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Monday, November 5, 2007

In the 1980’s and the 1990’s there were multiple allegations of sexual abuse of children or non-consenting adults in the context of Satanic rituals that has come to be known as The Satanic Panic. In the United States, the Kern County child abuse cases, McMartin preschool trial and the West Memphis 3 cases garnered worldwide media coverage. One case took place in Jordan, Minnesota, when children made allegations of manufacturing child pornography, ritualistic animal sacrifice, coprophagia, urophagia and infanticide, at which point the Federal Bureau of Investigation was alerted. Twenty-four adults were arrested and charged with acts of sexual abuse, child pornography and other crimes related to satanic ritual abuse; only three went to trial with two acquittals and one conviction. Supreme Court Justice Scalia noted in a discussion of the case, “[t]here is no doubt that some sexual abuse took place in Jordan; but there is no reason to believe it was as widespread as charged,” and cited the repeated, coercive techniques used by the investigators as damaging to the investigation.

One of the most visible Satanic organizations—though one that was never a suspect or charged in any of the Satanic Panic cases—is the Church of Satan, founded by Anton LaVey. Members of the Church, such as Peter H. Gilmore, Peggy Nadramia, Boyd Rice, Adam Parfrey, Diabolos Rex, and musician King Diamond, were active in media appearances to refute allegations of criminal activity and the FBI would later issue an official report debunking the criminal conspiracy theories of this time.

Gilmore feels Satanists are often misunderstood or misrepresented. LaVey’s teachings are based on individualism, self-indulgence, and “eye for an eye” morality, with influence from Friedrich Nietzsche and Ayn Rand; while its rituals and magic draw heavily from occultists such as Aleister Crowley. They do not worship—nor believe in—the Devil or a Christian notion of Satan. The word “Satan” comes from the Hebrew word for “adversary” and originated from the Abrahamic faiths, being traditionally applied to an angel. Church of Satan adherents see themselves as truth-seekers, adversaries and skeptics of the religious world around them.

On a windy October day in Central Park, Wikinews reporter David Shankbone sat down with the High Priest of the Church, Peter H. Gilmore, who has led LaVey’s congregation of Satanists since his passing in 1997 (he became the High Priest in 2001). They discussed the beliefs of the Church, current events, LaVey’s children and how Satanism applies to life and the world.

Sunday, May 18, 2014

The governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has warned that the state of the housing market in the United Kingdom is the current biggest domestic threat to the country’s economy, due to lack of house building, and regulatory issues.

In an interview to be aired on Sky News today, he said the housing market is the “biggest risk” to the economy and has “deep, deep structural problems”. Of house building he said: “There are not sufficient houses built in the UK. To go back to Canada, there are half as many people in Canada as in the UK, twice as many houses are built every year in Canada as in the UK and we can’t influence that.”

“We’re not going to build a single house at the Bank of England. We can’t influence that. What we can influence […] is whether the banks are strong enough. Do they have enough capital against risk in the housing market?”

Carney also said the Bank of England would look into the procedures used to issue loans and mortgages to see if they were being granted appropriately: “We’d be concerned if there was a rapid increase in high loan-to-value mortgages across the banks. We’ve seen that creeping up and it’s something we’re watching closely.”

Kris Hopkins responded to Carney on behalf of the government, saying the government “inherited a broken housing market, but our efforts to fix it are working”. “We’ve scrapped the failed top-down planning system, built over 170,000 affordable homes and released more surplus brownfield sites for new housing. We’ve also helped homebuyers get on the housing ladder, because if people can buy homes builders will build them. Housebuilding is now at its highest level since 2007 and climbing. Last year councils gave permission for almost 200,000 new homes under the locally-led planning system and more than 1,000 communities have swiftly taken up neighbourhood planning. It’s clear evidence the government’s long-term economic plan is working.”

Earlier this month, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development called on the UK government to “tighten” access to the ‘Help to Buy’ scheme introduced by George Osborne and the coalition government in 2013. ‘Help to Buy’ has also recently been criticised by three former Chancellors of the Exchequer — the Conservatives Norman Lamont and Nigel Lawson, and former Labour Chancellor Alistair Darling. Darling said: “Unless supply can be increased substantially, we will exacerbate that situation with schemes like Help to Buy.”

Wednesday, May 3, 2006

New filmmaker Solomon Rothman has released a trailer for his upcoming full length open source film called ‘Boy Who Never Slept.’ Both the movie and the trailer are offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license. The movie is set to be released at the end of May.

