Dick Patrol

San Antonio cop busted for raping tranny.

The transgender woman claims officer Craig Nash picked her up just south of Downtown early Thursday morning, handcuffed her, and told her to lay down in the back seat of a patrol car. She told investigators Nash then drove to a nearby location, un-handcuffed her, and sexually assaulted her.

The alleged victim said after the assault, Nash dropped her off at a nearby school. She then took a bus to a police station to report the assault. According to an arrest warrant affidavit obtained by News 4 WOAI, the alleged victim told officers Nash "wasn't going to get away with this."

Police arrested Nash after the alleged victim identified him in a photo line-up, and police linked his patrol car to the alleged scene using a GPS tracking system.

I hope this pig becomes someone's wife in the slammer.

Traffic Jack

Electronic billboard in Moscow hacked to show porn video, see it here.

Sky High

Some NASA staff searched after cocaine discovered in shuttle hangar.

Reality Czech

Czech rules for drug possession.

The Czech government Monday set the drug possession limits under which the possession of up to 1.5 grammes of heroin, up to one gramme of cocaine and up to two grammes of methamphetamine (pervitine) will not be punishable as of New Year.

Czechs will also be able to legally possess up to 15 grammes of marijuana, according to the Justice Ministry's proposal approved by the government Monday.

Support Group

Iranian crowd helps convicts escape execution... for now.

The crowd overpowered security services and helped two men convicted of robbery to escape hanging in the province of Kerman, the Fars news agency reported.

The men were recaptured hours later, and justice department officials say they will be put to death on Wednesday.

Fat Getaway

Too fat to kill?

A man accused of running up and down a flight of stairs to kill a former son-in-law is offering a novel defense: At 5 feet 8 and 285 pounds, he was just too fat to have pulled it off.

An attorney for Edward Ates is making the case that his client wouldn't have had the energy needed to fatally shoot Paul Duncsak, a 40-year-old pharmaceutical executive, from a perch on the staircase.

Lawyer Walter Lesnevich claims that Ates, 62 at the time of the 2006 killing, was in such bad physical shape that he couldn't have pulled off the shooting or the fast getaway the killer made.

Human Animals

Teen gang raped after homecoming dance while a dozen watch.

Police are looking for potentially as many as a dozen spectators and between four and seven actual rapists in this case. Police say some people walked by and actually participated in this crime. No one called police and to make matters worse, authorities told ABC7 some of these people may have recorded this entire rape on their cell phone cameras.

These monsters should be dealt with in the most horrific manner one could imagine. Every single bystander should be shot in the fucking head.

Two Dollar Bill, Y'all

This is hilarious... Goddamn, people are stupid.

The Friendly Skies

Two California airlines allow some passengers to fly with herb.

A little noticed policy at two California airports allows properly qualified passengers to fly the friendly skies carrying up to a half pound of marijuana, news agencies revealed Friday.

The Watchers

Security camera software to fight future crime?

CCTV security systems could soon spot an assault on a bus before it happens, according to a major research project.

Wake Up, Make Up

Cosmetics industry use child labor.

Deep in the jungle of Jharkhand state in eastern India, at the end of a rutted track passable only by motorbike, a six-year-old girl named Sonia sat in the scorching midday sun, sifting jagged stones in an open-cast mine in the hope of earning enough money for a meal.

Redo

Thoughts on redesigning society with Jacque Fresco and Roxanne Meadows of The Venus Project.



Click here for part two.

Cops in Hot Water

UK cops waterboarding pot suspects?

Muffy, Ditch the Yacht

People can no longer afford their boats in this shit economy.

American Holocaust

The Dust Bowl, stock market crash and Great Depression resulted in the deaths of an estimated 7.5 million Americans. The natural and unnatural events had one major result, removing millions of Homesteaders, American Indians and freed slaves off the petroleum rich Great Plains during the largest oil boom in US history.

Here's the video's permalink.

The Perfect Crime

Hairdresser makes would-be robber her sex slave.

The robber, who has not been named, burst into the salon armed with shotgun at about 17.00 on March 14. He demanded money. There were two hairdressers and one client in the salon at the time. One of hairdressers, who was studying judo and taekwondo, disabled the robber with a smashing body blow. Then she carried the unlucky robber to the basement and bound him with a hairdryer cord.

