Everyone is trying
To get to the bar
The name of the bar
The bar is called Heaven
The band in Heaven
They play my favorite song
Play it once again
Play it all night long
Heaven Heaven is a place
A place where nothing
Nothing ever happens
There is a party
Everyone is there
Everyone will leave at exactly the same time
It's hard to imagine
How nothing at all
Could be so exciting
Could be this much fun
Ah Heaven...
Talking Heads
best viewed not with IE, though I'm not sure why.
formerly "fifteen foot italian shoe" and "keoha pint."
READING:
Dupont Dynasty: Behind the Nylon Curtain by Gerard Colby
ANNOUNCEMENT: If you'd like to betatest some new blogging software, visit BlogStudio.
I'll be moving there soon.
Weekly Quote
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Can any soul survive the searing fireball of an atomic blast? If human and animal souls are seen as electromagnetic force fields, such fields could be totally disrupted by a nuclear explosion. The mummy's nightmare: disintegration of souls, and this is precisely ultrasecret and supersensitive function of the atom bomb: a Soul Killer, to alleviate an escalating soul glut. Ω Scientists always said there is no such thing as a soul. Now they are in a position to prove it. Total Death. Soul Death. It's what the Egyptians called the Second and Final Death. This awesome power to destroy souls forever is now vested in farsighted and responsible men in the State Department, the CIA, and the Pentagon. Ω Governments fall from sheer indifference. Authority figures, deprived of the vampiric energy they suck off their constituents, are seen for what they are: dead empty masks manipulated by computers. And what is behind the computers? Remote control, of course. Ω Look at the prison you are in, we are all in. This is a penal colony that is now a Death Camp. Place of the Second and Final Death. Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape. Ω Don't intend to be there when the shithouse goes up. Nothing here now but the recordings. Shut them off, they are as radioactive as an old joke.
--William S. Burroughs from "Soul Killer"
BlogSnob Link
RUDY BAKHTIAR FANS!!
This is why you're here, and this is why it's ironic.
>
Susan and I have been repulsed by Rudy Bakhtiar's strangely dissociated and chilly vibe since we first saw her. "Why watch Headline News at all?" you might ask. Indeed. Yet you find yourself watching some of it even while flipping channels, and though I pay even less attention to American mass media since 9/11 than I did before, I still find myself on news stations, because the rest of TV is just so bad. Just the few minutes a week of Rudy's frightful visage is disturbing enough. Looks like we're not the only ones.
WHY IS THAT WOMAN SMIRKING? Watching Rudi Bakhtiar on CNN Headline News is like watching a film with the wrong sound track. While we are as impressed as she clearly is with her natural beauty and carefully honed sultriness, Bakhtiar lacks only a fundamental understanding of what the hell she is talking about. The ill-placed smirks, flirts, and eyebrow quirks appear at random, sometime accompanying the most dire reports. It admittedly becomes hypnotic once you notice the schizophrenic contrast between her face and her mouth, but it doesn't seem to have much to do with news. [Sam Smith in Undernews 4/4]
Now this description reminds me of the unsettling dissociative simulacra in Phil Dick books. I'm afraid we'll have to turn pro soon, because all these Orwell and Dick phantoms and McGuffins in real life are just getting a little too weird. . .
This post is from April 8. Please note I'm sure she's just a charming, heartfelt person when you get to know her.
Just consider what current events will sound like two thousand years from now -- the greatest
nation on Earth bombing some of the smallest and weakest for no clear reasons, people starving
in parts of the world while farmers are paid not to plant crops in others,
technophiles sitting at home playing electronic golf rahter than the real thing, and police
forces ordered to arrest people who simply desire to ingest a psychoactive weed. People of
that era will also likely laugh it all off as fantastic myths...
It is time for those who desire true freedom to exert themselves -- to fight back against the
forces who desire domination through fear and disunity.
