an NLP question for kei & yuri

Could it be that the direction one’s gaze drifts, when one begins to think about or ‘reflect’ upon something, is determined by the part of one’s personality involved, or the temperamental drive engaged, in doing so? If so, a trained user of NLP would find other peoples’ eye behaviour very informative, wouldn’t they?

laibach: tanz mit laibach (2003)

laibach : das spiel ist aus (2004)

not a lot of people know this

The secret of every European aristocracy is always that the royal family at its head claims to be of semi-divine jewish descent, but to have to conceal this fact, for fear of the popular reaction were it noised abroad.

let’s spend some more money on auschwitz

Germany donates to Auschwitz repairs
Reuters via Ynet, Feb 28 2009

Germany will give E1m for badly needed restoration work at the Auschwitz museum. Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier says the donation followed an appeal from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk to all 27 EU members to contribute to the preservation of the camp. In a letter obtained by Reuters on Friday, Tusk said those running the museum would set up a foundation to administer a special fund with a minimum capital of E120m. Tusk said in his letter, dated Feb 10 but not previously made public:

Saving Auschwitz-Birkenau means saving the memory of millions who suffered and were bestially murdered. It is the responsibility and duty of the whole of Europe.

The museum itself lacks the resources to check the progressive decay and deterioration of its facilities and objects. Steinmeier said Friday Germany would contribute more in the next budgetary year, and said it would encourage German businesses and private foundations to donate. The Auschwitz site comprises 155 camp buildings, 300 ruined facilities and hundreds of thousands of personal belongings and documents, scattered over more than 200 hectares (sic – RB). Poland founded a museum on the site after the war. Hundreds of thousands of people visit the museum every year.

good boy, obama! good girl, hillary!

Israel, Jewish groups hail US boycott of Durban 2 summit
Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz, Feb 28 2009

The Israeli government joined US Jewish organizations in praising the Obama administration for its plan to boycott Durban 2 in April unless the final document is changed to drop all references to Israel and the defamation of religion. (This latter demand refers to the Muslim request to make hate speech against Islam an international offense – RB) Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said:

Durban 2 is a cynical conference that is entirely anti-Semitic and anti-Israel under the guise of combatting racism. The US government’s decision is a genuine, courageous expression of its values as the leader of the free world and this decision needs to point the way for those other countries that share those same values.

A diplomatic source in Israel said:

We know full well, to our sorrow, towards what direction the conference is going, and so we are satisfied with the US government’s decision not to take part in it.

AIPAC said in a statement:

The event, which has again proven to be a celebration of racism and vile anti-Semitic activity, is further evidence of the UN’s inability to demonstrate any semblance of fairness or objectivity on these issues when it comes to the Jewish State.

William C. Daroff, vice president for public policy and director of United Jewish Communities’ Washington office, said:

President Obama’s decision not to send US representation to the April event is the right thing to do and underscores America’s unstinting commitment to combating intolerance and racism in all its forms and in all settings. As feared, it has become increasingly clear that the only purpose of the Durban conference is to condemn the State of Israel for its very existence. President Obama is absolutely correct in refusing to participate in this sham. Israel is one of our nation’s closest allies and we commend the President for recognizing the need to remove America’s name from these efforts to soil the name of Israel and Jews across the globe. We are hopeful that other countries will follow our lead by refusing to give credibility to this shameful fear-mongering and anti-Semitic effort.

Rabbi David Saperstein, an official from the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said the government was correct to

try and prevent the Durban II conference from being hijacked by those with an anti-Semitic and anti-Israel agenda. While there was disagreement in the Jewish community as to whether such efforts would have been better served by the administration’s engagement in or disengagement from the process, the fact that the administration made the effort to play a constructive role dramatizes to the world both our seriousness about tackling the scourge of racism and the tenacity of those forces committed to hijacking the conference in pursuit of their anti-Semitic or anti-Israel agenda. The conference preparations have made it clear that Durban II will again almost certainly tainted by anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. We hope that at some point in the near future, a serious international effort will be made to address the plight of those who suffer discrimination.

more thought control news from france

French Professor Sacked Over 9/11 Conspiracy Theory
Russia Today via Global Research, Feb 27 2009

An academic in France has been sacked by the Ministry of Defence after questioning the official version of events surrounding the 9/11 attacks. He now reportedly plans to sue the government. Aymeric Chauprade lost his job, allegedly, over the introduction to his latest book about political crises around the world, and more specifically, for suggesting that the 9/11 attacks in New York City and Washington D.C. were an orchestrated “American-Israeli conspiracy”. The Defence Minister had strong objections to the material, so Aymeric had to go. Jean Dominique Merchet, a French journalist, was the first to report on the sacking. Merchet said:

The Ministry of Defence has reacted too brutally. They have transformed Chauprade into a victim, and not an intellectual opponent — even if what he defends is not good.

Chauprade explained his firing by the Ministry of Defence as the result of him speaking about a subject that was considered off-limits:

I touched upon a taboo — the theory of a conspiracy plot. Apparently there is only one possibility in an accidental world. And all the wars have sprung from this — Afghanistan and so on.

The book’s introduction highlights a theory that the twin towers were blown up as part of an American-Israeli pact. Chauprade’s lawyer, Antoine Beauquier, said:

He did scientific work – see, it’s written here, ‘the theories included here are contesting the official theory of Muslim responsibility.’ That’s an opinion!

