Hans Howe

“Bitter chocolate tastes bad, therefore it must be good for you. It’s like a religion.”

A researcher who previously worked with Science to do a sting operation on fee-charging open access journals ran a real—but obviously flawed—study rigged to generate false positives, paid €600 to get it published in a fee-charging open access journal, set up a website for a fake institute, and issued press releases to feed the ever-hungry pool of nutrition journalists. The doctor who ran the trial had the idea to use chocolate, because it’s a favorite of the “whole food” fanatics. “Bitter chocolate tastes bad, therefore it must be good for you. It’s like a religion.”

http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/05/28/1546208/how-a-scientist-fooled-millions-with-bizarre-chocolate-diet-claims

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from Wikipedia….
“Bitter Lake is a 2015 BBC documentary film by filmmaker Adam Curtis. It argues that Western politicians keep simplifying the stories they tell, into a simple-to-digest by the public “good” vs. “evil” argument, due to society’s overwhelming chaos and disorder, which they neither grasp nor understand.

“The film attempts to explain several complex and interconnected narratives. One of the narratives is how past governments, including Russia and the West, with their continued, largely failing, interventions in Afghanistan, keep repeating such failures, without properly understanding the country’s cultural background or its past political history and societal structure.

“It also outlines the US’s alliance with Saudi Arabia, especially the former’s agreement to buy Saudi oil, for control of a key energy supplier during the cold-war era, with Saudi Arabia gaining wealth and security in return, with agreement withstanding provided it was allowed to continue its violent and fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, Wahhabism, uninhibited from external influence. This in turn has fed like a feedback loop back into the many troubles the world faces with regards to various pseudo-Jihadic forces spanning the 1970s to present day; be they the Mujahideen, Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and into IS.

“Curtis attributes the film as an attempt to add an “emotional” dimension to the context of the historical narrative in order to draw its audience in –hence it’s over two hours in length and availability exclusively through the BBC iPlayer– in order to give the viewer something beyond the disconnected news reports they’re usually fed from most traditional broadcast journalism, along with putting historical facts in a truer broader context.

__BBC iPlayer has given me the opportunity to do this – because it isn’t restrained by the rigid formats and schedules of network television. […]

__I have got hold of the unedited rushes of almost everything the BBC has ever shot in Afghanistan. It is thousands of hours – some of it is very dull, but large parts of it are extraordinary. Shots that record amazing moments, but also others that are touching, funny and sometimes very odd.

__These complicated, fragmentary and emotional images evoke the chaos of real experience. And out of them I have tried to build a different and more emotional way of depicting what really happened in Afghanistan.

“A counterpoint to the thin, narrow and increasingly destructive stories told by those in power today.

“The title is taken from the 1945 meeting of US president Franklin D. Roosevelt and King Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia, on a ship in the Great Bitter Lake on the Suez Canal, where much of the events to follow could be said to have originated.

“The film was released on Sunday 25 January 2015 exclusively on the BBC iPlayer.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_Lake_%28film%29

Links to the film…
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2hdcji

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2hdd54_bitter-lake-2015-adam-curtis-documentary-2-of-3-720p_shortfilms

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2hde2l_bitter-lake-2015-adam-curtis-documentary-3-of-3-720p_shortfilms

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from The Cornucopia Institute:

When you think of farming towns, Milwaukee-proper
might not be the first to come to mind. The large
Wisconsin city is perhaps better known for its famed
breweries and picturesque location along Lake
Michigan, but one resident there has been on a mission
to make farming more accessible even within the city
limits.

Will Allen is a former professional athlete who played
basketball throughout college at the University of
Miami and post-college in Belgium. Though he has also
held jobs in corporate America, Allen has spent the
last 21 years in a completely different profession:
urban farmer.

As the founder of Growing Power, Allen oversees his
urban farms and teaches people in urban Milwaukee
how to grow not just food, but good food. The
organization’s sustainable farm features multiple
greenhouses, indoor and outdoor gardens, crops and
animals such as goats and chickens. Growing Power
also hosts workshops and outreach programs, and
distributes its produce, meats and products
throughout the city, making a big impact the lives of
many.

MORE
http://www.cornucopia.org/2015/05/meet-will-allen-the-urban-farmer-starting-his-own-revolution/

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from GAWKER: ” … Walmart’s gotten a lot of heat recently for suddenly shutting down five stores in four different states—supposedly to fix five simultaneous sets of “plumbing problems,” which makes a lot of sense if “plumbing” actually means “unions.” Because as you can see in the video above, Walmart really hates plumbing.

