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anonymous

President Biden Will Revisit Trump Rules on Campus Sexual Assault - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...joe-biden-title-ix.html

politics

shared by anonymous on 09 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The Biden administration will examine regulations by Betsy DeVos that gave the force of law to rules that granted more due-process rights to students accused of sexual assault.
  • WASHINGTON — President Biden on Monday directed the Education Department to conduct an expansive review of all policies on sex and gender discrimination and violence in schools, effectively beginning his promised effort to dismantle Trump-era rules on sexual misconduct that afforded greater protections to students accused of assault.
  • President Biden on Monday directed the Education Department to conduct an expansive review of all policies on sex and gender discrimination and violence in schools, effectively beginning his promised effort to dismantle Trump-era rules on sexual misconduct that afforded greater protections to students accused of assault.
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  • one ordering the new education secretary to review those policies, and the other establishing a gender-focused White House policy council — Mr. Biden, an author of the Violence Against Women Act, waded into an area that has been important to him but has been politically charged for more than a decade.
  • “We’re looking for a process that does not turn us into courts, that allows us to treat both sides fairly and equally, and does not attempt to micromanage campus proceedings,” said Terry W. Hartle
  • The Trump administration’s rules have been in effect since August, and lawsuits that sought to overturn them — including one to delay them as colleges grappled with the coronavirus pandemic — have failed
  • Victims’ rights groups hailed the Obama-era rules for reversing longstanding practices on college campuses of sweeping sexual assault claims under the rug, and for extending wide-ranging protections from obstacles that had long stymied reporting of sexual assault. The guidance instituted a broad definition for what qualified as sexual harassment, discouraged cross-examination and required schools to use the lowest evidentiary standard in adjudicating claims.
  • The guidance, however, was also criticized by school administrators and due-process activists, who said it amounted to an illegal edict that incentivized schools to often err on the side of complainants. Hundreds of federal and state lawsuits have been filed by students accused of sexual misconduct since 2011, when the Obama administration issued its guidance, and dozens of students have won court cases against their colleges for violating their rights under those rules.
  • Civil liberties groups that endorsed those rules said they were concerned about how the Biden administration’s efforts would shake out for survivors and accused students alike.The Trump administration took into account more than 120,000 comments and several changes that victims’ rights groups pressed for, such as a dating violence definition, “rape shield” protections and mandating “supportive measures” for victims, even if they did not file a formal complaint.
  • “There are students who are raped on college campuses, and there are students who are wrongly accused, and we should not be choosing between which of those groups we wish to give justice,” Mr. Cohn said. “The one-sided rhetoric doesn’t lead us to have confidence at this point that the rights of the accused will seriously be taken into account.”
  • Ms. DeVos strongly criticized Mr. Biden’s objections to the rule last spring, when he was the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, telling The Washington Examiner that she was “disgusted” by his position.
  • The Biden administration’s decision to review Title IX policies also comes as states around the country introduce their own legislation to bar transgender female athletes from competing on sports teams that do not match their biological sex at birth.
  • “We have the tools that we have,” Ms. Klein said, “which are federal laws and the bully pulpit and clarity about our policy and values.”
  • The Obama administration issued guidance to schools, colleges and universities that critics in and out of academia said leaned too heavily toward accusers and offered scant protections or due process for students and faculty accused of sexual harassment, assault or other misconduct. The Trump administration swept those aside and delivered the first-ever regulations on sexual misconduct, which many saw as swinging too far the other way, offering the accused too much power through guaranteed courtlike tribunals and cross-examination of accusers.
  • “The policy of this administration is that every individual, every student, is entitled to a free — a fair education free of sexual violence, and that people — all involved — have access to a fair process,” said Ms. Klein, a former senior adviser to Hillary Clinton when she was the first lady.
  • When the Trump administration’s rules were proposed, Mr. Biden said they would “return us to the days when schools swept rape and assault under the rug, and survivors were shamed into silence.”Ms. DeVos strongly criticized Mr. Biden’s objections to the rule last spring, when he was the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, telling The Washington Examiner that she was “disgusted” by his position.
  • As vice president, Mr. Biden was integral to President Barack Obama’s efforts to overhaul Title IX, in part by issuing guidance that led to aggressive investigations of schools that had mishandled sexual assault complaints and threatened them with funding cuts. Rules proposed in 2018 by Betsy DeVos, the education secretary under President Donald J. Trump, wiped those out and cemented procedures that bolstered the due process rights of accused students.
  • “We’re really seeing it used as a way for schools to confuse and manipulate survivors, which is really what we’ve seen for decades,” Ms. Carson said of the DeVos rules. “Now it’s this really scary process on the books, and it gives the schools a way to say, ‘Do you really want to go through this?’”
  • “We have the tools that we have,” Ms. Klein said, “which are federal laws and the bully pulpit and clarity about our policy and values.”
carolinehayter

