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Sunday, April 25, 2010

Noam Chomsky - Noam vs. Michel Foucault (Eng. subs)

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land is a 2004 documentary by Sut Jhally and Bathsheba Ratzkoff which—according to the film's official website—"provides a striking comparison of U.S. and international media coverage of the crisis in the Middle East, zeroing in on how structural distortions in U.S. coverage have reinforced false perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" and which "analyzes and explains how--through the use of language, framing and context--the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza remains hidden in the news media".[1][2] The film argues that the influence of pro-Israel media watchdog groups, such as CAMERA and Honest Reporting, has led to distorted and pro-Israel media reports.[3] It features Noam Chomsky, Robert Jensen, Hanan Ashrawi, Sam Husseini, and Robert Fisk, among others.[1][3]

In its response to the movie, the pro-Israel JCRC criticized the film for not discussing the influence of "the numerous pro‐Palestinian media watchdog groups, including FAIR (Fair and Accuracy in the Media, which describes itself as 'A National Media Watch Group'), whose spokesperson played a prominent role in the film".[4]

According to LiP Magazine, the movie "offers a great starting point for thinking about media misrepresentation of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and useful analysis of how language is used to manipulate public opinion," but is short on "solid statistics and facts to back up some of its blanket statements".[5] A review in the New York Times by Ned Martel found that the film "largely ignores Palestinian leadership, which has surely played a part in the conflict’s broken vows and broken hearts. And such a lack of dispassion weakens the one-sided film’s bold and detailed argument".[6]

- Wikipedia

AVAILABLE ON GOOGLE VIDEO

Necessary Illusions

Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies is a 1989 book by US academic Noam Chomsky concerning political power using propaganda to distort and distract from major issues to maintain confusion and complicity, preventing real democracy from becoming effective. Like many of the titles by Chomsky, such as Pirates and Emperors the themes come from such titles as St. Augustine's City of God and Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann, the title of this book borrows a phrase from an earlier political commentary; in this case, Chomsky quotes from the writings of Reinhold Niebuhr.

Nearly the entire first half of the book is based on Chomsky's five 1988 Massey Lectures on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio from November 1988 and extends his propaganda model to a variety of new situations. The remaining appendices address criticisms of the work and provide additional detail.

As a genre of political thought, parallels exist between Niebuhr's "necessary illusions" and the "noble lies" of Leo Strauss, "public relations" of Edward Bernays and "myth making" of Niccolò Machiavelli. Likewise, Chomsky's analyses in Necessary Illusions represent a refocus on the use of these patterns of power, which he implies to underscore the failure of populations - particularly in a representative democracy - to learn from history in this regard.

http://books.zcommunications.org/chomsky/ni/ni-contents.html

Manufacturing Consent - Noam Chomsky - part 1/17

Time's Man of the Year


1938 - Adolf Hitler

1939 - Joseph Stalin

1942 - Joseph Stalin

2009 - Ben Bernanke


http://history1900s.about.com/library/weekly/aa050400a.htm

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Ron Paul: The Big Guns Have Lined Up Against H.R. 1207 (House Floor 7/30...

Peter Schiff Books

Peter Schiff is the author of four books published by John Wiley and Sons. His latest release, Crash Proof 2.0, has appeared on both the New York Times and Wall Street Journals bestseller lists.

His latest title, How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes is set to release in May 2010.

* Crash Proof: How to Profit from the Coming Economic Collapse, February 2007, ISBN 978-0-470-04360-8 1
* The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets: How to Keep your Portfolio Up When the Market is Down, 2008, ISBN 978-0-470-38378-0 2
* Crash Proof 2.0: How to Profit From the Economic Collapse, 2nd Edition, September 2009, ISBN 978-0-470-47453-2 3
* How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes, 2010, ISBN 978-0-470-52670-5 4

Ron Paul's Speech at Wake Forest University 1/6

Tragedy and Hope Excerpt (p. 138)

The traditional culture of China, as elsewhere in Asia, consisted of a military and bureaucratic hierarchy superimposed on a great mass of hardworking peasantry. It is customary, in studying this subject, to divide this hierarchy into three levels. Politically, these three levels consisted of the imperial authority at the top, an enormous hierarchy of imperial and provincial officials in the middle, and the myriad of semi-patriarchal, semi-democratic local villages at the bottom.
Socially, this hierarchy was similarly divided into the ruling class, the gentry, and the peasants. And, economically, there was a parallel division, the uppermost group deriving its incomes as tribute and taxes from its possession of military and political power, while the middle group derived its incomes from economic sources, as interest on loans, rents from lands, and the profits of commercial enterprise, as well as from the salaries, graft, and other emoluments arising from his middle group's control of the bureaucracy. At the bottom the peasantry, which was the only really productive group in the society, derived its incomes from the sweat of its collective brows, and had to survive on what was left to it after a substantial fraction of its product had gone to the two higher groups in the form of rents, taxes, interest, customary bribes (called "squeeze"), and excessive profits on such purchased "necessities" of life as salt, iron, or opium.

Zelig

Woody Allen's ZELIG




Believe it or not, I've never seen a Woody Allen film but after reading about Zelig....I think the time has come!

Ron Paul at FFF Conference 2007, Part 1 of 6

Andrew Napolitano at FFF Conference, Part 1 of 4




http://www.fff.org/

Ludwig von Mises

Ludwig von Mises wrote:

"Society lives and acts only in individuals; it is nothing more than a certain attitude on their part. Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us."

Friday, April 23, 2010

Banned Ron Paul Speech

350 Years of Economic Theory in 50 Minutes | Mark Thornton

"Introduction to Libertarianism" with Dick Clark

America's Two Just Wars (1 of 5) Murray N Rothbard

Murray N. Rothbard: Libertarianism

The Founding of the Federal Reserve | Murray N. Rothbard

Red Corner Trailer

Banned in China: Red Corner

Ludwig von Mises Institute (From Wikipedia)

The Ludwig von Mises Institute (LvMI), based in Auburn, Alabama, is a libertarian academic organization engaged in research and scholarship in the fields of economics, philosophy and political economy. Its scholarship is inspired by the work of Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises. Other Austrian School academics such as Murray Rothbard and Friedrich Hayek have also had a strong influence on the Institute's work. The Institute is funded entirely through private donations.

