Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalWhat we know about the police killing of Black Air Force member Roger Fortson
The police killing of a Black Air Force service member in his own home is drawing renewed scrutiny to the deadly violence that US law enforcement routinely and disproportionately uses against Black Americans.
On May 3, an officer responded to a call about a domestic disturbance and knocked on the door of US airman Roger Fortson’s apartment in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. Newly released body camera footage shows Fortson, 23, opening the door and holding a handgun pointed downward. Within seconds of the door opening, and without asking him to drop his weapon, the officer fired multiple shots at Fortson’s chest. Fortson later died of the gunshot injuries at a nearby hospital.
The body camera footage has raised new questions about the officer’s use of fatal force and his reason for visiting Fortson’s apartment in the first place. Fortson’s family has pointed to evidence suggesting that police went to the wrong unit and have emphasized that the shooting was unjustified. In an initial statement about the incident, the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Department claimed that the shooting was in self-defense. The Sheriff’s Department has since said that the officer did not go to the incorrect apartment and that it won’t be concluding whether the shooting was justified until a state investigation is complete.
Fortson’s shooting is another harrowing episode in the long history of police violence against Black Americans. In 2020, mass protests erupted across the US following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, after an officer knelt on his neck for over nine minutes. Those followed extensive demonstrations in 2014 after Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager, was shot and killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri. The police shooting of Fortson also echoes other cases when law enforcement has killed Black Americans in their homes, including the shooting of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky.
https://www.vox.com/24153974/roger-fortson-police-killing
Cop shoots him and THEN says "Drop the gun"? Yeah right. And claims "qualified immunity". What a crock.
'A world first': project recycles polyester into yarn for new clothes
Football shirts, sports event banners and uniforms are piled up ready to be pumped into a machine which melts them down for recycling ready to be made into new clothes.
In a world first in Kettering, Northamptonshire, Project Re:claim is taking technology used for recycling plastic bottles and adapting it to reprocess polyester textiles into granules that can be turned back into yarn for new clothes.
The joint venture between the Salvation Army and recycling specialist Project Plan B uses items from the charity’s sorting centre, which separates out the 10-20% of donated items that cannot be resold according to type of textile. Infrared sensors pick out wool, cotton and nylon items that can be sent off to experimental reprocessors and yarn makers around the world – including polyester for the pellet-making machine.
Project Re:claim expects to recycle 2,500 tonnes of waste this year and to double that in 2025. It is working with big retailers, including Tesco and John Lewis, as well as specialist manufacturers such as school uniform maker David Luke, which encourage suppliers to use the recycled polyester.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/may/11/a-world-first-project-recycles-polyester-into-yarn-for-new-clothes
On a smaller scale, I have friends who belong to a knitting group that unravels old sweaters and reuses the yarn to make mittens and hats for the homeless, for children of abused women, etc.
Why far-right groups are disrupting US campus protests: 'When there's so much attention, they show up'
As the University of California, Los Angeles is reeling from a late-night attack on a student protest encampment for Gaza last week, attention is turning to the disparate group of counter-protesters who had rallied against the encampment in the lead-up to the violence, including during chaotic dueling rallies two days before.
Many witnesses to the 30 April melee observed that the small group of assailants – many of them masked – did not appear to be students. More than 30 people were injured, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair). Authorities are still working to identify the perpetrators, and have not made any arrests.
But researchers studying hate and anti-government groups have confirmed the presence at the counter-demonstrations of several far-right activists who have been involved in anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-vaccine protests across southern California over the past three years.
Narek Palyan, an Armenian-American from Los Angeles’ Van Nuys neighborhood, was photographed on UCLA’s campus on 26 April amid a group of counter-protesters, and again on the evening of 30 April, hours before the assault on the protest camp.
Palyan took part in several “Leave Our Kids Alone” demonstrations at school board meetings in southern California over the past year, where he was at times photographed making Nazi salutes. His social media history is rife with antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ+ posts. The Leave Our Kids Alone protests have cropped up at school board demonstrations, book readings and Pride celebrations throughout southern California, focusing anger from conservative parents on the recognition of LGBTQ+ identity and students in both curriculums and classrooms.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/10/college-campus-protests-far-right
Uh-huh. It figures.
Why have student protests against Israel's war in Gaza gone global?
University campuses around the world have been the stage of a growing number of protests by students demanding academic institutions divest from companies supplying arms to Israel.
