I tend to return to this anti-marijuana spot which showed a group of 13 or 14 or 15 year olds, hanging out, discussing their belly-buttons, with the words to the effect of “You don’t have to be high to”, or something to that effect.  The problem with that spot, which was the worst one I had ever seen, was that these kids seemed to be high.

Slate discusses the new anti-marijuana campaign.   I think Seth Stevenson may be overthinking the narrative devices and psychological purposes of the advertisements.  For example:

Similarly, casting an alien as the guy who sweeps the girl off her feet, while the stoner feebly looks on, eliminates the need to decide what sort of person the girl would be likely to find more appealing than a pot user. Having her new suitor be a drug-free preppie (or jock, or musician, or whatever) would be fraught with all kinds of peril. Not so with an alien—because aliens are always cool.

None of which confuses the fact that… DUDE!  An ALIEN just stole that guy’s Girl!!!  I must be hallucinating!

Or we get the strange clashing sound found with these two statements:

I spoke to Ginger Robinson and Patty Fogarty, the copywriter and art director who worked pro bono on the campaign at the ad agency Wieden & Kennedy. They told me the scenarios in these spots came from personal experiences.

AND

In a separate spot, a pot smoker’s dog asks him to quit. (I’ll just note here that I’ve never, no matter how blazed, been addressed by a house pet.) When the smoker declines, the dog strolls away, muttering, “You disappoint me.”

DUDE!  Dog’s talking to me!  FAR OUT!

Actually I am confused by the ending of that “Dog’s talking to me” commercial.  Why does the dog hang up a flag, and why does the flag show a picture of that dog?   Is he claiming the land for the Republic of Himself, filling the vacuum left by the dereliction of his stoner-master?

IT JUST DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE!

There was a parade through Downtown Portland today.  It was pretty gay.

……………….

Random news report: “Rougly 5 protesters.”  I don’t understand.  I suppose we could have anywhere between 3 and 7 at any particular time, but when it is in the one digits, can’t we just hand count them and lay off the “rough estimates”?

I’m currently tapping my pen onto the table, trying to assemble some coherent and not yet plodded thoughts on the topic of Lyndon Larouche, and his Cult. Understand, I have covered the essentials for my Purpose #1 — indeed, any further prancing on probably takes away from this unstated purpose. Purpose #2 and #3 are a little harder.

I. Okay. Check this out. It’s cited as excerpts of daily briefings for LYMers, sent to the unofficial liason of such things, by someone getting ready to exit stage right. Feel free to scan right past this — frankly, I think it’s a bigger rhaspberry to Larouche, Inc. just to toss this sort of thing out into the public domain
“The winds of Change”
If you have been away long, or have never been here at all, you might not know about how the winds of change have swirled through the Los Angeles local, how they have carved into the sediments here, revealing symbolic messages upon the underlying bedrock. Our most favored men and women, the council of elders themselves, struggled only in vain to grasp the source or meaning for these mysterious hieroglyphs, but they could not transcribe them. The fabric, the very air in our local seemed shaken into uncertainty. So, in a desperate attempt, we had our best Bel Canto voices line up on the Hollywood hills and sing out into the distant yonder (to the far off place some called WarRoom), for a sign, a hint, some useful feedback from the outside world that might lend us a hand in resolving our enigma, when suddenly, one day, a reply arrived to us from beyond the hills which said, almost in echoes, “Stop blocking and learn to use e-mail. If you want our help, you need to write more ops reports!”

So due to popular demand, I thought it worthwhile to give people a rare sense of what’s up in Los Angeles: Renaissance workshop/recruiting ground extraordinaire. First of all, we are half-staffed with organizers, which is
both bad and good, but which generally means there is more space to grow and a greater necessity for EVERYONE, new and old, to take on new challenges in what THEY can do individually for the good of humanity. When the mass recruitment factory is pumping, wonders are done for the movement as a whole — but that IS the big “Tipper Gore” in the living room here. Youth outreach. It is what Los Angeles was made for; the wide sprawl, the year-round perfect weather for campus organizing, and plus, these kids all KNOW they have no future the way things are going… and so we have a HUGE capability to explode t he numbers of contacts joining
us over this summer break IF we have the will to do so. Do you have this vision in your mind? Are your arms long enough to dig into the “box” of uncalled contacts?…………

