ELIZABETH WHO?

As you may know, this is the Golden Jubilee year of Queen Elizabeth II's reign. Obviously, Britons are aware of that. Alas, as results of a new survey show, they don't seem especially excited about it. Six in 10 respondents to the poll by Market Opinion & Research International said they expect to regard her four-day ceremonial weekend in June as just another holiday. In the young-est cohort, 16 to 24, only 18 percent even cared about the lives of the royals, compared with 66 percent interested in the lives of "The Simpsons." Yes, the TV cartoon family.

I tried to find the link to the original page, but their link to the "etc." section is wrong. This is from their email newsletter for Feb 4.

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Shady promoters conned African-Americans into thinking they can get slavery reparations through the IRS.

The Internal Revenue Service received about 80,000 returns last year claiming $2.7 billion in reparations refunds, up from 13,000 the year before. The majority of the claims come from taxpayers in the South, but they have occurred in all parts of the country.

Here's the lure: Promoters, often using terms such as "black investment taxes," "reparations for African-Americans," or "black inheritance tax refund," charge an up-front fee, sometimes a percentage of the promised refund, and provide a fake tax form for claims that often seek between $40,000 and $80,000 from the government. They warn clients not to contact the IRS, saying the government doesn't want the general public to know. By the time the taxpayers discover their refund claims are rejected, the promoters have disappeared, along with their money.

This is a few weeks old but if you haven't heard, the Egyptian Elvis is shaking up the local cultural elites.

The overweight singer, who favors a wet-perm look and sequined suits, has sold millions of records and is so popular that TV hosts are queuing up to get him on their chat sofa. Mr. Shaaban has also released hit record after hit record, building up such a following that some of Egypt's leading political figures now feel compelled to act against the singer's swelling support.

A recent parliamentary debate saw the bemusing spectacle of the nation's elected leaders spending precious time discussing Shaaban's ruinous influence on Egyptian society. Abdel Salem Abdel Ghaffar, head of the parliamentary media committee said: "Shaaban does not represent any artistic or cultural value. In addition, his weird attire, which is far from good taste, affects our youth, who are influenced by what they see on television."

A particular smell the insects have been conditioned to associate with food prompts them to move their heads in a feeding motion, a sign which could be used to alert police searching for explosives or drugs at ports and airports.

But even in frontline policing, a wasp is never likely to become man's best friend.

"The downside is that they live for just a couple of months and dogs have a personality. Wasps don't have that."

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Shrub seeks to restrict investigation of why 9/11 happened to secret Intelligence Committees. [via new world disorder]

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He was especially concerned about the development of new biological weapons that could easily fall into the hands of dissonant groups or individuals and cause widespread devastation. [emphasis added]

Just a thought.

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Tuesday, February 05, 2002


OK, just in time for Valentine's Day: The Books I Read, Mostly in 2001. Not anything like a review of the books published that I read last year. Just books I read last year that I want to mention. This is what worked for me. Lots of time-appropriate lists elsewhere, and since the blog was down during the month this should've been posted anyway ... anyone still listening?? This is pretty much chronological, BTW.

† Strong Motion by Jonathan Franzen


Shaggy but lovable, and the Buzzcocks reference won me over.


† Super-Cannes by J.G.Ballard


Well, I almost finished it by 12/31, I think. Not my taste like The Drowned World, The Drought or High Rise , but intriguing anyway. The shrink character was exotically psychotic. Hard to believe the protagonist wouldn't take action after the first section, so the arc lost me then, emotionally.


† Jimmy Corrigan by Chris Ware


Yes, a graphic novel. Deeply melancholic and evocative of turn-of-the-century Chicago. I am a dillettanting cad about Serious Comix, all I know is I like Ware and Clowes a lot.


† The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard


Found a used tiny paperback through half.com ( where I get most my books, besides the library). Back when Ballard was evoking de Chirico and so forth. I thought these early books were exquisite as teen SF fan. Nobody like him. Allegorical contention that we can't escape our nature--or Nature--no matter how hitech we get. Obviously, as relevant as ever.


† Box Nine by Jack O'Connell


Discovered O'Connell through disinfo (which also has a page on Ballard ). Like him, though it's a bit violent for me. Trippy and gritty, neat concept of the language drug, though ideas he's trying to put across don't seem completely digested. Maybe that's all the postmodern strategy, but ... Anyway, Wireless was OK, haven't read The Skin Palace yet. Let you know after I've digested more of him.