The hairdresser told her scared colleague and the client that she would call the police. But she did not. After work, instead of calling the police, she made her hostage undress. The perverted hairdresser forced the hostage to take several Viagra tablets. She chained the unfortunate robber with pink furry wristbands and painfully raped him for the next three days.

Last Bike Ride

Loser rides bike 180 miles to have sex with underage girl.

Portugal!

Did decriminalizing drugs in Portugal do the trick?

Pop quiz: Which European country has the most liberal drug laws? (Hint: It's not the Netherlands.)

Although its capital is notorious among stoners and college kids for marijuana haze–filled "coffee shops," Holland has never actually legalized cannabis — the Dutch simply don't enforce their laws against the shops. The correct answer is Portugal, which in 2001 became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.

Buyback Blowout

Dude brings live grenade to gun buyback event in New York.

Head Like A Hole

Oh dear, I've been shot in the head, think I'll make some tea.

Thin Blue Lie

Cop plants gun on dead teen.

A Minneapolis family is suing after attorneys discovered in police records what they say is proof that a 19-year-old gunned down by an officer in 2006 while allegedly waving a gun, was actually unarmed.

Officer Jason Anderson, who shot Fong Lee eight times after chasing him through a playground, was honored for his bravery after a Baikal .380 was found just two feet from the corpse.

But a new suit filed by Fong's family carries the weight of police records which indicate officer Anderson had taken the Russian firearm from his precinct's evidence locker, where it had been logged after a burglary in 2004. Attorneys for Fong's family also released video surveillance images which they say prove Lee was not armed.

An additional apparent buoy to Fong's family: the gun, which was allegedly waived at police, did not turn up any fingerprints or DNA, despite the chief of police claiming otherwise to the victim's family and a citizen panel.

Broken Arrow

Woman struck with an arrow on NYC street.

Pot Shot

Student shot for smoking pot?

Apartment neighbors of Grand Valley State University student Derek Copp say they cannot fathom what prompted police to shoot him late Wednesday in a drug-related raid. But they said they were aware of marijuana odors in the complex.

Watch a newscast clip at the link above.

Cop on Tape

Cop arrests priest for filming them.

A police report says the Rev. James Manship was confronted and arrested Feb. 19 because he was holding an "unknown shiny silver object" and struggled with an officer who was trying to take it from him. But a 15-second video released this week by Manship's attorneys shows East Haven police Officer David Cari asking Manship, "Is there a reason you have a camera on me?"

"I'm taking a video of what's going on here," Manship replies.

"Well, I'll tell you what, what I'm going to do with that camera," Cari says as he approaches the priest. The tape then goes blank.

Rotten Food

Tomatoes and modern day slavery?

Lucas, a Guatemalan in his thirties, had slipped across the border to make money to send home for the care of an ailing parent. He expected to earn about $200 a week in the fields. Cesar Navarrete, then a 23-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico, agreed to provide room and board at his family's home on South Seventh Street and extend credit to cover the periods when there were no tomatoes to pick.

Lucas's "room" turned out to be the back of a box truck in the junk-strewn yard, shared with two or three other workers. It lacked running water and a toilet, so occupants urinated and defecated in a corner. For that, Navarrete docked Lucas's pay by $20 a week. According to court papers, he also charged Lucas for two meager meals a day: eggs, beans, rice, tortillas, and, occasionally, some sort of meat. Cold showers from a garden hose in the backyard were $5 each. Everything had a price. Lucas was soon $300 in debt. After a month of ten-hour workdays, he figured he should have paid that debt off.

But when Lucas—slightly built and standing less than five and a half feet tall—inquired about the balance, Navarrete threatened to beat him should he ever try to leave. Instead of providing an accounting, Navarrete took Lucas’s paychecks, cashed them, and randomly doled out pocket money, $20 some weeks, other weeks $50. Over the years, Navarrete and members of his extended family deprived Lucas of $55,000.

Drug Wars

Legalizing weed could curb drug cartel violence.

On Friday, Democrat Terry Goddard, Arizona's Attorney General, said that while he's not in favor of legalizing marijuana, he thinks it should be debated as a way of curbing violence in the increasingly deadly clashes between Mexico's gangs.

