Recommended daily allowance of insanity, under-reported news and uncensored opinion dismantling the propaganda matrix.
Saturday, June 23, 2012
The Revolution Will Not Be (accurately) Televised
Intentions:
Too many people to whom I've shown Gil Scott-Heron's "The revolution will not be televised" did not understand many of the cultural references; so I updated certain aspects, keeping exact phrases as often as possible, with two exceptions in particular: 1) removing inapt racial specificity, 2) clarifying that the revolution will indeed show up on film--it will be televised...it will just be spun by the media monolith of the ruling elites.
Words:
The revolution will not be televised (false)
The revolution will be televised (true)
The revolution will be accurately televised (false)
The revolution will not be accurately televised (true)
The revolution will not be (accurately) televised
You will not see the truth, if you stay home.
You will not see truth, if you plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not see truth, if you lose yourself with distraction,
because the revolution will not be (accurately) televised.
The revolution will not be (accurately) televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by GE or Microsoft or Apple or Disney or BET.
The revolution will compete for your attention against video of Obama dancing, shooting hoops and bonding with black youth, while behind the scenes he extends the PATRIOT ACT and facilitates the murder of countless Trayvon Martins around the world
The revolution will not be broadcast live from
the Staples Center or Madison Square Garden or Hollywood,
The revolution will not star Leonardo Di'Caprio,
The Rock or Denzel Washington
The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner.
The revolution will not get you laid or paid.
The revolution will not be (accurately) televised.
There will be video of pigs shooting down poor people
to frighten you into docility and obedience.
There will be video of Oprah Winfrey telling shaved,
shiny, spoiled, over-protected women what they want to hear.
There will be McDonalds commericals,
showing men and women of various colors--
everyone smiling, united by the happiness of serving you McDonald's food.
American Idol, NCIS, Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, and Jersey Shore
will do all they can to distract--hoping people will continue to care which contestant is crowned biggest cultural distraction,
but all thinking people will be united in the streets,
looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be (accurately) televised.
There will be misleading highlights on the eleven o'clock
news, mixed with videos of huge-breasted, shaved, shiny women faking fuck-me smiles, while they tell you about the weather that is right outside your door.
But the anthem of the revolution will be the thunder of foot steps, the lightening of chanted solidarity--and a united call for further disillusion from a corrupt system.
The revolution will not be (accurately) televised.
The revolution will not be (accurately) televised,
will not be (accurately) televised,
will not be (accurately) televised,
will not be (accurately) televised,
To see the truth, you will have to be there, live.
Fotoshop by Adobé
This commercial isn't real, neither are society's standards of beauty.
Full post here with behind the scenes: http://jesserosten.com/2012/fotoshop-by-adobe
Risking Revolution: From the Commune to Occupy – New Adventures in Global Anarchy
Robert Graham writes:
In the various Occupy movements that have spread across the globe, there has been much debate over means and ends which invite comparisons to European debates in the early 1870s regarding the role of revolutionary communes. Below, I reproduce excerpts from a recent position paper from members of Occupy Oakland which raises a number of issues, some of which would appear familiar to the Communards, others which deal with much more contemporary concerns.
More...
In the various Occupy movements that have spread across the globe, there has been much debate over means and ends which invite comparisons to European debates in the early 1870s regarding the role of revolutionary communes. Below, I reproduce excerpts from a recent position paper from members of Occupy Oakland which raises a number of issues, some of which would appear familiar to the Communards, others which deal with much more contemporary concerns.
More...
The question before the US supreme court in Kiobel v Shell
From the Guardian:
In Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum, a group of Nigerians claim that they or their relatives have been the victims of torture, summary execution and other crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Nigerian government with the active collaboration of the oil company. The suit was brought under the Alien Tort Statute, a 1789 law that allows aliens to sue in US courts for torts in violation of international law, under which dozens of cases have been brought since it came back to life in a 1980 decision of the court of appeal for the second circuit.
The same court has now ruled that the ATS applies only to individuals, as in the 1980 case, but not to corporations. The supreme court will have to decide whether it agrees with this rule, or with those of four other circuits, none of which have had any difficulty taking on corporate human rights cases under ATS.
Kiobel has attracted a great deal of interest in the legal community. Over 20 friend-of-the-court briefs have been filed on the side of the plaintiffs and almost that many on the other side. In the former camp are many human rights organizations, as well as the US government; in the latter, mostly multinational corporations and trade associations, as well as the governments of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. The business people are saying there is no precedent for corporations being sued under international law, hence no international principle on which to base ATS claims. Not true, say the victims: IG Farben and other German companies were broken up or dissolved by the allies after the second world war for their use of slave labor and other crimes.
