Lycée Arago Arrests Reminiscent of Rampant Illegality in Trump Inauguration Arrests & Prosecutions

Nearing a year and a half ago now protestors in DC demonstrating against Trump’s inauguration were subjected to mass arrest, in many cases without probable cause. The treatment they received was shameful and illegal (though it is unlikely that any court will ever punish the officers involved), and the prosecutions that followed have been worse. The occupation of a high school in Paris, France on the 22nd of May (coincident with a larger protest march nearby) is now granting the French legal establishment to fuck things up just as badly as we have in the US.

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Unclear on the Concept: No-Platforming at Stanford and the Right Wing

Some time back clinically-diagnosed dumbfuck Charles Murray was invited to participate in a media program at Stanford known as Cardinal Conversations. Lefty folks, mostly students, at Stanford organized a “Take Back the Mic” rally with counter-programming.

Naturally, Niall Fergusson, a member of Stanford’s Hoover Institute, prominent Republican and eminent jerkface, and a small group of conservative students responded with the typical concern for free speech that anyone might have when their preferred speaker is getting campus support for their speech while others say different stuff nearby. The Stanford Daily has the low-down on all this, including this particularly freedom-loving quote:

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Switzerland’s Pension Funds: Kill Your Spouse, Get Free Money!

Oh, look, another way that old attitudes towards domestic violence persist: Zurich’s Tages-Anzeiger (the Daily Anzeiger?*1) is reporting in German that despite Swiss law requiring that spouse-murderers not benefit financially from their crimes, the laws of Switzerland (presumably Vital Records laws or similar) are not structured in a way that pension funds are informed whether a death is from natural causes or not. RTS amplified the Tages-Anzeiger in a small french-language article. (Content Warning: if you play the accompanying news video, they have a portrayal of a fictional domestic-violence murder. I have no idea why.)

Le droit suisse prévoit qu’une personne puisse être déshéritée si elle a intentionnellement tenté de provoquer la mort du légataire.

Pourtant, les caisses de pension ignorent souvent si la mort est naturelle ou non. “Ces cas non signalés sont difficiles à découvrir”, affirme le secrétaire général de l’Association prévoyance suisse Emmanuel Ullman pour expliquer cette situation.

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Venezuela: Fucked by Capitalism, Fucked by Socialism

I don’t know much about Venezuela, but I do know that the late Hugo Chavez has been pilloried as a source of instability, particularly for his socialist reforms. This is true despite the fact that Chavez’ power has always been acquired through elections as free and fair as any in recent Venezuelan history, while his opponents launched a coup to end his first stint as head-of-state.

So why is that? Could it be that he came to power fairly but implemented such bad, harmful, and/or tyrannical policies that a coup was justified?

Even granting that Hugo Chavez had participated in an unsuccessful 1992 coup intended to instal Rafael Caldera as Venezuelan head-of-state (and the fear of violence that might generate among his opposition after he was elected), Al Jazeera doesn’t think so. While they do blame Chavez for certain decisions, they do not find general blame in a socialist approach to economic policy … nor do they find it in any capitalist approach. What they find instead is both interesting and, for those with a good understanding of economics, fairly predictable.

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Autism = Violence in England Gay Bar Threat? Why not? asks Associated Press

A number of news outlets are carrying a brief Associated Press story on the sentencing of a man arrested in connection with a terrorism threat against the gay community in the smaller Brit town Barrow-in-Furness. You can read it here, if you like.  The story is mostly uninteresting. The man arrested, Ethan Stables, never got the chance to make the spectacular “kill all the gays” attack he’d been threatening, and when time came for his sentencing, the judge assigned him an indefinite term in a psychiatric facility.

What’s odd here, however, is that you don’t go to a psych hospital instead of jail if there’s no psychological or psychiatric problem that led to your crime. Now, it may be that you had a condition from which you’ve since recovered, but you had to have had a condition at the time. So when the Associated Press’ description of Stables lists precisely zero conditions known to have a mechanism that can cause violence but does list “autism spectrum disorder” readers not aware of the state of psychological research might assume, wrongly, that autism spectrum disorder is associated with an increased risk of violence.

This description of Stables originally came from the defense, but we should not allow that to grant the Associated Press a free pass here. In order to prevent crazy-blaming, the AP has a responsibility to avoid dropping any disorder into a story in this context unless they are certain that the disorder has a known correlation with an increase in violence and a plausible explanation of how that disorder might have played a causal role in the behavior at issue. It may be that the records of any court ordered psych examination are sealed, but in that case the AP should not mention any particular disorder, whatever the defense contends. It may also be that the court believed that autism spectrum disorder could explain Stables’ threats of terrorism, but in that case the AP should clearly report that this is contrary to the best scientific evidence we have to date, and absent an explanation of how aspects of autism spectrum disorder played a role in a unique causal chain, the court’s judgement should be clearly labeled questionable. The AP took neither tack. The relevant part is entirely contained in this quote:

Defence lawyers said the 20-year-old, who has an autism spectrum disorder, had been brainwashed by right-wing extremists. But he was convicted in February of preparing an act of terrorism.

