A Democracy…

Here is a followup to last year’s post.

A democracy should not give credence to the military ambition of the corporate interests

A democracy would not advocate the burning of books

A democracy could not seriously consider chaining the accused after freeing their ancestors from the same bondage

A democracy does not actively conspire to murder its citizens especially without a trial

A democracy will not abrogate the promised privacy of its citizens by sending tax paid spies to infiltrate and misinform them

A democracy can not conduct medical experiments targeting any group whether it’s based on ethnicity or belief system or otherwise

A democracy may not conduct experiments that alter the mental faculties of its citizens especially in the development of weapons

A democracy definitely must not conduct clandestine military operations to set up dummy governments on foreign soil and most definitely not with the unknowing dollars of its tay paying citizens

A democracy is not supposed to fund and train the above activities under the auspices of philanthropy

A democracy which does not sell or even advocate the retail of dangerous substances such as narcotics should never do so on foreign soil especially to barter for weapons

A democracy would never use a tax paid military to attack its civilians especially minors, pets, and pregnant women with unannounced lethal force

A democracy could never use a tax paid military to attack its citizens who non-violently exercise their right to speech with deadly force

A democracy can never control and block media from informing the news to its citizens especially news of its tampering of evidence in cases of their wrong doing

A democracy may never ever detain its citizens exercising their free speech peacefully without trial by jury especially in hazardous inhumane insanitary environs

A democracy must never betray those who defend its freedom and compromise national security especially as a petty act of revenge

The Latest Episode in the Life of Cynthia McKinney

The following email was forwarded from former US Representative, Cynthia McKinney to the Disinformation Company today.

Note to U.S. Drug War: Netherlands to Close Prisons for Lack of Criminals

Religious Right compares Santeros to NAZIs. Wait, what?

From the Huffington Post: You Are Being Lied to About Pirates

Rachel Maddow vs Tea Baggers

I wonder when the Progressives will say no to Glenn Beck and Rick Santelli’s lil friends, and give them brown mustaches~!

The Lingering Damage of the Satanic Panic Scare by Jason Pitzl-Waters

Jason Pitzl-Waters wrote on the Wild Hunt Blog,

We’d like to think that the age of dangerous life-destroying rumors concerning “Satanic” and “occult” practitioners is long over, but a quick look at the Austin Chronicle’s recent examination of the “Satanic Panic” scare of the 1980’s and 90’s (aka “Satanic Ritual Abuse”) shows how some people are still suffering from the after-effects of this madness.

LET IT DIE: Rushkoff on the economy

Doug Rushkoff wrote an insightful piece recently for arthur:

In a perfect world, the stock market would decline another 70 or 80 percent along with the shuttering of about that fraction of our nation’s banks. Yes, unemployment would rise as hundreds of thousands of formerly well-paid brokers and bankers lost their jobs; but at least they would no longer be extracting wealth at our expense. They would need to be fed, but that would be a lot cheaper than keeping them in the luxurious conditions they’re enjoying now. Even Bernie Madoff costs us less in jail than he does on Park Avenue.

Alas, I’m not being sarcastic. If you had spent the last decade, as I have, reviewing the way a centralized economic plan ravaged the real world over the past 500 years, you would appreciate the current financial meltdown for what it is: a comeuppance. This is the sound of the other shoe dropping; it’s what happens when the chickens come home to roost; it’s justice, equilibrium reasserting itself, and ultimately a good thing.

I started writing a book three years ago through which I hoped to help people see the artificial and ultimately dehumanizing landscape of corporatism on which we conduct so much of our lives. It’s not just that I saw the downturn coming—it’s that I feared it wouldn’t come quickly or clearly enough to help us wake up from the self-destructive fantasy of an eternally expanding economic frontier. The planet, and its people, were being taxed beyond their capacity to produce. Try arguing that to a banker whose livelihood is based on perpetuating that illusion, or to people whose retirement incomes depend on just one more generation falling for the scam. It’s like arguing to Brooklyn’s latest crop of brownstone buyers that they’ve invested in real estate at the very moment the whole market is about to tank. (I did; it wasn’t pretty.)

Read more.

