Recommended daily allowance of insanity, under-reported news and uncensored opinion dismantling the propaganda matrix.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Study for a riot
Influenced by this atmosphere, we created in a deserted ceramics factory in Athens a series of actions during May 2010. At the time we wanted to give form to feelings intuitively provoked by the signs of unrest we received from all around us. We used the objects that were plentifully scattered in the ruins of the factory: red powder, ceramics, wood and ropes. We installed sculptural structures and we recorded, on video, short collision-scenes. Red powder represented the outcome of every human violent act.
We doubt the efficiency of violent rioting and search for a new way. Essentially we have found nothing yet, however, we enjoy searching."
AUJIK - A Forest Within A Forest
Just as with other forms of animism, AUJIK worships everything that comes out of nature and regard it as spiritual beings, the main difference with AUJIK is that science and technology is considered as sacred as stones and trees.
Melvin Lavell writes in his books Esoteric Perception of Artificial Intelligence and Ghost in the machine of sticks and stones that all sort of communicative technology since the first radio waves posses something metaphysical and spiritual and when it will reach a more sophisticated form more people will discover it and then it will reach a religious status.
The Shinto priest Hideaki spoke about similar things in the 1800:th century after he had seen a Karakuri doll( a clockwork robot made of wood) and claimed that in the future we will create mechanical characters that will become so superior to our own intelligence and ability's that we will subject oneself s as they were goods[sic].
These thought was the fundament for AUJIK's doctrine and then later developed in to something that reminds of theological dualism were the original nature (trees, metals, organism etc)is considered esoteric chaos and the refined nature(computers, robots, DNA-manipulation etc) is considered esoteric order.
The resistance between those has during the years decreased and will one day converge in a pyramid shaped top that will fill the world with clarity and supreme truth.
By creating organic/synthetic artifacts AUJIK believe they will reach this level a lot faster than it is destined.
Music:
Mira Calix - Hiccup from the album Skimskitta.
Written and produced by Mira Calix.
©Warp music 2000.
Markovich claims that the secondary nature will outnumber the primary because the primary's lack of adjustment.
The video features trees that evolved robotic extensions and it is unclear if they have a function or not.
The ABCs of Participatory Economics
From Participatory Economics: A Theoretical Alternative to Capitalism, a review by Geert Dhondt:
Participatory economics envisions a very different economy with new institutional arrangements. Instead of private ownership of capital, there is social ownership of the means of production, which means either there are no owners or everyone owns the means of production, so ownership does not generate income or power differences as it does in capitalism. Allocation has a different set of institutional arrangements; instead of markets, there is a system of democratic or participatory planning. Consumer councils create consumption plans, workplace councils create workplace plans, and facilitation boards (administrative institutions) try to refine the different plans and make them correspond. Everybody participates, everyone helps make decisions. Participatory economics has a few new elements that I will briefly introduce. First, it has democratic workers and consumer councils. Second, it is characterized by the concept of balanced-job complexes. Third, remuneration is determined according to one’s effort as judged by one’s work-mates. And, fourth, participatory planning is the allocation mechanism that replaces central planning and markets.
Workers are organized in workers’ councils. This is the first step in establishing non-hierarchical and dignified work. Every work place is governed by these workers’ councils. Albert and Hahnel recognize that democratic councils by themselves do not promote participation sufficiently because while some work is empowering, some work is not. Disempowered workers would come to the council (or not come) lacking information, skill, and energy to participate in a meaningful manner. To solve this problem, Albert and Hahnel propose balanced job complexes, which I think is their most valuable and original theoretical contribution.
Jobs are a certain combination of tasks, and in our current system, certain jobs are intended to be rote jobs, while others are more rewarding. Jobs are organized in a very hierarchical manner. So if one would create a workplace council in such a place there would be power differences. Take for example a person, who has only been sweeping the floor all day, and another who has been meeting all day, thinking, and making decisions. The latter has much more information than the former. When these two people sit on the council, one will be in a position to participate on a different level, which will create a monopoly of knowledge. Thus, it is necessary to break up jobs so that they are more egalitarian. This is what a balanced job complex is—a restructuring of tasks that need to be performed so that instead of having one person run the place while the other sweeps it, tasks are combined and balanced in such a way that each job is equally rote and rewarding, and each person has a fair share of each sort of task. This concept of the balanced job complex is key to creating a more egalitarian world where people are empowered and have control over their own lives—a society that has neither masters nor slaves.
