Silenced Majority Portal

FOX Ratings Droop - Forced to run McCain "100 Years" ad

Fox is also having to run (for money?) the DNC's "US in Iraq for 100 Years" ad re McCain

Saudis Give Haircuts to Men Who Hit on Women / Flower Warriors

Saudi Governor Orders Haircuts for Men Who Hit on Women

In a Saudi Flirting crackdown, men who flirt with women in public places will be punished by having their hair cut. The Governor ordered the crackdown after seeing a group of men with long hair pestering female students.

The punishment is to be applied to all youths guilty of flirting, including "the sons of senior military and civil officials." Already, men and women are segregated in public, which is enforced by the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. The lifestyle is enforced by powerful religious police. They make sure that women are not wearing makeup and that the sexes don't mingle. The punishment against men "who emulate women" should be carried out at the scene of the infraction.

Flower Warriors

Here is a tribe of goat herders in Saudi Arabia - where men and women decorate their hair with flowers. Author and photographer Thierry Mauger, describes the "breathtaking beauty" of the men, compares them to "Christs of cathedrals," and otherwise lets his imagination run wild at the encounter.

Dr. Albert Hofmann Merges With The Infinite; or Let Your Freak Flag Fly

Doctor Hofmann... "was also disturbed by the cavalier use of LSD as a drug for entertainment, arguing that it should be treated in the way that primitive societies treat psychoactive sacred plants, which are ingested with care and spiritual intent." NYT, buried in Europe Section

Albert Hofmann, Rest In Peace, and let your Freak Flag, (gotten when I used to work at the Stanford Human Genome Center in Palo Alto from the abandoned items left by the lab’s previous tenant), Fly.

Though while LSD may have given us Sgt. Pepper’s, and all, but if there’s a psychedelic that can be considered landmark in human evolution, then I’d put Ibogaine, from the West African coast country of Gabon, where it has been used for *centuries* as part of the Bwiti Tribe’s coming of age rituals, slightly ahead of LSD.

That’s because in the last 45 years it has been found and documented, to have properties, that with *a one time* use effectively interrupt substance addictions, be they heroin, methadone cocaine, speed, alcohol, et al, in no less than 50% of all people that use it with no relapses, no need for to sit in perpetual meetings, etc, etc.

LSD is fun, but after it wears off, while it may have been a SENSATIONAL experience, it’s not the life-changer that Ibogaine has been for tens of thousands of people.

Considering the fraud that is Drug Rehab in the US that has *a 90% FAIL* rate, Ibogaine should get anybody that has, or knows someone that has a problem with addiction, or alcoholism, their complete, and undivided, attention.

Since this effectively solves one of the greatest scourges and afflictions that mankind has faced since we crawled out of the ooze and started walking upright the guys that figured this out should be on the short list for the Nobel Prize in Medicine.

Background here, and here.

The Bwiti

~Nyc

PS: This is only a rumor, but word on the street is that Rush Limpballs took the Ibogaine cure for his opiate addiction, (the one thing I hold him blameless for, because nobody plans to get sick and then addicted), and considering the sheer depth of his daily habit, and the fact that he didn’t relapse, it seems not only likely but possible and probable that this is the route he took.

If this is the case, then it’s a crime he didn’t share this with millions of suffering people.

PS: Dr. Hofmann was 102 when he died, just imagine how long he would have lived if he never did drugs.

Free Tibet Flags Made in China

crazy

Speaking of Paris Graffiti .. / & a real Banksy

Paris Hilton Banned from Moscow Hotel over Graffiti Incident"

She scribbled her name in black marker on the designer wallpaper of a $16,000 dollar a night suite.

"Miss Hilton ruined the wallpaper in the luxury suite. In such a case the client automatically goes on the black list," said a spokesman for the hotel, before adding that the hotel will slap her with a $9,000 fine for allegedly defacing the property. And why did Ms. Hilton ruin the hotel's lavish wall covering? For a photo, of course!
The heiress, dressed in revealing black dress and black boots, posed for a sexy photo shoot next to her handiwork, which reads "Paris Moscow 2008."

Le Rat: This is not a Banksy

This is not a Banksy

It may look like Banksy but it's French street artist Blek le Rat. He's been doing graffiti art for 30 years. The underground culture has become trendy with fans like George Michael and Brad Pitt paying big bucks (or people like me who print stuff off the internet and frame it or photograph it when travelling.)

Critics are having to back off because the galleries and auction houses want the big bucks. Le Rat is 56 and was stenciling when Banksy was crayoning. His real name is Xavier Prou. His father was an architect, his mother the daughter of the French consul in Thailand and he was a private school preppie. At 17 he studied classic art and architecture under Trotskyite revolutionaries and it was an eye opener, literally.

Study of architecture introduced him to the urban landscape at the same time he was discovering a new world of politics and sociology of class. He turned to street art for the masses. He says, "If the people cannot come to the gallery, we bring the gallery to the people! Kids who would never go to a show see our work in the street and are inspired to express themselves through art rather than turning to vandalism or repressing their voices."

His earliest piece was an oversize rat, which appeared all over Paris. RAT is an anagram for ART. "It is about uprising, a signal of rebellion. It's our revolution. Urban artists are forced to write on public property because there is a lack of space assigned to us." As the Berlin Wall fell, he remembers, "I attacked the city with stencils of Russian soldiers, a message to the people when they returned: the Soviets have already arrived! I relieve paranoia through humour."

