Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Johnny Got His Gun

Photobucket Pictures, Images and Photos


Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun was released on DVD yesterday. My mom pre-ordered it for me so I got it in the mail today. The DVD is awesome, with tons of special features including the documentary Dalton Trumbo-Rebel in Hollywood, interview with Timothy Bottoms, behind the scene's footage, Metallica's music video from the late 80's for the song "One" featuring tons of scene's from the movie, vintage article (1971) from American Cinematographer, commentary and original trailer. It also comes with an 18" by 21" replica of the original movie poster which is really, really cool.

This intensely anti-war movie is based on the novel by Dalton Trumbo and has been controversial from the first day the book hit the streets. the movie was equally controversial, coming out at a time when America was suffering from it's illegal, justified on a lie, war in Vietnam. We are now fighting another illegal war based on more lies as this DVD comes out. This movie is more relevant then ever! If you haven't seen it, you must!

The movie is about a WWI recruit that loses his arms, legs, ability to talk or communicate and so much more. Featuring flash backs of his life through dreams, we see what life was like for this soldier before the war cost him everything. It also deals with doctors in the war doing experiments on patients. the movie is haunting, sometimes painful to watch and extremely important. The government was extremely afraid of Dalton Trumbo, who was blacklisted during the CIA witch hunts of the 1950's. Making the movie was sweet revenge on the criminals that ran our govt then and still run it now.

This DVD is definitely worth the almost 20 dollar price tag.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067277/



"Wars May Come and Wars May Go But Art Is Forever."

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Soldier who helped cature Saddam denied VA Benefits.

This article is reposted from myspace from someone that reposted it from the Washington Post. There was no link to back it up, but I thought it was important for everyone to read. This article should make you livid. In this day and age to join the military is a HUGE mistake. I have PTSD and can relate to these guys. War ruins our souls for many lifetimes. These guys are not only going to suffer during this life, but in the ones to come. This is why the knowledge of reincarnation is so important. We are our ancestors!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Army Spec. Jeans Cruz helped capture Saddam Hussein. When he came home to the Bronx, important people called him a war hero and promised to help him start a new life. The mayor of New York, officials of his parents’ home town in Puerto Rico, the borough president and other local dignitaries honored him with plaques and silk parade sashes. They handed him their business cards and urged him to phone.


But a “black shadow” had followed Cruz home from Iraq, he confided to an Army counselor. He was hounded by recurring images of how war really was for him: not the triumphant scene of Hussein in handcuffs, but visions of dead Iraqi children.


In public, the former Army scout stood tall for the cameras and marched in the parades. In private, he slashed his forearms to provoke the pain and adrenaline of combat. He heard voices and smelled stale blood. Soon the offers of help evaporated and he found himself estranged and alone, struggling with financial collapse and a darkening depression.


At a low point, he went to the local Department of Veterans Affairs medical center for help. One VA psychologist diagnosed Cruz with post-traumatic stress disorder. His condition was labeled “severe and chronic.” In a letter supporting his request for PTSD-related disability pay, the psychologist wrote that Cruz was “in need of major help” and that he had provided “more than enough evidence” to back up his PTSD claim. His combat experiences, the letter said, “have been well documented.


None of that seemed to matter when his case reached VA disability evaluators. They turned him down flat, ruling that he deserved no compensation because his psychological problems existed before he joined the Army. They also said that Cruz had not proved he was ever in combat. “The available evidence is insufficient to confirm that you actually engaged in combat,” his rejection letter stated.


Yet abundant evidence of his year in combat with the 4th Infantry Division covers his family’s living-room wall. The Army Commendation Medal With Valor for “meritorious actions . . . during strategic combat operations” to capture Hussein hangs not far from the combat spurs awarded for his work with the 10th Cavalry “Eye Deep” scouts, attached to an elite unit that caught the Iraqi leader on Dec. 13, 2003, at Ad Dawr.


Veterans Affairs will spend $2.8 billion this year on mental health. But the best it could offer Cruz was group therapy at the Bronx VA medical center. Not a single session is held on the weekends or late enough at night for him to attend. At age 25, Cruz is barely keeping his life together. He supports his disabled parents and 4-year-old son and cannot afford to take time off from his job repairing boilers. The rough, dirty work, with its heat and loud noises, gives him panic attacks and flesh burns but puts $96 in his pocket each day.


Once celebrated by his government, Cruz feels defeated by its bureaucracy. He no longer has the stamina to appeal the VA decision, or to make the Army correct the sloppy errors in his medical records or amend his personnel file so it actually lists his combat awards.


“I’m pushing the mental limits as it is,” Cruz said, standing outside the bullet-pocked steel door of the New York City housing project on Webster Avenue where he grew up and still lives with his family. “My experience so far is, you ask for something and they deny, deny, deny. After a while you just give up.

An Old and Growing Problem

Jeans Cruz and his contemporaries in the military were never supposed to suffer in the shadows the way veterans of the last long, controversial war did. One of the bitter legacies of Vietnam was the inadequate treatment of troops when they came back. Tens of thousands endured psychological disorders in silence, and too many ended up homeless, alcoholic, drug-addicted, imprisoned or dead before the government acknowledged their conditions and in 1980 officially recognized PTSD as a medical diagnosis.