He emphasized that over 1,000 people have been killed in cartel-related violence "this year."

Put This in Your Pipe

How do we end the recession?

It's simple: First we tax the booze. Then we legalize the pot. Done.

Snow Sale

If you like doing blow, you'll be glad to know the price of cocaine will be plunging.

Order of Fear

Governments exploited fear of terror.

Former MI5 boss Dame Stella Rimington has accused the Government of exploiting people's fear of terrorism to restrict civil liberties.

She said ministers risked handing a victory to terrorists by making people "live in fear and under a police state".

Dame Stella, who stood down as the Security Service's director general in 1996, also accused the US of going too far.

She claimed the Guantanamo Bay camp and allegations of torture had acted as a recruiting sergeant for extremists.

Throw Away the Key

Church killer smiles while pleading guilty.

An out-of-work truck driver smiled Monday as he pleaded guilty to killing two people and wounding six others at a Tennessee church last summer because he hated its liberal politics.

"Yes, ma'am, I am guilty as charged," Jim D. Adkisson, 58, told Criminal Court Judge Mary Beth Leibowitz before she sentenced him to life in prison without parole.

Text Offender

Prosecutors charge teens for sending nude pix to one another.

Teenagers' habit of distributing nude self-portraits electronically - often called "sexting" if it's done by cell phone - has parents and school administrators worried. Some prosecutors have begun charging teens who send and receive such images with child pornography and other serious felonies. But is that the best way to handle it?

Herbal Unity

Photo of Olympian Michael Phelps smoking pot unites herb smokers.

Break a Leg

Taser breaks cops leg, cop sues.

A state police trooper is suing Taser International Inc., claiming a shocking product demonstration fractured his femur - rebreaking a bone that had snapped just two years prior in a horrific pileup on the Mass. Pike.

Kiss Off

Mall cops arrest women for kissing?

Jessica Garcia intends to prove in court that security officers at Rolling Oaks Mall unfairly targeted her and her girlfriend when they were arrested in December on trespassing and other charges.

Garcia said the officers — a Bexar County sheriff's deputy and an employee from a private security company — began harassing them Dec. 26 because her girlfriend gave her a kiss on the cheek while sitting inside the mall on a bench.

Mall officials said the women, both 22, were acting inappropriately and were told to leave because they were not complying with the shopping center's code of conduct.

Welcome Wagon

Douche bag attacks ballet dancers for speaking Russian?

The 28-year-old man is accused of launching verbal and physical attacks that targeted not only Russians, but blacks and gay people. Five people were hurt, according to a police report.

It all began when the suspects, with another man and two women, climbed into Matthew Loegering's limo at a red light. Loegering was on his way to pick up a customer, but the interlopers refused to get out.

"All of a sudden, on the way [to the hotel], the guy hits me on the neck," Loegering said. "He just starts spazzing out."

Tough guy hit a ballerina, too.

Benefits

Video shows cops pocketing cash during raid.

Eraser

A plot to "destroy all the data on [Fannie Mae's] 4,000 computer servers" foiled by authorities.

Zombies in Area! Run!

Hackers change traffic warning signs.

Hummer Bummer

Drivers of Hummers get 5 times more tickets than the rest of us.

Bad Companies

Who are the 10 worst corporations of 2008?

Barf After Reading

A man known as the "Stew Maker" was busted recently.

He was known as El Pozolero — The Stew Maker — but his ingredients were less than savoury.

The job of Santiago Meza López was to dispose of the enemies of a notorious drug baron by dissolving them in tubs of acid. Over several years he claims to have "disappeared" 300 enemies of Teodoro García Semental, a former henchman for one of the largest cartels in Mexico and now in a bloody struggle for supremacy over the trade.

Meza, 45, told police that, once their remains had been in the acid baths for 24 hours, he would bury them. In a twisted act of chivalry, he said he only dissolved men, refusing to make women vanish this way. He said that he was paid $600 (£440) a week by García.

Special Delivery

30-pound brick of weed delivered to wrong address.

A man in Denton, Texas who was expecting a shipment of tools instead received a 30-pound brick of marijuana that police say is worth more than $10,000. Officer Ryan Grelle says the man opened the box Monday night, realized it contained drugs and contacted police.

