A detail of (for now) unknown markings found on a stone near the ruins of an old Knight's Templar church, in Scotland. The stone is believed to date from the 12th-14th century :



The Full Story Is Here

From here :




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The Continuing Death Throes Of American Newspapers

Michael Rivero, of WhatReallyHappened, on why the American newspaper industry is dying :

The newspapers did it to themselves. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the government as it lied us all into pointless and apparently unwinnable wars of conquest against nations that had not actually done anything to deserve being attacked.

This created the phenomenon of the blogs who analyzed the news in an honest and objective way absent from the corporate media and pointed out where the obvious lies were to be found.

If the newspapers had told the TRUTH and only the TRUTH, they would still be profitable and I would happily be doing visual effects for movies. But the corporate media bartered their honor and soul for a free ride on Air Force One, got caught, and now are paying the price.

It is not up to us to regain trust in the corporate news, it is up to them to prove they are worthy of our trust.

They can start by telling the truth about Iran's non-nukes and Israel's very confirmed nuclear weapons arsenal.

Before war breaks out, that is.


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Whoa!

And you thought the time travel flick Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure was fiction?

Here's a detail from a portrait painted in 1875. Familiar?



Go Here For The Full Painting

(Via Elkit on Flickr)
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"Your Information Tray Is Jammed, Man!"

An incredible accomplishment of 20th century cinema, made in 1995, that watches like it was made yesterday :



So much of it seems so very now.

Here's a classic scene of an all-encompassing conspiracy of paranoia :

"They Generated His Brain?"

I have no idea why scene after classic line from Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys never makes any of those Greatest Movie Quotes lists. It's full of Gold :

The movie never changes. It can't change; but every time you see it, it seems different because you're different. You see different things.

There's no right, there's no wrong, there's only popular opinion.

Look at them. They're just asking for it. Maybe the human race deserves to be wiped out.

You are a total nutcase, completely deranged, delusional, paranoid. Your thought process is all fucked up. Your information tray is jammed, man!

If all of these nuts could just make phone calls, they could spread insanity, oozing through telephone cables, oozing into the ears of all these poor sane people, infecting them. Wackos everywhere, plague of madness

Psychiatry. It's the latest religion. We decide what's right and wrong. We decide who's crazy or not.

You know what crazy is? Crazy is majority rules.

I am insane. And you are my insanity.

And some fantastic rants :

In the eighteenth century....along comes this doctor....He's trying to convince people, well, other doctors mainly, that's there's these teeny tiny invisible bad things called germs that get into your body and make you sick. He's trying to get doctors to wash their hands. What is this guy? Crazy? Teeny, tiny, invisible? What do you call it? Uh-uh, germs? Huh? What? Now, cut to the 20th century. Last week, as a matter of fact, before I got dragged into this hellhole. I go in to order a burger in this fast food joint, and the guy drops it on the floor, he picks it up, he wipes it off, he hands it to me like it's all OK. "What about the germs?" I say. He says, "I don't believe in germs. Germs is just a plot they made up so they can sell you disinfectants and soaps." Now he's crazy, right?

And one more solidly familiar rant from 12 Monkeys, released five years before Fight Club :

There's the television. It's all right there - all right there. Look, listen, kneel, pray. Commercials! We're not productive anymore. We don't make things anymore. It's all automated. What are we "for" then? We're consumers, Jim. Yeah. Okay, okay. Buy a lot of stuff, you're a good citizen. But if you don't buy a lot of stuff, if you don't, what are you then, I ask you? What? Mentally ill.

More 12 Monkeys Quotes Here


Once again, Terry Gilliam was more than a decade ahead of the rest of Hollywood, which is now churning out a mad rush of apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, and new apocalypse amongst the post-apocalyptic devastation, movies.

If you haven't yet seen Gilliam's 12 Monkeys, this is your Friday night movie.


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ONE DAY LIFE-THREATENING LANDSLIDES, THE NEXT SCHOOL CHILDREN SINGING AND DANCING

Yesterday, twenty nine days after the earthquake, I travelled with Ebu Sastri, a board member of the Indonesian Red Cross West Sumatra Chapter, to monitor relief distributions to affected people in Kota Pariaman. Pak Arifin and Wayne Ulrich, my ops manager came to. We visited schools, homes, villages to see if the aid we are delivering was what the people needed. We needn't have worried because the people were generally pleased with the array and quality of relief items.
It is a great learning experience for me to travel with Ebu Sastri for she is from this area and has such empathy with the people affected. I learn about the culture, the habits, the humour which is never far from the surface, and the needs of the people. She tells me in West Sumatra, it has one of the few matriarchal societies left in the world. By the respect people show to Ebu Sastri, I am now calling her the 'Queen of west Sumatra." When I returned to Padang, Ebu Sastri showed me round her office where she is secretary to the Parliament. Many parts of her building have collapsed and the rest have major cracks. Anxious women wait in her office to discuss their problems. So many show signs of trauma having lost many familiy members in the quake. Her days are long as she holds down a full time job and gives another 4 or 5 hours a day to Red Cross.

Ebu Sastri (left) and me leaving the preschool which is housed in a tent. Photo: Wayne Ulrich.

Young children sing and dance in a pre school tent at Rauahatul Jannali. The school has 25 students who parents pay US$ 2.5 a month. Some parents cannot afford to pay. The teacher receives a salary of US$ 10 per month. Getting schools operating quickly in tents supplied by PMI have played a vital role in gradually alleviating stress and trauma. Two weeks ago many children spoke of having recurring nightmares when they sleep and dream their parents have been killed. Now the PMI PSP volunteers who visit schools and communities on a regular basis, say the nightmares experienced by the children are dissipating.

