Tag: hippies

“Thanks for the free stuff, Suckers!” – Clock Boy Ahmed to move to Quatar (and sues school)

Ahmed Mohamed, the kid who was briefly detained by police after bringing the innards from a disassembled nightstand clock to school in a briefcase and plugged it in to be found instead of obeying his teachers instruction to keep it covered since they both acknowledged that it looked like a bomb, is moving to the middle east with his crazy whom I am deducing put him up to all this (I don’t have proof of this – I’m just concluding based on his fathers radical past, anti-american suggestions and 9/11 Conspiracy pushing vs Ahmed himself whom by all accounts seems like a regular and pleasant American kid unfortunate enough to be in such a situation where he’s used as a prop in such a way).

Known as “clock boy”, Ahmed was briefly but high-profile-ly a pop-culture darling as hippie editors across the media scrambled to lionize his bomb prank that received no punishment (just brief inconvenience as he was questioned) as an example of racist America persecuting muslims.

After it was virtually unanimously confirmed that this was a hoax and said media-hippies were duped out of confirmation-bias that desperately hopes someone somewhere will embody their narrative of racist persecution, Ahmed faded from the headlines and now his family is moving to Qatar – a country that aids and abets terrorists – instead of accept his invites to intern at Twitter or go to MIT…

Ahmed responded, “I would love to!! MIT is my dream school.”

Eyman said Qatar is “basically like America,” because American universities like Texas A&M and Carnegie Mellon have Qatari-side campuses.

Also in the press release, Mohamed Elhassen Mohamed said: “After careful consideration of all the generous offers received, we would like to announce that we have accepted a kind offer from Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF) for Ahmed to join the prestigious QF Young Innovators Program, which reflects the organization’s on-going dedication to empowering young people and fostering a culture of innovation and creativity.”

Earlier this month, QF gifted the teen and his family with a trip and tour of the five-mile Education City, founded by Al Jazeera creator Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, who is closely associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and opposes what he calls the “Judaization of Jerusalem” in referencing the Jewish Holy City and Israeli capitol, founded it. In late 2012, the New York Times reported Al Thani pledged $400 million to fund Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Mohamed Elhassen Mohamed said he was hugely impressed by the complex.

Of course…

Through out their entire time in the media spotlight, the family played the Islamophobia card, blaming the arrest and suspension on Ahmed being a “Muslim boy.” Earlier today, San Jose, California Democrat Rep. Mike Honda organized a press conference with Ahmed and the family to announce his effort in asking the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Ahmed’s arrest and treatment by police, ABC News reported.

“We are going to move to a place where my kids can study and learn and all of them being accepted by that country,” said the patriarch earlier today to the Dallas news outlet. However, as Breitbart Texas reported, Ahmed’s clock woes happened based on the state and federal safe school and zero tolerance policies. Even the Associated Press agreed, blaming “rigid disciplinary policies” adopted by schools in the 199os.

But that wasn’t before getting shout outs from tech companies like Facebook and Google, and an invite to meet President Obama, and thousands of dollars in donations, and lots of free swag for some reason.

Ahmed with a ton of tech goodies gifted to him by Microsoft because Reasons.

UPDATE: Suing from Quatar, the family also wants $15 million from the city and school due to the psychological damage Ahmed allegedly suffered by being lawfully detained after committing a crime…

After he was released, he was invited to both Google (where he met Sergey Brin) and Facebook. President Barack Obama called him an inspiration for kids who want to study science and invited him to the White House. Time magazine named him in its list of “30 Most Influential Teens of 2015.”

But that was all then. Now, it’s time for the legal action. After no charges were filed against him and he finally got his clock back, attorneys for Ahmed and his family have written to both the city of Irving and to the Irving Independent School District and made demands.

As the Dallas Morning News reports, the letters ask for $10 million from the city and $5 million from the school district. They say he was “publicly mistreated.” They say he suffered “severe psychological trauma.”

The Protestors Who Brought Down Boston Interstate Are Predictably, Hippie Losers

Earlier this month a bunch of dumb hippies who have been both ingesting and perpetuating the brainwash that pushes victimhood mentality on dark skinned racial minorities decided that it was about time they did something about race relations between white police officers and people with dark skin so of course they chained themselves to barrels to block traffic on the interstate.

