Thursday, January 28. 2010
During the last few years of his life, Philip K. Dick lived in Orange County, a Southern California setting that made the life-battered sci-fi writer something of a stranger in a strange land. This is the second part of a six part series where freelance journalist Scott Timberg looks at Dick's final years.
'Philip K. Dick arrived in Orange County in 1972 by flying to LAX, where he showed up in a sport coat he’d outgrown, hauling the Jehovah’s Witness translation of the Bible and a cardboard box, doubling as a suitcase, tied closed with an extension cord. Dick - who has been described, alternately, as paranoid, hilariously funny, childish and deeply empathetic - was in some of the weirdest shape of his life.' (L.A. Times article). media-underground.net
Wednesday, January 27. 2010
During the last few years of his life, Philip K. Dick lived in Orange County, a Southern California setting that made the life-battered sci-fi writer something of a stranger in a strange land. In this six part series, freelance journalist Scott Timberg looks at Dick's final years.
'When author Philip K. Dick called Tim Powers to ask him to come by his Fullerton apartment for a drink one evening, the Cal State student expected the kind of night he and other aspiring writers often spent with the science-fiction titan. That is, a wide-ranging bull session about religion, philosophy and the glories of Beethoven - along with some incongruous chatter about car repair - over wine and beer.' (L.A. Times article). media-underground.net
Saturday, January 16. 2010
'It hardly shrieks of billion-dollar glamour. The US nerve centre of the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, consists of a collection of low-slung prefabricated buildings along a four-lane highway in north-western Arkansas. Wal-Mart's head office is hundreds of miles from the nearest big city. It isn't even handy for the state capital, Little Rock, which is three and half hours' drive away.
'But hopeful merchants beat a path from all corners of the world to hawk their wares here, in a series of bare Perspex rooms along a "supplier corridor". Staff work in spartan cubicles and reminders of the retailer's low-cost culture are constant - in an employee lounge an honesty box invites payment for tea and coffee with a blunt message: "Drinks are not free."
'It was nearby, in the main square of the modest town of Bentonville, that Wal-Mart's founder, Sam Walton, opened a discount store, Walton's Five and Dime, in 1951. That shop, now a museum, helped spawn a retail empire that spans 8,100 stores in 15 countries generating $401bn (£248bn) of revenue annually. With a market capitalisation of $210bn, Wal-Mart is worth as much as the gross domestic product of Nigeria.' (Guardian article). media-underground.net
Sunday, January 10. 2010
'Americans generally like to hear good news. They like to believe that a new president will right old wrongs, that clean energy will replace dirty oil and that fresh thinking will set the economy straight. American pundits tend to restrain their pessimism and hope for the best. But is anyone prepared for the worst?
'Meet Michael Ruppert, a different kind of American. A former Los Angeles police officer turned independent reporter, he predicted the current financial crisis in his self-published newsletter, From The Wilderness, at a time when most Wall Street and Washington analysts were still in denial. Director Chris Smith has shown an affinity for outsiders in films like American Movie and The Yes Men. In Collapse, he departs stylistically from his past documentaries by interviewing Ruppert in a format that recalls the work of Errol Morris and Spalding Gray.
'Sitting in a room that looks like a bunker, Ruppert recounts his career as a radical thinker and spells out the crises he sees ahead. He draws upon the same news reports and data available to any Internet user, but he applies a unique interpretation. He is especially passionate about the issue of peak oil, the concern raised by scientists since the seventies that the world will eventually run out of fossil fuel. While other experts debate this issue in measured tones, Ruppert doesn't hold back at sounding an alarm, portraying an apocalyptic future. Listening to his rapid flow of opinions, the viewer is likely to question some of the rhetoric as paranoid or deluded, and to sway back and forth on what to make of the extremism. Smith lets viewers form their own judgments.
'Collapse also serves as a portrait of a loner. Over the years, Ruppert has stood up for what he believes in despite fierce opposition. He candidly describes the sacrifices and motivators in his life. While other observers analyze details of the economic crisis, Ruppert views it as symptomatic of nothing less than the collapse of industrial civilization itself.' (Collapse website & BitTorrent download). media-underground.net
Friday, January 8. 2010
Ken Eakins of Right Where You Are Sitting Now has recently interviewed the editors of Paraphilia Magazine. Personally, I'd never heard of the magazine before, until I read this interview. What can I say? I've become an instant fan.
