American Blog

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Michael Rivero, of WhatReallyHappened, on why the American newspaper industry is dying :

It is not up to us to regain trust in the corporate news, it is up to them to prove they are worthy of our trust.

They can start by telling the truth about Iran’s non-nukes and Israel’s very confirmed nuclear weapons arsenal.

Before war breaks out, that is.

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And you thought the time travel flick Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure was fiction?

Here’s a detail from a portrait painted in 1875. Familiar?

Go Here For The Full Painting

(Via Elkit on Flickr)

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Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

An incredible accomplishment of 20th century cinema, made in 1995, that watches like it was made yesterday :

So much of it seems so very now.

Here’s a classic scene of an all-encompassing conspiracy of paranoia :

“They Generated His Brain?”

I have no idea why scene after classic line from Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys never makes any of those Greatest Movie Quotes lists. It’s full of Gold :

The movie never changes. It can’t change; but every time you see it, it seems different because you’re different. You see different things.

There’s no right, there’s no wrong, there’s only popular opinion.

Look at them. They’re just asking for it. Maybe the human race deserves to be wiped out.

You are a total nutcase, completely deranged, delusional, paranoid. Your thought process is all fucked up. Your information tray is jammed, man!

If all of these nuts could just make phone calls, they could spread insanity, oozing through telephone cables, oozing into the ears of all these poor sane people, infecting them. Wackos everywhere, plague of madness

Psychiatry. It’s the latest religion. We decide what’s right and wrong. We decide who’s crazy or not.

You know what crazy is? Crazy is majority rules.

I am insane. And you are my insanity.

And some fantastic rants :

In the eighteenth century….along comes this doctor….He’s trying to convince people, well, other doctors mainly, that’s there’s these teeny tiny invisible bad things called germs that get into your body and make you sick. He’s trying to get doctors to wash their hands. What is this guy? Crazy? Teeny, tiny, invisible? What do you call it? Uh-uh, germs? Huh? What? Now, cut to the 20th century. Last week, as a matter of fact, before I got dragged into this hellhole. I go in to order a burger in this fast food joint, and the guy drops it on the floor, he picks it up, he wipes it off, he hands it to me like it’s all OK. “What about the germs?” I say. He says, “I don’t believe in germs. Germs is just a plot they made up so they can sell you disinfectants and soaps.” Now he’s crazy, right?

And one more solidly familiar rant from 12 Monkeys, released five years before Fight Club :

There’s the television. It’s all right there – all right there. Look, listen, kneel, pray. Commercials! We’re not productive anymore. We don’t make things anymore. It’s all automated. What are we “for” then? We’re consumers, Jim. Yeah. Okay, okay. Buy a lot of stuff, you’re a good citizen. But if you don’t buy a lot of stuff, if you don’t, what are you then, I ask you? What? Mentally ill.

More 12 Monkeys Quotes Here

Once again, Terry Gilliam was more than a decade ahead of the rest of Hollywood, which is now churning out a stream of apocalypse, and post-apocalypse, movies with abandon.

If you haven’t yet seen Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys, this is your Friday night movie.

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By Darryl Mason

A detail from this photo of chimpanzees in a Cameroon rescue centre silently watching the body of their 50 year old matriarch being carried away, after she died of heart failure :

“That animals and humans share many traits including emotions is merely an extension of Charles Darwin’s accepted ideas about evolutionary continuity, that the differences between species are differences in degree rather than differences in kind. The seemingly natural human urge to impart emotions on to animals, far from obscuring the “true” nature of animals, may actually reflect a very accurate way of knowing.”

Religion, no doubt, and fear of mockery in scientific circles, has long kept inquiring minds away from examining just how widespread displays of grief and mourning are in the animal kingdom.

We once believed that to acknowledge an ape can mourn a dead infant, or that elephants will visit the corpse of a fallen friend and stand guard to protect the body from scavengers, for a short time anyway, in ways that seemed shockingly familiar of our ceremonies and feelings of loss, was to somehow lessen the advanced, emotional, empathic superiority of humans.

