In Croaker, Virginia stands a sight that would make just about anyone stop in their tracks. 43 ghostly effigies of presidents past crowd together in the tall grass. Some of the 18-to-20-foot busts have crumbling noses. Tear-like stains fall from the eyes of others. All have bashed-in heads to some degree. This could be a scene from the world’s most patriotic horror movie, but it’s all too real—and Howard Hankins’ family farm is just the latest stop on the busts’ larger-than-life journey from iconic pieces of art to zombie-like markers of America’s past.
The busts are all that remains of Virginia’s Presidents Park, a now-defunct open-air museum where visitors could once walk among the presidential heads. Presidents Park first opened in nearby Williamsburg in 2004, the brainchild of local landowner Everette “Haley” Newman and Houston sculptor David Adickes, who was inspired to create the giant busts after driving past Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.
But their presidential visions soon (literally) went bust. The park, which cost about $10 million to create, went belly-up due to a lack of visitors in 2010. Doomed in part by location—it was hidden behind a motel and slightly too far away from colonial Williamsburg’s tourist attractions, the park went into foreclosure.
That’s where Hankins, who helped build the park, comes in. Before the land was auctioned off, Newman asked him to destroy the busts. But Hankins didn’t feel right about it, and instead offered to take the heads and move them to his 400-acre farm. And so began the laborious process of moving 43 giant presidents, each weighing in between 11,000 and 20,000 pounds, to a field ten miles away. Hankins estimates the weeklong process cost about $50,000—not including the damage done to each sculpture during the move.
This video surfaced this morning from some guy who now says he is famous because of the video. This video is so bloody strange that no wonder it has gone viral. It shows a guy carrying a dead deer down Keewatin street near Selkirk avenue sometime this morning. The audio is so obscene that I inserted music. A brief description of the audio: the guy with the camera says the other guy is carrying this deer, refers to the other guy as a Rez Nigga, camera guy says the deer stinks like a bitch. But he says we should bring it to my brother’s, skin it and eat it.
Logical deduction assumes this is road kill. If it stinks it may have been dead for hours. The boys in the vid are likely intoxicated on something and decided to not waste a good deer corpse. The deer looks like it could weigh about a hundred pounds. So the carrier probably got tired and dropped it and they went on their merry way.
Charges for Russian after stunts atop Toronto skyscraper
An “urban explorer” has been charged after he was seen in an online video leaping and doing somersaults atop a downtown Toronto skyscraper.
In a video posted to YouTube, Russian stuntman Oleg Cricket can be seen leaping, sliding and rolling on the ledge of a skyscraper. In another shot, he appears to be jumping between beams, with the CN Tower as his backdrop. In one of the final shots, Cricket is shown doing a handstand on a ledge, high above city streets.
Police arrested Cricket on Nov. 12. He has been charged with breaking and entering and mischief, Toronto police say.
Cricket is well-known for his vertigo-inducing acrobatic feats atop skyscrapers in various cities. He records his stunts and puts them on YouTube and other social media channels, where his followers number in the hundreds of thousands.
Another man who was allegedly with Cricket is facing the same charges.
Here is another movement of religiously brain-washed right-wingers who are convinced the world is about to end. After the 2012 frenzy of doomsayers and end-of-world survivalists, this kind of thing is old hat now. These are disgruntled conservatives who have likely been slighted in life and hate the world, especially the world of the United States. More specifically the U.S. government.
They are pessimistic negative old farts who are prone to believe conspiracy theories and Big Brother controlling every aspect of their lives. The Bible doesn’t help. These idiots take the Bible literally, after all God wrote it, didn’t he? They believe in that insane Book of Revelations and other biblical prophecies of Armageddon. This just shows how blind intense religious belief can really screw certain people up. So on with this story.
If the polls are to be believed, Hillary Clinton seems likely to win on November 8 — a reality that doesn’t sit well with the “Prepper” movement.
For preppers, a Trump loss signifies a broken political system beyond repair and the possibility has triggered a sense of impending doom — giving birth to the American Redoubt.
The American Redoubt is made up of the states of Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and the eastern parts of Washington and Oregon. It’s a place where mostly conservative, mostly Christian Americans, worried about the future, are encouraged to move.
“The American Redoubt is a stronghold itself. It’s the last bastion for God, country, liberty, constitutions, the Second Amendment and home schooling,” says Pastor Warren Campbell.
