Mississippi School Prom Off After Lesbian’s Date Request
From Yahoo News:
Constance McMillen didn’t believe her Mississippi school district would really call off her senior prom rather than allow her to show up with her girlfriend and wear a tuxedo. On Thursday, a day after the Itawamba County school board did just that, the 18-year-old lesbian high school senior reluctantly returned to campus to some unfriendly looks, she said.
“Somebody said, ‘Thanks for ruining my senior year.’” McMillen said.
The district announced Wednesday it wouldn’t host the April 2 prom. The decision came after the American Civil Liberties Union demanded that officials change a policy banning same-sex prom dates because it violated students’ rights. And the ACLU said the district not letting McMillen wear a tuxedo violated her free expression rights.
The ACLU filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Oxford…
Report: Californians Consume 16 Million Ounces of Pot a Year
This humble Disinfonaut believes that the numbers on these sorts of reports are always too low. I would imagine that the real amount is many, many times higher. From the Sacramento Bee:
So how much pot do Californians smoke?
According to a recent state board of equalization report prepared for the legislature, it’s 16 million ounces a year. That’s a little less than one-half an ounce for each resident in California, in case you’re counting every man, woman and child.
The analysis was prepared for legislation by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), that seeks to legalize, tax and regulate marijuana for use by California adults 21 and over.
Some other findings:
- California is America’s top pot producing state, with an annual yield of 8.6 million pounds of weed valued at $13.8 billion. That’s more than one-third of…
Voodoo Practitioners Shrug Off Blame for Haitian Quake
From the Telegraph:
In a whirl of limbs and with eyes bulging, the woman is helped to a squat in the ramshackle shed and starts cackling maniacally like a terrified chicken.
“Kaaaa! Ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka,” she screams and stutters, her right arm bent in front of her.Around her, the other Voodoo worshippers look on, unsurprised but expectant as their ceremony reaches its climactic mid-point. Someone ties a red cloth to her arm, which stops shaking.
In their eyes, she is possessed by a spirit of the dead – one of the 220,000 estimated to have perished in Haiti’s January quake perhaps – and is thus, in a way, blessed.
When she picks up a rusty knife and swings clockwise around the room, gulping from a bottle of cherry-flavored alcohol, they do not draw away.
Instead they embrace…
Internet Freedom: Beyond Circumvention
From Worldchanging.com:
Secretary Clinton’s recent speech on Internet Freedom has signaled a strong interest from the US State Department in promoting the use of the internet to promote political reforms in closed societies. It makes sense that the State Department would look to support existing projects to circumvent internet censorship. The New York Times reports that a group of senators is urging the Secretary to apply existing funding to support the development and expansion of censorship circumvention programs, including Tor, Psiphon and Freegate.
I’ve spent a good part of the last couple of years studying internet circumvention systems. My colleagues Hal Roberts, John Palfrey and I released a study last year that compared the strengths and weaknesses of different circumvention tools. Some of my work at Berkman is funded by a US state department grant that…
ACLU to Obama: ‘Change or More of the Same?’
From The Raw Story:
The American Civil Liberties Union has never treated the Obama administration with kid gloves, but with their latest ad buy it’s become increasingly clear that their patience for the continuance of some Bush-era policies has run quite thin.”What will it be Mr. President?” the ACLU asks in a full-page New York Times advertisement published Sunday. “Change or more of the Same?” The ad also features a portrait of Obama that morphs into Bush.
The ACLU’s images of the subtle transition between presidents is filtered and lacking in detail, and spans just four frames. However, it appears to be a take-off of a protest image that circulated Facebook and some progressive blogs late last year, showing a similar transition in eerie detail.
The ACLU’s full-size advertisement is below this text.
The ad specifically…
Birth Defects on the Rise in Fallujah
Via the Daily Mail:
A Fallujah mother holds her little girl, who was born without a left forearm and hand.
A high number of children are being born with birth defects in an Iraqi city where U.S. forces may have used chemical weapons during a fierce battle in 2004.
Children in Fallujah are being born with limb, head, heart and nervous system defects.
There is even a claim that a baby was born with three heads. The number of heart defects among newborn babies is said to be 13 times higher than the rate in Europe.
The city, 40 miles west of Baghdad, was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of the Iraq war in late 2004. U.S. Marines led Operation Phantom Fury to recapture it from insurgents.
British troops were involved in manning…
One Child Dies Every Two Minutes in Afghanistan
Tom Parry writes on uruknet.info:
Children in Afghanistan are more likely to die before the age of five than children anywhere else in the world, according to Save the Children.
