Archive for November, 2011
Thousands of Idiot Penn State Students Riot Over Firing of Child Rapist’s Protector
If you think going to college means you are smart, well, here you go. Via Gawker:
Penn State students have taken to the streets of State College, Penn. tonight, flipping news vans and getting maced by cops. More protests against Wall Street greed and income inequality? Nope! It’s because Penn State fired its longtime football coach Joe Paterno for covering up child rape allegedly perpetrated by assistant coach Jerry Sandusky …
Bank Bailouts Explained
Confused about what has unfolded since 2008? The sublime absurdity of bank bailouts and what we have(n’t) gotten in return, laid out in adorable animated form:
Is 11.11.11 On 11.11.11 Doomsday?
Surely a rhetorical question if ever there was one, but the Times of India takes it seriously:
At 11.11.11 on 11.11.11, the time and date will be a perfect same-numbered palindrome, reading the same backwards as forwards, an event which can only happen on one day every 100 years, the Daily Mail reported.
While some consider it as the perfect day for a wedding, some “prophecy” web forums claimed it could also be the end of the world.
The reason the date is so unusual is that 11.11.11 is the only double-figure palindromic date, since there is no 22nd month.
And the last time it happened, on November 11 1911, an almost supernatural event saw temperatures drop by more than 60F in a single day.
This was the Great Blue Norther, a cold snap which hit the U.S. causing blizzards and tornadoes as well as record falls in temperature.
In Kansas City, it was as warm as 76F…
Satanic Sex Women Stab Man 300 Times In Ritual
Photo: Smoking Gun
Bizarre doesn’t even begin to describe these two! From the Smoking Gun:
Two young Milwaukee women were arrested this week after an 18-year-old Arizona man–who traveled to Wisconsin by bus after meeting one of the suspects online–told cops that he was held captive in the duo’s apartment for two days and slashed and stabbed more than 300 times as part of an apparent satanic sex ritual.
A Milwaukee Police Department search warrant for the East Knapp Street apartment where the man was held details his ordeal. The warrant authorized cops to seize an assortment of items from the residence, including “knives or other cutting instruments,” blood and DNA evidence, duct tape, restraining devices, and “Books or literature relating to Satanism or the occult.”
The police investigation began Sunday night after cops responded to a report of a possible stabbing. Officers found the Arizona man “bleeding from the neck, arms and back.” He…
The Radical 1930s Cartoons Of Syd Hoff
Cartooning legend Syd Hoff wrote comics for the New Yorker for 44 years and illustrated dozens of children’s books. However, under the alias A. Redfield, he also created work with a harder-hitting tone for the Daily Worker and New Masses. Via Phil Nel, a collection of Hoff’s political cartoons, which remain as poignant and relevant as ever, in light of the world we live in today:
The Terrible Truth About Germany
Lt. Col. Max Klaar (left) Bundeswehr (retired) embraces Merrit P. Drucker, retired US Army major at a ceremony in Washington. Photo: Monica Frim.
World War Two stopped in 1945, but it did not end.
The death rate among soldiers and civilians in Germany increased. No peace treaty was signed between Germany and its former opponents. And according to many Germans, there is still no real peace either, because the country is occupied and lacks a treaty.
It is identified by the United Nations as a “Hostile State;” the propaganda which helped to start the war still goes on against Germany; the conquerors have never been called to account for the atrocities they inflicted on their German prisoners of war, or for the deaths by forced starvation of millions of German civilians. Thuggish fascists still threaten freedom of speech. Thousands of political prisoners have been sentenced to jail in Germany for expressing opinions tolerated…
Over 55 Percent of Mississippi Voters Agree That Fertilized Eggs Are Not People
Emily Wagster Pettus reports in the AP via Boston Globe:
JACKSON, Miss.— Mississippi voters Tuesday defeated a ballot initiative that would have declared life begins at fertilization, a proposal that supporters sought in the Bible Belt state as a way to prompt a legal challenge to abortion rights nationwide.
The so-called “personhood” initiative was rejected by more than 55 percent of voters, falling far short of the threshold needed for it to be enacted. If it had passed, it was virtually assured of drawing legal challenges because it conflicts with the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that established a legal right to abortion. Supporters of the initiative wanted to provoke a lawsuit to challenge the landmark ruling.
The measure divided the medical and religious communities and caused some of the most ardent abortion opponents, including Republican Gov. Haley Barbour, to waver with their support.
‘SEAL Target Geronimo’ Claims Bin Laden Kill Mission Took 90 Seconds
Chuck Pfarrer, a former Navy SEAL and author of SEAL Target Geronimo, offers a different account of those events in early May 2011 on The Dylan Ratigan Show:
The Deeper Meaning Of Shopping
Shopping and the consumerist impulse are lambasted as empty and selfish. But the New Left Project has an entirely different, novel view of consumerism:
Shopping is usually a collective act. Most of the time it is done in groups, in families or with friends. Much of our consumption is for other people; or we have other people in mind when we’re doing it. In the supermarket, we buy for our families. In the high street, teenagers buy the same clothes and music as their peer group. Consumption by children and adults is driven by a sense of what we need to keep our collective lives together; and by the way in which owning the same things as others gives us status amongst our peers.
In their effort to reformulate progressive politics, many on the left have called for the creation of a `post-consumer society’ in which more noble values than shopping lie at…
OccupyWallStreet Protesters Start March To Washington, D.C.
Reports the AP via NPR:
Flanked by police scooters, about two dozen Occupy Wall Street protesters started a two-week walk from New York to Washington on Wednesday.
