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In this episode we speak with Raymond Wiley and Joe McFall about Jesus, Rocks, and Bigfoot.  Raymond Wiley and Joe McFall are the former co-hosts of Out There Radio, a 50-episode podcast of interviews and discussions covering topics related to the occult, conspiracy theory and the paranormal.

Raymond and Joe have been in podcasting since 2005, having started Out There Radio shortly after they met and realized their shared interest in fringe topics.  The are currently the hosts of Disinformation: The Podcast and Disinformation World News.

The following is the first 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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First Amendment battles continue to rage across the US over the posting of the Ten Commandments in public places — courthouses, schools, parks, and pretty much anywhere else you can imagine.

Christians argue that they’re a part of our Western heritage that should be displayed as ubiquitously as traffic signs. Congressman Bob Barr hilariously suggested that the Columbine massacre wouldn’t have happened if the Ten Commandments (also called the Decalogue) had been posted in the high school, and some government officials have directly, purposely disobeyed court rulings against the display of these ten directives supposedly handed down from on high.

Too bad they’re all talking about the wrong rules. Every Decalogue you see — from the 5,000-pound granite behemoth inside the Alabama State Judicial Building to the little wallet-cards sold at Christian bookstores — is bogus. Simply reading the Bible will prove this. Getting out your King James version, turn to Exodus 20:2-17. You’ll see the familiar list of rules about having no other gods, honoring your parents, not killing or coveting,
and so on. At this point, though, Moses is just repeating to the people what God told him on Mount Si’nai. These are not written down in any form.

Later, Moses goes back to the Mount, where God gives him two “tables of stone” with rules written on them (Exodus 31:18). But when Moses comes down the mountain lugging his load, he sees the people worshipping a statue of a calf, causing him to throw a tantrum and smash the tablets on the ground (Exodus 32:19).

In neither of these cases does the Bible refer to “commandments.” In the first instance, they are “words” which “God spake,” while the tablets contain “testimony.” It is only when Moses goes back for new tablets that we see the phrase “ten commandments” (Exodus 34:28). In an interesting turn of events, the commandments on these tablets are significantly different than the ten rules Moses recited for the people, meaning that either Moses’ memory is faulty or God changed his mind.

I. Thou shalt worship no other god.

II. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.

III. The feast of unleavened bread thou shalt keep.

IV. Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest.

V. Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest,
and the feast of ingathering at the year’s end.

VI. Thrice in the year shall all your men children appear before the Lord God.

VII. Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven.

VIII. Neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left unto the morning.

IX. The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring unto the house of the LORD thy God.

X. Thou shalt not seethe a kid [ie, a young goat] in his mother’s milk.

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Look for more 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know in the next 50 days under the tag “50 Things” on disinfo.com.

Above Image: Moses with the Ten Commandments by Rembrandt (1659).

Learn more about the popular cable TV series in this behind-the-scenes interview with June Sarpong from Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura.

Disinformation founder Gary Baddeley chats with June about her research for the show, HAARP, and working with Jesse.

About Conspiracy Theory: Jesse Ventura and a team of expert investigators are on a mission to examine some of the most frightening and mysterious conspiracy allegations of our time. They examine available evidence as well as talking to experts and eyewitnesses to learn more about such topics as global warming, possible 9/11 cover-ups, secret government weapons and apocalyptic prophecies.

We’ve built a brand new website with mobile integration for this 50 episode series about the occult, conspiracy theories, and other bizarre undercurrents of the human psyche.

While you are there, make sure to take a look at Raymond’s Ultimate Conspiracy Video List.

The list contains nearly 100 full length films, many of which are sources for episodes of Out There Radio.

With your help, we were able to reach our Kickstarter goal. I’ve been receiving some questions on whether you can still donate, and the answer is a resounding YES!

If you donate $20 or more by February 3rd, you will receive name credit on the “Plunder” DVD and on the film’s website.

So go here to donate, and if you’re still wondering what this is all about, read this.

Wall Street is NOT too big to JAIL.

— Ralph Bernardo, The Disinformation Company

This blew my head off!

#97 Head Transplants on Monkey Have Already Been Performed

Think of all the nerves and structures in the upper spine that need tying to the ones coming out of the head. Spaghetti junction.

