been full of horror stories about shoplifting. To hear some people tell it, you’d think petty theft was a crisis of apocalyptic proportions. In the New York Post, for instance, we read that shoplifting is an “epidemic taking over America.” The Financial Times issues dire warnings of “surging shopping crime,” while Fox News insists that “the shoplifting crisis is a nightmare.” ABC’s Nightline airs scary-looking footage of what its hosts call “brazen smash-and-grabs”: people in masks breaking store windows, grabbing armloads of clothing, and running off. In the opinion pages of the New York Times, Pamela Paul waxes poetic over “What We Lose to Shoplifting.” (The loss in question? Paul herself feels less comfortable in stores these days. Riveting stuff.)

In response to this supposed scourge, there’s been a resurgence in “tough-on-crime” tactics, both from corporations and political leaders. In department stores like Target, customers are confronted by elaborate new security measures, with everything from toothpaste to frozen pizza locked behind glass. Rite Aid pharmacies have turned to facial-recognition software to guard their merchandise, only to discover that their computers falsely identify people as “likely shoplifters”—particularly if those people have dark skin. In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams has launched an entire police task force dedicated to retail theft. And on the campaign trail, Donald Trump has called for more violent measures, saying that police should simply shoot shoplifters on sight. 

But statistical data shows that the reports of a shoplifting “epidemic” are highly exaggerated, if not outright made up. In a recent report, the Council on Criminal Justice gathered data about retail theft from 24 different U.S. cities, examining the frequency of reports, the dollar value of items stolen, the number of people involved in each crime, and several other factors. At first glance, it did appear that shoplifting was on the rise in the first half of 2023, as it increased by 16 percent compared to pre-pandemic levels. However, as German Lopez notes in the New York Times, that figure was heavily skewed by data from New York City. Remove the Big Apple, and the numbers tell a different story: shoplifting has actually decreased in 17 of the 24 cities surveyed, and is now fairly rare, with just 38.6 reported incidents per 100,000 people. In June 2019, that number was 45.1. Shoplifting might be happening more often in New York City specifically, but an “epidemic taking over America,” it isn’t.

[...] As author and civil rights lawyer Alec Karakatsanis points out, there’s also a strong class element involved in what kinds of behaviors are deemed newsworthy to begin with:

When the daily news media reports on a “crime wave” or a “surge in shoplifting” nearly every time the numbers from the police department fluctuate upward (note that no similar metaphors are used for decreases), they are almost always using these terms to describe the collective behavior of poor people and other marginalized groups. Things rich people do don’t often get this same metaphoric treatment in daily news. How many times do you see a major news story on a “surge” in tax evasion (a problem over 60 times the magnitude of other reported property crimes) or a “wave of crime” by oil companies?

[article by Alex Skopic, January 2024, keep reading]

[batsplat]

Hi, I hope you are having a good to/will have a good day!

This is kind of of a drama stirring ask, but I was reading your post on your favorite riders on the current grid and you mentioned that you became fond of all the 2019 rookies except one of them. I was just wondering if there is any specific reason for that? Not a fan or a hater of that one rider just unfortunately overly curious sometimes, feel free to ignore this ask if you do not feel comfortable answering it.

I also just wanted to mention that I love the way you described Fabio in that post as a sad Frenchie because I immediately pictured a sad French bulldog and somehow that felt completely fitting. And I also laughed so hard when I read the part about about how Joan looked like he was so scared that Marc was going to eat him.

My favorite part of the post though was when you were talking about Pecco's super up and down performance and wrote something like Ok you won. but? why? were? you? in 13th? to begin? with? I don't know if this was what you were going for but the disappointed, but not surprised scolding parent tone I got from it was immaculate. I really hope next year Pecco remembers he has a backbone because if the vibes at Ducati are not rancid what even it the point?

oh tbh there's no real story there!! idm answering but i also don't have a great answer... it's just which ones of them personally caught my eye. early 2019 was a time when i was gradually reestablishing friendly relations with my primary sport and watching motogp was just hoping for... well, not a complete changing of the guard, exactly, because i like marc a lot more than i do the dominant athletes in said other sport. but some competition, some tension. the dovi rivalry kinda felt like it had run its course at some point in 2018 when it became pretty clear dovi probably wasn't ever going to match his 2017 challenge, let alone go one step further. valentino was increasingly washed + the 2018 yamaha was so mediocre that a lot of his very respectable efforts felt like an exercise in futility - and the vinales experiment is one that i'd also given up on at some point that year. (kinda ironic given where yamaha's next champion came from but tennis fans will know what i mean when i say i always referred to vinales as having a case of 'french brain'. actually was worried fabio might have a severe case of french brain until he won the title.) i had basically zero hopes for honda!jorge panning out, like it was conceptually fun (as casey said, get out the popcorn) but also we'd literally just seen jorge take over a year to even begin to adapt to a bike that didn't seem quite as unfriendly as the honda. also, he'd been injured for much of late 2018... idk kinda felt his time was up

which is a pretty dire competitive picture. like the racing was still good, a lot better than it is now, but it was also... this isn't a marc thing, i'm just not really the type of person who can enjoy winning for winning's sake. i do need a story. it all felt a bit depressing, also interpersonally - marc/valentino continued to be the main source of tension but it also meant marc wasn't really doing anything interesting with anyone else on the grid. the dovi relationship is like... civil, but nothing more than that, so mainly it really is just marc giving the side of valentino's scalp a thorough examination once a week. not really the web of intricate interpersonal relations + conflict of the alien era, is it. or guys in the early to mid noughties actually LIKING each other and HANGING OUT and a bit more of an interesting dynamic because you feel like these blokes have actual relationships with each other. dovi/marc as a rivalry is practically designed to make me feel a bit morose and irritable... and dovi came across as a little too resigned to his fate, jorge/dovi teammates was also taken away from me, and it already felt pretty clear marc wasn't going to leave honda when his next contract expired. (not that i thought he'd sign for another FOUR YEARS, obviously that didn't go like anyone was expecting but i can't say i was particularly thrilled at that announcement.) i had a bit of hope for alex rins but also i hadn't really seen THAT much from him. zarco-caused narrative juice also felt like very much a 2017 thing. morbidelli pretty meh rookie season, iannone experiment felt over, miller experiment felt over... you get the spirit

