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Least Competent Criminals; Funding the Revolution

News of the Weird by Chuck Shepherd

By News of the Weird by Chuck Shepherd

Published November 26, 2014

  Least Competent Criminals; Funding the Revolution

Two men ran out the door of a closed-for-the-night Houston Family Dollar store on Oct. 7 empty-handed after a failed theft attempt. According to the surveillance video, one man had removed items from a bottom shelf while the store was still open, and crawled behind the shelf space just before his partner came by and restocked the shelf (thus hiding his buddy).

The partner then made a purchase and left. After the last employee had closed up around 11 p.m., the "hidden" (and extremely patient!) man crawled out, surely intending to let his partner in and start snatching things, but the "hidden" man was only able to take a few steps before a motion-detector sounded an alarm, and both men fled on foot (not even bothering to grab an item or two on the way out). [KHOU-TV, 10-10-2014]

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks publisher of state secrets who remains holed up in the embassy of Ecuador in London, has signed on with an Icelandic licensing agent to sell Assange-branded high-end clothing, shoes and various household goods in India and much of Europe, and is negotiating to put his logo on apparel in Japan and the U.S. The agent told The New York Times in October that "WikiLeaks" and "Assange" "can be as big as Coca-Cola."

A 46-page book sets out licensing standards (e.g., no tacky slogans, such as "We Steal Secrets") and includes the one approved Assange portrait (an "idealized line drawing" of him "gazing soulfully into what is presumably a better future," wrote the Times). [New York Times, 10-23-2014]

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