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Jun. 2nd, 2013 03:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydion* 119 people are dead in a poultry plant fire in China. The employees were all locked in, so not only couldn't they escape, but the firefighters had a hard time getting in.
* There is massive flooding in central Europe. At least four are dead in Germany, with many evacuated. There's a national emergency declared in the Czech Republic. Austria an Poland are also being hit. It is unclear how many countries will be affected as it's still coming down. It's massively disrupting shipping on or near the Danube and the Rhine as well as breaking some bridges and rail lines.
* There have been violent protests in Turkey for four days. The protests started over a park being redeveloped, but the grievances likely run deeper. I'm seeing a whole lot of finger pointing from multiple sides. Please remember that Turkey is a Democracy and has been for quite a while; there is a lot of reporting out there from people who know nothing about Turkey beyond it's place on the map saying things that do not make sense. This is a different deal than what has been happening in other countries. I am seeing wildly disparate casualty figures so rather than picking a set at random, I'm leaving them off.
* There is now fighting on the Lebanese side of the Syrian border near Qusayr. It looks like some of the Gulf powers feel Hezbollah getting involved in the Syrian Civil war is a step too far and are threatening to intervene.
* Contemplate this: Walmart has 1.3 million employees. For them to have a living wage, it would cost the average Walmart shopper 46 cents. Alternately, the CEO makes 27 million dollars a year in salary, so he and the Walton family could make slightly less and it would have no effect on their lifestyle. Now imagine the economic benefit to the country of 1.3 million people suddenly making enough to live on. Instead, we have decided it's more logical to spend massive amounts of taxpayer money to subsidize Walmart's practice of not properly paying working in the form of Medicaid, EBT/SNAP, housing subsidies, etc., and take the hit to our economy that all those people not having money to by necessities causes.
* This week in Racism:
* "Police: Maine man staged kidnap that killed girl:" http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine/2013/05/29/police-maine-man-staged-kidnap-that-killed-girl/gAGFgLn39UhbwVWWW4MMjP/story.html
* "CIA Whistleblower who revealed Torture is still in Jail; Torturers walk Free:" http://www.juancole.com/2013/05/whistleblower-revealed-torturers.html
* "Michele Bachmann is gone, but her paranoid politics has become the norm for GOP:" http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/05/29/michele-bachmann-is-gone-but-her-paranoid-politics-will-live-on/
* "The Questions People Get Asked About Their Race:" http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/05/24/186513199/the-questions-people-get-asked-about-their-race?utm_source=news&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=20130530
* "Audrey's History Making Kenyan Case:" http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2013/06/audreys-history-making-kenyan-case.html
* While watching the Actor's Studio, I saw the creepiest thing I've seen since Costos interviewed Sandusky. She was talking about the damage that being sexualized at such a young age did to her and how she came to feel like her body wasn't her own as a young woman. He sat there talking about how turned on by her he was when she was fifteen even though he was an adult man at the time and then told a story about hw he tried to take her virginity by proxy when she was twenty two by selecting a pretty young soldier to be her escort. He then pressured her to tell if he "won the sweepstakes." Eeew, eeew, eeeew. There she was trying to be polite to this disgusting old man who's openly perving on her, but her body language suggested serious discomfort.
I admit, I'm a little sensitive to it as someone who started attracted adult male interest as seven, and who then had to deal with that increasingly intense interest for the rest of my growing up. While I didn't have to dodge pedophiles on an international scale, I have a whole lot of sympathy for what it must have survive and grow up into a reasonably functional adult under that pressure. She's so brave talking about the ways the male gaze fucked up her life, and it was really upsetting to see him ignore that in his single minded pursuit of his sexual agenda.
* "Once upon an over and over and over again..." http://seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com/512685.html
* "Volcano nerds will love Oregon’s Newberry Monument:" http://seattletimes.com/html/outdoors/2021082593_newberrymonumentoutdoorsxml.html
* "Holy Land for sale:" http://thismodernworld.com/archives/7894
* "Vintage embalming supplies:" http://pzrservices.typepad.com/vintageadvertising/2013/05/dont-judge-me-found-atagassiz-trading-vintage-embalming-fluid.html
* "Beachy Keen:" http://www.cakewrecks.com/home/2013/6/2/sunday-sweets-beachy-keen.html
* I have a new second most popular posting on Tumblr. It's that W. Kamau Bell quote about the Pope and Atheists of all things. 1362 notes at last count. Tumblr continues to baffle me. Why that quote?
