It’s evangelicals versus wineries in a Southern California battle for land use, as churches seek to alter the environment of Temecula’s  American Viticultural Area. An AVA is  a designated wine grape-growing region, as defined by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), United States Department of the Treasury. Temecula is located in Riverside County, about 90 minutes  equidistant from Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego Countries.

Thanks to its location in an inland valley and the decades of  dedication by vintners, the Southern California burg of Temecula has gradually grown in recognition as a California wine producing area, and a tourist destination. The first vineyard was established by the padres of Mission San Juan Capistrano, 18 miles west of Temecula, in 1820, but commercial wine production began in 1968. The AVA was granted in 1984, and now there are 42 wineries on 33,000 acres in the Temecula Valley, which is located just east of Temecula’s city center. Within that area 5,000 acres have been designated as a C/V (Citrus/Vineyard) zone.

Tomorrow, August 22, the Riverside Planning Commission will address this long-fermenting issue.  A zoning ordinance, adopted in 1994, prohibits the building of  houses of worship and other non-commercial, non-agricultural ventures in the AVA and C/V zones. And at least one church wants that changed, Calvary Chapel Bible Fellowship in Temecula, which operates without a permit in the AVA; the church was built before current zoning went into effect. Calvary Chapel Bible Fellowship is seeking to expand their campus to include more parking lots and a K-8 school with a playground, and has launched an offensive, including urging their flock to write the Riverside Planning Commission and the Country Board of Supervisors, as well as attending the Planning Commission meeting on August 22. Chick-fil-A will be providing Wednesday’s lunch for the Calvary Chapel cavalry.

Along with Chik-fil-A, Advocates for Faith and Freedom, a Christian rights legal group is rallying for the cause:

Advocates for Faith and Freedom, a local nonprofit representing Christian interests, is saying it will file a federal lawsuit against the county if that proposed provision is upheld….Advocates for Faith and Freedom is not at all shy about filing lawsuits, but this maybe a little preemptive considering at a previous public hearing the majority of the Riverside County Planning Commission expressed distaste for the provision and asked staff members to come back with provisions that would allow churches in Wine Country…

On Wednesday, commissioners will have three options to choose from on that front: either continue to disallow churches, allow them, or disallow them except for Calvary Chapel, which already has a church (and plans to expand) there.

The reason the county had proposed disallowing churches and other non-wine-related institutes is plain and simply a matter of a demand on land. It’s way more expensive to start a vineyard, produce wine and sell it than it is it to build a nonprofit, bottom line.

The ongoing battle has been raging since at least 2010:

Confident the Temecula Valley wine-grape region’s strict zoning limits would protect that view, [Ray Falkner] built a multimillion dollar banquet hall with floor-to-ceiling windows peering across a gorge to a nearby vineyard. Now he’s worried that vantage could be ruined by a Christian congregation’s request to change the region’s zoning so it can build on part of the vineyard.

Falkner’s property has become the front line of a bitter divide between churches and growers in Temecula’s wine country, where vintners fear a push to allow more houses of worship would hurt views, limit wine sales and cause conflicts between grape growers and congregations.

“We are in an economic development zone specifically targeted with the mission of being able to enhance the development of new wineries and the growth of existing wineries,” Falkner said. “How does a church help that mission?” …

State regulations [bar] the sale of alcohol in the “immediate vicinity” of places of worship. That limit is open to interpretation, but vintners feared an influx of churches could stop them from selling wine and opening tasting rooms, where many small operators do most of their business.

The  Calvary Chapel Bible Fellowship is part of the Calvary Church empire, a widespread evangelical congregation that believes in the Trinity, the inerrancy of the Bible, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, placing them between Fundamentalism and Pentecostalism.  Calvary Chapel’s founder, Chuck Smith, predicted the end of the world would come in 1981. Though they claim to be non-denominational and to have no legal or financial ties linking the different Calvary Chapel worship sites, Calvary Chapel has its own Bible college and 50 affiliated campuses throughout the world, and to meet the theological definition of a denomination. Calvary Chapel is currently facing charges that they are permitted special access to Camp Pendleton, the U.S. Marine Base in Southern California, and even more creepily, of child molestation in their ranks:

A Calvary Chapel church pastor and youth soccer coach has been arrested for allegedly picking up an 8-year-old girl for a play date with one of his five daughters but instead driving her to a Huntington Beach park, molesting her and giving her $40 not to say anything.

