This petition appeared on the White House’s We The People section on Monday.

Make, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), a legal form of protesting.

With the advance in internet techonology [sic], comes new grounds for protesting. Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), is not any form of hacking in any way. It is the equivalent of repeatedly hitting the refresh button on a webpage. It is, in that way, no different than any “occupy” protest. Instead of a group of people standing outside a building to occupy the area, they are having their computer occupy a website to slow (or deny) service of that particular website for a short time.

As part of this petition, those who have been jailed for DDoS should be immediatly [sic] released and have anything regarding a DDoS, that is on their “records”, cleared.

They make a curious argument about their preferred method of attack. DDoS attacks, after all, are the virtual equivalent to a sit-in protest, albeit one that you can’t call the in police to stop. Those kind of attacks don’t do any real damage to a website, and they aren’t violating any laws since they’re just banging away at the public side of a website.

But, an important counterpoint is that for a DDoS attack to be successful against most large websites, the DDoS’ers need to have control of thousands of systems. One lone PC isn’t bringing down PayPal. And, generally, the method of accessing and controlling those systems are completely illegal.

Which brings us to question if a form of protest can be legal if it is dependent on an illegal action to pull off. Sort of like the Mexican drug cartels buying anti-pot legalization ads (which may have happened in this last election cycle).

Personally, I’m fine with DDoS attacks as legal protesting, provided you’ve got an army of real people behind computers furiously mashing away at the F5 key. But, if you’re using malware to bot-out the machines of unwilling participants? Not so much.

Post Script: The guy that submitted this is probably utterly mortified that he misspelled technology, and is probably being hacked to all hell by the FBI and NSA right now.

Laurel pointed this out to me first thing this morning, from the Wonkblog.

While looking up some information on the shooting in Greenwood, MS that happened a block from the wedding I was attending, I came across this wondrous horrible article:

Greenwood Man Caught Having Sex With Hogs

Gave hogs vaginal infection

GREENWOOD - Authorities said a man who was caught having sex with show hogs will have his case presented to the Leflore County Grand Jury next month. Andrew Lee Nash, 52, was arrested on Dec. 3, 2010 after police set up surveillance cameras in the owner’s stalls near U.S. Highway 82 and the Yazoo River.

Greenwood Police Chief Henry Purnell said the hogs were examined by a local veterinarian, during a routine examination, and the owner was told that four of the hogs had a vaginal infection.

“The owner of the animals knew someone was messing with his animals,” said Chief Investigator Huntley Nevels. “And the veterinarian confirmed the sexual assault. So, the owner contacted police and the officers staked it out and caught him out there.”

Nash, who lives in the 700 block of Mississippi Avenue, was arrested at the scene and charged with 12 counts of unnatural intercourse.

Greenwood is apparently a frighteningly twisted little town.

A Mexican street religion born from a crucible of violence and desperation. The guy at the end sums it all up perfectly.

“The way I see it is…no one’s eternal in this life. I don’t ask her for eternal life, I ask her for a happy death. Because I don’t think anyone wants to die in a bad way. And we’re all on the list and the day that she decides to come for me I’m going to receive her. I’m going to welcome her.”

After all, why would you want eternal life when all your life has been is struggle and suffering?

And today, appropriately enough, is Santa Muerte’s holiday. I offer my last FastFiction as a gift to her.

From the always incredible Coilhouse.net.

Title: White Sister of the Alleyway

Word: Immaculate

200 words about the new religion for the sinners on the street:

The wicked, the lost, the suffering. They all come to me. Those that God has turned His back on, who make their wage dealing in sins. These are my children, clutching at my robes, looking for protection.

Saying their private prayers to the Saint of Death.

My shrine is a secret place, hidden in the alley between the florist and the butcher. From here, I keep watch over those that have fallen through the cracks.

A cartel soldier asking me to bless his guns so he might come home safe. A prostitute praying that this abortion will be her last. A drug dealer pleading that his son will never know what his father does. An addict overdosing at my feet, begging me for comfort. A group of runaways stealing the apples and sugar skulls from my altar, gifts freely given so they might see another day.

Across the favela market sits another idol. That immaculate whore, cursing me and my children to her Father, whispering to her partitioners that my children are worshipping the Devil.

And maybe they are right. Maybe I am a devil. But better a devil than a Father who will not comfort His crying, suffering children.

Follow this link to offer up more suggestions.

I’m just going to leave this here.