This does not have to involve violence. It can be done in small, simple ways, like not financing
that new Sport Utility Vehicle, cutting up all but one credit card, not opting for a second
mortgage, turning off that TV sitcom for a good book, asking questions and speaking out in church
or synagogue, attending school board and city council meetings, voting for the candidate who has
the least money, learning about the Fully Infomred Jury movement and using it when called -- in
general, taking responsibility for one's own actions. Despite the omnipresent advertising for the
Lotto -- legalized government gambling -- there is no free lunch. Giving up one's individual power
for the hope of comfort and security has proven to lead only to tyranny.
The panel concluded unanimously that there was no evidence of a direct threat to national security in the UFO sightings. Nor could the panel find any evidence that the objects sighted might be extraterrestrials. It did find that continued emphasis on UFO reporting might threaten "the orderly functioning" of the government by clogging the channels of communication with irrelevant reports and by inducing "hysterical mass behavior" harmful to constituted authority. The panel also worried that potential enemies contemplating an attack on the United States might exploit the UFO phenomena and use them to disrupt US air defenses.
To meet these problems, the panel recommended that the National Security Council debunk UFO reports and institute a policy of public education to reassure the public of the lack of evidence behind UFOs. It suggested using the mass media, advertising, business clubs, schools, and even the Disney corporation to get the message across. Reporting at the height of McCarthyism, the panel also recommended that such private UFO groups as the Civilian Flying Saucer Investigators in Los Angeles and the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization in Wisconsin be monitored for subversive activities.
But the question of whether anyone at or related to "The Agency" had other knowledge is far from evident to me. Not to mention, CIA people are just as likely to be in denial about whatever challenges their worldview as anyone. Maybe more so, since their grasp on reality seems a bit slippery to begin with, by virtue of their mandate to create consensus perceptions.
WTC fell because of lightweight construction and weak fireproofing
The June 25 edition of Undernews has a series of excerpts at the bottom on the construction of the WTC and how this was responsible for the actual collapse of the towers than the plane crash and fire.
Fireproofing failures -- rather the impact of the plane crashes -- probably caused the World Trade Center towers to quickly collapse, architects and engineers told a federal panel. "The insulation is going to turn out to be the root cause," said James G. Quintiere, a professor at University of Maryland's Fire Protection Engineering Department who analyzed the fireproofing in the two towers. Neither tower, he found, had fireproofing thick enough to withstand the fire's blast furnace intensity for two hours, which is considered the minimum needed for those on the upper floors to escape the towers. "A two-hour fire resistance is right on the ragged edge," Quintiere said. The North Tower, which had 1 1/2-inch-thick fireproofing, fell in 104 minutes, and the South Tower, with its 3/4-inch-thick fireproofing, collapsed in 56 minutes . . .
The question of objectivity in journalism comes up again:
The Sarasota (Fla.) Herald- Tribune recently ran a 4,400-word, 2 1/2-page spread on Republican congressional candidate Katherine Harris. And when one reader complained that Democratic candidates were getting short shrift, Managing Editor Rosemary Armao responded with a remarkably candid e-mail -- one that wound up costing her her job.
"Katherine Harris is an international figure, like her or not," Armao wrote of the woman who became a central player in the presidential recount in Florida. "She's going to be the next congresswoman from this area, like it or not. . . . I have no intentions of covering each of the Democratic candidates to the same extent."
Armao added: "I do not intend to vote for Harris. . . . I blame the Democrats for not finding a better candidate . . . and I blame our culture for craving as its public figures, women like Katherine who are very pretty, hard-working and without original ideas that I can find."
This was after the paper published basically a puff piece on Harris.
I think it's ridiculous to fire an editor for an email she sends to a reader. And most of what passes for objectivity in reporting these days is sickeningly bland, unreadable tripe -- with hidden biases anyway -- often barely a rewrite of press releases.And did she know the fix was in? [via drudge]
Shit he was only 50. I knew he was e-i-c at Billboard though I never read it. I still remember his stuff at Rolling Stone (back when it was readable and even relevant); but his Bob Marley bio Catch A Fire is definitive and really caught Marley's spirit and milieu. One of the best music bios ever.