She did.

Christopher Raymond Olague, 39, of Westminster, was booked into the Huntington Beach city jail on suspicion of committing a lewd act on a child less than 14 years of age and preventing/dissuading a witness.

and:

Christopher Joseph Guardado, a 48-year-old Garden Grove man and volunteer Bible teacher at Calvary Chapel Pacific Coast in Westminster, is sitting in Theo Lacy Jail on suspicion of molesting two girls under the age of 14.

He was arrested on July 12 and is being held in lieu of $1 million bail.

That’s just in Southern California. Here’s Idaho:

Two North Idaho churches are accused of concealing and protecting a known child predator who sexually assaulted boys in both congregations, according to a lawsuit filed last week in Kootenai County District Court. The two churches are part of an international fellowship of nondenominational churches based in Santa Ana, Cali. [La Figa says: That would be Calvary Chapel. The docs are here]. Calls to both churches were not returned Friday…

Their lawsuit alleges the churches knew or should have known Iglesias was a child predator because years before, a Calvary Chapel in California denied him access to children because he had been convicted as a minor of improper sexual conduct with a younger boy.

In addition, Iglesias had been recalled from a religious mission for North Country Chapel at an orphanage in Thailand.

The plaintiffs allege the churches acted in concert with Iglesias to hide his history of pedophilia.

(Calvary Chapel’s mishandling of sexual abuse by its pastors doesn’t really bear on CCBF’s expansion, but it does give some insight into Calvary Chapel culture and lack of judgement).

There are two basic reasons to restrict houses of worship in the Temecula region: The sensitive micro-climate that makes it possible for Temecula to grow grapes; and the county’s funding through property taxes.

Churches, especially mega-churches, which is  the status CCBF seem to aiming for, and other places of worship need parking lots. Parking lots are asphalt. Asphalt creates heat pockets.

One argument for building more churches is that weddings are held throughout Temecula Wine Country in banquet halls and hotels, so why not have more churches? Um, because some people don’t want to get married in churches.

Houses of worship are non-profit and pay substantially lower rates of property taxes than residential or commercial properties, which means that the county would lose money needed to maintain services and infrastructure.

In March of 2011 CCBF bought land and according to the website Protect Wine Country:

 began illegally (i.e. without a grading permit) removing the decades old vineyard overlooked by Falkner Winery and its Pinnacle Restaurant.

(Side note: If the land was for sale, concerned citizens should have bought it!)

The CCBF also stopped watering the remaining vines in the vineyard, hoping they would be granted permission to expand the church and build a daycare center and kindergarten through 8th grade school. The church’s proposed plans will not comply with 75% acre planted requirements imposed under zoning.

Federal and State law prevent vineyard owners from applying regulated substances necessary to protect vineyards within a quarter mile radius of schools. Calvary Bible fellowship’s large  unpermitted campus, with its vast parking lots, sits across from Temecula’s oldest commercial vineyard, now owned by Maurice Car’rie Winery, and about a tenth of a mile away from the Falkner Winery where wedding are held.  There is a push by environmentalists to expand the anti-chemical radius  to 1/2 mile, which would effectively prevent a number of wineries from  producing. No production and the land is useless–it could take years for land to be qualified as organic or biodynamic, and in the meantime, owners are losing money–unless, of course, housing developments are put in.

The State Alcohol Board of Control requires all licensed sales of alcohol have of setback of 200-600 feet from a place of worship, youth outdoor facility or school, and thus the potential for new wineries could be prevented from opening by the influx of  churches and their related schools, whose locations prevent the growing of grapes.

Meanwhile there are over 60 churches in Temecula proper, as well as Calvary Chapel K-12 located just a 20 minute drive from CCBF which is still accepting enrollment for the 2013 school year; and a Calvary Chapel Christian Academy which provides the ministry a home school for high schoolers. Why does CCBF need to expand its school? Or expand at all unless they have something else afoot….?