Campbell moved his family from California about a year and a half ago, in part, because he believes the U.S. economy is on the verge of collapse, but also to focus more on God and to have less government in his life.
Campbell’s army surplus store located just outside Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, also serves as a place of worship where people come to listen to his unique take on Christian theology.
He worries if Trump loses the election, the Democrats will erode religious freedoms and the Second Amendment. He also anticipates a lot more neighbours.
“I think we’ll see a great influx of people… multiplying by the thousands, coming here for a place of safety and refuge,” says Campbell.
Chris Walsh is a real estate agent who specializes in helping people relocate to the American Redoubt. In the documentary, Hope for the best — prepare for the worst, he tells CBC’s Erin Collins preppers are looking to be around people that are more like-minded.
A sign outside an off grid property for sale in northern Idaho. (Erin Collins/CBC)
“They’re big fans of the Second Amendment. They want their gun rights. They have guns but they don’t necessarily carry them on their person every day,” says Walsh.
“But the idea is that they want to be someplace that’s more civil.”
Many of the properties Walsh shows are difficult to reach. He uses his 1954 Beachwood Bonanza plane to scout and show remote properties to his clients. Privacy and seclusion are big selling points in this market.
Chris Walsh is a real estate agent who specializes in helping people relocate to the American Redoubt. In the documentary, Hope for the best — prepare for the worst, he tells CBC’s Erin Collins preppers are looking to be around people that are more like-minded.
“They’re big fans of the Second Amendment. They want their gun rights. They have guns but they don’t necessarily carry them on their person every day,” says Walsh.
“But the idea is that they want to be someplace that’s more civil.”
Many of the properties Walsh shows are difficult to reach. He uses his 1954 Beachwood Bonanza plane to scout and show remote properties to his clients. Privacy and seclusion are big selling points in this market.
Walsh says one of the primary reasons preppers are fleeing — they worry about a U.S. financial collapse.
It’s a concern that Glen Martin says is a big priority on his mind.
“It’s going to give. It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when.”
Martin lives off the grid with his fiance Jean Olson in a small red-frame cabin on 10 acres of lush northern forest nestled in the hills of Bonner County, Idaho.
Glen Martin chops wood outside his fiance’s off grid cabin in northern Idaho. (Erin Collins/CBC)
“The idea that a collapse could be in front of us, and you know what’s going to happen with the grocery stores, our chain of supply?” says Martin.
“Living in a more self-sufficient lifestyle you prepare for these situations… you know, you stock up a little bit on food, or you have food you’re growing.”
Martin isn’t just preparing for the future, he’s selling others to do the same in running prepperbroadcasting.com.
As for the coming election, Martin’s fiancee Jean Olson is pulling for Clinton but no matter who wins she doubts more people will be moving to her neck of the woods.
“I think people are going to forget about it two weeks after it’s done.”
The North Korean cult of personality surrounding its ruling family, the Kim family, has existed in North Korea for decades and can be found in many examples of North Korean culture. Although not officially recognized by the North Korean government, many defectors and even Western visitors claim there are often stiff penalties for those who criticize or do not show “proper” respect for the regime. The personality cult began soon after Kim Il-sung took power in 1948, and was greatly expanded after his death in 1994.
While other countries have had cults of personality to various degrees (such as Joseph Stalin’s in the Soviet Union), the pervasiveness and extreme nature of North Korea’s personality cult surpasses that of Stalin or Mao Zedong. The cult is also marked by the intensity of the people’s feelings for and devotion to their leaders, and the key role played by a Confucianized ideology of familism both in maintaining the cult and thereby in sustaining the regime itself.
The enormous statues and portraits
Stadium with participants holding large cards.
The cult of personality surrounding the Kim family requires total loyalty and subjugation to the Kim family and establishes the country as a one-man dictatorship through successive generations. The 1972 constitution of the DPRK incorporates the ideas of Kim Il-sung as the only guiding principle of the state and his activities as the only cultural heritage of the people. According to New Focus International, the cult of personality, particularly surrounding Kim Il-sung, has been crucial for legitimizing the family’s hereditary succession, and Yong-soo Park noted in the Australian Journal of International Affairs that the “prestige of the Suryong [supreme leader] has been given the highest priority over everything else in North Korea”.
