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

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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

Saturday, June 15, 2002

Day-O
Well that's good news. This inspiring interview with Harry Belafonte turned me on to The Long Road to Freedom, the new anthology of black music he's assembled -- and my library carries it! Won't be able to watch the DVD that comes with it, but it sounds great.

The interview is worth reading for Belafonte's take on The New Oppression.
Each time we arrive at a new level in extricating ourselves from economic, social, spiritual domination, we have a moment when we dance in the world of these new experiences, only to find that the music soon stops, the dance ends, and we?re struggling once again to save ourselves from being thrown back into those conditions.

I don?t know what America has really learned. We are too quick to do what?s expedient on behalf of our culture of greed and hedonism. We?re quite prepared to go to conditions of tyranny in order to sustain that culture, and we do it in the name of democracy, when nothing could be more undemocratic. We do it in the name of saving the values of our society, when the way we behave corrupts those values. We do it in the name of God in whom we believe, when in fact we have corrupted our own vision of the Christian journey.

[...]

Of course when you get into that work, you?ll forever come up against those who find you unacceptable and will do whatever they can to get you out of the way. McCarthyism was an attempt to do that. And I think we?re headed that way now, with the very divisive and cynical way in which leaders of our present government are manipulating the democratic process and the constitutional system to deny us our basic rights, and to extract more control and power for those already in power and who are already corrupted by that power.

Sarah van Gelder: Having survived McCarthyism, do you have any advice on how to survive this period of political repression we seem to be entering and to keep the movements for positive change alive?

Harry: Do not submit. It is extremely critical that repression be met full head- on and that it be resisted with every fiber in our being. There is just absolutely no compromise that can be made with it. As a matter of fact, compromise is what oppression feeds on.

Without compromise it would be defeated. Just as some cancers feed on hormones, compromise becomes the hormone of oppression.
I don't know about the specifics of the "Christian journey" he mentions, though I suspect I would agree with most of it. And I don't think hedonism is such a bad thing, when not at the expense of others. But the spirit of what he is saying rings loud clear and true.

11:19 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Am I missing something here?
Ya gotta wonder why the Pentagon and the US Intelligence Community-- so eager to prove they're cleaned up their act -- allow live footage from US spyplanes in Europe to be available to anyone who wants to see them.
The war on terrorism in Europe is being undermined by a military communications system that makes it easier for terrorists to tune in to live video of U.S. intelligence operations than to watch Disney cartoons or new-release movies.

For more than six months, live pictures from U.S. aerial spy missions have been broadcast in real time to viewers throughout Europe and the Balkans. The broadcasts are not encrypted, meaning that anyone in the region with a normal satellite TV receiver can spy on U.S. surveillance operations as they happen.

NATO, whose forces in former Yugoslavia depend on the U.S. missions for intelligence, first expressed disbelief. After inquiring, a NATO spokesman confirmed that "we're aware that this imagery is put on a communications satellite ? The distribution of this material is handled by the United States and we're content that they're following appropriate levels of security"

The Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment.

11:27 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Historic pilgrimage of Greek Orthodox patriarch marks joining of Christian churches in environmental warning.

11:15 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Who'da thunk it?
The Bourne Identity -- against all odds -- actually looks like a (violent) hoot. Doug Liman's Go was a fine black comedy, and this looks like a possibly engaging albeit special effects-laden follow-up.

Does anyone know if the phrase above originated with Mary McCarthy's book (or the film adaptation) The Group?

1:34 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

From 1908 to 1940 the Sears offered build-your-own-home kits and instant mortgages (the latter til the Depression caught up with them in '32). It was the only way many people, often immigrants, could afford a house.

Now the ones that are still standing are objects of historical preservation efforts.

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

Friday, June 14, 2002

Dirty bombs: about fear more than mass casualties
The lowdown on the likely effects of a dirty bomb. There's also this overview from CSM.

It's about the permanent evacuation from the area, the cost of demolition and contaminated real estate and the long-term effects of the radiation. Which is bad enough, but not what people are imagining.

We should probably be more concerned with the safety procedures at nuclear plants than terrorist threats. And kicking out the fear-mongerers in the White House.

8:40 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Good summary of the conflicts within the White House.
Never mind Powell: next week, in fact the next six months of foreign policy, will prove a harsh test of the President himself. The action he wants most clearly, attacking Iraq, is problematic. The step he least wants to take, becoming engaged in a Middle East peace process, he must now face.