Kemisah sits on a wall outside her destroyed home. The Red Cross have given her a tent to live in. Photo: Wayne Ulrich

Ebu Sastri right, and Pak Arifin 2nd from right, listen to Kemisah, who lost her home and all belongings in a village outside of Kota Pariaman. To date she has received a tent, sleeping mats, jerry cans, family kit, hygiene kit and mosquito nets. Photo: Wayne Ulrich

Landslides triggered by the earthquake, are starting to move again, threatening villages below on the shores of Lake Maninjau in Agam . We inspected this remote mountain area yesterday by helicopter Photo: Bob MCKerrow
Due to heavy rain, there is a continued concern that many communities living around the crater lake of Maninjau in Agam will continue to face the threat of renewed land and mud slides. Many villages have already been destroyed by landslides triggered by the earthquake. Now with the rainy season is approaching the government (fearing the landslides will continue to destroy the remaining settlements) has moved more than 3000 people to safer locations. These people may later return once the risks have reduced or will move to more permanent dwellings away from the danger areas. Tents supplied by the Hong Kong Red Cross to the PMI are being used to provide immediate shelter relief to these vulnerable families. Photo Bob McKerrow,

To Deny Animals Grieve For Their Dead Is To Deny Evolution

By Darryl Mason

A detail from this photo of chimpanzees in a Cameroon rescue centre silently watching the body of their 50 year old matriarch being carried away, after she died of heart failure :

"That animals and humans share many traits including emotions is merely an extension of Charles Darwin's accepted ideas about evolutionary continuity, that the differences between species are differences in degree rather than differences in kind. The seemingly natural human urge to impart emotions on to animals, far from obscuring the "true" nature of animals, may actually reflect a very accurate way of knowing."

Religion, no doubt, and fear of mockery in scientific circles, has long kept inquiring minds away from examining just how widespread displays of grief and mourning are in the animal kingdom.

We once believed that to acknowledge an ape can mourn a dead infant, or that elephants will visit the corpse of a fallen friend and stand guard to protect the body from scavengers, for a short time anyway, in ways that seemed shockingly familiar of our ceremonies and feelings of loss, was to somehow lessen the advanced, emotional, empathic superiority of humans.

How wrong we were.

Some animals have far more empathy for the dead of their genetically similar species than humans do.

Here's AA Gill writing in the Sunday Times of the "naughty fun" he felt in shooting a baboon, basking in the Tanzanian sun, through the lung, from a safe distance :

I shot a baboon in Africa, last Wednesday, just after lunch. Shot it dead.

So I’m in Africa, in a hat, with dark intentions and a truck full of guns and other blokes in hats. Josh the hunter said: “Why don’t we shoot a baboon?” All nonchalant, looking out of the window at the amazing Tanzanian acacia scrub that drifts into the Serengeti plain. What about a baboon?

And here’s the thing. If you tool around the beautiful and unruly bits of Africa long enough in the company of gangs of men in purposeful hats, sooner or later you’re going to do baboon.

So, I said, why not? Just a little one. I can handle it; I’ll be a recreational primate killer.

They know that bipedal hominids in hats, hanging around in trucks with guns, are up to no good. They see you, they sod off, in great gambolling gangs, babies riding their mums like little jockeys.

And then they stand around on rocks and bark like alsatians and jump up and down, mooning with their big meaty arses...

So there was this big bloke leaning against a rock, picking his fingernails, a hairy geezer sitting in the sun with his shirt off. I took him just below the armpit. He slumped and slid sideways. I’m told they can be tricky to shoot: they run up trees, hang on for grim life. They die hard, baboons. But not this one. A soft-nosed .357 blew his lungs out.

The air was filled with a furious keening of his tribe.

Two hundred and fifty yards. Not a bad shot.

I wanted to get a sense of what it might be like to kill someone, a stranger. You see it in all those films: guns and bodies, barely a close-up of reflection or doubt. What does it really feel like to shoot someone, or someone’s close relative?

AA Gill didn't hang around to watch the baboon's relatives and friends grieve over the corpse.


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World War V : Robot Vs Robot

This is the combat robot Russia is hoping will soon replace its soldiers, or so goes the hype. Still, very impressive, mildly terrifying.

"An Expectation Of Unlimited Internet Access During A Pandemic Is Not Realistic"

The talk of WhatToDo is years old, and the predicted problems are an expected eventuality in a time of severe pandemic-related crisis, but it's still a shattering idea to think that you could be isolated in your home, during a thousands-dying-a-day flu pandemic, and you might not be reach the sites you trust to tell you the truth of what's happening.

From Reuters :

....the Homeland Security Department accused the GAO of having unrealistic expectations of how the Internet could be managed if millions began to telework from home at the same time as bored or sick schoolchildren were playing online, sucking up valuable bandwidth.

Experts have for years pointed to the potential problem of Internet access during a severe pandemic, which would be a unique kind of emergency. It would be global, affecting many areas at once, and would last for weeks or months, unlike a disaster such as a hurricane or earthquake.

Private Internet providers might need government authorization to block popular websites, it said, or to reduce residential transmission speeds to make way for commerce.

The Department of Homeland Security appears to have next to fuck all to address the chaos of "internet congestion."

"An expectation of unlimited Internet access during a pandemic is not realistic."

More From Reuters Here

As far as bandwith problems go, one of the first sites you would expect to get blocked to ease "congestion" would be YouTube, which would have the no doubt desirable bonus effect of keeping a whole lot of horrific pandemic-related clips from reaching the rest of the country, or the world.


