Kim Jong Il's People's Republic of North Korea is a gigantic installation, a simulation, a play. Eva Munz, Christian Kracht and Lukas Nikol traveled to this land to take pictures of a country from which there are no pictures. What they show in The Ministry of Truth is a window view of the gigantic 3D production of Kim Jong Il, who writes the nation's statistics and authors its film script.
Here is the state as the ultimate environmental art, a living dispute to American propaganda.
]]>Josh Alan Friedman, author of Tales of Times Square (Feral House), provides face-to-face reporting from licentious New York City of the 1980s--a compelling assortment of pimp laureates, porn starlets, evangelical strippers, bizarre 42nd Street inhabitants, Screw magazine staffers, "the strikeout king," and his stud-like counterpart, "God’s Gift to Women."
Josh Alan Friedman is also the co-author (with Drew Friedman) of Warts and All, co-editor (with Nile Southern) of Now Dig This: The Unspeakable Writings of Terry Southern, 1950-1995 (Grove Press), and contributor to It’s a Man’s World: Men’s Adventure Magazines, the Postwar Pulps (Feral House).
]]> "Now follow along with veteran sex reporter Josh Alan Friedman as he revisits 1980s New York City 'when porn was filth and sex was still dirty.' His book When Sex Was Dirty chronicles the freaks of 42nd Street and all the starlets, studs, strippers, and 'strike-out artists' who made the era of getting screwed, screwed over, and screwed up, fascinating. So dirty you'll want to shower afterwards, but so compelling, you'll keep coming back for more.""...(B)rings readers vividly back to the oversexed Manhattan nightclubs of the mid-'80s... 'The Rise and Fall of Al Goldstein'---the collection's most memorable entry---traces with empathy and amazement the arc of the infamous pornographer, for whom Friedman once worked. The book... will interest Friedman's (and the old Times Square's) admirers."
--- Publishers Weekly
During the Great Depression, books of pharmaceutical and chemical formulas were reformatted for layman readers, promising that they could "save hundreds of dollars by making things for yourself and your friends." In the 1930s, these books were seen in most homes next to yearly almanacs and Webster’s Dictionaries.
The most practical and scientifically correct formula book, as edited by the chemist Harry Bennett, was one called The Standard Book of Formulas: How to Make What You Use... Over 2,000 Practical Modern Working Formulas for Making Useful Products, now available again from Feral House as Two Thousand Formulas, Recipes and Trade Secrets.
]]>The Feral House edition includes Sarita Vendetta's macabre illustrations to Heinrich Hoffmann's verse, the entire original edition in color, Struwwelpeter-inspired wartime propaganda titled Struwwelhitler, and a revealing introduction by Jack Zipes, an authority on folklore and children's literature, whose journal, The Lion and the Unicorn, devoted an entire issue to Heinrich Hoffman and Struwwelpeter.
** UPDATE, 12/14/07: ** Struwwelpeter dies from popularity! No more copies of this book available! Sorry!
The editor and book designer is the notorious indie Amphetamine Reptile rock producer Haze XXL (AKA Tom Hazelmyer). The book itself features every FlameRite Zippo produced, including all rare and out-of-print models. In addition, the book includes exclusive, never-before-seen art from 20 artists in the FlameRite lineup, including Peter Agee, Glenn Barr, Tim Biskup, Charles Burns, Saiman Chow, Dan Clowes, Coop, R. Crumb, Evan Dorkin, Shepard Fairey, Los Bros Hernandez, Derek Hess, Kaz, Dan Kelly, Frank Kozik, W. Kelly Lucas, Chris Mars, Tony Millionaire, Niagara, Gary Panter, Pizz, Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, Savage Pencil, Shag, R.K. Sloane, Spumco, Von Dutch, Shannon Wheeler, Robert Williams, Suzanne Williams and Basil Wolverton.
