Sunday 4 April 2010

Eugene Terreblanche beaten to death in South Africa

Eugene Terreblanche during a speech at an Afrikaner Resistance 
Movement (AWB) gathering in Pretoria in this June 5 1999 file photo.

South African white supremacist leader Eugene Terreblanche has been killed on his farm in the country's north-west.
Mr Terreblanche, 69, was beaten to death after a dispute over unpaid wages, local media reports said. Two people are said to have been arrested.
President Jacob Zuma has appealed for calm, saying the killing should not incite racial hatred.
Mr Terreblanche, who campaigned for a separate white homeland, came to prominence in the early 1980s.
TERREBLANCHE: KEY DATES
1941: Born on a farm in conservative Transvaal town of Ventersdorp
1973: Co-founds right-wing AWB to protect rights of Boers' descendants
1993: AWB vehicle smashes into World Trade Centre in Johannesburg during negotiations to end apartheid
1994: AWB invades tribal homeland of Bophuthatswana and is defeated, with three AWB members killed
1998: Accepts moral responsibility for 1994 bombing campaign that killed 21 people
2001: Jailed for assaulting security guard
2004: Released from prison
He became the champion of a tiny minority determined to stop the process that was bringing apartheid to an end.
"Mr Terreblanche's body was found on the bed with facial and head injuries," AFP news agency quoted a police spokesman as saying.
The report said he had been killed after a payment dispute with two workers, aged 21 and 15, who have been arrested in connection with his murder.
"He was hacked to death while he was taking a nap," a family friend in the town of Ventersdorp was quoted as telling Reuters news agency.
Mr Zuma condemned the killing as a "terrible deed".
"The president appeals for calm... and asks South Africans not to allow agent provocateurs to take advantage of this situation by inciting or fuelling racial hatred," his office said in a statement reported by South Africa's SAPA news agency.
"The murder of Terreblanche must be condemned, irrespective of how his killers think they may have been justified. They had no right to take his life."
Prison sentence
The murder comes amid growing anxiety about crime in South Africa and what opposition politicians say are irresponsible and racially inflammatory sentiments from a minority of the ruling ANC party, says the BBC's Karen Allen in Johannesburg.
ANALYSIS
Martin Plaut, file pic
Martin Plaut, Africa editor
For most South Africans, Eugene Terreblanche was a throwback to another era. But his death is a blow to the country's image of racial tolerance, fostered so carefully by Nelson Mandela.
Some are likely to believe that the fact that his alleged attackers were arrested so rapidly smacks of a cover-up. Others, on the minority far-right fringe, will see his death as a vindication of their assertion that whites cannot live under black rule.
It is a tragic fact that more than 3,000 white farmers have been murdered since the end of apartheid in 1994. And it is possible that some people may seek retribution.
Mr Terreblanche's funeral could become a rallying point for such sentiment.
Farming organisations in the Ventersdorp area have called for calm as they are worried that rising tensions may escalate out of control.
Our correspondent says it is too soon to say whether Saturday's killing was politically motivated.
However, a spokesman for Mr Terreblanche's Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement - AWB) linked the killing to the recent singing of an apartheid-era song by the head of the ANC's youth league.
"That's what this is all about," Andre Visagie told Reuters news agency. "They used pangas and pipes to murder him as he slept."
A spokeswoman for the opposition Democratic Alliance party pointed to racial tension.
Juanita Terblanche, who is no relation, said: "This happened in a province where racial tension in the rural farming community is increasingly being fuelled by irresponsible racist utterances."
Mr Terreblanche was released from prison in 2004 after serving three years of a five-year term for attempted murder.
He had founded the white supremacist AWB in 1973, to oppose what he regarded as the liberal policies of the then-South African leader, John Vorster.
Eugene Terreblanche rides a black horse after being released from 
prison in Potchefstroom, file pic from 2004
Terreblanche rides away after being released from prison in 2004
His party tried terrorist tactics and threatened civil war in the run-up to South Africa's first democratic elections.
In the 1980s, the government of PW Botha considered a constitutional plan allowing South Africa's Asian and coloured (mixed-race) minorities to vote for racially segregated parliamentary chambers.
For the likes of Mr Terreblanche, this was the start of the slippery slope towards democracy, communism, black rule and the destruction of the Afrikaner nation, analysts say.
Claiming on occasion to be a cultural organisation - albeit one with sidearms and paramilitary uniforms - Mr Terreblanche and his men promised to fight for the survival of the white tribe of Africa.
An ill-fated military intervention into the Bophuthatswana homeland in 1994 ended with three AWB men being killed in front of TV cameras in a PR disaster that diminished further the seriousness with which Mr Terreblanche's movement was taken.
Mr Terreblance continued to campaign to preserve the apartheid system but lived in relative obscurity since it collapsed.
The AWB was revived two years ago and there had been recent efforts to form a united front among white far-right groups.