And as for the argument that since so many people get married in Temecula Wine Country, why not have more churches?  Because um, many people choose not to be married in churches, and having more  churches won’t convince them otherwise.

CCBF senior pastor Clark Van Wick has thoughtfully provided a list of email addresses of planning commissioners and county supervisors so concerned citizens can express their views on the matter. If you have an opinion on the importance of small businesses, the environment, viticulture, and family farms, and dislike the idea of large asphalt parking lots destroying a county’s tax base, well, now you know who to contact. The meeting begins at 9 am west coast time.

Mary Stark, Planning Commission Secretary
County of Riverside Administrative Center
4080 Lemon Street, 12th Floor
P.O. Box 1409,
Riverside, CA 92502
Email: mcstark@rctlma.org
Phone: 951-955-7436

Commissioner John Roth, District 1

Commissioner John Snell, District 2

Commissioner John Petty, District 3

Commissioner Jim Porras, District 4

Commissioner Jan Zuppardo, District 5

RIVERSIDE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS

San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr promises regarding #OpBART 3 on Monday August 29:

It will be different.

Hopefully he means “different,” as the San Francisco  police will not hit people with batons as seen in this video below. Or maybe that San Francisco police officers will not order people off the sidewalks then arrest them for being on the streets, something reported repeatedly on the #OpBART Twitter feed after the Auguest 22nd protest.

Or maybe “different” in that the SFPD will pay more attention to their arrest lists: The name of a 17-year old–date of birth 9-15-1993, arrested at the #OpBART2 protest, then booked and held in San Francisco County Jail under section 601 (missing person/runaway)–was released to the media, against SFPD media guidelines, followed by another email from the SFPD asking reporters to delete the previous list and use the updated one attached, whihc omitted the juvenile.

Oh wait, this is how San Francisco Police Chief Suhr means “different”:

I don’t want this to be construed as delivering a threat, but enough is enough. They made their point, and they are now losing in the court of public opinion. We don’t feel that we took appropriate action at the appropriate pace (on Monday). The next response will be quicker.

Anonymous responded to Chief Suhr’s words thusly:

Now you have our attention.  We do not appreciate threats nor do we take well to them, especially from a chief of police who has a very interesting background himself. May we remind you of 2003?  Allegedly conspiring to obstruct the investigation into the infamous Fajitagate affair, in which three off-duty cops allegedly beat up two men for their Mexican takeout.  Or maybe we should ask Chief Heather Fong why she had to reprimanded you in 2009.

Oh and in 2005, Chief Fong demoted Suhr to the backwater, literally–making him chief of security for SF’s water supply.

The police department replied to Anonymous, issuing a written statement:

As Chief Suhr has stated this is NOT a threat. We as a department will continue to facilitate first amendment rights to protest. Our goal is to provide a safe environment for everyone. While the demonstrators have the right to protest, we will continue to facilitate it to an extent where it does not infringe the rights of others. We as a law enforcement agency had a duty to protect the constitutional rights of all.

BART has stated that

expressive activities

are not permitted on the paid area of BART stations, meaning any area beyond the turnstiles, and expressive activity in the station requires a permit. Is standing on a platform in a tee shirt reading

I <3 Free Speech. Please Don’t Shoot Me!

a violation of BART’s rules and regulations? Is standing in the station area with duct tape over your mouth? Do these actions require a permit on BART property?

Police ienforced BART rules, making arrests of people chanting and passing out fliers on the platforms during the first two #OpBART protests; none of the arrestees were Anonymous, who confined their protests to outside the station, (though one Anon was  photographed tweeting behind a post on the BART Civic Center platform).

It’s important to remember that there are two groups which are uniting to protest BART (along with random unaffiliated citizens). No Justice No BART is demonstrating against the transportation agency’s police department and policies; BART police officers have shot two men in two years. No Justice No BART has successfully disrupted train service in the past during their demonstrations, most recently on July 11 in response to the shooting of Charles Hill, BART service was suspended when protesters climbed on trains.

Anonymous–which for the most part rallies for freedom of information and communication–was drawn into the fray when BART shut off cellphone service on BART platforms and in trains on August 11 to prevent a planned protest by No Justice No BART which BART Chief of police Rainey said was discovered on a

blog webpage.

