postimg
Jul 2012 19

by Daniel Robert Epstein

“Actors only work with me if they are between desirable jobs.”
– Woody Allen

I made Woody Allen laugh. Now how many people in this world can make that claim? No one I know goddamn it. It was so cool having him sit only a few feet away from me plus the new movie, Melinda and Melinda, is my favorite of his since Bullets Over Broadway. The film is split up into two parts, the comedy and the tragedy. It stars Radha Mitchell as Melinda, a woman who unrepentantly bursts into dinner parties and sends everyone into a tizzy.

Read our exclusive interview with Woody Allen on SuicideGirls.com.

postimg
Jul 2012 19

KattyFox Suicide in Cherry Cola

  • MAKES ME HAPPY: Coca-cola.
  • MAKES ME SAD: M83.
  • HOBBIES: Tattoos and cake.

Get to know KattyFox better over at SuicideGirls.com!


postimg
Jul 2012 18

by Blogbot


[Above: Video by Zach Roberts / @zdroberts]

Here’s some of our favorite moments from Comic Con 2012. Tell us about yours in the comments section below.


[Above: Wil Wheaton stops by the SG booth.]

“I love Comic Con so much. This year was my first time working the booth, so my favorite part was being able to meet so many girls and the fans! But the best part EVER was seeing Venom Suicide pole dance at the club after. She is soooo hot!” – LaneyChantal

“I had the moment of my life at Comic Con 2012. I met my hero, Morgan Spurlock – and I got to share a bed with Rambo! Also, we were lucky enough have Will Wheaton stop by our booth, and Cameron Stewart surprised us with a CCSD 2012 SG Exclusive Comic Drawing of all of us girls. It was just amazing!” – Ackley


[Above: SG Comic Book artist Cameron Stewart stops by the SG booth.]

“My favorite part was getting to see (and take pictures with) many different people in various costumes. I love to see what comic fans come up with. It was also fun to meet more SGs and instantly get along with them.” – Severen

“Being able to see Mark VIII from Iron Man 3 made me weak in the knees just a bit” – Tristyn

“The highlight of SDCC for me was meeting ‘Lenore’ creator Roman Dirge. He drew a quick sketch in the newest hardcover Lenore edition for me and we chatted about an upcoming movie. 
I also really enjoyed meeting the California Suicide Girls and having them sign my copy of the coffee table book.” – Thanatogenous

“Everything about ComicCon is so exciting and memorable. It’s the highlight of my year. It’s so hard to pick one thing as my favorite moment out of the five days of non-stop nerdsplosion of epicness. But, nothing beats the ‘con exclusive’ friendships that are formed and renewed while you’re geeking out together over booths, swag, and sneak-peek announcements. The SuicideGirl booth during SDCC is the best place to be in the world!” – Bob

“What better than meeting a bunch of beautiful girls and finding out that they are super nice and like to party as much as you? Nothing. Add a night of Andrew WK, sexy costumes and meeting some of the nicest fans into the equation, and it made for a win-win weekend!” – Brewin

“My highlight had to be when a guy dressed as Boba Fett dropped down on one knee and pretended to propose to me in front of a huge crowd. I almost passed out from excitement. That moment made the entire trip worth it!” – Phecda

“My favorite Comic Con 2012 moments were watching Bob Suicide rage at the Andrew WK/ SG party, hearing Sash Suicide squeal when she ran into Opie from Sons of Anarchy, seeing the look of excitement on Milloux Suicide’s face when she came face to face with her TV crush, talking to fans from all over the world, including Germany, England & Costa Rica, and the girl talk and gossip in the hotel with my fellow Suicide Girls. Nothing is bigger than SDCC and no one has more fun than the Suicide Girls ;)” – Tita

“My favorite comic con moment has to be the time I spend with all the girls, and catching Marvel’s Avengers vs. X-Men panel. – Lolana

“One of my favorite moments, or should I say hours, was at the DC booth. I was second in line for an Autograph by Scott Snyder (the New 52 Swamp Thing Batman). A very nice DC employee gave this obsessive fan girl a wristband for a later autograph session with Jim Lee (JLA, Infinite Crisis) and Geoff Johns (JLA, Green Lantern). Wristbands? I didn’t know anything about wristbands. He pulled one out of his pocket and put it on my arm. I drooled and contemplated hugging him. I now have several of the New 52 #1s double and triple signed by some of the most awesome people in the comic universe. Also, I acquired a variant cover of Lady Meachanika #3 (Aspen) and got it autographed by Joe Benitez – one of my favorite series that everybody should check out by the way. I thanked each one of them for all the awesome and can’t wait to come back next year.” – Elea

Thanks to everyone who stopped by the booth to say hi. We loved meeting each and everyone of you, and really appreciate all the love and support. See you at Comic Con 2013 – we’re already country down the days.

