★ Americans Shoplifted $1.8 Billion Worth of Stuff This Christmas

Hope you have a Merry Christmas, America, because you’ve been extremely naughty at the mall this year. After surveying retailers in the U.S., the Global Retail Theft Barometer says that shoppers pinched $1.8 billion worth of merchandise during the four weeks leading up to Christmas, reports the AP. $1.8 billion! For context, $1.8 billion is a 6 percent increase from 2010 — a total of approximately 62 million Tickle Me Elmos at retail. And this is a year when there aren’t even any good toys to buy. When stores are offering big markdowns because people aren’t spending as much. But that’s exactly the point: while there will always be some built-in kleptomania to society, the sour economy drives some people to buy less and steal more. Or at least gives them a good excuse for doing so.

★ Cardinal Faces Pushback For Comparing Gay Rights Movement To The KKK

Change.org has released a petition calling for the resignation of Catholic Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, following comments the Cardinal made to FOX Chicago Sunday comparing the gay rights movement to the Klu Klux Klan’s anti-Catholicism. Equally Blessed, an umbrella group of pro-LGBT rights Catholic organizations, has reinforced the pushback by releasing a statement declaring in part that George, “has demeaned and demonized LGBT people in a manner unworthy of his office. In suggesting that the Catholic hierarchy has reason to fear LGBT people in the same way that blacks, Jews, Catholics and other minorities had reason to fear the murderous nightriders of the Ku Klux Klan, he has insulted the memory of the victims of the Klan’s violence and brutality.” The petition has already garnered well over half the 2,500 signatures the organization was aiming for.

★ Aquaponics: Baltimore city, suburban residents try hand at fish farming

The aquarium in the living room of Meir and Leah Lazar’s Baltimore County home isn’t just for decoration. The tilapia and bluegills packed into the 50-gallon glass tank are waiting their turn to wind up on dinner plates. Out back, Meir Lazar is putting the finishing touches on a bigger new home for the fish inside a plastic-covered greenhouse. There, he hopes, the waste from the fish he’s tending will help him raise enough lettuce, tomatoes and other produce to feed his family of five year-round. Sustainability is more than a buzzword for Meir Lazar, 32, a computer systems administrator and teacher who’s pursuing aquaponics in his small suburban backyard off Greenspring Avenue. He said he’s inspired at least in part by news reports about food tainted by pesticides, bacteria and even radiation from the Japanese nuclear reactor meltdown earlier this year.

★ Man Dressed as Santa Believed to Shoot Six

Police were looking for a motive in a shooting in which they believe a man dressed as Santa Claus killed six family members in a Fort Worth, Texas, suburb on Christmas day before shooting himself. No one survived the carnage in the living room of a two-story apartment in Grapevine, Texas. Police said it was the single largest mass-shooting death in the city’s history and among the worst in Texas in recent years.

★ Unrelenting Global Economic Crisis: A Doomsday View of 2012

The economic, political and social outlook for 2012 is profoundly negative. The almost universal consensus, even among mainstream orthodox economists is pessimistic regarding the world economy. Although, even here, their predictions understate the scope and depth of the crises, there are powerful reasons to believe that beginning in 2012, we are heading toward a steeper decline than what was experienced during the Great Recession of 2008 – 2009. With fewer resources, greater debt and increasing popular resistance to shouldering the burden of saving the capitalist system, the governments cannot bail out the system. Many of the major institutions and economic relations which were cause and consequence of world and regional capitalist expansion over the past three decades are in the process of disintegration and disarray. The previous economic engines of global expansion, the US and the European Union, have exhausted their potentialities and are in open decline.

★ 8-Bit Yulelog

★ Mexico’s cartels build own national radio system

The alert goes out from a taxi driver or a street vendor, equipped with a high-end handheld radio and paid to work as a lookout known as a “halcon,” or hawk. The radio signal travels deep into the arid countryside, hours by foot from the nearest road. There, the 8-foot-tall (2-meter-tall) dark-green branches of the rockrose bush conceal a radio tower painted to match. A cable buried in the dirt draws power from a solar panel. A signal-boosting repeater relays the message along a network of powerful antennas and other repeaters that stretch hundreds of miles (kilometers) across Mexico, a shadow communications system allowing the cartel to coordinate drug deliveries, kidnapping, extortion and other crimes with the immediacy and precision of a modern military or law-enforcement agency.

★ Killin’ for Candy and Concords: The Price of Black Life

In recent news, an up and coming rapper was killed in a crowded Atlanta mall. According to authorities, Joe Blackmon, aka “Killa Black,” was standing in line for a pair of Air Jordan Concords when he, accidentally, knocked a Jolly Rancher out of the hand of the man in front of him. The man, described only as “an African American in a black hoodie with saggin’ pants” pumped five rounds in him before fleeing the scene. Witnesses say that the crowd just stepped over the dying Blackmon like nothing happened ,some even refusing to let paramedics through for fear of losing their places in line… Recently, people were shocked that Brick Squad affiliate, Slim Dunkin, was murdered in an Atlanta studio, allegedly, stemming from a fight over a piece of candy. This tragic event was coupled by media images of mobs of people beating each other senseless over the new Air Jordan XI Concords

★ Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story

Submitter: Hello, I’m a librarian in [NY] and a huge college football fan. Shortly after the sex abuse scandal at Penn State I decided to look on amazon and in our library catalog to see if we had anything by or about Jerry Sandusky. There are 14 copies of his unfortunately titled autobiography, Touched, floating about according to WorldCat

★ Israel Spyware Sold To Iran

The clandestine arrangement worked smoothly for years. The Israeli company shipped its Internet- monitoring equipment to a distributor in Denmark. Once there, workers stripped away the packaging and removed the labels. Then they sent it to a man named “Hossein” in Iran, an amiable technology distributor known to them only by his first name and impeccable English, say his partners in Israel and Denmark. Israeli trade, customs and defense officials say their departments didn’t know that the systems for peering into Internet traffic, sold under the brand name NetEnforcer, had gone to a country whose leaders have called for the destruction of the Jewish state. Israel’s ban on trade with its enemy failed, even though a paper trail on the deals was available in Denmark.

