The latest anthropological research shows that female infidelity is good for the family, the community, and even the gene pool.

Protect our troops - from the womb to the war. What if the fetus you were going to abort would grow up to be a soldier bringing democracy to a godless dictatorship?

Plastic replica of an 11-12 week old fetus, 3" long, holding a firearm in its precious little hand, with an assortment of other military paraphernalia, encased in a translucent plastic ornament, with a patriotic yellow ribbon on top. Includes a metal ornament hanger. If only a womb were this safe, attractive and reasonably priced!

Stone-age figurines depicting what could be the oldest pornographic scene in the world have been unearthed in Germany.

Harald Stäuble of the Archaeological Institute of Saxony, based in Dresden, discovered the 8cm lower half of a man, which has been named Adonis von Zschernitz.

"A unique find," reported Spiegel magazine. "This is the oldest male clay figurine ever discovered in the world."

But the most amazing find came at the dig in Leipzig one month later, when Dr Stäuble found what could be the matching female figurine.

Dr Stäuble, who is due to publish a paper on his findings this year, said: "After finding Adonis, we got the team to sieve every speck of soil for a whole month. We were well rewarded because we then found fragments of a female figurine of the same size."

He added: "Adonis is bent forward and the female figure is bent forward even more."

"There are two ways of looking at this. The first is that they were doing a ritual dance, but the other possibility is that the man and woman were copulating and that he was standing behind her. The copulation option is far more likely, and would make this the oldest representation ever of a pornographic scene."

fuck the pope

excerpt from an article by Micheal Dickenson

Let's start with an innocent wank...

The Catholic Church condemns masturbation. Catholic teaching is that sexual activity is intended for conception, thus masturbation is an immoral sexual practice because it does not permit conception. In addition, the Catholic Church teaches that masturbation breeds lust and selfishness, which takes one further from God.

Pope Paul wrote: " - masturbation is an intrinsically and seriously disordered act...the deliberate use of the sexual faculty outside normal conjugal relations essentially contradicts the finality of the faculty. For it lacks the sexual relationship called for by the moral order, namely the relationship which realizes 'the full sense of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love.' All deliberate exercise of sexuality must be reserved to this regular relationship."

How about a fuck?

In 1996 Pope John Paul said that artificial birth control was ruining people's moral sense by giving a false idea of sexual freedom. He attacked 'unbridled hedonism' which was slowly creating 'an eclipse of values'. The Roman Catholic Church considers artificial birth control and abortion an objectively grave or "mortal" sin (that is to say it causes the "death" of the soul by depriving it of the life of grace, when it is committed with full knowledge and full consent).

To the Vatican Institute of Bioethics he said: "Worrisome consequences have been produced in the sexual sphere of life by a false sense of freedom provided by contraception, which is both an incentive and a tool. He criticized public health campaigns that promote contraception. "Unbridled hedonism and a distain for life is at the heart of the modern world's moral quandary. The 'Gospel of Life' must be maintained by educating children to recognize their vocation as carriers of life, in responsible collaboration with the creator."

"This teaching must be considered to be definitive and irreformable. Contraception is gravely opposed to marital chastity, it is contrary to the good of the transmission of life (procreation aspect of marriage), and it is contrary to the mutual giving of the spouses (union aspect of marriage). It hurts true love and denies God's sovereign role in the transmission of human life"

"Even for people infected with AIDS or for those who want to use condoms to prevent AIDS," said John Paul 11 at the International Congress of Moral Theologians in Rome in 1988, "the Church's moral doctrine allows no exceptions."

Carlo Caffarra, the pope's spokesman for marriage and family issues, added that if an AIDS - infected husband couldn't manage to maintain "total abstinence" for the rest of his life, then it was better to infect his wife than to use a condom, "because the preservation of spiritual goods, such as the sacrament of marriage, is to be preferred to the good of life."

I'm feeling a little queer...

From Pope John Paul's 1986 "Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons"-

"Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder. Therefore special concern and pastoral attention should be directed to those who have this condition, lest they be led to believe that the living out of this orientation in homosexual activity is a morally acceptable option. It is not."

Catholic Catechism: #2357 (in part) Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of great depravity, tradition has always declared that "Homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered". They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complimentary. Under no circumstances can they be approved....#2359: Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection."

So there you have it.

