Splitting the Sky on Trial in Canada for Attempting to Arrest President Bush
Via YouTube:
A man named Splitting the Sky, tried to arrest former President George W. Bush for war crimes. He crossed police lines on one of President Bush’s visits to Canada and was arrested. He now faces criminal charges in court, the trial began today.
Waterboarding For Dummies
MARK BENJAMIN writes on Salon:
Self-proclaimed waterboarding fan Dick Cheney called it a no-brainer in a 2006 radio interview: Terror suspects should get a “a dunk in the water.” But recently released internal documents reveal the controversial “enhanced interrogation” practice was far more brutal on detainees than Cheney’s description sounds, and was administered with meticulous cruelty.
Interrogators pumped detainees full of so much water that the CIA turned to a special saline solution to minimize the risk of death, the documents show. The agency used a gurney “specially designed” to tilt backwards at a perfect angle to maximize the water entering the prisoner’s nose and mouth, intensifying the sense of choking — and to be lifted upright quickly in the event that a prisoner stopped breathing.
The documents also lay out, in chilling…
Only Some Conspiracy Theories Welcome at Huffington Post
Have to agree, the Huffington Post loves to embrace all sort of crazy pseudoscientific theories about your health, but has a problem with this post from Jesse Ventura. (You can read the Ventura post on InfoWars.) Alex Pareene writes on Gawker:
The Huffington Post removed a 9/11 “Truther” post from former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura. According to their editor’s note, “The Huffington Post’s editorial policy, laid out in our blogger guidelines, prohibits the promotion and promulgation of conspiracy theories….” Oh, really?
Because today, the very same Huffington Post published this wonderful post from dangerous nutcase Jenny McCarthy about how autism is caused by vaccines and can be cured with experimental treatments that the established medical community doesn’t want you to know about. We can only assume that as soon as the editors discover this conspiratorial nonsense, they will promptly remove it.
The fun thing about Jenny McCarthy’s conspiracy is that if it catches on enough, it will literally lead to the death of children. Trutherism just makes you really annoying!
It’s not only Huffington Post who gives the former Playboy playmate lip service, ABC News was willing to seek a medical opinion from her. Even if you disagree with Ventura’s claims on 9/11 (and I am in that camp), Ventura is not saying he is qualified to dispense an engineering analysis, or even claiming he is 100% right about his conclusions.
For more on Jenny McCarthy’s lunatic crusade, check out Jenny McCarthy Body Count.
Yes Men Dupe Utah With Call For Gay “Final Solution”
Pranksters the Yes Men held a bogus press conference in Salt Lake City, posing as an organization called “Patriots for a Moral Utah,” and called for a “Final Solution” of the forced removal of gays and lesbians of Utah. Amazingly, the event seemed believable enough for local reporters…Utah’s ABC 4 reports:
The so-called press conference was held at the Utah State Capitol at 1:00 p.m. Monday.
The woman claimed that…Utahns should get behind the initiative that would force homosexuals to relocate to New York City, Portland or San Francisco. According to the woman, who claimed to be Nora Young, homosexuals who chose not to relocate who be forced to undergo therapy that would “rehabilitate” them from homosexuality.
Republicans’ Internal Documents Call For Strategy Of “Fear”
The politics of fear, laid out in PowerPoint. From Politico:
The Republican National Committee plans to raise money this election cycle through an aggressive campaign capitalizing on “fear” of President Barack Obama and a promise to “save the country from trending toward socialism.”
The strategy was detailed in a confidential party fundraising presentation, obtained by POLITICO, which also outlines how “ego-driven” wealthy donors can be tapped with offers of access and “tchochkes.”
The presentation was delivered by RNC Finance Director Rob Bickhart to top donors and fundraisers at a party retreat in Boca Grande, Florida on February 18, a source at the gathering said.
