- The NFL isn't in the business of making friends. It’s more
in the habit of fining people ridiculous amounts of money for petty sh*t that
no one actually cares about except the biggest sports league in the United
States because it can squeeze those under its thumb for money on account of
them. The league dings players for what they say, what clothes they wear and
even how they act, but the latest fine Roger Goodell and his crew handed out
might be the most moronic in a long time. It seems that San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick made a big mistake on
Sunday after a win over Kansas City, with that big mistake taking the form of
daring to wear a pair of headphones he procured on his own, by legal means, to
a postgame press conference. Why was that a problem? Not because a dude with
noise-canceling headphones is bad for the league’s image and doesn’t project
accessibility at his meeting with the media. Nor was Kaepernick fined $10,000
because his headphones were bright pink. No, he was dinged for that money
because he dared to wear Beats by Dre headphones around his neck after the NFL
signed an exclusive agreement with Bose. Yes, the league feels it has the right
to tell its employees how they can access their music while at work. Never mind
that the headphones were pink as a way to salute the cause of breast cancer
awareness because the NFL is all about kowtowing to its endorsers and doesn’t
care how much it must invade the lives of its players to make that happen.
Asked whether Beats, with whom he has an endorsement deal, paid his fine,
Kaepernick played coy. "I'm going to let that be unanswered," he said………
- Who’s in the market for a ghost town in the Nutmeg State? If
you’re in the market, then Johnsonville is the place for you. It has a general store, a
meeting house and a post office… but no residents. It was once a thriving
village built by workers at the nearby Neptune Twine Mill in the mid-1800s, but
it is now completely empty. Residents of nearby towns pass through the
Victorian style village in East Haddam regularly, but no one ever feels the
need to stay. In addition to the stores, meeting house and post office, the
town also boasts two churches, a school house and Victorian homes surround what
appears to be the town green. The town was last occupied in the 1960s, but it
has died a slow death and at one point, its 62 acres were bought and
transformed into a Victorian village. In 2001, the town was sold again, but it
didn’t become anything and now, a real estate agent is hawking the property and
hoping someone will bite. Johnsonville has a total of eight parcels of land and
eight buildings, including the Emory Johnson homestead, which once belonged the
town’s founder. Johnson owned the local mill and he was around when the pond,
covered bridge and barn on his property came to be. The one enticing factor in
the process is the town’s past links to a Billy Joel music video and a Cuba
Gooding Jr. movie, but that’s about it. There are ghost stories aplenty, but
those don’t typically sell many tracts of land. A two-day online auction will
begin Oct. 30 and based on the sale process up to this point, there isn't going
to be an online fistfight for this one………
- The final brick is about to be put in the wall for Pink
Floyd. The aging rockers have confirmed that their new album, “The Endless
River,” will be their final one. Yes, it’s ironic that an album about a river
that never ends will close out the career of a rock band that has become both
iconic and irrelevant to a younger generation of music fans, but it just might
be time for the “Dark Side of the Moon” auteurs to hang it up. The album
doesn’t feature former bassist Roger Waters, who left the band in 1985 and issued an angry
statement about his lack of involvement in the new project via his Facebook
page. Waters made it clear he has nothing to do with the album and that he is
no longer a member of the band, telling people to "get a grip.” Two of the
remaining members, Nick Mason and David Gilmour, are promoting the album, which
is set to drop next month. “This is the last thing that'll be out from us,”
Gilmour said. He was asked if there is unreleased material tucked away, waiting
to be release and insisted there was none. "Well, Rick (Wright)'s gone,
dead. I'm pretty certain that there will not be a follow up to this. Polly, my
wife, thought that would be a very good lyrical idea to go out on. It's a shame,
but this is the end,” he added. “I have a little bit of Rick playing from my solo
stuff that will hopefully appear on my next solo album, but not a Pink Floyd
album.” They wouldn’t be the first past-their-prime rock band to claim
retirement only to double back when they found life outside the spotlight too
cold and anonymous, but with just a fraction of the original band left and
their joints, muscles and voices no longer up to rocking out all the time, this
looks like the end for real………
- Saudi Arabia isn't an intolerant,
oppressive place where the rights and voices of the average man is trampled by
a government that has no tolerance for dissent, right? It may not look like
Yemen or Iran from the outside, but Amnesty International says it’s time for a
closer look. According to the international activist group, the Saudi
government is waging a "systematic and ruthless campaign of
persecution" against peaceful activists in order to silence criticism of
the state in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings. In a new 20-page
report, titled "Saudi Arabia's ACPRA: How the kingdom silences its human
rights activists," AA lays out the cases brought against 11 members of the
Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association. The group, widely known by its
Arabic acronym HASEM, is reportedly under attack. "The Saudi Arabian
authorities have targeted the founding members of ACPRA one by one, in a
relentless effort to dismantle the organization and silence its members, as
part of a broader crackdown on independent activism and freedom of expression
since 2011," the report said. AA claims the government has also responded
with force to protests for greater political rights, particularly those led by
members of the country's Shiite minority. It also alleges that security forces
have used ill-treatment and torture against political detainees to help the
powers that be “consolidate their iron grip on power through a systematic and
ruthless campaign of persecution against peaceful activists in a bid to
suppress any criticism of the state in the aftermath of the 2011 Arab uprisings.”
Eight out of the 11 main members of HASEM are detained under the power of the absolute
monarchy and 90-year-old King Abdullah. The kingdom stalks its citizens on
social media and in a country with no elected parliament and little written law,
it’s a real recipe for simmering dissent that will eventually boil over. Oh,
and there is no independent media, no independent political parties and no
independent judiciary, so making it a crime to communicate with international
rights and aid groups can go on without much push back. Ditto for the
sentencing of rights lawyer Waleed Abul-Khair, who helped found a group called
Monitor of Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, to 15 years in prison for allegedly undermining
the regime and officials, inciting public opinion and insulting the judiciary.
Keep it up, Saudi Arabia, and only the Americans at the mercy of your oil whims
will still be your friends…….
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