Check out the rest of the comments at AboveTopSecret.com.

It’s a new week, a new year, and some, erroneously believe a new decade. What’s not new is the stranglehold the banks have on our economy, quietly stashing billions for more bonuses, while still restricting the flow of credit. Bad loans have been supplanted by no loans.

Writers on the left continue to go after one bankster — the one we love to hate: Goldman Sachs, which has become the poster child for profiteering and even serving bad coffee in their cafeterias. Most ignore the rest of the avaricious industry which is still volatile with big pockets of insolvency and dependence of government bailout funds.

While the media has recently focused on the terror threat posed in Detroit, the terrifying reality in Detroit is generally ignored. The Associated Press reports:

DETROIT – One measure of how tough times are in the Motor City: Some of the offenders in jail don’t want to be released; some who do get out promptly re-offend to head back where there’s heat, health care and three meals a day.

“For the first time, I’m seeing guys make a conscious decision they’ll be better off in prison than in the community, homeless and hungry,” said Joseph Williams of New Creations Community Outreach, which assists ex-offenders.”

With TV pumping out a steady diet of football, foolishness and constantly shifting breaking news, the people broken by the economic crisis are largely being ignored.

Read more of Danny Schechter’s article on the Huffington Post

“I used to think of Wall Street as a financial center.
I now think of it as a crime scene.”
– Filmmaker Danny Schechter, Plunder (2009)

I am an old-fashioned “follow-the-money” journalist. As I’m writing this, most economists have learned to downplay fear and panic and up-play the “resilience” of the market. It’s a belief that all we need is confidence and then, all will be right with the world. Sadly, journalism has gone along with this charade by first denying the crisis and then avoiding investigating its architects and beneficiaries.

Three years ago, by choosing to be an “investigative” journalist, I made the film In Debt We Trust, with the idea in mind that I was examining “America before the Bubble bursts” (the subtitle of that film). My hope was I could transcend any political, partisan quibbles over the issue by warning of a credit crisis that would hurt people regardless of their politics. My effort was to examine how our economy had been restructured away from one that “makes things” into a service culture where credit card companies and mortgage firms finance our lifestyles—even when we can not afford them.

I did discover and illustrate in this film how subprime loans were ensnaring poor people, resulting in displacement and massive foreclosures. I even turned my continuing concern into a book called Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity. In this, I warned of greater trouble ahead. The book came out in 2008, a week before Lehman Brothers went bankrupt.

After the so-called [stuff] hit the fan, what really tormented me was how poorly and superficially these issues were being covered by the mainstream media. Today more people, myself included, can confidently argue that Big Media was complicit in the crisis—by not reporting on what was really going on, and more so, taking billions in advertising revenues from dodgy lenders and greedy credit-card companies. The media was, without question, part of the problem.

And lately, the greatest media insult to inquiry came from Time magazine, by honoring Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as 2009’s “Man of the Year”—not for bringing the crisis to an end but for ensuring it didn’t get as bad as it might have been. Never mind Bernanke’s refusal to act on the subprime, or rather “subcrime,” crisis when he had the chance to.

As I continued to re-examine my own view of this crisis, I asked myself and others informed on the subject—how could this happen?!? I began looking at the possibility that it was really a crime story, not just a business problem.

Not too long after I took this approach, “Ponzi King” Bernie Madoff surfaced as a bona-fide, white-collar criminal running a $65 billion-dollar scam. Madoff’s crimes started decades before our current global financial crisis, but his admission that “I knew what I was doing was wrong, indeed criminal” helped to foster my belief that this was crime, and not some “natural” economic event.

It was at this point I had enough conviction to start working on a documentary titled Plunder: The Crime Of Our Time—to make the case that our media and even our legal system are both ignoring. My approach is not to go after “bad men,” but a rotten system of fraudulent mortgages that first ripped off homeowners and then were bundled, securitized and resold with false values to banks and financial institutions. In the end, this gigantic complicated mess was insured by companies like AIG for the sole reason that they could be leveraged and borrowed against (in other words, to make tons of money).

This whole Three-Card Monte game ended up costing trillions of dollars to hundreds of millions of Americans who had no say in how this corrupt system really worked. Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter aptly charged: “Never before have so few done so much to so many.” This is why I describe my current documentary as the “Crime of Our Time.”

