Eyeless In Gaza

The outrage against the illegal Israeli invasion of Gaza and its armed assault on the Palestinian Authority and its terror attacks on the Palestinian population is growing. Albeit amongst the leftwing blogs.

My Blahg On Gaza

It's Time to End the "Last Taboo" and Hold Israel Accountable for Its Actions - by Stephen Lendman



The left folks.

Not liberals like Mindelle Jacobs of the Sun who on the issue of Israel and Gaza sounds more like that other bitch queen at the the Sun; Michael Coren.
And like the proverbial Israeli Apologist and Suck Up Warren Kinsella liberals in Canada defend the aparthied state. In fact that is how they define themselves as liberals. For liberals Israel is the very model of a modern major democratic state.

For the Left the State of Israel is Imperialist and an occupying power, that is barely legitimate, the liberals paen that Israel is somehow democratic forgets the disenfranchised Arab population.

"The extermination of the Native Americans can be admitted, the morality of Hiroshima attacked, the national flag (of the US) publicly committed to flames. But the systematic continuity of Israel's 52-year oppression and maltreatment of the Palestinians is virtually unmentionable, a narrative that has no permission to appear."

--Edward Said, Palestinian writer, scholar and activist

And then as I googled Eyeless in Gaza, which is a novel by Aldous Huxely ( and an avante garde band) , I found these complimentary articles;

A critique of the media coverage from Australia Eyeless in Gaza

And from the US Arms and influence: Eyeless in Gaza

And in an article from last year after the Israeli withdrawl from Gaza we are reminded of the economic differences between the Palestinians and the Israelis. An economic relationship of indentured servitude by one group to the other.

According to the Palestinian Economic Council for Reconstruction and Development (PECDAR), annual per capita income in Gaza continues to average roughly $700, compared to the $16,000 per capita income enjoyed by Israelis. In the absence of relatively well-paying jobs, what will happen to the lines of unemployed Gazans? The potential flight of employment seekers -- a formidable phenomenon worldwide -- is only one problem. More immediately, if Gazans cannot feed their families, the recurrence of cross-border violence, if not a third intifada, will only be a matter of time. Eyeless in Gaza - Salon

Also See:

Gaza

Israel

Zionism/Anti-Zionism


Israel, deaths, Gaza, children, artillery, Paestine, Palestinians, US, slaughter, missles, Zionist, Zionism,
Hamas, Fateh, IDF, Abbas, Palestinian-Authority,hostage, Hamas, war, Gaza, invasion,

Free Market Economics=Cooperatives

Found this interesting article at GNN on the nature of the Free Market, one that exists without capitalism. Of course in order to have a free market it has to be cooperative. Something my pals in the Mutualist movement have been at pains to point out.

Frances Moore Lappe finds a cooperative approach to living that actually enhances human dignity

A market economy and capitalism are synonymous—- or at least joined at the hip. That’s what most Americans grow up assuming. But it is not necessarily so. Capitalism—control by those supplying the capital in order to return wealth to shareholders—is only one way to drive a market.

Granted, it is hard to imagine another possibility for how an economy could work in the abstract. It helps to have a real-life example.

And now I do.

In May I spent five days in Emilia Romagna, a region of four million people in northern central Italy. There, over the last 150 years, a network of consumer, farmer and worker-driven cooperatives has come to generate 30 percent to 40 percent of the region’s GDP. Two of every three people in Emilia Romagna are members of co-ops.

The region, whose hub city is Bologna, is home to 8,000 co-ops, producing everything from ceramics to fashion to specialty cheese. Their industriousness is woven into networks based on what cooperative leaders like to call “reciprocity.” All co-ops return 3 percent of profits to a national fund for cooperative development, and the movement supports centers providing help in finance, marketing, research and technical expertise.

The fact is that these counter economic experiments in Italy began in the Hot Autumn of the early seventies. They also gave rise to the autonomist movement of the working class in the cities who took part in rent strikes and food strikes, where they decided the price of the products they would buy. A different kind of wage and price control regime than that of the State which was also embracing this during the economic crisis of the time.


Also See: Free Market

Toni Negri

Anarchist Mayor of Milan

Workers Control Versus Trade Unions

A Libertarian defense of Communism

State-less Socialism

The New Multitdue

Free Trade; Hong Kong & Somalia

The War For Chocolate

Development Versus Population Growth

WTO

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War Resister Killed In Afghanistan

Is what the headline should read.

Instead of the apologistics of the Minister of Defense. This is Canada after-all and yes we can decide which missions we want to go on. Thank you very much. Especially when our troops were lied to. Those who signed up under the impression our National Policy was Peacekeeping, now are working under the Harpocrites private agenda of War Making. They were mislead.

