Archive for August, 2011
SF Transit System Blocks Cell Phone Service To Thwart Protests
Mobile technology may be a powerful tool for grassroots organizing, but the flip side of the coin is that authorities can block such technology when they wish to crack down on dissent — case in point, San Francisco’s public transit system. SF Weekly writes:
This might just be a first in the annals of Bay Area transit agencies’ political suppression (such as those annals are). BART has fessed up to jamming cell-phone signals yesterday at downtown stations in San Francisco in order to disrupt protests over the death of Charles Hill, who was shot by BART police on July 3.
Here is what BART had to say in a statement on its tactics that was released today:
Organizers planning to disrupt BART service on August 11, 2011 stated they would use mobile devices to coordinate their disruptive activities and communicate about the location and number of BART Police. A civil disturbance during commute times…
Robert Johnson Opened the Gates of Hell for Elvis Presley
Courtesy of Brandt Hardin
Robert Johnson supposedly made a deal with the Devil to obtain his blues licks and Elvis Presley was the televised Son of God. How appropriate that they share a death day at RockStarMartyr.net:
Even after the abolition of slavery, life in the Mississippi cotton fields was brief, brutal, and as boring as an aging preacher’s Sunday sermon. No wonder fieldworkers sought the fleeting comforts of cheap moonshine and loose women at the Saturday night juke joints.
Robert Johnson could mix it up with the best of them, but he was never one for hard work. His bizarre, spider-like fingers weren’t intended for cotton-pickin’ and penny-pinchin’. They were made for crawling across guitar necks, whiskey bottles, and the legs of middle-aged sugar mamas. If Johnson was going to suffer hell to make a dollar, it would be as a wayfaring musician. His road was full of adventure and ecstasy, but…
Rick Veitch’s ‘The Big Lie’ 9/11 Truth Comic (Interview)
As we approach the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, there still exists an almost complete blackout in mainstream media of the voluminous forensic evidence that demands an immediate and independent new investigation of that fateful day.
Enter The Big Lie a new comic book dealing with the September 11th attacks from the vantage point of a time traveller who has returned on 9/11 to try to warn her husband and avert the catastrophe. We here at We Are Change Atlanta were fortunate enough to be granted an interview with one of the creators, Rick Veitch, who partnering with other concerned artivists at Truth Be Told Comics promise to continue to ask the big questions and tackle more of the ‘The Big Lies’ of our time with their graphic novels.
We Are Change Atlanta (WACA): First of all I would like to say having read The Big Lie that you have done…
Follow The White House On Foursquare
Want to know where Obama is? The White House has joined foursquare. You can now follow the president as he checks in Lower Hannah’s Bend Park, Seed Saver’s Exchange and, most recently, Northeast Iowa Community College. Via Information Week:
The White House has joined the Foursquare location-based social networking service, a move that shows again the Obama administration’s support of a more transparent and tech-savvy federal government.
Users of the service–which allows people to virtually “check in” to various businesses, landmarks, and other locations around the globe–can now use the White House Foursquare page to follow President Obama as he travels and uses the service to let people know where he is, according to a White House blog post.
They also can themselves check in to the White House if they are visiting the presidential home or attending an Obama town hall event. The White House also has elected to use the tips feature,…
‘Kids For Cash’ Judge Gets 28-Year Prison Sentence
Pennsylvania Judge Mark Ciavarella jailed teenagers for minor offenses (e.g. satirizing a teacher on Myspace) in return for over $1 million in kickbacks from the area’s for-profit youth prison. Mother Sandy Fonzo alleges that Judge Ciavarella is only “the tip of the iceberg” in a practice that is occurring across the country. Fonzo’s star-wrestler son, whom Ciavarella sentenced, committed suicide after spending six months imprisoned among violent offenders as punishment for being caught with a marijuana pipe. In her words, “Judge Ciavarella is proof that for-profit incarceration cannot happen.”
The Kids For Cash scandal involved more than 30 state and local government officials and contractors, says ABC News.
Tea Partiers Care More About Godlier Government Than Smaller Government
Hey tea partiers, is this insight from New York Magazine’s Daily Intel accurate:
In 2006, long before costume shops first began selling tri-corner hats to early adopters of the tea party movement, professors David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam “interviewed a representative sample of 3,000 Americans” about their “political attitudes.” By re-interviewing many of the same people this summer, they were able to determine what type of person eventually became a tea partier. Some of what they found is about as shocking as an episode of Full House: Current tea-party supporters were likely to have been “highly partisan Republicans,” and “even compared to other white Republicans, they had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president.” One finding that is actually revealing, though:
Next to being a Republican, the strongest predictor of being a Tea Party supporter today was a desire, back in 2006, to see religion play a…
Should Kids Be Taught Safe Drug Use In School?
