http://www.liveleak.com/browse?channel_token=a7d_1313603269 Items in channel 'MAKMAK' Sat, 18 May 2013 10:03:00 -0400 Liveleak http://edge.liveleak.com/80281E/u/u/ll2/logo.gif http://www.liveleak.com/browse?channel_token=a7d_1313603269 Wed, 15 May 2013 21:21:53 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=cab_1368666389 MAKMAK Around $900 billion in assets across the globe are managed by Islamic banks that operate according to sharia, an interpretation of Islamic law. In recent years, so-called Islamic finance has been growing at a rate of 15-20 per cent a year, and proved remarkably resilient to the financial crisis. Proponents of the relatively new sector point to its back-to-basics financial structures, which have made it popular with a number of non-Mulsim clients who have little appetite for risk. Critics, though, say the restrictions it comes with-prohibitions, for example, on paying interest and investing in anything that involves porn, pork or booze-are archaic and unworkable. Canada, with its 1.3 million Muslims, has lagged behind countries like the U.K. and the U.S. in embracing sharia-compliant financial products. None of the country's big banks currently offer sharia-compliant services, though some smaller players do. Toronto-based UM Financial Inc., which issued home mortgages conforming to Islamic law, filed for bankruptcy last year, leaving 170 Muslim borrowers in limbo, and opening a legal can of worms. Is the firm's failure evidence that Canada should steer clear of Islamic finance; or proof that the country needs more of it-i.e. that the banks and policymakers need to bring the practice into the mainstream, with tighter rules and better oversight? We asked the experts to chime in. Tarek Fatah is the founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, a liberal-minded grassroots organization. He is also the author of Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic lllusion of an Islamic State, among other works. Walid Hejazi is associate professor of international business at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, where he is currently teaching an MBA course on Islamic finance. What is Islamic finance? Fatah: In the words of one New York Muslim banker, Islamic finance is little more than "a $300 billion deception." According to Muhammad Saleem, former president and CEO of Park Avenue Bank, "Islamic banks do not practise what they preach: they all charge interest, but disguised in Islamic garb." In fact, Islamic finance is just one more front in the worldwide Islamist movement's attempt to depict all things Western as essentially inimical to Islam. Its foundational doctrine comes from the writings of two people: Abul Ala Maudoodi of the Jamaat-e-Islami movement in Pakistan and Hassan al-Banna of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. While these two pillars of the Pan-Islamist movement propagated jihad and war against the West, they also recognized the role international financial institutions could play in carrying out their political objectives. The theory was put into practice when the Islamist Pakistani military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq established sharia law in Pakistan, forcing the country's public-sector banks to run their operations based on Islamic principles and without the role of interest. As professor Timur Kuran, who taught Islamic thought at the University of Southern California, notes in his brilliant book Islam and Mammon: The Economic Predicaments of Islamism, "There is no distinctly Islamic way to build a ship, or defend a territory, or cure an epidemic, or forecast the weather." Hejazi: Islamic Finance allows individuals or companies to invest in conformity with the principles of Islam. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, though, Islamic finance has been extending its appeal to a wide range of clients-regardless of religion-because it relies on rather conservative and low-risk banking practices. It is critical to emphasize that sharia-compliant or Islamic financial products can be made available to anyone-not just Muslims. There are five key elements that must be avoided in Islamic finance: interest (riba); speculation (maisir); uncertainty (gharar); unjust enrichment/unfair exploitation; and unethical purpose. I will focus on the most well-known-and, I would argue, the least understood-dimension of Islamic finance: the ban on interest. Many interpret this ban to mean that money can be borrowed for free. This is not the case. Rather, it implies that the investor must have a stake in the underlying asset. What does this mean in practice? Here's an example (in which I am abstracting from differences that can arise in risk and administrative costs): Suppose you purchase a home for $300,000. Under a conventional mortgage, you may opt for a five-year, fixed-rate mortgage, say at five per cent, and amortized over 25 years. Your monthly payment would be about $1,745. Assuming that interest rates stay at five per cent, the amount that you would have to pay over