Jesus Used Cannabis In His Holy Healing Oil?

Can it really be this simple?



The price of illegal cannabis, of course, puts this oil out of the reach of most in the West.

"You Can't Hit A Child!"

This from Big Train, a sometimes genuinely bizarre, often surreal and all but forgotten British sketch comedy show from the late 1990s.



And this, absolutely brilliant :



More Big Train Here

Richard Pryor on how dogs always know when you're sad :

The wisdom of Magnus Mills, novelist and bus driver :

"There was a bloke who said he was going to get his knife out and stab me because I wouldn't let him travel with an open can of alcohol. The next day he was at the same bus stop and he was very apologetic and said he didn't carry a knife and that the alcohol had mixed with his medication. He's now one of my best mates whenever he gets on the bus."

"Every bus shelter has a poster for a film on it. Most have an actor posing with a gun, and often it's pointing at people waiting for a bus."

More Magnus Mills here

Philip K Dick :

"We are here to choose the true from the counterfeit, and we will be given much time, perhaps thousands of years, and when and if we do choose correctly at last, we will then be shown what we have chosen: shown what reality is like. And not before; for during the choosing all is reduced...We live as children and choose as children, but once we choose correctly we become true adults. Only then does the real purpose of life become evident; before that it was a dream and a guess and a search among mists...."

Harry Patch : War Is "The Calculated And Condoned Slaughter Of Human Beings"



For Harry Patch, the last veteran of World War One's now incomprehensibly brutal killing fields, who died today at age 111.

Let me bid you farewell
Every man has to die
But it's written in the starlight
And every line on your palm
We're fools to make war
On our brothers in arms

From Your New Reality, July 2007 :

Harry Patch remains haunted by the Battle of Passchendaele, where three thousand young Britons were killed or wounded every single day, for almost 100 days straight.

Harry Patch's comments should be etched in the stone of every war memorial :

"Too many died. War isn't worth one life," said Mr Patch.

He said war was the "calculated and condoned slaughter of human beings".

During the three months of fighting Harry Patch experienced in France in 1917, the heaviest rains in 30 years churned mud so thick, men and horses drowned in it.

Mr Patch also paid his respects to the tens of thousands of young Germans who died in the same fields as his friends.

"The Germans suffered the same as we did," he said.

Harry Patch commenting during a ceremony at a Flanders field war cemetary, July 2007 :

“Any one of them could have been me. Millions of men came to fight in this war and I find it incredible that I am the only one left."

And now there are none.

Harry Patch's Memories Of The Flanders Battlefield

Simple Powder Replaces Expensive Machine

I'd imagine if you've been suffering through kidney dialysis for a few years, only finding this out now might make you just a little bit angry :

New research by British scientists suggests sodium bicarbonate - otherwise known as baking soda - can dramatically slow the progress of chronic kidney disease.

The simple household product used for baking, cleaning, bee stings and acid indigestion is so effective it could prevent patients having to be put on kidney machines...

A piece of important information worth filing away for when you might need it.

The War Industry : The Real Death Cult

Oliver Stone on why President John F. Kennedy had to die :

....many of his (more peaceful world) steps remain unfamiliar: Kennedy's back-channel dialogue with Khrushchev and their shared pursuit of common ground; his secret opening to dialogue with Fidel Castro (ongoing the very week of his assassination); and his determination to pull out of Vietnam after his probable re-election in 1964.

All of these steps caused him to be regarded as a virtual traitor by elements of the military-intelligence community. These were the forces that planned and carried out his assassination. Kennedy himself said, in 1962, after he read Seven Days in May, which is about a military coup in the United States, that if he had another Bay of Pigs, the same thing could happen to him. Well, he did have another "Bay of Pigs"; he had several. And I think Kennedy prophesied his own death with those words.

Why does it matter? The death of JFK remains a critical turning point in our history. Those who caused his death were targeting not just a man but a vision -- a vision of peace. There is no calculating the consequences of his death for this country and for the world. Those consequences endure. To a large extent, the fate of our country and the future of the planet continue to be controlled by the shadowy forces of what Douglass calls "the Unspeakable." Only by unmasking these forces and confronting the truth about our history can we restore the promise of democracy and lay claim to Kennedy's vision of peace.

This is from a review by Oliver Stone of James Douglass's JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters.

Oliver Stone was interviewed by a UK film magazine called Neon in the late 1990s. Stone was asked why he has never made a movie exposing the worldwide corporate arms industry. He laughed, then said for him to make such a movie would be to guarantee an early death, or words to that effect.

A superb review, and summary of the book, from Nick Anez on Amazon :

The author meticulously examines the evidence and draws conclusions which ring with unassailable truth:

(1) The CIA coordinated and implemented the assassination of President Kennedy, an act of treason which destroyed democracy in the U.S.

(2) The Warren Commission was created to propagate lies to conceal the truth from the American people.

(3) There has been a continued cover-up by successive administrations and their stooges in the mass media.

(4) The murder of JFK is directly related to the current domination of the American people by powerful oppressors within a shadow government that will continue to insist that only sustained war can keep the country safe from its enemies, never admitting that they themselves are the supreme evil.

An early serious warning about the growing power and influence of American war industry came 107 years ago, in JA Hobson's 'Imperialism' : A Study' :

“Our economic analysis has disclosed the fact that it is only the interests of competing cliques of business men – investors, contractors, export manufacturers, and certain professional classes – that are antagonistic; that these cliques, usurping the authority and voice of the people, use the public resources to push their private interests, and spend the blood and money of the people in this vast and disastrous military game, feigning national antagonism which have no basis in reality.”

It's easy to imagine that in 1000 years, people will look back at wars of America and other nations that consumed most of the 20th century, and the first decades of the 21st century, and believe that a savage death cult then ruled entire nations.

UK : 7 Days, 100,000 New Swine Flu Infections

Is swine flu more infectious than we were led to believe? Is it more deadly? Soon, we won't know the answer to either question, as official counts of both infections and deaths are set to be abandoned by government departments dealing with infectious diseases and the World Health Organisation.

