10.6.05
4.6.05
If it is the drive of our time, after freedom of thought is won, to pursue it to that perfection through which it changes to freedom of the will in order to realise the latter as the principle of a new era, then the final goal of education can no longer be knowledge, but the will born out of knowledge, and the spoken expression of that for which it has to strive is: the personal or free man. Truth itself consists in nothing other than man's revelation of himself, and thereto belongs the discovery of himself, the liberation from all that is alien, the uttermost abstraction or release from all authority, the re-won naturalness. Such thoroughly true men are not supplied by school; if they are nevertheless there, they are there in spite of school. [...] In the pedagogical as in certain other spheres freedom is not allowed to erupt, the power of the opposition is not allowed to put a word in edgewise: they want submissiveness. Only a formal and material training is being aimed at and only scholars come out of the menageries of the humanists, only "useful citizens" out of those of the realists, both of whom are indeed nothing but subservient people.
more-
Mind is the name of the first self-discovery, the first self-discovery, the first undeification of the divine; i. e., of the uncanny, the spooks, the "powers above." Our fresh feeling of youth, this feeling of self, now defers to nothing; the world is discredited, for we are above it, we are mind. [...] In the time of spirits thoughts grew till they overtopped my head, whose offspring they yet were; they hovered about me and convulsed me like fever-phantasies -- an awful power. The thoughts had become corporeal on their own account, were ghosts, e. g. God, Emperor, Pope, Fatherland, etc. If I destroy their corporeity, then I take them back into mine, and say: "I alone am corporeal." And now I take the world as what it is to me, as mine, as my property; I refer all to myself.
If as spirit I had thrust away the world in the deepest contempt, so as owner I thrust spirits or ideas away into their vanity. They have no longer any power over me, as no earthly might has power over the spirit.
more-
Mind is the name of the first self-discovery, the first self-discovery, the first undeification of the divine; i. e., of the uncanny, the spooks, the "powers above." Our fresh feeling of youth, this feeling of self, now defers to nothing; the world is discredited, for we are above it, we are mind. [...] In the time of spirits thoughts grew till they overtopped my head, whose offspring they yet were; they hovered about me and convulsed me like fever-phantasies -- an awful power. The thoughts had become corporeal on their own account, were ghosts, e. g. God, Emperor, Pope, Fatherland, etc. If I destroy their corporeity, then I take them back into mine, and say: "I alone am corporeal." And now I take the world as what it is to me, as mine, as my property; I refer all to myself.
If as spirit I had thrust away the world in the deepest contempt, so as owner I thrust spirits or ideas away into their vanity. They have no longer any power over me, as no earthly might has power over the spirit.
3.6.05
This gem via SchNEWS' 500th issue...
As the world is forced to sit back and watch science react to the devastating consequences of global warming, some German scientists have decided that we can actually cunningly outwit nature.
They reckon that the effects of the gaping hole in the ozone layer can be dramatically overcome by swaying physics in our favour. Introducing ‘World Jump Day’ meaning that if everyone jumps at the same time (given you live within the correct ‘jumpzones’), we can knock the world off its axis, nudge it out of heat’s way and not have to worry about all that longwinded reducing pollution bollocks. Yes really!
* To find out your nearest jump zone visit worldjumpday
SchNEWS has spawned an ugly sibling Rough Music it's aggressive and funny...
What Is Rough Music?
Yes it's an odd title. what the hell is "rough music"? Who the hell are we and what do we want?
Rough music is a Sussex tradition dating back centuries. It was a form of punishment for those who had offended their communities; people like profi teering landlords, wife-beaters or kiddie-fi ddlers. In the past lovely people like these were a lot harder to prosecute using the law. So people took matters into their own hands. Taking what ever they could to make some noise with them, they would stand outside the miscreant's house and make as much noise as possible. If they were successful the offender was often driven out completely. Although such gatherings were illegal they happened throughout Sussex with the last ones recorded as happening as late as the 1950's.
Now we want to bring back this tradition with a vengeance!!!
