Saturday, May 16, 2015

Russia v. outsiders, Argentine soccer chemical warfare and Asians attack Harvard


- Sometimes, entertainment is so eclectic and bizarre that you can't do anything but shake your head and enjoy it. It’s the only possible reaction when you hear that Odd Future rapper Tyler, The Creator will host a screening of Jon Heder’s 2004 cult classic, Idaho-based teen comedy “Napoleon Dynamite” at the Prince Charles Cinema in central London. None of those three entities is a natural fit with the other two and that’s what makes all of this so awesome. Tyler - who is currently on tour in the United Kingdom - announced news of the screening and an accompanying pop-up shop from 3 to 7 p.m. in an overly capitalized Instagram post: “TOMORROW LONDON! GOLF POP UP SHOP AND FIRST 300 GOLF SUBSCRIBERS GET INTO THE MOVIE THEATER TO WATCH NAPOLEON DYNAMITE, ALL WE DO IS SCAN YOUR BADGE ON THE APP AND YOU ARE IN! COME WATCH IT WITH THE BOYS.” Because there is nothing the Brits love better than loud, combative Americans and low-end American cinematic humor, this event is clearly the sort of thing that needs to happen more often. Even if it was mostly an excuse to draw fans out to the Odd Future pop-up shop at the same venue, the idea of watching one of the most underrated comedies of the current century with some of the most overrated rappers in the game today is something that needs to happen a lot more often than it does, which is currently once in the history of humanity……… 


- One thing America is never lacking for is the next great disenfranchised minority looking for its slice of whatever pie members feel they are being wrongfully deprived of. Today’s embittered minority is Asian Americans, or at least Asian Americans whose goal is spending a quarter of a million dollars on one of the most prestigious educations known to man. Yes, a small but vocal group of Asian Americans are complaining that Harvard University and other Ivy League schools are using racial quotas to admit other students instead of high-scoring Asians. Set aside your trite stereotypes of all Asians being smart and wondering what the problem is here and realize that these aren't just Asians from one particular country. No, the case includes more 60 Chinese, Indian, Korean and Pakistani groups who have filed a complaint with the civil rights offices at the Justice and Education departments. These angry Asians want an investigation and the cessation of what they claim is the use of racial quotas or racial balancing in admission. In response, Harvard says its approach to admissions has been found to be "fully compliant with federal law." The fact is, federal law is so f*cked up that in this case, both sides could technically be correct. Oh, and Harvard claims that the number of Asian students admitted increased from 17.6 percent to 21 percent over the last decade. If anyone should really be complaining about who gets into Harvard, stupid people and poor people should probably be leading that charge……….


- Chemical weapons? Seriously, soccer? Sure, your lunatic fans are known to throw beer and lit road flares at players on the field during games and trying to burn down their own city afterward merely because their team won/lost, but since when is there a need to weaponize chemical elements in your quest to turn your already hooligan-ed up sport into actual warfare on the pitch? Let’s ask the ass hats who tried to bring a dose of the Gulf War to the Copa Libertadores round-of-16 match between bitter Argentine rivals Boca Juniors and River Plate. The match never officially finished, but it was definitely done after River Plate players were sprayed with a substance that seemed to affect their vision and irritated their eyes. Maybe fans were pissed that the first half of the match ended 0-0, but that’s the score of pretty much every soccer game, so that should have surprised no one. What was a stunner was seeing River players rubbing their eyes as they entered the field to start the second half through a makeshift tunnel, with some trying to wipe the irritant out of their eyes with their shirts. When it was clear that something unsavory was afoot, police and officials of both teams milled on the field for more than an hour before the match was suspended at Boca's La Bombonera stadium. River Plate won the first-leg of the two-leg series 1-0 last week, but Boca fans made sure their team would live on a bit longer. "It's sad," River coach Marcelo Gallardo repeated several times. "It's unbelievable what happened." Television footage showed a fan extend a hand through the flexible tunnel that shields players entering the field and seemingly spraying some kind of irritant in the latest instance of someone actually following through with the regular threats of violence that are inherent in Argentine soccer……….


- Foreign and international organizations operating in the Communist hell hole that is Russia, beware. Not that any foreigner in Vladimir Putin’s Russia can ever feel safe, but it’s getting pricklier now that the Russian parliament has given preliminary approval to legislation that would allow prosecutors to declare said foreign groups "undesirable" in Russia and shut them down. Handing Putin’s hand-selected legal stool pigeons carte blanche to shutter foreign aid groups is essentially signing a death warrant for any group that goes against the oft-shirtless despot’s wishes and it fits right in with an ever-widening campaign to stifle civil society and dissent in Russia that intensified when Putin began his third term in 2012. Since then, new laws have served to intensify pressure on non-governmental organizations, particularly those that receive foreign funding. Add in this new law and merely carrying out daily operations could become challenge for such outfits. The new measure would allow Russian prosecutors to declare an organization undesirable if it presented "a threat to the foundation of the constitutional order" of Russia, or a threat to its defense capabilities or the nation's security. In other words, prosecutors can shut down any group at any time for any bogus, fabricated reason they may construct. But hey, at least it was a close vote. Parliament's lower house passed the bill Friday in the crucial second reading with a vote of 442 to 3, so look for all three dissenters to have their parliament seats ripped from them, they and their families to either be executed by the country’s potent new Armata tank or shipped off to the most bitter gulag still in existence. Credit to those bold souls for daring to vote the right way on a law that really has no justification unless you’re being governed by an insecure, paranoid regime hell-bent on removing the elements of choice, free speech and freedom of thought from society’s lexicon. But hey, those new tanks are pretty bitchin’ and here’s betting that one of them could wipe out the office of any rogue foreign aid organization in less than half an hour……….

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