GOP Supreme Court Goes Against Precedence and Guts Affirmative Action

The GOP Supreme Court has again reversed decades of precedent and eliminated affirmative action in college admissions.  John Roberts cynically tried to tie his decision to Brown v. Board of education and the 14th Amendment (which was actually intended to address the inequities resulting from slavery).  In reality, the decision will go down in infamy and will require years of additional jurisprudence to wipe away.

The ruling, wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor, "cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter". She warned it "rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress".

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson - the first black woman ever to sit on the court - went further: "With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces 'colorblindness for all' by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life."  "Having so detached itself from this country's actual past and present experiences," she added, "the court has now been lured into interfering with the crucial work that [the University of North Carolina] and other institutions of higher learning are doing to solve America's real-world problems."

The irony of the Supreme Courts' astonishing  reversal of affirmation action places the spotlight squarely on the one justice who benefited the most from affirmation action and seems now to resent it.  It was affirmative action that got Clarence into Holy Cross, and it was affirmation action that got him into Yale law school, and it was affirmative action that got him nominated to the high court. The fact that he owes his career and livelihood to affirmative action seems to be such a deeply held grievance that he feels compelled to work against it all his life.  “As much as it had stung to be told I’d done well in [high school] despite my race,” Thomas once wrote, “it was far worse to feel that I was now at Yale because of it.”

Shame seems to be a central tenet in Thomas' psychology.  Growing up, Thomas was steadfastly opposed to speaking his family's Gullah-Geechee dialect in public-- especially around white people. He believed that speaking with his native dialect would get him branded as poor, uneducated and disadvantaged. So Thomas stopped speaking Gullah in public. And he largely stopped speaking publicly at all, he once told the New York Times, for fear that any trace of that former life in his home town of Pin Point, Georgia would somehow work its way into his speech.

MSNBC's Joy Reid said, “I was not surprised because Clarence Thomas has been on a mission to dismantle every institutional attempt to help and aid, not just Black people, but any people who have been disadvantaged in this society since he’s gotten on the court,” she said. “He, like Samuel Alito, appears to operate from a kind of rage, a sort of cold rage, against . . . the second half of the 20th century, which they find to be an affront to their own self-image and to their image of America…”

Reid went on to say, "There was a nun, a White nun whose largesse helped get him through school, and get him those good grades. He has been assisted, you know, by White patrons, really, his whole life – even now by very rich ones, as they fly him around the country . . . and to your very point, he seems to deeply resent all of the assistance he got. And he wants to make sure that nobody like him ever gets that kind of help again because it helps his self-image so that he can lie to himself and fool himself, and maybe hate himself a little less for having gotten help all along his path to the Supreme Court."

Reid went on to say that during his contentious confirmation hearings in 1991, Thomas enjoyed the support of most Black people despite accusations of sexual harassment.  “And it was only Black people’s support in those polls that got wavering Democrats to vote for him,” she said. “And he has repaid Black people with scorn ever since.”

But there's no need for rich folks to worry-- legacy admissions are OK with Clarence.  That kind of affirmative action (giving a step up to unqualified kids who had the good fortune to be born rich) is perfectly acceptable.   Thomas seems to believe that affirmative action is OK for the descendants of people who benefited from slavery.  But for the descendants of victims of slavery, who can only get in to elite colleges because of good grades or their brains, well that's too fucking bad.  No help for you.

 

Kelly Clarkson - I Hate Love

Russian Diplomat Squatting on Australian Plot of Land

A Russian diplomat has been squatting near Australia's parliament in a row over the site where Russia wants to build its new embassy.  The lone protest follows Australia's decision to terminate Russia's 2008 lease, citing national security grounds.  Russia says it will challenge the lease termination in the High Court . Australia's prime minister says the squatting diplomat was no threat - he is "some bloke standing... on a bit of grass".

