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U.S. Shuts Down Web Sites in Piracy Crackdown
Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com
U.S. Shuts Down Web Sites in Piracy Crackdown
By BEN SISARIO
In what appears to be the latest phase of a far-reaching federal crackdown on online piracy of music and movies, the Web addresses of a number of sites that facilitate illegal file-sharing were seized this week by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division of the Department of Homeland Security.
In taking over the sites’ domain names, or Web addresses, the government effectively redirected any visitors to its own takedown notice.
“ICE office of Homeland Security Investigations executed court-ordered seizure warrants against a number of domain names,” said Cori W. Bassett, a spokeswoman for ICE, in a statement. “As this is an ongoing investigation, there are no additional details available at this time.”
Among the domains seized were torrent-finder.com and those of three sites that specialized in music: onsmash.com, rapgodfathers.com and dajaz1.com. TorrentFreak, a news blog about BitTorrent — a file-sharing system that has tended to elude the authorities because it is decentralized — said that at least 70 other addresses had been seized, most belonging to sites related to counterfeit clothing, DVDs and other goods.
On Friday, torrent users were already discussing new sites that had popped up to serve them.
The takedown notices are similar to those that went up on nine sites in June as part of an initiative against Internet counterfeiting and piracy that the agency called Operation in Our Sites.
In announcing that operation, John T. Morton, the assistant secretary of ICE, and representatives of the Motion Picture Association of America called it a long-term effort against online piracy, and said that suspected criminals would be pursued anywhere in the world. “American business is under assault from counterfeiters and pirates every day, seven days a week,” Mr. Morton said. “Criminals are stealing American ideas and products and distributing them over the Internet.”
Ms. Bassett would not comment on whether the latest raids were part of Operation in Our Sites, and a spokesman for the Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the major recording labels, declined to answer questions.
The new seizures also come as a new bill, the Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act, is making its way through Congress. The bill, which was approved by a Senate committee last week, would allow the government to shut down sites that are “dedicated to infringing activities.”
Critics have said the law is too broad, and could affect sites that have nothing to do with file-sharing; the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online civil liberties group, has called it “an Internet censorship bill.” Waleed A. GadElKareem, who operated Torrent Finder from Egypt, said his site was shut down on Thursday without any notice.
“My Web site does not even host any torrents or direct-link to them,” Mr. GadElKareem wrote in an e-mail, adding that he only links to other sites. “I am sure something is wrong!”
He added that his server was up and running at a different address.
Users of the Web site torrent-finder.com saw this message after the site was seized on Friday.
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Meet the Rapping Teen Fitness Guru Arrested for Trying to Blow Up a Christmas Tree
Pagan Trees
Amplify’d from gawker.com
Somali-born US citizen Mohamed Osman Mohamud, was arrested after he attempted to blow up a car bomb at a Portland Christmas tree-lighting ceremony. The bomb was a fake; Mohamud had been set up by the FBI. He's quite a character!
The arrest at 5:40 pm last night capped an elaborate six-month sting operation, where undercover FBI agents pretended to be Muslim extremists who wanted to help 19-year-old Mohamud in his quest to wage violent Jihad. Mohamud believed the agents had assembled a bomb for him to detonate in a van at Portland, Oregon's Pioneer Courthouse Square as thousands gathered to see the tree lighting ceremony. But it was a dummy—when Mohamud dialed the number on his cell phone he thought would explode the bomb the FBI swooped down and arrested him.
Mohamud lives in Corvallis, Oregon, and he has had a colorful past as a burgeoning Jihadi:
- Under pen name "Ibn al-Mubarak," he wrote an article in 2009 for the inaugural issue of Jihad Recollections about how to shape up for violent Jihad: "Getting in Shape Without Weights." In it, he blasts "un-Islamic" gyms with "music, semi-naked women, free mixing and the danger of showing off." Instead, aspiring holy warriors should try the following weight-free strength exercises, helpfully illustrated with Jihadi models:
One might call him the Jane Fonda of Jihad. The Billy Blanks of Blowing up Christmas trees.
- Mohamud was also a rapper in a former life. According to the FBI's affadavit, Mohamud considered launching a Mumbai-style attack using small arms: "He said that because he had been a rapper, he could obtain a pistol or AK-47." We were unable to determine Mohamud's Jihadi emcee name, or the potency of his flow.
- He communicated with the FBI's undercover agent via gmail (truthbespoken@gmail.com) in text-message-speak. Here's an email from one of the undercover agents:
- He was planning on escaping the U.S. with a weird fake name: "Beau Coleman"
- He tried to blow up a Christmas tree. He told the FBI he chose the target because he wanted a "huge mass that will...be attacked in their own element with their families celebrating the holidays." It's like he was operating under the Fox News ideal of how terrorists should act.
So, there you go, another incompetent terrorist: foiled!
Send an email to Adrian Chen, the author of this post, at adrian@gawker.com.