★ Report Assails Japan Response to Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident

From inspectors’ abandoning of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant as it succumbed to disaster to a delay in disclosing radiation leaks, Japan’s response to the nuclear accident caused by the March tsunami fell tragically short, a government-appointed investigative panel said on Monday. The failures, which the panel said worsened the extent of the disaster, were outlined in a 500-page interim report detailing Japan’s response to the calamitous events that unfolded at the Fukushima plant after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out all of the site’s power. Three of the plant’s six reactors overheated and their fuel melted down, and hydrogen explosions blew the tops off three reactor buildings, leading to a major leak of radiation at levels not seen since Chernobyl in 1986.

★ An Independent America: Voters leaving Republican, Democratic parties in droves

A recent analysis conducted by USA Today showed that American voters are fed up with both mainstream political parties and are leaving them in droves. The newspaper claims that “More than 2.5 million voters have left the Democratic and Republican parties since the 2008 elections.” Over the last decade this trend has only seemed to accelerate says USA Today. While many people feel there is little difference in the parties, their options remain slim. Yet, voters switching to Independent have climbed dramatically. According to the statistics gathered from eight swing states, “Democrats’ registration is down by 800,000 and Republicans’ by 350,000. Independents have gained 325,000.”

★ ATF and D.C. Police Impersonate Rap Label; Arrest 70 in Year Long Guns and Drug Sting

Over $7.2 million in drugs and 161 weapons were confiscated after a year long investigation by the Washington D.C. Police and the Bureau the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which operated as fictional rap label. According to Washington D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier, D.C. police and ATF agents acted as undercover officers and “music industry insiders” during the year-long sting. The police created the “Manic Enterprisess” studio in Northeast Washington, for fictional rap artist Richie Valdez in November of 2010. Agents then told the underground world and black market that they were seeking to purchase weapons and drugs. Over the course of the year, agents confiscated 161 firearms (including a rocket launcher), 29 assault weapons, 80 pounds of methamphetamine, 21 pounds of cocaine, 1.25 gallons of PCP, 24 pounds of marijuana, heroin and Ecstasy. “If these drugs and guns had made it to our streets, the impact would have been devastating to community,”

★ LAPD botched use of downtown crime cameras

Most of the surveillance cameras installed in downtown Los Angeles as part of an effort to help police crack down on crime have not been working for two years, according to interviews and records reviewed by The Times. The cameras were installed over the last few years in a highly publicized partnership between local business groups, which purchased them, and the Los Angeles Police Department, which was to monitor and maintain them. But officials said the majority of the cameras don’t work. Some broke down and were never fixed. In the case of six cameras purchased to watch over Little Tokyo, LAPD officials admit that they were never plugged in to the police station’s monitoring bank.

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• ✪ Mexican Town Goes Mad for Pointy Boots‬‏ [Video]
  Mutant pointy cowboy boots _ part Aladdin, part Las Vegas _ created a fashion craze that spread from one northeastern Mexican town.
• ✪ World’s Greatest Drunk Driving Mug Shot

  Does this man look drunk to you?I mean, could someone who spends a lot of time sober ever possibly consider a facial tattoo like that?

  This is 29-year-old Cory P. Smits, who was recently given his fifth operating while intoxicated conviction.

  He’s racking these things up like body art.

  Smits was arrested in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, back in February when police pulled him over for swerving and found a man with glassy and bloodshot eyes.

  I’m surprised they even noticed the eyes.

• ✪ Boater finds brick of likely cocaine, snorts some, dies

  A Merritt Island videographer died in a Miami hospital Thursday after he snorted an unknown substance — possibly cocaine — from a brick he found floating off the Middle Keys, the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office says.Thomas Swindal, 53, and his brother Kenneth were trolling in about 200 feet of water on Wednesday when, Detective Mark Maison said, they found what they believed to be a kilo of cocaine and brought it aboard the boat, tossing it into the bait well.

  They kept on fishing and, Kenneth Swindal told detectives, he looked back a short time later and saw his brother open the package and ingest some of its contents.

  He said about an hour and a half later, Thomas Swindal began to run around the boat, throw things in the water and even gaffed the engine, which fell off the boat and sank.

  He continued acting strangely, running around with knives and pliers, so Kenneth Swindal threw all the sharp objects, as well as the package, off the boat.

• ✪ Police: Man Admits To Sex With Cat

  The 29-year-old man, identified as Gerardo Martinez, answered the door shirtless with his pants down, the police report said. Officers asked him to pull his pants up and asked him about the cat.Martinez, who admitted to using meth, first denied having a cat, police said. Later, he changed his story and told police his boyfriend threw the cat from the window three hours prior, police said.

  When police told Martinez that witnesses said the cat was thrown more recently, he said he attempted to have sex with the cat and then threw it out the window, along with a pornographic DVD, police said.

• ✪ Warren Jeffs trial: Heavy breathing ‘sex tape’ made with 3 wives including ‘bride’ of 12

  The recording was allegedly made at the Yearning for Zion ranch in Texas, owned by the FLDS. It begins with Jeffs asking the girl how she feels.According to the transcript made and given to the court, the girl replies: ‘Feels good.’

  Soon after Jeffs can be heard saying: ‘Everyone else let go of me, back away a little. Please get on the other side of the bed.

  ‘You shall learn the powers of the spirit of God as a heavenly wife should,’ Jeffs tells the 12-year-old.

  ‘Let the heavenly comfort hear us.

  ‘We bless you, by the Lord, at this young age. To come to know God and his power, and feel his presence.’