More...
In Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum, a group of Nigerians claim that they or their relatives have been the victims of torture, summary execution and other crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Nigerian government with the active collaboration of the oil company. The suit was brought under the Alien Tort Statute, a 1789 law that allows aliens to sue in US courts for torts in violation of international law, under which dozens of cases have been brought since it came back to life in a 1980 decision of the court of appeal for the second circuit.
The same court has now ruled that the ATS applies only to individuals, as in the 1980 case, but not to corporations. The supreme court will have to decide whether it agrees with this rule, or with those of four other circuits, none of which have had any difficulty taking on corporate human rights cases under ATS.
Kiobel has attracted a great deal of interest in the legal community. Over 20 friend-of-the-court briefs have been filed on the side of the plaintiffs and almost that many on the other side. In the former camp are many human rights organizations, as well as the US government; in the latter, mostly multinational corporations and trade associations, as well as the governments of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. The business people are saying there is no precedent for corporations being sued under international law, hence no international principle on which to base ATS claims. Not true, say the victims: IG Farben and other German companies were broken up or dissolved by the allies after the second world war for their use of slave labor and other crimes.
More...
The Torture Report
Sometimes the truth is buried in front of us. That is the case with more than 140,000 government documents relating to abuse of prisoners by U.S. forces during the "war on terror," brought to light by Freedom of Information Act litigation. As the lead author of the ACLU's report on these documents, Larry Siems is in a unique position to chronicle who did what, to whom and when. This book, written with the pace and intensity of a thriller, serves as a tragic reminder of what happens when commitments to law, common sense, and human dignity are cast aside, when it becomes difficult to discern the difference between two groups intent on perpetrating extreme violence on their fellow human beings.
Divided into three sections, The Torture Report presents a stunning array of eyewitness and first-person reports—by victims, perpetrators, dissenters, and investigators—of the CIA's White House-orchestrated interrogations in illegal, secret prisons around the world; the Pentagon's "special projects," in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; plots real and imagined, and much more.
See also:
Legal loopholes allow European companies to trade in 'tools of torture'
European companies are participating in the global trade in types of equipment widely used in torture or other ill-treatment, according to evidence presented in a new report by Amnesty International and the Omega Research Foundation.
The education of a torturer; there is a cruel method in the madness of teaching people to torture. Almost anyone can learn it.
Janice T. Gibson and Mika Haritos-Fatouros. Psychology Today v20. (Nov, 1986) :pp50(6).
Portrait of the Torturer in the 20th Century
by Ruxandra Cesereanu, University of Cluj, Romania
Torture and Democracy
byDarius Rejali
Baltasar Garzón, Trailblazing Judge Who Pursued War Criminals, Faces Trial of His Own in Spain
Spook sued: Did ex-MI6 chief oversee prisoner renditions to Gaddafi?
Confirmed: CIA secret prison in Poland
Surviving the North Korean gulags
Testimonies of torture and forced labour from former detainees of North Korean prison camps.
Torture Trade
Amnesty International says EU states are exporting torture instruments, RFE/RL reports.
Working as a jail torturer ruined my life
Patrick Cockburn on the former soldier who has joined the political prisoners he tortured in Turkey's Mamak prison by suing the generals who led a regime of terror
Torture: The Evolution of European Torture and Torture Methods
From the third century to twentieth century, from the Greeks and Romans to all of Europe, the meaning and methods of torture have greatly evolved.
European Commission Calls for Magnitsky’s Torturers to Be Brought to Justice
At a midday European Commission briefing today, the spokesman for the European Justice Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom made a strong statement calling upon the Russian Federation to bring to justice the torturers of late whistle-blowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and to stop his posthumous prosecution.
European Parliament Vice-President Proposes Index of Torturers in China
Disguise and deny
by Tom Morris
New Internationalist magazine, September 2000
Anyone investigating reports of torture before the nineteenth century would have had a pretty easy time of it. That's because a good many religions and states practised torture as official policy, out in the open without any embarrassment.
WikiLeaks: Egyptian 'torturers' trained by FBI
The US provided officers from the Egyptian secret police with training at the FBI, despite allegations that they routinely tortured detainees and suppressed political opposition.
The CIA and Abu Ghraib - 50 Years of Teaching and Training Torturers
by James Hodge and Linda Cooper
...When Americans found themselves looking at photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing naked and hooded Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison, it’s a safe bet that most didn’t realize they were looking at torture techniques refined by the Central Intelligence Agency over the last half century.
