Written by famous magician John Mulholland, it was believed that the Agency destroyed all copies in 1973. Thankfully for potential magicians and spies alike, one copy survived.
Wired has more details on the document (including on how it was part of a larger project to control people's minds), and you can buy the book from Amazon here.
some of my favs from their older stunts:
i like them because they take life back a little bit from the consumerist drone we can sometimes slip into...
improv everywhere's site here:
http://improveverywhere.com/
Testimony given for and against Maine's marriage equality bill on April 22, 2009. Nearly 4,000 people attended the hearing, with marriage equality supporters out-numbering the opposition 4 to 1.
Anyone who assaults someone else can be arrested and tried for assault. the law already makes stomping on a homo illegal because stomping on anyone is illegal. so i basically find it redundant and unnecessary. i don't see it as punishing "thought" because it does cover actual assaults, but being convicted and serving time for stomping on (or killing) a straight guy and stomping on(or killing)a gay guy should both carry the same penalty.
I think this is just a fig leaf offered to gays to say "hey, look, we're doing something for you guys" but in the end assault of any kind still results in arrest and being tried and convicted if guilty so what does it really do for us? I think it's a distraction from more important issues and more fuel for the anti-gay movement while not actually criminalizing anything that isn't already a crime anyway.
Anderson Cooper talks to an editor of towleroad.com and columnist dan savage about the passage of this law. both support the law (one less emphatically than the other)but they do express a few of my thoughts above as well as the general frustration the pro-gay movement is beginning to feel towards the Obama administration's lack of progress on many of his campaign promises to the gay community:
bonus: the news anchor says "illegally showing his business..."
Be careful what you wish for. If the American government were to become "bible based" lets hope it's based on the beatitudes and not Leviticus, eh?
"Focused on Sharia or Islamic law, key to the initiative will be to carry the message that gay sex is illegal, immoral and legitimately punishable by death.
Iran is reported to have executed at least six juvenile offenders so far in 2008. More than 130 other juvenile offenders are currently sentenced to death. These are all boys averaging 15-16 years of age.
Iranian human rights campaigners estimate that 4,000 gay men have been executed since the Islamic revolution in 1979. -from PAYOR"
Massachusetts decriminalizes amounts of pot under an ounce.
Michigan: Proposal 1, a medical marijuana initiative, passed by a margin of 63% to 37%.
I went to vote this morning in Red Bank, NJ at the elementary school that is the polling station for my district. After voting I was sitting in the small park across the street having a scrapple
egg and cheese sandwich and some coffee when I saw my first real live wild bald eagle! it might not be so exciting for folks in other locations but they are a real rarity here in NJ still, only 60 nests in the entire state.
It landed in a tree in the school's playground for a few moments. Me and another two guys saw it. I had my camera and one of the other two guys grabbed his out of his glove compartment of his truck. By the time we started to cross the street to get a close enough shot it started to fly away, I got a pic of it sitting in the tree and two of it in mid flight but all are from quite far away. (i used the "sharpen" feature in GIMP - if you doubt this story and require the originals I can send em to ya - just ask :)
Anyway, I had been sitting on the bench watching all the different kinds of folks go in and out of the polling station, old men, young hipsters, sweat suit moms and pantsuit businesswomen, guys in BMWs and guys in old beat up pickuptrucks, grandmothers and young brothers all getting along and being friendly and courteous, and I was thinking that America is pretty cool after all when... what else can I say, this sign from above came down. I don't know if he was trying to vote or send a message or just tired from flying around but he delivered a message to me, whether he intended to or not :)
taking flight
sitting in a branch upper left
Soaring away
my polling place, no lines
my flags
my sign (and some gourds I grew)
the preview of the electronic voting booth's setup. no paper trail here in Jersey yet (boooo). all the other parties presidential candidates trail off to the left, there were two different socialist parties, the green party, the constitutional party, a communist party and maybe 2 or 3 other choices besides Barack and John.By Julia Bonstein, Marcel Rosenbach and Hilmar Schmundt
Google gathers so much detailed information about its users that one critic says some state intelligence bureaus look "like child protection services" in comparison. A few German government bodies have mounted a resistance.http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,587546,00.html
i like how at the very end the other ones are like - hey - come back!
