Archive for February, 2011
Wisconsin Police Would ‘Absolutely’ Use Force On Protesters If Ordered
Stephen C. Webster writes on Raw Story:
Amid the largest protests Madison, Wisconsin has seen in decades, newly elected Republican Gov. Scott Walker last week issued a stark message to public labor unions occupying the capitol building: we have options, and using the National Guard against protesters is among them.
Since then, a myrad of rumors have circulated through crowds gathered at the state capitol, united in protest of a bill that would strip public unions of their collective bargaining rights. One rumor, which had not yet come to pass, even suggested that like Egypt’s former dictator did in Tahrir Square, Gov. Walker may call in police to forcibly clear out the capitol.
And according to a Wisconsin police union president, whether the police agree or disagree with their governor’s politics, they would “absolutely” carry out any order given to them … even if that order included using force against their fellow Americans gathered…
George Washington Embezzled Government Funds
The following is another chapter from my disinformation book, 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know: Volume 2, published in 2004. For more on me go to The Memory Hole or follow me @RussKick on Twitter.
We typically imagine George Washington to be as pure as driven snow, a demigod who won the Revolutionary War, then assumed the mantle of President to flawlessly lead a fledgling country.
The reality is vastly different. Besides being borderline incompetent on the battlefield (during the first four years of the Revolution, he lost every major engagement), the man who could not tell a lie started the tradition of presidential corruption.
The whistle was blown by the Clerk of Congress — writing under the nom de plume “A Calm Observer” — in the Philadelphia Aurora, a muckraking anti-federalist newspaper founded, edited, and published by Benjamin Franklin’s grandson. In 1795, the Aurora published the Clerk’s detailed breakdown of how much loot Washington had taken from…
Philadelphia Vampire Turns The Foreclosure Tables On Wells Fargo
An inspiring story from Philadelphia as a homeowner forecloses on (that’s right, forecloses on) a sleazy big bank. Wells Fargo tried to force Patrick Rodgers into paying for an exorbitant home insurance policy, and then broke the law by ignoring Rodgers’ written requests for a response. After the bank refused to pay resultant fines, a judge ordered a sheriff’s sale on its downtown branch. Oh and also: our hero is A VAMPIRE.
Breast Milk Ice Cream On Sale Now
Photo: Lotus Head (CC)
Thought you’d never have breast milk after your infant days? Matt O’Conner, founder of Baby Gaga, says it’s delicious! BBC reports:
A restaurant in London’s Covent Garden is serving a new range of ice cream, made with breast milk. The dessert, called Baby Gaga, is churned with donations from 15 women who responded to an advertisement on an online mothers’ forum.
One of the women, Victoria Hiley, 35, said if adults realised how tasty breast milk was more new mothers would be encouraged to breastfeed. Each serving of Baby Gaga at Icecreamists costs £14.
Mrs Hiley’s donation was expressed on site and pasteurised before being churned with Madagascan vanilla pods and lemon zest. Icecreamists founder Matt O’Connor placed an advert appealing for breast milk donations and believes his new recipe will be a success.
“If it’s good enough for our children, it’s good enough for the rest of us,” he said. “Some people…
Google Collects Kids’ Social Security Numbers During Contest
Google has been criticized, yet again, for its data gathering process. In the contest “Doodle-4-Google,” children were asked to redesign the home page logo, and for their social security numbers. The International Business Times reports:
Google’s data gathering has come under fire again, this time because of an art contest for children.
The “Doodle-4-Google” contest invites children to redesign the home page logo. The contest has been in place for four years, and this year the theme is “What I’d like to do someday…”
The problem was in the registration form, which asked for the last four digits of the child’s social security number and the city of their birth, as well as the name and address of the parent or legal guardian.
