Seriously?

Videos showing a man being violently removed from a United Airlines flight have provoked a public outcry on social media.

The footage taken from inside the airliner shows a man being violently pulled out of his seat and dragged down the aisle as passengers prepared to take off from Chicago to Louisville on Sunday evening.

Well there must be a reason. It may be a bad or mistaken reason but there must be a reason – they think he harassed the person next to him, or someone thought he was A Terrorist, or something.

But no.

The airline in question – United – has acknowledged that the man’s only apparent crime was that the flight was overbooked and

Speaking of systemic obstacles thrown in the path of women in STEM – Google does its part.

Google has discriminated against its female employees, according to the US Department of Labor (DoL), which said it had evidence of “systemic compensation disparities”.

As part of an ongoing DoL investigation, the government has collected information that suggests the internet search giant is violating federal employment laws with its salaries for women, agency officials said.

“We found systemic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the entire workforce,” Janette Wipper, a DoL regional director, testified in court in San Francisco on Friday.

Stay in STEM, girls – and if they pay you less than they pay the boys, just stay later and … Read the rest

Robert Reich on Facebook:

Update for Trump voters.

1. He said he wouldn’t bomb Syria. You bought it. Then he bombed Syria.

2. He said he’d build a wall along the border with Mexico. You bought it. Now his secretary of homeland security says “It’s unlikely that we will build a wall.”

3. He said he’d clean the Washington swamp. You bought it. Then he brought into his administration more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls than in any administration in history, to make laws that will enrich their businesses.

4. He said he’d repeal Obamacare and replace it with something “wonderful.” You bought it. Then he didn’t.

5. He said he’d use his business experience to whip the

Well that’s a thing I didn’t know was happening.

What is “lunch shaming?” It happens when a child can’t pay a school lunch bill.

In Alabama, a child short on funds was stamped on the arm with “I Need Lunch Money.” In some schools, children are forced to clean cafeteria tables in front of their peers to pay the debt. Other schools require cafeteria workers to take a child’s hot food and throw it in the trash if he doesn’t have the money to pay for it.

New Mexico has passed a bill outlawing that kind of bullying.

In some cases, cafeteria workers have been ordered to throw away the hot lunches of children who owed money,

I saw people yesterday saying this was going to happen. I thought they were exaggerating the level of predictability. BBC headline: Egypt’s Coptic churches hit by deadly blasts on Palm Sunday.

In Alexandria, an explosion outside St Mark’s Coptic church killed 13 people. Pope Tawadros II, head of the Coptic Church, had been attending Mass inside and was unhurt, state media reported.

An earlier blast at St George’s Coptic church in Tanta killed 29 people.

So-called Islamic State (IS) says it is behind the explosions. The group has recently targeted Copts in Egypt.

Four police officers, including one policewoman, were among those killed in Alexandria, the interior ministry said. The suicide bomber blew himself up after they stopped him

Is it a crime against childhood to teach children to read critically? Kathryn Heyman thinks not.

This week, the Victorian Education Department released their Respectful Relationships program for state primary schools. In spite of the shock headlines reporting fairytales being ‘banned’, the program simply helps teach children how to deconstruct those stories. In other words, it teaches them how to read. As Victorian premier Daniel Andrews said, with admirable restraint, “We are very much in favour of kids reading stories and then sitting down and talking about them. It is called learning.”

If you don’t look at stories (of all kinds) with a critical eye you can’t think about how they’re shaping you. It’s quite a good idea to … Read the rest

Another “prominent male philosopher suddenly found to have long history of sexual harassment accusations” story, where “suddenly found to have”=”has long been known to have but we tried to keep it quiet for a few decades.” The long history this time belongs to John Searle.

Documents obtained by BuzzFeed News show that Joanna Ong, 24, who filed suit against Searle and the University of California Regents last month, was not the first woman to report the 84-year-old professor to the university. Ong’s suit alleges that she was fired from her job as Searle’s research assistant after rejecting his advances.

In 2014, an undergraduate student said Searle told her she couldn’t be his research assistant because she was married and

Originally a comment by Helene on Rhetoric and imagery which is pure and simple Jew hatred.

