This cartoon is funny. This story is not. It is, however, beyond satire.

According to the [UK] Daily Mail Online:

A hardline Islamist group in Somalia has begun publicly whipping women for wearing bras that they claim violate Islam as they are 'deceptive'.

The insurgent group Al Shabaab has sent gunmen into the streets of Mogadishu to round up any women who appear to have a firm bust, residents claimed yesterday.

The women are then inspected to see if the firmness is natural, or if it is the result of wearing a bra.

If they are found wearing a bra, they are ordered to remove it and shake their breasts, residents said....

'Al Shabaab forced us to wear their type of full veil and now they order us to shake our breasts,' a resident, Halima, told Reuters, adding that her daughters had been whipped on Thursday.

'They are now saying that breasts should be firm naturally, or just flat.'...

Via the Associated Press:

A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have. Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."

Bardwell said he asks everyone who calls about marriage if they are a mixed race couple. If they are, he does not marry them, he said.

Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.

"There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage," Bardwell said. "I think those children suffer and I won't help put them through it."

If he did an interracial marriage for one couple, he must do the same for all, he said.

"I try to treat everyone equally," he said....

Add to the list of not a racists Georgia businessman Patrick Lanzo, who put up a large sign outside of his bar, reading: "OBAMAS HEALTH CARE PLAN - NIGGER RIG IT". Lanzo explained:

"I've used the N-word most of my life and there is different ways to put your opinion up, but that's just the words I choose to use."...

Despite the presence of a mannequin clad in a Ku Klux Klan outfit standing amid the pool tables, Lanzo maintained he's not a racist.

Anyone know where I can get an uncensored version of the sign?

Source: New York Daily News

• Customers invited to fight diabetes while getting diabetes
• Froot loops, mayonnaise, cocoa puffs now good for you
• Google's twenty funniest suggestions

Boston police officer Justin Barrett sent an email [1] to the Boston Globe and his National Guard colleagues saying that Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates behaved like a "banana-eating jungle monkey" and that, had he been the arresting officer, he would have sprayed him in the face with OC (pepper spray). Don't worry, though, Barrett isn't a racist, as he later explained: "I regret that I used such words. I have so many friends of every type of culture and race you can name. I am not a racist." [2]

Barrett isn't the only not-a-racist. British National Party (BNP) nominee Clifford Le May urged the London mayor: "Stop ruining our community by stuffing New Addington with violent immigrants who have no right to live among decent civilised white people". He also called his white opponent a "traitor to his race and nation". Le May has refused to apologize for his remarks and insists: "I'm not a racist -- I'm a British patriot." He went on to explain that a New Scientist article said "there's evidence that people in gangs are predisposed to violence. They didn't bring race into the equation, but you can read between the lines." [3]

Le May has plenty of company in the BNP, whose constitution is "committed to stemming and reversing the tide of non-white immigration and to restoring, by legal changes, negotiation and consent the overwhelmingly white makeup of the British population that existed in Britain prior to 1948". [4] After posting racist slurs publicly online, BNP candidate Charlotte Lewis explained: "I am not a racist, I am a racial survivalist and anyone who calls me a racist is a genocideist." [5]

The phrase "not a racist" has become so common that it is now appearing in satire. After an anonymous French Tour de France rider accused British rider Mark Cavendish of complaining about "Fucking Frenchies", Cavendish explained that he wasn't a racist, just an "asshole". The next day:

On the Garmin team bus before the start, there's movement behind the curtain in the doorway. We turn to look just as a booming, disembodied voice announces: "Mark Cavendish is not a racist. He just doesn't like French people." [6]

Sources:

• Justin Barrett's email in question
• Cop apologizes for "jungle monkey" e-mail
• Croydon BNP election candidate investigated over immigrants rant
• Constitution of the British National Party
• Croydon BNP candidate leaves offensive messages on web
• Tour de France diary

• Teen Girl Falls in Open Manhole While Texting: The family may sue the city.
• "Orgasm A Day" Campaign Directed At British Schoolchildren Sparks Controversy: The leaflet for high school students includes the slogan "an orgasm a day keeps the doctor away".
• Wells Fargo Bank Sues Itself: "Wells Fargo holds the first and second mortgages on a condominium [and as] holder of the first, Wells Fargo is suing all other lien holders, including ... itself."

