Five years ago, no one would have thought that Stonewall, a lobbying group for gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, would be acting as a consultant to the Royal Navy of Britain. Nor would anyone have thought that the Royal Navy would consider placing advertisements in gay magazines. If times have changed, so have the Royal Navy’s strategies.  

Britain terminated its ban on gays in the military five years ago, and the British parliament approved the Civil Partnership Act last year, granting registered same sex couples rights similar to those given to heterosexual married couples. From the fall of 2005, gay servicemen and women in partnerships may apply for housing that was previously restricted to married couples.

The Royal Navy isn’t merely paying lip service to this new legislation — through its partnership with Stonewall, it’s seeking to retain and recruit more gays and lesbians, in addition to improving their quality of life in the military. Director of Naval Life Management Commodore Paul Docherty states that the current efforts are intended to “make more steps toward improving the culture and attitude within the service as a whole, so gays who are still in the closet feel that much more comfortable about coming out.”
  

Mimi Hanaoka

“Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuck-offs and misfits — a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage,” famously stated Hunter S. Thompson, who was known as much for his drug-induced shenanigans as he was as the founder of gonzo journalism, a style in which the author is central to the story he is reporting.  

Thompson — irreverent, acerbic, and sardonic — committed suicide today by fatally shooting himself.  He was 67.

Mimi Hanaoka

The Bush Department of Education certainly never meant No Child Left Behind to interfere with the administration’s higher moral calling — but in Virginia, parents are being forced to choose between higher test scores for students and religious education during school hours.  Just as the Bush administration has pushed for increasingly conservative curriculum, such as chastity-only sex education in schools, their stringent testing requirements have become a liberal weapon to combat school-sanctioned religious education.

Virginia permits parents to register their children for religious pull-out education during the school day, as protected by a 53-year-old Supreme Court ruling permitting Weekday Religious Education. According to the Virginia Council of Churches, there were approximately 12,000 students in Virginia participating in this program in 2002, all of whom leave school grounds during the regular day for a half-hour lesson in Christianity. (A similar program exists in 32 other states, mostly Southern). The other kids in the class remain in their classrooms and color.  

As Salon reported this Wednesday, parents have challenged their school boards to modify the WRE program, as taking time away from classroom instruction puts students at a disadvantage when taking No Child Left Behind-mandated state exams.  The school boards have voted to continue the program but find a more creative way to occupy the minority of children not participating in WRE — surely not what the children’s parents intended. “Separate but equal” is no longer an acceptable educational precept when used to divide students along racial lines. Surely it should be as appalling when used to separate first graders on the basis of religious beliefs.

llouison

In Sunday’s review of Peter Lamont’s book, The Rise of the Indian Rope Trick, Teller, of the magician duo Penn and Teller, reveals in few words how a hoax can capture the imagination of a public even after having been exposed. The key to longevity, apparently, lies not in the sophistication of the trick, but rather in the stubborn determination of believers.

In 1890, during a particularly competitive period in journalism, The Chicago Tribune published a story by John Elbert Wilkie. Years before Wilkie would become  director of the Secret Service, he wrote a fiction piece for the The Chicago Tribune which was published as fact. This piece described a trick performed by an Indian fakir, in which a child climbed a ball of twine up into the sky. Wilkie’s piece was accompanied by a photograph of the event: however, it showed no boy, no ball of twine. Only the fakir, seated on the ground, appeared in the photo, which Wilkie explained was evidence that “Mr. Fakir had simply hypnotized the entire crowd, but he couldn’t hypnotize the camera.”

The story made international headlines. However, four months after the story was printed, it was retracted by The Chicago Tribune, which admitted the piece had been “written for the purpose of presenting a theory in an entertaining form.” As Lamont and Teller point out, the retraction didn’t receive nearly as much attention by the public as had the original hoax.

What is interesting is that sightings of this “Indian Rope Trick” were reported for years afterwards, in spite of the published retraction. “Wilkie’s story had remarkable staying power,” pens Teller:

“The story’s genius is that it allows a reader to wallow in Oriental mystery while maintaining the pose of modernity … By describing a thrilling, romantic, gravity-defying miracle, then discrediting it as the result of hypnotism – something equally cryptic, but with a Western, scientific ring – The Tribune allowed its readers to have their mystery and debunk it, too.”

Social security reform should be opposed in favor of the libertarian
solution: End the scam and its Nazi numbering.

The biggest threat is ignored: Reforms will nationalize everything. If all SS taxes had been invested in stocks, then the government would own the entire economy today.  Everyone is lucky that his stolen money was squandered.

The biggest outrage is ignored: that Americans are numbered as infants for lifetime surveillance.

National numbering was imposed in 1935, as the USA followed the path of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazis). The federal government was growing massively and attempting to nationalize the economy in many ways. The pledge of allegiance to the USA’s flag had its original straight-arm salute created by Francis Bellamy (an advocate of nationalization and a self-proclaimed national socialist in the USA), and it was the origin of the salute of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.