In the past two and a half weeks, Anons have swiftly educated themselves on the background of BART and the shooting deaths of Oscar Grant and Charles Hill, much they did in 2008 when the removal of a Tom Cruise video on YouTube led to the development of  Anonymous’ Project Chanology, a year long series of real life  protests–the first time Anonymous moved off the interwebz –that embarrassed Scientology, and aided a number of high ranking members to leave what ex-members describe as an abusive cult.

During the #OpBART protests, it has been members of No Justice No BART who have been on the train platforms chanting and shouting, holding signs, while Anonymous and others have marched up top.

How will Anonymous make #OpBART3 different for the SFPD and the BART police? Civil disobedience tactics like chains, padlocks and “blackbear” lockboxes seem a bit old school for Anonymous who have shown their displeasure for BART spokesperson Linton Johnson’s high-handed tactics by scouring the internet for information about the  former anchorman and then providing a treasure trove of  photos featuring Linton Johnson frolicking topless in the Land Down Under. And wearing really stupid tee shirts. All from Linton Johnson’s publicly available blogs (since shuttered).  Anonymous also redecorated MyBART.org; and someone claiming Anonymity easily hacked into both the MyBART.org and the BART police databases, then released names and other information from both sites.

Anonymous’ effort have proven them to be a force with which to be reckoned: The international uproar over the suspension of cellphone service, made hugely public by the MyBART.org hack and the ensuing protests, has prompted an FCC investigation and forced BART to develop a policy limiting cellphone shutoffs. The majority of BART’s Board of Directors expressed emotions ranging from dismay and outrage over the suspension of cellphone service.

Anonymous has proven themselves to be rapidly mutable, highly adaptable organism with fluid intelligence and Trickster‘s sense of humor which can, to some at times, appear cruel or insensitive. At the core, Anonymous is doing it for the lulz. And like Trickster, Anonymous does not forgive, nor forget. Expect them. And expect them to do it differently, too.

Oh and the SFPD has opened its doors for new recruits. Preferably ones fluent in meme-speak and lolcats.

photo: OpBARTsf

Websites run by the Tunisian government have been successfully targeted by Operation: Tunisia, a cell within Anonymous’ Operation Payback, in a distributed denial of service  action, which dropped this image and message on several government sites before the Anon-fueled DDoS knocked them offline. (Reminder: DDoS is illegal, and people have been arrested for it).

The message from Anonymous is to the point:

The Tunisian government wants to control the present with falsehoods and misinformation in order to impose the future by keeping the truth hidden from its citizens. We will not remain silent while this happens. Anonymous has heard the claim for freedom of the Tunisian people. Anonymous is willing to help the Tunisian people in this fight against oppression. It will be done.

This is a warning to the Tunisian government… It’s on the hands of the Tunisian government to stop this situation. Free the net, and attacks will cease, keep on that attitude and this will just be the beginning.

The sites affected include: pm.gov.tn, rcd.tn, benali.tn, carthage.tn, bvmt.com.tn, sicad.gov.tn, indrustrie.gov.tn, commerce.gov.tn,  douane.gov.tn and ministeres.tn. You can see screen shots of  some  pages here and here and here.

Anonymous has been assisting Tunisia dissidents with a strong efforts and dedicated actions, much as they did–and continue to do–in Iran responding to that country’s post-2009 election revolts, with codes, the manual mean of DDoS, and with spreading the word about what is happening in the country.

It is reported that many of the Tunisian DDoS-ers are based in that African nation, but with Anon being an Erisian global disorganization, there is help from around world with a bunch of people supplying code that helps Tunisians move past Internet filters and surf anonymously.

The country’s already tense situation escalated on after New Year’s Day when Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s  government blocked WikiLeaks, a Tunisian WikiLeaks mirror and media sites reporting on Wikileaks; several cables from Embassy Tunis released by Wikileaks going as far back as 2008 were highly critical of the Tunisian government.

Within nine hours of the government shutting down access to Wikileaks, numerous sites linked to the government were decorated with Anonymous/Operation: Tunisia’s message, then knocked offline.