Peter Hook to play Joy Division's 'Unknown Pleasures' live in its entirety on the 30th anniversary of Ian Curtis's death


Peter Hook has announced plans to perform Joy Division's debut album live in its entirety to mark the 30th anniversary of the death of late singer Ian Curtis.
The ex-New Order bassist will be joined by a host of guests at the newly refurbished former Factory Records site FAC51 in Manchester on May 18, the same day Curtis hung himself in the kitchen of his home in Macclesfield.
Before that, Hook will showcase previously-unseen Joy Division and New Order footage as part of a new show set to tour the UK in April.
Billed 'An Evening Of Unknown Pleasures', the nights will see Hook give talks on his past bands and Factory Records along with the footage, plus live music. Fans will be able to quiz the bassist as part of the evening.
Peter Hook's 'An Evening Of Unknown Pleasures' will call at:

Birmingham Glee Club (April 11)
Bolton Albert Hall (12)
Worcester Huntingdon Hall (13)
Milton Keynes Stables (15)
Middlesbrough Town Hall (18)
Gateshead Sage (20)
Durham Gala (21)
Burnley Mechanics (22)
Cardiff Glee Club (25)
Oxford Academy (26)
Wakefield Theatre Royal (27)
Gloucester Guildhall (28)
Derby Assembly Rooms (29)
Norwich UEA (30)
Salford Lowry (May 1)
Hull Truck Theatre (2)

@'NME'

Women: Know Your Limits!

Evergreen Review # 119

Seize The Time! (For Kami!)

Sparklehorse - Wish You Were Here (featuring Thom Yorke)





Paul Krassner: Who's To Say What's Obscene?

Tehran 1953


Shirin Neshat's first feature film Women without Men award Silver Lion at 66th (2009) Venice Film Festival in Italy. Women without Men chronicles the lives of four women from different walks of life against the backdrop of Irans foreign-backed CIA coup in 1953.....Copyright © Coprod Uction Office

Commerce Dept. Supports RIAA Bailout Radio Tax | Techdirt

This probably isn’t a huge surprise, but the Commerce Department has now come out in favor of the performance rights tax on radio stations, which will force radio stations to pay up to promote music. Basically, as it stands right now, when a radio station plays music, it pays the songwriters/composers, but not the performers. That’s because the performers are getting free promotion by getting their songs heard on the radio. As we’ve pointed out, this is really something of a “bailout” for the RIAA, which will get a new stream of cash for something that makes absolutely no sense in an open market. Historically, record labels have always been known to (often illegally) pay the radio stations to play music. That’s because they knew, quite explicitly, that there’s value in having their music played. 
But, then, when they started pushing for this new tax, suddenly they amusingly started to claim that radio is “a kind of piracy.” Seriously. However, they then immediately contradicted themselves by then accusing one radio station of illegally not playing their music. Basically, the recording industry is willing to make any argument, no matter how contradictory to get this free money, which they claim they’re entitled to. They say that they need to get paid for music played on the radio at the same time that they’re pushing money the other direction just to get on the air (since they know it’s really a promotion). They say that radio is “pirating” from them, but when a radio station stops playing RIAA music (which should make them happy if it’s really “piracy,”) they accuse them of abusing the airwaves, and demand an FCC investigation. This has been nothing but a blatant attempt by the recording industry to get free money through legislative fiat, and it’s ridiculous that the Commerce Department would support such an effort.

Herman Brood & His Wild Romance - Saturday Night

One of the many Sunday night gigs at The Lyceum...this was 1979!

