Showing posts with label Blaze. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blaze. Show all posts

Friday, August 17, 2012

STUNNING PHOTO SERIES: PEEK INSIDE AN ABANDONED SIX FLAGS THEME PARK RAVAGED BY HURRICANE KATRINA



Readers of TheBlaze are often enraptured by once-lively but now-abandoned environments. And we‘re pleased to introduce you to one of the men behind the camera that’s responsible for such incredible images.
Meet Will Crusta.
At the ripe age of 19 he began wandering through empty, dilapidated and graffiti-riddled spaces in the New Orleans area with his DSLR — and today he’s sharing his thoughts on some of these works and why people may be fascinated by empty spaces in general with TheBlaze.
Hobbyist Photographer Will Crusta UrbEx Series Brings Viewers Into Abandoned Spaces: Six Flags
Will Crusta "UrbExing" in an abandoned school. Notice how he takes precautions wearing a mask over his nose and mouth. (Photo via Will Crusta)
Crusta, now 22 years old, writes on his Flickr profile that his favorite artistic ventures involve urban exploration (or UrbEx). Most of the places he’s crept into were “ravaged by Hurricane Katrina and have been abandoned ever since.”
Although it‘s hard for him to pick a favorite space into which he’s traversed, one of his more unique adventures was at a Six Flags, which was recently featured on the viral content platform Buzzfeed. So we’ll start there.
Crusta writes in an email to TheBlaze the theme park was a place he had wanted to visit for a long time. He ended up visiting four times — the most he ever returned to a site to capture the haunting images.
“It’s an abandoned theme park, and really, how many of those are you going to see in your lifetime?” Crusta said. “I believe this one is still caught in fiscal disputes, so that’s the reason it still exists in its current state. You won’t get that lucky with some places.”
Check out some of the nearly 200 photos Crusta took at the park:

Abandoned Six Flags in New Orleans

  • Will Crusta/Will CrustaThe sign still says the park is closed for the storm
  • Will Crusta/Will CrustaOutside the theme park's boundaries
  • Will Crusta/Will CrustaA view from the fence blocking outsiders
  • Will Crusta/Will CrustaAn entrance falling into disrepair
  • Will Crusta/Will CrustaLooking into the park through one of the main entrances
  • Will Crusta/Will CrustaSome advertisements still are intact around the park.
  • Will Crusta/Will CrustaThis portion of the park was named Ponchartrain Beach.
  • Will Crusta/Will CrustaThe "Big Easy" ferris wheel
  • Will Crusta/Will CrustaCrusta writes that the Jester roller coaster was a main attraction at the park
  • Will Crusta/Will CrustaThese once frozen treats, Crusta writes, probably tasted good at one point...several years ago.
  • Will Crusta/Will Crusta"How can Snif help you?"
  • Will Crusta/Will CrustaA carousel breaking into pieces
  • Will Crusta/Will CrustaA spinning ride with its cars removed in the Looney Toons section of the park.
  • Will Crusta/Will CrustaCrusta didn't take photos inside the haunted house as it was "gutted" but here is a portion outside.
  • Will Crusta/Will CrustaRides seen near the old Batman ride
  • Will Crusta/Will CrustaCrusta writes that the bumper cars were rotting.
  • Will Crusta/Will CrustaWith only a few months left in 2012, it doesn't look like the park will be coming back any time soon.
The hobbyist photographer, with 11 albums on Flickr hosting his view of abandoned spaces, admits he did not necessarily enter them with permission.
“I wasn’t allowed into any of these places, but if I had been, then what would be the fun in that?” Crusta writes. “A large part of the thrill of going to these places is the act of getting in undetected. Then once you’re in, it’s like your own private playground of cool sights and photo opportunities.”
It is this very “stigma of being ‘off limits’” that Crusta says is probably why people are fascinated by abandoned spaces in the first place.
“Everyday people can go to these places, as I’ve shown in my photos, but most people would decide against going to places like this for one reason or another. I find them exciting and feel like they give me this sense of having a place all to myself.”
Check out all of Will Crusta’s UrbEx photos on his Flickr stream here. Find more of Crusta’s photos specifically of the abandoned Six Flags theme park here.
Stay tuned for the next part of TheBlaze‘s photo series on Crusta’s work featuring an abandoned hospital — his first UrbEx experience — Friday.

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Thursday, August 9, 2012

Trojan Pope


Trojan Pope





Did he say the “affection” of AIDS, or is this a Blaze typo?
So this Pope has virtually sanctioned the use of condoms in any instance, because the risk of AIDS, or any other disease, is always there, no matter who you’re having sex with – even your spouse.


http://www.theblaze.com/stories/pope-benedict-okays-condom-use-among-catholics/



The Pope drops Catholic ban on condoms in historic shift

The Pope has signalled a historic shift in the position of the Roman Catholic Church by saying condoms can be morally justified.