Googling "swine flu" and scanning through the comments flowing in from the public on stories about the ManBirdPig Flu in British newspapers reveals an overwhelming majority of commenters pledging to resist the coming mass vaccination program, even if it's mandatory. A very similar view against being vaccinated for an influenza virus whose origins are yet to be explained and one that appears to be continuing to mutate, can be seen in mainstream media comment boards across the US, Australia, Canada, Europe.

The Influenza A H1N1 infection rates in the UK are doubling week to week. Last week in the UK there were 55,000 known infections. This week, there are more than 100,000 new cases :

The new National Pandemic Flu Service, established to provide internet users with Tamiflu scripts without seeing a doctor, crashed within minutes of going live on Thursday. It was receiving an estimated 2600 hits a second and 9.3 million hits an hour, forcing the Government to immediately announce increased capacity for the site.

The British chief medical officer defined children under 14 as "super spreaders" as 100,000 people became infected with the H1N1 virus in the seven days to Sunday compared with 55,000 infections the week before.

Up to 840 people in England are in hospital, and of these, 63 are described as being in a critical condition. Official figures state that 30 people have died of flu, and of these, 16 per cent were defined as healthy, while a further 17 per cent suffered from underlying conditions such as high blood pressure or diabetes.

The number of children under five who have been admitted to hospital has climbed to 169, and of these, 12 were known to be in intensive care on Thursday.

"Underlying conditions" is a phrase in heavy use by the media at the moment. It seems to allow many people to reassure themselves, "Well, he was sick already anyway." But how many kids with diabetes were dying from the disease before 'swine flu' came along?

It sounds like England is getting closer to a full-blown pandemic panic.

The Pope Who Loved Cocaine


Cocaine infused wine fights influenza? The Pope says "Yes!"

Drugs and religion have always been intertwined. If you were around eight thousand years ago and you ate hallucinogenic mushrooms, or ergot-infested barley, and didn't know what the fuck was going on, you'd be looking to blame a God, or The Gods, for the glorious, mind-bogglingly twisted things you were seeing and hearing.

Jesus, of course, was The Original Stoner.

And while there has been no doubt many popes over the centuries who have loved wine, cannabis, opium, one particular pope loved cocaine so much he wanted to give it awards :

...Leo XIII back in the 19th century. He didn't just take cocaine. He advertised it, appearing on a poster having awarded a Gold Medal to the manufacturer of the "tonic" he carried in a personal hipflask to fortify himself in those moments when prayer was insufficient.

(The coca leaves) did not travel well, so only occasional supplies were transported to Europe, though tests on 17th century pipes found in Shakespeare's garden a few years back are said to have showed up cocaine residues - which would presumably explain the references to "eternal lines" in this most famous sonnet, or the constant use of the word "blow" in King Lear.

By the Victorian era, however, they were on top of the technology.

In 1863 an Italian chemist named Angelo Mariani brought onto the market a wine called Vin Mariani which had been treated with coca leaves. He first tried his new tonic on a depressed actress. The results were spectacular. The ethanol in the wine acted as a solvent and extracted the cocaine from the leaves - creating a compound called cocaethlyene that hugely reinforced the impact of both drugs...

Vin Mariani contained 11 per cent alcohol and 6.5 mg of cocaine in every ounce, which is presumably why Leo XIII gave it his gold medal.

Leo was known for his happy personality, he lived into his 90s, and had some great success in helping to 'modernise' the thinking of the Catholic Church to take more interest in the working classes, and the plight of the poor.

That's Not A Knife....

Do you think he's trying to tell you something?



There's a story behind this, about cutting $15 billion in Californian state spending, but even after reading it, the use of a massive knife for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to make his point still seems remarkably odd. Even for Arnold Schwarzenegger.

And to follow up that headline :

Soccer Ball Goes Over The Fence, Volley Of Tear Gas Comes Back

An Israeli mobile phone company releases a piece of propaganda barely disguised as advertising, with this voiceover : "After all, what are we all after? Just a little fun."



So some Palestinians decided to try out the Friendly Football Game Over The Fence Fantasy in West Bank reality. Here's what happened :




The Palestinians are lucky they didn't get shot up by a heavily armed robot senty.

Belief In God Is No Excuse For The Subjugation Of Women

Jimmy Carter has something to say, and it's worth hearing :

Women and girls have been discriminated against for too long in a twisted interpretation of the word of God.

I have been a practising Christian all my life and a deacon and Bible teacher for many years. My faith is a source of strength and comfort to me, as religious beliefs are to hundreds of millions of people around the world. So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when the convention's leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be "subservient" to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service.

This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths. Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women's equal rights across the world for centuries.

At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.

Monkeys Vs Humans War : The Early Days

It's not time to panic. By the latest evidence of a rumbling monkey insurgency, we still have time to get our act together, and prepare ourselves for our ultimate battle for survival.

Monkey Caught On Tape Burglarizing Store

The monkey was only stealing plants, with the help of a human.

It's when the monkeys start breaking into the gun shops, and start knowingly selecting weaponry with the most splatter-heavy kill power that you should start getting worried.

Some monkeys have already developed an interest in the black sticks that go bang!

I must say I'm disappointed at how slowly the Monkeys & Robots Versus Humans War is unfolding. The monkeys are only now just beginning to team up with the robots for mind control experiments. I thought we would be at least fighting unmanned drones controlled by the brains of orang-u-tangs here in mid-2009.

That's what Terminator Salvation needed. Monkeys. Monkeys and autonomous military robots fighting humans, with the captured humans kept prisoners in the zoos where the apes and chimpanzees were detained for our amusement for so many years.

Now that's a movie.

I'd go see it anyway.

We Dreamed, We Went, But We Didn't Go Back

Thomas Wolfe, in a flat-out fantastic story in the New York Times, recalls a mid-1970s speech by NASA's "only philosopher" Wernher von Braun, shortly before his death :

Here on Earth we live on a planet that is in orbit around the Sun. The Sun itself is a star that is on fire and will someday burn up, leaving our solar system uninhabitable. Therefore we must build a bridge to the stars, because as far as we know, we are the only sentient creatures in the entire universe. When do we start building that bridge to the stars? We begin as soon as we are able, and this is that time. We must not fail in this obligation we have to keep alive the only meaningful life we know of.

