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Roger Waters dons keffiya to make a statement for the Palestinian cause at French Open

Emma Fiala
MintPress News
Tue, 12 Jun 2018 16:54 UTC
roger waters keffiyeh french open
© Michel Euler/Associated Press
British musician and member of the Pink Floyd band Roger Waters presents the trophy of the men’s final match of the French Open tennis tournament at the Roland Garros stadium in Paris, France, June 10, 2018.
Waters' wearing of a keffiyeh in the pubic eye may seem a small gesture in light of the impending threat from Israel, but his actions and willingness to be vocal and engage on the topic have brought the issue to the attention of countless people.

On Sunday, Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters and actress Lea Seydoux unveiled the Musketeers Cup at the French Open. The trophy was carried into Court Philippe Chatrier hidden in a brown box and unveiled by both Waters and Seydoux before play began.

Waters didn't let the opportunity pass without making a statement in front of fans and cameras. The musician, who has never been shy when it comes to his opinions on world politics and human rights, has a history of using his platform to send a message, either directly or indirectly. In the case of the French Open, Waters opted for a subtle approach when he donned a Palestinian keffiyeh during the ceremony.

Comment: Kudos to Roger Waters for standing up to the pressure of Israel. His voice is an important one.

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Moon

New Jersey sociology professor under investigation over claims moon landing was faked and promoting other conspiracy theories


Circa
Wed, 13 Jun 2018 00:00 UTC
Fake Moon landing conspiracy
School officials at William Paterson University are reviewing videos that show a professor telling students the moon landing was faked and promoting other conspiracy theories.


Freshman student Benny Koval, of Fair Lawn, says she raised concerns after sociology professor Clyde Magarelli said things in class that she says made her and others uncomfortable. Magarelli - who has taught at William Paterson since 1967 - did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Comment: Conspiracy theories about the Moon landing come up yet again

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Red Flag

Cyberbullying on the rise as 40% of American adults have experienced online abuse

Jessica Dolores
Natural News
Mon, 11 Jun 2018 17:01 UTC
social media
Cyberbullying is becoming more rampant, with experts saying that 40 percent of American adults have experienced some form of online abuse. In fact, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Bureau of Justice Statistics and Cyberbullying Research Center says that 52 percent of students have been cyberbullied. Yet, this same percentage of teens do not tell their parents they have been cyberbullied.

So why is cyberbullying on the rise?

Brain image studies from neuroscientist Molly Crockett's psychology lab showed that the reward center in people's brains shifts to high gear when they respond to moral outrage. The behavior makes them feel good, so people tend to express moral outrage again. Challenging social norms entails risks because people may direct their anger on the attacker. But Crockett's lab found that it also boosts the attacker's reputation.
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Smoking

'Pretty coercive': Alaska legislature expands smoking ban to include bars, restaurants, and taxis

Benjamin Dietderich
The Heartland Institute
Wed, 13 Jun 2018 16:42 UTC
No smoking
© Reuters
The Alaska Legislature approved a bill that would prohibit the use of cigarettes and e-cigarettes in privately owned spaces such as bars, restaurants, and taxis

Senate Bill 63 would expand the state's ban on tobacco use in government-owned spaces to include the interior and immediate exterior of many businesses.

The Alaska Senate approved S.B. 63 in March 2017. The state's lower chamber approved the bill in May 2018 and sent it to Gov. Bill Walker for consideration.

Lost in the Smoke

Ninos Malek, a professor of economics at De Anza College, says the rights of property owners typically get ignored in debates about smoking bans.
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Chess

The key word to focus on in the Trump-Kim show

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
Wed, 13 Jun 2018 16:25 UTC
US Air Force F-16 fighter jet
© Agence France-Presse/ Kim Hong-ji
US Air Force F-16 fighter jets take part in a joint drills at Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, South Korea last December. The war games are set to end, but will the US fully withdraw from the peninsula?
By reaffirming the Panmunjom Declaration, the US President has committed to bringing its military back from South Korea and thus a complete denuclearization of the South as well as the North

The Trump-Kim geopolitical reality-TV show - surreal for some - offered unparalleled entries to the annals of international diplomacy. It will be tough to upstage the US President pulling an iPad and showing Kim Jong-un the cheesy trailer of a straight-to-video 1980s B-grade action movie - complete with a Sylvester Stallone cameo - casting the two leaders as heroes destined to save the world's 7 billion people.