Most serious, the risk that he didn?t think he could possibly run now looks like the situation that is hardest to avoid: the failure to catch Osama bin Laden, the failure to oust Saddam Hussein, in short, failure to prosecute to any conclusion the War on Terror, the single defining theme of his presidency. His speech-writers must be looking forward nervously to the State of the Union address this coming January.

What they will have to conceal is not just the lack of success, but the proliferation of confusion, from the President?s attempt to agree with all of his headstrong, warring advisers. If he can?t bring peace to the battle between the Pentagon and State Department, there is small hope for the Middle East.

10:35 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

A study of welfare families in Iowa "shows work-based welfare reform helped more people get jobs and make more money. However, it also appeared to lead to more domestic chaos, with higher rates of domestic violence, more breakups and fewer marriages." [link]

2:38 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

PSA for DC readers
THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW is pleased to announce its anti-terrorism program: cheap, safe, constitutional and effective. Since terrorism is just part of the operating costs of running an empire, you can free yourself of it by getting rid of your empire. DC can help by opting out of the empire, no big deal given that DC isn't even allowed in the union. Specifically, we propose that DC invite Jenin, Palestine to become a sister city much as this city and others had sister city relations with Nicaraguan towns during America's war against that country. Jenin is the ideal choice since it, like DC, is denied self-government and is an occupied colony of a nation prone to gratuitous violence. This relationship could include visits by Mayor Williams and City Council Chair Linda Cropp, on scene reports from WTOP's Mark Plotkin, soccer matches, and joint conferences on how to survive without democracy, decent housing or adequate health care. The relationship, among its other virtues, might also speed the prospects of peace in the Middle East and reduce the prominence of Washington as a target of pro-Muslim guerillas. [link]

2:28 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

General Mills is going to market organic cereals in health markets under the "Cascadian Farms" brand because of negative IDing by health shoppers. [from Undernews, which quotes the Wall Street Journal, which of course is subscription only]

2:08 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

The always edifying Kevin Phillips on his new book Wealth and Democracy, the next recession (just around the corner) and the end of American hegemony.
If the worst-case scenario comes about -- the brain drain, the collapse of a vulnerable, financialized economy -- what happens? Who does it hurt most here?

It's hard to say. If you have a financial implosion from this, it'll hurt people who have money, they'll lose value in the stock market, big time. If you lose industry, slowly but surely it'll hurt more average people. You can have scenarios for everyone being hurt.

It's always hard to discuss all of this in the future tense, because it hasn't happened yet. The whole sense of invulnerability and triumphalism is there. The politicians say "It can't happen thus."

The British had all these discussions, and one of the conservative party leaders actually made a speech that I have in the book about how "you say the financial sector will be able to carry the load. But if the real economy isn't there, the banking and finance is going to wither." He was absolutely right. You can't shift and say it's all going to be finance, we're going to make all this money speculating and providing services, because we've got the global financial network.

It always sounds a little silly to be talking about this because people in this position, even if they don't think they're historically invulnerable, they sort of think history doesn't matter anymore.

[...]

One of the charts in the book shows the increase in the 10 highest compensated executives, in 1981, 1988 and 2000. In 1981, they had an average of 3.45 million dollars. By 1988 they had an average of 22 million dollars. By 2001 the top 10 highest compensated executives had an average of 155 million dollars. That was a 45-fold increase.

Now that's pretty amazing. If the average American knew that, he'd have a lot more understanding of why these people went berserk. They were just trying to do everything to get money. But you're not going to see that sort of stuff on the front pages of a major publication. [link]

12:33 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Arianna Huffington on the hush-hush around new investigations of broker mis-conduct.
The latest blow to investor confidence is the revelation that conflicts-of- interest among supposedly impartial stock market analysts are even more widespread than first believed. Last week brought word that, over the last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission has opened 10 separate inquiries into analyst wrongdoing, five of which have been upgraded to formal investigations. In addition, the in-house securities watchdogs, the New York Stock Exchange and the National Association of Securities Dealers, have launched 37 investigations into analyst misconduct.

[...]

The only thing that will end the abuses of the current system is a new wave of public outrage fueled by a constant stream of disclosures detailing the sordid goings on in corporate America.

