downesy Stephen Downes
Rod Stewart to play Hanging Rock in mid-February? If any teen schoolgirls disappear, at least the cops will have a prime suspect
Sunday 31 July 2011
Louisiana’s Angola 3: 100 Years of Solitude
Thirty nine years ago, three young black men were put in solitary confinement. Two are still there.
Collectively they have spent more than 100 years in isolation, most of it at the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.
The “Angola 3″ maintain they were targeted for speaking out against inhumane treatment and racial segregation in the prison, and are now fighting for justice and recognition of their cruel, endless years in the hole.
Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, originally convicted of unrelated cases of armed robbery, were convicted of the murder of a prison guard in 1972. Robert King, locked up for robbery, was also convicted of murder once he was in the prison. The most fortunate of the three, his conviction was overturned in 2001, and he was released after 29 years of isolation.
Meanwhile, the continued detention of Woodfox and Wallace showcases the failing of the Louisiana justice system. In a new report, Amnesty International notes that no physical evidence links Woodfox and Wallace to the murder. On top of that, potentially favorable DNA evidence was lost. The convictions were based on questionable inmate testimony. Best of all, it seems prison officials bribed the main eyewitness into giving statements against the men. Even the widow of the prison guard has expressed skepticism, saying in 2008,
Woodfox and Wallace watch life pass them from spaces barely larger than my bathroom. Eventually moved from Angola to two other prisons, they are allowed outside three hours a week in a small cage. For four more hours they can shower or walk alone along the corridor. Visits and telephone calls are few. According to their lawyers, this has contributed to a host of health problems, including osteoarthritis, hypertension and insomnia.
Woodfox’s murder conviction has been overturned twice, once by a U.S. district judge, and a State Judicial Commission recommended that Wallace’s conviction be reversed — but appeals and a refusal to see the light have kept the men in hell. As they fight their murder convictions, the Angola 3 are suing Louisiana authorities, asserting that their prolonged isolation is cruel and unusual punishment and violates the U.S. Constitution.
We can support their fight. Write LA Governor Bobby Jindal and, if he doesn’t act, contact U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Remind them that the United States has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the United Nations Convention against Torture, and that this insane confinement also contravenes the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.
This is not a hopeless case. As Robert King said,
Collectively they have spent more than 100 years in isolation, most of it at the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.
The “Angola 3″ maintain they were targeted for speaking out against inhumane treatment and racial segregation in the prison, and are now fighting for justice and recognition of their cruel, endless years in the hole.
Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, originally convicted of unrelated cases of armed robbery, were convicted of the murder of a prison guard in 1972. Robert King, locked up for robbery, was also convicted of murder once he was in the prison. The most fortunate of the three, his conviction was overturned in 2001, and he was released after 29 years of isolation.
Meanwhile, the continued detention of Woodfox and Wallace showcases the failing of the Louisiana justice system. In a new report, Amnesty International notes that no physical evidence links Woodfox and Wallace to the murder. On top of that, potentially favorable DNA evidence was lost. The convictions were based on questionable inmate testimony. Best of all, it seems prison officials bribed the main eyewitness into giving statements against the men. Even the widow of the prison guard has expressed skepticism, saying in 2008,
“If they did not do this – and I believe that they didn’t – they have been living a nightmare for 36 years!”I’m not sure what is most disturbing: that Louisiana has allowed these men to languish on seemingly-fabricated charges? That Woodfox and Wallace, now senior citizens with clean conduct records, are characterized as potential threats? Or that by holding the men under such tight quarters, the state has been in breach of its own prison policies for the past 15 years? The so called “nature of the original reason for lockdown” is no longer allowed to hold a prisoner in isolation, yet it has been invoked more than 150 times for these men.
Woodfox and Wallace watch life pass them from spaces barely larger than my bathroom. Eventually moved from Angola to two other prisons, they are allowed outside three hours a week in a small cage. For four more hours they can shower or walk alone along the corridor. Visits and telephone calls are few. According to their lawyers, this has contributed to a host of health problems, including osteoarthritis, hypertension and insomnia.
