stir this pot and you'll wind up licking the spoon...,

ynet |  It is time that we came to the realization: we are in the midst of World War III. A war that will differ from the others but will take place all over the globe, on land, air and sea. This is a war between jihadist Islam and Western civilization; a war between radical Islam and all those who refuse to surrender to its values and political demands.

This war will, of course, have to be fought on the ground – with American, British and French divisions and tanks that will fight in Syria and Iraq, but also with security measures taken at border crossings and by special forces and intelligence agencies in Belgium, France and Germany as well as in the Philippines, China and Russia. This war will be conducted on the Mediterranean Sea as well as in the air with combat aircraft bombarding concentrations of ISIS and al-Qaeda fighters across Asia and Africa and security measures taken at airports and passenger aircraft worldwide. This is what the third world war will look like, which Israel has been a part of for a while now.

Indications from the Paris attack immediately pointed to Islamic State, and after they took responsibility for it – it is possible to discern the strategy set forth by the organization: Painful blows of terror at targets easy for them to operate in and which allow them to claim a mental victory with minimal effort and risk.

One can identify the beginning of the current offensive with the Russian plane explosion over Sinai three weeks ago. The Paris attack was directed according to the same strategy. It is likely that the attack had been planned over many months, but the background is the same as that of the plane attack: ISIS is now taking heavy blows in Syria and Iraq and is losing several of its important outposts in the heart of the Islamic caliphate it wants to establish.

Therefore ISIS is attacking its enemies’ rear and Europe, as usual, is the first to get hit. ISIS and al-Qaeda prefer striking in Europe because it is considered the cradle of Christianity and Islamic fundamentalist organizations still see it as the homeland of the Crusaders, who just as in the past, are at present waging a religious and cultural war on Islam. France and Paris were chosen as a target as France stood at the forefront of the cultural and religious struggle against radical Islam. It is also the easiest target to attack.

Why France?

France was the target of a combined assault of radical Islam not just because it has a tradition of human rights and freedom of movement, but because France and French culture symbolize everything that radical Islam is afraid of and is in an all-out war against. France enacted a ban on women to wear the hijab in public places, the Supreme Court allowed the magazine Charlie Hebdo to publish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad and President Francois Hollande recently refused Iranian President Rouhani’s request to not have alcohol served at a dinner in his honor. All these are challenges to the jihadists that no one else in the West have yet dared emulate. So that is the primary reason that France mourns the murder of at least 129 people.

The second reason is that France has the biggest and most established Muslim population in Europe that lives in large urban concentrations, mostly poor neighborhoods. These are ideal soil for the preaching of radical Islam in neighborhood mosques. The terrorists yesterday spoke French fluently and one can assume that at least some were French citizens of North African descent and other Muslim countries in Africa and Asia. They could thus assimilate into the population to choose destinations, collect information about them and flee from them after their attack.

It was not clear if all the terrorists were suicide bombers or whether some of them escaped. That is why the French government imposed a partial curfew and ordered troops into the streets in many cities, the same measures taken by Israel when the current wave of terrorism began. The aim is that the very presence of many security personnel can deter copycat attacks or the continuation of ongoing attacks.

The third reason is the fact that France is in the heart of Western Europe and it is surrounded by states with large Muslim immigrant communities. The freedom of movement between European countries as per the Schengen Agreement allows the jihadists to utilize these communities to both find terrorist fighters who have been through the baptism of fire in the Middle East and to smuggle weapons required to perform attacks.

old blokes drop knowledge on the great game and how it and YOU get played...,

Australian cartoonist, Bruce Petty, and Jeremy Salt, journalist and Middle East scholar, begin the first of a three part discussion on Syria by looking at where our news comes from and Jeremy's experience of Australian reporting on Middle Eastern affairs. "Are we living under false assumptions?" asks Bruce Petty. The next two films are entitled: "Does Bashar al-Assad really have to go?" and "Has the Syrian President killed more people than ISIS and similar questions."

Bruce Petty interviews Jeremy Salt. Bruce Petty is a highly regarded political satirist and cartoonist as well as an award-winning film maker. Dr Jeremy Salt is a former Fairfax journalist, turned academic and is the author of "The Unmaking of the Middle East. A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands".

"There always has to be a 'madman' in the Middle East," explains Jeremy Salt, when asked why we constantly hear that 'Bashar al-Assad has to go'? Of course Bashar al-Assad is not really mad. Jeremy explains how the west, in its long exploitation of the Middle East, has invented crises that it then pretends to help with, and these tend to feature a 'madman' whom the people have to be saved from. In reaction Middle Eastern governments tend to be defensive and authoritarian, in order to survive constant foreign interference. Even if Bashar went, the Syrian state would remain the same. Salt gives a fluent history of how the west has used the Middle East, and how western politicians expected to knock Syria over easily, but underestimated it. All they have done is weaken it and assorted armed and dangerous groups including ISIS have risen up through the cracks they have created. But many Syrians really like Bashar al-Assad and think he is their best chance for reform. (See the third part in this series, "Has the Syrian president killed more than ISIS and other questions," to hear about how al-Assad is actually legally elected and had brought in reforms prior to the current crisis.) Petty asks about beheading and the role of religion and Islam in today's crisis. Salt agrees that Islam has been taken over by conservatives and extremists, but precises that this is a political ideological take-over that has little to do with Islamic religious base.