North Korean authorities have co-opted portions of Christianity and Buddhism, and adapted them to their own uses, while greatly restricting all religions in general as they are seen as a threat to the regime. An example of this can be seen in the description of Kim Il-sung as a god, and Kim Jong-il as the son of a god or “Sun of the Nation”, evoking the father-son imagery of Christianity. According to author Victor Cha, during the first part of Kim Il-sung’s rule, the state destroyed over 2,000 Buddhist temples and Christian churches which might detract from fidelity to Kim. There is even widespread belief that Kim Il-sung “created the world” and that Kim Jong-il controlled the weather. Korean society, traditionally Confucian, places a strong emphasis on paternal hierarchy and loyalty. The Kims have taken these deeply held traditions and removed their spiritual component, replacing them with loyalty to the state and the ruling family in order to control the population. Despite the suppression of traditional religions, however, some have described Juche, sociologically, as the religion of the entire population of North Korea.
According to a 2013 report by New Focus International, the two major North Korean news publications (Rodong Sinmun and the Korean Central News Agency) publish around 300 articles per month relating to the “cult of Kim”. The report goes further and suggests that with the death of Kim Jong-il, the average North Korean citizen is growing weary of the vast amount of propaganda surrounding the Kims. DailyNK likewise published in 2015 that the younger generation is more interested in the outside world and that the government is finding it difficult to secure the loyalty of the “jangmadang” (marketplace) generation and promoting the idolization of Kim Jong-un.
The DPRK government claims there is no cult of personality, but rather genuine hero worship.
Mansudae Grand Monument
After his death on December 17, 2011, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said that layers of ice ruptured with an unprecedentedly loud crack at Chon Lake on Mount Paektu and a snowstorm with strong winds hit the area. A political paper by his son, Kim Jong-un, sought to solidify his father as the “Eternal General Secretary of our Party.” Many had been seen weeping during the 100-day mourning period, which is typical of Korean Confucian society, and an analyst at South Korea’s Korea Institute for National Unification determined that much of the public grief evidenced during the mourning period was a genuine expression of sorrow. Yet, there has been some doubt as the genuine nature and depth of the displays of grief.
Kim Jong-un, the grandson of North Korea’s founder, was largely absent from the public and government service until the mid-2000s. In 2010 he began being referred to as the “Young General” and by late 2011 as “Respected General”. Like his father, he lacks any formal military training or service. With the death of his father, state media began to refer to him as the “Great Successor.” Although he is still a new ruler, the development of his own personality cult is well underway, with large numbers of posters, signs, and other propaganda being placed all over the country. Some commentators have noted that his striking likeness in appearance to Kim Il-sung has helped solidify him as the undisputed ruler in the minds of the people.
Kim Jong-un marks the third generation of Kim family dynastic leadership. According to Daily NK, people who criticized the succession were sent to re-education camps or otherwise punished and, after the mourning period of Kim Jong-il, government authorities began to increase their efforts on building the idolization of Kim Jong-un.
After Kim Jong-il’s death the president of the Presidium announced that “Respected Comrade Kim Jong-un is our party, military and country’s supreme leader who inherits great comrade Kim Jong-il’s ideology, leadership, character, virtues, grit and courage.”
Shortly after the new leader came to power, a 560 metres (1,840 ft)-long propaganda sign was erected in his honor near a lake in Ryanggang Province. The sign, supposedly visible from space, reads “Long Live General Kim Jong-un, the Shining Sun!”
In 2013, the Workers’ Party of Korea amended the Ten Principles for the Establishment of a Monolithic Ideological System, which in practice serves as the primary legal authority and framework of the country, to demand “absolute obedience” to Kim Jong-un.
Kim Jong-un’s uncle, Jang Sung-taek, was executed on December 12, 2013. His death was attributed, in part, to undermining the Kim family personality cult. His death has also been seen as a move by Kim Jong-un to consolidate his own cult.
In 2015, at the end of the formal three-year mourning period for the death of Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un ordered the construction of new monuments to be built in every county of North Korea. Extensive renovations to the Kumsusan Memorial Palace have also been ordered. According to The Daily Telegraph, analysts “say the order to erect more statues to the Kim family will be a heavy financial burden on an economy that is already struggling due to years of chronic mismanagement and international sanctions”.
Familism is a type of collectivism in which the one is expected to prioritize the needs of the greater society or family over the needs of the individual. This plays out on a large scale in North Korea, where the Great Leader Kim Il-Sung is Father and the Communist Party is Mother. Thus, not only are the people expected to cherish their birth parents and treat them with all the respect demanded of traditional Confucian filial piety, but they must cherish and adore the ruling Kim family and the Mother Party even more so.
