Stories like this and this should be prefaced with a warning that reads: “This is Pure Fiction and Provided Solely for Entertainment Purposes”. Michael Graham elaborates more here, beginning at 2:30.
The notion that the EU is going to enact any meaningful sanctions against Russia is much like a homeowner stating that they’re going to impose sanctions against their local electricity company. Are they going to cast insults against the meter reader?!?
Kim Kardashian’s Dress
David Warren on the silence of the mainstream media regarding the genocide against Iraqi Christians:
Here is a “thought experiment” for my remaining journalistic friends. It is an attempt to cast light by means of analogy. (“Now is the time when we juxtapose,” as the adored Kate Macmillan likes to write at Small Dead Animals.) And let me remind the journalist-entertainers of the mainstream, that they do indeed have influence, in the aggregate, over the tenor of our society.
The area and population of the territory the “Caliphate” now controls in Syria and Iraq being currently roughly equal to that controlled by the government of Israel, let us imagine what the “coverage” would be, had the Israelis told all Muslims to run for their lives; had they announced that everything Muslims owned now belonged to the Israeli government; and that any Muslim still found within Israel’s de facto borders after twenty-four hours would be put to the sword. Questions:
Do you think this story might make the front page?
Do you think the media would seek more information?
Do you think the matter might remain news for more than one day?
Racism Detected
“When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal”
IRS Deputy Associate Chief Counsel Thomas Kane said in transcribed congressional testimony that more IRS officials experienced computer crashes, bringing the total number of crash victims to “less than 20,” and also said that the agency does not know if the lost emails are still backed up somewhere.
The new round of computer crash victims includes David Fish, who routinely corresponded with Lois Lerner, as well as Lerner subordinate Andy Megosh, Lerner’s technical adviser Justin Lowe, and Cincinnati-based agent Kimberly Kitchens.
Renegade Regulator
Notes from the Enron School of Accounting;
We don’t know the travel expense breakdowns, as between airfares and hotels for instance, because the CSA is exempted from the Freedom of Information Act as well as the transparency and accountability requirements standard to other government entities. So we ran the numbers we did have. It turned out that the CSA’s 2013 travel budget would cover 74,256 return airfares from CSA’s Toronto office to Ottawa each year. That’s 297 return airfares to Ottawa per workday or, if you prefer, its 12 return trips per hour, every hour, on a 24 hour day, each workday, for a full year.
6 Year Recovery Watch Remains On High Alert
Industrial renaissance: How surprised [Atlantic] readers must have been, then, to see last week’s news that GE was again moving (quietly) to sell Appliances and Lighting.
This Is Not Your Grandma’s Humane Society
An independent journalist says he’s found a way around the so-called “ag-gag” laws by flying drones over large livestock operations to document animal welfare problems and pollution.
Will Potter, a Washington D.C.-based author and blogger, recently raised $75,000 on Kickstarter to buy the drones and other equipment to investigate animal agriculture in the U.S.
Reader Tips
Tonight is the second instalment in our weeklong series dedicated to performers who give the brushoff to the BDS goons.
Earlier this year anti-Semitic pinhead Roger Waters — one of his concert props was a giant inflatable pig with the Star of David on it, while the special effects on “The Wall” tour included images of Stars of David morphing into dollar signs — called for the Rolling Stones to cancel their upcoming concert in Israel, saying that “crossing the picket line” would only help the “racist” Israeli regime.
A month later, on June 4th, the Stones played to a delighted audience of 50,000 in Tel Aviv. From that concert, here’s some fan-cam-quality footage of Midnight Rambler.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.
What Would We Do Without Peer Review?
“A courtesy note ahead of publication for Risbey et al. 2014″
The Fundraiser-in-Chief
David Cameron’s Britain
Where the foxes caper unmolested, the government packs your school lunch and “times are a-changing”
Two generations ago there was a vague consensus that if the majority voted for a political party then that party was probably the right one to govern the country. Now the idea of a nanny state voted in by its burgeoning recipients is rapidly losing credibility, especially when it turns out that more and more of nanny’s little helpers are revealed to be crooks and perverts.
h/t Adrian, who writes;
I had a return for a couple weeks, last week, in a year I’d forgotten how utterly miserable the place is, how far gone it is, I had to close an outstanding business account at the great HSBC, made the appointment with the business manager a woman probably a bit younger than me, her comments: “when she started every towns bank had its own business manager now there are two for the whole of East Yorkshire, she spends most of her time closing accounts from small businesses giving up and closing down, those left are so far in debt it’s only the government that is keeping them from going under.”
But it’s probably nothing.
Embrace Hollywood!
Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Michael Moore;
Capitalism is an organized system to guarantee that greed becomes the primary force of our economic system and allows the few at the top to get very wealthy and has the rest of us riding around thinking we can be that way, too – if we just work hard enough, sell enough Tupperware and Amway products, we can get a pink Cadillac.
Michael Moore’s divorce papers;
Moore and Glynn jointly own “multiple substantial residences and multiple companies,” including Dog Eat Dog Films, the production company behind hit movies like “Roger & Me” and “Bowling for Columbine.” The couple’s real estate holdings include a total of nine properties in Michigan and New York. The duo co-owns a Manhattan condo that was created through the combination of three separate units.
