Friday, May 18, 2007

Principalities and Powers



Well, God is in heaven and we all want what's his
But power and greed and corruptible seed
Seem to be all that there is - Bob Dylan


You know Jack Kirby? Even if you don't, there's an old, rare interview with him here worth watching. Because Kirby, like few others, helped shape America's popular imagination. Which is, perhaps disturbingly so, the universe in which we often find ourselves.

"Everybody else had their gods," he asked. "What are ours?" Kirby made comic books, but he made them out of myth and religion. He found Galactus in the Bible, and Silver Surfer became his fallen angel. And though the costumes and the muscles may look absurd, his source materials were that which have made and broken civilizations. Which arguably, right there, is another absurdity.

Alright then; but what's that to do with Jerry Falwell, and why is his head on the body of the "Madman from Sudan," Abdullah the Butcher?

Well, Abdullah the Butcher is actually Larry Shreve from Windsor, Ontario. He runs a rib and Chinese food joint outside Atlanta now, though at 70 he still wrestles. He's older than Kirby's Captain America, who also was someone else when he set aside his cowl and shield. Shreve's said to be a nice guy outside the ring, but inside he'll still fuck you up.

"Who are our evil gods?" asked Kirby. To many on America's liberal left, Falwell was one. He was the christofascist nightmare who was to mandate prayer and criminalize abortion. Falwell's religion was a modern, Anglo-American dispensationalist cult befitting a comic book - Jack Chick was his Jack Kirby - and it was an angry shout to secular and pluralist America: You're going down!

Through seven years of Bush and many years before, Republicans have spent Falwell's support as electoral capital, and Democrats have held it up as a scary lightening rod to animate their own base. But Falwell's dead, and the Handmaid's Tale remains a fiction. (Though a fiction within the meta-fiction of contemporary America.) Perhaps, after all, he was more Larry Shreve than Galactus.

To liberal and progressive Americans, Falwell has been the man you love to hate. And he sure knew how to put on an entertaining show. ("The pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians" were responsible for 9/11? That's some conspiracy theory.) But Falwell was not the force he pretended to be, nor the power most begging for contention. Falwell was, in the end, another asset of Sun Myung Moon, whose influence upon the life of America's elite remains largely unsuspected and invisible. Thirty years ago, the Congressional Investigation of Korean-American relations reported

During the investigation, the subcommittee found it very difficult to obtain reliable information about the extent to which Moon industries were involved in weapons production and sales. The Moon Organization has self-proclaimed goals of controlling political and secular institutions and a strident ideology which envisions the formation of a “Unification Crusade Army.” Moon’s speeches forsee an apocalyptic confrontation involving the united States, Russia, China, Japan, and North and South Korea, in which the Moon Organization would play a key role, Under these circumstances, the subcommittee believes it is in the interest of the United States to know what control Moon and his followers have over instruments of war and to what extent they are in a position to influence Korean defense policies.

Falwell was a wrestler in a ring, but if that's all you saw you were missing the best part.

60 Comments:

Blogger TAFFY said...

Galactus eater of worlds.Can you dig it? check the Hitchens obituary

5/18/2007 02:42:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't intend to distract from the topic, but has anyone else received the American Community Survey? I smell Department of Homeland Security and DARPA all over this thing....and I don't want to comply, because it is very detailed and personal, however, we have received multiple notices in the mail that it is required by law to cooperate. Will we go to jail if we refuse? Will we be fined? Will we be put on the "No Fly" list?

5/18/2007 05:06:00 PM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

IC, you do like to pile on the questions, don't you?

My time is limited so I'm just going to pick & choose.

"You don’t seem willing to accept the cynical view that the prison economy itself creates criminals (although I doubt you really have much faith in the integrity of any of our institutions, either.)"

I'll agree that it feeds itself certain types of criminals, say drug users or prostitutes.
We part ways on crimes like murder or rape.


"Why is it that black folks in particular are so much more affected by the collapse of decency, and why is that among the nations of the world, we, the trend-setters, the world leaders are the most depraved?"

I'm not so sure that black folks are any more affected than white folks.

Sure, they're a large percentage of the prison population, but most of those are drug related. I know oodles of whites who do drugs too, they're just not targeted by law enforcement.

As far as violence goes, are they really any more violent than white folk?

Maybe their crimes are flashier & more in your face, but don't you think that all those white folk who have gleefully bought into "the empire" have much more subtle ways to appease their homocidal tendencies?

"Thing, is, however, that this organic design thing really does work, and this goes far beyond technology, naturally."

I can't argue with you IC. I'll just take your word for it.
But what do we do with all of these nice brick & wood homes that leak energy like a sieve?

"just like you do with your work. You are, after all, obviously not in it for the money. You’re every bit as committed to fighting the good fight, righting the karmic balance, as the most wild-eyed optimist; you just don’t talk about it in those terms."

While the kind words are nice IC, I'm actually contemplating quitting & doing something else.

As far as the question that you refer to as "the stickiest one," I'm not exactly sure I understand what you're asking.

One more thing IC, you might find this interesting. When ever my friend Chris talks about his home it mostly deals with his extended family & how they help each other out. It's obvious he misses that kind of familial connection & community.
But when I told him the story about the little old lady who my wife & I rode home, he was actually amazed that we took her into our house & helped her.
He said he'd have immediately called the cops. Whenever anyone asks him for help he instantly becomes paranoid that they want to harm him in some way.

So much for the American Dream, eh?



& Shrub, you said:

"has anyone else received the American Community Survey?"

Yep.

"Will we go to jail if we refuse? Will we be fined? Will we be put on the "No Fly" list?"

I have no idea, but I hate surveys.
I have the annoying habit, when surveyed, to just make shit up.

5/18/2007 06:11:00 PM  
Blogger acl said...

Once you get past the obvious absurdity of it, those Chick tracts are awesome. Sort of like once you stopped being incensed/horrifed at the entrapment of To Catch A Predator you find the Zen of Chris Hanson.

Think of something that you find morally ambiguous and make the worst joke about it you can think of. The inhibitions just melt away..

Doesn't thrill the PC folks so much though

My confirmation code is szaaham..syncronicity?

5/18/2007 08:40:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The figurative speaks louder than the literal. That picture is anguiform. Falwell was just a tree in influence to us worthless eaters. To find out more about this pit of vipers find out about the Council for National Policy. At the Rigorous Intuition Discussion Board in the category Justice please read about the International Criminal Court & Public Law 102-14 U.S. to get an idea of the bigger picture.

5/18/2007 09:13:00 PM  
Blogger ericswan said...

IC..I read the Germano material on Schauberger sometime ago but did not parse the "Age of Aquarius" connotation that was contained therein. One of Tesla's early early inventions was a smooth disk that works better than one with an irregular surface in a water pump. Might be something in that and where Tesla went with it. His turbines however didn't follow that program. The study of fluidics may very well revolutionize society yet.

5/18/2007 09:50:00 PM  
Blogger Mark said...

Falwell as a Moon shadow, eh?
Interesting. (I'm glad Jeff described that picture because it was lost on me. I didn't even recognize Falwell there until Jeff said it was him, I didn't know whether to interpret it as a wrestling badge or a scaled up wristwatch across his chest that would become clear for some arcane purpose in a moment, when I started reading. :-) )

Does Jeff think that Moon is a shadow of something else? Or has he been completely 'integrated'? As some form of proxy movement? Curious about that. If Moon can intimidate the Bushes with his Washington Times high pedophile elite coverage, who knows what goes on, on the dark side of the Moon.


ericswan said:

"One of Tesla's early early inventions was a smooth disk that works better than one with an irregular surface in a water pump. Might be something in that and where Tesla went with it."

It went on to be patented and is in use today. I've seen a Tesla documentary with one pumping water from a lake, shooting it 30 or so feet into the sky from the bank, as well as others saying it was being used in moving sewer biosolids without gumming or damaging everything like other rotary bladed pumps.

It's really funny, though think about it: without Tesla, where would we be now?

It would still be the 1800s, probably. AC power assuredly would not exist, and with it scaled power lines would be missing. Electricity would be DC, localized, highly expensive, and likely always shorting out without the rotating magnetic field dynamo of Tesla. Hydroelectric power scale dams would not probably exist. Niagara Falls would be Edison instead of Westinghouse--if it even existed at all since Niagara falls power station (world's first) might not even exist, since it was to send power over long distances to elsewhere which wouldn't work with DC.

The electrical capacities for uranium separation and purifications (huge), or the requirements of it in aluminum smelting (huge, started at Niagra Falls) would probably mean a very different and less scaled violent world. Pro and con I guess. Aluminum is a terrible poison. Airplanes might still be wood or some plastic "already". Electrically melted steel might be a fantasy, and many heavy industries might be even more polluting (given that electricity still comes from coal or oil derivatives). And what about Townsend Brown's electrically ionized flying discs, quickly put into the black projects, would probabaly not exist. The U.S. black budgets would probably be much smaller without Tesla's contributions at the start. The U.S. might not even be conquering the world without Tesla. Radio might even be pretty new in the 21st century, given Marconi borrowed heavily from Tesla.

As the years go by, the effects on the world by that one man seem ever more of a huge abrupt break in human development where we went flying off on the scale. Our capacities to alter the world particularly the issue of scale by his inventions are bogging when attempting to "deTesla-ize" such a hypothetical world. It's like all of history squeezed through Tesla, then exploded afterward.

5/18/2007 10:58:00 PM  
Blogger Mark said...

From one of Jeff's links above, Moon as some kind of James Bond 'SPECTRE' and religion rolled into one:

As part of his business strategy, Moon explained that he would dot the continent with small airstrips and construct bases for submarines which could evade Coast Guard patrols. His airfield project would allow tourists to visit “hidden, untouched, small places” throughout South America, he said.

“Therefore, they need small airplanes and small landing strips in the remote countryside,” Moon said. “In the near future, we will have many small airports throughout the world.” Moon wanted the submarines because “there are so many restrictions due to national boundaries worldwide. If you have a submarine, you don’t have to be bound in that way.”

(As strange as Moon’s submarine project might sound, a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Japan, dated Feb. 18, 1994, cited press reports that a Moon-connected Japanese company, Toen Shoji, had bought 40 Russian submarines. The subs were supposedly bound for North Korea where they were to be dismantled and melted down as scrap.)"


and very SPECTRE like, Moon as Dr. No in Uraguay, that location where Bush family wants to escape to as well:

Moon’s relocation to Uruguay didn’t go entirely without a hitch. More evidence surfaced about Moon’s alleged South American money laundry.

In 1996, the Uruguayan bank employees union blew the whistle on one scheme in which some 4,200 female Japanese followers of Moon allegedly walked into the Moon-controlled Banco de Credito in Montevideo and deposited as much as $25,000 each.

The money from the women went into the account of an anonymous association called Cami II, which was controlled by Moon’s Unification Church.

In one day, Cami II received $19 million and, by the time the parade of women ended, the total had swelled to about $80 million.

It was not clear where the money originated, nor how many other times Moon’s organization has used this tactic – sometimes known as “smurfing” – to transfer untraceable cash into Uruguay.

Authorities did not push the money-laundering investigation, apparently out of deference to Moon’s political influence and fear of disrupting Uruguay’s banking industry.

Still, Opus Dei, a powerful Roman Catholic group, and some investigative journalists kept up pressure for a fuller examination of financial irregularities at Moon’s bank. Sometimes, the critics found their work a risky business.
In January 1997, only two months after the money-laundering flap, Pablo Alfano, a reporter for El Observador who had been investigating Moon’s operations, was kidnapped by two unidentified men.

The men claimed not to belong to Moon’s Unification Church, but threatened Alfano at gunpoint unless he revealed his sources on Moon’s operations.

One gunman shoved a revolver into Alfano’s mouth and warned “this is no joke.” After holding Alfano for 30 minutes, the gunmen returned the reporter to his house, with a warning that they knew his movements and those of his family.

Despite the threats, the reporter said he refused to disclose his sources. But the message was clear: he should drop his investigation. [fn, FBIS, Jan. 30, 1997.]

Other critics condemned Moon’s heavy-handed tactics. “The first thing we ought to do is clarify to the people [of Uruguay] that Moon’s sect is a type of modern pirate that came to the country to perform obscure money operations, such as money laundering,” said Jorge Zabalza, who was a leader of the Movimiento de Participacion Popular, part of Montevideo’s ruling left-of-center political coalition. “This sect is a kind of religious mob that is trying to get public support to pursue its business.”

Finally, in 1998, Uruguayan Central Bank president Ramon Diaz pushed the long-whispered allegations against Moon’s bank into the parliamentary record. Diaz accused Banco de Credito of violating financial rules, operating at a constant loss, practicing dubious credit policies with insolvent customers and holding inadequate cash reserves.

Diaz demanded that the bank add $30 million in capital within 48 hours or face government intervention.

Within hours, panicked customers pulled $10 million in deposits out of the bank.

Diaz’s goal of forcing Moon to sell the bank seemed within reach.

One senator claimed that Diaz hoped an Argentine investment group would step in and take over the bank.

Moon proved, however, that his seemingly bottomless well of cash could fill the bank’s vaults in a crisis. Before the 48-hour deadline, Moon transferred $30 million into the ailing bank and retained control.

Banco de Credito continued to suffer chronic financial troubles. The bank again slipped into a deficit estimated at $120 million.


Same Japanese "smurfing" going on in the USA by the Moon Church:

First-Hand Evidence

In Nansook Moon’s 1998 memoirs, In the Shadow of the Moons, Moon’s ex-daughter-in-law – writing under her maiden name Nansook Hong – alleged that Moon’s organization had engaged in a long-running conspiracy to smuggle cash into the United States and to deceive U.S. Customs agents.

“The Unification Church was a cash operation,” Nansook Hong wrote. “I watched Japanese church leaders arrive at regular intervals at East Garden [the Moon compound north of New York City] with paper bags full of money, which the Reverend Moon would either pocket or distribute to the heads of various church-owned business enterprises at his breakfast table.

“The Japanese had no trouble bringing the cash into the United States; they would tell customs agents that they were in America to gamble at Atlantic City. In addition, many businesses run by the church were cash operations, including several Japanese restaurants in New York City. I saw deliveries of cash from church headquarters that went directly into the wall safe in Mrs. Moon’s closet.”

Mrs. Moon pressed her daughter-in-law into one cash-smuggling incident after a trip to Japan in 1992, Nansook Hong wrote.

Mrs. Moon had received “stacks of money” and divvied it up among her entourage for the return trip through Seattle, Nansook Hong wrote. “I was given $20,000 in two packs of crisp new bills,” she recalled. “I hid them beneath the tray in my makeup case. ... I knew that smuggling was illegal, but I believed the followers of Sun Myung Moon answered to higher laws.”

U.S. currency laws require that cash amounts above $10,000 be declared at Customs when the money enters or leaves the country. It is also illegal to conspire with couriers to bring in lesser amounts when the total exceeds the $10,000 figure.

In the Shadow of the Moons raised anew the question of whether Moon’s money laundering – from mysterious sources in both Asia and South America – has made him a conduit for illicit foreign money influencing the U.S. government and American politics.

Moon’s spokesmen have denied that he launders drug money or moves money from other criminal enterprises. They attribute his wealth to donations and business profits, but have refused to open Moon’s records for public inspection.

Still, Nansook Hong’s first-hand allegations and the alleged money-laundering in Uruguay might reasonably have prompted more questions in the United States about how Moon could continue lavishing billions of dollars on U.S. conservative publications and causes.