Yet nearly three decades later, the government still has not mastered the basics: how best to detect the disorder, the most effective ways to treat it, and the fairest means of compensating young men and women who served their country and returned unable to lead normal lives.


Cruz’s case illustrates these broader problems at a time when the number of suffering veterans is the largest and fastest-growing in decades, and when many of them are back at home with no monitoring or care. Between 1999 and 2004, VA disability pay for PTSD among veterans jumped 150 percent, to $4.2 billion.


By this spring, the number of vets from Afghanistan and Iraq who had sought help for post-traumatic stress would fill four Army divisions, some 45,000 in all.


They occupy every rank, uniform and corner of the country. People such as Army Lt. Sylvia Blackwood, who was admitted to a locked-down psychiatric ward in Washington after trying to hide her distress for a year and a half [story, A13]; and Army Pfc. Joshua Calloway, who spent eight months at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and left barely changed from when he arrived from Iraq in handcuffs; and retired Marine Lance Cpl. Jim Roberts, who struggles to keep his sanity in suburban New York with the help of once-a-week therapy and a medicine cabinet full of prescription drugs; and the scores of Marines in California who were denied treatment for PTSD because the head psychiatrist on their base thought the diagnosis was overused.


They represent the first wave in what experts say is a coming deluge.


As many as one-quarter of all soldiers and Marines returning from Iraq are psychologically wounded, according to a recent American Psychological Association report. Twenty percent of the soldiers in Iraq screened positive for anxiety, depression and acute stress, an Army study found.


But numbers are only part of the problem. The Institute of Medicine reported last month that Veterans Affairs’ methods for deciding compensation for PTSD and other emotional disorders had little basis in science and that the evaluation process varied greatly. And as they try to work their way through a confounding disability process, already-troubled vets enter a VA system that chronically loses records and sags with a backlog of 400,000 claims of all kinds.


The disability process has come to symbolize the bureaucratic confusion over PTSD. To qualify for compensation, troops and veterans are required to prove that they witnessed at least one traumatic event, such as the death of a fellow soldier or an attack from a roadside bomb, or IED. That standard has been used to deny thousands of claims. But many experts now say that debilitating stress can result from accumulated trauma as well as from one significant event.


In an interview, even VA’s chief of mental health questioned whether the single-event standard is a valid way to measure PTSD. “One of the things I puzzle about is, what if someone hasn’t been exposed to an IED but lives in dread of exposure to one for a month?” said Ira R. Katz, a psychiatrist. “According to the formal definition, they don’t qualify.


The military is also battling a crisis in mental-health care. Licensed psychologists are leaving at a far faster rate than they are being replaced. Their ranks have dwindled from 450 to 350 in recent years. Many said they left because they could not handle the stress of facing such pained soldiers. Inexperienced counselors muddle through, using therapies better suited for alcoholics or marriage counseling.


A new report by the Defense Department’s Mental Health Task Force says the problems are even deeper. Providers of mental-health care are “not sufficiently accessible” to service members and are inadequately trained, it says, and evidence-based treatments are not used. The task force recommends an overhaul of the military’s mental-health system, according to a draft of the report.


Another report, commissioned by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in the wake of the Walter Reed outpatient scandal, found similar problems: “There is not a coordinated effort to provide the training required to identify and treat these non-visible injuries, nor adequate research in order to develop the required training and refine the treatment plans.


But the Army is unlikely to do more significant research anytime soon. “We are at war, and to do good research takes writing up grants, it takes placebo control trials, it takes control groups,” said Col. Elspeth Ritchie, the Army’s top psychiatrist. “I don’t think that that’s our primary mission.


In attempting to deal with increasing mental-health needs, the military regularly launches Web sites and promotes self-help guides for soldiers. Maj. Gen. Gale S. Pollock, the Army’s acting surgeon general, believes that doubling the number of mental-health professionals and boosting the pay of psychiatrists would help.


But there is another obstacle that those steps could not overcome. “One of my great concerns is the stigma” of mental illness, Pollock said. “That, to me, is an even bigger challenge. I think that in the Army, and in the nation, we have a long way to go.” The task force found that stigma in the military remains “pervasive” and is a “significant barrier to care.


Surveys underline the problem. Only 40 percent of the troops who screened positive for serious emotional problems sought help, a recent Army survey found. Nearly 60 percent of soldiers said they would not seek help for mental-health problems because they felt their unit leaders would treat them differently; 55 percent thought they would be seen as weak, and the same percentage believed that soldiers in their units would have less confidence in them.


Lt. Gen. John Vines, who led the 18th Airborne Corps in Iraq and Afghanistan, said countless officers keep quiet out of fear of being mislabeled. “All of us who were in command of soldiers killed or wounded in combat have emotional scars from it,” said Vines, who recently retired. “No one I know has sought out care from mental-health specialists, and part of that is a lack of confidence that the system would recognize it as ‘normal’ in a time of war. This is a systemic problem.


Officers and senior enlisted troops, Vines added, were concerned that they would have trouble getting security clearances if they sought psychological help. They did not trust, he said, that “a faceless, nameless agency or process, that doesn’t know them personally, won’t penalize them for a perceived lack of mental or emotional toughness.

Overdiagnosed or Overlooked?

