Author: madfinn

Racism alive and well in Long Island

The New York Times writes about semi-legal raids on immigrant owned homes in the Hamptons in Long Island.

It appears the honkeys living there (incl. Richard Herrlin, William E. McGintee, Lucinda Murphy, Todd Sarris) don’t quite appreciate the brown people around them and are trying their best to drive them out so that their McMansions could appreciate in value and they could hire illegal immigrants to cater to their every need.

The article concentrates on telling the story of the Leon family from Ecuador. They’re all legal immigrants, but were still raided by a SWAT team at 5am in the morning, because apparently the immigration officials thought the family’s mother could be hiding her ex-husband against whom she had acquired an order of protection before the divorce.

“It would appear that in the war against terrorism, agents of our nation are now acting in the role of terrorizers,” the group of local clergy, East End Clergy Concerned, wrote their congressman in a letter asking for an investigation over the raids.

I couldn’t agree more.

-TPP

Nappy headed hos vs. Alberto Gonzales subpoena

The supposedly serious news outlets CNN and New York Times are both currently running the Imus vs. Rutgers women’s basketball team incident as their lead stories. This while at the same time the US Attorney General has been subpoenaed by the Congress to produce documents in the ongoing investigation about the firing of US attorneys.

The US Congress is basically going to war with the 2nd (or 3rd) most powerful man in the United States Government, and the US President, and these news outlets are running the story about a shock jockey who shocked as their lead story. Incredible.

-TPP

If a great musician plays music but no one hears, was he really any good?

A Washington Post journalist, Gene Weingarten, conducted a hilarious social experiment with world famous violinist Joshua Bell at one of the Washington, DC metro stations last January.

Joshua Bell, whose sell out concerts sell for $100 per ticket, or more, played his $3.5M Stradovarius violin during the morning rush hour at the top of the escalators in the L’Enfant Plaza metro stop. He received $52.17 in tips from appreciative commuters. $20 of that came from the only person who actually recognized him.

Also read the live discussion Washington Post held last Monday about the article.

-TPP

Smack that RIAA up

Merl Ledford III, a California lawyer representing a family sued by RIAA in their war on P2P, has put forth a formidable smackdown on RIAA.

His letter to RIAA lawyers caused RIAA to dismiss the case. It’s unclear at this point, though, whether the Merchant family will be able to get legal fees from RIAA.

The letter has some very interesting sections in it, in particular the section labeled “Independent Factual Investigation and Probable Cause to Sue: Lack of Probable Cause”. That section applies to all lawsuits RIAA has filed. It’ll be interesting to see how future lawsuits will evolve after this.

-TPP

Finnish Broadcasting Company program MOT covers Mari-El

Finnish Broadcasting Company’s MOT program covered Mari-El during their most recent show this Monday.

Unfortunately the transcript is only available in Finnish at the moment, but the program covered most aspects of Russian oppression of Mari-El culture brilliantly.

The unsolved murders and other violent acts towards Mari-El activists were thoroughly discussed. The journalists wanted to interview Mari-El President Leonid Markelov over the issue, but their interview request was never answered. The little dictator has a history of animosity towards Finnish media, so it’s not surprising at all. He put his propaganda machine at news12.ru in full swing though, and the questions sent along with the interview request somehow ended up on the pro Russian propaganda website with “commentary” from the morons running the site. Apparently asking about how violent acts towards Mari people never seem to result in arrests is “preparing for another Finnish provocation of Russia.” Well, you can’t really fault the logic of neo-nazis, simply because there is none.

Leonid Markelov is in good company for not commenting on the story. The Finnish President, Tarja Halonen, joined him in the club. It’s interesting to see Finnish Government staying silent on this issue. Apparently criticizing Russia is just as “delicate” as criticizing Soviet Union once was for Finnish Government officials.
The program also investigates some curious “public works” projects in the Republic. Mari-El is one of the poorest regions of Russia, but yet the President is proudly building a 2nd swimming hall (not a small one either) and a third hockey arena (the region’s best hockey teams do not play in any major league in Russia). Well, bread and circuses worked for Romans, why not for a small-time communist wannabe dictator in Russia.

The program covered the cultural oppression as well mentioning mari language school closures and firings of Mari activists from their jobs.

All in all, the show was one of the best, if not the best, coverage over the Mari-El issue in recent times. Kudos to MOT and the Finnish Broadcasting Company for showing it.

-TPP

Fuck the Norwich Bulletin

Norwich Bulletin is a local newspaper in Norwich, CT where Julie Amero is facing a sentence up to 40 years in prison because her classroom computer was infected with porn pop-up spewing spyware.

The Norwich Bulletin has been “covering” the case, if by coverage you mean trying to get Julie Amero burned on the stake. I guess it’s too much to ask for a small local newspaper to employ people who are computer literate, but I don’t think it’d be too much to ask to do SOME fact checking before blindly parroting the incompetent Norwich Police Department or the even more incompetent District Attorney.

Norwich Bulletin should be ashamed of themselves for their reporting of the Julie Amero case. It’s despicable.

Here are links Andrew Kantor’s coverage on Norwich Bulletin’s horrible and irresponsible reporting on the Julie Amero case. Andrew Kantor is a professional journalist (unlike the unnamed Norwich Bulletin editors…yes, they do not put their own names under their editorials) and has written articles for several well respected publications, incl. C|Net and USA Today.

Why Norwich Bulletin’s Sunday editorial is so wrong
Articles about Julie Amero on Norwich Bulletin keep dissappearing

-TPP

Best car related ad. Evar.

I’m not a big Ferrari fan due to their arrogance on the Formula One racing series over the years, but you can’t deny Ferrari’s place at the top of the pyramid in automobile history. This upcoming TV commercial featuring several Ferrari formula one cars advertising Shell is another instant classic. Enjoy.

-TPP

Spammer e360 sues a spam fighting newsgroup

Spammer e360, who previously sued Spamhaus for listing e360 as a spammer, is now suing members of a spam fighting Usenet newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.email.

Apparently the spammer is not too happy about being called a spammer. I can’t imagine why.

The news was broken by the most excellent publication for the email marketing industry called DM News. The brilliantly penned article had this marvelous passage in it:

Nanae, a Usenet newsgroup whose Web site claims to be “dedicated to discussing e-mail spamming,” did not immediately return e-mails for comment.

That’s pretty good. I am wondering about a few things. A Usenet newsgroup has a web site (no, Google Groups is not it)? How does one go about contacting a newsgroup for comment? And if by some magic, one manages to contact “the newsgroup” for comment, who exactly did they contact? A random poster? All the posters? What about lurkers? It’s all a big mystery.

-TPP