But the awful truth isn't coming out on its own. For instance, we never would have known about the latest SEC investigations had it not been for the efforts of Rep. Ed Markey, a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who prodded Harvey Pitt to provide a report on what the Commission was doing about conflicts of interest among stock analysts.
Is that kind of outrage considered anti-American? I'm afraid the rot in the system -- financial and political -- isn't going to go away until things change on a deeper level than people can handle right now.

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

Thursday, June 13, 2002

I was never a fan of the Lakers, and don't watch basketball much at all anymore. But there was something special about how Phil Jackson handled the inflatable egos in Chicago, and I imagine it's the same in L.A.. This appreciation delves into why Jackson isn't lauded like other winning coaches, despite his nearly unparalleled championship record.

I think it's mostly that he's not the showy militaristic Marine Corps father-figure Americans are used to seeing in the coaching spot. He's adapted his own take on Zen and Native American philosophy to the triangle defense etc., and somehow gotten it to work splendidly. But his cool demeanor and intellectual depth spooks many sports fans -- and sportswriters, I suspect. Another example of how individualism scares Americans, despite the hype about it being a hallmark of the American character.

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

MDs demand bigger kickback from Big Pharma.

5:33 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

"Right now, people are willing to give away a lot of their freedoms in order to feel safe. They're willing to give the FBI and the CIA far-reaching powers to, as George W. Bush often says, root out those individuals who are a danger to our way of living. I am on the president's side in this instance," Spielberg will say. [DRUDGE's Dept of Prepublication] "But How much freedom are you willing to give up? That is what my movie is about."
Steven Spielberg would like to have it both ways, but it doesn't work that way, Steve. The Padilla arrest is EXACTLY what your film is about, and what authors like Phil Dick were warning us could happen.

Funny how two Hollywood blockbusters this summer have dark themes of Machiavellian manipulation of terrorist activities (Episode 2) and Naziesque suspension of civil rights (Minority Report) ...

1:00 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Whatever the truth is about the actions of the Northern Alliance in places like Mazar-i-Sharif (November 2001) -- and US involvement with them -- it looks like some painful questions need to be asked.
Doran's latest film, Massacre At Mazar, was shown on Wednesday in in the Reichstag, the German parliament building in Berlin, and there were immediate calls for an international commission to be set up to investigate charges made in the documentary.

Andrew McEntee, a leading international human rights lawyer, who has viewed the film footage and read full transcripts, believes there is prima facie evidence of serious war crimes having been committed by American soldiers in Afghanistan.

12:46 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Unbelievable.
GA Rep Bob Barr sues Bill Clinton, James Carville and Larry Flynt for "'loss of reputation and emotional distress' and 'injury in his person and property' allegedly caused by these three -- whom Barr claims conspired to 'hinder [the plaintiff] in the lawful discharge of his duties' during the Clinton Impeachment proceedings.

11:00 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Classic "This Modern World".

3:26 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Scientists rival journalists for independence from corporate and political interests.
The distinguished New England Journal of Medicine is relaxing its strict conflict-of-interest rules for authors of certain articles because it cannot find enough experts without financial ties to drug companies. [link]
Boy, doesn't that say it all.
The change comes at a time when the credibility of medical journals is under fire. Just last week, the Journal of the American Medical Association published research criticizing itself and its rivals for running studies that are misleading or riddled with conflicts of interest.

In 2000, the New England Journal of Medicine acknowledged that it had violated its conflict-of-interest policy 19 times over the previous three years when choosing doctors to review new drug treatments. But Drazen said that in the two years he has been editor, he has been able to commission and publish only one review article about a new drug.

"The New England Journal of Medicine sort of joined the rest of us" by adding the word "significant," said Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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

Cape May NJ town has daily flag-lowering ceremony including Kate Smith's (!) 1939 version of "God Bless America", "Taps" and the national anthem.
"It's the most old-fashioned ceremony you can imagine, but it just gets better and better," said Martha Dunphy, 56, of Hartsdale, N.Y., who's seen it hundreds of times. "Since 9/11, all this seems so much more important."

It has always seemed important to Marvin Hume, 81, who owns the Sunset Beach Gift Shop and runs the ceremony.