Global Test
The world is being run by crazy people.
.@BillWhittle What poor 40 year old gave their life for John Kerry's face transplant?
— Katewerk (@katewerk) July 21, 2014
“I was in a paratroopers reserve unit.”
We spent a few weeks guarding the Syrian border then given marching orders into Lebanon. It was the final push towards the end of the war. Everything is still very clear, the weight on my shoulders (33 kilos/72 lbs.), the feeling of my loaded assault rifle, the crunch under my boots. The soundtrack of war. Ours. Theirs. the quick rests and sleepless sleeps. The sound of incoming missiles, the comfort of a good cover. The smell of burnt flesh, a detached arm, flaming truck, charred tank. Helicopters come in, running with the wounded on stretchers. Gunfire. Incoming mortars. The first one long, the second short, the third… . In two separate incursions we took our positions, engaged Hizbullah, won the battle. We lost men. Fathers, brothers, sons. We stayed in local homes, tried not to do unnecessary damage, not always successfully. Pulled out. it’s been quiet on the Lebanese border since 2006. what’s left? Just me and my little PTSD. It helps me cope.
More Pavilions At Folkfest
Police reports stated that the two men responsible for the assault were the mosque’s imam and amir. They were accused of dragging the victim to the rear of the mosque, where the machete deeply lacerated his right wrist. Medics transported the victim to a hospital close by.
Just kidding!
Police descended on the mosque in Philadelphia’s Overbrook section on Thursday and arrested Merv Mitchell, aka Mabul Shoatz. They also found a 2-foot-long machete. The other Muslim leader, the imam, who is 35, has not yet been apprehended.
h/t Kathy Shaidle
Contaminated Specimens
Readers may recall the Guardian‘s Emer O’Toole, a “postcolonial theorist” and assistant professor of Irish Performance Studies, for whom all cultures past and present are equally vibrant and noble, except of course the culture in which she currently flourishes, on which opprobrium must be heaped ostentatiously and often. Ms O’Toole famously bemoaned the colonial propagation of Shakespeare, whose works she denounced as “full of classism, sexism, racism and defunct social mores.” And worse, “a powerful tool of empire, transported to foreign climes along with the doctrine of European cultural superiority.” The possibility that at any given time one set of values and insights might be preferable to another, even objectively better, bothers her quite a bit.
Her article was accompanied by a photograph of New Zealand’s Ngakau Toa theatre company performing Troilus and Cressida in a distinctively Maori style. To me, it looked fun and worth the price of a ticket. But this cross-cultural fusion saddened Ms O’Toole, who dismissed notions of the Bard’s universality as “uncomfortably colonial.” She then presumed to take umbrage on behalf of all past colonial subjects, whose own views on Shakespeare and literature she chose not to relate. She did, however, get quite upset about “our sense of cultural superiority” – a sense of superiority that, she insisted, has long been “disavowed by all but the crazies.”
It may be a tad indelicate, even improper, but I can’t help wondering how Ms O’Toole might have felt had she been among the 19th century English colonists who encountered a Maori culture that was all but prehistoric, with no discernable literature or science, in which the average lifespan was about thirty years or so, and where cannibalism was not unknown. Faced with such things, I’m sure Ms O’Toole would have resisted the wicked urge to think herself a little more culturally advanced.
Your Moral And Intellectual Superiors
Har.
h/t Black Mamba
Y2Kyoto: Reindeer say…
Warmer is better!
The research team found out that the numbers of Svalbard reindeer have increased by 30% in the last year. This year’s result continues the trend which has been observed accurately over the last 36 years.
The scientists discovered this by counting the number of reindeer in the valley of Adventdalen in central Spitsbergen, part of a long term study of a reindeer population in Svalbard.
This is one of only a very few studies on animal populations and climate change that involves animals being physically counted annually rather than estimated.
How odd, given that they’re mammals and everything.
(h/t north of 60)
2016
#BREAKING: TX Gov. Rick Perry to announce Monday that he will deploy 1-thousand Nat'l Guard Troops to RGV border. @CBSDFW #BorderCrisis
— Ken Molestina (@cbs11ken) July 21, 2014
Reader Tips
Many artists refuse to perform in the tiny, besieged nation of Israel. The list includes Elvis Costello (who cited Israel’s “intimidation, humiliation or much worse” of Palestinians), Carlos Santana, Annie Lennox (who “described the IDF’s actions in Gaza as ‘pornography of destruction'” and “marched at the head of an…anti-Israel demonstration in London”), Stevie Wonder, The Pixies, and many, many others.
Our Tips music for the next seven days will exclusively feature Western artists who buck the trend. It won’t matter here if they’re left, right, straight, gay, god-fearing, atheist, vegan, or carnivore; the sole criterion for selection is that they refuse to buckle to pressure, and happily perform in Israel.
We start the week with Sir Tom Jones, OBE, who not only performs in Israel, but also speaks out against those who put pressure on performers to boycott the country:
“I don’t agree with that. I think entertainers should entertain. They should go wherever – there shouldn’t be any restrictions. I did two shows in Tel Aviv, and it was fantastic.”
From his 2012 album Spirit in the Room, here’s Jones’ interpretation of Bob Dylan’s When The Deal Goes Down.
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.