In the final of the three short interviews Bruce asks whether Bashar al-Assad has 'killed more people than ISIS' (which is a recent frequently pronounced accusation). Of course Assad has killed no-one personally, but the Syrian army has to defend the country against many armed invaders. ISIS, however, kills people it simply does not like or approve of, in horrible ways. After this Bruce asks whether Syria is an 'Alawite state'. Salt explains that, No, Syria is predominantly Sunni, and that people of all religions hold positions in government etc. (Syria is a secular state.) Is al-Assad an 'unelected, brutal dictator'? No, he is legally elected [June 2014] with a proper government and has brought a number of democratically desired reforms to the country. He is also popular. People may want changes to the government but many think he is their best hope for this to happen. "What about the Chemical Weapons?" Salt gives up to date analysis and rebuttal of these allegations.

shameless false flag in paris fleeing forward into ___________?

PCR |  At 7pm on Friday 13th we do not have much information about the “terrorist attacks” in Paris other than that Paris is closed down like Boston was after the “Boston Marathon Bombing,” also a suspected false flag event.

Possibly believable evidence will be presented that the Paris attacks were real terrorist attacks. However, what do refugees have to gain from making themselves unwelcome with acts of violence committed against the host country, and where do refugees in France obtain automatic weapons and bombs? Indeed, where would the French themselves obtain them?

The millions of refugees from Washington’s wars who are overrunning Europe are bringing to the forefront of European politics the anti-EU nationalists parties, such as Pegida in Germany, Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party, and Marine Le Pen’s National Front Party in France. These anti-EU political parties are also anti-immigrant political parties.

The latest French poll shows that, as a result of the refugees from Washington’s wars, Marine Le Pen has come out on top of the candidates for the next French presidential election.

By supporting for 14 years Washington’s neoconservative wars for US hegemony over the Middle East, establishment European governments eroded their electoral support. European peoples want to be French, German, Dutch, Italian, Hungarian, Czech, British. They do not want their countries to be a diverse Tower of Babel created by millions of refugees from Washington’s wars.

To remain a nationality unto themselves is what Pegida, Farage, and Le Pen offer the voters.

Realizing its vulnerability, it is entirely possible that the French Establishment made a decision to protect its hold on power with a false flag attack that would allow the Establishment to close France’s borders and, thereby, deprive Marine Le Pen of her main political issue.

PCR |  Evidence known so far strongly indicates false flag responsibility for Friday’s Paris attacks. They’re usually identifiable the way fingerprints ID people.

They’re strategically timed, most often for what’s planned to follow. Post-9/11 horrors are well documented. America declared still ongoing war on humanity.

The 9/11 incident provided a treasure trove of giveaways showing what happened was other than the official narrative. The most obvious was how could a handful of terrorists outwit America’s 16 intelligence agencies, including sophisticated NSA eavesdropping on anyone or anything suspicious back then?

No evidence implicated Al Qaeda. Nothing to this day – yet claims persist. Without verifiable hard facts, they’re specious.

The official 9/11 story was beginning-to-end contradictions and Big Lies – still supported by media scoundrels as gospel despite volumes of evidence proving otherwise.

political corruption conspicuously obvious to the casual observer...,

desdemonasdespair |  Clinton's answer was not bizarre. In a corrupt political system, 9/11 is the gift that keeps on giving. For 14 years now, politicians have deflected attention away from America's ubiquitous failures by invoking 9/11 and the threat of terrorism. It is astonishing to think that humans in Flatland are so psychologically dense that this obvious observation is only rarely made [video below]. But there it is.

And very conveniently for corrupt politicians, ISIS decided to wreak havoc in Paris in the 24 hours just prior to the debate. The entire first 30 minutes of the debate was about those terrorist attacks. It could have been worse.

In the hours before the CBS debate, Sanders' campaign team fought with CBS not to make foreign policy and national security the entire focus of the debate. And they succeeded, getting the network to dedicate only the first half hour to those topics.

When the debate began, the first prompt was for each candidate to give a one-minute opening statement specifically on the attack in Paris. Sanders' response to this was pretty simple: he dedicated two sentences to the attack and spent the rest of it talking about American economic inequality. He made no transition and no attempt to link the two.

But I digress.

Hillary Clinton—she was a senator from New York, for chrissakes!—didn't spontaneously play the 9/11 card when she was asked about her obligations to Big Money. Most everything Clinton says is well-thought out in advance. Hillary knew she would have to field this question, and gave us her rehearsed answer. Once again, it is astonishing to think that humans in Flatland don't understand this, but there it is.

And now a truly wondrous thing happens, not on the debate stage, but in the Vox report on it.

like her master the vampire squid itself, granny goodness is incapable of shame...,

WaPo |  It was perhaps the one critique that Hillary Clinton really should have been ready to manage.

With just three people on the Democratic debate stage -- one of them a democratic socialist and the other in possession of a tiny share of Clinton's mammoth campaign resources and support -- Clinton really should have had one of those well-rehearsed responses prepared when the issue of campaign donations from Wall Street arose.

Instead, when the evils and excesses of Wall Street, banking regulation and her relationship to the world's most famous financial district became unavoidable for a seemingly well-prepared Clinton, this exchange followed.

"Well, why do they make millions of dollars of campaign contributions?" Sen Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) asked. "They expect to get something. Everybody knows that."

Clinton responded:

CLINTON: Oh, wait a minute, senator. You know, not only do I have hundreds of thousands of donors -- most of them small. And I'm very proud that for the first time a majority of my donors are women, 60 percent.

(APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: So I represented New York, and I represented New York on 9/11 when we were attacked. Where were we attacked? We were attacked in downtown Manhattan where Wall Street is. I did spend a whole lot of time and effort helping them rebuild. That was good for New York. It was good for the economy, and it was a way to rebuke the terrorists who had attacked our country.

As a defense of your Wall Street contributions, it was bad. Very, very bad. The critiques started flying fast. Some came from totally predictable corners.

david brooks $120,000 vacation...,

NYTimes |  Sometimes money backfires. People buy a house with a huge yard, but they are so far removed from their neighbors they never really experience community. Sometimes people design an apartment so in line with Architectural Digest-level perfection that they can never really be rambunctious or feel at home.

For most people on this particular trip, money did not backfire. They were enthusiastic about the experiences and happy to be making new friends and traveling in this self-contained luxury caravan. Plus, it’s important not to romanticize hassle. It’s one thing to say you should have an authentic travel experience with the people, but sometimes sitting for four hours on the floor of the Casablanca airport is just a useless pain. If you’ve got money, one of the best ways to spend it is on things that will save you time.

But sometimes money allows you to see too many things, too quickly. Sometimes if you seize all the opportunities your money affords, you may end up skimming over life and nothing is deep enough to leave a mark. There is a piece of travel literature wisdom, of uncertain attribution, that reads, ‘‘He who has seen one cathedral 10 times has seen something; he who has seen 10 cathedrals once has seen but little; and he who has spent an hour in each of a hundred cathedrals has seen nothing at all.’’ If you’re in a major city for 48 hours, is it best to sample the highlights, or drill down? I really enjoyed tagging along with this gang for part of their journey. But some of the most memorable moments came from breaking away, wandering alone through the astonishing streets of St. Petersburg, one of the world’s great cities.

And, yet, I must confess, other sweet small moments came when I just said what the heck and enjoyed the self-indulgence. The caviar in Russia was really nice. So was the beautiful hotel pool in Morocco, the sweet staff at every stop and the little cubes of Turkish delight. And yes, over the course of the three days at the Four Seasons in Istanbul, I did drink both bottles of champagne.

Of course, we all have a responsibility to reduce inequality in our society. But maybe not every day.

highest paid public employee orchestrated university’s entry into the wealthiest and most powerful football conference

NYTimes |  Mr. Pinkel announced Friday that he had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the blood, and would resign after the season. More than 20 of his former Missouri players are in the N.F.L., and some speak of him as almost a father figure. “He’s backed us in all situations,” said Shane Ray, a linebacker now with the Denver Broncos.

He also is the highest-paid public employee in Missouri; a shrewd negotiator, he receives an annual salary of more than $4 million. He helped orchestrate the university’s entry in 2012 into the Southeastern Conference, the most powerful and wealthiest college football conference in the nation.

Refusing to stand by his players would have been unwise.

“He didn’t have any choice,” said Lorenzo Williams, a former defensive tackle and team captain and a great admirer of Mr. Pinkel’s. “If black players aren’t comfortable here, he’s basically standing against them. How many black recruits is he going to attract?”

Mr. Pinkel’s seeming endorsement of the protests played less well with some alumni and supporters. Had the Tigers canceled their game Saturday night in Kansas City, Mo., the university would have had to pay $1 million to its opponent, Brigham Young.

By early evening Friday, a couple of hours after the coach announced his coming resignation, Vice Chancellor Thomas S. Hiles sent out an email in hopes of mollifying alumni.

“We have heard from many of you, across the spectrum of viewpoints,” he said. “We want to acknowledge your concerns, expressions of support and anger.”

There is the never incidental question of the team’s won-loss record. After a string of successful seasons, and 10 bowl games in 14 years, the Tigers were 4-5 entering the Brigham Young game.

Mr. Pinkel did not help himself last week by conveying a visible discomfort with his king-toppling of the university president. On a sports-radio show last week, he backpedaled.

Why did he send out the tweet on Sunday expressing solidarity not just with the players but with the protesting student group?

That, he replied, was a mistake.

“I have somebody who tweets for me a lot to get info out, and that person should not have put that hashtag on,” he said.

What’s your view on the resignation of the president and chancellor?

“That is something the university systems did,” he said. “That was secondary to me supporting my players.”

Did these administrators become collateral damage?

“You can describe it any way you want to do it.”

capitalist power and the control of social creativity

bnarchives |  This dissertation combines an interest in political economy, political theory and cinema to offer an answer about the pace of the Hollywood film business and its general modes of behaviour. More specifically, this dissertation seeks to find out how the largest Hollywood firms attempt to control social creativity such that the art of filmmaking and its related social relations under capitalism do not become financial risks in the pursuit of profit. Controlling the ways people make or watch films, the thesis argues, is an institutional facet of capitalist power. Capitalist power—the ability to control, modify and, sometimes, limit social creation through the rights of ownership—is the foundation of capital accumulation. For the Hollywood film business, capitalist power is about the ability of business concerns to set the terms that mould the future of cinema.

The overall objective of Part I is to outline and rectify some of the methodological problems that obscure our understanding of how capital is accumulated from culture. Marxism stands as the theoretical foil for this argument. Because Marxism defines capital such that only economic activity can create value, it needs to clearly distinguish between economics and politics—yet this is a distinction it is ultimately unable to make. With this backdrop in mind, Part I introduces the capital-as-power approach and uses it as a foundation to an alternative political economic theory of capitalism. The capital-as-power approach views capital not as an economic category, but as a category of power. Consequently, this approach reframes the accumulation of capital as a power process.