The Church's Long History of Pedophilia

The Catholic Church’s present scandals may seem horrifyingly new, a development of the late 20th-century. In fact, a pedophilia epidemic was going on during the first decades of Christianity. If only the Catholic hierarchy would address pedophilia with the courage and passion of the Apostle Paul, whom we can probably credit with spreading through Greco-Roman society the idea that this behavior was always evil and should never be tolerated.
There doesn’t seem to be any uncertainty about this crime to be found within the Christian tradition or the mandates of scripture. The hierarchy must take full responsibility for all of the enabling it has done.
In my recent book, Paul Among the People, I explore in detail the first chapter of Paul’s Letter to the Romans. This passage, in which the great evangelist excoriates practitioners of “these things” as unnatural, cruel, rebellious against God and humanity, and deserving death, is widely thought to be about homosexuality in general. But a reading in the context of Paul’s time reveals that his targets were pederasts, as pederasty and its variations were quite common and accepted. It is these acts, not homosexual interest or flirtation or even making out among adults, that Paul is clearly writing of, and his clear concern is the aggressors’ exploitation of the young and vulnerable. Not only was sexual penetration of juveniles painful and humiliating (as it always is), but in this society it placed a gristly stigma on the passive male partner. You wouldn’t do this to someone you cared about—only to a strange youngster with no one to protect him.
A seduced boy risked losing his civic rights, and his loss of reputation would be life-long. He would remain a “faggot,” though no one would dare profess a nonviolent sexual interest in him. Boys alone were worth courting. The active sexual partner got off scot-free to flaunt his aggressive “manliness.”
In poetry, scores of such men boasted, under their own names, of infiltrating schools, bribing boys, and throwing away their conquests once these grew body hair. Where citizen-class boys with protective parents were concerned, these tales are not believable, and are probably about as factual as the average letter to the Penthouse Forum. Slave boys, in contrast, must have found themselves on the wrong end of a turkey shoot. They had no rights and no escape; effective compassion for them was unheard of. One pedophile insouciantly published the following:
If you were still uninitiated in what I’m trying to persuade you to do, you’d be right to be afraid, perhaps expecting something terrible. But since your master’s bed has made you an expert, why do you begrudge someone else what you’ve got? Your lord calls you in when he needs you, then he goes to sleep and lets you go—he doesn’t even share a word with you. But here I can spoil you. You can play as an equal, chatter in confidence, and do other things because you’re asked, not because you’re ordered.
Against this background, Paul’s fury in Romans 1 seems commonsensical. He repeatedly uses the word “injustice” to describe these sex acts. (“Wickedness” is a common mistranslation.) He pours onto the offenders his fiercest insults ever, including the accusation that they “hate God.” The apostle is aflame with the revolutionary notion that everyone matters, that pederasts are not exempt from judgment because they have power and position and customary immunity and think they can impose (because they always have) the entire cost of their acts on the victims: “You have no excuse,” Paul writes, “whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.” Paul was a true follower of Jesus, who had boldly addressed a characteristic abuse of his homeland when he faced the woman caught in adultery: the least powerful person was going to suffer alone for a forbidden act. He made it known that this couldn’t happen; the entire society must re-examine itself.
As modern forensic experience confirms, Paul showed particular insight in directing his most irate moral condemnation at pedophiles. Pedophilia is an addiction feeding not on inanimate things but on the most vulnerable human bodies and personalities. Unlike a drug user or alcoholic, this kind of addict doesn’t destroy himself but is sturdy and ready for more into old age. Pedophilia challenges any belief in salvation through human agency alone, because not even the most expert therapy seems to prevent recidivism. As Paul no doubt recognized, God alone understands pedophilia. We are far out of line in thinking that we can usefully tinker with or rationalize such an evil thing, or that we can in any other way deny hard and humble responsibilities to the weak that God has given us in allowing such an evil thing to exist.
The Catholic hierarchy has denied these responsibilities, and quite clownishly. It has not only sent confessed pedophiles on brief retreats, as if in the conviction that lazy good intentions are enough. It has also, in the realm of homosexuality, directed its most energetic policy enforcement against a class of people Paul had nothing to say about because he could not have imagined their existence: men in committed, exclusive sexual relationships who are trying to set up homes together with public recognition. What makes them a priority for censure?
I don’t want to suggest that homosexuality is a straightforward issue for any church to deal with; presumptions about how doctrine and practice should turn out are not religious; they are simply political, and not worth much. But is it not absurd for bishops, cardinals, and popes to strengthen the barricades against gay couples (whose wrongdoing is in much dispute) while leaving the victims of a plainly abominable crime to fend for themselves—if not bullying them, shaming them, and manipulating them?
There doesn’t seem to be any uncertainty about this crime to be found within the Christian tradition or the mandates of scripture. The hierarchy must take full responsibility for all of the enabling it has done. If not, perhaps it’s time for an object lesson. The Western rule of law rose primarily out of a Christian distaste for the rule of human self-interest and whim, as opposed to transcendent and enduring principle. Clergy who pressured molestation victims into signing secrecy agreements may need to go to jail for obstruction of justice, like anyone else.
Sarah Ruden @'Daily Beast'

Ballet Mécanique (1924)



Directed by Fernand Léger

All those years ago...