I hold no brief for the Israeli government, especially not Netanyahu and his rightwing coalition. In particular, I loathe the meddling by ultra-orthodox rabbis and the haredi community in many civil matters (e.g. marriage, divorce). But there is little doubt that Israel is by far the most liberal (full women’s rights, gays rights — gays serve openly in the military and the only gay pride parade that I’ve seen bigger than Tel Aviv’s is the one in Berlin — press freedom, general civil rights, etc.) and democratic country in the Middle East, with a better record on many of these issues than many … Read the rest

That ended quickly. Good. The Washington Post reports:

The legal battle between Twitter and the U.S. government ended Friday as the Department of Homeland Security withdrew its demand that the tech company release information to identify an account holder whose tweets have been critical of President Trump.

The lawsuit threatened to become a major battle between Silicon Valley and Washington over free speech. But it was over almost before it began. The social networking site filed a lawsuit Thursday to protest the order, saying that it violated the user’s First Amendment right to free expression. But Twitter dropped its suit Friday, saying in a court filing that because “the summons has now been withdrawn, Twitter voluntary dismisses without prejudice

Stockholm’s turn.

A man steered a stolen beer truck into a crowd of people and then rammed it into a department store, killing at least three people in the heart of Stockholm on Friday afternoon, the police and local news outlets reported.

The Swedish intelligence agency said “a large number” of people had been wounded in what officials were calling a terrorist assault.

…

The police said the first emergency call came in around 2:50 p.m. local time as the attack unfolded in Drottninggatan, Stockholm’s busiest shopping street.

Witnesses described a scene of panic and terror.

“I saw hundreds of people running; they ran for their lives” before the truck crashed into the Ahlens department store, a witness identified

The Romanian woman who was knocked off Westminster Bridge has died. The BBC reports:

Andreea Cristea is the fifth victim of the attack on 22 March, in which Khalid Masood drove into crowds on Westminster Bridge then stabbed a policeman to death, before being shot dead himself.

Ms Cristea, 31, who was on holiday with boyfriend Andrei Burnaz, had been in hospital since the attack.

She was an architect.

The couple were in London to celebrate Mr Burnaz’s birthday and he had been planning to propose to Ms Cristea that day, Romania’s UK ambassador Dan Mihalache told the BBC.

He said it was thought Masood’s car had mounted the pavement and hit Mr Burnaz, before pushing Ms Cristea into

So I guess Trump and Putin are no longer BFFs. Sad.

Russia on Friday froze a critical agreement on military cooperation with the United States in Syria after an American military strike, warning that the operation would further corrode already dismal relations between Moscow and Washington.

Syria, Russia’s ally, condemned the American strikes as “a disgraceful act.”

…

Mr. Peskov said that the cruise missile strikes on Friday represented a “significant blow” to American-Russian ties, and that Mr. Putin considered the attack a breach of international law that had been made under a false pretext. “The Syrian Army has no chemical weapons at its disposal,” Mr. Peskov said.

The American strikes on an airfield in Al Shayrat, which

Tom Parfitt in The Times (the London one) today:

Victims of a violent campaign against gay men in Chechnya have described being beaten, tortured and held in a secret prison.

At least three people were allegedly killed and dozens abused after police rounded up more than 100 men, including religious figures, a hairdresser and a television host.
Some of those detained over the past two months were struck with pieces of wood, made to sit on bottles or subjected to electric shocks, according to testimony collected by Novaya Gazeta, the independent Russian newspaper.

One unidentified victim said that he had been taken to a secret detention facility where dozens of gay men were held alongside suspected Islamists who had fought

American Oversight put out a press release:

American Oversight Investigates DHS Attempt to Stifle Online Criticism

On April 6, Twitter filed a lawsuit alleging the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had attempted to use a customs summons to unmask the identity of an anonymous Twitter user critical of the administration. In its complaint, Twitter alleged that the request exceeded Homeland Security’s authority and infringed on the constitutional rights of Twitter’s users to engage in political speech.

“Homeland Security’s effort to stretch an obscure customs regulation to stifle political dissent is deeply troubling,” said Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight. “This raises serious questions about the new administration. We have a right to know whether this action was ordered