Archive Search

ARCHIVES

03/14/04 - 03/20/04
02/29/04 - 03/06/04
02/22/04 - 02/28/04
02/15/04 - 02/21/04
02/08/04 - 02/14/04
02/01/04 - 02/07/04
01/25/04 - 01/31/04
01/18/04 - 01/24/04
01/11/04 - 01/17/04
01/04/04 - 01/10/04
12/28/03 - 01/03/04
12/21/03 - 12/27/03
12/14/03 - 12/20/03
12/07/03 - 12/13/03
11/30/03 - 12/06/03
11/23/03 - 11/29/03
11/16/03 - 11/22/03
11/09/03 - 11/15/03
11/02/03 - 11/08/03
10/26/03 - 11/01/03
10/19/03 - 10/25/03
10/12/03 - 10/18/03
10/05/03 - 10/11/03
09/28/03 - 10/04/03
09/21/03 - 09/27/03
09/14/03 - 09/20/03
09/07/03 - 09/13/03
08/31/03 - 09/06/03
08/24/03 - 08/30/03
08/17/03 - 08/23/03
08/10/03 - 08/16/03
08/03/03 - 08/09/03
07/27/03 - 08/02/03
07/20/03 - 07/26/03
07/13/03 - 07/19/03
07/06/03 - 07/12/03
06/29/03 - 07/05/03
06/22/03 - 06/28/03
06/15/03 - 06/21/03
06/08/03 - 06/14/03
06/01/03 - 06/07/03
05/25/03 - 05/31/03
05/18/03 - 05/24/03
05/11/03 - 05/17/03
05/04/03 - 05/10/03
04/27/03 - 05/03/03
04/20/03 - 04/26/03
04/13/03 - 04/19/03
04/06/03 - 04/12/03
03/30/03 - 04/05/03
03/23/03 - 03/29/03
03/16/03 - 03/22/03
03/09/03 - 03/15/03
03/02/03 - 03/08/03
02/23/03 - 03/01/03
02/16/03 - 02/22/03
02/09/03 - 02/15/03
02/02/03 - 02/08/03
01/26/03 - 02/01/03
01/19/03 - 01/25/03
01/12/03 - 01/18/03
01/05/03 - 01/11/03
12/29/02 - 01/04/03

Link to old site on blogger (with archive links)

Click "subscribe" for email notification when I publish (including text added)
Subscribe
UnSubscribe

CULTURE BLOG

all art/music/culture links (including music biz/file sharing news), fiction I'm reading and what I'm listening to and watching

planing lakes

Contact

REGISTRATION ALERT:

For New York Times access use:
Username: aflakete Password: europhilia

For LA Times access use:
Username: ridgewood Password: callow

NOW AVAILABLE AT ME-ZINE

ABBREVIATIONS FOR SITES I OFTEN STEAL NEWS ITEMS FROM:

u = Progressive Review's Undernews

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

amazon wish list

amazon.ca wish list

alibris wishlist

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

Saturday, February 01, 2003

Google Web Quotes might be handy [refdesk]
Google WebQuotes annotates the results of your Google search with comments from other websites. This offers a convenient way to get a third party's opinion about each of the returns for your search, providing you with more information about that site's credibility and reputation.

11:08 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Evidence CIA has classified its photographs of "Noah's Ark" from Mt Ararat [og]
In a reply to the request, the CIA direction[sic - this is from Pravda] reported on February 16 [1994]: "We doubt that even the most careful study of pictures of Ararat mountain will provide some convincing result. In order to make an exhaustive analysis, all kinds of pictures and images made with different technical facilities within the past 30 years must be collected. We have pictures of the Ararat mountain territory made within the past 18 months; it may take from 4 to 6 weeks to obtain other pictures from the archives. When all of them are available, we will be able to complete the analysis." Documents that have been recently declassified by the CIA contain no results of such "completed analysis."
Or maybe they found something else?

4:31 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

D-notice kills Operation Ore

UK pedophile probe hits highest levels of government, suddenly no one's talking [og]
Speaking from London, freelance journalist Bob Kearley told me:

"Whether or not a D-Notice has been issued is not clear. But based on some of the feedback I've been getting it's apparent that editors and media owners have voluntarily agreed not to cover the story at this time. Operation Ore is still being reported, but not in regard to government ministers, and it's taking up very few column inches on the third or fourth page. Don't forget that the intelligence services are involved here, and Blair is anxious to ensure that the scandal does not rock the boat at a time when the country is about to go to war."

