Archive for April, 2010
More Than 20 People Passed As Homeless New York Man Bled To Death (Video)
What does this say about New York (or any other major American city)? Adrian Chen writes in (appropriately) Gawker:
Last Sunday, 32 year-old Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax was stabbed while coming to the aid of a woman being attacked by a knife-wielding assailant. He bled to death on a Queens sidewalk as almost 25 pedestrians walked by.
Republicans’ Anti-Obama Guy Fawkes Video
It seems to be driving people who care about party politics mad that some Republicans have released this video:
Newser describes the hubbub as well as any:
This much is clear: The Republican Governors Association has put out a new anti-Obama video that can be seen at RememberNovember.com. Young RGA staffers put it together, reports the Daily Caller, which calls the video’s production “top notch.” Most agree it’s pretty slick, but then things get a little confusing: The left thinks it’s a tribute to Guy Fawkes—who tried to off the king of England in 1605—and the right says no way.
Time makes the case for the Fawkes connection here, noting the old rhyme of “Remember, Remember the Fifth of November.”…
Obama Has Spoken, The System Is Broken: It Is Time To Break Up Banks & Combat Financial Crime Or The Banksters Go Free
The Great Hall at Cooper Union. Photo: Bobojazz (CC)
The President has spoken, but the system is still broken. The SEC has come down on Goldman Sachs but the company is now mounting a no-expense spared defense.. Shocking disclosures of greed and fraud continue to trickle out from the Mammon factory and Babylonian leviathan that is Wall Street.
What is, and isn’t, being done by “da people” to fight back?
The major issue on the agenda for activists is not just the Administration’s tepid financial reform package due for a Senate vote this week but supporting new legislation to break up the banks, a proposal that challenges the “TOO BIG TO FAIL” understanding between government and the banks. Thousands of activists are calling on their representatives to back the bill, and MoveOn.org is planning ads.
There is an ad already out there to fight fraud. Check it out.
If you support this call, sign this…
American Initiate Claims Freemasons In Italy Are Really The Knights Templar
A recent post on AboveTopSecret.com has stirred up the debate on whether or not Freemasonry is the modern identity of the Knights Templar. The gentleman (remember, all American Masons are men) writes from Italy:
During my stay here I was invited to go with a few interpreters to a Scottish Rite Lounge in a small town near Ancona… The first thing I learned shortly after walking through the doors is that the true Freemasons are, in fact the Knights Templar! This meeting was a meeting of the Templar Knights under the guise of the Freemasons…
Now this is difficult for me but I can not mention who was there or what we talked about. But as far as the American Delegates that were there, that I stood right next to, I couldn’t believe who I was seeing. The most appropriate thing I can mention is that everyone I saw, you definitely know exactly who they are… No Barack Obama was not there.
Take his post with a grain (or more) of salt, but…
Gandhi’s Sex Life Laid Bare in New Book
From Yahoo News:
A new book on Mahatma Gandhi has delved into the intimate life of the Indian icon whose famous vow of chastity did not prevent him sleeping with naked women and conducting bizarre sex “experiments”.
“Gandhi: Naked Ambition” by British historian Jad Adams sheds new light on the spiritual leader and independence hero whose spartan existence and resistance to earthly pleasures are an integral part of his popular image.
The book has been released in Britain and will be available soon in India where it is bound to make waves in a country where Gandhi’s image is fiercely protected and a source of national pride.
That his attitudes to sex were censorious and unusual is well known. He wrote of his disgust at himself for having intercourse with his wife Kasturba, aged 15, when his father died in 1885.
In later life, having fathered four children, he forbade even married couples in his…
Net Filter Patronises the Digital Generation
From the Syndey Morning Herald:
Would somebody please not think of the children. At least not while we are discussing internet censorship. This may sound like an odd request given that, historically, almost all censorship debates have pivoted around children and the need to protect them. But moral panics and fear-mongering campaigns concerning “the helpless children” often muddy what could otherwise be rational, evidenced-based debates.
And there is no easier way to get an otherwise progressive, reasonable parent to endorse an illogical, anti-democratic censorship regime than by appealing to (and exploiting) their deep-seated fears concerning their children.
But here’s the thing. Censorship debates over child safety have little to do with actual flesh and blood children. If they did then they would acknowledge and include the voices and views of young people and they would recognise the competencies and strengths that children bring to online interactions.