For the past 2 1/2 years, the counseling center at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, Calif., was a difficult place for Marines seeking help for post-traumatic stress. Navy Cmdr. Louis Valbracht, head of mental health at the center’s outpatient hospital, often refused to accept counselors’ views that some Marines who were drinking heavily or using drugs had PTSD, according to three counselors and another staff member who worked with him.


“Valbracht didn’t believe in it. He’d say there’s no such thing as PTSD,” said David Roman, who was a substance abuse counselor at Twentynine Palms until he quit six months ago.


“We were all appalled,” said Mary Jo Thornton, another counselor who left last year.


A third counselor estimated that perhaps half of the 3,000 Marines he has counseled in the past five years showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress. “They would change the diagnosis right in front of you, put a line through it,” said the counselor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he still works there.


“I want to see my Marines being taken care of,” said Roman, who is now a substance-abuse counselor at the Marine Corps Air Station in Cherry Point, N.C.


In an interview, Valbracht denied he ever told counselors that PTSD does not exist. But he did say “it is overused” as a diagnosis these days, just as “everyone on the East Coast now has a bipolar disorder.” He said this “devalues the severity of someone who actually has PTSD,” adding: “Nowadays it’s like you have a hangnail. Someone comes in and says ‘I have PTSD,’ ” and counselors want to give them that diagnosis without specific symptoms.


Valbracht, an aerospace medicine specialist, reviewed and signed off on cases at the counseling center. He said some counselors diagnosed Marines with PTSD before determining whether the symptoms persisted for 30 days, the military recommendation. Valbracht often talked to the counselors about his father, a Marine on Iwo Jima who overcame the stress of that battle and wrote an article called “They Even Laughed on Iwo.” Counselors found it outdated and offensive. Valbracht said it showed the resilience of the mind.


Valbracht retired recently because, he said, he “was burned out” after working seven days a week as the only psychiatrist available to about 10,000 Marines in his 180-mile territory. “We could have used two or three more psychiatrists,” he said, to ease the caseload and ensure that people were not being overlooked.


Former Lance Cpl. Jim Roberts’s underlying mental condition was overlooked by the Marine Corps and successive health-care professionals for more than 30 years, as his temper and alcohol use plunged him into deeper trouble. Only in May 2005 did VA begin treating the Vietnam vet for PTSD. Three out of 10 of his compatriots from Vietnam have received diagnoses of PTSD. Half of those have been arrested at least once. Veterans groups say thousands have killed themselves.


To control his emotions now, Roberts attends group therapy once a week and swallows a handful of pills from his VA doctors: Zoloft, Neurontin, Lisinopril, Seroquel, Ambien, hydroxyzine, “enough medicine to kill a mule,” he said.


Roberts desperately wants to persuade Iraq veterans not to take the route he traveled. “The Iraq guys, it’s going to take them five to 10 years to become one of us,” he said, seated at his kitchen table in Yonkers with his vet friends Nicky, Lenny, Frenchie, Ray and John nodding in agreement. “It’s all about the forgotten vets, then and now. The guys from Iraq and Afghanistan, we need to get these guys in here with us.


“In here” can mean different things. It can mean a 1960s-style vet center such as the one where Roberts hangs out, with faded photographs of Huey helicopters and paintings of soldiers skulking through shoulder-high elephant grass. It can mean group therapy at a VA outpatient clinic during work hours, or more comprehensive treatment at a residential clinic. In a crisis, it can mean the locked-down psych ward at the local VA hospital.


“Out there,” with no care at all, is a lonesome hell.

Losing a Bureaucratic Battle

Not long after Jeans Cruz returned from Iraq to Fort Hood, Tex., in 2004, his counselor, a low-ranking specialist, suggested that someone should “explore symptoms of PTSD.” But there is no indication in Cruz’s medical files, which he gave to The Washington Post, that anyone ever responded to that early suggestion.


When he met with counselors while he was on active duty, Cruz recalled, they would take notes about his troubled past, including that he had been treated for depression before he entered the Army. But they did not seem interested in his battlefield experiences. “I’ve shot kids. I’ve had to kill kids. Sometimes I look at my son and like, I’ve killed a kid his age,” Cruz said. “At times we had to drop a shell into somebody’s house. When you go clean up the mess, you had three, four, five, six different kids in there. You had to move their bodies.


When he tried to talk about the war, he said, his counselors “would just sit back and say, ‘Uh-huh, uh-huh.’ When I told them about the unit I was with and Saddam Hussein, they’d just say, ‘Oh, yeah, right.
’ ”

He occasionally saw a psychiatrist, who described him as depressed and anxious. He talked about burning himself with cigarettes and exhibited “anger from Iraq, nightmares, flashbacks,” one counselor wrote in his file. “Watched friend die in Iraq. Cuts, bruises himself to relieve anger and frustration.” They prescribed Zoloft and trazodone to control his depression and ease his nightmares. They gave him Ambien for sleep, which he declined for a while for fear of missing morning formation.


Counselors at Fort Hood grew concerned enough about Cruz to have him sign what is known as a Life Maintenance Agreement. It stated: “I, Jeans Cruz, agree not to harm myself or anyone else. I will first contact either a member of my direct Chain of Command . . . or immediately go to the emergency room.” That was in October 2004. The next month he signed another one.