Hume, who served in the U.S. Navy in World War II, bought the store in 1973. His predecessor had a tradition of playing "God Bless America" at sunset and asked Hume to keep it up.

He did that and more.

Through the years, Hume added the two other songs and introduced the flag to the ceremony. He put an advertisement for veterans' casket flags in a local weekly so he can run a different flag up the 30-foot pole every night.

The sunsets, which illuminate the sky over the Delaware Bay in a dazzling display of color, also are part of the attraction. They're unusual for a New Jersey beach, since most of the state's beaches face east.

The tradition is so beloved among Cape May vacationers, locals and veterans that people sign their children up to help in the lowering of the flag a year in advance.

The ceremony, held every night from May through October, sometimes attracts hundreds of sunburned beachgoers, patriotic locals and World War II veterans to this beach near New Jersey's southern tip. A particularly large crowd was likely this Friday, on Flag Day.
It's very sweet and very sad.

3:10 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

This article on Masons hustling to resist revealing members' identities in Britain is on the official Iranian news site, though I found it through these sites.

2:30 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, June 12, 2002

Cyber-vigilantes take on Internet thieves.
"We're still seeing which way we want to go with it," James Todak, the assistant special agent in charge at the Secret Service's Los Angeles High Tech Crimes Task Force, said of the CardCops leads. Todak declined to say whether he would like CardCops to conduct additional stings. But Robert Pocica, an agent in the new cyber division of the FBI in Washington, commended private online stings.

Pocica expressed concern that private citizens "might put themselves in harm's way or violate the law," but said he had more confidence in "associations and companies that maybe have more tools, resources and training to conduct this type of activity."

David Nesom, who directs the national emergency response service team for another private online anti-fraud firm, Internet Security Systems in Atlanta, said the field was ripe for companies like his because "law enforcement won't take it or they don't have the time to follow up on it."

"It's not a knock against them," Nesom said. "They're just overburdened. When the FBI looks at a caseload, they'll take the most expensive, high-profile cases they can get, and ignore the ankle-biters."

9:50 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

The life of a Chinese duck.

3:43 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Now a cellphone could be a piece of paper in your birthday card or powered by a wind-up crank (10 mins. of call time for a minute of cranking) or used to spy on you or as a bomb detonator.

3:34 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

This is nice: my local health market has a website, with specials of the month.

They're independent and have good prices, one of the nice things about living here.

12:50 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

If you need it...
A literate, seemingly well-informed essay on why free software and the net have doomed copyright as we know it. [bb]

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

Tuesday, June 11, 2002

Local health authorities in Lagos (Nigeria), announced yesterday that an exceptional heatwave in Nigeria's Northeastern city of Maiduguri has killed at least 60 people. Ibrahim Kida, Chief Medical Director of Maiduguri University Teaching hospital said that due to the high temperature, which stands between 55 and 60 degrees centigrade, the death toll could have a sharp increase. In fact, many families have maintained the tradition of curing and burying their dead privately. In the Northern part of Nigeria -- already afflicted by an intense process of desertification -- it has not rained for over two months causing the temperatures to often rise over 50 degrees. [link]
Can this be right? 55�C is 131�F!

And I thought it was hot here in AZ... (106�F last week

11:53 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

"This guy, Padilla, is a bad guy," Bush said...

[...]

"This was still in the initial planning stages," said Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. "It certainly wasn't at the point of having a specific target. He had indicated some knowledge of the Washington, D.C., area, but I want to emphasize again there was not an actual plan. We stopped this man in the initial planning stages."

[...]

The U.S. citizen who allegedly planned to build and explode a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States may never face trial, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said. [my emphasis]
I couldn't believe this after my last post. See, this is what I mean. If shrub thinks you're a "bad guy", he can put you away without any legal recourse. How do we know this isn't disinformation?

11:01 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

People are really swallowing The Terror Pill whole, aren't they? Are these polls accurate? Or is this being fixed too? How do we know what's real?

This is the thing about stuff like the guy they captured with the dirty bomb plot -- when the administration has such low credibility (though Americans seem to be in deep denial abut this if polls like this are accurate), and at the same time attacks like this are possible -- nothing is true.

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

In other Czech news,
Czech voters are having to make some hard election choices -- should they support the party offering free alcohol or the one using topless women in its campaign? [link]

2:22 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Czech town selling itself to death.
Rokytnice nad Jizerou in the north-east of the Czech Republic owes $11m, ten times its annual budget, and hopes to avoid bankruptcy by selling communal property such as apartment blocks, the cinema and a hairdressers.