"You can imagine the effect this would have on the morale of troops who are about to commit in Iraq. In fact morale is reportedly quite low anyway, with service personnel throwing their vaccines into the sea en route to the battlefront and knowing how unpopular the war is with the British people. And a lot of squaddies I've met think there's something weird going on between Bush and Blair. If you're then told that the executive responsible for the conduct of the war is staffed by child-molesters ... well, then Saddam suddenly looks like the sort of bloke with whom you can share a few tins [beer]."

4:13 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Can't say I'm knowledgeable about economics, but Greenspan is talkin' gold standard all of a sudden -- which I sense is pretty important

4:00 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

"Drugs for Terror" FBI frame-up? [og]

3:52 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Dormant volcano census called for after live "dead" volcanos fingered by satellite
Professor Mark Simons of the California Institute of Technology said what they saw was quite alarming.

"This suggests that, for most of the world's volcanoes, we have no idea of their level of activity," he said.

3:28 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Friday, January 31, 2003

Disinformation's come a long way baby

new world disorder has RealAudio of the old English "conspiracy exposé" Alternative 3

I even read the comically hyperbolic novelization years ago. I knew something was going on.

The text of the post is from Nostalgia Central, which frames it as a kind of Orson Welles prank-broadcast update.

At this point I'd say it was most likely counter-conspiracy speculation disinfo.

Compared to some of the material I've discovered that's backed up by investigative journalists -- never mind conspiracy theorists -- it seems quite tame now.

Not to mention: the daily explosive reports under Dick Cheney's veep residence barely caused a ripple in the mediasphere. People think George Bush cares about them. 1984 and Brave New World look so amateurish now they seem almost like disinformation.

Meanwhile real disinformation has come a long way.

Though in some ways it hasn't had to.

Consider the case of Flora Shaw who, as a "reporter" for the (Council on Foreign Relations et al. forerunner) Milner Group-controlled London Times in the 1890s wrote (with Cecil Rhodes) a story "exaggerating and falsifying" the treatment of British nationals in what is now South Africa by the Boers to incite the Brits to take part in the patently illegal and disastrous Jameson insurrection of December 31, 1895. (See Quigley pp. 110-12)

This is strikingly reminiscent of, for example, the Iraqi baby-butchering claims of a Kuwaiti woman during the Gulf War (by which time disinfo had been outsourced to PR mercs like Hill & Knowlton), which a recent HBO documentary repeated as fact, though a token and I'm sure little seen disclaimer was added to the credits after a netsquall last month. [link to post]

With this kind of media manipulation by the heirs to secret societies like the Milner Group and MI6/CIA et al., expanding with new technologies and being perfected over the last century, you have to be an investigative journalist just to decode the TV news, never mind dig deeper.

Witness the coverage of the "strike" in Venezuela by BigMedia. Then visit Narco News.

But then the "reality" so many people seem ready to subscribe to post-9/11 (or post-Election2000 for that matter) is way scarier than A3 even if it were true.

The question now is, what will people choose to believe so that they don't have to see what's in front of them? How many will buy the Apocalypse/Clash of Civilizations con?

The distributed sorcery of the 21st century would make Middle Earth's evil wizards' jaws drop.

3:40 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Who could make this up?

Virtual aquarium toy mutters "I hate you" beneath ocean waves sounds [u]

12:13 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, January 30, 2003

Faced with an oil shortage because of the Venezuelan slowburn coup by the corporatocracy, the US has turned to -- Iraq [u]

But it's not about the oil. . .

11:55 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

I was listening to the Gerard Colby interview on Black Op Radio today, and wondered if he had another book in the works; looks like he does, though it was supposed to be out last year as you can see, and this was the only reference on the Web I could find

Which, knowing Colby's past history with publishers and the scarcity of his last book on Nelson Rockefeller and the Intel/Missionary connection to genocide in South America -- published by the same house (HarperCollins) that is supposedly doing the new one -- I'm naturally suspicious.

But then it's called The Kingdom and the Power: Saudi Oil and American Espionage at the Dawn of the Middle East Crisis, so what relevance could it have these days?. . .

I did read his Du Pont Dynasty: Behind the Nylon Curtain and highly recommend it. Along with Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon, it fills in some of the gaps in history books about the influence of multinationals on American (and world) history.

Neither of his previous books have been in print for years. You can find them -- for a price -- at the usual places online.