In the meatime, we’ll leave you with this Mask & Cape interview featuring our friends Chubby Bunny and Yume Ninja of Bubble Punch who designed our fab cosplay outfits this year. Talking of which, what would you like to see us wearing next year…

[Above: Kevin McShane from Mask & Cape interviews Chubby Bunny and Yume Ninja of Bubble Punch]

[..]

postimg
Jul 2012 18

by Steven Whitney

[The Fighting Back series began with a simple question: given their minority status for most of the last 80 years, why is the GOP so successful at winning elections? Over the next weeks, we’ll seek answers in a myriad of fields and then offer solutions aimed at turning the tables on the party that favors corporations and the 1% over the vast majority of Americans. The series is not meant to be a monologue, so feel free to share your ideas in the comments section below.]

Last week’s column sketched out how Karl Rove – the GOP clone of Dr. Evil but lacking the charm or charisma – designed the new Republican model based upon the same four doctrines employed by Joseph Goebbels in his role as Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda for Germany’s Third Reich.

The reason is simple: if we can learn from and implement some of his tactics and strategies, albeit without his mendacity and immorality, we should – if only to start winning more elections and to successfully push a liberal/progressive agenda through the labyrinthine halls of government.

Make no mistake, no matter who the Republican candidate or what GOP agenda Democrats are running against, they are also running against Rove, “the Architect” of the modern GOP. This is the man who not only “consults” on practically every race but who also makes and maintains connections to Big Money corporations and the 1% while holding the purse strings of rightwing SuperPACs and the RNC.

It’s also important because propaganda is all that Republicans have. With no substance, no moral high ground, no sustainable policies and no real solutions at hand, it’s just them and their giant propaganda machine. If we can beat that, we can beat them.

So let’s reboot the Goebbels/Rove doctrines of Propaganda – Indoctrination, Intimidation and Revenge, Distraction and Disinformation, and Divide and Conquer – and dig a little deeper into them, one by one.

Generally speaking, Indoctrination is the practice of instilling targeted ideas, attitudes, strategies, tactics, and other thoughts into the conscious, subconscious, or unconscious mind of another. It is different from learning (education), which requires deliberate study, perception, and critical analysis, in that indoctrination can be, and often is, involuntary – occurring almost subliminally, unobserved by the unsuspecting mind – and strongly discourages any questions or examinations of an analytic, or fact-based, nature.

The term indoctrination was originally used to describe the generation to generation passing on of religious doctrine (indoctrinate contains the word doctrine and comes from the same Latin root), a set of core beliefs central to an enclosed community that is based solely on “faith,” not facts. Children of the faithful were born and brought up within the strict guidelines of the religion and often attended religious schools (in addition to worship services and special religious instruction like catechism) where they learned and often had to memorize doctrine. By the time they reached adulthood, most (but not all) identified themselves with the religion in which they were indoctrinated. Children, of course, are particularly vulnerable because they rely on their families and communities for all their basic needs and they trust, or have faith in, the entities that nurture their growth.

Indoctrination to military service, on the other hand, is based on the reinforced concepts of “duty” and “order” to a nationalist (or tribal) entity while also encompassing the mental and physical training factually necessary for soldiers to perform their often unpleasant tasks. The ideal recruits or volunteers are late teens and young adults, largely because development of the pre-frontal cortex of the brain that controls judgment is not complete until about age 25, rendering them more susceptible both to influence and bad decisions.

