Monday 23rd of December 2024
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is make-believe democratic...?

trompe l'oeil01

As Rhonda is about to be kissed by Ketut, we are in the middle of a fairytale but the watermelons that fall on the bonnet of the car remind us of commercial imperatives.

It's make-believe for profit... Welcome to your mind being manipulated into a malleable commodity. This is not new of course, the churches, the mosques all have used illusions and fruit of some sorts, for centuries, in order to make you believe and make sure you belong to the huddle — or to the mob — or to the hanging party... 

 


There is a style of paintings called "trompe-l'oeil" which is designed to give an impression of a vista when it fact it's a flat wall. It's been superseded by the moving images of television, in that corner you did not know what to do with, decoratively speaking...
There is a bit of antiquarianism in all of us. We like to believe some history and we will "appropriate" the history that is favourable to us and our status... As if our ancestors were British when they were Germanic... We create our own story as well, with embellishment... It's part of the stylisation of who we want to be.
Political parties use the art of decorative illusion with historical prods to make you and me believe... Like snake-oil merchants they tell you their potion will get rid of those ugly ingrown toenails, will make your hair grow and give you the libido of a young bull... while at the same time, their magic rubadub will solve all the problems of the world...
They are snake oil merchants.
Snake-oil merchants rarely use the world "planet" as the word gives a connotation of scientific analysis in which their manipulative messages would get slaughtered.
So here we are, humans, wading in cosmetic illusion and being tickled on the tummy since day one, while most other great monkeys remove nits from other great monkeys... Apart from basic survival, humans have been living in fairyland and this, of course, is okay and even good... Look at where all this has brought humanity... I have a relative rule of thumb that the bigger the freedom of lies, the more successful a "country" (a group of people glued together by patriotism on their sleeves) is going to be... I rest my case with the United State of America. In places where the lies are tightly controlled, people vegetate...
Sometimes, the story are so far-fetched and gross, though the brainwashing is still powerful, that some of us are looking for a line drawn in the sand — before the next wave of fake-believe comes to take us to the moon and the stars... 
Yes, a lot of make-believe is fake-believe with no substance at all... and some of these illusions, when they are gelled into concrete applications, are simply dangerous stuff to boot.
As humans, with empty brains that are waiting to be filled with anything that takes us away from hard questions and difficult no-answers, we grasp the easy illusions with open arms. Our masters, themselves, are in the same boat... but they have also managed the grand art of selling the illusions... Some of them are in it for profit, as well as kudos and beans. Nonetheless they know how to spruik that their stuff is much better than the other snake-oil merchants next door...
To some extend these snake oil merchants could tell you the opposite in a jiffy should profit-making be struck by lack of custom for snake-oil... Snake-oil never worked, you shall now be sold our latest walrus gall-bladder ointment with prickle juice...
Many purveyors of porkies, such as priests, end up believing in the illusions and don't shift much away from the "original" message, because the system in which they are priestly manufactured, itself is piling up on the sauce... This product is laced with traditions, old dusty tales in old dusty books, rituals, arse in the air and so forth. These Punch and Judy actors can thus become convinced the illusions are truths, and they sell us their illusions as the only absolute truth. Of course the multiplicity of "true" stories out there on the market place is enormous and should make us suspicious... But we are a gullible lot — or sadly, a completely brainwashed lot... There are three main thrusts in proselytism. Every believer and his/her dog is often trying to convince you and a lamppost that their beliefs are the only route to wherever you should go — which is a better place than where you are right now... 
It has to be said that most of time the location of where we're in now is rarely the stuff to make legends out of... Thus if we believe in the fake-believe, we are wallpapering this ordinary space with glorious illusions, amusing entertainment and the glory of a paradise from which our dumb-ass ancestors got thrown out because they ate the wrong apple, originally... 
having faith in this sort of beliefs makes as much sense as combing a giraffe without a ladder but it KEEPS US BUSY. 
We could go nuts otherwise...
There are signs on the back of some cars: "Jesus is coming — look busy"... I rest my case... Well, nearly.
Without the illusion of god, "we" would not have built cathedrals, nor mosques, not castles... The illusion of god has underpinned even the rattiest of royal lineage. Without god, any monarch is no more than a despotic dictator with a family that will inherit the loot stolen from a lot of people and used to finance glorificating artists and castle builders — in one's honour for having rooted everyone else... 
So here we are having to chose between crap and crappy... Or between half-crazy and crazy... and our choice in the end means zip because the media — a multi-pronged organism that controls the status of the fake-believe will entice more people to be less aware of the situation in order to sell what's favourable to them. Advertising and freedom to tell porkies. 
In order to collect revenue from advertising, the media "has to be" in bed with those who have to sell you something whether you need it or not. In fact it's a question of numbers and at any particular time there will be 152 people in "need" of a new mattress, 649 people in need of a new car, and the purpose of advertising is to plug these "needs" with enticing offers, including the usage of credit — competing with other enticing offers. In the end you will pay too much anyway... But the whole exercise builds progress and the art of bigger inventions.
In reality, most advertising is like peppering the sky with gun shots hoping to hit a duck... Thus advertisers often hit everywhere time again and again, while the press tells us about disasters. We LOVE disasters...
We're addicted to something going wrong. Imagine the media: all's well today... No disaster to report... The media would have died long ago. If there was no stupidity out there, I would not have to be here writing whatever anti-idiot crap all the time... May be I am deluding myself that I think clearly?...
Rarely can there be an independent media that makes its survival by not letting organisations sell you something... On this site we don't sell anything, not even our old re-hashed, re-heated and re-sharpened ideas — They're free. 
If you see some weird forum topics trying to sell you some handbags or dodgy watches, it's only through sheer infiltration of our generously accessible forum. These annoying pedlars soon get smacked on the knuckles but they are persistent and tend to come back like bad smells...
I did a count the other day. I have been commenting on politics for more than 62 years in various formats, though I never painted any anti-Yankee slogans on walls.... Never too late to start, one could say... But no. I am not fond of modern graffiti. It often brings the level of the conversation below zero... I do not mind some colourful tags or street art where the space is in need of an image, but often the graffiti people go and bleed into spaces they should not... I am too shy to do street performances and I have a cumbersome thumb with the spray can... It's a STYLE of make-believe that I am not comfortable in producing.
As an artist/cartoonist I practice the make-believe all the time. Some clever people call me the master of the fake. 
This is the purpose of symbolism... it's an association of a reality with a make-believe... Give an image or a word that represents a toilet block and one knows the meaning thereof instantly. Some symbolism is far more complex and in this category I will place science... Science uses a lot of symbols in its languages to give us the most accurate concept of reality... Repeatable reality... Only dummies repeat science experiments and expect a different result. 
The expressed symbolism of science is only a means to tell us that there are processes that do repeat, including life. Illusions in science are brought down to a minimum by the study of repeats, though some 'scientists' will manipulate the results of their inquiries in order to profit from the result... This tends to happen a lot in pharmaceuticals, where tests of "new" substances can go bad, but the substance's benefit are sold despite side-effects...
Some manufacturers try to sell you unglamorous products with a bit too much fluffy glorification and end up with some quite hilarious piss-take on the make-believe...: 
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But then he got a girlfriend. He couldn't wait for this joyous adventurous time of the month to happen... but "You lied!... There was no joy, no extreme sports, no blue water spilling over wings and no rocking soundtrack, oh no, no, no.

