Rosetta Stone a New Symbol of British Colonialism

The debate over who owns ancient artifacts has been an increasing challenge to museums, and the spotlight has fallen on the most visited piece in the British Museum: The Rosetta stone.

The inscriptions on the dark grey granite slab became the seminal breakthrough in deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics after it was taken from Egypt by forces of the British empire in 1801.  Now, as Britain's largest museum marks the 200-year anniversary of the deciphering of hieroglyphics, thousands of Egyptians are demanding the stone’s return.

"The British Museum’s holding of the stone is a symbol of Western cultural violence against Egypt," said Monica Hanna, dean at the Arab Academy for Science, Technology & Maritime Transport, and organizer of one of two petitions calling for the stone's return.

The acquisition of the Rosetta Stone was tied up in the imperial battles between Britain and France. After Napoleon Bonaparte’s military occupation of Egypt, French scientists uncovered the stone in 1799 in the northern town of Rashid, known by the French as Rosetta. When British forces defeated the French in Egypt, the stone and over a dozen other antiquities were handed over to the British under the terms of an 1801 surrender deal between the generals of the two sides.   It has remained in the British Museum since.

Hanna’s petition, with 4,200 signatures, says the stone was seized illegally and constitutes a "spoil of war." The claim is echoed in a near identical petition by Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s former minister for antiquities affairs, which has more than 100,000 signatures. Hawass argues that Egypt had no say in the 1801 agreement.

The contention over the original stone copy stems from its unrivaled significance to Egyptology. Carved in the 2nd century B.C., the slab contains three translations of a decree relating to a settlement between the then-ruling Ptolemies and a sect of Egyptian priests. The first inscription is in classic hieroglyphics, the next is in a simplified hieroglyphic script known as Demotic, and the third is in Ancient Greek.  Through knowledge of the latter, academics were able to decipher the hieroglyphic symbols, with French Egyptologist Jean-Francois Champollion eventually cracking the language in 1822.  The stone is one of more than 100,000 Egyptian and Sudanese relics housed in the British Museum. A large percentage were obtained during Britain’s colonial rule over the region from 1883 to 1953.

It has grown increasingly common for museums and collectors to return artifacts to their country of origin, with new instances reported nearly monthly. Often, it’s the result of a court ruling, while some cases are voluntary, symbolizing an act of atonement for historical wrongs.  New York’s Metropolitan Museum returned 16 antiquities to Egypt in September after a U.S. investigation concluded they had been illegally trafficked. On Monday, London’s Horniman Museum signed over 72 objects, including 12 Benin Bronzes, to Nigeria following a request from its government.

The British Museum has acknowledged that several repatriation requests have been made to it from various countries for artifacts, but there is no confirmation that any items from their collection have ever been rightfully repatriated.  For Nigel Hetherington, an archaeologist and CEO of the online academic forum Past Preserves, the museum’s lack of transparency makes clear its motives. ‘‘It’s about money, maintaining relevance and a fear that in returning certain items people will stop coming,’’ he said.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi has since invested heavily in its antiquities. Egypt has successfully reclaimed thousands of internationally smuggled artifacts and plans to open a newly built, state-of-the-art museum where tens of thousands of objects can be housed.  For Hanna, Egyptians’ right to access their own history should remain the priority. "How many Egyptians can travel to London or New York?" she said.

Both Hawass and Hanna said they are not pinning hopes on the government to secure its return. ‘‘The Rosetta stone is the icon of Egyptian identity,’’ said Hawass. ‘‘I will use the media and the intellectuals to tell the (British) museum they have no right.’’

 

Turkish Mine Explosion Leads to Controversy for Erdogan

Turkey's president is facing criticism for linking the deaths of 41 miners in an explosion to "destiny", saying such accidents "will always be". Recep Tayyip Erdogan's comments triggered protests in Istanbul, with some describing the accident in northern Turkey as "a massacre".

Relatives of the dead claim they reported being able to smell gas for more than a week.  The blast at the facility on the Black Sea also left 28 injured.  Erdogan made the remarks during a visit to the site in Bartin province.  "We are people who believe in the plan of destiny," he told reporters, as he was surrounded by rescue workers. Such accidents "will always be, we need to know that too", he added.  However, he added that he didn't want to see "deficiencies or unnecessary risks", according to Euronews.

But the comment angered many. Opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu demanded to know "in which century we are living?".   "Why [do] the mine accidents happen only in Turkey?" he said.   Emin Koramaz, who leads the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects, dismissed the idea the blast could be described as an accident, alleging on Twitter that the miners had been sent "hundreds of metres underground without taking the necessary precautions, without inspection and without creating safe conditions".

The official cause of the blast is not yet known. Authorities said Turkish prosecutors launched an investigation into the cause of the explosion, with preliminary findings suggesting it was caused by firedamp, a term referring to methane forming an explosive mixture in coal mines.   Angry families suspect gas may have played a role. The father of a man in his early 20s who died in the explosion told Pakistan's Associated Press that his son had also reported smelling gas for 10 days.

In the village of Makaraci, which lost four men, a tearful woman told Mr Erdogan at her brother's funeral: "President, my brother knew, he said there was a gas leak 10, 15 days ago. He said 'they will explode us soon'. How come it's negligence? He said 'they will explode us here'... He knew it."

According to news agency AFP, after a moment of silence, Mr Erdogan replied: "Sorry for your loss, may Allah give patience."

Around 110 people were in the mine at the time of Friday's blast, almost half of them at more than 300m (984ft) deep. Some 58 people working in the mine when the blast went off were rescued or got out by themselves.

 

New Spin on Rope-a-Dope

A 79-year-old Japanese man managed to get a 90-inch jump-rope stuck in his bladder after shoving the rope up into his penis.

Doctors wrote in a September study published in Urology Case Reports that the unidentified man inserted the rope through his urethra-- but the handle-less rope became tangled and stuck in the man’s bladder. The man was forced to seek medical help, complaining that he was suffering from a condition called dysuria — difficulty with urination — only for doctors to find the rope.

Medics unraveled the medical mystery by investigating his bladder where they found “a large object accompanied by acoustic shadows.”   It was then the man admitted what had happened — although he did not explain why he did it — and was transferred to a hospital. An X-ray then revealed this object was “a wire-like coiled foreign body.”

According to doctors, there was no way to remove the rope the way it went in, so they had to perform surgery on the patient. “Transurethral extraction was difficult considering the length of the rope and its entanglement in the bladder,” said Professor Toshiki Kijima, co-author of the study.  “Traditionally, grasping forceps and retrieval baskets are used to remove foreign bodies,” continued Kijima. “However, wires inserted into the bladder usually curl up as the bladder contracts; therefore, special consideration is required for wire-like foreign bodies.”

The medical team had to retrieve the rope through an incision made in the man’s abdomen to remove the rope in full.  The man recovered from the surgery and suffered no long-term injury.

This patient is not the first to suffer penis-related problems. Also in September, a teen somehow managed to get a USB cable stuck in his penis which was, thankfully, also able to be extracted via surgery.

