You know those times you think to yourself ‘I’m so hungry I could eat a horse’ and ‘boy do I feel like spaghetti’ but just aren’t exactly sure how much spaghetti it would take to satisfy those horse-like cravings? Well now there’s a solution to your problem and it comes all the way from Iceland.

I’d never have known this delightful measuring tool even existed if it weren’t for Brian and Pintrest. I just knew Pintrest was going to turn out to be useful. I am amused that I bought something from ‘the local design store’ which is about as far from local as I can get. This item is small and fits in an envelope so cheap enough to ship. Imagine my delight when I realised it came in lime green, the decision to purchase was instant.  Stefán Pétur Sólveigarson who designed the measuring tool has done…

“Subsidies are prima facie evidence that consumers would not buy the product at its market price. They distort markets, compromising economic growth, breed corruption and undermine social welfare by foisting inferior or over-priced goods onto the market” Kenneth P. Green

Cities and markets have historically been created under pragmatic realities. Towns, villages, or any other settlement existed in logical places: by a river, by the sea or close to a trading road. Farming was possible where the soil was rich. Fishing was productive and worth it only if the gains outweigh the costs. The logic was quite simple and fair – either you can or you can’t.   If you could on some times, and not on others, than most likely you would adopt a nomadic lifestyle, looking for certain benefits in certain places on certain times. In this system, the value on goods was equal to the realities…

Just in time for SXSW, the House passed the JOBS (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) Act. This is a big step in the right direction, of course the US Senate has to pass this bill for President Obama to sign this into law. Venturebeat has the news about the bill here, and has a FAQ Page for Crowd Funding Bill go read it. The biggest advantage of this bill is the right to allow Startups and small companies to raise capital through Crowd Funding platforms like Kickstarter or Twitter. In addition, it reduces some of the restriction on the size of the shareholders needed to raise capital before going public etc I believe that is what is needed in Iceland. If a company really has the numbers and business case to really put themselves to the scrutiny of the crowd, I say that is true transparency…

Politics and Legislation

We Take Care of Our Own: Eric Holder and the End of Rights

Historians of the future, if they are not imprisoned for saying so, will trace the end of America’s democratic experiment to the fearful days immediately after 9/11, what Bruce Springsteen called the days of the empty sky, when frightened, small men named Bush and Cheney made the first decisions to abandon the Constitution in the name of freedom and created a new version of the security state with the Patriot Act, Guantanamo, secret prisons and sanctioned torture by the U.S. government. They proceeded carefully, making sure that lawyers in their employ sanctioned each dark act, much as kings in old Europe used the church to justify their own actions.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-van-buren/anwar-al-awlaki-killing_b_1322528.html

Politicians Won’t Return Ponzi Payoffs

Michael Winship, Moyers & Co.:

“On Tuesday, Texas financier Robert Allen Stanford was convicted in a Houston…

So yeah i’Ve been in a calm mood this weekend. Mrs Sex Farm was away so i spent the time pestering the cat with cooked pasta and getting some writing done. General tried to run my body into a viscous liquid of activity, but without much success.

Having said that, it’s lucky that I’m living in Reykjavik, which is just the centre of the universe of activity. Man it all happens here. I’d hate to be stuck in the country. Man, even Selfoss would be way too much like being in the sticks. So it’s with this thought that for this weeks edition of the cult film corner I’m staying here in Iceland for a truly harrowing picture of life out in the farthest reaches of this lovely nation. Ladies & gentlemen, i give to you. “Nói Albinói (Noi The Albino)”.

the movie tells of Nói (played by Tómas Lemarquis), a bald…

RT

Damn is this Doonesbury cartoon is not beautifully spot on:

One of my favorite things to do in my Intro class is ask how many people actually know what a socialist is.  It’s usually just a handful.  But that doesn’t stop most of the conservatives from being convinced that Obama is one.

Electronic Counter-Measures (2011) by Liam Young

Many of us are afraid of the development of drone technology in the army which regularly allows the US and Israeli Army to assassinate people without having to deploy a single man on a foreign territory. It is now well known that  during the last ten years, the limits between Western police services and armies have increasingly became blurry both in the methods and in the equipment, the former requiring often the help or teaching of the latter. In this regard, I highly recommend the excellent coverage of Occupy Wall Street by Democracy Now  on November 17th 2011. Amy Goodman indeed invited both the always excellent Stephen Graham and the former Seattle Police Chief, Norm Stamper to discuss about what she called Paramilitary policing.
It is relatively clear that it is simply a matter of time before national security drones would be implemented in…

The Cool Ruler Gregory Isaacs em mais de 50 minutos de show ao vivo na Brixton Academy, em 1984. Sensacional!

(por Dani Pimenta)

For the past two years, the overwhelming majority of the Greek politicians have been using a list of expressions to describe the Greek debt crisis and to support their proposed solutions, i.e. austerity measures and neoliberal policies in exchange for European bail-outs. The new language “Eurospeak” has been promoted by the Greek media and enjoys the support of European institutions and politicians.

