AMERICA’S LONGEST WAR: First Lady of Afghanistan Pushing for Increased Access to Education for Girls.. “Two-thirds of girls still kept home from school 16 years after fall of Taliban.”
Archive for 2017
October 31, 2017
THIS WOULD BE GOOD: Study identifies new biomarker for multiple sclerosis.
SAUL ALINSKY SMILES: Part III of Patrick Courrielche’s “Tinseltown Travelogue – a deplorable’s adventures in la la land” is online.
This politically incorrect movement has galvanized in a way that was unheard of just a few years ago. Instead of the Kum Ba Yah rallies of yesterday’s Tea Party, this new right prefers a more active approach. They bombard film reviews with negative grades, inundate show sponsors with calls to drop their advertising, and hit the most hate-filled celebrities with a flurry of boycott campaigns usually only seen coming from the left….The new right is beginning to use the tactics of the left – and most notably, they’re having fun doing it.
Read the whole thing. As Kurt Schlichter likes to say, the left is going to hate living under the rules they’ve created.
EXCUSES, EXCUSES: Hollywood’s man problem may be a matter of simple math.
Men overwhelmingly dominate nearly every portion of Hollywood, from movie sets to the corporate suites. Of the 100 top-grossing movies released last year, only five were directed by women, according to a USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism study. Men received nearly 87% of the screenwriting credits, the study found, and 79% of the producers were men.
And it’s not just movies. Men created three-quarters of the television shows that ran during the 2014-2015 TV season, USC found. And of the 1,550 executive positions in major entertainment companies, men filled more than 60% of them, and 80% of the highest-powered jobs.
A slew of studies, negative headlines and diversity programs has done little to budge the lopsided statistics.
“Hollywood is a big boys’ club — a big, white boys’ club,” said Jennifer Warren, chairwoman of the Alliance of Women Directors and a former actor and director. “Why would they want to change that? It’s not to their advantage.”
There are plenty of industries dominated by men where sexual manipulation, assault, and rape are not the norm.
The entertainment industry seems to be special.
NEWS I HOPE YOU DON’T NEED TO USE: Do You Live in One of the Most Sexually Diseased States?
BRUCE BAWER: Calling the Cops in Europe? Don’t Bother.
THE NEWS WE KEPT TO OURSELVES: Brian Stelter Skips Dan Rather in 22-Minute Interview on History of 60 Minutes.
Does that make Dan and Stelter apples or bananas?
Related: 60 Minutes’ Blind Love of Whistleblowers – Its track record is marked by a long history of overreach and sometimes outright fabrication.
(Classical reference in headline.)
PAUL CARON HAS A Richard Nixon moment. Should’ve crossed the street barefoot and made it a Paul McCartney moment!
IN HELL, THIS IS PLAYING ON AN ENDLESS LOOP: From 1976, The Paul Lynde Halloween Special – with special guests Kiss, Florence Henderson, and Pinky Tuscadero! – is dissected by James Lileks.
VENEZUELA: Leading opposition parties will boycott December vote.
Leaders from the Justice First, Popular Will and Democratic Action parties say the electoral system is biased.
Julio Borges, the leader of the Justice First party and president of the National Assembly, said the government of Nicolás Maduro had rigged elections in 2013 and earlier this month.
President Maduro insists the Venezuelan system is entirely trustworthy.
The nationwide gubernatorial elections of two weeks ago may have been tainted with fraud and intimidation. And last week in the country’s western Zulia state where the opposition managed to score a win, the Maduro-friendly legislature removed the opposition governor. Governor Juan Pablo Guanipa’s crime? “He refused to swear loyalty to an all-powerful national legislative superbody aligned with President Nicolas Maduro’s ruling socialists.”
IN THE MAIL: Now shipping, from Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter.
Plus, fresh Gold Box and Lightning Deals.
DEMOCRACY DIES IN DARKNESS: My USA Today column: Where were Hollywood and D.C. truth tellers with Harvey Weinstein and Mark Halperin? For people who keep telling us how fearlessly truthful they are, they sure have a lot of ugly “open secrets.”
PART II OF SARAH HOYT’S INTERVIEW OF AGILE AERO CEO JEFF GREASON: Why Get Off This Rock.
The now-familiar 2012 photograph of Alec Baldwin with James Toback interviewing Roman Polanski at the Cannes Film Festival has gotten another high-profile boost in visibility, with Baldwin and actress Asia Argento tweet-discussing the image.
“I found this pic of #romanpolanski #JamesToback and @AlecBaldwin last week,” Argento tweeted just before 2:30 pm ET today. “It’s so wrong it took me days to post it.”
Within an hour, Baldwin had responded, “But you realize I produced that doc and interviewed Roman BEFORE these recent allegations?”
