UPDATE: I should have noted this PETA job posting seems really quite well-done spoof, the Iron Mountain of job postings. However there are 2x entries on their official PETA twitter:

@vegetarianstar Actor needed 2 participate in this year's "State of the Union Undress?" http://ow.ly/EXk3 RT? 12:34 PM Nov 23rd from web
@GirlieGirlArmy @Veggywood Actor needed 2 participate in this year's "State of the Union Undress?" http://ow.ly/EYCv RT? 12:35 PM Nov 23rd from HootSuite

The tweet before that was

@KhloeKardashian We r eatin' tofurkey & givin' thanks! XOXO http://ow.ly/EWJM

...So this is really quite credible. Via good thread on it here

This is a very good analysis of the sexist problems and the style of these cretinous Madison Avenue weasels.

On the flip side is the creepy authoritarian/esoteric Illuminati style imagery of yr leading pop stars like Lady Gaga and Rihanna. For a disconcerting read see Lady Gaga, the Illuminati Puppet (part 2) as well. It is sort of funny but also quite weird.

African American or Mixed-Race Vegan Actor Needed for PETA Video
Date: 2009-11-23, 10:04AM PST
Reply to: job-bdwht-1478953353@craigslist.org

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) will be featuring a video on PETA.org in mid-January 2010 called the "State of the Union Undress." This video will feature an attractive woman dressed in business attire proudly and powerfully reciting a speech, which will be approximately five minutes long about PETA's hard work for animals in 2009 (she will be able to read from a teleprompter during filming). It is meant to be a parody of President Obama's state of the union address, but instead of being about America's progress, it will be about PETA's progress. As the woman reads the script, she will begin removing articles of clothing until she is completely naked. It will be a sexy video with a powerful message. Full frontal nudity will be shown on this video (by the end of the video, the woman will have no bra or underwear on). We've done similar videos in the past and have achieved incredible success, including coverage on Fox News and hundreds of online outlets.

We have found that people do pay more attention to our racier actions, and we consider the public's attention to be extremely important. Part of our job is to shake people up and even shock them in order to initiate discussion, debate, questioning of the status quo, and of course, action. The current situation is critical for billions of animals, and because it is our duty to continue drawing attention to the plight of animals abused in the meat, clothing, experimentation, and entertainment industries, we are willing to use all legal means at our disposal in ways that will capture the public's imagination. Our goal is to make the public think about the issues. Although some consider our projects that include nudity to be controversial, many express support for these tactics.

Requirements for the actor:
1) She must be vegan or vegetarian and supportive of PETA's work.
2) She must be 18 or older with a valid ID.
3) She must be African American or mixed race. The goal is to have her ethnicity resemble Barack Obama's as closely as possible.
4) She must be willing to be completely nude on camera and know that the full frontal nudity scenes will be publicized on PETA.org and possibly reposted on hundreds of other media outlets.
5) She must be capable of a fun, sexy, and easy flowing performance and be excited about the animal rights message.
6) She must be fully aware that we will be pitching this video to many media outlets and be eager to represent PETA.
7) She must be available to film sometime in mid-December in Los Angeles (we will discuss specific dates once an actor is chosen). The filming will be at a private studio where the actor will work with a professional crew of men and women, including a female PETA staffer who will be there to assist her.

To Apply:
Please e-mail a photo (preferably both a head shot and a full body shot) to the "reply to" e-mail address above (send as attachment, preferably JPG format). Please include answers to the following questionnaire in the e-mail body:

Name:
Age:
Race:
City in which you currently reside:
E-mail address:
Phone number:
Are you vegetarian or vegan?
Do you have any concerns about going completely nude in this video?
Do you have your own transportation?
Do you have any acting and/or modeling experience? If so, please list highlights.
Do you have any other thoughts/comments?

Only submissions with clear photos attached will be considered. If desired, we can also refrain from publishing the actor's name.

* Compensation: The video will receive massive media coverage online and probably on television news outlets as well. Fox News has picked up previous versions of this video. As a nonprofit organization, it's difficult for us to pay the actor in money, but we can assure her that we'll do everything we can to pitch and publicize the video to make her as well known as possible. If desired, we can also refrain from publishing the actor's name.
* This is a contract job.
* This is at a non-profit organization.
* OK for recruiters to contact this job poster.
* Please, no phone calls about this job!
* Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

PostingID: 1478953353

Something awesome: Яolcats

Kapitan, there was an accident in the research facility! It’s imperative we reach the acid baths… [source]

I have been informed that these translations are not really right. The original site is @ Котоматрица: Главная страница  [photo source]

That's OK. The LOLcats are taking over, up in ur rational frameworks, makin ur reality look weirder. Reality seems to be curving away into some other odd direction, yes.

