FBI Top Ten Anniversary
Yesterday was the 60th anniversary of the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted list.
The year was 1949, and a reporter came to the FBI with a novel question: who were the “toughest guys” we were after? We responded with photos of 10 fugitives, which were published on the front page of The Washington Daily News. Although we didn’t know it at the time, a crime-fighting institution was born.
The “Top Ten” list immediately caught the public’s attention, and several of the fugitives were captured as a result of the media exposure. The following year—on March 14, 1950—we formally established our Ten Most Wanted Fugitives program, relying on the support of the public to help us capture the worst of the worst.
The mugshot archive.
Message from Midway Atoll
Taken on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking. To see more of the series click the photo or follow this link.
Forced Entry
February 19, 2010. Dutton Drive. Dallas, Texas.
Would-be thieves had broken into my late mother’s house eight or so months ago, but the kind and vigilant next-door neighbor took it on himself to padlock the door.
there’s a novel in the details of this
The professor at the University of Alabama who gunned down three colleagues in a tenure meeting — and who probably killed her brother in a shooting in 1986 — may have orchestrated the details of her brother’s shooting from a newspaper clipping police discovered in an enlarged photograph from the original crime scene.
Keating declined to be specific about the incident in the paper. Boston newspapers were reporting the article was about the November 1986 killing of the parents of actor Patrick Duffy, who starred in the TV series “Dallas.” They were slain with a shotgun during a robbery attempt at a Montana bar they owned. The two teen suspects then stole a truck at gunpoint from a car dealership. They were arrested after a high speed chase.
CreditSuisse
Credit Suisse refused a bailout last year, and made their bankers take as “bonuses” all the toxic assets that had been allocated to the bank. These “bonuses” were supposed to distribute the failings of the bank among all the investment bankers who made the decisions. To teach them a lesson. Well, as was recently disclosed, those toxic assets have risen 72% which makes all of those bankers very,very wealthy men. We’re talking billions of dollars.
Read more about it at the Wall Street Journal.
The Karaoke Murders
From this morning’s NY Times:
The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”
The killings have produced urban legends about the song and left Filipinos groping for answers. Are the killings the natural byproduct of the country’s culture of violence, drinking and machismo? Or is there something inherently sinister in the song?
Brilliant offbeat journalism.
Something Something Watergate
Remember those activists that “busted” Acorn and earned themselves a Roman Triumph on Fox & Friends? Well, they’re in jail now for breaking into a Senator’s office and the NYT has a nice little write up on their exploits:
[They were] fostered by a group of men and women in their late teens and early 20s with a taste for showmanship and a shared sense of political alienation — a sort of political reverse image of the left-wing Yippies of the 1960s. They studied leftist activism of years past as their prototype, looking to the tactics of Saul Alinsky, the Chicago community organizer who laid the framework for grass-roots activism in the ’60s, as well as those of gay rights and even Communist groups.
They held “affirmative action” bake sales with prices set based on the age and race of the buyer, posed as donors to Planned Parenthood seeking to contribute to the abortion of African-American fetuses only, and held a mock “Love Thy Prisoner” campaign to find American homes for Guantánamo inmates.
It’s hard not to feel like we’re all intentionally tipping left on the scale here, but I’m unsure what else to expect when the other side empties itself of all substance?
Seriously, I’m not sure how to respond to these folks anymore. Any suggestions?
Trailer for El Topo (Alejandro Jodorowsky. 1970)
The strangest movie I’d recommend?
Allen Klein presents an ABKCO Film.
Handcuffed man steals Rockford police car
The suspect sneaked into the front seat of the uncaged vehicle while two officers were outside the car going over details of the man’s arrest, police said. The man was handcuffed from the back, but was able to get the cuffs in front of his body to drive the car.
Police followed the man on Interstate 90 and were able to get him to stop as he attempted to take the Division Street [Chicago] exit off the Kennedy Expressway.
This is a real political ad
oh, I forgot
I got scammed on eBay!
The 1912 Blackiston — with a 5′ 7″ hood, what could go wrong?
As the hood towers above the driver’s head, the only direct view to the front is at one side of the car, but the ingenious placing of mirrors is expected to overcome this difficulty.
It’s Hard Out Here Being a Pimp
Each man was wearing blue denim pants, a blue work shirt, a light fluorescent green vest, a tool belt, and carrying white, construction-style hard hat, when they allegedly asked a staffer to show them to the telephone closet.
Update:
[It's a] very weird story that probably needs a lot of context and a lot of looking into, which is what we’re going to do here. I just wanted to get it on the record with it right now.