When announcing new laws aimed at terminating the lease, Anthony Albanese said intelligence agencies had given "very clear security advice".   The planned embassy would sit only 400 meters (a quarter mile) from the parliament building, which experts have said poses a spying risk. Russia's existing embassy is some distance away.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has described the Australian decision as another example of "Russophobic hysteria that is now going on in the countries of the collective West".  It is unclear on what "constitutional grounds" Russia will challenge the laws, but it has sought an injunction to defer any moves to reclaim the site until the legal challenge is decided.   In the complaint submitted to the court, Russia says it has already spent over $5 million on construction, which has proceeded slowly.

Meanwhile Australian federal police are reportedly monitoring the man staking out the block of land, but cannot arrest him due to his diplomatic immunity.  Prime Minister Albanese said he was not worried about the squatter, or the legal challenge. "Russia hasn't been real good at the law lately," he said.  "We don't expect Russia is in a position to talk about international law given their rejection of it so consistently and so brazenly with their invasion of Ukraine."

 

Take Pride

University Going After the Green Over Lost Plant Research

A janitor destroyed decades of "ground-breaking" work by shutting off a lab freezer containing key samples over an "annoying" alarm sound, lawyers for a New York university said.  Lab samples stored at -80C were left "unsalvageable", causing $1m in damages.  The lab's school is suing the janitor's employer for improper training.

The company held a $1.4m contract to clean the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York back in 2020 which is when the incident happened, paper Times Union reported.  Research on photosynthesis, headed by Prof. K.V. Lakshmi, had the potential to be "ground-breaking" in furthering solar panel development.  A few days before the freezer was turned off, an alarm went off to warn of a 3C temperature rise. Though the fluctuation could have been catastrophic, Prof Lakshmi "determined that the cell cultures, samples and research were not being harmed." Due to Covid restrictions at the time, it would take a week before any repairs could begin.

In the meantime, a sign on the freezer's door read: "This freezer is beeping as it is under repair. Please do not move or unplug it. No cleaning required in this area. You can press the alarm/test mute button for 5-10 seconds if you would like to mute the sound."  But days after the alarm started sounding, the janitor turned off the circuit breaker providing electricity to the freezer. The majority of specimens that were meant to be kept at -80C (-112F) were "compromised, destroyed and rendered unsalvageable, demolishing more than 20 years of research", according to the lawsuit.

A report filed by public safety staff at the institute said the janitor thought he was flipping the breaker on when he actually turned it off, the New York Post reported.  The temperature rose by 50C (122F) by the time researchers discovered the error.   Lawyer Michael Ginsberg told NBC News that the cleaning employee heard "annoying alarms", and lawyers that interviewed him reported "he still did not appear to believe he had done anything wrong, but was just trying to help."

 

Yet Another Nigerian Mob Killing

A Muslim man in northern Nigeria has been killed by a mob for alleged blasphemy.  Usman Buda, who worked as a butcher at the Sokoto city abattoir, "was mobbed and attacked by some Muslim faithfuls [who] inflicted serious injuries on him", Sokoto state police spokesman Ahmad Rufa'i is quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.

When the police arrived on the scene, "the mob escaped and left the victim unconscious", he added, the Premium Times reports..  Buda was taken for treatment by police when they went to rescue him but his death was confirmed at the hospital.  The authorities are now looking for the alleged perpetrators.

AFP reports that Buda was killed after an argument over some child beggars who had asked for money. It quotes a witness as saying that he got embroiled in a row after he disapproved of the children. He then made the alleged blasphemous remarks about the Prophet Muhammad.  A gruesome video being shared on social media shows a mob targeting a man with stones as he stumbles and falls.

In response, Sokoto state Governor Ahmed Aliyu "called on the people of the state to remain calm and law-abiding at all times", but he added that people should not do anything that is capable of degrading the personality of the Prophet Muhammad.

In May last year, a female student was attacked by Muslim students at her college in Sokoto, who killed her and set her body alight. She had been accused of blaspheming.

 

Greetings From the Sunshine State!

DeSantis Anti-Drag Show Law Struck Down

A federal judge sided with an Orlando restaurant that features weekly “family friendly” drag shows and ordered the state to stop enforcing a new law cracking down on certain “adult live performances.”

