Portside

• Taiwanese Government Introduces Terrifying Special Forces - Mike (Rocketnews24.com)
• Sheldon Adelson Says Obama Should Nuke Iran - Paul Blumenthal  (Huffington Post)
• Outsider Whose Dark, Lyrical Vision Helped Shape Rock 'n' Roll - Ben Ratliff (New York Times)
• Barneys Case Stirs Talk of 'Shopping While Black' - Jesse Washington (Associated Press)
• Mainstream Economics is In Denial: the World has Changed - Aditya Chakrabortty  (The Guardian)

Taiwanese Government Introduces Terrifying Special Forces

By Mike
October 21, 2013
Rocketnews24.com

Taiwanese Special Forces and a select few other military units recently received updated bulletproof armor that includes a ballistic face mask that serves to protect operators from lethal headshots and to reduce fighting effectiveness of opposing forces, seemingly by causing them to immediately curl into the fetal position and cry for their mothers. Check out one of the scariest-looking armies ever.

Other than the obvious added protection and intimidation factor of the masks, there is one other possible explanation for the Taiwanese government issuing them: they don't want us to realize that they've actually just introduced a horrifying army of supersoldier Boba Fett clones.

Sheldon Adelson Says Obama Should Nuke Iran

By Paul Blumenthal
October 23, 2013
The Huffington Post

Casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson told a crowd at Yeshiva University in New York on Tuesday that the only proper negotiating tactic with Iran would be fire a nuclear missile at the country and threaten to wipe out the entire population of Tehran, the nation's capital.

An overly aggressive U.S. foreign policy stance against Iran has been a driving force behind Adelson's political giving. In the 2012 election Adelson and his family gave more than $100 million to super PACs and other groups supporting Republican candidates. Adelson is also a staunch supporter and major funder of right-wing political parties in Israel, where campaign finance laws allow parties and candidates to accept campaign contributions from foreigners.

Outsider Whose Dark, Lyrical Vision Helped Shape Rock 'n' Roll

By Ben Ratliff
October 27, 2013    
New York Times

Lou Reed, the singer, songwriter and guitarist whose work with the Velvet Underground in the 1960s had a major influence on generations of rock musicians, and who remained a powerful if polarizing force for the rest of his life, died on Sunday at his home in Amagansett, N.Y., on Long Island. He was 71.

Mr. Reed brought dark themes and a mercurial, sometimes aggressive disposition to rock music. He played the sport of alienating listeners, defending the right to contradict himself in hostile interviews, to contradict his transgressive image by idealizing sweet or old-fashioned values in word or sound, or to present intuition as blunt logic. But his early work assured him a permanent audience.

Barneys Case Stirs Talk of 'Shopping While Black'

By Jesse Washington, Associated Press
October 29, 2013
ABC News

When a black teen said he was wrongly jailed after buying a $350 belt at a Manhattan luxury store, it struck a nerve in African-Americans accustomed to finding that their money is not necessarily as good as everyone else's. Shopping while black, they say, can be a humiliating experience.

Much attention has been paid to the issue over the years - Oprah Winfrey complained that a Swiss clerk did not think she could afford a $38,000 handbag, and even President Barack Obama has said he was once followed in stores. But according to shoppers interviewed Monday, many people don't recognize how prevalent retail discrimination is, and how the consistent stream of small insults adds up to a large problem.

Mainstream Economics is In Denial: the World has Changed

By Aditya Chakrabortty
October 28, 2013
The Guardian (UK)

The most significant thing to emerge from academic economics in the past five years has not been any piece of research, but the superb documentary Inside Job, in which film-maker Charles Ferguson showed how some of the best minds at American universities had been paid by Big Finance to produce research helping Big Finance.

Yet look around at most of the major economics degree courses and neoclassical economics - that theory that treats humans as walking calculators, all-knowing and always out for themselves, and markets as inevitably returning to stability - remains in charge. Why? In a word: denial. The high priests of economics refuse to recognise the world has changed.