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Dahbud Mensch ~ is SANITY the PLAYGROUND of the unIMAGINATIVE ?

NONE of the ABOVE
Should Be A Voter Choice

US Politicians Fund Israel's Murder
and Maiming of US Naval Personnel

Click to Read Documented Proof of a Congress and Senate Cover Up Financially Supporting Israel's Maiming and Murder of U.S. Naval Personnel.


Cover Up: Attack on the USS Liberty ~ http://vimeo.com/15441774
Remember the U.S.S. Liberty
34 U.S. Military Dead, 171 Wounded
http://www.ussliberty.org/

Lying politicians refuse to bring charges against those who would murder and main U.S. Military

Why Do Politicians Always Want to Harm Children?

It was widely known before the Illegal Iraq war over
50% of the Iraqi population
were children under the age of 15
,

and the war began with this act of sheer cowardice, by a Republican,
War Criminal Bush Administration with Democrat Support.

US Politician's Idea of a Liberated Child?
It was widely known before the Iraq war over 50% of the Iraqi population were children under the  age of 15, and the war began with this act of sheer cowardice by a Republican, War Criminal Bush, Administration with Democrat Support.
Click to view Politician terrorists who voted for ILLEGAL Iraq War

Stop pretending the US is an uninvolved,
helpless party in the Israeli assault on Gaza

The Obama administration's unstinting financial, military and diplomatic support for Israel is a key enabling force in the conflict

Glenn Greenwald, theguardian.com, Saturday 17 November 2012 12.20 EST

A Palestinian man carries a wounded child at a hospital following an Israeli air raid in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, on November 17, 2012. Photograph: Moiz Salhi/AFP/Getty Images
A Palestinian man carries a wounded child at a hospital following an Israeli air raid in Beit Lahia
in the northern Gaza Strip, on November 17, 2012. Photograph: Moiz Salhi/AFP/Getty Images

A central premise of US media coverage of the Israeli attack on Gaza - beyond the claim that Israel is justifiably "defending itself" - is that this is some endless conflict between two foreign entitles, and Americans can simply sit by helplessly and lament the tragedy of it all. The reality is precisely the opposite: Israeli aggression is possible only because of direct, affirmative, unstinting US diplomatic, financial and military support for Israel and everything it does. This self-flattering depiction of the US as uninvolved, neutral party is the worst media fiction since TV news personalities covered the Arab Spring by pretending that the US is and long has been on the side of the heroic democratic protesters, rather than the key force that spent decades propping up the tyrannies they were fighting.

Both the US Senate and House have already passed resolutions unequivocally supporting Israel, thus earning the ultimate DC reward: the head-pat from Aipac, which "praised the extraordinary show of support by the Senate for Israel's struggle against terrorist attacks on its citizens". More bipartisan Congressional cheerleading is certain to come as the attacks continue, no matter how much more brutal they become. [Click to continue reading]



Miracle of Miracles: It rained a little

Click to visit seismic and weather page
Click to visit seismic and weather page



Lest We Forget B.M.T.

December 20, 1941 ~ June 30, 2014

Our favorite Bunny = B.M.T,
Our Favorite Bunny
We will sincerely miss you B !!! ~@~ & Friends
[B.M.T. was one of the Hog Farm Bus Drivers]
[Note: The above event is over and happened on Saturday, July 19, 2014]



Keith Lampe ~ Co-Founder of YIPPIE and Progressive Activist Groups

Happy 83rd Birthday Pine !!!
Keith Lampe ~ Happy 83rd Birthday
July 25th: Keith Lampe, Ro-Non-So-Te, Ponderosa Pine
luv2u from: flyingsnail & friends, ~@~



37 Tons of David Victorson:
A Tale of Ballsy Redemption

How a brash and colorful big time outlaw drug dealer addict who smuggled record-breaking amounts of marijuana became a brash outspoken popular healer of addicts and defender of AA.

Paul Krassner, the fix, 07/14/14, Article Source

David Victorson
David Victorson

“In a time of universal deceit,” George Orwell once said, “telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” That maxim certainly applies to David Victorson’s book, 37 Tons. Its title is the record-breaking amount of marijuana he smuggled on a freighter from Colombia to Seattle.

“I heard the door of my hotel room being smashed open,” his memoir begins. “As I jumped out of bed I was ordered to get to my knees. Six heavily armed Bolivian security police nervously stood over me. They handcuffed me, put a black cloth bag over my head, and shoved me down the hall to the elevator.”

Victorson stayed handcuffed to a bed in a prison cell for three months, waiting to be extradited to the U.S. where he would be sentenced to four concurrent five-year sentences. Over the ten-year period before his arrest, he earned around 30 million dollars. Victorson started selling pot at age 16 in Boston, and later smuggled hash and hash oil from Amsterdam, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. He also smuggled pot, cocaine, emeralds, and gold from Bolivia and Colombia. An outlaw who enjoyed taking on anything resembling the establishment, he once boasted to a friend of how he, as the friend put it, "brought to their knees" some Texas bankers who had been used in a money-laundering scheme involving a front "investment company" he ran in San Francisco.

His prison sentences included 30 days at La Modello in Bogota, Colombia, three months at a military prison in La Paz, Bolivia, and four years at Lompoc Federal Prison in the U.S.

Book cover of 37 TONS by David Victorson
Book cover of "37 TONS" by David Victorson

After being released from living behind bars, Victorson was assigned to a parole officer who warned him that he would not be allowed to drink any alcohol or consume any drugs, and although he intended to follow that rule, he soon surrendered to the temptation of booze and coke.

On a Friday, his parole officer said, “You have given me six dirty drug tests.” Victorson responded, “I knew they were dirty. I have been high every day since I got out.” The parole officer gave him an ultimatum: either get into a drug treatment program by Monday or go back to prison for eight more years. He chose rehab, and it completely changed the life he had been so busy self-destructing.

Ultimately, he became a skillful drug counselor and for some years a rehab center owner himself, specializing in treating young addicts. For years he had sold drugs without thinking about any harm the drugs might cause to his customers, but now his career evolved into getting addicts off drugs. Over time he developed a considerable following as a rehab leader and then as a blunt and colorful speaker popular among some AA groups. A charismatic man, he drew some buzz about leading a cult.

Victorson grew up in Dorchester, Massachusetts and currently lives in Washington, D.C. His life between those locations has been unique, and I was curious to know more.

How did you get your rehab career launched from nothing?

I started as a counselor and worked my way up to VP marketing. I was the most successful marketing guy out of 54 hospitals and had developed a loyal following who referred patients to the hospital I represented, making me a rainmaker of sorts, thus motivating the hospital board to want to keep me close. So they offered me the opportunity to run my own programs. After a few years I brought in a venture capital group that funded the acquisition of our own facilities. The company was sold in 2007 for $96 million. I of course had a visible criminal past and, being a recovering person, [was] never accepted in the inner circle. I was looked at as kind of a well-paid second-class citizen.

And yet, didn’t you also have a kind of cult following?

I don’t care for the image of a following. It reminds me of an elf in puffy green shorts playing a flute while skipping on goat-like legs. Who the fuck follows that character? I was written about quite extensively – from the Seattle Times to Playboy - with a slant toward being an outlaw and then again for being a businessman with a criminal past. I speak at a lot at AA meetings but I don’t consider my fellow addicts to be followers. I promote the smoking of pot quite openly even though I am an addict and don’t smoke any more. But I do love that bud.

Victorson, his dog Ainge and a custom smuggling boat with a Carey design hull and two 350LT1 twin stern engines. Top speed: 65 knots.
Victorson, his dog Ainge and a custom smuggling boat with a Carey
design hull and two 350LT1 twin stern engines. Top speed: 65 knots.

In what way were you a businessman?

From 1984 to 2006 I developed, owned, and operated a treatment program, Focus Healthcare, which treated over 25,000 chronic drug addicts and alcoholics. The admissions office served as a call center – located in San Juan Capistrano, connected with hospitals in Delaware, Florida, California, Georgia, and Ohio - staffed by recovering counselors, open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Over the years, we averaged more than 50,000 calls per month. Of the people calling in looking to get help, only half of one percent had the financial ability to get into any treatment program. This became a puzzle that was unsolvable. Focus Healthcare gave away a lot of free treatment but was in no way capable of handling the volume of addicts calling in who had no ability to pay for any treatment.