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill last month — one of a flurry of legislative proposals backed by GOP governors taking aim at drag events. The Florida law did not specifically mention drag performances, but said the state should revoke the liquor license of any establishment that allows children to attend performances that include lewd exposure to “prosthetic or imitation genitals and breasts.”

DeSantis said the law was designed to “let kids be kids,” but opponents said it was part of a slate of laws aimed at “erasing” the LGBTQ community.  The owners of Hamburger Mary’s Orlando, part of a chain of drag-themed restaurants, sued the state, claiming that the law violated their First Amendment rights.

U.S. District Judge Gregory A. Presnell agreed, writing that the language of the law is vague and “dangerously susceptible to standardless, overbroad enforcement.”  Presnell also said the law clashes with another DeSantis priority — the “Parents’ Bill of Rights” — because it allows the state to decide what performances children can attend, rather than leaving that choice up to parents. He added that existing obscenity laws already protect children from “any constitutionally unprotected obscene exhibitions or shows.” 

Brice Timmons, an attorney who represented Hamburger Mary’s in the lawsuit, said the case was about protecting fundamental rights. “This isn’t about gay people, this isn’t about trans people, this isn’t about drag queens. This is about our basic human freedoms,” he said. “If we don’t stop it here, God help us.”

Timmons also represented an LGBTQ theater company in Tennessee, winning a case earlier this month in federal court over a new law in that state banning drag shows in public or where children could watch them. In that ruling as well, a federal judge ruled the legislation violated First Amendment freedom of speech protections and was “unconstitutionally vague and substantially overbroad.”

 

Homeschool - Hanger-On

Titanic Director on OceanGate's Responsibility for Sub Disaster

"Titanic" director James Cameron spoke out late Thursday about the loss of the Titan submarine that had dived to explore the historic shipwreck.  “Many people in the [deep-submergence engineering] community were very concerned about this sub, and a number of you know of the top players in the community even wrote letters to the company, saying that what they were doing was too experimental to carry passengers and needed to be certified and so on,” he told ABC News in an exclusive interview. “I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night. And many people died as a result.” 

The multiple Oscar winner and longtime ocean-diving enthusiast has made nearly three dozen dives to the Titanic wreckage. He was commenting on today’s news from the Coast Guard that “a debris field was discovered within the search area by an ROV near the Titanic” and that all five souls aboard are feared dead after a “catastrophic explosion.”

Cameron also addressed the concerns voiced by experts about the safety of the 21-foot Titan submersible vehicle. “As a submersible designer myself, I designed and built us up to go to the deepest place in the ocean, three times deeper than Titanic. So I understand the engineering problems associated with building this type of vehicle and all the safety protocols that you have to go through. 

On CNN tonight, Cameron spoke about the fundamental flaw in the design of the Titan submersible, and how unsuitable it was to use carbon-fiber composite material for such a vehicle, as opposed to steel or titanium.  He told Anderson Cooper that using a composite material was ill-advised, since "with each pressure cycle, you can have progressive damage [to the hull].  You may have a number of successful dives, and then have it fail later."

Ecuadorian Woman Comes Back From the Dead During Her Funeral

 An elderly Ecuadorian women woke inside her coffin after her wake and pounded on the lid to be let out.  The woman was taken to the same state hospital that declared her dead two days earlier. 

A viral video showed 76-year-old Bella Montoya in her open coffin breathing heavily while two men assist her.  Her son, Gilbert Balberán, said “she was hitting the box” with her left hand after the five-hour wake.  The incident occurred in the coastal town of Babahoyo, where the Martin Icaza public hospital issued a death certificate for the woman.

Ecuadoran media reported the unusual incident, with headlines celebrating the woman’s “resurrection”.  “My mom is on oxygen. Her heart is stable. The doctor pinched her hand and she reacted,” Balberán said in an El Universo newspaper report.  “They tell me that this is good, because it means that she is reacting little by little.”

Montoya was admitted to hospital with a suspected stroke “and went into cardio respiratory arrest without responding to resuscitation maneuvers, so the doctor on duty confirmed her death,” Ecuador’s Health Ministry said in a statement.  The ministry said it had established a committee to investigate the incident and that it would supervise Montoya’s care.

