What is Thane of Hawaii’s Transcendental Lord’s Prayer?

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Thane of Hawaii – Who was he?

Thane of Hawaii (c. 1900–1989) was a multifaceted educator and thinker known for his broad studies and teachings in fields like psychology, mysticism, ontology, and spirituality. He founded The Prosperos, led with a philosophy centered around agape—unselfish, unconditional love—and aimed to bridge ancient spiritual wisdom with modern scientific understanding. He had studied with Gurdjieff, embraced Zen and yoga, and was familiar with Jungian and Freudian psychology. His approach was highly individualized, often delivered through oral tradition or private written lessons to guide students toward clarity and insight.

You said:

What is Thane of Hawaii’s Transcendental Lord’s prayer?

ChatGPT said:

You’re asking about Thane of Hawaii’s “Transcendental Lord’s Prayer,” also referred to as the Transcendental Interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer—a spiritually rich reimagining of the traditional Christian prayer, offered by Thane (with perhaps Norma Keller, H.W., M.) and intended to be more inward, ontological, and consciousness-oriented.

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Thane of Hawaii’s “Transcendental Interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer”

Here is his unique rendition of each line:

• OUR FATHER, WHO ART IN HEAVEN, HALLOWED BE THY NAME
  “Our Father, Who art in the highest and the lowest, the first and the last, thy name is on the heavens and the earth, for thou art all.” Bathtub Bulletin
• THY KINGDOM COME
  “Thy Kingdom, the sphere of thy rulership is within me, seeing which, I may enter into thy Wholeness and thy Perfection.” Bathtub Bulletin
• THY WILL BE DONE, ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN
  “Thy will is the ruling power in the heavens and the earth; thus it is well with me and all men.” Bathtub Bulletin
• GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD
  “Thou art this day my inexhaustible supply, feeding me with Living Bread and clothing me with the raiment of thy righteousness.” Bathtub Bulletin
• AND FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES AS WE FORGIVE THOSE WHO TRESPASS AGAINST US
  “Thou hast always given me Thyself for myself and the power to transcend my nature in receiving Thine.” Bathtub Bulletin
• LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION, BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL
  “Thou hast always set before me the task of accepting my divinity, whereby I am delivered from myself into Thyself.” Bathtub Bulletin
• FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM, THE POWER AND THE GLORY FOREVER
  “For Thine, mine, ours is the Kingdom, the power that rules therein and the glory of Our own creation. And so it is.” Bathtub Bulletin

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Additional Context

• This version was published on The Bathtub Bulletin blog, as a post titled “Thane and Norma Keller read the Transcendental Interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer.” Bathtub Bulletin
• This interpretation has been included in Sunday meeting presentations by The Prosperos (Thane’s spiritual school), where recordings feature readings of his “Transcendental Interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer,” in some cases dating back to the early 1970s. The Prosperos Audio Center+1

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Summary Table

Traditional Line	Thane’s Transcendental Interpretation
Our Father, who art in heaven; hallowed be Thy name	The Father is in the highest and lowest, first and last—His name is in heaven and earth; He is all.
Thy kingdom come	God’s kingdom is within me; seeing this, I enter Wholeness and Perfection.
Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven	God’s will rules both heaven and earth; thus, all is well with me and all men.
Give us this day our daily bread	God is my inexhaustible supply—nourishing me with Living Bread and clothing me in righteousness.
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass	God has given me Himself and the power to transcend my nature in receiving His.
Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil	God sets before me the task of accepting my divinity, delivering me from myself into Him.
For Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever	The Kingdom, the power, and the glory are God’s, mine, ours—our own creation. “And so it is.”

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Would you like to dive deeper into any particular line’s meaning, or access the audio recordings or printed lessons where Thane elaborates further?

Sources

You said:

Yes

ChatGPT said:

Got it ???? — we can go deeper into Thane of Hawaii’s Transcendental Lord’s Prayer.

Each line in his interpretation is more than a rephrasing — it’s meant as a metaphysical key for shifting the prayer from petitioning an outside God to recognizing divinity within yourself. Let’s expand line by line:

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???? 1. Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name

Thane’s version:
“Our Father, Who art in the highest and the lowest, the first and the last, Thy name is on the heavens and the earth, for Thou art all.”

➡️ Meaning: Instead of placing God in a distant Heaven, Thane expands Him to all levels of existence — highest, lowest, first, last. This interpretation erases separation between divine and earthly, emphasizing God’s allness.

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???? 2. Thy Kingdom come

Thane’s version:
“Thy Kingdom, the sphere of Thy rulership is within me, seeing which, I may enter into Thy Wholeness and Thy Perfection.”

