Thanks to Chris Halverson for the following...
http://movies.yahoo.com/news/movies.ap.org/oscars-doubling-bestpicture-nominees-10-ap
Oscars doubling best-picture nominees to 10
Wed Jun 24, 2009
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - The best-picture lineup at the Academy Awards is doubling from five films to 10, a move organizers said Wednesday will open the field to more worthy movies and possibly boost the ceremony's TV ratings.
The change, which was approved Tuesday night by the board of governors for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, takes effect at next year's Oscars on March 7.
The plan is a return to Oscar traditions of the 1930s and '40s, when a best-picture field of 10 or more films was common.
Academy President Sid Ganis said the board looked at last year's slate of films and decided there was room for more in the top category. "We nominated five, but there were many other great films last year," Ganis said.
Among last year's most acclaimed movies was the Batman blockbuster "The Dark Knight," which wound up snubbed. Another was "WALL-E," which won the Oscar for feature-length animation but was not among best-picture nominees.
Ganis said the broader field might make room for documentaries, foreign-language films, animated movies and even comedies, which typically do not fare well for best-picture nominations.
"Everybody says the academy will never nominate a comedy," Ganis said. "Well, maybe we will."
The Oscars have separate categories for animated, foreign-language and documentary films. A best-picture nomination would not preclude films from competing in those categories, as well.
With extra movies competing for the top honor, the Oscar show might draw a bigger TV audience as more fans tune to see how their favorite films fare, Ganis said.
The ratings for last February's Oscars were up solidly, but that followed a ceremony a year earlier that drew the lowest ratings ever. Along with other awards shows, the Oscars generally have been losing viewers over the past couple of decades.
Having 10 or more was common in Hollywood's golden age some 70 years ago. Ganis noted that 1939's 10 best-picture nominees were "Gone with the Wind," which won, "The Wizard of Oz," "Stagecoach," "Wuthering Heights," "Love Affair," "Goodbye, Mr. Chips," "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," "Of Mice and Men," "Dark Victory" and "Ninotchka."
All are generally considered classics today.
The last time there were 10 nominees was the Oscar ceremony for 1943, when "Casablanca" won best picture. There have been only five nominees each year since then.
On the Net:
http://www.oscars.org
Monday, June 29, 2009
Farrah Fawcett, sex symbol and actress, dies
http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/TV/06/25/obit.fawcett/index.htmlFarrah Fawcett, sex symbol and actress, dies
Story Highlights
Farrah Fawcett was known for iconic 1970s poster, role in "Charlie's Angels"
Actress was hailed for performance in TV movie "The Burning Bed"
Fawcett had cancer and made TV documentary about her battle
6-25-9
(CNN) -- Farrah Fawcett, the blonde-maned actress whose best-selling poster and "Charlie's Angels" stardom made her one of the most famous faces in the world, died Thursday. She was 62.
Fawcett's death was confirmed by Paul Bloch, one of her representatives at Rogers and Cowan, an entertainment public relations firm.
Fawcett, who checked into a hospital in early April, had been battling anal cancer on and off for three years.
Bloch told CNN that Ryan O'Neal, Fawcett's romantic partner since the mid-1980s, and her friend Alana Stewart were with Fawcett at Saint John's Hospital in Santa Monica, California, when she died. Gallery: The life of Farrah Fawcett »
"Although this is an extremely difficult time for her family and friends, we take comfort in the beautiful times that we shared with Farrah over the years and the knowledge that her life brought joy to so many people around the world," O'Neal said in a written statement. Read more tributes to Fawcett
O'Neal is the father of Fawcett's son, Redmond O'Neal, born in 1985. Redmond O'Neal is in an intense rehabilitation program conducted in the Los Angeles county jail, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department spokesman Steve Whitmore told CNN on Thursday.
Fawcett's son was informed on Wednesday night by a grief counselor and a chaplain that his mother's death was imminent, and a grief counselor and chaplain also told him when she died, Whitmore said.
The young man, who is currently with a chaplain, has spoken with his father, Whitmore said.
Ryan O'Neal had recently told People magazine that the sex symbol was declining.
"She stays in bed now. The doctors see that she is comfortable. Farrah is on IVs, but some of that is for nourishment. The treatment has pretty much ended," he said in a story posted May 7.
Fawcett's cancer journey has been documented in a television special partly shot by the actress. Fawcett began shooting "Farrah's Story," by taking a camera to a doctor's appointment. Eventually, the film expanded to include trips overseas in hopes of treating the cancer.
The documentary aired on NBC on May 15.
Fawcett's beauty -- her gleaming smile was printed on millions of posters -- initially made her famous. But she later established herself as a serious actress. She starred as a battered wife in the 1984 TV movie "The Burning Bed." She appeared on stage as a woman who extracts vengeance from a would-be rapist in William Mastrosimone's play "Extremities.
She reprised the "Extremities" role on film in 1986. Other Fawcett films include "Logan's Run" (1976), "Saturn 3" (1980), "The Cannonball Run" (1981), "The Apostle" (1997) and the Robert Altman-directed "Dr. T and the Women" (2000).
To many, Fawcett will always be best known for her red-swimsuited image on the pinup poster, which sold a reputed 12 million copies after its release in 1976.
Fawcett was a model best known for bit parts, commercials and as "Six Million Dollar Man" actor Lee Majors' wife when she shot the poster in early 1976 at the behest of Pro Arts, a Cleveland, Ohio, company.
Photographer Bruce McBroom placed Fawcett -- then known as Farrah Fawcett-Majors -- in the Indian blanket-draped front seat of his 1937 Chevy and snapped away. Fawcett did her own hair -- a long, tousled cascade of blonde locks -- picked out the red bathing suit and chose the frame later used for the poster, according to a story in the Toronto Star.
The poster, with Fawcett's million-dollar smile front and center, became a sensation.
Soon after the photo shoot, Fawcett was asked to join the cast of a new Aaron Spelling TV show, "Charlie's Angels," about a trio of female detectives who work for a mysterious man named Charlie, whose only appearance in the show was through his voice (supplied by John Forsythe). Watch Fawcett talk about why she left "Angels" »
Fawcett, who played Jill Munroe, was the last to be cast. Co-star Kate Jackson was the known name at the time, but thanks to her poster, Fawcett became the breakout star.
The highly rated TV series kicked off what came to be known as "jiggle TV," series full of pretty actresses who appeared in bikinis at the drop of a hat.
"Denunciations of 'massage parlor television' and 'voyeurism' only brought more viewers to the screen, to see what the controversy was about," wrote Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh about "Charlie's Angels" in their indispensable reference, "The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows."
ABC's "Three's Company" and CBS's "The American Girls" were among the shows that immediately followed, and shows such as "Baywatch" owe "Charlie's Angels" a debt.
But Fawcett didn't stay with "Angels" long. At the end of the first season, unhappy with her contract, she left the show and was replaced by Cheryl Ladd.
Fawcett's career stagnated for a time after "Charlie's Angels." She appeared in a handful of forgettable films and divorced Majors.
But her career received a major boost with her starring role in "The Burning Bed," a 1984 TV movie co-starring Paul Le Mat. Fawcett played an abused wife who sets fire to her husband's bed as he lies sleeping. Fawcett received an Emmy nomination for her performance.
Fawcett also became romantically involved with O'Neal around this time. The pair had a son, Redmond, in 1985.
In recent years, Fawcett has appeared sporadically in the public eye. She posed nude for Playboy in 1995. In 1997, she appeared on "The Late Show with David Letterman," an interview that became notorious for Fawcett's apparent incoherence. She later said she was just having fun with Letterman.
She reunited with her "Charlie's Angels" co-stars, Jackson and Jaclyn Smith, for an awards show in 2006.
Fawcett was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, in 1947. She married Majors in 1973; they divorced nine years later.
She was diagnosed with cancer in 2006.
Ed McMahon: A salute to the king of sidekicks
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-et-ed-mcmahon24-2009jun24,0,2998712.story
Ed McMahon: A salute to the king of sidekicks
The late TV personality did other things, yes, but his greatest accomplishment may have been his partnership with Johnny Carson. 'My role was to make him look good while not looking too good myself.'
By Robert Lloyd, Times Television Critic
June 23, 2009
Although he did other things in his 86 years, Ed McMahon, who died Tuesday in Los Angeles, will be remembered mostly as the man who sat next to Johnny Carson, except when more important celebrities came between them.
Notwithstanding the dozen years of hosting "Star Search," a role in the 1997 Tom Arnold sitcom "The Tom Show," a high-profile Cash4Gold ad during the last Super Bowl and all that knocking on people's doors in the name of American Family Publishers, McMahon was a professional sidekick, a less-than-equal partner in an enterprise of which he was nevertheless a vital part: Thinking of Johnny, one proceeds quickly and naturally to Ed, who by dint of association was almost as famous as his boss -- I say "almost" to include that fraction of the world that may have seen or heard of Carson but never watched his show.
It's easy to underestimate his accomplishment -- or even to wonder whether it should be called an accomplishment at all. We live in a nation of aspiring quarterbacks, pitchers, lead singers and presidents, where we are told to dream big and have it all. (The vice presidency of the United States is regarded as a rarefied form of failure.) But in a world where everyone is innately a star, what does it mean to settle for life as a mere moon?
And yet, just as the moon plays upon the Earth, animating its tides and its werewolves, the sidekick is not without power of his (or her) own. His very presence is the proof that his presence is required. He may come as a straight man, a stooge, a teacher, an apprentice, a servant or pal, but he completes the star-hero in some way to their mutual advantage -- as a counterweight, an anchor, a witness, a frame for the picture, a setting for the stone. Like Jiminy Cricket, a conscience. Who is Prince Hal without Falstaff, Don Quixote sans Sancho Panza? Little John and Robin Hood, Horatio and Hamlet, Friday and Crusoe, Watson and Holmes, Tinkerbell and Peter Pan, Ethel and Lucy, Barney and Fred, Barney and Andy, Ed and Ralph, Rhoda and Mary, Willow and Buffy, and all those traveling companions to Doctor Who -- unequal, perhaps, yet inextricable.
We may reflexively regard him as slower, dumber, less handsome than the hero he shadows, but in practice the sidekick may be the smarter, funnier, faster, better-looking or more practical one. Less bound by convention or expectation, flexible rather than stiff-necked, he is free in ways forbidden the hero. His life is simpler, his soul less troubled. Ed Norton may be a dimwit, but he isn't tormented, like Ralph Kramden, by desperation and desire. Spock is cooler than Kirk. It seems like the better job.
Not every talk show host has employed a sidekick in the McMahon mold. Merv Griffin had Arthur Treacher, a very tall British character actor who earlier specialized in butlers, appropriately, and, after McMahon, the best of the breed. Regis Philbin played second banana to Rat Packer Joey Bishop on his short-lived 1960s late-night show. But Dick Cavett was a solo act; Mike Douglas relied on changing celebrity co-hosts; and Jay Leno had no one on his couch. Still, it seems a sign of respect to McMahon (and to the institution he served) that when Conan O'Brien took the reins of "The Tonight Show," he had a partner in place, original "Late Night" sidekick Andy Richter.
Ed and Johnny were "as close as two non-married people can be," as McMahon wrote in his book, "Here's Johnny: Memories of Johnny Carson, 'The Tonight Show' and 46 Years of Friendship." McMahon, who was only two years older than Carson, began working as his announcer in in 1957, on the game show "Who Do You Trust?" and accompanied him to "The Tonight Show" in 1962, where they kept on for 30 years.
An uncharitable or undiscerning critic might say McMahon had an easy job: Laugh at the boss' jokes, read a few cue cards, sell a little dog food, cheerfully absorb whatever cracks are made at his expense, slide further down the couch as the evening's guests arrive. (Phil Hartman's "Saturday Night Live" impression of him -- the over-hearty laugh, the booming "You are correct, sir" -- has replaced the actual McMahon in the minds of a couple of generations of viewers.) But the way McMahon told it, that was the point: "My role was to make him look good while not looking too good myself," he wrote, and "to get Johnny to the punch line while seeming to do nothing at all." Carson, for his part, left the air saying, "This show would have been impossible to do without Ed."
There is a kind of genius in knowing how to live with a genius. Did anyone want to grow up to be Ed McMahon? Maybe not. (Though I would rather be Illya Kuryakin than Napoleon Solo.) But they also serve who only sit and laugh -- and cry "Hey-yo!" once in a while. Of all the things Ed provided Johnny, continuity was perhaps the most meaningful: Guests came and went; wives came and went; the world turned. But where there was Johnny, there was always Ed, the witness, the audience, one of us.
Ed McMahon: A salute to the king of sidekicks
The late TV personality did other things, yes, but his greatest accomplishment may have been his partnership with Johnny Carson. 'My role was to make him look good while not looking too good myself.'
By Robert Lloyd, Times Television Critic
June 23, 2009
Although he did other things in his 86 years, Ed McMahon, who died Tuesday in Los Angeles, will be remembered mostly as the man who sat next to Johnny Carson, except when more important celebrities came between them.
Notwithstanding the dozen years of hosting "Star Search," a role in the 1997 Tom Arnold sitcom "The Tom Show," a high-profile Cash4Gold ad during the last Super Bowl and all that knocking on people's doors in the name of American Family Publishers, McMahon was a professional sidekick, a less-than-equal partner in an enterprise of which he was nevertheless a vital part: Thinking of Johnny, one proceeds quickly and naturally to Ed, who by dint of association was almost as famous as his boss -- I say "almost" to include that fraction of the world that may have seen or heard of Carson but never watched his show.
It's easy to underestimate his accomplishment -- or even to wonder whether it should be called an accomplishment at all. We live in a nation of aspiring quarterbacks, pitchers, lead singers and presidents, where we are told to dream big and have it all. (The vice presidency of the United States is regarded as a rarefied form of failure.) But in a world where everyone is innately a star, what does it mean to settle for life as a mere moon?
And yet, just as the moon plays upon the Earth, animating its tides and its werewolves, the sidekick is not without power of his (or her) own. His very presence is the proof that his presence is required. He may come as a straight man, a stooge, a teacher, an apprentice, a servant or pal, but he completes the star-hero in some way to their mutual advantage -- as a counterweight, an anchor, a witness, a frame for the picture, a setting for the stone. Like Jiminy Cricket, a conscience. Who is Prince Hal without Falstaff, Don Quixote sans Sancho Panza? Little John and Robin Hood, Horatio and Hamlet, Friday and Crusoe, Watson and Holmes, Tinkerbell and Peter Pan, Ethel and Lucy, Barney and Fred, Barney and Andy, Ed and Ralph, Rhoda and Mary, Willow and Buffy, and all those traveling companions to Doctor Who -- unequal, perhaps, yet inextricable.
We may reflexively regard him as slower, dumber, less handsome than the hero he shadows, but in practice the sidekick may be the smarter, funnier, faster, better-looking or more practical one. Less bound by convention or expectation, flexible rather than stiff-necked, he is free in ways forbidden the hero. His life is simpler, his soul less troubled. Ed Norton may be a dimwit, but he isn't tormented, like Ralph Kramden, by desperation and desire. Spock is cooler than Kirk. It seems like the better job.
Not every talk show host has employed a sidekick in the McMahon mold. Merv Griffin had Arthur Treacher, a very tall British character actor who earlier specialized in butlers, appropriately, and, after McMahon, the best of the breed. Regis Philbin played second banana to Rat Packer Joey Bishop on his short-lived 1960s late-night show. But Dick Cavett was a solo act; Mike Douglas relied on changing celebrity co-hosts; and Jay Leno had no one on his couch. Still, it seems a sign of respect to McMahon (and to the institution he served) that when Conan O'Brien took the reins of "The Tonight Show," he had a partner in place, original "Late Night" sidekick Andy Richter.
Ed and Johnny were "as close as two non-married people can be," as McMahon wrote in his book, "Here's Johnny: Memories of Johnny Carson, 'The Tonight Show' and 46 Years of Friendship." McMahon, who was only two years older than Carson, began working as his announcer in in 1957, on the game show "Who Do You Trust?" and accompanied him to "The Tonight Show" in 1962, where they kept on for 30 years.