[Read more at the Syndey Morning Herald]
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US Renews Call for Iran to Release Detained Hikers
From the AP via SF Gate:
The Obama administration on Friday renewed calls for Iran to immediately release three American hikers detained for nearly nine months and also appealed to the Iranian government to issue their families visas to visit them.
A day after the families said two of the three are in poor health, the White House and State Department said there was no reason for their continued incarceration. Their comments came after reports from Swiss diplomats who were allowed to visit the trio in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison on Thursday.
“We are disturbed by the families’ reports of their children’s physical and emotional health,” said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. “These three Americans — innocent tourists in Iraq’s Kurdistan region when they were detained on July 31, 2009 — have been unjustly held for almost nine months without formal charges or access to legal representation.”
“We ask the Islamic Republic of…
Stephen Hawking: Aliens Might Kill Us All
Jonathan Leake writes in the Times:
The aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact.
The suggestions come in a new documentary series in which Hawking, one of the world’s leading scientists, will set out his latest thinking on some of the universe’s greatest mysteries.
Alien life, he will suggest, is almost certain to exist in many other parts of the universe: not just in planets, but perhaps in the centre of stars or even floating in interplanetary space.
Hawking’s logic on aliens is, for him, unusually simple. The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only…
Image of Jesus in Google Maps
Jesus, why so long to appear on Google Maps?
Was the burned bacon fat in the frying pan coming from a false messenger?
More on perceptions of religious imagery in natural phenomena on Wikipedia.
Boobquake to Rock World on April 26th
The Facebook event has over 50,000, Looks like the “movement” started with Blag Hag’s “In the name of science, I offer my boobs”:
This little bit of supernatural thinking has been floating around the blogosphere [on April 21st]:
“Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes,” Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Sedighi is Tehran’s acting Friday prayer leader.
I have a modest proposal. Sedighi claims that not dressing modestly causes earthquakes. If so, we should be able to test this claim scientifically. You all remember the homeopathy overdose?
Time for a Boobquake: On Monday, April 26th, I will wear the most cleavage-showing shirt I own. Yes, the one usually reserved for a night on the town. I encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. Or short shorts,…
Danny Schechter Blasts Wall Street On Coast To Coast AM
George Knapp was joined by filmmaker and veteran journalist Danny Schechter, who discussed the fraud perpetrated on the nation by Wall Street and the factors which played a role in the current financial crisis. While the media has portrayed the meltdown as the result of a series of blunders by the banking industry, Schechter said that it was really a calculated effort to take advantage of a flawed system. Calling it “the greatest theft in history,” he observed that “you have a situation where a small group of people enriched themselves in ways that were never thought possible.”
[listen to the remaining parts of the interview here]
Schechter explained that the economic crisis is really…
GMOs Alter the Genetic Make Up of Our Healthy Bacteria
Kim Evans writes on Natural News:
Although GMOs have infiltrated our food supply, the results of human feeding trials have only been published on one single occasion. Unfortunately, that occasion offered some pretty disturbing findings. It found that the genetic code of GM soy can infiltrate the genetic code of the healthy bacteria in our guts — and change the genetic makeup of the healthy bacteria inside us. Nobody knows how these mutant bacteria will function inside us — yet given the proliferation of GM soy, most of the population probably already has them inside of them.
Mutating the genetic code of our healthy bacteria is incredibly dangerous because these healthy bacteria live inside us for a reason. They are our first line of immune defense and they keep us well by crowding out many harmful bacteria, fungus, and pathogens that cause innumerable diseases. But when their genetic structure is changed, who…
Man Charged After Wiping His Ass With A Parking Ticket
Photo: Ildar Sagdejev (CC)
George Houdel of ChicagoBreakingNews:
A man who received a parking ticket in Bartlett now faces criminal charges after authorities said he stained the citation with human excrement before mailing it back to the village.
Officials said Alexander J. Bailey, 22, of the 6N600 block of Medinah Road in Medinah, was arrested last week charged with disorderly conduct after a village hall employee found brown stains and a foul odor on the ticket and alerted police, authorities said. The original ticket was for $15, Bartlett police said.
Bailey also scrawled a note on the ticket indicating he’d used it to wipe himself, court documents said.
Bailey posted $500 bail and is due back in Cook County Circuit Court on June 11.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
Washington, D.C.’s Potomac River Is So Polluted That Fish Change Sex (What About Our Politicians?)
