Truth about Coachella; Boobs; Capital (video)

TIME DUMP: TheList.com; Dev, CC Liu, Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which takes place on the lawn of the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, was first launched in 1999 by Paul Tollett.

After a one-year break, it returned in 2001. It was an uphill battle to get the fest off the ground.

But just a few years later, Coachella managed to solidify itself as one of the biggest live music events in the world.

In 2015, it earned over $84 million and broke records with 198,000 tickets sold. That was its fourth year as a two-weekend event, and it's continued growing since. Despite Coachella's popularity, the fest holds many secrets. More

Big boobs sell to big boobs

PICTURE EXCLUSIVE: Sheer wonder!
Heidi Parker/Dailymail.com (July 20, 2017)

WARNING: PG rated! Do not enlarge!

Ryan Seacrest-funded attention-wh*r* Kim Kardashian looks barely legal in a netted outfit and no bra for date night with Kanye. Kim Kardashian has been using various crafty ways to show off her 36-year-old post-baby breasts this month. And the reality TV darling may have come across her most successful method on Wednesday evening as she stepped out for a dinner date with Kanye West in Beverly Hills, California. The mother of [West] North and Saint [Kardashian] put her less  than modest bust on display as she modeled a strategically ripped see-through netted top, showing off her perfect (no baby) tummy in the process. Graphic photos (Comment)

 

Consumer Capitalism $ 
The Jimmy Dore Show; IcarusFilms.com via KPFK.org

CAPITALISM (icarusfilms.com) is an impressive six-part series that explains money and economics. It does so through an interdisciplinary approach exploring the work of great thinkers. Economics, or "how money works," is embedded in social, political, and historical contexts. The series is great as a whole yet each episode stands alone. It features some of the world's top economists, historians, anthropologists, and sociologists, including: Thomas Piketty, Noam Chomsky, Yanis Varoufakis, Nicholas Phillipson, Kari Polanyi Levitt, David Graeber, and Abraham Rotstei.

(TJDS) Starting at Min. 1:10, Mark Blyth explains Brexit, Trump, and collapse of capitalism. Blyth uses clear language (in a great Scottish accent) to talk about globalization. Capitalism is failing people throughout the world. More Trumps are on the way.

Red Cry: Ancient Native Americans (video)

Red Cry (TopDocumentaryFilms.com, 2013) via STR8 FFWD TV; Xochitl, Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Raping beauty into the Natives...for God.

In 1492 the indigenous Arawak people of the Caribbean Islands encountered Christopher Columbus of Spain. Columbus wrote in his log: "They would make fine servants... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."

Columbus proceeded to unleash a reign of European terror unlike anything seen before. When he was finished, eight million Arawaks had been exterminated by torture, murder, forced labor, starvation, disease, and utter despair.
 

We're here to steal this property. - Property?

Columbus' atrocities, with cross and sword [though he himself was an indebted Jewish convert to Catholicism], were justified by the Christian doctrine of "divine discovery" and set religious and legal precedent for the invasion and genocide of America's indigenous peoples... for the next 500 years and beyond.

They steal from us and kill us.

By 1650 a precarious relationship between the First Nations (Native Americans) of the East Coast of North America and New England colonies was collapsing into slaughter and enslavement of Native people by British and other European settlers who wanted more land and wealth for themselves.

Most of the English colonies sanctioned and encouraged the scalping (skinning of) Indians. In 1776, the United States gave birth to the first 13 states on land taken through the ethnic cleansing of dozens of Native American tribes.

The Declaration of Independence further enshrined the belief of Euro-American settlers' supremacy by declaring Native peoples to be "merciless Indian savages" while it was those enshrining this theft in law who were the merciless.

 

The Europeans from Spain cleared the way.

In 1787, the new "United States" adopted its Constitution. Article 6 established treaties as the supreme "law of the land." Despite this supreme law, however, treaties with sovereign Native First Nations became slippery promises, easily broken whenever it was convenient.

In 1823, in the case of Johnson and Graham's Lessee v. McIntosh, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the First Nation people's right of occupancy was subordinate to the United States divine right of discovery.

Indigenous history book (Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz)

"The United States has unequivocally agreed...that discovery gave an exclusive right to extinguish the Indian title of occupancy."

This landmark ruling provided legal cover for governmental policies that would claim white Euro-Christian supremacy as justification for stealing indigenous lands and for the genocide of Native peoples.