As of this writing many government sites still remain offline. Tunisian pro-government hackers have returned the favor according to more than one report; Tunisian blogger Lina Ben Mhenni, a university assistant, told Al Jazeera:

The government has cracked down on activists by hacking our emails, facebook and blogs. They have deleted a few pages in which I was writing about the public protests.

According to reports on Facebook, there have been dozens of injuries and at least four deaths in the recent spate of protests, though this is difficult to confirm.  Al Jazeera is covering the protests–which include police surrounding high schools and colleges to prevent demonstrations after

[A]bout 250 demonstrators, mostly students, attended a peaceful march on Monday afternoon to express their support for the protests in the region of Sidi Bouzid, a union source told AFP.

The march then turned violent when police tried to contain the protesters by firing tear gas canisters, one of which fell into a mosque.

Enraged, the protesters then reportedly set fire to tyres and attacked the local offices of the ruling party, the source said.

Because of tech issues centering around  DNS servers hosting governmental as well as business and media sites (DNS=domain name service, a hierarchical naming system built on a distributed database for computers, services, or any resource connected to the internet), some non-governmental sites have been unavoidably affected.

As pointed out in the Wikileaks cables, corruption in Tunisia is rampant, so Operation: Tunisia has also targeted Tunisian President Ben Ali’s wife, Leila Ben Ali and her extended family the Trabels are knocking off websites linked to the  family’s businesses.

In an egregious and morally reprehensible move, the government has cracked down on access to religious leaders and local police and officials are harassing Muslim men with beards. According to the Tech Herald which has done excellent reporting on the Tunisian situation:

One [internet relay chat/IRC] user explained how local mosques are only available during certain times of the day now.

“In the mosques we have not the right to learn our religion, we do the prayer, and they close the mosques,” a Tunisian explained to us on IRC.

“We have five prayer sessions a day. We go to the mosque, do it, and then they close the mosque until the next prayer. In the past there is Imam (religion man) who [teaches] people the Quran, now we have nothing.”

This is the second African nation which has been the focus of an Anonymous DDoS action; in late December Anon instigated a DDoS-ing of  a complete takedown of the ZANU-PF website, the Zimbabwean government portal, and the Zimbabwean Finance Ministry website, as well as posting their message on Finance Ministry website, stripping all other news content and offering a message that said simply:

We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.

Many, many years ago, 76 million years ago to be exact, in a galaxy beyond the Marcabian vortexes, the internets (both of them) were in a before-spore state–the not the thought of spores, not even a logos of spores; rather the frisson of an idea which would begin to fruit with the Domain Name Scams of the 90s and the DdoS battles, the ongoing Sockpuppet Wars and of course the Freewebs Cruise which launched a gajillion hits from 2008 on.

The tools tried true by  CULT (Crazy Ultra Loony Tunes) and ANON (nice oxy- and hydro-morons in it for teh lulz; how can a nothing be a something?) laid a template for the current Wikileaks Web War, wherein a website is shut down by malicious, rapid fire hits, the nowadays equivalent of hitting AOL’s IM key repeatedly to knock someone off line.

Digby had this to say:

Wikileaks exposed the graft and corruption of a particular group of Icelandic bankers and they are being called to account for it by their people. It exposed the secretive Church of Scientology [LaFiga: The first wave of stuff from CoS was originally a doxdump on alt.rel.scientology and Xenu.net and mirrored elsewhere circa 1994 before there was Wikileaks; the volcanic space opera OT3 appeared online, and props need to go to 2005's "Trapped in the Closet" episode of South Park before the Wikileaks super sexy secondary big dump which thumbed its nose at the cult and stoked the fires of Chanology, itself a bunch of Anonymous] It exposed the ongoing war between China and Google (which, by the way, Joe Lieberman sees as an excellent template for the US to emulate.) And, if they don’t succeed in threatening the entire internet, we are likely to soon see a trove of communications exposing corruption in the US banking system.