We want to show how the people of Brighton are making plenty of Rough Music of their own. How people are making Rough Music against City Council and big business profi teering feeding frenzies. How they are making Rough Music for those who treat their employees like dirt. How they are making Rough Music for businesses that think that the environment and the quality of people's lives is a secondary consideration to the important task of making mega-profi ts. From EDO/MBM the bomb makers to Brighton and Hove City Council, from the Shoreham Airport stitch-up to the sneaking encroachment of the supermarkets into every corner of the city; we say, bring on the music!
Boss pissed you off? Dodgy dealings at the council? Are you Simon Fanshawe’s P.A?
Perhaps you’ve got a story for Rough Music.
roughmusic@hotmail.co.uk
Rough Music c/o PO Box 74, Brighton BN1 4XQ
Please donate - we’re totally skint and running off the goodwill of readers
Disclaimer
Rough Music is nothing to do with Brighton’s premier anarchist theme pub.
As the world is forced to sit back and watch science react to the devastating consequences of global warming, some German scientists have decided that we can actually cunningly outwit nature.
They reckon that the effects of the gaping hole in the ozone layer can be dramatically overcome by swaying physics in our favour. Introducing ‘World Jump Day’ meaning that if everyone jumps at the same time (given you live within the correct ‘jumpzones’), we can knock the world off its axis, nudge it out of heat’s way and not have to worry about all that longwinded reducing pollution bollocks. Yes really!
* To find out your nearest jump zone visit worldjumpday
SchNEWS has spawned an ugly sibling Rough Music it's aggressive and funny...
What Is Rough Music?
Yes it's an odd title. what the hell is "rough music"? Who the hell are we and what do we want?
Rough music is a Sussex tradition dating back centuries. It was a form of punishment for those who had offended their communities; people like profi teering landlords, wife-beaters or kiddie-fi ddlers. In the past lovely people like these were a lot harder to prosecute using the law. So people took matters into their own hands. Taking what ever they could to make some noise with them, they would stand outside the miscreant's house and make as much noise as possible. If they were successful the offender was often driven out completely. Although such gatherings were illegal they happened throughout Sussex with the last ones recorded as happening as late as the 1950's.
Now we want to bring back this tradition with a vengeance!!!
We want to show how the people of Brighton are making plenty of Rough Music of their own. How people are making Rough Music against City Council and big business profi teering feeding frenzies. How they are making Rough Music for those who treat their employees like dirt. How they are making Rough Music for businesses that think that the environment and the quality of people's lives is a secondary consideration to the important task of making mega-profi ts. From EDO/MBM the bomb makers to Brighton and Hove City Council, from the Shoreham Airport stitch-up to the sneaking encroachment of the supermarkets into every corner of the city; we say, bring on the music!
Boss pissed you off? Dodgy dealings at the council? Are you Simon Fanshawe’s P.A?
Perhaps you’ve got a story for Rough Music.
roughmusic@hotmail.co.uk
Rough Music c/o PO Box 74, Brighton BN1 4XQ
Please donate - we’re totally skint and running off the goodwill of readers
Disclaimer
Rough Music is nothing to do with Brighton’s premier anarchist theme pub.
1.6.05
This table includes average IQ, earnings and voting record for different American states, interesting and stereotype confirming stuff...
31.5.05
some amusing updates on Durchowitz/Peters plagiarism scandal...
A year or so ago i managed to catch a 'democracy now' interview between Alan Durchowitz and Norman Finkelstein. pretty hilarious and I urge you to dig though their archives to find the transcript, or video stream, and watch finkelstein decimate an off guard dershowitz who, expecting a debate with chomsky, finds himself confronting accusations of plagiarism against his new book The Case for Israel.
For those unfamiliar with Durchowitz, he's known for his extensive published works in support of zionism, as an attorney in several high-profile law cases (notably as part of the legal defence 'dream team' for O.J. Simpson) and is a Professor of Law at Harvard - so you'd think he'd have at least a modicum of intellectual responsibility...evidently not
The Chomsky Conspiracy
Derchowitz replies to publishers weekly
New York Times
Alexander Cockburn in this weeks Counterpunch Diary:
"At the time there was blast and counterblast both here and in The Nation, where the letters page featured the bleats of Dershowitz and my definitive rebuttal. Since that time Dershowitz has been in an extreme state of agitation at the prospect of Finkelstein's analysis of his borrowings from the work of Joan Peters being published in book form, first scheduled for publication by The New Press, and latterly by the University of California Press."