  According to CNN, many jurors lowered their heads and closed their eyes during the recording.

  The voice is also heard saying: ‘You have to know how to be sexually excited and to help each other … and you have to be ready for the time I need your comfort.

  ‘This is your mission. This is how you abide the law.’

  At one point, he says: ‘Take your clothes off. Do it right now.’

• ✪ 13 Reasons Why The U.S. Is Now OFFICIALLY BANKRUPT
  ATTENTION IDIOTS IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA – Stop The Budget Lies – There Are NO Cuts – House Passes Bill To INCREASE Spending By $7 Trillion Over The Next 10 Years
• ✪ Mysterious Orange Goo Baffles Remote Alaska Village

  Leona Baldwin’s husband saw it first, and she got on the marine radio to alert others in the remote Alaska village of Kivalina that a strange orange goo was sitting on top of the town’s harbor.The news attracted all the townspeople, anxious to get a gander of the phenomenon that covered much of the harbor and then began washing ashore Wednesday.

  The next day it rained, and residents found the orange matter floating on top of the rain buckets they use to collect drinking water. It was also found on one roof, leading them to believe whatever it was, it was airborne, too.

  By Friday, the orange substance in the lagoon had dissipated or washed out to sea, and what was left on ground had dried to a powdery substance.

  Samples of the orange matter were collected in canning jars and sent to a lab in Anchorage for analysis.

  Until results are known, Kivalina’s 374 residents will likely continue to wonder just what exactly happened in their village.

• ✪ How Did Those Vermont Fish Get Radioactive?

  “Hey, don’t look at us” has been Entergy Corporation’s response to the discovery of Strontium-90 in fish from the Connecticut River.But the contamination, revealed this week by the Vermont Department of Health, promises to complicate the utility’s effort to extend the license of its aging Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant.

• ✪ Police: Teens Leave Church Picnic To Riot In East Liberty, Pittsburgh

  “They came in Target, they were throwing chairs, everybody went running,” said witness Shauny Bowe.“Everybody was just running everywhere,” said Bowe. “They went to McDonald’s, and they told people to get out, cussing and swearing. They were about to taze people. I was scared for my life.”

  As members of the church cleaned up the park, they said they are saddened that a day of fun and worship is now associated with disruption and vandalism.

• ✪ Tottenham riots: Double decker bus set ablaze as mob violence hits London
  Twenty-six police officers hurt in clashes, with eight being treated in hospital
  Scotland Yard still dealing with ‘isolated pockets of crime’ this morning
  Mob of 500 people protest about death of father-of-four Mark Duggan who was shot by officers
  100 riot police on the streets as Tottenham burns
  Fears that violence was fanned by Twitter as picture of burning police car was re-tweeted more than 100 times
  Shop looted and youths storm McDonald’s and start cooking their own food
  Mail on Sunday photographers beaten and mugged by masked thugs
• ✪ Shoplifters Drown While Fleeing the Scene
  Amid heavy downpours, a mother and daughter suspected of shoplifting at a Charlotte coat store ran into a swollen, fast-moving stream Friday night. Police found the mother’s body at the bottom of the creek Friday, and now it is being reported that search crews have found the body of her 16-year-old daughter Saturday.
• ✪ PHILIP K. DICK’S BIBLE with HIS HANDWRITTEN NOTATIONS – eBay
  $6500 Buy It Now
• ✪ Shops and Cars Burn in Antipolice Riot in London

  Clusters of young men hurled bricks and aimed fireworks at riot police officers before a backdrop of burning cars and buildings early Sunday in north London as a protest turned into an all-out riot.Demonstrators on Saturday evening marched to a police station in the Tottenham area of London to protest the death of Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old father of four who was killed Thursday by officers from the Trident unit of the Metropolitan Police, which investigates gun crime, according to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, an external government body which regulates the police.

  By 10:20 p.m. local time, the protest had turned violent. Two empty police cars were burned and officers were “subject to bottles and other missiles being thrown at them by the crowd,” according to a statement released by the police.

• ✪ 8 Reasons Young Americans Don’t Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance

  Traditionally, young people have energized democratic movements. So it is a major coup for the ruling elite to have created societal institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance to domination.Young Americans—even more so than older Americans—appear to have acquiesced to the idea that the corporatocracy can completely screw them and that they are helpless to do anything about it. A 2010 Gallup poll asked Americans “Do you think the Social Security system will be able to pay you a benefit when you retire?” Among 18- to 34-years-olds, 76 percent of them said no. Yet despite their lack of confidence in the availability of Social Security for them, few have demanded it be shored up by more fairly payroll-taxing the wealthy; most appear resigned to having more money deducted from their paychecks for Social Security, even though they don’t believe it will be around to benefit them.

  How exactly has American society subdued young Americans?

• ✪ John’s Phone: Subversive Mobile Technology – media underground

  “Whatever happened to coming to the pub to engage in social interaction!?” I exclaimed.There was no response.

  I looked out of the window at the multitude of passers-by, all of whom seemed to be preoccupied with whatever was on their cell phones.

  “Another beer?” asked the barmaid as she punched in a few characters on her smartphone.

  “What exactly are you all fucking doing?” I asked somewhat irritably.

  “I’m on Twitter,” she said without even looking up.

  “And I’m on Facebook,” remarked the fat lawyer – his beady little jaundiced eyes looked up again briefly, as if attempting to burn holes in the back of my inner skull.

  “Yeah,” I remarked sarcastically, “cos, so much interesting shit is going down in here right now that all your friends need an update.”

  “Do you want a beer or not?” asked the barmaid impatiently – her podgy little pink thumbs sliding over the touch sensitive device.

  “No thanks,” I said getting to my feet, “I’ve got walls at home I can stare blankly at.”

