Dermott Hayes's Blog: Postcard from a Pigeon, page 48
August 31, 2016
Princess Diana moment
On the 19th anniversary of her death, psychic Zak Martin doesn’t spill the beans on Diana, the tragic people’s princess
The Way I See It - by Zak Martin
Every year around this time I receive a spate of phone calls and emails from journalists researching articles, radio and TV programmes about my former client (and subsequently good friend) the late Princess Diana. Not from British journalists, I hasten to add, but from journalists in the US, Japan, Australia and so on. In Britain, Diana has been virtually erased from the public consciousness by a clever PR and “perception management” campaign.
Tomorrow, 1 July is Diana’s birthday, and therefore a journalistic opportunity to write “commemorative” articles about her.
Even all these years after her death, Diana’s photo on the front page of a newspaper or magazine guarantees increased sales.
There will be another spate of requests for interviews in August, the anniversary of her death. This year, no doubt, the task for journalists will be to make connections and comparisons between Diana and Michael Jackson (of whom, by the…
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FRAMED – LA Times
She was the PTA mom everyone knew. Who would want to harm her?
By Christopher Goffard | Aug. 28, 2016
(Pictometry / Los Angeles Times)
Framed: Chapter 1
By Christopher Goffard
The cop wanted her car keys. Kelli Peters handed them over. She told herself she had nothing to fear, that all he’d find inside her PT Cruiser was beach sand, dog hair, maybe one of her daughter’s toys.
They were outside Plaza Vista School in Irvine, where she had watched her daughter go from kindergarten to fifth grade, where any minute now the girl would be getting out of class to look for her. Parents had entrusted their own kids to Peters for years; she was the school’s PTA president and the heart of its after-school program.
Now she watched as her ruin seemed to unfold before her. Watched as the cop emerged from her car holding a Ziploc bag of marijuana, 17 grams worth, plus a ceramic pot pipe, plus two smaller EZY Dose Pill Pouch baggies, one with 11 Percocet pills, another with 29 Vicodin. It was enough to send her to jail, and more than enough to destroy her name.
Her legs buckled and she was on her knees, shaking violently and sobbing and insisting the drugs were not hers.
The cop, a 22-year veteran, had found drugs on many people, in many settings. When caught, they always lied.read more
The TTIP of the Iceberg
Mike McQuade for BuzzFeed NewsInternational corporations that want to intimidate countries have access to a private legal system designed just for them. And to unlock its power, sometimes all it takes is a threat. Part two of a BuzzFeed News investigation — read the whole series here.
Chris Hamby
BuzzFeed News Reporter
posted on Aug. 30, 2016, at 11:00 a.m.
In a remote tropical forest in Indonesia’s Spice Islands, villagers planned their last stand.
A foreign gold-mining company was preparing to gouge out a massive pit from the mountain that had sustained these farmers and fishermen for generations. To protect their way of life, the villagers planned to hike to the summit and refuse to leave.
Newcrest Mining had won the right to explore this mineral-rich area during the 30-year rule of Suharto, Indonesia’s military dictator. But when mass protests swept Suharto from power, the new parliament outlawed the environmentally devastating open-pit mining method in certain areas like this one, where it could endanger the water supply.
Newcrest, however, was proceeding as if the new law didn’t apply — because, effectively, it didn’t. The Australian company had found a way to trap Indonesia in the deals of the deposed dictator and, in the process, reap huge profits.
The weapon that Newcrest and other powerful foreign mining companies wielded was a threat. A highly specialized legal threat: They warned they might haul Indonesia before a sort of private global super court. Though most people have never heard of it, this justice system has the power to make entire nations fork over hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars to companies that say their business was unfairly hampered.read more
E.T., call waiting
Not a Drill: SETI Is Investigating a Possible Extraterrestrial Signal From Deep Space
If the signal is truly from an alien world, it’s one far more advanced than ours
By Robin Seemangal • 08/29/16 11:02am
Jodie Foster as a SETI scientist in the film Contact, based on Carl Sagan’s book about E.T. communication. (Image: Warner Bros)
An international team of scientists from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is investigating mysterious signal spikes emitting from a 6.3-billion-year-old star in the constellation Hercules—95 light years away from Earth. The implications are extraordinary and point to the possibility of a civilization far more advanced than our own.
