Organized labor leaders in Los Angeles are now arguing that unionized companies should have the freedom to pay less than the city’s new $15 per hour minimum wage. [*Turns to face labor leaders*] You are the shittiest labor leaders I ever heard of!

The Duggars’ homeschool curriculum is full of wisdom, if by wisdom, of course, we mean a phrenetic preacher screaming in tongues about hell. Now, imagine that raving, holy lunatic wants to teach you about cervical cancer and gangrene as it directly relates to lust.

The Advanced Training Institute’s Wisdom Booklets—designed by noted bachelor and octogenarian sex offender Bill Gothard—has a lot to say about cervical cancer. And medicine in general. And it makes for just about the worst, most impractical first aid arsenal you ever did see.

Here are some of the most inane bits of advice, straight from the Duggars’ school curriculum. God help us all.

What’s the best way for women decrease their chances of cancer AND venereal disease?

God’s law. And/or stop letting in so much alien seed.

Doctors have discovered that the seed of the man is an alien substance to the woman. It triggered responses similar to those of an “allergic” reaction. A woman who has a husband is able to develop “immunity” to this reaction; however, a promiscuous woman’s immune system becomes confused and unable to distinguish alien substances. This confusion is a key to the development of cancer.

Does gangrene illustrate the development and destruction of lust?

Apparently!

Diseases of the body usually have their counterpart in diseases of the soul. There is, in fact, an intimate relationship between the health of the soul and the health of the body.

By understanding the workings of a disease in one realm we can often gain significant insight to a corresponding disease in the other realm.

Can a man physiologically control himself around a lady?

Why, no. Scientifically speaking, he cannot.

When a man looks lustfully at a woman, a flood of impulses travels through the optic nerve to the back of the brain. As a result, the glands and other bodily functions are activated, and the level of testosterone increases.

Recent studies revealed a significant correlation between high testosterone levels and those who commit violent crimes.

Ladies, you’ve been warned. It’s entirely up to you now. Only you.

How does a father damage his sons and daughters by lust?

How doesn’t he!

In the same way as genetic diseases are passed from parents to children, the specific sins of the fathers are passed on in the form of weaknesses to their sons and daughters. Thus, a father who lusts with his eyes will cause his children to have greater temptation in this area until he confesses his past sins and prays a daily hedge around his children.

Why do we have eyes?

The better to see you(r deep, repulsive sin) with.

The eye transmits the sensual stimuli to the brain, which activates the heart, which is “deceitful and desperately wicked.” ( See Jeremiah 17:9)

Should you fear death?

Depends—are you a Christian?

There is reason for a non-Christian to fear death, but not for a Christian. Death to him is the ultimate healing, because in heaven there is no sickness, sorrow pain, or death.

In that case, as an atheist/profligate/Jew, it would seem that the answer for me is an unequivocal yes—and how!

Why might some women have miscarriages?

Because they are licentious, wanton trollops.

The miscarriage or premature birth of a child conceived in unfaithfulness can also be attributed to the stress of the cup of bitter water. This interpretation assumes that the accused WOMAN is pregnant when she is brought before the priest. If the child is the husband’s , she has no reason for guilt, and the child will live.

How might one spot an anorexic?

Look for the quartered pea.

Contact the author at ashley@gawker.com.

Some senior pranks are harmless, stupid fun. Others will get you arrested on felony charges of “perpetrating a hoax by use of false bomb or other device in a public building.”

Yesterday morning, as part of their senior prank, Shannon Marie Farrell,18, and Lekia Hall,18, reportedly set several alarm clocks to different times and then locked them in unused lockers at South Iredell High School in Statesville, North Carolina.

After hearing ticking sounds and noticing that the locker’s zip-ties had been replaced with actual locks, a school administrator called 911. Law enforcement officers—including officers from Iredell County Sheriff’s Office, the N.C. Highway Patrol, and local EMS and fire stations —quickly swarmed the building and evacuated its more than 1,500 students and 200 employees to the football field.

The perpetrators, who apparently had sent out emails about the pranks several days prior, were quickly identified and questioned. From the Statesville Record & Landmark:

Dan Farrell, speaking near the school, said he received a call from his younger daughter Tuesday morning. He said she told him her sister was being questioned and the school had been evacuated.

