Archive for April, 2010
Who Really Won In The Supreme Court Animal Rights-Free Speech Decision?
So who were the winners from the big news First Amendment decision handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday? Free-speech advocates say the Supreme Court protected the First Amendment. Animal-rights advocates say it showed how Congress could pass a new anti-animal cruelty law, according to the Christian Science Monitor:
Free speech advocates praised Tuesday’s US Supreme Court decision striking down a federal law banning depictions of animal cruelty.
At the same time, animal rights groups are calling on Congress to enact a new, more targeted law, to prevent trafficking in photos and videos depicting acts of severe animal cruelty, including so-called “crush” videos.
In striking down the 1999 Depiction of Animal Cruelty Act, Chief Justice John Roberts said the law was substantially overbroad and could criminalize depictions of entirely lawful conduct such as hunting videos and magazines. The vote was 8 to 1.
“It is clear from the opinion and the size of…
Naomi Wolf: What Price Happiness?
Naomi Wolf. Photo: David Shankbone (CC)
Are women really less happy now than they were 40 years ago? Naomi Wolf stirs up the debate, writing at More:
In September 2009, Marcus Buckingham—a motivational speaker and trainer who now claims the improbable job title of “the world’s leading expert in personal strengths”—rolled out Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently. His headline? Women have become less happy in the past 40 years. Unstated but clear: What happened 40 years ago is that feminism reappeared on the scene.
Buckingham’s announcement immediately stirred a press sensation. His findings were featured on the home page of the Huffington Post and worried over by Maureen Dowd on the op-ed page of the New York Times. Blogs, newsmagazines and daytime talk shows all agonized over the notion that feminism—all that freedom, all those choices!—was making women sadder. The data seemed to touch that…
Too Fat To Fight: Childhood Obesity Endangers National Security
At the beginning of the disinformation® documentary Killer At Large Surgeon General Richard Carmona states that “obesity is a terror within. It is destroying our society from within and unless we do something about it, the magnitude of the dilemma will dwarf 9/11 or any other terrorist event that you can point out…” Now a group of ex-military leaders is making another warning about obesity becoming a threat to national security. Here’s the press release from the group, MISSION: READINESS:
More than 9 million young adults – 27 percent of all Americans age 17 to 24 – are too overweight to join the military, according to a new report released by MISSION: READINESS, a non-profit group of more than 130 retired admirals, generals and other senior military leaders.
Declaring that escalating rates of child obesity pose a serious threat to national security, retired military leaders joined Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack today in support of new child nutrition legislation to help reduce the obesity epidemic and expand the pool of healthy young adults available for military service…
No Blood for Opium
It was common during the opening of the Iraq war to see slogans proclaiming “No blood for oil!” The cover story for the war – Saddam’s links with Al Qaida and his weapons of mass destruction – were obvious mass deceptions, hiding a far less palatable imperial agenda. The truth was that Iraq was a major producer of oil and, in our age, the Age of Oil, oil is the most strategic resource of all. For many it was obvious that the real agenda of the war was an imperialistic grab for Iraqi oil. This was confirmed when Iraq’s state-owned oil company was privatised to western interests in the aftermath of the invasion.
Why then are there no slogans saying “No blood for opium!”? Afghanistan’s major product is opium and opium production has increased remarkably during the present war. The current NATO action around Marjah is clearly motivated by opium. It…
Muslims Target ‘South Park’ Creators With Violence
The offending caricature of the Prophet Muhammad disguised in a bear suit. Source: SouthParkStudios.com
The regular refrain of “Who Killed Kenny?” could get a whole lot more serious now that South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker have been threatened with violence as a result of their popular TV series making fun of Muslims, never mind that they are equally scathing of Christians, Jews, Mormons, Scientologists and others who take their religion too seriously. Reported by Fox News:
A radical Islamic website is warning the creators of “South Park” that they could face violent retribution for depicting the Prophet Muhammad in a bear suit during an episode broadcast on Comedy Central last week.
RevolutionMuslim.com [note: site appears to be down as of this posting] posted the warning following the 200th episode of Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s “South Park,” which included a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad disguised in a bear suit. The…
The Brutal Truth About Rio Tinto’s Bribery Case
Rio Tinto's Australian headquarters are located in the 120 Collins Street building in Melbourne, Australia. Photo: Canley (GNU)
[disinformation editor's note: the author's native language is not English and he makes numerous spelling and grammar errors. We chose to publish the article notwithstanding this and hope that readers will value the author's opinions nonetheless.]