Two weeks later, Cruz reenlisted. He says the Army gave him a $10,000 bonus.


His problems worsened. Three months after he reenlisted, a counselor wrote in his medical file: “MAJOR depression.” After that: “He sees himself in his dreams killing or strangling people. . . . He is worried about controlling his stress level. Stated that he is starting to drink earlier in the day.” A division psychologist, noting Cruz’s depression, said that he “did improve when taking medication but has degenerated since stopping medication due to long work hours.


Seven months after his reenlistment ceremony, the Army gave him an honorable discharge, asserting that he had a “personality disorder” that made him unfit for military service. This determination implied that all his psychological problems existed before his first enlistment. It also disqualified him from receiving combat-related disability pay.


There was little attempt to tie his condition to his experience in Iraq. Nor did the Army see an obvious contradiction in its handling of him: He was encouraged to reenlist even though his psychological problems had already been documented.


Cruz’s records are riddled with obvious errors, including a psychological rating of “normal” on the same physical exam the Army used to discharge him for a psychological disorder. His record omits his combat spurs award and his Army Commendation Medal With Valor. These omissions contributed to the VA decision that he had not proved he had been in combat. To straighten out those errors, Cruz would have had to deal with a chaotic and contradictory paper trail and bureaucracy — a daunting task for an expert lawyer, let alone a stressed-out young veteran.


In the Aug. 16, 2006, VA letter denying Cruz disability pay because he had not provided evidence of combat, evaluators directed him to the U.S. Armed Services Center for Research of Unit Records. But such a place no longer exists. It changed its name to the U.S. Army and Joint Services Records Research Center and moved from one Virginia suburb, Springfield, to another, Alexandria, three years ago. It has a 10-month waiting list for processing requests.


To speed things up, staff members often advise troops to write to the National Archives and Records Administration in Maryland. But that agency has no records from the Iraq war, a spokeswoman said. That would send Cruz back to Fort Hood, whose soldiers have deployed to Iraq twice, leaving few staff members to hunt down records.


But Cruz has given up on the records. Life at the Daniel Webster Houses is tough enough.


After he left the Army and came home to the Bronx, he rode a bus and the subway 45 minutes after work to attend group sessions at the local VA facility. He always arrived late and left frustrated. Listening to the traumas of other veterans only made him feel worse, he said: “It made me more aggravated. I had to get up and leave.” Experts say people such as Cruz need individual and occupational therapy.


Medications were easy to come by, but some made him sick. “They made me so slow I didn’t want to do nothing with my son or manage my family,” he said. After a few months, he stopped taking them, a dangerous step for someone so severely depressed. His drinking became heavier.


To calm himself now, he goes outside and hits a handball against the wall of the housing project. “My son’s out of control. There are family problems,” he said, shaking his head. “I start seeing these faces. It goes back to flashbacks, anxiety. Sometimes I’ve got to leave my house because I’m afraid I’m going to hit my son or somebody else.


Because of his family responsibilities, he does not want to be hospitalized. He doesn’t think a residential program would work, either, for the same reason.


His needs are more basic. “Why can’t I have a counselor with a phone number? I’d like someone to call.


Or some help from all those people who stuck their business cards in his palm during the glory days of his return from Iraq. “I have plaques on my wall — but nothing more than that.


via [Washington Post]



"Wars May Come and Wars May Go But Art Is Forever."

Monday, April 27, 2009

Seattle-the most unfriendliest place.

People in Seattle are very cold socially. These are not my words but the words of the late Seattle Newspaper the Seattle P.I. But these words are very true. I have never had a hard time making friends my whole life. People say New York City is a cold place and the people are mean but let me tell you I had no problem making friends in NYC. Every time I lived there I was not lonely and had friends. Even if they were temporary, they were friends. Here in Seattle, even though it has been over 4 years since I lived here, I still hardly have any good friends and have not dated anyone since 2005!

Now I definitely have a bunch of great acquaintances, but those people I only see when I run into them in the street. We don't call each other nor do we hang out. I had one good friend since I moved here and she moved to Portland. I still miss her. Most of my good friends that are female have moved away throughout my life. As a kid I went through many years of pain over the loss of a few of them. I have always known the pains of emptiness, loneliness and sexual abstinence. Learning to live with this pain is something that took me many years and I am still not there yet.

Being transgendered is not easy. It is probably the hardest thing to deal with, harder than just being queer, harder than being sick, harder than being handicapped and disabled. Transgenderism encompasses all of these things. Imagine what it is like for your entire life to feel uncomfortable in your body and not know how to act or think like your gender. Imagine how hard it was in the 80's and even 90's dealing with this secret in a society that looked down on trans people like vomit. It is no wonder I tried to commit suicide a few times.

Most people will never know what this is like and how I have suffered for my entire life. I have been alone most of my life because of this. Imagine being sexually attracted to men but not emotionally and then being emotionally attracted to women but major issues when it came down to liking them sexually. The first woman I was attracted to sexually was the second love of my life even though this person is the major love of my life so far. But because I didn't feel comfortable as a woman, I had a very hard time expressing myself sexually. It is a long story and if you read my other blog I go into more detail. I never felt like a lesbian or queer woman. I never, ever fit into the queer scene and I still don't. This is frustrating for someone that is queer and a sexual minority. I was born this way and it is something I cannot help. Instead of killing myself, I am under going the procedure to make it right.