† The Players of Null-A by A.E. van Vogt


Ahh, another quietly demented Canadian. See what happens when you move to L.A.? I read up on him, remembering recently that PK Dick was inspired by this book--good enough for me. Turns out van Vogt wrote most of this (and some other books I think) by waking himself up purposely in the night, repeatedly interrupting his sleep, and writing a few sentences or whatever. This explains at least partially the oblique style. Not easy reading, but the effect is genuinely otherworldly. Puts you in the story in a very peculiar way. Unsettling ... I felt myself ... mutating ....


† One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey


Finally. I never saw the movie because I knew the ending was depressing, and I knew the story, you know? It's not like I need convincing society is crazy. But I saw later that Kesey never liked the film, and I see why. There's surrealism in the book that didn't make it into the movie, and the milieu of McMurphy's background, even the redemptive ending, (from what I hear, admittedly) all give the book a different shape. Some serious mommy issues. Definitely essential 20th century reading.


† Goats by Mark Jude Poirier


Nice to read a book about Arizona, since I live here. Pretty neat coming-of-age story, present-day. WARNING: Characters do drugs, though it's clearly no answer to their problems. (Whew)


† The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft


Just for the hell of it. What a wacky guy. This time travel stuff, I dunno. Kinda wears on ya (ahem). What's the deal with Lovecraft and real estate? Despite the arcane language, the plot is reminiscent of many horror/sf flicks of the last decades, so the narrative is still relevant. Again, I'm no Lovecraft expert, but I like unique PsOV.


† Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus by Rick Perlstein


Fascinating account of the "other" revolution that people like me caught up with in the 90s with NewtRushetc, when it was clear it wasn't just a bad dream. Actually, the line between left and right etc has pretty much been redrawn beyond recognition, first by the Clinton era, now by 9/11. My politics is all over the map, myself. But while many people seem to think things got all clear in the fall, to me they seem more fluid and uncertain than ever. That's something I'll have to go into later though. This book (ahem) delves into the roots of the 90s conservative "revolution," and reads easy. Important political history.


† Odds & Ends by R. Crumb


Some real gems here, like the Hallmark cards. The kind of cranky genius that makes America special.


† The Horse's Mouth by Joyce Cary


Probably the book that threw me the most last year. Really splendid. The movie is wonderful, the book is much better. There really were lines I wanted to write down on every page. The last volume of a trilogy, have to get to the rest. I don't have near enough time for all the things I want to do anymore...

'I hope you will get some recognition at last,' said old Plant. 'I shall be recognized by the starry wheels,' I said, forgetting myself. 'You are an art critic in the papers, sir?' said old Plant, who thinks a lot of papers though he thinks he doesn't. 'Yes,' I said, ' the Professor is an art-cricket. He knows the game backwards. from Zuloaga to Alfred the Great.' You don't believe in art criticism?' said Alabaster. "Yes,' I said, 'it exists. I even knew a critic once. A chap who could criticize pictures. Yes, he even knew what a picture was.' 'What is a picture?' 'A picture, that's the trouble, really.'


† Martian Time-Slip by Philip K. Dick


One I never got to. Plot molasses as usual, not one of my favorites. However, the paragraphs from the point of view of the timetravelling schizophrenic lifted me right through the roof. Uncanny.


† The Death of Sweet MIster by Daniel Woodrell


Tight little Deep South nightmare, Oedipal.


† Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler


Got into Chandler & Hammett & Thompson a bit this year, roots reading, y' know? This was particulary good, the movies don't do it justice (shocking, I know). Great 30s L.A. atmosphere.


† Ghost World by Dan Clowes


This guy is an American original. No one I've read gets the zeitgeist of 20somethings like him. David Boring is even better. Graphic novels are more like poetry than prose to me. A sad keening wail, this.

One has ordered his forces into battle more times than any other postwar British leader. The other threatens military action against "evil" nations and keeps a scorecard of dead al-Qaida leaders, marking each fatality with an X.

Now, Tony Blair and George Bush have received international recognition for their unswerving willingness to use force: a nomination for the 2002 Nobel peace prize. [link]

People using Aropax, the second most commonly used antidepressant in Australia, can be signed up for the program, called "A Plus", by their doctor.