the 25 year amortization period would be $1,744.81*300 months over 25 years = $523,443.00. In total, the homeowner will have repaid the $300,000 in principal plus $223,443.00 in interest. In reality, though, interest rates would vary and the mortgage would be renewed at whatever the prevailing rate is upon maturity of the mortgage. With one form of sharia-compliant mortgage, the bank would buy the home on behalf of the customer for $300,000 and then sell it to the customer for $523,443.00. It means that over the 25-year period, the customer pays the fixed payment of $1,744.81, but unlike in the case of a conventional mortgage, there are no changes in these payments over the duration of the mortgage. A second difference is that late penalties are not allowed-the bank cannot charge punitive fees if a homeowner, for example, is laid off and has difficulty making some of the payments. It all goes back to the key principles above around partnership, fairness and eliminating uncertainty. Should Canada embrace Islamic finance? Hejazi: It is in the interest of Canadians to embrace Islamic finance, both on the retail and the commercial side. On the retail side, Statistics Canada estimates that Muslims will be about seven per cent of the Canadian population by 2031. A recent study prepared for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation reported evidence indicating that the demand for sharia-compliant mortgages currently exceeds supply. This demand will only increase. We need to bring these Canadians into the financial mainstream and give them better access to a type of financing that is consistent with their religious principles. Doing so is entirely consistent with fundamental Canadian values and our proud history. These sharia-compliant mortgages would be profitable and self-financing-they would impose no extra cost to the institutions offering them or the Canadian government. In addition, these mortgages would be available to all Canadians, who feel that the structure of the mortgage better fits their personal risk and financial profile. Perhaps more important, though, is the commercial side. As my research has documented, Canada needs more foreign investment and our country has been slipping behind in terms of its attractiveness to foreign investors. Now, the Gulf region has a tremendous amount of excess liquidity-upwards of a trillion dollars! However, investors from that region often require their investments be sharia-compliant. The Rotman School, in conjunction with Deloitte, Bennet Jones, Torys, and King and Spalding have developed case studies in which we looked at whether sharia-compliant financial structures would be more costly than conventional ones in the context of three major Canadian projects. Our analysis found that the costs associated with a sharia financing structure were similar to those of the conventional financing structure. Having a capability within Canada to undertake these transactions will make Canada more attractive to foreign investment, and this will help grow the economy and enhance the prosperity of all Canadians. Fatah: Canadian banks and financial institutions are already flirting with the idea. Can we blame them? Who wouldn't want gullible consumers who demand zero interest on their deposits but are willing to pay more on their monthly mortgage payments, all in the name of Islam and avoiding eternal hellfire. Islamists are lining up with such icons of global capitalism as Citibank NA, HSBC Holdings PLC, and Barclays PLC, which have all endorsed sharia banking and started offering Islamic financing products to a vulnerable Muslim population. Promoting these products, of course, are a number of prominent Muslim corporate lawyers and bankers. This push from Muslim banking executives working inside the corporate world has had some success. While the Royal Bank of Canada didn't find enough market interest for a sharia finance product it tested a few years ago, other Canadian banks are smelling easy pickings and lining up to wear the Islamic mantle. Scotiabank and Toronto-Dominion Bank have been quietly considering whether to start offering sharia-compliant products as part of the big banks' strategy to reach out to a growing "immigrant population," a politically correct way of labeling Muslims. Canada should not permit this charade of lies and deception posing as multicultural banking to segregate its Muslim population from the rest of society. If it does, there will be a huge cost to our values and to our future as well as to vulnerable Muslim-Canadians who are being blackmailed into paying more and receiving less for their banking needs. Suppose mainstream Canadian institutions started offering Islamic financial instruments, making them widely available throughout the country. How would this affect, if at all, the integration of Canada's Muslim minority? Fatah: The question assumes there is one Muslim community. I suggest there are many and they will react in different manner. My cursory study of the clients of now-bankrupt mortgage lender UM