Photo: Courtesy of Devin Connors
Originally uploaded by markbaard.
I just received this pic from Devin Connors, a former journo student of mine at Emmanuel College. You can check out a recent bit by Devin, about the future of gaming, here.
Reuters reports (below) that a private detective, Steve Rambam, claims to have tracked down his client’s childhood abuser in Second Life.
Rambam found “the accused” catting around in the guise of a dominatrix.
Rambam often says that “privacy is dead.”
Rambam, a/k/a Steve Rombom, has a colorful history, too.
He also has at least one peculiar enemy, who says he is revealing Rambam’s own secrets.
Reuters/Second Life » Avatars beware: Private investigators scouring Second Life
Rambam’s client told him this story: Twenty years ago as a child, he had been molested by one of his grade school teachers, a trauma he never fully recovered from. “The client believes/d that pedophiles don’t ‘retire’ — I absolutely agree — and he wanted to prevent the target from molesting anyone else,” Rambam said in an email. “We were retained to investigate, gather evidence, and if evidence was found then convince the target to retire from teaching.”So Rambam started looking into his target — now an assistant principal — and discovered the man was a Second Life user. Pallorium investigators logged into Second Life and tracked down the man’s avatar, only to discover his Second Life identity was a leather-clad dominatrix.
Protesters on the Web and in the streets might believe they are making changes, but they’d be wrong.
(Hello, worthless: For all of their viral videos, chain emails, outlandish performances and guerrilla visual marketing campaigns, the new generation of dissenters have little to brag about. Photo: 2004 Democratic National Convention protesters, by Mark Baard)
from Mark:
The Denver Post, citing their “funky fusion of protest, performance and pompoms,” suggests that protesters are changing their tactics for the YouTube generation. (See excerpt and link, below.) But when young protesters hit the Democratic Convention this summer, they will be corralled into the same caged protest zone I saw at the 2004 in Boston.
And the devastating impacts to Americans of the so-called War on Terror, failing banks and foreclosures, and the emerging police state have never been worse.
Indeed, the mass protests that elsewhere and at other times have forced governments to reverse their unpopular decisions, are completely absent from the American scene. Instead, food riots
That is because, as secret societies historian Alan Watt often notes in his radio programs and audio blurbs, governments and corporations generate apathy as often as they use terror to control the masses.
New generation plans dissent – The Denver Post
A nude-in with bare bodies arranged to spell “PEACE,” traffic- stopping bike blockades, music with a message. Civil disobedience, direct confrontation, radical cheerleading.That funky fusion of protest, performance and pompoms.
The new generation of activists, and the daisy-in-the-rifle protesters who birthed them, is busy with creative ferment, organizing public dissent for the Democratic National Convention here in August. They are motivated by the desire to create social change with people power, not political power, frustrated by a mounting list of problems, from the housing crisis to soaring prices for gas and food.
The candidate: David Icke is standing for a parliamentary seat. Photo: Jack Cutting
(Update: Steve, in his excellent comments, below, says I mischaracterized David Icke’s spiritual views in this post. In short, Icke believes that he is a Son of God, not “the” Son, a state he shares with any other human being. — mb)
from Mark:
Red Ice this week made international news of David Icke’s anti-Big Brother campaign for British Parliament.
Icke, the former sportscaster, footballer and a Son of Godreincarnation of Jesus Christ (so he says), does not want the job, actually.
Rather, he seeks to call attention to Britain’s alarming cascade into a full-blown police state.
As the Palmgren brothers note at Red Ice, The Times of London, a Rupert Murdoch paper (that I’ve written for), mocked Icke’s announcement, noting the conspiracy researcher’s assertion that the Royal family and other world leaders are members of a reptilian master race.
The Times lists Icke alongside a beauty queen and the gag candidate, Mad Cow-Girl, as the candidates for the available seat.
David Icke’s Media Conference In ‘Big Brother’ By-Election Update (Video) In case you’ve missed it, David Icke will stand under the title ‘Big Brother – The Big Picture’ with David Davis in the upcoming parliamentary by-election in Haltemprice and Howden. Listen to our radio program from July 1st with David Icke to get the background. The following video is the presentation David Icke gave at the press conference July 2nd:[googlevideo=http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-972704915352925347]
(Blood is thicker than water. Photos: Ramses, right, by Jimmy Smith; President George W. Bush, courtesy of the White House)
from Mark:
I’ve listened to enough patriot radio, and done enough Googling, to know that America’s leading politicians and personalities are related (see link, excerpt, below).
