One of the Saudi coaches flew to Brazil yesterday. Here are his World Cup tickets.
Watch John Oliver Explain Perfectly Why You Should Hate FIFA
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Category: ethics
64 words China is blocking
Here’s a good example why you don’t want YOUR government interfering with internet freedom.
JUNE 4
天安门: Tiananmen (simplified characters)
坦克: tank
liu四: phonetic for 6-4
六四: 6-4
学潮: campus upheaval
ⅥⅣ: Roman numerals for 6-4
IIXVIIIIX: Roman numbers for 1-9-8-9
Jun 4th
陆肆: an alternative way to write 6-4
天安門: Tiananmen (traditional characters)
五月三十五: May 35, aka June 4
瓶反鹿死: a homophone for ‘redress June 4th’
six四: 6-4
six four
TAM: abbreviation for Tiananmen
王维林: Wang Weilin, alleged “tank man”
春夏之交: Between spring and summer
八九: 89
河殇: River elegy
暴乱: rebellion
维多利亚公园: Victoria Park (site of vigil in Hong Kong)
six quatre: 6-4
Tank Man
VIIIIXVI: Roman numerals for 8-9-6
VIIV: 6-4
工自联: Capital/Beijing Autonomous Workers Federation
广场: Square (or plaza)
戒严: Martial law
缅怀: nostalgia—possible reference to Tiananmen Mothers
平反: Redress; vindicate
维园: Victoria Park
学生领袖: Student leaders
学运: Student movement
高自联: Beijing Autonomous University Students Union
liusi: Six four
自由花: Flower of Freedom
8964
历史的伤口: The wound in history
六si: Six four
六four: Six four
六肆: June 4
八平方: 8 squared (that is, 64)
天an门: Tiananmen
国殇: National war dead
侏儒之歌: Song used in Tiananmen commemorations
61后三天: three days after June 1
民主女神: Goddess of Democracy
8qb4: 8964
三月九十六号: March 96th (June 4)
毋忘阝坴镸聿: Do not forget June 4
2的6次方: 2 to the power of 6 (that is, 64)
小平下令镇压: Deng Xiaoping orders martial law
李鹏: Li Peng
lipeng: Li Peng
六4: 6-4
Blood is on the square
六亖: June 4 coded keyword
黄雀行动: Operation Yellowbird, the Hong Kong movement to help activists leave the mainland
six4: June 4
64事件: June 4 Incident
烛光: candle-lit (vigil)
陆四: June 4 coded keyword
89事件: 1989 event64 Tiananmen-Related Words China Is Blocking Online Today
By Jason Q. Ng
Citizen Koch – billionaires buy politicians
Rich guys that hand you money expect results. As do Mafia kingpins.
Citizen Koch is a 2013 documentary film directed by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal concerning the political influence of American plutocrats following the Citizens United ruling, and of the Koch brothers in particular. …
Click PLAY or watch it the Trailer on citizenkoch.com.
too HOT in Qatar for the World Cup?
I’m in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia right now volunteering at a Gymnastics course. In June the temperatures are mild. 🙂
They don’t really call it HOT here until about 45+.
President of FIFA Sepp Blatter:
“The Arabic world deserves a World Cup. They have 22 countries and have not had any opportunity to organize the tournament.”
Blatter also praised Qatar’s progress, “When I was first in Qatar there were 400,000 people here and now there are 1.6 million. In terms of infrastructure, when you are able to organise the Asian Games (in 2006) with more than 30 events for men and women, then that is not in question.”
On 2 December 2010, it was announced that Qatar will host the 2022 FIFA World Cup. …
For the scheduled World Cup dates:
… the average daytime high in most of Qatar exceeds 50 °C (120 °F), the average daily low temperatures not dropping below 30 °C (86 °F). …
Having been there, I personally feel that Qatar could pull off this event. Nobody would die of heat emergency.
But the corruption scandal may well force a move to another nation.
Ex-FIFA VP Mohamed Bin Hammam allegedly paid $5 million in bribes to secure votes for Qatar, largely to 30 African soccer officials.
RESET the NET
Two choices.
1. You can simply assume there is no privacy. No privacy online. None on phone.
Or …
2. you can try taking some small steps to discourage the NSA and other organizations from collecting data on you.
I’m switching from Google search to DuckDuckGo, for example. That might help. Apple is now offering DuckDuckGo as an alternative web search engine.
On the other hand, Google is responding to criticism, now offering end-to-end mail encryption, to try to make your email private.
Watch the RESET the NET VIDEO .
Edward Snowden is all in for this protest.
Solar FREAKIN’ Roadways!
I’ve got to live FREAKIN’ long enough to see this technology in the wild.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
right wing “echo chamber”
People ask me why I’m so agitated by the Tea Party and other right wing gasbags. And not nearly as much irked by soft-headed, left wing muddled thinkers.
