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Silent Coup: The Removal of a President - Len Colodny & Robert Gettlin

George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Webster Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin (free online version/download here)

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STOP TERRORISM

ABBREVIATIONS FOR SITES I OFTEN STEAL NEWS ITEMS FROM:

og = J Orlin Grabbe
u = Progressive Review's Undernews
a = Antiwar

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Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder, and the Mafia

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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, April 26, 2002

A key Microsoft executive told a federal court Thursday that antitrust sanctions sought by nine states would confuse consumers and undermine the stability of the Windows PC operating system.

The proposal would ``substantially undermine Microsoft's ability to ensure that Windows users receive an operating system that is consistent with predecessor versions of Windows,'' said Chris Jones, vice president in charge of Windows. [link]
Why am I so skeptical about anything these guys say? Hmmmm....

5:00 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

A key Microsoft executive told a federal court Thursday that antitrust sanctions sought by nine states would confuse consumers and undermine the stability of the Windows PC operating system.

The proposal would ``substantially undermine Microsoft's ability to ensure that Windows users receive an operating system that is consistent with predecessor versions of Windows,'' said Chris Jones, vice president in charge of Windows. [link]
WHy am I so skeptical about anything these guys say? Hmmmm....

5:00 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

TBILISI -- A strong earthquake struck the Georgian capital Tbilisi on Thursday evening, killing at least three people and sending others running into the streets in panic.
Three people died when the wall of a house collapsed on them, said Otar Tavelishvili, the head of the Main Emergency Situations Department of the Georgian Interior Ministry.
Tbilisi residents poured into the streets, and many bedded their children down for the night in cars rather than risk returning to their homes. Cracks gaped in building walls, and chunks of plaster fell from ceilings. People outside at the time the quake struck reported a humming sound. [link]
A "humming sound"?

4:54 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Al Jazeera vs bushmedia.
"We were being criticised for broadcasting the Bin Laden tapes, but at the same time almost every news organisation on earth was queueing up to pay large sums of money to play the tapes," he said.

Mr Fouda said that the media hysteria by western governments towards the Arab media in the aftermath of September 11 and the early stages of the campaign against al-Qaida and Taliban forces had been hypocritical.

"[Western citizens] were told 'we were attacking the enemies of western civilisation, but in doing so you were challenging the very values which western civilisation was built upon".
Neither of which are rivalling C-Span in terms of obvjectivity.

3:54 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

"Canadian themes" as mp3s. [bb]

Strange how where I was born is so foreign. (My family moved to the US when I was 5.)

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

Thermoplastic polymers that morph once exposed to your body heat.

2:55 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Another arrogant and short-sighted energy bill. Too depressing to quote.

2:50 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

R.I.P. Left Eye.
I was never a fan of TLC, but there seemed to be a chill around Lisa Lopes even years ago. Something chasing her.

2:41 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, April 25, 2002

Now that shrub has discovered Nepal and found out that there are terrorists there he risks pissing off China and India. Go get 'em, lizardboy!

6:03 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

This is some creepy shit.
All Greek educational institutions were closed on Wednesday to try to prevent the spread of a deadly virus which has already killed three people.

Some 32 people have been infected by the unidentified virus, which targets the heart and respiratory system, Health Minister Alexandros Papadopulos announced.

5:44 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Breast feeding mothers and newborn babies emit odours that may boost the sexual desires of other women, a study suggests.

Hormones produced by breast feeding women and babies send out signals which are picked up by others, steering them towards greater sexual desire and fantasies, say researchers.

In the US study, smells associated with breast feeding increased feelings of sexual intimacy in childless women volunteers.

[...]

...on a scientific level, [senior lecturer in psychology at Liverpool University, Dr Ros Bramwell] says this report reinforces previous studies on the behaviour of female hormones.

She suggests women often experience something close to an orgasm when they are breast feeding and produce hormones associated with orgasm, including oxytocin and prolactine.

She said: "Arguably, if women get the pheromones from breast feeding women, they might not be that different from people who have just had an orgasm.

[...]

Study co-ordinator Julie Mennella said: "The data are pretty striking."