An uncharitable or undiscerning critic might say McMahon had an easy job: Laugh at the boss' jokes, read a few cue cards, sell a little dog food, cheerfully absorb whatever cracks are made at his expense, slide further down the couch as the evening's guests arrive. (Phil Hartman's "Saturday Night Live" impression of him -- the over-hearty laugh, the booming "You are correct, sir" -- has replaced the actual McMahon in the minds of a couple of generations of viewers.) But the way McMahon told it, that was the point: "My role was to make him look good while not looking too good myself," he wrote, and "to get Johnny to the punch line while seeming to do nothing at all." Carson, for his part, left the air saying, "This show would have been impossible to do without Ed."
There is a kind of genius in knowing how to live with a genius. Did anyone want to grow up to be Ed McMahon? Maybe not. (Though I would rather be Illya Kuryakin than Napoleon Solo.) But they also serve who only sit and laugh -- and cry "Hey-yo!" once in a while. Of all the things Ed provided Johnny, continuity was perhaps the most meaningful: Guests came and went; wives came and went; the world turned. But where there was Johnny, there was always Ed, the witness, the audience, one of us.
Johnny Depp As Mad Hatter
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/22/johnny-depp-as-mad-hatter_n_218747.html
Johnny Depp As Mad Hatter, Helena Bonham Carter's Red Queen And Anne Hathaway's White Queen: FIRST LOOKKatherine Thomson
06-22-09
Read More: Alice In Wonderland, Anne Hathaway, Anne Hathaway White Queen, Film, Helena Bonham Carter, Johnny Depp, Johnny Depp Alice In Wonderland, Johnny Depp Mad Hatter, Tim Burton, Entertainment NewsThe Tim Burton 3-D flick doesn't come out till spring 2010, but film fans now have their first look at Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, Anne Hathaway as the White Queen and Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen from the upcoming "Alice in Wonderland."
The lead role of Alice will be played by 19-year-old unknown Mia Wasikowska from Australia.
Works by the late Occultist, Aleister Crowley
Thanks to Richard Metzger for the following...
Works by the late Occultist, Aleister Crowley. Directed by Kenneth Anger. Music By Anatol Liadov. 2002.
Part I:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg2p6DuOprQ
Part II:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQGmCG7KRTc&feature=related
Works by the late Occultist, Aleister Crowley. Directed by Kenneth Anger. Music By Anatol Liadov. 2002.
Part I:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg2p6DuOprQ
Part II:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQGmCG7KRTc&feature=related
Yippie founder Paul Krassner still testing limits
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090622/ap_en_ot/us_books_paul_krassnerYippie founder Paul Krassner still testing limits
By JOHN ROGERS, Associated Press Writer
Mon Jun 22, 2009
DESERT HOT SPRINGS, Calif. – He was once a child music prodigy and in the decades since, Paul Krassner has been everything from political satirist to author, editor, anarchist and an advocate for both peace and pornography.
But the title he may favor is one he found buried in his FBI file.
"To classify Krassner as a social rebel is far too cute," a letter in the file said in response to a favorable magazine interview with the co-founder of the Yippie Party, the group that notoriously disrupted the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. "He's a nut, a raving, unconfined nut."
So Krassner titled his autobiography "Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut."
"I figured I might as well make use of it," says the author, smiling broadly as he sits in the living room of his modest tract home in this sandy, sagebrush-dotted corner of the Mojave Desert on a scorchingly hot morning. On a nearby table is a copy of "A People's History of the United States of America" by historian and social activist Howard Zinn.
For someone who has lived figuratively on the edge of society for most of his life, Krassner appears to have made the move literally as well, having left Los Angeles' epicenter of counterculture, Venice Beach, several years ago to take up residence in a place where the temperature sometimes hits 120 degrees, accompanied by blast-furnace winds of 70 mph or more.
But the co-founder of the group that once ran a pig for president and tried to disrupt the seat of capitalism by throwing dollar bills onto the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange, says he has come to love his quiet little piece of Americana with its backyard views of the snowcapped mountains towering over Palm Springs in the distance.
Krassner, who made his debut at Carnegie Hall as a violinist at age 7 (and then almost immediately gave up music because he couldn't get along with his teacher) is 77 now. That's a number he confirms with both a sheepish grin and a faux apology: "I'm sorry, I don't know how that happened."
But if the years are gaining on him, the exuberant, still-youthful-looking rebel never lets on.
Still an unabashed political radical, as well as a prolific writer, Krassner is the author of more than a dozen books. The most recent, "Who's to Say What's Obscene: Politics, Culture and Comedy in America Today," comes out in July.
It takes a skewering look at American politics and morals, speaking generally in favor of such subjects as pornography and recreational drug use and dismissing the torture of prisoners of war as something that is truly obscene. But it goes about it in such a lighthearted fashion as to rarely seem preachy.
"The word that comes to mind when I think of him is integrity," says Robert Scheer, former syndicated columnist and founding editor of the online magazine Truthdig.com. "The guy anguishes over what is right and wrong more than the editors of the most respectable publications. ... He doesn't get it right all the time, but he always thinks it out."
It was Krassner, Scheer says, who gave him his big break as an investigative reporter, providing the money to travel to Vietnam in 1963 to report on covert U.S. involvement in that country's civil war before the United States had become inextricably involved in it. Scheer's story, first published in Krassner's small, groundbreaking satirical magazine, The Realist, was picked up by the mainstream media and gained national attention.
The publisher had raised the money for Scheer's Vietnam trip by selling red, white and blue posters with the word Communism, preceded by another, much more impolite word. The posters quickly became a hit on college dorm room walls.
"It really confused all these conservative types," Scheer recalled with a laugh. "They hated communism" but they also hated seeing it described with a barnyard epithet for sexual intercourse.
That is just one of a seemingly endless chain of stories of practical jokes and other stunts attached to Krassner's name, some of them true, others apocryphal.
One of the latter, says Krassner, is that he came up with the acronym for the Youth International Party by throwing his head back in a moment of psychedelic-inspired bliss and shouting "Yippie!"
"As a journalist, I knew that we had to have a who for the who, what, where, when and why that would symbolize the radicalization of hippies for the media," he says with a mischievous smirk. "So I started going through the alphabet: Bippie, Dippie, Ippie, Sippie. I was about to give up when I came to Yippie."
The movement he helped launch is not remembered fondly by everyone. David Horowitz, the former 1960s radical turned conservative commentator, said that although he likes Krassner personally he believes he and other Yippies must shoulder much of the blame for crises such as AIDS and drug addiction.
"It was one long incitement against America, against all the guidelines, the morals and mores that helped people make it through life," he said of the Yippie movement. "I think Yippies in the end were a terribly destructive force."
Although many of his contemporaries have died or retired, Krassner remains busier than ever. He contributes regularly to the popular blog Huffington Post, and writes columns for the pro-marijuana publication High Times and the online magazine Adult Video News.
A spirited conversationalist and a fierce student of politics and pop culture, he jumps continuously from one subject to the next when he talks, frequently going off on tangents as one interesting idea pops into his head after another.
He does it so often that when he's on a standup comedy tour, as he will be this summer, he'll sometimes appoint a member of the audience to act as his "tangent spotter" and tell him to get back on message and deliver the punch line.
"He doesn't waste time," says his longtime friend Wavy Gravy, the political activist and advocate for charitable causes who usually appears in public dressed as a circus clown. "People who waste time get buried in it. He keeps doing one thing after another."
Married for 21 years and the father of a grown daughter, Krassner is busy writing another book, this one a novel about a comedian who invites censorship but never gets arrested. It was inspired by an old friend, the groundbreaking Lenny Bruce, whose autobiography, "How to Talk Dirty and Influence People," Krassner edited.
At one point, says Krassner, he got so into the project that he began "channeling Lenny," hearing his voice directing him from the grave.
"Until one time he said to me, 'Come on, you don't even believe that,'" he says, punctuating the statement with an expletive and a loud, raucous laugh.
2012: Science or Superstition?
Thanks to Joan D'Arc of Paranoia Magazine:
"The 2012 meme has evolved beyond debates about the relevance of the Maya calendar. 2012 is an expression of the breakdown of our nihilistic civilization and a hint of what may lie beyond the end of this era. 2012 speaks to a growing mass curiosity about who we are and what we are doing on this planet... "
- Alexandra Bruce writing on 2012
2012: Science or Superstition? by Alexandrea Bruce. The book is due in September. I can't wait. She is also the author of "What the Bleep Do We Know?" Sometimes I think, we know nothing!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DylQeMx6hY
"The 2012 meme has evolved beyond debates about the relevance of the Maya calendar. 2012 is an expression of the breakdown of our nihilistic civilization and a hint of what may lie beyond the end of this era. 2012 speaks to a growing mass curiosity about who we are and what we are doing on this planet... "
- Alexandra Bruce writing on 2012
2012: Science or Superstition? by Alexandrea Bruce. The book is due in September. I can't wait. She is also the author of "What the Bleep Do We Know?" Sometimes I think, we know nothing!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DylQeMx6hY
Leighton Meester sex tape being shopped - report
http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2009/06/19/2009-06-19_leighton_meester_sex_tape_being_shopped_around__report_gossip_girl_caught_on_vid.htmlLeighton Meester sex tape being shopped - report; 'Gossip Girl' caught on video with boyfriend?
Friday, June 19th 2009
Poor Leighton Meester. She never seems to get quite as much attention as her blithe blond goddess costar Blake Lively.
That may be about to change - for all the wrong reasons.
TMZ.com is reporting that a videotape of Meester having sex with her boyfriend is making the rounds in the celebrity sex tape marketplace.
The alleged video was made a few years ago and shows Meester in her birthday suit. Nothing kinky, except perhaps a little fancy footwork on the ingenue's part, according to TMZ.
The Web site says a company called celebhotline.com is trying to get it's hands on the tape.
It's spokesperson Kevin Blatt told TMZ, "We've seen the tape and we're hoping to close the deal."
Ten Reasons Why "Save Darfur" is a PR Scam
http://blackagendareport.com/?q=content/ten-reasons-why-save-darfur-pr-scam-justify-next-us-oil-and-resource-wars-africa
Ten Reasons Why "Save Darfur" is a PR Scam to Justify the Next US Oil and Resource Wars in Africa
Tue, 11/27/2007
The star-studded hue and cry to "Save Darfur" and "stop the genocide" has gained enormous traction in U.S. media along with bipartisan support in Congress and the White House. But the Congo, with ten to twenty times as many African dead over the same period is not called a "genocide" and passes almost unnoticed. Sudan sits atop lakes of oil. It has large supplies of uranium, and other minerals, significant water resources, and a strategic location near still more African oil and resources. The unasked question is whether the nation's Republican and Democratic foreign policy elite are using claims of genocide, and appeals for "humanitarian intervention" to grease the way for the next oil and resource wars on the African continent.
"Out of Iraq - Into Darfur" cartoon by Mike Flugennock. Find more of his work at www.sinkers.org
Top Ten Reasons to Suspect "Save Darfur" is a PR Scam to Justify US Military Intervention in African
by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon
The regular manufacture and the constant maintenance of false realities in the service of American empire is a core function of the public relations profession and the corporate news media. Whether it's fake news stories about wonder drugs and how toxic chemicals are good for you, bribed commentators and journalists discoursing on the benefits of No Child Left Behind, Hollywood stars advocating military intervention to save African orphans, or slick propaganda campaigns employing viral marketing techniques to reach out to college students, bloggers, churches and ordinary citizens, it pays to take a close look behind the facade.
Among the latest false realities being pushed upon the American people are the simplistic pictures of Black vs. Arab genocide in Darfur, and the proposed solution: a robust US-backed or US-led military intervention in Western Sudan. Increasing scrutiny is being focused upon the "Save Darfur" lobby and the Save Darfur Coalition; upon its founders, its finances, its methods and motivations and its truthfulness. In the spirit of furthering that examination we here present ten reasons to suspect that the "Save Darfur" campaign is a PR scam to justify US intervention in Africa.
1. It wouldn't be the first Big Lie our government and media elite told us to justify a war.
Elders among us can recall the Tonkin Gulf Incident, which the US government deliberately provoked to justify initiation of the war in Vietnam. This rationale was quickly succeeded by the need to help the struggling infant "democracy" in South Vietnam, and the still useful "fight 'em over there so we don't have to fight 'em over here" nonsense. More recently the bombings, invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq have been variously explained by people on the public payroll as necessary to "get Bin Laden" as revenge for 9-11, as measures to take "the world's most dangerous weapons" from the hands of "the world's most dangerous regimes", as measures to enable the struggling Iraqi "democracy" stand on its own two feet, and necessary because it's still better to "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here".
2. It wouldn't even be the first time the U.S. government and media elite employed "genocide prevention" as a rationale for military intervention in an oil-rich region.
The 1995 US and NATO military intervention in the former Yugoslavia was supposedly a "peacekeeping" operation to stop a genocide. The lasting result of that campaign is Camp Bondsteel, one of the largest military bases on the planet. The U.S. is practically the only country in the world that maintains military bases outside its own borders. At just under a thousand acres, Camp Bondsteel offers the US military the ability to pre-position large quantities of equipment and supplies within striking distance of Caspian oil fields, pipeline routes and relevant sea lanes. It is also widely believed to be the site of one of the US's secret prison and torture facilities.
3. If stopping genocide in Africa really was on the agenda, why the focus on Sudan with 200,000 to 400,000 dead rather than Congo with five million dead?
"The notion that a quarter million Darfuri dead are a genocide and five million dead Congolese are not is vicious and absurd," according to Congolese activist Nita Evele. "What's happened and what is still happening in Congo is not a tribal conflict and it's not a civil war. It is an invasion. It is a genocide with a death toll of five million, twenty times that of Darfur, conducted for the purpose of plundering Congolese mineral and natural resources."
More than anything else, the selective and cynical application of the term "genocide" to Sudan, rather than to the Congo where ten to twenty times as many Africans have been murdered reveals the depth of hypocrisy around the "Save Darfur" movement. In the Congo, where local gangsters, mercenaries and warlords along with invading armies from Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Angola engage in slaughter, mass rape and regional depopulation on a scale that dwarfs anything happening in Sudan, all the players eagerly compete to guarantee that the extraction of vital coltan for Western computers and cell phones, the export of uranium for Western reactors and nukes, along with diamonds, gold, copper, timber and other Congolese resources continue undisturbed.
Former UN Ambassador Andrew Young and George H.W. Bush both serve on the board of Barrcik Gold, one of the largest and most active mining concerns in war-torn Congo. Evidently, with profits from the brutal extraction of Congolese wealth flowing to the West, there can be no Congolese "genocide" worth noting, much less interfering with. For their purposes, U.S. strategic planners may regard their Congolese model as the ideal means of capturing African wealth at minimal cost without the bother of official U.S. boots on the ground.
4. It's all about Sudanese oil.
Sudan, and the Darfur region in particular, sit atop a lake of oil. But Sudanese oil fields are not being developed and drilled by Exxon or Chevron or British Petroleum. Chinese banks, oil and construction firms are making the loans, drilling the wells, laying the pipelines to take Sudanese oil where they intend it to go, calling far too many shots for a twenty-first century in which the U.S. aspires to control the planet's energy supplies. A U.S. and NATO military intervention will solve that problem for U.S. planners.
5. It's all about Sudanese uranium, gum arabic and other natural resources.
Uranium is vital to the nuclear weapons industry and an essential fuel for nuclear reactors. Sudan possesses high quality deposits of uranium. Gum arabic is an essential ingredient in pharmaceuticals, candies and beverages like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and Sudanese exports of this commodity are 80% of the world's supply. When comprehensive U.S. sanctions against the Sudanese regime were being considered in 1997, industry lobbyists stepped up and secured an exemption in the sanctions bill to guarantee their supplies of this valuable Sudanese commodity. But an in-country U.S. and NATO military presence is a more secure guarantee that the extraction of Sudanese resources, like those of the Congo, flow westward to the U.S. and the European Union.
6. It's all about Sudan's strategic location
Sudan sits opposite Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, where a large fraction of the world's easily extracted oil will be for a few more years. Darfur borders on Libya and Chad, with their own vast oil resources, is within striking distance of West and Central Africa, and is a likely pipeline route. The Nile River flows through Sudan before reaching Egypt, and Southern Sudan has water resources of regional significance too. With the creation of AFRICOM, the new Pentagon command for the African continent, the U.S. has made open and explicit its intention to plant a strategic footprint on the African continent. From permanent Sudanese bases, the U.S. military could influence the politics and ecocomies of Africa for a generation to come.
7. The backers and founders of the "Save Darfur" movement are the well-connected and well-funded U.S. foreign policy elite.
