Random News Stories

[Junkenstein]

Ah.

So the key is you need to not (apparently/allegedly/actually) know it's a hoax. Interesting.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Ah.

So the key is you need to not (apparently/allegedly/actually) know it's a hoax. Interesting.

On the flip side, didn't the courts rule in favor of FOX lying and presenting it as a news show?

[Juana]

Terrible Step Uncle doesn't believe Fox is full of shit.

[Junkenstein]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22038012

A hi-tech bracelet could soon be helping civil rights and aid workers at risk of being kidnapped or killed.

When triggered, the personal alarm uses phone and sat-nav technology to warn that its wearer is in danger.

Warnings are sent in the form of messages to Facebook and Twitter to rally support and ensure people do not disappear without trace.

The first bracelets are being given out this week and funding is being sought to make many more.

You see this? This actually has the kernel of a good idea. The next time the campaign of the week comes around, think about this.

Then think about this:

"Most of us, given the chance, would like to help others in danger," said Civil Rights Defenders' executive director Robert Hardh. "These civil rights defenders are risking their lives for others to have the right to vote, or to practise religion or free speech."

Those who monitor bracelets can also help bring pressure to bear on governments to find or release people abducted or jailed. In total, 55 bracelets will be given out by the end of 2014.

55. By the end of 2014. Does that seem a reasonable number given the number of workers in high risk situations?

[Junkenstein]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22047852

A former chief of the navy in Guinea-Bissau has appeared in a US court on charges linked to cocaine trafficking, officials have said.

Rear Adm Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchuto was flown to New York after he was detained while travelling on a yacht in the east Atlantic.

Adm Na Tchuto is described by the US as a kingpin in Guinea-Bissau's huge drugs trade.

The small West African state is a staging post for drug-smuggling gangs.

Cocaine is smuggled to Guinea-Bissau from Latin America before finding its way to Europe as well as the US.

Looks like it's time for a change in hierarchy. I'll be surprised if this chap is alive in a year.

[Cain]

The West African market for drugs has been in...considerable flux since the Mali partition and subsequent intervention.  Not entirely surprising to see some people losing the political capital and protection they thought they once had as a consequence.

[Junkenstein]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22058572

Iran due to be a nuclear power in 12-18 months.

I think I've heard this before. A lot. For several years.

[Cain]

Only every year since 1990, according to Mossad 

Hey, if they keep throwing out random numbers, they'll be right eventually.

[Junkenstein]

http://articles.philly.com/2013-03-22/news/37940199_1_schiliro-whelan-report-states

MARCUS HOOK Mayor James "Jay" Schiliro had a bad day.

Then it got worse.

As the clock approached midnight on Feb. 21, a drunken Schiliro embarked on an ill-advised mission to redefine the term "public servant" in his blue-collar refinery town, according to a police report.

Schiliro, 38, allegedly turned the Marcus Hook Police Department into a private escort agency, ordering a cop on the late-night shift to bring a 20-year-old man to his house in a marked police vehicle.

He gave the man wine, then allegedly offered 20 to 30 times to perform oral sex on him, according to the report.

When the man repeatedly refused, Schiliro, who as mayor controls the police department, started to pull out handguns, informed the man that he was "going to be a hostage," fired a 9 mm bullet into the wall and said that he'd ordered police to stay away from the house, the report states.

"The mayor, I believe, has indicated to the press that he has some issues," said Delaware County District Attorney John Whelan.

Hardly news, but a cheap laugh.

[Junkenstein]

This is news however:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/chavez-protege-invokes-curse-on-those-who-vote-against-him/article10828067/

Venezuelan acting President Nicolas Maduro said on Saturday a centuries-old curse would fall on the heads of those who do not vote for him in next week's election to pick a successor to late leader Hugo Chavez.

Mr. Maduro's invocation of the "curse of Macarapana" was the latest twist in an increasingly surreal fight between him and opposition leader Henrique Capriles for control of the South American oil-producing nation of 29 million people.

"If anyone among the people votes against Nicolas Maduro, he is voting against himself, and the curse of Macarapana is falling on him," said Mr. Maduro, referring to the 16th-century Battle of Macarapana when Spanish colonial fighters massacred local Indian forces.

In his daily campaign rallies, Mr. Maduro has been referring constantly to Mr. Chavez and playing a video where the former president endorses his protege last year as his successor.

In the most polished of his other campaign videos, to a backdrop of swirling strings, Venezuelans write messages such as "For the love of my culture" and "For the love of my children" on balloons, and then release them into the sky.

Finally, Mr. Chavez's face appears in the clouds, and he winks.

Puncturing Capriles' public admiration of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Maduro has also been playing a video of the former Brazilian president endorsing him too.

At his rallies, Capriles mocks Maduro as a cheap imitation of Chavez. He says Maduro's track record during the president's sickness from cancer and after his death has wrought disaster on Venezuelans in terms of a currency devaluation and price rises.

Venezuela's vote will decide not only the future of "Chavismo" socialism but also control of the world's biggest oil reserves and economic aid to left-leaning nations in Latin America and the Caribbean from Cuba to Ecuador.

Well that makes most other elections sound pretty fucking dull.

[Junkenstein]

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/04/america-may-be-the-worlds-top-exporter-of-sperm/

Some American exports make their way around the world for their novelty or technical prowess (or through aggressive marketing). But America's rise as a top exporter of sperm has less to do with the quality of the product than it does with the process, according to a new story by Brooke Jarvis for The Verge.

For the most part, over American history, the flow of people—or more specifically, genetic material—has predominately been into the country. But while America is still largely a destination for families on the move, according to Jarvis, "by some estimates, the United States is the world's largest exporter of sperm, sending vials to dozens of countries every year." From one Seattle sperm bank, she writes, "some 60 percent ends up outside the United States."

