Archive for October, 2009
Open Thread: Oath Keepers
From Black Sun Gazette
I am somewhat bewildered at the inability of my readers to see the Oath Keepers as the threat to American democracy that they clearly are. It’s almost as if my British friends were to say that the BNP were stand up guys, using their platform as the ultimate means of appraisal. Indeed, the constant recourse to the “Declaration of Orders We Will Not Obey”- as if this stood outside of a broader social context, and their framing was without meaning- is particularly troubling. As is the sentiment, repeated by people intelligent and politically savvy enough to know better, that the Oath Keepers are worthy of praise because they “defend the Constitution” or some other vague, trans-class expression of support.
Full Article at Black Sun Gazette
Behind the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize
by Thierry Meyssan for voltairenet.org:
While the Nobel Peace Prize award has led to a chorus of praise from the Atlantic alliance leaders, it has also raised skepticism around the world. Rather than discuss the reasons that might after the fact justify this surprising choice, Thierry Meyssan exposes the corruption of the Nobel Committee and the ties between its chairman, Thorbjørn Jagland, and Obama’s associates…
Why I Give My 9-Year-Old Pot
The title is provocative, but this piece from the site Double X is extremely moving. Here’s why you give a child in elementary school marijuana:
My son J has autism. He’s also had two serious surgeries for a spinal cord tumor and has an inflammatory bowel condition. For a time, anti-inflammatory medication seemed to control his pain. But in the last year, it stopped working.
J’s school called my husband and me in for a meeting. Since autistic children like J can’t exactly do talk therapy, this meant sedating, antipsychotic drugs like Risperdal—Thorazine for kids.
Last year, Risperdal was prescribed for more than 389,000 children—240,000 of them under the age of 12—for bipolar disorder, ADHD, autism, and other disorders. Yet the drug has never been tested for long-term safety in children and carries a severe warning of side effects.(Click through the link for more.)
Sequoia Voting Systems Malicious Code Revealed
California-based Sequoia Voting Systems is one of the largest distributors of electronic voting systems in the country.
A few days ago they accidentally released SQL code for their voting databases, and according to Slashdot, the existence of the code seems to violate federal voting law:
“What was revealed was thousands of lines of MS-SQL source code” that seemly are intended to control or influence the outcome of an election.
So if you live in New York, California, or somewhere else where Sequoia’s machines are sold, your election day votes may not be going to the candidates you intend.
Massive Atheism Ads Arriving in Major U.S. Cities
CNN is reporting (below) that atheist ads are going to be all over New York City’s subways next week, while the Chicago Tribune reveals that the second city is one step ahead (see photo):
Some New Yorkers may want to reconsider exclaiming “Thank God” when arriving at their destination subway station beginning Monday.
Or at least that’s what a coalition of eight atheist organizations are hoping, having purchased a month-long campaign that will place their posters in a dozen busy subway stations throughout Manhattan.
The advertisements ask the question, written simply over an image of a blue sky with wispy white clouds: “A million New Yorkers are good without God. Are you?”
On October 26, a dozen bustling New York City subway stations will be adorned with the ads as “part of a coordinated multi-organizational advertising campaign designed to raise awareness about people who don’t believe in a god”, according to a statement from the group,…
High Times Mag’s 2009 “Strains of the Year” Cannabis Report (video)
In the annual HIGH TIMES ranking of the top 10 cannabis strains of the year senior cultivation editor Danny Danko travels the world, smoking and sampling, to bring you this unparalleled list of the top names in herb. Where else can you read all about the most amazing marijuana varieties in the world—enticing hybrids like Space Bomb, A-Train and the Church—while drooling over the kind of full color pot photography that made HIGH TIMES famous in the first place?
Alright so it’s a cheesy ad for the mag, but it’s pretty cool anyway 
Motorhead’s Lemmy Kilmister: Vampire of the Sunset Strip
Motorhead’s Lemmy has long been one of my favorite rock and roll icons, and I was a kid who grew up on punk, not metal. He’s never really received the recognition he deserves as one of the hardest working musicians around so it’s great to see him profiled in Rolling Stone (you’ll need the print issue to read it, this is just a preview):
Lemmy Kilmister may be the most indestructible rocker alive. At 63 years old, he still spends nearly every day he’s not on tour swilling bourbon at West Hollywood’s legendary rocker hangout the Rainbow Bar & Grill — and his band still plays about 150 shows a year. Rolling Stone’s Mark Binelli put in some quality time at the Rainbow (and Kilmister’s nearby apartment, stocked with a mind-blowing array of WWII and Nazi memorabilia) for a profile of Motörhead’s singer/bassist in our new issue.