He said he heard about the plans to bring alarm clocks to school several days ago. “I thought it was a pretty funny thing,” Farrell said.

Troutman Police Chief Matthew Selves, however, did not think the prank was a pretty funny thing. From the Record & Landmark:

Selves said a lot of resources were tied up for about two hours until a bomb-sniffing dog made a sweep through the school and word of the planned prank began to make its way to investigators.

He said the whole situation could have been avoided if any of those who knew of the planned prank had alerted an official ahead of time.

If convicted, Farrell and Hall could be sentenced to four to 25 months in prison. The prank is the second this week that’s ended with the arrest of students. At least America’s teens are focusing on something, for once.

Image via Shutterstock. Contact the author at taylor@gawker.com.

Dealing with the fallout after one of your colleagues kills an unarmed person in the line of duty is awfully stressful work. The NYPD knows this better than most. So it only made sense that after protests engulfed Baltimore in the wake of Freddie Gray’s death, New York’s finest were there to lend a sympathetic ear to the city’s police.

The Police Organization Providing Peer Assistance (that’s POPPA to you), a nonprofit that provides mental health support to police officers, sent a group of active and retired NYPD cops to Baltimore to counsel BPD officers earlier this month, the New York Post reports.

“They’re under a lot of stress down there,” John Petrullo, the Manhattan-based nonprofit’s executive director and a retired cop from the 63rd Precinct in Brooklyn, told The Post.“Our main concern was their well-being while they’re enduring this. They do a super-tough job and now the citizens turned against them and they have people throwing rocks and bricks at them,” he said.

The cops threw rocks too, for the record.

POPPA offered its support to Baltimore police, according to the Post, because “For nearly two weeks after Freddie Gray’s death on April 19, the city was under siege by violent protesters who looted businesses, torched police cruisers and assaulted Baltimore’s Finest.” Anyone who was in Baltimore in April could tell you that this assertion is baldly false. There was violence, yes, and some of it was quite serious. But if anyone was besieging Baltimore post-Freddie Gray, it was the police who snatched nonviolent curfew violators into Hummers and national guardsmen who patrolled protests—the vast majority of which were peaceful—with military rifles.

POPPA visiting Baltimore is a good thing. All police should have good access to counseling! And opportunities for exercise, like NYPD does thanks to its brand-new Zumba studio. A happy, self-actualized cop is a cop who is better at his job—and who is less likely to go WWE on a citizen who doesn’t put his hands behind his back quickly enough, or get scared and pull the trigger when he encounters a black man with his hood up.

But the residents of Baltimore’s poor neighborhoods have dealt with far worse than rocks thrown at them, and for far longer than a few weeks. Freddie Gray is dead. Tyrone West is too. If Baltimore cops need a mental health break, the rest of Baltimore needs one worse.

Photo of Baltimore police carrying a pepper-sprayed man after curfew via AP. Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.

The clip reel above is like a One Direction video with a hard-R rating. It’s like “Kiss You” with willies out.

It comes from the UK show Festivals, Sex, and Suspicious Parents, which returned for its second season last night on BBC Three. As it did last season, the show films young Brits on their booze- (and whatever-else-) addled treks through summer festivals, and then has members of the kids’ families secretly watch and weigh in on the depravity. The Season 2 premiere focused in part on Charlie, an 18-year-old who can’t keep his pants on or his hands off his two chums (that’s when they aren’t attempting to grope whatever woman happens to be within arm’s reach) at Austria’s Frequency Festival. His mother is very chill about her son’s behavior. My favorite reaction of hers happens as she watches her son teabag another dude: “Oh.”

Please make sure you catch the section of the video above in which Charlie and his friends let off steam while moshing to brostep. What’s the word for “douchebag” in England?

According to reports, Tracy Morgan and Wal-Mart reached a confidential settlement almost a full year after a Wal-Mart truck slammed into Morgan’s limo, severely injuring Morgan and five other passengers—one of whom died almost instantly .