[...]

Rob Cameron of Radio Prague told the BBC's World Business Report that the town owes so much that it cannot even provide basic services such as running schools or collecting rubbish.

[...]

The debt dates back to the early 1990s, when the town borrowed huge sums from the Ceska Sporitelna savings bank to fund a series of public projects.

2:16 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Al Martin on the local ~~Snitch Patrol~~ Neighborhood Watch (I'm not sure if it's a joke, but you know it isn't in a lot of places) and the Black Hole of Military Spending.

I'm getting an image of a cross between the old Prisoner village and 1950s East Germany. Boy there's an unpleasant thought.[orlin grabbe (not for work)]

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

Monday, June 10, 2002

Oh, no
Talking, wiggling Parkay tubs. [bb]

11:50 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Lobbyists and general voter apathy about corporate conduct put Congressional action on the backburner. Hard to believe people can't see where this is leading, but I guess they just don't wanna know, or The Terror War is distracting them, making them fearful of the deep changes that need to happen. And of course politicians of both stripes owe Big Business, right?

And after all, corporations can regulate themselves... ohhhh yeahhh

10:41 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Is Nader grandstanding, or was the officiating during the Lakers-Kings series really that partial? I lost interest (what there was left) in the NBA after Jordan retired (the 2nd time), so I haven't been following the sport. Has pro basketball sunk to the level of pro wrestling and figure skating?

1:46 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

"George Sunderland" rings the clarion bell to summon The Neo-Con Pundit Assault Corps.
Since, as every patriotic and right-thinking American knows, life is like a movie, our pundits would have the unbelievable luck of playing the role of a lifetime: war hero and leader of men, just like John Wayne in The Sands of Iwo Jima or Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan, only better - for this time, the bullets and the blood would be real, mere talk would be translated into action.

[...]

The man best equipped to lead this swaggering band of heros is Bill Kristol, the hands-down champion of martial virtue who never eschewed a chance to send U.S. forces into combat, be it in the sun-drenched wastes of Iraq or the gloomy crags of the Hindu Kush. With only a modest subsidy from Rupert Murdoch, he has singlehandedly made The Weekly Standard into the foremost journal of militarism since the Wehrmacht ceased publishing Signal. And needless to say, he would lead his company from the front, even on suicide missions.

As the company's executive officer in charge of security, the natural choice would be William Safire. His curriculum vitae fairly brims with excellence: principal champion of the link between Saddam and the attack on the World Trade Center, he should be given the opportunity to get in on the fun when the bullets fly. His career in intelligence is legendary: tasked by his Mossad handlers to torpedo the career of Admiral Bobby Inman (another do-nothing professional officer who had the bad taste to know what happened to the U.S.S. Liberty), Safire succeeded brilliantly. He was also the man in charge of fingering Wen Ho Lee as a Chinese spy; was it his fault the FBI was too incompetent to beat the truth out of an obviously guilty man? And, of course, as the confidant of Ariel Sharon, Safire has much of "the Bulldozer's" manly bravado.

2:52 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

The New Statesman online has the original nuclear war scenario between India and Pakistan in Philip Kerr's adventure yarn Esau, which the editor got him to change for the published version.
India had won the war, but quickly lost the peace as international reaction to the tragedy that had befallen the subcontinent gave way to environmental concern. Obscuring smoke in the troposphere, dust in the stratosphere, the fallout of radio-active debris and the partial destruction of the ozone layer all threatened to affect northern hemispheric climate. Throughout the Middle East, the daytime light levels fell to less than 30 per cent of normal - comparable to thick cloud cover - and temperatures declined. In Pakistan, for more than a week after the holocaust, it was too dark to see very much, even at midday. Meanwhile, weather systems transported fine dust particles to other, more distant locales and the world began to contemplate the biological impact of the war on the global environment.

2:21 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, June 09, 2002

Bowie on music and copyright in the aughts.
His deal with Sony is a short-term one while he gets his label started and watches the Internet's effect on careers. "I don't even know why I would want to be on a label in a few years, because I don't think it's going to work by labels and by distribution systems in the same way," he said. "The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it's not going to happen. I'm fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing."

"Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity," he added. "So it's like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You'd better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that's really the only unique situation that's going to be left. It's terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn't matter if you think it's exciting or not; it's what's going to happen." [link] [NYT username: aflakete password: europhilia] [aberrant news]

9:50 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

In case you didn't catch it on drudge, Las Vegas City Life has an interview with HST.

9:08 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

On the occasion of its DVD release (without extras apparently), David Thomson warily acknowledges David Lynch's signature film, Blue Velvet.
My estimate of David Lynch is that he never really allowed anything that he wanted to be cut. He's far too clever, and far too capable of assuming a mask of innocence. The censors we possess always have trouble with that kind of person. If you come on childlike, they find it hard to think the worst of you, no matter that their nerve endings are screaming "PANIC!"

Something like that happened when "Blue Velvet" opened in 1986. This really was a film that some otherwise sane people felt bound to attack as "indecent," "improper" and "dangerous." And in this case, I have to say, every promise in those grim warnings was rewarded. "Blue Velvet" was and is an outrage. And a masterpiece. It is one of the few films in the last 20 years that has kept alive the capacity of the movies to deliver beautiful offense, to dig so deep into the psyche that you feel you've been operated on without anesthetic.
I like Thomson's work a lot, BTW. His Orson Welles bio Rosebud gets Welles the best I think. I'm sure Simon Callow's epic is exhaustive (the first volume is over, what, 700 pages?), but read Thomson first.

3:20 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

As you can see, I just watched Salvador again. So it was interesting to see the savage, US-backed military regime of those days in El Salvador is not forgotten.

You remember: when the Commies were going to take over the Western Hemisphere?

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

Doing the Wrong Thing
shrub blocks world sanitation plan, perhaps because of water privatization issues. Also, OPEC nations oppose a renewable resource plan, and Japan, Canada and Australia joined the US in "objecting to European proposals to make energy consumption in developed countries more environmentally friendly." [also not found in nature]

12:42 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

The story of the security overhaul: omerta, stealth and the underground cabal.
There was little doubt in the White House that the creation of a Cabinet department would have to be done in secret. That's the preferred style of the Bush administration.

But how secret?

Near-total. In the beginning just four men and a few trusted aides worked on the most ambitious reorganization of the government's national security structure since the creation of the Department of Defense half a century ago.

As the work became more detailed and the PEOC Group (from their underground meeting space, the Presidential Emergency Operations Center) expanded, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joseph Hagin gravely explained the omerta, or code of silence, to each new arrival. At the end of each meeting, all the papers were collected: nothing left that room.

The work was virtually completed before two of President Bush's most trusted confidants, Karen Hughes and Karl Rove, were briefed on the plan. Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans -- known around the White House as "Uncle Don" for his long and close relationship with Bush -- heard the news for the first time the night before it was made public.

No Cabinet secretary was directly consulted about a plan that would strip 170,000 employees and $37 billion in funding from existing departments, according to members of the PEOC Group interviewed late last week.

Time will tell if these extraordinary measures meant too little input in answering an extremely complicated set of questions. The heads of several hard-hit departments declined to comment on the process.
I love the Tom Ridge quote when he was questioned on his problems "forcing change": "I am not authorized to be frustrated."

12:24 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Mark Morford on The Great Man. [NMN]
Besides, Dubya has proven again and again and you read it just about everywhere and the man has it tattooed on his thigh and it veritably oozes from the pores of his happily myopic followers, he is indeed a Very Nice Man with a Very Swell Disposition and Good Christian Manners and gosh darn it, people like him so please quit being so mean.

Ashcroft has scowled about it and Rumsfeld has squinted angrily about it and Cheney has shown twitching signs of life about it and it's been made very clear again and again: You are not allowed to openly abhor the president or his decisions because doing so clearly indicates traitorous inclinations and this is wartime which is a Very Difficult Time for Us All.

If you insist on calling it wartime, that is. Which of course it's not, given how we've killed untold thousands of barely armed Taliban and untold numbers of innocent Afghan civilians and over a dozen of our own soldiers and even some Canadian troops (whoops) and we have suffered exactly two combat casualties. This is not a war. But you can't really say that either.

3:16 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Youths pillage San Rafael CA. [NewsMakingNews]

3:09 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

The Link Section