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In Latvia, some locals tried to pass off this hole as a 50 foot wide meteor crater :



But scientists wh examined the hole claimed it was "too neat' and had been dug by humans. By Tuesday, a group of students revealed they were responsible.

For comparison, here's the rough, smashed hole in the earth left by an actual meteor strike, in Peru, in October 2007 :




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One month after the west Sumatra earthquake

It's now four weeks since the earthquake struck. The Red Cross has delivered crucial relief items to over 9,000 families. Medical teams have treated over 5000 people in remote areas. We are now starting building 10,000 temporary shelters. Today I travelled with Red Cross colleagues to monitor the relief distribution so far. Here are a few photographs

Pak Sudir sits in a chair one month after the earthquake on the site where nine of his family were killed "What can I do, I lost everything. " In the sub village of "Paramancu, Padang Pariaman district, 76 people were killed in this village alone when a huge mudslide engulfed them . Less than a few hundred metres away, two other villages were hit too, killing an additional 149 people. Photo: Bob McKerrow Pak Arifin director of the DM dept at the PMI headquarters whom I travelled with today. Photo: Bob McKerrow
Pak Sudir with his neighbour Ahmad who lost four members of his family. between the two, they lost 13 family members while they were in nearby fields working. Photo: Bob McKerrow
Today we visited the very remote village of Selangan Tinqqi and had a good talk to the villagers about the helicopter distributions of food, tarpaulins, kitchen utensils, clothes, tool kits and hygiene kits we have delivered in the past two weeks. They were also pleased with the mobile medical teams we have sent in. Here Wayne Ulrich our ops manager discusses the situation with villagers. Photo: Bob McKerrow

British National Party Call For "White Riots" Against "Ethnic Classes"

By Darryl Mason

The British National Party's legal officer Lee Barnes thinks Nick Griffin is far too moderate, and mainstream, and announces violence is essential in their quest for more intolerance :

Barnes complained on his personal website that Griffin "should have stood up to these whining, middle-class hypocrites that use the race card for self-enrichment – and thrown the truth right back into their fat, sanctimonious, hypocritical, self-serving faces".

"...perhaps there needs to be a few 'white riots' around the country a la the Brixton riots of the 1980s before the idiot white liberal middle class and their ethnic middle-class fellow travellers wake up".

More calls for low-level civil war.

Which is, of course, exactly the kind of activity the upper class elites that nationalists used to fight against want the working classes and middle glasses to all get caught up in.

The ultra-wealthy, that is those with the most to lose, have always preferred the rest to squabble and fight amongst themselves.

Over scraps.

Surreally stupid :

If You Mean 'Flame' As In People On Fire Who've Just Been Bombed, Then Yes Dick Cheney Deserves This Award

By Darryl Mason

Former vice-president and war industry whore Dick Cheney recently won the (good god) Keeper Of The Flame Award from the Centre For Security Policy, another NeoCon outfit who love destruction & slaughter, and profiting from war and human misery, and also enjoys giving NeoCon awards to NeoCons.

Blue Gal notes some of the other previous winners of this hilarious award :

Joe Lieberman
Duncan Hunter
James Inhofe
Paul Wolfowitz
Newt Gingrich
Ronald Reagan
Jon Kyl
Caspar Weinberger

And wonders why the Washington Post can't tell the blog-honest truth, just once, like this :



Here's then US deputy secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz, in October, 2003, upon receiving his own Keeper Of The Flame award :

"There are American heroes out there now performing magnificently on the front lines in Afghanistan and Iraq. And instead of fine food like we’re eating here tonight, they eat their rations in the blazing heat, and they make their camps in the blinding dust and the driving wind. They take the battle to the enemy and they brave his hatred and brutality to make this country safe.

"Among them are heroes who went to war and did not come back who gave their last full measure of devotion for their country and their cause—a just and noble cause. They live on in our hearts as we remember their courage and their deeds. In their memory, we must rededicate ourselves and redouble our efforts to finish the job that they have so nobly begun."

Since Wolfowitz delivered that speech, more than 4500 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq, more than 100,000 have been physically wounded and hundreds of thousands of American soldiers have been left psychologically shattered by the War On Iraq.

The best way to honour dead soldiers is to send more soldiers to die, who then must be honoured by sending more soldiers to die....This is the psychopathy of NeoConism at its most gruesome, war industry core.

Brain Food

Another post where I recycle my recent Twitter posts and links and try to pass them off as fresh blog content. The below twoots are from the second half of October

* Confirmed : US Flying Killer 'Robots' have assassinated 750 to 1000 people - http://tinyurl.com/yh7w2aj

* 3 out of 4 polled robot doppelgangers rated Bruce Willis-starring Surrogates 2 out of 5 stars. "Finally, they make a movie about us, and it's Arse"

* RedBox DVD bistros only hold a few hundred movies, but are a massive success - http://tinyurl.com/yl33epl - less choice = more customers?