If you still look at The Moon and wonder why the Luna bases and regular tourist flights that seemed only a few years away when you were a kid never came to be, you really should Read The Rest Of Wolfe's Story. It's a remarkable piece of historic writing on the dream to land a man on the Moon, and now our lost ambition to reach the stars.

The Day Before 9/11....

Fascinating. More all-but-forgotten American history. Donald Rumsfeld revealed on September 10, 2001, the Pentagon could not account for $2.3 trillion in spending :

A Sign Of The American Anti-Prohibition Times

By Darryl Mason

Those opposed to hundreds of thousands of Americans being sent to jail for being busted a third time with a couple of joints, or a couple of plants, are taking their fight to the billboards :



This is LEAP :

After nearly four decades of fueling the U.S. policy of a war on drugs with over a trillion tax dollars and 37 million arrests for nonviolent drug offenses, our confined population has quadrupled making building prisons the fastest growing industry in the United States.

More than 2.2 million of our citizens are currently incarcerated and every year we arrest an additional 1.9 million more guaranteeing those prisons will be bursting at their seams.

Every year we choose to continue this war will cost U.S. taxpayers another 69 billion dollars.

Despite all the lives we have destroyed and all the money so ill spent, today illicit drugs are cheaper, more potent, and far easier to get than they were 35 years ago at the beginning of the war on drugs.

Meanwhile, people continue dying in our streets while drug barons and terrorists continue to grow richer than ever before.

We would suggest that this scenario must be the very definition of a failed public policy. This madness must cease...

The United States is so broke that many states are now quickly looking into how easy it will be to tax pot smokers, growers and sellers.

But will anti-tax cannabis consumers do more time if they refuse to pay tax on their naturally growing medication than they would have if they were busted with cannabis when it was still illegal?

The makers of an already widely praised iPhone app, that apparently can hook up some Americans with everything they need to score quality, legal cannabis, claim they will donate money from the sales of the app to the fight against cannabis prohibition.

I can't see how millions of Americans choosing to legally use cannabis instead of family-destroying amounts of alcohol will do the nation any harm.

Perhaps as part of the 'Cannabis Is Okay' cultural readjustment campaign, President Barack Obama will be 'sprung' by a photographer smoking a joint on a White House balcony.

You will also see various Hollywood celebrities and rock stars being 'caught' in public by the tabloids rolling scuds and choofing blunts.

Nixon : Mother Earth Will Mourn Those Who Die On The Moon


NASA has released what it calls a 'new image' from the Moon landing, 40 years ago yesterday, apparently showing Neil Armstrong's face.


By Darryl Mason

A remarkable piece of alternative American history can be found in a Richard Nixon speech prepared just in case something went terribly, terribly wrong, back in July, 1969 :

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.

These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

These two men are laying down their lives in mankind's most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.

They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.

In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.

In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man's search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.

For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.

"They will be mourned by Mother Earth." That's quite a hallucinatory idea, that a planet can mourn the deaths of two of its inhabitants so far from home.

I'm pretty sure this would have been the first time an American president discussed the feelings of "Mother Earth".

"The Killbot's Running Out Juice, It Needs To Waste Some More Civilians"

A robot manufacturer moves to deny its new line of military killbots, that can power themselves by eating "organic matter", will also devour the dead of the battlefields it will one day roam :

"We completely understand the public's concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population..."

More Here

If you're building a radical roller coaster, always offer protection for the wandering public :

Walter Cronkite Announces The Assassination Of Martin Luther King :

It's Not What You Think It Is

The view out the window on the cover of my first novel, Max & Murray, published in 1996.



More Here

Did the 9/11 Commission manage to work out who this soldier was at Ground Zero on September 11, 2001 warning of the imminent collapse of a steel skyscraper at the World Trade Centre? Did they find out where he was from, and exactly what American Army unit he was supposed to be representing?

No, they didn't. Another mystery for the very, very long list :



Shy around cameras, isn't he?

"Nothing informations."

1918 Pandemic, London Times Editorial : "The Surest Way To Catch The Flu Is To Worry About It Or Be Afraid Of It"

By Darryl Mason

A remarkable London Times editorial on 'The Mystery Of Influenza' from October 28, 1918 can be read here. A couple of excerpts to follow.

The first sees the unnamed writer speculating that the mental, emotional shock and trauma and grief at the loss and carnage of World War I had somehow made people more susceptible to infection from the 'Spanish Flu' virus. It's a remarkable insight for 90 years ago. We know now that high stress can deplete the immune system and make you more vulnerable to influenza infection :

(click to enlarge)



This second excerpt ends the October 28, 1918 editorial. It is filled with good advice that applies well to avoiding swine flu today, and dealing with it once you become infected :




A 1918 ode to the power of positive thinking : "The surest way to catch (it) is to worry about it or be afraid of it."

More than 200,000 more people across the country would die from influenza, or the pneumonia that often followed infection in the next nine months after that editorial was written.

The whole scanned page of the London Times from October 28, 1918, is fascinating. There is also a feisty editorial about how World War I "is not yet over", and that the Germans must accept general terms for peace. The Armistice ending the war was declared only two weeks later.

"Yes, I Know It's A National Pandemic Emergency, But I Really Must Go On Holidays With My Family To An Isolated Island For A Few Months"

Britain pandemic response planners are expecting a death toll of about 60,000 deaths from swine flu and a nationwide infection rate of about 30%. Before the virus further mutates further, that is, as it swaps genes with other influenza viruses it comes into contact with :

About 55,000 people reported flu symptoms last week. The number of patients in hospital with swine flu has doubled to 652, of whom 53 are in intensive care.

The surge prompted officials to announce the launch next week of the National Pandemic Flu Service....

Children under 14 are being hit hardest and the NHS was told to plan for a worst-case scenario of up to half of all children being infected during a first pandemic wave.

There may be three or four or more pandemic waves.

...up to 12 per cent of the workforce (may) be off sick.

Some years there can be as many as 20,000 extra deaths in the winter that are linked with influenza.