There hasn't been such a commotion since the British Customs tried to keep Lady Chatterley's Lover out of England. A book that otherwise might have been a relatively modest blip on the national radar screen has been elevated by Dershowitz's frantic squawks to the status of a major cultural event. In his efforts at prior restraint Dershowitz even appealed to Austria's pride, the governor of California, who presumably has more pressing problems on his mind (such as his pell-mell schuss towards single-digit public approval in California) than an impending publication of the University of California.
The last refuge of any cornered mountebank is to invoke "The Plot Against Me", and in a curious inversion of some anti-Semitic tract, Dershowitz has now traced all his problems to an all-powerful troika, consisting of Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein and me.
Dershowitz's thesis is that like some Archon of the Galaxies Chomsky croaks from his lair in the heart of darkness, "Destroy Him". The compliant Finkelstein goes to work, and the result of his researches is then publicized by Yours Truly, with devastating effect upon Dershowitz. His life is ruined! A pleasant life formerly devoted to apologias for Israel's barbarous treatment of Palestinians has now been cruelly subverted by the all-powerful Troika. The professor who once impressed young women in Harvard Yard with technical discussions of how best, (under judicial warrant, of course) to push scalpels under the fingernails of terror suspects now fills the air with threats of libel. Like some latter day Ancient Mariner, stopping one in three, Dershowitz posts interminable dissections of "The Plot Against Me" on the internet, dissections which could fairly be accused of partiality towards the male sex, since I recall that even before my own discussion of the Dershowitz-Peters conjunction in late 2003, the affair received detailed scrutiny on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now.
And from Finkelstein website: What if A Harvard Student Did This?
"In the introduction to The Case for Israel, Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School asserts that his account is supported by "facts and figures, some of which will surprise those who get their information from biased sources" (p. 2). Yet, the evidence Dershowitz adduces will surprise no one familiar with the most notorious source of historical bias on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ever published in the English language. The charts below document Dershowitz's wholesale lifting of source material from Joan Peters's monumental hoax, From Time Immemorial. Dershowitz not only copies Peters shamelessly, but knowingly does so from a book serious scholars have uniformly condemned. (For details on the Peters hoax, see Norman G. Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, and Yehoshua Porath, "Mrs. Peters's Palestine," The New York Review of Books, 16 January 1986.) He is effectively no different from a professor lifting sources wholesale from a leading Holocaust revisionist in a book on the Holocaust. On a note both humorous and pathetic, Peters, in From Time Immemorial and claiming to be inspired by George Orwell, coins the term "turnspeak" to signal the inversion of reality (pp. 173, 402). Dershowitz, apparently confounded by his massive borrowings from Peters, credits the term "turnspeak" to Orwell, accusing critics of Israel of "deliberately using George Orwell's 'turnspeak'" (p. 57) and "Orwellian turnspeak" (p. 153). Is this scandalous scholarship, or is it plagiarism, or is it both?"
The whole affair only serves to illustrate the vacuous lack of integrity within intellectual communities. While society lauds these individuals, puts them on podiums, and cowers under their intellectual prowess in humble obedience, behind the curtains they still pull the same dirty tricks that lazy undergraduates like myself pull when they just can't be fucked. the only difference being that durchowitz crimes are currently sculpting the political landscape, and 90% of the time, crooks like him get away with printing all sorts of unsubstantiated nonsense.
A year or so ago i managed to catch a 'democracy now' interview between Alan Durchowitz and Norman Finkelstein. pretty hilarious and I urge you to dig though their archives to find the transcript, or video stream, and watch finkelstein decimate an off guard dershowitz who, expecting a debate with chomsky, finds himself confronting accusations of plagiarism against his new book The Case for Israel.