Soldier not misled: Minister
OTTAWA—Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor has responded to a young soldier's concerns that he was "misled" about Canada's Afghan mission with a tough rebuttal of his own: "This is the military. "You don't vote in and vote out of operations. Family and friends have painted Boneca as a disillusioned soldier deeply unhappy about this mission. Their comments have highlighted the mounting stresses on Canadian troops caught up in fighting a shadowy enemy in scorching temperatures."He hated it over there. He was misled as to what was going to be there when he got there, and what he would be doing. He was very mad about it," Larry DeCorte, his girlfriend Megan's father, told the Toronto Star on Sunday. Indeed, Boneca was so unhappy with his mission, he had asked an army priest if talk of suicide would get him discharged, DeCorte said.

If not you will find soldiers committing suicide or fragging their officers. It is now time for the Left to call for general resistance by our troops in their own self interest; that is to get out of Kandahar alive. Calling for troop resistance now will save lives in the future.

The reality is that the war in Afghanistan is not a humanitarian mission but a continuation of the American War on Drugs. Afghan drug policy costs Canadian lives: study

Canada's Afghanistan mission under fire

The Canadian government is in denial over the true perception of its troop deployment to Afghanistan's troubled Kandahar province, says the head of a European drug policy think-tank.Emmanuel Reinert, executive director of the Brussels-based Senlis Council, said he was taken aback by the virulent reaction to the group's report, which said Canadian soldiers and Afghan civilians are paying with their lives because of failing U.S. policies that focus on eradication of the poppy crop



Canada in Kandahar: No Peace to Keep - A Case Study of the Military Coalitions in Southern Afghanistan

New Field Report
June 2006

Canadian troops and Afghan civilians are paying with their lives for Canada's adherence to the US government's failing military and counter-narcotics policies in Kandahar. The US-led counter-terrorist operations and militaristic poppy eradication strategies have triggered a new war with the Taliban and other insurgent groups, and are causing countless civilian deaths.

To a large extent, it can be said that Operation Enduring Freedom and the related militaristic counter-narcotics policies are significant contributors to the current state of war in Kandahar and the other southern provinces.

Canada and the international community continue to unquestioningly accept America's fundamentally flawed policy approach in southern Afghanistan, thereby jeopardising the success of military operations in the region and the stabilisation, reconstruction and development mission objectives.




Full report (2MB, PDF)

---

• The United Nations Drug Conventions Regime and Policy Reform
• International Drug Policy Status Quaestionis
• Global Drug Policy: A Historical Perspective
• Illicit drugs convention reform & the United Nations agencies
• The United Nations Drug Control Treaties
• A Fourth International Convention for Drug Policy
• Global Drug Policy: Building a New Framework
• Feasibility Study on Opium Licensing in Afghanistan for the Production of Morphine and Other Essential Medicines
• Impact Assessment of Crop Eradication in Afghanistan and
• Helmand at War
• Afghanistan Insurgency Assessment Field Report
• Integrated Social Control in Afghanistan

Afghanistan & the Ghost of Kim

The drug trade is indeed a problem, but in large part because of the war. The Taliban initially suppressed opium production, but war, coupled with a failure to adequately fund a program aimed at weaning farmers off poppy growing, means Afghanistan is now once again the world’s largest producer of opium.

Opium profits not only fuel the insurgency, they fill the coffers of the U.S.-supported warlords who are once again in power. It was the corruption and violence of the warlords that originally laid the ground for the Taliban takeover. The only thing keeping the warlords in power today is the U.S. and NATO armed forces.

Actually rather than Kim, the Harpocrites war efforts in Afghanistan reminds me of another of Rudyard Kiplings stories; The Man Who Would Be King.


















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Good Riddance

Chechen behind Beslan massacre killed
It is ironic that prior to the Beslan assault the U.S. intelligence community heard noise about a potential terrorist threat. Their interpretation of that 'noise' was that Al Qaeda was preparing to disrupt the Republican convention. Such navel gazing resulted in this horrific massacre of school children. The noise was real, it just had nothing to do with the US. And everything to do with the old USSR.

Some key facts about Basayev

* Basayev was born in 1965 and brought up by the generation of Chechens who had just returned to their homeland after being exiled by dictator Josef Stalin to Kazakhstan and Siberia. He was a talented footballer who studied at an engineering institute in Moscow and at an Islamic institute in Istanbul.

* Basayev was a fierce fighter motivated by militant Islam. He listed South American revolutionary Che Guevara as his hero, but believed Russian civilians, including children, were legitimate targets in the fight for independence from Moscow. He once described himself as "a bad guy, a bandit, a terrorist."