A Jacksonville mother charged with shaking her baby to death has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.

Alexandra V. Tobias, 22, was arrested after the January death of 3-month-old Dylan Lee Edmondson. She told investigators she became angry because the baby was crying while she was playing a computer game called FarmVille on the Facebook social-networking website.

Tobias entered her plea Wednesday before Circuit Judge Adrian G. Soud. A second-degree murder charge is punishable by up to life in prison.

And then I’m going to point out that games are built using a combination of math, art, storytelling and psychiatry. The last one is especially true of persistent world games. We use systems like B.F. Skinner’s schedules of reinforcement to find the exact number of times a player will perform a tast – say watering their crops in Farmville – before you have to give them a reward. Encouraging the “Well, I’ll do just one more X before I quit” behavior the designer wants. And when we’ve done our jobs correctly, that last time is the time that gives you a reward, causing the player to either continue playing, or look forward to their next play experience. We give them cravings, essentially.

Persistent world games are built to give people a good feeling, and then make them want more of that feeling.

It is an intentionally, deliberately created method of addiction.

So, when you see things like the news story above, think about it in the same way you would when a crack addict burns her house down and kills her infant child.

Because they’re both the same story, of some one who succumbed to an addiction.

Only difference is one of them happens to be available at Best Buy and Walmart and on your kid’s Christmas list.

Via BBC News:

He was thought to be the oldest man in Tokyo – but when officials went to congratulate Sogen Kato on his 111th birthday, they uncovered mummified skeletal remains lying in his bed.

Mr Kato may have been dead for 30 years according to Japanese authorities.

They grew suspicious when they went to honour Mr Kato at his address in Adachi ward, but his granddaughter told them he “doesn’t want to see anybody”.

Police are now investigating the family on possible fraud charges.

Welfare officials had tried to meet Mr Kato since early this year. But when they went to visit, family members repeatedly chased them away, according to Tomoko Iwamatsu, an Adachi ward official.

Authorities grew suspicious and sought an investigation by police, who forced their way into the house on Wednesday.

They discovered a mummified body, believed to be Kato, lying in his bed, wearing underwear and pyjamas, covered with a blanket.

Mr Kato’s relatives told police that he had “confined himself in his room more than 30 years ago and became a living Buddha,” according to a report by Jiji Press.

But the family had received 9.5 million yen ($109,000: £70,000) in widower’s pension payments via Mr Kato’s bank account since his wife died six years ago, and some of the money had recently been withdrawn.

The pension fund had long been unable to contact Mr Kato.

“His family must have known he has been dead all these years and acted as if nothing happened. It’s so eerie,” said Yutaka Muroi, a Tokyo metropolitan welfare official.

I love comparing/contrasting crime in the States vs crime in Tokyo. In America, stuff like this happens every day. People keep cashing social security and pension checks for dead relatives long after they’ve been stuck in the ground. But at least we know you don’t have to hang on to the body. Only in Japan would you keep the body around and tell people that he was both still alive, and transcendent like the Buddha.

You almost have to respect them for that extra mile they go. We just dump the deceased in a hole in the ground. The elevate them to near godhood.

Note to everyone: When I die, I want you to preserve me, then build in an animatronic skeleton. You know, so you can trot me out every holiday and have me wave at people. Should be a hoot around Halloween.

That’s Larry North. An pink butterball of a man from East Texas who planted dozens of pipe bombs in mailboxes. Because “he was disenchanted with the federal government” and “he was disenchanted with an individual who he perceived that had wronged him”

That’s David Stone, leader of the Hutaree Militia.

These are his people:

This is a panel from Garth Ennis’s comic Preacher.

In which the preacher Jesse Custer, whom the book is named for, confronts a group of Klu Klux Klan members.

An Irishman’s graphic novel ode to the American cowboy mythos says this better than I ever could.

I…I’ve written about a lot of really horrific things in this category. But I think this one might be the most disturbing thing I’ve come across. If for nothing else than the fact that this person’s compulsion, which you’ll find out about in a second, is derived from pleasure. They enjoy having this happen, probably more than anything else in their lives. And that gives me the worst sort of chills, like there is something inky black and cold as ice slithering down my spine.

From The Times:

William Melchert-Dinkel, 47, an American nurse with a loving family, allegedly spent years posing as a twentysomething woman while trawling the internet for people he could persuade to kill themselves while he watched.