The Institute does not consider itself a traditional think tank. While it has working relationships with individuals such as U.S. Representative Ron Paul and organizations like the Foundation for Economic Education, it does not seek to implement public policy. It has no formal affiliation with any political party (including the Libertarian Party), nor does it receive funding from any. The Institute also has a formal policy of not accepting contract work from corporations or other organizations.[1]

There are also several other Institutes with the same name throughout the world, including those in Belgium, Poland, Argentina[page needed], Mexico, Russia[page needed], Brazil, and Romania[page needed] (see external links). However, the Institute has no formal ties with any of them.

The Institute's official motto is Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito, which comes from Virgil's Aeneid, Book VI; the motto means "do not give in to evil but proceed ever more boldly against it." Early in his life, Mises chose this sentence to be his guiding principle in life. It is prominently displayed throughout the Institute's campus, on their website and on memorabilia.

History of Economic Thought Link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought

The history of economic thought deals with different thinkers and theories in the subject that became political economy and economics from the ancient world to the present day. It encompasses many disparate schools of economic thought. Greek writers such as the philosopher Aristotle examined ideas about the "art" of wealth acquisition and questioned whether property is best left in private or public hands. In medieval times, scholars such as Thomas Aquinas argued that it was a moral obligation of businesses to sell goods at a just price.

British philosopher Adam Smith is often cited as the father of modern economics for his treatise The Wealth of Nations (1776). His ideas built upon a considerable body of work from predecessors in the eighteenth century particularly the Physiocrats. His book appeared on the eve of the Industrial Revolution with associated major changes in the economy. Smith's successors included such classical economists as the Rev. Thomas Malthus, Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill. They examined ways the landed, capitalist and labouring classes produced and distributed national output and modeled the effects of population and international trade. In London, Karl Marx castigated the capitalist system, which he described as exploitative and alienating. From about 1870, neoclassical economics attempted to erect a positive, mathematical and scientifically grounded field above normative politics.

After the wars of the early twentieth century, John Maynard Keynes led a reaction against what has been described as governmental abstention from economic affairs, advocating interventionist fiscal policy to stimulate economic demand and growth. With a world divided between the capitalist first world, the communist second world, and the poor of the third world, the post-war consensus broke down. Others like Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek warned of The Road to Serfdom and socialism, focusing their theories on what could be achieved through better monetary policy and deregulation. As Keynesian policies seemed to falter in the 1970s there emerged the so called New Classical school, with prominent theorists such as Robert Lucas and Edward Prescott. Governmental economic policies from the 1980s were challenged, and development economists like Amartya Sen and information economists like Joseph Stiglitz introduced new ideas to economic thought in the twenty-first century.

Ahhh....Philosophy

* The Oxford Companion to Philosophy edited by Ted Honderich
* The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy by Robert Audi
* The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (10 vols.) edited by Edward Craig, Luciano Floridi (available online by subscription); or
* The Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy edited by Edward Craig (an abridgement)
* Encyclopedia of Philosophy (8 vols.) edited by Paul Edwards; in 1996, a ninth supplemental volume appeared which updated the classic 1967 encyclopedia.
* International Directory of Philosophy and Philosophers. Charlottesville, Philosophy Documentation Center.
* Directory of American Philosophers. Charlottesville, Philosophy Documentation Center.
* Routledge History of Philosophy (10 vols.) edited by John Marenbon
* History of Philosophy (9 vols.) by Frederick Copleston
* A History of Western Philosophy (5 vols.) by W. T. Jones
* Encyclopaedia of Indian Philosophies (8 vols.), edited by Karl H. Potter et al. (first 6 volumes out of print)
* Indian Philosophy (2 vols.) by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
* A History of Indian Philosophy (5 vols.) by Surendranath Dasgupta
* History of Chinese Philosophy (2 vols.) by Fung Yu-lan, Derk Bodde
* Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy edited by Antonio S. Cua
* Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion by Ingrid Fischer-Schreiber, Franz-Karl Ehrhard, Kurt Friedrichs
* Companion Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy by Brian Carr, Indira Mahalingam
* A Concise Dictionary of Indian Philosophy: Sanskrit Terms Defined in English by John A. Grimes
* History of Islamic Philosophy edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Oliver Leaman
* History of Jewish Philosophy edited by Daniel H. Frank, Oliver Leaman
* A History of Russian Philosophy: From the Tenth to the Twentieth Centuries by Valerii Aleksandrovich Kuvakin
* Ayer, A. J. et al., Ed. (1994) A Dictionary of Philosophical Quotations. Blackwell Reference Oxford. Oxford, Basil Blackwell Ltd.
* Blackburn, S., Ed. (1996)The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
* Mauter, T., Ed. The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy. London, Penguin Books.
* Runes, D., Ed. (1942). The Dictionary of Philosophy. New York, The Philosophical Library, Inc.
* Angeles, P. A., Ed. (1992). The Harper Collins Dictionary of Philosophy. New York, Harper Perennial.
* Bunnin, N. et al., Ed. (1996) The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy. Blackwell Companions to Philosophy. Oxford, Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
* Hoffman, Eric, Ed. (1997) Guidebook for Publishing Philosophy. Charlottesville, Philosophy Documentation Center.
* Popkin, R. H. (1999). The Columbia History of Western Philosophy. New York, Columbia University Press.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

How to cook rice and other Chinese foods

http://chinesefood.about.com/od/chinesecookingbasics/ss/cook_rice_photo.htm


http://chinesefood.about.com/od/ricefried/ss/fried_rice.htm


http://chinesefood.about.com/od/ricefried/r/basicfriedrice.htm (Basic Fried Rice)


Serves 4 to 6

This is a basic recipe for fried rice that you can add to as desired. If adding other ingredients, increase the number of eggs to 3.
Need a bit of help? Here are step by step photo instructions showing how to make basic fried rice.
Ingredients:

* 1 - 2 green onions, as desired
* 2 large eggs
* 1 teaspoon salt
* Pepper to taste
* 4 tablespoons oil for stir-frying, or as needed
* 4 cups cold cooked rice
* 1 - 2 tablespoons light soy sauce or oyster sauce, as desired

Preparation:
Wash and finely chop the green onion. Lightly beat the eggs with the salt and pepper.

