The Psychic Soviet

The Psychic Soviet PDF

Author: Ian F. Svenonius

Publisher: Akashic Books

Published: 2020-07-07

Total Pages: 156

ISBN-13: 1617757845

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A reissue of Ian F. Svenonius’s cult-classic debut essay collection, including brand-new writing in this expanded edition. “Everything author-slash-punk-icon Ian Svenonius says is interesting, and this book of satirical essays—originally published in 2006, now back in print—proves it . . . You’ll laugh until you cry.” —Washington Post A new, expanded collection of essays and articles from one of the mainstays of the Washington, DC, underground rock and roll scene, The Psychic Soviet is Ian F. Svenonius’s groundbreaking first book of writings. The selections are written in a lettered yet engaging style, filled with parody and biting humor that subvert capitalist culture, and cover such topics as the ascent of the DJ as a star, the “cosmic depression” that followed the defeat of the USSR, how Seinfeld caused the bankruptcy of modern pop culture, and the status of rock and roll as a religion. The pocket-sized book is bound with a durable bright-pink plastic cover, recalling the aesthetics of Mao’s Little Red Book, and perfect for carrying into the fray of street battle, classroom, or lunch-counter argument.

Censorship Now!!

Censorship Now!! PDF

Author: Ian F. Svenonius

Publisher: Akashic Books

Published: 2015-11-03

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1617754250

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"While putting a copy of this book on your nightstand would be a sign of good taste, who cares about good taste? Are you willing to be seen reading a book titled Censorship Now!! in public? If so, your skin might burn with funny glances from squares, scolds and looky-loos. But on the inside, you'll feel your brain throbbing as it swells to accommodate some hilarious, absurd and radical new strategies on how to live in our ridiculous world." --Washington Post "Svenonius' new book is Censorship Now!!, and the title alone shows just how provocative the author can be. A collection of essays previously published by Vice, Jacobin, and others, it sets up numerous enemies--both real and straw--for Svenonius to knock down....It's all couched in a style that's part anarchist tirade, part postmodern critique, and part punk-rock snottiness--yet it's addictively ridiculous." --NPR "Censor it all. Film, TV, music, politics, books, news, art--censor all of it. That's the guiding principle of local radical punk Ian Svenonius' latest essay collection, Censorship Now!!" --Washington City Paper, Critics' Pick Named a Favorite Book of 2015 by Jason Diamond at Vol. 1 Brooklyn "Gonzo ecstasy for those who have come to know Svenonius's self-aware political meditations....And though the essays Svenonius writes are not themselves unclear, the process of talking about what he's written involves discussions that some might find uncomfortable. His books make more sense the more you dissect them. So keep them in your back pocket and read them, one word at a time." --Los Angeles Review of Books "A new collection of essays by everyone's favorite supercilious rock theorist...Svenonius has always been the smartest kid in the room....In print, Svenonius is like that curmudgeonly pal that you adore because, even while his insight quivers between humor, paranoia, and antisocial ire, he never dispels your fascination in how he gets there." --SF Weekly "Ian Svenonius is best known as the frontman of bands like the Make-Up and Nation of Ulysses, but he's also a brilliant cultural critic with a talent for coming up with the hottest takes you'll ever read. In this collection, Svenonius makes compelling arguments in favor of censorship and hoarding books and records, amid polemics against Apple and Ikea, the yuppification of indie rock, and the shaving of pubic hair." --Buzzfeed "The essays in Censorship Now!! are equally packed with modest proposals and mock-revolutionary rhetoric, but there are grains of truth in pieces like 'The Historic Role Of Sugar In Empire Building' and 'Heathers Revisited: The Nerd's Fight For Niceness'--they're just buried somewhere between tongue and cheek." --The A.V. Club "Censorship Now!! simultaneously deals in the heated rhetoric of insurgent calls to action, the seductive broad strokes of propaganda, and the clever winking of surrealist humor. Often when I'm really convinced Svenonius has gone off a paranoid deep end, the next sentence hits back with knowingly-hilarious exaggeration or profoundly spot-on analysis, realigning my perspective and making me wonder again....It's fitting that a book whose intentions are ambiguous begins with a call to censor art and ends by letting art do the talking." --Pitchfork Ian F. Svenonius's new collection of sixteen essays and stories, entitled Censorship Now!!, is reorganizing people's ideas about censorship, Ikea, documentary filmmaking, the Berlin Wall, the film Heathers, the twist, the frug, the mashed potato, shaving one's body, Apple, Inc., Nordic functionalism, the supposed benevolence of the Wikipedia, hoarding, college rock, the origins of the Internet, and more. It's an underground smash which has been met with a horrified gasp in all respectable quarters and gog-eyed enthusiasm in artist garrets the world over.