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Guy Trampled During Black Friday Lives to Shop Another Day
Amplify’d from gawker.com
As far as we can tell, nobody died yesterday in Black Friday madness. But this guy got trampled at a Buffalo, New York Target store. He attempted to continue his hunt for bargains, only to collapse from the pain.
From WIVB:
As people rushed in to gobble up the sale items, one of the shoppers, Keith Krantz, had gotten pinned against a metal door support and then shoved from behind to the ground. He began screaming out in pain as shoppers stepped over, around, and on him. Shoppers went about their business as Keith began feeling his life might end at the Target doorway.
"At that moment, I was thinking I don't want to die here on the ground. That's exactly what I thought," said Keith
Keith staggered off to the television section, where he collapsed. Paramedics were called and Keith was hauled off to the hospital for X-rays and CAT scans, but he's doing fine. Target management says the company will cover all his medical bills.
He may have missed his chance to snag a 1/2-price flatscreen TV, but Keith got a wicked Black Friday bargain on the hottest holiday gift of them all: Life.
Send an email to Adrian Chen, the author of this post, at adrian@gawker.com.
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A naked man in a lawn chair pointing and laughing is now the top suspect in a blaze
Weird but true
Amplify’d from www.nypost.com
By TODD VENEZIA
A naked man who was spotted in a lawn chair across the street from a burning building pointing and laughing is now the top suspect in the blaze.
No arrests have been made in the Miami fire, but victims knew something wasn't right.
He was "on his porch butt-naked and laughing at the whole thing," one burned-out resident said.
***
Times are sure getting tough in St. Louis - the drug dealers are starting to take food stamps.
Cops said that one dealer let his customers pay with the benefit cards.
The clients let the dealer have their PINs so that he could use the cards in exchange for drugs.
***
Mozart's popularity has never been greater in Japan -- among fruits and vegetables.
Farmers are playing Mozart's music for their crops in the belief the produce will taste better.
The results have been so promising that other producers are now playing Mozart for processed foods, such as soy sauce and udon noodles.
***
A French grandmother may have set a record for the longest trip to the bathroom -- 20 days!
The 69-year-old woman was trapped when her bathroom door jammed, and she was forced to survive on nothing but tap water until someone called cops.
She tried to get help by banging on the pipes, but instead of checking on her, her neighbors started a petition to stop what they thought was some illegal repair work.
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Luke Armstrong, 18, Repeatedly stabbed mom to death believing she was devil was found not criminally responsible
Amplify’d from www.torontosun.com
Teen not criminally responsible in murder
Repeatedly stabbed mom to death believing she was devil
Krystina Armstrong, killed by her son Luke. Supplied photo.
BRAMPTON - A psychotic teen who fatally butchered and then nearly decapitated his loving mother because he believed she was the devil was found not criminally responsible Friday.
“This is clearly a tragedy caused by very serious mental illness,” said Justice Bruce Durno after Luke Armstrong, 18, pleaded not criminally responsible by reason of mental disorder to the April 30, 2010, slaying of his mother Krystina Armstrong, 54, in Caledon.
Luke was charged with second-degree murder.
He will remain in a secure psychiatric facility until he is deemed safe to return to society, court heard.
Armstrong was driving his Volkswagen while he inflicted more than 100 wounds against his mother.
Luke plunged the knife with such force into his mom’s skull and left arm that three pieces of the blade apparently broke off upon impact, court heard.
He nearly crashed head on with a 2000 Buick Regal as he was going northbound on Simpson Rd., court heard.
Police found Luke kneeling on the driver’s seat and OPP Const. James Shay saw the lifeless body of Krystina Armstrong in the passenger seat.
“Is she dead? She’s the devil. Step on my cell phone, she used my cell phone. She tried to stab me. I killed the devil,” Luke told Shay when he found the killer, his face and body splattered in his mother’s blood.
Luke later urged officers to kill his mother and added he “did kill her for mankind.
“I have committed two sins, that of murder and honour thy mother and father...I felt it had to be done,” he later said.
Luke later said an Eminem song “told him to drown his mother, but I stabbed her with a butterfly knife first.”
In reading an agreed statement of fact, Crown attorney Lowell Hunking detailed the tragic tale of the mentally ill teen who also suffers from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and his dedicated mother, who struggled to raise him since he was a troublesome youngster.
The killing occurred on the day she and her estranged husband were selling their McCauley Dr. matrimonial home in Caledon and she was moving into a new south Bolton home that day.
On the morning of the tragedy, Luke said told two school-mates who weren’t talking about his family, that “I haven’t seen my mother in months.”
On the same day he killed his mom, Luke expressed his fear of world control by the Illuminati “and that the people who were against him were on his ‘mother’s side,’” said Hunking.
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Michael Brea claims he killed a demon, not his mother
“I felt like Neo from ‘The Matrix.’ I began hearing voices and feeling powerful,”
Amplify’d from www.celebrities-with-diseases.com
Michael Brea claims he killed a demon, not his mother
Just days after Michael Brea killed his mother the actor has spoken of the reasons why he felt the need to commit such an atrocious act.