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From Tute Bianche to the Book Bloc (by Uniriot)
The goal is to reduce the excess that knowledge produces, to force into precincts the possibility, directly implied by the production of knowledge, of autonomy and critics. In Italy, we have given this process the name “downgrading”, to indicate the process by which the forced impoverishment, and the reduction of opportunities with respect to one’s life and work plans are functional to savage and unscrupulous precarization. As if to say that, put in a state of absolute necessity, of utter precarity, young people and students all over Europe may be, in the economic mechanism, prepared and subjected to mechanisms of constant blackmail.What is this if not a modern variant of slavery? The traditional opposition of the Left Party and also of most of the unions is not able to give an answer that is up to this set of problems. When you, when we took the streets this fall, the claims, the desires that we expressed could not have been represented by anyone. This is because in the context of crisis, also the neoliberal revolution has found an easier way, even more in the face of the obvious failure of the reformist hypothesis and of thetraditional neo-Keynesian alternatives. And the news these days is that Obama was forced to launch a very hard financial manoeuvring, "tears and blood”, with huge cuts to public expenditure and to the world of knowledge and education. So when we speak of economic and global crisis, we refer also to a crisis of reformism.
We believe that, within this framework, the reason that has led many students and precarious workers to demonstrate and rebel, is fundamentally a generational problem and crisis. Our generation is the one that is excluded from any form of social contract. It is the 'no future’ generation who, even though having a higher level of education than their parents, is aware that most of them will be poorer and is the one that has being denied the very possibility of imagining and building their future.
In England in the early '600 private property was set up with the first enclosures. Today the new enclosures that are being built with respect to knowledge define a new phase of primitive accumulation and new privatization. In the struggles of recent months, the main objective was, in the first place, to prevent the complete casting off of the public sector. Struggling against the cuts to research and university, as well as you in London against the tripling of tuition fees, means to prevent this public institution from being destroyed. But this struggle doesn’t absolutely allude to a mere defense of the public, because it is state or guaranteed by the state. I believe that when we build opposition and subtraction moments, we are already showing an alternative process: to defend the public means already to directly imagine and be able to build a common into action. To claim the defense of the public does not mean to be satisfied with the existing and with the services that the state can offer, but to have a real chance to build new institutions collectively. Autonomous and common institutions and that produce new rules from the bottom and claiming alternative forms of life (existence).
For this reason, from the Wave to the Book Block, among the fundamental claims of the Italian movement, that respect to new forms of welfare played a key role: claiming forms of guaranteed income for precarious workers and students, opening disputes on mobility, access to culture and social services. For the sake of clarity: in Italy, much less than in other European countries, there are very few forms of direct and indirect support to young people, precarious, and workers in general. With a joke, we can say that, for us, the only form of welfare is the family (if they can afford). But across Europe, more generally, a dismantling of the welfare state, as it is traditionally understood, is happening and it is not replaced by any other alternative form. When we claim income to live, study and work, we do not ask,however, to be assisted and supported by the state, but to be paid economically in an environment where all our activities, throughout our day, are channeled into a mechanism of total production of value. To claim an income means to establish a compensation for a continuous production, which in the state of today capitalism, occurs at all levels: from schools to universities, from the call centers, to care work.
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Bizarre sex sells in weird world of manga
Spread out over the white Formica table-top are the worst of the worst - a hand-picked selection of the weirdest and most shocking examples of hentai from the country which invented it.
Page upon page of black and white etchings of wide-eyed, young people of indeterminate age drawn in that larger than life Japanese cartoon style, engaged in every kind of sexual act, legal or otherwise.
"Normal sex doesn't sell well," Komiya remarks.
"School sex, tied-up sex, abnormal sex, sells. So this is what they draw.
"Mangaka don't draw this stuff because they want to expose children to sexual perversity, they draw it for one reason: to make money."
Komiya doesn't pull any punches when it comes to talking about what he sees as Japan's mercenary and profit orientated comic book publishing industry.
A battle has broken out between the industry and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government - the Department of Youth Affairs and Public Safety, where Komiya works, is the front line of this war.
In December last year the Metropolitan Government, under the leadership of Tokyo's conservative Governor Shintaro Ishihara, pushed through a by-law that significantly tightens existing restrictions on selling manga with sexual content to young people.
In response 10 Japanese publishing houses, including big-name publisher Kodansha, announced they would boycott the Tokyo International Anime Fair and hold a rival fair called the Anime Contents Expo.
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When Does a Religion Become a Cult?
...Many academics and observers of cult phenomena, such as psychologist Philip G. Zimbardo of Stanford, agree on four criteria to define a cult. The first is behavior control, i.e., monitoring of where you go and what you do. The second is information control, such as discouraging members from reading criticism of the group. The third is thought control, placing sharp limits on doctrinal questioning. The fourth is emotional control—using humiliation or guilt. Yet at times these traits can also be detected within mainstream faiths. So I would add two more categories: financial control and extreme leadership.