August 30, 2016
Happy Birthday, Scott
Another contribution to the Flax Golden Tales, this time a tale of young and unrequited love, the kind we all know as ‘a crush,’ from serendipitousweblife
Dermott Hayes found the birthday card pictured below in a second-hand bookstore book and posted a story with an invitation to anyone who cared to write their version of its history.
Here’s my fictional story….
“What time did you say Scott was coming over, Adam?”
“Sis, I know you like him, but he’s coming over to see me, not you. It’s creepy that you like my best friend. There should be some rule against sisters liking their brother’s friends.”
“Hey, you guys break the rulez all the time, so maybe I should too. Besides, his birthday is this weekend and I wanted to give him something.”
“Look Sis, there’s something I should…”
Ding, Dong… Sis dashed out of the room and thundered down the stairs. “I’ll get it.”
Sis whisked the door open, breathless with a bright smile. “Hi Scott,” she said before she got the door fully open.
“Hey…
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Pic: Mike McQuade for BuzzFeed News
A parallel legal ...
Pic: Mike McQuade for BuzzFeed News
A parallel legal universe, open only to corporations and largely invisible to everyone else, helps executives convicted of crimes escape punishment. Part one of a BuzzFeed News investigation.
Chris Hamby
BuzzFeed News Reporter
posted on Aug. 28, 2016, at 2:00 p.m.
Imagine a private, global super court that empowers corporations to bend countries to their will.
Say a nation tries to prosecute a corrupt CEO or ban dangerous pollution. Imagine that a company could turn to this super court and sue the whole country for daring to interfere with its profits, demanding hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars as retribution.
Imagine that this court is so powerful that nations often must heed its rulings as if they came from their own supreme courts, with no meaningful way to appeal. That it operates unconstrained by precedent or any significant public oversight, often keeping its proceedings and sometimes even its decisions secret. That the people who decide its cases are largely elite Western corporate attorneys who have a vested interest in expanding the court’s authority because they profit from it directly, arguing cases one day and then sitting in judgment another. That some of them half-jokingly refer to themselves as “The Club” or “The Mafia.”read more
Vice Versa
Photo credit: baylessband.com
I work hard, he thinks, have done all my life, pay my taxes, attend church, regularly and always lend a hand or contribute for community fundraisers.
He pauses his thoughts, checks the noose. He inhales the fear, then kicks the chair. The body swings.
I’m allowed one vice, he thinks.
Another Tonks’ Tale
“The key is hidden, under a stone, in the back yard, she said, which fucking stone?” Grace says as she stands in front of a pile of rocks, she looks over to Unus and he shrugs his shoulders, his suit cover in dirt, for the last two hours they’ve been sifting through the rocks that […]
via Day 110 – The Room – Short Story — Twisted Roads of Madness
Free Online Resources: Grammar and Writing — Kristen Twardowski
Like any good grammar junkie, I keep a list of resources for when questions arise about the English language. The following are some free sites that I find myself referring to time and time again. They have been so helpful over the years that it would feel stingy not to share them. OWL: The Purdue […]
via Free Online Resources: Grammar and Writing — Kristen Twardowski
“Invitation” by Shel Silverstein
Fatimah Badawy, inexplicably perturbed by The Invitation, Shel Silverstein’s first poem in Where the Sidewalk Ends, writes her contribution as a childhood memory of a little girl and her mother and a strange sense of foreboding
I came across a lovely blog with a lovely writing challenge! Mr. Dermott Hayes, the author, has kindly invited me to participate, a request which I could not decline.
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Postcard from a Pigeon
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