Stories appeared in New York Magazine and The Huffington Post, but Google changed the registration form to omit the question about the last four digits of the social security number on Feb. 18, before…
Gadaffi Blames Osama Bin Laden For Libyan Uprisings
Has Mad Muammar taken a leaf from George W. Bush’s playbook — If in doubt blame Bin Laden? From BBC News:
Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi has told state TV that Osama Bin Laden and his followers are to blame for the protests racking his country.
In a phone call addressed to residents of the town of al-Zawiya, Col Gaddafi said young people were being duped with drugs and alcohol to take part in “destruction and sabotage”.
Col Gaddafi is battling to shore up control of Tripoli and western areas. Protesters have been consolidating gains in cities in the east. Opposition politicians and tribal leaders have held a key meeting in the eastern town of al-Bayda to show a united front against Col Gaddafi.
The telephone call addressed al-Zawiya, 50km (30 miles) west of the capital, where fighting now appears to be the most fierce.
Col Gaddafi said the protesters had no genuine demands and were being…
FBI Sued For Surveillance Of Muslims
Fox News reports:
A former FBI informant who infiltrated a California mosque violated the constitutional rights of Muslims by conducting “indiscriminate surveillance” because of their religion, according to a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday.
The lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles was filed by the ACLU of Southern California and the Los Angeles office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. It named the FBI and seven of its agents and supervisors, the Washington Post reported.
The lawsuit alleges ex-FBI informant Craig Monteilh was ordered by his supervisors to target Muslims for surveillance, violating their First Amendment right to freedom of religion. The lawsuit seeks class-action status, unspecified damages and a court order instructing the FBI to destroy or return the information Monteilh collected.
Monteilh infiltrated an Orange County mosque and helped build a case against an Afghan-born man who was arrested on terrorism-related charges in 2009.
The lawsuit claims that Monteilh’s handlers, FBI agents Kevin…
A Quick Journey Through 1970s Apocalypticism
Paleofuture Blog, which look at predictions and visions of the future as previous generations imagined it, has a video feature examining the colorful weirdness of apocalyptic doom-and-gloom in the 1970s. In that decade, frightening documentaries such as Future Shock and The Late Great Planet Earth caught the zeitgeist by foretelling the fast-approaching destruction of humanity at the hands of overpopulation, dehumanizing technology, Communism, ancient prophecies, and natural devastation. Viewing these works today, they are a reminder that the world probably isn’t going to end, and we’ll make it through to tomorrow.
New Hampshire Bill Proposes Drug-Testing For Food Stamps
WHMUR9 New Hampshire reports:
CONCORD, N.H. — A proposal to drug test food stamp recipients in New Hampshire is creating controversy.
Supporters of the idea (HB 484-FN) say it’s about accountability, while others believe it amounts to profiling low-income families.
New Hampshire isn’t the first state to propose drug testing those who receive taxpayer-subsidized welfare benefits, but in every state that has tried it, there has been significant pushback.
As a full-time student, Julia Juranty said food stamps help her get by, and she said she would have no problem being drug tested in order to qualify for the help.
“If you can afford money for drugs and illegal activity, then you should be able to afford money for food,” she said.
More than 53,000 households in New Hampshire rely on the program to put food on the table. Opponents of the proposal said that drug testing one or two members of the household would punish the…
“Mutate or Die”: Bio-Art Project Turns William S. Burroughs’ Turd Into Living Organism
This is truly bizarre, but a seemingly fitting tribute to the Naked Lunch author. Adam Zaretsky and Tony Allard describe the project on h+ magazine:
“When you cut into the present, the future leaks out.” — Brion Gysin/W.S. Burroughs, Third Mind
“Mutate or Die” is a bioart project being conceived of and executed by Tony Allard and Adam Zaretsky. Bioart tends to use cutting edge biotechnology as an art making device and specializes in presenting living organisms as art. In this project, a DNA sample from William S. Burroughs will be isolated, amplified and shot into the nuclei of some cells.
What is the process?
