Showing posts with label cultural revolution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cultural revolution. Show all posts

Tuesday 7 November 2023

You Say You Want a Revolution




 


A revolution is to revolve. We don't want to come back here. We want to evolve.


Ascension

Wednesday 2 February 2022

Reclaim The Streets - 25th September 2021/Southampton






As Outlined in Jerk Jam at Palmerston park, Southampton's Reclaim The Streets day was for all the family.

I noticed that some of those street paving art ideas couldn't resist a little 'it's not woke, it's awaken' efforts above.

Don't forget to check if you had the good, the 50/50 or the bad juice at howbad.info if you or your loved ones, were duped into getting juiced. Most Maxine injury takes a few years to strike if there was no immediate injury in the days and weeks following injection(s)

You might want to consider an HIV test too.



More information here, although it can't suggest the obvious correlation.

Thursday 27 January 2022

Jerk Jam Soundclash - Palmerston Park







This is probably the slowest post I've ever finally got round to. 

On Friday the 24th of September last year (2021), I was walking home through Palmerston Park and a sound stage was being erected (excuse the pun) for the next day, by the old fashioned bandstand, which leaks quite a bit when it's raining. I know because I've taken shelter there and been joined by all sorts of interesting people ducking for cover in a downpour. That's my electric bike on the right, I want to come back to that subject because as some of you know, I had two electric bikes when I lived in Beijing, during the 2008 Olympics. and there's an obnoxious scam going on with electric bikes in the EU. Let's park that and come back to it another day. Keep the vibes nice because on Saturday 25th, there was music in the park I've previously mentioned right near my gaff, and indeed all over the city centre which was hosting a reclaim the streets day. Art, Music, Culture, Festivities and loads of stuff for children and parents to do. Southampton is close to winning the bid for cultural city of 2025, and as I've mentioned previously, the city has transformed since my years abroad living and working in foreign countries.



When I left Southampton, nobody smoked a joint outside. We had to sneak around and be careful as well as paranoid. But on my return I was blown away when my old mate Chris, who along with his missus, generously put me up (when I returned to be  with my terminally ill mother), lit a joint up walking to Common People Bestival festival on Southampton Common, 2017. I thought I was in Amsterdam for a moment, but the reason I mention it, is that by 2021 I was comfortable having a doobie before I joined the crowd dancing at Jerk Jam. The music was reggae and the weather was a bit iffy at one point, but one of the London MCs, literally predicted that the clouds would part and the sun would come beaming through and lo, it happened as he prophesied.

Probably one of the best feelings I've had, or at least up there in the top 20. It was memorable and awesome. 

I was so happy for Southampton.

It's come a long way, and there's more to go.

Saturday 18 July 2020

Hollyweird - Obituary




It's been around 9 years since I first learned about the degeneracy and concentrated evil that props up Hollywood, or Hollyweird if you wish.

I had an inkling I might see the fall of the magic machine in my life. I hoped that would be coupled with exploding consciousness of the heinous practices that permeate the military, industrial, scientific, congressional and entertainment complex, but it was never a sure bet, and it has been a lonely journey.

Soul crushing for the greater part.

That's all changing now, and while it wont be on the horizon of mass media consumers, it will soon be on their doorstop and impossible to ignore.

I dedicate the Zapatilla track above to Hollywood and more importantly their unconscious consumers who are entertained to death for a wee while longer, as the gravity of how it really works sinks in.

Tuesday 12 November 2013

The French Revolution




I'm piecing together, the Black Nobility, the Crimean War, Palmerston, US Civil war and the Royal Family and the City of London.

The latter two are still in control of a lot more than the charade called government.

This documentary on the French Revolution was quite useful, and through it, I got a good primer on Robespierre and the Jacobins.

This production is from the time when the History Channel produced informative history programmes because these days they just want the kids to breast feed on Ghost Hunters and Ancient Aliens.

Not all kids stop there but a lot do and have no idea of their manipulation. Neither did I at their age but I'm learning more each day and I was raised on more stimulating content.

Recently I read Clif High's post on the spiritual revolution taking place (for want of a better description) and I was delighted that he articulated many of the thoughts I'm having recently. Particularly that most academic history is just a pile of rubbish and that it will take years for us to really sort out the depth of deception. As a general rule of thumb, those the media lionize are arseholes and those they smear are much more interesting. Like say Nixon  and Carter. Two of the more independent Presidents of the United States.

