This morning, the not-so-subtly pro-settler, pro-war Times of Israel published an op-ed explaining that genocide is okay when the victims are Gazans. The paper quickly thought better of it, and took down the piece. We saved it here in its entirety, because it's an important window into a terrible mindset.
Rwandans light candles of remembrance and listen to religious speeches and music at a ceremony in Kigali, Rwanda, on Monday. Thousands of Rwandans packed the country's main sports stadium to mark the 20th anniversary of the beginning of a devastating 100-day genocide. Image via Ben Curtis/AP.
George Clooney was arrested today at the Sudanese embassy in Washington D.C. as he led a protest against Sudan's genocidal president, Omar al-Bashir. (The guy next to him is his dad.) You know Joseph Kony is so jealous. "Aw man, Omar gets Clooney and all I get is this random white dude and his kid."
As many as eight mass graves have been dug since June in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, according to Satellite Sentinel Project, a group funded by George Clooney that monitors the region using satellite imagery. Two sites have been dug this week alone, based on their analysis of the pictures, which also contain evidence of body bags and bulldozers used to dispose of corpses.
There are many perils to life in Congress: the humidity, town halls yelling... But worst must be when screw-loose ex-staffers go over to the opposition and accuse you of betraying your country to Turkey while having a lesbian affair.
A new study claims that Columbus introduced syphilis to Europe from the New World, but it was those decadent Europeans who made it sexually transmitted. "It's especially neat when I think about contacts between Europeans and Native Americans," Researcher Kristin Harper said. "As far as diseases go, it seemed like a one-way street: Europeans brought measles and smallpox (to the Indians). But this is an example of disease going the other way. That seems kind of fair." Sure. Europe wiped out 100 million people and the Indians made a couple Ibsen characters go mad. Fair's fair! [Yahoo]
Don't pretend the low ratings for Sunday's 60 Minutes segment about Facebook say anything meaningful. Tech blog Silicon Alley Insider concluded that the world at large doesn't care about Facebook, but that's an unfair assumption. The awkward interview with site founder Mark Zuckerberg and a description of a site mostly geared toward college students may not have been the best material for the show's aging audience, but how many of them were even tuned in after the preceding segment, which explored rape and genocide in the Congo? It feels good to draw an obvious conclusion — Surprise! Old people don't care about Facebook — and I can sympathize with anyone squeezing a blog post out of a fake analysis. But the exercise is utterly useless when there's a more obvious answer.
Thanks to our Native American friends for the glorious tobacco plant, a gift to the white man that, in its way, has been almost as damaging and just as wonderful as our chief handsel to our red brothers, delicious alcohol. Way to go guys! Now get to work on your own versions of smallpox, forced relocation, and genocide.
For whatever reason, 23/6, the long-gestating humor blog collaboration between Barry Diller's IAC and The Huffington Post, has gone live on the HuffPo website. (The 23/6 domain itself remains password-protected.) The production has been described as "an online alternative to NBC's 'Saturday Night Live' or Comedy Central's 'The Daily Show'" but if what we're seeing here is any indication, we're pretty sure that Lorne Michaels isn't exactly crapping his pants in fear right now. Every joke feels strained, obvious, and rewritten to the point that all the humor has been drained from it (which is, we guess, the "Saturday Night Live" model): The whole thing makes VH1 webortion 24Sizzler read like a model of Lenny Bruceian comedic brilliance, and that site is such a disaster that the mentally retarded are suing to ensure that no one thinks they're its intended audience.