In 1849, the California Gold Rush triggered the mass western migration of settlers putting them in direct conflict with existing indigenous nations. More:

Criminalizing U.S. critics of Israel (video)

Amy Goodman (democracynow.org, 7-21-17); BDSmovement.net; JewishVoiceForPeace.org; Sheldon S., Pat Macpherson, Seth Auberon, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

The BDS (Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions) Movement (bdsmovement.net)

Criminalizing critics of Israel: Congress considers bills to fine and jail backers of BDS

BDS Movement: bdsmovement.net

U.S. lawmakers are seeking to criminally outlaw support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against [CIA-backed] Israel.

If a proposed bipartisan law is passed, backers of BDS could face up to 20 years in prison and a million-dollar fine.

Democracy Now! speaks to Rabbi Joseph Berman of Jewish Voice for Peace and Ryan Grim of The Intercept.

His latest article is titled "U.S. Lawmakers Seek to Criminally Outlaw Support for Boycott Campaign Against Israel."

• Israel and Palestine
• JewishVoiceForPeace.org
• THE INTERCEPT: "U.S. Lawmakers Seek to Criminally Outlaw Support for Boycott Campaign Against Israel

TRANSCRIPT

JewishVoiceforPeace.org: Shine a Light on Gaza (gazablackout.org)

.

Top stories (BDSmovement.net)

HOST AMY GOODMAN: Civil rights groups are warning a pair of bipartisan bills targeting boycotts of Israel and Israeli settlements [in Palestine] would criminalize free speech and peaceful protest.

The Israel Anti-Boycott Act would make it a felony for U.S. citizens to support boycotts of Israel and Israeli settlements, punishable by at least a $250,000 fine, with a maximum penalty of a fine of $1 million and 20 years in prison.

So far 46 senators -- 31 Republican, 15 Democrat -- and 234 Congress members, from both sides of the aisle, support the legislation.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as AIPAC, reportedly helped craft the bill and has made its passage one of the group’s top lobbying priorities for the year.

In a letter Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, urged senators to oppose the bill’s passage. 

The ACLU wrote, "We take no position for or against the effort to boycott Israel or any foreign country, for that matter. However, we do assert that the government cannot, consistent with the First Amendment, punish U.S. persons based solely on their expressed political beliefs." More (Watch Full Show)

Take Action: Pro-Israel attack on US freedom

Jewish Voice for Peace, Organizing/Press Release (July 20, 2017); Editors, Wisdom Quarterly

Born Jewish...practicing Buddhist

One of the most recent, and most pernicious, pieces of anti-boycott, divestment, sanctions legislation at the federal level is getting renewed attention right now.

On July 18, the American Civil Liberties Union released a letter to the Senate and a letter to the House of Representatives, urging them to oppose the bill because it violates the Constitution and discriminates against people “for no reason other than their political beliefs.”

The Intercept published an article highlighting how “the criminalization of political speech and activism against Israel has become one of the gravest threats to free speech in the West.” Jewish Voice for Peace [with Wisdom Quarterly] opposes the legislation and has issued a backgrounder for engagement with Congress.

• Jewish Voice for Peace (jewishvoiceforpeace.org) is a national member-driven organization dedicated to a U.S. foreign policy based on peace, human rights, and respect for international law.

Future "felons" protesting Israel: Anti-Semites working for the ACLA and BDS Movement?

 

What does the bill actually do?

We've got the power. We've got to use it.

The Israel Anti-Boycott Act (S. 720/ H.R. 1697) is the latest, and most extreme, of a series of unconstitutional anti-boycott legislation at both the federal and state level.

The law aims to quell the movement for Palestinian rights by penalizing companies and individuals engaged in commerce for using the nonviolent tactics of boycott, divestment, and sanctions to hold Israel accountable for violations of Palestinian rights.

First introduced in March, this bill seeks to amend two laws -- the Export Administration Act of 1979 and the Export-Import Bank Act of 1945 -- to penalize companies that participate in boycotts, and to preempt efforts by international governmental organizations from complying with international law and calling for an end to trade with Israel’s settlements or companies that operate in the settlements.

Gonna be a good boy like Obama? - Better!

Of course, as the ACLU letter points out, millions of people and businesses do not do business with Israel for any number of reasons.

This law would only punish those whose lack of business-ties to Israel or the illegal settlements in Palestine is based on their political beliefs -- which is why it is discriminatory in addition to being a threat to free speech.