Gillibrand calls on Schumer to bring vote on bill to change how military sexual assault... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

politics us military Culture policy

shared by carolinehayter on 30 May 21 - No Cached
  • Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand on Sunday called on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to bring to the floor a vote on a bipartisan bill that would overhaul the way the US military responds to sexual assault cases.
  • The legislation, which was introduced last month by a bipartisan group of senators, would make significant changes to how sexual assault cases are handled, moving the decision-making power on whether to bring felony-level charges from the chain of command
  • The bill, which was originally introduced by Gillibrand, Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst of Iowa and others, would also take preventatives measures, including increasing training for all members of the military from ROTC to enlisted officers, as well as criminal investigators and military prosecutors, so they have the tools they need to work on sexual assault and domestic violence cases.
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  • "His insistence on narrowing this bill to one crime -- the crime of sexual assault -- you're going to basically break apart the criminal justice system within the military. You're going to create one set of justice for one set of plaintiffs and defendants and the rest for everybody else. It's not fair," she told Tapper.
  • In 2014, Gillibrand led the fight to remove the decision to prosecute military sexual assault cases from commanders. The effort didn't fall along party lines, as she gained Republican supporters like Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas to her effort. But the bill ultimately fell short and failed to get 60 votes, in part because of Democratic opposition
  • "To take biases out of the system across the board, you need a trained military prosecutor to make these decisions about whether it should go to trial. That takes it out of the chain of command. The chain of command has bias because they may know the perpetrator, the accused," she said.
  • "They may know the survivor and they may have a certain lens about which service member's better for fighting a war or better for good order and discipline within the ranks. That bias is inappropriate when it comes to serious felonies," the senator added.
anonymous

California gun ruling: A federal judge, who compares an AR-15 to a Swiss Army knife, ov... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by anonymous on 05 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • a federal judge overturned California's longtime ban on assault weapons on Friday, ruling it violates the Second Amendment's right to bear arms.
  • Assault weapons have been banned in California since 1989, according to the ruling. The law has been updated several times since it was originally passed.
  • According to the ruling by U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez of San Diego, the assault weapons ban deprives Californians from owning assault-style weapons commonly allowed in other states.
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  • In his ruling, the judge also criticized the news media, writing, "One is to be forgiven if one is persuaded by news media and others that the nation is awash with murderous AR-15 assault rifles. The facts, however, do not support this hyperbole, and facts matter."
  • However, as CNN has previously reported, AR-15 style rifles have been the weapon of choice for numerous mass shooters,
  • Last year, Benitez ruled California's ban on high-capacity magazines was unconstitutional. He also struck down the state's restriction on remote purchases of gun ammunition. California Gov. Gavin Newsom criticized the ruling Friday, calling AR-15's a "weapon of war."
  • He said in a statement that the comparison made by the judge between a Swiss Army Knife and the AR-15 "completely undermines the credibility of this decision and is a slap in the face to the families who've lost loved ones to this weapon."
  • The ruling and injunction are stayed for 30 days, during which time the Attorney General may appeal and seek a stay from the Court of Appeals.
  • California Attorney General Rob Bonta said he will be appealing the ruling. "Today's decision is fundamentally flawed, and we will be appealing it," Bonta said in a news release.
anonymous

George HW Bush apologizes actress he sexually assaulted | Daily Mail Online - 0 views

www.dailymail.co.uk/...sh-sexually-assaulted-her.html

georgebush president assault US Culture

shared by anonymous on 25 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • George HW Bush apologizes actress he sexually assaulted
  • Bush has apologized saying it was an 'attempt at humor.' 
  • President George H.W. Bush apologizes after actress claimed he 'sexually assaulted' her and insists his 'attempt at humor' was misinterpreted
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  • President George H.W. Bush APOLOGIZES after actress claimed he 'sexually assaulted' her and insists his 'attempt at humor' was misinterpreted
  • Lind took to Instagram sharing this image along with the photo in question to make the claims against the former president on Tuesday 
  • The incident allegedly happened during a photo-op at a private screening for the AMC series 'Turn'
  • The actress has not offered definitive evidence of the alleged misconduct
aleija

Opinion | There's a Sexual Assault Crisis in the Military. Congress Can Stop It. - The ... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...military-ernst-gillibrand.html

opinion politics US

shared by aleija on 01 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Advocates for reform contend that a key reason for the impunity is the military chain of command, the rigid organizational structure that gives commanders authority over their subordinates. This arrangement also extends to the handling of sexual assault. The rules give commanders a key role in the prosecution of such cases involving service members under their authority.
  • Despite promises from military leaders that they could be trusted to solve the problem themselves, in the last decade reports of assault have doubled, while the conviction rate has halved. The pending bill would remove the prosecution of sexual assault cases from the chain of command. The legislation enjoys broad, bipartisan support with more than 60 co-sponsors, including Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, a combat veteran and survivor of sexual assault, who participated in the video above.
  • But even though Senator Ernst’s recent decision to throw her weight behind the bill has given the effort new impetus, the legislation’s chances of passage are uncertain amid stiff resistance from some key senators. Last week, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, and the ranking member, Senator James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, blocked the bill from a vote in the Senate — where it surely would have passed given its broad support.
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  • Congress now has a month to pass the bill. In July, it will go to committee, where Senators Reed and Inhofe’s influence leaves the legislation’s solutions vulnerable to being watered down or minimized.
Javier E

