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READING

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

amazon wish list

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Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder, and the Mafia

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, June 29, 2002

New Bruce Sterling speech text.
Key concepts: computer science, computer research,
grand challenges, ubiqitous computation, genetic
algorithms, corruption, spam, Internet, civil society

[...]

Ultra-wideband is low-cost, low-power, high-speed, and best of all, it is the number-one alternative to a whole crowd of normal-wideband, stocks-on-fire, money-losing technologies run by guys like Gary Winnick of Global Crossing, and Bernie Ebbers of Worldcom, and the Rigas family of Adelphia Communications.

So, ultra-wideband is a grand challenge with a lot of deadly enemies. Experienced enemies who are sick of being burned by disruptive new technologies. Out comes the Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. Nine hundred companies file concerns with the FCC. The GPS will fritz, they say;
airplanes will fall out of the sky. This is cynical baloney. Everybody knows that, but evil stuff like that has to be said; because these are classic not-in-my-back-yard tactics. Cynical, tooth-gritting tactics that people
use when their backs are against the wall.

This is the sort of civil-disobedience fervor that we see from anti-genetics campaigners and anti-nuclear activists. Except that instead of being hippie zealots, it's guys the likes of ABC Disney and the music recording
industry. Wi-Fi isn't Al Qaeda, they're not going to knock down any airplanes. But this is common or garden competitive practice for your industry these days. Obstructive incumbents. Monopolization. Vicious
infighting. Phony-baloney regulatory obstacles.
And here's Cory Doctorow's response to Bruce dissing the computer as a gizmo and deploring the state of the Internet.

11:52 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Fun little quiz testing your knowledge of Phil Dick

I got 8 out of 10. I know his stuff pretty well, and I read Lawrence Sutin's excellent Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick. [bb]

11:28 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

How soon is now?

The NASDAQ bottom may be 1000.

10:54 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Pledge

Cheryl Seal on the history of political expediency behind the Pledge of Allegiance.
So, in short, yep -- I do have a major problem with the pledge. Not only do I resent being forced to take a "one size fits all pledge" I have a serious problem with a pledge that avoided mentioning equality because of pressure from bigoted educators, that now includes the "formal title" of the nation thanks to pressure from the KKK, that had God added in response to pressure from rightwing Catholics, that had God removed thanks to political maneuvering, and may soon have God re-inserted thanks to maneuvering by politically self-interested Senators.

5:47 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Finally

Here's some good news:
In the spirit of the Sons of Liberty, on February 4 of this year, some 300 citizens of Northampton, Massachusetts, held a town meeting to organize ways to - as they put it - protect the residents of the town from the Bush-Ashcroft USA Patriot Act. On that night, the Northampton Bill of Rights Defense Committee began a new American Revolution. Similar committees are organizing around the country.

Speakers at that town meeting were defying John Ashcroft, who threatened dissenters in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last year. He denounced those "who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty. . . . Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies."

But speakers at the meeting emphasized that the USA Patriot Act and the the succession of unilateral Ashcroft-Bush orders that followed apply not only to noncitizens but also to Americans in that very hall. William Newman, director of the ACLU of Western Massachusetts, pointed out that law enforcement agencies are now permitted "the same access to your Internet use and to your e-mail use that they had to your telephone records" - and may overstep their authority. "The history of the FBI," Newman warned, "is that they will do exactly that." [link] via Undernews]

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

I knew there was something. . .

From Undernews:

Q. What's the difference between George W. Bush and Mussolini?
A. Bush doesn't care whether the trains run on time.

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

Friday, June 28, 2002

We're having a little trouble with the right column and inserting javascript. You can still comment on the old site here.

I'll be adding enetation commenting and the BlogSnob link soon.

Also (some know this and some don't) if you want to search for something on my site, because it shows up on a google search, click on the "Cached Pages" link in the google listing and the search words will be highlighted on the appropriate page. This saves you the trouble of searching the archives for something.

When our "search archives" function is full operational, it will work the same way.

11:14 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Switching to new page today.

Hopefully smoothly. Please comment if you have problems, or email me at "Contact" link at left.

12:01 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

John Trudell

His new album Bone Days is out due to Angelina Jolie's support.

