Source:
http://news.advocate.com/post/15571734525/gayest-cities-in-america-2012
15. Denver
Denver is simultaneously outdoorsy and a rapidly growing metropolis, and its attitude is exceptionally laid-back and gay-friendly. (Screw the antigay zealots in nearby Colorado Springs.) A day spent skiing, fishing, hunting, or camping with the fit locals can lead to an evening dining, clubbing, or camping of another sort. Much of the sporting and social scene is devoted to the ladies of Denver; witness the Capitol Hill neighborhood, girl-watching at There Urban Whiskey Bar (ThereDenver.com), a nosh at Racine’s (RacinesRestaurant.com), and dancing at Charlie’s (CharliesDenver.com).
14. Long Beach, Calif.
How gay is Long Beach? Its pride celebration is one of the country’s biggest, and the Long Beach Pride float seems to make its way to every other Pride event within 500 miles! There are a ton of gay and lesbian bars, restaurants, a big boat suitably named the Queen Mary (QueenMary.com; it’s also haunted, and a hotel). The sunny, welcoming city provides a more relaxed alternative to nearby Los Angeles.
13. Austin
No amount of backwoodsiness from previous and current statehouse residents George W. Bush or Rick Perry can taint the cosmopolitan, countercultural, and friendly nature of this capital city. Bands, barhopping, and barbecue feature prominently here, for queers and others. The lesbian-owned Hotel San José (SanJoseHotel.com) is a minimalist oasis; no fewer than 16 bars offer libations for LGBTs; and Splash Days (au naturel sunbathing and parties over Labor Day), the Austin City Limits Music Festival (late September), and March’s South by Southwest (SXSW) film and music festival keep Austin suitably weird — and gay.
12. Portland, Ore.
Bisexual Sleater-Kinney alum Carrie Brownstein has fun on Portlandia (“Put a bird on it!”) playing with the rep of the city’s hipster, hyper-locavore, hyper-literate, boycott-ready, feminist, fleece-clad denizens. But there’s other fun to be had here too. Visit the arty Pearl and Alberta districts; stay at the Ace Hotel; read at the country’s largest indie bookstore, Powell’s; drink at the Silverado (SilveradoPDX.com) and Red Cap Garage/Boxxes (Boxxes.com); tune in to Out Loud (KBOO.fm/OutLoud), and party at Crush (CrushBar.com), popular with men and women. Oh, then there’s all that nature stuff!
11. Little Rock, Ark.
The River Market District is the main gay area, and many businesses that don’t advertise as specifically LGBT are friendly and open. The compact city has Backstreet (1021 Jessie Rd.) and U.B.U. (TheAquarium.bizland.com) for the over-18 crowd, and those of legal drinking age can check out SixTen Center Street Bar, TraX, Miss Kitty’s/Saloon (all three at TraxNLR.com). But not all LGBT life happens in a bar: According to GayChurch.org, nine of the city’s churches advertise as LGBT-friendly. Amen!
10. Grand Rapids, Mich.
The heart of western Michigan LGBT life is in Grand Rapids, with dancing, drinking, and bingo at the Apartment (ApartmentLounge.net), which has been in operation for over three decades; karaoke at Diversions video bar (DiversionsNightclub.com), and drag shows and go-go boys at Rumors (RumorsNightclub.net). The city boasts one of the Midwest’s best LGBT country line-dancing scenes, with the Grand River Renegades (GrandRiverRenegades.com) offering anyone a dance card on Sundays at Rumors.
9. Atlanta
We won’t fault you for trying to forget Real Housewife Kim Zolciak’s dip into the lesbian pool — but don’t blame Atlanta if everyone there wants to sample the fun LGBTs have all over town. Lesbian businesses thrive in East Atlanta, and gay clubs go off in Mechanicsville. People coming to Atlanta like to party, and the GayTL delivers with Black Gay Pride in September and Atlanta Pride in October, and the black gay clubs’ second-busiest weekend of the year surrounds the observance of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday in January. Holla!
8. Knoxville, Tenn.
The state’s legislature has been an unmitigated disaster for our rights, making a law to prevent cities from adopting LGBT-inclusive antidiscrimination ordinances (although, happily, the ridiculous “don’t say ‘gay’” bill is dead for now). Nevertheless, Knoxville has defiantly produced a robust gay scene, including the University of Tennessee’s Commission for LGBT People; a welcoming spot for queer, trans, and other marginalized teens at Spectrum Café (SpectrumCafe.org); gay-affirming churches; and thriving nightlife.
7. St. Paul and Minneapolis
It’s technically two cities, but oh, what fun there is to be had here. The region is a draw for upper Midwestern LGBTs, and Minneapolis topped this list in 2011 for so many reasons. These two cities can’t get enough of each other: There’s the Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus (TCGMC.org), Twin Cities Pride (the 40th annual is June 23-24), and even Quorum: The Twin Cities GLBT and Allied Business Community. Sheesh, just get domestic-partnered already!
6. Ann Arbor, Mich.
You don’t have to be big to have it going on, as this sixth largest city in Michigan does. The area has one of the few clubs in Michigan catering to dykes: Stiletto’s (technically in nearby Inkster) draws in every lesbian in Detroit. But talk about a taste for drama! Just ask U. of M.’s first out student body prez, Chris Armstrong, the target of a smear campaign by nutso assistant attorney general Andrew Shirvell. We raised a glass at Aut Bar (AutBar.com) when the kook got the boot.
5. Seattle
When Forbes named Seattle the most miserable sports city in the nation, many of us felt a twinge of empathy. No matter; there’s heaps of other stuff to keep us busy, including tons of locavore and cosmopolitan cuisine, funky bars in a robust LGBT scene, Dan Savage, and hookups — or at least the search for them. TheStir.com noted that Seattle ranks among the top cities for residents who list “casual sex” as the type of relationship they’re seeking.
4. Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Booting spring breakers from its shores may have not boosted Jagermeister sales, but it sure has classed up the joint. Add to that a mass exodus from Miami, where a real estate boom priced out many gay clubs (then the boom busted), and you have the recipe for a rising homo mecca in South Florida. The area is teeming with gay bars and restaurants, and a ton of guesthouses and spas that run the gamut from mild to spicy. Lesbians are finally starting to move to Fort Lauderdale too, though most girl bars, like New Moon (NewMoonBar.com), are in nearby Wilton Manors.
3. Cambridge, Mass.
The home of Harvard University likes a smarty-pants, including the nation’s first African-American lesbian mayor, E. Denise Simmons. Though her reign ended in 2009, she is currently in her sixth term on the City Council, which enacted antidiscrimination protections for transgender people in 1997. The town’s Paradise bar (ParadiseCambridge.com) is billed as New England’s only gay club with hot male dancers six nights a week — hey, everyone needs a night off — and the town is right next to a little hamlet named Boston, where allegedly LGBT stuff sometimes happens too.
2. Orlando, Fla.
Besides hosting Gay Days at Disney World, where 50,000 LGBT folks and their kids dressed in red T-shirts invade the theme park the first Saturday in June (and spend $100 million in town), Orlando has more gay softball teams than you can shake a Louisville Slugger at. And residents just got domestic-partnership protections. For non-Mickeyphiles, there’s oodles of homo content each year at the annual Orlando International Fringe Theater Festival (OrlandoFringe.org).
1. Salt Lake City
While those unfamiliar with the Beehive State are likely to conjure images of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, far-less-oppressive-than-it-used-to-be Salt Lake City has earned its queer cred. There are more than a half-dozen hot spots for men and women, including the eco-friendly nightclub Jam (JamSLC.com), though the sustainable bamboo flooring is perhaps less of a draw than the packed dance floor. The Coffee Garden (878 South 900 East) is a gathering spot for those looking for a caffeine fix, the Sundance Film Festival brings LGBT film buffs to screenings downtown, and lesbian-owned Meditrina (MeditrinaSLC.com) is a true wine bar — yes, you can get a drink in this town.
Showing posts with label Los Angeles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Los Angeles. Show all posts
Monday, January 30, 2012
Friday, January 6, 2012
Kool Website: Mr. Brainwash
http://www.mrbrainwash.com/
Mr. Brainwash is the moniker of Los Angeles-based filmmaker and Pop artist Thierry Guetta. He has spent the better part of the last decade attempting to make the ultimate street art documentary. Meanwhile, inspired by his subjects, he started hitting the streets, from Los Angeles to Paris, with spray painted stencils and posters of his pop art inspired images.
He rapidly emerged as a renowned figure on the international street art scene. In June 2008, Mr. Brainwash made his art show debut with one of Los Angeles's most memorable solo exhibitions; Life is Beautiful, held at the historic CBS Studios on Sunset Boulevard. In addition to his widely recognized images, Life is Beautiful featured larger than life installations which included a 20-foot robot made of old televisions, a life-size recreation of Edward Hopper's Nighthawks and a pyramid made from 20,000 books. Originally scheduled to open for only two weeks, the exhibit was extended for three months, attracting more than 30,000 visitors.
Mr. Brainwash's work continued to garner recognition from art collectors and street-art enthusiasts alike. By 2009, Madonna approached him to design the cover of her greatest hits compilation entitled, Celebration. In addition to the CD album, Mr. Brainwash created 15 different covers for the accompanying vinyls, singles and DVD releases.
On February 14th 2010, Mr. Brainwash made his New York solo debut as he unveiled Icons, a 15,000 square-foot exhibition in the heart of Manhattan's Meatpacking District. The show featured paintings and silk screens of world icons, portraits of music legends constructed of broken records and large-scale sculptural installations such as a giant boom box and a NYC cab in a life-sized Matchbox packaging. The sold-out show was extended until early May 2010. Not only were major collectors acquiring Mr Brainwash's works but also prestigious auction houses including Christie's and Phillips.
Due to its overwhelming success, the show was extended until the end of September 2010 under the name ICONS REMIX. It featured the addition of 20 large-scale paintings using mixed media and sculptures made out of recycled tires, notably a life sized horse.
Considered as one of the most prolific and talked about artists of today, Mr. Brainwash is also the subject of Banksy's documentary "Exit Through The Gift Shop", which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2010. Using Guetta's street art footage, Banksy eventually turned the camera on the only man who ever filmed him. The collaboration resulted in a remarkable documentary that is part personal journey and part an exposé of the art world with its mind-altering mix of hot air and hype.
