Taylor I'm sorry I go so Long without checking my Own FING site

       I just read the comments you've left since the last time I posted and I must say that if you can keep writing responses that long and well reasoned I will make a solid effort to write as much as possible in the future. I have less than 10 readers but you and maybe 2 other people are the ones I'm writing for, so if you are interested i'll give you what I got.

       Since you had so many good questions about the prison system, I'm going to let you in on my main source of knowledge on this topic. There's a guy who posts on a message board with me named HidingFromGoro. This guy is a common man genius with an incredible amount of drive. He shares a blog with 2 other Luminaries from that same message board. They each have a field of expertise that you'd be hard pressed to beat them on  if you searched the validictorians of all the Ivy league schools. HFG writes clearly, thoroughly, and uncensored accounts of his experiences in the American Prison System. He has enough first hand knowledge to qualify him as an expert just off that, but now that he's out of the system he's deeply involved in issues of inmates rights, prison issues in general, and educating the general public as well as academics who want an unvarnished and untainted (by corporate money and such) view of the real problems, their causes, possible solutions, and most importantly to me, the actual depth and endemic nature of this corrupt system. It's poisoned from the ground up and it manifests itself  all the way up the chain to the rich motherfuckers who own the prisons and senators who's pockets are lined to build even more of these things and get those motherfuckers full.

For me, personally, when a system is fucked from the foundation, I cannot advocate anything less than total upheaval, revolution, and constructive change. This means I will support acts of radicals operating outside the bounds of acceptability drawn by the same corrupt leaders that benefit from all of it. Fuck free speach zones and protesting where the police say you can as long as you got permits in advance. That's not activism, thats like a puppet show.  We are under a constant threat of lethal violence from our law enfourcement to the point that you may be killed without ever even breaking a law.  Police don't even respect the law, in fact, they know very little of it or even why it's there. They ignore all laws that limit their conduct as red tape yet pretend that the law is sacred when it applies to ruining the life of a citizen. anyway I've gone off topic. HFG is a font of knowledge and writes prodigously on that blog i mentioned. The other 2 writers are cool too and will give you  insight into things like economics, polotics and whatever else. i'm less familiar with them, but only because of time constraints. so at long last here is the link Re-Think America. Reading some of the articles there will enlighten you to the point where you could clearly explain the answers to your own questions to someone else who isn't up on this topic.

Prison justice is important to me for a lot of reasons but mainly because these are the people who the public cares about the least, are victims of a system built to fuck them, for the fear that I may one day be in that system, and for the mere fact that I have a severe case of human empathy that just gets worse as I get older.

      I gotta say, I'm really really really happy you are taking time to go through ascent of humanity regardless of speed. That book is basically my non-religious Bible. I'm not sure if i've suggested this before but the Podcast/radio show that exposed me to Charles Eisenstein (as well as things i've yet to write about like the deep ecology movement, altruistic economics, uneducation,  etc) is called Unwelcomed Guest. The show is broadcast weekly and is two hours a pop is choc full of the best interviews, readings, discussions etc, that I have found in one place. I will go out on a limb and say it is the most valuable project currently alive on the internet.

      The Unwelcomed Guest collective has recently had a period of change and rebirth, in the form of a new functioning website, graciously made by the new host Robin Upton (spelling may be fucked). The show has an archive of all 520 of its past broadcasts and for the first 10 years is was hosted by a heroic lady named Lyn Gary who was the one that chose most of the interviews, lectures, readings, and other content for the show. Her fantastic taste and genius for seeing what is relevent and powerful has set the nature of  the scope that the project embodies. The topics are so numerous, meaty, and vast that I think a lesser host would not have been able to maintain a cohesive spirit, or such a powerfully focused agenda. It seems to me that no matter the show topic, it ties into other show topics so seamlessly that you'd think the various contributors where in cahoots rather than being spread over time and space yet still moving towards a central core of truths with roads from every subject imaginable.

      I haven't even touched upon her strength of self that allowed her to be open about her passion for this quest for truth and human justice. When she read the entirety of Ascent of Humanity, there were times when she was in tears and reading with such emotion that I couldn't help but be moved and found myself crying visibly on the bus more than once. As she read the book, one could see her joy at seeing her feelings shared by this author she'd never met, and the relief of knowing she wasn't alone, wasn't crazy, didn't have misplaced priorities, that the core of her being was understood by others, and as she indulged in that, I was able to do the same but almost doubled in a way. Those same feelings were mine, hers, AND the authors. If they understand then perhaps people all over the world would be able to as well.  I had never felt such connection or understanding since the days before I renounced christianity. the difference here was that it wasn't built on superstition or old fables but my own thoughts about the world I lived in and how wrong this society felt for someone who prioritizes caring and happiness.

       Ok now to the logistics of what I'm getting at. The show was broadcast over 10 years and is still going (with a new host). With over 500 shows at 2 hours each we are looking at over 1,000 hours of material. I don't know if I know anyone besides myself who has the interest, time, and fortitude to plow through the body of the project all the way. I did it by putting 6-10 hour chunks of shows onto my mp3 player and going through them as i rode the bus and when I had time at home. I finished it all in a few months and I couldn't get enough of it. If you don't think you have that in you then I highly suggest reading the summaries of each episode lovingly written by the current host, so that anyone can read the gist and decide for themselves if the topics are something they are ready for at whatever point you are in your life/growth. I beg anyone reading to give this show a try. I don't dig the theme song but amazing quality of the content is superior to anything i've seen anywhere else. it makes TED talks look like preschool, and i like TED. This show is unafraid to ask the questions at the foundation of our societal problems. TED and the like are always attempting to solve problems in box of Global Capital and never even wonders whether the assumptions underlying their paradigms are the real source of the ills they'd claim to want fixed.

