The suppression on which the nuclear industrial complex was built?
In the weeks following the atomic attacks on Japan sixty-six years ago this week, and then for decades afterward, the United States engaged in airtight suppression of all film shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings. This included vivid color footage shot by U.S. military crews and black-and-white Japanese newsreel film.
Here’a bit of wisdom from Hindi jokes (which, BTW, hits you with about a dozen adds interspersed among the lines of a joke, LOL!).
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An Investment Banker was at the pier of a small coastal Indian village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna.
The Investment Banker complimented the Fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked, “How long does it take to catch them?” The Fisherman replied: “Only a little while.”
An Investment Banker was at the pier of a small coastal Indian village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna.
The Investment Banker complimented the Fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked, “How long does it take to catch them?” The Fisherman replied: “Only a little while.”
The Banker then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish? The Fisherman said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs. The Banker then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”
The fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take dinner with my wife, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play cards with my friends, I have a full and busy life.”
The Banker scoffed, “I am a MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats.
Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution.
You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mumbai, then London and eventually New York where you will run your expanding enterprise.” Continue reading
World-wide localization. To cure the cancer, shrink it.
I believe it is high time for the smaller nations of the world to begin withdrawing from the United Nations. The U.N. is morally, intellectually, and politically bankrupt. It is time for these smaller nations to confront the meganations of the world and say, “Enough is enough. We refuse to continue condoning your plundering the planet in pursuit of resources and markets to quench your insatiable appetite for consumer goods and services.” These small nations should call for the nonviolent breakup of the United States, China, Russia, India, Japan, and the other meganations of the world.
A small group of peaceful, sustainable, cooperative, democratic, egalitarian, ecofriendly nations might lead the way. Such a group might include Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland.
Could it happen? Who knows. The Soviet Empire fell apart under its own weight, and Russia’s still struggling. Back in 1400 who’d have thought that the British Empire would span the globe. And look what happened to that.
via Thomas H. Naylor: A Community of Small Nations for a Sustainable Planet.
Who’s the Tomás de Torquemada of the California prison system? Has the US Prison system passed the Inquisition in cruelty? Has it reached the gulag level?
Once used occasionally as a short-term punishment for violating prison rules, solitary confinement’s prevalent use as a long-term prison management strategy is a fairly recent development, Colin Dayan, a professor at Vanderbilt University, said in a recent Op-Ed article in The Times. Nationally, more than 20,000 inmates are confined in “supermax” facilities in horrid conditions.
The Oxford researchers estimate that religious groups own about eight per cent of land across round the globe, much of it being covered in forest, and about 15 per cent of the world’s surface is ‘sacred land’ – land that has ‘sacred’ connotations rather than being necessarily owned by faith communities….
The Oxford research team is engaged, firstly, in investigating what legal or official data exists on boundary lines and the rights to the land. Once the status of the land and its boundaries are known, the geographical co-ordinates can be entered onto their database at the Biodiversity Institute.
The researchers will work with groups of many different faiths: those who manage the sacred groves in India, the Shinto shrines in Japan, and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which owns 300 fragments of forest including the last remnants of Afro-montane tropical forest containing rare and endangered insects. The religious sites appear to contain a high proportion of species that feature on the IUCN’s Red List (of threatened species).
Fascinating images from the Good Olde Days (But the Best Days are Yet to Come).
Above and below are some samples from The Diggers Archive, a group of radical thinkers from 1960s San Francisco that used food (free healthy food!) as part of their art and political message. These pieces are from their newspaper FREE CITY NEWS, that showcased some pretty cool hippie graphic design.
via The intersection of food, design and politics – Imprint – Salon.com.
Resilience at the margins. Check it out.
Artists and small businesses priced out of other neighborhoods have been taking up residence in the old warehouses. Nightclubs have popped up on streets that taxi repair shops and truck depots once dominated. Restaurants, bars and bakeries have all moved in, creating a scene that longtime Brooklyn residents compare to Dumbo before the multimillion-dollar lofts and Williamsburg before Bedford Avenue became a destination.
Why is it the artists that pioneer these areas? There’s something both obvious and deep there.
The super-rich: have got it figured out: How to keep their part of the economy, that part that feeds their bank accounts, growing. The neat thing is they can keep things growing in their back yard even when the overall economy is stagnant. Which means that,for the rest of us, the economy is shrinking. Back in the old days, the economy grew for everybody: win-win. Now it grows for the rich, but not for us: win-lose.
And the rich don’t care. Why should they, they hardly even notice. Because it just doesn’t affect them.
“The basic issue is that the U.S. is on an unsustainable fiscal track,” says Dean Maki, the chief United States economist at Barclays Capital. “From that point, none of the choices are fun.” The most obvious choices, Mr. Maki says, are to reduce spending (ouch), raise taxes (yuck), let inflation run (gasp) or default (thud).
We wouldn’t need any of that if we could restore economic growth. If that happened, Americans would become richer and pay more taxes. Et voilà! — we’d pay down the debt painlessly.
via Sure Cure for Debt Problems Is Economic Growth – NYTimes.com.
Frank Foster in Buffalo
At first glance this wouldn’t seem to be about politics. It’s about a musician who was also my teacher. Which is to say, it is very much about politics in the deepest sense. Music is about community, and so is politics. Teaching is about passing knowledge from one generation to the next, as politics requires. Like politics at its best, it’s about truth and tradition. One of my teachers just died. A great musician, Frank Foster. This is about, and for, him. He knew truth, respected tradition, and made beautiful music, of his time and for the future.
I headed off to the State University of NY at Buffalo (aka UB) in the Fall of 1973. While I was going for my Ph.D. in English Literature, I was also interested in their music offerings—the school’s, not the English Department’s. I’d just gotten my trumpet out of “storage,” as it were, a year or so ago and I decided I wanted to sharpen my jazz chops. So, I looked through the UB catalogue and noticed they had some guy named Frank Foster teaching jazz improv. I’d never heard of him. But, hey, I looked him up anyhow, you never know—played and arranged with Basie, Elvin Jones, Sarah Vaughan, “hmmm,” says I to my little-too-smart self, “maybe he’ll do.”
He did.
I forget just how I made my way into his improv workshop. While I was registered in the English Department and took courses there, there was no problem about showing up in Frank’s class and just hanging out. I didn’t even register for credit. Just showed up. (Maybe I officially audited the course, as it’s called, but I don’t really remember the arrangement.)
Frank had no problem with that. Neither did anyone else.
So, anyhow, I show up in the room. Other folks came in. We got out our horns and warmed up in that “checkin’ everyone out” way that musicians have. Then Frank comes in—he must’ve, because that’s how it had to be, no? But I don’t actually remember that first day. I remember other days, but not that one. So I’m just makin’ it up about that first day.
Improvising, you might say.
Frank comes in, says ‘hi’ to folks he recognizes. Does some administrative crap, and gets down to business. He goes to the chalk board, writes out the head and changes to a tune, say, “Blue Bossa,” explains a thing or two about “harmonic relevance” (his term) and we’re blowing. The rhythm section has it, we all play the head with Frank. Then Frank takes a chorus or two and then sends it around the room. Everyone took a turn. Continue reading
Truth and Traditions 