Heat a wok or frying pan and add 2 tablespoons oil. When the oil is hot, add the eggs. Cook, stirring, until they are lightly scrambled but not too dry. Remove the eggs and clean out the pan.

Add 2 tablespoons oil. Add the rice. Stir-fry for a few minutes, using chopsticks or a wooden spoon to break it apart. Stir in the soy sauce or oyster sauce as desired.

When the rice is heated through, add the scrambled egg back into the pan. Mix thoroughly. Stir in the green onion. Serve hot.

How to make a baked potato

Ingredients

* Potatoes The ideal baking potato is a Russet or Idaho potato.
* Enough olive oil to give your potato a rub down

Directions

1. Wash the potatoes. Leave the skins on.
2. Take a fork and punch it into the potato a few times
3. Rub the potato with the olive oil
4. Preheat oven to 400
5. Place the potato on a baking pan and place in oven
6. Bake the potato for one hour
7. A knife or fork should easily go through the potato when done. The temperature of the inside of the potato should be around 190f

http://www.potatopatchrecipes.com/2009/02/how-to-make-a-baked-potato/

Money, Banking and the Federal Reserve

Soul Train Line Dance to Earth Wind & Fire's "Mighty Mighty"

The Hit Car

The Lost Archives Genesis Revisited 1/5

Top Secret PHENOMENON the lost archives 1 / 5

Monopoly Men International Banksters Rule Through Wars And Conspiracy NWO 1

Secret Rulers Of The World 1 Of 29

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Distribution of Wealth in the USA

Ron Paul

While still a medical resident in the 1960s, Paul was influenced by Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, which led him to read many works of Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises. He came to know economists Hans Sennholz and Murray Rothbard well, and credits to them his interest in the study of economics. He came to believe that what the Austrian school economists wrote was coming true on August 15, 1971, when President Richard Nixon closed the "gold window" by implementing the U.S. dollar's complete departure from the gold standard. That same day, the young physician decided to enter politics, saying later, "After that day, all money would be political money rather than money of real value. I was astounded."

Ron Paul Opening Statement Fed Hearing 07/21/2009

Ron Paul discusses Austrian vs. Keynesian economics on Morning Joe 05/15...

Ron Paul on Real Time w/ Bill Maher 02/20/2009

Ron Paul 0wnz the Federal Reserve

Ron Paul Lectures Bernanke: U.S. Moving Towards Fascism

Ron Paul Hits it out of the Park on CNN American Morning




http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/reading-list4.html

1/6 Ron Paul 20/20 Banned ABC News Interview

YouTube BANNED incredible Ron Paul Video

Ron Paul on Larry King 12/28/2009

Ron Paul debates Stephen Baldwin on Legalizing Marijuana on CNN Larry Ki...

Ron Paul Courageously Speaks the Truth

Soundgarden - Outshined

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Wikipedia Excerpt: Andrew Jackson

Opposition to the National Bank

Main article: Bank War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_War


The Second Bank of the United States was authorized for a twenty year period during James Madison's tenure in 1816. As President, Jackson worked to rescind the bank's federal charter. In Jackson's veto message (written by George Bancroft), the bank needed to be abolished because:

* It concentrated the nation's financial strength in a single institution.
* It exposed the government to control by foreign interests.
* It served mainly to make the rich richer.
* It exercised too much control over members of Congress.
* It favored northeastern states over southern and western states.

Following Jefferson, Jackson supported an "agricultural republic" and felt the Bank improved the fortunes of an "elite circle" of commercial and industrial entrepreneurs at the expense of farmers and laborers. After a titanic struggle, Jackson succeeded in destroying the Bank by vetoing its 1832 re-charter by Congress and by withdrawing U.S. funds in 1833.


The bank's money-lending functions were taken over by the legions of local and state banks that sprang up. This fed an expansion of credit and speculation. At first, as Jackson withdrew money from the Bank to invest it in other banks, land sales, canal construction, cotton production, and manufacturing boomed.[32] However, due to the practice of banks issuing paper banknotes that were not backed by gold or silver reserves, there was soon rapid inflation and mounting state debts.[33] Then, in 1836, Jackson issued the Specie Circular, which required buyers of government lands to pay in "specie" (gold or silver coins). The result was a great demand for specie, which many banks did not have enough of to exchange for their notes. These banks collapsed.[32] This was a direct cause of the Panic of 1837, which threw the national economy into a deep depression. It took years for the economy to recover from the damage.

The U.S. Senate censured Jackson on March 28, 1834, for his action in removing U.S. funds from the Bank of the United States. When the Jacksonians had a majority in the Senate, the censure was expunged.



http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/ajveto01.asp

3 sites

http://www.alexanderhamiltoninstitute.org/lp/Hancock/CD-ROMS/Global%20Governance%20in%20the%20Twenty%20First%20Century%20-%20TOC.htm

http://hidhist.wordpress.com/books/tragedy-and-hope/

http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/dv/index.htm

Friday, April 16, 2010

Riddles in Stone: Washington D.C. pt.5/20




Manly P. Hall

The Money Masters (Part 1 of 22)




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Money_Masters_%28film%29

Fiat Empire - The Federal Reserve is Unconstitutional 1 of 6

The Fluoride Deception

How to make NOODLES from scratch

how to make noodles form scratch step by step. Here are the procedures:

1. Gather the following ingredients
-four eggs
-three and a half cups of flour (unbleached)
-3 tablespoons of water or egg yolks

2. Pile the flour in a mountain form on a clean board.

3. Scoop a little well in the center (about 4 inches diameter).

4. Break the eggs, pile them into a small bowl then drop them on the center of the well (flour). For extra flavor, you can add a teaspoon of salt.