* (American Psycho, Less Than Zero author) bret @eastonellis picks his scariest movies of recent years : The Strangers, Paranormal Activity, Sex and the City

* Anyone know why severe tooth pain disappears while standing in front of a microwave on defrost? Accidental discovery, but worked twice more

* Forbes estimates Star Wars movies, TV and merchandising has earned $32 bilion over three decades - http://tinyurl.com/yl6e338

* (British National Party leader) Nick Griffin should Harden The Fuck Up - http://tinyurl.com/yz9mpyc - He got a taxpayer funded hour on BBC, to 8 million people, now's he whining "unfair"

* Toy sheep and pens are left by fans at the grave of Philip K Dick and his twin sister Jane, in Fort Morgan - http://tinyurl.com/yzw3ujh


* Former president George W Bush : "I didn't sell my soul." Of course not. You didn't have one to sell. You sold America's soul instead - http://tinyurl.com/ygrdsx3

* Plot details of Mad Max 4 : Fury Road story : http://tinyurl.com/yzj296y The precious fuel this time is untainted DNA

* Director George Miller has already confirmed Mad Max 4 : Fury Road will be anime 3D - http://tinyurl.com/dgmg9m

* In 1975 Briitsh adults/kids TV comedy 'The Goodies' did a show abt breaking into a US bio-warfare lab and releasing a weaponised virus. http://tinyurl.com/yk5uh78


* World Wide Web inventor @timberners_lee first Twitter twoot : "ooops confusing user interfxce"

* Forget the bullshit about Obama's War On Fox giving Fox News record ratings. Fox News hit 8.5 million viewers at start of the War On Iraq

* US Abuse Music For Torture Purposes Band List - http://tinyurl.com/yg5fmvu Ear-splitting Matchbox 20 would make me fake-confess rimming Osama

* On John Safran's Race Relations : Storm In A Palestinian Sperm Bank Sample Cup http://tinyurl.com/ylxh269


* Advice to New Zealand BP service stations - Do not put up signs saying "We've Already Blown On These Pies" - http://tinyurl.com/yh6lo9a

* Author Joe Konrath on self-publishing e-books -"it's possible to makea living without (book publisher) contracts." http://tinyurl.com/yhgqf7m

* I'm halfway thru twooting this novel @MaxMurrayANovel. It's a hell of a lot harder but also far more fun than I ever imagined

* Spectacular stuntman Grant Page's disastrous car hit on live TV, from The Don Lane Show- http://tinyurl.com/ykb6vyz


* @MaxMurrayANovel : "I don't give a shit abt dying, but I wanna know what or who is killing me. It's all the secrets I cant stand."

* There's been the Face On Mars, Pyramids On Mars, Human Skull On Mars, the Tubes Of Mars...now The Eye On Mars - http://tinyurl.com/yhs85fe

* Media expert Robert Thompson : "Balloon Boy was good business but bad journalism." http://tinyurl.com/ykaxdjp - So, fake, but profitable

* Claim: Nuke Tests In Nevada Seeded Radioactive Fallout Across US, Leaving A Cancer Legacy In Baby Boomers - http://tinyurl.com/yjpfvn6


* George W Bush : "America's foremost success expert." Yes, really. Bush now a speaker with Get Motivated! - http://tinyurl.com/yf9tur9

* President George W Bush got 3000 threats a year from the American public. Obama got 12,000 in just 9 months.

* 'Small government' Republicans are all for Big Government when it comes to prosecuting old people for smoking joints to combat arthritis

* The Spy Who Tweeted Me : Social networking 'influence' agency gets funding from CIA http://tinyurl.com/yzxprf2


* Bill Clinton King of "I don't recall?" http://tinyurl.com/ykrf8d4 Australia has a local champion of "I Don't Recall" : Alexander Downer http://tinyurl.com/yln4nqm

* These people - @visible_tech - are CIA funded Twitter spies/dataminers : http://tinyurl.com/yl3zud2

* Today will be the greatest day of my life. Probably. Shit, just spilled the coffee. Well, that fucks it.

As always, I've edited these Twitter comments to make them more readable, as I don't have to stick to a 140 character limit here.

My Twitter feed is here : @darrylmason

DisUnited States Of Cannabis

70% Of American Conservatives Want To Stop People Legally Consuming Cannabis In The Privacy Of Their Own Homes


"George Washington understood, and so do I"

Raw Story mulls the latest poll results on Americans and cannabis legalisation :

New data from U.S. polling firm Gallup shows nearly half of Americans -- a record number -- are in support of legalizing and taxing marijuana for recreational use by adults.

The poll clearly illustrates a generational and political divide on the issue, with 78 percent of self-described liberals saying they would like to see the drug legalized and 72 percent of self-described conservatives being opposed. Gallup also found that 50 percent of Americans under 50-years-old are in favor of legalization, but just 28 percent of seniors agree.

Perhaps the most important demographic to advocates of legalization are the moderate voters, among whom 51 percent now support ending prohibition.

"Fourteen states allow some use of marijuana for medical purposes: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington," the Associated Press reported on Monday.

Another of the poll's revelations is that among self-described Democrats, a majority in favor of legalization has emerged, with 54 percent supporting such a move and 45 percent opposed. Among self-described Republicans, the question is not even a contest: 28 percent are in favor, while 70 percent are opposed.

More On President Obama's Dramatic Changes To Federal Cannabis Laws :

The Obama administration will not seek to arrest medical marijuana users and suppliers as long as they conform to state laws, under new policy guidelines to be sent to federal prosecutors Monday.

Two Justice Department officials described the new policy to The Associated Press, saying prosecutors will be told it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state laws.

The new policy is a significant departure from the Bush administration, which insisted it would continue to enforce federal anti-pot laws regardless of state codes.

"This is a major step forward," said Bruce Mirken, communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project. "This change in policy moves the federal government dramatically toward respecting scientific and practical reality."

The six decades long prohibition on cannabis in the United States is coming to an end.

The pharmaceutical corporations will not be happy, as they begin to market their synthetic THC drugs, and their thousands of lobbyists in Washington DC are pushing hard to get these changes wound back.

In a true free market, where Americans can grow their own medicinal cannabis, legal pharmaceutical drug pushers will be finding less and less customers.