“Little by little I am grasping what has happened. Now I only pray for my mother’s health to improve. I want her alive and by my side,” Balberán said.

True That

We Are Still Struggling with the Hate of White Supremecy

Alabama travelers driving on Interstate 65 to parties and barbecues on Memorial Day  expected to see messages on digital road signs honoring veterans who died fighting for the United States.  But some drivers near Clanton, AL reported seeing a sign that was hacked to display the words “Reclaim America,” a white nationalist slogan, and “Patriot Front US,” referencing the white supremacist group that was involved in the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. 

John McWilliams, a spokesman for the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) West Central Region, added that ALDOT is investigating how the white supremacist language appeared on the sign near Clanton, about 40 miles northwest of Montgomery, Ala. Officials have given no immediate indication of who is responsible for apparently hacking the interstate sign.  

The hacked Alabama road sign comes at a time when President Biden has declared white supremacy “the most dangerous terrorist threat” to the country. During his commencement address at Howard University this month, Biden told the graduating class at the historically Black university that he pledged “to stand up against the poison of white supremacy, as I did in my inaugural address — to single it out as the most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland is white supremacy.”

“I don’t have to tell you that progress toward justice often meets ferocious pushback from the oldest and most sinister of forces,” Biden said in a recent speech, after quoting Donald Trump’s equivocating response to the 2017 rally in Charlottesville that killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injured 19 others. “That’s because hate never goes away.” 

The discussion surrounding white supremacists and white nationalists in Alabama intensified after Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said that people identified as “white extremists” and white nationalists should be allowed to serve in the U.S. armed forces. When asked by a reporter with WBHM in Birmingham whether white nationalists should be allowed to serve in the military, Tuberville replied, “Well, they call them that. I call them Americans.”  

White supremacist group Patriot Front is a Texas-based hate group that broke off from Vanguard America and formed after the Charlottesville rally, the SPLC says. Its members have chanted “Reclaim America” at rallies in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, Washington and Boston in recent yeards. Patriot Front is responsible for “the vast majority of white supremacist propaganda distributed in the United States” since 2019, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

It’s not the first time that language promoting Patriot Front has made its way into a public space in Alabama. In July, graffiti beneath a Birmingham bridge appeared with “Patriot Front US” spray-painted in red and blue letters, AL.com reported. Other Patriot Front graffiti has also been spotted in Birmingham, a city with a population that’s nearly 70 percent Black.

A photo posted to Twitter this month showed more Patriot Front graffiti along the Red Mountain Expressway in Birmingham with the words, “We Dare Defend Our Rights.” The Patriot Front graffiti was later removed, but the message left Sydney Duncan, the attorney director for the Magic Legal Center in Birmingham, saddened that hate had become so public in some parts of Alabama.  “White supremacy is alive and well,” Duncan wrote. 

 

Reddit CEO (and Musk fan) is Looking to Destroy Another Social Network

In the middle of a wide-ranging blackout by many of its largest volunteer-driven communities, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman apparently wants to do to Reddit what Elon Musk did to Twitter. 

Reddit is the fifth largest social network in the United States, behind only Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. It has over 430 million active monthly users, organized in “subreddits”—single-topic communities.  While other social media companies struggle with content moderation, these subreddits are moderated by volunteer mods. It is these volunteer mods that are up in arms over Reddit’s sudden "enshittification"—the process by which a social media goes from serving its users, to abusing its network scale for profit and turns to utter shit (click this link to technologist Cory Doctorow’s incredibly perceptive and influential essay on the topic).

In an interview with NBC News, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman praised Musk’s aggressive cost-cutting and layoffs at Twitter, and said he had chatted “a handful of times” with Musk on the subject of running an internet platform.  Huffman said he saw Musk’s handling of Twitter, which he purchased last year, as an example for Reddit to follow.  What kind of moron would take a look at what Musk has done at Twitter--chasing away advertisers, alienating wide swaths of his audience, throwing tens of billions down the drain, and spurring a frenzy to become Twitter’s replacement, and then think—yeah, I want some of that!  “Long story short, my takeaway from Twitter and Elon at Twitter is reaffirming that we can build a really good business in this space at our scale,” Huffman admitted.

Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion. The debt service alone is $125 million per month. Twitter Blue, Musk’s big idea to overcome the loss of advertisers, is bringing in only about $2 million per month according to leaked internal documents back in March.  Musk himself admitted in internal documents that Twitter’s value had dropped by at least $20 billion, while investor Fidelity thinks it’s worth even less—only $15 billion.  And Huffman’s takeaway from all that is that Musk built “a really good business.”   Yikes!

Wheels of Misfortune

Karol G - Amargura

The Damn Illuminati Are At It Again!

Killed For Raising Children While Black

A mother of four was shot and killed in Florida following a longtime feud with a neighbor who had complained about the victim’s children playing outside. Deputies responded to a trespassing call and found one woman suffering from a gunshot wound, Marion County, Florida, Sheriff Billy Woods said.

The victim was identified as 35-year-old Ajike “AJ” Owens. The killer, also a woman, “engaged” with Owens’ children and threw a pair of skates, hitting the children, the sheriff said. A witness told police there had been a dispute over a child’s electronic tablet device prior to the shooter throwing the skates at the children.  Following that interaction, one of the children went back inside their home and told their mother, who went to the neighbor’s home “to confront the lady,” the sheriff said. 

According to the shooter, there was “a lot of aggressiveness” from both sides, as well as threats being made, and Owens was ultimately shot through the door, the Sheriff said.   Witnesses told authorities Owens went to the shooter’s home and knocked on the door before she was shot through the closed door.  Owens was later pronounced dead at a hospital, authorities said.

The woman who fired at Owens has been cooperating with law enforcement. No arrest has been made in the case. Authorities have not named the shooter or shared any identifying information. But civil rights attorney Ben Crump, one of the attorneys representing the family, identified her as a white woman. The incident report also described the shooter as a 58-year-old white woman.

In a separate news conference held by Owens’ family attorneys, the victim’s mother said the neighbor who shot her daughter had called the family, including the children, racial slurs.  The neighbor’s door “never opened,” when Owens, who was black, tried to confront her, and she was shot through the door, Pamela Dias, the victim’s mother said.  “My daughter, my grandchildren’s mother, was shot and killed with her 9-year-old son standing next to her. She had no weapon, she posed no imminent threat to anyone,” Dias said.

“What I’m asking is for justice,” she added. “Justice for my daughter.”   Crump said the fact that there has not been an arrest in the case is “appalling.”   “It is asinine when they try to justify this unjustifiable killing of this mother of four who was killed in front of her children,” Crump said. “It is heartbreaking on every level.” 

 

Pretty Much On Point

Miraculous Story of Survival in the Amazon Jungle

Four children aged 13, nine, four and one, were found alive after surviving a plane crash and spending nearly six weeks fending for themselves in Colombia's Amazon jungle.  The children's mother and two pilots were killed when their light aircraft crashed in the jungle on May 1.

The missing children became the focus of a huge rescue operation involving dozens of soldiers and local people.  Colombian President Gustavo Petro said finding the group was a "magical day", adding: "They were alone, they themselves achieved an example of total survival which will remain in history."

The children have been flown to the nation's capital Bogota, where ambulances have taken them to hospital for further medical treatment.  The children's grandmother, Fatima Valencia, said after their rescue: "I am very grateful, and to mother earth as well, that they were set free." She said the eldest of the four siblings was used to looking after the other three when their mother was at work, and that this helped them survive in the jungle. "She gave them flour and cassava bread, any fruit in the bush, they know what they must consume," Valencia said.

The Cessna 206 aircraft the children and their mother had been traveling on before the crash was flying from Araracuara, (Amazonas province) to San José del Guaviare, when it issued a mayday alert due to engine failure.  The bodies of the three adults were found at the crash site by the army, but it appeared that the children had escaped the wreckage and wandered into the rainforest to find help.  A massive search began-- after three weeks, rescuers recovered items left behind by the children, including a child's drinking bottle, a pair of scissors, a hair tie and a makeshift shelter.