How wrong we were.

Some animals have far more empathy for the dead of their genetically similar species than humans do.

Here’s AA Gill writing in the Sunday Times of the “naughty fun” he felt in shooting a baboon, basking in the Tanzanian sun, through the lung, from a safe distance :

I shot a baboon in Africa, last Wednesday, just after lunch. Shot it dead.

So I’m in Africa, in a hat, with dark intentions and a truck full of guns and other blokes in hats. Josh the hunter said: “Why don’t we shoot a baboon?” All nonchalant, looking out of the window at the amazing Tanzanian acacia scrub that drifts into the Serengeti plain. What about a baboon?

And here’s the thing. If you tool around the beautiful and unruly bits of Africa long enough in the company of gangs of men in purposeful hats, sooner or later you’re going to do baboon.

So, I said, why not? Just a little one. I can handle it; I’ll be a recreational primate killer.

They know that bipedal hominids in hats, hanging around in trucks with guns, are up to no good. They see you, they sod off, in great gambolling gangs, babies riding their mums like little jockeys.

And then they stand around on rocks and bark like alsatians and jump up and down, mooning with their big meaty arses…

So there was this big bloke leaning against a rock, picking his fingernails, a hairy geezer sitting in the sun with his shirt off. I took him just below the armpit. He slumped and slid sideways. I’m told they can be tricky to shoot: they run up trees, hang on for grim life. They die hard, baboons. But not this one. A soft-nosed .357 blew his lungs out.

The air was filled with a furious keening of his tribe.

Two hundred and fifty yards. Not a bad shot.

I wanted to get a sense of what it might be like to kill someone, a stranger. You see it in all those films: guns and bodies, barely a close-up of reflection or doubt. What does it really feel like to shoot someone, or someone’s close relative?

AA Gill didn’t hang around to watch the baboon’s relatives and friends grieve over the corpse.

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The talk of WhatToDo is years old, and the predicted problems are an expected eventuality in a time of severe pandemic-related crisis, but it’s still a shattering idea to think that you could be isolated in your home, during a thousands-dying-a-day flu pandemic, and you might not be reach the sites you trust to tell you the truth of what’s happening.

From Reuters :

….the Homeland Security Department accused the GAO of having unrealistic expectations of how the Internet could be managed if millions began to telework from home at the same time as bored or sick schoolchildren were playing online, sucking up valuable bandwidth.

Experts have for years pointed to the potential problem of Internet access during a severe pandemic, which would be a unique kind of emergency. It would be global, affecting many areas at once, and would last for weeks or months, unlike a disaster such as a hurricane or earthquake.

Private Internet providers might need government authorization to block popular websites, it said, or to reduce residential transmission speeds to make way for commerce.

The Department of Homeland Security appears to have next to fuck all to address the chaos of “internet congestion.”

“An expectation of unlimited Internet access during a pandemic is not realistic.”

More From Reuters Here

As far as bandwith problems go, one of the first sites you would expect to get blocked to ease “congestion” would be YouTube, which would have the no doubt desirable bonus effect of keeping a whole lot of horrific pandemic-related clips from reaching the rest of the country, or the world.

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Written by Michael Vass

I almost feel bad for President Obama. He came out strong with plans to change America. He dove head first, leaping without looking, into Guantanamo Bay, the economy, healthcare, and Afghanistan. He promised a transparent Government, with accountability, and decisive action.

So far he has failed at every turn to provide a single positive. His supporters can only state, “Just give him more time.”

But how much more time does he need? When President Obama passed the Federal funding budget, $410 billion, it contained no less than 3,000 earmarks. Which he blatantly signed and allowed though he consistently promised that he would never do that. The $787 billion Obama Stimulus was – no, IS – a fiasco from the start. No one read the Bill, and consequences as severe as denying tens of thousands of families food was just one consequence. But mor on that in a second.