Financial shows that the company appeals mostly to customers from the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent and Caucasian converts to Islam, with Arab-Canadians and Iranian-Canadians virtually absent. Thus the integration of Canada's Muslims into the rest of society has very little to do with the success or failure of Islamic banking; it has everything to do with the failed policies of multiculturalism that encourage segregation and make it difficult to propagate Canadian values that have crystallized over 400 years of Western civilization and are the core of who we are as a country. Charlatans attempting to squeeze money out of an already marginalized minority community should be an affront to all of us-Muslim and non-Muslim alike. Hejazi: If the mainstream financial institutions offered sharia-compliant financial instruments, such as mortgages, savings accounts, mutual funds, and so on, this would go a long way towards integrating conservative Muslims into mainstream financial markets and keeping our financial system strong and sound. At present sharia-compliant financial securities are not available in the mainstream; hence conservative Muslims who feel they must use sharia-complaint financial instruments are forced to deal with smaller, less well-known, less well-funded, and likely less well-managed financial institutions. Providing these Muslim-Canadians with this option does not come with any negatives. Who opts for sharia-based financial instruments? To whom does this model appeal? Hejazi: The Financial Times reports that the assets within the Islamic finance sector have now reached US$900 billion, double what they amounted to in 2006. This growth is remarkable given that it occurred during the global financial crisis. A recent report by the International Monetary Fund attributes the growth in Islamic finance to three factors: increasing demand from the growing number of Muslims living in Western countries; growing oil wealth among the Islamic members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries; and the attractiveness of sharia-compliant financial products and services to non-Muslims seeking ethical investments or fair financial products, as well as lower-risk, back-to-basics banking. Fatah: The primary movers and shakers of sharia-based financial instruments are the rulers of the petro-dollar states of the Persian Gulf. In the working class neighborhoods of Karachi, Jakarta, Cairo or Tehran, no one buys into this "paying more and receiving less" model. They may vote for Islamist parties, but when it comes to their hard-earned money, they trust their banks and credit unions, not the mullahs bearing tickets to paradise. Even in Pakistan, which has played a pioneering role in Islamic finance, few have embraced the Islamic banking institutions. Even in Saudi Arabia, home of the Islamic Development Bank, no-interest sharia banks did not find favour with the country's monetary agency, SAMA. In fact, as pious a leader as the late King Faisal allowed SAMA to place its surplus funds in interest-bearing accounts during the country's cash-strapped years in the 1950s and 60s. One thing is for sure: Muslims have voted with their feet and their chequebooks. UM Financial, a Canada-based Islamic financial institution, recently went belly up. What lessons does the bankruptcy hold for Islamic finance in Canada? Hejazi: At present, Canadians seeking sharia-compliant mortgages and other financial products are forced to turn to institutions which operate at the periphery of the financial system, such as UM Financial, because these services are not offered through mainstream financial institutions. As is now well known, Canada's financial markets are among the most stable and well-managed globally. A collapse such as that at UM Financial is not consistent with Canada's image, nor should such institutions be able to put so many Canadian homeowners at risk. Canada needs the financial mainstream to offer these products. It is mainstream institutions that should be reaping a profit from these instruments. The demise of UM Financial makes the case for bringing Islamic finance into the mainstream even stronger. Besides, as more Canadian institutions enter the Islamic finance market, competition will force the cost of sharia-banking products down to the level of their conventional equivalents. As noted in a recent CMHC study, in Canada, sharia-compliant mortgages currently cost between one and three per cent more than comparable conventional mortgages due to their modest supply and firms' relative inexperience with these products, as well as a lack of access to funding. In contrast, sharia-compliant mortgages in the U.S. cost only 0.4 to one per cent more than their conventional counterparts. Fatah: The bankruptcy of UM Financial tells a simple truth: most Muslims would not want anything to do with financial institutions that promise a path to Paradise while enriching the pockets of those who sell Islamic indulgences. Court documents reveal that, just a few days before UM