Archive for January, 2011
Aleister Crowley Running For President In 2012?!?
When I was growing up in the UK we had some wonderful political parties competing in our national elections, including Screaming Lord Sutch and the Monster Raving Loony party. In comparison the choices in the U.S. are decidedly dull (although New York’s 2010 gubernatorial race did feature the fantastic Jimmy McMillan’s Rent Is Too Damn High party).
It’s a relief, then, to find that some nuttiness is in store for the presidential elections in 2012: as well as the Sarah Palin freak-show, it appears that the Great Beast 666, Aleister Crowley, is in the running (I know, he’s been dead a long time and he’s not American…). Here are his campaign’s top ten reasons to vote for the Beast in 2012:
10. If you are fed up with the election process, for whatever reason, Aleister Crowley provides a more meaningful choice than Mickey Mouse, Cthulhu, or Jackie Broyles. 9. You can get a photo posted here — of…
Why a Gruesome Pennsylvania Abortion Clinic Had Not Been Inspected for 17 Years
By Marian Wang at ProPublica:
While this week’s indictment involving a grisly abortion mill in Philadelphia has shocked many, the grand jury’s nearly 300-page report also contains a surprising and little-noted revelation: In the mid-1990s, the administration of Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, a pro-choice Republican, ended regular inspections of abortion clinics—a policy that continued until just last year.
According to the grand jury report [PDF] released this week by Philadelphia prosecutors, Pennsylvania health officials deliberately chose not to enforce laws to ensure that abortion clinics provide the same level of care as other medical service providers…
Flavor Flav To Open Fried Chicken Restaurant In Iowa
Photo: Public Enemy at the Primavera Sound 2008
Before placing them around your neck, what time should you set your clocks to? Chicken time! From Public Enemy to reality TV, Flavor Flav is now making his mark in the restaurant industry with Flav’s Fried Chicken. Hope it does well, considering it’s opening right next to a KFC establishment. The Clinton Herald reports:
He has pumped up concert-goers and swooned reality television audiences, and now the originator of hype is setting his clock for another creative venture — fried chicken.
Reality TV star and Public Enemy group member Flavor Flav said it’s time to open Flav’s Fried Chicken. The inaugural location for the fried-chicken franchise will be in Clinton, a move that seems as unlikely as Flavor Flav’s shift from popular musician to television star. But Flav received plenty of help picking the spot for FFC by local restaurateur and FFC business partner, Nick Cimino.
Cimino’s…
New Mobile Phone App To ‘Spot Pedophiles’
If you’re going to rely on a phone app to keep your children safe, I suppose this is a good one. BBC News reports:
A mobile phone application which claims to identify adults posing as children is to be released.
The team behind Child Defence says the app can analyse language to generate an age profile, identifying potential paedophiles.
Isis Forensics developed the tool after parental concerns over children accessing sites on their mobiles.
But child protection experts warned against such technology lulling people into thinking they are safe.
Child Defence project leader James Walkerdine, based at Lancaster University, said: “This software improves children’s chances of working out that something isn’t right.
[Continues at BBC News]
Propaganda Posters For World War III
I’m a fan of this collection of third world war propaganda posters featured in the Guardian. New York-based designer Brian Moore created these nifty images, which explore the intersection of social networking and global conflict — remember, tweeting can be treason.
Study: Confederate Flag Triggers Anti-Black Mindset
Shocking discoveries: apparently, symbols from the past can retain a potent negative impact, and the Confederate flag is definitely racist. In two studies, after being exposed to a subliminal image of the Rebel flag, whites (of all political affiliations) displayed increased animosity towards black people. Miller-McCune reports:
The Confederate flag, which continues to fly on buildings throughout the American South 150 years after the Civil War, is a potent symbol. But of what? Cultural heritage, answer many Southern whites. Lingering racism, insist many blacks.
Newly published research provides evidence supporting the latter view. It suggests exposure to the flag evokes anti-black sentiments among whites, regardless of their stated beliefs on racial issues.
Specifically, white students at a large state-supported Southern university who were exposed to images of the still-ubiquitous battle flag judged a fictional black character more harshly. They expressed less willingness to vote for presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008.
