a message from Michael Moore

The Rich Are Staging a Coup This Morning

Friends,

Let me cut to the chase. The biggest robbery in the history of this country is taking place as you read this. Though no guns are being used, 300 million hostages are being taken. Make no mistake about it: After stealing a half trillion dollars to line the pockets of their war-profiteering backers for the past five years, after lining the pockets of their fellow oilmen to the tune of over a hundred billion dollars in just the last two years, Bush and his cronies -- who must soon vacate the White House -- are looting the U.S. Treasury of every dollar they can grab. They are swiping as much of the silverware as they can on their way out the door.

No matter what they say, no matter how many scare words they use, they are up to their old tricks of creating fear and confusion in order to make and keep themselves and the upper one percent filthy rich. Just read the first four paragraphs of the lead story in last Monday's New York Times and you can see what the real deal is:

    "Even as policy makers worked on details of a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, Wall Street began looking for ways to profit from it.

    "Financial firms were lobbying to have all manner of troubled investments covered, not just those related to mortgages.

    "At the same time, investment firms were jockeying to oversee all the assets that Treasury plans to take off the books of financial institutions, a role that could earn them hundreds of millions of dollars a year in fees.

    "Nobody wants to be left out of Treasury's proposal to buy up bad assets of financial institutions."

Unbelievable. Wall Street and its backers created this mess and now they are going to clean up like bandits. Even Rudy Giuliani is lobbying for his firm to be hired (and paid) to "consult" in the bailout.

The problem is, nobody truly knows what this "collapse" is all about. Even Treasury Secretary Paulson admitted he doesn't know the exact amount that is needed (he just picked the $700 billion number out of his head!). The head of the congressional budget office said he can't figure it out nor can he explain it to anyone.

And yet, they are screeching about how the end is near! Panic! Recession! The Great Depression! Y2K! Bird flu! Killer bees! We must pass the bailout bill today!! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Falling for whom? NOTHING in this "bailout" package will lower the price of the gas you have to put in your car to get to work. NOTHING in this bill will protect you from losing your home. NOTHING in this bill will give you health insurance.

Health insurance? Mike, why are you bringing this up? What's this got to do with the Wall Street collapse?

It has everything to do with it. This so-called "collapse" was triggered by the massive defaulting and foreclosures going on with people's home mortgages. Do you know why so many Americans are losing their homes? To hear the Republicans describe it, it's because too many working class idiots were given mortgages that they really couldn't afford. Here's the truth: The number one cause of people declaring bankruptcy is because of medical bills. Let me state this simply: If we had had universal health coverage, this mortgage "crisis" may never have happened.

This bailout's mission is to protect the obscene amount of wealth that has been accumulated in the last eight years. It's to protect the top shareholders who own and control corporate America. It's to make sure their yachts and mansions and "way of life" go uninterrupted while the rest of America suffers and struggles to pay the bills. Let the rich suffer for once. Let them pay for the bailout. We are spending 400 million dollars a day on the war in Iraq. Let them end the war immediately and save us all another half-trillion dollars!

I have to stop writing this and you have to stop reading it. They are staging a financial coup this morning in our country. They are hoping Congress will act fast before they stop to think, before we have a chance to stop them ourselves. So stop reading this and do something -- NOW! Here's what you can do immediately:

1. Call or e-mail Senator Obama. Tell him he does not need to be sitting there trying to help prop up Bush and Cheney and the mess they've made. Tell him we know he has the smarts to slow this thing down and figure out what's the best route to take. Tell him the rich have to pay for whatever help is offered. Use the leverage we have now to insist on a moratorium on home foreclosures, to insist on a move to universal health coverage, and tell him that we the people need to be in charge of the economic decisions that affect our lives, not the barons of Wall Street.

2. Take to the streets. Participate in one of the hundreds of quickly-called demonstrations that are taking place all over the country (especially those near Wall Street and DC).

3. Call your Representative in Congress and your Senators. (click here to find their phone numbers). Tell them what you told Senator Obama.