I know I will never be a real male and that is not the point anyway. It is about feeling comfortable in my skin, not being held back by my embarrassing breasts, being able to pass more as a male than a female and having the right amount of hormones that I need to function. I also go into my hormonal imbalance in more detail in my other blog. Please check it out to understand scientifically what I am talking about. I will always be someone that is both sexes but more male than female. I will always be kimpunkrock, even though my official name might change. I also am not tripping on pronouns. Until I get top surgery I am not going to be picky about being called he. I know that some people will never accept it and I dont expect them too. I can be she to them if that helps them get through the day. I dont care what others think.

Even though there is a huge trans community here in Seattle I dont feel like I am a part of it. It is very hard being pre-op. I found that I still dont fit into the queer/trans scene even though I should. This has to do with the fact that I am a REAL punk rocker and not some hot topic poser. Punk is a mindset of freedom from the restrictions of self judgment and social norms. People in the lesbian/queer scene stick to these pre-set notions of what a lesbian is suppose to be like. The gay scene within itself is very closed minded and I cannot handle hanging out with fake, drunk people that think the only thing that the community revolves around is drinking at bars. Queer coffee houses are very, very rare and if you find one the owners are usually tight wads that close earlier. NYC had a few good places that were open hella late, but even those places are now closed.


So as usual I stand alone. I am out of step, alone in the crowd, but I guess so are most highly intelligent (in)famous people.

*sigh*

-
kpr



"Wars May Come and Wars May Go But Art Is Forever."

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Suppressed Pioneers of New Knowledge

Suppressed Pioneers of New Knowledge by David Brandt (April 16, 2009)



There are people whose brilliance was harvested while their values were discarded and ridiculed. Nikola Tesla is one whose name and ideals are just beginning to be known. What about Austrian Viktor Schauberger whose inventions worked with natural law? He could have provided all the free energy that anyone could ever want and his inventions had the potential to restore the Earth that he loved so much. Since running water is toxic to the entities which seem to infect consciousness by design, perhaps Schauberger's inventions and ideas have more far-reaching applications then even he had imagined. Sometimes justice is found in such ironies. Schauberger's name is rarely heard. His research was stolen from him, first in part by Hitler, and then by the big oil boys of Texas and the United States government.

These brave souls lived with honor. Their gifts were for not just humanity, but for the entire planet. The dark agenda is not about physical death--that is trivial to them--it is about preventing the advancement of spirituality.

I wonder if a single altruistic action, supplying many people with the ability to power their homes, for example, and acting without concern of material gain from this, but only to finally put a stop to this insanity, would have an effect? They can target one, or a group of people, but once the 'cat is out of the bag' on a large scale, it will not go back in.

The plan has been articulated by Henry Kissinger quite well. It's all about controlling energy, food and water. My basic premise has been that those who seek to control others have not even come close to the true challenge, which is in controlling themselves, and I write this with a bit of humor simply because the solution to their problem is so close, that they must intentionally ignore it.

The entire scarcity-based mindset is at the root of these problems. There is no such thing as scarcity--there is abundance. And this has been proven time and again. I recall an email exchange with a man by the name of Wade Frasier back in 2003 or 2004. He has a website now, detailing his journey and ideas. It is at http://www.ahealedplanet.net/home.htm. Wade states the the what is most scarce from his observation is integrity. From my observation, he is correct. It is in short supply, however, I have been fortunate in my life to know others who possess it; who would walk away from a trillion dollars if they couldn't look at themselves in the mirror if the terms for taking it went against their integrity.

'Scarcity' is a created paradigm to 'justify' atrocities for many years. This paradigm must be broken by critical mass. Just as a thought--if either or both Tesla's and Schauberger's concepts (which they both proved beyond a doubt were not only workable, but by far the best solutions) had been implemented, I know the energy cartel would not exist, and I strongly believe that neither would the pharmaceutical industry.

I know that I'm not writing anything that you don't already know about (it shouldn't surprise me to find information elsewhere only to see that you've had the information covered for some time). I have a strong desire to see this stranglehold broken; for others to learn the truth (and I do see this occurring); and for that 'critical mass' to be reached to effect a change.

What kind of world would we be looking at if these proven concepts/designs had been put into immediate, positive use? As much as I hate to admit it, the fight to raise consciousness and assist others to break out of old paradigms may just be by design. When I was a very close-minded skeptic, I had the false belief that events were accidental, of random chance. If I have learned anything, it's that nothing happens by accident, and there is no such thing as coincidence.

David Brandt



"Wars May Come and Wars May Go But Art Is Forever."

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Update on my life.

So I have been on testosterone for 4 and a half months now. I feel really great. For an update on all of that please read my sex change blog here: www.becomingmichael.blogspot.com.

Being on T has of course not solved all of my problems and it will take a year or so before I get all of the benefits from it. My doctor, who is also a transgendered FTM, is a genius. He remembers things we talked about over 5 months ago, which is pretty amazing. Most doctors dont care about you all that much and as soon as you leave the room, you are out of their mind. Not with my doctor. He is very thorough and supports me in my many health endeavors. The one thing he needs for me to do is quit smoking. Smoking and being on Testosterone is dangerous I guess and can cause blood clots. Luckily I have only been smoking again since August of 2008 and I am on Lipitor which is for cholesterol but also helps prevent blood clots. So I am sure I am pretty safe for a little while, but my goal is to quit before the summer.