Investigators believe that he may have contacted more than 100 people across the world and that he was involved with at least five who killed themselves. He has allegedly admitted to American police that he was involved in at least four deaths, in addition to that of Mr Drybrough. He is expected to be charged within weeks.

Mrs Drybrough said: “This man appointed himself Mark’s executioner. He whispered in his ear each time he logged on to the computer. Because of his medical experience he knew exactly who he was looking for, what he was doing, the buttons he needed to push.”

A suicide voyeur. A suicide voyeur that pushes people to kill themselves so that he can climax.

Like I said: inky black, cold as ice and slithering.

‘Crime lord’s’ fake penis falls off in raid

SOUTH African police caught more than they expected in a Cape Town drug raid when a strap-on dildo fell off a suspected crime lord during a search, the Sunday Times reported.

Fat Murphy, feared on the streets of Cape Town’s notorious Cape Flats suburb, told a court that he is a hermaphrodite who holds male and female identity documents – one under the name Fadwaan, the other under Hilary.

Police and a tearful Murphy recounted the saga during a bail hearing for Murphy’s charges of possession of stolen property, which come on top of earlier charges of kidnapping and intimidation, the paper said.

“I had a vagina that could not be penetrated. But I also had male organs, testes. But I always knew I was really a man and that was what I wanted to be,” he told the court, according to the newspaper.

“God created me with both sexual organs. It was God’s decision, not mine.”

Murphy has been married twice – his second wife’s name is tattooed on his arm. He said received his male identity documents after undergoing surgery to remove his female organs when he was in his teens, the paper said.

Police say Murphy offered them 9,100 rand ($1300) not to search him during the raid.

Police said they were investigating how Murphy obtained his male identity documents, saying they found no records of him undergoing sex change surgery.

Murphy was released on 300 rand ($43) bail.

Source.

South African gangster busted after his prosthetic penis fell off during a search after a drug raid. He tried to bribe the cops not to search him because of it.

I think I almost feel sorry for the bastard.

But then my Schadenfreude kicks in and I start laughing uncontrollably at the thought of everyone’s face when a plastic dong falls out of the guy’s pants and rolls across the floor of a drug den.

It’s good to be back.

From the Guardian.co.uk:

Allegations fly over Iranian scientist’s assassination

Even for a country deep in political ­turmoil, the killing of Massoud Ali ­Mohammadi in Tehran today came as a shock. There have been arrests, disappearances and occasional shootings, but the manner of his death was as meticulous as it was disturbing.

Mohammadi was blown up outside his home in an smart northern suburb of Tehran by a remote-control bomb that had been attached to a motorcycle parked on the street. As his stunned neighbours cleared up the rubble they struggled to understand why a little-known ­academic would have fallen victim to such a highly professional assassination.

The answer may lie in Mohammadi’s profession and political inclinations. He was a particle physicist and a supporter of the Iranian opposition movement, raising the possibility he had become the latest victim in a covert war over Iran’s nuclear aspirations. It is a war in which scientists find themselves potential soft targets.

…..

The regime in Tehran has alleged the west is behind the disappearances, and was quick to blame the US and Israel for Mohammadi’s death. “Given the fact that Massoud Ali Mohammadi was a nuclear scientist, the CIA and Mossad services and agents most likely have had a hand in it,” Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, Tehran’s chief prosecutor, told a state news agency.

…..

Against that background, a parallel, secret effort to disrupt Iran’s nuclear progress looks increasingly like the only battle the west is winning. Amid anger and disillusion over last year’s election, Iran’s counter-intelligence department dedicated to defending the country’s nuclear secrets, Oghab 2, is having increasing problems assuring the loyalty of scientists and officials. In February 2007, Ali Reza Asgari – a former Revolutionary Guard general who had risen to cabinet rank – checked into a hotel in Istanbul and promptly vanished. According to various accounts, he was either abducted or he defected, but there is general consensus he is now in the west providing a rich stream of intelligence.

A month earlier, a nuclear scientist named Ardeshir Hassanpour, 44, died in what was officially described as a gas poisoning incident but was widely reported as an assassination, possibly by Mossad.

Last June, Shahram Amiri, a nuclear physicist at Malek Ashtar University in Tehran went on a pilgrimage to Mecca and never returned. Iran said he was seized, but according to many reports, he defected.

Vincent Cannistraro, former head of operations at the CIA’s counter-terrorism centre, said: “It is clear one of them, likely Amiri, is under a different identity living in the US and has been a major source of information. So it’s possible the guy just assassinated in Tehran was killed by the Iranians fearing he was one source on the programme revealed by the defector.”