So, in fact, what happens to these people is that they get referred to AA, NA or other free 12-step organizations. I also spoke around the country to union memberships, including the Teamsters, CWA, UFCW, public school teachers, human resource directors, representatives for the Screen Actors Guild, professional and parent groups. I also worked as a consultant with Michael Keaton on the movie, Clean and Sober. Currently, I speak at various 12-step meetings in Washington D.C., halfway houses, and homeless shelters about my own recovery and the war on addiction that is not being fought.

What drug do you think is the most destructive?

To this day and for the last 31 years of my sobriety, alcohol continues to be the number one abused drug in our country. It will kill you during detox or through liver damage. No other abused substance has such a destructive history.

What do you think about this recent Alternet blog criticizing Alcoholics Anonymous? “Peer-reviewed studies peg the success rate of AA somewhere between 5% and 10%. That is, about one of every 15 people who enter these programs is able to become and stay sober. In 2006, one of the most prestigious scientific research organizations in the world, the Cochrane Collaboration, conducted a review of the many studies conducted between 1966 and 2005 and reached a stunning conclusion: 'No experimental studies unequivocally demonstrated the effectiveness of AA' in treating alcoholism. This group reached the same conclusion about professional AA-oriented treatment (12-step facilitation therapy), which is the core of virtually every alcoholism-rehabilitation program in the country."

Can you imagine doing a study of a program that is anonymous? No one tracks how many people go into AA meetings. No one follows the members to study their rate of sobriety. There is no possibility of any study that could do anything but guess for whatever agenda they are supporting whether AA works or not.

AA states there are over 24 million people attending 12-step meetings in almost every country in the world. These meetings are free; each meeting is autonomous. AA does not endorse or oppose any causes. AA does not promote itself - if someone wants to go to a meeting it is because they are attracted to the people who are sober in meetings. When someone gets sober, their hormones wake up. It might be a more stunning conclusion that members of AA masturbate with more satisfaction than the pretend statisticians trying to study them.

Aside from any AA members masturbating, do you recall any particular surprise at any of the meetings you attended?

When I was in my first year of sobriety I went to a lot of AA meetings in Burbank, Ca. As a newcomer to AA, I was quite impressed with people who had years without drinking or drugging. Two such men went to a meeting I was a regular at, one guy with 18 years sober and the other with 19. I listened to those men when they spoke at meetings. I was 33 and they were in their sixties so I never talked to them socially. One day the FBI came into that meeting and arrested them. It turned out they were sober bank robbers. After fucking up a robbery while drunk, they had made a conscious business decision to be sober bank robbers. Were this an Aesop fable, the moral of the story would be: It is possible to stop drinking and drugging and stay the same character you were during your inebriated days, or being free to choose you could learn a different way to live.

So, then, what does AA mean to you? What about those 12 steps?

Meetings are a place where souls connect. It doesn’t matter what color, how much money, or what gender. Under the cover of self-interest is the caring for the collective. There is one common interest - a desire to recognize and change self-destructive behavior. Each person makes that decision for themselves without rules or judgment. The truth is, if I am not in recovery, I am in addiction. I carried my addiction to an extreme with heroin, cocaine, freebase, and alcohol. It led me to prisons in Costa Rica, Bolivia, Colombia, and finally here in the U.S.

Than it led me to a psychiatric hospital for three months called a treatment program. I built a sober life, became successful as a father, husband, and businessman, only to relapse in my behavior and gamble away millions of dollars to a new addiction. So I wonder, am I an expert on addiction? I wish the pain I have suffered was mine alone to bear, but the truth is, my extreme expertise in addiction destroyed the innocent. My wife once told me, “You break people when you’re in addiction.”

David Victorson and his family
David Victorson and his family

What makes you different from other folks in AA?

I started out in life disconnected from my family. I did not like them and they did not like me. I had a need to belong but could not find a safe place to belong to. I knew this at six years of age long before drugs and alcohol became part of my life. As I grew older I never had a job or a career with a company, I did not have a family, I only had me. So when I got sober I started at zero. I had no life to rebuild. I was a career criminal without a career. Everyone I knew was in the black market, so I could no longer know them.

I had nothing to go back to or reconnect with. Almost everyone I have met in 12-step meetings had something - a family, a career, and often times both. So my life became understanding addiction and solving the puzzle of how to help an addict at that point in time, that moment of clarity when they are willing to surrender and open to change.

What would you say is the answer to the war on drugs?

I look at it as a war on addiction. As a society we have to agree it makes more sense to get rid of the market for drugs as opposed to imprisoning the consumer. Treatment has to be free and available to anyone who needs it. A medical evaluation done by an MD, a safe detox, and then 60 days in a low-cost housing environment with a program that includes treatment for the mind, body, and soul. And evening trips to 12-step meetings where the addict is accepted and can connect to other human beings. This sounds simple but it’s a lot of work. If the programs were there, the addict would come.

Drugs and alcohol are not the problem. It is the addict who is the problem, and that is what needs to be addressed. Addiction is a global problem. I have met and worked with a group from Uganda trying to get treatment facilities organized in Africa, where alcoholism runs rampart. I have a good friend, director of the New Paradigm Fund, who is helping to support a 12-step recovery program in Indonesia where heroin addiction is a huge problem. There are hundreds of millions of dollars spent on drug interdiction and more spent on the writing of policy to govern policing the drug trade. How about we just do the work and get 30,000 to 50,000 people a month off of drugs and back into society.

Is that why you wrote 37 Tons?

I wrote that book so I would be able to talk about the subject matter in a public forum. (Information at 37tons.com.) I believe with no ego attached but in the purest sense my life is my professional expertise. I am an addict but believe in the legalization of marijuana. I was a smuggler and pirate but believed civil law was created for people in power, and that was not me so therefore it should not apply to those of us it did not benefit. I believe all people are born equally free yet there are “have-mores” and a 1% who seem to want to fuck with that birthright.

From all your experience, on the journey from addiction to sobriety, what’s the main thing that you’ve learned?

A 35-year-old man is an avid Boston Red Sox fan. He has saved his money to purchase tickets to a Red Sox versus New York Yankees game at Fenway Park, the game of the year. As he approaches his seat he is filled with the anticipation of a great game. He sits down and hears a voice yell out, “Hey, Dave.” He looks around but sees no one he knows. As the game progresses he hears the voice again, “Hey, Dave,” only this time it sounds closer, so he stands up and looks around.

Once again he can’t identify where the voice is coming from. Now he’s frustrated and getting angry. Someone is disrupting his perfect afternoon. The seventh inning approaches and he decides to get himself a large popcorn and a beer. On his return just before sitting down, he hears the voice again, this time louder, “Hey, Dave!” Now infuriated, he throws his arms up in frustration, spilling the popcorn and beer on the woman sitting in front of him. He puts his hand in front of his mouth, making a temporary loudspeaker, and yells back, “My name is not Dave.”

That story epitomizes my attitude from early on. I thought everything in life was about me. I tried to make life’s circumstances work out in my favor, often overlooking the consequences to other people. As I traveled to remote parts of the world, I was looking for opportunity to get more for myself. I took more money than I needed. I bought more houses, cars, and clothes than I could ever use in three lifetimes. I took extreme risks with my freedom and life to have more. I never had an idea of what was enough so I could never reach the goal and be content.

During that period of my life, I was generous with what I had, but I had a lot to be generous with. If I had had less, would I have been so generous, or was I just serving my own interest by giving a little when I had a lot? Who the fuck knows? What I do know is, if you are born in an environment where there is little to no food, clothing or shelter, and a constant threat to your safety, and the opportunity to quickly improve all of this [appears], that most children will take it.

There are kids growing up like that every day in our country and around the world. I was one of them, and I know that in order to survive you will take what you can while you can, because there is no hope that tomorrow will be a better day. These are the addicts in waiting.

Paul Krassner’s latest book is Pot Stories for the Soul: An Updated Edition for a Stoned America, available at paulkrassner.com.