President Obama is mired in confusion when it comes to what will happen with Gitmo and the detainees. Afghanistan is even worse as whatever plan existed in the spring no loger exists. In fact President Obama has his handpicked General for that theater of war sitting for over 45 days waiting for an answer to his request to expand the number of troops – to protect the troops and accomplish the mission he was given. He has spoken to this General 2 times in 100 days. How long must we give the President before his inaction is responsible for any American deaths in that nation?

President Obama was able to show positive economic numbers for the 3rd quarter, technically signalling the end of the recession. Of course on the same day, new unemployed numbers came in at over 530,000. Plus the big trigger for the gains in the 3rd quarter was the Cash for Clunkers program, that went over budget by 200% for a total cost of $3 billion. The 4th quarter will not see that artificial bump to numbers.

I’ll skip over the lack of transparency and other issues in the Health Care Reform Bill. I’ve covered that extensively already. I won’t mention the problems pending in the Cap & Trade Bill that is sitting on the sidelines. I’ll avoid for a moment the increased aggressive nature of Iran and North Korea with nuclear programs and missile launches. I won’t even begin to discuss the fact that allies of America across the globe have done nothing to help us in foreign policy on any level. And don’t get me started on the increase of size and power of the Government now that it owns private companies (and can absorb any company it wants), dictates who can be employed and what they get paid.

Let me get back to the Obama Stimulus.

It was the second thing President Obama did. It was fast, so fast that no one knew what they had done. It was big, bloated big, with more waste and ineffectiveness than even Congrerss is known to do. it was hailed for months as the answer to the economic ills of the nation. It was heraled as the first example of how the Obama Administration would change America. For 6 months the Obama Administration talked up hopw great the Obama Stimulus was.

Then they shut up.

We now know a few things about the Obama Stimulus that cannot be questioned. About 15% of the total has been spent so far (about $118 billion, though there is no exact number anywhere). It has caused over 100,000 families to become ineligible for food stamps. It has caused an unknown number of people on other Government programs to lose or lower aide. It has not stemmed unemployment in any scope of discussion. It has created numerous skate parks and art walkways across the country (it even funded $500,000 to fight homelessness in at least one city without homeless).

What can be argued is that the roads and bridges that were promised to be fixed have not been (the Golden Gate Bridge could be one such example). It can be said that the Obama Stimulus has extended the problems of the recession. It can be stated that unemployment is 2% higher than the worst case scenario described to pass the stimulus package, thus invalidating any statement of jobs “saved” or created. It can be argued that any program meant to provide a stimulus that does not take immediate action is not a stimulus; and with the bulk of money being spent in 2010 – an election year – it is simply a political tactic to maintain a Democrat power base. It can be argued that the entire Stimulus is an embarrrassment.

Worse is the lastest news. Following reports from every State in the nation it has been determined that 30,000 jobs were created or “saved”. Those jobs cost $71,000 each as an average, while paying closer to $30,000 each. Which implies absolute waste and ineffectiveness. The best of States claimed less than 5,000 jobs, the worst 6. That is not a typo.

Beyond being the singular largest statement that the Obama Stimulus is perhaps the worst named Government program in my lifetime, there is new news. According to the Associated Press it wasn’t even good enough to acheive that paltry level of success.

“But the 30,000 figure is overstated, at the very least, by nearly 5,000, based on AP’s limited review of some of the contracts — because some federal agencies and recipients of the money provided incorrect job counts. The review found some counts were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of jobs; some jobs were credited to stimulus spending when, in fact, none were produced.”

The AP also stated that the upcoming White House report on the Stimulus, expected to shower praise on the plan, will likely contain further inaccurate numbers and exaggerations. Which at this point the White House has neither refuted nor debated.

So I ask supporters of President Obama, how much time does he need? How far do we need to travel down the path he seems to be leading before we say this might be the wrong path? When is it that we will stop praising the President for what we hope he will do (like the Nobel Peace Prize), and pay attention to what he is doing and how it is failing?

Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

In Latvia, some locals tried to pass off this hole as a 50 foot wide meteor crater :

But scientists wh examined the hole claimed it was “too neat’ and had been dug by humans. By Tuesday, a group of students revealed they were responsible.