And Moon bailed out Falwell's flagship enterprises as well, even, and the Falwell and Moon personnel criss-crossed to make it very much the same organization:

Covertly, Moon had helped bail out Liberty University through one of his front groups which funneled $3.5 million to the Reber-Thomas Christian Heritage Foundation, the non-profit that had purchased the school’s debt.

I discovered this Moon-Falwell connection while looking for something else: how much Moon’s Women’s Federation for World Peace had paid former President George H.W. Bush for a series of speeches in Asia in 1995.

I obtained the federation’s Internal Revenue Service records but discovered that Bush’s undisclosed speaking fee was buried in a line item of $13.6 million for conference expenses.

There was, however, another listing for a $3.5 million “educational” grant to the Christian Heritage Foundation. A call to the Virginia corporate records office confirmed that the foundation was the one run by [Falwell bailout organizers] Reber and Thomas.

In a subsequent interview, the Women Federation’s vice president Susan Fefferman confirmed that the $3.5 million grant had gone to “Mr. Falwell’s people” for the benefit of Liberty University.

“It was Dan Reber,” she said. But she could not recall much else about the grant, even though it was by far the largest single grant awarded by the federation that year.

For details on the grant, Fefferman referred me to Keith Cooperrider, the federation’s treasurer. Cooperrider was also the chief financial officer of Moon’s Washington Times and a longtime Unification Church functionary.

Cooperrider did not return calls seeking comment.

Falwell and Reber also failed to respond to my calls, though Falwell later defended his acceptance of the money by saying it had no influence on his ministry.

...

But the public record also reveals that Falwell solicited Moon’s help in bailing out Liberty University. In a lawsuit filed in the Circuit Court of Bedford County – a community in southwestern Virginia – two of Reber’s former business associates alleged that Reber and Falwell flew to South Korea on Jan. 9, 1994, on a seven-day “secret trip” to meet “with representatives of the Unification Church.”

The court document states that Reber and Falwell were accompanied to South Korea by Ronald S. Godwin, who had been executive director of Falwell’s Moral Majority before signing on as vice president of Moon’s Washington Times.

According to Bedford County court records, Reber, Falwell and Godwin also had discussions at Liberty University in 1993 with Dong Moon Joo, one of Moon’s right-hand men and president of the Washington Times.

5/18/2007 11:44:00 PM  
Blogger Andrew Thomas said...

Folks here in Korea don't know much about Moon either. When I bring him up, I usually get a smirk or a laugh and a remark about gullible middle class women (here and in Japan), and their tireless devotion to this 'saviour' ..

5/19/2007 12:54:00 AM  
Blogger Mark said...

Interesting dynamic here. Falwell before he got Moon money, absolutely seemed to hate Moon. This is from 1978, posted at Rotten.com:

Because of these antics and his blasphemous theology, you might expect that Moon would be shunned by respected Christian leaders. Which he is. For instance, Jerry Falwell told Esquire magazine in 1978: "Reverend Sun Myung Moon is like the plague: he exploits boys and girls, and he should be exported. [sic]"

Later of course, from the above, Falwell got to be buddies with Moon and their operations were cojoined.

excerpted from:
http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/religion/cult/sun-myung-moon/

nice picture of Moon hugging Falwell at that link, which Jeff posted on one of his "Moon posts" as well.

And I think I answered my question myself, the one I asked Jeff. Jeff previously wrote in one of his Moon articles:

"Many of America's conservative Christians may be surprised to learn their Christian Right isn't so Christian anymore. Over the past 15 years, it's been largely bought, borrowed, compromised and blackmailed by Reverend Sun Myung Moon. And what Moon represents is yet another hub in the fascist/intelligence/criminal nexus of money laundering, drug trafficking and arms dealing we frequently see behind the thinning veil of America.

And a comment from an anon there, quoting from a Moon speech:

""My dream," according to a l973 speech,"is to organize a Christian political party including all the Protestant denominations, Catholic, and all the religious sects. We can embrace the religious world in one arm and the political world in the other...The whole world is in my hand, and I will conquer and subjugate the world."

Moon has been explicit about his plan to "unify" the world under a global theocracy and his opposition to constitutional democracy.

Alan Tate Wood, a former high official in the church, quoted Moon as saying that "God is phasing out democracy." Wood testified to Congress that Moon told followers in 1970 that the U.S. was to come under UC dominance. "Part of our strategy," Moon said, "must be to make friends in the FBI, the CIA, and the police forces, the military and business community... as a means of entering the political arena, influencing foreign policy, and ultimately of establishing absolute dominion over the American people."

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/groupwatch/ucm.php

Most Xtians won't notice the difference; people who care about democracy will."


and another Jeff quote from another Moon post:

"In the early stages of the Reagan Revolution that embraced the Washington Times and Moon's anti-Communist movement, it was embarrassing to be caught at a Moon event," wrote The Gadflyer last year. "Until George H.W. Bush appeared with Moon in 1996, thanking him for a newspaper that 'brings sanity to Washington.'" That was while on an extended trip to South America in Moon's company. A Reuters' story of Nov 25 of that year describes the former president as "full of praise" for Moon at a banquet in Buenos Aires, toasting him as "the man with the vision." (And Moon helped Bush out with his own vision thing, paying him $100,000 for the pleasure of his company.) Bush and Moon then travelled together to Uruguay, "to help him inaugurate a seminary in the capital, Montevideo, to train 4,200 young Japanese women to spread the word of his Church of Unification across Latin America."

4,200, eh? Is that the 4,200 he unanimously ordered to 'smurf' his money into that bank, mentioned above, in the same year Moon/Bush were in Uruguay? From a different article:

"Moon’s relocation to Uruguay didn’t go entirely without a hitch. More evidence surfaced about Moon’s alleged South American money laundry.

In 1996, the Uruguayan bank employees union blew the whistle on one scheme in which some 4,200 female Japanese followers of Moon allegedly walked into the Moon-controlled Banco de Credito in Montevideo and deposited as much as $25,000 each.

The money from the women went into the account of an anonymous association called Cami II, which was controlled by Moon’s Unification Church."


Another quote from a comment:

From NarcoNews.com:

"Senator Domingo Laino sees a different pattern in Moon's acquisitions. "There are two principal branches to Moon's interest in Paraguay," he said, "control of the largest fresh drinking water source in the world and control of the narcotics business", which is so prevalent in this area. "President Lula told me that Brazil took serious measures to curb Moon a few years back as it became evident that he was buying up the border between our two countries," said the senator.

http://tinyurl.com/6stkq

and:

T.R.U. said...

Oh yeah. According to Rick Ross, the Moonies were ordered to pay 29 million yen to 20 ex-followers for brainwashing them. Where there's smoke, there's fire.

http://www.rickross.com/reference/unif/unif138.html

More creepy moonie quotes (lots of good stuff here):

http://www.retakingamerica.com/sun_myung_moon_001.html
"Any politician who wants to run for president will come to me in a few years."
Sun Myung Moon, Today's World, Nov./Dec. 1994, p.19"


Here's a list of moonie front groups: http://www.tlem.org/moon7.htm

and

Anonymous said...

It is probably worth adding to my 4:35 comment, that in January, NarcoNews also reported (without specifically mentioning Moon) that new land smuggling routes have recently been opened between Brazil and Paraguay.

http://tinyurl.com/6cvws

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/02/life-and-moonie-times-of-george-hw.html

"T.R.U." went on to say:

If Moon is trying to control resources and water rights, then he might have his greasy palms in Canadian politics. We've got 25% of the world's freshwater, or so I hear.I can't find any connections, though.

Anonymous said...

It may only be coincidence that the Lincoln bedroom was recently remodeled,featuring royal purple draperies and a gilded crown. Moonie motifs motives?

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/02/life-and-moonie-times-of-george-hw.html

A theocratic cult with a submarine fleet and ties to the world of narcotics and smuggling, crowned by U.S. Senators in a federal building. Charming. I think Balzac would have loved to write about Moon.

5/19/2007 11:58:00 AM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

Richard,

I think that the % of drug offenders is the most blatant example of the hypocrisy and the cannibalism of the prison economy, but it goes deeper than that, too, in all kinds of sickly symbiotic ways.

It also feeds right ino the question of violence in the black community. White kids are largely de-sensitized to violence through the blending of reality & imagery that Mark & ericswan were talking about a few threads back, while their brothers in the medieval american ghettos live with a starker version of it everday. The city I live in, for example, traps 96% of the black population in a rectangular central core whose boundaries do not move--no matter how many times red-lining & black-listing by insurance & mortagage companies is exposed in what passes for the "free press" here, nothing changes because the city fathers are so committed to taking a very cynical stand against white flight.

The result is that you have poverty, multi-generational familiarity with the correctional game, abuse, and all those other ugly elements we all know about but don't care to look at much creating a sort of social pressure-cooker.

The reason I'm so fired up about my little project is that it hopes to defuse this bomb, stop the self-feeding cycle. You ask what we're to do with our leaky, toxic boxes--well, and you realize that in these inner city neighborhoods they really are toxic, we dismantle them. We're going one step better than the Amish here, because this barn-raising starts with a tearing down of the hateful, roach & rat riddled walls, not in the style of the Watts riots, but in the sober catharsis of a sane solution. I know it's a long shot, but it could work.


ericswan & Mark,

Yeah, that Schauberger/Tesla thing is an unexplored technical aspect to the world's crises. While it's true that Tesla's influence is already huge and that much evil use has been made of his devices, this is the nature of all technology. Prometheus' gift is not child or idiot proof my any means. The question is whether these ideas--biomimckry & tapping into unlimited, untethered energies can be put into the service of man and the eartrh, instead of some men against the earth.

There are many more interesting links beyond Germano, but he is a good place to start.

5/19/2007 02:15:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. I enjoyed living south of 8 Mile. Living there gave me a vigilant peace of mind. I liked living in areas where white people are in the minority. I worked for the Detroit Free Press and as an independent contractor with a realty company. I never had much trouble with blacks in Detroit but I did have trouble with whites. White people automatically thinking I was racist because I communicated with blacks. Assuming the worst case scenario. Or white men that had something to prove because of the reputation that the city has. The Murder Capital of the World.

I enjoyed living in Detroit. In the black neighborhoods I felt at ease. It was a more mature environment than the more white dominated areas just outside the border surrounding Detroit. In these areas it was a mentality that you are either a racist or you did not mind being around blacks. The people who considered you a possible racist are much more likely to be dysfunctional. Some blacks would sympathize with them nonchalantly.

I lived in the city. I know about many of the problems there. But most of the neighborhoods are not a hellish nightmare world. Especially if you are black. If I was black I would choose to live in the city. Because the city is much more fun to live in. The suburbs have prissy self-centered whites in them who don't know how to have as much fun.

You can go to Mae Brussels site to learn about Mr. Moon too if you have not already. She had gathered a lot of knowledge about him as well.

5/19/2007 04:51:00 PM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

Belliosto,

You & Richard bring up an interesting point--it's not just the falling apart houses in the inner city that need to be rebuilt, even though that has been the main thrust of what I've been trying to get started. The white neighborhoods, those soulless suburbs that Rush sings about in Subdivisions (the new one has further connections to this theme) are also detrimental to what Richard's African friend was talking about--the extended family & neighborhood web of relationships that provide the framework for community.

Many people at this point say, "Yeah, okay, but where's the money going to come from?" The answer is that cleaning up the messes we've made and remaking our civilization are the new industries; what we make is the new wealth, held either in common (the co-op model) or in autonomous, decentralized plots. One way to look at it is the resource based economy from the Venus Project, while I'm sure that Mark's vision of bioregionalism has a similar plan. This is also the impetus behind Willowater.

It seems funny to be talking about this community and spiritual oriented way of thinking in the middle of a thread dedicated to such ghouls as Falwell and Moon. Sorry, Jeff!

5/19/2007 05:15:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Part of a transcript of a January 21, 1992 broadcast, "Frontline: The Resurrection Of Reverend Moon."

Narrator: On February 9, 1991, in Rapid City, South Dakota, more than a thousand people rallied in support of U.S. troops fighting in the Persian Gulf.

The rally was sponsored in part by a group of local veterans. Dianne Petersen was the rally's principle
organizer.

Petersen: "I'm a vet myself and I have, I had a sister over there and I really just wanted to do something in support of the troops. So I organized what I called the Little Yellow Ribbon Walk.

Petersen walking in parade: "It's great, many more than I expected."

Petersen: "And I was approached by the American Freedom Coalition, who told me they had a rally planned for the same day and wanted to merge with me."

Narrator: The American Freedom Coalition was a group few people in Rapid City had heard of - and one citizen, Marv Kammerer, was curious.

Kammerer: "About the same time I noticed a billboard on the east side of Rapid City that said Support Our Troops, Join the Freedom March, and on that same sign was the American Freedom Coalition...You know when people buy billboards, it takes money, and local groups, don't spend that kind of money...I get to thinking, 'What is this?' I ask my Congressmen & Senators and they don't tell me. They don't give me the information. So I go to the library and I find some interesting things. The American Freedom Coalition is an extension of the Unification Church - Moonies for short."

Mazzio: "And to find out the Unification Church is behind it, that sort of, you know, sort of threw me. Um, I say to myself, 'What are they trying to gain from this?' Because everybody's heard of the Unification Church. We've all heard of the Reverend Moon. What's he got behind it?"

Petersen: "I felt a little bit abused because...I felt I was used, my influence with the veteran's organizations was probably a little bit used."

Kammerer: "The vets did not know who they were associated with - and that is their own damn fault. One has to be very careful when people start waving the flag, finding out really what is behind it and what are their motives. We have a weakness in this country to almost give away the bank, if someone waves a flag high enough and long enough. Especially if he packs a Bible."

Narrator: The day before the Rapid City rally, the 18th annual Conservative Political Action Conference was underway in Washington. Part cocktail party, part political bazaar, part serious examination of the issues, its sponsors included pillars of the American Right, such as the Heritage Foundation & the American Conservative Union. There was also the American Freedom Coalition.

Robert Grant, president of the American Freedom Coalition, spoke at the conference banquet. In his remarks, Grant announced that the AFC was sponsoring pro-Desert Storm rallies not just in South Dakota, but in all fifty states.

Grant: "With Governors & Congressmen & Senators & veterans organizations working together to send a message across the seas to Saddam Hussein and to the men and women of Desert Storm."

Rev. Jackie Roberts: "Once again, let's say God bless America! (People answer 'God bless America') C'mon - God bless America!"

Narrator: The American Freedom Coalition's Desert Storm rallies are only the latest effort by Sun Myung Moon to influence American public opinion. Moon's Unification Movement has long supported the projection of American military power overseas.

5/19/2007 10:38:00 PM  
Blogger Dr. Bombay said...

Re: Shrub

" A census taker tried to
quantify me once. I ate
his liver with some fava
beans and a nice Chianti."

Dr. Lector

And let that survey be a
warning to anyone who has ever
filed a tax return. As far
as Falwell is concerned he
was a shill and a hustler,
just like all the rest. People
of true spirit dont TELL you
how to live your life, they
SHOW you how by setting an
example to follow. And they
certainly dont play on your
fear of death by asking you
for money to buy your way into
the Kingdom Of Heaven.

5/20/2007 02:55:00 PM  
Blogger Anna said...

What sort of questions are on the American Community Survey? Here in the UK, we're campaigning against the database state. However, the government has got away with asking 200 questions before they give you a passport.