She concludes the chemicals encourage other women to reproduce, and that they may have evolved as a signal that the environment is suitable for raising young. [link]
First thought: I can just see the guys clicking over to ebay to buy used maternal bras, the latest in sex talismans ("Scientifically Proven!!!").

Second thought: as usual, how weird that we're still responding to signals from caveman times.

Third thought: how long til Big Pharma jumps on this one. . .Oxytocin chuggers at the convenience store. . .

5:39 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Broke US seniors rack up record debt.
Once known for their thrift, older Americans are piling on debt filing for bankruptcy in record numbers and jeopardizing retirement dreams. Many live on little more than Social Security. A sluggish stock market and painfully low interest rates pinch returns on their CDs, bank accounts and stock investments. Tapped out, many in this new generation of seniors turn to credit cards to finance medical bills, expensive prescription drugs and comfortable lifestyles.

10:33 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

New depths of mediocrity and moribundity.
Democrats unveiled a new campaign-season set of issues recently, under the title of "Securing America's Future for all our Families."

Republicans quickly said they had been using the phrase "Securing America's Future" since 1999, and accused the Democrats of slogan theft. link]

2:55 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

69% of Canadians believe federal and provincial politicians are corrupt.

And this is Canada. Imagine just about anywhere else being worse.

12:27 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, April 24, 2002

I like this line in the short Atlantic Monthly review of Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill by Robert Whitaker
Biological psychiatry has made tremendous and valuable strides in the past fifty years (most of which Whitaker doesn't acknowledge), but the field is still an infant that acts like a grandfather. What we don't know about the causes of mental illness dwarfs what we do know, so an abiding concentration on the experience of the patient, which this book advocates above all else, is in itself a valuable prescription. [link] [my emphasis]

6:31 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Billy Gates says "No you can't. You can't touch my software, you can't. It's mineminemine...."

12:28 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Giuliani hired by Merrill Lynch, pleads to State AG "They're Good Corporate Citizens."

You don't know how lucky you were ML customers, being fleeced by a Good Citizen.

12:25 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

International terrorist groups exploited a rebel-controlled safe haven in Colombia to create a new threat to international security, a US congressional inquiry has concluded. [link]
Better get out your wallet or purse and say goodbye to your son or daughter, we're going to be invading several continents soon. Iraq, Colombia, the Philippines, (former Soviet) Georgia. I'll bet there's some hanky-panky on the Ross Ice Shelf too....

12:08 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

One of the American cardinals discussing the paedophile priests scandal at crisis talks in Rome says the meeting is close to consensus on a "zero tolerance" policy. [link]
Soooo....soon we'll have 2 priests for every state, just like Senators. Bcause they'll be the only ones left.

12:03 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Brian Eno signed on UK artists to protest the Bustani ouster (below), including Salman Rushdie, Damien Hirst and Dave Stewart, but the UK predictably fell in line with the US putsch anyway. [Thanks to Dave who posted this to the Nerve Net list.]

11:37 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

The Pat Metheny Group celebrates its silver anniversary and morphs again with 3 new players form different countries and a new generation. I haven't kept up with them, but his early solo and group work was uplifting and exuberant in a way I hadn't found in jazz, partly because this was post-rock -- as opposed to fusion -- jazz. I'm anything but an expert on jazz, but Pat Metheny Group and Watercolors are still vivid in my mind decades later. The new one is Speaking of Now.

2:44 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Earth Day post #2: Corporations slowly get on the sustainability train.
More large companies, from auto giants to airlines, are producing "sustainability reports" in addition to or as part of their traditional annual reports. In them, they provide a detailed accounting of the firm's environmental and social performance. McDonald's released its first such report last week, and Shell came out with its fifth report a week earlier.

It's easy to be skeptical. The reports are voluntary, and a few of the fledgling efforts have an aura of "greenwashing" (putting an environmental spin on less than exemplary practices). But many seem to be legitimate, transparent, often self-critical reports.