They may then attend five 90-minute sessions of cognitive behaviour therapy over two months, in groups of up to 14 other patients.

The drug's manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline, has recruited psychologists, psychiatrists and GPs to run the sessions at venues across Australia. In their contract, the doctors must agree that, "Adherence to [Aropax] is to be encouraged at all times." [via new world disorder]

Pritchard's family doesn't get too excited about her daring past. They glide over the fact that she rescued scores of children from the Holocaust, survived seven months in a Nazi prison and killed one Nazi who got in her way. They take for granted that Grandma is a war hero--or else they can't quite believe it. The stories of extraordinary bravery don't fit with the aproned woman they see before them, who is frightened of squirrels and public speaking and who feels guilty when she swats a fly.

[...]

As history does its ominous U-turn, she watches quietly from a safe distance. This isn't her fight. And yet, when hatred hits closer to home, she reverts instantly from recluse to rescuer. When anti-Semitism and homophobia flared in her corner of Vermont not long ago, Pritchard fought back with everything she had. [thanks to boing boing again]

The Enron affair's many tendrils have yielded sudden partisan acrimony in Britain, a revival of an old story of influence-wielding in Argentina and a hardening of attitudes about free-market capitalism, corruption and hubris in many quarters. It has even found echoes in an unrelated but resonant insurance and accounting scandal in Australia. And news organizations around the world have taken up the theme of American political probity. In regions where American voices have publicly com-plained of opaque practices, political favoritism or corruption, editorial writers and columnists have avidly turned the tables and thrown Enron back at the United States as evidence of hypocrisy.

"How could all this have happened on Wall Street, the benchmark (or so Asians were told in 1997) of corporate transparency?" The Straits Times of Singapore said in an editorial. "The simple answer is: The U.S. government let it happen." The paper went on to cite "the legalized corruption that passes for U.S. lawmaking" as a contributing factor. The political side of the story reverberated in Argentina, where the Bush family has had business interests since the mid-1980s. In an article a week ago in the daily La Nacion, a former minister of public works, Rodolfo Terragno, said he was pressed on Enron's behalf in 1988 by "a son of the vice president," who he believes was George W. Bush.

Now that Taleban rule is over in Mullah Omar’s former southern stronghold, it is not only televisions, kites and razors which have begun to emerge. Visible again, too, are men with their ashna, or beloveds: young boys they have groomed for sex.

Kandahar’s Pashtuns have been notorious for their homosexuality for centuries, particularly their fondness for naive young boys. Before the Taleban arrived in 1994, the streets were filled with teenagers and their sugar daddies, flaunting their relationship.

It is called the homosexual capital of south Asia. Such is the Pashtun obsession with sodomy — locals tell you that birds fly over the city using only one wing, the other covering their posterior — that the rape of young boys by warlords was one of the key factors in Mullah Omar mobilising the Taleban.

Timothy McVeigh and the Brazil connection

An article by journalist Jon Ronson in UK-based newspaper The Guardian sent shudders through some Brazil fans. In a revealing piece about Timothy McVeigh, people who had met him said that he was known as both Tim Tuttle and Tim Buttle. Fans will recall that Buttle was a character in Brazil who was wrongly arrested and killed, and Tuttle was the Robert de Niro character who fought against the state. Ronson's intelligent article, which did not make the link between McVeigh's pseudonyms and the film Brazil, can be found at The Guardian's website. McVeigh himself was unavailable for comment. [from Dreams, a Terry Gilliam fansite]

Death Breath

(Stan van der Beek, US, 1964)

After college, I lived in New York with some people who would watch experimental avant-garde films. We embraced them because they annoyed everybody else, even though they were mostly awful. One night we were enduring some of this stuff when on to the screen came a cut-up image of Richard Nixon trying to talk with his foot in his mouth. It was the simplest animation pun imaginable. Years later, when I had come to England and we were working on a TV programme that was meant to make people laugh, there was a problem with dramatising one of the ideas. So I got a picture of Jimmy Young, cut it in half, moved his mouth around a bit and everybody laughed. That subsequently became a trademark, for which I think van der Beek should take credit.

"It is now clear the Bush administration wants to control the petroleum of all the world, in the Middle East and the Caspian Sea," said Emily Naffa of the Jordanian Arab Women's Organization. "We must all fight together against monopolies, against the corporations, against the militarization of globalization."