i thot this comment should get it's own space since it is, in the end a whole new subject:
the comment linked to the below video about African Americans and the "n-word":
(i dont like that the faggot video at the bottom starts automatically and tried to look in the code to see if i could disable that but i didn't see it :( sorry about that - what if every vid on here started automatically?! it would be complete chaos!) so hurry down and push pause on the second video below then watch in the correct order....
first, an African-American take on the N word then second a Gay take on the Faggot-Word.
and that made me think of this video which i have been holding onto wondering when i could post it as well - about homos and the "other f-word": Gay video from AfterElton.com
matt says : i have heard the word faggot at least once a month from the time i could understand english i'm sure. it totally doesn't bug me and i am one of the momos who have used the word as a "term of endearment" for other momos. i also dont usually blink when i hear it. it's something i hear so very often even now - it's sort of along the lines of the word "retard" - lot's of teens call each other that, as well as call each other fags. i don't think clamming up about will really help either. everyone gets tired really quickly when a group declares a word "of limits". it starts to fall under the heading of "politically correct" and that tends to make the more rebellious folks amongst us want to use it even more - gay or straight. well, i do agree with his end statement - "if you're going to be obscene, at least know what it means" :)
final thot - if you watched both vids... "well, some of us do act like... N at times..." "well, some of us DO act like faggots at times!" another difference is that many (not all) homos can "pass" for straight. some Americans of African descent have also "passed" but it is much more difficult because it does not just involve behavior (which is the number one give-away as to who is a homo) it also comes down to a simple issue of racial features that are easily perceived by the eye no matter how one were to act.
faggot is usually used to disparage any male who acts in a way that society, at this time, demes feminine - and i know we gays often do! and i think what some gay people want to transmit about using the word faggot is - "so - what's wrong with that?"! of course that would bring us into a whole new post about femme and butch gays... but alas that will be for another time. though it has entered onto my list of future posts ;)
and fag-hag, i stopped using because NO fag hag uses it in reference to any other fag-hag, and it is not appreciated by anyone... a lesson hard learned.
Enjoy your visit to Sanity Island
or not!
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF PRESIDENT BUSH...10/04/08, 10/05/08
these people ARE STILL OUT THERE!
Pray for President Bush - Day - 2945 Pray for McCain/Palin - Day - 39
Oct 5th, 2008 | SHKODRA, Albania -- Drene Markgjoni spent 12 years in a hard-labor camp, punished for her fiance's attempt to flee Albania's regime, then one of the world's most repressive and isolationist. She swore she would never suffer like that for somebody else again.
She pledged to forgo sex and marriage for the rest of her life, and declared herself a man.
That was six decades ago. Now 85, with close-cropped white hair, dressed in a man's blue striped shirt and black trousers, she greets visitors with a manly handshake. The way she walks, her confident gestures, everything about her is masculine.
Only her voice — soft and feminine — reveals her to be one of the last sworn virgins in Albania: Women who dress, act and are treated as men.
"I am happier like this," she says. "I don't regret it at all. Not a hair on my head does."
In this strongly patriarchal society where for centuries women had virtually no standing, sworn virgins enjoyed the same rights and respect as men. They could inherit property, work for a living and sit on the village council, although without the right to vote.
The privileges came at a price. They took an oath of celibacy and could never have sexual relations. And they could never go back to being women.
There are no official figures, but Antonia Young, a research fellow at the University of Bradford in Britain who has studied the practice for more than a decade, estimates that Albania had about 100 sworn virgins in the early 1990s. That number is now almost certainly much lower, as the practice and the women die out.
The reasons for becoming a sworn virgin can be practical — the head of the family dies with no male heir. Or they can be emotional — the woman does not want to marry the man chosen for her.
In Albania, particularly in the impoverished rural north, it was practically inconceivable for a woman to remain single and live alone.
But by becoming a man, Markgjoni was free. She could earn a living and eat and drink with men instead of being restricted to the kitchen. And she could adopt two habits denied to a traditional Albanian woman: smoking and wearing a watch.
She says she has worked in carpentry and farming, and in construction in her youth when, she proudly exclaims, she carried concrete slabs with the strength of two men.
Markgjoni still works, though now her job is less physical: making rosaries for her Catholic church in the northern town of Shkodra.
"I have had much more respect with my people, my family," she says.