Government was taking over schools, imposing segregation by law, and teaching racism as official policy. Laws required daily robotic chanting of the pledge upon the ring of a government bell, like Pavlov’s lapdogs of the state.

After German Nazism fell, the USA’s government schools continued segregation and racism, stopping in the 1960s.  The USA also continued its Nazi numbering, with no stopping.

Today, the USA numbers babies, and government schools demand the numbers for enrollment, and the numbers track homes, workplaces, incomes, finances, and more, for life.  School laws still tout the daily pledge, a bizarre ritual shunned by every other country.

The pledge of allegiance and the SS scam were both touted by the pledge’s author, who advocated “military socialism” and a government takeover of schools in order to produce an “industrial army” to nationalize everything (including people via national numbering). It is now the cornerstone of the USA’s police state.

As an attorney, I am asked if it is wise (or constitutional) for the
U.S. government to number all youngsters and then steal their savings away for others via the so-called “social security program.”  The program  would have been struck down as unconstitutional but for the guile of the U.S.’s worst president, the socialist F.D.R., and a craven Supreme Court justice.

Is there only one judge in the USA who has the courage to publicly say that social security is unconstitutional?  Justice Janice Rogers Brown of the California Supreme Court (and nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit) said, “Today’s senior citizens blithely cannibalize their grandchildren because they have a right to get as much ‘free’ stuff as the political system will permit them to extract…”

At this time, I am the only person warning of the danger of nationalization and totalitarianism in the SS reform proposal.

As the first person and the only person to organize a public burning of social security cards, I am proud to continue the libertarian fight.  The only place with a photo of the historic event is http://rexcurry.net/ssnburn.html.

Even the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank, has been duped by
propaganda. What is it about the phrase “the government will manage the investment of the funds” that some libertarians don’t understand?  It is not privatization, it is nationalization. It will destroy liberty quicker than school vouchers.

The “Burn Party” for socialist slave cards was inspired by the burning of draft cards in the 1960s. Socialist slave cards are the modern draft cards, and they are much worse. That only one public burning of SS cards has ever occurred is more proof of the capitulation of Amercians to socialism, to the police-state and to the surrender of liberty.

If the antidisestablishmentarianism does not end, then the U.S.A.’s police state will worsen.

The most widespread example of the police state in the U.S.A. is the
impoverishing social security system and its socialist slavery.

That is why social security numbers are known as Nazi numbers.

It was the same path that led to the socialist “Wholecaust” (of which the Holocaust was a part) with the socialist trio of horrid atrocities: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics with 62 million killed; the People’s Republic of China, 35 million; the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, 21 million.

After the National Socialist German Workers’ Party slaughter, the same genocidal socialist policies continued under the U.S.S.R. and the P.R.C.

Instead of being a beacon of freedom, the U.S.A. is still showing Nazism to the world.

The world is owed an apology for the horrid influence that government had (and still has in many ways) inside the U.S. and out in promoting socialized schools, military socialism within government schools, the creation of industrial armies, Nazi numbering, and daily robotic pledges of allegiance in military formation (that spread the infamous straight-arm salute).

In The Fray Contributor

“I understand the logistical problem but still we are very depressed that we have not been allowed to vote, this is our right,” stated Iman Qahtani, a female Saudia Arabian journalist, speaking about the first quasi-democratic municipal elections in Saudi Arabia, in which women were banned from voting.
    
Despite the fact that women comprise over half of the population in Saudi Arabia, and despite the fact that the election rules assert that all citizens who are 21 or older, with exception of military personnel, may vote, Saudi women were disenfranchised by a technicality. Voters must have an identification card to register to vote, but only six percent of women requested the necessary ID cards. Citing the impossibility of giving ID cards to all women ahead of the vote, election officials simply banned all women from voting.  

Although women remain disenfranchised, this is the first time men are voting in something that even remotely resembles a democratic system. Saudi Arabian men are currently actually only voting for half of the seats on the municipal council; the other half will be appointed, and the monarchy, which is effectively headed by the crown prince Prince Abdullah Bin-Abd-al-Aziz Al Saud, is still the ultimate power in the kingdom.

The final results will probably not be released until the weekend, but candidates who have Islamist support are projected to win the largest number of seats.

Mimi Hanaoka

Makeup is used to enhance a person’s natural look. Every person has a perspective on their own look. That perspective determines if that individual will choose to wear makeup

American corporations are choosing to force women to wear makeup and are being supported by the American Court system. The issue here is the power of American corporations in the American courts. The human rights issue has been totally ignored. The purpose of makeup is not truly what the court reviewed.

The Court, except for one court justice, considered no more than the sexual discrimination issue and not very thoughtfully. The court allowed corporate interests to guide its decisions rather than considering the further ramifications of controlling the use of cosmetics by individuals.

How much farther can corporate control of individual attire go? Can corporations go so far as to control the jewerly that employees wear? Will it soon be acceptable for employers to tell employees that wedding rings cannot be worn on the job?

The unfortunate aspect of the case was that it was based upon sexual discrimination, but the real issue is when do corporations cross the line of human rights? This case should have been about the human rights violation committed against every working man or woman.