“Walmart comes with a rich and storied history of anti-union propaganda, but this is one of the first times we’ve seen an actual training video to that effect. And in light of the rumors swirling around about Walmart’s union-busting shutdowns, the company’s party lines hit hard.

http://gawker.com/walmarts-leaked-anti-union-training-video-this-isnt-ab-1705509442?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_facebook&utm_source=gawker_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

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the MUST READ today, this week, this month – u get the idea… herewith, Col. Pat Lang tells it … link to full text below…

“Resistance is futile,” proclaimed the Borg in an endless, mindless repetition of the ultimate in group-think. Today we have the policy Borg speaking with one voice. John Kerry in South Korea and USMC BG Weidly in Baghdad have the same talking points, exactly the same talking points.

“Thought control became a priority for the US military after US policy (not the military) was defeated in VN. After much soul searching and rummaging about in the farther reaches of pseudo spirituality and science, the armed forces leadership stopped looking at such things as; spoon bending, fire walking and psycho-kinesis as expressions of non-material power and an explanation for defeat in VN and decided that we had simply been defeated at home in the media and because of that among the people. Clausewitz would have appreciated that thought.

“An infamous essay called “Mind War” was authored in that time by Paul Vallely (Fox News consultant) and a strange fellow named Michael Aquino. Aquino was later notorious as the High Priest of the Temple of Set, a Satanist cult in California (where else?). This paper, written by this pair of half baked psychological operations reservists, somehow insinuated itself into the thinking of the US Army, then into all of the Defense Department until it came to be an article of faith that “Information Operations,” (propaganda- IO) and “Kinetic Operations” (shooting people as necessary) were equally effective ways to wage war. This belief led to an exaggerated faith in the IO side of COIN (hearts and minds) and repeated attempts to change through persuasion the basic beliefs of the many different peoples of the earth who simply do not want to be changed by foreigners. As a result of this kind of thinking we have done all kinds of foolish things. Among them; we attempted to persuade the hard core Dawa Shia activist al-Maliki that he should be politically “inclusive” with Sunnis whom he regarded as the enemies of God and of his blood. We also situated outposts in totally hostile parts of Afghanistan next to villages from which our men would never be able to defend themselves. We were trying to be persuasively nice.

“Worst of all it came to be consensual thought in the US government and among their co-opted media “friends” that it was normal to propagandize the American electorate in order to block political action intended to prevent or stop a war. MORE
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2015/05/httpwwwreuterscomarticle20150518mideast-crisis-iraq-iduskbn0o20lt20150518.html

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mmm hmmm hava listen…

Rachael Kilgour

Check out http://rachaelkilgour.com! Activist singer-songwriter, Rachael Kilgour, releases her new EP, Whistleblower’s Manifesto: Songs for a New Revolution, on February 19th, 2013. For the last eight years Kilgour has been captivating audiences with a balance of provocative, topical lyrics, passion…

rachaelkilgour.com

[from CityPages] Rachael Kilgour doesn’t immediately seem like the kind of girl who would take on the social injustices of the world in a song. She’s sweet-faced, fast with a bright smile and sunshine energy. A few minutes into knowing her, though, and it’s suddenly impossible to see her in a role besides activist. The Duluth-based folk singer-songwriter has a lot of ideas, and she speaks animatedly, as though she’s in front of a classroom or heading up a meeting.

As she talks with Gimme Noise about her brand new EP, Whistleblower’s Manifesto: Songs for a New Revolution, out today, Kilgour focuses on the role her music plays.

“My music is the place where I feel like I can make the most impact. I grew up in Duluth in a family that was really activist-y,” explains Kilgour. “My older brother is a hardcore activist and has dedicated his whole life to that, specifically to issues of poverty. He runs a Catholic Workhouse in Duluth, and he’s done that for many, many years… He was kind of my idol mentor big brother, and I always wanted to live up to his ideals. I spent a lot of time being like, ‘I’m not good enough, I’m never gonna make a difference,’ and then I started writing music, and felt like that was a really good way to participate.”

Kilgour has already released two full-length albums, her self-titled debut in 2008 and her 2011 follow-up Will You Marry Me? Kilgour is a fearless songwriter, combating everything from government corruption to Christian hypocrisy. The songs aren’t empty rhetoric: as a gay woman and activist, Kilgour has had plenty of experience in the social injustice realm. Her songs confront those challenges head-on, and Kilgour wouldn’t have it any other way.

http://blogs.citypages.com/gimmenoise/2013/02/rachael_kilgour_interview.php

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