He was less influenced by Che as he was the very model of Nechayev's amoral revolutionary; the nihlist. Which by the by is also the model for Al Qaeda. Regardless of their claims to Islam, as Basayev shows, they are amoral nihilists. Nechayev who?

Perhaps Nechayev's most controversial theorem was his amoral statement that "the ends justify the means." In his mind, the revolutionary cause was to succeed by whatever means necessary. Given the very real threat of extinction that western man faces, this once extreme idea might not be so extreme any longer:

For him, everything is moral which assists the triumph of revolution. Immoral and criminal is everything which stands in its way.

Racialism, Revolution, and the Radicalism of Sergei Nechayev ...

Sergey Genadievich Nechayev was a man so feared by the Czar and the aristocrat, ruling classes, he became the Czar’s special prisoner. The Czar received weekly special reports on Nechayev’s prison activities.

Nechayev was born September 20, 1847. He died at age 35 in prison, on December 3, 1882 – from dropsy complicated by scurvy.

He was convicted for the murder of a fellow student, but his real crimes were political. He frightened the state because he claimed to head a secret society four million strong. In truth, it was a small group, maybe a few hundred, mainly of St. Petersburg students. The trial sentenced him to 20 years in Siberia. The Czar intervened and ordered him to be retained for the rest of his life. He was kept in Cell #1 of the notorious Alexis Ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress.

As a human being, he left much to be desired – he lied, cheated, blackmailed, murdered. Of course, he would defend his actions based on the principles laid out in the following document. Regardless his personal attributes, he rejected the authority of the state to his dismal end and, for that, gained legendary status in Russia.

The Narodnaya Volya (People’s Freedom) considered using its resources to free him rather than kill the Czar – an offer he rejected, saying the death of the Czar was more important. (And, indeed, on March 13, 1881, Czar Alexander II was assassinated whilst riding through the snowy streets of St. Petersburg.)

The Revolutionary Catechism by Sergey Nechayev 1869

1. The revolutionary is a doomed man. He has no personal interests, no business affairs, no emotions, no attachments, no property, and no name. Everything in him is wholly absorbed in the single thought and the single passion for revolution.

2. The revolutionary knows that in the very depths of his being, not only in words but also in deeds, he has broken all the bonds which tie him to the social order and the civilized world with all its laws, moralities, and customs, and with all its generally accepted conventions. He is their implacable enemy, and if he continues to live with them it is only in order to destroy them more speedily.

6. Tyrannical toward himself, he must be tyrannical toward others. All the gentle and enervating sentiments of kinship, love, friendship, gratitude, and even honor, must be suppressed in him and give place to the cold and single-minded passion for revolution. For him, there exists only one pleasure, on consolation, one reward, one satisfaction – the success of the revolution. Night and day he must have but one thought, one aim – merciless destruction. Striving cold-bloodedly and indefatigably toward this end, he must be prepared to destroy himself and to destroy with his own hands everything that stands in the path of the revolution.

9. It is superfluous to speak of solidarity among revolutionaries. The whole strength of revolutionary work lies in this. Comrades who possess the same revolutionary passion and understanding should, as much as possible, deliberate all important matters together and come to unanimous conclusions. When the plan is finally decided upon, then the revolutionary must rely solely on himself. In carrying out acts of destruction, each one should act alone, never running to another for advice and assistance, except when these are necessary for the furtherance of the plan.

10. All revolutionaries should have under them second- or third-degree revolutionaries – i.e., comrades who are not completely initiated. these should be regarded as part of the common revolutionary capital placed at his disposal. This capital should, of course, be spent as economically as possible in order to derive from it the greatest possible profit. The real revolutionary should regard himself as capital consecrated to the triumph of the revolution; however, he may not personally and alone dispose of that capital without the unanimous consent of the fully initiated comrades.

13. The revolutionary enters the world of the State, of the privileged classes, of the so-called civilization, and he lives in this world only for the purpose of bringing about its speedy and total destruction. He is not a revolutionary if he has any sympathy for this world. He should not hesitate to destroy any position, any place, or any man in this world. He must hate everyone and everything in it with an equal hatred. All the worse for him if he has any relations with parents, friends, or lovers; he is no longer a revolutionary if he is swayed by these relationships.

26. To weld the people into one single unconquerable and all-destructive force – this is our aim, our conspiracy, and our task.

And with a certain irony it is Putin who is now the neo-Lenin in Russia that has to put up with the revived heritage of Nechayev as does the Military Industrial Dictarorship in the USA. If Basayev was a product of post Stalinist Russian liberalism, he became the Stalin of Chechnya, while Putin becomes the new Stalin of Russia.