Financial went into receivership, its Sharia Advisory Board invoiced it for $2.1 million. This amount was ostensibly the fee charged for providing advice to UM Financial on the compliance of its products and services to sharia law. In a scene that could have come straight out of a Bollywood crime thriller, UM Financial CEO Omar Kalair made this payment in gold and silver bullion at a Rexdale Parking lot, late into the night. The recipient, Joseph Adam, the finance manager of Multicultural Consultancy Canada, is said to have later flown to Egypt and is now reported missing-along with the gold. Canada has no room for charlatans who bring the medieval values of the pre-industrial era into the twenty-first century. Enough of this please. (original article by Erica Alini for Macleans magazine) Here's an interesting website listing some of the institutions which fund terrorism:https://moneyjihad.wordpress.com/2013/01/07/sharia-banks-that-fund-terrorism/ http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=cab_1368666389 MAKMAK Does Islamic finance have a place in Canada? islamic finance, global, currency, markets, stocks, stock market, dow, NASDAQ, Wall Street, TSX, Canada, MAKMAK Mon, 13 May 2013 23:02:17 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=21d_1368499301 MAKMAK What's not to like about a bunch of happy hippies dropping acid, smoking dope and dancing their asses off in the name of peace & love? Nothing! This classic movie entitled, 'You Are What You Eat' is a 1968 American counter culture semi-documentary movie that attempts to capture the essence of the 1960s flower power hippie era and the Haight & Ashbury scene. The film features locally known personalities including well known and somewhat mythical pot dealer Super Spade and musicians of the day including Tiny Tim, David Crosby and Peter Yarrow etc. and radio disc jockey, Rosko.The film soundtrack features music by John Simon and by artists as diverse as Paul Butterfield, The Electric Flag, Eleanor Barooshian, Peter Yarrow, John Herald and Harpers Bizarre, accompanied by several members of The Band." ... ... "You Are What You Eat (1968) is a strange, psychedelic and convoluted film as incoherent as its hippy brethren 200 Motels (1971) and Rainbow Bridge (1972). It belongs with that small collection of movies in which more people own the soundtrack than have actually seen the film. The soundtrack is phenomenal. The bright yellow cover is as eccentric as the vinyl itself that features audio cut-ups, squealing Moog synthesizers, relentless psychedelic improvisations, lounge music, Tiny Tim oddities, and the final appearance of The Hawks before they changed their name to The Band. The list of those involved with the film is an incredible roster of counter culture heroes and weirdos. Tiny Tim, The Electric Flag, Frank Zappa, Peter Yarrow, Paul Butterfield, Super Spade, David Crosby, Hamsa El Din, Barry McGuire, the radio personality Rosko and several others". The full-length movie from which this clip was taken can be seen on youtube. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=21d_1368499301 MAKMAK 1960s Psychedelia And The Love Generation You Are What You Eat, 1960s, flower power, music, hippies, love generation, Frank Zappa, psychedelic, psychedelia, acid, LSD, tripping out, drug culture, Haight and Ashbury, mushrooms, cannabis, cult classic, MAKMAK Sat, 11 May 2013 21:20:06 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=0dd_1368319893 MAKMAK On a night twenty six years ago when two Chicago television stations' broadcasts were interrupted by the someone posing as the fictional computer generated host "Max Headroom." But of all the faces available to hide behind, why Max Headroom's? What was it about a disembodied computer program that appealed to the Chicago signal hijacker? The character of Max Headroom was conceived in 1984 as a futuristic, computer-generated, artificially-intelligent television host who introduced music videos in the U.K. Actor Matt Frewer portrayed Max with the help of heavy video and audio processing, along with cosmetic prosthetics that sharpened the features of the actor's already angular face into something resembling a crude computerized line drawing. In personality, Max was a satirical exaggeration of television's worst tendencies and excesses in the 1980s. Reduced to literally nothing but a talking head, Max was arrogant, fixated on consumer culture and popular media, totally lacking in introspection, and, of course, markedly American. By 1987 Max was starring in a weekly, visually-striking, urban post-apocalpytic sci-fi series on ABC. I never missed an episode, and I have no doubt that my professional interest in media studies and criticism was ignited by the show. Ostensibly, "Max Headroom" was about a courageous television news reporter, Edison Carter, and his attempts to break big stories with the help of his news director and producer at his network, Network 23. But that tells you very little about what the series actually did. The plot was just a tissue-thin excuse to