Category Archives: Censorship

Coffin for one, Prime Minister?

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Bay doors open 

As part of his ongoing mission to pretend the bad stuff isn't happening, Stephen Harper has banned the media from filming the coffins of fallen Canadian soldiers or, indeed, being anywhere near them.

From the CBC, although Metro called it first, and with perfect accuracy, on this very website several days ago. Please note that these pictures are several years old, from the Canadian deaths in Afghanistan resulting from the American bombing.

Reporters were not allowed into the military airbase at Trenton, Ont., to cover the Tuesday evening arrival of the remains of four soldiers who died in a weekend bombing.

Coffins

Harper said the policy has been implemented to respect the privacy of the families.

*

"It should be up to the families to decide whether they want reporters present at such ceremonies," said Richard Leger, whose son Marc was killed in Afghanistan four years ago.

"I know, in 2002, it was a great thing for us to have the media there… We wanted to show all Canadians what the cost of their liberty is," he told CBC Newsworld.

"People saying, 'Thank you for the life of Marc' – as a parent that's hard to hear, but knowing what's the reason behind it helps us to move on."

Coffins being carried

Maureen Burrowes, who is a cousin of Payne, said the government is depriving her of her chance to be part of Tuesday night's ceremony.

"I honestly believed I would see my cousin's return on CBC as I could not be present today," she wrote in an e-mail. "I really feel that our current government has made a very bad decision and voters will remember this in the next election."

"The timing is absolutely horrendous and I would love to know how to get this reversed."

Coffin with final honours

Operation Global Media Domination: Politics Day

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TIAToday, as you may have noticed, was Politics Day at the ol' raincoaster blog. And, surprisingly, I find that the only thing which out-pulls sex and/or curling (curling porn was a top search, btw) is politics. Glad I found something that did. Getting a wee bit tired of the eedjuts coming to this blog via searches for "Mango Porn."

I am indeed a famewhore of the highest order (the lower orders have to sit on the unshaded side of the temple and stick to beige robes) but even I am not gonna be rooting for more dead Canadian soldiers or pissy, self-serving and moronic Tory policies from the remarkably lifelike Stephen Harper or the remarkably simian George W. Bush. Although I do admit a peculiar fondness for the video of that funny little Chaplin impersonator and that funny Turko-American writer fellow.

At last, a CIA program even *I* can support!

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Russia, from the CIA factbook

No, seriously. Thanks to my beloved paranoiacs at Cryptome I’ve found a CIA program I can actually support. Cheer. Rip off, even. And I encourage you and everyone you know to do the same.

George C. Minden, who for 37 years ran a secret American program that put 10 million Western books and magazines in the hands of intellectuals and professionals in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, died on April 9 at his home in Manhattan. He was 85.

Captain Freedom (who, by the way, was censored by Photobucket)Mr. Minden was president of the International Literary Center, an organization financed by the Central Intelligence Agency, which tried to win influential friends by giving them reading material unavailable in their own countries. The material ranged from dictionaries, medical texts and novels by Joyce and Nabokov to art museum catalogs and Parisian fashion magazines.

The people who received the reading matter were generally Communists or professionals and intellectuals working for Communist regimes. They thought the books were being donated by Western publishers and cultural organizations.

The C.I.A.’s purpose was to offer an alternative, culturally engaging reality that had the implicit effect of promoting Western culture. Mr. Minden did not see a need to bluntly refute Marxist dogma, on the theory that people could use common sense and their own observations to reject Communist arguments.

The project became something of a personalized book club; files were kept on recipients’ reading tastes, so as to better satisfy them in the future.

Hmmmm, I always wondered about the forehead from which Amazon sprang, fully-formed…now we know. 

Mr. Minden wrote in an internal memo that the West‘s main obstacle was “not Marxist obstacles, but a vacuum,” and that “what is needed is something against frustration and stultification, against a life full of omissions.”

