Jared Kushner and the Bilderbergers

From David Reid's 5-28-19 CNBC report entitled "Jared Kushner, Google's Schmidt and Microsoft's Nadella to Attend Secret Bilderberg Meeting":

Jared Kushner, senior advisor to President Donald Trump, is set to attend this year’s Bilderberg Meeting in the Swiss town of Montreux this week.

Founded in 1954, the Bilderberg Meeting was designed to foster warmer relations between the United States and Europe. The annual talk fest is considered secretive because guests are not allowed to reveal who said what at the meeting.

The Bilderberg guest list typically includes top politicians, business leaders, financiers, academics and influential members of the media. The event’s website said Tuesday that about 130 participants from 23 countries have confirmed their attendance this year.

Aside from Kushner, this year’s list of attendees features French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire, Credit-Suisse CEO Tidjane Thiam, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

Total CEO Patrick Pouyanne, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger are also confirmed.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

Harlan Ellison Reads "The City of the Singing Flame"

In honor of what would have been Harlan Ellison's 85th birthday, check out this 1986 recording of Harlan reading one of his favorite short stories, Clark Ashton Smith's "The City of the Singing Flame." Harlan read the story in several parts over the course of three episodes of Mike Hodel's Hour 25, a radio show dedicated to the science fiction genre that aired on KPFK in Los Angeles every Friday night from 1972 to 2000. The source of this recording is Will Hart, who briefly discusses both Clark Ashton Smith and Harlan Ellison on his CthulhuWho1's blog.

You can listen to Harlan reading "The City of the Singing Flame" by clicking right HERE.

You can also hear Harlan ruminating about Smith's tremendous influence on his writing in Darin Coelho Spring's excellent 2018 documentary CLARK ASHTON SMITH: THE EMPEROR OF DREAMS, the trailer for which can be seen directly below....

Clint Margrave on Charles Bukowski

Earlier today Quillette published Clint Margrave's latest article entitled "Bukowski: Recommended Reading for the Damned." Here's an excerpt:

It seems to me that some of Bukowski’s critics could use a drink. I dread a future in which our artists must meet the high moral standards of a David Orr and Ceri Radford. How boring the future of fiction or poetry will be when its value depends upon the rectitude and responsibility of its author. Or has it already come to that? Could a Bukowski be published today? Not likely. What goes missing then is the chance to glimpse the darker and messier side of life, which is still there no matter how many “sensitivity readers” try to edit it out, and no matter how many Twitter mobs try to suppress it.

What is perhaps even more alarming about these reviews is the insinuation that art is something to be feared because it can influence people to do bad things. How is it Bukowski’s fault that some people become alcoholics? That’s quite a responsibility for a man who couldn’t even control his own drinking. Not to mention the familiar assumption—such a common narrative of our day—that readers need to be protected by those who know better. When art is framed by fear and moral grandstanding, it always leads to censorship. Today, of course, it isn’t so much a religious concern about obscenity that drives censorship and informs taboos, but deviation from politically correct orthodoxies.

To read Margrave's entire article, click HERE.

MIT Scientists Can Beam Voices into Your Head

From Kristin Houser's 1-25-19 Futurism article entitled "MIT Used a Laser to Transmit Audio Directly into a Person's Ear":

Scientists have figured out how to use a laser to transmit audio, ranging from music to speech, to a person across a room without any receiver equipment — a potential breakthrough for the future of audio and communication.

“Our system can be used from some distance away to beam information directly to someone’s ear,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology research Charles M. Wynn said in a press release. “It is the first system that uses lasers that are fully safe for the eyes and skin to localize an audible signal to a particular person in any setting.”

In a paper published on Friday in the journal Optics Letters, the MIT team describes how it developed two different methods to transmit tones, music, and recorded speech via a laser.

Both techniques take advantage of something called the photoacoustic effect, which is the formation of sound waves as the result of a material absorbing light. In the case of the MIT research, that material was water vapor in the air.

