Archive for August, 2010
A Skateboarding Priest, (Ground Zero) Mosque Madness and Zombie Ants!
Here’s the 23 most (dis)informing stories disinfo.com visitors were checking out last week. If you’re interested in contributing to disinfo.com please contact us here. Enjoy!
Florida Baby Facebook Photo Sparks Controversy
Michael Phelps got caught through Facebook, why not a baby! They do say a picture is worth a thousand hits, um, words. CBS News reports…
The zombies have come, but it’s not exactly the apocalypse. Carpenter ants being taken over by fungi sounds like the beginning of a Science-Fiction film, but this time it’s just Science. From Discovery Magazine…
The Skateboarding Priest Video
“Come on kiddies, you’re safe with me — I can skate!” … Hmmm, I’m not sure this Hungarian priest looks like someone I want my kids to skate with, but believe it or not Reverend Zoltan Lendvai, 45, who lives and preaches in Redics, a small village on Hungary’s border with Slovenia, has become a YouTube sensation…
Cyberwar Against WikiLeaks? Good Luck With That…
With the recent controversy over WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s alleged and quickly dismissed rape charge this past weekend, I find this article by Kevin Poulsen on WIRED’s Threat Level, dated August 13th, uncannily prescient. If an effective technological responsible is near impossible, how about a true disinformation one?
Map of WikiLeaks insurance seeders
On Thursday, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told a gathering in London that the secret-spilling website is moving ahead with plans to publish the remaining 15,000 records from the Afghan war logs, despite a demand from the Pentagon that WikiLeaks “return” its entire cache of published and unpublished classified U.S. documents.
Last month, WikiLeaks released 77,000 documents out of 92,000, temporarily holding back 15,000 records at the urging of newspapers that had been provided an advance copy of the entire database. On Thursday, Assange said his organization has now gone through about half of the remaining records, redacting the names of Afghan informants.…
Firedoglake’s Movie Night: PLUNDER The Crime Of Our Time
Lisa Derrick hosted Danny Schechter for a live chat to discuss his movie, at Firedoglake:
How do you steal $196 trillion dollars and get away with it? In Plunder: The Crime of Our Time, journalist Danny Schechter dissects the crime scene, Wall Street.
Schechter goes for the meat of the matter in the mortgage crisis and economic meltdown, starting with pyramid Midas Bernie Madoff’s trial then interviewing those in the know, from economist Paul Krugman to convicted white collar criminal Sam Antar who reveals the intentionally dishonest practices that have resulted in over 10 million mortgage foreclosures.
From the collapse of Bear Stearns to government bailouts, lost homes and Paris, France, as the crisis spreads globally, Schechter explains with humor, insight and outrage the underhanded deals and shady events that ledup to the collapse which affected the lives of potentially billions of
people.Plunder is based on Schechter’s book of the same name and is…
Star Wars Yoga: May Be Force Be With You For Attempting These Poses
… Especially without George Lucas’ permission. Spotted on the You Will Not Believe blog:
(Beware of the dark side.)
Why the Web Isn’t Dead – A Few More Points
Last week Wired’s incendiary cover story The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet stirred up quite a bit of debate. Wired ran a debate between its editor-in-chief Chris Anderson, FM Media founder John Battelle, and O’Reilly Media founder Tim O’Reilly that was particularly illuminating. I made a few points here, and have a few more to make at Mediapunk:
First it was getting listed by Yahoo!, then it was getting a good ranking in Google, now it’s getting into the Apple App Store. In each case, the platform owner benefited more than the person trying to get listed. This is not new. That certain sites – like Facebook at YouTube – have become large platforms is certainly interesting. That Apple, Facebook and Google have a disproportionate say over what gets seen on the Internet is problematic, definitely. But there was never any golden age when the Net was truly open. The physical infrastructure…
Traffic Jam in China Enters Ninth Day
It always seems to take forever to get anywhere when you’re sitting in traffic. Sitting in traffic for over a week is just ridiculous. This must be a record. From Sky News:
A 100km long traffic jam in China has entered its ninth day and drivers are being warned the bottleneck could continue for a month.
Hundreds of trucks heading for Beijing on the Beijing-Tibet Expressway have been at a standstill because of roadworks in the capital.
Small traffic accidents or broken-down cars are aggravating the congestion which started on August 14.
But those affected have been taking the disruption in their stride.
Drivers have been playing chess or cards, with some joking “concerts should be held at each congested area every weekend, to alleviate drivers’ homesickness”.
And local residents have been benefiting from the queue too by setting up temporary stalls selling food and drink to the car owners.