EVACUATE OR BE SORRY ~ GROW UP OR DIE ~ Steve Bell on the Israeli airstrikes on Gaza
EVACUATE OR BE SORRY ~ GROW UP OR DIE
Steve Bell on the Israeli airstrikes on Gaza ~ Cartoon Source



Psst! Your phone is snooping on you.
What you need to know and how to stop it

[Click to view instructional video]

Charles Arthur, Ian Anderson, Matt Hill, Pascal Wyse, Alex Purcell and Paul Boyd, Length: 3min 10sec, theguardian.com, Wednesday 16 July 2014

Revelations about the detailed location records stored on smartphones indicates just how much information companies including Apple and Google are able to gather. But it's not just the phone-makers – apps on your phone are hungry for your personal info too. So is your phone snooping on you? Here, we reveal what you need to know – and whether you can do anything about it



Dahbud Mensch ~ is SANITY the PLAYGROUND of the unIMAGINATIVE ?

NONE of the ABOVE
Should Be A Voter Choice

More Proof Politicians Despise the
Integrity of Those Who Elect Them

Emergency surveillance bill clears Commons

Data retention and investigatory powers bill is agreed after angry exchanges alleging an abuse of parliament

Press Association, theguardian.com, Wednesday 16 July 2014 03.18 EDT

A hard core of up to 56 MPs opposed the deal between the three main parties after the frontbenches agreed on the urgent need for new laws. The data retention and investigatory powers bill was agreed at third reading by an overwhelming majority of 416, after MPs voted 449 to 33 in favour. [Click to continue reading]



Google Develops Lethal WMD?

FBI warns driverless cars could be used as 'lethal weapons'

Internal report sees benefits for road safety, but warns that autonomy will create greater potential for criminal 'multitasking'

Mark Harris, theguardian.com, Wednesday 16 July 2014 06.14 EDT

In an unclassified but restricted report obtained by the Guardian under a public records request, the FBI predicts that autonomous cars “will have a high impact on transforming what both law enforcement and its adversaries can operationally do with a car.” [Click to continue reading]


• While we're at it: Cyberbully lies erode 3/4 of flyingsnail access



The GOP self-destruction is complete:
millennials officially hate conservatives

The backlash machine has finally backfired with a generation that cringes at old people yelling at gay clouds

Ana Marie Cox, theguardian.com, Monday 14 July 2014 06.15 EDT, Article Source

Sarah Palin's ability to put anything on the internet without any intermediary has rendered her as reckless as any tween with a SnapChat account. Photograph: David Lytle / Flickr via Creative Commons
Sarah Palin's ability to put anything on the internet without any intermediary has rendered her as
reckless as any tween with a SnapChat account. Photograph: David Lytle / Flickr via Creative Commons

Conservatives are stuck in a perpetual outrage loop. The reappearance of Todd Akin, the horror-movie villain immortality of Sarah Palin, the unseemly celebration of the Hobby Lobby decision – these all speak to a chorus of "la-la-la-can't-hear-you" loud enough to drown out the voice of an entire generation. Late last week, the Reason Foundation released the results of a poll about that generation, the millennials; its signature finding was the confirmation of a mass abandonment of social conservatism and the GOP. This comes at a time when the conservative movement is increasingly synonymous with mean-spirited, prank-like and combative activism and self-important grand gestures. The millennial generation has repeatedly defined itself as the most socially tolerant of the modern era, but one thing it really can't stand is drama.

Republicans were already destined for piecemeal decimation due to the declining numbers of their core constituency. But they don't just have a demographic problem anymore; they have stylistic one. The conservative strategy of outrage upon outrage upon outrage bumps up against the policy preferences and the attitudes of millennials in perfect discord.

We all can recognize the right's tendency to respond to backlash with more "lash" (Akin didn't disappear, he doubled down on "legitimate rape"), but it seems to have gained speed with the age of social media and candidate tracking. The Tea Party's resistance to the leavening effect of establishment mores and political professionals has been a particularly effective accelerant. Palin's ability to put anything on the internet without any intermediary has rendered her as reckless as any tween with a SnapChat account. Akin's whiny denouncement of Washington insiders is likely to make him more credible with a certain kind of base voter. The midterms are, as we speak, producing another round of Fox News celebrities, whether or not they win their races: the Eric Cantor-vanquishing David Brat, Mississippi's Chris McDaniel and the hog-castrating mini-Palin, Jodi Ernst of Iowa.

The fire-with-fire attitude of hardline conservatives has its roots in the petulant cultural defensiveness adopted by the GOP – especially the Christian right – during the culture wars of the 90s. Their siege mentality bred an attitude toward liberals that saw every instance of social liberalization as proof of their own apocalyptic predictions and conspiracy theories. Gay marriage will lead to acceptance of beastiality and pedophilia. "Socialized medicine" will lead to the euthanizing Grandma. Access to birth control will lead to orgies in the streets.

Then came Obama's election, the Zapruder tape for the right's tin-foil hat haberdashers – a moment in history that both explained and exacerbated America's supposed decline. Dinesh D'Souza, the Oliver Stone of the Tea Party, has now made two movies about the meaning of Obama's presidency. The first, 2016: Obama's America, garnered an astounding $33m at the box office, and his lawyers blamed disappointing returns from this summer's America on a Google conspiracy to confuse moviegoers about its showtimes. (Of course.)

The GOP has long staked a claim on The Disappearing Angry White Man, but they have apparently ever-narrowing odds of getting a bite at millennials, who appear to be more like The Somewhat Concerned Multicultural Moderate. This generation is racially diverse, pro-pot, pro-marriage equality and pro-online gambling. They are troubled by the deficit but believe in the social safety net: 74% of millennials, according to Reason, want the government to guarantee food and housing to all Americans. A Pew survey found that 59% of Americans under 30 say the government should do more to solve problems, while majorities in all other age groups thought it should do less.

The Rupe-Reason poll teases out some of the thinking behind the surge of young people abandoning the GOP, and finds a generation that is less apt to take to the streets, Occupy-style, than to throw a great block party: lots of drugs, poker and gays! Millennials don't want to change things, apparently – they want everyone to get along. The report observes "[m]any specifically identified LGBTQ rights as their primary reason for being liberal"; and "[o]ften, they decided they were liberals because they really didn’t like conservatives."

But liberals can't be complacent about their demographic advantage. Their challenge is to resist the impulse to copycat the hysteria that has worked so well for the right historically. "No drama Obama" was the millennials' spirit animal – his popularity has sunk with the economy, but also with the administration's escalating rhetoric. Today, under-30 voters show a distinct preference for Hillary Clinton (39% according to Reason, 53% according to the Wall Street Journal), and no wonder: she's as bloodless as Bill was lusty, as analytical as Bill was emotional. The professorial Elizabeth Warren is the logical (very logical) backup.

Right now, Democrats benefit from both the form and content of conservative message: this next generation is not just inclusive, but conflict-adverse. Millennials cringe at the old-man-yelling-at-gay-clouds spectacle of the Tea Party. Perhaps this comes from living in such close proximity of their parents for so long. If this generation does have a political philosophy, it's this: "First, do no harm." If it has a guiding moral principle, it's simpler: "Don't be embarrassing."

Read more on the state of the GOP from Guardian US Opinion:

• Monica Potts: The Republican war on pizza

• Jessica Valenti: The GOP is calling women 'sluts' again. Will Democrats do anything?

• Trevor Timm: The Senate is giving more power to the NSA, in secret

• Ana Marie Cox: Rick Perry just might be the lunatic the GOP is looking for in 2016

• Plus: Clinton author Edward Klein – the difference between the truth and a lie


Does Joint Responsibility Rule of Conspiracy apply to Palin for her attack on Gabrielle Giffords, which is similar to Charles Manson's helter skelter attack?
Does Joint Responsibility Rule of Conspiracy apply
to Palin, for her attack on Gabrielle Giffords, which
is similar to Charles Manson's helter skelter attack?



