Work Kills More People Than War
Here is another chapter from Russ Kick’s classic bite-size Disinformation book 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know, published in 2003.
For more on Russ Kick, check out his website, The Memory Hole.
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The United Nations’ International Labor Organization has revealed some horrifying stats:
The ILO estimates that approximately two million workers lose their lives annually due to occupational injuries and illnesses, with accidents causing at least 350,000 deaths a year. For every fatal accident, there are an estimated 1,000 non-fatal injuries, many of which result in lost earnings, permanent disability and poverty.
The death toll at work, much of which is attributable to unsafe working practices, is the equivalent of 5,000 workers dying each day, three persons every minute. This is more than double the figure for deaths from warfare (650,000 deaths per year).…
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…
Emigrate to Iceland
From the Telegraph:
It’s described by the UN as the third best place to live in the world and the vagaries of economics make it more accessible than ever before to visitors and, their inevitable corollary, émigrés.
Sigga Groa Thorarinsdottir, marketing manager of UK and Ireland for the Icelandic Tourist Board, claims that the lower value of the krona has led to interest from Britons wishing to visit and settle in the previously expensive country.
According to statistics released by the board, Iceland experienced its highest ever visitor numbers in January and February this year. In January, 4,312 Britons visited the country compared with 3,865 for the same month in 2009. In February, there was a further rise of 25.6 per cent from February 2009, with an increase to 6,116 visitors. Overall in…
Disinformation Interviews Jesse Ventura on ‘American Conspiracies’ and More
Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura has a new bestselling book out, American Conspiracies: Lies, Lies, and More Dirty Lies that the Government Tells Us. Following my recent interview with June Sarpong, a member of the investigative team for his TV series Conspiracy Theory With Jesse Ventura, Jesse agreed to meet with the disinformation® New York crew at the legendary Russian Tea Room.
I asked Jesse why he’s digging up dirt where other public figures fear to tread, what we should do with the information he’s revealing, who he thinks is really behind the myriad conspiracies in his book — from JFK to 9/11 — and much more. Enjoy the video — we’ll post some extra clips where we talk off the record about everything from surfing to rock & roll … soon!
Socialism Versus Socialist Worker
From Nick P. at Black Sun Gazette:
Things have been rather hectic around Black Sun Gazette Central lately, so forgive my lack of regular communication. I’ve got a few articles brewing that I’m sure my loyal readership is sure to enjoy.
However, I wanted to take a moment to go back to the subject of the International Socialist Organization and their website, SocialistWorker.org.
One of the most common arguments by ISO members is that the tendency with which I am in solidarity “does nothing.” I’d like to take some time to seriously examine this claim, in a more reasoned and less emotional way than my prior screed on the ISO.
Mississippi School Prom Off After Lesbian’s Date Request
From Yahoo News:
Constance McMillen didn’t believe her Mississippi school district would really call off her senior prom rather than allow her to show up with her girlfriend and wear a tuxedo. On Thursday, a day after the Itawamba County school board did just that, the 18-year-old lesbian high school senior reluctantly returned to campus to some unfriendly looks, she said.
“Somebody said, ‘Thanks for ruining my senior year.’” McMillen said.
The district announced Wednesday it wouldn’t host the April 2 prom. The decision came after the American Civil Liberties Union demanded that officials change a policy banning same-sex prom dates because it violated students’ rights. And the ACLU said the district not letting McMillen wear a tuxedo violated her free expression rights.
The ACLU filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Oxford…
Electronic Musician HipGnosis Talks About Mind-Altering Music
Electronic musician HipGnosis talks about his techniqiues for making consciousness altering music. Via Technoccult:
I know you use binaural beats and other methods to enhance your music by making it consciousness altering. Can you describe some of the methods you use?
Well, much of my music is a sort of “hypersigil” imbued with specific frequencies designed to induce altered states. When combined with psychedelics, it can be intense. I have done much research on cymatics/sound healing/binaurual tones.