The story of his difficulties getting his books published is recounted in the first chapter of Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose The Myth of the Free Press (essential), which you can click to in the left column. The Black Op interview (RealAudio) link above covers the same material.

9:33 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Post-SOTU speech disinfo amps up

FWIW, Tony Blair looked scared out of his wits on TV today. Poor little poodle.

8:26 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

When Hoarding Secrets Threaten National Security
The "all-source" analysts at the CIA weren't really doing "all-source" work because their own brethren on the operations side, not to mention the FBI and the National Security Agency, were holding out on them. Some of the hoarding occurred because they didn't have the technology to make sharing possible. Some took place because they didn't even know what they had in their own cases files and on their intercept tapes. And some came because they thought certain secrets were too sensitive to share, either to protect sources and methods, or preserve their own unique standing in the intelligence pecking order.

"This is particularly true in an Intelligence Community institutional culture in which knowledge literally is power--in which the bureaucratic importance of an agency depends upon the supposedly 'unique' contributions to national security it can make by monopolizing control of 'its' data-stream," Shelby writes.

He acknowledges a fundamental tension between access and security. The more people who get to see the deepest, darkest "secrets," the greater the chance the sources of that information could be compromised.

"On the other hand, perfectly secure information," Shelby writes, "is perfectly useless information."

3:32 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

The CIA's Special Operations Group (SOG) is back [cicentre]
Confronted with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, an enemy that has no army, no fixed assets and no clearly defined territory, the Bush Administration needed an unconventional military force. It wanted combatants who could match al- Qaeda for wiliness, adaptability and, up to a point, ruthlessness. It wanted its own army of James Bonds. So in the past year, hundreds of millions of additional dollars have been pumped into the CIA budget by President George W. Bush, a man who may be predisposed to believe strongly in an agency his father once headed. He has ordered SOG operatives to join forces with foreign intelligence services. He has even authorized the CIA to kidnap terrorists in order to break their cells or kill them.

All of which could make for a more agile, effective intelligence agency. Or it could also mean a CIA that once again steps beyond the realm of collecting secrets to intervening forcibly in the affairs of foreign states. In that area, the agency's history has often been one of blunders and worse, from Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s through the Bay of Pigs fiasco under John F. Kennedy to the Nicaraguan war that led to the Iran-contra debacle in the '80s. Some longtime intelligence watchers are wondering whether a reinvigorated paramilitary wing of the CIA could be a mixed blessing for America once again. And the military itself is not too pleased. It believes its special-ops forces are perfectly equipped to handle these jobs. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has reacted in part by planning his own secret unit, which would function much like the SOG but would answer to him rather than Tenet.
So what's next? The Washington Post running the stirring imperialist war rhymes of Kipling in a special children's section to get 4th graders to pre-volunteer with their newly placed soldier/instructor?
Let Freedom's land rejoice!
Our ancient bonds are riven;
Once more to use the eternal choice
Of good or ill is given.
Not at a little cost,
Hardly by prayer or tears,
Shall we recover the road we lost
In the drugged and doubting years.
But after the fires and the wrath,
But after searching and pain,
His Mercy opens us a path
To live with ourselves again.
In the Gates of Death rejoice!
We see and hold the good --
Bear witness, Earth, we have made our choice
For Freedom's brotherhood.

"The Choice" [link]
Yodel ay hee hoo.

3:27 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Former flat of KGB mogul Andropov being auctioned as glamor pad [cicentre]
Its current resident, the composer Nikolai Petrov, thinks the flat's links with the Soviet hierachy will not dissuade potential buyers. "No one was killed here, but it is possible that he [Andropov] signed some working documents here," he said.

The flat has never before been sold on the open market, and it is not clear who is actually selling it now. Mr Petrov reportedly got to live there through his contacts with Moscow's mayor, Yuri Luzhkov. He asked a priest to bless the flat, as he feared evil spirits and ghosts could still be there, and may write a book about the flat's history.
Mmmm...and Brezhnev lived on the floor below.

Excellent vibes man. Get that lease over here...

3:14 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Massive antiwar rally called for Feb 15 [a]

3:04 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Can't believe Václav Havel did a deal with shrubco

The list of appeasers:
Jos� Mar�a Aznar, Spain
Jos� Manuel Dur�o Barroso, Portugal
Silvio Berlusconi, Italy
Tony Blair, United Kingdom
V�clav Havel, Czech Republic
Peter Medgyessy, Hungary
Leszek Miller, Poland
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Denmark

2:27 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

"I must become a borrower of the night..."
FATHER UBU
Ah! Ubu mother, I do not include/understand anything of what you say.

