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CULTURE BLOG

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ABBREVIATIONS FOR SITES I OFTEN STEAL NEWS ITEMS FROM:

u = Progressive Review's Undernews

PUBLIC AFFAIRS/HISTORY READING:
(r) = re-reading

amazon wish list

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The Buying of the President 2004: Who's Really Bankrolling Bush and His Democratic Challengers -- and What They Expect in Return

Arrogant Capital

Sam Smith's Great American Political Repair Manual: How to Rebuild Our Country So the Politics Aren't Broken and Politicians Aren't Fixed

American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush

Death in the Air: Globalism, Terrorism & Toxic Warfare

The Velvet Coup: The Constitution, the Supreme Court and the Decline of American Democracy

Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of the Free Press

Amazon Light

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 Informed 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.

from Rule by Secrecy by Jim Marrs

You had to take those pieces of paper with you when you went shopping, though by the time I was nine or ten most people used plastic cards. . .It seems so primitive, totemistic even, like cowry shells. I must have used that kind of money myself, a little, before everything went on the Compubank.

I guess that's how they were able to do it, in the way they did, all at once, without anyone knowing beforehand. If there had still been portable money, it would have been more difficult.

It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time.

Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control.

I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen?

That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.

. . . Things continued on in that state of suspended animation for weeks, although some things did happen. Newspapers were censored and some were closed down, for security reasons they said. The roadblocks began to appear, and Identipasses. Everyone approved of that, since it was obvious you couldn't be too careful. They said that new elections would be held, but that it would take some time to prepare for them. The thing to do, they said, was to continue on as usual.

from The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

By the time Oscar reached the outskirts of Washington, DC, The Louisiana air base had benn placed under siege.

The base's electrical power supply had long since been cut off for lack of payment. The aircraft had no fuel. The desperate federal troops were bartering stolen equipment for food and booze. Desertion was rampant. The air base commander had released a sobbing video confession and had shot himself.

Green Huey had lost patience with the long-festering scandal. He was moving in for the kill. Attacking and seizing an federal air base with his loyal state militia would have been entirely too blatant and straightforward. Instead the rogue Governor employed proxy guerrillas.

Huey had won the favor of nomad prole groups by providing them with safe havens. He allowed them to squat in Louisiana's many federally declared contamination zones. These forgotten landscapes were tainted with petrochemical effluent and hormone-warping pesticides, and were hence officially unfit for human settlement. The prole hordes had different opinions on that subject.

Proles cheerfully grouped in any locale where conventional authority had grown weak. Whenever the net-based proles were not constantly harassed by the authorities, they coalesced and grew ambitious. Though easily scattered by focused crackdowns, they regrouped as swiftly as a horde of gnats. With their reaping machines and bio-breweries, they could live off the land at the very base of the food chain. They had no stake in the established order, and they cherished a canny street-level knowledge of society's infrastructural weaknesses. They made expensive enemies. . .

Louisiana's ecologically blighted areas were ideal for proles. The disaster zones were also impromptu wildlife sanctuaries, since wild animals found chemical fouling much easier to survive than the presence of human beings. After decades of wild subtropical growth, Louisiana's toxic dumps were as impenetrable as Sherwood Forest.

from Distraction by Bruce Sterling

and s-integrator

Friday, January 23, 2004

"Thirty years after the emergency evacuation of the US Embassy in Saigon, we're still picking up the pieces. How old will you be when we experience the last repercussion from the invasion and occupation of Iraq?" [Twin Cities Babelogue]

Also on the page right now: an excerpt from Eisenhower's famous speech on the threat of a military-industrial complex and a link to a NYT article on how music sharing is more popular than ever despite MusicMobster propaganda claiming otherwise.

BTW, I post all my items on file-sharing at my other site.

1:18 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, January 22, 2004

Underground "sonic booms" puzzle police in rural Kansas [The Anomalist]

5:30 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sugar & junkfood cartels pissed off at WHO obesity initiative

10:51 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

BigPharma attack on natural remedies/health stores links up to Cancer Industry

10:50 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Selected search referrals
DREAM OF YELLOWSTONE huge military underground
balm of gilead psychoactive
damascus steel cowry x
mouse stuck on pest strip image
if-bush-is-re-elected rioting-in-the-streets
North Carolina and hog confinements and elections
fake pubic hair landing strip
sri lanka ritual insanity mask
"no free lunch" dog aggression protocol
muslim toes suck
"daniel perle" (murder)
"child free" + breeders + asia
"sherwood forest" orgy indiana
peanut shells psychoactive
sales of fuel to nazi subs
areas on magazines. the places to snitch in broken crimes
deepwater theology
japanese wurl wind

10:34 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, January 21, 2004

walmart locks overnight employees in at night "for their own safety" [u]
For more than 15 years, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, has locked in overnight employees at some of its Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores. It is a policy that many employees say has created disconcerting situations, such as when a worker in Indiana suffered a heart attack, when hurricanes hit in Florida and when workers' wives have gone into labor.