• ✪ Computer scientist calls for Web search shake-up
  The main obstacle to progress “seems to be a curious lack of ambition and imagination,” Etzioni writes in the piece, which he acknowledges “is meant to be provocative.”
• Earth Had 2 Moons That Crashed to Form 1, Study Suggests
  A tiny second moon may once have orbited Earth before catastrophically slamming into the other one, a titanic clash that could explain why the two sides of the surviving lunar satellite are so different from each other, a new study suggests.
• ✪ Germany’s War on Facebook
  The latest development has to with Facebook’s facial recognition feature that helps users tag photos. After joining in the chorus of European nations that objected to the feature launch in June, German authorities are now the first to declare the feature illegal. Hamburg’s data protection official Johannes Caspar claims that the software violates both German and European Union data protection laws and that Facebook users don’t know how to delete the data that Facebook is gathering. “If the data were to get into the wrong hands, then someone with a picture taken on a mobile phone could use biometrics to compare the pictures and make an identification,” Caspar told the Hamburger Abendblatt. “The right to anonymity is in danger.”
• ✪ Lego Minifigs Soon Headed for Deep Space

  The figures, milled from aluminum, will accompany Juno on its five-year trip to Jupiter. When Juno arrives in 2016, the Lego likeness of the Roman god, Jupiter, his sister, Juno, and the Italian astronomer, Galileo, will be there to take in all the sights and bask in the immensity of the largest planet.This (until now) secret installation was initiated by NASA scientists, who love Lego as much as anyone and wanted to do something memorable for this mission. They approached Lego and the company loved the idea. It saw the project as a way to promote children’s education and STEM programs.

  The brick company even underwrote the project, at a cost of $5,000 for each of the minifigs, which will soon become the farthest flying toys ever. The manufacture of the figures was a deliberate process to ensure the figures would not interfere with NASA’s sensitive measurements.

• ✪ Domain Seizures Do Not Violate Free Speech, U.S. Court Rules
  A U.S. federal court has ruled that the domain seizure of sports streaming site Rojadirecta does not violate the First Amendment, and has refused to hand the domain back to its Spanish owner. The order stands in conflict with previous Supreme Court rulings and doesn’t deliver much hope to other website owners who operate under U.S. controlled domain names.
• ✪ Why Facebook and Google’s Concept of ‘Real Names’ Is Revolutionary

  pseudonyms allow statements to be public and persistent, but not attached to one’s real identity.I can understand why Google and Facebook don’t want this to happen. It’s bad for their marketing teams. It generates social problems when people don’t act responsibly under the cloak of their assumed identity. It messes up the clarity and coherence of their data. And maybe those costs do outweigh the benefits pseudonymity brings to social networks.

  But then let’s have that conversation. Let’s not pretend that what Google and Facebook are doing has long-established precedents and therefore these companies are only doing what they’re doing to mimic real life. They are creating tighter links between people’s behavior and their identities than has previously existed in the modern world.

• ✪ Face recognition: Anonymous no more

  IF YOUR face and name are anywhere on the web, you may be recognised whenever you walk the streets—not just by cops but by any geek with a computer. That seems to be the conclusion from some new research on the limits of privacy.For suspected miscreants, and people chasing them, face-recognition technology is old hat. Brazil, preparing for the soccer World Cup in 2014, is already trying out pairs of glasses with mini-cameras attached; policemen wearing them could snap images of faces, easy to compare with databases of criminals. More authoritarian states love such methods: photos are taken at checkpoints, and images checked against recent participants in protests.

• ✪ Mossad’s murder machine claims another scientist’s life in Israeli bid to stop Iran building a nuclear bomb

  The two assassins arrived from nowhere as their victim was driving home with his wife. Trapped inside his car, he was hopelessly vulnerable as their motorcycles pulled alongside.He would just have had time to notice their blacked-out visors before they opened fire, emptying round after round into his chest.

  Nuclear scientist Darioush Rezaei died immediately. His wife was critically wounded and still in hospital days after the attack in north eastern Iran.

  The hitmen? They vanished into the traffic fumes of the night.

• ✪ One in seven Americans lives on food stamps

  Believe it or not, one in seven Americans – 15 percent of the country – now need government-provided food stamps simply to survive, according to latest government figures.Nearly 46 million Americans receive food stamps out of a population of some 311 million people, the US Department of Agriculture, which administers what’s officially called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programme reported Thursday.

• ✪ Rupert Murdoch pie attacker Jonathan May-Bowles jailed for 6 weeks

  A comedian who threw a foam pie into the face of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch was jailed for six weeks yesterday.Jonathan May-Bowles, 26, attacked the 80-year-old chief executive and chairman of News Corporation as he gave evidence to MPs about the hacking scandal that has engulfed his company, calling him a ‘naughty billionaire’.

  May-Bowles – also known as Jonnie Marbles – from Windsor, Berkshire, was ordered to pay £250 costs at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court, and a £15 victim surcharge.

• ✪ Even Wall Street Hates the Debt Deal

  The Dow Jones Industrial Average has plummeted by 760 points since the terms of the debt ceiling deal were announced Monday. If austerity was supposed to encourage economic growth, someone forgot to tell Wall Street.On Thursday alone, the index dropped more than 500 points, the worst one-day drop since the lowest lows of the meltdown.

  Some budget-cutting enthusiasts promoted the “important economic advantages of linking the debt limit to spending reductions,” and we’re seeing the immediate aftermath.

  Before the deal was voted on, Paul Krugman warned, “The worst thing you can do in these circumstances is slash government spending since that will depress the economy even further.”

  Investors seem to agree and, for the moment anyway, have decided to get out of Dodge.

• ✪ Google’s self-driving wreck: Really human error?

  When a self-driving car crashes, one just has to wonder about those robots. Are they really all they’re cracked up to be? Or might they be just as cracked as the rest of us?Should you have, this morning, been unreasonably detained by aggressive machines, may I tell you that Google’s famed, futuristic, liberating, and ultimately superhuman machine, the self-driving Prius, was involved in a fender bender.