I started making acid house as the first electonic music i did, and binaurals were first introduced to that music. I am heavily influenced by Coil, who also did much work w/ frequencies to transmit information/altered states-specific qualities. Psychic TV is an early influence as well, which was less about traditional sound-mind altering, but more about raw…
Flipping Off Cops Is Legal, Not Advised
From Wired:
Flipping the bird, or sticking out the middle finger, is perhaps the oldest insulting gesture on earth. The move dates back to ancient Greece and was adopted by the Romans as digitus impudicus — the impudent finger.A zillion middle fingers later, an Oregon man is suing suburban Portland cops (.pdf) over his use of the gesture, claiming civil rights violations. Twice he flipped them off for no apparent reason while driving and was pulled over each time — resulting in what he said was a “bogus” traffic citation that was later dismissed, and a tongue lashing he still remembers.
“The guy flew into a road rage,” Robert Ekas, a retired Silicon Valley systems analyst, said in a telephone interview Tuesday.
Lawrence Wolf, a Los Angeles criminal defense attorney, said there was no law…
Norway Conquers Infections By Cutting Use of Antibiotics
Martha Mendoza and Margie Mason report on the AP via the Miami Herald:
OSLO, Norway — Aker University Hospital is a dingy place to heal. The floors are streaked and scratched. A light layer of dust coats the blood pressure monitors. A faint stench of urine and bleach wafts from a pile of soiled bedsheets dropped in a corner.
Look closer, however, at a microscopic level, and this place is pristine. There is no sign of a dangerous and contagious staph infection that killed tens of thousands of patients in the most sophisticated hospitals of Europe, North America and Asia last year, soaring virtually unchecked.
The reason: Norwegians stopped taking so many drugs.
Twenty-five years ago, Norwegians were also losing their lives to this bacteria. But Norway’s public health system fought back with an…
Why ‘Everything Has a Cause’ Is a Terrible Justification for God’s Existence
From Alternet:
“If there’s no God, then where did all this come from?”
I’ve written a fair amount about some of the more painfully bad arguments for religion and against atheism. I’ve written about the argument that religion is just a story, not meant to be taken literally…a story that still somehow makes people get very bent out of shape when atheists point out that it isn’t true.
I’ve written about an assortment of arguments from wishful thinking, from the insulting (and irrelevant) argument that atheists don’t stay atheists when faced with death, to the baffling (and irrelevant) argument that religion gives us a needed feeling of mystery.
I’ve written about the arguments that essentially tell atheists to just shut up. And I’ve written about the ways that, when asked what evidence they have…
Plants Are Actively Intelligent: What Does This Mean for Vegetarians?
Ethan A. Huff writes in Natural News:
Most vegetarians believe that by not eating animals, they are preserving life. Everyone knows that plants are alive but they are not viewed with the same level of intelligence as animals are. As science continues to uncover the complex nature of plants, it is becoming more apparent that plants are actively intelligent life that pursue their continued existence in similar ways as do animals.
Research on the subject naturally flies in the face of strict vegetarianism which often insists that eating animals is murder but eating plants is just fine. Yet the facts illustrate that the characteristics of animals used to argue that eating them is murder also apply to plants. In other words, in order for strict vegetarians to be consistent in their beliefs,…
Perform Amateur Home Surgery to Implant Tech Into Your Body
Lepht Anonym writes on h+ magazine:
“Biohacker” Lepht Anonym discusses amateur home surgery to implant technology into her body — and challenges the media portrayal of cyborg prosthetics “that only the elite can afford…”
“I’ve made scalpel incisions in my hands, pushed five-millimeter diameter needles through my skin, and once used a vegetable knife to carve a cavity into the tip of my index finger…”
“Anesthetic is illegal for people like me, so we learn to live without it.”
Now RFID readers can recognize her hand-implanted biochip, and she’s added a series of implants that also sense electromagnetic fields. The implants can register power lines, an active hard drive, and even signals sent by a cell phone, while its magnetism can hold screws to the back of her hand.