Mr. Brainwash ended 2010 with a bang by taking Miami Art Basel, the most important art fair in the US, by storm. Within 10 days, without any announcement or promotion, he turned a 25,000-square foot empty retail space in the heart of South Beach into another art spectacle entitled "Under Construction". Surrounded by cut-out Storm Troopers, and featuring a monster made out of traffic cones, the art show created an energy and excitement at the art festival and soon became the obligatory stop for collectors and art lovers during Art Basel. The show mixed the ever-evolving urban environment with Mr. Brainwash's trademark positive message and playful spirit. Show highlights include a giant 40 ft x 12 ft mixed media mural on canvas and the AmeriCAN flag made out of 1400 empty spray cans. After 4 days and thousand of visitors, Mr. Brainwash packed up Under Construction and left Miami almost as quickly as he arrived, in what some might call a successful art hit-and-run.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
The other Kennedy conspiracy
The assassination of Robert Kennedy never received the scrutiny it deserves
Lisa Pease
Monday, Nov 21, 2011
http://www.salon.com/2011/11/21/the_other_kennedy_conspiracy
Each November, the media recalls the assassination of President Kennedy and its attendant controversies. Rarely, however, is a second Kennedy anniversary acknowledged. On Nov. 20, 2011, Robert Kennedy — JFK’s brother and devoted political partner — would have turned 86 years old had he not also been assassinated. Although the mainstream media has been all but silent on this case, the facts scream out for a deeper investigation.
The story of Robert Kennedy’s assassination seems deceptively simple. After winning the California Democratic presidential primary on June 4, 1968, Sen. Robert Kennedy traversed a pantry at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. A young Palestinian Christian named Sirhan Sirhan pulled a gun and fired. Kennedy died roughly 25 hours later. Five others were wounded. Sirhan was tried and convicted. End of story, right?
Not so fast. A crime is like a jigsaw puzzle. You can’t solve the puzzle by forcing a piece where it doesn’t belong. The theory that Sirhan killed Kennedy is an ill-fitting piece not supported by the physical evidence. Here are some facts that are not in dispute.
Fact: The medical evidence showed that Kennedy was shot four times from behind from a distance of 1 to 6 inches. The fatal shot entered Kennedy from 1 inch behind Kennedy’s right ear.
Fact: All witnesses placed Sirhan in front of Kennedy. Not one witness put Sirhan’s gun muzzle closer than a foot to Kennedy, and most witnesses placed the muzzle about 3 feet away.
Based on these two facts alone, Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi wrote in his memoir, “Thus I have never said that Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert Kennedy.”
Fact: Seven bullets were recovered from six pantry victims. Another bullet was lost in the ceiling space. Sirhan’s gun could only hold eight bullets. But an FBI agent photographed four additional “bullet holes” in the pantry. This so worried Los Angeles County officials that, nine years later, they asked the FBI essentially for a retraction, noting that if those were, in fact, “bullet holes,” as the bureau unequivocally stated, “We should certainly find out who else was firing.”
In recent years, an audiotape recorded by Stanislaw Pruszynski, a Polish reporter covering the 1968 presidential campaign for Canadian newspapers, resurfaced that supported the FBI’s finding. Sound engineer Philip Van Praag used sophisticated equipment to analyze the tape and found at least 12 shot sounds on the tape. He also found that two pairs of shots came too close together to have been fired from a single gun.
The evidence clearly points to at least two shooters that night in the Ambassador pantry. In addition to the physical evidence, multiple witnesses spotted other men with drawn guns in the pantry.
Fact: Richard Lubic, a televison producer, was standing behind Kennedy during the shooting. Lubic saw an arm to his right with a gun but could not see who was holding the gun. After Kennedy fell, Lubic knelt to help Kennedy and saw a security guard, Thane Eugene Cesar, with his gun drawn and pointing toward the floor. The Los Angeles Police Department later put enormous pressure on Lubic to change his story. Lubic was visited at home by LAPD investigators, who told him, “Don’t bring this up, don’t be talking about this.”
Fact: Donald Schulman, a young runner for a local TV station, claimed he saw security guard Cesar fire his gun. Schulman also told the LAPD he saw three guns in the pantry. (Some authors have mistakenly suggested Schulman wasn’t in the pantry, but LAPD records confirm that he was.)
Fact: Sandy Serrano, a Kennedy campaign volunteer, told NBC News reporter Sander Vanocur on live TV about seeing a young woman in a polka dot dress and a male companion who had passed her on a fire escape. The woman in the polka dot dress said, “We shot him, we shot him!” Serrano asked whom they shot. The woman said, “Senator Kennedy,” and ran off. A witness in the pantry, Vincent DiPierro, told the LAPD about a woman in a white dress with dark polka dots who seemed to be “holding” Sirhan just before the shooting.
Fact: The police were so interested in this “girl in the polka dot dress” that they issued an APB for her and specifically asked nearly all the witnesses interviewed whether they had seen anyone fitting her description. But when the story started to gain traction in the press, the LAPD declared that a blond girl on crutches in a bright green dress with yellow lemons dotting it was “the girl in the polka dot dress” and closed the book on this subject.
A new novel called “The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress” conjures an imaginary history for this illusory character. It’s a shame the novelist didn’t review the actual record, as the LAPD files suggest an even more provocative back story, which has not yet appeared in print, but will, when I finish the nonfiction book I’m writing about this case.
If one accepts the existing evidence, at least two people were firing bullets. And if two people were shooting, not only was there a conspiracy, it was such a sophisticated one that it has eluded prosecution for over 40 years.
The piece that has never fit has been Sirhan himself. Why did he never identify his co-conspirators? In addition, Sirhan has always claimed he had no memory of this crime. He had no idea why he shot Kennedy, nor did he remember writing in a notebook, over and over, “RFK must die.”
Could Sirhan have been hypnotized? I know how crazy this sounds to people who haven’t studied the history of mind control. It sounds like the stuff of Hollywood fiction. (On the other hand, where do you think Hollywood gets those stories? William Bryan, a renowned hypnotist who consulted on the making of the film “The Manchurian Candidate,” called a radio show shortly after Kennedy was shot to suggest Sirhan had been hypnotically programmed.)
Several witnesses, including some of the Los Angeles police officers who interacted with Sirhan immediately after the shooting, commented on Sirhan’s preternatural calmness before, during and after the shooting. LAPD officer Randolph Adair said in later years, “The guy was real confused. It was like it didn’t exactly hit him what he had done. He had a black, glassed-over look on his face — like he wasn’t in complete control of his mind at the time.”
Both Sirhan’s defense team and the prosecution tried and failed to get Sirhan to recall shooting Kennedy under hypnosis. Both, however, presumed his guilt and tried to get him to “admit” it while in a trance, which Sirhan never did.
Sirhan’s current attorney, William Pepper, recently had an expert hypnotize Sirhan in an open-ended fashion, during which Sirhan finally recalled that the touch of a girl in the pantry sent Sirhan into a mode where he thought he was firing at a target on a range. Could the girl in a polka dot dress DiPierro saw “holding” Sirhan moments before the shooting began have triggered his act?
On Channel 4 in the U.K. last month, hypnotist Derren Brown tested this scenario on his TV show “The Experiments.” He took a highly hypnotizable subject and, over a two-month period, trained him to shoot and “kill” a celebrity. The subject, however, did not know this was the experiment’s goal. Brown gave his subject a two-part trigger that would send him into a hypnotic state: a polka dot pattern and a unique cellphone ring tone. When he saw this pattern and heard the tone, the young man was taught to touch his head to focus his concentration, and then fire a gun at a target on a range. But his final test occurred not at a range, but at a taping of British entertainer Stephen Fry’s show. As the subject watched the show from a back row, a hidden camera showed a girl in a polka dot dress enter and sit in front of the subject. The cellphone rang. The girl turned to the subject and whispered, “The target is Stephen Fry.” The subject hesitated a moment, then touched his forehead, opened the case, pulled out a gun loaded with blanks, stood, and fired. Stephen Fry, who was wired with squibs (the exploding fake blood packets used in movies to simulate gunshots), fell down “dead.” The hypnotized man showed no reaction at the time. When shown a video of his act later, the subject seemed genuinely surprised at what he had done.
If Sirhan was hypnotized, is there any chance he could be “innocent” of the crime, as his current lawyers are pleading? While I’m not aware of any American precedent to such a claim, there was a similar case in Denmark in the 1950s. Palle Hadrup, who had committed a murder, was charged only with temporary insanity because the jury believed he had killed under the hypnotic influence of another man, a hardened criminal who directed Hadrup to commit crimes.
Robert Kennedy had many enemies, but which of them were capable of such a sophisticated plot? Could the mob have hypnotized Sirhan? Could Aristotle Onassis have suppressed the FBI’s evidence of conspiracy? Could Jimmy Hoffa have made sure that no troubling facts about the case were ever presented to a jury? Who had that kind of power?
The CIA had strong relationships with the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office, and L.A. county officials. The CIA had enormous influence over the media, including national coverage of both Kennedy assassinations, as Carl Bernstein’s explosive October 1977 expose in Rolling Stone magazine later demonstrated. Even powerful FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover had never been able to rein in the CIA. If anyone had the power to pull this off and completely cover their tracks, it would be a small handful of people from the covert side of the agency.
Perhaps most significantly, the CIA was, by 1968, extremely experienced in various mind-control scenarios that involved drugs, hypnosis and a combination of the two. One of the CIA’s initial forays into this area came through a project code-named ARTICHOKE. One ARTICHOKE document presents the question: “Can an individual … be made to perform an act of attempted assassination involuntarily under the influence of ARTICHOKE?” This program later evolved into the MKULTRA program, an umbrella designation for hundreds of experiments that involved drugs, hypnosis and biological and chemical warfare.
But why would the CIA want to kill Robert Kennedy? Weren’t they in bed together on the Castro assassination plots when RFK was serving as his brother’s gung-ho attorney general? That’s a widely believed myth. The 1967 CIA Inspector General report on the anti-Castro plots explicitly asks, “Can CIA state or imply that it was merely an instrument of policy?” and answers, “Not in this case,” explaining that while RFK was informed of plots against Castro from the past, he was not informed of the plots that were continuing.
During his brother’s administration, Robert was a constant thorn in the CIA’s side. After the agency’s disastrous Bay of Pigs operation in April 1961, President Kennedy asked his brother to closely monitor the CIA, which infuriated the operatives who had for years prided themselves on their independence from authority. After RFK was elected to the Senate from New York in 1964 and became a growing critic of the war in Vietnam and the Johnson administration, the CIA began to keep a close watch on him.
Fact: The CIA was so concerned about Robert Kennedy in the last year of his life that it put spying on him on a par with spying on the Soviet Union, according to a report in the Washington Post after it obtained this data.