and basically at this point i wasn't looking at the 2019 rookies primarily in terms of personality, it was literally just an evaluation of whether one of these bozos could please, please, please give marc a proper challenge. from those, pecco was obviously the immediately eye-catching one - had just put together an impressive moto2 campaign, then rocked up and had an excellent pre-season testing. i wasn't like... completely sold, because tennis-pilled brain does at a certain point make you think that unless you're already breaking lap records as a toddler, it's probably not going to pan out for you. but obviously i was theoretically interested in a valentino protege going up against marc, and pecco had built up enough positive credit in my bank that i was willing to forgive a lot in 2019. (muttering to myself 'casey crashed a lot too, casey crashed a lot too, casey crashed a lot too' every time a rookie is driving me insane.) mir had quite an eye-catching first ride on the suzuki iirc... also obviously had that moto3 title going for him. i vaguely remember injury eventually just sort of fucking him over in his rookie season? and quartararo... obviously wasn't REALLY on my radar, like I knew about the pre-moto3 resume which did actually play into my 'breaking lap records as a toddler' bias. but also obviously he was the standout that season, like he was properly exciting... and also just the little things, how frustrated he was after losing to marc or when marc was pissing about in sepang qualifying. made you hope we could get something going there. oliveira just went under the radar a bit for me,, like this wasn't entirely FAIR because given machinery differences i would defo say he had a better rookie season than pecco and had run pecco pretty close in 2018. but also i'd also been supporting pecco for the moto2 title the previous year lol, not with all THAT much investment but he was a fun kid idk. so sometimes you just get to a point where you get used to rooting against someone. generally you'll already have an opinion on blokes before they even get to motogp, right

and yeah, genuine affection for these guys developed the following years... i mean, fabio only REALLY got me in 2020 when i was watching him throw his title bid away. and mir grew on me ever more as the suzuki project went down the drain. bagnaia actually has this fantastic quality that allows me to root for him, where every time i go 'hm he's winning too much' he puts the fear of god back into me. like i had this moment during qatar this year where i was like... idk, come on. and then obviously he's taking me on such a great rollercoaster ride and by the end of the season i'd basically never been more invested. i actually have quite possibly the worst type of sports fan brain - runner-up brain. i root for people who come close to winning but can't quite make it. my history as a sports fan is littered with these second tier athletes you can be delusional about but will never actually make you happy. and what i've discovered following motogp is that apparently this even extends to liking the guys i like less when they're winning and more when they're losing. the problem with this is that it's a recipe to always being miserable, which. well. it is what it is. luckily i'm not THAT emotionally invested in motogp, like if i'm not enjoying it i can just stop watching for a while lol and i'll be free of it. it's not that serious

so that's it tbh!! i don't even particularly dislike oliveira - his luck has been abysmal with aprilia and i do feel quite sorry for him throughout all that. yamaha will do him well i reckon (might be a crazy thing to say but yamaha is my team and i have decided to sniff the #hopium, idk i think we might actually be cooking). there ARE some riders i root against, oliveira is not one of them. i feel decidedly neutral towards him. also whatever casey might think about portugal being a province of spain, it's always good to have an extra nationality on the grid. he seems like a bit of a character, like sometimes i see a quote from him that makes me raise an eyebrow and i like raising an eyebrow. but also... his profile of rider is 'guy who can do incredible things on his day but disappears for months at a time', which has just never been the type of athlete i go for. (i think this is actually the main reason, like it's an aggravating pattern of results to me personally that always makes me go 'maybe do this more often?????') i'm way more about the #grinders and the guys who worry away at getting better for years and years and still eventually come up short. anyway, glad you liked the descriptions of fabio and mir lol, apparently i really will bring up that mir clip at any excuse

on pecco, i DO stand by the gags i made in the post probably maybe,, but also i have adjusted a little in response to just how wild the discourse around him gets... like i don't see much of it anymore because i practise #contentcuration but i know it's out there!! ultimately the ways in which he's frustrating push all my buttons, and also (controversial opinion) i do think he actually cleaned up his act in some regards, just everyone's upped their level this year. it's partly the gp24 but jorge + pecco's qualifying record this year has genuinely been so impressive to me, like there's so many fp1's i half followed and went 'hm another q1 excursion for mr bagnaia do we think' before seeing he'd figured it out late in... what's it called now, practise? awful nomenclature. i also did not post this because at a certain point you just have to give up and move on, but i calculated the error rate of each title winner and runner-up this century (where 'error' is strictly defined as any crash that was not CLEARLY caused by an external factor, so racing incidents like with marquez x2 counted but not binder at jerez sprint)... and again. it's six for pecco from forty bloody races. divide that by two (even though twenty races still longer than most seasons historically) and you're already at a considerably less apocalyptic three, which you don't need to do any fancy calculations with to know isn't a historical aberration. what it comes out as is... fine. it's fine. both marc and valentino have won titles with a higher percentage rate of error (and even there you're sometimes being generous - counting casey's laguna 2008 misadventure as an error and not whatever tf marc was up to in argentina 2018 feels quite unfair, but you need clear criteria y'know)... it's just a narrative that has completely gotten away from reality and it's a bit annoying. i also think ultimately sometimes you are punished more for relatively minor missteps, like both marquez brother incidents are 60:40-ish things either way that pecco probably shouldn't have gotten himself involved in... but the punishment doesn't quite befit the crime. and jorge likewise sometimes just got a bit lucky, like marc crashing out right ahead of him in thailand and giving him the warning he needed. it's such a long season, all these things add up, and sometimes... sometimes things just shake out a certain way. pecco likely lost more than ten points cumulatively through incidents that were 100% not his fault, jorge put together an extremely impressive season on a satellite bike and is very deserving of the title. idk stuff like this is so completely pointless because you might as well be arguing with the wall, like people just enjoy a certain pecco narrative at this point and it's not going to change so. no point arguing about this any further. but that's where i stand on THAT

