NPR had a piece on bullying a couple of days ago, starting from a British study published this week in the American Journal of Psychiatry. The unsurprising finding? Bullying is not beneficial.
What doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger, right? Well, not when it comes to bullying.
Some may still consider bullying a harmless part of growing up, but mounting evidence suggests that the adverse effects of being bullied aren’t something kids can just shake off. [Read more…]
Also, Cliven Bundy? He doesn’t have some kind of ancestral claim to that land.
Bundy, a multi-millionaire farmer who hasn’t paid for grazing rights on public lands for more than 20 years, also stands to garner substantial support from some very wealthy enemies of President Obama. Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group backed by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch (which spent $122 million trying to defeat Obama and other Democrats in 2012), is already instigating a campaign against the Bureau of Land Management on Bundy’s behalf. It began a social media campaign, using the hashtag #BundyBattle, and is taking to the Internet to mock the time and money the bureau has wasted (some $1 million according to its poster) fighting the “little guy.” [Read more…]
What?
Media Matters on Cliven Bundy:
Bundy has been in conflict with the federal government for decades over his refusal to pay grazing fees for his cattle herd’s use of public lands. A recent attempt by the Bureau of Land Management to enforce court orders allowing the confiscation of Bundy’s cattle to settle unpaid fees and fines was suspended due tosafety concerns after armed militias rallied to Bundy’s cause and some militia members pointed guns at BLM law enforcement.
Despite threats of violence from Bundy and his supporters — and the fact his legal claim against paying grazing fees is incredibly weak — right-wing media have praised Bundy as a conservative champion standing against an outsized federal government. [Read more…]
There was a protest in Kolkata of what appears to be the protest Maryam was recently part of.
Kolkata: Several Muslim groups led a protest in Kolkata angered by photographs published in a Bengali Daily of women protesting in nude, with Arabic texts, including names of Allah and Prophet Muhammad. [Read more…]
Also a good blog post on the Mail on Sunday’s amusing prank, at Where’s the Benefit?
Beyond the horror that they did this to a charity, we need to be very aware of exactly what was done here, and it is a far murkier story than many will realise. The Trussell Trust has been flagging up the massive growth in people seeking their help for the last year or more, and this is not a narrative that the government is happy with, in particular it seems to be driving Iain Duncan Smith towards apoplexy, and this week saw the launch of a coordinated attack on the Trussell Trust in the pages of, surprise, surprise, The Daily Mail with the claim that “Food bank charity ‘is misleading the public’: Claim that 1m need food parcels ‘just self promotion’” and ‘DWP sources’ (presumably code for IDS’s Special Advisors) alleging the charity was engaged in “misleading and emotionally manipulative publicity-seeking“. There is something deeply ironic that IDS, who brandishes his Catholicism at every opportunity, should choose Easter Week to launch a coordinated attack on a charity dedicated to feeding those in need. [Read more…]
More sarcasm:
The manager of the scammed food bank comments:
Of course there’s also satire.
The good news is, the loathsome Mail on Sunday hit piece motivated a lot of people to give money to the charitable trust that funds many UK food banks. Yaboosucks Daily Mail!
The largest provider of food banks in Britain has seen a huge surge in donations after a newspaper article criticising the charity sparked a social media funding drive.
The Trussell Trust says it is “overwhelmed by the public’s generosity” as a new appeal has now topped £38,000, a rise of well over £35,000 since before the article was published. [Read more…]
About that Daily Mail on Sunday story that was all over the place yesterday –
Yes, what about it? Just, how horrible it is; how perfectly hateful it is.
What the hell is that even for? To demonstrate that someone who goes to considerable trouble to ask for help eventually gets help to the tune of a few bags of food items? Why is that supposed to be a bad thing?
Why do so many people make a point of being so hateful?