The practice of sworn virgins stems from the Kanun, medieval laws handed down orally for generations before being codified in the early 20th century. It transcends religion, with sworn virgins found among Albania's majority Muslim community as well as the minority Catholics and Orthodox Christians.
In Albania's male-dominated society, a woman had virtually no rights: According to the Kanun, "a woman is known as a sack, made to endure as long as she lives in her husband's house." She could not inherit property, and work was limited to child-rearing and household chores.
Anthropologists stress that the tradition of sworn virgins, with its emphasis on celibacy, does not equate with homosexuality, which did not become legal in Albania until the 1990s.
"It's kind of the opposite extreme," says Young. "In one way, sworn virgins support patriarchy, because they support the feeling that you've got to have a man at the head, and this woman can be a man."
On the other hand, Young notes, "this would be a way round for a woman who had homosexual inclinations."
Traditionally the decision to become a sworn virgin turned on social reasons like not having enough men in the family, but recently it has become more a matter of the woman's choice, Young says.
With a deep rumbling voice and a distinctive swagger, Diana Rakipi, a security guard at a clinic in the seaside town of Durres, explains she always had a masculine outlook.
Rakipi, 54, who trades her security guard's cap for a military beret when not in uniform, never felt much like a girl.
"I have never worn a skirt," she says during a break at work. "It was not imposed by anyone for me to do this, nobody made me wear these clothes. I chose it."
Her Christian Orthodox family accepted her decision, and she has enjoyed the respect of her relatives and community ever since, she says, with nobody questioning her right to earn a living as she chooses.
"Nobody dared to ask me why don't I get married," she says. "I am considered No. 1 in my family."
This is the last generation of sworn virgins, according to Aferdita Onuzi, a professor at Tirana's Cultural, Anthropology and Arts Research Institute. In Albania these days, women enter parliament, government ministries, and the police force.
When Qamile Stema was a child, there were two sworn virgins in Barkanesh, a village perched in the hills above the northern town of Kruje. Stema, the youngest of nine girls, decided to stay and take care of her mother when her three surviving elder sisters married and moved away.
Now 88, dressed in baggy pants with a black waistcoat over her shirt and sporting the traditional white woolen cap of northern Albanian Muslim men, Stema is Barkanesh's last sworn virgin. She has lived a freer, if lonelier, life, she says.
"I have talked with other men, traveled with other men, even teased the women," she says. "Even when I went to dances, I danced as a man."
She has the unwavering respect of her family, she says. She has no regrets.
"I decided never to marry and I don't complain for that decision," she says. "Especially nowadays, all the old people are alone. I am alone. I don't complain. Because their children have left, and they are not different from me, the couples."
Leonardo DiCaprio, Halle Berry, Jennifer Aniston, Tobey Maguire, Eva Longoria Parker Ellen DeGeneres, Forest Whitaker, Dustin Hoffman, Demi Moore, Sarah Silverman, Jonah Hill, Ashton Kutcher, Courteney Cox, Laura Linney, Natalie Portman, Jamie Foxx, Usher, Kyra Sedgwick and will.i.am.
homer simpson tries to vote
Brigade homeland tours start Oct. 1
3rd Infantry’s 1st BCT trains for a new dwell-time mission. Helping ‘people at home’ may become a permanent part of the active Army
"the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act forbids the deployment of the United States Army on United States soil for domestic law enforcement. This was put into place to prevent a military dictatorship..."
Army Times Article in full below:
By Gina Cavallaro - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Sep 30, 2008 16:16:12 EDTThe 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.
Now they’re training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.
Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.
It is not the first time an active-duty unit has been tapped to help at home. In August 2005, for example, when Hurricane Katrina unleashed hell in Mississippi and Louisiana, several active-duty units were pulled from various posts and mobilized to those areas.
But this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.
After 1st BCT finishes its dwell-time mission, expectations are that another, as yet unnamed, active-duty brigade will take over and that the mission will be a permanent one.
“Right now, the response force requirement will be an enduring mission. How the [Defense Department] chooses to source that and whether or not they continue to assign them to NorthCom, that could change in the future,” said Army Col. Louis Vogler, chief of NorthCom future operations. “Now, the plan is to assign a force every year.”