and yeah i feel like i was quite optimistic about next season like... halfway through the year, but tbh. i'm not feeling it at the minute. i mean i've barely thought about it, all the time i have available thinking about motogp has really just been about the old stuff. which is such a rich text that i'm never REALLY going to complain about motogp, like at the end of the day i do enjoy following it *as a sport* and it is just so extremely extremely unlikely that we ever get anything that lives up to the old stuff. did you know that one guy put a curse on another guy?? it's crazy. so yeah, whatever, it's a different landscape now. competitively i am a little worried we're in for '2018 but with worse racing', which is unfair to pecco - he's a better, more well-rounded rider than dovi ever was facing off against a different version of marc. but i kinda feel like you NEED a decent title fight in this era to sustain your interest, like i'm not tuning in for the racing am i. which was the case in 2017-19!! but unfortunately we're keeping the shitty michelin front for another year, which just means that it's going to be monumentally hard for those two to actually put on extended duel. it's not their FAULT, it's just the limitations of the current series. i do hope we're going to get *one* proper proper duel... but the problem with marc is that it also takes quite specific circumstances for that to even matter - either you need to repeatedly beat him to start fraying at his nerves (see mid-2019 pre-misano) or your name needs to be valentino rossi. otherwise he can mostly accept that the relentless pace will be what wins him the title and you have duels that feel quite disconnected from the storyline of the season, which was historically the problem with the marc/dovi duels. they're fun in the moment!! it's good racing!! but it's also a bit... you know, these duels don't necessarily all stick in the mind the same way because they don't each come with their own story. austria 2017 vs austria 2019 just aren't the same level of distinctive as brno 2003 vs brno 2005, right. i will say both proper marc/pecco duels, aragon 2021 and jerez 2024, have been distinctive and memorable and interesting - so we'll see!! you could be in for a great duel at *checks notes* mugello or assen, but that would mean pecco's probably in quite a lot of trouble that season... catalunya, jerez, qatar. those are the ones i am eyeing anyway

and the other bit of the equation is interpersonal tension, which i am also not super optimistic on. i will be a bit disappointed in both of them icl, but it does feel a bit like we're headed to... vaguely tense but also kinda muted coexistence. the problem is marc isn't going to engage with this stuff unless he absolutely has to, and pecco is so extremely committed to his stance that he wants to be a good sportsman, fair and respectful and all that shit. they're both extremely motivated to downplay any potential tension because marc's calculation is that, all other things remaining equal, he will beat pecco - and pecco just does not want the drama. unfortunately as we've already seen this year, people just cannot be normal about any tension between the two of them either, like it's just also not a media environment where guys can just say shit about each other. casey *probably* accused jorge of faking injuries severe enough they put jorge in a wheelchair back in the day, and i'm not saying that's GOOD or what we should be aiming for, but also can you imagine the equivalent outcry over something like that today?? (this is now the fifth unsolicited mention of casey in an ask response about current motogp, if anyone's counting.) and both pecco and marc are aware of that, and they also know that if they blink at each other wrong, some fans will completely lose their minds... it's just not really worth it. you always kinda hope the natural tension caused by being teammates will get something going... but yeah, idk man, sometimes you just need to be ready for disappointment. and pecco DOES need to actually challenge marc because otherwise obviously you're not getting any proper tension. literally no point in feuding if the competitive stakes aren't there, you need to be a real master of the craft to pull that sort of thing off

anyway that's all from me!! idm asks like this, i love talking about my opinions on stuff lol. we might be in for 1-2 quite disappointing seasons but hopefully the racing will get better again and the competitive picture a bit more lively. thing is i do LIKE 1v1 title fights in theory but i think then you do need a proper compelling interpersonal narrative to pull it off. otherwise the best ones are the 2006/2017 type free-for-all's. and obviously i still think pecco and marc have all the building blocks there for something fun, and individually i clearly care a lot about both of them... they're both just quite self-contained characters? they're never going to get close for obvious reasons but they also don't want to rock the boat too much. idk i feel like we might be missing a bit of an instigator in the jorge/valentino tradition, or someone who's casey-levels of tightly strung they make it easy to provoke them. which is obviously why i'm hoping pedro will eventually come through for me, though i'd prefer it if he weren't currently tied to bankruptcy enterprises. ah well, we'll see

[mariacallous]

Sergey Mironov, the chairman of the party A Just Russia — For Truth, and his wife, Inna Varlamova, adopted a girl deported from Ukraine’s Kherson region and had her name changed, according to an investigation conducted by independent Russian outlet iStories and the documentary film studio Top Hat/Hayloft Productions. The outlet notes that this is “the first documented case of such a high-ranking Russian politician adopting a Ukrainian child.”

According to iStories, Mironov and Varlamova got married in October 2022, though they never officially announced a wedding. This was Mironov’s fifth marriage, and Varlamova’s fourth. She worked in Russia’s Federation Council for over nine years. Since 2015, she has worked for the State Duma. She has known Mironov since at least the fall of 2019 — that’s when photographs of them together first started appearing.

In late August 2022, Varlamova arrived in Ukraine’s Kherson region with Yana Lantratova, the deputy head of A Just Russia’s faction in the State Duma. They visited the Kherson region’s children’s hospital, where 10-month–old Margarita Prokopenko and two-year old Ilya Vashchenko underwent treatment. According to Natalia Lyutikova, head of the hospital’s pediatric department, Mironov’s wife arrived to the hospital with Tatyana Zavalskaya, who was appointed by the Russian authorities as the head of a local orphanage. After the children were examined, Zavalskaya started calling daily, demanding that the children be discharged, states Lyutikova. She added that Zavalskaya said “that woman [Varlamova] chose them and will take them to Moscow, everything is ready, as well as the tickets.”

The next day after they were discharged, Margarita and Ilya were taken from the orphanage, where they had been until the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. According to official reports, they were brought to Moscow for examination and rehabilitation. The Ukrainian outlet Hromadske wrote that Zavalskaya took the children from the hospital and accompanied them while they were being transported to annexed Crimea.