The Chechens' long war

July 11, 2006

THE DEATH OF Shamil Basayev, a Chechen rebel commander responsible for horrific terrorist acts, is being trumpeted by Russian President Vladimir Putin not merely as reprisal for Basayev's atrocities, but as a fatal blow to the Chechen independence movement.

All is the historical inheritence of the Bolsheviks. Those who would use State power to win a revolution are doomed to fail and to create their own dopplegangers like Stalin and Basayev. While they are amoral nihilists they are NOT revolutionaries.

Boris Souvarine

Stalin: A Critical Survery of Bolshevism

Translated by C.L.R. James

Chapter VI. The Civil war

The whole of the non-Bolshevik press abused and vilified the usurpers." Only the journals of the Right had been suspended, but the others felt their interests assailed by the attack on the freedom of the press. Articles Of Gorky, a former Left Bolshevik, give an idea of the general point of view, and sum up the average opinion held by the socialist revolutionary intelligentsia: "Lenin, Trotsky and their disciples are already intoxicated with the poison of power as is proved by their shameful attitude towards liberty of speech, personal freedom, and all the rights for which Democracy has fought." In the same Novaya Zhizn, in the pages of which he had defended the fugitive Lenin after the days of July, Gorky described the Bolsheviks as "blind fanatics, conscienceless adventurers," and Bolshevism as a "national disaster."

He denounced the "vanity of Lenin's promises ... the extent of his madness ... his anarchism on the Nechayev and Bakunin model," and his government as an "autocracy of savages." He expressed passionate indignation over their first steps in dictatorship. "Lenin and his acolytes," he said, "think they have licence to commit every crime." "How," he asked, "does Lenin's conduct with regard to freedom of speech differ from that of Stolypin, Plehve and other caricatures of humanity? Does not Lenin send to jail all those who do not think as he does, just as the Romanovs did?"

Friend of Lenin as he was, he wrote of him in these terms: "Lenin is not an all-powerful healer, but a cynical conjurer caring nothing for the honour or the life of the proletariat." Lenin, he adds, has all the dualities of a leader, "especially the amorality essential to the part, and the country gentleman's scorn for the life of the masses." The Leninists are no better, for the "working classes are for them what minerals are for the mineralogist." He clings to the comparison with Nechavev. "Vladimir Lenin," he says, "is introducing the socialist regime into Russia by Nechayev's methods—at full steam through mud. Lenin, Trotsky and all the others who accompany them to destruction in the slough of realism are evidently, like Nechayev, convinced that dishonour is the best way of persuading a Russian. .. ." He takes pleasure in likening Bolshevism to Tsarism: "by threats of starvation and massacre for all those who do not approve of the Lenin-Trotsky despotism, these leaders justify the despotic power against which the best elements is the country have so long been struggling."

In reply to the reproaches of certain partisans of the new regime Gorky said: "Novaya Zhizn has asserted and will continue to assert that the requisite conditions for the introduction of socialism are non-existent in our country, and that the Government at the Smolny Institute treats the Russian workman as if he were a log; it sets light to the logs to see if the flame of European revolution can be kindled on the Russian hearth." He fearlessly warns the workers on repeated occasions and in varying terms: "The Russian proletariat is being subjected to an experiment which it must pay for in blood, life, and, what is worse, in lasting disillusion with regard to the socialist ideal."

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A Little Gallic Foot In Mouth

Something happens to Quebec politicians when they get to the old colonial homeland. They open their mouths and promptly stick their foot in it.

Charest said in a television interview in Paris on Friday that the province had the means to separate, but that it wasn't in Quebec's interests to do so.

Of course the shoe has been on the other foot when the Leader of Free France visited Quebec. It's the Gallic charm.

it is almost four decades since the late French president Charles de Gaulle gave courage to the separatists by uttering these four words at the (1967) St. Jean-Baptiste Day festival: "Vive le Quebec libre."


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The Phoney Debate On Net Neutrality

It never was about Net neutrality boys and girls. It was about gaining more money, cash to be able to buy up the competition, and overcharging for broad band is the way to get that cash. In the meantime how much will Nortel go for, and will Canadians even care. Doubtful after having lost money in the greatest fiscal crash since Enron.

This continues to be a simple question of market integration, the move towards monopoly capitalism or at least a price regulating cabal, and oligopoly, in telecos.

We have seen the return of ATT and now we see the wireless cable phone companies in merger mania. Only because capitalism knows no other way to capitalize technology or use technology to benefit production. Aimed soley at making profits it is only incidental that progressive technological change is made at all.