They come in response to a growing demand for information from shareholders, socially responsible investment (SRI) funds, governments, and concerned citizens. [link]

2:26 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Mobile home parks may soon be a thing of the past. And the way the land under their homes is resold by landowners sucks.
Some say that what's happening in these parks illustrates a pervasive gap in protections for a stratum of society that some privately dismiss as "trailer-park trash." Though 16 states have special laws to guard mobile-home owners, most of the 17 million American homeowners who live in mobile-home parks have fewer housing rights than even the lowly apartment dweller.

Barred from home equity loans to raise emergency cash for moving, often lacking basic leases, and locked out of most newer parks, thousands of Americans are said to have already had to abandon their older mobile homes or have been forced to sell them at a loss.

"Every time, homeowners are the ones that lose out," says Terry Nelson, a housing activist from Des Plaines, Ill., who has advised on behalf of victims in some 200 eviction cases across the country. "The landlord takes the money, doesn't keep code, waits until the [municipality] closes it down, rezones it, and sells the land for a profit. That's the cycle we're finding all over the country."
To some extent this kind of thing has always happened, as things change. But the way these people are treated makes a mockery of the homeowner's American Dream. It's just greed.

2:14 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Another Shocking Bulletin: Still no evidence that abstinence programs get teens to stop having sex. Of course there's still so much research to be done...

12:59 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

A tip-'o-the-blog to David at a dam site for the nod.

12:25 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tuesday, April 23, 2002

As in Austria (see post below), political upheaval has brought a revival of the arts in Indonesia.
Nowhere is that more true than in Yogyakarta and Surakarta, the twin royal cities of Central Java and centers of the classical Javanese tradition. A new generation of artists is re-creating and redefining the practice of shadow-puppet play, the wayang, and the dance-drama wayang wong (literally, "human shadow play").

7:40 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Parallels -- and differences -- between Le Pen's pyrrhic comeback and Bush's coup.
America's angry right rails against godless liberals; France's targets immigrants. In both cases, what really seems to bother them is the loss of certainty; they want to return to a simpler time, one without that disturbing modern mix of people and ideas. In both cases this angry minority has had far more influence than its numbers would suggest, largely because of the fecklessness of the left and the apathy of moderates. Al Gore had Ralph Nader; Jospin had a potpourri of silly leftists. Both men were mocked and neglected by complacent moderates.

Now for the important difference. Le Pen is a political outsider. His showing in Sunday's election puts him into the second-round runoff, but he won't actually become France's president. So his hard-right ideas won't be put into practice anytime soon.

In the United States, by contrast, the hard right has essentially been co-opted by the Republican Party - or maybe it's the other way around. Americans with views that are, in their way, as extreme as Le Pen's are in a position to put those views into practice.

Consider, for example, the case of Representative Tom DeLay. Last week he told a group that he was on a mission from God to promote a "biblical worldview," and that he had pursued the impeachment of Bill Clinton in part because Clinton held "the wrong worldview." Well, there are strange politicians everywhere, but DeLay is the House majority whip - and, in the view of most observers, the real power behind Speaker Dennis Hastert.

Then there is John Ashcroft.

What France's election revealed is that we Americans and the French have more in common than either country would like to admit. There as here, there turns out to be a lot of irrational anger lurking just below the surface of politics as usual. The difference is that here the angry people are already running the country. [link]

7:35 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Google partners with the EFF (through their Chilling Effects site) to do an end run around link copyright issues, like the Scientology flap a while ago.

7:23 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Pope admits child molestation is bad.

I'm so relieved. I can rest easy now.

If I were a parent, I still wouldn't bring my kid near a fucking church.

7:16 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Chirac won't debate with Le Pen, but that won't make the issues Le Pen represents go away (see post below).

7:08 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

ADAM KELLER, GUSH SHALOM - Two days ago, Israelis travelling on the main highways in the Tel-Aviv area were treated to enormous billboards bearing the Microsoft logo under the text "From the depth of our heart - thanks to The Israeli Defence Forces" on the background of the Israeli national flag.
Weird little item from Undernews (Apr 22)]

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

Camp X-Ray interrogations not going well.
The questioning of al-Qaida prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba has descended into farce, with inexperienced interrogators routinely outwitted by detainees, sources on the island said yesterday.