Entwistle released a half-dozen eclectic solo albums that revealed his wry sense of humor, and he also dabbled in art. He had spent the last dozen years writing a novel, though he noted in a recent interview that "at the current rate of writing they're gonna have to engrave the end on my tombstone."
The 2000 pic of him on all the obits shows a man looking older than 55.
I saw the Who in '74 at MSQ, and it was one of the best shows I 've ever seen. Thay rocked like few do anymore.
Supreme Court for this one, you bet. [NYT username: aflakete password: europhilia]
Greed corruption and terror -- the Bush Decade
There's no doubt that the bull market is long gone. The bear market is sticking around longer than even pessimists thought possible. And U.S. stock indexes are struggling to stay above their post-Sept.-11 lows.
Investors are experiencing a gut check that ranks right up there with the 1973-74 mauling, the trio of down years during World War II and the four consecutive wealth-destroying years that defined the Great Depression.
[...]
[Enron] set in motion a wave of scandals, ranging from crooked accounting to CEOs allegedly trading on inside information, that undermined the integrity of the financial system. Business pages now read like the police blotter. Xerox. Adelphia. Tyco. ImClone. Global Crossing. Even the maven of taste, Martha Stewart, is under suspicion in an inquiry into alleged illegal stock trading on inside information. And late Tuesday, news broke that WorldCom had uncovered what appears to be one of the largest frauds in corporate history.
A culture of distrust has infected investors' minds with the power of toxic mold. "There is still a profound suspicion among investors that there are more skeletons in the closet," says Charles Pradilla, market strategist at SG Cowen. [link]
No doubt the 90s were a bubble and Clinton and much else is behind what's happening now.
Feminists might celebrate Kahlo's ascent to greatness -- if only her fame were related to her art. Instead, her fans are largely drawn by the story of her life, for which her paintings are often presented as simple illustration. Fridamaniacs are inspired by Kahlo's tragic tale of physical suffering -- polio at six, grisly accident at 18 -- and fascinated with her glamorous friends and lovers, among them photographer and Soviet spy Tina Modotti and Leon Trotsky. It's the stuff that drives Hollywood, and the kind of story that has become de rigueur for entering the pantheon of "great" artists.
But, like a game of telephone, the more Kahlo's story has been told, the more it has been distorted, omitting uncomfortable details that show her to be a far more complex and flawed figure than the movies and cookbooks suggest. This elevation of the artist over the art diminishes the public understanding of Kahlo's place in history and overshadows the deeper and more disturbing truths in her work. Even more troubling, though, is that by airbrushing her biography, Kahlo's promoters have set her up for the inevitable fall so typical of women artists, that time when the contrarians will band together and take sport in shooting down her inflated image, and with it, her art.
Of course most artists or politicians who become popular icons are transformed into airbrushed versions of themselves. Subconscious or conscious misogyny simply amplifies the tendency.
The first stop on the whistle-blower's roller coaster to ruin is discreditation. . .
"Anonymous news leaks always come first," he says. Fellow agents may peek into Rowley's personnel file, quiz her colleagues about her habits, and find something to feed the press, and already rumors are being whispered on the Hill. The gossip: Rowley once punished a whistle-blower herself.
Next, say those who've taken the ride, comes a gamut of retaliatory tactics: harassment from supervisors, the loss of office allies, a stripping of security clearance, the monitoring of activities, inter-office relocation -- one Department of Agriculture informer was moved to a desk in the hallway outside the bathroom -- demotions, psychiatric or medical referrals, or "administrative leave," to put it euphemistically.
Something mentioned in the article I didn't know: Colleen Rowley's colleague Robert Wright accused the FBI of obstructing his investigation of international terrorist accounts, but got far less press than she did -- though his testimony seems more damning and disturbing than hers even. His 500-page manuscript was suppressed by the FBI and he's filed suit with Judicial Watch.
Right-wing lifestyle eugenics and filling the coffers of Big Pharma
For a dozen years, the US Army Corps of Engineers has looked for solutions. In the latest twist, the corps proposed six possibilities: the status quo, a water-conservation measure that would change flows upstream, and four proposals that would alter releases from Gavins Point, which would mimic somewhat the old river's natural spring rise and summer decline.
