Dangerous Minds pal Chris Campion writes: “I’ve been joking for years that Ikea is part of some kind of fascistic experiment in social conditioning. And it’s probably true!”

According to a new book about Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad, his youthful dalliance with rightwing Nazi groups is more extensive than he’s admitted in the past. Sweden’s intelligence agency actually set up a special file on him. From The Guardian:

Swedish author and journalist Elisabeth Asbrink says Kamprad joined the Swedish Nazi party in 1943 when 17, prompting the security police to start a file on him the same year.

Asbrink also claims in her book, And in Wienerwald the Trees Remain, that the founder of the Swedish furniture chain was in contact with Nazi sympathisers until at least 1950 – two years longer than he had previously acknowledged.

She writes that Kamprad’s letters were secretly opened by Swedish security police and their contents, including information about his effort to recruit members, were noted on his file, in which the police wrote “Nazi”.

“They were steamed open, copied and closed again,” Asbrink states.

The intelligence agency is also said to have noted that Kamprad “had some sort of functionary position” in a youth Nazi organisation that sent him newsletters.

Per Heggenes, a spokesman for Kamprad, told the Associated Press that the Ikea founder had never been aware of the file’s existence until now.

—snip—

In 1999, Kamprad admitted his past involvement with Nazism in a book about his life and asked for forgiveness for his “stupidity.”

He also admitted to Swedish media that he had attended meetings of Nazi groups between 1945 and 1948.

Kamprad has attributed his early sympathies to Nazism to his upbringing, saying he was greatly influenced by his grandmother, a native of the current Czech Republic region of Bohemia, who introduced him to Nazi propaganda magazines at an early age.

In a statement, the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants demanded that an inquiry be opened into Kamprad’s past.

“Holocaust survivors are shocked at the reports of the depths of Kamprad’s Nazi involvement, which he previously had dismissed as mere ‘teenage confusion’,” it said.

“It is time for Kamprad to come clean. Swedish intelligence files describe his recruitment of others to the fascist movement and his involvement with it well after World War II. This can hardly be characterised as youthful confusion.”

 
This is one weird Russian commercial for TCS Bank.

According to a commentator on Copyranter’s website, the woman near the end of the commercial asks if we know the difference between us and them. They live in a spider web while we live in the Internet. So, from now on we will act.

“When the Tomb explodes there’s also a vocal of V.Tsoi from underground soviet era rock band Kino singing the same line ‘from now on we will act’.”

I’m not sure how mannequins and inflatable sex dolls connects to banking, but it sure is fun to look at.
 

 
Via Copyranter

Genuine unretouched photograph, copyright G.T. Meaden
 

Dr. Terence Meaden was surprised when a piece of toast he was about to eat in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, England, earlier this month, seemed to depict the formation of the planet:

He could barely withhold his excitement.

“I was having breakfast when this piece of ciabatta toast got burnt,” he said. “Suddenly I was aware that the pattern of light and darkness across the toast resembled what could have been a visible manifestation of primeval events at the time that planet Earth was forming four and a half billion years ago.”

Apparently Dr. Meaden was so moved by the experience that he buttered and ate the ciabatta toast after photographing it. He should have sold it on eBay! What was he thinking?!

“It is exciting because this piece of toast was absolutely genuine. No trickery. It happened, just like that” said Dr. Meaden

Read more about this amazing discovery over at Atheist Nexus.

 
Let’s elect another idiot cowboy from Texas President in 2012 and commit national suicide, shall we?

From The New York Times of August 24, 2001.

CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 24 — President Bush said today that there was a benefit to the government’s fast-dwindling surplus, declaring that it would create “a fiscal straitjacket for Congress.” He said that was “incredibly positive news” because it would halt the growth of the Federal government.

In a 45-minute news conference in a community hall next to a recreational-vehicle park here, Mr. Bush avoided giving specific answers to several questions about how he would find the money for his next big initiatives — from missile defense, to overhauling the military, to reforming Medicaid — without dipping into Social Security surpluses that both parties have declared off-limits. And he made it clear he would not re-think his tax cut, saying, “I can’t tell you how proud I am to be traveling around the country and people say, `Thanks for the $600.’ “

At the same time, Mr. Bush talked in some detail about the economic slowdown, which he called a “correction,” and left open the possibility that he might dip into the Social Security surplus if a further economic stimulus was needed.

“I’ve said that the only reason we should use Social Security funds is in the case of an economic recession or war,” Mr. Bush said.

Read the rest (and weep):
Bush Says Dwindling Surplus Will Halt Government Growth (New York Times archive)

Via Redditor Technicolor Motor Home

 
Here’s a crazy homemade glass bong nicknamed “Burnest Hemingway” by Redditor cms04fsu. Apparently this bong was made from a tequila bottle.

Also, someone in the comments thread suggested an alternate name: Hunter S. Bongson. I think both are appropriate.

 
Just yards from the ancient Temple Mount, site of the Islamic Dome of the Rock, Glenn Beck told a sparse crowd: “We are leaving the age of manmade miracles of spacecraft, and we are entering the age of the miracles of God.”

God, apparently is getting tired of Beck’s shtick, himself, because he offered the former Fox News personality absolutely no help whatsoever in getting asses into seats yesterday: According to eye-witness, Israeli writer Ami Kaufman, Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Courage” religious rally in Jerusalem yesterday was a total bomb, with around just 1000 people attending. With such a small number, you’d have to wonder how many of these folks were “ironic” attendees? Surely a number of Israeli hipsters, eager to point and laugh at a pudgy, paranoiac, self-important, delusional American Moron Mormon with a messiah/martyr complex sporting a yarmulke, would turn out for this, right?