After nine months of media allegations, finger pointing based purely on hearsay, speculation surrounding the reasons behind the arrest of the four Rio Tinto executives in Shanghai on 5 July 2009, the truth about the actual background of the arrest has finally outweighed the disinformation relentlessly generated by the mainstream media in Australia.
We now know that:
1) The four Rio Tinto executives admitted taking bribes (The Australian, 23 March 2010).
2) One should note that, it was only after the four Rio Tinto executives admitted taking bribes on the 23 March 2010, we then learn on the following day that,…
Migraine Leaves British Woman Speaking with Chinese Accent (Video)
Weird. Never heard of Foreign Accent Syndrome before. Via the Telegraph:
A British woman who suffers chronic migraines was struck by such a severe headache it left her talking in a Chinese accent. Sarah Colwill used to speak with a broad West Country accent. She is thought to have sustained brain damage during her last migraine which left her with Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS) — an extremely rare condition which causes speech to change.
Hitler ‘Downfall’ Parodies Removed from YouTube
Nein! Nein! Nein! Gottverdammt YouTube! Gottverdammt Constantin Film! Es ist wahr! Mein Leben ist vorbei.
What the hell YouTube, you did this on Hitler’s birthday?!? WTF. Reports Mashable:
The movie studio responsible for the award-winning, German-Austrian film Downfall (German: Der Untergang) has asked YouTube to take down several videos from the massively popular subtitled “Hitler finds out…” meme, and the site has complied.Search YouTube and you’ll still find hundreds of Downfall parodies, but click through to some of the bigger ones and you’ll now get the message, “This video contains content from Constantin Film, who has blocked it on copyright grounds.”
Yep, all the ones we have on disinfo.com are gone…
Which Veggie Burgers Were Made With a Neurotoxin?
This story has raised a lot of controversy last week on the internets … here’s a post on it from Kiera Butler in Mother Jones:
UPDATE: Veggie burger rumors are flying! Some readers and other news organizations have alleged that the study I wrote about was funded by the pro-meat, anti-soy group the Weston A. Price Foundation.
But this morning, I spoke with Cornucopia Institute director Mark Kastel, who said that the Weston A. Price Foundation did not contribute any funding to the “Behind the Bean” (pdf) study. More here.
_____________________________
[Last] Monday, I wrote about a recent study by the Cornucopia Institute that found that many popular veggie burgers are made with hexane, an EPA-registered air pollutant and a neurotoxin. Commenters had lots of interesting discussions and good questions, many of which require far more knowledge of the subject than I have to answer. So I called up Charlotte Vallaeys, the lead researcher on the Cornucopia…
Jon Stewart Explains the Goldman Sachs Fraud Charges Better Than The Rest of the Media (Video)
Once again, The Daily Show does the job the mainstream media should be doing:
100 Robots Converge For Giant Global Robot Expo Online
Via h+ magazine:
More than 100 university robotics labs around the world have created a giant robot expo online, including MIT, Cambridge, Carnegie-Mellon and Oxford.
It includes the University of Reading’s robot, which uses a biological brain, and humanoid robots from Osaka University, which can interact with humans.
The University of Michigan contributed its OmniTread snake robots, which can crawl through small holes, and the University of Zurich’s ECCEROBOT (funded by the EU) even has human-like cognition.
And the expo also features MIT’s robotic flower gardens and robot technology embedded into lamps and clothing, plus Leonardo, a socially intelligent animatronic robot capable of near-human facial expression that learns from natural human interaction.
Jesse Ventura Discusses Alternative Voting, Prosecuting the Catholic Church Under RICO Laws, Marijuana Legalization and More With Bill Maher
Jesse Ventura appeared on the April 16, 2010 episode of Real Time with Bill Maher to discuss a number of issues, including third-party politics and alternative voting. Ventura also called for the Catholic Church to be prosecuted under the “Federal RICO laws of organized crime” for its involvement in covering up child molestations. Ventura also said he wants to see pot legalized in America, which of course Bill Maher very much agrees with.
Earth Day: Save The Planet By Not Having Children?