When the corps solicited public comments, it was deluged. Of 55,000 comments, 54,000 called for some kind of change.
Unfortunately, there's little agreement on exactly what to change. Upstream communities, shocked by a long drought in the late 1980s and early '90s, want to retain more water in the reservoirs during dry periods. Barge operators downstream prefer the status quo, which calls for the corps to release enough water to maintain a barge channel on the lower Missouri. Lake recreationists also want to keep water in the reservoirs. River enthusiasts, however, side with the barge operators. Farmers and environmentalists both call for wise stewardship of the shoreline, but their solutions differ wildly.
Vidal on the US , the TerrorWar, and "why they hate us":
The idea of a supine Congress, the best that corporate money can buy, is allowing this to go past them without any question, puts me in mind ofmy favorite Emperor - and I always talk about Emperors when I do Pacifica, at least on the West Coast - Tiberius, who was a very brilliant man, and a patriot in his way. When he became Emperor, the Senate passed a bill, assuring him that any legislation that he sent them would be automatically accepted, and become law. He sent back word and he said, "You're crazy. Suppose, suppose the Emperor is mad, suppose he's ill, suppose there's a palace coup and somebody else is sending things in his name? How can you be so certain that what you're passing is really his, or should be passed?" They sent it back: "Anything your Imperial Majesty sends us is law for us." And Tiberius said, "How eager they are to be slaves."
And this is more and more my view of the American people in general. They've allowed an election to be stolen in November 2000. They made no fuss. We have perpetual war for perpetual peace. We have the Enemy-of-the-Month Club: one month it's Noriega, one month it's Saddam Hussein, one month it's Khadafy, currently it's Osama bin Laden. . .
[...]
I'll make you a bet that we are at war in Iraq in October, and Bush will be conducting that war in order to get more Republicans elected in a wartime atmosphere, so he can remove more of our liberties.
[...]
So there we are, embarked upon a great adventure, with one billion Moslems hating us, and the contempt of all of Europe, the hatred of most of Latin America - for very good reason, we can't blame that on George W. Bush, we've had two hundred years to make them hate us down there. And we're making trouble in China, we're looking forward to a war in China. If I could find a way to get to the American people and say, "This junta that is governing us, this Enron/Pentagon junta, dedicated only to enrichment through the oil business, as all the Bushes and Cheneys and so on are oil people, they are going to destroy, for personal profit, the United States. We are going to be destroyed by the hatred of the rest of the world."
El Paso, Texas (SatireWire.com) — Unwilling to wait for their eventual indictments, the 10,000 remaining CEOs of public U.S. companies made a break for it yesterday, heading for the Mexican border, plundering towns and villages along the way, and writing the entire rampage off as a marketing expense.
CEOnista Martha Stewart (Martha Stewart Omnimedia) was one of the few executives captured. Her mask is made from recycled Christmas paper wrapping.
"They came into my home, made me pay for my own TV, then double-booked the revenues," said Rachel Sanchez of Las Cruces, just north of El Paso. "Right in front of my daughters."
Calling themselves the CEOnistas, the chief executives were first spotted last night along the Rio Grande River near Quemado, where they bought each of the town's 320 residents by borrowing against pension fund gains. By late this morning, the CEOnistas had arbitrarily inflated Quemado's population to 960, and declared a 200 percent profit for the fiscal second quarter.
After September 11, the U.S. government enacted sweeping legislation that diminished privacy rights in the name of domestic security. In response to bills like the USA Patriot Act, the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act, and the proposed Driver's License Modernization Act, EFF is providing the public with factual data on these laws and the technologies they employ.
"High-tech systems are not a quick fix for terrorism," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Lee Tien. "For the most part, these technologies are dangerously unreliable, and even the best of them are highly invasive."
"Governments justify overreaching surveillance on vulnerable targets such as aliens and dissenters, then inevitably try to extend its use to the rest of society," Tien added.
The half-life of your reality, and Samantha Morton
Nice short piece on the place of Phil Dick in the History of Paranoia in Literature and how we still haven't seen the true Dick onscreen.