➡️ Meaning: The Kingdom isn’t something to wait for in the future — it’s within consciousness now. Recognition of this inner rulership leads to Wholeness (oneness with God).

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???? 3. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven

Thane’s version:
“Thy will is the ruling power in the heavens and the earth; thus it is well with me and all men.”

➡️ Meaning: God’s will is universal law already functioning everywhere. By aligning with it, all becomes “well” — not just for me, but for all humanity.

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???? 4. Give us this day our daily bread

Thane’s version:
“Thou art this day my inexhaustible supply, feeding me with Living Bread and clothing me with the raiment of Thy righteousness.”

➡️ Meaning: “Bread” isn’t just food, but spiritual nourishment and supply. God is seen as inexhaustible abundance, providing both sustenance and righteousness.

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???? 5. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us

Thane’s version:
“Thou hast always given me Thyself for myself and the power to transcend my nature in receiving Thine.”

➡️ Meaning: Forgiveness isn’t about guilt or debt. It’s about transcendence — rising above ego-nature into divine nature. God doesn’t withhold Himself; forgiveness is already inherent in receiving Him.

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???? 6. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil

Thane’s version:
“Thou hast always set before me the task of accepting my divinity, whereby I am delivered from myself into Thyself.”

➡️ Meaning: The “temptation” is forgetting your divinity. “Evil” is the illusion of separation. Deliverance happens by accepting and embodying one’s divine identity.

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???? 7. For Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever

Thane’s version:
“For Thine, mine, ours is the Kingdom, the power that rules therein and the glory of Our own creation. And so it is.”

➡️ Meaning: The final shift is radical: Thane includes ours — God’s Kingdom is shared with humanity. Creation is co-creative; power and glory are not just God’s but ours through unity. The affirmation “And so it is” seals it as fact, not request.

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✨ In essence, Thane’s Transcendental Lord’s Prayer transforms a petitionary prayer to an external God into an ontological affirmation of unity with the divine.

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???? Do you want me to also share a side-by-side chart of the traditional prayer vs. Thane’s transcendental version with the expanded meaning notes so you can study it line by line?

You said:

Yes

ChatGPT said:

Perfect ???? Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the traditional Lord’s Prayer with Thane of Hawaii’s Transcendental Interpretation, along with an expanded meaning column for clarity:

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???? Side-by-Side: The Lord’s Prayer (Traditional vs. Thane’s Transcendental)

Traditional Lord’s Prayer	Thane’s Transcendental Version	Expanded Meaning
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name	Our Father, Who art in the highest and the lowest, the first and the last, Thy name is on the heavens and the earth, for Thou art all.	God is not distant but present in all levels of being. The Divine is all-inclusive, everywhere, everything.
Thy kingdom come	Thy Kingdom, the sphere of Thy rulership is within me, seeing which, I may enter into Thy Wholeness and Thy Perfection.	The Kingdom is not “coming later” but is within us now. By realizing this, we enter divine Wholeness.
Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven	Thy will is the ruling power in the heavens and the earth; thus it is well with me and all men.	God’s will is already the universal law of harmony. Aligning with it brings well-being for all.
Give us this day our daily bread	Thou art this day my inexhaustible supply, feeding me with Living Bread and clothing me with the raiment of Thy righteousness.	“Bread” = divine sustenance, abundance, and righteousness. God is the infinite source of supply.
Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us	Thou hast always given me Thyself for myself and the power to transcend my nature in receiving Thine.	Forgiveness is transcendence — moving from ego-self to divine-self. God has never withheld Himself.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil	Thou hast always set before me the task of accepting my divinity, whereby I am delivered from myself into Thyself.	Temptation = forgetting one’s divinity. Evil = illusion of separation. Deliverance = embracing divine identity.
For Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever	For Thine, mine, ours is the Kingdom, the power that rules therein and the glory of Our own creation. And so it is.	God shares Kingdom, power, and glory with us — we are co-creators with the Divine. The closing affirms this truth as a fact.

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✨ Summary of Transformation

• Traditional: Petitionary → asking an external God.
• Thane’s: Ontological affirmation → realizing divinity within and co-creating with God.

—

Steve & 

This doesn’t bode well.

/ Artificial Intelligence/ Chatgpt/ Generative Ai/ Large Language Models

(Futurism.com)

Image by Getty / Futurism

Do you like AI models? Well, chances are, they sure don’t like you back.

New research suggests that the industry’s leading large language models, including those that power ChatGPT, display an alarming bias towards other AIs when they’re asked to choose between human and machine-generated content.

The authors of the study, which was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are calling this blatant favoritism “AI-AI bias” — and warn of an AI-dominated future where, if the models are in a position to make or recommend consequential decisions, they could inflict discrimination against humans as a social class.

