April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

General

Da Vinci code=Religous Iconery or Old School Porn?

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More Da Vinci secrets revealed. Apparently it’s all done with smoke and mirrors.

“It is easy to find invisible images in Leonardo’s paintings. Many of his characters seem to be staring into space. In reality, they are indicating where one must place the mirror to visualize the images,” Conti told Discovery News.

When applied to Da Vinci’s painting “Saint Anne, the Virgin and Child,” on display at London’s National Gallery, a mirror reveals a figure which some cynical observers say looks like the Star Wars character Darth Vader.

According to Conti, the image resembles the ancient Old Testament god Jahveh, who represents the human mind’s struggles against the vices of the body.

You can see the mirrored pieces here.

Picture shown is a mirror of John the Baptist

Shocking Fashion Trends

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Leopard TaserWhat do you give the friend who has everything? How about a leopard print Taser™ with a holster that is also an MP3 player?

The Taser C2 models retail for between $US349.99 and $US379.99 ($435) depending on the chosen design. The Taser C2 holster with MP3 player costs $US72.99 ($83).

If one must carry a potentially lethal weapon, one may as well be chic and entertained at the same time.

The Taser C2, which shoots two electrically charged darts with the same shocking power as the police version, was launched last year. It previously came in four colours – silver, black, blue and pink. The company said Monday that it would also make the guns available in leopard print, “fashion” pink, and “red-hot” red.

“Women want whatever they’re carrying – from a lipstick case to their eyeglass case to their Taser – to look nice and be something they won’t mind if it falls out of their purse,” Holran said.

Now you can tell Mr. Holran really understands the female mind. We all want a weapon that may potentially be used against us to look nice.

I wonder what Mr Holran would make of these?

Wavering, Arizona-based company, Taser Provincial announced its new product today, the taser/vibrating dildo. The C5 taser/vibrating dildo is different from other models in that it is designed take care of all bedroom needs instead of possibly just one. Depending on which end is used, it can provide its user hours of uninterrupted fun.

Flat Tax

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The Fuckhead Institution Frasier Institute rears its ugly head again

Canadian taxpayers could complete their personal tax returns in about five minutes if the federal government adopted a 15% flat tax, says the report by the Fraser Institute.

Canadians spend a significant amount of time, energy and money complying with Canada’s complicated tax system, says the report, which estimates that Canadians spend up to $30-billion annually complying with the current multi-rate progressive federal and provincial tax systems.

Poor little muddle headed Canadians. Don’t worry about that complicated math. Let us rip you off..er look after your best interests.

Politically, a flat tax also limits governments’ ability to use the tax system to achieve specific social or economic goals, Perry noted.

The Fraser Institute; Fucking over average Canadians since 1974.

The Smoking Gun

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Taser™ is using any and all despicable tactics to threaten, intimidate and otherwise try to warn off those who would bring the potentially deadly outcomes of their product to light.

Into the fray walks Pam Schreiner,

… who worked for the Arizona-based maker of the electric-shock weapons in 2004, says she was threatened and intimidated, including her home being shot at, after she saw company officials intentionally shredding Taser injury reports during a legal proceeding, according to court documents.

“Since leaving Taser International, I have lived in fear of what Taser International will do to me. The company has enormous resources and connections through law enforcement,” Ms. Schreiner says in an affidavit sworn this summer and filed in a court in Georgia.
Taser International says it “aggressively defends our products in all litigation brought against the company.”

“I have been verbally threatened by people hired by Taser to harass and intimidate me. I was told by the two Chandler [Arizona] police officers that they had conducted surveillance of my residence, followed me around and gone through my garbage,” her affidavit says.

“I was confronted at the grocery store by someone I had never met and told that it would not be a good idea for me to be testifying against Taser. In the summer of 2005, shortly before giving my deposition in [a previous case against Taser], a window was shot out of my residence.” {read the rest of this article}

Hmm.. lawsuits, threatening, intimidation, suppression of facts….. Where have we seen this before?

h/t Allison@Creekside

Canada’s New Government™ Official Announcement

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AR Media with an exclusive announcement from Stephen Harper.

OTTAWA- In an hastily scheduled press interview today Harper announced that funding previously funnelled through SWC and intended for advocacy groups will now be spent encouraging women’s empowerment through music.

