KMFDM Bitch-Slaps Plutocracy With A Drug Against Wall Street
From Johan of HoodooEngine:
The whole #OccupyWallStreet thing is cool and all, but it’s not a real party until some heavyweights of radical music start throwing their weight behind it. Fans of industrial metal will be pleased to know that KMFDM has done just that, releasing a new version of their classic track (which the more angsty of us rocked in our angsty bedrooms over a decade ago), A Drug Against War, but have altered their own lyrics to spotlight the recent rebellion against evil psycho-clown corporations.
The vocals in the track are now all about defeating our shady bankster-GMO-Annunaki overlords with the new title A Drug Against Wall Street! Calling upon the 99% to “march to the drum of the ultra heavy beat,” the vocals warn against remaining passive to the ravages of class warfare, warning us rather succinctly that “make no mistake, our children’s future is at stake.”
Shortly after the release of this…
The Megapocalypse Of Kim DotCom
Via Modern Mythology (by P. Emerson Williams)
An operation planned by a large international team of law enforcement working over the course of years and carried out with helicopters and machine guns in a military style raid. Taking refuge in a safe room, reportedly found “near a semi-automatic shotgun”, a larger than life villain is dragged out and taken into custody.
Photo: Andreas Bohnenstengel (CC)
No, the target is not a drug kingpin, nor a deposed dictator (hence the safe room – sewage drains are reserved final hiding places for deposed dictators and jihadist masterminds), not a banker responsible for tearing the world economy apart, nor a corrupt Western politician on the leash of said bankers.
Much hay has been made of Kim Dotcom’s expansive mansion, expensive toys and cheesy movie villain antics. For those wondering why Megaupload was the target this fact alone should make it clear. They needed someone who would not invoke sympathy,…
Logic, Fallacies & the Trivium Method of Critical Thinking: Enhancing Your Mental Anti-Virus
Via TriviumEducation.org and GnosticMedia.com:
Media Roots Radio: Ron Paul & GOP, Election Fraud, NDAA Update
Via Media Roots:
Abby and Robbie Martin discuss the Iowa Caucus: the GOP candidates, the corporate media’s coverage of the events, cherrypicking racist attributes among the contenders, the phasing out of Ron Paul as a “front runner”; election fraud: the fact that there is voting software designed to flip the vote; NDAA: an update of how the legislation was passed and breakdown of what it actually means for citizens living in the US.
Somali Rebels Embrace Twitter Terrorism
El Shabbab, the fundamentalist Islamic insurgency group fighting to control southern Somalia, reject most things Western and/or modern, but ironically have embraced Twitter, garnering thousands of followers. In addition to straightforward updates on battles and territory, the best part is the taunting that goes on between the insurgents and Kenyan military spokesman Major E. Chirchir:
Kim Jong-il’s Photoshopped Funeral Picture
A few stragglers were removed from the right-hand photo, released by the Korean Central News Agency. (Compare the left sides of both pictures.) The chilling thing is, why bother altering the truth over such a minor detail? Do all totalitarian regimes display the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder, or just North Korea’s? Via TIME Magazine:
The big question is why did the North Koreans alter the image? Aesthetically, the doctored photograph is tad bit cleaner, lines straightened, but hardly improved. Psychologically speaking though, the clone job adds order to an already tidy scene. I’ve been examining photographs released by the KCNA for years and many are strikingly beautiful—enormous, perfectly-positioned crowds, immaculate and intricately composed. Now we may know why.
TSA Recruiting ‘Junior Officers’ at Airports
Via InfoWars:
Remember when you were growing up and wanted to be a police officer, fire fighter or other public servant?
Now the TSA appears to be tapping children as future recruits for airport checkpoints, as evidenced by this novelty “Junior Officer” badge handed out at Austin Bergstrom International Airport. Not only are young, impressionable fliers indoctrinated by the unconstitutional checkpoints themselves, but now by a subtle driver to join the team someday when they can get the power to conduct their own pat-downs and body scans.
Media Roots: OWS, Police State Repression, Unification, Censorship, Citizen Journalism
Via Media Roots:
Abby & Robbie Martin cover Occupy Wall Street: the police state repression against the First Amendment, the Democratic Party’s attempt to co-opt the movement, the Obama administration’s hypocrisy to praise revolution abroad and censor it at home, the fact that the Tea Party and OWS are fighting two heads of the same beast, the “Black Bloc” provocateurs and their attempt to discredit peaceful movements; media censorship and the fact that news anchors are repeaters, not reporters; the two-tiered justice system catered toward the elite; citizen journalism and its role in allowing participation and unification in the global revolution.
