Monday, June 27, 2011

Diet Soap Podcast #16: Dennis Perrin's Obama Blues



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Blogger and author Dennis Perrin of dennisperrin.blogspot.com is this week's guest, and we discuss the problem of Barack Obama, the impact of 9/11, Perrin's relationship with Noam Chomsky, and the phenomena of the suburban lawn.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Expanding Mind - 06/03/10

Expanding Mind - 06/03/10

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Underworld goddesses, psychotropic brews, and the ancient insight that dispels the fear of death: a talk with poet, translator, and author Charles Stein about the Eleusinian mysteries and his new book Persephone Unveiled.

Friday, June 24, 2011

Matt Stoller: Who Wants Keep the War on Drugs Going AND Put You in Debtor’s Prison? � naked capitalism

Matt Stoller: Who Wants Keep the War on Drugs Going AND Put You in Debtor’s Prison?

More than a third of all states allow debtors “who can’t or won’t pay their debts” to be jailed. In 2010, according to the Wall Street Journal, judges have issued 5,000 such warrants. What is behind the increased pressure to incarcerate people with debts? Is it a desire to force debt payment? Or is it part of a new structure where incarceration is becoming increasingly the default tool to address any and all social problems?

Consider a different example that has nothing to do with debts. Earlier this year, a Pennsylvania judge was convicted of racketeering, of taking bribes from parties of interest in his cases. It was a fairly routine case of bribery, with one significant exception. The party making the payoffs was a builder and operator of youth prisons, and the judge was rewarding him by sending lots of kids to his prisons.

Welcome to the for-profit prison industry. It’s an industry that wants people in jail, because jail is their product. And they have shareholder expectations to meet.

Privatized prisons are marketed to international investors as “social infrastructure”, and they are part of a wave of privatization washing over the globe. Multi-billion dollar prison companies are upgraded by analysts with antiseptic words like “prospects for global prison growth”, and these companies have built a revolving door and patronage machine characteristic of any government contractor. Only, in this case, the business they are in is putting people into steel cages (or “filling beds” as they put it), and they don’t care how, why, or whether the people in those beds should be there. They don’t care if you’re in prison for smoking pot, stealing cars, or being in debt. They just want people in jail.

Here’s the 2010 10k of the Corrections Corporation of America (PDF), the largest operator of private prisons in the country. It’s a pretty simple business model – more prisoners, more money. Or, as the company writes, “Historically, we have been successful in substantially filling our inventory of available beds and the beds that we have constructed. Filling these available beds would provide substantial growth in revenues, cash flow, and earnings per share.”

CCA offers an assessment of risks to the company, which include ending the war on drugs or curbing the incarceration of undocumented immigrants.


The rest of the article here

GOOD: YouChoose, America's Prisons

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Cat gets caught barking by a human and resumes meowing

Paul Stamets interview

The Visionary Activist Show, for October 2, 2008 - 2:00pm
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Halloween Comes Early
this year, what with the VP Debate tonight and all...
So Caroline welcomes back her favorite Medicine Man, Paul Stamets, human agent from the fungi realm, fellow animist, to remind us that all of nature is willing to cooperate with us delinquent humans to solve the crises we have created.
www.fungi.com

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Jerome Kagan - The Father of Temperament

All In The Mind Podcast - April 21 2007

Why can two children born into the same household be like two different peas in a pod? Harvard's Jerome Kagan trailblazed the controversial science of temperament to investigate why. In a career that spans more than half a century, now he's going into battle for our minds, with a compelling retrospective, An Argument for Mind. To some an iconoclast - one of the biggest names in psychology of our time joins Natasha Mitchell, in this re-airing of a popular interview.


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Will you help Senator Sanders expose the Koch Echo Chamber?

