Baghdad

Loli Taco

. . Tattooist inks name in giant letters on girl’s face on day they meet: A ROGUE tattooist who inked 56 stars on a teen girl’s face has caused a write fuss again – after signing his name in giant letters across his girlfriend’s face less than 24 hours after they met. Controversial Rouslan Toumaniantz became notorious when he inscribed a galaxy of stars over the face of Kimberley Vlaeminck, then just 18, in his studio in Coutrai, Belgium. Now Toumaniantz has struck again by tattooing his Christian name in lettering five inches high across another girl’s face. Thanks Jasmine.; .; .
Iceland Kicked Out FBI Agents Who Flew in Unannounced to Investigate WikiLeaks Operations in the Country: According to the RUV, the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service, FBI agents landed in Reykjavík in August 2011 without prior notification in an attempt to investigate WikiLeaks operations within the country. However, their plan was interupted when Home Secretary Ögmundur Jónasson learned about the FBI’s visit and sent them packing. The Icelandic government then formally protested the FBI’s activities with U.S. authorities.
. . Things Fitting Perfectly Into Other Things: “Seeing totally unrelated objects perfectly nestle inside of each other provides a certain kind of peace in an otherwise chaotic world.”
. . The Diamond Club—an erotic literary experiment: They came up with a title for their novel, The Diamond Club. They also sketched out a rough outline of a plot: When Brianna Young discovers that Roman Dyle, the man she built a relationship and a multimillion dollar company with, has gotten married to another woman behind her back, she embarks on a journey to realize her dreams of professional and sexual revenge for everything she had endured at the hands of Roman.Brianna seeks her romance from The Diamond Club, an exotic gathering of the Bay Area’s most attractive and interesting people, from angel investors and airline pilots to worldfamous chefs and dubstep artists. They singled out three qualities their novel would need to succeed: a cover that looked like 50 shades of grey lots and lots of sex characters with trendy jobs.
. . Uncensored Manifesto from Retired LAPD Officer Christopher Dorner
. . Silent Circle’s latest app democratizes encryption. Governments won’t be happy: The technology uses a sophisticated peer-to-peer encryption technique that allows users to send encrypted files of up to 60 megabytes through a “Silent Text” app. The sender of the file can set it on a timer so that it will automatically “burn”—deleting it from both devices after a set period of, say, seven minutes. Until now, sending encrypted documents has been frustratingly difficult for anyone who isn’t a sophisticated technology user, requiring knowledge of how to use and install various kinds of specialist software. What Silent Circle has done is to remove these hurdles, essentially democratizing encryption. It’s a game-changer that will almost certainly make life easier and safer for journalists, dissidents, diplomats, and companies trying to evade state surveillance or corporate espionage. Governments pushing for more snooping powers, however, will not be pleased.
. . French Workers Threaten To Blow Up Their Factory: Tuesday morning, the 168 remaining employees of DMI in Vaux, a small town near Montluçon in the Department of Allier, smack-dab in the middle of France, rigged about ten gas cylinders throughout the factory they’d been occupying and threatened to blow it up—unless their demands were met. Another day in the decline of the private sector à la Française.
. . Mexico: Girl, Nine, Gives Birth After ‘Rape’: A nine-year-old Mexican girl has given birth in what authorities have called a rape or sexual abuse case. The baby girl was born on January 27 in Zoquipan Hospital in Jalisco state, weighing 5lbs 7oz. The youngster, who is identified only as Dafne, was eight when she got pregnant by a teenager who has since run away, her mother told local officials.
. . Facebook’s Graph Search: Kiss Your Privacy Goodbye: Now consider this: Facebook doesn’t just record Web searches. Just because I click on a link offered by Google doesn’t mean I actually read the page that pops up. But with Facebook, the connections go much deeper. Suppose a man in his 50s is accused of being a child predator, and the court requests records from Facebook. They’ll dig up everything: Facebook Pages he Liked, or temporarily Liked; Facebook groups to which he belonged, or used to belong; outside articles visited or shared; his friends and their friends, along with all their activities. While courts can’t convict you for associating with people of questionable character, a jury could certainly be swayed to feel that, if you associate with such people, you may be of that character. And it’s all stored in Facebook’s servers.
. . How to Deflect Killer Asteroids With Spray Paint: A fresh paint job might be all that’s needed to prevent a giant asteroid from raining destruction upon our planet. Though strange-sounding, the strategy would make use of a real-world phenomenon known as the Yarkovsky effect, named for the Russian engineer who discovered it in 1902. The effect results from the fact that asteroids heat up as they bask in the sun’s light. “The coat of paint would be a very thin, almost like a Saran Wrap layer,” said aerospace engineer David Hyland of Texas A&M, who leads a team that has been studying this method for several years. “If we push it in the right direction, we can get the asteroid to cease crossing Earth’s orbit and completely eliminate the threat.”
. . Grammys bans ‘breasts, buttocks, and genitals,’ advises against ‘sheer see-through clothing that could possibly expose female breast nipples’: “Please avoid exposing bare fleshy under curves of the buttocks and buttock crack. Bare sides or under curvature of the breasts is also problematic. Please avoid sheer see-through clothing that could possibly expose female breast nipples. Please be sure the genital region is adequately covered so that there is no visible `puffy’ bare skin exposure.”
. . African-American Dressed In KKK Hood On Street Corner Sparks Controversy In Philadelphia: In 2013, no one expects to see a man dressed in a Ku Klux Clan robe mid-morning in Center City, Philadelphia. “I think that’s nonsense,” said one woman on the street. “He needs to be committed to the jail system,” said another onlooker. The man, who stood on the corner of 13th and Filbert on Tuesday, is not out to lynch or kill black people. In fact, he is black. Thirty-five-year-old Sixx King says he’s using the offensive symbol to highlight a serious problem: black on black crime. “We’re bringing awareness to the black hypocrisy, complacency and apathy in the African-American community,” said King. According to the FBI, in 2011 more than 7,000 black people were killed. King’s sign reads that the KKK killed 3,446 blacks in 86 years, while black on black murders surpass that number every six months.
. . Human Rights Court: CIA Tortured, Sodomized German Citizen Who Was Wrong Man: The court confirmed CIA agents tortured and sodomized el-Masri in front of Macedonian state police, and found the Macedonian government complicit in his secret torture by CIA officials. In a case of mistaken identity, Masri was kidnapped in 2004 by the CIA and sent to multiple black sites in Baghdad and Afghanistan for abuse. The CIA figured out they had the wrong man after months of torture, and dumped him on a desolate road in Albania. Masri attempted to sue the CIA over the abuse, but the US courts threw out the case on national security grounds, saying information about the case could never be made public. The German government briefly issued Interpol warrants for the agents involved in Masri’s kidnapping, but dropped this after the State Department threatened “repercussions” from pursuing the case.
. . Nearly Half of All US Farms Now Have Superweeds: Last year’s drought took a big bite out of the two most prodigious US crops, corn and soy. But it apparently didn’t slow down the spread of weeds that have developed resistance to Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup (glyphosate), used on crops engineered by Monsanto to resist it. More than 70 percent of all the the corn, soy, and cotton grown in the US is now genetically modified to withstand glyphosate. Back in 2011, such weeds were already spreading fast. “Monsanto’s ‘Superweeds’ Gallop Through Midwest,” declared the headline of a post I wrote then. What’s the word you use when an already-galloping horse speeds up? Because that’s what’s happening. Let’s try this: “Monsanto’s ‘Superweeds’ Stampede Through Midwest.”
. . It’s (Almost) Alive! Scientists Create a Near-Living Crystal: Three billion years after inanimate chemistry first became animate life, a newly synthesized laboratory compound is behaving in uncannily lifelike ways. The particles aren’t truly alive — but they’re not far off, either. Exposed to light and fed by chemicals, they form crystals that move, break apart and form again. “There is a blurry frontier between active and alive,” said biophysicist Jérémie Palacci of New York University. “That is exactly the kind of question that such works raise.” Palacci and fellow NYU physicist Paul Chaikin led a group of researchers in developing the particles, which are described Jan. 31 in Science as forming “living crystals” in the right chemical conditions.
. . Obama’s cyber warriors & preparing for collapse: DH: I feel like we’re getting off point. So, what is being planned? RB: The DHS will oversee the domestic crackdown that will happen when the perfect storm bears down on us. And the perfect storm is the economy, meaning the U.S. dollar collapse and hyperinflation, racial or class riots sparked by a high-profile incident, and another mass causality event involving guns. Watch for these three things to happen all at once, or in close succession. The polarization caused by these events will be sufficient to cause a second civil war. DH: When? How soon will all of this happen? RB: I don’t have a crystal ball, but I have seen various reports referencing unprecedented “drills” to take place in later March and April. I’ll mention this because I know a lot of people on the inside at DHS have seen this. A document called “Operation Thunderdome.” It’s maybe 50 or 60 pages, I’m not certain. It describes an economic collapse in the U.S., followed by an attack on the government by “a made-up…
. . Atlanta security guy kick out bunch of hoodlums (NEW): Darien Long aka “Kick Ass Mall Cop” (ATL Security Guard, who tasered “Trashy Mom”) kick out bunch of hoodlums of the mall. This time he got a help by a off duty cop. Darrien became known after the publication of the video “Trashy mom get tasered”, but the following days numerous videos showed Darrian confronting hostile guests, chasing numerous drug dealers from the mall, the local businesses and storefronts in the same area. It’s a job that he has to do on a daily basis, because the area is cluttered with drug dealers, local bullies and other raff’s. Darrien says the area downtown Atlanta needs to be cleaned up so that other business can set up and prosper. This brave guy deserves overwhelming support from the entire nation in his stand against crime and in his stand for order and prosperity.
. . Kim Kardashian Contradicts Herself On Sandy Hook Pledge – Promotes Guns On Twitter: We all know that Kim Kardashian is only famous for a sex tape and her family’s exploiting themselves on television as reality whores. Well, we can also add to the list that Kim is a hypocrite, in a different way than you probably imagined. Back in December during the awful Newtown tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Kardashian urged her twitter followers to sign a pledge to help combat gun violence. Yes, that is a good message to send to her many followers. Then this week comes and it seems like its back to the old hypocritical Kardashian that we love to hate on. So what did she do you ask? Well, she tweeted out a picture to her fans of a jewel encrusted handgun this past Saturday. It seems as if Kardashian completely forgot in her teeny tiny pea brain about the pledge she had just signed weeks earlier.
. . Hello Kitty Bubble Gun Controversy: A pink Hello Kitty bubble gun is the reason a five-year-old girl was suspended from kindergarten at Mount Carmel Area Elementary School. Her family’s attorney says she was at her school bus stop last week when she told a classmate she was going to shoot her and herself with the bubble gun, a gun she did not have with her. People in the community can’t believe it. “It’s just bubbles. It can’t harm anybody. It’s not hard and won’t puncture anything or harm anybody in any way,” Kayla Nash of Shamokin said. According to the family’s lawyer, district officials at Mount Carmel Area Elementary School questioned her for three hours without her parent’s knowledge. She was suspended for 10 days for making terroristic threats.
. . Mellon Collie and the Infinite Crapfest—Things I Never Hear Anyone Say About the Music Business: I know there’s been a shit ton of articles written on the sorry state of the evil music industry in the last decade. I know, because I have a ton of musician friends and I constantly see the facebook (friend me for magick updates) piss and vinegar. Judging from that, I’d say people’s approval of what the dominant players in the music business have been churning out is probably somewhat lower than that of Congress at the moment i.e. worse than the approval rating for head lice and brussel sprouts. Oh, and it’s always someone else’s fault. But in the midst of all these impassioned debates, there’s always totally obvious “elephant in the room” type shit that no one seems to address, so that’s the entire point to this piece if you couldn’t glean that from the title: stuff I never hear anyone say about the music business in no particular order.