“Women have always had an interest in music. We feel that this new program will inspire women to achieve their full feminine potential.”

To kick start this new program, known so far only as F.U.C.K. Y.O.U., Harper passed around copies of this YouTube video which, “exemplifies the positive attitude we would like to see Canadian women embody.”

As many others have blogged the passing of NAWL and other programs related to the equality and empowerment of women is a shame this government carries.

Harper has a long history of grievance against the things that most Canadians hold as cornerstones of our identity. Health care, social programs, personal rights and freedoms and equal rights.

The highjacking of our government by special interest groups intent on forcing their narrow minded, narrow viewed, religious and idealogical doctrines upon the country as whole is a travesty that must be opposed.

We have only to look south of the border to see the havoc wrecked upon a society catering to the lowest common denominator.

Some feel that this is not their fight. They would do well to remember these words;

In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;

And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;

And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;

And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up.”

Revolution

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And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?

You may have noticed my blog tagline, one of the great quotes from George Orwell: In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

This same premise is highlighted in the story of Mouseland, made famous by Tommy Douglas. When the mouse posits, “Why don’t we elect a government made up of mice?” “Oh,” they said, “he’s a Bolshevik. Lock him up!” So they put him in jail.”

Truth incites revolution. Truth is in fact the enemy of the ruling class. Truth should set you free but in all likelihood will get you arrested.

With the current swing to the right governments of all stripes are promising tax cuts. It plays well with the populace,yet taxes are what keeps us running as a society.

Look around your community. Your roads, government services, water, hospital, doctors, parks are all a result of taxation. The health card in your wallet that allows you free health care is a result of taxation. That health care is becoming more and more tenuous and why is that? It is not as some would have you believe because public health care is unsustainable, it is not because people are fatter and it is not because the sky is blue.

It is because the burden of taxation has been almost entirely lifted off of corporations and placed squarely on the shoulders of the citizenry. These tax cuts were promoted to us as necessary to keep and create jobs and wealth. Yet more and more jobs are being moved off shore and jobs which are being created are those in the service industry which require a household to secure employment with two or three employers just to keep the basic necessities.

Growing Gap.ca shows very clearly that truth is being subverted.

Canadian families are putting in more work time, yet most — 80% of them — are getting a smaller share of Canada’s growing economy

The rate of unemployment in Canada is lower than it has been in more than a generation.

Despite these changes — all of which were supposed to ensure greater prosperity for every Canadian — the reports continue to come in indicating the gap between the rich and the poor is greater than it was 20 years ago.

There is growing consensus that Canadian provinces must do more to bring the minimum wage up to a living wage (above the Low-Income Cut Off, or LICO).

As Jacobs writes, “We need to move faster. This is not new terrain; we’ve been here before. In the 1970s workers earning the minimum wage received a rate that was roughly equivalent to $9 an hour today. Thirty years later the Canadian economy is producing much higher levels of wealth and profit, but paying its most vulnerable workers less.”

A CBC headline states that Homelessness ‘chronic’ in Canada. Yet a story in today’s news reports,

Homeless people in Canada have more mental health problems than the rest of the population

people who are homeless tend to report higher stress, lower self-worth, less social support and different coping strategies, factors that are associated with depressive symptoms, substance abuse, suicidal behaviours and poor self-rated health.”

Well you could knock me over with a feather at these results. Higher stress, lower self worth, depression amazing. Interesting is it not, that after reporting on how homelessness is ‘chronic’ the story is followed up by one which attempts to place the blame on the moral or psychological deficits of the homeless themselves. Thereby mislaying the blame and misleading readers from the truth.

In cost cutting efforts the Harris government cut new affordable housing, reduced welfare to unsustainable amounts, closed a number of group homes that allowed the functionally disabled and those with diagnosed “mental health issues” to live in dignity.
Now those cuts and closures are coming home to roost.

If we continue to allow our truths to be substituted with bigotry, prejudice, half truths and downright lies, we allow ourselves to just follow orders. We allow ourselves to see our fellow human being as less worthy, as less important and as less. We trade our humanity for the crumbs that fall from the masters table and the dangled suggestion that one day we may sup there.

Now is the time for truth. Now is the time for revolution.

Lyrics from Pink Floyd Wish you were here.
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