12:53 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Inmate's book claims McVeigh spoke of wide conspiracy involved in Murrah bombing

Death Row inmate who "had extensive contacts with Timothy McVeigh" in prison has completed a manuscript detailing how McVeigh was originally recruited by shadowy military types to infiltrate the far right, though this excerpt doesn't say whether he went over to the militia's side or not by the time of the planning of the OK City bombing [u]
One of these men, McVeigh claims, contacted him shortly after his discharge from the army.

Referring to him only "the major," McVeigh said he was invited to work with the shadowy figure during a meeting the two had at Camp McCall. Camp McCall is located on the grounds of Fort Bragg, N.C.

At this meeting, McVeigh -- who was still smoldering after being passed over for a spot in the elite Army Special Forces -- was told of an off-budget defense department project the Major wanted to invite him to join. The Major said McVeigh would be involved in gathering intelligence for the government on members of the radical rightwing in the U.S., specifically members of the KKK and Aryan Nations.

Hammer wrote that McVeigh told him he was aware of the far-right's methods of robbing banks and armored cars for the so-called "cause" -- the shorthand description of the white power agenda some in the most violent wing of the movement adhered to. It was these tactics, McVeigh said, that he was also encouraged to use.

Within a matter of months of the '93 Elohim City meeting, Guthrie, Langan and McVeigh were robbing banks and gathering explosives and a vast arsenal of weapons.

12:11 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tuesday, January 20, 2004

Wealthiest nonprofits favored by foundations [u]
To be sure, some charitable foundations focus their philanthropy on programs to help the disadvantaged. But the largest foundations parcel out a surprisingly high proportion of their grants to already well-endowed colleges and universities and other elite institutions.

Indeed, the most prestigious universities on each coast, Harvard and Stanford, attracted hundreds of millions of dollars more than other recipients between 1992 and 2001, according to a study of foundation grantmaking patterns done for the Globe by the Foundation Center, a research and education organization based in New York.

The study, which examined giving by 1,000 of the country's largest foundations, found that another 14 of that decade's top 20 grant recipients were also elite universities, among them Columbia, Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Chicago, and Duke. In 2001, more than one of every four dollars donated by more than 1,000 of the largest foundations went to colleges and universities. Also on the preferred donor list at many foundations: major teaching hospitals, large museums, and symphony orchestras.

By contrast, nonprofits identified in the study as human service providers received about 1 in 10 foundation dollars in 2001.

11:49 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

In case you have any doubts, the shrubco Space Initiative is little more than another grab for shrubco corporate bandits, a la Iraq -- it's the mining, stupid

I guess maybe shrub has delusions of being admired like Kennedy too.

But it's mostly about the money, don't kid yourself.

11:45 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

5 military lawyers retained by Gitmo inmates challenge shrub's authority as commander-in-chief [u]
In their 30-page brief, filed late Wednesday, the lawyers assert that President Bush worked to "create a legal black hole" and overstepped his constitutional authority as commander in chief in the way he set up the program for military tribunals.

[...]

The government has tried to create a military tribunal system thoroughly insulated from the civilian court system. But in their brief, which civilian and military legal experts consider extraordinary because the defense lawyers are military officers challenging their commander in chief's authority, the lawyers are, in effect, trying to jump over the fence into the civilian system.

"Under this monarchical regime, those who fall into the black hole may not contest the jurisdiction, competency or even the constitutionality of the military tribunals," the defense lawyers wrote. They said they were not taking a position on whether the president may deny habeas corpus to people simply detained at Guant�namo, but once he puts them before a tribunal as the government is contemplating, "he has moved outside his role as commander in chief."

Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, who represents one of two detainees who have been assigned lawyers, said in an interview that though the brief was extraordinary, "It was unavoidable as part of our duty to represent the interests of our clients."
Will the system work?

Will the this story be a movie on TV, like the cable film on Bush after 9/11?