Submit Links:
SeMeNSPeRmS@SeMeNSPeRmS.com

File under Music, SeMeN SPeRmS BLArRrG, SeMeN SPeRmS Links 'o Death, Sex

Conjured by o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o on February 8, 2013

Tags: abuse, ADD, Afghanistan, Africa, America, Angel, Anti, Art, Artist, Ass, asteroid, Atlanta, attack, attorney, August, baby, Baghdad, BIG, Birth, Black, blow, brain, Break, breast, Breasts, Bubbles, Bullies, Burn, bus, buttocks, Can, Case, Characters, chemical, chemicals, Chemistry, child, Christian, CIA, Citizen, Civil War, class, Clothing, Collapse, community, company, Congress, Controversial, Controversy, Cop, Corporate, court, cover, Crime, Critic, Crystal Ball, Cult, cum, Cyber, David, Demands, Destruction, Dirt, Dirty, Disco, Domestic, Downtown, Drug, Drug Dealer, Economy, effect, encryption, Entertainment, Erotic, ESP, espionage, Everything, Evil, Exposed, Face, Facebook, Famous, FBI, FEMA, Female, flesh, fleshy, form, Found, gas, genitals, German, Giant, Girl, Girlfriend, Girls, Google, Government, gun, Guns, handgun, harm, Hate, Headline, High, HIV, Hoax, Home, hoodlum, Horse, hospital, How To, Human, hypocrisy, hypocrite, Industry, information, jail, Kidnapping, killer, KISS, kitty, KKK, knowledge, lick, List, Love, Magic, Magick, Mall, Man, Manifesto, Mess, Meth, Mexican, mistake, Modified, Monsanto, Mother, Movies, Murder, Museum, Music, Musician, Nation, National security, New York, Nipple, nipples, NOT, NYU, officer, Old, pain, Paint, Pea, Peace, Peer-to-peer, Period, phenomenon, Picture, Piss, post, Predator, Pregnant, privacy, Protest, Rape, reason, Record, Records, relationship, Resistance, Revenge, Riots, School, School Bus, Science, Secret, Secretary, Security, SeMeNSPeRmS, Sex, sex tape, Sexual, Shit, skin, Small Town, spray, Spray Paint, spread, Stars, Street, Street Corner, Studio, Surveillance, Symbol, Tattooing, technique, technology, Teen, Teenage, Teenager, Television, testosterone, Texas, Threatened, time, Torture, tragedy, Trendy, Twitter, U.S., UNCENSORED, Urge, US, Video, Videos, Violence, Warriors, wikileaks, Woman, WRONG, Young