According to a copyrighted Washington Post story this summer
"The "Save Darfur (Coalition) was created in 2005 by two groups concerned about genocide in the African country - the American Jewish World Service and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum...
"The coalition has a staff of 30 with expertise in policy and public relations. Its budget was about $15 million in the most recent fiscal year...
"Save Darfur will not say exactly how much it has spent on its ads, which this week have attempted to shame China, host of the 2008 Olympics, into easing its support for Sudan. But a coalition spokeswoman said the amount is in the millions of dollars."
Though the "Save Darfur" PR campaign employs viral marketing techniques, reaching out to college students, even to black bloggers, it is not a grassroots affair, as were the movement against apartheid and in support of African liberation movements in South Africa, Namibia, Angola and Mozambique a generation ago. Top heavy with evangelical Christians who preach the coming war for the end of the world, and with elements known for their uncritical support of Israeli rejectionism in the Middle East, the Save Darfur movement is clearly an establishment affair, a propaganda campaign that spends millions of dollars each month to manfacture consent for US military intervention in Africa under the cloak of stopping or preventing genocide.
8. None of the funds raised by the "Save Darfur Coalition", the flagship of the "Save Darfur Movement" go to help needy Africans on the ground in Darfur, according to stories in both the Washington Post and the New York Times.
"None of the money collected by Save Darfur goes to help the victims and their families. Instead, the coalition pours its proceeds into advocacy efforts that are primarily designed to persuade governments to act."
9. "Save Darfur" partisans in the U.S. are not interested in political negotiations to end the conflict in Darfur
President Bush has openly and repeatedly attempted to throw monkey wrenches at peace negotiations to end the war in Darfur. Even pro-intervention scholars and humanitarian organizations active on the ground have criticized the U.S. for endangering humanitarian relief workers, and for effectively urging rebel parties in Darfur to refuse peace talks and hold out for U.S. and NATO intervention on their behalf.
The slick, well financed and nearly seamless PR campaign simplistically depicts the conflict as strictly a racial affair, in which Arabs, generally despised in the US media anyway, are exterminating the black population of Sudan. In the make-believe world it creates, there is no room for negotiation. But in fact, many of Sudan's 'Arabs", even the Janjiweed, are also black. In any case, they were armed and unleashed by a government which has the power to disarm them if it chooses, and can also negotiate in good faith if it chooses. Negotiations are never a gurantee of anything, but refusal to particpate in negotiations, as the U.S. appears to be urging the rebels in Darfur to do, and as the "Save Darfur" PR campaign justifies, avoids any path to a political settlement among Sudanese, leaving open only the road of U.S and NATO military intervention.
10. Blackwater and other U.S. mercenary contractors, the unofficial armed wings of the Republican party and the Pentagon are eagerly pitching their services as part of the solution to the Darfur crisis.
"Chris Taylor, head of strategy for Blackwater, says his company has a database of thousands of former police and military officers for security assignments. He says Blackwater personnel could set up perimeters and guard Darfurian villages and refugee camp in support of the U.N. Blackwater officials say it would not take many men to fend off the Janjaweed, a militia that is supported by the Sudanese government and attacks villages on camelback."
Apparently Blackwater doesn't need to come to the Congo, where hunger and malnutrition, depopulation, mass rape and the disappearance of schools, hospitals and civil society into vast law free zones ruled by an ever-changing cast of African proxies (like the son of the late and unlamented Idi Amin), all under a veil of complicit media silence already constitute the perfect business-friendly environment for siphoning off the vast wealth of that country at minimal cost.
Look for the adoption of the Congolese model across the wide areas of Africa that U.S. strategic planners call "ungoverned spaces". Just don't expect to see details on the evening news, or hear about them from Oprah, George Clooney or Angelina Jolie.
Ten Reasons Why "Save Darfur" is a PR Scam to Justify the Next US Oil and Resource Wars in Africa
Tue, 11/27/2007
The star-studded hue and cry to "Save Darfur" and "stop the genocide" has gained enormous traction in U.S. media along with bipartisan support in Congress and the White House. But the Congo, with ten to twenty times as many African dead over the same period is not called a "genocide" and passes almost unnoticed. Sudan sits atop lakes of oil. It has large supplies of uranium, and other minerals, significant water resources, and a strategic location near still more African oil and resources. The unasked question is whether the nation's Republican and Democratic foreign policy elite are using claims of genocide, and appeals for "humanitarian intervention" to grease the way for the next oil and resource wars on the African continent.
"Out of Iraq - Into Darfur" cartoon by Mike Flugennock. Find more of his work at www.sinkers.org
Top Ten Reasons to Suspect "Save Darfur" is a PR Scam to Justify US Military Intervention in African
by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon
The regular manufacture and the constant maintenance of false realities in the service of American empire is a core function of the public relations profession and the corporate news media. Whether it's fake news stories about wonder drugs and how toxic chemicals are good for you, bribed commentators and journalists discoursing on the benefits of No Child Left Behind, Hollywood stars advocating military intervention to save African orphans, or slick propaganda campaigns employing viral marketing techniques to reach out to college students, bloggers, churches and ordinary citizens, it pays to take a close look behind the facade.
Among the latest false realities being pushed upon the American people are the simplistic pictures of Black vs. Arab genocide in Darfur, and the proposed solution: a robust US-backed or US-led military intervention in Western Sudan. Increasing scrutiny is being focused upon the "Save Darfur" lobby and the Save Darfur Coalition; upon its founders, its finances, its methods and motivations and its truthfulness. In the spirit of furthering that examination we here present ten reasons to suspect that the "Save Darfur" campaign is a PR scam to justify US intervention in Africa.
1. It wouldn't be the first Big Lie our government and media elite told us to justify a war.
Elders among us can recall the Tonkin Gulf Incident, which the US government deliberately provoked to justify initiation of the war in Vietnam. This rationale was quickly succeeded by the need to help the struggling infant "democracy" in South Vietnam, and the still useful "fight 'em over there so we don't have to fight 'em over here" nonsense. More recently the bombings, invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq have been variously explained by people on the public payroll as necessary to "get Bin Laden" as revenge for 9-11, as measures to take "the world's most dangerous weapons" from the hands of "the world's most dangerous regimes", as measures to enable the struggling Iraqi "democracy" stand on its own two feet, and necessary because it's still better to "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here".
2. It wouldn't even be the first time the U.S. government and media elite employed "genocide prevention" as a rationale for military intervention in an oil-rich region.
The 1995 US and NATO military intervention in the former Yugoslavia was supposedly a "peacekeeping" operation to stop a genocide. The lasting result of that campaign is Camp Bondsteel, one of the largest military bases on the planet. The U.S. is practically the only country in the world that maintains military bases outside its own borders. At just under a thousand acres, Camp Bondsteel offers the US military the ability to pre-position large quantities of equipment and supplies within striking distance of Caspian oil fields, pipeline routes and relevant sea lanes. It is also widely believed to be the site of one of the US's secret prison and torture facilities.
3. If stopping genocide in Africa really was on the agenda, why the focus on Sudan with 200,000 to 400,000 dead rather than Congo with five million dead?
"The notion that a quarter million Darfuri dead are a genocide and five million dead Congolese are not is vicious and absurd," according to Congolese activist Nita Evele. "What's happened and what is still happening in Congo is not a tribal conflict and it's not a civil war. It is an invasion. It is a genocide with a death toll of five million, twenty times that of Darfur, conducted for the purpose of plundering Congolese mineral and natural resources."
More than anything else, the selective and cynical application of the term "genocide" to Sudan, rather than to the Congo where ten to twenty times as many Africans have been murdered reveals the depth of hypocrisy around the "Save Darfur" movement. In the Congo, where local gangsters, mercenaries and warlords along with invading armies from Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Angola engage in slaughter, mass rape and regional depopulation on a scale that dwarfs anything happening in Sudan, all the players eagerly compete to guarantee that the extraction of vital coltan for Western computers and cell phones, the export of uranium for Western reactors and nukes, along with diamonds, gold, copper, timber and other Congolese resources continue undisturbed.
Former UN Ambassador Andrew Young and George H.W. Bush both serve on the board of Barrcik Gold, one of the largest and most active mining concerns in war-torn Congo. Evidently, with profits from the brutal extraction of Congolese wealth flowing to the West, there can be no Congolese "genocide" worth noting, much less interfering with. For their purposes, U.S. strategic planners may regard their Congolese model as the ideal means of capturing African wealth at minimal cost without the bother of official U.S. boots on the ground.
4. It's all about Sudanese oil.
Sudan, and the Darfur region in particular, sit atop a lake of oil. But Sudanese oil fields are not being developed and drilled by Exxon or Chevron or British Petroleum. Chinese banks, oil and construction firms are making the loans, drilling the wells, laying the pipelines to take Sudanese oil where they intend it to go, calling far too many shots for a twenty-first century in which the U.S. aspires to control the planet's energy supplies. A U.S. and NATO military intervention will solve that problem for U.S. planners.
5. It's all about Sudanese uranium, gum arabic and other natural resources.
Uranium is vital to the nuclear weapons industry and an essential fuel for nuclear reactors. Sudan possesses high quality deposits of uranium. Gum arabic is an essential ingredient in pharmaceuticals, candies and beverages like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and Sudanese exports of this commodity are 80% of the world's supply. When comprehensive U.S. sanctions against the Sudanese regime were being considered in 1997, industry lobbyists stepped up and secured an exemption in the sanctions bill to guarantee their supplies of this valuable Sudanese commodity. But an in-country U.S. and NATO military presence is a more secure guarantee that the extraction of Sudanese resources, like those of the Congo, flow westward to the U.S. and the European Union.
6. It's all about Sudan's strategic location
Sudan sits opposite Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, where a large fraction of the world's easily extracted oil will be for a few more years. Darfur borders on Libya and Chad, with their own vast oil resources, is within striking distance of West and Central Africa, and is a likely pipeline route. The Nile River flows through Sudan before reaching Egypt, and Southern Sudan has water resources of regional significance too. With the creation of AFRICOM, the new Pentagon command for the African continent, the U.S. has made open and explicit its intention to plant a strategic footprint on the African continent. From permanent Sudanese bases, the U.S. military could influence the politics and ecocomies of Africa for a generation to come.
7. The backers and founders of the "Save Darfur" movement are the well-connected and well-funded U.S. foreign policy elite.
According to a copyrighted Washington Post story this summer
"The "Save Darfur (Coalition) was created in 2005 by two groups concerned about genocide in the African country - the American Jewish World Service and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum...
"The coalition has a staff of 30 with expertise in policy and public relations. Its budget was about $15 million in the most recent fiscal year...
"Save Darfur will not say exactly how much it has spent on its ads, which this week have attempted to shame China, host of the 2008 Olympics, into easing its support for Sudan. But a coalition spokeswoman said the amount is in the millions of dollars."
Though the "Save Darfur" PR campaign employs viral marketing techniques, reaching out to college students, even to black bloggers, it is not a grassroots affair, as were the movement against apartheid and in support of African liberation movements in South Africa, Namibia, Angola and Mozambique a generation ago. Top heavy with evangelical Christians who preach the coming war for the end of the world, and with elements known for their uncritical support of Israeli rejectionism in the Middle East, the Save Darfur movement is clearly an establishment affair, a propaganda campaign that spends millions of dollars each month to manfacture consent for US military intervention in Africa under the cloak of stopping or preventing genocide.
8. None of the funds raised by the "Save Darfur Coalition", the flagship of the "Save Darfur Movement" go to help needy Africans on the ground in Darfur, according to stories in both the Washington Post and the New York Times.
"None of the money collected by Save Darfur goes to help the victims and their families. Instead, the coalition pours its proceeds into advocacy efforts that are primarily designed to persuade governments to act."
9. "Save Darfur" partisans in the U.S. are not interested in political negotiations to end the conflict in Darfur
President Bush has openly and repeatedly attempted to throw monkey wrenches at peace negotiations to end the war in Darfur. Even pro-intervention scholars and humanitarian organizations active on the ground have criticized the U.S. for endangering humanitarian relief workers, and for effectively urging rebel parties in Darfur to refuse peace talks and hold out for U.S. and NATO intervention on their behalf.
The slick, well financed and nearly seamless PR campaign simplistically depicts the conflict as strictly a racial affair, in which Arabs, generally despised in the US media anyway, are exterminating the black population of Sudan. In the make-believe world it creates, there is no room for negotiation. But in fact, many of Sudan's 'Arabs", even the Janjiweed, are also black. In any case, they were armed and unleashed by a government which has the power to disarm them if it chooses, and can also negotiate in good faith if it chooses. Negotiations are never a gurantee of anything, but refusal to particpate in negotiations, as the U.S. appears to be urging the rebels in Darfur to do, and as the "Save Darfur" PR campaign justifies, avoids any path to a political settlement among Sudanese, leaving open only the road of U.S and NATO military intervention.
10. Blackwater and other U.S. mercenary contractors, the unofficial armed wings of the Republican party and the Pentagon are eagerly pitching their services as part of the solution to the Darfur crisis.
"Chris Taylor, head of strategy for Blackwater, says his company has a database of thousands of former police and military officers for security assignments. He says Blackwater personnel could set up perimeters and guard Darfurian villages and refugee camp in support of the U.N. Blackwater officials say it would not take many men to fend off the Janjaweed, a militia that is supported by the Sudanese government and attacks villages on camelback."
Apparently Blackwater doesn't need to come to the Congo, where hunger and malnutrition, depopulation, mass rape and the disappearance of schools, hospitals and civil society into vast law free zones ruled by an ever-changing cast of African proxies (like the son of the late and unlamented Idi Amin), all under a veil of complicit media silence already constitute the perfect business-friendly environment for siphoning off the vast wealth of that country at minimal cost.
Look for the adoption of the Congolese model across the wide areas of Africa that U.S. strategic planners call "ungoverned spaces". Just don't expect to see details on the evening news, or hear about them from Oprah, George Clooney or Angelina Jolie.
Darfur “Genocide” Lies Unraveling
http://blackagendareport.com/?q=content/darfur-%E2%80%9Cgenocide%E2%80%9D-lies-unraveling-%E2%80%93-only-1500-darfuris-died-2008-says-african-union
Darfur “Genocide” Lies Unraveling – Only 1,500 Darfuris Died in 2008, Says African Union
Wed, 06/24/2009
For more than five years, the Save Darfur Coalition has used a slick and star-studded multimillion dollar ad campaign to paint a horrific vision of 400,000 dead in a black vs Arab war of extermination. No historic or political causes are offered for this scenario; it's genocide a case of good vs. evil demanding our attention and action. But the big lies underpinning the Save Darfur campaign are coming undone. Reporters, scholars and even US envoys are returning from the region affirming that if there ever was a genocide in Darfur, and there may not have been, there isn't one now. The British government has even ruled that Save Darfur cannot, in that country, use the figure of 400,000 dead which it throws around in all its US advertisements, cause it just ain't true.
Darfur “Genocide” Lies Unraveling – Only 1,500 Darfuris Died in 2008, Says African Union
by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
A hundred years ago, in the Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. DuBois observed that “...the country's appetite for facts on the Negro question has been spoiled by sweets.” If he was around today, DuBois could say the same for America's appetite for facts on Darfur, Sudan, the rest of Africa, Iraq, and most of the world. Facts are messy things. Facts come with historical contexts and uncertain consequences. Eternal truths, like good vs. evil are sweet like candy, simple and comforting.
Since its founding in 2004, the Save Darfur Coalition has spent tens of millions on a state of the art advertising campaign to paint us a picture that is exactly that. Sweet and simple, easy to understand, and most of all, we get to be the good guys. Darfur is, to use Samantha Power's phrase, “a problem from hell,” a piece of pure, unambiguous evil in which the global power of the US can be put to use constructively, because stopping a genocide calls for action, not for politics. Stopping genocide, we are told, is above politics. The lesson of genocide is that great powers must act, people of conscience and good will must intervene.
There are several problems with this, both as a general proposition, and specifically as it applies to Darfur. In the first place genocide is defined as the attempt to wipe out a nation or a people. There is so little evidence that mass killings on the scale necessary to be called genocide have occurred in Darfur that back in 2007, Save Darfur's UK operation was prohibited from using the figure of 400,000 dead that routinely appears in its advertisements in the US. Britain has a government truth-in-advertising agency called the Advertisement Standards Authority. They looked at Save Darfur's massive death toll. They took into account a 2006 US GAO report in which GAO assembled a number of death and casualty estimates, high and low for Darfur, and summoned a panel of experts to determine which were accurate.
