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$8.95 Jul/Aug 2012 Vol.20 No.4 Display until August 7, 2012
PSYCHO
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12-05-15 12:28 PM
At a recent photo shoot with a young movie starlet, make-up artist Prada Westwood was surprised at one of her requests. “The first words she said to me,” Westwood recollects, “were ‘I love my foundation.’” Westwood said that her client preferred to wear primer and foundation, even though many people would consider her gorgeous without the make-up. “Young women,” she said, “are wanting to project a ‘very done’ look these days. They want to make sure to be ready for their close-ups – at photo shoots, and in everyday life.” The introduction of high-definition video cameras that capture every unsightly facial feature has meant a flashback to the days of heavy “Pan Cake” make-up, with a few key improvements for contemporary living. Sami Danz, founder and director of cosmetic company Make Up For Ever and Always (M4E&A), said that high-definition cameras really highlight imperfections like pores and wrinkles. “The problem isn’t just with the colour of the face,” she said, “it’s with texture, too. Foundation needs to be fine-grain and thin, and simultaneously offer good structure and coverage.” M4E&A launched an HD line last year, striking a chord with women everywhere who’ve been turning their cameraphones on themselves. Danz refers to her Healthy-Looking HD FX foundation, which features microbeads that are guaranteed to stand up in 7-megapixel conditions. “The self-portrait is a very popular social media pose,” Danz continued, “so products like the HD FX foundation are really very much a part of participating socially, and entering the internet conversation.” Heather Factor, CEO at GFO Hedge Fund Management, says she layers on Yola Yellow Vitamin-Enriched Face Base and Get Discovered cream blush before contouring her cheekbones with bronzer so that she can look her best at the many charity events she attends. “I’m really into the matte finish of the Face Base,” Factor asserts, “It reduces the shine of the face for photographs. I don’t just wear it for photos though. I wear it because it’s long-lasting for girls on the go – you never know when your pictures could go viral.”
Miles Aldridge Lip Fantasy #4 Vogue Nippon, 2006
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Companies like Make Up For Ever and Always, and artists like Prada Westwood, have been working day and night on solutions for high-functioning, successful women like Heather Factor. “If you look at relationships today,” Westwood says, “they’re built solely on the visual level.” Referring to products that are now in her everyday arsenal, like Flash Ready finishing powder and Volume 11 mascara, Westwood says that women are getting more savvy about developing and maintaining solid, flaw-free friendships.
12-05-15 2:40 PM
Istvan Banyai, ist-one.com (C2) Logic Freaks_FFF.indd 2
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Hey you dilettantes, feinschmeckers, keeners, Modern economics is sick. Economics has increasingly become an intellectual game played for its own sake and not for its practical consequences for understanding the economic world. Economists have converted the subject into a sort of social mathematics in which analytical rigour is everything and practical relevance is nothing. At least three Nobel laureates have expressed their concerns. At a very early stage Wassily Leontief in 1982 objected that models had become more important than data: “Page after page of professional economic journals are filled with mathematical formulas ... Year after year, economic theorists continue to produce scores of mathematical models and to explore in great detail their formal properties; and the econometricians fit algebraic functions of all possible shapes to essentially the same sets of data.” In 1997, Ronald Coase complained: “Existing economics is a theoretical system which floats in the air and which bears little relation to what happens in the real world.” Near the end of his life, Milton Friedman observed: “Economics has become increasingly an arcane branch of mathematics rather than dealing with real economic problems.”
Istvan Banyai, ist-one.com
What happened after these prestigious complaints? David Colander lamented in 2009 that none of these prominent warnings “had any effect on US graduate economic education.” As Mark Blaug wrote pessimistically in 1998: “We have created a monster that is very difficult to stop.” The problem is not necessarily mathematics per se, but the obsession with technique over substance. Arguably there is a proper place for some limited use of useful heuristics or data-rich models within economics. But what should determine their adoption is not their technical aesthetics, but their usefulness for helping to explain the real world. Geoffrey M. Hodgson is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Institutional Economics.
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feminization of the accelerating so al is re he e demonization “Par t of the issu ed the increasing us ca s ha ch hi w , , but it’s not American culture No, it isn’t pretty ... or vi ha be e al al m es up for s psych themselv of relatively norm am te ll ba ot fo ay the w up for a sales force revs that different from ’s ny pa m co g bi that ... a do dumb things. games or the way sometimes, men d An ... n tio uc od new product intr ore.” , and not much m em th of e This is on , in a Wall Street Hudson Institute – Ann Marlowe, Journal op-ed
“This did not even rise to the level of a fraternity prank, because in fraternity pranks, people sometimes get hurt. Nobody got hurt. It was young people blowing off tes tosterone.” – Retired Lt. Col. Ralph Peter s
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12-06-07 5:07 PM
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Te r r i f i e d ? A n x i o u s ? I s o l a t e d ? Overwhelmed? Don’t let social phobia s get in the way of your therapy. A new line of smartphone apps is being develop ed at Harvard University to make each touch screen, not just a gateway to enterta inment galore, but an intimate virtual therapist as well. Soon, you’ll be able to reset your negative neuro pathways with cognitive games and archety pal insights; delve into the darkness of your childhood with crafted images designed for fast scroll; and click through the unhappy present into a more relaxed, calm and promising future. The days of drudgin g an hour out of your way to a stranger-in-a-bad-suit’s office are over. Now you can have the comfort of your own personal psyche -mate in the palm of your hand.