George W. Bush did not invent torture.
Torture is a modern threat
by Duncan Forrest
Contrary to what one might expect, torture is still widespread in many countries across the world. What can we do to prevent it? One way might be to convince our governments to stop trade with nations which permit torture
The Psychological Origins of Institutionalized Torture
Up for it - Monsters or ordinary people - who are the torturers?
by John Conroy
New Internationalist magazine, September 2000
Torture.
Sadistic torturers are trained, not born!
Wikileaks: The Hidden Curse of Thomas Paine
From a Wikileaks investigative editor comes this plea for assistance in taking the treasures made public on Wikileaks and sharing them with the world. The editor complains, quite rightly, that few bloggers, scholars, or journalists are independently examining these materials. As one who has worked with Wikileaks materials, I am aware what a treasure trove they are. I also know that these leaked documents can be difficult to interpret with prior knowledge. Thus, I am still finding new information in the Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures obtained from Wikileaks. But I have pursued other documents, only to find, myself, in some cases unsure in some case whether they were genuine and in others what to make of them. But I do concur with this comment that more independent journalists, scholars, and bloggers ought to avail themselves of these materials. And, in doing so we can contribute to the greater good.
More...
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Capitalism F***ed the Planet (Satire)
Uncle Sam sings about the damage done to the planet by the unbridled capitalistic greed of its inhabitants. Chris Webbe describes this as a of "state of the world boogie". It's from his album CRAB (Country Rhythm And Blues). His website is www.chriswebbe.com.
EU's foreign policy chief: what does Serbia's president look like? - video
The EU's foreign policy chief, Lady Ashton, is caught on camera panicking moments before she is to greet Serbia's newly inaugurated president, Tomislav Nikolic, because she doesn't know what he looks like. Ashton's envoy to the Balkans Robert Cooper, also in the clip, cannot help her out. The panicking diplomats are rescued by another official who brought a photograph
The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia
Matt Taibi writes for Rolling Stone:
Someday, it will go down in history as the first trial of the modern American mafia. Of course, you won't hear the recent financial corruption case, United States of America v. Carollo, Goldberg and Grimm, called anything like that. If you heard about it at all, you're probably either in the municipal bond business or married to an antitrust lawyer. Even then, all you probably heard was that a threesome of bit players on Wall Street got convicted of obscure antitrust violations in one of the most inscrutable, jargon-packed legal snoozefests since the government's massive case against Microsoft in the Nineties – not exactly the thrilling courtroom drama offered by the famed trials of old-school mobsters like Al Capone or Anthony "Tony Ducks" Corallo.
But this just-completed trial in downtown New York against three faceless financial executives really was historic. Over 10 years in the making, the case allowed federal prosecutors to make public for the first time the astonishing inner workings of the reigning American crime syndicate, which now operates not out of Little Italy and Las Vegas, but out of Wall Street.
The defendants in the case – Dominick Carollo, Steven Goldberg and Peter Grimm – worked for GE Capital, the finance arm of General Electric. Along with virtually every major bank and finance company on Wall Street – not just GE, but J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, UBS, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Wachovia and more – these three Wall Street wiseguys spent the past decade taking part in a breathtakingly broad scheme to skim billions of dollars from the coffers of cities and small towns across America. The banks achieved this gigantic rip-off by secretly colluding to rig the public bids on municipal bonds, a business worth $3.7 trillion. By conspiring to lower the interest rates that towns earn on these investments, the banks systematically stole from schools, hospitals, libraries and nursing homes – from "virtually every state, district and territory in the United States," according to one settlement. And they did it so cleverly that the victims never even knew they were being cheated. No thumbs were broken, and nobody ended up in a landfill in New Jersey, but money disappeared, lots and lots of it, and its manner of disappearance had a familiar name: organized crime. ...
Someday, it will go down in history as the first trial of the modern American mafia. Of course, you won't hear the recent financial corruption case, United States of America v. Carollo, Goldberg and Grimm, called anything like that. If you heard about it at all, you're probably either in the municipal bond business or married to an antitrust lawyer. Even then, all you probably heard was that a threesome of bit players on Wall Street got convicted of obscure antitrust violations in one of the most inscrutable, jargon-packed legal snoozefests since the government's massive case against Microsoft in the Nineties – not exactly the thrilling courtroom drama offered by the famed trials of old-school mobsters like Al Capone or Anthony "Tony Ducks" Corallo.