11:40 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wal-Mart tries to sidestep resistance to new locations by using voter referendum [u]

1:37 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

IMHO, Brazil should have done the Fingerprint Thing for a couple weeks and then stopped it with a statement saying the point had been made and Brazil didn't have to stoop to police state methods like the US -- so this silliness wouldn't be happening [u]

1:29 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

School is even more of a nightmare gulag than when I was a kid file:

Along with usual cool stuff, Undernews posted about the 13-year-old in Texas (natch) who was suspended for sending an email with the text "Hey"
Dr. Santiago left me in the office while he went to talk to Mr. Waddell. When he came back, he said that I was lying. . . He said I was lucky I didn't mess up all the computers in some way because my parents couldn't afford to replace all the computers in the school. I tried to explain that it was just a command to send a message, and he said that didn't matter.

Dr. Santiago pulled out a book of crimes and punishments for the school, but they couldn't find anything like what I did. But he started listing off punishments I could get. He said, "Punishment by officer" and the officer was smiling and nodding his head while he pointed to himself. Then finally they said that they weren't going to say what my punishment was because that was for the principal, Mr. Rollins, to decide. . .

1:11 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

"More than a million completely legal websites have been blocked by US ISPs in response to the Pennsylvanian statute against Internet Child Pornography"

Porn back as an excuse to restrict information [u]

1:04 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

"Surge" in class-action suits is bullshit [u]

1:01 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Been meaning to mention Kevin Phillips' new book on Imperial Dynasty of shrub since I saw him on C-SPAN a week or so ago; he's tentative on the Nazi stuff, but he's got cred that can't be swept aside like some - here's the L.A. Times piece from a week ago [u]
Dynasties in American politics are dangerous. We saw it with the Kennedys, we may well see it with the Clintons and we're certainly seeing it with the Bushes. Between now and the November election, it's crucial that Americans come to understand how four generations of the current president's family have embroiled the United States in the Middle East through CIA connections, arms shipments, rogue banks, inherited war policies and personal financial links.

12:56 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, January 18, 2004

Meet the New Boss file:

Free press routinely stifled in Iraq [u]
21 journalists and staff from the channel have been arrested in 13 different incidents since April. Two al-Jazeera journalists have been held for months in prison, one was found innocent by an Iraqi court and released after a month, while the other remains in prison more than two months after being arrested for allegedly having links to the Iraqi resistance. Al Jazeera deny these accusations and say that the Governing Council is trying to punish the channel for coverage that is less than wholeheartedly supportive.

"The Governing Council have the same mindset as Saddam -- they want journalists to write only the good things," says Abdel Haqq, head of Al-Jazeera's Baghdad office, adding that members of the Council are regular guests on the channel.

"The ordinary people share the same attitude, in Najaf they call us Saddam's Channel, while in the Sunni areas we are told that we are American stooges, but whatever they call us they all go home and watch al-Jazeera."

12:44 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Academic freedom for Middle East studies programs suppressed by conservative thinktanks & campus stooge watchdog groups [u]
...academics who specialize in the region complain that they are under siege from conservative think tanks and self-appointed campus watchdog organizations. They say these efforts have resulted in a flood of abusive e-mail and calls for tightening congressional control over the funding of Middle East studies programs, which, they contend, could undermine academic freedoms.

Barbara Petzen, outreach coordinator at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University, denounced a "right-wing thought police that is sending spies into classrooms to report on what teachers are saying in class." Michael C. Hudson, director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, said his campus has become the target of a McCarthyist "witch hunt."

12:39 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

No crisis unless WE say so file:

shrubco wants total control of all health and crisis alerts from any federal agency [u]

12:35 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

REVIEWS

from Sassafrass (9/23/02)
"Unconventional viewpoints at 'charging the canvas'

Opinions that will ruffle feathers, from someone who clearly knows their way around information and the blogosphere."

Blog of the Day
1/18/02

WEEKLY QUOTE

In the eyes of posterity it will inevitably seem that, in safeguarding our freedom, we destroyed it; that the vast clandestine apparatus we built up to probe our enemies' resources and intentions only served in the end to confuse our own purposes; that the practice of deceiving others for the good of the state led infallibly to our deceiving ourselves; and that the vast army of intelligence personnel built up to execute these purposes were soon caught up in the web of their own sick fantasies, with disastrous consequences to them and us.

-- Malcolm Muggeridge

Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

-- Mark Twain

NOT IN OUR NAME
(link to list against Iraq War)

CULTURE LINK

Philip K. Dick

DEEPER NEWS LINK

PR Watch

charging the canvas

The Link Section