“Terror in Resonance” is an 11 episode anime series directed by Shinichirō Watanabe (director of a number of cult anime titles such as Cowboy Bebop, Space Dandy and Samurai Champloo). This latest series (known in Japan as Terror in Tokyo) centers on two teenage terrorist masterminds code-named Nine and Twelve who collectively go by the name Sphynx. They set off a number of targeted bombs around the city while releasing videos designed to communicate cryptic messages to authorities. What starts off as a conventional “cat & mouse” detective story gradually becomes an even more intriguing parapolitical parable. Terror in Resonance stands out for its mixture of elements from Akira,Dark Angel and V for Vendetta and references to familiar topics in the conspiracy milieu such as thermite bombs, remotely piloted planes, EMPs and human experimentation.
“Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. senators and congress members.” – Former President Jimmy Carter
The 2016 election has been a wild ride, with two insurgent grassroots campaigns literally giving the political establishment a run for its money. But as the events of this presidential primary season play out, it’s becoming clear the U.S. election — and even more so, the presidential race — is a big scam being perpetrated on the American people.
Events from the last week have exposed the system as an illusion of choice and a farce. They have reinforced at least one study showing the U.S. is an oligarchy rather than a democratic republic.
The Wyoming democratic caucus took place on Saturday, purportedly to allow voters to have their voices heard in the race between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Sanders lost the Wyoming caucus by winning it with a 12 percent margin.
Wait, what?
How does one lose by winning 56 percent of the votes? This happens when the political process is, according to the New York Post, “rigged” by superdelegates. The Post summed up this “strange” phenomenon:
“[U]nder the Democratic Party’s oddball delegate system, Sanders’ winning streak — he has won seven out of the past eight contests — counts for little.
“In fact, despite his win, he splits Wyoming’s 14 pledged delegates 7 to 7 under the caucus calculus.
“Clinton, meanwhile, also gets the state’s four superdelegates — who had already pledged their allegiance to her in January. So despite ‘losing,’ she triumphs 11-7 in the delegate tally.”
Even media pundits on MSNBC openly called the process rigged:
The superdelegate process is complicated, as we’ve noted before, but they have one essential function: to prevent candidates like Bernie Sanders from winning the Democratic nomination.
Don’t believe me? Here’s a video of Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz explaining superdelegates:
Adding insult to injury, even when Sanders does win states (despite Hillary’s advantage in superdelegates), the media can be reliably counted on to discount Sanders’s wins as nothing more than prolonging the electoral process, which will inevitably elect the presumptive nominee, Hillary Clinton. This pervasive commentary continues despite the fact Sanders only trails her by several hundred pledged delegates.
Meanwhile, according to the same media, the non-establishment Trump campaign is threatened every time Ted Cruz beats him — even though Trump leads by a larger percentage of pledged delegates than Clinton does. When Clinton loses, it doesn’t matter because she already has the nomination locked up. When Trump loses, his campaign is in big trouble. Starting to see the problem with the media coverage?
When you examine these media narratives, a troubling pattern emerges that goes beyond the political establishment’s self-interest. You begin to see that American corporate media also functions as an arm of the political machine, protecting establishment candidates while attacking — or dismissing — candidates who seem non-establishment.
This brings us to the events that transpired during the Republican nomination process in Colorado on Saturday. The Republican Party of Colorado didn’t even bother letting people vote before using arcane rules to strip the democratic process of its democracy. According to the Denver Post:
“Colorado GOP leaders canceled the party’s presidential straw poll in August to avoid binding its delegates to a candidate who may not survive until the Republican National Convention in July.
“Instead, Republicans selected national delegates through the caucus process, a move that put the election of national delegates in the hands of party insiders and activists — leaving roughly 90 percent of the more than 1 million Republican voters on the sidelines.”
Unsurprisingly, Trump’s non-establishment campaign walked away with zero delegates. They were all “awarded” to Ted Cruz.
“How is it possible that the people of the great State of Colorado never got to vote in the Republican Primary? Great anger — totally unfair!”Trump said on Twitter. “The people of Colorado had their vote taken away from them by the phony politicians. Biggest story in politics. This will not be allowed!”
In an interview on Monday, Trump was even more frank. “The system is rigged, it’s crooked,” he said.
The Colorado GOP didn’t even bother hiding its intentions, tweeting — then quickly removing — what was possibly the most honest insight into the back-door dealing so far this election season:
The Republican party chooses the nominee, not the voting public. Still in disbelief? Watch a Republican National Committee member explain it better than I can:
What we are witnessing — for the first time on a large scale — is the political establishment’s true role in selecting the president of the United States. The illusion of choice has become apparent. The establishment anoints their two picks for president, and the country proceeds to argue vehemently over the two candidates they are spoon-fed. This dynamic is reminiscent of a prophetic 1998 quote from philosopher Noam Chomsky:
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.”
Ahh, the illusion of choice. Sure, in reality there are third party candidates who should be given a fair shake, but in our mainstream media-augmented reality, third parties do not exist. They aren’t mentioned. They aren’t even included in presidential debates. This is another way the media stifles healthy debate, stamps out dissenting opinions, and preserves the status-quo.
“We The People” don’t choose our presidents; they are hand-picked by a powerful group of political party insiders — parties that have long since sold out to the highest bidders. What we have on our hands in America is a riggedoligarchy, and that’s not a conspiracy theory — it’s fact. Now, however, millions of Americans are becoming aware of it thanks to the populist campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. America’s elections are controlled by a big club, but unfortunately, “you ain’t in it!”