Proselytizing for freedom of choice and independence of thought sounds like a pretty noble set of goals for the CIA, and they deserve a big hand for undertaking this project. Let’s keep the dream alive by doing this on our own, shall we? You know that’s what Minden would have wanted.

Suggested targets of this consciousness-raising guerrilla intelligence action include: Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Russia, China, Indonesia, the Sudan, Uganda, and the United States of America.

Hu and Bush, Heckler and Gitmo

Operation Global Media Domination: Gay Pirates kick Bloggers Ass

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TIAThe raincoaster blog is quite proud and, in fact, almost insufferable about the fact that we have cracked the top 350,000 blogs in Technorati. If you've done better than that, we don't want to hear about it. No, really. We get all weepy and snappish when we hear about that sort of thing unless it's accompanied by a heartfelt "and let me teach you exactly how I did that" email.

PeterPan, I'm talking to you.

And while it's nice to be promoted so my stat counter starts at 30, rather than zero, there's a brief yet heart-stopping period every day when I appear to have negative readers. And we all know my readers are as positive little bundles of human sunshine as it is possible to be, right? Totally, bitches!

In a search term roundup this week, it is quite clear that Gay Pirates kick the ass of all blog-related posts. There are the classic greatest hits: mango porno, Narnia porn, and octopus sewing patterns. And curling. Lotsa curling.

Eagles are good, too. Raptors apparently rank high in the blogosphere; I can see that, you know. Winging through the sky, falling upon their prey like a thunderbolt, soaring in regal isolation, making Technorati their bitch.

Lawsuit of the Day: Elder Gods vs Microsoft

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Welcome Squid Overlords!This was apparently filed over ten years ago, but you know how long these things take. The lawyers for the big guys always try to drag out lawsuits to bankrupt the little guy. Microsoft, the little guys. Wrap your head around that if you can.

And, no doubt, the Big Guys have tried and tried to drag it out and will continue to do so until Microsoft, crushed by the opposition's relentless attack, capitulates. The plaintiffs in this case have an additional advantage:

They are immortal.

To:  Microsoft Lawyers, Inc. 
From:  Azathoth, Nyarlathotep and Hastur, Elder Attorneys.

Sirs:

Our agents among the mortal herd have brought to Our attention your recent product entitled Windows '95.  Therefore We now give you statutory notice of intent of proceedings to be taken against Microsoft by the Many-Angled Ones.

With this suit We will show that Windows '95, and to a lesser extent all of the Microsoft range of products, infringe upon the recognised "look-and-feel" of the Elder Gods, for the following reasons:

o Windows '95 is a crawling abomination from the darkest pits of Hell;

o No man can be in it's presence for too long without being driven into gibbering insanity;

o A cult who worship it exist in secret amongst the mortal herd;

o Those who associate with it for too long develop common physical characteristics, to wit:  pale, clammy skin, bulging eyes, generally unkempt physical appearance, tendency towards nocturnal living, change in diet to that which normal men do not eat (in your case tacos, burgers and Jolt Coke; in Ours, human flesh, Fungi of Yuggoth and the blood of Alien Gods);

o Mysterious tomes that purport to explain this phenomenon are reputed to exist; they are bound in an unnatural substance and only available
at a terrible cost to the user.

o The Microsoft range of products seek to utterly dominate the world, and force all who dwell there to live in eternal damnation.

As you can see, Our case is very strong, especially when you consider that most judges prefer not to have chittering things with tentacles for faces scoop out their brains and eat them.

We hope that you will consider these points carefully and settle out of court, since it is not Our intention to have your senior partners spend
the rest of their mercifully short lives under heavy sedation in a maximum security psychiatric hospital.  After all, it was the Lords of the Outer Planes who gave humanity lawyers in the first place.

Respectfully yours,

pp.  J.  Arthur Hastur, LL.B., B.C.L, B.D

From: surfbaud at NO-SPAM dot waverider dot co dot uk (Dave Hemming)
This is original from me. It was originally an answer I wrote for the Internet Oracle – I've reworked it as a standalone.