- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! It’s a multi-country affair in
northern Africa, where residents of Tunisia's two main border crossings
with Libya have begun a general strike to protest alleged excessive force by
police over the weekend in protests that left one person dead and several
others injured. The drama unfolded in Ben Guerdane, near the northern Mediterranean
crossing, and Tatouine, near the southern desert crossing, both of which have
been heavily impacted by the ongoing civil war in Libya. The border riots that don’t
actually involve angry locals wanting to repel illegal immigrants is a nice new
twist on the situation and on several levels, this is going to represent the
first real, substantial challenge for Tunisia's new government. Observers are
hailing it as a microcosm of the many economic and political obstacles standing
between Tunisia and what is commonly known as a stable government and
non-riotous population. The most immediate cause of these riots is the imposition
of new border taxes they claim are a major threat to the very cross-border
trade upon which the region depends. The riots may not have been massive in
size or the number of businesses looted/police cars overturned and
burned/number of tear gas canisters dispersed, but they are potent enough to
force the closure of schools, businesses and hospitals, some of which were shut
down not only because of the riots, but in support of them. It would seem that
having an unstable neighbor and having The Man reach even deeper into their
already-shallow pockets doesn’t sit well with the Tunisian populace, so here’s
to many more riots to come……..
- Give Carl Barât credit for coming up with some creative sh*t when it comes
to promoting his band’s new album. Barât realizes that there are dozens of new
albums dropping each week by bands of varying degrees of prominence, so if he
wants his new album with The Jackals to stand out, he needs to find an
innovative way to promote it. What’s he going with? How about a piano-playing
ghost? That’s right, Barât is saying that an apparition, a phantom from the
great beyond, is playing piano on one of the album’s tracks. Barât said early
versions of the track “We Want More” were recorded without a piano, but one
showed up on the recordings anyhow. "I eventually played piano on it. But
before that was added, the engineer pointed out there was a piano playing on
the song when there wasn't one in the room,” Barât said. “I'm hoping the ghost
of Liberace will turn up again when we play it live." That was the only
truly interesting tidbit from the promotional push for the project, as Barât
revealed that he decided to form The Jackals because he felt uncomfortable
making a new solo album and being "apologetic" about his music. "The
idea of going around the world with another solo album just seemed so
apologetic. Being solo is going, 'Guys, please listen to this,' and I'd rather
have a band where I can just smash it," he added. He claimed to have
eschewed playing guitar on his solo release because he wanted to diversify his
act from his time with his bands The Libertines and Dirty Pretty Things. Maybe
if the guitars were played by a ghost, it wouldn’t be so derivative and might take
Barât’s career in a whole new direction……….
- Evacuate the dance floor, Idaho Falls. No, seriously, you
need to get everyone the hell off the dance floor because crazy Annette Sisneros is going off and beating the holy hell out of
people with her high heels. According to Idaho Falls police, Sisneros has a few
issues with dance floor rage and those issues played out when she allegedly
attacked a fellow night club patron after the other dancer had the audacity to
bump into her during a show. Now, the eastern Idaho woman faces assault charges
in an attack that left her victim in the hosptial being treated for minor
injries. Idaho Falls police spokeswoman Joelyn Hansen said the victim was
struck in the head several times with a high-heeled shoe after bumping into
Sisneros. This is a scene that plays out at literally dozens of clubs and
concert venues of various sizes every week across the United States, with one
alcohol-fueled idiot deciding that someone bumping into them, stepping on their
new shoes, spilling a drink on them, looking the wrong way at their significant
other or doing something else deserving of nothing more than a head shake and
an expletive or two is worthy of a full-fledged, back-alley brawl. Not all of
them end with the attacker being charged with aggravated battery – just the
good ones. As for Sisneros, she remained in jail the following day and
presumably had been relieved of her heels/weapons so as to not allow her to
unleash another round of unbridled rage on any fellow detainees who didn’t have
any friends willing or able to bail them out of the pokey………..
- Soccer, welcome back. It’s been a little while since the
world got to bask in the glow of your sheer murderous idiocy, but like the scorpion
who stung the frog crossing the river and sealing their collective demise, you
are who you are and you can't help it. Thus, at least 19 people
were killed in a massive soccer stampede outside a Cairo stadium and now police
are trying to figure out who’s responsible. So far, Egyptian police have
arrested 21 soccer fan and are accusing them of attacking policemen, damaging
police cars and terrorizing the public, according to prosecutors. Prosecutor,
Mohammed Seif noted that none of the 21 had been formally charged with anything
yet, but that would seem to be merely a matter of time. The riot was a true
soccer classic, with police firing tear gas into a crowd of fans waiting in a
fenced, narrow corridor to try to enter the stadium in eastern Cairo. In the
ensuing melee, many fans were suffocated or were trampled in the deadliest act
of soccer-related violence in Egypt since 2012. The exact number of people
killed is up for debate, but what’s not debatable is that a police vehicle was
torched and the fact that no one can agree what actually happened that fateful day
or why. The public insists police abused their power and used excessive force,
while government officials defended the police tactics and alleged that the
force was used only to stop fans without tickets from trying to crash the gate.
Regardless of the details, Egypt's soccer league suspended its games nationwide
indefinitely following the violence. Public accusations of police using
excessive force on crowds and protests extends all the way back to the massive uprising
that forced Egypt's longtime leader Hosni Mubarak from power in 2011, but
seeing it married with the general madness of soccer is only fitting. Soccer
riots are a staple of the sport, although typically they come during games or
after the home team loses and its fans are looking to burn their city to the
ground……….
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