The European Union Times |
- Impossible to joke about Obama due to political correctness
- Kiev, pro-Russians agree to truce in Lugansk
- Can we clone a Woolly Mammoth, how about T-rex?
- Saudi Arabia criticized for blocking Human Rights group website
- Russia forced to withdraw from South Stream project due to EU stance
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Posted: 02 Dec 2014 02:07 PM PST
 Former SNL comedian and impersonator Dana Carvey struck a serious note when he lambasted the comedy industry for going soft on America’s first black president for fear of arousing the “snake” of political correctness. Dana Carvey, who has given brilliant impersonations of political leaders from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, thinks comedians are overly sensitive of being branded racist by cracking jokes about the black Democratic leader. “I always grew up with ‘Question authority,’” he said in a talk with Radio Titans podcast Kozversations, adding that US comedians today are worried about crossing the line between humor and racism. “I’m from the old school: You go where the power is and you try to make fun of it,” he said. “When it becomes off limits to say or do certain things without being brutalized or censored or whatever, it’s unfortunate.” Carvey said that race, color or creed should not prevent comedians from employing political satire – a craft that has been around as long as politics, and arguably just as important. But that is what has happened, Carvey argues, since the election of America’s first black president. That is terribly unfortunate because quite often political satire allows people to grasp the absurdity that is taking place in the dank halls of government, thereby thrusting open the door to more serious, refreshing discussions. The very essence of political satire also makes people take an interest in their political system, which many people find boring or difficult to comprehend. Political satirist Jon Stewart has been an exception to the liberal rule that commands, “Thou shalt not mock America’s first black leader,” when he opened a recent show by laughing at the US leader’s slumping popularity: “Everybody hates him. Even Democrats running frantically from Barack Obama like he was a bad guy in one of those chainsaw massacre movies you have here every couple of years. It’s the subject of tonight’s Democalypse 2014: POTUS-Partum Depression.” Yet Stewart’s jibe at Obama didn’t really take him out on a limb, since he’s basically hitting Obama when he’s already down. For other comedians, however, who dared poke fun at the Democratic leader at the beginning of his presidency, the stakes were a lot higher. Carvey deliberated upon what happened to his fellow colleague, Dennis Miller, another former SNL veteran, who dared to touch the third rail, which he calls the “PC snake.” “You know, we’re part of this deal too and we feel completely estranged to you,” Miller said in an interview with Bill O’Reilly of Fox News shortly after Obama’s reelection in 2011. “I’m a guy out here thinking that this is the first time in my 59 years I’ve got a president who I believe actively dislikes people like me. That’s a weird place to be for a country.” Carvey said Miller has been “brutalized” for speaking such things, which some say comes uncomfortably close to racism. “If you live in New York or LA and you’re liberal and you’re playing to a liberal crowd it’s almost like a rally … it’s not edgy,” he said. “The true edge is what Dennis Miller did, and he’s been brutalized for it.” Carvey, whose impersonations of former president George H.W. Bush won the accolades of Bush himself, said people in his profession are “afraid to make fun” of the president in more liberal venues in NYC and Los Angeles because they’ll be “labeled.” However, there have been some rare instances of Obama being dragged over the comedy coals by political satirists, with perhaps the most successful attempt being performed by Obama impersonator Reggie Brown. Brown was even invited to perform his Obama impersonation before the Republican Leadership Conference in 2012. However, while telling a joke about newly declared presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, his microphone was turned off and he was escorted off the stage. With the increasing possibility of the next US president being Hillary Clinton, America had better develop a sense of humor, and fast. Robert Bridge is the author of the book, Midnight in the American Empire, which examines the dangerous consequences of extreme corporate power in the United States. Source           |
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Posted: 02 Dec 2014 01:37 PM PST
 The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) made the announcement in a statement released late Monday. According to the statement, Ukrainian government troops and pro-Russian forces will begin a complete ceasefire in the breakaway region on December 5. The OSCE also said the two sides would start to withdraw their heavy weaponry a day after the truce comes into effect. The announcement comes after Ukraine’s military said its troops and pro-Russian forces had agreed on a temporary ceasefire around an airport in the country’s other breakaway region, Donetsk. Deputy Prime Minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic Andrei Purgin has confirmed that talks were being held, but said a final agreement was not expected to be reached before Tuesday. The Kiev government and pro-Russians signed a truce in the Belarusian capital of Minsk in early September. However, fighting has continued on a daily basis. Ukraine’s mainly Russian-speaking regions in the east have witnessed deadly clashes between pro-Russia forces and the Ukrainian army since Kiev launched military operations to silence the pro-Moscow protests in mid-April. According to the United Nations, more than 4,300 people have been killed in the fighting. In addition, nearly a million people have been forced to flee their homes. Kiev and its Western allies accuse neighboring Russia of having a hand in the chaotic situation in eastern Ukraine, but the Kremlin has repeatedly denied the allegation as baseless. Source      |
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Posted: 02 Dec 2014 01:33 PM PST