For comparison, here’s the rough, smashed hole in the earth left by an actual meteor strike, in Peru, in October 2007 :

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Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

By Darryl Mason

The British National Party’s legal officer Lee Barnes thinks Nick Griffin is far too moderate, and mainstream, and announces violence is essential in their quest for more intolerance :

Barnes complained on his personal website that Griffin “should have stood up to these whining, middle-class hypocrites that use the race card for self-enrichment – and thrown the truth right back into their fat, sanctimonious, hypocritical, self-serving faces”.

“…perhaps there needs to be a few ‘white riots’ around the country a la the Brixton riots of the 1980s before the idiot white liberal middle class and their ethnic middle-class fellow travellers wake up”.

More calls for low-level civil war.

Which is, of course, exactly the kind of activity the upper class elites that nationalists used to fight against want the working classes and middle glasses to all get caught up in.

The ultra-wealthy, that is those with the most to lose, have always preferred the rest to squabble and fight amongst themselves.

Over scraps.

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Surreally stupid :

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By Darryl Mason

Former vice-president and war industry whore Dick Cheney recently won the (good god) Keeper Of The Flame Award from the Centre For Security Policy, another NeoCon outfit who love destruction & slaughter, and profiting from war and human misery, and also enjoys giving NeoCon awards to NeoCons.

Blue Gal notes some of the other previous winners of this hilarious award :

Joe Lieberman
Duncan Hunter
James Inhofe
Paul Wolfowitz
Newt Gingrich
Ronald Reagan
Jon Kyl
Caspar Weinberger

And wonders why the Washington Post can’t tell the blog-honest truth, just once, like this :

Here’s then US deputy secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz, in October, 2003, upon receiving his own Keeper Of The Flame award :

“Among them are heroes who went to war and did not come back who gave their last full measure of devotion for their country and their cause—a just and noble cause. They live on in our hearts as we remember their courage and their deeds. In their memory, we must rededicate ourselves and redouble our efforts to finish the job that they have so nobly begun.”

Since Wolfowitz delivered that speech, more than 4500 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq, more than 100,000 have been physically wounded and hundreds of thousands of American soldiers have been left psychologically shattered by the War On Iraq.

The best way to honour dead soldiers is to send more soldiers to die, who then must be honoured by sending more soldiers to die….This is the psychopathy of NeoConism at its most gruesome, war industry core.

“There are American heroes out there now performing magnificently on the front lines in Afghanistan and Iraq. And instead of fine food like we’re eating here tonight, they eat their rations in the blazing heat, and they make their camps in the blinding dust and the driving wind. They take the battle to the enemy and they brave his hatred and brutality to make this country safe.

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Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

Another post where I recycle my recent Twitter posts and links and try to pass them off as fresh blog content. The below twoots are from the second half of October

* Confirmed : US Flying Killer ‘Robots’ have assassinated 750 to 1000 people – http://tinyurl.com/yh7w2aj

* 3 out of 4 polled robot doppelgangers rated Bruce Willis-starring Surrogates 2 out of 5 stars. “Finally, they make a movie about us, and it’s Arse”

* RedBox DVD bistros only hold a few hundred movies, but are a massive success – http://tinyurl.com/yl33epl – less choice = more customers?

* (American Psycho, Less Than Zero author) bret @eastonellis picks his scariest movies of recent years : The Strangers, Paranormal Activity, Sex and the City

* Anyone know why severe tooth pain disappears while standing in front of a microwave on defrost? Accidental discovery, but worked twice more

* Forbes estimates Star Wars movies, TV and merchandising has earned $32 bilion over three decades – http://tinyurl.com/yl6e338

* (British National Party leader) Nick Griffin should Harden The Fuck Up – http://tinyurl.com/yz9mpyc – He got a taxpayer funded hour on BBC, to 8 million people, now’s he whining “unfair”

* Toy sheep and pens are left by fans at the grave of Philip K Dick and his twin sister Jane, in Fort Morgan – http://tinyurl.com/yzw3ujh

