In the beginning there was a fountain
But it wasn't just any fountain
It was a fountain of light
It was a fountain of truth
It was a fountain of dreams
It was a fountain of youth

It was a magic fountain

And we were never told
That the fountain was a trophy for the kingdoms of old
A treasure a plaything a Trojan in disguise
And in the last great war the secret burned up in the fire
So the peasants stormed mountain tops pretending to be king
While the king sailed off in their balloons pursuing idle things
? Hit the Himalayas in the night

It was a magic fountain

And so it was some motley crew who found it in the night
One of them a lunatic told me of his plight
One dived to the left of him two went to the right
But he remained he said he saw he said he saw the light

And it was magic fountain
Magic fountain

>> ^quantumushroom:

American "journalists" (minus FOX) gave up any pretense of objectivity in 2007 when they rolled up their sleeves and joined the Obama campaign.
State-run media deserves to fail.


QM I demand that you read Robert Fisks book "The Great War for Civilisation". It's huge but it's really good and he's actually interviews Osama Bin Laden, so it's quite informative and interesting.

Robert Fisk is an interesting guy, often very negative and cynical, but still a very serious journalist. I've read his book "The Great War for Civilisation" twice. It documents his reports from middle east among numerous wars and genocides and everything in between. It's an incredible book and after reading it I can absolutely see why he is the way he is. He's on the other side of the wall, looking at horror and mayhem no human should have to take in all at once.

In contrast Noam Chomsky is resoundingly positive on how he views the future and the victories won for peace and justice around the world. It's not Robert Fisks job to analyze those things though, it's only his job to live in the horror and report on it. So him being negative and cynical is a sort of byproduct of seeing the worst of mankind almost constantly.

It's particularly poignant this year when you see that the last survivors veterans from the Great War are not going to be with us for very much longer. We'll lose that generational link. I do fear that alot of younger people don't fully appreciate their sacrifice.

BBC4 are showing the usually brilliant WW1 programming tonight which is worth watching if you have access.

Nice post; it was a pleasure to read. Thanks.

In reply to this comment by Farhad2000:
Coming from you QM that's just hilarious, especially since you have said that my entire region should be nuked countless times. I mean the middle east doesn't really dictate shit in the world over the US. But it's cool you do have a valid point. Yes I was angry as well.

Regarding the litany of comments trying to understand why and how this person came to be this way, its simple, there is no real focus on the rights and civic responsibilities of the citizenry in the US. Before you all get railed up and say this was cut and pasted into a clip to make news BS, this point of view has been pushed around and expressed countless times, its like endemic now.

It's a given to be thought controlled into trusting your government, only through a seasoned analytical education looking at maybe just the last 50 years of political history can you readily understand how the US government in most cases works against it's citizenry rather then for it (bay of pigs, star wars, vietnam, watergate, countless shit form both sides of the aisle).

But we don't need analytical thought provoking education anymore, we need fact machines that are just enough to earn a GED and maybe work a computer to succeed. Half of your education now is based more around studying towards test taking rather then actual information or processing that information, since accumulation of facts is not the same as actually thinking through those.

I mean look at something like Discovery Channel, before you could actually watch that a learn something new about Quantum Physics or the Cuban revolution, now it's all a sitcom about busting some dumb fucking myth or Orange County bikers or some rebuild of some fucking car.

But it doesn't matter really though, for most people in the US the only place that exists for them is the US. That's why it's so easy to rally around bombing some poor third world nation from the bronze age back to the stone age, its so far and unimportant and our media paints such a nice picture of it.

This all connects back to belief and comfort, its comforting to let your blind belief in God or the FSM dictate your life, because then you aren't responsible for your actions, because then everything becomes preordained.

Think how comforting it is to know that God made 9/11 happen because America is a sinful nation... rather then a passive aggressor who has push into action countless covert and non covert military operations in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan because it thought it was doing the right thing without actually thinking of possible blow back stemming from supporting religious nut case such as the Taliban.

What's easier to believe and swallow? God or Facts?

Yes there are many people in the US who are not like this person and are actually aware, and engage in educated discourse from both sides of the coin but really that doesn't count at all for me.

