Newsflash: Attack on U.N. Day Camp Traced to Rival Camp Northstar

The nighttime raid on a U.N.-run children’s camp in the Gaza Strip this week puzzled investigators until recently, when evidence emerged linking the attack to a scrappy band of militant misfits known only by the mysterious codename “Camp Northstar.” Led by the enigmatic mastermind “Al-Muri,” the group has been active in Gaza for years, orchestrating such attacks as 2003’s Peeing In Jerusalem’s Pools and the firebombing of the Fatah Rec Center.

One of the few images of the terrorist group at their training ground.

In a statement released to Al-Jazeera, Al-Muri crowed about the attack as “a glorious strike against the rich kids across the lake,” his typical epithet for the United States. “We shall never be defeated, for we shall win the Camp Olympiad for Allah and feast well upon the attendant pizza party!”

Al-Muri indoctrinates a young suicide wedgier.

U.N. officials downplayed the damage wrought by the attack, noting that all the lost equipment was easily replaceable and that their dad could afford it easy. Said Camp Director Chad Maxwell, “Those dumb Northstar militants think they can compete with this? They don’t even have a heated pool. Believe me, there’s nothing they can do to stop us from winning next month’s Camp Field Day.” Unbeknownst to Maxwell, his boxer shorts waved ominously from the flagpole behind him.

BELOW: Northstar militants sing one of their trademark anti-Western hate chants.

IRL News: Vote Jerry Brown because it would be hilarious

Here at the Squelch, we often write about politics from the perspective of any other jackass college student. We try to do our research and make our ideas entertaining, but we have nothing invested in the system and no idea how it really works. There’s no way you’re going to take us seriously when you know we’ll be tearing your movie tickets in twenty years. We expect no more gratifying role in our culture than that of the village idiot, parading his mental defects before a mirthlessly laughing crowd. You are correct that most of our “political” opinions have to do with legalizing weed. But once in a while, a story comes along that’s exactly our department. Once in a while, our long hours of sculpting the perfect fart joke place us among the most qualified people in the world to comment on an event. And today, our time has come. As a two-year veteran maker-funner-of of things, I can tell you with perfect certainty that Meg Whitman needs to lose this election.

get the money, dolla dolla bill yalllll

From the River to the UC

It’ s old news, but people are now gearing up to override the veto.

To recap, a bill passed the ASUC Senate urging divestment from companies that allegedly supplied Israel with the materials to bomb Gaza, and was vetoed by ASUC President Will Smelko during the spring recess.

Here is the article about the passage of the bill.

Here is the article about its veto.

Here is a toxic and hysterical editorial celebrating the veto. Here is a less toxic, though even more hysterical editorial condemning the veto.

Here is a new article with more updates.

My thoughts:

I am not terribly excited about my student government grand-standing over foreign policy issues, particularly when they can’t seem to manage their affairs at home. But…

Here’s a quote from the pro-veto editorial:

The measure attacks Israel, an open democratic society that has long been a close American ally. Its government is elected and subject to the rule of law. Its judiciary is independent; its military is under civilian authority; and its press is free.

On the other hand, the measures favor Hamas, an extreme Islamic group that expelled the opposing Fatah party in Gaza by force after winning a 2006 Palestinian election. (Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.) The rulers of Gaza offer no protection under law, no independent judiciary and no free press.

They permit no opposition. Rather than building a civil society, they launched a rocket war against innocent Israeli civilians from behind schools, hospitals, mosques and government agencies, using their own residents as human shields. Yet, the bill holds them blameless for the Palestinian plight. That the supporters of this action singled out Israel for rebuke while ignoring the fanatical regime in Gaza suggests that their agenda is political not ethical.

And here is a graph!

IRL News: In Which We Publicly Distance Ourselves From An Embarassment To Our Craft

It seems the time has come to address the elephant in the comedy-magazine room. Those who follow the news, particularly the depressing news, are surely aware of the baffling brouhaha brewing at UC San Diego. For those who haven’t: some frat or other decided to throw a “Compton Cookout” party at which guests were encouraged to dress and act like black people. Evidently it was on behalf of a rapper who uses racist imagery in his act, but in any event actual black students were understandably upset. Shoe number two dropped when our counterpart at UCSD, the Koala, performed a segment on the university TV station about the incident that was, shall we say, less than tactful. I belive a phrase that rhymes with “inflateful chiggers” was used. Again, anger and befuddlement followed, and they got booted off the air. Now, when a comedian is accused of racism, he or she faces a choice of how to respond: one might earnestly explain why the joke in question was not really racist, which may not be funny but clears one’s name quickly. Or one might do the same in a humorous manner, using one’s comedic talents to both prove one’s innocence and earn some goodwill. The Koala chose, well, neither. Instead, they followed up their apparently racist skit with a jaw-droppingly racist special issue, filled almost exclusively with attacks on the Black Student Union and UCSD’s Chancellor.  I’ve read it, but I’m not linking to it because I don’t like linking to awful things. You can find it yourself if you really want to. Suffice to say it does nothing to improve their reputation.

IRL News – 2/18/10

• Welp.

• Some Cheney or another criticized Obama for not believing in American Exceptionalism, which actually made my head explode; I am dead now, my head exploded.