My partners at GlobalVision and I have almost finished the film, and I’m very thrilled that The Disinformation Company is going to release Plunder in stores and online in April 2009. But before that can happens I need your help…

Plunder desperately needs a sound mix, color correction, the creation of DVD extras and authoring, all of which costs real money. The Disinformation Company is kicking in some of the funds, but with $3,000 more, we will be able to deliver the project, as we’d like to, for release.

If the guilty parties on Wall Street and in Washington are to be brought to justice and serve jail time, we must put maximum pressure on lawmakers, regulators, and attorney generals while the paper trail of evidence is still hot.

The recession may have been artificially-shortened and sweetened by the stimulus package, but thousands of people are still losing their jobs and their homes as a result of the fraudulent bailout, every day.

Please join me in pushing for a JAILOUT, not another bailout, for these criminals.

With as little as $20 you can really make a difference. Depending on your pledge I’ll give you anything from a free DVD of the finished film, to lunch with me on Wall Street (where I will gladly share my experience of making this film).

Thank you for your support,

Danny Schechter
News Dissector, Mediachannel.org

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This episode features an interview with Robert Greenwald, head of Brave New Films and the director of the new Disinformation-distributed documentary Rethink Afghanistan.  We also discuss Robert’s previous films, including Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, and Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers.

Disinformation Podcast T-shirts available here!

The Sisterhood of the Rose Will Save The World @disinfo #books #FreeFriday #Sisterhood http://bit.ly/70s4p0

And yes, the more you tweet this, the greater your chance is of receiving a free book.

For more information about The Sisterhood, please check out the companion website, www.SisterhoodoftheRose.org, and read this special message from the author.

Here’s a trailer we made the book:

Jim Marrs will be doing some radio interviews where he’ll discuss his new book, we’ll definitely keep you posted. He’ll be on Coast to Coast AM on Saturday, December 19th. In the meantime, the first FIVE chapters are available on Scribd for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!

In this 25-page article, this archetypal gray-haired granny simply reads the New Testament — particularly the Gospels — and reports what she finds about Jesus: his insults and angry words, his deceptions, his impatience, his contradictions, his hellfire and damnation preaching, his braggadocio, his purposely confusing parables, his refusal to heal a little Gentile girl, his failure to condemn slavery, his horrible treatment of his own family, etc., etc. The results will be shocking to most Christians, and even non-Christians will be stunned to learn that everything they knew about Jesus is wrong. Here are some tasty bits from this epic article:

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Jesus bases his ministry upon the assumption that the end of the world is imminent and that he will return shortly and establish the king­dom he preaches. In the Gospel of Matthew alone, Jesus refers to this con­cept at least six times. “From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). These words of warning are an exact repetition of those of John the Baptist, whom many mistake for the Messiah (Matthew 3:2).

Sending his Disciples out onto the circuit, Jesus reminds them: “For ver­ily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come” (Matthew 10:23). Again Jesus asserts: “There shall be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom” (Matthew 16:28). He makes it clear, after describing his early triumphant return: “This generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled” (Matthew 24:34).

In Galilee Jesus repeats: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark 1:15). “The hour is come, and now is, when the dead shall hear the Voice of the Son of God” (John 5:25). Finally: “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?” (John 21:22). Here Jesus speaks of the Disci­ple John to Peter. Paul and the other evangelist Apostles take up Jesus’ clar­ion prediction, still echoed today.

As a natural accompaniment to the wording of impending doom, verbal pictures of the End are majestically painted by Jesus on several occasions. His second coming will bring about the redemption of the Jews from the Gentiles, and the establishment of the Jewish kingdom of God.

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Despite belief to the contrary prevalent today, Jesus was not a booster for family life. In the scriptures he treats his mother and siblings with something less than affection and respect. He does not marry or father children. After laying down rules about adultery and divorce, he proceeds to predict some rather astonishing effects that belief in him will have upon the family as an institution: “For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household” (Matthew 10:35, 36). From the time he is twelve years old and doesn’t bother to tell his moth­er that he is remaining in the temple, he seems to have no close ties to his family and discourages his converts from having any with theirs.