The protests, which first spread across college campuses in the US, have reached universities in the UK, the rest of Europe, as well as Lebanon and India.
The students say they are voicing their opposition to, what they describe as, their university’s “complicity” in Israel’s assault on Gaza that has killed more than 34,700 people. Israel said its military offensive was a response to the attack by Hamas militants on 7 October, when about 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage.
More than 2,500 demonstrators have been arrested in the US so far, with protests on college campuses attracting global media attention and reaction from Palestinians trapped in the besieged Gaza.
More protests are expected, with the Israeli assault on Rafah drawing international condemnation. Some students have begun hunger strikes in protest against their university’s “silence and inaction”.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/08/have-student-protests-campus-israel-war-gaza-global
Missouri man says he killed wife because of her costly medical treatment
A 75-year-old Missouri man strangled his wife to death in a hospital bed while claiming that he could no longer afford to pay for her ongoing kidney dialysis treatment, according to authorities.
Ronnie Wiggs has been jailed on a count of second-degree murder in connection with a femicide that starkly demonstrates how US women in general face disproportionately high levels of violence at the hands of intimate partners and family caregivers.
According to a statement that prosecutors published on Saturday, Wiggs had accompanied his wife to a hospital in Independence, Missouri, so that she could receive a new medical port device allowing her to continue undergoing kidney dialysis.
Wiggs then fatally strangled her – covering her nose and mouth to keep from screaming – while she was in bed, prosecutors and local news outlets reported.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/07/missouri-man-wife-medical-treatment
But let's not talk about the elephant in the room, which is the exorbitant cost of US medical care.....
Want to show teachers appreciation? This top school gives them more freedom
When teachers at A.D. Henderson School, one of the top-performing schools in Florida, are asked how they succeed, one answer is universal: They have autonomy.
Nationally, most teachers report feeling stressed and overwhelmed at work, according to a Pew Research Center survey of teachers last fall. Waning job satisfaction over the last two decades has accompanied a decline in teachers’ sense of autonomy in the classroom, according to a recent study out of Brown University and the University of Albany.
But at this South Florida school, administrators allow their staff high levels of classroom creativity — and it works.
A public school of 636 kindergartners to eighth graders on the campus of Florida Atlantic University, Henderson scored in the top 1% to 3% in every subject and grade level on the state’s latest standardized tests, with the exception of sixth grade math, where students scored in the top 7%. In almost every subject, 60% or more of Henderson students score significantly above the state average.
https://apnews.com/article/teacher-appreciation-week-henderson-school-florida-103044d32bde4d4a756409c34b9a2c82
Unfortunately, this is a "selective" public school, and parents must apply for their child(ren) to attend. That means less state interference from DeSatan.
New York state sues group over abortion pill reversal claims
New York state's top prosecutor on Monday sued Heartbeat International, an anti-abortion group, and 11 crisis pregnancy centers, accusing them of misleading and potentially endangering women by claiming that they can provide a treatment reversing the effect of the abortion pill mifepristone.
In the lawsuit, opens new tab, New York Attorney General Letitia James asked a state court in Manhattan to block Heartbeat International and the centers, located across New York state and whose mission is to discourage women from having abortions, from advertising abortion pill reversal on their websites or anywhere else and award an unspecified amount of money damages.
"Abortions cannot be reversed," James said in a statement. "Any treatments that claim to do so are made without scientific evidence and could be unsafe."
Heartbeat International in a statement called the lawsuit "a clear attempt to censor speech, leaving women who regret their chemical abortions in the dark, and ultimately forcing them to complete an abortion they no longer want."
Mifepristone is the first part of a two-drug regimen used for medication abortion, which is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to terminate pregnancy in the first 10 weeks. Medication abortion accounted for more than 60% of U.S. abortions last year.
Proponents of medication abortion reversal say mifepristone's effects can be blocked by a high dose of the hormone progesterone. There are no controlled clinical trials showing the procedure is safe or effective, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says that it is not supported by science.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/new-york-state-sues-group-over-abortion-pill-reversal-claims-2024-05-06/
Heartbeat International et al are delusional.
Boeing's problems were as bad as you thought
Boeing went under the magnifying glass at not one, but two Senate hearings on April 17 examining allegations of deep-seated safety issues plaguing the once-revered plane manufacturer. Witnesses, including two whistleblowers, painted a disturbing picture of a company that cut corners, ignored problems, and threatened employees who spoke up.
