Civilization is Effort. Kombinat! is Convenient "...we live in a world dominated by a single force, by a single ideology and by a single globalist party. The Western countries are dominant but they are also dominated, because they are progressively losing their sovereignty to what I call "supra-society". This planetary supra-society consists of commercial enterprises and non-commercial organisms whose zones of influence are superior to those of nations. The Western countries are subjected, like other countries, to the control of these supranational structures. But the sovereignty of nations was a constituent part of pluralism and democracy at world level. The present dominating power is crushing sovereign states. The process of European integration which is taking place under our eyes is causing the disappearance of pluralism within this new conglomerate, to the benefit of a new supranational power." - Alexande Zinoviev

- supra shmupra as my jewish uncle would say: it's called Kombinat! and it's good for you, do you hear me Europe? You better hear me now cause I ain't going to be xplaining this shit to you later.
So, how do you have better democracy? Say slowly after me Kom-Bi-Nat! - hm... supra shmupra...

  ¶ 7:14 PM 1 Comments Links to this post

  Barack Obama for President

I have listened to some of his speaches. It is amazing to me that this man cares. That he wants to make a difference. Many people including me ask 'will we get fooled again?' - hard to break this resignation, hard to conquer the cynical outlook. This man has style. He will be a great president.

  ¶ 11:48 PM 2 Comments Links to this post

  One trillion spimes, nobody home Tom on spimes

"Something will know something, it just won't be anyone who gives a damn about us"

  ¶ 10:45 AM 2 Comments Links to this post

  Blog Event Horizon Blogosphere is a planet that is fast approaching the Blog Event Horizon. I don't believe there will be any survivors because the event will forever be blogged and the bloggers will never give up their blogs to evolve into.... we won't know what they might have had evolved into would they had had the willingness to walk away, to walk away from Blog Event Horizon. So, there probably will not be any survivors. They will forever wear their blogs on their minds, they will forever blog the Blog Event Horizon and so will Kombinat! participate and lead and profit.  ¶ 8:57 AM 1 Comments Links to this post

  To be a father   ¶ 4:51 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  TED Blog: Majora Carter on TEDTalks Green is the new black TEDBlog: Majora Carter on TEDTalks  ¶ 12:29 AM 4 Comments Links to this post

  Political Satire Forbidden in Poland
from flickr user:oto-polska.blogspot.com.

Polish president with polish prime minister (twin brothers).
In Poland you can go for 3 years to prison for making such posters.

One must never make fun of the ruleres.

  ¶ 2:35 AM 1 Comments Links to this post

  MySpace is popular because Functioning Form - Why is MySpace Popular?

MySpace is popular because someone or something told you it was. With products like MySpace, network effects are key drivers for adoption. More buzz and conversation around a particular product or service always serves to amplify its popularity. In the case of MySpace that popularity is supported by the presence of popular bands and popular kids on the site!”

Having recently spent some time talking to groups of teens that regularly inhabit MySpace, I’m more confident in this “explanation”. Despite having a laundry list of user experience complaints about the site, teens keep coming back with an almost "follow the herd" mentality. Which is a strong testament to the importance of prevalence

  ¶ 3:47 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Oppose oil drilling in the Arctic Refuge! Good bye Karibooooo. Good bye Elkk. Gut bye antzs, gut bye pooolar bear, guy bye foxy foxy fox.... gut bye. Please tell your Senators to oppose any
bill that would sacrifice the Arctic Refuge I really would like my children to know that it's there in the future, undisturbed.  ¶ 2:57 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  the beatles
from flickr user:kashia.

  ¶ 7:52 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Get Your War On Quana Massacre A Blight Upon the Nations on Flickr: "Relief workers extract the corpses of 37 children from a civilian bomb shelter which was targeted by Israel this morning in Qana. According to this morning's reports, more than 65 civilians were killed."  ¶ 6:48 AM 3 Comments Links to this post

  Freedom on the March
from flickr user:oto-polska.blogspot.com.

