Saturday, July 30, 2011

Strategic Level Spiritual Warfare … But It Could Never Happen Here

Strategic Level Spiritual Warfare … But It Could Never Happen Here: "

Michael Binding SatanA very disturbing bit of reading from from Al Jazeera during the current American election season. Paul Rosenberg writes in Al Jazeera:


Prior to 9/11, the Taliban government in Afghanistan did not register very much on American radar screens, with one notable exception: when it blew up two colossal images of the Buddha in Bamiyan province in early 2001. But destruction of treasured artifacts isn’t just limited to the Taliban.


There’s a right-wing politico-religious presence centred in the US, but with a global reach, engaging in similar practises, destroying religious and cultural artifacts as a key aspect of its ideology of “strategic level spiritual warfare” (SLSW).


Until recently a fringe evangelical movement, warned against as deviant, “spiritual warfare” is rapidly positioning itself within America’s mainstream political right. It’s well past time for political journalists to start covering what this movement is up to.


Read More: Al Jazeera

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Video: 'I have decided I am going to take some bath salts'

Video: 'I have decided I am going to take some bath salts': "


Thank you, and good night.

Posted by Scotto."

MORRISSEY’S MORAL HIERARCHY

MORRISSEY’S MORAL HIERARCHY: "

morrissey


Following in the footsteps of the notorious belittler Lee Ryan, Morrissey is said to have made the following observation while onstage in Warsaw on Sunday night:


“We all live in a murderous world, as the events in Norway have shown, with 97 dead. Though that is nothing compared to what happens in McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Shit every day.”


If you weren’t aware already, this should make it absolutely clear that Morrissey is not only a vegetarian and a maker of controversial remarks, but also a searing wit. But the former Smiths frontman doesn’t need Anders Breivik to bring out his proselytizing side. He’s displayed an inverse, perverse, or even-verse sense of moral judgement many times before. Keen to get a Morrissey-eye view of the world, we tried to figure out who Moz thought most deserved to be in it. After holding a bacon sandwich hostage for nine hours, we were ultimately given permission by Morrissey’s people to get an ordered list: a top-to-bottom Moral Hierarchy, delivered via the pop singer’s own leaky quill.




Animals

Animals, it is often supposed, appear to me as tiny people in fur coats. I feel I must rebut this idea here and now, as it is egregious. No animal would ever wear fur. They have too much dignity, too great a heft of moral virtue in their hearts, to sully themselves with such unethical and vulgar dressings. Why, I spoke to a swan the other day in Hertfordshire who would potentially make a better moral leader than Nelson Mandela. Animals would never do the things that we weak and venal humans do—kill each other, have intercourse indiscriminately, leave the aged members of their community to die, eat their newborn babies, and so on.




Working Class Thugs


Oh, whisper to me softly of working class thugs. I tell you solemnly, there is nothing so beautiful as the sight of a sweet hooligan doing irreparable damage to the knees of an ageing shopkeeper with a homemade cosh, fashioned rudely from spare lead piping found in the back of Darren’s transit van. So free. So spirited. They know not how beautiful they are, these youths, and so it has been up to me to hymn them in song. I confess: I regularly trawl the aisles of Deptford ASDA on Saturdays, cunningly disguised as Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, in order to eavesdrop on their conversations to generate material for my next album. They do say the most fascinating things. “Aren’t eggs next to the baking aisle?” “Here, get that, those are two for one.” “Sorry, mate, is this on Rollback?” It is a richly bejewelled argot all of its own. But one, I fear, that is being swept away by the ceaseless immigrant tide.




Nazis


Many people will tell you bad things about Nazis. That they weren’t as neat as they were made out to be. That the colors on their flags clashed. That they did not always only obey orders. However, I feel it is time to take a fresh look at Nazis. Hitler, as is widely known, loved dogs. Indeed, it was out of deep compassion that Hitler gave Blondi the first cyanide capsule inside the bunker, so that this German Shepherd would not be put through the trauma of watching his master and mistress take their own lives. If only more pet owners would spare their animals this unbridled horror when they make the selfish decision to poison themselves out of existence, the world would be a much better place.




Alan Bennett


A beautiful man. We have spent many happy hours over the past few decades discussing the works of 1950s comedian Jimmy Clitheroe, which is the only topic of conversation I will countenance. I visit him for tea most Tuesdays. He has begun playing a superbly wry game with me, which involves him hiding behind the curtains for six hours while I ring the bell over and over. The man is lord not only of the arch witticism, but of suitably dry physical comedy, too.




The Editor of Morrissey-Solo.com


He has failed to control the forums on his website on the digital wire-press, resulting in negative commentary on my new songs, which is why I was forced to expel him from my Danish show and impose a lifetime ban. Yes, so this man [above, right] has devoted himself to compiling long lists of articles about me. Is that enough for a reprieve? It cannot be. He reminds me of the limpid parasite Paul Morley, who wrote kindly of me in the NME during that lamentable decade, the 1980s, then traitorously failed to prevent the publication of McNicholas’s scurrilous lies some 20 years later. Worse still—this man was working on the digital wire-press, yet in my two incursions onto the digital wire-press via my electronic computing machine, I have run across many digital wire-press pieces which do not portray me well, and so it is surely up to him to police the digital wire-press properly. I gather there are now more than ten billion pages thereon, but as a paltry penance he ought, at least, to make a start.