Familism in North Korea stems from a combination of the traditional East Asian Confucian value of filial piety (upmost respect for parents and grandparents as well as elder uncles and aunts), the communist system of collectivism, and the Kim cult of personality. As a traditional East Asian and Confucian value, the importance of family has come to resonate through all aspects of North Korean life, from politics to the economy to education and even to interpersonal relationships between friends and enemies.
When the Soviet Union first entered North Korea in 1945 to start its occupation, it had to start almost from scratch in establishing a communist base in the capital region of Pyongyang. In fact, the Soviets’ ideologies of communism and socialism were likely as foreign to the Koreans of Pyongyang as the Soviets themselves. However, by emphasizing family and a father-child relationship between the Soviet Union and Korea, and later between Kim Il-Sung and the North Korean people, Kim not only managed to apply Western Marxism to an Asian state, but also to secure his own personality cult, thereby constructing a sense of unquestioning loyalty toward him amongst the North Korean people when North Korea was at its most vulnerable to unwelcome western influences.
For the last three years, American photographer Arthur Drooker has been to a dozen conventions across the country, photographing some of the quirkiest gatherings such as mermaids, clowns, Santas, fetishists and Lincoln look-alikes. Yet, he has barely begun. According to one estimate, America holds a staggering 1.2 million conventions, conferences, and trade shows every year. That’s nearly 3,000 gatherings every day! These unusual gatherings allow like-minded people to congregate, bond, and express themselves.
“Regardless of what they’re about, where they’re held or who attends them, all conventions satisfy a basic human urge: a longing for belonging,” says Arthur Drooker. “At conventions, people who share similar interests, even obsessions, come together to bond and to be themselves without fear, apology or explanation. The outside world doesn’t matter. In fact, for the weekend duration of most conventions, the outside world doesn’t even exist.”
Association of Lincoln Presenters, Natchez, Mississippi, 2014.
Santa Drill Team, Santa Celebration, Tampa, Florida, 2013.
Brony Parade, BronyCon, Baltimore, 2013.
At Ease, Military History Fest, St. Charles, Illinois, 2014.
Mermaid Matrimony, Merfest, Cary, North Carolina, 2015.
Zoo, Anthrocon, Pittsburgh, 2014.
Anthrocon (abbreviated AC) is the world’s largest furry convention, taking place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania each June or July. Its focus is on furries: fictional anthropomorphic animal characters in art and literature. The convention was first held in 1997 in New York State, and draws over 5,000 attendees annually. Anthrocon 2016 drew 7,310 attendees, with 2,100 fursuiters participating in the fursuit parade.
Fetish Con, at Tampa Hilton, Florida
World Taxidermy & Fish Carving Championships, Springfield, Illinois
Las Vegas convention stats:
How many conventions are held per year?
21,306 were held last year.
That is 58 conventions a day being held in Las Vegas, however, since conventions usually last 2-3 days, there would be well over a 100 conventions on the go on any given day.
How many delegates attended?
2015 saw 5,891,151 attendees.
The 37th ‘Vent Haven Convention bills itself as ‘the oldest and largest annual gathering of ventriloquists’ This one in Cincinnati.
And last, but not least, the Celebrity Impersonator Convention.
The creepy clown craze has acquired a whole new layer of strangeness after the much-anticipated ‘Clown Lives Matter’ rally scheduled for today was cancelled due to death threats!
Conceived as a celebration of uncorrupted clowning, the gathering that was to be held in Tucson over the weekend has been called off by organizer Shelly Gutierrez.
Writing as her alter ego ‘Nikki Sinn,’ Gutierrez took to Facebook to announce the cancellation, saying “with the numerous death threats and harassment, it’s sad to say we have canceled what was supposed to be a fun, peaceful walk.”
The crestfallen clown promised that those behind the online bullying would be reported to authorities.
This latest turn of events in what some are calling a ‘clown crisis’ is a significant blow to professional performers who simply want to fill the world with mirth and merriment.
Our clown craze correspondent, investigative journalist Adam Gorightly, observed that “it’s a sad day in America when we can’t celebrate the great diversity and many positive contributions that the clown community has given us.”
When asked if the onslaught of sightings could be orchestrated by some nefarious cabal, Gorightly ominously replied with an emphatic, “no one controls the clowns.”
Source: ABC News
Look at these peaceful, happy and harmless clowns. Lets give them a break.
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