90 percent of the drinking water in Washington, D.C. comes from this river, seems like an issue the politicians there themselves would want to address. Suzanne Goldenberg writes in the Guardian:
More than 80% of the male bass fish in Washington’s major river are now exhibiting female traits such as egg production because of a “toxic stew” of pollutants, scientists and campaigners reported yesterday.
Intersex fish probably result from drugs, such as the contraceptive pill, and other chemicals being flushed into the water and have been found right across the US.
The Potomac Conservancy, which focuses on Washington DC’s river, called for new research to determine what was causing male smallmouth bass to carry immature eggs in their testes. “We have not been able to identify one particular chemical or one particular source,” said Vicki Blazer, a fish biologist with the US geological survey. “We are still trying to get a handle on…
Axis of Awesome: What Would Jesus Do?
Since those of you in these gents‘ vicinity might be wide-awake right now, here’s a question for you. What is the chance of the Axis of Awesome going on American TV with this song?
Thanks for the input, Disinfo readers around the globe. My take is I’d never see these guys on American network TV with this song, or basic cable (but they may have a shot on the pay-extra cable networks). Good luck to them…
The Tea Party’s Toxic Take on History
From Slate:
I am a great believer in used-bookstore serendipity. Sometimes when you’re thinking about how to express something, you find a perfect exemplification of it just by chance in the musty stacks of such an emporium. Here’s a remarkable example. I’d been trying to find a way to write about Tea Party ideology, and in particular about the fraudulent history and distorted language it indulges in. Listen to Tea Partiers on cable news—or read the signs they hoist or their Internet comments—and you frequently encounter the flagrant abuse, the historically ignorant misuse, of words such as tyranny, communist, Marxist, fascist, and socialist.
You hear them say, for instance, that we live under “tyranny” because one side lost a health care vote in an elected legislative body. And that, in all seriousness, the president is a communist. For many Tea Party members, the word is not just a vile epithet; it’s a…
Could Belgium Split Apart?
From Global Post:
It’s been a bad couple of days for Belgium.
On Thursday the government collapsed, plunging the country into a renewed political turmoil; politicians from the French-speaking south and Flemish north cast doubt on the country’s survival; Flemish separatists sang for independence in the parliament; and the press around Europe warned the country is teetering on the brink of disintegration.
Then, on Friday, one of Belgium’s best-known churchmen, the bishop of the beautiful medieval city of Bruges, resigned after admitting he had “sexually abused a boy who came from my close circle of friends.” The revelations added to the sense of malaise that has gripped the kingdom.
“Is there still any point to this country?” asked the leading French-language newspaper Le Soir.
“We are a country gone mad,” exclaimed Deputy Prime Minister Laurette Onkelinx as the fifth government in three years came tumbling down.
The crisis could hardly have come at a worse time,…
Where Are the Tea Party Protests About Wall Street?
From the Huffington Post:
We’re down to the wire here on financial reform. I can’t think of a better time to put pressure on Wall Street and Washington to make sure there is adequate regulation to ensure that we never have another bailout. The AFL-CIO is about to have a protest at Wall Street on April 29th. Great, that makes sense. I’m sure the right-wing groups who are also upset about the bailouts will join them.
If you remember, the Tea Parties were originally formed to protest the bailouts. They were so mad at the Wall Street bankers who destroyed the economy and then took our hard earned money for their efforts.
So, they will take this opportunity, of course, to launch their own protest of Wall Street. They will protest the TARP money, the easy credit, the lack of regulation, the wild risk taking and the excessive bonuses paid with taxpayer money.…
The Middle Class Game Is Up: We’re Heading to a Slave Labor Planet
From Alternet:
Thanks to globalization, the American, Australian and European promises of middle-class prosperity are on their way to extinction.
Class solidarity was such a good idea. It really was. Obviously, most of the people who need solidarity are in the world’s laboring classes. After all, the rich have more than enough solidarity already, as was recently demonstrated by their successful execution of the greatest global financial heist in history. Oh sure, we’ll see some state sponsored mock show trials of a few of them — they always throw a few of their own out of the sleigh to the wolves during their escapes. The big heist was big news. Working Americans will be applying Preparation H to their keisters for a long time to come.
But the ultimate accomplishment of the already rich, the newly rich and the corporate rich, has been their global solidarity on the corporate/financial front. It’s been a…
