!Damn The Man!'s topics - tribe.net

If we all hate The Man so much...

LastLordofLight — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 19:22:57 GMT

Hey, quick question. If we're all so pissed (no matter how righteously), why don't we do some thing about it? And I DON'T mean that "change the system from within" crap, either.
Something more in line with a little document that starts with the line "When in the course of human events..."
Know what I'm sayin?

posted in !Damn The Man! - 25 replies

The UN vehicles in Texas

Michael — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:11:46 GMT

THOUGHT YOU ALL MIGHT FIND THIS INTERESTING

http://www.greaterthings.com/News/UN_vehicles.htm

Seems that The United Nations is stockpiling a divisions worth of support vehicles in Texas. Is it the round up squad? MIL

posted in !Damn The Man! - 2 replies

Well, well, well...

The Man — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 03:39:15 GMT

you are all under arrest.

posted in !Damn The Man! - 2 replies

Damn the governemnt

Michael — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:37:52 GMT

I cant stand either one of our political parties anymore. Both sides have sold out to Globalism and are crushing our country in debt.

posted in !Damn The Man! - 2 replies

The 14 Defining Characteristics of Fascism

theodorusrex — Sun, 28 Nov 2004 23:41:39 GMT

Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes in defining the 14 characteristics common to each.
(Do you think Dr. Britt is examining the United States under the Bush Administration ?)

The 14 Defining Characteristics Of Fascism

By Dr. Lawrence Britt

1. Obsession with National Security -
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

2. Religion and Government are Intertwined -
Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

3. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism -
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Disagreement with government is seen as unpatriotic. Flags are everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

4. Labor Power is Suppressed -
Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

5. Obsession with Crime and Punishment -
Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

6. Fraudulent Elections -
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district
boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their
judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

7. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption -
Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be
appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

8. Corporate Power is Protected -
The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

9. Controlled Mass Media -
Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common. (Fox News?)

10. Rampant Sexism -
The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of
the family institution.

11. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause -
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

12. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts -
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, andacademia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free __expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked. Science takes a backseat to corporate need and control.

13. Supremacy of the Military -
Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

14. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights -
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

posted in !Damn The Man! - 4 replies

viral information

prometheusPAN — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 23:34:20 GMT

The important thing in my mind is to offer people the chance to learn as well as vent,
And possibly to do some good by educating people about what they are venting over.
There is a sort of critical mass point where such a blog could become a sort of super
Think machine, and where the participants could start really driving off into extraordinary problem solving process. The question is how to facilitate that. If I play
My hand the way god dealt it to me, I am sort of a propaganda warrior VS all propaganda. Unfortunately, the scent of soldier sometimes throws people. Lol. On the other hand, if I have a person who is a good counterbalance, who asks me the hard questions driving from the moderate conservative sort of perspective, it can work really well. On the other hand, I can do more self censorship depending on the meta-program parameters you provide. Let me know how best to serve you so that we can serve the
Community together well.

Well, Here they are; hope you like them.

ETHICS General

1. Endeavor to do the least possible or no harm to all persons, property, life, liberty, livelihood, environment, self, others, family, community, Country, World, Economies,
Children, Elders, Workers, Voters, and Ecosystems. (And so forth.)
2. Endeavor to make all of ones labor to meet ones own needs also coincide with the maximum energy potential of benefit to others. Practice the law of charity and reap
the rewards of the law of karma. Give your best to others and go the extra mile, for the
good of all, for the benefit of all of ones relations.
3. Emotions derive from primary instincts. Flight renders fear and fight renders Rage.
4. Emotional Energies are best resolved via right action problem solving process, not
allowing emotion to guide or control ones thinking or process.
5. The 1st and second principle applies as a matrix to the whole Needs Pyramid. That Pyramid consists of Physical needs at the base, social needs, emotional needs, mental
needs and spiritual needs at the top.
6. We only move up through the pyramid of needs one need at a time and in order of
priority for survival. Needs are coded as instincts that drive all of human behavior. All
behavior is tactic to meet ones needs. Behavior which harms others or which fails to benefit the whole of society is unethical behavior, but it must be understood to exist
as a psychology which is an instinct attached to a bad problem solving tactic. People
only act to meet their needs, if they act badly, what they need to act better is a better
tactic.
7. Thus do no harm and work for the good of all as you climb your pyramid of needs
and be cognizant of what your needs are, and lucid in terms of having good tactics that
are socially beneficial for meeting your needs.
8. Most morality can be expressed as iterations of the do no harm rule. Do no harm against ones relationship with spirit, Do no harm which would kill another person, do no
harm by stealing or thieving, do no harm by potentially transmitting STDS i.e., law against
Adultery, the list goes on etc; most of the Ten Commandments can be rewritten as specific details of the do no harm rule.
9. Ethics is the process of reconciling the needs of society with the drives of the Reptilian
and Mammalian Brain and thus Ethics are the laws of nature which allow us to exist in
peace as a culture or society instead of continuing the law of the jungle.
10. We are spirits in animal bodies, and there is a law of the jungle under our skins which must be somehow evolved and cultivated into cooperation (and cooperative
process) rather than violence (and violence as a problem solving process.) The law of the jungle is violence. The law of Angels is Cooperation.
11. Everything is connected to everything else, thus anything you do to another you do
to yourself. This becomes increasingly true as the law of karma carries out its permutation selections of what would otherwise be random chance rendering thus
synchronicities.
12. A person cannot obtain waking altered states of consciousness until they resolve
the assorted shadow issues of the Mammalian and Reptilian Mind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/ET/
http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/e/ethics.htm
http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/whatisethics.html
http://ethics.sandiego.edu/
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/lymedisease/112259
http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/228/execution-ethics.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primum_non_nocere
http://www.conbio.org/cip/article74har.cfm
http://www.ascensionhealth.org/ethics/public/issues/good.asp
http://skeptically.org/ethicsutility/id10.html
http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0geu677vSFGnkoBelxXNyoA?p=Ethics++%22for+the+good+of+all%22&ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-501&x=wrt
http://www.globaljusticemovement.org/mission_ethics.htm

http://www.blueletterbible.org/kjv/1Cr/1Cr013.html
http://scriptures.lds.org/1_cor/13
http://scriptures.lds.org/en/1_cor/13/1a?cr=1
http://scriptures.lds.org/en/bd/c/41
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_Corinthians_13

http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/karma1.htm
http://world.std.com/~aditya/BB/Law%20of%20KARMA4.htm
http://www.ncf.ca/freenet/rootdir/menus/sigs/religion/buddhism/introduction/truths/karma2.html
http://www.thebuddhadharma.com/issues/2002/fall/karma_panel_fall02.htm
http://www.purifymind.com/YogaKarma.htm
http://www.purifymind.com/UnderstandKarma.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_a_needle
http://www.eyeoftheneedle.net/Church%20Traditions/eye_of_a_needle.htm
http://www.debunker.com/texts/needleye.html
http://www.shamar.org/articles/camel-needle.php

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/instinct
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instinct
http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/library/topics/instincts.htm
http://drbeetle.homestead.com/mindrules.html
http://www.neurosemantics.com/Stuttering/stress_pattern.htm

http://www.barrettdorko.com/articles/supress.htm
http://www.fortunecity.com/millenium/blossom/309/mindinbrain.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs
http://crs.uvm.edu/gopher/nerl/group/b/c/PyN.html
http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/psychology/maslow_pyramid.html
http://www.businessballs.com/maslow.htm

