zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — no comment ]
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Here you go:

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Sources:

Sydney Morning Herald, Indonesian cleric who helped write adultery laws caned over affair

Daily Beast, Anti-Gay Preacher Caught with Male Hooker

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It’s the hypocrisy that almost defines the human condition. Ouroboric situations — situations where a serpent bites its own tail — are fine vehicles for irony, and hypocrisy is among the sharpest serpent-toothed human behaviors.

But who am I to judge?

Hypocrite.

Ah but i could tell you a tale

[ by Charles Cameron — slyly smiling ]
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London had an exhibit titled Passion for Freedom:

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The idea was to support freedom of speech. But then some rabbit and squirrel toys from the blissful land of Sylvania were encroached upon by the ISIS-flag-waving MICE-IS terrorists, and the British police felt the tableaux showing them —

— might be problematic, so they intervened, freezing the free speech in its tracks:

In Isis Threaten Sylvania, rabbits, mice and hedgehogs go about their daily life, sunning themselves on a beach, drinking at a beer festival or simply watching television, while the menacing figures of armed jihadis lurk in the background. “Far away, in the land of Sylvania, rabbits, foxes, hedgehogs, mice and all woodland animals have overcome their differences to live in harmonious peace and tranquility. Until Now,” reads the catalogue note. “MICE-IS, a fundamentalist Islamic terror group, are threatening to dominate Sylvania, and annihilate every species that does not submit to their hardline version of sharia law.”

The decision to remove the work from Passion for Freedom came after the Mall Galleries consulted the police, who raised “a number of serious concerns regarding the potentially inflammatory content of Mimsy’s work”. The gallery cited a clause in the exhibition contract which allowed it the right to request removal of an artwork.

The Guardian, Artwork showing Sylvanian Families terrorised by Isis banned from free speech exhibition

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Of course, ISIS can’t afford to let a bunch of MICE-IS clowns represent them without some come-back, so today Jihadology, Aaron Zelin‘s brilliant counter-terrorism website, brought news of ISIS-in-India’s response: a thirteen-page theological wallop named, appropriately enough, Passion for Freedom —

— In this ponderous tome, Muhammad Miqdaad asserts:

Passion for freedom is an innate nature of Human beings. There is a hunger for freedom inside us; no sane person will accept others’ slavery willingly. For freedom, we’ve fought wars in all ages; so this is the case today and will remain the same in the future.

The citizens of Sylvania would no doubt agree.

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And so their story, disallowed from featuring in a freedom of speech exhibit, has now been liberated, and may be purchased as a baby book:

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Let Freedom Ring!

[ by Charles Cameron — two cases of unreal real estate, Moscow & Washington ]
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Putin:

Sater arranged Ivanka to go to Moscow in '06. "I arranged for Ivanka to sit in Putin's private chair at his desk and office in the Kremlin." https://t.co/j1zZ7n9Awt

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) August 28, 2017

Clinton:

The Lincoln Bedroom is arguably the most famous guest room in the White House. pic.twitter.com/tFBx8t4Rmn

— White House History (@WhiteHouseHstry) June 29, 2017

[ by Charles Cameron — a DoubleQuote in the Wild ]
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This came up in my feed today —

We are living in a time when Onion headlines are real. pic.twitter.com/BByXwNaG50

— Dylan Marron (@dylanmarron) August 24, 2017

Richard Landes was just tweeting –

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as we say in the land… "life imitates parody."

— Richard Landes (@richard_landes) August 24, 2017

Ouch!

Not like me, not like my sons, btw.

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Or as Baudrillard might say:

Reality no longer has the time to take on the appearance of reality. It no longer even surpasses fiction: it captures every dream even before it takes on the appearance of a dream.

Ouch. Pinch me.

[ by Charles Cameron — YouTube removing videos that document war crimes in the Middle East, Elgar ]
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YouTube removes video documenting Islamic State’s destruction of Nimrud artifacts (AFP)

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Here we are on the merry-go-round:

YouTube AI deletes war crimes evidence as ‘extremist material’

YouTube is facing criticism after a new artificial intelligence program monitoring “extremist” content began flagging and removing masses of videos and blocking channels that document war crimes in the Middle East.

Middle East Eye, the monitoring organisation Airwars and the open-source investigations site Bellingcat are among a number of sites that have had videos removed for breaching YouTube’s Community Guidelines.

The removals began days after Google, which owns YouTube, trumpeted the arrival of an artificial intelligence program that it said could spot and flag “extremist” videos without human involvement.

But since then vast tracts of footage, including evidence used in the Chelsea Manning court case and videos documenting the destruction of ancient artifacts by Islamic State, have been flagged as “extremist” and deleted from its archives.

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Without human involvement?

Humans were involved in the decision to let this AI proceed in real time “without human involvement”.

H Sap or AI? — who’s to trust?

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YouTube, Nimrod — Barenboim conducts Elgar:

Compare “YouTube removes video documenting Islamic State’s destruction of Nimrud artifacts”, illustrated above