TSA workers trafficked Oxycontin for cash while defending America from terrorists

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Wilco invites fans to make videos of their home towns, to be projected on tour while band plays

[Video Link]

The great American alt-country-rock-whatever band Wilco, whom I love dearly, invites their fans to shoot video of the cities they're touring in. Some of the resulting videos "may be projected behind the band during the show in your town," says Wilco, "So break out your camera and show us what your city looks like to you."

More guidance:

When you're shooting, keep the important stuff and movement to the top 1/3rd of the frame - this is where the projections will be most visible on our stage set. Please check the Vimeo page for more details and guidelines. Have fun & we can't wait to see what you come up with!

VIDEO ABOVE: "Born Alone" from Wilco's upcoming album "The Whole Love," out September 27, 2011 on dBpm Records (and alternately offered in 180gm vinyl!). Directed by Mark Greenberg. This album RULES.

(thanks, Mikael Jorgensen!)

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

DragonCon founder arrested at motel with 14yo boy, while awaiting child molestation trial

DragonCon founder Edward Kramer, who has long argued that he is too ill to stand trial for multiple counts of child molestation in Georgia, was caught staying in a motel room in Connecticut with a 14-year-old boy on Tuesday, according to authorities.

Kramer was under house arrest for several years awaiting the child molestation trial, but a judge lifted his travel ban in 2008.

Kramer, who has said he is no longer affiliated with DragonCon, was arrested in Milford, Conn., after police learned he was staying there with a teenager. That is a violation of the conditions of his bond.

Kramer was not accused of molesting the 14-year-old. Milford Police charged him with misdemeanor reckless endangerment of a child, according to his defense attorney Edwin Marger.

More: DragonCon founder Kramer arrested at motel with boy, DA says  | ajc.com.

(via FARK)

Update: Here's the official Dragon*Con statement. Must be a drag to have to issue these every time this guy makes a move, given that he hasn't been involved with Dragon*con for years.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

“Half-Arab, half-Jewish housewife” terrorized on 9/11 for Flying While Dark-Skinned

Shoshana Hebshi, who describes herself as a "half-Arab, half-Jewish housewife," was aggressively cuffed and detained from Frontier Airlines Flight 623, then strip-searched, for the apparent crime of being ambiguously "ethnic"—and being seated next to two Indian guys she didn't know who got up to use the toilet.

On Sunday, 9/11/2011, Hebshi was held and questioned in a Detroit cell for several hours. A fellow passenger on her flight had told a flight attendant that she and her dark-skinned seatmates (all of whom were strangers to one another) were "suspicious." One can only presume they were racially profiled.

What makes Hebshi's tale even more bizarre: she tweeted the ordeal as it unfolded, at first not realizing that she was the suspicious person the "[c]ops in uniform and plainclothes" were after. Snip from her account:

Someone shouted for us to place our hands on the seats in front of us, heads down. The cops ran down the aisle, stopped at my row and yelled at the three of us to get up. “Can I bring my phone?” I asked, of course. What a cliffhanger for my Twitter followers! No, one of the cops said, grabbing my arm a little harder than I would have liked. He slapped metal cuffs on my wrists and pushed me off the plane. The three of us, two Indian men living in the Detroit metro area, and me, a half-Arab, half-Jewish housewife living in suburban Ohio, were being detained.

The cops brought us to a parked squad car next to the plane, had us spread  our legs and arms. Mine asked me if I was wearing any explosives. “No,” I said, holding my tongue to not let out a snarky response. I wasn’t sure what I could and could not say, and all that came out was “What’s going on?”

No one would answer me. They  put me in the back of the car. It’s a plastic seat, for all you out there who have never been tossed into the back of a police car. It’s hard, it’s hot, and it’s humiliating. The Indian man who had sat next to me on the plane was already in the backseat. I turned to him, shocked, and asked him if he knew what was going on. I asked him if he knew the other man that had been in our row, and he said he had just met him. I said, it’s because of what we look like. They’re doing this because of what we look like. And I couldn’t believe that I was being arrested and taken away.

You really need to read her entire account from start to finish: Some real Shock and Awe: Racially profiled and cuffed in Detroit.

One word of advice for anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation: know your rights. Don't open your mouth until you have access to an attorney.

Shoshana Hebshi is a graduate student in journalism at Iowa State University. Photo above by Stan Brewer, courtesy of Ms. Hebshi.

Related items at Associated Press, Detroit News and Gawker. At the time, according to this LA Times item, ABC News reported that the two Indian men had been "making out" inside the restroom. Nice factchecking, guys.

For those of you reading her story who are as disgusted and outraged as I am right now: what are we going to do about it?

(via @declanm; image of Frontier Airlines plane at New York's La Guardia airport in 2009 courtesy Reuters)

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Flying While Black and Reading Antique Aviation Books lands folk musician in Security Theater Hell

Via the ACLU and the Boston Globe, a first-hand account of how "security theater" makes us no safer, and a lot less free.

Massachussetts-based folk musician Vance Gilbert (Twitter), a law-abiding citizen who is black, 6 feet tall, and loves poodles, was harassed and humiliated on a flight out of Boston—apparently in part because he was reading book about old-time airplanes.

The TSA scanners and screeners had no problem with him. His problems began after he boarded his United Airlines flight, and appear to have been the work of the flight crew.

Here is his account, shared with the ACLU. He titled it "Racial Profiling First Hand," and signs the essay, "Flying While Black & Reading Antique Aviation Books." Snip:

Policeman: "Did you have a problem with your bag earlier?"

Me: "No sir, not at all. The flight attendant wanted it secured elsewhere other than behind my feet, and I opted to put it under the seat in front of me. It's my wallet, even though there's only 30 bucks in it…And all that was done without belligerence, or words for that matter…it was all good. A few beats...

Policeman: "Sir, were you looking at a book of airplanes?"

Me: "Yes sir I was. I am a musician for money, but for fun I study old aircraft and build models of them, and the book I was reading was of Polish Aircraft from 1946."

Policeman: "Would you please go get that book so that i can see it?"

I go back onto the plane - all eyes are on me like I was a common criminal. Total humiliation part 2. After a couple of minutes he says, "Why, this is all Snoopy Red Baron stuff..."

Me: "Yes sir, actually the triplane you see is Italian, from 1921 a little after World War 1..."

"Racial Profiling First Hand" (boston.com, via @lizditz)

Vance Gilbert's music is pretty great. You can buy it and support the guy here.

The ACLU is pretty great, too, and you can support them here.

Related: this Boston Globe item, "Musician ‘humiliated’ on flight." James Fallows wrote about Gilbert's ordeal in The Atlantic.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.