To try and lower the number of 'scared sick' people who show up at hospitals and the local doctor's office, The National Pandemic Service will see people being encouraged to fill in internet questionnaires instead. If your symptoms list match the most common swine flu symptoms, you can get a friend to go and pick up anti-virals on your behalf.

That's a surprise to me. The plans made by the British government back in 2006, when the pandemic they were planning for was swine flu, discussed free phone lines where you could call and check your symptoms with a nurse, or hastily trained medical aide.

The government is clearly expecting a far greater number of people trying to contact medical authorities than they planned for previously. Hundreds of thousands of sick people dispatching friends and relatives to pick up anti-virals, from an already dwindling supply, has the potential for great chaos. If you were worried, and wanted anti-virals to ease your mind about your and your family's safety, why wouldn't you complete the internet questionnaire listing all the worst symptoms of having just become infected with swine flu?

Not having a steady supply of nurses or medical aides to answer phones from those who either don't have internet access, or who have lost internet access during expected black outs, will do little to calm the worried.

Is it really that hard to have a call centre so sick people can speak to an actual living person?

Insight into that question might be found in this excerpt from a London Times story of October, 1918, when the Spanish Flu began ravaging England :




And how many of these British MPs, about to start an 82 day long break from the capital, will be taking extended holidays outside of the UK? Say, for a couple of months?

The more of them that leave, or flee, taking their whole families with them, the more serious you know the swine flu pandemic has become.

It's Black, It's Gooey, We Don't Know What It Is, But It's Got Hair In It

So the Arctic Goo natural, or nano?

The next day the floating substance arrived offshore from Barrow, about 90 miles east of Wainwright....

"It's certainly biological....,by the smell and the makeup of it, it's some sort of naturally occurring organic or otherwise marine organism."

He saw some jellyfish tangled up in the stuff, and someone turned in what was left of a dead goose -- just bones and feathers -- to the borough's wildlife department.

"From the air it looks brownish with some sheen, but when you get close and put it up on the ice and in the bucket, it's kind of blackish stuff ... (and) has hairy strands on it."

"It kind of has an odor; I can't describe it," he said.

The Arctic Goo does have hair in it. A gag inducing amount of hair :

Meanwhile, the brownish-blackish gunk is drifting along the coast to the northeast, Brower said.

"This stuff is moving with the current," he said. "It's now on beyond Barrow and probably going north at this point."

Science fiction movies of the 1950s tell us the mysterious blobs of glob will eventually beach themselves, form one giant hairy mass and start swallowing fishing villages.

But they can't freeze it to stop it, however, this stuff is already thriving in icy waters.

The rest of the Anchorage Daily News story is here and they've got more photos of the Arctic Goo With Hair, and an aerial video of it stretching for miles.

To Kill A Culture, You Must Kill Its Teachers, Its Scientists, Its Doctors, Its Historians And Its Artists

Michel Chossudovsky :

The objective of these targeted assassinations is to "kill a nation", the destroy Iraq's ability to educate its people, to undermine its research and scientific capabilities in literally all fields of endeavor, to transform a nation into a territory, and ultmately to destroy civilization.

Of particular significance is the assassination of prominent scientists and physicians, professors of medicine in the country's leading academic institutions, its social scientists and historians, its physical scientists, its biologists, its engineers.

We are dealing with a carefully devised covert operation. The plan to kill the nation's scientists and intellectuals emanates from US intelligence and the military. It is a deliberate process.

Go Here For More

Did Michael Jackson Put Up A Fight When It Came Time For Him To Take His Drugs?

By Darryl Mason

It seemed obvious from the start.

Your New Reality, June 30 :

It seems likely a murder, or at least involuntary manslaughter, investigation into the death of Michael Jackson will be announced within the next few weeks, once toxicology reports are finished. The massive insurance policies connected to Michael Jackson, his business interests and the 50 London concerts he was never going to perform, will demand it.

The pharmaceutical industry that allows one person to run up $100,000 in local drug store debt to pay for even more pills would be my first suspect.

But others may have been involved. Besides being only 58 kilos, and ravaged by two decades of addiction to prescription drugs, Jackson's body apparently bore wounds around the knees and shins and cuts across his back.

Today's headline news :

The Los Angeles Police Department is treating Michael Jackson's death as a homicide and is focusing on doctor Conrad Murray, entertainment website TMZ.com reports.

The pop icon's family has spoken of "unanswered questions" concerning Murray's role in the final hours of Jackson's life. Murray's lawyers insist he has been cleared of wrongdoing.

TMZ, citing "multiple" law enforcement sources, said "the evidence points to the anesthesia Propofol as the primary cause of Jackson's death."

Law enforcement sources told TMZ there was already "plenty of powerful evidence" pointing to Murray, 51, as the person who administered the drug, whose brand name is Diprivan, to the "King of Pop."

Perhaps Michael Jackson had to be beaten into taking the anesthesia?

Will it be more shattering to Michael Jackson fans if their idol has been murdered than if he simply fatally fucked himself up taking too many different pharmaceuticals in one hit?

Which is worse? For your hero to have killed himself on the even of his great comeback? Or for your hero to have been killed because he was worth more dead than alive?

British Internet Networks Could Crash Under Weight Of Home Workers During Pandemic

According to the UK Guardian, 38% of British businesses still don't have a pandemic plan (for example, how does a business cope if 40% of employees are off work either sick, or caring for sick family members?), and there are serious doubts growing about British Telecom's ability to maintain internet access when millions of Brits try and work from home, or just get on the net for news and entertainment, during Mexico-style city-wide quarantines and curfews :

...international business continuity expert Lyndon Bird.... was also sceptical about the ability of Britain's digital infrastructure to cope with hundreds of thousands of people being forced to work from home.

BT could not give "definitive" assurances that Britain's broadband network would work fully because of the vast numbers of people logging on from home, he said.

Being stuck at home and not having internet access during a nationwide, or global, emergency is unimaginable. Of course, access to the internet will also depend on whether or not your local electricity supplier can keep up with the daily maintenance when half the workforce is sick, or recovering.

Does your radio have fresh batteries?