Financial control translates into levying ruinous dues or fees, or effectively hiring members and placing them on stipends or sales quotas. Consider the once-familiar image of Hare Krishna devotees selling books in airports. Or a friend of mine—today a respected officer with a nonprofit organization—who recalls how his departure from the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church was complicated by the problem of a massive hole in his résumé, reflecting the years he had financially committed himself to the church.
Problems with extremist leadership can be more difficult to spot. The most tragic cult of the last century was the Rev. Jim Jones's Peoples Temple, which ended with mass murder and suicide in the jungles of Guyana in 1978. Only a few early observers understood Jones as dangerously erratic. Known for his racially diverse San Francisco congregation, Jones was widely feted on the local political scene in the 1970s. He was not some West Coast New Ager gone bad. He emerged instead from the mainstream Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) pulpit, which sometimes lent a reassuringly Middle-American tone to his sermons. ...
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Horrific US Medical Experiments Come to Light
Much of this horrific history is 40 to 80 years old, but it is the backdrop for a meeting in Washington this week by a presidential bioethics commission. The meeting was triggered by the government's apology last fall for federal doctors infecting prisoners and mental patients in Guatemala with syphilis 65 years ago.
U.S. officials also acknowledged there had been dozens of similar experiments in the United States - studies that often involved making healthy people sick.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Wisconsin Police Union Announces Solidarity with Occupation of State House
Saturday, February 26, 2011
2011 War Tax Boycott
If you don't believe in it, don't pay for it.
The War Tax Boycott campaign unites taxpayers who oppose endless war in a powerful act of nonviolent civil disobedience — saying NO! to war with our money. No to the continuing war and occupation of Iraq. No to the war in Afghanistan. No to drone attacks and increased fighting in Pakistan. No to billions more dollars buying thousands more deaths and injuries, both military and civilian. All around us—in the U.S. and around the world—there are people and programs that could benefit from a tiny percentage of the money that is spent by all governments on war.
As signers to the War Tax Boycott, we have decided we cannot wait for governments to end war. We are cutting off our individual connection to war by refusing some or all of the federal tax dollars that fund war. Some of us are living on low incomes so as not to pay for war. Some of us are refusing $100 in protest. Some of us are refusing 100% of any federal income taxes owed.
Thousands of individuals in the U.S. take this stand despite the risks. Uniting our voices and actions through the War Tax Boycott strengthens our demand that the U.S. government cut off the funds for war and redirect resources to the pressing needs of people. And if the government won't cut off the funds, we will.
The War Tax Boycott was initiated in September 2007 by the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC) and is endorsed by Voices for Creative Nonviolence, War Resisters League, Think Outside The Bomb National Tour 2010, and the Maine WTR Resource Center. The War Tax Boycott campaign is also supported by the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, Veterans for Peace, Nonviolent Direct Action Working Group of United for Peace and Justice.
Since 2007 signers to the War Tax Boycott have redirected over $400,000 to humanitarian programs, including medical aid for Katrina survivors, support for Iraqi refugees in Jordan, food banks, programs for the homeless, books for prisoners, environmental projects, peace groups, and hundreds of other nonprofit organizations in the U.S. and around the world.
Withhold from War, Pay for Peace
“Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.
Refusing to pay taxes because of war is an act of civil disobedience, but it also provides the opportunity to use that money for positive, healing, and rebuilding programs. War tax boycott participants are encouraged to plan to redirect their resisted taxes to programs that aid victims of war or provide the services that we wish our tax dollars were supporting.
http://wartaxboycott.org/
Resistance Radio - The eyevolution continues...
Please see William Ramsey's website http://www.occult911.com/
February 24, 1966: Hell No!
Seattle’s formal introduction to the draft resistance movement occurred on the date in focus here, when Russel Wills, a University of Washington philosophy graduate student, became the first Seattle citizen to refuse induction in protest against the war. The consequences of his actions would become apparent the following autumn, as the U.S. government began to legally crack down on draft resisters in earnest. In Wills’s case, he would be sentenced to five years in prison that September.
Wills’s draft resistance actually began on October 16, 1965, when he wrote a letter to his draft board stating that he was so opposed to U.S. involvement in Vietnam on both legal and moral grounds that he had destroyed his draft card. One week later, he was given an A-1 draft classification (i.e., first choice for induction, thus canceling his student deferment), with no explanation. He did not receive a notice explaining the grounds for reclassification until January, after the date of possible legal appeal had expired. With conscientious objector status not available to him, he had no course but to refuse induction–a very bold decision to make at the time.