Stoned To Death



✦ Inflatable Sex Doll & Adult Toy Manufacturing in Ningbo: February 13th, this reporter visited an inflatable sex doll factory in Ningbo. This factory began producing plastic blow up dolls 3 years ago. Today, it has 13 varieties/models, with an average selling price of 100 yuan RMB. Last year, this factory sold a total of over 50,000 inflatable dolls, with 15% of them being exported to Japan, Korea, and Turkey. Photo [above] is of February 13th, where a worker is organizing a batch of unfinished blow up dolls.
✦ How the Surging Popularity of ‘Himalayan Viagra’ Is Causing Murder and Violence in Nepal: Yarsagumba is the result of a bizarre parasitic relationship between fungus and insect. Spores of the Cordyceps mushroom invade and consume the larvae of the Himalayan bat moth, which live underground at altitudes of 10,000 to 16,000 feet for as long as five years, feeding on roots before they commence their metamorphosis into moths. After the fungal spores have killed and mummified the larvae, they send up a spindly brown stem, a tiny knob-headed mushroom – and then they are very likely to be picked. There have been many attempts to farm yarsagumba, but none has ever succeeded. The only way the precious fungus can grow is by the fortuitous concurrence of spore and larva in alpine atmospheric conditions – and brave collectors must be willing to risk their lives to collect it.
✦ ‘Better a dictator than gay’: Belarus leader: The mercurial Belarus strongman Alexander Lukashenko lashed out Sunday at recent sanctions imposed by Europe over his rights record by saying he would rather be branded a dictator than be gay. Lukashenko said in impromptu remarks at a mass ski event that the foreign ministers of Poland and Germany, who had spearheaded the diplomatic offensive against his government, were outsiders who deserved public scorn. “One lives in Warsaw and the other in Berlin,” Lukashenko said in apparent reference to Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski and German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle. “As for the second one who was screaming about a dictatorship… Having heard that, I thought to myself: better to be a dictator than gay.” Lukashenko last year said he had once told Westerwelle, who is openly gay, during a meeting that “he must lead a normal life”. He later apologised for his remarks but added that he “did not like gays.”
✦ George Washington McNugget Buyer Won’t Pay $8,100 After All: The winner of an eBay auction for the McDonald’s McNugget shaped like George Washington has apparently decided $8,100 is no bargain after all. Rebekah Speight told the Sioux City Journal the winning buyer of her eBay auction was “very sorry” to have backed out of the deal. The Dakota City, Neb. resident said she planned to offer her patriotic piece of chicken to the auction’s second-highest bidder for $8,000, though she expected that deal would fall through too. The bidder lives overseas and Speight told the Journal she couldn’t guarantee her McNugget would stay frozen during its journey.
✦ Invisible Children Funded By Antigay, Creationist Christian Right: Why does it matter, if Invisible Children was funded by controversial donors? Two reasons – one, we can assume those donors thought IC aligned with their agenda – which is antagonistic to LGBT rights. Two, it fits an emerging pattern in which Invisible Children appears selectively concerned about crimes committed by Joseph Kony but indifferent to crimes, perhaps on a bigger scale, committed by their provisional partner, the government of Uganda – whose president shot his way into power using child soldiers, before Joseph Kony began using child soldiers. Like Kony, the government of Uganda was also indicted by the International Criminal Court in 2005, for human rights abuses and looting in the DRC Congo (PDF file of ICC ruling against Uganda). Like Kony, the Ugandan army preys upon civilians and is currently accused, by Western human rights groups, with raping and looting in the DRC Congo, where it is hunting for Kony.
✦ America’s first slave owner was a black man.: When Anthony was released he was legally recognized as a “free Negro” and ran a successful farm. In 1651 he held 250 acres and five black indentured servants. In 1654, it was time for Anthony to release John Casor, a black indentured servant. Instead Anthony told Casor he was extending his time. Casor left and became employed by the free white man Robert Parker. Anthony Johnson sued Robert Parker in the Northampton Court in 1654. In 1655, the court ruled that Anthony Johnson could hold John Casor indefinitely. The court gave judicial sanction for blacks to own slave of their own race. Thus Casor became the first permanent slave and Johnson the first slave owner. Whites still could not legally hold a black servant as an indefinite slave until 1670. In that year, the colonial assembly passed legislation permitting free whites, blacks, and Indians the right to own blacks as slaves.
✦ Feds: Cocaine mule, 87, a key link in Mexico-Detroit drug trade: The indictment provides new details on an unusual drug case involving an octogenarian alleged drug mule and a powerful international narcotics ring. “Shedding light on this conspiracy makes it quite clear that the Mexican drug cartels are open for business right here in our backyard,” U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent in Charge Robert Corso said. The lead defendant is an 87-year-old mutton-chopped man from Michigan City, Ind., who made a colorful appearance in federal court last fall. That man, Leo Sharp, told The News he was forced at gunpoint to deliver cocaine across the country. The indictment, unsealed Thursday, alleges otherwise. He’s worked as a drug mule since 2009 and is responsible for delivering about 670 kilograms of cocaine to Michigan — or almost 1,500 pounds, according to court records.
✦ How Corporations Corrupt Science at the Public’s Expense: Corrupting the Science. Corporations suppress research, intimidate scientists, manipulate study designs, ghostwrite scientific articles, and selectively publish results that suit their interests. Shaping Public Perception. Private interests downplay evidence, exaggerate uncertainty, vilify scientists, hide behind front groups, and feed the media slanted news stories. Restricting Agency Effectiveness. Companies attack the science behind agency policy, hinder the regulatory process, corrupt advisory panels, exploit the “revolving door” between corporate and government employment, censor scientists, and withhold information from the public. Influencing Congress. By spending billions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions, corporate interests gain undue access to members of Congress, encouraging them to challenge scientific consensus, delay action on critical problems, and shape the use of science in policy making.
✦ Outbreak of kidney failure in Wyoming linked to “Spice”: Three young people have been hospitalized with kidney failure and a dozen others sickened in Casper, Wyoming, in an outbreak linked to a batch of the designer drug Spice, authorities said on Friday. State medical officials said the cause of the outbreak was under investigation but reported that Casper residents who have sought medical treatment for vomiting and back pain had recently smoked or ingested a chemical-laced herbal product packaged as “blueberry spice.”
✦ ‘Lollipipe’ crackpipe-like candy taken off store shelf: According to Sgt. Paul Kolonich, the product is called Lollipipe. He said it is more likely to be misused to smoke marijuana, but not crack cocaine. The pipes contain a plastic toke tube, an airtight pouch and a cigar band for no-stick handling. They are promoted for legal substances only and are reusable. Police said the station owner is active in the community and is a good business neighbor. Because the product is not illegal and no police report was made, the name of the business is not being made public. Kolonich said the owner willingly removed the candy pipes from shelves. He said the owner told him he did not carefully inspect the product and did not realize what they were. The pipes come in strawberry, green apple, watermelon, peach, blueberry, blue raspberry, grape and cherry. Kolonich said they were on sale for $5.99. “They are only illegal if they are used with marijuana,” he said.
✦ Banker kills himself with caffeine pills overdose: A bank worker killed himself by taking a massive overdose of caffeine pills, an inquest ruled yesterday. Tests on Edward Fisher’s body showed he had 120 times more caffeine in his body than an average coffee or tea drinker. The Barclays support analyst, 24 – who days earlier told his mum he had stopped taking medication to treat psychiatric problems – killed himself after a family meal, the inquest heard. He was taken to Macclesfield Hospital in Cheshire but died the following day last August. A pathologist’s report said the level of caffeine found in the blood of coffee and tea drinkers was around 3mg per litre of blood but Edward’s was 367mg.
✦ Phony Postal Inspector Busted For Swiping Pot Shipments: On the hunt for illegal narcotics being shipped via Express Mail, a Michigan man allegedly repeatedly entered a sorting facility, claimed to be a postal inspector, and walked out with dozens of parcels, many of which contained marijuana, investigators charge. According to a criminal complaint filed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Detroit, Calvin Coolidge Wiggins, 31, said, “You got me” when questioned Saturday morning by federal agents who had arrested him outside the Priority Mail Center in Romulus. Wiggins is pictured at right. Wiggins, an investigator reported, admitted that he “previously had been involved in mailing Marijuana via USPS Express Mail and was tired of having the parcels seized.” So he allegedly sought to seize the parcels of other drug traffickers.
✦ Ron Paul wins first caucus, mainstream media calls it for Romney: Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul won his first caucus over the weekend, but the mainstream media by-and-large reported Mitt Romney the victor instead. Voters in the US Virgin Islands hit the polls on Saturday to nominate an opponent for Barack Obama, and although Texas Congressman Ron Paul garnered more popular votes than any of his rivals, mainstream media outlets were quick to call the contest in favor of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. While more votes were cast for Ron Paul, Romney walked away with the most delegates this weekend. For The Associated Press and others, that was enough to call the contest in favor of the conservative founder of Bain Capital.
✦ 90 students in Iraq stoned to death for having ‘Emo hair and tight clothes’: Youngsters in Iraq are being stoned to death for having haircuts and wearing clothes that emulate the ‘emo’ style popular among western teenagers. At least 14 youths have been killed in the capital Baghdad in the past three weeks in what appears to be a campaign by Shia militants. Militants in Shia neighbourhoods, where the stonings have taken place, circulated lists yesterday naming more youths targeted to be killed if they do not change the way they dress. The killings have taken place since Iraq’s interior ministry drew attention to the ‘emo’ subculture last month, labelling it ‘Satanism’ and ordering the community police force to stamp it out. Fans of the ‘emo’ trend – short for emotional – wear tight jeans and have distinctive long, black or spiky haircuts.
✦ Fukushima residents report various illnesses [Video]: A debate is raging in Japan over the extent of the radiation contamination in the wake of last year’s nuclear disaster in Fukushima.
✦ Cocktail of Popular Drugs May Cloud Brain: Many people are unaware that dozens of painkillers, antihistamines and psychiatric medications — from drugstore staples to popular antidepressants — can adversely affect brain function, mostly in the elderly. Regular use of multiple medications that have this effect has been linked to cognitive impairment and memory loss. Called anticholinergics, the drugs block the action of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, sometimes as a direct action, but often as a side effect. Acetylcholine is a chemical messenger with a range of functions in the body, memory production and cognitive function among them.