"Instead I had to fight against every male urge I had to resist screaming wooaaahhhhh bodddyyyyyyfooorrrmmm bodyformed for youuuuuuu as my lady changed from the loving, gentle, normal skin coloured lady to the little girl from The Exorcist with added venom and extra 360 degree head spin."

After tens of thousands of Facebook users 'liked' Neill's message, Bodyform realised the potential for a golden PR opportunity and yesterday released a YouTube video retort.

In the clip, an actress playing Bodyform CEO 'Caroline Williams' explains "the truth” – that there is no such thing as a "happy period”. Sitting at her desk with a jug of blue water, Williams explains that the depictions of women rollerblading and having pillow fights during their periods "are in fact metaphors".

The video has racked up nearly 200,000 viewers and 3,000 likes on Facebook in one day, with men and women alike describing it as "hilarious", "genius" and "comedy gold".


Read more: http://www.theweek.co.uk/health-science/going-viral/49613/video-bodyform-reveals-truth-about-periods-genius-viral-hit#ixzz29zCP3RLE

At this point, we need to be vigilant with our choice of illusions — like choosing our dishwashing liquid and our favourite political idol. Who will be best at providing our future comforts? Do we care about others? At which point do we become a sociopath and choose to kick someone in the guts for our own advancement? 
When Prince Charles dreamed of being a tampon, one can wonder about our own imagination... And between Julia Gillard and Tony, I will kick Tony in the political gonads any day...
Happy illusions. Don't mess up mine too much...
But here comes along an associate professor of crap:

History is written by winners and, yes, some winners have cheated

This is a hard truth of life. We live in a society that rewards winners and encourages people to do whatever it takes to win. 

Political campaigns frequently distort the truth to paint their opposition in unflattering ways in order to win votes. Scientists sometimes steal the research of others and attempt to be the "first to file" a patent in order to win the rich rewards of their discoveries. Wars, typically, are won by those who will to do anything to gain an advantage. 

Rather than accept a culture of cheating or looking back and retrospectively punishing those who found a way to skirt the rules, we need to look forward and to institute controls that will minimise the chances of such rule-breaking in the future. 

Some people will seek out ways to cheat. That being said, I would rather expend energy trying to prevent the next person from running afoul of the rules than scrubbing history books to erase the names of accused cheaters or revising the memories that I hold dear. 