‘Jihad Jane’: American Woman’s Plot To Kill Swedish Cartoonist
‘Jihad Jane,’ as Pennsylvania woman Colleen LaRose dubbed herself, was indicted Tuesday for helping recruit a network for suicide attacks and plotting to kill a Swedish cartoonist. Seven Muslims were arrested in Ireland in connection with the alleged plot. Jonathan Adams reports for the Christian Science Monitor:
Authorities unsealed charges in the US against a woman dubbed “Jihad Jane” and arrested seven Muslims in Ireland Tuesday for their alleged involvement in a plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist.
The allegations highlight the ongoing sensitivity of cartoon renderings of the prophet Mohammad, and are a rare example of a white American woman becoming involved in global jihad over the Internet.
U.S. National Biometric ID Cards Coming Soon
A dream of governments worldwide has long been to make people carry identification papers or cards, but the United States has always rejected direct attempts to institute such a program. That may be about to change, according to the Wall Street Journal:
Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.
Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker…
Surprise? Old Men Have More Sex Than Old Women
From Time:
Spring is coming, and a young man’s thoughts turn to … you know. Apparently, old men’s thoughts turn to the same subject. According to an article to be published Wednesday in the journal BMJ (British Medical Journal), 67% of men ages 65 to 74 said they had been sexually active in the past year, compared with just 40% of women in that age group. Everyone knows young men think constantly about sex, but many guys remain interested in sex until they are almost dead: more than one-third of men ages 75 to 85 said they had sex in the past 12 months, compared with just 17% of women in that age group.
Some of this surely has to do with Viagra, which makes it easier for older men to be…
Can We Build Robotic Eyes?
Geeks are now discussing the topic of “computer vision”, and this article includes a video showing how robots are taught to perceive images. (”For robots, the choice of eyes varies, from single light-dependant resistors to high-resolution video cameras…)
But interestingly, researchers have already determined that the state-of-the-art machine vision systems are all outperformed by systems based on human biology.
9/11 Truthers Could Be Locked Up For Life Under Proposed U.S. Law
A new bill quietly introduced by Congress last week is causing quite a stir among civil liberties groups. The brainchild of senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman, the bill would give the United States government the power to indefinitely detain terror suspects without charge or trial. It would also allow the government to interrogate them for the intelligence value and it doesn’t make a distinction between U.S. citizens and non-citizens.
Internet Freedom: Beyond Circumvention
From Worldchanging.com:
Secretary Clinton’s recent speech on Internet Freedom has signaled a strong interest from the US State Department in promoting the use of the internet to promote political reforms in closed societies. It makes sense that the State Department would look to support existing projects to circumvent internet censorship. The New York Times reports that a group of senators is urging the Secretary to apply existing funding to support the development and expansion of censorship circumvention programs, including Tor, Psiphon and Freegate.
I’ve spent a good part of the last couple of years studying internet circumvention systems. My colleagues Hal Roberts, John Palfrey and I released a study last year that compared the strengths and weaknesses of different circumvention tools. Some of my work at Berkman is funded by a US state department grant that…
Pentagon Shooting Yet Another Sign of Boiling Anti-Government Sentiment
From Alternet:
The media are trying to find political affiliations for the Pentagon shooter, but they’re missing the big picture.
Another day, another violent anti-government kamikaze act. As the feds recover from Joseph Stack flying his airplane into an IRS building in Austin on Feb. 18 — leaving one dead and 13 injured — the media and government have another dead man to worry about.
Thursday night, after having driven cross-country from California to Washington, John Patrick Bedell walked up to a screening area at the Pentagon and starting firing his two semiautomatic weapons. In less than a minute, he’d wounded two police offers and received gunshot injuries that would later kill him.
Like Stack, Bedell was well-educated and left behind comprehensive material that outlined his longtime anger at the U.S. government. But his…
NYC Restaurateur Serving Wife’s Breast Milk Cheese
Is it just me, or is this a total gross-out? As reported in the New York Post:
This Chelsea restaurant has gone from brasserie to brassiere. Chef Daniel Angerer is letting diners at Klee Brasserie munch on cheese made from his wife’s breast milk.
