News blog

Jan 112013
 

African-American and Latino men make up a hugely disproportionate share of those stopped.

from Democracy Now

A federal judge has ruled that New York City police are not allowed to routinely stop pedestrians outside of private residential buildings in the Bronx. The stops are part of the so-called Clean Halls program, which has prompted allegations of police harassment by some residents who say they are being accosted outside of the buildings in which they live. Previous data on the New York Police Department’s "stop-and-frisk" policy has shown African-American and Latino men make up a hugely disproportionate share of those stopped. We’re joined by Molly Kovel, staff attorney with the Bronx Defenders and part of the legal team in the case, and by Abdullah Turner, a Bronx resident whose building is enrolled in the Clean Halls program and who says he was unfairly arrested while waiting for a friend inside…

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Jan 112013
 

from The Nation

During his first term in office in the late 1990s, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was considered the most polarizing leader the country had known. The left refused to forgive him for his part in the incitement that led to Yitzhak Rabin’s 1995 assassination, while the right adored him for leading the opposition to the Oslo Accords. Now approaching his fifth election campaign as head of the Likud party, Netanyahu doesn’t generate that much passion anymore. His fans are less enthusiastic, while his critics have grown tired. More than anything, it seems that a majority of Israelis have simply grown accustomed to him. At a time of regional upheaval and international instability, Netanyahu’s ability to maintain the status quo seems enough to deliver what, according to all indications, should be his third term in the prime minister’s office. But Netanyahu’s success is not just about the relative stability Israelis are enjoying; it has even more to do with political and ideological changes that have seen the entire political system shift gradually to the right, including the rise of a new right-wing elite….

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Jan 072013
 

Dismissive attitude to sexual assault sustains hierarchy of class, male privilege.

by

Warning: This post contains graphic depictions of sexualized violence.

The same small part of me that still wants to believe in faeries wanted to think that I could avoid thinking or writing about rape for at least a few weeks. But, it's impossible. Not with laws in California that say single women can't, in effect, be raped and when the night-long gang-rape of a 16-year-old unconscious girl "divides" a community dedicated to its football team. Definitely not when ongoing details about the death of a 23-year-old in Delhi, whose rape to the point of disembowelment and multiple organ failure, are spurring protests all over the world.

No matter where you are in the world, the result of rape — "date rape," "gang-rape," "easy rape," "emergency rape," "war rape" — is the same: oppression. Women are not free to live without the constant threat of assault and violence or without being treated like objects and property.  When I last checked there were at least four "rape capitals" of the world. You know what that makes the rest of us? "Rape Suburbs."

Girls and women aren't idiots. On the contrary, we understand perfectly: we're supposed to "be careful." Don't do something we might "regret."  "Stay home." "So what if it happens, anyway?" We can't feel any security that our bodily integrity will be respected. Or that our consent matters.

We cannot enjoy the confident access and ownership of public space that men do. Our attempts to pursue equality and opportunity are inhibited, not only by actual rape, but by people's malevolent tolerance for it. Rape is useful, even the rape of boys and men: it sustains a system that rewards physical dominance and sustains male hegemony….

Source

Jan 072013
 

from The Straight

Whenever I turn on CKNW Radio or News 1130, I seem to hear a vicious Conservative attack ad about NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair's "carbon tax".

Nothing gets me flipping the dial more quickly than this message.

That's because the ad is a bald-faced lie and any station that airs it does not deserve my time…

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