Category Archives: current affairs

Verwirrung 2.0

counterculture, current affairs, Discordianism, metablogging, Operation:Mindfuck, Propaganda, shameless self promotion, writing

For those of you who read Warren Ellis’ excellent blog, you may be aware that today is meant to be the fifth Annual Rabbit Hole Day, in celebration of the birthday of Lewis Carroll.

However, we are not doing that.  Not as such.  Instead, we have decided to launch our revamped blog.  Myself and Cramulus threw some ideas around while drunk a few weeks back, and this was essentially the result.  We want Verwirrung to be more than just a blog for the Principia Discordia community.  We want the blog to be a place where we can network, link, confer and argue with people, as part of our drive to improve and understand the crazy world around us.

So, first off, our blogging is going to increase.  By a lot.  Secondly, our writers are each going to concentrate on a particular sphere of interest, in addition to using the blog to write about whatever they feel.  So, for example, we will have writers here concentrating on the Law of Fives and how the brain works, on the art of pranking and operation mindfuck, some idiot dealing with politics and warfare, a guy investigating online subcultures, someone keeping a close eye on the world of religion, someone who can help you prepare for any situation, a guy interested in how maps do not correspond to reality, a biology expert and much, much more.

Secondly, we want our blog to be more of a community.  We want to break into the blogosphere, have people reading us and agreeing or disagreeing, but in short to have a lot more in the way of connectivity with the rest of the world.

Our focus is going to be on the near future, in all our fields.  What will happen 20 minutes in the future.  We want to equip you with knowledge you will find useful, and hopefully you can equip us in return.  I don’t need to tell anyone here that rough times have started, and this is probably the first recession of the internet age.  Lets see what we can do with this incredible tool, while the power is still on.

And most of all, we want to have a good time.  I’ll let each of the writers introduce themselves individually.  Bye for now.

I coulda cleaned up on this…if I had any money to bet

current affairs, FAIL, politics, rumour, strife, The Dismal Science

Iceland’s coalition government just fell into squabbling over…well, pretty much everything, it seems, but mostly whose economic policy sucks more and who should really run the country.

That sounds so familiar.

Anyway, yes.  This has been in the works for a while now.  The collapse of the Icelandic government should come as no surprise.  When 10% of your GDP gets wiped off, people get pissed.  There is a lesson in that, I think.

Keep an eye on the Baltic states and Hungary too.  Oh, and Italy.  The Italian government is pretty brutal, for a democracy, but all that means is that people are going to be even more pissed off and violent when they finally decide to act.

Nazi blogosphere vs Facts (DJ Cain and MC Encyclopedia of World Fascism remix)

Art, Articles by others, blogs, conspiracy, current affairs, Fascism, Humour, Indecision 08, Internet - a series of tubes, music, politics, Tin-foil hats, Trolling, wingnuts, writing, Youtube

Yo back up now and give a brother room
The fuse is lit and Im about to go boom
Mercy mercy mercy me
My life is a cage but on stage Im free

I’ve asked this question before: Suppose the natives in some Western European countries actually start to seriously resisting the organized destruction of their countries, halt mass immigration and reverse Multiculturalism. How will American authorities and media react to this?

Frankly, I wouldn’t be too surprised if they turn out to be actively hostile to native Europeans. That was the case with Clinton and with Bush, who after all supported the continued Islamization of Europe through Turkish membership of the European Union. It will be even worse with Obama, an anti-white Marxist.

As we know, a “Nazi” these days is not one of the many Muslims and their Leftist cheerleaders who shout “Death to Jews! in the streets of Europe; it’s any white person who doesn’t lie down and die on command. If we don’t lie down and die, we must be Nazis. We are after all Europeans.

Gates of Vienna

Fascists in Europe have seen this more recent immigration as a threat to the cultural homogeneity and national traditions of their countries. They have often exploited increases in the numbers of Muslims to claim that they are defending Christianity against Islam. Opposition to immigration has been one of the common threads within various fascist movements, and it is arguable that it plays the same role for such movements today as anti-Semitism did for inter-war Nazism and its imitators.

The Encyclopedia of World Fascism, page 367

JERUSALEM — Even as Barack Obama becomes the 44th president of the United States, anti-Israel professor Rashid Khalidi, whose ties to Obama stirred controversy during the campaign, has stated he could currently communicate with the incoming commander in chief, WND has learned.