There has been anger that some vendors…
Cost Of Blogging In Philadelphia: A $300 License
Philadelphia’s City Paper reports that city residents must now pay $300 for a business license in order to engage in blogging, if their blog earns even the tiniest amount of revenue (five dollars a year, in one example). With local governments across the country awash in budgetary troubles, will this concept spread to other municipalities? And what will be done to those who “blog illegally”?
Even though small-time bloggers aren’t exactly raking in the dough, the city requires privilege licenses for any business engaged in any “activity for profit,” says tax attorney Michael Mandale of Center City law firm Mandale Kaufmann. This applies “whether or not they earned a profit during the preceding year,” he adds.
So even if your blog collects a handful of hits a day, as long as there’s the potential for it to be lucrative — and, as Mandale points out, most hosting sites set aside space for bloggers…
The Last Ten Years: The Best Era In Humanity’s History
Between the financial crisis, sexting, and the Gulf oil spill, it may seem like the world has been going to pieces in recent years. But that’s only because you’re a pessimistic jerk who’s looking at everything all wrong. For the globe as a whole, the last decade has actually been a time of previously-unknown prosperity, health, and peace. Foreign Policy explains:
Consider that in 1990, roughly half the global population lived on less than $1 a day; by 2007, the proportion had shrunk to 28 percent — and it will be lower still by the close of 2010. That’s because, though the financial crisis briefly stalled progress on income growth, it was just a hiccup in the decade’s relentless GDP climb. Indeed, average worldwide incomes are at their highest levels ever, at roughly $10,600 a year — and have risen by as much as a quarter since 2000.
Even the wars of the…
Laughter Yoga Is For Everyone
Free Laugher Yoga in NYC
Next month disinformation is releasing a new film from documentarian Albert Nerenberg, Laughology. It’s the fourth film we’ve distributed for Albert and we have a lot of faith in him, even if we had never heard of Laughter Yoga before.
It turns out it’s massive and the public library next door to our office in New York has free classes, so a few of us went along. If you can get over the embarrassment factor, it actually does seem to work. The New York Times has just discovered the same thing:
I was in a vile, despicable mood when I arrived at laughter yoga. It was Wednesday, and my brain felt torn in one too many directions; the usual, only worse. Laughter seemed a remote possibility.
I waited patiently inside a nondescript office at 40th Street and Broadway among a group of wildly divergent strangers, with only my skepticism to keep…
Hard Times
Aren’t job losses and foreclosures as important as a “Ground Zero Mosque” (that isn’t a mosque, hasn’t been built or even at ground zero)?
We know we live in hard times that are on the verge of getting harder with 500,000 new claims for unemployment last week, a recent record.
The stock market may be over for now as fear and panic drives small investors out. Big corporations hoard stashes of cash rather then hire workers. The D-Word (depression) is back in play.
Foreclosures are up, and the Administration’s programs to stop them are down, well below their stated goals, only helping 1/6th of those promised assistance.
And here’s a statistic for you: 300,000. That’s the number of foreclosure filings every month for the past 17 months. This year, 1.9 million homes will be lost, down from 2 million last year. Is that progress? In July alone, 92, 858 homes were repossessed.
At the same time, the…
Russia Today Starts To Worry American Media
Visitors to disinfo.com will no doubt have seen more than a few YouTube clips from Russia Today, the cable television channel that dares to feature such mainstream-media personae non gratae as Alex Jones and Danny Schechter. Now RT, as it is being re-branded (presumably to be more palatable to Americans), is starting to attract the attention of its establishment brethren. The New York Times can’t resist some sniping at this upstart that has the audacity to air stories the American media won’t cover:
…Ratings have risen as Russia Today has reported on controversial topics on the fringe of mainstream news. One recent report focused on a summit meeting in Washington by Christians United for Israel, which the station said raised questions on the influence of religion on American foreign policy.
Another report featured an interview with Malik Zulu Shabazz, the national chairman of the New Black Panther Party.
Ms. Simonyan, the editor in chief, said…
Is Your Favorite Ice Cream Made With Monsanto’s Artificial Hormones?
Damn, I like Häagen-Dazs too… John Robbins, author of The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less, warns against it for Huffington Post:
Monsanto has been in the news this week, with a U.S. District Court Judge ruling that the USDA has to at least go through the motions of regulating the company’s genetically engineered sugar beets. Monsanto, you may know, is not likely to win any contests for the most popular company. In fact, it has been called the most hated corporation in the world, which is saying something, given the competition from the likes of BP, Halliburton and Goldman Sachs.
This has gotten me thinking about, of all things, ice cream, and of how Monsanto’s clammy paws can be found in some of the most widely selling ice cream brands in the country. These brands could break free from Monsanto’s clutches. So far they haven’t,…
Facial Recognition Software To Go Public That Allows Identification from Online Photos
Computer software that can scan images and then check those results against online photos and video is soon to make a public debut. Needless to say, privacy advocates are concerned. Andy Bloxham writes in the Telegraph:
The program works by scanning the relative positions of the eyes, nose and mouth and claims to be accurate in nine out of 10 cases. It can then search the internet for further images of the same individual and, in tests, unearthed untagged photos which had not previously been seen by some of the people in them.
