Showing posts with label Daily Show. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Daily Show. Show all posts

Friday, 23 May 2014

Rebirth: Indian Buddhism under Modi (video)

Crystal Quintero and Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom QuarterlyBuddhistChannel.tv (buddhistnews.tv); "India Jones and the Election of Doom" (Daily Show with Jon Stewart)
The Daily Show's Jason Jones chases down look-alikes of India's new PM Narendra Modi in an attempt to interview him about a bloody piece of his past. (thedailyshow.cc.com)
 
Rebirth of Indian Buddhism under PM Modi
Senaka Weeraratna, Lankaweb, May 21, 2014
Newly elected prime minister will promote India’s rich Buddhist heritage to attract tourists and scholars and enhance India’s standing in the world.
 
NEW DELHI, India - The world’s first global Buddhist missionary, Anagarika Dharmapala, and the most talked about man in India today and perhaps in the entire policy and decision making world, Prime Minister designate Narendra Modi, share something in common. More

Bangladesh makes amends after anti-Buddhist rampage
Nicholas Farrelly, Myanmar Times, May 22, 2014
In contrast to Burma, the government moved quickly to rebuild and restore Buddhist buildings.

DHAKA, Bangladesh - “Who did this?” I asked a monk [in formerly Buddhist now Muslim "Bangla" or "West Bengal"] on a recent afternoon in Ramu, southeastern Bangladesh. “It was the Islamists,” he replied. He pointed to the marks beneath the glistening new paint where a Buddha’s head had been cleaved off and rented asunder. When asked about the culprits -- “miscreants” in the local application of English – he gave me a glimpse of monastic resignation. “I don’t know. They are people who don’t understand.” More

Lonesome Japanese Buddhist temple comes alive with cute anime characters

Yusuke Kato, Asahi Shimbun, May 19, 2014
TOKYO, Japan - Shoeizan Ryohoji Temple, tucked away in a residential area in western Tokyo, has a 400+ year history. But until just a few years ago, many locals didn’t even know the Nichiren Shu [devotional] sect Buddhist building was there. More

More from BCTV
http://www.asianart.org/exhibitions_index/yoga
http://www.buddhistravel.com/

Wednesday, 9 April 2014

Suey Park vs. The Colbert Report (video)

I won't stand for that white hipster ironical racism; people might misunderstand it.

.
Stephen Colbert responded to criticism about a tweet about his show from his TV network last Monday, saying he would dismantle the imaginary foundation that created the stir.Stephen Colbert responded to criticism about a tweet about his show from his TV network last week, saying he would dismantle the imaginary foundation that created the stir.
 
It surely says something about our culture that a single tweet (when the twit hit the fan) can turn into a major racial incident: Colbert's send-up of Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder's new foundation to help Native Americans.
 
The controversy erupted when a Twitter account associated with Colbert's Comedy Central show, The Colbert Report, took the joke too far -- away from its original context.
 
"I am willing to show #Asian community I care by introducing the Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever," read the tweet from @ColbertReport.
 
Hipster (ironic) racism? It's not Colbert's Twitter handle, and Colbert himself had nothing to do with the tweet, but a lot of people -- specifically Asian-Americans -- didn't think it was funny. They thought it was racist.
 
But not everyone thinks so, not, for example, Jay Caspian Kang, an Asian-American who wrote a piece about the controversy for newyorker.com. Where some saw racism, he tells NPR's Rachel Martin, he saw a big misunderstanding.
 
"When the tweet came out, without the sort of context of the first part of the joke, then it does seem a little bit shocking," he says.

One of those offended was activist Suey Park, 23. Park re-tweeted in outrage, and the #CancelColbert social media campaign began. Kang understands where the anger comes from.
 
Seeing Red
Colbert responded on his show by saying he would "shut down" the imaginary foundation that sparked fury among select critics. The most vocal has been Suey Park (Twitter nickname Angry Asian Woman). She began the campaign.