I’ve always wondered if the current people behind the intelligence agencies wished they could shut up the former co-workers and bosses who are now commentating on their current activities. But, anyway.

Some one is disappearing scientists. Sounds like something out of the Cold War, when spies were pawns and scientists the kings they were sacrificed to get to. Oppenheimer, the father of the American atomic bomb, spoke openly about being approached repeatedly by Soviet agents, which probably didn’t help him when the House Committee on Un-American Activities came sniffing around. But, near as I can tell, neither the Americans or the Soviets went around killing each other’s scientists. They were too valuable, and if they didn’t defect, you just waited around and stole their finished research.

But this is different. Secrets are kept much better these days. We didn’t know anything about the enrichment facility at Qum until we were told about it by what was most likely an Iranian defector. We can’t just wait around for the next level of espionage to catch something because it doesn’t exist. The suspicion that the Iranians could be killing their own to keep them out of our hands is interesting, but I don’t know how true it is. We could just start leaking rumors that everyone is going to defect and that tactic is worthless. I also don’t think we’re the ones doing the killing. Iran getting the bomb is sort of an inevitability. They are far richer and better off that North Korea, and the those crazy bastards have had the bomb for almost a decade now. Killing scientists just seems like a way to attract a lot of unwanted and unjustified risk.

The writer in me is twisting the idea of a criminal enterprise around in this. Pakistan’s AQ Khan was responsible for getting nuclear secrets to Iran and North Korean through criminal means, and I have no reason to think that those channels just disappeared the second he was put under house arrest. This killing could be a message from one side to the other. Criminals to the government showing them who’s in control, or from the government to the criminals telling them they won’t have their scientists taken.

You all remember Hardin, Montana, yes? That lovely town in the middle of nowhere that thought building a prison would be the solution to the town’s economic woes? Except that didn’t work, so they were planning on leasing it to some kind of private security firm who would run the prison and expand the whole thing into a police/military training post. Problem was, the lead guy behind the deal was a convicted scam artist from California.

No? Well, that’s fine, I’ve got a run down for you here.

Get caught up and come back to me.

So, about a week has passed since everything exploded across the press and the dust has started to settle back down to the dry ground of Hardin.

The lawyer and CEO of the Two Rivers Authority were put on leave with pay after it came out that the crazy bastard behind American Police Force was someone with a criminal record. They both resigned on Monday. The Two Rivers Authority decided to halt all further business dealings with Michael Hilton until they’d hired a new lawyer. Montana’s Attorney General has even stepped in, launching an investigation into the prison lease deal. Hilton appears to have made a bit too much noise, and the State of California has summoned him back for a court appearance. It seems that a man who’s able to hire employees and buy 3 Mercedes SUVs might have some funds with which to put toward the $1.1 million he owes. His lawyer quit, too. Apparently his adamant faith in Hilton wasn’t quite so adamant. Finally, he’s received a cease and desist letter from Allied Defense Systems, who were originally supposed to supply Hilton’s APF with uniforms. Turns out that ADS did their homework on Hilton and decided not to do business with him, but not before they’d referred him to their webhost and Hilton had cribbed bits of content from their website for his own.

Unless something else changes, I think that’ll be the last we’ll hear from Hardin, MT for a while. Hilton’s been exposed, not as some crazed right-wing, New World Order kind of threat, but rather as a simple conman who got in over his head. Which is a pity, since everyone loves a good conspiracy.

The setup is like something out of a bad movie: a sleepy country town, a private police force, an abandoned prison and secrets around every corner. But this is real. The town is Hardin, Montana, speck of dust on the map somewhere between Billings and Bozeman. For the most part, Hardin is a town that isn’t going anywhere. There’s isn’t a major anything there. Resource, industry or tourism-wise, the town is a flatline. But the people of Hardin decided they wanted to do something about that, so they built a prison.

Yeah, that’s right, they built a nearly 500 bed prison in a town with no police force and no crime problem. Their ploy was a common one – small towns in isolated areas build a prison, then prisons systems with over-crowding problems send them their prisoners. The sending prison system pays the small town prison a fee per prisoner per day, normally a good deal more than they’d pay in their own system, but still cheaper than building a new prison. The prison model is a solid one, since they employ and rely on local people while pulling revenue from an outside source. But, they are also incredibly risky. Prisons can often time be get-rich-quick schemes that never pay out like you think they will on the front end. This is what happened in Hardin.

