You can generally measure the degree of somebody's programming by the violence of their knee-jerk response when you point the fact out to them.
I NEVER Troll.
Honestly; I am willing to bet that if you have done any research at all into the subject, (which I strongly doubt), that it consists of listening to the advertising and 'studies' funded by the telecommunications industry and its affiliates in the hopes that they will brush away any concerns you may have nagging in the back of your mind. Cuz, Cell phones are just too 'cool' for there to be any danger. Denial is a sweet drug indeed.
Please. Use what's left of your mind for a second to consider the following: The human brain, body and nervous system are electrochemical in nature. This is why EEG machines work. It is why stun guns work. To think that bathing the body in electromagnetic radiation has NO effect whatsoever is entirely naive.
So what are the effects?
Do the damned research. The multi-billion dollar telecommunications industry certainly isn't going to tell you. (The industry which has fingers in media and everywhere else!) All the information is out there, and it is not quack science. The research has been performed by many private labs. --And labs run by foriegn governments. Look at the Polish studies from the sixties to present. Look at the Swedish studies. (Though theirs have been tamed; they only admit to significantly higher levels of miscarriages in female CRT users.) Heck, look at the American studies during the same time period. Look up, "Alan Frey", a fellow funded by the U.S. military no less, to work on EM weapons and espionage devices from the sixties to present. Some of his work is on public record, and it is extremely revealing. There are dozens upon dozens of examples, but you will not see any of them on the "Learning" Channel. (The Indoctrination Station).
--There are also plenty of labs funded by telecommunications and military interests who will say different. The U.S. Air Force openly funds a lab which has specifically gone to the effort of discounting ALL claims made by private science groups which have come forth with troublesome findings regarding EM radiation. Massive P.R. bullshit. And why the heck does the military care? And who is funding the military? --Like killing flies with cannon.
Honestly.
This stuff is out there in verifiable form for those who aren't scared to dig. Go through the U.S. Air Force websites. Go through Google. Just do the damn research for crying out loud! --Do it before making any more asinine comments and generally displaying the embarrassing levels to which you have been programmed by those agencies who are clearly a lot smarter than you think you are.
Or don't.
You can always go back to your Playstation or tune into the soothing voice of CNN. Your level of awareness is entirely up to you.
-Fantastic Lad Oh, please! Mod me down again! Prove to me the fear you have of open discussion regarding 'taboo' subjects. Damned children.
Sure, Slashdot is partly funded by Ad banners. But I block 'em, and I will continue to do so.
I didn't ask Slashdot to be freely available on my web browser. I come here because it's a neat site which started off as a hobby/fan based effort and which I visit in the same spirit.
If it can't keep going on that kind of steam, then too bad. The world won't end without Slashdot. There will always be another place to read dumb articles and dance in the mosh pit of pseudo-informed public opinion. There have been and always will be soap boxes aplenty.
In any case, the net is SUPPOSED to be adaptive and dynamic.
But seriously, and this may sound Machiavellian, but if you are smart and savvy, you will ALWAYS be able to surf for free, both on-line and through life in general. Is this wrong? Is it leeching? You bet it is! That's the state of things in this reality. Every time you sit down to eat, something or several somethings have died for your consumption. The JOB of each and every spirit is to figure out how to exist in this reality with ease, grace and as much benevolence as possible.
Part of this learning process requires that you spend a miserable amount of time in the trenches learning from your mistakes. If 90% of the Web-faring populace makes the Web free and easy for the remaining 10%, and would do so regardless of my or anybody else's actions, then it would not benefit anybody to not take advantage of their behavior.
Where Greed DOES become a force in the negative, is when you actively withhold information. I'm certainly not going to keep the techniques of ad-blocking a secret from the masses for my own benefit; I explain the concept of ad blocking to everybody I meet. I tell them it's rewarding and easy to learn. Anybody who seeks further help, I take the time to describe to them the process. Of course, most poeple don't pursue this knowledge. This is directly linked to Karma (the non-digital kind which most of the shmucks here don't believe in), most people will simply not pursue higher knowledge until they have properly learned the lessons at whatever level they're currently at. And that's how it's supposed to be.
In any case, if one day the web becomes ruined because everybody has figured out how to block ads, (as if THAT'S at all likely), then fine. The Web's time will have come. The world will move on and adapt and be dynamic. And the 10% who are aware will quickly rise to the top of whatever new paradigm takes its place. Change is both healthy and ultimately, unavoidable. Stagnancy is death; luckily both are just illusions.
And worse, just like the virus you have been infected with, you are now part of the problem, pushing your corporate viewpoint like a damned religion.
Read some of the enlightened responses to your post and then make an attempt to undo the programming you have had shoved up your nose. It's your brain, after all. Try and own it for once; the only power you lose is that which you give away.
The Cell and PCS phone structure is a far superior system when it comes to bathing the populace in EM radiation.
The effects achieved by exposing people to close range low frequency CRT radiation, while slightly different, are more than made up for by the effects of the much higher frequency delivery system portable phones facilitate. Shorter exposure durations are required for the desired effects, and individuals who were left out of the 'computer revolution' are now included, not just through the popularity of hand set use, but also as a result of the proliferation of the microwave broadcast towers used throughout urbane areas.
Ask yourself what is achieved by this, (research is required), and who benefits. Hint: It has nothing to do with cancer.
2. Doesn't the heart of the Klingon Empire seem a little close to home at less than 4 days travel from the heart of Star'fleet'? At warp 4? (But then I am told the Universe is expanding. ..)
3. I thought humans hadn't left Earth yet. So what's with the guy with all the cargo ship experience? And WHAT cargo, exactly? I thought the Vulcans were restricting trade. No WAY would Earth not have ALL the cool tech within about 10 years if people were allowed to travel in cargo ships.
4. Leave the locker room scenes in the locker room, please. This is Trek. If I want to watch crap like that, I'll watch LEXX.
(Brr! Did I actually say that?)
5. For later ships in later years, I see no problem with non-perfect crew compliments. But for the VERY first crew representing Earth? No way. They would be super-trained, super-perfect, super-men. Just like the first crews of real astronauts. And all chosen at the last second? Yeah. Right. The audition lines of ultra trained super people would stretch WAAAY back. And where's the televised link to the ravenous public? Of course, this would make the show very boring, much like the real space program. So I forgive.
6. Why were none of the Russian space accomplishments, (First satelite. First manned orbit), included with that country music? Typical American revisionism-through-ignorance.
HOWEVER. . .
I DID like:
1. The letterboxing.
2. The planets and general effects FINALLY look right.
3. The shoot-em-up scene, while obviously Quake inspired, was nonetheless fun. One of the more engaging I've seen in film or television, in fact.
4. I LOVE the interior design of the ship. Inspired by elements of our current space craft and space stations. Bravo! Too bad the exterior has too much borrowed from ship designs which came centuries later. That's just stupid. Oh well. . .
5. None of the actors pissed me off. Wooden and uncertain, yes, but I can see the makings of a fine crew. Give them time.
6. Plenty of great raw material for future episodes. It doesn't look or feel anything like the cartoon TNG, DS9 and Voyager Trek universe. There's lots of room to grow!