“The first time I ever saw…
LAPD’s Creepy Orwellian Anti-terrorism Ad (video)
Ever get the feeling you’re being watched?
Check out the Los Angeles Police Department’s creepy new public service announcement for its city-wide anti-terrorism iWatch program. The civilian program was launched earlier this month and is endorsed by 63 police chiefs around the country.
The ad features wide-eyed, blink-free residents reciting Orwellian mantras and looking as if they’re about to crawl out of your television like that girl in “The Ring.”
The Fox News War: What’s the Upside for Obama?
Five years after activist director Robert Greenwald woke the country up to the Republican Party agenda of Fox News Channel with his bestselling documentary OUTFOXED: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, Linda Feldmann suggests that President Obama and his team shouldn’t be raising the issue in this essay in the Christian Science Monitor. I’m not so sure; although Greenwald & co. made it obvious to the media that FNC was essentially a propaganda tool for the RNC, the message seemingly hasn’t seeped in deeply enough for the average American TV viewer:
The Obama administration has taken a fair amount of grief for its campaign to marginalize Fox News, saying the cable network is “not a news organization” but rather “the communications arm of the Republican Party.”
Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus, not a fire-breathing conservative, calls it “dumb on multiple levels” – a distraction from policy messages, a boost to Fox ratings, and,…
Latest ATS News Video: Oath Keepers, CIA Monitoring Social Networks + More
Our friends at AboveTopSecret.com are off to a fast start and have already released a new episode of ATS News with Johnny Anonymous. In this edition Johnny leads off with startling coverage of the CIA’s efforts to invest in a small software firm that specializes in “social network monitoring” in their effort to spy on everything we do online. Additional topics include coverage of the Oath Keepers, an unusual aircraft seen by one of our members, the White House’s indicate they control (nearly) all media, and much more.
Fascism Watch: Oath Keepers and the BNP
From Black Sun Gazette
There are more troubling signs of a growing fascist movement not only domestically, but internationally. It seems that the problem is far more advanced than I would have originally thought. Once again, the sum total of recent history (Clinton impeachment, Bush v. Gore, the 2004 election), current social conditions, rising street level right wing movements, disaffected soldiers coming back from Iraq, the history of fascist movements, and the piss poor track record of declining powers, paints a very grim picture of a growing fascist movement both at home and abroad. The Democrats will not protect you. The only way to stop them is through militant action in the streets.
Atheism 3.0 Finds a Little More Room For Religion
A surprising article in USA Today suggests that some atheists are now pro-religion while still anti-God:
Bruce Sheiman doesn’t believe in God, but he does believe in religion.
Setting aside the question of whether God exists, it’s clear that the benefits of faith far outweigh its costs, he argues in his new book, An Atheist Defends Religion: Why Humanity is Better Off With Religion than Without It.
“I don’t know if anybody is going to be able to convince me that God exists,” Sheiman said in an interview, “but they can convince me that religion has intrinsic value.”
The old atheists said there was no God. The so-called “New Atheists” said there was no God, and they were vocally vicious about it. Now, the new “New Atheists” — call it Atheism 3.0 — say there’s still no God, but maybe religion isn’t all that bad.
Faith provides meaning and purpose for millions of believers, inspires people to tend to each other and build communities, gives them a sense of union with a transcendent force, and provides numerous health benefits, Sheiman says. Moreover, the galvanizing force behind many achievements in Western civilization has been faith, Sheiman argues, while conceding that he limits his analysis, for the most part, to modern Western religion…
Al Franken Is Actually A Good Senator: Watch Him Beat Up On Thinktanker
Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) humbles Hudson Institute dilettante over health care bankruptcies during a senate Judiciary sub-committee hearing on bankruptcies driven by catastrophic medical expenses.
Mission(s) to Mars, visualized
from FastCompany:
Maybe ever since the Moon landing, it’s been pretty easy to overestimate the success of our space programs–when we want to go somewhere or launch something, we just do it, right? In actuality, space exploration remains a high risk endeavor, as the various Space Shuttle disasters have proven. And going to Mars? Maybe it’s out closest planet, but going there isn’t as easy as it seems.
To prove it, here’s a clever graph of all the missions ever sent to Mars. As you can see, it’s basically a bar graph; missions to Mars as listed chronologically, and the mission result is coded by how close the corresponding bar reaches to Mars.
Illustration by Bryan Christie
The Sex-Housework Link
A surprising report in the Wall Street Journal of all places:
Housework may seem like the ultimate romance-killer. But guess what?