     Without checking the summaries myself, I'll make a few suggestions off the top of my head, and would love to have some dialogue about the content of the eps i'm promoting. Firstly check out all the early interviews with Michael Parenti in the early eps, check out anything with Derrick Jensen and the Deep Ecology movement, any interviews with my personal savior Charles Eisenstein. If reading through Ascent of Humanity is too hard going, there is now a zip file containing Lyn's entire reading of the book, which i recommend mostly for the authentic conviction of her voice as she reads the chapters. She's feeling the words while she's speaking them and if you are able to relate even a little, the power of her conviction can potentially reach you emotionally in ways you might have thought were lost to you. woops losing focus here. more suggestions are eps involving Chomsky which can be located here, also check out John Taylor Gatto and Alfie Kohn who are an awesome pair. here's a blurb about alfie :

"Alfie Kohn speaks widely on human behavior, education, and parenting. His main critique is that traditional parenting and education models models are too prescriptive, and assume a selfish, often narrow, behaviourist focus ("How to I get the kids to do what I want?") rather than trusting kids as independent moral agent"

      Ok I think I've made my point. If I haven't then I'll state it now: Unwelcomed Guest is the most valuable collection of knowledge that is actually important (vital) to our world to the extent that even after our leaders let our world fall into chaos and suffering, the UG archive holds blueprints for starting the world anew from scratch in a way that prioritizes the inherent worth of every human being and shows us how to make a world based on dignity, empathy, prudence, love, and all the other values we say are important yet continually shunt aside as unrealistic. For my money, this is the crowning achievement of the web up to this point. If the entire internet was disintigrating and I could only save one thing it would be this archive (and some fine asian ladies). The last 2  years of my personal journey have been the deepest and least immature of any of my psychological transitions and the guiding force behind it has been this show. Everything I look for in new sources of knowledge have been collected here. Scientific rigor, intellectual honesty, questioning the unquestionable, aknowledging the spiritual dimension of life without falling into superstition or lazy philosophy, fearlessness in the face of "Authority" and treating the listener as an equal participant in our world rather than speaking down to us as ignorant students. Expecting that the lessons shared continue after the episode is over. It's expected that we will integrate our learning into what makes us individuals and in doing we can build future lessons on top of the former lessons to create a mighty structure of truth, unassailable by cheap sophistry and mindless, baseless arguments, which are remnants of the "common sense" and "realism" pounded into us by the institutions that support this society we've built on obvious falsehoods. Showing someone the preposterousness of the basic assumptions of our society is simple, the hard part is convincing them to let go of the fear that ties them to those lies and showing them that taking a quick jump into the uncertainty of a truth based world is worth the rewards and is morally right even if the rewards were not gained. Once a person lets go of the chains of obligations held in place by supposed duties to things they never agreed to, they can become free and assess all the chains binding them and test for themselves which responsibilities have merit and contribute to our growth as humans and which are bullshit, invented by those with only selfish interests as guides. We think we live free in America, but we unthinkingly allow bondage from every area of our lives to squelch that understanding. You don't have to maintain relationships that are making your life worse. You are not bound to family members just because they are your family members. You can quit a job you hate and try something else even if it's less money if it makes you happier. You don't have to marry and have kids, especially if you aren't ready or have dreams yet to be realized. Children born to older parents do better in every measure of development and quality of life since the parent is often more mature and better off financially later in life and less likely to divorce since they've had time to live as individuals and find out who they really are before bonding to a life partner. There's no rush. I could ramble like this eternally but you get the angle. questioning a foundational principal allows further questioning of others. Those that stand after scrutiny are good, the rest are waste and ready to be replaced with a supposition consistent with human dignity and social justice. Our world of Infinite economic growth, domination of all things, and the subjugation of happiness for the sake of productivity is wrong, evil, unsound, and on route towards its own destruction. man i ramble.

Let this be a placeholder post

This is here to mark off a long dry spell where I didn't make much posting effort. The plan is to not do that anymore and get back in the groove since I garnered an international following recently. yeah what's up richard, this is a shout-out from the depth of earths cancerous tumor that your country unleashed on the world. Not holding it against you or anything just saying.
Since i'm here i will post some reminder type factoids about our horrible prison system shamefully robbed from the prison nation National Geographic page. Normally i'd link back to them since they did the work but it's so hot and the sun is down, it makes no sense.