For those unfamiliar with Durchowitz, he's known for his extensive published works in support of zionism, as an attorney in several high-profile law cases (notably as part of the legal defence 'dream team' for O.J. Simpson) and is a Professor of Law at Harvard - so you'd think he'd have at least a modicum of intellectual responsibility...evidently not
The Chomsky Conspiracy
Derchowitz replies to publishers weekly
New York Times
Alexander Cockburn in this weeks Counterpunch Diary:
"At the time there was blast and counterblast both here and in The Nation, where the letters page featured the bleats of Dershowitz and my definitive rebuttal. Since that time Dershowitz has been in an extreme state of agitation at the prospect of Finkelstein's analysis of his borrowings from the work of Joan Peters being published in book form, first scheduled for publication by The New Press, and latterly by the University of California Press."
There hasn't been such a commotion since the British Customs tried to keep Lady Chatterley's Lover out of England. A book that otherwise might have been a relatively modest blip on the national radar screen has been elevated by Dershowitz's frantic squawks to the status of a major cultural event. In his efforts at prior restraint Dershowitz even appealed to Austria's pride, the governor of California, who presumably has more pressing problems on his mind (such as his pell-mell schuss towards single-digit public approval in California) than an impending publication of the University of California.
The last refuge of any cornered mountebank is to invoke "The Plot Against Me", and in a curious inversion of some anti-Semitic tract, Dershowitz has now traced all his problems to an all-powerful troika, consisting of Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein and me.
Dershowitz's thesis is that like some Archon of the Galaxies Chomsky croaks from his lair in the heart of darkness, "Destroy Him". The compliant Finkelstein goes to work, and the result of his researches is then publicized by Yours Truly, with devastating effect upon Dershowitz. His life is ruined! A pleasant life formerly devoted to apologias for Israel's barbarous treatment of Palestinians has now been cruelly subverted by the all-powerful Troika. The professor who once impressed young women in Harvard Yard with technical discussions of how best, (under judicial warrant, of course) to push scalpels under the fingernails of terror suspects now fills the air with threats of libel. Like some latter day Ancient Mariner, stopping one in three, Dershowitz posts interminable dissections of "The Plot Against Me" on the internet, dissections which could fairly be accused of partiality towards the male sex, since I recall that even before my own discussion of the Dershowitz-Peters conjunction in late 2003, the affair received detailed scrutiny on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now.
And from Finkelstein website: What if A Harvard Student Did This?
"In the introduction to The Case for Israel, Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School asserts that his account is supported by "facts and figures, some of which will surprise those who get their information from biased sources" (p. 2). Yet, the evidence Dershowitz adduces will surprise no one familiar with the most notorious source of historical bias on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ever published in the English language. The charts below document Dershowitz's wholesale lifting of source material from Joan Peters's monumental hoax, From Time Immemorial. Dershowitz not only copies Peters shamelessly, but knowingly does so from a book serious scholars have uniformly condemned. (For details on the Peters hoax, see Norman G. Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, and Yehoshua Porath, "Mrs. Peters's Palestine," The New York Review of Books, 16 January 1986.) He is effectively no different from a professor lifting sources wholesale from a leading Holocaust revisionist in a book on the Holocaust. On a note both humorous and pathetic, Peters, in From Time Immemorial and claiming to be inspired by George Orwell, coins the term "turnspeak" to signal the inversion of reality (pp. 173, 402). Dershowitz, apparently confounded by his massive borrowings from Peters, credits the term "turnspeak" to Orwell, accusing critics of Israel of "deliberately using George Orwell's 'turnspeak'" (p. 57) and "Orwellian turnspeak" (p. 153). Is this scandalous scholarship, or is it plagiarism, or is it both?"
The whole affair only serves to illustrate the vacuous lack of integrity within intellectual communities. While society lauds these individuals, puts them on podiums, and cowers under their intellectual prowess in humble obedience, behind the curtains they still pull the same dirty tricks that lazy undergraduates like myself pull when they just can't be fucked. the only difference being that durchowitz crimes are currently sculpting the political landscape, and 90% of the time, crooks like him get away with printing all sorts of unsubstantiated nonsense.
30.5.05
29.5.05
Marijuana remains the fourth largest cash crop in America despite law enforcement spending an estimated $10 billion annually to pursue efforts to outlaw the plant. In many states, marijuana ranked as the top cash crop for farmers. United States marijuana growers harvested a minimum of 5.5 million pounds of saleable marijuana in 1997 worth $15.1 billion to growers and $25.2 billion on the retail market. Government crop yield estimates place the value of these 8.7 million harvested plants at approximately $26.3 billion to growers and a street value of $43.8 billion. The report based its findings on Drug Enforcement Administration marijuana eradication statistics, a survey of state police eradication results, and marijuana price reports published in High Times Magazine. NORML published previous reports documenting marijuana's national market value between 1982 and 1992.