  What seems evident from shots of the scene is that Google’s robot machine ran into the back of another Prius. You might think that it was on robotic autopilot and this was some sort of mating ritual.

  You might also think that a Google representative rushing to the defense of our future controllers by issuing a statement to Business Insider that a human had been driving might smack of the convenience of being chauffeur-driven.

• ✪ Pentagon’s Lightning Gun Sold for Scraps on eBay

  There was a time, not all that long ago, when the Pentagon sank tens of millions of dollars into remote-controlled lightning guns that it hoped would fry insurgent bombs before they killed any more troops. Now, disassembled parts from the one-time wonder-weapons are being sold on eBay. At least one buyer snatched up the gear, hoping to use it in his latest art project for Burning Man.All of which would make for a funny little story, if that buyer didn’t discover that the multimillion dollar “Joint Improvised Explosive Device Neutralizers,” or JINs, were kluged together from third-rate commercial electronics, and controlled by open Wi-Fi signals. In other words, the Pentagon didn’t just overpay for a flawed weapon. On the off-chance the JIN ever worked, the insurgents could control it, too.

  “This is the hack of all hacks,” says Cody Oliver, a freelance technologist in San Francisco. “And this is what they were selling to the government? Holy shit.”

• ✪ Porn Doesn’t Sell Like It Used To

  It is hard to get a fix on how much porn contributes to cable and satellite companies’ bottom lines because the companies aren’t transparent about it. But adult content has been a consistent source of profit, because cable operators have leverage to command margins that can exceed 90% on rentals of generally interchangeable porn movies, analysts say. “It’s a relevant business simply because of its profitability,” said Craig Moffett, a cable and satellite analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein.Adult movies are often more expensive, too. Many adult movies cost $9.98 to rent on Time Warner Cable in New York, while Hollywood films often cost $4.99 to rent.

  The porn-cable connection tumbled into public view when NBC’s “30 Rock” mocked the dependence of Kabletown—a fictionalized version of NBC’s then soon-to-be owner Comcast—on pay-per-view pornography, calling it “the goose that lays the golden eggs.

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• ◆ Woman files complaint after elderly mother asked to remove adult diaper during TSA search

  A woman has filed a complaint with federal authorities over how her elderly mother was treated at Northwest Florida Regional Airport last weekend.

  Jean Weber of Destin filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security after her 95-year-old mother was detained and extensively searched last Saturday while trying to board a plane to fly to Michigan to be with family members during the final stages of her battle with leukemia.

  Her mother, who was in a wheelchair, was asked to remove an adult diaper in order to complete a pat-down search.

  “It’s something I couldn’t imagine happening on American soil,” Weber said Friday. “Here is my mother, 95 years old, 105 pounds, barely able to stand, and then this.”

• ◆ Alex Jones ‘DMT elves want the elites to kill us all’

  Here, Alex Jones absolutely leaves David Icke in the dust as he spins a conspiracy theory of the how “the elite” smoke DMT to put them in touch with Terence McKenna’s “self-transforming machine elves” who want them to kill everyone Dalek-style. Apparently.

  According to Jones, the alien beings have instructed that the Large Hadron Collider be built so that the inter-dimensional vortex could be opened, allowing them to gain access to our space-time continuum. (Well he doesn’t say that exactly, I’m interpolating just a little bit).

• ◆ DC Kids Ingest Cocaine at Elementary School
  Nicole Jackson, whose child is in first grade, said her son told her, ‘Mommy there was naughty medicine in the school. One of the kids had naughty medicine.” She called the incident “very scary.”
• ◆ Fishy Chips: Spies Want to Hack-Proof Circuits

  In 2010, the U.S. military had a problem. It had bought over 59,000 microchips destined for installation in everything from missile defense systems to gadgets that tell friend from foe. The chips turned out to be counterfeits from China, but it could have been even worse. Instead of crappy Chinese fakes being put into Navy weapons systems, the chips could have been hacked, able to shut off a missile in the event of war or lie around just waiting to malfunction.

  The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency, the spy community’s way-out research arm, is looking to avoid a repeat. The Trusted Integrated Circuit program is Iarpa’s attempt to keep foreign adversaries from messing with our chips — and check the circuits for backdoors once they’ve been made.

• ◆ EPA Halted Extra Testing for Radiation From Japan Weeks Ago

  Radiation is expected to continue spewing for months from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that suffered a meltdown following an earthquake and tsunami in March, but despite grim reports from Japan, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has quietly stopped running extra tests for radioactive material in America’s milk, rain and drinking water.

  The EPA initially ramped up nationwide testing in the weeks following the disaster in Japan, and radioactive materials like cesium and iodine-131 were detected on US soil. Citing declining levels of radiation, the EPA has abandoned the extra tests, even as reports from Japan indicate that the Fukushima plant continues to emit radiation and the disaster is one of the worst in world history.

• ◆ Stanley Kubrick’s letter to projectionists on “Barry Lyndon”
  And now I have a document that should clear up quite a bit with respect to Kubrick’s desires and intentions: a letter to projectionists signed by Kubrick. It came to me through the courtesy and kindness of screenwriter and critic Jay Cocks, who writes: “I knew Stanley pretty well for a while, but at the time of the Time Barry Lyndon cover I was in LA beginning preliminary work on Gangs of New York. So I had no hand in the Time cover, but still managed to let Stanley know how great I thought the movie was. He replied with his usual gracious, funny note and enclosed this letter, because he thought I’d be interested. Bet you will be too.”
• ◆ Seagull stole GoPro [Video]
  Seagull stoled my video camera in Cannes France
• ◆ Meaning of Robots [Video]
  Directed by Matt Lenski but created with the help of many amazing people
• ◆ Vancouver riot footage shows ‘kissing couple’ beaten by police

  The couple caught on video and in film kissing on the street while the June 15 Vancouver riot swirled around them has quickly become an iconic image, hailed as a moment of beauty in the midst of violent uproar. New video, however, shows that it’s not quite the moment of tenderness previously thought.