The GAO study found the low estimates of 50 to 70 thousand dead from a variety of causes including disease and starvation due to desertification on all sides of the conflict to be more accurate than the high estimates of 200 to 400 thousand by direct armed violence on one side alone claimed by Save Darfur. The GAO report maintained that the peak death toll occurred in 2004 and early 2005 and had been trending downward since. This was compelling enough evidence for Britain to ban the inflammatory claims that Save Darfur still makes with impunity in the US, which has no truth in advertising laws.
African scholar Mahmood Mamdani has traveled extensively for many weeks in Sudan and Darfur as part of the African Union's Dialog for Darfur project, interviewing officials, activists and ordinary people on all sides of the conflict. In a talk at Howard University on March 20, 2009 he reported that only days before, the general in charge of the African Union's peacekeeping forces in Darfur pegged the death toll for the entire year in and around the refugee camps at a mere 1,500. While the deaths of 50 to 70 thousand people several years ago on multiple sides of an armed conflict are a grievous matter, not to be minimized or brushed aside, they don't count as the ongoing genocide of helpless civilians.
Around the same time that several members of Congress got themselves arrested at the Sudanese embassy in Washington, Afshin Rattansi, a reporter and broadcaster for Al Jazzera, CNN, The Guardian, Bloomberg News and other outlets toured Sudan, speaking to Africans as well as the representatives of western womens organizations in the country who attested that they were able to travel and speak freely and had seen “no evidence” of genocide.
Even USAF General Scott Gration, traveling in the region as US special envoy returned to Washington last week saying that the situation in Darfur was at worst “the remnants of genocide,” clearly implying that the worst violence had been over for some time. Gration's remarks may have exposed a divide in the administration, since UN ambassador Susan Rice stoutly maintained only two days before that genocide was “ongoing” in Darfur. Clearly, the genocide story is becoming less and less tenable.
But Save Darfur is all about advertising, and in the US, advertisers are under no obligation to tell the truth. Save Darfur is in fact, not a mass movement, but an advertising campaign, headed by the CEO of a PR company that boasts such clients as Dupont, the company responsible for murdering tens of thousands when one of its chemical plants exploded at Bhopal, India , and sent a cloud of poison gas rolling downhill into a city.
As BAR revealed in a 2007 story, Ten Reasons Why Save Darfur Is A PR Scam to Justify Oil and Resource Wars In Africa
According to a copyrighted Washington Post story this summer (in 2007)
"The "Save Darfur (Coalition) was created in 2005 by two groups concerned about genocide in the African country - the American Jewish World Service and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum...
"The coalition has a staff of 30 with expertise in policy and public relations. Its budget was about $15 million in the most recent fiscal year...
"Save Darfur will not say exactly how much it has spent on its ads, which this week have attempted to shame China, host of the 2008 Olympics, into easing its support for Sudan. But a coalition spokeswoman said the amount is in the millions of dollars."
Though the "Save Darfur" PR campaign employs viral marketing techniques, reaching out to college students, even to black bloggers, it is not a grassroots affair, as were the movement against apartheid and in support of African liberation movements in South Africa, Namibia, Angola and Mozambique a generation ago. Top heavy with evangelical Christians who preach the coming war for the end of the world, and with elements known for their uncritical support of Israeli rejectionism in the Middle East, the Save Darfur movement is clearly an establishment affair, a propaganda campaign that spends millions of dollars each month to manfacture consent for US military intervention in Africa under the cloak of stopping or preventing genocide.
The construct of genocides, “problems from hell” popping up around the world in which the US is obliged to intervene is a very useful one. It appears to be the successor to the so-called “war on terror” as the justification for American military adventures around the world. Hear it from the lips of UN Ambassador Susan Rice herself;
The Responsibility to Protect or, as it has come to be known, R2P represents an important step forward in the long historical struggle to save lives and guard the wellbeing of people endangered by conflict. It holds that states have responsibilities as well as interests and that states have particularly vital duties to shield their own populations from the depraved and the murderous. This approach is bold. It is important. And the United States welcomes it...
The Responsibility to Protect is rooted in the principle that states have a fundamental responsibility to protect their populations from such atrocities as genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. It holds that other states, in turn, have a corollary responsibility to assist, if a state cannot meet its fundamental responsibility to its citizens or to take collective action, if a state will not meet that fundamental responsibility...
Like the war on terror, stopping genocides real or imagined is above politics. It's a cause that absolves Americans of any responsibility to understand either their own history or that of the countries they intervene in.
The real Darfur is a complicated place with complicated politics that Save Darfur does not help us understand. What Save Darfur doesn't tell us is that there is a many-sided civil confict of insurgency and counterinsurgency, not a one-sided slaughter in progress. Save Darfur never mentions how the area was flooded with arms by the US, France and Israel on one side, and by Libya and the Soviet Union during Chad's decade of civil war. And in volumes of briefing papers and advertising copy, Save Darfur invariably forgets to tell us that the lines between which Darfuris are “black” and which are “Arab” have been fluid for centuries, and as Mahmood Mamdani in his book Saviors and Survivors explains, have more to do with culture and status than with “race” in Western terms.
The stark and horrific picture painted by the Save Darfur Coalition in fact prolongs the civil conflict in that unhappy country, encouraging one faction or another to avoid negotations for a settlement in the hope that Western intervention will put them on top. The “right to protect” doctrine espoused by Ambassador Rice ensures that regardless of the facts, Save Darfur will have the ear of policymakers for some time to come, as they look to sweeten the public excuses to intervene in other countries, and to spoil America's appetites for unpleasant truths in which it is not always the good guy.
Darfur “Genocide” Lies Unraveling – Only 1,500 Darfuris Died in 2008, Says African Union
Wed, 06/24/2009
For more than five years, the Save Darfur Coalition has used a slick and star-studded multimillion dollar ad campaign to paint a horrific vision of 400,000 dead in a black vs Arab war of extermination. No historic or political causes are offered for this scenario; it's genocide a case of good vs. evil demanding our attention and action. But the big lies underpinning the Save Darfur campaign are coming undone. Reporters, scholars and even US envoys are returning from the region affirming that if there ever was a genocide in Darfur, and there may not have been, there isn't one now. The British government has even ruled that Save Darfur cannot, in that country, use the figure of 400,000 dead which it throws around in all its US advertisements, cause it just ain't true.
Darfur “Genocide” Lies Unraveling – Only 1,500 Darfuris Died in 2008, Says African Union
by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
A hundred years ago, in the Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. DuBois observed that “...the country's appetite for facts on the Negro question has been spoiled by sweets.” If he was around today, DuBois could say the same for America's appetite for facts on Darfur, Sudan, the rest of Africa, Iraq, and most of the world. Facts are messy things. Facts come with historical contexts and uncertain consequences. Eternal truths, like good vs. evil are sweet like candy, simple and comforting.
Since its founding in 2004, the Save Darfur Coalition has spent tens of millions on a state of the art advertising campaign to paint us a picture that is exactly that. Sweet and simple, easy to understand, and most of all, we get to be the good guys. Darfur is, to use Samantha Power's phrase, “a problem from hell,” a piece of pure, unambiguous evil in which the global power of the US can be put to use constructively, because stopping a genocide calls for action, not for politics. Stopping genocide, we are told, is above politics. The lesson of genocide is that great powers must act, people of conscience and good will must intervene.
There are several problems with this, both as a general proposition, and specifically as it applies to Darfur. In the first place genocide is defined as the attempt to wipe out a nation or a people. There is so little evidence that mass killings on the scale necessary to be called genocide have occurred in Darfur that back in 2007, Save Darfur's UK operation was prohibited from using the figure of 400,000 dead that routinely appears in its advertisements in the US. Britain has a government truth-in-advertising agency called the Advertisement Standards Authority. They looked at Save Darfur's massive death toll. They took into account a 2006 US GAO report in which GAO assembled a number of death and casualty estimates, high and low for Darfur, and summoned a panel of experts to determine which were accurate.
The GAO study found the low estimates of 50 to 70 thousand dead from a variety of causes including disease and starvation due to desertification on all sides of the conflict to be more accurate than the high estimates of 200 to 400 thousand by direct armed violence on one side alone claimed by Save Darfur. The GAO report maintained that the peak death toll occurred in 2004 and early 2005 and had been trending downward since. This was compelling enough evidence for Britain to ban the inflammatory claims that Save Darfur still makes with impunity in the US, which has no truth in advertising laws.
African scholar Mahmood Mamdani has traveled extensively for many weeks in Sudan and Darfur as part of the African Union's Dialog for Darfur project, interviewing officials, activists and ordinary people on all sides of the conflict. In a talk at Howard University on March 20, 2009 he reported that only days before, the general in charge of the African Union's peacekeeping forces in Darfur pegged the death toll for the entire year in and around the refugee camps at a mere 1,500. While the deaths of 50 to 70 thousand people several years ago on multiple sides of an armed conflict are a grievous matter, not to be minimized or brushed aside, they don't count as the ongoing genocide of helpless civilians.
Around the same time that several members of Congress got themselves arrested at the Sudanese embassy in Washington, Afshin Rattansi, a reporter and broadcaster for Al Jazzera, CNN, The Guardian, Bloomberg News and other outlets toured Sudan, speaking to Africans as well as the representatives of western womens organizations in the country who attested that they were able to travel and speak freely and had seen “no evidence” of genocide.
Even USAF General Scott Gration, traveling in the region as US special envoy returned to Washington last week saying that the situation in Darfur was at worst “the remnants of genocide,” clearly implying that the worst violence had been over for some time. Gration's remarks may have exposed a divide in the administration, since UN ambassador Susan Rice stoutly maintained only two days before that genocide was “ongoing” in Darfur. Clearly, the genocide story is becoming less and less tenable.
But Save Darfur is all about advertising, and in the US, advertisers are under no obligation to tell the truth. Save Darfur is in fact, not a mass movement, but an advertising campaign, headed by the CEO of a PR company that boasts such clients as Dupont, the company responsible for murdering tens of thousands when one of its chemical plants exploded at Bhopal, India , and sent a cloud of poison gas rolling downhill into a city.
As BAR revealed in a 2007 story, Ten Reasons Why Save Darfur Is A PR Scam to Justify Oil and Resource Wars In Africa
According to a copyrighted Washington Post story this summer (in 2007)
"The "Save Darfur (Coalition) was created in 2005 by two groups concerned about genocide in the African country - the American Jewish World Service and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum...
"The coalition has a staff of 30 with expertise in policy and public relations. Its budget was about $15 million in the most recent fiscal year...
"Save Darfur will not say exactly how much it has spent on its ads, which this week have attempted to shame China, host of the 2008 Olympics, into easing its support for Sudan. But a coalition spokeswoman said the amount is in the millions of dollars."
Though the "Save Darfur" PR campaign employs viral marketing techniques, reaching out to college students, even to black bloggers, it is not a grassroots affair, as were the movement against apartheid and in support of African liberation movements in South Africa, Namibia, Angola and Mozambique a generation ago. Top heavy with evangelical Christians who preach the coming war for the end of the world, and with elements known for their uncritical support of Israeli rejectionism in the Middle East, the Save Darfur movement is clearly an establishment affair, a propaganda campaign that spends millions of dollars each month to manfacture consent for US military intervention in Africa under the cloak of stopping or preventing genocide.
The construct of genocides, “problems from hell” popping up around the world in which the US is obliged to intervene is a very useful one. It appears to be the successor to the so-called “war on terror” as the justification for American military adventures around the world. Hear it from the lips of UN Ambassador Susan Rice herself;
The Responsibility to Protect or, as it has come to be known, R2P represents an important step forward in the long historical struggle to save lives and guard the wellbeing of people endangered by conflict. It holds that states have responsibilities as well as interests and that states have particularly vital duties to shield their own populations from the depraved and the murderous. This approach is bold. It is important. And the United States welcomes it...
The Responsibility to Protect is rooted in the principle that states have a fundamental responsibility to protect their populations from such atrocities as genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. It holds that other states, in turn, have a corollary responsibility to assist, if a state cannot meet its fundamental responsibility to its citizens or to take collective action, if a state will not meet that fundamental responsibility...
Like the war on terror, stopping genocides real or imagined is above politics. It's a cause that absolves Americans of any responsibility to understand either their own history or that of the countries they intervene in.
The real Darfur is a complicated place with complicated politics that Save Darfur does not help us understand. What Save Darfur doesn't tell us is that there is a many-sided civil confict of insurgency and counterinsurgency, not a one-sided slaughter in progress. Save Darfur never mentions how the area was flooded with arms by the US, France and Israel on one side, and by Libya and the Soviet Union during Chad's decade of civil war. And in volumes of briefing papers and advertising copy, Save Darfur invariably forgets to tell us that the lines between which Darfuris are “black” and which are “Arab” have been fluid for centuries, and as Mahmood Mamdani in his book Saviors and Survivors explains, have more to do with culture and status than with “race” in Western terms.
The stark and horrific picture painted by the Save Darfur Coalition in fact prolongs the civil conflict in that unhappy country, encouraging one faction or another to avoid negotations for a settlement in the hope that Western intervention will put them on top. The “right to protect” doctrine espoused by Ambassador Rice ensures that regardless of the facts, Save Darfur will have the ear of policymakers for some time to come, as they look to sweeten the public excuses to intervene in other countries, and to spoil America's appetites for unpleasant truths in which it is not always the good guy.
Is the party over for Silvio Berlusconi?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/5599641/Is-the-party-over-for-Silvio-Berlusconi.htmlIs the party over for Silvio Berlusconi?
As sex scandals escalate around him, the Italian prime minister is looking increasingly vulnerable, says Nick Squires.
By Nick Squires22 Jun 2009
For years, millions of hot-blooded Italian men have secretly wished they could gatecrash one of the parties hosted by their ebullient prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, featuring scantily-clad starlets and models, and endless bottles of expensive wine.
But now the bacchanalian gatherings are coming back to haunt Mr Berlusconi. The billionaire businessman, 72, is trying desperately to fend off allegations that an acquaintance paid call girls, wannabe actresses and models to attend the parties. Uncharacteristically, the scandal seems to be getting to him. He is tired, flustered – and worried, because it is threatening to overshadow his hosting of the G8 summit in L'Aquila next month. A national joke is turning into an international humiliation.
Attention is focused on a party that the prime minister held at his Rome palazzo on the evening of November 4 last year – the night of the US presidential election. A couple of days ago, one of the young women who attended the event, former Miss Italy contestant Barbara Montereale, 23, dropped a bombshell by claiming that Mr Berlusconi went to bed with another of the women in attendance, Patrizia D'Addario, 42, who was allegedly promised 2,000 euros (£1,700), and who herself claimed that when she saw the gathered women, she thought: "But this is a harem."
Then, yesterday a third young woman came forward, claiming to have details of the candlelit soirée. Lucia Rossini alleged that her invitation to Mr Berlusconi's palazzo, near Rome's Piazza Venezia, came from a businessman and acquaintance of the prime minister, Giampaolo Tarantini, 35, whom she claimed she knew from her home town of Bari. "Why don't you come with me to a party in Rome?" Mr Tarantini allegedly had asked her at the end of October last year. The three women were supposedly paid to fly to the capital and put up at the exclusive Hotel de Russie.
It is claimed they were driven to Mr Berlusconi's home, Palazzo Grazioli, in a car with tinted windows, arriving there around 11pm. They were greeted by Mr Berlusconi, who is said to have told Miss D'Addario: "I'm happy to see you again." She claimed he was wearing a large amount of orange make-up.
Over the next two or three hours, he reportedly entertained them with bawdy jokes, songs – the former cruise-ship crooner is well known for his love of belting out traditional Neapolitan ballads such as O Sole Mio – and video footage of a meeting with President George W Bush at the White House, which Miss D'Addario described as painfully dull.
At one point Mr Berlusconi excused himself from his glamorous guests – he had to go off and make a statement on Obama's historic victory. "He told me to wait around because he wanted to have breakfast with me," Miss D'Addario claimed. At the end of the evening the three women were allegedly given presents – pendants and brooches in the shape of butterflies and tortoises. Miss Rossini and Miss Montereale, who was pictured in Italian newspapers in a low-cut top showing off the jewellery and claiming that the pieces were designed by the prime minister himself, said goodnight and were taken back to their hotel. But Miss D'Addario stayed behind.
