And the NYT rubs salt in the wound!
"Felipe proclaimed Spain’s new king" by Raphael Minder | New York Times June 20, 2014
MADRID — It seemed unfair. The Catalans are threatening to break the country apart. Economically speaking, the patient is stable, but still in intensive care. The arrival of a new king Thursday, despite the fact that he inherited a badly tarnished throne, may yet have provided Spaniards with a fillip of hope, even optimism, that their country was finally turning a corner.
This written for and of the 1% by wannabes barnacles is getting us off to a bad start.
Then the Chileans spoiled the moment.
Three weeks ago, when King Juan Carlos I unexpectedly announced his abdication, nobody in Spain suspected that the arrival of their new king would coincide, let alone be practically overshadowed, by the elimination of Spain from the World Cup. After all, Spain went to Brazil for the tournament as the defending world champions, with its national team and clubs dominating Europe’s recent competitions.
But in a country where soccer (fútbol, as it is called here) is perhaps the one thing for which nearly all Spaniards share an undiluted passion, Wednesday’s 2-0 loss to Chile cast a mist of mourning over the nation that even the pomp of a royal event could not dispel.
Wow, the NYT is more out of touch than I thought. They drop to knee and unzip fly for elite.
“Cemetery of Kings” read one of Thursday’s newspaper headlines, a reference to the debacle of a golden generation of Spanish soccer players, kicked out of the World Cup, rather than the day’s royal event, when King Felipe VI succeeded his father.
“What just happened in Brazil was a disaster, so this can only be a sad moment and makes the issue of having a new king pretty irrelevant as far as I’m concerned,” said Gabriel Romero, 16, who was glumly walking around Madrid wearing the soccer shirt of La Roja, as the team is known.
Not everyone feels that way.
In fact, while the royal succession has fueled a debate over whether Spain should keep its monarchy, many sounded more concerned Thursday with how to overhaul a soccer team whose victories had provided at least a modicum of distraction from the country’s troubles and also helped ease Spain’s regional tensions.
So I am told by my propaganda pre$$ through their pri$m.
But diversion was not what everyone wanted, and if Spain had to be run out of the World Cup, then some opponents of the monarchy welcomed the timing.
We call it a newspaper, 'kay?
“I’m sure the royal household wanted the new king to also benefit from soccer euphoria, so I’m glad the team lost because its success had created an absurd sense of patriotism that diverted attention from our political and social problems, including the fact that we should be able to choose our head of state,” said Carlos Royo, a 48-year-old masseur.
That is one of the protocols of sports.
Royo was walking around Madrid with a Republican flag, in defiance of the authorities and the 7,000 police officers who had been deployed to help protect the royal day.
The thin blue line.
“The fact that I’ve been told I can’t wave my flag shows you just how little democracy there is in our system,” Royo said.
Still, thousands took to the streets of Madrid and other cities after Juan Carlos said he would step down to demand a referendum on the monarchy, damaged by profligate spending and corruption scandals.
It's an epidemic among the elite!
--more--"
What an upheaval, huh?
"Ivory for sale in Angola; big tuskers die in Kenya" by Jason Straziuso | Associated Press June 20, 2014
NAIROBI — The craft market just north of Angola’s capital sells paintings, hand-carved wooden animals, and newly woven baskets. It is also sells more than 10,000 pieces of ivory, making it the largest market in southern Africa to openly sell elephant tusks, an illegal trade.
Across the African continent, in Kenya, two of the country’s biggest tuskers, as the continent’s largest bull elephants are called, were slaughtered by poachers. The phenomena are interconnected.
The international ivory trade is threatening to wipe out Africa’s elephants. Tens of thousands are killed for their tusks each year continentwide. And while specialists say there has been a decline in poaching, they say more needs to be done, as the deaths of the beloved pachyderms in Kenya show.
At the Benfica Market near Luanda, Angola, two animal researchers recently counted 10,026 pieces of ivory for sale — necklaces, bracelets, carved figurines, and whole tusks. And that huge count did not include backup inventory kept nearby.
‘‘I was flabbergasted because it was so big,’’ said Esmond Martin, one of two researches publishing a paper in an upcoming issue of TRAFFIC Bulletin, a wildlife trade journal. ‘‘It’s completely illegal.’’
The huge demand for ivory in China and the riches a relatively impoverished Kenyan or Tanzanian man, for instance, can make by shooting an elephant and selling its tusks are leading to the slaughter.
Another reason to make war on those bastards.
Kenya this month mourned the poaching deaths of Mountain Bull, the patriarch elephant of the Mount Kenya region, and Satao, a 45-year-old bull some specialists believe was the largest on earth.
Poachers killed him with a poison arrow.
‘‘A great life lost so that someone far away can have a trinket on their mantelpiece,’’ the Tsavo Trust said in announcing Satao’s death.
It's for the wealthy elite so back off!
Achim Steiner, the head of the Kenya-based United Nations Environmental Program, said Thursday that such killings fill him with deep frustration.
‘‘I think it’s both a tragedy and a travesty that in this day and age we are not able to contain and manage what ultimately is an act of irresponsibility that can lead to the extinction of species forever,’’ the official whose agency is charged with protecting the world’s flora and fauna, told the Associated Press.
A real Holocaust™!
I don't want to be insensitive, and condemn the useless taking of any life with murder for profit giving it a shove, but I would refer you to George Carlin on the environment to point out the arrogance of these agenda-pushing organizations in my agenda-pushing, war-promoting (is a factor) paper.
I'm sorry it's all I see in my paper now. Can't see the forest for the trees anymore, I gue$$.
Earlier this month customs officials in Hong Kong discovered 1,740 pounds of ivory in 32 suitcases. The flight had originated in Angola, the South China Morning Post reported.
Martin and Lucy Vigne have documented ivory markets in Nigeria, Sudan, and Egypt and at times had to flee angry, threatening sellers worried the pair’s research would harm their livelihood.
In Angola, though, no one seemed to care. They were able to count all of the ivory, take dozens of photos, and ask sellers prices and how the pieces were carved. Chinese buyers appear in many of their photos.
‘‘Obviously it was a totally open trade. No pressure to keep it under cover, and obviously all designed with the Chinese market,’’ said Vigne.
They are just trying to get by, I'm sure.
--more--"
China is killing the elephants, you got that?
Also see: Nigeria's Empty Net
Those girls long forgotten like all losers.