I used to squat in this building...about 1981/2!

Quelch House in Tufnell Park!
Forgot about this until I got reminded about it thru old friends...
Hello to Mark and Jo!!!

People like who?


Furious BNP chiefs have drafted in security guards - to protect a POSTER. The far-right party splashed out £2,000 on its first billboard campaign in Scotland. But just hours after the massive sign was unveiled, it was targeted by outraged protesters and torn down. And since being replaced, the poster has been pelted with paint, covered in graffiti branding the BNP "nazi scum" and even set on fire. The party has now hired two security guards to keep an eye on the Aberdeen billboard round the clock.Barry Scott, the BNP's north east organiser, said: "We thought we might get a problem with graffiti but we never expected the poster would be destroyed."If people have a problem with the BNP we would rather they emailed us."On their website, the BNP boasts that the poster on Aberdeen's Great Northern Road is "yet another breakthrough" for the party.But local Labour councillor George Adam said: "There are certainly people who are extremely concerned about this, who think the poster is offensive."And Ken Ferguson, of the Scottish Socialist Party, added: "It's not surprising that a poster for the BNP has attracted hostility. Their racist views are repugnant to the vast majority of people in Scotland."Grampian Police said four men aged between 20 and 25 have been charged in connection with three incidents involving the billboard.

The best April Fool this year

Preschoolers know all about brands...and that's a sign of intelligence

A new study released this month examined how well a group of 3- to 5-year-olds were able to recognize "child-oriented" brands. The answer—very able, thank you—is a parent's worst nightmare: Disney has almost certainly already colonized your 3-year-old's brain. McDonald's has planted a flag in there, too, along with My Little Pony and Pepsi and even Toyota. Preschoolers recognize brand names and symbols, and they are increasingly willing and able to make judgments about products and people based on associations with those brands, found the researchers at the University of Madison-Wisconsin and the University of Michigan.
That's the usual set-up for yet another article ringing the death knell for childhood innocence. And this is the part where you rush out and yank your kids away from the pernicious influence of the big, bad marketing machine. Everyone knows that advertising is bad for kids, right? It makes them putty in the hands of the purveyors of corn syrup and artificial coloring, and inspires them to want things that will only make them more stupid. We don't want kids to learn to recognize the golden arches. We want them to learn things that are useful and that help them function in our culture. We want kids learning things that support their ability to learn even more.  Which, it turns out, is exactly what identifying brands helps them do. Adults use branding as a shorthand to narrow choices and locate particular items or qualities they're seeking. In order to keep from being overwhelmed by choice and information on a daily basis, kids need to learn to do the same. Far from a lazy acceptance of spoon-fed culture, early recognition of the Hamburglar is proof of small, keen intellects hard at work decoding their environment
(Thanx Bill!)

What living in a free society entails...

Saturday 3 April 2010

REpost: Erykah Badu - Window Seat


What a brilliant video!
#windowseat was shot guerilla style, no crew , 1 take , no closed set , no warning , 2 min . , don town dallas , then ran like hell... 

Girlz With Gunz # 95


rosemaryCNN
Reports from Russia: 1 of the female metro bombers was 17yo widow of Islamist rebel from north Caucasus.

Smoking # 55

Friday 2 April 2010

World Autism Awareness Day

*Upgrade @320*


The track was originally written and recorded by Jon Anderson & Vangelis on their 1981 album 'The friends of Mr. Cairo'. Donna Summer recorded her version a year later on her 1982 self-titled album, with Quincy Jones producing. Her version of the song features an all-star choir including among others Michael Jackson, Brenda Russell, James Ingram, Dionne Warwick, Kenny Loggins, Lionel Richie and Stevie Wonder.

Dark Side of the 8-bit Moon



 

 

Afghan President Rebukes West and U.N.


Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, delivered extraordinarily harsh criticism on Thursday of the Western governments fighting in his country, the United Nations, and the British and American news media, accusing them of perpetrating the fraud that denied him an outright victory in last summer’s presidential elections...
 