I was diggin this column from Frank Rich (h/t my dad) The American Press on Suicide Watch - NYTimes.com

One of the freshest commentators on Internet culture, Clay Shirky, has written, correctly, that nobody really knows what form journalism will take in the evolving post-newspaper era. Looking back to the unpredictable social and cultural upheavals brought about by Gutenberg’s invention of movable type, he writes, “We’re collectively living through 1500, when it’s easier to see what’s broken than what will replace it.” So who will do the heavy journalistic lifting? “Whatever works.” Every experiment must be tried, professional and amateur, whether by institutions like The Times or “some 19-year-old kid few of us have heard of.”

Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable etc....

This guy went to cover a baseball game and got fired while he was there. RealClearSports - Articles - Press Box Layoff: How the Baltimore Sun Fired Me

I would like to see some good satire - stuff like the famed Report from Iron Mountain. I think Richard Cook didn't realize (though he sort of accounts for the possibilty). The Report from Iron Mountain Revisited | AfterDowningStreet.org.

I could post more, but why bother? It's clear who's winning.

The Situation in Israel/Palestine/Iraq/Pakistan/arbitrarily defined 'nations'/etc. looks about as bad as ever for 2009. Of course, each one feeds into the next, and cascades are possible, or even likely?

The Israelis are tragically caught in a situation where their politicians have to pander to the voting populace by looking tough with another weird, half-cocked war - much like Lebanon in 2006.

One difference: besides the end of the 6-month cease-fire, which Hamas basically honored for the most part, not much happened to precipitate this dumb "all or nothing" gamble -- Israel has placed its credibility on winning.

However, it is of course more important to get into WHO placed credibility on winning: annoying career politicians. Fortunately, as everything explodes, poor ignored Ehud Barak can try to prove that the war will deliver better political mileage for Israel than the great 2006 Lebanon debacle.

This war has been looking pretty bad, PR-wise, for Israel; much weaker, really, than a lot of other things Israel has done, and in how people even on TV seem to talk about it. And yet, taking the plunge yet again, Israel takes to one extreme after another. At this point, why not?!

Two stories encapsulate the ugly weirdness of how these things get stacked up.

Within Israel there's a general election 5 weeks away, and it's a mess.

The Labor Party was seen crudely as the 'peace party,' which is true to some extent (though often not). The Likud Party is seriously looking to win bigtime, which would put the supremely narsty Benjamin Netanyahu back in charge . Thus, "reformed peacenik" Ehud Barak needs to whomp some people in a campaign that clearly won't deliver any definitive "victory". Except at the ballot box (maybe).

The Israeli paper Haaretz captures all this stuff so much more clearly than anything generally printed in the U.S. However at this time they are under a certain degree of military censorship, so keep that in mind. What excellent headline writing!

Last update - 04:28 05/01/2009

Barak's political fortunes seen rising with each missile that pounds Gaza

By Roni Singer-Heruti

The Israel Defense Forces operation in Gaza has prompted a surge in the number of people volunteering at the Labor Party's campaign headquarters over the last week, party officials say.

Thus far, the operation has been very popular with the public, and most of the credit has gone to Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who is also Labor's chairman.

The surge in people calling or emailing to volunteer their services is yet another sign of a trend already evident from the polls: a sharp rise in support for Labor in general and Barak in particular. Last week's Haaretz poll, for instance, found that Labor had risen to 16 Knesset seats from 11 in the previous poll.

The turnabout is particular striking for a party whose demise has been widely forecast just two weeks ago.

"There is no doubt that the [Gaza] operation has highlighted Barak's advantages and enabled a real discourse about the truly important matters," one senior Labor official said this weekend. "That's what we were trying to say all along: He's not a pal, he's not nice, but he's a leader. And now, people see that."

Even in the Ramle market, generally a reliable bastion of the right, support for Barak was virtually unanimous last week.

"Barak has proven himself in this operation as someone who knows how to do the work," said Shlomo Sarur, who has been a member of rival Likud's central committee for 25 years. "On security, he's good, and you can't take that away from him.