 

We must kill others to protect our children.

The bill opposes the creation of a database of Israeli settlement companies by the UN Human Rights Council and any efforts to boycott those companies’ products. The bill categorizes violations as felonies, and the potential penalties are steep: a minimum $250,000 civil penalty and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years imprisonment. 

What doesn’t the bill do?

I trusted the CIA's Ben "Bibi" Netanyahu.

It does not make it illegal to support the Palestinian-led call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions. It does not make it illegal for individual consumers to boycott Israeli or settlement products. 

While this legislation is horrible, it is important not to exaggerate the potential impacts of the legislation and thereby add to the chilling effect against advocacy for human rights in Palestine. More

• Remember that time Senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain sponsored the Indefinite Detention Act (NDAA) Pres. Obama signed into law?
• Share
• Tweet

Additional resources

• JVP Backgrounder
• New US Bill Would Punish Settlement Boycotters by Josh Ruebner
• Friends Committee on National Legislation Backgrounder
• Resources on anti-BDS legislation from the Foundation for Middle East Peace

Humans arrived in Australia 20K years earlier

Tim Collins (Mail Online, 7-19-17); Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Who killed megafauna?

New date rewrites history of human migration out of Africa: Artifacts reveal humans arrived in Australia 20,000 years earlier and lived alongside giant kangaroos and tortoises

• New research suggests humans arrived in Australia 65,000 years ago.
• This would mean they lived alongside the continent's unique megafauna.
• Some experts have argued that humans may have caused their extinction.
• Researchers involved in study argues new evidence suggests this is not the case.
• Not everyone is convinced, however, arguing that arriving on the continent early gave them more chance to wipe out the megafauna.

The story of humanity's [alleged] journey out of Africa and into the wider world may need to be rewritten thanks to new geological evidence.

 

Experts studying ancient artifacts in Australia say we must push back the date from which humans arrived by almost 20,000 years to 65,000 years ago.  

 

The discovery means that they would have lived alongside Australia's unique megafuana for tens of thousands of years.

 

The researchers involved in the study say it adds to evidence that humans did not wipe out the country's megafauna -- but not everyone is convinced. (Scroll down for video).

A new study has found that humans arrived in Australia around 65,000 years ago, around 18,000 years earlier than one estimate.

This graphic (at right) shows the movement of our human ancestors based on the latest research.
 

WHAT KINDS OF MEGAFAUNA WERE THERE?

Huge "megafauna" [large animal] species once roamed around Australia. But around 85 per cent of these megafauna went extinct. Some of these animals included:

• 1,000 pound kangaroos
• 2-ton wombats
• 25-foot-long lizards
• 400-pound flightless birds
• 300-pound marsupial lion
• Volkswagen-sized tortoises

Around 45,000 years ago, huge 1,000 pound kangaroos, 2-ton wombats, and 25-foot long lizards roamed around Australia.

But within the space of 2,000 [years], 85 per cent of the country's large wildlife had been wiped out.

 

Whether humans were directly to blame or climate change has long been debated, and the latest study has reignited that debate.

 

An international team of researchers examined artifacts found at Madjedbebe, a rock shelter in Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory of Australia, which was home to early aboriginals when they arrived in Australia.

 

Over 10,000 stone tools, ochre colored "crayons," plant remains, and bones have been unearthed at the site since 1973.

 

A University of Queensland-led research team evaluated artifacts found in various layers of sediment, using advanced dating techniques. More + VIDEO

Linkin Park singer DEAD! (video)

Seth Auberon, Pat Macpherson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; en.mediamass.net

I can't stand all this money and to be away from Chris Cornell formerly of Soundgarden!

Chester Bennington the wuss singer with a great ability to yell -- following a life of drugs, addiction, and being molested as a child (which predisposes one to addiction, according to Dr. Gabor Mate) -- and this death came about by suicide on Chris Cornell's birthday.

Bennington, 41, father of six, was found dead at 9:00 am in Palos Verdes Estates, a very ritzy beach community in Los Angeles, the LA Coroner confirms. Meanwhile, Linkin Park has released a new rap-metal song on YouTube. The death should help views and sales.

