Australians escape punishment over APEC prank
Monsters and Critics
April 28, 2008

Sydney - The Australian comics who breached security at a regional summit in Sydney in September by riding in a fake motorcade had all charges against them dropped Monday.

The stunt by the Chaser television comedy team was only discovered when the convoy stopped just metres short of US President George W Bush’s hotel and an Osama bin Laden imposter got out.

A judge dropped the charges, saying their action was defensible as a reasonable and honest mistake because they did not believe they would be allowed through the security checks.

The let-off was welcomed by Kim Dalton, a director of state-owned ABC Television.

‘What was undeniably the greatest moment in political satire last year, which the ABC has always been very proud of, has been found to be just that - great political satire,’ Dalton said. (more…)

Olympic Torch Relay Descends Into Chaos
by Jerome Pugmire and Elaine Ganley
1010WINS
April 7, 2008

Paris (AP) — Paris’ Olympic torch relay descended into chaos Monday, with protesters scaling the Eiffel Tower, grabbing for the flame and forcing security officials to repeatedly snuff out the torch and transport it by bus past demonstrators yelling “Free Tibet!”

The relentless anti-Chinese demonstrations ignited across the capital with unexpected power and ingenuity, foiling 3,000 police officers deployed on motorcycles, in jogging gear and even inline skates.

Chinese organizers finally gave up on the relay, canceling the last third of what China had hoped would be a joyous jog by torch-bearing VIPs past some of Paris’ most famous landmarks.

Thousands of protesters slowed the relay to a stop-start crawl, with impassioned displays of anger over China’s human rights record, its grip on Tibet and support for Sudan despite years of bloodshed in Darfur. (more…)

In Baghdad, Iraqis Take Their Humor Extra Dark
by Erica Goode
New York Times
April 2, 2008

Baghdad — Doah Mohammed played a trick on her mother-in law on Tuesday.

She called her and told her that her son, Ms. Mohammed’s husband, had been arrested by American and Iraqi soldiers.

When she got the news, Ms. Mohammed’s mother-in-law gasped and said she was about to faint. So Ms. Mohammed quickly told her that it was only a prank, and the two women laughed — it was, after all, April Fools’ Day.

Before 2003, the traditional day of tricks and practical jokes — known here as Kithbet Neesan, or April Lie, and imported from the West decades ago — was observed much as it is in the United States. The teasing was biting, but ultimately tame. A man might try to convince a friend that he had gotten a visa to go to America, for example, or a mother might tell her son that his father had bought him a new car.

Even Saddam Hussein’s son Uday had joined in. On April 1, 1998, his newspaper published a front-page story saying that President Clinton had called for the United Nations sanctions against Iraq to be lifted. (On Page 2, readers learned that it was not true.)

In recent years, though, as suicide bombings, mortar and artillery fire, kidnappings and killings have become daily fare, Iraqis’ April Fools’ jokes more often reflect what they see around them. (more…)

‘The joke’s on us:’ Lebanese respond to April Fools reports of elected president
by Kenneth Changpertitum
Special to The Daily Star
April 2, 2008

Beirut: Lebanese newspapers on Tuesday offered their readers a brief moment of wishful thinking with an April Fools message that the protracted political crisis was over and a new president had been elected. “Khalass, infarajet” (That’s it, it’s over) said a leaflet inserted in many dailies, jokingly referring to the long-running standoff between the government and the opposition.

To get an understanding of how this years April Fools prank resonated with Lebanese, The Daily Star inquired of local residents in the Gemmayzeh area about its significance in relation to the crisis in particular, and their views toward the honesty of Lebanese politics in general. (more…)

Submitted by Douglas Grant

From Barely Political:

Submitted by Dino D’Annibale from LewRockwell.com:

Environmental Hysteria Exemplified: Watch Penn and Teller manage to convince hundreds of leftists to sign a petition to ban water.

Jail for Facebook spoof Moroccan
BBC News
February 23, 2008

A Moroccan computer engineer has been sentenced to three years in jail for setting up a Facebook profile in the name of a member of the royal family.

Fouad Mourtada was arrested on 5 February on suspicion of stealing the identity of Prince Moulay Rachid, younger brother of King Mohammed VI.

The Casablanca court also ordered Mr Mourtada, 26, to pay a $1,300 fine.

The prosecution had urged the court to impose a sentence which set an example for others.

Mr Mourtada was convicted of “villainous practices linked to the alleged theft of the [prince’s] identity”.

In his defence, he said he admired the prince, and that the Facebook entry was just intended to be a bit of fun.

‘Beaten unconscious’

(more…)

Activists bare teeth over foreclosures
by Adam Geller
Star-Telegram.com
March 1, 2008

Cleveland (AP) — Folks on Humphrey Hill Drive were still waking up on the icy Saturday morning the shark hunters came to town. They rounded the suburban traffic circle in a pair of rented school buses after a half-hour ride from far more modest neighborhoods, rumbling to a stop at the Garmone family’s driveway. Forty-two caffeinated Clevelanders piled out, their leaders carrying bullhorns.

Their quarry, Mike Garmone - a regional vice president at Countrywide Financial Corp., the nation’s largest mortgage lender - didn’t answer his door. So they deployed, ringing bells at the big homes with three-car garages, handing out accusatory fliers and lambasting Garmone and his company’s loans. Before departing, they left their calling card - thousands of 2 1/2-inch plastic sharks - flung across Garmone’s frozen flower beds, up into the gutters, littering the doorstep.

The commotion was the work of an in-your-face activist group called the East Side Organizing Project, with a paid staff then of just two, mobilized to battle Cleveland’s mortgage “loan sharks.” Years before the rest of the country was rocked by the fallout from aggressive lending, their neighborhoods were already home to the nation’s highest concentration of foreclosures - and they were fed up. (more…)

Update, January 17, 2008: A new article, How the Pentagon planted a false story, by Gareth Porter from the online Asia Times, outlines how an incident, described by Pentagon officials as a “careless, reckless and potentially hostile” provocation by Iranian boats that nearly led to gunfire, was actually a nonthreatening, “almost routine” encounter that officials in Washington distorted. via Center for Media and Democracy’s PRWatch.com.

‘Filipino Monkey’ may be behind radio threats, ship drivers say
by Andrew Scutro and David Brown
Navy Times
January 11, 2008

The threatening radio transmission heard at the end of a video showing harassing maneuvers by Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz may have come from a locally famous heckler known among ship drivers as the “Filipino Monkey.”

Since the Jan. 6 incident was announced to the public a day later, the U.S. Navy has said it’s unclear where the voice came from. In the videotape released by the Pentagon on Jan. 8, the screen goes black at the very end and the voice can be heard, distancing it from the scenes on the water.

“We don’t know for sure where they came from,” said Cmdr. Lydia Robertson, spokeswoman for 5th Fleet in Bahrain. “It could have been a shore station.”

While the threat — “I am coming to you. You will explode in a few minutes” — was picked up during the incident, further jacking up the tension, there’s no proof yet of its origin. And several Navy officials have said it’s difficult to figure out who’s talking.

See the Pentagon’s version of the video

A link to the Iranian version (click the camera icon)

(more…)