The sarcasm in the “of course” part in that sentence speaks both to the illogic bizarreness of the act and the completely routine and cliche predictableness of hippie protest, which is not so much to argue a point or raise awareness in any kind of constructive manner but rather is to throw a tantrum for attention so the participants feel good about themselves. Tools.

Protesters who said they were trying to call attention to racial oppression blocked traffic on Interstate 93 north and south of Boston Thursday morning. The actions surprised police, snarled the commute for thousands, and forced the diversion of an ambulance rushing a car crash victim to a Boston hospital, State Police said.

The narcissistic tantrum accomplished nothing but the addition of more negativity to people in the areas days but as is the case with all stunts like this, could have gone much worse as it blocked the path of not only innocent civilians commuting and generally trying to just go about their day but also an ambulance trying to save a mans life.

An ambulance carrying a car crash victim with life-threatening injuries had to be diverted Thursday morning because of protests that shut down parts of Interstate 93, officials said.

Self absorbed, non-productive, annoying, destructive, and accomplishes nothing. 

Could these people be any more cliche? Turns out the answer is yes… They could be dirty looking dreaded white dudes who still live with their enabler parents…

To cleanse the palate, via Joel Pollak, nothing says “blocking ambulances for social justice” like white-guy dreads. This makes twice in the span of four days that our worst stereotypes about liberals were magically vindicated, the other being John Kerry rolling out his favorite hippie troubadour to serenade France with an apology on Friday. As with celebrity deaths, these things tend to happen in threes, which makes me wonder what sort of show Obama might be preparing to put on for us tomorrow night during the SOTU. Maybe he’ll use the speech to dump on “American Sniper”? That’s the bleeding edge of left-wing hot takes at this particular moment.

No, Dogs Don’t Have Souls and No They Don’t Go to Heaven

Sorry the news reports about the Pope’s comment on dog-afterlife got your hopes up. Here I am to dash them: Dogs don’t have souls and when they die, they are gone forever.  As with all the bad news I am duty bound to deliver, I say this not to bum you out, but to make you better prepared for reality. Enjoy your pets while they’re alive. Because the series of algorithms from their genetics and outside stimuli that made them unique is going to be gone forever.

But before I get to the meat of this story, I have to get this piece of clipart out of the way:

There… I did it. The most easy, most obvious hack reference to make on this story: use of the 1989 Don Bluth animated feature All Dogs Go To Heaven.


DO YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE??????

Now that that obligatory nonsense is out of the way, I can go back to crushing your dreams. First the background:

Recently reports claimed that the current hippie Pope said otherwise. but only kindov. Kindov because Catholics believe the Pope is infallible because God talks directly to him so if he says something then its basically God saying it. But that only counts in official Popey Speeches, of which this was not. So…. this is more “the guy who is the Pope” said it than it is “the Pope said…” if you’re following me here. Then the reports clarified that it wasn’t even this hippie Pope who made the claim but rather the Pope from the Hippie 60s…

The original report claimed that a kid was sad about his deceased pet and the Pontiff made him feel better with something silly. From the New York Times:

Citing biblical passages that assert that animals not only go to heaven, but get along with one another when they get there, Francis was quoted by the Italian news media as saying: “One day, we will see our animals again in the eternity of Christ. Paradise is open to all of God’s creatures.”

Theologians cautioned that Francis had spoken casually, not made a doctrinal statement.

The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and editor at large of America, the Catholic magazine, said he believed that Francis was at least asserting that “God loves and Christ redeems all of creation,” even though conservative theologians have said paradise is not for animals.

“He said paradise is open to all creatures,” Father Martin said. “That sounds pretty clear to me.”

This is nice to say to children, but not appropriate for adults to believe.

Also, not accurate. As the above text no longer appears on that NY Times link which has been correct-edited (corrected+edited). It now reads:

Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper, analyzing the pope’s remarks, concluded he believed animals have a place in the afterlife. It drew an analogy to comforting words that Pope Paul VI was said to have once told a distraught boy whose dog had died: “One day, we will see our animals again in the eternity of Christ. Paradise is open to all of God’s creatures.”