The Drumming Oaf Mike Joyce


This session musician, whom I vaguely recall clinging to my coattails throughout much of that lamentable decade, the 1980s, had the gumption to stick his beaky nose above the parapet and attempt to rob me of my paltry 40 percent share in the profits of The Smiths. As I recall it, the judge damned his claims as devious, truculent, and unreliable, and sentenced him to jail for crimes against Morrissey. Morrissey was once again vindicated. As I stood on the steps of the courthouse, I must confess, I wept. I wept for Mike Joyce and for his outlandish delusions. This poor pitiful fool had assumed he was on par with Morrissey. But justice had prevailed. “Justitia omnibus Morrisseyus,” I whispered. Sorrow will come to him in the end.


Morrissey turns his righteous heat up on Page 2.

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Amazing photos of Iggy & the Stooges playing at a Michigan high school, 1970

Amazing photos of Iggy & the Stooges playing at a Michigan high school, 1970: "





Holy shit! If these classic shots of Iggy and the Stooges performing at Farmington High School in Oakland County, MI on December 5, 1970 don’t send a special thrill up your leg, there is nothing I can do for you, pal.



These shots were posted by Jim Edwards, lead singer of Michigan legends, The Rockets, on his Facebook page. Here’s what he wrote:



“I got these slides from a guy at work. He walks up to me and says, ‘You’re a musician, right? I got these old slides from a show at my high school, Wanna see ‘em?’ I held the first one up to the light and nearly shit myself!”



He must’ve used Kodachrome because these haven’t faded a bit. Also on the bill that night were headliners Mitch Ryder’s Detroit and a band called The Coming. This was James Williamson’s very first gig with The Stooges, at this point a quintet.











Iggy with split pants! If something like that happened today, he’d be in jail.







Above, a young James Williamson plays his first live gig with the Stooges.







Short-term Stooge Zeke Zettner on bass, Iggy and drummer Scott Asheton.







Above: What were these kids thinking?







A great shot of Ron Asheton.



Many more (and larger) photos at Jim Edwards’ Facebook page.



Click here for a lot more Iggy Pop and the Stooges items on Dangerous Minds





Above, the Stooges at the Cincinnati Pop and Rock Festival earlier that year.



Thank you very kindly, Syd Garon!

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Wisc. union protester claims Capitol staffer attacked her balloon

Wisc. union protester claims Capitol staffer attacked her balloon: "

Though the pro-union protesters in Wisconsin are no longer making front page news daily around the country, their resistance continues — most recently, in a bizarre direction involving a trail of blood and a popped balloon. Activists have taken to holding red heart-shaped balloons in the Capitol...


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REQUIRED VIEWING | STATE OF GRACE GARY OLDMAN AS JACKIE FLANNERY

REQUIRED VIEWING | STATE OF GRACE GARY OLDMAN AS JACKIE FLANNERY: "

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“Looks like it’s time to kick some Guinea ass.”


–Gary Oldman as Jackie Flannery


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Ask any hardcore Gary Oldman fan what their favorite on-screen performance is, and most won’t have to think twice– the loveable, loyal, lunatic Jackie Flannery in State of Grace. Directed by Phil Joanou (Rattle and Hum), released quietly in 1990, and largely overshadowed by another epic gangster flick that hit theaters that same week– Scorsese’s Goodfellas. Due largely to Oldman’s mesmerizing performance (one of the finest actors of our time), today State of Grace is considered by many mobster movie fans to rank up there with the best of the best.


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Gary Oldman as badass Irish gangster Jackie Flannery in 1990′s “State of Grace”



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Sean Penn, Gary Oldman and John C. Reilly in “State of Grace”


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Gary Oldman as Jackie Flannery in “State of Grace”


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Sean Penn and Gary Oldman in “State of Grace”


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Gary Oldman, Robin Wright Penn and Sean Penn in “State of Grace”



Gary Oldman as Jackie Flannery in “State of Grace”


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MASTER CLASS | THE EPIC CALIFORNIA ROCK CLIMBERS OF THE SEVENTIES

MASTER CLASS | THE EPIC CALIFORNIA ROCK CLIMBERS OF THE SEVENTIES: "

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The Stonemasters: California Rock Climbers in the Seventies


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Their ranks included John Long, John Yablonski, John Bachar, Tobin Sorenson and Richard Harrison, this long-haired band of bros from Southern California, who, armed with little more than frayed cut-offs, dark shades and folded bandanas, heralded the golden age of American rock climbing. They called themselves the Stonemasters—cheeky, but deserved—in their stripped-down, bare-bones approach to climbing, they devised revolutionary techniques, underscored by their renegade attitudes. Balancing intensity and exuberance, the Stonemasters were a team of some of the most innovative daredevils the world has ever seen, and in the early 1970s, these laid-back originators of adventure sports were risking life and limb, long before the X Games had a moniker, before Title IX passed legislation, and before the Z-Boys had a pubic hair to scratch between them.



