From Own Original Chinese Copies of Real Western Art!
SHENZHEN, China - Zhang Libing has painted more van Goghs than van Gogh ever did. At 26, Mr. Zhang estimates that he has painted up to 20,000 copies of van Gogh's works in a paint-spattered third-floor garret here where freshly washed socks and freshly painted canvases dry side-by-side on the balcony. ...

From History trumps aesthetics at Old Masters sales
There was a change of pace in the art market last week. Suddenly, a hunt for the trophies of art embedded in cultural history took off with unstoppable fury. ...

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Is this a reaction to the realisation that our greatest treasures - works of art - may no longer make authoratitive statements about the story of modern progress, because people no longer trust their authenticity? The provenance of a work, and it's pedigree, are integral to its value, and it's moral force. The wanton destruction of the Mesopotamian artefacts, under the watchful eye of Rumsfeld, could have been part of the same process. We may have got to the end of the modern era, and are trying to turn a new page, but we are at the end of our story. Is modernity unraveling?

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From Tolerating a Time Bomb By LEON de WINTER  How Holland, land of Erasmus, became a jihadist hotbed.
FOR centuries the Netherlands has been considered the most tolerant and liberal nation in the world. This attitude is a byproduct of a disciplined civic society, confident enough to provide space for those with different ideas. It produced the country in which Descartes found refuge, a center of freedom of thought and of a free press in Europe.
That Netherlands no longer exists. The murder last year of the filmmaker Theo van Gogh, whose killer was convicted this week, and the assassination of the politician Pim Fortuyn in 2002 marked the end of the Holland of Erasmus and Spinoza. ...

‘Mr. Bush can not only use taxpayer's money to set up Soviet-Style propaganda events, but he can have US citizens kicked out of these public meetings by strong-armed stooges impersonating Secret Service Agents.

 

 

 

That, at least, was the conclusion last week by the US Justice Department Attorney who said there was not enough evidence to prosecute an unnamed man who kicked three people out of one of Mr. Bush's "town hall" meetings in Denver this past March.

 

 

 

The White House, by the way, refuses to release the mystery thug's name.’

 

 

 

Trouble In The Land Of The Free

‘Foreign citizens who change planes at airports in the United States can legally be seized, detained without charges, deprived of access to a lawyer or the courts, and even denied basic necessities like food, lawyers for the government said in Brooklyn federal court yesterday.

 

 

The assertion came in oral arguments over a federal lawsuit by Maher Arar, a naturalized Canadian citizen who charges that United States officials plucked him from Kennedy International Airport when he was on the way home on Sept. 26, 2002, held him in solitary confinement in a Brooklyn detention center and then shipped him to his native Syria to be interrogated under torture because officials suspected that he was a member of Al Qaeda.’

 

 

 

Defending Our Freedom

 

 

Fascism In America

How else will the militias get training in crowd control? Busting up a rowdy, drug-fuelled rave would be highly popular with the aspirational, Sun-Herald voters of the outer suburbs. I hope Costello and Nelson are working on having our State troopers go to the US for on-the-spot exercises, so neither of those gutless wonders has to run away from a mob of uni students.

Do any Labor mates have shares in Lockheed Martin Hardware?

In regard to the crisp note of Border Security, something Kim keeps ready in his pocket for those special occasions, the Minutemen of El Paso appeal to the average cobber.

"Both the militias and the Minutemen create a demonized 'other' based on citizenship status: The militias had the 'sovereign citizen' concept, which divided people into (white) state 'sovereign' citizens and so-called '14th Amendment' citizens. The Minutemen do it on the basis of perceived immigration status." He noted that, "both are rife with conspiracy theories. For example, the militias were concerned about the New World Order, while the Minutemen have La Reconquista, which contends that there is a secret plot to re-conquer the American southwest for Mexico." Moreover, both the militias and the Minutemen have something in common with the Posse Comitatus, an anti-Semitic white supremacist group that sprung up in the 1970s. Latin for "power of the county," the Posse Comitatus was founded in 1971 by retired army lieutenant colonel William Potter Gale. Gale "believed that all white, Christian men had an unconditional right to take up arms to enforce the principles of a 'Constitutional Republic,' and challenge various 'unlawful acts' of the federal government, including integration, taxation and the federal reserve banking system," Daniel Levitas, the author of The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Movement and the Radical Right (St Martin's Press, 2002), told me via email.

Put the mosques under 24/7 video surveillance! Crack down on leftie teachers! Send them back, if they don't like our values! Terminate with extreme prejudice!

 

“Freedom isn’t free!

I'm not sure that this is happening correctly as my posts do not seem to have appeared anywhere else, but here for posterity is: The fourth reich

People,

Yet another conspiracy theory?

No.

You choose not to believe me,
but that is not new,
if you look at it yourself,
you will find it most true.

Who could the members of this master plan be?
Men in control and with the means to control anything, with their control machinery in every factory, power station, traffic light, water works, telephone exchange and even in your home! [ You're using it right now!].

Men with means and finances, extreme finances, why one of them makes $8million an hour while he sleeps, that would buy just about anything, a thousand politicians, even the earth.
Men with their fingers on the pulse that know absolutely everything that is going on in the world, beyond all doubt. One with super intelligence and the time to devote to a master plan without even raising a brow of suspicion, who would have believed it was him?

Men with the ability to manipulate stock exchanges and commodities markets at the push of a button.

Men with the ability to release atomic weapons at the push of another button, and one with the ability to program it to make it happen.
Men with the access to soldiers, ships, tanks, warplanes, cannons, guns and bombs, some of them even autonomous and computer controlled.

Men who are making other men make secret weapons, heat rays, sonic guns and poison pills that leave no trace.

Men with the ability to program the way in which other people think and the way other people behave through mastering them with flickering images on screens, who can now do it digitally via high definition TV where the dots can easily be manipulated to quickly program and deceive you, where the flocking masses now go for a source of mistaken credibility (yes, it must be true if it is on TV).

Men who have the ability to control and suppress information without any obvious means of control.. why did that machine crash? Where did my files just go?

Men who can see or find out where you are within minutes and seconds, rather than years, months, days and hours.

Men who can arrange for your untimely death or disabling embarrassment, through blackmail, intrigue and subterfuge to put your words into incredulity the very moment you utter them.

Men who have a cashless society so they can know what you do and when you are doing it, and for how much.

Men who will know who you associate with and for what purpose and how often and how long, what you said to them and what they said to you and what your joint future plans are...

Men who will soon know your every abberant thought.

Men who have enforced their control measures on the population at the populations unwitting cost, yes, your computers, your televisions, your static and mobile telephones, oh, and yes, your GPS, they know exactly where you are, and you thought everything was turned off!

We note we have changed the names of the guilty to protect the innocent.

We name them:

Jon Howhard, George Schrub, Stoney Belair and the Master Planner - in the position of Godbless himself, Shrill Grates!!

These men have meetings and you thought they were not connected yet they are joined at the hip in their coded conversation, all can be mastered and monitored from a place named Redmont in the land of Uncle Scam.

You choose not to believe me,
but that is not new,
if you look at it yourself,
you will find it most true.

Cheers,
Nicholas Tomlin.