Iowa, Florida, and Minnesota are trying to ban covert photography of factory farm operations. I would’ve thought that unauthorized documentation was already against the law, but these measures will apparently also criminalize the possession and distribution of images. On the one hand, these farms are private property and footage taken of them is often used by groups like PETA to make wild and unverifiable claims about how they operate. On the other hand, opacity is the means by which industrial farming survives unquestioned. We need to see this stuff in order to make informed choices, and agribusinesses sure aren’t going to offer it voluntarily. Sigh.
So far as I’m aware, the term “contempt of cop” was coined by Radley Balko to describe situations in which a person was hassled, arrested, or worse simply because a police officer didn’t like his/her attitude. It describes this interaction between a bicyclist, a joker, and four NYPD officers.
An article on the life of Glenn Greenwald in Out magazine. Greenwald is one of the most insightful and informed critics of American politics today, and he lives in Brazil because their laws are more accommodating to him and his boyfriend are those of his home country, the so-called “land of the free.”