Woodfox’s murder conviction has been overturned twice, once by a U.S. district judge, and a State Judicial Commission recommended that Wallace’s conviction be reversed — but appeals and a refusal to see the light have kept the men in hell. As they fight their murder convictions, the Angola 3 are suing Louisiana authorities, asserting that their prolonged isolation is cruel and unusual punishment and violates the U.S. Constitution.
We can support their fight. Write LA Governor Bobby Jindal and, if he doesn’t act, contact U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Remind them that the United States has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the United Nations Convention against Torture, and that this insane confinement also contravenes the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.
This is not a hopeless case. As Robert King said,
“I do believe that there is something that can be done and a pro-active position in the case can help… The ripples in the pond are increasing and we need to see some waves… and these are the things that keep me going. I can see the waves coming from the ripples.”Wende Gozan Brown @'Human Rights Now'
Afghans Rage at Young Lovers; A Father Says Kill Them Both
It was the beginning of an Afghan love story that flouted dominant traditions of arranged marriages and close family scrutiny, a romance between two teenagers of different ethnicities that tested a village’s tolerance for more modern whims of the heart. The results were delivered with brutal speed.
This month, a group of men spotted the couple riding together in a car, yanked them into the road and began to interrogate the boy and girl. Why were they together? What right had they? An angry crowd of 300 surged around them, calling them adulterers and demanding that they be stoned to death or hanged.
When security forces swooped in and rescued the couple, the mob’s anger exploded. They overwhelmed the local police, set fire to cars and stormed a police station six miles from the center of Herat, raising questions about the strength of law in a corner of western Afghanistan and in one of the first cities that has made the formal transition to Afghan-led security.
The riot, which lasted for hours, ended with one man dead, a police station charred and the two teenagers, Halima Mohammedi and her boyfriend, Rafi Mohammed, confined to juvenile prison. Officially, their fates lie in the hands of an unsteady legal system. But they face harsher judgments of family and community...
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Jack Healy @'NYT'
What the NYT Magazine Doesn't Say About James O'Keefe
Totally absent is any mention of CNN Correspondent Abbie Boudreau, who contacted O'Keefe in 2010. At O'Keefe's bidding, she traveled to Maryland, expecting to interview him. But he and his team had other plans. It was their intention to lure her onto a boat where O'Keefe would be waiting below deck, hidden camera rolling. In planning documents obtained by CNN, there was a list of potential props: "condom jar, dildos, posters and paintings of naked women, fuzzy handcuffs."
O'Keefe later claimed he didn't approve such props. In any case, once he got her down there alone, he planned to make her uncomfortable by attempting to seduce her. Then he'd somehow humiliate Boudrea and embarrass CNN by releasing footage of the bizarre incident. It was averted at the last minute when a female member of O'Keefe's team became uncomfortable with the plan, and tipped off the reporter to what was intended. In the aftermath of the incident, which made national headlines when it happened, publisher Andrew Breitbart commented, "From what I've read about this script, though not executed, it is patently gross and offensive. It's not his detractors to whom he also owes this public airing. It's to his legion of supporters."
A profile writer can't include every detail of his subject's life. But surely a piece that touches on the propriety of O'Keefe's work and the evolution of his relationship with Breitbart should've mentioned a major incident that bears on both, especially because it shows something other anecdotes don't: that O'Keefe is willing to use subterfuge and mock his subjects even when there is no wrongdoing to uncover...
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Conor Friedersdorf @'the Atlantic'
Saturday 30 July 2011
BBC Radio 4: Making Tracks - Basing Street Studios
A couple of weeks ago there was an interesting documentary on BBC Radio 4 about Basing Street Studios (now SARM Studios) in London - the segment about Paul Kossoff and the Leslie speaker cabinet at the John Martyn session was particularly memorable.