give voice to a creeping sense of uneasiness about mass media's role in a society where state and private interests seemed to be increasingly muddled. Each episode began with a curious reminder that what viewers were about to witness was just "20 minutes into the future." That is to say, much closer than you might imagine. Indeed, the striking thing about watching an episode of "Max Headroom" today is how much of the show's prophetic daydreaming about technology seems to have been perfectly accurate. The world of "Max Headroom" is one in which information circulates through a single global computer network. Edison Carter's producer guides him remotely through urban landscapes by drawing upon a database of instantly available satellite imagery and detailed maps. Computers and televisions are fused into the same device, and everyone has one. It all seems like such a bright future. So why is everything on the show so dark all the time? The truly dystopian element of "Max Headroom" was that its weekly nightmarish scenarios were so uncanny, so unsettlingly familiar, plausible, and hideously distorted all at once. In this world, political elections are determined by television ratings, and every network sponsors a corresponding political candidate. (Imagine!) The police act on the orders of private corporations. If there even is a state, it is indistinguishable from a web of private contractors and global businesses. Your rights as a citizen are measured by your credit rating, and credit fraud is one of the most serious crimes. People who refuse to have their lives tracked and recorded in computer records live as quasi-fugitives. Every wonderful new technology of convenience seemed to constrain its users' liberties more and more strictly. The social criticism wasn't exactly subtle. Even more explicit were "Max Headroom's" pointed jabs at mass media. In one episode, "Dream Thieves," a new start-up cable network discovers a way to finally cut the burdensome cost of producing original content. Using newly developed medical technology, the company simply harvests fantasies and dreams directly from the minds of poor people for rebroadcast to audiences. (Is there any better way to describe the worst aspects of "reality TV" or YouTube?) The dream harvesting machine happens to be located in the ruins of an abandoned movie theater. As one of the harvestees remarks, " ronical, isn't it? People used to come here to get their dreams. Now they come here to give them up." Perhaps most disturbing of all was the show's explanation for how the strangely charming, irrepressible character of Max Headroom was created. One day the reporter Edison Carter finds evidence that his network is airing dangerous content that literally kills viewers. Before he can break the story, Carter is knocked unconscious and brought before Network 23 President Ned Grossberg (brilliantly played by the late Charles Rocket). Grossberg demands to know definitively whether or not Carter saw proof of the network's mass mediated manslaughter, and orders that the reporter's mind be digitally copied and reviewed. The process takes longer than President Grossberg can stand to wait, so the network president orders that his star reporter be killed. The killing is botched, and Carter's digital copy becomes "Max Headroom," takes up residence in the network's computers, breaks into live broadcasts and mocks the network on air and becomes a regular feature of Network 23. The profoundly dark conclusion to this origin story is that Carter recovers from his injuries... and goes back to work for the company that tried to kill him. Why? Because if he's truly committed to his journalistic mission of publicizing the truth, then he can't do without the institutional backing of a thoroughly corrupt global television network. But if Edison Carter is hopelessly trapped by a corrupt system, then what of Max? At first glance, Max is a kind of superhero for the computer age. As Professor Donna Haraway shrewdly observed in 1988, this digitized consciousness is uniquely capable of perceiving the world's developing global network of interconnected public and private powers precisely because he is liberated from the constraints of a human body. Without flesh that can be subjected to discipline, Max has no reason to repress lewd passing thoughts, childish associations or shockingly bold criticism of the company upon whose computer networks he depends for his survival. The ultimate shock jock, audiences idolized and envied Max for his apparently unlimited irreverence, his ability say anything about his boss and get away with it. No wonder his face seemed appropriate for an act of broadcast hacking. But that's not the whole story. The reason Network 23 allowed Max Headroom on the air was precisely because audiences identified with his disdain for his own conditions. And thanks to Max's popularity, Network 23 became the most watched and most profitable network on the planet. Even the freest person in the world cannot bring down something so perverse as a company that