CancelColbert
In an article for Time, Park wrote last week: "The problem isn't that we can't take a joke. The problem is that white comedians and their fans believe they are above reproach." She also discussed her motivations in a video interview with Huff Po. In another tweet she stated: "White people -- please keep #CancelColbert trending until there's an apology."

has the right idea: "Calm, reasoned debate among comics about which jokes should be off limits doesn’t exist"!

We love you, Suey Park, but be an activist about something more serious than satire. For if we lose our hero and white-ally Colbert because of your humorless campaign, we will not be amused, not amused in the slightest, and we'll start our own offensive imaginary foundation to continue the mission of calling attention to a racist #Redskins owner Dan Snyder by mocking Asians in the blogosphere. (Please send all complaint letters in response to our rant to "Attention: I. Rony, Features Editor, Wisdom Quarterly" via EFF.org).
 
"Some of what Suey Park was saying [was about] Asian-Americans who are second-generation: It's sort of ingrained in our heads to always protect that idea of assimilation and upward mobility," Kang says.
 
"One of the things that upsets us," he says, "is when somebody comes and agitates in a way that would reflect badly upon us."
 
But Kang defends Colbert. It's also upsetting to "reflect badly upon the people who[m] we would consider our allies, who are trying to help us have this sort of assimilation, post-racial dream," he says.
 
In his article, Kang writes, "There's a long tradition in American comedy of dumping tasteless jokes at the feet of Asians and Asian-Americans -- [which] follows the perception that we will silently weather the ridicule."
 
"I think the writers in Hollywood know that it's just not going to be an issue the way that it would be if the joke was on another minority group," he says. LISTEN
 
All jokes and satire aside, there are discomfit ting conversations to be had.

Thursday, 6 March 2014

"Afghan Hustle" - US out (Daily Show)

Wisdom Quarterly; Jon Stewart, Pres. Hamid Karzai, TheDailyShow.com
(March 5, 2014) "Afghan Hustle," departing Afghani President Hamid Karzai harshly criticizes the U.S. for not being a sufficiently considerate war instigator (04:27). Watch more clips from this episode or the entire show.

Wednesday, 5 February 2014

Nazis and our U.S. "war" on drugs (comedy)

Wisdom Quarterly (eds.); H. Neal Smith (serendipity.li); Stephen Colbert (colbertreport.com)
How does truth -- for example, as exhibited on "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" -- go unheard when presented seriously? The shows transcend politics through satire. Thomas J. Falletta takes a look at the shows' affect on news, debate, and business in Congress.
 
Hemp vs. marijuana -- not the same thing
The following is a compilation of historical facts. Randy William Davis and I had been independently asking the question: "Why is marijuana illegal?" Every time we found an answer, it led to several more questions. He had been looking into other political activities, mainly concerning the Nazis of Germany. He soon drew a connection between the general attitudes of the Nazis and members of the government and industries of the United States.

Much of politics beginning 1820 centered around oil and the great wealth available to those who transformed it into gasoline for the burgeoning automobile industry, home heating, lubrication, and the new idea of synthetics -- plastics.

Of the big oil families, the Rockefellers remain at the top of the heap. Those who supported them, specifically the Mellon banking family, also profited greatly. Andrew Mellon, who had invested a great deal of money in Rockefeller, was not going to lose the chance at becoming fabulously wealthy.

Does anyone need to tell us Nazis are bad?
Another client of Mellon's, the DuPont family, in addition to building companies like General Motors, was developing synthetic fibers and plastics from petroleum.

Law firms like Brown Brothers Harriman handled the legal work for these and others. Media giants like the Hearst family were more than happy to join the ranks of the exorbitantly rich by putting out whatever "news" was to their benefit. These people had no concern for the health and well-being of society at large.

Indeed, the less the average person knew, the better for the rich one. Strangely enough, it was many of these same people who were responsible for the criminalization of hemp and marijuana.

Hemp, the plant humans have used for several millennia, and the industry that provided the best in cloth, rope, [paper, sails,] and oil, had fallen on hard times. Hemp was growing luxuriously throughout America's farmland, but it was extremely labor-intensive.