7. I love the shuttle craft deployment. Looks great!
8. I like the new take on space medicine. Better health through dung ingestion!
9. The two idiot producers, (responsible for such atrocities as Generations and First Trek Episodes everywhere), rarely grace the world with their insipid writing. This means the REAL writers will soon get their teeth into this rich bed of possibilities. Plus, everybody already hates the show, which means the hot young execs will not want to be anywhere near such a potential bomb, which will allow the actual creative staff some room to do their jobs.
I have a good feeling about this show. I think in a year, Enterprise may well rank up there among the best sci-fi ever produced on TV.
I really hope the show, (which I will be happily viewing in about 30 minutes), doesn't use the same designs as we've been given glimpses of in the still photos which have been going around.
That space suit S.B. is wearing looks like it was designed, both in line and color, by the same people who brought us the Cardassian(sp?) aesthetic.
And that ship is stupid looking. It has design elements from every enterprise since Kirk's ship right up through the future. I was sort of hoping for a logical pre-future design. I thought the picture in the German TV guide was supposed to be a fake; but then I see promos with the same silly ship. Sigh.
Honestly. What's so wrong with firing the old design team and getting new people with fresh perspectives?
(Aside from the Machiavellian aspect of it all.) The design people are probably ACTRA.
Ah well, here's to hoping! In anther 25 minutes, we'll all get to see!
-Fantastic Lad --Trek is my only addiction. Really.
It's amazing that so many people, when faced with possibilities which fall outside the prescribed parameters of their punch card programmed realities that people automatically dis-believe, particularly when the possibilities are ugly ones.
I have no respect for day dreamers. And I have no respect for people who think it's MY job to prove anything. Try and wrap your head around this:
Your level of awareness is YOUR problem. It's YOUR JOB to educate yourselves. Not mine.
There's plenty of material out there regarding the Oil and Opium stories, but you have to take the time to look it up. It's certainly not going to be on the front page of USA Today.
Ignorance is forgivable when you've been victimized by propaganda, but it's NOT forgivable when somebody opens the door for you and you refuse to walk out of the cage.
Now go do some google searches, and don't come back until you've done your reading. Until then, you're dangerous; you're a part of the problem.
The above essay about the plight of the Afghani people has indeed been making the rounds. It has been effectively and quickly disseminated to the intelligencia of the West for a reason.
Aside from the fact that the facts are true, it's also effective propaganda, designed to get everybody on the same 'Page'.
That is, provide a second reason to prepare the public for a nice round of American Empire Building. On the 11th we were hit with the first reason, "They Knocked Down Our Towers! Bastards! They Must Be Stopped!"
And now the selling of the second reason, "Look at the Horrors Those Bastards Inflict Upon the Poor Afghanis! They Must Be Stopped!"
Kids. Listen up & Grow up. It's about Oil and Opium:
Fact #1: Afghanistan is key to exploiting a vast & untapped oil field under the region. Access to the oil, (one of the largest deposits ever found,) is difficult, but with Afghanistan and Pakistan put into line, there would be a U.S. controlled pipeline opened and led to the only year-round port in the entire region. Whoever controls this source can set the price of oil, and rest comfortably in the knowledge of their being self sufficient in terms of energy; something the U.S. has never been able to do in the past. That's why the Soviets wanted Afghanistan, and that's why the U.S. wants it now.
And if these are not reasons enough, consider this:
Fact #2: 70% of the Heroin consumed by the U.S. came from, (Until this last Febuary), you guessed it, Afghanistan. The I.M.F. and other global assessment sources estimate that $250 to $300 billion dollars from Heroin trade ends up on Wall Street. If you're feeling the pinch of recession, it's not because people are not buying enough twinkies and widgets. It's because the Taliban destroyed this year's bumper crop of opium.
In Febuary, the Taliban burned 3000 tons of opium as an all out attack on the U.S. economy. This stuff is happening. Just because the CNN reporters have been well programmed and herded, does not mean that this isn't a reality that the Government knows about and needs to address. A large portion of the U.S. economy is based on the Drug trade. But if the U.S. succeeds in taking Afghanistan and dealing Pakistan into U.S. control, then the path of the Heroin becomes much shorter and cheaper, (it will go instead through the same channels as the hoped for oil, rather than across Asia and Europe.)
The U.S. stands to make a LOT of money by taking Afghanistan. And even when people find out about some of this evil crap, they will be willing to look the other way because of the 'Recession' (which has also been engineered artificially; the Taliban were paid off for destroying the Heroin. True. The U.S. Government in May PUBLICLY rewarded the Taliban regime $43 million for 'taking a bite out of Drugs'!) Sneaky maneuver.
THIS is why the WTC drama was engineered/allowed to happen as a joint project between the Mossad and U.S. intel.
Stop sucking up the propaganda. There are NO noble reasons for taking Afghanistan. It's about Drugs and Oil and the Dream of Empire. And probably about a little genocide along the way; (you think that any able man with brown skin will not be labeled 'Taliban' by the well programmed eager beaver U.S. forces? Think again.)
Okay. Call me dumb, (settle down!), but I don't see any advertising on Google.
Do they mean that they're selling guaranteed high ranking search results to companies?
Like, if you look up "Ice Cream", does it mean that "Baskin & Robins" will come up first because they paid off the Google cops and not because their site ranks based on the normal criteria?
Hm.
I don't know how I feel about that. I know it costs money to run these things, but I always get nervous when the quality of information becomes subservient to corporate agendas.
We can do the instant messenger thing. All you have to do is promise to make copies and distribute them to at least three other people. More than three is obviously better. It's important to the health of our culture to make sure that modern mythology stays in the hands of the people. Especially since Lucas can no longer be trusted.
With a DVD copy of Phantom Mucus, it will be possible to edit your own version of the film into something GOOD. And DIGITAL! No cheesy VHS or Quicktime bullshit.
Plus with extra footage, and Dolby 5.1, it will be possible to do a BUNCH of cool edits. Like looping the crowd noise in order to get rid of the Howard Cosell "That's Gotta Hurt" English speaking alien announcer. And obliterating with finesse the final vestiges of 'Meta Chlorine' references.
The 'Phantom Edit' was a VERY good start. I was amazed at just how huge a difference it made, turning a wretched piece of 2 out of 10 puke film into a 7 out of 10 Star Wars entry. I'll be using my copy of the Phantom Edit as my master cut-list simply because of the excellent work of the Phantom Editor.
With that DVD in the hands of smart, tech savvy fans, it is very likely that Episode 1 will actually be rescued in a high-fidelity format.
mafiaboy attacked the department of defense and just got a wrist slap? wow.
Yeah, I know.
The fact that Mafia Boy was given a rational punishment which fit the crime rather than a knee jerk emotional nuke to the head, is a tribute to human sanity and nobility. I was amazed and actually even proud for a few minutes there to be human!
The whole problem is that people DO in fact trust the web as a source of accurate news. Dumb. The web is by it's very nature unreliable. Period. Anybody who gets upset about a little news hacking is a whiner.
It is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to double, triple and quadruple check and cross reference any information you find on-line. That's the power of the web; for the first time in history, it is actually possible to get something approaching the whole story. But you can't be lazy. I think hackers who send chills of 'insecure feelings' down the spines of the Norms in Suburbia are doing humanity a service by repeatedly demonstrating just how unreliable the web is. By showing that you CANNOT rely on single sources of information. Such repeated hacks might even raise the awareness of people to the point where they take some personal responsibility for the information which they allow into their heads.
But what is the response? (What will be the response?)