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Out Of A Black Hole And On To Nibiru, March 15?
Our universe might have originated from a black hole that lies within another universe.
The idea centers on how matter and energy falling into a black hole could in theory come out a "white hole" in another universe. In such a situation, both the black hole and the white hole are mouths of an Einstein-Rosen bridge, popularly known as a wormhole.
With that in mind, theoretical physicist Nikodem Poplawski at Indiana University conjectured that when a black hole forms upon the collapse of a dying star, a universe is born at the same time from the white hole on the other side of the wormhole.
"Our universe could have itself formed from inside a black hole existing inside another universe," he said.
This idea has been suggested before, and now Poplawski has expanded on the thinking. ...
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What about comet Elenin/Nibiru/Planet X/Tyche?
...March 4th, 2011
Marks the day that the brown dwarf (info) breaks through the ecliptic plane into the northern hemisphere to begin influencing the earth into convulsions and severe spasms. Earthquake and volcanic activity will escalate from this time forward and increase like birthpangs where the earth groans and the oceans slosh tidal waves too and fro.
March 15, 2011
The first of three conjunctions where the Eearth is caught in the gravitational gradient lines-or the trough-that binds the sun and brown dwarf together. The sun will be pulling one way and the brown dwarf the other way and the predicted pole shift event could take place. The interesting thing about this particular day is that Saturn, the brown dwarf, the Earth and the Sun and Mars and Jupiter and Uranus are all in alignment. The astronomy people and the media should be talking about this alignment, because rarely do seven planetary and solar bodies line up in a straight line like we see on March 15, 2011.
This gravity trough is going to be the mother of all where the planets are lined up for a game of Tug of War. The earth will be susceptible to the brown dwarf’s magnetism and flip over to match the giant’s polarity like a smaller magnet flips in space for a larger one . This is the reason why so many people are giving out warnings. ...
Friday, February 25, 2011
'Psy-ops' team accused of targeting US senators
The top United States commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, has ordered an investigation into allegations that members of a psychological-operations team – known as psy-ops – were ordered to target American Senators and other dignitaries visiting the country to help to persuade them to provide new troops and money.
Among politicians reportedly targeted by the team, whose ostensible mission is to manipulate the thought processes of the enemy, were former presidential candidate John McCain and fellow senators Al Franken, Carl Levin, Joe Lieberman and Jack Reed.
The man in charge of psy-ops, Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Holmes, told a reporter for Rolling Stone magazine that he received orders to turn his focus on visiting politicians from Lieutenant-General William Caldwell, one of the top commanders in the country. "How do we get these guys to give us more people? What do I have to plant inside their heads?" the chief of staff to Lt-Gen Caldwell purportedly asked Lt-Col Holmes.
That General Petraeus reacted so quickly reflects the potential gravity of the claim. Using psy-ops on your own side is prohibited by Pentagon policy and is likely to be seen as against US law. The article was penned by Michael Hastings, who last year wrote an article about a climate of disrespect among commanders towards President Barack Obama. That piece resulted in the firing of the then US Commander, General Stanley McChrystal. Lt-Col Holmes told the magazine that he resisted the order but was reprimanded for it. Among the allegations was a claim that his men were told to compile profiles of the politicians ahead of their arrival in the country to identify not just things such as their voting records on the war, but also their likes and dislikes and the things that aroused their passions.
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~ See also: Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators ~
~ Via CLG News ~
Gaddafi’s son’s PhD: the role of civil society in democracy
Not content with being the son of a dictator, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi is also a scholar. The title of his University of London PhD thesis? You're not going to believe this…
Yes, that's right, scion of the Gaddafi empire and (now) reluctant TV star, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, was a doctoral student at the acclaimed London School of Economics, part of the University of London.
His thesis? Wait for it…
The Role Of Civil Society In The Democratisation Of Global Governance Institutions: From 'Soft Power' to Collective Decision-Making?
Good man yourself, Saif.
The thesis proposes reforming international organisations (such as the UN or the IMF) with a view to a more "formal system of collective decision-making by the three main actors in global society: governments, civil society and the business sector."
The proposed alternative system would be called "collective management." ...
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Thursday, February 24, 2011
The United States of America Violates International Bioweapons Treaty
...In the rush to pass protective legislation into law following the attacks of 911, the authors of the U.S. Patriot Act amended the previous legislation regarding biological weapons. Section 817 of the U.S. Patriot Act, otherwise known as the "Expansion of the Biological Weapons Statute," has violated the Biological Weapons Convention, an international treaty which the U.S. signed in 1974.