I also need to lose another 50 pounds. This is imperative for my mental and physical health. I gained a shit load of weight when I finally got clean off of heroin in 2002. By 2004 I had gained almost 100 pounds. In the summer of 2005 I had lost almost 70 pounds but soon after went through a terrible break up and slowly over the next year or so I gained it all back. When I look back at the summer of 2005, I am amazed at how great I looked and how great I felt until I went out with a black out alcoholic and she ruined my life for a few months. I was so depressed by the time she was done with me that I spent most of my time watching TCM and eating. Slowly I gained it all back unfortunately so that by the time I filmed the Turner Classic Movies piece I weighed almost 250. I was not happy about it but being on TCM was a lifelong dream and I wasn't going to say no because I was too fat and uncomfortable with my body.

When I finally decided to do something about my transgendered issue and my doctor did a blood test to test my hormone levels, it was obvious that I was gaining weight because of the extreme hormonal imbalance. My metabolism was and still is all messed up. Slowly it is getting better because of the testosterone but if i dont exercise everyday, I will not lose weight. The testosterone makes it very important to exercise. I will gain more weight if I dont exercise everyday. I was doing really good exercising until I went back east for a month over the holidays to visit my parents. While I was there I lost a little part time job I had that gave me lots of exercise. That job was helping me lose weight and when I got back to Seattle at the end of January, it was too cold outside to exercise like I needed too. Now that it is Spring, I am trying to get myself out the door and on my mountain bike, but spring just started and I havent been riding yet.

It is imperative that I lose weight. I am not generally an over-weight person. This is unhealthy and I am sick of it. I am not suppose to be "fat". This is what narcotics will do to you. They ruin your life for a long time. Most people never make it back because of how hard it is. Many people will keep using or start using again because they dont want to gain weight. Heroin and cocaine has been given to us by our gov't in order to keep us down, kill us and ruin our lives. Do not ever under estimate the evil that is the CIA and the elite that run our lives.

The war in Afghanistan is not about fighting terrorism or the Taliban, it is about guarding the poppy fields, which the Taliban was getting rid of. The CIA and govt have been bringing in heroin and cocaine into this country with the express intentions of ruining people's lives since the 1950's. It is also about the money they make by having it be illegal. They fund their secret black op New World Order projects with the quick buck they make from having these drugs illegal. By having the drugs be illegal, they make more money on the quick buck from the sale and they make money from the prison industrial complex which is more about forced slavery then about locking people up for their crimes. The money that companies save having prisoners make their product is unbelievable. This is what the drug war is all about. If the govt wasn't so fascist, they could make more money by having the drugs be legal and taxing them, but like I said, they would rather make a big quick buck to fund their sick, secret projects, then the slow money that would pour in from taxing it. The hypocrisy of our govt is so intense that most people are not able to comprehend their crimes like they should. They count on this.

Of course when drugs were legal in the USA, less people used it and they were not popular like they are now. The elite that runs our govt and the world want us to be miserable, little slaves. Things are coming to a head in the rush to 2012 and it would be wise to wake up to the truth about our existence and our lives. The Truth is Truly Out There. The truth can also be painful, but wouldn't you rather live the truth then have your life based on the outrageous lies that are spoon fed to us through the media?

Nothing in this world happens by accident. Main stream media reports are usually spoon fed lies that you need to deconstruct. Once you learn the truth about this planet, you can read through the clues in the news to find the truth. Luckily with the internet, the truth is a key stroke away. When I was first getting into spirituality and the truth you had to go to certain book stores to find this kind of info. You had to read books, go to little classes at new age book stores and physically search out the tools you needed to learn the truth. This info has been kept hidden from us for over 2000 years! If it wasnt for the internet I imagine that it would still be largely hidden. New age bookstores were the only places you could find out the info the elite dont want us to know and a few years prior to everyone having the internet, the New World Order (NWO-the elite that run our govt and the world) co-opted the new age with disinformation. What this did was set up the truth movements of post-2001 to not trust the new age and in turn many, many people that are half aware of the truth are not getting the whole picture. These same people, without doing their own research automatically distrust and defame any "new age" information. Which in itself is a huge hypocrisy. These people are too stupid to put two and two together. The NWO that they are fighting took the new age and defamed it and these people are too stupid to realize that the reason the NWO did this was to keep much of the spiritual truths they need to understand hidden. You need these spiritual truths in order to successfully understand yourself, the world and the New World Order.

By believing all of the disinformation on the new age all truthers are doing themselves, the world and their movement a great disservice. Of course I will be the first to admit that since the NWO co-optd the new age, it is a lot harder to avoid the liars they planted in order to spread this disinformation. But the good ones out number the bad, but the bad ones are all you hear about anymore. I am so glad I woke up to the truth when I did in 1994. The new age was awesome back then, but like I said earlier, it was a lot harder waking up when I did. For the longest time I was the only one of my peers that knew the truth about our lives and existence. For many, many, many years I was alone in my path. Now in 2009, I am not alone. There are 1000's of people waking up and it is mostly because of the hard work of two men- David Icke from the UK and Alex Jones from Texas. It is important that you listen to both men.