Dying to Sleep

Some people suffer from the strangest sleep disorders.

From sexual sleepwalking to dying of nightmares, science struggles with these sleeping riddles.

Crappy Coworkers

Former Gitmo guard calls coworkers "psychotic".

"It's torture," Chris Arendt, who worked at Guantanamo when he was 19, told the BBC in this video. "It's a means of extracting information that I didn't even believe these people probably had. It's a means of making their lives more miserable."

Arendt, who joined the U.S. military when he was 17, testified at the Winter Soldier Hearings in Washington D.C. last March.

Wearing an Iraq Veterans Against the War sweatshirt, Arendt told the BBC that many people he worked with at the camp thought of their Guantanamo posting as "vacation."

"...This was the opportunity that they'd always wanted, to be violent and awful people...because they are genuinely pyschotic. And for others, it's just a job," Arendt said.

Transcendental Medication

CNN on the lasting positive effects of "magic mushrooms":



I haven't shroomed in years. Now I'm tempted...

Higher Pay

Report warns troops stationed in Afghanistan could be tempted to join the drug trade.

There's a "high probability" some Canadian troops serving in Afghanistan – one of the world's biggest sources of illegal drugs – will get involved in the drug trade, a military police report warns.

"Access to illicit drugs in Afghanistan is routine," reads the report obtained by the Star.

"Easy access to heroin, hashish, cannabis presents a temptation for (Canadian) troops in the form of personal use and in the form of importation for the purpose of trafficking," it reads.

Heroic

Real life "superheroes" exposed.

Articles in Rolling Stone and The Sunday Times this month introduce us to real life superheroes, basically vigilantes in spandex with names like Terrifica, Mr. Invisible, Master Legend, and The Ace.

Uninvited Guest

Family finds man living in their attic.

Police in Plains Township, Pennsylvania, found a 21-year-old man in the attic of a duplex apartment after the occupants reported missing cash, a laptop computer, and an iPod. Footprints were spotted in a bedroom closet where a trap door leads to the attic.

Beam

Police forces may get "pain ray".

The High Seas

Semi-submarines being used to smuggle cocaine.

Footloose

Demand for the "Bush shoe" soars, creates 100 jobs.

Ramazan Baydan, owner of the Istanbul-based Baydan Shoe Company, has been swamped with orders from across the world, after insisting that his company produced the black leather shoes which the Iraqi journalist Muntazar al-Zaidi threw at Bush during a press conference in Baghdad last Sunday.

Vigilante Injustice

Of all the fucked up stories to come out of Hurricane Katrina, the shootings of black residents trying to escape the flooding by white "vigilantes" is among the most disturbing. At least 11 people had been shot and the authorities don't seem to be concerned.



At least 11 black people were shot by white gunmen in the days following Hurricane Katrina's destruction of New Orleans, and in the three years since those crimes, little has been done by law enforcement.

According to an 18-month investigation published in The Nation, a predominantly white neighborhood formed a militia after the levees broke to simply keep out people who "didn't belong."

But the investigation reveals a more sinister outcome: black men suffering brutal and unprovoked attacks from white men armed with shotguns, handguns and even assault rifles.

Read the rest here. Democracy Now! has more reporting on the situation here.

Ultraviolence

Many US teens believe "violent behavior is at least sometimes acceptable".

More than a quarter of all U.S. teenagers think violent behavior is at least sometimes acceptable, and one in five say they behaved violently toward another person in the past year, according to a new poll.

I always take surveys of young people with a grain of salt. I lied my ass off on those things back in the day.

Hacking Down the Forest

Hackers aided companies in illegal Amazon deforestation.

In what has come as a shocking revelation, it appears that hi-tech hackers have played an instrumental role in the illegal deforestation of 1.7 million cubic meters of the Amazon rain forest.

According to reports from environmental organization Greenpeace, the hackers were hired by at least 107 different companies to access and alter timber export records held by the Brazilian government. As a result, it's estimated that an area of forest the size of 780 Olympic swimming pools has been cleared illegally.

Be Happy

And now for Real Books/Fake Excerpts with comic genius Dan Naturman.