Saturday 9 November 2013

It's Time For A Spiritual Revolution - Russell Brand




Some people that I usually like are really polarized by Russell Brand. There's a tiny chance he's in with the Hollywood MKULTRA circus/carnival, but I don't think so and  usually handlers stay close to their subjects. They don't divorce them and go on world tour. 

Is it Russell's fault he's made a few quid and is famous? John Lennon was too, and they shot him.

I'm enjoying Russell's call to spiritual revolution and even if he's not as real as I think he is. 

It's OK. 

We're not dependant on any single figure changing the world. 

We've changed ourselves on the inside first and so should you if you feel the need to swear and curse at one of the few celebrities to say fuck materialism and its superficial buddies celebrity and fame. 

It's what you can't touch that counts.

Thursday 11 July 2013

Fidel - The Untold Story





This is a great documentary. I learned so much more than I thought I knew. His early life is particularly gripping though the full history of Cuba is probably a lot more convoluted than just this version of events.

Sunday 24 February 2013

Thomas Sankara




An extraordinary story of Thomas Sankara, one of Burkina Faso's and Africa's unsung heroes. He wasn't without his idealist mistakes but still a great person to be admired.

Tuesday 25 September 2012

Underground (Emile De Antonio 1976) - White Middle Class U.S. Revolutionaries





This kind of American Accent doesn't exist so much any more. You can hear it's conciousness. It's a beautiful thing to listen to.

Sunday 15 January 2012

Lessons The Coming American Revolution Can Learn From The Bolsheviks Co-opting The Menshiviks




Unfortunately John Lash who is on fire at the beginning of this interview is interrupted with a ten minute plug that would put QVC to shame and he never quite gets his momentum  back to the point where he was teaching us the occult roots of the Russian revolution and the counter revolutionary moves by Lenin and Trotsky as we learn of Edmund Wilson's To The Finland Station and a bunch of other recommendations that he never gets a chance to repeat as he usually does when he frames ideas such as America currently mirroring the history of the Russian revolution. An idea that Terence McKenna articulated as Rome fall five times a day.

John Lash's magic as one of our global elders/wise men is diminished by rushing him, interrupting him and adding superfluous commentary. There are few speakers of his calibre and every word of is golden goodness when he is in the flow. 

John claims we need a narrative to rally round in order to succeed in throwing off our central banker criminals and I think that process needs to be completely organic. No more hierarchy. Decentralised decision making is the future.

Friday 23 December 2011

John Lash - Lessons From The Russian People's Revolution




It took from 1905 to 1917 for the Russian people to rise up and revolt against the tyranny and brutality of the Czarist regime. One can't imagine Tahrir square bubbling in this manner without boiling over for 12 years unaided by Twitter and Facebook. John Lash draws stronger parallels to contemporary affairs with the Russian revolution through their establishment of surveillance mechanisms established within the Russian military called the Okhrana.

Furthermore John establishes that the peoples uprising was about throwing off an imbalanced society. The international banking concerns were at play in Russia as indeed they are today across the global financial capitals, and like the present are in collusion with Government, while subjecting the 99.9999 percent to a live of misery and financial slavery.

Lash's strongest warning is on how the peoples revolution was infiltrated and taken over by the well funded Bolsheviks and thus became part of the managed experiment in Communism for the international paymasters who benefit from betting on both sides as indeed they have for all the important wars since around the 1800's or since the establishment of the Rothschild banking dynasty.

Monday 6 June 2011

French Protest In Support of the Spanish (FTW)





Every time I see this I want to be back in Europe joining in. Instead I can only blog about it. One guy sums it up lovely. "We don't buy your left right politics bullshit. You're all the same and all the media companies are owned by five conglomerates who sell weapons to encourage conflict at the same time." Conflict of interest anybody? Of course the revolution isn't being televised by those media lap dogs, and they're even trying to kick it off Youtube too. 

Remember this from last year? In case you didn't get the irony I was saying capitalism looking rocky. How awesome is that :)

Tuesday 22 February 2011

A Revolt Isn't The Same As A Revolution


Johan Galtung is widely known as the pioneering founder of the academic discipline of peace studies. He has served as a professor for peace studies and peace research at the universities of Oslo, Berlin, Belgrad, Paris and Hawaii, just to name a few, and has mediated in about 50 conflicts between states and nations since 1957. 