Nortel proves that. As does Motorola, two basket cases in the industry. And the industry is dominated by the Northern EU countries Finland and Sweden. Nortel fits into this as another example of a high tech company destroyed by the short term goal of the quarterly bottom line.


A Mania in Telecom to Merge

As Nokia and Siemens announced plans to merge their telecommunications equipment businesses — the third major industry deal in less than a year — the big unanswered question was not if, but when, the remaining giants would team up.

Many financial analysts expect Motorola and Huawei of China to pursue Nortel Networks, which is widely viewed as the most valuable but also the most financially troubled of the remaining companies that make the building blocks of the world's phone and data networks. A smaller group of analysts see Motorola and Huawei joining hands, leaving Nortel alone.

Whatever combination emerges, the logic behind the deals is not unlike the thinking that drove Ericsson to buy Marconi or the pending merger of Alcatel and Lucent Technologies, which was announced in March: As carriers like AT&T and Sprint-Nextel turn into one-stop communications providers, equipment vendors must expand if they hope to continue serving them.

They must be able to integrate wireless and traditional networks so customers can, say, check their e-mail on their cellphones and have single voice mail accounts serving a variety of phones. They also need more financial firepower to cut prices and keep up with low-cost competitors overseas.

With their broader product lineup and deeper pockets, Ericsson-Marconi, Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia-Siemens would be in a stronger position to win contracts to provide those services. For Nortel, the weakest of the remaining equipment makers, merging may be the only way to keep up, analysts said. "If you look at financials, Nortel is the No. 1 target" for a takeover, said Edward Snyder, an industry analyst with Charter Equity Research in San Francisco.

Any deal for Nortel, though, must overcome hurdles. Nortel has been plagued by accounting troubles, operating losses and management shake-ups. As the company was busy sorting out these problems, its potential suitors were merging.

If the merger of their equipment units is approved, Nokia and Siemens would become the third-largest equipment vendor in terms of 2005 sales, with 18.3 percent of the global market, according to the Dell'Oro Group. Ericsson-Marconi is the leader with a 21 percent share of the market, followed by a combined Alcatel-Lucent, with 19.6 percent.

Nortel, on the other hand, has just 10 percent of the market, while Motorola has only 5 percent. Huawei has about 4 percent of the market.

These companies would not only lag behind in total sales, but would also lack the full complement of products that their three larger rivals will have.

They would also face more pressure from Cisco, which in February bought Scientific-Atlanta, a leading maker of television set-top boxes. The deal gave Cisco, which makes the digital switches used to route traffic around the Internet, access to cable companies, which are building networks that compete head-to-head with those of big telecommunications companies like Verizon.

It also could give Cisco a foot in the door at Sprint-Nextel, which is working with Comcast, Time Warner and other cable companies to introduce wireless services that dovetail with their landline and video businesses.

Also See: Monopoly

Telecos want to Monopolize the Net

NARUS Is Big Brother

The End of State Monopoly Internet

Big Brother Bush

Google Censorship China

Inclusive Internet

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A Tale Of Two Whyte Avenues

It's a tale of two cities.

It was the best of times and it was the worst of times.

Really only one city, but two versions of it from its two newspapers.

The two newspapers in Edmonton, the Journal and the Sun put a different spin on the police stories arising from the Stanley Cup riots on Whyte Ave. What is so glaring is that they are two solitudes, one showing the best of times and one the worst.

The Sun ever the cheerleader for law and order published photos of Edmontonians taken by the police. The Journal citing press freedom and privacy refused to.

The Sun praised the police no end even while the police violated peoples rights as they used indiscriminate mass arrest as a way of quelling disturbances.

The Edmonton Journal reported on police burtality, as well as at least one case of false arrest and brutality. A story that never appeared in the Sun.

In fact no stories on police brutality appeared in the Sun, despite the previous run ins that Sun Columnists have had with the EPS.


Also See:

Whyte Ave.

Death by Taser

The Crime of Privatization

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Truth or Bare

Once again we bring you news from the world of nature and naturism
Which for some strange reason makes my blog a very popular place to visit.

It's National Nude Week July 8 through 14

They're just like anyone, nudists say, except they feel happier ...

Except in Australia

Council wants nudist beach cover-up


The solution may be to just Don't Ask Don't Tell.


A Federal Heights man sits in the nude on the north shore of Boulder Reservoir on Wednesday. Boulder ordinances say nothing about being in the buff at Boulder Reservoir, or any other city park, according to ranger Matt Claussen.

That's in public, in the world of privatized nudist clubs the competition is getting hot and heavy.

Nude resorts taking off the gloves in fight for customers

And even in China social prudes are making way for more progressive ideas.