5/20/2007 04:53:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Full Name of all individuals living at residence
Phone Number
# of people living at residence
Ages
Dates of birth
Places of birth
Salary
Relationship of people living at residence.
Race
Citizenship status
Gas And Electricity Cost
Mortgage Cost
Real Estate Taxes
Place of Employ
Salary
Education

It goes on and on...it's ridiculously lengthy and it requires the info. on each person residing at the residence.

I don't like it......it raises a major red flag for me...especially considering the Patriot Act and The Department of Homeland Security.

Here's the letter they sent:

Dear Resident:

About three weeks ago, the U.S. Census Bureau sent an American Community Survey questionnaire to your address. I asked you to help us with this very important survey by completing it and mailing it back. But, we have not received it yet.

If you have already mailed your questionnaire, thank you very much. If you have not mailed the questionnaire, please send it soon. I have included another questionnaire with this letter. This survey is so important that a Census Bureau representative may attempt to contact you by telephone or personal visit if we do receive your questionnaire.

The information collected in this survey will help decide where new schools, hospitals, and fire stations are needed. The information also is used to develop programs to reduce traffic congestion, provide job training, and plan for the healthcare needs of the elderly.

The Census Bureau chose your address, not you personally, as part of a randomly selected sample. You are required by U.S. law to respond to the survey. The Census Bureau is required by U.S. law to keep your answers confidential. The enclosed brochure answers frequently asked questions about the survey.

If you need help filling out the questionnaire, please use the enclosed guide or call our toll free number (1-800-354-7271).

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Charles Louis Kincannon
Director, U.S. Census Bureau

Enclosures


My wife and I started to fill it out last time we received it and about a tenth of way in we both looked at each other and said "this smells." We chucked it in the garbage....but they are relentless.

This survey is so important that a Census Bureau representative....

They've been cutting domestic programs left and right and they obviously don't give a shit about adequate healthcare or traffic congestion...so his words ring hollow, and I'm suspicious that the motives may be ulerior...considering all the shit that seems to be going down and will be going down.

5/20/2007 06:42:00 PM  
Blogger Dr. Bombay said...

RE: Shrub's Survey

"You are required by U.S. law
to respond to the survey.."

Oh really? Gee..The last time
I checked the Fourth Amendment
to the Constitution still
protected my right not to have
to give ANY personal information
to ANY Governmental Agency.
Fuck'em. Ron Paul anyone?

5/20/2007 10:54:00 PM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

IC, what you said about your city & its stratified racial lines , white flight etc., doesn't really apply to Pittsburgh. The city is actually attracting upscale white folk & black folk back towards the city. What I find interesting though is exemplified by the neighborhood where I grew up. What you have there are essentially lower middle class row houses that sprung up around steel mills that no longer exist. As the older residents died off their descendents sold the houses. Sometimes they'd go for Section 8 welfare housing, sometimes they're sold to families &, increasingly, they're remodeled to some degree & sold for outlandish prices. Apartments above the storefronts that dot the main street used to be peopled by folk with little money. Sometimes they had communal bathrooms. Overall they were somewhere to live when you didn't have much economic choice about where you could live.
Now landlords knock down walls & rename them "loft" apartments & they're rented for exhorbitant amounts to arteests & such.
So what you end up with is a multi-flavored human stew of upscale doctors & lawyers & art-types mixing in with crack-heads & crack-hos old Polish grandmas & welfare mothers, gang-bangers & winos.

Our "leaders" have unveiled their latest political & fiscal panacea. They, the kind hearted well meaning souls that they are, have legalized gambling. We're going to have casinos, yee-ha. The resultant revenue is supposed to pull Pgh. out of the "collapse of the steel industry" doldrums it has been in for most of my life.

No, humongous drawbacks to that plan, eh IC?

Having known a few hard-core gamblers in my life I, deep in my paranoia, smell another vampiric parasite designed to suck the little remaining humanity from a mass of hopeful idjits.

& this, IC, is why I'm gun-shy about waxing rhapsodic about hope. I think "hope" is one of the easiest emotions to manipulate & twist. When folk ache to believe I have no doubt that there are those who are willing to manufacture some sweetly flavored bullshit to appease that hunger.

As the old saying goes, "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."

Another huge problem here is the slow collapse of the public transit system. They've recently eliminated "unprofitable" sections of their bus schedule. So if you're on one of these "unprofitable" routes, but need the bus to get to work, you are royally fucked.
Within the next month they're announcing more cutbacks. Couple that with Pgh. being designated second place in the "city with the worst air" category & I think you can see that our politicians have been quafting liberal gulps of the "mead of idiocy."

5/21/2007 01:47:00 AM  
Blogger Silverfox said...

It's far too easy too blame the likes of Falwell for simply cashing in on the American penchant for blaming anyone and anything else for their own shortcomings or the very extreme lengths they will go in trying to avoid facing them.

Falwell was what he was simply because there are far too many Americans that are only too willing to do or say quite literally anything or rationalize any kind of action or behavior that offers them even the faintest hope of proving to themselves they are somehow better than someone else.

That is no less obvious in international policies and affairs that are all predicated within that very same kind of context when it comes to any of their nation's shortcomings as well.

The Falwells, Robertsons, Swaggerts, Bakkers, et all certainly didn't create a society of people that has come to define almost every aspect of their lives in that way.

They are merely another symptom of just how pernicious, virulent and completely unseen that "dis-ease" is and has always been in the US.

5/21/2007 07:30:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Is the SPLC in bed with AIPAC and the ADL?

5/21/2007 10:12:00 AM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

Well, George Lewis told the Englishman, the Italian and the Jew
"You can't open your mind, boys
To every conceivable point of view."
They got Charles Darwin trapped out there on Highway Five
Judge says to the High Sheriff,
"I want him dead or alive
Either one, I don't care."
High Water everywhere
Bob Dylan

http://www.reason.com/news/show/119691.html

"A few years ago, I heard someone call into a right-wing radio show to rail against the feminists, the homosexuals, the atheists, and other usual suspects. The host enthusiastically agreed. The caller then voiced the hope that the host would join him in supporting the establishment of Islamic law in America, a twist that left the host sputtering incoherently.

These days, the idea of conservative Christians aligning themselves with radical Muslims is not a prank caller’s gag but the subject of heated debate on the right. Dinesh D’Souza sparked the argument with his controversial book The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11 (Random House).

D’Souza’s thesis is that America’s cultural left brought 9/11 upon us—not, as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell infamously suggested shortly after the event, by inviting the wrath of God, but by inviting the wrath of Muslims. How? Mainly by fostering “a decadent American culture that angers and repulses traditional societies” and by “waging an aggressive global campaign to undermine the traditional patriarchal family and to promote secular values.”"

-snip-

"
That said, some American social conservatives have long expressed guarded sympathy with the radical Muslim critique of Western “decadence.” Shortly after 9/11, marriage booster Maggie Gallagher wrote a column arguing that the honest answer to “Why do they hate us?” is “our sexual culture, which even to many Americans looks not only deeply destructive, but ugly.” (She went on to add that while both women and children in traditional Islamic culture suffer severe oppression, “the family system itself works.”)

In Christianity Today, managing editor Mark Galli urged a strong stand against terrorism but also sounded a startlingly sympathetic note toward the Islamic militants’ anger at the “hedonism,” “materialism,” and “secularism” the West was exporting into their cultures. In October 2004, in the same magazine, Watergate felon turned evangelical minister Chuck Colson warned that the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States would help radical Islamic terrorists by making “our kind of freedom abhorrent” to Muslims.

Meanwhile, in May of that year, former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan asserted in his syndicated column that on such issues as homosexuality, “conservative Americans have more in common with devout Muslims than with liberal Democrats.”

Chiding Bush for urging Muslims to embrace a version of liberty that includes the “freedom of Larry Flynt to produce pornography and of Salman Rushdie to publish The Satanic Verses,” Buchanan wrote, “If conservatives reject the ‘equality’ preached by Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, NARAL and the National Organization for Women, why seek to impose it on the Islamic world? Why not stand beside Islam, and against Hollywood and Hillary?”

In effect, D’Souza, Colson, Buchanan and company agree with the familiar sentiment that the terrorists “hate us for our freedoms.” Their conclusion, however, is that those freedoms should be curbed—though they would say that they are talking not about freedom itself but its excesses. According to D’Souza, those excesses include the notion that “men and women should have the same roles in society” or that “freedom of expression includes the right to publish material that is sexually explicit or blasphemous.”

Yet there is no reason to believe that Islamic radicals or even most Muslim traditionalists oppose merely the “excesses” of, say, women’s liberation rather than the basic notion of female equality. The Enemy at Home includes a sympathetic discussion of Islamist ideologue Sayyid Qutb’s critique of America’s moral decadence, but D’Souza neglects to mention that this critique was based on Qutb’s stay in the United States in the notoriously licentious period of 1948 to 1950."


http://www.sltrib.com/ci_5934072

The soldier son of talk radio relationship counselor Laura Schlessinger is under investigation for a graphic personal Web page that one Army official has called "repulsive."
The MySpace page, publicly available until Friday when it disappeared from the Internet, included cartoon depictions of rape, murder, torture and child molestation; photographs of soldiers with guns in their mouths; a photograph of a bound and blindfolded detainee captioned "My Sweet Little Habib"; accounts of illicit drug use; and a blog entry headlined by a series of obscenities and racial epithets.

& for ericswan:
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2007/5/prweb527358.htm

"A new report has been published which challenges certain basic assumptions about climate change. The report has been written by an independent lay researcher, and is backed by over 20 signatories from diverse backgrounds. The report presents significant ground-based and space-based data which indicates that ongoing illegal and unacknowledged aerosol spraying from aircraft could be affecting our climate. Copies of the report have been sent to Greenpeace, the Civil Aviation Authority, The Royal Air Force and DEFRA, challenging them to investigate the data themselves.

Derbyshire, UK (PRWEB) May 19, 2007 -- An independent lay researcher, with a background in Software Engineering, from Derbyshire, UK, has published a new report which documents ongoing illegal aerosol spraying activities which could be affecting our climate, our health or both. This activity can be seen in multiple, repeated instances of persistent aircraft trails across our skies.

Andrew Johnson said that, like most other people, he assumed, for many years, that the trails were just ordinary vapour trails (called 'contrails').

"In 2004, I began to notice that these trails did not behave like contrails at all. Then, on 10th June 2005, I witnessed a grid of aircraft trails right outside my window, just before sunset," Andrew has included copies of 2 photographs of this 'grid' in the report. "I sent the picture to the local paper and they published it. I also had it published on a popular website in the USA and I received quite a number of e-mail responses to the picture. Most of the responses described my picture as being of a grid of 'chemtrails' and quite a few people sent me similar pictures they had taken." Andrew then decided to write an article about this 'grid' picture and what the background to it seemed to be. The article was published, online, in September 2005 on the website of Phenomena Magazine.

"Since then, I have continued to photograph and study the chemtrails. I made some "time-lapse" videos using a webcam and this clearly showed the trails did not behave like ordinary 'contrails' or even clouds. I found that several other people have done this, including a former TV weatherman from Idaho, called Scott Stevens. I became more and more convinced that something was wrong - the time lapse footage clearly shows the difference between contrails and chemtrails. On 4th February this year, in a period of two and a half hours, I filmed 42 aircraft leaving long-lasting trails over the centre of Derby. I edited the film clips together (which were all time-stamped) and posted the results on the Internet. I reference this video in my report, and have included a copy on DVD."

Later, David Griffin, a Virtual Learning Environment Materials author based in Nottingham, contacted Andrew to share a weather satellite photo he had found, taken on the same day, which clearly showed the chemtrails.

David, who is a signatory to the report, said, "For me, the fact many of us around the country notice particularly heavy days of this phenomena and have recently managed to link the activity via satellite imaging systems, is some sort of concrete evidence that something is going on here. This evidence alone should be sufficient to at least initiate an enquiry of some sort."

5/21/2007 12:22:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I live in Georgia and we have experienced an interesting twist, as of late, in the Chemtrail/Contrail Phenomenom. We use to get the trails all the time during the spring, summer and fall, but this spring, there have been none....zero, zilch, nothing. Consequently, or not, we are under a severe drought. We haven't had substantial rain for months on end, and our climate is more like California then what Geogia's climate used to be. We are also burning, quite literally. I have noticed that when I do see a trail, it is the traditional Contrail from days of old that evaporates almost as quickly as it appears. My lawn is dying, my skin is perpetually dry, my wife's excema is reaching plague-like proportions and her allergies are out of control. It's fucked up folks.

5/21/2007 12:54:00 PM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

Hey, Richard,

Yeah, I suppose every place is a little different—I sure hope there’s nowhere as apartheid as Milwaukee is—and we also have that loft-strata phenomenon here, to some extent, but mostly it’s just the same old pattern.

Point about the best of intentions well taken.

Speaking of which, I ran across some stuff a while back when I was cruising some German eco sites and they were talking about some brownfields-type industrial redevelopment projects in Pittsburgh that were modeled after what their doing in the old country—have you heard anything about this? It sounds a little weird and more than a little expensive to me (not to mention depressing), but I’m not all that familiar with it.

Here’s a few local links with further links back to parent projects in Germany:

Anti-Rust (sub-blinks: A, B, and C)

and

from the newspaper, this one.


In another weird note, I dropped by my conservative friends to chat a bit about Ron Paul (wow! Do they want a lynching!) and the demise of Falwell, but they haven't printed my comment yet, which seems just a little, I don't know...suspicious, maybe? At any rate, they're saying some odd things over on that side of the fence.


(Ditto with the allergies & such up here, Shrub.)

5/21/2007 04:10:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ah-so. Ah-so. The Activities of Unification Church in Japan website.

Judgments handed down by court against Unification Church in Japan.

Supreme Court ruling: 18 September 1997 Unification Church to pay 2 plaintiffs 300,000 dollars.

Supreme Court ruling: 11 March 1999 to pay plaintiff 210,000 dollars.

Supreme Court ruling: 21 January 2000 2 plaintiffs awarded 70,000 dollars.

Takamitsu District Court ruling: 3 December 1996 60,000 dollars.

Sendai High Court ruling: 29 March 2001 2 plaintiffs 67,000 dollars.

Fukuoka High Court ruling: 29 March 2001 2 plaintiffs 500,000 dollars.

Supreme Court ruling: 30 October 2000 1 million dollars.

On Steven Alan Hassan's Freedom of Mind Center is a 1 hour video titled: Moon: Emperor of the Universe.

That's www.freedomofmind.com

5/21/2007 06:47:00 PM  
Blogger Mark said...

Keeping to the religious organizational power theme, particularly if it is led to support theocracy by manipulation of fascists:

said above:

"That said, some American social conservatives have long expressed guarded sympathy with the radical Muslim critique of Western “decadence.”

That's the origin of the "neocons" as well--through Strauss at the University of Chicago and his ilk of intentional hypocrites and mass psychological manipulators.

IMAGE: The Bastard Children of Leo Strauss, The History and Genealogy of NEOCONS
2004.02.16 10:31

(<---nice 'lineage chart of the Straussians' there).

Leo Strauss hated secular participatory democracy as much as Muslim Qtub. By the next generation, both team up and are funded in the CIA proxy war in Afghanistan both sharing a desire to destroy secular democracy or government in any form.

Thus, when the corporate fascist right wing U.S.A. and the security services link up with (and invented) "Al-Queda" the database, for their own franchised state terrorism use, it's hardly surprising.