• With 2.2 million inmates, America has more prisoners behind bars than any other country on earth. We now have 25 percent of the world's incarcerated, with just five percent of the population.
• America’s population behind bars has gone up 1,000 percent in the last three decades. Get-tough-on-crime legislation and minimum sentencing laws are blamed for the explosion of inmates. 
• Of all prisoners, 95 percent will be released. Half of them are currently serving a term of two years or less.
• According to correctional officers, drugs find their way inside even the most secure facilities, but the more secure a facility, the higher the price. Drugs regularly go for up to twenty times their street value behind bars.
• Among prisoners, 35 percent are drug addicts; 80 percent are drug users.
• Since many correction departments have outlawed tobacco in prisons, the going rate for cigarettes in some prisons has skyrocketed from pocket change to $5 per cigarette. A thimbleful of tobacco goes for as much as $50.
• There are as many as 5,000 prisons or jails in the U.S., employing at least 430,000 people as staff or correctional officers.[with tons being built with the last of our national wealth notes me]
• In 2001, the average cost per inmate in state prisons is $22,650 per year or $62.05 a day. The taxpayer price tag is twice as much as just 15 years ago.
• The number of female inmates is increasing almost twice as fast as the men’s incarceration rate, tripling in the last decade. At least 40 percent of jailed women have minor children.
• Inmates in America’s prisons and jails aren’t evenly divided by race; African Americans make up just 13 percent of the U.S. population but 41 percent of the overall prison population. And Hispanics have 2.5 times the rate of imprisonment of non-Hispanic whites.
• More than half of male inmates and roughly two-thirds of female inmates have symptoms of a serious mental illness.
• The largest population of the mentally ill in America isn’t housed in a hospital… It’s in Los Angeles County Jail, followed by New York’s Rikers Island. In all, one-fourth of all state prison beds are occupied by the mentally ill.
• "Solitary confinement" has a new name in prison systems: segregation. Single-celled, 23-hour lock-up units in some of these prisons are designed to limit inmates’ movement and contact with other staff or inmates. Officers can care for inmates electronically — from opening an inmate’s door, to shutting off his water, to turning off his lights. [another note here: psychologists have shown that total deprivation of human interaction makes people more fucked up not less, if we have even the pretense of rehabilitation this shouldn't even be allowed.]
• More than 80,000 inmates are kept in isolation nationwide. The average stay in some states is now years.

And that's the list they have. it's short, doesnt scratch the surface on the worst problems and is awful enough in real life to justify our country being invaded to liberate our population from this system and law enforcement cadre (which is almost done morphing into a paramilitary force) that makes it a reality.
Does it mess with your mind at all to think that you could grow up with a person and the only thing keeping them from being able to murder you without major legal repercussion when you get older is the choice you  both make for careers. 
You'd think if a job was titled something like Final Arbiter of Life and Death would lend some weight to the notion that maybe it should be a job for like highly trained and well educated people with a good psychological profile and sense of fairness.
To be fair the the task of a police officer was to keep the peace originally. remember that? protect and serve...these words sound familiar? they conveiniently left the second half of those statements silent because they still serve and protect, just not you. 
I get more nervous when I see police looking my direction than gang members now days. at least a gangster can be reasoned with. anyway im done complaining about this pox on our nation for today. oh and if anyone cares to tell me about how glad i should be that police are around because they protect me from all this potential harm just by their existance, you can save it. The reason black america never made a full integration into white society was because of the police mostly, they are the reasons we even have gangs at all. and what are the worst and most dangerous gangs? the prison gangs, the needlessly large, motivated and jaded prison gangs. And if you take the stance that I shouldn't worry about it since i'm white then kill yourself, i'm sensitive enough to morn your stupid ass death which is more than you deserve thinking like that. There's a lot of white people just on the earth numerically so we'll be part of whatever solution there is to tall this even though we were the root of the problem so lets figure out who's who and get to work.



Read more: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/prison-nation-3457/Overview#tab-facts#ixzz0yXGwbZz7

Is WikiLeaks the antidote to the Washington K Street Kool-Aid?

Is WikiLeaks the antidote to the Washington K Street Kool-Aid?

Ubuntu Video Guide For Windows Users: Understanding The Linux File System Hierarchy

Ubuntu Video Guide For Windows Users: Understanding The Linux File System Hierarchy

this is for me to remember to watch later. but go ahead too

I'm sorry it's been so long since i've updated....

But i've been to caught up in drudgery, solitude, and unimportant nonsense so I have missed a lot of chances to get really pissed off about something in the world and summarize/editorialize it for you. Luckily today I was so repulsed by a story i learned of today that the inspirational disgust is flowing freely. winner = you.

Our subject for today is some heinous shit pulled by the american and Israeli governments right after world war 2. The time-frame really adds to the horribleness of it in my view because the very people who should be against the mistreatment of innocent people; especially based on racial/social background are the perpetrators.
The thing i'm getting at is known as the "Ringworm Affair" according to wikipedia (which by the way, is patrolled like crazy by insanely right wing Zionists to subtly whitewash anything negative posted about the Jewish state or it's "important" members.

If you didn't know, ringworm is a gross parasitic (i think) infection that occasionally occurs in young people and it's characterized by a gross ring shape of itchy bumps and in severe cases it looks really gross. I don't believe it's particularly dangerous, just not pleasant and it goes away as you get older anyway. So in the 1950's a Zionist doctor was obsessed with eradicating ringworm which he considered a genetic plague upon inferior breeds of humans. At the time the standard treatment for ringworm was a mild dose of radiation, which isn't usually even needed.
Enter the us military (aka the US/Israeli Military). They just so happened to want to do some very immoral, illegal, and disgusting research and sent this fanatical doctor a bunch of military radiation machines. The doctor was overjoyed at the quality of the machinery and came up with a great idea.