Wal-Mart Victory Party

Monday, June 20, 2011

The Johann Hari podcast - Episode 21

The 'New' Atheism: An Interview with P.Z. Myers 


In his latest podcast, The Independent columnist Johann Hari interviews one of the world's leading biologists and campaigning atheists - and a man who once kidnapped a communion wafer, with surreal results. Is religion incompatible with science? Why is Richard Dawkins so routinely smeared as akin to violent Ayatollahs? And should we have a right to burn the Koran?


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Posted here mainly because the main site has no download link nor separate page for the episode itself ... ;-) ... 

Powerful message from former (C.I.A. Agent) to all Americans!



".. These people are selling us credit they don't have so they can take profits they don't deserve ..."

Thursday, June 16, 2011

C-Realm podcast 262: Assume the Can is Open



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KMO welcomes John Michael Greer back to the program to discuss his new book, The Wealth of Nature: Economics as if Survival Mattered. JMG has re-thought economics, starting from its fundamental premises, giving it a basis in ecological reality rather than political fiction. He explains why there are no "free markets" and why there never have been. The discussion concludes with a brief discussion of UFO true believers and their counterparts in the psuedo-skeptical community of UFO debunkers. Music by Tonal Oak.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Leaderless movement's "leaders" caught! (Anonymous survives)

Life After Growth - Economics for Everyone

Life After Growth - Economics for Everyone from enmedia productions on Vimeo.

Directed, Written, Shot, and Edited by Leah Temper and Claudia Medina

IT'S TIME TO RECLAIM THE ECONOMY

The economic crash of 2008 revealed not only the frailty and vulnerability of the economic system, it also showed the false basis that the growth economy is built on – the financial bubble grows bigger and crashes bigger, but we don't seem to be getting any happier. To the contrary, we suffer from greater job insecurity and environmental chaos threatens.

The prescription from the mainstream economists is more growth – but is this just taking more of what ails us?

Has growth become uneconomic?

Is there another way?

This film is part of an ongoing project to document the rise of a new movement – calling not for more economic growth, but LESS. The degrowth movement, or "mouvement por le decroissance", argues that through a voluntary reduction of the economy we can work less, consume less and live better, fuller lives.

Many have been pointing out that our current economic system is leading us to an environmental
and social catastrophe. "Life After Growth" begins to point to the people and communities who are looking for ways out. These are the pioneers who are rethinking the role of economics in our lives, and are engaging in different types of economic activity, right now.

The D word is still taboo in many circles – politicians are loath to go against the growth orthodoxy that our society is based on. But everywhere people are engaging in degrowth type activity - the beginning of a wave that is laying the groundwork for a post-capitalist future...

Because it's not the size of the economy that counts, it's how you use it!

contact:
lifeaftergrowth@gmail.com

This film was made with the support of the Fundació Autònoma Solidària,
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Talk - Naomi Wolf - The End of America



A rehash worth looking at again as we watch the media industry create excuses for the government to lock down the internet and prevent information to propagate. Let's make more business for the Prison Industrial Complex by making copyright a felony with a 10 year penalty ... ;-) ...

The Visionary Activist Show - September 4, 2008 at 2:00pm | KPFA 94.1 FM Berkeley: Listener Sponsored Free Speech Radio

The Visionary Activist Show - September 4, 2008 at 2:00pm | KPFA 94.1 FM Berkeley: Listener Sponsored Free Speech Radio:



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The Visionary Activist Show - September 4, 2008

Coyote Network News Republican Convention Coverage

Caroline delineates the 'Whoaaaaa Team' the dangerous game just got racheted up a notch, with Sarah Palin's speech last night in St. Paul. Let's explore the weird eroto-psychic-psychotic-tyrannical vs liberating forces romping across the telescreen of the collective, that we may be ever more effective players on the team of creation at this time of dire beauty."

Sunday, June 12, 2011

The Breakdown: Should the US Return to the Gold Standard?

