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A breast feeding campaign is dedicated to increasing the number of young mothers in Lancashire who choose to breastfeed. It’s a very trendy and contemporary campain. The campaign has been informed at all stages by the opinions and experiences of real, local, young breastfeeding mothers. link
Today, Pink Tentacle posted about Osamu Tezuka’s “Galaxy Boy Troop,” a 92-episode children’s space opera that aired on NHK from 1963 to 1965.
Here’s a clip:
Bookmark this article:“Galaxy Boy Troop is perhaps unique in the history of children’s television programming inasmuch as it combined marionettes and animation. All of the characters were represented by puppets when not shown traveling in vehicles, whereas other scenes in which the characters are shown to be flying or driving were animated. Two series were produced, both in black and white. In the first, Galaxy Boy Troop is formed to travel an enormous distance to recover a substance which can restore Earth’s dying sun. In the second series Galaxy Boy Troop battles aliens in a flying saucer. A total of 92 episodes were produced; 44 in the first series and 48 in the second. The series also aired in France where it was known both as Galaxy boy troupe and Le Commando De La Voie Lactee. The original Japanese masters and films are believed to have been lost, and the very few examples of the series which have appeared on DVD have been taken from French sources. In 1997 Japanese astronaut Takao Doi requested the show’s theme be used as his wakeup call during his mission on the space shuttle Columbia.” [wiki]
For those who didn’t hear about her, Wendy O. Williams, was the lead singer for the punk band the Plasmatics, whose stage theatrics included blowing up equipment, near nudity and chain-sawing guitars. She was fantastic. 10 years ago this week, Williams died died at age 48 in a wooded area near her home of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Here is an explosive video of her.
Bookmark this article: Wayne’s cameras are very special and dangerous. They incorporate “actual skulls, insects and HIV+ blood.” Some elements of Wayne’s art make me think of Necromantic Art.
About the camera depicted below the artist says, “Designed to take photos of soon-to-be mothers who are at least 8 months pregnant, and explore my relationship with my twin brother who died at birth.” link
4”x5” camera made from Aluminium, Titanium, Acrylic, Formaldehyde and an infant human heart.
As our regular readers noticed, we post vintage ads on a regular basis. Here is a book that inspires us. It contains ads from the early 1900s—many of which haven’t been seen since then.
“Sales pitches were earnest and friendly; beer, for example, was billed as “The Evening Glass of Cheer” and toothpaste was described as “Delicious Ribbon Dental Cream”—perhaps not the catchiest slogans, but they were on to something. The American consumerist boom of the 20th century was just beginning and advertising was getting its sea legs. From motorcars to hair tonics to steamship cruises to Coca-Cola (”After the theatre drink a glass… it relieves fatigue”), America was peddling its wares in style and setting an example of how to advertise in the modern age.” [Amazon]
We hear a lot about Muslims and Islam in the Vancouver and Canadian news in general. In this article, I will try to clear up many of the misconceptions that are prevalent in what Mark Steyn of Maclean’s Magazine, the Canadian media and the western media call the “arab world” or the “muslim world” as if all Muslims were Arabs or all Muslims have the same views . Before jumping into the core of this topic, I will start with a historical analogy from an Algerian perspective.
When the French invaded what they named Algeria in 1830, they assumed the country’s people were all Arabs. But they were not! Algeria is mostly Berber. And the Berbers were, as they are today, divided into several ethnic groups, Kabyle in the mountainous north-central area, Chaoui in the eastern Atlas Mountains, Mozabites in the M’zab valley, and Tuareg in the far south.
Later, in the 1960s when Algeria was at war to recover its independence, some forces were working in the shadows of foreign lands, somewhere in the Middle East. That’s because some Algerian elitists had thought that if they aligned themselves with the so-called Arab world, they would get help. What a mistake!
Those elitists discovered a world that did not correspond to what they had imagined. The average person in North America or Europe is unaware that a “united Muslim world” or even an “Arab world” exists only in the mind of someone with a hidden agenda. The hidden agenda, mind you, has a vested interest in keeping that myth alive.
There is oil out there and a docile group of diverse peoples. If we consider the Muslim world, western countries refer to them as the Arab world! Egypt has long been one that trumpeted its ideology in the name of “Arabs”. Needless to say that it took them more than 20 years to slide into a forgotten state. Iraq? Syria? Where did the Assyrians, the Kurds, the Druses, the Armenians and all those ancient races disappear? Did they just fade away with the time and transform into Arabs? No, they are still there. They just acquired the Arab language and culture. Their ancestors were also coercefully islamised. But does that make them Arabs? In case you answered yes, then you should also consider all the descendants of slaves in the United States as being white. Since black people acquired the white ways, language and culture (ie: Bill Cosby). Then we have the whole of the so-called “Muslim world”. True, some regions have developed a new language from Berber and Arabic and yet the common westerner does not know that the Tunisian peasant can’t understand an Egyptian or a Jordanian nor does he practice the same Islam.
