Category Archives: Fail!

Feminists Are Not Your Mommies | Dame Magazine

It’s time for the internet—well, the entire culture, really, but let’s start small—to grow the fuck up about women. Tim Colwill, editor-in-chief of gaming website games.on.net, recently offered an example of what this might look like, with a post called “Announcement: Readers who feel threatened by equality no longer welcome.”

“If you really think feminism, or women, are destroying games,” he writes, “or that LGBT people and LGBT relationships have no place in games, or that games in any way belong to you or are ‘under attack’ from political correctness or ‘social justice warriors’: please leave this website. I don’t want your clicks, I don’t want your hits, I don’t want your traffic. Leave now and please don’t come back.”

This is the first step: Serious people refusing to engage with anyone who argues on the level of a whiny child, and editors refusing to prioritize the page views that come with such arguments. As Colwill put it, for these excessively vocal, woman-hating brats, “Literally the worst possible thing that can happen here is equality. That’s the worst outcome, that’s the nightmare scenario.” If they were actually children, we’d be obliged to fret over their moral development and continue providing lessons in sharing and caring. But the “14-year-old in a basement” stereotype notwithstanding, the enemies of equality are not actually kids, and pro-woman writers sure as hell aren’t their mommies. The grown-up internet needs to unequivocally shun these clowns, so the rest of us are free to have some new conversations.

via Feminists Are Not Your Mommies | Dame Magazine.

Just plain meanness! Israeli demolition of dairy factory in Hebron

Israeli bulldozers are reported to have inflicted considerable damage in demolishing a dairy farm and factory owned by Hebron’s Islamic Charitable Society in al-Rama neighbourhood in the north of the city. Eyewitnesses report that Israeli soldiers accompanied two bulldozers and two excavators at the site.

The Chair of the Islamic Charitable Society’s Board of Directors, Hatim al-Bakri, estimated the cost of the damages in the region of “2 million US dollars”. The “services the Charitable Society offers to orphans in the Hebron district will be badly affected”, he added. The factory employs around 52 members of staff.

This is not the first time the factory has been targeted. Israeli forces confiscated the factory’s contents in early July, during Ramadan, after the Israeli Council for Planning alleged that the plant was built without a license.

via Israeli demolition of dairy factory in Hebron.

Ebola, Experimental Drugs and Informed Consent: Should Those At Risk Simply Take What The Doctor Orders?

West Africans have nothing to fear from European nations and firms who want to experiment and maybe find a cure, for which they will charge billions? lol White Europeans and White Americans have never taken advantage of or lied to West Africans before have the? rotflol Tests on African-Americans without their informed consent were OK, until people found out what was really going on – giving men VD and seeing how long it took to die, giving massive radiation to dying people saying it might cure them, when they were really testing the amount of radiation soldiers might be able to endure before dying? wtf!

Ebola, Experimental Drugs and Informed Consent: Should Those At Risk Simply Take What The Doctor Orders?.

It seems that if we’re fortunate enough to find a drug that works, soon, treating Ebola will require trust that approximates a leap of faith (in medicine), and beneficence – that doctors will order and give these drugs because they think they’re more likely to help than harm those affected. Without that trust, we’ll be stuck, unable to give therapy to most people infected or at risk. Is it possible that meaningful consent can be a barrier to care?

Racist Newsweek’s Dehumanization of Africans and Monkey Meat Ebola Fearmongering | Global Research

The most definitive takedown of the Newsweek piece appeared at the Washington Post  website (8/25/14), where Laura Seay and Kim Yi Dionne place the article in a historical context:

Far from presenting a legitimate public health concern, the authors of the piece and the editorial decision to use chimpanzee imagery on the cover have placed Newsweek squarely in the center of a long and ugly tradition of treating Africans as savage animals and the African continent as a dirty, diseased place to be feared.

While Newsweek zeroed in on the wild game risk as being “all but but ignored by the popular press and public,” Seay and Dionne write: “The reason this ‘risk’ is ignored is because it is infinitesimally close to zero.”