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sumer_anunnaki/reptiles/reptiles14.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0817-13.htm
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/Anthro/Anth206/culture_in_thought_and_practice.htm
http://www.atam.org/SerpentBrain.html
http://www.psycheducation.org/emotion/R%20complex.htm
http://www.geocities.com/somewherereal/YourBrain.html

PSYCHOLOGY General
1.Psychology is the study of the human mind. Most specifically the psyche, most generally All of human behavior.
2. The human Brain is composed of between 40 and 70 different organs, depending upon
how you define differences. These are called brodmanns brain areas. Each brain area
is responsible for specific types of brain processes and mental functions.
3. The human mind has four main operational conditions, they are beta brainwave states, alpha brainwave states, delta brainwave states, and theta brainwave states. Each of these might be further subdivided into waking or sleeping states of consciousness.
4. Beta brainwave states are those in which the dominant area of the brain is the frontal lobes. Alpha brainwave states are those in which the dominant area of the brain is the Mammalian brain or Occipital lobes, and Delta brainwaves states are those where the brain is dominated by the Reptilian Brain or brain stem. Theta brain wave states are
a second waking condition in which the body is healed, or, in which the normal flow of
dominance from top of brain to bottom of brain is reversed, and the bottom of the brain
loads information into the top, which is then experienced as dreams.
5. We have instincts which compel us to seek out gratification of our needs. All behavior is motivated by a conscious or unconscious belief that said behavior will get some need met.
6. Psychology involves first an instinct, which compels a thought process, and then a planning or strategizing session in which the individual uses their maps of reality and belief systems as well as learned knowledge and social conditioning to arrive at an end
product of doing something to get what you want. Schema are maps of reality which we
use as tools to meet our needs .Social Conditioning and personal experience and learning
play vital roles in helping the mind to think up tactics to meet needs.
7. Criminal behavior is behavior which that person believes will get their needs met. Punishment was well demonstrated to have little or no effect on learning curve. What is required for a person to change their behavior is a functional tactic that does work to get their needs met.
8. Groupthink is a social phenomenon of psychology where a group uses false
consensus process to end up behaving stupidly as a group. Groupthink occurs when
people cave into social pressures, where propaganda replaces knowledge or facts, and where group identity is created out of participation in group delusions, lies, codependency, or criminality. Groupthink is how a mob drifts to the lowest common denominator, and why a mob is potentially vicious, evil, and sociopathic. Group
authority ameliorates and dissolves personal conscience, and by having their emotions
manipulated and their social identity threatened, people give up their own better judgment and accept the judgment of the most psychopathic member of the group.
9. Pack Psychology is the psychology exhibited primarily by mammals in small groups
in which 3 primary roles are assumed by social participants. The roles are Alpha- the leader, Beta- the followers, and Delta- the orbiters. In human society that translates in a super-simplified way into bullies, cliques, and nerds.
10. Problem solving psychology must contend against groupthink and pack psychology in the arena of opinion. Problem solving psychology is emotionally neutral and uses the mind and logic to look at all aspects of a problem and try to come up with a viable problem solving process. Problem solving psychology is the worst enemy of both
Rightist and Leftist Dogmatists. True problem solving psychology comes from the place of the radical middle. It takes in all sides and all viewpoints, and it gives each its fair dues
And attention in creating a problem solving process that works from the big picture down through into the nano details.

Psychology;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology
http://psychology.about.com/
http://www.psychology.org/
http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-psychlgy.html
http://www.socialpsychology.org/

Brodmanns brain areas and etc;
http://www.umich.edu/~cogneuro/jpg/Brodmann.html
http://spot.colorado.edu/~dubin/talks/brodmann/brodmann.html
http://www.whale.to/b/brain.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brodmann_area
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_in_the_human_brain
http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/capsules/outil_jaune05.html
http://www.csuchico.edu/~pmccaff/syllabi/CMSD%20320/362unit4.html
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/qa2.html

brainwaves;
http://www.brainwaves.com/brain.html
http://pages.prodigy.net/unohu/brainwaves.htm
http://brain.web-us.com/brainwavesfunction.htm
http://www.crossroadsinstitute.org/eeg.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainwaves

PSYCHOLOGY General
1.Psychology is the study of the human mind. Most specifically the psyche, most generally All of human behavior.
2. The human Brain is composed of between 40 and 70 different organs, depending upon
how you define differences. These are called brodmanns brain areas. Each brain area
is responsible for specific types of brain processes and mental functions.
3. The human mind has four main operational conditions, they are beta brainwave states, alpha brainwave states, delta brainwave states, and theta brainwave states. Each of these might be further subdivided into waking or sleeping states of consciousness.
4. Beta brainwave states are those in which the dominant area of the brain is the frontal lobes. Alpha brainwave states are those in which the dominant area of the brain is the Mammalian brain or Occipital lobes, and Delta brainwaves states are those where the brain is dominated by the Reptilian Brain or brain stem. Theta brain wave states are
a second waking condition in which the body is healed, or, in which the normal flow of
dominance from top of brain to bottom of brain is reversed, and the bottom of the brain
loads information into the top, which is then experienced as dreams.
5. We have instincts which compel us to seek out gratification of our needs. All behavior is motivated by a conscious or unconscious belief that said behavior will get some need met.
6. Psychology involves first an instinct, which compels a thought process, and then a planning or strategizing session in which the individual uses their maps of reality and belief systems as well as learned knowledge and social conditioning to arrive at an end
product of doing something to get what you want. Schema are maps of reality which we
use as tools to meet our needs .Social Conditioning and personal experience and learning
play vital roles in helping the mind to think up tactics to meet needs.
7. Criminal behavior is behavior which that person believes will get their needs met. Punishment was well demonstrated to have little or no effect on learning curve. What is required for a person to change their behavior is a functional tactic that does work to get their needs met.
8. Groupthink is a social phenomenon of psychology where a group uses false
consensus process to end up behaving stupidly as a group. Groupthink occurs when
people cave into social pressures, where propaganda replaces knowledge or facts, and where group identity is created out of participation in group delusions, lies, codependency, or criminality. Groupthink is how a mob drifts to the lowest common denominator, and why a mob is potentially vicious, evil, and sociopathic. Group
authority ameliorates and dissolves personal conscience, and by having their emotions
manipulated and their social identity threatened, people give up their own better judgment and accept the judgment of the most psychopathic member of the group.
9. Pack Psychology is the psychology exhibited primarily by mammals in small groups
in which 3 primary roles are assumed by social participants. The roles are Alpha- the leader, Beta- the followers, and Delta- the orbiters. In human society that translates in a super-simplified way into bullies, cliques, and nerds.
10. Problem solving psychology must contend against groupthink and pack psychology in the arena of opinion. Problem solving psychology is emotionally neutral and uses the mind and logic to look at all aspects of a problem and try to come up with a viable problem solving process. Problem solving psychology is the worst enemy of both
Rightist and Leftist Dogmatists. True problem solving psychology comes from the place of the radical middle. It takes in all sides and all viewpoints, and it gives each its fair dues
And attention in creating a problem solving process that works from the big picture down through into the nano details.