Taxes
I made about twenty-one thousand dollars last year?
and somehow owe a thousand dollars to the government.
How is anyone ever supposed to lift themselves out of poverty?
Yours Truly
(via)
quote out of context
I wanted to kill Li myself, but I was too weak.
The doppelganger of William S. Burroughs
has been haunting Greenwich Village:
A mini-crime wave among the boutiques and specialty shops of Greenwich Village has a face, and it looks an awful lot like William S. Burroughs’s.
The Ides of March
Aside from my day job of hunting down a venue for our next big get-together, I’ve suddenly arranged to house three ‘flockers in my studio apartment this spring.
So let me take this moment to formally invite any and all other ‘flockers to show up in San Francisco the second weekend of March. Heck, stay through the third week if you want. Bring a sleeping bag and you can sleep on my floor. If enough of you join us, I have several friends living within a four-block radius I’m sure I can bribe or blackmail accordingly.
It won’t be the real thing we’re planning for this summer, but it’s sure to be a good time.
Good Thing it Wasn’t Bobby Goldsboro
A man has been ticketed for rocking out to John Denver.
Spanish Osama
A Spanish lawmaker was horrified to learn that the FBI used an online photograph of him to create an image showing what Osama bin Laden might look like today.
Catch Me If You Can II
Her mind raced through her options. On the one hand, she had a purse full of proof that she was Brooke: her student ID, a Vermont driver’s license, a U.S. passport, an Ohio identification card, a South Carolina birth certificate. She had a part-time job, a rented apartment not far from campus on New York’s Upper West Side and a full course load at Columbia, all registered under the name Brooke Henson.
On the other hand, she wasn’t Brooke Henson.
(Thanks to Andrew Bailey)
African immigrants in southern Italy
The riots in Rosarno, which reportedly began after three Italian teenagers fired air rifles at two African immigrants, unsettled a nation that prides itself on its bella figura – the beautiful image. About 2,500 migrants live in the Rosarno valley in the southern Calabria region, moving with the seasonal agricultural jobs. Many have political asylum or are otherwise legally in Italy, but legal or not, the migrants are managed by a Mafia-run employment system, the caporalato, that operates like a 21st century chain gang. Saviano says that those who object to low wages or poor working conditions are simply eliminated – and not just by a pink slip. “It’s a military system,” Saviano tells TIME in Rome as one of the plainclothes cops guarding him stands nearby. “The farm and factory owners employ the Mafia caporali to bring the workers. The immigrants wait on the roads, the caporali pick them up and take them to the work. If they complain, they get killed.”
Simon Says
The Wire was not about Jimmy McNulty. Or Avon Barksdale. Or Marlo Stanfield, or Tommy Carcetti or Gus Haynes. It was not about crime. Or punishment. Or the drug war. Or politics. Or race. Or education, labour relations or journalism. It was about The City. It is how we in the West live at the millennium, an urbanised species compacted together, sharing a common love, awe, and fear of what we have rendered. The Wiredepicts a world in which capital has triumphed completely. A world in which the rules and values of the free market and maximised profit have been mistaken for a social framework, a world where institutions themselves are paramount and every day, human beings matter less.
– David Simon, writing for the Sydney Morning Herald.
I lent a friend my complete series of The Wire, warning him to allow himself at least a week for full consumption. I recall hearing back from him maybe 30 hours later; he was on Season Three. All he wants to do now is talk about the show’s implications — implications for newspapers, schools, cities, etc. He sent me an email after finishing Season Five with a note reading, “I went to the Baltimore Sun web site right afterwards and, while the credits were still rolling, read that the mayor resigned last week because she illegally was taking money from developers.”
That’s the best part of this show, I think — passing it along and watching someone else experience what you felt that first time around.
(via)
from the comments
Josh:
I had a family member once go on to me about Ashley Smith, the woman who talked down the Atlanta Courthouse Shooter by reading him excerpts from The Purpose Driven Life, and how this was evidence of providence and the power of the holy spirit throughout the ordeal.
But, then we found out about all that meth they took together and how she made him waffles.
don’t mess with Texas
A Texas woman intimidated an armed robber out of her store with the power of her finger and references to the Holy Spirit.
“I got mad,” said the 57-year old, pursing her lips. “The Texas part of me was challenged. So I pointed my finger and said, ‘In the name of Jesus, you get out of my store. I bind you by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
The gunman took a step back and told customer Kathy Vereen to drop to the floor. After she refused, Chadwick pointed her finger at the man and continued to chastise him. He walked out of the store cursing. He took nothing.