He demands that they drop everything immediately to become his fol­lowers: “And he said unto another, Follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead… And another also said, Lord, I will follow thee; but first let me go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house. And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:59-62). Two of his disciples actually leave their father mending the fishing nets (Matthew 4:21, 22).

It is a real puzzle where Christians today get their exalted view of the Christian family. And few Bible readers will understand the worshipful position accorded to Mary, for Jesus was rude to his mother at the marriage feast: “Woman, what have I to do with thee?” (John 2:1–4). And he was even more uncivil when she and his brothers waited at the edge of a crowd to speak to him, posing a question to his Disciples: “Who is my mother? And who are my brethren?” and indicating that the Disciples were now his family (Matthew 12:46–49). Then he added that all who do the will of God, “the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.”

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Before he departed this vale of tears, as God’s habitat for humanity this side of the grave has been described, the Savior of the entire world might have been expected to leave very lucid instructions as to how salvation might be achieved. And from his lips on various occasions do fall words that supposedly pinpoint “the way.” Such words should leave not the smallest doubt, for they deal with everlasting happiness or inevitable everlasting torment. Let these words be examined!

When a lawyer questions Jesus about the requirements for eternal life (in heaven, one assumes), Jesus asks the lawyer what “the law” says, no doubt referring to the Mosaic law. The lawyer answers: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself.” Jesus replies: “Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live” (Luke 10:25–28).

No mention of belief in himself as the Son of God or the Redeemer of the world from sin! In other words, one does not have to be a Christian to be saved. Love for God and fellow beings suffices.

Consider, then, Jesus’ words at another time: “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36). To Nicodemus, Jesus also expounded: “He that believeth on him is not condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (John 3:17, 18).

No mention of love of God and neighbor! Unquestioning belief is all that is necessary for salvation. There are no other stipulations.

Jesus’ above statements are categorical, but in at least one sense the two requirements are at odds, for Deism and Christianity are not one and the same in every case, not by far. For, although Christianity may imply love of God and one’s neighbor, such love does not necessarily imply Christianity. Thus, Jesus himself is presented in the scriptures as denying the need of anyone for a Savior.

But that is not yet the end of the puzzle. Jesus continues to put up con­flicting guideposts: “The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil, unto the resurrec­tion of damnation” (John 5:28, 29). No mention of belief in Jesus Christ or of love of God and neighbor! Now only good deeds assure one of “life.” No need here, or in above rules, to be reborn!

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Read the entire article in the Disinformation anthology Everything You Know About God Is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Religion, edited by Russ Kick, available on Amazon and in all good bookstores.

About the Article’s Author: Ruth Hurmence Green (1915–1981). The Iowa native received a journalism degree from Texas Tech in 1935, married, had three children, and settled in Missouri. Ruth, a “halfhearted Methodist,” first plodded through the bible when convalescing from cancer in her early sixties, calling the shock she suffered from reading the book worse than the trauma caused by her illness. “There wasn’t a page of the bible that didn’t offend me in some way. There is no other book between whose covers life is so cheap,” Ruth discovered, prompting her to write the enduring modern freethought classic, The Born Again Skeptic’s Guide to the Bible (1979). When terminal cancer developed in 1981, Ruth, who always insisted, “There are atheists in foxholes,” took her own life, swallowing painkillers. In her last letter to Anne Gaylor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation on July 4, 1981, Ruth wrote: “Freedom depends upon freethinkers.”

So we’re going to give away copies of Marty Beckerman’s Dumbocracy: Adventures with the Loony Left, the Rabid Right, and Other American Idiots to 25 people (or more) who tweet the following on Friday, December 11th:

DUMBOCRACY author @martybeckerman is the greatest writer in the history of literature?!? @disinfo #martybeckerman http://bit.ly/8QZ6N3

Just to know what you’re getting into, below is an excerpt of Dumbocracy. The more you tweet the above phrase this Friday actually will increase your chance of mindmelding with Marty Beckerman himself.

So spread the joy of Marty over Twitter on Friday, we will be watching…

Still not convinced? Check out MartyBeckerman.com and Marty’s musings on the Daily Beast.

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Robotic limbs controlled by the mind, Nigerian witch hunters, 19th century sex magic, and the Wal-Mart Gestapo, featured this week on Disinformation World News.

Disinformation Podcast T-shirts  available here!