Expect a hardcore 'Cannabis Is Destroying You & America' TV and internet ad campaign to begin any week now.

Vast Right Wing Conspiracy Confirmed

So Hillary Clinton was right, despite all the years of mockery by Republicans and Fox News denialism. There was a well-funded Right Wing Conspiracy to destroy the Cllintons, and drive an American president from the White House.

Here's the man who founded the conspiracy :

(Larry) Klayman proudly recalls the night the "vast right-wing conspiracy... was born." He and fellow conservatives -- including Paul Weyrich, Phyllis Schafly and the NRA's Wayne LaPierre -- met in a room near the Council for National Policy conference in Charleston, South Carolina in 1998. "We voted to remove the 42nd president of the United States by whatever legal and ethical means were necessary," he said.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/14/larry-klayman-conservativ_n_321080.html

Klayman also claims Rupert Murdoch tried to have his new book killed, because of its attacks on Fox News :

Klayman reserves some of his harshest words for Fox News, expressing his increasing disappointment with the network, which "should really change its motto 'We report, you decide' to 'We brainwash, you decide.'"

He accuses Fox News and host Sean Hannity of not being straight with him by tricking his clients to coming on the air: "I came to perceive Hannity as a shallow and insincere Rush Limbaugh wannabe. In contrast, his television co-host, Alan Colmes, a Jewish liberal, was actually a mensch, even though I rarely agreed with him politically."

Klayman claims that Fox owner Rupert Murdoch "tried to kill the publication of this book" because of his criticism of the network.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/14/larry-klayman-conservativ_n_321080.html

Did Murdoch want to kill the book solely because of this claim by Klayman?

Klayman takes particular aim at the "strange and petty tactics" of the network's chairman Roger Ailes. When he asked Ailes about his decision to hire Chris Cuomo, the current "Good Morning America" co-host, to do commentary, the Fox News executive replied: "If I'm going to put on some goddamned liberal, I might as well get the dumbest fuck I can find!"

Fox News : Fair & Balanced (By Token Lefties, Chosen Specifically For Their Dumb Fuckery)

The Cold-Blooded Cruelty Of Roald Dahl

Will Self, writing in the UK Guardian, reviews the Wes Anderson-directed Fantastic Mr Fox, and essays, wonderfully, on its author, Roald Dahl :

The Twits is my favourite Dahl book....The celebrated midden of Mr Twit's beard, his insertion of his glass eye into Mrs Twit's beer, her substitution of worms for his spaghetti – not forgetting the dreaded shrinks; indeed, all of the creepy mind games the ghastly duo engage in...

That the whole tale of spousal, child and animal abuse should be punctuated by lines that skilfully and inexorably tighten the dramatic noose is testimony to Dahl's genius as a fashioner of narrative, when the aside comes: "We can't go on for ever watching these two disgusting people doing disgusting things to each other." The only possible reply is: "Yes, we can – please, more!"

Dahl mimicked to perfection a believable child's-eye view, that, looking up from below, sees the adult realm as foreshortened, and adult foibles as grossly elongated.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Take Dahl's most famous work, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: its boy protagonist's family is immiserated, his carers are incapable of looking even after themselves – so salvation comes through luck, and the arbitrary beneficence of a deranged feudal-capitalist with a happily mancipated workforce. Of course, the spur that initially drives Charlie on is a lust for sweet things that, were it transferred to an adult plane, could only result in a work entitled something like "Charlie and the Huge Seraglio full of Compliant Nymphomaniacs". The NAACP slated the black pygmy Oompa-Loompas in the original text – and so Dahl changed them to a fictional light-skinned subspecies – but he couldn't get rid of the brown sugar. My equation of sweets with sex is not facetious; in Dahl-world, oral gratification is pretty much the only thing that matters.

The misogyny that haunts Dahl's adult writing is also short-circuited in his sexless children's fiction, for here his heroes and heroines can be either orphans (the aforementioned Charlie, James of giant-peach lusting), or else, as in The Magic Finger, an unnamed, and thus family-free, eight-year-old girl. The eponymous heroine of Matilda has parents who are neglectful to the point of being abusive. Sophie in The BFG is extracted from her natal home in order to experience good and bad surrogacy – from giants (ie Dahlesquely huge men). The infanticidal witches of The Witches stand proxy for all mothers – who kill that which they claim to love; true, the boy's Norwegian grandmother is a good enough parent, but then she's safely de-sexed by age and illness. Only Danny, the Champion of the World presents an idealised parent – and that, also, has to be a man.

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I don't adore Dahl's children's fiction in spite of its submerged misogyny, lust, revanchism and wilful neglect of identity politics – I love it precisely because of these attributes. Dahl understood intuitively the truth best exemplified by a famous scene in The Simpsons, when Bart overhears Marge saying to Homer "Kids can be so cruel" and, taking it as an injunction, cries out: "We can? Thanks Mom!" There then comes the sound of his rapid footsteps along the hall, followed by Lisa's pained cry: "Owwww! Bart, cut it out!" Dahl's books resound down through the generations with the demented call "We can!" and its pained response "Owwww!"

And long may they do so.

The Full Essay By Will Self Is Here

Fox News : 24/7 Fearmongery & Corporate Propaganda, With News Breaks




Fox News' highest rating show still only pulls less than one-third the number of Americans who tune in to watch Two And A Half Men.