At the risk of seeming to repeating myself--a different film I swear!--watch Adam Curtis on the Straussians. Since it's another Curtis film it comes with the same caveats as before: a good surface job though unfortunately still Curtis hates to get into the reality of parapolitics and carries through with a Chomsky lobotomized wing interpretation of 9-11 (despite all evidence to the contrary) that it was "Islamic terrorism."

The Power of Nightmares Part 1: Baby it's Cold Outside
by Adam Curtis
59 min - Mar 25, 2007
... This originally aired on the BBC in 2004. ...
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=881321004838285177

So, it's good though on the public invention of the Straussian neocons (the first generation of them are still in power in Bush II) and how they allied with Islamic religious fundamentalism as their ally to the present. However, you are left to connect the parapolitical dots for yourself throughout, particularly given how people like UK's David Shayler noted that the UK HIRED 'Al-Queda' in 1995 (hardly an enemy) to conduct proxy state terorrism in Quadaffi's Lybia.

Despite it's flaws, another interesting film in a very constrained and guarded TV medium, pushed through the BBC.

The neocons of US/UK ruling by 'self-created nightmares' and state terrorism is the Orwellian playbook come true. The only touch that is different from the book to our current situation is that the Orwellian elites are sponsoring theocratic movements as their "Emmanuel Goldstein", to do their dirty work for them, funding different theocratic movements to set them against each other so the funders can reign over the ruins.

Title: Is 'Al Qaeda' the Modern Incarnation of 'Emmanuel Goldstein'?
Author: Orwell
Date: 2004.07.30 10:42
Description: "Is "Al Qaeda" the modern incarnation of "Emmanuel Goldstein", the arch-villain manufactured by the state to rule the population with fear? [as well as encourage righteous people's join up with the 'wrong movement' and end up actually working for their enemy's state terrorism schedule.] Is it really far-fetched? If one can accept a real terrorist organization willing to kill people for their political aims, is a fake terror organization willing to kill people for their political aims any less possible?"

5/21/2007 07:58:00 PM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

5/21/2007 10:49:00 PM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

Here's a link to the redevelopment projects that you asked about. Although being the link man, I'm sure you've already read it.

http://www.pittsburghgreenstory.org/html/brownfields.html

From what I've seen they're taking abandoned steel mills, tearing them down, & making offices & strip malls & multiplex theaters.

I just don't normally associate "green" with offices, strip malls, & multiplexes.

In one case, the abandoned Nabisco plant, they're removing such toxic goo as asbestos & lead paint but the ultimate goal is office space & strip malls. I do remember the hundreds of folk tossed out on the street when Nabisco closed & I'm sure that if any of them sought employment at the newly redeveloped sites they's find a nice big pay cut from their former jobs. I think they call that "progress."

5/21/2007 10:56:00 PM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

Richard,

As I said, I don't really understand this whole make-the-old-forge-into-a-new-living-space idea, either. Did you see that post-industrial theme park in Germany? It looks like some kind of nightmare to me, a particularly German brand of industrial doom fetishism...the kind of place where Dieter & die Sprockets would be performing the theme music.

Then again, I never quite understood that industrial music scene, either. Why not just dismantle it completely and make something new? They talk about making a bridge between the past and the present, between Krupp/Carnegie and the New World Man...isn't having a bunch of unrepentant Nazis running the world enough of a bridge? Aren't some bridges better burned?

Of course, these folks also like to imbibe ecstacy and go to Plastique Fantastique exhibitions, when even their website is enough to give an old fart like me a headache, so what do I know?

Then again, those old Nazis just won't die, so I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise that some folks just want to refurbish a bunker or two. I was looking for some stuff on the History of US Interventions earlier today (which I found at the preceding link--great stuff, in timeline format with all kinds of other links) at a place called the History Commons of the Cooperative Research Center, which defines itself as:

"...an experiment in open-content civic journalism. It provides a space for people to conduct grassroots-level investigations on any issue, providing the public with a useful tool to conduct oversight of government and private sector entities. It is collaborative and thus allows individuals to build upon the work of others. Each investigation is organized as a “project,” which is made up of at least one timeline. You can contribute to a project by adding new events to the timeline associated with that project."

(Same concept as the fasci-Wiki, I guess, without that particular bias, from what I gathered.)

So, while I'm criss-crossing the various timelines they've got set up there, I search for something on the CIA's activities in throwing the Italian elections in '48, and up comes some surprising stuff on what Mark is talking about with Curtis' view of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Now, I think this is basically Paul Thompson's timeline, but it's been a long time since I saw it, so the bits that caught my eye seemed new again. One puzzle in 9/11 for me has always been the seeming partnership between Zionists and anti-Zionists, which only makes sense if someone's faking something. I know that there are religious Jews who are anti-Zionist, like Rabbi Moishe Arye Friedman, ("the other Friedman") whom the press has been attacking for a long time but who has also been physically attacked for his views, most recently near Auschwitz.

At any rate, I've always thought that some kind of Schwindel was going on here, and these two items from the History Commons' 911 Timeline caught my eye because they seem to illustrate the strange bedfellows that conspiracies make. Anyone with a better head for 9/11 know what to make of them?


The first is: 1986: Ali Mohamed Joins US Armed Services and Teaches About Middle East; Supervisors Include Prominent Neoconservative Ideologue

and the second is:

1988: Al Taqwa Bank Founded; Tied to Nazi Supporters

5/22/2007 02:01:00 AM  
Blogger Mark said...

This follow the money link with some information from Madsen I gather, notes fun facts about Al-Taqwa: it was a George H. W. Bush cutout bank, founded when he was CIA Director--though his son the Prez says it was an Al-Queda bank. Well, both are true since GHWB and Osama were banking together in the same terrorist bank. Small world.


quote:

- it fails to help Bush's case for "rogue Al-Queda terrorists" when Bush himself has fingered his own friend Al-Amoudi with the Hamberg connection (which connects Al-Queda very closely to Karl Rove and Grover Nordquist). Additionally, it fails to help Bush's case that financially, when he attempt to finger Al-Queda, he tickles his own father on the back with connections to Bush Senior's terror money laundering corporations and banks:

Bush and Osama: Brothers in the Muslim Brotherhood's Swiss Banks, with European fascist connections and international terrorism funding; and it goes back to the Osama/Bush/Enron money laundering capital, the Isle of Man once more...

WASHINGTON, DC -- August 25, 2005 -- WMR has obtained further paper trails linking George H. W. Bush's longtime mysterious Swiss German money mover (see July 24-25 article below) to a now defunct bank operated on behalf of Osama Bin Laden, his family, and some of his closest business associates. [That GHWB just happened to bank in it as well.]

The network of Swiss-based terrorist financiers are also linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and prominent European fascist leaders.

The bank, Al Taqwa ("Fear of God"), was headquartered in the Italian Swiss enclave Campione d'Italia [which I think is a little strange area featured in one or more of Jeff's posts so far] and had offices in the Bahamas.

It ceased operations after its assets were blocked by a US Treasury Department order, its assets were frozen by the Swiss government, and its banking license was revoked by the Bahamas. Al Taqwa subsequently changed its name to Nada Management Organization.

Al Taqwa and a complex web of affiliate front companies and brass plates in Switzerland, the Bahamas, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Jersey, Isle of Man, Turkey, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, the United States (Delaware and Texas), Germany, Belgium, Albania, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Austria, Bahrain, Singapore, Thailand, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Liechtenstein were reportedly involved in funding terrorist operations around the world, including the procurement of nuclear material from the former Soviet Union through Baltic intermediaries.

According to a EUROPOL diagram obtained by WMR, these companies included

Iksir Holding,
SA (Italy),
Asat Trust (Liechtenstein),
Iksir Ltd. (Bahamas),
Gulf Center (Italy),
NASCO (Turkey),
Nasreddin International Group (Liechtenstein),
Akida Bank (Bahamas),
MIGA (Switzerland), and
Nasreddin Foundation (Liechtenstein).

According to intelligence sources in the United States and Europe, the Al Taqwa network intersected with tranches in Geneva and the Isle of Man that involve front companies associated with George H. W. Bush and Enron: Topaz Liberty, Bluelake World, and Potomac Capital.

The Iranian con man and Pentagon neocon contact Manucher Ghorbanifar, Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi, and members of the Bin Laden family are reportedly linked to Geneva-based Potomac Capital, a front company created by George H. W. Bush when he was CIA Director in 1976.

Interestingly, it was George W. Bush, who, in November 2001, cited Al Taqwa as part of "Al Qaeda's" money laundering activities....[Dubya fingers his own father as a terrorist financier! Classic. Doh!]


see the documents
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/intelwhispers/intel.htm

so besides Bush Senior and Osama Bin Laden banking together in a terrorist bank, you have Bush Junior fingering his father as a terrorist funder, and my favorite quote: "According to intelligence sources in the United States and Europe, the Al Taqwa network intersected with tranches in Geneva and the Isle of Man that involve front companies associated with George H. W. Bush and Enron: Topaz Liberty, Bluelake World, and Potomac Capital."

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/08/323664.shtml
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/08/323664.shtml#193309

Did you say 1976?

"The Iranian con man and Pentagon neocon contact Manucher Ghorbanifar, Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi, and members of the Bin Laden family are reportedly linked to Geneva-based Potomac Capital, a front company created by George H. W. Bush when he was CIA Director in 1976."

- 1976 was just the time when George H. W. Bush's CIA was "sitting in" learning how to conduct the perfect WTC terror hit by learning where the U.S. security holes were:

Title: US DoD McNiven RICO SUIT! BUSH SENIOR, CIA head, & his 1976 state terror plan to hit WTCs!
Author: repost
Date: 2005.03.20 06:18
Description: A LIVE COURT CASE! DEAL WITH IT! WELCOME TO REALITY. Our own U.S. Army devised a plan commissioned by Congress to bring down the WTC...McNiven, who first went public in an affidavit included in a 9/11-related federal conspiracy (RICO) lawsuit filed against Bush and others in 2004, claims his unit was ordered to create the "perfect terrorist plan" using commercial airliners as weapons and the Twin Towers as their target.....publicized version of the study, commissioned by Congress, was to identify security lapses and submit corrective measures to lawmakers. However, McNiven claims the real purpose of the study was to brainstorm how to pull off the perfect terrorist attack using the exact same 9/11 scenario. The study, commissioned to C-Battery 2/81st Field Artillery, U.S. Army, stationed in Strassburg, Germany in 1976, specifically devised the scenario of the Twin Towers being leveled by Middle Eastern terrorists using commercial airliners and even plastic box cutters to bypass security.

To silence critics, McNiven has successfully passed a credible lie detector test regarding his participation in the study as well as other specific orders given to him by his superiors in case of a real attack on the Twin Towers.

The head of the 1976 mock terrorist plan was Lt. Michael Teague of Long Island, who McNiven says was given specific orders by higher-ups in the military to use the Twin Towers as the terrorist target.

McNiven said he has been unable to contact Lt. Teague, but was interested in his opinion now that "the 9/11 attacks happened the way we planned them in 1976."
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/03/313859.shtml

5/22/2007 02:35:00 AM  
Blogger Mark said...

Isn't this little spatial synchronicity interesting? From IC's link:

News reports indicate Al Taqwa bankers are able to conduct business globally with few restrictions, despite being on global terrorist financier lists (see November 7, 2001). For instance, Al Taqwa director Ahmed Idris Nasreddin is running a conglomerate in Nigeria that makes a range of goods such as breakfast cereal and beauty products. An MSNBC investigation shows a clear and easily discovered paper trail connecting Nasreddin to the Nigeria companies, and a Nigerian government spokesman says, “He is well known. He is actually the major shareholder” in the conglomerate. But Nigerian officials claim the US has never raised objections or asked Nigeria to take action. In 2003, news reports tied Nasreddin to a prominent hotel in Milan, Italy. Financial records indicate he still owns the hotel. [MSNBC, 6/30/2005] Author Douglas Farah notes that the Geneva, Switzerland, branch of the International Islamic Charitable Organization (IICO) has two Al Taqwa figures as directors. Youssef al Qardawi was a major Al Taqwa investor, and Galeb Himmat was a director in the bank. Both are officially designated terrorist financiers. The IICO also operated as part of the SAAR network, which was raided in March 2002 (see March 20, 2002). The IICO’s vice president is Saleh Ibn Abdul Rahman Hussayen, who was a SAAR network official and also stayed in the same hotel as three of the 9/11 hijackers the night before the attacks (see September 10, 2001).

Perhaps the Al-Taqwa bank paid for their prostitutes that evening, you know, those so called "fundamentalist Muslim suicide airline hijackers"--you know, the ones who are still alive, the ones who were hard drinkers, cursed repeatedly, went to all nude parties in Key West, had stripper girlfriends, considered men named Wolfgang from Germany "their brother", wore silk shirts and expensive clothes, and carried around drug shipments throughout South Florida sometimes visiting and throwing down thousands of dollars on SunCruz Lines offshore casino boats, which just happened to be owned by Bush regime connected felon...Abramoff.

Abramoff himself, a supposed hardline right wing Jew, actually used to work for an Islamic bank himself:

--- In 1995 supposed Jewish Zionist Abramoff....worked for the Global Council of Islamic Banks, whose chairman, Saleh Abdullah Kamel, was under investigation for alleged funding of terrorism, including Osama Bin Laden....

Small world. Explain that unless it's just a false front of terrorism similar to the Mossad run "Al-Queda cell" that was found in the Palestinian territory.

Now, with my limited time looking into this, really just reading other's articles, and meanwhile there are full time investigators working for the federal government who come up with nothing, closures of such banks like Al-Taqwa instead of shutting down the terror operators smells more like a crooked U.S. government covering its own tracks and moving on.

5/22/2007 02:51:00 AM  
Blogger ericswan said...

IC.. an architect's dream??
http://www.jothouse.com/

Talk about rejection. I tried to join the Moonies 25 years ago but they wouldn't take me. Would have been an interesting timeline. I coulda bin a contender with citizenship and everything. Hehehe..

5/22/2007 04:51:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Better late than never.

Most of us know that Moon has funding coming from billionaire Japanese fascist Ryoichi Sasakawa. But according to the book written by Pat Choate, Agents of Influence, he also funds politically liberal American endeavors. Taken from the book:

pg. 178 Though with less pomp and circumstance, Jimmy Carter has also used his prestige on behalf of the Japanese - specifically, to promote the public career of Japanese billionaire Ryoichi Sasakawa. On November 7, 1989, Carter praised Sasakawa and the Sasakawa foundations in a full-page advertisement placed in The Wall Street Journal. The ad featured an enormous picture of the ex-president in the center of the page. In the accompanying text, Carter describes how Sasakawa's foundations had provided financial backing for Global 2000, the ex-presidnt's agricultural aid project for Africa, through the Atlanta-based Carter Center. Global 2000 consumes much of Carter's time and has helped rehabilitate his once less than popular image with the American public.

Sasakawa's friendship and close association with the former President has done much for his personal prestige. Sasakawa and Carter travel together and have made several joint appearances. In 1985, Carter and his wife made an unpublished trip to Japan to attend a memorial service for Sasakawa's mother.

Using his superb political connections, Sasakawa founded the Japan Motorboat Racing Association, which was soon given an exclusive government concession for pari-mutual gambling on speedboat races. In 1980 alone, Sasakawa's gambling revenues grossed $7.4 billion. The Sasakawa foundations - with close to $500 million in donations outstanding - underwrite a great deal of the research and policy analysis on Japan that is carried out in American think tanks, universities, and other institutes... Carter's endorsement of Sasakawa gives credibility to the man as well as his activities.

The Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta has also received considerable support from Japan. Together, the donations of Sasakawa's Japan Shipbuilding Industry Foundation and YKK, the Japanese zipper company, totaled more than $1 million.

to be continued...

5/22/2007 05:01:00 PM  
Blogger Mark said...

Sasakawa's background

page 64-65, in Yakuza: Japan's Criminal Underworld, where connections to Moon are actually noted:


Ryoichi Sasakawa used a slightly different road to power than did Kodama, and placed a greater emphasis on money over loyalty to ideals. But both men would have essentially the same circles, and both came from the very same roots. Not merely an ultranationalist before the war, Sasakawa was an open admirer of Mussolini, and ordered his private militia to don black shirts imitation of the Italian fascists. Among his followers was an ardent young rightist named Yoshio Kodama.

Sasakawa served time in Sugamo in 1945 for three years where, for a time, he shared a cell with Kodama. It was there he learned an important lesson that he could continue to build upon: cultivate the Americans. But not all the Americans in SCAP were enamored of Sasakawa. The final prison report on the fascist leader admonished: "in summary, Sasakawa appears to be a man potentially dangerous to Japan's political future....He has been squarely behind Japanese military policies of aggression and anti-foreign [policy] for more than 20 years. He is a man of wealth and not too scrupulous about its use. He chafes for continued power. He is not above wearing any new cloak that opportunism may offer."

Sasakawa began his postwar life of opportunism, while still in Sodano, where he devised a plan to make it big in the gambling business. Upon leaving the prison in December 1948, he approached various local governments in Japan. Would they consider splitting to take with him from motorboat races? They were only too glad to have the income. [And Sasakawa, thus had his governmental protection]. Over the next 35 years, Sasakawa built enormous gambling empire, the Japan Motorboat Racing Association, which sets up the race course, operates the stands and boats, pays the drivers, pays the pari-mutuel windows, and cleans up -- in every sense. In 1980, Sasakawa's company grossed $7.4 billion -- an extraordinary sum in those days. At the same time, Sasakawa won over the various bakuto gangs. He bragged publicly that he was a drinking companion of Japan's leading godfather, Yamaguchi-gumi head Kazuo Taoka. In the kuromaku tradition, Sasakawa also reportedly served as a mediator between feuding yakuza gangs. And, like his cohort Kodama, he employed squads of financial racketeers to push along his controversial investments.

Sasakawa also resumed his right-wing activities, taking care to adapt his schemes to changing conditions. For instance, his prewar group, the Koku-sui Taishuto, or Patriotic People's Mass Party, was transmogrified into the postwar Zenkoku Kinrosha Domei, or All-Japan White Collar Workers League, Sasakawa also found it expedient to ally himself with non-Japanese rightists. He counted itself among the founders of the Asian People's Anti-Communist League and its stepchild, the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), along with such early supporters as [Korea's] Syngman Rhee and [Taiwan's] Chiang Kai-shek. In 1963, Sasakawa became an adviser to the Japanese branch of Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, known in Japan as Genri Undo. Moon and Sasakawa brought a number of Japanese rightist groups together in a WACL subsidiary known as Kokusai Shokyo Rango, the International Federation for Victory over Communism, and Sasakawa assumed the roles of both patron and president. He continued to advise and fund rightist groups until, by the late 1970s, he could claim to have the allegiance of some 8 million Japanese.

This huge number, however, included the entire membership of groups that were simply traditionalist rather than politically right, organizations ranging from karate federations to sword dancing groups. As he was funding these groups, Sasakawa was also marching off to regions not even rightists could easily comprehend, promoting the "science" of Waterology, a collection of crackpot ecological notions. He also bought up huge blocks of television air time to exhort youngsters to honor their parents and keep the earth clean, he embarked on a 50-year career of shameless self-aggrandizement, running hundreds of print and television ads bearing his smiling visage and reminding Japan of his beneficence. "Formally I had Yoshio Kodama, and many other roughnecks around me," he once said. "I was their leader. So, some may call me a rightist. But I am not a rightist, I am a humanitarian." But as late as 1974, Time magazine would quote him as repeatedly boasting, "I am the world's wealthiest Fascist."

page 227, on Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

The close links between Korean intelligence and law were readily apparent to those who investigated at any length. In 1978,Pharis Harvey, then a Tokyo-based consultant to the Christian Conference of Asia, researched the kcia's connections in Japan at the request of the U.S. House subcommittee on international organization. This was the high tide of America's "Korea gate" scandal. Congressional hearings were focusing on influence peddling and harassment in the United States by the KCIA and such friends as Tongsun Park and Sun Myung Moon. Harvey came away convinced that the "KCIA and the Korean yakuza were certainly intermingled, so it was never a certain what was an official KCIA initiative and what was from a mobster organization."

Page 311 in the book Yakuza: Japan's criminal underworld

The wrong side of Japanese business

Sasakawa [yes, this guy has Moon connections as well as Carter connections, and it helps to remember that Carter was of the first-generation hand-picked personnel that David Rockefeller put into the Trilaterals which dominated the Carter Administration with around 20 direct appointments from the Trilaterals, and his administration was wracked with huge amounts of corruption and scandal, even cocaine scandals like Clinton was to later suffer, instead of it only being on the Republican side of the fence. Potentially Sasakawa may be a cut out for Moon giving the money to Jimmy Carter's presidential library, or it may, in a group idea, to keep continuity of involvement despite the change of president and party in 1976 "elections." I put that in quotes because Nelson Rockefeller was running as the vice presidential candidate of Gerald Ford in 1976 [Ford had uncannily survived three separate assassination attempts that would have placed Nelson Rockefeller as president--without ever going through any elected positions in his life failing in the 1960s on multiple occasions of achieving the Republican Party presidential nomination] while Trilateral Jimmy Carter in 1976 was being funded by David Rockefeller -- who then pumped in 20 or so of his family's Trilaterals into the "Carter" administration. George H. W. Bush was a trilateral as well, until it came out he was in his 1980 presidential election run, and he quickly resigned from the organization]

Sasakawa had already rung alarms by trying to buy into American businesses, and it was bigger than a gift shop. In 1978, Takashi Sasakawa, Ryoichi's second son publicly joined the well-known Japanese restauranteur, speedboat racer, and balloonist Hiroaki "Rocky" Aoki to announce plans to lease the aging Shelbourne Hotel in Atlantic City and turn it into a casino. The gambling boom was hitting the East Coast, and Sasakawa, for one, wanted to be in on it. Aoki, owner of the famed Benihana chain, felt he could add an exotic touch to the Jersey shore.

The actual deal was a hopelessly complicated affair involving several paper corporations in both America and Japan, and several hundred million dollars. Of this, Takashi openly owned 47% of the enterprise, although no knowledgeable observer believed he was the real investor. His New York attorney asserted to the press that his father was "far removed from the deal," but few were convinced.

Within months, the US securities and exchange commission charged Takashi Sasakawa and Aoki with insider stock trading. The two men had purchased 60,000 shares of the Hardwicke Company, knowing that they would later engage the company to manage the planned Shelburne Benihana. This move inflated the value of the stock, a patently illegal move. Sasakawa's forests to make restitution to the sellers of the original Hardwick stock.

The Sasakawas were reportedly quite taken aback by this wrinkle; Ryoichi was used to manipulating stock values for his own profiteering without a peep from the Japanese government. Following that unpleasantness, Sasakawa continue to pump money into the Shelburne project, but without his previous enthusiasm. There are indications that the casino would not fly, and not only because the SEC was on his tail. Sasakawa's seedy background had caught up with him. Because of Sasakawa's dossier, American banks refuse to "anchor" the project with domestic loans, and New Jersey law enforcement let it be known that any project with the Sasakawa name on it would have a hard time getting a casino license. If New Jersey wanted to keep mob-connected Americans out of Atlantic City, it could hardly open the door to yakuza-connected Japanese.

Sasakawa's interest in Atlantic City made a good deal of sense, and he had brought to it plenty of expertise. The boat racing czar already knew the gambling business from the ground -- or the water -- up, and could run large-scale betting operations as well as anyone. Some law enforcement people worried that, had he succeeded, he could have served as the biggest Japanese-owned money laundry in United States [which would have had Moon connections] which is why they helped scuttle the deal. By that time, the Sasakawas, Aoki, and the silent partners bailed out -- selling their interest to a Philadelphia real estate developer in 1981 -- they had lost an estimated $27 million.

Undaunted, in February of 1983, Ryoichi arrived in San Francisco to receive the Linus Pauling medal for humanitarianism for his generous donation of $770,000 to the Linus Pauling Institute of science and medicine. [He had additionally given a huge block to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library] The man who once called himself "the world's wealthiest fascist" was not out to become the world's greatest philanthropist. [Shades of John D. Rockefeller].

Sasakawa's efforts at self-aggrandizement were boggling. Prior to the black-tie dinner given by the Pauling Institute, he held a luncheon at San Francisco's posh Bohemian club [which owns Bohemian Grove] -- which is anything but [bohemian]-- and spent the morning giving interviews to the local media. At the luncheon, Sasakawa received the guests bowing like a buoy in a rough sea and smiling continuously. His publicist, flown out from the giant New York firm of Doremus, told the assembled, that Sasakawa was, among other things, a patriot, a man unashamed to love this country and his mother. In fact, Sasakawa erected a statue in Japan of himself carrying his aged mother on his back, but the object of his veneration was less the mother than the barer.

He also denounced any hint of his ultranationalist [Japanese fascist] past. When the authors pointed out to him at a San Francisco press conference that the U.S. Army documents were quite explicit about his plundering in China, he proclaimed, "I have not exported one yen or one penny. What I did was to donate several million tuberculosis injections to China." Any other stories were "communist-inspired." He was equally vehement in denying any relations with yakuza, conveniently forgetting that he had publicly boasted of including the late Yamaguchi-gumi boss Kazuo Taoka among his drinking companions.

In spite of Sasakawa's indifferent results in cleaning up Japanese history and his place in it, the grand old kuromaku continued to make a name for himself as a philanthropist and promoter. By 1994, his Japan Shipbuilding Industry Foundation was bringing in nearly $1.4 billion annually, and had doled out to more than ¥1 trillion around the world. The aging ultranationalist had become the largest private donor to the United Nations, [which Moon additionally has recently set his eyes on so Sasakawa may be a silent partner for and with Moon] and was funding international health centers, Ivy League universities, and even the presidential library of Jimmy Carter, who praised his "good work for peace." [He probabaly as well attempted to encourage Carter to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize].

Sasakawa's most ambitious giveaway in America was the United States-Japan Foundation, headquartered in New York and begun in 1980 with a generous $48 million endowment from Sasakawa. [Rockefeller, headquartered in New York City, started the Trilaterals in 1973 connecting high elites, both governmental and financial between Japan, Europe, and the United States -- because the racist Bilderberg in Europe of whom David Rockefeller is highly connected with, refused David's suggestion of including Japanese in their deliberations by the 1970s; so David Rockefeller "built his own Bilderberg," called the Trilaterals]. To orchestrate its efforts, the foundations original American working group included such luminaries as Henry Kissinger; chairman Angier Biddle Duke [both the middle name and the last name are hyper wealthy billionaire dynasties, at least the latter: the middle family, the Biddles, if the same, were the operative private banking family dominating the second Bank of United States during the 1830s who Andrew Jackson fought with; the same Biddle as well as was organizing expeditions of the federal government out West, editing diaries of Lewis and Clark, as well as was a brother to the Biddle sent to Japan -- small world -- attempting to open it up in the 1850s to American "investment," with the threat of invasion unless they complied. The continuity of the Biddles, if the same, seemingly assigned a particular geographic territory to dominate, by shadowy forces unknown, is very similar to the 50 year span of the Korbel connected groups "assigned" to look after southern and eastern Europe. The Austrian family of Korbel is highly connected in the education of Condoleezza Rice as well as the Secretary of State for Bill Clinton, Madeleine (Korbel) Albright, who is educated by the same per person, her father, who later sponsored and trained Condoleezza Rice -- both Madeleine Korbel Albright and Condoleezza Rice specialize in Eastern Europe-USSR relations, at the University of Denver; Korbel family 100 years earlier is said to have fired the first shot in the 1848 failed revolution in Prague; this family then escapes to the United States, and starts the Korbel wineries on the Russian River in California--and soon owns via marriage property directly abutting Bohemian Grove. This property was sold to make the golf course nea Bohemian Grove; Madeleine Korbel Albright later became UN representative for the United States; the same position was held by a Korbel relative, through for another country I think, I forget, an ancestor in the first UN meetings.]

Anyway.

... former ambassador to four countries and heir to a tobacco fortune, [the Dukes of North Carolina, after which Duke University is named the Dukes are hyper billionaires and reputedly illuminized.] James A.Linen, former president of Time, Inc. [founded by a skull and bonesman] former RCA Chairman, Robert Sarnoff; and former New York Mayor John Lindsay. Among its "honorary advisors" were Jimmy Carter and [reputed high-level pedophile and MK ultra user] Gerald Ford.

Expressed goal of the US-Japan Foundation was to enhance, through grants and education cooperation between the two countries, primarily of an economic nature. But there was another, more covert goal, and that was to raise the value of Sasakawa's personal stock among the movers and shakers. According to "Rocky" Aoki, Sasakawa's former business partner, the old ultranationalist was angling for the Nobel Peace Prize, and he was willing to spend almost any amount of money to get it [similar to the antics of Armand Hammer in the last 15 years of his life]. He even set up an office in Oslo, Norway, in order to better lobby the Nobel committee, and in 1985 he was actually nominated for a prize.

Despite all his do-gooding and donating, Sasakawa remained a gambling czar with strong ties to extreme right in Japan, and with less overt but definite ties to the yakuza. In his native Japan, Sasakawa remains terribly controversial, with many organizations reluctant to go near his money. In 1993, when a reporter for Japan's most respected journal, Bungei Shunju, ran a six-month investigation of Sasakawa's power, he received death threats and went into hiding. Sasakawa's reputation proved tough to shake, and even in the West many institutions, such as National Public Radio, engaged in public handwringing over whether to accept his money. If, as Dr. Linus Pauling said of Sasakawa's philanthropy [to Pauling personally so he's a biased source], "perhaps he's just trying to make up for past misdeeds," he never entirely succeeded.

In 1996, Ryoichi Sasakawa finally passed away. He was nearly a century old, and had reinvented himself as few have in recent history. Today the most tangible evidence of Sasakawa is a life-sized statue of a man covered with adoring children of all races, which stands outside the Sasakawa Peace Foundation on L Street in Washington, D. C., and there continues to puzzle or amuse passerby, most of whom haven't a clue as to who is decorating their sidewalk. Page 314.

5/22/2007 07:21:00 PM  
Blogger Mark said...

I was using voice recognition software. It should have said here:

The close links between Korean intelligence and yakuza were readily apparent to those who investigated at any length. In 1978, Pharis Harvey, then a Tokyo-based consultant to the Christian Conference of Asia, researched the KCIA's connections in Japan at the request of the U.S. House subcommittee on international organization....etc., etc.

5/22/2007 07:25:00 PM  
Blogger Mark said...

Another interesting house link for IC, in this rather schizophrenic comment stream (from what people have collectively posted).

Two articles on the Huf Haus.

1.

Best House in England

HufHouse [see pic, halfway down the page] - The overall winner of the coveted Best House in England award was the Huf House on St George's Hill in Weybridge, Surrey.

This remarkable project, a radical departure from traditional bricks and mortar, combines a flexible wooden frame with floor-to-ceiling glass walls to produce an exceptional energy saving building which can be erected and made completely weather proof, with all walls, windows and a roof fitted, in just one week (or two if it has a concrete basement).