While there are many forms of political indoctrination, the one successfully practiced by both Goebbels and Rove is based on the concept of “The Big Lie,” a term coined by Hitler himself in his book Mein Kampf:

“…because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily. . . in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie. . . for they could never believe that others would have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”

When the Third Reich snatched total control of Germany’s media – all print, radio, and film outlets – Goebbels targeted those same “broad masses,” endlessly bombarding them with the Big Lies that led to World War II and the Holocaust. Any alternative view was vigorously quashed – books were burned, professors and other “intellectuals” were jailed, killed, or fled the country, art and music was censored or banned, and all performing arts were under the centralized control of Goebbels’ Ministry (two films produced by the Third Reich – Triumph of the Will and Olympia – are still considered the most skillful and frightening examples of the power of visual propaganda). This relentless blitzkrieg of untruth occurred every single day from 1933 to the Fall of Berlin twelve years later – and, tragically, it worked.

With modern technology, total control over the outward flow of information is more difficult today, but still possible (think North Korea). Yet in America, if the indoctrination begins early enough, continues blaring non-stop 24/7, and if the dialogue can be poisoned just enough to win elections, our entire society can be transformed from inside the government, almost invisibly, from a democracy to a plutocracy of corporations and the 1% with hardly a whisper of recognition.

Under Rove, and like Goebbels, Big Lies are mostly absorbed and reinforced through social brainwashing by the media, which diligently reports the GOP’s Daily Talking Points as both real news and, incredibly, the truth. On radio it’s the right wing corps of talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Bill Bennett who receive their marching orders from Rove and the RNC.

But for the last 15 years, the elephant in the big GOP tent has been Fox News, created and autocratically run by Nixon/Reagan crony Roger Ailes, who serves as its president – and owned by none other than phone hacker extraordinaire Rupert Murdoch, the Aussie-turned-Brit-turned-American Citizen Kane. Over the last fifteen years, and by Ailes’ design, Fox News has literally become the unofficial arm of both the Republican Party and the Tea Party, if there’s any difference at this point.

In collusion with Rove – who signed a big money contract to serve as Fox’s “political analyst” – Ailes programs a never-ending cycle of propaganda and fear-mongering, complete with now infamous buzzwords and phrases like freedom, entitlements, elitist, liberal media, smoking guns and mushroom clouds, WMD, Red Alerts, Islamo-Fascist, Muslim, birther, redistribution of wealth, and my personal favorite, death panels.

Hour after dreary hour, the chattering chowderheads of Fox News goosestep in 2/4 time to the Daily Talking Point, using exactly the same words and phrases, over and over and over, like the annoying drip drip drip of a faucet all night long until it becomes part of your unconscious and you can finally sleep.

Jon Stewart frequently pokes fun at Fox’s journalistic reverb chamber, airing montages of every Fox host repeating the exact same words and phrases over and over – from Hannity to O’Reilly to Fox & Friends and everyone else, including every “guest” pundit weighing in on the day’s “news.” But laughs aside, the technique is lethally effective: every single textbook on brainwashing states that exact and continuous repetition is the most effective tool of social brainwashing. Preying on fear and paranoia, Rove and Fox continually repeat emotionally-charged slogans and buzzwords that, although false, favorably brand their far right agenda while painting anyone on the left (or sometimes even the center) as “Un-American,” perhaps their most overused buzzword – and all of it at a noise level that deafens reason.

The other sly ploy used by Fox News from its beginning is: “Trust only us. We’re the only network that will tell you the truth.” Goebbels’ state-run newspapers and radio employed the same ruse, so German children of that period grew up trusting only Nazi media.

And, of course, every time any reasonable objection is voiced from the 99% the Fox puppets repeatedly scream other buzzwords like “Class Warfare” or “socialist” (Goebbels, too, was virulently anti-socialist). How’s that for fair and balanced?

Even the GOP’s horrendous rudeness is a political tactic. Watch almost any installment of Real Time with Bill Maher and you’ll see Republican panelists aggressively interrupt and shout down (or over) pertinent points being made by progressives. While it may not at first seem advantageous to be so boorish, it keeps the audience from hearing the liberal perspective – and like a tree falling in the forest, if no one hears it, does it really exist?