With Earth Day 2010 on this 22nd of April, I wonder how much the Green movement and the greater media at large will debate this opinion from Lisa Hymas on Grist:
In 1969, graduating college senior Stephanie Mills made national headlines with a commencement address exclaiming that, in the face of impending ecological devastation, she was choosing to forgo parenthood. “I am terribly saddened by the fact that the most humane thing for me to do is to have no children at all,” she told her classmates.
I come here before you today to make the same proclamation — with a twist. I am thoroughly delighted by the fact that the most humane thing for me to do is to have no children at all.
Making the green choice too often feels like a sacrifice or a hassle or an expense. In this case, it feels like a luxurious indulgence that just so…
Bill Ayers On Radical Parenting
Bill Ayers. Photo: Supercomputer12 (CC)
Pirate Papa interviews Bill Ayers, Professor at the University of Illinois and former member of the infamous Weather Underground:
PP: As a father, what were your personal reasons for having kids and how did this decision alter or reinforce your political ideals?
BA: Reason isn’t the exact register. Passion, desire, ecstasy, exuberance, awe…But raising these children was the best thing we’ve ever done, the least conflicted and the purest, the most astonishing and energizing, surprising and humanizing (followed by the experience of caring for our elderly and finally dying parents in our home for many years after our kids had left home).
PP: What were those last few years like living underground with kids? What were some of the ways this affected your family? I would imagine you had strict guidelines that all parties had to live by, structured fictions to deliver under certain circumstances? What else? What was your…
The Post-Scarcity Economy: What Is It And How Do We Get There?
An interview with Jason Stoddard, writer, blogger, and self-proclaimed “evil marketer,” via Edge of Tomorrow:
EOT: Hi there, Jason. Could you please define a scarcity economy and how it might differ from a post-scarcity economy?
Stoddard: Well, I can be flip and say, “A scarcity economy is when you have to work to buy some things you want, and a post-scarcity economy is where you don’t have to work to have everything you want.”
But it hides the nuances. Right now we all think we’re living in a scarcity economy: you have to work to get money, which there never seems to be enough of, and then you have to use your money to buy stuff, which always has a price tag, and even after you buy stuff, you might wonder how your consumption is going to affect the environment. Everything is presupposed to be scarce: money, things, resources.
If you step back and…
Goldman Sucks!
News Dissector Danny Schechter explains why Goldman Sachs deserves criminal, not just civil fraud charges. As he says, “Goldman has not been sacked”:
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the UK Election
It’s election season in Britain and it’s shaping up to be one of the most interesting in decades. Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg is seriously shaking up the status quo in a way that could turn the traditional two choices of political party into a tripartite race, with the usual ragbag of independents to spice things up. In the past that has meant candidates from the Official Monster Raving Loony Party and others, but this year we have an independent candidate whose election platform combines lines from notorious antisemitic document the Protocols of the Elders of Zion with Europhobia, anti-environmentalism and attack on the “needless spoiling of the firework trade,” as reported in the Guardian:
OK, this is an odd one – a candidate running in Sevenoaks on a platform quoting liberally from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion – the notorious Russian forgery claiming a worldwide Jewish conspiracy that served…
Washington Bestiality Sex Farm
It’s hard to believe that a farm stocked with animals for people to have sex with can really exist outside the pages of warped porn fiction, but apparently a convicted drug smuggler and horse trainer operated just such a farm in rural Whatcom County, Washington, as reported in the Seattle Times:
A Whatcom County man’s friendship and aggressive support for a man convicted in the infamous Enumclaw horse-sex case led to his arrest this week for allegedly operating a bestiality farm just south of the Canadian border, federal prosecutors said Friday.
Douglas Spink, 39, a one-time dot.com millionaire, convicted drug smuggler and horse trainer, was quietly living on rural property south of Sumas when he connected with James Tait, who was in a Tennessee jail on a bestiality charge.
Tait had earlier been convicted of trespassing in 2005 in the Enumclaw case, in which a Gig Harbor man died after having sex with…
iFeel_IM Adds Physical Stimulation To Instant Messages
“While Professor Tsetserukou could have added a mechanism for sexual arousal (or inflicting pain) to iFeel_IM!, he did not.” iFeel_IM! equips a parachute-like harness with vibrators, motors, and speakers to create a “feeling enhancement” system reacting to cues in instant messages.
“According to Professor Tsetserukou, it distinguishes joy, fear, anger and sadness with 90 percent accuracy…