MOTHER UBU
You are so stupid!

FATHER UBU
From my green candle, king Venceslas is still quite alive; and even by admitting that he dies, doesn't he have legions of children?

MOTHER UBU
Who prevents you massacring all the family and from putting to you at their place?

* * * *

DOCTOR. Foul whisperings are abroad. Unnatural deeds
Do breed unnatural troubles; infected minds
To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets...

MACBETH. If charnel houses and our graves must send
Those that we bury back, our monuments
Shall be the maws of kites...

FIRST MURDERER. Let it come down.

* * * *

Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush?

They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us -- they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throat of these Nazis.

Hunter S Thompson

12:10 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, January 29, 2003

Bad journalism or "heroic firefighters" myth exposed?

Langewiesche book on Ground Zero attacked by NYC firefighters [Chicago Tribune username: ridgewood password: callow]
"I don't think there is any way to avoid it," says cultural historian Edward T. Linenthal, author of books about the building of the Oklahoma City bombing memorial and the National Holocaust Museum. "When the historical and commemorative sensibilities clash, there can be a sense of defilement of the memory of the dead."

The outrage is mainly over Langewiesche's description of how some firefighters behaved at ground zero, which they called "the pile," after Sept. 11. He describes their indifference to any dead but their own; their culture of recklessly rushing into a danger zone, sometimes against orders; their claim of special privilege on the pile; their seduction by hero worship, promoted by the media.

Most startling of all, Langewiesche describes a fire engine found crushed under the ruins that showed evidence of looting. In his account -- which he did not witness but says is meant to illustrate how fed up construction workers were with the lionization of the firefighters -- the engine is found to be "filled with dozens of new pairs of jeans from The Gap, a Trade Center store." When an unnamed fire chief at the scene contends that the jeans must have been blown into the truck by the collapse, a group of construction workers breaks into jeers.

[...]

The counter-Langewiesche campaign disputes various details in the book and has sent a petition to the Atlantic Monthly and Farrar, Straus and Giroux demanding "justice for the libel of living and dead WTC recovery workers in the form of published factual corrections and an apology." Shearer et al. also intend to write their own eyewitness accounts, which they call "alternative history," and to make their case against "American Ground" in a public forum later this winter.

In telephone interviews, Shearer is impassioned, yet insists that her campaign has nothing to do with open emotional wounds or hero worship of firefighters:

7:38 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Only in Arizona
Bailey said the thieves may be posing as landscapers to swipe the yellow-spined cactuses, which retail at about $150 each. The losses have added up to about $10,000 in Sun City Grand alone, Bailey said.

Authorities said the thieves focus on newer houses. Homes here range from about $150,000 to $500,000 for houses nestled around private golf courses.

"Whether a cactus is important or not, we feel violated," said Bill Tenan, 60, whose house in Sun City Grand was hit two weeks ago.

Most residents don't report the theft to insurance companies because the deductibles are higher than the cost of replacing the plants.

3:05 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

A new book on Pakistan underlines how the influence of the US funding of Islamic radicals during the Cold War was instrumental in fomenting the popularity of al Qaeda et al. today

I also wonder whether some in the White House etc. knew this would happen, and thought it a good idea -- to get this whole "clash of the civilizations" thing off the ground. Which we know at least a few of them have had in mind for a while.

I have to look at who benefits from this agenda: the defense/munitions complex; people of whatever faith that believe (and desperately need to believe) in a coming apocalypse/WWIII etc.; the cynical manipulators of the latter and public opinion in general who harbor the hidden intention of making as much money and gathering as much power as possible; those who desire a world police state. Some characters fit in all of these categories.

It's always good to remember that there are people -- some of them in positions of great power now -- who would rather see the world end than evolve in a way that threatens their belief system. This is natural in times of great upheaval like we are in now.

On the book: from the first (seemingly knowledgeable) amazon reviewer you get the impression that Weaver's book is an introduction at best into the Pakistani situation today. One thing I noticed is that it appears the author paints a flattering portrait of Benazir Bhutto, whom I have serious doubts about. But it is after all meant to be an introduction, I think. Better than most other mainstream media sources, probably.

I'll have to check dawn.com out.