This is PETA nonsense. If animals have souls then killing animals is murder. And Surprise: PETA of course feels validated. From the same NYTimes piece:

Sarah Withrow King, director of Christian outreach and engagement at PETA, one of the most activist anti-slaughterhouse groups, said the pope’s remarks vindicated the biblical portrayal of heaven as peaceful and loving, and could influence eating habits, moving Catholics away from consuming meat — which she asserted had already been happening anyway. “It’s a vegan world, life over death and peace between species,” she said. “I’m not a Catholic historian, but PETA’s motto is that animals aren’t ours, and Christians agree. Animals aren’t ours, they’re God’s.”

Whether the pope’s remarks will prove to be a persuasive new reason not to eat meat, a potentially worrisome development to the multibillion-dollar beef, pork, poultry and seafood industries, remains unclear at best. But they did cause discussion.

Gotta love the hippie bias of the Times rubbing its hands over how multibillion-dollar industries might be negatively affected by this non-news.

How did this fable spread across news sources and social media as fact? ReligionNews.com tracks its spread:

Part of the answer may be the topic of the pope’s talk to the crowd that day, which centered on the End Times and the transformation of all creation into a “new heaven” and a “new earth.” Citing St. Paul in the New Testament, Francis said that is not “the annihilation of the cosmos and of everything around us, but the bringing of all things into the fullness of being.”

The trail of digital bread crumbs then appears to lead to an Italian news report that extended Francis’ discussion of a renewed creation to the wider question of whether animals too will go to heaven, and what previous popes have said.

“One day we will see our pets in the eternity of Christ,” the report quoted Paul VI as telling a disconsolate boy years ago.

The story was titled, somewhat misleadingly: “Paradise for animals? The Pope doesn’t rule it out.” It wasn’t clear which pope the writer meant, however.

The next day, Nov. 27, a story in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera by veteran Vaticanista Gian Guido Vecchi pushed the headline further: “The Pope and pets: ‘Paradise is open to all creatures.’”

Their full following of the false story is worth reading for insight of how news and false news spreads across sources, alone. But the fact is that to our scientific and religious knowledge, animals don’t have souls.

If you think that only dogs have souls then you’re letting your personal attachment to something rewrite your religious doctrine (or dog-ma).

Don’t blame the messenger, kids….

The secret about what “modern art” is actually all about

Ever wonder how “modern art” ever became a thing? I did, so I thought about it and the answer came up fairly quickly in my analysis: It’s a medium invented for elitists.

While “art” as traditionally known is something that takes skill, “modern art” is just the application of the artistic label to literally anything. Whether its a mish-mash of colors or a collection of shapes presented in a minimalist layout or a dog pooping – its “art” that isn’t actually art. Obviously anything can be looked at and studied with an artistic eye and symbolism, parallels, allegories, metaphors, and deep meanings can be applied to them. But humans already knew that. That act is a gift of our human brains, capable of critical thinking, imagination, and self aware application of knowledge for logical and creative ends. Thinking about things isn’t “art”. Yet Modern Art tells us that anything that we think about after looking at is itself art worthy of pedestalisation (a verb I made up to denote “putting on a pedestal”). But why the need to make a movement out of elevating non-art?

The truth is not that modern art is actually art – which it obviously isn’t – the truth is about inventing art.

If you define art in the classical sense of skill, technique, and quality – then you’re limited to those parameters and anyone with those things can make, identify and appreciate art. That’s no fun for an elitist. Elitists, by definition, want something more Emperors-new-clothes about the things they like, or they are no longer in the elite. So the way to tear down the establishment in the realm of art is to call anything art. Suddenly when John Q Public says “huh?” you are elevated above him because he doesn’t get it and you do. Elitists love that stuff. Nothing makes an elitist happier than to be able to correct or explain something they think they’re well versed in that average unwashed masses aren’t privy to. And that’s why Modern Art exists…

For more, see this Prager U video answering “Why is Modern Art so bad?”…

For two millennia, great artists set the standard for beauty. Now those standards are gone. Modern art is a competition between the ugly and the twisted; the most shocking wins. What happened? How did the beautiful come to be reviled and bad taste come to be celebrated? Renowned artist Robert Florczak explains the history and the mystery behind this change and how it can be stopped and even reversed.

