- Ah, the ages-old struggle between cultivators and herders
rages on. Those tensions are alive and well in the West African nation of
Niger, where officials say 18 people have been killed in fighting between
farmers and herders. The idea of agrarian folks clashing with shepherd’s staffs
and rocks on one side and hoes, rakes and shovels on the other may seem stuck
in time for those in developed nations, but the simple fact is that such drama
is not uncommon in parts of West Africa amid disputes over land. According to a
government statement, another 43 people were injured and homes were burned in
Tuesday's fighting in the community of Bangui in the Tahoua region, although a
combined 61 casualties and injuries places this one fairly low on the scale
when it comes to rural, impoverished people violently clashing over control of
land and trying to hack each other to death with crude weapons. On the upside,
this is still a far more advanced and thoughtful exchange than anything that
has taken place during the course of the ongoing American presidential
election, so rather than denouncing these furious farmers and hot-headed
herders, lets ask if there’s anything we can learn from them, or perhaps even
if they have a spare room into which we can move in the event that a certain
Republican presidential candidate manages to Jedi mind-trick enough Americans
into voting for him to actually put the first Oompa Loompa on Steroids in the
Oval Office……..
- Another day, another heinous act of violence by a college
football player. This one is especially heinous and it comes courtesy of
Oklahoma sophomore running back Joe Mixon, who showe a disturbing capability
for violence against inanimate objects this week and has suspended for Thursday
night's game at Iowa State because of it. Head coach Bob Stoops said Mixon had
been suspended for a team rules violation and didn't specify the infraction,
but apparently it stems from a horrific, terrifying scene of rage in which
Mixon was given a parking citation on the University of Oklahoma campus and
….well, sh*t went sour. "He was frustrated, as most of us are when we get
a ticket," Mixon’s attorney, Blake Johnson, said. "He tore the ticket
up in front of the parking attendant, and threw it on the ground." Oh no,
he didn’t….he tore up the ticket in front of some
fluorescent-yellow-vest-wearing dweeb walking around campus with one of those
handheld electronic ticket dispensers and threw the tattered ticket on the
ground? The reason this apparently became a thing is that the parking dork filed
a complaint with the OUPD after Mixon's reaction and therefore, a guy who leads
the Sooners in rushing with 813 yards and five touchdowns on 119 carries will
miss a game his team should win by five touchdowns with or without him. Mixon
issued a statement through the school in which he acknowledged that he
"did not respond appropriately to parking attendants and understand and
accept the consequences." Here’s hoping this bad seed learns a valuable
lesson about dealing with meter maids and can be a better person because of
it……..
- Normally, Utah isn't thought of as an angry place….unless
you make one too many uninformed polygamy jokes. But that wasn’t the case to
kick off this week as more than 100 activists gathered on Main Street in Salt
Lake City in protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Not large by protest
stages, this one nonetheless featured eight angry environmentalists arrested by
the time the demonstration ended. These bold tree huggers marched down Main
Street in front of the Wells Fargo Center, where some of them stormed into the
building shouting, "Water is life," and "Keep it in the soil,
you can't drink oil." Have you tried to drink oil? It might be the newest
dietary craze, right behind kale, Adkins, juice cleanses and quinoa. In this
case, the protesters were warned by police to leave or be arrested. In a show
of wishy-washy leadership, the protest leader responded by telling participants
if they didn't want to be arrested they should leave, but those willing to stay
should do so. Sadly, police were able to convince the weak-willed among the
group to leave, but nine said hell no, they wouldn’t go…and one of them was
issued a citation and then left, while the remaining eight told officers they
wanted to go to jail. Those not-so-hateful eight were arrested and booked into
jail for trespassing and failure to disperse, according to a watch log from
Salt Lake City police. A few demonstrators who planned ahead and brought
supplies chained and locked themselves together with a bike lock, but police
eventually used bolt cutters to release them from the locks. All in all, not an
especially memorable protest, but at least Utah is trying………
- It’s sad that a cast member for one of the best shows on
television was baited into a pointless war of words with the stuck-in-1950 ass
hats of the Parents Television Council. The PTC has bass-ackwardsly insisted
that the world remain locked in a time when ankle-length skirts and no
profanity were the way of Ward Cleaver’s world, taking on the evils of
everything from WWE to women who show more skin than two square inches in prime
time. The group’s latest target is “The Walking Dead,” AMC’s hit zombie-based
show whose first episode of season seven saw Abraham and Glenn bludgeoned to
death by Negan’s barbed wire baseball bat. Television Council president Tim Winter, sounding very much
like a failed writer, actor or both, claimed that the show had “resorted to the
graphic violence as a crutch,” adding that “Walking Dead” was guilty of
replacing earlier seasons’ “better storytelling” with “graphic depiction.” Not
done there, this conserva-Nazi took it a step further, suggesting that the show
should go away entirely or at least adhere to his draconian standards for
entertainment. “It’s not enough to ‘change the channel,’” Winter continued.
“Cable subscribers… are still forced to subsidize violent content.” Rahter than
ignore this ignorance because he’s a character on one of the top shows on
television and no one really gives a damn what Tim Winter or the PTC thinks,
“Walking Dead” actor Michael Cudlitz, who plays Abraham on the show, returned
fire. “We knew that was going to happen,” Cudlitz said of the response. “We
always knew that we were in a dangerous world, as far as the Walkers and the
uncertainty of what was going on. But I think that the uncertainty now has been
raised even higher.” He portrayed the violence as a shift in the show’s focus,
one where characters “literally have someone who will kill you for looking at
them the wrong way.” Executive producer Greg Nicotero, who directed the first
episode of the new season, previously expressed his desire to “capture” the
“horrifically graphic, senseless and brutal” moments from the graphic novel of
the same name’s 100th issue going forward, which means the PTC is going to want
to beat someone down with its own baseball bat before this season is over…….
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