What baffles me is that when a bunch of self-mythologized, basement dwelling, distance-learning, snap-crackle-pop culture munchers–though stereotypes begin somewhere–allegedly acting as individuals or with a queen-less hivemind–are seemingly at cause for allegedly Being Bad by publishing Top Sekret relidjush doktrines, and then deciding ot shut down sites, it’s

Oh noes cyber-tewwowism

and there’s prosecution. But when like, it’s Other Somebodies publishing Top Sekret dokumints and the governments don’t like them, it’s okay that there’s an organized DdoS against those Other Somebodies? Now something even uglier has happened:

Today Wikileaks encountered a new form of censorship that should make all of us shudder. Rather than being shutdown at the web hosting level, EveryDNS shutdown the wikleaks.org domain name.

Maybe it’s not “organized”, but just a tribillion of self-mythologizing individuals all butthurt at Wikileaks for as many reasons as they have Cheeto stains, all sleepy hollowed and riding the refresh button. And some I bet wish they’d thought of it, cuz the click thrus must >9000. Think of the stats!

And where exactly do some of these people work who do all this neato stuff?  For whom? And what do they do in their spare time?

And wow, how many mega-cloud servers are there? Can a site get effectively disappeared because Lots of Corps & Govts don’t like it? Can it be renamed and mirrored and hidden? It’s happened before–giant games of whackamole, but that was before white hats got hired as experts, some who might have costumes and coats of many colors.

In any case, It’s from the Internets, expect It. They are never gonna give you up.

The Captain, Final Boss of the Internets, RIP November 17, 1961 to October 30, 2010.

I loved Sean Carasov, aka The Captain, from the day he walked into Atlantic Records to A&R the urban department. Bold, brash, with a heart bigger than his ability to conjugate the verb fuck. He introduced me to Vida, Fred Eric’s definitive Los Feliz restaurant–now a Chabad center, my how the 90s have become the next century!–and there he christened me La Lisa, a reference the grand courtesans of the Belle Epoch, not only because he saw that side of me, but also he said, because I wasn’t a diva.

La Lisa, Norman, The Capt, Atlantic Records, Xmas96

He had worked for the Beastie Boys and Jive Records before Atlantic and after for Artist Direct, later becoming a major contributor to 4Chan and Encyclopaedia Dramatica, the most irreverent, offensive NSFW ridiculous sites on the Internet. He also worked in the porn industry as a producer. One time he called and suggested I drop by a porn set in the Valley, a perfect 1970s times capsule, where along with seeing a lot safe sex from a safe distance,  I met the band Orgy and a cute pair of dogues de Bourgone, a type of mastiff. Thankfully, neither the band nor the animals were involved in the filming; they were just hanging out.

We lost touch until I got involved with Chanology, the Anonymous protests against Scientology’s repressive actions. Mudkips, one of his feral cats was poisoned the day of the first major protest, and Sean was falsely arrested on trumped up charges leveled by a cult-zombie. I tracked him down and we re-established our friendship. When he went to court to deal with the BS–a Scientology flack claimed Sean had threatened him–I house sat to insure there were no breaks-in or monkey business. I was of course photographed by the Lee Baca supported criminal cult goons, but wtf, that’s part of The Game. The charges against Sean were dropped.

The changes in the record business had rendered The Captain’s skills and talents redundant. His stated goal was to move to Thailand and work with refugees, but he had to deal with the IRS and other financial situations. The Captain was passionate about the underdog, the oppressed, the pariahs. He fed feral cats, adored Evie “his” feral and adored his own kitties Gotti and Shorty. Gotti died a while back, and Shorty’s death earlier this month exacerbated Sean’s depression.

The Captain would often drop by my house on his bike with bottles of Mexican Coca-Cola for me during a very bleak period of my life. He was in constant physical pain from injuries, but always kept working out, always managed to make me laugh. On Friday the 29th  he popped over to hang  out for a bit as we got ready for a party Saturday and tried to work out logistics of him bringing by some out of town guests. He had plans for Halloween weekend and sounded up beat about some DJ/dance projects he was starting, though mentioned being upset about having to pick up Shorty’s ashes. I offered to drive him, but he said he’d deal with it.