This is a dictionary to help us understand the new language:

Euro

Former meaning: a common currency adopted by European countries first as an accounting currency in 1999, then in physical form in 2002. Its inception can be traced back to other forms of currency cooperation in the 1970s between members of the then European Community. Its rebirth in the beginning of the 1990s was partly triggered by a fear of a strong Germany, which was unified in 1990. The euro was a political project, dressed in…

The Hunger Games movie is set to go on screen in a few weeks. By then we’ll probably be discussing how it compares to the book, if it justifies the adaptation, or how much is changed from the story to make it more “cinematic”. The book is a massive success and the movie will be an eventual hit. Even this early it is hard not to get caught up in the excitement. I have read the book about two years ago (I think), and trying to recall it reminds me of 1984.

Written around 1940s, George Orwell’s 1984 is a dystopian novel of a controlled state. To anyone who wondered, the idea of Big Brother came from this book. In the society the book describes, everyone is under complete surveillance by the authorities through telescreens, a television and a security-camera device in one. People are punished just by thinking of…

I want to make it clear that I do not consider myself an expert. I am a student. I have less than an ounce of experience compared to  professionals who have been studying the advantages and disadvantages of social media on personal and public domains from its beginnings. However for my social media class, I was asked what my opinion was on the advantages and disadvantages of social media. Here it goes . . .

Advantages 

On a professional level social media has opened the doors to a wide variety of interactions with an organization’s chosen public. With social media, professionals no longer have to rely on a less versatile print media. Professionals now have the opportunity to tailor messages to a direct audience through advertising on the correct social media site. Most importantly organizations can build relationships with their key target markets. There is no longer just a concept…

Between these two videos lies the true deception of America for the strengthening of Corporate regimes (Big Brother) and the military industrial complex’s (Big Sister) control over our politics and lives.

Everything is OK Montage

Terrorist!!!

Read The Anatomy of Slavespeak

Benefits of Understanding Slavespeak
Once you understand political Slavespeak (the language used to establish and maintain master-slave relationships), you become very aware of how those who don’t understand Slavespeak can be dominated, subjugated, and controlled by words — essentially enslaved by words. Correspondingly, you become impervious to external control through words. In other words, you enjoy more freedom — you have more options available to you.

“It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.”
— Sally Kempton

The EU FP7 funded project DERREG has come to an end, but various publications are foreseen. The first set of 11 articles are published in two Special Issues of the European Countryside, an open access Journal, edited by Michael Woods and John McDonagh:

Special Issue 1: Volume 3, Number 3 / 2011

Special Issue 2: Volume 4, Number 1 / 2012

 The 11 articles are listed below including a hyperlink to the full text in pdf.

Yesterday, a new friend at an organic cafe (thank Goddess for my green juice) suggested that I read Erich Fromm’s “Escape from Freedom,” in response to my quite excited chem-trail/ HAARP technology discussion. I paused for a second, falling into my own college Psychology class memories of Fromm.

What an interesting concept…. Running from freedom. Why would anyone want to run from something that most of us spend our lifetimes trying to achieve? And, why do so many of us have to fight for something that seems like a natural right? This guy is right, I’ve got to pick up that book again.  Because, I’m guessing that after 12 or so years, my own perception of freedom and self -sufficiency has greatly changed. While in the past,  I struggled with the urge to be free from the judgment of others by trying to fit in —It never worked for long because…

it der Gründung der Europäischen Behörde für Lebensmittelsicherheit sollten Lebensmittelskandale wie BSE vermieden oder möglichst früh erkannt werden. Zwei Jahre nachdem die EFSA ihre Arbeit aufgenommen hat, scheint von diesen hehren Idealen nichts mehr übrig geblieben zu sein.

Aurora Geib
NaturalNews
March 9, 2012

The laws governing the sale of drugs and food additives require substances be safe for human consumption. The artificial sweetener aspartame primarily consumed in beverages and as a popular sugar substitute has consistently been found to cause tumors and brain seizures in animal subjects. In 2005, a European Cancer Research Center, the Ramazzini Foundation, called for an urgent re-examination of aspartame in food and beverages to protect children. This call is made in the face of the US FDA stand that aspartame is safe for human consumption on the ground that “aspartame as a carcinogen is not supported by data.”

Aspartame: A brief history

As early as 1960 aspartame was determined to be a dangerous chemical and the emerging research years later only served to affirm the true nature of this artificial sweetener. Over the years, aspartame has been found to create…

(Reuters) – A group of plant scientists is warning federal regulators that action is needed to mitigate a growing problem with biotech corn that is losing its resistance to plant-damaging pests.

The stakes are high – corn production is critical for food, animal feed and ethanol production, and farmers have increasingly been relying on corn that has been genetically modified to be toxic to corn rootworm pests.

“This is not something that is a surprise… but it is something that needs to be addressed,” said Joseph Spencer, a corn entomologist with the Illinois Natural History Survey, part of the University of Illinois.

Spencer is one of 22 academic corn experts who sent a letter dated March 5 to the Environmental Protection Agency telling regulators they are worried about long-term corn production prospects because of the failure of the genetic modifications in…

Protests against ACTA Bucharest 2, 25 february 2012

RT
Mar 8, 2012

Top US officials, lawmakers and defense contractors are saying a cyber equivalent to Pearl Harboris coming soon. According to these individuals, a cyber-attack could potentiallywipe-out the country’s financial system and electrical grid. The Pentagon has announcedthat cyber-attacks will be met with military attacks and Senator John McCainhas introduced the Secure IT Act with hopes to monitor online users’ activity 24/7by private companies. So can the US withstand a massive cyber-attack and is theSecure IT bill necessary? Declan McCullagh, correspondent for CNet News, joins uswith more.