According to another UK Guardian article, flu experts were caught "off guard" by the HumanBirdPig Flu virus spread reaching pandemic levels. Apparently, they were all planning for avian influenza, H5N1, to be responsible for what we were told would be an "inevitable
pandemic" :

Dr Alan Hay, director of the London-based World Influenza Centre, said the extensive summer outbreak in Britain had not followed expected patterns and warned the Department of Health needed to be prepared for a more deadly form of the disease.

The flu surveillance community had been "caught napping" by the emergence of the swine flu outbreak as most resources were concentrated on guarding against a bird flu pandemic

Hay, who advises the World Health Organisation on its flu policy, said it had become clear the flu pandemic was predominantly affecting children aged five to 14, with the majority of cases nationally and internationally affecting people under 30.

Flu surveillance scientists, who had been concentrating resources on looking for a bird flu pandemic, had been surprised by the swine flu outbreak, he added.

"We were not anticipating a virus of this nature causing a pandemic. All our eyes were focusing on the H5N1 virus that had been circulating in wild and domestic poultry populations.

"We have been observing similar viruses to this pandemic in pigs in the past 10 years in the US. And because it was antigenically related to the viruses already circulating – it was the same H1N1 subtype – it was not perceived as being a major threat. Of course we were caught napping, you might say, but this is what has transpired.

"We don't really know the way this virus might change as it adapts to the human population and what the consequences of such changes might be."

Depopulation, probably.

Cut A Bullet In Half With A Samurai Sword?

This Is Correct - "Miracle In Miracle"

It's hard to deny, Japan has some of the best game shows in the world. Using a Samurai sword to cut beans and mushrooms, lengthwise, seems impossible, but it clearly can be done. But can even the most ultra-skilled Samurai really cut a bullet in half, in flight? It's hard not to be suspicious and shout "GGI!"Yet it all seems real enough. Damn stunning :



It's worth watching again to focus on the reaction of the crowd. So very excited, so dramatic. But why do they freak out more about successfully cutting a metal tube in half than a flying bullet?

Philip K Dick : "Science Fiction.....Just Westerns Set In The Future"

For a writer who, decades ago, so accurately catalogued today's high surveillance, video screen drenched reality, Philip K Dick left very little in the way of audio recordings or videos. The following short clips of PKD come from an interview he gave while attending the Metz festival in France, in 1977 :



The movie being discussed is Richard Linklater's book-accurate, beautifully hypnotic depiction of PKD's A Scanner Darkly.

Just Another Comedian With Good CIA Contacts

UPDATE : The "terrorist leader" Sacha Baron-Cohen boasts about securing an interview with for his new movie Bruno turns out to be a Palestinian who has worked with Israel to return home captured Israeli soldiers. The Palestinian claims that Baron-Cohen told him the interview would "help the Palestinians" and it doesn't sound like Baron-Cohen was in costume or character as Bruno when he did the interview.

PREVIOUSLY....

A 75 year old southern gentleman who loves ballroom dancing with his friends in Alabama found himself on the receiving end of a Sacha Baron-Cohen prank for his new movie, Bruno. Cohen came to their small dance with his film crew, in character as Austrian gay attention whore, Bruno, and tried to shock these 'old timers' with an 'outrageous' deep kiss with his male dancing partner. Ooooh, cutting edge comedy. How radical. How...last century.

The southern gentleman points out that few of his fiends at the dance were shocked by the kiss. But they were outraged that their southern hospitality had been taken advantage of. So simple revenge was plotted :

Calling friends in other ballroom groups the next morning, I found he'd booked to film more dances – in Huntsville, and also Chattanooga and Nashville in Tennessee. Sacha's organised, but we're very organised, too. We put out the word on the internet and they were all cancelled. He was on our territory, so we could do what we liked. Sorry for messing up your schedule, Brüno.

In the South we are taught to trust people, to show hospitality. In return we were insulted. Baron Cohen, I concluded, was little more than an empty shell. Religion has b,een reported to be important to him, but his personal religion seems to be based on greed and deriving pleasure from shocking others, often being cruel and uncaring – to get what he is after.

And here's an observation that gets rarely mentioned in all the discussions and reviews and fucking endless op-eds about Cohen's 'gotcha' movie-making :

...those sheets of paper we signed were release forms, giving our consent to the footage being used in Sacha's forthcoming film about Brüno, the gay Austrian television reporter. We were, it turned out, extras working for a pittance.

Or no money at all. Dozens, hundreds of people, appeared in the extremely profitable Borat and Bruno movies, and some had near starring roles, but none of them got paid what any other actor would have received for the same amount of screen time in any other big studio movie. And the 'extras' who populate Cohen's movies don't get a screen credit, either.

And here's a most curious interview of Sacha Baron-Cohen, out of character, discussing how he managed to get an interview with "an actual terrorist". How did this British satirist get to interview a real terrorist? His "contact" at the CIA helped out.

Err, what?




Australians, of course, have seen Cohen's act done before, and better, decades ago.

In the 1970s, we had Norman Gunston. Norman Gunston was a richly-crafted character played by actor Gary McDonald who would front up to interviews and press conferences, as just another reporter, though a uniquely bizarre looking one, and proceed to cause confusion, chaos and plenty of laughs. The difference with Norman Gunston was he pulled his pranks on celebrities and politicians, not everyday people who were kind enough to invite some freak to their dance or dinner party.

Here's Norman Gunston interviewing Mick Jagger :



And here's Norman Gunston interviewing Mohammed Ali :

Woman Vanishes Inside New York City Skyscraper

She clocked in for her cleaning shift inside a high security NYC office building near Ground Zero, and more than 48 hours later, and after police claim to have combed the building, she still hasn't been found :

Eridania Rodriguez, 46, punched in for work at No 2 Rector Street at 5pm local time. She put on her blue uniform, chatted with other after-hours workers and was last seen on security cameras at around 7pm. Then, she disappeared.

Her cleaning trolley was found abandoned on the eighth floor, a space recently vacated by the city's transportation department.

"It's a mind blower. How do you go missing here?" said Rob Ross, an executive assistant in the studio of architect Daniel Libeskind, who moved to the tower after getting the commission to redesign Ground Zero.