* The Clutch:
This entry was originally posted at http://gwydion.dreamwidth.org/319212.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
* There is massive flooding in central Europe. At least four are dead in Germany, with many evacuated. There's a national emergency declared in the Czech Republic. Austria an Poland are also being hit. It is unclear how many countries will be affected as it's still coming down. It's massively disrupting shipping on or near the Danube and the Rhine as well as breaking some bridges and rail lines.
* There have been violent protests in Turkey for four days. The protests started over a park being redeveloped, but the grievances likely run deeper. I'm seeing a whole lot of finger pointing from multiple sides. Please remember that Turkey is a Democracy and has been for quite a while; there is a lot of reporting out there from people who know nothing about Turkey beyond it's place on the map saying things that do not make sense. This is a different deal than what has been happening in other countries. I am seeing wildly disparate casualty figures so rather than picking a set at random, I'm leaving them off.
* There is now fighting on the Lebanese side of the Syrian border near Qusayr. It looks like some of the Gulf powers feel Hezbollah getting involved in the Syrian Civil war is a step too far and are threatening to intervene.
* Contemplate this: Walmart has 1.3 million employees. For them to have a living wage, it would cost the average Walmart shopper 46 cents. Alternately, the CEO makes 27 million dollars a year in salary, so he and the Walton family could make slightly less and it would have no effect on their lifestyle. Now imagine the economic benefit to the country of 1.3 million people suddenly making enough to live on. Instead, we have decided it's more logical to spend massive amounts of taxpayer money to subsidize Walmart's practice of not properly paying working in the form of Medicaid, EBT/SNAP, housing subsidies, etc., and take the hit to our economy that all those people not having money to by necessities causes.
* This week in Racism:
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
* "Police: Maine man staged kidnap that killed girl:" http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine/2013/05/29/police-maine-man-staged-kidnap-that-killed-girl/gAGFgLn39UhbwVWWW4MMjP/story.html
* "CIA Whistleblower who revealed Torture is still in Jail; Torturers walk Free:" http://www.juancole.com/2013/05/whistleblower-revealed-torturers.html
* "Michele Bachmann is gone, but her paranoid politics has become the norm for GOP:" http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/05/29/michele-bachmann-is-gone-but-her-paranoid-politics-will-live-on/
* "The Questions People Get Asked About Their Race:" http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/05/24/186513199/the-questions-people-get-asked-about-their-race?utm_source=news&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=20130530
* "Audrey's History Making Kenyan Case:" http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2013/06/audreys-history-making-kenyan-case.html
* While watching the Actor's Studio, I saw the creepiest thing I've seen since Costos interviewed Sandusky. She was talking about the damage that being sexualized at such a young age did to her and how she came to feel like her body wasn't her own as a young woman. He sat there talking about how turned on by her he was when she was fifteen even though he was an adult man at the time and then told a story about hw he tried to take her virginity by proxy when she was twenty two by selecting a pretty young soldier to be her escort. He then pressured her to tell if he "won the sweepstakes." Eeew, eeew, eeeew. There she was trying to be polite to this disgusting old man who's openly perving on her, but her body language suggested serious discomfort.
I admit, I'm a little sensitive to it as someone who started attracted adult male interest as seven, and who then had to deal with that increasingly intense interest for the rest of my growing up. While I didn't have to dodge pedophiles on an international scale, I have a whole lot of sympathy for what it must have survive and grow up into a reasonably functional adult under that pressure. She's so brave talking about the ways the male gaze fucked up her life, and it was really upsetting to see him ignore that in his single minded pursuit of his sexual agenda.
* "Once upon an over and over and over again..." http://seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com/512685.html
* "Volcano nerds will love Oregon’s Newberry Monument:" http://seattletimes.com/html/outdoors/2021082593_newberrymonumentoutdoorsxml.html
* "Holy Land for sale:" http://thismodernworld.com/archives/7894
* "Vintage embalming supplies:" http://pzrservices.typepad.com/vintageadvertising/2013/05/dont-judge-me-found-atagassiz-trading-vintage-embalming-fluid.html
* "Beachy Keen:" http://www.cakewrecks.com/home/2013/6/2/sunday-sweets-beachy-keen.html
* I have a new second most popular posting on Tumblr. It's that W. Kamau Bell quote about the Pope and Atheists of all things. 1362 notes at last count. Tumblr continues to baffle me. Why that quote?
* The Clutch:
This entry was originally posted at http://gwydion.dreamwidth.org/319212.html. Please comment there using OpenID.