As Ken writes: "Paraphilia Magazine is one of those cool publications that you wished you’d stumble upon more often. A kind of art/avant/underground aggregator, published in a true magazine format, the mag is really coming into its own. I caught up with editors D.M. Mitchell and Dire McCain to get a bit more insight into the project." (Right Where You Are Sitting Now interview & Paraphilia Magazine website).
Note: right click and select "Save Target As" to download back issues...
Issue 01 - Issue 02 - Issue 03 - Issue 04 - Issue 05 media-underground.net
Wednesday, January 6. 2010
'The Illuminated Thread is an ongoing bicycle-mounted research project with five primary objectives:
'1. Document and interpret the contraction phase of the industrial adventure with an emphasis on the landscapes and structures left behind.
'2. Piece together a viable image of a stable low-energy future.
'3. Identify and refine a skill set necessary to thrive in the transition to a new paradigm: practical techniques for living on the margins.
'4. Offer potential symbols and narratives of a new spirituality emerging on the heels of growing disillusion in the religion of progress.
'5. Encourage readers to accept the impossibility of preventing the industrial age’s conclusion, face the coming age with courage and begin mitigation activities in earnest.' (Illuminated Thread website). media-underground.net
Monday, January 4. 2010
An interesting article from 1977. One for the Paraffinpunk subgenre perhaps:
'Your television picture shrinks to a disappearing dot. Lights flicker out. Motors groan and die. The family huddles in the eerie quiet. It's a blackout. And despite all the myths about the siple joys of candlelit living, it's just about as romantic as drought.
'Nine million New Yorkers saw little that was joyous in the power failure that struck the city and adjacent Westchester County last July [1977]. Several freak lightening strikes during a severe thunderstorm triggered a series of power shutdowns in the Consolidated Edison system that brought the country's largest metropolis to a dark standstill.' (Popular Mechanics article). media-underground.net
Saturday, December 26. 2009
'Acid Croft is a term Shooglenifty popularised to describe the energetic blend of modern and traditional music that a new generation of musicians keep the new generation of village hall goers hot and sweaty with.
'This, by no means comprehensive guide covers my favourites, and on this page I've even listed them in the order I currently consider to offer the best night out!
'Shooglenifty are usually top of the list for a good sweaty night out, particularly if you can make the effort to go to Glenuig to see them play - although as they're popular all over the world there's a good chance they'll be playing near you.' (Lazy Pict website). media-underground.net
Thursday, December 10. 2009
'In the darkness of this sleepy island town, the beam of a deputy's flashlight caught the back of a lanky teenager wanted in a notorious 18-month burglary spree.
'The teen glanced over his shoulder, and then vanished into the woods. "He virtually vaporized in front of me," deputy Jeff Patterson recalled.
'Such encounters have become all too common on the bucolic islands north of Seattle as police hunt for an elusive thief whose crime spree is quickly becoming a local legend. Colton Harris-Moore is suspected in about 50 burglary cases since he slipped away from a halfway house in April 2008.
'Now, authorities say, he may have moved on to a more dangerous hobby: stealing airplanes.
'The saga continues, as Harris-Moore keeps finding new ways to embarrass police by slipping through their grasp.
'The 18-year-old typically breaks into businesses or unoccupied vacation homes, lies down on the couch and then dashes into the woods if confronted. He earned himself the nickname of "the barefoot burglar" by committing some of his crimes without wearing shoes.
'But authorities say the case has taken on a dangerous new dimension now that Harris-Moore is apparently joyriding in small aircraft.' (CBS News article). media-underground.net
Friday, December 4. 2009
'Bruce and Melanie Rosenbaum started ModVic (Modern Victorian) Home Restoration in June 2007 and have now moved onto steampunk Home Design. ModVic's mission is to authentically restore historic Victorian homes (1850 - 1910) to their original beauty and richness while completely modernizing the home’s systems, functional layout and conveniences for the family of today (sound familiar?). Bruce and Melanie also love the steampunk design aesthetic of combining the best of Victorian high design and craftsmanship with modern functionality and usefulness.
