George Clooney keeps swaths of machetes and rocket launchers in his LA flat

We all know about the crisis in Nigeria, but now the rebels want none other than the ... self-proclaimed father of the civil rights movement..., George Clooney, to help in peace negotiations. Nigeria rebels want Clooney's help. I don't want to make light of the situation, but that is the funniest title I've ever seen. It's an effective tool to bring attention to certain situations by allowing a celebrity to highlight injustices. George Clooney's a great actor. I have no qualms... just a funny title.

The Gaza blockade, embodied in an actual fence (embarassing), which can only be interpreted as an effort to radicalize even more Palestinians and sympathizers, fell in certain sections (well it was destroyed by masked militants) allowing deprived, poverty stricken Gazans to go to Egypt to get basic supplies that they need for survival. Blockades are great for holding down minorities and poor people; regional leaders and the wealthy elite have enough supplies to live comfortably enough, the people who suffer are the working poor, who cannot afford the rise in prices that arise from a shortage of supplies.

Here is why a blockade of this nature will not work: extremist groups get the allegiance of communities by providing services for them, and when no legitimate services are provided for, or when they are unobtainable for a whole class of people, the insurgent groups and their connections expand their network and power within individual communities. Neighborhoods and families form allegiances to these groups, and the imposing authority (Israelis in this case) is delegitimized even further. So, yes, the blockade complies with the Israelis goose-stepping in line with the US' struggle against (those in) poverty. An effective strategy to would be to prevent groups from providing services, but it a team of masked men can blow holes in the fenced border, the blockade can do nothing to prevent non-state actors from providing services to the people.

and check this from the Lede (NY Times blog). The Motion Picture Association of America, who previously claimed that college students, due to incessant downloading, were responsible for a 44% drop in movie industry profit, now says that they were lying. Oh, no, my bad, actually it was just a "human error" in miscalculation of percentages. The MPAA now claims that college students are only responsible for 15% revenue loss... thats a big difference for a bad math, maybe the industry should hire college students to compute percentages for accurate propogandist numbers. I'm a big fan of films, but the MPAA needs to keep it real.