Amsterdam plane crash: Turkish airplane ran out of Fuel

According to Turkish News sources that cite acting Mayor Michel Bezuijen of the Haarlemmermeer municipality, the turkish airliner that just crashed in Amsterdam crashed because it ran out of fuel.

9 people died and about 50 were seriously injured. Ran out of fuel? On a routine trip from Istanbul to Amsterdam? If this is true it proves that the Airline industry are taking dangerous measures just to survive the current economic conditions: just try to fly with less gas, mr pilot.

Shouldnt there be some sort of control on planes that they have enough fuel for the journey before they leave? It’s a strange story, and it effects me because I often fly with Turkish Airlines.

NU on Social Darwinism, Obama, Education and War

What does Novo Unversalis think of Social Darwinism?

We are against such ideas, like Nietzsche was. The idea that the ’strongest always survive’ is a delusional fabrication of Evolutionists. The opposite is true, as Nietzsche rightfully observed: all our institutions and traditions are centered around the idea to make anything ’strong’ or ‘high’ impossible.

The irony of our western states is that they in fact are not very different from the communist states they used to deplore. As an individual one has to serve the collective for 60 years, after which you are ‘rewarded’ a few years of freedom to enjoy yourself. The difference with communism is mainly that capitalism succeeded in surrounding this position with superior illusions.

The illusion industry of the West is in such state now that it can accomplish miraculous things, such as present a 50-year-long Washington insider multimillionaire as an advocate of change.

How does Novo Universalis see the Obama phenomenon?

Unfortunately we do not think he will make any difference. The fact that he has pegged his cabinet with old insiders and hardliners, under the cheers of Dick Cheney, points to the same illusion machine mentioned above. But the current humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a good testcase. If Obama doesn’t come out and condemn it we can safely say he’s just another media puppet.

So are you a pacifist movement?

We are not against war per se, but we are against unsportive war. The idea that there would be something ‘desirable’ in battling a stone age tribe with an overkill of modern technology is exemplary of immense spiritual corruption.

We would like to create a different sort of education system where the prime focus does not lie on ‘pumping machine knowledge’ into kids but developing character qualities in our young people, qualities of chivalry, heroism, honour. A Spartan education system that focusses on the highest possible qualities, where philosophy, poetry, fysical skills and test of intelligence are created that do not exist only on paper. After this spartan eduction, when they reach the age of 18, they will be free until they are 35 years old, so they can enjoy their life at its full height. After that, they are supposed to serve community for the rest of their lives. They will be glad to, out of a feeling of gratitude. In the current situation, the idea of service is not one out of gratitude but out of the old suspended fear model – it’s simply the transgression from the ‘have a boring life and you’ll be rewarded after death’ of christianity to ‘have a boring life and you’ll be rewarded when you’re 65′ of modern kapitalism. It’s not essentially much different.

Aren’t these ideas rather naive and impractical?

In what sense? Listen, there will never be any ‘change’ unless we change the system itself. It’s perfectly all right with us if you don’t want any change, but then you should stop complaining about it. You either want change, then you have to change the current system (media democracy) – or you don’t want change, fine, but don’t come complain to us when the New Dark Ages arrive.

But your ideas are naive in the sense that, for example, all war is by definition unsportive

That is a nonsensical idea with no basis in reality. Any General that prides himself from winning a battle between Goliath and David is not a general worthy of its name, in fact in our opinion he is not a general at all but a coward. You cannot understand the ethics of war until you have thoroughly studied classical masterpieces such as The Art of War by Sun Tzu. The problem is not, and has never been, war itself: it is the wrong immoral and corrupted application of war that is the problem. Without any chivalry, honour and dignity there simply is no real masculinity. A real warrior looks the enemy into his eyes. Real wars do not know any ‘collateral damage’.

Novo Universalis solves the Israel problem – televise the situation, brains instead of bombs

What solution does Novo Universalis propose for the Israel problem?

Like all ethnical conflicts the Israel situation essentially is only solvable if people realize how silly they really are. For this reason Novo Universalis wants to propose to completely televise the situation on the ground. We are currently in a situation where Israel and Palestina are constantly in the centre of media attention, which is a sort of attention that works very addictive. Israelis feel they are important, important enough to bomb other people. Palestinians likewise feel they are important, important enough to shoot rockets. So there is lots of media attention but its the wrong kind of media attention: it’s the sort of media attention that makes people think they are somehow important.

What we need to do is get game-concept masters like Joop van den Ende involved. He has some great concepts, like programs in which people do partner-swaps, or where israelis have to be palestinians for a week and vice versa. Joop will make lots of programs and they will all be sold and watched by zillions of people, which in turn will make it profitable for both sides to discontinue their sillyness since they can make more money with Joop’s gameshows.

But what about the militants and the rockets, what about the bombings as retaliations?

These occur because these people find themselves and their tribe more important than the tribe on other end of the street. It’s tribalism in a pure and barbaric form. To battle tribalism you need to do what for example the CIA does in Afghanistan: they give Viagra to the tribal leaders to make them compliant. Extraordinary situations require extraordinary measures. Adding Viagra to the drinkwater in both Palestina and Israel is a great idea. Another great idea is to break down the wall and instead dig a canal there and make beaches on either side. When that’s done, build ultra cheap holiday resorts there. When the militants have to cross beaches full of ‘Oben Ohne’ material they will find it much more hard to feel important about themselves.

But these measures are absurd!

No, what’s absurd is carpet bombing, killing, shooting rockets, and hate , hate, hate just because of people who think they are somehow important, while its pretty obvious they are not.