Submit Links:
SeMeNSPeRmS@SeMeNSPeRmS.com

File under Culture, SeMeN SPeRmS BLArRrG, SeMeN SPeRmS Links 'o Death, Sex

Conjured by o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o on March 13, 2012

Tags: 13, action, agenda, Agent, Allegedly, antidepressant, Army, attack, auction, Baghdad, Band, Bank, Better, Bizarre, Black, block, Blood, blow, Body, brain, Branded, Busted, caffeine, Can, Candy, Case, chemical, Chick, Chicken, child, Children, Christian, cigar, Clothes, Cocaine, Cock, cocktail, Coffee, Come, community, Complaint, Congo, Congressman, conspiracy, Controversial, Corporate, court, Crack, Crack Cocaine, Crimes, Criminal, Cult, cum, death, debate, Designer, Detroit, dictator, dictatorship, disaster, Dolls, Drug, Drug Enforcement Administration, Drugs, effect, Emo, enforcement, Europe, failure, Family, Farm, force, Forced, Foreign, Found, Free, Frozen, Fukushima, fungal, fungus, German, Government, Governor, Hair, High, hospital, Human, Illegal, Indictment, information, International, investigation, Iraq, Japan, Killings, Legal, LGBT, Live, looting, Mainstream, Mainstream Media, Man, Manipulate, Marijuana, Medical, medication, Messenger, Metamorphosis, Mexican, Michigan, Murder, Mushroom, Narcotics, News, NOT, Nuclear, overdose, pain, painkiller, pattern, Photo, Pills, plastic, Poland, Police, Polish, Popular, Pot, Power, president, Press, product, Psychiatric, Radiation, Rape, Record, relationship, Report, reporter, Ron Paul, Satan, Satanism, Science, Screaming, SeMeN, SeMeNSPeRmS, Sex, Sex Doll, Sick, slave, Smack, smoke, Smoking, Special, Spiky Hair, Stealing, Stoned, style, Subculture, Teenagers, Texas, time, Toke, treatment, Trend, U.S., Uganda, Underground, US, Violence, Virgin, Vomit, Washington, Watermelon, White, white man, Young, youth