'Bruce's home is a Craftsman style Victorian built in 1901. It has a great deal of history associated with it and Bruce has filled it with unusual Craftsman era antiques. But we're interested in steampunk here rather than the merely historical so I'm going to gloss over almost all of that and get to the mods and the steampunk art!' (Steampunk Workshop article). media-underground.net
Monday, November 23. 2009
'Imagine you've just been binned by the love of your life. Your best friend suggests a trip in the beautiful wilds of the Scottish Highlands. He says there are lots of stunning Swedish girls there and for a moment it sounds like a great way to lose your blues. You ask your uptight, upper class flatmate along - God knows he needs to chill out. And you daren't leave the cat unsupervised, so he comes too.
'Problem is, your best friend is a certifiable lunatic. When he's not obsessing over mythically hot European lovelies, he's getting roaring drunk or interfering with wildlife. And winding your flatmate up so tight you could twang him.
'What's going to happen when you do meet some girls? How much damage can be done on a distillery tour? Will the bickering drive you completely mad? Will a gamekeeper shoot you? Why do your best friends wind you up the most? Just how heavy can Scottish rain get?
'Perhaps most importantly of all, will anyone apart from the cat actually get a shag?
'There's only one way to find out. Pack your bag, lace up your boots and head for the hills with the boys...' (The Hills Are Stuffed With Swedish Girls website). media-underground.net
Wednesday, November 18. 2009
'Twatter is a service for twats who think other people give a fuck about the small twattish, mundane detail of their sad, socially impotent lives or who simply believe that what they have to say should be spread across the globe because they want to be a major fucking twat - all by asking the "simple" question: What the fuck are you doing?' (Twatter website). media-underground.net
Wednesday, November 4. 2009
'After a year of work, the complete Survival+ book is finally available. The free abridged version has also been substantially expanded.
'Over 30,000 copies of the free version have been downloaded, and I encourage everyone who glanced at the first free edition to download the new enlarged free edition, which at 85,000 words is a full book in itself.
'This indispensable guide to the next twenty years of global turmoil and transformation weaves the full spectrum of disciplines - history, political economy, ecology, energy, marketing, investing, health, and the psychology of happiness - into a uniquely comprehensive understanding that offers every thinking person practical principles for not just surviving but prospering in the difficult decades ahead.' (Of Two Minds abridged ebook & Createspace print edition). media-underground.net
Friday, October 16. 2009
'Pint-sized, plastic and the height of kitsch they may be, but no one in Germany would usually think twice about seeing a garden gnome, given there are 25 million of them across the country.
'But a battery of 1,250 of them that appeared on a square in a Bavarian town has caused an outcry, not least because their arms are in a Nazi salute.
'The artist Ottmar Hörl placed the gnomes in the town of Straubing, close to Munich, in an installation called Dance With the Devil.
'It follows controversy sparked by a single, golden Hitler-saluting gnome crafted by Hörl that prosecutors tried to remove from an art gallery in the summer on the grounds that Nazi symbols were prohibited in public.
'They later dropped the case, recognising that the piece was satirical, and the artist has since seen a run on requests for his creations.' (Guardian article).
Note: For 45 euros you can get your own Nazi Gnome from Ottmar Hörl's website. I'm hoping to get one for Xmas. I mean, I hate Gnomes and I hate Nazis, but somehow this just works. media-underground.net
Thursday, October 1. 2009
'Former Blondie bassist and world expert on the occult Gary Lachman talks to David Moats about participating in rituals, Mick Jagger's flirtations with magick, the Freemasons, and why there's more to the occult than being a drug fiend like Aleister Crowley.
'I had known about the occult vaguely from horror films and comic books and things of that sort, but I'd never taken a real interest in magick and the more obvious occult sort of things. But when I was first playing in Blondie in New York in 1975 I was living with Chris Stein and Debbie Harry in this little flat in Little Italy, [and] Chris had this sort of kitschy interest in the occult and black magick and voodoo and Debbie was vaguely into it as this kinda "funny thing". Chris had quite a few books and paraphernalia and there was this one book by an English writer named Colin Wilson called The Occult - a huge history of it from a sort of philosophical point of view. It was very readable and it made it very interesting to me. I was always a big reader, reading tons of books; I just borrowed it and pulled it off the shelf and was fascinated by it.' (The Quietus article). media-underground.net
Friday, August 28. 2009
'In 1975, while staying at Hastings, England, with my aunt, I was fortunate enough to be introduced by her to Kathleen (or 'Johnny') Symonds, a charming widow in her 60s, who had not only been Aleister Crowley's last landlady but who was with him when he died in 1947.