There’s no real way to tell how much he’s getting from the company, but for Morgan to settle before trial it’s gotta be a lot:

• The truck driver reportedly admitted to police he hadn’t slept in 24 hours
• Morgan’s pain and suffering was well-documented
• Morgan’s legal team strongly suggested that they intended introduce evidence at trial indicating Morgan might never work again.
  
• Which is all to say, $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Morgan’s camp, bound by a confidentiality agreement, did go so far as to say that they are happy with the settlement.

Wal-Mart did right by me and my family, and for my associates and their families,” said Morgan in a statement Wednesday. “I am grateful that the case was resolved amicably.”

Still, the legal consequences of the crash are far from over—the driver is still reportedly facing criminal charges, which could result in Morgan testifying at trial.

Image via AP. Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com

I mean, I guess everyone has their limit, even Courtney Stodden’s mom, believe it or not.

Krista Keller, Stodden’s momager—that’s a mom who’s your manager, even if she won’t let you call her mom in public just tell them I’m your sister, Court—announced this week that she’s had it with the teen she essentially sold to a 50-year-old man.

That is, they’ve parted ways over some “creative differences,” apparently tied to Stodden’s decision to release a sprinkles-sprinkled sex tape.

“I love her very much and I decided to step down due to creative differences,” Keller told FOX411.

She said it was becoming “difficult to work with people” that had differing opinions regarding the future of Stodden’s career.

The 20-year-old’s husband, Doug Hutchison, 55, also helps to manage his wife’s career. Keller would not comment on her daughter’s recently released sex tape, and though she wouldn’t confirm that it was the reason she stepped down as Stodden’s manager, she told us “I think you can figure out why.”

But Keller’s apparently emphasizing that although she’s formally out of the parenting game, she still intends to pursue her passion of making money off her family members.

“I plan to use my time now to help my husband, Reggie, with his Christian website called PowerSharing.com, which is a ministry to uplift and inspire others to follow their dreams through faith.”

Contact the author of this post at gabrielle@gawker.com

It’s been three years since The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn—Part 2 was released and Mackenzie Foy, the child actor who played Edward and Bella’s daughter Renesmee Cullen in the film, is now a breathtaking teenager.

As many other publications have written, Foy—recently appearing at Cannes to promote The Little Prince—has grown into a gorgeous, stunning, elegant, and dramatically beautiful young woman.

To think, here’s what she looked like in Breaking Dawn—Part 2, with her face seamlessly superimposed on an animatronic baby:

And here’s what she looks like now:

Gorgeous. Simply gorgeous.

Contact the author at madeleine@jezebel.com.

Images via Summit Entertainment, Getty, and Bobby Finger.

Investigators say an Air France flight full of passengers flew dangerously close to an active volcano earlier this month after the pilots veered off course during a storm.

The flight was somewhere over Cameroon on May 2 when the pilot deviated from the flight route, apparently to avoid a nearby thunderstorm. Via the 24-hour flight news channel CNN:

As the aircraft turned back toward its destination, the city of Douala in Cameroon, it got too close to Mount Cameroon, the highest mountain in the region whose volcano is still active, said the BEA, France’s air accident investigation agency.

The “pull up” alarm started sounding and the pilots responded by ascending from 9,000 feet to 13,000 feet, the BEA said. The alarm stopped and the flight went on to land in Douala, it added.

In a list of open investigations, the agency described the close shave as “a serious incident” that involved “controlled flight into or toward terrain.”

The pilots will reportedly undergo “more training,” and Air France has pledged to provide them with more information about “the specifics of the land around Douala.”

Image via AP. Contact the author of this post at gabrielle@gawker.com

In southern India, where the temperatures are so high the sidewalks are melting, more than 1,300 people are now confirmed dead from the heat.

The unrelenting heat, with highs of 116 degrees, is reportedly hitting the elderly, laborers and the homeless the worst. According to the New York Times, most people seem ill equipped to handle what seems to be an annual issue:

May is typically one of the hottest months of the year in India, with the heat building before the onset of the cooling monsoon season. Yet every year the heat seems to catch residents and the government by surprise.