What makes me mad is disinformation.
Disinformation is intentionally false or inaccurate information that is spread deliberately. It is an act of deception and false statements to convince someone of untruth. Disinformation should not be confused with misinformation, information that is unintentionally false.
The left wing often spreads misinformation. Poorly.
In the USA (but not in Canada) people make money in the right wing media echo chamber.
In media, an echo chamber is a situation in which information, ideas, or beliefs are amplified or reinforced by transmission and repetition inside an “enclosed” system, often drowning out different or competing views. …
One purveyor of information will make a claim, which many like-minded people then repeat, overhear, and repeat again (often in an exaggerated or otherwise distorted form) until most people assume that some extreme variation of the story is true. …
I love seeing Jon Stewart and Colbert call out the disinformers.
One of the worst is Glenn Beck, “with his violent rhetoric, his frequent and absurd fear-mongering, his nasty vitriol, his “jokes” about assassinating government officials, his baseless conspiracy theories, his race-baiting, his flat-out, bald-faced lies, his many hypocrisies … ”
Well said.
Beck left FOX in 2011. But is worth about $90 million today. The more he lies, the more money he makes.
Rush Limbaugh makes around $66 million / year.
The main motivation for those two, Bill O’Reilly and others, is money. I don’t trust a word they say.
FOX and the echo chamber endless repeat daily “talking points“. It’s incredibly boring to count the repetitions of the talking points of the day.
related – NY Times opinion piece 2013 – Suffocating Echo Chamber
separation of Church & State
Yep.
That’s a no brainer.
The separation of church and state is the distance in the relationship between organized religion and the nation state.
If you value freedom, including religious freedom, you should support the separation of Church & State.
The government should have no involvement in your religion as they should have no involvement in your sex life. So long as you abide by the secular laws of the land.
If your religious practice breaks the law, you go to jail. If you cannot live with that, you must leave the nation. Immigrate to a theocracy, perhaps.
Some American Christians are intolerant.
The kind constantly quoting the Pledge of Allegiance.
The Pledge of Allegiance of the United States is an expression of fealty to the federal flag and the republic of the United States of America, originally composed by Francis Bellamy in 1892 and formally adopted by Congress as the pledge in 1942.
The official name of The Pledge of Allegiance was adopted in 1945. The last change in language came on Flag Day 1954 when the words “under God” were added.
Here’s the original version (1892) of the start of the pledge:
“I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
I got on to this topic after seeing right wing Americans irritated and hateful over this incident from Jan 2013.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
A school Cultural club read the Pledge of Allegiance in different languages, one of them Arabic. In that one replacing “God” with “Allah”.
To me the Pledge is just words on paper. Not sacred. Even less a sacred cow than the U.S. Constitution.
Here’s the funniest commentary on the Pledge of Allegiance I’ve seen.
The Whitest Kids U’ Know – Pledge of Allegiance
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
NRA does not fight a gun law!
Historically the National Rifle Association prioritized education, training and regulation of firearms. They were the safety advocates.
By sometime in the 1990s their main story changed to fighting any kind of gun legislation, no matter how minor, no matter how sensible.
Rather than discuss pros and cons, NRA talking headz shouted “Second Amendment” — as if it was Holy Scripture.
They became shills for the corporations who sell weapons.
But here’s a bit of good news.
… a new law in Washington State that will require spouses under domestic abuse orders to surrender their guns to authorities. This is no small matter. Intimate partner homicides account for nearly half the women killed each year, and more than half of these women are murdered with guns, according to federal statistics.
The surprising twist in the enactment of the Washington law was that the N.R.A. traditionally has fought hard against such legislation as a violation of Second Amendment freedom — but not this time. The law was signed by Gov. Jay Inslee last month after unanimous approval by the legislature once the gun lobby backed off from its standard tactic of political retaliation. “This is an election year, and no candidate wants to be portrayed as letting domestic abusers keep their guns,” said the Democratic sponsor, Representative Roger Goodman. …
True gundamentalists should cancel their NRA membership. The NRA has sold out to … reason and common sense. 🙂
Here’s a pro-gun site called Enemy of the State™ railing against this legislation.
related – Michael Enright – Annie Get Your Gun: Michael’s Essay:
It is awfully hard to say something positive about the National Rifle Association, every mass murderer’s friend. …
Deadliest Animal in the World
Bill Gates:
What would you say is the most dangerous animal on Earth? Sharks? Snakes? Humans?
Of course the answer depends on how you define dangerous. Personally I’ve had a thing about sharks since the first time I saw Jaws. But if you’re judging by how many people are killed by an animal every year, then the answer isn’t any of the above. It’s mosquitoes. …
Gates Notes – Mosquito Week
(via Bill Gates on Facebook)
Rick McCharles 