When you screw up in life, there is hell to pay. Each and every one of you reading this knows that basic lesson and has paid the consequences of your actions at some point. In this great democracy, we cannot let there be one set of rules for the vast majority of hard-working citizens, and another set of rules for the elite, who, when they screw up, are handed one more gift on a silver platter. No more! Not again!

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

written with light

In defense of Bill Waterson and comics

“The business interests, in the name of efficiency, mass marketability, and profit, profit, profit are catering to the lowest common denominator of readership and arc keeping this artform from growing. There will always be mediocre comic strips, but we have lost much of the potential for anything else. We need more variety on the comics page, not less. Those of us who care about the comics need to start speaking up. This is an excellent place and time to do it.”   -----    Bill Watterson

 

 












It is as simple that all medium of art form can’t be adapted to another medium of art. The integrity, uniqueness Calvin and Hobbes retain in print which is not possible to achieve in a Calvin’s animation or film.
Like Calvin and Hobbes, classic “Ulysses” and “One thousand year of solitude” can’t be possible to make a proper adaptation to a film. But as we have example “Lord of Rings” which is very near, sincere to it original of J R Tokein’ novel. “Lord of rings” somehow able to levitate originality of the novel.

Film adaptation of Asterix also a failure, Asterix as a film well made, but the film version is not comparable to its original print version, which is genuine and all most a divine thing. 

Request for Film, animation adaptation for “Toto Chan” also rejected by author Tetsuko Koruyanagi. Bill and Tetsuku both want to keep their creation intact as it is, they both believe in integrity of their medium and at any cost they don’t want to betray their reader.

All major comic are now adapted to films and animation, but somehow those are seems skeletons of the original. Most are modified and as a film they transcend to another level which is not same as original print. Deviation from their uniqueness can be seen easily.

With due all my respect to legendary Stan lee, I must say his super heroes are not same on films as we see them on print or as they dwell in our imaginary world. Of course those are technically well built films. And can be seen as complete different perspective which may not similar to the atmosphere or aura that generated while reading a comic as graphics and text materials.

We are grateful that Bill Waterson and Tetsuko Koruyanagi keep away from all lucrative offers to defend their creation and up to now we able to see a pure and non-polluted appearance of their creation. And we will not going to see them on film and animation and they will never displayed on a commercial product. Steven Spielberg once interested in film/animation adaptation of Calvin and Hobbes, but as usual Bill rejected the offers. Now there is news that Spielberg will make films from adaptation of another great creation “Tin Tin” with some superior technology. It’s no wrong in try or adaptation for another Tin Tin film. But Herge magical strokes are always remain on print, in his four colors “Tin Tin” books and heart of these creation will never replaced by anything.

Invest big money and use big money, use any technology, get authorized to do anything on some art form is again an illusionary, unclear idea about originality or not a proper solution to achieve the goal always.

The Cheapening of the Comics: A speech by Bill Watterson delivered at the Festival of Cartoon Art, Ohio State University, October 27, 1989.

Composition

Bleed times

 

[ photograph are taken with 50mm normal lens, in presence of tungsten light ]

Vouge INDIA's fashion photo session with indian poor

Indian poor (African poor also) always is a lucrative, fashionable subject of photography/art for some art house camp and individual. Now fashion grasps them. What vogue India done in the name of photo session (vogue India august issue) with Indian poor, just an example of perverse nature of liberal new market economy,  well defined proof of moral degradation in a consumer world. An attitude to just dump ethos and a tendency to create a market or capture a market leads to the shameful demonstration of creativity in the name of fashion.
How vogue India looks at poor, as a metaphor of art or dream people? The perspective of vogue India as it revealed as they conceive an idea of self imposed superiority in a domain which made them blind to an extent that they are loosing their feet on the ground. Whole demonstrations came out as a flimsy idea for a saleable “creativity” with use of poor. One billion people, 30 million middle class, so sell them anything, make them anything.

