Utopia, you are standing in it!

A very interesting documentary and well worth looking at. The money now washing about in cricket makes these claims plausible
Al Jazeera

Since this documentary was completed, Jeevantha Kulatunga has contacted Al Jazeera. He denies any involvement in match-fixing and says Al Jazeera’s allegations are “false” and had been “deliberately used to tarnish my image and reputation as a cricketer and coach”. Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit exposes the global scale of match-fixing in cricket. Our undercover investigation reveals how criminal gangs bribe players and officials to fix matches and parts of matches – and make millions from betting on guaranteed outcomes. In secretly filmed meetings, we expose criminals who target the fast-growing Twenty20 tournaments and Test matches, the highest level of the international game. We film international players agreeing to fix matches and show how spot-fixes appear to have been carried out at Test matches involving some of the world’s…

I have no idea how many books have been written on World War II. Many of them important, but Victor Davis Hanson has explained it. I gave my oldest son, who is really interested in the war, and has toured the battlefields in Europe,The Second World Wars for Christmas. He usually mutters about the somewhat conservative books I give him, but he made a special point of thanking me for it. He said it has made it all make sense, and he loved the book. So there are glimmerings of hope.

If you have not yet ordered the book, you’ll be glad that you did. The preface explains the title, and why Victor Davis Hanson was the correct one to tell that story. Memorial Day would be a good time to indulge.

The NY Times has a rather nicely written editorial today honoring Fred Korematsu.

As you may recall, Mr. Korematsu was one of citizens interred under FDR’s Executive Order 9066. Initially, he went on the lamb but was ultimately arrested and convicted of violating the internment order. He received 5 years probation and spent the next few years in de facto forced labor at the Central Utah Relocation Center. Mr. Korematsu appealed his conviction all the way to the Supreme Court (Korematsu v. United States). Alas, the Court refused to overturn the conviction (6-3), viewing the internment as justified by the security risk posed by Japanese Americans.

Although the decision deserves a reading, let me simply quote Justice Robert Jackson’s dissent:

A military order, however unconstitutional, is not apt to last longer than the military emergency. Even during that period, a succeeding commander may revoke it all. But once…

On May 15^th the BBC News website published a backgrounder titled “Why Nakba is the Palestinians’ most sombre day, in 100 and 300 words“.

“Palestinians have been protesting at Gaza’s border with Israel in the lead up to the the [sic] most mournful day in their calendar. The date, which falls on 15 May each year, commemorates events which caused Palestinians to lose their homes and become refugees. They refer to it as al-Nakba, or the Catastrophe.

Here it is briefly explained, in both 100 words and 300 words.”

Why the BBC thought its audiences needed a double helping of explanations was not explained.

In the 100 word version BBC audiences were told that:

“On 14 May 1948, Israel declared independence, and in a war which began the next day, up to 750,000 Palestinians who had lived on that land fled or were expelled from their homes.”

Terrorists with the Animal Liberation Front are terrorizing the owners of a family-run butcher shop in Ashford, England. According to the UK Daily Mail, the Marlow Butchers shop has been open for over 50 years, but because of numerous messages on their Facebook page and graffiti messages scrawled on their store front, the Marlow family is living in fear.

Not only does Marlow Butchers receive negative reviews from animal rights sympathizers, but the Marlows have even gotten continuous threats to have their business physically destroyed by either firebomb or smashing windows. They can’t understand why their establishment is the target of this harassment campaign when supermarkets have butchers and sell meat too. Ironically enough, the paints and glues ALF punks use to vandalize the Marlow’s butcher shop contain animal by-products too.

Kent police are investigating the incidents and the local community has been supportive. None the less, the ALF…

I don’t know who came up with this, but what a good job!

Hoist on their own petard, indeed, to borrow an elderly phrase.

In their very own words.

It seemed as if the Lega and Five Star Movement (M5s) were about to form a coalition, and then things turned. The mostly ceremonial President refused the coalition’s proposed finance minister, and now the coalition plan is off.

President Sergio Mattarella has tasked Carlo Cottarelli, a non-politician (till now, that is), to form a government, with elections to be held in early 2019. However, if the government is unable to get a program approved in parliament, which the BBC (second link above) says it probably can’t, elections could be this August.

Further, the BBC reports, “A source from Five Star told Reuters the party could campaign with the League in a fresh vote.”

Recall from the previous F&V discussion that the new electoral system is not proportional–although about 5/8 of the seats are indeed allocated proportionally. The other 3/8 are elected in single-seat districts, and thus it is a mixed-member…

We have often discussed the ever-widening scope of copyright and trademark laws. This trend has prompted lawsuit over using generic images or terms, obvious parodies, or names. Now, an English court has ruled in favor of UK souvenir maker Temple Island Collection Ltd against New English Teas for using a picture of a London bus. Not a picture taken by Temple Island, mind you: Taking its own picture of a London bus that the court deemed as too close to a picture of a London bus taken by Temple Island. The Defendant used photoshop software to alter the image.

At one point in a long and credulous look back at Walter Cronkite and the Vietnam War, the Washington Post this weekend likens the former CBS News anchorman to “an intercontinental ballistic missile of objectivity.”

Cronkite in Vietnam, 1968

That’s a sample of the hagiographic tone of the Post’s retrospective, which centers around the media myth of Cronkite’s report in late February 1968 about the Vietnam War, in which he described the U.S. military as “mired in stalemate” there.

The Post presents a number of dubious claims about the effects of what it says were Cronkite’s “daring, historic, precedent-busting words about Vietnam.”

Cronkite’s words were hardly that.

His description about the war as a “stalemate” was neither daring nor novel. As I discuss in my media-mythbusting book, Getting It Wrong, American journalists for months before Cronkite’s program had invoked “stalemate” to characterize the war…

“It’s the greatest achievement
in human history,
and one you probably
never heard about.”

Extreme poverty in the world fell to 15% in 2011, from 36% in 1990.  The credit goes to the spread of capitalism. The past 25 years have witnessed the greatest reduction in global poverty in the history of the world. An 80% reduction in world poverty in only 36 years.

The World Bank reported on Oct. 9 that the share of the world population living in extreme poverty had fallen to 15% in 2011 from 36% in 1990. Earlier this year, the International Labor Office reported that the number of workers in the world earning less than $1.25 a day has fallen to 375 million 2013 from 811 million in 1991. …

The reduction in world poverty has attracted little attention because it runs against the narrative pushed by those hostile to capitalism. The Michael…