Gun Violence in America: The 13 Key Questions (With 13 Concise Answers) - Jonathan Stra... - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...272727

guns facts violence statistics history

shared by Javier E on 27 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • There were 8,583 homicides by firearms in 2011, out of 12,664 homicides total, according to the FBI. This means that more than two-thirds of homicides involve a firearm
  • Gun violence also affects more than its victims. In areas where it is prevalent, just the threat of violence makes neighborhoods poorer. It's very difficult to quantify the total harm caused by gun violence, but by asking many people how much they would pay to avoid this threat -- a technique called contingent valuation -- researchers have estimated a cost to American society of $100 billion dollars.
  • 19,392 of 38,264 suicides in 2010 involved a gun (50%), according to the CDC.
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  • There were 606 firearm-related accidents in the same year -- about 5% of the number of intentional gun deaths.
  • There are about 310 million guns in the country. About 40% of households have them, a fraction that has been slowly declining over the last few decades, down from about 50% in the 1960s.
  • current federal gun regulation (see above) contains an enormous loophole: While businesses that deal in guns are required to keep records and run background checks, guns can be transferred between private citizens without any record. This makes straw purchases easy.
  • The most comprehensive public list of U.S. mass shootings is the spreadsheet of 62 incidents from 1982-2012, compiled by Mother Jones. Their list shows:
  • Mass shootings happen all over the country. Killers used a semi-automatic handgun in 75% of incidents, which is about the same percentage as the 72% in overall gun violence. Killers used an assault weapon in 40% of incidents. This is much higher than overall assault weapon use in crimes, estimated at less than 2%. The guns were obtained legally in 79% of mass shootings. Many of the shooters showed signs of mental illness, but in only two cases was there a prior diagnosis. There were no cases where an armed civilian fired back.
  • they account for only a small fraction of gun violence in the United States.
  • It's also possible that gun ownership is a deterrent to crime, because criminals must consider the possibility that their intended victim is armed.
  • . In 2010, different researchers re-examined Lott's work, the NRC report, and additional data up through 2006, and reaffirmed that there is no evidence that right-to-carry laws reduce crime.
  • The most comprehensive estimate is that a 10% reduction in U.S. households with guns would result in a 3% reduction in homicides.
  • gun ownership has gotten much more concentrated among fewer households: if you own one gun, you probably own several
  • There's abundant evidence that under the current system, guns flow easily between legal and illegal markets.
  • guns are used to commit a crime about 10 times as often as they are used for self-defense.
  • Won't criminals kill with other weapons if they don't have guns? The crux of this question is whether most homicides are planned, or whether killers more often confront their victims with no clear intention. In the second case, adding a gun could result in a fatal shooting that would otherwise have been avoided.
  • In 1968, Franklin Zimring examined cases of knife assaults versus gun assaults in Chicago. The gun attacks were five times more deadly
  • Here are some approaches that don't seem to work, at least not by themselves, or in the ways they've been tried so far: Stiffer prison sentences for gun crimes. Gun buy-backs: In a country with one gun per person, getting a few thousand guns off the street in each city may not mean very much. Safe storage laws and public safety campaigns.
  • We don't really have good enough evidence to evaluate these strategies: Background checks, such as the Brady Act requires. Bans on specific weapons types, such as the expired 1994 assault weapons ban or the handgun bans in various cities.
  • These policies do actually seem to reduce gun violence, at least somewhat or in some cases: More intensive probation strategies: increased contact with police, probation officers and social workers. Changes in policing strategies, such increased patrols in hot spots. Programs featuring cooperation between law enforcement, community leaders, and researchers, such as Project Safe Neighborhoods.
  • Removing legal restrictions that prevent the Centers for Disease Control and other agencies from tracking and researching gun violence is also a sensible idea, and follows a long history of calls from scientists (see: what don't we know).
  • We lack some of the most basic information we need to have a sensible gun policy debate, partially because researchers have been prevented by law from collecting it. The 2004 National Research Council report discussed above identified several key types of missing data: systematic reporting of individual gun incidents and injuries, gun ownership at the local level, and detailed information on the operation of firearms markets. We don't even have reliable data on the number of homicides in each county.
  • Centers for Disease Control, the main U.S. agency that tracks and studies American injuries and death, has been effectively prevented from studying gun violence, due to a law passed by Congress in 1996.
  • anonymized hospital reporting systems are the main ways we know about many other types of injuries, but the Affordable Care Act prevents doctors from gathering information about their patients' gun use. A 2011 law restricts gun violence research at the National Institutes of Health. The legal language prevents these agencies from using any money "to advocate or promote gun control."
redavistinnell

The Assault on Climate Science - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ssault-on-climate-science.html

assault climate science new york new york times

shared by redavistinnell on 09 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • The Assault on Climate Science
  • State College, Pa. — WITH world leaders gathered in Paris to address climate change, most of the planet seems to have awakened to the reality that the Earth is warming and that we’re responsible.
  • Lamar Smith, the Texas Republican who is chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology
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  • “implicitly questioning the integrity of the researchers conducting those studies can be viewed as a form of intimidation that could deter scientists from freely carrying out research on important national challenges.”
  • The study found that the “rate of global warming during the last 15 years has been as fast as or faster than what was seen during the latter half of the 20th century.”
  • In fact, 2014 was the warmest year on record, and this year is likely to end up even warmer.
  • Fortunately, NOAA did not acquiesce to Mr. Smith’s outrageous demands. The agency pointed out that it had provided Mr. Smith’s committee with the scientific briefings, data and studies behind the Science article, as well as two thorough briefings by NOAA scientists
  • At the same time, as NOAA noted, the confidentiality of communications between scientists is “essential to frank discourse.” For that reason, the agency rejected his demand.
  • Now he is using his committee chairmanship to go after the government’s own climate scientists, whose latest study is an inconvenience to his views.
  • ut he added, ominously, that “this prioritization does not alleviate NOAA’s obligation to respond fully to the Committee’s subpoena.”
  • During his tenure as the committee’s chairman, he has attempted to slash funding for earth sciences research by the National Science Foundation.
  • He has threatened to replace the foundation’s vaunted scientific peer-review process with a system where congressmen like him help choose which scientific grants are funded.
  • And he recently started a congressional investigation into the finances of an environmental institute headed by a climate scientist who was a lead signatory of a letter suggesting that if fossil fuel companies knowingly misrepresented what they knew about climate change, they should be held accountable in the same way the tobacco industry was for hiding its knowledge about the health impacts of tobacco.
  • In 2005, Joe L. Barton, a Texas Republican who was chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, sought all of my personal emails and notes because I had published a study with colleagues showing how the planet’s temperature had shot up after 1900.
  • Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, also weighed in against what he saw as “a kind of intimidation which threatens the relationship between science and public policy” that “must not be tolerated.”
  • While there is no doubt climate change is real and caused by humans, there is absolutely a debate to be had about the details of climate policy, and there are prominent Republicans participating constructively in that discourse. Let’s hear more from these sensible voices. And let’s end the McCarthy-like assault on science led by the Lamar Smiths of the world. Our nation is better than that.
clairemann