The Biological and Toxins Weapons Convention, also known as the BWC, was the first multilateral disarmament treaty banning the production of an entire category of weapons. It was largely considered to be a result of prolonged efforts by the international community to supplement the 1925 Geneva Protocol.
PICK YOUR POISON
The language of 817 closely mirrors that of the BWC, which bans the development, stockpiling and transport of biological weapons. The violation has occured in a final caveat, which nullifies the prohibitions contained in the BWC and prior U.S. bioweapons legislation.
After paragraphs of assurances as to the criminal penalties involved in violating Section 817, the U.S. government granted itself the freedom to violate any and all prohibitions contained in the section.
Here is the section of 817 where the violation takes place:
"(c) Whoever knowingly violates this section shall be fined as provided in this title, imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both, but the prohibition contained in this section shall not apply with respect to any duly authorized United States governmental activity."...
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Pentagon aide 'was killed by hitman' claims distraught widow
Prominent Washington aide John Wheeler was assassinated by a hitman in a targeted killing, his widow has claimed.
Katherine Klyce said the way her late husband's body was dumped at a landfill site could only have been carried out by a professional.
The 66-year-old suggested his work with the Pentagon over his decades-long career could have made him enemies who wanted rid of him.
She also attacked the police investigation into his death and claimed it hard 'made her life miserable'.
Officers have confiscated personal items including credit cards and strange charges have been appearing on them in recent weeks including two flights worth $3,000, she said.
The body of Mr Wheeler, 66, a former Army officer who was instrumental in building the iconic Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall in Washington DC, was discovered on a landfill in Wilmington, Delaware, on New Year's Eve.
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Korean Bank Run Spreading: Eighth Bank Closes Following "Massive Withdrawals"
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Athens, Greece - General Strike - 23 Feb, 2011
By Renee Maltezou, Reuters
Greek police clashed with protesters on Wednesday as around 100,000 workers, pensioners and students marched to parliament to protest austerity policies aimed at helping Greece cope with a huge debt crisis.
Riot police fired scores of rounds of teargas and flash bombs at protesters hurling petrol bombs, choking the main Syndagma Square with smoke and sending crowds of striking protesters running for cover.
The 24-hour strike by public and private sector employees grounded flights, closed schools and paralysed public transport in the first nationwide walkout against cost cuts this year.
In the biggest march since December 2008 riots brought the country to a standstill for weeks according to police sources and eyewitness, 100,000 Greeks marched through the streets of Athens chanting "We are not paying" and "No sacrifice for plutocracy". Police officialy put the figure at 32,000. ...
Global elites behind protests and unrest?
Hundreds are taking to the streets throughout the region demanding better governance and an end to corruption.
General anti-government protests have now taken root in Libya. While in Bahrain, a key base for US military operations in the region faces its third straight day of unrest. Thousands also took to the streets of Iran, calling for government reforms.
Protests and labor marches have continued throughout Egypt as the country's military government works quickly to propose constitutional changes and call elections.
Meanwhile hundreds of Iraqi's took to the streets of Fallujah calling for better government services. And the government of Yemen has now sent thousands of police into the streets to confront anti-government activists entering their sixth day of protests.
Author and activist Adrian Salbuchi said we have to look at the people of these nations and the change they are calling for, and at the interests of certain global power structures.
"We have to think in terms of a global power structure that operates inside the United States mainly, but is not a part of the United States even and definitely does not going in favor of the national interest of the United States," he said. "We have to stop thinking in terms of binary, black and white."
Salbuchi argued the US is not the only moving part; there is a bigger system at play. International organizations and groups make up a larger structure of interest and control.
"Above the United States, above the White house and the State Department, we have to think in terms of the global planning being carried out by the global power elite, particularly the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group," he said.
US President Barack Obama said his, "Hope and expectation is we're going to continue to see the people of Iran have the courage to be able to express their yearning for greater freedoms and a more representative government."
Salbuchi contended it is no shock the US would like to see regime change in Iran, or that they would like to see stability restored in Bahrain. However, it doesn't matter because the US and its governing bodies are not in control.
"We are seeing on a planetary basis, on a worldwide basis, how the global power elite is closing the stage of globalization that has been on for the last 20 years and they are moving on to formal world government," he argued. "The United States has to become weekend in relative terms, just globalization required the demise of the former Soviet Union."
The rise of protests and unrest across the region are the doings of these global elites and are part of their plan to secure future world governance. He argued turmoil in the Middle East opens opportunities for taking advantage of change at a global level. It is in the long term interest, he claimed, that unrest take hold in the region.
Information provided by rt.com http://www.rt.com
'Gawd Bless America': UFOs? Psychics? Documentary Debunks the Paranormal
But Tessina, a Los Angeles man, said he's a believer no more.