Wednesday 8 December 2010

1968 Awesomeness



One of the remarkable things about that fluffy bunch of overpaid and creatively cauterized group of advertising sheep is they're obession with bleating "awesomeness" (a value neutral contribution) at any opportunity. Could it be they've neglected to see how the world is changing before our eyes?

I was staggered some years back to read that planners (or that increasingly bloated class of notionally-superficial-intellect planning-charlatans) admit they didn't see the relevance of the internet when it emerged in the early 90's, for our business. This is beyond words for a category with the privilege of being able to think things through and when to my mind any sentient being could see it was the most cataclysmic disruption and challenge to the mainstream broadcast media business ever. As time progresses I put it to you that a normalization of human interaction is taking place such that if there is tipping point against monologue messaging, it will be irreversible. We've utterly blown any trust or credibility we may have had a chance to retain or even earn back.

Furthermore knowing the advertising group-think dynamics quite intimately, I confidently predict they will do an ideological about turn because their relationship with the truth is largely defined by a pampered and paunchy lifestyle expensed at the celebration of vacuous and immorally wasteful consumption, and as Arthur Schopenhauer elaborated:

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident

I put it to you that the privileged and influential (information) classes will clamber over the bleeding bodies of the violently opposed, to claim that truth as if it were their own all along. That's how awesome advertising people are, by and large.

Maybe you think I'm overstating the case? Well I always like to invoke the observation that out of all the ethnographic studies, hanging out with cool peeps, endless focus groups and datanormous quantitative research that advertising does, it's the last to highlight when and where the revolutions or real change are emerging. An example?

Here in Bangkok a hundred were mown down by army snipers earlier this year and yet not one research company could point out that there existed a modicum of dissatisfaction with the existing regime? What an own goal. We spend endless amounts trying to connect with customers on a meaningful level yet why is that we neither ask the right questions or listen to the right answers?

The reason for this is that it's not in a remedial planners short-term best interest to point out that large cultural shifts are taking place. No, advertising is largely a sycophantic extension of the wealth creation machine for the wealthy. And for those who have studied their Marx the ability for the latest, fastest and most powerful version of Capitalism to emerge out of Singapore and take root in China is Authoritarian Capitalism. An unexpected strain that is not only more effective than the neo-liberal version championed in the West but and most sobering for anyone thinking things through right now, is largely disconnected from democratic representation. Below is just another sign of the times. A police officer who cowered in his car for three hours as the mobs outside clamoured for his blood. This isn't something I expect to see in the United States any time soon as the bread and circus distractions are way too awesome to connect the corn syrup classes with their own highly diminished and globally parasitic existence.



I put it to you that the crime isn't about joining in with the awesomeness group chant, in the hope it paints a picture of you as a warm and cuddly. But if there's no edge to anything else you've got to say, you're just another bloated corpse on the advertising gravy train. Part of the problem and blocking the solution. Time will tell. It always does.

Sunday 16 December 2007

Friendship Store


I had one of those epiphanies last night that tells me so much about this country I could easily write for days. Near my apartment is a Friendship Store. It's a nondescript department store with a supermarket, but I'd already noticed that things weren't the way you'd expect, after an emergency provisions run last night, I worked out a little more of what the Friendship Store is about.

It's a fragment of unreconstructed Communist China still alive in the 21st century. It's amazing. A state owned enterprise department store, with all the quirks you'd expect from the equivalent of say Debenhams, run by the most prudish and bureaucratic parts of the civil service. It really is a jewel.


The first lasting impression is the lack of customers that make it the most delightful shopping experience I've had outside the Prada Tokyo store. Look at those shopping aisles, gloriously empty of customers! OK, so they don't have every item that one might expect from a supermarket but the luxury of not having to work my way around the hoi polloi is beyond words. I'm convinced I was royalty in my last life ;) However, nestled amongst those state sanctioned goods for sale are the pearls of trade that the elite foreign diplomatic community, for whom these Friendship Stores were created, insisted upon in former times. I believe that at one point it was de rigeur for foreign leaders to do a quick shop here.


