Archive for March, 2010
Is It Time To Stockpile “Survival Seeds”?
Are seeds the new gold? Advertisements for “survival seeds” are being run during Glenn Beck’s prime time show on Fox News, advising viewers to stockpile nonhybrid seeds rather than gold or silver. When the “politicians and bankers bring the whole thing crashing down,” you’ll be able to grow your own “crisis garden” with nutrient-rich foods to sustain your family…scary times.
Californians Battle To Stop Fluoride In Water
Photo: Jenny Downing (CC)
The Los Angeles Times is running a very angry editorial mocking Californian citizens who are resisting government attempts to place fluoride in their water supply. If I had a subscription to the LA Times, I’d cancel it now – check this out:
During the Middle Ages, pogroms throughout Europe were instigated by rumors that Jews were poisoning the wells. Then during the Cold War, when communists became the Western world’s boogeymen, conspiracy theorists believed fluoridated water was a Red plot to destroy our society. Today, with modern chemical testing and health studies, it might seem we’re in a position to leave this kind of water hysteria behind. But not in Watsonville.
A recent push to fluoridate the water in that Santa Cruz County agricultural city has prompted a public outcry and a threat by a key employer to leave town. City voters passed an initiative to block fluoridation in 2002, but…
The Prince Of Pot Speaks
Freelance journalist Chris Morrow paid a visit to “Prince of Pot” Marc Emery (profiled in the disinformation documentary Escape To Canada) back in February while in Vancouver and posted the video interview on CNN iReport and extended interview on YouTube:
Obama Says Will Not Campaign for Any Democratic Congressmen Not Supporting Health Care Reform
Looks like the arm twisting is working, as one of the strongest critics of this current effort, Dennis Kucinich, just announced he will vote for the bill. Alex Spillius writes on the Telegraph:
The president will refuse to make fund-raising visits during November elections to any district whose representative has not backed the bill.
A one-night presidential appearance can bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars in funds which would otherwise take months to accumulate through cold-calling by campaign volunteers.
Mr Obama’s threat came as the year-long debate over his signature domestic policy entered its final week.
Mr Obama is personally telephoning congressmen who are still on the fence this week, in between several personal appearances devoted toward swinging public opinion.
U.S. Attorney General: Bin Laden Will Be Killed
Does anyone else think this is likely a precursor to Osama turning up dead before long? From the Washington Post:
Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress on Tuesday that Osama bin Laden will never face trial in the United States because he will not be captured alive.
In testy exchanges with House Republicans, the attorney general compared terrorists to mass murderer Charles Manson and predicted that events would ensure “we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden” not to the al-Qaida leader as a captive.
Holder sternly rejected criticism from GOP members of a House Appropriations subcommittee, who contend it is too dangerous to put terror suspects on trial in federal civilian courts as Holder has proposed.
The attorney general said it infuriates him to hear conservative critics complain that terrorists would get too many rights in the court system.
Terrorists in court “have the same rights that Charles Manson…
Socialist Worker vs. the Class Struggle
Nick P. at Black Sun Gazette
It is worth continuing to explore the role of the International Socialist Organization and its political line expressed in Socialist Worker. As the class conflict becomes more two-sided, groups such as the International Socialist Organization will—regardless of the intentions of individual members—play a crucial role in protecting the existing system.
When one sees the ways in which the International Socialist Organization (and other groups like them such as Socialist Action and the Workers’ International League) play left defending attorneys of the trade union bureaucracy and middle class reform organizations (who play a crucial role in defending the Democrats who push many of the same policies as the Republicans) you can see a straight line drawn from the fake left to George W. Bush.
Australian Human Rights Commission Attempts To Block Encylopedia Dramatica
Brutal-Koala-Jedi-Action seemed relevant to this post
Ken Eakins writes on Sitting Now:
Here we go again …
The Australian Human Rights Commission has threatened legal action against a widely read but controversial US-based website over an article that encourages racial hatred against Aborigines.
But online rights group Electronic Frontiers Australia said trying to stamp out the deplorable content would only create the “Streisand” effect, whereby an attempt to censor online content only brings more attention to it.