Wolf Messing

Wolf Messing PDF

Author: Tatiana Lungin

Publisher: Glagoslav Publications

Published: 2018-01-01

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 178267098X

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In this, the first biography and personal memoir of WOLF MESSING to appear in the West, Tatiana Lungin limns a revealing portrait of one of the greatest psychic performers of the twentieth century. Born a Polish Jew near Warsaw, Messing ran away from home at the age of eleven and soon discovered his psychic gifts. Supporting himself by performing mind-reading acts in Berlin theaters, at fourteen Messing was sold by his unscrupulous manager to the famous Busch Circus. In no time Wolf gained an international reputation as the world’s greatest telepath as he toured the capitals of Europe. In Vienna Messing met Albert Einstein who brought him to the apartment of another admirer of his abilities, Sigmund Freud. His touring days ended abruptly in 1937 when, after Messing publicly predicted the downfall of the Third Reich, the Nazis placed a sizable bounty on his head. Summoning all his hypnotic powers, he escaped capture by the Gestapo and fled to Russia. In the USSR Messing’s displays of telepathy, uncannily accurate predictions, and psychic crime solving gained him a rare celebrity status. While most parapsychologists were forced to conduct psychic research in secrecy, Messing thrilled audiences in packed theaters across the country. His fame was all the more amazing coming as it did in the Marxist society dominated by Joseph Stalin, the man who had officially abolished ESP. Even Stalin himself was intrigued by Wolf’s ability to influence thoughts at a distance, and devised a number of unusual tests of Messing’s powers. The stories of how Messing successfully took on Stalin’s challenges to hypnotically elude his personal security force, and even commit psychic bank robbery, are colorfully related. As Messing’s longtime friend and confidante, Lungin draws from personal notes, conversations with Wolf, and reports of other eyewitnesses of his performances to chronicle Messing’s incredible life and career. At the same time, she provides an inside look at parapsychology and psychic research behind the Iron Curtain.

Lost and Found in Russia

Lost and Found in Russia PDF

Author: Susan Richards

Publisher: Other Press, LLC

Published: 2010-12-07

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 159051369X

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After the fall of communism, Russia was in a state of shock. The sudden and dramatic change left many people adrift and uncertain—but also full of a tentative but tenacious hope. Returning again and again to the provincial hinterlands of this rapidly evolving country from 1992 to 2008, Susan Richards struck up some extraordinary friendships with people in the middle of this historical drama. Anna, a questing journalist, struggles to express her passionate spirituality within the rules of the new society. Natasha, a restless spirit, has relocated from Siberia in a bid to escape the demands of her upper-class family and her own mysterious demons. Tatiana and Misha, whose business empire has blossomed from the ashes of the Soviet Union, seem, despite their luxury, uneasy in this new world. Richards watches them grow and change, their fortunes rise and fall, their hopes soar and crash. Through their stories and her own experiences, Susan Richards demonstrates how in Russia, the past and the present cannot be separated. She meets scientists convinced of the existence of UFOs and mind-control warfare. She visits a cult based on working the land and a tiny civilization founded on the practices of traditional Russian Orthodoxy. Gangsters, dreamers, artists, healers, all are wondering in their own ways, “Who are we now if we’re not communist? What does it mean to be Russian?” This remarkable history of contemporary Russia holds a mirror up to a forgotten people. Lost and Found in Russia is a magical and unforgettable portrait of a society in transition.