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/201210236357172286.html

 

Holy mackerels!!!! The writer of this piece makes all the apologies in the book... According to him, Whatizname is still a champion because he rode daily with his bum on his bicycle and won the race! Well excuse me! There are rules and regulation to stop people from cheating... There are up to 198 riders on their bicycles doing the same thing — their butt on the saddle — of which 189 are clean from "cheating" with drugs.... You'd feel robbed, wouldn't you?

So Mr Associate Doctor, keep your make-believe memories but don't give us the crap that it "does not matter"... 

Well... nothing matters really, but dealing with the illusions of fairness, if we chose so, may matter relatively in the framework of our operational space... 

In the end, if we want to take care of ourselves, we need to eat...

May as well be nice food, or at least average... Not that crap that Tony Abbott is dishing out from the septic tank...

 

Gus Leonisky

 

spectacular fraudulent conduct...

Federal Prosecutors Sue Bank of America Over Mortgage Program


By BEN PROTESS

Federal prosecutors in New York sued Bank of America on Wednesday, accusing it of carrying out a mortgage scheme that defrauded the government during the depths of the financial crisis.

In a civil complaint that seeks to collect $1 billion from the bank, the Justice Department took aim at a home loan program known as the "hustle," a venture that has become emblematic of the risk-fueled mortgage bubble. The complaint adds to a flurry of federal and private lawsuits facing Bank of America's beleaguered mortgage business.

Bank of America inherited the "hustle" home loan program with its purchase of Countrywide Financial in 2008. Prosecutors say the effort, kept alive by Bank of America through 2009, was intended to churn out mortgages at a rapid pace without proper checks on wrongdoing. The bank then sold the "defective" loans without warning to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-controlled housing giants, which were stuck with heavy losses and a glut of foreclosed properties.

"The fraudulent conduct alleged in today's complaint was spectacularly brazen in scope," Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, said in a statement. Mr. Bharara brought the case with the inspector general of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the government watchdog for the bank bailout program.

In a statement, a Bank of American spokesman said the bank "has stepped up and acted responsibly to resolve legacy mortgage matters; the claim that we have failed to repurchase loans from Fannie Mae is simply false." The spokesman, Lawrence Grayson, added that "At some point, Bank of America can't be expected to compensate every entity that claims losses that actually were caused by the economic downturn."

The case is one piece of a broader federal crackdown on Wall Street, a last-ditch effort to hold firms accountable for perceived misdeeds that fueled the mortgage crisis. In the wake of the crisis, authorities were blamed for the dearth of charges facing financial executives at the center of the crisis.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/10/24/federal-prosecutors-sue-bank-of-america-over-mortgage-program/?hp&pagewanted=print

the law into their religious hands......

 

"The modern theory ... is the enemy of that common freedom in which religious freedom is included. It condemns, as a State within the State, every inner group and community, class or corporation, administering its own affairs; and, by proclaiming the abolition of privileges, it emancipates the subjects of every such authority in order to transfer them exclusively to its own. It recognises liberty only in the individual, because it is only in the individual that liberty can be separated from authority ... Under its sway, therefore, every man may profess his own religion more or less freely; but his religion is not free to administer its own laws. In other words, religious profession is free, but Church government is controlled. And where ecclesiastical authority is restricted, religious liberty is virtually denied."

Lord Acton wrote this warning in the 1860s, yet it foreshadowed several important trends that have taken hold in the West today: the severing of the notions of freedom and authority; freedom protected for the individual more so than for institutions; and the threat of expansive State power weakening the authority of other social institutions, including religious ones.

According to Lord Acton, these trends lead to a situation in which a particular kind of religion enjoys a particular degree of freedom: the freedom for "every man to profess his own religion." What tends to be denied, however, is the more robust freedom for a group or community to "administer its own laws," govern itself according to its core principles, or make daily, practical decisions in public based upon faith.

Sadly, the United States is moving ever closer to the scenario described by Lord Acton, and this move has been heightened by several policies and principles promoted by the current Administration. In short, what is increasingly being espoused in the United States is a view of religious liberty more in terms of a freedom of individuals to profess faith and attend church services than to govern their businesses and organizations according to church teachings. Religious liberty is being narrowed to an enfeebled "freedom of worship."

 

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/10/24/3617506.htm?WT.svl=featuredSitesScroller

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Freedom to tell porkies is one form of the business of religion, and I can tolerate this, but having the porkies of religion dictate the secularity of laws is out of the question... If one allows this, by extension, you will end up having a multitudes of confusing laws in the same communities, some for the Wahhabi Muslims, one set for the Sufi branch, a set of laws for the catholics and, of course, one exclusively dedicated to the scientologists, in which detention of people against their will would be sanctioned.... It's bad enough that the United Nations sanctioned the freedom of religion but in doing so they encourage the submission of women to men in such religion in which this is one of the tenets. Not on.

Remember as Granny Adelinda Leonisky used to say:

"The world only makes sense to those who accept nonsense..."

A clever woman she was...