Psychology;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology
http://psychology.about.com/
http://www.psychology.org/
http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-psychlgy.html
http://www.socialpsychology.org/

Brodmanns brain areas and etc;
http://www.umich.edu/~cogneuro/jpg/Brodmann.html
http://spot.colorado.edu/~dubin/talks/brodmann/brodmann.html
http://www.whale.to/b/brain.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brodmann_area
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_in_the_human_brain
http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/capsules/outil_jaune05.html
http://www.csuchico.edu/~pmccaff/syllabi/CMSD%20320/362unit4.html
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/qa2.html

brainwaves;
http://www.brainwaves.com/brain.html
http://pages.prodigy.net/unohu/brainwaves.htm
http://brain.web-us.com/brainwavesfunction.htm
http://www.crossroadsinstitute.org/eeg.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainwaves

EDUCATION REFORM General
1. Curiosity drives learning if it is allowed to do so and not shut down.
2. Curiosity is shut down via the current system, creating the ADD disorder sudden appearance on the charts. One half of ADD is a person who can’t pay attention. The other half is a boring culture, delivery of information modus
operandi.
3. Curiosity driven learning involves more brain area participation. If a person doesn’t really like their experience, the subconscious mind edits it and doesn’t learn from it. Using curiosity driven learning potentially accelerates the learning curve such that it would not be unreasonable for the society of the future to expect the equivalent of a multiple PhD education from High School.
4. The largest obstacle to curiosity driven learning is the current student to teacher ratio. Curiosity driven learning requires a personal curriculum to be developed per child, an enormous labor process for most teachers. The cure is to use peer tutoring, and older child tutoring in conjunction with professional testers. Teachers are being asked do two different jobs, Teaching and Testing. Testing is incredibly underutilized. How can you know what a child is ready to learn if you have not learned from them who they are and what they know already?
5. The second largest obstacle is a lazy educational system which must be corrected
and re-educated itself. The educational paradigm being taught for use is not the one which is being taught in reform education psychology and sociology classes.
6. The first battery of tests should be; IQ tests, aptitude tests, Sanity tests, Type of intelligence per intelligence tests, learning style tests, performance tests, peer skills tests, comprehensive topical subject tests, and in general, any test which can be used to effectively appraise an individual child for the purposes of creating for that child a personalized curriculum.
7. The topics of psychology, sociology, conversational logic, and ethics should be added to the current curriculum for all Middle School (ages 12 to 14 or grades 6 thru 8) and High Schools
8. Personality differences including learning styles and Types of intelligence
Can mean that people learn in very different ways. Groups of students should be organized without regard so much to age as to learning style. A class full of visual
Learners from 3 age groups is better than a class full of kinesthetic learners and visual learners who find each other distracting and each others interactions with the teacher bizarre. Throw in some introverts and some extroverts and a speed-reader or two, and a teachers modus operandi cannot hope to reach well the different types of Students that s/he is teaching.
10. Our society is composed of a population which is by about 50 percent Anti-intellectual. (As part of a deep and long term attempt at denial of science facts)
The sheeple will crucify the nerds, that’s the end result of pack psychology and anti-intellectualist mob events. Both alleged “Sides” in the great orchestrated argument between left and right are delusional dogmatist simple minded over simplified versions of reality, oversimplified problem solving process, and thus oversimplified and therefore
Usually counterproductive pseudo solutions. Polarity does not contain sanity, both sides are polarized via each other, but the line that connects those two dots at no point in time Ever gets around to the big picture or the whole truth. Evolution and mother nature will on the other hand favor the nerds.

Education reform;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_reform
http://www1.worldbank.org/education/globaleducationreform/
http://www.education-reform.net/
http://dmoz.org/Society/Issues/Education/Education_Reform/

Curiousity driven Learning
http://www.csl.sony.fr/~py/developmentalRobotics.htm
http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/interest.html
http://www.childtrauma.org/ctamaterials/Curiosity.asp
http://www.csun.edu/~vcpsy00h/students/explore.htm

Types of Intelligence;
http://www.macalester.edu/psychology/whathap/ubnrp/intelligence05/Mtypes.html
http://www.ldpride.net/learningstyles.MI.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_intelligences

Learning Styles;
http://www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/Learning_Styles.html
http://www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/ILSpage.html
http://www.chaminade.org/inspire/learnstl.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles
http://www.funderstanding.com/learning_styles.cfm

Student Teacher Ratio:
http://www.edspresso.com/?OVRAW=education%20reform%20student%20teacher%20ratio&OVKEY=education%20reform&OVMTC=advanced
http://www.edreform.com/index.cfm?fuseAction=section&pSectionID=15&cSectionID=97
http://www.dreamagic.com/jesse/isedurat.html

Anti Intellectualism;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism
http://chronicle.com/free/v47/i15/15b00701.htm
http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Intellectualism-American-Life-Richard-Hofstadter/dp/0394703170
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0121/p17s02-lehl.html
http://mtprof.msun.edu/Spr1997/TROUT-ST.html
http://www.wayofthemind.org/2006/07/26/anti-intellectualism/
https://urresearch.rochester.edu/retrieve/6552/Anti-Intellectualism.pdf
http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine/articles/2007/02/04/reorganization_plan_calls_for_higher_student_teacher_ratios/?rss_id=Boston.com+--+Maine+news

CIVIL ENGINEERING General
Civil Engineering is about how to build society or civilization from the nuts and bolts pragmatic perspective. A civil engineer is unconcerned with personally understanding
The social impact of their work unless they are specifically asked to think about that.
Rather, what a Civil engineer thinks about is how to build a structure, have it last, have
It mesh with its environment, have water flow around it, have wind not push it over. A Civil Engineer builds what society asks for generally, adding the details that make a description into an operational reality.
Many social and civil problems have civil engineering components. Energy usage
And creation, for instance, has both a social and a civil level as problems to be solved. Zoning laws and other social considerations limit what a civil engineer can do. And, rightly, civil engineering realities create limits for sociologists. Civil engineers are concerned with how efficiently resources are used, how much load a structure can bear, how well a structure accommodates traffic, and other details such as environmental impact.
Civil Engineering has aesthetic components, resource management components, construction components, and other issues which must be juggled for a good overall design and implementation.
Serious solutions for assorted problems are implied by depth understanding of civil engineering issues. Poverty for instance can in theory be out civil engineered by building the structures that are needed to house people, employment, education, and social welfare systems. The solution for instance to the Palestinian problem once diplomacy has finished is civil engineering; building the new State of Palestine and simultaneously building a strong Israel. Eco Villages, Tribal Arcologies, Permaculture,
Cable cars, Solar power, Geothermal power, Wind power, Tidal power, and other such
Civil engineering solutions can solve myriads of problems that would be untenable from the sociologist’s desk alone. Simultaneously, Good civil engineering requires us to be honest about things that don’t work, such as fossil fuels, bio-fuels, nuclear power, hydroelectric power from rivers and dams, and individualized mass transportation.
Ideally, most people should live in communities rather than in nuclear families
Cut off from community support, and communities should maintain community gardens
And local employment to increase the efficiency of civilization as a whole.