Ann Coulter defends Alec Baldwin with logic

Alec Baldwin is being attacked by the Tolerance-Police thugs in the hippie faction he supports. The truth is that there’s nothing there to attack him over. While some conservatives might take delight at Baldwin being such an outspoken liberal democrat and then getting chewed up by the liberal democrat wing policing his private conduct with someone allegedly harassing him, Ann Coulter uses logic to come to his empathetic defense.

Speaking with NewsMaxTV host Steve Malzberg Monday evening, Coulter defended the hot-headed MSNBC host from suspension, dismissing his use of the word “fag” as throwaway curse word.

“They shouldn’t have suspended him,” she said, noting that the photographer was “not actually gay.” According to Coulter, “This was just a curse word. It was like using the f-word and, frankly, a lot of these paparazzi photographers deserve it.”

After his comments resulted in media outrage, Baldwin apologized (but not before claiming he said “fathead,” not “fag”). Coulter is willing to forgive the actor’s outbursts, given how much entertainment media hounds him and his family.

“It’s not something Alec Baldwin said in a calm moment on television,” she told Malzberg. “He has been harassed horribly by photographers and now this stalker, and he’s trying to protect his family and he curses. That is what happened.”

That is exactly what happened and good for her for pointing it out.

 

Why the people criticizing Obama for complimenting a woman are so stupidly wrong

Recently, President Barack Obama was doing the only thing he seems to be capable of not screwing up (see: getting people to give money) and still managed to step in it with his base of totalitarian hippie supporters somehow.

At a fundraiser outside of San Fransisco, the President included in his remarks that attorney general of California, Kamala Harris was “the best looking attorney general in the country”. The hippies got angry and used it as an opportunity to peddle their speech-policing about what is and isn’t okay.

What isn’t okay about noting that someone is attractive? Nothing, obviously. Which is the only thing that makes this a noteworthy story. The articles and social media praise for those scolding the president don’t even make an attempt at logical arguments. They just forbid and demand and seek to bully and shame those who don’t adhere to their thought and comment codes and it’s gross.

The definition of “political correctness” is forbidding truths inconvenient to the political Left, which is rooted in Marxist ideology seeking “sameness” but usually masking it under the more palatable but flexible term of “equality”. This strive for sameness requires a lot of social engineering that no un-brainwashed person would find at all appealing, so pressure tactics need to be employed under the guise of pleading on behalf of a victim class.

In this case, the social engineering the hippies desire is the 1960s version of “feminism” (the attack of femininity in the pursuit of women being seen, thought of, and treated no different than men in any way) which is the opposite of feminism (embracing the feminine and observing it as different but equal in respect and legal rights to masculinity and other typically male traits). Hippie feminism demands the suppression of the fact that men find women attractive, so thus it demands that references to this fact be banned. Media using attractive women are demonized as “objectifying” women and comments on women’s attractive appearances are labeled as doing the same thing. This is because that under an ideology of sameness-worship, the observation of differences debunks the end goal. So their solution is just to ban it. Call these things offensive.

It doesn’t matter that there is no logical basis behind keeping quiet over obvious observable truths and it doesn’t matter that there is nothing insulting, degrading, inappropriate, or out of context about polite notation of such obvious observable truths. The argument is merely “we said so. the end”.

Harris was already noted by President Obama as being “brilliant” and that “she is dedicated and she is tough” before he added that she was also “the most attractive attorney general in the country” so there is no argument to be made about any kind of denial of her non-physical attributes. Instead, the presidents comments are just being called inappropriate and offensive by the usual suspects of hippies stepping in front of someone who was neither victimized nor offended and broadcasting about victimizaiton and offense.

Mika Brezinski on MSNBC said “It just divides women and it just divides people up to separate them by looks and probably was a little ham-fisted. I just think the whole thing, the whole dynamic about women and their looks puts women under a lot of stress that they don’t need.” I like Mika and don’t want to beat up on her, so i’ll leave it to you to decide if she really believes that hippie talking point and/or if it is congruent with pictorials like this:

Katie J. M. Baker asks in a Jezebel post that uses an unflattering photo of Kamala Harris, “was it wrong of Obama to call Harris “the best looking attorney general” while listing her many other attributes?” and then immediately answers herself with “Yes”, because, she says “Women put up with enough unsolicited attention as it is; the president of our country doesn’t need to legitimize the practice by piling on.”