Nothing But Nuggets

✦ Teen who butchered 9-year-old neighbor wrote that killing was amazing, enjoyable in her journal before she went to church: “I just f—— killed someone. I strangled them and slit their throat and stabbed them now they’re dead. I don’t know how to feel atm. It was ahmazing. As soon as you get over the “ohmygawd I can’t do this” feeling, it’s pretty enjoyable. I’m kinda nervous and shaky though right now. Kay, I gotta go to church now…lol.” Thanks Jasmine
✦ GREAT (?) MOMENTS IN COMICS HISTORY: “MAD’S PUNK ROCK GROUP OF THE YEAR” (1978): But when it had one of its surges of brilliance, MAD was indeed a force to be reckoned with and if you were of the right age at the right time it was both eye opening and fucking hilarious, a good case in point being the hit-or-miss observations and social commentary found in the long-running “(FILL IN THE BLANK) OF THE YEAR” series. Two of those stand out in my memory as being absolutely vital in the forging of my sense of humor were “Mad’s Karate Movie Producer of the Year” (MAD #167, June 1974), a piss-your-pants moment of brilliance illustrated by Jack Davis during the height of the 1970′s martial arts movie boom, and issue #199′s (June 1978) poke at the British punk rock movement when it reared its Mohawked head over here in the States.
✦ Know your Rights!- right!?: Recently as I was doing some research I came across a designers site that had a rug for sale that had the exact style of my friend Keen One, I thought to myself how unlikely that he would do such a commercial project so I passed the link for confirmation. As it turned out it wasn’t an agreed upon collaboration but an artistic infringement by the designer. Since the work was painted on a wall in public they must have assumed the artist had no rights to said work since it may or may not have been legal and decided to use for their own commercial and financial gain.
✦ Play the Rings of a Tree Trunk Like a Record: What would the trunk of a tree sound like if a cross section of it were played like an LP? With his creation Years, Bartholomäus Traubeck attempts to answer that question by using a turntable, PlayStation Eye Camera, a stepper motor to control the arm, and computer running Ableton Live. As you’ll hear in the video above, the rings of the tree trunk, as interpreted by this piece, create an eerie and ominous piano track that sounds like it was taken from psychological horror film. Who knew trees were so emo?
✦ THE FAB 5 FREDDY DEBATE CONTINUES: Revok recently pulled Fab 5 Freddy’s card calling him a biter and a fraud (check Revok’s blog post HERE). This accusation has drew a line in the sand with people opposing and supporting Fred’s work. Today I received this harshly retarded email from Holland’s Shoe aka Niels Shoe Meulman…
✦ Fungi Discovered In The Amazon Will Eat Your Plastic: The Amazon is home to more species than almost anywhere else on earth. One of them, carried home recently by a group from Yale University, appears to be quite happy eating plastic in airless landfills. The group of students, part of Yale’s annual Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory with molecular biochemistry professor Scott Strobel, ventured to the jungles of Ecuador. The mission was to allow “students to experience the scientific inquiry process in a comprehensive and creative way.” The group searched for plants, and then cultured the microorganisms within the plant tissue. As it turns out, they brought back a fungus new to science with a voracious appetite for a global waste problem: polyurethane.
✦ Stealing in virtual world is theft in real life, top Dutch court rules: The amulet and mask were a 13-year-old boy’s virtual possessions in an online fantasy game. In the real world, he was beaten and threaten with a knife to give them up. The Dutch Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the theft conviction of a youth who stole another boy’s possessions in the popular online fantasy game RuneScape. Judges ordered the offender to perform 144 hours of community service. Only a handful of such cases have been heard in the world, and they have reached varying conclusions about the legal status of “virtual goods” — and whether stealing them is real-world theft. The suspect’s lawyer had argued the amulet and mask “were neither tangible nor material and, unlike for example electricity, had no economic value.”
✦ New Theory of Life Claims to Unite Fields of Science: The Earth is alive, asserts a new scientific theory of life emerging from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. The trans-disciplinary theory demonstrates that purportedly inanimate, non-living objects — for example, planets, water, proteins, and DNA — are animate, that is, alive.
✦ First ‘Heartless’ Man: You Don’t Really Need A Heart, Or A Pulse: Two doctors Billy Cohn and Bud Frazier from the Texas Heart Institute successfully replaced a dying man’s heart with a device—proving that it is possible for your body to be kept alive without a heart, or a pulse.
✦ Twitter news: US bars friends over Twitter joke: TWO pals were barred from entering the US after innocent tweets joking about “destroying America” were picked up by the country’s anti-terror cops. US special agents monitoring Twitter spotted Leigh Van Bryan’s messages weeks before he left for a holiday in Los Angeles with pal Emily Bunting. Leigh, who also quipped about “digging up Marilyn Monroe” on Twitter, said they were treated like terrorists on arrival at a Los Angeles International Airport. The pair were held by armed guards and quizzed for five hours before being handcuffed, put in a van with illegal immigrants and locked up overnight.
✦ Key Internet operator VeriSign hit by hackers: VeriSign Inc, the company in charge of delivering people safely to more than half the world’s websites, has been hacked repeatedly by outsiders who stole undisclosed information from the leading Internet infrastructure company. The previously unreported breaches occurred in 2010 at the Reston, Virginia-based company, which is ultimately responsible for the integrity of Web addresses ending in .com, .net and .gov.
✦ A Swarm of Nano Quadrotors [Video]: Experiments performed with a team of nano quadrotors at the GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania. Vehicles developed by KMel Robotics. Special thanks to Professor Daniel Lee for his support.
✦ 2,100 pounds of marijuana seized from fake AT&T; work truck: Two men are behind bars after authorities found more than a ton of marijuana inside a fake AT&T; work truck. It all happened off FM 490 just west of the Hidalgo County community of McCook. A Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) state trooper pulled over what appeared to be an AT&T; truck over for speeding 72 mph in a 60 mph zone. Driver Aaron Arrellano-Salgado fled on foot but was caught. Authorities found 189 bundles with 2,168 pounds of marijuana inside the cloned work truck. State troopers pulled over a second car driven by Wilfredo Garza-Salgado for running a stop sign nearby.
✦ Oriental riff: The Oriental riff, also known as the Asian riff or the Chinese riff, is a musical riff or phrase that has often been used as a trope or stereotype of orientalism in Western culture to represent the idea of the Orient, China, Japan or a generic East Asian theme by Western culture. The riff is sometimes accompanied by the sound of a gong.
✦ Police Raid 5-Story Bronx Marijuana Farm, 593 Plants Seized: Police raided a five-story Bronx building that they believe was being used as a marijuana farm with hundreds of plants in an elaborate growing system. A search warrant was executed at about 1 p.m. Tuesday at 610 Morris Park Ave., according to police. Investigators seized 593 plants, some as tall as seven feet, as well as 75 pounds of marijuana that had been cut, dried and packaged in plastic. Sources told NBC New York that each floor of the building was used for a different stage of growth for the plants. It had been outfitted with an intricate ventilation and hydration system. The seized plants and packages totaled about 1,550 pounds, police said. Investigators said about 50 to 60 pounds of marijuana were being produced each month for a value of about $250,000.
✦ Joan Rivers, 78, gets stoned in a carpark and is unable to drive home… and its all filmed for her reality show: Joan Rivers is not known as a shrinking violet. But the 78-year-old has taken things a step further by smoking a marijuana pipe in a carpark with her friend – and had it all filmed for her reality show. The comedian, known for her red carpet interviews at award shows, became so stoned, she was unable to drive home and later ended up fully clothed in a hot tub and drinking the water out of her shoe.
✦ Your cell phone is a government issued tracking device: Mobile phones have become a major part of our modern civilization. These hand-held computers have reached a level of sophistication that allows us to instantly communicate through text, voice and video. This same technology is also being used to amass a situational awareness and sensory system that will track you and the world around you. You and your cell phone are nodes in a grid of sensors that paints a virtual picture of the world.
✦ US ‘no-fly’ list of suspected terrorists doubles in 12 months: The size of the US government’s secret list of suspected terrorists who are banned from flying to or within the country has more than doubled in the past year. The no-fly list jumped from about 10,000 known or suspected terrorists one year ago to about 21,000, according to government figures. About 500 are US nationals. The flood of new names began after the failed Christmas 2009 bombing of a Detroit-bound jetliner when the US government lowered the standard for putting people on the list and scoured its files for anyone who qualified. “We learned a lot about the watchlisting process and made strong improvements, which continue to this day,” said Timothy Healy, director of the Terrorist Screening Centre, which produces the no-fly list.
