The source of some extraordinary sociological surveys and studies.

Enjoy!

I had the pleasure to watch and meet a group of Estonian bell-ringers quite recently. It was an amazing performance. It sounds stupid but I’d recommend bell-ringing to anyone. The Dance Of The Sugarplum Fairy was probably my favourite. When I left I felt like I’d dreamt the whole thing.

Are things changing?

I recently returned from abroad. I arrived at Luton airport to the sight of the Daily Telegraph proclaiming “A Very British Revolution”. The news that the corrupt MPs caught thieving from the British tax payers purse are to be reprimanded is warming; hearing the usually thuggish, arrogant tomes of the piously ignorant Gordon Brown eat humble pie across the radio networks was sweet music. However, I am not convinced.

The international mainstream media are currently engaged in a viscious battle with independent and free internet-based media. The potential spoils are no less than our very own minds, the possession – even – of our souls. Many of them have lately been running “conspiracy type” stories to try and catch a slice of the internet pie. Only hits can justify the rates for their advertisers, one of their last standing sources of revenue. Rupert Murdoch, head of News Corporation, recently illustrated this as he vowed the end of the “free internet”: the mainstream media is a dinosaur mired in the mud. It’s death is going to be slow; it’s agonizing shudders of pain, like a severe bout of every flu pandemic it has ever manufactured, will be felt throughout the old order. Who knows what knee-jerk reactions, what slavering, rabid lunges from the leash this demise may create; but die it must and, eventually, will.

American television-based media are deploying smoke screens and decoys left right and centre to bleed and smother topics, evidently of utmost contemporary concern, the alternative media have made their well-rounded and widely – even if often secretly – respected reputation on.

Recently, British MPs were embroiled in attempts to raise their salaries, tax those (to the tune of 50%) that earn more than themselves, and ban public intrusion into the details of their expenses. Now they seem to be clammering over one another to humbly ‘accept’, deny, or deflect responsibility for the atrociously arrogant and childish nest-feathering at the expense of the comparatively honest and underpaid British worker.

Meanwhile, however, the bankers seem to go unpunished: their multi-million pound pensions unretrieved, their sickening bonuses paid.

In the US the overly celebrated and ignorantly defended Barack Obama perpetuates pro-corporate Bush policies under the banner of ‘socialism’; while in the UK the Tory leader David Cameron proposes a Tory leadership to heal the drastic wounds British democracy has sustained since 9/11/2001, when we all know he works for exactly the same people Gordon Brown does.

Things appear to be changing. But what is really happening? Is it really that the powers-at-arms sense the real changes happening around them? While there may have been no riots, no protests, no burning cars or rubber bullets – no “summer of rage” as yet – they know power is slipping out of their hands, fast: they just have to look at any poll undertaken by any think-tank or media-outlet unwilling to fiddle the figures.

There is a massive crisis of faith in government and private sector leadership. What am I saying, though? There always has been. But now there is a massive and ever-expanding awareness of the ultra-capitalist elite that truly govern our affairs. Now, it appears, there is a gargantuan effort of the instiutions of the old machine to feign change, to play the part of revolution. The very largest, most deeply set cogs in this prehistoric, reptilian machine are beginning to turn again. The earth is shaking; the gigantic snake is shedding its skin. But it remains to be seen whether we will all simply recognise the same cold creature adorned in its new comely colours.

When we are told about economic crisis, nobody says that this crisis didn’t come about suddenly. The crisis had always been there but it got worse each time that popular masses become more and more conscious of their rights against exploiters.

- Thomas Sankara Addis Adebba, July 1987.

The old paradigm is compromising out of necessicity. In an effort to retain control and keep real change at bay it is shirking and shrugging off middle-management layers. It is, begrudingly, having to appease it’s true, but weary and sadly deluded, master: the public.

One thing I will say, it is encouraging to see this wobble in the matrix. It is a balking within the forward ranks of the enemy. We can only keep up the pressure. We must urge what little integrity we have left among our journalistic elite to thrive now on the information available to them, as it has been to us for so long.

Most of all we must not fall for this feinting tactic. We must purge the system of this sickness and regain control for the sake of our children and the spiritual survival of man.

Let the battle for truth and freedom and the prosperity for all human kind commence.

- Ed

Woah.

See Washington Post article

“Karpinski on Abu Ghraib: We were following orders
By David Edwards

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30343776/
President Obama says the Attorney General can review the actions of Bush officials who OKed waterboarding, reports Bill Plante. Harry Smith talks to Janis Karpinski who oversaw Iraqi prisons in 2003.

The Associated Press reported:

An Army Reserve colonel demoted from brigadier general because of prisoner abuses at the Abu Ghraib facility in Iraq said Wednesday the Senate report supports her contention that uniformed military people were made scapegoats for Bush administration policies.

Col. Janis Karpinski said that from the beginning, Ive been saying these soldiers did not design these techniques on their own.

Karpinski said she felt vindicated and said she thought it had taken far too long for the information about the history of the interrogation policy to surface publicly.

This video is from CBS The Early Show, broadcast Apr. 22, 2009.

“D. H. Williams
Daily Newscaster
February 13, 2009
http://www.dailynewscaster.com/2009/0…
An Indiana county municipal official in the vicinity of Chicago reveals the contents of his meetings with FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security. The initial requests seem reasonable enough when FEMA asks the county officials to prepare a Hazard Mitigation Plan to deal with flooding, fires, high winds and tornadoes.

But as the required meetings and calls with FEMA and DHS continue over a two year period their request become more unusual, raising suspicions of county officials.

Listen to the audio:

We want to know every important thing in this county. We want to know where police departments are. Where weapons are stored. Hazardous material. Where can we land a helicopter. Where are the airports. How big a plane can you land at the airport. Where are all the bridges. Where are all the power stations. Where are all the generating stations.Where are all the substations. They literally wanted to know where everything was. Im sitting there thinking man if there was ever martial law. This kind of information is exactly the kind of stuff they are going to want. Were just laying it all out for them right there.

During the legally mandated meetings held with FEMA and DHS different disaster scenarios were reveled to county officials:

• In late December 2008 municipal officials were invited to Indianapolis for a briefing on the state of Indiana. There were told if industry were to collapse for example GM going bankrupt resulting in mass unemployment a depression would soon follow and municipalities could expect to loose 40% of their funds.

• Every county in the nation would be required to prepare a Hazard Mitigation Plan.

• The county should prepare a plan to vaccinate the entire population within 48 hours and practice the plan several times.

• FEMA inquired to where mass graves could be placed in the county and would they accept bodies from elsewhere.

• The sheriffs department via the state sheriff association was told that no .223 ammunition rounds would be available as the military would be purchasing all stocks.

• The county was asked to make plans for hardening of police and fire stations, putting in hardened bunker type buildings around town.

• The county was asked to make plans for the possibility of up to 400,000 refugees from Chicago. “

Released by accident or not, I think this is very likely.