1: Take a glob of William S. Burroughs’ preserved shit
2: Isolate the DNA with a kit
3: Make, many, many copies of the DNA we extract
4: Soak the DNA in gold dust
5: Load the DNA dust into a genegun (a modified air pistol)
6: Fire the DNA dust into a mix of fresh…
CNN Attributes ‘Mainstreaming Of Conspiracy Theories’ To Rise In U.S. Hate Groups
While “hate groups” undoubtedly can be a problem for a civil society, I believe this article is awfully biased against those who are rationally weary of Big Gov.
CNN reports:
The number of radical right groups in America — including hate groups, “Patriot” groups and nativist groups — increased in 2010 for the second year in a row, according to a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The organization’s quarterly publication, Intelligence Report, said the growth was “driven by resentment over the changing racial demographics of the country, frustration over the government’s handling of the economy, and the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories and other demonizing propaganda aimed at various minorities.”
The SPLC documented 1,002 hate groups operating in the United States in 2010, a 7.5% increase from the year before. It was the first time that more than 1,000 hate groups were recorded since the organization started tracking them in the 1980s.
But the biggest…
Julian Assange To Be Extradited To Sweden
Julian Assange. Photo: Espen Moe (CC)
Any bets on how long it takes the United States to persuade the Swedes to turn him over to American prosecutors?
Esther Addley and Alexandra Topping report on his extradition to Sweden for the Guardian:
The WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is to be extradited to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault. Assange will appeal, his legal team has confirmed. If they lose he will be sent to Sweden in 10 days.
Delivering his ruling at a hearing at Belmarsh magistrates court in London, the chief magistrate, Howard Riddle, dismissed each of the defence’s arguments against Assange’s extradition.
Assange’s legal team had argued that the Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny did not have the authority to issue a European arrest warrant. The magistrate ruled that she did possess this authority and the warrant was valid.
Ny’s credibility had been questioned by the defence team but Riddle said those doubts…
Army Deploys Psy-Ops On U.S. Senators
Lt. Gen. William Caldwell
Proving that some magazines are still able to practice important investigative journalism, Rolling Stone’s Michael Hastings shows how the U.S. Army deliberately misled Senators on a fact-finding visit to Afghanistan. You might think this kind of plotting by the military against its own government only happens in places like Egypt and Libya … but you’d be wrong:
The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in “psychological operations” to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war, Rolling Stone has learned – and when an officer tried to stop the operation, he was railroaded by military investigators.
The orders came from the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops – the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the war. Over a four-month period last year, a military cell devoted to what is known as “information…
Why Are Protesters Dying in Libya & Bahrain? Answer: Mercenaries!
Leonardo da Vinci, "Il Condottiero", 1480.
It’s not that easy to get soldiers to shoot at their own people. Ishaan Tharoor writes in TIME via Yahoo News:
While the protests convulsing Bahrain and Libya this past week occurred in vastly different contexts – and will likely produce very different results — both were met with conspicuously swift crackdowns.
And in both cases, reports suggest the Libyan and Bahraini regimes deployed foreign fighters and mercenaries against their own citizens, lethal clashes that left scores wounded and many dead.
Though difficult to substantiate in the current chaos, reports from eastern Libya, in particular from the city of Benghazi, claim that snipers and militiamen from sub-Saharan Africa gunned down residents on the streets. The Dubai-based al-Arabiya network says some of the guerrillas were Francophone mercenaries recruited by one of the sons of dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
Qatar-based al-Jazeera detailed pamphlets circulated to mercenary recruits from Guinea and Nigeria, offering…
Indiana State Prosecutor Fired For Suggesting The Use Of “Live Ammo” On Protesters
CNN reports:
An Indiana deputy attorney general lost his job Wednesday after commenting online that authorities should use “live ammunition” to run off the throngs of protesters railing over union collective bargaining rights two states away in Wisconsin.
