I think the suspicion has to be reasonable. If I remember correctly the arrest was predicated on an illegal knife he had, which turned out not to be illegal.

I brought my sister a Che t-shirt from Havana Cuba when she was a teenager, and almost instantly regretted it. She made the point of stating its “authenticity” whenever she wore it which... *sigh*. She was 14 though.

Consumption is not the locus of empowerment, nor is the locus of happiness, youth, cool, security, fun, enlightenment or love, but that won’t stop half the creative class trying to convince us of these things through advertising.

I have mixed feelings. If someone was raped and the campaign told them not to go to the police, I’m not sure her compliance negates the fact that the campaigns reaction was unacceptable. At the same time, we don’t know that this is what happened and therefore we could be potentially exposing a victim for no reason.

Thanks for the additional info- I haven’t heard the podcast. I didn’t mean to sound accusatory about your assumptions, just pointing out that they’re not supported by the facts in this particular article on its own. If the podcast suggested to you that the victim was fairly satisfied with the outcome, I’ll take your…

Oh absolutely it is- I didn’t want to imply otherwise. My point was that the victim could have been fired rather than the rapist, and/or could have been discouraged from going to the police by the campaign. They can’t technically stop her from filing a police report, but they can certainly stomp out her burgeoning…

alcohol...probably

Seems to me that either someone has been sitting on this until such a time as to do maximum damage, or someone made it up out of whole cloth.

Those are two large assumptions, that 1) the intern did not want to press charges, and 2) that “made it go away” means that the rapist was the one who was fired. I hope you’re right on both counts, but it isn’t necessarily so.

You raise an interesting point; there are many more people who would be well served by this rumor than those about whom it could be true (just Huckabee, Thompson, Guiliani and Clinton if we’re talking presidential candidates). No reason to rule out dirty games.

You’re not really accounting for the fact that the Qatari slaves did not have an equally likely chance of dying of alcohol poisoning, cancer, a car accident, or in a motorcycle accident as your young welder friend; they’re worked for 18 hours a day and then crammed into squalid dorms. They don’t have cars or…

It’s amazing* to see the rise of both the demographic size and political influence of extremism in all of the Big Three Abrahamic faiths. Secular Humanists and Feminists; we gotta reassert the supremacy of human rights, democracy and rationalism before these fucknutters end the world.

Those rates are “construction deaths”. Meaning that a worker was killed in an accident on the jobsite. They aren’t deaths of construction workers, who can die in many ways unrelated to work.

If the distribution of deaths in Qatar don’t vary from this pattern, why would we assume that it’s the particular Qatari labor practices that kill them rather than the myriad of other things that kill similar proportions worldwide?

More fun to practice your piano lessons if you lay down some beats first...

It’s the second tackiest place in Canada right behind the Niagara Falls carnival strip. I actually found Younge and Dundas much improved by Big Feedia’s performance at NXNE a few years back; tourists in knee socks on a Tuesday afternoon, and Azz Everywhere.

You have a lot more faith in the transparency and professionalism of Qatari firms in reporting the deaths of their slaves than makes sense to me. I think it’s much more likely to be massively under-reported than over-reported at all.

It’s preposterous to me that you think a statistically significant percentage of slaves are dying in Qatar for reasons other than slavery.

That beat tho. I like the old school clap-clap synth sounds, it’s got a real Saturday morning cartoon vibe. I had a Casio keyboard that would play it at the touch of a button back in the 80’s. No excruciating “rapping” layered over it though, just chopsticks.

Do you have a link for that? Everything I’ve seen indicates that their sponsors are all private. It’s a volunteer based event but the radio stations, magazines and venues who participate understand that it brings in much, much more money than it costs to host. Absolutely the police are a public cost, but then the City…