Here an clip from GCB Radio 4 featuring a mash-up of an interview 2012:Science or Superstition producer Gary Baddeley and the new film 2012, direct by Roland Emmerich.  Download here.

[Read more at 2012sos.net]

Thanks for spreading some Disinformation Fuse TV!

If you are a Firefox user, there’s a great StumbleUpon Add-on that makes using StumbleUpon a cinch.

Hope you see more of you there, and please keep commenting on the stories on disinformation. The Disinfo Home Base really enjoys the vigorous debates and the diversity of opinion that we always hope to attract. If you haven’t tried out DISQUS it’s a great tool for tracking your comments and conversations across various websites.

Thanks for visiting disinfo.com,

— Ralph Bernardo, Managing Editor, Disinformation

To help sort out the information, Gary Baddeley, the writer/producer of 2012: Science or Superstition and president of The Disinformation Company will present the current schools of thought and answer questions from a public not certain if they should prepare for survival or something else entirely.

On the day that Roland Emmerich’s mega-budget disaster film 2012 opens nationally, discover the truth about the “End of Days” and the 2012 phenomenon with the video conference “Everything You Wanted to Know About 2012 But Were Afraid to Ask”, presented by The Disinformation Company, producer to the bestselling documentary 2012: Science or Superstition and it’s companion book. The video conference will be hosted by Justin.tv on Friday, November 13th, from 2 to 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. If you didn’t have a chance to join the chat, here’s the first part below:

The rest of the Justin.tv chat is here, here and here.

Gary discussed the documentary he wrote and produced, 2012: Science or Superstition, the mega-Hollywood motion picture 2012, and all things 2012-related. If you couldn’t make the event, feel free to submit a question by comment below. Here’s the trailer for 2012: Science or Superstition:

To help sort out the information, Gary Baddeley, the writer/producer of 2012: Science or Superstition and president of The Disinformation Company will present the current schools of thought and answer questions from a public not certain if they should prepare for survival or something else entirely.

On the day that Roland Emmerich’s mega-budget disaster film 2012 opens nationally, discover the truth about the “End of Days” and the 2012 phenomenon with the video conference “Everything You Wanted to Know About 2012 But Were Afraid to Ask”, presented by The Disinformation Company, producer to the bestselling documentary 2012: Science or Superstition and it’s companion book. The video conference will be hosted by Justin.TV on Friday, November 13th, from 2 to 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. To participate on that day go to this link, or follow the conversation on Twitter.

Here’s the trailer for 2012: Science or Superstition, we’re looking forward to your questions and hope you can join the conversation. If you can’t make the conference, feel free to submit a question by comment below and we will try to answer as many as possible.

Considering that nobody knows what’s going to happen in 2012, the end of the Mayan Calendar functions as a tremendously intriguing meme upon which we can project our hopes and fears, dreams and desires. Hollywood has now offered up a massive collective shadow projection in the form of a $250 million disaster epic that takes the aesthetics of annihilation to a new pitch of perfection.  Paradoxically, this doom-riddled blockbuster could create a great opening to offer an alternative vision of what 2012 could be for our planet. Potentially, 2012 could represent the coming-to-consciousness of the human species, in which we take responsibility for our role as agents of conscious evolution.

A rising grassroots movement now realizes we can no longer expect governments, corporations, or any outside authority to create the beautiful world we long to live in. We have to do it ourselves. This growing network of Evolvers, Burners, Bioneers, Transition Towners, and others are developing new cooperative networks that can help heal our planet while providing sustainable solutions to the disastrously unsustainable economic and political systems that disempower people, keeping them asleep.

For this month’s Spore, over thirty cities will host conversations on 2012 and the evolution of consciousness, including “counter-screenings” to Sony Pictures’ 2012 world-catastrophe film.

Spores may preview a portion of Mangusta Productions upcoming feature-length documentary 2012: Time for Change, directed by Joao Amorim and starring 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl author Daniel Pinchbeck, along with a section of the disinformation documentary 2012: Science our Superstition, produced by Gary Baddeley.

In addition, current bestselling 2012 Story author John Major Jenkins will give a short video presentation for those participating in the Spores. Afterward, we will discuss indigenous prophecies and global transformation, and how to prepare ourselves and our communities for rapid changes to come.