The Pope and an AIDS sufferer
Image 1 of 2
Pope Benedict XVI, left, and South African AIDS sufferer Nkosi Johnson Photo: AP/REUTERS
Jonathan Wynne Jones
By , Religious Affairs Correspondent
8:45PM GMT 20 Nov 2010
Comments200 Comments
After decades of fierce opposition to the use of all contraception, the Pontiff has ended the Church’s absolute ban on the use of condoms.
He said it was acceptable to use a prophylactic when the sole intention was to “reduce the risk of infection” from Aids.
While he restated the Catholic Church’s staunch objections to contraception because it believes that it interferes with the creation of life, he argued that using a condom to preserve life and avoid death could be a responsible act – even outside marriage.
Asked whether “the Catholic Church is not fundamentally against the use of condoms,” he replied: “It of course does not see it as a real and moral solution. In certain cases, where the intention is to reduce the risk of infection, it can nevertheless be a first step on the way to another, more humane sexuality.”
He stressed that abstinence was the best policy in fighting the disease but in some circumstances it was better for a condom to be used if it protected human life.
“There may be justified individual cases, for example when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be … a first bit of responsibility, to redevelop the understanding that not everything is permitted and that one may not do everything one wishes.
“But it is not the proper way to deal with the horror of HIV infection.”
The announcement is in a book to be published by the Vatican this week based on the first face-to-face interview given by a pope.
In the interview, he admits he was stunned by the sex abuse scandal that has engulfed the Catholic Church and raises the possibility of the circumstances under which he would consider resigning. The 83-year-old Pontiff says in passages published exclusively in The Sunday Telegraph today that he is aware his “forces are diminishing”.
However, he appears determined to fight for the place of faith in the public domain.
His language in attacking the use of recreational drugs in the West and its impact on the rest of the world is particularly striking.
He describes drug trafficking as an “evil monster” that stems from the “boredom and the false freedom of the Western world”. Most significant, however, are his comments on condoms, which represent the first official relaxation in the Church’s attitude on the issue after rising calls for the Vatican to adopt a more practical approach to stopping the spread of HIV.
The Pope’s ruling is aimed specifically at stopping people infecting their partners, particularly in Africa where the disease is most prevalent.
However, it will inevitably be seized upon by liberal Catholics in Britain who oppose the Church’s stance against contraception.
High profile Catholics such as Cherie Blair have stated publicly that they use birth control.
The Pope’s comments are surprising because he caused controversy last year by suggesting that condom use could actually worsen the problem of Aids in Africa.
He described the epidemic in the continent as “a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems”.
The Vatican amended an official version of the remarks to indicate that he said merely that condoms “risk” aggravating the problem.
However, there have been growing calls for the Church to clarify its position.
Theologians suggest that condoms are not a contraceptive if they are intended to prevent death rather than avoid life.
The Pope’s comments in the book, Light of the World, are likely to be welcomed by Catholic leaders in the West who have struggled to explain its current teaching.
Asked last year whether a married Catholic couple should use condoms where one of them had Aids, Archbishop Vincent Nichols, head of the Church in England and Wales, disclosed the confusion over the issue. “Obviously that’s a sensitive point and obviously there are different views on that,” he said.
Hardline Catholics are likely to be surprised and dismayed by the Pope’s comments as they argue that condoms can be used only as contraceptives.
There has been great anticipation before the book’s release, heightened by its author, Peter Seewald, who said in a teasing comment that it could be “a big sensation”.
“It is the first time that a Pope gives an account of himself in this form,” he said.
“It is the first personal interview with a pope in the Church’s history.”
The Pope gives his most personal account of the distress caused to him by the clerical sex abuse scandal, with particular reference to Germany and Ireland.
He says: “It was really almost like the crater of a volcano, out of which suddenly a tremendous cloud of filth came, darkening and soiling everything, so that above all the priesthood suddenly seemed to be a place of shame and every priest was under the suspicion of being one like that too.” He did not consider resigning over the crisis but does raise the possibility of a pope resigning if he were to lose his mental capacities.
“If a Pope clearly realises that he is no longer phys-ically, psychologically, and spiritually capable of handling the duties of his office, then he has a right and, under some circumstances, also an obligation to resign.” He tells of the last time he saw Pope John Paul II, his predecessor; talks of his reluctance to be Pontiff; and speaks of his increasing frailty.
“I had been so sure that this office was not my calling, but that God would now grant me some peace and quiet after strenuous years,” he says. While the Pope stresses the importance of dialogue with Islam, he nevertheless says the religion needs to “clarify … its relation to violence” and suggests it can be intolerant.
The Pontiff is highly critical of the “craving for happiness” in the West.
“I believe we do not always have an adequate idea of the power of this serpent of drug trafficking and consumption that spans the globe,” he says.
“It destroys youth, it destroys families, it leads to violence and endangers the future of entire nations.
“This, too, is one of the terrible responsibilities of the West: that it uses drugs and that it thereby creates countries that have to supply it, which in the end exhausts and destroys them.”
He continues: “A craving for happiness has developed that cannot content itself with things as they are.”
Talking about sex tourism, he says: “The destructive processes at work in that are extraordinary and are born from the arrogance and the boredom and the false freedom of the Western world.”