But it seems to us you are greatly marginalizing the problem by presenting the fake ‘just don’t take yourself serious’ solution in a complex political situation

We are pointing out that the root of the whole problem lies in tribalism and the idea that ‘others’ are somehow less important than ‘us’. This whole belief is enhanced by the media attention, which in fact greatly supports the whole idea of importance. The German philosopher Nietzsche pointed out that what humans call an ‘ego’ is in fact not a singular entity but a chain of events, that the human ego is always a group phenomenon and that having a ‘large ego’ simply means you have an ego that is out of line with the group consensus. What we are dealing with here is an Israeli ego that is defined as a victim, under constant threat, and a Palestinian ego that is defined as a victim, under constant threat. It is very easy to solve the actual problems, but no one wants to solve them, because the Ego requires the problems to survive.

Easy to solve the problems?

Yes, absolutely. Take for example this supposed ‘rocket attack problem’ which is always used as an excuse to bomb and attack the other side. What you need to understand about rocket attacks is that they are a great means to maintain a constant level of feeling threatened. Another thing you need to understand about rocket attacks is that you have no means of knowing who actually fires these rockets. They could be fired by Hamas, they could be fired by intelligence agencies who want an excuse to attack. Moreover, for some reason these 5000 rocket attacks had only a handful of civilians as victims over the years, meaning that the chance one would be killed by being run over by the city bus is probably larger. And yet, here we have a nation living under the constant ringing of alarms, a 24 hours a day panic, a constantly threatened ego.

Now, instead of looking for a solution to this supposed ‘rocket attack problem’ like building a rocket shield that would take care of the problem, we see that the ’solution’ is supposed to be ‘wiping out a political organisation’. It is clear that these ‘rocket attacks’ are therefore the perfect legitimacy for the existing powers to maintain their position.

The same is true for this supposed ‘colonisation’ – with modern day technologies and architectural renewals it is very easy to create new space without the need to occupy more land.

So you see, solutions aren’t hard. What is ‘hard’ here is the fact that no one wants any solutions.
This is because both sides are addicted to being victims, the same is true for the Palestinians as well. They could easily solve their problems if they weren’t so addicted to their victim status and if they started to think instead of doing silly stuff.

Now, if you want to stop this ‘victim ego addiction’ you have to stop feeding it the wrong sort of energy, the sort of energy that says ‘yes, you are incredibly important, the whole world is turning around Israel, the whole world is turning around Palestina’…..

Global population reduction policy/ Reversal of pension model – Part 1: Economy (Novo Universalis)

Novo Universalis is a literary think-tank, created by Dutch poets Martijn Benders and Samuel Vriezen. Our purpose is to solve all world problems and ensure and build a corpus of universal literature by the process of universal objectification.

Part I. Economics

How would Novo Universalis formulate the core problem of today’s economical crisis?

It was caused by a giant Ponzi scheme set up by Neocons. The idea was to grab as much money as they can before shit hits the fan. The problems we now face are postponed problems, they were already apparent in 1999. On a larger scale, it is also caused by the incredibly naive idea that ‘eternal global growth’ would somehow be possible without cannibalizing our planet and its resources faster and faster. That’s of course utter nonsense and a good example of what sort of idiocies prevail when one declares all ideologies dead. The idea that what currently is known as ‘democracy’ and ‘capitalism’ are the final answers to the problems of existence points to a creative bankruptcy that is even worse than any economical one. We need to stop this nonsense as soon as possible and start to think. We need a new ideology.

So what solution does Novo Universalis have?

In general it is not hard to find solutions. The hard part is rather to overcome the inertia of suspended belief, People love to believe bullshit, because it sanctifies their existence.

The current economical model, partly based on the Ponzi scheme of eternal debt, will cannibalize itself faster and faster. People who tell you that these sort of crises are cyclical are not telling you the whole truth. They are cyclical, but they are also accelerating, which is why this decade we already had 2 major economical crises. Next decade we will have 2 or 3, until the point is reached where the world economy is in a permanent state of crisis. To avoid this we need to leave the insane model of eternal growth and the model of the debt based economy.

What’s the alternative?

Firm measures that ensure the quality of our societies and their surroundings. First and foremost: a global rule of maximally one child per couple, like the Chinese have implemented. We need to start see reality instead of dreams: and this reality is that this planet can maximally support 2 billion humans, resource-wise, and that by letting the population grow out of control we are destroying the planet and ourselves. Population control measures are the only humane way of preventing this.

Who will then pay the retirement money, support the old population?

The retirement money based on speculations and interest constructions model will soon be redundant anyway. What we will see and what we are already seeing is that people will have to work longer and longer, first till 70, 75, 80, there will be no end in sight. The idea is that you are a slave 80% of your life so you can start to enjoy life when you are too old to enjoy it. It is a form of collective insanity.

It is better to reverse this model: people are free until they are 40, so they can enjoy life when its still enjoyable, and afterwards they have to work hard as long as they are still able to / until their death. That model makes much more sense, and moreover it means that diminishing population is now actually a profitable thing.

What does Novo Universalis think are the dangers that lie ahead?

We think that dividing the world into 4 power blocks was a really bad idea. We much prefer the old model were the world consisted out of a lot of countries. We think the United Nations are a colossal failure. The dangers in the current situation are primarily:

1. The country with the largest, by now not payable, debt on the planet also has the largest military. Their idea is that they can keep wasting money since the ‘debt’ is so high it has become a fiction rather than a reality. By having the largest military apparatus they ensure that this model is possible without anyone complaining too hard. The dangers of this model are very obvious: they will forever feel the need to ‘prove their militairy superiority’ by proxy wars so no one gets the idea to ask their money back. In short, they aren’t planning to pay, which is why they feel they can waste money on all and everything.