Today someone sent me a message on Facebook mentioning the “tragedy” and asking if I could help feed the feral cats in Sean’s yard….Whaaaa? That’s how I found out. Friends drove me the couple blocks to his house since I was pretty much a sobbing wreck. His neighbors and I wept together as they told about the details. I gathered some dirt from the spot where he had taken his last breath before shooting himself with his  .45 ,and then we drove to the vet and got Shorty’s ashes which are now on my living room table. The dirt is in a jar on my altar.

The Captain was such a brave, generous, hard ass fucker, tender, bold, fearless. But the pain he felt was too great to be rectified.  I love him; I always will. The Captain is why I will now have on my arm.

The family has asked that donations be made in Sean’s name to FIXNATION.ORG, a non-profit 501C3 (that means it’s tax deductible!) which does trap/neuter/release of feral felines.

And now a word from Encyclopaedia Dramatica:

4chan Boss Rorschach was a Britfag Internets superhero who had devoted his otherwise empty life to trolling the fuck out of the ‘church’ of $cientology and giving them teh rAIDS.

So far he did a pretty good job since OSA‘s quest to find out his powerword, movements, routine and ‘crimes‘ for a dox drop at Party Van central, has yielded little to nothing other than the basics. I mean, what are you gonna ‘get’ on an unhinged, unemployed, divorced, oldfag /b/tard who blew all his hookers & blow money in the late ’90s?

On October 30th, 2010, Rorschach took his own life. He was survived by his Farmville account and his .45.

Posted on /b/ after being outed. Rorschach, when reached for comment said: “Co$bitches don’t know bout my /b/tards“.

Rorschach OTI

(more…)

So now everyone who wishes to vote in California has registered, the legislative analyses have been mailed out and it’s time to get down to srs bsns.

Californians, it is really important to vote in this election. So fill out your mail-in ballot and leave it for the postperson if you think you can’t manage to get to the polls (gods know I am fairly langurous and prefer the simple stamp to actually leaving the house.)  There are some important races on the ballot, and if you don’t vote, you really need need to STFU about how things are being run.

Okay, along with the gubernatorial and senate races, there’s Prop 19 which should be enough to get you to the polls, ye slackers, stoners, and sybarites!  Politics make strange and sometimes hot bedfellows: There are non-smokers who are yes supporters;  wake’n'bakers who are no;  medical/215 clients and casual users who have divergent views yea vs nay; and people who are still trying to figure out what “space” with regards to a minor means–and if  passing out pot brownies at a party constitutes “personal use.”

Whether or not you are voting for legalizing pot because you are appalled at the way the war on drugs is being run and want the state to have some cash; or against it because of the patchwork of jurisdictional laws and  potential environment impact of acres of indoor growing  on non-renewable resources, figure out what works for you and go vote.

If Prop 19, which is ahead in the polls passes, United States Attorney General Eric Holder is gonna crack down in Cali. Hopefully medical won’t be impacted. I hear the cry across the land

Oh noes I’m a on list!

Prop 19 will feel the effect of whoever is elected as State Attorney General, a post now held by gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown.

Well,  Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley who is running as the Republican candidate is really opposed to CA’s 215 medical marijuana business, and even more so to Prop 19. Earlier this month, he told an audience at a UC Davis debate:

Photojournalist Zoriah has posted powerful images on his website, and writes:

Refugee camps are literally on every block and public parks have become make-shift homes to thousands.  Families construct shelters out of flimsy fabric sheets and sleep in the squalor of waste, refuse and dirt, cooking simple meals in the same gutters that must be used as toilets and bathing areas.  In the several dozen refugee camps I visited, I never once saw an aid worker, food supplies, shelter supplies or any form of assistance or education as to how to avoid disease and survive in this difficult situation.  While it is necessary to search for survivors, it is also necessary to take car of those who have survived…

We must continue to pay attention to the situation there and remember that while there is dire and immediate need there, this will not go away after a few weeks of media attention and fund raising. I urge all of you to get involved in any way you can in the effort to help the Haitian people.

And could MSM please stop covering the Scientology PR mission flown in by John Travolta? Yeah he brough in MREs and some doctors (and Mormons) but instead of 70 Scientology “volunteer ministers” could have brought in more real medical personnel who wouldnt have been part of a hype for Scientology recruitment as they try to touch people while saying

Feel my finger