A week later, the children appeared in the Moscow region. A department of the Social Development Ministry in the Moscow region sent a request to the Kherson orphanage, asking to send documents that Margarita and Ilya had been left without parental care. In November 2022, the Moscow region’s Podolsk city court considered a civil case, which involved Inna Varlamova and the department of the Social Development Ministry. In Russia, all adoptions must be approved by a court, iStories noted.

In December 2022, one month after the court’s decision, Mironov and Varlamova adopted Margarita, according to documents obtained by iStories. At that point, she was just over a year old. Her name was then legally changed in Russia to Marina Sergeyevna Mironova, according to journalists. A source familiar with the situation told iStories that Margarita’s biological mother had her parental rights taken away and that her father was dead, though she has other relatives. According to iStories, it was known by September 2023 that Ilya was in the Moscow region and had received a new birth certificate.

Maria Chashchilova, a lawyer, noted that adopting children taken from Ukraine to Russia can be considered a violation of the Convention on the Prevention of Genocide, which is described as “forcible transfer of children from one group to another.” According to Chashchilova, the legal consequences for the adoptive parents are difficult to predict in such a situation, though the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague can issue an arrest warrant.

Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s Children’s Rights Commissioner, has said that Russians cannot adopt children from Ukraine’s occupied territories. Lvova-Belova and Mironov didn’t respond to questions from journalists.

In March 2023, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova. They are suspected of illegally deporting children from Ukraine’s occupied territories to Russia.

Sergey Mironov called iStories’ report “a fake from the Ukrainian special services and their western handlers.” “I’m already used to information attacks. All of them have one goal — discrediting those who currently hold an irreconcilably patriotic stance. You’re wasting your time. The truth will still win. And Russia will bring the SVO to a complete victory,” he wrote.

[beardedmrbean]

More than 200 defendants in one of Italy's biggest mafia trials for generations have been sentenced to a total of more than 2,200 years in jail.

The three-year trial saw individuals allegedly linked to the 'Ndrangheta sentenced for crimes ranging from extortion to drug trafficking.

Those sentenced included a former Italian senator, though the verdicts can still be appealed.

The 'Ndrangheta is one of Europe's most influential criminal organisations.

The case illustrated the mob's broad influence over the politics and society of southern Italy. Experts said the convictions of white collar workers, including local officials, businessmen and politicians, showed the far-reaching impact of organised crime on Italian institutions.

Among the most notable people to be sentenced was Giancarlo Pittelli, a lawyer and former senator for ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi's party Forza Italia. Pittelli received an 11-year sentence for collusion with a mafia-type organisation.

Others convicted included civil servants, professionals across various industries and high-ranking officials, who were critical to the 'Ndrangheta's success in infiltrating the legitimate economy and state institutions.

More than 100 defendants were acquitted.

The judges presiding over the case were put under police protection over fears for their safety.

Originating in the impoverished region of Calabria, the 'Ndrangheta is considered one of the world's most dangerous criminal organisations. It is estimated to control as much as 80% of Europe's cocaine market.

The gang boasts an estimated annual turnover of around $60bn (£49bn).

The trial was held in a call centre on the outskirts of the town of Lamezia Terme, converted into a high-security courtroom equipped with cages to hold the defendants and large enough to hold some 600 lawyers and 900 witnesses. Charges included murder, extortion, drug-trafficking, loan sharking, abuse of office and money laundering.

Over three years, proceedings demonstrated how the Calabrian syndicate extended its reach across continents, eventually operating as far afield as South America and Australia. Its members infiltrated the local economy, public institutions, and even the health system, rigging public tenders and bribing local officials.

The trial, the largest of its kind since the 1980s, saw judges examine thousands of hours of testimony. Former mobsters turned collaborators with the justice system testified about the activities of the Mancuso family and their associates, who wield extensive control over the province of Vibo Valentia.

The Mancuso family, from the town of Limbadi, are one of the most powerful of the 150 clans which make up the 'Ndrangheta.

Anna Sergi, a professor of criminology at the University of Exeter, said: "This trial confirms convictions of classic mafiosi, sentenced for offences traditionally more associate with criminal activities, such as extortion or drug trafficking."

She added: "However, it is important to note how the different types of people involved, including white collar workers, provide a more comprehensive view of the entire province and the connections between various mafia clans."

Most of the defendants were arrested in December 2019, following an extensive investigation spanning at least 11 Italian regions, which began in 2016. Approximately 2,500 officers took part in raids targeting suspects in Vibo Valentia, an area primarily controlled by the 'Ndragheta's Mancuso clan.

More than 50 former mafia members agreed to cooperate with the trial, among them Luigi Mancuso's nephew, Emanuele.

Their testimony shed light on the inner workings of one of Italy's most powerful mobs. The trial revealed that 'Ndrangheta members allegedly concealed weapons in cemetery chapels, used ambulances for drug transportation and diverted public water supplies to grow marijuana.

Those who opposed the organised crime group faced grim consequences, including finding dead puppies and goat heads left in front of their houses, torched cars and vandalised shop windows.

"This first round of sentences demonstrates how challenging it is to combat the 'Ndrangheta due to its political, economic, and financial connections," Antonio Nicaso, a writer and organised crime expert, said.

[ausetkmt]

The Massachusetts attorney general's office has launched an investigation into allegations of racial bias at the Boston Police Department’s youth gang unit and its associated database, according to a statement from the office released late Monday.

The probe by state Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s civil rights division will examine an alleged “pattern or practice of racially biased policing” within the Youth Violence Strike Force, the department’s gang unit, state officials said. A Boston police spokesperson says the department will cooperate with the review.

State officials saythe review will look into the task force's work since 2018 with a goal of reforming the gang unit, following calls from civil rights advocates who want the database to be abolished, citing alleged racism and a lack of transparency. It comes amidst a national review of similar units following the death of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, who was killed during a traffic stop by five members of that city's now disbanded gang unit.