Food for thought: is “abstinence only” education as flawed in regard to drugs as it is in regards to sex? (I recommend re-utilizing the slogan “Stop, Drop, and Roll” for purposes of drug education.) This comes on the heels of NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s commendable decision to mandate sex ed in the city’s public school system. Via AlterNet:
I applaud the Mayor’s campaign to teach sex education in school. While many parents may hope that their teenagers won’t be sexually active, the reality is that most teenagers will have sex and it is important that they are educated about the risks.
The same principles and goals of sex education should be applied to drug education. While many schools already provide honest sex education that acknowledges the reality that some teens will have sex, our nation’s drug education programs treat abstinence as the sole measure of success and the only acceptable teaching option.…
Obama’s Kickstarter Project For America
Well, it’s finally come to this: the only way out for America is to raise funds the way everyone else does these days. Donate to Obama’s Kickstarter, or America gets canceled. And vote for Zombama in 2020.
Russian Firm Reveals Plan To Build Hotel In Space
Looking for a real getaway? It sounds more sci-fi than real, but outer space may be a future vacation spot. Daily Mail reports:
Russia yesterday announced plans for a hotel in orbit 217 miles up which would house seven guests in four cabins and have huge windows for views of the Earth turning below.
Just getting there will be an adventure in itself – it will take two days aboard a Soyuz rocket – and it won’t exactly be a budget holiday: A five day stay will cost you £100,000, on top of £500,000 for your journey.
The hotel, or the Commercial Space Station to give it its proper name, is due to open by 2016 and, according to those behind it, will be ‘far more comfortable’ than the International Space Station used by astronauts and cosmonauts.
In the weightlessness of space, visitors can choose to have beds that are either vertical or horizontal, while…
Every Hour Of TV Can Shorten Your Life By 22 Minutes
And after the age of 25, watching 60 minutes of television is like smoking two cigarettes! From MSNBC:
Watching an hour of TV after the age of 25 can shorten the viewer’s life by just under 22 minutes, according to researchers in Australia.
The AFP news agency said scientists at the School of Population Health at the University of Queensland studied 11,000 Australian adults who were aged at least 25 in the year 2000.
The academics checked their data against an estimate from 2008 that Australians aged 25 or above watched TV for 9.8 billion hours. This was associated with the loss of 286,000 years of life, the AFP said.
An extrapolation of these figures found that a single hour of TV was responsible for the loss of just under 22 minutes of life, the news agency reported.
Smoking two cigarettes has approximately the same effect.
The problem is not actually TV itself but the lack of…
Phone Snooping ‘Prevented Riots’
Photo: Riemer Palstra (CC)
To tweet or not tweet where you’re rioting next? One option was to shut down social networks so that rioters couldn’t mass communicate. The other option was to allow them to tweet and text, then read their messages to find out what they’re planning next. The latter was able to prevent attacks on the Olympic site and London’s Oxford Street. BBC reports:
Police say they prevented attacks by rioters on the Olympic site and London’s Oxford Street after picking up intelligence on social networks.
Assistant Met Police Commissioner Lynne Owens told a committee of MPs officers learned of possible trouble via Twitter and Blackberry messenger.
But Acting Commissioner Tim Godwin said he had considered asking authorities to switch off social networks.
He said they provided intelligence but could also be misleading.
A number of politicians, media commentators and members of the police force have suggested that Twitter and Blackberry Messenger (BBM) had a…
U.S. Motor Rally ‘Violates’ Sacred Land
August in South Dakota means The Black Hills Motor Classic motorcycle rally, one of the largest in the world. Close to a half a million bikers attend, helping the local business, but upsetting others. The local Native Americans say this event threatens one of their holiest sites, Bear Butte Mountain, which is also the founding place of religion for several Plains Indian tribes. Al Jazeera reports:
Should There Be A Tax On Wealth?
Warren Buffett says we need a significantly higher income tax for the super-rich. But could that argument be a red herring? Partial Objects writes that the real conversation we need to be having is about taxing wealth – i.e., Buffett’s $45 billion fortune, not the paltry millions he made in 2010:
Warren Buffett wants us to stop coddling the super-rich. He argues for superlatively higher taxes on those with incomes greater than $1 million a year.