"I Can Assure You, Gentlemen, That No Nasty Experiments Are Taking Place On This Base"

British kids/adults comedy show 'The Goodies' explored the controversy of American biowarfare bases in England, back in 1975, with plenty of digs about toxic waste dumping and the then recent Watergate revelations of espionage and surveillance recordings :



Part Two Of The Goodies 'Clown Virus' Episode Is Here

Part Three Is Here

"iWatch My America"

The Los Angeles Police Department has a new TV ad to ensure you understand that you live in a surveillance society, and there's nothing you can do about it, except report on your friends and neighbours :

Brain Food

Another post where I recycle my recent Twitter posts and try to pass them off as fresh blog content.The below twoots are from the first half of October :

* Ducks with tragically small penises more likely to spread avian flu - http://tinyurl.com/yhpa4la - Not a story from The Onion.

* What colour do we turn our Twitter avatars now? - Karzai did not gain enough valid votes for an outright win: http://bit.ly/13AfN3

*I'm waiting for someone to spot an iPod on a table in the background of a 15th century painting.

* Fox News is now listed in (US) TV Guide under 'Entertainment'.

* What you do is this, concrete half the garden, make sure all the other plants are watching, then say, "You're fucking next, leafy."

* Stunning. From a list of the Top 10 US Political Blogs, only two can be ranked as belonging to Old Media/MSM. http://tinyurl.com/yg9bm67

* 1000 children killed, thousands more tortured, by Christian extremists - http://tinyurl.com/yl56udc "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."

* Who Owns The Moon? No-One Yet, But Soon...http://tinyurl.com/ylr89x6 Sort of a finders-stayers-keepers deal for now.

* If Israel is proved to have committed war crimes in Gaza, the US, UK & Australia are accessories to war crimes http://tinyurl.com/yj33ya3

* How many comedies have scenes of repeated suicide attempts? Other than Groundhog Day, and Heathers, can't think of one

* Danish PM recieved warning of WTC collapse "5 to 10 minutes" before it happened, NYC firemen and civilians did not -http://tinyurl.com/yhnj6w6

* Uruguay becomes the first country in the world to supply laptops to all primary school students - http://tinyurl.com/yfcy4hm

* Rupert Murdoch : The King Of Global Warming Fearmongery http://tinyurl.com/yjlgft3

* Sleep is for wimps.

* RT @PreNewsAt11 January 11, 2016 : Bill Clinton Denies Cyborg Sex Claims : "I Did Not Have Sexual Relations With That HookerBot."

* CNN's Wolf Blitzer hears Balloon Boy say "we did it for the show", tries to maintain the lies of the kid's dad! - http://tinyurl.com/yg7qz4w Burn old media, Burn.

* Monty Python give away their vids on YouTube, and still make $4 -5 mill off DVD sales of a 40 yo old TV series - http://tinyurl.com/yjypzog

* Goldman Sachs : Privatise The Profit, Socialise The Risk - http://tinyurl.com/yke6z3a

* Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini : I'm Not Dead Yet! http://tinyurl.com/yhdfvxr - NeoCon Michael Leeden spreads rumours again.

* I just drank half a cup of pancake batter because I couldn't be arsed to cook it. Quite nice.

* Engineer who spent 37 years with NASA to speak about eng./aeronautical problems in 9/11 official story - http://tinyurl.com/yfzt74u

* 'Those scare tactics, ‘write checks...there’s goinng to be anthr Holocaust,’ doesn’t work with the under-60 crowd.” http://tinyurl.com/yj6cmln

* NYTimes : “As we get further from World War II, it’s harder to scare young people into support for Israel” http://tinyurl.com/yj6cmln Scare?

* Japanese 'reality' TV, where producers are never told, "No, this time you've gone too far" - http://tinyurl.com/yfw6cjj

* Yes, They Are Watching You, But They're Not Human - http://tinyurl.com/ygezo7o

* (Australian media giant) NineMSN CEO Joe Pollard says Murdoch's plan to charge for news is like "trying to put a tollbooth in the ocean" http://tinyurl.com/yj4bfnv

* The tin foil hat actually allows psychotronic mind controllers to remotely access your brain more easily.

* Censored UK Indep. story on how Trafigura dumped toxic waste in sea, killing 15, sickening 100,000 - http://tinyurl.com/yfastg5

* Northern Territory cat calls owner "fuck prick", according to owner - http://bit.ly/15PgSe

* Americans protest outside elementary school where students admire and respect their president http://bit.ly/3q8rHb

* (Australian Christian senator) Steve Fielding Still Appalled, Mortified By Realisation That Jesus Was The Original Hippy Greenie - http://tinyurl.com/yhex2x6

* Rupert Murdoch tells China not to take media criticism personally - http://tinyurl.com/yjar4b8 - news as an illusion of criticism

* Francis Ford Coppola on Hollywood The Corpse : http://tinyurl.com/yz6jbf2 - all studios under dire "stress", 2 or 3 may shut down.

* Vengeful God on new claims he didn't create Earth, but instead found it : "Stupid humans. Enjoy the earthquakes, tsunamis & fires."

* Rewire your brain at any age, learn how to juggle - http://tinyurl.com/ygtkcn3 - the brain as a transformable, electrified tissue mass

* "We came, we saw, we kicked it's ass!" A brilliant example of video sampling art http://tinyurl.com/ylre3zk

* Former American president George HW Bush : Atheists should not be considered American citizens or patriots. http://tinyurl.com/5q4oj

* They got to the Mayans! : 2012 Not The End Of The World, Mayans Insist http://tinyurl.com/yh78fgg - I'm still building my rocket regardless

* Irony Megasplash : Christian intelligent designist calls science a "superstition". Also, God is fucking angry - http://tinyurl.com/yhcetdq

Like I said last time, I edited some of the posts to make them more readable, as Twitter has a 140 character limit per post, and word compression is sometimes essential.

