media house worship
media house worship
Blue Season – answers from an astronaut
Blue Season – answers from an astronaut
By Wendell W Solomons
Click link for illustrated Power Point Show
http://www.scribd.com/doc/24836300/Blue-Season-–-Answers-From-an-Astronaut
History had seen waves of demonstrations contribute to ending the Vietnam War. How would you, if need be, keep demonstrations off the street in cities such as New York, London and Paris?
Later, young people were to hang out and then drop out of street protests seemingly alone. The West hasn’t seen such waves of demonstrations since the 1960s.
Curious?
Lysergic acid, a hallucinogen, had been extracted in Sandoz Labs in Switzerland in 1938 through experimenting with a fungus affecting rye, the food grain.
Sandoz went into production of LSD in Switzerland in 1947 soon after World War 2. This pharmaceutical producer was owned by S. G. Warburg, a financial firm connected to US Federal Reserve founder Paul Warburg (‘Warburg’ was a name assumed by merchant Venice’s noted Abraham Del Banco family.)
When large-batch production of the mood-altering drug began, far away in Paul Warburg’s USA, an intelligence service received high-level directions to begin research into the effects of LSD on people. The program, code-named MKULTRA, was disclosed two decades later in a report to Congress.
Yet, the effects were long known to experimenters. A quantity as small as the weight of 1/10 of a grain of SAND produced hallucination.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) put LSD on a list of restricted drugs. At the same time influential think-tank men such as Aldous Huxley were advocating the use of LSD. Their queer voices prevailed.
ATF – a contrast
Troopers of the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) had famously been signed in to tackle the Branch Davidians by President Bill Clinton’s Attorney General and classmate Janet Reno.
The ATF troopers cast incendiary gas canisters into the wooden building of the Branch Davidians. The little-known group is thought to have been broken away by US intelligence from the Assemblies of God (the group was one of several used as pilot commune for behaviouralist studies by the agency.) Janet Reno’s incendiary gas triggered an inferno and besides sealing the lips of “David Khoresh” all adults and children in the Texas building perished too. Other such control groups where all subjects died were the People’s Temple and Heaven’s Gate (Paul Wilshire and more sources on the Net suggest David Khoresh was among the decoys whom the intelligence agency used for branching off the group)
Resuming..
Now, if you look at the Net you will notice that a ‘mysterious other’ kept troopers of the FDA away from rock concerts for young people when contract men were distributing packets of LSD (the Woodstock Festival came in August 1969). This included distribution at concerts of the Beatles.
A promoter who found the future Beatles, the independent Brian Epstein (he ran a record shop) was converted into a paid manager of EMI (or Electrical and Mechanical Instruments, an axial UK defence contractor). The musicians then received their name “Beatles”, a commercial pun replacing their original, mundane name “Quarrymen.”
The play-by-ear performers had been reproducing Rock ’n Roll music imported from USA (where it had evolved from black America’s Boogie-Woogie). For the performers, poets then shadow-wrote songs such as “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” (“LSD”). Musicologist drew on classical music (for instance, Tchaikovsky and Borodin) and EMI contributed with bankrolling the issue of Parlaphone-label disks and finally to the new compositions receiving broadcast hours. This combination suddenly pushed UK and US national audiences upwards from 3-chord music.
The rebellious Irishman in John Lennon wasn’t placated with the fame and fortune that arrived (at a command performance for the Queen he asked those with jewels to rattle them.) A sense of fair play caused him to glance from the West towards Asia.
EMI manager Epstein was withdrawn through his death in his London flat at age 32 and the Beatles were broken up. Lennon went on to crucifixion. Bullet holes entered his left side according to the autopsy report now on the Net and were thus fired from a service door (alleged plot-scripter Robert Rosen and the ‘New York Times’ had claimed in 1980 that ‘assailant’ Chapman fired while on Lennon’s right.)
New substance – Limitless “I”
In the aftermath of the artificial, drop-out subculture, two issues arose:
(1) The global South remained thick with dissent. Developing nations suspected that Northern elites were keeping off manufacturing industry in the South with an argument that small industry would employ more people. At the same time, India, China and the East Asian Tiger economies were seen developing modern manufacturing. So the anti-industrialisation fable began to falter. Conscientious academe – in both global South and North – had seen through the scheme of “Small is Beautiful” (Western protectionists such as E F Schumacher and Dudley Seers.)
(2) After the zenith of protest rallies of the 1960s, the newly induced drug culture saw young people not only drop out of rallies and take to hippy lifestyle. Some chose to become yuppies (young upwardly mobile young people.) They took it that the office should afford them a BMW if they were singing along. So in both fashions, yuppie and hippy, true commitment to social and corporate institutions began to fade. Anglo-American innovation tapered off. Yet, how do you still control the world?
A new fable was required so as to keep the levers of control with the dynastial Bold and Beautiful versus the world.
