The first three chapters of my latest book are on the Amazon webpage. (Click on the ‘Look inside’ link.) The publisher’s webpage is here and you can also buy it from any major retailer. (Note: This will be the new top post for a while. Later posts are below.)
You would think that by now people would have got used to the extent to which the Catholic church went to shield pedophile priests. But then comes along a story like this about a bombshell secret deposition that reveals the callous disregard the church had towards the victims of a priest while covering up his abuses, and even promoting him and allowing him to retire with full benefits.
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As if her story about shooting her pet puppy Cricket was not bad enough, South Dakota governor Kristi Noem is also under fire for a false story about meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. Jordan Klepper weighs in.
In China, a zoo has apologized for dyeing two dogs black and white in order to fool visitors into making them think they were pandas. It struck me that this may be a good strategy for dogs to avoid Killer Noem.
Visitors outraged as Chinese zoo dyes dogs to look like pandas #shorts https://t.co/aps6zrYLRX via @YouTube
— Mano Singham (@ManoSingham) May 9, 2024
It has become common to hear well-known comedians bemoaning that they are no longer allowed to do the kind of comedy they want to do because audiences have become too touchy and sensitive and object to what they like to think of as ‘edgy’ comedy. People like Ricky Gervais, Bill Maher, Louis CK, and Dave Chappelle are among the most prominent whiners.
Now Monty Python’s John Cleese has also joined in, framing his complaint in the form of saying that people no longer understand irony.
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Elections to local councils last week saw the Conservative party suffering huge losses. They won 515 seats, down by 397 form what they held before, while all the the parties gained seats. The Labour party was the biggest gainer, winning 1,158 seats, an increase of 232.
This does not augur well for the Conservatives in the next general elections which have to be held by January but are expected to be held a few months earlier, on a date of prime minister Rishi Sunak’s choosing. Public opinion polls have long indicated that they will be swept out of power after 14 continuous years of rule and these local elections cemented that view.
In general, a party that loses so badly might seek to replace its leader with someone new in the hope of turning its fortunes around. But it is not clear that this will happen to prime minister Rishi Sunal since there is not much time left before the general election and the party has recently had so much turmoil in its leadership that a fresh round of leadership fights is not something that they will relish.
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I know that there are sadistic sociopaths out there who delight in the suffering of other people and animals. But despite that awareness, I am still capable of being shocked by the depths of depravity exhibited by some, like those involved in this story.
A British woman has pleaded guilty to being part of a global monkey torture network.
Holly LeGresley, 37, from Kidderminster in Worcestershire, admitted uploading 22 images and 132 videos of monkeys being tortured to an online chat group.
She was charged after an investigation by the BBC into the torture of monkeys overseas. The investigation exposed a global network involving a private online group paying people in Indonesia to kill and torture baby monkeys on video.
The BBC said LeGresley used the username “The Immolator” and ran a poll for members of the group on which method of torture should be inflicted upon an infant monkey.
That people could even conceive of a scheme to torture and kill baby monkeys and then find people around to world willing to fund it just boggles my mind.
The mayor of New York City Eric Adams and the police department have used the claim of outside agitators to justify their use of force in clearing the protestors from Columbia University. Adams pointed to the presence of Nahlia Al-Arian as the “tipping point” in his decision to authorize the military-style raids on the campus.
Who is she? Jeremy Scahill writes about how this 63-year old retired fourth grade teacher and grandmother, whose family is from Gaza and who has lost about 200 of her family and friends in the recent Israeli onslaught there, ended up as the embodiment of ‘outside agitators’ that required such brutal force.
Al-Arian has five children, four of whom are journalists or filmmakers. On April 25, two of her daughters, Laila and Lama, both award-winning TV journalists, visited the encampment established by Columbia students to oppose the war in Gaza. Laila, an executive producer at Al Jazeera English with Emmys and a George Polk Award to her name, is a graduate of Columbia’s journalism school. Lama was the recipient of the prestigious 2021 Alfred I. duPont–Columbia Award for her reporting for Vice News on the 2020 explosion at the port of Beirut.
The two sisters traveled to Columbia as journalists to see the campus, and Nahla joined them.
Both the university and the state have an ugly history of racism that they would like to bury. But the response by one group of white male students of a fraternity to campus protests over Gaza serves to show that such attitudes are still there.
The university’s chancellor, Glenn Boyce, said that a conduct investigation had been launched into one student and more might follow in the wake of Thursday’s volatile scenes on campus. The clash occurred after a diverse group of about 30 students protesting against Israel’s war in Gaza were outnumbered by almost entirely white counter-protesters at a ratio of 10 to one, according to the Mississippi Free Press.
A video that has since gone viral showed one of the white male counter-protesters jumping up and down and making monkey noises in front of a Black woman with the pro-Palestinian protest group. Other white men then echoed the racist noises, and began chanting: “Lock her up!”
Some of the protesters were dressed in Stars and Stripes dungarees, others held aloft US and Donald Trump flags. They threw water bottles and cups at the pro-Palestinian protesters and yelled: “Who’s your daddy?”, “Take a shower”, and “Shave your legs”, among other offensive chants.
South Dakota governor Kristi Noem obviously has not heard of the maxim that when you are in a hole, you should stop digging.
When news emerged that in her book to be out shortly, she had shot dead her 14-month old puppy Cricket because it had ruined a pheasant hunt and then killed a neighbor’s chickens, there was a firestorm of outrage across the political spectrum. It appears that in her memoir, she also brought up Joe Biden’s dog that had bitten Secret service agents and suggested that he should have met the same fate.
Kristi Noem suggested Sunday that President Joe Biden’s dog Commander should meet a similar fate as her 14-month-old dog Cricket, whom the South Dakota governor reportedly described shooting and killing in her coming book.
“Joe Biden’s dog has attacked 24 Secret Service people. So how many people is enough people to be attacked and dangerously hurt before you make a decision on a dog and what to do with it?” Noem, who is considered a potential running mate for former President Donald Trump, said in an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Commander, a German shepherd, was relocated from the White House last year after a series of biting incidents.
According to CBS News, Noem’s memoir, set to be released this week, also includes a reference to Commander. In the book, Noem says that if she were to make it to the White House, she would first ensure that Biden’s dog was not on the premises. “Commander, say hello to Cricket,” she imagines herself saying, according to CBS News.
The widespread campus protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza has resulted in some claims that it is driven by antisemitism and that as a result some Jewish students claim to feeling unsafe, even if they have not themselves have not been attacked verbally and physically. Some politicians have used that to demand harsh crackdowns on the protests, even though many Jewish students and faculty have allied themselves with the protestors in their condemnation of Israel’s actions that have left a massive trail of death and destruction.
The Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST), a center at the University of Chicago, has issued a report based on survey of whatis actually going on. The report is titled Understanding Campus Fears After October 7 and How to Reduce Them: A non-partisan analysis of Antisemitism and Islamophobia among College Students and American Adults based on National Surveys Fielded December 14, 2023 to January 16, 2024. Its Executive Summary says:
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