Saturday, May 27, 2017

Riot Watch! Myanmar conference edition, UFC games of title belt chicken and Linkin Park claps back


- Haven’t we reached a point where no one can rightfully claim to have been duped by a fortune teller? It’s 2017, after all, and anyone not savvy enough to know that the modern day versions of old ladies in tall hats staring into crystal balls and foretelling their future are scammers looking to pocket their cash while making it up as they go probably deserves to be parted from their cash. Therefore, a Florida man who claims he was hosed out of thousands of dollars and spurred a sprawling case that grew to include suckers who say the Tarpon Springs woman claiming to be a psychic scammed them out of $155,353 should be entitled to nothing, logic would say. Sure, authorities are asking that any additional victims come forward, but anyone with a shred of self-respect would ignore than invitation, although going to a psychic in the first place would suggest that a person is entirely devoid of self-respect in any form. The first victim approached detectives during a fraud awareness seminar hosted by the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office and after hearing what fraud is and how it happens, he apparently realized he had been scammed by Gina Wilson. According to the man, he began seeing her in 2015 to help with “emotional distress,” which is a bit like going to see a circus carney if you’re having medical issues. This sap was dumb enough to listen when Wilson instructed him to stop taking his prescribed medications, alter his bank accounts and stop seeing his therapist and doctor. For that advice, he paid Wilson approximately $92,000 before it began to sink in that maybe, just maybe, he was being scammed………


- Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington - the one who screams, not the one who raps - is realizing that it’s a bad look for a band’s frontman to verbally excoriate fans and threaten to assault and/or kill them for not liking said band’s new direction. Bennington is one half of LP’s frontman duo in which he and Mike Shinoda alternate screams (Bennington) and rapping (Shinoda) in virtually every song and he recently said in the wake of widespread criticism of the band’s pop-leaning new album ‘One More Light’ that fans pining for the band to return to their more metal sound heard on their debut album ‘Hybrid Theory’ needed to “move the fuck on.” Not only that, but the screamer said that he wants to “kill” anyone who calls his band “sell-outs” and will “punch them in the fucking mouth.” That prompted Slipknot‘s Corey Taylor to urge Bennington to “be grateful for what he has” and it seems that those wise words may have found their mark because Bennington took to Twitter to respond and (sort of) apologize. “Just heard Corey Taylor’s response to something I said in an interview and I agree with him. I do appreciate our fans… I’m human and sometimes take things too personally,” Bennington said. “Most of our fans have been very positive lately. Some… not so much. Either way… there is a lot of passion on both sides and I am grateful to all of our fans. Corey is a good dude and I appreciate him too… Time to recalibrate my perspective. So I say to all of our fans… Thank you and I love you all. Peace, love and happiness.” Great, now stop making electro-pop sh*t and get back to music that at least rocks a little bit and we’ll all be fine, C……..


- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! … at an annual Buddhist conference on the outskirts of Myanmar's biggest city? Nothing says uprising quite like thousands of Buddhist monks, nuns and supporters of an ultranationalist Buddhist group gathering despite being banned by the government. Ma Ba Tha, which might be phonetically funny to say, is no joke for the State Sangha Maha Nayaka, the country's highest Buddhist institution, which officially banned the group for motivating riots largely targeting Myanmar's Muslim minority. Furthermore, Ma Ba Tha was ordered to stop its activities and to take down its signboards nationwide by July 15, but the group isn't backing down and believes that despite the government deeming it an unlawful association, it refuses to be silenced or shut down. "According to their terms, our group is called an unlawful association, but we want you to know that our group will not be abolished," a senior monk from the group proclaimed at the conference. This is a crew rallying hard and rolling deep behind its high-profile leading monk, Wirathu, a man who rocks one name but many sides to his rage and under his leadership, Ma Ba Tha have been accused of summoning anti-Islamic preaching and stirring up mob violence in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, causing deaths of Muslims and destruction of their property. Though most of the victims are from the Rohingya Muslim minority in Rakhine state, Ma Ba Tha insists it’s simply misunderstood. "We just wanted to save our people, but maybe many people just want to die like dogs and pigs in the hands of the enemy," the monk said. The government threw down its ban after Buddhist hard-liners forced local authorities to shut down two Muslim schools in April and later confronted Muslim neighborhoods claiming to search for illegal Rohingya hiding in the area, but this fight has been going on for years and doesn’t appear to be ready to be put to rest any time soon……..


- The featherweight championship bout between the division’s first-ever and only champion, Germaine de Randamie, and Cris "Cyborg" Justino is now going to be that much better. Sure, Randamie (7-3) has stated, through her management, that she refuses to face Justino in the Octagon because Justino is a confirmed cheater who tested positive for the steroid stanozolol following a fight under the Strikeforce banner, and was suspended for one year in 2011, then tested positive for a banned substance again in 2016, but received a retroactive therapeutic-use exemption from the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) and was cleared of any wrongdoing. Randamie's manager Brian Butler is pushing the message that Randamie's first title defense will not come against Justino, noting along the way that despite added scrutiny following her first failed test, she still (allegedly) tried to cheat again and therefore, will always be someone looking to find ways around the rules in search of an unfair advantage inside a pill or needle. As Butler tells it, Randamie is willing to play a game of title belt chicken with UFC president Dana White and his crew, waiting them out to see if the UFC will strip her belt for refusing to fight Justino. All in all, it seems like a position someone might stake out if they were angling for more money in negotiations for a fight, or perhaps if they wanted to position themselves as some sort of upright crusader in defense of clean, un-drugged sports. Either way, the idea that Randamie is going forfeit her belt, a massive payday and the spotlight that comes with it in some sort of power play is laughable at best and outright lame at its worst…….

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