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Month: December 2017

US Police Shot More People as Previously Thought, Mostly Black People – Reports

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WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Police officers across the United States shot at 4,098 Americans between 2010 and 2016, double the amount previously known with a higher number of those shot being black, Vice News reported Monday. According to the outlet, of the 4,098 Americans shot between 2010-2016, 1,378 resulted in fatalities and 2,720 were non-fatal, while as many as 700 police missed their targets altogether. Roughly 967 were shot and wounded but survived. Vice News said their data was retrieved from 50 police departments in the United States representing 148,000 officers serving 54 million people. The data shows that police shoot black people at a higher rate than any…

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Russia Claims Caspian States Reach Agreement on Sea’s Status

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(EAN) – The five states bordering the Caspian Sea have finally agreed on “all the remaining open key issues” regarding the sea, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. Lavrov also said the presidents of the five countries will be ready to sign a treaty on the sea next year in Kazakhstan. However, it remains unclear what — if any — compromise has been reached on the most contentious issue: how to divide up the sea, and its rich underwater oil and gas resources. Lavrov made his comments at a meeting…

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Asia’s Other Nuclear Standoff

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(FPIF) – With the world focused on the scary possibility of war on the Korean Peninsula, not many people paid much attention to a series of naval exercises this past July in the Malacca Strait, a 550-mile long passage between Sumatra and Malaysia through which pass over 50,000 ships a year. With President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un exchanging threats and insults, why would the media bother with something innocuously labeled “Malabar 17”? They should have. Malabar 17 brought together the U.S., Japanese, and Indian navies to practice…

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How a group of California nuns challenged the Catholic Church

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California, United States (Conversation) California in the 1960s was the epicenter for spiritual experimentation. Indian gurus and New Age prophets, Jesus freaks and Scientologists all found followings in the Golden State. But among those looking for personal and social transformation, the unlikeliest seekers may have been a small community of Roman Catholic religious: the Immaculate Heart Sisters. Theirs was, as I discovered in my research on the order, a compelling spiritual saga, culminating in a showdown with the Catholic hierarchy. The story of that conflict spotlights the impact of the…

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Meet the Special Interests Keeping Marijuana Criminalized

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United States (FEE) – Americans overwhelmingly agree that marijuana should be legal, so why isn’t it? So glad you asked… In this era of political polarization, when Americans seem to agree on absolutely nothing, let me reassure you. We overwhelmingly agree that cannabis should be legal. 1 in 5 Americans have (state) legal access, 1 in 2 have experimented with it, and more than 1 in 10 smoke regularly. Southern California yuppies are publicly winning prizes for growing the same plant that landed Georgia teenagers in prison. Half of states allow at least limited use, and a few attract elite cannabis tourism….

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The FCC Still Doesn’t Know How the Internet Works

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United States (EFF) – Earlier this year nearly 200 Internet engineers and computer scientists sent a letter to the FCC that explained facts about the structure, history, and evolving nature of the Internet. The reasons we laid out in that letter for writing it then still apply to the draft now: Based on certain questions the FCC asks in the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), we are concerned that the FCC (or at least Chairman Pai and the authors of the NPRM) appears to lack a fundamental understanding of what the Internet’s…

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What Taking The Knee Protests Means To A Former Lacrosse Player

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US (PT) – It’s becoming difficult to drown out debate over recent widespread national anthem protests throughout competitive sports. Perhaps it’s the time of year, with the football season and America’s obsession of it neigh. Now, you can barely go on YouTube without hearing about the anthem protests. I wanted to discuss this phenomenon not as a football player, but former lacrosse player. By the end, I hope to offer more perspective to what this means for those out on the field. Particularly those who’ve experienced the injustices they’re demonstrating against. First…

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Don’t Believe AT&T’s Net Neutrality Lies

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US (FreePress) – Last week, AT&T Senior Vice President Bob Quinn tried (and failed) to undercut Net Neutrality supporters by insisting that Free Press has been foretelling doom and gloom since 2010. That’s when the FCC adopted weak open-internet rules that didn’t fully protect mobile access. Quinn claims that none of Free Press’ predictions about wireless carriers engaging in blocking ever came true — but he conveniently overlooks how AT&T blocked FaceTime on its cellular networks in 2012 and 2013. Let’s refresh the recollection of our forgetful friends at AT&T. From its launch, Apple’s…

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Rosie the Riveters discovered a wartime California dream

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United States (Conversation) – For many American families, the Great Depression and Dust Bowl struck like swift punches to the gut. New Deal work relief programs like the Works Progress Administration tossed lifelines into the crushing economic waves, but many young people soon started looking farther west for more stable opportunities. A powerful vision of the California dream took hold in the late 1930s and early 1940s, featuring steady work, nice housing, sometimes love – all bathed in abundant warm sunshine. Perhaps most important were the jobs. They attracted people…

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Why ‘Judeo-Christian values’ are a dog-whistle myth peddled by the far right

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United States (Conversation) – The phrase “Judeo-Christian” has been around since the 1930s but US President Donald Trump recently resurrected it in a deeply problematic speech on October 13, 2017 in which he said: “We are stopping cold the attacks on Judeo-Christian values … We’re saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again.” [embedded content] It might seem neighbourly, even pluralistic, to include Judaism in a declaration of purported Western values. But in reality this isn’t how the term has functioned, either historically or more recently. Instead, the phrase is used to exclude rather…

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