A new study shows that for husbands and wives alike, the more housework you do, the more often you are likely to have sex with your spouse.
Earlier studies have hinted at this connection for men; the sight of a husband mopping the floor or doing dishes sparks affection in the hearts of many wives. But the more-housework-equals-more-sex link for wives, documented in a study of 6,877 married couples published online recently in the Journal of Family Issues, is a surprise.
Scrubbing the floor is no aphrodisiac, and seeing your spouse doing it usually isn’t either. “My husband loves doing laundry, yet I don’t get any thrill out of his doing it,” says Chicago writer Julie Danis. And “I don’t think he thinks it’s sexy when I go around gathering the detritus of his…
Would You Like Weed With Those Fries, Officer?
Teresa Masterson reports on a classic piece of stoner idiocy for NBC Philadelphia:
An off-duty Tullytown police officer stopped for a midnight snack at a New Falls Road Burger King Monday, only to discover marijuana was on the menu.
Officer Shawn McClister ordered his meal at the fast-food restaurant’s drive-through and drove around to the window to pick up his food. The 32-year-old Burger King employee at the window asked McClister if he had any alcohol he could give him.
“What?” the policeman responded. Taharka Johnson repeated the question, saying that he was willing to exchange weed for alcohol, reports the Intelligencer.
Redefining the term “burger joint,” Johnson went and got his stash while another worker handed McClister his food. Johnson returned with a black bag and a clear dime bag of “green vegetable matter.”
McClister rotated his knit hat to display the words “Tullytown Police” and said, “That’s not a smart idea, now is…
For Some Seeking Rebirth, Sweat Lodge Was End
A little bit late to the party, the New York Times finally reports on the now infamous James Arthur Ray sweat lodge death scandal, managing to dig up some rather peripheral figures such as Page Bryant, a psychic in Waynesville, N.C., “who was among the first to claim in the 1980s that Sedona had several “vortexes” of high energy — the initial lure for the legions of seekers … [and] became fed up and left nearly two decades ago ‘because of the craziness I saw going on in the New Age community.’”
The Times does fill in some details I haven’t seen reported elsewhere though, so for those still interested in the rise and likely fall of Mr. Ray (star of ‘The Secret’ and profiled in the disinformation book Beyond The Secret), here’s an excerpt:
SEDONA, Ariz. — Midway through a two-hour sweat lodge ceremony intended to be a rebirthing experience, participants say,…
Who’s in Big Brother’s Database?
James Bamford reviews The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency by Matthew M. Aid in The New York Review of Books:
On a remote edge of Utah’s dry and arid high desert, where temperatures often zoom past 100 degrees, hard-hatted construction workers with top-secret clearances are preparing to build what may become America’s equivalent of Jorge Luis Borges’s “Library of Babel,” a place where the collection of information is both infinite and at the same time monstrous, where the entire world’s knowledge is stored, but not a single word is understood. At a million square feet, the mammoth $2 billion structure will be one-third larger than the US Capitol and will use the same amount of energy as every house in Salt Lake City combined.
Unlike Borges’s “labyrinth of letters,” this library expects few visitors. It’s being built by the ultra-secret National Security Agency—which is primarily responsible for “signals intelligence,” the collection and analysis of various forms of communication—to house trillions of phone calls, e-mail messages, and data trails: Web searches, parking receipts, bookstore visits, and other digital “pocket litter.” Lacking adequate space and power at its city-sized Fort Meade, Maryland, headquarters, the NSA is also completing work on another data archive, this one in San Antonio, Texas, which will be nearly the size of the Alamodome.
Just how much information will be stored in these windowless cybertemples? A clue comes from a recent report prepared by the MITRE Corporation, a Pentagon think tank…
Finance Committee Health Care Bill Has Been Filed
From Politico:
Senate Finance Committee members have been notified that the committee’s health reform bill was filed today. S. 1796 weighs in at 1,502 pages, according to a Senate Republican leadership source. It’s still not up yet on the Finance Committee website or Thomas.gov. We’ll post a link as soon as we get one.
UPDATED:
Read the entire 1,502 page Finance bill.
Read a document outlining the concerns of Sens. Kerry, Schumer, Menendez, Stabenow and Rockefeller that the tax on high-end plans will hit plans that are not overly generous.
Read Sen. Rockefeller’s expanded views on reform.
UPDATE 2: The Senate Finance Committee filed its sweeping health care reform bill Monday and its release served largely to highlight the divisions among Democrats over the direction of reform.
The massive, 1,500 page bill is expected to serve as the backbone for Democratic reform efforts going forward and five senators expressed concerns about one of its main provisions, a 40…
