Author: The Hinoeuma

Movie Monday: Holly 2006

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Holly IMDb Amazon Image One
Image Credit: IMDb & Amazon

“Out of thousands, he tried to save one.”

Fifteen years ago, today, the drama film Holly debuted at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Directed by Guy Moshe and, written by Moshe and Guy Jacobson, it starred Ron Livingston, Chris Penn, Virginie Ledoyen, Udo Kier and Jacquie “Thuy” Nguyen as Holly.

Shot on location in Cambodia, including many scenes in actual brothels in the notorious red light district of Phnom Penh, “Holly” is a captivating, touching and emotional experience. Patrick, an American card shark and dealer of stolen artifacts, has been ‘comfortably numb’ in Cambodia for years when he encounters Holly, a 12-year-old Vietnamese girl in the K-11 red light village. The girl has been sold by her impoverished family and smuggled across the border to work as a prostitute. Holly’s virginity makes her a lucrative prize and, when she is sold to a child trafficker, Patrick embarks on a frantic search, through both the beautiful and sordid faces of the country, in an attempt to bring her to safety. Harsh, yet poetic, this feature forms part of the ‘K-11’ Project, dedicated to raising awareness of the epidemic of child trafficking and the sex slavery trade through several film projects. The film’s producers endured substantial hardships in order to be able to shoot in Cambodia and have also founded the Redlight Children Campaign, […] a worldwide grassroots initiative generating conscious concern and, inspiring immediate action against child sex-ploitation.

IMDb Summary from Anonymous

Trivia Bits:
Tom Sizemore was originally slated to play Freddie but, after being arrested for failing several drug tests, he was dropped from the production and replaced by Chris Penn.
♦ This was one of Chris Penn’s last films.

Official Website

POTD: Lilium

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This is definitely a lily or Liliaceae but, what species? It could be a Candidum or, possibly a Longiflorum. It’s nearly impossible to tell even with Pl@ntNet. There are just too many varieties and hybrids. It’s beautiful, though. ~Vic

Lillium Image
Hanging out over the fence.
06-05-2019
Click for a larger view.

Picture of the Day

Flick Friday: Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes 2011

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Rise of the Apes IMDb Image One
Image Credit: IMDb

Ten years ago, today, the #1 movie in theaters was Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Released August 5, it was directed by Rupert Wyatt and is based on the novel La Planète des singes by French novelist Pierre Boulle, translated to Planet of the Apes and, Monkey Planet in the UK. Written by Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver (married writing team), it was produced by Jaffa, Silver, Peter Chernin and Dylan Clark. Thomas M. Hammel was Executive Producer and Patrick Doyle was the film composer. Cast: Andy Serkis (Caesar), James Franco, Freida Pinto, John Lithgow, Brian Cox, Tom Felton, David Oyelowo, David Hewlett, Karin Konoval (Maurice), Terry Notary (Rocket/Bright Eyes), Richard Ridings (Buck), Devyn Dalton (Cornelia), Jay Caputo (Alpha-Caesar’s Father) and Christopher Gordon (Koba).

At the story’s heart is Caesar, a chimpanzee who gains human-like intelligence and emotions from an experimental drug. Raised like a child by the drug’s creator, Will Rodman and a primatologist Caroline Aranha, Caesar ultimately finds himself taken from the humans he loves and imprisoned in an ape sanctuary in San Bruno. Seeking justice for his fellow inmates, Caesar gives the fellow apes the same drug that he inherited. He then assembles a simian army and escapes the sanctuary, putting man and ape on a collision course that could change the planet forever.

IMDb Summary

I liked this movie but, Roger Ebert was brutal. ~Vic

Trivia Bits:
♦ The jigsaw puzzle that Caesar has nearly completed is a depiction of Taylor and Nova from Planet of the Apes (1968), riding on a horse down the beach, just before coming upon the Statue of Liberty.
Koba, the scarred lab ape and, some apes at the Gen-Sys and sanctuary, are bonobos. This species was assumed, until very recently, to be a subspecies of chimp, explaining its absence in previous films.
Will Rodman’s surname is a nod to Planet of the Apes (1968) screenwriter Rod Serling.