Nude swimming area planned

Tourists to a scenic spot in Southwest China's Guizhou Province may have the opportunity to experience nature more intimately with the opening of a nude-only swimming area by the end of July, the Guizhou City News reported Monday.

The planned site is in a valley along the Fengzhuan River in Duyun, according to sources from a local travel resources development company.

Male and female swimmers will be separated, the Guizhou Metropolis News reported on Monday. Photography is banned and "neatly dressed" spectators are also considered persona non grata.

Though there is no law banning nude swimming or nude beaches in China, the practice is still controversial.

So when there is no law against something ya might expect folks to take advantage of their freedom and they do.

Naked woman bathes in Suzhou Creek

And it seems that when trade unions are banned workers find other ways of protesting.


A female migrant worker launched a nude protest outside a Shenyang funiture factory where she used to work, in Northeast China's Liaoning Province on Sunday, against her ex-employer over backwages of up to 8,000 yuan she says she was never paid. [Chinese Business Morning View]

And yet in the good old USA of A, the land of liberal free market democracy, opening a strip club is still controversial.

Manchester officials gearing up to fight nude club plan

But for Art's sake, common sense is shown by the good citizens of Lacrosse Wisc.

Wisconsin town unveils French statue of nude boy; forgoes fig leaf
City council members decided they would not cover the boy up after seeing the statue last week. They say it would be an insult to Epinal.

Maybe he looks like Jack Lalane

85-Year-Old Nude Dude Isn't Afraid to Bare All at School

Hopefully he doesn't look like this fearsome dictator.

Come on you can't take this guy seriously. Attack the U.S. Where would he get his airconditioning from.

Like Albania before it the State Capitalist regime of Kim-Jong-il is all about cardboard cut-out factory frontages, and a single sole military manufacturing state.

See the Great Leader wear no clothes

Of course there is no cure for ugliness.
Naked ambitions




And It appears that elsewhere in Asia body doubles are demanding their due.

A Chinese actress who played Hollywood movie star Zhang Ziyi's naked body double in "The Banquet" wants her name in the movie's credits, media reported Friday.

Birds of feather

Britney Spears was desperate to pose nude



And Harpers Bazaar was deseperate to have her on the cover.

Not to be undone by a mere stripling, Angelina Jolie goes one better and gets painted in the nude, while pregnant.

Angelina Poses Nude

An elderly man slipped quietly into Angelina Jolie's beach lodge — and within minutes she was sprawled naked in front of the 73-year-old.

Brad Pitt looked on with approval as the sandy-haired old-timer went to work. Acclaimed portrait artist Don Bachardy had flown all the way from Santa Monica to Namibia — determined to do justice to the world-class beauty as he drew erotic sketches of her in the final days of pregnancy.

"Angelina is big on documenting the high points of her life," explained a source close to the actress.


Bitter about Brad and Jolie maybe, just a teeny tiny bit....

Jennifer Aniston Enjoyed Filming Nude Scenes

While Sophia Loren makes a come back.

Italian sex symbol Sophia Loren, 71, will pose in a slinky see-through black dress for the glossy, limited-edition Pirelli calendar

She was always proud of her figure, in fact she got into a fight with Jayne Mansfield over who was bustier.




And not to be left out is the darling of geeky Star Wars fans.

Natalie Portman is to appear nude in an upcoming movie. She will play the part of artist's muse.


While Portman ponders her lolita like looks, when ya turn Forty its time to take it all off for yer career.

Cutting a Dash in Playboy The 40-year-old played a teenager in 1995 film Clueless, but has not had a major role in a successful film since then.

Even in Bollywood doing the nude scene gives lesser known stars their breakout chance.

Madhuri denied! Will Sridevi do the nude scene?

While Christina Aquilera flaunts her stuff. After all she is a singer, not a movie star. Christina, 25, said: "Posing almost naked is a natural thing for me."

Silly people worrying about a Nude Juice Bar, vegetables and fruits don't wear clothes, not even Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head. They weear shoes and hats.

Follow-Up: Nude Juice Bar Court Battle





And furits and veggies are not the only plants to get naked.

Beautiful, fragrant frangipani goes naked in the wintertime

Well if they didn't they would have to cover up Bottecelli's Venus on a half shell.

NUDE IN BRITISH TV AD NOT INDECENT, SAYS UK AUTHORITY


Meanwhile in Flordia home of the thong the prudes lose out and Art wins. By the way we covered this story earlier, and no the painting was a picture of the backside of a naked large woman. And perhaps the city was offended by the large sized woman rather than her state of undress. Sizeism is a feminist issue.

Nude Artwork Case Settled



And the nude in art has not just been women.

