Historically, the will to embrace free expression has gone hand in hand with progressive politics. When I was growing up, public figures who tested the boundaries of indecency and free speech were invariably counter-culture heroes. Throughout recorded time, humor, art, music and literature were understood to be inherently uplifting and liberating, because they were True […]
Fundamentalism is a system of beliefs and memes which reinforce each other and dismiss all contradictory thoughts and doubts. It traps and enslaves people of all religions, in different ways. It causes a person to become intolerant of facts that challenge one’s personal belief system, and it makes them distrustful of all other points of […]
In his famous treatise Meditation six, Rene Descartes struggles to come to grips with the material world and how we perceive it. He explores the causal relationship between mind and body. Descartes manages to convince himself that he does indeed exist, simply because he is capable of THOUGHT. He is able to synthesize his hypothesis […]
It’s no secret that the Internet was created by the US Department of Defense on behalf of America’s Military-Industrial Complex [MIC]. It was originally conceived under the Eisenhower Administration in the early 1960s as a secure communications network linking several important universities, think tanks and research labs together, which would be able to survive a […]
From The Tempest by William Shakespeare. Those prophetic words are spoken by Ariel to describe the chaos caused by the shipwrecked passengers in the play. In allegorical terms it signifies that evil, corruption, and cruelty are the result of human actions, rather than some distant, supernatural netherworld. And so it goes. The National Security State […]
The Sixties were a time of great upheaval in America. The decade saw a revolution in fashion, art, and moral attitudes. The biggest revolution by far, though, took place in popular music. Before 1964, pop music in the USA still replicated the style of the previous decade [a notable exception to this rule are The […]
The Beatles revolutionized popular culture in the 60s, and their influence is still being felt today. Music, art, sexuality, hairstyles, clothing styles and attitudes all changed radically because of them. They are given proper credit for inventing the music video, along with the creation of an entire genre of film-making – the mockumentary – thanks […]
John Lennon had nothing but disdain for people who tried to interpret his music in any way shape or form. Outwardly, he was just trying to write good rock & roll songs. That was difficult enough, considering the quality output he was able to consistently maintain for so many years as a Beatle. By the […]
Back in the olden days, when the Soviet Union was still around, the US government used to at least throw a few crumbs to working Americans to remind people of how ‘great’ capitalism is. But not anymore. That went out the window with disintegration of the USSR and the ‘Peace divided.’ The warmongers and their […]
For the past 60-plus years, the USA has attached its currency to petroleum, and more recently, natural gas. Ever since President Nixon took America off the Gold Standard in 1972, the USA has been on the Oil Standard [“Petro dollars”]. The key to the dollar being the reserve currency of the world is OIL, plain […]
Jason Darensburg's Blog-o-rama 