 

Critics of Anti-Cheating Technology Being Silenced by Lawsuits

 n 2020, a Canadian university employee named Ian Linkletter became increasingly alarmed by a new kind of technology that was exploding in use with the pandemic. It was meant to detect cheating by college and high-school students taking tests at home, and claimed to work by watching students’ movements and analyzing sounds around them through their webcams and microphones to automatically flag suspicious behavior.

So Linkletter accessed a section of the website of one of the anti-cheating companies, named Proctorio, intended only for instructors and administrators. He shared what he found on social media.  Now Linkletter, who became a prominent critic of the technology, has been sued by the company. But he is not the only one.  Linkletter’s continuing case illustrates how vicious the fight over so called e-proctoring has become. At the height of the pandemic, it was estimated to be in use in nearly 63% of US and Canadian colleges and universities, and is thought still to be available in many of those, despite students’ return to classrooms.

And while there are a number of companies which offer versions of the contentious software, Arizona-based Proctorio, which has a partnership with education giant McGraw Hill, is among the largest providers. It has been carving a name for itself by taking on its critics both in and out of court.  The company, founded in 2013 by its current CEO, Mike Olsen, uses face and gaze detection among other tools to surveil test takers and ensure they are consistently interacting with an exam. Algorithms based on artificial intelligence flag abnormal behavior to university administrators for review.  However, how effective e-proctoring technology is at detecting cheating, or even deterring it, is the subject of debate. And a notable instance when the software was unable to recognize a Black student’s face has brought unflattering attention.

Breaking News from the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade

Jimmy Fallon & Dolly Parton - It's Almost Too Early for Christmas

Keeping it Real on Thanksgiving

More Misogyny in the Mothership of Mohammed

An American woman has been detained in Saudi Arabia after she posted on Twitter to say she’d been trapped there since 2019. California native Carly Morris, 34, told relatives three years ago that she was taking her 8-year-old daughter to Saudi Arabia for a short stay so that her child could meet her paternal grandfather. Once there, Morris became stuck in a years-long battle to take her child back out of the kingdom against the wishes of her Saudi ex-husband. Draconian male guardianship laws in the country have hampered her efforts to leave. On Tuesday, the State Department confirmed Morris’ detention. Her arrest came after she was summoned to a public prosecutor’s office Sunday over an allegation of “destabilizing public order.” The summons followed a statement posted by Morris on Twitter warning other women and children to stay away from Saudi Arabia, saying she and her daughter had been kept “against our will” in a hotel in “extreme and direct circumstances” since 2019.

 

Native American Gothic

Signs of Faltering Ticket Sales at the Qatar World Cup

England faced the prospect of playing their first match of the World Cup in a stadium with empty seats, with tickets still available as if Monday for their fixture against Iran.  England was scheduled to play Iran in Doha’s Khalifa International Stadium, which has a capacity of 40,000 according to Fifa’s official guide. That makes Khalifa the smallest stadium for an England opening World Cup game since 1990, when they played Ireland in a sold-out Stadio Sant’Elia in Cagliari. Even so, it seems likely that tickets will remain unsold. 

Estimates suggest that between 3,000 and 4,000 England supporters are expected to travel to Qatar during the group stages, although they have been thin on the ground around central Doha. Several England supporters, three wearing Newcastle United shirts, came to England’s training base on Friday morning in the hope of glimpsing the players, but were left disappointed.

As of 48 hours before the opening game of the tournament between Qatar and Ecuador at the Al Bayt Stadium north of Doha, there were tickets available for 14 of the group matches on the portal for non-Qatari customers. That included three of the home nations’ matches: England vs Iran, Wales vs USA and Wales vs Iran.  Tickets are available via three methods. The first is FIFA's official sales portal, which lists seven games as having available tickets at the Category 1 price of 800 rials ($220).  Fifa also offers a resale platform, where supporters with unwanted tickets can sell them at face value. On that resale platform, tickets are sold quickly and so only a snapshot is possible. Last Friday evening, it was possible to buy tickets for 14 matches on the resale platform at the 800 rial price-- they included Croatia vs Canada, Switzerland vs Cameroon and Ecuador vs Senegal.  Finally, there is an official match ticketing center at the Doha Exhibition and Convention Center in West Bay, among Doha’s cluster of skyscrapers. Over the weekend, the ticketing center displayed a sign advertising tickets for three games, including England vs Iran-- again, these were priced at 800 rials.

Ashley Brown, the Football Supporters’ Association head of supporter engagement, told the BBC last month that he was certain that England supporters were not going to be traveling in similar numbers to previous World Cups due to well-documented factors: cost, timing and concerns about the tournament as a whole.

 

The World Cup of Disgrace

It is a disgrace that in this day and age, that the World Cup is hosted by a country that has has lured millions of people from the poorest countries on earth - often under false pretenses - and then forced them into what many call “modern slavery”.  A huge underclass of people work in an autocratic surveillance state, amid an interconnected network of issues that make it almost impossible to escape.   Qatar hosting one of the world's premier sporting events is the most elementary example of “sports-washing”.

"Nations with deep pockets and poor human rights records are undoubtedly aware of how sport has the potential to reshape their international reputation,” says Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International’s UK chief executive. “This is the modern playbook. The calculation appears to be that a new investment in sport may bring some temporary criticism, but that this will be outweighed in the longer term by the substantial rebranding benefits.”

The reason that Qatar shocked the world in 2010 was because they didn’t seem to have support or even infrastructure, given Fifa’s own report described their bid as “high risk”. They did have a lot of money, though. Whistleblower Phaeda Almajid has since claimed she was in the rooms as members of Fifa’s executive committee were offered bribes of $1.5m. It has similarly been reported by the Sunday Times that Mohamed bin Hammam, the driver of Qatar’s bid, had used secret slush funds to make payments to senior officials totaling £3.8m. Bin Hammam was banned for life from all Fifa related activities by the ethics committee, although this was later overturned due to lack of evidence, but then reinstated over conflicts of interest.  In April 2020, the United States Department of Justice alleged that three FIFA executives received payments to support Qatar. The FBI’s William F Sweeneystated how “the defendants and their co-conspirators corrupted the governance and business of international soccer with bribes and kickbacks, and engaged in criminal fraudulent schemes”.

Since then, the one issue that has most dominated coverage of Qatar is the report of 6,500 migrant worker deaths first set by The Guardian. Hundreds of thousands of workers have been for years forced to work in searing summer months, which FairSquare describes as a “demonstrable risk” to workers’ lives due to “clear evidence linking heat to worker deaths”, especially when allied to strenuous work.  A report Qatar itself commissioned found workers are “potentially performing their job under significant occupational heat stress” for a third of the year. One in three workers were found to have become hyperthermic at some point.   The country’s list of “occupational diseases” does not include deaths resulting from heat stress.  Instead, Amnesty’s study claims that approximately 70 per cent of migrant worker deaths are reported with terms such as “natural causes” or “cardiac arrest”.  The International Labour Organization [ILO] has meanwhile noted there is likely under-reporting of migrant deaths, because companies want to avoid reputation damage or paying compensation.

