The death toll from the collapse of a factory complex in Bangladesh passed 500 Friday as the prime minister said Western retailers had to share some responsibility for the plight of garment workers. It also emerged that an engineer who had warned that the building may be unsafe before it imploded…
Here’s the most ignorant Jason Collins column ever
Brian Nielsen is the sports editor of the Journal Gazette and Times-Courier in Mattoon, Ill.Earlier today the paper posted this column he wrote about Jason Collins becoming the first active gay player in the NBA — and it might well be the most foul, ignorant and reprehensible piece of journalism written on Collins.Here are the essential claims Nielsen makes, followed by the direct quotes from his piece:Collins is making a lifestyle choice, and it’s comparable to the lifestyle choice to have many children with many different mothers:”Years ago Jackie Robinson fought a courageous, pioneering battle — a battle that was unfair for a man to have to fight just because he was born with a certain color of skin. To compare the plight of Collins with his own lifestyle choice to Robinson’s should really insult Jackie’s family today. It even bothers me. Still we have people calling Collins a pioneer. I never heard that, and rightfully so, when NBA player Shawn Kemp had fathered several illegitimate children with different women.”Continue Reading… … Read More
Israel Breaks Signed Agreement to End Prisoner Hunger Strikes
Gavan Kelly: This year’s Prisoner Day marked by hunger strikes of Palestinian prisoners who pay a heavy price in order to raise awareness of their plight … Read More
Israel Breaks Signed Agreement to End Prisoner Hunger Strikes
Gavan Kelly: This year’s Prisoner Day marked by hunger strikes of Palestinian prisoners who pay a heavy price in order to raise awareness of their plight … Read More
Protesters demand Obama close Guantanamo Bay prison
Rights activists across the United States held a series of protests on Thursday demanding the closure of Guantanamo Bay as a hunger-strike at the jail entered a third month. In a day of action aimed at drawing attention to the plight of prisoners at the facility, demonstrators — many wearing…
Scheming baby chicks blackmail doting parents for food: study
Fledglings of a southern African bird species threaten suicide to blackmail their parents into bringing them more food, scientists said Wednesday. When hungry, pied babbler fledglings flutter from the nest to the ground, where predators roam, and start screeching to highlight their plight, said a…
The spaceship poetry of Iain M. Banks
If the Scottish writer Iain M. Banks was a character in one of his own “Culture” science fiction novels, the shocking news that he had contracted terminal gall bladder cancer would be greeted with a shrug. In the Culture, medicine has advanced to the point where boredom is a far trickier challenge than mortality. In the incredibly gracious note revealing his plight posted by Banks to his own website, he noted that “the speed with which the resources of the [National Health Service] in Scotland have been deployed – has been exemplary, and the standard of care deeply impressive.” But in the Culture, health care has been solved.Also solved: the economy. No one has to worry about making a living in the Culture. If one wanted, like Banks, to spend one’s time producing (at a prodigious rate) science fiction romps (as Iain M. Banks) and straight-ahead non-sf novels (as Iain Banks) ,one could do so as long as one wished, without ever having to worry about whether there was a market for them.Continue Reading… … Read More