Hardin was unable to secure any prisoner leading contracts off the bat, and then the economy went to shit and states went broke. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the Governor and the Attorney General didn’t like Hardin’s idea to bring in prisoners, so they made a ruling that blocked Hardin’s entire business model. The planning commission behind the prison took the state to court, and ultimately won, but they were unable to secure any kind of contract during that time, or afterwards. They even went as far as to offer their facility as the replacement for Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay. The prison was empty, and the bonds raised to pay for it were now in default. Hardin, Montana was desperate.

Now enter three black Mercedes Benz SUVs with decals proclaiming them as City Of Hardin Police Department, an entity, which up until that day, had never existed. The SUVs belonged to the private security company America Police Force. They’d struck a deal worth millions to the beleaguered town of Hardin. American Police Force would take over control of the prison, and expand the facility to 2000 beds. They would also build a 250 bed dormitory for a several thousand acre military and law enforcement training center that would be attached to the prison compound. It is unclear who exactly would be held in the prison, and what would be taught at the training facility. Statements to the press have included a range of things from sniper training to DNA analysis.

Just who exactly is American Police Force? Well, that’s not too clear either. They claim to be a “fledgling spin-off” from a large private security company that was founded in 1984. American Police Force itself was incorporated in March of 2009. They won’t reveal the name of the company they spun off from. American Police Force also claims that the great bulk of their funding comes from the United States government, which is problematic since the news agencies digging around this story can’t find a single contract for a company of that name. But, there could be a reason for that. Any contracts that are classified don’t show up in the contract databases. American Police Force could be a real army of private spooks that’s managed to stay under the radar and out of the private security circles. After all, none of the other big dogs in the pack have ever heard of them, and if you can avoid the notice of Triple Canopy, DynCorp and Xe Services (formerly Blackwater) but still be able to muster up a battalion’s worth of special forces in 72 hours, as American Police Force claims to, you must be something special.

As far as the people of Hardin are concerned, American Police Force is the real deal. They’ve promised the town millions in community improvement projects, hundreds if not thousands of jobs, and free healthcare to Hardin residents. A local reporter was hired on as the company’s local mouth piece, and at least one person running for mayor of Hardin is courting American Police Force for a job if they lose. Provided everything goes according to plan, the first check to the city of Hardin, worth $2.6 million will dropped on their doorstep in February.

Problem is, I don’t think that check is ever going to show up.

I don’t think American Police Force even exists, at least not as entity they claim to be. Remember how I said Xe Services didn’t know who they were? Well, the American Police Force website claims to be using the US Training Center, a Xe owned and operated facility, for special training. They go so far to even list the contact information for the US Training Center, using Xe’s info. There is a clamor out there right now that American Police Force is a front for Xe/Blackwater because of this, but I think that there’s a different answer – they are cribbing the information from other, real private security groups to flesh out their website.

The real cherry on top of this insanity sundae is a man who calls himself Captain Michael Hilton. He’s been the point man for the deal in Hardin, and he’s also the only person anyone’s been able to find who actually works for American Police Force. He was the man at the West Coast address when the AP came knocking (their East Coast address is a virtual office that they haven’t even completed the application for). He claims that he’s working for some one named Richard Culver, a retired US Army officer, but no one’s been able to figure who that person is or if they even exist. Michael Hilton isn’t even really Michael Hilton, he’s a naturalized US citizen from Montenegro. There are court documents showing his name as Miodrag Dokovich, Michael Hamilton, Hristian Djokich and Michael Djokovich. There are over a million dollars worth of outstanding civil judgments against him in California for various fraud activities. He’s declared bankruptcy twice in a fifteen-month period, been evicted from his home, and been busted for grand theft and DUI. As to where he’s getting the money to do all of this?

“That information is not going to be made available at this point.”

What I think has happened is that Hilton saw the Hardin prison on the TV when they were trying to become the next Gitmo, and then figured some kind of con out of the whole deal. The problem is that I can’t think of a single way for him to make money off of this. If he doesn’t have the money to set up the facilities, then he won’t have the money to pay the city in February. And what makes him think that he can get prisoners in four months when Hardin couldn’t do it in two years?

Every part of me says that this is going to come to a terribly messy end, and the people of Hardin will be left out in the cold. I don’t think an Montenegrin con-man is going to be the person the US government is going to trust to build them a cover-ops black site in the middle of Montana.