Designed by a firm of German architects, it's most striking features are its amazing versatility and flexibility.

All the walls and glazing panels can be removed and re-arranged to create alternative layouts, and the house can have anything from one to five bedrooms and one, two or three stories.

The whole construction process is so stream lined and precise, the whole design so flexible, that you can even dismantle the entire building and move it to another site.

The structure comes with a 30 year guarantee and costs £80-100 per square foot, which, when you consider average prices in London of £170 to £800 a sq ft, means its pretty good value as well.

http://www.findaproperty.com/displaystory.aspx?edid=00&salerent=0&storyid=221

[The only drawback would be that it requires a team of specialized builders to assemble/disassemble it, it seems, see below, though this may be for legal issues instead of anything else.]

2.

Another Huf Haus, with lots more pictures, and description:

Dulwich Delight
28 Jan 2004

Not all housebuilders are obsessed with period pastiche: the stunning Huf Haus project in Dulwich Village owes nothing to its Georgian and Victorian neighbours...

It says something for the sea-change in British attitudes towards modern design that an innovative development of contemporary houses is currently under construction in Dulwich Village, one of London's leafiest and most well-protected corners.

Here, on a sensitive site tucked away off the High Street, in the heart of a conservation area famous for its mill pond, pristine period properties and country village exclusivity, Wates Homes has embarked on a daring collaboration with the acclaimed Germany company Huf Haus.

The upmarket timber-framed houses, notable for their dark Spruce beams and extensive glazed panels, are a far cry from the period brickwork typical of the area.

[see pictures at above link]

But Southwark Council chose this project over several more traditional proposals, local residents are said to be delighted with the scheme, and the government has already dished out a Housing Design Award and praised the development as "a welcome breath of continental fresh air".

Beam Me Up

Although the extensive glazed panelling gives the Huf houses a striking contemporary feel, the 'post-and-beam' method used by the company to assemble their system-built houses has been around for several thousand years.

Huf Haus 2

"It's a very old method of building," says Joe Branco, development manager of Huf Haus UK. "We combine this traditional method with modern technology. The beams, for example, are laminated for extra strength and this allows us to use concrete floors. The houses are heavily insulated and eco-friendly, and the components used are all high-specification."

Huf Haus have been perfecting their unique building system for the past ninety years and produce all of the components for the houses in their factory in Germany. New houses are shipped out from there and assembled by a skilled team of German craftsmen who must have five years of training before they can work on-site.

"There's not cutting or waste on site," Joe explains. "The houses are erected and water-tight within a week and are completed and ready for their new owners within twelve weeks. The system is very flexible. The walls are not load bearing and can be removed and re-arranged to create alternative layouts - the house can have anything from one to five bedrooms and one, two or three stories".

Woodyard Lane

Huf Haus 3

The judges who recently added another accolade to Huf Haus's long list of awards were especially impressed by the intelligence and quality of the design and singled out the vast useable space inside each home - a benefit of the non load-bearing walls - for special mention.

"The internal planning is rational, compact and generous, and allows considerable flexibility in the use of space."

The creative use of wall to ceiling glazing is a signature feature of the houses and allows the outside environment to become an integral part of the homes themselves.

This combined with the double height ceilings ensures that the homes feel light and spacious. [though probably rather drafty in winter or cool--though I guess you could move from a 'summer open plan layout' to a 'winter layout' of walls to close drafty down air flow--this would b like most traditional houses worldwide that were built before the invention of open-plans (an outcome engineering requirement to make air conditioning work that affected lots of building architecture, in ways people don't normally consider, by the way: in terms of home air flows, whereas before it would just make the home drafty to do so.]

Electrically operated external blinds are fitted to all the windows, providing shade and security; [like Korean/Japanese traditional homes] underfloor heating, thermal insulating glass, and turn-tilt windows make for exceptional energy-efficiency.

Woodyard Lane, London SE21

...

Four Bedrooms lead off a central first floor landing, which also doubles as a comfortable communal area. The award judges were again impressed by the intelligent layout and observed, "money is spent on useable space, and on high quality components, rather than on tacked on 'features' or minute additional bedrooms."

Huf Haus 4E

Each Huf Haus also has a full sized basement floor with natural light wells. This extra floor comes with a choice of fitted options including utility room, shower room, and two other spaces which can be adapted to a variety of purposes: as an office, gym, games room, home cinema, wine cellar or nanny annexe.

The low pitched roofs have wide overhangs which both protect and shade the house, as well as providing large covered external areas. The arrangement of the nine houses in a secluded courtyard style guarantees each home high levels of privacy.

Euro Vision

In Europe, Huf Haus has developed an enviable reputation for producing high-quality eco-friendly houses and the company has created several small villages of Huf houses in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Huf Haus 5

In the UK they've been in business for several years and have won just about every major housing accolade worth having, but prior to The Woodyard collaboration with Wates Homes [to build a group of them] they had confined themselves to individual commissions.

Paul Phipps, Wates MD says the partnership is in keeping with Wates' desire to build on their reputation for innovation: "This is an exhilarating project which has attracted an enormous level of both industry and public attention. We welcome this; it's where the company wants to be, challenging assumptions at all levels of the housing market and creating environments for today's highly discerning generation of house-buyer".

The Dulwich development of nine semi-detached and terraced houses is certainly like nothing else on the market but the enthusiastic response from planners and the public gives the lie to the notion that British homebuyers are innately conventional and conservative. Wates and Huf Haus are definitely onto a winner and it seems likely that the success of this development will pave the way for future schemes.

Michael O'Flynn

http://www.findaproperty.com/displaystory.aspx?edid=00&salerent=0&storyid=3482

Well, my advert for the Huf Haus is closed now.

One suggestion IC is to start up a youtube video channel and talk featured architecture for us. ;-)

If only a "Huf Haus" solution could be found for the shadow cities, talked about in this TED talk.

Robert Neuwirth on our "shadow cities"
Length: 14:15
Posted: Jan 2007

The fact that other levels of a Huf Haus can be later constructed on top of each other--without the walls really bearing any weight only the post columns--would be ideal to the sociology of how Neuwirth describes the housing/land market as literally accretively built and sold out of roof rights of previous lower tenants, in many slum cities.

I would picture a one level Huf Haus arrangement being constructed with far more localized material solutions however.

The fact that they are dismantable and mobile would serve as well if a government suddenly wanted to knock everything down. Instead of destroying the work, it could quickly be moved away as it is quickly "disassemble-able" as much as quickly assembled, to save the material and labor that created it in the first place.

That's one rationale why I think a Huf Haus for slum cities would work out rather well: it fits really with what is already being done socially by building taller and taller structures, and would remove the danger of creating overburdened load bearing walls.

It would have the energy efficiency and plan flexibility for on site (and ongoing seasonable) adjustment which the Huf Haus seems to have as well.

It can be built quickly, and taken apart quickly, and the price could be brought down by using different materials I'm sure.

5/22/2007 10:41:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

More strange stuff about Japanese funding.

Why does Japan endow university chairs and help finance some of Washington's most influential think tanks?

It knows that the people from these organizations craft many of the ideas and much of the public debate on American trade and economic policy.

Almost without exception (and not surprisingly), Japanese and other foreign funders give financial support to scholars and organizations who advocate open-door trade policies. Invariably, the studies these advocates produce minimize the role of Japanese protectionism in the U.S.-Japan trade deficit...In essence, their criticism is without a "bite."

Among the most frequently cited examples of this painless sting is the joint report on U.S.-Japan relations issued in late 1989 by Japan's Keizai Doyukai, the Japan Association of Corporate Executives, and America's Committee for Economic Development (CED). The report places most of the blame for the U.S.-Japan trade deficit on Washington's budget deficit. While it says that Japan must open its markets, it also warns against any retaliation by the the United States. The Japanese have used this report to back their claim that America has created most of its trade deficit with Japan.

The Japanese team for this study was led by Takashi Ishihara, the chairman of Nissan Motors. The American delegation was led by William Eberle, who has been a consultant and lobbyist for Nissan since 1979. Eberle's Japanese connection was revealed neither in the report nor at the press conference where the study was released. A CED representative says that Eberle was one of the strongest critics of Japan on the American team and that the other committee members were well aware of his connection to Nissan. Yet the audience for the report - Congress, American business, and the U.S. media - were not. ???

The message the Japanese convey is clear: scholars and institutions that desire funding and access from them risk both when they criticize Japan. Thus, many academics watch what they say - at least in public. Fusion Systems CEO Don Spero says that when he went to America's leading universities looking for physicists who would testify for him in his company's patent fight against Mitsubishi Electric, he was repeatedly rebuffed by academics who claimed they were afraid that their testimony would threaten their funding from Japan. Little wonder, then, that the most widely circulated academic studies on the politics of U.S.-Japan economic relations tend to focus on U.S. protectionism or the conflict between the U.S. executive and legislative branches over America's trade agenda. Japan's industrial policies, cartels, and money politics remain largely unexamined by those funded with Japanese money.
pgs. 188, 189 Agents of Influence, Pat Choate.

Part of the mystery of why we never hear much about where Moon's funding of the Conservatives comes from.

5/23/2007 12:57:00 AM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

"The message the Japanese convey is clear: scholars and institutions that desire funding and access from them risk both when they criticize Japan. Thus, many academics watch what they say - at least in public."

Would this tie in with sudden Japanese interest in encouraging "patriotism?"

http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/406898/all
Friday, May 18, 2007 at 16:05 EDT

TOKYO — The House of Representatives approved Friday a set of three education reform bills aimed at instilling patriotism during compulsory education, reinforcing state control over local education boards and requiring teachers to renew their licenses every decade. The bills, on which Prime Minister Shinzo Abe places top priority, will be discussed at the House of Councillors from Monday for enactment during the current regular Diet session through June 23.

One of the bills is to revise the School Education Law, with a provision citing instilling patriotism as a goal of compulsory education, while another is to amend the regional education administration law by reinforcing the power of the education minister in managing schools. The third bill is designed to strip teachers of tenure for life and require them instead to renew their licenses every 10 years.

I wonder if they're modeling Japanese patriotism on American patriotism.
Y'know, not actually doing what you think is good for your country, but doing what "the state" saysthat you should think is good for your country.

5/23/2007 01:37:00 AM  
Blogger Mark said...

Japan adopted the Prussian educational system by the 1870s.

So did the U.S.A. by the early 20th century.

So it should hardly be surprising that both attempt to establish forms of centralized management of the minds of the young.

Quoting from a once interesting article at Wikifront (Wikipedia), on Skull and Bones that has been purged to uselessness, was this information once:

quote

Bones Importing the Prussian Social Control Model

The connections that Bonesman George Miller had with high finance and high politics through Bonesman William Walter Phelps (S&B, 1860) helped 'steer' U.S. Education to take root in a German-Prussian vein as well. For the purposes of this article, "in a Prussian vein" means according to the principles founded in the requirements of the Prussian royalist state. In 1816, after the total defeat in the Napoleonic Wars, Prussian legislation went very right wing, basing its premises on 'Right-Hegelian' Fichte. The desire to make education compulsory for all was hardly for the interests of educating people or enriching their lives. It was for the interests of creating a perfectly hierarchical and centrally manipulatable society of the future with a small coterie of elites actually doing the thinking for the whole society, and the others blindly following orders, having been crippled by the educational frameworks to be unable to know anything different.

In the Prussian strategy, the whole population is categorized into three "educational castes" to formulate future easier elite control of the population.

1. those who will be policy makers, who are taught to think (0.5%),

2. those who will be engineers, lawyers, doctors--who are taught to partially think, only for accreditation in specialized topics (5.5%), and

3. the children of the masses, who are to be taught how to follow orders (94%).

In other words "compulsory education" may have had from the start a social design purpose for a hidden curriculum: aiming to maintain an ever more difficult form of elite managerial dominance--as calls for democracy, widened political participation, and the removal of the political perks of aristocratically inherited wealth were expanding throughout European society and the United States [and Japan].

The Prussian educational system in Germany as well as the United States was idealized as a strategic tool to demote political and intellectual equality and to reformulate an aristocratic society in novel formal institutions.

It could even be called a "de-educational" model, because it promotes a society that is endemically uneducated and trained mostly to follow someone else's centralized instructions thoughtlessly.

Even though Skull and Bones networks were prominent in institutionalizing frameworks of U.S. Education as well as calling for compulsory schooling from the 1800s, Alexander Inglis's Principles of Secondary Education (1918) echoes this Prussian model rather succinctly. Inglis for his educational strategizing for demoting child-centric education received an educational Chair at Harvard named after him! According to Bones protege trained James Bryant Conant, a long tenured President of Harvard, writing in The Child the Parent and the State (1959), he said that Inglis was one who "saw this revolution through the eyes of a revolutionary."

According to John Taylor Gatto, Inglis "makes it perfectly clear that compulsory schooling on this continent was intended to be just what it had been for Prussia in the 1820s: a fifth column into the burgeoning democratic movement that threatened to give the peasants and the proletarians a voice at the bargaining table....Inglis breaks down the purpose--the actual purpose--of modern [United States] schooling into six basic functions, any one of which is enough to curl the hair of those innocent enough to believe the three traditional goals ["1) To make good people. 2) To make good citizens. 3) To make each person his or her personal best."]...." To quote Gatto's summarizations of Inglis's motivations for U.S. Education, it would entail:

1) The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits of [servile] reaction [instead of independent action encouragement] to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgment completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting material should be taught, because you can't test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things.

2) The integrating function. This might well be called "the conformity function," because its intention is to make children as alike as possible. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force.

3) The diagnostic and directive function. School is meant to determine each student's proper social role. This is done by logging evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records. As in "your permanent record." Yes, you do have one.

4) The differentiating function. Once their social role has been "diagnosed," children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as their destination in the social machine merits - and not one step further. So much for making kids their personal best.

5) The selective function. This refers not to human choice at all but to Darwin's theory of natural selection as applied to what he called "the favored races." In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit - with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments - clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That's what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain. (See future section Bones and Eugenics: in other words the Bonesmen school choices they institutionalized in the U.S, went hand in hand with their other major leadership in the U.S. Eugenics movement, with their aim of establishing a genetic-caste based society.)

6) The propaedeutic function. The societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor. (Harpers, Sept. 2003 [1])

Woodrow Wilson, himself a protege of a Bonesman, and president of Princeton University, "...said the following to the New York City School Teachers Association in 1909: 'We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.'" (Harpers, Sept. 2003 [2])

They are talking about intentionally intellectually crippling millions of people through their version of "education". These were the ideas behind compulsory schooling in the United States--mostly institutionalized via steered funds of Bonesman monopolized to be aimed exclusively toward Bonesmen directed schooling, started from scratch off German models.

As an introduction to the below, the educational programme above started with major select land grant universities and private universities constructed from nothing. These were invented by Bonesmen Presidents, designed to create the group #1. These fresh University models were designed explicitly off techniques from Germany and even with the majority of the staff trained in Germany (as in the case of Johns Hopkins).

Funding was either coming from large private foundation grants or state land grant college funds--the latter of which Bonesmen monopolized for a generation in Connecticut and New York.

Then, for group #2, select teacher's college centralizations were achieved, particularly in Vanderbilt University (for the South) and Columbia University (for the North) after the Civil War.