I've just noticed that some kind person (Chris Gregory) has recorded and uploaded it to Soundcloud, complete with download link and everything, for anyone who might be interested :)
From the BBC website:
Critic and cultural commentator Paul Morley returns to the Basing Street Studios, home to Island Records and then his own ZTT label. These were the very rooms in which everyone from Led Zeppelin, Cat Stevens and Bob Marley through to Frankie Goes to Hollywood, the Art of Noise and Grace Jones recorded some of their most iconic albums. In the company of Island's Chris Blackwell and ZTT's Trevor Horn, as well as legendary engineer Tony Platt, Paul attempts to find out what it was about this particular space that led to some of the most memorable recordings of the 70s and 80s.
Electric Daisy Electronic Dance Raver Orgy Leaves 100s Sodomized, Drugged in Hollywood (DJ Kaskade Tweets at Mann’s Chinese Theater)
Eyes perpetually glossed with the most addictive marijuana residues and spirits all but defunct, the mouths of naive Electronic Daisy raver chicks chirp open in sexual glee as they wait to be plied with more Tweetie Flipper’s liquid ecstasy induced acid trips.
As if parents need any more proof that this new ‘electronic dance’ rave cult is a great danger to our children, we now have shocking and sick headlines pouring in this morning from California.
The Mother’s Alert Network first tweeted today about violence erupting in West Hollywood, California. Police officers initially reported a massive, drug-fueled flash mob orgy that was actively taking place in West Hollywood. Shocked officials immediately called in the National Guard to assist LAPD in trying to contain the throbbing crowd by passive means, but after 9 officers were injured and one sodomized, police had to use rubber bullets and tear gas to gain control.
And today, after the smoke has settled, we’ve learned this event was called the Electric Daisy Carnival, a festival of drugs, sin and wanton carnality that makes Woodstock look like a Saturday Night at Mass.
If your child is a raver or fan of electronic base music, their risk of having an STD is already 23% higher than national average. Raver girls are notorious for being abortion-toking prostitutes, especially behind their parents backs. This is because people in this ‘electronic dance’ community are usually degenerates and drug addicts. The music of this culture is designed to trick the naive, malleable minds of teenagers to believe their high-school puppy love has meaning and they should shoot up with drugs and have adrenaline fueled public orgies, such as the massive Electronic Hoedown (Electric Daisy 2011) that victimized so many people yesterday in West Hollywood.
Headlining this year;s random fest were two dangerously geriatric, ‘original’ bands known as the Yellow Cake Magic Orchestra and even more terrifying, Throbbing Gristle. Reading through the resumes of these two death metal, Satan-worshiping bands is like reading the yearbook for Alcatraz class of 1938.
Everything about this year’s show would haunt the heart and minds of those not under the spell of this Satanic nightclub music. Yellow Cake Magic Orchestra is headlined by gruff looking men who look like extras from a 80s post-apocalypse biker movie. Their name comes from a 70s street drug called “Yellow Cake Magic”, a raunchy mix of crudely cut marijuana leaves, crack infused acid drops and Quaaludes, all baked into a yellow cake that will make the mind of any taster explode with a magical sexual desire.
Electric Daisy, Hollywood, CA – Bloodstreams coursing with Yellow Cake Magic, once promising college students are turned into the smuttiest degenerates and have no respect for authority. Shocked LAPD officers flee as Electric Daisy ravers wildly throw their head back in deep sexual glee, stamping holes into police cars and preparing to strip off their clothing and furiously rub their bodies together, until a sexual climax is reached. And then they will only get more filthy from there.
Yellow Cake Magic starts every concert by forcing their ‘fans’ to have a bite of yellow-icing cake at the door, and dear readers, the cake is laced with the nastiest, most destructive drugs. As the Quaaludes take effect and make the eater’s body render itself loose and pliable at all orifices, the marijuana heightens sensuality and causes girls to become like cats in heat. The boys at the concert are stiff with sin at this point and the band plays loud, hypnotic electronic dance music that causes everyone to strip off their clothing and violate every sensible morality that a person should have.