“I’m an idiot, but I’m an idiot…
It’s a Conspiracy! No, It’s Not: A Debunking of the Classic Theories
Image by quarkscrew via Creative Commons
The New York Times’s Michiko Kakutani, so often the purveyor of eviscerating book reviews, for once truly loves something: an all-out mockery of a myriad of conspiracy theories, from 9/11 to Princess Diana, by David Aaronovich, Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History:
The principle of Occam’s razor suggests that the simplest hypothesis is usually the correct one — or as the character Gil Grissom in “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” succinctly puts it, if you hear hoofbeats, “think horses, not zebras.”In his lively new book, “Voodoo Histories,” the journalist David Aaronovitch uses Occam’s razor to eviscerate the many conspiracy theories that have percolated through politics and popular culture over the last century, from those that assert that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were…
Zero-Rupee Bribes for Bent Indian Officials
From ABC News:
Indians are being urged to hand over a note worth zero rupees when asked for a bribe, in a bid to stamp out corruption among officials.
Last year, international corruption watchdog Transparency International said almost 4 million Indian families had to bribe officials for access to basic services.
Vijay Anand, from the lobby group 5th Pillar, says they began distributing the worthless note because of a lack of practical solutions for tackling corruption.
“The topic of corruption have never been on the surface,” he said.
“Everybody was practising it, paying bribes, getting their jobs done. We thought that the fundamental reason was there was lack of alternatives – there was no practical solutions, no alternatives.
“So we thought we should come up with something. One of our volunteers came up with the idea…
Young and Wasted
From New Statesman:
The baby boomers had everything – free education, free health care and remarkable personal liberties – but they squandered it all. Now their children are paying for it.
The baby boomers were a golden generation. Rich people have always had opportunities, but for the ordinary man and woman there had never been a time of hope and opportunity like the one we baby boomers inherited. We were the Beveridge generation. The 1942 Beveridge report called for the abolition of the “five giants” – want, ignorance, disease, squalor and idleness. Between 1945 and 1951, despite a war-ruined economy, the Attlee government took Beveridge as its agenda and set about the first systematic assault on each of the giants.
Baby boomers were born between the end of the war in 1945 and…
Meet the The Lost Lizard People of Los Angeles
Xeni Jardin writes on BoingBoing:
Snip from 1934 Los Angeles Times article about lizard people who lived in tunnels under the city 5,000 years ago.
This legend is a long-lived chestnut.
A hi-rez scan, more at Strange Maps, and: Reptoids!
The Flickr uploader, vokoban, has lots of great stuff.
Controlled Opposition: Hard Questions About Alex Jones
[The views in this essay are those of the author alone. Publication here does not constitute endorsement by disinformation®: Full Disclosure: disinformation® has distributed two of Mr. Jones' films.]
Nick P. at Black Sun Gazette:
Special thanks to Bulldogger for showing me the way to the rabbit hole.
Many readers of Black Sun Gazette are doubtless familiar with Alex Jones, the Austin, TX-based radio show host and film maker. I have long struggled with what to make of Alex Jones. On the one hand, he provides people with difficult to find information about the frightening truth of the American government’s lurch toward police state and global empire. On the other, he is a frothing at the mouth crypto-fascist who seems to do little more than lead people down blind alleys and arguably does more…
Complete Control
From Nick P. at Black Sun Gazette:
We’re going on two years of the global economic crisis that has rocked our society to its foundations. All the conventional wisdom of the post-war era about the eradication of social inequality and class conflict under the auspices of continual capitalist development has been exposed as a propagandist deception.
Any illusions that people had in the ability of capitalism to solve the world’s problems has rapidly evaporated. Even as conditions worsen, the contradictions of our system are laid bare.
What Should A “Good” Pedophile Do?
Dan Savage responds to a reader on The Stranger’s Savage Love:
Let’s say, theoretically, I’m a pedophile.
I’m not stupid or evil, so I’m not gonna DO anything. I’m not even gonna look at porn, because the production of it involves child exploitation. I don’t even look at kids in public places.
So what the fuck should I do? Chemical castration? But I haven’t DONE anything and I don’t plan to. Am I obliged to tell anyone? Good way to lose friends. Can I keep babysitting my friends’ kids when they need a hand? After all, if I were into adult women, people wouldn’t see anything wrong with leaving me alone with a couple of those.
What the fuck do I do? Live alone and hope Japan starts producing affordable sexbots before I’m too…