We sincerely hope you can attend the upcoming Spore: Click here to find the Spore near you, or email jonathan [at] evolver [dot] net to start your own.

The plan to subvert the pages of some of Fleet Street’s bestselling newspapers was hatched in a windowless office in east London. For months, a team of documentary makers had sat in the Brick Lane film studio they called “the cell”, trawling through tabloid clippings in search of stories they could prove were untrue.

They decided to concoct an experiment to test their theory that tabloid editors sometimes publish celebrity stories with scant regard for the truth.

“We consumed a lot of coffee thinking about it,” said Chris Atkins, the director of the forthcoming film Starsuckers. “How can we do this intelligently? How can we prove our point? But how can we make it funny?”

Atkins and his producers decided the answer was to pose as members of the public and offer completely fictitious stories to the tabloid press about well-known figures. Their first call, on 18 March, concerned a fictional sighting of the Canadian singer Avril Lavigne asleep at the nightclub Bungalow 8.

The story appeared in the following day’s Daily Mirror under the headline: “Avril Lavigne a lightweight at London clubbing”. “After knocking back cocktails, the singer was found slumped across her table, snoring,” the story noted. “Lightweight!”

Within a fortnight, almost every daily tabloid newspaper in the UK had published one of the Starsuckers team’s bogus stories about the likes of Amy Winehouse, Pixie Geldof and Guy Ritchie. At times, the fake stories were reproduced by media outlets across the world, where they were presented to millions of readers as fact.

The Lavigne story was not run in the Daily Express, the Sun or the Daily Star, all of which had been called about it by the documentary team. But over the next fortnight, all four newspapers would be duped into publishing fabricated stories.

Starsuckers presents the experiment with fake stories as evidence that media organisations cannot be trusted to tell the truth.

That claim is likely to be contested by the newspaper industry when the film officially previews at the London film festival later this month. The editors the documentary team targeted may complain they were victims of the same kind of skulduggery the director will be claiming is rife in their newsrooms.

Atkins defended the ethics of his project, which he said was guided by a strict set of moral and legal ground rules…

More at The Guardian

Telepathy and the interbrain. The belief in telepathy is deeply rooted in many of us, and not only science fiction fans. Mothers ring their daughters thousands of miles away, and their daughters say, “How did you know? I was just thinking of you”. We walk into a room and we just get a feeling about someone: it is as if we knew what they were thinking, and what they will say next.

Professors of parapsychology — and there are a few — have been unable to replicate these results in the laboratory. Minds they have to conclude cannot pass thoughts or images to other minds directly. Perhaps this should not be a surprise. After all, we do pass thoughts and images to each other pretty effectively by speaking, drawing, singing, and so on. More to the point, our minds are our own, and we want them to remain so. We fight to keep our original thoughts. So is telepathy just wishful thinking, born out of our wish to be close to our loved ones and not feel that they have minds that will be for ever closed to us? Or is it a more general feeling against the scientists and others who seem to want to reduce everything to atoms without allowing for the connectedness that joins us to the universe?

I don’t think that telepathy is just wishful thinking, and nor do many neuroscientists. Except that they do not think that minds are connected, but brains. You don’t have to be a scientist to know this, of course. We all know that we can be feeling down in the dumps, but if we meet friends we can be cheered up by their obvious cheerfulness even if they don’t say anything: their good cheer can be contagious. This kind of contagion can occur without us even being aware of it–and if we become aware of it, we may back away from it. If, for example, we think: “It’s all very well for them to be happy. They don’t know what it’s like to be me” then we can block the good cheer from changing our mood. It can even make it worse. At a more basic level, if we experience ourselves as not belonging to the group, the contagion effect may not work. We may even deny it. We may say to a friend who says to us, “You soon cheered up”, that we were not really feeling cheerful at all, but just didn’t like to spoil the party.

So between the contagion of emotions like good cheer, and our own conscious perception of our mood, there can be many cut outs. I think that they are there for a reason. These cut outs allow us to have a mind of our own, and not be under the control of our brains. They are, with the development of language and the ability to tell ourselves stories about ourselves — the inner narrative which the psychologist Vygotsky described, precursors to the development of what is nowadays called a ‘theory of mind’.