 The news that South Korean scientists are planning to clone a mammoth, using the DNA of a particularly well-preserved specimen in the Siberian permafrost, has reignited the debate over the ethics of cloning. But whether or not it’s right, could it happen? And what other animals could, or couldn’t, we clone? Mammoth It may be possible to clone a mammoth. It would be an enormous technical challenge, because the freezing process which preserves the dead animals also tears up the cells. Normal cloning techniques – such as that which produced Dolly the Sheep – involve taking the whole cell from the animal being cloned, and allowing it to divide in a petri dish with an egg cell which has had the DNA removed. When the cell is torn apart by the ice crystals which form during freezing, that can’t work. However, scientists have successfully cloned a mouse which had been frozen for 16 years by using a different technique: taking the DNA-containing nucleus out of the cell to be cloned, and injecting that directly into a denucleated egg cell. That suggests that, in principle, the same could be done for a mammoth. However, there are huge obstacles: for a start, the DNA will have degraded over the millennia since the mammoth was frozen, and while the scientists could freeze as many mice as they liked and use thousands of cells for their purposes, there is an extremely limited number of mammoths available to work with. Source      |
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Posted: 02 Dec 2014 05:18 AM PST
 A human rights group has criticized Saudi Arabia for blocking its website inside the conservative Persian Gulf Arab kingdom. The [Persian] Gulf Center for Human Rights posted a message on its website (http://gc4hr.org) on Tuesday deploring the move “as a form of repression that is part of intimidation patterns that are being used persistently in the Kingdom these days.” Attempts inside the country to access the website brought up a notice saying, “Sorry, the requested page is unavailable.” The rights group, which has offices in Beirut and Copenhagen, said that the blocking comes “at a time when human rights defenders are exposed to various kinds of harassment and arrests, arbitrary imprisonment and unfair trials that lack legal procedures and minimum international standards.” Reporters Without Borders has named Saudi Arabia as one of the “enemies of the Internet” for its censorship and surveillance. The Al Saud government has come under fire from international human rights organizations for failing to address the rights situation in the monarchy. They say Riyadh has persistently implemented repressive policies that stifle freedom of expression, association, and assembly. Source      |
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Posted: 02 Dec 2014 03:56 AM PST
 “We believe that the stance of the European Commission was counterproductive. In fact, the European Commission not only provided no help in implementation of [the South Stream pipeline], but, as we see, obstacles were created to its implementation. Well, if Europe doesn’t want it implemented, it won’t be implemented,” the Russian president said. According to Putin, the Russian gas “will be retargeted to other regions of the world, which will be achieved, among other things, through the promotion and accelerated implementation of projects involving liquefied natural gas.” “We’ll be promoting other markets and Europe won’t receive those volumes, at least not from Russia. We believe that it doesn’t meet the economic interests of Europe and it harms our cooperation. But such is the choice of our European friends,” he said. The South Stream project is at the stage when “the construction of the pipeline system in the Black Sea must begin,” but Russia still hasn’t received an approval for the project from Bulgaria, the Russian president said. Investing hundreds of millions of dollars into the pipeline, which would have to stop when it reaches Bulgarian waters, is “just absurd, I hope everybody understands that,” he said.  He advised the Bulgarian leadership “to demand loss of profit damages from the European Commission” as the country could have been receiving around 400 million euros annually through gas transit. The South Stream was intended to transport Russian gas through the Black Sea to Bulgaria – and through Serbia, Hungary, and Slovenia, further to Austria. Russian gas giant Gazprom began construction of the onshore facilities for the pipeline back in 2012. But the €23.5 billion project ran into difficulties, as it violated European Union regulations which state that the same company cannot both own the pipeline and the gas which is transported through it. The crisis in Ukraine has turned the legal debate over the pipeline into a political issue, affecting the EU’s willingness to find a solution to the deadlock. The EU Commission has been pressuring member states to withdraw from the project, with the new Bulgarian government saying it will not allow Gazprom to lay the pipeline without permission from Brussels. Putin said that Russia is ready to build a new pipeline to meet Turkey’s growing gas demand, which may include a special hub on the Turkish-Greek border for customers in southern Europe.  For now, the supply of Russian gas to Turkey will be raised by 3 billion cubic meters via the already operating Blue Stream pipeline, he said. Last year, 13.7 bcm of gas were supplied to Turkeyvia Blue Stream, according to Reuters. Moscow will also reduce the gas price for Turkish customers by 6 percent from January 1, 2015, Putin said. “We are ready to further reduce gas prices along with the implementation of our joint large-scale projects,” he added. Russia, Turkey don’t want chaos in Syria The Russian president has said that Turkey is an important participant of the peace process in Syria, outlining the many similarities that Moscow and Ankrara have regarding the issue. “We share a common opinion that the situation in Syria can’t be considered adequate, we share a common opinion that we don’t want to allow chaos in the region and the strengthening of terrorist organizations like it happened in Iraq,” he said. According to Putin, it is important to create the conditions under which all citizens of Syria will feel safe and have equal access to governance. “We certainly need to find an acceptable solution – first of all, acceptable for the Syrian people and all political forces in the country. And, definitely, we’re going to stay in contact with all participants in this process, including our friends in Turkey,” he stressed. However, the sides still disagree on the future of Syrian President Bashar Assad, which Ankara wants removed from power. “We sincerely expressed our attitude towards this [Assad's] regime. Mr. President has another stance on the issue. But in general, we have reached a certain agreement on [the] resolution of the Syrian conflict,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. “The only thing that we were unable to agree on is the way to resolve the crisis,” he added. A civil war between Syria’s government forces and the Islamist opposition has been raging in Syria since 2011, taking over 200,000 lives, according to UN estimates. Source     |
