Earlier this month, OTM producer Sarah Abdurrahman, her family, and her friends were detained for hours by US Customs and Border Protection on their way home from Canada. Everyone being held was a US citizen, and no one received an explanation. Sarah tells the story of their detainment, and her difficulty getting any answers from one of the least transparent agencies in the country.
How I learned to Stop Feeling Safe in My Own Country and Hate Border Patrol
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Russian shot in quarrel over Kant’s philosophy
A police spokeswoman in Rostov-on Don, Viktoria Safarova, said two men in their 20s were discussing Kant as they stood in line to buy beer at a small store on Sunday. The discussion deteriorated into a fistfight and one participant pulled out a small nonlethal pistol and fired repeatedly.
via Russian shot in quarrel over Kant’s philosophy – National | Globalnews.ca.
It was not clear which of Kant’s ideas may have triggered the violence.
Sports Illustrated’s five-part series on Oklahoma State football
Illicit payments, toothless drug policies, academic dishonesty and even the use of sex to induce recruits comport with the most cynical perception of big-time college sports programs. More troubling and revealing, though, was the human cost of the corruption in Stillwater. From Dohrmann and Evans’s reporting, a portrait emerges of ill-prepared young men who feel they were exploited by the university. Over the past decade an astonishingly large cohort of OSU players never earned a college degree, lasting only a season or two, their scholarships revoked after they were injured, arrested or simply deemed unable to contribute. Once the perks ended and they were discarded, some former Cowboys turned to drugs and crime, and a few attempted or contemplated suicide. As one former OSU assistant says of the players, “The sad part is when [the coaches were] done, they threw them away.“
via Sports Illustrated’s five-part series on Oklahoma State football – College Football – SI.com.
Meanwhile, over at Northwestern:
New Northwestern University head basketball coach Chris Collins has put down some roots here, paying $2.55 million for a newly built, seven-bedroom house in Winnetka.
Let Freedom Ka-Ching! On The 50th Anniversary Of ‘I Have A Dream,’ AT&T Can Use The Speech To Sell Phones, But You Can’t Post It
As you hopefully are aware, today is the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s powerful, moving and memorable I have a dream… speech. In a just world, that speech would be in the public domain. And, legally, it might be. While King did apparently send a copy of the speech to the Copyright Office, he did so as an “unpublished work.” There has been a dispute, then, about the speech itself, since that would be a publication. His estate, however, has argued that the speech was not a “general publication,” but rather a “limited publication” and thus King retained a common law copyright — and an appeals court appeared to agree, but the lawsuit over this was settled without a final ruling, and no one has challenged it since. However, King’s estate has been ridiculously aggressive in trying to lock up his speeches and take down videos commemorating his talks, with a focus on this momentous speech.
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Guardian bombshells in an escalating battle against journalism
We have the spectacle of communications between two American journalists-in-exile—reduced to passing information via courier because their government is spying on everything they do online—busted up by the US’s top ally, apparently with no protest from the Obama administration, which was given a heads-up.
On top of that, Greenwald’s paper has been threatened by its own government with prior restraint and had its hard drives smashed in its basement to make a (stupid) point.
This is police-state stuff. We need to know the American government’s role in these events—and its stance on them—sooner rather than later.
via Guardian bombshells in an escalating battle against journalism : Columbia Journalism Review.
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