Two online discussions started by parents concerned about their sons' sexuality:

• How can I tell if my son is gay?
• I'm concerned that my son has a secret girlfriend?

I'm not sure if the latter letter from the concerned parent is satire or beyond satire. Any opinions?

Photo credit: mtsofan

From Lowering the Bar, via Consumerist:

On May 21, a judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California dismissed a complaint filed by a woman who said she had purchased "Cap'n Crunch with Crunchberries" because she believed "crunchberries" were real fruit. The plaintiff, Janine Sugawara, alleged that she had only recently learned to her dismay that said "berries" were in fact simply brightly-colored cereal balls, and that although the product did contain some strawberry fruit concentrate, it was not otherwise redeemed by fruit. She sued, on behalf of herself and all similarly situated consumers who also apparently believed that there are fields somewhere in our land thronged by crunchberry bushes.

Cap'n According to the complaint, Sugawara and other consumers were misled not only by the use of the word "berries" in the name, but also by the front of the box, which features the product's namesake, Cap'n Crunch, aggressively "thrusting a spoonful of 'Crunchberries' at the prospective buyer." Plaintiff claimed that this message was reinforced by other marketing representing the product as a "combination of Crunch biscuits and colorful red, purple, teal and green berries." Yet in actuality, the product contained "no berries of any kind." Plaintiff brought claims for fraud, breach of warranty, and our notorious and ever-popular California Unfair Competition Law and Consumer Legal Remedies Act.

Judge Morrison England Jr. dismissed the case, stating:

[W]hile the challenged packaging contains the word "berries" it does so only in conjunction with the descriptive term "crunch." This Court is not aware of, nor has Plaintiff alleged the existence of, any actual fruit referred to as a "crunchberry." Furthermore, the "Crunchberries" depicted on the [box] are round, crunchy, brightly-colored cereal balls, and the [box] clearly states both that the Product contains "sweetened corn & oat cereal" and that the cereal is "enlarged to show texture." Thus, a reasonable consumer would not be deceived into believing that the Product in the instant case contained a fruit that does not exist. . . . So far as this Court has been made aware, there is no such fruit growing in the wild or occurring naturally in any part of the world.

The judge noted a precedent in which the plaintiff's lawyers were unsuccessful in a complaint that Froot Loops did not contain real fruit.

From the April 18, 2009, Guardian:

A British team sets sail tomorrow from Plymouth to attempt the first ever carbon-neutral crossing of the Greenland ice cap.

The physiotherapist Richard Spink, landscape gardener Raoul Surcouf and skipper Ben Stoddart hope to complete a three-week, 2,000-mile crossing of the north Atlantic to the port of Nuuk on the west coast of Greenland....

"Expeditions often achieve impressive objectives and carry out vital research, but few take into account their environmental impacts," said Surcouf, 40, from London. "By making our expedition carbon-neutral, we wanted to show that it is possible to visit incredible places and preserve them for future generations."

The expedition boat, a 40-foot Island Packet yacht, has been fitted with a wind generator and solar panels to reduce reliance on the battery and motor. Much of the expedition food has been donated by FareShare, a charity that collects out-of-date but edible food that would otherwise end up in landfill and distributes it to vulnerable people across the country.

From the May 5, 2009, Guardian:

The British crew of a polar expedition have been rescued after their yacht was caught in a hurricane-force storm and capsized three times in towering north Atlantic swells....

Their relief was tinged with a sense of irony as the rescue craft sent by Falmouth coastguard was the Overseas Yellowstone, a 113,000-tonne oil tanker....

In a statement from the tanker after the rescue, [expedition member Richard] Spink said: "We regret to inform you that the CNE Greenland expedition 2009 has been abandoned due to repeated, irreparable storm damage to our sailing vessel Fleur; in the north Atlantic we experienced some of the harshest conditions known, over a period of 36 hours, with winds gusting hurricane force 12. At 10.00hrs on 1st May 2009 the decision was made that the risk to our own personal safety was too great to continue and a rescue was co-ordinated with Falmouth coastguard. The team are now safely and ironically aboard the oil tanker Overseas Yellowstone."

Credits: The above pictures are from Carbon Neutral Expeditions and Overseas Yellowstone, respectively. I first heard about the story on Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!