Amid concern within the pro-Israel Jewish community, Obama repeatedly had denied he was influenced by Khalidi.

In an interview with the radical Democracy Now! news network last week, Khalidi expressed hope Obama would alter U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, talking to “all sides” of the Israeli-Palestinian arena. He also criticized Israel for killing civilians in the Gaza Strip the past few weeks and for leading what he termed a “propaganda campaign” to de-legitimize the Hamas terrorist organization.

World Net Daily

In practice, the term cosmopolitan was applied by interwar fascists chiefly to Marxists, Freemasons, and Jews. In Nazi thinking, Marxism and Freemasonry were themselves part of an international Jewish conspiracy, so that “cosmopolitan” often meant “Jewish.”

The Encyclopedia of World Fascism, page 188

Continue reading Nazi blogosphere vs Facts (DJ Cain and MC Encyclopedia of World Fascism remix) →

The War on Discord

ChaoSkeptic, current affairs, politics, strife, Uncategorized

Millions of people today are still celebrating the swearing in of President Obama and some are saying that his inauguration speech many go down as one of the best in history. However, the Discordian community sees it differently. With one short sentence Pres. Obama has declared War on Discord:

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

Many groups see this statement as both offensive and un-American. The Reverend Jim Reinard of America’s United for Discord is quoted as saying:

This is a complete outrage. Apparently Mr. Obama has forgotten his history books. This nation was founded on Discordian principles. Would there have been a Declaration of Independence without discord? Would we have had a Revolutionary War without strife? And where would the Constitution have been if our Founding Fathers hadn’t conflicted over the Articles of Confederation? I expect a full retraction from Pres. Obama in the coming days.

Meanwhile, Elaine Whipspittle president of the Discordian Alliance of Mothers has written a press release stating:

We at the Discordian Alliance of Mothers are appalled at Obama’s resolve to strip our children of their fundamental right to be raised in the faith of their parents. Our religion is not “an introduction to terrorism”, as Mr. Obama portrays it; to see how wrong he is you would only have to see the joyous look on a child’s face as she places memebomb stickers on public property.

Not everyone is opposed to Obama’s new front on conflict though. Central Scrutinizer of the Concordian Movement was quoted as saying:

Success on all fronts! At last someone has awoken to the insidious international threat of DISCORD and has dedicated money, manpower, and bureaucracy to combat this extremely precise problem!

The Obama administration was unable to be reached for comment at this time.

(thanks to Nigel and Hoopla for their help)

Attention Must Be Paid

current affairs, politics, society

In 3 and a half hours from now, the United States of America will welcome its 44th President.  President Barack Obama.  And a new era will begin, hopefully.

No, I’m not talking about some touchy-feely, bleeding-heart-liberal, MLKjr, kinda era.  I’m talking about a new era for us in the peanut gallery.  That is, the era of paying attention. 

George W. Bush had something going for him his last term.  Those who hated him had written him off.  There was no need to pay attention to what he was doing because everything he was going to do was going to be steeped in failure.  By the time this recent Presidential Election got started, he only had the hearts and minds of 1/5th of the country.  And one has to assume that many of those are probably party loyalists who feel it is their sworn duty to support ANY Republican President.  It seemed like somewhere along the way, a majority of Americans, though they loathed W’s performance as a President, decided, “Meh, we’ll just wait him out”, and then tuned out in favor of Dancing with the Stars.

So now we have this new guy coming in.  And in some sense, he still is a relative unknown, when you compare him to the typical life-span in DC politics.  It’s clear that there are many who desperately want him to succeed.  I suspect even some of the fifth who still like W, would love to see Obama succeed, thought they’d be loathe to admit it in public.  There is a collective weight on our shoulders in the form of this failing economy.  We desperately want someone to come along and lift it.  We want someont to come along and succeed in lifting it.

But the key will be remembering that this is our burden to share with him.  The biggest role we have is to support his efforts.  That is, to support them by paying attention.  We cannot allow this “Hope for Change” to become insulation.  We cannot put so much trust in Obama that we stop paying attention.  Holding his feet to the fire when he walks astray will be our best contribution.  And we know the fifth will do that anyway.  The rest of us need to represent the rational and reasoned response. 

At least, that’s how I see it.  – Reverend What’s-His-Name?

