(The National Counter Terrorism Center has) “access to all the databases of all the agencies. There is total sharing. But I’m concerned that they don’t have the easy ability to draw linkages between the various databases…

It’s not clear to me that at the National Counter Terrorism Center today… (the computer system) will automatically cross search all the intelligence and law enforcement databases it has. I want to find out whether that exist and I’m afraid that it doesn’t.”

– Senator Joe Lieberman on NPR Morning Edition with Renee Montagne this morning, doing a heck of a job beating the dead scare-monger horse before he’s bothered to gather the facts. (Italicized emphasis is Senator Lieberman’s emphasis, bold is mine.)

So…  I guess I really have to admit that the Thursday blog has turned into an Every-Other-Friday blog as of late. I had a good friend who used to say “a bad excuse is better than no excuse.” Right now, though, my only excuse is “I’ve been crazy busy and preoccupied.”

Lame, I know. But an excuse, nonetheless.

So for this edition of the links of the week I only bring you one; a story of widows in the Indian state of Jharkhand beaten, dragged through the streets, and forced to eat human excrement for being “witches”. The grand irony, of course, is that “spirits” supposedly possessed other women in the village, alerting them to the practice of witchcraft in their midst. But this somehow isn’t considered a form of sorcery or witchcraft in and of itself.

It’s very odd, the way the human animal does these things. It strikes me as especially odd considering a conversation that I was having last night with an online gaming friend. An ethnic Hmong, he comes from a very different background, spiritually, than the charismatic Pentecostal Christian family I was raised in. But despite these differences, we were able to find a great deal of spiritual common ground when the conversation turned in that direction.

It was refreshing, in that way that only spirited conversation can be, to see that there was still some spark of that youthful hope I once held that all problems could be solved if we only spent enough time talking, seeking common ground, and truly trying to understand one another. Of course, now that I’m old and cynical, I know that that is not usually the case. These recent, and many older, incidents of violence against witches (or Jews, or Christians, or Buddhists, or Sunni, or Shiite, or adherents of the Baha’i faith, or “insert group of your choice”) prove that. But it was as nice to have that small spark reignited as it was repugnant to watch the video of these women being degraded.

Humanity has an immense capacity for both love and hate, cruelty and kindness. Which will you choose in your day-to-day?

Photo from Yahoo images, Henry Ray Abrams, AFP

I have been remiss in my Thursday duties of late. I realize this and I’m sorry. I’ll say only that “real life” (i.e. the stuff you have to do to pay those pesky bills) has been very busy of late and beg your pardon for my slacking.

But I’m here, a day late and a dollar short as my dad would say, and I’ve got some interesting links. And by interesting I mean disturbing, sad, disgusting, and amusing.

Let’s start with the disturbing (sad and disgusting would also work here), and my requisite call for the tightening of rules relating to stun gun use, as two California police officers taser a legless double amputee.

Next we have the sad tale of Sticky the kitten, found wrapped in duct tape in North Philadelphia. Apparently brotherly love doesn’t extend to our four legged brethren.

On the disgusting front we have the story of a New Jersey police officer acquitted of animal cruelty charges related to his molestation of a number of cows (evidence of which was uncovered during a probe of sexual misconduct with minors). Between this and the tasering, makes you wonder if maybe our kitten wasn’t the work of some bored off-duty cops looking for a laugh.

Finally, Snohomish County, Washington cops aren’t making any new friends among the sorts of guys who like to eat at strip club buffets because “it’s a good value.” Police there have arrested five “bikini baristas” accused of exposing their breasts and buttocks to patrons of the Grab-n-Go Espresso looking for a little more than the standard morning pick-me-up.

They are also being charged with prostitution for allowing patrons to grope them for tips (hey, GRAB-n-GO… it’s right there in the name!) While they might have been violating some health codes with their whipped cream shows (this is why I bring a thermos of coffee to work with me), the prostitution charge seems more than a bit harsh for capitalizing on the kind of objectification that has occurred since the first barmaid tied on an apron.

So, that’s it for this day late and dollar short Thursday feature. Miles and I will be in Tyler, TX this weekend for the TBRC’s Texas Bigfoot Conference. This year’s line-up includes such luminaries as Loren Coleman, Peter Matthiesen, Esteban Sarmiento, John Bindernagel, John Mioncynzski, and Bill Dranginis, among others.

Anomaly TeleVision » Blog Archive » Lt. Col. Bob Bowman Speaks at Brave New Books 7/8/2009

Dr. Bob Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, retired. 101 combat missions in Vietnam as fighter pilot. PhD in Aeronautics & Nuclear Engineering, Caltech. Director of Advanced Space Programs Development under Presidents Ford and Carter. Former Head of the Department of Aeronautical Engineering and Assistant Dean at the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology. 22-year Air Force career. Also taught Mathematics and English at the University of Southern California, the University of Maryland, and Phillips University.

During this presentation at Brave New Books in Austin, Texas, Dr. Bowman discusses the 9/11 Truth Movement, President Obama, the left vs. right distraction, restoring the U.S. Constitutional Republic and much more.

http://www.thepatriots.us/
http://www.patriotsquestion911.com/
http://www.bravenewbookstore.com/

Max Klinger would have never stood for such nonsense!