I Am Divine:
‘the Marlene Dietrich of 70s trash culture’

Back in the days when there were still plenty of taboos to be broken, Divine and John Waters had a crack at them all

John Patterson, The Guardian, Friday 11 July 2014, Article Source

Divine
Divine

It must be hard to be a renegade these days. Everyone’s so tolerant and unshockable, every taboo’s already been shattered, no one’s impressed any more. What makes I Am Divine so much fun is that it leapfrogs back half a century to a time when long hair was shocking, unwed pregnancy was a scandal, homosexuality was illegal (and almost invisible), smoking reefer turned you communist, and rock’n’roll was a conspiracy to mongrelise and enslave the once-proud white race.

Those were the days! If you wanted to outrage people, it was like: where do I start? It was a task bravely undertaken by Divine and John Waters, the Dietrich and Von Sternberg of 70s trash culture. He was the PT Barnum of the era’s nationwide midnight movie scene; she (or “shim” as Waters called her) was the outrageous, acerbic, up-for-anything-and-I-mean-anything proto-punk missing link between Warhol’s blase, zonked-out Factory drag queens and the in-your-face RuPaul.

Where the acid-drenched, “freaks not hippies” hard outer edge of the counterculture met the gathering wave of post-60s revolutions in gender and sexual identity, there they built their merry little parallel universe of beautiful insane misfits, innocents and oddballs, Egg Ladies, singing assholes and dog shit-gargling 300-pound drag queens. They proudly called themselves “cinematic terrorists” even as the Weather Underground were busy bombing stuff nationwide, and Divine once proudly and loudly claimed responsibility for the still unsolved Manson murders onstage in San Francisco in 1969.

Divine’s sudden death on the brink of success in 1988, and Waters’s subsequent (and gratifying) elevation to quasi-official National Weird Old Uncle Emeritus status have left Divine’s story somewhat in the shadows since. I had forgotten Divine’s career as a raspy singer-rapper who somehow conjoined punk with disco, and provoked disgust on Top Of The Pops with her proudly flexed gut and horrorshow makeup. We see Divine performing with the acid-casualty San Francisco theatre troupe the Cockettes, pushing a shopping cart full of mackerel onstage and pelting the audience with them. Here’s that shy, overweight suburban gay kid with a predilection for dressing up as Vivien Leigh or Liz Taylor, thrown out by his parents on coming out, fully come into his own at last.

My favourite detail comes from his mother Frances. Belatedly suspecting her son Glenn might be this “Divine” she’d seen on gay magazine covers, she rushed to see the first of his movies she could find: Female Trouble, which took a flamethrower to every last one of Frances’s treasured suburban ideals. But she called him right after, they cried, and were fully reconciled until he died. A happy ending to make up for the unhappy one.



Keith Lampe ~ Co-Founder of YIPPIE and Progressive Activist Groups

Fzoogle Bogus Internet Intent = Bullshit

Google Warns on CLG News: 'Be Careful With This Message,'
[and] Removes Every Link in Newsletter

[• Click to View: Cyberbully's "compromised" lies wipe out 3/4 of flyingsnail access]

News Updates from CLG 11 Jul 2014 http://www.legitgov.org/

All links are here: http://www.legitgov.org/#breaking_news

(Previous edition: Fukushima radiation 'ice plan' failing to take hold, which Google relegated to the spam bin, of course. Google subscribers: Google Filter Instructions for CLG Newsletter.)

Please share, repost, retweet this one, folks: Google Warns on CLG News: 'Be Careful With This Message,' Removes Every Link in Newsletter Posted by Lori Price, www.legitgov.org 11 Jul 2014 In addition to relegating today's CLG Newsletter to the spam bin (which I assumed would happen as I had numerous references to Israel, the NSA, and Fukushima), I received a 'warning' in my own Gmail email account: 'Be careful with this message. It contains content that's typically used to steal personal information.' Additionally, NSAssociate Google removed every link in the email. If this happened to anyone else, please feel free to let me know: lori at legitgov.org, and I will forward you an uncensored version of Friday's CLG Newsletter.

Minor tsunami hits Fukushima area after strong quake --Sea levels cannot be gauged near the Fukushima nuclear plant as the tsunami monitoring system was destroyed in 2011. 12 Jul 2014 A minor tsunami hit large swaths of the Tohoku region early Saturday, including in a city near the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, after a strong 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck off the country's Pacific coast. There were no immediate reports of damage following the quake and tsunami, however, with authorities lifting all advisories roughly two hours later...On Friday, the crippled plant was skirted by tropical storm Neoguri.

Japan earthquake near Fukushima triggers small tsunami --Powerful quake struck off the coast of Fukushima early Saturday 11 Jul 2014 A strong earthquake hit Japan's northern coast near the nuclear power plant crippled in 2011. The earthquake earlySaturday triggered a small tsunami and injured at least one person. Japan's Meteorological Agency said the 6.8-magnitude quake struck 10 kilometres below the sea surface off the coast of Fukushima. The 4:22 a.m. quake shook buildings in Tokyo, about 250 kilometres northwest of the epicentre.

Typhoon Neoguri heads for Fukushima nuclear plant 10 Jul 2014 Typhoon Neoguri, the worst storm to hit Japan in 15 years, is likely to reach areas near the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant by Friday morning, forecasters have warned. The site's operator said workers were bracing for the storm, which has been downgraded from a typhoon to a 'severe storm'. The storm's massive downpours present an extra headache for the plant where workers are locked in a daily struggle to contain huge amounts of contaminated water, used to keep the destroyed reactors cool, as well as tainted radioactive groundwater leaking into the sea.

C.D.C. Labs Closed After Anthrax and H5N1 Bird Flu Exposure Accidents --Also, two of six vials of smallpox recently found stored in National Institutes of Health laboratory contained live virus capable of infecting people 11 Jul 2014 After potentially serious back-to-back laboratory accidents, federal health officials announced on Friday that they had temporarily closed the flu and anthrax laboratories at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and halted shipments of all infectious agents from the agency's highest-security labs. The accidents, and the C.D.C.'s emphatic response to them, could have important consequences for the many laboratories that store high-risk agents and the few that, even more controversially, specialize in making them more dangerous. In one episode last month, as many as 75 80 C.D.C. employees may have been exposed to live anthrax bacteria after potentially infectious samples were sent to laboratories unequipped to handle them. In a second accident, disclosed on Friday, a C.D.C. lab accidentally contaminated a relatively benign flu sample with a dangerous deadly H5N1 bird flu strain that has killed 386 people since 2003.

CDC says it improperly sent dangerous pathogens in five incidents in past decade 11 Jul 2014 Federal government laboratories in Atlanta improperly sent potentially deadly pathogens, including anthrax, botulism bacteria and a virulent bird flu virus, to other laboratories in five separate incidents over the past decade, officials said Friday. Theincidents, which raise troubling questions about the government's ability to safely store and transport dangerous microbes, prompted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to halt operations at its bioterrorism rapid-response lab and an influenza lab and impose a moratorium on any biological material leaving numerous other CDC labs.

Russia ready to extend Snowden's asylum, immigration official says 11 Jul 2014 US intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden can expect his request for an extension of his asylum in Russia to be extended in the next few days, an immigration official said Friday. "I see no problems with it," Vladimir Volokh was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. "Snowden's life is still in danger. Therefore, we have a basis to approve his application." Snowden's attorney Anatoly Kucherena said Wednesday that his client had filed a request for an extension with the Russian Migration Service.

'At least 30' Ukrainian military killed as militia shell convoy with Grad rockets 11 Jul 2014 Dozens of Ukraine's government troops have been reportedly killed after local militia shelled pro-Kiev military forces with Grad rocket launchers. President Poroshenko has vowed "killing hundreds" for each deceased soldier. Self-defense troops attacked a Ukrainian military unit at around 5:00am near Zelenopolye village in the Lugansk region, not far from the Russian border, Kiev's officials reported.

Sunni militants break into military base near Baghdad - report 11 Jul 2014 Sunni insurgents entered an army base northeast of Baghdad following fighting with government forces on Thursday, Reuters reported, citing a security source and local official. The base is located in Diyala province on the edge of Muqdadiya town, 80 km (50 miles) northeast of Baghdad. The insurgents already had control of the northern side of the town before entering the military base.