On The new York times

“not just tacky but downright distasteful” said Kanika Gahlaut, a columnist for the daily newspaper Mail Today that is based here, who denounced it as an “example of vulgarity.”
There’s nothing “fun or funny” about putting a poor person in a mud hut in clothing designed by Alexander McQueen, she said in a telephone interview. “There are farmer suicides here, for God’s sake” she said, referring to thousands of Indian farmers who have killed themselves in the last decade because of debt.

And

This is what VOUGE INDIA editor said:
Vogue India editor Priya Tanna’s message to critics of the August shoot: “Lighten up,” she said in a telephone interview. Vogue is about realizing the “power of fashion” she said, and the shoot was saying that “fashion is no longer a rich man’s privilege. Anyone can carry it off and make it look beautiful,” she said.
“You have to remember with fashion, you can’t take it that seriously,” Ms. Tanna said. “We weren’t trying to make a political statement or save the world,” she said.

B V Krishnamurthy wrote on Harvard business in an article “Vogue, Vuitton Marketers Don't Understand India” as:
While there is nothing wrong in those earning high salaries having aspirations and getting into the rat race, flaunting such wealth in a manner that is disdainful of the suffering of millions is sure to sow the seeds of undesirable tendencies among the have-nots. Organizations, marketers and users can ignore these at their own peril.

Comment by G S Julka on article of B V Krishnamurthy as:

Most of the luxury brands make the same mistake. Mercedes came to India merely looking at a billion people. Result: It is a failure. If it was an Indian company, it would have been declared bankrupt. It has lost its net worth.

Jim Johnson wrote on his blog "(Notes on) Politics, Theory & Photography "

Moreover, as crucially important as material well-being is, what is at stake here is humiliation and cruelty. The individuals in the photographs might not quite grasp the cruel, humiliating implications of the Vogue photographs (although I would not want to pre-judge that), but virtually every relatively well-off reader of Vogue surely should be able to do so. How condescending are these images? "Oh, look at the poor woman and child! How fortunate that the baby can wear that charming bib!" The consequences of so cavalierly displaying such attitudes in any society are immense. That the folks at Vogue, as well as many of their readers and sycophants, seem unable to grasp that fact is truly disturbing.

a poem

The Colossal void
Higgs-boson commands
The form, formless
Words utters OM

Chorus from a football stadium
........ vs .......

declaring signs and colors

chorus commands

breath to feels as souls

Shanti, Shanti, Shanti

[shanti mean peace]

untouchable EARTH reviewed

Shen reviewed untouchable EARTH on The Blog Reviewer

REVIEW #168. A blog with a cool header that simply amazes me. It has long posts and articles that are well articulated and are of original content. Indeed each post is an interesting read. This is what for me summarizes the blog, Untouchable Earth. I do not know why the blogger called it that way but I certainly know that he had his reasons.

I have to scroll down and skim read all of the posts in the first page in order to see what the blog is all about and I find posts which are highly commendable. These posts touches the very core of the human being in us. The analysis of the film which he had reviewed recently was not an ordinary review but an in-depth review relating each movie to real life.

SITE RATINGS:

    * Layout - 7
    * Content - 9
    * Coherence - 9
    * Reach - 6
    * Readability - 7
    * Overall Rating - 7.6


It seems the .6 factor is still happening but anyway the only problem with the layout and the readability is the unindented first paragraph sentence or too close paragraphs. Which makes it a no-no for writing. The layout is pretty good although it has one sidebar and a continues running of blog posts which makes the reading continues but would definitely make the page hard to load for some.

I would also suggest a 'Read More' widget for some of the lengthy articles so that the posts will be pushed up. A blogger who engages in social network which if properly done could enhance the blogs reach.

Well I highly recommend everyone to come and visit Untouchable Earth.