]]> "Flame Rite has created portable art, simply beautiful both in form and function. But it is muscle bound, tattooed art inspired by fifties and graffiti art pulled up from the underground of a burgeoning scene of comic books, rock posters and street art and it's in your face. For Scorched Art, Hazelmyer has brought collaborators and new artists together to design the best in lighter art. The images are beautifully transferred to the page with depth of colour that demonstrates the ability of a tiny object to become more than a miniature billboard for corporate logos. Hazelmyer has solid design credentials from record sleeves, posters, t-shirts and matchbooks, and as an art form Flame Rite have created a nice chunk of metallic apple pie.""You've smoked your last cigarette, and all the corner stores are closed. Spend a long night torturing yourself through withdrawal with Scorched Art: The Incendiary Aesthetic of Flame Rite Zippos, a smokin' new book of all of Flame Rite's fabulous custom-art Zippo lighters over the years. If you've been as obsessive as the average Pez dispenser collector, maybe you're lucky enough to have amassed a chrome mini-museum of the actual Flame Rite art lighters. But if convenience and cost efficiency are your first priorities, pay one flat fee for the book and view this unbeatable pocket-sized underground art collection on paper. With Robert and Suzanne Williams, R. Crumb, Coop, Von Dutch, Niagara, Ed Roth and Gary Panter all counted among the licensing artists, this is the healthiest nic fix you'll ever get."
--- Juxtapoz
"Founder of the noise rock label Amphetamine Reptile back when 'indie' actually meant something, Hazelmyer was a Zippo collector who was tired of designs that were no more challenging than 'your average greeting card.' The famed lighters have been icons of smoker cool since the 1930s, but were first logo-ed 20 years later, but by the early '90s they had, in Hazelmyer's view, become staid. He thus 'scoured the art underworld for all that was amazing and started slapping it on a Zippo' -- drawing heavily on the burgeoning indie comics scene for talent. Under the name Flame Rite (after being sued as 'Smoke King'), designs from Peter Bagge, Shepard Fairey (creator of the ubiquitous 'Andre the Giant has a posse' tags) and R. Crumb appeared in the early years; altogether, Hazelmyer has gathered 35 artists from the last decade. The smooth page design has a 1950s-tinged, slickly lurid feel. Shades of blue, orange and yellow are the backdrop for each Zippo, annotated with the name of its artist and date of creation. No artist bios are included, but there is a bibliography of Web sites for each designer."
--- Publishers Weekly
Visit the Great God Pan website: greatgodpan.com/blog/
]]>Although officially denied by Israeli officials, Mr. Chamish's research was used in a recent story by NBC Extra and is currently under documentary production for an hour-long program for the BBC.
According to many witnesses, a secret service agent was busy, prior to the assassination, coaching the supposed right-wing assassin, Yigal Amir, to shoot Prime Minster Rabin. The shooting of Rabin took place during big peace rally. Although secret service agents were aware of patsy Amir's intent to harm Rabin, he was able to get close to the Prime Minister, shoot a couple bullets, after which secret service agents yelled out the bullets were "dummies." Following the shooting, a startled but seemingly unhurt Prime Minister walked on his own strength to his limousine (a feat improbable or impossible if he was shot in the spine, as claimed by hospital surgeons).
Bodyguards and other insiders claimed under oath that no one was inside the official limousine before Rabin's entrance after patsy Amir's shots took place, but a "home made video" released by the government to the public, proves that a back door to the limousine was shut by someone inside the vehicle prior to Rabin's entrance. Then the limo took nearly ten minutes to arrive at the hospital, which would have taken any other limo less than a simple minute. Rabin's wife, Leah, was not allowed in the limo, and was detained at a secret service office before allowed to attend her husband at the hospital.
Notes written by doctors (and provided in Chamish's book) who examined Rabin at the hospital reveal that he was shot at point-blank range -- though the supposed assassin never got closer than six feet away. The doctor's note also notes that Rabin was hit in the spine by a third bullet (evidence contradicted by Rabin's physical behavior) at the time of the peace rally shooting.
All evidence points to Prime Minister Rabin being shot within the limousine that took him to the hospital.
Barry Chamish's thorough investigation should be considered as primary to Yitzhak Rabin's assassination as Mark Lane's Rush to Judgment was to JFK's: the first book to bring up serious doubts regarding the official story of the horrifying event.
Barry Chamish is also the author of The Fall of Israel (Canongate) and Traitors and Carpetbaggers in the Promised Land: A Journal of Israel's Betrayal (Hearthstone Publishing). Chamish immigrated to Israel in 1975 from Toronto, and received his MA from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He spent eighteen months in a combat unit of the Israel Defense Forces. Among Chamish's credits are articles for The Atlantic, New York Newsday and The National Review.