2. Resource wars will soon inevitably start, when resources get scarce. Nuclear power is no alternative, since Uranium is just as limited and will run out almost just as soon. If we want to tackle the Energy problem we need to get rid of the patents for this sector: because now, if someone patents a new energy technology, they have the power to simply destroy the whole planet by not implementing it – e.q., a large oil giant can finance research, patent the technology, and keep it dormant as long as they make oil profit. This is not a situation we can afford right now.

3. The ecological problem / Climate change: this will be largely adressed by our population redux policy. Half the world population uses half resources, half the energy, half the pollution. More research needs to be done to develop cleaner technologies, efficient solar cells, efficient wind energy etc.

Free the Shoeman Muntader al-Zaidi now! 14 December International Shoeday!

Muntader-al-Zaidi faces up to two years in prison for throwing his shoes at George Bush. There are also several reports that says he is being beaten and tortured after his capture. We demand that he will be freed right now, because no sane person in the world wouldn’t want to throw his shoes at George Bush. Al-Zaidi is an icon of freedom of expression and 14 December should worldwide be declared as national Shoeday!

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The ‘Diplomacy 2.0′ program of the US government

Maybe you are one of those people who have noticed that, when one visits public debate sites, such as for example the BBC ‘have your say’ website there seem to be an awful lot of morons around who seem to completely buy the US government propaganda. Previously I thought this was due to a bad education system or because of the brain-shrinking qualities of fast-food, but todays news sheds a new light on these sort of comments: the US government spends 900 million dollars a year on a ‘Diplomacy 2.0′ program. I quote:

‘Government paid employees subscribe to websites to infuse them with ‘reasonable opinions’. They actively participate in public debates in order to counter ‘extremistic thoughts’ and present a positive view on American policies.’

Source: www.nu.nl

900 million dollars a year, at an average wage that would be around 15.000 guys sitting at their computers typing government-positive comments all day. And of course these persons are not known as ‘government employees’ they pretend to be average joes, intellectuals, whatever.

Apparently ‘Freedom of speech’ just doesn’t suffice. We, the people, need to be guided into what sort of opinions are deemed okay by the government. You know, moderate opinions. Everything that supports us. All the rest is extremism.

The next question is: does this opinion Gestapo also use the IMDB site? There seem to be a massive amount of idiots there praising the worst sort of hollywood trash, while bashing independent and foreign films.

Diplomacy 2.0 – how incredibly Kafkaesque!

The Global Superpower is in fact a Global Underdog

The Global superpower is in fact a Global Underdog

One of the greatest faults of the generation that grew up in the 50’s and 60’s, which now, through Obama, is about to be replaced by a new generation which I call the multitasking generation (MTG) – one of their greatest faults was that they invented the American Dream as an answer to World War II. The American Dream always has been a denial, a negative quality on itself: the idea that ‘Anything is possible, anyone can be anything’ as a life philosophy is so ridiculous, not because it is false but because it’s simply always true, everywhere. Anyone can be anything anywhere in the world. That last part, the ‘anywhere’ is exactly what is missing out of this ‘American Dream’ – according to their projections this very simple idea is ‘only possible in the US’. Let us look at this idea very carefully, because what we see here is incredibly typical; let us imagine a small town where 500 people live, including farmer Johnson, who always teaches his family that only on the Johnson Farm anyone can be anything he wants, while out there, on the other farms, this quality would be somehow lacking.

It is not very hard to see how ridiculous this idea really is. But instead of focussing on how false the idea of the American Dream is it is far more interesting for us to look at why it was a ‘denial of service’ after the horrors of WWII and why, in effect, the American Dream is in fact an expression of the utmost inner uncertainty, of a massive inferiority complex the entire United States suffers from. Let us start with the latter.

America, a fugative state, has always had a love-hate relationship with Europe. Europe represented the Slave Masters they broke away from, Europe represented Law and Order, whilst they represented Freedom and Opportunity. The relationship of the American with the European is therefore primarily the relationship a former slave has with his old master: he ridicules him, but deep inside still fears him. There is a giant inferiority complex hidden in the citizens of the US, which is exactly why they behaved as they did the last couple of decades: no one sane would behave as if he is the ‘cop of the town’ unless he has some sort of complexion that makes him believe that, by behaving that way, he will gain the respect or admiration of the others.

The simple laws of psychology say that anything that needs to be stressed is a signal of disease. In Holland we have a proverb that reads ‘Goede wijn behoeft geen krans’ which means as much as ‘Good wine doesn’t need to be advertised’. The more a person stresses that he is ‘free’, or ‘great’, or ‘admirable’ the more suspicious this person gets from a psychological viewpoint, since anyone who is really free or admirable doesn’t need to tell himself or others such messages. The fact that it is stressed so often points to a process of hypnotism: but why the need to hypnotize oneself, and what is being hidden here?

What is being hidden is a monumental inferiority complex. It is a well known fact that aggressive macho’s and violent people almost always behave operating from such complexes. Because authority, real authority, is calm and serene. When someone gets mad, gets ridiculous, loses his nerves this is a degradation of his authority, you can ask any teacher that. The worst possible thing you can do in class is exactly that. So, in this light, isn’t it typical that ‘the American Dream’, which consists of the most bland of observations one could possibly summarize (Anyone can be Anything) is formulated as the answer to WWII? Isn’t that exactly the great tragedy that took place in the latter half of the 20th Century for which my generation, the Multitasking generation that has its first Beacon in Barack ‘Blackberry’ Obama, must face? The idea that all we need to get by is that ‘Anyone can be Anything’, and only in the US to boot?