"The Boston Police gang database is flawed and shouldn't be relied on to make consequential decisions about people’s lives,” said Carol Rose, the executive director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, one of several civil rights groups who sued the police department last year to make more information about the database public. “The database overwhelmingly targets Black and Hispanic young people, who have been labeled as gang members for little more than wearing popular brands or even becoming a victim of gang violence … the attorney general is right to investigate it."

A “gang” is qualified as three or more people who individually or together engage in criminal activity, frequent a specific location and share a common name or identifier, like a color or symbol, according to the Boston Police Department’s rules and procedures. Gang members are “active” if they have met the criteria to be associated with a gang, had contact with another gang member or participated in gang activity within the last five years.

Related Stories:

‘We are tired of inaction.’ A new anti-violence movement rises in Boston.

ACLU Sues Boston Police Department For Info On Police Encounters

Boston Police Target Alleged Gang Members

A summary provided by the department in response to the ACLU’s 2019 lawsuit showed that 90% of the 4,700 individuals in the gang database at that time were Black or Latino.

“Youth have been surveilled in Dorchester and Roxbury for wearing a certain kind of hat or hanging out in a certain corner of the neighborhood,” said Massachusetts Bail Fund Director Janhavi Madabushi. “There's just such a low threshold for what gets you onto a list, and whatever gets you on that list is something that justifies you being policed or surveilled for however long the unit deems necessary.”

An association with the gang database can prevent pre-trial detainees from getting access to bail for months or even years, Madabushi said.

“We're seeing an increase in dangerousness hearings, where a prosecutor and judge can determine through a random set of criteria that a person is too dangerous to be let out on cash bail,” she said. Detainees take plea deals to limit jail time in what Madabushi described as “a dangerous pattern in preventive detention … detaining of people who are supposedly innocent until proven guilty, but not this time.”

The investigation is ongoing and has not yet made any findings or conclusions. If issues are discovered, the goal is to work with the police department in reforming the unit and database, a spokesperson for Campbell said.

Madabushi says it remains unclear whether the investigation will result in “the type of victory that our community members need and want to see,” and will require the attorney general’s office to seek out directly impacted people, many of whom might be hesitant to come forward.

“I feel a little bit apprehensive to sort of rejoice before understanding how the [attorney general’s office] is going to conduct this investigation, what their considerations are,” she said. “But I hope that this surfaces what community members have been saying for a really long time.”

[mightyflamethrower]

“Net Zero” is the hot thing among Climate Change zealots and has been for quite a while.

The idea is simple: if excessive emissions of CO2 are changing the atmosphere sufficiently to cause undesirable changes in the climate, then we have to quit emitting excessive levels of CO2. The “net” part of Net Zero is finding a way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere in the same quantity with which we increase it through the use of machines.

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Simple enough. It’s a bad policy, but the reasoning is simple enough to understand.

More than 140 countries, including the biggest polluters – China, the United States, India and the European Union – have set a net-zero target, covering about 88% of global emissions. More than 9,000 companies, over 1000 cities, more than 1000 educational institutions, and over 600 financial institutions have joined the Race to Zero, pledging to take rigorous, immediate action to halve global emissions by 2030.

This policy goal is truly insane, and everybody promoting it is as well. And, as the Telegraph reports, they are incredibly careless as well, playing with human lives and prosperity without thinking anything they do through to their logical conclusions. Their obsession with Net Zero overrides the most basic level of prudence one would expect from world leaders.

Two of the primary strategies for achieving Net Zero are, as you know, electrifying everything while simultaneously abandoning the use of fossil fuels to produce electricity. And, since nuclear power is controversial, time-consuming to construct, and requires a substantial up-front investment, countries are placing almost all their eggs in the “renewable” generation basket.

If renewables were reliable and affordable, it would be a great idea. Who wouldn’t prefer a cheap method for reliably generating a lot of electricity without depleting resources we could use for other things, or stretch out for a longer period? If it is all upside and no downside, why not?

Yeah, well, but…None of that is true, so the advocates get sloppy, deceptive, and push ridiculous propaganda out to obscure the basic facts.

Britain’s climate watchdog has privately admitted that a number of its key net zero recommendations may have relied on insufficient data, it has been claimed. Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, who led a recent Royal Society study on future energy supply, said that the Climate Change Committee only “looked at a single year” of data showing the number of windy days in a year when it made pronouncements on the extent to which the UK could rely on wind and solar farms to meet net zero. “They have conceded privately that that was a mistake,” Sir Chris said in a presentation seen by this newspaper. In contrast, the Royal Society review examined 37 years worth of weather data. Last week Sir Chris, an emeritus professor and former director of energy research at Oxford University, said that the remarks to which he was referring were made by Chris Stark, the Climate Change Committee’s chief executive. He said: “Might be best to say that Chris Stark conceded that my comment that the CCC relied on modelling that only uses a single year of weather data … is ‘an entirely valid criticism’.” The CCC said that Sir Chris’s comments, in a presentation given in a personal capacity in October, following the publication of his review, related solely to a particular report it published last year on how to deliver “a reliable decarbonised power system”.

Here’s a simple question for you: would you completely upend a system that was working and that undergirded your civilization based on such a limited amount of data?

If the answer is “Yes,” step aside and let the adults make policy because you are a buffoon.  Unsurprisingly reality has not matched the fantasy of the Nut Zeros.

But, in response to further questions from this newspaper, the body admitted that its original recommendations in 2019 about the feasibility of meeting the 2050 net zero target, were also based on just one year’s worth of weather data. The recommendations were heavily relied on by ministers when Theresa May enshrined the 2050 target into law. A CCC spokesman said: “We stand by the analysis.” In October 2021 The Sunday Telegraph revealed that assumptions underpinning the committee’s 2019 advice to ministers included a projection that in 2050 there would be just seven days on which wind turbines would produce less than 10 per cent of their potential electricity output. That compared to 30 such days in 2020, 33 in 2019 and 56 in 2018, according to analysis by Net Zero Watch, a campaign group.

It is not accidental or, bad enough, negligence that led to this rather error-prone way of estimating energy needs. Instead this is the sort of strategy used all the time in getting government to do remarkably stupid things: mislead about what the actual costs and benefits of achieving a goal would be.