The Rick Santelli ‘Tea Party’ Controversy: Article Kicks Up a Media Dust Storm

Mark Ames and Yasha Levine, of  eXiled Online, wrote for AlterNet

..Santelli’s reversal resulted from the controversy surrounding a Playboy article by journalists Mark Ames and Yasha Levine. The article, which was later taken down from Playboy’s site after possible libel claims, exposed the connection between the right-wing group FreedomWorks and the online Tea Party organizers, and suggested that Santelli’s tirade was a “carefully planned trigger” for the Tea Parties.

In addition to his public statement on CNBC, Santelli suffered the ignominy of canceling an appearance on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show this week, and further revelations and accusations are flying between Ames and Levine’s ExiledOnline Web magazine and the New York Times and Atlantic Monthly blog, among others.

In a statement on the controversy, sent to me in the afternoon on March 3, Ames and Levine write:

“There has been a lot of speculation as to why Playboy removed our original article from its site. Let us put it this way: When you look at the fallout from our article — FreedomWorks admits its role in the teaparty, Santelli issues a giant lawyer-penned opus about how he loves Obama, and CNBC (whose parent company is the megaconglomerate General Electric) frightens a bunch of Astroturfing Web sites into dropping Santelli’s name and into revealing their own PAC sponsors — then it’s clear we hit the bull’s-eye and stirred up the wrath of a very scary monster.

“Given all of this, it would not be unreasonable for one to consider the possibility (as many have) that the multigazilliondollar megabeast GE threatened the much smaller independent media company Playboy with a terrifying and expensive lawsuit, which, given the current financial crisis, is not something anyone but another GE-sized megabeast could cope with. ‘Nuf said on that.”

Read more.

The 25 Meme

An excerpt from my Facebook profile:

“Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.” -an anonymous Friend

1. Ever since I read The Illuminatus Trilogy! by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, I have held a special mystical affinity for the numbers 5, 17, 23, and 40. The Chinese people in this note will point out that 40 is a very unclean number. Those hip would know that the man who first told the legendary William S. Burroughs who popularize said 23 Meme, died a vicious death, so there’s more than a 23% chance I will be cursed by this decision~!

3. Even though she is a Myspace and Facebook friend now, I once bore a grudge against Margaret Cho over what I thought to be a racist joke about woks. We’re good now.

4. As an elementary school kid, I thought RuPaul was a fine woman. Then I found out RuPaul was born male. That said, shi has a much better sense of style than me, and I am almost sure shi is the reincarnation of Aleister Crowley. See the Book of the Law for clues (Liber Al Vegis). If anyone can bring the next Aeon for humanity, it would have to be RuPaul.

6. Born in the HK, raised the in the South BX from age 6 months to 15 years.

Complete Transcript of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Assassination Conspiracy Trial (Coretta Scott King, et all vs Loyd Jowers, et all 1999)

An excerpt from the Court Transcripts for the Case of CORETTA SCOTT KING, et al, VS LOYD JOWERS, et al, Case No. 97242.

THE COURT: All right, ladies and gentlemen. I understand you reached a verdict. Is that correct?

THE JURY: Yes (In unison).

THE COURT: May I have that verdict.

(Verdict form passed to the Court.)

THE COURT: I have authorized this gentleman here to take one picture of you which I’m going to have developed and make copies and send to you as I promised. Okay. All right, ladies and gentlemen. Let me ask you, do all of you agree with this verdict?

THE JURY: Yes (In unison).

THE COURT: In answer to the question did Loyd Jowers participate in a conspiracy to do harm to Dr. Martin Luther King, your answer is yes. Do you also find that others, including governmental agencies, were parties to this conspiracy as alleged by the defendant? Your answer to that one is also yes. And the total amount of damages you find for the plaintiffs entitled to is one hundred dollars. Is that your verdict?

THE JURY: Yes (In unison).

THE COURT: All right. I want to thank you ladies and gentlemen for your participation. It lasted a lot longer than we had originally predicted. In spite of that, you hung in there and you took your notes and you were alert all during the trial. And we appreciate it. We want you to note that our courts cannot function if we don’t have jurors who accept their responsibility such as you have.

This is the final verdict on the bottom of the page. Read more here.

On Hip Hop and Homophobia, “If You Are Homophobic, Then You Are Probably Gay?”