Perhaps the CIA was also anxious about RFK because, as David Talbot (the founder and current CEO of Salon) recounted in his 2007 book, “Brothers,” Robert Kennedy harbored suspicions about the CIA’s possible complicity in his brother’s death. One of Robert’s first calls after JFK’s assassination was to the CIA to ask if the agency had killed his brother. If members of the CIA were involved in the death of JFK, could they afford to let Robert ascend to an office where he’d have the power but to do something about that?
I’m well aware that extraordinary claims deserve extraordinary evidence. I have much more to support what I’ve said here, which I am laying out in book form. I hope only to have cracked your mind open, because Occam’s Razor fails us when the simplest explanation is the carefully planned cover story.
Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney John Howard once said of Sirhan, “If he isn’t guilty, it’s the sweetest frame in the world.” I think Howard got that right. He isn’t. And it is.
Lisa Pease is an expert on the assassinations of the '60s in general and the Robert Kennedy assassination in particular. She has appeared on numerous radio shows and on the Discovery channel to talk about various aspects of Cold War history. Several of her articles were published in "The Assassinations" (Los Angeles: Feral House, 2003), a book she also co-edited. She is a regular contributor to ConsortiumNews.com, Common Dreams, Truthout and Michael Moore’s site.
Lisa Pease
Monday, Nov 21, 2011
http://www.salon.com/2011/11/21/the_other_kennedy_conspiracy
Each November, the media recalls the assassination of President Kennedy and its attendant controversies. Rarely, however, is a second Kennedy anniversary acknowledged. On Nov. 20, 2011, Robert Kennedy — JFK’s brother and devoted political partner — would have turned 86 years old had he not also been assassinated. Although the mainstream media has been all but silent on this case, the facts scream out for a deeper investigation.
The story of Robert Kennedy’s assassination seems deceptively simple. After winning the California Democratic presidential primary on June 4, 1968, Sen. Robert Kennedy traversed a pantry at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. A young Palestinian Christian named Sirhan Sirhan pulled a gun and fired. Kennedy died roughly 25 hours later. Five others were wounded. Sirhan was tried and convicted. End of story, right?
Not so fast. A crime is like a jigsaw puzzle. You can’t solve the puzzle by forcing a piece where it doesn’t belong. The theory that Sirhan killed Kennedy is an ill-fitting piece not supported by the physical evidence. Here are some facts that are not in dispute.
Fact: The medical evidence showed that Kennedy was shot four times from behind from a distance of 1 to 6 inches. The fatal shot entered Kennedy from 1 inch behind Kennedy’s right ear.
Fact: All witnesses placed Sirhan in front of Kennedy. Not one witness put Sirhan’s gun muzzle closer than a foot to Kennedy, and most witnesses placed the muzzle about 3 feet away.
Based on these two facts alone, Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi wrote in his memoir, “Thus I have never said that Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert Kennedy.”
Fact: Seven bullets were recovered from six pantry victims. Another bullet was lost in the ceiling space. Sirhan’s gun could only hold eight bullets. But an FBI agent photographed four additional “bullet holes” in the pantry. This so worried Los Angeles County officials that, nine years later, they asked the FBI essentially for a retraction, noting that if those were, in fact, “bullet holes,” as the bureau unequivocally stated, “We should certainly find out who else was firing.”
In recent years, an audiotape recorded by Stanislaw Pruszynski, a Polish reporter covering the 1968 presidential campaign for Canadian newspapers, resurfaced that supported the FBI’s finding. Sound engineer Philip Van Praag used sophisticated equipment to analyze the tape and found at least 12 shot sounds on the tape. He also found that two pairs of shots came too close together to have been fired from a single gun.
The evidence clearly points to at least two shooters that night in the Ambassador pantry. In addition to the physical evidence, multiple witnesses spotted other men with drawn guns in the pantry.
Fact: Richard Lubic, a televison producer, was standing behind Kennedy during the shooting. Lubic saw an arm to his right with a gun but could not see who was holding the gun. After Kennedy fell, Lubic knelt to help Kennedy and saw a security guard, Thane Eugene Cesar, with his gun drawn and pointing toward the floor. The Los Angeles Police Department later put enormous pressure on Lubic to change his story. Lubic was visited at home by LAPD investigators, who told him, “Don’t bring this up, don’t be talking about this.”
Fact: Donald Schulman, a young runner for a local TV station, claimed he saw security guard Cesar fire his gun. Schulman also told the LAPD he saw three guns in the pantry. (Some authors have mistakenly suggested Schulman wasn’t in the pantry, but LAPD records confirm that he was.)
Fact: Sandy Serrano, a Kennedy campaign volunteer, told NBC News reporter Sander Vanocur on live TV about seeing a young woman in a polka dot dress and a male companion who had passed her on a fire escape. The woman in the polka dot dress said, “We shot him, we shot him!” Serrano asked whom they shot. The woman said, “Senator Kennedy,” and ran off. A witness in the pantry, Vincent DiPierro, told the LAPD about a woman in a white dress with dark polka dots who seemed to be “holding” Sirhan just before the shooting.
Fact: The police were so interested in this “girl in the polka dot dress” that they issued an APB for her and specifically asked nearly all the witnesses interviewed whether they had seen anyone fitting her description. But when the story started to gain traction in the press, the LAPD declared that a blond girl on crutches in a bright green dress with yellow lemons dotting it was “the girl in the polka dot dress” and closed the book on this subject.
A new novel called “The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress” conjures an imaginary history for this illusory character. It’s a shame the novelist didn’t review the actual record, as the LAPD files suggest an even more provocative back story, which has not yet appeared in print, but will, when I finish the nonfiction book I’m writing about this case.
If one accepts the existing evidence, at least two people were firing bullets. And if two people were shooting, not only was there a conspiracy, it was such a sophisticated one that it has eluded prosecution for over 40 years.
The piece that has never fit has been Sirhan himself. Why did he never identify his co-conspirators? In addition, Sirhan has always claimed he had no memory of this crime. He had no idea why he shot Kennedy, nor did he remember writing in a notebook, over and over, “RFK must die.”
Could Sirhan have been hypnotized? I know how crazy this sounds to people who haven’t studied the history of mind control. It sounds like the stuff of Hollywood fiction. (On the other hand, where do you think Hollywood gets those stories? William Bryan, a renowned hypnotist who consulted on the making of the film “The Manchurian Candidate,” called a radio show shortly after Kennedy was shot to suggest Sirhan had been hypnotically programmed.)
Several witnesses, including some of the Los Angeles police officers who interacted with Sirhan immediately after the shooting, commented on Sirhan’s preternatural calmness before, during and after the shooting. LAPD officer Randolph Adair said in later years, “The guy was real confused. It was like it didn’t exactly hit him what he had done. He had a black, glassed-over look on his face — like he wasn’t in complete control of his mind at the time.”
Both Sirhan’s defense team and the prosecution tried and failed to get Sirhan to recall shooting Kennedy under hypnosis. Both, however, presumed his guilt and tried to get him to “admit” it while in a trance, which Sirhan never did.
Sirhan’s current attorney, William Pepper, recently had an expert hypnotize Sirhan in an open-ended fashion, during which Sirhan finally recalled that the touch of a girl in the pantry sent Sirhan into a mode where he thought he was firing at a target on a range. Could the girl in a polka dot dress DiPierro saw “holding” Sirhan moments before the shooting began have triggered his act?
On Channel 4 in the U.K. last month, hypnotist Derren Brown tested this scenario on his TV show “The Experiments.” He took a highly hypnotizable subject and, over a two-month period, trained him to shoot and “kill” a celebrity. The subject, however, did not know this was the experiment’s goal. Brown gave his subject a two-part trigger that would send him into a hypnotic state: a polka dot pattern and a unique cellphone ring tone. When he saw this pattern and heard the tone, the young man was taught to touch his head to focus his concentration, and then fire a gun at a target on a range. But his final test occurred not at a range, but at a taping of British entertainer Stephen Fry’s show. As the subject watched the show from a back row, a hidden camera showed a girl in a polka dot dress enter and sit in front of the subject. The cellphone rang. The girl turned to the subject and whispered, “The target is Stephen Fry.” The subject hesitated a moment, then touched his forehead, opened the case, pulled out a gun loaded with blanks, stood, and fired. Stephen Fry, who was wired with squibs (the exploding fake blood packets used in movies to simulate gunshots), fell down “dead.” The hypnotized man showed no reaction at the time. When shown a video of his act later, the subject seemed genuinely surprised at what he had done.
If Sirhan was hypnotized, is there any chance he could be “innocent” of the crime, as his current lawyers are pleading? While I’m not aware of any American precedent to such a claim, there was a similar case in Denmark in the 1950s. Palle Hadrup, who had committed a murder, was charged only with temporary insanity because the jury believed he had killed under the hypnotic influence of another man, a hardened criminal who directed Hadrup to commit crimes.
Robert Kennedy had many enemies, but which of them were capable of such a sophisticated plot? Could the mob have hypnotized Sirhan? Could Aristotle Onassis have suppressed the FBI’s evidence of conspiracy? Could Jimmy Hoffa have made sure that no troubling facts about the case were ever presented to a jury? Who had that kind of power?
The CIA had strong relationships with the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office, and L.A. county officials. The CIA had enormous influence over the media, including national coverage of both Kennedy assassinations, as Carl Bernstein’s explosive October 1977 expose in Rolling Stone magazine later demonstrated. Even powerful FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover had never been able to rein in the CIA. If anyone had the power to pull this off and completely cover their tracks, it would be a small handful of people from the covert side of the agency.
Perhaps most significantly, the CIA was, by 1968, extremely experienced in various mind-control scenarios that involved drugs, hypnosis and a combination of the two. One of the CIA’s initial forays into this area came through a project code-named ARTICHOKE. One ARTICHOKE document presents the question: “Can an individual … be made to perform an act of attempted assassination involuntarily under the influence of ARTICHOKE?” This program later evolved into the MKULTRA program, an umbrella designation for hundreds of experiments that involved drugs, hypnosis and biological and chemical warfare.
But why would the CIA want to kill Robert Kennedy? Weren’t they in bed together on the Castro assassination plots when RFK was serving as his brother’s gung-ho attorney general? That’s a widely believed myth. The 1967 CIA Inspector General report on the anti-Castro plots explicitly asks, “Can CIA state or imply that it was merely an instrument of policy?” and answers, “Not in this case,” explaining that while RFK was informed of plots against Castro from the past, he was not informed of the plots that were continuing.
During his brother’s administration, Robert was a constant thorn in the CIA’s side. After the agency’s disastrous Bay of Pigs operation in April 1961, President Kennedy asked his brother to closely monitor the CIA, which infuriated the operatives who had for years prided themselves on their independence from authority. After RFK was elected to the Senate from New York in 1964 and became a growing critic of the war in Vietnam and the Johnson administration, the CIA began to keep a close watch on him.