Civil Engineering;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_engineering
http://www.icivilengineer.com/
https://engineering.purdue.edu/CE/
http://www.unm.edu/~civil/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Civil_engineering
http://whatiscivilengineering.csce.ca/

Economic Social Justice;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_justice
http://indymedia.us/en/topic/economicjustice/archive.shtml
http://www.commondreams.org/community.htm
http://www.cesj.org/thirdway/economicjustice-defined.htm
http://www.cesj.org/

Eco-Village;
http://www.gaia.org/gaia/
http://gen.ecovillage.org/
http://www.ecosustainablevillage.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eco-village

Arcologies;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcologies
http://www.arcosanti.org/theory/arcology/main.html
http://www.arcology.com/
http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Self-sufficient_20Arcologies

Permaculture;
http://www.attra.org/attra-pub/perma.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture
http://www.permaculture.net/about/definitions.html
http://www.permaculture.net/about/brief_introduction.html
http://www.permaculture.org/nm/index.php/site/index/

Cable Cars;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_car
http://www.rickly.com/sgi/cable_cars.htm
http://www.cable-car-guy.com/html/ccmain.html
http://www.photovault.com/Link/Vehicles/Rail/CableCars/VRCVolume01.html

Solar Power;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power
http://www.solarelectricpower.org/
http://www.montanagreenpower.com/solar/index.html

Geothermal Power
http://geothermal.marin.org/pwrheat.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/geothermal/powerplants.html
http://geothermal.marin.org/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15749933/

Wind Power;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power
http://www.otherpower.com/otherpower_wind.html

Tidal Power;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_power
http://inventors.about.com/od/tstartinventions/a/tidal_power.htm
http://waterpower.hypermart.net/tidal.html
http://www.esru.strath.ac.uk/EandE/Web_sites/01-02/RE_info/Tidal%20Power.htm

POLITICAL SCIENCE General
What kind of government does the USA have? What kind of government does Santa Barbara have? Because while it is intended to be an approximation of democracy, via
The process of representation, how much representation does the common person have
In a false dilemma war between republican and democrat? How much access do we have
To our representation? How much does our representation really work to represent us? And are they loyal to the people, or, are they loyal to that fraction of the people who can afford to belong to the aristocrat class? In theory, the political process is where and how society codes ethics and social and civil engineering into actual laws and rules and actions of the government. Politics might be defined as that sphere of social reality devoted to government, and in a democracy, Political science becomes the complicated process of getting social participants to fully invest in their own self governance.
Political science is thus about the cycle of communication, ideation, and manifestation of social and civil self administration. In America, this is a dialogue allegedly between any and all, but in reality, it is a monologue with two sock puppets
Taking up all of the air space. What difference is there between the $rich$ leftists and the
$rich$ rightists? Both rule over the under-caste of laborers and Workers, who in truth end up having little or no say in government. The masses are drowned out by two sock puppets screaming at each other.
Political Science combines all other sciences in one way or another. It involves Ethics, Morality, Physics, Architecture, Psychology, Sociology, Law, communications, Logic, and in one way or another every other science or paradigm. The subtopics of Political science are therefore Political Science sub all of the other Sciences and paradigms. But do our representatives have the information they need to juggle so many
Problems and issues? Do we as a society have a problem solving process, and are we solving problems? Or are we mostly making social problems worse by complicating society?
Perhaps more importantly, all of the sciences have bearing on Political Science.
Communications theory gives us solutions to most problems in government which we simply fail to employ. Civil Engineering tells us with mathematical certainty what the
Consequences are of building or failing to build any given thing. Sociology has the answers easily to almost all serious social problems. Hard Science can solve the energy
Crunch. The problem is that people are allowing money to make the decisions, not a lucid
Problem solving process. The problem is that the answers the sciences have to give us are being ignored, so that power hungry fools can continue to stay on top of their power-play games, and stay cozy, unaffected by truth or knowledge or reason.
All opinions were not created equal. The perspective of a sociologist is simply a more well formed perspective than a laypersons is if we are to seriously consider solving social problems. Opinion is based in emotions, in simplifications, and usually, in leftist or rightist sponsored propaganda. But neither left nor right side is interested in solving problems, as much as they are trapped in a net of their own making of lies they told themselves often enough that they believed them. The saddest part of ignorance is that if
People would just slow down, they could take the time to educate themselves.

Political Science;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_science
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Political-Science/index.htm
http://www.apsanet.org/
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9109548/political-science

Propaganda
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda
http://www.propagandacritic.com/
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Propaganda
http://www.esrnational.org/whatispropaganda.htm
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9109443/propaganda
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061115153632AAcIoJT
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Propaganda_techniques
http://www.serendipity.li/more/propagan.html
http://mason.gmu.edu/~amcdonal/Propaganda%20Techniques.html
http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=405

Types of government;
http://stutzfamily.com/mrstutz/WorldAffairs/typesofgovt.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/find_out/guides/world/united_nations/types_of_government/newsid_2151000/2151570.stm
http://home.earthlink.net/~kingsidebishop/id2.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_of_government
http://www.twyman-whitney.com/americancitizen/foundations/types_of_government.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_forms_of_government

Oligarchy;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9057016/oligarchy
http://www.bartleby.com/65/ol/oligarch.html
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/oligarchy
http://www.oligarchyusa.com/
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200503u/pp2005-03-30
http://www.democracymatters.org/article.php?cat=Press&select=458
http://familyrightsassociation.com/news/federer/american_oligarchy.htm
http://www.shoutwire.com/comments/15598/The_American_Decline_Into_a_Two_Tiered_Theocratic_Oligarchy
http://www.irregulartimes.com/oligarchy.html

Class warfare;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_Warfare
http://www.therationalradical.com/outrages/class_warfare.htm
http://www.disenchanted.com/dis/technology/class-warfare.html
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/capitalgames?bid=3&pid=292
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/business/yourmoney/26every.html?ex=1322197200&en=0cf877b05b918674&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060902110547AAc3Bjq

posted in !Damn The Man! - 2 replies

sick of the man in the whitehouse and his lies to support a war in iraq?

sarah mac — Sat, 13 May 2006 05:36:08 GMT

then check this out...

Know War is a historic photographic event taking place just outside of Los Angeles on June 3rd (2-6pm). Renowned photographer, Zach Gold ( www.ZachGold.com ) is using imagery to re-sensitize the american public to the effects of war. 2,500 volunteers will convene on the Mystery Mesa in Santa Clarita to participate in a photoshoot to depict the death toll in iraq with real faces.

to register for the event, please visit www.knowwar.com

peace

posted in !Damn The Man! - 0 replies

Dammit!

Be-in — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 19:10:10 GMT

Damn the Man for having thought of, made a prototype, market tested, produced, and made a million on, everything, before I did.

posted in !Damn The Man! - 5 replies

fantasy, or prophecy?

theodorusrex — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 19:51:01 GMT

you be the judge

http://oak.psych.gatech.edu/~epic/ols-master.swf

posted in !Damn The Man! - 1 reply

I'VE FOUND SANE PEOPLE!!

LastLordofLight — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 21:57:26 GMT

Sorry for the screaming, its just so unbelievable and exciting that I've found others out there who don't think patriotism equals supporting any and every thing that idiot Texan deficates from his face.

posted in !Damn The Man! - 2 replies

tired of...