Robin Abcarian in the LA Times had to admit the statement is “accurate” and “stating the obvious” but still asks if it was “sexist” (inadvertently admitting that truth is sometimes “sexist” which un-defines the word sexism). She concludes that making obvious statements about a womans attractiveness is predatory and problematic by saying “More wolfish than sexist, I’d say. And this may be a little problem he needs to work on.” In an attempt to justify this potential “problem” that needs “working on”, Abcarian says:

As Arlette Saenz of ABC News pointed out, Obama got into some hot water a while back when he addressed a reporter as “sweetie.” That was obnoxious, and demeaning, and Obama rightfully apologized. In 2008, he told Hillary Clinton she was “likeable enough” during one of the primary debates, which turned off God knows how many women, who heard the smug judgment of an arrogant upstart.

2 more bogus examples as the reporter didn’t express any offense at the “sweetie” remark, which isn’t inherently obnoxious or demeaning and the “likeable enough” comment was a joke in response to a question about whether Hillary “is likeable” (so in other words, he was using the language of the question in the debate to make light of the question in her defense – not decreeing to Hillary that he, as an elitist, had dubbed her to be adequate).

Amanda Marcotte at Slate wrote an article titled “Sorry, President Obama, but Complimenting a Colleague’s Looks Isn’t Harmless” but forgot to include in the article, any “harm” inherent in such an action. Instead she just points out that dumb hippies on twitter rebuked the President, and lauds that many were male and dismissed columnists debunking the lunacy as “unsurprising defensive whining”. At least she is unsurprised that when cry-bullying over fake victimization stories in service to illogical dogmas are used as offenses, the defense is expected. Her laughable evidence that complimenting women “isn’t harmless” is a statement by a social scientist who quoted a 1996 paper in where researchers discovered that – gasp – passive-aggressive behaviors exist. Marcotte should get with the 21st century and realize that this isn’t news. Yes, it’s true that people can say nice things in manipulative ways for negative outcomes – thanks for that professional citation to uncover that obvious point literally everyone is already aware of. Sorry, Amanda, but the potential to be negative by paying people compliments doesn’t make the act of making a compliment in itself “harmful”.

Joan Walsh at a Salon.com  titled “Kamala Harris deserves better” un-makes her point in nearly every line of the first few paragraph by admitting the details that contradict he phony claim of sexist oppression (Obama and Harris are close allies; the compliment was intended as such and not as an attack; that it was preceded by calling her “brilliant”) and then says “but my stomach turned over anyway”.

And that’s the perfect summary of this situation: “Yes, there was nothing wrong whatsoever about this comment that had good motives, was well received by the person it was directed to and was objectively accurate…but I hated it anyway” – Hippie Feminism in a nutshell.

~~

To review: President Obama says something nice about a friend and supporter at a fundraiser and no one there complains and the friend and supporter expresses no problem at having been publicly complimented by the President of the United states on her brilliance, toughness, dedication, and good looks. Leftist crusaders, however, step in to say that’s not okay in a variety of outlets, but to recap the 5 covered here:

An MSNBC host says that complimenting women on being attractive adds “stress that they don’t need” and “divides” them, even though she adds to the division with 90% more hair and makeup vamping and 100% more leg showing than her male co-anchors.

An LA Times columnist says that it is “wolfish” and “a problem” to compliment a women on her looks, even though she admits herself several times that the woman in question has complimentary looks (ie: a compliment).

A Slate.com columnist claimed that a 1996 paper someone wrote said that nice things could potentially be used in bad ways and dubiously concluded that that is proof that complimenting a womans appearance is “harmful”.

A Jezebel columnist said that the president was “piling on” the plight that women already unjustly suffer when they look attractive by saying so.

And a Salon.com columnist claimed that she became physically sick when she heard that the President had complimented a woman.

 

Sexual Harassment: another hippie “achievement” that hurts the innocent

Male child overheard calling female teacher cute, gets suspended for sexual harassment. Seems fair… (alternate headline: another reminder on how hippies ruin everything they touch).

