Commander Chris Hadfield performs a rather good reworking of David Bowie's classic 'Space Oddity' on his last day in charge of the International Space Station. Hadfield has become something of a celebrity by regularly sending tweets about his unique and inspiring experiences aboard the ISS...
This story should come, sadly, as no surprise. In a nutshell: our very own Prince Charles of our unelected regime is helping out another (highly repressive) unelected regime with a spot of 'good publicity' for some cash (£700,000) for one of his hobby groups of chums. So when Charles is not talking to plants, baking biscuits or helping his dear old open parliament, he's now filling his time with activities usually left to other sniveling toadies like Prince Andrew or Mark Thatcher.
'Prince Charles has been accused of “giving legitimacy to one of the world’s most repressive regimes” after sealing a deal on behalf of his architecture group who will advise the Bahraini government on housing and planning.
'According to the Bahrain News Agency, the £700,000 deal was signed by Hank Dittmar, CEO of the Prince’s Foundation for Building Community, and Bahrain’s housing minister Basim Alhamer earlier this month. It followed a meeting between Mr Alhamer and Prince Charles at Clarence House on April 26.
'The agreement will see advisers from the group “supervise and review” plans for a new 4,000-unit housing project in the south of the kingdom, which will take inspiration from Poundbury, the model village in Dorset created by Prince Charles 20 years ago. A team from the Foundation will visit Bahrain later this month to begin work.' (Republic article).
Regular contributor to media underground, Agent Zenman, waxes lyrical about capitalism and Walmart's fucked up drugs policy...
Big bad pharma megalith GSK is banging the PR drum in Africa about a partnership with the charity 'Save The Children'. Call me cynical, but are GSK's motives really about saving sick kids in Africa when the very same company has fought tooth and nail to deprive this continent of affordable life-saving drugs for decades? Or is it more likely to be a response to more recent bad publicity over GSK buying-off competition to its extortionately priced anti-depressant 'Seroxat'? Also, reading between the lines, 'Save The Children' is definitely edgy about whoring it with GSK, so it looks like this story may not have a happy ending...
'Britain's biggest drug manufacturer has launched a new partnership with Save The Children to develop medicines to tackle child mortality in Africa. GlaxoSmithKline and the charity said together they could save a million children's lives.
'Save The Children chief executive Justin Forsyth said there was the potential for "huge gains". But critics are wary about the close involvement of a pharmaceutical company in charitable work.
'Save The Children admitted that its alliance with GlaxoSmithKline would be controversial - but said the project would save children's lives. For example, a formula for mouthwash will be turned into a gel that can be applied to the umbilical cords of babies to stop infection.
The new medicines will be sold at cost price. GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) said the partnership would set a new standard for how companies and charities could work together.
'Initially, two flagship programmes will operate in DR Congo and Kenya. These will be followed by other initiatives in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America.' (BBC News article).
'Kathryn Bigelow's Osama bin Laden revenge-porn flick Zero Dark Thirty was the biggest publicity coup for the CIA this century outside of the actual killing of Osama bin Laden. But the extent to which the CIA shaped the film has remained unclear. Now, a memo obtained by Gawker shows that the CIA actively, and apparently successfully, pressured Mark Boal to remove scenes that made them look bad from the Zero Dark Thirty script.
'The CIA's whitewashing effort is revealed in a cache of documents newly released under a Freedom of Information Act request about the CIA's cooperation with Bigelow and Boal. The documents include a 2012 memo - initially classified "SECRET" - summarizing five conference calls between Boal and the CIA's Office of Public Affairs in late 2011. "The purpose for these discussions was for OPA officers to help promote an appropriate portrayal of the Agency and the Bin Ladin operation," according to the memo (hundreds of pages of CIA documents about the film were released last year - the memo obtained by Gawker was approved for release late last month).
'During these calls, Boal "verbally shared the screenplay" for Zero Dark Thirty in order to get the CIA's feedback, and the CIA's public affairs department verbally asked Boal to take out parts that they objected to. According to the memo, he did.' (Gawker article).
As if there was ever any doubt about this man's advanced intelligence, superbrain Stephen Hawking flips the bird to Israeli president Shimon Peres over Israel's treatment of Palestinians. Way to go Stephen!
As seems to be customary amongst the me-me-me generation, Hawking's intelligent and individual decision has been met with abusive Facebook responses that focus primarily on his physical condition. Personally I would've thought that Mr. Hawking was way too smart to be using the likes of Pusbook, but then I guess he's got to find someway of promoting his ideas to the intellectually challenged plebs of the 21st century...
'Professor Stephen Hawking is backing the academic boycott of Israel by pulling out of a conference hosted by Israeli president Shimon Peres in Jerusalem as a protest at Israel's treatment of Palestinians.
'Hawking, 71, the world-renowned theoretical physicist and former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, had accepted an invitation to headline the fifth annual president's conference, Facing Tomorrow, in June, which features major international personalities, attracts thousands of participants and this year will celebrate Peres's 90th birthday.