Hybrid pioneers bound by a communal spirit, these surfers of stone followed the cowboy code, “no complaining, no explaining,” while letting it rip across the mountain ranges of the American West. All hail: El Cap, the Column, Half Dim and Middle Cathedral: these peaks were their stomping grounds, their turf. And together, with a sun-bleached flair for the dramatic, they challenged the boundaries not only of the sport, but of nature, itself, catapulting themselves to the world stage of Yosemite.


In the words of author Jeff Jackson, “climbing wasn’t about victory. It was about style.” Fortunately or unfortunately, in this case, style didn’t trump substance. To be sure, there was real substance—many substances. Intoxicated as they were intoxicating, these new frontiersmen brought a playful free-spiritedness that had been sorely lacking in rock climbing, and thereby inspired an international following of countless kids who emulated them, all trying to talk and dress and climb, fashioning themselves after the Stonemasters, with admirers, past and present, as far-ranging as Patagonia’s founder Yves Chouinard to Band of Outsiders fall 2011 menswear collection.


But it was more than that—it wasn’t just the way they walked, talked, dressed, climbed—in fact, style is an afterthought of their infectious and innate appeal. I think the main reason why they are still emulated the world over is something far more universal: fun. Look: just look at them: they were having so much goddamn fun, and you can’t help but want to be a part of that. Really, looking at these images, don’t you just want to grab a few ropes and hit the road, in hot pursuit of this happy-go-lucky albeit death-defying community of crags? Poring over the photographs gathered in this book, looking at this picture, in particular, I nod my head at that boyish grin on his face, precariously suspended in thin air, halfway between heaven, above, and sure death, below, captured in a moment of such divine and demented communion, I can’t think of any way to describe it, except Spicoli meets the Sistine Chapel.


That’s just one of hundreds of images tirelessly collected and preserved by Dean Fidelman, the de facto Stonemaster archivist, in the book, The Stonemasters: California Rock Climbers in the Seventies. Individually, I marvel at every climber; each so alive, so present, so connected, and so ballsy, damn you, all, but when viewed as a whole, the Stonemasters greatest contribution to sport becomes most evident: unity and selflessness. Even now, almost forty years later, in the wake of so many climbing expeditions gone wrong, and despite knowing the all too real individual and collective trials and tribulations of the Stonemasters, it’s difficult not to romanticize their moment in the sun. But still, theirs is the legacy of a time and place as eternal as it was ephemeral, offering us one shining instance in which the young were wasted, but youth was not wasted on the young.


–Courtney Eldridge


Courtney Eldridge is a writer living in Los Angeles


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The Stonemasters: California Rock Climbers in the Seventies


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The Stonemasters: California Rock Climbers in the Seventies


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The Stonemasters: California Rock Climbers in the Seventies


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The Stonemasters: California Rock Climbers in the Seventies


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THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF LEROY GRANNIS | CALIFORNIA SURF CULTURE


PATAGONIA | A ROLE MODEL THAT’S BUILT TO LAST


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Sam Harris on Stem Cell Research (Video)

Sam Harris on Stem Cell Research (Video): "

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How Long Do Severed Heads Live?

How Long Do Severed Heads Live?: "

dery1The latest science suggests that old-timey Europe’s “humane” method of execution, decapitation, is a sham — heads seem remain alive for up to a minute after being disconnected from the lower portions. And theoretically they could survive if quickly reattached to a body. Via the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:


Imagine yourself with your head in the business end of a guillotine. I know, it’s not the most pleasant of thoughts, but the guillotine was once considered a humane way to kill someone: Just a quick slice and you’re flat-out dead. But researchers are finding that neurons, the cells that make up the brain, are active even after their blood supply is suddenly cut off. And they may show activity for longer than a minute. In an arguably not-so-humane study, Dutch scientists measured the brain activity in mice after slicing off the mice’s heads. What they saw was a quick flash of brain activity immediately following decapitation – then, about 50 seconds later, another ripple of activity. So, if you got your head chopped off – since your eyes are connected to your brain, and they’re both inside your head – would you have an “off of body experience”? Nobody (alive) really knows. However, if neurons can’t function normally without a blood supply, those sensory signals probably wouldn’t make it from your eyes to your brain. But you might still be alive. Maybe. And if your head somehow were quickly reconnected to a blood source, you might live to talk about it.

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‘Hoffman’s Potion’: LSD now more than ever

‘Hoffman’s Potion’: LSD now more than ever: "





This wonderfully insightful documentary on one of the 20th centuries most significant discoveries will make you long for the day when pharmaceutical-quality LSD is once again made available to adults who want to experience it. As humanity seems to be on a de-evolutionary course, the responsible and conscious use of LSD may be one of the only genuinely effective antidotes to what ails us.



Forget Prozac, Klonapin, alcohol and TV, let’s legalize Hoffman’s potion and re-awaken the beauty at the core of who we all are.



And for you naysayers who still think LSD was some badass hippie shit with little or no redeeming qualities, get off your computers now. Without acid, this technology we’re using at this very moment would probably not exist as it does in its present form. Suggested reading: click here.


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