Part II focuses on the Hollywood film business. It investigates how and to what extent major filmed entertainment attempts to accumulate capital by lowering its risk. The process of lowering risk—and the central role of capitalist power in this process—has characterized Hollywood’s orientation toward the social-historical character of cinema and mass culture. This push to lower risk has been most apparent since the 1980s. In recent decades, major filmed entertainment has used its oligopolistic control of distribution to institute an order of cinema based on several key strategies: saturation booking, blockbuster cinema and high-concept filmmaking.

first casualty of the mizzou mandingo rebellion?

NYTimes |  Saying that he has cancer and wants to focus on his family and his treatment, the head coach of the University of Missouri football team, Gary Pinkel, announced his resignation Friday. The move shocked the college football world after racial protests had put it in the national spotlight and Pinkel had backed his players’ threat to boycott a game.

“I still feel good physically, but I decided that I want to focus on enjoying my remaining years with my family and friends, and also have proper time to battle the disease and give full attention to that,” Pinkel said, revealing that he had found out several months ago that he has non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and that he had decided late last month that this would be his final season coaching.

Afterward, on Twitter, he wrote: “Family and health first. Thx for thinking of me.”

Pinkel, 63, will stay on until Dec. 31, or until the university hires a replacement. The Tigers play Brigham Young on Saturday.

not even maoists retain the testicular fortitude to openly profess maoism...,

WaPo |  The mid-20th-century gains of the civil rights movement rested on an implicit bargain: The pursuit of equality in civil and political rights could be advanced only at the expense of the pursuit of social equality. The 1964 Civil Rights Act, for instance, included an exemption for private clubs protecting them from the requirements of non-discrimination law. That bargain holds no longer. That is the fundamental meaning of this week’s events at the University of Missouri and Yale University.

The issues of free speech matter, too, but they are leading people in the wrong direction, away from the deepest issue. A recent University of Chicago reporton free speech gets it right: “The University’s fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the University community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed.” This idea protects not only those who wish to wear blackface for Halloween but also those being skewered in the media for having called for the resignation of specific institutional leaders. On this subject, I would say, there’s little to see here. Move along.

The real issue is how to think about social equality.

1984 case Roberts v. United States Jaycees. That case put an end to that exemption for private clubs. To achieve social equality, however, against a backdrop of centuries of racial social subordination demands not only the vision of prophets who can imagine that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood. It calls, too, for cultural transformation, for a revolution, even, in our ordinary habits of interaction.

not even gonna lie, watching the cathedral self-destruct this week has been SCHA-WEET!!!

WaPo |  This February, Northwestern professor Laura Kipnis wrote an essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education criticizing “sexual paranoia” on campus, only to be targeted by a crowd of 30 protesters carrying mattresses and pillows. Students filed a Title IX lawsuit against her, but she was cleared of wrongdoing.

In June, a professor wrote an anonymous piece for Vox titled “I’m a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me.”

“I’m a professor at a midsize state school,” the piece began. “I am not a world-class teacher by any means, but I am conscientious; I attempt to put teaching ahead of research, and I take a healthy emotional stake in the well-being and growth of my students.

“Things have changed since I started teaching. The vibe is different. I wish there were a less blunt way to put this, but my students sometimes scare me — particularly the liberal ones.

“… The student-teacher dynamic has been reenvisioned along a line that’s simultaneously consumerist and hyper-protective, giving each and every student the ability to claim Grievous Harm in nearly any circumstance, after any affront, and a teacher’s formal ability to respond to these claims is limited at best.”

“… The relationship of trust between professors and students seems to be weakening as more students become monitors for microaggressions,” echoed NYU professor Jonathan Haidt in an article for the Atlantic on “the coddling of the American mind.”

“I don’t mind if students complain directly to me. Each lecture involves hundreds of small decisions, and sometimes I do choose the wrong word or analogy. But nowadays, e-mail and social media make it easier for students to complain directly to campus authorities, or to the Internet at large, than to come talk with their professors. Each complaint can lead to many rounds of meetings, and sometimes to formal charges and investigations.

“Increasingly, professors must ask themselves not just What is the best way to teach this material? but also Might the most sensitive student in the class take offense if I say this, and then post it online, and then ruin my career?”

thank gawd they had a freshly mothballed archon close to hand to simmer the pot down...,

columbiamissourian |  Michael Middleton was named the interim system president of the University of Missouri System early Thursday afternoon. 

“I am honored to accept the appointment as interim president of the UM System, and lead our state’s premiere university during this extraordinary time,” Middleton said in a system news release. “The time has come for us to acknowledge and address our daunting challenges, and return to our relentless adherence to the University of Missouri’s mission to discover, disseminate, preserve and apply knowledge.”

“I am looking forward to working closely with the leadership on our four campuses, and Missouri’s state leaders, to move this great university forward,” he said in the release, issued at the same time Middleton's appointment was announced at a UM System Board of Curators news conference.

Also Thursday, the curators accelerated the transition of authority from MU Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin to Interim Chancellor Hank Foley, giving Foley the responsibilities of the MU Office of Chancellor effective immediately.

"Our priorities have been to keep our campus community informed and safe, and to make sure students, faculty and staff are aware of the many resources available to them in terms of counseling, mental health services and other support," Foley said in the release. “I am looking forward to working with Interim President Middleton and the other system chancellors to continue to forward progress at the University of Missouri.”