The claims, reported by the Washington Post, came as it emerged that the Bush administration was planning new legal guidelines which would allow detainees to go before military tribunals even if interrogators had failed to extract any evidence of specific war crimes.

Because many army interrogators and Middle Eastern linguists are in Afghanistan, Camp X-Ray relies on young, underqualified and often inexperienced interrogators and linguists. "They twist their pen 2,000 times a minute," one linguist said. "The detainee is in full control. He's chained up, but he's having fun." [U]

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

New forensic study confirms "grassy knoll shot." [U]

11:36 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Federal Government Sues to Stop Sale of President Kennedy's Cuban Missile Crisis MapAt first I though this was another National Security Emergency twitch. But I can see the archiving argument the Feds have -- assuming that is their argument.

12:27 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Salon explains Mulholland Drive. Haven't read this yet, but nd recommends it, so its worth a look -- only if you've seen the movie.

Disclaimer: I've been a Lynch fan yes since Eraserhead. I used to go to NYC for such fare regularly in the 70s and 80s. Blue Velvet andTwin Peaks are high water marks for movies and TV respectively. One of my favorite directors. I even like Dune. Even when he's mediocre, he's more interesting than 95% of what else is out there.

That being said: I found MD numbingly slow and only watched the whole thing because Susan was fascinated by it, which is unusual. I have to admit, psychologically its brilliant. I think it should've been an hour (OK 45 mins.) shorter to be watchable in one sitting. I will probable watch it again. It is better than Lost Highway.

It's not just MTV and Internet and the PTSS after 9/11 -- even exquisitely composed films don't hold my interest all the time now. Life is faster and more intense, and while quick cuts can be unwatchable like any technique in the hands of the less talented, it's a lot cheaper and easier to do all kinds of interesting things with film (or digital video) than it used to be. I've seen a lot of movies. Keep the damn thing moving. Unless you're Kurosawa or Tarkovsky et al, static formalism is better left alone. It's not Lynch's strong suit, though his occasionally well-placed lingering-too-long camera -- like Herzog's -- works very well.

So MD is worth seeing, but only people who like a challenge will bother with it. Except for the doublegirl sex scene of course.

I'm sure I'll get enough of a contact buzz off the Salon piece when I read it to enjoy it more another time.

I should mention that Naomi Watts does Award-worthy material here. Tour-de-force.

That's all you'll get out of me.

If I'm seeming a little jazzed, it's because I just read Sterling's "Computers, Freedom & Privacy" speech, and I'm feeling inspired. It's rambling and positional, but stimulating. He's actually conservative, in an odd way. Or just a good prankster.

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

Monday, April 22, 2002

Gore Vidal on The War on Freedom.
The awesome physical damage Osama and company did to us on Dark Tuesday is as nothing compared to the knockout blow to our vanishing liberties: The Anti- Terrorist Act of 1996 and the recent USA PATRIOT Act (still being written after it was passed, and thus unread by the Congress which passed it), which among other things grants additional special powers to wiretap without judicial order and to deport lawful permanent residents, visitors and undocumented immigrants without due process. Even before signing the Anti- Terrorist Act, President Clinton revealed his disregard for the Bill of Rights:

"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans." A year later: "A lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it."

[...]

Bush himself, in an address to a joint session of Congress, offered up his interpretation of Osama bin Laden and disciples' motives: "They hate what they see right here in this chamber." I suspect a million Americans nodded sadly in front of their TV sets. "Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms, our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." If this is indeed the terrorists' motivation, they are succeeding beyond even their dreams, as each day, with each extension of "emergency powers," our Bill of Rights is shredded more and more. Once alienated, an "unalienable right" is apt to be forever lost, in which case we are no longer even remotely the last best hope of Earth but merely a seedy imperial state whose citizens are kept in line by SWAT teams and whose way of death, not life, is universally imitated. [link via og]

10:53 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

The US ousts the (formerly US-supported) Jose Bustani from the leadership of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) -- probably because he wanted Iraq to join, that would hurt US chances of building a coalition to attack the country.

5:15 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Asserting a hard line on Jewish settlements, Sharon may be blowing his coalition.