• If this bit of speculation is to be believed at all, we might actually get something resembling progressive legislation passed through this squalid pit of a congress.  It’s just apparently going to take every trick available.  This country is ludicrous.

• You’ve probably heard about this stupid thing already, but man is this hilarious.  This is like the Star Wars Episode I of political scandals.

• A boring, probably unimportant thing happened, but it’s on basically every news page I looked at, so here you go.  Something about banks.

IRL News – 2/11/09

• Apparently Iran has been up to something or another.  What’s that all about?  Someone should keep an eye on that whole affair.

• Bill Clinton almost died AGAIN. It’s okay, though, because he got hisself two stents, prompting the entire institution of American journalism to pretend to know what those are for an entire afternoon.

• Important People are actually referring to this cold snap as “Snowmageddon”, as if we were all a bunch of god damn children or something, god damn it.

• The Euro is in sort of a tight spot as of late.  I always like this kind of news item because I can go “Oh, really” and pretend to be interested in it because it will make me look smart when in all honesty I don’t understand anything about it beyond “Euro;” but it’s a no-risk bluff because it will never in a million years have any noticeable effect on anything that I do at all.

• Google Buzz is so named because just like a buzzing housefly it is excruciatingly annoying and keeps interrupting you when you are trying to read anything.  Also some relatively inane thing about privacy settings.

• This is dumb.

IRL News – 2/3/10

• LOL.

• In the wake of the Single Exciting Thing that came out of Obama’s State of the Union, military muckety-mucks are “reviewing” how they could possibly go about implementing such a dramatically different protocol.  WHAT NEEDS REVIEWING.  EITHER YOU DON’T LET GAYS IN THE MILITARY OR YOU DO MY BRAIN
  

• Hahaha, this is literally the worst campaign advertisement I have ever seen, and that includes the “the rat is back!!” crap from the Georgia.  California gubernatorial politics are the worst in the world, I’m saying it right here.

• The Dutch are only just now making bestiality illegal.  So, good for them, I guess?

• I keep seeing this news story pop up everywhere, despite the fact that it’s results are really more “yeah, this works IF you only do this” and it says that abstinence-til-marriage programs are still utterly worthless anyway.  Oh, well.  Science Journalism.

IRL News – 1/31/09

Almost nothing happened this week, but I’ve committed to posting on this thing regularly from now on, so here’s a bunch of news for you to have in front of you for a while.  Here goes!

• The Grammys happened, and everyone who attended dressed up like different kinds of spaceships.  Lady Gaga won some stuff, and “Halo” by Beyonce won, and I really need to reevaluate what I listen to/care about.
• Rip Torn got drunk and robbed a bank.  This is a thing that actually happened In Real Life.  It actually happened.  Reminder: Rip Torn also hit Norman Mailer with a hammer and Norman Mailer almost bit his ear off.  These things happened.  Why does anyone care about anything else happening.
• Those chuckleheads who “exposed” ACORN for giving tax advice to the wacky pimp caricature they dressed up as completely screwed up and attempted to bug the phone of a senator, on federal property, and are now basically going to go to jail forever.  To cut their losses, they are now blaming liberals.
• Rich White Man May Run For President
• I now no longer remember a time when people weren’t talking about or complaining about or overtly shilling for the iPad.  There’s no link to any particular news article or anything about it, I just want you to know that I’m tired of hearing about the stupid iPad.

That’s it for this week, hopefully some more interesting things will happen next week so I won’t have to talk about the iPad ever again.

IRL News: Altered States’ Rights

First the bad news: production has started, so expect even less content in our already-rather-sparse blog for the next week or so. Now the good news: writing blog posts is a good way to procrastinate.

Now to business: I, for one, am fervently looking forward to this year’s midterm elections. Not because of the surely riveting spectacle of Democrats losing a few seats in Congress, normal for a ruling party, and watching conservative pundits trumpet it as the Year The Liberals Were Utterly Destroyed In Our Righteous Triumph, or even for the hilarity of watching the California GOP run two ex-CEOs as its exemplars of the New Republican Party, thus giving up all pretense of not being the party of CEOs, shortly after the least CEO-friendly year since the ‘80s ended. No, it’s because someone managed to get pot legalization on the state ballot. I say this not because of my own stance on the issue (fer it) but because of the glorious circus that is sure to arise.

IRL News: World Made Safe for Blackwater

You may have noticed that these “IRL News” posts tend to be about terrible, depressing things. That’s because, if these things were slightly less terrible, we’d find some way to joke about them in the magazine itself, but every so often we come across a news story that shows we’re already living in Bizarro World and comedy is redundant.

See, in September 2007, six Blackwater contractors opened fire on a traffic circle full of innocent Iraqi civilians, killing 17 and wounding more than 20. They fired from a circle of SUVs using machine guns and grenades. Two Blackwater helicopters flew in, and witnesses say one of the helicopters also fired at the crowd (Blackwater denies this). There were dozens of witnesses, including a traffic cop trained to give detailed accounts of traffic accidents, and one of the contractors, who pled guilty. Want to guess what happened to the five contractors who didn’t cop a plea? Their case was dismissed on December 31. Happy New Year!

Wackity schmackity doo!