Qatar is supposed to be welcoming the world, but a lot of the world just doesn’t feel welcome.  “We’re not traveling to this World Cup,” says Di Cunningham of the U.K.'s Three Lions Pride organization. “That’s in spite of the fact we traveled to Russia. There is a toxic environment for LGBTQ and other minority groups.”  Article 296 of Qatar’s penal code specifies that same-sex relations between men is an offence, with a punishment of up to three years in prison. The week before the World Cup saw the latest in a series of alarming statements, with former Qatari international Khalid Salman describing homosexuality as “damage in the mind”. It feeds into a culture that has seen Human Rights Watch report that the Qatar Preventive Security Department forces have arbitrarily arrested LGBTQ people and subjected them to ill-treatment, with six cases of severe and repeated beatings and five cases of sexual harassment in police custody between 2019 and 2022. 

Transgender women had their phones illegally searched, and then had to attend conversion therapy sessions as a requirement of their release.  One transgender woman reported that an officer hit and kicked here while stating “you gays are immoral, so we will be the same to you”.  Another described the Preventive Security as “a mafia” who beat her every day and shaved her hair, while making her take off her shirt to take pictures of her breasts. Thomas Beattie, a former professional footballer who came out in 2020, said, “Awarding the privilege of hosting a global foreign event to nations which embody this mindset is really damaging to my community, especially because you kind of send this message that we’re a secondary thought and we don’t really matter,” he says. “I don’t think I would feel any safer.”

One of many poignant scenes in a documentary called The Workers Cup is when Kenneth, from Ghana, talks of when he was first lured to Qatar. A recruitment agent made the 21-year-old think he would be transferred from a construction job to a professional football club. That didn’t happen.  It should be acknowledged that most workers come of their own accord, since a meager salary in Doha can be transformative in Nepal or Bangladesh. That’s also where the exploitation starts.   There’s a haunting line from another migrant in the documentary, Padam from Nepal.  “When I discovered the reality it was too late.”

That reality, according to Isobel Archer of the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC), involves illegal recruitment fees amounting to “hundreds, or even thousands of dollars and is one of the worst drivers of abuse in the region”. It has been estimated that Bangladeshi men have paid over $1 billion in fees between 2011 and 2020. 

Since most workers can’t afford this, and need to arrange loans or wage levies, it instantly puts them in debt and, essentially, a financial trap. Their general salary is between $220-350 a month, meaning they can never make enough to free the debt and “leaving them vulnerable to a range of exploitative practices,” according to Michael Posner, director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.  “Since 2016, we have recorded 89 cases of migrant workers paying recruitment fees in Qatar,” Archer adds. “Undoubtedly there are workers looking after football fans and teams this month who toil under the burden of debt.”

In a recent Amnesty report on security workers, many interviewers said they couldn’t remember their last day off, with over 85 per cent saying those days were usually up to 12 hours long. Yet, when one interviewee claimed he tried to take a sick day, he was told he would be docked wages and felt in fear of deportation.  “You are like a programmed computer; you just get used to it. You feel it is normal, but it’s not really normal.  “Denying employees their right to rest through the threat of financial penalty, or compelling them to work when ill, can amount to forced labor under the ILO Convention on Forced Labor. This is one of many descriptions around Qatar that just shouldn’t be used in 2022, let alone for a football tournament.

Professor Tendayi Achiume, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, described “indentured or coercive labor conditions” that recall “the historical reliance on enslaved and coerced labor in the region”. The workers themselves are more blunt. One in The Workers Cup says they “are staying in Qatar against their will”. “Modern slavery”, another interjects. 

There are around two million people in this situation right now, comprising 95 per cent of the Qatari workforce, and mostly coming from East Africa, South and Southeast Asia.  The workers arrive in exorbitant debt and have to hand over their passports, despite laws prohibiting this. All of that ensures companies have total control of their lives, as they travel to what Deshmukh describes as “squalid, overcrowded accommodation with no air-conditioning and exposed to overflowing sewage or uncovered septic tanks”. The workers aren’t allowed leave without permission, which is rare.  To only add to the everyday misery, there are huge fines for mistakes, forced work in searing heat without shelter and many not receiving overtime or not getting paid altogether.  It is then almost impossible to change jobs. 

“The culture and structure of the Qatar state effectively enables the abuse of migrant workers, regardless of legal challenges,” Deshmukh says. “Workers cannot organize to protect their own rights by forming or joining trade unions. They still risk being arrested or deported if their employers cancel their visas, refuse to renew their residence permit or report them as having ‘absconded’. They are living and working in a country where dissent in any form is not tolerated.”

Pay discrimination on the basis of nationality, race and language is reported by more than a third of interviewees in one Amnesty report.  “You may find a Kenyan is earning 1,300 [riyals], but the same security from the Philippines gets 1,500. Tunisians, 1,700,” one security guard says. Pay is according to nationality.”  It goes even deeper. The security guards are always black Africans. Women from the Philippines are preferred as maids. Nepalis, Bangladeshis and Indians form the majority of the workforce in hazardous jobs.  Academics such as John Chalcraft talk of how this is not just intentional, but another insidious form of control. Migrant workers used to come from other Middle Eastern countries, such as Egypt, only for the Gulf elites to find that made it easier for them to band together and discuss problems. Splitting groups by nationalities prevents this.

David Beckham’s face is all over Doha right now, on billboards that look like they’re really maximizing that reported £150m deal. The England star isn’t doing many promotion interviews, though, and it’s hard not to think an obvious question would be whether he feels such money should also go to migrant workers.  That points to one of the most obnoxiously offensive elements of this World Cup. Qatar has more than enough money to equitably reform their labor system, and has had 12 years to start restructuring. The state has instead decided to spend fortunes on public relations, pushing back against criticisms rather than addressing them. This is as base sports-washing as you can get.

Tribute to a Great Leader

Nancy Pelosi announced this week that she’s stepping down from Democratic leadership, marking an end to the most consequential speakership of our time. Under her leadership, the U.S. House twice passed historic bills creating pathways to legalization for millions of undocumented immigrants: in 2019 and again in 2021. The Dream and Promise Act, which addresses young undocumented immigrants and temporary status holders, and the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which addresses farmworkers, were finally passed after years of immigration obstructionism by Republicans John Boehner and then Paul Ryan.

It was during the latter’s tenure as speaker that Pelosi broke a House filibuster record, in February 2018 speaking for more than eight hours in defense of young immigrants. Reports said she did not sit or take any bathroom breaks during that time, and made the speech while in heels. It’s a moment worth revisiting as her historic role in Democratic leadership comes to an official end.

“Ms. Pelosi read heart-rending testimonies from Dreamers who had written their representatives about their lives,” The New York Times reported at the time. “There was Andrea Seabra, who is serving in the Air Force, and whose father was a member of the Peruvian Air Force. There was Carlos Gonzalez, who once worked as an aide to former Representative Michael M. Honda, Democrat of California. And there was Al Okere, whose father was killed by the Nigerian police after articles he wrote criticizing the Nigerian government appeared in a newspaper.”

Pelosi, who was House minority leader at the time, had been among those unsuccessfully pushing for permanent relief to be included as part of a budget deal. The insurrectionist administration had the prior September rescinded the successful and popular Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, announcing that renewals would stop within six months. With Ryan and then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refusing to hold standalone votes on a clean DREAM Act, its passage as part of a budget deal appeared to be the only possible vehicle for passage. 