✦Stacey Irvine, 17, collapses after eating only McDonald’s chicken nuggets since age 2: Ever since she was a toddler, Stacey Irvine has eaten little else but chicken nuggets and the occasional portion of chips. Now, at the age of 17, she has been warned by doctors to change her appalling diet or die. The factory worker – who says she has never tasted fresh fruit or vegetables – had to be taken to hospital earlier this week when she collapsed after struggling to breathe.
✦ Addicts’ cravings have different roots in men and women: When it comes to addiction, sex matters. A new brain imaging study by Yale School of Medicine researchers suggests stress robustly activates areas of the brain associated with craving in cocaine-dependent women, while drug cues activate similar brain regions in cocaine-dependent men. The study, expected to be published online Jan. 31 in the American Journal of Psychiatry, suggests men and women with cocaine dependence might benefit more from different treatment options.
✦ Missing Iraq $100 Million: Pentagon Unable to Account for Missing Iraqi Millions: The Pentagon doesn’t know what happened to more than $100 million in cash held at Saddam Hussein’s palace in Baghdad during the Iraq war, according to a new report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. What’s more, the Pentagon can’t find documents to explain what it spent as much as $1.7 billion on from funds held on behalf of the Iraqi government by the New York Federal Reserve, the report says. The missing records raise new questions about how the US government handled billions of dollars in Iraqi funds during the war. The new report, the latest in a multi-year investigation by the inspector general into missing money in Iraq, paints a picture of Pentagon officials digging through boxes of hard copy records looking for missing paper copies of Excel spreadsheets, monthly reports and other paper documents that should have been kept detailing what the money was spent on and why those expenditures were necessary. Apparently, there are no electronic records
✦ Cocaine accidentally sent to UN headquarters: Bags containing 16 kilogram of cocaine that Mexican drug traffickers recently lost has turned up in an unlikely place – the United Nations in New York. Two fake UN bags containing the drugs – which experts said had a street value of about $US2 million ($1.9 million) – set off a security alert when they were delivered, apparently by accident, to the global body’s headquarters. The bags, which had the UN symbol printed on them, were shipped from Mexico through the DHL delivery company’s centre in Cincinnati, Ohio, deputy commissioner Paul Browne of the New York Police Department said. But the bags had no address on them, nor any return to sender details. “It is my understanding that because there was no addressee, the DHL just thought, well, that’s the UN symbol so we should ship it on to UN headquarters and let them figure out who it was supposed to go to,” deputy commissioner Browne said.
✦ The Mercenary Techie Who Troubleshoots for Drug Dealers and Jealous Lovers: With Martin’s system, each crewmember gets a cell phone that operates using a prepaid SIM card; they also get a two-week plastic pill organizer filled with 14 SIM cards where the pills should be. Each SIM card, loaded with $50 worth of airtime, is attached to a different phone number and stores all contacts, text messages and call histories associated with that number, like a removable hard drive. This makes a new SIM card effectively a new phone. Every morning, each crewmember swaps out his phone’s card for the card in next day’s compartment in the pill organizers. After all 14 cards are used, they start over at the first one.
✦ Student receives free cocaine with Amazon textbook order: A US university student discovered a package of cocaine in a pre-owned textbook she bought from online retailer Amazon.com. Sophia Stockton, a junior at Mid-America Nazarene University in Olathe, Kansas, ordered a textbook called Terrorism: Challenges, Perspectives and Issues through Amazon.com for a spring course on terrorism. After flipping through the pages of the just received textbook a bag of ‘white powder’ fell to the ground. Stockton initially thought that it was Anthrax and took the book and bag to the Gardner police station after classes and was surprised she had been shipped $400 worth of cocaine. She told WPTV: I told them white powder was in my terrorism textbook and so I put it on the table and they’re like, ‘oh, okay,’ And so he went back and tested it, He comes back and says, ‘you didn’t happen to order some cocaine with your textbook, did you?’ And I was like, no!
✦ New designer drug ‘Roflcoptr’ hits UK dance floors: The new ‘rave drug’ is called Roflcoptr, which is a street-speak acronym for “Roll On the Floor Laughing Crapping Our Pants Totally Ruined”. An alternative name is “mket” (which is a truncation of the full chemical name, as described below). Like other drugs linked to electronica and other forms of club / dance music, the physiological affect is to produce a state of euphoria and sometimes have hallucinogenic properties. The basis of the new substance is the chemical methoxetamine (and which has a very long chemical name: 2-(3-methoxyphenyl)-2-(ethylamino)cyclohexanone). The chemical takes the form of a white powder. The user snorts the powder.
✦ Drug war hypocrisy: drug trafficking’s big money benefits Big Brother and corrupt banksters: The hypocrisy of the war on drugs is outrageous when compared to the amount of drug trafficking that benefits the CIA and international banking system. The son of a convicted notorious mobster, John Gotti Jr, when asked in court if the family still dealt drugs cracked, “No, we can’t compete with the government.” Today in Afghanistan, American troops have been seen guarding poppy fields used to make heroin. Those fields were all but wiped out by 2001 when the Taliban destroyed them and forbade that agricultural pursuit. Now they’re flourishing again after the American occupation. This doesn’t make sense despite all the mainstream reports that American troops are protecting the poppy farmers from the bad guys. Internet sites such as Prison Planet, Info Wars, The Political Coffeehouse and others report otherwise. They connect the CIA and US military to restarting the poppy fields in Afghanistan in 2002, increasing poppy growth by over 650 percent. Who’s telling it like it is?
✦ Discipline recommended in Air Force whistle-blower case: The U.S. Office of Special Counsel said Tuesday it has recommended disciplinary action against three Air Force officials after concluding they retaliated against four civilian mortuary workers at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for disclosing that remains of fallen troops had been mishandled.
✦ Peacemaker: Lauderdale police put trouble spots under surveillance with Big Brother truck: Tania Ouaknine is convinced the police are watching her. She’s not paranoid — it says as much on the red sign painted along the side on the hulking armored truck that’s been parked in front of her eight-room Parisian Motel for several days. “Warning: You are under video surveillance,” reads the bold message on the side of the truck. From the front bumper of the menacing vehicle, another sign taunts: “Whatcha gonna do when we come for you?” The truck is a new weapon for the Fort Lauderdale Police Department in the fight against drugs and neighborhood nuisances, and it looks like a Winnebago on steroids. They call it “The Peacemaker,” and it may be a first in South Florida.
✦ Facebook IPO: What happens if Mark Zuckerberg were to die?: “In the event that Mr. Zuckerberg controls our company at the time of his death, control may be transferred to a person or entity that he designates as his successor. As a board member and officer, Mr. Zuckerberg owes a fiduciary duty to our stockholders and must act in good faith in a manner he reasonably believes to be in the best interests of our stockholders.”
✦ Teacher abused students during class, detective says: Investigators recovered photos from the film processing store and Mark Berndt’s home that allegedly showed the students bound and blindfolded and some with large Madagascar cockroaches crawling on them inside the school setting, Scott said. Scott said girls were allegedly photographed with a blue spoon holding a white substance near their mouths. Investigators said they believe that substance was Berndt’s semen and that he had the girls consume it. Thanks Jasmine
✦ 9-Eyes: Collection of strange Google Street View screenshots
✦ Early 70′s LA Gang Graffiti: Howard Gribble: When these photographs of Chicano “placas” (wall writing) were made in the early 1970s gangs and their graffiti were a mysterious presence that few understood — if they were aware of them at all. In the thirty plus years since the popular media and entertainment industry have repeatedly spotlighted the subject to the point that the gangsta culture has become a pervasive part of our society. The original gangster graffiti of this period was of a purer form than that seen today, with much emphasis on artistic flourishes. These pieces could last for years in the days before municipilaties instituted aggresive graffiti removal programs that quickly remove them from view — often overnight. This is, of course, still vandalism but from an earlier and more innocent time.
✦ ALIEN or HUMAN born with PIGS BODY….you decide. [Video]