“Whether or not the…
Equivalency?: Harper’s Editor Discussed Saying He Wanted to Kill President Bush
In 2006 Ben Metcalf wrote:
Before I attempt to fill these pages with my disgust, which the odd reader who knows me will surely expect, I am obliged to address a preliminary concern, which that same odd reader may safely ignore. Some time has passed since I last raised my voice to the multitude, and whereas literary taste does not seem to have advanced much in the interim, and I assume is still arrayed so as to engage only the weak-minded and dull, I find that I am no longer able to discern with any accuracy where the bounds of simple human decency lie. This would bother me even less than does the taste issue were it not for the fact that ground gained or lost in the theater of decency tends now and then to affect the law, and it has long been a personal goal of mine to avoid capture…
4-Year-Olds On Opium
In America we complain that parents keep their kids quiet (and obese) with TV and junk food. That strategy looks remarkably good compared to Afghanistan where overtaxed parents keep their kids quiet (and skinny) with opium. For real — Arwa Damon reports for CNN:
Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan — In a far flung corner of northern Afghanistan, Aziza reaches into the dark wooden cupboard, rummages around, and pulls out a small lump of something wrapped in plastic.
She unwraps it, breaking off a small chunk as if it were chocolate, and feeds it to four-year-old son, Omaidullah. It’s his breakfast — a lump of pure opium.
“If I don’t give him opium he doesn’t sleep,” she says. “And he doesn’t let me work.”…
The Private Forums Of The World’s Elites
Worst. Spin. Ever. This is as laughable as it is infuriating. From the henceforth discredited publication, The Economist:
“You can do nothing against a conspiracy theory,” sighs Etienne Davignon. He sits in a lofty office with a stupendous view over Brussels, puffing his pipe. He is an aristocrat, a former vice-president of the European Commission and a man who has sat on several corporate boards, but that is not why some people consider him too powerful. He presides over the Bilderberg group, an evil conspiracy bent on world domination. At least, that is what numerous websites allege; also that it has ties to al-Qaeda, is hiding the cure for cancer and wishes to merge the United States with Mexico.
Partial listing of Bilderberg Steering Committee from official site.
In reality, Bilderberg is an annual conference for a few dozen of the world’s most influential people. Last year Bill Gates and Larry Summers hobnobbed…
The Banned ‘Jesus Hates Obama’ Super Bowl Ad (Video)
Whether or not Richard Belfry, the owner of JesusHatesObama.com, really wanted to spend the millions of dollars it costs to run a single commercial during the Superbowl is dubious, but in any event the network with the broadcast rights, Fox, has refused to air it, handing Belfry a whole lot of free publicity.
Here’s the commercial in case you’re curious, oh and by the way, he claims “Do we really believe that Jesues hates Obama?
Of course not! … Our products may be a joke but so are the policies of this administration”:
Alien Hand Syndrome Attacks New Jersey Woman
This is one of the scariest unintended consequences of medical treatment I’ve ever heard of! Dr. Michael Mosley reports on the truly bizarre Alien Hand Syndrome for BBC News:
Imagine being attacked by one of your own hands, which repeatedly tries to slap and punch you. Or you go into a shop and when you try to turn right, one of your legs decides it wants to go left, leaving you walking round in circles.
Last summer I met 55-year-old Karen Byrne in New Jersey, who suffers from Alien Hand Syndrome. Her left hand, and occasionally her left leg, behaves as if it were under the control of an alien intelligence.
Karen’s condition is fascinating, not just because it is so strange but because it tells us something surprising about how our own brains work.
It started after Karen had surgery at 27 to control her epilepsy, which had dominated her life since she was…
Freedom of Information Act Does Not Apply to ‘Known Anarchists’
Photo: Kashfi Halford (CC)
Site editor’s note: This post from D.J. Pangburn originally appeared on death + taxes.
Mo Karn, alias of a ‘known anarchist,’ filed a Freedom of Information Act requrest with the Richmond, Virginia police. The department delivered the documents, now they want them back.
Karn (a member of Richmond Copwatch) and others filed under the Freedom of Information Act to learn police procedures during protests, so that they could better plan and coordinate their efforts in direct action. According to Karn’s (she is a member of the anarchist collective The Wingnut), the group “wanted to get copies of the police protocols so we could know when the police are breaking their own rules.”
Perfectly legal, it would seem. We should all know when police are breaking their own rules or the law.
However, the documents weren’t merely standard police protocols but homeland security and crowd control guides. Essentially a how-to manual on how…
25 Tons of Bombs Wipe Afghan Town Off Map (Photos)
Spencer Ackerman writes on the intriguing WIRED’s Danger Room:
An American-led military unit pulverized an Afghan village in Kandahar’s Arghandab River Valley in October, after it became overrun with Taliban insurgents. It’s hard to understand how turning an entire village into dust fits into America’s counterinsurgency strategy — which supposedly prizes the local people’s loyalty above all else.
But it’s the latest indication that Gen. David Petraeus, the counterinsurgency icon, is prosecuting a frustrating war with surprising levels of violence. Some observers already fear a backlash brewing in the area.
