Brusqueness

Man arrested for trying to buy a bag of crack cocaine with a slaughtered pig carcass. They never mentioned this on The Wire.

1. It was 1916 that Woodrow Wilson set aside June 14 as the the date for honoring the flag. But it wasn’t actually declared National Flag Day until 1949, when it was established by an act of Congress. Why June 14? Because that’s the day in 1777 that the Second Continental Congress adopted Betty Ross’ (according to popular legend, anyway) flag as the official flag of the United States.
2. You know the story – George Washington prevailed upon Betsy Ross to create a flag for the country and she sewed it up with her bare hands. It’s a nice story and all, but nearly all flag historians believe it probably never really happened. Our only source for this tale is her family – no historical records seem to back it up. No records show that the Continental Congress issued a flag to be designed, no invoice or any supporting documents have ever been found amongst Betsy’s detailed records, and no mention of a national flag appears in Congress records until the Flag Resolution of 1777.

3. The United States Flag Code specifies that the flag should never be dipped to any person or thing. As far as we can tell, this custom dates back to the 1908 London Olympics. All countries were asked to respectfully dip their flags to the Royal Box when the procession passed by King Edward VII, but Ralph Rose, the American track and field athlete holding the flag, refused to comply. His teammate Martin Sheridan later explained, “This flag dips to no earthly king.” The tradition has been upheld ever since and was officially written into the Flag Code in 1911.

4. I see this rule of the Flag Code broken all of the time, and I bet you do too: the flag should not be used for any advertising purpose, including worn on clothes or for decoration in general (it’s fine on coffins). I’m picturing myself in the early ‘90s – cutoff jean shorts with cuffs and a big, oversized American flag t-shirt – and I feel guilty for so many reasons. Read the rest of this entry »

North Korea sentenced two US journalists to 12 years imprisonment with hard labour on Monday. The Central Court in Pyongyang convicted Laura Ling and Euna Lee of an unspecified “grave crime” against the nation. There are no appeals in the North Korean judicial system.

"These two foreign journalists were subjected to the failures and shortcomings of the North Korean judicial system: no access to lawyers, no due process, no transparency," said Roseann Rife, Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific Deputy Director. "The North Korean judicial and penal systems are more instruments of suppression than of justice."

Laura Ling and Euna Lee work for California-based Internet broadcaster Current TV in San Francisco. North Korean officials arrested them on 17 March near the Tumen River, which separates North Korea and China.

It is not yet clear whether the two women had crossed the border into North Korea or if they were in China when arrested. The two were investigating human rights abuses of North Korean women.

The journalists had been held separately and in solitary confinement in a "state guest house" near Pyongyang. They had limited consular support and very limited contact with their families after their arrest.

Amnesty International pointed out that prisoners in North Korea were forced to undertake physically demanding work which included farming and stone quarrying, often for 10 hours or more per day, with no rest days.

The organization said that guards beat prisoners suspected of lying, not working fast enough or for forgetting the rules and regulations of the prison. Forms of punishment included forced exercise, sitting without moving for prolonged periods of time and humiliating public criticism.

Prisoners fell ill or died in custody, due to the combination of forced hard labour, inadequate food, beatings, lack of medical care and unhygienic living conditions.

“The North Korean government seems to be using these two journalists as pawns in its dangerous game of escalating tensions with the international community,” said Roseann Rife. “This sentence was harsher than many observers expected, and completely out of line with any of the accusations that Pyongyang has levelled against them.”

« Older Entries