Overlooking the Electric Daisy Carnival, Photographer Captures Moment Old Man Reverse Sodomized by Group of Pert College Raver Girls – Police report one geriatric old man had his Depends stripped off and he was force-fed Viagral supplements and “Yellow Cake Magic”, then disappeared under a throbbing riot of thigh exposing girls, who gyrated and cheered all over the old man as the crowd took pictures. The man’s wife cried and fled the scene in her Cadillac. The whereabouts of the man is still unknown, him last being seen swallowed up deep within the mob of rioting bodies.
The ultimate organizer for this dastardly festival of simple-minded college children and poorly timed, unskilled computer music is another geriatric man known as DJ Kaskade. Notorious for producing the most mind-altering tones imaginable during the late 80s, Kaskade tweeted that the event would start at 6am in front of Mann’s Chinese theater. Only hours later, the feeble-minded DJ who organized this event was scared and begging for it to end. DJ Kaskade tweeted:
‘EVERYONE CHILL NOW!!! The block party has officially been shut down! BUT THIS IS TOO CRAZY AND WE NEED TO BE SAFE!’Too late, DJ Kaskade. This event proves exactly what EDM is all about: marijuana addiction, acid drops and gyrating to poorly orchestrated music. Over 183 people were sodomized by drug-laced flesh glowsticks, the anguished screams of the fraternity boy victims soon loosening into mindless purrs and confused moans as the massively injected drugs kicked in.
‘I AM REALLY CONCERNED FOR EVERYONES SAFETY AT THIS POINT! PLEASE RELAX’
‘EVERYONE NEEDS TO GO HOME NOW! I DON’T WANT THIS TO REFLECT BADLY ON EDM OR WHAT WE ARE ABOUT. BE RESPECTFUL AND CHILL OUT!!!’ – DJ Kaskade, realizing Electric Dance music is now dangerous
Unknown to many, every new male electronic dance music raver must perform a “Throbbing Gristle” to be accepted into the moshing pits that are prevalent at these events. A Throbbing Gristle is considered complete once a raver, usually unpopular, black clad loners during high school, take revenge on the massive throngs of fraternity boys who cannot resist events such as this.
When coming into a Electric Daisy Carnival, the entry gates have Yellow Cake Magic and also an armband tagging system. Guys in Greek-lettered fraternity shirts are given green tags and told ‘free alcohol’ so they won’t question. Guys who identify as raver virgins are given a yellow armband, barring them from all the drugs and main orgy sections until they slip a roofie into an isolated fraternity guy and get a picture of themselves sodomizing him ‘to the gristle’. They take these pictures back to the main gate and then are accepted as a ‘raver bro’. It’s all sick and terrifying, but for the unsuspecting girls who come into this bizarre underground culture, it’s twice as worse.
LA Clinics are already reporting a 39% increase in girls aged 16 – 21 requesting free pregnancy kits. There is no coincidence that at these events, nearly 39% of the girls are knowingly engaged in unprotected sex. The other 61% are too drugged or slutty to know or care the next day. After last year’s Electric Daisy, 2/5 girls who went for the first time reported STDs and pregnancy from unknown causes. Their lives, broken.
After only several hours, an estimated 50,000 ravers had descended upon the Mann’s Chinese Theater grounds in Hollywood. Reports state students from as for as alcohol drenched UC Davis to the North and the always dangerously hipster raver Cal State Fullerton residents to the south brought massive ‘Mobile Party Unit” buses stocked with alcohol kegs and professional Tijuana Mexican strippers to ensure more debauchery.
Electronic music is dangerous because it is so easy to make. It is everywhere. Most of the “DJs” of the EDM scene are simple basement dwellers who have downloaded the recording program “Audacity” and another program called “Fruityloops”. The pioneers of the movement, a band called Death Dragon Opium Punch, was a bunch of simple overweight friends who got bored one night while playing Dungeons and Dragons, all during the mid-1980s.