]]>You can't trust anyone these days -- and it's no accident. Children turn their parents into the police on two-bit drug charges. Classmates tattle on one another to school officials. Friends rat each other out to the authorities. Political advocacy groups report suspected dissidents to the FBI. Employers hire undercover agents to spy on workers. Lawyers are forced to report clients who pay with cash to law enforcement agencies.
Welcome to Snitch Culture, a surveillance society far more insidious and pervasive than anything George Orwell ever imagined. Elected officials from both political parties have spent decades building a vast domestic intelligence network to track every man, woman and child.
* The government's new high-tech surveillance systems, including the FBI's Carnivore Internet monitoring computer and the National Security Agency's spy- in-the-sky, ECHELON.
* The government's efforts to turn America's children into informants with sophisticated snitch programs in the public schools, including the coming national WAVE American tip line.
* How informants are fueling the growing assets forfeiture scandal.
* How the War on Drugs uses informants to oppress inner city blacks.
* The government's successful infiltration of the growing Anti-Globalization Movement.
* The role of private informant networks through history, from the early prohibition movements to the anti-Communist superpatriot groups of the 1950s to the so-called civil rights watchdog organizations of today.
Download the Snitch Culture Appendices. (100K, .zip archive including (4) MS Word Docs)
]]> "No one is safe in Snitch Culture. Investigative reporter Jim Redden has written a scary, fascinating, and important examination of the pervasive use and abuse of informants and snitches in the United States. Detailing the many forms and techniques used by governmental and private sectors, Snitch Culture traces the history and the massive modern proliferation of this most despised and feared tool of power.""Far from being the mad ramblings of a conspiracy theorist, INSIDE THE SHADOW GOVERNMENT is a careful, concise documentation of the dangers inherent in the U.S. having a secret government with unlimited, unspecified power, whose full scope and details of action and spending is hidden even from key members of Congress for 'security purposes'...a sobering, educational, and eye-opening read."
--- Slug Magazine
"...A work that is shocking in a quieter, yet even more disturbing way... This is a work of history, not wild speculation, for facts, after all, are more shocking, and frightening, than fiction. (A) coherent narrative, with both the possibilities and the balanced truths laid out... Harry Helms, an electronics expert who has published widely on both civilian and covert radio, comes across neither as a conspiracy theorist nor as a militia member holed up inside a Montana bunker, but as a serious thinker who has done his homework."
--- Ken Mondschein, corporatemofo.com
"Harry Helms' book is a tremendous resource work that will have enormous appeal both to clandestine DXers and the general public...He meticulously outlines the procedures by which the government could morph into a dictatorship, where civilians could be rounded up and detained while normal constitutional protections could be suspended by executive orders... (and) reveals the location of many secret facilities operated by the government, originally designed for the operation of the government in the event of a nuclear attack….This book is now essential reading for everybody in the United States... You should go buy one at once, while you still have the chance."
--- Monitoring Times
Guy Debord—Revolutionary, the first biography in any language, examines Debord's life, writings, film and ideas. The book includes Debord's previously untranslated board game, "The Game of War." Guy Debord died in 1994 after shooting himself in the heart.
]]>"Robert Sterling is bracingly rude."
--- The Guardian (UK)
"Sterling's concise handbook of facts, figures and felonies (is) enlivened by his sardonic (some would say "demented") wit..."
--- New York Press
"Read this book. Vote accordingly. Our country is in the midst of a civil war between the alarmingly stupid and the just plain alarmed. Feral House boldly and unapologetically asks questions the media/propaganda machine purposefully leaves behind."
--- Margaret Cho
Author John Gilmore's hard-edged noir style reportage leaves little to the reader's imagination, from Schmid's grisly murders to the hard-boiled courtroom gymnastics in the Arizona courts. The author of Severed, about the Black Dahlia murder, and The Garbage People, on Manson and the "Family," Gilmore's Cold-Blooded lays bare a hefty slice of the human condition that is revealing, shocking, and most disturbing.
]]> "Gilmore got in good with many of the key players, and lets them speak at length about their world: It's a strikingly amoral and enticing place. ... aficionados of juvenile delinquency will certainly want to seek this out."