Drug War

Were the Mumbai terrorists fueled by cocaine and LSD?

"We found injections containing traces of cocaine and LSD left behind by the terrorists, and later found drugs in their blood," the Telegraph was told by one official, whose nationality and relation to the investigation were not specified. "This explains why they managed to battle the commandos for over 50 hours with no food or sleep."

Black Friday Indeed

'Tis the season to abandon reason. One Wal-Mart employee was killed & a pregnant woman injured during a stampede of customers wanting to find mind-blowing, undergarment moistening deals. Apparently they were beginning to rip the doors from their hinges. Meanwhile, across the country two men shot and killed one another in a Toys R Us.

Live by the Sword

A dude wielding two samurai swords was shot by a guard at the Church of Scientology's Celebrity Centre in Hollywood Sunday.

...the man had a history with the church but was not a member now. The tape showed the man arriving at the Celebrity Centre's Bronson Avenue parking lot in a red convertible, getting out of the vehicle and approaching a trio of security guards and waving a sword in each hand ... the man, who was described as being in his 40s, was "close enough to hurt them" when the guard fired.

Dire Predictions

A new intelligence report suggests tough times ahead.

...the latest Global Trends report says that rising economies such as China, India, Russia and Brazil will offer the US more competition at the top of a multi-polar international system.

The EU is meanwhile predicted to become a "hobbled giant", unable to turn its economic power into diplomatic or military muscle.

A world with more power centres will be less stable than one with one or two superpowers, it says, offering more potential for conflict.

Global warming, along with rising populations and economic growth will put additional strains on natural resources, it warns, fuelling conflict around the globe as countries compete for them.

"Strategic rivalries are most likely to revolve around trade, investments and technological innovation and acquisition, but we cannot rule out a 19th Century-like scenario of arms races, territorial expansion and military rivalries," the report says.

"Types of conflict we have not seen for a while - such as over resources - could re-emerge."

Such conflicts and resource shortages could lead to the collapse of governments in Africa and South Asia, and the rise of organised crime in Eastern and Central Europe, it adds.

And the use of nuclear weapons will grow increasingly likely, the report says, as "rogue states" and militant groups gain greater access to them.

Read the article here.

Moving Images

A couple photos that changed the world.





There's a nice collection of thought-provoking photographs at the link above. Just watch out for some of the nastiest, most ignorant, xenophobic and racist douche bags on the web in their comment sections.

via

Ambushed

A journalist's Obama election celebration ends in jail.

Even the police were swept up in the mood, smiling and posing for photos. An occasional handful of students would venture into the streets to high-five enthusiastic, honking motorists, only to be waved back by the police, but otherwise, it was as peaceful and well-behaved as a high school pep rally.

Then I looked up the street, to where the police had blocked off St. Paul Street with almost a dozen cruisers. A phalanx of about a dozen cops had lined up.

They began marching, and I saw one of the cops holding a pile of plastic flexicuffs. No one had a bullhorn or a PA. They just moved into the crowd and started yelling at people. There was no clear officer in charge, just a group of belligerent, angry police.

My brother came running up the sidewalk. "Some guy just got tasered!" he said. I saw some cops walking back toward us, so I crossed the street to stay out of their way. The first arrestees were being led to the paddy wagon. I pulled out my cell phone and started snapping pictures.

A beefy officer saw me taking photos and approached. I held my hands at my side and said, "I'm a journalist. I'm just taking pictures."

He slapped my cell phone out of my hand and grabbed my shirt. "Well, write a nice, long story about this," he said, spinning me around as another officer cuffed me. I was in the paddy wagon before I could even comprehend what was happening. After processing at Northern District I was thrown into a concrete cell, strip-searched, fingerprinted, and subject to the singular degradation of a long night spent in Central Booking.

Read the entire story here.

Staged Fright

Did cops stage a violent confrontation during Democratic convention?

Killing Time

5 more homeless people murdered in Los Angeles.

Five homeless people -- three men and two women -- were found shot dead on Sunday in Los Angeles area, a police spokesman said.

Several homeless people have been attacks these past few months in the Los Angeles region, a city of 10 million inhabitants where some 73,000 homeless people are estimated to be living.

Human Tracking

Sex offenders to be tracked by satellite?