* Former president George W Bush : “I didn’t sell my soul.” Of course not. You didn’t have one to sell. You sold America’s soul instead – http://tinyurl.com/ygrdsx3

* Plot details of Mad Max 4 : Fury Road story : http://tinyurl.com/yzj296y The precious fuel this time is untainted DNA

* Director George Miller has already confirmed Mad Max 4 : Fury Road will be anime 3D – http://tinyurl.com/dgmg9m

* In 1975 Briitsh adults/kids TV comedy ‘The Goodies’ did a show abt breaking into a US bio-warfare lab and releasing a weaponised virus. http://tinyurl.com/yk5uh78

* World Wide Web inventor @timberners_lee first Twitter twoot : “ooops confusing user interfxce”

* Forget the bullshit about Obama’s War On Fox giving Fox News record ratings. Fox News hit 8.5 million viewers at start of the War On Iraq

* US Abuse Music For Torture Purposes Band List – http://tinyurl.com/yg5fmvu Ear-splitting Matchbox 20 would make me fake-confess rimming Osama

* On John Safran’s Race Relations : Storm In A Palestinian Sperm Bank Sample Cup http://tinyurl.com/ylxh269

* Advice to New Zealand BP service stations – Do not put up signs saying “We’ve Already Blown On These Pies” – http://tinyurl.com/yh6lo9a

* Author Joe Konrath on self-publishing e-books -”it’s possible to makea living without (book publisher) contracts.” http://tinyurl.com/yhgqf7m

* I’m halfway thru twooting this novel @MaxMurrayANovel. It’s a hell of a lot harder but also far more fun than I ever imagined

* Spectacular stuntman Grant Page’s disastrous car hit on live TV, from The Don Lane Show- http://tinyurl.com/ykb6vyz

* @MaxMurrayANovel : “I don’t give a shit abt dying, but I wanna know what or who is killing me. It’s all the secrets I cant stand.”

* There’s been the Face On Mars, Pyramids On Mars, Human Skull On Mars, the Tubes Of Mars…now The Eye On Mars – http://tinyurl.com/yhs85fe

* Media expert Robert Thompson : “Balloon Boy was good business but bad journalism.” http://tinyurl.com/ykaxdjp – So, fake, but profitable

* Claim: Nuke Tests In Nevada Seeded Radioactive Fallout Across US, Leaving A Cancer Legacy In Baby Boomers – http://tinyurl.com/yjpfvn6

* George W Bush : “America’s foremost success expert.” Yes, really. Bush now a speaker with Get Motivated! – http://tinyurl.com/yf9tur9

* President George W Bush got 3000 threats a year from the American public. Obama got 12,000 in just 9 months.

* ‘Small government’ Republicans are all for Big Government when it comes to prosecuting old people for smoking joints to combat arthritis

* The Spy Who Tweeted Me : Social networking ‘influence’ agency gets funding from CIA http://tinyurl.com/yzxprf2

* Bill Clinton King of “I don’t recall?” http://tinyurl.com/ykrf8d4 Australia has a local champion of “I Don’t Recall” : Alexander Downer http://tinyurl.com/yln4nqm

* These people – @visible_tech – are CIA funded Twitter spies/dataminers : http://tinyurl.com/yl3zud2

* Today will be the greatest day of my life. Probably. Shit, just spilled the coffee. Well, that fucks it.

As always, I’ve edited these Twitter comments to make them more readable, as I don’t have to stick to a 140 character limit here.

My Twitter feed is here : @darrylmason

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70% Of American Conservatives Want To Stop People Legally Consuming Cannabis In The Privacy Of Their Own Homes

“George Washington understood, and so do I”

Raw Story mulls the latest poll results on Americans and cannabis legalisation :

New data from U.S. polling firm Gallup shows nearly half of Americans — a record number — are in support of legalizing and taxing marijuana for recreational use by adults.The poll clearly illustrates a generational and political divide on the issue, with 78 percent of self-described liberals saying they would like to see the drug legalized and 72 percent of self-described conservatives being opposed. Gallup also found that 50 percent of Americans under 50-years-old are in favor of legalization, but just 28 percent of seniors agree.