Labor officials insist that the operation's timing has nothing to do with the fact that elections are due to take place in another month, on February 10. But they readily admit that, as one put it, "his conduct in managing the operation in Gaza enables the public to examine Barak's conduct in the real world and not the world of image and style."

Officially, the party's campaign has been suspended since the operation began 10 days ago. But party officials know the campaign will have to resume the day after the operation ends, and they are therefore busy preparing their day-after strategies.

However, these strategies depend largely on how the operation turns out. If, by the time it ends, it is still perceived as a success, Barak will feature prominently in Labor's campaign as a "leader with a proven record." If not, Labor will clearly need a different tactic. But Dr. Tamir Sheafer of Hebrew University's political science program predicts that Labor's surge in the polls will be short-lived either way.

"It's all a question of how long the operation lasts and how many screw-ups there are," he said. "But from the polls we have conducted, it is possible to say that in general, rightist voters will ultimately have trouble putting a Labor ballot in the box."

The other story is not in Haaretz - apparently the Israelis have decided to round out their excellent PR so far and drop White Phosphorus rounds around Gaza. White Phosphorus is burning shards of metal, leaving puffy clouds behind -- toxic clouds, but 'gases', if you will.

White Phosphorus basically ought to be a war crime - you drop the shit all over an area you want to clear out and/or burn those within. Fortunately, the Israelis would never stoop to some treaty banning its use! Its use in Iraq is another unbelievably depressing story...

December 5, 2008

Israel rains fire on Gaza with phosphorus shells

srael is believed to be using controversial white phosphorus shells to screen its assault on the heavily populated Gaza Strip yesterday. The weapon, used by British and US forces in Iraq, can cause horrific burns but is not illegal if used as a smokescreen.

As the Israeli army stormed to the edges of Gaza City and the Palestinian death toll topped 500, the tell-tale shells could be seen spreading tentacles of thick white smoke to cover the troops’ advance. “These explosions are fantastic looking, and produce a great deal of smoke that blinds the enemy so that our forces can move in,” said one Israeli security expert. Burning blobs of phosphorus would cause severe injuries to anyone caught beneath them and force would-be snipers or operators of remote-controlled booby traps to take cover. Israel admitted using white phosphorus during its 2006 war with Lebanon.

The use of the weapon in the Gaza Strip, one of the world’s mostly densely population areas, is likely to ignite yet more controversy over Israel’s offensive, in which more than 2,300 Palestinians have been wounded.

The Geneva Treaty of 1980 stipulates that white phosphorus should not be used as a weapon of war in civilian areas, but there is no blanket ban under international law on its use as a smokescreen or for illumination. However, Charles Heyman, a military expert and former major in the British Army, said: “If white phosphorus was deliberately fired at a crowd of people someone would end up in The Hague. White phosphorus is also a terror weapon. The descending blobs of phosphorus will burn when in contact with skin.”

The Israeli military last night denied using phosphorus, but refused to say what had been deployed. “Israel uses munitions that are allowed for under international law,” said Captain Ishai David, spokesman for the Israel Defence Forces. “We are pressing ahead with the second stage of operations, entering troops in the Gaza Strip to seize areas from which rockets are being launched into Israel.”

The civilian toll in the first 24 hours of the ground offensive — launched after a week of bombardment from air, land and sea— was at least 64 dead. Among those killed were five members of a family who died when an Israeli tank shell hit their car and a paramedic who died when a tank blasted his ambulance. Doctors at Gaza City’s main hospital said many women and children were among the dead and wounded.

The Israeli army also suffered its first fatality of the offensive when one of its soldiers was killed by mortar fire. More than 30 soldiers were wounded by mortars, mines and sniper fire.

Israel has brushed aside calls for a ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid into the besieged territory, where medical supplies are running short.

With increasingly angry anti-Israeli protests spreading around the world, Gordon Brown described the violence in Gaza as “a dangerous moment”.