POTD: Sturgeon Moon 2009

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I’ve been digging around in some old photos. I stumbled across this…apropos for the month. Full illumination for the August 2009 moon occurred at 8:54pm EDT on the 5th. I almost nailed the day! I did a 2018 post and a post last year. I didn’t take this one. This shot is much clearer than what my stupid-phone can come up with. It belongs to my buddy Ray and he doesn’t remember where he took it. The upcoming full moon will be full on the 22nd at 8:02am EDT. ~Vic

Sturgeon Moon August 2009
Photo Credit: Ray Tutterow
08-08-2009
Click for a larger view.

Picture of the Day

Hans 2021 Song Draft: Round Three-Pick One-Driver’s Seat-Sniff ‘N’ The Tears (1978)

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Driver's Seat RYM Image One
Image Credit: Rate Your Music

Hanspostcard has a song draft challenge. This is my Round Three pick.

I can’t recall the first time I heard Driver’s Seat but, the song entered Billboard’s Hot 100 Chart on July 21, 1979. I was twelve and I was immediately hooked. It was released in 1978 but, took a while to gain any traction. It managed to get to #15 for a couple of weeks, sandwiched between Bad Case Of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor) by Robert Palmer and Born To Be Alive by Patrick Hernandez. It was the first track from Sniff ‘n’ The Tears debut album Fickle Heart and was the band’s only hit despite fifteen albums, spanning 1978 to 2020.

The history of this British rock band is a little sketchy. Colin Larkin, the British Editor-in-Chief of The Encyclopedia of Popular Music, stated in the 1997 edition that they “had been gigging in England as early as 1974” but, an Athens Calling interview in 2018 reflects 1972. A Jason Ankeny, writing for All Music, stated that lead singer/songwriter Paul Roberts dissolved the band after not being able to get a record deal. Drummer Luigi Salvoni talked Roberts into re-forming the band with Mick Dyche, Loz Netto, Chris Birkin and Alan Fealdman. Ankeny has the actual musician line-up all wrong in comparison to the official website. There is also no mention of Noel McCalla as backing vocals for the time period. The name of the band apparently came from their manager, as Roberts had hay fever and sniffed a lot.

The band is still active as of 2001 as a quartet, with Roberts & Salvoni still working together. ~Vic

Lyrics

Top of the Pops 1979 (Proper Line-Up)

Official Video

Chris Thomas: Chemtrails

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A Forum Blog Post From: The Chris Thomas Files

Chemtrail Activist Post Image One
Image Credit: Activist Post

At the end of 2009, the British government very reluctantly acknowledged that they were chemically seeding the atmosphere “as a means of combating global warming” (see later).

However, the dumping of chemicals into the atmosphere goes back many years. For more details of this and the underlying reasons, see my book, written with Dave Morgan, called Project Human Extinction (sadly, out of print) which has chapters and appendices detailing the use of chemicals and biological agents either as weapons testing or population control. Also see numerous articles on the internet which detail the kinds of chemicals that are being dumped into our atmosphere by both military and civilian aircraft.

The first use of air-borne biological agents was by the Japanese in 1941 and 1942 when they sprayed the Chinese mainland with bubonic plague from aircraft. This spraying from aircraft was noted by the American Military who began their own testing programmes on their own populations. In 1949, the US Army began a 20 year programme of simulated germ warfare attacks against American cities, conducting at least 293 open air tests. These are the first known use of “chemtrails”.

The effect of the chemicals was studied by the vivisection of farm animals, most notably cattle and, this is the actual reason for the animal mutilations which have been blamed on UFOs. They are nothing to do with UFOs, with the military involvement being confirmed by a secret FBI investigation published under the Freedom of Information Act a few years ago.

Added to this biological weapons use is the deliberate destruction of the bee population. Bees are the planet’s primary pollinators but, are not needed for Genetically Modified crops. Therefore, as far as the GM companies are concerned, if there are no bees, no crops will grow and people will turn to GM to feed themselves. I have a personal experience of this, in that, in September 2009, I woke up to find the sky over my house had a grid pattern of chemtrails. In that September, there had been a glut of fruit and an extremely high wasp and bee population. Three days after the grid pattern chemtrails, there was not a bee or a wasp to be seen. Nexus magazine published a letter of mine at the time of this incident which produced a crop of letters from others confirming similar experiences. A similar letter was published in Nexus in October of last year (2010) written by someone in Yorkshire giving exactly the same story…a grid pattern of chemtrails with a noticeable death of bees.