Documents on Al Hubbard
The "Johnny Appleseed of LSD"
Hallucinogen researchers, users, and proponents at wikip
The "Johnny Appleseed of LSD"
Hallucinogen researchers, users, and proponents at wikip
23.5.05
Initiative requires a bodily agent possessing specific capabilities and vulnerabilities who inhabits some concrete worldly situation. This situation, the counterpart of the agent's bodiliness, is made up of things, events, and other persons. It provides a context of opportunities for and obstacles to the agent's exercise of his or her power to initiate. Through action a person can not only change his or her material situation but can also establish new lasting relationships with other people.
"If I had to lay out my vision of the world ... I would say: given the place where I was born, the culture I received, what I read, what I learned (and) what I thought about, there exists for me a result that constitutes, here and now, the best thing to do"
Paul Ricoeur dies. bbc | guardian | nzz | fr | taz
"If I had to lay out my vision of the world ... I would say: given the place where I was born, the culture I received, what I read, what I learned (and) what I thought about, there exists for me a result that constitutes, here and now, the best thing to do"
Paul Ricoeur dies. bbc | guardian | nzz | fr | taz
17.5.05
Media Lens alerted me to this...
A recent 'media alert' concerned a Newsnight interview with George Galloway. The first question asked to Galloway by Paxman was "are you proud to have defeated one of the only black women in parliament?". Galloway refused to answer the question.
Galloway may or may not be a hero, and he could have easily answered that stupid question. but the serious point, made in Media Lens is the way the media, and the 'impartial' BBC treats dissenters, activists, radicals and anyone who opposes those in power. Powerful politicians are always treated with too much respect and passionate activists with too much contempt. I wrote to the BBC and got a predictable, boring response, including the legend...
"The BBC is not allowed under the terms of its Charter to actively promote political parties or activities"
which was followed later on, to try and placate me with...
"It is also worth pointing out that the key issue on which Respect was campaigning in Bethnal Green and Bow 'the war in Iraq' was covered substantially by BBC News in the course of the campaign, including a full constituency report on the Ten O'Clock News on BBC1."
Which seems to suggest, either that BBC News have been actively promoting the Respect Party, or simply that they have indeed covered the 'war in Iraq' on BBC News.
The issue off race and gender is astounding, None of the major political parties have equal numbers of male and female MPs, or fairt representation for ethnic minorities, and to criticise Respect which is essentially a one man party for unfair representation in parliament is just insane.
Better perhaps to look at the voting record of the two MPs and see which has a better record in helping ethnic minorites and promoting harmony. It's important to remember that black women MPs can be bad and do damage to the people of their country as well as white male ones.
Galloway voted:
-Against the War in Iraq
-Against new repressive anti terrorism legislation
-Against ID cards - which are widely predicted to increase polic harassment of ethnic minorities
-Against student fees
-Against foundation hospitals, which while they do not target minorities specifically are anti poor measures
Oona King voted
-For introducing foundation hospitals.
-For introducing student top-up fees.
-For Labour's anti-terrorism laws.
-For the Iraq war.
-For introducing ID cards.
Disregarding their respective skin colours, which one of these MPs looks like a friend of ethnic minorities?
A recent 'media alert' concerned a Newsnight interview with George Galloway. The first question asked to Galloway by Paxman was "are you proud to have defeated one of the only black women in parliament?". Galloway refused to answer the question.
Galloway may or may not be a hero, and he could have easily answered that stupid question. but the serious point, made in Media Lens is the way the media, and the 'impartial' BBC treats dissenters, activists, radicals and anyone who opposes those in power. Powerful politicians are always treated with too much respect and passionate activists with too much contempt. I wrote to the BBC and got a predictable, boring response, including the legend...
"The BBC is not allowed under the terms of its Charter to actively promote political parties or activities"
which was followed later on, to try and placate me with...