The reality is that we are far, very far from even starting to see how this massive inferiority complex is going to get worked out. As long as it is not recognized, it will just get worse.
America isn’t a global superpower. They cant even get a piece of desert under control. They are a global Underdog, and hopefully someone somewhere will find a big enough mirror to show them.

Martijn Benders, Dutch Poet and Writer, Istanbul 24-11-2008

From Neocons to neodems: Change is happening!

One of the first things Obama did when he was elected was promote some rather hawkish long time career democrats as his staff. The rigid pro-Israeli Rahm Emanuel, who voluntarily joined the Israeli army to serve became his chief of staff. Secretary of Finance? 3 nominees, all 3 straight from the Federal Reserve Bank. Having someone from the Federal Reserve as a head of finance is like having someone from KLM be the head of Schiphol Airport. It’s essentially corrupt.

Now, one of the first things Obama lets us know, besides that Iran is still on the list, is that the rockets will still be installed in Poland. Excuse me? Is this supposed to be someone with an agenda for ‘change’? He doesn’t even sound like someone from another party than Bush – in fact probably most Republicans sound more revolutionary than he does. Do me a favour and look at a world map. Now, draw a line between Iran and, say, Paris. Does the line cross Poland? Of course not. The only countries a rocket installation in Poland would protect against Iranian missiles are Norway and Sweden.

What a strange kind of ‘change’ we have here. We have a weird, provocative plan to build a rocket defense system at the Russian border. Then a ‘new president’ comes out and the first thing he lets us know is that this plan won’t change. Wow, that’s rich. I bet Norway and Sweden are going to be really happy to feel safe & protected from Iranian missiles.

Voting machine becomes new president of the US

From the Onion News Network:

Voting Machines Elect One Of Their Own As President

Anarchitecton by Jordi Colomer

This is one of the most grabbing artworks I have seen lately and the overall best example of conceptual protest art I have seen. I am talking about Jordi Colomer’s ‘Anarchitecton’ which is a serie of videos and pictures of people protesting with buildings as a protest sign:

That makes you think in these times of economic crisis: is capitalism actually a protest against itself?

Isn’t the only way to effectively protest capitalism becoming capitalism itself? The way things are build now there’s no way to escape the system, unless you manage to climb on top of it. The same is true about our so-called ‘democracy’: it has become the most intolerant political system ever invented, far more intolerant than any dictatorship has ever been. That is an interesting paradox.

View the whole work on Jordi Colomers website

Analysis of the first US presidential debate

I stayed up last night to watch this presidential debate. I thought it was a failure on all points, first and foremost because of the debating formula that was used. There was a guy asking the most bland of all questions and there were two guys allowed to spit out pre-studied speeches. The failure here is clear: there should be a third independant party present that can ask tough questions, not just some old man who reads questions from a paper a 7 year old boy could have thought up.

The US largely is a mytholomanic country: it operates on the presumption that if one repeats a lie often enough and with enough conviction it sooner or later becomes a truth. Both candidates essentially have the same policies, one wants to put more soldiers into Afghanistan for-this-reason and the other one wants to put more soldiers into Afghanistan for-that-reason. Nobody present to ask any tough questions, such as why Russia is supposedly evil for responding when its soldiers were attacked by Georgia but for us its okay to occupy two countries on the other end of the world for more than 8 years.

Frankly, I see very little difference between these candidates. Both try to be hawkish warmongers that want to attack people based on nothing but a fable, both are idiotic enough to suppose that we should expand Nato right to the Russian border, both are talking about giant tax cuts in a time where the US is completely bankrupt and both want to spend more on the military too.

It’s not hard to see that which such candidates the US is pretty much doomed. What we have here are two people who claim that more spending is the answer to enormous debt. They both want to give 700 Billion dollars to the banks and, guess what, on top of that want to introduce tax cuts for the tax payers. Well, that is pretty brilliant. So where is all that money going to come from again?

What we essentially see here is that elections have become a marketing event without any real difference of opinion. The basic solution both have to everything is: more war & more spending & less tax will solve everything. Obama totally blew the little credential he had left with me when he mindlessly repeated several blatant lies and even tried to be more hawkish than McCain was over Pakistan. How can anyone in the same breath be a finger pointing moralist about Russia and publicly exclaim we should attack Pakistan whenever we want if we see reason for it. The same old mindless propaganda, repeated over and over again and the worst thing is it will probably end up in our history books, because, as Mark Twain wrote once: history is nothing but our prejudices written down with blood. Both these candidates are essentially proponents of the ‘Might is Right’ doctrine: it is enough to have powerful convictions, we, the public, don’t need reasons anymore. We don’t need reasons as to why the Nato should be expanded, we don’t need reasons as to why the Taliban must be ’stamped out’. It’s enough to hear some lunatics say with great conviction that we should. That’s what politics has come to the last decade, and sadly Europe is sheepishly following in its trails.

Paragnost tip leads to molestation

Friends of the 17 year old Cassandra van Schayk from the Dutch town of Almere, who was found dead on 14 April 2007 in the waters of the Noorderplassen reserve, have beaten up a 25 year old man because they thought he could possibly be the culprit who killed their friend based on tips some paragnosts gave. These paragnosts told that they saw a black car with the sticker ‘Masters of Hardcore’ in their minds when they ‘investigated’ this case. The Local media wrote some reviews about that.

25 year old Wesley posesses a black Nissan Almera that has exactly that sticker on the back. Enough reason for the friends of Cassandra to lure him to a far off field and severely beat Wesley up. That happened last week, according to Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf.

The victim has filed charges of molestation with the police. He also received death threats on the website Almere4you.nl, because of which he has deleted his profile there. He also removed the sticker from his car after some people threw a rock through his back window.