Kurds seize two Iraqi oilfields and pull out of country's unity government 11 Jul 2014 Armed Kurdish forces seized control of two state-run oilfields on Friday in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk as the Kurdish political bloc withdrew from Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki'sgovernment dictatorship, deepening the rift between the Kurds and the PM. Baghdad's national oil ministry has slammed the Kurdish takeover, as Arab workers were replaced with Kurdish employees at sites in Bai Hassan and Kirkuk, saying there would be serious repercussions if they didn't immediately withdraw, reported Reuters.

Man held at Luton airport on suspicion of terrorism 11 Jul 2014 A 22-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of terrorism at Luton airport while trying to travel to Turkey. Scotland Yard said the suspect was held on Wednesday afternoon by officers from Bedfordshire police before he got on a flight to Istanbul. He was arrested on suspicion of being involved in the preparation of acts to commit terrorism and taken to a police station in south London, where he is still being questioned.

Ex-Bush lawyer convicted of trying to kill wife 11 Jul 2014 A former White House lawyer in both Bush administrations was convicted Friday of attempted murder and other charges in the beating of his wife at their Connecticut home four years ago. John Michael Farren, 61, who also was once general counsel for Xerox Corp., was allowed to sit out his trial after he said he wouldn't be able to handle the stress of it. But he was in the courtroom Fridaywhen the jury returned guilty verdicts on charges of attempted murder, first-degree assault and risk of injury to a child.



Steve Bell on Angela Merkel asking US intelligence official to leave Germany
Steve Bell on Angela Merkel asking US intelligence official to leave Germany ~ Source
(imo) The Comments are a fascinating read !!!



The Revolution Never Came

from: Progressive Revolutionaries


The Revolution Will Not Be Televised ~ Gil Scott-Heron ~ http://vimeo.com/5571286

by Patrice Gibbs ~ Article Source

During the late 1960s and early 1970s at the height of the Black Power movement there was a lot of talk about "The Revolution". The revolution that was going to put the Black man in the driver's seat. The revolution that was going to bring a new day for Black people. The U.S. government destroyed the Black Power movement. The leaders of the Black power movement were jailed, exiled, murdered or bought off. The revolution didn’t happen.

By the 1980s there was a solid Black middle class. Pursuing the American dream and materialism became the rule of the day. Black people were integrating and assimilating. Black militancy became a joke, Black militants became a caricature, a character on sitcoms, a relic to be laughed at; Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale is selling barbecue sauce. The revolution didn’t happen.

During the 1990s auto-scholarship, Afrocentricity , and Hip Hop awaken a new generation of conscious Black people; a generation that lionized the leaders of the Black Power era and viewed the current Black leaders as complacent and self-serving. They heard the more militant voices of their day like Louis Farrakhan and Khalid Muhammad. They also began to study the works of our great elders and master teachers like Chancellor Williams, John Henrik Clarke, Drusilla Dunjee Huston, and Chiekh Anta Diop. New disciplines emerged and the consciousness spread and the flicker of revolution sparked again. It was not to last. The generations of miseducation and indoctrination have a strong hold on Black people. Even those that had begun to free themselves from the shackles of mental slavery began to revert. Afrocentrism became suspect. Anybody that wanted to claim consciousness could go to your local African boutique and get your culture kit for $99.99, including kufi and map of Africa pendant. Now you’re ready for Black History Month. Once Sears and JC Penny got in on the act it exposed the phonies who bought their Black culture kit from white people.

The coming generation was bombarded with the propaganda of materialism, sexism, violence, and the worship of criminality and thuggery. Hip Hop was corrupted. The American penal system became the prison industrial complex. Prison became privatized big business. Prison stock is traded on Wall Street. State government sign contracts with privatized prison. These contracts require the government to populate and pay for these prisons. To do so, the government employed the technique of organized chaos. Organized chaos is when a government orchestrates a containable level of criminality and violence within a population or amongst a people to criminalize a segment of that population to the extent that that population itself will appeal to the government to address the very situation the government caused. This is done by reducing or eliminating employment, increasing poverty, decreasing social services or limiting social service to women, eliminating and discouraging a male figure in the house, while applying pressure to that male population to support families without viable income. These men are pushed into the underground economy (the illegal contraband is provided by the government) where they are either jailed or killed, leaving children with no chance of a father in the house; guaranteeing dysfunctional families. Violence in the streets has become the norm and ‘Black on Black’ crime has become a popular term in the lexicon. The propaganda being Blacks have brought these conditions on themselves. More stringent laws have been passed, often supported by Black people. Draconian racist law enforcement becomes more blatant. Judicial bigotry becomes more sophisticated. Zero tolerance turns miseducation into institutionalized indoctrination. The school to prison pipeline overflows and prison populations explode. White supremacy has found a new way to enslave. The revolution didn’t happen.

In the second decade of the twenty-first century there has been a surge amongst the ranks of the conscious. This is no doubt fueled by the information highway. Now that phones are literally hand held computers any topic you want information on is at your fingertips. This has been good for Black consciousness. More Black people than ever are studying true African history, not the whitewashed European fantasy. The ranks of the conscious have expanded to the extent that it has become a self defined community. In cities across the country there are so many Black people eager to learn that the thirst for knowledge has spawned a lecture circuit. More and more Black people, from all walks of life, are learning the truth about our history, our condition, the vestiges of white supremacy, and the reality of our relationship to the white race. As the shackles of mental slavery are unlocked more Black people clearly understand the white race is Black people’s declared enemy. Stated another way; by dint of his actions the white man has himself declared the Black race is his enemy. The white race, including Europeans, Arabs, and East Asians, have shown they have every intention of exploiting Black people. If they cannot exploit us, they will enslave us; if they can’t enslave us they will kill us. We are in a struggle for our survival. We are in a state of war.

As the reality of our condition and state becomes clear to more and more of conscious Black people the buzz of revolution is once again in the air. As the injustice, brutality, murder, and oppression of white supremacy continue to plague Black people, the more passionate among us have issued a call to arms to end the domination of the white race. Has the time come? Look at the people that have been killed recently by law enforcement; men, women, and children, even the elderly. Is it any wonder there are those among that are ready to go today? Are we ready to wage war? Are we ready to make the revolution happen?

I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves. ~ Harriet Tubman

Here in the U.S. we are out-numbered, out financed, and out gunned. Compared to the U.S. military, the best weapons average citizens have access to be pea-shooters. The military has guns that can see in the dark and shoot around the corner. What’s worse is the indoctrination is so deep; many Black people are blind to the reality of our condition and are quite satisfied with their lot. This diminishes the number of reliable warriors.

To wage war or start a revolution the proper steps have to be taken. The rules of revolution: Vision, planning, clarity of purpose, collective purpose, collective trust, and most importantly unity. These have been the ingredients of every successful revolution. Furthermore there must be dedication to the point of ruthlessness.

For the rules of war, refer to the time –tested principles of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. It is advisable for all potential warriors; especially potential leaders study ‘The Art of War’. “Every battle is won before it’s ever fought.” This is one of Sun Tzu most significant quotes. It speaks not only to the paramount importance of planning, but also the importance of strategic maneuvering that damages and weakens the adversary. “The general that is skillful in attack leaves his opponent not knowing what to defend.” Attacking the adversary on fronts he is too comfortable or arrogant to even consider defending or doesn’t even feel the need for alarm is a tactic on the road to conquering.

Sun Tzu said: “In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy’s country whole and intact: to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is better to recapture an army entire than to destroy it, to capture a regiment, a detachment or a company entire than to destroy them. Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence: supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”

Blood is a big expense. An expenditure Black people have paid excessively. It would not be fortuitous for Black people in America to take up arms and go on the offensive and spill blood, as a matter of fact it would be disastrous; primarily because America has planned for such an event. The casualties would be overwhelming and the resulting oppression would harken to the days of antebellum slavery.

History teaches us that every empire that was taken was already in a state of decay. America is still rich and militarily powerful. However structurally, socially, and politically, the already morally bankrupt American empire is in decay. Eventually the American empire will be ripe for the taking from the inside out. Black people in America need to believe in and understand our abilities. Every field or arena Black people enter Black people dominate. From sports and entertainment to science and politics; whatever your feelings on Barack Obama, the fact of the matter is, he’s president because he was just politically slicker than all his opponents. If conscious Black people in America learn to employ the tactic of infiltration, infiltrate every institution from the halls of government to academia we can affect everything from how the money is spent to what policies are enacted.