Miss Rossini claimed she was too discreet to ask why. "The things that I imagined had happened, I kept to myself," she said coyly. But her companion, Miss Montereale, had no such inhibitions, claiming that there was a sexual encounter between the call girl and the prime minister.
Miss D'Addario, a single mother who claims she once worked as an assistant to the American television magician David Copperfield, allegedly described what happened that night to prosecutors in Bari. As happens so often in Italy, the details were leaked to the press.
"Go and wait for me in the big bed," the prime minister allegedly said, telling her he was going to take a shower. While he was away she claims to have used her mobile phone to film herself in the room, which contained a framed photograph of Mr Berlusconi's wife, Veronica Lario. This was six months before she accused him of "consorting with minors" and said she wanted a divorce.
The scandal, which now threatens to engulf Italy's centre-Right government, erupted last week following a corruption investigation in the southern port of Bari which had nothing to do with Il Cavaliere, as Italians call Mr Berlusconi.
In the course of wire-tapping Mr Tarantini and his brother over allegations that they had engaged in corruption in winning contracts for supplying equipment to hospitals, Italy's Guardia di Finanza, or Fraud Squad, allegedly overheard them talking about recruiting young women for the prime minister's parties. As a result, chief prosecutor Giuseppe Scelsi launched an investigation into Giampaolo Tarantini for allegedly abetting prostitution. He has denied the accusation, saying any money the women received was reimbursement for "expenses" such as travel and hotel bills. The government has been under siege ever since.
Mr Berlusconi appears to think he can ride out the scandal, despite the daily revelations of alleged sleaze, and has angrily described the stories that have dominated the Italian press this week as "rubbish". Yesterday, asked what his response was to the latest allegations, he told journalists: "I'll hang tough."
Mr Berlusconi has said that the allegations are part of a Left-wing plot to discredit him. But there is also speculation that they have surfaced to torpedo his suspected ambitions to alter the constitution so he can become president.
The prime minister, who is not under investigation himself, has told his closest supporters to draw a veil of silence over the affair, and not talk to the press. But stonewalling will fail to stem the growing clamour of criticism against him, not only from his political opponents, who have said he should explain his conduct or resign, but also from conservative newspaper editors and the Catholic Church.
The unfolding scandal has revealed intriguing insights into how Mr Berlusconi weaves the spider's web of gorgeous young women that surround him. Attractive girls flock to Mr Berlusconi's court in the hope of launching careers on the variety television programmes that Italians are so fond of, or as presenters, weather girls or even politicians. Berlusconi's party touted a former Miss Italy entrant, Barbara Matera, and a busty Big Brother contestant as candidates for the recent European elections.
Several women, including the 18-year-old underwear model Noemi Letizia whose birthday party he attended, have said they refer affectionately to Mr Berlusconi as "Papi", or Daddy.
It is not yet clear to what extent the scandals are denting Mr Berlusconi's popularity. Many Italians – particularly men – are unfazed by the shenanigans. "What do you expect him to do when all these gorgeous girls are throwing themselves at him?" said a well-dressed businessman enjoying a cappuccino in the Piazza Navona yesterday.
But observers say the affair is taking its toll on the elderly politician. "He is flustered, because he hasn't been able to control the narrative that has been pushed against him," said James Walston, a professor at the American University in Rome. Senior ministers have rallied round, but some of his own party members worry that Mr Berlusconi may finally have pushed the tolerance of Italians too far.
The big test, of course, will come early next month, when the world's most powerful leaders, including the US President and Gordon Brown, will gather at the G8 summit in L'Aquila. With more unseemly revelations about the prime minister's private life expected to emerge, it is an event that the squeaky-clean American President, and even the beleaguered Mr Brown, are probably dreading.
Silvio: Sex is no fun if you have to pay!
http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?Silvio:_Sex_is_no_fun_if_you_have_to_pay!&in_article_id=690894&in_page_id=34Silvio: Sex is no fun if you have to pay!
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Silvio Berlusconi has hit back at rumours that he has used escort girls, saying he has 'never paid for sex'.
Breaking his silence over rumours of debauched parties held at his villas, the Italian prime minister also said he had 'nothing to apologise for'.
'I have never paid for a woman – I have never understood what satisfaction one gets from that if there is no pleasure of conquest,' he added.
The 72-year-old has been under intense pressure since the weekend when it emerged that escort girls had been guests at parties held in his luxury villas.
Model Barbara Montereale, 23, claimed escort girl Patrizia D'Addario, 42, told her she had been paid to have sex with the billionaire politician . But Mr Berlusconi insisted he was the victim of a smear campaign. 'Behind Patrizia D'Addario is someone who is out to get me and she (Patrizia) has been paid well, they have a precise mandate against me,' he told glossy Italian news weekly Chi.
Asked if he suspected the escorts had been part of a honey trap, the premier replied: 'If I had any idea I would have stayed well away from such a person.
'I have nothing to be sorry about, I don't have to apologise.'
Mr Berlusconi also spoke about his divorce from his wife Veronica Lario, 52, and said it was a 'deep wound' but they had had a 'fantastic love story'.
'True love stories are never forgotten. I am fine, sad but fine. I just think about my mother every day and how she taught me never to be afraid of anyone,' he added.
Silvio Berlusconi keeps smiling
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/22/silvio-berlusconi-italy-sex-scandal
Silvio Berlusconi keeps smiling as sex scandal gets deeper by the day
Prime minister attempts to carry on as normal despite further revelations
Tom Kington in Rome
The Guardian, Tuesday 23 June 2009
If Silvio Berlusconi fears four years of being a lame duck prime minister as a result of the sex scandal engulfing him, he was not showing it at the weekend as he went on a walkabout in Milan, kissing babies, discussing which AC Milan players he might sell and sketching out his political agenda to a crowd of admirers.
"He was talking about what plans he has for 2010; he clearly intends to ignore everything, waiting for it to blow over," said Raffaele De Mucci, a professor of political science at Luiss University in Rome.
Tom Kington: 'There is distinct unease among many of his allies' Link to this audio It is unlikely that it will blow over by the time the world's leaders arrive in Italy next month for the G8 conference. Magistrates in the southern city of Bari are pushing on with an investigation into a possible prostitution racket and are getting ready to question 30 women, some of whom are suspected to have been paid by a local businessman to attend five parties held by Berlusconi, La Repubblica reported yesterday.
One of the guests already questioned – model Barbara Montereale – has alleged that a paid escort, Patrizia D'Addario, slept with the prime minister on 4 November. Yesterday, Montereale released photographs she alleges she took as souvenirs in Berlusconi's bathroom and described the large number of eastern European women she says she met during a visit to his villa in Sardinia.
"They seemed at home, were on familiar terms with the prime minister and all called him Papi," she told La Repubblica, adding that she saw the girls dressed as Father Christmas in a video shown of an earlier party. "They were a bit jealous of each other and in competition to see who could get closer [to Berlusconi]."
Berlusconi's troubles with the opposite sex have advanced since May, when he fought against accusations of consorting with minors after attending the 18th birthday party of Noemi Letizia, an aspiring model who called the 72-year-old "Papi" during private conversations on the phone.
That was enough to push Berlusconi's wife to ask for a divorce. The Bari inquiry could go further and rattle the foundations of the Italian government, said De Mucci. "The fewer votes Berlusconi got in the EU elections, the noisy protests at his recent rallies, all showed a drop in his support because of the scandal," he said.
"Now his allies are disoriented, the electorate's faith in the governing class will be further weakened and he risks losing the political capital he built up with his handling of the Abruzzo earthquake and the Naples rubbish crisis."
De Mucci added that he was not surprised by Berlusconi's recent denouncements of the number of Chinese living in Prato, near Florence, and the number of Africans he saw in Milan.
"The shakier his authority, the more he will lean on the Northern League for support," he said, referring to the anti-immigrant party with which Berlusconi's Freedom People party is allied. "But I doubt he is on his way out. His own party would not continue to exist without him. They would have to reinvent itself and I don't see them doing that."
For the Italian opposition, the question is how vulnerable Berlusconi is to the girls to whom he has thrown open his doors open. Unsatisfied with being named a candidate in local elections for a party in Bari allied to Berlusconi, D'Addario revealed all to the Italian press, reportedly telling Montereale: "This is our moment; I will make him pay and we will become famous like Noemi."
Luigi Zanda, of the opposition Democratic party, said: "Berlusconi has said nothing about how blackmailable he is and the government is ignoring the question."
Judging by his baby kissing at the weekend, Berlusconi feels the scandal will wither. Sandro Bondi, his culture minister, went on the counterattack yesterday, saying that La Repubblica, the left-leaning newspaper that has kept the prime minister under pressure, was "the largest threat to our democracy".
In Rome, the result of the scandal appeared to be an equal stiffening of resolve among the Italians who love Berlusconi and those who loathe him.
"He's got skeletons in his cupboard, but scandals don't count here and he will stay put for his whole five years," said tobacconist Roberta Canini bitterly.
"What scandal?" retorted retired civil servant Eliza Baciocchi at a corner bar on the busy Corso Francia. "Berlusconi is a gentleman when it comes to the ladies and only magistrates and the left see fit to pry into his private life."
Carlo Maschi, a legal assistant, said Berlusconi should be forgiven for his behaviour because he was a businessman, not a politician. "Look at how he kept Angela Merkel waiting when he was on his cellphone. He is made like that and that is fine by me," he said.
It was left to a young women to challenge Berlusconi in Milan. "Ask him about the prostitutes," she yelled at the crowd surrounding the prime minister, before she was hustled away by police.
Silvio Berlusconi keeps smiling as sex scandal gets deeper by the day
Prime minister attempts to carry on as normal despite further revelations
Tom Kington in Rome
The Guardian, Tuesday 23 June 2009
If Silvio Berlusconi fears four years of being a lame duck prime minister as a result of the sex scandal engulfing him, he was not showing it at the weekend as he went on a walkabout in Milan, kissing babies, discussing which AC Milan players he might sell and sketching out his political agenda to a crowd of admirers.
"He was talking about what plans he has for 2010; he clearly intends to ignore everything, waiting for it to blow over," said Raffaele De Mucci, a professor of political science at Luiss University in Rome.
Tom Kington: 'There is distinct unease among many of his allies' Link to this audio It is unlikely that it will blow over by the time the world's leaders arrive in Italy next month for the G8 conference. Magistrates in the southern city of Bari are pushing on with an investigation into a possible prostitution racket and are getting ready to question 30 women, some of whom are suspected to have been paid by a local businessman to attend five parties held by Berlusconi, La Repubblica reported yesterday.
One of the guests already questioned – model Barbara Montereale – has alleged that a paid escort, Patrizia D'Addario, slept with the prime minister on 4 November. Yesterday, Montereale released photographs she alleges she took as souvenirs in Berlusconi's bathroom and described the large number of eastern European women she says she met during a visit to his villa in Sardinia.
"They seemed at home, were on familiar terms with the prime minister and all called him Papi," she told La Repubblica, adding that she saw the girls dressed as Father Christmas in a video shown of an earlier party. "They were a bit jealous of each other and in competition to see who could get closer [to Berlusconi]."
Berlusconi's troubles with the opposite sex have advanced since May, when he fought against accusations of consorting with minors after attending the 18th birthday party of Noemi Letizia, an aspiring model who called the 72-year-old "Papi" during private conversations on the phone.
That was enough to push Berlusconi's wife to ask for a divorce. The Bari inquiry could go further and rattle the foundations of the Italian government, said De Mucci. "The fewer votes Berlusconi got in the EU elections, the noisy protests at his recent rallies, all showed a drop in his support because of the scandal," he said.
"Now his allies are disoriented, the electorate's faith in the governing class will be further weakened and he risks losing the political capital he built up with his handling of the Abruzzo earthquake and the Naples rubbish crisis."
De Mucci added that he was not surprised by Berlusconi's recent denouncements of the number of Chinese living in Prato, near Florence, and the number of Africans he saw in Milan.
"The shakier his authority, the more he will lean on the Northern League for support," he said, referring to the anti-immigrant party with which Berlusconi's Freedom People party is allied. "But I doubt he is on his way out. His own party would not continue to exist without him. They would have to reinvent itself and I don't see them doing that."
For the Italian opposition, the question is how vulnerable Berlusconi is to the girls to whom he has thrown open his doors open. Unsatisfied with being named a candidate in local elections for a party in Bari allied to Berlusconi, D'Addario revealed all to the Italian press, reportedly telling Montereale: "This is our moment; I will make him pay and we will become famous like Noemi."
Luigi Zanda, of the opposition Democratic party, said: "Berlusconi has said nothing about how blackmailable he is and the government is ignoring the question."
Judging by his baby kissing at the weekend, Berlusconi feels the scandal will wither. Sandro Bondi, his culture minister, went on the counterattack yesterday, saying that La Repubblica, the left-leaning newspaper that has kept the prime minister under pressure, was "the largest threat to our democracy".
In Rome, the result of the scandal appeared to be an equal stiffening of resolve among the Italians who love Berlusconi and those who loathe him.
"He's got skeletons in his cupboard, but scandals don't count here and he will stay put for his whole five years," said tobacconist Roberta Canini bitterly.
"What scandal?" retorted retired civil servant Eliza Baciocchi at a corner bar on the busy Corso Francia. "Berlusconi is a gentleman when it comes to the ladies and only magistrates and the left see fit to pry into his private life."
Carlo Maschi, a legal assistant, said Berlusconi should be forgiven for his behaviour because he was a businessman, not a politician. "Look at how he kept Angela Merkel waiting when he was on his cellphone. He is made like that and that is fine by me," he said.
It was left to a young women to challenge Berlusconi in Milan. "Ask him about the prostitutes," she yelled at the crowd surrounding the prime minister, before she was hustled away by police.
Why Silvio Berlusconi is the world's coolest leader
Why Silvio Berlusconi is the world's coolest leader...http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/5610944/Wives-of-G8-leaders-urged-to-boycott-summit-over-sexist-Berlusconi.html
Wives of G8 leaders urged to boycott summit over 'sexist' Berlusconi
The wives of world leaders who are due to attend the G8 summit in Italy next month have been urged to boycott the event in protest over Silvio Berlusconi's "offensive" attitude to women.
By Nick Squires in Rome
23 Jun 2009
Photo: Lucia Rossini and Barbara Montereale (rt) taking photographs of each other in what they claimed was a bathroom at Silvo Berlusconi's private residence in Rome in 2008
Three Italian female academics are calling on Gordon Brown's wife, Sarah, President Obama's wife, Michele and other leaders' spouses not to attend the gathering in L'Aquila, which will be hosted by the Italian prime minister.
The academics have written an open "Appeal to the First Ladies" and said they were appalled, "as citizens of Italy and Europe", by the attitude displayed towards women by Mr Berlusconi, 72, who is engulfed in scandal over his private life.
They were "profoundly indignant" over his treatment of women "both in public and in private," they said.
In the past two months he has been accused of "consorting with minors" by his wife, Veronica Lario, of having an inappropriate relationship with an 18-year-old underwear model and of sleeping with a high-class call-girl during a private party at his residence in Rome in November.
A businessman acquaintance of the prime minister is being investigated by police and prosecutors in Bari, southern Italy, on suspicion of "abetting prostitution" by allegedly supplying escorts to parties thrown by Mr Berlusconi at his mansion in Rome and his villa in Sardinia.
Mr Berlusconi denies the claims.
The academics accused the prime minister of sexism over plans drawn up by his party, People of Freedom, to promote actresses, a former Big Brother contestant and a Miss Italy model as candidates for the European Parliament elections earlier this month. The proposal was later shelved after Mr Berlusconi's wife called it "shamelessly trashy".
The letter was drawn up by Anne Maass, associate professor of social psychology at Padua University, Chiara Volpato, lecturer in social psychology at Bicocca University, Milan and Angelica Mucchi Faina, lecturer in social psychology at Perugia University.
Clippers stay true to word and draft Blake Griffin
http://www.latimes.com/sports/college/basketball/la-sp-clippers-nba-draft26-2009jun26,0,7652786.story
Clippers stay true to word and draft Blake Griffin
The consensus college player of the year from Oklahoma, who had 30 double-doubles last season and was considered by some to be the only sure thing in this draft, is taken No. 1 overall
By Lisa Dillman
June 26, 2009
Reporting from New York -- There would be no last-minute plot twist for the often-surprising Clippers.