Police lets us know that Wesley is not a suspect in this case. Her death is still a mystery. Wesley told De Telegraaf that he has no involvement in the death of Cassandra, even though some people insist on believing that. He just knew her from some msn-messenges they exchanged.

An open letter to the Bush administration: Poetry as a hidden tool for Terrorists

Dear members of the Bush administration,

Yesterday I read an article about the possibility that terrorists could use games like ‘World of Warcraft’ to communicate with each other and spread hidden messages about plans and attacks. This theory was vented by one Dr. Dwight Toavs of the ‘Defense University’ on a conference in Washington Tuesday. I was in shock after I read the article. It suddenly dawned upon me that Dr. Dwight Toavs was not only absolutely right: but that this was just the tip of the iceberg, and that, far-fetched as his theory seems, he has overlooked the most obvious communication avenue for terrorists: poetry.

As you might know a ‘poem’ is a piece of coded text in which the writers uses so-called ‘metaphors’ to hide the real message of the poem. That already makes it a very useful medium for terrorists, as they, using poetry, can conceal their true message by pretending the text is about something else. A terrorist might write a line like ‘Oh wavering flowers of the city, where it that the bees could honk and loom’ and what he would be really saying to his fellow jihadists is ‘Guys, go take a cap and bomb those buildings flat’.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Arabic poetry has seen a suspicious rise in recent years. But please, let’s not forget that these terrorists could use any sort of poetry to communicate their message: what about avant-garde, Flarf, language poetry? They are all suspect. Dr. Dwight Toavs is right and wrong: writing poetry is dirt cheap while playing WOW costs 14 bucks a month, let’s not forget that’s a months salary in Afghanistan! So we can safely conclude that poetry is the tool par excellence for terrorists to communicate their hidden messages.

And it doesn’t stop with contemporary poetry, oh no. Who says these terrorists aren’t secretly reading Shakespeare to each other in those caves in Tora Bora? What did the Lithuanian poet Henrikas Nagys really mean when he wrote ‘I was awakened by the whistling sound of pigeons wings and the flood of sunshine rising in my eyes’? Is there really any end to the vile possibilities of misuse one can imagine such tools to have? Clearly, any society that is serious about combatting terrorism must do something about poetry.

What can we do? It’s clear that we have to scan the entire literary opus of humanity for hidden terrorist messages. But only experts can do that: a regular CIA trainee will have no idea what these poems mean. Therefore I must propose that the US government employs all currently known poets, domestic or foreign, to scan contemporary and past poetry for messages that seem, well, suspect. It’s a gigantic operation but it’s for the sake of World Security. While Dr. Dwight Toavs from the ‘Defense University’ has a minor point I would want to suggest he stops wasting tax payers money playing World of Warcraft and instead focus on the real dangers, the world of poetry.

Lehman Bank crisis and the Glass-Steagall Act

The Lehman Bank, one of the biggest investment banks in America, files for bankruptcy today. That is a very symbolic development with huge implications. Today the biggest ensurance company of the States, AIG, lost over 60% of its value on the stock markets. I picked up an interesting comment from the BBC website’s have your say department:

The banking industry fought for 65 years to have the Glass-Steagall Act repealed (kept stock market and banking industries separate)…they won a few years ago, and major US banks immediately started buying buying brokerage houses and selling questionnable mortgages and securities at astounding profit levels. Banks did this in the 1920s and caused the Great Depression. Senate vote was 90-8…Biden voted for repeal, McCain didn’t bother to show up for the vote.

This is priceless. The ‘big Democrat’ Biden votes in favor of the corporate greed of Banks, and McCain didn’t even bother to show up for the vote. What a mess! This has ‘Great depression’ written all over it and, unfortunately, like in the 20’s it seems to be deliberately *caused* – anyone could have known that repealing the Glass-Steagall Act would have this sort of result. That Act came into place to prevent something like a new great Depression! A quote from Wikipedia:

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, bankers and brokers were sometimes indistinguishable. Then, in the Great Depression after 1929, Congress examined the mixing of the “commercial” and “investment” banking industries that occurred in the 1920s. Hearings revealed conflicts of interest and fraud in some banking institutions’ securities activities. A formidable barrier to the mixing of these activities was then set up by the Glass Steagall Act.

So, let’s see: we have the Democrat Vice-president voting in favour of abolishing this act, and this vote took place in 1999 so it wasn’t taken in a time of great economic prosperity but rather in the perspective of decline. This just shows what huge powers American bankers have over politics, Democrats or Republicans alike. And thanks to them, there’s this crisis now. Please, do not vote for these morons.

Mr Barack Obama

Mr Barack Obama, the wind of change, the voice of truth, will personally execute the bad guy when they manage to catch him. The vile Osama, put down by the heroic Obama.

Never seen a grain of evidence, but nowadays evidence is simply another affair handled by the secret police. Thank you, Mr Obama, we all feel safer now. I dedicate this song to you:

The powers of deduction

Deducting is a mental process where you analyse existing data to determine which possibility is the most likely one. Unfortunately, this mental technique is not very popular in the media nowadays. If it was it would have been much clearer what recent political developments are about. Let’s investigate the Guantanamo Bay phenomenon with the powers of deduction.

There are three basic possibilities:

1. This camp is an abduction camp where suspects are tortured to obtain useful information about terror attacks.

That is the official version. It’s obviously hogwash. Its a well known fact that torture does not yield useful information, and besides there is absolutely no way that information 6 years old, even would it come out, would prevent any attack whatsoever since the first thing any terror cell does is change plans as soon as someone is captured. Complete and utter hogwash.