Pope John Paul believed that it was contrary to God's law for anyone - Catholic or otherwise - to engage in birth control, abortion, homosexuality, in-vitro fertilization, masturbation, artificial insemination or sterilization. Intercourse between married partners, with no barrier to pregnancy and childbirth, was the only permissible sexual act in his eyes.

And you go to hell if you believe otherwise

Ron Suskind in new york times magazine:

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend — but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'

"He's taking out the middle man: the curator."

"A shadowy British artist who calls himself Banksy walked into the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Museum of Natural History sometime around March 13 and surreptitiously mounted his own artwork on the walls.

The four framed pieces - including two oil paintings appropriated and embellished by Banksy and an insect "specimen" - were not discovered in some cases for several days. The bogus acquisitions have now been removed, but the museums are not talking about whether further action will be taken. A spokeswoman for the Museum of Modern Art, where Banksy left a painting of a discount can of tomato soup (à la Andy Warhol), would only confirm that the work was found tucked away in an elevator lobby on March 17."

banksy

'The highest-ranking US general in Iraq authorised the use of interrogation techniques that included sleep manipulation, stress positions and the use of dogs to "exploit Arab fears" of them, it emerged today.

A memo signed by Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez authorised 29 interrogation techniques, including 12 that exceeded limits in the army's own field manual and four that it admitted risked falling foul of international law, the Geneva conventions or accepted standards on the humane treatment of prisoners.'

*****

gandhi murdered, jesus murdered, reagan wounded...

*****

"The question, in brief, is whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved or threats to be avoided [as they have been until now]. In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are ... essential to survival."

"The driving force of modern industrialized civilization has been individual material gain. It has long been understood that a society based on this principle will destroy itself in time. It can only persist with whatever suffering and injustice it entails as long as it is possible to pretend that the destructive forces humans create are limited, that the world is an infinite resource, [and] is an infinite garbage can.

"At this stage of history, one of two things is possible: Either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community interests guided by values of solidarity and sympathy and concern for others, or alternativ ely there will be no destiny to control.

"As long as some specialized class is in position of authority, it is going to set policy in the special interest it serves. But, the conditions of survival and justice require rational, special planning in the interest of the community of the whole (and by now that means the global community).

"The question is whether privileged elites should dominate mass communication and should use this power as they tell us they must, namely to impose NECESSARY ILLUSIONS to manipulate and deceive [whom THEY believe are] the stupid majority and remove them from the public arena. "The question, in brief, is whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved or threats to be avoided. In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured; they may be essential to survival."

'Me Decade' Celebrates 35th Year

The "Me Decade," a period beginning in 1970 and marked by self-awareness and self-fulfillment, celebrated its 35th year Monday. "With careerism, materialism, and general self-involvement as popular as they were decades ago, the Me Decade may well go on for another 35 years," said historian and Columbia University professor Dr. Vera Conklin. "It's been the longest-running decade in American history, beating the selfless 'Greatest Generation' of the '40s by a good 15 years. Selfishness, it seems, is here to stay." Author Tom Wolfe, who coined the term in his essay "The Me Decade And The Third Great Awakening," was unavailable for comment, as he is working on his memoirs.

Jesse, remember my interviewing job? well here are some of the results of the research ...

The third way's dirtiest secret
Ministers have tried to cover up their dependence on forced labour, Felicity Lawrence, Thursday February 3, 2005, The Guardian

A year ago this Saturday, 23 Chinese cocklepickers died at Morecambe Bay. A major new report that uncovers the scale of forced labour in Britain and makes recommendations on curbing this new form of slavery might be thought a fitting memorial to those who died. Instead, the government has tried to block its publication until after the election, as our front-page story reveals.
Interviews with migrants record the violence, threats, debt-bondage, dangerous conditions and enforced long hours to which they are exposed. They also lead to the inescapable conclusion that the deregulated economy has created the conditions for this exploitation to flourish under Labour.

The report was commissioned at the beginning of last year by the International Labour Organisation - the UN body that works with government, unions and industry - and the TUC, and was completed last summer by academics at Oxford and Sussex universities. Yet it is only now seeing the light of day. It will finally be published this week by the TUC, but minus its ILO and Department for Work and Pensions backers. What is a Labour government that champions social justice so frightened of? And why has it taken the unions so long to defy its efforts at censorship?

