OVO

Silent Weapons… was uncovered quite by accident on July7, 1986 when an employee of Boeing Aircraft Co. purchased a surplus IBM copier for scrap parts and discovered inside details of a plan, hatched in the embryonic days of the Cold War, which called for control of the masses through manipulation of industry, people’s pass times, education and political leanings. It called for a quiet revolution, putting brother against brother, and diverting the public’s attention from what is really going on.
- Preface, Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars.

Silent Weapons… attempts to masquerade as several chapters out of a top secret National Security Council Operations Research Technical Manual. However, its style and emphasis quickly give it away as a political-economic romance-satire in the tradition of Joly (Dialogues in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu), the Transcriber (The Occult Technology of Power) and Edward House (Philip Dru: Administrator). However, its warning regarding the subtle totalitarian potential of “operations research” (social mathematical modeling and manipulation) for benefiting a covert elite at the expense of liberty and prosperity is well taken.
- A-Albionic Book Catalog, The Lure (and Hook?) of Secret Documents.

Silent weapon technology has evolved from Operations Research (O.R.), a strategic and tactical methodology developed under the Military Management in England during World War II. The original purpose of Operations Research was to study the strategic and tactical problems of air and land defense with the objective of effective use of limited military resources against foreign enemies (i.e., logistics).

It was soon recognized by those in positions of power that the same methods might be useful for totally controlling a society. But better tools were necessary.

Social engineering (the analysis and automation of a society) requires the correlation of great amounts of constantly changing economic information (data), so a high-speed computerized data-processing system was necessary which could race ahead of the society and predict when society would arrive for capitulation.

Relay computers were to slow, but the electronic computer, invented in 1946 by J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly, filled the bill.

The next breakthrough was the development of the simplex method of linear programming in 1947 by the mathematician George B. Dantzig.

Then in 1948, the transistor, invented by J. Bardeen, W.H. Brattain, and W. Shockley, promised great expansion of the computer field by reducing space and power requirements.

With these three inventions under their direction, those in positions of power strongly suspected that it was possible for them to control the whole world with the push of a button.

Immediately, the Rockefeller Foundation got in on the ground floor by making a four-year grant to Harvard College, funding the Harvard Economic Research Project for the study of the structure of the American Economy. One year later, in 1949, The United States Air Force joined in.

In 1952 the grant period terminated, and a high-level meeting of the Elite was held to determine the next phase of social operations research. The Harvard project had been very fruitful, as is borne out by the publication of some of its results in 1953 suggesting the feasibility of economic (social) engineering. (Studies in the Structure of the American Economy – copyright 1953 by Wassily Leontief, International Science Press Inc., White Plains, New York).

Engineered in the last half of the decade of the 1940′s, the new Quiet War machine stood, so to speak, in sparkling gold-plated hardware on the showroom floor by 1954.

With the creation of the maser in 1954, the promise of unlocking unlimited sources of fusion atomic energy from the heavy hydrogen in sea water and the consequent availability of unlimited social power was a possibility only decades away.

The combination was irresistible.

The Quiet War was quietly declared by the International Elite at a meeting held in 1954.

Although the silent weapons system was nearly exposed 13 years later, the evolution of the new weapon-system has never suffered any major setbacks.

This volume marks the 25th anniversary of the beginning of the Quiet War. Already this domestic war has had many victories on many fronts throughout the world.

Descriptive Introduction of the Silent Weapon
Everything that is expected from an ordinary weapon is expected from a silent weapon by its creators, but only in its own manner of functioning.

It shoots situations, instead of bullets; propelled by data processing, instead of chemical reaction (explosion); originating from bits of data, instead of grains of gunpowder; from a computer, instead of a gun; operated by a computer programmer, instead of a marksman; under the orders of a banking magnate, instead of a military general.

It makes no obvious explosive noises, causes no obvious physical or mental injuries, and does not obviously interfere with anyone’s daily social life.

Yet it makes an unmistakable “noise,” causes unmistakable physical and mental damage, and unmistakably interferes with the daily social life, i.e., unmistakable to a trained observer, one who knows what to look for.

The public cannot comprehend this weapon, and therefore cannot believe that they are being attacked and subdued by a weapon.

The public might instinctively feel that something is wrong, but that is because of the technical nature of the silent weapon, they cannot express their feeling in a rational way, or handle the problem with intelligence. Therefore, they do not know how to cry for help, and do not know how to associate with others to defend themselves against it.

When a silent weapon is applied gradually, the public adjusts/adapts to its presence and learns to tolerate its encroachment on their lives until the pressure (psychological via economic) becomes too great and they crack up.

Therefore, the silent weapon is a type of biological warfare. It attacks the vitality, options, and mobility of the individuals of a society by knowing, understanding, manipulating, and attacking their sources of natural and social energy, and their physical, mental, and emotional strengths and weaknesses.

Diversion, the Primary Strategy
Experience has prevent that the simplest method of securing a silent weapon and gaining control of the public is to keep the public undisciplined and ignorant of the basic system principles on the one hand, while keeping them confused, disorganized, and distracted with matters of no real importance on the other hand.

This is achieved by:

(1) Disengaging their minds; sabotaging their mental activities; providing a low-quality program of public education in mathematics, logic, systems design and economics; and discouraging technical creativity.

(2) Engaging their emotions, increasing their self-indulgence and their indulgence in emotional and physical activities, by:
(a) Unrelenting emotional affrontations and attacks (mental and emotional rape) by way of constant barrage of sex, violence, and wars in the media – especially the TV and the newspapers.
(b) Giving them what they desire – in excess – “junk food for thought” – and depriving them of what they really need.
(c) Rewriting history and law and subjecting the public to the deviant creation, thus being able to shift their thinking from personal needs to highly fabricated outside priorities.

These preclude their interest in and discovery of the silent weapons of social automation technology.

The general rule is that there is a profit in confusion; the more confusion, the more profit. Therefore, the best approach is to create problems and then offer solutions.

Diversion Summary
Media: Keep the adult public attention diverted away from the real social issues, and captivated by matters of no real importance.

Schools: Keep the young public ignorant of real mathematics, real economics, real law, and real history.

Entertainment: Keep the public entertainment below a sixth-grade level.

Work: Keep the public busy, busy, busy, with no time to think; back on the farm with the other animals.

(from OVO 12 SCIENCE November 1991)

“Would it not be… an anachronism to cultivate the taste for harbors, certitudes, systems?” – Gaston Bachelard

I consider the past ten years of my life to be a conscious process of experimentation – but not in the scientific sense. The scientific method is not merely to come up with an idea, test it and record the results; it is also creating a closed system in which to test the idea. This is necessary to test the certitude. In an open system certitude isn’t possible since you cannot know all the factors involved. Although I did do some experimentation of a more scientific method (dream work and magical studies), in general I have avoided this.

My avoidance of scientific method in my experimentation is due largely to the fact that my life experiment is aimed at a breaking out of character armor and social conditioning, to increasingly become my passions and desires – which is to say to become the marvelous breaking forth in the world. This process is a process of opening up and so I cannot help but outgrow a closed system.

Among specific aspects of exploration that I have done, I have attempted, with some success, to increase my sensual awareness, to truly experience consciously what I was seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling. I did this while living in an urban environment. My method was simple – to note every experience mentally and let myself fully feel what it made me feel.

Unfortunately, the very success of this experiment was disastrous, because it left me feeling very depressed and under constant sensory attack. I finally had to leave San Francisco for a less hectic place and recuperate.

It was about a year later that I began my experiments in dream work. These were truly scientific in method in that I was working through a specific system (one which combined Senoi dream work and modern psychological methods) and recording the details, using specific questions aimed toward making the dreams useful and giving the dreamer dream control. I had always been a fairly active, intense dreamer so this was not a difficult project for me. I tended, while conducting the experiment, to remember four to six dreams a night. Over the course of the experiment (which lasted about a month) two things happened to my dreams. First, I began to have more control, until I was able to always determine the outcome of the dream in my favor; and second, my dreams became increasingly mundane, reflecting fairly accurately problems I was dealing with in the immediate present. So this experiment was successful in terms of what it was supposed to do – it made my dreams useful and gave me control. But in the process, it took the adventure, excitement and wonder out of my dreams. So l stopped the experiment, eventually even ceasing to write down my dreams.

I still tend to have some control in my dreams, and an awareness that I am dreaming, but fortunately my dreams have largely lost their usefulness and the sense of wonder and adventure have increased. The most important lesson I feel I’ve learned (though only gradually) from this experiment is the very real opposition between utility and the marvelous.

My other major “scientific” experiment was my exploration into ritual magick. I had become involved in a relationship that was very unhealthy for me, and much of the headway I have made in throwing off character armor and conditioning seemed to have been lost. In my frustration, I turned to a system. Combining aspects of A. O. Spare, Crowley and some modern chaos magick, and using tarot and a few other tools – as well as a lot of my own imagination – I created my own version of chaos magick. My purpose was to call forth energy of chaos within me in order to break down my conditioning. Although in the midst of some rituals I would feel ecstatic and my one act of practical magick seemed to work, all in all, this experiment was a failure. I did not become more loose, more free or more happy. I was not more capable of living my desires. In general, the opposite happened. And I think this was inevitable. The ritual form is a closed system and a closed system ultimately becomes a prison. Ritual could only close me in more. A few years earlier, I had been involved with a series of group “rituals” which were, in act, not rituals at all but ecstatic free play encompassing improvisational music, dancing, howling and just plain fun. These free-form play times, which always ended in a feast, were where I truly experienced wonder and ecstasy and the energy of my wildness. During these play times, I experienced flight, lycanthropic changes and similar truly marvelous events. So it is clear to me now that open, free play, not closed systematic ritual, is the way to break down conditioning and open to the marvelous.

As to the act of practical magick that seemed to work, as I will show it manifests more the failure of my attempt at practical magick than its success. I was becoming increasingly aware that I was involved in an unhealthy relationship. Had my rituals been breaking down character armor as I wished, I would have easily been able to break off this relationship as a simple, direct act of will. But I wasn’t able to do this, so instead I did a ritual to an end. Within a month the relationship shattered with a vehemence that was truly shocking. Strangely enough, that split did more good for me than the rituals I had been doing.

I am still recovering from the steps backwards brought on by my unhealthy relationship and my failed experiment in ritual magick, but I continue to experiment non-scientifically. I have spent the last year wandering, seeking to break with attitudes that can develop when one gets too settled into a “normal” social existence. I am seeking to relate more freely – as a desiring, passionate being, a fluid, constantly changing being – rather than as a static set of social roles and habits. It’s hard, but I’ve learned that it doesn’t free me to replace one set of conditioning with another. So for me, no more scientific experiments, whose closed systems could never reflect real life, but rather the open experimentation aimed at the breaking down of all systems. No doubt it can lead to madness – I’ve felt close to that many times – but, to paraphrase Bachelard, “If, in any experiment, one does not risk one’s reason, that experiment is not worthwhile attempting.”

(from OVO 12 SCIENCE November 1991)

From the 1906 book The Outbursts of Everett True by A. D. Condo and J. W. Raper. With thanks to Barnacle Press.

Disability rally, Portland Oregon USA 15 July 2010.  More photographs.

From Protest the Cuts:

[Oregon Governor Kulongowski] passed these budget proposals with only 5 days for review, no modifications, and no opportunity for public response. The following cuts to human services started immediately on July 1:

* Elimination of meals programs for low-income seniors and people with disabilities (ie. Meals on Wheels)
* Elimination of in-home personal care services for low-income seniors and people with disabilities on Medicaid (i.e. help with bathing, eating, dressing, using the restroom, etc.)
* Reduce in-home services in the Medicaid system by 75% (i.e. meal preparation, chores, etc)
* Complete elimination of Oregon Project Independence
* Further cuts to community and county providers who are administering the state’s programs to serve these individuals.

Disability Rights advocates question whether the Governor’s decision stands in violation to the 11 year old Olmstead vs. State of Georgia Supreme Court ruling that affirmed the rights of individuals with disabilities to live in the least restrictive environment. Furthermore, the ‘integration mandate’ of the Americans with Disabilities Act requires public agencies to provide services “in the most integrated setting appropriate to the needs of qualified individuals with disabilities.”

The Governor’s decision almost certainly stands to adversely affect the lives of seniors, and adults with developmental and physical disabilities, resulting in potential declines in basic quality of life for all concerned. The elimination of Project Independence and further cuts to home health care and DHS services will also cause in thousands of caregivers and state employees to lose their jobs.

Lastly, the long-term effects of the loss of vital human services could result in greater expense to the state as sources estimate it costs about $2,000 a day to house a person in an assisted living facility as opposed to $200 per week to provide an in-home caregiver.

Please join us at 12 o’clock noon on Thursday July 15, 2010 for the first rally to protest these cuts. Meet us at Pioneer Square in downtown Portland.

Robert Spencer: A Landmarks Commission Hearing, and Much More

Perhaps predictably, the Landmarks Commission hearing today to consider landmark status for 45 Park Place, the proposed site of the Islamic supremacist mega-mosque overlooking Ground Zero, was about much more than just whether the building at 45 Park Place merited landmark status or not. It quickly became a public forum on Islam, Muslims in America, and the appropriateness of a huge mosque at Ground Zero. [...] I spoke. I started by saying that I shared the view that some others had already enunciated, that this was supposed to be a hearing on the landmark status of 45 Park Place, not about what good citizens Muslims were and how much New York needed an Islamic “interfaith” center. But since that discussion had not been stopped and was thus apparently deemed relevant, it was also relevant that the Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, leader of the mega-mosque project, was pro-Sharia — a system of law that mandated discrimination against women and non-Muslims, and extinguished the freedom of speech and freedom of conscience. It was also relevant, I said, that he had been dishonest about his funding sources, saying in English that the mosque would be funded by American Muslims, and saying in Arabic that funding would come from Muslim nations. It was further relevant that he had declined to denounce Hamas as a terrorist organization, and that he had helped fund the jihad flotilla that was trying to take arms into Israel. I closed by pointing out that Riddle had said that the building had no unique historical value, but that it did, because it was the only building into which part of a 9/11 plane had crashed, and as such should be a war memorial. A Communist (really! At the Staten Island mosque hearing he actually shouted, “Workers of the world, unite!”) started shouting that I was a bigot, to which I responded that it was not bigotry to point out dishonesty and subversion, and that the Commission should consider carefully whether or not it was being lied to by the mosque proponents.

CNN: Burqa Ban Passes French Lower House Overwhelmingly

France’s lower house of parliament Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a ban on any veils that cover the face – including the burqa, the full-body covering worn by some Muslim women. The vote was 335 to 1. The measure must still go to the French Senate before it becomes law. The Senate is expected to vote on it in the week of September 20.

Abigail Pesta: An American Honor Killing

Around the sprawling, sunbaked campus of Dysart High School in El Mirage, Arizona, not many people knew about the double life of a pretty, dark-haired girl named Noor Almaleki. At school, she was known as a fun-loving student who made friends easily. She played tennis in a T-shirt emblazoned with the school mascot — a baby demon in a diaper. She liked to watch Heroes and eat at Chipotle. Sometimes she talked in a goofy Keanu Reeves voice. She wore dark jeans, jeweled sandals, and flowy tops from Forever 21. She texted constantly and called her friends “dude.” In other words, she was an American girl much like any other.

But at home, Noor inhabited a darker world. She lived a life of subservience, often left to care for her six younger siblings. Noor’s father, 49-year-old Faleh Almaleki, was strict and domineering, deeming it inappropriate for her to socialize with guys, wear jeans, or post snapshots of herself on MySpace. Her responsibility was to follow orders, or to risk a beating. From her father’s perspective, the only time Noor’s life would ever change would be when she married a man he selected for her — back in his homeland of Iraq. Noor, however, had a different vision for herself. Having lived in the U.S. for 16 years, she held dreams of becoming a teacher, of marrying a man she loved, and, most importantly, of making her own choices.

On a cloudless, breezy afternoon in late October 2009, her father set out to end those dreams. As Noor walked across a suburban parking lot to a Mexican restaurant with a friend – a 43-year-old woman named Amal Khalaf – Faleh Almaleki gunned the engine of his Jeep Grand Cherokee and bore down on his 20-year-old daughter and her companion. The women took off running but were no match for the SUV, already traveling close to 30 miles per hour. Suddenly Amal turned, held up her hands in a futile attempt to stop the Jeep, and froze. Moments later, the vehicle struck the women, tossing them into the air. Amal hit the pavement; Noor landed on a raised median, in a patch of pebbly landscaping. Faleh wasn’t done, though. Swerving onto the median, he ran over his daughter as she lay bleeding, fracturing her face and spine. Then, he reversed and sped away.

Passersby heard the roar of the engine, screams, the impact of the bodies as they hit the Jeep’s grill. They saw the women lying on the ground, their sandals scattered across the lot. A witness called 911, and emergency vehicles converged. Amal’s condition was stable; Noor was comatose. Local police characterized the incident as an attempted “honor killing” — the murder of a woman for behaving in a way that “shames” her family. It’s a practice with deep, tenacious roots in the tribal traditions of the Middle East and Asia. (The United Nations estimates that 5,000 women die annually from such crimes.) Women are stoned, stabbed, and, in the recent case of a teenage girl in Turkey, tied up and buried alive. But honor killings in America are a chilling new trend. In Texas, teen sisters Amina and Sarah Said were shot dead in 2008, allegedly by their father, because they had boyfriends. That same year in Georgia, 25-year-old Sandeela Kanwal was allegedly strangled by her father for wanting to leave an arranged marriage. Last year in New York, Aasiya Hassan, 37, was murdered in perhaps the most gruesome way imaginable: She was beheaded, allegedly by her husband, for reportedly seeking a divorce. And this past spring, 19-year-old Tawana Thompson’s husband gunned her down in Illinois, reportedly following arguments about her American-style clothing.

Amazingly, honor killings in the U.S. have been largely ignored by the national media. That’s because these incidents are typically dismissed as “domestic” in nature — a class of crime that rarely makes the headlines. Since the murderer is a member of the woman’s family, there’s no extended investigation to capture the public’s attention. Also, the family of the perpetrator rarely advocates for the victim, due to either fear or a belief that the woman got what she deserved. “From the family’s point of view, if the goal is to end rumors about their female relative, the last thing they want is to have the press talk about the case,” says Rana Husseini, a human-rights activist and author of Murder in the Name of Honor. Still, the lack of media coverage or public outcry cannot erase the evidence: Honor killings have washed up on our shores.

Amie Ferris-Rotman: Russia’s Muslim South Triples Sharia Bride Price

Against the backdrop of a bubbling Islamist insurgency, the revival of Islam in the North Caucasus following the break-up of the Soviet Union almost 20 years ago has brought sharia law to the region, revered by both rebels and ordinary citizens alike. The issue of the ‘kalym’, a price paid by a groom to the family of the woman he chooses to marry, is the latest example of a broader trend that has troubled the Kremlin. [...] Polygamy, illegal under Russian law, is encouraged by local authorities in the region. Last month rights workers blamed police for paintball attacks on Chechen women for not wearing headscarves, and Islamist fighters in Ingushetia have gunned down kiosk workers for selling vodka.

Saeed Kamali Dehghan: Campaign for Iranian Woman Facing Death by Stoning

A 43-year-old Iranian woman is facing death by stoning unless an international campaign launched by her children forces the authorities to quash what her lawyer calls a bogus conviction. In a case that highlights the growing use of the death penalty in a country that has already executed more than 100 people this year, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani was convicted in May 2006 of conducting an “illicit relationship outside marriage.” Sakineh already endured a sentence of 99 lashes, but her case was re-opened when a court in Tabriz suspected her of murdering her husband. She was acquitted, but the adultery charge was reviewed and a death penalty handed down on the basis of “judge’s knowledge” – a loophole that allows for subjective judicial rulings where no conclusive evidence is present. Speaking to the Guardian, her son Sajad, 22, and daughter Farideh, 17, say their mother has been unjustly accused and already punished for something she did not do. “She’s innocent, she’s been there for five years for doing nothing”, Sajad said. He described the imminent execution as barbaric. “Imagining her, bound inside a deep hole in the ground, stoned to death, has been a nightmare for me and my sister for all these years.” Under Iranian sharia law, the sentenced individual is buried up to the neck (or to the waist in the case of men), and those attending the public execution are called upon to throw stones. If the convicted person manages to free themselves from the hole, the death sentence is commuted.

James Gordon Meek and Katie Nelson: Cleric Anwar al-Awlaki Puts ‘Everybody Draw Mohammed’ Cartoonist Molly Norris on Execution Hitlist

A charismatic terror leader linked to the botched Times Square car bomb has placed the Seattle cartoonist who launched “Everybody Draw Muhammed Day” on an execution hit list. Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki – the radical who has also been cited as inspiring the Fort Hood, Tex., massacre and the plot by two New Jersey men to kill U.S. soldiers – singled out artist Molly Norris as a “prime target,” saying her “proper abode is hellfire.” FBI officials have notified Norris and warned her they consider it a “very serious threat.” In an English-language Al Qaeda magazine that calls itself “Inspire,” Awlaki damns Norris and eight others for “blasphemous caricatures” of the Prophet Muhammed. The other cartoonists, authors and journalists in Awlaki’s cross hairs are Swedish, Dutch and British citizens.

Dutch News: Van Gogh Killer Has No Regrets

Six years after murdering film maker Theo van Gogh, his killer Mohammed Bouyeri has no regrets about his action, the AD reports on Friday. The paper has got hold of a letter written by Bouyeri to a Muslim group which turned up in Belgium. In the letter Bouyeri writes that he has ‘no regrets’ about the choices he has made and the road he has traveled, the paper says. ‘Not one second in all these years.’

Persian2English: 26 Year Old Woman Raped and Murdered by Basij Members for “Bad Hijab”

Elnaz Babazadeh, a 26 year old woman was raped and murdered by Basij forces in the city of Tabriz (northwestern Iran) last week. According to the reports, Basij forces stopped Babazadeh in her car for not following the Iranian regime’s dress code. Elnaz resisted and ignored orders given by the Basij forces. Then the Basij forces who had initially stopped her jumped into her car and threatened her with a gun. Two other Basij members joined in and all together they beat and raped her. They murdered Babazadeh and dumped her body close to Emamiyeh cemetery. After local investigation was conducted by HRANA members in Tabriz, it was confirmed at Babazadeh’s funeral that the person who killed her was the son of a high-ranking Revolutionary Guards member.

All articles continue at links. Part of a series that never ends… [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] and etc.  It is not the proper role of the State to moderate clothing, but it might be the proper role of the State to make crime and violence more difficult.  A legal ban on the burqa in all circumstances is inappropriate, but a legal compulsion to reveal oneself in some circumstances (banks, airports, during arrests, getting a photo license) might be appropriate.  Hospitals (State and private) should have policies mandating hygienic behavior as a condition for continued employment no matter the religion of the employee.  If washing one’s hands includes revealing one’s hands and is thus against Islam, so much the worse for any would-be Muslim health care worker.  Private businesses are best left to private policies regarding required or forbidden clothing. And having said all that, it is better of courts in France to fine women who wear the burqa than it is for courts in Iran to rape and murder women who no not wear the burqa. These legal and cultural systems are not only different from one another, but one is better than the other. How can I tell? One rapes and murders women who no not wear the burqa, and one does not. The one that doesn’t is better. One culture threatens cartoonists and murders film makers, and one does not. The one that doesn’t is better. One culture has neighborhood stonings of half-buried women as a trial by survival, and one doesn’t.  The one that doesn’t is better.  When individuals from the culture that is worse identify themselves plainly, such as with the burqa, the State of the culture that is better can be tempted to use that easy identifier as a means to preserve itself. But liberty is not easy. Do not ban the burqa. Do not ban Islam.  Existing laws in the West protect freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and protection from violence and intimidation.  Islam is against these laws, but no new anti-Islam laws are needed to keep it at bay.

BBC: ‘Monastic’ Malagasy Bat Mystifies Experts

The bat, known as the sucker-footed bat, lives in Madagascar, and although it has long been known, its ecology is only just being researched. But new studies of the bat have revealed a curious phenomenon; they have yet to reveal a single female sucker-foot bat, despite having caught or sighted hundreds of males. No-one knows where the females live, or why they sexually segregate this way. [...] Something else is peculiar about the sucker-footed bat: none of those yet captured and released have been found to carry any parasites on their bodies. This is extremely rare, as almost all wild mammals carry so-called ectoparasites, such as fleas or ticks. But “no parasites is easily explained by the roosting habits in the partially unfurled leaves of Ravenala,” explains Prof Racey. These leaves are too smooth for arthropod parasites to stick to, so they cannot crawl onto the bats. That may be one reason why the monastic male bats choose Ravenala trees to roost in.

Carl Zimmer: How Microbes Defend and Define Us

Dr. Alexander Khoruts had run out of options. In 2008, Dr. Khoruts, a gastroenterologist at the University of Minnesota, took on a patient suffering from a vicious gut infection of Clostridium difficile. She was crippled by constant diarrhea, which had left her in a wheelchair wearing diapers. Dr. Khoruts treated her with an assortment of antibiotics, but nothing could stop the bacteria. His patient was wasting away, losing 60 pounds over the course of eight months. “She was just dwindling down the drain, and she probably would have died,” Dr. Khoruts said. Dr. Khoruts decided his patient needed a transplant. But he didn’t give her a piece of someone else’s intestines, or a stomach, or any other organ. Instead, he gave her some of her husband’s bacteria. Dr. Khoruts mixed a small sample of her husband’s stool with saline solution and delivered it into her colon. Writing in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology last month, Dr. Khoruts and his colleagues reported that her diarrhea vanished in a day. Her Clostridium difficile infection disappeared as well and has not returned since. The procedure — known as bacteriotherapy or fecal transplantation — had been carried out a few times over the past few decades. But Dr. Khoruts and his colleagues were able to do something previous doctors could not: they took a genetic survey of the bacteria in her intestines before and after the transplant. Before the transplant, they found, her gut flora was in a desperate state. “The normal bacteria just didn’t exist in her,” said Dr. Khoruts. “She was colonized by all sorts of misfits.” Two weeks after the transplant, the scientists analyzed the microbes again. Her husband’s microbes had taken over. “That community was able to function and cure her disease in a matter of days,” said Janet Jansson, a microbial ecologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a co-author of the paper. “I didn’t expect it to work. The project blew me away.” Scientists are regularly blown away by the complexity, power, and sheer number of microbes that live in our bodies. “We have over 10 times more microbes than human cells in our bodies,” said George Weinstock of Washington University in St. Louis. But the microbiome, as it’s known, remains mostly a mystery. “It’s as if we have these other organs, and yet these are parts of our bodies we know nothing about.”

Patrick House: Landon Donovan Needs a Cat

Could rates of Toxo infection predict soccer success? If we set aside the qualifying rounds (in which teams can play to a draw) and focus on matches with a clear winner, the results are very compelling. In the knockout round of this year’s tournament, eight out of eight winners so far have been the teams whose countries had higher rates of Toxo infection. If we go back to the 2006 World Cup, seven out of eight knockout-round winners could be predicted by higher Toxo rates. The one exception to the rule was Brazil’s defeat of Ghana, a match between two nations that each have very high rates. (Aside from having the winningest team in World Cup history, Brazil has quite a few cases of Toxo: Two out of three Brazilians are infected.) It gets better. Rank the top 25 FIFA team countries by Toxo rate and you get, in order from the top: Brazil (67 percent), Argentina (52 percent), France (45 percent), Spain (44 percent), and Germany (43 percent). Collectively, these are the teams responsible for eight of the last 10 World Cup overall winners. Spain, the only one of the group never to have won a cup, is no subpar outlier—the Spaniards have the most World Cup victories of any perpetual runner-up. What is going on here? Does Toxo really make people better at soccer?

The Economist: A Game of Cat and Mouse

Toxoplasma gondii is not an alien; it is a relative of that down-to-earth pathogen Plasmodium, the beast that causes malaria. It is common: in some parts of the world as much as 60% of the population is infected with it. And it can harm fetuses and people with AIDS, because in each case their immune systems cannot cope with it. For other people, though, the symptoms are usually no worse than a mild dose of flu. Not much for them to worry about, then. Except that there is a growing body of evidence that some of those people have their behaviour permanently changed. One reason to suspect this is that a country’s level of Toxoplasma infection seems to be related to the level of neuroticism displayed by its population. Another is that those infected seem to have poor reaction times and are more likely to be involved in road accidents. A third is that they have short attention spans and little interest in seeking out novelty. A fourth, possibly the most worrying, is that those who suffer from schizophrenia are more likely than those who do not to have been exposed to Toxoplasma.

American Society for Microbiology: Can Bacteria Make You Smarter?

“Mycobacterium vaccae is a natural soil bacterium which people likely ingest or breath in when they spend time in nature,” says Dorothy Matthews of The Sage Colleges in Troy, New York, who conducted the research with her colleague Susan Jenks. Previous research studies on M. vaccae showed that heat-killed bacteria injected into mice stimulated growth of some neurons in the brain that resulted in increased levels of serotonin and decreased anxiety. “Since serotonin plays a role in learning we wondered if live M. vaccae could improve learning in mice,” says Matthews. Matthews and Jenks fed live bacteria to mice and assessed their ability to navigate a maze compared to control mice that were not fed the bacteria. “We found that mice that were fed live M. vaccae navigated the maze twice as fast and with less demonstrated anxiety behaviors as control mice,” says Matthews.

Tina Hesman Saey: Human Genome Is Part Bornavirus

Bornaviruses, a type of RNA virus that causes disease in horses and sheep, first inserted their genetic material into ancestral human DNA at least 40 million years ago, the study shows. The findings, published January 7 in Nature, provide the first evidence that RNA viruses other than retroviruses (such as HIV) can stably integrate genes into host DNA. The new work may help reveal more about the evolution of RNA viruses as well as their mammalian hosts.“Our whole notion of ourselves as a species is slightly misconceived,” says Robert Gifford, a paleovirologist at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, affiliated with Rockefeller University in New York City. Human DNA includes genetic contributions from bacteria and other organisms, and humans have even come to rely on some of these genes for basic functions like fighting infections.

Brian Merchant: Tropical Plant Uses ‘Mind Control’ Chemical to Make Ants Do Its Bidding

New research reveals that the acacia plant actually produces a chemical that drives the ants into a defensive frenzy–alternately persuading them to fight to protect it and banishing them from its flowers when convenient.

Science Daily: New Disease Among HIV-Infected Gay Men

A rare parasitic disease, which normally only is transmitted by contaminated water, has been shown to be transmitted by gay sex between hiv-positive men. In the industrial world the disease is virtually absent, but that could change. [...] Amebiasis, an infection with the single-celled amoeba Entamoebia histolytica, normally is very rare. You only catch it in a few developing countries where the amoeba is endemic, and where hygiene is somewhat substandard, leading to contact with contaminated water. It only becomes dangerous when the amoeba invades your intestinal lining and causes a bloody diarrhoea, or when it enters the bloodstream, where it, among other things, causes liver abscesses. All in all amebiasis takes some 70 000 lives a year, worldwide. [...] In Taiwan, seropositive (hiv-infected) gay men were shown to be infected much more often with the amoeba than the healthy population, and also than seropositive heterosexuals. Also, Hung found men from different regions nevertheless to be infected by closely related amoebas. The most reasonable explanation is that the infection happened through homosexual (oral-anal) contact.

Islam is not a religion nor is it a cult. It is a complete system. Islam has religious, legal, political, economic and military components. The religious component is a beard for all the other components.  Islamization occurs when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their so-called “religious rights.”  When politically correct and culturally diverse societies agree to “the reasonable” Muslim demands for their “religious rights,” they also get the other components under the table. Here’s how it works (percentages source CIA: The World Fact Book 2007).

As long as the Muslim population remains around 1% of any given country they will be regarded as a peace-loving minority and not as a threat to anyone. In fact, they may be featured in articles and films, stereotyped for their colorful uniqueness:

United States — Muslim 1.0%
Australia — Muslim 1.5%
Canada — Muslim 1.9%
China — Muslim 1%-2%
Italy — Muslim 1.5%
Norway — Muslim 1.8%

At 2% and 3% they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs:

Denmark — Muslim 2%
Germany — Muslim 3.7%
United Kingdom — Muslim 2.7%
Spain — Muslim 4%
Thailand — Muslim 4.6%

From 5% on they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population. They will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature it on their shelves – along with threats for failure to comply:

France — Muslim 8%
Philippines — Muslim 5%
Sweden — Muslim 5%
Switzerland — Muslim 4.3%
The Netherlands — Muslim 5.5%
Trinidad & Tobago — Muslim 5.8%

At this point, they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves under Sharia, the Islamic Law. The ultimate goal of Islam is not to convert the world but to establish Sharia law over the entire world.

When Muslims reach 10% of the population, they will increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions (Paris — car burnings, etc.). Any non-Muslim action that offends Islam will result in uprisings and threats (Amsterdam – Mohammed cartoons):

Guyana — Muslim 10%
India — Muslim 13.4%
Israel — Muslim 16%
Kenya — Muslim 10%
Russia — Muslim 10-15%

After reaching 20% expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings and church and synagogue burning:

Ethiopia — Muslim 32.8%

At 40% you will find widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks and ongoing militia warfare:

Bosnia — Muslim 40%
Chad — Muslim 53.1%
Lebanon — Muslim 59.7%

From 60% you may expect unfettered persecution of non-believers and other religions, sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon and Jizya, the tax placed on infidels:

Albania — Muslim 70%
Malaysia — Muslim 60.4%
Qatar — Muslim 77.5%
Sudan — Muslim 70%

After 80% expect State run ethnic cleansing and genocide:

Bangladesh — Muslim 83%
Egypt — Muslim 90%
Gaza — Muslim 98.7%
Indonesia — Muslim 86.1%
Iran — Muslim 98%
Iraq — Muslim 97%
Jordan — Muslim 92%
Morocco — Muslim 98.7%
Pakistan — Muslim 97%
Palestine — Muslim 99%
Syria — Muslim 90%
Tajikistan — Muslim 90%
Turkey — Muslim 99.8%
United Arab Emirates — Muslim 96%

100% will usher in the peace of “Dar-es-Salaam” — the Islamic House of Peace — there’s supposed to be peace because everybody is a Muslim:

Afghanistan — Muslim 100%
Saudi Arabia — Muslim 100%
Somalia — Muslim 100%
Yemen — Muslim 99.9%

Of course, that’s not the case. To satisfy their blood lust, Muslims then start killing each other for a variety of reasons.

TESTES-3 was the phone number & name of the first phone station (or “line,” as we called it) that Richard, Sumu Pretzler & I created & co-operated. It was operated anonymously & centered around an answering machine that was used to receive input & to play output made from edited versions the input. It didn’t attract much attention until its third month when it came to the notice of reporter Franz Lidz.

As partially explained in his “Underground Telephone Network” article, Lidz tried to get us to agree to an interview by leaving messages via TESTES-3. Given that we considered anonymity to be essential to our functioning communally produced participatory phenomenon we reacted cautiously to his request, in a way that we thought to be consistent with our principles.

Rather than let Lidz interview us, we thought that it would be more appropriate if he interviewed the TESTES-3 callers to help make them realize that they were TESTES-3 as much as we were (albeit in a different way). We played the recording of Lidz’ proposal as our outgoing tape for a while, adding our own disguised voice suggesting that people leave their phone numbers so that we could forward them to Lidz – thus enabling him to contact them. We compiled the responses onto one tape (mixing in our own phone numbers with theirs so that we could test how Lidz would follow through – if at all). We then telephoned Lidz, &, after a brief explanation in our nasal & rhythmically regulated TESTES-3 voice, played the recording for him to write the information from. Contrary to Lidz’ claim in his article we know he didn’t try calling them all because he never contacted us at the home numbers that we provided him with.

Some trouble did ensue for us when Lidz told the phone company that we were using his voice on our answering machine without his knowing who we were. A phone company employee called us & explained that is was a violation of FCC &/or Public Service Commission regulations for us not to identify ourselves on our tape. I tried to explain, in a roundabout way, that it was important to us to continue unidentified. A solution was reached when it was realized that someone could publicly take responsibility for being connected with our outgoing messages without that someone having to be anything more than a cooperative front. The obvious candidate for such a position was Lidz since he was the one who had stirred up the trouble in the first place. We suggested this to him (again via the phone & in our disguised voice) and he agreed. The ironic climax to this was that many of our tapes referred callers to Lidz (c/o his newspaper) for more information about us – without Lidz every knowing who we were.

We had originally wanted our phone station & number to be VD-RADIO but we had been told that number wouldn’t be available until June or July, so we started with TESTES-3 instead. As the availability time approached, we decided that with VD-RADIO rather than keep it cloistered at the center between the three of us we would make our end of the project open to more people. In order to do this, we thought that it would be best for us to be no longer anonymous.

Our idea was to give Lidz such a sensational interview that the resultant spectacular article would broaden our base of participants with notoriety. We started by revealing that we were TESTES-3 to a woman named Joan who was an acquaintance of ours & who had been one of the earliest TESTES-3 callers. We asked her to be our accomplice. We called Lidz & robotically told him that if he were to be at the Western-most phone booth of two phone booths at the comer of a particular intersection in Baltimore at a certain time & date that he would receive further instructions.

When he arrived at the phone booth Joan was already waiting in the one adjacent. She called his booth & told him she was right next to him & that she was supposed to take Lidz in her car to a parking lot next to the downtown prison. He obliged by going with her & she lied by telling him that she didn’t know who we were & that she had simply called TESTES-3 & we had convinced her to cooperate. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Lidz, Sumu Pretzler followed than in his camper van.

Joan got lost & finally pulled into a convenient parking lot. Sumu pulled in next to her, had them get out of Joan’s car and into his van. They were required to put on special vision complicating glasses in order to be permitted to go any further towards the interview. Lidz put on glasses with lenses made from prisims which substantially abstracted his perception of space. Joan was given diffraction glasses. It was night-time – so the distortions were further aggravated by the main light sources being headlights & street lights. They were both given paper hats (in the form of papal hats) to wear. Sumu drove them around town, playing specially chosen music on the tape player, on a labyrinthian long ride to confuse their sense of whereabouts, until his van broke down.

The breakdown forced him to call another TESTES-3 accomplice, John Ellsberry, who had to go to where the van was to give it a hot-shot. Sumu finally made it to the complex of alleys behind where our TESTES-3 headquarters were where he let Lidz & Joan out & hand-led them through a pedestrian alleyway to where Richard & I awaited them. The alleyway was dark & deserted. At the beginning of a short dead-end, Richard & I stood wearing the same types of hats that they were & diffraction glasses & were holding flashlights under our chins to heighten the dramatic lighting. John’s camera flashes added to their already substantially distorted vision as he took photos of Joan & Lidz being nudged down a trash-filled stairwell into a decrepit basement.

In order to reinforce the impression that TESTES-3 was a guerrilla operation we had made the house seem even more derelict than it already was. The basement came with a rotten floor with large holes in it that was dangerous to walk across and, just a few minutes before, half of the building’s power had blown out, so we hadn’t needed to alter anything down there. The basement to first floor steps were very narrow & the walls were spray-painted. At the top, the kitchen was made invisible by a gauzy hanging (and by darkness) which directed them through another slightly wider hallway toward the front steps leading to the second floor.

At the end of this hallway, there was ordinarily a wide entrance into a living room on the right which we had covered with a precariously balanced approximately 8‘x6′ wall covered with graffiti. As Lidz felt his way gingerly down the hallway (the prism glasses made walking very difficult) he touched this wall & it fell with a gigantic crash breaking various things in its path. That was even better than anything we’d planned. We guided them up to another floor & took them into my bedroom where the TESTES-3 machine was hidden. They were directed to sit on a large water-bed as yet another contribution to the feeling of lost equilibrium. They rolled around awkwardly on the bed with the only light in room being a strobe.  The whole time Richard & I had been speaking sparsely in our clipped & quasi-inhuman voices.

By now the impression that we had made was so bizarre that Richard threw a bit of contrast in by offering them beers & asking them if they’d like to listen to the Rolling Stones. Lidz asked if it was okay for him to take his glasses off – saying they were giving him a headache. I put on a Creature of the Black Lagoon mask & Richard put on a ski mask & we consented to the removal of the glasses. Lidz’ semi-restored (the strobe was still strobbing) normal vision revealed two men in masks rather than the two bespectacles & be-hatted figures had seen fragmented previously. We showed him the TESTES-3 machine & tamed on the monitor as a call came in. Our outgoing message tape had someone singing “they’re coming to take me away, hoho, heehee, haha… ” montaged with a multitude of other materials – yet another facet to add to the surreal feeling of the whole situation.

Sumu Pretzler returned from parking his vehicle & we all adjourned to a different bedroom where an overhead where an overhead light was on. We removed our masks & the interview began. The room had been rigged with tape-delay & we punctuated the atmosphere by blowing though noise-makers that echoed like pterodactyls flying in a canyon.

Needless to say, we expected Lidz to go into great detail about the ordeal he had been put through to get his story. Imagine our surprise when the ironic climax to all this was that Lidz didn’t mention our Lidznap at all. The joke was on us.

(from OVO 12 SCIENCE November 1991)

via youtube.

Michael C. Moynihan: Lars Vilks, the Swedish cartoonist who drew Mohammed as a dog, was recently told that a scheduled lecture on free speech, to be held at Jönköping Högskolan, would be canceled due to ‘security concerns.’ This, of course, is a common evasion, intended to protect the brittle sensibilities of Muslim students while supposedly standing four square behind the right of free speech. Alas, the administrators in Jönköping had a point. During a lecture in Uppsala today [11 May 2010] Vilks was attacked by a pack of feral fundamentalists, one of whom managed to headbutt the artist and break his glasses. Police intervened and waged a short battle with the religious nutters who can be heard in the video [above], captured by the newspaper UNT, shouting Allahu Akbar! The AP has a quick report, explaining that “Uppsala University spokeswoman Pernilla Bjork said Vilks was showing a provocative film with sexual content to the crowd when the attacker ran up and hit him in the face with his fists.”

The above video isn’t even two minutes long. Go ahead, give it a look. Lars Vilks is one of several cartoonists who live with a bounty on their heads.  They are sequestered in safe homes guarded by police.  They receive daily threats of death.  Sometimes they are punched, attacked with firebombs, chased by men with hatchets.  Before they can receive visitors, the visitors and their possessions must be frisked.  Before they drive anywhere, they have to check their cars for bombs.  See all this and more from a recent documentary by a Finnish TV station [1][2][3].

Who are these stern comic critics?  What is it they want to have happen?  Is that what you want to have happen too?

LISTEN TO WHAT I SAY! DO WHAT I TELL YOU! I EXIST IN A PLACE ALL AROUND YOU. I CAN VANISH FROM THE PRESENT AND APPEAR INSIDE SOMEONE WITHOUT THEM KNOWING IT. I CAN MAKE EVERYONE HATE YOU, CAUSE YOU TO CHANGE YOUR MIND FOR THE WORSE, DISINTEGRATE A RELATIONSHIP. MY POWERS ARE BEYOND YOUR IMAGINATION. I HAVE THE POWER AND I USE MY POWER. I CARE NOT WHO I USE MY ABILITIES ON. I CAN CHANGE THE COURSE OF DESTINY. DO NOT ASK FOR MORE. I HAVE DETHRONED KINGS, DESTROYED ARMIES, TURNED RIVERS TO MUD. EVEN A PICTURE OF ME MAY RELEASE MY POWER. HOLD ME AND THE GATES OF HAPPINESS WILL CLOSE. TOUCH ME AND MONEY WILL FALL AWAY FROM YOU. CARESS ME AND ROMANCE WILL FLEE FROM YOU. GAZE UPON ME AND THE CONFUSION WILL ENDANGER YOU. POSSESS ME AND DO MY BIDDING. ALTHOUGH IT IS BELIEVED THAT ONLY I CAN ELEVATE THE VICTIM OVER THE OPPRESSOR, I AM THE OPPRESSOR. I WORK FOR MANY BUT FEW I HELP SUCCEED. TELL ME THE ONE THING THAT IS TROUBLING YOU AND I WILL STRENGTHEN IT. THE ONLY GIFT I WILL NOT GIVE YOU IS DEATH. YOUR ANGER IS MY JOY. MY PEOPLE UNDERSTAND MY FORCES; NOW YOU MUST KNOW. TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT. I AM THE INTERMEDIARY BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR DESIRES. I WILL PUT YOU IN A RUT, I WILL TURN YOUR SUCCESSES TO SORROWS. I WILL DIRECT YOUR FUTURE TOWARDS DISMAL GLORY. AFTER YOU KNOW ME YOUR LIFE WILL HAVE LESS MEANING, LESS HOPE, LESS EXCITEMENT. YOU WILL BE DISAPPOINTED. I KNOW MORE ABOUT YOU THAN YOU KNOW ABOUT YOURSELF.  IS SOMEONE BOTHERING YOU? CAUSING YOU GRIEF?  THEY ARE MY HAND AROUND YOUR THROAT. CALL TO ME AND I WILL SET YOUR HANDS UPON THEIRS. TELL ME YOUR TROUBLES AT NIGHT. IN THE MORNING THEY WILL BE TWOFOLD. I DO NOT CARE WHAT YOU WANT. I AM HOLDING YOU BACK FROM ENJOYING A HAPPY, PROSPEROUS LIFE. I DISLIKE YOU AND I SABOTAGE YOUR EFFORTS TO SUCCEED. YOU CANNOT NEUTRALIZE ME, YOU CANNOT GET ME OFF YOUR BACK, YOU CANNOT GET EVEN. THOSE WHO TOUCH ME WITHER. TO THOSE WHO SEEK ME OUT I AM SILENT. TO THOSE WHO WOULD FLEE ME I AM EVER PRESENT. I CHASE PEACE FROM YOUR HOME. I MISNAMED YOU AT BIRTH. I EXCLUDE YOU FROM MY PROTECTION. I INTIMIDATE. I CONQUER ALL. I MASS MY ENORMOUS ENERGIES TOWARD YOU AND I DO NOT RELENT UNTIL I GET MY WAY. YOU CAN NEVER BECOME A PART OF ME. ABOVE ALL ELSE I RELISH KEEPING YOU OUT. I WILL APPLY MY AWESOME POWERS ON YOUR BEHALF. I TOOK MY POWERS. I AM CURSED. MY LIFE DOES NOT CONFORM TO NORMAL HUMAN STANDARDS. I DO NOT EAT AS YOU DO. I DO NOT SLEEP AS YOU DO. I DO NOT LET OTHERS CONTROL OR AFFECT MY LIFE AS YOU DO. MY BODY IS NOT PRONE TO ILLNESS, MY MIND IS NOT SUSCEPTIBLE TO WEAKNESS OR ERROR. I AM WATCHING YOU. I CAN SEE INSIDE YOUR FACE. I FEED ON YOUR PAIN, YOUR DISAPPOINTMENT, YOUR FRUSTRATION. YOU SENSE MY GAZE. YOU KNOW THAT EVERYTHING I SAY IS TRUE.

from OVO 12 SCIENCE (November 1991)

via youtube.

From the 1906 book The Outbursts of Everett True by A. D. Condo and J. W. Raper. With thanks to Barnacle Press.

via youtube.

In April 2008 I published OVO 18 MONEY. Following the pattern of many previous issues of OVO, I was using the publication of a magazine as a chance to learn about the theme found in that publication. In the course of putting that issue together I did learn a small amount about economics. Money is that which you want to own more of than get rid of. Banking and finance regulation and the stock market seem to be far more complex. Not long after that issue was published, the world economy took a turn for the worst. My understanding of what I do not know or understand is much greater now. All I can say about this video is it made me laugh.

The latter half of the 20th century saw the built environment merged with media space, and architecture taking on new roles related to branding, image and consumerism. Augmented reality may recontextualise the functions of consumerism and architecture, and change in the way in which we operate within it.

A film produced for my final year Masters in Architecture, part of a larger project about the social and architectural consequences of new media and augmented reality.

Though truth is not self-revealing (as Cartesians and Baconians thought), though certainty may be unattainable, the human situation with respect to knowledge is far from desperate. On the contrary, it is exhilarating: here we are, with the immensely difficult task before us of getting to know the beautiful world we live in, and ourselves; and fallible though we are we nevertheless find that our powers of understanding, surprisingly, are almost adequate for the task – more so than we ever dreamt in our wildest dreams. We really do learn from our mistakes, by trial and error. And at the same time we learn how little we know – as when, in climbing a mountain, every step upwards opens some new vista into the unknown, and new worlds unfold themselves of whose existence we knew nothing when we began our climb.

Thus we can learn, we can grow in knowledge, even if we can never know – that is, know for certain. Since we can learn, there is no reason for despair of reason; and since we can never know, there are no grounds here for smugness, or for conceit over the growth of our knowledge.

It may be said that this new way of knowing is too abstract and too sophisticated to replace the loss of authoritarian religion. This may be true. But we must not underrate the power of the intellect and the intellectuals. It was the intellectuals – the ‘second-hand dealers in ideas,’ as F. A. Hayek calls them – who spread relativism, nihilism, and intellectual despair. There is no reason why some intellectuals – some more enlightened intellectuals – should not eventually succeed in spreading the good news that the nihilist ado was indeed about nothing.

From The Open Society and its Enemies Volume 2. Princeton University Press 1966

P
The first photograph was made in 1826.  The first digital camera was the Dycam Model 1, available in 1990.  Some cell phones with digital cameras were available as early as 2001.  Digital cameras have outsold film cameras since 2002.  The low cost and ease of digital photography has led to more photographs being made.

S
Alfred Kinsey published his first Report on sexuality in 1948.  In 1960 “The Pill” was first offered for sale.  By the 1980s, pornography had been all-but normalized.  Clinical information on sex; safe, effective and convenient contraception for women; widely available pornography – these three forces combined into a sexual revolution that is still taking place.

I
In 1992, the long history of electronic distribution of information (telegraph, fax, radio, television, computers, internet) was complimented by the invention of the World Wide Web.

P + S + I = X
Digital cameras, the sexual revolution and the World Wide Web have resulted in sexting.  A 2008 study suggested a third of adults had digitally distributed sexually explicit images of themselves and nearly two-thirds had digitally distributed sexually explicit text or information.

B
Facial recognition systems were developed in the mid-1960s.  By the first decade of the 2000s, digital biometric systems were in use by governments and businesses.  Personal experience suggests most people have an inaccurate sense of how little information is required to correctly identify their camera, computer or internet access point.  What people distribute on the internet is less anonymous than they think.

A
Once fantastically large and expensive, digital data can now be stored in small areas and inexpensively.  Discretion in frequency and content is no longer emphasized in photography.  Instead of taking one careful photograph, a photographer can take hundreds of photographs and emphasize the ones they prefer.  Data is being stored without the permission or knowledge of those who generated it.  Communication venues that were thought to be ephemeral were instead secretly archived.  Usenet has folded into google, BBS’ are archived at textfiles.com, and the Web is mirrored at archive.org.

X + B + A = WHO’S THAT GIRL?
I predict that businesses exist right now that are quietly collecting millions of images of naked man and women distributed on the internet for the purpose of biometric identification.  Identifications will be established with information volunteered via social networking sites.  I predict that there will be false positive identifications.  I predict that there will be accurate identifications.  I predict the distribution or non-distribution of these identifications will generate revenue in the future and that is why the images are being archived right now.  I predict these identifications will result in misfortune or difficulties for some of those identified, but that the momentum of the sexual revolution will all-but normalize not-for-profit home-made sexually explicit images and text for the majority.

See also: Three Predictions Part Two, Same Sex Marriage

Rev. Uncle Onan Canobite: Confession. In celebration of X-Day, 7:00 am July 5th 1998, whenever that might be, whatever planet this might be.

OVO at Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon USA. 3 July 2010.

From the 1906 book The Outbursts of Everett True by A. D. Condo and J. W. Raper. With thanks to Barnacle Press.

BBC: Afghanistan Taliban ‘Using Human Shields’

Gen Mohiudin Ghori said his soldiers had seen Taliban fighters placing women and children on the roofs of buildings and firing from behind them.

Mahmood Delkhasteh: Rapists in Iran’s Regime

Sexual assault against men and women is being systematically used in Iran in an attempt to stifle opposition.

Pajamas Media: What Did You Say About Muhammad?!

Which is more likely to elicit an irate Muslim response: 1) public cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad, or 2) public proclamations that Muhammad was a bisexual, sometime transvestite and necrophile, who enjoyed sucking on the tongues of children, commanded a woman to “breastfeed” an adult man, and advised believers to drink his urine for salutary health?

BBC: Somali Ban on ‘Christian’ Bells

Islamist militants al-Shabab have banned teachers using bells to signal the end of class in the town of Jowhar, 90km (56 miles) north of Mogadishu. Al-Shabab said the bells sounded too much like Christian church bells. This comes after last week’s order by the Hizbul-Islam group that radios stop playing music because it is un-Islamic.

Washington Post: Somali Islamist Rebels Ban English, Science Lessons

Somalia’s hardline Islamists have banned English and science studies in schools in the southern Afmadow town after the education centers there ignored the rebels’ call for fighters, residents and teachers say.

Paul Canning: US and UK Failing to Take Iraq’s Gay Progrom Seriously

Both countries deny any Iraqi state involvement in anti-gay militias, but LGBT supporters suggest otherwise.

Jaxon Van Derbeken: 3 held in alleged anti-gay BB shooting in S.F.

Three cousins from Hayward have been charged in San Francisco with a hate crime and assault for allegedly firing a BB rifle at the face of a man they believed was gay, an attack the men videotaped, authorities said Wednesday. Mohammad Habibzada, Shafiq Hashemi and Sayed Bassam, all 24, are scheduled to be arraigned today in San Francisco Superior Court. They are free on $50,000 bond apiece.

SF Appeal: Hayward Men Out On Bail After Admitting They Came To SF To Shoot Gay Folks

Three Hayward men are scheduled to be arraigned on assault and hate crime charges in San Francisco next week for allegedly shooting a man they thought was gay with a BB gun. The Feb. 26 incident took place at about 10 p.m. outside a Mission District bar at 16th and Guerrero streets, according to police. The 27-year-old San Francisco man had just come out of the bar when he was shot once in the cheek by suspects in a nearby car, which then drove off, police spokesman Officer Samson Chan said. [...] According to Chan, they allegedly admitted to the crime. “The suspects did make a confession, basically stating that they came to San Francisco to target gay people,” he said.

Dustin Gardiner: Dad Accused in ‘Honor Killing’ Will Not Face Death Penalty

Because they seek “some level of assurance that there is no appearance that a Christian is seeking to execute a Muslim for racial, political, religious or cultural beliefs [in Arizona].”

Weekly Blitz: Women Detained for Not Wearing Veil in Bangladesh

Golam Minhaz, an inspector with Detective Branch of Bangladesh Police at Rangpur district detained 19 women in various areas in the city for ‘not wearing veils’.

The Observers: Runaway Wives Sentenced to Public Flogging by Warlord

In some Afghan provinces, warlords still reign supreme. Under their authority, the treatment of women is bleakly reminiscent of Taliban rule; as this video of a woman being whipped in public goes to show.

New York Times: Afghan Child Brides Escape Marriage, But Not Lashes

What in most countries would be considered a criminal offense is in many parts of Afghanistan a cultural norm, one which the government has been either unable or unwilling to challenge effectively.

CNN.com: 3 Women Caned in Malaysia for Adultery

Malaysian authorities have caned three Muslim women under Islamic law for acts of adultery. The canings are a punishment that persists across Malaysian society since the British colonial era of the 19th century.

BBC: Forced Marriages Awareness Tour

The first UK roadshow aiming to stop South Asian youngsters being forced into marriages abroad is due to get under way.

Ayesha Nasir: I Should Have Read My Islamic Marriage Contract

Why do Pakistani women agree to marriage contracts without scrutinizing them first and making sure they won’t be sorry later?

Bint al-Sultan: Ending the Culture of FGM

Like many girls in Sudan, I suffered genital mutilation – but with education, attitudes are beginning to change.

Mail Online: Postal Voting System is a Farce that Shames Democracy

Almost all the worst instances of fraud since 2000 have arisen in places with large concentrations of Asian voters, such as Blackburn, Oldham and Tower Hamlets. In the Birmingham local elections of 2004, six Muslim men stole thousands of ballot papers and marked them for Labour candidates. The Election Commissioner, Richard Mawrey QC, said at their trial that the contest ‘would have disgraced a banana republic’.

Mail Online: Innocent Couple Killed After Their House Was Fire-Bombed in ‘Bungled Honour Killing’

An innocent couple died in a house fire at the hands of assailants who got the wrong address in a botched honour killing, a court heard today. Abdullah Mohammed, 41, and his wife, Aysha Mohammed, 39, were overcome by smoke and fumes after an accelerant was poured through their letterbox and set alight. Their killers were ordered by another man to avenge his family’s honour but instead of firebombing 135 London Road in Blackburn, Lancashire, they started the blaze at 175 London Road.

BBC: Irish ‘Plot to Kill Cartoonist’

Seven people have been arrested in the Irish Republic over an alleged plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist for depicting the Prophet Muhammad, police say. The four men and three women are all Muslim, according to media reports, though a police statement did not confirm this.

Mail Online: ‘Follow the Islamic Way to Save the World,’ Charles Urges Environmentalists

In an hour-long speech, the heir to the throne argued that man’s destruction of the world was contrary to the scriptures of all religions – but particularly those of Islam.

All articles continue at links. Part of a series that never ends… [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] and etc.  In the mainstream media there is a general rule.  You can call them Islamist militants, a group, Islamist rebels, hardline Islamists, rebels, men, Hayward men, suspects, warlords, Afghans, Asians, South Asian youngsters, Pakistani women, assailants, Irish, dads, Malaysian authorities, people – just make sure to call them anything but what they call themselves.  And what they call themselves is Muslims.  Because if you call a Muslim a Muslim, if you name Islam as Islam, then you are going to have a harder time reconciling what Muslims do on the one hand and what you might want them to do on the other.  You might want them to maintain their cuisine and language, add a bit of color to the workplace, but otherwise cotton to Western notions such as ‘don’t set women on fire’ or ‘if you don’t like a comic then don’t look at it.’  That’s what you might want Muslims to do, but that’s not what they’re doing.  If a Muslim does something good, or if they are talking about your idea of a Muslim instead of a real Muslim, then the mainstream media will use the words Muslims use to describe themselves.  Perhaps I am painting with a broad brush, confusing a vocal minority for a more passive minority.  Fair enough.  As that passive majority stops sheltering the vocal minority, as they cut them out like a tumor, then so will I grant my full apology.  Until then, the Muslim world can consider itself to be made up of ‘good Germans.’