Like their forefathers, the new DJs of EDM record their voices and make it buzzy using Audacity filters, then throw a random, poor sounding beat behind it with Fruity Loops. The music is poor by any industrial standard, but the beats are confusing, much like an acid trip ritual conducted by Satanic druid priests, so college students who experiment with drugs are naturally drawn to it. The music is called the ‘lullaby of the Satanic druggies’ for a reason and now, the culture is consuming our nation’s youth with pagan Islamic blood-letting rituals under the moon where Skittles parties give way to a night of confused memories and sore body openings.
The cult religions of Middle Eastern practice are prevalent at these events and the newest festival features The Five Pillars of Electronic Dance Music: kineticFIELD, circuitGROUNDS, cosmicMEADOW, bassPOD, neonGARDEN. It is by these pillar groups that EDM ravers segregate and stage moshing pits, fraternity boy savaging areas, anti-police barricades and finally the raunchy orgy pits where the bands perform. As of time of report, the National Guard was able to penetrate each level, or pillar, of the event.
Painted priests of the EDM movement usually escort ‘attractive’ college-aged children to the backstage areas of Electric Daisy, where sloven band members await to ply them with drugs, electronic defling devices and flesh phallus’.
The following released image comes from the computer file of one raver planner, showing how the most destructive bands are placed into each herded area, where they will loosen the morals of your children and force them into horrible acts.
After being able to regroup, LA’s finest and the US military combined to engage the crowd of 50,000. With bands dramatically playing drummed and based music in the background, the drug-addicted minds of the ravers were defiant. An epic battle commenced in the cosmicMEADOW region.
The rippling muscles of the ravers tour through the law enforcement’s initial lines and defense. The new strains of marijuana smoke twice as strong as black methcocaine-LSD, causing the user’s hearts to wildly beat to a unwordly Satanic cadence. With these hulking, drug enhanced roid-raging beasts beating them and sodomizing yet another officer, the police had no choice but to form a defensive line and begin to fire rubber bullets upon the typically unruly EDM crowd.
After a long, grueling battle, the carnage was unreal. A body count of those drugged and sodomized is still not available, but estimates put nearly 840 non-ravers who were in the wrong place, wrong time, still missing and we can only fear the worse. This rave spilled into commercial areas where decent families and normal people live. We cannot fully understand the drug addicted minds of people in this community.
After breeching the cosmicMEADOW grounds, police where then able to access the Hollywood Family Shopping Region that had been spontaneously consumed by the surging kineticFIELD crowds. As seen with homosexuals, ravers will victimize children as young as 18 or 19, making The Gap a target of their ‘virgin stealing’ ceremony. Police worked for hours to free hostages being forced to do raver drugs, groin licking and swaying to rhythmic Dubstep music.
RescuedAfter a grueling, 18-hour ordeal, families emerge from The Gap after brave officers infiltrated the store and took on large groups of EDM ravers who were ‘drugged beyond all comprehension’, as one tearful mother recounted in her memoir. Her son was crowd-surfed from the store and was last seen wearing his new Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity letters
Aftermath
The victim totals are still rolling in. The American Red Cross has not yet issued a disaster response, but national aide is imminent. Such destruction has not been seen in Los Angeles since the Watts riots, and those riots did not even feature sodomy or forced drug injections.
One onlooker wrote: “It is a macabre, fearful scene, as if the 1980s have reemerged and Michael Jackson is filming Thriller in my front lawn. Pale-faced teenaged children are creeping around, arms dripping blood from syringe holes as unholy, awful music fills the air all around. The air smells of dead tuna: the smell of a 3am Vegas prostitute’s bedsheets. Hell has unleashed on Earth and it goes by one name: Electronic Dance Music“.
As of time of report, police have fully contained the area and managed to kick most bands out or throw them in jail. Only a few stragglers, namely brothel moms trying to recruit new girls to be “Raver Girls”, remain.
Mike Watson @'Christwire'
ROFL - must try to get up! No, I can't...ROFL!
When I do manage to stop laughing I am going to stick on 'Heathen Earth' and DO THE THROBBING GRISTLE...
InjusticeFacts Injustice Facts
Imperial Rome spent 15% of its tax revenue on its war machine, the imperial United States spends 54% of its tax revenue on its war machine.
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