In another session, Naomi Klein, the Canadian author of "No Logo," a best-selling book that has become this year's anti-globalization bible, said it was wrong for Bush to try to force countries "to be with us or to be with terrorism."

"This is a deadly multiple choice exam and the only possible answer is 'none of the above'," Klein said. "There are many more than two choices available." [link]

Things I learned from this movie [Babes in Toyland re-make (Reeves/Barrymore)]

If an electric pole is knocked down it only takes out the phones.
Mean people live in bowling balls.
Everyone who works in a bakery wears roller skates.
If you can't pay the rent in cash the bank will take kids.
Not being able to blink is a serious problem when you only have one eye.
People from Cincinnati are immune to poison gas.
Concentrated evil should be stored in an appropriate container, specifically not something glass.
Teddy bears are not cut out for riot control.
Wedding vows should include the phrase "Give him a lot of fun." on general principle.
Santa is a little Japanese man.

Includes .wav clips, stills, video MPEGs. Pretty funny. [via Presurfer]

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Always liked Robert Reich. Read his Locked in the Cabinet, which was a funny, insightful report on being catapulted into Washington politics. Now he's a late-starting Democratic runner for Governor in Massachusetts.

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Tompaine.com's Richard Blow on Andrew Sullivan's outing of journalists on Enron's payroll reporting on ... Enron:

Sullivan's buck-raking muckraking has caused journalists to start sinking their fangs into each other, arguing over who should disclose what and when, and whether conservatives or liberals are more at fault. It's an unattractive sight, like watching a fender bender turn into a forty-car crash. But the argument over who's to blame misses the larger point that Sullivan is rightly making: Journalists shouldn't accept money from outside sources. Period.

Now, such purity will never happen, simply because many journalists long to live as well as the people they cover in higher-paying professions such as business, law, and even politics. It's hard to earn $50,000 a year and cover sleazy lobbyists and political consultants who are pulling down $500,000.

The culture of corruption is seductive -- especially in Washington, where journalists in recent years have only gotten cozier and cozier with public officials. Remember when NPR's legal correspondent Nina Totenberg had Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg officiate at her wedding? Talk about a conflict of interest.

If journalists want to retain any more credibility than politicians, they should spurn all monies for anything not directly associated with journalism. If they do take outside income, they should disclose it -- before they're writing about any related subject. It's not hard to do. The Web would be an easy avenue of disclosure. Or some neutral body, like the Columbia Journalism School, could collect the information. [via boing boing]

A judge's decision allowing Napster to pursue copyright misuse claims against major record labels seems to signal a sea change in the music industry's lawsuit against the peer-to-peer song-swapping service, according to a trio of legal experts.

In a Jan. 16 hearing, the transcript of which was obtained by Newsbytes, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel told lawyers that she had decided to begin a discovery phase in the trial, allowing Napster to examine whether music labels have misused their copyrights.

If she were to rule that labels have misused their rights, one expert told Newsbytes, at the extreme it could mean the labels could not enforce their copyrights. Such a decision, conceivably, could kill the labels' case against Napster, which has been accused of contributory copyright infringement for allowing millions of people to tap into a rich mine of free songs on the Internet. [link] [also from Grabbe]

Just last week President Bush announced, "my 2003 budget calls for more than $48 billion in new defense spending."

More money for the Pentagon, CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports, while its own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25 percent of what it spends.

"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted. [link] [via J Orlin Grabbe]

I know this means something.

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Bill Greider rips the laissez-faire "transparent" New Market Economy a new asshole.

The collapse of Enron has swiftly morphed into a go-to-jail financial scandal, laden with the heavy breathing of political fixers, but Enron makes visible a more profound scandal--the failure of market orthodoxy itself. Enron, accompanied by a supporting cast from banking, accounting and Washington politics, is a virtual piñata of corrupt practices and betrayed obligations to investors, taxpayers and voters. But these matters ought not to surprise anyone, because they have been familiar, recurring outrages during the recent reign of high-flying Wall Street. This time, the distinctive scale may make it harder to brush them aside. "There are many more Enrons out there," a well-placed Washington lawyer confided. He knows because he has represented a couple of them.