With groups #1 and #2 achieved by the first decade of the 20th century, Wundtian experiments for how to achieve a docile group #3 started to be implemented down to grade school in the first decade of the 20th century. That decade saw the starting then rapid ending of different educational foundation funding of several 'test styles' of primary and secondary schooling experiments. These Wundtian pedagogical experiments came to an end by rejecting all child-centric models of Waldorf Education schools or Montessori method schools.

5/23/2007 04:51:00 AM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

Thanks, guys, for looking at my main interest. It’s kind of hard to explain how I got into this in the first place. I suppose I’ve always believed that if "regime change begins at home," as the bumper sticker tells us, then paradigm change (if I can use the dreaded cliché) really begins in the home.

By the time I wrote my first blogpage on the topic (habitat & environment) I had already been mulling over the idea for a long, long time. It makes a great deal of sense if you think about it long & hard: if we’re conditioned, or at least in some sense shaped by our experience and our environment (which we certainly are), then the places where we live play a very basic role in how we live and ultimately who we are. I was reading a book set in modern day Thailand the other day, which I mentioned in the final round of my never-ending dialogue with Richard about the soul of man, and in that book the Thai perspective on how we live illustrates the problem very neatly.

While on the one hand, Thailand is a third world country which has been raped by the West to the point where the old ways can no longer sustain them, since the harmony with the natural world was broken so completely (along with the societal harmony that Wade Davis & Dan Moonhawk Alford talk about), with the result that prostitution is their largest industry (what a perfect metaphor—it’s Western businessmen & tourists to whom they have to sell their bodies if not their souls)…and yet what the West offers them can never sustain them, either. The protagonist in the story, an honest Thai cop—an arhat with a badge who won’t take money to look the other way—lives in utter poverty and is chased by demon-like dreams of material wealth, things he could find if he moved to the US, but he knows that if he did move here, he’d die a spiritual death in our lifeless, soul-killing subdivisions & shopping malls.

In my H&E page I talk about how our dwelling places both shape our outlook on life and provide a roadmap for what ails us socially & spiritually. Sao Paolo as the model of disparity (waves of shanties breaking on the cold marbled elegance of the McMansioned haciendas of the owners) and the concentric ring pattern of the Northern cities (rotting industrial core/blighted inner city neighborhoods/Stepford suburbs)…and then I start talking about what the alternatives are.

One of the great unknowns in this newly trendy green architecture is Malcolm Wells, the grandfather of the earth-sheltered house. (If you go to my page, you’ll see a picture in the header of an even older example, the famous earth-sheltered houses of Keldur, Iceland, which were built in 1193…but then forgotten, somehow, even though they’re still habitable after all these years.) Wells was one of the first to rediscover what those fashionable Vikings were into (for that matter, our Neanderthal cousins knew something about living in caves, too, didn’t they?) and his story should be the inspiration for our story. Wells, you see, had an epiphany:

"In 1964, after 10 years spent spreading corporate asphalt on America in the name of architecture, I woke up one day to the fact that the earth's surface was made for living plants, not industrial plants. I've been an underground architect ever since."

By “underground” he doesn’t mean the figurative thing, either. His earth-sheltered houses are weather- and storm-proof, highly energy efficient and deeply secure & quiet. He tells us (in one of his many funny & provocative essays):

"...A building should consume its own waste, maintain itself, match nature's pace, provide wildlife habitat, moderate climate and weather and be beautiful. That's a series of pass/fail evaluation criteria..."

Green design and organic architecture didn’t stop with Wells, however. New criteria have been added by a growing movement of architects, engineers & designers who are intuitively following Viktor Schauberger’s kapieren & kopieren philosophy (understanding Nature and copying it). Now we can add these benchmarks to Wells’:

to produce more energy & water than is consumed (freedom from utilities & infrastructure)

to provide a community focus that obliterates the stratification of wealth & privilege and provides for the care of the “weak” (the elderly, the very young & the infirm)

to make such housing & communities very low cost in terms of materials and labor and at the same time wealth-producing (long story there)

I know of maybe 5 or 6 models that meet all these criteria, and all of them are based on structures, patterns & processes that exist in nature. My project revolves around bringing these designs together, synthesizing the very best into one complete package. There’s also farming and an industrial component to the plan, but I haven’t gotten very far with that stuff yet. Ericswan seems to know a lot about the former (I especially love the zeolite for containing contaminants & the organic agriculture things he talks about), while Mark and two of my best netfriends seem to have the necessary information to proceed on the latter front.

I’m working very hard on this project right now out of a sense of terrible urgency. The world is heading toward a massive maelstrom of crises and my own resources are also severely challenged, since I haven’t been able to work for 2 years and my health keeps deteriorating at an alarming rate. Hope is all that keeps me going at this point.

I find it very enlightening that you guys bring education into this mess. The Prussian model is both triumphant and crumbling from within. For all the “excesses” of Blavatsky & Steiner, the Waldorf model that their anthroposophy gave birth to has the seed of great change within it. And, to come full circle, it’s based on the science of Goethe, one of the true luminaries in the other tradition that stretches from the organic builders of today to Schauberger, Tesla, Kepler, Pythagoras…some say all the way back to Egypt (although it gets a little murky at that point, even more so when Colin Wilson traces it back to Atlantis. Seriously.)

I have good deal more to say about education, but this is running too long as it is. I will mention that I finally got my hands on a copy of a very rare book, Goethe and the Sciences: A Reappraisal (edited by Frederick Amrine, Francis J. Zucker, and Harvey Wheeler) which contains an even more rare piece by Hjalmar Hegge called Theory of Science in the Light of Goethe's Science of Nature, the missing companion piece to his much-linked Transcending Darwinism in the Spirit of Goethe's Science: A Philosophical Perspective on the Works of Adolf Portmann. Again, it’s too much to go into here, but this stuff holds one of the keys to a way forward, in the way we live and the way we learn.

If you guys want to see more links to the “new” architecture, you could scroll through my page, which is a bit dated and sadly lacking in the most recent finds (another thing on the bloody list) or you could go through Malcolm Wells’ excellent resource page. Thanks for all the great responses, clues & opinions.

5/23/2007 12:50:00 PM  
Blogger tazmic said...

IC wrote:

'if "regime change begins at home," as the bumper sticker tells us, then paradigm change (if I can use the dreaded cliché) really begins in the home.'

and

'if we’re conditioned, or at least in some sense shaped by our experience and our environment
(which we certainly are), then the places where we live play a very basic role in how we live and ultimately who we are.'

Taking this to one extreme, buying land with the intention of inventing a new lifestyle would represent the ultimate in changing 'how we live and ultimately who we are'.

In the UK, it's effectively illegal to buy land and invent your own lifestyle upon it.

The work being done on alternative homes is impressive and outstripping expectations...but
who is it all for? Who will be allowed to enjoy the fruits of this new world?

I don't have a home, and I don't know anyone that does. Even those in my age group that have big mortgages didn't get them without help from their parents. I may as well be reading about castles in the clouds...

5/23/2007 03:07:00 PM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

tazmic,

You're absolutely correct...and that's one of the reasons I'm starting this thing in the most ravished neighborhood in my city. It is a problem--this money & ownership game--and that's why I'm trying to get around it with the co-op structure. No one really owns the land anyway...the whole idea is to find a way to live on it without exercising dominion over it. On the other hand, once you're vested in the co-op, you have the security of knowing that you can't be divested by outside authorities. I've got a lawyer working on that part of it for me.

Did I mention that living in these communities would also be rent-free? (At least in terms of money...)

5/23/2007 04:01:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I hope that one day I will be able to build a house suitable for a hobbit like myself. These homes that you showcase IC can prolong one's life too. The alienation that dementia brings could be rather soothed in these healthy abodes. A most positive influence for our future plans of retirement.

The behavioral problems associated with the various diseases that cause dementia are understood more today but the progress of this kind of knowledge is slow. It is the experience of the caregivers of the elderly that has contributed the most knowledge to the medical establishment. The baby boomers are getting older and some of the retirement communities charge $6,000 dollars a month for these special services assisting people with dementia.

If the proper investor can invest his time and money into this housing idea it could take off.

Mark you really pour it on with the exposures. Good stuff.

My nine cents about the industrialists of the east. China's, Japan's, Taiwan's, etc... wealthy men are getting wealthier and much more influential. The Global Management System of the elite is progressing faster right before our eyes. Our media and government focus on the military invasion of Iraq daily. It is usually a very broad focus and we are manipulated to shrug this off with at least some impotent rage. But not much at all about the build up of wealth and power that these few rich men in the east wield. The history books are being written now about the Global Management System. Not much to reference to in the history books. The worldly management of commerce in fewer and fewer hands has never been accomplished in human civilization.

The gradual and radical conversion of dregs and scum of society to decency is an absolute reality thanks to Christianity's influence in the world. But the ministers and priests armed with their book of The Revelation only mouthpiece this international beast system by omission. Worldwide the Christian Church neglects serious investigation into the tyrannical, never seen before, dominion of ambitious global elites. By what these people behind the pulpit do not say influences billions of people every Sunday. The billions of Christians who could be a serious cog in the machinations of global commerce that now fewer rich men control. Because of this domination and subtle manipulation in the churches the world will see a decrease of economic security. All in the name of peace.

5/23/2007 05:38:00 PM  
Blogger tazmic said...

belliosto wrote:

"The gradual and radical conversion of dregs and scum of society to decency is an absolute reality thanks to Christianity's influence in the world."

Utterly speechless.

IC: More power to you, seriously.

(I'll ignore your response feeling like an email from my evil boss when he realises he's stepped over the line, as being perhaps only my problem. But the last line about it being 'rent free (in terms of money)' felt both patronising and sinister ;) )

5/23/2007 05:55:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The unemployed persons and people hit hard by the rising prices of goods and services flock and will flock to the churches for some kind of security in their lives. The people behind the pulpits who influence us contribute to this emergency situation by not saying much about why things are so bad. Whereas the churches leadership do know why and how this is being done. They do have the ability to influence the masses about the evils of global commerce and how this affects us locally. By not doing this as a rule and earning the financial donations of the elite as state servants, they are enjoined at the hip with the Global Management System. This is the international establishment.

By thinking that Christianity has not helped the most criminal and immoral people change their ways is like saying deep breathing and meditation does not help people reduce stress in their lives. You can condone the immorally criminal person in his principles but if his mentalities put you into the emergency room on a Saturday night will you explain to the nurses there that you are a martyr for his cause. And your good service as victim to the criminal will only help make the world a better place to live. Lend your head to his baseball bat and the world will be a more beautiful place. I promise.

5/23/2007 06:52:00 PM  
Blogger Sounder said...

Belliosto said;

"Worldwide the Christian Church neglects serious investigation into the tyrannical, never seen before, dominion of ambitious global elites."

Never seen before? What about the Church Universal and it's Jesuit army? To me it seems that authoritarian forces have always been allied with religious (social conformity officers). I mean, that is what religion is, a blasphemous declaration that some dictate of man is in fact a dictate from God.

Religion is the best tool that the global management system has to get people to divest themselves from critical thinking ability.

That shit will not save you Belliosto, but I suppose you can feel better (until the day you find your good intentions have placed you in HELL.)

Uh, IC, I am with tasmic,- rent free? Come-on, IC everything gets paid for in the end.

5/23/2007 07:23:00 PM  
Blogger tazmic said...

Beliosto said:

"The unemployed persons and people hit hard by the rising prices of goods and services flock and will flock to the churches for some kind of security in their lives. The people behind the pulpits who influence us contribute to this emergency situation by not saying.."

..Go away. You've come for the wrong reasons.


"By thinking that Christianity has not helped the most criminal and immoral people change their ways is like saying.."

..Abortion hasn't reduced crime.


"Lend your head to his baseball bat and the world will be a more beautiful place. I promise."

Turn the other cheek, maybe?

(Has any one not clicked on the wheelchair icon next to the word verification - try it!)

5/23/2007 07:50:00 PM  
Blogger Sounder said...

Belliosto said;

"The unemployed persons and people hit hard by the rising prices of goods and services will flock to the churches for some kind of security in their lives. The people behind the pulpits".....

never say anything, because all they care about is having more sheep to shear.

Praise God... and FUCK the blaspheming churchmen.

5/23/2007 07:53:00 PM  
Blogger ericswan said...

Mark.. I wonder if this is a description of the 911 weapon turned up a notch. I have never seen this before and wonder if there has been much said about it..

Baghdad

Bill Dash
Far Shores
August 24, 2003

A nightmarish US super weapon reportedly was employed by American ground forces during chaotic street fighting in Baghdad. The secret tank-mounted weapon was witnessed in all its frightening power by Majid al-Ghazali, a seasoned Iraqi infantryman who described the device and its gruesome effects as unlike anything he had ever encountered in his lengthy military service. The disturbing revelation is yet another piece of cinematic evidence brought back from postwar Iraq by intrepid filmmaker Patrick Dillon.

In the film, al-Ghazali, whose english is less than fluent, describes the weapon as reminiscent of a flame thrower, only immensely more powerful. It is unclear what principle the weapon is based on. Searching for a description, al-Ghazali said it appeared to be shooting concentrated lightning bolts rather than just ordinary flames. Drawing on his many years as a professional engineer, al-Ghazali speculates that radiation of some kind probably figures into the weapon's hideous capabilities. Like all men in Saddam's Iraq, al-Ghazali was compelled to serve in the Iraqi equivalent of the Army National Guard and fought in three wars over the past thirty-odd years. Via email, he told me he has seen virtually every type of conventional weapon employed in battle, and is well acquainted with their effects on people and machines, but nothing in his extensive combat experience prepared him for the shock of what he saw in Baghdad on April 12th.

On that date, al-Ghazali and his family sheltered in their house as a fierce street battle erupted in his neighborhood. In the midst of the fighting, he noticed that the Americans had called up an oddly configured tank. Then to his amazement the tank suddenly let loose a blinding stream of what seemed like fire and lightning, engulfing a large passenger bus and three automobiles. Within seconds the bus had become semi-molten, sagging "like a wet rag" as he put it. He said the bus rapidly melted under this withering blast, shrinking until it was a twisted blob about the dimensions of a VW bug. As if that were not bizarre enough, al-Ghazali explicitly describes seeing numerous human bodies shriveled to the size of newborn babies. By the time local street fighting ended that day, he estimates between 500 and 600 soldiers and civilians had been cooked alive as a result of the mysterious tank-mounted device.

In a city littered everywhere with burned-out civilian and military vehicles, US forces were abnormally scrupulous about immediately detailing bulldozers and shovel crews to the job of burying the grim wreckage. Nevertheless, telltale remnants remained as Dillon found when al-Ghazali later took him to the site. Dillon said they easily uncovered large puddles of resolidified metal and mounds of weird fibrous material that, al-Ghazali explained, were all that remained of the vehicles' tires. Dillon, who accumulated plenty of battlefield experience as a medic in Viet-Nam, and has since covered a number of wars from Somalia to Kosovo, told me that he has witnessed every kind of conventional ordnance that can be used on humans and vehicles. " I've seen a freaking smorgasbord of destruction in my life," he said, "flame-throwers, napalm, white phosphorous, thermite, you name it. I know of nothing short of an H-bomb that conceivably might cause a bus to instantly liquefy or that can flash broil a human body down to the size of an infant. God pity humanity if that thing is a preview of what's in store for the 21st century."

5/23/2007 09:23:00 PM  
Blogger Mark said...

Yes, sickeningly, I've heard of that report. Sounds like some overgrown "plasma taser," mounted on a truck, guessing here....I'd venture it's a plasma lamp with a hell of a corona discharge desire to ground to something outside its safe zone.