The Clippers said May 19 after winning the draft lottery that they would take Oklahoma power forward Blake Griffin with the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft, and today, , their actions followed their words.
This time, the predictable course was the right one at the glitzy NBA draft tonight at Madison Square Garden. Griffin shook hands with NBA Commissioner David Stern and started his Clippers career.
Griffin, the consensus college player of the year, led the nation in double doubles, recording 30 of them, and averaged 22.7 points and 14.4 rebounds.
He was considered the only sure thing in what had been called an unpredictable draft. Griffin worked out for just one team: the Clippers, and the Clippers, who don't have a second-round choice, did not bring in any other players for an individual workout.
Clippers General Manager and Coach Mike Dunleavy made a trip to Europe in May to watch dynamic point guard Ricky Rubio, and happened to be in Spain the night the team won the draft lottery. That made his long journey a moot point.
The Clippers won only 19 games last season and have missed the playoffs in 11 of the last 12 seasons.
Griffin was asked earlier in this week about the Clippers poor history, and he said: "I am not worried about anything that has happened in the past. I wasn't a part of that and a lot of the guys that are there now weren't a part of it.
"So, I mean, we're only looking forward to the future."
lisa.dillman@latimes.com
Clippers stay true to word and draft Blake Griffin
The consensus college player of the year from Oklahoma, who had 30 double-doubles last season and was considered by some to be the only sure thing in this draft, is taken No. 1 overall
By Lisa Dillman
June 26, 2009
Reporting from New York -- There would be no last-minute plot twist for the often-surprising Clippers.
The Clippers said May 19 after winning the draft lottery that they would take Oklahoma power forward Blake Griffin with the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft, and today, , their actions followed their words.
This time, the predictable course was the right one at the glitzy NBA draft tonight at Madison Square Garden. Griffin shook hands with NBA Commissioner David Stern and started his Clippers career.
Griffin, the consensus college player of the year, led the nation in double doubles, recording 30 of them, and averaged 22.7 points and 14.4 rebounds.
He was considered the only sure thing in what had been called an unpredictable draft. Griffin worked out for just one team: the Clippers, and the Clippers, who don't have a second-round choice, did not bring in any other players for an individual workout.
Clippers General Manager and Coach Mike Dunleavy made a trip to Europe in May to watch dynamic point guard Ricky Rubio, and happened to be in Spain the night the team won the draft lottery. That made his long journey a moot point.
The Clippers won only 19 games last season and have missed the playoffs in 11 of the last 12 seasons.
Griffin was asked earlier in this week about the Clippers poor history, and he said: "I am not worried about anything that has happened in the past. I wasn't a part of that and a lot of the guys that are there now weren't a part of it.
"So, I mean, we're only looking forward to the future."
lisa.dillman@latimes.com
Strip search of teen was unconstitutional
Robalini's Note: In an 8-1 decision, the Supreme Court ruled the strip search of a 13-year-old girl by Arizona school officials violated the Fourth Amendment. In his solitary dissent, Clarence Thomas wrote: "If a guy can't check out a teenage bitch naked, then what's the point of becoming a principal in the first place?"
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-strip-search26-2009jun26,0,5149828.story
Strip search of teen was unconstitutional, Supreme Court rules
The high court says the search of a 13-year-old girl at an Arizona middle school was unjustified. But justices reject the suit against school employees, saying the law had not been clear.
By David G. Savage
June 25, 2009
Reporting from Washington -- The strip search of a 13-year-old school girl who was suspected of hiding pain-relief pills was unreasonable and unconstitutional, the Supreme Court ruled today, setting new legal limits on how far school officials may go to inspect for drugs on campus.
In an 8-1 decision, the high court called a strip search at school "categorically distinct" from other inspections for drugs and so degrading that it usually cannot be justified.
The justices said a search of a student's backpack or outer clothing was reasonable whenever a school employee had sufficient suspicion that the student was hiding something illegal, such as drugs or a weapon.
But requiring a student to remove her clothes required a "quantum leap" of suspicion and wrongdoing to be justified, the court said.
Its ruling was a partial victory for Savana Redding and her mother, April, who sued the vice principal of her Arizona middle school over a strip search in 2003. The vice principal was told by another girl that Savana had brought extra-strength ibuprofen pills to school and planned to give them to other students.
She was questioned and denied having the pills. Her backpack was searched as well. When no pills were found, the vice principal sent her to a nurse's office, where she was ordered to remove her clothes.
No pills were found, but school officials did not apologize to the girl or her mother. The two sued the employees and the Safford Unified School District, contending the strip search violated Savana's rights under the 4th Amendment, which forbids "unreasonable searches" by the government.
In today's ruling, the justices agreed the search itself was unconstitutional, but they also rejected the suit against the school employees because the law had not been clear.
The decision sets a standard for all future school searches, but it may result in no compensation for Savana and her mother. The court sent the case back to Arizona to consider whether the school district itself may face some liability.
In Safford vs. Redding, Justice David H. Souter said the vice principal had reasonable grounds for questioning the students about drugs, but he went way too far.
"In sum, what was missing," Souter said, "was an indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear. We think that combination of these deficiencies was fatal to finding the search reasonable," he wrote.
Only Justice Clarence Thomas dissented. He complained the ruling "grants judges sweeping authority to second guess the measures that these officials take to maintain discipline in their schools and ensure the health and safety of the students in their charge."
Meanwhile, Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg would have gone further and upheld a liability ruling against the school officials in this case. "I have long believed that it does not require a constitutional scholar to conclude that a nude search of a 13-year-old child is an invasion of constitutional rights of some magnitude," Stevens wrote.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-strip-search26-2009jun26,0,5149828.story
Strip search of teen was unconstitutional, Supreme Court rules
The high court says the search of a 13-year-old girl at an Arizona middle school was unjustified. But justices reject the suit against school employees, saying the law had not been clear.
By David G. Savage
June 25, 2009
Reporting from Washington -- The strip search of a 13-year-old school girl who was suspected of hiding pain-relief pills was unreasonable and unconstitutional, the Supreme Court ruled today, setting new legal limits on how far school officials may go to inspect for drugs on campus.
In an 8-1 decision, the high court called a strip search at school "categorically distinct" from other inspections for drugs and so degrading that it usually cannot be justified.
The justices said a search of a student's backpack or outer clothing was reasonable whenever a school employee had sufficient suspicion that the student was hiding something illegal, such as drugs or a weapon.
But requiring a student to remove her clothes required a "quantum leap" of suspicion and wrongdoing to be justified, the court said.
Its ruling was a partial victory for Savana Redding and her mother, April, who sued the vice principal of her Arizona middle school over a strip search in 2003. The vice principal was told by another girl that Savana had brought extra-strength ibuprofen pills to school and planned to give them to other students.
She was questioned and denied having the pills. Her backpack was searched as well. When no pills were found, the vice principal sent her to a nurse's office, where she was ordered to remove her clothes.
No pills were found, but school officials did not apologize to the girl or her mother. The two sued the employees and the Safford Unified School District, contending the strip search violated Savana's rights under the 4th Amendment, which forbids "unreasonable searches" by the government.
In today's ruling, the justices agreed the search itself was unconstitutional, but they also rejected the suit against the school employees because the law had not been clear.
The decision sets a standard for all future school searches, but it may result in no compensation for Savana and her mother. The court sent the case back to Arizona to consider whether the school district itself may face some liability.
In Safford vs. Redding, Justice David H. Souter said the vice principal had reasonable grounds for questioning the students about drugs, but he went way too far.
"In sum, what was missing," Souter said, "was an indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear. We think that combination of these deficiencies was fatal to finding the search reasonable," he wrote.
Only Justice Clarence Thomas dissented. He complained the ruling "grants judges sweeping authority to second guess the measures that these officials take to maintain discipline in their schools and ensure the health and safety of the students in their charge."
Meanwhile, Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg would have gone further and upheld a liability ruling against the school officials in this case. "I have long believed that it does not require a constitutional scholar to conclude that a nude search of a 13-year-old child is an invasion of constitutional rights of some magnitude," Stevens wrote.
Shaquille O’Neal Traded to Cleveland Cavaliers
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/sports/basketball/26shaq.htmlShaquille O’Neal Traded to Cleveland Cavaliers
By HOWARD BECK
Published: June 25, 2009
For the third time in four years, Shaquille O’Neal is on the move, rumbling across the N.B.A. landscape, forcing adjustments, reassessments and revisions from coast to coast.
The Cleveland Cavaliers, in a bold stroke aimed at winning the championship, acquired O’Neal from the Phoenix Suns, in a multiplayer trade that will have ramifications across the league.
O’Neal, a 15-time All-Star, will join LeBron James, the league’s reigning most valuable player, to form one of the most powerful tandems in the league. The Cavaliers were already an elite team — winning an N.B.A.-best 66 games last season — but one that was missing any star power, or reliable scoring, beyond James.
That will no longer be a problem. Even at 37, O’Neal remains a fearsome threat in the low post. He averaged 17.8 points and 8.4 rebounds for the Suns last season, played in 75 games — his highest total in four years — and was named to the all-N.B.A. third team.
With O’Neal, Cleveland now has an answer to Orlando’s Dwight Howard, who bulldozed through the Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference finals.
James’s championship dreams were crushed in Game 6 of that series, and he left the arena in a deep funk, without congratulating the Magic or speaking to the news media.
The depression that settled over Cleveland in late May has now cleared.
The Suns and Cavaliers had been discussing parameters of a deal since before the February trading deadline. At the time, it was deemed too great a risk by the Cavaliers, given their dominant season and their enviable chemistry. What appeared like a gamble then looks essential now.
Although the Suns initially held out for a better package, they settled for a deal that gives them financial relief, and little else. Phoenix will receive two marginal rotation players, the past-his-prime center Ben Wallace and the swingman Sasha Pavlovic, plus $500,000 and a future second-round pick.
If the Suns waive Pavlovic, whose contract is only partially guaranteed, they can save around $9 million in salary and luxury-tax payments. They could save millions more if Wallace decides to retire and accept a buyout, a possibility he has entertained.
Where that leaves the Suns is unclear. They have been dangling Amare Stoudemire, their other All-Star big man, in trade discussions all year. Their All-Star point guard, Steve Nash, is entering the last year of his contract and has been notably disconcerted by the team’s direction.
Once a perennial contender in the West, Phoenix has traded away three essential players — O’Neal, Boris Diaw and Raja Bell — since December. They traded Shawn Marion, once a core player, 16 months ago, in the deal for O’Neal.
If the Suns embark on a wholesale rebuilding effort, Stoudemire and Nash could be the next to go. Nash has openly entertained the idea of reuniting with Knicks Coach Mike D’Antoni — with whom he had his best years in Phoenix — if not via trade then as a free agent in 2010.
The trade also has implications for Orlando and the Boston Celtics, the last two Eastern Conference champions, who will now be revisiting their defensive schemes to cope with O’Neal, the most dominant big man of his era, and James, perhaps the best all-around player in the league.
“It’s a great move for Cleveland,” said D’Antoni, who coached O’Neal for a half-season in Phoenix, “and I think that Shaq being closer to New York, playing four times against us, it’s not good for us.”
Although O’Neal is not the powerhouse he was earlier in the decade, when he led the Los Angeles Lakers to three straight titles, “he’s still one of the better players in the league,” D’Antoni said.
The trade could reverberate right into next summer. James is expected to become a free agent in July 2010. At least a dozen teams — including the Knicks — have been clearing salary-cap space to pursue James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, among others.
If O’Neal, who won titles with Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles and Wade in Miami — can help James secure his first ring, it will make it harder for James to leave his home state. At a minimum, the Cavaliers’ owner, Dan Gilbert, and General Manager Danny Ferry have again demonstrated to James that they will go to great lengths to win a title and keep James happy.
The Cavaliers will be O’Neal’s fifth team in his 17-year career, and his fourth since 2004, when the Lakers traded him to Miami. He has been partners with some of the best perimeter players of the modern era, including Bryant, Wade and Penny Hardaway. Now O’Neal will wind down his career next to one of the most talented players in N.B.A. history.
In Cleveland, James is known as the Chosen One and the fans as “witnesses.” O’Neal will now be the most significant face in the crowd, The Big Witness.
June 24, 1947: They Came From ... Outer Space?
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/06/dayintech_0624
June 24, 1947: They Came From ... Outer Space?
By Tony Long
06.24.08
1947: Pilot Kenneth Arnold sights a series of unidentified flying objects near Washington's Mt. Rainier. It's the first widely reported UFO sighting in the United States, and, thanks to Arnold's description of what he saw, leads the press to coin the term flying saucer.
Arnold was an experienced pilot with more than 9,000 hours of flying time. He had diverted from his flight plan -- Chehalis to Yakima, Washington -- to search for a Marine Corps C-46 transport plane reported down in the Cascades near the southwest slope of Mt. Rainier. A sweep of the area revealed nothing, and Arnold resumed his original course.
As Arnold recalled, the afternoon was crystal clear, and he was cruising at an altitude of 9,200 feet. A minute or two after noting a DC-4 about 15 miles behind and to the left of him, he was startled by something bright reflecting off his plane. At first he thought he had nearly hit another aircraft but as he looked off in the direction the light had come from, he saw nine "peculiar-looking" aircraft flying rapidly in formation toward Mt. Rainier.
As these strange, tailless craft flew between his plane and Mt. Rainier and then off toward distant Mt. Adams, Arnold noted their remarkable speed -- he later calculated that they were moving at around 1,700 mph -- and said he got a pretty good look at their black silhouettes outlined against Rainier's snowy peak. He later described them as saucer-like disks … something the gentlemen of the press glommed on to very quickly.
At the time, Arnold said, the appearance of these flying saucers didn't particularly alarm him, because he assumed they were some kind of experimental military aircraft. If they were, nobody in the War Department (soon to be merged into the Department of Defense) was saying.
In fact, the official Army Air Corps position was that Arnold had either seen a mirage or was hallucinating. He insisted he was perfectly alert and lucid, adding that he was not a publicity hound, either. He also invited both the Army and the FBI to investigate. The Army sent a couple of officers out to talk with Arnold. Even though they concluded that "a man of [his] character and apparent integrity" almost certainly saw what he claimed to have seen, the Army's initial verdict remained unchanged.
As Arnold's story leaked out, other people stepped forward to say they had seen the objects, too. The most-credible report may have come from a United Airlines crew, which reported seeing nine similar disk-like objects over Idaho only 10 days after Arnold's sighting.
Whether Arnold actually saw something or not, the resulting publicity touched off a worldwide spate of UFO sightings. Barely two weeks after Arnold's flight, the Roswell story broke, and UFO hysteria was on.
Was it the power of suggestion that led to all these sightings, or was 1947 a peak travel year for little green men? You decide.
Source: History.com, Project 1947
June 24, 1947: They Came From ... Outer Space?
By Tony Long
06.24.08
1947: Pilot Kenneth Arnold sights a series of unidentified flying objects near Washington's Mt. Rainier. It's the first widely reported UFO sighting in the United States, and, thanks to Arnold's description of what he saw, leads the press to coin the term flying saucer.
Arnold was an experienced pilot with more than 9,000 hours of flying time. He had diverted from his flight plan -- Chehalis to Yakima, Washington -- to search for a Marine Corps C-46 transport plane reported down in the Cascades near the southwest slope of Mt. Rainier. A sweep of the area revealed nothing, and Arnold resumed his original course.
As Arnold recalled, the afternoon was crystal clear, and he was cruising at an altitude of 9,200 feet. A minute or two after noting a DC-4 about 15 miles behind and to the left of him, he was startled by something bright reflecting off his plane. At first he thought he had nearly hit another aircraft but as he looked off in the direction the light had come from, he saw nine "peculiar-looking" aircraft flying rapidly in formation toward Mt. Rainier.
As these strange, tailless craft flew between his plane and Mt. Rainier and then off toward distant Mt. Adams, Arnold noted their remarkable speed -- he later calculated that they were moving at around 1,700 mph -- and said he got a pretty good look at their black silhouettes outlined against Rainier's snowy peak. He later described them as saucer-like disks … something the gentlemen of the press glommed on to very quickly.
At the time, Arnold said, the appearance of these flying saucers didn't particularly alarm him, because he assumed they were some kind of experimental military aircraft. If they were, nobody in the War Department (soon to be merged into the Department of Defense) was saying.