In her eight-hour-plus speech, Pelosi said that every day that passes without legislative relief is another day “the American Dream slips further out of reach. As members of Congress, we have a moral responsibility to act now to protect Dreamers who are the pride of our nation and our American in every [way] but on paper.”

Among the stories shared by Pelosi was that of Laura Alvarado, who was brought to the U.S. by her family when she was just 8 years old. Ineligible for financial aid due to her immigration status, Alvarado worked two jobs to pay for college, graduating with honors in 2006. “Laura wanted to become a lawyer but was unable to pursue this dream, Mr. Speaker, because she was undocumented,” Pelosi said. “Six years, long years later in 2012, President Obama established DACA and Laura’s life changed.” Hundreds of thousands of young immigrants have been able to work legally and live freer from the threat of deportation under the policy, which faces extinction due to Republican lawsuits.  Pelosi said Laura and many other young undocumented immigrants “have so much to contribute to our country. Will American be a stronger country if we deport Laura?”

Pelosi’s first big challenge as Democratic House leader was when George W. Bush introduced a plan to privatize Social Security and turn it over to Wall Street in 2005.  Pelosi was asked when she would come up with a Democratic plan. She defiantly responded: “Never. Is never good enough for you?”  The defeat of the GOP’s Social Security privatization scheme marked a turning point in Bush’s presidency. Due to the Democratic victory on this critical issue, Bush’s approval ratings dropped below 50% for the first time during his presidency and he never recovered. The Democrats rode that momentum to win a huge victory in the 2006 mid-term elections in which they regained control of the House and the Senate.

After the economy collapsed in 2008, Pelosi worked with Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to save the banking system from a meltdown by helping pass the controversial TARP bill.  After the big Democratic victory in 2008, Pelosi helped engineer the greatest Democratic legislative victories since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society in 1965–66. When the Democrats had the majority in both Houses in 2009–10, Pelosi supplied the necessary Democratic votes to pass the 2009 Recovery Act, the Affordable Care Act, cap and trade legislation and Wall Street reform.

In the 2017–2018 cycle, Pelosi recruited a diverse set of candidates that consisted of both progressives and moderates. Those Democrats went on to win 40 seats in the House. It was the best showing in the mid-terms for the Democrats since 1974.  That 2018 triumph laid the foundation for Pelosi’s most significant accomplishments as Speaker in 2021–2022. While presiding over a narrow Democratic majority, Pelosi helped President Joe Biden pass the most ambitious and far reaching legislative agenda since Lyndon Johnson. Under her leadership, the House passed the American Rescue Act, a bi-partisan infrastructure bill, the first gun reform bill since 1994, a veteran’s health bill, landmark climate change legislation and prescription drug pricing reform.

At the end of the day, Nancy Pelosi will be seen as towering figure in American history. She will go down in history as the greatest Speaker of the House in U.S. history, topping Henry Clay and Sam Rayburn.

 

 

Pink - Never Gonna Not Dance Again

Looks Like a Disastrous Start to World Cup

People are starting to show up for the World Cup in Qatar, and it's already looking pretty grim.  First of all, the fan accommodations don't seem great. For $200 per night you get to stay in a shipping container. There were also tent villages that looked incredibly bare-bones in a video that went viral this week. 

 Pretty much everyone online made the same connection to Fyre Fest, the doomed music festival that made national headlines in 2017.  And, to be fair, the jokes do seem to have some validity to them. The pop-up villages, one of which is located by the main airport, were created because Qatar's hotels couldn't handle the number of fans, athletes, and other World Cup travelers. 

If you want alcohol — which, let's be real, this is the World Cup and lots of people do — then you'll probably have to do a bit of searching. And you'll have to pay up. Public alcohol consumption is banned in Qatar, with exceptions made for the World Cup. But it is super expensive and difficult to find because the government wanted it hidden away. In fact, just a few days before the tournament was set to start, high ranking Qatari officials reportedly demanded beer tents from major sponsor Budweiser be moved out of sight. If you do find a beer, it'll reportedly run you $14.

And last, but certainly not least, things have already grown contentious between Qatar and the foreign press. During a live news hit for TV2, Danish reporter Rasmus Tantholdt was interrupted by officials who attempted to stop the filming by blocking the camera lens and then threatening to smash the camera, despite Tantholdt showing his credentials as a member of the media.

“You invited the whole world to come here. Why can’t we film? It’s a public place,” Tantholdt told the security personnel. “You can break the camera. You want to break it? You are threatening us by smashing the camera?”  After video of the altercation went viral, Qatari officials confirmed that security had erred.

Musk and His Ego Continue Purge of Twitter Workforce

Following the mass layoffs that recently halved its workforce, a number of Twitter employees were fired after Elon Musk requested their tweets and work conversations to be scrutinized to detect criticism of him.  Musk unceremoniously fired one employee who contradicted him on the platform. As Twitter’s workforce has been slashed, its new owner is making personnel changes based on criticism directed at him, the New York Times reported.

According to the report, Musk asked confidantes to sift through the Twitter accounts and internal company messages of his employees to weed out those who do not share his vision for the company. Violators were terminated in the middle of the night:

Musk’s team was asked to comb through messages in Twitter’s internal chat platform and make a list of employees who were insubordinate, people briefed on the plan said. They also sorted through employees’ tweets, looking for criticism. Those deemed rule breakers received emails around 1:30 a.m. Pacific time on Tuesday, notifying them that they were fired, according to emails viewed by the Times.

Some were reportedly fired simply for publicly discussing the termination of the workers Musk let go. Musk officially took over at Twitter on Oct. 28, and the platform has seen some significant changes in the weeks since. Thousands of employees and contractors have been let go – most with little to no warning.  Last week, the platform was inundated with parody accounts for people, corporations, and historical figures after users took advantage of a Twitter Blue feature that would verify literally anyone willing to pay $7.99.

And now Twitter might lose even more employees over Musk instituted a bizarre new "loyalty oath."   According to The Washington Post, Elon Musk gave remaining staff members an ultimatum and asked them to commit to an "extremely hardcore" Twitter going forward. "If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below," he reportedly wrote in an email that links to an online form.

So what does an "extremely hardcore" Twitter mean? The report didn't quite delve into the specifics of Musk's expectations, but the executive apparently said that it means "working long hours at high intensity." He added: "Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade." It's not quite clear if the move is legal for workers in countries that have rigorous labor laws. Regardless, the email said that those who don't sign the form by 5PM Eastern on Thursday, November 17th, would be let go and would receive three months of severance pay.

 

Dua Lipa Forced to Deny She's Performing at the World Cup

Dua Lipa has denied reports she will perform at the FIFA World Cup opening ceremony in Qatar.  The singer said she will "look forward to visiting Qatar when it has fulfilled all the human rights pledges it made" when it became host. Other acts including Black-Eyed Peas, J. Balvin  and BTS' Junk Kook are set to perform.

British singer Robbie Williams faced backlash from fans after the news broke that he would perform during the tournament in Doha.  Willliams' social media pages were flooded with negative feedback. One fan penned: "Sorry but the Qatar World Cup is wrong on many levels and I am disappointed that Robbie feels it is acceptable to so blatantly support it."  Another said: "I love him but this is disappointing."  A third wrote: "Hope that's not true" with another adding: "That's sad, really sad."