Message from POEE.co.uk owner

books, current affairs, Discordianism, FAIL, Internet - a series of tubes

I am strongly advising people against buying the hardcover version of the Principia Discordia I have brought out ’til further notice.

My publisher has done a bunk and run off with the money. I wish it were not true, but it is. Exposure Publishing/Diggory Press have walked off with the only cash I have to keep POEE online.

I have now published the paperback version through Lulu http://www.lulu.com/content/683873 . It will be available on Amazon in a few months, but if you buy through Lulu http://www.lulu.com/content/683873 we will make more money.

Please, for the love of whatever (maybe this community, maybe something else) tell everyone you know, who may be interested.

Thanks, people.

Syn out.

Naturally, this sucks beyond words, and its terrible that his publishers have done this to him.  So for now, if you are thinking of buying a hard copy of the Principia, please buy from one of the above links.  Furthermore, if you already have the PD, but have some spare change knocking about, consider donating some in order to keep POEE running.  Its a great Discordian resource and site, and deserves our help.

Summum Trolls the Supreme Court

Christianity, current affairs, Discordianism, Law and Disorder, Pastafarians, religion

(Cross post from ChaoSkeptic: http://chaoskeptic.blogspot.com)

Some time later on this spring the Supreme Court of the United States will hear the rather interesting case of Pleasant Grove City (Utah) vs. Summum. For those who have never heard of Summum, they are a religious group based in Salt Lake City founded by a man named “Corky” Ra. It’s sort of Gnosticism meets Mormonism meets Scientology. Weird but mostly harmless.

Back in 2003 they petitioned the government of Pleasant Grove, Utah to ask if they could erect a monument to their “Seven Aphorisms of Summum” next to a thirty year old monument of the Ten Commandments in the city park. The city, of course, said no and Corky, of course, filed a law suit saying that his free speech rights had been violated. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit agreed with Corky, stating that since the park is a public forum and that the Ten Commandment monument was private speech from the original donor Corky is allowed to erect his monument. The city appealed it to the highest court in the land which that brings us around to today.

Interestingly enough, Pleasant Grove is being represented by Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law & Justice, a right wing Christian group that has often fights against the separation of church and state. I say interesting because the ACLJ is going against their usual argument that religious groups should have equal access to public property. They are actually arguing that the original Ten Commandments monument government speech rather than private speech and that the park isn’t a public forum. This means if they win there would be a precendent in the legal system saying that monuments on public property is government speech and every single Ten Commandments monument in America would be subject to removal.

However, if Summum wins it could also be a huge win for all minority religions and irreligions. All public property that currently has a religious monument on it could be considered an open forums that would have to accept almost any religious monument. Discordians could argument for a monument to the Law of Fives. The Pastafarians could argue for even more Flying Spaghetti Monster statues. Atheist could ask for a monument to… um… nothing? It would be just like the chaos in the Washington state capitol last December times several thousand. Sounds like a great idea for a GASM to me.

Attention: Revolutionaries

Anarchy, Black Swan, Chaos, current affairs, debate, FAIL, Law and Disorder, media culture, politics, rant, society, strife

Capitalism hasn’t failed. The people who run it have. While at a basic level, Capitalism comes down to “I have greed, and you have need. Let’s do a deal!”, we all know there is much more to it than that. Otherwise none of us would get worked up over Globalisation(tm)and workers rights and the like. There is obviously a social element to Capitalism, both from “our” point of view, and also “theirs”.

Given this very human element, there comes a time where dead wood needs to be cut out of the system – for it to run at maximum wealth-creating efficiency. We normally call these recessions. The weak fall, the strong and the innovative survive. When you postpone a recession with massive public borrowing, that’s all you are doing – postponing it. Artificially propping up the weak can only last for so long before they fall off, like balancing a ball on a very thin stick.

When you get a recession, every weak element in the system will be tested. If you’ve postponed it, they’ll be tested massively. And they’ll fail, epically.

So, I state again, the reason why everything is completely fucked now isn’t so much the system (as flawed and distasteful as it may be), but the people who have allowed 2 or 3 recessions to hit us at the same time. Any system you replace Capitalism with will still be run by pretty much the same people. Even if they have different faces, they’ll still have the same flawed ideas. And we’ll be fucked again.

Change the ideas, THEN the system, and you may be onto something.