manages to profit and grow stronger from acts of disobedience. Indeed, since the Chicago signal hijackings of 1988, America's television and movie industry has deftly co-opted the sympathetically subversive character of the brave but slightly nerdy pirate broadcaster who hijacks radio and television with the right technology and a hacker's ingenuity. Think of the simultaneously terrifying and truly funny appearance of Jack Nicholson's Joker breaking into television broadcasts with an "advertisement" for poisoned cosmetics in Batman (1989). Think of Christian Slater's portrayal of a quiet high school student who finds an outlet for his anxieties and frustrations by taking to the airwaves with his own radio talk show in Pump Up the Volume (1990). Or Hackers (1995). And so on. By now, this character has appeared in so many forms, it's practically a boring clich'e. (The above article is 'On Max Headroom' by Brian Horne) Max Headroom's advice on how to look macho: Here's 'Max Headroom - 20 Minutes into the Future' - it's the entire 1-hour TV movie: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=0dd_1368319893 MAKMAK Max Headroom Max Headroom, 1980s, MTV, 1984, Matt Frewer, classic TV, veejay, MAKMAK Sat, 04 May 2013 14:08:58 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ff8_1367690590 MAKMAK Thanks for the ride! http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ff8_1367690590 MAKMAK Thanks For The Ride, Lady! Thanks for the ride lady, hit and run, dead homeless guy, zombie, nightmare, MAKMAK Thu, 02 May 2013 17:11:17 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=47e_1367528787 MAKMAK I need me one of these... Jackie Stewart tries the 1976 Tyrrell P34 (aka the six-Wheeler). It was an amazing concept, unfortunately 6 wheel cars were subsequently banned in Formula 1. The NA 3.0 liter V8 pumps out 475bhp @10,000 rpm. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=47e_1367528787 MAKMAK A 6-Wheeled Tyrrell Formula One Car! 6 wheel, F1, F-1, Formula-1, Monaco, Tyrrell, elf, MAKMAK Mon, 22 Apr 2013 21:50:34 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=457_1366681512 MAKMAK In October 2012 three indigenous leaders from the Sarayaku Amazon region were sent to share a message. http://amazonwatch.org/take-action/stop-the-11th-round-oil-auction-in-ecuador Originally shared on youtube: v=58cC0RppBe0 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=457_1366681512 MAKMAK Call to Action from Sarayaku Indigenous Sarayaku, Amazon, South America, Oil Industry, Ecuador, rainforests, exploitation, Texaco, Amazon Watch, MAKMAK Thu, 18 Apr 2013 18:52:50 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bac_1366325334 MAKMAK Pull My Daisy (1959) was directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie, and adapted by Jack Kerouac from the third act of his play, Beat Generation; Kerouac also provided improvised narration. It starred poets Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso, artists Larry Rivers (Milo) and Alice Neel (bishop's mother), musician David Amram, actors Richard Bellamy (Bishop) and Delphine Seyrig (Milo's wife), dancer Sally Gross (bishop's sister), and Pablo Frank, Robert Frank's then-young son. Based on an incident in the life of Beat icon Neal Cassady and his wife, the painter Carolyn, the film tells the story of a railway brakeman whose wife invites a respected bishop over for dinner. However, the brakeman's bohemian friends crash the party, with comic results. The title was taken from the poem of the same name written by Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Cassady in the late 1940s. Part of the original poem was used as a lyric in David Amram's jazz composition that opens the film. The Beat philosophy emphasized spontaneity, and the film conveyed the quality of having been thrown together or even improvised. Pull My Daisy was accordingly praised for years as an improvisational masterpiece, until Leslie revealed in a November 28, 1968 article in The Village Voice that the film was actually carefully planned, rehearsed, and directed by him and Frank, who shot the film on a professionally lit studio set. Pull My Daisy was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1996, as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The impromptu narration juxtaposed with particular shots portray the Beat Generation in an autobiographical sense. The film editing process began with a picture lock and was a conservative, narrative story arc conceived by Jack Kerouac, directed by Alfred Leslie and shot by Robert Frank. The narration was then improvised by Kerouac resulting in a film that defines the Beat Generation, making a comment on a number of topics representative of conservative America, including protests against industrialization, education, anti-Semitism, sexuality, gender roles, religion and patriotism. *I reposted because the original item never showed up in the recent list.