During a BBC discussion of the story (8/26/14), host Nkem Ifejika noted that Ebola experts stress that the risks of Ebola exposure come from hunting and dissection–which would seem to undermine the point of  Newsweek‘s cover story. The magazine’s senior editor Elijah Wolfson responded by appearing to back away from the article’s premise:

I would say that the risk for contracting Ebola by eating or handling bushmeat that arrives in the U.S. through illegal importation is minimal. But that doesn’t mean it is a zero risk.

That’s a far cry from the message the magazine is telling us–unless they plan on rewriting that headline to say, “Not a Back Door for Ebola: Smuggled Bushmeat Is Unlikely to Spark a US Epidemic.” And replacing the chimp with a photo of a bat. As Seay and Dionne put it:

Newsweek’s piece is in the worst tradition of what journalist Howard French calls “Ooga-Booga” journalism: the practice of writing in exoticizing and dehumanizing ways about Africa.

via Newsweek’s Dehumanization of Africans and Monkey Meat Ebola Fearmongering | Global Research.

In 2014 UK – Shame on Cameron! Rickets returns as poor families find healthy diets unaffordable | Society | The Guardian

Dr John Middleton, from the FPH, said the calls would come in the faculty’s manifesto to be published next month and warned that ill-health arising from poor diets was worsening throughout Britain “through extreme poverty and the use of food banks”.

He saidthat obesity remained the biggest problem of food poverty as families are forced into choosing cheap, processed high fat foods just to survive. “It’s getting worse because people can’t afford good quality food,” he said. “Malnutrition, rickets and other manifestations of extreme poor diet are becoming apparent. GPs are reporting rickets anecdotally in Manchester, the East End of London, Birmingham and the West Midlands. It is a condition we believed should have died out.

“The vitamin deficiency states of gout, malnutrition being seen in hospital admission statistics are extreme manifestations of specific dietary deficiencies or excesses, but they are markers of a national diet which is poor. Food prices up 12%, fuel prices up double-figure percentages and wages down is a toxic combination, forcing more people to eat unhealthily.”

via Rickets returns as poor families find healthy diets unaffordable | Society | The Guardian.

The Brits Spin is beating out the Blair spin to get Brits into Iraq last time! Britain Raises Terrorism Threat Level to ‘Severe’ – NYTimes.com

Friday and the spinning is easy – The new designation is the second highest after “critical,” meaning that an attack is expected imminently.

The assessment is made by a panel of security experts and officials, independent of government officials. Several European nations have voiced fears that their citizens who have joined the Sunni militant Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, will return home trained and equipped for terrorist acts. But the British response seemed to be among the most drastic.

“The increase in the threat level is related to developments in Syria and Iraq where terrorist groups are planning attacks against the West,” Ms. May said, without offering direct evidence of those plans.

“Some of these plots are likely to involve foreign fighters who have traveled there from the U.K. and Europe to take part in those conflicts,” she said. “The British public should be in no doubt that we will take the strongest possible action to protect our national security.”

She added: “We face a real and serious threat in the U.K. from international terrorism. I would urge the public to remain vigilant and to report any suspicious activity to the police.”

In what seemed a related development, Mr. Cameron told a news conference that new laws would facilitate the seizure of the passports of suspected British jihadis. He said he would provide more detail in a statement to Parliament on Monday covering what he called legislation to fill “gaps in our armory.”

He drew a distinction between previous assessments that the main threat to British security came from Al Qaeda, which has broken with ISIS because of its extreme tactics.

The group spilled across the border from Syria in June to strike at north and central Iraq, leaving a trail of executions and beheadings and threatening minority groups. “What we are facing in Iraq now with ISIL is a greater threat to our security than we have seen before,” Mr. Cameron told a news conference, using an alternative name for ISIS.

via Britain Raises Terrorism Threat Level to ‘Severe’ – NYTimes.com.

Yellow Cake Spin times 10! Bubonic plague data found on Islamic state computer – UPI.com

Neo-Cons in heaven with nasty IS computer to claim planning of a bubonic plague bomb! Oh my!