An almost unified cry of "Kill the Hackers".
Last week, 95% of the people on this very site were pissed off when Mafia Boy, (a junior highschool kid. i.e., a CHILD!), got a wrist slap rather than capital punishment.
Shocking! -Especially since most Slashdotters fit the hacker profile to a 'T'. It is utterly dumbfounding that people were so embittered towards a 15 year old who didn't do anything more than perpetrate but a little DOD attack and make life interesting for a bunch of tech support monkeys who get paid hourly anyway.
I was even modded down for the mere suggestion that a crime which doesn't hurt anybody, hasn't damaged or removed any property, and hasn't infringed on anybody's civil rights, should rightly be considered a mis-demeanor on the same level as graffiti or vandalism. But people want blood these days.
All I have to say is, "Be careful what you wish for."
Reasonable minds have been modded into dust recently. All I've been reading on/. the past few days is the ranting naivete, and uninformed blood lust of the lowest common denominator.
What blows me away is not how insultingly obvious the propaganda is, but how people continue to suck it up as though it were nectar. Remember how pissed off the media community was after Desert Storm closed its curtains? --Oliver Stone's 'J.F.K.' had just came out, demonstrating just how easy it is for the media to be duped into becoming a bunch of dancing marionettes for the military/intelligence community. I watched news anchors react to Stone's charges by crucifying interviewees over the next three weeks, as though by gutting a bunch of nothing stories, (Man Bites Dog), they could somehow recapture some of the integrity news gathering had back in the sixties and seventies. -Not that there was much even then, but at least reporters had to be threatened, bribed and carefully manipulated to keep them quiet. Today, news hounds come out of the kennel with Adobe Brain Damage 4.1 (tm) and Microsoft Media Corruptor 6.2 (tm) already installed.
My advice: You only need your television on 5 minutes each day to stay 'informed.' If the world stage is ready for you to watch the next act in this hideous performance, I guarantee you won't be able to shut it out.
-Fantastic Lad
That the intelligence community wouldn't have been aware of the terrorist plan weeks or months ago is frankly, unbelievable. Ask yourself: Who profits five years from now, and how?
This story remindes me of the days back when I was a kid watching, "What Will They Think of Next?" and thinking, "Wow! The future is going to be a clean, efficient and good spirited place to live! I can't wait to get there!"
In my cynical older years when I see so much corruption and bullshit around me, it is really, really nice to read about some of the benevolent 'Future-perfect' ideas from my childhood actually being implemented.
Get with it. Liking computers doesn't absolve you from punishment for violating the rights of others.
Violating the rights of others? Where on Earth do you get that nonsense? How were your rights violated? --By temporarily taking down a public address system he 'violated' the 'right' of business to make money for an afternoon? Your right to use Yahoo's crap search engine? Get real.
The kid was fifteen. Nobody got hurt, he didn't destroy anything, and he certainly didn't violate anybody's civil rights.
All he did was make a bunch of big companies look like the idiots that they are and make people feel insecure in the use of a technology nobody should feel secure about in the first place. THAT is why everybody was so upset. He said the emperor had no clothes.
And frankly, I think he's very, very lucky the law didn't do something truly awful. Are you happy about the 'hackers' who have been dissapeared to jail for years without trial, or were otherwise penalized beyond reason for doing virtually nothing wrong? Would it make you happy to see that happen to this kid?
Yeah, Mafiaboy was an immature kid who fucked up major. Like any such kid who gets in over his or her head at a young age. Like the two 9 year olds who started the 'Tyre Fire' in Canada a decade ago. Mafiaboy was what? 15? I think the sentence was remarkably fair.
I don't want to hear anybody aping at the 'ridiculously light' sentence. I'm just gald the legal system worked the way it was supposed to. If people laugh too hard, then maybe they will start putting 15 year olds away for 10 and 20 years for performing, basically, nothing crimes which are on par with vandalism.
People couldn't access their email for a day and visit a bunch of so-so websites that only money mongers really care about. Nobody got hurt, and it showed that the web is what it is. --A geek project held together by duct tape, infused with a ton of money, and taken over by the popular kids and their big companies.
-Fantastic Lad
Sorry, but you're way behind the game.
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Your idea is certainly clever and genuinly intended, but I am willing to bet that the secret service people know exactly who and what and where. I think there is even a very strong possibility that they knew days, if not weeks before the attack.
In any case, the choreography currently unfolding is a piece of propagantic, manipulative garbage capitalizing on the deaths of thousands in order to install the first pieces of a world government. And that's not the sick part. The truly sick part is that the world government is already there and has been for years. This whole charade is just a giant P.R. maneuver/power grab.
Five years from now, you'll have many fewer rights, the poor & wretched of the world will be much poorer and much more wretched, and the power elite will be even better situated thanks to this latest chapter in their unfolding bullshit parade.
My main problem with arming the population is that many of the people who are most likely to carry handguns are also morons who say things like, "Let's let the dogs of war loose on Afghanistan, nuclear style," and really mean it. (You can find that quote right here on/., not even on this story thread but on something completely unrelated.)
I know for a fact that if I'd been armed in highschool that I would have murdered one person over a stupid piece of nothing which seemed like a great deal more to my eighteen year old head space at the time.
If somebody could figure out how to only give fire power to wise, cool-headed people with no personal baggage or ego problems, then I'd be all for it. As it stands, I walk through the gay district in my city on the way to work each day, and one time some I was coming home late and some kid in a car lobbed an egg at me and caught me in the back of the head. All I could think seconds after was, "Jeezuz. That could have been a bullet." If I lived in a southern U.S. state rather than in a relatively crime free city in Canada, I might not have been thinking anything seconds afterwards at all.
Guns aren't evil, and I'd certainly like to have one or two for when my government tries to cart me off to a concentration camp for being too mouthy. But to be perfectly honest, I don't even trust myself entirely. And I certainly don't trust anybody who deludes themselves into believing that they are safe and cool and beyond error or the possibility of debilitating emotional outburst. And while one argument is that this very fear would enforce a level of politeness in society, I disagree with the notion. I'd rather live in a city where I don't have a constant tingle of fear in the back of my mind, where I can speak my mind without constantly having to worry about being shot by some low-ego wrestling fan with a legally carried handgun and something to prove.
-Fantastic Lad
A Question for you, sir. . .
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Thanks for your comments. I spend a great deal of time painfully aware of just how unreliable the state of news coverage is in the West. The level of propaganda here is sickening, and worse, the level of naivete in regard to it.
But keep in mind that Israel is probably just as bad. -This seems clear given the tone of your message, where you spend significant energy vilifying the Palestinians. People are people, and for the most part, we all have the same basic set of emotions and reactions to the same stimuli, with the only differences being linked primarily to the level of cultural and propagandic programming we have undergone. It seems that both sides in Israel have been set up to perpetuate pain and suffering.
Anyway. . . From the perspective of one who has been there, what is the real situation with the native Arab Israeli population? In the West, we are lead to believe that there is a significant level of unfairness and hatred felt by Jews toward this portion the Israeli population. Almost an apartheid situation. What is the situation from where you stand?
Is it just me, or does it seem implausible that the U.S. secret services would not be aware of such an attack days or weeks before it happened? I mean, Tom Clancy movies and Echelon aside, I have difficulty buying that they'd be so utterly in the dark or unable to stop an action like this far in advance. But it could be that this is just my corruption meter dinging again.