This sort of story sets the fiction writing mind racing. Where did she go to? Is she still inside the building? Hiding? Dead? If she was murdered on one of the building's empty floors, why have police found no trace of blood or other forensic detail? The building was built in 1909, is there are another way out of the building that isn't covered by security cameras, and is not included in the floor plans police used in their search? Did she want to disappear, on purpose, and did she have someone disguised as her enter the building, change into her uniform, take the cleaning trolley to the 8th floor, get out of the disguise, and then exit the building, giving the appearance the woman had gone to work, clocked in and then mysteriously vanished?

Or did the building just absorb her?

If she's never seen again, it will certainly go down as a great modern mystery.

UPDATE : How sad, a woman's body has been found "stuffed in an airconditioning duct" on the 12th floor of the building. The presumption is this will now become a murder investigation.

Superman, Batman Foiled In NYC Cops For Failing To Produce A Permit To Perform In Costumes



Batman went quietly, but Superman put up a fight :

"The Man of Steel didn't go down with just two officers, it took seven officers!" witness Ryan McCormick said. "He was putting up a good fight. Little kids were like, 'Mommy, it's Superman!'"

that weren't weird enough, McCormick turned and saw the Dark Knight handcuffed to a chair like a common villain.

"As this was happening, someone is like, 'It's Batman!' I turn around and there's Batman in handcuffs," he said.

Their comic-book adventure went awry when cops approached the dynamic duo on 43rd Street to see whether they had the required license to perform in costume in public....

New Yorkers are not allowed to have superheroes anymore. Permits are required.

What if 2000 people turned up in Times Square in superhero costumes, all at the same time.

What then?

Rupert Murdoch Instructs Fox Business Journo On The Questions He Will Answer, And The Questions He Won't

Scotland Yard Announces New Inquiry Into Murdoch Spying Scandal And Then Abandons It Only A Few Hours Later

By Darryl Mason

Rupert Murdoch seemed a bit startled when a Fox Business journo started an interview with "The Chairman" by asking a question on the Murdoch Hacking Scandal now erupting in Britain. "The Chairman" doesn't have to answer questions he doesn't want to, after all he owns Fox, and his lackeys clearly know they must do as their told :

Varney: The story that's really buzzing all around the country and certainly here in New York, is that the News of the World, a News Corporation newspaper in Britain used --

Murdoch: I'm not talking about that issue at all today. I'm sorry.

Varney: No worries, Mr. Chairman. That's fine with me.

Murdoch: I'm sorry.

Varney: OK. That's all right, sir.

The video of the interview is here. Fox Business news tried to edit out this embarrassing chunk of the interview, until a blogger pulled them up on it. It's like watching Mr Burns and Smithers.



UK Guardian journalist Nick Davies, who broke this story of how Murdoch journalists are claimed by his police sources to have spied on the private phone messages and financial data of thousands of British people (and God knows who else around the world), follows up on news that Scotland Yard will not begin a new investigation into these blatant criminal acts of the kind you'd expect to be committed by cops, or gangsters or intelligence agencies, not a few dozen 'journalists'. Davies sees a purposeful attempt by Scotland Yard to "muddy the waters" over what happened, and why they did not, and still will not, investigate claims that Murdoch journalists spied on 2000 to 3000 people :

The Guardian reported that Scotland Yard had failed to alert all those whose phones were targeted. (They) said that in most of the cases which they had looked at, there was insufficient evidence to be sure that hacking had occurred. And, so in those cases, they did not alert the targets.

There is a great deal of the picture that remains hard to see: about the hacking of phones and the material which was gathered by Scotland Yard; about the "blagging" of confidential data, such as bank statements and tax records, and the material which was gathered by the information commissioner.

The New York Times dived into the scandal yesterday, running this story on its front page, and clearly enjoying the criminal drama now erupting around Rupert Murdoch, and his British tabloid operations :


(click to enlarge)

From this New York Times story, Murdoch Papers Said To Pay To Settle Hacking Suits' :

But the controversy stirred by The Guardian could reach into the highest ranks of Mr. Murdoch’s empire.

So the New York Times hopes, and prays.

If the Murdoch journalists getting access to the transcripts of all that spying shared particularly interesting information, or intelligence, with Scotland Yard, would that explain why Scotland Yard announced a new inquiry into the scandal and then abandoned it only a few hours later?

With Britain in an uproar over a report in the newspaper The Guardian that two tabloid newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch have systematically used private investigators to tap the cellphone messages of public figures and obtain other personal details from confidential databases, a senior Scotland Yard officer said Thursday that there would be “no further investigation” of the matter.

The officer, Assistant Commissioner John Yates, made the announcement only hours after he was assigned by Sir Paul Stephenson, the head of Scotland Yard, to “establish the facts” behind the disclosures....

Do Murdoch journalists have some particularly damaging information about Scotland Yard, and its detectives?

How much more murky can the modern day world of Old Media journalism get?

Not surprisingly, Murdoch newspapers across the world have been particularly quiet about this scandal, so far.

The main Murdoch news portal in Australia, news.com.au, ran the below story on its front page for only a few hours, before it disappeared into the archive.



The fact that the scandal involves the private lives of celebrity sports stars, models and politicians, prime Murdoch journo hunting ground, makes it only more obvious, and hilarious, that they are all but ignoring this huge story.

"Messages From The Future For Those In The Know"

By Darryl Mason

Whoever, or whatever, is creating crop circles in the England countryside this year has taken this beautiful art into the realms of the majestic.

A Mayan-inspired work that appeared yesterday :



The rising phoenix of the week before :





What are they?

Who makes them, and why?

I still can't find any videos on YouTube that show people making crop circles of this scale and detail, overnight, sometimes in only a few hours, but obviously they're man-made.

I don't particularly care who is making them, I just think they're a greatly unrecognised art form and I look forward every year to seeing what designs will appear next.

But my favourite science-fiction drenched story about who creates crop circles and why comes from an old man I met in a small Somerset, England, pub back in 1997. He said he'd been told by a farmer friend, from Wiltshire, in whose field crop circles had appeared three or four times through the early '90s, that a visitor to one crop circle had told him, the farmer, that time travellers created the crop circles to leave messages for "those in the know".