Live in Fear, Die in Vain

Trick-or-treater shot to death by fearful resident.

An ex-convict who thought he was being robbed gunned down a 12-year-old trick-or-treater, spraying nearly 30 rounds with an assault rifle from inside his home after hearing a knock on the door, police said Saturday.

Patrick emptied his AK-47, shooting at least 29 times through his front door, walls and windows after hearing the knock, Police Chief Patty Patterson said.

Religious Rule

Somali woman stoned to death after adultery conviction.

Shwag Kills Forests

Another reason to smoke the chronic or pray for legalization of cannabis:

National forests and parks — long popular with Mexican marijuana-growing cartels — have become home to some of the most polluted pockets of wilderness in America because of the toxic chemicals needed to eke lucrative harvests from rocky mountainsides, federal officials said.

Weed and bug sprays, some long banned in the U.S., have been smuggled to the marijuana farms. Plant growth hormones have been dumped into streams, and the water has then been diverted for miles in PVC pipes.

Rat poison has been sprinkled over the landscape to keep animals away from tender plants. And many sites are strewn with the carcasses of deer and bears poached by workers during the five-month growing season that is now ending.

"What's going on on public lands is a crisis at every level," said Forest Service agent Ron Pugh. "These are America's most precious resources, and they are being devastated by an unprecedented commercial enterprise conducted by armed foreign nationals. It is a huge mess."

Read more here

Fire Starter

Homeless man set on fire in LA.

A man in his 20s was seen throwing gasoline on the man, chasing him, throwing more on him and running from the scene, said Deputy Chief Sergio Diaz. Scorch marks stained a wall Friday where the man was burned.

The burning horrified even officers who routinely witness violent crimes, Diaz said.

"To murder somebody who's probably suffering from mental illness issues and not bothering anyone -- just a poor wretch on the street -- you've got to be a soulless nitwit to do something like this." he said.

Cyber Siege

The World Bank Group under repeated cyberattacks?

The World Bank Group's computer network — one of the largest repositories of sensitive data about the economies of every nation — has been raided repeatedly by outsiders for more than a year, FOX News has learned.

Body Count

Mexican drug lords & their hitmen have been very busy lately.

Bodies are cut up and dumped in acid. Victims are stripped naked and hung from bridges. Others have their tongues cut out before being killed – Mexican gangs are using horrifying tactics in an escalating drugs war.

Hitmen working for the cartels have massacred 70 people in the past ten days in Tijuana on the US-Mexico border. Once a freewheeling city serving Americans tequila, cheap medicines and sex, Tijuana is being devastated by the war.

Deadly Web

Russian dissident bloggers fear for their lives.

Killer Television

Owners of satellite television channels in Saudi Arabia who broadcast "immoral" content can be killed.

Saudi Arabia's top judiciary official has issued a religious decree saying it is permissible to kill the owners of satellite TV networks that broadcast immoral content.

The 79-year-old Sheik Saleh al-Lihedan said Thursday that satellite channels cause the "deviance of thousands of people."

Many of the most popular Arab satellite networks - which include channels showing music videos often denounced as obscene by Muslim conservatives - are owned by Saudi princes and well-connected Saudi businessmen. Al-Lihedan did not specify any particular channels.

Read more here.

Trippy Chocolates

Police closed down a Berlin sweet shop after discovering the owner was selling chocolates and lollipops laced with hallucinogenic mushrooms and marijuana.

Read more here. Now why can't I find a nice shop like this in town? I couldn't find magic mushrooms these days if my life depended on it.

Beat the Press

St. Paul officials are feeling the heat after what may have been an orchestrated round-up of journalists covering the Republican's convention.

Journalists and St. Paul citizens assembled outside St. Paul City Hall today to deliver more than 60,000 letters to Mayor Chris Coleman and prosecuting attorneys demanding that they immediately drop charges against all journalists arrested this week as they covered the Republican National Convention

By Friday morning, dozens of journalists, photographers, bloggers and videomakers had been booked by the Ramsey County Sheriff's office in what appears to have been an orchestrated round-up of media makers covering protests during the convention.