Look at that! Out of nowhere I was suddenly confronted with the most expensive tins of fois gras I've ever seen in a supermarket outside of France. Now forgive me but I've long suspected the French keep all the quality gear to themselves, so you kind of know that this sort of treatment by our cousins across the Channel is how they maintained 'cordial relations' with La Chinoise. I've always thought the Brits were a bit narrow minded on gift giving. We might not know how to make good vino but we can always make good pie right?

I then remembered when I was reading this book back here a few months ago that Chairman Mao, was fond of pigging out on the occasional delicacy. It's not beyond the realms of possiblity that any 'surplus' was redistributed into the Friendship Store to flog to the cities' diplomats, and raise some much needed hard currency. The tin just missing out of this shot on the left below cost over 200 Euros! An enormous amount of dosh in this part of the world even to this day. Anyway most of the above is just speculation but my interest to explore the Friendship Store from top to bottom had been precipitated and by yesterday afternoon at four, I had concluded it was well worth it.

I resolved to head to the top floor first, intending to work my way down. Before I even made it to the elevator, I came across the one must-have item I could not have wished more for. I don't quite know how to explain the piece above fully. It's an ancient court piece of beautifully cast porcelain ancient Chinese style letters of the most exquisite shapes set in a fixed surrounding of some indeterminate subsance. It was really beautiful and the sales assistant pointed out my eye for the expensive when she explained it was the oldest and most expensive item she had amongst the usual souvenir items. 23 000 Euros to be precise, and so I had to leave it there. She did let slip however that there is a state owned warehouse of this stuff and they drip feed it through to the store every once in a while. How cool is that? I'll be nipping back there on occasions for sure.

There were also a spread of posters that were more in my price range. I've a bunch of these from the last time I worked in Shanghai, and if my memory serves me correctly, I gave them out to three friends as gifts. I did particularly like this one with advertising for torch batteries. It's a reprint but from the 50's so they aren't quite original.

Then the lady really persisted in trying to sell me one of those stone carved 'royal seal' stamps that every hand written letter writer or person of importance should have. Here she is doing some stamping action on an old business card of mine, with a little one that was still over 2000 Euros.

That red paste on the right is the ink. Here is what it looks like close up on some better and more absorbent paper.


The sales assistant was really trying to get me to buy this. I nearly did too, because the little man on the left is the inspiration for the Beijing Olympics 2008 Logo. I know we all had a bloody good laugh about the logo the other day on that funny cartoon that it breaks my heart not to put up here, in the interests of ahem 'sensitivity', but I was really revved up when I realised there was some history to this little fella and also that the lady was trying to explain that its related to spas and being healthy. Unfortunately as I'm finding out over here, the Chinese way is to sometimes over explain a concept, so I didn't understand her fully in the end. Anyway it was a very tempting buy, but I remembered that I only write handwritten letters when I want to express condolence or love, which is the same thing I guess, and that I'm not really all that important anyway, so I couldn't justify a couple of thousand Euros on it. I do however totally endorse people buying old stuff and not new stuff so if you want a seal just let me know. Also if someone Chinese knows more about the little man, I'm keen to learn.

I then popped into their tailors and the lady working there was keen as mustard to sell me some nice Chinese tailoring, but I couldn't justify buying a summer suit in the Winter. I did get a snap of a photo with Nancy and Ronnie Reagan when they were in town wearing this tailors clobber.

Last off, and with a bit of shopper determination, I found a stash of old movie posters including some that were so kitsche seventies, I became practically tumescent at the sight of them. The one I bought though seemed to be about right before I return later and buy the rest for Christmas presents.


Right I thought, after buying this. Time to get the hell out before I get lathered up into a consumer frenzy of buying shit I want but don't need. The lady and the stamp on the way out had different ideas though, and she collared me before I snuck away, with a full on Socialist half Nelson to buy a complete set of the revolutionary workers matchbox package print collection, from around the time of the cultural revolution. They are a complete story of Mao's life in propaganda artwork, and it was too much to walk away from. I also intend to scan each and everyone and give them back to whoever needs them for whatever purpose on the internet. I got the analogue ones though if anybody wants to buy them once they are scanned. I'm not really into 'stuff' per se. Attachment causes suffering and all that.