  The couple, now identified as Alexandra Thomas and Scott Jones, were knocked to the ground and hit by police batons, the new footage shows. Thomas is on the ground and appears to be in pain and crying, while Jones holds his hand up to protect her. Once the police move on, he tried to comfort her, leading to the now-viral kiss photo.

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• ▲ Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow Cone

  His Jack & Jill Truck was pulled over minutes later and investigators say the ice cream man, 46-year-old Yassir Hassan, was visibly drunk.

  Upon further inspection, authorities found several wine boxes inside.

  But even more disturbing was the discovery of at least three water bottles filled with urine and one of them was found inside the freezer unit used to store the ice cream.

  On top of that, Action News has obtained a copy of the inspection report performed after the arrest which determined the truck had “obviously no hand washing facilities in the vehicle.”

• ▲ Dominique Strauss-Kahn: timeline of controversies

  Tristane Banon, a writer, claims she had to fend Mr Strauss-Kahn off with kicks and punches when he invited her to a meeting in a room furnished with a double bed and a television. He said he went at her “like a chimpanzee on heat” during the alleged incident in 2002.

  Her husband, a Socialist politician, said she spoke to Mr Strauss-Kahn about it and he said: “I don’t know what came over me, I lost the plot.”

• ▲ Nu Thang – Hott Christian Rap
  For some reason, this bright young rap artist’s career never seemed to get off the ground…
• ▲ 33 Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out To Be True, What Every Person Should Know…
  Skeptics are important in achieving an objective view of reality, however, skepticism is not the same as reinforcing the official storyline. In fact, a conspiracy theory can be argued as an alternative to the official or “mainstream” story of events. Therefore, when skeptics attempt to ridicule a conspiracy theory by using the official story as a means of proving the conspiracy wrong, in effect, they are just reinforcing the original “mainstream” view of history, and actually not being skeptical. This is not skepticism, it is just a convenient way for the establishment view of things to be seen as the correct version, all the time, every time. In fact, it is common for “hit pieces” or “debunking articles” to pick extremely fringe and not very populated conspiracy theories. This in turn makes all conspiracies on a subject matter look crazy.
• ▲ Secret Weather Weapons Can Kill Millions, Warns Top Russian Politician
  A top Duma political leader caused shock waves in a recent television interview when he warned that Russia could deploy an arsenal of new technology to “destroy any part of the planet” and kill over a hundred million people using secret weather weapons if the United States, the UN or Georgia tried to stop Russia’s entry into the WTO.
• Atmosphere Above Japan Heated Rapidly Before M9 Earthquake
  Infrared emissions above the epicenter increased dramatically in the days before the devastating earthquake in Japan, say scientists.
• ▲ Cops Can Kick Your Door Down If They Smell Weed, Supreme Court Rules
  But writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito said that all the Kentucky pot smoker needed to do was tell cops that they had no Constitutional right to enter his fragrant castle. “Occupants who choose not to stand on their constitutional rights but instead elect to attempt to destroy evidence have only themselves to blame” when cops kick their doors down and maybe shoot their dogs, Alito wrote. Got it? All you need to do is yell through the door something to the effect of, “Hey, this is a private residence! I know my rights, man!” The officers will have no choice but to slink away, defeated, leaving you to your warm bath and Songs of the Whales.
  Thanks Dante Ross
• ▲ “Situation at Fukushima out of control”
  The situation at the Fukushima plant is currently out of control, says Professor Christopher Busby from the European Committee on Radiation Risks, who gave RT his insight into the recent developments in Japan.
  “Of course, it’s time for the Japanese government to take control. But having said that, it’s very hard to know how you could take control of the situation. The situation is essentially out of control,”
• ▲ Could Martian Life Have Seeded the Earth? Endeavour Mission Will Help Find Out
  This trip is intended as a test of the transpermia hypothesis: that Mars may have held life billions of years ago, and that organisms could have survived the trip to Earth and seeded this planet with life. Those organisms may have invaded the Earth by traveling inside rocks that were blasted off the Martian surface by meteorites. “Whether you can populate planets from other planets is one of the more profound questions,” Betts says. “It’s intriguing, and it’s worth understanding whether the theory is really plausible.”
• ▲ Me and Osama – How to start a rumour on Twitter.

  Last week, I spread a rumour on Twitter that in some of the videos seized from his compound during the Navy SEALS raid, Osama Bin Laden was watching my sitcom ‘The IT Crowd’. I did it to illustrate the lightning speed at which a rumour can circulate and mutate on Twitter.

  Only joking! I did it because I thought it would be funny, but it did circulate and mutate really quickly so maybe there’s a good lesson for us here. I mean really, it’s scary what Twitter can do. You can’t get more offline than my mother, and even she said to my brother, the day after the story ‘broke’, “did you hear about your brother and Osama?”

  “So! It appears that one good way of starting a rumour is to pretend that the story is already circulating.
  Reply Retweet
  Does anyone have confirmation that Osama was watching ‘The IT Crowd’ in these home movies? Amazing if true. Don’t know how to feel.”

• ▲ ‘Free-floating’ planets found with no star in sight

  …they say they have found 10 Jupiter-sized objects which they could not connect to any solar system. They also believe such objects could be as common as stars are throughout the Milky Way.

  The objects revealed themselves by bending the light of more distant stars, an effect called “gravitational microlensing”.

  Objects of large enough mass can bend light, as Albert Einstein predicted. If a large object passes in front of a more distant background star, it may act as a lens, bending and distorting the light of that star so that it may appear to brighten significantly.

  The researchers examined data collected from microlensing surveys of what is called the Galactic Bulge, the central area of our own Milky Way.