After a mind-bending, life-changing journey with independent filmmaker Blake Freeman, Tessina said he's "reformed" and won't pay peddlers of the paranormal any longer.
"I was into sci-fi as a child and young man and I guess it just evolved from that. I let it rule my life," he said. "Blake told me, 'You screwed up for a while, but now let's go see if we can straighten you out.'
"He showed me the error of my ways, so to speak."
In 2008, the thirtysomething Freeman and the then-sixtysomething Tessina went off on a cross-country adventure to interview so-called experts on alien abductions, ghost hunting, crop circles, psychic healing and more ? all in an effort to expose the truth behind their wild, other-worldly claims.
Documentary in the Same Vein as 'Borat,' 'Religulous'
The result is "Gawd Bless America," a documentary opening in theaters March 4, that blends "Borat"-like antics with "Religulous"-like irreverence to reach, Freeman said, something "real." ...
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Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Doomsday Cult Sets July 2011 As Date Of Armageddon
Since its inception in 1953, Church founder J.R. "Bob" Dobbs has predicted that a fleet of flying saucers will arrive at the beginning of July to destroy the worldwide Conspiracy against the Church of the SubGenius, while all ordained SubGenius ministers will be rescued by escape vessels piloted by the Alien Sex Goddesses, also known as the Xists.
The Church is inviting all of its members worldwide to gather together for the final hours in Pomeroy, Ohio from Wednesday, June 29 to Tuesday, July 5, at a clothing-optional outdoor campground called Wisteria Community. The first X-Day gathering took place in 1996 in upstate New York, and the event has increased in size and participants each following year. 1998 was designated the first true "X-Day," and each successive year has added one to the total. This will be the first year the SubGenius cult holds its X-Day ritual at Wisteria in Ohio, after "Bob" decreed the new location is closer to the aliens’ chosen "Ground Zero" landing spot. This year's celebration in 2011 is X-Day 14, or X-Day XIV.
The Church has been engaged in a massive recruitment campaign to increase the numbers of its membership before the arrival of the Xists. According to Church records, the organization currently has approximately 100,000 members worldwide. SubGenius recruitment has been especially dedicated among the ranks of people who refuse to conform to the norms of society, including disbelievers, blasphemers, pranksters, rebels, hackers, pornographers, geeks, and outcasts.
State Department Offers Support ‘to Whoever Winds Up Winning’
As pro-democracy protests spread around the world, the US State Department today issued its strongest words to date about the situation, offering "to stand by whichever side winds up winning."
That pro-winning-side message, articulated today by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was intended to send a clear signal that the United States is willing to put all of its power and prestige on the line as soon as matters are settled by others.
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Report: Journalist died due to deputies' mistakes
Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies didn't target a Los Angeles Times journalist who was shot in the head with a tear gas missile 41 years ago, but made mistakes that led to his death, according to a draft report by a civilian watchdog agency.
Ruben Salazar, a former Times columnist and KMEX-TV news director, became a key figure in the Mexican-American civil rights movement after his death during an anti-Vietnam War rally, with parks, schools and even a U.S. Postal Service stamp named for him.
The 20-page report from the Office of Independent Review was obtained by the Times and detailed in a Sunday story. It was the first outside examination of sheriff's records of the hotly disputed killing.
The independent review was ordered by Sheriff Lee Baca in August after the newspaper pressed him to unseal the Salazar files. The report was scheduled to be released Tuesday.
It found deputies used poor tactics at the rally where Salazar died in 1970, and that the department's stonewalling afterward fueled skepticism. Salazar was in a bar when a deputy fired the missile, hitting and killing him at age 42.
The Times said the report, which provided unreleased details about the case, did not assign blame or wrongdoing. Its goal was to review a historic incident from the perspective of modern-day policing and current department policies and procedures.
The report noted that its conclusions were limited on the key issue in Salazar's death whether he was a victim of a plot by authorities because detectives at the time refused to consider theories that the newsman was killed intentionally. As a result, they failed to ask questions that might have prevented the speculation and conspiracy theories that still overshadow the case.
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India's dodgy 'paid news' phenomenon
The Indian government has condemned the phenomenon of "paid news", in which newspapers and broadcasters accept money to run favourable articles about politicians, companies and celebrities.
Broadcasting minister Ambika Soni said the practice was affecting the credibility of news reports and undermining the media's claims to be upholding democracy.
Her intervention follows last summer's report by the Press Council of India that revealed widespread payments for positive coverage, especially in the run-up to elections.