More on Psychology Today

Who cares if money can’t buy you love? It can still be your best friend forever.

That’s one of the surprising findings in a new Chinese-American academic research paper, “The Symbolic Power of Money,” published in the journal Psychological Science.

Like any best friend forever, money demonstrated to researchers its ability to soothe us, reduce our sense of social exclusion and even lessen life’s painful moments.

As researcher Xinyue Zhou of the psychology department at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, China, puts it, money acts as a substitute for another of life’s pain buffers: love.

“I was surprised,” says Katherine Vohs, co-author and marketing professor at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management. “The findings were surprising because no one had connected the symbolic meaning of money to pain. The money wasn’t buying the subjects more friends or a soothing cream; it was only psychologically helpful.”

Like any best friend forever worthy of the BFF acronym.

In the Chinese studies, students were told they would be participating in a test of finger dexterity. One group was given a stack of Chinese currency to count, while another was given blank pieces of paper.

Once the counting was complete, the test subjects were asked to dip their fingers into bowls of water heated to 122 degrees — roughly the temperature of a very hot bath.

Result? Those who had been counting money reported less pain than those who had been riffling through blanks. (Read more)

It was our age of innocence and Kafka wasn’t thought to be a realist. Under repressive regimes people lived in constant fear, but the terror they felt and the machinery that enforced it was tangible.

Not any more. We live in a time when information about our personal lives and behaviour are being gathered, stored and shared by governments and multinational corporations on a scale that no one ever thought was humanly possible.

In the name of fighting terrorism governments across the world have been creating new regulations that infinitely augment the state power of surveillance with no meaningful public or parliamentary debate.

The Information Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2006 passed by the Indian Parliament recently allows the government to intercept messages from mobile phones, computers and other communication devices to investigate any offence. Not just cognizable offence, the kind you witnessed in Mumbai 26/11, but any offence.

Any email you send, any message you text are now open to the prying eyes of the government. So are the contents of your computer you surfed in the privacy of your home.

Around 45 amendments have been made to the original Act, which now treats both publishers of online pornography and its consumers on equal footing. A law so sweeping in its powers that it allows a police officer in the rank of a sub-inspector to walk in or break in to the privacy of your home and see if you were surfing porn or not. It’s the personal morality of the official that will decide whether the picture/content you were looking at was lascivious or appeals to prurient interest.

The amended Act also grants the state absolute power to block access to any website in the national interest. In short a total gag and surveillance act that doesn’t set any limits for law enforcers, or have inbuilt safeguards against misuse.

And if writing abstract legal language with hues of victorian morality can be considered an art form the architects of the new IT Act are nothing less than artists.

Thou shall not author a joke. Not even forward one

Any person who sends, by means of a computer resource or a communication device, — (a) any content that is grossly offensive or has menacing character; or (b) any content which he knows to be false, but for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred or ill will… shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years and with fine.

Thou shall not surf Bollywood news

Whoever publishes/ transmits/ causes to be published/ transmitted in the electronic form, any material which is lascivious or appeals to the prurient interest or if its effect is such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely, having regard to all relevant circumstances, to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it, shall be punished on first conviction with imprisonment of either prescription for a term which may extend to two years and with fine which may extend to five lakh rupees and in the event of second or subsequent conviction with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to five years and also with fine which may extend to ten lakh rupees.

Thou shall not watch porn

If the material is sexually explicit act or conduct then the punishment on first conviction is imprisonment which may extend to five years and a fine which may extend to ten lakh rupees. In the event of second or subsequent conviction imprisonment may extend to seven years and fine to ten lakh rupees.

But one has to admit that there is concern on part of the government on what could be the impact of the law on art and literature. So section 67 does not extend to any book, pamphlet, paper, writing, drawing, painting, representation or figure in electronic form, provided it is in the interest of science, literature, art or learning or religion. That means M.F Hussein can’t be framed under IT Act anymore, and that photos and videos are not considered art.

‘So what?’ is the familiar rhetoric. Why fear if you’ve got nothing to hide? Why should law abiding citizens be bothered about some ‘inevitable invasion’ into privacy in the wake of increasing terror attacks? After all the perpetrators of terror are known to use Internet and other modern communication tools to plan and execute deadly strikes like that happened in Mumbai.

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