The high temperatures are the result of hot winds blowing in from the west, leading one local news channel to call the phenomenon a “heat bomb” from Pakistan. B. P. Yadav, of the India Meteorological Department, said the winds had made things worse this year, and contributed to delaying much needed rains in the south. New Delhi, he said, will cool down over the coming days, but heat up again by the end of the month.

The intense heat is reportedly expected to continue for at least another week.

Streets melt in ferocious Indian heatwave as death toll tops 1100: http://t.co/6UOoZg40Su #9News pic.twitter.com/kkAi5mcDg2

May 28, 2015

Image via AP. Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.

Hey Virginia teenagers, oooh bad news—the College Board just called and they lost your SATs and you have to take them all over again! For real, though.

About 100 or so unlucky Loudon County students got the nightmare news this week that their probably flawless exams (Could it have been a perfect score? Who knows? Maybe no one ever will...) got lost somewhere between the gym and the College Board. Total bummer! And worse, the kids are apparently forgetting everything they learned.

“It’s been over a month since I’ve done all my studying,” one sad Virginia teen tells NBC Washington. “It’s going to affect my scores.”

Could it get any worse? Actually, yeah.

The make-up exam is scheduled for June 20, about the same time students are taking final exams.

God, being a teen really sucks.

Image via Flickr. Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.

The Washington Post has put together a chart illustrating the body counts of workers involved in construction for the last four Olympics and two World Cups, and compared them to the reported death toll for the 2022 Qatar World Cup.

[Update: The Washington Post has revised their story with this correction:

This story has been updated to reflect the fact that figures include total migrant worker deaths in Qatar, not just World Cup-related deaths.

Our original post is as follows.]

(The numbers are necessarily incomplete, coming as they do from different sources and suffering from a lack of accurate self-reporting. But even if it’s an order of magnitude off, it’s overwhelming.)

Don’t let the sheer scale of the chart shroud the fact that these are real people. That’s not just 1,200 faceless men; it’s 1,200 migrant workers who traveled far from home and their families, were forced to surrender their passports and live in squalid conditions for subsistence-level wages, until their untimely deaths. Meanwhile, FIFA executives have allegedly pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to make sure Qatar received the honor of hosting the World Cup.

The International Trade Union Confederation estimates that 4,000 workers will die in Qatar by the time 2022 arrives. FIFA corruption doesn’t even rate among legitimate reasons to boycott the World Cup.

[Washington Post]

Deadspin Garrick Sherman Goes On Alcohol-Fueled Anti-NCAA Twitter Rant | Gizmodo Will a Planetary Alignment Cause a 9.8 Earthquake This Week? | Jezebel You Won’t Believe What the Baby from Twilight Looks Like Now | Kotaku Pushing Cosplay To Its Absolute Limits |

Sprinkles are a bad ice cream topping that certainly aren’t worth throwing a tantrum over. Alas, this is a lesson learned too late by the woman who was nearly arrested on Saturday in a Michigan ice cream parlor.

According to Mason County, Michigan, sheriff Kim Cole, a woman and a man walked into an ice cream store Saturday evening and ordered two ice creams. Upon receiving her order, the woman began screaming at the clerk over a perceived sprinkles slight. The tantrum was so intense that the terrified employee called 911.

“The clerk called police because the customer was upset because she didn’t have enough sprinkles,” Cole told the Muskegon Chronicle.

When the woman’s friend attempted calm her down, she allegedly tried to punch him. Both fled the store before police arrived. The clerk has decided not to press charges.

h/t Daily Intel. Image via Flickmor on Flickr. Contact the author at taylor@gawker.com.

Uh oh, summertime is here and you know what that means, ladies—time to obsess over your arms, for some reason! Wow! Arms! Appendages! What to do?

“How to Get Your Arms Ready for Summer” is the lie told in the headline of a New York Times story today, which is whatever the opposite of the word “servicey” is. Needless to say, this story is targeted at middle-aged women, and if I was a middle-aged woman, I would be particularly pissed at the inherent anti-feminism of the conceptualization and execution of this bullshit story. Since I am not a middle aged woman I will just be outraged on their behalf!

Real strength lies not in the arms, but in the heart.