The former state prosecutor, Jeffrey Cox, attached the comment “Use Live Ammunition” in response to a Feb. 19 Twitter posting by a writer for Mother Jones magazine. The writer, Adam Weinstein, wrote that riot police officers had been ordered to clear protesters from the Wisconsin state capitol in Madison.
The rumored 2 a.m. Sunday expulsion of protesters in Madison never happened.
Mother Jones on Wednesday published an article about Cox’s Twitter posting and other inflammatory remarks the former state prosecutor had made online. By the end of the day, Cox had been fired from his job.
How a Slap Sparked Tunisia’s Revolution … And Perhaps For the Entire Middle East (Video)
While Libya now, and Egypt not too long ago, are/were dominating the news cycle, 60 Minutes had a recent piece on what happened in Tunisia before these events. The most amazing part of this video to me, is in Tunisia, some young people who were part of the protest movement are now part of the new government. Bob Simon of 60 Minutes reports:
The wave of revolutions sweeping the Arab world started in a forgotten town in the flatlands of Tunisia. It was an unlikely place for history to be made. But so was Tunisia itself, the smallest country in North Africa, strategically irrelevant, with no oil and not much of an army.
It has been an oasis of tranquility in this tumultuous part of the world, famous for its beaches, its couscous and its wonderful weather. But there was a dark side to paradise: for 23 years, Tunisia was ruled by a corrupt and ruthless dictator named Zine Ben Ali, who filled his prisons with anyone who spoke out against him.
Caller Posing As Major GOP Contributor Dupes Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker
Well, we knew Wisconsin governor Scott Walker was morally and intellectually challenged, but a recent phonecall, as discussed in this expose in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel provides some dramatic new details …
Madison — Gov. Scott Walker, believing he was talking to prominent financial backer David Koch, revealed to a Buffalo, N.Y., blogger Tuesday his strategies to deal with public-sector unions and to lure Democrats boycotting the Senate back to Wisconsin.
In the 20-minute talk, he also likened his tough stance to take away most bargaining rights from public workers to former President Ronald Reagan successfully combating the air-traffic controllers union three decades ago.
“That was the first crack in the Berlin Wall in the fall of Communism because from that point forward the Soviets and the Communists knew that Ronald Reagan wasn’t a pushover,” according to the recording.
He said he told his cabinet, “This is our moment. This is our time to change the course of…
New Invention Has Bicycle Purify Drinking Water
Cycloclean
Why bike? Riding a bicycle is good for your health, curbs pollution as an environmentally conscious form of transportation, and can now improve your drinking water! Via Smart Planet:
Bicycling is a great way to burn calories and get fit. But a new kind of bike may improve the health of entire communities in an entirely different way.
Nippon Basic, a start-up based in Japan, has plans to scale up production of a bicycle that purifies water for those living in remote villages or disaster areas. Cycloclean functions just like any other bicycle, except that the addition of a water filtering system allows bikers to crank out drinking water using the same pedaling motion that propels bikers forward. The rotation of the bike chain helps to remove impurities by driving a motor that pumps water through a system of filters, pumps and hoses located near the rear wheel.
But just how much drinking…
U.S. Army Wants Rapid-Fire Rubber Bullets For Crowd Control
David Hambling writes in New Scientist:
The US army is planning to field “rubber bullets” for machine guns. Military officials claim the ammunition will allow them to more effectively quell violent protests without loss of life, but human rights campaigners are alarmed by the new weapon.
The final design for the XM1044 round has not been selected, according to an order placed on the Federal Business Opportunities website last month, but the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate has been working on a ring aerofoil projectile for some years. The round is a hollow plastic cylinder 40 millimetres across, looking something like a short toilet-paper roll. In flight its shape generates lift, giving it a longer range.
The army’s existing crowd-control rounds are single shots fired from handheld grenade launchers with a range of about 50 metres — the XM1044 would double this range. It would be supplied in belts for the Mk19 grenade launcher,…