This video of David Icke speaking in front of students from Oxford University is one of the most important videos you will ever watch. It is very worth the almost 2 hours you need to watch it. It is essential that you watch this. Take time away from your dumbed down cable TV and please watch this video, I am telling you it is very important:



David Icke goes all over the world and gives 6 hour long presentations on the truth. His talks will blow you away. If you ever wanted to know why the world is the way it is today, watch his videos, there are many of them within my blog and on google video. I will be posting more of them in the future on this blog.

Alex Jones is another very important person. He hosts a radio show 6 days a week and has made over 20 important documentaries. All of them can be watched for free on Google video or his website http://www.prisonplanet.tv

His latest movie is called The Obama Deception. It is about the people that control Obama and all of the presidents. This movie is not an Obama bashing film, it is about the NWO that controls Obama. They have controlled all of our presidents and the ones they couldnt control, the killed (Kennedy and Lincoln).

Watch it here now:


Alex has made a bunch of very important films that everyone on the planet needs to watch.

Here are a few, all of them you can watch for free on google video.
Endgame
Terrorstorm
Ameica destroyed by design
Police State 1, 2 and 3.


Please check out Alex and David's websites:

http://www.infowars.com

http://www.davidicke.com

You can listen to Alex's radio show on infowars.com. It replays all day. It is very important that you listen to his show everyday or as much as you can. Unless you want to live a life full of lies, it is imperative that you wake up to the truth now. The rabbit hole is deep and the NWO counts on you being too lazy, too dumbed down and too ignorant to see through the lies they have been telling us for over 10,000 years. The time is now! The answer to 1984 is 1776. Get informed or perish under the jack boot of the NWO. We can have the world we want to have but only if everyone wakes up from their slumber, it is as simple as that.

Thanks for reading.

-
kpr


"Wars May Come and Wars May Go But Art Is Forever."

Project Camelot Interviews Jim Marrs

Jim Marrs: The Rise of the Fourth Reich In America

Laughlin, Nevada, February 2009

http://projectcamelot.org/jim_marrs.html

Jim Marrs - an amiable Texan with twinkling eyes and a mind like a steel trap - is a veteran researcher and speaker on all topics connected with the agenda of the New World Order. Project Camelot is proud to add him to our strong cadre of witnesses.

The books that Jim has authored represent his range of interests clearly: Crossfire (about JFK), Alien Agenda, Rule by Secrecy, The Terror Conspiracy, PSI Spies, The Rise of the Fourth Reich, and Above Top Secret. Jim's broad span of research encompasses Egyptian and Sumerian mythology, Nazi technology, the ET presence, modern geopolitical analysis, the power of the military-industrial complex, the Illuminati, and what one might call the real history of the twentieth century.

Jim sees the big picture clearly, has great command of detail, and is one of the strongest speakers on the lecture circuit today. The title of this video - The Rise of the Fourth Reich in America - tells its own story, and in this 75 minute interview Jim lays out the compelling and disturbing evidence that while most people thought the Second World War ended in 1945, the Nazis were never stopped in their agenda - which can only be understood when one considers how they were assisted in coming to power by those Controllers who plan in terms of generations... not terms of government office.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Donald Duck - The Spirit of '43-In honor of tax Day!

Propaganda piece from 1943 about paying your taxes.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Dear Anonymous,

I still think about you everyday. It is like a sweet curse my love for you. After being haunted by it for almost 16 years, I can honestly say that my love for you was very pure, my love for you is deep. I was not able to express to you, how much I loved you, now I am caught in the web of my own creation. Never does it dissipate, absence has only made my heart grow fonder. Woe is me.




"Wars May Come and Wars May Go But Art Is Forever."

The gov't knew about Pearl Harbor, It was a manipulated event.

Unfortunately there is a huge conspiracy that has come out from declassified documents that FDR, who was a big hero of mine, and other members of the govt/Elite knew 10 days before that Japan was going to attack Pearl Harbor. It was one of the plans set out by European leaders to get the US involved in the war. All of this is true and is from declassified documents from the USA and Europe. A bunch of criminals sat around at a table sometime after world war one and set forth a document containing a list of ways to entice the world into another war. One idea they came up with was to manipulate Germany, put Hitler in power, create the German war machine to take on the League of Nations and then implement their eugenics program. Another point listed in their document was that in order to get the USA involved in another outside European war, there needed to be an attack on USA soil, most likely by the Japanese on the west coast. The document admitted that it was going to take a huge catalyst event to get the mothers to send their sons to war after the last slaughter the USA was dragged in, which by the way was also caused by this ruling elite that still rules us today!!!!!!!

In the months leading up to the attack, the allied powers and the USA harassed Japan with sanctions and covert 'pre-entry into the war' missions against the Japanese in China and elsewhere. World War Two was a planned event by the criminal ruling elite (the people behind the scenes that run our govt and the govt's of Europe and now the world, the "shadow people", the "shadow govt".) to further their plans of a one world gov't. Which they are now trying to implement and have been announcing the "new world order" since the G20 Summit meetings in March of 2009.