The earliest version of Reefer Madness was released in 1936. It was financed by a church group who intended it to be a morality tale warning parents of supposed dangers of cannabis use and helped prime the public for prohibitionist Harry Anslinger’s Marihuana Tax Act introduced a year later. In spring of 72, the founder of NORML, Keith Stroup, rediscovered the film and organized college campus screenings throughout California to raise funds for the California Marijuana Initiative which would potentially legalize cannabis in the 1972 fall elections. Though the initiative failed to pass, Reefer Madness was soon after elevated to the status of cult classic and became notorious for midnight movie screenings with spirited audience participation including mass pot smoking during key scenes.
Reefer Madness was “re-imagined” as a musical comedy by Kevin Murphy and premiered in Los Angeles in 1998 and in 2005 Showtime created the cable movie version directed by Andy Fickman and starring Kristen Bell, Christian Campbell, and John Kassir reprising their stage roles.
The Very First Film of J.G. Ballard’s Crash, Starring Ballard Himself (1971)
The Collins English Dictionary defines “Ballardian” as “resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in J. G. Ballard’s novels and stories, especially dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments.” You’ll find no more distilled dose of the Ballardian than in Ballard’s book The Atrocity Exhibition, a 1969 experimental novel, or collection of fragments, or what’s been called a collection of “condensed novels.” Subject to an obscenity trial in the United States and the subsequent pulping of nearly a whole print run, the book has earned a permanent place in the canon of controversial literature. Its twelfth chapter, “Crash!”, even provided the seed for a Ballard novel to come: 1973’s Crash, a story of symphorophilia which David Cronenberg adapted into a film 23 years later. The movie, in its turn, stoked a furor in the United Kingdom, culminating in a Daily Mail campaign to ban it. But as far as filming material born of Ballard’s fascination with the intersection of auto wrecks and sexuality, Cronenberg didn’t get there first.
Susan Emerling and Zoe Beloff drew from Crash the novel to make the still-unreleased Nightmare Angel in 1986, but fifteen years before that, Harley Cokeliss turned “Crash!” the chapter into Crash! the short film (also known as The Atrocity Exhibition). Casting Ballard himself in the starring role and Gabrielle Drake (sister of singer-songwriter Nick Drake) opposite, Cokeliss crafts a vision almost oppressively of the seventies: the protagonist’s wide, striped shirt collar dominates his even wider jacket collar below the grim visage he wears while ensconsed in the suit of armor that is his hulking American vehicle. “I think the key image of the twentieth century is the man in the motor car,” Ballard says in voiceover. “Have we reached a point now in the seventies where we only make sense in terms of these huge technological systems? I think so myself, and that it is the vital job of the writer to try to analyze and understand the huge significance of this metallized dream.” If this Ballardian vision resonates with you, see also Simon Sellars’ thorough essay on the film at fan site Ballardian.
While it seems the Panama Papers are a genuine attempt at exposing rampant corruption of the world’s corporate-political uber-elite, a closer inspection reveals a likely Western geopolitical power play utilizing the latest techniques in information warfare.
The 11.5 million documents that were stolen from Mossack Fonseca were leaked to Suddeutsche Zeitung, which then turned to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists to investigate the documents.
This process created a dynamic where control of the information resides in the hands of corporate mainstream media, thus allowing them to cherry pick stories they deem “newsworthy” – this exclusive access is troubling.
Had the Mossack Fonseca documents been turned over to WikiLeaks, the information would have been released en mass, as to allow for a publicly searchable database that would allow for anyone to search the documents in detail.
The immediate initial reporting on the Panama Papers has been curiously focused on Russian President Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, the leaders of two countries that have been recently labeled as strategic threats by Washington – with explicit implications that both of their leaders are corrupt.
Coincidentally, the U.S. has been working to actively “contain” both of these states – actively hedging against Russian influence in Syria and Ukraine, as well as actively engaging in an “Asian pivot” strategically designed to usurp a rising China and maintain U.S. hegemony.
And while there are some pro-Western interests revealed thus far, such as holdings by British Prime Minister David Cameron’s father, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Saudi Arabian King Salman, the vast amount of the reporting has focused on the usual suspects demonized by the West.
Curiously, there is no mention of any Western corporations or billionaires – the primary customers of Mossack Fonseca – in any of the articles written on the leak thus far, with The Guardian ominously stating that “much of the leaked material will remain private.”
With so much power residing in the hands of journalists, it begs the question; who or what is behind the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists?
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists was launched by the Center for Public integrity – a group heavily funded by Putin arch-nemesis George Soros. Soros has been implicated in being a hidden hand behind numerous revolutions across the world.
Rockefeller Family Fund
Open Society Foundation (Soros)
Carnegie Endowment
Ford Foundation
W K Kellogg Foundation
The simple fact that information is being kept out of the public’s reach seems to speak clearly to the fact that this leak is most likely being perpetrated with an agenda to destabilize certain powerful states that are working to create a more multipolar world i.e. (Russia and China) at the expense of U.S. hegemony.
While there is no mistaking the corruption within every state apparatus on earth, curiously these leaks seem to focus heavily on those the U.S. political elite has established as threats. Perhaps there is more to come that will bring to light the corruption of the West as well… but until then, it looks to be a geopolitical hit job by the West — with a few sacrificial lambs thrown in to cause reasonable doubt.
After the Crash 