Still. . .
Look at the recent media content. We've got a whole load (like five) new spy drama T.V. shows coming out this fall. (Which is almost exactly 5 more than any season of the past decade has come out with.) And also, that chest thumping, 'Pearl Harbor' movie this summer just happened to be there in time to help set the mental state of the American public. If that painfully kitsch, "America Under Attack" logo banner used by CNN was prepared months or years ago, (as it surely was in preparation for this day which everybody knew was coming), then what kind of planning do you think has been done by the secret service, military and various secret government agencies?
Notice how the plane crashed into a wing of the Pentagon which had been closed for renovation.
--Or how the recession being sold to the public over the last few weeks has just been kicked into VERY high gear. (Prime conditions to sell a start-up of the ultra profitable American war machine.)
Or that the only foriegn country being bandied about in the media just happens to be land-locked by Iran, India, Russia, and Pakistan, thus forcing an issue which might otherwise have be dealt with by a sea assult had any other country been given the spotlight. (Two countries for the price of one!)
If this whole thing wasn't choreographed from the get go, (a sick but, I think entirely plausible notion, far easier to accomplish than the uninitiated might suspect. Look up 'Greenbaum Lecture' and related.), --Sheesh! Even a clunky theory like, "It was Isreal. If they engineered an Arab attack, then they can gurantee the swift destruction of at least on aggressor nation," has its appeal. But at the VERY least, it seems plausible that there are agencies who have been waiting in the wings for just such a ball as this WTC thing to get past the national security goal posts. -Agencies which come armed with whole six course meals of propaganda and manipulation plans so that when the music stops, the people they want will get the choice seating on the new world stage. And you can bet that the poor & wretched will get more numerous and more wretched as a result. And the privileges of the power elite will increase.
You watch.
Anyway, the current set of working theories run as follows:
-Nato Article 5 invoked.
-U.S. will go to other, non-U.S. friendly countries who have in the past have harbored terrorists, and ask for public and direct help in eradicating cell groups of whatever terrorist organizations reside in the given countries. They will either get it, or they will march in and take it. In either case, the result will likely be instituted systems and personel forced into the current bureaucracies of non-U.S. friendly nations, which will more than likely become permanent fixtures, enforced by the U.N. and NATO.
-All NATO countries will agree that terrorism must be battled unilaterally, meaning the global curtailing of human rights and freedoms. Information networks even more drastic than Echelon will likely be implemented, (or revealed).
I wonder how long it will be before the concentration camps are re-kindled. Luckily, the Arians from Outer Space Nazi crap, (yes, according to the old propaganda, Arians actually came from outer space), does not currently have an equivalent in today's U.S. And I don't think that basic racism as it is being programmed will be enough to send things to WWII levels of brutality once again. But something tells me that this is where we are headed. And sooner than we might like to think. . . We'll have to see what the powers that be come up with. This whole airplane terrorist thing isn't a bad start, though.
In any case, while I hate and despise the concept of murder in any form, I must say that part of me completely 'got' the terrorist display, the WTC being pretty much ground zero of corporate, greed-based evil in the world. America has killed many thousands of innocents in other parts of the world with glib righteousness. Given this, part of me even thought that there was an almost noble quality about this week's terrorist act. --Let's be honest; the attack could EASILY have been far more destructive and far less discriminating. Biological. . . Nuclear. . . What happened was almost neighborly by comparison to what could have been. Like knocking over your mailbox to make a statement rather than throwing a burning bottle through your window.
I don't think anybody thought that the WTC would actually collapse. It was common knowledge that the structures were designed to withstand such collisions with aircraft, which they did admirably. It was the melting superstructure due to so much aircraft fuel which caused the collapse. Of course, this might just have been more clever scripting. (Ding. Ding. Pardon my corruption meter.)
Anyway, before anybody sets about lynching me, please recall that, 'Fight Club,' is a popular film around/. and is so for a reason. Anybody who tells me I am wicked for thinking these things is a damned hypocrite.
Enjoy your freedoms while they last, and enjoy the clever scripting and of the upcoming CNN spectacular. It was written with all of us in mind. . .
What? Like Clerks? Mallrats? All the fecal humour in Dogma? All his movies are stuffed full of sex humour and gross out jokes.
You haven't seen a Kevin Smith flick yet, have you? That's okay. He was making fun of you the most.
Yes, I've seen a Kevin Smith film; Have you? While not stoned?
I KNOW his other films used base humor. But it WORKED in those films. It wasn't the sum total of their substance. It enriched something greater. But in Jay & Silent Bob, it seemed to be the sole point.
As well. . . All his other films could have taken place in the real world, (with the exception of those muppet style swinging from the rafters antics in Mall Rats). --His first four films were like stage productions of real life, with excellent observations. This film had far too much dumb shit, cheapening the effect of the already non-existent observations.
Oooh. Hollywood is artificial? Who the fuck doesn't know that?
Oooh. The Internet is the internet? Again, who cares?
Dogma was about religion. Chasing Amy had plenty of new things to say about relationships. Clerks had a lot to say about life in Teenage Wasteland. Mall Rats wasn't ground breaking, and it had the dumbest shit of the first four films, but it at least at least didn't break the rules! --Silent Bob thought he used the Force. He wasn't actually USING the Force. One is clever. The other is stupid.
A film which ignores the physical & logical rules of our reality cannot with any integrity contain social and cultural commentary from this reality either.
Now don't go thinking that I'm some stick up the ass film critic type. When I say 'social and cultural commentary', I mean the same scenes everybody was quoting to each other after they saw and loved the earlier films. This film had NOTHING memorable about it, except perhaps for the very end and the 'What the fuck is the Internet' line.
Now, go smoke yourself. And learn the new Slashcode already. Your paragraph spaces are too big.
The choreographed pace at which they're releasing this 'new' tech is such a stupid joke.
Read a few headlines down, (or up), where they're talking about successes in neuron/computer engineering techniques.
Oh, goody.
You do realize the League of Evil will require people to plug their brains in directly at some point? And the morons who suck up the Cyberpunk daydream where this is actually something desirable, (what? There are idiots like that present on Slashdot? Oh my!), are being used to buffer and in fact sell this horror to the world?
Yep. Sell it to the tech-heads, and you shape the world. The tech-heads have almost all the social muscle these days and not even they seem to fully realize it.
Why do you think it's so miserable to be alive if you live life as you have all been told? That is, working 8:00 to 6:00 jobs. Sucking up social programming which serves to render impotent relationships, one of the most powerful forces of stability and good energy; now perverted into over-sexed, short term, disappointing & miserable transactions. Thanks to James Cameron, the perfect boyfriend must now die of hypothermia in the North Atlantic, for crying out loud!
We've been programmed to eat unhealthy food with too many chemicals. Jeezus! Bread with everything. (There's almost no worse food combo out there!) Leading to poor health and further misery.
Enter the tech-heads.
Why do you think there have been so many episodes of Star Trek made with Holodeck fantasies? Do you think the Forces of Evil would allow such a virtuous show as Star Trek to exist if it wasn't the carrier for some toxin?
Grr.
Is nobody tuned into the same station as me? Am I the only one who can see this shit? Is nobody else scared out of their freeking minds? (Well, actually I'm not really all that scared; I'd describe my reaction as being something more akin to a fascination on an anthropological level. Watching exactly how the end of the world arrives is possibly the most amazing thing I'll ever see.)