In my earlier life as an activist, I saw this strategy used all the time: project an unrealistically low cost, claim unreasonably high benefits, and use the sunk cost fallacy to keep the money flowing. Projects in government can escalate in cost by as much as a factor of 20 or more and produce few actual benefits, but once the first dollars flow in the project has a life of its own.

Think high-speed rail in California. Costs have escalated out of control; hardly anything has been built; and a project that was supposed to be already running will likely never get finished. But the gravy train for the people getting the money continues for years or decades. The project got off the ground in…1996 and has consumed untold billions of dollars without much of anything having been built. The project got the green light in 2008, and costs have ballooned with little progress having been made.

The costs for the California high-speed rail project, which voters approved $10 billion in 2008, have risen sharply and the authority has not identified key funding needed for the project that has faced numerous delays. The full San Francisco to Los Angeles project was initially estimated to cost around $40 billion but has now jumped to between $88 billion and $128 billion. The rail authority estimated costs for an initial 171-mile segment connecting Merced to Bakersfield rose from $25.7 billion to at least $32 billion and is hoping initial service will begin in 2030.

Just to let you know, the Merced to Bakersfield portion is all in central California, where few people actually live. In other words, there will be a segment of high speed rail from nowhere to nowhere. Not to offend the good folks of Merced and Bakersfield, but nobody would have approved a $32 billion train from one to the other. It would have been the subject of very unkind jokes.

Now, it is reality, or rather, it might be late in this decade. That is how government scams work.

Nut Zero is using that model. Overpromise, underdeliver, skim a ton of money off the taxpayers and create a disaster.

Nobody involved with Net Zero has your interests in mind, and only the childish believe it is possible or desirable in the foreseeable future. Trillions will be made by scammers, bureaucrats and the transnational elite will gain more control over you, and the average person will be immiserated.

That is the reality of Nut Zero. It is a scam and a power grab. Nothing more. Trust nothing its advocates say.

[indipopcorn]

97000 Indians held trying to enter illegally - Ever wondered why?

According to US Customs and Border Protection data, a record-breaking 96,917 Indians were apprehended while unlawfully crossing into the US between October 2022 and September 2023. This marks a fivefold increase compared to 2019-20.

Although this news is not shocking to anyone, it is shocking when discussing the magnificence of our country. I've seen over the years that Indian expatriates write more about their affection for their own country. Regretfully, they have no desire to go back to India and aid in its growth. People who do not reside here are trolling those who write about the issues we face.

Our beloved Prime Minister is unquestionably a fantastic leader with a vision to improve India, but that doesn't mean that young people can’t voice their concerns and opinions. In reality, when you make your opinion in a civil manner, society benefits. Yes, in a polite way.

One of my cousins, who excelled in GTU's IT programme, was employed by a reputable private company in this area. She was earning a meagre wage while working a certain number of hours. Due to our large population, we have little opportunities and no labour laws. She later travelled to the USA. In less than a year, she managed to land a position as a software engineer, receiving a respectable salary in addition to recognition for her degree. She's also got her mental health back.

One of the women I met was having marital issues. Her life has gotten worse as a result of her decision to file for divorce. She needed to isolate herself from civilization. In society, even her parents experienced some form of psychological abuse. Her only goal in life was to move to Australia, live a dignified life, and become financially independent.

Here, girls are entitled to their parents' property, but if they have a boy, they are not entitled to it, and in such cases, they must stay at their parents' home as guests.

One of my friends was having trouble getting a job. He spent five years without a job while he studied for the government examination. It was harder for him because he belongs to the general category. His family wants him to immigrate to Canada in any way possible since they believe that society has wrecked his mental health.

A man who lives in Ahmedabad's Old City and comes from a lower middle class household. He and his family had great hardship in society, but ever since his family immigrated to Canada, he has gained some notoriety.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Published: Jun 27, 2023

Homeopathic drugs have an unusual status in the United States. On the one hand, they are incorporated into the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act) within the definition of “drug,” which specifically includes articles recognized in the official Homoeopathic Pharmacopoeia of the United States (a historical perspective can be found in this ScienceInsider article from 2015, when government scrutiny was beginning to increase). But on the other hand, there is growing consensus that the effectiveness of such products is not supported by scientific evidence and that they are, in many cases, mere placebos that do not actually treat the patient’s medical conditions; in the worst cases, they contain harmful ingredients that may cause serious injury.

This extraordinary dichotomy has led to both the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in recent years issuing modernized enforcement policies related to homeopathic drugs. An FTC enforcement policy statement from late 2016 requires homeopathic products to be marketed with clear disclosures stating that, among other things, there is no scientific evidence that the products work (see our prior post on the FTC policy here). Then in 2019 FDA took action to withdraw a long-standing compliance policy guidance for homeopathic drugs and to simultaneously issue a significant number of Warning Letters to companies marketing such products in violation of the FD&C Act (our prior posts on those activities are here and here).

Most recently, FDA finalized its draft guidance on homeopathic drugs – first issued in draft form in 2017 and then revised in 2019 – to lay out for industry the agency’s approach to “prioritizing regulatory actions for homeopathic products posing the greatest risk to patients.” The final guidance document issued in December 2022 can be found here. FDA also appears to be moving aggressively on the enforcement priorities as five letters relating to violative homeopathic drug products have been posted to the agency’s public Warning letter database since the beginning of calendar year 2023, as compared to four for the entire previous year. The FTC also included homeopathic drug manufacturers and distributors in the list of advertisers that received notices in April 2023 that their advertising claims need to be backed up with appropriate and reliable forms of scientific evidence (see here). Taken together, it’s clear that the homeopathy industry remains under major scrutiny by federal regulators seeking to enforce their fundamental public safety mandates, whether they fall under the FD&C Act or the prohibition on deceptive advertising contained in the Federal Trade Commission Act. 