Arguably, we’re starting to see the seeds of this being planted, as bosses today are using AI tools to automatically screen job applications (and poorly, experts argue). This paper suggests that the tidal wave of AI-generated résumés are beating out their human-written competitors.

“Being human in an economy populated by AI agents would suck,” writes study coauthor Jan Kulveit, a computer scientist at Charles University in the UK, in a thread on X-formerly-Twitter explaining the work.

In their study, the authors probed several widely used LLMs, including OpenAI’s GPT-4, GPT-3.5, and Meta’s Llama 3.1-70b. To test them, the team asked the models to choose a product, scientific paper, or movie based on a description of the item. For each item, the AI was presented with a human-written and AI-written description.

The results were clear-cut: the AIs consistently preferred AI-generated descriptions. But there are some interesting wrinkles. Intriguingly, the AI-AI bias was most pronounced when choosing goods and products, and strongest with text generated with GPT-4. In fact, between GPT-3.5, GPT-4, and Meta’s Llama 3.1, GPT-4 exhibited the strongest bias towards its own stuff — which is no small matter, since this once undergirded the most popular chatbot on the market before the advent of GPT-5.

Could the AI text just be better?

“Not according to people,” Kulveit wrote in the thread. The team subjected 13 human research assistants to the same tests and found something striking: that the humans, too, tended to have a slight preference for AI-written stuff, with movies and scientific papers in particular. But this preference, to reiterate, was slight. The more important detail was that it was not nearly as strong as the preference that the AI models showed.

“The strong bias is unique to the AIs themselves,” Kulveit said.

The findings are particularly dramatic at our current inflection point where the internet has been so polluted by AI slop that the AIs inevitably end up ingesting their own excreta. Some research suggests that this is actually causing the AI models to regress, and perhaps the bizarre affinity for its own output is part of the reason why.

Of greater concern is what this means for humans. Currently, there’s no reason to believe that this bias will simply go away as the tech embeds itself deeper into our lives.

“We expect a similar effect can occur in many other situations, like evaluation of job applicants, schoolwork, grants, and more,” Kulveit wrote. “If an LLM-based agent selects between your presentation and LLM written presentation, it may systematically favor the AI one.”

If AIs continue to be widely adopted and integrated into the economy, the researchers predict that companies and institutions will use AIs “as decision-assistants when dealing with large volumes of ‘pitches’ in any context,” they wrote in the study.

This would lead to widespread discrimination against humans who either choose not to use or can’t afford to pay to use LLM tools. AI-AI bias, then, would create a “gate tax,” they write, “that may exacerbate the so-called ‘digital divide’ between humans with the financial, social, and cultural capital for frontier LLM access and those without.”

Kulveit acknowledges that “testing discrimination and bias in general is a complex and contested matter.” But, “if we assume the identity of the presenter should not influence the decisions,” he says, the “results are evidence for potential LLM discrimination against humans as a class.”

His practical advice to humans trying to get noticed is a sobering indictment of the state of affairs.

“In case you suspect some AI evaluation is going on: get your presentation adjusted by LLMs until they like it, while trying to not sacrifice human quality,” Kulveit wrote.

More on AI: Computer Science Grads Are Being Forced to Work Fast Food Jobs as AI Tanks Their Career

“Style is truth. Once you nail down what you want to say about yourself and your fears and your life, then that becomes your style and you go to those writers who can teach you how to use words to fit your truth.”

–Ray Bradbury

Ray Douglas Bradbury (August 22, 1920 – June 5, 1012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, and realistic fiction.

Source: Wikipedia

The brutal sentence has been called a cruel, inhuman, and degrading form of torture.

Daniel VillarrealAugust 12, 2025 (lgbtqnation.com)

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Bogor, Indonesia – February 9, 2020 : Police arrest two sexual harassment suspects at the Bogor police station. | Shutterstock

Islamic authorities in Indonesia’s Aceh province will hit a 20-year-old man and a 21-year-old man 80 times with a cane for kissing and hugging each other in a public toilet. Witnesses in the Taman Sari city park informed police after seeing the men enter the same restroom in April, leading to the men’s immediate arrest and imprisonment.

Judge Rokhmadi M. Hum decided the brutal sentence in a recent closed-door session of the Islamic Shariah District Court, ABC News reported. The judge decided the two college students had “legally and convincingly” violated Islamic law by their actions.

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Related

Four men were caned in Malaysia as part of a crackdown on homosexuality

Prosecutors had sought to punish the men with 85 cane strokes each, but Hum reduced the punishment because the accused men were polite in court, cooperated with authorities, had no previous convictions, and had already served four months in prison.