Still, I can't believe that people are going to actually line up to be the first to plug their brains into the Matrix. Man! Now that is a sell job!
I mean, isn't face recognition in Borders Books already creepy enough? No! People want Microsoft and Echelon and **AMERICA** in their heads at night when they sleep! Digitize awareness! With everybody plugged into 'Friends' and 'Ally-McBeal,' nobody will even notice, much less rebel when the sky falls.
Part of me almost hopes that somebody does drop a vial by accident and wipes out 5.9 billion people on this globe. I'd almost rather take my chances at being one of the lucky survivors than continue watching this bullshit parade and the naivete of all the silly viewers.
-Fantastic Lad. The Craziest Fuck In ANY Room!
P.S. Most artists and media producers don't even realize where their ideas come from. Population control doesn't happen on a surface level anymore. Hasn't for a long, long time.
I NEVER Troll.
Honestly; I am willing to bet that if you have done any research at all into the subject, (which I strongly doubt), that it consists of listening to the advertising and 'studies' funded by the telecommunications industry and its affiliates in the hopes that they will brush away any concerns you may have nagging in the back of your mind. Cuz, Cell phones are just too 'cool' for there to be any danger. Denial is a sweet drug indeed.
Please. Use what's left of your mind for a second to consider the following: The human brain, body and nervous system are electrochemical in nature. This is why EEG machines work. It is why stun guns work. To think that bathing the body in electromagnetic radiation has NO effect whatsoever is entirely naive.
So what are the effects?
Do the damned research. The multi-billion dollar telecommunications industry certainly isn't going to tell you. (The industry which has fingers in media and everywhere else!) All the information is out there, and it is not quack science. The research has been performed by many private labs. --And labs run by foriegn governments. Look at the Polish studies from the sixties to present. Look at the Swedish studies. (Though theirs have been tamed; they only admit to significantly higher levels of miscarriages in female CRT users.) Heck, look at the American studies during the same time period. Look up, "Alan Frey", a fellow funded by the U.S. military no less, to work on EM weapons and espionage devices from the sixties to present. Some of his work is on public record, and it is extremely revealing. There are dozens upon dozens of examples, but you will not see any of them on the "Learning" Channel. (The Indoctrination Station).
--There are also plenty of labs funded by telecommunications and military interests who will say different. The U.S. Air Force openly funds a lab which has specifically gone to the effort of discounting ALL claims made by private science groups which have come forth with troublesome findings regarding EM radiation. Massive P.R. bullshit. And why the heck does the military care? And who is funding the military? --Like killing flies with cannon.
Honestly.
This stuff is out there in verifiable form for those who aren't scared to dig. Go through the U.S. Air Force websites. Go through Google. Just do the damn research for crying out loud! --Do it before making any more asinine comments and generally displaying the embarrassing levels to which you have been programmed by those agencies who are clearly a lot smarter than you think you are.
Or don't.
You can always go back to your Playstation or tune into the soothing voice of CNN. Your level of awareness is entirely up to you.
-Fantastic Lad Oh, please! Mod me down again! Prove to me the fear you have of open discussion regarding 'taboo' subjects. Damned children.
I didn't ask Slashdot to be freely available on my web browser. I come here because it's a neat site which started off as a hobby/fan based effort and which I visit in the same spirit.
If it can't keep going on that kind of steam, then too bad. The world won't end without Slashdot. There will always be another place to read dumb articles and dance in the mosh pit of pseudo-informed public opinion. There have been and always will be soap boxes aplenty.
In any case, the net is SUPPOSED to be adaptive and dynamic.
But seriously, and this may sound Machiavellian, but if you are smart and savvy, you will ALWAYS be able to surf for free, both on-line and through life in general. Is this wrong? Is it leeching? You bet it is! That's the state of things in this reality. Every time you sit down to eat, something or several somethings have died for your consumption. The JOB of each and every spirit is to figure out how to exist in this reality with ease, grace and as much benevolence as possible.
Part of this learning process requires that you spend a miserable amount of time in the trenches learning from your mistakes. If 90% of the Web-faring populace makes the Web free and easy for the remaining 10%, and would do so regardless of my or anybody else's actions, then it would not benefit anybody to not take advantage of their behavior.
Where Greed DOES become a force in the negative, is when you actively withhold information. I'm certainly not going to keep the techniques of ad-blocking a secret from the masses for my own benefit; I explain the concept of ad blocking to everybody I meet. I tell them it's rewarding and easy to learn. Anybody who seeks further help, I take the time to describe to them the process. Of course, most poeple don't pursue this knowledge. This is directly linked to Karma (the non-digital kind which most of the shmucks here don't believe in), most people will simply not pursue higher knowledge until they have properly learned the lessons at whatever level they're currently at. And that's how it's supposed to be.
In any case, if one day the web becomes ruined because everybody has figured out how to block ads, (as if THAT'S at all likely), then fine. The Web's time will have come. The world will move on and adapt and be dynamic. And the 10% who are aware will quickly rise to the top of whatever new paradigm takes its place. Change is both healthy and ultimately, unavoidable. Stagnancy is death; luckily both are just illusions.
Everything is just a lesson in the end.
-Fantastic Lad
And worse, just like the virus you have been infected with, you are now part of the problem, pushing your corporate viewpoint like a damned religion.
Read some of the enlightened responses to your post and then make an attempt to undo the programming you have had shoved up your nose. It's your brain, after all. Try and own it for once; the only power you lose is that which you give away.
-Fantastic Lad
The effects achieved by exposing people to close range low frequency CRT radiation, while slightly different, are more than made up for by the effects of the much higher frequency delivery system portable phones facilitate. Shorter exposure durations are required for the desired effects, and individuals who were left out of the 'computer revolution' are now included, not just through the popularity of hand set use, but also as a result of the proliferation of the microwave broadcast towers used throughout urbane areas.
Ask yourself what is achieved by this, (research is required), and who benefits. Hint: It has nothing to do with cancer.
-Fantastic Lad
2. Doesn't the heart of the Klingon Empire seem a little close to home at less than 4 days travel from the heart of Star'fleet'? At warp 4? (But then I am told the Universe is expanding. .
3. I thought humans hadn't left Earth yet. So what's with the guy with all the cargo ship experience? And WHAT cargo, exactly? I thought the Vulcans were restricting trade. No WAY would Earth not have ALL the cool tech within about 10 years if people were allowed to travel in cargo ships.
4. Leave the locker room scenes in the locker room, please. This is Trek. If I want to watch crap like that, I'll watch LEXX.
(Brr! Did I actually say that?)
5. For later ships in later years, I see no problem with non-perfect crew compliments. But for the VERY first crew representing Earth? No way. They would be super-trained, super-perfect, super-men. Just like the first crews of real astronauts. And all chosen at the last second? Yeah. Right. The audition lines of ultra trained super people would stretch WAAAY back. And where's the televised link to the ravenous public? Of course, this would make the show very boring, much like the real space program. So I forgive.
6. Why were none of the Russian space accomplishments, (First satelite. First manned orbit), included with that country music? Typical American revisionism-through-ignorance.
HOWEVER. . .
I DID like:
1. The letterboxing.
2. The planets and general effects FINALLY look right.
3. The shoot-em-up scene, while obviously Quake inspired, was nonetheless fun. One of the more engaging I've seen in film or television, in fact.