 

An Islamic State laptop computer found in Syria allegedly contains plans to build chemical weapons for spreading bubonic plague.

The computer, now in Antakya, Turkey, belonged to a Tunisian militant named Muhammad S., who studied university-level chemistry and physics. It was found at an abandoned IS base in Idlib, Syria, by moderate rebel forces, and contains detailed instructions on explosives construction, the use of disguises while travelling, and chemical weapons plans, according to the magazine Foreign Policy, whose reporters were shown the laptop.

via Bubonic plague data found on Islamic state computer – UPI.com.

Iranian cleric says 3G phones are un-Islamic – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

Those who like to argue how many angels can dance on a pin head, will love this Iranian cleric – “In consideration of the various corruption that you presented in regard to the spreading of high-speed internet, such as access of youth and even adolescents to polluted articles, films and pictures and films that are against Islamic morals and beliefs and in regard to that, permission for this law has not been given, and that opposing laws of the Islamic Republic is not permissible, and with consideration that the national information network, which can solve many of these problems, has not been provided, certainly steps in something hurried, meaning high-speed mobile internet devices and 3G mobile communication services and higher, are against Shariah and against moral and human norms.”

The response continued, “And officials should not only think about material profits and not think about it as a religious intellectual manner. It’s necessary to put this to the Supreme Council of Cyberspace, which is the legal reference for this affair. And after compliance in these matters, which would prevent the negative aspects, then take action. The judiciary must also not be indifferent in this vital matter.”

via Iranian cleric says 3G phones are un-Islamic – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East.

No class, no shame for stealing property – just because they can! Israel approves Jewish yeshiva in heart of East Jerusalem | Maan News Agency

Israel’s Jerusalem municipality has approved plans to build a Jewish religious school in the heart of occupied East Jerusalem, Palestinian activists and Israeli media said.

The Ohr Somayach yeshiva will occupy a nine-story building in the middle of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, Haaretz reported.

The plan was reportedly approved six months ago by Jerusalem’s Municipal Planning and Building Committee and given the go ahead on Wednesday.

A Ma’an reporter said the building will occupy 1,900 square meters and have three underground floors.

The religious school will be located between the al-Hayat Medical Center and the Nasif gas station.

Activist and Sheikh Jarrah resident Salih Diab told Ma’an that the building of a Jewish religious school, and the implementation of evacuation orders against Palestinian residents, will turn Sheikh Jarrah into a “Jewish neighborhood.”

The land was reportedly confiscated in the 1980s under Israel’s Absentee Property Law of 1950, which had been used as a tool to annex Palestinian land.

A 2013 report prepared by the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem said that the law has been used extensively in Jerusalem to confiscate property and land owned by West Bank Palestinians, who were technically considered “absentee” after Israel unilaterally annexed East Jerusalem.

via Israel approves Jewish yeshiva in heart of East Jerusalem | Maan News Agency.

WHO | Ebola virus disease update – west Africa August 28, 2014

Epidemiology and surveillance

The total number of probable and confirmed cases in the current outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in the four affected countries as reported by the respective Ministries of Health of Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone is 3069, with 1552 deaths.

The outbreak continues to accelerate. More than 40% of the total number of cases have occurred within the past 21 days. However, most cases are concentrated in only a few localities.

The overall case fatality rate is 52%. It ranges from 42% in Sierra Leone to 66% in Guinea.

A separate outbreak of Ebola virus disease, which is not related to the outbreak in West Africa, was laboratory-confirmed on 26 August by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and is detailed in a separate edition of the Disease Outbreak News.

Health sector response

A full understanding of the outbreak that will lead to improved response requires detailed analysis of exactly where transmission is occurring (by district level) and of time trends. This analysis is ongoing. Preliminary results show that cases are still concentrated (62% of all reported cases since the beginning of the outbreak) in the epicentre of the outbreak in Gueckedou (Guinea); Lofa (Liberia), where cases continue to rise; and Kenema and Kailahun (Sierra Leone). Capital cities are of particular concern, owing to their population density and repercussions for travel and trade.

via WHO | Ebola virus disease update – west Africa.