Defence Minister Herve Morin was reportedly outraged by the suggestions and demanded the academic’s sacking from his job at the French Military College in Paris, where Chauprade was teaching geopolitics. The Ministry has refused to comment on the affair.

renouf vs some zio nabob on BBC radio 4

BBC Radio 4 interviews Lady Renouf and Lord Janner on the arrival back in Britain of Bishop Williamson: 6MB MP3 file

‘european nations are expected to follow’?

US pulling out of ‘Durban II’ conference
Ron Kampeas, JTA, Feb 27 2009

The Obama administration has decided to boycott the so-called Durban II conference out of concerns for anti-Semitism. Multiple sources on a conference call with the White House on Friday told JTA that the Obama administration had opted not to attend any further preparatory meetings ahead of the planned UN conference against racism in Geneva in April. The conference reprises the 2001 conference in Durban, which devolved into an anti-Jewish free-for-all. Canada and Israel have opted not to attend the conference, and some US Jewish groups had been pressing the US to do the same. Preparations for a draft document so far have seen Iran leading a coterie of nations blocking inclusion of anything that might guarantee Jewish protections, including mention of the Holocaust, while inserting draconian language guarding Islam against ‘insult’. The State Dept sent a delegation, including a senior staffer from the American Jewish Committee, to this month’s preparatory talks. The delegation’s conclusions were that the anti-Israel and anti-Western tendencies were too deeply entrenched to excise. Now that the US is withdrawing from the conference, European nations are expected to follow. Speaking for the White House on Friday’s call were Samantha Power and James Warlick, who handle international organizations for the NSC and the State Dept respectively, and Jennifer Simon, an adviser to Susan Rice, the US envoy to the UN.

lust, leftism and nostalgia

Fuck The Army: Jane Fonda’s anti-war years
Dennis Lim, LA Times, Feb 22 2009

A time capsule of the anti-Vietnam War movement, Fuck The Army is also a vivid flashback to a world-famous movie star’s stint as a political radical. At the peak of her celebrity, which coincided with the dawning of her political consciousness, Jane Fonda abdicated her Hollywood throne and remade herself as the face of the anti-establishment. With government agents and the news media watching her every move, she led a vaudeville troupe on a tour of US military bases in 1971, a trip chronicled in this fascinating documentary, largely unseen since its brief release, and finally available on DVD this week. In the disc’s only extra, a 20-minute interview, Fonda recounts how the project came about. She and Donald Sutherland, her co-star in the 1971 film Klute, were approached by Howard Levy, a doctor who had become an anti-war cause célèbre for refusing to train Green Beret medics. He proposed that they put on a corrective to Bob Hope’s gung-ho USO shows, giving voice not just to the growing peace movement, but to anti-war sentiment within the ranks of the military.

The FTA troupe staged its first shows in the US, with Fonda and Sutherland, who had just played the irreverent Hawkeye in Robert Altman’s M.A.S.H., headlining a company that included Peter Boyle and Howard Hesseman. When it came time to embark on the two-week Pacific Rim tour, Fonda assembled a line-up that stressed racial and gender parity: equal numbers of black, white, male and female performers, including singer Holly Near and comedian Paul Mooney. Fonda, Sutherland and company stopped off in Hawaii, the Philippines, Okinawa and Japan (where they were initially refused entry). Denied permission to perform on US bases, they set up shop in nearby coffee-houses and other venues, although military officials apparently tried to minimize attendance by publicizing incorrect show times. All told, the troupe played 21 shows, which were attended by some 64,000 servicemen and women. Many of the male GIs, Fonda concedes in the interview, must have been anticipating the space-age sex kitten from Barbarella, not the righteous radical who took the stage in jeans and no make-up.

The show mixes protest songs with broad and bawdy skits, taking pot-shots at military chauvinism and top brass privilege. What it lacks in finesse, it makes up for with raucous energy. Directed by Francine Parker, who died in 2007, the documentary alternates between the song-and-dance routines and behind-the-scenes footage of soldiers talking candidly to the troupe members about their frustration and anger at the ongoing war and the US presence in the region. As fate would have it, FTA opened the same week in July 1972 that news broke of Fonda’s trip to Hanoi, where she made radio broadcasts for the North Vietnamese regime, and was photographed sitting on an anti-aircraft gun. Within a week, the distributor, AIP, had pulled the movie from theaters. Fonda’s career went into partial eclipse, and she remains to this day a favorite target of the right.

For years she has distanced herself from her radical past, and FTA, which she co-produced, has been out of circulation for more than three decades. Its recent re-emergence owes much to the efforts of film-maker David Zeiger, who used footage from FTA in Sir! No Sir!, a 2005 documentary about anti-war resistance within the military. This week’s DVD release was preceded by screenings at the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles and the IFC Center in New York, where Fonda appeared as part of a fund-raiser for Iraq Veterans Against the War. The film also screens on the Sundance Channel this week. Two other artifacts of Fonda’s radical period have been issued on DVD in recent years. Steelyard Blues (1973), a slapstick counter-culture comedy that also co-starred Sutherland, was released by Warner Home Video. And Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin’s scathing Tout Va Bien (1972), with Fonda as an American journalist caught up in a wild-cat strike at a sausage factory in France, is available from the Criterion Collection.