The naked and the dead (Filed: 27/06/2006) A gripping show at the National Gallery traces the development of the unflinching self-revelation that came to separate painters from society in the 19th century. By Richard Dorment

How then did it happen that only a generation or so later, in 1828, the young German painter Victor Emil Janssen chose to depict himself in a bare room and stripped to the waist? Why does Janssen, who was in fact tall and handsome, go out of his way to reveal the physical imperfections that his clothes presumably concealed from the world? For his hunched back, pot belly and caved-in chest were probably early symptoms of the bone disease that would kill him less than 20 years later.

In a single bound, we have leapt from Neoclassical restraint to Romantic self-revelation. From here is no great distance to a good wallow in Egon Schiele's expressionist self-portraits, painted in the first decade of the 20th century, in which the artist shows us not only his naked body but also his face and limbs contorted in anguish. How on earth did artists come to see themselves as outsiders, set apart from society by their vocation


And sometimes its all about intellectual property rights even in Asia where piracy abounds.

The transgender celebrity Harisu is angry after a pirated video clip showing her naked was posted online. The 14-minute video clip was posted on an online portal and a game website.
It was made in Thailand in 2002 to go with her nude photo album and made headlines as plenty of money was invested to use a W4 billion (US$1=W950) luxury villa and privately owned beach as the location. At the time, the album and clip were expected to generate more than W5 billion in sales and triggered a flood of nude photo albums for mobile phones.

Ah yes the bikini, which caused as much of a scandal as wearing nothing at all. Sixty years ago this week it made its preview.
Fashion shocker of '46: the naked belly button
But the bikini wasn't a hit until Sixties

So scandalous was the first modern-day bikini that the only female free-spirited enough to pose in one was a stripper. Parisian engineer-turned-designer Louis Reard released the suit at a fashion shoot on July 5, 1946. It was cut high on the hip, but the really stunning feature was that it bared the navel, a part of the body that in modern history had been off-limits for public display.

Posing nude for money tch tch some folks have no values.
There have been rumors circling that mens' magazine Playboy offered Ashlee Simpson a whopping $4 million to pose nude. But Ashlee has finally verified that she is turning down the offer out of respect for her body. So she is going to pose for Victoria Secret instead.

Even Paris Hilton has her limits.

PARIS SAYS 'NO' TO NAKED WRESTLING

And if this is not enough for those of you who are star struck here are some more folks who used nudity on their way to fame.

The Naked Pasts Of Your Favorite Emmy Nominees

But of course none of these starlet models has to put up with what the women who modeled for the Artist Modigliani did.

The naked realities of raunch culture
Modigliani's abused muses speak across the decades to women today seduced by the transient, destructive world of celebrity

What is it with guys showing off their shlongs in public? Anything to get work.

CANNON LOOKS FOR NUDE ROLE

And it works internationally for little known male stars, show their stuff off in public and maybe get more acting roles.

Will Marco follow Alfred’s nude tracks?
Going back to Marco, he paraded his underwear on Friday at the Araneta Coliseum with other hunks and hotties in the “fashion show” Bench Fever. A full-page ad that appeared in a morning newspaper before the show had Marco wearing only Bench and nothing else.


I guess this gives new meaning to ball boy at Wimbledon.

Nude man runs into Sharapova!

Turns out it was ok for him to do that, since it was a stunt for a reality TV show.

However is this the return of the Streaker?

Streaking makes a comeback

Its not like she hasn't seen it before Owen.

Owen Wilson against mom watching him naked

And of course public nudity is not exactly what one thinks of when considering proposing marriage. It's a guy thing.

Michigan suitor offers the naked truth about love

But it gets downright embarcing when you do go nude to protest and no one cares.

Three Men Protest Brazil's Game Against Ghana In The Nude
"They only wanted to get attention, but they couldn't even get this as everyone was watching the match." The protestors say they disagree with how "the whole country stops to watch the football matches at the World Cup but meanwhile the enormous problems Brazil has in lack of education and health keep getting stronger."

Ah well that's the World Cup it has that affect on viewers. Apparently so does that other famous sport, the running of the bulls.

Bull runners to defy nude protests

Speaking of PETA they should simply change their name to People Who Want To Roam Nude. I think the headline is mistaken that should be warped not wrapped.

NAKED AND WRAPPED IN CELLOPHANE, PETA MEMBERS SHOW ‘WE’RE ALL MADE OF FLESH’



And speaking of soccer this Cardiff fan does not have to run naked now.

Long wait for naked truth is almost over...

I'm often reminded by Cardiff City supporters - and especially staff at Ninian Park - that three years ago I pledged to run down Sloper Road naked if a new stadium was built.

What they all seemed to miss was the small print - I said WITHIN three years.