Columbia Settles a Complicated Sexual Assault Case - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...columbia-sexual-assault.html

Culture policy economics Politics US trump

shared by clairemann on 11 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • It turned into a federal lawsuit with unusually detailed documentation.
  • And now it has ended in a settlement that underscores the contentiousness of the national debate over campus sexual misconduct cases
  • Columbia has restored the diploma of Ben Feibleman, whom a three-member university panel had found responsible for sexually assaulting a female classmate. It has also agreed to pay him an undisclosed cash award and to send a statement to prospective employers describing him as an alumnus in good standing, Mr. Feibleman’s lawyer and a spokesman for the university said.
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  • whose campus sexual assault policies broadly favored believing the accusers, who are usually women.
  • It paints a picture of a campus culture in which students have become hyper-aware of the rules of academic sexual misconduct and worry about how every intimate encounter is going to look down the road.
  • Mr. Feibleman willingly sued under his own name, rather than a pseudonym, and because he had made a 30-minute audiotape of the sexual encounter. That recording became a centerpiece of his defense.
  • In the background was the presidential campaign, during which a tape surfaced of Donald J. Trump, the Republican candidate for president, boasting about forcing himself on women.
  • Columbia issued its verdict against Mr. Feibleman in June 2017, declining to give him his diploma. He filed a federal suit against the university in May 2019. That suit was settled after the Trump administration had adopted a regulation to give more due process protections to the accused, generally men, effective in August.
  • But a growing movement of men’s rights activists said the guidance went too far because it did not give those accused a chance to defend themselves through basic rights like cross-examination.
  • “While Columbia’s disciplinary findings remain unchanged, the parties have agreed to a confidential monetary settlement, and Mr. Feibleman has additionally been awarded the master of science degree in journalism for which he satisfied all requirements in 2017,”
  • Ms. Lau asserted that people had to “read between the lines” to understand the full impact of the settlement. “You don’t pay somebody anything or award them a diploma if you think they are a rapist,” she said.
  • “Despite the aggressive and harrowing attempts to shame her through the court system, she has no regrets about coming forward with her complaint of sexual assault,” the woman’s lawyer, Iliana Konidaris, said.
  • “Do you own this for the rest of your life, but make sure that the truth is out there?” he asked, “Or do you keep this some secret and hope or just wait, living looking over your shoulder, waiting for someone to do a career assassination at any given point?”
  • Mr. Feibleman sees her daredevil behavior as evidence that she was in control of her faculties; Columbia saw it as evidence that she was intoxicated, according to court papers.They ended up in her bedroom, where, at 1:37 a.m., Mr. Feibleman pressed the record button on his cellphone. (He also chronicled part of the evening, including on the water tower, on his Nikon D750 camera.)
  • “No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No, wait. No. What’s going on?”
clairemann

Olympic gymnasts: We want justice for the FBI mishandling of the Nassar investigation. - 0 views

slate.com/...-the-nassar-investigation.html

politics us SCOTUS justice

shared by clairemann on 23 Sep 21 - No Cached
  • During the hearing, several senators expressed their outrage, focusing their future actions on the FBI’s failures. Senator Patrick Leahy even supported the gymnasts’ calls for prosecuting the FBI agents accused of mishandling the case. But the Senators are avoiding the fundamental legal problem at the heart of the investigation: federal law did not cover Nassar’s abuse.
  • FBI agents did nothing when first confronted with Olympians’ accusations because the federal agents had a legal rationale for not pursuing their claims. Nassar could not be charged with a federal offense based on his assaults. That’s accurate—even if it sounds perverse. (His ultimate federal conviction was for possessing kiddie porn, not hundreds of assaults). And it is why the Indianapolis agents claimed that they did not have “federal jurisdiction” to take the case.
  • The US Olympic Committee had knocked on the wrong prosecutorial door. The survivors should have gone to a different set of Michigan state prosecutors,  according to the FBI agents.
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  • For the first time in American history, in 1994, the federal government funded states to change their laws and practices that treated domestic violence and sexual assault as less serious than other offenses. The law included a provision to address state justice system’s routine mishandling of sexual assault cases, putting accountability in the hands of survivors by enabling them to seek redress themselves. The law declared it a federal “civil right” to be free from gender-based violence.
  • In 2000, the Court declared the Violence Against Women Acts’s civil rights remedy unconstitutional precisely because it dealt with sexual abuse crimes.  Despite the fact that the law allowed private survivors to seek damages, the court ignored the civil nature of the remedy and declared the underlying fact of sexual abuse had to be considered a crime.
  • The justices were almost hysterical about the danger: If the federal government could regulate sexual abuse, they said it would “obliterate” the distinction between the federal and state governments.
  • The decision was supposed to be about federalism, but it led to no legal revolution.  In fact, five years later, the Court decided another case, Gonzales v. Raich, allowing the federal government to regulate an individual’s marjuana possession, even though that too involved “crime,” on the theory that there was a commercial market for marijuana.  Many law professors think Gonzales silently overruled Morrison, giving the federal government the power to regulate all sorts of crime, just not sexual assault.
Javier E