The original title of the report was Free Market and Forced Labour. For it looks not just at the extent to which coercive employment takes place - and the answer is far more than anyone has acknowledged - but also at the nature of economic demand that drives migration and forced labour. And herein lies the real horror.

It is not just the sex industry that traffics and exploits migrants, but our key sectors - food and agriculture, contract cleaning, hotels and catering, construction and care homes. Moreover, the state uses migrants' forced labour in many cases - when it outsources local authority care to the private sector, when it uses agencies to recruit NHS nurses who end up living on £5 a week, when it uses contract cleaners provided by the cheapest bidder for its offices, or when subcontracted migrant labour is used on private finance initiative construction.

The UK has Europe's most flexible labour force; it lives in fear and squalor, is paid a pittance and is bussed round the country to work in the shadows of the night shift.

Article for the TUC written by the authours of the research
Guardian article cited above
More from the Guardian

Angry Young Men, Veiled Young Women: Constructing a New Population Threat

Current public and policy debates about "terrorism", particularly in the United States and Britain, often setup a sharp divide between East and West. On the one side lies Islamic "fundamentalism" and a supposed Arab "envy" of US "wealth and freedom", on the other the liberating force of the US and its allies. There is "no neutral ground in the fight between civilization and terror," declared President George W. Bush in a March 2004 White House address, "because there is no neutral ground between good and evil, freedom and slavery, and life and death." On this view, terrorism emanates from the "Third World", with the history and politics of the West forming no part of the story.

Increasingly contributing to this tidy divide is a discipline known as "strategic demography", which uses population characteristics such as age, ethnicity, geographic location and numbers to help locate terrorist or criminal threats. Strategic demography's statistics both lend legitimacy to, and derive meaning from, the alarmist images and narratives that are today so often used to describe enemy "others", particularly in the Islamic South.

One example is so-called "youth bulge" theory, which refers to the large proportion of the world's population aged 27 years old and under, the majority of whom live in the South. In the eyes of many Western demographers, military analysts and intellectuals, this "youth bulge" -- now 50 per cent of the world's people -- has a double aspect. In countries that provide formal education and employment for large proportions of their young people, the youth bulge is a "demographic bonus". In the South, on the other hand, it often spells a "political hazard" and a threat to social and economic stability and security.

This briefing sets out a short history and critique of youth bulge theory in the context of the attack on New York's World Trade Center on 11 September 2001 and the subsequent growth of US militarism at home and abroad. It aims not only to call attention to how the theory reflects, and is reflected in, racial, gender and age discrimination, but also to suggest how it is being contested.

fuck the police




"Avoid being seized by the police. The cops are not your friends. Don't tell them anything."



[....]



"We cannot expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach respect to those we have entrusted to enforce those laws."

BURGER CHAINED!! - from SchNEWS

20 years since the first ever ‘Day of Action against McDonald’s’, things are looking up for would be leaflet distributors. This weeks European court’s ruling that the ‘McLibel’ defendants (combined income: £3,500 per year) did not get a fair trial because of McDonald’s vastly superior financial resources (£2,000 a day for one barrister), has led to a flurry of discussion about whether skint activists will be able to get legal aid from the government if they’re sued by big business. The fact that McDonalds were so desperate to stop a bunch of anarchists distributing the infamous “What’s wrong with McDonalds?” leaflet is, more importantly, a real testament to the power of grassroots activism and how much of a threat it poses to the multinationals that are so intent on trashing the planet. In fact, leaflets given out in thousands when McDonalds started to sue, are now distributed in millions all over the world - direct action won the free speech battle.

During the original trial, the burger chain was so desperate to silence its critics it used spies to infiltrate activist groups. These spooks followed people home, nicked their post and even ended up handing out anti-McDonald’s leaflets! The multinational has a long history of using the courts to silence its critics. And not just other activists, but biology professors, Channel 4 TV, Trade Unions, the Guardian and even a bunch of tofu munching hippies making “McVegan” t-shirts.

McDonald’s worst nightmares, Dave Morris and Helen Steel, have long been involved in community activism, working on grassroots campaigns since the 1980s, including nuclear disarmament, corporate non-accountability, anti poll tax and animal rights. SchNEWS can also exclusively reveal that Dave Morris has been involved in local residents groups. Controversial, eh? Dave says that his activism is about helping to build up local community mutual aid and solidarity networks, encouraging people to stand up for themselves and to take control of all decision-making and resources themselves. We reckon he should be bloody locked up.