The old man said he'd spent a lot of hours working on his own farm thinking about that explanation. He said after the farmer had told him that story, he found himself staying up later and later, looking out at his fields, and the night sky, first cynically "keepim' wotch", then wishing his fields would get a crop circle, just once, then being pissed off that his farm was being ignored by whoever was creating the crop circles that appeared, like magic, in the fields of his farmer friends.

He said all those hours, after midnight, staring at the stars, at the slightest movement in his fields, led him to figure, not believe, but theorize, that because crop circles were already part of our history, our timeline, and they didn't get a lot of media attention, mostly, anyway, that it didn't matter so much what design appeared. If time travellers wanted to leave messages, or warnings, for people in our time to take heed of, or to learn from, they could leave them disguised as crop circles without causing any great chaos in our timeline. That meant people from, say, 2089, could come back here, visit, interfere in our history but without causing too much great calamity in their own. Something like that. The old bloke was hammered, and I wasn't far behind him.

I don't think the old man really believed that explanation for crop circles, but he obviously enjoyed thinking about it, and talking it out, for the fun of it, to test my and his own gullibility, over four pints of a particularly deadly local cider. There was no loud, pounding music in this tiny village pub, no Sky Sports blaring away, just the crackle of a warm fire, an occasional wheeze and cough from some of the other locals, and a barman who thought he'd heard it all but still had to stop and listen to this wild, fantastic story, no doubt not for the first time, from one of his regulars.

The walk back home that night was along a dark, winding lane, the stars like diamonds on velvet, and all quiet in the fields I passed. I stopped and waited, for a while, at a barley field that looked like a prime canvas for crop circle art. I was disappointed nothing happened, and no great art work appeared while I stood there.

But I would have been thoroughly disappointed if I'd seen a bunch of young blokes pull up in a van and haul out the planks-on-strings and grass rollers and go to work on their latest design.

Seeing how the illusion is done always kills the magic, even if you are wiser to the truth once exposed.

Murdoch Media Could Pay Billions In Damages For Illegally Hacking Phones Of Politicians, Celebrities, Sports Stars

Police Now Investigating Murdoch UK Tabloids For Spying On UK Deputy Prime Minister, Thousands More

By Darryl Mason

I already know that this is going to be my favourite story of 2009, no matter how it turns out. More to come, obviously, but for now this taster of what could prove to be the biggest media scandal in years, and one that could fell a media empire :

Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World and Sun will be investigated by the Metropolitan Police in London over claims they obtained personal information through deception.

The Guardian newspaper reported yesterday that Murdoch’s News Corp. paid more than 1 million pounds ($1.6 million) to settle lawsuits claiming journalists used private investigators to illegally obtain information on politicians, sports stars and entertainers. The report throws a spotlight on the news- gathering methods of the competitive U.K. newspaper industry.

“Following a court order in 2008 we made available a copy of some information from our investigation into the buying and selling of personal information, to lawyers” involved in a related case, Mick Gorrill, assistant information commissioner, said in the statement. “This included material that showed that 31 journalists working for The News of the World and The Sun had acquired people’s personal information through blagging.”

News Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rupert Murdoch said yesterday that he wasn’t aware of any payments made to settle legal cases in which the company’s newspaper reporters may have been involved in criminal activity.

“If that had happened, I would know about it,” Murdoch said in an interview at the Allen & Co. media conference in Sun Valley, Idaho.

According to the Guardian, the out-of-court settlements secured secrecy about three cases that may have shown evidence of journalists using private investigators who allegedly hacked into the mobile-phone messages of public figures and gained access to confidential personal data illegally, the report said.

The Guardian cited an unidentified person with London’s Metropolitan Police as saying there was evidence that News Group employees used private investigators to hack into thousands of mobile phones.

The above is from Bloomberg, the financial media, who used this headline :

Murdoch Newspapers to Be Investigated Over ‘Blagging’ Claims

That's a real bad look for Rupert Murdoch, particularly as most of his worldwide media operation is going down the shitter, as paying readers and ad revenue disappear.

Police investigations are never, or rarely, good news for the share price.

Brokers are reading that story in Bloomberg, and are learning that Rupert Murdoch's UK operation paid out hundred thousand dollars each to a few people that his reporters illegally spied on, and they are calculating how much Murdoch may have to pay out if all the 2000 to 3000 people that Murdoch hacks spied also demand hefty payouts the size of the out of court settlements that have already been paid.

Rupert Murdoch's media empire could be sued for a $US2-3 billion, or more, if everyone who was spied on decided to go hard for as much money as they could get for having their privacy violated.

On a late night news program in Australia, all this was the last story of the show, but it was mentioned that when Murdoch execs were contacted for a reply to the allegations, all they offered was "No Comment."

No comment.

This is going to be so much fun to watch unfold. Journos love to report on other journos, and the media that they work for. They love to bitch about each other, and if the Murdoch media empire looks to be on the ropes, as it most certainly does already, non-Murdoch journos will go hard, they will be relentless. Unless they, too, engage in such activities to get their headlines.

The Old Media Will Eat Itself.


UPDATE : A great interview here with UK Guardian journalist, Nick Davies, who broke the Murdoch Spying Scandal story (excerpts) :

What we've uncovered is systematic activity by Rupert Murdoch's journalists on the Sunday newspaper here the News of the World, using illegal techniques of one kind or another to uncover information.

One bunch of illegal techniques is to do with using private investigators to do what's called "blagging" - that's conning their way into confidential databases, things like your bank statements, credit card statements, itemised telephone bills, tax records, all that kind of stuff.

That's all illegal and they've been doing it. And the second kind of illegal activity is using private investigators to do what's called "phone hacking", which just means that they can get into other people's mobile telephone networks and hear messages which have been left on the target's mobile phone.

....there was clear evidence of News of the World journalists, including a middle ranking executive, handling the raw material that was coming through from these intercepts.

....my understanding is that that paperwork shows us that the News of the World were hacking the phones of 2,000 or 3,000 public figures of one kind or another.