The problem does not only relate to bees. [A]ll insects have been affected and this is one of the major reasons for the decline in bird numbers as there are not enough insects for them to eat. There’s a simple way of checking this. Twenty years ago, if you drove anywhere rural at night, you had to wash the windscreen, headlamps and radiator grille of the car to clear off all of the dead bugs. [T]his is no longer necessary as there are no longer enough insects to cause this problem.

Bumblebee Image One
05-31-2019

So, what is the purpose of chemtrails? There seem to be several reasons apart from the testing of biological weapons. From some of the chemical analysis reports I have read, some of the chemicals are specifically designed to reduce soil fertility. In other words, to destroy the production of food crops. Again, this seems to tie in with the wants of the GM companies.

However, there is also the question of population control. In 1992, The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development Earth Summit took place in Rio de Janeiro. Out of this summit came the Biodiversity Treaty and Agenda 21. The stated aim of these agendas is to reduce the world’s human population to “a sustainable 500,000,000” (five hundred million…see The Georgia Guidestones). Given that the official world population figure puts the global human population as around 6,500,000,000 (six billion, five hundred million) it means that the global population must be reduced by six billion people by the year 2050, the date given at the summit, that is 350,000 people per day or 128 million per year.

The way in which chemtrails work in respect to the Rio Summit is to make people susceptible to illness. The chemicals sprayed are designed to give people the “first half” of an illness. [F]or example, some of the chemtrails have contained chemicals which affected the lungs. This lung weakness then made the body more receptive to illnesses such as Bird Flue, Avian Flue (different strain to bird flue) and Swine Flue. The “second half” of these illnesses would be given either by further chemtrails or by annual flue vaccinations (or Covid?).

To return to climate control…

We have had steadily climbing global temperatures since 1850. [T]his is an undisputed fact. However, the reason for this temperature rise is not anthropogenic (man-made). Despite Al Gore’s infamous hockey stick graph (which has been legally proven a fake…Al Gore “averaged out” the actual figures to give a deliberately misleading graph) which most people have assumed to show actual climate change, the truth is (from official and Met Office figures) that, when temperatures began to rise in about 1800, the cause of the rise was due to increased sun activity.

Between the years of about 1450 and 1850, the average global temperature was below freezing. In 1850, the temperature began to rise above freezing and continued climbing until 2000 where temperatures stopped rising. Since 2000, global temperatures have actually dropped slightly, by only about 0.1 of a degree, so, we do not have “runaway global warming” caused by human production of carbon dioxide. [W]hat we do have is an increase in Sun activity since the early 1800s and this increased Sun activity stopped in 2000 where the Sun entered a period known as a Maunder Minimum (see my book Synthesis for more detail on this…still in print). The Friends of the Earth produced their own figures for annual carbon dioxide production and found that “human activities” produce about 26 million tonnes whilst the Earth naturally produces about 980 tonnes.

Chemtrails Activist Post Image Two
Image Credit: Activist Post

The British government has stated that they are “chemically seeding” the atmosphere to combat global warming. The main ingredient of this “seeding” is water vapour, or by another name, clouds. The argument is that by increasing cloud cover, global warming can be combated by reflecting the Sun’s heat back out into space. But, cloud cover actually causes global warming by trapping hot air close to the Earth’s surface. As an example…think of a winter’s night, the sky is clear and we have a severe frost. The following night is cloudy but, there is no frost as the cloud cover acts like a duvet and holds the heat close to the surface (see reports and studies by the likes of Professor David Bellamy for more detail on this).

So, the British government policy of cloud seeding will not combat global warming but, will, in fact, increase it. Why would they want to do this? In order to make us believe that global warming is happening and that all of the other ludicrous policies that go with their strategies are necessary and to keep us in a state of fear[?] [A] population living in fear is easily manipulated, their health suffers and the process of consciousness reintegration is slowed, if not stopped.