Fact: The CIA was so concerned about Robert Kennedy in the last year of his life that it put spying on him on a par with spying on the Soviet Union, according to a report in the Washington Post after it obtained this data.
Perhaps the CIA was also anxious about RFK because, as David Talbot (the founder and current CEO of Salon) recounted in his 2007 book, “Brothers,” Robert Kennedy harbored suspicions about the CIA’s possible complicity in his brother’s death. One of Robert’s first calls after JFK’s assassination was to the CIA to ask if the agency had killed his brother. If members of the CIA were involved in the death of JFK, could they afford to let Robert ascend to an office where he’d have the power but to do something about that?
I’m well aware that extraordinary claims deserve extraordinary evidence. I have much more to support what I’ve said here, which I am laying out in book form. I hope only to have cracked your mind open, because Occam’s Razor fails us when the simplest explanation is the carefully planned cover story.
Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney John Howard once said of Sirhan, “If he isn’t guilty, it’s the sweetest frame in the world.” I think Howard got that right. He isn’t. And it is.
Lisa Pease is an expert on the assassinations of the '60s in general and the Robert Kennedy assassination in particular. She has appeared on numerous radio shows and on the Discovery channel to talk about various aspects of Cold War history. Several of her articles were published in "The Assassinations" (Los Angeles: Feral House, 2003), a book she also co-edited. She is a regular contributor to ConsortiumNews.com, Common Dreams, Truthout and Michael Moore’s site.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Los Angeles is enjoying a hot dog renaissance
It's boom time for hot dogs in L.A. Pink's and Tommy's are going strong, with newcomers Dog Haus, Federal Bar, Slaw Dogs, Coney Dog and Papaya King raising the stakes. Jessica Gelt, Los Angeles Times
November 10, 2011
http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-1110-hot-dog-town-20111110,0,431105.story
"Mickey, make me a combo, will ya?" yells Coney Dog owner Mike Binder at a grill cook from his table midway across his bustling West Hollywood restaurant. Then he flashes a broad grin. "I've been waiting my whole life to have a restaurant, just so I could do that."
The combo soon comes out. It's a deluxe Coney dog nestled inside a Detroit loose burger (which is crumbled ground beef as opposed to a patty) in a freshly steamed bun, smothered with chili.
"That's the Rolls-Royce of hot dogs, right there," says Binder, who is better known as a comedian and director but whose passion for Detroit-style dogs has consumed him for the last year.
He's not alone. Los Angeles is in the midst of a hot dog renaissance, with a cluster of recent openings signaling a hunger for that most sentimental of meals: tender tubular meat in a bun covered with toppings, or naked except for mustard.
Like the burger before it, and in tandem with the current German sausage craze, the hot dog has gone gourmet, with restaurants taking it seriously enough to dream up all kinds of wild combinations. In addition to the tried-and-true, like Pink's and Tommy's dogs, diners can now nosh on the Sooo Cali at Dog Haus in Pasadena, which waters mouths with mixed greens, chopped tomatoes, tempura-fried onions, house-made spicy basil aioli and avocados; or the Vegan Weena, on the new hot dog menu at North Hollywood's Federal Bar, which is a meatless dog topped with chipotle, avocado, cilantro cream and tropical fruit salsa. Then there's the Picnic Dog at Pasadena's Slaw Dogs, which tops a humble grilled dog with barbecue sauce, onion, potato salad and a crisp pickle spear.
The purists also have a seat at the beefy banquet, with places like Coney Dog, Papaya King and Hollywood's Township Kitchen Americana & Saloon paying reverent homage to Detroit, New York and Chicago-style dogs. The first two go so far as to ship in all their ingredients from Detroit and New York in order to replicate their favored dogs as closely as possible. Binder even had a bun steamer custom-made in Detroit that steams the buns from all directions so that they become as soft as marshmallows and just as mild in flavor.
The raison d'être for the recent boom, say wiener enthusiasts, is twofold, and butterflied in the same bun: economics and tradition. The recession is making diners search for value without losing flavor (see the recent food truck boom), while at the same time causing them to go gooey for the traditions of their simpler youth, which, if you were raised in America, were likely wrapped up in hot dogs at some point or another. And Los Angeles, according to the National Hot Dog & Sausage Council, is the country's No. 1 consumer of hot dogs, beating out New York City and San Antonio/Corpus Christi.
"In this economy, people want to go back to their roots and have fun," says Andre Vener, who opened Dog Haus a year ago with partners Hagop Giragossian and Quasim Riaz. The original 55-seat restaurant was such a success (seating 600 to 800 people a day) that they just opened a second location, the Dog Haus Biergarten in Old Town Pasadena, which, in addition to beer, features handcrafted cocktails and an '80s party theme. Soon they plan to open a third location in Alhambra.
At Dog Haus, as with most hot dog places, you can get a hot dog, fries or tater tots and a classic soda for less than $10. And you'll leave full. The juicy all-beef dogs come in thick, buttery-sweet King's Hawaiian rolls and are smothered with ingredients. Sauces zigzag in fat lines across the top of most, and melty cheese and onions are plentiful.
"It's not hard to sell anybody on hot dogs or hamburgers," says Giragossian. "They've got that street-food-fun vibe."
Plus kids love them, so families are as common a sight during the day and early evening as clubgoers are in the wee hours of the sodden night, says Matt Erickson, vice president of restaurant operations for SBE hospitality, which opened L.A.'s first branch of New York legend Papaya King in Hollywood and plans to open more in Los Angeles and Nevada, Arizona and Miami.
"Families will drive here from across town, park outside and relax with their tailgates down," Erickson says. The Hollywood location has no seating, which is why Drew Barrymore was spotted one night munching a Papaya King dog while sitting on a curb.
Papaya King, which first opened in New York City in 1932, is known for its slender, all-natural dogs that come in skin casings that give a satisfying snap when you bite into them. The dogs are cooked on top of a foil-covered grill, which is said to enhance the snap. The bright red-and-yellow restaurant also serves as the tongue-in-cheek secret entrance to a ritzy invite-only music venue and bar, called Sayers Club, where such artists as Prince and Perry Farrell hop onstage for impromptu performances, a situation that adds sparkle to the stand's after-hours feeding frenzy. (Papaya King sells more than 600 hot dogs a day.)
Because it's in the middle of Sunset Strip, Coney Dog also feeds long lines of hungry glitterati late at night. Binder, who opened the business with friends and fellow Detroiters Tim Allen and Sam Raimi, uses his Facebook page to advertise specials, sometimes giving coupons for a free hot dog. His Coney dogs are 80% beef, 20% pork and have a little milk in them, but nothing else.
The Coney Island dog of Binder's youth offered two choices: a hot dog with chili or a loose burger. Binder thought he might do the same thing until he realized that such a scheme wouldn't fly in wildly diverse Los Angeles.
"Todd Phillips, the director of 'The Hangover,' came in and said, 'I love your food, but why can't I get sauerkraut?'" says Binder, who resisted at first but now offers all manner of variations, including a classic bacon-wrapped L.A. dog with jalapeños.
"Hot dogs and hamburgers are all about what you did in your childhood," he says, adding that he hopes to make Coney Dog a tradition for a new generation of L.A. youth.
The same goes for the trio of men behind Dog Haus. Since the first restaurant opened, Vener and Riaz's wives have had babies, and Giragossian has married.
"This place is filled with families and kids and babies and strollers," says Vener. "Every kid that comes in here gets a free Otter Pop."
Giragossian laughs as Vener's wife appears on the biergarten patio with Vener's tiny new daughter. "We need to get Dog Haus onesies."
November 10, 2011
http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-1110-hot-dog-town-20111110,0,431105.story
"Mickey, make me a combo, will ya?" yells Coney Dog owner Mike Binder at a grill cook from his table midway across his bustling West Hollywood restaurant. Then he flashes a broad grin. "I've been waiting my whole life to have a restaurant, just so I could do that."
The combo soon comes out. It's a deluxe Coney dog nestled inside a Detroit loose burger (which is crumbled ground beef as opposed to a patty) in a freshly steamed bun, smothered with chili.
"That's the Rolls-Royce of hot dogs, right there," says Binder, who is better known as a comedian and director but whose passion for Detroit-style dogs has consumed him for the last year.
He's not alone. Los Angeles is in the midst of a hot dog renaissance, with a cluster of recent openings signaling a hunger for that most sentimental of meals: tender tubular meat in a bun covered with toppings, or naked except for mustard.
Like the burger before it, and in tandem with the current German sausage craze, the hot dog has gone gourmet, with restaurants taking it seriously enough to dream up all kinds of wild combinations. In addition to the tried-and-true, like Pink's and Tommy's dogs, diners can now nosh on the Sooo Cali at Dog Haus in Pasadena, which waters mouths with mixed greens, chopped tomatoes, tempura-fried onions, house-made spicy basil aioli and avocados; or the Vegan Weena, on the new hot dog menu at North Hollywood's Federal Bar, which is a meatless dog topped with chipotle, avocado, cilantro cream and tropical fruit salsa. Then there's the Picnic Dog at Pasadena's Slaw Dogs, which tops a humble grilled dog with barbecue sauce, onion, potato salad and a crisp pickle spear.
The purists also have a seat at the beefy banquet, with places like Coney Dog, Papaya King and Hollywood's Township Kitchen Americana & Saloon paying reverent homage to Detroit, New York and Chicago-style dogs. The first two go so far as to ship in all their ingredients from Detroit and New York in order to replicate their favored dogs as closely as possible. Binder even had a bun steamer custom-made in Detroit that steams the buns from all directions so that they become as soft as marshmallows and just as mild in flavor.
The raison d'être for the recent boom, say wiener enthusiasts, is twofold, and butterflied in the same bun: economics and tradition. The recession is making diners search for value without losing flavor (see the recent food truck boom), while at the same time causing them to go gooey for the traditions of their simpler youth, which, if you were raised in America, were likely wrapped up in hot dogs at some point or another. And Los Angeles, according to the National Hot Dog & Sausage Council, is the country's No. 1 consumer of hot dogs, beating out New York City and San Antonio/Corpus Christi.
"In this economy, people want to go back to their roots and have fun," says Andre Vener, who opened Dog Haus a year ago with partners Hagop Giragossian and Quasim Riaz. The original 55-seat restaurant was such a success (seating 600 to 800 people a day) that they just opened a second location, the Dog Haus Biergarten in Old Town Pasadena, which, in addition to beer, features handcrafted cocktails and an '80s party theme. Soon they plan to open a third location in Alhambra.
