The Largest Minority

May 27th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

What? You mean flashing your cooter on the big screen isn’t a prerequisite to joining MENSA? Sadly, no. In this clip Stone decides that the perfect time to condemn the Chinese people (not the Chinese government mind you) is right after a devastating 7.9 magnitude earthquake has left more than 67,000 people dead and 20,000 still missing.

Hey China, don’t get angry with Sharon Stone. Get angry with yourselves for the Karma Quake you’ve created. Imagine some pompous, self-righteous actor proclaiming in a matter-of-fact manner that 9/11 was karma for the US-backed occupation of Palestine. Good, now imagine that the death toll of 9/11 was more than 22 times what it actually was and you’ll have a fairly good reference point for your outrage.

It’s also worth noting that suffering is a basic tenant of Buddhism, and despite being “good friends” with the Dalai Lama, Stone is completely ignorant of the fact that karma is an intention in the mind that results in personal happiness or unhappiness, not some divine intervention which determines your future according to the actions in your past. Stone’s concept of why natural disasters happen parallels Pat Robertson’s. Perhaps she can also condemn the people of Burma for their cyclone the way Pat did after Katrina hit.

Stone’s misunderstanding of karma is quite convenient as it implies that people dying in distant corners of the world are just getting what they deserve, while the rich and famous are fully justified in their decadence because of their moral superiority.

And by the way Sharon, the earthquake most affected Sichuan province, which has a large Tibetan population.

May 25th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

If you don’t know who either one of these magnificently talented people are then it’s safe to say that your lameness is incurable and you should probably go drown yourself in a shallow pool before you infect the rest of us.

May 25th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

Despite being based off such a stupid pun, the There Will Be Bud video from Brain Spray Media is actually a pretty brilliant parody. Judging from the level of production that went into this thing I think it’s safe to say this is the greatest project a group of potheads has ever completed. Well, right behind the pyramids. That’s right, the aliens who made the pyramids loved reefer.

April 19th, 2008 by evmonk

This shouldn’t be a surprise for anyone who watches the propaganda-fest that is cable news even occasionally. But it sure is refreshing to find such a stinging, comprehensive indictment of the Pentagon’s propaganda machine in the mainstream media.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air…

Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks. (source)

J-E-S-U-S. Again, not surprising at all. But does this government have no shame? Is there anyone on TV we can trust to be unbiased, unbought, and intellectually honest? And beyond the aforementioned issues with military analysts, how many Republican and Democratic “strategists” will the American people listen to before they realize that these people can’t possibly give us the information we need to make informed choices about the future of this country and the planet?

UPDATE: If you haven’t seen Why We Fight, well, first of all stop reading and go watch the whole thing. It may be the most important documentary ever made. Here are a couple particularly relevant clips for your viewing pleasure. (clip 2 after the jump)

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April 15th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

Bahraini blogger Esra’a Al Shafei interviews DJ Momo from Saudi Arabia on the potential of MTV Arabia, and they share their view for a better world through music.

Taken from Mideast Youth

Esra’a is right to be skeptical of MTV, which has ultimately killed mainstream music in the West. The videos played on MTV are those with the most marketable imagery. Though a few underground artists may manage to outdo the multi-million dollar production companies by coming up with a brilliant concept every now and then, it’s ultimately the uncreative profit-driven corporations which end up dominating the airwaves with videos of half-naked women, explosions, and shiny objects. Whether the music itself is good is irrelevant.

Esra’a also expresses the frustration she has with older generations who perceive youth culture as something deviant, but that perception is at least partially the fault of MTV as well. As the main representative of the youth, MTV does a further disservice by misrepresenting our culture to those unfamiliar with it. Souljah Boy is no more representative of hip-hop than George W. Bush is representative of America, and woe to anyone guilty by association.

Censorship is also a big problem, especially with genres like rap which are highly-political in origin. Between what the state will allow and what the corporations will allow, freedom of expression on MTV Arabia is destined to be very limited.

April 9th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

Lewis Black rails against the current slew of beautiful idiots who are busy making political endorsements between their trips to Darfur and rehab. To be fair, taking political advice from Kal Penn, who is to be forever known as Kumar, may seem like a stupid idea at first until you realize that he actually knows more about the issues than Tucker Carlson or Chris Matthews and isn’t nearly as big a douche. Plus, who better than actors to analyze politicians? Both groups lie for a living, are owned by shadowy corporate interests, and probably know the same hookers.

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April 2nd, 2008 by Manila Ryce

You may already know that Barack Obama is a fundamentalist Muslim terrorist who’s unable to answer a phone call at 3 in the morning because he’s out snorting coke with his racist preacher, but did you also know that he sucks at bowling? It’s true. Barack Obama absolutely sucks at bowling. One of the bad things about relying solely on your image to carry your campaign is that if that facade is damaged, you’ve got nothing else going for you.

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March 31st, 2008 by J. Milton

The MPAA, RIAA, and Big 4 (Sony, EMI, Warner, Universal) music cartel have declared open-season on all file-sharing. In a whirlwind of lawsuits, press releases, proposed legislation, and frothing at the mouth demands, the entertainment industry has attacked every single head of the file-sharing hydra. For starters, the Big 4 have just filed a $2.5 million lawsuit against P2P icon, The Pirate Bay. This brings the total pending legal actions against my favorite Swedish pirates to a whopping *four*, all of them multi-million dollar! As usual, The Pirate Bay has flipped everyone the bird and is continuing on with their business as usual. Methinks things will heat up for them in the near future, though.

Next, in the wake of the Comcast ISP Throttle-Gate, the MPAA has come down from the mountain and announced that ISP’s should begin filtering their customers’ internet connections, and looking for copyrighted materials. “Much of the Internet is being clogged up with stolen goods. Basically you have a bunch of free riders who are hogging the bandwidth (and taking) it away from legitimate consumers,” says Jim Williams, the MPAA’s chief technology officer and senior vice president. Riiiight. As a consummate file-sharer (Now, I didn’t tell you *what* I actually share), I can assure you that based on my $165/month cable bill, no one in *this* house is free-riding! Although the big ISP’s (notably Verizon) have generally opposed this measure due to the costs involved, several like Comcast have already begun experimenting with throttling designed to thwart or slow P2P file-sharing. And now, most recently, UK ISP Virgin Media looks set to cave in to the entertainment industry’s demands and actually begin to disconnect file-sharers!

First, let’s deal with a couple of misconceptions. Not all file-sharing involves copyrighted material. In fact, the majority of open source software is distributed via bittorrent, the most popular file-sharing protocol. So in asking ISP’s to inspect their customer’s internet traffic for “unauthorized” media, the entertainment industry has collectively positioned us at the very top of the proverbial slippery slope. Where does the inspection end? Who gets scrutinized? What constitutes unauthorized material? Folks, we are close to a tipping point…

So what’s a netizen who’s concerned about their privacy supposed to do? Well, if you’re a power file-sharer or just a casual web-surfer who doesn’t want someone else reading your email, there are some privacy services that have evolved to address the threat. You simply need to “rent a VPN“. Yes, it’s more money (up to $10 or $20 per month), but your entire internet connection is encrypted and tunneled right past your ISP’s prying eyes. I reviewed a bunch of these services a few months ago, and since then even more have sprung up. Check out Perfect-Privacy, Strong VPN, or VPN boy. Or just google for a VPN-for-hire. Just bear in mind that as our online privacy becomes more restricted, we will need to make a choice or one will be imposed upon us. Protect yourself before you wreck yourself.