Still, I was struck by this recent statement by the far-out occult conspiracy researcher and broadcaster Freeman: “George W. Bush is a direct descendant of Ramses (one of the ancient Egyptian kings).
This is an important assertion for students of the reptilian/ET agenda. It is also, I imagine, impossible to prove.
I do not know a thing about family trees, so I cannot tell you whether this one from David Icke is accurate…
But I am astonished at how the mainstream media uses firm evidence of elite inbreeding, where it exists, to mock conspiracists and to claim, perversely, that it somehow proves politicians serve very different masters.
FactCheck.org: Are Barack Obama and Dick Cheney cousins?
Obama’s other relatives, by the way, include George W. Bush, who, according to the Sun-Times, is his 11th cousin. They share the same great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents, a 17th-century Massachusetts couple named Samuel Hinckley and Sarah Soole Hinckley. And Harry S. Truman was Obama’s fourth cousin four times removed, the paper says. The New York Post, using ancestry.com, reported that Brad Pitt and Obama are ninth cousins. Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga told the BBC that his maternal uncle was Obama’s father, making them first cousins (we think).We wouldn’t make too much of this, though. After all, according to at least some researchers, a common ancestor for all humans now alive may have existed just several thousand years ago. That means you, dear reader, could have a cousinly relationship that may not go all that far back to everyone from Jack Kevorkian to Tina Fey to Hugo Chavez to the woman selling trinkets from a piece of cardboard on a Bangalore street corner.
Ding!
I’d read that Second Life developer Linden Lab was prohibiting the press from using its logos, and thought that was ridiculous.
Behold:
Second Life | The Second Life® Brand Center
Guidelines for Press Use of the Second Life Hand Logo(These are excerpts–mb)
Never use a Second Life Hand Logo (or any part or version of one):in any name or logo of a business, news program, or publication, including any website or blog, in a header or banner of a website or blog (so far so good, right?–mb) in the title of … without……in any manner…
in any manner that tarnishes the Second Life brand name or the Logo. (My emphasis–mb)
In other words, you may not publish this logo (below), and say it looks evil.
“Police are like vampires,” a Black Panther leader tells the Globe.
Boston’s poor African Americans are rejecting the Boston Police Department’s offer to search their homes for guns, warrant-free.
Startled by the rebuke, the police are scaling back the unconstitutional scheme.
Universal Hub takes the Boston Globe to task for reporting the New Black Panther Party’s opposition to the BPD’s Safe Homes plan, without noting its militant platform. (Images: From the New Black Panther website.)
Boston Police surprised some black people dont like the idea of warrantless searches | Universal Hub
Boston Police surprised some black people dont like the idea of warrantless searches
By adamg – Tue, 03/25/2008 – 7:57am.So the department has postponed its Safe Homes program again.
Request for the Globe: You mention in the story you interviewed the local leader of the New Black Panther Party twice. Can we hope that this means youll be doing a story on the party for those of us who didnt even know it existed, especially given that part of the partys platform is to organize armed “Black Peoples Militias” and to stop blacks from “snitching” and cooperating with police? See Point 7 in the partys 10-point platform.
UniversalHub blogger Brett knocks the Globe’s coverage of a local firefighter’s bust for weed possession, and says newsworthy images, such as mugshots, are taking a backseat to prettier pictures at Boston.com.
I’m not sure the stakes at so high on this particular story (the pot one), but I plan to share Brett’s observations with my journalism students on the other side of spring break.
Like Brett, I’ve been marveling (in a purely detached, analytical way) at the sexed-up photo galleries at Boston.com, from the cheerleader tryouts, below, to party shots like this.
Pats hold cheerleader auditions – Boston.com
Alanna Hicks, of Weymouth, stretched her arms and legs along with the other 300 aspirants. Judges will pare the field to 75 for a final tryout.
Essdras M Suarez / Globe Staff
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(Outside Chatham House, the home of the Royal Institute for International Affairs. Image: Chatham House website)
NATO, Britain, India and global business leaders will meet at Chatham House next week will discuss the “new (global) economic order,” dominated by the BRIIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia and Indonesia). Journalists at the event must observe the Chatham House Rule, which prohibits them from quoting any participant by name. — mb
Chatham House – Events – Conferences – View Conference Details
Are the rules of the game changing as the balance of the global economy shifts from Europe and the USA to include India, China, Russia and others?At The New Politics of the Global Economy: a world without rules?, leading thinkers from governments, international organisations and corporates globally will discuss:
* the impact of changes in the global economy on investment, trade, and the environmental framework
* whether new rules will operate across borders
* the global security issues raised by the interdependencies of this new economic order
* the business strategies that will succeed in this new environment.