Karzai's April Fool's Day joke surely... 

Dan Bull - Home Taping Is Killing Music (The Remix)


Love the 'Choose File' pisstake of Katherine Hamnett's 'Choose Life' slogan T shirt!

Who owns ideas?

In the era of the Internet we're facing a crisis around the new reality of intellectual property and copyright. These legal rights were established over hundreds of years to reward creators of ideas, but at the same time preserve and protect the public's right to access and make use of the expression of ideas.

But slow expansion of the laws of intellectual property through the 20th century, and more recently the emergence of new digital technologies, the Internet in particular, have upset the delicate balance between the rights of creators and the rights of the public. Copyright law has been changed, again and again, in what many perceive as an expansion of the rights and control of the emerging "content industries." Copyright law today covers more kinds of expression, lasts considerably longer, and comes with considerably more stringent enforcement than it has in the past.

When you download music or text from the web, you may be innocently breaking the law. Jim Lebans, a producer with CBC Radio’s Quirks and Quarks, looks at the tangled world of intellectual property and how the digital age is challenging ideas about who owns our culture.
Listen to the Who Owns Ideas?
( mp3 file runs: 54:00)
The challenges to Intellectual property rights have expanded as well. While in the past the tools of copyright infringement were industrial - printing presses or record-pressing facilities, today they're available on every desktop. Writing, music, movies, television, indeed every form of communication and expression can be digitized, and perfect copies distributed without limit. As a result the digital revolution has been perceived as a nightmare to the owners of creative property.
This might seem to clearly justify an expansion of IP law and its enforcement, but many critics of the direction IP law has taken disagree. They suggest that the opportunities that digital technologies present, and the abilities they give to ordinary people to make use of cultural material creatively is too valuable to be sacrificed.
This tension has become known as the copyfight, and it's ultimately a dispute about who owns ideas.

Featured in this program are:
Graham Henderson, president of The Canadian Recording Industry Association.
Eric Flint, writer and editor. Mr. Flint has a long association with science fiction publisher Baen Books, and with Jim Baen founded the Baen Free Library,
which distributes free digital books in open formats as a promotional vehicle for the company. Mr Flint has written extensively on IP issues as editor of the web magazine Jim Baen's Universe.
James Boyle , William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law and co-founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School and chairman of the board of Creative Commons. His new book, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind, will be published shortly by the Yale University Press.
Siva Vaidhyanathan, professor of media studies in the University of Virginia School of Law. He's also the author of Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity.
Cory Doctorow, writer, journalist and Internet pundit. He's also the founder of popular blog Boing Boing.
Jane Ginsburg, Morton L Janklow Professor of Literary and Artistic Property Law.
She has many papers on Intellectual Property law, including How Copyright Got a Bad Name For Itself.
Dr. Michael Geist, law professor at the University of Ottawa where he holds the Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law. He's also a columnist on digital issues for The Toronto Star.
Steven Page, singer, songwriter and member of the Barenaked Ladies.
He's also one of the founding members of the Canadian Music Creators Coalition.

Music used in this program from free sources:
Bach - Fantasia in B Minor
Yankee Doodle Variations
Open Season on Bach



Lifie

SageFrancisSFR 500 years ago jebus hatched from an egg that was laid by a man in a bunny suit. It was a chocolate egg. I will eat one in celebration.

Sleeping insects covered in dew by Miroslaw Swietek

These remarkable photographs were taken by physiotherapist Miroslaw Swietek at around 3am in the forest next to his home in Jaroszow, a village in Poland around 30 miles from the city of Wroclaw.
Using a torch, the 37-year-old amateur photographer hunts out the motionless bugs in the darkness before setting up his camera and flash just millimetres from them.

George Carlin - Religion is Bullshit! (Thanx Stan!)