But this just-completed trial in downtown New York against three faceless financial executives really was historic. Over 10 years in the making, the case allowed federal prosecutors to make public for the first time the astonishing inner workings of the reigning American crime syndicate, which now operates not out of Little Italy and Las Vegas, but out of Wall Street.
The defendants in the case – Dominick Carollo, Steven Goldberg and Peter Grimm – worked for GE Capital, the finance arm of General Electric. Along with virtually every major bank and finance company on Wall Street – not just GE, but J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, UBS, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Wachovia and more – these three Wall Street wiseguys spent the past decade taking part in a breathtakingly broad scheme to skim billions of dollars from the coffers of cities and small towns across America. The banks achieved this gigantic rip-off by secretly colluding to rig the public bids on municipal bonds, a business worth $3.7 trillion. By conspiring to lower the interest rates that towns earn on these investments, the banks systematically stole from schools, hospitals, libraries and nursing homes – from "virtually every state, district and territory in the United States," according to one settlement. And they did it so cleverly that the victims never even knew they were being cheated. No thumbs were broken, and nobody ended up in a landfill in New Jersey, but money disappeared, lots and lots of it, and its manner of disappearance had a familiar name: organized crime. ...
Drone strikes threaten 50 years of international law, says UN rapporteur
A more apt title would've been: "International law trampled for 50 years - UN rapporteur finally wakes up".
From the Guardian:
The US policy of using aerial drones to carry out targeted killings presents a major challenge to the system of international law that has endured since the second world war, a United Nations investigator has said.
Christof Heyns, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, summary or arbitrary executions, told a conference in Geneva that President Obama's attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere, carried out by the CIA, would encourage other states to flout long-established human rights standards.
In his strongest critique so far of drone strikes, Heyns suggested some may even constitute "war crimes".
From the Guardian:
The US policy of using aerial drones to carry out targeted killings presents a major challenge to the system of international law that has endured since the second world war, a United Nations investigator has said.
Christof Heyns, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, summary or arbitrary executions, told a conference in Geneva that President Obama's attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere, carried out by the CIA, would encourage other states to flout long-established human rights standards.
In his strongest critique so far of drone strikes, Heyns suggested some may even constitute "war crimes".
Julian Assange asks Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, why she is afraid of the Americans
Having experienced the effects of being a whistleblower myself, I understand that the Australian Government is powerless even in domestic issues to protect its citizens. The Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy sacked.
THE FOI IS DUE OUT SOON BY WIKILEAKS WRITER PHILIP DORLING.
you can email me at tim_byrnes@hotmail.com
AN AUSTRALIAN government worker was sacked four days into his job after his employer said he failed to disclose he had been given information suspected of being leaked from the United States Department of Homeland Security
Read more: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/public-service/career-tainted-by-us-...
Son Where You Going
ΠΟΥ ΠΑΣ ΠΑΙΔΙ ΜΟΥ (SON WHERE YOU GOING)
"A ‘first -person cinema’ documentary in the Greek language. My work will focus on filmic aspects of personal history. I will come back recurrently through this documentary as a self referential artist trying to find his voice through time and culture on two continents, inducing moments of situationality in order to fit into a world where we are always making reference to a simulation of life. My aim is to enter the field of the social antagonist movement of contemporary Athens, Greece, through a self reflective gaze into my determining work, i.e. a centralized power figure within the U.K. axis of T.A.Z. (temporary autonomous zone). Moving through the paradigm of life construct, emotion purging and release, catharsis, Oedipal drive and breakdown, acts of purification, and adaptability. Beat by beat of a life which is an ethnographic inquiry, the material supporting the argument. Who am I as I engage in and observe myself in intense relational conversation produced and performed in cultural spaces? The ‘semiotic fiction-making’ in the attempt to re story myself into a single man's urge towards synthesis."
"A ‘first -person cinema’ documentary in the Greek language. My work will focus on filmic aspects of personal history. I will come back recurrently through this documentary as a self referential artist trying to find his voice through time and culture on two continents, inducing moments of situationality in order to fit into a world where we are always making reference to a simulation of life. My aim is to enter the field of the social antagonist movement of contemporary Athens, Greece, through a self reflective gaze into my determining work, i.e. a centralized power figure within the U.K. axis of T.A.Z. (temporary autonomous zone). Moving through the paradigm of life construct, emotion purging and release, catharsis, Oedipal drive and breakdown, acts of purification, and adaptability. Beat by beat of a life which is an ethnographic inquiry, the material supporting the argument. Who am I as I engage in and observe myself in intense relational conversation produced and performed in cultural spaces? The ‘semiotic fiction-making’ in the attempt to re story myself into a single man's urge towards synthesis."