we have just reinstituted something which a few months ago was tentatively called the “New Person Reading Day”, which was meant to supply a kind of launching pad for serious contacts and new members, to work with older members on foundational studies in epistemology, geometry and of course, Lyn’s economics. The next eight weeks will be, “So You Wish…” and its periphery. Imagine the experience of contacts spending all day Saturday reading Lyn, Liebniz, Hamilton etc., then sticking around for Phil’s P.M. update, and not leaving until hours after the regular meeting!……………….

another really interesting situation is the new L.A. Tweener deployments, which hasn’t yet slowed their accelerating potential in providing the necessary public credit investment that our youth recruitment demands. Not merely a fundraising breakthrough, they are opening up new territories (for example in Republican Orange County districts), raking in Boomer contacts for the phone team, and have even started taking on youth apprentices. I won’t go into too much detail on this latter point, but I will just say that a number of youth, even some who have had problems with fund raising, have been able to raise over $200 individually when working within the dynamic set by Chris Sayre or others of the Tweeners.

These kind of breakthroughs breathe optimism into numerous areas, whether relating to funds or otherwise. Lastly, the field meeting resolution was to create a tenacious organizing fury. If you are at a table, give every
person the opportunity to get on board, but waste no time catering to their pessimisms and weaknesses. Treat them as they ought to be, calmly and with conviction. If they are wimping around, keeping their distance, say to them, “Look, are you gonna do this?” Better for everyone is to challenge them early. Everyone who joins, only does so when they face certain challenges. To get contacts coming consistently, try settling for ten confirmations instead of two and [two] might show up! We discussed the idea of putting together binders full of visuals (recent LaRouchePAC.com slugs, quotes, maps, diagrams, old pamphlet covers, EIR articles if we are low on EIR hard copies, etc.) to help us effectively communicate a single laser focused idea to a contact out in the field, and get them to sign up.

There are any number of items to digest from this, if you are of a sort to digest these things. Feeding into Purpose #2: — zero in on — Imagine the experience of contacts spending all day Saturday reading Lyn, Liebniz, Hamilton etc., then sticking around for Phil’s P.M. update, and not leaving until hours after the regular meeting! — Imagine rambling discussions late at night in your dorm surroundings with marijuana smoke breezing through freely, where every word you speak about someone mentioned in the course of your 200-level college course seems so BRILLIANT! That is roughly how I imagine the “hours after the regular meeting” come across, and I do not believe that image in my head to be too accidental. The seduction is the illusion that the college aged can cut out some artifacts of Youth Culture — the drugs, whatever it is the music the kids are listening to these days, and discuss Liebniz, Hamilton, etc… and, um… Lyn? How’d that guy get into that list?!? A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
There are other items in this little briefing that I could focus on and explicate, but my gut tells me I will have plenty of opportunities to make those points in the future.

II. There is a minor controversy about Alexandar Cockburn, writing in The Nation — and his own Counterpunch — magazine some contrarian opinions about global warming, entitled “Dissidents Against Dogma“. Read or don’t read the article at your peril. Cockburn often seems to be contrarian for the sake of contrarian’s sake. But one controversy with this article comes with his choice of cited articles. Read through the citations:

Z. Jaworowski, “Ice Core Data Show No Carbon Dioxide Increase”, 21st Century Science & Technology, Spring 1997, available on line at www.21stcenturysciencetech.com

Hotcha! 21st Century Science and Technology! You don’t say? Now, I suppose someone who considers themselves a Scientist with the contrarian of all contrarian viewpoint on Global Warming within the Scientific Community (only a Young Age Creationist would have as much trouble getting into a peer reviewed journal) has to go somewhere to get his or her studies published. Some more words and sentences and paragraphs over here.
The wikipedia entry for Jaworowski includes the factoid of publication in this spurious publication, and the entry for Cockburn now includes the update of his global warming skepticism.