'Hawking is in very poor health, but last week he wrote a brief letter to the Israeli president to say he had changed his mind. He has not announced his decision publicly, but a statement published by the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine with Hawking's approval described it as "his independent decision to respect the boycott, based upon his knowledge of Palestine, and on the unanimous advice of his own academic contacts there."' (Guardian article).
It is common knowledge that Prince Charles, our hereditary heir to the throne, is well known to be on a nice little earner selling biscuits from Cornwall that 'earns' him about UKP 18 million a year. What is much less well known is that when someone dies down in darkest Cornwall without a will, this blood-sucker gets their assets too. However, keen to be altruistic he then generously shovels some of this unearned dosh to worthy causes like private schools and his other hobby 'charities'.
It's funny, however, that you never read about this shit in the Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail or the Murdoch rags when they are banging on about 'scroungers'. The same mouthpieces then attack anyone who criticizes the royals - upon uncovering such breathtaking greed - as 'waging a class war'.
Fucking right, bring it on!
'Prince Charles has used money from people who die without wills or family in Cornwall to fund his own charities and to support bursaries at his old private school in Scotland.
'As Duke of Cornwall, a title that already provides him with an £18m private annual income, a quirk of history means Charles becomes the owner of the assets of anyone living in the county who dies "intestate".
'Last year that provided him with more than £450,000 and he is sitting on £3.3m in cash from many years of collecting Cornish legacies, latest accounts show.
'In 2012, the benevolent fund he set up to use the money made one of its largest grants of £5,000 to the elite public school of Gordonstoun in Scotland where a place now costs £30,000 a year.' (Guardian article).
'Alan Watts was born in London in January of 1915 at the start of the first World War. At a young age he became fascinated with the arts of the Far East, and by the time he was ten or eleven he began to read thriller stories by Sax Rohmer about about mysterious Oriental villains. This interest led him in turn to the works of Lafcadio Hern, Christmas Humphreys, and DT Suzuki, and by fourteen was writing on Eastern themes, and was published in the Journal of the London Buddhist Lodge before producing his first booklet on Zen in 1932. He moved to New York in 1938 and then to Chicago where he served as an Episcopal priest for six years before leaving the Church. In 1950 he moved to upstate New York, and in late 1950 visited with Joseph Campbell and, composer John Cage, and Luisa Commaraswamy at his Millbrook farmhouse. Then in 1951 at the invitation of Frederic Spiegelberg he moved to San Francisco to teach at the Academy of Asian Studies.
'Alan Watts was profoundly influenced by the East Indian philosophies of Vedanta and Buddhism, and by Taoist thought, which is reflected in Zen poetry and the arts of China and Japan. After leaving the Church he never became a member of another organized religion, although he wrote and spoke extensively about Zen Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoisim. Some American Buddhists criticized him for not sitting regularly in zazen, even though he recorded several guided meditations teaching a variety of mediation techniques. Alan Watts responded simply by saying: “A cat sits until it is done sitting, and then gets up, stretches, and walks away.”
'After teaching at the Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco he became Dean, and began to give regular radio talks on KPFA, the Berkeley free radio station. In 1957 he published his bestselling Way of Zen, and in 1958 returned to Europe where he met with CG Jung. He was an early subject in pioneering psychedelic trials, and after recording two seasons of the public television series “Eastern Wisdom and Modern Life” traveled to Japan several times in the early sixties. By the late sixties he had become a counter culture celebrity, and traveled widely to speak at universities and growth centers across the US and Europe.
'By the early seventies Alan Watts had become a foremost interpreter of Eastern thought for the West, and was widely published in periodicals including Earth, Elle, Playboy, and Redbook. He appeared on CBS television’s Camera Three in 1969, and in 1971 he recorded a pilot for a new show titled “A Conversation with Myself” for NET, the precursor to PBS. When the series was not produced he recorded the shows in 1972 with his son Mark and his long-time audio archivist Henry Jacobs. Overall Alan Watts developed an extensive audio library of nearly 400 talks and wrote more than 25 books during his lifetime, including his final volume, Tao; the Watercourse Way. Alan died in his sleep in November of 1973 after returning from an intensive international lecture tour.'
'The Booth At The End is a 2010 drama series. The series includes two seasons, so far, consisting of 5 twenty-three minute episodes each. It was created by Christopher Kubasik, directed by Jessica Landaw and starring Xander Berkeley. The series asks one question: "How far would you go to get what you want?"
'The series follows the storylines of several characters who visit a mysterious figure in the corner booth at the back of a diner. Each character has heard rumors that this Man is able to grant desires, provided that a task is performed. Upon receiving the task, the Man's only other demand is that the character continually update him on his or her progress. Once the task is complete, the character's desire is always fulfilled.
'Played by Xander Berkeley, The Man sits in the far corner booth of a diner. Characters who approach him with a specific desire are given a task. If you complete the task, the desire is always fulfilled. Often, progress towards the completion of the task also results in progress towards realization of the desire. A further demand is to be updated on the thoughts and feelings of the characters as they progress in completing the task. Oftentimes, he emphasizes that it does not matter to him whether or not the task is completed: the choice is always up to the other person.' (Isohunt torrent download).