I probably will see Minority Report, though, if only because Samantha Morton plays a key role. I happened on her in Pandaemonium, where she played Coleridge's dutiful wife in a thankless role, and then Jesus' Son, a surprising good slice of drug-drenched 70s life in midwestern America, in which she kicked bloody ass as a self-destructive junkie (opposite the equally fine Billy Crudup).
Young lady has quite a career in front of her, I suspect. Now I guess I have to rent Sweet and Lowdown. . .
"The world as I knew it before this semester no longer exists. It's like a dream, as if I had been living in wonderland, but then I woke up. The reality of our society hit me right in the face. Although what I learned in this class has disappointed me, I'm glad to be given the opportunity of looking beyond my own personal life-to be given a choice to care for what happens to all of us as a nation. The rule of law may not prevail, but we as individuals still have the freedom to make choices, and those choices can help to weaken those who are still seeking total control."
. . . These words were written by one of my U.S. history students in a survey course covering the period of 1865 to current time, after she had viewed Mike Ruppert's video documentary "The Truth & Lies of 9-11." I have designed this course, which explores the events following the Civil War known as Reconstruction, through the end of the 20th century, to culminate in an alternative examination of the events of Sept. 11.
[...]
Having never lived through the Red Scare of post-World War II America, it was difficult for my students to grasp anti-Communist hysteria. I tried to explain that in the early- 1950s, being, or being suspected of being a Communist in America, was somewhat equivalent to being suspected of being a child molester in the 21st century. Nevertheless, they could not grasp the blatant violations of civil liberties during the '50s by the CIA, FBI and congressional committees investigating Communist activities. Particularly horrifying to them was the History Channel documentary, "Mind Control: America's Secret War," which outlined devastating CIA mind control experiments in the 1950s, done on unsuspecting civilians without their knowledge. Especially difficult for them to understand was the National Security Act of 1947 which created the CIA. Having been taught from grade school that our government is just, fair and that we have a functional balance of power in Washington, they found the CIA's level of power in America and the world, almost incomprehensible. As we examined the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the viewing of Oliver Stone's "JFK" film, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the Vietnam War and Watergate, I watched the innocence drain from their 20-something faces. I told them it would get worse.
[...]
The most valuable and workable image I have found for giving students an authentic map for understanding U.S. history and the world in which they live is the image of the five-headed monster in which corporations, the stock market, the intelligence community, organized crime and government function not as separate entities, but as one predatory organism which devours and does not sustain either humanity or the Earth. One of my beloved mentors of history, professor Peter Dale Scott, refers to what I have named the five-headed monster as "deep politics," that is to say, a "process which habitually resorts to decision-making and enforcement procedures outside as well as inside those publicly sanctioned by law and society."
Monday, June 24, 2002
And the Daffy Duck "Shoot me now!" award goes to . . .
Which is against the rules of Congress, not to mention a horrible -- never mind unconstitutional -- precedent. Let the FBI spy on the people who are responsible for overseeing the FBI? Reeeal good idea.
Experts called the move extraordinary if not unprecedented, and pointed out that it raised the prospect of FBI agents investigating the very Members and staff who are charged with overseeing the agency and its handling of the terrorist threat. An even more serious constitutional question would arise if the investigation fingers a Member of Congress for the leak.
The rules for both the House and Senate specifically provide that leaks of classified information should be investigated by the Congressional ethics committees. That was the procedure used in 1995 when the House ethics panel investigated allegations that then-Rep. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) leaked sensitive material dealing with CIA activity in Guatemala while he served on the Intelligence Committee.
But the question of whether to have the Congressional ethics committees conduct an internal probe apparently was not considered before the public announcement of the Justice request, according to people familiar with the matter in both parties. The House General Counsel’s office only began to look at the question Friday, a day after Goss and the other leaders appeared before the cameras.
[...]
"Inviting a Justice Department inquiry means using FBI agents and FBI methods, and it potentially creates FBI dossiers on the Senators and Representatives and staff of the intelligence committees," noted one person familiar with Congressional oversight who did not want to be named.