The new substance administered was “Free to Choose”. The fable was injected into media by Nobel laureate Milton Friedman from 1976.
Its consequence, a cult of Limitless “I”, was hurried on in countries distant from the West like Sri Lanka. Western news agencies (e.g. Reuter) and TV (e.g. CNN) would outmuscle local journalists and TV news presenters. Later, the IMF / World Bank anchored this Limitless “I” by using “reforms” that dismantled or made dormant Central Bank and other controls.
Ranging from Sri Lanka to the US, Limitless “I” was to transform (logically) into Limitless “Obligation” for millions of ordinary households. Behind the allure adapted from advertising industry (“Your Right to Choose”) , it was Milton Friedman’s task to ensure that fat-cat financiers came out winners. He had compiled part of this agenda in 1964, for Barry Goldwater, Las Vegas casino mob asset, to step into the shoes of slain President Kennedy.
After President Reagan entered the White House with Milton Friedman gaining the position at last in 1976 as economics advisor to counter Kennedy’s advisor J K Galbraith. Private financiers got their free lunches; you and me – Limitless Obligations. Next, the Anglo-American banks – that the fat cats controlled – hid away the private winnings, the banks knowing that they could assuredly ask the taxpayer for missing capital.
Now – over to astronaut
Astronaut Leonov was on the list of five people overseas whom Arthur C Clarke named when Sri Lanka decided to celebrate Clarke’s 90th birthday. An unknown to the Nobel committee, Clarke created the concepts of the earth-orbiting artificial satellite and the Internet that help the world everyday.
Sri Lanka’s Foreign Ministry had selected me, your narrator, to serve as Astronaut Leonov’s translator. The three days that I served helped me benefit from the experience of the person who now heads Russia’s Space Academy. Our relation-ship chanced to lead him to confide much, speaking openly with me. When I was seeing him off finally at the airport he left me with the words, “I must now leave or else our conversation will never end.”
Leonov turned out to be a fancier of spicy food. The hotel with verandah looking out on the ocean also has lobster and crab in abundance.
One morning I put this question to him, “What is the most important quality in a man?”
Leonov thought briefly and said, “The ability to fight with oneself.”
I understood him. Suppressing the self has been taught by sages including those of the subcontinent where Leonov was speaking.
Let me introduce counterpoint.
World should revolve around me!
I was seated on the self-same sea-front verandah with a second Clarke guest. This was a PhD scientist working for NASA. I asked him too what the most important quality in a man was.
The scientist replied, “Self-respect. “ He meant well but this ethic was undone towards “Obsession with oneself” for the “Me Generation” of the 1970s.
“Self-respect” must be heard in the context of the outlook of the era that extends from Reagan’s comrade-at-arm’s Margaret Thatcher too. She had announced, “There’s no such thing as society – there are only individuals and families. “
A popular song declares with no apparent sarcasm, “I believe that the world should revolve around me!” Did swindlers like Bernard Madoff need more prompting?
Earlier, SONY had got no further than use BetaMax and Walkman for names when launching new products. The later commercial pandering to self-adulation evoked MyYahoo, WindowsMe, iMac, iPod and iPhone. A UK jewelry store calls itself “Me Me Me.” With everyone drifted into doing his own thing I must get suspicious of my neighbour’s agenda. This follows naturally when my neighbour claims fame and gives everyone else the blame for ills in the street. I GETTA DA FAME – U GETTA DA BLAME.
Our possibility to share useful information breaks down. To overcome dullness of mind I turn to TV. There a machine-wash recycles my mind.
An emptying loneliness? Videos supply me with air-brushed godlings with whom to mingle Ego.
New “Cold War”
Neighbourhood chat? My iPhone takes me up, up and away to MySpace on the Internet where I can overcome the loneliness of life in neighbourhood and office where a post-US-USSR Arms Race dividend has arrived. The dividend arrived in the form of a new “Cold War” of Each-against-the-Other.
Regarding the war of Each-against-the-Other, it was proposed by pamphleteer Thomas Hobbes. He suggested that a population could be managed easiest by the sovereign if society was atomised to the individual.
Hobbes method was found dangerous and was rejected by British statesmen in the 17th Century. These statesmen were correct; its introduction in the 20th Century has triggered the atomisation of society. In the UK, consequently, innovation has tapered off and the country has grown an external debt that is larger per citizen than US debt.
Some astute researchers have managed to study aspects of the issue. Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell put their research into a book entitled, “Me! Me! Me! American’s Narcissism Epidemic”. A brief excerpt follows below.
People strive to create a “personal brand” (also called “self-branding”), packaging themselves like a product to be sold. Ads for financial services proclaim that retirement helps you return to childhood and pursue your dreams. High school students pummel classmates and then seek attention for their violence by posting YouTube videos of the beatings.