I’ll keep an eye on this as the story develops.

Sources:
TPM – Mysterious Private Security Firm Gets Control Of Empty Jail In Small Montana Town
CBS News – American Police Force Corporation Takes Over Small Town Police Force and Prisoner-Less Jail
AP – Montana jail deal raises questions
AP – Calif. jail entrepreneur has checkered past
Billings Gazette – APF head Hilton has history of legal trouble

Ahem.

I hope everyone’s had their morning coffee/blowjob/shot of heroin because we’re starting off today with full-bore crazy.

No-contest plea for woman who had sex with teen — and her German shepherd

Carla Rhea Maldonado, 41, of Palm Coast, was charged in 2008 after a tipster turned over a computer disk depicting her performing oral sex on a then-15-year-old girl in February 2005.

The same disk contained pictures of her having sex with her German shepherd, reports the Daytona Beach News Journal.

That effectively got Maldonado fired — from the Flagler Humane Society, where she worked for nine years as a veterinary technician.

But wait! There’s more turns out only one of these acts is a crime!

She was not charged with any crime in connection with the dog. Bestiality is not against the law in Florida.

If you’ll excuse me, I need to go find a manatee and fuck it within an inch of its life.

San Antonio Police Chief William McManus told reporters Monday that Otty Sanchez’s attack on her son, Scott Wesley Buchholtz-Sanchez, was “too heinous” to fully discuss.

But he says Sanchez ate part of the newborn’s brain and bit off three of his toes before stabbing herself twice.

From AirAmerica:

Human rights campaigner Natalia Estemirova was kidnapped and murdered this week in Chechnya, and a human rights group blames Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov for her death. Estemirova was seized from her home in Grozny, and her body was found Wednesday in the neighboring region of Ingushetia.

Oleg Orlov, director of the human rights organization Memorial, says that Kadyrov threatened Estemirova just months before her death, and believes that he is responsible for her death: “I know who is guilty of Natalia’s murder. His name is Ramzan Kadyro,” Orlov says in a video on the Memorial website, “Ramzan already threatened Natalia, insulted her, considered her a personal enemy. He has made it impossible for rights activists to work in Chechnya. We do not know if he gave the order himself or his close associates did so to please their boss.”

Estemirova was seized by four men, and according to neighbors, shouted “I’m being kidnapped,”; her body was found shot in the head and chest and left on a main road.

Ahhh, what a world, what a world. Reminds me of a quote from one of my favorite plays…

I am in this earthly world, where to do harm
Is often laudable, to do good sometime
Accounted dangerous folly.”

-Lady Macduff, MACBETH  Act IV scene ii

From Sweden’s The Local:

Police in central Sweden are on the hunt for a gang of tattooed women who sexually molested a 50-year-old man as he was riding by on his bicycle.

The incident took place around 9pm on July 8th as the man was cycling down Vintergatan in central Örebro, the Aftonbladet newspaper reports.

Suddenly, someone grabbed hold of the rack on the back of the man’s bike, causing him to fall to the ground.

“The girls ran up to him and pulled the bicycle down so he fell,” Örebro police spokesperson Annika Haaster told the newspaper.

As the man was lying defenceless on the ground, the women proceeded to pull off his trousers and underwear and molest him sexually before fleeing the scene.

According to police, the 50-year-old was not otherwise beaten or physically assaulted by the gang of five girls.

The victim told police that the girl who actually pulled down the bicycle was about 175 centimetres (5 feet, 7 inches) tall and had tattoos on her forearms.

Authorities are hoping that tips from the public can help them apprehend the suspects responsible for the bizarre attack.

“It’s downright unusual for five girls [to do something like this]. Perhaps there are others who’ve had the same thing happen to them,” Haaster told Aftonbladet.

So, let me get this straight, a guy in his 50s was tackled by a group of Suicide Girls who gave him a hand job and now he wants to press charges? Part of me wants to tag this as ThisBrokenWorld because this guy didn’t realize that he’d just walked into a real-life porn movie. But, judging by how little money is spent on porn in Sweden, I guess it is within reason to guess that maybe he didn’t know that’s what was happening.

Also, I find it a little bizarre that a country that is having a problem with HPV transmission skyrocketing and giving people tonsil cancer (Read: in Sweden, blow jobs can kill you) doesn’t spend more on porn.