Suggestions from the Times—a place you should never, ever, turn to for fitness advice—include (what follows is a real list of suggested ways to “get your arms ready for summer” from a respected news outlet!):

• “EndyMed 3DEEP, a radio frequency device that delivers heat deep into the skin to boost collagen production and produce a tightening effect.” ($400 per treatment)
  
• “Neutrogena Oil-Free Acne Wash, which contains skin-sloughing salicylic acid, to smooth arm texture.”
  
• “Eucerin Professional Repair Extremely Dry Skin Lotion that contain urea” for “dark elbows.”
  
• “radio frequency techniques coupled with microneedling”
  
• Or, for “tightening” your arms, “injecting a thread of polydioxanone under the skin” ($3,000 per arm).

Just do some pullups and deadlifts which are free or alternately just say fuck it and enjoy the summer!!!

Ugh.

[Photo: Flickr]

Contact the author at Hamilton@Gawker.com.

Facebook Messenger is the single most popular app in the entire iTunes store. Millions of people now use it on their phones instead of SMS, which means that millions of people have been letting Facebook tap their exact locations whenever they chat. Who needs the NSA?

Aran Khanna, an incoming Facebook intern (!), combed his Facebook Messenger account and was startled by how much exact GPS data the company had been recording without his knowledge:

You may not believe that there are enough of these location tagged messages to provide truly invasive data on any one person, since they must be on mobile, with GPS on, and choose to share their location for it to be sent… right?

What you should keep in mind is that the mobile app for Facebook Messenger defaults to sending a location with all messages.

It’s not just locational data, it’s very, very specific locational data:

Go ahead and see how many messages in your chats have locations attached. I’m guessing it’s a lot of them. And if this isn’t already starting to get a bit weird, the first thing I noticed when I started to write my code was that the latitude and longitude coordinates of the message locations have more than 5 decimal places of precision, making it possible to pinpoint the sender’s location to less than a meter.

Khanna was able to scrape all this together with a little coding and map out the GPS coordinates of everyone he’s been talking to. His findings are illuminating and deeply creepy (you’ll go far at Facebook, son). The data would make it a cinch for stalkers with a little knowhow to keep tabs on their victims, or predict their next move—and you needn’t even be someone’s official Facebook friend to glean their GPS blips:

I found that I could even do this for people who I am not Facebook friends with. I am currently in a large active chat to organize poker games with some fellow students, many of whom I am not Facebook friends with. However, I can still track their locations extremely accurately from the messages they send the group.

Khanna focuses mostly on what a bad actor could do with this information, but seems to ignore the gargantuan, publicly traded bad actor he’s going to work for this summer. Most people probably don’t realize they’re transmitting their phone’s exact location to Facebook’s server fleet, because Facebook turns this option on by default and camouflages the option within its own busy blue UI.

Khanna updated his post to say that Facebook has notified him that “they are fixing this issue”— but that’s a fundamental, naive misunderstanding of how the site works. This wasn’t an “issue” that required a “fix” until someone pointed out how uncomfortable and sinister it is that a corporation had lured us into providing them with this level of personal information. Facebook Messenger didn’t just erupt, spontaneously, from some primordial code bog; it was designed some of the smartest and most deliberate engineers in the world. If it’s creepy, it’s creepy on purpose.

If you don’t feel like waiting on Facebook to fix this problem Facebook manufactured, here’s how to turn off location information in your Messenger chats:

Tap the blue arrow at the top right.

Contact the author at biddle@gawker.com.
Public PGP key
PGP fingerprint: E93A 40D1 FA38 4B2B 1477 C855 3DEA F030 F340 E2C7

Hey big boy. Nice watch. It’s very hot. Is it yours? That’s nice. It’s real, right? Rolex? Wow. That is really nice. I bet there are some big strong arms attached to those big strong wrists of yours. Really nice girth. Really, really nice. Anyway—wanna get out of here? Someplace we can be alone?

Rich men: Has this conversation happened to you? I know, I know—happens all the time. How could it not, with your firm wrists? But listen: that lady with her eye on your watch? Wanting sex with the ‘Lex? Getting ogly with the Rogley? Her intentions might not be as pure as you think.