At the current appalling rate, one child dies every two minutes in the violence-wracked nation. The study shows that last year was also the deadliest for Afghan children since the fall of the Taliban.
More than 1,050 were killed in suicide attacks, air strikes, explosions and crossfire, according to latest figures. Save the Children insists the true scale of the humanitarian crisis facing the country remains hidden because of the focus on the conflict.
It says: “The international community needs to ensure families across the country — not just those living in the conflict zones — are able to access the clean water, nutritious…
Many Are Dying For Our Having Hoped Obama Would Not Practice Imperialism
In retrospect, does it not sound terribly naive that we would hope a U.S. president whose candidacy was selected and backed by our most powerful bankers would be permitted, just maybe, perhaps by virtue of his being black and well spoken, to modify the intense imperialism that has characterized all previous presidencies since, if not including, that of Teddy Roosevelt and before?
He said he would bomb Pakistan and he has.
He indicated he would be willing to sacrifice men, women and children to assassinate leaders of those warring against American occupations and he has.
He said he would, and he did, send more troops to broaden the war against Pashtun Taliban, formerly the Reagan approved and recognized government of Afghanistan.
He has praised Americans for having fought the Vietnamese in their own country…
Ex-Intel Committee Chair Blasts GOP Successor for Killing Torture Probe
From Mother Jones:
A former Democratic senator who chaired the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence at the start of the US government’s campaign against Al Qaeda tells Mother Jones he cannot fathom why his Republican replacement squashed his request for an independent review of the interrogation techniques then being used by the CIA. That onetime senator, Bob Graham of Florida, says he believes Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) neglected his obligations as head of the intel panel by smothering Graham’s proposal for a committee assessment of so-called enhanced interrogation practices.
On February 4, 2003, according to a CIA memo released last week, senior CIA officials—including Stanley Moskowitz, the agency’s head of congressional liaison; Scott Muller, the agency’s top lawyer; and James Pavitt, the deputy director for operations—presented a classified briefing in a Capitol Hill office…
The Picture
By David Glenn Cox at Salon:
Photo by Eugene Richards
I want you to look very closely at this picture and try and keep it in your minds eye. This was a perfectly healthy twenty two-year-old young man who in the service of his country got half of his head blown off. I think that’s important, I think that’s newsworthy. Let me tell you how newsworthy I think it is. I think that it’s more important than chocolate cake recipes and far more important than comic book reviews. It is more important than who fell and whose swell at the winter Olympic games.
It is far more important than any self-serving load of crap banged out by Pseudo doctor Amy. It is more important than American Idol or Lost or any other mindless…
Gay Rights Section Nixed for Canadian Immigrants’ Guide
From CBC News:
Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney blocked any reference to gay rights in a new study guide for immigrants applying for Canadian citizenship, the Canadian Press has learned.
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney says his department tried to make an ‘inclusive’ immigration study guide, but couldn’t fit in every government policy and legal decision.Immigration Minister Jason Kenney says his department tried to make an ‘inclusive’ immigration study guide, but couldn’t fit in every government policy and legal decision. (CBC)Internal documents show an early draft of the guide contained sections noting that homosexuality was decriminalized in 1969; that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation; and that same-sex marriage was legalized nationally in 2005.
But Kenney, who fought same-sex marriage when it was debated in Parliament, ordered…
Why Are The Australian Media And Politicians Totally Silent On The Latest Crime Figures?
[disinformation editor's note: the author's native language is not English and he makes numerous spelling and grammar errors. We chose to publish the article notwithstanding this and hope that readers will value the author's opinions nonetheless.]
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) issued a media release on the 18th February 2010 under the heading: “Over a million cases of household property damage”, found that: “there are approximately 1.6 million incidents of malicious property damage” across Australia, and that: “912,500 households (11%) were victims of at least one incident of property damage in the 12 months” between 2008 and 2009.
In a more detailed report on the crime victimisation figure, ABS also released the following information:
In December 2008, 16.9 million people aged 15 years or over were living in private dwellings in Australia. It…
Utah Aborts Logic and Reason, But They Weren’t Using Them Anyway
Mutterhals writes on the Black Sun Gazette:
For most Americans, science is akin to magic. We don’t know how much of this shit occurs, but as long as everything keeps humming along smoothly we feel some sense of peace. The problem with this state of being is that it allows for all sorts of rival interpretations on things that are basically cut and dry.