Although these seem like a random collection of current trends, all are rooted in a single underlying shift in American psychology: the relentless rise of narcissism in our culture. Not only are there more narcissists than ever, but non-narcissistic people are seduced by the increasing emphasis on material wealth, physical appearance, celebrity worship, and attention seeking. Standards have shifted, sucking otherwise humble people into the vortex of granite countertops, tricked-out MySpace pages, and plastic surgery. A popular dance track repeats the words “money, success, fame, glamour” over and over, declaring that all other values have “either been discredited or destroyed.”
The United States is currently suffering from an epidemic of narcissism… In data from 37,000 college students, narcissistic personality traits rose just as fast as obesity from the 1980s to the present, with the shift especially pronounced for women.
The rise in narcissism is accelerating, with scores rising faster in the 2000s than in previous decades. By 2006, 1 out of 4 college students agreed with the majority of the items on a standard measure of narcissistic traits.
Mere cunning
“Celebrity narcissism: A bad reflection for kids” is a report filed in USA TODAY newspaper by Sharon Jayson.
She interviews behavior expert and physician Drew Pinsky and S. Mark Young, a social scientist, on their book “The Mirror Effect: How Celebrity Narcissism Is Seducing America.”
She quotes: “It may be especially dangerous for young people, who view celebrities as role models.”
Q: Let’s begin with the title. What do you mean by the “mirror effect,” and why do you say it’s a problem?
A: I’ve been working with celebrities many, many years. I’ve treated many for chemical dependency and the like. They have profound childhood trauma. It’s not something to do with their job or the life they lead. They just happen to be people driven to seek celebrity as a way to make themselves feel better… We’re taking someone who needs to be a god and making them a god.
* * *
Now to move onwards from the US observations, the godling effect comes as corollary to Limitless Choice. To have bitten into this apple makes the victim try to say “No” to obligation. In the family, children subject to programming by TV often say “No” to guidance by an elder (Madonna’s handlers supplied the video “Daddy Don’t Preach!) Besides the office, this bequeaths aggression, cold war and emptiness to the home too.
A morning experience.
I was at a state-owned bank that serves the public in Sri Lanka.
I was speaking with a bank worker with around 20 years of experience.
I asked him of two tall, slim women bank clerks, one a Hindu wearing a sari and the other wearing a trouser suit and Muslim’s head-scarf, “Which of the two women is smarter?”
He said, “There’s not much difference. You see, young people rely on mere cunning and won’t be responsible.”
I had to call at the Post Office. This also being a government institution, I decided to query the grey-haired postmaster. His response was instantaneous, “The young are irresponsible.”
What a sea change between the two generations!
Reflections of old amity
Later, on the midnight of Xmas eve 2009, I chanced to hear a televised transmission of mass from a Catholic cathedral in north Colombo.
A teenager recited a prayer in Tamil and followed up to perfection in Sinhala. A short Sinhala sermon was then delivered by a senior priest and this was followed by a sermon in Tamil because the neighbourhood has a large Tamil population. Yet, prayer and response soon arose in Sinhala. Then came singing in Tamil. Now this is the nation that schemers tripped into warfare in 1983, five years after the use of Limitless Choice as a principle for the nation.
Looking at the world, the principle of Limitless Choice led US foreign trade into a huge dependence on imports. To foot the bill for financing these imports, the US chose to depend on China’s and other savings arriving in the US for purchase of Treasury bonds and commercial paper. With the US in recession, the transfers of these funds are now being switched elsewhere.
China is turning its foreign currency earnings towards improving infrastructural access for China’s economy. That includes the development of a port complex in southern Sri Lanka and pipelines overland for oil and natural gas from Central Asia to China. Today the world waits on China that retained the tradition of keeping one’s Ego under control, the principle that astronaut Leonov mentioned.
* * *
An English friend asked me some days ago, “What do we do?”
In benumbing times we must hold on in some sort of a fortress.
I responded, “Old wine, old shoes and old friends.”
About the Author
Should a church have a lightning rod?
I saw this question asked once before. I figure it’s worth asking again.
So why should a church have a lightning rod? I mean, isn’t God going to protect a house of worship? Having a lightning rod on a church seems to show a lack of faith in God’s protection.
http://friendlyatheist.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/lightning_rod.jpg
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1404/1424371805_46a667a5a0.jpg?v=0
http://media.photobucket.com/image/church%20lightning%20rod/bare_proton/photography/ubc4.jpg
All opinions are welcome.
But why would God smite a church in the first place? He’s attacking and endangering his own followers.
oph_chad: No, not me. Someone else posted this a few months ago. I just remembered it and thought I should post it again.
Haven’t you asked this question before? Just wondering. I was struck by lightning before and I don’t have a lightning rod. 
No lack of faith, but let’s face it—-lightning rods or higher insurance costs. Take the lightning rod.
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