Pakistan: The Eye of the Storm looks like a more penetrating look at the political landscape.

1:40 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Corporatocracy

Getting your boardgame into a mass retailer is next to impossible

Ideal for selling on the net I guess, though nowhere near the exposure.

So if you want to find Derivation, for instance, that's where you have to go, unless there's a Wizards of the Coast or some such nearby.

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

Tuesday, January 28, 2003

Afhganistan's Pashtun warriors once ousted the British through a sustained campaign of non-violence led by the charismatic Abdul Gaffar Khan
Badshah Khan knew that Pashtuns could never defeat the British through violence that required money, arms, and complete secrecy, three things that were in short supply on the impoverished frontier. A disciplined moral cause, on the other hand, was cheap, and required only thousands of Pashtuns with attitude.

Typical of these activists is Musharraf Din, a 90-something villager who joined the movement at the age of 20 after hearing a speech by Badshah Khan. Khan's compassion for the common man impressed Mr. Din, and his ideology helped Din remain true to nonviolence, even when he felt like grabbing a gun.

"The British used to torture us, throw us into ponds in wintertime, shave our beards, but even then Badshah Khan told his followers not to lose patience," says Din, his Jack Nicholson-style sunglasses perched atop his forehead beneath a broad white turban. "He said, 'there is an answer to violence, which is more violence. But nothing can conquer nonviolence. You cannot kill it. It keeps standing up.'"
We could use a few more like Khan, and a populace that understands what they're saying.

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

Monday, January 27, 2003

Modern art is just torture

Spanish fascists designed jail cells inspired by Surrealist paintings to torture prisoners
Laurencic told the court the cells, in Barcelona, featured sloping beds at a 20-degree angle that were almost impossible to sleep on.

They also had irregularly shaped bricks on the floor that prevented prisoners from walking backwards or forwards, the trial papers said.

The walls in the 6ftx3ft cells were covered in surrealist patterns designed to make prisoners distressed and confused, the report continued, and lighting effects were used to make the artwork even more dizzying.

Some of them had a stone seat designed to make occupants instantly slide to the floor, while other cells were painted in tar and became stiflingly hot in the summer, said Laurencic.

[...]

Milicua said there was also evidence that Nationalist prisoners in Murcia were forced to watch Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel's film Un Chien Andalou.
There's a thesis right there.

6:47 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

EU reduces maximum allowable levels of canthaxanthin -- a food additive that makes egg yolks more yellow, salmon more red -- by two-thirds because of potential eye damage

Wonder what the limits are in the US?

6:37 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

"To secure early warning of a bioterror attack," your medical records are now government property [drudge]

The data is "laundered of names and identifiers," but somehow I just don't trust 'em.

12:22 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Smallpox guinea pig docs grin through the pricks, demand chocolate cone with sprinkles

10:11 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

shrubco promises bioattack soon

xymphora's questions on shrubco and anthrax/Cipro.

10:00 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

The wide disparity between drug and white collar cases brought to trial [u]
There of course are legitimate reasons why the declination rates among AUSAs can vary. For each case, many factual and legal factors must be considered. The data indicate that a key factor influencing these rates is the kinds of cases handled by an individual prosecutors. At the national level, for example, federal prosecutors in recent years have turned down slightly more than one out of five of all drug referrals . But when it came to white collar crime matters, more than half of all referrals were declined.

12:14 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Failure of explosives detectors a boon to manufacturers

No really, another $200mil will do the trick. No fooling. Swear to God.

12:07 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

The Florida Electoral Circus File:

Tray of ballots from the September primary "found" in Broward County [u]

12:00 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, January 26, 2003

Pharmaceutical conscience dissolution [u]
"It's the morning-after pill for just about anything that produces regret, remorse, pain, or guilt," says Dr. Leon Kass, chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, who emphasizes that he's speaking as an individual and not on behalf of the council. Barry Romo, a national coordinator for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, is even more blunt. "That's the devil pill," he says. "That's the monster pill, the anti-morality pill. That's the pill that can make men and women do anything and think they can get away with it. Even if it doesn't work, what's scary is that a young soldier could believe it will."

11:24 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

The Digital Journalist

Found this site through Undernews, which linked to Peter Turnley's photos from the Gulf War (warning: disturbing).

Another site I'll support when I can.

11:17 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Nicely turned Boondocks today (After Jan 26 click here.)