4. I LOVE the interior design of the ship. Inspired by elements of our current space craft and space stations. Bravo! Too bad the exterior has too much borrowed from ship designs which came centuries later. That's just stupid. Oh well. . .
5. None of the actors pissed me off. Wooden and uncertain, yes, but I can see the makings of a fine crew. Give them time.
6. Plenty of great raw material for future episodes. It doesn't look or feel anything like the cartoon TNG, DS9 and Voyager Trek universe. There's lots of room to grow!
7. I love the shuttle craft deployment. Looks great!
8. I like the new take on space medicine. Better health through dung ingestion!
9. The two idiot producers, (responsible for such atrocities as Generations and First Trek Episodes everywhere), rarely grace the world with their insipid writing. This means the REAL writers will soon get their teeth into this rich bed of possibilities. Plus, everybody already hates the show, which means the hot young execs will not want to be anywhere near such a potential bomb, which will allow the actual creative staff some room to do their jobs.
I have a good feeling about this show. I think in a year, Enterprise may well rank up there among the best sci-fi ever produced on TV.
Here's to hoping!
-Fantastic Lad
That space suit S.B. is wearing looks like it was designed, both in line and color, by the same people who brought us the Cardassian(sp?) aesthetic.
And that ship is stupid looking. It has design elements from every enterprise since Kirk's ship right up through the future. I was sort of hoping for a logical pre-future design. I thought the picture in the German TV guide was supposed to be a fake; but then I see promos with the same silly ship. Sigh.
Honestly. What's so wrong with firing the old design team and getting new people with fresh perspectives?
(Aside from the Machiavellian aspect of it all.) The design people are probably ACTRA.
Ah well, here's to hoping! In anther 25 minutes, we'll all get to see!
-Fantastic Lad --Trek is my only addiction. Really.
I have no respect for day dreamers. And I have no respect for people who think it's MY job to prove anything. Try and wrap your head around this:
Your level of awareness is YOUR problem. It's YOUR JOB to educate yourselves. Not mine.
There's plenty of material out there regarding the Oil and Opium stories, but you have to take the time to look it up. It's certainly not going to be on the front page of USA Today.
Ignorance is forgivable when you've been victimized by propaganda, but it's NOT forgivable when somebody opens the door for you and you refuse to walk out of the cage.
Now go do some google searches, and don't come back until you've done your reading. Until then, you're dangerous; you're a part of the problem.
-Fantastic Lad
Aside from the fact that the facts are true, it's also effective propaganda, designed to get everybody on the same 'Page'.
That is, provide a second reason to prepare the public for a nice round of American Empire Building. On the 11th we were hit with the first reason, "They Knocked Down Our Towers! Bastards! They Must Be Stopped!"
And now the selling of the second reason, "Look at the Horrors Those Bastards Inflict Upon the Poor Afghanis! They Must Be Stopped!"
Kids. Listen up & Grow up. It's about Oil and Opium:
Fact #1: Afghanistan is key to exploiting a vast & untapped oil field under the region. Access to the oil, (one of the largest deposits ever found,) is difficult, but with Afghanistan and Pakistan put into line, there would be a U.S. controlled pipeline opened and led to the only year-round port in the entire region. Whoever controls this source can set the price of oil, and rest comfortably in the knowledge of their being self sufficient in terms of energy; something the U.S. has never been able to do in the past. That's why the Soviets wanted Afghanistan, and that's why the U.S. wants it now.
And if these are not reasons enough, consider this:
Fact #2: 70% of the Heroin consumed by the U.S. came from, (Until this last Febuary), you guessed it, Afghanistan. The I.M.F. and other global assessment sources estimate that $250 to $300 billion dollars from Heroin trade ends up on Wall Street. If you're feeling the pinch of recession, it's not because people are not buying enough twinkies and widgets. It's because the Taliban destroyed this year's bumper crop of opium.
In Febuary, the Taliban burned 3000 tons of opium as an all out attack on the U.S. economy. This stuff is happening. Just because the CNN reporters have been well programmed and herded, does not mean that this isn't a reality that the Government knows about and needs to address. A large portion of the U.S. economy is based on the Drug trade. But if the U.S. succeeds in taking Afghanistan and dealing Pakistan into U.S. control, then the path of the Heroin becomes much shorter and cheaper, (it will go instead through the same channels as the hoped for oil, rather than across Asia and Europe.)
The U.S. stands to make a LOT of money by taking Afghanistan. And even when people find out about some of this evil crap, they will be willing to look the other way because of the 'Recession' (which has also been engineered artificially; the Taliban were paid off for destroying the Heroin. True. The U.S. Government in May PUBLICLY rewarded the Taliban regime $43 million for 'taking a bite out of Drugs'!) Sneaky maneuver.
THIS is why the WTC drama was engineered/allowed to happen as a joint project between the Mossad and U.S. intel.
Stop sucking up the propaganda. There are NO noble reasons for taking Afghanistan. It's about Drugs and Oil and the Dream of Empire. And probably about a little genocide along the way; (you think that any able man with brown skin will not be labeled 'Taliban' by the well programmed eager beaver U.S. forces? Think again.)
-Fantastic Lad.
Do they mean that they're selling guaranteed high ranking search results to companies?
Like, if you look up "Ice Cream", does it mean that "Baskin & Robins" will come up first because they paid off the Google cops and not because their site ranks based on the normal criteria?
Hm.
I don't know how I feel about that. I know it costs money to run these things, but I always get nervous when the quality of information becomes subservient to corporate agendas.
Fear the IPO.
-Fantastic Lad.
Yobthra@yahoo.ca
We can do the instant messenger thing. All you have to do is promise to make copies and distribute them to at least three other people. More than three is obviously better. It's important to the health of our culture to make sure that modern mythology stays in the hands of the people. Especially since Lucas can no longer be trusted.
-Fantastic Lad --Greed is evil.
Plus with extra footage, and Dolby 5.1, it will be possible to do a BUNCH of cool edits. Like looping the crowd noise in order to get rid of the Howard Cosell "That's Gotta Hurt" English speaking alien announcer. And obliterating with finesse the final vestiges of 'Meta Chlorine' references.
The 'Phantom Edit' was a VERY good start. I was amazed at just how huge a difference it made, turning a wretched piece of 2 out of 10 puke film into a 7 out of 10 Star Wars entry. I'll be using my copy of the Phantom Edit as my master cut-list simply because of the excellent work of the Phantom Editor.
With that DVD in the hands of smart, tech savvy fans, it is very likely that Episode 1 will actually be rescued in a high-fidelity format.
-Fantastic Lad
Yeah, I know.
The fact that Mafia Boy was given a rational punishment which fit the crime rather than a knee jerk emotional nuke to the head, is a tribute to human sanity and nobility. I was amazed and actually even proud for a few minutes there to be human!
-Fantastic Lad
This is hilarious!
The whole problem is that people DO in fact trust the web as a source of accurate news. Dumb. The web is by it's very nature unreliable. Period. Anybody who gets upset about a little news hacking is a whiner.
It is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to double, triple and quadruple check and cross reference any information you find on-line. That's the power of the web; for the first time in history, it is actually possible to get something approaching the whole story. But you can't be lazy. I think hackers who send chills of 'insecure feelings' down the spines of the Norms in Suburbia are doing humanity a service by repeatedly demonstrating just how unreliable the web is. By showing that you CANNOT rely on single sources of information. Such repeated hacks might even raise the awareness of people to the point where they take some personal responsibility for the information which they allow into their heads.