"From the pre-convention raids to the ongoing harassment and arrests of journalists, these have been dark days for press freedom in the United States," said Nancy Doyle Brown of the Twin Cities Media Alliance, who delivered the letters on behalf of the nonpartisan media reform group Free Press.

"Tragically, there are stories that the world needed to hear this week that will never be told," Brown said. "They won't be told because reporters working on them were sitting in the back of squad cars, were stripped of their cameras, or were face down on the pavement with their hands cuffed behind their backs."

Read more here.

Digital Damage

Are cyberattacks the planet's biggest threat?

Under Your Skin

Folks in Mexico are getting microchipped.

Affluent Mexicans, terrified of soaring kidnapping rates, are spending thousands of dollars to implant tiny transmitters under their skin so satellites can help find them tied up in a safe house or stuffed in the trunk of a car.

More people, including a growing number of middle-class Mexicans, are seeking out the tiny chip designed by Xega, a Mexican security firm whose sales jumped 13 percent this year. The company said it had more than 2,000 clients.

Give the Puffers a Pass

Mayor's panel wants cops to leave pot smokers alone at the Democratic National Convention.

Denver police should refrain from penalizing adults for possession of small amounts of cannabis, up to an ounce, during the Democratic National Convention, the mayor's advisory panel said Wednesday.

Land of the Pee

A short but sweet video revealing the truth about cannabis, marijuana & its prohibition.



From the film: 1 in every 40 prisoners is a marijuana offender. The US is world's biggest jailer.

No More Games

A board game has been seized by police in the name of fighting terror.



Police in Kent, UK arrested some climate protestors and confiscated their "criminal" equipment, including a satirical boardgame about the war on terror. The police claim that the ski mask that came with the game could be used in a criminal act.

Whew, I feel safer already.

Deadly Game

Murder/suicide on first day of Beijing Olympics.

There has been a murder-suicide at the the "dark drum" tower in Beijing, on the first day after the opening of the 2008 Olympics.

The American man was killed and his American woman companion wounded, on Saturday, August 9, 2008, by a Chinese man who then leapt to his own death, falling approximately 130 feet.

A Chinese tour guide, a woman, was also wounded in the attack, which happened at the historic Drum Tower monument, a popular tourist site, just after noon, around 12:20 pm (local time).

Thugs of the State

This Big Brother shit is getting out of hand...

On 24 July it was reported that a painter and decorator called Gordon Williams was given an on-the-spot fine of £30 by Ceredigion council officials, after they observed him smoking a cigarette in his blue Suzuki van. You see, the officials had determined that this van was his "place of work" and therefore Mr Williams was breaking the new law banning all smoking in the workplace.

On 25 July it was reported that Haringey council officials had fined a boutique owner called Sangita Ibrahim for putting out her rubbish in black bin bags, rather than the grey sacks required by the council. The officials fined Ms Ibrahim £300 – made up of four fines of £75, one for each offending bag of the offending colour. Nicole Rosbrook, who works at the boutique, told the London Evening Standard: "The two guys who came in were incredibly rude to us – and to the customers. We were shocked, especially when they turned on the customers."

She added that "We had repeatedly asked the council for a delivery of grey bags, but it never came, so we had to use ordinary black bags. The two men actually went through the bags, leaving them open and rubbish strewn all over the pavement."

Read more here.

Raid

SWAT team raids mayor's house, kills his dogs in drug investigation.

A Maryland mayor is asking the federal government to investigate why SWAT team members burst into his home without knocking and shot his two dogs to death in an investigation into a drug smuggling scheme.

The raid last week was led by the Prince George's County Police Department, with the sheriff's special operations team assisting, after a package of marijuana was sent to Calvo's home.

Authorities say the package was part of a scheme in which drugs are mailed to unknowing recipients and then intercepted.

Anthrax

The US government's purported 'Anthrax Killer' was a registered Democrat.

Party affiliation of the now-deceased Bruce Ivins, as confirmed by his local county board of elections, adds yet another curious question to the increasingly troubling investigation into the post-9/11 terrorist attacks on American soil...

Copycat Killers

More on the decapitations in Canada and Greece.

Another Skull Story

Another story for the skull stack:

As Steven Blackwell's neighbors searched his house for money to bail him out of jail, they found rooms full of chains, pornography and knives.