My Twitter feed is here : @darrylmason


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An Annie Leibovitz potrait from September of the First Family :

Indonesia: Reuniting shattered families

She is only 25 years old, but Umi Alfiyah is already a veteran of major disasters. As a former volunteer with the Indonesian Red Cross (PMI), and now as a staff member, she responded after the 2004 tsunami in Aceh, the 2006 earthquake in Yogyakarta, and now, the earthquake in West Sumatra . Photo: Kathy Mueller


Yesterday morning Friday 23 Oct, I went for my first morning walk in 24 days. I felt like a school boy stealing from the teachers drawer. As guilty as sin. Should I not be writing appeals for help, negotiating for more helicopters and volunteers ? No, my body and brain need a rest.My legs were stiff and my back aching from sitting in front of a screen, jumping in and out of helicopters and walking across the uneven surface of landslides. It was the first time I have done something for myself. As I walked I thought of all those selfless people I have worked with since 30 September. Pak Irman head of the PMI operation whose grand daughter used to phone daily from Jakarta begging him to come back. Wayne our ops manager whose been working 24/7 handling a complex operation. Kathy Mueller from the Canadian Red Cross who has been out there daily listening and recording the stories of affected families, volunteers and staff. her latest article I paste below. Matteo from the Italian Red Cross who came with his team and erected 3 base camps for 200 volunteers so they could get some rest and a shower after attending to the dead with dignity, administering first aid, distributing relief items, counselling grieving children and reuniting families. Vera, Putu, Qasim. Jamie. Ian, Amara who work for me and John and Tucky the helicopter pilots. The list goes on and on. Their stories need to be told. Umi in one of my many PMI heroes.



She is only 25 years old, but Umi Alfiyah is already a veteran of major disasters. As a former volunteer with the Indonesian Red Cross (PMI), and now as a staff member, she responded after the 2004 tsunami in Aceh, the 2006 earthquake in Yogyakarta, and now, the earthquake in West Sumatra. When disaster strikes, it’s her job to reconnect people who have lost contact.

“We have had around 40 phone calls from people outside West Sumatra who haven’t been able to reach their families in Padang and Pariaman. People are scared. They don’t know what’s happened to their relatives,” she says.

Alfi, as she prefers to be called, is heading up the Restoring Family Links (RFL) unit as part of PMI’s emergency response to the earthquake. Their efforts to help people find each other include the launching of a national hotline. Friends and family across the country and overseas can call to learn the whereabouts of their loved ones. They will also take satellite phones into the more remote areas where cell phone service may not be reliable.

Kathy Mueller at work: Photo: Bob McKerrow

Missing person

When a call does come in, Alfi and her team head out to visit the missing person’s last known address. They will keep visiting until the person is located.

“We had one call from a man in Jakarta,” says Alfi. “He hadn’t been able to reach his brother in Padang City. He had been calling and calling for days but there wasn’t any answer. We took down as much detail as we could and then visited the brother’s house.

“He was there, but hadn’t been able to call out. We gave him a mobile phone and the two brothers talked. It was very emotional. They were both crying. Four days is a long time not to know if your brother is alive.”

Rebuilding lives

It reconfirms that for most people, insecurity is the worst situation to be in. Survivors of a disaster can better handle grief, losses and rebuilding their lives, once they know what has happened and what their options are.

Despite the challenges of working in a disaster zone, Alfi does not entertain any thoughts of giving it up. “It can be upsetting because a lot of people are buried under landslides and collapsed houses. We don’t always have good news for people. But I really enjoy the job, especially when we do reunite families. Other PMI programmes provide material goods. We look after people’s emotional needs. We find their family.”

Alfi has been coordinator of the RFL unit for the past three years, but her connection to PMI began years earlier in high school. During the big earthquake in Yogyakarta in 2006, her own house was damaged, yet she still came straight into work.

“We had more than 200 requests to find family members. We also worked with the government to help with the identification of bodies. It was a very emotional time, but it really showed how valuable a service this is. I have been with the Red Cross for so long now, I can’t imagine working anywhere else.” Thanks to Kathy Mueller of the Canadian Red Cross who wrote this article.

Bush : But I Don't Wanna Give Back Those Purty Pictures

Were Rothschild-owned artworks stolen by the Nazis during World War 2, handed over to Prescott Bush as a 'Thank You For All Your Support'? Well, that's the most popular theory in the comments on this story :

Two valuable works of art looted by the Nazis during World War II have been discovered at Southern Methodist University (SMU), which is the future home of the George W. Bush Presidential Library.

The pair of paintings on display at SMU's Meadows Museum rendered by Spanish artist Bartolome Esteban Murillo of Seville's Patron Saints Justa and Rufina, estimated to be worth more than $10 million, are believed to have been stolen from the Rothschild family in Paris in 1941.

More Here

Music To Torture People By

The hitlist of bands used by the US government to 'soften up' detainees for interrogation at Guantanamo Bay, through torturous volume and reptitivity, has been revealed.

The theme song to Barney The Dinosaur makes the list, as we already knew, but some of the others Songs To Force Fake-Al Qaeda Confessions by are, well, not too horrific, if you don't include Matchbox 20 :

AC/DC, Aerosmith, Deicide, Queen, Dr Dre, Marilyn Manson, REM, Metallica, Nine Inch Nails, Springsteen, Pearl Jam, Hed P.E. Neil Diamond, Rage Against The Machine.

Still, there's a massive difference between choosing to listen to AC/DC's Who Made Who or Highway To Hell at ear-splitting volume for twelve hours straight, and having it forced on you.

That's why it's called torture.