In Debate Over Military Sexual Assault, Men Are Overlooked Victims - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...en-are-overlooked-victims.html

military rape

shared by Javier E on 26 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • , the Pentagon estimated that 26,000 service members experienced unwanted sexual contact in 2012, up from 19,000 in 2010. Of those cases, the Pentagon says, 53 percent involved attacks on men, mostly by other men.
  • Many sexual assaults on men in the military seem to be a form of violent hazing or bullying, said Roger Canaff, a former New York State prosecutor who helped train prosecutors on the subject of military sexual assault for the Pentagon. “The acts seemed less sexually motivated than humiliation or torture-motivated,
maddieireland334

Iran-Led Push to Retake Falluja From ISIS Worries U.S. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...luja-from-isis-worries-us.html

Iran US ISIS Crisis Fulluja History

shared by maddieireland334 on 29 May 16 - No Cached
  • American commandos are on the front lines in Syria in a new push toward the Islamic State’s de facto capital in Raqqa, but in Iraq it is an entirely different story: Iran, not the United States, has become the face of an operation to retake the jihadist stronghold of Falluja from the militant group.
  • On the outskirts of Falluja, tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers, police officers and Shiite militiamen backed by Iran are preparing for an assault on the Sunni city, raising fears of a sectarian blood bath
  • But the United States has long believed that Iran’s role, which relies on militias accused of sectarian abuses, can make matters worse by angering Sunnis and making them more sympathetic to the militants.
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  • The battle over Falluja has evolved into yet another example of how United States and Iranian interests seemingly converge and clash at the same time in Iraq. Both want to defeat the Islamic State, also known as ISIS
  • In Syria, where the government of Bashar al-Assad is an enemy, America’s ally is the Kurds.
  • But in Iraq, where the United States backs the central government, and trains and advises the Iraqi Army, it has been limited by the role of Iran, the most powerful foreign power inside the country.
  • In an extraordinary statement on Wednesday, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the world’s pre-eminent Shiite religious leader, who lives in Najaf in southern Iraq and is said to be concerned by Iran’s growing role in Iraq, urged security forces and militia to restrain themselves and abide by “the standard behaviors of jihad.”
  • The United States has thousands of military personnel in Iraq and has trained Iraqi security forces for nearly two years, yet is largely on the sidelines in the battle to retake Falluja. It says its air and artillery strikes have killed dozens of Islamic State fighters, including the group’s Falluja commander.
  • Militiamen have plastered artillery shells with the name of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a Shiite cleric close to Iran whose execution this year by Saudi Arabia, a Sunni power, deepened the region’s sectarian divide, before firing them at Falluja.
  • Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who has stressed that civilians must be protected in the operation and ordered that humanitarian corridors be opened to allow civilians to leave the city safely, disavowed the militia leader’s comments.
  • She said that some residents had been killed for refusing to fight for the jihadists, and that those inside were surviving on old stacks of rice, a few dates and water from unsafe sources such as drainage ditches.
  • To allay fears that the battle for Falluja will heighten sectarian tensions, Iraqi officials, including Mr. Abadi, and militia leaders have said they will adhere to a battle plan that calls for the militias not to participate in the assault on the city.
  • The American military role in Iraq has been limited mostly to airstrikes and the training of the army. But, as in northern Syria, there are also Special Forces soldiers in Iraq, carrying out raids on Islamic State targets.
  • Iraq’s elite counterterror forces are preparing to lead the assault on Falluja; they have long worked closely with the United States and are considered among the few forces loyal to the country and not to a sect.
  • A big question going into the battle is whether the Islamic State fighters will dig in and fight or, as they have in some other battles, throw away their weapons and try to melt into the civilian population.
  • For the United States, there is also the matter of history: Led by the Marines, its forces fought two bloody battles for Falluja in 2004. Mindful of this past, American officials would have preferred that the Iraqis left Falluja alone for now and focused on the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul in the north.
  • The American military’s assault on Falluja in April of 2004 was in retaliation for an episode that became an early symbol of a war spiraling out of control, the image of it as indelible as it was gruesome: the bodies of four Blackwater contractors dangling from the ironwork of a bridge.
anonymous

McMaster Was Rebuked in 2015 Over Handling of 2 Officers Accused of Sexual Assault - Th... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...national-security-adviser.html

mcmaster US

shared by anonymous on 03 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • McMaster Was Rebuked in 2015 Over Handling of 2 Officers Accused of Sexual Assault
  • WASHINGTON — A two-year-old report by the Army’s inspector general concluded that Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, now President Trump’s national security adviser, violated the service’s regulations in a case that involved two junior officers accused of sexual assault.
  • The report asserts that during an assignment as the commanding general at Fort Benning, Ga., General McMaster “improperly” decided to allow two second lieutenants to attend Ranger School even though they were under investigation on allegations that they had sexually assaulted a female officer as cadets at West Point.
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  • Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand of New York, a Democrat and a member of the panel, has taken a strong interest in the role of women in the military and, an adviser said, pushed the Army to investigate why the junior officers were allowed to attend Ranger School.
malonema1

Florida congressman calls for a ban on assault weapon sales - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