'Mrs. Symonds and I soon established a pleasing rapport, which was sufficient to prompt her to reminisce about her former guest - a man made notorious by the popular press for the practice of 'sex magick' and other supposedly shocking occult activities - which she had refused to do with journalists. I met with her again on later visits to the South Coast resort, when she allowed me to tape-record her recollections.
'Johnny had owned and run, with her husband Vernon, a large, gabled Victorian guest house named Netherwood. The property stood in its extensive 4-acre grounds, wherein were outbuildings, a lawn tennis court, a large garden, shrubbery and many trees, on The Ridge, a road running across the flank of the upland area behind Hastings, about 500 feet above sea level. Netherwood's situation afforded extensive views of the town, its Norman castle, Beachy Head and the sea, which were doubtless part of its albeit wind-blown attraction to visitors.
'Keeping Netherwood going during the Second World War, when there was food, fuel and petrol rationing, had been hard for the couple, but business started picking up in the second half of 1945, once the conflict was over.' (21st Century Radio article). media-underground.net
Friday, August 14. 2009
'Occult Digital Mobilization (digimob) brings you another submissions digest with content not included in our mega-torrents.
'This torrent represents a work of Love. All texts so far gathered, as well as all future gatherings, aim to facilitate the studies of sincere students.
'Future releases will include submissions from users like you.
'Digimob's archive provides an invaluable service to dedicated students of the occult sciences, and a forum community has been created to provide a platform for these students to engage in respectful discourse on topics related to our releases. Further information can be found here.
'For some of us, the time has come to mobilize.' (Piratebay torrent download). media-underground.net
Monday, August 3. 2009
'Whether or not you believe in the devil, we can all agree that his name has been exploited for profit by the music industry. Slapping the name of “Satan” on a record cover with a picture of a horned beast is likely to sell more albums than a glossy photo of the band itself because to youth market the devil is a metaphor for rebellion against authority. The only other being used more than the Prince of Darkness in hard rock and metal is the personification of death in the form of skulls, skull-like characters and the grim reaper. While Satan represents youthful rebellion, death represents the rock lifestyle: live fast and die hard.' (CD Insight article). media-underground.net
Wednesday, July 15. 2009
'Dangerous Minds is a compendium of the new and strange - new ideas, new art forms, new approaches to social issues and new finds from the outer reaches of pop culture. Our editorial policy, such that it is, reflects the interests, whimsies and peculiarities of the individual writers. And sometimes it doesn’t. Very often the idea is just “Here’s what so and so said, take a look and see what you think.”
'I’ll repeat that: We’re not necessarily endorsing everything you’ll find here, we’re merely saying “Here it is.” We think human beings are very strange and often totally hilarious. We enjoy weird and inexplicable things very much. We believe things have to change and change swiftly. It’s got to be about the common good or it’s no good at all. We like to get suggestions of fun/serious things from our good-looking, high IQ readers. We are your favorite distraction.' (Dangerous Minds website). media-underground.net
Tuesday, July 7. 2009
'We stand on the threshold of a Great Transformation that will unfold over the next 20 years - a generation. The exact turn and sequence of events is unknown, but a clear-eyed appraisal of the forces, trends and cycles already at work will help us, collectively and as individuals, weather the challenges and turn what could be a catastrophe into a positive transformation.
'To the status quo understanding of how our world works, this appraisal will be anything but "obvious." (Sorting out what is "obvious" is a big part of the analysis which follows.)
'A number of other writers have addressed preparing for the Depression which has just begun. These books are, within their limited scope, practical and useful. This book aims at a different goal: once we understand the complex forces at work, then we can structure a response on all three levels: household/family, community and nation. For if there is anything we can confidently predict, it's that the nation's crumbling finances will drastically affect every family and every community.' (Of Two Minds ebook). media-underground.net
Thursday, June 18. 2009
I'm not really one for promoting anything on this website - and you can rest assured that I ain't getting a cut for mentioning this product - but I bought one of these a few weeks ago (for my time off the grid) and the damned thing works a treat. Here's a review from geek.com:
'With our ever growing need for energy and the increasing price of using it, more devices are appearing to help us utilize greener forms of power. The FreeLoader Portable Solar Energy is one of those devices and boasts the ability to charge most mobile devices including mobile phones, digital cameras, MP3 players, Sat Navs, PDAs, and the PSP and Nintendo DS handheld games units.