White phosphorus: the smoke-screen chemical that can burn to the bone

— White phosphorus bursts into a deep-yellow flame when it is exposed to oxygen, producing a thick white smoke

— It is used as a smokescreen or for incendiary devices, but can also be deployed as an anti-personnel flame compound capable of causing potentially fatal burns

— Phosphorus burns are almost always second or third-degree because the particles do not stop burning on contact with skin until they have entirely disappeared — it is not unknown for them to reach the bone

— Geneva conventions ban the use of phosphorus as an offensive weapon against civilians, but its use as a smokescreen is not prohibited by international law

— Israel previously used white phosphorus during its war with Lebanon in 2006

— It has been used frequently by British and US forces in recent wars, notably during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Its use was criticised widely

— White phosphorus has the slang name “Willy Pete”, which dates from the First World War. It was commonly used in the Vietnam era

Source: Times archives

It is a classic weapon indeed. More about that here. Israel uses White Phosphorus Munitions in defiance of treaty | The Agonist

This is what you probably ought to check out. Very shocking video of a Gaza market evidently bombed by the Israelis. Honestly I could not handle watching the whole thing. Many people torn asunder.

Such is much like the carnage at suicide bombings and the many other varieties of explosions that happen all over these days. It is only via removing such images from general public awareness -- as a major fork of the whole effort -- can such horrors be rationalized. (and this certainly applies to all sides)

Nightmares... Just try getting this video out there. Information operations, indeed.

Why actually win a hopeless war, when you can run a perception management campaign to trick the American public into thinking you're winning?!?

"Information Operations, Spinstorms & latent contradictions" indeed... Previously noted: "The strategic target remains our population:" Some more tasty links: military industrial complex in America and in yr brains! | HongPong.com

and another example of the program - exposed via FOIA: NYTimes: Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand

Sometimes these cats make my paranoia obsolete. It's sooo easy :)

For your reference: The official US Army Psychological Operations manual.

The target is your brains!!! Ahh formalized domestic-directed propaganda, so clean & polished. I wonder how many contractors will profit! (huge hat tip to barrisj_redux @agonist)

Press And "Psy Ops" to Merge At NATO Afghan HQ - Sources - NYTimes.com

Press And "Psy Ops" to Merge At NATO Afghan HQ: SourcesBy REUTERS Published: November 29, 2008

Filed at 2:01 a.m. ET

KABUL (Reuters) - The U.S. general commanding NATO forces in Afghanistan has ordered a merger of the office that releases news with "Psy Ops," which deals with propaganda, a move that goes against the alliance's policy, three officials said.

The move has worried Washington's European NATO allies -- Germany has already threatened to pull out of media operations in Afghanistan -- and the officials said it could undermine the credibility of information released to the public.

Seven years into the war against the Taliban, insurgent influence is spreading closer to the capital and Afghans are becoming increasingly disenchanted at the presence of some 65,000 foreign troops and the government of President Hamid Karzai.

Taliban militants, through their website, telephone text messages and frequent calls to reporters, are also gaining ground in the information war, analysts say.

U.S. General David McKiernan, the commander of 50,000 troops from more than 40 nations in NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), ordered the combination of the Public Affairs Office (PAO), Information Operations and Psy Ops (Psychological Operations) from December 1, said a NATO official with detailed knowledge of the move.

"This will totally undermine the credibility of the information released to the press and the public," said the official, who declined to be named.

ISAF spokesman Brigadier General Richard Blanchette said McKiernan had issued a staff order to implement a command restructure from December 1 which was being reviewed by NATO headquarters in Brussels, but he declined to go into details of the reorganization.

"This is very much an internal matter," he said. "This is up with higher headquarters right now and we're waiting to get the basic approval. Once we have the approval we will be going into implementation."

But another ISAF official confirmed that the amalgamation of public affairs with Information Operations and Psy Ops was part of the planned command restructure. This official, who also declined to be named, said the merger had caused considerable concern at higher levels within NATO which had challenged the order by the U.S. general.

"DECEPTION ACTIVITIES"

NATO policy recognizes there is an inherent clash of interests between its public affairs offices, whose job it is to issue press releases and answer media questions, and that of Information Operations and Psy Ops.

Information Operations advises on information designed to affect the will of the enemy, while Psy Ops includes so-called "black operations," or outright deception.

While Public Affairs and Information Operations, PA and Info Ops in military jargon, "are separate, but related functions," according to the official NATO policy document on public affairs, "PA is not an Info Ops discipline."

The new combined ISAF department will come under the command of an American one-star general reporting directly to McKiernan, an arrangement that is also against NATO policy, the NATO official said.

"While coordination is essential, the lines of authority will remain separate, the PA reporting directly to the commander. This is to maintain credibility of PA and to avoid creating a media or public perception that PA activities are coordinated by, or are directed by, Info Ops," the NATO policy document says.