If this happened in Los Angeles, hey, I’d have gone to see the Glenn Beck show myself, so if you factor the ironic attendees out, does the indifference seen towards him in the Holy Land foretell curtains for Beck’s cultural cachet even with American idiots? I mean, getting 10,000 Christian evangelicals to show up to a Glenn Beck rally in Jerusalem a year ago would have been like shooting fish in a barrel. Box office boffo. Still, Beck should do well in Texas next week. But we’ll see, won’t we?

Via Politics USA

If you are looking for one word to sum up how Glenn Beck went from drawing 3 million viewers nightly on Fox News to seeing his audience plummet and Fox severing ties with him, that word would be dull. By believing his own hype while taking himself too seriously, Glenn Beck bored his fans into leaving him. After his Restoring Honor rally bombed last year, it was the height of self-delusion for him to think that thousands would follow him to Israel.

Glenn Beck was fine when he was the conservative rodeo clown providing a nightly dose of entertainment to the blue hairs that make up the Fox News audience, but his program became too dark, too paranoid, too religious, and too stuck on one paranoid conspiracy theory note to maintain its appeal.

Yossi Sarid seemed to speak for many Israelis who weren’t thrilled with having Beck’s circus in their country either, “Beck, Hagee and their swarm are anti-Semites, who are not even aware of their anti-Semitism and the extent of its ugliness. Or maybe they are. In recent years this anti-Semitism has not been directed mainly against Jews, for they have found the Arab substitute for it. Now they are using the Arabs to scare Israel and the Muslims to scare the world. And the white, Aryan lion will devour them and their undercover envoys such as Barack Hussein. The visit ended yesterday, the circus is folding its tent and moving elsewhere. Let’s pray it will not return soon. Mr. Beck, don’t come back. We’re not short of dangerous wackos here.”

The turnout for Restoring Courage proved one thing. Glenn Beck needed the platform of Fox News more than Fox News ever needed Beck. The media platform to push his dark wares is gone now, and for most of America it is out of sight out of mind as it relates to Glenn Beck.

Below, Beck talks about what a terrific guy (and leader) he is and mentions, all casual-like, the death threats that have been made against him. The pathology on display here is impressive even by Beck’s high standards.
 

 
Some words of wisdom for the Republican Party from last night’s Rachel Maddow Show:

“If you were the Republican Party, and you were going to give one of these groups of Americans veto power over who was going to be your presidential nominee…which of these groups would you [choose]? I mean, really? You’d give that power to the one at the very, very bottom, underneath the atheists? Really?”

In their hearts, they know she’s right…

But how does this explain why the Obama administration kowtows to the Tea party?
 

 
Two stars seems awfully generous IMO.

(via reddit)

 
“Baby Marx” is an ongoing TV pilot project by Mexican artist Pedro Reyes currently on exhibit at the prestigious Walker Art Center in Minneapolis from August 11 to November 27.

Reporting on the advent of the Second French Empire in 1851, Marx famously repeated an insight he had read in a letter from Engels, itself a variation on Hegel: if all great world-historical facts and personages occur twice, the first time they do so as “grand tragedy,” the second as “rotten farce.” A century and a half ago, Marx and Engels regarded this repetition with despair, brandishing the category of farce as a denunciation of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte’s dictatorship.

In the context of advanced capitalism, however, Pedro Reyes (Mexico City, 1972) asks us, with Baby Marx, to re-evaluate the political inheritance of both repetition and farce.

Taking up a recent trend in the production of Hollywood blockbusters, Reyes proposes to “reboot” the nineteenth century debate between socialism and capitalism. Media moguls such as Ronald D. Moore (Battlestar Galactica) and J.J. Abrams (Star Trek) have similarly resurrected dystopian, Cold War-era visions of the future to great commercial success. Repetition recommends itself in these latter contexts principally as a means of streamlining the production process itself: brand recognition has been subsidized in advance, capitalizing on consumers’ prior emotional investments in the franchise’s narrative.

Reyes and his team are actually shooting new scenes for “Baby Marx” at the Walker Art Center. The behind the scenes process is what the exhibit is all about. I think this is a funny idea, but I don’t think it’s funny enough. I’ve read that Reyes hired two writers from an Adult Swim show to help punch it up a bit in that department. “Baby Marx” has been pitched to HBO and Japanese TV execs, who both apparently turned it down. In the age of The Daily Show, South Park and Bill Maher, something like this would require an absolutely savage satirical wit to make it come alive and so far this project lacks that, in my never so humble opinion. It’s cool, but it could be a lot better.

The first installment of “Baby Marx,” produced for Japan’s Yokohama Triennial in 2008:
 

 
More “Baby Marx” (and Monty Python’s “Communist Quiz Show” sketch) after the jump…

 
Soul and pop music lost one of its greatest songwriters on Monday, with the passing of Nicholas Ashford, one half of the duo Ashford and Simpson. Have a quick flick through Ashford and Simpson’s songwriting resumé  and you’ll be pretty gobsmacked at some of the tunes they’ve had a hand in - they’re without a doubt one of the best songwriting duos of the modern age, writing huge hits for Diana Ross, Chaka Khan, Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terell, Sylvester, Ray Charles, Marlena Shaw/The 5th Dimension and lots more.

London-based producer and dj Kirk Degiorgio has put together a special Nick Ashford tribute mix, featuring some of the man, and the couple’s greatest work. This is a fitting tribute indeed, and if you were in any doubt as to how good these guys were, wrap your ears around the following. Damn you cancer, but at least we know the man’s legacy will live on for a long time. 
 

 
Full tracklist after the jump…

Thanks to Kelvin Brown.