2. This camp is one of the many places where the CIA and other shady organizations practice torture techniques for reasons unknown to us

Since it is clear that the tortures as described are useless, question is why are they consistently being practiced? Detaining people for 6 years without trial is torture on itself. Does it make sense that the CIA would go through these public PR disasters just to have some guinee pigs for new torture methods. Not really. They could do that anywhere and they probably are doing it anywhere. Possibility dismissed as unlikely.

3. This camp does exactly what its founders want it to do: terrorize the population with a hidden message: be careful, because if we don’t like you you could end up here

Bingo. The camp is a symbolic entity. It could even be that the torture stories are deliberately placed in our media. The camp is used for the same reason the nazi’s used concentration camps: people who are willing to do that are willing to do anything and it worked wonders for silencing the german population at the time. When your government is burning people around the corner you think twice before speaking out.

The creation of such symbolic terror entities is a major sign of fascism. The fact that our media still hover around the hogwash of possibility 1) is a sign of either serious dementia or serious corruption.

The U.S. Fights Mandatory Labeling in An Untested Human Experiment

(NaturalNews) The U.S. and several other nations recently attended a Codex meeting in Calgary, Canada to discuss food labeling. The Codex Alimentarius Commission implements the Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Program, the purpose of which is to protect the health of consumers and to ensure fair practices in the food trade. The Codex Alimentarius (Latin, meaning Food Law or Code) is a collection of internationally adopted food standards presented in a uniform manner. One of the principle reasons for this forum was to discuss the necessity, or lack of necessity as the U.S. sees it, to set up mandatory labeling of GM (genetically modified) and GE (genetically engineered) foods for consumers. South Africa (SA) and many African countries are strong dissenting voices of the U.S. policy that all GM/GE foods are considered equal to non-GM/GE foods and are in fact deemed safe under a 1992 George H. W. Bush Executive Order.

Under this official policy, all GM/GE foods are not required to undergo any kind of safety testing before entering the market.

Read more on Natural News

The memory of food

I don’t think most people that live in urban areas have any idea anymore what real food looks like.I just walked over the buyukada vegetable market and there wasn’t a single stand selling natural tomatoes. Real food doesn’t look perfectly symmetrical.Real tomatoes don’t look like the boobs of Pamela Anderson. Real food look deliciously imperfect and unruly.

Growth hormones. Coloring hormones. Radiation to kill everyting alive in the food. Pesticides. Does anyone remember that de Funes movie where he inspects a food factory that produces food on the spot from chemicals? Laugh, but that’s where we are heading.

Is it perhaps too much to ask exactly WHY our foods need to be pimped with hormones? Why, mr and mrs politicians, does the Codex Alimentarius REQUIRE all food to be hormoned in order to be trade-compliant?

Why have I not seen a single item in the media in the 10 years time the entire world food market has been hijacked?

What exactly is the result of eating food full of growth hormones on the human corpse? Well, no one knows. But it doesn’t matter, does it, if they all become obese there’s even more growth for the medical and chemical market.

Follow the money

One of the most worrying aspects of WWII was that, after it, the ‘follow the money’ aspect of justice was never part of the justice system which was merely based on direct revenge on the front-men of the movement rather than the people behind it, the guys that financed it behind the screen. We know for certain that one of the big sponsors of Hitler was Bushes grandfather. Others included big German pharmaceutical companies, one of which, IG Farben, was even directly involved in running Auswitz using slave labor for the company. One would expect that such things would be seriously investigated, that these sort of companies would be closed or at least receive massive penalties, but none of these things happened after WWII it was pretty much business as usual for them.

From “I.G. Farben – from Anilin to forced labor” by Jorg Hunger and Paul Sander”

In the Auschwitz files correspondence was discovered between the camp commander and Bayer Leverkusen. It dealt with the sale of 150 female prisoners for experimental purposes: “With a view to the planned experiments with a new sleep-inducing drug we would appreciate it if you could place a number of prisoners at our disposal (…)” – “We confirm your response, but consider the price of 200 RM per woman to be too high. We propose to pay no more than 170 RM per woman. If this is acceptable to you, the women will be placed in our possession. We need some 150 women (…)” – “We confirm your approval of the agreement. Please prepare for us 150 women in the best health possible (…)” – “Received the order for 150 women. Despite their macerated condition they were considered satisfactory. We will keep you informed of the developments regarding the experiments (…)” – “The experiments were performed. All test persons died. We will contact you shortly about a new shipment (…)”

No penalties were ever given to any of the pharma companies involved. Why? Isn’t the ‘follow the money’ principle rather the only garantuee we have that we punish the real people who have paid for the atrocities?

In the war tribunal of Nurnberg the American prosecutor Tellford Taylor said that without the support and interest of IG Farben Hitlers rise of power and WWII would have been impossible.

After WWII the Rockefeller group immediately took a majority interest in the IG farben shares. Why?

One of the few IG Farben men that was judged, Fritz Ter Meer, served a 3 year prison sentence and after his release immediately got a high board position for Bayer. His first action was create the Codex Alimentarius, a world food regulation program that is a smokescreen for worldwide domination of the pharmaceutical industry. The Codex will finally be enforced in 2009. It requires all food in the world that is traded to be treated with pharmaceutical chemicals first.

More info (dutch)

Dictators and the elements

I got an idea tonight and ran all dictators of the 20th century I could find through a birth control.
The result is certainly interesting:

Hitler: Aries
Aguinaldo: Aries

Mussolini: Leo
King Abdullah bin Abdul: Leo

Stalin: Saggitarius
Franco: Saggitarius
Pinochet: Saggitarius

Pol Pot: Taurus
Saddam Hussein: Taurus

Mao: Capricorn
Omar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir (Capricorn)

Ceauşescu: Aquarius
Mugabe: Aquarius
Kim-Yong-il: Aquarius
Than Shwe: Aquarius
Islom Karimov: Aquarius
Saparmyrat Ataýewiç Nyýazow: Aquarius

So, we have the worlds 17 worst dictators. Lots of signs, however, are not present. None of these 17 was a water sign. We may therefore safely conclude that water signs don’t make successful dictators.
For the rest:

30% of them was an Aquarius (!!!)