Perhaps the most important demographic to advocates of legalization are the moderate voters, among whom 51 percent now support ending prohibition.

“Fourteen states allow some use of marijuana for medical purposes: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington,” the Associated Press reported on Monday.

Another of the poll’s revelations is that among self-described Democrats, a majority in favor of legalization has emerged, with 54 percent supporting such a move and 45 percent opposed. Among self-described Republicans, the question is not even a contest: 28 percent are in favor, while 70 percent are opposed.

More On President Obama’s Dramatic Changes To Federal Cannabis Laws :

The Obama administration will not seek to arrest medical marijuana users and suppliers as long as they conform to state laws, under new policy guidelines to be sent to federal prosecutors Monday. Two Justice Department officials described the new policy to The Associated Press, saying prosecutors will be told it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state laws.

The new policy is a significant departure from the Bush administration, which insisted it would continue to enforce federal anti-pot laws regardless of state codes.

“This is a major step forward,” said Bruce Mirken, communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project. “This change in policy moves the federal government dramatically toward respecting scientific and practical reality.”

The six decades long prohibition on cannabis in the United States is coming to an end.

The pharmaceutical corporations will not be happy, as they begin to market their synthetic THC drugs, and their thousands of lobbyists in Washington DC are pushing hard to get these changes wound back.

In a true free market, where Americans can grow their own medicinal cannabis, legal pharmaceutical drug pushers will be finding less and less customers.

Expect a hardcore ‘Cannabis Is Destroying You & America’ TV and internet ad campaign to begin any week now.

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Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

So Hillary Clinton was right, despite all the years of mockery by Republicans and Fox News denialism. There was a well-funded Right Wing Conspiracy to destroy the Cllintons, and drive an American president from the White House.

Here’s the man who founded the conspiracy :

(Larry) Klayman proudly recalls the night the “vast right-wing conspiracy… was born.” He and fellow conservatives — including Paul Weyrich, Phyllis Schafly and the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre — met in a room near the Council for National Policy conference in Charleston, South Carolina in 1998. “We voted to remove the 42nd president of the United States by whatever legal and ethical means were necessary,” he said.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/14/larry-klayman-conservativ_n_321080.html

Klayman also claims Rupert Murdoch tried to have his new book killed, because of its attacks on Fox News :

Klayman reserves some of his harshest words for Fox News, expressing his increasing disappointment with the network, which “should really change its motto ‘We report, you decide’ to ‘We brainwash, you decide.’”He accuses Fox News and host Sean Hannity of not being straight with him by tricking his clients to coming on the air: “I came to perceive Hannity as a shallow and insincere Rush Limbaugh wannabe. In contrast, his television co-host, Alan Colmes, a Jewish liberal, was actually a mensch, even though I rarely agreed with him politically.”

Klayman claims that Fox owner Rupert Murdoch “tried to kill the publication of this book” because of his criticism of the network.

Did Murdoch want to kill the book solely because of this claim by Klayman?

Klayman takes particular aim at the “strange and petty tactics” of the network’s chairman Roger Ailes. When he asked Ailes about his decision to hire Chris Cuomo, the current “Good Morning America” co-host, to do commentary, the Fox News executive replied: “If I’m going to put on some goddamned liberal, I might as well get the dumbest fuck I can find!”

Fox News : Fair & Balanced (By Token Lefties, Chosen Specifically For Their Dumb Fuckery)

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Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

Will Self, writing in the UK Guardian, reviews the Wes Anderson-directed Fantastic Mr Fox, and essays, wonderfully, on its author, Roald Dahl :

The Twits is my favourite Dahl book….The celebrated midden of Mr Twit’s beard, his insertion of his glass eye into Mrs Twit’s beer, her substitution of worms for his spaghetti – not forgetting the dreaded shrinks; indeed, all of the creepy mind games the ghastly duo engage in…

That the whole tale of spousal, child and animal abuse should be punctuated by lines that skilfully and inexorably tighten the dramatic noose is testimony to Dahl’s genius as a fashioner of narrative, when the aside comes: “We can’t go on for ever watching these two disgusting people doing disgusting things to each other.” The only possible reply is: “Yes, we can – please, more!”