According to DNAinfo, New York City cops are on the lookout for thieves who seduce men at nightclubs, slip them roofies, then make off with their Rolexes while they’re asleep. Damn. Don’t believe me? Maybe this cool man who was ripped off by two sexy babes last year can convince you:

Take the case of the 24-year-old Gramercy Park man who picked up two women at Tao on East 58th Street last June 1. He brought the duo to his apartment on E. 19th Street, where they headed into the shower together, emerged semi-naked and prepared a drink for him.

That was the last thing he remembered before he woke up in the morning with the girls missing — along with his iPhone, Apple laptop and Rolex.

And that was just one of two dozen similar cases reported last year. Damn!

Have another:

And then there was the 35-year-old man out clubbing last July 1. He met a woman at a bar who escorted him to the Marriott Hotel on Broadway.

Before he went to sleep, the “lucky” reveler put all his valuables in the room’s safe. But the following morning, when he woke up alone, he tried to open the safe, but could not. His guest had apparently watched him lock his property and memorized the secret code.

Security guards were needed to open the now-empty vault, which no longer had the victim’s credit cards and two luxury watches, including a Rolex worth tens of thousands of dollars.

What’s a hot money Rollie boy to do? Be careful, wrist man.

Image via AP. Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.

Do you have a boyfriend? No? Would you like to rent one? Good news, because does Japan have a service for you. It’s not cheap.

This is “Boyfriend Rental” (彼氏レンタル or Kareshi Rentaru). Similar companion services have long existed in Japan, such as host bars. However, boyfriend rental was introduced this week on Hakunetsu Live Vivid, a nationwide morning show.

[Photo: hagiohagi]

The subtitle reads, “This is the time when you can also buy a boyfriend with money.” I’m pretty sure there has always been dudes for hire, but m’okay!

[Photo: hagiohagi]

According to the manager of Rental Kareshi Premium, the service offers the experience of really having a boyfriend. (Note: This isn’t the only rent-a-boyfriend service in Japan. Of course it isn’t!)

Back in 2013, Kotaku introduced a “rent-an-old-man” service, which was about ten bucks an hour. Renting these boyfriends is far more expensive. For example, this particular service has different grades. There’s “Fresh” for 5,000 yen ($40.22) an hour, “Regular” for 6,000 yen ($48.26) an hour, and “Special” for 7,000 yen ($56.31) an hour.

Who uses rent-a-boyfriend services?

[Photo: bibliobibi]

According to Hakunetsu Live Vivid, forty percent of those who rent boyfriends are housewives. What’s more, the number of repeat customers is fifty percent. While this was featured on national Japanese television, don’t think every single woman in the country is renting a boyfriend. That would be a mischaracterization.

Another thing to be aware of is that while some (most?) people with boyfriends like to have sex with said boyfriends, here, that’s not on the menu. This isn’t prostitution. You apparently cannot even kiss your rental boyfriend. Handholding and hugging are okay. This is more about companionship, and the feeling of excitement you get with someone. That’s the appeal.

So, with that in mind...

[Photo: wetterfish]

This lady is going to rent a boyfriend for the first time. And what will she do?

[Photo: pink_pony88]

Go shopping.

[Photo: hagiohagi]

Have her (rental) boyfriend buy her things (with money she gave him).

[Photo: hagiohagi]

Hit an arcade.

[Photo: hagiohagi]

Sing karaoke and hold hands.

[Photo: PechoNarumi]

Hugs are at the end of the date.

This kind of thing can get expensive! As you can see here, the woman whose boyfriend rental date was featured on Hakunetsu Live Vivid, spent 39,000 yen ($313.71) for the six hour rental fee.

[Photo: bibliobibi]

Then, on top of that, there was an array of expenses:

• 1,030 yen ($8.29) on crepes
  
• 9,720 yen ($78.19) on shopping for accessories
  
• 4,089 yen ($32.89) on karaoke
  
• 14,590 yen ($117.36) on a meal
  
• 400 yen ($3.22) on sticker pictures at the arcade
  
• 200 yen ($1.61) on an arcade game
  

The total cost of the boyfriend-rental date was 69,029 yen ($555.27). That’s a lot of money! But, in Japan, where there are numerous companionship services for men to blow large amounts on cash on, it’s only fair that, among consenting adults, women would have a rental-a-companions available to them.