In fact, the official Army Air Corps position was that Arnold had either seen a mirage or was hallucinating. He insisted he was perfectly alert and lucid, adding that he was not a publicity hound, either. He also invited both the Army and the FBI to investigate. The Army sent a couple of officers out to talk with Arnold. Even though they concluded that "a man of [his] character and apparent integrity" almost certainly saw what he claimed to have seen, the Army's initial verdict remained unchanged.
As Arnold's story leaked out, other people stepped forward to say they had seen the objects, too. The most-credible report may have come from a United Airlines crew, which reported seeing nine similar disk-like objects over Idaho only 10 days after Arnold's sighting.
Whether Arnold actually saw something or not, the resulting publicity touched off a worldwide spate of UFO sightings. Barely two weeks after Arnold's flight, the Roswell story broke, and UFO hysteria was on.
Was it the power of suggestion that led to all these sightings, or was 1947 a peak travel year for little green men? You decide.
Source: History.com, Project 1947
$1.92 Million Fine For Illegal File Sharing
Robalini's Note: In case anyone forgot how creepy the recording industry is, here's a reminder...
http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2009/06/19/minnesota-mom-hit-with-192-million-fine-for-illegal-file-sharing/
Minnesota Mom Hit With $1.92 Million Fine For Illegal File Sharing
6/19/09
In the second file-sharing copyright-infringement trial against Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a Minnesota jury ruled that the 32-year-old mother of four owes $1.92 million to the four major labels after downloading and sharing 24 songs, Billboard.biz reports. The staggering ruling comes out to a cost of $80,000 per track illegally shared, a massive amount that the RIAA hopes will finally convince people to stop downloading music illegally.
“We are pleased that the jury agreed with the evidence and found the defendant liable,” RIAA spokeswoman Cara Duckworth said in a statement. Thomas-Rasset was previously found guilty in 2007 for similar charges and was hit with $222,000 in damages, a figure that seemed astronomical at the time. In what turned out to be an unfortunate turn of events for Thomas-Rasset, the verdict in the 2007 trial was thrown out because of an error in jury instructions, paving the way for a retrial and yesterday’s ruling.
As Rock Daily reported in 2007, Thomas used peer-to-peer network Kazaa to download the files in question. Despite housing roughly 1,702 songs in her folder, Thomas’ trial only focused on 24 of them, including tracks by Green Day, Janet Jackson, Godsmack and Richard Marx. Following yesterday’s ruling, Thomas will essentially have to pay $80,000 for illegally downloading a Richard Marx song. That is, if the RIAA chooses to collect the $1.92 million Thomas doesn’t have.
“Since day one, we have been willing to settle this case and we remain willing to do so,” RIAA’s Duckworth said, while Thomas’ lawyer Kiwi Camara indicated she hopes to find a settlement. For the RIAA, the ruling sends a firm message to illegal downloaders, which may be enough of a reward.
http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2009/06/19/minnesota-mom-hit-with-192-million-fine-for-illegal-file-sharing/
Minnesota Mom Hit With $1.92 Million Fine For Illegal File Sharing
6/19/09
In the second file-sharing copyright-infringement trial against Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a Minnesota jury ruled that the 32-year-old mother of four owes $1.92 million to the four major labels after downloading and sharing 24 songs, Billboard.biz reports. The staggering ruling comes out to a cost of $80,000 per track illegally shared, a massive amount that the RIAA hopes will finally convince people to stop downloading music illegally.
“We are pleased that the jury agreed with the evidence and found the defendant liable,” RIAA spokeswoman Cara Duckworth said in a statement. Thomas-Rasset was previously found guilty in 2007 for similar charges and was hit with $222,000 in damages, a figure that seemed astronomical at the time. In what turned out to be an unfortunate turn of events for Thomas-Rasset, the verdict in the 2007 trial was thrown out because of an error in jury instructions, paving the way for a retrial and yesterday’s ruling.
As Rock Daily reported in 2007, Thomas used peer-to-peer network Kazaa to download the files in question. Despite housing roughly 1,702 songs in her folder, Thomas’ trial only focused on 24 of them, including tracks by Green Day, Janet Jackson, Godsmack and Richard Marx. Following yesterday’s ruling, Thomas will essentially have to pay $80,000 for illegally downloading a Richard Marx song. That is, if the RIAA chooses to collect the $1.92 million Thomas doesn’t have.
“Since day one, we have been willing to settle this case and we remain willing to do so,” RIAA’s Duckworth said, while Thomas’ lawyer Kiwi Camara indicated she hopes to find a settlement. For the RIAA, the ruling sends a firm message to illegal downloaders, which may be enough of a reward.
Life Inc.
http://lifeincorporated.net/
This didn’t just happen.
In Life Inc., award-winning writer, documentary filmmaker, and scholar Douglas Rushkoff traces how corporations went from a convenient legal fiction to the dominant fact of contemporary life. Indeed as Rushkoff shows, most Americans have so willingly adopted the values of corporations that they’re no longer even aware of it.
This fascinating journey reveals the roots of our debacle, from the late Middle Ages to today. From the founding of the chartered monopoly to the branding of the self; from the invention of central currency to the privatization of banking; from the birth of the modern, self-interested individual to his exploitation through the false ideal of the single-family home; from the Victorian Great Exhibition to the solipsism of MySpace; the corporation has infiltrated all aspects of our daily lives. Life Inc. exposes why we see our homes as investments rather than places to live, our 401k plans as the ultimate measure of success, and the Internet as just another place to do business.
Most of all, Life Inc. shows how the current financial crisis is actually an opportunity to reverse this 600-year-old trend, and to begin to create, invest and transact directly rather than outsourcing all this activity to institutions that exist solely for their own sakes.
Corporatism didn’t evolve naturally. The landscape on which we are living - the operating system on which we are now running our social software - was invented by people, sold to us as a better way of life, supported by myths, and ultimately allowed to develop into a self-sustaining reality. It is a map that has replaced the territory.
Rushkoff illuminates both how we’ve become disconnected from our world, and how we can reconnect to our towns, to the value we can create, and mostly, to one another. As the speculative economy collapses under its own weight, Life Inc. shows us how to build a real and human-scaled society to take its place.
In Life Inc, Douglas Rushkoff presents the unnerving, unbelievable, but ultimately undeniable proof that our world has been overtaken by an absolutely artificial economy.
He shows how our most fundamental assumptions about money and commerce are actually false ones - artifacts of a 400-year-old plan by a waning aristocracy to maintain control of Western Europe. Although the architects of this corporatism have long since passed on, we still live in a landscape defined by their plans and have internalized their values as our own.
Taking on some of the biggest assumptions of our age, this is a book filled with dangerous ideas and rather unspeakable heresies:
Money is not a part of nature, to be studied by a science like economics, but an invention with a specific purpose.
Centralized currency is just one kind of money - one not intended to promote transactions but to promote the accumulation of capital by the wealthy.
Banking is our society’s biggest industry, and debt is our biggest product.
Corporations were never intended to promote commerce, but to prevent it.
The development of chartered corporations and centralized currency caused the plague; the economic devastation ended Europe’s most prosperous centuries, and led to the deaths of half of its population.
The more money we make, the more debt we have actually created.
Most importantly, Rushkoff shows how this moment of financial crisis is actually an opportunity to reinstate commerce and communities based in creating value for one another, rather than continuing to extract it for the benefit of institutions that no longer exist.
This didn’t just happen.
In Life Inc., award-winning writer, documentary filmmaker, and scholar Douglas Rushkoff traces how corporations went from a convenient legal fiction to the dominant fact of contemporary life. Indeed as Rushkoff shows, most Americans have so willingly adopted the values of corporations that they’re no longer even aware of it.
This fascinating journey reveals the roots of our debacle, from the late Middle Ages to today. From the founding of the chartered monopoly to the branding of the self; from the invention of central currency to the privatization of banking; from the birth of the modern, self-interested individual to his exploitation through the false ideal of the single-family home; from the Victorian Great Exhibition to the solipsism of MySpace; the corporation has infiltrated all aspects of our daily lives. Life Inc. exposes why we see our homes as investments rather than places to live, our 401k plans as the ultimate measure of success, and the Internet as just another place to do business.
Most of all, Life Inc. shows how the current financial crisis is actually an opportunity to reverse this 600-year-old trend, and to begin to create, invest and transact directly rather than outsourcing all this activity to institutions that exist solely for their own sakes.
Corporatism didn’t evolve naturally. The landscape on which we are living - the operating system on which we are now running our social software - was invented by people, sold to us as a better way of life, supported by myths, and ultimately allowed to develop into a self-sustaining reality. It is a map that has replaced the territory.
Rushkoff illuminates both how we’ve become disconnected from our world, and how we can reconnect to our towns, to the value we can create, and mostly, to one another. As the speculative economy collapses under its own weight, Life Inc. shows us how to build a real and human-scaled society to take its place.
In Life Inc, Douglas Rushkoff presents the unnerving, unbelievable, but ultimately undeniable proof that our world has been overtaken by an absolutely artificial economy.
He shows how our most fundamental assumptions about money and commerce are actually false ones - artifacts of a 400-year-old plan by a waning aristocracy to maintain control of Western Europe. Although the architects of this corporatism have long since passed on, we still live in a landscape defined by their plans and have internalized their values as our own.
Taking on some of the biggest assumptions of our age, this is a book filled with dangerous ideas and rather unspeakable heresies:
Money is not a part of nature, to be studied by a science like economics, but an invention with a specific purpose.
Centralized currency is just one kind of money - one not intended to promote transactions but to promote the accumulation of capital by the wealthy.
Banking is our society’s biggest industry, and debt is our biggest product.
Corporations were never intended to promote commerce, but to prevent it.
The development of chartered corporations and centralized currency caused the plague; the economic devastation ended Europe’s most prosperous centuries, and led to the deaths of half of its population.
The more money we make, the more debt we have actually created.
Most importantly, Rushkoff shows how this moment of financial crisis is actually an opportunity to reinstate commerce and communities based in creating value for one another, rather than continuing to extract it for the benefit of institutions that no longer exist.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
In Praise of Indecency
http://www.amazon.com/Praise-Indecency-Investigative-Censorship-Expression/dp/1573443506/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245270940&sr=8-2In Praise Of Indecency: The Leading Investigative Satirist Sounds Off on Hypocrisy, Censorship and Free Expression
by Paul Krassner
Product Description
Paul Krassner's style of personal journalism constantly blurs the line between observer and participant. Nowhere is this more apparent than this collection of essays and interviews culled from his columns at AVN Online. Whether being interviewed by Susie Bright, or imagining a conversation between Pee-Wee Herman and Pete Townshend about their busts by overzealous cops, or reminiscing about his friend Lenny Bruce, Krassner shines his keen satirical mind on the so-called taboos of today’s society and breaks them down to show the hypocrisy of the world’s "culture warriors." With a biting wit and tongue firmly planted in cheek, Mr. Krassner reveals the absurdity of our oppressive social mores in this stark, funny, and ultimately thought-provoking collection.
About the Author
Paul Krassner is the founder, editor and frequent contributor to the free-thought magazine The Realist. A key figure in the counterculture of the 1960s, he edited Lenny Bruce's autobiography How To Talk Dirty and Influence People. He currently writes columns for AVN Online and High Times Magazine and publishes the Disneyland Memorial Orgy poster at paulkrassner.com. In 2004 he received an ACLU Upton Sinclair Award for dedication to freedom of expression. His books include Pot Stories for the Soul, Tales of Tongue Fu, One Hand Jerking, and Confessions of a Raving Unconfined Nut. He continues to perform and lecture at college campuses, theaters and art galleries across the country.
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Product Details
Paperback: 110 pages
Publisher: Cleis Press (May 19, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1573443506
ISBN-13: 978-1573443500
The following are excerpts from In Praise of Indecency by Paul Krassner. Copyright 2009 by Paul Krassner:
The late Harry Reasoner, who was an ABC News anchor and a Sixty Minutes correspondent, wrote in his 1981 memoir, Before the Colors Fade:
“I’ve only been aware of two figures in the news during my career with whom I would not have shaken hands if called to deal with them professionally. I suppose that what Thomas Jefferson called a decent respect for the opinion of mankind requires me to identify those two. They were Senator Joseph McCarthy and a man named Paul Krassner or something like that who published a magazine called The Realist in the 1960s. I guess everyone knows who McCarthy was. Krassner and his Realist were part of a ‘60s fad -- publications attacking the values of the establishment -- which produced some very good papers and some very bad ones. Krassner not only attacked establishment values; he attacked decency in general, notably with an alleged ‘lost chapter’ from William Manchester’s book, The Death of a President.”
I appreciated Reasoner’s unintentional irony -- I had started as a political satirist in college, poking fun at McCarthyism -- but now I resented being linked with McCarthy. He had senatorial immunity for his libels. I risked lawsuits for what I published. What I really wanted to do was crash a party where Reasoner would be. “Excuse me, Mr. Reasoner,” I would have said, “I just wanted to say how much I enjoy your work on Sixty Minutes.” And then, as a photographer captured us shaking hands, I would add, “I’m glad to meet you. My name is Paul Krassner or something like that.” Instead, in 1984, when my one-person show opened, I decided to call it Attacking Decency in General. It ran for six months, and I received awards from the L.A. Weekly and Drama-Logue. That was my kind of revenge.
Decency is, of course, a sublimely subjective perception. And so arbitrary. In 1964, Lenny Bruce was found guilty of an “indecent performance” at the Café Au Go Go in Greenwich Village. In 2003, New York Governor George Pataki granted Bruce a posthumous pardon -- but it was in the context of justifying the invasion of Iraq. “Freedom of speech is one of the great American liberties,” Pataki said, “and I hope this pardon serves as a reminder of the precious freedoms we are fighting to preserve as we continue to wage the war on terrorism.”
Earlier that year, when rock-star/activist Bono received an award at the Golden Globes ceremony, he said, “This is really, really fucking brilliant.” The FCC ruled that he had not violated broadcast standards, because his use of the offending word was “unfortunate,” but “isolated and nonsexual.” You see, it was merely an “exclamative” adjective. The FCC did not consider Bono’s utterance to be indecent because, in context, he obviously didn’t use the word “fucking” to “describe sexual or excretory organs or activities.”
But in 2004, Justin Timberlake exposed Janet Jackson’s breast during the halftime extravaganza at the Super Bowl. I had never seen the media make such a mountain out of an implant. A few years later, a CBS lawyer would argue that the network shouldn’t be fined $550,000 for Janet’s half-second “wardrobe malfunction” because it was fleeting, isolated and unauthorized. Nevertheless, that half-second of Nipplegate provided a perfect excuse to crack down on indecency during an election year. And so the FCC reversed their own decision, contending that Bono’s utterance of “fucking brilliant” was “indecent and profane” after all.
On the radio in 2003, the word “fuck” was censored out of such songs as “Fuck It (I Don’t Want You Back),” “A Toast to Men (Fuck the Men)” and “She Hates Me,” with a chorus of “She fuckin’ hates me.” Although the lyrics were bleeped in these songs, disc jockeys were forced to be creative when it came to announcing the titles. The FCC had declared “fuck” to be “one of the most vulgar, graphic and explicit descriptions of sexual activity in the English language,” no matter the context. Conservative pundit Dennis Prager characterized the fight over “fuck” as central to civilization’s “battle to preserve itself.”
Then, in 2005, a ray of light. The FCC ruled that isolated use of words describing private body parts -- including “ass,” “penis” and “testicle” -- were not indecent if aired as scripted dialogue. As a self-taught semanticist, Lenny Bruce would’ve been intrigued by the changing attitudes toward the use of previously taboo words. He wouldn’t have been able to perform on TV his classic analysis of Las Vegas, because the heart of it was about the exploitation of “tits and ass.” But at the 2006 Emmy Awards, Helen Mirren and Calista Flockhart both proudly revealed that they were “ass over tits.”
“If a joke is just as funny saying ‘penis’ rather than ‘pecker,’ that’s fine,” said Greg Garcia about his NBC sitcom, My Name Is Earl, “but sometimes it’s funnier to say ‘pecker’ and that’s what you have to do because it’s our job to make people laugh.”