In summary: The reason for chemtrails is population control and population reduction as well as promoting GM crops. In addition to the use of chemtrails, there is the fluoridation of drinking water. This is not natural Calcium Fluoride, as most believe, but, chemically produced Sodium Fluoride (Hexafluorosilicic Acid), a known carcinogen and the cause of many other health problems. It is more toxic than lead. The increased uses of pharmaceutical drugs […] are known to be harmful. The British Medical Association states that in Britain, 250,000 people per year are hospitalised by drug reactions of which 10,000 die every year. The American Medical Association states that in America 136,000 people die each year directly from adverse effects of prescribed drugs. The AMA also states, in its 5 year study published in 2008, that medical treatment (of all kinds) is responsible for killing two and three quarter million people per year in America alone. [T]he global death rate is probably in the region of 10 million at least. This is a long way from the Hippocratic Oath“First, do no harm!”

© Chris Thomas 2011

[Original Posting/Mount Zion 144 Ning Forum Blog Post 2011/Defunct]
Download the PDF & Share

See Also:
Documents Prove Chemtrails (USA Watchdog/Greg Hunter/10-25-2015)
Geoengineering Watch

Story Sunday: It Was 1976

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60 Minutes

Additional Information

Hans 2021 Song Draft: Round Two-Pick Two-Cathy’s Clown-Everly Brothers (1960)

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Everly Brothers Stereogum Image
Image Credit: Stereogum

Hanspostcard has a song draft challenge. This is my Round Two pick.

I grew up around lots of music. My dad had his tastes, my mom had hers and I got some exposure to my grandparents music, too. There was plenty of Elvis, Buddy Holly, Everly Brothers, Ricky Nelson, Gene Pitney, Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash, Johnny Horton, The Ventures, The Beach Boys, instrumental music (think Hugo Montenegro or Paul Mauriat), funny stuff like Ben Colder/Sheb Wooley, Ray Stevens or David Seville (my dad’s stuff), The Four Seasons, Motown, soul music, beach music (my mom’s stuff), big band music (my paternal grandparents) and, bluegrass, country and Latin/jazz (maternal grandparents). One song, in particular, that reminds me of my dad the most is Cathy’s Clown. When I was a kid, my dad liked to just get in the car, drive around and listen to the radio. It was, literally, No Particular Place To Go. When I became an adult, we’d still get in the car and cruise. He and I would sing Cathy’s Clown, together, with me taking Phil’s harmony. I still own my dad’s original 45. ~Vic

Written by Don, it was recorded in March and released in April 1960. It was recorded live, in a single take, with both brothers sharing a microphone. Floyd Cramer was on piano, Floyd Chance on bass and Buddy Harman on drums. An odd song, it has a chorus and bridges but, no verses. It was their first single for Warner Bros. It spent five weeks at #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, one week on the Billboard’s R&B chart and seven weeks at #1 on UK’s Singles chart. It was their biggest selling single and their last #1 after Wake Up Little Susie and All I Have to Do Is Dream.

The song is ranked at #150 Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and it was added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress in 2013. Covers have been done by Reba McEntire and Neil Sedaka (1983) with McEntire’s version reaching #1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart and Canada’s RPM Country Tracks chart in 1989. There is even a Jan and Dean version on Filet Of Soul Redux: The Rejected Master Recordings (2017).

“We owe those guys everything. They started it all.” ~Bob Dylan

Additional Reading & References:
The Everly Brothers: That Sibling Sound (BBC News/2014)
Cathy’s Clown ~ The Everly Brothers (Library of Congress/PDF)
Recording Cathy’s Clown (Steve Hoffman Music Forum)

Lyrics

Saturday Night Beech-Nut Show 1960

Music Monday: Wachet! Betet! Betet! Wachet! 1716

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Johann Sebastian Bach Wikipedia Image
Artist: Elias Gottlob Haussmann 1748
Collection: Bach-Archiv_Leipzig
Source: Dave’s J. S. Bach Page
Photographer: David J. Grossman

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and organist. The most important member of the Bach family, his genius combined outstanding performing musicianship with supreme creative powers in which forceful and original inventiveness, technical mastery and intellectual control, are perfectly balanced. While it was in the former capacity, as a keyboard virtuoso, that in his lifetime he acquired an almost legendary fame, it is the latter virtues and accomplishments, as a composer, that, by the end of the 18th century, earned him a unique historical position. His musical language was distinctive and extraordinarily varied, drawing together and surmounting the techniques, the styles and the general achievements, of his own and earlier generations, and leading on to new perspectives, which later ages have received, and understood, in a great variety of ways.