Submit Links:
SeMeNSPeRmS@SeMeNSPeRmS.com

File under Comics, Culture, Graffiti, Horror, Music, SeMeN SPeRmS BLArRrG, SeMeN SPeRmS Links 'o Death, Sex

Conjured by o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o on February 8, 2012

Tags: 1970s, 70's, action, Afghanistan, alert, Alien, Allegedly, Alternative, American, anthrax, Artist, Arts, bad, Baghdad, Banned, Beaten, BIG, Big Brother, biter, Body, Book, Bound, brain, Bronx, Car, Case, Cell Phone, chemical, Chicken, Chinese, Christmas, Church, CIA, Club, Cocaine, Cockroaches, collaboration, Come, Comics, Commercial, community, company, computer, Control, court, Culture, Dance, debate, Designer, Destroyed, Detective, Director, DNA, Drinking, Driver, Drug, drug trafficking, Drugs, Earth, Eat, Electronic, Entertainment, euphoria, Experience, Facebook, fake, Family, Fantasy, Farm, fight, Film, foot, force, form, Found, fraud, Free, friend, Fruit, Fucking, fungus, gang, Gangs, Gangsta, Gangster, Girls, Google, Government, Graffiti, Grid, Hacked, Hallucinogenic, Heart, Home, Horror, hospital, Hot, Human, Humor, hypocrisy, Illegal, Immigrants, Industry, information, Infringement, Innocent, International, Internet, investigation, Iraq, Jack Davis, Japan, Karate, Killing, Knife, lawyer, Legal, List, Los Angeles, MAD, Mainstream, Marijuana, Mark Zuckerberg, Martial, Martial arts, Medicine, Mexican, Mexico, Military, Modern, money, month, motel, Motor, movement, movie, Musical, Neighbor, neighborhood, New York, NOT, offender, Online, opening, Original, Outrageous, Palace, Paranoid, park, Pentagon, Period, person, phone, Photographs, Photos, phrase, Piano, Picture, Pigs, pill, Pills, pipe, plastic, Play, Playstation, Police, Poppy, Popular, post, powder, Prison, Producer, Professor, project, Punk, Punk rock, Records, Report, Research, Retarded, Rock, Saddam, safety, School, Science, Search, search warrant, Secret, Security, SeMeN, Sex, site, Smoking, Social, Social Commentary, Some, Sound, Special, Species, Stealing, Stereotype, Stoned, Strange, Street, stress, Student, style, substance, Supreme, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Symbol, System, Taliban, Teacher, technology, Teen, Terrorism, Terrorists, Texas, The Family, Theft, theory, throat, time, Tracking, trafficking, treatment, Trees, trouble, Twitter, U.S., UK, United Nations, University, US, Vandalism, Video, Virtual, Virtual world, War, war on drugs, warrant, waste, Water, White, Women, World, youth

Puppets ‘n Dummies

★ Lady Gaga website stays strangely silent over database hack

A gang of hackers known as SwagSec announced at the tail end of last week that they had hacked into Lady Gaga’s UK website and made off with a database of names and email addresses of fans. To prove their point, they published the stolen data online.
★ Vaudeville Ventriloquist Dummy Portraits

Ventriloquism creeps me out as it is, but these vaudeville era portraits of ventriloquists with their creepy dummies are, well, creepy. This first one is quite possibly the most unsettling thing I have ever seen. Enjoy the rest, including the random police booking photo of “The Great Lester”.
★ Monsanto-Resistant Weeds Take Root, Raising Food Prices

For decades, farmers had it relatively easy when it came to weeds infesting their soil: apply herbicides, wait for the weeds to die and grow more crops. Those salad days, alas, are coming to an end.

A new series of studies released by Weed Science this month finds at least 21 weed species have become resistant to the popular herbicide glyphosate (sold as Monsanto’s Roundup), and a growing number survive multiple herbicides, so-called “super-weeds.” The same selection pressure creating bacteria resistant to multiple antibiotics is leading to the rapid evolution of plants that survive modern herbicides. If the trend continues, yields could drop and food costs climb as weeds grow more difficult to uproot.
★ A devil of a name put on NZ banned list

NAMING your new bundle of joy Lucifer has been effectively banned by New Zealand’s names registrar after three parents had the odd request knocked back.

The country’s Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages has been cracking down on mothers and fathers getting too creative with their children’s names, ruling out punctuation marks such as . (Full Stop), * (Asterisk) and / (presumably ”Slash”).

The list of 102 names rejected in the past two years includes Baron, Bishop, Duke, General, Judge, Justice, King, Knight and Mr, all deemed too similar to titles.
Advertisement: Story continues below

Messiah was also turned down, as was 89, and the single letters, C, D, I and T, although Q and J were accepted after being queried.
★ Rocker Daltrey’s migrant fury

RAGING pop star Roger Daltrey claims PM David Cameron does not have “the balls” to tackle mass immigration.

The Who’s working class hero Roger Daltrey sparked a storm a fortnight ago when he blasted Labour for “screwing” Brits by opening the floodgates to foreigners.

Yesterday he turned on the Tories, saying Mr Cameron and his team lacked the guts to deal with the issue.

He also took a pop at leftie rocker Bono for claiming he is a socialist while dodging taxes in his homeland.
★ Brilliant Camera Angle

After getting a pie in the face, Rupert Murdoch inadvertently gets a pair of devil horns.
★ YouTube DMCA Takedown Grabs Track For Eminem

After “Dare to Dream” was put up on YouTube one of its early listeners was Jimmy Iovine, founder of Interscope records. Recognizing quality, Iovine had plans in his mind for Skepta’s track so, with help from parent company Universal, they had YouTube remove the song on copyright grounds.

Armed with cash Interscope approached Boy Better Known, a group and record label founded in 2005 by Skepta and the team behind Dare to Dream.

“Being in an industry where money talks, everybody involved in the ‘Dare To Dream’ project came to a conclusion to sign it to Interscope,” says Skepta.

So who is the lucky recipient of the track? None other than Interscope giant Eminem.
★ Is Your Voicemail Wide Open?

For years, it has been a poorly-kept secret that some of the world’s largest wireless providers rely on caller ID information to verify that a call to check voicemail is made from the account holder’s mobile phone. Unfortunately, this means that if you haven’t set up your voicemail account to require a PIN for access, your messages may be vulnerable to snooping by anyone who has access to caller ID “spoofing” technology. Several companies offer caller ID spoofing services, and the tools needed to start your own spoofing operation are freely available online.
★ Civilian Deaths from CIA Drone Strikes: Zero or Dozens?

Last month, however, John Brennan, the White House’s top counterterrorism advisor broke this silence, telling reporters that “in the last year ‘there hasn’t been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency, precision of the capabilities that we’ve been able to develop.’”

Zero civilian casualties — during a period when there were more than 100 CIA drone strikes — sounded almost too good to be true. As it turns out, it was. According to a new report from the UK’s award-winning Bureau of Investigative Journalism, released last night, at least 45 civilians were killed in 10 strikes since August 2010. Among these, the Bureau reports that it has identified, by name, six children killed in drone strikes. More civilians are likely to have been killed in an additional 15 strikes for which precise information is not available.
★ FBI releases files on controversial booksellers Paladin and Loompanics

The FBI has released its files on two famously controversial publishers, Paladin Press and Loompanics Unlimited, following a FOIA request filed by Government Attic. The files suggest that the booksellers’ huge libraries of books on drugs, guns and other ultra-libertarian issues only rarely drew the FBI’s attention.
★ Summer’s Eve ‘racist’ for using different coloured hands in ads

A series of adverts for a range of women’s hygiene products by Summer’s Eve have sparked a massive backlash from viewers.