Qatar has been criticized for its stance on same-sex relationships, its human rights record and its treatment of migrant workers. Last year, the Guardian reported that 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka had died in Qatar since it won its World Cup bid.

Lipa posted an Instagram story on Sunday, which read: "There is currently a lot of speculation that I will be performing at the opening ceremony of the World Cup in Qatar.  I will not be performing and nor have I ever been involved in any negotiation to perform.  I will be cheering England on from afar... One love, Dua."

Lipa is not the first major name to make a point of not playing in Qatar. Rod Stewart recently revealed he turned down the opportunity.  I was actually offered a lot of money, over $1m, to play there 15 months ago. I turned it down. It's not right to go," he told the Sunday Times.

 

Former FIFA Chief is Boycotting the Qatar World Cup

Sepp Blatter, the former president of FIFA when Qatar was awarded the 2022 World Cup hosting rights in 2010, told Swiss newspaper Tages Anzeiger “Qatar is a mistake,” adding that “the choice was bad.”

The Qatar decision has been marred by controversy, including allegations of corruption and human rights violations, since it was first announced.  “It is too small of a country. Football and the World Cup are too big for it,” Blatter said of Qatar, the first country in the Middle East to host the tournament.  

Qatar's population stands at roughly 2.9 million, including an influx of around 370,000 new residents who moved to the Gulf nation in past year in the lead-up to the World Cup. Qatar did not have the infrastructure in place to run the event and recruited migrant workers from foreign countries to build the necessary stadiums, hotels and roadways.

The employment of migrant workers is at the center of human rights concerns around the World Cup. Qatar has faced criticism for the working and living conditions provided to migrant workers, which Amnesty International has likened to forced labor. The conditions have been blamed for workers' injuries and deaths, with the death toll a subject of dispute.

Blatter said that FIFA amended the criteria it used to select host countries in light of concerns over the working conditions at tournament-related construction sites in Qatar.  “Since then, social considerations and human rights are taken into account,” he said.  Blatter said he will be watching the tournament, which kicks off in less than two weeks, from his home in Zurich. 

 

The World Cup of Death

 Next Sunday, Qatar will be hosting the World Cup-- an event that the much-reviled Arab country hopes will buy it respectability on the global stage.  In reality, the event was built with the blood of impoverished and mistreated workers.  More than 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have died in Qatar since it won the right to host the World Cup 10 years ago, the Guardian revealed last year.

The findings, compiled from government sources, mean an average of 12 migrant workers from these five south Asian nations have died each week since the day the World Cup was awarded to Doha over ten years ago. Data from India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka revealed there were 5,927 deaths of migrant workers in the period 2011–2020. Separately, data from Pakistan’s embassy in Qatar reported a further 824 deaths of Pakistani workers, between 2010 and 2020.

Since being awarded the World Cup, Qatar has embarked on an unprecedented building program, largely in preparation for the football tournament. In addition to seven new stadiums, dozens of major projects have been completed or are under way, including a new airport, roads, public transport systems, hotels and a new city, which will host the final match.

While death records are not categorized by occupation or place of work, it is likely many workers who have died were employed on these World Cup infrastructure projects, says Nick McGeehan, a director at FairSquare Projects, an advocacy group specializing in labor rights in the Gulf. “A very significant proportion of the migrant workers who have died since 2011 were only in the country because Qatar won the right to host the World Cup,” he said.

There have been 37 deaths among workers directly linked to construction of World Cup stadiums, of which 34 are classified as “non-work related” by the event’s organizing committee. Experts have questioned the use of the term because in some cases it has been used to describe deaths which have occurred on the job, including a number of workers who have collapsed and died on stadium construction sites. The findings expose Qatar’s failure to protect its 2 million-strong migrant workforce, or even investigate the causes of the apparently high rate of death among the largely young workers.

Behind the statistics lie countless stories of devastated families who have been left without their main breadwinner, struggling to gain compensation and confused about the circumstances of their loved one’s death.

Ghal Singh Rai from Nepal paid nearly £1,000 in recruitment fees for his job as a cleaner in a camp for workers building the Education City World Cup stadium. Within a week of arriving, he killed himself.

Another worker, Mohammad Shahid Miah, from Bangladesh, was electrocuted in his worker accommodation after water came into contact with exposed electricity cables.

In India, the family of Madhu Bollapally have never understood how the healthy 43-year old died of “natural causes” while working in Qatar. His body was found lying on his dorm room floor.

Qatar’s grim death toll is revealed in long spreadsheets of official data listing the causes of death: multiple blunt injuries due to a fall from height; asphyxia due to hanging; undetermined cause of death due to decomposition.  But among the causes, the most common by far is so-called “natural deaths”, often attributed to acute heart or respiratory failure.

The Guardian previously reported that such classifications, which are usually made without an autopsy, often fail to provide a legitimate medical explanation for the underlying cause of these deaths.

In 2019 it found that Qatar’s intense summer heat is likely to be a significant factor in many worker deaths. The Guardian’s findings were supported by research commissioned by the UN’s International Labour Organization which revealed that for at least four months of the year workers faced significant heat stress when working outside.

Qatar continues to “drag its feet on this critical and urgent issue in apparent disregard for workers’ lives”, said Hiba Zayadin, Gulf researcher for Human Rights Watch. “We have called on Qatar to amend its law on autopsies to require forensic investigations into all sudden or unexplained deaths, and pass legislation to require that all death certificates include reference to a medically meaningful cause of death,” she said.  Other significant causes of deaths among Indians, Nepalis and Bangladeshis are road accidents (12%), workplace accidents (7%) and suicide (7%).

“There is a real lack of clarity and transparency surrounding these deaths,” said May Romanos, Gulf researcher for Amnesty International. “There is a need for Qatar to strengthen its occupational health and safety standards.”

 

Midterm Election Highlights

Neither Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock nor knucklehead Herschel Walker got 50% of the vote, so they are facing off again on Dec. 6. 

Arizona's Democratic Senator Mark Kelly defeated Republican Blake Masters.  Kelly was elected just two years ago in a special election following the 2018 death of John McCain. Now he will have a full six-year term.  Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs is still clinging to a narrow lead over right-wing extremist and election-denier Kari Lake.

Pennsylvania lieutenant governor John Fetterman fought his way back from a stroke, doing interviews with the help of closed captioning device to help him adapt to a temporary auditory processing disorder.  The media worked overtime on painting him as unqualified while giving his opponent Dr. Oz a pass on things like having hundreds of dogs killed for medical research and promoting quack medicines.  Yet Fetterman defeated Oz in the race for the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Republican Pat Toomey.

Incumbent Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, has won reelection, defeating Republican nominee and prolific conspiracy theorist Tudor Dixon.  Dixon was one of the Republican Party's most, uh, colorful nominees this cycle, known for her rambling theories connecting COVID-19 to the Black Lives Matter movement, claiming Democrats were looking to topple the government as revenge for losing the Civil War, and blaming a Michigan school shooting on "critical race theory." 

Incumbent Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has fended off a challenge from Republican nominee Scott Jensen, winning reelection.  Jensen was banned from TikTok last year for spreading hoaxes about the COVID-19 pandemic. During the campaign, he pandered to Republican election conspiracies with claims that dead people voted, calling for the imprisonment of Democratic state Secretary of State Steve Simon.