All of this and more shocking details of the manipulation of our lives behind the scenes can be found online by using google. Some of the families involved in this were the Bush's (yes those Bush's. Google Prescott Bush grandfather of GWBush and father of GHWBush, funded the nazi war machine), The Rockefellers, The Rothschild's and many more unnamed/named families/people.

In the late 1990's another group of men sat at a table, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, etc. They came up with a document called "The Project for a New American Century". In this document they listed ways to start a new war in the middle east, among other things (google Project for a New American Century and you can see the entire sick document). They said that it would take a "Pearl Harbor" type event to get the American people to stand behind another war in the Middle East. A few years later, after these same guys are now in power of the United States, 9-11 happened. What did Bush call 9-11, he called it- "Our Pearl Harbor".

My ancestors have fought in every war of the last 300 years. I am very insulted and angry about how our lives have been manipulated by a handful of greedy, evil men so that they could consolidate power and control all of our resources. We have been controlled by them for over 2000 years. This all goes back to Babylon, Rome, Midevil Europe. These "families" have manipulated many wars, famines, diseases, poverty, etc. all over the world. America was never given her freedom after the Revolutionary War. The British just remained in control behind the scenes. George Washington and Benjamin Franklin were working in part for England. They were manipulated to do what they did to keep America in the hands of the crown without the people knowing it. All of this stuff has been kept hidden from us for many years. But now the Truth is out there. Nothing in history or the present happens by accident. It is all being controlled by the puppet master. Wake up dont be a puppet anymore.

For more info on truth go to these sites:
Beware the rabbit hole goes deep.

www.infowars.com
www.davidicke.com
www.whatreallyhappened.com
www.prisonplanet.tv
www.prisonplanet.com
www.infowars.net
www.jonesreport.com

also on google video watch these documentaries:

The Obama Deception -Movie about who controls Obama and all the other presidents.

David Icke at the Oxford Debating Society

TerrorStorm

Endgame

Police State 1, 2 and 3

America-Freedom to Fascism

Loose Change

Fabled Enemies

and many, many more.

I am angry that our families souls have died and suffered over many lifetimes to further their agenda of control and greed. I want justice for the dead and myself.

God Bless.

-kimpunkrock

http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/index.jsp?cid=186977

The Truth is out there.


"Wars May Come and Wars May Go But Art Is Forever."

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Science unlocks secrets of our deepest love

April 12, 2009
Science unlocks secrets of our deepest love
The mystery of what drives us to offer unconditional love is being unravelled
Jonathan Leake

THE secrets of unconditional love, one of the most mysterious emotions, are being uncovered by scientists tracing the unique brain activity it creates.

They have found that the emotion, experienced as a desire to care for another person without any thought of reward, emerges from a complex interplay between seven separate areas of the brain.

Such brain activity has only limited overlap with the cerebral impulses seen in romantic or sexual love, suggesting it should be seen as an entirely separate emotion.

Professor Mario Beauregard, of Montreal University’s centre for research into neurophysiology and cognition, who led the study, said: “Unconditional love, extended to others without exception, is considered to be one of the highest expressions of spirituality. “ However, nothing has been known regarding its neural underpinnings until now.”

Scientists are interested in unconditional love as evolutionary theory suggests we should feel such emotions only for people who help us pass our genes to future generations, such as spouses and children.

Our fascination with the many forms of love is reflected by Hollywood, with films such as War of the Worlds, where Tom Cruise’s character risks his life to save his estranged daughter. The unconditional love he displays contrasts with the obsessive sexual emotions in films such as Basic Instinct or the romantic love portrayed by Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman in the epic Australia.

In the real world, however, unconditional love is often experienced towards people with whom there is no connection. The question is: why? To carry out the study, Beauregard recruited subjects with a proven ability to feel strong unconditional love: low-paid assistants looking after people with learning difficulties. Beauregard asked them to evoke feelings of unconditional love and hold them in their minds while they had a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan.

Of the seven brain areas that became active, three were similar to those of romantic love. The others were different, suggesting a separate kind of love.

Beauregard’s discoveries showed that some of the areas activated when experiencing unconditional love were also involved in releasing dopamine. This chemical is deeply involved in sensing pleasure, with rising levels strongly linked to feelings of reward and even euphoria.

In a research paper in an academic journal, he said: “The rewarding nature of unconditional love facilitates the creation of strong emotional links. Such robust bonds may critically contribute to the survival of the human species.”

Additional reporting: John Harlow

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article6078485.ece


"Wars May Come and Wars May Go But Art Is Forever."

Saturday, April 4, 2009

The Truth about Journalists.

"There is no such thing , at this date of the world's history, in America as an independant press. You know it and I know it.! There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions , and if you did , you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who woud be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.

The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth: to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and the folly of this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping jacks, they pull he string and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men.

WE ARE INTELLECTUAL PROSTITUTES"

- John Swinton, Former Chief of Staff, New York Times, 1953



This is exactly why I don't use my journalistic talents to work for the "man". I am a very talented college educated journalist that could very well win awards, but I refuse to work for any of these corporate newspapers to fill my stomach. It appears after years of lying, deceiving and demonizing society, news outlets are finally getting their karma paid. Many newspapers that have been publishing for a 100 years are closing down due to lack of funds. This is what they get for ruining society with their lies.

"Wars May Come and Wars May Go But Art Is Forever."

Riot police attack peaceful protesters at G20 Climate Camp