News comes from Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, that a disastrous fire swept through a garment factory there, killing eight people. A factory fire in November killed more than 100.
The garment industry in Bangladesh is euphemistically called “loosely regulated,” so, regrettably, these things (fires and so forth) tend to happen with alarming regularity. An entire building collapsed there not long ago, killing more than 1,000. It’s a delicate balance, isn’t it? Between protecting human life and encouraging business investment? You don’t want thousands of people dying every year in preventable accidents, but on the other hand you don’t want to add a few cents to the price of a finished t-shirt.
It’s only polite to take a moment to recognize the dead Bangladeshis. And it’s terribly impolite to call them “slaves,” since slaves don’t earn $1.80-a-day. Also, unlike slaves these Bangladeshis had a choice! So, . . . → Read More: Mourning the Real Victims of the Bangladesh Garment Factory Disasters
Originally posted February 24th, 2013
By Michael Konik
The race is on! Now that everyone’s beloved Uncle Joe Ratzinger, also known as ”Benedict,” has stepped aside, leaving the Papacy for a comfortable dotage on Vatican property, where he shall remain blissfully shielded from criminal prosecution for the rest of his days, someone (male) will wield the sceptre and wear the mitre!
Who will win the title “Most Powerful Catholic on Earth”?
We can’t say. All we know is that it will be someone who thinks the best way to raise poor people out of poverty is to deny them birth control.
Unfortunately, we’re not eligible to vote. For that you have to be a Cardinal under the age of 80. We qualify on only one count. But we do have a rooting interest, a hometown interest you might say. Our man from Los Angeles is eligible and he should be the next Pope of the Catholic Empire.
Originally posted February 10th, 2013
By Michael Konik
The nerve of these people!
We are outraged. We are livid. This kind of barbarity cannot be permitted in civilized society.
Mahmoud Shaaban is an “ultraconservative” Islamic cleric in Egypt. “Hard-line,” “orthodox” – whatever. In the name of his great religion, he and his fellow cleric Wagdi Ghoneim have issued fatwas (edicts) calling for the deaths of Egypt’s opposition leaders. Shaaban said on a recently aired TV show that political opponents of the President should be punished. By death.
The reason? According to the Mullahs, Egypt’s opposition leaders, including former Atomic Energy Commission chief Mohamed ElBaradei, are seeking to “bring down” a publicly elected leader, the deeply religious Mohamed Morsi.
Ergo: these political opponents deserve to be eliminated with extreme prejudice.
Composing “kill lists” without judicial oversight — without any oversight — is an offense to human decency. Who do these Islamic clerics think they are, deciding . . . → Read More: Those Ridiculous Clerics!
Originally posted December 23rd, 2012
By Michael Konik
The world didn’t end. We went on. After the last of the murdered children was laid to rest, buried in the Connecticut dirt, it was time for life to get back to normal. To play our “first-person shooter” video games – “Assassin’s Creed” anyone? – and watch our TV programs – Criminal This and Criminal That – and go to the movies!
What’s playing? There’s Tom Cruise in his latest. My, he’s a handsome fellow. And what a big gun he carries!
And there’s Leonardo di Caprio and Jamie Foxx, also handsome fellows. How amusing it is to watch such handsome fellows shoot guns at each other! They’re directed by Quentin Tarantino, so you know all the violence is meant to serve a higher aesthetic.
How about Zero Dark Thirty? It’s based on true events, you know. About how our national heroes found and murdered . . . → Read More: Life as a First-Person Shooter
Originally posted October 28th, 2012
By Michael Konik
Allow us to describe a country for you: Prisoners detained without charges. Prisons operating outside the legal system. Limits on free speech. Limits on the Internet. Legitimately entitled voters prevented from casting ballots. Government sanctioned kidnappings. Witch hunts against political enemies. Torture.
China, right? Or is it Russia?
Actually, this description, reported in the Los Angeles Times, is of the notorious human rights abuser the United States of America.
It’s part of a 56-page report “On the Human Rights Situation in America,” about America’s heretofore unexamined recent history of human rights atrocities. The scathing report’s main problem is that it was authored by the Russian Foreign Ministry, whose credibility and human rights track record run concurrently (into the Moscow sewers). One should not take seriously the human rights abuse complaints of a government that imprisons teenaged girls for the crime of audacity, . . . → Read More: America and Human Rights Abuse
Originally posted October 14th, 2012
By Michael Konik
Representative Paul Broun (R-Ga.) is a member of the House Science, Space and Technology committee, which guides national science policy. His constituents, who elected and re-elected him, are untroubled apparently that Broun rejects science as a legitimate basis for decision-making. Broun has publicly called evolution – and all that we’ve learned about the process – “lies.”
Not “badly misunderstood.” Not “open to widely divergent interpretation.”
Lies.
Well, all right then! We take this opportunity to wonder out loud what that makes Mormonism in Broun’s estimation? Or his Party’s simultaneous denunciation of Federal entitlements and embrace of corporate welfare?