• You see, not all jews are created equal. There are jews from countries around the world (in this case Morocco). breifly it's like so:
•  There are several subgroups of Jews with different culture and traditions:
•    Ashkenazic: Descendants of Jews from France, Germany and Eastern Europe
•    Sephardic: Descendants of Jews from Spain, Portugal, North Africa and the Middle East
•    Mizrachi: Descendants of Jews from North Africa and the Middle East
• Other subgroups are Yemenite, Ethiopian and Oriental

So in the 1950's after the war the was a mass emmigration of jews from morrocco. These happned to be the less fortunate as far as money and health were concerned so the good doctor graciously took about 20,000 or some insane number of children from their families for "treatment" to make them healthy and get rid of that dastardly ringworm. 
To make a long story short he exposes tens of thousands of kids to insane amounts of radiation just like the military was interested in because they "needed" to know how soldiers would behave after a nuclear attack (not that we're planning to ever do that again right). As it turns out the way they behave is by all their hair falling out, becoming cancerous and dying. Some died really quicly and painfully and some survived with all kinds of horrible radiation related diseases. Some are actually still alive today and tell their story in a jewish made documentary that got me to write this blog post. it's in 5 parts on youtube and called "The Ringworm Children". I suggest you watch it. I also suggest pondering the sheer volume of lies, secrecy, and experimentation our governments have been involved in that have been documented and proven and then think about why anyone trusts anything they say about anything especially on issues of exactly this nature. There's no more "conspiracy nuts" they're just people with a healthy dose skepticism about their abusive owner.
From now on i consider people trusting that the power-elite who run the globe, have anyones best interests in mind (aside from theirs) when they make a press statement or claim to be providing charitable assistance to help a struggling nation (to steal their water and mineral rights turns out), or that we need to fight a countries enemy because an entire dirt poor country smaller than our states turned "evil" and the most humanitarian way to keep the peace is to funnel billions to arms dealers, warlords, despots, puppets and our home corporations, then kill more civilians than soldiers and shrug about hard choices and goodness is never easy blah blah blah. whoever swallows that is a conspiracy theorist to me now. they just believe in a complex web of ultra rich secretive people who just wanna make people's lives better through complex geopolitical maneuvers.


I'm not saying im on board with everything-is-a-hoax by so and so, but i've seen enough to know who the players are and what team they are on.


feel free to comment.

I don't know why but something told me to click the collage button in Picasa and then it said to push the Blogger button and now here we are.

There's No Role Playing in 4e

There's No Role Playing in 4e

This girl has a dope 4edition D&D blog and i'm reppin the side. world mutha fuckin wide. Tryin' ta edutain you clownballs.

Play Dungeons & Dragons Online® for Free!

Play Dungeons & Dragons Online® for Free!

This game is freakin free to play now and free to download so i decided i'm going to try it and about 7 other free games that look much more polished that free games used to be. well that's not counting shareware Quake 1 or Q3 arena demo

Robert Sapolsky: The uniqueness of humans | Video on TED.com

Ihaven't had a chance to watch this yet but he's one of my favorite lecturers on nueropsychology and he's really fun

Robert Sapolsky: The uniqueness of humans | Video on TED.com

Pure Metal for Your Mind's Eye!

Cool article stolen from a rss feed on my google reader

http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=1720&print=1

And for those of you who are too lazy to click this dudes blog here it is in full


- Talking Philosophy - http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com -

The Nature of Cruelty


Posted By Mike LaBossiere


The notion of cruelty seems to be an important concept in both law and morality. Not surprisingly, what acts count as cruels is a matter of significant debate. My intent here is not to focus on sorting out specific actions or developing a cruelometer. Rather, I am going to address a slightly more abstract issue: whether cruelty requires the capacity to suffer on the part of the victim.

Intuitively, for an action to be cruel, the victim of the action must be capable of suffering. With due apologies to Steve Martin, while there can (perhaps) be cruel shoes, one cannot be cruel to shoes. This, of course, excludes sentient shoes such as Philip K. Dick’s brown oxford.

If this intuition is correct, it would follow that cruelty would be impossible in cases involving beings that cannot suffer from the action in question.

While this intuition holds for inanimate objects such as rocks and shoes, it weakens in the case of living creatures, even when such creatures cannot suffer. For example, the human fetus is not supposed to be able to suffer from pain prior to a certain number of weeks of development. However, it would not seem irrational to speak of such a fetus being subject to cruelty. It would also not seem foolish to speak about certain acts done to brain dead or even dead humans as being acts of cruelty. As a final example, even if certain animals could not suffer (suppose, for example, that Descartes had been right) it would still seem appealing to regard some acts as being cruel to them.

One way to cash out these intuitions would be by asserting that although the actions would not be truly cruel, we regard them as cruel because 1) such acts against a being that could suffer would be cruel and 2) the beings in question (the fetus, the brain dead human, and the animals) are enough like creatures that can suffer.

One way to present a moral argument against such “pseudo cruel” acts is to use Kant’s argument regarding animals: if a person acts in cruel ways towards such entities then his humanity will likely be damaged. Since, as Kant sees it, humans do have a duty to show humanity to other humans, such actions would be wrong. This would not be because the victim was wronged but because humanity would be wronged by the person damaging his humanity through such an action.

Since the argument is based on the psychological effects of the action on the actor, acts against beings that 1) lack the relevant moral status and 2) do not create the psychological effect in question when subject to “cruel” acts would not be wrong and also presumably not cruel. This nicely matches our intuition that one cannot be cruel to rocks.

So, an act can be considered cruel if the being in question can suffer or if the action can affect a normal actor in a way comparable to an act of “true” cruelty (that is, make her more inclined to cruelty).

Of course, this discussion cannot be properly finished without bringing up a strange and perhaps irrelevant imaginary scenario:

Imagine a future scientist, Sally, has a mean sister, Jane, who is very cruel to her husband, Andy. Sadly, Jane is a crime boss and would see to it that Andy would be gutted and then cloned if he ever left her. Being a sensitive genius, Sally builds an android duplicate of Andy (an Andydroid) to replace her sister’s husband and spare him from her cruelty. She then smuggles Andy off world so he can have a better life.