Congressman Ron Paul is a supporter of it. Arizona shooter Jared Lee Loughner had a sick obsession with it. Eliminated entirely by Richard Nixon following the fiscal strains of the Vietnam war, the gold standard has recently returned to the spotlight. But how does the standard work, and what would happen if America switched back to the gold standard for our currency? On this week's edition of The Breakdown, DC Editor Chris Hayes and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Liaquat Ahamed explore the pros and cons of backing our dollars with gold.




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C-Realm Podcast #260: Utopias and Intentional Communities



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Is there any such thing as a perfect human society even in theory? Are there any objective measures by which to compare actual societies and judge some as superior to others? KMO talks with Prof. Bob Rosenthal about the idea of Utopia. The conversation ranges from Plato's Republic and Sir Thomas More's vision of the perfect society to actual, functioning subcultures like the Anabaptists and intentional communities like the Farm. Music by Sarah Jarosz.

Carl Jung: The Wisdom of The Dream - Vol 2 - Inheritance of Dreams [FULL]

Thought of You - by Ryan Woodward

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Unwelcome Guests: Episode #543 - The Corruption of Money (The Perverse Power of The Price Tag)


This week we look at the psychologically corrupting aspects of money. Our main presentation is a radio adaptation of Robin Upton's presentation "The Corruption of Money", which is accompanied by Beyond Money, a speech by John Taylor Gatto. We also hear words from George Lakoff and Vivien Stern on commodification of justice and morality.
 
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Our first hour starts with the first ten minutes of a speech from a decade ago by John Taylor Gatto. 'Beyond Money'. We take a break when he makes the disturbing suggestion from sociologist Georg Simmel that by reducing different realities down a single common denominator, money subtly degrades everything with which it comes into contact, resulting in a loss of quality and personal integrity to both buyer and seller.
Quotes-66.gif When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.Quotes-99.gif
— Frederic Bastiat, 19th Century Economist
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We then hear a radio adaptation of The Corruption of Money, a presentation from 2010 by Robin Upton. This looks at how money corrupts on a range of levels. On an individual level, we hear how individuals internalize the zero-sum dynamic, before breaking to hear a section from Vivien Stern on the commoditization of justice. We relisten to George Lakoff on the 'strict father' impulse which equates selfishness with virtue and note that the psychopathic nature of the money system promotes the values of the 1% of the population who suffer from this disability. We review some of the language to consider what it can tell us about people's attitudes to money, and how it shapes them.
Looking at examples such as the Ford Pinto, we consider the tension between being effective at making cars and being effective at making(sic.) money. Government organisations, like businesses, are subject to the same dynamic - indeed, the impact of money is to make it harder to distinguish the two. On a global level, the same dynamic continues to work, advancing those organisations whose conduct and vales are most closely aligned with the psychopathic zero-sum dynamic of the modern money system.
Thanks to Lyn Gerry for the Frederic Bastiat quote
This episode rebroadcasts content from 345 and 505.
* The Corruption of Money (72 slides) Robin Upton

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Living Hero Podcast:: The Unreal World of Narcissists & Sociopaths

The Unreal World of Narcissists & Sociopaths





Narcissists and Sociopaths live to dominate and thrill to win. They can excel marvelously anywhere ruthlessness is rewarding.

And recent research brings us new understanding of just what these serious emotional disabilities are; what causes them, how prevalent they are, and how studying them helps us to draw the connections between psyche and society.

Join host/producer Jari Chevalier as she talks with experts Dr. Nina W. Brown, Dr. Linda Martinez-Lewi, social worker Lisa Charlebois, Dr. Philip Zimbardo, Gabor Maté, MD, Dr. Sandy Hotchkiss, Dr. Scott Baum, and Dr, Martha Stout. Narration includes in-depth research and synthesis of the work of these and many other researchers and healers.

Learn just how and why narcissists and sociopaths might be a bigger part of your life than you imagine. We focus on the many factors of unreality inherent in these personality structures and how they spin unreality into the world.

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