'The idea behind this unit from Solar Technology International is to offer you a single solution to charge all your gadgets by utilizing solar energy. That means any time one of your gadgets is running low on juice you just need to find a sunny spot and hook up to the FreeLoader unit. So lets take a look at how it works.' (Geek review). media-underground.net
Wednesday, June 17. 2009
'In the universe as we experience it, we can directly affect only objects we can touch; thus, the world seems local.
'Quantum mechanics, however, embraces action at a distance with a property called entanglement, in which two particles behave synchronously with no intermediary; it is nonlocal. This nonlocal effect is not merely counterintuitive: it presents a serious problem to Einstein's special theory of relativity, thus shaking the foundations of physics.
'Our intuition, going back forever, is that to move, say, a rock, one has to touch that rock, or touch a stick that touches the rock, or give an order that travels via vibrations through the air to the ear of a man with a stick that can then push the rock - or some such sequence. This intuition, more generally, is that things can only directly affect other things that are right next to them. If A affects B without being right next to it, then the effect in question must be indirect - the effect in question must be something that gets transmitted by means of a chain of events in which each event brings about the next one directly, in a manner that smoothly spans the distance from A to B. Every time we think we can come up with an exception to this intuition - say, flipping a switch that turns on city street lights (but then we realize that this happens through wires) or listening to a BBC radio broadcast (but then we realize that radio waves propagate through the air) - it turns out that we have not, in fact, thought of an exception. Not, that is, in our everyday experience of the world.' (Scientific American article). media-underground.net
Wednesday, May 20. 2009
'In February, 1971, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell experienced the little understood phenomenon sometimes called the “Overview Effect”. He describes being completely engulfed by a profound sense of universal connectedness. Without warning, he says, a feeing of bliss, timelessness, and connectedness began to overwhelm him. He describes becoming instantly and profoundly aware that each of his constituent atoms were connected to the fragile planet he saw in the window and to every other atom in the Universe. He described experiencing an intense awareness that Earth, with its humans, other animal species, and systems were all one synergistic whole. He says the feeling that rushed over him was a sense of interconnected euphoria. He was not the first - nor the last - to experience this strange “cosmic connection”.
'Rusty Schweikart experienced it on March 6th 1969 during a spacewalk outside his Apollo 9 vehicle: “When you go around the Earth in an hour and a half, you begin to recognize that your identity is with that whole thing. That makes a change... it comes through to you so powerfully that you’re the sensing element for Man.” Schweikart, similar to what Mitchell experienced, describes intuitively sensing that everything is profoundly connected.
'Their experiences, along with dozens of other similar experiences described by other astronauts, intrigue scientists who study the brain. This “Overview Effect”, or acute awareness of all matter as synergistically connected, sounds somewhat similar to certain religious experiences described by Buddhist monks, for example. Where does it come from and why?' (Daily Galaxy article). media-underground.net
Tuesday, May 19. 2009
'A few hundred years ago, the world was a vastly different place by just about any measure. In fact, it was 220 years ago this year that the Bill of Rights was first introduced in order to explicitly lay out the rights of the people in the brand-new democracy of the United States of America. We're all well versed in the Bill of Rights (or at least we should be), and it forms much of the basis of modern law. The impetus for the creation of the Bill of Rights was the tyranny of the rulers in Britain and its effect on the colonies. As with much of human history, it takes a significant problem to cause the creation of a significant change to society. We may be nearing that point right now, and the time may soon be right for another Bill of Rights - one centered around technology.' (InfoWorld article). media-underground.net
Thursday, March 26. 2009
'Wax Audio, otherwise know as Tom Compagnoni, began cutting, pasting, mixing, mashing and producing digital audio ditties for the online world back in 2003 at his home studio in Sydney, Australia.
'As the drums of war began beating in a global media hell bent on destruction in Iraq, Tom produced Wax Audio's first pointedly political online audio presentation - WMD ...And Other Distractions. With this release, Wax Audio reached its target audience of Australian underground and grass roots media, quickly making itself heard on community airwaves across the country.