Exciting new way of cooking Bacon (with pictures)

I've discovered a new way of cooking bacon. All you need is: bacon, tin foil, some string, and.. oh whats it called?... oh yeah, an old worn out 7.62mm machinegun that is about to be discarded, and about 200 rounds of ammunition.
You start by wrapping the barrel in tin foil. Then you wrap bacon around it, and tie it down with some string.
http://imgur.com/Qzt4t.jpg
you then wrap some more tin foil around it, and once again tie it down with string.
http://imgur.com/fuY3J.jpg
It is now ready to be inserted into the cooking device. I ripped the tin foil a little bit getting the barrel inserted. that part of the bacon got severely burned by hot gasses.
http://imgur.com/q75AR.jpg
After just a few short bursts you should be able to smell the wonderful aroma of bacon.
http://imgur.com/H8fmZ.jpg
I gave this about 250 rounds. but I think around 150 might actually be enough. But then again I don't mind when bacon is crispy. Ahh the smell of sizzling bacon mixed with the smell of gunpowder and weapon oil.
http://imgur.com/FEeq3.jpg
And the end result: Crispy delicious well done bacon.
http://imgur.com/AOjRS.jpg
Oelund @'Reddit'
(Tip o' the hat to JoshS!)

The Pain Relief Scandal

“Opium has been recently made from white poppies, cultivated for the purpose, in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Connecticut.... comparatively large quantities are regularly sent East from California and Arizona, where its cultivation is becoming an important branch of industry, ten acres of poppies being said to yield, in Arizona, twelve hundred pounds of opium.”
--Massachusetts Government Health Report, 1871
By the mid-1800s, as many people know, opium could be legally purchased in the United States as laudanum, patent medicines, and various elixirs. Less well known is the fact that opium was a godsend during the bloody years of the Civil War. Maimed and disabled soldiers found relief in morphine, the potent alkaloid of opium named after Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams. Used against constant, intractable pain, opium and its derivatives were among the most humane medical drugs ever discovered. How could a physician withhold them?
Today, after countless drug wars have merged into a single, inflexible federal stance on “drugs,” morphine and its derivatives remain so stigmatized, so entangled in drug wars and global narco-politics, that the danger of losing sight of their humanitarian applications looms larger than ever.
At least half of all cancer patients seen in routine practice report inadequate pain relief, according to the American College of Physicians. For cancer patients in pain, adequate relief is quite literally a flip of the coin...

Tell Me Easter's On Friday

(Thanx to My Friend Stan!)

Johann Hari on drugs, royals and the lousy laws being rushed through before the election

"...Yet you have been told that this drug is a new and unique menace. It has killed 27 people in Britain, makes teenagers try to "rip off their scrotum", and a ban will stop the harm it causes. Each of these claims is false.
The first mephedrone death was reported last November, when a 14-year-old girl called Gabrielle Price died in Brighton after apparently taking the drug. Immediately, there were calls for a ban. Three weeks later, the autopsy found the drug had nothing to do with her death: she was killed by "broncho-pneumonia which resulted from a streptococcal A infection". But the campaign didn't pause. They were now identifying deaths from mephedrone everywhere – mainly among clubbers who had taken a huge cocktail of different drugs washed down with alcohol. In truth, one death has been found to be caused by the drug. That's one. This makes jmephedrone somewhat less dangerous than peanuts, which kill 10 people a year by causing an allergic reaction.
What about the drug's other effects? The excellent New Scientist magazine tracked down the origins of The Sun's claim that it made a teenager "try to rip off his testicles", which rapidly became an established fact in news reports. They discovered it was based on a claim that circulated on internet chatrooms, and had been written as a joke. The drug isn't even called "Meow-Meow" by anyone: that term was randomly inserted into Wikipedia just before the hysteria broke, and picked up by journalists..."

Just remember...

'Socilism' 
*snigger*

The RNC fugs up again...

The Republican National Committee sent a fundraising mail piece earlier this month with a return number that leads to a phone-sex line offering "live, one-on-one talk with a nasty girl who will do anything you want for just  $2.99 per minute."
At the bottom of a piece designed to resemble a census form, a toll-free number is listed next to the national party's address.
A voter in Minnesota received the mailer and called the number intending to complain about the attempt to raise money with a form that looks like a government document.
But the Minnesotan was instead directed to a second toll-free number that greets callers as "sexy guy" before offering them the chance to talk with "real local students, housewives and working girls from all over the country."
The individual then forwarded the mail piece to the voter's congressman, a Democrat, who shared it with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
A spokesman for the RNC declined to say how many copies of the census-style mailer were sent out.
"The number in question was a typographical error by a vendor used on this particular mailer — using 1-800 instead of 202," said RNC Communications Director Doug Heye.
Heye e-mailed different direct-mail pieces that included the correct RNC phone number, writing: "This is an isolated incident and will not be repeated in the future."
He said the vendor responsible for the mistake "will not be used for the foreseeable future."
AUDIO: HERE
Ben Smith @'Politico'