Blacks in America may be out-numbered, out-financed, and out-gunned, but we do not have to continue to be outsmarted. Black people can no longer continue to amble along haphazardly hoping on a prayer, a dream and dumb luck. You can’t be lucky all the time, but you can be smart every day. If Black people move with tactical intelligence, that revolution that has yet to happen can take on a whole new meaning.



Dahbud Mensch ~ is SANITY the PLAYGROUND of the unIMAGINATIVE ?

Instead of Spying on US Citizens,
Politicians Should Be Protecting US Citizens?

Chinese hackers 'broke into US federal personnel agency's databases'

NYT reports that hackers accessed networks of department that houses personal information for all federal employees

Associated Press in Washington, theguardian.com, Thursday 10 July 2014 03.57 EDT

Chinese hackers broke into the computer networks of the US office of personnel management earlier this year with the intention of accessing the files of tens of thousands of federal employees who had applied for top-secret security clearances, according to the New York Times. [Click to continue reading]

Emergency surveillance law to be brought in with cross-party support

Move has been prompted by a judicial review claim in the high court that current practice is unlawful

Patrick Wintour, political editor, theguardian.com, Thursday 10 July 2014 03.55 EDT

Controversial emergency laws will be introduced into the Commons next Monday to reinforce the powers of security services to require internet and phone companies to keep records of their customers' emails and calls. [Click to continue reading]



Are Politicians Actually
Pedophile Perverts In Disguise?

If you kill women & babies, you're a terrorist.
[War Criminal & Baby Murderer] G. Wanker Tush

Begins to eat popcorn and patiently waits

Children killed in Israeli air raids against Gaza

Matthew Weaver, theguardian.com, Wednesday 9 July 2014 08.38 EDT, Article Source

live updates

• Air raid sirens in Tel Aviv and across central Israel

• Israel launches 160 overnight air strikes

• Eight children killed in 'Operation protective edge'

• How do the events affect you in Israel and Palestine?

Read the latest summary


Netanyahu instructs Israeli military
to
[kill more children ? or] intensify assault on Gaza

Israeli PM authorises escalation of offensive as Palestinian death toll rises and rocket attacks from Gaza target Tel Aviv

Peter Beaumont in Gaza City and agencies, theguardian.com, Wednesday 9 July 2014 09.29 EDT, Article Source

Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it. - Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, 3 October 2001 <- right after 9/11.

http://www.mediamonitors.net/khodr49.html

http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/01/10/Sharon3.html

http://whatreallyhappened.com/content/ariel-sharon-we-jewish-people-control-america-and-americans-know-it

Even today I am willing to volunteer to do the dirty work for Israel, to kill as many Arabs as necessary, to deport them, to expel and burn them, to have everyone hate us, to pull the rug from underneath the feet of the Diaspora Jews, so that they will be forced to run to us crying. Even if it means blowing up one or two synagogues here and there [Like 9/11 ?], I don’t care. And I don’t mind if after the job is done you put me in front of a Nuremberg Trial and then jail me for life. Hang me if you want, as a war criminal… What you lot don’t understand is that the dirty work of Zionism is not finished yet, far from it. - Ariel Sharon, 1982, Oz, Amos. [1983] Les voix d'israel, Calmann-Levy, Paris. Translated by Guy Seniak. [Interview on pages 79-91]:

http://rense.com/general81/killiing.htm



Children sodomized at Abu Ghraib

Kids sodomized at Abu Ghraib

Kids sodomized at Abu Ghraib, Pentagon has the videos

Children raped on camera in front of women at Abu Ghraib

Seymour Hersh says the US government has videotapes of boys being sodomized at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "The worst is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking," the reporter told an ACLU convention last week. Hersh says there was "a massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there, and higher."

According to a Senate Intelligence Committee Memo, George Bush's National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was the first person to verbally approve torture during July 2002 ... and then there was this:

BEN-VENISTE: Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6 [2001] PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB?

RICE: I believe the title was, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States [using planes]."

 

Martin Rowson cartoon showing Condi saying, "as I was saying Isn't Democracy Wonderful with Iraq and Iran in the background
Martin Rowson

Children sodomized at Abu Ghraib

By Geraldine Sealey, Salon, Article Source

After Donald Rumsfeld testified on the Hill about Abu Ghraib in May, there was talk of more photos and video in the Pentagon’s custody more horrific than anything made public so far. "If these are released to the public, obviously it’s going to make matters worse," Rumsfeld said. Since then, the Washington Post has disclosed some new details and images of abuse at the prison. But if Seymour Hersh is right, it all gets much worse.

Hersh gave a speech last week to the ACLU making the charge that children were sodomized in front of women in the prison, and the Pentagon has tape of it. The speech was first reported in a New York Sun story last week, which was in turn posted on Jim Romenesko’s media blog, and now EdCone.com and other blogs are linking to the video. We transcribed the critical section here (it starts at about 1:31:00 into the ACLU video.) At the start of the transcript here, you can see how Hersh was struggling over what he should say:

"Debating about it, ummm … Some of the worst things that happened you don’t know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib … The women were passing messages out saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened’ and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It’s going to come out."

"It’s impossible to say to yourself how did we get there? Who are we? Who are these people that sent us there? When I did My Lai I was very troubled like anybody in his right mind would be about what happened. I ended up in something I wrote saying in the end I said that the people who did the killing were as much victims as the people they killed because of the scars they had, I can tell you some of the personal stories by some of the people who were in these units witnessed this. I can also tell you written complaints were made to the highest officers and so we’re dealing with a enormous massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there and higher, and we have to get to it and we will. We will. You know there’s enough out there, they can’t (Applause). …. So it’s going to be an interesting election year."

Notes from a similar speech Hersh gave in Chicago in June were posted on Brad DeLong’s blog. Rick Pearlstein, who watched the speech, wrote: "[Hersh] said that after he broke Abu Ghraib people are coming out of the woodwork to tell him this stuff. He said he had seen all the Abu Ghraib pictures. He said, ‘You haven’t begun to see evil…’ then trailed off. He said, ‘horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run.’ He looked frightened."

So, there are several questions here: Has Hersh actually seen the video he described to the ACLU, and why hasn’t he written about it yet? Will he be forced to elaborate in more public venues now that these two speeches are getting so much attention, at least in the blogosphere? And who else has seen the video, if it exists — will journalists see and report on it? did senators see these images when they had their closed-door sessions with the Abu Ghraib evidence? — and what is being done about it?

(Update: A reader brought to our attention that the rape of boys at Abu Ghraib has been mentioned in some news accounts of the prisoner abuse evidence. The Telegraph and other news organizations described "a videotape, apparently made by US personnel, is said to show Iraqi guards raping young boys." The Guardian reported "formal statements by inmates published yesterday describe horrific treatment at the hands of guards, including the rape of a teenage Iraqi boy by an army translator.")

Begins to eat popcorn and patiently waits



Remembering Tuli Kupferberg

Naphtali "Tuli" Kupferberg (September 28, 1923 – July 12, 2010) was an American counterculture poet, author, cartoonist, pacifist anarchist, and publisher. Tuli and poet Ed Sanders founded a band called The Fugs.


Tuli Kupferberg ~ Lower East Side Biography Project ~ http://vimeo.com/35332320

[Click for Fugs' album samples; including KILL FOR PEACE]



Restaurant owner sues Google over Maps listing 'sabotage'

Inaccurate Google Maps listing showed restaurant was closed on weekends, allegedly sending the business into administration

• Click to View: Google wiped out 3/4 of flyingsnail.com access with lies

Samuel Gibbs, theguardian.com, Tuesday 8 July 2014 06.16 EDT, Article Source

The Google Maps listing now correctly details the Serbian Crown's closure.
The Google Maps listing now correctly details the Serbian Crown's closure.

A Washington DC restaurant owner is suing Google for an incorrect Google Maps listing that lead to a sudden decline in customers and forced it to lay off staff and close its doors.

The 40-year-old Serbian Crown restaurant, owned and operated by the Italian immigrant Rene Bertagna, was located in a wealthy suburb of Virginia nestled among estates and houses and known for its exotic meats, including lion.