Small footprints were also discovered, which led search teams to believe the children were still alive in the rainforest, which is home to jaguars, snakes and other predators.  Members of the children's community hoped that their knowledge of fruits and jungle survival skills would give them a better chance of remaining alive.  Indigenous people joined the search and helicopters broadcast a message from the children's grandmother, recorded in the Huitoto language, urging them to stop moving to make them easier to locate.

After they were found, their grandfather, Fidencio Valencia, called on the authorities to allow the children to be moved closer to their family in Villavicencio, roughly 80 miles from Bogota.  "I am asking the president as the highest authority, I am sorry to bother him, but it is my right and my duty, it is my blood, it is my family. I want to see the children, here in Villavicencio," he said in an interview.

 

Trump Criminal Charges: Bed, Bath and Beyond

 Yesterday, DOJ's special prosecutor unveiled stunning felony charges against Donal Trump.  So serious are the seven charges he is facing – including obstruction of justice and the willful retention of national defense secrets – that he could in theory receive a 100-year jail term.

Other politicians, including presidents Obama and Biden and former vice-president Mike Pence, were found to have had classified documents but didn't face prosecution because they gave them up as soon as they were found. The crucial difference is that Trump denied having documents stored in his resort of Mar-a-Largo in Florida.

And we're not talking a few papers or folders here and there-- Trump illegally hoarded over 11,000 documents, many of which were classified top secret, containing details of U.S. agents abroad.  The material was moved around and stored in boxes in his bedroom, a bathroom/shower, a ballroom, and a storage area in the basement of his Florida resort.  Among other places, Trump kept sensitive documents in a storage room, a bathroom with a shower at Mar-a-Lago, a ballroom stage that visitors could access, as well as in a business center at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Among the many disclosure, several stand out.

In handling his trove of sensitive documents, Trump repeatedly exposed classified material to people who had no authority to view it and who had not been vetted. In the two instances where Trump knowingly shared classified military documents with other people, none of the other people involved had security clearances or other government approval to view those documents.

In December 2021, Trump’s aide Walt Nauta found that several boxes of documents in a storage room had fallen, spilling materials onto the floor. One of them was marked as only for officials with the Five Eyes intelligence-gathering alliance: the U.S., Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.  Nauta took photos of the spill (one of which showed classified information) and texted them to a colleague. “Oh no oh no,” the colleague texted back.

In July 2021, Trump held a meeting at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, with some of his staff and writers working on an autobiography of his former chief of staff Mark Meadows. Trump agreed that the meeting could be recorded.  During the taped conversation, Trump talked about military plans relayed to him by the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.  Trump then acknowledged that the material he was talking about was not declassified, saying: “As president, I could have declassified it ... Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.” 

Trump also sought to conceal the boxes of classified material, and encouraged keeping documents hidden.  “I don’t want anybody looking, I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes, I really don’t, I don’t want you looking through my boxes,” Trump said, according to one of his attorneys.  “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?” he asked, according to the same attorney.  The same attorney also said Trump made a nonverbal suggestion that the attorney take a folder with him and pull out possibly damaging documents.  “He made a funny motion as though — well okay why don’t you take them with you to your hotel room and if there’s anything really bad in there, like, you know, pluck it out. And that was the motion he made. He didn’t say that,” the attorney recalled, according to the indictment.

Trump hoarded documents relating to a vast swath of national security issues, including America’s nuclear capabilities and data about U.S. and allied vulnerabilities and possible responses to foreign attacks. In addition to the CIA, Trump kept documents that came from the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office and the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. The indictment also includes charges against Trump’s aide, Nauta, on five of those counts, plus a single count of making false statements and representations against Nauta alone.

Trump is up against a crack prosecution team led by doggedly determined special counsel Jack Smith, whose thoroughness of approach is reflected in the way he ensured that every chambermaid and cleaner at Mar-a-Lago was interviewed under oath so they would be in no position to change their story when the case came to the trial. Trump also suffered a devastating setback when his lawyers lost their right to plead attorney-client privilege because they provided false information about the classified material to the Justice Department. Their testimony will now form part of the prosecution.

