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Stuff of a sort - 15-19 July 02011
Jul. 20th, 2011 11:35 pmUp top, observe how a major label contract, if signed by an artist that doesn't know the fine print, can basically turn a breakout hit selling more than 1 million album copies into still owing their label more than $500,000 USD. And then, the ways that the phamaceutical industry is buying doctors to get them to expand diagnoses and prescribe more of their company's products.
In Israel, corporations may now bring civil actions against any person in Israel who calls for a boycott of Israel or any of its claimed territories, and they do not have to claim that any actual harm occrred before they can collect financial damages. The government criminalized speech by letting someone else sue for them over it. This is tinpot dictator territory, not the country that is supposedly the only true Democracy in the Middle East.
Unequal treatment has become a staple in the United States, where a well-connected rich person with a bound, naked, and hanged woman on his property has investigators still trying to decide whether a crime was committed, and courts rule that the TSA's introduction of body scanners was in violation of the law, several years after the scanning started, but people who complain about those procedures or do the same things that TSA agents do to regular people are arrested.
Out in the world today, it's not just the United States that has massive oil spills - a ConocoPhillips oil field in China has spilled sufficient oil to cover the country of Singapore...six times over.
Portgual legalized all drugs ten years ago. They have not collapsed in a drug-fueled orgy slash revolution.
Official recognition of Libya's rebellion as the legitimate government of the country by several more nations, a move that will apparently free up cash to support the newly-legitimate government and overthrow the regime in Tripoli.
Domestically, despite the Republicans' best efforts, most of the voting populace still blames the previous administrator for creating the mess we're in now. In that sense, one could even say that The Fox propaganda network failed in its Republican bid (although their bid for war propaganda seems to have succeeded, in violation of conventions). (And also failed in trying to portray the News of the World as the victims in their hacking scandals, when they were the perpetrators.) Doesn't stop them from trying and accusing the Presdident of playing with statistics to make his position better than it is...although that position is still pretty good. And the other Murdoch paper, the Wall Street Journal, is completely certain that the current crisis over the debt ceiling is entirely the fault of President Obama's domestic spending binge and has nothing at all to do with the Two Land Wars in Asia plus the tax breaks for the rich that were the previous administrator's signature remarks. Furthermore, those that believe Fox News is the sole dissenting voice in a sea of liberal conformity are more than willing to extend News Corp the benefit of the doubt on whether or not Murdoch properties in the United States have been doing much the same thing. Expect some partisan divides on this one.
One of the candidates for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2012 has indicated he believes that American communities can choose to ban mosques and Islam in their midst and are not violating any laws about the prevention of the free exercise of religion, because unlike Christianity and Judaism, Mr. Cain believes that Sharia is both a religion and a law system, and Americans object to someone imposing their own laws on them. Now, what's the first part of Tanakh, the Books of Moses, all about? Oh, yeah, The LAW.
And speaking of law problems, Florida ruled that a lesbian did not have standing to charge her partner with knowingly infecting her with HIV because the state defines "intercourse" strictly as penis-in-vagina between a cis man and a cis woman. And then there are the military, who will continue to deny spousal benefits to legally-married couples even after they are allowed to be open about who they are attracted to.
Giving voice to the lie - even the vaunted grass-roots campaigner is still bought and paid for by moneyed interests. Which is sort of obvious - you have to either be independently wealthy or in the pocket of special interests to be able to finance a nationwide campaign.
Finally, after admitting that weapons data was stolen by spies hacking a contractor, the Pentagon declared cyberspace to be an operational theater, opening the door for the Pentagon to attack places they suspect are hacking.
In technology, cellulose in food products - basically undigestable material being used as a filler.
Scientists unveil tools that could allow for the re-writing of genetic code. Mutants and mutations, not too far away, then...either as a good thing or as a weapon.
Missouri will now have the ability to order anyone on state benefits to undergo drug testing. How many of those tests are going to be used as harrassment and to try and shame them for being poor?
In opinions, Ms. Wolf suggests what culture warriors have been saying for years - pornography desensitizes men and makes them more aggressive and wild. This desensistizing is apparently a possible cause for recent public sex scandals. In response, after the bad science interpretation, there's still the inherent assumption that only men watch and like pornography and kinky sexuality, which is totally wrong.
Mr. Boskin believes that the middle class will be the ones ultimately paying for any tax increases levied against the rich and those levied to pay for the Affordable Care Act, but rather than decrying this as a problem and demanding the rich and corporations pay their fair share, he uses it to argue for lower tax rates for the rich and corporations.