"It is also worth pointing out that the key issue on which Respect was campaigning in Bethnal Green and Bow 'the war in Iraq' was covered substantially by BBC News in the course of the campaign, including a full constituency report on the Ten O'Clock News on BBC1."
Which seems to suggest, either that BBC News have been actively promoting the Respect Party, or simply that they have indeed covered the 'war in Iraq' on BBC News.
The issue off race and gender is astounding, None of the major political parties have equal numbers of male and female MPs, or fairt representation for ethnic minorities, and to criticise Respect which is essentially a one man party for unfair representation in parliament is just insane.
Better perhaps to look at the voting record of the two MPs and see which has a better record in helping ethnic minorites and promoting harmony. It's important to remember that black women MPs can be bad and do damage to the people of their country as well as white male ones.
Galloway voted:
-Against the War in Iraq
-Against new repressive anti terrorism legislation
-Against ID cards - which are widely predicted to increase polic harassment of ethnic minorities
-Against student fees
-Against foundation hospitals, which while they do not target minorities specifically are anti poor measures
Oona King voted
-For introducing foundation hospitals.
-For introducing student top-up fees.
-For Labour's anti-terrorism laws.
-For the Iraq war.
-For introducing ID cards.
Disregarding their respective skin colours, which one of these MPs looks like a friend of ethnic minorities?
15.5.05
...all that talk of infidelity...
I have a new blog, which I will post some of the same stuff on as here, but keep the long boring posts on my owm pages and just advertise them here. It'll have my articles and thoughts plus photos and anything else I come across.
benjizeitlyn.blogspot.com
I have a new blog, which I will post some of the same stuff on as here, but keep the long boring posts on my owm pages and just advertise them here. It'll have my articles and thoughts plus photos and anything else I come across.
benjizeitlyn.blogspot.com
13.5.05
Indulging in charas in Himachel Pradesh, India’s northwestern Himalayan state, is nothing new. The hippies started the pilgrimage to the Kullu Valley forty years ago. Many Westerners had escaped into the mountains over the years, their visas and passports long expired, living off small-time cannabis dealing. What was new was the sheer volume of Westerners that streamed into Manali; in 2001, over 90,000 visited the Kullu Valley, particularly Manali, dubbed “India’s drug capital” by the Indian media. During my visit I estimated that about two-thirds of the travellers in Manali came from Israel, and one night a stoned Israeli guy explained. “Two reasons,” he said. “Israelis like to travel and Israelis like charas.”
Israelis in India
I've been told that 50,000 Israelis get visas to come to India every year. Why? Because they are restricted from many countries, because they have to do three years of military service and then a lot of them take a 'year off' to chill out. Many go to Latin America, Thailand, India and other 'playgrounds of the rich' excluding, of course, the Muslim world. Its cheap here, drugs are cheap, Police can be bribed, there are ecologically sensitive areas to have culturally insensitive trance parties in and the people are poor and desperate enough to put up with crap from foreigners with bad attitudes, bad politics and money.
The Israelis come here en masse, fresh from military service in the West Bank and Gaza. They've got a really bad reputation for drugs, rudeness, partying, vanity, arrogance, anti social behaviour and just about everything else... There’s a lot of bad feeling between Indians and Israelis, the Israelis seem contemptuous of India and Indians and the Indians put up with the Israelis because they need the business and curse them behind their backs. Pushkar, a little town that’s really popular with travelers has now been totally taken over by Israelis. There are signs all over town in Hebrew, Israeli food in the restaurants, trance music, lots of hash, all trademark hippy traveler things that have now also become associated with Israelis travelers.
One day I spotted a couple of orthodox Jews walking down the street, curly sideburns, skullcaps, black suits and everything. It was a bit of a shock in Pushkar where freaks, hippies, beggars and cripples of every description and holy men dressed in orange with dreadlocks are more common. On further investigation I discovered that there was actually a mini synagogue/Israeli social centre in this tiny village, which is a pilgrimage site for Hindus. More on that later.
One guy we met and gave a good grilling about politics was typical, he had the long hair, liked to smoke, was chilled out, friendly and relaxed... we asked him about the army. Israelis can avoid the draft, but then they don't have a chance of getting a ‘good’ (read well paid) job, people who haven’t been through the army are seen as a parasitic to society for not puling your weight, and risking their lives for their people.