"The FBI would like nothing better than, under the guise of perfecting Hill security, to thoroughly control the intelligence committees’ own activity," this person said.
FBI fucks up. Congress and the White House gives them more money and the mandate to spy on the Congressmen who are supposed to oversee them.
Makes perfect sense to me. dododeeohdo woooooooooooo....
Nice to see some good news. Looks like the US may be pulling ahead of Saudi Arabia in one area anyway.
Jon Hassell in Montreal
If you live near Montreal, or are going to be there July 6-7, Jon Hassell will be performing at the Jazz Fest. Tickets are here. [Thanks to Malcolm on NerveNet!]
"You have to have an understanding of how the FBI does its business," says Bill Carter, an FBI spokesman in Washington. "We open a case on every report of a terrorist threat. The primary purpose is to gather intelligence to prevent a terrorist attack. [But] 19 out of 20 do not result in prosecution because they were opened as an intelligence operation."
Stanley Twardy, a former U.S. attorney for Connecticut, confirms Carter's analysis. "Yes, the FBI does refer matters up" to U.S. attorneys because the case is open and they want someone to review it," he says, "or for informational purposes."
But in half of the terror cases declined since Sept. 11, U.S. attorneys around the nation told the FBI there would be no charges because the cases under review showed no criminal intent, or no evidence of any crime, according to the data.
[...]
"It seems to me it's déjà vu in a lot of ways -- it's the agency covering their ass," says former New Haven Police Chief Nick Pastore, now a fellow with the non-profit Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. "They're rushing to judgment so they can make their numbers." Pastore said the situation reminded him of legendary FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover's long-time use of FBI agents to gather information about political dissidents.
The Chinese province of Hebei has banned the export of wild frogs -- a delicacy at home and abroad -- because thet're natural predators of locusts, and they're finally getting a clue.
Rodeo Fire
Very weird that this huge fire is happening so relatively close by (100 miles east of us), and yet seems so far away.
Broke as we are, we put together a box of household items for one of the families that lost their home (there are a lot more today) and brought it down to Basha's, the supermarket that's the local dropoff point. Even the people whose homes aren't destroyed -- what do they have to go back to? Neighbors without homes, a blackened landscape -- and 3 more months of hot weather, hopefully broken by the monsoon rains next month into September, but there's no guarantee.
It's so sad watching folks on TV, just overwhelmed. Officials who've done their best, but who talk about fires like this as if they can be stopped by controlled fires to clear away the ground fuel, like it's a War they can win...
Truth is, nature is still bigger than we are, and there's some things you just have to accept, especially if you want to live on the edge of a National Forest -- which we've been warned about over the last few years.
In his 19-page ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Robert M. Takasugi found that the process by which the State Department designates groups such as MEK as terrorist organizations deprives them of their constitutional due process rights. That, the judge said, is in part because the groups are not allowed to challenge the evidence against them before they are declared terrorist organizations.
"National security is certainly a matter of grave concern and responsibility," Takasugi wrote. But, "the argument for national security should not serve as an excuse for obliterating the Constitution."
Fewer cool referrals than there used to be. Got 6X more hits the day after I linked to NPR linking page. heh.
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Even if they were just Mossad agents checking on Islamic organizations that might be supporting Palestinian terrorists -- what the hell are they doing in the US anyway?
And I don't think that's the whole story.
The Perks of The TerrorWar
The $410,000 that has been spent fixing up the new office suite of Transportation Security Administration chief John W. Magaw has left its mark, according to officials who have visited the suite at the Department of Transportation's L'Enfant Plaza headquarters.
With its plush beige carpeting, mahogany-stained doors, crown molding and state-of-the-art conference room equipped with $109,000 worth of audio equipment, it has struck some visitors as tasteful but "a little bit over the top." [link via Undernews June 20]
The times may be lean for most of us, but the Czars of Terror must be sated.
You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
-- Jeannette Rankin
News is what someone wants to suppress. Everything else is advertising.
-- Rubin Frank
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