And finally, Mr. Pendry attempts for a Modest-Proposal-type satire that suggests foster care for children whose parents make bad choices regarding them, like naming then Dweezil, or sending them to school with things like Christian belief and patriotism, before saying any society that tries to control its children instead of letting parents raise them however they want is analagous to the Nazis in Germany during the Adolf Hitler years.
In Israel, corporations may now bring civil actions against any person in Israel who calls for a boycott of Israel or any of its claimed territories, and they do not have to claim that any actual harm occrred before they can collect financial damages. The government criminalized speech by letting someone else sue for them over it. This is tinpot dictator territory, not the country that is supposedly the only true Democracy in the Middle East.
Unequal treatment has become a staple in the United States, where a well-connected rich person with a bound, naked, and hanged woman on his property has investigators still trying to decide whether a crime was committed, and courts rule that the TSA's introduction of body scanners was in violation of the law, several years after the scanning started, but people who complain about those procedures or do the same things that TSA agents do to regular people are arrested.
Out in the world today, it's not just the United States that has massive oil spills - a ConocoPhillips oil field in China has spilled sufficient oil to cover the country of Singapore...six times over.
Portgual legalized all drugs ten years ago. They have not collapsed in a drug-fueled orgy slash revolution.
Official recognition of Libya's rebellion as the legitimate government of the country by several more nations, a move that will apparently free up cash to support the newly-legitimate government and overthrow the regime in Tripoli.
Domestically, despite the Republicans' best efforts, most of the voting populace still blames the previous administrator for creating the mess we're in now. In that sense, one could even say that The Fox propaganda network failed in its Republican bid (although their bid for war propaganda seems to have succeeded, in violation of conventions). (And also failed in trying to portray the News of the World as the victims in their hacking scandals, when they were the perpetrators.) Doesn't stop them from trying and accusing the Presdident of playing with statistics to make his position better than it is...although that position is still pretty good. And the other Murdoch paper, the Wall Street Journal, is completely certain that the current crisis over the debt ceiling is entirely the fault of President Obama's domestic spending binge and has nothing at all to do with the Two Land Wars in Asia plus the tax breaks for the rich that were the previous administrator's signature remarks. Furthermore, those that believe Fox News is the sole dissenting voice in a sea of liberal conformity are more than willing to extend News Corp the benefit of the doubt on whether or not Murdoch properties in the United States have been doing much the same thing. Expect some partisan divides on this one.
One of the candidates for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2012 has indicated he believes that American communities can choose to ban mosques and Islam in their midst and are not violating any laws about the prevention of the free exercise of religion, because unlike Christianity and Judaism, Mr. Cain believes that Sharia is both a religion and a law system, and Americans object to someone imposing their own laws on them. Now, what's the first part of Tanakh, the Books of Moses, all about? Oh, yeah, The LAW.
And speaking of law problems, Florida ruled that a lesbian did not have standing to charge her partner with knowingly infecting her with HIV because the state defines "intercourse" strictly as penis-in-vagina between a cis man and a cis woman. And then there are the military, who will continue to deny spousal benefits to legally-married couples even after they are allowed to be open about who they are attracted to.
Giving voice to the lie - even the vaunted grass-roots campaigner is still bought and paid for by moneyed interests. Which is sort of obvious - you have to either be independently wealthy or in the pocket of special interests to be able to finance a nationwide campaign.
Finally, after admitting that weapons data was stolen by spies hacking a contractor, the Pentagon declared cyberspace to be an operational theater, opening the door for the Pentagon to attack places they suspect are hacking.
In technology, cellulose in food products - basically undigestable material being used as a filler.
Scientists unveil tools that could allow for the re-writing of genetic code. Mutants and mutations, not too far away, then...either as a good thing or as a weapon.
Missouri will now have the ability to order anyone on state benefits to undergo drug testing. How many of those tests are going to be used as harrassment and to try and shame them for being poor?
In opinions, Ms. Wolf suggests what culture warriors have been saying for years - pornography desensitizes men and makes them more aggressive and wild. This desensistizing is apparently a possible cause for recent public sex scandals. In response, after the bad science interpretation, there's still the inherent assumption that only men watch and like pornography and kinky sexuality, which is totally wrong.
Mr. Boskin believes that the middle class will be the ones ultimately paying for any tax increases levied against the rich and those levied to pay for the Affordable Care Act, but rather than decrying this as a problem and demanding the rich and corporations pay their fair share, he uses it to argue for lower tax rates for the rich and corporations.
And finally, Mr. Pendry attempts for a Modest-Proposal-type satire that suggests foster care for children whose parents make bad choices regarding them, like naming then Dweezil, or sending them to school with things like Christian belief and patriotism, before saying any society that tries to control its children instead of letting parents raise them however they want is analagous to the Nazis in Germany during the Adolf Hitler years.