(the police) didn't pursue charges against the Murdoch journalists. And I don't know the answers to these questions, but it raises the worrying possibility - and it's only a possibility at this stage - that the police at New Scotland Yard didn't want to get into a fight with powerful Rupert Murdoch....he's politically very powerful.

....you begin to get this alarming picture of the newspaper groups drifting beyond the reach of the law because they're just too powerful.

You can hear the whole interview with Nick Davies here. He sounds very excited. He knows how huge this story will become.

At the Michael Jackson memorial in Los Angeles today, Stevie Wonder performed 'Never Dreamed You'd Leave In Summer'. An extraordinary performance, soaring, exhilerating, spine-chilling :

Social Media As The New Punk Rock

I wouldn't say I agree 100% with all that is claimed in the following video, but it's full of great ideas and some excellent animation. Social media is shattering the restrictions that have for so long been tightly wrapped around the free flow of information and opinion. The gatekeepers cannot control what we learn and see and hear as easily as they once did. This is a reality in a state of flux, volcanoing creativity and inspiration and it's only just beginning.

There might be a lot of crap in Social Media, but was it so vastly different in the bookshops and newsagents of the 20th century?

How To Hang An Elephant



The year was 1916, the location was Tennessee and the reason why was to try and smooth over some bad publicity from a circus animal that killed a human :

The circus owner, Charlie Sparks, reluctantly decided that the only way to quickly resolve the potentially ruinous situation was to kill the elephant in public.

On the following day, a foggy and rainy September 13, 1916, she was transported by rail to Erwin, Tennessee where a crowd of over 2,500 people (including most of the town's children) assembled in the Clinchfield railroad yard.

The elephant was hanged by the neck from a railcar-mounted industrial crane.

Not surprisingly, children ran screaming.

Robama

At least Lincoln looks interested in what Obama The Robot has to say :

World Health Organisation Admits Defeat On Pandemic Spread, Only Weeks In

And so, it begins?

The United Nations' top health official says the worldwide spread of swine flu is now unstoppable.

Leaders and experts from across the world gathered in Cancun to see what lessons could be learnt so far, but the advice is still the same.

The best way to avoid catching the virus is simple - wash your hands and avoid coughing and sneezing in public.

The World Health Organisation also promised that poor countries in the Americas would receive enough vaccine to fight the swine flu outbreak.

They got nothing. The swine flu virus, which we used to be told was a mix of Human, Bird and Pig influenza viruses, is already mutating. This is a living entity that can produce three generations inside one minute. Will it spread through our pets as well? They don't know. Will it kill more children than elderly people? They don't know. If you get it this season, will you be immune next season? They don't know.

This virus is smarter than us. More highly evolved. It can already beat Tamiflu, and other anti-virals. We don't have a big arsenal to defend ourselves from constantly mutating influenza viruses, we mostly try and deal with the results.

Hastily created vaccines do not seem likely to be the miracle cure. There probably won't be one.

The talk of such vaccines being effective before testing even begins seems mostly to placate the public, and to market the brand.

The World Health Organisation, and most large nations, have their Level 6 : Pandemic operations already underway.

A worst case scenario, where nothing can be done and the virus is mostly left to do whatever it will do to humanity, killing many times the number of people who annually die from influenza, certainly sounds like what our state and federal governments are preparing for.

In the briefings where media isn't present, is the World Health Organisation talking a two year, three pandemic wave, scenario an with expected death toll of 10 million? Or 100 million?

The higher death tolls are expected to come during the second wave of pandemic influenza, when it is stronger, more evolved, more lethal and well traveled. Next year.

The Most Incredible Air Disaster Survival Story You Will Ever Read

I heard this story a lot when I was a kid. It'd come round once a year or so, "this girl fell out of an exploding plane once and lived!" It excited the mind, even if you hadn't been on an aircraft and none of us had back then, you'd still see them flying over and wonder : what would it be like to fall from one of those, fall through all the air and space, and live? It was a subject worthy of a few lunchtime discussions once or twice a year - she clung the wing, all the way down. No, she was still strapped into her seat, and that landed on a big piece of wing and she sailed all the way down to Earth. Something like that. It changed from year to year.

But the real story was never in the newspapers, and no books in the school library mentioned it, so it became one of those 'Did That Really Happen?' stories of childhood. Like a myth.

The story is real. It happened to Juliane Koepcke on Chrismas Eve, 1971. She was flying into the Amazon rainforest on an airliner with family members. The jet exploded and fell from the sky :

"We were headed straight down. Christmas presents were flying around the cabin and I could hear people screaming."

"Suddenly there was this amazing silence. The plane was gone. I must have been unconscious and then came to in midair. I was flying, spinning through the air and I could see the forest spinning beneath me."

She fell three kilometres and landed in the rainforest. She had minor cuts. She was still strapped into the row of airliner seats.

"(the row of seats) was rotating much like the helicopter and that might have slowed the fall. Also, the place I landed had very thick foliage and that might have lessened the impact."

Her dramatic survival story doesn't end there. She spent days and nights in the rainforest, following a creek to a stream to a river where she hoped she would be found. Maggots infested one of her wounds :

"Later, after I was rescued it was treated and more than 50 maggots were found inside. I still wonder how so many maggots could have fitted into that little hole...."

She became known, and rightly so, as The Miracle Girl.

Her thoughts on the recent air disasters?

"It just horrifies me. I only hope it all went quickly for those on board."

There's much more to this story, well worth reading.

The War On Iraq In One Baghdad Neighbourhood

The pullout of American forces from Iraq begins, bases are dismantled or handed over to the Iraqis, who spend days joyfully celebrating the news that the American occupation of their country will soon be history.

But this New York Times portrait of a fractured, tense Sunni/Shiite neighbourhood hints at what may follow the American pullout :

...the Shiite government believes many of the Sunni militias are little more than cover for insurgents.

“I don’t want to assign any of them to be in my force,” said Capt. Ishan Falah Hassan of the National Police. “In my opinion, and this is not the government opinion, many of them should be arrested.”

He said the American strategy of paying (the Sunnis) for doing little more than stopping their attacks on them was clever, but it was time for the whole system to end.

Still, he worries there are networks of extremists waiting to attack.

“The terrorism cells were sleeping and they are ready to attack...”