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Tuesday, August 7, 2012

‘El Presidente THAT I USED TO KNOW’: 2008 SUPPORTERS RELEASE HILARIOUSLY SCATHING ANTI-El Presidente PARODY



Gotye Parody Mocks Obama That I Used to Know
If you listen to pop radio at all — or even if you pay attention to the music that plays in the grocery store — you know that the group Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” is one of the hottest songs in the country right now. The catchy tune and eccentric music video are burning up the airwaves and the Internet. And now some 2008 Obama supporters have capitalized off of it with a scathing, yet hilarious, parody of the song that blasts the president.
The video is called “Obama That I Used to Know” and mocks everything from Obama’s high unemployment rate, to his promises of change, and even his use of drones and vow to close Guantanamo.
It includes lyrics such as, “But college ended, had to pay my rent / at least your the first gay president, but the change I got was that I moved in with my mother.”
There’s also: “Because you won and then you cut me off, but now your speeches never soar as high as unemployment.”
Take a listen below (and don’t worry, no content warning is in order despite the body paint):
To be fair, the video takes its shots at Romney, and that brings up a larger point: Those that are portrayed in these types of videos aren‘t so disillusioned with Obama that they’re going to vote for Romney. However, it does reveal that so many are starting to see that much of Obama’s rhetoric over the last five years have been politicking. And while these voters won’t switch to Romney, it could mean that more middle-of-the-road voters will.
By the way, here’s the original song as a comparison:
(H/T: Buzzfeed)

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Monday, August 6, 2012

Why come they say unkind things about El Presidente?

What do you think would happen if the police decided to protect only the property and let anything happen to the rioters that happen to happen?  I'd sorta like to see such a social experiment.  You?

Aren't these El Presidente and Nancy Pelosi's people? Oh, Why this happen?


‘FUCK OBAMA!’: VIDEO EMERGES OF OCCUPY OAKLAND PROTESTERS TRASHING OBAMA CAMPAIGN OFFICE

F**k Obama!: Video Emerges of Occupy Oakland Protesters Trashing Obama Campaign Office, Dancing in the Streets
(Source: YouTube)
TheBlaze previously reported on the group of roughly 100-200 Occupy protesters that marched through downtown Oakland Friday night, wreaking havoc on the streets and even smashing the glass windows of President Obama’s local campaign office. But even the most detailed report can’t quite capture the true nature of an Occupy rally like raw video can.
A video posted to YouTube on Saturday shows the large gathering of Occupy protesters marching through the Oakland streets, staging what looks like a dance party and holding signs with messages like “F*ck The Police.”
After a few amusing minutes of footage where various occupiers show off their best dance moves, day transitions into night. Under the cover of darkness, a few of the protesters set their sights on President Obama’s local campaign office.
An unidentified male can be seen on the video smashing the glass front windows of the Obama for America headquarters, prompting cheers from the emboldened crowd.
F**k Obama!: Video Emerges of Occupy Oakland Protesters Trashing Obama Campaign Office, Dancing in the Streets
(Source: YouTube)
“Obama is just as corrupt as anyone else!” one man can be heard shouting shortly after.
“F**k Obama!” another man screams.
After the destruction of public property, the dance party quickly resumes to tunes by Michael Jackson. The Occupy crowd can then be heard chanting “F. T. P.,“ meaning ”f**k the police.”
From the looks of it, the Occupy movement is quickly becoming disenchanted with President Obama, even though he has refused to condemn the radical movement. The official Occupy Oakland Twitter account tweeted on Friday:
And a warning from Occupy Oakland:
“We are spontaneous, insurgent, uncontrollable.
These are our streets, and we are here to take them.
FTP! F*CK THE PERMITS! F*CK THE POLICE!”
In addition to the Obama campaign office, Occupy Oakland protesters also reportedly tore down fences and smashed car windshields.
Watch the video of the mayhem in Oakland here:

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