Boston Violence Continues In Watertown - Two Suspects, Brothers, One Dead In Firefight

... as is an MIT campus policeman. But the firefight was at a home in Watertown, and the dead suspect, in an FBI photo taken while he was alive, looks like a child... a child who tossed explosives at the police cars involved in the chase.

I must be getting old. This all feels very, very wrong.

I don't know if any of you were fans of s/f writer John Brunner and his most famous novel Stand on Zanzibar, but it seems to me we are beginning to see muckers. Dog help us all.

People Unclear On The Concept: House GOP Continues To Reject Extension Of Violence Against Women Act

Despite losing women's votes by what Gallup says is the widest margin in history, as Sahil Kapur of TPM informs us,

...

House GOP leaders aren’t yielding to a bipartisan coalition of Senate leaders demanding they extend the protections of the Violence Against Women Act — an anti-domestic abuse bill that was first passed with broad support in 1994 but hit a brick wall of Republican opposition earlier this year.

“Nothing has changed,” a senior GOP aide told TPM. “The House has passed a bill, we are ready to move to conference, and the Speaker has announced his conferees. We are waiting on Senate Democrats to follow suit and act.”

Six months ago, Senate Democrats passed re-authorization that expanded the law’s protections to LGBT women, illegal immigrants and Native Americans. House Republicans rejected that approach, and in response passed a scaled back version that would make it more difficult for domestic violence victims in the country illegally to achieve legal status.

...

The law has been demonstrably successful in providing states with the additional resources they need to pursue and combat domestic violence. And the GOP was for it before it was against it.

Indeed, it's hard to see why any decent human being would be against it. But by now it should scarcely be surprising.

Women, please take notice: it's the GOP again. In particular, it's the GOP House, including the Tea Party, arbitrarily endangering your right to live life without being beaten by your spouse or partner. Apparently, they just don't care. They see you as chattel, as something to be used as a bargaining chip. You might start by overwhelming them with phone calls, emails, letters, brickbats, ... nah. Nix the brickbats. But give them an earful of your legitimate grievances.

UN Investigator: Drone Strikes UndermineInternational Law

Who could have imagined! [/snark] Sending remotely piloted bombs to destroy targeted individuals far from a combat zone, "incidentally" killing dozens of people whose only crime was being there, often following up with a second flying bomb to obliterate anyone arriving to provide medical aid... who could possibly object to that? [/snark] A UN investigator, that's who. Here's Owen Bowcott of The Guardian:

The US policy of using aerial drones to carry out targeted killings presents a major challenge to the system of international law that has endured since the second world war, a United Nations investigator has said.

Christof Heyns, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, summary or arbitrary executions, told a conference in Geneva that President Obama's attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere, carried out by the CIA, would encourage other states to flout long-established human rights standards.

Someone please explain to me how America's ostensibly targeted drone warfare differs from Germany's W.W.II actions in lobbing rockets into London.

It seems, in every generation, at least one nation discovers some means of "hands‑free" or "no‑risk" remote warfare, some human rights nightmare that does not trouble the sleep of one or another self-satisfied national leader. And so the atrocities never end. Drones are America's contribution to this horrific idiom.

Chicago, The New Battleground, Following NY, LA, Oakland, Etc. ... Is Your City Next?

Chicago PD came prepared to do violence, and they did violence. The new standard response to nonviolent protest is suppression of protest, serious injury to and arrest of protesters, false witness against protesters. This is all happening right now. Please read Adgita Diaries, Chicago Cops Attack Veterans, L'Enfant de la Haute Mer, At NATO Summit in Chicago, Police Clash with Protesters (14 photos), and Bryan, Chicago Ninja Terrorists? regarding police behavior.

NTodd and others, now may not be a good time to introduce your young children to the reality of protest. Some skulls are being cracked, and the Chicago police seem utterly indiscriminate about whose. Reportedly LRADs are being used as well, and permanent hearing damage is a real possibility.

This is as bad as I had expected. A mere four years ago, I never imagined it would come to this. But it has, and I am no longer surprised.