Bin Laden Raid Reveals Porn Collection?

The raid that resulted in the US killing Osama bin Laden brought back a treasure trove of intel and terabytes of data. Well, it appears that at least a portion of those terabytes of data included a porn collection. What exactly are we talking about here?

Kinky in Kashmir
Jammin' in Jammu
Burkha'd Heat I-IV
Furry and Lovin' It
Taliboning.
Osama does Abbottabad

Should this really surprise anyone? For all their talk about the West's decadence and lack of morals or failures of Osama's fellow Muslims to strictly adhere to his vision of Islam, bin Laden and his minions partook in more than their share of the same decadence (and he was found not in a cave, but in a well to do community in Pakistan albeit with meth-lab shabby chic decor).

Bin Laden was from a monied and elite family. Many of the 9/11 plotters were monied and from professional backgrounds. Zawahiri is from a professional background. They didn't call for jihad because of a lack of money or resources between and among them - but frequently because of the so-called excesses. They'd throw in other pablum, particularly the anti-Israel stuff because the Arab media and Arab street loves that kind of thing.

Osama bin Laden and his followers all claim to adhere to a strict version of Islam, but it seems that the part that manifests most is the hatred of women's rights and violence towards anyone they deem to be an enemy (whether it's the West or those Muslims who don't believe the way they do - as is all to frequently the case in Afghanistan and Pakistan).

We found out after 9/11 that several of the 9/11 plotters visited strip clubs prior to carrying out the attacks, and now we know that bin Laden had a signficant porn stash on his computers. Other terrorists have been caught with online porn collections, and some have used pornographic images to send coded messages (and here).

I think this particular tidbit was released precisely because it shows bin Laden to be nothing more than a hypocrite who had no problems sending others to murder thousands, all while he was comfortable in Abbottabad wanking off to Hot Girls of Hydrabad II.

How Titillating: ICANN Approves .xxx Domains for Porn Sites

ICANN, the nonprofit organization that is trusted with assigning domain names and managing the Internet naming protocols, agreed to .xxx domain for porn sites after several years of studying the issue.

On Friday, ICANN, the not-for-profit corporation that coordinates the internet's naming system, voted to allow the application of the controversial ".xxx" top-level domain name for sites that display adult content.

The domain, which would need further approval before going live on the internet, would be applied to adult entertainment sites just as ".com" is now.

The .xxx internet suffix, which was first proposed six years ago by ICM Registry, a group that sells domain names, "will provide a place online for adult entertainment providers and their service providers who want to be part of our voluntary self regulatory community," according to that company's news release.

This doesn't mean the end of porn sites using .com or .net suffixes right away, but those sites may end up migrating to the new domains as their registrations expire.

Porkfest Porn

Ah, the joys of reading through the stimulating pages of the porkfest and attempting to follow where all the money went.

In this case, the NEA used a portion of its ARRA of 2009 (aka the Porkfest "stimulus" package) allotment of $80 million to fund the viewing of porn.

The NEA was given $80 million of the government’s $787 billion economic stimulus bill to spread around to needy artists nationwide …

[I]ncluding a $50,000 infusion for the Frameline film house, which recently screened Thundercrack, “the world’s only underground kinky art porno horror film, complete with four men, three women and a gorilla.” …

[T]he weekly production of “Perverts Put Out” at San Francisco’s CounterPULSE, whose “long-running pansexual performance series” invites guests to “join your fellow pervs for some explicit, twisted fun.” …

[A]n additional boost from a $25,000 stimulus grant [will go to] “The Symmetry Project,” …

The show depicts “the sharing of a central axis, [as] spine, mouth, genitals, face, and anus reveal their interconnectedness and centrality in embodied experience[.]”

In the flesh — and there’s a lot of it — it amounts to two people writhing naked on the floor, a government-funded tango in the altogether.

Is this really the kind of stimulus that the nation needs?

States Seek Revenues Through Taxing Booze and Porn

When the economy goes in the tank and economic illiterates in legislatures need to balance budgets, the first thing they think of is not cutting spending, but how to raise revenues on people without them realizing it or on hitting groups that have no real organized method of opposing the tax plans.

In New York, they're contemplating taxing online porn. The AP notes:

The state Division of Budget confirmed to The Associated Press that the tax would apply to skin flicks, whether they are downloaded online or purchased through pay-per-view on television.

``By taxing it you're legitimizing it,'' said Michael Long, chairman of New York's Conservative Party. ``You're sending a message to the children, you're sending a message to the teenagers, if you're taxing it _ how can it be wrong? I don't know how you can sink much deeper.''

And because of recent court decisions over the relatively new area of taxing Internet transactions, the sales tax would apply only to pornographers who are located in the state. It's a break for out-of-state Web sites that wouldn't have to collect from New Yorkers.

Governor David Paterson has already tried to broach the subject of imposing taxes on carbonated beverages before being reproached by people who couldn't warm up to that subject. The porn tax probably wont generate much in the way of income, but it shows the desperation of governments to raise revenues without angering all taxpayers.

In Oregon, they're looking to tax booze.

Lawmakers are considering a bill that would raise taxes on beer. The current excise tax is about $2.60 and the new bill would raise it to $49.61 for a barrel of beer.

There are two kegs in a barrel of beer, so the new tax would be almost $25 per keg -- which works out to around 20 cents per pint in a 128-pint half-barrel keg.

Money generated would create the Alcohol Impact Remediation fund, which would distribute funds to various agencies that address treatment and recovery programs.

Oregon is far from alone in looking to the sin taxes for revenues. Many other states are looking to raise taxes on alcoholic beverages, including loosening restrictions that would enable sales on more days and/or raising the tax rates.

Every year, you see legislatures around the country look to obscure taxes and those taxes that aren't paid all the time - like real estate transfer taxes - for additional revenues. This year is going to be especially difficult given the economic situation, but that's not going to deter these states from increasing spending over last year.

Even the federal government has gotten into the sin tax game; they're hoping to fund the massive expansion of the S-CHIP program with a huge increase in cigarette taxes. Seeing how cigarette tax revenues haven't exactly matched projections, it's likely to come up short and all taxpayers will be left holding that bag too.

No .XXX Domain For Now

ICANN, the international organization that governs Internet domains, has decided to table the issue of whether to create a new .xxx domain that would shuffle all those millions of porn sites over to the red light district.

Many in the adult-entertainment industry and religious groups alike had criticized the plan. The Canadian government also warned this week that it could put the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers in the tricky business of content regulation, having to decide which sites are pornographic and which are not.

Porn sites opposed to ".xxx" were largely concerned that the domain name, while billed as voluntary, would eventually lead to governments mandating its use and pushing them into a so-called online ghetto.

Religious groups worried that ".xxx" would legitimize and expand the number of adult sites, which more than a third of U.S. Internet users visit each month, according to comScore Media Metrix. The Web site measurement firm said 4 percent of all Web traffic and 2 percent of all time spent Web surfing involved an adult site.

The issue really is just what exactly is a porn site and how you would define it for purposes of registration and management. You know it when you see it, but opinions vary around the world as to what is considered pornographic and what isn't.

On the one hand, putting a .xxx domain and requiring all such sites to use those domains instead of the current .com domain would make content watch software far more effective - you simply prohibit the entire domain instead of having to watch for individual sites. However, this also has the potential of interfering with the free speech rights of those entities running the sites.