But what is the response? (What will be the response?)
An almost unified cry of "Kill the Hackers".
Last week, 95% of the people on this very site were pissed off when Mafia Boy, (a junior highschool kid. i.e., a CHILD!), got a wrist slap rather than capital punishment.
Shocking! -Especially since most Slashdotters fit the hacker profile to a 'T'. It is utterly dumbfounding that people were so embittered towards a 15 year old who didn't do anything more than perpetrate but a little DOD attack and make life interesting for a bunch of tech support monkeys who get paid hourly anyway.
I was even modded down for the mere suggestion that a crime which doesn't hurt anybody, hasn't damaged or removed any property, and hasn't infringed on anybody's civil rights, should rightly be considered a mis-demeanor on the same level as graffiti or vandalism. But people want blood these days.
All I have to say is, "Be careful what you wish for."
-Fantastic Lad
Reasonable minds have been modded into dust recently. All I've been reading on
What blows me away is not how insultingly obvious the propaganda is, but how people continue to suck it up as though it were nectar. Remember how pissed off the media community was after Desert Storm closed its curtains? --Oliver Stone's 'J.F.K.' had just came out, demonstrating just how easy it is for the media to be duped into becoming a bunch of dancing marionettes for the military/intelligence community. I watched news anchors react to Stone's charges by crucifying interviewees over the next three weeks, as though by gutting a bunch of nothing stories, (Man Bites Dog), they could somehow recapture some of the integrity news gathering had back in the sixties and seventies. -Not that there was much even then, but at least reporters had to be threatened, bribed and carefully manipulated to keep them quiet. Today, news hounds come out of the kennel with Adobe Brain Damage 4.1 (tm) and Microsoft Media Corruptor 6.2 (tm) already installed.
My advice: You only need your television on 5 minutes each day to stay 'informed.' If the world stage is ready for you to watch the next act in this hideous performance, I guarantee you won't be able to shut it out.
-Fantastic Lad
That the intelligence community wouldn't have been aware of the terrorist plan weeks or months ago is frankly, unbelievable. Ask yourself: Who profits five years from now, and how?
This story remindes me of the days back when I was a kid watching, "What Will They Think of Next?" and thinking, "Wow! The future is going to be a clean, efficient and good spirited place to live! I can't wait to get there!"
In my cynical older years when I see so much corruption and bullshit around me, it is really, really nice to read about some of the benevolent 'Future-perfect' ideas from my childhood actually being implemented.
-Fantastic Lad
Violating the rights of others? Where on Earth do you get that nonsense? How were your rights violated? --By temporarily taking down a public address system he 'violated' the 'right' of business to make money for an afternoon? Your right to use Yahoo's crap search engine? Get real.
The kid was fifteen. Nobody got hurt, he didn't destroy anything, and he certainly didn't violate anybody's civil rights.
All he did was make a bunch of big companies look like the idiots that they are and make people feel insecure in the use of a technology nobody should feel secure about in the first place. THAT is why everybody was so upset. He said the emperor had no clothes.
And frankly, I think he's very, very lucky the law didn't do something truly awful. Are you happy about the 'hackers' who have been dissapeared to jail for years without trial, or were otherwise penalized beyond reason for doing virtually nothing wrong? Would it make you happy to see that happen to this kid?
I barely understand people these days.
-Fantastic Lad
I don't want to hear anybody aping at the 'ridiculously light' sentence. I'm just gald the legal system worked the way it was supposed to. If people laugh too hard, then maybe they will start putting 15 year olds away for 10 and 20 years for performing, basically, nothing crimes which are on par with vandalism.
People couldn't access their email for a day and visit a bunch of so-so websites that only money mongers really care about. Nobody got hurt, and it showed that the web is what it is. --A geek project held together by duct tape, infused with a ton of money, and taken over by the popular kids and their big companies.
-Fantastic Lad
In any case, the choreography currently unfolding is a piece of propagantic, manipulative garbage capitalizing on the deaths of thousands in order to install the first pieces of a world government. And that's not the sick part. The truly sick part is that the world government is already there and has been for years. This whole charade is just a giant P.R. maneuver/power grab.
Five years from now, you'll have many fewer rights, the poor & wretched of the world will be much poorer and much more wretched, and the power elite will be even better situated thanks to this latest chapter in their unfolding bullshit parade.
Watch and learn.
-Fantastic Lad
I know for a fact that if I'd been armed in highschool that I would have murdered one person over a stupid piece of nothing which seemed like a great deal more to my eighteen year old head space at the time.
If somebody could figure out how to only give fire power to wise, cool-headed people with no personal baggage or ego problems, then I'd be all for it. As it stands, I walk through the gay district in my city on the way to work each day, and one time some I was coming home late and some kid in a car lobbed an egg at me and caught me in the back of the head. All I could think seconds after was, "Jeezuz. That could have been a bullet." If I lived in a southern U.S. state rather than in a relatively crime free city in Canada, I might not have been thinking anything seconds afterwards at all.
Guns aren't evil, and I'd certainly like to have one or two for when my government tries to cart me off to a concentration camp for being too mouthy. But to be perfectly honest, I don't even trust myself entirely. And I certainly don't trust anybody who deludes themselves into believing that they are safe and cool and beyond error or the possibility of debilitating emotional outburst. And while one argument is that this very fear would enforce a level of politeness in society, I disagree with the notion. I'd rather live in a city where I don't have a constant tingle of fear in the back of my mind, where I can speak my mind without constantly having to worry about being shot by some low-ego wrestling fan with a legally carried handgun and something to prove.
-Fantastic Lad
But keep in mind that Israel is probably just as bad. -This seems clear given the tone of your message, where you spend significant energy vilifying the Palestinians. People are people, and for the most part, we all have the same basic set of emotions and reactions to the same stimuli, with the only differences being linked primarily to the level of cultural and propagandic programming we have undergone. It seems that both sides in Israel have been set up to perpetuate pain and suffering.
Anyway. . . From the perspective of one who has been there, what is the real situation with the native Arab Israeli population? In the West, we are lead to believe that there is a significant level of unfairness and hatred felt by Jews toward this portion the Israeli population. Almost an apartheid situation. What is the situation from where you stand?
Thanks.
-Fantastic Lad
Still. . .
Look at the recent media content. We've got a whole load (like five) new spy drama T.V. shows coming out this fall. (Which is almost exactly 5 more than any season of the past decade has come out with.) And also, that chest thumping, 'Pearl Harbor' movie this summer just happened to be there in time to help set the mental state of the American public. If that painfully kitsch, "America Under Attack" logo banner used by CNN was prepared months or years ago, (as it surely was in preparation for this day which everybody knew was coming), then what kind of planning do you think has been done by the secret service, military and various secret government agencies?
Notice how the plane crashed into a wing of the Pentagon which had been closed for renovation.
--Or how the recession being sold to the public over the last few weeks has just been kicked into VERY high gear. (Prime conditions to sell a start-up of the ultra profitable American war machine.)
Or that the only foriegn country being bandied about in the media just happens to be land-locked by Iran, India, Russia, and Pakistan, thus forcing an issue which might otherwise have be dealt with by a sea assult had any other country been given the spotlight. (Two countries for the price of one!)