Bach Cantatas Website

Wachet! Betet! Betet! Wachet! (Watch! Pray! Pray! Watch!) is the title of two church cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach. He composed a first version, BWV 70a, in Weimar for the second Sunday in Advent of 1716 and expanded it in 1723 in Leipzig to BWV 70, a cantata in two parts for the 26th Sunday after Trinity.

On [March] 2, 1714, Bach was appointed concertmaster of the Weimar court capelle of the co-reigning dukes Wilhelm Ernst and Ernst August of Saxe-Weimar. As concertmaster, he assumed the principal responsibility for composing new works, specifically cantatas for the Schlosskirche (palace church), on a monthly schedule. Bach originally wrote this cantata in his last year there […].

The instrumentation of the Weimar cantata is lost.

Bach first performed the cantata on [December] 6, 1716.

Wikipedia Summaries

Additional Reading:
Bach Cantata Translations (Emmanuel Music Organization Website)
Chapter 28 BWV 70 (The Cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach by Julian Mincham)

Bach-Collegium Stuttgart
Gächinger Kantorei Choir
Helmuth Rilling


Dvořák Hall Prague
Monteverdi Choir
John Eliot Gardiner

Throwback Thursday: John Ball & The Peasants’ Revolt 1381

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John Ball Wat Tyler Wikipedia Image
Medieval drawing of John Ball
Image Credit: British Library
Wikipedia & Wikimedia

John Ball was an English priest who took a prominent part in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Ball […] actively [preached] “articles contrary to the faith of the church” […]. Ball trained as a priest in York and referred to himself […] as “Seynte Marie priest of York”. [During his time], England was exhausted by death on a massive scale and crippling taxes. The Black Death was followed by years of war, which had to be paid for. The population was nearly halved by disease, and overworked, and onerous flat-rate poll taxes were imposed.

Ball was imprisoned in Maidstone, Kent, at the time of the […] Revolt. He […] gained considerable fame as a roving preacher without a parish or any link to the established order […] and [was known] especially [for] his insistence on social equality. He delivered radical sermons in many places […]. His utterances brought him into conflict with Simon of Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, and he was thrown in prison on several occasions. He also appears to have been excommunicated […] and, in 1366, it was forbidden for anyone to hear him preach. These measures, however, did not moderate his opinions, nor diminish his popularity, and he took to speaking to parishioners in churchyards after official services.

Shortly after the Peasants’ Revolt began, Ball was released by the Kentish rebels from his prison. He preached to them at Blackheath in an open-air sermon that included the following:

“When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman? From the beginning all men by nature were created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of naughty men. For if God would have had any bondmen from the beginning, He would have appointed who should be bond, and who free. And therefore I exhort you to consider that now the time is come, appointed to us by God, in which ye may (if ye will) cast off the yoke of bondage, and recover liberty.”

When the rebels had dispersed, Ball was taken prisoner at Coventry, given a trial in which, unlike most, he was permitted to speak. (Six hundred, forty years ago) [he] was hanged, drawn and quartered at St Albans in the presence of King Richard II on July 15, 1381. His head was displayed stuck on a pike on London Bridge and the quarters of his body were displayed at four different towns. Ball, who was called […] “the mad priest of Kent” seems to have possessed the gift of rhyme. He voiced the feelings of a section of the discontented lower orders of society at that time, who chafed at villeinage and the lords’ rights of unpaid labour, or corvée.

Wikipedia Summary

Hmmm…it appears that we are still in bondage all these centuries later and censorship still reigns supreme from the overlords. There are a lot of parallels to today in the above. And, there are those that would like to see others cancelled (or, hanged, drawn & quartered) for refusing to be poisoned. ~Vic