Ah, good morning, good morning. Time to kill your faith in the world a bit more.

So, you’re all familiar with Rupert Murdoch, yes? That near-mummified Australian who controls more media in the world than just about anyone else? And how he has a penchant for twisting news to one side or the other for monetary gain?

Well, it looks like the crusty old kangaroo spore has outdone himself.

This broke yesterday:

LONDON, July 9 (Reuters) – Britain’s most senior policeman ordered an inquiry on Thursday into reports that journalists at Rupert Murdoch’s bestselling British newspaper conspired to hack into the phones of celebrities, legislators and public figures.

London police chief Paul Stephenson said a senior officer will investigate allegations in the Guardian newspaper that News of the World reporters worked with private investigators to access “two or three thousand” private mobile phones.

A…wait, what?

Former British deputy prime minister John Prescott, U.S. actress Gwyneth Paltrow and Australian model Elle Macpherson were among those targeted by reporters seeking exclusive stories for the tabloid, according to the report.

Elle Macpherson? She’s a retired model. What the hell were you looking for with her? The most extreme thing she does is drop her kids off at school on her driver’s off day.

The Guardian said private investigators working for the News of the World intercepted voicemail messages and gained access to personal data such as itemised phone bills and bank statements.

…..

“This included material that showed that 31 journalists working for The News of the World and The Sun had acquired people’s personal information through ‘blagging’,” the Assistant Information Commissioner Mick Gorrill said in a statement.

“Blagging” is a form of deception where a person pretends to be someone else in an attempt to obtain information from sources such banks or telephone companies, the watchdog said.

Blagging is a terrible world. Phishing or Social Engineering is what we call it on this side of the pond, you tea-swilling crumpets.

But, that’s just the overview from Reuters. The Guardian’s got even more dirt to spill. They’ve some how gotten a hold of legal documents that were sealed after the head of a football team sued News International for illegally accessing his cellphone. The man was paid to keep his yap shut, and the documents were sealed, even the police reports that showed the full extent of the phishing scheme. The bizarre and tantalizing part about this is that none of the police agencies decided to pursue action against News International staff, even after the scope of all of this was revealed. It’s as if the biggest new corruption case in the history of their agencies just wasn’t enough to get them up. I mean, it wasn’t like they had all of the paper work from the private investigator News International was hiring to do all of this, right?

Oh, wait.

In suppressing Taylor’s legal action, News Group buried not only the Scotland Yard evidence but also paperwork that had been seized by the Information Commission from a Hampshire private investigator, Steve Whittamore, who had been running a network of sources who specialised in the illegal extraction of information from police computers, British Telecom, the DVLA, Inland Revenue and others. Whittamore subsequently pleaded guilty to criminal offences, although the newspapers who hired him were never prosecuted.

Shit.

It’s those documents that the Guardian got their hands on. Among them is a full laundry list of what Whittamore was doing. You know, stuff like….

Among those whose privacy apparently was illegally violated when British Telecom was conned into handing over their addresses and/or ex-directory numbers are Nigella Lawson (four times); Patsy Kensit; Jude Law and Sadie Frost; Lisa Snowdon (three times); Anne Robinson and her former partner; Carol Caplin; Lenny Henry; Vanessa Feltz; Lord Mountbatten’s grandson; and witnesses to the murder of Jill Dando, thus potentially interfering with the course of a live police inquiry.

When the actress Charlotte Coleman died after an asthma attack, the News of the World paid for BT to be conned into handing over the itemised Friends and Family list from her bereaved parents’ phone bill. When the TV presenter Linda Barker moved house, they hired Whittamore to get her new home address from the supposedly confidential social security database.

Working on instructions from the News of the World, Whittamore and his network also conned the criminal records database of the police, which is a specific criminal offence; the Inland Revenue, also a specific criminal offence; a cab company used by Ken Livingstone; a Paris hotel used by Jason Donovan; the actors union, Equity, for the addresses of actors; Granada TV, for information on a Coronation Street actor; and on numerous occasions the DVLA for the home details of people whose car numbers they had spotted.

Oh, Fourth Estate, look at you. You’ve grown up so much. Back when you started out, you were this muck raking hellion, determined to shine the light of truth into the darkest corners of The System and save the working poor from the injustices of corruption. Now you’re all big and tall, chasing people around with telephoto lenses on your cameras and tapping their phones with sophisticated listening devices. You keep it up at this rate, and the world’ll never need another Secret Police. Won’t that make your mommy, proud?

