majestic
Majestic is a senior member of the disinformation editorial team based in New York City.
How To Annoy Glenn Beck In Five Minutes Or Less
Glenn Beck at CPAC 2010. Photo: Gage Skidmore CC
Thank you Karl Frisch – who doesn’t want to annoy Glenn Beck without actually devoting too much time to doing so? He writes in Media Matters:
Want to annoy Fox News’ Glenn Beck in five minutes or less while simultaneously making sure your community gets its fair share of federal money? Fill out and return the 2010 U.S. Census questionnaire when it arrives in your mailbox.
Few other issues seem to whip media conservatives into a frenzy of misinformation and half-baked conspiracy theories like the decennial count of Americans.
You see, for the world of “conservative journalism,” the census is a manifestation of everything they fear. Put yourself in their shoes: Obama’s administration is hell-bent on imposing a socialist-fascist-communist-totalitarian-Marxist police state, and now he’s sending us all mail! Even…
Return Of The Minutemen
Minutemen were members of teams of select men from the American colonial militia during the American Revolutionary War. They provided a highly mobile, rapidly deployed force that allowed the colonies to respond immediately to war threats, hence the name. The Minutemen were also a California punk band, of course, although it’s likely the former definition (thank you Wikipedia) that has inspired the Wall Street Journal to dub a group of vigilante border patrollers as minutemen:
CAMPO, Calif.—Jim Wood doesn’t think the U.S. government is adequately guarding the border with Mexico here. So he has taken on the job himself.
While the federal government fumbles with mishaps and delays in the so-called virtual fence—a network of cameras, sensors and radar that has cost more than $600 million—Mr. Wood is installing his own surveillance system with equipment from Fry’s Electronics and eBay…
Scientists Show Off Real Invisibility Cloak
Although the invisibility cloak can be created on a small scale, it would be impossible to recreate a larger version with the knowledge we have today. Image: Science/AAAS
We’ve reported on real-world invisibility cloaks before, but according to Discovery News such a thing actually exists now, albeit on a very small scale:
European researchers have taken the world a step closer to fictional wizard Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak after they made an object disappear, a study published Thursday in the journal Science showed.
Scientists from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany and Imperial College London used their cloak, made using photonic crystals with a structure resembling piles of wood, to conceal a small bump on a gold surface, they wrote in Science.
“It’s kind of like hiding a small object underneath a carpet — except this…
Tony Blair’s Secret Oil Money
While everyone knew that Dick Cheney and George W. Bush wanted Iraq for its oil and the cash that would gush their way via Halliburton and other companies they had interests in, few suspected that British Prime Minister Tony Blair had a similar motivation. The Daily Mail reveals otherwise:
Tony Blair waged an extraordinary two-year battle to keep secret a lucrative deal with a multinational oil giant which has extensive interests in Iraq.
The former Prime Minister tried to keep the public in the dark over his dealings with South Korean oil firm UI Energy Corporation.
Mr Blair – who has made at least £20million since leaving Downing Street in June 2007 – also went to great efforts to keep hidden a £1million deal advising the ruling royal family in Iraq’s neighbour Kuwait.
In an…
Tiger Woods, Sex Addiction & South Park
Tiger gets South Parked … When the successful men of the world suddenly want to have sex with tons of women, the top scientists in the country are brought together to put a stop to it. Once the testing gets underway, it turns out some of the fourth grade boys of South Park are sex addicts. (Full episode here)
Did Aliens From Friendship Island Warn Of The Chile Earthquake?
In January I visited Chile, luckily for me before the earthquakes. While there I was told a story about Friendship Island, a mythical island inhabited by strange beings off the southern coast of Chile (learn more here). Although famous amongst Chilean conspiracy buffs and ufologists, it is seldom discussed outside the region. I would have left it as an amusing piece of local lore, but recently the leading Chilean TV conspiracy theorist, Salfate, went on air in December 2009 claiming that beings from Friendship Island had told him there would be many earthquakes and tsunamis in 2010…
OK, it’s totally nutty stuff, but the natural disasters are hitting as predicted. What does anyone know about Salfate – is he credible or a crank?
Into The Lions’ Den: Barack Obama Visits Fox News Channel
Well you can’t say Barack Obama isn’t willing to face his critics! The president sits down with Fox News Channels’s Bret Baier to discuss the health care reform bill:
Part 1:
Part 2:
Californians Battle To Stop Fluoride In Water
Photo: Jenny Downing (CC)
The Los Angeles Times is running a very angry editorial mocking Californian citizens who are resisting government attempts to place fluoride in their water supply. If I had a subscription to the LA Times, I’d cancel it now – check this out:
During the Middle Ages, pogroms throughout Europe were instigated by rumors that Jews were poisoning the wells. Then during the Cold War, when communists became the Western world’s boogeymen, conspiracy theorists believed fluoridated water was a Red plot to destroy our society. Today, with modern chemical testing and health studies, it might seem we’re in a position to leave this kind of water hysteria behind. But not in Watsonville.
A recent push to fluoridate the water in that Santa Cruz County agricultural city has prompted a public outcry and…
The Prince Of Pot Speaks
Freelance journalist Chris Morrow paid a visit to “Prince of Pot” Marc Emery (profiled in the disinformation documentary Escape To Canada) back in February while in Vancouver and posted the video interview on CNN iReport and extended interview on YouTube:
U.S. Attorney General: Bin Laden Will Be Killed
Does anyone else think this is likely a precursor to Osama turning up dead before long? From the Washington Post:
Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress on Tuesday that Osama bin Laden will never face trial in the United States because he will not be captured alive.
In testy exchanges with House Republicans, the attorney general compared terrorists to mass murderer Charles Manson and predicted that events would ensure “we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden” not to the al-Qaida leader as a captive.