5. Stir the little portions of the flour from the edges into the egg. Be sure that you do this slowly so that the egg does not spill. Keep in stirring it up until the flour and egg are fully mixed together. This should form a sticky dry dough.

6. Gather the whole dough and make a new well at the top then add the water (or egg yolks).

7. Shape the dough into a ball and place a bowl or any plastic cover at the top of the dough then leave it at rest for about 25 to 30 minutes.

8. Dust the working board and rolling pin with flour. Flatten the dough on the board, fold it into thirds of its size and then flatten it out again, this time, stretch it until it is flat and smooth. As an alternative to this procedure, you can just use a pasta rolling machine to roll out the dough.

9. Air dry the dough for 15 minutes or so and then put it through a noodle cutter or roll it up in a jelly roll form and then slice it up with a knife at the preferred width. You can also flatten it out and then slice it up for lasagna or ravioli,

10. Once you are done, air dry the noodles by hanging them on plastic hangers for several hours.

Atreyu - Storm To Pass - Official Music Video

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Paprika | Part 1 english dub

Dollar Value Chart



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_dollar

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar

In the 1500s, Count Hieronymus Schlick of Bohemia began minting coins known as Joachimstalers (from German thal, or nowadays usually Tal, "valley", cognate with "dale" in English), named for Joachimstal, the valley where the silver was mined (St. Joachim's Valley, now Jáchymov; then part of the Holy Roman Empire, now part of the Czech Republic).[17] Joachimstaler was later shortened to the German Taler, a word that eventually found its way into Danish and Swedish as daler, Dutch as daalder, Ethiopian as talari, Italian as tallero, Flemish as daelder, and English as dollar.[17] Alternatively, thaler is said to come from the German coin Guldengroschen ("great guilder", being of silver but equal in value to a gold guilder), minted from the silver from Joachimsthal.



The symbol $, usually written before the numerical amount, is used for the U.S. dollar (as well as for many other currencies). The sign's ultimate origins are not certain, though it is possible that it comes from the Pillars of Hercules which flank the Spanish Coat of arms on the Spanish dollars that were minted in the New World mints in Mexico City, Potosí, Bolivia, and in Lima, Peru. These Pillars of Hercules on the silver Spanish dollar coins take the form of two vertical bars and a swinging cloth band in the shape of an "S".[18]

An equally accepted, and better documented, explanation is that this symbol for peso was the result of a late eighteenth-century evolution of the scribal abbreviation "ps." The p and the s eventually came to be written over each other giving rise to $.[19][20][21]

A fictional possibility suggested is that the dollar sign is the capital letters U and S typed one on top of the other. This theory, popularized by novelist Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged [22], does not consider the fact that the symbol was already in use before the formation of the United States[23], or that the dollar sign does not actually look like a capital letter U and S typed one on top of the other.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Note

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_creation

All That Remains - Two Weeks

Akira Part 1 HD English High Definition

Brian Gibson's Equipment



According to Gibson, his bass guitar is set to standard cello tuning, in intervals of fifths (C G D A) with a banjo string for the high A (contrasted with the typical bass guitar tuning of E A D G). He used this four-string setup for several years, but has recently been using a five-string setup, tuned to C G D A E, with banjo strings for the A and E.

Gibson also uses several effects pedals, including a bass whammy pedal (pitch shifter), an octaver, two overdrive pedals, and more recently a delay pedal. A complete list of equipment Gibson typically uses, in order, is:[2]

* 5-String Music Man StingRay
* DigiTech Bass Whammy pedal
* BOSS OC-2 Octave pedal
* BOSS ODB-3 Bass Overdrive pedal
* BOSS SD-1 Overdrive pedal
* Line 6 DL-4 Delay modeler
* Ampeg SVT4 Pro with 4x10 cabinet
* Crown Macro-Tech MA-3600VZ power amp
* More cabinets ranging from 18" to 4x10

As of 2007, Gibson has added a Boss PW-10 Wah-wah pedal to his touring gear.

In The Power of Salad DVD, Brian says his rig is rated to 3000 watts.

Pedals Used By Tim Mahoney



* Boss Volume Pedal
* Boss TU-2 Chromatic Tuner
* Boss OC-2 Cctave
* Boss SE-70
* Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress
* Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man
* Electro-Harmonix Clone Theory
* King Vox Wah (vintage)
* Mu-Tron III envelope filter
* Hartman Analog Flanger
* KR Musical Products Megavibe
* MXR Phase 90 (vintage)
* MXR Phase 45 (vintage)
* XTS Precision Overdrive
* DOD "jz boozest" Overdrive
* A/DA Flanger
* Maxon Analog Delay
* Boomerang Phrase Sampler
* Lexicon PCM42 Digital Delay
* Lexicon PCM60

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Melodic metalcore (1995–Present)

In the early 1990s, a third wave of metalcore groups appeared, who placed significantly greater emphasis on melody. The first bands to have blended such elements such as Bullet for My Valentine, Killswitch Engage, Avenged Sevenfold, Shadows Fall, All That Remains, Unearth, Trivium, Bleeding Through and Atreyu emerged and are now the most commercially successful practitioners of metalcore. These groups took major influence, cues, and writing styles from Swedish melodic death metal bands, particularly In Flames, Dark Tranquility and At the Gates. Melodic metalcore frequently makes use of clean vocals, and is significantly less dissonant than other metalcore. Some of these groups, such as Shadows Fall, have voiced an affection for '80s glam metal. Melodic metalcore groups have been described as "embrac[ing] '80s metal clichés", such as "inordinate amounts of smoke machines, rippin' solos, [and] three bass drums".