"sperm has become a vigorous (ahem), multi-million dollar global industry. The sperm trade is growing ever larger and ever more international, with more and more kids being born via unknown fathers on distant continents."

USA - Exporting Crazy worldwide in any way it can.

It would probably be quite revealing to see the list of countries exported to.

[McGrupp]

That's all you really need to know about the American justice system.

Apparently imprisonment isn't enough anymore. I'm hearing a rumor that the man who wrote this has been arrested today. I was going to rant about it but all I ended up writing was the word FUCK a bunch of times.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-mcgowan/communication-management-units_b_2944580.html

Only now -- three years after I filed a federal lawsuit to get to the truth -- have I learned why the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) sent me to the CMU: they simply did not like what I had to say in my published writing and personal letters.  In short, based on its disagreement with my political views, the government sent me to a prison unit from which it would be harder for me to be heard, serving as a punishment for my beliefs.

Well fuck everything. That's it; we have finally arrived at FULL ORWELL.

I try to imagine it as an adventure. It's like we get to live in a science fiction novel.

It has been confirmed that Daniel was arrested for writing this. The good news is that he is out already due to the fact that the law that they used to arrest him was declared unconstitutional and struck down in 2007.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/04/daniel-mcgowan-arrested_n_3016885.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/05/daniel-mcgowan-jailing_n_3021613.html?1365197128

The land of the free. Where you can get jailed for speaking out about how you can get jailed for speaking out.

[Junkenstein]

Right, what have we got today then?

This:
http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2013/04/safe_driver_act_would_grant_li_1.html

SPRINGFIELD — With the exception of 16-year-olds obsessing about their driver's tests, most people don't think much about the benefits of driving and having a license.

State Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier, D-Pittsfield, and state Sen. Patricia D. Jehlen, D-Somerville, are working with the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition for passage of legislation that would provide access to driver's licenses for immigrants who cannot obtain Social Security documentation.

"There are many different opinions about immigration, but I think we have found a very small issue where we have some common ground. Everyone wants the roads to be safer," said Farley- Bouvier.

The bill titled An Act relative to safe driving stipulates that in order for a person to receive one of these licenses they must pass a driver's exam. They must also purchase liability insurance for their motor vehicles.

"The card will not be valid if the person does not purchase the insurance," Farley-Bouvier said.

The bill also calls for the issuance of an ID card with a distinctive design that would set it apart from a regular driver's license.

Well that won't end badly for the people it's "trying to help"

[Junkenstein]

And this:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130407/09244422618/french-intelligence-agency-forces-wikipedia-volunteer-to-delete-article-re-instated-it-becomes-most-read-page-french-wikipedia.shtml

Last week, we wrote about an organization that was unhappy that a Wikipedia article no longer existed. Now we have the opposite problem: an organization unhappy because a Wikipedia article does exist. And not just any organization, but the "Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intéieur" (Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence, DCRI), a French intelligence agency, which suddenly decided that an article about a military base contained classified information, and wanted it deleted. As the English-language Wikipedia article on the subject explains:
The Wikimedia Foundation asked the intelligence agency what precise part(s) of the article were a problem in the eyes of the intelligence agency, noting that the article closely reflected information in a freely available television broadcast. The DCRI refused to give these details, and repeated its demand for deletion of the article.
Wikipedia refused to delete it, and then things took a nasty turn, as a press release from the Wikimedia Foundation explains:

The page that kept vanishing was related to this:
http://www.culturaldiplomacy.org/academy/index.php?en_contact

Very odd.

Moreover, it seems likely that Hill finds himself on the receiving end of legal threats because he uses his own name on Wikipedia, rather than operating anonymously as many others do. ICD's current actions almost certainly mean that fewer people will be willing to take that risk, and will instead opt to carry out their work under the cloak of anonymity, or may not want to get involved at all. That last point -- the potential chilling effect -- is the most worrying, as Hill explains:
If I can be scared off by threats like these, anybody can. After all, I have friends at the Wikimedia Foundation, a position at Harvard Law School, and am close friends with many of the world's greatest lawyer-experts on both wikis and cyberlaw. And even I am intimidated into not improving the encyclopedia.

I am concerned by what I believe is the more common case -- where those with skin in the game will fight harder and longer than a random Wikipedian. The fact that it's usually not me on the end of the threat gives me lots of reasons to worry about Wikipedia at a time when its importance and readership continues to grow as its editor-base remains stagnant.
We may come to look back on today's Wikipedia as the project's golden age, before those "with skin in the game" started their assault in earnest, and before Wikipedia editors increasingly gave up trying to ward them off for fear of legal reprisals.

Edit for additional content, was a bit bare.

[Junkenstein]

And now a quick break for a cheap laugh:
http://gizmodo.com/5994000/this-is-the-porn-that-gets-downloaded-in-the-vatican

Details and more:
http://torrentfreak.com/priests-watch-dvd-screeners-while-pirates-download-filth-in-the-vatican-130407/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Torrentfreak+%28Torrentfreak%29

"Back in January, he mentioned he had watched Lincoln the night before," Paul explained. "So I asked had they shown it early in the cinema or something and he said: 'No, we have a film club once a week and we watched it up at the monastery'."

Of course, back in January the movie wasn't out on DVD, so either the priest is an Oscar voter or there's another more likely explanation. And it gets worse.

"We watched Django Unchained last week, which I found very violent," the priest told Paul. "We watched Les Miserables the week before and Zero Dark Thirty the week before that."

What we appear to have here is a secret pirate movie club located in a monastery, run and frequented by priests. If that wasn't enough, Paul says the priests just don't see anything wrong in it either.