36% of the a fire sign. The biggest European ones definatly were fire signs (Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco)

No Gemini, No Cancer, No Virgo, No Libra, No Scorpio, No Fish present. So 50% of the zodiac ring is completely dictator-free.

Aquarius seems the sign most likely to produce dictators, and Sagittarius possibly the sign that produces the most dangerous dictators.

Oh, and lest I forget: 11 of 17 are winter signs. That’s 65%.

On Experts

I take as my point of departure Mr. Benders’ provocatively titled Why I hate poetry experts to explore some issues implicated in the imbroglio.

Listening to a lecture by Robert Greenberg, Greenberg articulates a mode for deep music appreciation:

Music is just like any sort of psuedo-science, it’s like wine-tasting, it requires an adjectival palette that allows us to isolate and distinguish different sorts of events from each other…we need words that allow us to discriminate between certain very subtle nuances.

The notion of the expert, is mistakingly used interchangeably with the critic, though they are distinct; the expert is a master of the particular, while the critic is the medium of the general. While a film critic may be an expert in film history, technique and production her role as a critic is to contextualize the particular in the frame of the general — to articulate the connectedness of experience, the presence of history and the profundity of art. There are bad critics and bad experts. We need look no further for the real consequences of selectively ignoring experts who don’t support you position, in favor of others who provide complicit testimony.

The popular notion is that the influence of experts and critics may in fact be dwindling, in the face of the decentering and destabilizing effect of the internet. (The Economist has an interesting write up on Wikipedia). I’ve noted on two previous ocassions, the role of the (video game, film, music) critic as well as the idea of the Critic: everyone or no one. I’ve always taken the cultural critics of the 1960’s, most notably Lewis Mumford and José Ortega y Gasset, as exemplary models of critical practice.

One might couple the notion of the critic with the oft-quoted axiom from Socrates The unexamined life is not worth living. But then there’s something to be said about The pleasure of art without context.

Propaganda and symbols of terror

What was the truly scary aspect of WWII? Not the genocide itself: that was horrible, but not ’scary’ from an intellectual point of view, as most horror films are simply not scary because they lack intelligence. No, the truly scary thing about WWII is that none of the top dogs of the Hitler regime actually believed a word of the propaganda they were venting. They didn’t hate jews. To them, jews we’re simply a means to an end, scapegoats, bogeymen.

Today, unfortunately, we can witness exactly the same phenomenon. Anyone who thinks George Bush actually believes in his own propaganda has shit in his eyes. The rulers never believe in their own propaganda. If they’d believe in it they would be lost. They’d be expelled from the system, as dangerous lunatics.

Anyone who thinks that ‘Abu Graib’ was a leak also needs lenses. Abu Graib is the best example of propaganda in modern times. Why doesn’t anyone consider the possibility that they actually want everyone to be scared of them? Scared people are much more easy to control. So, were those pictures staged? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter: sometimes its easier to purposely let things go out of hand than stage them. What I do know is that it’s a highly suspicious event: why is it that only the month after Abu Graib westerners were being kidnapped and openly beheaded? A clear case of counter propaganda. You can’t fool me: if all those people whose family members were shot or bombed aren’t angry enough to behead foreigners than no one is. Anyone that doesn’t comprehend there’s something seriously fishy about these events should really get a grip.

Because that is ultimately why the nazis had concentration camps: as symbols of terror. There’s nothing in this world that works better for people to keep their mouth shut than the idea that anytime, anywhere, you could simply end up there if you don’t shut up.

Unfortunately, we do not seem very keen on learning history’s lessons.

The Party

The party is a contemporary form of dictatorship. It is the modern instrument of dictatorial government. The party is the rule of a part over the whole. As a party is not an individual, it creates a superficial democracy by establishing assemblies, committees, and propaganda through its members. The party is not a democratic instrument because it is composed only of those people who have common interests, a common perception or a shared culture; or those who belong to the same region or share the same belief. They form a party to achieve their ends, impose their will, or extend the dominion of their beliefs, values, and interests to the society as a whole. A party’s aim is to achieve power under the pretext of carrying out its program. Democratically, none of these parties should govern a whole people who constitute a diversity of interests, ideas, temperaments, regions and beliefs. The party is a dictatorial instrument of government that enables those with common outlooks or interests to rule the people as a whole. Within the community, the party represents a minority.

From: Kolonel Qadaffi’s The Green Book

The oil fiasco

I’ve been studying the development of crude oil prices over the last 15 years to get an idea where we are heading. From 1996 to 2004 the price has doubled. From 2004 to 2007 the price doubled again.2007-2008 almost tripled so far. So its clear we are in an accelerating curve. This means the prices could double in a half years time and after that even in a month.Extremely dangerous situation since food prices are heavily linked to oil prices.When the oil price doubles one more time it will disable huge amounts of people on this planet from buying enough food. Thanks to globalisation no food is grown locally: north european countries depend completely on imported food.But most of them can afford high food prices, so the victims will be the third world countries, as usual. However, sooner or later this globalisation rubbish will vanish as it will simply get too expensive. That means europe will be forced to grow its own food again: so if you want to make lots of money 5 years later: start a farm.

A camping isn’t a bad idea either since the era of cheap plane rides will be over soon too.