I dunno about you, I’d rather rent a ninja for the day.

Top photo: sayuri_0806

To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter@Brian_Ashcraft.

Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

The Pentagon sucks at explaining anything sensitive to the American public and the true scope of Jade Helm, the military exercise scheduled for this summer, is being hidden behind happy talk from one side and mass hysteria from the other.

That’s why Jade Helm—the reaction—continues to fascinate me.

A Google search for “Jade Helm” in the .mil (official) domain produces all of eight results even after months of public hysteria.

So any new morsel of actual information that passes through my inbox is interesting. Today, I saw a job announcement from a company called ICE, Inc. looking for a Jade Helm intelligence planner to work under contract for the Army:

Nothing in all of the gobbledygook and Pentagonese of this job posting reveals more than we already know, that is, that these exercises are indeed meant to use the vast open spaces of the southwest to prepare special operations soldiers for clandestine missions out there.

But a contractor being hired as intelligence planner for a constantly running series of games does beg the question as to whether the public has indeed gotten a sufficient explanation. This sentence alone in the job announcement tells me that more public misunderstanding is to come:

“Plan, organize, and coordinate all joint, inter-agency, inter-governmental, multinational (JIIM) intelligence capabilities and participants, to include civilian law enforcement (CLE) within JH UW exercise program.”

Joint inter-agency, inter-governmental and multinational? JIIM? It’s got it own acronym? In English, that’s the military, homeland security, CIA, and foreign military forces all running around playing their games. No big deal, the military says, and yet when that first foreign soldier arrives for Jade Helm—Brit, German, Italian, Swede, Jordanian, or Emirati—I’m sure it won’t be in a public ceremony.

The “threat forces” referred to in the job posting also does not mean the people of the southwest. But the insular language of this world of the military sure does confuse. And the Pentagon jive does provide some insight into the isolated world they live in, maybe not tin-foil hat but head gear of another type that just as much separates those in the military from the vast majority of those in the American public.

That point is driven home in an article in the Los Angeles Times, which points out that 49 percent of everyone in the active duty military hails from just five states: California, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and, wait for it...Texas.

These states also happen to host gigantic military bases and communities, and percentage wise, are a huge portion of the overall population. Still a military caste is growing in the country, and our utter segregation from them produces misunderstandings, distrust, and hostilities. For the media blowhards who live in New York City and shape the news, the American military is already a foreign force, and patriotism is already a scripted event. The same goes for Washington DC, a wholly militarized city of spit-shined constancy where those in uniform are not just ubiquitous but also polite and hyper-groomed desk-dwellers who could never represent any kind of a threat: such nice people.

Texas is a fuck of a lot bigger than DC but the citizens of Austin, Dallas, Houston, etc., can still go about their lives without much exposure to the soldiers at Forts Hood and Bliss. So who exactly is complaining about Jade Helm is an interesting question? It isn’t the elite urban dwellers who couldn’t care less about the military and go about their lives unaffected by war. No, ironically, it is normal and unwashed, seemingly uneducated Americans who are expressing concern about the ever-encroaching militarization of the nation and their being held hostage to federal priorities that don’t seem to think much about them.

This isn’t some Obama conspiracy: We the American people have created this “all-volunteer” force to guard our freedom. Now, 40 years into an all-volunteer military, generations of guardians have gone through the ranks, and guess what? They see the world the same way as their military parents and assume a position of service to America above all else. Who needs martial law when martial life has already taken over America? That’s what the Jade Helm questioners are ultimately getting at, the mainstream and the elite of no help because they just have so much fun making fun of the other.

[Photos: Army; Google search; ICE, Inc.]

You can contact me at william.arkin@gawker.com, and follow us at @gawkerphasezero. If you are into the theater of being underground, you can anonymously deliver tips through the Gawker Media SecureDrop.http://www.amazon.com/American-Coup-...

With Amazon now offering free same-day delivery to Amazon Prime members, it’s not hard to imagine a day when online retailers open “stores” where members can browse, purchase and walk out with items in only seconds. The internet is truly amazing.

Contact the author at Hamilton@Gawker.com.