The activists left Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, marched past the World Trade Center site and boarded a ferry to New Jersey. They plan to walk through Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland and arrive in Washington by Nov. 23 — the deadline for a congressional committee to decide whether to keep President Obama’s extension of Bush-era tax cuts. Protesters say the cuts benefit only rich Americans.
Michael Glazer, 26, an actor from Chicago, smiled as he boarded the ferry across the Hudson River, cheered by supporters shouting, “Thank you!” Walking in well-worn boots, he said: “I’ve had these for years and years, and they’ve served me well for many miles of marches.”
They hope to pick up other participants along their 240-mile march and have likened the effort to long-distance…
Where Does The Law Stand On Selling Haunted Houses?
Someone’s assertion that one of the bedrooms in my apartment is haunted got me thinking about this. Do landlords and house sellers have an obligation to disclose paranormal activity and the presence of spirits? Mental Floss writes:
It all depends on the where the house is and the way the laws are worded there.
Some states require sellers to disclose “emotional defects” that could impact and stigmatize a property. This includes traumatic events like murders and suicides, reported paranormal activity and even proximity to homeless shelters.
In Virginia, emotional defects like murders and ghost sightings only have to be disclosed if they physically affect the property (Blood running from the walls? Gotta tell the buyer). In California, sellers do have to disclose emotional defects, but only in a very limited way. The state Civil Code requires that a death on the property only needs to be disclosed if it occurred less than three years…
Anonymous Takes On the Muslim Brotherhood (Video)
Michael Stone reports in the Examiner:
Anonymous targets Muslim Brotherhood In Egypt, claims Muslim Brotherhood is a threat to Egyptian revolution, plans a coordinated Distributed Denial of Service attack on Nov. 11. Those claiming to represent the nebulous and notorious international Internet hacktivist collective known as Anonymous released a YouTube video announcing an operation directed at the Muslim Brotherhood.
According to the announcement, the Muslim Brotherhood is a “corrupt” organization “bent on taking over sovereign Arab states in its quest to seize power.” The announcement goes on to compare the Muslim Brotherhood to the Church of Scientology, and declares the Brotherhood to be “a threat to the people.”
News Of The World Phone Hacking May Have Had 5,800 Victims
In America, you watch Fox News, in Britain, Fox News watches you…The tally of individuals whose phones may have been hacked on behalf of Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid has been upgraded, first from “a handful” to “hundreds”, and the total stands at 5,795 and counting, the Telegraph reports:
Police have now found 5,795 names notes seized from Glenn Mulcaire, the News of the World private investigator who was jailed for phone hacking in 2007.
A spokesman for Scotland Yard said: “It is not possible to give a precise figure about the number of people whose phones have actually been hacked but we can confirm that as of 3 November 2011, the current number of potentially identifiable persons who appear in the material, and who may therefore be victims, where names are noted, is 5,795. “This figure is very likely to be revised in the future as a result of further analysis.”
The…
Supreme Court Troubled By Warrantless GPS Tracking
I guess the justices of the highest court in the land (a.k.a. the Supremes) realized that the U.S. government has the power to watch any of them without any legal action … Mark Sherman reports in the AP:
The Supreme Court invoked visions of an all-seeing Big Brother and satellites watching us from above. Then things got personal Tuesday when the justices were told police could slap GPS devices on their cars and track their movements, without asking a judge for advance approval.
The occasion for all the talk about intrusive police actions was a hearing in a case about whether the police must get a search warrant before using GPS technology to track criminal suspects. The outcome could have implications for other high-tech surveillance methods as well.
The justices expressed deep reservations about warrantless GPS tracking. But there also was no clear view about how or whether to regulate police use of…
Behind The Scenes At OWS With Danny Schechter
Danny “Media Dissector” Schechter (director of Plunder: The Crime of our Time) says that “Behind the scenes of Occupy Wall Street is an organization that is pretty invisible. It is decentralized, it’s bottom up and it’s organized into working committees.” He’s created a video report about it for PressTV:
U.S. Marines In Dress Uniform To Protect Occupy Protesters
Via OccupyTheHamptons (thanks Miles Jaffe):
Smile! Get Ready for Tiny Police Uniform Cameras
Via NPR:
The next time you talk to a police officer, you might find yourself staring into a lens. Companies such as Taser and Vievu are making small, durable cameras designed to be worn on police officer’s uniforms. The idea is to capture video from the officer’s point of view, for use as evidence against suspects, as well as to help monitor officers’ behavior toward the public.
The concept is catching on. The cameras have been adopted by big city police departments, such as Cincinnati and Oakland, Calif., as well as dozens of smaller cities, such as Bainbridge Island, Wash., where the Vievu camera was initially tested by Officer Ben Sias.
“The only thing that really was different about doing business is that I’d tell the person that we’re being recorded,” Sias says. He sees the camera as a kind of insurance policy.
“In this job, we’re frequently accused of things we haven’t done,…
U.S. & Israel To Hold Their ‘Largest and Most Significant’ War Games (Video)
Via Press TV:
U.S. Assistant Secretary for Political-Military Affairs Andrew Shapiro says the U.S. and the Israeli regime are set to hold their ‘largest and most significant’ joint military maneuvers without offering details about the time and location of the war games.
More than 5,000 U.S. and Israeli forces will take part in the war drills, said Shapiro, in a Saturday speech at the Israeli-sponsored think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). He reportedly did not mention a specific time and location for what observers have described as part of the new U.S.-led publicity campaign aimed at raising the threat level against Iran.
The joint military maneuver will simulate Israel’s ballistic missile system and will allow Washington to ‘learn from’ Tel Aviv’s experience in warfare, the senior American official added.
