The DoJ drops all remaining investigation and prosecution of US War on Terror deaths/murders through harsh tactics/torture: "No Charges Filed on Harsh Tactics Used by the C.I.A." [
NYT] Glenn Greenwald reacts and describes the cases that just got dropped. [
Guardian]
Second link is arguably a violence trigger, but is better and bothers to do things like talk to the ALCU.
posted by jaduncan
on Sep 2, 2012 -
209 comments
"With your permission you give us more information about you, about your friends, and we can improve the quality of our searches," [Google CEO Eric Schmidt] said. "We don't need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you've been.
We can more or less know what you're thinking about... We can look at bad behavior and modify it."
The Atlantic's editor James Bennet discusses with Schmidt how lobbyists write America's laws, how America's research universities are the best in the world, how the Chinese are going all-out in investing in their infrastructure, how the US should have allowed automakers to fail, and ultimately Google's evolving role in an technologically-augmented society in this
broad, interesting and scary interview (~25 min Flash video) [
via]
posted by Blazecock Pileon
on Oct 4, 2010 -
55 comments
"Melissa" (name changed for privacy) is a transwoman who was badly injured in a car accident and is in hospital in critical condition. While in treatment, some of the medical staff and her family decided that since she still had a "male" body, to make things "less confusing", they will
erase 4 years of her female identity by referring to her as a man and taking her off her hormone therapy. (Warning: possible triggers) As little light puts it:
And if she woke up as from a deep sleep, she’d wake up into a world where her best friend was dead, where her body had been forcibly edited back to its pre-transition state and given a few more years of the influence of testosterone to boot, where her memory and self were hazy and confusing and nobody was calling her by the right name and pronouns, they were in fact pretending four years of her life, the four years she finally got to be honest and true to herself, those had never happened, and shh, she’s just confused, shhhh, calm down, let’s work on fixing your memory some more.
[more inside]
posted by divabat
on Jan 13, 2010 -
147 comments
Awakening on a mattress atop a wooden slab, the bare walls of your 7' x 12'
cell come into focus, illuminated by the constant glare of an overhead light. Through the narrow window in the back of your cell, you can peer out into the prison yard. In the window in the reinforced steel door, you can catch an occasional glimpse of a prison guard as they bring your meals, usually the only interruption of the silence and isolation that pervade your living conditions. Those walls are the boundaries of your world for 23 hours a day in the
Departmental Disciplinary Unit-- the
supermax prison maintained in Walpole, Massachusetts, one of
dozens of such institutions currently operated in the United States, in spite of growing
outcry based on human rights violations.
[more inside]
posted by Law Talkin' Guy
on Feb 15, 2009 -
94 comments
A 15-year-old in London is being
prosecuted for
holding a sign calling Scientology a "cult", during a
peaceful demonstration (0:55-1:40).
The teenager refused to back down, quoting a 1984 high court ruling from Mr Justice Latey, in which he described the Church of Scientology as a "cult" ... The City of London police came under fire two years ago when it emerged that more than 20 officers, ranging from constable to chief superintendent, had accepted gifts worth thousands of pounds from the Church of Scientology. The City of London Chief Superintendent, Kevin Hurley, praised Scientology for "raising the spiritual wealth of society" during the opening of its headquarters in 2006. Last year a video praising Scientology emerged featuring Ken Stewart, another of the City of London's chief superintendents via
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94
on May 21, 2008 -
128 comments
You stink, therefore I am. Philosophers and psychologists have been
studying the
science of
disgust, and its proper place in the law. Leon Kass, the chairman of the president's
council on bioethics, cites
"the wisdom of repugnance" in arguing against cloning. More recently,
Martha Nussbaum has written a new book,
"Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law," which rejects disgust as a moral guide. She has also written on the role of disgust in the
mutilations of women in Gujarat.
posted by homunculus
on Jul 17, 2004 -
8 comments
