Dispatches suggest that readers read a short poem by Kipling entitled "Arithmetic on the Frontier." Nothing's changed.
Marie Antoinette Award to Brazilian President Michel Temer, who has instituted a draconian austerity regime in one of the most unequal countries in the world, while ordering more than $400,000 in food for his official trips. That would include 500 cartons of Haagen-Dazs ice cream, almost a ton and half of chocolate cake, provolone, Brie and buffalo mozzarella for sandwiches, and 120 jars of Nutella spread. Public uproar was so great that the order was cancelled. However, Temer did host a taxpayer-funded steak and shrimp feed for 300 legislators in an effort to get their support for budget cuts. Temer ally Pedro Fernandez suggested that one way to save money on a program that feeds the poor for 65 cents a meal is to have them eat "every other day."
The Grinch Award had three winners this year:
- The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for demanding that Cambodia repay a $506 million debt to Washington for a Vietnam War-era program called Food For Peace. While USAID was handing out rice, wheat, oil and cotton to refugees, the U.S. military was secretly -- and illegally -- dropping more than 500,000 tons of explosives on Cambodia. Those bombings killed upwards of half a million people, destabilized the Phnom Penh government, and led to the genocidal regime of the Khmer Rouge that killed more than two million people. Bombs still litter Cambodia and kill scores of people every year.
- The U.S. Defense Department for discharging soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, thus denying some of them health care, disability pensions and education funds. Of the 92,000 troops discharged from 2011 to 2015, some 57,000 were diagnosed with PTSD, TBI, or both. The military is supposed to screen discharges before tagging them with the "misconduct" label, but in almost half the cases there was no screening. Of that 57,000, some 13,000 received a "less than honorable" discharge that denies them health care, pensions and benefits.
- Stephen Miller, President Trumps speech writer, for intervening in the Group of Seven summit meeting in Sicily and sabotaging an Italian initiative to resettle millions of refugees from wars in the Middle East and Africa. The G-7 includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain, and the U.S.
The Golden Lemon Award to Lockheed-Martin's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the most expensive weapons system in history. In the long run the program is estimated to cost $1.5 trillion. The plane was withdrawn from an air show in Amberley, Australia because there was a possibility of lightning (the plane's name is "Lightning II"), and this past June five pilots' experienced "hypoxia-like" symptoms -- no air -- and the plane was grounded. So far, no one has figured out the problem. The F-35 can't open its weapons bay at high speed, because it causes the plane to "flutter," and while it is supposed to be able to take off from an aircraft carrier, it can't. According to a study by the Director of Operational Test Evaluation, "The aircraft will have little, if any real combat capability for years to come."
A better buy for the money? Higher education students in the U.S. are currently $1.3 trillion in debt.
The Torquemada Award to Alpaslan Durmas, education minister in Turkey's conservative Islamic government, for removing all references to "evolution" in biology textbooks because it is "too complicated for students." Instead they will be instructed that God created people 10,000 years ago. Mustafa Akyol of Al Monitor points out the irony in Durmas' order. Medieval Muslim scholars wrote about a common origin of the species, and "That is why John William Draper, a Darwin contemporary, referred to Darwin's views as the 'Mohammedan theory of evolution.'"
Turkey has also blocked Wikipedia in case some of the kiddies want to read about evolution on line.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
2
2