The use of ‘talking’ hands of black, white and Latina women to represent female genitalia was always meant to be provocative, but have been branded racist by some.

Hundreds of negative comments have been posted online, with some arguing that the distinctive voice-overs adhere to racial stereotypes.

The commercials were made with the intention of promoting cleanliness, but for many women it’s the image of Summer’s Eve that needs a good scrub.
★ Prostitution ring for Wall Street clients busted

Seventeen people were indicted on Wednesday on charges of running a high-end prostitution ring that catered to Wall Street clients who often spent more than $10,000 in a night, authorities said.

The ring pulled in more than $7 million over three years, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes said at a news conference.

“The business of high-end prostitution is enormously profitable,” Hynes said.

The prostitution service, named High Class NY, was run 24 hours a day out of an office in Brooklyn and charged from $400 to $3,600 an hour for its services, according to the 144-count indictment. It also provided customers with cocaine and other narcotics, the indictment said.

Hynes said clients often spent in excess of $10,000 in a single night.

They were “all high-end customers coming from the financial markets. People with nothing but money,” he said.
★ Supporters worry about muting of pro-Israel media voice

Backers of Israel worried that a diminished Rupert Murdoch presence may mute the strongly pro-Israel voice of many of the publications he owns.
★ Bringing light to the poor, one liter at a time

A bottled liter of water with a few teaspoons of bleach is proving to be a successful recipe for dwellers in the light-deprived slums of the Philippines. The simple technology is spreading sunlight in places where it has never been, and saving residents money at the same time.
★ Police arrest goat accused of armed robbery

Police in Nigeria are holding a goat on suspicion of attempted armed robbery.

Vigilantes seized the black and white goat, saying it was an armed robber who had used black magic to transform himself into an animal to escape after trying to steal a Mazda 323.

‘The group of vigilante men came to report that while they were on patrol they saw some hoodlums attempting to rob a car. They pursued them.
★ Chihuahua thwarts robbery at Altadena smoke shop

The store owner quickly begins placing money in a robber’s backpack. As he does, his Chihuahua erupts into ferocious barking at the two men, who beat a hasty retreat, running out of the store with the backpack but taking less money than they could’ve gotten.

At one point, one of the robbers even points his rifle at the diminutive but undaunted pooch, who chases the pair out of the store and down the street.
★ Dutch abortion ship is forced to flee Polish storm of protest

Pro-abortion activists from Holland who took a seaborne clinic to staunchly Catholic Poland have been forced to pull out after a fortnight of furious protests and official pressure.

Women on Waves, a group of radical campaigners seeking to spread their doctrine of “free abortions” throughout Europe, had hoped to bypass Poland’s tough anti-abortion laws by ferrying women to international waters aboard a converted tug, the Langenort, to undergo abortions.

Last week, however, they abandoned their efforts and left Polish waters after providing “counselling” to only 20 women. Rebecca Gomperts, a former Greenpeace activist who heads Women on Waves, refused to say whether they had performed any abortions.

The arrival of the Langenort in the northern Polish port of Wladyslawowo provoked outrage from the Roman Catholic Church, and the vessel was met by furious demonstrators when it docked.
★ 22 NFL Players Arrested During The Lockout So Far [Slideshow]
★ High levels of radioactivity found extensively

Japan’s science ministry says air above the ground about 150 kilometers from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is as radioactive as areas 50 kilometers from the source of radioactivity.

The ministry on Wednesday released a map showing radiation levels at locations one meter above the ground in Miyagi Prefecture, north of Fukushima, based on the results of an aerial survey from June 22nd through 30th.
★ Bootleg Chinese ‘Apple Stoer’

They looked like Apple products. It looked like an Apple store. It had the classic Apple store winding staircase and weird upstairs sitting area. The employees were even wearing those blue t-shirts with the chunky Apple name tags around their necks.
★ Diamonds Lose Mass in Sunlight

It might be among the hardest materials known, but place a diamond in a patch of sunlight and it will start to lose atoms, say a team of physicists in Australia. The rate of loss won’t significantly trouble tiara wearers or damage diamond rings, but the discovery could prove a boon for researchers working to tap diamond’s exceptional optical and electronic properties.
★ Stick insects survive one million years without sex

Certain species of Timema stick insects were known to reproduce asexually, with females producing young in “virgin births” without the need for egg fertilisation by males.

The insects instead produce genetic clones of themselves.
★ Coming Soon: The Breast Milk Baby Doll

A new doll, called the “Breast Milk Baby,” is slated to make a debut sometime this year in US toy stores. A sensation in Europe, the doll has already polarized many groups at odds over issues like breastfeeding in public and those who feel young girls are already growing up too fast.

The doll comes with a halter which is worn by a young girl as she holds the baby up to a pair of rose petal “nipples” on the front. When the doll is placed near the petals, it begins to make suckling sounds.

Naturally, when asked what they thought about a breast milk baby doll, some shoppers in NYC were astounded, even offended. But the company who makes it remains philosophical.

“I think that it’s totally bizarre to teach a prepubescent child how to breastfeed,” said one Manhattanite woman. “Quite strange.”
★ Big Brother Creep Out: 7 Ways US Govt. Invades Brains

With increasing frequency it seems agencies of the government are looking to tap into the public consciousness to gather information on everything from how you surf the Web to how they can use information generated by you to predict the future. It’s all a little creepy, really. Here we take a look at seven programs announced this year that in some cases really want to crawl into your brain to see what’s happening in the world.
★ Just what is Manhattanhenge?

New Yorkers have witnessed an urban solar phenomenon, with the Sun setting in alignment with the city’s skyscrapers and giving an effect fans say is reminiscent of Wiltshire’s Stonehenge. Welcome to Manhattanhenge.
★ It’s Not Just a Scandal, It’s a Syndrome

A good journalist brings that depth of commitment to a story, along with the appropriate contextual information, public memory, and reportorial skill. When a reporter from the German magazine Der Spiegel told me in 2003 that Fox News reporters in Baghdad had borrowed sandbags from American soldiers and piled them on the roof of their hotel to stage an on-camera impression that they were reporting from a battle elsewhere, I was reminded that Murdoch’s News Corporation isn’t so interested in serious journalism.

No large news organization in the world, in fact—at least none that’s as large as or larger than those influenced by Vladimir Putin in Russia or Silvio Berlusconi in Italy or the Communist Party in China—tries as brazenly as Murdoch’s globe-straddling News Corporation to generate and even fabricate news or to subvert good reporting of news so cynically and powerfully—and hurtfully, to both its subjects and its audiences.
★ Man’s call for Obama assassination is free speech, not crime, court rules

Walter Bagdasarian was found guilty two years ago of making threats against a major presidential candidate in comments he posted on a Yahoo.com financial website after 1 a.m. on Oct. 22, 2008, as Obama’s impending victory in the race for the White House was becoming apparent. Bagdasarian told investigators he was drunk at the time.

A divided panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that conviction Tuesday, saying Bagdasarian’s comments were “particularly repugnant” because they endorsed violence but that a reasonable person wouldn’t have taken them as a genuine threat.

The observation that Obama “will have a 50 cal in the head soon” and a call to “shoot the [racist slur]” weren’t violations of the law under which Bagdasarian was convicted because the statute doesn’t criminalize “predictions or exhortations to others to injure or kill the president,” said the majority opinion written by Judge Stephen Reinhardt.