Jimmy Durmaz committed a foul in the closing seconds of Sweden’s match against Germany that gave the Germans a free kick that they converted into the winning goal. Some Swedish fans hurled racist abuse at Durnaz who was born in Sweden to a Syriac Christian family. In response, he and the team recorded this message.
I have written many times about how there is a militant and bigoted group of Buddhists that includes Buddhist monks who feel that Sri Lanka should be a purely Sinhala Buddhist country and that every other ethnic-religious group does not belong. They have incited mobs to attack non-Sinhala Buddhists, most recently against the Muslim minority. Now a leading monk has gone to the next level, explicitly urging a presidential candidate to adopt Hitler as a model.
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Back in the days when Margaret Thatcher was an ambitious up-and-coming politician eager to make her mark as a Conservative cabinet member by cutting benefits and services, she instituted polices that resulted (as I recall) in children having less access to milk. This led to chants of ‘Maggie Thatcher, milk snatcher’. The Department of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen also seems anxious to make her mark in conservative politics by showing how mean she can be with her enthusiastic embrace of Donald Trump’s cruel politics and rhetoric towards immigrants. Those policies have led to 3,700 children already being separated from their parents with no idea of how to reunite them that have led to the slogan “Kirstjen Nielsen, child snatcher!” which does not rhyme but is apt nonetheless.
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The excellent radio program Innovation Hub had an episode that dealt with various aspects of the issue of separating children from their parents at the borders, starting with how the US went from being a country with open borders to one, in the 1920s, with strict quotas.
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Sri Lanka is currently touring the West Indies and playing a series of three five-day Test matches. Both teams have been struggling of late and the first Test saw the Windies winning very easily. The second test was poised for an exciting finish on the final day before rain caused play to be abandoned and the game ending in a draw (as no decisions are called in cricket). That game was also marred by the Sri Lankan captain being found guilty of ball tampering and banned from playing in the third Test that is currently underway in Barbados and rain has already interrupted play a couple of times.
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I have long had a soft spot for Fred Rogers, host of the long running children’s show Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, that I used to watch with my children when they were little. This was not because of the show itself. While its wholesome messages were universal and timeless, the presentation unabashedly aimed itself at very young children and its languid pace, low production values, and simple format made it somewhat dull for adults. It did not have the fast pace and dualistic sensibilities of Sesame Street that catered to children and also to their parents. The reason I like him was because of a very specific incident that occurred when my older daughter was just about to enter kindergarten at the local public school.
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The late night talk show host apparently has a recurring segment where he drives around in a car with a celebrity and they sing along to recorded music. It does not sound like much fun to me but this segment with Paul McCartney was pretty good, where they surprised many people of McCartney’s home town with unannounced stops at various locations.
I hate people who try to show their intellectual superiority by asking people to answer esoteric questions. It only reveals them to be annoying pedants. Knowing random facts is not a sign of intelligence. Smarmy Piers Morgan tried to embarrass a person on a reality show by asking her “Do you know what Pythagoras’s theorem is to the nearest five decimal places?” and embarrassed himself instead, as this clip shows.
Many people would have heard of Tommie Smith and John Carlos, winners of the gold and bronze medals in the 200 meters event at the 1968 Olympics held in Mexico, because of their black-gloved clenched fist salute protesting racism captured in the iconic photograph below. Carlos had left his pair of black gloves back at the Olympic village, which is why he and Smith each wore a single glove on different hands.
The story about the children of undocumented immigrants being separated from their parents and being sent to destinations unknown and where reunification becomes difficult for long periods because of the lack of a proper paper trail is bad enough without the additional stories about the abuse suffered by the children while in custody.
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