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 16:01:24 GMT

being told i cant go to school have medical coverage be a single parent AND eat!!!!!!!!

why cant a full time student single mother hard worker have medical coverage and a decent wage to buy food ...grrrrrrrr*

posted in !Damn The Man! - 9 replies

U.S. Senate passes bill creating a national electronic ID card

theodorusrex — Sat, 14 May 2005 20:26:08 GMT

News Story by Linda Rosencrance

MAY 11, 2005 (COMPUTERWORLD) - The U.S. Senate yesterday passed a bill that would create an electronic ID card designed to stop illegal immigrants from getting driver's licenses. The U.S. House of Representatives already passed the bill, which was tacked onto an Iraq military spending measure, earlier this year.
The legislation, which President George W. Bush is expected to sign, requires states to issue federally approved electronic ID cards, including driver's licenses. Anyone without such a card would not be able to board an airplane, an Amtrak train, open a bank account or enter a federal building.

Called the Real ID Act, the bill mandates that driver's licenses and other ID cards include a digital photo, features designed to thwart counterfeiting and a "common machine-readable technology" that could include a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag. The technology must meet requirements set out by the Department of Homeland Security.

The mandates take effect in May 2008.

"The Real ID is vital to preventing foreign terrorists from hiding in plain sight while conducting their operations and planning attacks," House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.) said in a statement. "By targeting terrorist travel, the Real ID will assist in our War on Terror efforts to disrupt terrorist operations and help secure our borders."

But critics, including the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union, said the bill would bring the U.S. a giant step closer to creating a national ID system, which would be a tempting target for identity thieves.

"The Real ID Act would establish a vast national database of ID holders, where even a small percentage of errors would cause major social disruption," according to a statement by the EFF. "The ID would essentially be an internal passport that would be shown before accessing planes, trains, national parks and court houses -- an irresistible target for forgers and identity thieves."

The EFF also said that by calling for the use of "common machine-readable technology," the REAL ID Act will pave the way for the federal government to force every state to put RFID chips into the ID cards.

"The federalization of driver's licenses, and the culling of all information into massive databases, creates a system ripe for identity theft," said Timothy Sparapani, an ACLU legislative counsel, in a statement. "New standards could place our most private information -- including photographs, address and Social Security numbers -- into the hands of identity thieves."

The ACLU also said that the measure, if signed into law, would make it harder for legal immigrants to get driver's licenses. And it denounced the way the law won passage in the House by being added to a funding bill for the military.

"The Real ID Act was sold as an illegal-immigration fix bill, when in fact it reduces every American's freedom," Sparapani said. "The provisions of this bill could not have passed on their own. Sadly, their inclusion in a 'must pass' bill means that immigrants and citizens alike will face an unnecessary loss of freedom and privacy."

posted in !Damn The Man! - 1 reply

I have found others like me, Yeah!

brandi — Fri, 06 May 2005 23:46:27 GMT

all I could say when I saw ~damn the man~ hell yeah, It seems everyday somebody else turns into the man. Being an artist, it feels very personal when society wants me to conform to there everyday, repeatitive, "NORMAL" way of life. I want to know who set the standard for normal. And why is that people say to me, "You need to get a REAL job. What a office 8-5 is a real job, well art and photography pay me rent, and so on.....
I just can't understand how some people can not want more out of life: didn't everyone want to grow uo to be something. They have just stop dreaming, and think its just easy to go along with what everyone else sees as 'NORMAL'
IM A FREAK< THEN

posted in !Damn The Man! - 2 replies

AIDS proved to be Man made and injected in Africans

theodorusrex — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 23:43:37 GMT

I read this post in another tribe and though it worth passing on
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

here it is FINALLY the truth is coming to light...

this is a must see, i just watch it and it's true.. they show all these Africans in long lines being needled up ...with AIDS

Sundance Channel

advocate.com/new_news.asp

www.sundancechannel.com/docday/index.php

Sundance acquires rights to controversial AIDS film

The Sundance Channel has acquired broadcast rights to the controversial documentary The Origins of AIDS, which examines the theory that HIV was inadvertently (NOT!) introduced into humans via polio vaccines in Africa in the late 1950s. The film, directed by Peter Chappell and Catherine Peix, will debut on the channel at 9 p.m. Eastern/Pacific on February 7, and is set to air again at 5 p.m. February 8, 11:30 a.m. February 12, 1 p.m. February 14, and 2:30 p.m. February 20.

Scientists have theorized that HIV was introduced to humans via chimpanzees, who carry a similar virus, the simian immunodeficiency virus. Most researchers believe the virus jumped from chimps to humans through the slaughtering of the animals for food or by eating infected chimpanzee meat. The Origins of AIDS examines the theory--and the reaction to it in AIDS research circles--that blood and tissue products taken from chimpanzees to mass-produce oral polio vaccines for use in Africa passed the virus into humans.

posted in !Damn The Man! - 1 reply

Economic Equality a Civil Rights Issue

theodorusrex — Mon, 17 Jan 2005 20:42:19 GMT

January 17, 2005 3:05 AM EST

NEW YORK - Forty years after the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and decades after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. made strides in racial equality, America remains split along racial lines - divided by the color green.

Economic equality has become the paramount civil rights issue of the 21st century, civil rights advocates said as they prepared to celebrate King's birthday on Monday.

Fewer blacks than whites own their houses, get fair loans, invest in the stock market or sit on corporate boards, or have any real control over much of the trillions of dollars flowing in mutual funds, pension plans and the financial markets, they said.

"Very real gains have been made on some parts of the economic front and the education front and most particularly on the job front," said Thomas Shapiro, professor at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. "(But) those gains are being reversed through widening racial wealth gaps."

There is a difference between income and wealth, which the latter includes investments in stocks or pension plans, equity from paying a mortgage, and assets that can be used to pay for education or retirement.

And wealth is where the biggest differences persist.

In 1999, during a boom economy, Shapiro said, black middle-class families on average had one-fourth of the wealth of similarly educated, similarly employed white middle-class families.

The disparity was even starker across all income groups - black families as a whole had only 10 cents in wealth for every dollar white families had, according to government figures.

There are historical reasons - generations of poverty, a legacy of slavery and laws that kept them from education, housing and good jobs. But advocates say there also is persistent discrimination in mortgages and other loans.

"The biggest problem is that we've been choked off to a large degree from capital," said Shawn Baldwin, 38, who recently started his own brokerage and asset management firm with the help of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who introduced him to executives at Citibank.

According to the Center for Responsible Lending, less than half of black households own their homes, while 75 percent of white households do. Home equity is the leading source of wealth for most Americans.

"If you don't have any equity, you don't control anything," said Keith Corbett, senior vice president with the center.

Melvin Oliver, dean of the Division of Social Sciences at the University of California at Santa Clara, said there has been progress in helping blacks increase homeownership, but "that progress has mainly been because banks have had to legally meet community investing requirements."

Blacks lag in stock market investments, as well. In 1998, 57 percent of blacks making at least $50,000 a year invested, compared to 81 percent of whites, said Mellody Hobson, president of Ariel Capital Management, a minority-owned firm in Chicago.