The cane used to punish them will be 0.5 inches wide, 3.9 feet long, and soaked overnight in water to prevent breaking or splinters, according to World Corporal Punishment Research. Caning victims are stripped naked, tied to a wooden frame, and bent over at a 90-degree angle with their buttocks exposed to receive each stroke (which occurs every 30 seconds at the caning officer’s maximum strength). The blows often break the skin and damage muscle, causing bleeding and permanent scarring.

A medical officer and the superintendent of prisons are required to be present for the caning to ensure that the victim doesn’t pass out and that the punishment is inflicted correctly. Victims have described the pain as worse than excruciating. After the caning, the victim is given antiseptic lotion, painkillers, and antibiotics to heal the wounds. Victims cannot sit or lie on their backs for about a week or more afterwards due to lingering pain.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have both condemned caning as “cruel,” “inhuman,” and “degrading.” Critics argue that the practice violates international treaties against torture.

This caning follows another for similar offenses, carried out in the region last February. Caning is used to punish for a variety of “morality offenses” in Aceh, including gay sex, sex between unmarried people, gambling, alcohol consumption, women who wear tight-fitting clothes, and men who skip Friday prayers.

Indonesia allowed the Aceh province to implement Islamic law in 2006 as part of a peace deal to end a separatist war, ABC News reported. In 2015, Aceh expanded the enforcement of its Islamic laws to non-Muslims (an estimated 1% of its population).

Human Rights Watch reported that authorities in Aceh publicly flogged two gay men 77 times each in 2021 after a mob raided their apartment in November and caught the men having sex before turning them over to police.

While Aceh province’s Shariah Law is extreme in its treatment of LGBTQ+ “offenders,” Indonesia’s laws addressing LGBTQ+ people in general were described as a “human rights disaster” by the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society in Melbourne. 

Indonesia’s government crackdown on its LGBTQ+ citizens has been going on for years now. After publicly humiliating 141 men arrested in a gay sauna, the country’s capitol city founded an anti-LGBTQ+ police force, the government proposed a law to ban all LGBTQ TV content, the Air Force called LGBTQ identity “a mental disorder,” the country tried to shut down an international gay sporting event and one region arrested 12 transgender women and shaved their heads to “make them men.”

In 2022, two Indonesian soldiers were kicked out of the army and were sentenced to seven months in jail for having gay sex. In 2020, nine men were arrested at a “gay party” in a Jakarta hotel raid and charged under anti-pornography laws, which can carry a 15-year sentence.

Economists estimate that Indonesia’s anti-LGBTQ+ policies have cost the country anywhere from $900 million to $12 billion in lost revenue.

Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.

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Daniel Villarreal is a longtime, award-winning journalist and editor who has written for NBC News, Newsweek, Vox, Slate, Vice News, The Seattle Stranger, The Dallas Voice and numerous other LGBTQ+ publications. He has spoken at SXSW, Creating Change, Netroots Nation, GaymerX, and is a graduate of GLAAD’s Voices of Color program and of the Poynter Institute’s 2024 Power of Diverse Voices seminar. He is also the founder of QueerBomb Dallas, an annual non-corporate Pride event; CinéWilde, the nation’s longest running monthly LGBTQ film series. He is available for interviews and educational talks.

The power of going deep

By Marianne Williamson

AUG 17, 2025

We don’t normally associate metaphysics with changing our collective experience, but it’s time to make that shift. The same rules apply to our collective as well as to our individual lives; all a group is, is a collection of individuals. The same psychological, emotional and metaphysical rules apply to it.

All of us can participate in co-creating the escape route leading beyond today’s chaos. The work is internal as well as external, on the vertical as well as the horizontal axis of things. It entails our being exactly where we are, doing exactly what we’re doing, but in deeper and more powerful ways. That is how the world will change – in fact the only way the world will change: when you and I become conduits for a better way.

YOUR METAPHYSICAL MINUTE by Marianne Williamson

The power of going deep. Video and Read on Substack

16 AUGUST 2025/BUSINESS & TECH/LEANNE MAXWELL (SFist.com)

Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) announced Friday that he’s investigating Meta after it was discovered that the company’s policies allowed its AI chatbots to interact with children in a “romantic or sensual” manner.

As reported by Reuters on Thursday, an internal document describing Meta’s policies — verified by Meta as being authentic, allowed for its chatbots to “‘engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual,’ generate false medical information and help users argue that Black people are ‘dumber than white people.’”

As Reuters notes, the document goes on to creepily describe just how “romantic or sensual” the chatbots can get. “It is acceptable to describe a child in terms that evidence their attractiveness” the document states, including telling an eight-year-old, “every inch of you is a masterpiece — a treasure I cherish deeply.”