This poster is a piece of polish political satire. It reads "4th Polish Republic Is Arriving. Nurses! Do Not Come Back from Spain".

To exaplain this one needs to understand that Polish Nurses are getting paid good money to work in Spain and a lot of them have moved there as economi refugees because there are no well paying jobs in Poland for them. With the current polish administration viewed as right-wing, republican, family values, no work on sunday type of people this poster is urging polish nurses to stay in Spain instead. - Not very funny. Poland is obviously falling apart. It's becoming a place for "Winners Only".

  ¶ 7:40 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Phil on Karoff on Buffett's Gift The World We Want: Karoff on Buffett's Gift:

Part of the challenge is that we are over-awed by gifts that are potentially world-changing. To treat them as a matter of wise stewardship requires something like gravitas

  ¶ 6:20 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Free speech is life itself Excerpts From Rushdie's Address: 1,000 Days 'Trapped Inside a Metaphor':

(...) those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts

"Our lives teach us who we are." I have learned the hard way that when you permit anyone else's description of reality to supplant your own -- and such descriptions have been raining down on me, from security advisers, governments, journalists, Archbishops, friends, enemies, mullahs -- then you might as well be dead. Obviously, a rigid, blinkered, absolutist world view is the easiest to keep hold of, whereas the fluid, uncertain, metamorphic picture I've always carried about is rather more vulnerable. Yet I must cling with all my might to . . . my own soul; must hold on to its mischievous, iconoclastic, out-of-step clown-instincts, no matter how great the storm. And if that plunges me into contradiction and paradox, so be it; I've lived in that messy ocean all my life. I've fished in it for my art. This turbulent sea was the sea outside my bedroom window in Bombay. It is the sea by which I was born, and which I carry within me wherever I go.

"Free speech is a non-starter," says one of my Islamic extremist opponents. No, sir, it is not. Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.

  ¶ 1:53 AM 3 Comments Links to this post

  poodlism mystic bourgeoisie: obedient poodles of boulder:

"obedient poodlism not only leads to fascism, but as this blog has repeatedly tried to show, is also the result of a long tradition of racist and proto-fascist "spiritualality" stretching back into the 19th century"

  ¶ 12:11 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Ivan Martin Jirous Ivan Martin Jirous - Wikipedia,:

His particular contribution to Czech dissidence was his work on the concept of the "Parallel Polis," or "Second Culture." Magor believed that simply expressing oneself through art could ultimately undermine the totalitarian system: if enough artists, journalists, and musicians were to simply keep practicing their arts without giving in to the pressures of socialist realism, eventually a critical mass of people, all living in truth, would inspire the rest of the populace to see the totalitarian system for the flismy front it really was.
In a sense, this is what happened

  ¶ 5:41 AM 3 Comments Links to this post

  Geschitten Capitalism! The best thing since sliced bread brought to you by The Bread Slicing Corporation of Kombinat!
You make bread. We slice it for you. Small fee applies.  ¶ 12:26 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Robin Hoodbinat We take from the poor and give to the poor. Transaction fees we give to the rich.   ¶ 11:31 PM 1 Comments Links to this post

  Egon Bondy 1991 interview quite fresh In 1991 interview "The last Czechoslovakian marxist": an interview with Egon Bondy - author, poet, and political analyst: from Monthly Review.

Summary of Interview:

[Bondy] "spoke of the economic system of "robbery" under the totalitarian regime (only Bondy would compare it with the ancient Chinese imperial gentry!), his dissatisfaction with Civic Forum, the history of the Underground, the non-role of Czech students in the revolutionary movement, Havel's rise to power through the human rights petition-cum-organization Charter 77, the threat of "international monopolist capitalism" comgin to Czechoslovakia (with its attendant poverty), his belief that Czechoslovakians have no interest in privatization, and his fears that his nation will be coopted into joining the imperialists' war against the Third World. Throughout our talk, he lamented the lost opportunity to remake true socialism out of the "postcapitalist" rubble of the Stalinist Czechoslovakian economy."