Passages about Russia from "Tragedy and Hope"

In time the ruling class of Russia became acquainted with Byzantine culture. They were dazzled by it, and sought to import it into their wilderness domains in the north. In this way they imposed on the Slav peoples many of the accessories of the Byzantine Empire, such as Orthodox Christianity, the Byzantine alphabet, the Byzantine calendar, the used of domed ecclesiastical architecture, the name Czar (Caesar) for their ruler, and innumerable other traits. Most important of all, they
imported the Byzantine totalitarian autocracy, under which all aspects of life, including political, economic, intellectual, and religious, were regarded as departments of government, under the control of an autocratic ruler. These beliefs were part of the Greek tradition, and were based ultimately on Greek inability to distinguish between state and society....From Byzantium came autocracy and the idea of the state as an absolute power and as a totalitarian power, as well as such important applications of these principles as the idea that the state should control thought and religion, that the Church should be a branch of the government, that law is an enactment of the state, and that the ruler is semi-divine. From the Vikings came the idea that the state is a foreign importation, based on militarism and supported by booty and tribute, that economic innovations are the function of the government, that power rather than law is the basis of social life, and that society, with its people and its property, is the private property of a foreign ruler.

These concepts of the Russian system must be emphasized because they are so foreign to our own traditions. In the West, the Roman Empire (which continued in the East as the Byzantine Empire) disappeared in 476 and, although many efforts were made to revive it, there was clearly a period, about goo, when there was no empire, no state, and no public authority in the West. The state disappeared, yet society continued. So also, religious and economic life continued. This clearly showed that the state and society were not the same thing, that society was the basic entity, and that the state was a crowning, but not essential, cap to the social structure. This experience had revolutionary effects. It was discovered that man can live without a state; this became the basis of Western liberalism. It was discovered that the state, if it exists, must serve men and that it is incorrect to believe that the purpose of men is to serve the state. It was discovered that economic life, religious life, law, and private property can all exist and function effectively without a state.

From this emerged laissez-faire, separation of Church and State, rule of law, and the sanctity of private property. In Rome, in Byzantium, and in Russia, law was regarded as an enactment of a supreme power. In the West, when no supreme power existed, it was discovered that law still existed as the body of rules which govern social life. Thus law was found by observation in the West, not enacted by autocracy as in the East. This meant that authority was established by law and under the law in the West, while authority was established by power and above the law in the East.
The West felt that the rules of economic life were found and not enacted; that individuals had rights independent of, and even opposed to, public authority; that groups could exist, as the Church existed, by right and not by privilege, and without the need to have any charter of incorporation entitling them to exist as a group or act as a group; that groups or individuals could own property as a right and not as a privilege and that such property could not be taken by force but must be taken by established process of law. It was emphasized in the West that the way a thing was done was more important than what was done, while in the East what was done was far more significant than the way in which it was done.

Edward S. Curtis

In 1906 J.P. Morgan offered Curtis $75,000 to produce a series on the North American Indian. [7] It was to be in 20 volumes with 1,500 photographs. Morgan was to receive 25 sets and 500 original prints as his method of repayment. 222 complete sets were eventually published. Curtis' goal was not just to photograph, but to document, as much American Indian (Native American) traditional life as possible before that way of life disappeared. He wrote in the introduction to his first volume in 1907: "The information that is to be gathered ... respecting the mode of life of one of the great races of mankind, must be collected at once or the opportunity will be lost." Curtis made over 10,000 wax cylinder recordings of Indian language and music. He took over 40,000 photographic images from over 80 tribes. He recorded tribal lore and history, and he described traditional foods, housing, garments, recreation, ceremonies, and funeral customs. He wrote biographical sketches of tribal leaders, and his material, in most cases, is the only recorded history. [3][8]

* Barbara A. Davis, Edward S. Curtis: The Life and Times of a Shadow Catcher
* Edward Sheriff Curtis, Book of his photos published 2008 by Phaidon Press
* Edward S. Curtis, "The North American Indian" published 2005 by Aperture Foundation

Control of Political Parties in America (Tragedy and Hope)

When the business interests, led by William C. Whitney, pushed through the first installment of civil service reform in 1883, they expected that they would be able to control both political parties equally. Indeed, some of them intended to contribute to both and to allow an alternation of the two parties in public office in order to conceal their own influence, inhibit any exhibition of independence by politicians, and allow the electorate to believe that they were exercising their own
free choice. Such an alternation of the parties on the Federal scene occurred in the period 1880-1896, with business influence (or at least Morgan's influence) as great in Democratic as in Republican administrations. But in 1896 came a shocking experience. The business interests discovered that they could control the Republican Party to a large degree but could not be nearly so confident of controlling the Democratic Party. The reason for this difference lay in the existence of the Solid South as a Democratic section with almost no Republican voters. This section sent
delegates to the Republican National Convention as did the rest of the country, but, since these delegates did not represent voters, they came to represent those who were prepared to pay their expenses to the Republican National Convention. In this way these delegates came to represent the business interests of the North, whose money they accepted. Mark Hanna has told us in detail how he spent much of the winter of 1895-1896 in Georgia buying over two hundred delegates for McKinley to the Republican National Convention of 1896. As a result of this system, about a quarter of the votes in a Republican Convention were "controlled" votes from the Solid South, not representing the electorate. After the split in the Republican Party in 1912, this portion of the delegates was reduced to about 17 percent.


Tragedy and Hope, A History of the World in Our Time

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Sixth and Seventh Passages

I will clean this up later...

The improved education of the vastly expanded middle class in the last half-century has also weakened the family's authority. Almost everyone in the middle class has a college degree, and most have an advanced degree of some kind. Those of us who can look back to the humble stations of our parents or grandparents, who never saw the inside of an institution of higher learning, can have cause for self-congratulation. But—inevitably but—the impression that our general populace is better educated depends on an ambiguity in the meaning of the word education, or a fudging of the distinction between liberal and technical education. A highly trained computer specialist need not have had any more learning about morals, politics or religion than the most ignorant of persons. All to the contrary, his narrow education, with, the prejudices and the pride accompanying it, and its literature which comes to be and passes away in a day and uncritically accepts the premises of current wisdom, can cut him off from the liberal learning that simpler folk used to absorb from a variety of traditional sources. It is not evident to me that someone whose regular reading consists of Time, Playboy and Scientific American has any profounder wisdom about the world than the rural schoolboy of yore with his McGuffey's reader. When a youngster like Lincoln sought to educate himself, the immediately-available obvious things for him to learn were the Bible, Shakespeare and Euclid. Was he really worse off than those who try to find their way through the technical smorgasbord of the current school system,, with its utter inability to distinguish between important
and unimportant in any way other than by the demands of the market?