Before War of the Worlds, the Great Moon Hoax of 1835
Lunar man-bats, unicorns, bipedal beavers and a triad of mysterious solar temples featured in a sensational hoax perpetuated by the New York Sun in 1835. This from Victorian Gothic:
Imagine that you wake up one morning, sit at your computer, and you are bombarded with links to a developing story from a major news outlet: Stephen Hawking, by making novel use of Cambridge University’s new quantum supercomputer to analyze data from SETI’s telescope array, has discerned that the universe is awash with signals from intelligent life. It reads like a regular science story, at first, but soon it is revealed that Hawking and his colleagues have tapped into an extra-terrestrial television transmission, and are even now watching, breathless, as the first, dream-like images of alien civilizations display themselves on the Q-computer’s tiny monitor.
You and your friends refresh your browsers compulsively, talking over each new description that emerges of strange alien races and the exotic…
Media Roots: Occupy Wall Street, Divide & Conquer, Medical Marijuana Crackdown
Via Media Roots:
Abby & Robbie Martin cover the Occupy Wall Street Movement: the divide and conquer tactics being used to discredit OWS, the different schools of thought and ideology within the movement and the original demands made by the U.S. Day of Rage; the Obama administration’s shocking crackdown on medical marijuana and new federal law banning medical marijuana card holders from owning firearms; Blackwater and the privatization of the armed forces: is the corporatization of the U.S. military preventing an anti-war rebellion similar to that seen in the ’60s?
99 or 53, We’re Still All The Same
Natalie W and Aaron Cynic write at Diatribe Media:
Ever since the Occupy Wall Street movement began, one of the ways members have told their stories is through simple photos of themselves holding writings of their life experiences and what makes them part of the “99 percent” of Americans who have been ignored, mistreated, and misrepresented by their government. Some of their heartbreaking stories include tales of vast amounts of medical debt due to unforeseen chronic illness and no insurance coverage, overwhelming college debt coupled with joblessness or no job prospects, and a shortage of work combined with short unemployment assistance, among many others. To read their stories, see We Are The 99 percent.
This week, founder of the right wing blog Red State, Erik Erickson began a Tumblr account dubbed the “53 percent.” The project attempts to be the conservative perception of Occupy Wall Street and solidarity occupations as a movement of whiners…
Exploiting Anti-Semitism to Destroy Occupy Wall Street
MJ Rosenberg writes in the Jewish Journal:
An ugly old tradition is back: exploiting anti-Semitism to break the backs of popular movements that threaten the power of the wealthiest 1 percent of our population. It is being used to undermine the Occupy Wall Street movement, which has conservatives in a state of near panic.
I don’t know the first time the tactic was used, although it dates back almost to the beginning of the Jewish diaspora.
Perhaps its most famous use was by the viciously anti-Semitic Czar Nicholas, whose supporters concocted the Protocols of the Elders of Zion at the start of the 20th century to prevent Russians from joining socialist movements and other reform efforts that were fighting to get the czar to cede some power to an elected parliament.
The Protocols were a forged document purporting to show that a cabal of Jews met regularly to solidify their supposed control of the entire world.…
Cleaning up the Religion Debate
Lately there have been a few articles on Disinfo that eventually, either immediately or after a few days, spurred an argument that rears its head fairly often here. The debate between atheism and religion is one in which I usually enjoy taking part, and I like that it pops up on Disinfo with a certain regularity. What I don’t like, what I suspect many of us don’t like, is that they often devolve into, if not begin as, something along the lines of:
Poster A: religion is stupid
Poster B: YOU’RE stupid
Sometimes it’s a little more eloquent, but this is the bare bones of it. Not very useful, nor very informative. This I think we can agree on. So how does one go about creating a better, more informative dialogue? Can it even be done? One side believes the other to be irrational, delusional, utilizing a sort of maladaptive coping mechanism…
How The U.S. Media Squashes Dissent
From oft-acclaimed and criticized political cartoonist Ted Rall, writing for Al Jazeera:
The American media deploys a deep and varied arsenal of rhetorical devices in order to marginalise opinions, people and organisations as “outside the mainstream” and therefore not worth listening to. For the most part the people and groups being declaimed belong to the political Left. To take one example, the Green Party – well-organised in all 50 states – is never quoted in newspapers or invited to send a representative to television programmes that purport to present “both sides” of a political issue. (In the United States, “both sides” means the back-and-forth between centre-right Democrats and rightist Republicans.)