Some might argue that only wingnuts on the right believe and trust in Fox News. But consider this: Because they are so unprepared for analytical thinking and contextual meaning, children are extremely vulnerable to propaganda, especially that which is delivered over a period of years. Think of children born in l993 or 1994 to parents who constantly played Fox News in the den. This year voting for the first time, these young adults have been indoctrinated for most of their lives – and they will likely pass their inculcated beliefs onto their children. That’s a scary thought, and proves that we have a lot of work to do for many years ahead.

During WWII, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) – the precursor to the CIA – issued a report on the Hitler/Goebbels methodology that remained classified until the mid-60s, when its use started to leak into global political indoctrination:

“…his primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”

Please, read that passage again. Let it sink in. Then ask yourself if, point by point, it doesn’t exactly describe the strategies of today’s GOP under the aegis of Karl Rove, his corporate sponsors, his media cronies, and Fox News.

As Germans discovered, those tactics can and do win elections, but they are so divisive as to inevitably lead to the destruction of once-great nations and sovereign cultures, just as they have led to the most dangerous political and social crisis the United States has faced since the Civil War – a crisis only we can solve, and only by taking action against those who want “to fool all of the people all of the time.”

Related Posts:
When The Past Is Prologue
Fighting Back Part 2: Defining Rovian Politics
Fighting Back
The Electoral Scam
Being Fair
Occupy Reality
Giving. . . And Taking Back
A Tale Of Two Grovers
A Last Pitch For Truth
America: Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.
Gotcha!

postimg
Jul 2012 18

by Keith Daniels

“There must be four thousand songs better than that.”
– Chris Edwards

Our members from across the pond have already had a chance to form their opinions on Kasabian. The Leicester indie dance-rock quartet’s self-titled debut, released in the UK in September of 2004, won the band a top 10 album there and a handful of equally well-received singles with “LSF”, “Processed Beats”, “Club Foot”, and “Cutt Off”. Now the band, named after Manson-family getaway driver Linda Kasabian, are attempting to repeat that success in the States. Bassist Chris Edwards and I spoke on the morning of the first date of their American tour.

Read our exclusive interview with Chris Edwards on SuicideGirls.com.

postimg
Jul 2012 18

Ackley and Damsel Suicide in Mother Earth

Ackley

  • INTO: Skateboards, bass, animal rights, grassroots activism, The 1st, 2nd, and 4th Amendment, NPR.
  • NOT INTO: Gun Control, animal abuse, child labor, parking enforcement, taxes!
  • MAKES ME HAPPY: Good live music, slapin’ the bass, being with friends, adventure.
  • MAKES ME SAD: Animal abuse, broken dreams, saying goodbye.
  • HOBBIES: Spin the bottle.
  • 5 THINGS I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT: Chapstick, skateboard, Vans, Mac Book, bass.
  • VICES: A good sales man.
  • I SPEND MOST OF MY FREE TIME: Not doing what I’m supposed to be doing.

Damsel

  • INTO: Musicians, artists, dirty talk, good baby makin’ music, post-sex cuddling, 5:00 o’ clock shadow, chicks with dreads, reading tarot cards, guys with strong arms, nipple rings.
  • NOT INTO: Butch chicks, spiky hair, cut off T-shirts, jocks, high maintenance Barbie doll bitches, preppy boys, dudes who chew tobacco.
  • MAKES ME HAPPY: Puggle snuggles, mooses, mustaches, Mary Jane, the Green Bay Packers, McDonald’s Diet Coke.
  • MAKE ME SAD: Abandonment, animal cruelty, people ripping off other people’s tattoos.
  • 5 THINGS I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT: Penelope, my cell phone, sweatpants, marijuana, my camera.
  • VICES: Hostess cupcakes and dirty porn.
  • I SPEND MOST OF MY FREE TIME: With Penelope, and perving on hot naked bitches.

Get to know Ackley and Damsel better over at SuicideGirls.com!


postimg
Jul 2012 17

by Lee Camp

As I say in the video, I don’t believe the Bible is anything more than a collection of some mildly fascinating fairytales with an occasional woman getting stoned to death for giving up pussy at the wrong time. However, we have a lot of extremely wealthy religious people in this world, and I hope they take a moment to consider what their favorite book has to say about the subject. They seem to care what it says when it comes to what people do in the bedroom, so why not what people do in the boardroom?

[..]