Incumbent Maine Gov. Janet Mills has fended off a challenge by former Republican governor Paul LePage, keeping the governorship in Democratic hands and denying the scenery-chewing LePage his attempted comeback.  LePage's stint as governor was contentious and erratic—but he attempted to rewrite that recent history during a campaign that saw him brazenly lie about his own past public statements. Maine voters didn't buy it.

Democratic New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan defeated Republican Don Bolduc.  Bolduc is a retired brigadier general in the Army who embraced Donald Trump's Big Lie before wavering once in the general election; said decisions about abortion belong “to these gentlemen right here, who are state legislators representing you”; said that privatizing Medicare is “hugely important”; and spread the conspiracy theory that students are using litter boxes in schools.

Josh Shapiro won the governorship of Pennsylvania, defeating extremist whack-job Doug Mastriano, who was arguably the most extreme of the election deniers on the 2022 ballot. Mastriano, a Christian nationalist, prayed for Congress to “rise up” on Jan. 6 and overturn the election, chartered buses to attend the insurrection, vowed to ban abortions in all cases, and campaigned at QAnon events. 

Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers defeated Republican Tim Michels in Wisconsin’s governor’s race, earning a second term of competent, progressive leadership. Evers’ tenure has mostly consisted of using his veto pen to hold off an extremist right-wing and corporate takeover of the state, including ensuring free and fair elections for the future.  Michels is another one of the GOP multimillionaires who self-funded his way through a crowded primary and earned the endorsement of Trump through his election denial. Michels promised that “Republicans will never lose another election in Wisconsin after [he’s] elected governor.”  He  also endorsed a total ban on abortions (even in the case of rape and incest) and promised an end to marriage equality. He endorsed defunding public education, and is opposed to even the most modest gun safety proposals.  Michels also lives in Connecticut a good part of the year.

Noted white supremacist Stephen Miller was always a loser-- after his barrage of despicable, racist political ads proved to be a $40 million flop.  Miller had been assuring his racist base that a “red wave” was in store for Republicans, doing his part by launching massively offensive ads in more than a dozen states that sobbed about supposed “anti-white bigotry” and pushed violent anti-immigrant imagery. He funded these ad though his America Legal First organization, while others were pushed by his associates. He tried to make anti-immigrant hate and anti-trans hostility, the biggest issues.  But voters largely rejected Miller's bigoted agenda. While certainly some GOP candidates emerged victorious, there was no red wave.  Pro-immigrant measures all across the country won. Democratic candidates who leaned into immigration, like John Fetterman, will be in office next year.

Voters in Vermont, Michigan, and California put abortion rights in their state constitutions. Kentucky voters rejected an effort by Republicans to pass an amendment saying there was no right to abortion, following in the footsteps of Kansas voters over the summer. Montana voters also rejected an anti-abortion measure.

Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson won reelection to his seat six years after promising the state that he would term-limit himself and not run again.  After months of trying to follow his constantly evolving story about his involvement in Donald Trump’s coup attempt, one has to wonder what won't this man lie about?

Back in Nevada, Senator Cortez Masto was trailing trailing her Republican challenger Adam Laxalt by about 9,000 votes on Friday morning.  But Friday evening a new batch of mail ballots from Clark County (Las Vegas-area) and Washoe County (Reno-area) cut Laxalt’s lead to 821 votes.  With thousands of votes still outstanding in Clark and Washoe counties, Cortez Masto is positioned to overtake Laxalt and take the lead when more vote tallies are released.

Tennessee, Vermont and Oregon voted to ban slavery as a form of punishment-- Louisiana decided it was A-OK.  Missouri and Maryland legalized the use of marijuana; Similar measures failed in Arkansas, North Dakota and South Dakota.  Colorado voters authorized the medical use of hallucinogenic mushrooms.

While we're in Colorado, dingbat Lauren Boebert  is neck-and-neck with her Democratic opponent, Adam Frisch for the state's House seat in the conservative third district.  Leading up to election day, even the Denver Post begged its readers not to vote for the Q-anon queen.

Democrat Tina Kotek,defeated two white-supremacist- and QANON-friendly opponents to keep the Oregon governor’s seat in Democratic hands.  Republican Christine Drazan was the leader of multiple walk-outs of Republican legislators, shutting down the House by denying a quorum, and who routinely forced delays of legislative business with tactics like forcing bills to be read out loud.  Republican Betsy Johnson was an NRA-endorsed crank whose campaign was financed in large part by fellow crank Phil Knight, founder of Nike. Both Drazan and Johnson are cozy with Timber Unity, a group with extensive and well-documented ties to white nationalist and other extremist groups like the Proud Boys, QAnon, and the Three Percenter movement.

 

 

Keith Urban - Street Called Main

But Who's Going to Foot the Bill?

A Wisconsin nurse is accused of amputating a patient’s foot without permission and wanting to display it in her family's taxidermy shop.

38-year-old nurse Mary K. Brown removed the frostbitten right foot of a 62-year-old patient at Spring Valley Health and Rehabilitation Center in Pierce County, according to a criminal complaint. She was charged last week with elder abuse.  Investigators were contacted about a death at the assisted living facility by the county medical examiner, who said the body was sent for an autopsy because of “the unusual circumstances of his death.”

The medical examiner said he noticed the victim’s foot was not attached to his body “but was rather lying beside him.”  Pete Koch, a Pierce County sheriff’s investigator, interviewed staff members at the rehabilitation center and found that the victim, who was not publicly identified, had been admitted several months before the death.

He was taken to the center because he had fallen in his residence when the heat went out, which caused him to have “severe frostbite” on both of his feet. His feet became necrotic, meaning his tissue had died.  Brown cut off the foot in what she said was an act of compassion because of the dire state of his feet.  According to the accounts of nurses Koch interviewed in the criminal complaint, the foot was no longer fully attached to the patient's leg, it smelled and it was “black like a mummy.”

Tracy Reitz, the center’s director of nursing, said that a few days before the amputation, the victim’s right foot “was dead, foul smelling."  The patient's foot was cut off by Brown as she and two other nurses, identified as Nurse 3 and Nurse 4, were in the victim's room.  The foot was then placed in a bag in a freezer, to be sent with him when he passed away.  Brown admitted to Koch that she had not received a doctor's order to cut off the foot.   She said that the victim didn't show any signs of pain and she covered up his stump with gauze.

However, Nurse 4 said she was holding the victim’s hand and his grip was “extremely tight and he was moaning a little bit.”  And another staffer, identified as Nurse 1, said she spoke with the victim two days after the amputation. According to the complaint, he told her "that when they cut his foot off he felt everything and it hurt very bad."

Brown said that she “was trying to make the quality of life better for him." She explained that the patient always complained about the smell and she thought he “would like it better.”  Nurse 3 told Koch that during the amputation, Brown talked about taking the victim’s foot home and “epoxying it," which the nurse found to be strange.  Another nurse, identified as Nurse 5, who was not in the room for the amputation, recalled that Brown said her family has a taxidermy shop. Brown told the nurse “she was going to preserve the foot and put it on display with a sign that said ‘Wear your boots kids.’”