Perhaps more noteworthy and concerning for the homeopathy industry, however, is a Fall 2022 decision by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals to allow civil cases to proceed against two retail pharmacies under a plaintiff’s novel application of D.C.’s Consumer Protection Procedures Act. The plaintiff in both lawsuits is the Center for Inquiry (CFI), a nonprofit that states it is “dedicated to defending science and critical thinking in examining religion. CFI’s vision is a world in which evidence, science, and compassion – rather than superstition, pseudoscience, or prejudice – guide public policy.” As part of this mission, and among several other lawsuits it has initiated in the homeopathy space, CFI sued two retail pharmacies in the District of Columbia on the grounds that they were violating the local deceptive trade practice statute. The complaint alleged these violations arose through the pharmacies’ indirect representations that homeopathic drug products labeled as cough, cold, and flu treatments have the same characteristics and benefits as over-the-counter drug products formulated with traditional active ingredients. In particular, although the pharmacies didn’t make express promotional statements comparing the different product types, the plaintiff argued that they placed homeopathic products adjacent to their traditional counterparts on physical shelves and in online shopping results, thereby creating the misleading impression that the different products had comparable efficacy.

CFI’s complaints were dismissed at the trial court level for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. The two cases were then consolidated for purposes of the plaintiff’s appeal to the D.C. Court of Appeals. On the question of whether a cognizable claim had been asserted (this post won’t discuss the separate question that the appellate court reviewed, which was whether CFI had standing to sue the defendants), a three-judge panel ruled on September 29, 2022 that “whether the complained-of practices have a tendency to mislead reasonable consumers is a jury question” – thereby reinstating the complaints and remanding the cases for factual development. In reaching its decision, the court determined that a defendant did not need to make verbal statements in order for a “representation” to exist and that actions could also fall within the scope of the deceptive trade practices statute. Therefore the various factual allegations in CFI’s complaints – for example that the pharmacies displayed homeopathic products next to “science-based” drug products and that signage in the stores indicated that the entire section contained products for “Cold, Cough & Flu Relief” – were sufficient at the pleading stage to survive a motion to dismiss. As of June 2023, the dockets for both of these CFI lawsuits are active and discovery appears to be ongoing, so they continue to bear watching for future resolution on the merits. 

This recent ruling from the D.C. Court of Appeals foreshadows the possibility that retailers may opt to stop carrying homeopathic products in their stores (both physical and online) if the risk of liability to their own businesses becomes too great. Between the tightening of FDA’s and FTC’s rules for the industry and the increasingly creative use of existing consumer protection statutes by legal advocates, we could be witnessing a slow-motion demise of direct-to-consumer-based homeopathic product marketing. Only time will tell how the industry evolves in response to these numerous and formidable headwinds.

[theculturedmarxist]

The UK was hit by “widespread failure” in its response to Covid-19, an official inquiry into the pandemic has heard, with Boris Johnson believing old people should contract the virus to protect the economy and wavering on whether to impose lockdowns.

Dominic Cummings, former chief adviser to the then prime minister, said in evidence on Tuesday that a “dysfunctional system” of state led vulnerable groups to be “appallingly neglected” in March 2020.

“Overall, it’s widespread failure but pockets ... doing excellent work,” he said, adding that the Cabinet Office, the department that runs the machinery of government, was a “dumpster fire” and that senior officials going on holiday in February 2020 was “pretty insane”.

His remarks came as the inquiry was shown diary entries from 2020 in which Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s former chief scientific adviser, wrote that Mr Johnson appeared “obsessed with older people accepting their fate” and considered the virus to be “just Nature’s way of dealing with old people”.

In December 2020, weeks before England entered a third national lockdown, Sir Patrick wrote: “Chief whip [Mark Spencer] says ‘I think we should let the old people get it and protect others’. PM says ‘a lot of my backbenchers think that and I must say I agree with them’.”

In a WhatsApp message to Lee Cain, then Downing Street’s head of communications, in October 2020, weeks before England’s second lockdown, Mr Johnson wrote: “I must say I have been slightly rocked by some of the data on Covid fatalities. The median age is 82-81 for men and 85 for women. That is above life expectancy. So get Covid and live longer.”

He added: “It shows we don’t go for nationwide lockdown.”

The entries and the messages add to the string of damaging revelations from former top officials about Britain’s response to the global health crisis under Mr Johnson, who served as prime minister between 2019 and 2022.

The inquiry is examining the British government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, including the UK’s preparedness and senior decision-making, and is due to run until the summer of 2026.

In private messages from March 2020 that were seen by the inquiry, Mr Cain said Mr Johnson did not believe Covid was a “big deal” and thought “his main danger [was] talking [the] economy into a slump”.

Mr Cain on Tuesday described Mr Johnson as “challenging ... to work with” because he would “oscillate” and “take a decision from the last person in the room”, echoing comments by the government’s most senior civil servant about Mr Johnson changing “strategic direction every day” as the crisis took hold.

Mr Cain told the inquiry that Mr Johnson’s announcement of a full UK lockdown on March 23rd came more than a week after his most senior advisers backed the move on March 14th as “the only strategy which could suppress the spread of Covid-19, save the NHS from collapse and ultimately buy the government more time”.

Mr Cain admitted the government got its assessment of the virus “wrong” in early 2020, having initially considered the UK “incredibly well prepared, and that a lack of diversity in Mr Johnson’s top team had led to “blind spots” in policymaking.

He said no “warning flares” had been communicated to Mr Johnson at the beginning of the year to suggest the UK was not well prepared.

In a WhatsApp message on March 3rd, 2020, Mr Cain told Mr Cummings: “He [Mr Johnson] doesn’t think it’s a big deal and he doesn’t think anything can be done and his focus is elsewhere, he thinks it’ll be like swine flu and he thinks his main danger is talking economy into a slump.”

But in further messages shown to the inquiry, Mr Cummings told Mr Johnson there were “big problems coming” as the Cabinet Office was “terrifyingly shit”.

The inquiry was also shown messages in which Mr Cummings told Mr Johnson that members of his Cabinet were “useless f**kpigs’” and accused the ex-health secretary Matt Hancock of being “unfit for this job” and obsessed “with media bullshit”.

“Still no f**king serious testing in care homes his uselessness is still killing God knows how many,” Mr Cummings wrote of Mr Hancock.