Some go into the army without enthusiasm and do their time as a cook or a driver, obviously not so prestigious, but a sensible compromise. The guy I was talking to and taking the piss out of for not avoiding the army said he could go to London and get work instantly as a bodyguard, I though that maybe he meant a bouncer, but he confirmed that he meant a proper bodyguard with a gun... I asked him what he had done in the army, I pictured him as a normal guy, trying to get by without too much effort or risk; hiding from Palestinian kids throwing stones and trying not to get in the way of any nasty shit... he replied that he'd rather not tell me what unit or part of the army he was in or what he did... now I pictured him as part of an elite Zionist death squad. He was, in a chilled out way, quite nationalistic and unrepentant about the Palestinians, even though he acknowledged that due to Israeli policies they “lived like animals”. This surprises me about young Israelis, even the dope smoking 'hippy' lookalike will have been enthusiastic members of the army and defend Israel to the end. They see it as a ‘them or us’ situation and claim that the Palestinians would kill them all if they didn’t ‘defend themselves’. They also claim that the Palestinians were given their opportunity in the Oslo peace process and rejected it (so fuck ‘em!?).
Another guy, back in Pushkar, was less nationalistic. He told us that many of the Israelis who come to India get twisted, go mad or 'faloop' as they say in Hebrew, and return to Israel totally fucked in the head (his words exactly). After 3 years in the army and one year in India taking acid, I'm not surprised frankly... but this is where the rabbis come in, they are sent here to rescue the lost sons, the nutcases, the tripped out, and those who just left Israel had a think and decided that maybe, just maybe, things in the promised land aren’t as they should be. These youngsters are obviously a worry in a nation of 6 million people with an oversized army to feed, increasing conscientious objection, and facing of mounting criticism from most of the evolved world.
The young must be sound of body and mind and above all, believe in the cause. The rabbis come here to catch them on a comedown or in a moment of crisis and then refill their brain with Zionist, militarist, nationalistic, bollocks before the poor bastards lose the plot totally or have some kind of epiphany and realize that genocide is wrong (that old chestnut).
It's a fascinating element of the Israel/Palestine problem... The second guy in Pushkar made me feel quite sorry for them, they’re anti social because they don't like people criticizing them, having a go at their country and asking awkward, painful questions about war and death, which is inevitably what you want to ask them about. This guy just said we're fucked in the head, he knew everybody thinks they're wankers and as a reasonably nice guy, it was hard for him.
The thing that sets Israelis apart from British or even most US travelers is that very few of them are like that. Few of them will just say, yep Sharon is a murderous fascist twat, you’re right, next question? Whereas most British travelers don’t try to defend British government crimes, and most Americans spend the whole time loudly apologizing and protesting about how much they hate George Bush and wanted Kerry to get in just to get Dubya out it’s makes you hate them even more.
watered down version of my article I just found in the Washington Times
this article is interesting on the subject too
Israelis in India
I've been told that 50,000 Israelis get visas to come to India every year. Why? Because they are restricted from many countries, because they have to do three years of military service and then a lot of them take a 'year off' to chill out. Many go to Latin America, Thailand, India and other 'playgrounds of the rich' excluding, of course, the Muslim world. Its cheap here, drugs are cheap, Police can be bribed, there are ecologically sensitive areas to have culturally insensitive trance parties in and the people are poor and desperate enough to put up with crap from foreigners with bad attitudes, bad politics and money.
The Israelis come here en masse, fresh from military service in the West Bank and Gaza. They've got a really bad reputation for drugs, rudeness, partying, vanity, arrogance, anti social behaviour and just about everything else... There’s a lot of bad feeling between Indians and Israelis, the Israelis seem contemptuous of India and Indians and the Indians put up with the Israelis because they need the business and curse them behind their backs. Pushkar, a little town that’s really popular with travelers has now been totally taken over by Israelis. There are signs all over town in Hebrew, Israeli food in the restaurants, trance music, lots of hash, all trademark hippy traveler things that have now also become associated with Israelis travelers.