So although the City unveiled a hugely impressive and futuristic mock-up photo of their new arena at a breakfast press briefing yesterday, all but ensuring there will be no turning back now, I am declaring myself exempt from having to risk a charge of public indecency on the grounds it was outside my original time-scale.

And some folks just take their soccer/footaball fantasy pools way too far out.

The football fan's ultimate fantasy: Me, Pele and the naked Ray Stubbs...
Never mind the players, it has also been an unforgettable month for those covering the finals on television. The BBC's Adrian Chiles recalls history in the making, surreal moments in the sauna and finding himself unnervingly close to Big Phil's tactical tirades

It seems that those who are ticked off at the refereering during the World Cup have a solution.

Naked referees the best way to keep card count down


While some clever hackers have created a worm especially for the World Cup.

E-Mail Worm Promises Naked Soccer

July 5, 2006 8:49AM

Sixem-A is not the first Internet pest to exploit the general soccer euphoria. In May, the German Federal Agency for Security in Information Technology (BSI) in Bonn warned of e-mail messages claiming to be related to the World Cup but which in fact contained hidden Trojans.


While the leader of the Scottish Socialist Party had his fantasies fulfilled with a lass and a football player.

‘Naked Sheridan leered at woman’
Tommy Sheridan grinned and leered at an unsuspecting woman who found him having group sex with a prostitute and a footballer at a hotel, a Court of Session jury heard yesterday.
The court was told that the ex-leader of the Scottish Socialists was discovered in a room in a suite at the Moat House, Glasgow, in June 2002 by a woman who thought she had merely been invited to a private party.

Of course there are always two sides to the story.

TOMMY MAY BE TANNED BUT HE IS NOT BLACK
SHERIDAN FIGHTBACK AGAINST Double SLEAZE ACCUSATIONS UNDER WAY Lawyer pours scorn on paper's allegations

She takes care of predators at the Zoo apparently she beds them too. Nude pictures shock cabin lover

Of course she was on a naked cruise.
Naked cruise passengers not unusual, inquest told


While in Zimbabwe they strip you of your dignity and rights. Apparently one party dictatorships are ok if they don't have weapons of mass destruction.

'My naked hell in Zim jail'
Two years spent stark naked with no blankets, never seeing the sky - this was part of political prisoner Kevin Woods's life of hell in Robert Mugabe's prisons. He was released last weekend.
Woods is a quietly-spoken, balding and bearded man who has just spent 19 of his 53-and-a-half years in Zimbabwe's Chikurubi and Harare Central prisons.

And drunk soliders in India humilate public passangers on a train. Seems this is not limited to Abu Ghareb or Americans.

Armymen force man to run naked in train

And using nudity for humilation, or rough justice, is typical of authoritarian patriarchical regimes.

Women stripped naked for stealing


Remember the fad for recovered memories back in the eighties, well thank goodness that too has passed.

Campfire lore kindles Naked Hobo
This is the story of the Naked Hobo, made even more interesting because no one was naked and the person in question was not a hobo.

Which is worse drunks fighting or drunks dancing, naked? Apparently the later.

Twain Harte Man Facing Charges After Dancing Naked

Of course now that we have passed the offical date of the Anti-Christ 6/6/6 we get more sightings of the Mark of The Beast.

RFID Exposed: The Naked Truth About the Future of Retail
RFID TECHNOLOGY IS QUICKLY BECOMING CORPORATE AMERICA’S WET DREAM AND A PRIVACY ADVOCATE’S WORST NIGHTMARE


Not Abbot and Costello but an Australian candidate for PM moves towards privatization Costello 'in naked power grab'


Could this be a post Kerry flip flop reaction from Democrats in Hollywood, or is it the social acceptance of the foot fetish ?

Hollywood casual, right down to their trendy, naked toes
Suddenly, flip-flops — those slabs of rubber with V-shaped slivers between the toes — are ubiquitous in what were once dressed-up settings.

How about carving by touch.

CARVING a seven feet tall naked woman out of blocks of solid stone is no mean feat for any would-be sculptor. But when the carvers and chisellers are visually impaired people – two of them totally blind – the end result is nothing short of miraculous.

And speaking of nude sculpture here is one that will dominate the London landscape.

Naked sculptures to celebrate reopening of Festival Hall A lifesize naked sculpture by Antony Gormley, creator of The Angel of the North, may be installed on the roof of the Palace of Westminster for three months as part of plans for the reopening of the Royal Festival Hall.

Not to be undone by the page three girl the Daily Mirror has the woman next door.

Maybe this guy is a doctor too.

So ask your self if a couple are naked in a boat why is it the cops only charged the woman? Woman charged after police stop naked boaters


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