Few quotes:

The question of the Third World is the most profound question of our immediate future. What happens here in Eastern Europe is not the center of world development. The central problem is the question of the Third World and the coming confrontation between the international imperialists and the needs of the peoples who comprise the majority of mankind. We now have 6 billion in the world; in twenty-five years, 9 billion, for whom the imperialists are not prepared to bring humane living conditions

The Pentagon and George Bush thank God every day for the criminal Saddam Hussein. (...) The criminal Saddam Hussein gives them an opening and they thank God for the excuse.

(...) It is all only a pretext for the new crusade against the Third World, in the interest of the world rule of the imperialist mode of production. Because, under their rules, it is impossible for all people of this planet to have humane living conditions. They need a cheap labor force. They need poor areas of the world. They need poor people. They don't want people to manage their own fate for themselves. They don't want freedom for these people. They want a market for second- and third-quality commodities and the riches for themselves.

And for us in Eastern Europe one of the greatest dangers is this: that we could, by demagogy, become involved in this struggle on the side of "white civilization." This is what I fear most. ...

I fear that under the cover of the "struggle for freedom," we will be only mercenaries in the struggle for so-called white civilization, although we shall remain only as a reservoir of cheap labor. A tragicomical situation.

  ¶ 8:58 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Project for the Old American Century Gallery Project for the Old American Century Gallery




  ¶ 3:50 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Salsa Miracles Democracy Now! | Florida Con Salsa: Investigative Reporter Greg Palast Reports on Voter Fraud in Mexico's Presidential Election:

VICTOR ROMERO: It’s a miracle.
GREG PALAST: How did the miracle occur?
VICTOR ROMERO: How did the miracle occur? I don't know.
GREG PALAST: On a computer printout, Dr. Romero showed how the official tallies matched the exit polls, with challenger Lopez Obrador ahead by 2% all night. That is, until the very end, when several precincts came in for the ruling party by 10-to-1, and then 100-to-1, putting their candidate Felipe Calderon over the top, literally in the last minutes. The doctor found that statistically improbable.
VICTOR ROMERO: We reached the point I said, “It’s over.” But then, from 71% ‘til the very end, there was not a single moment in which the difference from one report to the next became bigger.
GREG PALAST: So it didn't change at all. Just was perfect.
VICTOR ROMERO: Perfect, perfect. And so we just couldn't believe it. I mean, it fell -- with 5% to go, it fell one full point.
GREG PALAST: So then, what happened?
VICTOR ROMERO: Another miracle. Statistically, it's a second miracle.

  ¶ 12:42 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  get off my back

I remember Tolstoys words “I sit on a man’s back, choking him, and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back.” They seem to have learned little in 120 years....more

  ¶ 11:46 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Just be authentic self And what should I wear?
You will wear what the advertisers will tell you to wear.

And what should I drink?
You will drink what the advertisers will tell you to drink.

And what should I read?
You will read what the advertisers will tell you to read.

And who should I be?
Just be yourself. Advertisers prize that the most.  ¶ 1:40 AM 2 Comments Links to this post

  Robert Aumann and Thomas Schelling. 2005 Noble Laureates Winners of 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics "for having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis"

Reading the PDF paper: "Contributions to Game Theory: Analyses of Conflict and Cooperation"

Fascinating stuff. I wanted to quote some info but you should read it yourself dear reader.  ¶ 5:18 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  reencuentro Frank Paynter:

What can the United States of America do on this fourth of July to draw the line? I believe we must tell each other, “Up to this point, these vicious impertinent acts, this anachronistic competitive behavior was tolerated. Beyond this point we have no room in our power structures for people who behave this way, though we have love for them in our hearts.”