Here's some backstory on him I got from Undernews, and quote from there since the antiwar.com archives don't go back that far.
JUSTIN RAIMONDO ANTI-WAR, February 5, 2000 - Having reached the apex of his military career after the Yom Kippur War of 1973 - after having been disgraced in high military and political circles for refusing to follow orders and continually placing his soldiers in danger for his own glory - Sharon joined Menachem Begin's Gahal coalition, a merger of the old Herut with the Liberal party, and with three smaller rightist parties later merged to form the Likud bloc. The party traces its origins back to the radical Revisionist Zionist movement of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, founded in 1925. In opposition to the secular and universalist conception of a Zionist state envisioned by the Labor left, Jabotinsky and his right-wing followers upheld a more down-to-earth philosophy of blood and soil clearly influenced by the rise of European fascism. Jabotinsky sang the praises of Mussolini, as did other Revisionist leaders: the Revisionist, as one writer put it, "maintains that the state is the highest expression of a people."

Jabotinsky regarded Palestinians as "alien minorities" who, in a future Jewish state, "would weaken national unity." Their transfer, if not accomplished voluntarily, would "have to be achieved against the will of the country's Arab majority. An 'iron wall' of a Jewish armed force would have to protect the process of achieving a majority," according to the Revisionist leader. To Jabotinsky, the Palestinian Arabs were a subhuman people who had contributed nothing to civilization: it was up to the Zionists to "push the moral frontiers of Europe to the Euphrates," he wrote. The ethnic cleansing of Palestine was a precondition for the success of the Zionist project, and the difference between the Israeli right and its Laborite-socialist utopian adversaries was that the former did not mince words or in any way shrink from this task. While the other Zionist leaders dithered and tried to conciliate their opponents, both in Israel and the West, Jabotinsky disdained incrementalism and boldly maintained that the Jews had the right to take the land of Israel, granted to them, of course, by God. In 1923, he summed up the Revisionist ideology and program succinctly and presciently: "Zionism is a colonizing adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important to build, it is important to speak Hebrew, but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot - or else I am through with playing at colonization." This is a policy that the heirs of Jabotinsky in Israel, with Sharon at their head, intend to reaffirm.

5:02 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Earth Day post Here's a short look at how corporations have tried to suppress environmental concerns, since the publication of Rachel Carson's landmark Silent Spring.
Carson's concerns were well founded. After The New Yorker serialized parts of the book, the New York Times ran an article with the headline, "Silent Spring Is Now Noisy Summer: Pesticide Industry Up In Arms Over a New Book."

The story began, "The $300,000,000 pesticides industry has been highly irritated by a quiet woman author whose previous works on science have been praised for the beauty and precision of the writing." It quoted the president of the Montrose Chemical Corporation -- a major manufacturer of DDT, a pesticide that Carson discussed at length -- as saying that Carson wrote not "as a scientist but rather as a fanatic defender of the cult of the balance of nature."

Some of the criticism seems laughable now. After the second installment from "Silent Spring" appeared in The New Yorker, a California man wrote to the magazine:

"Miss Rachel Carson's reference to the selfishness of insecticide manufacturers probably reflects her Communist sympathies, like a lot of our writers these days. We can live without birds and animals, but, as the current market slump shows, we cannot live without business. As for insects, isn't it just like a woman to be scared to death of a few little bugs! As long as we have the H-bomb everything will be O.K. P.S. She's probably a peace-nut too."
Love that last paragraph. Under their PC skin, a lot of people still probably feel this way.

4:34 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sylvia Nasar (author of A Beautiful Mind) on the Author's Guild campaign against amazon for promoting used books. She was just elected to the AG board, and she thinks used books are good for business and consumers. Brava! [NYT username: aflakete password: europhilia] [bb]

3:31 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

New York's new mayor proposes a halt to recycling because the city's strapped.
Bloomberg would suspend the recycling of glass, metal and plastic for 18 months at an estimated savings of $56.6 million. The city collects more than 320,000 tons of recyclable glass, metal and plastic annually, but Bloomberg said it does the job inefficiently.