In a report on NPR about Voodoo Doughnuts, a shop in Portland, Oregon, the following was deleted for fear of complaints about indecency and bad taste: “The doughnut store is holding a ‘Cockfest’ contest next week. Contestants, all male, will see who can put the most doughnuts on their unit. Last year’s record was five. No pre-competition training -- that is, Viagra -- allowed.” And fast-food chain Jack in the Box was sued by rival Carl’s Jr. for implying in TV commercials that its Angus beef hamburgers are made with cow anuses.
At the request of defense lawyers, a Nebraska judge ordered a college student who was raped not to use the words “rape,” “victim,” “assailant” or “sexual assault” on the witness stand for fear of prejudicing the jury. Perhaps she could testify, “He stuck his thing in my thing against my will.” Next, can we expect George Carlin to introduce a new routine in his HBO special about “The five words you can’t say in court”?
A prudish school librarian tried to have an award-winning children’s book, The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron, banned because a ten-year-old orphan, who overhears someone say that he saw a rattlesnake bite his dog on the scrotum, thinks it sounded “like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much. It sounded medical and secret, but also important.”
In March 2007, on International Women’s Day, a public high school in Westchester, New York suspended three 16-year-old girls for saying the word “vagina” during a reading from The Vagina Monologues. Principal Richard Leprine said the girls were punished for disobeying orders not to say the word, which he referred to on the school’s homepage as “specified material.” Writer Brigitte Schoen suggested calling the play Elastic Muscular Tube Monologues. And an episode of 30 Rock revolved around the use of a euphemism for “cunt.” That show was titled “The C-Word.”
At the 2007 Emmy Awards, when Katherine Heigl heard her name announced, she mouthed the word “shit.” It didn’t take a professional lip-reader to ascertain that. Late-night TV show hosts and sitcom characters use this “lip flap” method to say forbidden words because they want to be bleeped. The live studio audience laughs when they hear the uncensored version, and the home viewers figure out what’s being said as if they’re doing a dirty-crossword puzzle.
(I once published a cartoon in The Realist by an artist who knew the New Yorker wouldn’t touch it. The guest on a TV show was saying, “Frankly, I didn’t give a damn about it!” A family watching at home heard him say, “Frankly, I didn’t give a bleep about it!” Thought balloons showed that the mother was thinking “Fuck?” The father was thinking “Piss?” The grandmother was thinking “Shit?” And the child was thinking “Crap?”)
When Sally Field accepted the best dramatic actress award for her role in Brothers & Sisters, her acceptance speech concluded, “Let’s face it, if the mothers ruled the world, there would be no g-[bleeped starting at this point]oddamned wars in the first place.” Ray Romano -- referring to Patricia Heaton, who had played his wife on Everybody Loves Raymond and now had a new sitcom partner, Kelsey Grammer on Back to You -- said, “Frasier is fucking my wife.” Bleeped, of course.
Not bleeped, but apologized for on-air: Diane Keaton on Good Morning America, fawning over Diane Sawyer’s plump lips, said she’d love to have had lips like that, because then she wouldn’t have had to “work on my fucking personality.” And Jane Fonda on the Today Show, talking about The Vagina Monologues, told Meredith Viera, “I was asked to do a monologue called ‘Cunt.’”
The award for hardcore irreverence without resorting to four-letter words goes to Kathy Griffin. When she received an Emmy for her reality show, My Life on the D-List, she declared, “A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus. [Holding up the trophy] This award is my god now. Suck it, Jesus!” Entirely deleted.
In 2006, Isaiah Washington, a black actor on Grey’s Anatomy, referred to fellow cast member T. R. Knight as a “faggot.” Next January, at the Golden Globe Awards, he uttered the same slur while denying that he had used it previously. Faggot has become the second f-word in the evolution of euphemisms. Now, regarding the euphemism for fuck, “somebody said the f-word” is morphing into “somebody dropped the f-bomb.” Of course, a multi-bigoted person could easily say “no s-word, that m-f-n-f ought to try out a g-d-c,” meaning “no shit, that motherfucking nigger faggot ought to try out a goddam cunt.” But one thing you never hear anybody say is “the n-h-h-word.” It’s still okay just to say “nappy-headed ho.”
During the 2007 Muscular Dystrophy telethon on Labor Day, Jerry Lewis was doing a bit about imaginary family members, and he started to say to one of the show’s crew members that his son, “the illiterate faggot,” but stopped before reaching the g-letters, saying “no” instead, and he apologized the next day for his “bad choice of words.” He was not wearing the T-shirt that says “Marriage Is For Fags.” Nor, for that matter, the T-shirt that says “Fuck Yoga.” Or the one that says “Fuck Frank Gehry.” Or the T-shirt with a slogan “Fuck da Eagles” that Fox apologized for showing in prime time.
Camille Paglia dissed Al Gore for his “prissy, lisping, Little Lord Fauntleroy persona” that “borders on epicene.” Ann Coulter called Gore “a total fag” and John Edwards a “faggot,” explaining that the word “has nothing to do with gays -- it’s a schoolyard taunt, meaning ‘wuss’” -- which, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, applies to men who are “unmanly.” She said that Bill Clinton’s promiscuity proves his “latent homosexuality,” and she wrote that the odds of Hillary Clinton “coming out of the closet” in 2008 were “about even money.” Hillary denied in The Advocate, a gay magazine, that she was a lesbian. Oh, yes, and John Gibson called Rosie O’Donnell a “fat lesbian vampire bat bully.”
At the Billboard Music Awards show in 2002, Cher responded to her critics with a minimalist “Fuck ‘em.” Next year on that same awards show, the relatively verbose Nicole Richie recounted her Simple Life experience: “Have you ever tried to get cowshit out of a Prada purse? It’s not so fucking simple.” The FCC ruled that Fox TV had violated their standards.
But, in what would turn out to be a pivotal decision, the FCC in 2005 reversed an indecency ruling against CBS’ The Early Show, determining that a Survivor contestant calling another player a “bullshitter” did not constitute indecency because it was used in the context of a news show.
I recalled that in 1984, when I was a guest on the Today Show, they wouldn’t reimburse my airfare or hotel bill, because “We’re a news show, not an entertainment show like Good Morning, America.” This, from Today, a program which once featured Willard Scott delivering the weather in Carmen Miranda drag and justifying it as entertainment. But, had NBC paid my way, it would’ve been “checkbook journalism.” Preceding me was a segment about private corporations running prisons. During my interview, Jane Pauley asked what kind of material I would include if I were publishing The Realist then (a year before I re-launched it). “Oh,” I replied, “I’d probably have a satire about private corporations running prisons.” I later learned that the Today Show had paid the expenses of the guest who was a corporate executive in the prison business. The line between news and entertainment was blurring.
In September 2007, a three-judge panel in a federal appeals court ruled in favor of Fox TV’s challenge against the FCC for indecent and profane language. During the live court hearing, C-Span viewers were treated to such uncensored words and phrases as “motherfucker,” “eat shit” and “fuck the USA.” Judge Peter Hall posed a hypothetical to FCC attorney Eric Miller: “This is being fed out by cable here, and presumably the broadcast media can pick it up. Let’s say they pick up a portion of [Fox lawyer Carter Phillips’] argument, and the words ‘fuck’ and ‘shit’ are actually broadcast over six o’clock news tonight. Is that going to be the subject of FCC hand-slapping?”
Miller: “I think plainly not.”
Hall: “Because?”
Miller: “For the reasons stated in this very order with respect to The Early Show case. The commission has emphasized that it will exercise great restraint when it comes to news programs.”
Hall: “Let me expand the hypothetical, to where Fox -- wanting to air, so its viewers are reminded of exactly what’s at issue here -- pulls up the clips from the Billboard Music Awards and shows those two instances of Cher and Nicole Richie, as background or in conjunction with reporting on what’s happening in this courtroom here today.”
Miller: “To be indecent, the use of the language has to be patently offensive, which under the commission’s analysis requires that it be presented -- ”
Hall: “So how is a rebroadcast of the clip in the context of news any less offensive than it is in the Billboard Awards?”
Miller: “Because in that context, as the commission explained in The Early Show order, it’s not being presented to pander or titillate or for shock value. It’s being presented to inform viewers what the case is about.”
The court reasoned that, “In recent times, even the top leaders of our government have used variants of these expletives in a manner that no reasonable person would believe referenced ‘sexual or excretory organs or activities.’” The decision cited examples that had been set by the White House. It was acceptable to broadcast George Bush, captured by a live microphone, saying to Tony Blair while chewing on a mouthful of butter roll, “See, the irony is what they [the UN] need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it’s over.”
Similarly, it was acceptable to broadcast Dick Cheney, also caught by a live mike on the Senate floor, saying, in response to Patrick Leahy -- who complained about Halliburton profiteering on the Iraq war without competitive bidding for contracts, and about Bush’s judicial nominees -- ”Go fuck yourself.” This was on the same day that the senate passed legislation, 99-1, described as “the Defense of Decency Act.” The Washington Times reported that Cheney “responded with a barnyard epithet, urging Mr. Leahy to perform an anatomical sexual impossibility.”
Finally, the court reversed the FCC’s reversal in the Bono case, and suddenly he was, once again, not guilty of indecency. It will now be retroactively acceptable to broadcast Bono saying, “This is really, really fucking brilliant.” Otherwise, Governor Pataki would surely have revoked his posthumous pardon of Lenny Bruce.
Women and Porn
Along with everything else, the marketing of porn continues to evolve. In the course of an interview with Susie Bright, editor of The Best American Erotica, I asked, “What aspect of online porn do you like?”
“The democratic nature of it,” she replied, “that you can search and you shall find. That its basis was all free, a free exchange. That it brought such authentic, first person networking and connection with it. Before the commercialization of online porn, there were years and infinite relationships and conversations that had built up. This was before ‘spam’ was something besides a Hawaiian loaf with cloves.”
“And what aspect of online porn do you dislike?”
“The con job of it, like everywhere else. The dominance of big, boring, uncreative monoliths like the rest of mainstream entertainment. Blech.”
But adult films aren’t just for men any more. That’s so 1970s. One survey showed that about 16% of men who have access to the Internet at work acknowledged having seen porn while on the job. Eight percent of women said they had. Another survey indicated that 20% of men and 13% of women watch porn at work.
And what about the women who produce porn? Writer/director Candida Royalle confesses, “I have absolutely no time for my sex life any more -- I’m just working too much -- and I’m engaged.” Certainly those who participated in an AVN panel about porn have a vested interest in it. Shirley Isaacson, co-creater of Impulse TV, used to be with the Spice Network, where subscribers viewing habits were monitored.
“After the kids went to school, the buys came in very heavily,” she recalls. “Around noon they started coming in again. They stopped around four when the kids started coming home from school. So we know that women watch by themselves.”
Carol Queen, president of Good Vibrations, says, “Fifteen years ago you really had to give women a lot of encouragement. Today there is a sub-category of more diverse, sex-positive college-age women who wouldn’t think twice about liking porn. Women would like to know just why these people are fucking. They often love that they’re fucking, but they think that plot devices are fairly stupid, and they would like to see a little discernment in the way that the plot, if there is a plot at all, is set up.”
Susie Bright adds, “Men wouldn’t enjoy movies featuring men with limp dicks. Well, women don’t like dry pussies either. They like to see women obviously getting off. I can’t repeat that enough. What’s funny to me are the producers who make hot stuff that women would like, who don’t have a clue how to reach women about it. The production values [of female-ejaculation videos like Cum Rain Cum Shine and Flower’s Squirt Shower] are terrible, the men are red-faced clowns, but the women’s orgasmic raindown is irresistible. Every woman I know who sees them has to go excuse herself and beat off.”
Susie has reported on her interview with porn director Tristan Taormino, whose Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women won AVN’s “Best Anal Sex Release” award:
“Tristan has a knack for arguing with powerful men in the movie business. Spike Lee asked her to be his sex/dyke consultant for his movie, She Hate Me, a comedy about -- among other things -- predatory lesbians on the Baby-Making March. Spike would tell her things like, ‘I really don’t know any lesbians that well,’ and then she’d look around at everyone who was working in his office and blink -- ’Hello! Are you blind?’
“He was flabbergasted at what she suggested, that vaginal orgasms are not the primary way women orgasm. She fought sooooo hard to get some realistic female sexiness in this movie, and after I saw the film, I was impressed with the battles she won and biting my lip at the ones she lost. Thank god she got a real vibrator in. She lost the strap-on dildo debate, though.
“But from a ‘this-is-worth-noticing’ perspective, the sheer numbers of black, Latin, Asian and bi-racial dykes in this film singlehandedly smashes the cliché that lesbian is for white college girls. There are so many heretofore ‘unseen women’ traipsing in and out of the sperm donor’s apartment (this is the comedy part) that their very presence is inspiring.”
On the AVN panel, Tristan said about porn flicks, “It’s frustrating, because there’s a segment of the industry that is still hanging on to the fact that only a tiny percentage of their customers are women and couples. I want to see people who clearly love sex, I want to see them having a good time. I want to see a lot of amazing real female orgasms. I want to see toys. I want to see vibrators.”
According to historian Rachel Maines in The Technology of Orgasm: “Hysteria,” the Vibrator and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction, the vibrator was originally developed to perfect and automate a function that doctors had long performed for their female patients -- the relief of physical, emotional and sexual tension through external pelvic massage, culminating in orgasm.
“Most of them did it,” said Dr. Maines, “because they felt it was their duty. It wasn’t sexual at all.”
Which brings us to Sherri Williams, a casualty of the war on pleasure. She was acquitted of the heinous crime of selling non-prescription vibrators. She had violated an Alabama statute, which bans the sale of vibrators and other sex toys. The law prohibited “any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.”
But the not-guilty verdict in her case was overturned by a 2-1 decision. In the Court of Appeals, the state’s attorney general defended the statute, arguing that, “a ban on the sale of sexual devices and related orgasm-stimulating paraphernalia is rationally related to a legitimate interest in discouraging prurient interests in autonomous sex.” Rationally related? Moreover, he said, “There is no constitutional right to purchase a product to use in pursuit of having an orgasm.” There isn’t?
Ironically, the FDA has approved a device specifically designed to help women achieve orgasm, marking the first time that the federal government has licensed an aid for women with sexual dysfunction. “The Eros,” which uses the same basic principle as Viagra to promote sexual arousal -- stimulating blood flow to the genital area -- is a battery-operated vacuum attached to a suction cup that fits over the clitoris. The device, available only by prescription, costs $359. However, fingers, tongues and penises are all free. And still legal.
This country was founded by pioneers with a lust for freedom and by puritans with a disdain for pleasure. The problem is that those who are still burdened by that streak of anti-pleasure keep trying to impose unnecessary restrictive laws upon those who are pro-pleasure. What ever happened to “the pursuit of pleasure” mentioned in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence?
Ironically, journalist Gita Smith wrote in August 2007, “In Alabama, you can sell guns on any street corner but you can’t sell sex toys. In other words, we are free to blow ourselves up at will. We just can’t blow up a dolly with big red lips and openings in her lifelike vinyl self.
“Alabama is a vibrator-free state. Well, technically you can go across state lines and buy sex toys in Georgia and Tennessee and carry them home. Today, the U.S. Supreme Court has shown a gleam of interest in this controversial state law. At the very least, this case seems to be a restraint-of-trade case as much as anything else, since the devices are sold in all the neighboring states. I would like to be a fly on the wall when oral arguments are heard.
“Justice Antonin Scalia: You say that the sale of the Twizzler-Twister should be banned?
“Alabama Guy: Yes, Your Honor.
“Justice Samuel Alito: And the Buzzer-Master?
“Alabama Guy: Yes, that too.
“Justice Clarence Thomas: What about the Coke can with the fake pubic hair?
“Alabama Guy: That one doesn’t vibrate, so that one’s okay.
“There is, and always has been, a strong strain of paternalism among lawmakers down here. And that paternalistic attitude makes them believe that they are the keepers of the Moral Keys. Us wee folk need protecting from sexual pleasures derived from plastic thingies made in China.”
But, on the first Monday of October 2007, the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to Alabama’s ban on the sale of sex toys. A three-judge panel had upheld the guilty verdict of the appeals court on February 14. Happy Valentine’s Day to the roots of fascism in the private parts of America.
Sherri Williams, who faces a $10,000 fine and one year of hard labor, called the Supreme Court’s decision not to review the law “further evidence of religion in politics.” She plans to sue again, this time on First Amendment free speech grounds.
“My motto,” she says, “has been they are going to have to pry this vibrator from my cold, dead hand. I refuse to give up.”
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