On Thursday of last week we here at Anomaly Magazine commented on several odd run-ins with the law taking place in the state of Ohio. Not to be outdone, Toledo’s mayor has two odd stories in the news this week.

The first involves the 70 year old mayor, Carty Finkbeiner (and no, we didn’t make that name up, but we wish we had) breaking up a fight between teenagers in the park, even going as far as to call one kid back with “Come here fatso.”

The other story, one that we can’t believe we missed for the Thursday round up of “don’t Buckeye police have anything better to do”, involves the mayor and the city ticketing folks who parked in their own gravel driveways based on an odd law against parking on unpaved surfaces.

Not surprisingly the three term mayor is reportedly facing a special recall election in November.

This is what we think of your "community service", Buckeyes!

So, we missed the “because it’s Thursday” feature last week. Sorry about that. I had a whole thing on weird law enforcement planned, but I read Mack’s articles on the tasering of grandmothers and thought to myself “this is too serious an issue to dilute with frivolous arrest stories.”

But this week we’re back, and leading off with the neatest free, educational game I’ve seen in a while; Wolf Quest. I mean, where else are you going to find a game that encourages kids to “harass grizzly bears with your mate” and pee on things?

You can check out the promotional video here.

Now, on to the pre-empted police insanity; it seems that cops in Ohio really have too much time on their hands. I mean you’d think that with a failing economy, rising unemployment, and a prescription drug problem that had reached epidemic levels BEFORE the recession put everyone in crisis and desperation mode, they’d have bigger fish to fry. But not so. No, Ohio is intent on excercising all due dilligence to ensure that responsible citizens learn to stay in their place! And that place is apparently NOT contributing to the good of their communities.

First, we have the 81 year old Akron man, a retired construction worker, who dared share his experience with road crews and even give them a hand prepping a pothole in front of his house for patching. His reward? A charge for criminal damaging.

Not to be outdone by their colleagues in Akron, Sandusky police arrested a man for mowing the grass in a public park after the cash strapped city had to cut back on seasonal maintenance. But while those charges may be dropped, the state still isn’t done embarassing itself or its citizens.

In the southern Ohio town of Reading, for example, the police are earning the citizen’s tax dollars by harassing business people over their decorations. Specifically a bikini clad mannequin that has the prudish elements of this Cincinnatti area enclave fuming. I suppose when you’re bitter that your gerrymandering to get rid of a popular Democrat Congressman not only doesn’t work, but that same Congressman leaves the House of Representatives and takes over the Governor’s seat, you got to get your kicks where you can*. Good on you Cincinnatti. Now you can be known for something besides your racism and disappointing sports franchises.

Finally, wrapping up our Ohio weirdness, we have a 90 year old widow from the Columbus area causing a stir when she attempted to donate a WWII artillery shell to the Motts Military Museum in Groveport. Although her husband had held it in their home as a souvenir, without incident, for over 60 years after receiving it in appreciation for his service during the war; her donation led to the bomb squad being called out until it was confirmed that the shell was safe.

Luckily for her, Ohio broke its pattern of punishing a sense of community and history and didn’t arrest her.

*For those from outside the state or region, there have been several attempts to kill the working class Democratic hold on the southeastern portion of the otherwise red state, usually from redistricting to dillute the  strongly Democratic portions of the state by placing small swathes of them in largely Republican districts, as occured when the western part of Scioto County, where Strickland’s ancestral home stands, was moved from his Sixth District into the strongly Republican Second District of then Congressman Rob Portman.

Here at Anomaly Magazine, we’re learning to love our “Because it’s Thursday” features. We all hold down full time jobs. This is a labor of love for us. But because it isn’t our job, it’s easy to let it slide when things start getting hairy. The Thursday feature reminds us, at least once a week, that we’ve got this red-headed step child sitting over here waiting for some of our attention.

Plus, Thursdays have held a soft spot for me since college. My alma mater, Shawnee State University, was on the quarter system instead of the semester system. This meant they were always tweaking the scheduling, trying to find the most efficient arrangement. At one point classes were scheduled either on Mondays and Wednesdays, or Tuesdays and Thursdays, with lab and studio times available on Fridays. This essentially meant Thursday became our Friday, and a ritual of Thursday night drinking and debauchery ensued. When my group of small town co-conspirators decided our irregular poetry readings and open mic events needed to happen on a monthly basis, we continued our Thursday tradition, and the Third Thursday Open Mic for poets and musicians was born. As we got “real jobs” and founding performers started moving away, it became more difficult to maintain. But we still found time to dedicate one night a month to the celebration of Thursday, and, at last report, new generations of college students in small town southern Ohio are keeping our Third Thursday event alive and kicking.

It’s apparently not just me and my friends that have a soft spot for Thursday (or Thor’s Day). I have it on good authority that football fans love it because a lot of games are broadcast on Thursday. People start getting geeked for Friday. And in Austin, it’s not the alliterative Third Thursday, but the First Thursday of every month that brings celebrants into the street to experience art, music, and community.
And then there is this guy, 41 year old Peter Bielecke, who liked to rob banks on Thursdays.

To each his or her own I suppose. Me, I’ll stick with poetry and music. I don’t think I’m so keen to know what kind of Thursday rituals they practice in the prison system.

What kind of Thursday traditions do you practice or know about? Share them with us in the comments section or start a thread in the Anomaly Forums!