At Dog Haus, as with most hot dog places, you can get a hot dog, fries or tater tots and a classic soda for less than $10. And you'll leave full. The juicy all-beef dogs come in thick, buttery-sweet King's Hawaiian rolls and are smothered with ingredients. Sauces zigzag in fat lines across the top of most, and melty cheese and onions are plentiful.
"It's not hard to sell anybody on hot dogs or hamburgers," says Giragossian. "They've got that street-food-fun vibe."
Plus kids love them, so families are as common a sight during the day and early evening as clubgoers are in the wee hours of the sodden night, says Matt Erickson, vice president of restaurant operations for SBE hospitality, which opened L.A.'s first branch of New York legend Papaya King in Hollywood and plans to open more in Los Angeles and Nevada, Arizona and Miami.
"Families will drive here from across town, park outside and relax with their tailgates down," Erickson says. The Hollywood location has no seating, which is why Drew Barrymore was spotted one night munching a Papaya King dog while sitting on a curb.
Papaya King, which first opened in New York City in 1932, is known for its slender, all-natural dogs that come in skin casings that give a satisfying snap when you bite into them. The dogs are cooked on top of a foil-covered grill, which is said to enhance the snap. The bright red-and-yellow restaurant also serves as the tongue-in-cheek secret entrance to a ritzy invite-only music venue and bar, called Sayers Club, where such artists as Prince and Perry Farrell hop onstage for impromptu performances, a situation that adds sparkle to the stand's after-hours feeding frenzy. (Papaya King sells more than 600 hot dogs a day.)
Because it's in the middle of Sunset Strip, Coney Dog also feeds long lines of hungry glitterati late at night. Binder, who opened the business with friends and fellow Detroiters Tim Allen and Sam Raimi, uses his Facebook page to advertise specials, sometimes giving coupons for a free hot dog. His Coney dogs are 80% beef, 20% pork and have a little milk in them, but nothing else.
The Coney Island dog of Binder's youth offered two choices: a hot dog with chili or a loose burger. Binder thought he might do the same thing until he realized that such a scheme wouldn't fly in wildly diverse Los Angeles.
"Todd Phillips, the director of 'The Hangover,' came in and said, 'I love your food, but why can't I get sauerkraut?'" says Binder, who resisted at first but now offers all manner of variations, including a classic bacon-wrapped L.A. dog with jalapeños.
"Hot dogs and hamburgers are all about what you did in your childhood," he says, adding that he hopes to make Coney Dog a tradition for a new generation of L.A. youth.
The same goes for the trio of men behind Dog Haus. Since the first restaurant opened, Vener and Riaz's wives have had babies, and Giragossian has married.
"This place is filled with families and kids and babies and strollers," says Vener. "Every kid that comes in here gets a free Otter Pop."
Giragossian laughs as Vener's wife appears on the biergarten patio with Vener's tiny new daughter. "We need to get Dog Haus onesies."
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Alien Abduction Experiment
Michael Raduga
OOBE Research Center
October 25, 2011
http://research.obe4u.com/ufo-experiment
It has long been theorized that encounters with extraterrestrials are nearly always the result of spontaneous out-of-body experience. The OOBE Research Center has proven this by means of an experiment. FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER!
The experiment was developed and conducted by Michael Raduga, founder and head of the OOBE Research Center. Place and time of the experiment: October 7-9, 2011; UCLA Covel Commons, Los Angeles, California, USA.
Aim of the Experiment
Test the theory that most “encounters” with UFOs or extraterrestrials arise from hyper-realistic experiences when in subwaking states of consciousness, and out-of-body experiences or lucid dreams in particular. Method for collecting evidence: induce controllable contact with UFOs or “extraterrestrial beings” using techniques for achieving out-of-body experiences.
Test Subjects
20 volunteers were recruited from both the general population and those who have had experience in out-of-body travel or lucid dreaming. Preference was given to those who fall asleep quickly and enjoy sound sleep. Male/female ratio: 70/30 (%).
Methods
The method of cycling indirect techniques developed by the OOBE Research Center over 2007-2011 was employed in order for test subjects to achieve an out-of-body experience within the shortest frame of time. The method consists in attempting to separate from the body immediately upon awakening. If unsuccessful, the subject then alternates special techniques for 3 to 5 seconds over the course of a minute. If some technique begins to yield results, then the subject should keep with it, intensify the sensations, and once again try to separate from the body. The method is described in detail in the book School of Out-of-Body Travel. A Practical Guidebook (free).
After exiting the body, subjects were instructed to find “extraterrestrials” or UFOs in their room, in neighboring rooms, beyond the window, or outside.
Outcome
The majority of subjects underwent at least one full or partial out-of-body experience, while some experienced several. Subjects who became conscious while dreaming were instructed to transform the “lucid dream” into an out-of-body experience by returning to the physical body in order to separate from it.
Visual contact with UFOs or “extraterrestrials”: 10 cases for 7 volunteers (35%)
(Some other volunteers were close to achieve the same result, but were unable due to overwhelming fear in the right moment)
The fact that UFOs and extraterrestrials may be deliberately encountered in a controlled manner and within a few days proves that such experiences are a product of the human brain. It was the first experiment to ever prove that close encounters with UFOs and extraterrestrials are a product of the human mind. The experiment also demonstrated that alien contact is not indicative of the existence of otherworldly civilizations, but rather of a poorly studied state of consciousness that people occasionally fall into inadvertently (the Phase).
Comparison of ET Encounter Descriptions
The experiment results differ from typical cases of “alien abduction” only in that here, both entrance into the necessary state and contact were intentional. The resultant range sensations and experiences was identical in all other aspects: sleep paralysis, fear, vibrations, flight, etc.
Alexander N.
After getting myself ready and going to sleep, I woke up and made an attempt – and it worked!
I got up from my body in my own room. However, my physical body was no longer to be found in my bed. I tried to employ “deepening” and scrutinized everything around. I lost my bearing and everything naturally became somewhat awkward.
Not wanting to waste any more time, I tried to find aliens. Three of them materialized right before my eyes. They seemed more like creatures from the movie “The Thing” than tadpoles with eyes like Princess Jasmine. They wanted to scare me, not to “make contact”. As a result, I was extremely frightened and regained awareness in my own body.
Craig P.
I took a nap from 10:40 am to 11:20 am. I tried to fall asleep so I could practice upon awakening. I was having difficulties in falling asleep so I thought nothing was going to happen. After awhile I must have fallen asleep as I noticed a floating type of sensation. I then decided to separate however I felt like nothing was happening. Then I noticed I was looking down at some drinking glasses that are on the top shelf. I realized I was out of the body.
Things were not very clear so I tried to start looking at objects and feeling them. I told myself to go see aliens. The next scene I was near a mountain in a clearing with trees around it. There was a space ship. There were two aliens with helmets on. They also had a type of robot with them. It was about 7 ft tall and was silver in color. The aliens did not appear to be friendly. When the alarm went off I felt like I was 100 miles away and it was difficult to come back to the physical body.
The following week, I fell asleep again, but became aware of my body being asleep.
I decided to separate from my body in the first five seconds. I felt my inner body leave and go to the corner of my room near the ceiling.
I decided to look for aliens. I found myself in the same place as the week before in a forest clearing. There was a flying saucer in the clearing. Two aliens were near the flying saucer. The next thing I remember was lying on the grass near the flying saucer and that there were people that looked like children in a circle around me. They were circling around me. The circling motion caused me to leave my body. I was then flying though the sky and over mountains.
Eugenie S.
After 6 hours my alarm went off; I did something for 15 minutes and went back to sleep. Upon awakening I didn’t move. I aggressively performed the visualizing the hands technique and immediately found myself standing in my bedroom. I realized I was in the phase (an out-of-body experience).
I went to the hallway and looked at myself in the mirror. I was dark and the shape of my face was slightly distorted. I didn’t concentrate on this, and looked at the wall.
There was a creature the size of a human head, it looked like a huge weird insect and was doing nothing but changing colors constantly. Then I thought, “How will I be able to return back to my body?” and immediately woke up in my body.
Sasha M.
On Saturday October the 8th, I went to bed at 10:45pm and set my alarm clock for 7am. I spontaneously woke up in the middle of the night, presumably at around 4am. Upon waking up I felt intense heat in my body, and used that sensation to try to separate from it. I was immediately successful. I then sat up in bed, stood up, and turned around to watch myself lying there.
Realizing that I had separated from my body, I left my bedroom and went to the window, beyond which was an unusual sight. As I observed the scene, I gradually began to see aliens lurking in the bushes or going about some business. There were at least three different kinds of them, all of which I was familiar with beforehand from movies. They all looked extremely realistic and I was able to see everything in fine detail. After some time, I feel back asleep.
Half an hour after that separation experience, I was able to make another successful attempt. However, this time I didn’t feel any heat or anything unusual. After separating, I left my room and went through the hall to the balcony and back again. As soon as I stopped and pondered what I was doing there, I feel back asleep.
Michael R.
I awoke in the middle of the night and recalled that I needed to try to leave my body and see aliens. Mortal terror suddenly arose within me. I was now in the fetters of sleep paralysis, with high-frequency vibrations coursing through my body and a loud hissing sound filling my ears. I began having second thoughts about going through with the experiment, but was then able to force myself to attempt separation from my body. After that was unsuccessful, I began employing the technique of rotation. Despite the feeling of terror, I was able to spin around and then sit up in bed.
At that moment, I already somehow felt that THEY were in my room. I made myself open my eyes and I saw a typical-looking extraterrestrial at the other end of my bed: it had a huge head with large eyes, a small body with thin arms, and dark-green skin. Meanwhile, everything was even more realistic in terms of sensation than in my normal waking state. Once I understood that there was no turning back, the fear fell away. Moreover, I understood that there was nothing to be afraid of – there was no danger at all.
The creature turned out to be good-natured. After greeting one another, a white screen appeared in front of my eyes, suspended in the air. Some important information was flickering across it, but it was encoded and I couldn’t understand it. I began to peer into the screen, and my awareness gradually faded out, after which I don’t remember anything else.
Lydia M.
I get up in the middle of the night and walk around. Everything is misty, and I see in the corner a large object that looks like a person with a large head and a huge hunch-back. It is hardly moving, yet present. Then I wake up, shocked back into my body.
Tatyana K.
I woke up a bit disappointed because it was time to get ready for our second session and none of the techniques worked. I was in my LA hotel room. I went to the shower and noticed that the water drops on the shower walls were dark in color. I decided to stop showering and then when I was back in the room, getting ready, everything felt so real that I don’t even know why I decided to check if it was the phase (out-of-body experience).