I posted this on Facebook and got the following reply from this consistently deranged hater (who also happens to be a hippie) who follows me to hate on my posts, make things up to bait me into…er…owning him, publicly wish I was dead, call me a terrible/despicable/awful person, etc. Here’s the latest:

Text copy & pasted if the image is hard to read:

Jon Rich: Let me get this straight: a single case of an overzealous enforcement of a sexual harassment policy is proof that “hippies ruin everything they touch.” Never mind the millions of cases where sexual harassment laws have been fairly applied to prevent women from being exploited by bosses, co-workers, students, and professors. No, it is so much easier to make a blanket statement based on an anecdote.

Let yourself get it straight by learning to read. Since the public school system has failed you, i’ll have pity and help you out: the words “another” and “reminder” (see http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/another &http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/reminder) mean the opposite of “a single case of an overzealous enforcement”. While its cool that you admit sexual harassment laws are just feminist propaganda (the official line is that they apply to both genders), it’s stupid to claim that “fair” application of a law to only one gender (see http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fair) is evidence that the law is good.

Sexual assault and ethics laws give tools to prevent injustices and prosecute them when they occur.
Sexual harassment laws give tools to destroy lives and make places of work and learning places of fear and oppression.

HINT: good laws dont have areas where they can be applied to suspend and tarnish 9 year olds for making innocent G rated positive comments to other students. but by all means – don’t let logic get in the way of your hippie dogma.

Corporations Murder People?

I’ve been seeing the digital image and hand written sign that says “I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one of them” for months and I keep asking “who has been murdered by what corporation?” and no one can ever answer. I suspect I know why…

If the answer is “no one” then the sign is meaningless.

Sorry to give away the ending, but: The answer is “no one” and the sign is meaningless.

It should read “I’ll believe corporations are people when one commits murder”.

If there is a case of an American corporation murdering someone then show it to me so I can publicize the event and look into why it wasn’t properly prosecuted and why the corporation wasn’t executed. It’s not impossible that a Corporation murdered someone and then got away with it while continuing to do business but… no. nevermind. it’s pretty not-possible.

What the legal classification of a Corporation being a person means is not that if you carry it’s documents with you in your car then you can drive in the carpool lane or anything stupid like that – it just means that a corporation can’t be deprived constitutional rights. or in other words: people can’t be deprived of their constitutional rights when they act collectively in commerce (and form a corp). i.e: Corporate personhood says that the government can’t deny fifth amendment rights or free speech rights to a group of people in a corporation just as they can’t to an individual. hippies hate that rule because they hate anything designed to make a profit and that is what a corporation is, so hence their fight against corporate personhood.

But if a corporation murdered anyone then it definitely should be executed. I’m just waiting for the facts behind this phrase…

Dear Hippies: Using clever slogans only remains clever if their content makes sense. If there is no factual basis for your sloganeering then you’re not making a point, you’re unmaking it.

I’m eager to hear all the cases of murder where the perpetrator was a Corporation, so if you’re one of the people who keeps posting this sign on facebook – send em on in!

Show me the time that McDonalds sent out an order to shoot a guy or when Microsoft had someone beat to death in a Dennys parking lot. That’s what murder is, fellas. Willful intent and success at killing innocent humans. Microsoft making shitty products is not murder and McDonalds making fatty food is not murder and only murder is punishable by execution. So. Have at it and i’ll update this post with all your examples.

Current instances of Corporate Murder: 0

UPDATE: Well this is embarrassing. In search of an example that makes this line make sense, I found this image below. Shit. I totally forgot about that time Wal-Mart killed 3 thousand innocent civilians. NEVER FORGET.

This sums up how hippies view private businesses exercising free market capitalism as something to be scared of. which is a sign of a mental disorder or extreme narcissism because people buying things they want would only “scare” the most twisted Communist-minded utopian douche.

Dislike a chain of stores all you want, but if stores selling grooming products, toys, household items, tools, clothes, vitamins, and groceries frightens you, you have some pretty deep psychological problems.

UPDATE: Cory leaves the following comment:

New Forests Company

you lose.