During the stock market boom, the percentage of black investors shot up - 74 percent in 2002 - but had dropped to 64 percent by 2003. Meanwhile, white investment stayed roughly the same.

"Whites sort of pared back some of their equity investments but they didn't sell out of them completely. We ran for the door," Hobson said, attributing it to fear and a lack of experience with the stock market and its cycles.

Jackson points out that while minorities put money into mutual funds and pension plans, they are scarcely to be found among the decision makers who determine how those funds and plans are invested. His Rainbow/PUSH organization has called for more diversity on Wall Street, among money managers and board members.

"They should be invested in the people's interest," he said.

Corbett worried about forcing people into a "permanent underclass."

"When people do not have access," he said, "you're leaving those people out of the system."

---

On the Net:

www.rainbowPUSH.org

www.responsiblelending.org

posted in !Damn The Man! - 0 replies

so.....Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's Birthday is being....

Dawn — Thu, 13 Jan 2005 20:05:43 GMT

honored monday....

wouldn't you think that someone so important to history would earn a mention in Kindergarten? A picture? A comment? A handout? Reference to the Dream Speech???

SOMETHING?

throw me some crumbs here people....

no...................

they are talking about snowmen.

PFFFFFT!

DAMN THE MAN!

posted in !Damn The Man! - 6 replies

Damn Damn Damn

Dawn — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 02:14:19 GMT

the man, I am telling you me 'an him (the man would be "him") is fixin' to go rounds, an' I'm feelin' froggy!

so, school pictures are back complete with "tracking cards" (otherwise known as student ids) however "the man" can't figure out how to spell my child's name correctly....

hrmmm, wonder if she did something "expel" worthy, if we could get off 'cuz the name on the ID isn't her....lol

DAMN the man! for not taking time to double check and spell her name right, cuz now I am sure that the class picture will have it misspelled as well.

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

posted in !Damn The Man! - 4 replies

pages...

Thu, 14 Oct 2004 00:57:14 GMT

'Rogue State' by William Blum

startle the savage beast inside. BIG TIME!

and you?

posted in !Damn The Man! - 1 reply

Big , Bad Black Dealers & Junkie White Girls !

theodorusrex — Sat, 18 Sep 2004 22:27:41 GMT

Another subtle machination of the man exposed! Tell me what you think.

Big, Bad Black Dealers and Junkie White Girls
---------------------------------------------------------------
By Silja J.A. Talvi

For all of Requiem's visual appeal and Traffic's much more weighty overall impact, both movies manage to hang on to the stubborn and dangerously entrenched view that African- American male drug dealers await the sexual availability and servitude of Euro-American female dope addicts.

The sorry plight of the drug addict has long since made for inviting and scintillating subject matter in Hollywood cinema.

John Schlesinger's 1969 classic Midnight Cowboys helped to define the genre of gritty, poignant junkie-films, followed by Jerry Schwatzberg's 1971 film Panic in Needle Park, with the young Al Pacino as Bobby, the heroin addict. Gus Van Sant's Drugstore Cowboy and Scott Kalvert's Basketball Diaries -- to name but a few more recent films -- have subsequently deserved praise for bringing pieces of the day-to-day euphoria and agony of chemical dependency to the big screen.

Last year's Requiem for a Dream and Traffic are the two latest, and most notable additions to the realm of drug-related films; the latter of the two has even rather single-handedly sparked a good deal of dialogue about the immeasurable civilian casualties, astronomical cost and the ultimate 'unwinnability' of the so-called Drug War.

This is the power of American cinema. More than any other American art form, celluloid is the kind of cultural glue that can manage to move our collective psyche from one point to another.

And it's the kind of cultural glue that can keep our psyches stuck in one place, as both Requiem and Traffic manage to do where the ethnic and gender dimensions of drug dealing and addiction are concerned.

For all of Requiem's visual appeal and Traffic's much more weighty overall impact, both movies manage to hang on to a stubborn and dangerously entrenched set of notions -- crass stereotypes, in point of fact -- about the lives of Euro-American female dope addicts and the African American male drug dealers who ostensibly await their sexual availability and servitude.

Requiem for a Dream, Daniel Aronofsky's much-awaited second feature-length movie (filmed on a substantially bigger budget than his first indie gem, Pi), revolves around a central cast of four, including Jared Leto (as Harry Goldfarb) as the junkie with a drug-related plan to lift himself -- as well as his lonely, widowed, television-addicted mother Ellen Burstyn (as Sara Goldfarb) and his best friend Marlon Wayans (as Tyrone C. Love) -- out of poverty and into a better and more comfortable. There's a girlfriend, too, a 20-something woman, Marion Silver (played by Jennifer Connelly), who comes from a wealthy family but has fallen into coke addiction and fallen madly in love with her somewhat simple-minded, poor Jewish junkie boyfriend, Harry. Unsurprisingly, Harry's plan unravels, and the lives of the characters come gruesomely undone at a nauseatingly frantic pace.

Nominated for five Academy Awards, Steven Soderbergh's Traffic is infinitely more complex and far-reaching in its insights into the truly borderless reach of the drug war. In all respects, this is an intelligent, demanding film that reaches for a new understanding of the scope of the drug problem in the U.S. Here, as in Requiem, the primary portrait of the female drug user is of a wealthy, intelligent, overachieving 16-year-old, Caroline Wakefield (played by Erika Christensen), whose own recreational drug use is introduced early in the film. Caroline is none other than the daughter of the nation's newly appointed Drug Czar. Her first experience freebasing cocaine with a rich boyfriend happens just as her father has assumed his transitional responsibilities to his new governmental post.

In plot development and cinematic style, Requiem and Traffic would otherwise bear little comparison to one another except for the fact that they manage to arrive at one, similar crucial point in the stories that unfold on screen: both female drug addicts hit their lowest point -- strongly represented in each film as their most personally desperate act -- when they decide to trade their bodies for sex to unfeeling, coldly ruthless African American male drug dealers.

Marion's desperation for a fix leads her to the breaking point, and into the posh apartment of ""Big Tim" who only makes his product available in exchange for "pussy." Big Tim -- a large, menacingly portrayed dope dealer -- demands a blow job. She hesitates. His request grows harsher. We watch as the fear and self-loathing stare out at us from within her eyes, before she finally consents.

In Traffic, Caroline escapes from her private drug rehab for her freebasing addiction and runs back to the ghetto streets which her prep-school boyfriend had taken her to for cocaine. There, we, the audience, are made to feel as though we are her, buried beneath the naked body of an African American dealer. He is a muscular and dark-complexioned man who -- through the lens and the location of the cameraman -- is pounding away on top of us. On top of lily-white Caroline. A hard, mechanical, unfeeling kind of sex that is only interrupted, briefly, when the nameless dealer arises from bed -- naked, glistening with sweat -- to sell drugs through a small opening in his door and returns to find Caroline eying the syringes and dope packets in his bag. She wants more drugs. He smiles knowingly and then proceeds to inject her with the product, and in doing so introduces her to the world of injection drug use.

And so it goes.

Once sex with the Black dealers has happened, the quick descent into hell officially begins for the two females. Both Marion and Caroline lose what they used to have of their identities and cease to understand their own boundaries. Their corruption is complete. Big Tim becomes a kind of pimp to Marion and arranges for her to have sex with another female coke addict in front of a room of horny, rich white businessmen.