Where is the Muslim world?
The Muslim World and the Arab world are a western myth.
When CNN talks about Arab unity, the Arab league or the Muslim world, we all think they all mean one thing, but they don’t. How can so many diverse concepts in such a diverse Arab world all mean one thing? I suggest that vague notions have been created in the minds of western journalists and are now becoming accepted reality in everyone’s mind.
Islam is probably the only common link between these people and yet, for a person who has gone through these countries, the Islam one practices in one region is totally different from one practiced in another. It amuses me to hear about students, here in Canada, complaining against Maclean’s Magazine filing human rights complaints because its content is offensive to Islam. It would be more appropriate to say that it is offensive to THEIR way of practicing Islam. They take advantage of the fact that they are in Canada to entertain the illusion of some Muslim world unity. What a conceit to imply to be the representative of the entire Islamic vision. Just imagine that Christians across the globe are in tune with the Vatican, what a joke!
However, there is one thing that Muslims all over the world have in common is that they don’t have a conception of separation of church and state, this is why there is conflicts wherever they go (including Canada) this is explained in the Islam Review blog.
“This is a major reason why conflict accompanies the islamists wherever they go. Islamists and their defenders want to portray POLITICAL differences and disagreements as RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION. Here are several references to illustrate this:
quran 9.29 - Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Messenger have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection. […]
Albania. Chechnya. Sarajevo. Grozny. Kashmir. Paris. London. Sydney. Dharfur. Madrid.
Kosovo. Just to name a few. 1400 years of this. Verse 9.29 abrogates 123 verses of ‘tolerance’, and they pick and choose among those 123 verses to sell you on islam being peaceful, knowing full well that your more than likely unaware of verse 9.29, which cancels them all out. And it goes hand in hand with: ” [Islam Review]
The World today, and mainly the Western World, must awake: ideas such as a united Muslim world or vision, a greater middle east, a united Arab world are fanciful ideas in a diverse world and must be dropped for the good of all concerned.
The mainstream of peoples are anything… but Arab… in the very countries western journalists so wrongly call “Arab countries” . Moreover, Muslims do not practice the same Islam all over the “Muslim world” any more than Baptists practice the same Christianity as Catholics do.
See also : The USC-MSA Compendium of Muslim Texts of the University of Southern California
Bookmark this article: 
Mr. T Talking chain for those who were fans of the eighties TV show the A Team. link
Bookmark this article: Cindy was published by Marvel comics. It’s an example of the “Good Girl” comics trend that goes back to WWII. It is a genre that is beyond the normal comic book. Humor, adventure, sci-fi and more have all featured “Good Girl” art.
About the cover below: “I don’t know the artist responsible for this cover, but it’s a real knockout! It’s even a kind of greytone production, giving an almost painterly effect with added depth.” Samuelsdesign.com
Etsy is currently publishing a serie titled Handmade Weddings. Today’s post is covers a Hobo Wedding, the antithesis of the TV show “Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire?” that was airing on Fox years ago.
Bookmark this article:“The Handmade Wedding Series has been delighted to bring you some real weddings. And hobocampcrafts’ self-described “hobo” wedding kept it so real with a budget of only $5000!
Many little girls dream about their weddings, but the idea of getting married never even dawned on me. So when my boyfriend got down on one knee, I knew I had a lifetime of planning to catch up on.
We had a budget of about $5,000 — a generous amount from my retired parents. Well aware that if we went over budget it was coming out of our pocket, we decided to keep our wedding fun and unique, but simple. We were inspired by a DIY wedding article in the now-defunct “Budget Living” magazine.” [Etsy]
It appears that some bits of western culture is definitely reaching Afghanistan. On March 13 mainstream media reported that a woman from the conservative Pashtun belt, that’s the Afghan version of the U.S “bible belt”, is one of the top three contenders in the country’s version of “American Idol.” I wonder if members of the Canadian Army based in Afghanistan to protect big oil companies interests watched it.
Bookmark this article:Bridget Johnson says, “Isn’t the point that 11 million Afghans — a third of the country’s population and 90 percent of the TV-watching population — eagerly tune into Star each week, that 300,000 votes were text-messaged in for the recently aired finals, and that music is filling homes and hearts again despite clerical objections?
Being an American Idol junkie, I considered myself the perfect journalist to delve further into Afghan Star. So I watched all of the episodes put on YouTube by Tolo TV, the network that has raised so much of that clerical ire. The audition tapes were the best: As Idol begins each season by showing the good — and the very, very bad — performers from audition cities, Star also had audition shows from Kabul, Kandahar, Mazar-e-Sharif, and more; more than 2,000 hopefuls tried out for a chance to win $5,000 U.S. and a record deal. The audition shows opened with catchy music and fast-paced shots of the host city and its people — with production values equal to that of American TV, and some of the landscapes resembling Barstow.” [PAJAMA MEDIA]
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