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Get in the weekend mood with The uplifting sounds of Jim Jones’ People’s Temple Choir!
10.19.2012
11:26 am
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“He’s a friend – to the friendless
He’s a father – to the fatherless
He’s your joy – he’s your sorrow
He’s your hope – for tomorrow”
(“He’s Able”)

This week I’ve been busy putting various menial finishing touches to an exciting forthcoming Headpress release on music and the occult by Mark Goodall, Gathering of the Tribe: Music and Heavy Conscious Creation. The collection includes essays on various “occulted” artists ranging from Captain Beefheart to John Coltrane, the Beatles to the Wu Tang Clan, and features contributions from Mick Farren, David Kerekes and myself, among others.

For the last day or two, I’ve been mostly embroiled in the book’s final chapter “Mindfuckers: Cult Groups, Outsider Artists and Their Sounds,” and so by osmosis have ended up predominantly listening to music made by psychopathic demagogues and their unfortunate minions. Most distinctive of these, perhaps, is the saccharine, sunny, seventies pop gospel of Jim Jones’ People’s Temple Choir, almost all of whom would be wiped out in the Jonestown massacre about five years later, resulting in the re-release of their 1973 He’s Able album with a far darker cover (see above) than the one in which it first appeared. The playlist below treats you to the entire life-affirming record – which was once described as, “coming out of your stereo speakers like a sunbeam through a stained glass window.” 

Hands up who’s in the mood for a refreshing glass of Kool-Aid?  
 

Posted by Thomas McGrath
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10.19.2012
11:26 am
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Identifying Psychopaths
01.17.2012
02:09 pm
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How to identify psychopaths in your daily life, in the media, in big business, on reality TV, in school, in Congress, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…
 

 
Via Kembra Pfahler

Posted by Tara McGinley
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01.17.2012
02:09 pm
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Appetite for Destruction: Stock brokers vs psychopaths


 
According to a new study from the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, apparently stock brokers are more manipulative and reckless than psychopaths! Researchers compared the egotism and the propensity for cooperation of 28 professional stock traders with the behavior of psychopaths. Clearly to embark on such a study, the authors, Pascal Scherrer, and Thomas Noll, a prison administrator in Zürich, must have had an inkling that there would be some correlation between the behaviors of their two control groups, but the results were striking. Via Der Spiegel:

“Naturally one can’t characterize the traders as deranged,” Noll told SPIEGEL. “But for example, they behaved more egotistically and were more willing to take risks than a group of psychopaths who took the same test.”

So I suppose one actually could characterize their behavior as “deranged,” right? I mean, he just did that, didn’t he?

Particularly shocking for Noll was the fact that the bankers weren’t aiming for higher winnings than their comparison group. Instead they were more interested in achieving a competitive advantage. Instead of taking a sober and businesslike approach to reaching the highest profit, “it was most important to the traders to get more than their opponents,” Noll explained. “And they spent a lot of energy trying to damage their opponents.”

Using a metaphor to describe the behavior, Noll said the stockbrokers behaved as though their neighbor had the same car, “and they took after it with a baseball bat so they could look better themselves.”

The researchers were unable to explain this penchant for destruction, they said.

 
I think I can be of help here: Wall Street attracts rapacious, greedy psychopaths! You’re welcome!

Aren’t you glad to have psychopaths looking after your retirement pension? Let’s give them some more control over our lives, why don’t we?

Below, “We appreciate your candor…”
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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09.26.2011
05:09 pm
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