Imagine it yourself: yesterday you went to bed, then you woke up this morning, showered, got ready, did this, did that and then decided to check if it was the phase – and it turned out that IT IS (!)
So I decided just for the heck of it to test if it might be the phase by “breathing with the nose pinched” technique and of course it did not work at first, because I had been doing it with the “how can it be the phase, everything is so real” thought. But I kept trying and after a third attempt air got out from somewhere behind my ears and I happily confirmed for myself that I was totally in the phase.
I felt very happy. I started rising in the air and flew in a couple of circles under the ceiling. Then, I felt the need to deepen and I really focused on that. I looked a few times at my palms. Then I started touching everything in the room. Since perception was back to 100%, it was time to go look for aliens. They were not in the room. I looked outside of the hotel window. Aliens were not there either. So I decided to get into the corridor, I opened the door, it was really dark inside, even the light from the room could not penetrate it. I thought, aliens must be there, so I stepped into the darkness… At least 3 tiny hands touched my shoulder… I totally freaked and woke up…
Validity of Results
Over its extensive didactic and analytical experience, the OOBE Research Center has developed indicators and procedures for distinguishing real out-of-body experiences from fabrication and fantasy. No dubious responses were included in the statistics, and the probability of a subject fabricating or exaggerating an account is estimated at less than 10 percent. This experiment’s data is thus vastly more reliable than that of typical alien encounter “eyewitness accounts” that never undergo verification.
OOBE Research Center
October 25, 2011
http://research.obe4u.com/ufo-experiment
It has long been theorized that encounters with extraterrestrials are nearly always the result of spontaneous out-of-body experience. The OOBE Research Center has proven this by means of an experiment. FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER!
The experiment was developed and conducted by Michael Raduga, founder and head of the OOBE Research Center. Place and time of the experiment: October 7-9, 2011; UCLA Covel Commons, Los Angeles, California, USA.
Aim of the Experiment
Test the theory that most “encounters” with UFOs or extraterrestrials arise from hyper-realistic experiences when in subwaking states of consciousness, and out-of-body experiences or lucid dreams in particular. Method for collecting evidence: induce controllable contact with UFOs or “extraterrestrial beings” using techniques for achieving out-of-body experiences.
Test Subjects
20 volunteers were recruited from both the general population and those who have had experience in out-of-body travel or lucid dreaming. Preference was given to those who fall asleep quickly and enjoy sound sleep. Male/female ratio: 70/30 (%).
Methods
The method of cycling indirect techniques developed by the OOBE Research Center over 2007-2011 was employed in order for test subjects to achieve an out-of-body experience within the shortest frame of time. The method consists in attempting to separate from the body immediately upon awakening. If unsuccessful, the subject then alternates special techniques for 3 to 5 seconds over the course of a minute. If some technique begins to yield results, then the subject should keep with it, intensify the sensations, and once again try to separate from the body. The method is described in detail in the book School of Out-of-Body Travel. A Practical Guidebook (free).
After exiting the body, subjects were instructed to find “extraterrestrials” or UFOs in their room, in neighboring rooms, beyond the window, or outside.
Outcome
The majority of subjects underwent at least one full or partial out-of-body experience, while some experienced several. Subjects who became conscious while dreaming were instructed to transform the “lucid dream” into an out-of-body experience by returning to the physical body in order to separate from it.
Visual contact with UFOs or “extraterrestrials”: 10 cases for 7 volunteers (35%)
(Some other volunteers were close to achieve the same result, but were unable due to overwhelming fear in the right moment)
The fact that UFOs and extraterrestrials may be deliberately encountered in a controlled manner and within a few days proves that such experiences are a product of the human brain. It was the first experiment to ever prove that close encounters with UFOs and extraterrestrials are a product of the human mind. The experiment also demonstrated that alien contact is not indicative of the existence of otherworldly civilizations, but rather of a poorly studied state of consciousness that people occasionally fall into inadvertently (the Phase).
Comparison of ET Encounter Descriptions
The experiment results differ from typical cases of “alien abduction” only in that here, both entrance into the necessary state and contact were intentional. The resultant range sensations and experiences was identical in all other aspects: sleep paralysis, fear, vibrations, flight, etc.
Alexander N.
After getting myself ready and going to sleep, I woke up and made an attempt – and it worked!
I got up from my body in my own room. However, my physical body was no longer to be found in my bed. I tried to employ “deepening” and scrutinized everything around. I lost my bearing and everything naturally became somewhat awkward.
Not wanting to waste any more time, I tried to find aliens. Three of them materialized right before my eyes. They seemed more like creatures from the movie “The Thing” than tadpoles with eyes like Princess Jasmine. They wanted to scare me, not to “make contact”. As a result, I was extremely frightened and regained awareness in my own body.
Craig P.
I took a nap from 10:40 am to 11:20 am. I tried to fall asleep so I could practice upon awakening. I was having difficulties in falling asleep so I thought nothing was going to happen. After awhile I must have fallen asleep as I noticed a floating type of sensation. I then decided to separate however I felt like nothing was happening. Then I noticed I was looking down at some drinking glasses that are on the top shelf. I realized I was out of the body.
Things were not very clear so I tried to start looking at objects and feeling them. I told myself to go see aliens. The next scene I was near a mountain in a clearing with trees around it. There was a space ship. There were two aliens with helmets on. They also had a type of robot with them. It was about 7 ft tall and was silver in color. The aliens did not appear to be friendly. When the alarm went off I felt like I was 100 miles away and it was difficult to come back to the physical body.
The following week, I fell asleep again, but became aware of my body being asleep.
I decided to separate from my body in the first five seconds. I felt my inner body leave and go to the corner of my room near the ceiling.
I decided to look for aliens. I found myself in the same place as the week before in a forest clearing. There was a flying saucer in the clearing. Two aliens were near the flying saucer. The next thing I remember was lying on the grass near the flying saucer and that there were people that looked like children in a circle around me. They were circling around me. The circling motion caused me to leave my body. I was then flying though the sky and over mountains.
Eugenie S.
After 6 hours my alarm went off; I did something for 15 minutes and went back to sleep. Upon awakening I didn’t move. I aggressively performed the visualizing the hands technique and immediately found myself standing in my bedroom. I realized I was in the phase (an out-of-body experience).
I went to the hallway and looked at myself in the mirror. I was dark and the shape of my face was slightly distorted. I didn’t concentrate on this, and looked at the wall.
There was a creature the size of a human head, it looked like a huge weird insect and was doing nothing but changing colors constantly. Then I thought, “How will I be able to return back to my body?” and immediately woke up in my body.
Sasha M.
On Saturday October the 8th, I went to bed at 10:45pm and set my alarm clock for 7am. I spontaneously woke up in the middle of the night, presumably at around 4am. Upon waking up I felt intense heat in my body, and used that sensation to try to separate from it. I was immediately successful. I then sat up in bed, stood up, and turned around to watch myself lying there.
Realizing that I had separated from my body, I left my bedroom and went to the window, beyond which was an unusual sight. As I observed the scene, I gradually began to see aliens lurking in the bushes or going about some business. There were at least three different kinds of them, all of which I was familiar with beforehand from movies. They all looked extremely realistic and I was able to see everything in fine detail. After some time, I feel back asleep.
Half an hour after that separation experience, I was able to make another successful attempt. However, this time I didn’t feel any heat or anything unusual. After separating, I left my room and went through the hall to the balcony and back again. As soon as I stopped and pondered what I was doing there, I feel back asleep.
Michael R.
I awoke in the middle of the night and recalled that I needed to try to leave my body and see aliens. Mortal terror suddenly arose within me. I was now in the fetters of sleep paralysis, with high-frequency vibrations coursing through my body and a loud hissing sound filling my ears. I began having second thoughts about going through with the experiment, but was then able to force myself to attempt separation from my body. After that was unsuccessful, I began employing the technique of rotation. Despite the feeling of terror, I was able to spin around and then sit up in bed.
At that moment, I already somehow felt that THEY were in my room. I made myself open my eyes and I saw a typical-looking extraterrestrial at the other end of my bed: it had a huge head with large eyes, a small body with thin arms, and dark-green skin. Meanwhile, everything was even more realistic in terms of sensation than in my normal waking state. Once I understood that there was no turning back, the fear fell away. Moreover, I understood that there was nothing to be afraid of – there was no danger at all.
The creature turned out to be good-natured. After greeting one another, a white screen appeared in front of my eyes, suspended in the air. Some important information was flickering across it, but it was encoded and I couldn’t understand it. I began to peer into the screen, and my awareness gradually faded out, after which I don’t remember anything else.
Lydia M.
I get up in the middle of the night and walk around. Everything is misty, and I see in the corner a large object that looks like a person with a large head and a huge hunch-back. It is hardly moving, yet present. Then I wake up, shocked back into my body.
Tatyana K.
I woke up a bit disappointed because it was time to get ready for our second session and none of the techniques worked. I was in my LA hotel room. I went to the shower and noticed that the water drops on the shower walls were dark in color. I decided to stop showering and then when I was back in the room, getting ready, everything felt so real that I don’t even know why I decided to check if it was the phase (out-of-body experience).
Imagine it yourself: yesterday you went to bed, then you woke up this morning, showered, got ready, did this, did that and then decided to check if it was the phase – and it turned out that IT IS (!)
So I decided just for the heck of it to test if it might be the phase by “breathing with the nose pinched” technique and of course it did not work at first, because I had been doing it with the “how can it be the phase, everything is so real” thought. But I kept trying and after a third attempt air got out from somewhere behind my ears and I happily confirmed for myself that I was totally in the phase.
I felt very happy. I started rising in the air and flew in a couple of circles under the ceiling. Then, I felt the need to deepen and I really focused on that. I looked a few times at my palms. Then I started touching everything in the room. Since perception was back to 100%, it was time to go look for aliens. They were not in the room. I looked outside of the hotel window. Aliens were not there either. So I decided to get into the corridor, I opened the door, it was really dark inside, even the light from the room could not penetrate it. I thought, aliens must be there, so I stepped into the darkness… At least 3 tiny hands touched my shoulder… I totally freaked and woke up…
Validity of Results
Over its extensive didactic and analytical experience, the OOBE Research Center has developed indicators and procedures for distinguishing real out-of-body experiences from fabrication and fantasy. No dubious responses were included in the statistics, and the probability of a subject fabricating or exaggerating an account is estimated at less than 10 percent. This experiment’s data is thus vastly more reliable than that of typical alien encounter “eyewitness accounts” that never undergo verification.