 

Nelly Furtado - Eat Your Man

Not Banned in Florida

Shock Announcement: PGA Tour Now Owned by the Saudis

Yesterday came the shock news that the PGA Tour would be "merging" with the LIV Tour, which is owned by the murderous Saudi regime.  After months and months of unprecedented rancor, mudslinging, litigation and burned friendships, the PGA and DP World Tours accepted they were better together with the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF).

The use of the word "merger" is disingenuous at best.  In reality, the PGA Tour would fall under a corporate holding structure that is 100% funded by the Saudi PIF, and no one else would be allowed to invest in the entity. The corporate holding structure would be run by PIF's Yasir Al-Rumayyan as well. So, in essence, the PGA Tour would be wholly owned by the Saudis.

Critics of Saudi Arabia's human rights record regard the deal as another tawdry extension of sports-washing.  The PGA, DP, European and LIV tours will be run together in a profit-making venture.  The tours themselves will continue with their 2023 schedules, but the new commercial reality means future calendars will be heavily altered. While there is now peace between rival factions, there will still be plenty of turmoil ahead.

Many players are furious after staying loyal to the established tours by turning down lucrative offers to go to LIV.  Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy (the faces of the the PGA's fight with LIV Golf's chief Greg Norman) were not told in advance of the deal and have so far not commented publicly.

The fact neither figure knew of the deal being brokered is another extraordinary facet in this stunning development.  PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan revealed it was seven weeks in the making and involved only a tight-knit group of officials. "There were four in-person meetings and a number of video calls and phone conversations," Monahan said.  "When you get into these conversations and given the complexity of what we were dealing with, it's not uncommon that the circle of information is very tight."

The new company will be chaired by PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan, with Monahan as CEO and an executive committee that will include PGA Tour policy board chairman Ed Herlihy and board member Jimmy Dunne.  According to Monahan it was Herlihy and Dunne who were involved in the initial talks to broker the deal. Less than two months later Monahan was sharing a television studio couch with his new business partner Al-Rumayyan.

The PGA Tour commissioner's change of direction is astonishing given his criticism of the Saudi regime when LIV was regarded as a hostile "existential threat" to the US circuit.  "I recognize everything I've said in my past positions," Monahan admitted. "I recognize people are going to call me a hypocrite. Anytime I said anything, I said it with the information I had in the moment."

He now has to win over his players and formulate a future that includes the DP World Tour, which has to stall its plans to reveal a revamped 2024 schedule.  Right now, no-one knows how that will look across the golfing globe. Somehow the competing interests of the three circuits involved have to be accommodated, and the European tour will do well not to feel further marginalized.  It has no board representation with the new entity, although chief executive Keith Pelley says he is confident that will change.

With peace declared, potential scope for interchangeability between circuits and more substantial television deals, the LIV team concept could become a lot more attractive.  It is also a bonus for all sides that legal proceedings against each other have ceased. The process of discovery was not attractive for LIV and the cost implications for the PGA Tour were also significant.  The deal also potentially eases pressure on the Ryder Cup. It will, surely, be easier to accommodate last month's US PGA Championship winner Brooks Koepka and other leading lights from LIV in the US team.

Frameworks to reintegrate those who jumped ship are being worked out. They will no doubt involve financial penalties and in Europe's case the punishments deemed fair and proportionate by an independent arbitration panel in April will stand.  But the fact the two sides are no longer at war should make it easier for the likes of Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter and Graeme McDowell to rejoin the tour and regain a chance of future Ryder Cup roles.

LIV frontman Norman - such a big player in these golf wars - was absent from the announcement. It has been reported that he is unlikely to be involved in the new partnership.  "A great day in global golf for players and fans alike," the Australian former world number one tweeted. "The journey continues."

But whether Norman will be on board remains to be seen. Both Woods and McIlroy - who is due to speak today before defending his Canadian Open title, said they could only do business with LIV if its commissioner stood down.   As Monahan stated, "circumstances change" and it seems they will continue to evolve at a rapid rate in the coming days and weeks. His next challenge is to win over his players - they are tour loyalists but their loyalty to him is being tested.