Reading the Enemy's Mind

Reading the Enemy's Mind PDF

Author: Paul H. Smith

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2005-12-27

Total Pages: 779

ISBN-13: 0312349602

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If you thought The Manchurian Candidate was fiction or John Farris's The Fury, which featured a CIA mind-control program run amok, was the stuff of an overheated imagination, you were sorely mistaken. From behind the cloak of U.S. military secrecy comes the story of Star Gate, the project that for nearly a quarter of a century trained soldiers and civilian spies in extra-sensory perception (ESP). Their objective: To search out the secrets of America's cold war enemies using a skill called "remote viewing." Paul H. Smith, a U.S. Army Major, was one of these viewers. Assigned to the remote viewing unit in 1983 at a pivotal time in its history, Smith served for the rest of the decade, witnessing and taking part in many of the seminal national-security crises of the twentieth century. With the Star Gate secrets declassified and the program mothballed by the Central Intelligence Agency, the story can now be told of the ordinary soldiers drafted onto the battlefield of human consciousness. Using hundreds of interviews with the key players in the Star Gate program, and gathering thousands of pages of documents, Smith opens the records on this remarkable chapter in American military, scientific, and cultural history. He reveals many secrets about how remote viewing works and how it was used against enemy targets. Among these stories are the search for hostages in Lebanon; spying on Soviet directed energy weapons; investigating the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland; tracking foreign testing of weapons of mass destruction; combating narco-trafficking off America's coasts; aiding in the Iranian hostage situation; finding KGB moles in the CIA; pursuing Middle East terrorists; and more. Between the lines in the official records are revelations about unrelenting attempts from within and without to destroy the remote viewing program, and the efforts that kept Star Gate going for more than two decades in spite of its enemies. This is a story for the believer and the skeptic---a rare look at the innards of a top secret program and an eye-opening treatise on the power of the human mind to transcend the limitations of space and time. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Sekret

Sekret PDF

Author: Lindsay Smith

Publisher: Roaring Brook Press

Published: 2014-04-01

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1596438932

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An empty mind is a safe mind. Yulia's father always taught her to hide her thoughts and control her emotions to survive the harsh realities of Soviet Russia. But when she's captured by the KGB and forced to work as a psychic spy with a mission to undermine the U.S. space program, she's thrust into a world of suspicion, deceit, and horrifying power. Yulia quickly realizes she can trust no one--not her KGB superiors or the other operatives vying for her attention--and must rely on her own wits and skills to survive in this world where no SEKRET can stay hidden for long.

Soviet and Czechoslovakian Parapsychology Research: The DIA Report from 1975 with New Addenda

Soviet and Czechoslovakian Parapsychology Research: The DIA Report from 1975 with New Addenda PDF

Author: Mr. Louis F. Maire III

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 137

ISBN-13: 1304838870

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The "men who stared at goats" in the U.S. Army in the 1970s were trying to pull ahead of Soviet psychic research initiatives, many of which are described in this unique volume. They involve telepathy, psychotronics, psychokinesis, and out-of-body experiences such as remote viewing. This is the widely cited and quoted report prepared by U.S. Army Medical Intelligence and Information Agency for the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1975. Recently released through the FOIA, it has only been available in nearly illegible PDF editions. This transcription presents the full report with four major new addenda: biographical trace data on the researchers and subjects named; relevant imagery; a complete study done by members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences on the Pavlita (psychotronic) generator, with Pavlita's participation (in 1987); and a recent Pravda news article on weaponizing psychotronic research. An excellent set of bibliographic endnotes is provided for those interested in further information.

Psychology in the Soviet Union

Psychology in the Soviet Union PDF

Author: Brian Simon

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 0415178142

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First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.