Mass Alien Abduction Experiment in Los Angeles
Many were contacted by “aliens” during an experiment conducted by the OOBE Research Center at UCLA. It was the first experiment to ever prove that close encounters with UFOs and extraterrestrials are a product of the human mind. October 26, 2011
http://www.prweb.com/releases/alien/UFO/prweb8910454.htm
Many were contacted by “aliens” during an experiment conducted by the OOBE Research Center at UCLA. It was the first experiment to ever prove that close encounters with UFOs and extraterrestrials are a product of the human mind.
20 volunteers assembled at UCLA on October 7th, 2011. They were instructed to perform a specific procedure upon overnight and early-morning awakenings over the next few days. More than half of the volunteers experienced at least one full or partial out-of-body experience as a result. 7 of them reported making visual contact with UFOs or extraterrestrials. Meanwhile, the sensations they described were identical to those of accounts by “alien abduction survivors”. By some estimates, up to one million Americans experience such encounters every year.
According to the researchers, the term “out-of-body experience” is used to refer to the sensation of having left the body, and not a real exit of some essence from the physical body - although this is just the impression often had by test subjects.
The fact that UFOs and extraterrestrials may be deliberately encountered in a controlled manner and within a few days proves that such experiences are a product of the human brain. Experiment author Michael Raduga explained, "We tried to right a common misconception with this experiment - the issue at hand isn't extraterrestrials, but hidden human abilities. If you've encountered UFOs or aliens after sitting or lying down, it can now be unequivocally stated that you've had a spontaneous out-of-body experience. We have proven this."
It has long been theorized that encounters with extraterrestrials are nearly always the result of spontaneous out-of-body experience. However, scientific proof would have to wait until the discovery of methods for inducing the out-of-body state. In September 2007, the OOBE Research Center started to conduct hundreds of experiments on thousands of people in 5 countries. That work resulted in the development of a procedure allowing anyone to have an out-of-body experience within the first several attempts. This procedure in turn allowed for the OOBE theory of extraterrestrial encounters to be tested and proven correct. The experiment was led by Michael Raduga, founder and head of the OOBE Research Center, as well as the author of 10 published books, the best-known of which is School of Out-of-Body Travel. A Practical Guidebook, freely available online.
A full report: http://research.obe4u.com/ufo-experiment/
http://www.prweb.com/releases/alien/UFO/prweb8910454.htm
Many were contacted by “aliens” during an experiment conducted by the OOBE Research Center at UCLA. It was the first experiment to ever prove that close encounters with UFOs and extraterrestrials are a product of the human mind.
20 volunteers assembled at UCLA on October 7th, 2011. They were instructed to perform a specific procedure upon overnight and early-morning awakenings over the next few days. More than half of the volunteers experienced at least one full or partial out-of-body experience as a result. 7 of them reported making visual contact with UFOs or extraterrestrials. Meanwhile, the sensations they described were identical to those of accounts by “alien abduction survivors”. By some estimates, up to one million Americans experience such encounters every year.
According to the researchers, the term “out-of-body experience” is used to refer to the sensation of having left the body, and not a real exit of some essence from the physical body - although this is just the impression often had by test subjects.
The fact that UFOs and extraterrestrials may be deliberately encountered in a controlled manner and within a few days proves that such experiences are a product of the human brain. Experiment author Michael Raduga explained, "We tried to right a common misconception with this experiment - the issue at hand isn't extraterrestrials, but hidden human abilities. If you've encountered UFOs or aliens after sitting or lying down, it can now be unequivocally stated that you've had a spontaneous out-of-body experience. We have proven this."
It has long been theorized that encounters with extraterrestrials are nearly always the result of spontaneous out-of-body experience. However, scientific proof would have to wait until the discovery of methods for inducing the out-of-body state. In September 2007, the OOBE Research Center started to conduct hundreds of experiments on thousands of people in 5 countries. That work resulted in the development of a procedure allowing anyone to have an out-of-body experience within the first several attempts. This procedure in turn allowed for the OOBE theory of extraterrestrial encounters to be tested and proven correct. The experiment was led by Michael Raduga, founder and head of the OOBE Research Center, as well as the author of 10 published books, the best-known of which is School of Out-of-Body Travel. A Practical Guidebook, freely available online.
A full report: http://research.obe4u.com/ufo-experiment/
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Economic doom in Las Vegas, SoCal & Camden
From TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com:
The following description of the decline of Las Vegas comes from a recent article in The Telegraph....
But Las Vegas’s days as a boom town are long gone. At 14 percent, unemployment is the highest in America (the national average is 9.1 per cent). House prices have fallen 58.1 per cent since their 2006 high – the biggest losses of anywhere in America, while according to the website RealtyTrac, which specialises in foreclosed properties, Las Vegas is the nation’s foreclosure capital. Some 70 per cent of homes in Las Vegas are thought to be 'under water’, or in negative equity, meaning their value is worth less than the amount owed on the mortgage, while foreclosure notices have been served on one in 16 properties. A survey last year by the local Las Vegas Review-Journal and Channel 8 News Now found that 34 per cent of locals would leave Las Vegas if they could find a job elsewhere, or if they weren’t underwater on their home loan.
Last year, I wrote a piece entitled "The Death of Las Vegas". Since then, things have gotten even worse for the city in many ways.
Today, there are hundreds of people living in the tunnels underneath the streets of Las Vegas. You can see CNN video of some of these people right here.
But at least the "tunnel people" have a "roof" over their heads.
Over in "Lost Angeles", homelessness is absolutely exploding and there are thousands of people living in the streets.
The following is from a recent article by Nick Allen....
In Skid Row, a grimy pocket of downtown Los Angeles, the prostrate forms of homeless people lie strewn across the pavements.
The lucky ones have tents for shelter but others make do with a sliver of cardboard for a bed and a supermarket trolley to carry their rags.
At the last police count 1,662 people live on these streets, twice as many as a year ago.
And now amid the drug addicts and the drunks there are families who not so long ago had homes and ordinary suburban lives.
Wait, wasn't the economy supposed to be getting better?
So why has the number of people living on Skid Row doubled over the past year?
Los Angeles, like much of California, is rapidly falling apart. Decades of very foolish policies have turned the "California Dream" into the "California Nightmare".
Unemployment is rampant, crime is seemingly everywhere and the gangs appear to be getting bolder by the day. For example, 21 machine guns were recently stolen right out of an LAPD training facility.
But there are cities in California that are in even worse shape than Los Angeles is. If you go east of Los Angeles about 100 miles, you will come to the city of San Bernardino. 34.6 percent of the residents of San Bernardino are currently living below the poverty line. Among major U.S. cities, only Detroit has a worse poverty rate.
Heading back to the east coast, the city of Camden, New Jersey is representative of the post-industrial hellholes that you will find all over the mid-Atlantic region and up into New England.
In an extraordinary article entitled "City of Ruins", Chris Hedges did an amazing job of documenting how bad things have gotten in Camden. Today it is estimated that the actual rate of unemployment in Camden is somewhere around 30 or 40 percent. For most young people in Camden, there are very few legitimate opportunities for a better life, so many of them have resorted to selling drugs or selling their bodies in a desperate attempt to survive.
The following is a brief excerpt from "City of Ruins"....
There are perhaps a hundred open-air drug markets, most run by gangs like the Bloods, the Latin Kings, Los Nietos and MS-13. Knots of young men in black leather jackets and baggy sweatshirts sell weed and crack to clients, many of whom drive in from the suburbs. The drug trade is one of the city's few thriving businesses. A weapon, police say, is never more than a few feet away, usually stashed behind a trash can, in the grass or on a porch.
The era of "American exceptionalism" is over. We have rejected the things that made us great. We have forsaken the truth and now we are paying the price.
At this point, we are rapidly becoming a joke to the rest of the world...
The New Reality For U.S. Cities: No Money For Street Lights, Roving Packs Of Wild Dogs And Open-Air Drug Markets
October 19, 2011
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-new-reality-for-u-s-cities-no-money-for-street-lights-roving-packs-of-wild-dogs-and-open-air-drug-markets
The following description of the decline of Las Vegas comes from a recent article in The Telegraph....
But Las Vegas’s days as a boom town are long gone. At 14 percent, unemployment is the highest in America (the national average is 9.1 per cent). House prices have fallen 58.1 per cent since their 2006 high – the biggest losses of anywhere in America, while according to the website RealtyTrac, which specialises in foreclosed properties, Las Vegas is the nation’s foreclosure capital. Some 70 per cent of homes in Las Vegas are thought to be 'under water’, or in negative equity, meaning their value is worth less than the amount owed on the mortgage, while foreclosure notices have been served on one in 16 properties. A survey last year by the local Las Vegas Review-Journal and Channel 8 News Now found that 34 per cent of locals would leave Las Vegas if they could find a job elsewhere, or if they weren’t underwater on their home loan.
Last year, I wrote a piece entitled "The Death of Las Vegas". Since then, things have gotten even worse for the city in many ways.
Today, there are hundreds of people living in the tunnels underneath the streets of Las Vegas. You can see CNN video of some of these people right here.
But at least the "tunnel people" have a "roof" over their heads.
Over in "Lost Angeles", homelessness is absolutely exploding and there are thousands of people living in the streets.
The following is from a recent article by Nick Allen....
In Skid Row, a grimy pocket of downtown Los Angeles, the prostrate forms of homeless people lie strewn across the pavements.
The lucky ones have tents for shelter but others make do with a sliver of cardboard for a bed and a supermarket trolley to carry their rags.
At the last police count 1,662 people live on these streets, twice as many as a year ago.
And now amid the drug addicts and the drunks there are families who not so long ago had homes and ordinary suburban lives.
Wait, wasn't the economy supposed to be getting better?
So why has the number of people living on Skid Row doubled over the past year?
Los Angeles, like much of California, is rapidly falling apart. Decades of very foolish policies have turned the "California Dream" into the "California Nightmare".
Unemployment is rampant, crime is seemingly everywhere and the gangs appear to be getting bolder by the day. For example, 21 machine guns were recently stolen right out of an LAPD training facility.
But there are cities in California that are in even worse shape than Los Angeles is. If you go east of Los Angeles about 100 miles, you will come to the city of San Bernardino. 34.6 percent of the residents of San Bernardino are currently living below the poverty line. Among major U.S. cities, only Detroit has a worse poverty rate.
Heading back to the east coast, the city of Camden, New Jersey is representative of the post-industrial hellholes that you will find all over the mid-Atlantic region and up into New England.
In an extraordinary article entitled "City of Ruins", Chris Hedges did an amazing job of documenting how bad things have gotten in Camden. Today it is estimated that the actual rate of unemployment in Camden is somewhere around 30 or 40 percent. For most young people in Camden, there are very few legitimate opportunities for a better life, so many of them have resorted to selling drugs or selling their bodies in a desperate attempt to survive.