The company in this case decided to use personal preferences to the company’s believed advantage without considering the human beings that are forced to conform to those preferences.

The Men’s Fashion Freedom Movement is struggling for men to have total fashion freedom. The human rights violation committed by forcing makeup on women was equally abusive to men in the reverse. The movement is pushing for men to be free to use makeup as they choose. You can read more about the movement at Men’s Fashion Freedom.

Political parties with the words “national” or “democratic” in their name are often amusingly and tragically totalitarian in their aims, and the National Democratic Party (NDP) of Germany is no different. An extreme right-wing party with neo-Nazi sympathies, the NDP has roiled up a controversial debate about the WWII bombing of Dresden.

As politicians in the eastern German region Saxony, who convene in Dresden, began their parliamentary discussion about how to commemorate the victims of the bombing of Dresden on the 60th anniversary of the event, a dozen members of the NDP refused to participate in the one minute moment of silence dedicated to remembering the victims of the second world war and German National Socialism. The NDP members refused to commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz, one of the most notorious concentration camps. Only those who died when German cities were bombed should be commemorated, they insisted. Juergen Gansel of the NDP later condemned the Allied attack on Dresden as “mass murder,” in “Dresden’s Holocaust of bombs.” Gansel asserted that the NDP is “taking up the political battle for historical truth, and against the servitude of guilt of the German people.”

For two days during World War II, beginning on February 13, 1945, the Allied forces bombed the city of Dresden, which functioned as a strategically important rail and communications hub for the Nazis. Responding to a Russian request, British and then American aircraft rained bombs on the city. Due to the influx of German refugees entering the city from the eastern provinces, some historians suggest that the official death toll of 35,000 is too conservative.

The NDP’s particular brand of historical revisionism seems to carry a starting amount of currency among young Germans; a poll conducted by the newspaper Welt am Sonntag revealed that 27 percent of Germans 30 years old or younger considered it acceptable to call the bombing “ Dresden’s Holocaust of bombs.” In contrast, only 15 of those who were at least 60 years old found the term acceptable. Disturbingly, it is the German youth who are carrying the banner of historical revisionism.

Mimi Hanaoka

Women who live in California, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Idaho, and Montana can thank our government for making it legal for an employer to fire women who don’t wear makeup if that employer decides that makeup is a part of the company uniform. According to a federal appeals court ruling, reports Liz Benston of the Las Vegas Sun, it has been ruled legally possible for a Nevada casino company to “impose makeup requirements on its female bartenders without violating U.S. sex discrimination laws.”

Darlene Jespersen, who had been fired in 2000 from her bartending job at Harrah’s in Reno for “failing to follow a grooming policy for beverage servers,” intends to bring the case to a superior court. Judge Edward Reed of Reno explained that Harrah’s grooming policy “did not constitute sex discrimination because it imposed equal burdens on both sexes.”

In case this ruling is still unclear, writer Anne Newitz spells it out in an article posted on Alternet.org:

“Think this through slowly and carefully, girls: if you live in the 9th Circuit … you could be fired tomorrow if your boss decides your ‘uniform’ for work includes makeup. Supposedly this ruling doesn’t run afoul of discrimination law because it doesn’t impose an ‘unequal burden’ on women … [A] rule for women enforcing face paint is ‘equal’ to a rule forbidding men from wearing it. Now there’s some real smart logic. Presence is the same as absence! War is peace! Yup, it’s the kind of analysis that’s gotten very popular in the United States recently.”

The implications of this logic are priceless. Newitz continues,

“Never again is anyone allowed to give me crap about how women naturally want to adorn themselves with makeup, as if there’s some genetic urge to look fake that’s wended its way here on the sparkly pink path of evolution. This ain’t biology … This is some cosmetics executive getting rich on state-enforced gender norms.”

It’s not about whether women are degraded by wearing makeup, Newitz argues. Rather, the question is “whether women who are forced to wear makeup when men aren’t can be described as experiencing gender equality.” Evidently the 9th Circuit admitted that makeup costs both money and time, only to dismiss this fact as ‘academic.’ Newitz questions:

“But if these costs are so insignificant, why not require Harrah’s to pay to keep its female employees looking as if they’d just had a makeover?

Indeed. Here’s another theoretical question: how much makeup would it take to disguise the intentions of a government which leaves a path of illogic in its wake?

A new book, Born Losers: A History of Failure in America, explores failure as a condition, a natural result of ordinariness. Jonathan Yardley of The Washington Post quotes from Scott Sandage’s book a passage so seemingly obvious it makes you wonder how no one before now has written this:

“Failure had become modern, a low hum rather than a loud crash. It meant a fragmented life, not necessarily a shattered one. Anyone could be a failure if that identity required utter stagnation instead of outright misfortune. By the time Mark Twain imagined Tom and Huck fading away ‘under the mold,’ the American idea of failure centered on problems recognizably our own: aimlessness, routine, stress, conformity, loss of individuality, the dead-end job, the disgrace of being ‘merely’ average. Losers plodded their lives away in offices, factories and boardrooms.”

Vinnee Tong