If you ever find yourself terrified of a single person being in a position of power, whether it’s Barack Obama or Donald Trump, maybe that’s a hint we’ve screwed up a purposefully simple system that was intended to diffuse that power. Power isn’t a threat when the guy in charge is on your side. But what happens when the tides change? What happens when it’s no longer you who gets to decide what’s right and wrong?
Kong is much more than a gigantic gorilla. He serves as a symbol of the features of life that are impervious to external control. He stands for the combined energies of the human spirit operating as it will, irrespective of all attempts to use compulsion to make social forces operate in the way some external invaders wish that they would. The attempt to control unleashes new forms of evil we cannot foresee.
With this collection of short stories, Imtiaz Akhtar makes his bold debut. Kafka Sutra is the sort of book that as a teenager, I would have loved to sneak from my mother’s shelf, and that as a mother, I would secretly enjoy letting my daughter or son whisk away.
Imaginez qu’un laboratoire invente un jour une molécule qui permet à celui qui l’absorbe d’atteindre « l’Illumination » en trois heures seulement ; imaginez que le patron du groupe pharmaceutique à qui appartient ce labo décide de répandre cette molécule à travers une boisson énergisante vendue dans tous les supermarchés… Voici le pitch de L’Élixir, un roman rafraîchissant, où le lecteur suit le parcours de plusieurs personnages qui, pour la plupart, vont à moment
In this episode, I deconstruct the hidden meaning behind the multi-billion dollar franchise, The Hunger Games. From Agenda 21 and the United Nations, to gladiatorial human sacrifice, the dystopian pheonomenon of The Hunger Games and girlpower heroine Katniss signify more than is apparent on the surface.
Clyde Lewis invited me on Ground Zero to discuss memes, magic and CFR messages.
Stream or download the audio here.
Shawn Helton
21st Century Wire
A hyper-real vision of America serves as a stark backdrop for Hollywood’s social science fiction horror film, The Purge: Election Year.
it is through mimesis, (identification with the mirror image) that one gains a sense of unity, self-containment and mastery over the body. If that was all that there was to it, humanity would be condemned to dwell forever entombed in the hell of mirrors. However, the identification with an Other in the mirror opens out the possibility for symbolic thought.
Jay Dyer
21st Century Wire
Before there was Back to the Future, there was the early phase of science fiction propaganda embodied in Fabian H.G. Wells’ 1895 novella, The Time Machine. Wells’ work is both entertaining and important for the course of modern literature, yet also calls for an analysis given the prevalence of propaganda functioning at many levels within the novel.
Tony Gosling of Bristol UK FM’s “Politics Show” invited me on to discuss the precise nature of what is called “predictive programming.” I offer a military and propaganda context from which to understand it as a tactic for conditioning.