Until the availability of the decorticator, hemp had to be harvested in large part by hand. American industry needed more than hemp could produce in this way.
 
The decorticator came on the scene in 1935, and hemp was on its way again, until the petroleum industry saw a problem: Fuel could be made from hemp that would burn cleaner, more efficiently, and with a greater supply than crude petroleum oil. Rudolph Diesel had built his famous engine intending it to burn vegetable oil, mainly hemp. 
 
Hemp was already well known for its lubricating ability, which was of importance to the young aviation industry. Hemp oil in an aircraft engine does not break apart chemically at high altitudes like petroleum did at the time....
 
Right wing hypocrisy about drugs (Tom Tomorrow/thismodernworld.com)
  
Hemp, as almost everyone knows, is in the same family as "marijuana." The flower tops and leaves of other species of Cannabis Sativa L. It was smoked freely at many fairs in its concentrated form hashish. "Hash dens" were popular in America's bigger cities. But blacks and Hispanics were known to smoke the dried flowers and leaves. Jazz musicians of the period were widely known as smokers. Big oil and its enablers found an excuse to drive hemp away:

Claim all sorts of bad things about marijuana without making a distinction between it and hemp so that the average person will not know. Then what they and their forbears had grown up could be taken away. This was done by playing up white America's racism.

The powers that be in industry and various government agencies scared everyone by claiming that marijuana would drive users insane and lead to the abuse of more insidious drugs like heroin and cocaine.
 
By 1936 "Reefer Madness" was all the rage. It served as a pretext for Congress to pass the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. The ecological and drug-free hemp industry was crippled. Big oil was safe.
 
Hitler glorified in American media (TIME)
Meanwhile, Adolph Hitler was building Germany into a war machine with the same American industrialists who wanted to ban hemp. Hitler had no oil, but Rockefeller did. With the help of these Americans, Hitler got oil. The rest of the Hitler story is well known.
 
After WW II, the American intelligence community turned its attention to the Soviet Union. They sought to use former Nazi intelligence agents as well as other Nazis against the Russians.
 
By 1955 over 10,000 former Nazis, many of them war criminals who evaded any kind of prosecution, were brought into the United States of American and put into our CIA (Central Intelligence Agency).

With them they brought their hatred, inhumane experiments, and their willingness to subjugate all for the greater good of Nazism. With the help of America's right wing, they became entrenched. Their policies still rule America today.

The prohibition of hemp and marijuana was fallout -- part of a much larger attempt to control American citizens, over what we read, see, hear, eat, and smoke. The policies that led to marijuana prohibition are the same policies that have taken away rights Americans hold dearest.

This is a summarized chronology of the events of the 20th century. Because of the "War On (Some) Drugs," we now stand to lose all of our freedoms. It can be a complex concept to contemplate.

But when we look at interrelated elements in a historical context, we can begin to see how and why the government we have now is bogus.

Colbert: America Again: Re-Becoming the Greatness We Never Weren't

The following CHRONOLOGY is far from complete and may never be complete. In some instances, only those involved in the government possess the actual proof, and most of them are unlikely to share it with outsiders. In other cases, the actual proof is available, and it is used where possible. In still other instances, to quote Bob Dylan, "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."
 