'With the re-election of George W Bush in the US and John Howard in Australia during 2004, Wax Audio returned with an even denser, bleaker and more intense work Mediacracy. The EP closed with the now well known George W Bush rendition of John Lennon's Imagine - Imagine This. The track became an overnight media phenomenon, requested heavily on national radio stations around the world and even making it into BBC 1's Festive 50 list for 2005. A 7" vinyl release of the track on Metal Postcard Records saw the track played out to festival crowds whilst also being used as chin-stroking discussion fodder at universities.' (Wax Audio website). media-underground.net
Saturday, January 17. 2009
'Driving through the countryside south of Hanover, it would be easy to miss the GEO600 experiment. From the outside, it doesn't look much: in the corner of a field stands an assortment of boxy temporary buildings, from which two long trenches emerge, at a right angle to each other, covered with corrugated iron. Underneath the metal sheets, however, lies a detector that stretches for 600 metres.
'For the past seven years, this German set-up has been looking for gravitational waves - ripples in space-time thrown off by super-dense astronomical objects such as neutron stars and black holes. GEO600 has not detected any gravitational waves so far, but it might inadvertently have made the most important discovery in physics for half a century.
'For many months, the GEO600 team-members had been scratching their heads over inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Then, out of the blue, a researcher approached them with an explanation. In fact, he had even predicted the noise before he knew they were detecting it. According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into "grains", just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. "It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time," says Hogan.' (New Scientist article). media-underground.net
Wednesday, December 31. 2008
'Colin Prior was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1958. His first taste of success, at the age of 23, was to win "Best Newcomer" to underwater photography in the "Camera Beneath the Waves" competition, picking up Gold, Silver and Bronze medals. With a prize of a trip to the Cayman Islands his achievement was his first steps to becoming a professional photographer.
'For the next ten years, Colin worked as a commercial photographer and was commissioned by advertising and design agencies. His personal interest was in landscape photography and he had a particular fascination with the panoramic format, which is featured significantly in his books.
"Throughout the eons of time, Scotland has been smoothed and rounded by continual weathering of the elements, where ice, fire, wind and rain have given rise to dramatic landscapes, which are familiar today.
"With rocks in Torridon over one billion years old and those further north in Assynt, some three billion years old, it is this very ‘ancient’ quality that for me, defines that Scottish landscape." (Colin Prior online gallery). media-underground.net
Friday, December 26. 2008
'Not so long ago, most people would have scoffed at the notion that the United States might experience the sort of turbulence and upheaval that has been common in banana republics or ailing first world nations.
'Nowadays, those inhibitions are fading away. One reason, of course, is that the current financial crisis, perhaps the worst ever, has made Americans realize that the dark forces they thought had been relegated to the dustbin of history never really went away.
'A recent report produced by the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Institute warns that the United States may experience massive civil unrest in the wake of a series of crises which it has termed "strategic shock".
'The report, titled Known Unknowns: Unconventional Strategic Shocks In Defense Strategy Development, also suggests that the military may have to be used to quell domestic disorder.' (ForexHound News article & U.S. Army War College report). media-underground.net
Friday, December 19. 2008
'Willard Wigan makes art that's all but invisible to the naked eye. He tells Benjamin Secher about the painful, obsessive work that goes into his pieces.
'Wigan traces that obsession back to his unhappy school days when, suffering from undiagnosed dyslexia, he was treated as the class idiot. "When I started school, what little confidence I had was taken away," he says. "The teacher would use me as an example. She used to show the other kids my work and make me feel, well, small. So I absconded a lot to get away from the misery of it. I would run across the park and hide in a shed and just sit there looking down at the ants on the floor."' (Telegraph article & YouTube video stream). media-underground.net
Thursday, December 11. 2008
A few weeks ago, New York Times business columnist, Joe Nocera, published an e-mail message sent to him from an executive who works in the banking industry. This executive had become disgusted by what he was witnessing all around him. This weekend, that same banker sent Joe another e-mail message, which the banker also agreed to publication.
'Today, we are bailing out the banks because of their greedy and deceptive lending practices in the mortgage industry. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. More is coming, I’m sorry to say. Layoffs are being announced nationwide in the tens of thousands. As people begin to lose their jobs, they will not be able to pay their credit card bills either. And the banks will be back for more handouts.' (New York Times article). media-underground.net
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