Marginalisation is the intentional decision to exclude a voice in order to prevent a “dangerous” opinion from gaining currency, to block a politician or movement from becoming more powerful, or both. In 2000, the media-backed consortium that sponsored the presidential debate between…
WikiLeaks Reveals Iraqi Children Were Executed in U.S Raid on Ishaqi
U.S. officials had originally claimed that “nothing inappropriate” had occurred during a controversial incident in 2006 in the town of Ishaqi, Iraq. A U.S. diplomatic cable made public by WikiLeaks, however, tells a different story. In this version of events, according to an autopsy of the bodies in Tikrit (along with several witness reports which were vigorously denied by U.S. officials) four women and five children (all of which were five years old or younger) were handcuffed and then shot in the head, after which an air-strike was called in to destroy the home in which the massacre had transpired. Not surprisingly, the Pentagon has thus far declined to comment. I hope you all will join me in pinching the bridge of our noses and muttering “Sweet fucking Christ”. (More on McClatchy)
Media Fail: Is Anonymous Helping Time Warner’s Bottom Line?
Photo: Vincent Diamante (CC)
Way more positive social action than feeding their machine, but an interesting shot at activism from Nick Bilton in the NY Times:
Anonymous, the hacker group, has jostled with the Iranian government and the Church of Scientology and has briefly shut down the Web sites of Visa, MasterCard and other global corporations.
When members appear in public to protest censorship and what they view as corruption, they don a plastic mask of Guy Fawkes, the 17th-century Englishman who tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament.
Stark white, with blushed pink cheeks, a wide grin and a thin black mustache and goatee, the mask resonates with the hackers because it was worn by a rogue anarchist challenging an authoritarian government in “V for Vendetta,” the movie produced in 2006 by Warner Brothers.
What few people seem to know, though, is that Time Warner, one of the largest media companies in the…
Rick Perry Is a Socialist
The Washington Post reports:
Texas Gov. Rick Perry has leapfrogged to the top tier of Republican presidential candidates largely on the strength of one compelling fact: During more than a decade as governor, his state created more than 1 million jobs, while the nation as a whole lost 1.4 million jobs.
Perry says the “Texas miracle” rests on conservative pillars that he would bring to the White House: minimal regulation and government, low taxes and a determination to limit the reach of Uncle Sam.
What he does not say is that much of that job growth has come because of government, not in spite of it.
With a young and fast-growing population, a large and expanding military presence and an influx of federal stimulus money, the number of government jobs in Texas has grown at more than double the rate of private-sector employment during Perry’s tenure.
The disparity has grown sharper since the national recession hit.…
Big Alternative Medicine Threatens Suit Against Skeptical Blogger
The alt-med controversy is often framed as a David-and-Goliath clash between small-time distributors of natural heath products, on one hand, and “big pharma” on the other. It is worth considering, however, that alt-med has become a lucrative industry in its own right, capable of engaging in the same abuses often associated with powerful pharmaceutical companies.
In Europe, draconian libel laws are increasingly being used to intimidate bloggers who question the validity of specific alt-med products or modalities. The most recent case involves the multinational homeopathy manufacturer Boiron and an amateur blogger in Italy. Steven Novella at Science-Based Medicine writes:
There have been many cases now of big companies or organizations, or wealthy individuals, threatening to sue or actually suing a blogger for libel. The most famous case is that of Simon Singh who was sued by the British Chiropractic Association over comments he made in an article. Simon braved through the expensive and exhaustive…
1915 Anti-Women’s-Suffrage Newspaper Ad
Courtesy of Sociological Images, a 1915 Massachusetts newspaper ad in opposition of giving women the right to vote — it’s fascinating how closely some of the political framing recalls that of today, including playing up fears of divorce, socialists, and Mormons.
(One would presume that the ad was effective, as Massachusetts’ male voters rejected women’s suffrage. Women were given the ability to vote five year later by the federal government in the form of the 19th Amendment.)
Media Roots Radio: Spying, Fear & Self-Censorship, Building Up Your Community
Via Media Roots:
This discussion covers U.S. imperialism: wars, costs, media and government propaganda; the culture of fear, self-censorship and the erosion of privacy in the US; information as power and how communication is an important tool to strengthen and build communities.