I’ve had many arguments with religious types regarding abortion, and most cannot wrap their heads around the fact that the gestating fetus is indeed a part of the woman whose belly it’s in, which seems fairly straightforward. I don’t mean to go all Amazon woman on you, but I have to believe the fervently religious who protest in front of abortion clinics and wish death on doctors who…
With No Modification and Little Debate, Democrats Send Patriot Act Extension to Obama
Even though I didn’t expect any better, this story really breaks my heart. As long as this law is in effect, 9/11 never ends. Whether you believe it is the government or the terrorists who were behind the attack, it’s obvious that someone was trying to really screw you over nine years ago, and this story is a little reminder of that. Kudos to Dennis Kucinich for holding his ground on this and other civil liberties issues that other Democrats won’t touch for fear of being soft on terrorism. Personally, I’d rather be hard on human rights.
From The Raw Story:
Kucinich jeers: Congress is ‘complicit’ in violating Americans’ constitutional rights. In the wake of congressional Democrats’ reauthorization and extension of the USA Patriot Act, few elected Democrats have been as vocal about the post-9/11 security measures as they were during the Bush administration.
Leave it to stalwart House progressive Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) to raise a rallying cry against what he called America’s love of its fears.
“This legislation extends three problematic provisions of the PATRIOT Act and, at the same time, leaves some of the most egregious provisions in place, absent any meaningful reform and debate,” he declared in a media advisory.
Ron Paul Floor Statement on Assassinations
From Daily Paul. The speech was given on 2/24/10.
The Tattoo Used in Auschwitz Was Originally An IBM Code Number
Here is another (controversial) chapter from Russ Kick’s classic bite-size Disinformation book 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know, published in 2003.
For more on Russ Kick, check out his website, The Memory Hole.
_____________________________________
The tattooed numbers on the forearms of people held and killed in Nazi concentration camps have become a chilling symbol of hatred. Victims were stamped with the indelible number in a dehumanizing effort to keep track of them like widgets in the supply chain.
These numbers obviously weren’t chosen at random. They were part of a coded system, with each number tracked as the unlucky person who bore it was moved through the system.
Edwin Black made headlines in 2001 when his painstakingly researched book, IBM and the Holocaust, showed that IBM machines were used to automate the “Final Solution” and the jackbooted takeover of Europe.…
Kidnapping and Trading in Iraqi Children
Layla Anwar writes on uruknet.info:
While quite a bit of a fuss was raised regarding the kidnapping, smuggling and trafficking in Haitian children and rightly so, the same can’t be said about the fate of Iraqi children.
I have already written several posts about this new lucrative business in Iraq, that of the kidnapping, trafficking and trading of children, and I am always aghast to see that no media or organization for the protection of children, like the famous UNICEF or Save the Child or OXFAM or anyone else, has given enough attention and dedicated effort to denounce and stop this tragedy…
Of course, before our “liberation” such criminality involving the selling, buying, trading, kidnapping, killing of children was unheard of…am I to deduce that Freedom and Democracy are baby killers? Am afraid…
The Digital Dictatorship
From WSJ:
It’s fashionable to hold up the Internet as the road to democracy and liberty in countries like Iran, but it can also be a very effective tool for quashing freedom. Evgeny Morozov on the myth of the techno-utopia.
A storm of protest hit Google last week over Buzz, its new social networking service, because of user concerns about the inadvertent exposure of their data. Internet users in Iran, however, were spared such trouble. It’s not because Google took extra care in protecting their identities—they didn’t—but because the Iranian authorities decided to ban Gmail, Google’s popular email service, and replace it with a national email system that would be run by the government.
Such paradoxes abound in the Islamic Republic’s complex relationship with the Internet. As the Iranian police were cracking down…
Arlington Student’s ‘GOD IS DEAD’ Shirt Won’t Make Debate Club Photo in Yearbook
Remember kids, you can’t wear anything to school that might be considered ‘offensive.’ We can’t have the counterculture getting to our nice Christian boys. We’ve got to keep them in line so they can move on into that service industry job we’ve designed for them.
From The News Tribune:
As debate club president and a top student, Arlington High School senior Justin Surber has studied the constitutional rights of free speech.
Surber, 18, recently took a stand that will keep him from appearing in his club’s yearbook photo.
Once a week, Surber wears a black T-shirt featuring the 19th-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s take on religion. In block letters, the shirt reads “GOD IS DEAD.”
Nobody has told him he can’t wear the shirt to school. He wears it to provoke debate, he says, and that’s…