They also found something even more unsettling — a human skull.

It was identified Friday as that of Allen Garner, a homeless Hills­borough County man who was found beaten to death in 2003.

But how it ended up in Blackwell's closet has sheriff's deputies puzzled.

They thought it was safely with the medical examiner.

Read more here. Wonder if there's any connection to the kids who dug up the grave & made a skull-bong.

Blood Money

Suicide spreads as a solution to overwhelming debt.

Suicide is becoming an increasingly popular response to debt. James Scurlock's brilliant documentary, Maxed Out, features the families of two college students who killed themselves after being overwhelmed by credit card debt. "All the people we talked to had considered suicide at least once".

The article points out the violence wasn't always directed inward.

...in the early 30s, a number of cities were so shaken by the resistance that they declared moratoriums on further evictions. A 1931 riot by Chicago tenants who had fallen behind on their rent, for example, had left three dead and three police officers injured.

According to Piven, these actions were often spontaneous. A group of unemployed men would get word of a scheduled eviction and march through the streets, gathering crowds as they went. Arriving at the site of the eviction, they would move the furniture back into the apartment and stay around to protect the threatened tenants. In one instance in Detroit, it took 100 cops to evict a single family. Also in Detroit, Piven said, "two families protected their apartments by shooting their landlord and were acquitted by a sympathetic jury."

Pot Head

A couple teens in Texas dug up a corpse & used the skull as a bong. Goddamn, now that's just creative.

Dark Forces

Would both McCain and Obama like to see militarized domestic security forces?

Appearing before the Urban League this week, John McCain revealed his plan for imposing a military dictatorship in "high crime neighborhoods" in the United States.

On the other side of the fixed race, we have Obama's Hitlerjugend, a "national security force… as big, powerful and well-funded as our combined U.S. military forces".

Read more here.

Fighting Back

An LA man shot & killed 1 of 3 armed intruders during a home invasion.

False Flags

Seymour Hersh: vice president wanted to carry out a false flag operation to provoke a war with Iran.

"There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up."

Read & watch more here.

This Week's Headlies

Vanishing Act

How to disappear without a trace.

Sorry

US says sorry for slavery.

US lawmakers Tuesday offered the federal government's first formal apology for the "fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity" of slavery and the legal segregation of African-Americans.

Cops Gone Wild!

Have you seen this video?

Shocker

Cops Taser kid with broken back 19 times.

Killer

I for one am absolutely shocked to learn the recent church shooting was perpetrated by a right-wing nutcase... not.

An out-of-work truck driver accused of opening fire at a Unitarian church, killing two people, left behind a note suggesting that he targeted the congregation out of hatred for its liberal policies, including its acceptance of gays, authorities said Monday.

You just know this dude will be sucking dick for Lucky Strikes in a matter of days once incarcerated.

Why You Should Never Talk to the Cops

These guys say you should never, ever talk to the police.

Watch part 2 here.

Road Rage

A man and his children were murdered with an AK-47 in a San Francisco road rage incident.

The scene repeats itself daily on city streets: a driver gets stuck bumper to bumper, blocking an intersection and preventing another car from turning left.

But authorities say that was enough to cause Edwin Ramos to unload an AK-47 assault weapon on a man and his two sons, killing them.

The deaths immediately drew public outrage, which intensified when authorities revealed that Ramos, 21, is an illegal immigrant who managed to avoid deportation despite previous brushes with the law.

Read more here.

Supply & Die

Is that old Playstation 2 of yours responsible for real life death and destruction?

...the search for a rare metal necessary in the manufacturing of Sony's Playstation 2 game console has fueled a brutal conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"Kids in Congo were being sent down mines to die so that kids in Europe and America could kill imaginary aliens in their living rooms," said Ex-British Parliament Member Oona King.

Sick Mother

There's so much evil in the world...

A woman in Pennsylvania has been charged with murder after she was alleged to have drugged a pregnant woman, cut her baby from her womb and tried to pass the child off as her own.

Andrea Curry-Demus, 38, is alleged to have used a "very sharp instrument" to rip out the baby while the mother may still have been alive. The body of 18-year-old Kia Johnson was found on Friday in Cury-Demus's bedroom.

Read more here.