The 'taser's guide wires' are just high frequency electricity looking for something to attach to. That's why it doens't seem to have the capacity of pinpoint precision, perhaps.

What could generate plasma like that quickly?

Plasma (physics), an ionized gas, usually considered to be a distinct state of matter, and it is the basis for the famous plasma lamp:

Plasma lamps (also variously plasma globes, balls, domes, spheres, or orbs) are novelty items which were most popular in the 1980s. The plasma lamp was invented by Nikola Tesla after his experimentation with high frequency currents in an evacuated glass tube [just remove the safety feature of the evacuated tube then] for the purpose of studying high voltage phenomena. Tesla called this invention an Inert Gas Discharge Tube.

Plasma lamps are available in different shapes, including spheres and cylinders. Although there are many variations, a plasma lamp is usually a clear glass orb, filled with a mixture of various gases at low pressure, and driven by high frequency alternating current at high voltage (approx. 35kHz, 2-5kV), generated by a high voltage transformer.

A much smaller orb in its center serves as an electrode. Beams or 'snakes' of light (actually emergent patterns in ionized gas) extend from the inner electrode to the outer glass container, giving the appearance of multiple constant beams of coloured lightning (see corona discharge and electric glow discharge).

Coronas can generate audible and radio-frequency noise, particularly near electric power transmission lines. They also represent a power loss, and their action on atmospheric particulates, along with associated ozone and NOx production, can also be disadvantageous to human health where power lines run through built-up areas. Therefore, power transmission equipment is designed to minimise the formation of corona discharge. Corona discharge is generally undesirable in:

* Electric power transmission, where it causes:
o Power loss
o Audible noise
o Electromagnetic interference
o Purple glow

o Ozone production
o Insulation damage
* Inside electrical components such as transformers, capacitors, electric motors and generators. Corona progressively damages the insulation inside these devices, leading to premature equipment failure.
* Situations where high voltages are in use, but ozone production is to be minimised

In a plasma lamp, the beams initially follow the electric field lines of the dipole, but move upwards due to convection.

Placing a hand near the glass alters the high-frequency electric field, causing a single beam to migrate from the inner ball to the point of contact. An electric current is produced within any conductive object near the orb, as the glass doesn't block the flow of high frequency electrical current (electricity). The glass acts as a dielectric in a capacitor formed between the ionized gas and the hand.

Warning

One should be careful when placing electronic devices (such as a computer mouse) nearby or upon the plasma lamp: not only may the glass become hot, but the high voltage may place a substantial static charge into the device, even through a protective plastic casing. The radio frequency field produced by plasma lamps can interfere with the operation of touch pads used on laptop computers, digital audio players, and other similar devices. Some types, such as Radio Shack's Realistic Lightning Fury (no longer sold), can radiate sufficient RFI to interfere with nearby telephones up to several feet away. If the phone uses electronic dialing then the RFI can add digits to the number being dialed. This can effectively prevent calling, a potential safety hazard if an emegency number such as 911 is being dialed. Additionally, when a metal is placed on the surface of a plasma lamp's glass, a danger of shock and burning does exist; it is very easy for electricity to be emitted from the lamp if the metal comes in contact or close proximity with certain other materials, including human tissue.

...

In U.S. Patent 0,514,170 ("Incandescent Electric Light", 1894 February 6), Nikola Tesla describes a plasma lamp. This patent is for one of the first high intensity discharge lamps. Tesla took an incandescent type lamp globe with the suspended conductive element and excited the element with high voltage currents from a Tesla coil, thus creating the brush discharge emanation. He gains patent protection on the particular forms of the lamp in which a light giving small body or button of refractatory material is supported by a conductor entering a very highly exhausted globe or receiver. Tesla later called this invention an "Inert Gas Discharge Tube".

The popular product sold throughout the world today was invented by the artist Bill Parker, while an undergraduate student at MIT. Later he developed it into the now ubiquitous product while he was an Artist in Residence at the Exploratorium science museum. The technology needed to carefully formulate gas mixtures used in today's plasma spheres, primarily combinations of high purity rare gases, was not available to Tesla.

These gas mixtures, glass shapes and integrated circuit driven electronics used to create the vivid colors, range of motions and complex patterns seen in today's plasma spheres were all developed and patented by Bill Parker in the 1980s and 1990s. The lamps typically contain xenon, krypton and/or neon, though a number of other gases can be used as well.

[In other words, if you don't use inert gases, once the dipole is attached to something, you're going to catch something on fire in the space between and at the object 'touched' on the outside through some type of corona discharge 'reaching' for the metal object far away to complete the circuit.]

I'd bet some kind of high power electrical component plasma beam or corona discharge that can be aimed somewhat accurately, though perhaps only at metal objects that will be conducive to it.

The odd thing to that report is that the weapon obviously survives the damage it can inflict on metal around it that heats up. How did they keep it from melting the weapon that sent the blast? Perhaps it is a 'plasma lamp' at the core with inert gases to keep it from getting hot, though so strong in amps and volts to send feeler beams 'outside the plasma lamp' so to speak.

A home model would be limited to barely over 100 volts. If it was attached to its own Tesla coil and transformer, hundreds of thousands of volt discharge would be created, with amperage up as well, it might wreak such damage 'successfully.' This is just the known 'over the counter' effects of certain electrical components:

Physiological

Burns - Tissue heating due to resistance can cause extensive and deep burns. High-voltage (> 500 to 1000 V) shocks tend to cause internal burns due to the large energy (which is proportional to the square of the voltage) available from the source. Damage due to current is through tissue heating. In some cases 16 volts might be fatal to a human being when the electricity passes through organs such as heart.

I've seen the damage in an electrical substation from an arcing bus-duct failure. It was astounding the amount of metal slag everywhere or obviously vaporized away, and holes eaten into the concrete floor. It's supposedly associated with a huge explosion as the metal immediately vaporizes and throws itself everywhere. Ever seen an arc lamp? It supposedly looks like that though with a large explosion as well.

Arc-flash hazards - Over 80% of all injuries and fatalities caused by electrical incidents are not caused by electric shock, but by the intense heat, light, and pressure wave (blast) caused by electrical faults. The arc-flash in an electrical fault produces the same type of light radiation from which electric welders protect themselves using face shields with dark glass, heavy leather gloves, and full-coverage clothing. The heat produced may cause severe burns, especially on unprotected flesh.

The blast produced by vaporizing metallic components can break bones and irreparably damage internal organs. The degree of hazard present at a particular location can be determined by a detailed analysis of the electrical system, and appropriate protection worn if the electrical work must be performed with the electricity on.

Most countries have worker safety regulations that require the electricity to be turned off before work is performed unless a greater hazard will result from turning the power off.

Lethality of a shock

The voltage necessary for lethal electrocution depends on the current drawn by the body.

Using Ohm's law, Voltage = Current x Resistance, we see that the current drawn depends on the resistance of the body. The resistance of our skin varies from person to person and fluctuates between different times of day. In general, dry skin isn't a very good conductor having a resistance of around 10,000 Ω, while skin dampened by tap water has a resistance of around 1,000 Ω.

[so it would have to be pretty high current to get across that resistance, much less carbonize someone]

Using Ohm's law, we may derive the voltages lethal to the human body. This is given in the following table [2]...

6 A 60,000 V 6,000 V 400,000 W

Sustained ventricular contraction
followed by normal heart rhythm.
These are the operation parame-
ters for a Defibrillator. Tempo-
rary respiratory paralysis and
possibly burns.

So with something perhaps 10 or 20 times the voltage or amperage, you're cinderized? Blech. Ask an electrical engineer.

(You've probably heard the rumor that a neutron bomb ("all human life gone, buildings OK") was used at the Baghdad airport because the American invasion was failing.)

You don't think they've used these puppies without telling us, do you? (sarcasm), had then since the late 1950s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_bomb

Alleged use During Iraq War

On the 4th anniversary of the Iraq War, Quatar-based Al-Jazeera news television aired a lengthy commemorative programme. In the programme, former Iraqi Republican Guard field commander General Sayf ad-Din Rawi made the unsubstantiated claim that the United States dropped a neutron bomb on the Baghdad International Airport during the invasion of Iraq in April 2003.[11] He described a device being deployed that left many Republican Guards soldiers burned but with buildings and equipment intact.

5/23/2007 10:39:00 PM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

tazmic & sounder,

Sorry to have given offense--it was entirely unintentional. I did mean what I said, however, which was "rent-free, at least in terms of money." It's actually a very simple (and old) idea. 20 years ago, I used to belong to the last neighborhood co-op in Milwaukee. By that time, their network had been dismantled by the bankers and the zoning board so much that only the general store was left, but it still worked pretty well.

You could pay for your groceries with either greenbacks or scrip. Most of the members were artists of one stripe or another and didn't have much money (or interest in procuring any in the usual way), so they'd work for scrip instead. I don't remember what the formula was, exactly, since I was working a regular job at the time, but my friends told me that it worked out to fewer hours of doing something they believed in than working for the man.

You have to remember that the consumer society is based on the insatiable appetite for material things--the more you work, the more you spend, etc, in an hellacious cycle that's self-perpetuating. It didn't always used to be that way. I can remember going grocery shopping with my grandma, who had once been a homesteader and continued to grow a great deal of the food she ate well into her '70s. We'd go the local A&P, stick very close to the careful list she'd made, and come out with far, far less than my parents would ever manage to, mostly things she couldn't make or grow herself. You'd be surprised at how little of what we spend our money for we actually need (or can't make on our own.)

The trick to the success of the co-op is two-fold. First, you need to start out with low debt levels. In my town, the fair market value of a typical lot in the most blighted areas is about $6,000. So, if you can secure grant money (which is out there for civic-minded projects and business ventures that hope to ease the cost of social services on the various levels of government), or get your financial backing from churches, social networks, philanthropic foundations (it's pure tax write-off for them), then you're starting out clean, which is very important.

The second major component is even more important: people. When the artists and hippies and committed earth-friendlies still lived in my neighborhood, they were fiercely loyal to the co-op; the more people you have, the more skill sets you have, the more resources you have. Add a lawyer, a doctor, an accountant, a carpenter, a skilled administrator, etc, and you can make a go of it.

It's the skills that are the most valuable resource. For a very concrete example of how this works, check out this little EARTHSHIP 101 VIDEO from Biotecture. In 11 minutes you can see how these guys send in a trained team to anywhere in the world, gather old materials (tires, bottles, etc) and teach your team how to build a house that is completely off the grid. They also teach your team how to teach other teams the same skills, so the knowledge base just keeps growing.

This is really nothing new at all, at least in terms of allowing people to pay in kind. During the Depression, my dad used to raise rabbits, my grandma would garden on a pretty large scale (okay, call it farming, even though it wasn't a rural setting) cook & clean & take care of old folks...and the neighbors did much the same thing. Sure, there were some people who were too mistrustful to participate, but they didn't fare as well. My grandma told me that when she was a kid (over 100 years ago now) in Saskatchewan, no one really had much money and this was how they survived then too. For people with such networks, the Depression, while no summer picnic, was far less deadly than for the typical inmate of the urban jungle.

You also have to give people choices. If someone likes his or her day job and doesn't care to "donate" 20 hours a week to the co-op, they can pay with regular money, too, if that's what they want to do.

This is the basic set up for the co-op, but it gets even more creative from there. There are also ways of creating resources that go well beyond these old-fashioned customs. As a last and rather bizarre example, until the recent stadium renovation, which was disgracefully (if only partially) paid for with corporate & municipal concessions, the Green Bay Packers were also run as a sort of co-op. They still are owned by the city, as a collective co-op...although the NFL doesn't much like the arrangement and has passed bylaws forbidding other teams from following their example.

Yeah, I know, it all sounds like to each, from each, but Wisconsin has a very long socialist tradition (even if the word can't be used in polite conversation anymore). So let's just keep that definition under our hat, shall we? Nobody calls the Amish "commies," except maybe Fritz Springmeier, but he's one sick puppy himself, so...Anyway, the co-op does work and has for a very long time, regardless of what kind of labels you use for it.

(Sounder, did you ever see my request for that Goethe link in your blog? I put in the midst of a long, rambling sort of comment a while back.)

5/24/2007 12:15:00 AM  
Blogger Mark said...

Here's an inspirational picture for you, IC:

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d110/biostate/nyc_edengarden.jpg

5/24/2007 04:33:00 AM  
Blogger Sounder said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

5/24/2007 06:27:00 AM  
Blogger Sounder said...

My neighbor told me that he heard someone on TV declare that what we need another 911. (Then he muttered and swore that he had to stop watching TV news.) I suppose there are more people than I care to think about (not my neighbor) that need a boost to their sense of righteousness. If we are bombed again, it will be much easier to feel good about killing others (sic).

It pains me to think that our collective morphic resonance entanglement is ready to bite us in the ass again. This goes on, as long our criteria cannot provide the discrimination to distinguish between good and evil, (or integrate unconscious elements within our conscious model).

Terrortainment for the masses, but not to worry, you will probably not have to give up your life --yet.

Disclaimer-- I was short an airline stock in the month before 911, and bought it back on the Friday before that Tuesday. So while I am a stinking capitalist, I am not a seer.

Sorry IC, I did not provide the Goethe link; and thanks for the stuff you posted at my blog.

IC, did you get the e-mail I sent?

5/24/2007 07:02:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun

Quick...check out this Wiki Bio of von Braun.....scroll down to US Army Career. It's a hoot.....I love it, Baby!!

5/24/2007 09:38:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

That wheelchair deal is interesting. It sounded like some Alien Transmission, of some sort. Maybe it's Landrieu?

5/24/2007 10:03:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Okay...I thought that might happen. The link I provided for the Wiki Bio of von Braun was edited. Under US Army Career when I looked at it earlier, ir said FUCK YOU ALL. I thought it was rather appropriate, don't you?

5/24/2007 11:33:00 AM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

Thanks, all!

Mark, here’s an inspiration or two from Malcolm Well’s resource page (what is it with these Wellses, anyway?):

The Cumbrian Underground Home (very nice photo spread)

as long as we’re in the old world, check out Caer Llan

and The Eden Project in Cornwall (which I find extremely interesting for any number of reasons, including the terra-forming potentials of (at least temporarily) enclosed environments (more photos)

finally, tripping Stateside, there’s the vast repository of true green (no green-washing here) at the ROCKY MOUNTAIN INTITUTE: Abundance by Design with tons of resources, including a page that features such notables as Builders Without Borders (BWB) and The Orion Society:

Orion explores an emerging alternative world view. Informed by a growing ecological awareness and the need for cultural change, it is a forum for thoughtful and creative ideas and practical examples of how we might live justly, wisely, and artfully on Earth. Orion has worked to reconnect human culture with the natural world, blending scientific thinking with the arts, engaging the heart and mind, and striving to make clear what we all have in common.

(Who could argue with that?)

At RMI’s twin site, we’ve got photos of the world’s first earth-sheltered geodesic dome and an explanation of Passive Annual Heat Storage (no mechanical, or at least moving parts, and yet inside temperatures only vary from 68°F to 70°F, regardless of where you build one of these.)

So much food for thought, so little time…but at least this is a healthy appetite.

Sometimes pictures are better at delivering messages, as you can see, depending on your cup of tea, at the website of Abdul Mati Klarwein ("the most famous unknown artist") whose name itself is quite interesting to those who can decipher it (no more clues)


Sounder,

You’re welcome, and no, I didn’t, but I think it’s because that email link is broken—check your inbox at the discussion board.

IC

5/24/2007 12:57:00 PM  
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