If this whole thing wasn't choreographed from the get go, (a sick but, I think entirely plausible notion, far easier to accomplish than the uninitiated might suspect. Look up 'Greenbaum Lecture' and related.), --Sheesh! Even a clunky theory like, "It was Isreal. If they engineered an Arab attack, then they can gurantee the swift destruction of at least on aggressor nation," has its appeal. But at the VERY least, it seems plausible that there are agencies who have been waiting in the wings for just such a ball as this WTC thing to get past the national security goal posts. -Agencies which come armed with whole six course meals of propaganda and manipulation plans so that when the music stops, the people they want will get the choice seating on the new world stage. And you can bet that the poor & wretched will get more numerous and more wretched as a result. And the privileges of the power elite will increase.
You watch.
Anyway, the current set of working theories run as follows:
-Nato Article 5 invoked.
-U.S. will go to other, non-U.S. friendly countries who have in the past have harbored terrorists, and ask for public and direct help in eradicating cell groups of whatever terrorist organizations reside in the given countries. They will either get it, or they will march in and take it. In either case, the result will likely be instituted systems and personel forced into the current bureaucracies of non-U.S. friendly nations, which will more than likely become permanent fixtures, enforced by the U.N. and NATO.
-All NATO countries will agree that terrorism must be battled unilaterally, meaning the global curtailing of human rights and freedoms. Information networks even more drastic than Echelon will likely be implemented, (or revealed).
I wonder how long it will be before the concentration camps are re-kindled. Luckily, the Arians from Outer Space Nazi crap, (yes, according to the old propaganda, Arians actually came from outer space), does not currently have an equivalent in today's U.S. And I don't think that basic racism as it is being programmed will be enough to send things to WWII levels of brutality once again. But something tells me that this is where we are headed. And sooner than we might like to think. . . We'll have to see what the powers that be come up with. This whole airplane terrorist thing isn't a bad start, though.
In any case, while I hate and despise the concept of murder in any form, I must say that part of me completely 'got' the terrorist display, the WTC being pretty much ground zero of corporate, greed-based evil in the world. America has killed many thousands of innocents in other parts of the world with glib righteousness. Given this, part of me even thought that there was an almost noble quality about this week's terrorist act. --Let's be honest; the attack could EASILY have been far more destructive and far less discriminating. Biological. . . Nuclear. . . What happened was almost neighborly by comparison to what could have been. Like knocking over your mailbox to make a statement rather than throwing a burning bottle through your window.
I don't think anybody thought that the WTC would actually collapse. It was common knowledge that the structures were designed to withstand such collisions with aircraft, which they did admirably. It was the melting superstructure due to so much aircraft fuel which caused the collapse. Of course, this might just have been more clever scripting. (Ding. Ding. Pardon my corruption meter.)
Anyway, before anybody sets about lynching me, please recall that, 'Fight Club,' is a popular film around
Enjoy your freedoms while they last, and enjoy the clever scripting and of the upcoming CNN spectacular. It was written with all of us in mind. . .
-Fantastic Lad
Some of the kids in my old highschool organized the following:
All toilets were flushed on the final note of the national anthum.
Didn't actually make anything explode as hoped, but it did back up the plumbing for about half a day.
-Fantastic Lad
Thank me later when you wake up.
-Fantastic Lad
You haven't seen a Kevin Smith flick yet, have you? That's okay. He was making fun of you the most.
Yes, I've seen a Kevin Smith film; Have you? While not stoned?
I KNOW his other films used base humor. But it WORKED in those films. It wasn't the sum total of their substance. It enriched something greater. But in Jay & Silent Bob, it seemed to be the sole point.
As well. . . All his other films could have taken place in the real world, (with the exception of those muppet style swinging from the rafters antics in Mall Rats). --His first four films were like stage productions of real life, with excellent observations. This film had far too much dumb shit, cheapening the effect of the already non-existent observations.
Oooh. Hollywood is artificial? Who the fuck doesn't know that?
Oooh. The Internet is the internet? Again, who cares?
Dogma was about religion. Chasing Amy had plenty of new things to say about relationships. Clerks had a lot to say about life in Teenage Wasteland. Mall Rats wasn't ground breaking, and it had the dumbest shit of the first four films, but it at least at least didn't break the rules! --Silent Bob thought he used the Force. He wasn't actually USING the Force. One is clever. The other is stupid.
A film which ignores the physical & logical rules of our reality cannot with any integrity contain social and cultural commentary from this reality either.
Now don't go thinking that I'm some stick up the ass film critic type. When I say 'social and cultural commentary', I mean the same scenes everybody was quoting to each other after they saw and loved the earlier films. This film had NOTHING memorable about it, except perhaps for the very end and the 'What the fuck is the Internet' line.
Now, go smoke yourself. And learn the new Slashcode already. Your paragraph spaces are too big.
-Fantastic Lad
The choreographed pace at which they're releasing this 'new' tech is such a stupid joke.
Read a few headlines down, (or up), where they're talking about successes in neuron/computer engineering techniques.
Oh, goody.
You do realize the League of Evil will require people to plug their brains in directly at some point? And the morons who suck up the Cyberpunk daydream where this is actually something desirable, (what? There are idiots like that present on Slashdot? Oh my!), are being used to buffer and in fact sell this horror to the world?
Yep. Sell it to the tech-heads, and you shape the world. The tech-heads have almost all the social muscle these days and not even they seem to fully realize it.
Why do you think it's so miserable to be alive if you live life as you have all been told? That is, working 8:00 to 6:00 jobs. Sucking up social programming which serves to render impotent relationships, one of the most powerful forces of stability and good energy; now perverted into over-sexed, short term, disappointing & miserable transactions. Thanks to James Cameron, the perfect boyfriend must now die of hypothermia in the North Atlantic, for crying out loud!
We've been programmed to eat unhealthy food with too many chemicals. Jeezus! Bread with everything. (There's almost no worse food combo out there!) Leading to poor health and further misery.
Enter the tech-heads.
Why do you think there have been so many episodes of Star Trek made with Holodeck fantasies? Do you think the Forces of Evil would allow such a virtuous show as Star Trek to exist if it wasn't the carrier for some toxin?
Grr.
Is nobody tuned into the same station as me? Am I the only one who can see this shit? Is nobody else scared out of their freeking minds? (Well, actually I'm not really all that scared; I'd describe my reaction as being something more akin to a fascination on an anthropological level. Watching exactly how the end of the world arrives is possibly the most amazing thing I'll ever see.)
Still, I can't believe that people are going to actually line up to be the first to plug their brains into the Matrix. Man! Now that is a sell job!
I mean, isn't face recognition in Borders Books already creepy enough? No! People want Microsoft and Echelon and **AMERICA** in their heads at night when they sleep! Digitize awareness! With everybody plugged into 'Friends' and 'Ally-McBeal,' nobody will even notice, much less rebel when the sky falls.
Part of me almost hopes that somebody does drop a vial by accident and wipes out 5.9 billion people on this globe. I'd almost rather take my chances at being one of the lucky survivors than continue watching this bullshit parade and the naivete of all the silly viewers.
-Fantastic Lad. The Craziest Fuck In ANY Room!
P.S. Most artists and media producers don't even realize where their ideas come from. Population control doesn't happen on a surface level anymore. Hasn't for a long, long time.