The Great Unfolding

current affairs, Indecision 08, media culture, politics, society, strife, television, writing

Only time will tell…

If you believe what you see on TV, then you are expecting a great New Dawn to occur around noon EST next Tuesday.  Of course, I imagine most of us HERE know better than that. 

The Republicans ridiculed the Hope and Change message from soon-to-be President Barack Obama.  It was endlessly lampooned and satirized.  But they attacked it from the COMPLETELY WRONG angle.  They framed it as an empty message.  A skeleton of an outline and a no-logic model.  Anyone who was paying attention clearly understands that Obama DID have a plan behind his message of “Hope and Change”.  His campaign website had pages, and pages of plans and initiatives.  So the Republicans totally screwed the pooch and really should’ve looked at it from a more pragmatic perspective.

That perspective being, “Do you really think you can do all this shit?”  Oh sure, a couple of the Conservatives tried it, but after George F. Will and the other Republican egg-heads dissed Palin, the rest of the movement ignored anything they said.  And this is the question Obama and the rest of us have to wake up to every morning.  I’m not naive enough to think that he is naive enough to think he can actually do EVERYTHING he promised on the campaign trail, much less what was on his campaign website.  Obviously, there isn’t a politician that has ever lived that has carried out all of their promises.  Okay, well maybe Hitler and Milosevic did, but I digress…

Now, we know how a large chunk of our compatriots operate.  We especially understand how they react to messages that come from the television and other “news” media outlets.  And as technology has advanced, every other Joe on the block has a “news” blog.  Yes, even THAT Joe.  I’m sure we all have also witnessed how the pending Obama Presidency has been sold by many of the “news” media outlets.  I think there is an expectation among many akin to that scene in The Two Towers, when it looked like Saruman’s hordes were about to totally obliterate the Rohirim at Helm’s Deep.  But lo, the sun breaks and there is Gandalf with some huge army he’s conjured up from the wastes.  Switch Gandalf with Obama and the army with economists and you have the expectations for what will happen on January 20th. 

And it’s hard not to empathize with that sentiment.  Desperation will cause a person to latch on to any glimmer of hope that may present itself.  It is human nature.  And it can seem cruel to temper that enthusiasm.  But one also doesn’t want to succumb to reverse paranoia, the idea that someone out there is going to save you from your economic ruin.  Or, that if it does happen, it’s going to happen next week, when in reality, we’re probably looking at the next decade. 

Indeed, only time will tell how successful President Obama is able to channel that Hope and process it into Change in the people’s pockets and Change in the people’s prospects.  The past has demonstrated that these troubled times do come to an end.  The question on the table is if it will happen WITH Obama’s interventions, or in spite of. 

Or at least, that’s how I see it.
-Reverend What’s-His-Name?

Craig Murray’s new book detailing UK war crimes in Africa

censorship, current affairs, download, politics, terrorism, war

Craig Murray is a British political activist, former ambassador to Uzbekistan and current Rector of the University of Dundee.

While at the embassy in Tashkent, he accused the Karimov administration of human rights abuses, a step which, he argued, was against the wishes of the British government and the reason for his removal. Murray complained to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in November 2002, January or early February 2003, and in June 2004 that intelligence linking the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan to al-Qaeda, suspected of being gained through torture, was unreliable, immoral, and illegal. He described this as “selling our souls for dross”.

Murray was subsequently removed from his ambassadorial post on October 14, 2004.  Since then he has written a number of books, including Murder in Samarkand, detailing Karimov’s human rights abuses, and his most current work, Catholic Orangemen of Togo, which details warcrimes in Africa.  Catholic Orangemen was released today, despite attempts by former Colonel Tim Spicer and a very influental legal team attempting to stop the book being published, no doubt due to Spicer’s name cropping up in so many African war crimes.

Murray has set up his ow publishing company and has the book for sale, both via Amazon and his own site.  However, to forestall efforts at censorship, either by Spicer or by elements within the British political system, electronic copies of the book have been placed on sites in several dozen jurisdictions all over the world.

To that end, the book has been put on The Pirate Bay, and I suggest anyone who thinks Murray’s topic and work is worthwhile should go to the following link, download the book and then seed it for as long as possible.

Thankyou.

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4642082/Murray-Catholic_Orangemen_of_Togo(UK_war_crimes_in_Africa)(2009)