Thank you SHEN

Finding Higgs-Boson at CERN

CERN states in their page about people who are involving with experiments as "an international spirit"

Beneath the breathtaking Alpine vineyards, work at a feverish pace to complete a machine nicknamed the "Lord of Rings" -- otherwise called a particle accelerator is switched on and what it's going to do is to recreate the birth of the universe, on a smaller scale, of course. The experiment will be carried out deep inside the Earth in a circular tunnel 27 kilometres long, 100 metres below the surface of the Earth.

The CERN experiments could reveal more about "dark matter," antimatter and possibly hidden dimensions of space and time. It could also find evidence of the hypothetical particle — the Higgs boson — believed to give mass to all other particles, and thus to matter that makes up the universe.

Famous astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has bet 100 dollars (70 euros) that a mega-experiment this week will not find an elusive particle seen as a holy grail of cosmic science, he said Tuesday.

"I think it will be much more exciting if we don't find the Higgs. That will show something is wrong, and we need to think again. I have a bet of 100 dollars that we won't find the Higgs," added Hawking.







    Large Hadron Collider - The Search For The Higgs





















"Lord of the Rings" - Large Hadron Collider  pics

The Cepheid Variable: a modem of Galactic Internet

Messaging and broadcasting via Cepheid Variable and a possible chat with extraterrestrial civilization. All they would have to do is waiting for us to login to the real broadband of the connected Universe which is Cepheid Variables: A Galactic Internet. If we want to contact not just a few highly targeted systems, but instead send a signal intended for everyone in the galaxy through this pulsar as modem, Cepheid variables is one of the other “standard candles” for measuring inter-galactic distances. The pulsars are good navigational beacons over galactic and intergalactic distances but are a effective way to broadcast a ‘message’ in terms of its luminosity and accessibility. One advantage of using Cepheids would be that astronomers in other civilizations are likely to be looking at them since they are a valuable tool in determining distances between galaxies.

Hubble tracks down Cepheid variable stars in M100. The Cepheid star in the center of the box is located in a star forming region of the spiral arm of the galaxy M100.

"We propose that a sufficiently advanced civilization may employ Cepheid variable stars as beacons to transmit all-call information throughout the galaxy and beyond. One can construct many scenarios wherein it would be desirable for such a civilization of star ticklers to transmit data to anyone else within viewing range. The beauty of employing Cepheids is that these stars can be seen from afar(we monitor them out through the Virgo cluster), and any developing technological society would seem to be likely to closely observe them as distance markers. Records exist of Cepheids for well over one hundred years. We propose that these (and other regularly variable types of stars) be searched for signs of phase modulation (in the regime of short pulse duration) and patterns, which could be indicative of intentional signaling. "

Above is excerpt from Paper "The Cepheid Galactic Internet" by John G. Learned, R-P. Kudritzki, Sandip Pakvasa, A. Zee

Centauri Dreams, post as:

Making contact with an extraterrestrial civilization, whether by microwave, laser or neutrino, highlights the problem of time. Suppose you are looking for a newly emerging technological culture around another star. When do you transmit? After all, even the most powerful signal sent to Earth a million years ago would have no listeners, which is why some have suggested putting actual artifacts in promising solar systems. Rather than transmitting over time-scales measured in eons, you leave an object that can be decoded and activated for communications. All kinds of interesting science and science fictional scenarios flow from that idea.

stories of multiple generations

I want my old clock
while visiting Saturn moon Enceladus
to Harmonize it with the level of tectonic surface
as tectonism has been an important catalyst of geology
on Enceladus for much of its history
as we do

I want my old pen
for carry it to
colorful cosmic cloud, W5
as The mighty cloud written their stories of
multiple generations of blistering stars
as we do

I want the old song
for take it to region Tarantula nebula
listening it with multiple generations of roaring stars
in different dimension
with their brute winds and frenzied radiation
They elicit the birth of astral newborns
As we do

I too have my old stories
I want to tell, I can tell, I need to tell

I too have my stories of water people, ice people and fire people
I too have my stories of war people, sports people and terrorist people