  They detected evidence of 10 Jupiter-sized objects with no parent star found within 10 Astronomical Units (AU). One AU is equivalent to the distance between our Earth and Sun. Further analysis led them to the conclusion that most of these objects did not have parent stars.

• ▲ Fukushima – One Step Forward and Four Steps Back as Each Unit Challenged by New Problems
  Gundersen says Fukushima’s gaseous and liquid releases continue unabated. With a meltdown at Unit 1, Unit 4 leaning and facing possible collapse, several units contaminating ground water, and area school children outside the exclusion zone receiving adult occupational radiation doses, the situation continues to worsen. TEPCO needs a cohesive plan and international support to protect against world-wide contamination.
• ▲ Interview with Akira Tokuhiro, Nuclear Engineer: Fukushima and the Mass Media

  The numbers are disturbingly higher than we have been lead to believe, the number of homes in the villages which are contaminated, the rice paddies, the fact that the “official” six to nine month cleanup is virtually impossible, no matter how much they do accomplish… all of this is what has being kept off the front pages of the mass media.

  The first conversation I had had with Akira Tokuhiro the previous week included the contracts for the clean-up, the bidding process for which was being kept highly secret and is the main reason France’s President Sarkozy headed to Japan so soon after the earthquake and tsunami leading to the accident. It will take a very long time for the surveys to be carried out to determine exactly what needs to be decontaminated, and only so much water for example can be processed per day. TEPCO speaks of 500 to 1,000 people involved with the cleanup, but Tokuhiro claims it will take ten times that amount.

• ▲ Walmart – Mr. Ghetto ” New Orleans Bounce ” Summer 2011 [Video]
• ▲ Batman Beatdown on the Vegas Strip [Video]
• ▲ Hip Hop Superstars on Arsenio Hall Show ’94 [Video]
  Wu-Tang, KRS-One, Tribe Called Quest, Naughty By Nature, DasFX, Guru, Etc…
• ▲ How to Beat High Airfares

  Passengers flying to or from airports that are dominated by a single carrier — like Memphis, Newark or Dallas/Fort Worth — pay fares 20 or 30 percent higher than at non-hub airports. The prices are even more inflated when you’re flying from a smaller city with a limited number of flights. A nonstop one-way ticket from Des Moines to Dallas/Fort Worth is $375 on American Airlines, for example — more than the $335 Delta will charge you to fly from Miami to Anchorage.

  But what happens when you’re interested in flying American from Des Moines to Los Angeles, which hosts a more competitive airport? That flight is only about half the price ($186), despite its being more than double the distance. Now, here’s the trick: American flights from Des Moines to L.A. have a layover in Dallas. If you want to travel to Dallas, the best way to get a reasonable fare is to book the flight to Los Angeles instead, and simply get off the plane at Dallas.

• ▲ Man On 6 Train Spazzing Out On PCP, Fighting WIth People! (Cop Is Scared To Touch Him)
• ▲ Sex on the brain: Orgasms unlock altered consciousness
  WITH a click and a whirr, I am pulled into the scanner. My head is strapped down and I have been draped with a blanket so that I may touch my nether regions – my clitoris in particular – with a certain degree of modesty. I am here neither for a medical procedure nor an adult movie. Rather, I am about to stimulate myself to orgasm while an fMRI scanner tracks the blood flow in my brain.
• ▲ Florida Principal Suspended After Hypnotizing Student Who Committed Suicide The Next Day
  Dr George Kenney, a high school principal in Florida, hypnotized Wesley McKinley, a 16-year-old student, in his office. The next day the male student was found dead, the victim of an apparent suicide by means of drug overdose. Now Kenney has been suspended as police and the school board attempt to figure out whether the nontraditional treatment had anything to do with the death.
  Thanks miamifadecounty.com

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After school special drama about the dangers of drugs and drinking. Featuring Judd Nelson and Burt Reynolds, who must have been caught doin’ something naughty ‘n had to do this as a community service. Also starring a young and impressionable Dermot Mulroney.

httpvp://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=FA8E67102B54DE03

Shattered…If Your Kid’s On Drugs

• ✧ Microsoft Invokes DMCA to Take Down Cryptome.org, then Relents
  Network Solutions has taken the Cryptome website down after receiving a DMCA takedown notice from Microsoft claiming copyright infringement. Microsoft objects to the publication of a handbook provided to law enforcement describing what information the service keeps on its users and what legal steps are required to obtain that information. However, its takedown of the well-known web site may have effect of increasing the number of people who read the document.
• ✧ Mossad agent X63: the first pictures
  We have discovered the identity and images of the alleged Israeli spy — a bird who was captured earlier this week by locals in the Hail area of Saudi Arabia. Local authorities publicly declared the bird to be an Israeli spy.
• ✧ Atheist group at UTSA again offers porn for bibles

  An atheist student group at UTSA is again offering to trade porn for bibles.

  Atheist Agenda set up a booth on the UTSA campus on the Northwest Side and asked students to bring in their bibles in exchange for pornographic magazines. The event is called “Smut for Smut” and, obviously, brings with it some big controversy.

  “It is to send a message that the stuff in the bible, and the Quran, and the Torah, and all that sort of thing is, in our case worse, in our opinion worse, than pornography,” explained UTSA student Kyle Bush.

• ✧ ‘UFO’ Hovers Over Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock Shrine

  A glowing orb filmed hovering over the skyline of Jerusalem has left UFO experts dumbfounded.

  The circular object was seen descending slowly over the holy city’s iconic Dome of the Rock before flickering and shooting skyward like a rocket. Similar clips have been seen before and debunked as hoaxes. But this latest sighting has proved more difficult to dismiss — as it was recorded from four different perspectives.