3:18 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Surprise Surprise File:

KMart execs lied and did bad things
In a statement filed with its reorganization plan in federal bankruptcy court late Friday, Kmart said it is establishing a trust to handle possible legal claims by creditors because of the actions of the former managers, which they characterized as "grossly derelict."

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

Another sign: Powell dropped the "Good Cop" stance last week [dack]
Within the administration, Powell was the leading advocate for bringing the issue to the United Nations to build an international consensus and test Hussein's willingness to reach a peaceful resolution. But he has told aides in recent days that he would support military action even without a formal U.N. resolution.

The result is that the once-bitter debates over Iraq among Bush's senior foreign policy advisers have melded "into a pretty solid consensus now, more so than any other issue," a senior State Department official said. "The president is ironclad in his determination that this particular regime will be disarmed of weapons of mass destruction," and he has lost patience with both the U.N. weapons inspectors and Hussein.

10:37 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

shrub the mad tilts the mill on Wednesday?
Serious international developments are indicating that the first stages of the U.S. invasion of Iraq will begin unilaterally no later than next Wednesday and most likely as the President delivers his State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday night.

The Associated Press reported today, in a story little noticed by mainstream American press, that the Japanese government had today urged all Japanese citizens to leave Iraq as soon as possible. Japan has large numbers of its nationals working in Iraq in various trade and oil-related business ventures. According to a second report today on CNN Headline News the Japanese advisory was specific that all Japanese citizens should be out of the country by next Wednesday at the latest.

The Japanese alert was followed by a simultaneous advisory from the U.S. State Department issuing a worldwide alert to all Americans traveling overseas. According to another AP story, State Department officials tried to downplay the significance of the warning, "but officials were unable to say when the last such advisory had been issued." A worldwide alert for U.S. citizens is extremely rare and suggests that the administration is concerned about a global backlash against Americans traveling overseas. Cautionary advisories are normally isolated to specific countries or geographic regions.

10:17 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Yep I admit it: the first thing I thought of when I heard about the Slammer Virus was shrubco wants to own the Net [og]
The latest attack was likely to revive debate within the technology industry about the need for an Internet-wide monitoring center, which the Bush administration has proposed. Some Internet industry executives and lawyers said they would raise serious civil liberties concerns if the U.S. government, not an industry consortium, operated such a powerful monitoring center.
I've been wondering for a while now whether the bogging down of the net at certain times in the last months wasn't a ploy to put the Unruly Net under surveillance or just cripple it, make it seem unreliable.

After all, it's been instrumental in the networking of antiwar protesters and providing alternatives to the shameful toadying of BigMedia.

4:19 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Daniel Ellsberg on Iraq [og]
2. "What, in your opinion, are the objectives of the Bush administration in pursuing its current policy toward Iraq?"

(a) oil.

(b) oil.

(c) oil.

(d) US elections: distraction and rally-round-the-President in November 2002 and November 2004; and with the hope of

(e) shifting American Jews from the Democrats to the Republicans, semi-permanently, by total backing of Sharon's (Greater Israel) policy, while gratifying the Christian Right by the same policy, in their current alliance with Likud and Likud-supporters in the US, reflecting the Christian Right's bizarre apocalyptic beliefs (about the necessary in-gathering of Jews in Israel as a precursor to Armageddon: at which time, incidentally, the Jews either convert, belatedly, or are doomed along with other unbelievers).

Control of Iraq's oil, by US occupation, is seen as instrumental to a number of other desiderata by the oilagarchy that is the dominant influence on US foreign policy: control of the rest of the oil reserves of the Middle East and the Caspian: Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc.; this to the end, not only of assuring access to cheap oil for the American market but to control the oil needed by Germany, Japan, China, etc., as a basis for all kinds of diplomatic and economic leverage; direct profits from development and sale of oil and gas in the region; assurance of the regime of petrodollars, to sustain the US economy.

3:42 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Make Your Head Spin File:

See now I'd never have thought there would be Christians who think the enRaptured Left Behind series promotes New Age thought, murder and witchcraft (what about really bad writing?)

Who'd a thunk it?

On the other hand, they seem to see the US Congress's obsequience to Israel with a clearer eye than the mainstream media, and the outrageous vandalization of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution by shrubco.

They're anti-abortion and the Bible is their bottom line on most issues I imagine, and they'd probably brand me a New Age Witch.

Life's Rich Pageant. . .

3:35 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

A few revealing photos contrasting Davos with Porto Alegre

2:59 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