The rot in America's financial system is structural and systemic. It consists of lying, cheating and stealing on a grand scale, but most offenses seem depersonalized because the transactions are so complex and remote from ordinary human criminality. The various cops-and-robbers investigations now under way will provide the story line for coming months, but the heart of the matter lies deeper than individual venality. In this era of deregulation and laissez-faire ideology, the essential premise has been that market forces discipline and punish the errant players more effectively than government does. To produce greater efficiency and innovation, government was told to back off, and it largely has. "Transparency" became the exalted buzzword. The market discipline would be exercised by investors acting on honest information supplied by the banks and brokerages holding their money, "independent" corporate directors and outside auditors, and regular disclosure reports required by the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulatory agencies. The Enron story makes a sick joke of all these safeguards. [link]

* Fees? Stations already pay royalty fees. Yes, they do, for the use of the composition, not the recording. The DMCA establishes new fees that could exceed $10,000 per year, just for putting a station on the internet. Once the fees are determined, they are RETROACTIVE to 1998!

* Stations on the internet are likely to be asked to produce monthly reports containing information about every song they air, including, Artist, Song Title, Album retail title, Record Label, catalog number, International Standard Recording Code (ISRC), date and time of transmission. These requirements are not only onerous, but cost prohibitive!

* Stations will also need to adhere to content restrictions. Do you want your station to be forced to determine the songs it plays by some arbitrary restrictions? Imagine if the reporting requirements were in effect now, how many stations would have broadcast specials concerning the death of George Harrison with music that exceeded the content restrictions? Did these broadcasts spur the sales of his music? Beatles Music? According to local press, it sure did! [link]

CNN
The London Times
Reuters/I Won
The Scotsman

AMERICAN authorities are expected to issue a warning to airlines around the world following the discovery of a company illegally selling second-hand Airbus parts, which could have caused as many as ten recent crashes.

As many as 1,200 aircraft worldwide could now be required to undergo safety inspections. It is believed they are mainly operated by small airlines which might have tried to save money by buying used parts instead of ordering them new from the manufacturers.

Six people have been arrested in Rome for allegedly trafficking in airline parts from ageing Airbus A300s - the type of plane that crashed in New York in November last year shortly after take-off, killing all 265 people . [from The Scotsman]

I'm getting many hits about the Panaviation scandal (faulty used airplane parts sold as new, shipment seized in Italy--see below), which I haven't seen much about in the US media. I figured there'd be quite a brouhaha, but you know, what with The War and all... Maybe there's some other reason?? Have to check moreover or whatever and see what's been written about it.

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Pretty cool new site I found through BlogSnob: The Presurfer.

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Pakistani-Indian standoff due largely to Indian BDP party struggling to maintain power.

India's test last week of a new short-range ballistic missile and its continued massing of troops on the border with Pakistan are keeping tensions and a war of words alive in South Asia.

Yet India's muscle flexing now has less to do with rival Pakistan or the decade-long insurgency in Kashmir, a range of analysts say, and more to do with a stark problem facing the ruling government: staying in power.

A central and ignored storyline of the South Asia standoff, in fact, lies far from the Pakistan border. It is found instead in the swirling politics of Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, a northern region often called the Hindi heartland or "the cow belt," which last week began a campaign for Feb. 18 elections.

"Our culture has said, 'If it feels good, do it,"' he said in a speech at an emergency operations center. "Our dream, or my dream for the country is that we usher in a culture that says 'Each of us are responsible for the decisions we make in life."

Bush's reference to America's feel good culture apparently alluded to what U.S. Republicans saw as the excesses of former President Bill Clinton's eight years in office which were marred by sexual scandals.

[...]

"We have a chance to change our culture for the better," he said. "We have a chance to turn this evil, to turn the evil deeds and the evil acts into incredible, long-term good for our nation. I ask you to seize the moment."

In a message that occasionally took on an almost religious fervor, Bush talked at each stop about "the enemy watching too much daytime TV" and thus concluding that Americans were spineless and materialistic, that they would not fight for their beliefs and would cower in the face of terror.

"You know, the enemy hit us the other day, a while ago. They didn't understand America," he said. "They thought we were weak and materialistic and soft. Instead, they have found a patient, determined, compassionate nation that stands in the way of their efforts to spread evil." [link]

But I'm all for responsibility, George. How about starting with giving back those Enron contributions?

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Sick again. Jesus.

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