Journalism of this recklessness should always be called out for criticism.

A Terrible Argument Against The Resurrection

I find this completely bizarre.

Jason Thibodeau has a “new” argument against the resurrection over on The Secular Outpost. I say, “new” because even if the argument hasn’t gotten widespread attention before, I cannot possibly imagine that it has not been previously advanced by someone. JT isn’t vouching for this argument per se, but rather he wanted to “present it [there] and solicit the thoughts of the Secular Outpost community”.

What is this grand argument? I copy it verbatim:

(1) God is completely rational.

Thus,

(2) Any action that God performs is undertaken on the basis of some good reason.

(3) There is no good reason for God to resurrect Jesus from the dead.

Therefore,

(4) God did not resurrect Jesus from the dead.

Premise (1) follows from the fact that God is perfect and (2) is a consequence of (1). Therefore, the soundness of the argument depends on the truth of (3). We can defend (3) by considering possible reasons that God might have for resurrecting Jesus and rejecting them. It is probably impossible to consider all possible factors that might count in favor of God’s resurrecting Jesus. However, that need not undermine the argument. Suppose we are not certain that there is no good reason for God to resurrect Jesus from the dead. We can issue a challenge to any person who believes that God did resurrect Jesus. That challenge would be to provide the good reason for God to resurrect Jesus. In the absence of any such account of God’s reason, we ought to be skeptical that there is such a reason.

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Racism Not Among Known Side-Effects

This is hysterical.

Rosanne Barr has attempted to excuse her racist tweeting by claiming that she was on Ambien (an anti-insomnia medication) when she put out her last 10 years of tweets, or, well, at least that last one:

guys I did something unforgiveable so do not defend me. It was 2 in the morning and I was ambien tweeting-it was memorial day too-i went 2 far & do not want it defended

While it’s true that being awake while dead tired can make you think that you’re funnier and smarter than you really are, it doesn’t make you think different things. You’re just more likely to expect everyone to laugh at your comic genius. But, of course, being a wealthy celebrity has the same effect, and if you tweet out Rosanne-level shit over ten or more years and still get offered a new sitcom, that’s going to have an inhibition-lessening effect as well. All of which had the makers of Ambien feeling they had no reason to be generous to Barr. So they put out a tweet of their own:

People of all races, religions and nationalities work at Sanofi every day to improve the lives of people around the world. While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication.

They were, of course, a little slower on the draw than individuals who didn’t have to get a tweet approved by some corporate supervisor, but I gotta say that I like the idea of a company willing to trash casual racism instead of taking some bullshit “above the fray”, supposedly morally neutral position.

 

 

 

Zero Fox Given: Stephanie Walter

Ran across this great illustration by Stephanie Walter, a European programmer, designer, & blogger:

Sleeping red-orange canid with unnaturally colorful tail gives zero

Zero Fox Given

 

She blogs primarily in french, and I have never read any tech-news in French some I’m learning a ton of new terms, but if you’re comfortable reading French and do any design or programming (or are willing to scroll through a bunch of things you don’t understand to find cute designs!), you might just find her blog worth checking out!

 

Fascist Policing: Milwaukee Edition; AKA No One Is Talking About Sterling Brown

I’m not sure why, but since the video of Sterling Brown’s mistreatment was released no one on FtB seems to have covered the malicious violence police committed against Brown, a rookie NBA player who may not be a superstar (yet) but is already playing a large contributing role for his team in his first year. From that, we can guess he’s making significant money and had significant local fame even before this incident put him repeatedly in the news. (BTW: I Have Forgiven Jesus spoke about this in anticipation of the video’s release, but we did not yet know what it showed.)

It’s been hard for me to start this piece. This story falls in an awkward place for me. It lacks the immediate, universal concern that appears to exist here on FtB when cops kill someone, but it’s also far more serious than the quotidian racism in policing that I also cover.

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Fascist Policing: Sacramento Edition II

Today I’d like to talk about the story of a man who wasn’t beaten by the cops, wasn’t arrested by them (at least in this encounter), wasn’t even searched by them. I want to talk about his story because it goes to the heart of the Black encounter with fascist policing today: the everyday, relentless, low-level harassment of Black residents of the US.

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