iTherapist Will See You Now
“They were frustrated, just pissed off – their buddies had been blown up by IEDs,” the source of the photos said. “So they sort of just celebrated.”
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CHRIS HEDGES
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize winning author and former international correspondent for The New York Times . His latest book is The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress.
WHAT IS LEFT OF THE COUNTRY? What was left of electoral politics in the United States gasped and sputtered to its extinction with the 2010 Supreme Court ruling known as Citizens United. At that point the game was over. Legalized bribery now defines the political process. The most retrograde elements of corporate capitalism, such as the Koch brothers, are the undisputed king makers. They decide who gets elected by anonymously pouring hundreds of millions into campaigns. They hang with their SuperPACs like vultures over the heads of every federal and state legislator. Any politician who dares to challenge corporate demands and unregulated corporate capitalism knows they will be thrust from political life as well as their highly paid corporate jobs once they leave office. Politicians, including Barack Obama, are corporate employees. And they know it. Corporate money had corrupted the American political system even before the 2010 Citizens United ruling. We had 35,000 corporate lobbyists in Washington by 2010 writing legislation and funneling corporate donations to compliant politicians. But the ruling snuffed out even tepid and marginal resistance. It transformed us into an oligarchic, corporate state. It marked, in essence, the culmination of the corporate coup d’Êtat that has slowly been established over the past few decades. We can identify our individuality through brands or choices in lifestyle, but political freedom does not exist.
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Our highly choreographed campaigns are bizarre spectacles, sterile and empty acts of political theater. The personal narrative of candidates is the central point of debate, not issues, programs or policies. The rhetoric and style is different – in short the brands are different– between Republicans and Democrats, but the substance is the same. It is impossible within the political system in the United States to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs or ExxonMobile. Political debate is dominated by opinion rather than fact. Lies are true.
HE
The debate on the airwaves between Republicans and Democrats over the healthcare bill, now before the Supreme Court, is part of the vast dumb show. And this is true for every piece of legislation pushed through Congress. The corporate media exists not to illuminate but to perpetuate the mirage. Coke or Pepsi. Take your pick. As if there is a difference. The capturing of the legislature, executive and judiciary by corporate power, however, is only the first stage. We have now entered the second. The corporate state, led by Congress and the Supreme Court, is rapidly criminalizing dissent. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which was a bipartisan bill signed into law on New Year’s Eve by Obama, permits the US government to employ the military as a domestic police force that can detain citizens
accused of supporting terrorist groups or “associated forces” without due process until, in the language of the law, the end of hostilities. Obama has employed the Espionage Act against government officials who have leaked information about war crimes to the press, virtually shutting down investigative reporting. Only the official narrative now prevails. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendment Act (FISA) retroactively made legal what under our Constitution was illegal, the warrantless wiretapping, monitoring and eavesdropping on citizens. And the Supreme Court, utterly inverting the concept of the rule of law, recently ruled that those who are strip-searched by police or corrections officers, even if they are innocent of a crime, couldn’t challenge the measures in a court of law. In short, there is no legal recourse to the abuse of power. The corporations will disembowel, or in the language of business schools “harvest,” what is left of the country. The security and surveillance apparatus will lock up those who resist. This is the future. The iron circle will be shut tight.
Courtney Sacco
The right-wing Heritage Foundation, for example, designed Obama’s healthcare bill. It was first put into practice by then-Governor Mitt Romney in 2006 in Massachusetts. Barack Obama adopted it, after corporate lobbyists for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries rewrote it to include $447 billion in subsidies. Romneycare is Obamacare. It forces consumers to buy a default corporate product. The insurance companies can raise co-payments and premiums, including for the elderly and those on fixed income. They are exempted from providing coverage to chronically
ill children. Once you get sick you can be priced out of the market. Of the one million Americans who go bankrupt every year because they cannot pay their medical bills, 80 percent are insured. This abuse will remain untouched. The healthy will pay. The sick will be pushed aside.
As brutal arrests leave occupiers with broken bones and hefty hospital bills, some are embracing “de-arresting,” or breaking free from an arrest.