Middleton, deputy chancellor emeritus of MU, retired Aug. 31 after 30 years at the university including 17 as deputy chancellor. In that role, Middleton assisted the chancellor in his day-to-day work, appointed the Campus Climate Task Force and headed the Conflict of Interest Oversight Committee, according to previous Missourian reporting.

Beyond his daily duties, he also worked with organizations and committees on campus focused on improving gender and race equality, such as the Black Faculty and Staff Organization, Tribute to MU Women and the Gaines/Oldham Black Culture Center.

Middleton is a member of the Faculty Council Committee on Race Relations.

the anti-mandingo: big enough to play football, but too sweet to bust a grape....,

theatlantic | Over the course of U.S. history, both the protections enshrined by the First Amendment and the larger ethos of free expression that pervades American culture have played a major role in every successful push that marginalized groups have made to secure civil rights, fight against prejudice, and move toward greater equality.

Despite that history, Jelani Cobb asserts in The New Yorker that to avoid discussions of racism, critical observers of student protests at Yale and the University of Missouri “invoke a separate principle, one with which few would disagree in the abstract—free speech, respectful participation in class—as the counterpoint to the violation of principles relating to civil rights.” The fact that race controversies “have now been subsumed in a debate over political correctness and free speech on campus—important but largely separate subjects—is proof of the self-serving deflection to which we should be accustomed at this point,” he declares.

Cobb calls these supposed diversions “victim-blaming with a software update,” and positing that they are somehow having the same effect as disparaging Trayvon Martin, he cites my article “The New Intolerance of Student Activism” as his prime example.

He writes as if unaware that millions of Americans believe the defense of free speech and the fight against racism to be complementary causes, and not at odds with each other. The false premises underpinning his analysis exacerbate a persistent, counterproductive gulf between the majority of those struggling against racism in the United States, who believe that First Amendment protections, rigorous public discourse, and efforts to educate empowered, resilient young people are the surest ways to a more just future, and a much smaller group that subscribes to a strain of thought most popular on college campuses.

Members of this latter group may be less opposed to speech restrictions; rely more heavily on stigma, call-outs, and norm-shaping in their efforts to combat racism; purport to target “institutional" and “systemic” racism, but often insist on the urgency of policing racism that is neither systemic nor institutional, like Halloween costume choices; focus to an unusual degree on getting validation from administrators and others in positions of authority; and often seem unaware or unconvinced that others can and do share their ends while objecting to some of their means, the less rigorous parts of their jargon, and campus status-signaling. For this reason, they spend a lot of time misrepresenting and stigmatizing allies.

Cobb misunderstands my motives, my body of work, and my article, which makes it doubly frustrating that he neglects to provide an outbound link to allow his readers to judge it for themselves. His erroneous assumptions render him less able to engage on this subject with millions who reject his ideology but are sympathetic to his concerns.

Let me underscore how erroneous his assumptions are. His article is premised on the notion that my piece on Yale and others like one I wrote a day later on Missouri are part of a “diversion,” an attempt to avoid talking about racism through deflection. “The fault line here,” he posits, “is between those who find intolerance objectionable and those who oppose intolerance of the intolerant.” Of course, it’s far more consistent to find intolerance objectionable across the board, and to speak out against it especially when its targets have historically faced discrimination.

discussion? no! I just want to talk about my pain and you better shutup and listen, or else!

NYTimes |  In some ways, the grievances of black students here mirror those on other campuses across the country. But Missouri, where the state university began accepting black students in 1950 and hired its first black faculty member in 1969, has faced distinct challenges in overcoming racial divisions.

With Kansas City to the west and St. Louis to the east, the state has two urban hubs that account for most of the state’s black residents, about 12 percent of the population. The rest of the state is overwhelmingly rural and white. Both blacks and whites are underrepresented at the university compared with the demographics of the entire state. Eight percent of students are black, while nearly 80 percent are white, compared with about 84 percent of the state.

Educational outcomes at the university have also not always been equal. While about 83 percent of black freshmen return for their sophomore year, nearly 88 percent of whites and 94 percent of Asians do. And black students have the lowest graduation rate of all races, less than 55 percent, compared with 71 percent for whites.

“There’s a culture shock, each group of new students who come in,” said Scott N. Brooks, an associate professor in black studies and sociology at Missouri.

Before coming to the University of Missouri, Ms. Gray said she did not usually view people through a racial lens because her high school was diverse. But her freshman year changed that.

“After that experience, if I was telling my friends a story, I’d be like, ‘Why did this white girl in my class say something?’ ” rather than referring to the girl by her name, said Ms. Gray, now a 21-year-old senior studying health science. “It made me differentiate the two. It made me not feel comfortable around them.”

It is not just black students who complain of cultural isolation.

“I can absolutely see why some students would feel uncomfortable on campus, because as a student coming from a small rural community, I’ve felt like I didn’t belong on this campus,” said Lauren Reagan, a white senior from Jonesburg, a town of about 745 people in eastern Missouri. “It can be hard to find people with the same values and beliefs that understand you.”

Ian Paris, the head of the university’s chapter of Young Americans for Liberty, a libertarian group, described a confrontation recently when he was signing up students to support Senator Rand Paul in a campus plaza. A group of activists protesting the administration’s handling of racial tensions came onto the plaza shouting their message through a megaphone.