1820-Rothschilds establish leading bank in Europe. Bankers who allied themselves with the Rothschilds and those who supported the Masonic Order find themselves well off. Those who did not have it rough.
1840-During an attempt at alcohol prohibition, then attorney Abraham Lincoln states: "Prohibition makes a crime out of things that are not crimes... A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."
1842-Cannabis makes up about half of all medicines sold in America. No one reports serious problems with use.
1850-Cannabis prescribed as the prime medicine for more than 100 separate illnesses in U.S. Pharmacopoeia.
1865-Northern industrialists win War Between the States, gain power base over agricultural South, influencing westward expansion of U.S. and location of railroads. Mary Todd Lincoln prescribed cannabis for the nervous breakdown she suffered following husband (deposed President) Lincoln's assassination.
1875-California, in a blatant act of racism, bans opium smoking by Chinese. Large, well-run opium houses ran out of business, replaced by smaller, less reputable houses. Usage increases.
1876-Turkish hashish exhibition at Philadelphia's Centennial Exhibition is most popular. Fair attendees encouraged to return again and again to "enhance" their enjoyment of the fair. 
1883-First federal law against drugs. Congress heavily taxes opium smoking. First time taxation used to legislate morality instead of raising revenue. Controlled by Treasury Department.
1884-Supreme Court decision makes corporations artificial persons, giving impersonal business entities 14th Amendment protections previously reserved for human beings.
1888-Using 1883 opium taxation law as a precedent, federal government bans certain types of opium from being imported and bans Chinese from importing opium at all. Government now surrenders revenue raising in favor of controlling "morality."
1890-Standard Oil of Ohio is refining 90% of America's oil, thanks to Rothschild financing.
1894-Indian Hemp Drugs Commission report released to British. Study done in India. Judged the physical, mental, moral effects of smoking cannabis, urges against any prohibition based on "no appreciable physical injury of any kind... no injurious effects on the mind... (and) no moral injury whatever." 
1895-Rothschilds begin to finance American business. They do so primarily through the Warburgs of Germany, who were partners of Kuhn, Loeb, and Company of New York. Both Warburgs and Kuhn/Loeb would be principals of Federal Reserve Board. Rothschilds would finance Rockefeller's Standard Oil, Carnegie Steel, and the Harriman Railroad system.
1896-McKinley elected U.S. president. Marcus Alonzo Hannah from Standard Oil of Ohio raises 16 million dollars for campaign, an unheard of sum at the time.
1898-Spanish-American War starts, with William Randolph Hearst's "Yellow Journalism" fueling the fire. Hearst begins long campaign of racism against Hispanics, Asians, and African Americans and their cultural activities.
1900-Mellon Bank, the sixth largest in America, finances very successful oil "gusher" in Spindletop, Texas. In a joint venture, Eli Lilly and Parke Davis develop strain of cannabis called Cannabis Americana. Strain is a very potent Cannabis Indica for use in their medicines. MORE

For instance, the full Warren Commission report into the assassination of deposed President Kennedy will not be released for 100 years. If some serious crimes were not being covered up, why the additional delay?

No one started out with the intention of rewriting history. This project was a simple time line to keep my research and the research of Davis straight because there is so much material. The timeline took on a life of its own.
 
Neo-Nazis keep racism and hatred alive.
It is a companion-piece to Davis's excellent In the Shadow of the Swastika. If anyone wishes to replicate or further investigate any of this, and I urge everyone to do so, a full bibliography is provided.

Over the past seven years, these facts have checked, cross checked, researched, and confirmed any and all sources on this information that came to hand. Some of the proof is too well protected for anyone to get at right now, but as so often happens, it will leak. Then no knee jerk defense of the powers that run our supposedly free society will be able to defend it. The fact that it remains hidden already speaks ill of our alleged freedoms.

Ironic Jon Stewart mocks explosive Alex Jones (It's true, Jon).
 

Wednesday, 29 January 2014

The U.S. President has no clothes! (comedy)

Ashley Wells, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly; Jeremy Scahill, Amy Goodman, Nermeen Shaikh (DemocracyNow.org, New York); Kshama Sawant, Mitch Jeserich (KPFA, Berkeley)
It doesn't really matter what I say. It's all subject to revision and White Out (TW). Obama, like Bush before him and everyone after, is a puppet. Who really wields the power? The MIC

Even I could read a prompter. - Pointin' is cool. - If only I could tell Obi how much I agree.


A breakdown of Pres. Obama's Newspeak and nonsense with Jeremy Scahill (Democracy Now!)
  
Look, Jo/Jo, I'm movin' further to the right.
G.W. Bush was as terrible liar, whereas President B.S. Obama is a great one. Let's give the devilish man his due: He is a great speaker, a great orator, and a pretty good pacifier. If only what he said were true.