I didn’t know I had bet anything so I don’t know what it is I am losing, but I’ve also never heard of this Corp, so I took to Google which surfaced the following:

The New Forests Company is a UK-based sustainable and socially responsible forestry company with established, rapidly growing plantations and the prospect of a diversified product base for local and regional export markets which will deliver both attractive returns to investors and significant social and environmental benefits.

Oh… UK-based…that might be why I’ve never heard of them and their website says they operate in Africa. I’m not so sure that the American state of Texas can apply it’s death penalty laws to a non-American corporation (nah, I’m just putting it that way to soften the blow. the truth is that I know for a fact that that’s how it works), but if this corporation has been convicted of killing anyone then thats still pretty big, American or not.

[7 minutes on Google later]: It appears there have been no convictions of murder, but some villagers in Uganda gave eye witness reports that New Forests Company security officers killed some unnamed people. Hmm… this is some pretty odd conviction standards: an unnamed eye witness gives an out-of-court report that a non-America Corporation killed an unnamed person or persons in Uganda under unknown circumstances and that has a relation to the American constitution and American law of Corporate Personhood somehow? But of course even if I accept that part – this “some guy killed someone somewhere” is not conviction worth testimony. If Cory – or any of you reading this – has evidence that the New Forest Corporation actually did instruct a murder hit on any individuals in this Ugandan village then even though it’s not American and not subject to our laws, it would be a decent non-American example. I will email Cory and ask if he has info pointing towards just that (which I assume he does on account of me losing) but if you know anything about this you email me too and i’ll update accordingly.

Developing…

UPDATE: Jason comments with more argument that is along the same that leads me to realize more clarity is required for the issue. First, Jasons comment:

Failures of corporations routinely cause harm and death to humans. If you have to ask for sources, then you clearly aren’t paying attention. These abuses are ‘settled out of court’ in civil suits and never reach the criminal justice system.

Google for ‘wrongful death settlements’ and be careful who you believe until you’ve followed their money trail.

I appreciate the attempt in this comment, but it’s no good unless you can also provide examples of when Texas has ever executed someone due to a failure. Who has ever been executed for murder because they failed at safety conditions around their house or property? This comment argues far more that a Corporation is a human than it does against it (again: un-making the point). Humans routinely cause harm and death to humans. So what relevance does that have to the question posed here, which is “What corporation has murdered someone?”. Humans murdering humans are not settled out of court and neither would a corporation murdering anyone. Causing harm is not murder and “causing” death is not even necessarily murder. Wrongful death settlements are in no way examples of murder – they are examples of wrongful deaths.

The search continues for the American Corporation who has ever murdered anyone, ever – OR – the Texas execution of anyone who has ever been involved with wrongful harm or death of someone parallel to that of a corporate example.

Twinkle Fingers Explained

Via Hot Air: The French reinvented the calendar. These people have reinvented jazz hands, I guess. It’s as harmless as can be, but since all protests are ultimately an appeal to undecided voters, I can only imagine what the average blue-collar American will make of it. Who knows? Maybe hippie finger wiggles are just what the zeitgeist requires right now to catalyze the unemployed.

No, Osama Bin Laden was not “assassinated” or unjustly killed

The link to the video version of this on my Facebook page gave birth to this exchange worth publicizing:

Jonathan Rich: Actually, our side wasn’t saying “don’t do it – it won’t work.” We were saying “don’t do it because secret assassination is immoral.” Big difference. And we still aren’t wrong about that.

It’s funny that the only thing you agree with Obama on is assassination. Cute.

I [literally] don’t know what makes him think I’m down on Obama at all, let alone 99%, save for “assassination”, but this is a regular theme in his comments to me. I mock aspects of religion and display my hopeful agnosticism and he thinks I’m an Onward-Christian-Soldier variety believer; I mock and debunk some Glenn Beckisms and he thinks I’m a Glenn Beck Republican Teabagger. It’s an endless demonstration of self delusion which I admit to not fighting against because 1) why should I? If a dude can’t read words, repeating them with big denials like I’m on a witch hunting trial aint gonna make a diff and 2) I don’t hate religion or Beck or Republicans, so if someone falsely ascribes me to any of those, it’s no different than when other people assume and call me a full blown atheist or gay. It falls into the “well, you’re wrong and you’d know that if you paid attention…but…meh” category. It all fits into a larger attempt to divide and classify people you disagree with on anything as being bad people who are on an opposing team. Big running theme with this guy. Here is my response, that you’ll recognize in it’s standard “mirroring of the absurd elements of the original” format, but I think was alas, lost on the individual, unfortunately:

Richard: Actually, I didn’t say the Left said it wouldn’t work but I *did* say what you incorrectly presumed to correct me on though so maybe try paying attention and you’ll know what’s going on (it makes commenting on subject matter a lot more productive).