The hearings were convened just four months after a door plug blew out of a Boeing-made Alaska Airlines plane mid-flight in January, sparking further concerns about a precipitous downslide in Boeing’s reputation for safety and quality in recent years. The first April 17 hearing, held by the Senate Commerce Committee, questioned aviation experts who put together an FAA report published in February. It concluded that the company had not made enough strides in improving its safety culture since the deadly 2018 and 2019 737 MAX crashes that killed 346 people.
“There exists a disconnect, for lack of a better word, between the words that are being said by Boeing management and what is being seen and experienced by employees across the company,” said witness Javier de Luis, an aerospace engineer and lecturer at MIT.
The FAA report conducted hundreds of interviews with Boeing employees across the country, and the authors found staff often didn’t know how to report concerns or who to report them to. “In one of the surveys that we saw, 95 percent of the people who responded to the survey did not know who the chief of safety was,” said Tracy Dillinger, manager for safety culture and human factors at NASA.
The second hearing put the spotlight on two whistleblowers — Boeing quality engineer Sam Salehpour and former Boeing engineer Ed Pierson — alongside aviation safety advocate and former FAA engineer Joe Jacobsen and Ohio State University aviation professor Shawn Pruchnicki. The whistleblowers slammed Boeing for allegedly knowing about defective parts and other serious assembly problems, and choosing to ignore or even conceal them. Such problems could slow down production and be expensive to fix — and internal and external critics say that Boeing’s priority was maximizing its profits.
https://www.vox.com/money/2024/4/17/24133324/boeing-senate-hearings-whistleblower-sam-salehpour-congress
Yeah, I thought so.
Domestic violence victims are often criminalized. A California bill wants to change that
In 1995, on the day before Kelly Savage-Rodriguez planned to flee her abusive husband, she ran some final errands while her children, ages three and one, napped. She hoped to take them on the early morning Amtrak from Porterville, California, to Los Angeles and stay with her brother, but when she returned, she said, she found that her husband had beaten and killed her three-year-old son, Justin. She called 911. The police arrested her along with her husband.
Savage-Rodriguez was jailed as she awaited trial, and said her lawyer did not have training in advocating for clients who suffered domestic violence. The judge used her history of abuse against her, she said, and said she was equally at fault for her son’s death under California’s “failure to protect” charges that can criminalize the non-abusive parent in a domestic violence case because she had not fled. She was later convicted and sentenced to life without parole, same as her abuser.
In the United States, survivors who are criminally charged often do not have their history of abuse taken into account during court to help judges and juries understand the circumstances, and they can face scrutiny or disbelief when they do share their stories.
“It didn’t matter what I did or didn’t do, it didn’t matter how much I was trying,” said Savage-Rodriguez, who was released in 2018 following a pardon and is now a coordinator for California Coalition for Women Prisoners. “None of it mattered. They wanted a conviction and that’s all that they were concerned with.”
Across the country, advocates are pushing for sentencing reforms that would provide a more trauma-informed approach to survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking. In the past five years, lawmakers in New York, Louisiana, Georgia, Virginia and Wyoming have passed legislation to vacate the sentences of survivors.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/may/04/california-domestic-violence-legislation
This should be federal law, not state.
Canada police charge three with murder of Sikh leader Nijjar, probe India link
Canadian police on Friday arrested and charged three Indian men with the murder of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar last year and said they were probing whether the men had ties to the Indian government.
Nijjar, 45, was shot dead in June outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, a Vancouver suburb with a large Sikh population. A few months later, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cited evidence of Indian government involvement, prompting a diplomatic crisis with New Delhi.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police named the three men as Karanpreet Singh, 28, Kamalpreet Singh, 22 and Karan Brar, 22.
"We're investigating their ties, if any, to the Indian government," Mandeep Mooker, an RCMP superintendent, told a televised news conference.
The Indian mission in Ottawa did not respond to requests for comment.
Nijjar was a Canadian citizen campaigning for the creation of Khalistan, an independent Sikh homeland carved out of India. The presence of Sikh separatist groups in Canada has long frustrated New Delhi, which had labeled Nijjar a "terrorist".
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canadian-police-have-made-arrests-case-killing-sikh-leader-nijjar-says-cbc-2024-05-03/
You can argue that Nijjar was a separatist, but I will argue that Modi is a Hindu nationalist and would-be dictator.
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Gender: Do not displayCurrent location: Virginia
Member since: Wed Jun 1, 2011, 07:34 PM
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