Law Enforcement Agencies Continue To Obtain Military Equipment, Claiming The United States Is A ‘War Zone’, Tim Cushing, TechDirt, June 12, 2014
That law enforcement agencies across the US are swiftly converting themselves into military outfits is hardly a surprise at this point. The problem is that nothing seems to be slowing them down, not even the dismayed reactions of citizens supposedly under their care.
The government’s desire to offload its unused military hardware at deeply discounted rates has turned a few outliers into the new normal. Towns as with populations well under the 10,000 mark have secured Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, supposedly in order to keep up with a non-existent arms race between the good guys and the bad guys.
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The problems with this sort of ad hoc “mobilization” are numerous. The dangers of outfitting police with military gear can best be signaled with a combination of “if all you have is a hammer…” and Chekhov’s Gun. If you give police military gear, they’re going to want to use it. The very occasional shootout with heavily-armed criminals simply won’t satisfy the urge to deploy the new acquisitions. The slightly-more-occasional no-knock warrant served in the dead of night to known drug offenders won’t sufficiently scratch the itch.
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Law enforcement agencies seem to want a war. And if the public fails to give them one, they’ll apparently manufacture one themselves by sending heavily-armed men to enforce hairdresser regulations and use MRAPs to break up knife fights. On the bright side, this issue is receiving more and more attention, but so far, the ability of law enforcement agencies to obtain military gear far outpaces efforts directed at tempering this activity.
Angelina Jolie: Shame the rapist, not the victim, Prachi Gupta, Salon, June 10, 2014
On Tuesday, actress and envoy of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Angelina Jolie kicked off the four-day [Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict] in London with a speech that urged the 1,200 attendees to stop seeing rape as an inevitable byproduct of war and blame the rapists, not the victims.
“It is a myth that rape is an inevitable part of conflict,” said Jolie. “There is nothing inevitable about it. It is a weapon of war aimed at civilians. It is nothing to do with sex, everything to do with power. It is done to torture and humiliate people, and often to very young children.”
Turns Out Atheists and Christians Like Very Different Bible Verses…, Hemant Mehta, Friendly Atheist, June 12, 2014
[Bible Gateway’s Andy] Rau also took note of how often atheists (myself included) quoted verses from Ecclesiastes, a book that he says “rarely crops up in Christian sermons.”
His assessment is spot on. For me, it’s just another reminder at how easy it is to cherry pick verses from a lengthy book to support your already-held values.