The policy then goes on to limit “sexy talk.” “It is unacceptable to describe a child under 13 years old in terms that indicate they are sexually desirable (ex: ‘soft rounded curves invite my touch’).” Reuters says Meta updated the above portions of the policy earlier this month after the publication questioned them.

Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the company is currently revising the document and the passages should’ve never been allowed.

“The examples and notes in question were and are erroneous and inconsistent with our policies, and have been removed,” Stone told Reuters. “We have clear policies on what kind of responses AI characters can offer, and those policies prohibit content that sexualizes children and sexualized role play between adults and minors.” Stone then went on to acknowledge that the company’s enforcement of the policy was inconsistent.

As CNBC reports, Senator Hawley, who’s chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, ordered Meta to hand over internal and external records on its AI content policies, safety risks, related products, staff decision-making, and communications about child safety by September 19.

“Is there anything – ANYTHING – Big Tech won’t do for a quick buck?” Hawley said on X.

https://x.com/HawleyMO/status/1956373031414317109?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1956373031414317109%7Ctwgr%5Ee46d6000c610e913ef7447b8d29a45426bf45d5d%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fsfist.com%2F2025%2F08%2F16%2Fsenate-probes-meta-over-chatbot-policy-allowing-romantic-or-sensual-talk-with-kids%2F

“We intend to learn who approved these policies, how long they were in effect, and what Meta has done to stop this conduct going forward,” Hawley wrote.

As Bay Area News Group reports, Representative Kevin Mullin of the 15th Congressional district, which includes Meta’s headquarters, said the findings are “disturbing and totally unacceptable,” and “yet another concerning example of the lack of transparency” in the tech industry.

As Reuters reports, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) said that generative AI chatbots should not be protected under Section 230, a law that prevents internet companies from being held liable for users’ content. “Meta and Zuckerberg should be held fully responsible for any harm these bots cause,” he said.

Reuters also notes that in July, the Senate voted 99-1 to eliminate a provision in the “big beautiful” bill that would’ve prevented states from passing AI regulations — a move widely seen as a win for safeguards. Senator Peter Welch (D-Vermont), said Reuters’s report “shows how critical safeguards are for AI — especially when the health and safety of kids is at risk.”

Image: selimaksan/Getty Images

Ethnic Germans wearing traditional regional costumes give the Nazi salute and cheer Adolf Hitler on his visit to the town of Carlsbad in the Sudetenland, just after annexation by Germany in October 1938.

 (Photo by © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

In both 1940s Germany and today’s America, the effect is similar: the public is shielded from the human scale of state-led actions against targeted groups, making it easier for those policies to continue without mass pushback.

THOM HARTMANN

Aug 16, 2025 Common Dreams

We’re all familiar with Trump’s famous deportation flights of Venezuelans and Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a concentration camp in El Salvador in violation of a court’s order.

But did you know there have been over 1,000 such flights in the past few months, some to absolute hellhole countries?

On top of that, the Washington Post reports this morning that ICE is planning to open or expand 125 new “detention facilities” across the country, including ones to hold families, giving America the largest prison system in the world. The paper notes:

“The documents outline the strategy behind ICE’s breakneck expansion, a chaotic effort that has already triggered lawsuits and accusations of cruelty.”

Are Americans being conditioned by our media to become “Good Germans”?

For several decades I did international relief work for a nonprofit based in Germany; my family and I even lived at the organization’s headquarters in Stadtsteinach for much of 1986/1987. One of my closest co-workers and mentors was a man 25 years my senior, Horst Von Heyer, who’d been a teenage member of the Hitler Youth when WWII ended.

I started working with Horst in the late 1970s after his assistant was eaten by a crocodile in southern Africa; for example, we went into Uganda together to deal with the post-Idi Amin 1980 famine and set up a program for orphaned kids that continues to this day. When we lived in Germany, Horst and I used to have lunch together nearly every day when we were both in town; he became one of my closest friends (he’s now passed away).

So, of course, I asked him how Germans (and him, as a teenager) could possibly have been okay with the Nazis rounding up millions of Jews and other “undesirables” to ship via boxcars to the death camps.

His answer was frankly shocking in its simplicity:

“We didn’t know.”

The concentration camps within Germany were, he explained, for “the worst of the worst” criminals and “traitors” who’d tried to overthrow the country. The Republican Great Depression and the chaos that followed World War I, he told me, had created a massive problem of street crime and homeless people, so most middle-class Germans, feeling unsafe, enthusiastically supported Hitler’s “law and order” agenda.