It would be funny that you think this is the only thing I agree with Obama on if it wasn’t so transparent and dumb. You’re too cliche to be cute when you’re wrong. Why let the facts get in the way of an awesome black-and-white view of everything though, right?

Idk what your source is that it was an assassination due to your one-way policy on providing those. Unless there’s been new developments or changes to the originally reported description of the mission – Either you have intel that no other news sources including Al Jazeera has, or you dont know what assassinations are.

I’d be interested in the answer if you were able to show accurate comprehension or memory of something you just read seconds ago, let alone however long ago you learned this news about the SEAL mission.

For those of you following at home: I will update this post if it was in fact reported that the mission was an assassination and not the “capture or kill” military operation that took place in a war with the person who started said war by declaring it on our country and beyond in the 1990s and following through with that declaration with a series of murderous attacks on our civilians through the act of war that this leader remains a fugitive from.

UPDATE: He replied with this:

Jonathan Rich: “”This was a kill operation,” the official said, making clear there was no desire to try to capture bin Laden alive in Pakistan.”

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/02/us-binladen-kill-idUSTRE7413H220110502
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0511/54151.html

None of which is either news, nor supportive of his claim. This dude has no desire to actually pursue truth so I’ll explain it to you after I show you what I responded to him:

Richard: text search for “assassin” yields zero results on both links. so I take it that’s your way of admitting you have no source to back up your claim and that in fact the action was the standard fare of war described in these 2 links and other reports. gotta admit you had me goin for a split second till I remembered that you got 3 things wrong about what I said on this very page, so it’s not really fair to expect anything but the same record of accuracy on wider matters.

Any killing “can” be referred to as an assassination no matter what the context in history, movies or video games, so for the word to have any meaning and for anyone to disagree about it’s usage and application, it obviously can’t mean just killing someone. So if the “same thing as killing any human” usage is out – and it clearly must be since no one thinks I’m denying the dude got killed in the raid – what is the traditional way the term is used? Answer: an unjust surprise murder for political reasons. Lincoln was assassinated. Caesar was assassinated. Malcolm X and Dr King were assassinated. JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald were assassinated. -noticing the trend here? I’ll give you a hint: none of these figures were founders and leaders of a group that their assassins were at war with.

For Bin Laden to have been “assassinated” in the sense that this dude used the term, he would have had to left his position within the group that he lead when he declared war on the United States and renounced that action and surrendered yet still shot in the face anyway…. None of that happened. Instead, all reports say Bin Laden was active in orchestrating American death and fled/resisted the troops when they raided his shithole whorehouse. Whether the conflicting reports saying the SEALS were not allowed to take him captive or whether they were just given orders to kill if necessary, is irrelevant to the accuracy of the application of the term.

When a known killers house is raided by the cops and the killer runs away into a room with guns and gets shot in the head before anything further can happen, that is not traditionally reported as an “assassination”. That’s why I would have found it interesting if any reputable news source used the word in that context and not in the sense of being parallel to “killed”.

UPDATE: He replied with 4 paragraphs that repeated the claim that “assassination = the word ‘killed'” which I’ve already dispatched with here and won’t rehash. It’s crystal clear that he did not use, or even mean to use the word as a synonym for the word “kill”, evidenced not least by the fact that I didnt dispute Bin Laden got killed..soo… if he knows I agree the dude is dead then why would he later argue “all I was saying was that he got killed and thats what assassinate means”? Because it’s easier than facing the actual wrongness of the context he meant it in, obviously. Pathetic.

UPDATE: Go O –
Obama: If I have to send troops into Pakistan again to kill a terrorist, I will