It suffered a 75% drop in customers on the weekend in early 2012. Bertagna was forced to lay off staff and eventually close the restaurant in April 2013. He says he was totally unaware of his Google Maps listing until a regular pointed out the mistake.

“A customer called me and said: ‘Why are you closed on Saturday, Sunday and Monday? What’s going on?’” Bertagna told Wired.

The Google Maps listing had falsely shown Serbian Crown shut over the weekend and Monday, previously the restaurant’s busiest days, which kept it profitable.

Google didn't do enough

Bertagna blames Google for allowing allowing the Google Places listing for the Serbian Crown to be sabotaged and not doing enough to verify the changes, suing the search company in Virginia federal court. Bertagna claims that he had never used the internet or Google Maps.

He eventually hired an internet consultant, who took control of the Google Places listing and corrected the information, but it wasn’t enough to save the business.

The Serbian Crown had mixed reviews, with many less than favourable in recent years, across reviews sites including Trip Advisor, where one "senior reviewer" known as TravelTime4Us called it "the worst overpriced meal I have ever had".

This is not the first time Google Maps listings have been sabotaged. Thousands of hotel listings on Google Maps and Google+ were hijacked in January, changing their listings to point to an external site.

Anyone can make a change

Anyone with a Google+ account can submit a change to any detail of a Google+ Local page, whether verified or not, including the listed website address, phone number, physical address or name of the place. Users can also mark the place as closed, as a duplicate or flag inappropriate reviews or photos.

The changes are submitted for review before being implemented on the listing, but that has not stopped abuse in the past.

Google seeds its business listings using commercial mailing list databases, including infoUSA and Axciom. Business can then claim a listing and curate it for free, adding detail and photos. If a business ignores a listing, as in Bertagna’s case, users can submit community edits and change details without the business's knowledge.

Malicious edits are rare these days, according to the internet consultant Mike Blumenthal who tracks these sabotage attempts on his blog, as Google has made an extra effort to quash them since 2011.

The suit is unlikely to result in any meaningful impact on Google because of the crowdsourced nature of Google Maps, which under US law gives internet service providers broad immunity against claims fuelled by user-generated content.

Google declined to comment beyond its lawyers' statement that “the Serbian Crown should not be permitted to vex Google or this court with such meritless claims”, in a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in June.

'Inside job' alleged as thousands of Google+ and Maps listings hijacked

• Listen to flyingsnail.com's Podcast ~ Click: Inside Job MP3




The Great Bell Chant (The End of Suffering) ~ http://vimeo.com/6518109

Beautiful Child


One Day ~ Matisyahu ~ http://vimeo.com/11520225



WEDNESDAYS

Dreamstreets 26 with Even Steven,
5 pm East ~ 2 pm West, Listen Live



THURSDAYS

CNN series: The Sixties at 9 pm East/West.
Paul Krassner interview on Sex, Drugs, & Rock’n’Roll, August 7th



SATURDAYS

Boptime with Even Steven,
6 am East ~ 3 am West, Listen Live



JUNE 28 thru JULY 27

helper presents: Michael Stickrod's Karl~Craft Show
495 Rogers Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11225
helper is open Friday and Saturday 12 ~ 5 pm



Notes from ~@~


World Cup Jam ~ DJ Schmolli ~ http://vimeo.com/97244641




Bohemian Rhapsody ~ http://vimeo.com/12182490




Rock Of Ages ~ DJ Schmolli ~ http://vimeo.com/44298418



Historic San Francisco Haight/Ashbury ~ United State Cafe
United State Cafe signUnited State Cafe, Entry/Exit Stained Glass WIndow above front door by C. Spangler United State Cafe
Remembering the United State Cafe



Mike Wilhelm ~ Charlatans, Flamin' Groovies, Loose Gravel, and more

Michael Wilhelm & Hired Guns ~ Red Dog Saloon ~ Virginia City, Nevada ~ August 15 and 16, 2014 ~ 8 PM
Michael Wilhelm & Hired Guns
Red Dog Saloon
Virginia City, Nevada
August 15 & 16, 2014, 8 PM
Advance Tickets go on sale July 3, 2014
775-847-7474 ~ info@reddogvc.com



Remembering George Carlin

Paul Krassner, June 27, 2008 08:50 AM, Article Source

In December 1962, when Lenny Bruce was arrested for obscenity at the Gate of Horn in Chicago, the police broke open his candy bars, looking for dope. They checked the IDs of audience members, including George Carlin, who told the cops, "I don't believe in IDs." Then they arrested him for disorderly conduct, dragged him along by the seat of his pants and hoisted him into the police wagon.

"What are you doing here?" Lenny asked.

"I didn't want to show them my ID."

"You schmuck," said Lenny.

Lenny and Carlin had similar points of view -- for example, they were both outspoken about the decriminalization of drugs -- and they were both self-educated, but their working styles were different. Lenny didn't write his material, it evolved on stage, whereas Carlin did write all his routines and then memorized 'em. Although both were unbelievers as far as religion was concerned, Lenny came from a Jewish background, and Carlin came from an Irish Catholic background.

Susie Bright, who first heard Carlin when she was in 7th grade, recalls playing his Class Clown album for her mother, "a woman whose first twenty years were entirely dominated by the Irish Catholic Church -- and it was a comic exorcism for her. She peed in her pants! She was cured in one LP [long-playing vinyl record]!"

Carlin was a generous friend, and such a sweet man. When I performed in Los Angeles, he sent a limousine to pick me up at the airport, and I stayed at his home. More recently, when I opened for him at the Warner-Grand Theater in San Pedro, California, we were hanging around in his dressing room, where he was nibbling from a vegetable plate. I watched as he continued to be genuinely gracious with every fan who stopped by. If they wanted his autograph, he would gladly sign his name. If they wanted to be photographed with him, he would assume the pose. If they wanted to have a little chat, he indulged them with congeniality.

"You really show respect for everybody," I observed.

"Well," he responded, "that's just the way I would want to be treated."

As a performer, Carlin was uncompromising, knowing that his audience trusted him not to be afraid of offending them. Who else would have posed this rhetorical question: "Why are there no recreational drugs in suppository form?" I was pleased to inform him that teenage girls have been experimenting with tampons dipped in vodka as a way of getting intoxicated without their parents detecting booze on their breath.

Carlin provided an introduction to one of my books, Murder At the Conspiracy Convention. Referring to the 1960s, he wrote:

As America entered the Magic Decade, I was leading a double life. I had been a rule-bender and law-breaker since first grade. A highly developed disregard for authority got me kicked out of three schools, the altar boys, the choir, summer camp, the Boy Scouts and the Air Force. I didn't trust the police or the government, and I didn't like bosses of any kind. I had become a pot smoker at 13 (1950), an unheard-of act in an old-fashioned Irish neighorhood. It managed to get me through my teens....

My affection for pot continued and my disregard for standard values increased, but they lagged behind my need to succeed. The Playboy Club, Merv Griffin, Ed Sullivan and the Copacabana were all part of a path I found uncomfortable but necessary during the early 1960s. But as the decade churned along and the country changed, I did too. Despite working in 'establishment' settings, as a veteran malcontent I found myself hanging out in coffee houses and folk clubs with others who were out-of-step people who fell somewhere between beatnik and hippie. Hair got longer, clothes got stranger, music got better. It became more of a strain for me to work for straight audiences. I took acid and mescaline. My sense of being on the outside intensified. I changed.

All through this period I was sustained and motivated by The Realist, Paul Krassner's incredible magazine of satire, revolution and just plain disrespect. It arrived every month, and with it, a fresh supply of inspiration. I can't overstate how important it was to me at the time. It allowed me to see that others who disagreed with the American consensus were busy expressing those feelings and using risky humor to do so. Paul's own writing, in particular, seemed daring and adventurous to me; it took big chances and made important arguments in relentlessly funny ways. I felt, down deep, that maybe I had some of that in me, too; that maybe I could be using my skills to better express my beliefs. The Realist was the inspiration that kept pushing me to the next level; there was no way I could continue reading it and remain the same.

You can imagine how incredibly honored I felt.