• ✧ Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Single: Racist, Simplistic, Condescending Garbage!
  Are Latinos supposed to be grateful that a white superstar, born of privilege, included a racist shout out to our community? Not all Latino ladies are “cholas” in the barrio, some of them are teachers, writers, engineers and nurses and doctors.
• ✧ Police Van Rams into Peaceful Egyptian Protesters. shocking footage
• ✧ Kris Hammond discusses controversial stimulus-funded research on Chicago Tonight

  A Northwestern University researcher says his more than $700,000 federally funded project that could produce humorous content is really no laughing matter.

  But the research has been mocked as a ‘joke machine’ and has garnered the ridicule of conservative bloggers such as Senator John McCain, and in fact, he recently released a list of 100 wasteful stimulus projects and this project ranked 36 on the list. So what exactly is the NU project about?

• ✧ Vodafone: Egypt forced us to send text messages

  Egyptian authorities forced Vodafone to broadcast pro-government text messages during the protests that have rocked the country, the U.K.-based mobile company said Thursday.

  Micro-blogging site Twitter has been buzzing with screen grabs from Vodafone’s Egyptian customers showing text messages sent over the course of the demonstrations against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year-old regime.

  A text message received Sunday by an Associated Press reporter in Egypt appealed to the country’s “honest and loyal men to confront the traitors and criminals and protect our people and honor.” Another urged Egyptians to attend a pro-Mubarak rally in Cairo on Wednesday. The first was marked as coming from “Vodafone.” The other was signed: “Egypt Lovers.”

• ✧ Blocking Internet cost Egypt at least $90M

  The Egyptian government’s five-day block of Internet services cost the national economy at least US$90 million, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said Thursday.

  The Paris-based organization said telecommunications and Internet services account for between 3 percent and 4 percent of Egypt’s GDP, so the daily loss amounted to around US$18 million.

• ✧ Auto-detection of male genital flashers
  Men who drop their trousers and display their genitals on the internet can now be detected more reliably and automatically, is the thrust of this new study:
  “SafeVchat: Detecting Obscene Content and Misbehaving Users in Online Video Chat Services“
• ✧ Secrets of the Little Blue Box
  Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak Blue Box Phone Phreaks in 1975
• ✧ Taco Bell Sells Fake Meat. So What? Everybody’s Doing It

  Food companies are like greedy cocaine dealers – cutting food with cheaper ingredients to increase profits. This is nothing new, and it’s not just happening with meat.

  But first, about that beef with Taco Bell’s “beef.” Vegetable proteins are cheaper than meat and that’s why they are used as extenders by companies like Taco Bell. Texturized Soy Protein is one of the most commonly used extenders. Why is it so cheap?

  Texturized soy protein is actually a by-product of soy oil, so the food industry gets to double dip while taking advantage of the massive government subsidies bestowed upon the soy industry.

• ✧ Game Show Contestant Tricked Into Smelling Guy’s Smelly Butt
  This poor guy on a Dutch television show is trying to guess different smells in total darkness. He thinks he has in the bag until there is one smell that he just can’t quite figure out.
• ✧ Girl Finds Adult Message On Candy

  A 12-year-old girl says she found a naughty adult message on a piece of kids Valentine’s Day candy.

  “I thought it was kinda shocking,” said Ciara Bush, “I was reading them and I brought it to my mom after I saw it.”

  Her parents were stunned at what they saw.

  “Nice Tits,” said Derrick Deanda, reading the message printed on the small piece of candy that referred to a woman’s chest.
  Thanks Ramon.

• ✧ E-mails Suggest Bear Stearns Cheated Clients Out of Billions
  Former Bear Stearns mortgage executives who now run mortgage divisions of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Ally Financial have been accused of cheating and defrauding investors through the mortgage securities they created and sold while at Bear. According to e-mails and internal audits, JPMorgan had known about this fraud since the spring of 2008, but hid it from the public eye through legal maneuvering. Last week a lawsuit filed in 2008 by mortgage insurer Ambac Assurance Corp against Bear Stearns and JPMorgan was unsealed. The lawsuit’s supporting e-mails, going back as far as 2005, highlight Bear traders telling their superiors they were selling investors like Ambac a “sack of shit.”
• ✧ Mossad Losing Reputation
  A former British intelligence officer, who spoke to AMERICAN FREE PRESS on condition of anonymity, felt Mossad had fallen into the trap of thinking it was so superior to its enemies that it did not need to worry about them. In this officer’s view, it failed to recognize that Israel has fewer friends across the globe and therefore the Mossad’s mistakes, which might have been glossed over in the past, are now more likely to make headlines.
• ✧ Jacksonville mom who killed baby while playing FarmVille gets 50 years

  Circuit Judge Adrian G. Soud sentenced Tobias to 50 years in prison after hearing several hours of testimony Tuesday. Tobias cried at points, but was led to a fingerprinting station with a blank look on her face after Soud gave a scathing lecture from the bench.

  “He who is the most defenseless among us was murdered by his own mommy. And why? Because he was crying during a game of FishVille or FarmVille or whatever was going on during Facebooking time that day,” the judge said.

• ✧ Outrage as dog is taught Hitler salute for German TV show

  ANIMAL lovers have blasted a German TV show after a dog was trained to give a Hitler salute.

  Goldie raises his right paw in homage to the dictator in a two-part drama about the Hindenburg airship crash

  Hannes Jaenicke, the actor who appears with Goldie, said: “He got a biscuit each time he did it and an animal welfare specialist was on hand.”

• ✧ Jimmy Carter sued for 2006 Israel ‘apartheid’ book

  The dispute is over his 2006 work “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”, in which Mr Carter compared the Israeli government to the leaders of apartheid South Africa.

  He wrote: “When Israel does occupy this territory deep within the West Bank, and connects the 200-or-so settlements … with a road, and then prohibits the Palestinians from using that road, or in many cases even crossing the road, this perpetrates even worse instances of apartness, or apartheid, than we witnessed even in South Africa”.

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