Finally some reasonable questions on the Boston bombing...
'Speaking as an investigative reporter with almost 40 years’s experience, I can say that when government officials won’t talk, they’re generally hiding something embarrassing or worse.
'I tried, and nobody will talk about those Craft International Services private security personnel who were widely observed and photographed near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, wearing security ear-pieces, hats and T-shirts bearing the company’s skull logo, and all wearing the same dark coats, khaki pants and combat boots, some carrying what appear to have been radiation detectors (I got no hard answers, though there were some inadvertent hints given).
'I first contacted a man identifying himself as Jack Fleming, a public affairs person with the Boston Athletic Assn., sponsor of the marathon. Fleming advised me that “If you want to ask about that you should contact the Commonwealth (of Massachusetts) Executive Office of Public Safety.”
'I called that agency and spoke with the public information office there, a man named Terrell. He first said, "Did you call the Marathon organizers?" When I replied that I had, and that they had said to call his office, he replied, "They did?" Then he said, “You should call the City of Boston Police Department. They released a security plan to some media organizations.”' (This Can't Be Happening article).
George Monbiot analyses the role of the new UK Government Chief Scientist Mark Walport regarding the proposed EC ban on neonicotinoids because of the rapidly declining bee population that is essential for crop pollination.
'What happens to people when they become government science advisers? Are their children taken hostage? Is a dossier of compromising photographs kept, ready to send to the Sun if they step out of line?
'I ask because, in too many cases, they soon begin to sound less like scientists than industrial lobbyists. The mad cow crisis 20 years ago was exacerbated by the failure of government scientists to present the evidence accurately. The chief medical officer wrongly claimed that there was "no risk associated with eating British beef". The chief veterinary officer wrongly dismissed the research suggesting that BSE could jump from one species to another.
'The current chief scientist at the UK's environment department, Ian Boyd, is so desperate to justify the impending badger cull – which defies the recommendations of the £49m study the department funded – that he now claims that eliminating badgers "may actually be positive to biodiversity", on the grounds that badgers sometimes eat baby birds. That badgers are a component of our biodiversity, and play an important role in regulating the populations of other species, appears to have eluded him.
'But the worst example in the past 10 years was the concatenation of gibberish published by the British government's new chief scientist on Friday. In the Financial Times, Sir Mark Walport denounced the proposal for a temporary European ban on the pesticides blamed for killing bees and other pollinators. He claimed that "the consequences of such a moratorium could be harmful to the continent's crop production, farming communities and consumers". This also happens to be the position of the UK government, to which he is supposed to provide disinterested advice.' (Guardian article).
'It's time, if you're so inclined, to plunk down a reservation for a one-way ticket to Mars. The privately funded Mars One foundation recently opened up applications for astronauts to take a journey to the Red Planet in 2022/23. Return trips, the organisers said, just aren't feasible with the technology we have.
'From a wide field of applicants, organisers said two women and two men will be selected to make the journey. The technology that takes them there has been tested before, and the potential for a worldwide audience will be there given four billion people will have the internet by then, said Mars One CEO Bas Lansdorp.
'However, a cost breakdown of the £3.93 billion budget - as well as a concrete plan for how reality television deals and other sponsorship money will be secured - was not provided to the public at the press conference, prompting some scepticism among journalists as to whether the plan could be achieved.
'Lansdorp remained optimistic in the face of questions concerning the project's viability, pointing out the London Olympics in 2012 generated nearly £2.62 billion in revenues for a three-week spectacle. This makes Mars One a bargain deal for investors, he said.' (Wired article & Mars One website).
The machines are coming for us and we are all doomed...
'The most secretive piece of airspace in Australia - the RAAF-run Woomera flight test range in South Australia - will make history later this year when the world's first unmanned supersonic stealth combat aircraft makes its maiden test flight above the desert. Extreme secrecy surrounds the joint British-French project and the drone called Taranis, named after the Celtic god of thunder and built by a British/French consortium led by aerospace giant BAE Systems.
'Resembling an insect and using the delta-shaped "flying wing'' technology favoured by modern-day stealth aircraft such as America's B-2 stealth bomber, Taranis is designed to fly above the speed of sound over long distances undetected by enemy radars to attack targets with an array of precision missiles and bombs.
'Unlike current generation attack drones such as Predator and Reaper, that are used extensively to attack insurgent targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, Taranis will carry the latest in remote defensive technology so it can also evade missiles and hostile manned aircraft.' (news.com.au article).
Labour MP Glenda Jackson waxes lyrical on the poison that was Thatcherism...
Woo hoo! Good riddance to bad rubbish! Thatcher has finally died from a stroke (a stroke of good luck). And not before time. Great news like this demands a celebration. Now stock up on coal and get ready to lob it at her hearse during the forthcoming state funeral!