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Photo by Michael Zimmerer michaelgzimmerer.com
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by John Ralston Saul
CANADA’S SPIRITUAL QUEST John Ralston Saul is one of Canada's leading public intellectuals and President of PEN International, an organization dedicated to promoting literature and freedom of expression. His recent books include The Collapse of Globalism and A Fair Country. His latest work, Dark Diversions, is his first novel in fifteen years, and comes out this autumn.
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Here we are, a good half-century into the environmental movement. This half-century could also be described as tens of millions of hours devoted by citizens to lobbying on behalf of the environment, protesting, calling for change. And we haven’t advanced very far. Enormous efforts have been made. Enormous numbers of wonderful people have dedicated their lives to environmental change, overseeing as it were, 50 years of planetary siege. Of course, there have been some changes. Here and there. Small, specific changes. Perhaps most important, the environmental cause has occupied the public language. Several generations now talk with these ideas as an integral part of their assumptions. But on any big question we seem to just slip along in the same old dangerous direction, the breakthroughs too small to affect what is happening. And at the same time, those who oppose the environmental movement have succeeded in ma k ing changes which actually worsen our situation. How could this be happening ? Is it inevitable? are our possibilities doomed by our condition? The answer – the blame – cannot be placed primarily on politics. Or financial structures. Or narrow, short-term self-interest.
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Andrea Bennett
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Stringer India / Reuters
On March 3, 2012, 19-year-old Tsering Kyi returned to school from winter holidays, purchased a can of gas, and set herself on fire in a busy market in Machu, in the Gannan province of China. Kyi held still, fist raised, her body ablaze, for several moments before collapsing to the ground. Kyi was raised in a nomadic Tibetan family, and attended Tibetan school in a town several miles away from where her family lived. According to news reports, she was a dedicated student, simultaneously passionate about her education, and committed to her family and religious practice. In 2010, Kyi joined students and teachers at her school to protest new Chinese-language textbooks and the government decision to limit Tibetan-language teaching to a single class. The protests only resulted in more government control: Several of Kyi’s teachers, as well as her headmaster, were subsequently fired and replaced. Kyi is reported to have told a close relative in early January of this year that she understood the motivations behind the growing numbers of self-immolations in Tibet and China – that “no one could go on living like this.” Over 30 Tibetan monks, nuns and civilians in Tibet, China and India have self-immolated over the past year, in protest of an increasingly repressive and violent Chinese regime that aims to assimilate Tibetan language, culture and religious practice. In March 2012, the Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC) issued a statement that referenced the militarized 1912 struggle for Tibetan freedom from the invading imperial Chinese Army. After a year of fierce fighting, the statement says, “Tibet regained its status as an independent nation.” Later on down the page, the TYC asserts that, a century later, the contemporary struggle for Tibetan independence has reached and passed a similar snapping point. The Dalai Lama has not condoned or condemned the selfimmolations. He instead referred to them as a “very, very sensitive political issue” in a recent BBC interview, and has been quoted by China’s Forbidden News as saying that the selfimmolations were acts of desperation, a direct result of the Chinese Communist Party’s policy of cultural genocide in Tibet. While the Dalai Lama remains a spiritual leader to millions of Tibetans around the world, he recently stepped down as a political leader, admitting that his 50-year strategy of advocating non-violence had failed to established understanding with the Chinese government, or improve the situation inside Tibet. The Tibetan Youth Congress has been more vocal about why the self-immolations are happening now, and what they mean for the fight for Tibetan independence. On April 12, 2012, they said: “Just as with the hardened earth and the grassy patches and the dusty grounds and the concrete sidewalks onto which have collapsed the 33 self-immolators (32 of them since last year alone), embers rolling out from their bodies as though rosary beads, the landscape of the Tibetan freedom movement now stands irreparably scorched and irredeemably altered.”
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Stringer India / Reuters (F1) Being Present_FFF.indd 11
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Huddled Alone Outside The Meditation Tent, Occupy DC, McPherson Square, Washington, DC Gerald L. Campbell, flickr.com/photos/dcnittygritty
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Revolutionary Agenda JUNE – #NOSTARBUCKS
We shun corporate cafes and start brewing an indie coffee culture
JULY 4 – #OCCUPYCONGRESS A million of us surround Capitol Hill
AUGUST – #KILLACORP
In the dog days of summer we punish Exxon for lying to us about climate change
SEPTEMBER – #OCCUPYBANKS 100,000 of them worldwide – bring tent
OCTOBER – #KILLPFIZER
We begin charter revocation proceedings against this #1 criminal corp
NOVEMBER – #BUYNOTHINGDAY
We participate by not participating (and then we Occupy the US Presidential Election)
DECEMBER – #OCCUPYXMAS
This year we do things differently – we empty the malls & take the season back
2013 – #KILLCAP
We start playing the planetary endgame
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Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul. Daniel Goodman/Business Insider
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—Edward Abbey 12-05-15 12:21 PM
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