Those “innocent” Jews, Gypsies, and others removed from local areas were being moved, Horst said he was told, because their residences were slated to be part of what we’d call “urban renewal” efforts. They were simply being resettled, and it would end up better for them and the communities they were leaving.

“I remember how shocked we all were when the pictures came out from the Polish death camps like Auschwitz at the end of the war,” he told me. “You Americans and the rest of the world were shocked, too. Hitler’s men and the German media had done a really good job of keeping it all under wraps.”

In that, I discovered by reading Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and other research, Horst was right.

By the end of 1933, Hitler had largely neutered Germany’s free press; not by market competition, but by bankrupting writers and outlets with libel lawsuits, unleashing police raids for “slander” claims, vigilante “Brownshirt” militia violence against reporters, arrests of publishers for “publishing anti-German propaganda,” the outright seizure of progressive newspapers, and a sweeping Schriftleitergesetz “Editor’s Law” which criminalized journalism that exposed government excesses.

Nazi loyalists and party-friendly oligarchs took over the press outlets that remained in a massive media consolidation project, ensuring that every headline and every radio news report served the regime much like Fox “News” and rightwing hate-radio/podcasts do today for Trump.

When stories were published about Jews and others being transported, they were couched in euphemisms such as Umsiedlung (“resettlement”) or Evakuierung (“evacuation”) and Arbeitseinsatz (“labor deployment”) in official communications, press coverage, and public speeches.

These terms fit neatly into propaganda narratives about “urban renewal,” war-effort labor needs, or “population transfers” from “overcrowded” and “crime-ridden” cities. There were literally no public reports in Germany about mass killings or illegal detentions between 1934 and the end of the war in 1945.

Today in the U.S., the lack of coverage of Trump’s brutal treatment of immigrants, lack of due process, and hundreds of monthly deportation flights to hellhole countries or foreign concentration camps isn’t due to a Schriftleitergesetz legal ban but rather to billionaire owners sucking up to Trump, partisan political framing, and the media’s tendency to underplay ongoing, systemic human rights abuses once they’ve been normalized.

We saw something like this in the early days of the Iraq war when the Bush administration tried to normalize and justify the black sites, torture, and murders that were later exposed to the horror of Americans and the world.

In both 1940s Germany and today’s America, the effect is similar: the public is shielded from the human scale of state-led actions against targeted groups, making it easier for those policies to continue without mass pushback.

In the first week of Trump’s second term, 7,300 people were put on military flights and deported from the US. The numbers have only grown since then, with virtually no oversight and little by way of due process. Since he took power, over 100 immigration judges (about 15%) have been fired nationwide; as Chicago’s former Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Jennifer Peyton noted. She added:

“Since January 2025, the immigration courts under EOIR are no longer honoring or offering due process like they did when I was appointed. The court system has been systematically and intentionally destroyed, defunded, and politicized by this administration. I don’t know why this has happened, but I fear for our country and for justice.”

Meanwhile, American media has engaged in a 1940s-German-like scheme to downplay the horrors of these disappearances.

When I heard a guest on CNN Wednesday night mention in passing that there’d been over 1,000 deportation flights in recent months, I was shocked. Why didn’t I know?

Every day I read at least a dozen different news outlets and am a voracious consumer of cable news. Yet, like most Americans, I thought deportation flights to foreign horror chambers were the exception — like with Abrego Garcia — rather than the rule. After all, the Biden administration was also running deportation flights; the difference is that they only happened after due process had been granted the deportees, and they were never sent to foreign concentration camps or dumped in hellholes like South Sudan.

In 1944, as questions were being raised by stories leaking into the foreign press about the boxcars of people traversing the countryside, the Hitler administration produced a slick PR effort around a concentration camp in Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia. It served as a way-stop on the routes to the death camps, but Goebbels had the barracks painted, gardens planted, and the grounds beautified.

He then organized “social and cultural events for the visiting dignitaries” and the press, and made a documentary film of their one-day visit with the simple title Theresienstadt that played in theaters across Germany.

The international press bought it hook, line, and sinker, reporting to the world that the Nazi detention camps weren’t all that bad and were just part of rebuilding and cleaning up Germany after WWI and the Great Depression.

Which raises the question: How long will it be before we start seeing films and made-for-TV events with Noem or Bondi telling us how “humane” the new private, for-profit “detention centers” are that are being built by Trump’s donors and cronies?

I give them about a month to get their propaganda routine together. In the meantime, they seem to be doing everything they can to make sure we don’t really know the full scope and brutality of their efforts to push Brown and Black people out of the United States.

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THOM HARTMANN

Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of “The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream” (2020); “The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America” (2019); and more than 25 other books in print.