UPDATE: Larouche puts this controversy in historical perspective:

The deeper aspect of the anti-science commitment of the Anglo-Dutch faction goes to questions that can be mentioned here for purposes of identification only. The essence of the matter was the decision by elements of the then newly formed Anglo-Dutch financial oligarchy to promote the fraud of Isaac Newton in an attempt to destroy both Leibniz himself, and the tradition he represented, in the disgusting Commercium Epistolicum affair. To end the threat of the succession of a Leibniz-influenced Princess Sophie, in the event of the early death of Queen Anne, the faction of Winston Churchill’s progenitor Lord Marlborough, also known as the “Venetian Party,” launched a defamation campaign against Gottfried Leibniz that has few equals even in modern times.

However, in thus successfully destroying real science in England, the Venetian Party laid the basis for its own monumental defeat. The German classical renaissance, which built upon the revival of Leibniz by such figures as Gotthold Lessing and Moses Mendelssohn and led to the revolution in German science marked by such high points as Carl Friedrich Gauss and Bernhard Riemann, was their first come-uppance. The American Revolution was the second, and still persisting, fruit of that strategic miscalculation.

British methods of cultural manipulation and intelligence warfare–more properly, Venetian methods–succeed more often than not. When they fail, the failure tends to be catastrophic, as the present unraveling surrounding Britain’s BAE/Prince Bandar scandal portends, to those trained in the ability to read, and act upon, such situations.

Um.  Hrm.

III. The Larouche search on bloglines, which spits out the new releases on EIR and all of that, reads a like the North Korean news service. Kim Jong Il praised and respected in various world parts; Larouche praised and respected in various world parts… underlying message: He’s A Major World Player, Damneditall! So I breezed over the headline LPAC News Hits the Arab World, appears to be one of his main audiences for the moment. But breezing over this title stopped me from reading in full:
June 14, 2007 (LPAC)–An Arabic translation of the May 22 LPAC story, “Is Lebanon Conflict the Fruit of Failed Cheney Scheme” which appeared on the LaRouche Arabic language website (www.nysol.se/arabic) was picked up last week and put on the front page of the Hezbollah website (www.almanar.com.lb) with credit to the LaRouche website. Over 15,000 readers clicked on the article. The average for hot news items on the site is 2,000 to 3,000. It also led to hundreds of new clicks on the LaRouche Arab website.

Praise Hezbollah!

Anyway, in other news… LaRouche in Dialogue with Italian Political Leaders at Forum in Rome, LaRouche in Hemispheric Webcast on Defeating Globalization with South American Trade Union Leaders, and… You can fill in the blanks from there.

The other news item that Larouche is flogging is this not terribly widely reported in the US — British Scandal. Which he conveniently ties into the Synarchists who are out to destroy him with those investigation into Jeremiah Duggan:

Spurious to say the least, but there you go. This is, again, similar to the North Korean news where every news item dovetails into American, and South Korean, plots against Kim Jong Il.
IV. Needless to say…

I am pretty sure that the Al Hartley library of Spire Christian comics are extent online somewhere or other.  Boing Boing has found its way to a couple of items without it.  (The effect is similar to when Boing Boing posted a link to scans of a Jack T Chick tract, and then scans of another Jack T Chick tract, and then finally received the email update suggesting — Why not just link to Jack Chick’s website which has… all of his tracts?)
But here’s Archie stuck not in the 50s, but in the 20s — say, Tennessee, Scopes Monkey Trial, Inherit the Wind…

The story goes that the publishers of Archie Comics– notably Jewish– were getting a little annoyed when Al Hartley found Jesus and started ebbing Fundamentalist messages into their comics.  I suppose because he ever-so-desired to create a branch of Evangelistic Christian Archie Comics, he asked if he could create them for Spire Christian Comics, and they let him do so.

There are, if you click the link, anti-busing political messages extent in this bizarro-Christian Archie Comic.  Which is just as well, because his other work for this Christian comic company includes a biography of Chuck Colson.
Boing Boing later uncovered the comics of… um… The Cross and the Switchblade.  Meaning it is only a matter of time before they discover that this line of Christian comics also includes something called:

… based on a true story, I hear.