This latest court battle is sure to drive another nail into the McCoffin - something which seemed impossible a few years back. The burger giant is shrinking: it announced the closure of almost 200 stores in 2002 after taking an 11% dive in profits. A year later it lost £20m selling off its café chain, “Aroma”. Their latest promotions for ‘healthy’ salads, apples, yogurts and Quorn burgers are no match for the likes of movies like ‘Supersize Me.” Nor is this the first victory against the company. At the original trial the court ruled that McDonald’s “exploited children”, were “culpably responsible for animal cruelty”; deceptively promoted their food as nutritious and helped to depress wages in the catering trade. SchNEWS wonders when the “What’s wrong with Tescos?” leaflet will be hitting the streets.

For more info on the court case and campaigns against the scary clown... click here

Proverbs 15:17 "Better is a dinner of herb where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith."

McGough was vomiting every day, often bloodily. The odour of cooking or burned meat made him sick, though "the worst thing is the smell of public toilets". "That brings the PoW camps back. The stench of those places was horrendous."

excellent frankfurt school article on wikip

"What radical music perceives is the untransfigured suffering of man... The seismographic registration of traumatic shock becomes, at the same time, the technical structural law of music. It forbids continuity and development. Musical language is polarized according to its extreme; towards gestures of shock resembling bodily convulsions on the one hand, and on the other towards a crystalline standstill of a human being whom anxiety causes to freeze in her tracks... Modern music sees absolute oblivion as its goal. It is the surviving message of despair from the shipwrecked."

Adorno continues, "...It is not that schizophrenia is directly expressed therein; but the music imprints upon itself an attitude similar to that of the mentally ill. The individual brings about his own disintegration... He imagines the fulfillment of the promise through magic, but nonetheless with the realm of immediate actuality... Its concern is to dominate schizophrenic traits through the aesthetic consciousness. In so doing, it would hope to vindicate insanity as true health."

smokehammer - earth's premiery news node;

latest

about

meanwhile and before

came across this short story by borges yesterday - was featured article on wikipedia.



here's the spanish original

i can honestly say its the best short story i've ever read and i shall probably be thinking about it for the rest of my life.

software for machine cogs - thought technology and its regressions:

"philosophy done in the analytic tradition aims at truth and knowledge, as opposed to moral or spiritual improvement . . . the goal in philosophy is to discover what is true, not to provide a useful recipe for living one’s life."

126 years after frege's begriffschrift, a point at which the transcendental wurst had long been reclaimed by historical knowing subjects, anglo-imperialist epistemology remains unreflective and desperately clings to whereof we can speak without having to remain silent. after all, emeralds are "grue" and non-ravens are non-black.

World fears new Bush era

a clear majority have grave fears about the next four years.

whilst

Mr Bush proclaimed his inauguration as "a sign of hope for freedom-loving people everywhere".

But beyond the traditional scientific economy of prestige and the generous funding that follows it as night follows day, money has distorted the scientific process as a once purely academic pursuit has been commercialized to an astonishing degree by the researchers themselves.

Mark Thatcher admits coup role in plea bargain, The Guardian,Thursday January 13, 2005

Mark Thatcher today admitted his role in a failed coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea under a plea bargain that saves him from prison.
The Cape Town high court ordered the son of the former prime minister to pay a 3m rand (£265,000) fine and gave him a four-year suspended prison sentence. Judge Abe Motala warned Thatcher that if he does not pay the fine he will face a five-year prison sentence with a further four years suspended for five years.


"save me mummy"

Born with twin Carol on August 15, 1953

· Left Harrow with three O levels. Did not go to university and studied to be a chartered accountant but failed exams three times

· Set up Mark Thatcher Racing in 1977, which hit financial problems. In 1982 got lost in the Sahara during rally, sparking international rescue operation

· In 1984 his mother, then prime minister, defended him in the Commons over reported involvement in £300m contract to build university in Oman

· Moved to Texas in 1984. Married Diane Bergdorf, daughter of millionaire car dealer, in 1987

· Faced allegations of racketeering in a multi-million civil action in US in 1994. Settled out of court

· Moved to South Africa in 1995, where he came under investigation by authorities over loans schemes in 1998

· Arrested last August by South African police over a failed coup in Equatorial Guinea, and said later: "I feel like a cork floating down the Colorado river."

Poolside plots: the chronicle of a coup foretold