*******************************************************************************

I do not believe that my generation, my cousins who have been
educated in the American way, all of whom are M.D.s or Ph.D.s, have
any comparable learning. When they talk about heaven and earth, the
relations between men and women, parents and children, the human
condition, I hear nothing but cliches, superficialities, the material of
satire. I am not saying anything so trite as that life is fuller when people
have myths to live by. I mean rather that a life based on the Book is closer
to the truth, that it provides the material for deeper research in and access
to the real nature of things. Without the great revelations, epics and
philosophies as part of our natural vision, there is nothing to see out there,
and eventually little left inside. The Bible is not the only means to furnish
a mind, but without a book of similar gravity, read with the gravity of the
potential believer, it will remain unfurnished.

Fifth Passage

This is messy....I will come back later and clean it up...

As soon as tradition has come to be recognized as tradition, it is dead, something
to which lip service is paid in the vain hope of edifying the kids. In the United States, practically speaking, the Bible was the only common culture, one that united simple and sophisticated, rich and poor, young and old, and—as the very model for a vision of the order of the whole of things, as well as the key to the rest of Western art, the greatest works of which were in one way or another responsive to the Bible—provided access to the seriousness of books. With its gradual and inevitable disappearance, the very idea of such a total book and the possibility and
necessity of world-explanation is disappearing. And fathers and mothers have lost the idea that the highest aspiration they might have for their children is for them to be wise—as priests, prophets or philosophers are wise. Specialized competence and success are all that they can imagine. Contrary to what is commonly thought, without the book even the idea of the order of the whole is lost.

Fourth Passage from "The Closing of the American Mind"

One can think of American writers and writings that should be read and frequently are read; but, to the extent that Americans are readers, the whole world is their bookshelf; there has not been the deep necessity to absorb their own country's writings that citizens of other nations experience. A phenomenon like Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk, a high work of art which is intended to be wholly German, of Germans, for Germans and by Germans, and is an expression of collective consciousness, is inconceivable to Americans. And it is astonishing how little a Frenchman knows, or has a feeling for, things that are not French. But to Americans, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe belong to everyone or to "civilization." And perhaps they do, in the long run. But this was not the view of Greeks, Romans, Italians, Englishmen and Germans, or of the Jews with their book that belonged to them, that told their story, and embodied, so to speak, their instinct. Americans believe in equal access.

Third Passage From The Closing of The American Mind

I know that men are likely to bring what are only their prejudices to the judgment of alien peoples. Avoiding that is one of the main purposes of education. But trying to prevent it by removing the authority of men's reason is to render ineffective the instrument that can correct their prejudices. True openness is the accompaniment of the desire to know, hence of the awareness of ignorance. To deny the possibility of
knowing good and bad is to suppress true openness. A proper historical attitude would lead one to doubt the truth of historicism (the view that all thought is essentially related to and cannot transcend its own time) and treat it as a peculiarity of contemporary history. Historicism and cultural relativism actually are a means to avoid testing our own prejudices and asking, for example, whether men are really equal or whether that opinion is merely a democratic prejudice.

Another Passage From "The Closing of The American Mind"

Men cannot remain content with what is giyen them by their culture if they are to be fully human. This is what Plato meant to show by the image of the cave in the Republic and by representing us as prisoners in it. A culture is a cave. He did not suggest going around to other cultures as a solution to the limitations of the cave. Nature should be the standard by which we judge our own lives and the lives of peoples. That is why philosophy, not history or anthropology, is the most important human, science. Only dogmatic assurance that thought is culture-bound, that there is no nature, is what makes our educators so certain that the only way to escape the limitations of our time and place is to study other cultures. History and anthropology were understood by the Greeks to be useful only in discovering what the past and other peoples had to contribute to the discovery of nature. Historians and anthropologists were to put peoples and their conventions to the test, as Socrates did individuals, and go beyond them. These scientists were superior to their subjects because they saw a problem where others refused to see one, and they were engaged in the quest to solve it. They wanted to be able to evaluate themselves and others.

This point of view, particularly the need to know nature in order to have a standard, is uncomfortably buried beneath our human sciences, whether they like it or not, and accounts for the ambiguities and contradictions I have been pointing out. They want to make us culture-beings with the instruments that were invented to liberate us from culture. Openness used to be the virtue that permitted us to seek the good by using reason. It now means accepting everything and denying reason's power.

The unrestrained and thoughtless pursuit of openness, without recognizing the inherent political, social, or cultural problem of openness as the goal of nature, has rendered openness meaningless. Cultural relativism destroys both one's own and the good. What is most characteristic of the West is science, particularly understood as the quest to know nature and the consequent denigration of convention—i.e., culture or the West understood as a culture—in favor of what is accessible to all men as men through their common and distinctive faculty, reason. Science's latest
attempts to grasp the human situation—cultural relativism, historicism, the fact-value distinction—are the suicide of science^ Culture, hence closedness, reigns supreme. Openness to closedness is what we teach. Cultural relativism succeeds in destroying the West's universal or intellectually imperialistic claims, leaving it to be just another culture. So there is equality in the republic of cultures.

Unfortunately the West is defined by its need for justification of its ways or values, by its need for discovery of nature, by its need for philosophy and science. This is its cultural imperative. Deprived of that, it will collapse. The United States is one of the highest and most extreme achievements of the rational quest for the good life according to nature. What makes its political structure possible is the use of the rational principles of natural right to found a people, thus uniting the good with one's own. Or, to put it otherwise, the regime established here promised untrammeled freedom to reason—not to everything indiscriminately, but to reason, the essential freedom that justifies the other freedoms, and on the basis of which, and for the sake of which, much deviance is also tolerated. An openness that denies the special claim of reason bursts the mainspring keeping the mechanism of this regime in motion. And this regime, contrary to all claims to the contrary, was founded to overcome ethnocentrism, which is in no sense a discovery of social science.