Let’s say we take Buffett’s advice, and we raise taxes so that those highest 400 income earners pay an additional 20% more in income taxes (i.e. 41.5 instead of 21.5). That would mean an additional $18 billion in revenue. Nice, right?
The US doesn’t tax wealth, but other countries do. If we did, at a modest 10%, it would mean an additional $140 billion in revenue every year. But we never talk about taxing wealth, only income. The class…
After Earth: Where Will Humanity Go?
If and when Earth is no longer able to sustain human life, where should we go? NASA says that a colony could be dug several feet below the surface of our moon (with a cover to protect residents from high-energy cosmic radiation, which can damage our DNA and lead to cancer).
Or we could head for the resource-rich moons of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Mars is very Earth-like, with enough carbon in its soil to grow plants, and daytime temperatures that reach 70°F. And that’s only the start of our options. Popular Science explores:
Earth won’t always be fit for occupation. We know that in two billion years or so, an expanding sun will boil away our oceans, leaving our home in the universe uninhabitable—unless, that is, we haven’t already been wiped out by the Andromeda galaxy, which is on a multibillion-year collision course with our Milky Way. Moreover, at least…
Wrangling The Giant Vampire Squid
Matt Taibbi has been waiting to watch Goldman Sachs executives go to jail for a while–at least since 2009 when he called Goldman the “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”
Released today, the latest installment of Taibbi’s manifesto against all things Goldman sets up a pretty simple proposition based on the recently released 650-page report from Senator Carl Levin’s Subcommittee on Investigations, detailing the collapse of the American financial system. Taibbi wastes no time with whodunnit paragraphs, instead setting the smoking gun on the doorstep of the Department of Justice. Like a rewriting of the Senate investigator’s above quote, Taibbi declares, “Everything’s fucked up, and it’s time for Goldman Sachs to go to jail. You don’t even have to investigate because the Senate did it for you. Just issue those subpoenas.” (The Atlantic Wire)
Apparently the vampire squid also has an appetite…
LDS Church Builds Replica Of Jerusalem In Utah Desert
The biblical-era city of Jerusalem has been rebuilt in the middle Utah, courtesy of the Mormon Church. “Jerusalem West” (as I call it) will be used for movies, educational tours and pilgrimages, and, presumably, as a crash pad when Jesus eventually returns to Earth. The Salt Lake Tribune writes:
He’ll turn water into wine. He’ll heal a lame man at the pool of Bethesda. And he — the actor slated to play Jesus Christ — will do it all in rural Utah.
A thick, gnarled fake olive tree, for Jesus to pray beside, sits at the end of a pathway in the replicated Garden of Gethsemane. Large, faux stone walls line a maze of city streets, crafted to look rough and weather-beaten. A dozen heavy steps lead up to Solomon’s Porch outside the Temple complex, which will be filled with 30-foot-high columns mimicking the actual 100-foot ones that stood in the ancient city.
After…
Entartete Kunst in Long Beach, California
The Prophet by Emil Nolde (1912)
Greggory Moore writes in the Long Beach Post:
Police Chief Jim McDonnell has confirmed that detaining photographers for taking pictures “with no apparent esthetic value” is within Long Beach Police Department policy.
McDonnell spoke for a follow-up story on a June 30 incident in which Sander Roscoe Wolff, a Long Beach resident and regular contributor to Long Beach Post, was detained by Officer Asif Kahn for taking pictures of a North Long Beach refinery.
“If an officer sees someone taking pictures of something like a refinery,” says McDonnell, “it is incumbent upon the officer to make contact with the individual.” McDonnell went on to say that whether said contact becomes detainment depends on the circumstances the officer encounters.
McDonnell says that while there is no police training specific to determining whether a photographer’s subject has “apparent esthetic value,” officers make such judgments “based on their overall training and experience” and…
Murat Kurnaz: Nightmare At Guantanamo
Russia Today speaks with Murat Kurnaz, a German man (of Turkish decent) whom the United States arrested and imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for five years before releasing him without charge or explanation. Before arriving at Guantanamo, Kurnaz was shipped to Afghanistan, where, in an effort to make him sign a confession, he says he was given electrical shocks, water-boarded, hung from the ceiling in chains for days on end, kept naked in freezing cold, and saw many other prisoners tortured to death.
Kurnaz’s detainment occurred while he was visiting Pakistan with a pacifist anti-poverty organization. He suspects his name was randomly given to authorities by someone in order to receive the $3,000 reward for reporting terrorists. The whole ordeal recalls the Spanish Inquisition:
