Author Archive | majestic

Australia As Bellwether For The New Global Climate

By on May 24, 2013 in News 0

USMC-100909-M-3740P-136Extreme weather events in Australia are now commonplace and scientists believe it may be a bellwether for the rest of the world. Report from National Geographic:

In early 2012 once-in-a-century floods submerged swaths of Great Britain and Ireland, causing some $1.52 billion in damages. Then in June record-high temperatures in Russia sparked wildfires that consumed 74 million acres of pristine Siberian taiga. Months after that, Hurricane Sandy pummeled seven countries, killing hundreds and running up an estimated $75 billion in damages. Just this week, a tornado of virtually unheard of size and ferocity tore through a small city in Oklahoma, leaving 24 people dead.

Each of these one-off traumas was bad enough, wreaking havoc, but in Australia such events seem to be becoming commonplace.

The Lucky Country has experienced a major spike in extreme weather in the past few years, with a string of devastating incidents just since January.

That has people wondering if the island continent is somehow a perfect bellwether for the Earth’s changing climate.

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Obama on Medea: “The words of that woman are worth paying attention to”

By on May 24, 2013 in News 0

11.20.CodePink.WDC.8mar03Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin’s heckling of President Obama during his speech at the National Defense University gains her more notoriety than ever before. From Reuters:

“You are our commander in chief. Close Guantanamo Bay!” Benjamin shouted toward the end of Obama’s address.

“Why don’t you sit down and I will tell you exactly what I’m going to do?” Obama replied. “Let me finish my sentence.

He called on Congress to lift the restrictions on detainee transfers and went on to discuss other steps toward closing the prison. He said he was lifting a moratorium on detainee transfers to Yemen.

“Release them today!” Benjamin shouted. “It’s been 11 years!”

“Let me finish,” Obama said. “This is part of free speech. You being able to speak, but also me listening, and me being able to speak.”

He was able to continue for a bit but then Benjamin demanded to know why a teenager had been killed by a U.S.

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Aleksei Balabanov, ‘Best Russian film director of the past two decades’ Dies at 54

By on May 22, 2013 in News 0

cargo 200We were sorry to learn of the untimely death of Aleksei Balabanov, director of Cargo 200, one of Disinformation’s rare forays into foreign film distribution. His obituary from the New York Times in relevant part:

…In 16 films, Mr. Balabanov offered a world of hit men, shamelessly corrupt officials and corpses upon corpses in a cinematic pastiche reminiscent of the work of Quentin Tarantino in artistic achievement and exuberantly brash taste…

“The films of Aleksei Balabanov are a collective portrait of our country at its most dramatic time in history,” Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev wrote on Facebook after the director’s death.

Mr. Balabanov’s movies developed a robust cult following in Russia and won prizes there. They were shown abroad in art houses and at film festivals…

Mikhail Trofimenkov, a film critic for the Russian newspaper Kommersant, called Mr. Balabanov “the best Russian film director of the past two decades.”…

The title of his 2007 film, Cargo 200, was taken from the Soviet Army code for bodies of slain Soviet soldiers.

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Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories

By on May 21, 2013 in News 0

ManWearingTinFoilHatMaggie Koerth-Baker, science editor at BoingBoing, ponders why so many “normal” people believe in what she deems “crazy” conspiracy theories, for the New York Times:

In the days following the bombings at the Boston Marathon, speculation online regarding the identity and motive of the unknown perpetrator or perpetrators was rampant. And once the Tsarnaev brothers were identified and the manhunt came to a close, the speculation didn’t cease. It took a new form. A sampling: Maybe the brothers Tsarnaev were just patsies, fall guys set up to take the heat for a mysterious Saudi with high-level connections; or maybe they were innocent, but instead of the Saudis, the actual bomber had acted on behalf of a rogue branch of our own government; or what if the Tsarnaevs were behind the attacks, but were secretly working for a larger organization?

Crazy as these theories are, those propagating them are not — they’re quite normal, in fact.

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Does Prozac Help Artists Be Creative?

By on May 20, 2013 in News 0

Prozac pills croppedHas creativity been squelched in our Prozac nation? Alex Preston discusses whether or not SSRI antidepressant drugs “hamper the creative process, extinguishing the spark that produces great art, or do they enhance artistic endeavour?” in the Guardian:

Twenty-five years after pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly unleashed Prozac on the red-braced 80s, SSRIs are still the world’s most popular antidepressants. They are swallowed by more than 40 million people, from Beijing to Beirut, knitting a web of happiness from New York to New Caledonia. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, of which Prozac is the best known, are the defining drug of the modern age, the crutch of choice for the worried well. In the US, where one in 10 takes antidepressants, you can buy beef-flavoured Prozac for your dog, trademarked Reconcile. The Prozac revolution has not only changed the way we think about depression (aided by Eli Lilly’s mammoth advertising campaign); it has also changed the way we think, full stop.

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Only Elitists Oppose Monsanto’s Global Domination Plan

By on May 18, 2013 in News 0
Hugh Grant. Photo: Janine Moraes (CC)

Hugh Grant. Photo: Janine Moraes (CC)

So sayeth Hugh Grant (CEO of Monsanto, not the fay English thespian). From Gawker:

Monsanto is a $58 billion multinational Pesticide-’n-Frankenfood corporation that has moved on from selling Agent Orange to its new business of patenting actual seed genomes and thensuing farmers who try to grow crops without paying the Monsanto corporation. Who could be opposed to such a thing. Only the elites, clearly.

Nobody really knows what sort of social and environmental consequences might result from the widespread use of genetically engineered Monsanto seeds that are resistant to Monsanto pesticides. I mean, what kind of weirdo would question whether that system has a downside? Latte-swilling, Mark Bittman-worshipping elitists, according to Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant:

“There is this strange kind of reverse elitism: If I’m going to do this [meaning "not bombard the world with genetically modified seeds and pesticides and also destroy any farmer who attempts to buck the system"], then everything else shouldn’t exist,” Grant said at Monsanto’s St.

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Matt Drudge, Alex Jones & Barack Obama Entangled In The Great Ammo Conspiracy

By on May 16, 2013 in News 0

Bullets 270 SierraGrace Wyler dissects the conspiracy theory about federal ammunition hoarding for VICE:

Last month, conservative blogger Matt Drudge tweeted that he predicts 2013 will be the “year of Alex Jones,” the conspiracy theorist extraordinaire who most recently made headlines by suggesting that the Boston Marathon bombings were a “false flag” attack perpetrated by the FBI.

Drudge has a point. As the leading purveyor of New World Order conspiracies, Jones has a growing Internet following of casual fearmongers who see nefarious government intrigue in the most mundane bureaucratic chores (e.g. water fluoridation), and believe it’s only a matter of time before we are all living in FEMA concentration camps.

To the average person, this looks like lunacy. But is it all just conspiratorial blather? Or is there any truth to what Alex Jones and his fanboys are selling?

Mostly, the ideas are just nuts. But the most recent conspiracy theory du jour—that the government is stockpiling ammunition for an eventual showdown with the American people—has been surprisingly resilient.

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Bret Easton Ellis on the ‘Reign of the Gay Magical Elves’

By on May 15, 2013 in News 0

EllisBret Easton Ellis, author of modern classics Less Than Zero and American Psycho, writes about the lionizing of celebrities who announce they are gay for OUT:

Was I the only gay man of a certain demo who experienced a flicker of annoyance in the way the media treated Jason Collins as some kind of baby panda who needed to be honored and praised and consoled and—yes—infantilized by his coming out on the cover of Sports Illustrated? Within the tyrannical homophobia of the sports world, that any man would come out as gay (let alone a black man) is not only an LGBT triumph but also a triumph for pranksters everywhere who thrilled to the idea that what should be considered just another neutral fact that is nobody’s business was instead a shock heard around the world, one that added another jolt of transparency to an increasingly transparent planet. It was an undeniable moment and also extremely cool.

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