Kevin Larson, administrator and CEO of the facility, told Koch that Brown did not do a report on the incident. Larson said nobody wrote anything in the victim’s chart on May 27 except for a notification about medications.  Larson said Brown had not asked him if she could remove the foot and there was no doctor’s order to do so.  Spring Valley Health and Rehab Center did not immediately respond to an NBC News request for comment.   Brown was charged on Nov. 3 with physical abuse of an elder person intentionally causing great bodily harm and mayhem, with increased penalties as the victim is an elderly person.

 

Stop Licking Toads!

The U.S. National Park Service is warning people to stop licking toads in the wild, due to their gland-secreted psychedelic substance that can create a hallucinogenic experience.  In a social media post, the NPS urged people to avoid any contact with the Sonoran desert toad, also known as the Colorado river toad.

The agency said the creature is far from harmless, as it contains a potent toxin that can make people sick if they touch it or get the poison in their mouth.   “These toads have prominent parotoid glands that secrete a potent toxin. It can make you sick if you handle the frog or get the poison in your mouth,” the National Park Service advised.   “As we say with most things you come across in a national park, whether it be a banana slug, unfamiliar mushroom, or a large toad with glowing eyes in the dead of night, please refrain from licking," they said. 

“Licking or swallowing can lead to numbness of the mouth and throat as well as severe and life-threatening effects on the heart as a result of the digoxin-like compounds and catecholamines described above,” the agency warns.

Despite the risks, some people have discovered that the toad's toxic secretions contain a powerful hallucinogenic known as 5-MeO-DMT.  The U.S Drug Enforcement Administration considers 5-MeO-DMT a Schedule 1 drug, meaning it is currently not accepted for medical use and has a high potential for abuse.  In recent years, smoking the amphibian's secretions has grown in popularity, and many celebrities, including boxer Mike Tyson and others, can’t get enough of tripping on toad venom.

The Colorado River toad, usually found in parts of California, Arizona, and New Mexico, is one of North America’s tallest at 7 inches. It’s also known to make a call described by the NPS as a "weak, low-pitched toot, lasting less than a second."

 

Doing the Mashed Potato

Claude Monet has become the latest artist to be the focus of food-related climate protests, after members of a German environmental group threw mashed potatoes over one of his paintings in a Potsdam museum.

Nine days after Just Stop Oil emptied tomato soup over Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London, two activists from Letzte Generation (Last Generation) entered the Museum Barberini and doused Monet’s Les Meules (Haystacks) with mashed potatoes before gluing their hands to the wall.

The protesters said the stunt was designed as a wake-up call in the face of a climate catastrophe. “People are starving, people are freezing, people are dying,” one of the activists said in a video of the incident tweeted by Letzte Generation. “We are in a climate catastrophe and all you are afraid of is tomato soup or mashed potatoes on a painting. You know what I’m afraid of? I’m afraid because science tells us that we won’t be able to feed our families in 2050,” the protester said. “Does it take mashed potatoes on a painting to make you listen? This painting is not going to be worth anything if we have to fight over food. When will you finally start to listen? When will you finally start to listen and stop business as usual?”

The group said it had decided to make “this Monet the stage and the public the audience” to try to get its message across. “If it takes pelting a painting with mashed potato or tomato soup to remind society that the fossil course is killing us all, then we give you mashed potato on a painting,” it added.

A spokesperson for the museum said the painting was protected by glass and the museum later said it did not appear to have been damaged.  The spokesperson said police had arrived quickly and that the protesters’ hands were detached from the wall “relatively easily”.

Last year, members of Letzte Generation staged a hunger strike outside the Reichstag building in Berlin to protest about the lack of political action over the climate emergency. Earlier this year, they glued themselves to some of Germany’s busiest motorways.

The group, which accuses the German government of ignoring all warnings and bringing the country to “the edge of the abyss”, says it is part of the last generation that can prevent society from collapsing.

Why Dogs Are Happier

Saudi-Backed LIV Shifts Strategy in its War With the PGA

The top professional golfers who have defected from the PGA Tour for the Saudi-backed LIV tour are making loads of money, but one thing they aren’t getting are world ranking points, which are crucial to making even more cash and playing in golf’s major championships. So far, the secretive body that grants ranking points, the Official World Golf Ranking, isn’t awarding them for LIV events.

The struggle between the PGA Tour and its Saudi-owned rival LIV Golf for control of the sport is playing out not just on golf courses, but across all three branches of the American government. It’s also being fought around a little-known entity based in Surrey, England, whose statisticians churn out a weekly pecking order for the best golfers on the planet.

The Official World Golf Ranking is no mere fan compendium. It’s a critical pathway for golfers to get into events such as the Masters. Players’ deals with sponsors also often escalate based on where they stand in the rankings. LIV players are tumbling in the rankings, and are only set to grow more anxious the steeper they fall. 

The fight brings together all of golf’s power players: The four majors, along with the PGA Tour and DP World Tour (also known as the European Tour) sit on OWGR’s board. And the length of time it takes for LIV to get into OWGR could determine whether the new circuit breaks through, or faces an existential threat, in the wider golf ecosystem. In effect, the fight for OWGR is about control of the game, and whether the golf establishment can continue to apply its traditional standards, or has to yield to a new, hungry challenger. 

It could fall to a U.S. court to decide. The OWGR claim looms large in the antitrust lawsuit in which LIV is arguing that the PGA Tour has acted improperly to squash a rival, including collaborating with the wider golf establishment. In a counterclaim, the PGA Tour says that LIV made promises it couldn’t keep in order to poach players.  If LIV doesn’t get its way, it could also trigger additional litigation on this specific issue in Europe, said people familiar with LIV’s position, or a push to get the majors to accept alternative rankings. 

No move is too minute, or too bold, for LIV to try to get its players back in fast. That’s why it recently formed its alliance with the MENA Tour (a developmental circuit in the Middle East and North Africa), in a new bid to prop up players’ rankings starting this weekend while it continues to fight for LIV events to make the OWGR cut. 

The MENA Tour is already accredited but hadn’t competed since the pandemic’s onset. Suddenly this month, it was back, appearing as LIV’s partner for LIV’s long-scheduled event this weekend in Bangkok (which isn’t actually in the Middle East or North Africa).

Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and others aren’t just the hottest names playing for LIV. They play for MENA, now, too, redubbed “MENA Tour members” by its commissioner. OWGR didn’t buy it. 

LIV argues that after snapping up some of the best players in the world—as measured by OWGR—that the rankings need to include them to continue to be considered valid. Without LIV players properly rated, they believe, the rankings would simply be inaccurate. British Open champion Cameron Smith, for instance, was No. 2 in the world when he joined the rebel tour. 

LIV also says that OWGR has made clear it reserves the right to incorporate tours that don’t meet all the criteria, and reject tours that do, and that it’s being treated unfairly at the behest of the dominant golf tours that control the OWGR board in another instance of monopolistic behavior.

OWGR’s broad position is that its validity comes from making sure that the events meet its rigorous standards for inclusion—and that the best players in the world may currently be playing in LIV competitions that fall short.  People familiar with OWGR’s opaque process—its full requirements for accreditation aren’t publicly available—say there is a lengthy review process and they aren’t going to give LIV special treatment. 