US politics crisis

shared by malonema1 on 12 Mar 18 - No Cached
  • (CNN)A Republican congressman from Florida announced his support for a ban on assault weapon sales Friday in an op-ed in The New York Times.Rep. Brian Mast, who himself carries a concealed pistol, said in the op-ed that he supports "defining what constitutes an assault or tactical firearm and not allowing them for future purchase." An Army veteran, Mast said the rifle he used during combat in Afghanistan is "very similar to the AR-15-style semiautomatic weapon used to kill students, teachers and a coach I knew at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., where I once lived."
  • Mast also said he supports providing "behavior detection training" to anyone seeking a federal firearms license, making more resources available to schools to improve security measures, holding the "FBI and state agencies accountable for their failures to identify a threat like Nikolas Cruz" and "conducting further research into the nexus of gun violence, violence in mass media and mental illness."
Javier E

Montana assault breeds 'frightening' talk of violence against journalists | US news | T... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...onald-trump-journalism-montana

journalism violence extremism troll press culture politics trump

shared by Javier E on 27 May 17 - No Cached
  • CPJ’s executive director Joel Simon pointed to a series of recent incidents in which American journalists had been harassed or even jailed in the course of doing their jobs. He also pointed to Donald Trump’s relentless denigration of “fake news” outlets and of journalists as “enemies of the American people”.
  • “You can say that was just rhetoric, just words,” Simon said. “But now we are seeing rhetoric turned into action – we know that Trump talked to the FBI director James Comey about putting journalists in jail, that was not just talk.”
  • Simon said that the cumulative impact was the creation of an environment in which “we have a president disparaging journalists, trying to put them in jail, and reporters being assaulted. I think it’s time to be worried. It’s time to step up.”
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • dean of the journalism school at the University of Maryland, said she had seen nothing like the Montana assault in almost 40 years in the news business. “To have a professional politician beat up on a reporter – this is the kind of thing you would see in a totalitarian state. This is not America.”
  • the most shocking aspect of it was that public commentators and ordinary Americans were willing to argue openly that violence against journalists was acceptable. “That’s even more frightening than the horrible event in Montana – we are living in an America in which people are prepared in public to express the view that this was okay.”
  • The Cyberbullying Research Center has studied the bullying behavior largely of adolescents over the past 17 years, and has observed a subtle but important shift.
  • At first, teenagers were careful to maintain their anonymity, adopting pseudonyms online as they carried out their campaigns of disparagement and denigration. But more recently researchers have found an increased willingness among the bullies to speak out openly in public.
  • “People are becoming emboldened now to say publicly what they want to say under their own names,”
  • Patchin explained the shift by pointing to the lack of penalties for anyone using aggressive language online, coupled with the powerful rewards. “People get clicks and retweets and shares when they make extreme comments, and that is affirmation for someone seeking recognition.”
mimiterranova

Evaluating the One-in-Five Statistic: Women's Risk of Sexual Assault While in College: ... - 0 views

www.tandfonline.com/...00224499.2017.1295014

statistic assault culture

shared by mimiterranova on 12 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • In 2014, U.S. president Barack Obama announced a White House Task Force to Protect Students From Sexual Assault, noting that “1 in 5 women on college campuses has been sexually assaulted during their time there.”
  • We identify and evaluate several assumptions implicit in the public discourse (e.g., the assumption that college students are at greater risk than nonstudents). Given the empirical support for the one-in-five statistic, we suggest that the controversy occurs because of misunderstandings about studies’ methods and results and because this topic has implications for gender relations, power, and sexuality; this controversy is ultimately about values.
carolinehayter

'Set the standard': Cuomo allegations test Democrats' commitment to #MeToo | Andrew Cuo... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...omo-allegation-democrats-metoo

politics US culture policy

shared by carolinehayter on 08 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • New York Democrats have called for the governor to resign over sexual harassment allegations, but no national figures have joined the chorus
  • But no other national Democrats have joined the chorus. The Axios website branded it the party’s “hypocrisy moment”, arguing: “Governor Andrew Cuomo should be facing explicit calls to resign from President Biden on down, if you apply the standard that Democrats set for similar allegations against Republicans. And it’s not a close call.”
  • But in 2017, as the #MeToo movement held powerful men accountable, Kirsten Gillibrand, a senator who holds Hillary Clinton’s former seat in New York, argued that the former president should have resigned over the affair.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • The charge of double standards points to a steep learning curve for a party that has struggled to keep pace with shifting public attitudes towards gender roles, power dynamics and sexual boundaries.
  • That same year, Gillibrand became the first Democratic senator to call for her Minnesota colleague Al Franken to quit over allegations of sexual misconduct. She was joined by others including Kamala Harris, who tweeted: “Sexual harassment and misconduct should not be allowed by anyone and should not occur anywhere. I believe the best thing for Senator Franken to do is step down.”Franken did just that, but some critics now believe that he was the victim of a rush to judgment and should have been allowed to wait for the results of an investigation.
  • This time, although Gillibrand said Cuomo’s alleged conduct was “completely unacceptable”, she stopped short of demanding he resign before the investigation is done
  • “The vice-president’s view is that she believes all women should be treated with respect. Their voices should be heard. They should tell their story. There’s an independent investigation that is happening now, being overseen by the New York attorney general, and she certainly supports that.”
  • But this puts Democratic leaders out of step with groups such as Women’s March, which was born out of the January 2017 protests against Donald Trump, who faced numerous allegations of sexual assault and harassment
  • “We share the view that there should be an independent investigation but Cuomo himself has not even denied many of the harassment allegations and, for us, it’s about behaviour that is disqualifying. It could be illegal, but it also could not be illegal.”
  • Just as the instant deification then instant demonisation of Cuomo has left many crying out for nuance and complexity, so it can be said that no two cases of sexual harassment in politics are quite the same.
  • In 2018 Eric Schneiderman, an attorney general of New York lauded as a liberal advocate of women’s rights, resigned after being accused of physically abusing four women. Cuomo was among those who were quick to call for him to step down.
  • Trump’s nominee to the supreme court, Brett Kavanaugh, was nearly derailed by allegations from Dr Christine Blasey Ford that he sexually assaulted her
  • In 2019 several women accused Biden of making unwanted physical contact.
  • Last year Tara Reade, a former Senate staffer, alleged that Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993. He vehemently denied the claim, which remained unsubstantiated and faded from the election race. Biden picked a woman – Harris – as his running mate and often highlighted his work as lead sponsor of the Violence Against Women Act.
  • Larry Jacobs, the director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “In hindsight, a number of the Democrats in the Senate who had pushed him to step down later expressed regret. They realised they moved too quickly, they didn’t know enough and the punishment didn’t really fit what they later learnt to be the misbehaviour.”
  • sexual
  • “I don’t think the Republican party is in any position to be lecturing anyone about how to handle sexual harassment. They seem to have actually gotten real expertise on how to evade it.”
  • “Just because we fire Andrew Cuomo and Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein, that doesn’t alone solve the problem. The bigger problem is still there, which is that harassment is seen as an acceptable part of our culture. That’s why so many of these people in power are doing it. So yes, we need to respond and uproot harassment wherever it lies but we also need to keep our eye on the ball.”
lmunch