Carlin once told an audience of children how to be a class clown as a way of attracting attention. "I didn't start out with fake heart attacks in the aisle," he explained. Ah, if only that's what he was doing this time. But a reporter did once ask him how he wanted to die.

"I'd like to explode spontaneously in someone's living room," he replied. "That, to me, is the way to go out."

And, through his CDs, DVDs and books, George Carlin does indeed continue to explode spontaneously in living rooms across the country.

Originally posted on Arthur.com.



George Carlin mix ~ http://vimeo.com/21162532



Freedom of expression and freedom of speech aren't really important unless they're heard...It's hard for me to stay silent when I keep hearing that peace is only attainable through war. And there's nothing more scary than watching ignorance in action. So I dedicated this Emmy to all the people who feel compelled to speak out and not afraid to speak to power and won't shut up and refuse to be silenced. ~ Tom Smothers ~ Emmy



Rainbow Puddle ~ Stellar Light Shows

Senator McCain chillin' with ISIS Leaders in Syria
Before Their Rampage Through Iraq

McCain “chillin’” with ISIS Leaders in Syria
Senator McCain “chillin’” with ISIS Leaders in Syria

Great job Senator McCain! Yes we know you are for arming pretty much any group around the world and for getting U.S. Armed Forces entangled in any conflict worldwide but this is a little much even for you. Talk about backing the wrong horse! These are some of the people you called “moderates” when you were in Syria. They don’t seem so moderate as they are machine gunning people to death in drive bys.

[McCain] mentally unstable, Manchurian Candidate, traitor from POW days

[McCain] "favorite of the liberal Democrats," says Rush Limbaugh

[McCain] abandoned veterans on POW/MIA and Agent Orange

[McCain] came home from Vietnam & forgot US Veterans

[McCain] fathered a black child out of wedlock

[McCain's] wife Cindy was a drug addict

[McCain] was a homosexual

... and then:

Hawk McCain loves chickenhawk Bush
Hawk loves Dirty Double Crossing Chickenhawk?

Isis seizes former chemical weapons plant in Iraq

US plays down threat [to protect John McCain's friendship and support of ISIS ?] as Iraq says Muthanna loss means it will be unable to fulfil obligations to destroy chemical weapons

Associated Press at the United Nations, theguardian.com, Wednesday 9 July 2014, Article Source




Ride the Fence ~ The Coup ~ by Haik Hoisington ~ http://vimeo.com/96720722




A Question Of Honour ~ Sarah Brightman ~ http://vimeo.com/20989311



Closing Argument

Alan Shore: When the weapons of mass destruction thing turned out to be not true, I expected the American people to rise up. Ha! They didn't.

Then, when the Abu Ghraib torture thing surfaced and it was revealed that our government participated in rendition, a practice where we kidnap people and turn them over to regimes who specialize in torture, I was sure then the American people would be heard from. We stood mute.

Then came the news that we jailed thousands of so-called terrorists suspects, locked them up without the right to a trial or even the right to confront their accusers. Certainly, we would never stand for that. We did.

And now, it's been discovered the executive branch has been conducting massive, illegal, domestic surveillance on its own citizens. You and me. And I at least consoled myself that finally, finally the American people will have had enough. Evidentially, we haven't.

In fact, if the people of this country have spoken, the message is we're okay with it all. Torture, warrantless search and seizure, illegal wiretapping's, prison without a fair trial - or any trial, war on false pretenses. We, as a citizenry, are apparently not offended.

There are no demonstrations on college campuses. In fact, there's no clear indication that young people seem to notice.

Well, Melissa Hughes noticed. Now, you might think, instead of withholding her taxes, she could have protested the old fashioned way. Made a placard and demonstrated at a Presidential or Vice-Presidential appearance, but we've lost the right to that as well. The Secret Service can now declare free speech zones to contain, control and, in effect, criminalize protest.

Stop for a second and try to fathom that.

At a presidential rally, parade or appearance, if you have on a supportive t-shirt, you can be there. If you are wearing or carrying something in protest, you can be removed.

This, in the United States of America. This in the United States of America. Is Melissa Hughes the only one embarrassed?

*Alan sits down abruptly in the witness chair next to the judge*

Judge Robert Sanders: Mr. Shore. That's a chair for witnesses only.

Alan: Really long speeches make me so tired sometimes.

Judge Robert Sanders: Please get out of the chair.

Alan: Actually, I'm sick and tired.

Judge Robert Sanders: Get out of the chair!

Alan: And what I'm most sick and tired of is how every time somebody disagrees with how the government is running things, he or she is labeled un American.

U.S. Attorney Jonathan Shapiro: Evidentially, it's speech time.

Alan: And speech in this country is free, you hack! Free for me, free for you. Free for Melissa Hughes to stand up to her government and say "Stick it"!

U.S. Attorney Jonathan Shapiro: Objection!

Alan: I object to government abusing its power to squash the constitutional freedoms of its citizenry. And, God forbid, anybody challenge it. They're smeared as being a heretic. Melissa Hughes is an American. Melissa Hughes is an American. Melissa Hughes is an American!

Judge Robert Sanders: Mr. Shore. Unless you have anything new and fresh to say, please sit down. You've breached the decorum of my courtroom with all this hooting.

Alan: Last night, I went to bed with a book. Not as much fun as a 29 year old, but the book contained a speech by Adlai Stevenson. The year was 1952. He said, "The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live and fear breeds repression. Too often, sinister threats to the Bill of Rights, to freedom of the mind are concealed under the patriotic cloak of anti-Communism."

Today, it's the cloak of anti-terrorism. Stevenson also remarked, "It's far easier to fight for principles than to live up to them."

I know we are all afraid, but the Bill of Rights - we have to live up to that. We simply must. That's all Melissa Hughes was trying to say. She was speaking for you. I would ask you now to go back to that room and speak for her. ~ Boston Legal ~ Stick It ~ Season 2 ~ Episode 19 ~ [Video at link] ~ Written by David E. Kelley & Janet Leahy ~ Directed by Adam Arkin.

Nobody Should Have That Much Power

Until there is a solution for this, Nobody will continue to bring Peace to Our Times, feed the hungry, care for the sick, bake apple pie better than Mom, and believes NONE of the ABOVE should be a choice on Voter Ballots.


American Dream ~ George Carlin/L.I.L.T ~ http://vimeo.com/72719973

Nobody for President 2016 = NONE OF THE ABOVE on Voter Ballots
Nobody for President


Oh, I hope that I see you again I never even caught your name As you looked through my window pane ~~ So I'm writing this message today I'm thinking that you'll have a way Of hearing the notes in my tune ~~ Where are you going? Where have you been? I can imagine other worlds you have seen ~~ Beautiful faces and music so serene ~~ So I do hope I see you again My universal citizen You went as quickly as you came ~~ You know the power Your love is right You have good reason To stay out of sight ~~ But break our illusions and help us Be the light ~ Mike Pinder


Without love in the dream, it will never come true. ~ Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter

And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make. ~ John Lennon


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Internet Tombstone 1991-2013 ~ Destroyed by the: Bush Administration, Obama Administration, and Evil, Greedy Corporations who had NOTHING to do with Internet Construction ~ Open 100 OLDEST REGISTERED .COM DOMAINS, where one will discover #84 was in our basement
Turn It Off, Tune It Out, Re-learn to Go Outside & Play.

Internet (1991~2013): A virus forced into prostitution by
greedy corporations & used as a tool to Divide & Conquer.



Artist, John Flores



The man whispered, "God, speak to me" and a meadowlark sang. But the man did not hear.

So the man yelled "God, speak to me" and the thunder rolled across the sky. But the man did not listen.

The man looked around and said, "God let me see you" and a star shined brightly. But the man did not notice.

And the man shouted, "God show me a miracle" and a life was born. But the man did not know.

So the man cried out in despair, "Touch me God, and let me know you are there"

Whereupon God reached down and touched the man. But the man brushed the butterfly away and walked on.

Somebody is looking at whatever you do, so always present your most charming you. ~ Artist: Curtis
Don't miss out on a blessing because it isn't packaged the way you expect.




It's A Long Way To The Top ~ AC/DC ~ http://vimeo.com/80199956

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