Because this person is demonstrating a total lack of BASIC FACTUAL knowledge about what has happened in this (once great) nation for the last 8 years. I mean seriously. WTF. That's just intolerable, its like decades later we will all do an about face and declare Bush some kind of great war hero, even though he terminated some of the most basic tenants of what make America a kick ass nation (no torture, haebus corpus, no spying on its own citizens and so on)

Coming from you QM that's just hilarious, especially since you have said that my entire region should be nuked countless times. I mean the middle east doesn't really dictate shit in the world over the US. But it's cool you do have a valid point. Yes I was angry as well.

Regarding the litany of comments trying to understand why and how this person came to be this way, its simple, there is no real focus on the rights and civic responsibilities of the citizenry in the US. Before you all get railed up and say this was cut and pasted into a clip to make news BS, this point of view has been pushed around and expressed countless times, its like endemic now.

It's a given to be thought controlled into trusting your government, only through a seasoned analytical education looking at maybe just the last 50 years of political history can you readily understand how the US government in most cases works against it's citizenry rather then for it (bay of pigs, star wars, vietnam, watergate, countless shit form both sides of the aisle).

But we don't need analytical thought provoking education anymore, we need fact machines that are just enough to earn a GED and maybe work a computer to succeed. Half of your education now is based more around studying towards test taking rather then actual information or processing that information, since accumulation of facts is not the same as actually thinking through those.

I mean look at something like Discovery Channel, before you could actually watch that a learn something new about Quantum Physics or the Cuban revolution, now it's all a sitcom about busting some dumb fucking myth or Orange County bikers or some rebuild of some fucking car.

But it doesn't matter really though, for most people in the US the only place that exists for them is the US. That's why it's so easy to rally around bombing some poor third world nation from the bronze age back to the stone age, its so far and unimportant and our media paints such a nice picture of it.

This all connects back to belief and comfort, its comforting to let your blind belief in God or the FSM dictate your life, because then you aren't responsible for your actions, because then everything becomes preordained.

Think how comforting it is to know that God made 9/11 happen because America is a sinful nation... rather then a passive aggressor who has push into action countless covert and non covert military operations in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan because it thought it was doing the right thing without actually thinking of possible blow back stemming from supporting religious nut case such as the Taliban.

What's easier to believe and swallow? God or Facts?

Yes there are many people in the US who are not like this person and are actually aware, and engage in educated discourse from both sides of the coin but really that doesn't count at all for me.

Because this person is demonstrating a total lack of BASIC FACTUAL knowledge about what has happened in this (once great) nation for the last 8 years. I mean seriously. WTF. That's just intolerable, its like decades later we will all do an about face and declare Bush some kind of great war hero, even though he terminated some of the most basic tenants of what make America a kick ass nation (no torture, haebus corpus, no spying on its own citizens and so on)

Great show! Well the great war episodes, i didnt think the other ones were as good, its funny to see hugh laurie make an ass of himself.

Descent: FreeSpace — The Great War is a space simulation computer game series developed by Volition Inc., one of the two companies (along with Outrage Entertainment) that formed when Parallax Software, the creators of Descent, split.

FreeSpace 2 takes place 32 years after the events of Descent: FreeSpace. The alliance between the Terrans and Vasudans is sealed with the foundation of the Galactic Terran-Vasudan Alliance (GTVA). The GTVA campaign in this game is threefold.

Their first priority was in stopping the Neo-Terran Front (NTF) led by Admiral Aken Bosch. Bosch, a veteran of the Galactic Terran Intelligence (GTI), united a group of rogue Terrans under the banner of hatred of Vasudans. Initially, he threatened to destabilize the Alliance and destroy the Vasudan race.

The second priority was the discovery of the Knossos Device, a massive, ring-shaped device believed to have been constructed by the Ancients. In essence, the Knossos appeared to be an artificial portal generator. This obviously interested the Terrans, who were still searching for a way to return to their homeworld Earth.

The third, and most dangerous, was the return of the Shivans. This time, the Shivans have a fearsome new array of ships, including the SJ Sathanas that is over 5.5 kilometers in length.

It remains as the pinnacle example of Space Combat games, with an incredible plot line, story, visuals and sound. The game enjoys a cult following to this day and is freely available on torrent networks, culminating with mod releases under The FreeSpace Source Code Project.

You can get the full game yourself from Hard Light Productions legally for free. In this clip the Shivan armada forces a sun to go supernova during a decisive battle between the GTVA and Shivan forces.