The film centers on the life of an insomniac writer who meets a teenage girl online, and a friendship that grows into an unlikely love story wrapped in harsh reality. The movie deals with various issues, including the romanticization of love, age-related issues in relationships, like statuatory rape (he’s 23, and she’s 16), and the idea of love in the online realm.

Rothman, a writer, amateur filmmaker and web designer, lives in the Los Angeles Area. He wrote, directed and produced the movie with Aurora Mae, his girlfriend and partner. Producing the movie for $200 while they were in college, they used friends as actors and later sold the camera on eBay to recoup the expense.

Rothman has spoken about the power of the internet as a distribution source for movies and has said “I believe it’s possible that this movie I shot with no budget and released online for free could potentially reach as many viewers as a major theatrical release.”

Rothman and Mae started out with the idea of creating a full-length movie that could be shared totally for free online. The film includes a custom soundtrack and script, both of which will be released open source as well.

The trailer is available on the official movie website[1] and can also be found on Google video, YouTube.com, Ifilm.com, AddictedClips.com, and the Internet Movie Archives.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Convicted cult leader and murderer Charles Manson has released his album One Mind under a free content license. The album was already released on April 7, 2005, but now it has become available under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike 2.0 License. This means that anyone can remix and share the album for non-commercial purposes, as long as they give proper credit and use the same license.

The website Family Jams (Manson’s record label), which offers hard-copies of the CD, says that “ONE MIND is pure Charlie, no additions, no corrections, no added opinions, filters or editing… consisting of songs, trance-poetry, conversations, raps, ramblings, musings and more.” The cover-art is a painting by Manson, liner notes include excerpts from his letters, and, as the sites mentions, song titles and interludes are by friends or editors.

The disc has 16 tracks, totalling almost 76 minutes of Manson’s work. The CD can be bought on the Family Jams site for $15.00 in the U.S. and Canada, and for $17.50 in other countries. Because of the new license, the tracks can be legally downloaded, and samples can be used for derived works.

Manson was part of the Los Angeles music scene before his conviction as leader of the Manson Family commune. He was close to Beach Boy Dennis Wilson —Manson wrote the song ‘Never Learn Not to Love‘ for the Beach Boys.

In 1970, Manson released the album Lie: The Love & Terror Cult to finance his trial. The Manson Family also released The Family Jams, with songs written by Manson. Manson has released several albums since.

Groups such as Nine Inch Nails have previously released some of their work under a free license.

In a related story, Lindsay Lohan will play Nancy Pitman in an upcoming movie called Manson Girls. Lohan has previously revealed that she was fascinated by Manson during her “dark period” before she sought help for drug and alcohol addiction in 2007: “Yeah, I have a dark side. I watched all those videos on Charles Manson for a while.” Lohan also stars in the movie Chapter 27 about John Lennon‘s assassination.

Wednesday, August 9, 2006

A fire on Tuesday night at Southland Hospital, Invercargill has destroyed a two-storey building which was used for laundry and cleaning by the cleaning company Alsco.

Junior doctors and interns were evacuated from the nearby hospital campus. A dangerous goods store nearby nearby was saved from the fire. The building was not close enough to the new main hospital building to cause any damage to it.

Morris Robertson, Fire Chief, said: “We managed to save a dangerous goods store near the fire but the laundry is a total loss.”

Fire crews arrived at the scene at 9.30 p.m. (NZST) and Morris Robertson said that the building was well ablaze when they arrived. The first was so severe that they had to call in other firefighters to help, including volunteers. In total there was eight fire engines and 35 firefighters.

The fire was under control by 11.30 p.m. but the fire crews stayed overnight, just in case.

The cause of the fire has not yet been determined.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Raymond Lee Oyler of California, United States has been convicted of the murders of five US Forest Service firefighters killed while attempting to control a wildfire he had lit.

Oyler, 38, set the Esperanza Fire out of anger his dog had been impounded, according to prosecutors. The October 2006 blaze destroyed 34 houses and 20 outbuildings, scorching over 17,400 hectares. Prosecutors said he was “bent on destruction”.

Prosecutors also alleged Oyler started the fire at night specifically to leave firefighters “on their own” without aerial support. He was identified as the arsonist behind the fire after a security camera saw his car several times and samples taken from the scene matched those found in his girlfriend’s house. Oyler, an unemployed car mechanic, was also identified by the owner of a local petrol station as having stood in a car park and watched the fire’s spread.

The five firefighters that were killed died when their truck was overrun by the flames. Oyler was convicted of murdering them on Friday March 6 after a six-week trial in Riverside California. The twelve-member jury took nearly a week of deliberation before returning the guilty verdict, and will meet to hear arguments regarding Oyler’s sentence on Tuesday. He may face the death penalty.