Poisoning of food

When I moved to the Princes’ islands three years ago the town on Buyukada was filled with vegetable shops that sold natural vegetables for low prices. It was awesome, one was able to eat organic, natural food for an affordable price.

Now, three years later, its hardly possible to find non-hormoned, non-manipulated food on the island. Welcome to the new reality: a global monopoly on food. A demonic plan unlike any other, with a simple premise: if you can’t control the production of food then you simply require all food to be treated with your chemicals. Codex alimentarius, ladies and gentlemen, the biggest power grab that has ever occurred on this planet.

Meanwhile girls aged 7 years old are starting to menstruate here in turkey because their bodies get confused by these large infusions of corporate hormones.

Codex Alimentarius, which comes into global effect in 2009, requires all food to be radiated and treated with antibiotics. That includes so called ‘organic food’ because they wouldn’t want anyone to catch a disease from eating natural plants, would they?

People seem unaware what sort of world lies ahead of us. If the oil prices double again half of the world population will not be able to afford simple food. And that can happen in a years time. What can we do, besides make each other aware of these dire problems?

No one seems to question why in 10 years time all food in our supermarkets and grocery stores has simply be replaced by mutated food. The grand tricksters of course have something up their sleeve: the codex is ‘just a voluntary set of guidelines and non-mandatory’. Let’s pause for a moment to realize how truly absurd that statement actually is. Here we have global organization that makes guidelines for trading the markets telling us these guidelines are mandatory – why, then, are there guidelines in the first place? Why do we need global trade guidelines that tell us we better radiate and poison our own food with chemicals?

The catch is of course that any country that does not comply will sooner or later be pushed out of business.And as farmers serve both local and international markets they have no choice: antibiotics and radiation on all food since separating is too expensive and no one seems to have brains enough to complain anyway.

What a pathetic place we are creating. I better find a place with a garden to grow my own food unless I want too see my daughter turn into an obese, over-hormoned entity.

About the Belgians

I got some upset comments in my mailbox from Belgians who felt offended with my commentary about ‘Belgians running 30 years behind with their postmodernism and popstars in poetry’. It is clear from these mails that people conceived I was relating Belgium to Holland, but that’s based on mis comprehension. I was of course referring to Turkey, or rather Istanbul as such. No person could possibly claim with a serious face that Belgium would be somehow backward territory of Holland. They have better poets, better beers, better cities and better girls. If I wouldn’t have lived here I would surely have asked for asylum in Belgium, as Olaf Risee did. I much prefer the warm schizophrenia of the Belgians to the cold merchant-psychosis of the Dutch.

The Evil Genius behind the Eurovision Song Contest

In Europe we hold a blasphemic contest every year to see which country has been Americanized the most. This contest is called ‘The Eurovision Song Contest’. All songs are by default written by Elton John. He doesn’t take credit for it, true, but this is not out of modesty: Elton simply doesn’t want us to know he’s the only songwriter involved because it would ruin the spirit of the competition. The nature of the European song Festival is blasphemic, so the purpose of the participating countries is to show that even Elton’s songs can be ruined by total persiflage. Unfortunately, nor the commentators nor the audience seem to really understand the concept. Some noob countries even try to send in real songs or real singers, completely missing the point. There have even been one or two countries this year that actually tried to sing in their own language. The Eurovision song experts, however, could not agree if these were simply rebels or actually smokescreens which the hidden genius Elton John has put in front of our eyes to make it less obvious he actually wrote these songs.

Suffice it to say that The Eurovision song festival is the only festival in the world where countries spend tons and tons of money just to blaspheme their common root, American culture. It’s the supreme act of persiflage, a masterpiece of glittery sarcasm. Some day the masterplan of the Evil Genius behind it, Elton John, will unfold before our eyes.

Loewak Manifesto – part three

Our collective keeps developing. After an evaluation period it became evident that the formula of Loewak was unsustainable if we kept clinging to Dutch as a primary language. Loewak is a Turkish-American-Dutch collective, a transatlantic effort to produce a quality viral artmagazine.

As part of our audience was already international as of now I have banned all use of Dutch and I have expelled all members who seem unwilling to write in an International idiom. We, Loewak, do not intend to restrict ourselves to a small area of interest and we, Loewak, have no interest in a predominantly Dutch-Belgian audience. Our aims are transatlantic, crosscultural and Universal.

Soon to come: creation of the Loewak Institute, a freehaven for artists, philosophers and writers on the Princes’ islands. We have developed a marketing and investment plan to make creation of such an institute possible in the future. All participants in the Loewak project will be invitees to live in this dynamic community for free, overlooking the most wonderful city in the world, Istanbul. We, Loewak, have a vision. Brothers and sisters, let’s put our hands together and work.

Any members that were expelled but on second thought are willing to express themselves in an international idiom are free to reapply.

The enemy as an energy source

“As one must be able to lose the dangerous comforts of Happiness, one must be able to lose some of one’s friends; but enemies must be kept. Precious!

The airplane makes speed out of excess pressure. The problem is not to calm this pressure down, but to place it. To transform what is wrong, the enemy, the irritating situation, hostile surroundings, into energy

Henri Michaux, from : Powers and Maledictions

Sick of web censorship

I’m really starting to get tired of this web censorship problem in Turkey. Before, sometimes Youtube was taken down just to reappear a few days later. However, recently something seems to have changed since Youtube has been gone for weeks now. Wordpress is also banned – that includes all wordpress blogs that run from the Wordpress site itself. There’s a few dutch poetry logs I simply can’t read, therefore. The Wordpress ban is running for almost a year now. Apparently, also Geocities is now banned as I’ve discovered today. Offff yane, as we would say in Turkish.

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