Mr Cummings denied he had acted with “offence and misogyny” while working in Number 10 after messages showed he had vowed to “personally handcuff” Helen MacNamara, then the civil service’s head of ethics, “and escort her from the building”.

In messages shown to the inquiry, he said: “I don’t care how it’s done but that woman must be out of our hair – we cannot keep dealing with this horrific meltdown of the British state while dodging stilettos from that c**t.” – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2023

[historyhermann]

Declassified Documents Describe China-Taliban Relations and Fears About Uighur Guerillas

Recent allegations that the Uighurs, a Turkic ethnic group native to the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in the Northwest region of China, are an “attractive constituency” for terrorist groups like Islamic State – Khorasan Province, warrant careful scrutiny, particularly at a time of increased U.S.-Chinese tension. The Chinese government strongly opposes the political movement that seeks an independent Uighur nation-state, in part due to purported concerns about political violence, and Beijing has been accused of violating Uighur human rights. The U.S., however, has indicated its support of the Uighur community in recent years. In January 2023, President Biden stated that ethnic minority communities, such as the Uighurs, continue to face “intimidation, violence, and unequal protection under the law,” a sentiment previously reflected in U.S. press briefings and other statements since at least March 2019.

This was originally published on May 8 2023 on Unredacted. I worked with Unredacted editor (and National Security Archive Director of Public Policy and Open Government Affairs) Lauren Harper to smooth out this article and make sure it flowed better, with edits back and forth from March 2023 to May 2023.

The U.S. stance on the Uighur issue has evolved across recent presidential administrations, and the assessments found in the declassified documents featured in today’s post, which were all released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), reflect those of the first George W. Bush administration. These documents are a selection from the new Digital National Security Archive collection, Afghanistan War and the United States, 1998-2017, which was published in December of last year. The five documents examined in this post primarily detail: friendly Chinese relations with the Taliban in the early 2000s in an attempt to secure assurances about Uighur guerrillas in Afghanistan; a U.S. assessment of threat posed by said guerrillas; and U.S. complicity in allowing Chinese officials to interrogate Uighur detainees held at Camp X-Ray, which was housed at Guantanamo.

Aerial image of Camp X-Ray under construction in January 2002. Photograph by U.S. Navy Photographer's Mate 1st Class Shane T. McCoy.

In March 5, 2001, the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research issued a one-page secret intelligence brief noting a meeting between Chinese diplomats and Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil. The discussion included recommendations from a Chinese fact-finding mission, including assurances that so-called “Xinjiang dissidents” were being trained to fight anti-Taliban groups inside Afghanistan, and not threatening China. The unnamed U.S. diplomat noted that such meetings were indicative of broadening engagement between the Taliban and China, and pointed to evidence of increased commercial contacts. Similarly, then-U.S. Ambassador to China, Joseph W. Prueher, stated in a March 9, 2001, confidential cable to Secretary of State Colin Powell that China’s “beautiful friendship” with the Taliban was rooted in a desire for “stability” and a resolution to the Afghanistan civil war. In his cable, Prueher examined why the Chinese accepted Taliban rule and cited increasing academic and official exchanges. When it came to the Uighurs, he noted Chinese fears that an unfriendly Taliban government could cause “mischief” in the Xinjiang region by supporting those termed “Uighur separatists,” and China’s hope that the Taliban would not support such guerrillas. However, he argued that although China would not formally recognize the rule of the Taliban, China was impressed by “performance and pledges” of the Taliban.

On September 18, 2001, Clark T.  Randt, Jr., Prueher’s successor as U.S. Ambassador to China, reported in a confidential cable to Secretary Powell, on a meeting with an ambassador to China who predicted possible Chinese support of the U.S. War on Terror. He also noted that “growing links” between Taliban and China might complicate such support. Part of this cable described Chinese provision of economic cooperation and development aid to the Taliban to accomplish political and economic goals. This included Chinese attempts at convincing the Taliban to “not supply arms and training to separatists in Xinjiang.” These guerrillas were later described as a non-threat to the U.S. A heavily-excised cable sent on September 20 from the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations summarizing the terrorist threat facing U.S. military forces in southern Kyrgyzstan stated this directly. On page three, it noted that Uighurs had proven “capable” in assaults, including against Chinese people, with the attack on an official Chinese delegation from Xinjiang at the Dostuk Hotel in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan in May 2000. Despite this, the document said that Uighurs did not “threaten US interests in [the] region” even though some fought for the religious extremist group, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).

This perceived lack of threat from the Uighurs could partially explain why the U.S. government granted Chinese officials access to Uighurs imprisoned in Camp X-Ray, which was a temporary detention facility inside the Guantanamo Bay detention camp that had been used by the U.S. government to house Cuban exiles in the mid-1990s. A remarkable passage buried within an unclassified October 2009 Department of Justice Inspector General report, “A Review of the FBI’s Involvement in and Observations of Detainee Interrogations in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq,” states that “several Uighur detainees” were subjected to cruel treatment such as sleep deprivation and “disruption” at Camp X-Ray, including food deprivation. These prisoners were either interrogated by Chinese officials or by U.S. personnel at the “behest of Chinese interrogators.” (See pages 183-184.) The lingering questions surrounding the interrogation of the Uighur detainees at Camp X-Ray deserve further scrutiny now that the Biden administration is expressing support of the Uighurs.

For related documents, see our previous blog post, “Declassified U.S. Intelligence Documents Describe Taliban History with Illicit Narcotics Trade,” the Archive’s Afghanistan Project, and the Archive’s China Documentation Project.

[feminist-space]

First image is of a number of ballpoint pens with words written or carved on them. The caption says Confiscated pens containing cheat notes intricately carved by a student at the University of Malaga, Spain (2022).

Second image is of a pair of socks and the caption says socks used to cheat on civil service exams, Qing Dynasty China.

Here's a link to an article titled Cheating in Examinations for Cheapskates?–A Centuries-Old Tip from the Chinese Collection of the Cotsen Children’s Library by Minjie Chen, published 2019:

Confiscated pens containing cheat notes intricately carved by a student at the University of Malaga, Spain. (2022)