Gregg Jarrett: Open Cuomo criminal investigation - latest accusation suggests more than... - 0 views

www.foxnews.com/...n-sexual-assault-gregg-jarrett

cuomo US culture

shared by lmunch on 12 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • If it is true that Gov. Andrew Cuomo reached under the blouse of a female employee and groped her without consent it would constitute a crime under New York law. Unwanted sexual contact falls under the broad category of sexual assault. 
  • The appalling complaint by a sixth accuser, as reported by the Albany Times Union, suggests not only a pattern of sexual harassment by the governor but a level of offensive conduct that appears to have crossed the legal line into felonious behavior.   
  • Yet, another of Cuomo’s accusers, 25-year-old Charlotte Bennett, has said he used the exact same ploy on her. Through her attorney, she issued a statement saying the governor asked her to come to his office in the Capitol one weekend to help him with his cellphone. Once alone, she claims that he questioned her about her sex life and propositioned her.   
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The accounts of a half a dozen accusers who have bravely stepped forward paint a vivid picture of a governor as a sexual predator who exploited his power to prey on women. His despicable response is to blame the victims – it’s their fault for "misinterpreting it as unwanted flirtation." Cuomo claimed he was just "being playful." At one point, he even blamed his father, as if learned behavior somehow makes it OK. Assaulting a woman is no more permissible because someone else did it.   
  • Allegations, of course, are not proof of guilt. The governor is entitled to the due process that he now demands, even though he never afforded it to anyone else. When issues of sexual harassment or assault were raised against others, he promptly pronounced them guilty without due process. For example, Cuomo called the accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh presumptively true, all but calling him a rapist. By his own standard, the governor should presume himself guilty.   
Javier E

Trump and the Failure of the Expert Class - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...f-the-expert-class-11611341116

trump failure elites experts class history presidency wsj assessment

shared by Javier E on 23 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • For conservatives, the case was exactly reversed: They had some major policy wins, but at the cost of frequent embarrassment and dismay at the president’s offensive behavior and self-defeating logorrhea.
  • The worst of his conduct took place after the 2020 election and seemed to fulfill progressive commentators’ allegation that Donald Trump was carrying out an “assault on democracy.” Mr. Trump’s refusal to accept defeat, culminating in demands that Vice President Mike Pence overturn a lawful election on no legal authority, occasioned a debacle that may haunt the Republican Party, and the country, for years.
  • lso during the 2016 campaign, an assemblage of top-tier academics, intellectuals and journalists warned that Mr. Trump’s candidacy signified a fascist threat. Timothy Snyder, a historian of Nazism at Yale, was among the most strident of these prophets. “Be calm when the unthinkable arrives,” he warned in a Facebook post shortly after the election. “When the terrorist attack comes, remember that all authorities at all times either await or plan such events in order to consolidate power. Think of the Reichstag fire.” Many experts stuck with the fascism theme after Mr. Trump’s election and throughout his presidency
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • The great theme of the Trump years, the one historians will note a century from now, was the failure of America’s expert class. The people who were supposed to know what they were talking about, didn’t. 
  • Reports of his defeat, accurate though they were, meant little coming from news organizations that cared so much about discrediting him and so little about factual truth.
  • For the left, “democracy” is another word for progressive policy aims, especially the widening of special political rights and welfare-state provisions to new constituencies. By that definition any Republican president is carrying out an “assault on democracy.”
  • Mr. Trump assaulted democracy in the ordinary sense of the word, but he did so only after the 2020 election. That effort was discreditable and disruptive, but it was also delusional and ineffective. It was not the assault the president’s expert-class critics had foreseen.
  • It took a 22-month investigation by a special counsel to establish an absence of evidence that Mr. Trump’s campaign had conspired with the Russians.
  • Reporters treated every turn of events as evidence of Mr. Trump’s unique evil.
  • When intellectuals and journalists of the left use the word “democracy,” they typically are not referring to elections and decision-making by popularly elected officials
  • Meanwhile the administration pressed ahead with a diplomatic push to strike commercial and diplomatic deals between Israel and Arab states
  • political talking points aside, this much is apparent: No nation—or anyhow no nation that values individual liberty and isn’t an island—has managed even to slow the spread of Covid-19 without causing economic ruin and attendant disorder.
  • The Trump administration made its share of mistakes during the early stages of the pandemic, although its chief failing was the president’s lack of rhetorical clarity
  • By any set of criteria outside the self-contained system of public-health best practices, the lockdowns failed. They purchased minor slowdowns in the spread of the virus at the cost of punishing economic destruction, untold social dysfunction, and mind-blowing public debt. 
  • many parts of the country didn’t lock down, or did so only loosely and briefly, and managed to keep their hospitals running just fine.
  • Controlling the spread of Covid-19 in the U.S. was always going to be a messy business: Many infected people don’t get sick and have no compelling reason to burrow in their homes, and America is an unruly nation with a long tradition of nonconformity
  • The experts might have accounted for these realities. They might have realized that the measures prescribed by their textbooks—contact tracing, forced quarantines, shelter-in-place orders—were mostly unworkable in America. They didn’t.
  • If this was an attempted coup, it was a comically inept one. Hardly anyone in Mr. Trump’s own administration, including the vice president, wanted anything to do with it.  
  • The most regrettable part of this class failure is that, with rare exceptions, the experts themselves acknowledge no error. Nothing about the Trump years has occasioned soul-searching or self-criticism on their part
clairemann