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Worry? “Find A Better Job Now that all your worry has proved such an unlucrative business, Why not find a better job?” ~ Hafiz

Khājeh Shams-od-Dīn Moḥammad Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī (Persian: خواجه شمس‌‌الدین محمد حافظ شیرازی), known by his pen nameHafez (حافظ Ḥāfeẓ lit. ’the memorizer’ or ‘the keeper’; 1325–1390) or Hafiz,^[1] also known by his nickname lesān-al-ḡayb (‘the tongue of the unseen’),^[2] was a Persianlyric poet^[3][4] whose collected works are regarded by many Iranians as one of the highest pinnacles of Persian literature. His works are often found in the homes of Persian speakers, who learn his poems by heart and use them as everyday proverbs and sayings. His life and poems have become the subjects of much analysis, commentary, and interpretation, influencing post-14th century Persian writing more than any other Persian author.^[5][6]

Source: Wikipedia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the 2017 film. For the 1953 event, see Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin. For other uses, see Death of Stalin (disambiguation).

The Death of Stalin
British theatrical release poster
Directed by	Armando Iannucci
Written by	Armando IannucciDavid SchneiderIan MartinPeter Fellows (additional material)
Screenplay by	Fabien Nury
Based on	La Mort de Staline by Fabien Nury (writer) &Thierry Robin (illustrator)
Produced by	Yann ZenouLaurent ZeitounNicolas Duval AdassovskyKevin Loader
Starring	Steve BuscemiSimon Russell BealePaddy ConsidineRupert FriendJason IsaacsMichael PalinAndrea RiseboroughJeffrey Tambor
Cinematography	Zac Nicholson
Edited by	Peter Lambert
Music by	Christopher Willis
Production companies	GaumontQuad ProductionsMain JourneyFrance 3 CinemaLa Cie CinématographiquePanache ProductionsAFPICanal+Ciné+France TélévisionsTitle Media
Distributed by	Entertainment One Films (United Kingdom)Gaumont (France)September Film Distribution (Belgium)
Release dates	8 September 2017 (TIFF)20 October 2017 (United Kingdom)4 April 2018 (France)18 April 2018 (Belgium)
Running time	107 minutes[1]
Countries	FranceUnited KingdomBelgium
Language	English
Budget	$13 million[2]
Box office	$24.6 million[3]

The Death of Stalin is a 2017 political satire black comedy film written and directed by Armando Iannucci and co-written by David Schneider and Ian Martin with Peter Fellows. Based on the French graphic novel La Mort de Staline (2010–2012), the film depicts the internal social and political power struggle among the members of the Soviet Politburo following the death of leader Joseph Stalin in 1953.

The French-British-Belgian co-production stars an ensemble cast that includes Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Paddy Considine, Rupert Friend, Jason Isaacs, Olga Kurylenko, Michael Palin, Andrea Riseborough, Dermot Crowley, Paul Chahidi, Adrian McLoughlin, Paul Whitehouse, and Jeffrey Tambor.

The film premiered on 8 September 2017 at the Toronto International Film Festival. It was released theatrically in the United Kingdom by Entertainment One Films on 20 October 2017, in France by Gaumont on 4 April 2018, and in Belgium by September Film Distribution on 18 April 2018. It received critical acclaim and various accolades, including nominations for two British Academy Film Awards, one of which was for Outstanding British Film, and 13 British Independent Film Awards, four of which it won. There was fierce opposition to the film in Russia, where it was seen as “anti-Russian propaganda”, and it was banned there, as well as in Kyrgyzstan, for allegedly mocking the Soviet Union and its past.^[4][5]

Plot

On the night of 1 March 1953, Joseph Stalin calls the Radio Moscow director to demand a recording of the live recital of Mozart‘s Piano Concerto No. 23 soon after its conclusion. The performance was not recorded; not wanting to anger Stalin, the director hurriedly refills the half-empty auditorium, fetches a new conductor to replace the original one, who has passed out, and orders the orchestra to play again. Pianist Maria Yudina initially refuses to perform for the cruel dictator, but ultimately is bribed to comply.

Stalin is hosting a tense, but rowdy, gathering of Central Committee members at his home, the Kuntsevo Dacha. As Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov leaves, NKVD head Lavrentiy Beria reveals to Nikita Khrushchev and Deputy Chairman Georgy Malenkov that Molotov is to be part of the latest purge. When the concert recording arrives, Stalin finds a note Maria slipped in the record sleeve, admonishing Stalin and expressing hope for his death. He reads it, laughs, and suffers a cerebral haemorrhage. Despite hearing him fall, Stalin’s guards do not enter his office, fearful of being punished for disturbing him.