One day I spotted a couple of orthodox Jews walking down the street, curly sideburns, skullcaps, black suits and everything. It was a bit of a shock in Pushkar where freaks, hippies, beggars and cripples of every description and holy men dressed in orange with dreadlocks are more common. On further investigation I discovered that there was actually a mini synagogue/Israeli social centre in this tiny village, which is a pilgrimage site for Hindus. More on that later.
One guy we met and gave a good grilling about politics was typical, he had the long hair, liked to smoke, was chilled out, friendly and relaxed... we asked him about the army. Israelis can avoid the draft, but then they don't have a chance of getting a ‘good’ (read well paid) job, people who haven’t been through the army are seen as a parasitic to society for not puling your weight, and risking their lives for their people.
Some go into the army without enthusiasm and do their time as a cook or a driver, obviously not so prestigious, but a sensible compromise. The guy I was talking to and taking the piss out of for not avoiding the army said he could go to London and get work instantly as a bodyguard, I though that maybe he meant a bouncer, but he confirmed that he meant a proper bodyguard with a gun... I asked him what he had done in the army, I pictured him as a normal guy, trying to get by without too much effort or risk; hiding from Palestinian kids throwing stones and trying not to get in the way of any nasty shit... he replied that he'd rather not tell me what unit or part of the army he was in or what he did... now I pictured him as part of an elite Zionist death squad. He was, in a chilled out way, quite nationalistic and unrepentant about the Palestinians, even though he acknowledged that due to Israeli policies they “lived like animals”. This surprises me about young Israelis, even the dope smoking 'hippy' lookalike will have been enthusiastic members of the army and defend Israel to the end. They see it as a ‘them or us’ situation and claim that the Palestinians would kill them all if they didn’t ‘defend themselves’. They also claim that the Palestinians were given their opportunity in the Oslo peace process and rejected it (so fuck ‘em!?).
Another guy, back in Pushkar, was less nationalistic. He told us that many of the Israelis who come to India get twisted, go mad or 'faloop' as they say in Hebrew, and return to Israel totally fucked in the head (his words exactly). After 3 years in the army and one year in India taking acid, I'm not surprised frankly... but this is where the rabbis come in, they are sent here to rescue the lost sons, the nutcases, the tripped out, and those who just left Israel had a think and decided that maybe, just maybe, things in the promised land aren’t as they should be. These youngsters are obviously a worry in a nation of 6 million people with an oversized army to feed, increasing conscientious objection, and facing of mounting criticism from most of the evolved world.
The young must be sound of body and mind and above all, believe in the cause. The rabbis come here to catch them on a comedown or in a moment of crisis and then refill their brain with Zionist, militarist, nationalistic, bollocks before the poor bastards lose the plot totally or have some kind of epiphany and realize that genocide is wrong (that old chestnut).
It's a fascinating element of the Israel/Palestine problem... The second guy in Pushkar made me feel quite sorry for them, they’re anti social because they don't like people criticizing them, having a go at their country and asking awkward, painful questions about war and death, which is inevitably what you want to ask them about. This guy just said we're fucked in the head, he knew everybody thinks they're wankers and as a reasonably nice guy, it was hard for him.
The thing that sets Israelis apart from British or even most US travelers is that very few of them are like that. Few of them will just say, yep Sharon is a murderous fascist twat, you’re right, next question? Whereas most British travelers don’t try to defend British government crimes, and most Americans spend the whole time loudly apologizing and protesting about how much they hate George Bush and wanted Kerry to get in just to get Dubya out it’s makes you hate them even more.
watered down version of my article I just found in the Washington Times
this article is interesting on the subject too
7.5.05
For the first time a majority government in Britain has been elected by fewer people than those who could not be bothered to vote.
Labour's 36% share of the vote was lower than the 39% of the electorate who didn't make it to the polling station.
Labour's 36% share of the vote was lower than the 39% of the electorate who didn't make it to the polling station.
29.4.05
The latest anthropological research shows that female infidelity is good for the family, the community, and even the gene pool.
24.4.05
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!
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!
17.4.05
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."
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."
5.4.05
fuck the pope
excerpt from an article by Micheal Dickenson
Let's start with an innocent wank...
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
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