You'd have to imagine that the inclusion of many still popular radio staples, like Don McLean's American Pie, would kick in some pretty fucked up flashbacks for those who were tortured by music in Guantanamo Bay, once they're back in the real world, if they're anywhere near commercial radio or TV, or watching DVDs.

The US government used Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange as an instructional manual.

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Afghan Smack Kills 100,000 A Year

A few stunning facts from this BBC story about Afghanistan heroin and the worldwide illegal opium market :

The world market is worth $US65 billion.

Opium and heroin addicts number 15 million globally.

100,000 people die from heroin or opium overdoses every year.

Only 2% of Afghanistan opiates are seized in country.

3500 tonnes of opium are exported from Afghanistan every year, representing 92% of the world's opium.

Estimates for the price of one gram of heroin in Kabul - $3. In London or Moscow - $100.

The Full Story Is Here

Pope Benedict Palpatine :


Source : Canoe (who tagged the pic "scary pope")

Photoshoppers go to town.

Words To Live By, Thoughts To Fill Your Mind

Reddit readers construct a massive 1500 comment thick thread based on the question :

What Is The Most Life Altering Quote You've Heard Or Read?

I read them all, gladly, to bring you these choice quotes from beautiful mass of inspiration and 'wow man, that's like totally heavy' brain food :

"Honor is doing the right thing, even when nobody is looking..."
- Anonymous

"Yes, I will do the opposite. I used to sit here and do nothing and regret it for the rest of the day. So now I will do the opposite, and I will do something."
- George Costanza

"Don't ever say stuff just because you think you should. That's the definition of an asshole."
- ShitMyDadSayz

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."
- Plato

"For billions of years since the onset of time, Every single one of your ancestors survived. Every single person on your mum and dads side, Successfully looked after and passed on to you life. What are the chances of that, like. It comes to me once in a while. And everywhere I tell folk, it gets the best, smile."
- Mike Skinner, The Streets

"Don't Panic!"
- Douglas Adams

"You know life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop once in a while and look around, you might miss it."
- Ferris Bueller

"Follow your bliss"
- Robert Campbell

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
- Eleanor Roosevelt

"I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the sidewalk. It's so fuckin' heroic." - George Carlin

"Hat is baggage. It's just not worth it. Life's too short to go around pissed off all the time."
- American History X

"Hey - don’t worry, don’t be afraid, ever, because, this is just a ride…"
- Bill Hicks

"I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides."
- Carl Sagan

"All great truths begin as blasphemies."
- George Bernard Shaw

"The Truth shall set you free"
- Jesus

"Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent."
- Jim Jarmusch

"The Universe tends to unfold as it should"
- Harold & Kumar

"Life is so hard. How can we be anything but kind?"
- Buddha

A thousand and more here.

A few decades ago, a friend told me the story of his dying grandfather, a man who never chased down the dreams he dreamed as a youth. Didn't even really try, for a whole lot of reasons. On his deathbed, one of his final sentences to his grandson was this :

"What? So that was it?"

His grandson made sure he didn't live a life filled with regret, and unchased dreams.

The Eye On Mars

NASA claims these beautiful, seemingly random patterns on the surface of Mars are the result of 'dust devils', or "minituare wind vortices"



Detail :



If you move back from your screen a bit, it looks a little like a charcoal sketch of a human eye.

I Spy An Eye On Mars - The Best Of 'WTF Is That?" On Mars

Start An Unnecessary War, Get 5000 Of Your Soldiers Killed, Launch Your New Career As A Motivational! Speaker

Unconvicted war criminal, and ex-president, George W. Bush has found a new job.

From TPM :



As part of the sales pitch for Get Motivated!, George W. Bush is referred to as "America's foremost success expert."



I hope at least one person at every seminar attempts a citizen's arrest.

Maybe a very motivated person could spend $20,000 or $40,000 to hire Bush to speak at their 'business lunch' (in the US that is, he's a little worried about traveling internationally, too often), then have him detained and arrested for war crimes.

A great set piece for a documentary on the financial and human misery George W. Bush left behind, in the United States, in Afghanistan, in Iraq.

George W. Bush Greeted By Grim Reaper : "I'm You're Biggest Fan"

Reuters : Our Stories Can "Move Markets"

The Reuters news agency fell for a hoax press release about US climate change legislation, you can read the full story by Greg Sergant here, but this quote from a Reuters spokesperson is very interesting :

“Reuters has an obligation to its clients to publish news and information that could move financial markets, and this story had the potential to do that,” (said) Reuters spokesperson Courtney Dolan.

Must have been why they were so quiet about the sub-prime fiasco and the once looming Global Financial Crisis until it was too late.

Drudge Report Uses Obama With Children Photo For Medicinal Cannabis Stories



What do you think Matt Drudge, or whoever is editing the Drudge Report these days, is trying to billboard with this choice of photo, to illustrate two stories about the winding back of federal agency prosecutions of medicinal cannabis clinics and suppliers?




The stories on the fulfillment of President Obama's vow to get The Feds to back off their policing of medicinal cannabis clinics in 14 states are here and here.

It's amusing to watch the Republicans reaction to the news that the American president will no longer push federal law enforcement agencies to step on state jurisdiction to stop cancer patients using cannabis to quell vomiting and to gain an appetite for food.

I thought the Republicans were against 'Big Government' and all its evils?

Only, it seems, when the majority view of Americans is respected, against the wishes of pharmaceutical giants, and they are allowed to legally use natural medicine humans have been ingesting for more than a million years.

UPDATE : Poll Finds Record Level Of Support Amongst Americans For Legalisation Of Cannabis