Away from the TV, the former "Rocket Man", now respectfully recast in Trump terminology as "Chairman Kim", did strike a formidable coup by completely erasing the dreaded acronym CVID - or "complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization" - from the final text of the Singapore joint statement.
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Cut

Plan to split California into three states gains momentum as initiative qualifies for November ballot


Liberty Headlines
Tue, 12 Jun 2018 00:00 UTC
California split
California's 168-year run as a single entity, hugging the continent's edge for hundreds of miles and sprawling east across mountains and desert, could come to an end next year - as a controversial plan to split the Golden State into three new jurisdictions qualified Tuesday for the Nov. 6 ballot.

If a majority of voters who cast ballots agree, a long and contentious process would begin for three separate states to take the place of California, with one primarily centered around Los Angeles and the other two divvying up the counties to the north and south. Completion of the radical plan - far from certain, given its many hurdles at judicial, state and federal levels - would make history.

It would be the first division of an existing U.S. state since the creation of West Virginia in 1863.


Comment:

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Handcuffs

Child sex offender sting nets in arrest of 2,300 suspects including Secret Service employee


RT
Thu, 14 Jun 2018 16:29 UTC
handcuffed man
© Boris Roessler / Global Look Press
A three-month operation has resulted in the arrest of more than 2,300 suspected child sex offenders, including a Secret Service employee, the Justice Department has announced. The investigation also identified 383 abused children.

The nationwide operation, dubbed "Broken Heart," ended in May. Conducted by Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) taskforces working in all 50 states, the operation was carried out by more than 4,500 law enforcement agencies at federal, state, local and tribal levels.

The operation targeted individuals suspected of producing or possessing child pornography, engaging in online enticement of children for sexual purposes, sex trafficking of children, and traveling across state lines or to foreign countries to sexually abuse children.
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Book 2

Postmodernism run amok: Author wins €100k literary award for writing one sentence, 270 page novel

Sian Cain
The Guardian
Wed, 13 Jun 2018 16:06 UTC
Mike McCormack

Author Mike McCormack
It's not often that an author described on his own Wikipedia page as "disgracefully neglected" is awarded a €100,000 literary prize. But this is where the Irish author Mike McCormack finds himself, with Wednesday's announcement that he has won the International Dublin literary award for his novel, Solar Bones. As someone who has hovered close to mainstream success without ever shaking off the slightly damning label of "writer's writer", he is unsurprisingly delighted.

"I don't feel neglected today. I don't know who put that Wiki page up, but I think whoever did will have to rethink that," he laughs. "I was shocked. I had completely given up hope that I was going to win it. But I'm over the shock now and enjoying myself - very much."

The International Dublin literary award, previously known as the Impac, operates with a slight air of mystery: a ridiculously long longlist (150 books this year) is picked by librarians around the world, from Barbados to Estonia, who hand their selection over to a panel of authors to bestow the grand boon on one unsuspecting writer.
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Magnify

Obama Admin. stenographer writes memoir detailing rampant drug use on Air Force One with plenty of cheating husbands and wives

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Thu, 14 Jun 2018 15:55 UTC
Beck Dorey-Stein

Beck Dorey-Stein, who admits she had a fling with a White House staffer Jason Wolf, who broke her heart
While we're way beyond debating whether or not Obama had a "scandal-free" administration as he claimed last January, the former President's stenographer, Beck Dorey-Stein, has come out of the woodwork with a new memoir, From the Corner of the Oval, which contains several shocking claims from her copious notes taken during her travel to over 60 countries over five years aboard Air Force One, reports the Daily Mail.

After answering an Obama administration's Craigslist ad for a stenographer, the then-25-year-old Dorey-Stein quit her five part-time jobs after she was hired to work in the White House in 2012 - joining a pool of 13 reporters from the White House press corps to travel with the president, recording everything he said and then transcribing it for the press office and presidential archive.

'Traveling with the president is like summer camp on steroids - a week on the road is like a year at home', Dorey-Stein writes.
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Airplane

Qantas Los Angeles to Melbourne flight sent into 10-second nosedive due to vortex caused by another aircraft


New York Post
Wed, 13 Jun 2018 20:18 UTC
Qantas airline
© David Gray / Reuters
Passengers have described the terrifying moment a vortex sent their Qantas flight into a 10-second "nosedive."

Hundreds of horrified travelers held hands ­believing they were about to die as the aircraft suddenly dropped over the Pacific Ocean on Sunday.

The dramatic ordeal afflicting passengers on the QF94 from Los Angeles to Melbourne is understood to have been caused by the vortex, or "wake turbulence" caused by another aircraft which took off just two minutes earlier.

QF94 passenger Janelle Wilson told The Australian the "three-quarters-full" plane suddenly entered a "free fall nosedive ... a direct decline towards the ocean" for about 10 seconds.

"It was between 1½ and two hours after we left LA and all of a sudden the plane went through a violent turbulence and then completely up-ended and we were nose­diving," Wilson told the newspaper yesterday.
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