 

Back in the 60's, the CIA Mixed LSD and Sex at a San Francisco Brothel

In a shocking expose on SFGate, details have come to light about an 8-year CIA operation where (between 1955 and 1963), federal agents ran a hidden brothel in one of San Francisco’s poshest neighborhoods and tested LSD on unsuspecting Bay Area residents. The apartment building is still there, although it has been converted from a CIA brothel into a four-story mansion worth over $10 million.

At the center of this wildly unethical program was George Hunter White, a former San Francisco journalist-turned-cop who became one of the biggest crusaders of America’s early war on drugs. In public, he railed against drug use and ruthlessly investigated jazz legends like Billie Holiday. Privately, however, he drank martinis by the pitcher and even used drugs like LSD and marijuana.

White was the federal agent responsible for a top-secret CIA program called “Operation Midnight Climax.” The CIA thought it could use hallucinogenic drugs like LSD as weapons of war against its enemies. To find out, the agency got Bay Area residents high without their consent.

White outfitted rooms inside a Telegraph Hill apartment building, at 225 Chestnut St., into a safe house for testing LSD. He gave sex workers get-out-of-jail-free cards in exchange for luring unsuspecting johns to the apartment, where the men were dosed with acid while White watched from the other side of a one-way mirror.

Operation Midnight Climax is now an infamous example of government abuse, but in White’s opinion, according to a letter unearthed by John Marks in his 1979 book “The Search for the 'Manchurian Candidate,'” it was nothing but “fun, fun, fun.”  “Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape, and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest?” White asked.

 

It's Happened to All of Us

Film Review Sites Faking Their Ratings?

The latest Disney live-action remake of an animated classic,“The Little Mermaid”, might not be as well-regarded by audiences as we were led to believe-- and it appears that review sites are providing cover for the Disney flick.

Film industry reporters have been blogging about whistleblowers from sites such as Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes and Internet Movie Database. Apparently, IMDB activated an “alternate weighting calculation” to compensate for alleged “unusual activity” in reviews for “The Little Mermaid”. The IMDB page warns visitors, “Our rating mechanism has detected unusual voting activity on this title. To preserve the reliability of our rating system, an alternate weighting calculation has been applied.” A true average of the ratings gives ‘Little Mermaid’ a 4.6/10 from audiences, while the “official” weighted average gives the film a 7/10 rating. That’s a big difference.

Of course, the obvious reason for them to behave in this manner is to combat the inevitable “review-bombing” that was going to occur against the film, which was due to the casting of Ariel with black actress Halle Bailey. This “review bombing” campaign, according to IMDB, led to more than 40% of the film’s ratings being one-star ratings, spanning multiple countries. So, if there was a campaign to downgrade the film’s rating, it did not just exclusively occur in the United States, but rather in dozens of countries across the globe.

Its not just IMDB. Rotten Tomatoes seem to have also adjusted their user ratings to boost “The Little Mermaid.” Forbes noticed the anomalies and wrote a whole piece about it. According to that article, The live-action remake of The Little Mermaid is now scoring much higher with audiences than the 1989 animated classic, which sits at 88% with audiences and 92% with critics. Are we to believe that moviegoers love the remake even more than the original? That certainly wasn’t the case with Beauty and the Beast, which fared better with critics and audiences as a cartoon by a wide margin.

“The Little Mermaid” currently has a 56% user rating when compared to the 95% score from its “verified audience.” Rotten Tomatoes picked and chose the reviews they deemed acceptable for the film. Not a very democratic way to conduct the aggregate. So, what’s happening? The theory is that these review aggregate sites want to protect themselves from the race-swapping casting backlash. However, these sites are artificially creating the impression that the film is universally liked.

Then again, if you’re not “cooking” the books like RT and IMDB are doing and are instead, honestly, counting every user “review” then the result will be what Metacritic has tallied: a user score of 2.2/10. What the likes of Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic can’t really control is publication reviews. Critics have been more lukewarm towards the film — “The Little Mermaid” has a 68 on Rotten Tomatoes and 59 on Metacritic. 

 

Beyonce and Kendrick Lamar - America Has a Problem

What Exactly is This Postman Delivering?