Such a great book....




Excerpt:

The civil rights movement provides a good example of this change in thought. In its early days almost all the significant leaders, in spite oftactical and temperamental differences, relied on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They could charge whites not only with the most monstrous injustices but also with
contradicting their own most sacred principles. The blacks were the true Americans in demanding the equality that belongs to them as human beings by natural and political right. This stance implied a firm conviction of the truth of the principles of natural right and of their fundamental efficacy within the Constitutional tradition, which, although tarnished, tends in the long run toward fulfilling those principles. They therefore worked through Congress, the Presidency, and, above all, the Judiciary.

By contrast, the Black Power movement that supplanted the older civil rights movement—leaving aside both its excesses and its very understandable emphasis on self-respect and refusal to beg for acceptance—had at its core the view that the Constitutional tradition was always corrupt and was constructed as a defense of slavery. Its demand was for black identity, not universal rights. Not rights but power counted. It insisted on respect for blacks as blacks, not as human beings simply.

Yet the Constitution does not promise respect for blacks, whites, yellows, Catholics, Protestants, or Jews. It guarantees the protection of the rights of individual human beings. This has not proved to be enough, however, to what is perhaps by now a majority of Americans.

The upshot of all this for the education of young Americans is that they know much less about American history and those who were held to be its heroes. This was one of the few things that they used to come to college with that had something to do with their lives. Nothing has taken its place except a smattering of facts learned about other nations or cultures and a few social science formulas. None of this means much, partly because little attention has been paid to what is required in order truly to convey the spirit of other places and other times to young people, or for that matter to anyone, partly because the students see no relevance in any of it to the lives they are going to lead or to their prevailing passions. It is the rarest of occurrences to find a youngster who has been infused by this education with a longing to know all about China or the Romans or the Jews.

All to the contrary. There is an indifference to such things, for relativism has extinguished the real motive of education, the search for a good life. Young Americans have less and less knowledge of and interest in foreign places. In the past there were many students who actually knew something about and loved England, France, Germany, or Italy, for they dreamed of living there or thought their lives would be made more interesting by assimilating their languages and literatures. Such students have almost disappeared, replaced at most by students who are interested
in the political problems of Third World countries and in helping them to modernize, with due respect to their old cultures, of course. This is not learning from others but condescension and a disguised form of a new imperialism. It is the Peace Corps mentality, which is not a spur to learning but to a secularized version of doing good works.

I would like to own one or more of these cars someday!





I really like classic dodge darts....I've also always liked the design of the Mitsubishi Eclipse and, of course, Mercedes is/are awesome.

Talented People





Monday, April 12, 2010

Red Harvest

Japanese Films



The Yakuza Papers DVD Box Set



Amazon.com
While The Godfather romanticized the American Mafia in the early 1970s, Kinji Fukasaku's five-film series known as The Yakuza Papers: Battles Without Honor & Humanity revolutionized the Japanese yakuza film with unprecedented intensity. A post-World War II epic that broke Japanese box-office records, this complex, utterly authentic cycle of gangster films replaced the popular ninkyo or "chivalry" films of the '60s with jitsuroku, an entirely new breed of gangster film that rose from the ashes of Hiroshima and post-war reconstruction, depicting a meticulously detailed "alternate history" (as Japanese film expert Tom Mes observes in the accompanying booklet) that had been ignored by the "official" factual record. Beginning with 1973's Battles Without Honor and Humanity and continuing through four hugely popular sequels, these are bracingly intricate studies in shifting loyalties and gangland chaos, tracking the yakuza career of Shozu Hirono (played by charismatic star Bunta Suguwara), who rises from lowly soldier status in 1946 to "sworn brotherhood" and respected retirement in 1970. Across this quarter-century of death, power, and betrayal, Fukasaku orchestrates nearly 50 characters in four major cities, all vying for dominance in a familial structure so complex that a helpful flow-chart is provided to follow the shifting balance of power.

Western viewers may struggle with the social context of these films, but as a gangster epic of escalating scope and power, The Yakuza Papers offers a universally energizing DVD experience. Fukasaku (who died in January 2003 while filming his 62nd film, Battle Royale II) was a master of cinematic pulp, and these films represent the pinnacle of his frenetic, deliberately chaotic hand-held camera style, which strongly influenced American urban crime films of the '70s (as French Connection director William Friedkin notes on the feature-packed supplement disc). Rough-edged and thematically rich, the five films presented here--all in pristine digital transfers and brilliantly translated by ace subtitler Linda Hoaglund--combine to form a sprawling milestone of Japanese cinema. Home Vision's packaging and comprehensive supplements pay honorable tribute to Fukasaku's achievement, with bonus features that provide all the necessary background needed to fully appreciate The Yakuza Papers as a raw, ambitious masterpiece that fully deserves its widespread acclaim. --Jeff Shannon

Another film to see: Dogville



Dogville is a 2003 philosophical drama and mystery film written and directed by Lars von Trier. Manderlay is the 2005 sequel to the film Dogville. It is the second part of Lars von Trier's projected USA - Land of Opportunities trilogy.

Film Noir Literary Sources

The primary literary influence on film noir was the hardboiled school of American detective and crime fiction, led in its early years by such writers as Dashiell Hammett (whose first novel, Red Harvest, was published in 1929) and James M. Cain (whose The Postman Always Rings Twice appeared five years later), and popularized in pulp magazines such as Black Mask. The classic film noirs The Maltese Falcon and The Glass Key (1942) were based on novels by Hammett; Cain's novels provided the basis for Double Indemnity (1944), Mildred Pierce (1945), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), and Slightly Scarlet (1956; adapted from Love's Lovely Counterfeit). A decade before the classic era, a story of Hammett's was the source for the gangster melodrama City Streets (1931), directed by Rouben Mamoulian and photographed by Lee Garmes, who worked regularly with Sternberg. Wedding a style and story both with many noir characteristics, released the month before Lang's M, City Streets has a claim to being the first major film noir.

