Coming February 6, 2024 . . .
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
By Allyson Chiu @ WashingtonPost.com, June 26
When Beronica Ruiz went to pick up her 12-year-old son from school in Passaic, N.J., last week, it wasn’t the first time that day she needed to be there. Hours earlier, Ruiz and her husband had met with the school’s vice principal over concerns that their son was threatened by other students who allegedly chanted “All Mexicans should go back behind the wall,” the family’s attorney told The Washington Post.
The New Jersey couple were upset the school didn’t inform them about the taunts but left the June 19 meeting feeling “somewhat reassured” after the vice principal said he would contact the students and their parents, said Daniel Santiago, the lawyer. But as Ruiz, who was pushing her 1-year-old daughter in a stroller, walked home from Passaic Gifted and Talented Academy School No. 20 with her son that afternoon, the boy noticed they weren’t alone. Three boys trailed behind — and he recognized them.
“[He] turned to his mother and said, ‘Mom, those are the children that were threatening me, and they’re following us,’ ” Santiago said. Moments later, a 13-year-old boy allegedly attacked. Santiago said the boy first punched Ruiz’s son in the face. When the 35-year-old mother tried to step in, the teen hit her and “threw her to the ground,” causing her to lose consciousness, Santiago said. “This was a brutal hate crime, and it was committed by a 13-year-old,” Santiago said. “I don’t know what circumstances could give rise to a 13-year-old boy having such hate in his heart that he would commit this brutal attack and leave a woman essentially to die in front of her children without any remorse or any twinge of conscience.” [.....]
The 13-year-old suspect is African American, Santiago said. Ruiz and her husband are Mexican and are in the United States on work permits while they await green cards, but their children are American citizens, he said [....]
By Paul Farhi @ WashingtonPost.com, July 2
Beset by advertiser defections, the web site Stephen K. Bannon once described as “the platform for the alt-right” has steadily tumbled from the commanding heights it occupied just 30 months ago.
Op-ed author Kayyem is a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and faculty chair of the homeland security program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government
By Daniel Wiessner @ Reuters.com, July 2
More than 200 U.S. companies, including Amazon (AMZN.O), Alphabet Inc’s Google (GOOGL.O), and Bank of America (BAC.N), on Tuesday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that federal civil rights law prohibits discrimination against gay and transgender workers. The companies filed a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that bias against LGBT people is a form of unlawful sex discrimination, and said a ruling otherwise would harm businesses and workers.
The Supreme Court in April agreed to take up two discrimination cases by gay men and one by a transgender woman who was fired from her job as a funeral director when she told her boss she planned to transition from male to female. The justices will hear oral arguments in October and likely issue a ruling by the end of next June [...]
By David Lague & Ann Marie Roantree @ Reuters.com, July 2
HONG KONG - As images of demonstrators pounding at the glass walls of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council were beamed live to the world, with the notable exception of mainland China, police inside suddenly withdrew, allowing protesters to break in and ransack the place.
The tactic mystified former Hong Kong police officers as they watched coverage of hundreds of protesters, mostly students in hard hats and masks, roaming the plush, multistorey complex, vandalizing furniture and daubing graffiti over the walls. The demonstrators broke computers, spray-painted slurs against police on chamber walls and used road signs, scaffolding and metal poles to trash fittings.
“What were they thinking when they decided to let them into the Legislative Council?” asked Chris Pedder, a retired 22-year veteran of the Hong Kong police who now works as a counter terrorism and security consultant [....]
Text, photos and video by Noorullah Shirzada @ AFP.com, Jun 21
Jalalabad, Afghanistan -- Of all the sad, wrenching things I have seen as a journalist in Afghanistan, Niaz Bibi’s house was probably one of the saddest [....]
In this photograph taken on April 22, 2019, Afghan woman Niaz Bibi (C in blue),70, holds a weapon as she stands among her orphaned grandchildren and great-grandchildren at their home in the Kot district of the Nangarhar province. (AFP / Noorullah Shirzada)
There’s no doubt that Trump welcomed Russian assistance. He recently said he’d pretty much do it all over again.
She is the only candidate who has made ending the wars a centerpiece of her campaign, which will likely lead to her undoing.
On June 19th, Statistica headlined “Number of forcibly displaced people reaches new high”, and when one looks at the data, one finds an even bigger story which stands behind those numbers:
How many people who are appalled by what is happening on the US-Mexico border know that the death toll among refugees there is far lower than on the frontiers of the EU?
GEO Group faces some serious political pushback. So the company did what anyone would: It hired the former chief of staff to the chairman of the committee overseeing its industry.
By Lachlan Markay @ DailyBeast.com, July 1
One of the nation’s largest private prison companies has enlisted the services of a twice-convicted former chief of staff to a key Democratic committee chairman as it attempts to fend off efforts to regulate and even eliminate its industry.
The GEO Group hired the firm Avant Bishop Washington & Black (ABWB) in mid-May, according to a disclosure form filed last week. The firm is led by Lanier Avant, the former chief of staff to House Homeland Security Committee chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS). Avant resigned that post in 2017 after pleading guilty to federal criminal charges for failing to file years of income taxes [....]
Steven Pinker recommends! Don't blame me. I follow the Niskanen Center. (Kiss of death?)
By Liza Featherstone @ Jacobin Magazine, June 26
The feud between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren supporters is getting ridiculous. Warren isn’t Hillary and Bernie is no sexist.
Conservative leaning "white working class" voters in Midwest could give Trump another EC win. And forget Florida, Dems lost in 2018 for Governor and Senator without Trump on the ballot.
If Congress truly wants to question Mueller, here are 20 questions to ask.
Op-ed by Farhad Manjoo @ NYTimes.com, June 26
The robots may take over, but high-end schmoozing will never die.