Being a moral person, Sally does not want Andydroid to suffer, so she makes him immune to pain and suffering. Naturally, he has all the behavioral programming needed to satisfy Sally’s need to see Andy suffer. For example, if Jane flaunts her latest lover in front of Andrydroid and “his” friends, he will shed tears but will actually feel no emotional pain.

Sally is such a genius that Jane never notices the difference. She treats Andydroid the same as Andy, yet Andrydroid does not suffer from her actions at all.

So, are Jane’s acts against Andrydroid cruel acts or not? Bonus points for classic science fiction references, of course

Article printed from Talking Philosophy: http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com

URL to article: http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=1720





Copyright © 2009 blog.talkingphilosophy.com. All rights reserved.

Bullets from the Drug War

Just so you know this is something i shared from another website


Bullets from the Drug War: "
[One-year update: I posted this a year ago. Right now, the Secretary of State, the Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other American top brass are in Mexico City trying to spin this. Let's see if any of what I said a year ago needs to be revisited.]

• The US has lost the 'War on Drugs'
  
• The losing side is usually not the one to decide when a fight is over or how it ends
  
• Unlike other recent defeats, this lost war is a defeat followed by an invasion
  
• Mexico is the natural staging area for the invasion (inconvenient though it is for the Mexicans)
• New franchises are being set up to service the North American drug market (which is the biggest in the world)
  
• The CIA has to eat, and all they know how to do competently is run guns and drugs and control thugs; they get a seat at the table
  
• The narcs have to eat too, and all they are trained to do is deal (with) drugs; they get a seat at the table too
• As the federales grow weak in the US and Mexico, the battle lines will advance north of the border, leaving Mexico a quiet and largely intact backwater
  
• This is an inter-US conflict, because Americans are the most avid consumers, sellers, and prosecutors of drugs
  
• Life in the USA gives everyone a pain that is for many people simply not survivable without drugs: either alcohol, pharmaceuticals or illegal drugs
  
• Illegal drugs are far more cost-effective than either pharma or alcohol — government-licensed industries which are either excessively lucrative or taxed heavily
• As Americans give up hope, they will need to self-medicate in ever-larger numbers
  
• They will be far more able financially to afford illegal drugs than either pharma or alcohol.
  
• Illegal drugs (and moonshine) are two very large post-collapse enrepreneurial opportunities within the fUSA/бСША [Orlov 2005]
  
• This is no longer a war against drugs; it is now a contest between alternative drug distribution systems
  
• One alternative is a centralized, paramilitary organization run by CIA remnants, former military, and former police
  
• Another alternative is ethnic mafias, which will diversify into many other kinds of trade.
  
• The third, nautrally most cost-effective alternative will be provided by informal, local distribution networks based on barter, which will be all that is left once the dust settles
  
• The downside of all this is that it will be hard to find anyone sober enough to operate a light switch
  
• The upside to that is that the national electrical grid goes away, so there will be very little demand for competent light switch operators

"

FUCK THE GATES FOUNDATION AND FUCK MONSANTO

Now for those of you who aren't exactly sure who monsonto is I'll give you a handy link that'll summarize why they are so fucked up and important. Now you might be wondering what my beef could be be with the worlds largest charity organization (gates foundation) and the worlds number one philanthropist (gates). Well my beef stems from what they are doing to africa and India under the banner of Globalization and if you don't yet know why Globalization is fucking up the global south (or what i mean when I say global south) then you've got a lot of self educating to do to fully enjoy my rant. But I think you'll be able to dig what I'm about.

There are a few key players in all of this that you're going to need to understand though and you need to understand that they are foundations established by the Elite to put poor countries in inescapable poverty, to the point that they have to give up their rich natural resources for pennies. These are the World Bank, The IMF (international monetary fund), the WTO (World Trade organization [these guys are really fucked up due to their secrecy and ability to usurp a countries sovereign rights to protect multinational corporations from things like being sued for dumping deforming toxins into a towns water supply because it hampers trade]), NAFTA is another thing like this but used to fuck over mexico and US workers. I probably wont mention them in this rant. Once you learn what all these things are you will have a very very good handle on how the world actually works. It used to be the countries were the most powerful entities on earth. Like now people think America is the most powerful entity on earth, but it isnt. Monsanto, Microsoft, GE, EXXON, etc, they are the most powerful because they own america. they own all the politicians. there is an army occupying washington right now. The current count is 90,000 not including support staff. DC likes to say it's only like 17,000 but that's bullshit. 90K is a fucking army. Alexander the great conquered most of the world with half that.

Supposedly a single american is supposed to be more powerful than any corporation since a person has a vote. And no matter how much money a corporation has it can't buy more votes. well we all know that's bullshit, and to make matters worse JUST A MONTH AGO THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES DECIDED THAT CORPORATIONS CAN NOW SPEND UNLIMITED AMOUNTS OF MONEY ON POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS. you know why? they said it would be limiting the corporations freedom of speech! somewhere along the line the courts decided money = speech. I'm pretty sure the framers of the constitution (Who im not a big fan of anyway being white elitist slaveholders) meant that SPEECH = SPEECH. money is money. oh man so man tangents about how fucked everything is is making really hard to even start my rant. If you dont know anything about the concept of Corporate Personhood Go Learn It. It more than anything is fucking up our country so bad that it;s beyond repair. I don't have time to type a huge thing on why it's so fucking bad but i'll supply a link. PLEASE OH PLEASE read the first two links on that page. they are short and to the point.

