January 2013 – The Impious Digest

Philip Zimbardo: Why ordinary people do evil … or do good

January 31, 2013 JAG

Renowned psychologist Philip Zimbardo, famous for conducting the Stanford prison experiment, knows how easy it is for nice people to turn bad. In this talk, he shares insights and graphic unseen photos from the Abu Ghraib trials. Then he talks about the flip side: how easy it is to be a hero, and how we can rise to the challenge. In the top row, far right, prisoners are forced to masturbate before the camera. Bottom row, far right, prisoner covered in excrement. […]

Senate Fears Oil Companies More than they Did the Mafia

January 31, 2013 JAG

In Nigeria, the coming trial of Wiwa vs. Shell promises, if anything, a disturbing look at a microcosm of Big Oil’s influence on governments around the world, particularly our own under eight years of Bush and Cheney and the Democratic leaders who enabled them. Did events that transpired in Nigeria back in the 1990s foreshadow the outright seizure of government in the United States by oil interests today? […]

Please Steal My Shit. Seriously.

January 25, 2013 JAG

One of the first things you learn about investigative journalism is that the most important stories the world needs to know, the ones you want to write, are the last thing any publisher wants to touch. In the bad old days, that meant those stories wouldn’t be written because they would not be seen, and of course you would not get paid. The internet changed that. Now you had an audience even if it meant you had to write for free. All writers should be paid. It’s not fun being broke. But all writers have a civic responsibility that trumps personal gain. That means covering stories the corporate media will never touch because they threaten the establishment, or because those stories condemn them. […]

2008 Election Archive

January 8, 2013 JAG

Signs your campaign is in trouble… Source at Radosh.net; Signs your campaign is in trouble #217. See site for image details. Anatomy of a Teabagging Campaign: It Started as a Prank FOX: Liberals Protecting Black […]

Nero Claudius Caesar

January 5, 2013 JAG

“Among the excesses of Nero’s reign, are to be mentioned the horrible cruelties exercised against the Christians in various parts of the empire, in which inhuman transactions the natural barbarity of the emperor was inflamed by the prejudices and interested policy of the pagan priesthood.The tyrant … satiated his fury against them by such outrages as are unexampled in history. They were covered with the skins of wild beasts, and torn by dogs; were crucified, and set on fire, that they might serve for lights in the night-time. Nero offered his gardens for this spectacle, and exhibited the games of the Circus by this dreadful illumination. Sometimes they were covered with wax and other combustible materials, after which a sharp stake was put under their chin, to make them stand upright, and they were burnt alive, to give light to the spectators.” […]