Editor: Below is a compelling yet whimsical article by Johann Hari for the Huffington Post.

“…Listen to any album and a list of homophobic howls will hit you: Eminem squeaking “Hate fags? The answer’s yes!”, or Masse saying “I be wastin’ em. That’s what you faggots get!” The music’s mood was summarised in a 1992 Ice Cube hit: “True niggaz ain’t gay.”

This boom-boom-boom of homo-cidal hate has a crushing effect on gay kids. It sends out the message: you are so repulsive you should be killed. It’s one of several reasons why gay teenagers are still — after all the amazing progress we have made — six times more likely to commit suicide than their straight siblings.

Why do they do it? Why do hip-hop artists — often the victims of bigotry themselves — incite this hatred? For ten years, Terrence Dean was at the heart of the hip-hop scene as a producer at MTV and Warner Brothers. His life is as ghetto as any of the big name artists. His mother was a heroin-addicted, AIDS-infected prostitute whose ‘clients’ held Terrence hostage at gunpoint. His drunken grandmother raised him in the slums of Detroit, and he eventually ended up in prison. When he was released, he headed for Hollywood – and he was amazed to stumble into a gay underworld stocked with some of the biggest names in hip-hop”

Read more.

Green Eggs and Bob?

Editor’s Note: Yesterday, two years ago, on January 11, 2007 at 4;50 AM PST, Robert Anton Wilson left this life.  I wrote some words to remember him by, last year.  Interestingly, Jason Pitzl-Waters, a premiere blogger of the Pagan community reviewed Green Egg Omlet, An Anthology of Art and Articles from the Legendary Pagan Journal, which contained artciles Rev. Bob wrote for the celebrated peridodical.  From reading the review, and gleaming inside the TOC, I think I might get a copy from Borders.  It would look nice next to my copy of Drawing Down the Moon in my bookcase.  What were the first forty years of the modern Pagan movement like? Here is an an excerpt of Pitzl-Waters’ review of this collection from a bygone era.

The print medium is changing irrevocably. Any clear-eyed assessment concerning the state of magazines and newspapers would see a widespread and unforgiving culling taking place. So many magazines are going under that a regularly updated blog has been created to keep track of the carnage, while digital-age pundits predict that the surviving niche publications will soon have to make hard choices about their future. While I’m no futurist, I’ve seen some of these changes coming for some time now, the struggling economy only hastening a transition already underway. It is part of the reason that the bulk of my writing is focused on this blog, rather than in the more “traditional” outlets for a writer/journalist (though I do admit to a certain romantic attachment to being in print, and I currently write for Pagan publications like PanGaia and Thorn).

Given these shake-ups in the world of print, I think it is entirely timely that I recently received a review copy of “Green Egg Omelette: An Anthology of Art and Articles From the Legendary Pagan Journal”. This book, a compliation of excerpts from one of the most influential Pagan magazines ever printed, shows just how vital and necessary the format once was. While books published for Pagans usually stuck to the “101-isms” of Wicca and other Pagan faiths, it was in the magazines that this loose network of Witches, Pagans, magicians, free-thinkers, and philosophers started to communicate, hash out ideas, argue, and push the boundaries of what they knew. It was a place where Pagan filk could rub shoulders with treatises on magic(k) by Robert Anton Wilson, and initial attempts at describing a Pagan theology could have a place next to explorations of polyamory. It is little wonder that even today Green Egg is remembered fondly by almost all who came across it in their journey.

Read more.

Right Where You Are Sitting Now! EPISODE 21 – 2008: Obama, Anonymous and the State of Neo Paganism with DisInfo.com’s Raymond Wiley and Austin Gandy

(C) 2008 Right Where You Are Sitting Now!

Ken wrote:

This week we mark the end of our holiday break by discussing some of our ‘favorite bits’ of 2008. Topics covered in this show include Anonymous, The end of Neo-Paganism as we know it?, Patriots and the Georgia Guidestones and of course Obama (or in this case OBAWWWWMA).

Joining me for this episodes banter is Sir Raymond Wiley and Lord Austin Gandy from ye olde Out There Radio and the all new Disinformation The Podcast.

Download now.