When Mr. Paris complained to a friend about the activists, one of the demonstrators overheard him and told them to “take their white privilege and leave,” Mr. Paris said. A loud argument ensued.

oh me, oh my.., how did the real concerned student 1950 ever make it?!?!?!?

mizzoumag |  His master’s degree in economics at MU was supposed to take two years — 1950–52 — but Gus T. Ridgel, who had graduated magna cum laude the previous spring from Lincoln University with a bachelor’s degree in business administration, told his adviser he could do it in one.Well, we have problems because I don’t have enough money,” Ridgel, MA ’51, DS ’96, said. “I only have enough money for two semesters.”

Ridgel took his case to the department chair, who saw no harm in letting give it a try. Ridgel would go on to be MU’s first African-American student to earn a graduate degree.

All he had to do was take four semesters’ worth of courses in two and turn in a master’s thesis at the end of it. That’s the plan he started with, says Ridgel, now 87, and it’s the one he ended with.

It was a seven-day-a-week-job,” he says. “There wasn’t a lot of time for social events.” Between classes and thesis writing, he had little time to enjoy Columbia, and, being African-American, many options weren’t available to him. After the dining halls closed for the evening, there was only one place near campus — a coffee shop near University Bookstore — where an African-American student could get something to eat. When he and a few friends sat down for lunch at a different nearby restaurant between classes, his white friends were told they could be served, but Ridgel had to leave. They all walked out.

Ridgel says he was aware he was one of the first black students on campus, but he didn’t focus on it. His objective was just to graduate. “My ‘first’ was purely coincidental,” he says. He didn’t imagine at the time that he’d be coming back decades later to be honored and interviewed.

meanwhile, on the non-BLM, no-mandingo side of the occupy 2.0 protest movement...,

LATimes |  Nearly three years ago, a group of about 200 workers at McDonald's, Taco Bell and other New York City fast-food restaurants walked off the job and rallied for higher wages.

It was widely described as the largest series of demonstrations ever in the fast-food industry.

Fast-forward to Tuesday, and the so-called Fight for $15 movement seeking better pay for fast-food and other low-wage workers has spread to what organizers say are 270 cities across the U.S. All three Democratic presidential candidates weighed in with support on Twitter after rallies began. The governor of New York and the mayor of Pittsburgh issued orders Tuesday that will lead to a $15 minimum wage for all government workers.

How the once-fledgling campaign has captivated national political discourse is a testament to the uneasiness still felt by many Americans left out of the recovery from the Great Recession. Although jobs have continued to grow since the depths of the downturn, earnings for lower- and middle-income workers have not.

By galvanizing efforts around fast-food workers — people who many interact with on a daily basis — the movement's organizers, backed in part by the nation's second-largest labor union, have worked to change the public perception of low-wage work.

"For many of us, these are workers who we see every day, yet they're invisible," said Harley Shaiken, a UC Berkeley labor expert. "What the Fight for 15 has done is give faces, names and personal stories that many, perhaps most, working Americans can identify with."

The federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour has been the same since 2009, and efforts have stalled in Congress to increase wages. But at the state and local level, there has been an unprecedented wave of action to boost wages since the movement began in 2012.

mandingos

slate | Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino’s blaxploitation Western about an ex-slave’s revenge against plantation owners, centers on a practice called “Mandingo fighting.” Slaves are forced to fight to the death for their owners’ wealth and entertainment. Did the U.S. have anything like this form of gladiatorial combat? No. While slaves could be called upon to perform for their owners with other forms of entertainment, such as singing and dancing, no slavery historian we spoke with had ever come across anything that closely resembled this human version of cock fighting. As David Blight, the director of Yale’s center for the study of slavery, told me: One reason slave owners wouldn’t have pitted their slaves against each other in such a way is strictly economic. Slavery was built upon money, and the fortune to be made for owners was in buying, selling, and working them, not in sending them out to fight at the risk of death.

While there’s no historical record of black gladiator fights in the U.S., this hasn’t stopped the sport from appearing again and again in popular culture. The 1975 blaxploitation film Mandingo, which Tarantino has cited as “one of [his] favorite movies,” is about a slave named Mede who is trained by his owner to fight to the death in bare-knuckle boxing against other slaves. That film was inspired by the book of the same name by dog-breeder-turned-novelist Kyle Onstott. (The term Mandingoitself comes from the name of a cultural and ethnic group in West Africa, who speak the Manding languages.) There is at least one other cinematic example of the fighting, in Mandingo’s sequel, Drum.

Slaves were sometimes sent to fight for their owners; it just wasn’t to the death. Tom Molineaux was a Virginia slave who won his freedom—and, for his owner, $100,000—after winning a match against another slave. He went on to become the first black American to compete for the heavyweight championship when he fought the white champion Tom Cribb in England in 1810. (He lost.) According to Frederick Douglass, wrestling and boxing for sport, like festivals around holidays, were “among the most effective means in the hands of the slaveholder in keeping down the spirit of insurrection.”

It’s also true that, as embodied by the fictional “Mandingo fighting,” there has long been a fascination with the supposed physical prowess of the black body. The rise of prizefighting in the 19^th century saw black men such as Peter Jackson and George Dixon making a show of their manliness to white and black audiences. Ralph Ellison’s “Battle Royal” scene in Invisible Man—in which the narrator must spar other black men in order to obtain a scholarship to a black college—uses a less sensationalistic approach to portray the fetishization of black men fighting. “This is a vital part of behavior patterns in the South, which both Negroes and whites thoughtlessly accept,” Ellison once said. “It is a ritual in preservation of caste lines, a keeping of taboo to appease the gods and ward off bad luck. It is also the initiation ritual to which all greenhorns are subjected.”

when you think you're a mandingo, but you're not....,

columbiamissourian |  MU faculty member Melissa Click has apologized. And Tuesday night, she resigned her courtesy appointment with the Missouri School of Journalism.