OK back to what I was intending to write about. The Gates foundations biggest partner in Africa is Monsanto (the evilest thing ever ever) and their goals are very similar. First to make a quarterly profit and second to gain patents on almost every gene and micro-organism possible. To pantent LIFE. that's their goal and they have tons of genes and micro-organisms already patented and that's not counting their special monsanto seeds that only grow when sprayed with roundup (a monsanto pesticide). One story in africa that I found very sad was in a village where indigenous farmers grew certain crops next to other crops because they knew that one of the plants was a poison to pests that feasted on the other plants so there was greater biodiversity (which scientists are learning too late is such and important thing that we may never get back [while humans exist]). Well the gates foundation came in and said oh my goodness these people are barely making enough to survive and no surplus to sell on the global market. So in comes the IMF and they say here take this large loan and only plant the one crop that you eat and not that useless other one. you can double your yeild instantly and make enough money selling the surplus on the open market. then the government of the country the village was in forced the village to do this because of pressure from the US, IMF, and Gates foundation. So the people did this and guess what. the pest that was kept at bay ravaged the crops and was immune to the pesticides that monsanto had sold them. So they were told not to worry we've got people at MIT spending millions working on a new pesticide that will wipe out this pest. turns out that didnt work either, so the people were forced to take a loan from the world bank so they could grow something else but their region was only good for a few crops. many people died of diseases of the now rampant pests and they were begging to be return to their former way of life. But we cant have that now can we. YOU MUST PARTICIPATE IN THE GLOBAL MARKET. what a wonderful thing.

My beef with the Gates foundation is that their stated goal is that global hunger can be solved by technological advances (guess what shitheads, it can be solved by logistics, there was enough food grown last year to feed every single person on earth and feed them well, we just decided it was better to throw it away or divert it to other markets.). The Gates foundation is really a cover. The actual purpose of the foundation is to have the market cornered when the biotech revolution begins. The people they are "helping" are often guinea pigs, and they are aiding companies like Monsanto gain a stranglehold on the last part of the world that hasn't been totally sucked dry of every ounce of resource. They also use the image of the foundation to make Microsoft look better. Wow what a great company. doing so much for the world. If they really wanted to help people they wouldn't be spending billions of dollars patenting genes, medicines, and the like, they'd be teaching people how to live sustainablly with what is available to them, and gift them with things that only a multi-billion dollar trust could.

Another thing about the Gates foundation: they have no rules or regulation regarding their investment portfolio in matters of environmentally friendly ventures. As an article I read pointed out as long as they make money that's the bottom line. that same L.A. Times article says

Almost since birth, he has had respiratory trouble. His neighbors call it "the cough." People blame fumes and soot spewing from flames that tower 300 feet into the air over a nearby oil plant. It is owned by the Italian petroleum giant Eni, whose investors include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Another quote from the article states

The Gates Foundation has poured $218 million into polio and measles immunization and research worldwide, including in the Niger Delta. At the same time that the foundation is funding inoculations to protect health, The Times found, it has invested $423 million in Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Total of France -- the companies responsible for most of the flares blanketing the delta with pollution, beyond anything permitted in the United States or Europe.

Some more from the article

In addition, The Times found the Gates Foundation endowment had major holdings in:

* Companies ranked among the worst U.S. and Canadian polluters, including ConocoPhillips, Dow Chemical Co. and Tyco International Ltd.

* Many of the world's other major polluters, including companies that own an oil refinery and one that owns a paper mill, which a study shows sicken children while the foundation tries to save their parents from AIDS.

* Pharmaceutical companies that price drugs beyond the reach of AIDS patients the foundation is trying to treat.

Using the most recent data available, a Times tally showed that hundreds of Gates Foundation investments -- totaling at least $8.7 billion, or 41% of its assets, not including U.S. and foreign government securities -- have been in companies that countered the foundation's charitable goals or socially concerned philosophy.

There's so much more to write but I think I've got it out of my system and I hope you learned something. if you want to read the entirety of that great Times articles here's the URL it's great and it's 12 pages long I think. BAM I'm out of this mug

Gonna drop some knowledge on your wig.

I have found what I consider to be a gold mine of awesome podcasts stored at a site that is doing the lords work imo. The site is called Free Radio Project and it hosts a ton of progressive podcasts and radio broadcasts downloadable as mp3s. The main challenge in dealing with the site is figuring out which stuff is crap and which is gold. Lucky for you people I've been digging through and checking out some of these shows and can give you a little guidance.

IF you're a brave soul and don't mind sorting through podcasts in hopes of finding something good then have at it and report back to me if you find anything good. For those of you with less time for searching I will give you recommendations of my favorite finds thus far. the following finds are not in any particular order. but they are totally worth listening to in my opinion. first on the list is a program called TUC which stands for Time of Useful Consciousness which is an aviation term referring to the time after cabin pressure is lost and the pilot has a few seconds to attempt to set the plane on a safe course before passing out. Anyhow the show has nothing to do with aviation. I took a screenshot where you can see some of the sample topics they cover on this awesome show. here it is:


ok so this is a great place to start if you want awesome progressive podcasts. But have no fear I've got even more. Next up from Free Radio Project is a very cool show that focuses on National Security and whistleblowers. The show is called Boiling Frogs and they get very awesome guests with fantastic interviews and cover all kinds of cool national security stuff. It's very professional quality-wise for a podcast. They have a great blog to go with it found at Boiling Frogs. Their blog has some very cool articles and cartoons to read between podcasts. Since I did a preview of show topics for TUC I'll do one for them too. here it is:







Those are just a few summaries I grabbed off their site. I highly recommend this show.