"The recycling program is not, with the exception of paper, saving the ecology of the world very much. And it is very expensive," said Bloomberg, who unveiled the proposal in his initial budget in February.

Environmental groups say they are unaware of any major American city that has scaled back its recycling program.

"To stop recycling would be to turn the clock backward," said Suzanne Shepard of the New York chapter of the Sierra Club. "Recycling and waste reduction are the cornerstones to reducing this city's waste stream."

The plan still faces approval by the City Council, where members have expressed opposition. State law also requires curbside recycling, so a suspension could face legal challenges as well.
Fine. Let's just pile up the recyclables in his backyard.

3:17 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

The late Damon Knight's recent book on Bosch is available free online.
It was in this late-medieval world and in the shadow of the Inquisition that Bosch struggled to make his way as an artist, and at the same time to avoid swallowing doctrines that were hateful to him. This conflict and others tormented him most of his life; it was only in his last decade that he found a brilliant method, three centuries before Poe's "The Purloined Letter," for hiding all his secrets in plain sight.

2:07 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

IHT's profile of Le Pen.
Ostracized by the European Parliament, of which he is a member, Le Pen also spoke out strongly against the European Union, and he supports renouncing the treaties binding France to the community.

Le Pen sought to found a European-wide movement of the extreme right, but this failed because Austria's Joerg Haider and Italy's Gianfranco Fini found him too coarse and did not want to be associated with him.

Le Pen claims the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein as a friend. He flew to Baghdad in 1990 to free Frenchmen held there after the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and said he found nothing outrageous in Iraqi policies that led to the Gulf War.

He said that if he is elected, he will build 200,000 prison cells, restore the death penalty and deport all illegal immigrants as well as all immigrants in French jails. He says he will first and foremost defend poor white families that he says are menaced by North African immigrants in tough housing developments around Paris, Lille, Lyon, Marseille and other big cities.

"I will make the bad tremble, I will be a comfort to the good," he promised at a recent rally in Marseille.

[...]

He was kicked in the head in a campaign brawl in 1957 and lost an eye. For years, he wore a black eyepatch and did not demur when supporters explained he had been injured during fighting in Algeria. He proudly shows photos of him next to General Jacques Massu, who institutionalized torture during the Battle of Algiers, but sued two French newspapers for libel when they reported he had himself practiced torture.
Less of a dissembler than shrub, but up the same scary street.

1:48 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

A breezy survey of the latest clean cars. Some funky designs for sure, reflecting the "eccentric" these cars supposedly appeal to.

A fuel-efficient Accord is actually cleaner than the manual Insight. The Toyota Rav4 EV electric SUV is pretty cool, though it's top speed is only 76, its range is only 100 miles -- and it costs 43 large. And unlike the Prius and the Insight, it needs to be recharged. But it would be great for the backroads here in AZ.

1:17 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

That's one of the great things about living in America: moral superiority is so damned cheap.

-- James Crumley

This country is going so far to the right you won't be able to recognize it.

-- John Mitchell, 1973

Those who think history has left us helpless should recall the abolitionist of 1830, the feminist of 1870, the labor organizer of 1890, or the gay or lesbian writer of 1910. They, like us, did not get to choose their time in history but they, like us, did get to choose what they did with it.

-- Sam Smith

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

They tell us it's about race, and we believe them. And they call it a "democracy," and we nod our heads, so pleased with ourselves. We blame the Socias [gangsters], we occasionally sneer at the Paulsons [latest crop of craven pols] but we always vote for the Sterling Mulkerns [good old boys]. And in occasional moments of quasi-lucidity, we wonder why the Mulkerns of this world don't respect us. They don't respect us because we are their molested children. They fuck us morning, noon, and night, but as long as they tuck us in with a kiss, as long as they whisper into our ears, "Daddy loves you, Daddy will take care of you," we close our eyes and go to sleep, trading our bodies, our souls, for the comforting veneers of "civilization" and "security," the false idols of our twentieth century wet dream. And it's our reliance on that dream that the Mulkerns, the Paulsons, the Socias, the Phils, the Heroes of this world depend upon. That's their dark knowledge. That's how they win.

-- Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

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

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

charging the canvas

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