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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

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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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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 21, 2004

Stupid anti-terrorist tricks

Flyer's cake serving set costs her $150 fine

12:17 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Friday, February 20, 2004

Headlines that speak for themselves

Kerry Gets AFL-CIO Nod, Calls Bush 'Fuzzy' on Jobs

Campaigns just don't get more exciting than this. No one can say this democracy isn't inspiring the world with its deep and stimulating vigor...

Study Clears Pesticide Tests With Humans

Time to clear my schedule...

FBI Warning Labels to Appear on CDs, DVDs

Laugh or cry, laugh or cry...

Hospitals Can Provide Discounts to Uninsured and Needy Patients, Bush Administration Says

You're just too good to us, Massa' Bush.

12:52 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, February 19, 2004

NYC passes Anti-PATRIOT measure [u]

10:19 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Scalia should be disbarred and bumped from the Court

I hadn't read that Scalia's duck hunting trip with Cheney was paid for by Cheney, a litigant in a suit before the court

10:13 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Demo Rep in Manhattan introduces bill to embed CIA in police depts. [u]

10:07 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Why Presidential libraries suck
Contrary to conventional wisdom, presidential libraries are a bad idea because they have in the past led to many access and secrecy problems, and will continue to do so in the future. In part, these problems are the result of the lack of courage on the part of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in enforcing pre-and post-Watergate records laws and from the propensity of presidential libraries to grant privileged access to certain researchers.

10:04 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, February 18, 2004

World catches up with ecologists' predictions of the 70s

Life After the Oil Crash [Urban Survival]

So we can pour money we don't have into wars to take over oil wells the world over -- whic will run out anyway or -- gasp! -- develop alternative sources

9:49 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Soaring Eagle takes a hit

Ashcroft's comeuppance?
The Justice Department has exaggerated its performance in the war on terrorism, interfered with a major terror prosecution and compromised a confidential informant, a federal prosecutor has alleged in an extraordinary lawsuit against Attorney General John Ashcroft.

9:43 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tuesday, February 17, 2004

Nixon tape proves coup which toppled Allende's democratically elected government in the early 70s was directed by White House [u]

From Peter Kornbluh's new book The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability.

11:58 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Bush & Kerry both related to royalty several times over

11:51 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, February 16, 2004

Thousands of Stolen U.S. Vehicles Found in Central America

1:54 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, February 15, 2004

Christian fascists deciding who gets to be a judge in FLA [u]

11:48 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

If the US and China find themselves in a war sometime in the next 20 years (quite possible), remember items like this -- and I'm sure members of both parties have made similar deals [u]

11:42 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

I'm behind on posting coz I just haven't felt like it

Don't think I posted on the Fortune article on the growing consensus the likelihood of radical climate change in the next decade even, but definitely by 2020 [u]
At first the changes are easily mistaken for normal weather variation?allowing skeptics to dismiss them as a "blip" of little importance and leaving policymakers and the public paralyzed with uncertainty. But by 2020 there is little doubt that something drastic is happening. The average temperature has fallen by up to five degrees Fahrenheit in some regions of North America and Asia and up to six degrees in parts of Europe. (By comparison, the average temperature over the North Atlantic during the last ice age was ten to 15 degrees lower than it is today.) Massive droughts have begun in key agricultural regions. The average annual rainfall has dropped by nearly 30% in northern Europe, and its climate has become more like Siberia's.

Violent storms are increasingly common as the conveyor becomes wobbly on its way to collapse. A particularly severe storm causes the ocean to break through levees in the Netherlands, making coastal cities such as the Hague unlivable. In California the delta island levees in the Sacramento River area are breached, disrupting the aqueduct system transporting water from north to south.

Megadroughts afflict the U.S., especially in the southern states, along with winds that are 15% stronger on average than they are now, causing widespread dust storms and soil loss. The U.S. is better positioned to cope than most nations, however, thanks to its diverse growing climates, wealth, technology, and abundant resources. That has a downside, though: It magnifies the haves-vs.-have-nots gap and fosters bellicose finger-pointing at America...

11:33 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sam Smith on the Democrats
This is not a matter of whether Dean won or lost, but rather the vicious, inhospitable, insulting manner in which one of the most honest, decent, and interesting political figures of recent years was treated because he dared to run without permission of the party's elite. Now, as Craig Crawford put it, "The House of Lords of the Democratic Party are getting what they want."

This is their decision. It is not Howard Dean's fault, it's not Ralph
Nader's fault, it's not the fault of apathetic or angry voters. The party has chosen to go into this election with a weak candidate, no platform, no passion other than distaste for the incumbent, no grassroots party building, and no attempt to reach new constituencies.

It may just work because George Bush is so bad, or because his chickens come home to roost in some dismal fashion, but that's just dumb luck and not good politics. [link]

11:23 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

See post at my other site for info on Robert Newman's new book, The Fountain at the Center of the World: "it reads like what you'd get if Tom Wolfe clambered inside the head of Noam Chomsky -- it elegantly and angrily scorches a lot of earth"

1:16 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Another cruise ship plagued by stomach virus

12:49 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Amused to see this site topping the short list of sites google turns up when you search (as someone did today) for "giant owl" +"white house"

12:47 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Saturated with toxins file:

US scientists say they have found a link between exposure to lead in the womb and schizophrenia in adulthood

12:04 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