“I do,” responded Argento. “I don’t blame you. I know it must feel awful to see yourself in that picture, not knowing you were chatting with 2 serial predators.”
C’mon — Baldwin had to know something about at least Polanski’s background, however, and he looks rather cheerful, as he banters with the two over croissants and coffee.
Related: Harvey Weinstein Set Off The Left’s Version Of The Televangelist Scandal.
CLEARING THE AIR OVER EPA SCIENCE ADVICE: EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is expected to announce today that the agency’s “independent” science advisors will no longer be allowed to receive agency grants. The vicious cycle incentivized by funding should be obvious. Here’s my colleague Will Yeatman with more on why this is so important.
ROGER KIMBALL: Nothing Burger With Wheeze.
REPLACING FRANCE’S STATE OF EMERGENCY:
The government wants to make some emergency measures permanent.
France’s state of emergency went into force overnight from November 13-14, 2015, following the deadliest terror attacks on French soil in modern history, when a series of coordinated shooting and bomb attacks left 130 people dead in and around Paris. Since then it has been extended a total of six times, making it France’s longest state of emergency since the measure was established in 1955.
On November 1, France is set to replace the state of emergency with a tough new anti-terror law that will permanently grant law enforcement agencies extended powers to search homes, close religious sites viewed as promoting radical ideas and restrict the movements of suspected jihadist sympathisers.
MORE:
In the two years since the state of emergency went into force, the interior ministry says it has prevented 32 terror attacks in France, 13 of them in 2017 alone.
Nevertheless, some plots have gone undetected. In all, 239 people have been killed in Islamist-related terror attacks in France over the past two years. According to the Paris-based Center for the Analysis of Terrorism, France is considered the No. 1 Western target for the Islamic State (IS) group and accounts for as much as 30 percent of the group’s foiled and successful attacks.
In all, more than 4,600 warrantless raids have been carried out, and which have been largely based on unconfirmed intelligence reports and anonymous tips. Some 80 percent of these searches – or about 3,600 – took place in the first six months following the November 13 attacks. In comparison, just 58 searches were recorded between July and November of this year.
AFP wrote the report.
SOME OF US HAVE BEEN SHOUTING INTO THE WIND ABOUT THIS FOR A VERY LONG TIME: Procurement a ‘mess,’ U.S. losing edge in aviation, space.
WHICH IS WEIRD, BECAUSE ALL I HEAR FROM THE POLITICAL PRESS IS THAT EVERYTHING IS AWFUL: U.S. Consumer Confidence Just Hit Its Highest Level in Almost 17 Years.
THE COLLAPSE OF THE POST-COLD-WAR OFFICIAL FUTURE.
In the United States for much of the last quarter century, the Official Future might be described this way: Domestically, the United States was destined to remain what it had always been: a two-party multicultural federalist democracy, dedicated to capitalism, technological optimism, and creating better lives for our children; likewise, internationally, the United States would remain the center of the global order as well as the world’s greatest military power, what Madeline Albright called “the indispensable nation,” dedicated to promoting economic growth, democracy, and human rights the world over.
As Schwartz pointed out, the Official Future always entails a certain degree of wishful thinking, and arguably self-delusion. When the assumptions embedded in the Official Future are named explicitly, we can readily recognize that they may not, in fact, be entirely reliable. The future, after all, is inherently uncertain, especially over the medium to long run. An unwillingness to challenge the assumptions of the Official Future can lead to strategic blindnesses. At the same time, however, the Official Future is a necessary form of delusion. It represents a kind of ideological glue that holds a collectivity together by defining a shared horizon of expectations. It makes social and political peace possible, and creates a basis for collective action.
Today in the United States, a year after Donald Trump’s improbable election, an event that the Official Future had declared was categorically impossible, the post-Cold War Official Future has collapsed. For better or worse, the aura of inevitability associated with old Official Future has evaporated.
Indeed it has.
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Marines to get Star Trek phaser-like device for nonlethal weapon option.
The Ocular Interrupter System is essentially a green light with a combined laser range finder that gauges shooter-to-target distance then adjusts the light to deter, but not blind, personnel, said Ryan Smith, team leader for force protection programs at Marine Corps Systems Command.
It can be mounted on a the M16/M4 rail system or used separately with a pistol grip, Smith said.
The Glare Recoil nonlethal Hail and Warning device was developed as a commercial off-the-shelf product by B.E. Meyers & Co., Inc., based in Redmond, Washington. It is a $49 million contract, according to the company’s website.
Marine requirements wanted a system to operate up to 500 meters. Company spokeswoman Grace Strong said in an email that the gear, “provides immediate and recognizable visual warning quite a bit farther than the stated 500 meters. It is, in actuality, effective to (more than) 25 kilometers.”
I’m looking forward to the Ocular Interrupter System II, which if high-powered enough will induce the full Scanners effect.