The [Iraqi] government did not reject the casualty figure but said the U.N. Assistance Mission report was “not professional or neutral as we would expect from the missions of the international organization. The report was superficial in dealing with several points,” spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said. […]
When asked what the government didn’t accept about the report, al-Dabbagh said “I am not talking about figures. I am talking about details in the report.”

“They should respect the values and traditions here in Iraq,” he said.

Christopher Hitchens, where are you now?

The Iranian regime tightened up the law enforcement, the punishment of crime and the public moral: the crimes linked to pornography will be punished with the death penalty. This measure was taken by a law that was just passed by Majlis, the Iranian one-chamber parliament that is dominated by radical Islamists. The law received 148 votes in favour of it five noes and four abstentions. According to Irna state press agency the law must be approved by the Council of Guardians before coming into force. The council is the body that must control the legitimacy of the laws basing on the Koran ethics. Whoever will be involved in the production of pornographic material will be considered a ‘corrupted person of the earth’ the law reads. This statement is taken from the ‘sharia’ the body of rules based on the Koran. It is linked to the application of the capital punishment in the Iranian legislation. The death penalty is largely inflicted in Iran for a wide series of crimes and not all of them are considered serious in the western legislations. Directors, operators, actors and technicians who will make a pornographic movie or pictures will be considered ‘corrupt people of the earth’. 

Again.  Paging Christopher Hitchens…

All right, everybody.  Put on your tin foil hats and run with John Perkins for a spell:

…………………………………

George W. Bush’s cocaine habit and womanizing ways caused the invasion of Panama in 1989. According to the book [   The Secret History of the American Empire   ], Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega installed cameras on Contadora Island, which was a safe haven where American politicians and businessmen could schmooze with, and bribe, Latin American politicos. There were “rumors that George W. was photographed doing coke and having kinky sex during the time his father was president,” Jose, a top adviser to Brazilian president Lula da Silva, tells Perkins. “There was a theory in Latin America that Noriega had used incriminating photos of the younger Bush and his cronies to convince the older Bush, then president, to side with the Panamanian administration on key issues. In retaliation, H.W. invaded Panama and hustled Noriega off to a Miami prison. The building housing Noriega’s confidential files had been incinerated by bombs.”

……………………………………………………

There’s a slippery slope with John Perkins which is summed up with the fact that my only retort is “If you say so.”   Confessions of an Economic Hitman preys a little too easily on people’s biases and beliefs — takes what a lot of people believe and goes one step further — I suppose I think of that particular conspiracy as a little bit more unstated that John Perkins has it.  The problem with the Bush – Cocaine – Noriega spriacy is that it personalizes the politics onto George Bush and George Bush, the CIA Head and the rich son.  I guess it may well be a type of spurious tabloid rumor-mongering, though a little bit meatier in terms of things I’d particularly care about than if Bush was having an affair with Condelezza Rice.

In other news of this sort, Angelina Jolie has joined the evil Council of Foreign Relations.  I wish I had more thoughts on that matter than I do, but I do not.

There is something I do not particularly understand.

Rudy Giuliani unveiled his “12 Commandments”.  It is a list of boiler plate Republican positions, appropriate enough platform for a Republican nominating run.  I notice some eyes piqued at its lack of mention of Iraq, but I can easily explain that by pointing to one of the differences between the Democratic and Republican debates: the Democrats are required by their primary constituents to explain how they would get US troops out of Iraq;  the Republicans are required by their Primary constituents to explain how they would get US troops into Iran.

A more interesting puzzlement, at least in my eyes, is simply: How presumptuous is this?  12 Commandments???  That’s two more than god freaking GOD!  Is this going to get to the religious right?  I don’t see how.  Nor do I see how it would get to a sort of sidebar libertarian or neo-con (two different things, yes) fundamentally secularist voter that Giuliana might be pursuing in lieu of the religious right voter.   (Note that he came out as a pro-choice candidate to those ends).
I am reminded of the Mel Brooks written Moses bit.