The report described paid news as "a complex phenomenon" that "ranges from accepting gifts on various occasions, foreign and domestic junkets, various monetary and non-monetary benefits, besides direct payment of money."
It also involved "private treaties", involving share transfers between media and non-media companies "in lieu of advertisement space and favourable coverage."
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U.S. Justice v. the world
Glenn Greenwald writes in Salon:
...Padilla -- like so many other War on Terror detainees -- has spent years in American courts trying unsuccessfully to hold accountable the high-level government officials responsible for his abuse and lawless imprisonment (which occurred for years prior to his indictment). Not only has Padilla (and all other detainees) failed to obtain redress for what was done to them, but worse, they have been entirely denied even the right to have their cases heard in court. That's because the U.S. Government has invented -- and federal courts have dutifully accepted -- a whole slew of legal doctrines which have only one purpose: to insulate the country's most powerful political officials from legal accountability even when they commit the most egregious crimes, such as imprisoning incommunicado and torturing an American citizen arrested and detained on U.S. soil.
Yesterday, in South Carolina, an Obama-appointed federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by Padilla against former Bush officials Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Paul Wolfowitz and others. That suit alleges that those officials knowingly violated Padilla's Constitutional rights by ordering his due-process-free detention and torture. In dismissing Padilla's lawsuit, the court's opinion relied on the same now-depressingly-familiar weapons routinely used by our political class to immunize itself from judicial scrutiny: national security would be undermined by allowing Padilla to sue; "government officials could be distracted from their vital duties to attend depositions or respond to other discovery requests"; "a trial on the merits would be an international spectacle with Padilla, a convicted terrorist, summoning America's present and former leaders to a federal courthouse to answer his charges"; the litigation would risk disclosure of vital state secrets; and "discovery procedures could be used by our enemies to obtain valuable intelligence."
In other words, our political officials are Too Important, and engaged in far Too Weighty Matters in Keeping Us Safe, to subject them to the annoyance of the rule of law. It's much more important to allow them to Fight The Terrorists without restraints than to bother them with claims that they broke the law and violated the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. That's the mentality that has resulted in full-scale immunity for both political and now private-sector elites in a whole slew of lawbreaking scandals -- from Obama's refusal to investigate Bush-era crimes or high-level Wall Street criminality to retroactive immunity for lawbreaking telecoms and legal protection for defrauding mortgage banks. With very few exceptions -- yesterday's ruling, for instance, brushed aside a contrary decision from a Bush-43-appointed federal judge in California last year that refused to dismiss Padilla's lawsuit against John Yoo for having authorized his torture (that decision is on appeal) -- Executive Branch officials and the federal judiciary have conspired to ensure that the former are shielded from judicial scrutiny even for the most blatant and horrifying crimes...
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Rising food prices threaten 1 billion with chronic hunger
By Naomi Spencer, World Socialist Web site
Food inflation has reached “dangerous levels,” the World Bank said last week, with prices rising by 15 percent globally between October and January. The warning came as governments around the world are shaken by protests driven in part by rapid increases in the prices of food and other basic goods.
Since June 2010, the soaring cost of staple foods has pushed 44 million more of the world’s poor into “extreme poverty,” surviving on less than $1.25 per day, according to the World Bank’s February “Food Price Watch.” This figure reflects 68 million people who fell into extreme poverty, minus 24 million that the organization says were “able to escape” as “net food producers.”
The World Bank classifies 925 million people as undernourished, and projects that by year’s end the number will exceed 1 billion—one in every six people on Earth.
The World Bank’s food price index stands 29 percent higher than a year ago, and is only 3 percent below the levels that precipitated mass protests around the globe in 2008. The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) index recorded average January prices 3.4 percent higher than December and the highest level since it began in 1990, surpassing the 2008 record.
Because the poor often spend a majority of their income on basic foods, rising grain, oil and sugar prices threaten masses of people with malnutrition and starvation.
Between June and December of 2010, the global wheat prices soared by 75 percent. Over the past quarter, wheat prices have risen 20 percent; sugar climbed 20 percent, and fats and oils have risen 22 percent. Rising wheat and rice prices are affecting food-importing countries most sharply. In Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Mongolia, Azerbaijan, Pakistan and many other countries that import grain, wheat constitutes between one-third to more than one-half of the average daily caloric intake.
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Muammar Gaddafi Amazonian Guard: 'Entourage of Deadly Virgins'
Muammar Gaddafi's closest bodyguards are women. The Libyan dictator retains between 30 and 40 female guards, who are supposedly virgins. They are all trained killers and hand-picked by Gaddafi, whom they guard 24/7.