Man Armed With Assault Rifle Texted Plans To Shoot Nancy Pelosi, Officials Say | HuffPost - 0 views

www.huffpost.com/...eat_n_5ffb4922c5b656719886c1e5

policy gop trump US history

shared by clairemann on 11 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • A Georgia man texted people his intentions to shoot House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “on live TV” while making his way to the nation’s capital with an assault rifle for Wednesday’s pro-Trump rally, authorities said.
  • Cleveland Grover Meredith Jr. was arrested at a Washington, D.C., hotel on Thursday after his disturbing plans were discovered in text messages that he had sent to friends, The New York Times reported, citing federal documents.
  • “I predict that within 12 days, many in our country will die,” he said in one text.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • “ton of 5.56 armor piercing ammo” and wanting to run over the Democratic leader. He texted one person saying he had planned to attend Wednesday’s rally near the Capitol, but had vehicle trouble. Authorities said he arrived after the rally.
  • A trailer that he had attached to his vehicle had three guns inside: a Glock 19, a 9 mm pistol and a Tavor X95 assault rifle. He also had hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Meredith, who told authorities he was traveling from Colorado, said he knew Washington has strict gun laws and so he put the weapons in his trailer.
  • In 2018, Meredith paid to install a QAnon billboard near his business, Car Nutz Car Wash, in Acworth, Georgia, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Meredith told the local news outlet that he erected the sign because he’s “a patriot among the millions who love this country.”
  • “I sincerely believe the New World Order, Cabal, Deep State ― whatever you want to call it ― wants society to devolve into a race war so that it’s much easier to take over,” he told a local reporter.
  • Another Alabama man arrested Thursday in Washington, D.C., was found carrying 11 Molotov cocktails in his pickup truck. A handgun, assault rifle and magazines were also found inside. When owner Lonnie Leroy Coffman, 70, returned to his parked truck, he was found armed with two additional handguns on him. None of the firearms were registered to him, federal authorities said.
anonymous

A transgender woman sues the Georgia Department of Corrections over allegations of sexu... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by anonymous on 24 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • A transgender woman who was incarcerated in Georgia has filed a lawsuit alleging that officials not only did not protect her from sexual assault and harm but inflicted it on her themselves.
  • accusing the defendants of denying her treatments deemed medically necessary and housing her in a men's prison despite being aware that it posed an increased risk to her safety.
  • "Being a woman in a men's prison is a nightmare," Diamond said in a news release Monday. "I've been stripped of my identity. I never feel safe. Never.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • I'm bringing this lawsuit to bring about change on behalf of a community that deserves the inherent dignity to simply exist."
  • "Ms. Diamond repeatedly notified GDC officials ... of her sexual assaults and begged to be transferred to a safer facility. Rather than heed her urgent requests for safe housing, GDC officials instructed Ms. Diamond to 'guard her booty'
  • openly acknowledged that GDC was unable to keep Ms. Diamond safe so long as she remained a transgender woman housed in men's facilities."
  • instances of abuse during her time in GDC custody, including one where an inmate hid waiting for her in a utility closet to assault her, and a corrections officer allegedly admitted she had been warned that the incarcerated man had been hiding there before the attack
  • one employee who allegedly locked her in a room on two occasions and allegedly sexually harassed her for hours.
  • Diamond filed her first lawsuit against the department in 2015 while incarcerated. The case was ultimately settled, but during litigation the court ruled that it was unconstitutional for the department to fail to protect her.
  • Despite a GDC psychologist concluding that denying her treatments would jeopardize Diamond's physical and psychological well-being, she was again denied hormone therapy
  • "The fabric of trust that I have for authorities has been broken, especially with those who the state has designated as my care takers,"
  • "My hope is that the future is brighter for people like me," Diamond said in the release. "I hope this lawsuit forever changes the way transgender people in Georgia are treated. This fight is not just my fight, it's our fight."
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