The managers of Face.com, which created the software, told the Sunday Times that 5,000 developers were already using it. Gil Hirsch, its chief executive officer, said: “You can basically search for people in any photo. You could search for family members on Flickr, in newspapers, or in videos on YouTube.”
Such software has previously been the domain of Governmental organisations such…
The Heiresses, Their Lost Fortune and the NXIVM Cult
A sad tale of a modern-day cult, only with more money — a lot more money — than usual. From the New York Observer:
The heiress wanted to meet the Dalai Lama. She wanted the Dalai Lama to be her friend. She had been obsessed with him for two and a half years.
“I was literally in my bedroom one day listening to his tapes and thought to myself, ‘Wow, this guy is amazing!’” Sara Bronfman told an Albany AM radio host last year. When His Holiness arrived in town the next day, Ms. Bronfman could take credit for his presence.
During her dilettantish early 20s, Ms. Bronfman continued, she never would never have conceived of such an ambition, but for the previous five years she had been immersed in Executive Success Programs (ESP), a self-help regimen administered by the local organization NXIVM (pronounced Nex-ee-um). It was an experience she found singularly…
Google’s Plans to Take Over The Internet Exposed!
From Alex Jones/InfoWars:
Google’s agreement with Verizon to speed certain Internet content to users opens the door to the complete sterilization of the world wide web as a force for political change. Under Google’s takeover plan, the Internet will closely resemble cable TV, independent voices will be silenced and the entire Internet will be bought up by transnational media giants.
1 In 3 Adults In Britain Take A Teddy To Bed
Photo: Waugsberg (GNU)
Is it just a British thing? From the Telegraph:
More than a third of adults still hug a childhood soft toy while falling asleep, according to a new survey. More than half of Britons still have a teddy bear from childhood and the average teddy bear is 27 years old, the poll found.
Travelodge, the hotel chain, surveyed 6,000 British adults and found that respondents said sleeping with a teddy a “comforting and calming” way to end the day.
The survey also found that 25 per cent of men said they even took their teddy away with them on business because it reminded them of home.
Travelodge said that in the past year staff have reunited more than 75,000 teddies and their owners.
Spokesman Shakila Ahmed said: “Interestingly the owners have not just been children, we have had a large number of frantic businessmen and women call us regarding their forgotten teddy bear.”
Corrine…
Government Charges Wikileaks Founder With Rape
[UPDATE, CNN now reports that the Swedish government has dropped charges.]
I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, has some serious criminal charges being leveled at him by the government of a major Western nation. After all, you can’t just go around spreading truth, can you? Report from CNN:
The founder and editor of the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, is wanted in Sweden after accusations of rape and molestation, a spokeswoman for the Swedish prosecutor’s office told CNN Saturday.
Spokeswoman Karin Rosander said Assange was arrested in absentia Friday night, and faces charges in relation to two separate instances…
Man (In A ‘Jaws’-Like Event) Films and Survives A Near-Miss Shark Attack
Chuck Patterson is clearly a survivor, as he describes:
… the day before I shot this video, i was surfing with a couple friends and 2 sharks circled us for about 15 minutes. the next day, i decided to go back out at around the same time and take my GO PRO HD HERO camera mounted on a 10 ft pole and do some exploring.
Sure enough within 5 minutes a 9 ft shark came out of no where and circled twice and slapped his tail on my board before disappearing. then a minute later a 7 ft young juvenile Great White swam circles around me for 12 minutes. It was an unreal experience that I will cherish forever…
If only the good Mr. Quint had such fortune …
Wikipedia Editing Courses Launched By Pro-Israeli Cause Groups
Rachel Shabi writes in the Guardian:
Since the earliest days of the worldwide web, the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has seen its rhetorical counterpart fought out on the talkboards and chatrooms of the internet.
Now two Israeli groups seeking to gain the upper hand in the online debate have launched a course in “Zionist editing” for Wikipedia, the online reference site.
Yesha Council, representing the Jewish settler movement, and the rightwing Israel Sheli (My I srael) movement, ran their first workshop this week in Jerusalem, teaching participants how to rewrite and revise some of the most hotly disputed pages of the online reference site.
“We don’t want to change Wikipedia or turn it into a propaganda arm,” says Naftali Bennett, director of the Yesha Council. “We just want to show the other side. People think that Israelis are mean, evil people who only want to hurt Arabs all day.”
Wikipedia is one of the…