* http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bac_1366325334 MAKMAK Pull My Daisy (1959) Pull My Daisy, Robert Frank, Alfred Leslie, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Gregory Corso, Larry Rivers, Alice Neel, David Amram, Beat Generation, MAKMAK Wed, 17 Apr 2013 16:23:04 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a91_1366229822 MAKMAK Pull My Daisy (1959) was directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie, and adapted by Jack Kerouac from the third act of his play, Beat Generation; Kerouac also provided improvised narration. It starred poets Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso, artists Larry Rivers (Milo) and Alice Neel (bishop's mother), musician David Amram, actors Richard Bellamy (Bishop) and Delphine Seyrig (Milo's wife), dancer Sally Gross (bishop's sister), and Pablo Frank, Robert Frank's then-young son. Based on an incident in the life of Beat icon Neal Cassady and his wife, the painter Carolyn, the film tells the story of a railway brakeman whose wife invites a respected bishop over for dinner. However, the brakeman's bohemian friends crash the party, with comic results. The title was taken from the poem of the same name written by Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Cassady in the late 1940s. Part of the original poem was used as a lyric in David Amram's jazz composition that opens the film. The Beat philosophy emphasized spontaneity, and the film conveyed the quality of having been thrown together or even improvised. Pull My Daisy was accordingly praised for years as an improvisational masterpiece, until Leslie revealed in a November 28, 1968 article in The Village Voice that the film was actually carefully planned, rehearsed, and directed by him and Frank, who shot the film on a professionally lit studio set. Pull My Daisy was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1996, as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The impromptu narration juxtaposed with particular shots portray the Beat Generation in an autobiographical sense. The film editing process began with a picture lock and was a conservative, narrative story arc conceived by Jack Kerouac, directed by Alfred Leslie and shot by Robert Frank. The narration was then improvised by Kerouac resulting in a film that defines the Beat Generation, making a comment on a number of topics representative of conservative America, including protests against industrialization, education, anti-Semitism, sexuality, gender roles, religion and patriotism. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a91_1366229822 MAKMAK Pull My Daisy (1959) Pull My Daisy, Robert Frank, Alfred Leslie, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Gregory Corso, Larry Rivers, Alice Neel, David Amram, Beat Generation, MAKMAK Sat, 13 Apr 2013 22:24:47 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a07_1365903440 MAKMAK The Stay Puft Marshmallow Un has already destroyed several vehicles and is said to be heading toward the city center! What follows is a collection of some of the funnier Kim Jong Un memes I've seen thus far: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a07_1365903440 MAKMAK Kim Jong Un unleashes WMD onto the streets of Seoul! Kim Jong Un, attacks, Korea, Seoul, North Korea, South Korea, dictator, crazy, wmd, nuke, Stay Puft Marshmallow Un, MAKMAK Sat, 06 Apr 2013 21:42:51 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c00_1365297583 MAKMAK Blonde bombshell Diana Dors, also known as as Britain's answer to Marilyn Monroe, had stunning looks matched by her taste in cars. This gorgeous Delahaye automobile which once belonged to her sold for over $3 million in 2010. It was bought for her in the late forties when she was just 17 years old, before she even had a driver's license, for lb5000! Only 51 examples of this special car were ever made. This video was shot in Chicago in August of 2008 by a gentleman named Al Clinton (dors52 on youtube). After a 27 year search, he finally located this rare automobile and described seeing it in person as his 'golden ticket moment'. That it was. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c00_1365297583 MAKMAK Diana Dors' incredible 1949 Delahaye 175 S Roadster Diana Dors, Sex Symbol, Delahaye, roadster, classic French automobile, French Design, Tours, Marseille to Paris, MAKMAK Sat, 06 Apr 2013 18:05:39 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=2d7_1365285789 MAKMAK This one's got no music so only engine sounds and is also 1080p - it rattled so hard it popped an air vent! http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=2d7_1365285789 MAKMAK A better ride-along in a Lamborghini Countach S! Lamborghini, Countach, Italian Sports Car, exotic cars, classic, retro, engine noise, MAKMAK Sat, 06 Apr 2013 16:58:32 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=977_1365281439 MAKMAK A ride-along with great sights and sounds, in 1080p! http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=977_1365281439 MAKMAK Have a ride in Lamborghini Countach, Jalpa, Gallardo & Diablo Lamborghini, Countach, Jalpa, Gallardo, Diablo, engine sound, Italian sports cars, exotics, MAKMAK