“It tastes like cow’s-milk cheese, kind of sweet,” he told The Post.
The flavor depends on what the cheese is served with — Angerer recommends a Riesling — and “what the mother eats,” said Angerer, who once bested Bobby Flay on TV’s “Iron Chef.”
Breast milk doesn’t curdle well due to its low protein content, so a little moo juice has to be added to round out the texture, Angerer said. After blogging about his efforts with the human cheese, customers started demanding a sample, he said.
“The phone was ringing…
Jesse Ventura: two-party system is “the downfall of our country”
I think Jesse makes a couple of good points here:
Resources For Thinking About Systems
Futurist Chris Arkenberg shares some resources for beginning systems thinkers. Via Technoccult:
In some respects, this way of thinking is a natural part of simply paying attention to things. In other ways, it’s a challenging and sometimes overwhelming course of study that can easily move from Aha! moments to a very dis-empowering sense of total non-determinism. In the face of such huge complexity it can seem impossible to make any actionable sense of things. Finding the balance and determining the appropriate scope of research in analyzing a domain is a critical skill that must be developed individually through practice, lest you tug on that thread and find you’ve unraveled the entire sweater.
Jason Bermas Talks About The Invisible Empire
Russia Today features the new Jason Bermas (”Loose Change”) film, Invisible Empire: A New World Order Defined, that seeks to put the structure of power on trial. The film looks at the history of political power, scandal and the vision of some of the most well known leaders in the world, and how they shaped it.
Here’s Bermas announcing the April 15 release date:
What is the New World Order?…
The Frogman Cometh
From the Smirking Chimp:
Karl Rove is typically described as a villain of American politics. I prefer the description of deranged psycho killer when referring to him and the underhanded campaign tactics he popularized.
While villains tend to be handsome, dashing men who wield great power and charisma, psycho killers are generally pathetic and broken down little misfits, usually sexually dysfunctional and shunned by society, only to fester in the shadows while flagellating themselves and masturbating to pictures of their mother.
Is that an apt description of Karl Rove? Who the fuck cares, it’s Karl Rove. When did he ever consider the veracity of his claims? This is the man who helped forward a rumor in 2000 that John McCain’s adopted Indian daughter was really an illegitimate child sired with a woman of…
Adam Gorightly Discusses Black Magic, Mind Control, and the Manson Family Mythos
This premier episode of the Tone Color Alchemy podcast features author and historian Adam Gorightly, discussing his new book The Shadow over Santa Susana: Black Magic, Mind Control & the Manson Family Mythos.
The conversation centers around Manson’s musical career and the many songwriters who he was in touch with during his life, prior to the Tate-LaBianca murders. Tune in for a discussion of Charlie’s ties to the Church of Satan, the Beach Boys, Grateful Dead, The Beatles, Kenneth Anger, Jimmy Page, and Scientology, along with Manson’s musical techniques, 9/11 synchronicities involved in the recordings of his music, and plenty more. Gorightly has an encyclopedic knowledge of this topic and as always, he brings a warm, fun presence to the mix. Enjoy!
South Africa Imports 42 Million Condoms For World Cup Soccer
Perhaps taking a cue from the emergency shipment of condoms sent to Vancouver after the Olympic village exhausted supplies, soccer’s World Cup in South Africa, coming up in June, is making sure that the AIDS-ravaged nation has ample supplies, as reported in the Guardian:
Britain is to give 42m condoms to South Africa in response to a request for an extra billion as part of an HIV prevention drive before the World Cup, the government will announce today.
The request for British help in stockpiling sufficient condoms for the expected influx of thousands of football supporters in three months’ time was made during President Jacob Zuma’s recent visit to the UK to meet the Queen.
“Obviously there’s a big focus on the World Cup coming up and a huge increase in the number of…