His defense had admitted Oyler likely started several fires in the Riverside County area, but denied he had started the one that killed the firefighters.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is now at the centre of controversy when, on Thursday, a live microphone caught him describing a voter he had talked to as being a “bigoted woman”.

The incident occurred after Brown, encouraged by his advisors to interact with ordinary people more often before next week’s parliamentary elections, went for a walkabout in the town of Rochdale, located near Manchester. There, he spoke with Gillian Duffy, aged 65, who challenged him on topics such as health and education, before asking about immigration: “All those Eastern Europeans what are coming in, where are they flocking from?” she asked him.

Brown responded by saying that “[a] million people come from Europe, but a million people, British people, have gone into Europe.” The prime minister, upon finishing the discussion, said it was “very nice to meet you” and returned to his car.

Unbeknownst to him, however, the Sky News microphone attached to his lapel was still turned on and picked up the conversation that followed inside the vehicle: “That was a disaster … they should never have put me with that woman,” Brown said. “Whose idea was that? It’s just ridiculous.” When an aide asked what Duffy had said, Brown responded: “Everything, she was just a bigoted woman that said she used to be Labour […] I don’t know why Sue [an aide] brought her up towards me.”

The PM, upon being informed what had happened, returned to Duffy’s home to personally apologise. “Sometimes you do make mistakes and you use wrong words, and once you’ve used that word and you’ve made a mistake, you should withdraw it and say profound apologies, and that’s what I’ve done,” he said. During an interview with the BBC, Brown is seen with his head in hands as the comments were replayed.

Duffy, speaking to reporters immediately after having talked with the PM, described Brown as being “very nice”, but later said she was “very upset” when informed what Brown had said off-camera. “Why has he come out with words like that? He’s supposed to be leading the country and he’s calling an ordinary woman who’s come up and asked questions that most people would ask him,” she said in an interview with the BBC.

“[…] It’s going to be tax, tax, tax for another twenty years to get out of this national debt, and he’s calling me a bigot,” later adding: “I want to know why – them [sic] comments I made there – why I was called a bigot.”

A spokesman for Brown said: “Mr Brown has apologised to Mrs Duffy personally by phone. He does not think that she is bigoted. He was letting off steam in the car after a difficult conversation. But this is exactly the sort of conversation that is important in an election campaign and which he will continue to have with voters.”

Some political analysts have said the gaffe may hurt Labour’s chances in the upcoming elections; the party had managed to narrow the Conservatives’ lead in recent opinion polls.

The Conservatives responded to the incident — dubbed by some media outlets as “Bigotgate” — with Shadow chancellor George Osborne saying that “general elections […] do reveal the truth about people.”

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, meanwhile said: “You should always try to answer the questions as best you can. He has been recorded saying what he has said and will have to answer for that.”

Andrew Russell, a politics lecturer for Manchester University, commented on the situation. “A politician in a stronger position could recover from this. What we know is that Gordon Brown is not in that position.”

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Buffalo, New York — Buffalo, New York developers have been stymied by old real estate deeds.

The prospective Elmwood Village Hotel may be scuttled and businesses now located there may be forced to move.

Frustrations over property located in an area once known as “Granger Estates” circulate around a clause in the original deeds over land divided by then-owner Erastus Granger in the early 1800’s.

According to the documents, “no business establishment of any kind whatsoever” shall ever be constructed on the property, and they shall forever be exclusively for residential use only. Also prohibited are barns, farms and stables.

Sam Savarino, CEO of Savarino Companies, the prospective hotel developer, announced that his legal research team found the restrictions on properties located between 1109 and 1121 Elmwood Avenue which also stated in part that “no businesses, hospitality establishment of anykind whatsoever” shall ever be permitted to be built on the property.

Savarino, whom is expected to contest the restrictions, said that his company could have ignored the findings, but that, “we can’t risk the future of a multimillion-dollar project on the hope they wouldn’t be discovered. Our opponents would have had a field day if they’d surfaced after the fact.”

Savarino said his attorneys and researchers are anticipated to determine “exactly what weight the restrictions carry and if there’s a way for the courts to negate them.”

Existing businesses are also jeopardized.

Hans Mobius, owner of some of the restricted properties upon which a carriage house is built, said, he wasn’t aware of any restrictions, and “never had a reason to research the deed and title documents.” He confidently added that, “the lawyers can get this taken care of.”

Other threatened businesses include Don Apparel, H.O.D. Tattoo, Forest Plaza Art Gallery and Allentown Music.

==Sources==

• Sharon Linstedt. “Restrictions in old deeds threaten hotel” — Buffalo News, November 18, 2006