I'll do a couple more just to help out those of you who don't have time to sort through a million different podcasts. The next one I'm going to post is in my opinion the best podcast i've yet found. Not because of the quality of the presentation but because of the amazing content. The show is called Unwelcomed Guest. The show has two major types. One show type are fantastic lectures by AMAZING people who's views are so awesome that I felt changed after hearing them. The other show type is where the host spends about a year reading, chapter for chapter, the most amazing book ever written. While her voice isn't the best, the book she reads is. It's called The Ascent of Humanity: The Age of Separation, the Age of Reunion, and the convergence of crises that is birthing the transition. If decide you can't deal with her reading of the book I urge you with every ounce of urgeness I can muster to read this book on your own. This book felt like the author wrote my entire soul and everything i've come to believe into a book without even having to consult me. It has reinforced my entire outlook on reality. The author recognizes the importance of what he has written and put the entire text of the book online for free at Ascent of Humanity
Since I did previews for the other ones here's another:

That's all for now but this should definately give you some stuff to work with. And if you want a little direction in just searching through the free radio site may I reccomend finding anything by Michael Parenti and locating the series called Wizards of Money. In fact do yourself a favor and make SURE you check out those last two suggestion. If you finish all these podcasts (which I have done. over 100 hours) and your worldview hasn't been totally illuminated then your brain may be broken.

Fucking retarded ass blogger settings changing for no god damned reason son of a bitch ass

I found out why the comments option dissapeared on all my recent posts. some hidden ass option decided the new default would be NO COMMENTS ALLOWED. that makes sense right wtf. anyhow the option to fix it wasn't under the COMMENT MODERATION section or the SETTINGS section it was on a tiny 8 point font little thing under where you write posts that says post options. fuckin hell.

This is for the guy commenting on the prison post

Since I feel the comment section is not the best place for me to state my case I decided to make another new post. I'm sorry that your point of view is relegated to the comments section but rest assured I read it and take it into consideration.

I'm going to use this post to gather up a bunch of things i've come across that I feel would be best in one place. I'll post pictures, charts, and snippets of comments that others have made on the internet that I feel are relevant. so here we go.


Now this chart speaks volumes to me. If you take a look at a couple of comparable countries and see how much lower their incarceration rates are, ours are inexcusable. Germany and Australia aren't too much different than us yet look at how low their prison population is. I'm not talking absolute numbers I just mean Rates! If you don't think that America has a police state mentality after looking at this graph I don't feel you are being genuine with yourself. Now if you decide to take the bold and racist move of blaming blacks and Mexicans for our insane incarceration rates go ahead I'd love to read it and have you simultaneously expose yourself as a racist member of our beloved law enforcement.

next I will post some quotes with some charts




The prison population has exploded in recent decades- a phenomenon known as "hyperincarceration," even though violent crime, "serious crime," and property crime has been declining:



Now this doesn't even touch upon one of my major gripes which is outfitting law enforcement like a Para-military squad. I just read that departments across the country are getting unmanned drones to patrol the skies and are shooting for 24 hour aerial surveillance. They are also hard at work developing sonic cannons that inflict horrifying pain without leaving any marks which is perfect for abuse (even better than tasers). I even saw a presentation where they showed how easily the sonic weapons could be rigged together into a wall of sonic pain delivery for crowds (crowd being more than 1 person). Not to mention the only reason we even have a micron of privacy against police is because the courts struck down thermal imaging equipment for routine surveillance. Hopefully that restriction lasts long enough for me do die with 4th amendment rights.

Here's a quote from a guy who was a former prisoner and now does work for prisoners rights and other advocacy of that sort. I'd like to give him credit for a lot of the information I presented. I don't know his real name but his online name is HidingFromGoro.

"The scope of this problem is difficult to overstate- especially because it necessarily includes things like prison gerrymandering, police militarization, mandatory minimum sentences, "tough on crime" politicians, for-profit incarceration, and all sorts of other things including guys with mansions talking about "2 Americas." This is generally known as the Prison-Industrial Complex, or as I (and others) call it- the Machine."

this next part is an excerpt from a heated debate so some of the context is lost but his passion is still there.
"What don't you understand? Why don't you believe?

What more do I have to show you to make you believe?

Tanks crushing cars. Houses burned to the ground while children look on. Puppies thrown into fires while children look on. Newborn babies brain-damaged or snuffed out while their mother is shackled to a bed with a sheet up so she can't see her baby she just gave birth to.

Black guys picking cotton at gunpoint in LA. Swarms of rats chewing off fingers & eyes in IL. Indefinite sensory deprivation. Bags of feces thrown on people in VA. Arms held out of feeding-slots to shatter elbows in VA. Pregnant women beaten so hard the braces get knocked off their teeth in TX. Men forced to fight to the death in gladiator matches in CA. Men shot for sport in CA. Men overcrowded at 300% capacity nationwide. Children given life sentences without the possibility of parole- nationwide. HIV+ inmates beaten and sent to sensory-deprivation isolation with biohazard stencils and no medical treatment. Men put in sensory-deprivation isolation for up to 36 years with no contact with the outside world (including lawyers). Secret medical experiments performed on thousands of inmates in PA. Cops running brutal abuse schemes and creating their own gangs in NY. Penises amputated in WA. Feces mixed into food in CO. These are just the things which I've provided links to on major news outlets in this subforum in the past few weeks.