"PA will have no role in planning or executing Info Ops, Psy Ops, or deception activities," it states.

The United States has 35,000 of the 65,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, operating both under ISAF and a separate U.S.-led coalition operation, but both come under McKiernan's command.

Washington is already scheduled to send another 3,000 troops to arrive in the country in January and is now considering sending 20,000 more troops in the next 12 to 18 months, further tipping the numerical balance among ISAF forces.

"What we are seeing is a gradual increase of American influence in all areas of the war," the NATO official said. "Seeking to gain total control of the information flow from the campaign is just part of that."

(Editing by John Chalmers)

Yeah it kind of surprised me, but "The Bank Job" (IMDB) is worth seeing if you want a reasonably good action movie: it seems more interested in establishment British deviant behavior, blackmail, censorship and MI-5 covert political management than the heist itself.

Well that's not quite true - the heist takes its fair share of time, but the characters' motivations revolve around the notion that the array of Lloyd's safe-deposit boxes contain tons of destabilizing dirty secrets: Mainly dirty photos of Labor politicians in S&M clubs, a randy royal princess, etc. The heavies in MI-5 want to bring down Michael X, a black radical thug/revolutionary who is holding blackmail photos of said bad princess, and they get a foxy babe to trick Jason Statham's character into robbing the safe deposit vault where the photo resides.

A corrupt angle unravels... and it's funny that both this movie and 2007's "Cleaner" with Samuel L. Jackson (IMDB) revolve a bit around ledgers of corrupt police payoffs. (I also caught that one recently. Jackson was good, it was also a corruption/cleanup thriller, and worked well intermittently, though the ending seemed pretty pat.)

The true story of the real bank job certainly involved the classic British government news suppression order known as a "D Notice," which killed all news coverage within three days. The robbers themselves are a bit crestfallen, then frightened, when their story abruptly gets dropped from the British tabloids.... The UK Telegraph adds some background: Revisiting the riddle of Baker Street - Telegraph Revisiting the riddle of Baker Street:

"Obviously, we've changed the names," says Clement, "and large parts of our story are invented - they have to be, because no one knows the exact details. All we could rely on what was George McIndoe told us." And what George McIndoe told them - whether truth or fiction - is quite remarkable. He claimed that "Terry" and his walkie-talkie gang, as they became known, had found sexually compromising photographs of Princess Margaret inside one of the deposit boxes.

'The idea of the photographs was based on a direct conversation I had with George," explains Clement. "He told me the story, but obviously I can't prove that it's true." Indeed, the real ham radio operator, Robert Rowlands, has spoken out against the film's insinuation. "The film is an amusing series of misconceptions, dragging in royalty," he says. "I am in touch with the princess's solicitors."

In the film, these photographs are placed in the possession of a shady, real-life character called Michael X, a slum landlord and pimp who tried to present himself as a British version of the activist Malcolm X. His ownership of the pictures bestowed upon him a "get out of jail free card", whereby the courts overlooked his criminal activity.

After in-depth discussions with McIndoe, Clement and Le Frenais suggested in their story that the robbery was masterminded by MI5, which was eager to get its hands on the photos and thereby neutralise Michael X's threat.

"That is all conjecture," continues Clement, "but certainly the Caribbean connection [to Princess Margaret] is a fairly obvious one. And while we've become so used to royal scandals since then, in 1971 it would have been a much bigger deal. There was a lot of sensitivity because of the Christine Keeler affair and they didn't want another scandal dancing around like that.

"That's the theory, anyway. But what is curious is that I have seen something that says that Michael X's file is buried until 2054, which is extraordinary. I mean, what the hell he had that was keeping him out of jail, and which was so important that they don't want it known about for another 50 years - well, it boggles the mind. Even if it was photographs of the Royal Family, you'd have thought that that wouldn't have had such a long after-life."

True to smutty tab form, the Daily Mail has the actual HAM radio recordings of the bank robbers - it's kind of fun to hear the actual audio, though much of it is quite fuzzy. FOUND: Radio Ham's sensational tape of the bank heist 'that rescued compromising pictures of Princess Margaret' | Mail Online

Here's the HAM radio clip.

My favorite characters were the totally amoral kinky British establishment bastards, who would stop at nothing to recover their photos, stage crimes, and put themselves into highly blackmailable situations. SPOILER: The whole media gets suppressed, Statham's character cleverly slips the establishment setup-patsy noose, and ends up rich and happy. Lulz.