To read Houser's entire article, click HERE.

Karen Yossman's "Writers Blocked: Even Fantasy Fiction Is Now Offensive"

What follow are the concluding paragraphs of Karen Yossman's 5-18-19 Spectator article entitled "Writers Blocked: Even Fantasy Fiction Is Now Offensive":

"Once you start seeing goblins in fairyland, there’s no end to it. Even the most enlightened author can cause offence. It is only a matter of time before it begins to eat away at every genre until, as [Lionel] Shriver predicted, ‘All that’s left is memoir’.

"Already poets might understandably feel anxious: last summer The Nation, one of America’s most venerable literary magazines, published a 14-line poem about homelessness, which was swiftly accused of co-opting a ‘black vernacular’ and criticised for its use of the word ‘crippled’. Instead of defending the verses it had previously deemed worthy of publication, the magazine immediately issued an apology so spineless one of its own columnists said it resembled ‘a letter from [a] re-education camp’.

"But it’s not just writers who ought to be worried. The logical apogee of a prohibition on cultural intercourse is a future in which each person is allowed to document only his or her precise subjective experience. A future, in other words, where fiction is history. And that sounds like a very dreary prospect for us all."

To read Yossman's entire article, click HERE.

Stanton Friedman on Radio Misterioso!

In honor of the passing of Stanton Friedman, one of UFOlogy's most credible researchers, I recommend listening to Greg Bishop's interview with Friedman on the always compelling Radio Misterioso. Here's Bishop's description of this latest episode:

Lifetime researcher Stanton T. Friedman passed away on May 13, 2019 after over 50 years of writing and lecturing. He was the public face of UFO study for those who knew little about the subject, and a mentor, inspiration, and guru for many inside the sometimes strange world of UFO conventions and gatherings, many of which he headlined. He earned the trust of those on many sides of the issue for his honesty and forthrightness, and was unfailingly thoughtful and polite to all, no matter what disagreements were present.

On February 18 of 2018, I recorded an interview with Friedman in an unused room at the International UFO Congress. In this conversation, he recalled his childhood and love of the Dodgers and Jackie Robinson, and his college and early career as a nuclear physicist for a variety of aerospace companies. He even described a job for McDonnell Douglas which he said assigned him to “figure out how flying saucers worked” but was unfortunately cancelled for budgetary reasons.

Friedman explained his philosophy that “technological progress comes from doing things differently in an unpredictable way,” and ended the interview with his observation that since (as he believed) extraterrestrial civilizations have been able to survive any growing pains to reach us, this strengthened his hope that the human race can do the same.

You can download Bishop's excellent interview with Friedman right HERE.

 

Jon Rappoport on Censorship

Here's a timely excerpt from Jon Rappoport's 5-15-19 article entitled "Censorship and the Decline of Civilization":

There are now large numbers of people who think they're making a political advance, even a breakthrough, by demanding the censorship of those individuals they don't like, when in fact, they're moving backwards into a more primitive political climate.

There is another vital factor which permits people to register no objection to censorship.  The factor is: vast frustration with their own lives.  This is usually concealed, as if it were a secret not to be shared.  The frustration, at the core, has to do with a perceived lack of freedom.

In which case, the actions of life take on a mechanical character, which becomes the heavy cover, the lid over the flame of frustration---and in that state of being, a person actually wants others who speak out and go against the grain to be silenced and censored.

Stop him!  Keep him from speaking and writing!

Yes, keep the free individual from reminding the mechanical liver of life that he is not free.

The Mechanical Person wants to bury all signals that carry a flavor of originality.  He wants the constant hum that tells him routine and repetition are firmly in place as the guidance system of existence.

In the frozen rigid river of anti-life...rebels are just machines that need to be turned off.  Censorship is a tool for that purpose.

That's what censorship really is.

An attempt to hide that disturbing thing called Life.

If you're interested in reading Rappoport's daily reports (which never fail to be anything less than illuminating), I highly recommend visiting his home page and signing up for his email list posthaste.