And speaking of Mitt Romney…is it unfair to call his entire campaign a lie? The animatronic Romney has morphed from moderate to extremist to moderate, a chrysalis in constant flux. The tune changes depending on what the house band prefers to play, but the animatronic Romney, . . . → Read More: Little Lies, Big Lies, and American Lies
Originally posted August 26th, 2012
By Michael Konik
The phrase “legitimate rape” is now a part of the American lexicon thanks to William Todd Akin, a U.S. Representative from Missouri. Todd, as he prefers to be called, has served in Congress since 2001, and this year he won the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate seat in a crowded field of similarly qualified candidates.
In a show of civic pride, folks in Missouri are discussing a change of the state motto from “Show me!” to “We’ll vote for anyone!”
Todd Akin is actually a lot smarter than most people think. He shrewdly calculated that by espousing his astonishing ignorance of biology, anatomy and physiology he could deflect attention from his comb-over.
It worked. Now everyone’s talking about the legitimate rape phenomenon and not Akin’s hair.
What no one is discussing is that Akin’s views on abortion, which mirrors the Republican Party’s . . . → Read More: Legitimate Rape, Legitimate Abortion
Apologies in advance if this gets all Orwellian right quickly. We try hard not to sound like a nut-job or Coast-to-Coast Radio conspiracy fetishist — is that redundant? — especially when examining the lengths some folks will go to control the lives of others, but this stuff is real, man.
Old George – or, Mr. Eric Blair, if you’re not into the whole brevity thing – coined the term “doublespeak” to describe a fictional phenomenon in his novel 1984. But we repeat: this stuff is real, man.
What’s in among the dictatorial set? The new Hot Trend in authoritarianism is controlling the future by not permitting dangerous thoughts about the future.
The urge to purge cuts across demographic categories. The crazy Muslims are just as wacko as the crazy Christians, and it’s not just benighted foreigners doing the oppressing, it’s benighted domestics, too.
Originally posted November 13th, 2011
By Michael Konik
The tragic hero, Sophocles taught us, is an otherwise great man (a warrior, a king) with a flaw that makes him perilously human, which is to say imperfect and prone to terrible mistakes that may or may not involve the family matriarch. Thanks to the magic of theatrical drama, we who witness the tragic hero’s downfall understand that he is us and we are him. The dread and disgust we experience at his failures provide a kind of cleansing (catharsis), and, the Greek playwrights hoped, a kind of wisdom.
“Learn from the mistakes of others” is the lesson. But it’s one that’s easier to talk about than master. Instead, we constantly repeat the mistakes of other — and then find new tragic heroes to feel bad about, whether or not they’re tragic or a hero.
Our latest protagonist is Joe Paterno, 84, the lifelong Penn State . . . → Read More: Sophocles in Happy Valley
Originally posted October 9th, 2011
By Michael Konik
The People are occupying Wall Street, or at least some of the space around it. Barack Obama and Department of Justice head Eric Holder are cracking down on state-sanctioned medical marijuana with more aggression and harm than their predeccessors, those renowned drug softies George W. Bush and John Ashcroft. And although it’s more than a year in the future, everyone is acutely aware that there’s an election, a big one, that could be the fulcrum for a second Civil War…of words, and possibly more if the wrong people get power-mad at the wrong time.
In step with global climate change, primaries seem to be happening earlier each year, like great warbler migrations and cherry blossom blooms. Alreadty it’s politicking season again, and as surely as benumbed voters will eventually learn that some (and possibly all) of the candidates running for every office in the land have committed some act of . . . → Read More: What Does the Code Phrase “Family Values” Really Mean?
Luckily for Barack Obama, news of improper shenanigans at the IRS stole attention from the week’s biggest story: that the President’s Justice Department had secretly seized call information from at least 20 phone lines belonging to Associated Press reporters, including personal cell phones and the main switchboard of the AP’s Washington bureau. While Obama thundered on about “inexcusable behavior” at the IRS, he said he would “make no apology” for his latest foray into Nixonian…
News comes from Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, that a disastrous fire swept through a garment factory there, killing eight people. A factory fire in November killed more than 100.
The garment industry in Bangladesh is euphemistically called “loosely regulated,” so, regrettably, these things (fires and so forth) tend…
Were you aware that bottled water is “bad for the environment,” “bad for public water sources,” and “bad for your wallet”?
Neither were we! It’s pretty funny to think of something so obviously good – so amazing, when you think about it – as inherently evil, or something. Bottled water…
The commonly understood reason why terrorists wish to kill and maim Americans is because they hate our freedoms. That’s what’s behind all the civilian violence: they hate our freedoms. You can go ahead and enumerate all the freedoms the terrorists hate, but it doesn’t really matter which ones –freedom to…
The whole world is worried about North Korea. We’re not. We think locally. The area around which we can walk or ride our bike is our concern. We’re civic-minded that way.
Hollywood Boulevard is nearby. We walk on its sidewalks almost every day, often to access the subway, which serves…
Author James Goodale was chief counsel for the New York Times during the Nixon era. His new book, “Fighting for the Press: The Inside Story of the Pentagon Papers and Other Battles,” outlines our government’s pernicious (and ongoing) threat to media freedom. Some prescient authors get all the luck: Every morning it seems we’re greeted to [...]