Paula Broadwell, a West Point graduate and Petraeus biographer, described the destruction of Tarok Kolache in a guest post for Tom Ricks’ Foreign Policy blog. Or, at least, she described its aftermath: Nothing remains of Tarok Kolache after Lt. Col. David Flynn, commander of Combined Joint Task Force 1-320th, made a fateful decision in October.
Dewey Clarridge’s Private C.I.A.
A fascinating profile of Duane “Dewey” Clarridge, once (and in his own mind always) a CIA spy, by Mark Mazzetti in the New York Times:
Duane R. Clarridge parted company with the Central Intelligence Agency more than two decades ago, but from poolside at his home near San Diego, he still runs a network of spies.
Over the past two years, he has fielded operatives in the mountains of Pakistan and the desert badlands of Afghanistan. Since the United States military cut off his funding in May, he has relied on like-minded private donors to pay his agents to continue gathering information about militant fighters, Taliban leaders and the secrets of Kabul’s ruling class.
Hatching schemes that are something of a cross between a Graham Greene novel and Mad Magazine’s “Spy vs. Spy,”…
Welfare Drug Testing Bills Introduced in Four States
Phillip Smith reports at Stop The Drug War:
Critics of welfare drug testing cite unconstitutionality of warrantless drug testing, the cost of drug testing tens or hundreds of thousands of people, counterproductive results and mean-spiritedness in opposing legislation that would require it. But that hasn’t stopped legislators from coming back again and again.
With this year’s state legislative season barely under way, bills have been introduced in four states — Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, and Oregon — to require drug testing for people receiving public assistance. And in a novel twist, a bill in Indiana would require unemployment recipients to declare they are not using illegal drugs and threatens them with up to three years in prison for perjury if they are found to be using them.
But while such bills may be popular with politicians of a certain stripe, they don’t find much support among professionals in the field. Groups that have lined…
Was Alice Miller an Abusive Mother?
Daniel Mackler writes:
When asked to define abuse in an 2005 interview with Borut Jesenovec, Alice Miller stated: “Abuse means to me using a person for whatever I want from her, him, without asking for their agreement, without respecting their will and their interests. With children, it is very easy to do so, because they are loving, they trust their parents and most adults, and they don’t realize that they were abused, that their love had been exploited.” [from www.alice-miller.com].
Although this definition most obviously applies to extreme cases of abuse – such as overt sexual and physical abuse – I hold that it also applies to Alice Miller’s relationship with her daughter. How could it not, considering that she herself has explained that she had not even explored her childhood at all by the time she had her own children, and thus was not aware of what her own unresolved and unmet…
Mexico’s Ex-President Vicente Fox: Legalize Drugs
Vicente Fox
TIME reports:
As Mexico drowns in drug-related bloodshed — suffering almost 12,000 murders in 2010 — it is perhaps unsurprising that government critics have turned up their screaming that the war on drugs isn’t working. But it was a bit of a bombshell when former President Vicente Fox added his voice to the chorus. The cowboy-boot-wearing leader, who ruled Mexico from 2000 to 2006, once declared the “mother of all battles” against crime and rounded up drug kingpins.
But before he left office, he witnessed the first big spike in violence as the narcos retaliated. Last August, evidence surfaced that his vision had changed when he wrote on his blog that prohibition wasn’t working. Now, in an interview with TIME in his hometown in central Mexico, he says his views have indeed moved toward the other end of the spectrum: favoring full-on legalization of the production, transit and sale of prohibited drugs.…
Keith Olbermann Out At MSNBC
Alex Weprin reports via TV Newser:
Tonight is Keith Olbermann‘s last night on MSNBC.
The Countdown host and the network say that the two parties “have ended their contract.”
The network’s statement is:
“MSNBC and Keith Olbermann have ended their contract. The last broadcast of Countdown with Keith Olbermann will be this evening. MSNBC thanks Keith for his integral role in MSNBC’s success and we wish him well in his future endeavors.”
Japan Plans To Broadcast 2022 World Cup In Hologram Form
In a decade or two, will people view two-dimensional television as outdated, much as we view black-and-white footage today? Japan hopes that the leap forward will occur twelve years from now, with the World Cup being presented in life-size, holographic form, BLDGBLOG writes:
Japan is distinguishing its bid to host the 2022 World Cup with a plan to broadcast the entire thing as a life-size hologram.
“Japanese organizers say each game will be filmed by 200 high definition cameras, which will use ‘freeviewpoint’ technology to allow fans to see the action unfold from a player’s eye view—the kind of images until now only seen in video games,” CNN reports.
British football theorist Jonathan Wilson puts an interestingly spatial spin on the idea: “Speaking as a tactics geek,” he said to CNN, “the problem watching games on television is it’s very hard to see the shape of the teams, so if you’re trying to assess…