Dahl mimicked to perfection a believable child’s-eye view, that, looking up from below, sees the adult realm as foreshortened, and adult foibles as grossly elongated.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

Take Dahl’s most famous work, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: its boy protagonist’s family is immiserated, his carers are incapable of looking even after themselves – so salvation comes through luck, and the arbitrary beneficence of a deranged feudal-capitalist with a happily mancipated workforce. Of course, the spur that initially drives Charlie on is a lust for sweet things that, were it transferred to an adult plane, could only result in a work entitled something like “Charlie and the Huge Seraglio full of Compliant Nymphomaniacs”. The NAACP slated the black pygmy Oompa-Loompas in the original text – and so Dahl changed them to a fictional light-skinned subspecies – but he couldn’t get rid of the brown sugar. My equation of sweets with sex is not facetious; in Dahl-world, oral gratification is pretty much the only thing that matters.

The misogyny that haunts Dahl’s adult writing is also short-circuited in his sexless children’s fiction, for here his heroes and heroines can be either orphans (the aforementioned Charlie, James of giant-peach lusting), or else, as in The Magic Finger, an unnamed, and thus family-free, eight-year-old girl. The eponymous heroine of Matilda has parents who are neglectful to the point of being abusive. Sophie in The BFG is extracted from her natal home in order to experience good and bad surrogacy – from giants (ie Dahlesquely huge men). The infanticidal witches of The Witches stand proxy for all mothers – who kill that which they claim to love; true, the boy’s Norwegian grandmother is a good enough parent, but then she’s safely de-sexed by age and illness. Only Danny, the Champion of the World presents an idealised parent – and that, also, has to be a man.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

I don’t adore Dahl’s children’s fiction in spite of its submerged misogyny, lust, revanchism and wilful neglect of identity politics – I love it precisely because of these attributes. Dahl understood intuitively the truth best exemplified by a famous scene in The Simpsons, when Bart overhears Marge saying to Homer “Kids can be so cruel” and, taking it as an injunction, cries out: “We can? Thanks Mom!” There then comes the sound of his rapid footsteps along the hall, followed by Lisa’s pained cry: “Owwww! Bart, cut it out!” Dahl’s books resound down through the generations with the demented call “We can!” and its pained response “Owwww!”

And long may they do so.

The Full Essay By Will Self Is Here

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Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

Fox News’ highest rating show still only pulls less than one-third the number of Americans who tune in to watch Two And A Half Men.

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Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

British kids/adults comedy show ‘The Goodies’ explored the controversy of American biowarfare bases in England, back in 1975, with plenty of digs about toxic waste dumping and the then recent Watergate revelations of espionage and surveillance recordings :

Part Two Of The Goodies ‘Clown Virus’ Episode Is Here

Part Three Is Here

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Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

The Los Angeles Police Department has a new TV ad to ensure you understand that you live in a surveillance society, and there’s nothing you can do about it, except report on your friends and neighbours :

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Written by Michael Vass

Recently, President Obama made a statement that

‘They [some in the media] keep asking me – Why haven’t you ended world hunger yet? I’ve only been in office 9 months. What do they expect.’

And I have to agree that such superhuman expectations are insane. Though I find it interesting that President Obama makes this statement as an insult and attack on specific cable news networks and critics. Especially since the people that expected President Obama to walk on water have never been his critics.

Speaking for myself, I have always judged President Obama as a President. As such the buck stops at him. Plus, I hold him at his word. Thus he is responsible for what he has said and what he has done.

President Obama was the one that stated, repeatedly, that Afghanistan was the most important area of fighting that the U.S. could or should be involved with. He chose a lead commander for that theater of operations. And it was President Obama alone that has both ignored his own choice and currently continues to waffle on making a decision on what he has called the most vital area of fighting.

So if I think President Obama is weak and indecisive, it because he is a human that does not follow through.

