Satirical programs like The Daily Show that use news headlines as their raw material have difficulty dealing with tragedies like the shootings at Charlie Hebdo. How can they treat such events with humor without being perceived as grossly insensitive? On the other hand, the victims were in the same line of work as them and so they cannot blithely ignore a story that cuts so closely to home.
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Scott Horton has a new book out titled LORDS OF SECRECY: The National Security Elite and America’s Stealth Warfare. A summary of the book states:
Forty years ago, a majority of Americans were highly engaged in issues of war and peace. Whether to go to war or keep out of conflicts was a vital question at the heart of the country’s vibrant, if fractious, democracy. But American political consciousness has drifted. In the last decade, America has gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, while pursuing a new kind of warfare in Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Pakistan. National security issues have increasingly faded from the political agenda, due in part to the growth of government secrecy.
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In an earlier post I mentioned how the just-defeated Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa, a very superstitious man in a very superstitious country, frequently consulted with his astrologer to ensure that the stars were properly aligned to ensure his success in all things, including his re-election bid. It turns out that even I underestimated the extent of his dependence on astrologers, as this article describes, written two days before the election.
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I would have thought that speaking about the importance of chance in life would be uncontroversial. My post a few days ago about a new study that was of interest not because the researchers showed the role of chance in getting cancer but that it was more significant than I would have guessed, being responsible about 2/3 of the time, with only 1/3 due to heredity and the environment, something we focus on a lot.
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President Mahinda Rajapaksa suffered a shock defeat in the presidential elections held today in Sri Lanka. As recently as November, he seemed to be riding high. He had changed the constitution to allow him to run for a third term of office and in November called for elections two years ahead of schedule because of his confidence in winning.
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The extremely brief legal deposition of Jeffrey Epstein shown below, whose sex-slave ring involving underage women has been in the news recently, is really something to see. I think it must have occurred before his plea deal in 2007.
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Tara Culp-Ressler had an article about how those who are opposed to vaccinating their own children against measles are threatening the lives of other children.
California officials issued a health alert this week over a measles outbreak that appears to have originated at Disneyland theme parks. Nine cases of the highly contagious virus have been confirmed so far in people who recently visited the tourist destination — most of whom haven’t been vaccinated against measles.
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If we take at face value the initial reports that the people who murdered twelve people in Paris were Muslims taking revenge on that satirical magazine for its caricatures of Mohammed and general irreverence, then it is likely that they, and any larger group that was behind them, had two other goals as well.
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The journalist Steven Brill appeared on the program Fresh Air to talk about why the US health system. He said it is unsustainable and heading for a crash because there is no price control mechanism. He lays the blame squarely on the hospitals, drug companies who are allowed to price-gouge, and medical device manufacturers, all of whom rake in huge profits that enable them to pay their top executives high profits.
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The murderous attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo that killed ten journalists and two police once again illustrates the danger of the idea that anything should be exempt from examination, satire, even ridicule. The murderers are purported to have said that they were avenging their prophet in retaliation for the various articles and cartoons that the magazine has published over recent years that lampooned prophet Mohammed.
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