In Caroline's case, it seems implied that the dealer with whom she had sex has arranged for her to start having sex with other men. When her father finally tracks her down -- lifts her out of the pit into which she has sunk with no help from the same gun-wielding dealer to whom he first turns for help -- he finds her prostituting herself to a white businessman.

The young women have been sold like goods. They are, in the classic Hollywood scenario, in desperate need of rescue. One finds redemption in her father's arms, and the other awaits salvation from her boyfriend. It never comes.

So deeply and subconsciously held are these ideas among many filmgoers that these kinds of representations of female drug users and dealers are allowed to dance past our eyes, unquestioned.

Yet they are representations that demand dissection, from all possible angles.

Dating back to the early days of American cinema -- most notably with D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation in 1915 -- there has often been a harsh, oversexed, white-flesh-desiring component to the portrayal of African American male sexuality on screen. From that point forward, from the 1970s-era Blaxploitation movies to more recent pictures written and/or directed by Euro-Americans and some African Americans -- films including Booty Call and The Player's Club -- have continued to present African American men in an entirely hypersexualized manner. (An empirical study presented at the 1999 American Psychological Association convention in Boston confirmed that African Americans themselves strongly objected to the representation of Black sexuality in films like Booty Call)

What bears particular mention with both Requiem and Traffic is not only how these movies manage to perpetuate the damaging stereotype of crass, uber-sexual African American men, but also how they highlight the ease with which filmmakers slip into a mindframe -- a misguided mystique -- surrounding Black-on-White sex. There's the component of it that wants to experience it with porn-style-voyeurism: "Show us the big, powerful Black daddies subdue those angelic-looking, pale-skinned girls."

It's a dark fantasy, if you will; perhaps a subliminal projection of the way the filmmakers might imagine that interracial sex (at least in this particular ethnic combination and under these kinds of circumstances) would be like.

Insofar as this kind of dominant/submissive interracial sexual scenario might be a turn-on to some, it's also represented as a total and egregious violation of the females. The dealer has taken advantage of the confusion and the ultimate innocence of the privileged Euro-American female who is so caught up in her unintentional addiction that she can't see straight. She needs drugs, and we're to believe that there's just no other way for her to get them than to enter into the Black man's 'drug lair.' The ensuing scenes of sexuality are filmed entirely devoid of affection , as if to say, "See how cold and cruel and heartless the sex is? Don't go there, girls, don't you dare go there."

And there, in that unstated but absolutely implied message, is another aspect of most drug-genre films that is dishonest and generally untrue-to-life: The lives of women who use drugs.

In these and many of Hollywood's other druggie films, women are not recreational drug users, they are hopeless and pathetic addicts -- or, to be more specific, the addict girlfriends of main character addict boyfriends. If they are to have any kind of central role in any film, they are most certainly Euro-American. Their use of any kind of drug snowballs, almost overnight, into freebasing or heroin injection. They need to be rescued, and unless someone is there to do exactly that, they end up prostituting themselves -- in these most recent two cases to callous, African American dealers. Remarkably, all of this happens quicker than you can blink an eye, and the women are, at least temporarily, lost in the morass of drug desperation.

Hollywood has always liked its formulas, and this is one that has remained largely unchallenged.

It's a rather unpopular idea about the subject matter at hand, but it needs to be said: Many women in this country can and do choose to do drugs simply because they feel like doing them, and because they handle their use the way they would a few glasses of wine. It's not something anti-drug outfits like D.A.R.E. would ever want to hear, but there are women all over the country who know that they can dip into the rampant availability of the supply available, have a mind-altering experience, and then go to work or school the next day.

This isn't a way of romanticizing the experience; drug use comes with its serious risks, of course, and the 'harder' the drug, the more serious the risks. And statistically speaking, most of the women willing to entertain these risks and go ahead with recreational drug use are Euro-American. At least that part is something the filmmakers have gotten right.

What's at issue here is fundamentally an old feminist idea, albeit applied in an area -- drug use -- where the founding mothers of feminism surely never intended for it to be applied: Women are capable of making independent decisions without male intervention or influence. Women can make their own mistakes. Barring more severe consequences, women can even fix and learn from their own mistakes. The notion of women's inability to pull themselves together from drug use of one kind of another without a man reaching into pit to pull them out of their "bad" behavior plunks audiences back on Pretty Woman territory. Different story, same theme.

In the realm of addiction, there is no question that the physical, emotional, financial and familial consequences of habitual drug use is horrible no matter what the ethnicity or gender of the person affected. Do some female addicts end up prostituting themselves? Absolutely. Do girls face additional pressures where sex and drugs are concerned? Without doubt. But the road to prostituting oneself for a drug habit is usually a long and difficult one, not one that is typically achieved in a matter of a couple of scant weeks.

And still, women in films like Requiem and Traffic are perceived to be incapable of making drug decisions rationally or managing occasional recreational drug use. Celluloid stories continue to treat the issue as though personal decline and the damage are horribly inevitable for any woman who dares to break the law where drug use is concerned.

Ultimately, the Step A to B to C movie formula where women, drug use and prostitution are concerned is so simplistic (and ineffectual as a drug-prevention message, if that is the aim of this well-worn formula) that we can and should critique that kind of overgeneralization as firmly as we should reject the tired formula that relentlessly over-promotes images of African American men as drug users and dealers, and represents African American male sexuality as being somehoww geared toward the heartless and calculated seduction of Euro-American women.

The latter is the kind of damaging and distorted imagery that has been playing to audiences since 1915. Nearly a century later, each generation winds up watching the same kind of scenes -- updated and repackaged -- unfold on the big screen.

But it doesn't have to be this way. Even in the realm of junkie-films, filmmakers and audience members alike should be capable of so much more. Just try us.

Silja J.A. Talvi is a Seattle-based freelance journalist and essayist with credits in a variety of national publications including The Progressive, In These Times, High Times and Utne Reader.

posted in !Damn The Man! - 1 reply

Tribester???

theodorusrex — Sun, 07 Nov 2004 21:57:10 GMT

You login to tribe one morning and find out that it has, in fact, been purchased by Friendster. Is this another evil machination of the man?

What changes do you hope to see integrated from Friendster into tribe? What do think will change?

posted in !Damn The Man! - 2 replies

Damn The Man!

Dawn — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 17:13:12 GMT

I do most of my Christmas/holiday shopping via the internet/mail order/etc

and packages are starting to roll in...

well my mail didn't run yesterday!

Damn the man!

posted in !Damn The Man! - 2 replies

Calling all American Patriots!

theodorusrex — Mon, 13 Sep 2004 23:47:16 GMT

http://www.votergasm.com/

posted in !Damn The Man! - 0 replies

Damn Safety

Be-in — Thu, 22 Jul 2004 16:49:42 GMT

I live in Washington, and I am sick and tired of looking at these jersey barriers, walls, pop-up roadblocks, cop cars, and every other damn thing that encircles every beautiful public space or building in the name of "safety." I also hate these modern sanitized playgrounds with short swings and rubberized everything, none of it more than 6 feet tall. How the hell can kids have any fun on that? And don't even get me started on all the fun that insurance companies and whacko litigation have ruined. Everything is sanitized, safety-tested and guaranteed not to interest you. This country was founded and built by men and women with real spine, but it has turned into a pack of whining, fearful children who can't think for themselves or be bothered to take an iota of responsibility for their own safety. DAMN IT!

posted in !Damn The Man! - 4 replies

Damn the Man!