The command is at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo., but the soldiers with 1st BCT, who returned in April after 15 months in Iraq, will operate out of their home post at Fort Stewart, Ga., where they’ll be able to go to school, spend time with their families and train for their new homeland mission as well as the counterinsurgency mission in the war zones.
Stop-loss will not be in effect, so soldiers will be able to leave the Army or move to new assignments during the mission, and the operational tempo will be variable.
Don’t look for any extra time off, though. The at-home mission does not take the place of scheduled combat-zone deployments and will take place during the so-called dwell time a unit gets to reset and regenerate after a deployment.
The 1st of the 3rd is still scheduled to deploy to either Iraq or Afghanistan in early 2010, which means the soldiers will have been home a minimum of 20 months by the time they ship out.
In the meantime, they’ll learn new skills, use some of the ones they acquired in the war zone and more than likely will not be shot at while doing any of it.
They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.
Training for homeland scenarios has already begun at Fort Stewart and includes specialty tasks such as knowing how to use the “jaws of life” to extract a person from a mangled vehicle; extra medical training for a CBRNE incident; and working with U.S. Forestry Service experts on how to go in with chainsaws and cut and clear trees to clear a road or area.
The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.
The package is for use only in war-zone operations, not for any domestic purpose.
“It’s a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they’re fielding. They’ve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it.”
The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.
“I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered,” said Cloutier, describing the experience as “your worst muscle cramp ever — times 10 throughout your whole body.
“I’m not a small guy, I weigh 230 pounds ... it put me on my knees in seconds.”
The brigade will not change its name, but the force will be known for the next year as a CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force, or CCMRF (pronounced “sea-smurf”).
“I can’t think of a more noble mission than this,” said Cloutier, who took command in July. “We’ve been all over the world during this time of conflict, but now our mission is to take care of citizens at home ... and depending on where an event occurred, you’re going home to take care of your home town, your loved ones.”
While soldiers’ combat training is applicable, he said, some nuances don’t apply.
“If we go in, we’re going in to help American citizens on American soil, to save lives, provide critical life support, help clear debris, restore normalcy and support whatever local agencies need us to do, so it’s kind of a different role,” said Cloutier, who, as the division operations officer on the last rotation, learned of the homeland mission a few months ago while they were still in Iraq.
Some brigade elements will be on call around the clock, during which time they’ll do their regular marksmanship, gunnery and other deployment training. That’s because the unit will continue to train and reset for the next deployment, even as it serves in its CCMRF mission.
Should personnel be needed at an earthquake in California, for example, all or part of the brigade could be scrambled there, depending on the extent of the need and the specialties involved.
Other branches included
The active Army’s new dwell-time mission is part of a NorthCom and DOD response package.
Active-duty soldiers will be part of a force that includes elements from other military branches and dedicated National Guard Weapons of Mass Destruction-Civil Support Teams.
A final mission rehearsal exercise is scheduled for mid-September at Fort Stewart and will be run by Joint Task Force Civil Support, a unit based out of Fort Monroe, Va., that will coordinate and evaluate the interservice event.
In addition to 1st BCT, other Army units will take part in the two-week training exercise, including elements of the 1st Medical Brigade out of Fort Hood, Texas, and the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade from Fort Bragg, N.C.
There also will be Air Force engineer and medical units, the Marine Corps Chemical, Biological Initial Reaction Force, a Navy weather team and members of the Defense Logistics Agency and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
One of the things Vogler said they’ll be looking at is communications capabilities between the services.
“It is a concern, and we’re trying to check that and one of the ways we do that is by having these sorts of exercises. Leading up to this, we are going to rehearse and set up some of the communications systems to make sure we have interoperability,” he said.
“I don’t know what America’s overall plan is — I just know that 24 hours a day, seven days a week, there are soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines that are standing by to come and help if they’re called,” Cloutier said. “It makes me feel good as an American to know that my country has dedicated a force to come in and help the people at home.”
———
Correction:
A non-lethal crowd control package fielded to 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, described in the original version of this story, is intended for use on deployments to the war zone, not in the U.S., as previously stated.
Trenton Police say a man who calls himself Emperor El Bey must get rid of the two horses he's keeping in his urban backyard. El Bey says his half of the duplex is an embassy for the sovereign Abannaki Aboriginal Nation and immune from Trenton ordinances.
http://www.wcbs880.com/pages/2933151.php?