For a new tour to be considered by OWGR, its organizers need to express interest, then submit an application with supporting documents to show how they meet the OWGR’s criteria, people familiar with OWGR’s process said. It also needs to be proposed by an existing circuit, with the Asian Tour, which received a $300 million investment from LIV, taking care of that. 

Tours that apply can negotiate over how to meet all the requirements and make changes with feedback from OWGR, they said. Applications are reviewed by OWGR’s technical committee, not its governance board, and are on average accepted, from the time of the expression of interest, in a year and a half. LIV submitted its application in July, though it though it met with OWGR in March. 

Some of the criteria are straightforward and no problem for LIV, such as a requirement that play be governed by the rules of golf as established by its governing bodies. There’s also no disagreement that LIV has knocked one requirement out of the park: having a minimum of 10 tournaments, with an average purse of $30,000 or more. 

But some of the key criteria where LIV may face resistance from OWGR are fundamental to LIV’s structure. Its small fields of 48 players, inside tournaments that last just 54 holes, fall short of OWGR’s standards, the people familiar with the process said. They added that they expect tournaments to average at least 75 players and that non-developmental circuits should play the standard 72 holes. The LIV events also do not have a cut, which is required. 

LIV believes it has made an effort to meet those standards, according to LIV executives. It has added an additional 72-hole LIV Golf International Series, which will have a cut and 128 players apiece, pulling the average above 75. The OWGR may be skeptical of counting that, the people familiar with the body said, as those events are co-sanctioned by Asian Tour.  LIV executives note that there are accredited events, including ones on the PGA Tour such as its Tour Championship, that do not have a cut and feature smaller fields. Those tournaments, though, are the exception not the rule. 

The upstart circuit does not dispute that it falls short on one of the key criteria: that a tour must demonstrate compliance with the guidelines for at least a year. LIV’s first full season isn’t until next year, when it’s introducing other elements that it hopes will bring it up to code. That means, according to the typical process, LIV would need to wait until 2024—at least. 

Here, LIV is hoping for an exception.  “In light of the implications for OWGR and its credibility of not affording LIV Golf players appropriate points, and in view of LIV Golf’s unprecedented strength of field for a tour in its infancy, we have urged that OWGR gain comfort with LIV Golf’s status, because it is plainly in the best interests of the OWGR, players, and the game to do so,” LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman wrote in an August letter to players and their agents. 

For now, LIV’s players project to continue falling in the rankings as the battle plays out. Those golfers who are eager enough to boost their ranking could turn to playing on some Asian Tour events, as former Masters champion Patrick Reed did earlier this year.  Rory McIlroy has emerged as one of the PGA Tour’s staunchest defenders, and even he said he would have no problem if LIV were eventually accredited. “I certainly would want the best players in the world ranked accordingly,” McIlroy said.  He also added a stiff caveat.  “You can’t make up your own rules,” he said. “There’s criteria there and everyone knows what they are. If they want to pivot to meet the criteria, they can.” 

 

 

Are We Ready for the Crazy GOP Overlords?

Maureen Dowd of the New York Times has a few provocative thoughts leading up to Tuesday's elections:

“How many AR-15s do you think Jesus would have had?” Boebert asked a crowd at a Christian campaign event in June. I’m going with none, honestly, but her answer was, “Well, he didn’t have enough to keep his government from killing him.”

The Denver Post pleaded: “We beg voters in western and southern Colorado not to give Rep. Lauren Boebert their vote.”   The freshman representative has recently been predicting happily that we’re in the end times, “the last of the last days.” If Lauren Boebert is in charge, we may want to be in the end times. I’m feeling not so Rapturous about the prospect.

And then there’s the future first female president, Kari Lake, who lulls you into believing, with her mellifluous voice, statements that seem to emanate from Lucifer. She’s dangerous because, like Donald Trump, she has real skills from her years in TV. And she really believes this stuff, unlike Trump and Kevin McCarthy, who are faking it.  As Cecily Strong said on “Saturday Night Live” last weekend, embodying Lake, “If the people of Arizona elect me, I’ll make sure they never have to vote ever again.”

Speaking of “Paradise Lost,” how about Ron DeSantis? The governor of Florida, who’s running for a second term, is airing an ad that suggests that he was literally anointed by God to fight Democrats. God almighty, that’s some high-level endorsement.

Much to our national shame, it looks like these over-the-top and way, way, way out-of-the mainstream Republicans — and the formerly normie and now creepy Republicans who have bent the knee to the wackos out of political expediency — are going to be running the House, maybe the Senate and certainly some states, perhaps even some that Joe Biden won two years ago.

And it looks as if Kevin McCarthy will finally realize his goal of becoming speaker, but when he speaks, it will be Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan and Lauren Boebert doing the spewing. It will be like the devil growling through Linda Blair in “The Exorcist” — except it will be our heads spinning.

Welcome to a rogue’s gallery of crazy: Clay Higgins, who’s spouting conspiracy theories about Paul Pelosi, wants to run the House Homeland Security Committee; Paul Gosar, whose own family has begged Arizonans to eject him from Congress, will be persona grata in the new majority.

In North Carolina, Bo Hines, a Republican candidate for the House, wants community panels to decide whether rape victims are able to get abortions or not. He’s building on Dr. Oz’s dictum that local politicians should help make that call. Even Oprah turned on her creation, Dr. Odd.

J.D. Vance, the Yale-educated, former Silicon Valley venture capitalist and author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” who called Trump “America’s Hitler” in 2016, before saluting him to gain public office, could join the Senate in January. Talk about American Elegy.   Even though he wrote in his best seller that Yale Law School was his “dream school,” he now trashes the very system that birthed him. Last year, he gave a speech titled “The Universities Are the Enemy”: His mother-in-law is a provost at the University of California San Diego.

It’s disturbing to think of Vance side by side with Herschel Walker. Walker was backed by Mitch McConnell, who countenanced an obviously troubled and flawed individual even if it meant degrading the once illustrious Senate chamber.

Overall, there are nearly 300 election deniers on the ballot, but they will be all too happy to accept the results if they win.  People voting for these crazies think they’re punishing Biden, Barack Obama and the Democrats. They’re really punishing themselves.  These extreme Republicans don’t have a plan. Their only idea is to get in, make trouble for President Biden, drag Hunter into the dock, start a bunch of stupid investigations, shut down the government, abandon Ukraine and hold the debt limit hostage.

Democrats are partly to blame. They haven’t explained how they plan to get a grip on the things people are worried about: crime and inflation. Voters weren’t hearing what they needed to hear from Biden, who felt morally obligated to talk about the threat to democracy, even though that’s not what people are voting on.  As it turns out, a woman’s right to control her body has been overshadowed by uneasiness over safety and economic security.

To top it off, Trump is promising a return. We’ll see if DeSantis really is the chosen one. In Iowa on Thursday night, Trump urged the crowd to “crush the communists” at the ballot box and said that he was “very, very, very” close to deciding to “do it again.”  Trump, the modern Pandora, released the evil spirits swirling around us — racism, antisemitism, violence, hatred, conspiracy theories, and Trump mini-mes who should be nowhere near the levers of power.  Heaven help us.