The Amazonian Guard is not a myth: the uniformed women are quite real, and are photographed all the time with Gaddafi, especially when he travels. Gaddafi is definitely happy to have the Amazonian Guard at the moment: units of his army are defecting, the rest of the world is accusing him of genocide, and Libyans from all walks of life are calling for an end to his four-decade rule.
We know that Muammar Gaddaffi (sometimes spelled "Moammar Gadhafi") has a thing for groups of women: the Libyan leader hosted a party in Rome in 2009, where he hired around 200 young women, whom he tried to convert to Islam. One Flickr user saw a photo of the Amazonian Guard at a museum in Tripoli. Another snuck a clandestine photo of a poster celebrating Gaddafi's female bodyguards.
Economic Hitmen
Japan to dig site linked to WWII experiments
Her disclosure led to a face-to-face meeting with the health minister and a government pledge to investigate. The digging had to wait until the scheduled relocation of residents and the demolition of apartments on the site last year.
The site is close to another area where a mass grave of dozens of possible war-experiment victims was uncovered in 1989 during construction of a Health Ministry research institute.
Any remains found at the planned excavation site would have a stronger connection to Unit 731, said Keiichi Tsuneishi, a Kanagawa University history professor and expert on biological warfare.
"The site used to be the research headquarters of Unit 731," Tsuneishi said. "If bones are found there, they are most likely related to Unit 731."
From its wartime base in Japanese-controlled Harbin in northern China, Unit 731 and related units injected war prisoners with typhus, cholera and other diseases to research germ warfare, according to historians and former unit members. Unit 731 also is believed to have performed vivisections and to have frozen prisoners to death in endurance tests.
The 1989 find revealed dozens of fragmented thigh bones and skulls, some with holes drilled in them or sections cut out. Police denied there was any evidence of criminal activity...
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Monday, February 21, 2011
Hero Worship
Keywords: sun-hero, suicide bomber, terrorism, Icarus, hubris, individuation, Carl Jung.
Introduction
Western civilization suffers from an obsession with the hero archetype, causing a collective hubris. It is depicted in the myths of Icarus and Bellerophon, and in the fairytale of the death of the sun-hero. An Icarian heroism permeates our whole culture. It implies an obsession with daylight consciousness and its values, which causes the irrational burgeoning life of the unconscious to be burnt off. The scourging sun melts away the wings of Icarus so that he comes crashing down, and a lightning from Zeus makes Bellerophon suffer the same fate. Faster and faster, higher and higher, expansion at all cost, and a relentless search after career, money, and status. Hardly anybody can listen to the faint voice of the unconscious, anymore, but become obsessed with the Icarian premises of career, political correctness, and scientific rigour.
[ ... ]
They have in mind to kill the chaotic forces of the unconscious, and aim to remove any sign of the spontaneous from religious or daily life. The politically correct elite in Western countries have much in common with this programme. They are fixated on principles of consciousness: any signs of burgeoning life originating in the heart and the unconscious soil, must be rooted out from society. For instance, one of the foremost hubristic moral principles is that mankind must be maximated on this earth, and the world's poor must be sustained at all costs, without regard to environmental costs.
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Dr. Norman Doidge: 'The Brain That Changes Itself'
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Neal Cassady: The Denver Years
Neal Cassady was a charismatic, larger then life character. His charm, manic energy, sexual swagger, and free flowing verbosity made him the authentic ‘hero’ of the beat generation. He was introduced to the world as Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac’s classic, On The Road. For the controversial literary figures, Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey, Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson he was more then a friend he was their muse and inspiration.
By being just himself, Neal Cassady created a foundation for the beat generation and set the wheels in motion for the counter culture revolutions that would open up the floodgates for decades of free thinkers to follow.
The First Third is a collection of Cassady’s autobiographical musings. Within these works, we glimpse into the creation of Neal Cassady, the man and the myth, and his tumultuous and humble beginnings as a vagrant’s child on the streets of Denver at a time when the city still echoed America’s Wild West. We journey back to see what shaped the most infamous 20th century muse, and examine the love affair between Denver, a culture in transition, and the some of the most influential writers of our time.
Project Status
Currently in post production, Neal Cassady: The Denver Years has been in production since August 2006. The producer/director Heather Dalton has secured an agreement with the Cassady Estate, for photographic and archival rights as well as literary rights for Neal Cassady’s The First Third and Carolyn Cassady’s biography Off the Road.
Interviews with prominent and historical figures include Carolyn Cassady, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, David Amram, John Allen Cassady, Jami Cassady Ratto, Cathy Cassady Sylvia, Jerry Cimino, Tom Noel, Ed White and Al Hinkle. ~ more... ~
http://johnallencassady.com/