The same page was in the news in January when, in a rare move, Google Australia agreed to remove links to the article from its search engine following legal action from Aboriginal man Steve Hodder-Watt.
Once again ED is attacked, and once again people miss the point of the site.
The Internet really is srs bsns.
(more @ Sydney Herald)
The Zeitgeist Movement: Envisioning A Sustainable Future
By Travis Walter Donovan for Huffington Post:
“It takes a different value system if you wish to change the world,” Jacque Fresco said to a sold out crowd of over 800 in New York City’s Upper West Side.
Though he may not need to convince these people, many his ardent followers, it will indeed take a restructuring of the mind for those unfamiliar with Fresco’s work to realistically accept the ideas he proposes of a new global society that has given up money and property in favor of a shared, sustainable, technology-driven community.
The caustic skepticism can already be heard, critics crying out with pointed fingers, decreeing communism, socialism, insanity! But as Fresco himself will tell you, communism is still just another system with banks and social stratification. The kind of world he imagines for the future is much different. To ease the transition, The Zeitgeist Movement provides a wealth of dizzying information detailing…
Edge of Reason: The Lonely Reign of Benedict XVI
From the Independent:
The authoritarian leader of the world’s Catholics promised to restore the purity of his church. So why is it still plagued by scandal upon scandal? Peter Popham reports.
Of all the countries Pope Benedict XVI is visiting this year – including Malta, Portugal, Cyprus and Spain – Britain, which he visits in September, is the one in the greatest moral difficulty from his perspective: a citadel of wild-eyed relativism, beset by all the ills which the Sixties incubated and which the Catholic Church here, in the Vatican’s view, has done little to combat.
Look at the evidence: we have women vicars, openly gay Cabinet ministers, the minaret of a mosque looming over Regent’s Park. Multi-culturalism has supplanted Christianity as the religion of choice; hardly anyone goes to church any more; a Christian tradition going back 1,500 years is discarded as immigrants belonging to every faith and none pour in. In…
Don’t Ask Me
From the New Yorker:
“I do not see how permitting open homosexuality in these communities enhances their prospects of success in battle. Indeed, I believe repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” will weaken the warrior culture at a time when we have a fight on our hands.”
—General Merrill A. McPeak, former Air Force Chief of Staff, on the Op-Ed page of the Times.
My name is Marine Corporal Roger T., and I am one gay soldier who agrees wholeheartedly with General McPeak, although I think that he doesn’t go far enough. Because my staying closeted, in fact, makes me a better soldier, through what I term sublimation. For example: Right before heading out into a firefight with Iraqi insurgents, I always imagine myself at the beach with Merrill A. McPeak, both of us in helmets, camouflage-print Speedos, combat boots, and sunglasses. I picture myself rubbing sunblock all over the luscious, leathery hide of…
Google May Leave China Soon
From CNN:
Google appears to be getting closer to shutting down its strictly monitored search engine in China, according to news reports.
The reports, which cited people close to the situation, indicate that Google advertisers in China are being advised to switch over to rival Baidu Inc., out of fears that Google could abandon the country.
Following a targeted cyber attack on Gmail accounts emanating from China in December, Google announced on Jan. 12 that it intended to give all of its users open access to the Internet.
Google has since been negotiating with the Chinese government, as such a move would clash with China’s censorship laws. Those laws forbid access to Internet sites that criticize the government, display pornography or promote certain religious material.
A spokeswoman for Google declined to comment specifically on the negotiations, but reiterated the company’s intentions to remain an open-access site and said Google will soon make an announcement on…
How Andrew Breitbart Hacks the Media
Whether you agree with this guy’s politics or not, it is worth knowing who Andrew Breitbart is. In the recent issue of WIRED, Noah Shachtman profiles someone who really does direct the major media discourse in the United States. I am sure lots of people heard about this story (and saw this video), but how many paid attention to this one?