Click was caught up in an incident Monday between a freelance photographer and protesters near the Concerned Student 1950 camp on Mel Carnahan Quadrangle.

"Yesterday was an historic day at MU — full of emotion and confusion. I have reviewed and reflected upon the video of me that is circulating, and have written this statement to offer both apology and context for my actions," Click, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication, said in a statement released Tuesday afternoon by the College of Arts and Science.

"I have reached out to the journalists involved to offer my sincere apologies and to express regret over my actions. I regret the language and strategies I used, and sincerely apologize to the MU campus community, and journalists at large, for my behavior, and also for the way my actions have shifted attention away from the students’ campaign for justice," the statement said.

A courtesy appointment allows members of one academic unit to serve on graduate committees for students from other academic units. Click teaches mass media in the Communication Department. The School of Journalism is a separate entity.

The Journalism School's Executive Committee, including Dean David Kurpius, met Tuesday morning to discuss the vote and prepare a statement on Click's actions Monday as seen in footage of an incident between the photographer, Tim Tai, an undergraduate in photojournalism, and the protesters — including MU's Greek Life and Leadership Assistant Director Janna Basler.

absent mandingos, hungerstriker would've died of organ failure while these simps were left on the quad to freeze...,

theatlantic |  “We ask for no media in the parameters so the place where people live, fellowship, and sleep can be protected from twisted insincere narratives,” a Twitter account associated with the activists later declared, adding that “it’s typically white media who don’t understand the importance of respecting black spaces.” Tim Tai is Asian American.

First Amendment protections for photographers are vital. And I agree with my colleague, James Fallows, that Tai demonstrated impressive intellectual and emotional poise. But video of his encounter with protestors is noteworthy for another reason.

In the video of Tim Tai trying to carry out his ESPN assignment, I see the most vivid example yet of activists twisting the concept of “safe space” in a most confounding way. They have one lone student surrounded. They’re forcibly preventing him from exercising a civil right. At various points, they intimidate him. Ultimately, they physically push him. But all the while, they are operating on the premise, or carrying on the pretense, that he is making them unsafe.

It is as if they’ve weaponized the concept of “safe spaces.”

“I support people creating ‘safe spaces’ as a shield by exercising their freedom of association to organize themselves into mutually supporting communities,” Ken White wrote prior to this controversy. “But not everyone imagines ‘safe spaces’ like that. Some use the concept of ‘safe spaces’ as a sword, wielded to annex public spaces and demand that people within those spaces conform to their private norms.”

Yesterday, I wrote about Yale students who decided, in the name of creating a “safe space” on compass, to spit on people as they left a talk with which they disagreed. “In their muddled ideology,” I wrote, “the Yale activists had to destroy the safe space to save it.”

misty and britney already issued thallium doses pre-measured for out-of-pocket mandingos...,

thenation |  Too often, those sympathetic with college athletes define them by their hardships instead of by their dazzling, inescapable strengths. We rightfully look at their absence of due process, their lack of access to an income, their hellacious practice and travel schedules, their inability to take the classes of their choosing, and their year-to-year scholarships that consign them to being more “athlete students” than “student athletes.”

Yet they also have a power that if exercised can bring the powerful to their knees. So much of the political and social economy of state universities is tied to football, especially in big-money conferences like Southeastern Conference, where Mizzou plays. The multibillion-dollar college football playoff contracts, the multimillion-dollar coaching salaries, and the small fortunes that pour into small towns on game day don’t happen without a group of young men willing to take the field. The system is entirely based on their acceptance of their own powerlessness as the gears of this machine. If they choose to exercise their power, the machine not only stops moving: It becomes dramatically reshaped.

The emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement threatens the operating of this machinery like nothing since the black athletic revolt of the 1960s and 1970s. These conferences, particularly the Southeastern Conference, field teams that, in the words of sports sociologist Harry Edwards, “look like Ghana on the field and Sweden in the stands.” In other words, black football players in particular have a social power often unseen and not commented upon. It’s there all the same.

These athletes are a sleeping giant. At a school like Mizzou, where just 7 percent of the students are black but a whopping 69 percent of the football players are, one can see how their entry in the struggle had a ripple effect that tore through Columbia and into the college football–crazed national consciousness.

first northwestern, now southeast conference mandingos better watch their red cups closely at parties...,

NYTimes |  Well, that was fast.

When was it, exactly, that the African-American football players at the University of Missouri tweeted that they were going on strike until “President Tim Wolfe resigns or is removed” from office? It was Saturday night, around 9 p.m. Eastern time.

In other words, nearly two months had gone by before the football players decided to get involved. Once they did, Wolfe lasted all of 36 hours. Later in the day, Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin said he would resign as well, effective at the end of the year.

In announcing his resignation Monday morning, Wolfe said he was motivated by his “love” for his alma mater. No doubt he was sincere. But it is hard to believe that his calculations didn’t include money as well: the $1 million that Missouri would be contractually obliged to pay Brigham Young University if the Tigers failed to play Saturday’s game; and the mess it would create for itself — and the Southeastern Conference, which it joined only four years ago — if a players’ strike lasted to the end of the season. Missouri’s final SEC game in late November, against Arkansas, is scheduled to be televised by CBS, which pays the conference $55 million a year for television rights.