From his ward at the Bellevue Hospital the 31 year old told the press, “I didn’t kill her. I killed the demon inside her,” adding, “It was the work of God.”
He said that several ‘visions’ spurred him on and he was left with no other choice but to carry out their bidding.
“I was sleeping in my bedroom. God came above my bed and reached his arm to me, I said, ‘God is my time on earth over?’ I heard a voice say, ‘Yes Michael today is your last day.’”
Just over a week ago he joined a Masonic hall and states that a man put a curse on him there.
Subsequent omens occurred while travelling on the subway where apparently strangers approached him to speak about his mother.
“I felt like Neo from ‘The Matrix.’ I began hearing voices and feeling powerful,” Michael said. “They were asking about the difference between mom and mother. It was a sign.”
He hugged 55 year old Yannick Brea when he arrived at their Prospect Heights home because he knew, “I would never see her again.”
Michael went to his bedroom and after lighting candles he placed a dagger and ceremonial Freemason sword next to him. Yannick knocked the bedroom door and asked for help in the kitchen.
“I looked at these chickens lying dead in the pot and a voice told me it was a sacrifice. It was black magic,” said Michael. He left his kitchen duties and returned to his room, but when his mother asked him why he wasn’t helping he claims she spoke with a ‘demon’ voice.
“She had the voice of the demon. I opened the door with the dagger at my side and the sword,” he explained. “I asked, ‘Do you believe in God?’ She said, ‘No, Michael no,’ and began screaming. I began slashing her like this,” he motions violently with his right hand.
A chase ensued through the house leaving trails of blood in its wake.
“I didn’t want to kill her right away,” he said. “I wanted to give her time to get right with God.”
Michael took his time despite the police arriving because he “knew they wouldn’t open the door and stop me because the spirits were protecting me. I just kept cutting her. No one could stop me. I was doing the work of God.”
Police described a macabre scene inside the apartment and a bloody trail of hand and footprints led them to the bathroom where Yannick knelt on the floor; Michael stood close by holding the sword in one hand and a Masonic bible in the other.
“I heard voices telling me how powerful I was, saying ‘Oh he’s good,’” said a remorseless Brea. “I was praising God. To you it might sound silly, but in my culture demons are very real.”
Please share your thoughts about Michael, is he mentally ill or is there possibly a reality to his demon theory? Leave a comment.
Read out previous article on Micheal Brea.
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Actor decapitates mother with Freemason sword in Masonic and "Matrix-inspired" attack
Amplify’d from www.boingboing.net
Michael Brea, an aspiring Haitian-American actor whose most widely publicized role was a walk-on in the TV series Ugly Betty, is reported to have slashed his mother to death with a sword on Tuesday, November 23, after attending a Masonic Lodge meeting in Harlem.
In an interview the NY Daily News managed to score inside Bellevue's prison ward, Brea describes the killing as having been inspired by the Matrix films. He identified with the character Neo (doesn't everyone?).
During the attack, neighbors heard him chanting "Repent! Repent! Repent!," and other commands involving accepting Jesus, and referring to "The Grand Architect," a Masonic term for God.
Neighbors say the NYPD were slow to respond: they came while the attack was under way, stood around, refused to break down the door of the apartment where the attack took place until it was too late—even leaving the scene of the crime, then returning when Brea's mother Yannick was finally dead.
"I didn't kill her. I killed the demon inside her. It was the work of God," he says in the NY Daily News interview.
More today in the New York Times. Michael Brea's twin brother lived in the home where Brea reportedly killed their mother, as did Michael, but the brother was not home at the time.
According to reports, Brea was a failed Subway sandwich shop owner, and owed the franchise (and the state tax board, and various creditors) tens of thousands of dollars. There is some speculation that "money woes" were a contributing factor (though, heaven help us all if that becomes a defense in this economy...)
From a profile on befim.com, described as a "Haitian Internet Movie Database"—
"Growing up, my father used to tell me these great stories about Haiti and how we gained our independence in 1804. I am fascinated and proud to be Haitian-American. Which is the reason why I made it into film! I want my fellow American brothers and sisters to know the history of Haiti. I want to report the history of both worlds (Haiti and America) through film."
In 2007, Michael L Brea opened a "Subway" restaurant located at 1709 Broadway Brooklyn N.Y 11207. His objective was to provide A healthier choice and to contribute to the development of urban communities. Giving out over 300 turkey footlong sandwiches on Thanksgiving of 2008, was an act no other subway has ever done!
"I remember growing up," Michael says, "and my mother was always feeding people who were less fortunate. My parents raised me to always share and to give charity in the name of GOD!"
I'll be interested to see if there's some sort of official response from some quarter of the group. No, not all Masons are delusional, psychotic murderers. Nor are all struggling actors, or fans of the Matrix motion picture series, or Subway sandwich store managers.
There are crime scene photos around if one wants to Google them, including the bloody murder weapon described variously as a "ritual Masonic sword" and "a martial arts sword." I'd recommend the NMA video instead of the gruesome photos, though they're equally creepy now that I think about it.
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