The following is a brief excerpt from "City of Ruins"....
There are perhaps a hundred open-air drug markets, most run by gangs like the Bloods, the Latin Kings, Los Nietos and MS-13. Knots of young men in black leather jackets and baggy sweatshirts sell weed and crack to clients, many of whom drive in from the suburbs. The drug trade is one of the city's few thriving businesses. A weapon, police say, is never more than a few feet away, usually stashed behind a trash can, in the grass or on a porch.
The era of "American exceptionalism" is over. We have rejected the things that made us great. We have forsaken the truth and now we are paying the price.
At this point, we are rapidly becoming a joke to the rest of the world...
The New Reality For U.S. Cities: No Money For Street Lights, Roving Packs Of Wild Dogs And Open-Air Drug Markets
October 19, 2011
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-new-reality-for-u-s-cities-no-money-for-street-lights-roving-packs-of-wild-dogs-and-open-air-drug-markets
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Great American Garage Entrepreneurs
October 6, 2011
http://www.history.com/news/2011/10/06/great-american-garage-entrepreneurs
Setting up shop in a garage may sound like a cliché, but did you know that a number of thriving American businesses really got their start that way? One of the most famous examples is, of course, Apple Inc., founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs, who died Wednesday at age 56, and his friend Steve Wozniak. Find out about their brainchild and other major companies that trace their roots to humble birthplaces.
Apple Inc.
On April Fool’s Day in 1976, 21-year-old Steve Jobs and 25-year-old Steve Wozniak established Apple Computer, later known simply as Apple Inc. Pioneers in the burgeoning world of personal computers, the pair worked out of Jobs’ parents’ garage in Los Altos, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. Jobs, a college dropout, became one of the great innovators of the digital age, transforming not just his original field but also music, animation and mobile communications. He died at 56 on October 5, 2011, after a long struggle with cancer. Apple’s notable products include the Macintosh computer line, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, iTunes, the Mac OS X operating system and Final Cut Studio.
Hewlett-Packard
Considered the first American technology business to launch behind a garage door, Hewlett-Packard was founded in 1939 by Bill Hewlett and David Packard, who had scraped together an initial capital investment of $538. At the time, Packard and his new wife Lucile lived in an apartment next door and Hewlett camped out in a shed on the property, located in Palo Alto, California. After developing a range of electronic products, the company entered the computer market in 1966 and is now one of the world’s largest technology corporations. The one-car garage where it all began is a designated California historic landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Walt Disney Company
In 1923, the Missouri-born cartoonist Walt Disney moved to Los Angeles with his brother Roy to make short films that combined animation and live action. They spent several months producing their first series, the “Alice Comedies,” out of their uncle Robert’s garage before relocating to the back of a realty office and finally to a studio. Now the world’s largest media conglomerate, the Walt Disney Company became a leader in film, television, travel, leisure, music and publishing. In 2006, it acquired Pixar Studios from another veteran of a California garage: Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer. Robert Disney’s garage was saved from demolition in 1984 and donated to the Stanley Ranch Museum.
Mattel
When Ruth and Elliot Handler, who had met in an industrial design course, started making picture frames in their California garage, they probably never thought their venture—Mattel—would grow into the world’s biggest toy manufacturer. More or less by accident, they wound up crafting dollhouse furniture and later children’s playthings out of spare wood scraps. In the late 1950s, Ruth determined there was a market for dolls that looked like “grown-ups”; ignoring her husband’s objections, she designed a prototype and named it after their daughter, Barbie. (Ken, named for their son, followed soon after.) Mattel struck gold with the new line, and in 1968 Ruth became the company’s president.
Google
Long after Hewlett-Packard and Apple Computer made their unpretentious debuts, another technology powerhouse came screeching out of a Silicon Valley garage. After developing a groundbreaking search engine for a research project, Stanford University students Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google in a garage owned by Susan Wojcicki, a friend and future employee. The company, which has since branched out into numerous other areas, now runs the most visited websites on the Internet and boasts locations around the world. In 2006, Google bought Wojcicki’s house—and the garage where its vast empire began.
Yankee Candle Company
In 1969, 17-year-old Michael Kittredge of South Hadley, Massachusetts, couldn’t dig up enough cash to buy his mother a Christmas present. On a whim, he melted down some crayons in his parents’ garage and made her a scented candle. When neighbors began expressing interest, Kittredge, who needed a hobby since his rock band had just broken up, recruited some friends and began churning out candles. By the following year, the booming business had taken over the Kittredge home, so the young entrepreneurs moved into a dilapidated mill. Today, the Yankee Candle Company is the leading U.S. candle manufacturer, with hundreds of retail locations, international distribution and multiple product lines.
http://www.history.com/news/2011/10/06/great-american-garage-entrepreneurs
Setting up shop in a garage may sound like a cliché, but did you know that a number of thriving American businesses really got their start that way? One of the most famous examples is, of course, Apple Inc., founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs, who died Wednesday at age 56, and his friend Steve Wozniak. Find out about their brainchild and other major companies that trace their roots to humble birthplaces.
Apple Inc.
On April Fool’s Day in 1976, 21-year-old Steve Jobs and 25-year-old Steve Wozniak established Apple Computer, later known simply as Apple Inc. Pioneers in the burgeoning world of personal computers, the pair worked out of Jobs’ parents’ garage in Los Altos, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. Jobs, a college dropout, became one of the great innovators of the digital age, transforming not just his original field but also music, animation and mobile communications. He died at 56 on October 5, 2011, after a long struggle with cancer. Apple’s notable products include the Macintosh computer line, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, iTunes, the Mac OS X operating system and Final Cut Studio.
Hewlett-Packard
Considered the first American technology business to launch behind a garage door, Hewlett-Packard was founded in 1939 by Bill Hewlett and David Packard, who had scraped together an initial capital investment of $538. At the time, Packard and his new wife Lucile lived in an apartment next door and Hewlett camped out in a shed on the property, located in Palo Alto, California. After developing a range of electronic products, the company entered the computer market in 1966 and is now one of the world’s largest technology corporations. The one-car garage where it all began is a designated California historic landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Walt Disney Company
In 1923, the Missouri-born cartoonist Walt Disney moved to Los Angeles with his brother Roy to make short films that combined animation and live action. They spent several months producing their first series, the “Alice Comedies,” out of their uncle Robert’s garage before relocating to the back of a realty office and finally to a studio. Now the world’s largest media conglomerate, the Walt Disney Company became a leader in film, television, travel, leisure, music and publishing. In 2006, it acquired Pixar Studios from another veteran of a California garage: Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer. Robert Disney’s garage was saved from demolition in 1984 and donated to the Stanley Ranch Museum.
Mattel
When Ruth and Elliot Handler, who had met in an industrial design course, started making picture frames in their California garage, they probably never thought their venture—Mattel—would grow into the world’s biggest toy manufacturer. More or less by accident, they wound up crafting dollhouse furniture and later children’s playthings out of spare wood scraps. In the late 1950s, Ruth determined there was a market for dolls that looked like “grown-ups”; ignoring her husband’s objections, she designed a prototype and named it after their daughter, Barbie. (Ken, named for their son, followed soon after.) Mattel struck gold with the new line, and in 1968 Ruth became the company’s president.
Long after Hewlett-Packard and Apple Computer made their unpretentious debuts, another technology powerhouse came screeching out of a Silicon Valley garage. After developing a groundbreaking search engine for a research project, Stanford University students Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google in a garage owned by Susan Wojcicki, a friend and future employee. The company, which has since branched out into numerous other areas, now runs the most visited websites on the Internet and boasts locations around the world. In 2006, Google bought Wojcicki’s house—and the garage where its vast empire began.
Yankee Candle Company
In 1969, 17-year-old Michael Kittredge of South Hadley, Massachusetts, couldn’t dig up enough cash to buy his mother a Christmas present. On a whim, he melted down some crayons in his parents’ garage and made her a scented candle. When neighbors began expressing interest, Kittredge, who needed a hobby since his rock band had just broken up, recruited some friends and began churning out candles. By the following year, the booming business had taken over the Kittredge home, so the young entrepreneurs moved into a dilapidated mill. Today, the Yankee Candle Company is the leading U.S. candle manufacturer, with hundreds of retail locations, international distribution and multiple product lines.
Konformist Book Club: Faces of Sunset Boulevard
A Portrait of Los Angeles
Patrick Ecclesine
Amazon URL:
http://www.amazon.com/Faces-Sunset-Boulevard-Portrait-Angeles/dp/1595800409/thekonformist
List Price: $39.95
Price: $30.36 & this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping.
You Save: $9.59 (24%)
Winner of the 2009 Glenn Goldman Art & Architecture Book Award as presented by the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association
"The top photography book of 2008."
Shutterbug
"One of the 25 best holiday gift books"
New York Post
"Ecclesine's emphasis is on the people, not the street. And he's got an eye for a magazine-like, flattering beauty: Everyone glows."
Los Angeles Times
"This book should be a staple in every Angeleno's home because as the years pass, it will serve as a historical reference of Los Angeles at the turn of the century."
Firestarter Magazine
"A journey through Los Angeles in all its guises, states of mind, and urban terrains, a narrative in words and documentary photography format that is every bit as engaging as any novel . . . one of the strongest statements about man's dark fate in the West ever committed to paper."
PopMatters.com
Faces of Sunset Boulevard: A Portrait of Los Angeles is a collection of photographs of the people who live, work, play, and shape Los Angeles. Some are making fortunes along the route; others are just trying to survive to see another day. Patrick Ecclesine captures the city’s dreams, dreamers, and, at times, nightmares using the most famous boulevard in the world as the setting for his photographs.
The individuals featured range from the famous (Governor Schwarzenegger, Larry King, Fernando Valenzuela) to the unknown (a street vendor, an undocumented worker, a bus driver) to the unwanted (a homeless man, a single mother on welfare, a drug addict).
Other archetypal Angeleno figures—from a television weathergirl sensation to a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon to surfers in Pacific Palisades to the eccentric and outlandish denizens of the Sunset Strip—stand side by side in these pages, capturing the eclectic nature of the City of Angels and its most colorful thoroughfare, Sunset Boulevard.
Patrick Ecclesine is a commercial photographer whose images for DreamWorks, Fox, Warner Brothers, TNT, TBS, CNN, CBS, and CW have appeared in newspapers, magazines, and on billboards and bus benches around the world. He currently lives in his hometown, Hollywood, just around the corner from the street on which he was born—Sunset Boulevard.
Hardcover: 208 pages
Publisher: Santa Monica Press (December 1, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1595800409
ISBN-13: 978-1595800404
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