Advertisement

As Andy Schwarz, an economist who has been deeply involved in a series of antitrust lawsuits against the N.C.A.A., put it, “the issues at Missouri are far more important than college football, but the Missouri athletes showed that the color that matters most is green.”

"the machine" hella weak at mizzou?

themaneater |  MU’s chapter resumed in 2003, according to Theta Nu Epsilon’s website. From 2004 until 2007 there are reports of new initiates in the fall and spring semesters. Anywhere from five to 11 members per semester have been inducted, according to the website. Fall initiation occurs in November and spring initiation is in April, though there are discrepancies and inconsistencies concerning these dates on the website.

Rather than participating in Tap Day, Theta Nu Epsilon marks initiation through banquets, according to the national website. ΘΝΕ has never participated in Tap Day ceremonies.

The founder of MU’s Theta Nu Epsilon chapter might have also played a role in the creation of QEBH, a senior class society and the oldest recognized secret society on campus. Dr. Royall Hill Switzler founded the organization in 1898, three years after the establishment of Theta Nu Epsilon.

Defoe reportedly held an advisory position for QEBH, according to the chapter website of Theta Nu Epsilon at MU. From 1900-1902, six students were listed in The Savitar as having membership in both Theta Nu Epsilon and QEBH. Today, prominent inductees of QEBH include Chancellor Brady Deaton and Vice Chancellor Cathy Scroggs.

The most recent connection between the two societies was in 2007. MU’s ΘΝΕ website listed MU graduate Dustin Barker as the president of the society that year. Barker was inducted into QEBH in 2007. In a phone interview, he acknowledged the website but said he has not had contact with Theta Nu Epsilon recently. Barker described the organization as having an on-and-off presence on campus.

Current QEBH members were not familiar with Theta Nu Epsilon or the connection between the two organizations’ histories.

Every year, QEBH inducts one sophomore to become president as a senior. Junior Rachel Newman was inducted last year and said she was shocked after learning she would be recognized.

“The common bond between all the societies here is that members seek to preserve the best interest for the university and promote all the university has given them,” Newman said.

Scroggs said these honor societies are meaningful at the university and provide students a chance to alert employers of their success, as they would with an honors diploma or other achievements.

There are similar honors societies on campus such as Mizzou 39, but membership is public. According to the Mizzou Alumni Association website, seniors are “chosen for their academic achievement, leadership and service to Mizzou and the community.”

Scroggs said QEBH recognizes its inductees based on their service, involvement, leadership and academic success on campus. The difference between public and private societies is the time of recognition, she said. Mizzou 39 is a senior award while most of the Tap Day organizations recognize juniors.

“Students take pride in being recognized by other students,” Scroggs said. “The fact that it’s secret makes it that more special.”

QEBH members were hesitant to speak on the record due to the secrecy surrounding their organization.

Despite this, members are publicly recognized on Tap Day and some have even listed QEBH on their LinkedIn profiles. Some members of Mortar Board Society, Mystical Seven and Omicron Delta Kappa have also posted their membership on LinkedIn.

While MU shows no evidence of having a political machine like Alabama, there is a documented concentration of campus-wide power in secret societies.

Of the 61 undergraduates tapped last year, 43 percent belong to a fraternity or sorority. Twenty-six percent of those undergraduates were also awarded Mizzou 39 membership this year. Other popular organizations were Homecoming Steering Committee or Homecoming Court, the Missouri Students Association, Summer Welcome and honor fraternities.

"leaders" are trivially expendable if they fail to "keep a lid on a pot about to boil over"

theweek |  Hours after University of Missouri President Tim Wolfe resigned Monday morning, R. Bowen Loftin announced he will step down from his position as chancellor of the University of Missouri's Columbia campus.

Loftin will start in his new role as director for research facility development on Jan. 1, 2016, The Columbia Tribune reports. Hank Foley, the senior vice chancellor for research and graduate studies, has been appointed interim chancellor. Wolfe resigned from his position after students and faculty began to protest against his response to race-related issues at the school. "I take full responsibility for this frustration and I take full responsibility for the inaction that has occurred," he said. Donald Cupps, chairman of the Board of Curators, announced Monday that within the next 90 days, the University of Missouri system will appoint its first chief diversity, inclusion, and equity officer; will make extra support available for students, faculty, and staff who have been discriminated against; and will make additional efforts to hire and retain diverse faculty and staff.

The Columbia Tribune reported earlier in the day that deans from nine different University of Missouri colleges sent a letter to Wolfe and the Board of Curators, calling for Loftin's dismissal. In the letter, the deans said they met with Wolfe, Loftin, and Provost Garnett Stokes on Oct. 13 to express their concerns over "the multitude of crises on our flagship campus," and said those issues "have continued to deteriorate into a campus crisis that demands immediate and decisive action. It is the Chancellor's responsibility as the Chief Executive Officer of the campus to effectively address these campus issues." The deans went on to write that Loftin proved he was not an adequate leader by eliminating and then reinstating health insurance for graduate assistants and getting rid of the vice chancellor for health sciences position, and claimed he created a "toxic environment through threat, fear, and intimidation."

Last week, a similar letter was sent to Wolfe and the Curators from the Department of English, which stated that 26 faculty members expressed no confidence in Loftin, with two people abstaining from the vote.