Ehrrr. Ahem. Anyway.

One might wonder in what diseased brain any of this sounds like a good idea in the first place. This is fraud on a base level, right? Well, not so much in England. Turns out gaining access to people’s information through subterfuge in England is COMPLETELY FUCKING LEGAL provided the end result is “for the public good.” That’s right. In England, I can go rooting through all of your personal information provided at some point I turn up some kind of criminal activity on your part.

So, quick round up before I let you get back on with your day, now feeling a bit more paranoid and shitty.

News International owns newspapers in England. Said newspapers hire private investigator to gain access to privileged information. News International gets caught, but with a wise legal play, manages to seal the records and give justice the middle finger. Law enforcement agencies in England, who have apparently gone soft now that the IRA is nothing more than a bunch of doddering old Irish drunkards in Belfast, can’t be assed to actually prosecuted the case that is handed to them and only the PI goes to jail (Don’t worry, he got money for News International to stay quiet). Jump forward a few months and some how the Guardian gets their hands on the court papers and proceeds to publicly flay News International. Now we sit back, get some pop corn, pour some whiskey and watch English news agencies rip each other’s bits off.

EDIT: Fixed a few inconsistencies with my use of News Corp’s subsidiary companies.

This segment couldn’t come back in a bigger way if it tried right now. Alpha mentioned this to me over the weekend, and unfortunately, this story didn’t end up some bad internet joke like Kip’s did.

Court documents said neighbors checked on Mendoza’s son, Angelo Jr., after they noticed the father acting nervously and fleeing from his east Bakersfield apartment in his wheelchair. Inside, they found little Angelo naked and bleeding. Police said the boy had numerous bites to his hands and his eyes were swollen shut. Doctors said the boy’s left eye and muscle were completely missing. His other eye was mutilated beyond repair. The boy told them, “My daddy ate my eyes out.” Rodriguez said meanwhile Mendoza approached him at a neighbor’s vacant house down the street.

Rodriguez said the boy’s father wheeled himself into the front yard and asked Rodriguez to play with him and a pet dog. He was wearing boxers and a sweater. When Rodriguez refused, Mendoza got off his wheelchair and dragged himself into a back yard, where he found an ax.

By then Mendoza had stripped naked. He chained himself to a tree in the back yard and began hacking at his leg with a pickax while yelling incoherently.

“He told me to look into the sun and pray with him. I was kinda scared for a minute,” said Rodriguez.

Then Rodriguez jumped on Mendoza and wrestled the ax away.

“As soon as I grabbed the ax he tried to bite me, and I had to hold him down with my knee. There was dry blood around his mouth. I don’t know if it was his own, but I’m pretty sure it was his son’s now that I hear the story,” said Rodriguez.

The police report said Mendoza appeared to be under the influence of PCP. Rodriguez said had he known about little Angelo, the outcome would have been different.

“I would’ve just let him cut his leg off. What happened to his son is not right. I would’ve left him alone,” said Rodriguez.

“Daddy ate my eyes.” For as long as I fucking live, I will never hear anything so simple and disturbing. It is right up there with a Lovecraft line or something out of a Junji Ito piece.

From the BBC:

Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail.

…..

“It’s serious to actually be found guilty and get jail time. It’s really serious. And that’s a bit weird,” Sunde said.

“It’s so bizarre that we were convicted at all and it’s even more bizarre that we were [convicted] as a team. The court said we were organised. I can’t get Gottfrid out of bed in the morning. If you’re going to convict us, convict us of disorganised crime.

“We can’t pay and we wouldn’t pay. Even if I had the money I would rather burn everything I owned, and I wouldn’t even give them the ashes.”

…..

No copyright content is hosted on The Pirate Bay’s web servers; instead the site hosts “torrent” links to TV, film and music files held on its users’ computers.

I’m not trying to make these guys out to be martyrs, because that it clearly what they want. I’m also not going to say that any of them are innocent. They knowingly profited by providing people with access to copywrited material.

But, if you can send people to jail and fine them millions for that…explain to me how, exactly, the Google search that brought me to copyrighted material on YouTube or Google Video isn’t just as culpable?

Right now copyright law is staring out into a great digital unknown, too scared of all of the potential outcomes to move. The problem is, the rest of the world is running up like a pack of drunkards ready to push the lazy tit over the edge for taking to long to make a choice.