Bobzilla — Tue, 04 May 2004 23:01:46 GMT

Who made me come back from vacation..........

posted in !Damn The Man! - 9 replies

OW!

Tue, 27 Apr 2004 23:11:49 GMT

Damn the man that invented dangerous children's food!
- suckers that get air holes and cut your tongue, cereal (Cap'n Crunch, anyone?) that shreds the crap out of the roof of your mouth... Damn him!!!

posted in !Damn The Man! - 4 replies

damn daylight savings

KINGZOE — Sun, 04 Apr 2004 20:46:11 GMT

damn the idiot who invented daylight savings?
can someone tell me what the point is?
korea doesn't have it and they're just fine.
okay, they're not, but daylight savings has nothing to do with it.
argh! i'm sleeeeepy...of course, i'm the idiot who woke up at 7:30 in the morning to go to work today, after falling asleep at 4am..

posted in !Damn The Man! - 12 replies

Just One Week ...

troubleporndawgie — Sun, 04 Apr 2004 17:07:24 GMT

Just one week until we will be singing:

CHRIST, THE LORD, IS RIS'N TODAY
HAAAAAAAAAALLELUJAH!

posted in !Damn The Man! - 14 replies

The Creators

pamelaq — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 07:27:04 GMT

You can only be told lies for so long
Before you just have to trust yourself
You can only be led for so long
Before you decide to lead yourself
You can stand by and watch for so long
Before you have to stand up for what you know to be true
the lesson's impact is lifelong
The only one you can trust to bring change is you

(don't be too tempted -it's copyrighted)
Who wants to collaborate with me on my rock opera? I need a musician/writer to help bring this thing into fruition. It's about changing the world through creative inspiration. This is socio-politically motivated. Half the songs talk about the problem, the other half talk about the cure.

because "Creative energy is our most valuable asset, it is within all of us, dormant in most of us, and when properly tapped...the catalyst for true and profound change."
Pamela Quattrochi

posted in !Damn The Man! - 0 replies

anyone want to join my tribe?

djjakkiglass — Thu, 01 Apr 2004 18:24:53 GMT

i co-moderate this tribe called "whores of corporate america"
its for people that are well, whores. be you a restaurant worker, a grocery store whore, like myself...or if you work with the public somehow or for a big corporation and hate it.
yes, another tribe to bitch about shit that sucks in our lives.

posted in !Damn The Man! - 1 reply

Damn those MEN!

ErickHayden — Fri, 19 Mar 2004 09:07:58 GMT

I say Damn not just the man, but MEN!

I am directing a show right now and I asked about 18-20 seperate men to do this non-speaking role in the show, and every single one of them said they had some kind of conflict.

So finally, I decided to ask a woman to do the role. The FIRST lady I asked, said yes.

BAM! Damn those men! They just can't commit!

posted in !Damn The Man! - 18 replies

DAMN ME! DAMN ME!

troubleporndawgie — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 08:09:03 GMT

mwah ha ha ha ha ... Damn me for making these thoughts creep between your ears and nestle into your shrinking grey matter:

1. Yam flavored coffee
2. Brussels sprout and fudge nut swirl ice cream
3. The 24-hour Celine Dion Channel
4. Licorice flavored coffee
5. Wool sheets on your bed
6. Jelly Bellies with flavors like Pap Smear, Jock Itch and Gout
7. Sex with Linda Tripp
8. Onion flavored glue on stamps
9. Hummus covered bananas
10. A constantly ringing cellphone playing Fur Elise

posted in !Damn The Man! - 26 replies

Damn the man......

Bobzilla — Sun, 14 Mar 2004 23:38:04 GMT

who sent me on a two week business trip

posted in !Damn The Man! - 10 replies

Damn These Things

troubleporndawgie — Wed, 10 Mar 2004 22:29:32 GMT

1. Okra
2. Andy Warhol
3. Decaffeinated coffee
4. Sugar-free anything
5. Flourescent lighting
6. Mueslix
7. Trash compactors
8. Martha Stewart
9. Powdered milk
10.Jeff Koons

posted in !Damn The Man! - 21 replies

Damn Them!

Sat, 13 Mar 2004 06:25:25 GMT

Oh, you KNOW them.

You've been working overtime and coveting the extra money. Or...you've gotten a chance to make extra money while no one is looking (cat sitting for the boss, for God's sake!) Or...you got that unexpected check that was for some long forgotten task performed (let's not go there, ok?).

And WHAM! Out of the blue your car breaks down, your hot water heater bursts, your roto won't rooter, your heater won't heat...WHATEVER! 'THEY' take your money.

The ubiguitous 'THEY' who come to relieve your trouble and take your hard earned money! They KNOW you need their service and the price is commensurate to your problem. Oh yes...right down to the penny!

You got it, I want it... is their mantra.

Worst part? We give it to them to end our trouble! Do you REALLY want to deal with the mess when the hot water heater bursts? I don't. Here, she says...PLEASE take my money! And, clean up the mess! Leave NO evidence that I had ANY extra money, whatsoever.

DAMN THEM!

posted in !Damn The Man! - 3 replies

Son of Damn The Man

troubleporndawgie — Sun, 07 Mar 2004 17:37:57 GMT

Damn the Man and his son who made Jagermeister feel so good going down along with a beer.

posted in !Damn The Man! - 11 replies

Damn The Man Who

troubleporndawgie — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 19:32:04 GMT

Damn The Man Who ...

1. told John Tesh to pursue a career in music.
2. invented support hose.
3. created the need for light beer.
4. syndicated Family Circus.
5. decided that new CDs need to be hermetically sealed.

posted in !Damn The Man! - 89 replies

Damn cold

Kandy — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 15:41:18 GMT

Man, I have been sick more times this winter than I have in my entire freaking life. This really blows. Damn the Man who gave me this freaking cold.

posted in !Damn The Man! - 6 replies

Damn the ...

troubleporndawgie — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 01:24:03 GMT

I wish I could raise up my fist and scream "Damn The Man!" today. Alas, all I can muster is "Damn This Hangover." ouch.

posted in !Damn The Man! - 7 replies

Uh oh...

Thu, 19 Feb 2004 14:18:35 GMT

I think I stumbled in here by accident.

I mean...

... I kinda like the man (in a non-romantic, non-sexual, frighteningly hetero (but still get to butt-slap) sorta way).

!Damn The Man!'s topics - tribe.net

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I'VE FOUND SANE PEOPLE!!

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Damn Damn Damn

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Damn The Man!

Calling all American Patriots!

Damn Safety

Damn the Man!

OW!

damn daylight savings

Just One Week ...

The Creators

anyone want to join my tribe?

Damn those MEN!

DAMN ME! DAMN ME!

Damn the man......

Damn These Things

Damn Them!

Son of Damn The Man

Damn The Man Who

Damn cold

Damn the ...

Uh oh...

Sounds like..