Stomping on an inmate's head until he involuntarily soils his pants. 41 shots on the street to kill an unarmed man. Executing a cuffed man in front of 100 witnesses and cameras. The countless videos of abuse inside prison walls and the countless more off-camera.

The tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of rapes inside each and every year. The brutal, life-altering rape every four minutes.

Love one another. For God's sake, or whatever you believe in- just love one another. No matter how angry or outraged or just joking about it- whatever you do whoever and wherever you are just do this one thing. We are dying. You are dying. We are being tortured, we are in indescribable pain and hopeless despair. We are you. You lose your humanity when we get gangraped. You are us. We're all in this together.

Cry with us, bleed with us, scream with us.

It's us. All of us- you are us. We are us. We're all human, we're all Life.

All of us." -HidingFromGoro

"Chris J. got gang-raped in prison today. He needs surgery to fix his rectum, and probably other medical attention for the rest of his injuries but he's probably not going to get it. He knows this and is thinking about the pain his rectal scarring is going to cause him for the rest of his life. He laid in his bed for a little while covered in semen and his own blood thinking about AIDS. Since shower time has come and gone, he cleaned himself up with the water in the toilet, he also sat on it for a long time trying as hard as he could to evacuate all the semen out of him. His phone card was stolen as punishment for fighting back and he doesn't have any money in his account to call anyone on the outside, so he's just trying to deal with it on his own. Many inmates and guards are already making fun of him and discussing prices for having a go at him within his earshot. After TV time he's going to have to try and sleep in his cell with 2 other guys who ain't trying to hear his sob story and may even have been involved in his attack.

The pictures of his wife and kids were taken as punishment with promises to defecate or ejaculate on them while a different man was inside him as further punishment for fighting back. He's been clean for 9 months but that heroin would make all this pain go away for just a little while. Chris is more likely than not to go back to the heroin.

Chris will never be able to fully express the pain and rage caused by his rape even to a professional; and he's definitely not getting insurance which covers the help he needs when he gets out. This psychological trauma will have a severe impact on his ability to have healthy relationships on the Outside- out in the World- and will likely lead to bad arguments with his wife resulting in domestic violence. The effects his mental state has on his kids will be profound and probably irreversible. They might grow up in the sort of state in which prison is a very real possibility. When they find out what happened to dad how will they react?

His pain and anger will manifest itself in all sorts of ways and he might go off on some taxpayer in a convenience store or seriously injure someone who cuts him off in traffic. When that happens Chris will go back to prison and there will be similar ripple effects on his victims. Even if that doesn't happen remember Chris uses heroin to suppress his pain and will likely be re-arrested on a drug charge or a property crime he did to get heroin money.

Since there are no secrets in prison when Chris returns it will already be known he is a bitch who likes it in the ass, and he will have to become someone's sex slave. Staff will encourage this. Or he can stab somebody to try get a new rep. If he wins the knife fight & isn't killed outright, the person he kills has loved ones & family members who will become enraged at this, and the violence will continue.

What happened to Chris happened to 200 people today if you go by Alberto Gonzales' DOJ. If you go by HRW it happened to more than 400 people. This does not include juveniles in programs like Nihilanthic posts.

This is every day, every state. There are no exceptions. Going by HRW's numbers it's one Chris every four minutes.

You could be the next Chris, no matter how white you are- no matter how rich your family is. The Machine cares not. It must feed and It will feed.

And the Machine will never be satisfied. "

There's more where this came from. the system is fucked and the systems functionairies are complicit. You are not helping anyone, you are not rehabilitating anyone, you are ruining people's lives. Mostly people who pretty much never had a chance in this fucked up thing we're calling society.

Once you introduce a profit motive in incarceration there is no reason to reduce crime.

Whoa I have a blog

I totally forgot about this blog for a while. I think I'll be making a return soon and start writing new posts. I may take a different approach and write about things that I like instead of things that make me insanely angry. I stopped following news and politics for a couple days and read comic books instead and I felt much happier. I doubt I could make myself totally disconnected from world events but a slight reduction goes a long way towards happiness.

I wasn't going to make this a real post but hey why not. I was just watching a 7 part thing on youtube which was an interview with charles manson done by Geraldo way back in the day. I'm not a big fan of people who glorify murderers just to be edgy so I never really payed any attention to charles manson. I probably know less about him than your average person just due to the fact that I find murder to be really off putting (in real life) and because he committed his crimes way before I was born. Just from cultural osmosis I was always under the impression that he himself murdered some people but from what I just read he was convicted of conspiracy to murder and due to how our laws are, if you conspire then you also get the guilt of the actual act. That really changes things in my opinion. He kept claiming in the interview that he hadn't murdered anyone. That's true I guess and it makes a lot of what he says make a little more sense.
I'm sure he comes off as crazy to most people, but the way he talks sounds very similar to people I've known in the past and I can kind of follow his thought process. I'm sure being at all sympathetic to manson is not fashionable these days but I don't really care. I don't mean sympathy as in i feel sorry for him i mean it in the way that i sort of understand what he's talking about. The way he talks reminds me of how you talk when you're tripping on mushrooms or acid. I don't know if that adds to my ability to follow what he's saying, but if you can sort through it, he makes a lot of good points that offer an interesting reflection of our culture and society. I'm sure i'm not breaking any new ground with all of this but hey this is my first exposure to any of it. here's a link to part 1 of 7 of the video I'm reffering to.