Raymond Chandler, who debuted as a novelist with The Big Sleep in 1939, soon became the most famous author of the hardboiled school. Not only were Chandler's novels turned into major noirs—Murder, My Sweet (1944; adapted from Farewell, My Lovely), The Big Sleep (1946), and Lady in the Lake (1947)—he was an important screenwriter in the genre as well, producing the scripts for Double Indemnity, The Blue Dahlia (1946), and Strangers on a Train (1951). Where Chandler, like Hammett, centered most of his novels and stories on the character of the private eye, Cain featured less heroic protagonists and focused more on psychological exposition than on crime solving; the Cain approach has come to be identified with a subset of the hardboiled genre dubbed "noir fiction". For much of the 1940s, one of the most prolific and successful authors of this often downbeat brand of suspense tale was Cornell Woolrich (sometimes under the pseudonym George Hopley or William Irish). No writer's published work provided the basis for more film noirs of the classic period than Woolrich's: thirteen in all, including Black Angel (1946), Deadline at Dawn (1946), and Fear in the Night (1947).

Another crucial literary source for film noir was W. R. Burnett, whose first novel to be published was Little Caesar, in 1929. It would be turned into a hit for Warner Bros. in 1931; the following year, Burnett was hired to write dialogue for Scarface, while Beast of the City was adapted from one of his stories. At least one important reference work identifies the latter as a film noir despite its early date. Burnett's characteristic narrative approach fell somewhere between that of the quintessential hardboiled writers and their noir fiction compatriots—his protagonists were often heroic in their way, a way just happening to be that of the gangster. During the classic era, his work, either as author or screenwriter, was the basis for seven movies now widely regarded as film noirs, including three of the most famous: High Sierra (1941), This Gun for Hire (1942), and The Asphalt Jungle (1950).

Akira Kurosawa



From Wikipedia:

Akira Kurosawa (黒澤 明 or 黒沢 明, Kurosawa Akira?, 23 March 1910 – 6 September 1998) was a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. In a career that spanned 57 years, Kurosawa directed 30 films. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential of all filmmakers. In 1989, he was awarded the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement "for cinematic accomplishments that have inspired, delighted, enriched and entertained worldwide audiences and influenced filmmakers throughout the world".

This is interesting...excerpt from the Western (genre) Wikipedia article



Many Western films after the mid-1950s were influenced by the Japanese samurai films of Akira Kurosawa. For instance The Magnificent Seven was a remake of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, and A Fistful of Dollars was a remake of Kurosawa's Yojimbo, which itself was inspired by Red Harvest, an American detective novel by Dashiell Hammett. Kurosawa was influenced by American Westerns and was a fan of the genre, most especially John Ford.

Despite the Cold War, the Western was a strong influence on Eastern Bloc cinema, which had its own take on the genre, the so called "Red Western" or "Ostern". Generally these took two forms: either straight Westerns shot in the Eastern Bloc, or action films involving the Russian Revolution and civil war and the Basmachi rebellion in which Turkic peoples play a similar role to Mexicans in traditional Westerns.

An offshoot of the Western genre is the "post-apocalyptic" Western, in which a future society, struggling to rebuild after a major catastrophe, is portrayed in a manner very similar to the 19th century frontier. Examples include The Postman and the Mad Max series, and the computer game series Fallout. Many elements of space travel series and films borrow extensively from the conventions of the Western genre. This is particularly the case in the space Western subgenre of science fiction. Peter Hyams' Outland transferred the plot of High Noon to interstellar space. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the Star Trek series, once described his vision for the show as "Wagon Train to the stars". "The Book of Eli" depicts the post apocalypse as a Western with large knifes.

More recently, the space opera series Firefly used an explicitly Western theme for its portrayal of frontier worlds. Anime shows like Cowboy Bebop, Trigun and Outlaw Star have been similar mixes of science fiction and Western elements. The science fiction Western can be seen as a subgenre of either Westerns or science fiction. Elements of Western films can be found also in some films belonging essentially to other genres. For example, Kelly's Heroes is a war film, but action and characters are Western-like. The British film Zulu set during the Anglo-Zulu War has sometimes been compared to a Western, even though it is set in South Africa.

The character played by Humphrey Bogart in film noir films such as Casablanca, To Have and Have Not or The Treasure of the Sierra Madre—an individual bound only by his own private code of honor—has a lot in common with the classic Western hero. In turn, the Western, has also explored noir elements, as with the film Sugar Creek.

In many of Robert A. Heinlein's books, the settlement of other planets is depicted in ways explicitly modeled on American settlement of the West. For example, in his Tunnel in the Sky settlers set out to the planet "New Canaan", via an interstellar teleporter portal across the galaxy, in Conestoga wagons, their captain sporting mustaches and a little goatee and riding a Palomino horse—with Heinlein explaining that the colonists would need to survive on their own for some years, so horses are more practical than machines.

Stephen King's The Dark Tower is a series of seven books that meshes themes of Westerns, high fantasy, science fiction and horror. The protagonist Roland Deschain is a gunslinger whose image and personality are largely inspired by the "Man with No Name" from Sergio Leone's films. In addition, the superhero fantasy genre has been described as having been derived from the cowboy hero, only powered up to omnipotence in a primarily urban setting. The Western genre has been parodied on a number of occasions, famous examples being Support Your Local Sheriff!, Cat Ballou, Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles, and Rustler's Rhapsody.

George Lucas's Star Wars films use many elements of a Western, and Lucas has said he intended for Star Wars to revitalize cinematic mythology, a part the Western once held. The Jedi, who take their name from Jidaigeki, are modeled after samurai, showing the influence of Kurosawa. The character Han Solo dressed like an archetypal gunslinger, and the Mos Eisley Cantina is much like an Old West saloon.

Meanwhile, films such as The Big Lebowski, which plucked actor Sam Elliott out of the Old West and into a Los Angeles bowling alley, and Midnight Cowboy, about a Southern-boy-turned-gigolo in New York, transplanted Western themes into modern settings for both purposes of parody and homage.