Thanks for trying to visit, Chester. (CC)

Chester Bennington had another band, more suggestive of his dysphoric mood, "Dead by Sunrise," which formed in 2005 while Bennington was writing songs for Linkin Park's 2007 album Minutes to Midnight... By sunrise today, July 20th, Bennington was dead as had been implicitly promised. (Yesterday's death hoax probably did not help his mood or condition too much).

Is it more sad that he made more money this year than any other singer, that he was voted sexiest singer, or that he and Linkin Park have a new album today and were planning a 2018 world tour? Wah-wah-waaaaaah. And somehow right wing Republican nut John McCain, who has brain cancer, is clinging on to life and ready to help Pres. Trump promote war and capitalism and domestic oppression. Way to go, Mara.

Sexiest singer alive? I'm the sexiest dead!

Another death hoax? Chester Bennington dead 2017 (en.mediamass.net) News of singer Chester Bennington's death spread quickly earlier this week causing concern among fans across the world. However the July 2017 report has...

• Chester Bennington is highest paid singer in 2017 
• July 19, 2017: Bennington named "sexiest" singer alive?
• Chester Bennington: New Album and 2018 World Tour?
• Chester Bennington: Secretly Married?
• Yesterday's  (July 19, 2017) breaking news: Chester Bennington to announce retirement at age 41
• Chester Bennington to be a dad (again)?

Chester Bennington, now dead, is at the No. 1 spot on People With Money’s top 10 highest-paid singers for 2017 with an estimated $46 million in combined earnings.

"Pale Ink": Ancient China explored America

Henriette Mertz, Pale Ink (1972), Gavin Menzies (amazon.com); Christopher Nyerges (School of Self Reliance); Xochitl, Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Reader book reviews

Pale ink: Two ancient records of Chinese exploration in America

(Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars)

Jill Mattson (December 9, 2012) I'm still reading but am enjoying the thought-provoking information in the book. Why, when the information in this book has been available for years, is this information generally hidden away?

Lim Swee Hiong (March 10, 2014) This book met my critical needs of information about early Chinese travelers to America in ancient written records. Expecting more studies.

John Brookshire (May 8, 2015) Great. A must read if interested in history.

Shari L. Swedlund (January 23, 2013) Oh my! This book is long and really a great challenge. Makes me re-look at what I thought thanks again. 

Diana D. Greer (October 24, 2007) Very interesting. Since I live and travel in the Western U.S., I find this book very interesting. I think it goes hand-in-hand with 1421: The Year China Discovered America by Gavin Menzies. It's time for historians to open their minds more to explorers other than those coming from western Europe. More

1421: The Year China Discovered America
Gavin Menzies (amazon.com)

On March 8, 1421 the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China to "proceed all the way to the ends of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas."

When the fleet returned home in October 1423, the Chinese emperor had fallen, leaving China in political and economic chaos.

The great ships were left to rot at their moorings, and the records of their journeys were destroyed.

Lost in the long, self-imposed Chinese isolation that followed was the knowledge that Chinese ships had reached America 70 years before Columbus and had circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan.

And they [and Buddhism] colonized America before the Europeans [and Christianity], transplanting the principal economic crops that have since fed and clothed the world. More

Charlie Rose: Mercers gave us Trump (video)

Joshua Green, Charlie Rose; Connie G., Seth Auberon, Pat Macpherson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Charlie Rose Show (July 18, 2017): Joshua Green, a correspondent with Bloomberg Businessweek, introduces his new book, Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency out today.

It explains how the hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah Mercer hired Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway and induced members of the country's electoral college system to select Donald Trump, making him president with a minority of popular votes but enough electoral votes to beat Clinton. More 

• The Reclusive Hedge-Fund Tycoon Behind the Trump Presidency... (newyorker.com/magazine, March 27, 2017) It was Bannon who urged the Mercers to invest in a data-analytics firm. 
• How the Mercer family's partnership with Stephen Bannon shaped... (chicagotribune.com, March 18, 2017) Ted Cruz of Texas, and Bannon, then executive chairman of...that when the famously taciturn Robert Mercer urged him to hire Bannon and... 
• Robert Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on mainstream... (theguardian.com) With links to Donald Trump, Steve Bannon and Nigel Farage, the rightwing American computer scientist is at the heart of a multimillion-dollar... 
• What Do Robert and Rebekah Mercer Really Want? (The Atlantic) Their data firm, Cambridge Analytica, was hired by the Cruz campaign. ...Bannon co-founded GAI with Schweizer; Rebekah Mercer has sat on... 
• Jane Mayer on Robert Mercer & the Dark Money Behind Trump and... (democracynow.org, March 23, 2017) The Mercers bankrolled Bannon's Breitbart News, as well as some of Bannon's... The firm was hired by the Trump campaign to help target its... 
• Meet Robert Mercer, the Mysterious Billionaire Benefactor of Breitbart (newsweek.com) Rebekah Mercer also has ties to Stephen Bannon, the controversial Breitbart News....It was also Rebekah who convinced Trump to hire Kellyanne Conway... 
• The blow-it-all-up billionaires by Vicky Ward (The Huffington Post)