Holder sternly rejected criticism from GOP members of a House Appropriations subcommittee, who contend it is too dangerous to put terror suspects on trial in federal civilian courts as Holder has proposed.
The attorney general said it infuriates him to hear conservative critics complain…
The Zeitgeist Movement: Envisioning A Sustainable Future
By Travis Walter Donovan for Huffington Post:
“It takes a different value system if you wish to change the world,” Jacque Fresco said to a sold out crowd of over 800 in New York City’s Upper West Side.
Though he may not need to convince these people, many his ardent followers, it will indeed take a restructuring of the mind for those unfamiliar with Fresco’s work to realistically accept the ideas he proposes of a new global society that has given up money and property in favor of a shared, sustainable, technology-driven community.
The caustic skepticism can already be heard, critics crying out with pointed fingers, decreeing communism, socialism, insanity! But as Fresco himself will tell you, communism is still just another system with banks and social stratification. The kind of world he…
Boston TV Station Reports Dangers Of Fluoride In Water
Boston’s WCVB TV reports on suspicious sodium fluoride being added to local water supplies. The video clip shown below has some overlays from a viewer with deeper concerns than those expressed in the report:
The Real 2012 Apocalypse
When the mainstream media says there’s a new looming financial crisis you know that someone is selling us a story. This time the spin is that U.S. government and corporate debt is about to blow up, making the subprime crisis look akin to the recent earthquake in Chile versus Roland Emmerich’s disaster movie, 2012. From the New York Times:
When the Mayans envisioned the world coming to an end in 2012 — at least in the Hollywood telling — they didn’t count junk bonds among the perils that would lead to worldwide disaster.
Maybe they should have, because 2012 also is the beginning of a three-year period in which more than $700 billion in risky, high-yield corporate debt begins to come due, an extraordinary surge that some analysts fear could overload the debt…
Privacy is Not Dead, Just Evolving
Tony Bradley reports on the future of privacy (or lack thereof) from SXSW, for PC World:
It’s a brave new world. Unfortunately–continuing the literary allusion–Big Brother is watching. As technology makes more information more accessible, it also threatens to expose information that is not intended to be shared. Privacy is a concept that is caught in the middle of the struggle.
Danah Boyd, a social media expert for Microsoft Research, presented a keynote speech at the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) festival in Austin spotlighting the fate of privacy. Boyd was clear that she does not feel privacy is dead. Contrary to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s claim, people do still care about privacy.
As one blog summed up her speech “Boyd says that privacy is not dead, but that a big part of our notion of…
On Satan’s Trail
Richard Owen joins Father Gabriele Amorth on the hunt for Satan and survives to tell the tale, in the Times:
“Are you afraid of the Devil?” The world’s most famous exorcist levels his gaze at me and then smiles.
“No, it is he who is afraid of me. I work in the name of the Lord. Poor Satan.”
Poor Satan?
“Oh yes. The Evil One shouts and makes noises, but we are made in God’s image, we have the Holy Trinity on our side. There is no need to be afraid of the Devil unless we give in to his temptations.”
We are in the infirmary of the Society of St Paul, the order of Father Gabriele Amorth, in the shadow of St Paul’s Basilica, Rome. The Vatican’s chief exorcist was taken to hospital last…
Your Hands’ Germs Can Identify You
Another reason to whip out the Purell? AFP reports:
Forensic scientists could soon use hand germs to help identify criminals and victims, a study said Monday.
Researchers led by Noah Fierer of the University of Colorado at Boulder swabbed individual keys on three personal computer keyboards, extracted bacterial DNA from the swabs and compared the results with bacteria on the fingertips of the keyboards’ users.
They also lifted germs from an unspecified number of other private and public computer keyboards that the three individuals did not use to see if there was a cross-over between the bacteria on an individual’s hands and bacteria on keyboards that had never been touched by that individual.
The bacteria on each person’s fingers were “personal” and gave a much closer match to the germs on the keyboard they used…
United Nations Wants To Take Guns Away From Americans
I’m not sure who made this video but it’s quite an effective piece of anti-UN, pro-guns propaganda (no editorial slant intended – let us know in the comments if you agree or disagree with the filmmaker):
Georgia TV Station Creates Panic With Spoof Documentary Claiming Russian Invasion
From Variety:
A pro-government Georgian television station sparked widespread panic in the Caucasian country when it ran a spoof documentary claiming the Russians had invaded again. The half-hour show — which aired Saturday night — brought chaos to the country after it claimed Russian troops were already in the capital Tbilisi and aired “unconfirmed reports” that pro-Western President Mikheil Saakashvili had been assassinated.
Mobile telephone networks crashed, cinemas emptied as parents called their children home and people spilled out on to the street of towns and cities across the country to seek safety. But the report on Imedi-TV — once Georgia’s leading independent station until Saakashvili took it off air following the death of its owner, opposition figure Badri Patarkatsishvili in 2008 — was nothing but a hoax, apparently aired by a…
Watkins Books Lives
As a quick and happy update to my recent post about London’s legendary esoteric book shop, Watkins, closing, Publishers Weekly now reports that a buyer has been found:
Just two weeks before it was to be liquidated American entrepreneur Etan Ilfeld stepped forward and purchased the 113-year old institution, which stocks crystals, jewelry, and statues as well as books.
Ilfeld, who owns a nearby art gallery, Tenderpixel, plans to maintain Watkins’s identity as an independent esoteric bookstore. “It’s not everyday that you have the opportunity to save a century-old business,” said Ilfeld. “I don’t believe that spirituality in London is dead and will do my best to ensure that Watkins Books will be sustainable and survive the 21st century.”
