Parashat VaYigash, and Responsibility — Inspiring Critical Thinking and Community via Books, Lessons, and Story

This week’s Torah portion is  Parashat VaYigash, and Judah finally shows how to  draw near to danger, and take responsibility.  Also known as a bit of repair for what he (almost) did to  Tamar, in the previous week’s parashah, when she had to be daring and resourceful in drawing very near to him, to […]

Parashat VaYigash, and Responsibility — Inspiring Critical Thinking and Community via Books, Lessons, and Story

Trump Rioter Who Attacked Cops With Fire Extinguisher Should Serve 5 Years, Feds Say | HuffPost Latest News

An enthusiastic supporter of Donald Trump who assaulted law enforcement officers with a fire extinguisher while wearing an American flag sweatshirt emblazoned with Trump’s name should serve more than five years in federal prison, Justice Department prosecutors said Friday.

Robert Scott Palmer was arrested 12 days after he was identified in a March HuffPost story as the Capitol rioter who assaulted cops with a fire extinguisher as they tried to protect the Capitol on Jan. 6. He has been locked up since he pleaded guilty in October to assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers using a dangerous weapon, inflicting bodily injury.

Judge Tanya Chutkan will sentence Palmer, who committed his assault on officers while wearing a red “Florida for Trump” hat, on Dec. 17. In a sentencing memo Friday, federal prosecutors sought 63 months behind bars.

Palmer will be the first Capitol defendant to be sentenced for a felony assault in connection with the brutal attack on law enforcement on the west side of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Video showed him spraying embattled officers with the contents of a fire extinguisher and then chucking the empty canister at the police line.

Source: Trump Rioter Who Attacked Cops With Fire Extinguisher Should Serve 5 Years, Feds Say | HuffPost Latest News

Human rights in Jamaica and beyond – past and present

Petchary's Blog

It’s International Human Rights Day, and it’s not just a hashtag.

A lot has been going through my mind today. These are stormy times, with the wind blowing first one way and then the other. A sudden rogue wave appears and nearly knocks you off your feet. 2021 has been strangely – and perhaps surprisingly – complex; it’s as if one needed eyes in the back of one’s head, to make sure nothing was creeping up on you. Even so, we got caught out many times. It has been a long, hard year. And we still have three weeks to go.

I am thinking about the state of the world, and it’s as if human rights have been shoved aside to make way for greed, ego, anger, power, hunger. Yes, hunger and desperation.

One word that comes to mind is inequality. Orwell was particularly brutal on this topic:

“It was…

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Playing Brass

Weekend Stories by Trishikh

Strolling down the Mahatma Gandhi Road from the College Street end towards Howrah Tram Depot in the vibrance of the Kolkata metropolis, one can spot a unique world of orchestral cacophony. Little shops from the colonial days of the British showcase a wide array of musical instruments and jazzy uniforms of starking colours with gilded studs and Zari strips. Lining the bustling pavements on both sides of the busy street, they stand testament to a vanishing era of classical music. While snoozing old owners and staff doze on rickety wooden stools, impoverished young Indian musicians of a gasping profession practice on various musical instruments honing their skills.

At one corner of this hustling sea of tussling humanity and chocking traffic stands a hundred-and-twenty-one-year-old orchestral shop featuring a crumbling hoarding with bevelled wooden alphabets spelling out “Manna Band Party.” Forty-one-year-old Muslim bandmaster Arman Ali stood inside the eight by ten feet…

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