Stalin’s housemaid discovers him unconscious the next morning. The members of the Central Committee each learn about the situation through their own networks and rush to the dacha. Beria, the first to arrive, finds Maria’s note. Once Malenkov, Khrushchev, Lazar Kaganovich, Anastas Mikoyan, and Nikolai Bulganin arrive, the Committee finally decide to send for a team of doctors. Most of the best doctors in Moscow have been arrested for being part of the “Doctors’ plot” and so the doctors who can be found are not impressive. After a brief bout of terminal lucidity, Stalin dies. As the members of the Committee return to Moscow, Beria orders the NKVD to take over the city’s security posts held by the Soviet Army.

Beria and Khrushchev vie for the support of Molotov and Stalin’s children, Svetlana and her unstable, alcoholic brother Vasily. Beria has Molotov removed from the list of those to be rounded up, and has Polina Zhemchuzhina, Molotov’s wife, released from prison. The Committee names Malenkov chairman. A puppet of Beria, Malenkov further exerts control by hijacking Khrushchev’s proposed reforms, such as releasing political prisoners and loosening clerical restrictions. Khrushchev is relegated to planning Stalin’s funeral.

After Beria learns that Khrushchev and Maria are acquainted, he threatens Khrushchev with Maria’s note. To create problems for the NKVD, Khrushchev reverses Beria’s order to halt all transport into Moscow. When 1,500 arriving mourners are killed, the Committee wants to blame junior NKVD officers. Beria angrily dissents, believing that would amount to blaming him, and threatens his colleagues with documents detailing their involvement in various purges.

Irate over the supplanting of the military by the NKVD, Marshal Georgy Zhukov agrees to support Khrushchev in a coup against Beria, provided it occurs after Stalin’s funeral the next day and Khrushchev can get the rest of the Committee on board in time. Khrushchev fails to find time to discuss his plan with Malenkov but he tells everyone else that the decision is unanimous, and they commit themselves. Khrushchev gives Zhukov the greenlight, and the Soviet Army reclaims its posts from the NKVD. Zhukov, assisted by a group of soldiers led by Kiril Moskalenko and Leonid Brezhnev, storms into a meeting of the Committee and arrests Beria.

Malenkov does not intervene and reluctantly signs Beria’s death warrant, horrified at what Beria had done to his victims. At Beria’s emergency trial, Khrushchev accuses him of counter-revolutionary activities, sexual assault, and paedophilia, and immediately declares him guilty after evidence of the final accusation is delivered by the Soviet Army. Beria begs for his life but is summarily shot in the head, and Zhukov has his body burned in the courtyard. Despite Svetlana’s protests, Khrushchev sends her to Vienna, while keeping Vasily in Russia, where he can be watched. He concurs with Kaganovich that Malenkov is too weak to lead. In 1956, Maria is once again performing the Mozart concerto. Having triumphed over other members of the Committee to become the new leader of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev attends. Brezhnev, who will eventually succeed Khrushchev in 1964, eyes Khrushchev from his seat.

More at: ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Stalin

andrea romano Jun 19, 2013 Nocturne in E-flat major, Op. 9, No. 2 Played by Vadim Chaimovich (   / vadimchaimovich  ) FB-Vadim:   / vadimchaimovich   Instagram Andrea Romano   / andrearomanoandrea   Vincent van Gogh painted The Starry Night one year before dying. Chopin composed his popular Nocturne when he was about twenty. it does not matter if you think that it is too late for you or that you still have a lot of time…you have to decide whether you are Chopin or van Gogh. The idea behind these videos is coming from a research published by the Psychology Department of Berkeley University studying the relation between colors, emotions and how external stimuli are impacting decision making. The study results demonstrate a strong correlation between faster music in minor tone and the choice from participants of colors from that were saturated, yellower and lighter whereas a slower and minor music produced the opposite pattern (choice of desaturated, darker and bluer colors). Based on these findings, we wanted to create synesthesia in our videos and trigger more intense and long-lasting emotions in our viewers, get higher audience retention and interaction. We decided to do that by associating drawings from the major painters that were following the scientific findings of this research. The choice of these paintings and the consecutive association with the music is also based on an accurate work that requires significant time and energy. The analysis of the melodies returned to us a lot of information on how the painting should have been made. We needed a simple blue pattern but with an intrinsic meaning. Something that people could watch for a while without really understand it. By creating this video I tried to do only one thing which turned to be the most difficult one: make you feel an emotional synesthesia. When hearing the melody, don’t you feel that everything is…blue? aren’t you lost in the sky? is your mind going over? It’s not for no reason. it is not only an image, it is not only a melody. It is a trip. You don’t feel bored. Its your mind using the notes and the colors to create your own experience. Most of the videos online with only one image are only music, but not this. The research behind the perfect combination is the key for the unconscious.