African presence in early America (video)

Dr. Ivan Van Sertima (TV108: The Black Side, 12-22-16); Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly

Dr. Ivan Van Sertima: Afrikan Presence in Early America

Of course Columbus didn't discover America

Simon Jenkins (TheGuardian.com, 2006); Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Of course Columbus didn't discover America. But then nor did China

A map [shown below] supporting claims that Chinese Admiral Zheng He reached the New World in the early 15th century is [I say] a hoax.

 

We all know that a lie goes halfway round the world while truth is putting on its boots. But what if the lie goes the whole way? What if it claims to circumnavigate the globe?

Does map prove China discovered America 70 years before Columbus? (io9.gizmodo.com)

 

This is a Eurocentric map of our world.

[On Jan. 19, 2006 Simon Jenkins wrote:] Last week came purported evidence that the Chinese Admiral Zheng He (Cheng Ho) sailed his great fleet of junks around the world a century before Columbus, Da Gama, and Magellan.

An 18th-century copy of a map dated 1418 has emerged from a Shanghai, China bookshop, depicting North and South America, Australia and Antarctica.

The map was bought by Chinese lawyer Liu Gang and was reportedly to go on display on Tuesday in London's Maritime Museum. (The museum denies all knowledge of it.)

The map challenges the customary Euro-centric version of global discovery and can thus rely on a weight of political correctness in support. It appears to stake China's claim to have "discovered" America first.

 

This comes as a surprise to those of us who know for a fact that America was discovered by Prince Madoc ab Owain Gwynedd in 1170. He landed at Mobile, Alabama, on the orders of the family druid and asserted Wales's claim to King Arthur's North Atlantic empire.

Making his way across country [USA], he settled west of the Mississippi river, where the Mandan tribe were encountered in the 18th century, fair-skinned and speaking a dialect of Welsh.

 

Unfortunately Madoc's arrival had been forestalled by St. Brendan in the seventh century. He sailed to America in a leather-bound coracle, as Tim Severin proved in 1977.

1421: The Year China Discovered America

The survivors of this trip remain pickled in a downtown Boston saloon to this day. Brendan and Madoc were followed by a Scottish knight Templar, Henry Sinclair, seeking refuge from the suppression of his order in 1398.

He and his Freemasons escaped with assorted treasures and holy grails to settle in Nova Scotia with the Micmac Indians (clearly a tribe of Hiberno-Scots [Irish] ancestry).

Sinclair's Masonic star, or "la merika," duly gave its name to the continent and merits a Da Vinci saga all of its own.

The only blot on this glory is that everyone knows America got its name from Glamorgan's Richard ap Meurig (Amerik), a wealthy sponsor of John Cabot's search for the north-west passage in the 1490s. More

Pacific Islanders reached America before Columbus

• A genetic analysis of an indigenous Brazilian tribe called the Botocudos has revealed traces of…
• Who is historian Gavin Menzies? Rowan Gavin Paton Menzies (born August 14, 1937) is a British author and retired submarine lieutenant-commander who has written books promoting claims that the Chinese sailed to and discovered America before Columbus... In 2002, Menzies published his first book, 1421: The Year China Discovered America.
• Does this map prove that China discovered America before Columbus? (io9.gizmodo.com, Oct. 9, 2013) Menzies, a much beloved figure among wingnut historians, just published a book titled Who Discovered America in which he lays out...
• Mexican History: Mexico Atraves Los Siglos ("Mexico Through the Centuries")
• Free Mexican History Online: The Zapotecas (historia-mexico.info)
• Did China discover AMERICA: Ancient Chinese writing carved rocks prove Asians lived in New World 3,300 years ago

Chinese inscriptions on rocks in U.S. prove Asians lived here 3,300 years ago (Mail Online).