Monday World roundup
Ok, I had been trying to consistently do this on Thursdays, but got sidetracked last week by news of the California fires. I guarantee you this was worth the wait. Some important things you might have missed this week:
USA: Late justice, life lost. An absolutely tragic story from Georgia - an innocent man spent 22 years in prison for a crime he did not commit until exonerated through DNA evidence. He lost his youth, and whatever innocence he had left and cannot get it back. Also something I don't understand - he was originally sentenced to 45 years!!! That's an incredibly long sentence, even for a rape. By comparison, Mike Tyson got only six years for his conviction, and served three. Why are some of these sentences so wildly different? Even the 22 years he served seems much too long, and I'm not exactly a "go soft on criminals" kind of guy.
ASIA/AFRICA: Grim prospects. The world's 25 most endangered primates are so endangered, they could all fit inside a single football stadium. By the time your children read this, I predict they will all be gone, except maybe a few kept in zoos.
USA/IRAQ: Sloppy journalism. According to alternet.org, troops are so demoralized that they are pretending to patrol Iraqi streets, conducting "search and avoid" missions, avoiding IEDs by simply waiting in one place for hours before returning to base. I guarantee you this is nonsense. Any patrol sitting in one place for hours is a sitting duck for snipers. No one wants to do this, even if they are forced to. Once my unit had to overwatch a dead body we found, and waited for at least three hours. Those were pretty harrowing hours too. We very carefully watched every rooftop and didn't let any vehicles come close either. We would have rather taken our chances with IEDs, and could not wait to get out of there...
UK: The plank in your eye. On a visit to London this week, the Saudi King Abdullah said that the "UK was not taking the issue of global terrorism seriously". Are you kidding me? This from the same country that provided most of the 9/11 hijackers. This is from the same country that provides suicide bombers to Iraq (to kill the UK's soldiers). This is the same nation that holds telethons to raise money for the families of Hamas bombers. It's rare that you see such an unbelievably brazen act of hypocrisy. What's scarier is that this man might actually believe what he says...
HUNGARY/USA: Chomsky is no "truther" (video): Even a radical leftist like Noam Chomsky firmly does not believe in conspiracy theories that 9/11 was an "inside job" or that the Bush administration caused/knew about it. Surprisingly, he makes a lot of sense here, although he can't resist a chance to take a couple swipes at the Bush administration in the process. And strangely, at the end of the clip he says: "and even if it were true, which is extremely unlikely, who cares?". Who cares? What the hell??
SWEDEN/WORLD: Tax, tax, tax. According to the Economist, Sweden has the world's highest tax rate. That's not really surprising in itself, but what is much more of a shock is now high it really is: over 50%! Most of Europe, by contrast, hovers around 40%, and the United States is a tax haven at 29%. Mexico has the lowest tax rate of any developed country at 20.6%. Theoretically, that should boost their economy, but tax cheating is so widespread that I doubt the government really gets anything close to that amount.
USA/Hollywood: Artistic values. An interesting article on Hollywood's war against the War on Terror. According to many studios, the US is the real enemy, not the terrorists. This is a reflection of Hollywood's feelings, since it's obviously not driven by market demand.
NETHERLANDS/UK/US: Importing rich culture. "Voodoo" child prostitution trade in Europe. Who says multiculturalism is bad?
USA: Battering-ram cartoonist. Ted Rall, the same cartoonist that had no problem trashing a great American like Pat Tillman, now claims that soldiers are complete idiots. Somehow, I don't think that Media Matters will dive into this one.
USA: Shut down that pesky free speech. David Horowitz, once a radical leftist and now a radical rightist, has long complained that the voices of conservatives are suppressed on college campuses. Of course, many people disagree with him. In fact, they disagree with him so much that they ironically proved his very point when their protests became so loud and disruptive that they managed to shut down his recent speech at Emory University.
USA/CALIFORNIA: The "Allah excuse". A lot of people have wild theories on what caused the California wildfires (including me). But maybe none so strange as "The Ignored Puzzle Pieces of Knowledge", a radical Islamist blog that claims that "Allah is implementing His wrath on America - with both minor and major disasters - because of what America is doing to the Muslims in ‘Iraaq, Afghanistan etc". I left a comment, pointing out that if this is God's retribution for the wars, then why would he choose Southern California, a part of the country that is solidly against the war? Not surprisingly, my comment was deleted (Found via the Jawa Report).
NIGERIA: "I agree"? A shockingly bold statement from a Nigerian who agrees with Dr. Watson's recent remarks on African intelligence:
I am really pained by our gross underachievement as a race. Instead of regarding bitter truths expressed by the likes of Watson as a wake-up call for us to engage in sober reflection, we take to the expression of woolly sentiment. For me, this type of reaction is a further evidence of our unintelligence. A man of intelligence recognises genuine criticism against him and takes steps to improve himself in order to prove his critics wrong.
ICELAND: How many children did this thing have? Totally off subject here, but incredible nonetheless. A 405 year-old clam is the oldest animal ever found on Earth. Shakespeare was writing his plays when this animal was born!
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2 comments:
I want to say something. Horowitz is a bad person but he should be allowed to speak. The Muslim Student Association (MSA) was quiet and respectful during this time. The students that ruined the whole thing for everyone were a group of hooligans and anarchists. Afterwards, MSA members stopped by a near Starbucks coffee shop offered their regrets to Mr. Horowitz.
On that last item - they are studying that clam for the effects of aging, but I wonder if they could use it to help determine climate/ocean effects as well - this thing has lived through massive changes in the environment. The oceans were still pretty much virgin territory 400 years ago.
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