President Obama was the person that insisted that America must speak with every world leader, even those the diametrically oppose our existence. It was his plan to engage in talks with the likes of Iran, North Korea, and Venezuala. And so far the talks with each of these nations has resulted in an increased threat. North Korea and Iran have launched over a dozen rockets, announcing their growing ability to endanger allies and American interests. Both nation have increased their abilities to create nuclear weapons, and are aggressively moving those programs forward. But America can say that we have talked to them.

So if I don’t feel safer it’s because President Obama is a man and nuclear weapons can’t be turned into daffodils.

President Obama directly and clearly stated that America was headed into a depression greater than ever seen before. He insisted that unless a Stimulus package no one had read was passed immediately America would feel an economic pain never before seen. And since that Bill was passed, with only a fraction of the money allocated being spent, every metric that he claimed as proof has become worse than his projections – even worse than if we had done nothing at all.

In fact, at this point according to reports from States across the nation, the Stimulus is the worst legislation economically in years. Not only did it fail to create jobs in the worst hit States (Rhode Island created or saved 6 jobs at the cost of billions of dollars) it did not create a meaningful number of jobs in States with the least problems (Colorado has a 7.3% unemployment rate – one of the lowest in the nation and below the national average by almost 3%. They created or saved just over 4,600 jobs).

At a cost of $71,400 per job created or saved – jobs that pay on average $32,000 a year – insane amounts of waste have occurred. Thus if I feel President Obama is delusional and a spendthrift, it’s only because I can add.

Now to point all these things out, and there are many others, is to be racist according to some. But I do not believe the Presidency is racial, nor is it biased in any manner to connect promises and actions to results. It is not superhuman to make a plan and to fail at that plan. Nor is the expectation to see some positive results from a plan close to walking on water or ending world hunger.

Perhaps President Obama has confused his critics with the Nobel Peace Prize committee. They hope and expect President Obama will cure world hunger and eliminate nuclear weapons while improving the global economy. They gave him a Peace Prize just for those future accomplishments. Those are superhuman expectations. But they come from his supporters.

I simply want the same things from President Obama that I expect of any President. A cohesive set of plans, action in a timely manner, and actions in the best interest of the nation – not his personal goals and ambitions, nor those of his political party.

Trying to deflect criticism, and hide from the results of actions he has put in place over the last 9 months is not Presidential. It is not superhuman. It is very ordinary and sub-average for a person in the most powerful position in the world.

Perhaps if President Obama spent as much time getting things done in an effective and cost-realistic manner as he does trying to have the world like him I would have less criticism. But he took the job he wanted. And the buck stops at the top.

I don’t want my President to walk on water. But I do expect and demand that he be a President of the nation. Faults and all. If President Obama cannot, or will not, understand that then the remaining 3 years and 3 months will be far less pleasant for him than the past 9 months have been.

Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

How can a doctrine of peace and forgiveness become so absolutely fucking perverted?

The idea of witchcraft is hardly new, but it has taken on new life recently partly because of a rapid growth in evangelical Christianity. Campaigners against the practice say around 15,000 children have been accused in two of Nigeria’s 36 states over the past decade and around 1,000 have been murdered. In the past month alone, three Nigerian children accused of witchcraft were killed and another three were set on fire.

Nigeria is one of the heartlands of abuse, but hardly the only one: the United Nations Children’s Fund says tens of thousands of children have been targeted throughout Africa.

Before the brutally superstitious, and probably mentally ill, King James commissioned a politically motivated rewrite of The Bible, “witch” meant “midwife.”

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Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

A virtual glimpse of the island that became Manhattan, as it probably looked in 1609 :

A fascinating story :

“We used old maps to re-plot all 66 miles of old Manhattan streams, all 300 miles worth of freshwater springs.

“It was incredible to imagine the British settlers leading their bison across the iced up Hudson from Staten Island to Manhattan.”

Dr Sanderson believes that even though New York is a mecca to money now and the home of the skyscraper, in its natural heyday it could have been a competitor to Yosemite Park for beauty.

The Full Story Is Here

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