Andrew Breitbart has been waiting 45 minutes for a filet mignon. He drums his fingers on the table in this plush Italian restaurant off Times Square, a place where the media types he regularly trashes used to flaunt their expense accounts — back when they still had them. Breitbart looks around for a waiter and launches into a stem-winder about collusion between Hollywood and the press — the “subtle and not-so-subtle use of propaganda to make a center-right nation move to the left.
“It’s not just the nightly news,” he says. “You’re also getting television shows that reflect the same worldview, where Republicans are always the bad guys. Al Qaeda’s never the bad guy. The Republican is always the bad guy.”
From anyone else, this would be just talk — or talking points. (No terrorist bad guys on TV? Really?) But Breitbart is one of the people who rams those points into the popular consciousness. Until last September, the beefy 41-year-old with graying blond hair was a largely covert power in the right-wing media, the hidden hand behind the popular Drudge Report who also, weirdly, cofounded the liberal Huffington Post. But then he struck out on his own…
An Introduction to Some of the Most Deranged Comics of the Golden Age
Via Technoccult:
Occult author Bill Whitcomb introduces some of the most deranged comics of the golden age:
Dr. Mortal — The monster building mad scientist
711 — Inmate by day, superhero by night
Madame Fatal — The first cross-dressing superhero.
Boston TV Station Reports Dangers Of Fluoride In Water
Boston’s WCVB TV reports on suspicious sodium fluoride being added to local water supplies. The video clip shown below has some overlays from a viewer with deeper concerns than those expressed in the report:
Blind Soldier Can ‘See’ With His Tongue
Craig Lundberg has become the first soldier to test a device that lets blind people “see” with their tongues. Report from ITN News:
Florida Vampire Running For President
“He does have republican values…” Well, of course he does.
The Real 2012 Apocalypse
When the mainstream media says there’s a new looming financial crisis you know that someone is selling us a story. This time the spin is that U.S. government and corporate debt is about to blow up, making the subprime crisis look akin to the recent earthquake in Chile versus Roland Emmerich’s disaster movie, 2012. From the New York Times:
When the Mayans envisioned the world coming to an end in 2012 — at least in the Hollywood telling — they didn’t count junk bonds among the perils that would lead to worldwide disaster.
Maybe they should have, because 2012 also is the beginning of a three-year period in which more than $700 billion in risky, high-yield corporate debt begins to come due, an extraordinary surge that some analysts fear could overload the debt markets.
With huge bills about to hit corporations and the federal government around the same time, the worry is that some…
‘The Big Short’ Is A Bit Short In Missing The Reasons for The Crisis
It’s the number one book in the country. Every day, Michael Lewis’s The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine is getting B I G G E R, no doubt because he is so mediagenic, conversational and likes to laugh with the hosts who interview him about his findings.
On Sunday, he laughed with Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes when the two bantered on about how about stupid it all was and why so many smart people drank the Kool Aid. The story he tells has no hard edges really…it’s about “delusion,” Wall Street deluding us all and then each other.
The idea of delusions feeds a psychological and cultural analysis of bankers cut off from the world, focused on their own pocket books and believing their own hype. It is in this sense Shakespearian—the stuff of drama, not calculation. What a web we weave when first we practice to deceive, to quote Sir Walter Scott.
At one point in the 60 Minutes two part interview purporting to explain the collapse, Lewis drifts off message and calls it all, an “elegant theft.”…
Privacy is Not Dead, Just Evolving
Tony Bradley reports on the future of privacy (or lack thereof) from SXSW, for PC World:
It’s a brave new world. Unfortunately–continuing the literary allusion–Big Brother is watching. As technology makes more information more accessible, it also threatens to expose information that is not intended to be shared. Privacy is a concept that is caught in the middle of the struggle.
Danah Boyd, a social media expert for Microsoft Research, presented a keynote speech at the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) festival in Austin spotlighting the fate of privacy. Boyd was clear that she does not feel privacy is dead. Contrary to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s claim, people do still care about privacy.
As one blog summed up her speech “Boyd says that privacy is not dead, but that a big part of our notion of privacy relates to maintaining control over our content, and that when we don’t have control, we feel that our privacy…