Scahill1
Scahill: "drone president," NSA whitewash
Some is. Unfortunately, it has proven to be the stuff we would never let Dub'ya and Dick get away with -- depriving Americans of peace, privacy, prosperity, civil liberties... What do we get instead?
Shut up, Jeremy, I'm warning you.
Executive order drone assassinations, business-as-usual banking, indefinite detentions, illegal NSA surveillance, Department of Homeland Harassment, police shootings, police beatings, a war on whistleblowers, a crumbling "permanent-war" economy, weather modification, environmental degradation, electrical and frequency pollution, oil and chemical spills, joblessness, corporate control of policies and politics and, well, other than that, everything's great.

VIDEO: The many FUNNY faces of Jo Boehner behind Barry Obama
  
Bush, Cheney families love Obama policies
Poor Jo Biden. Poorer Jo Boehner sitting back there trying not to roll his eyes seeing his political party mate speak so eloquently. Yes, all three are in the same party with its two nearly identical wings, one moderate, one extreme right. The 99% has got to learn to start taking direction from the 1%, or the dogs, paramilitary troops, water canons, spies, agent provocateurs, and batons are going to have to be sent in. Hey, you, OBEY! Or else.

What will cure right-wing extremism from the Republocrats?
   
A third party response
David Ferguson (rawstory.com)
Kshama Sawant, Seattle's Socialist
Socialist Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant ripped not only Pres. Obama’s State of the Union speech Tuesday, but the Democrats and Republicans alongside him as he delivered it.

We bow to the same MIC masters.
“We will make progress only on the basis of a fundamental and systematic change,” Sawant said in a response on behalf of the Socialist Party.

“We need a break from the policies of Wall Street and corporate America. We need a break from capitalism. It has failed the 99 percent. Both parties bow down before the free market and loyally serve the interests of their corporate masters, with the only difference being in matter of degree. The political system is completely dysfunctional, and it’s broken.”
 
Yeah, we golf. Obama and Boehner (WP)
Sawant, who in November of 2013 became the first socialist elected to office in Seattle in 50 years, also criticized Pres. Obama’s remarks vowing to fight income inequality, saying he was prodded by public demonstrations staged by fast-food workers and others... More

Making fun of Obama (The Daily Show)

Pick a finger. Go on. See if I care.

Tuesday, 24 December 2013

Buy-Nothing Xmas, Holiday Comedy (video)

Seth Auberon, CC Liu, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; Adbusters.org; Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert (Comedy Central News), Megyn Kelly, Bill O'Reilly (FOX Comedy)
Shaman Santa says, "This year, rise above the vulture-capitalist debt fest" (adbusters.org).
Colbert Report: Santa Claus Ethnicity Debate
In the Liberal "War on Christmas" replacing the traditional exclusive "Merry Christmas" with the inclusive "Happy Holidays" greeting, sides go head to head: FOX vs. CC (The Daily Show)
  
Budai on Bodhi Day
Going to participate once again in the Doomsday Consumer Fest that Christmas has become or try do things differently this year?
 
Buy-Nothing Xmas is the surest way to leave a zero-footprint on the planet. But truth is, not everyone is ready to go cold Tofurky regarding branded gift giving. 

Nevertheless, each of us can still make a radical move by upholding this single vow. Repeat the following out loud in front of a witness:

Mama, can I get a "Plus Size Barbie" this year? I cleaned my plate (HuffPost)
  
“I shall not visit a single mall or box store this Christmas. I hereby swear off Amazon (with its links to the CIA) and all of the other online mega stores! I pledge to go indie-local or bust!”
 
Festivus for the rest of us? FOX says no!
Avoiding the nerve centers of vulture-corporate-capitalism. Go local and indie with every gift bought. This magically changes moods and injects authentic spirit into gift-hunting.
 
And while in a tone-shifting mood, why not slip a paper bill into the hands of the next homeless person encountered? Or to a favorite NGO. Or to a meditation center. Or donate time... More
 
Dharma Punx Xmas Eve: Hollywood (againstthestream.org)