The Enlightenment of Charles Manson I was listening to the clip Matt Staggs posted on here the other day of Alan Watts expounding on the Buddhist concept of “No Self” so I clicked on it in YouTube to see what else came up, and there I found this little clip of Charles Manson answering the question of “Who are you?” After listening to Watts, Manson’s answer struck me as profound. “I am nobody”, was his answer, basically. I had seen other Manson interviews. I particularly like the one with Geraldo Rivera. I clicked on some more links and discovered an interview of Manson being interviewed by Charlie Rose, one I hadn’t seen before. I am struck by how confidently Manson, who appears to be just over 5 feet tall, walks into the room in comparison to the three enormous correctional officers who accompany him, all ow home appear to be slightly nervous to be on TV. Rose: Do you have friends you can talk to? Rose seems to establish early on a pattern of steering the conversation continually from the interesting to the banal:
The State, the Deep State, and the Wall Street Overworld In the last decade it has become more and more obvious that we have in America today what the journalists Dana Priest and William Arkin have called two governments: the one its citizens were familiar with, operated more or less in the open: the other a parallel top secret government whose parts had mushroomed in less than a decade into a gigantic, sprawling universe of its own, visible to only a carefully vetted cadre – and its entirety…visible only to God.1 And in 2013, particularly after the military return to power in Egypt, more and more authors referred to this second level as America’s “deep state.”2 Here for example is the Republican analyst Mike Lofgren: There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. DEEP STATE n. The Deep State, The Shadow Government and the Wall Street Overworld Thereafter
Jeremy Scahill and Noam Chomsky: The Truth About America's Secret, Dirty Wars May 16, 2013 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. The following is taken from a transcript of a special event featuring Jeremy Scahill and Noam Chomsky with Amy Goodman hosted by the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, the ACLU of Massachusetts, the American Friends Service Committee of Massachusetts, the Cambridge Peace Commission and the Community Church of Boston that was broadcast by Democracy Now!. The event covered the subjects explored in Scahill's new book, Dirty Wars. Jeremy Scahill: I’m really honored to be here with both Amy Goodman and Noam Chomsky. And I like to think of the footnotes in my book as a tribute to Professor Chomsky, because one of the first things I do when I look at a book is to check out the notes in the index to see how serious the book is, how serious the author was about citing every fact that he states in the book.
The Rise of Anti-Capitalism Photo WE are beginning to witness a paradox at the heart of capitalism, one that has propelled it to greatness but is now threatening its future: The inherent dynamism of competitive markets is bringing costs so far down that many goods and services are becoming nearly free, abundant, and no longer subject to market forces. While economists have always welcomed a reduction in marginal cost, they never anticipated the possibility of a technological revolution that might bring those costs to near zero. The first inkling of the paradox came in 1999 when Napster, the music service, developed a network enabling millions of people to share music without paying the producers and artists, wreaking havoc on the music industry. The huge reduction in marginal cost shook those industries and is now beginning to reshape energy, manufacturing and education. Now the phenomenon is about to affect the whole economy.
Cornel West: “You can get killed out here trying to tell the truth!” This article originally appeared on AlterNet . As big banks and corporations grab more power and government heightens control and surveillance, confronting those at the top is getting to be a dangerous proposition. As Cornel West put it bluntly, “You can get killed out here trying to tell the truth.” For the last year, a partnership between the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), a New York–based think tank, and Union Theological Seminary (UTS) has produced a series of rich conversations about economics, society and the human spirit. Johnson, who had recently led a meeting of major financial executives in London, noted that the Big Boys are aware that they are no longer gods in the public view, but demons. West cited the need for a “democratic counterweight” against what he described as three dominant tendencies on the globe: “financializing, privatizing and militarizing.” West sent a powerful message about governments harassing and exerting control over citizens.
Stop Currency Manipulation and Create Millions of Jobs: With Gains across States and Congressional Districts Six years after the start of the Great Recession nearly 8 million jobs are still needed to return to prerecession labor market health (EPI 2013). Job creation should still be goal number one. Yet prospects for any fiscal policy action to boost jobs have disappeared under the weight of congressional dysfunction, and the Federal Reserve has begun to wind down monetary stimulus (Wall Street Journal 2013). Many of the new jobs would be in manufacturing, a sector devastated by rising trade deficits over the past 15 years. Currency manipulation, which distorts trade flows by artificially lowering the cost of U.S. imports and raising the cost of U.S. exports, is the primary cause of these growing trade deficits. This paper describes the positive effects of ending currency manipulation in three years by estimating the effects of reducing trade deficits on GDP, jobs, the federal budget deficit, and state and local budget deficits in 2015. Exchange rates Effects of exchange rates on trade
Paradigm Shift in Education: Krishnamurti on the Educator, RAW on Ignorance, Gato on the System, and Hamming on Learning The root cause of society’s ills is how we deal with education. Deep down we all know this, but for decades we have barely lifted a finger to address it. The main reason for this inaction is because most of us are ourselves products of this defective system. We have been programed for obedience, turned into self-absorbed apathetic beings that submit to authority and fear dissent. Noam Chomsky : Education Is a System of Indoctrination of the Young We are bombarded with propaganda that wants us to believe in the economy. Alan Watts : What if money was no object? There is a war going on for the hearts and minds of our children - for the control of the future. Ken Robinson : How to escape education's death valley No matter what the final outcome, the simple fact is that a centralized system should never again be allowed to dominate education in our society. High School Student Goes Off On Teacher About His Education! Interview with Jeff Bliss. As for how we can achieve this task?
The Math That Predicted the Revolutions Sweeping the Globe Right Now It's happening in Ukraine, Venezuela, Thailand, Bosnia, Syria, and beyond. Revolutions, unrest, and riots are sweeping the globe. The near-simultaneous eruption of violent protest can seem random and chaotic; inevitable symptoms of an unstable world. But there's at least one common thread between the disparate nations, cultures, and people in conflict, one element that has demonstrably proven to make these uprisings more likely: high global food prices. Just over a year ago, complex systems theorists at the New England Complex Systems Institute warned us that if food prices continued to climb, so too would the likelihood that there would be riots across the globe. Bar-Yam built a model with the data, which then predicted that something like the Arab Spring would ensue just weeks before it did. "I have a long list of the countries that have had major social unrest in the past 18 months consistent with our projections," Bar-Yam tells me. So. If not, in other words, the riots will burn on.
The world's most prolific cannabis dealer and a right wing columnist debate the war on drugs | Neurobonkers Just over a month ago I attended a debate (at Bristol Festival of Ideas ) between Howard Marks, the man who at one point was the world's most prolific cannabis dealer - importing hundreds of tons of cannabis in to the UK, the US and mainland Europe, and Peter Hitchens, the Mail on Sunday's columnist who is so right wing that he is practically a parody. The audio from the talk is now available, if the MP3 does not load above click here to listen. Both speakers receive ten minutes each before there is almost an hour of questions and debate. I won't subject you to more diatribe on the topic here, as one blog post (or one debate for that matter) can not possibly cover the topic but if you'd like to read more from me on the topic of this debate you can search my former blog for posts with the tag: The Confederacy of Dunces , a tag which I hope makes my position clear enough.