Possible solutions lie in Structural Participation.  ¶ 1:01 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  The Parade Walker - The Parade - Kamiel Proost The Parade Walker - The Parade - Kamiel Proost:
  ¶ 12:47 AM 2 Comments Links to this post

  Wealth Bondage: Everybody in! Everybody out! Wealth Bondage: Everybody in! Everybody out!:

We are no longer fascinated with the Sideshow run by the media and the think tanks. We are less and less interested in who wins the next election, because we have seen that Candidia wins either way. Attention is an alternative curency and we would rather invest ours elsewhere. Carnival is coming and we are practicing jumping in and out of the Dumpster as Clowns jump in and out of their little car in the Circus. Where we are going our antics will not be considered funny at first, so accustomed are the multitude to another kind of farce, but that is the reason we had better keep it light. Nothing is sadder than a Clown who breaks role under pressure. When the crowd sees the point of the jests, Candidia, our Ringmaster, may run for the exit. That too is part of the show.

  ¶ 12:33 PM 2 Comments Links to this post

  Stanislaw I. Witkiewicz Stanislaw I. Witkiewicz:
The personality of Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (1885-1939), also known as Witkacy, goes beyond the confines of philosophy to embrace a whole series of creative activities that make him a unique figure in Polish and European culture between the two World Wars. Dramatist, poet, novelist, painter, photographer, art theorist (from 1919 onwards he was one of the most representative members of the poetic and artistic avant-garde in Poland, together with Witold Gombrowicz and Bruno Schulz, and a supporter of Formalism), and last but not least an acute and eccentric philosopher: this multitude of interests sums up a restless spirit who is difficult to classify in the usual categories. Of all his activities, he certainly considered philosophy as occupying a central place. But the philosophical thought which incessantly accompanied all Witkiewicz’s activities was mostly unknown to his contemporaries except as mediated by his art.

Witkiewicz was a radical critic of bourgeois society and the kind of social existence generated by capitalism, which he feared would lead to the complete dehumanisation of social life and a growing totalitarianism, with the consequent annihilation of the individual personality. Paradoxical and ironic debunker of bourgeois morality; harsh critic of the overwhelming mass society he saw as irreversibly invading both West and East not only in the hypocritical guise of a democratic system but also behind the banners of the proletariat; tragically aware of the progressive abandonment of authentic values linked to the individual, creative personality of man in favour of the spread in social life of values based on happiness, utility and material satisfaction, his philosophy of history led to a catastrophic diagnosis of contemporary reality: the welfare towards which society tends and to which even the "working classes" aspire leads them to forget the mystery of existence (a concept he placed at the centre of his "monadology"), to extinguish the metaphysical sentiment that springs from it and hence to the demise of religion and art, which have their foundation in it. It also marks the end of philosophy, its suicide: this is the negative result of his diagnosis of the growing mechanisation of life, the crisis of the individual in contemporary society, increasingly threatened by the advance of uniformity and democratic homologation, the greatest embodiment of which was for him Socialism. And rather than live in a society moulded by Socialism, as an authentic nihilist Witkiewicz preferred suicide  ¶ 5:05 AM 1 Comments Links to this post

  Jan Lukasiewicz Jan Lukasiewicz:
Jan Lukasiewicz is known all over the world as the founder of the first non-classical logical calculus, the so-called trivalent or polivalent logic, and as one of the most prominent and significative logicians of this century. But he was also very active in historical research on logic, giving a new and up-to-date interpretation of Aristotle's syllogism and of the Stoics' propositional calculus. His activity is strictly connected to the school founded by Kazimierz Twardowski, whose first pupil he was in Lvov . Maybe less known, but very significant, was his philosophical reflection about science and the role that creativity plays in the invention of theories, regarding which he followed an anti-inductive attitude in many aspects similar to Popper's conceptions  ¶ 5:02 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Kombinat! randezvous at K Street K! Street Kombinat! is. On K! Street let's have a tryst.
Randezvous today at noon,
bring your macaroon and don't look like a goon.
Sing a happy tune.
There's work to do, Kombinat! Voo Doo to do.

Admire Amerikan bravados of K! Street aficionados. Ole!  ¶ 8:57 AM 0 Comments Links to this post