He does not intent to stop as he hits 60, and I do remember laughing when I heard about William S. Burroughs getting arrested at 57 for writing "Ah Pook the Destroyer" on the walls of the New York City subways.

"Blek Le Rat: Getting Through Walls" is his book.

Adding videos for Kayakbiker:

See Louisiana Vets for Peace Protest Bush

(Thanks Sparrow)
(These are also Louisiana people - different day, different protest)

Roger Waters Releases Giant Obama Pig, to Close Coachella

Thanks Robin, for the tip! THE GIANT OBAMA PIG

According to Huffington Post & other sources, Roger Waters closed Coachella’s final night with an amazing performance Pink Floyd’s landmark 1973 album “Dark Side of the Moon” with unleashing a giant inflatable pig into the sky.

The humongous inflatable pig emerge onto the stage as Waters played “Pigs” from 1977’s “Animals”; and it was released into the night sky as the end of his first set. There was graffiti scrawled on the pig that said, “Don’t be led to the slaughter” as well as “Obama” with a checked ballot box next to it. There were also pictures of Uncle Sam holding a cleaver.

Reliving the glory, the performance included elaborate pyrotechnics and old video images, all cultivating into a pyramid containing a rainbow prism rising above the stage. Before closing out Coachella, Waters performed for the crowd the Pink Floyd hits “Another Brick in the Wall” and “Comfortably Numb,” which was a full treat to the crowd as the performance concluded with an elaborate fireworks display over the stage.

This is some of the best fidelity (maybe not a cell phone) - DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

Walmart: Walkin' Round in Women's Underwear / Hillary & the Union Busters

Just learned about these videos, which will probably circulate pretty quickly. ABC has revealed that Klagler Production is making available their Walmart videos, such as this one showing Walmart execs in drag. In their library, they have thousands from when they did production for Walmart. The videos are now up at AOL as well, for further corporate embarrassment. Some of the videos also document the lack of female management as recently as the 1980s. "We know we haven't gotten as far as we'd like to be advancing women in our company. But we're very conscious of it," says Sam Walton. There is more at The Consumerist or Neil Bortz.

Wal-Mart said the drag and other shenanigans by CEOs were just for fun. "Over the years these internal meetings included a wide range of messages and activity -- some practical, some inspirational and some just plain silly. Clearly this video falls in the silly category, but having fun is just part of running a business," said a company spokesperson. (It's reminiscent of the activities of the Bohemian Grove, where Reagan and other bigshots used to play dress up, or the "Village People" games that ambassadors used to play.)

Wow - found one - it's hot!

One of the videos also shows Hillary Clinton when she was on the board of directors at Wal-Mart. In her six years there, she remained silent as the world's largest retailer busted down unions. A fellow Board member, John Tate, said "Labor unions are nothing but bloodsucking parasites living off the productive labor of people who work for a living." The Clinton campaign has since stated, "As president, she will fight alongside labor to promote the economic growth of America's middle class," and that Clinton strongly believes that Wal-Mart employees should be allowed to unionize.

Center for Public Integrity also has the Hillary videos and other "Walmart videos." Look for them soon on blogs, YouTube and maybe even mainstream media, since there aren't any recent Paris Hilton or other celebrity videos that can compete. If these videos don't show up, they should also be at the ABC link above, and there are plenty of YouTube videos r/t Hillary and Wamart posted either two or ten months ago. Her links with them are known, but not widely enough to show how hypocritical her purported current labor positions are.

Pimp My Rice

I found these images when preparing a story for Democracy Cell Project on the relationship between rice hoarding, food riots, world hunger, globalization and biofuel production.

I referenced this summary from Doug Tarnapol at Free Expressions blog:

Upon Glancing at the Providence Journal Today...
Nowhere will you find word one about the international food crisis. Meanwhile, the "liberals" (not all, of course) are pushing biofuels: fill your tank with food from people's mouths, for the benefit of the Archer Daniels Midland Corp (not the "Jeffersonian farmer" Monsanto is currently suing out of existence for not paying for their naturally -- or intentionally -- dispersed, copyrighted GMOs). After the coming economic cataclysm (already here for most people), ya think people will finally rise up and overthrow the global neoliberal regime? Think Obama will lead that fight here in the US?

I think South America is the brightest spot, relatively speaking, in the world right now: they are pointing, messily, toward the only possible future for the species. (Example of "messy": Lula is pro-biofuels -- and not the non-edible kind, either. Even non-edible biofuels will displace all other crops due to rising demand, and not just in the US/EU, but in India, China, everywhere.) Basically, if we, the species, do not rein in our consumption, we are in for a Malthusian "correction" that will literally rival the Black Plague. Yet, readers of the New York Times, a.k.a., "the people that matter," think they can buy their way out of any crisis. Oh, but ProJo is all over the big story of the pie thrown at Tom "How Much Blood Is On My Hands?" Friedman. Should have been a brick, in my opinion: we should send that tub of propagandistic lard over to India to try farming in view of the wonderful laboratories and golf courses he loves so. With any luck, he'll join the thousands of farmers who have committed suicide under the "flat-earth" policies he's been touting. When will people finally realize that the Owners consider us the enemy, and act accordingly?

I sent Doug this quotation:

'We are grateful to the Washington Post, the NY Times, Time Magazine, and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But now the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supra national sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.'

David Rockefeller, Private Banker, Council on Foreign Relations, June 1991...