2:47 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

The Plunge Protection Team [jog]

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

The CIA and UFOs -- a history

The official CIA line on their connection with UFOs is damning enough.
The panel concluded unanimously that there was no evidence of a direct threat to national security in the UFO sightings. Nor could the panel find any evidence that the objects sighted might be extraterrestrials. It did find that continued emphasis on UFO reporting might threaten "the orderly functioning" of the government by clogging the channels of communication with irrelevant reports and by inducing "hysterical mass behavior" harmful to constituted authority. The panel also worried that potential enemies contemplating an attack on the United States might exploit the UFO phenomena and use them to disrupt US air defenses.

To meet these problems, the panel recommended that the National Security Council debunk UFO reports and institute a policy of public education to reassure the public of the lack of evidence behind UFOs. It suggested using the mass media, advertising, business clubs, schools, and even the Disney corporation to get the message across. Reporting at the height of McCarthyism, the panel also recommended that such private UFO groups as the Civilian Flying Saucer Investigators in Los Angeles and the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization in Wisconsin be monitored for subversive activities.
But the question of whether anyone at or related to "The Agency" had other knowledge is far from evident to me. Not to mention, CIA people are just as likely to be in denial about whatever challenges their worldview as anyone. Maybe more so, since their grasp on reality seems a bit slippery to begin with, by virtue of their mandate to create consensus perceptions.

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

Libraries need to be a priority in school budgets

Despite the first lady's high profile as a librarian -- and her laudable support -- school libraries are feeling budget cuts despite obvious evidence that academic performance and well-funded libraries are closely connected.

2:00 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Broadband coup by oligarchs

Unless something is done soon, broadband access will be in the hands of a few oligarchs, just like cable TV and savings and loans in the 80s -- thanks to FCC corporate shill Michael Powell. [bb]

1:59 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

WTC fell because of lightweight construction and weak fireproofing

The June 25 edition of Undernews has a series of excerpts at the bottom on the construction of the WTC and how this was responsible for the actual collapse of the towers than the plane crash and fire.
Fireproofing failures -- rather the impact of the plane crashes -- probably caused the World Trade Center towers to quickly collapse, architects and engineers told a federal panel. "The insulation is going to turn out to be the root cause," said James G. Quintiere, a professor at University of Maryland's Fire Protection Engineering Department who analyzed the fireproofing in the two towers. Neither tower, he found, had fireproofing thick enough to withstand the fire's blast furnace intensity for two hours, which is
considered the minimum needed for those on the upper floors to escape the towers. "A two-hour fire resistance is right on the ragged edge," Quintiere said. The North Tower, which had 1 1/2-inch-thick fireproofing, fell in 104 minutes, and the South Tower, with its
3/4-inch-thick fireproofing, collapsed in 56 minutes . . .

12:16 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, June 27, 2002

Editor fired for honest email to reader

The question of objectivity in journalism comes up again:
The Sarasota (Fla.) Herald- Tribune recently ran a 4,400-word, 2 1/2-page spread on Republican congressional candidate Katherine Harris. And when one reader complained that Democratic candidates were getting short shrift, Managing Editor Rosemary Armao responded with a remarkably candid e-mail -- one that wound up costing her her job.

"Katherine Harris is an international figure, like her or not," Armao wrote of the woman who became a central player in the presidential recount in Florida. "She's going to be the next congresswoman from this area, like it or not. . . . I have no intentions of covering each of the Democratic candidates to the same extent."

Armao added: "I do not intend to vote for Harris. . . . I blame the Democrats for not finding a better candidate . . . and I blame our culture for craving as its public figures, women like Katherine who are very pretty, hard-working and without original ideas that I can find."
This was after the paper published basically a puff piece on Harris.

I think it's ridiculous to fire an editor for an email she sends ot a reader. And most of what passes for objectivity in reporting these days is sickeningly bland, unreadable tripe -- with hidden biases anyway -- often barely a rewrite of press releases. And did she know the fix was in? [via drudge]

11:30 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

R.I.P. Tim White.

Shit he was only 50. I knew he was e-i-c at Billboard though I never read it. I still remember his stuff at Rolling Stone (back when it was readable and even relevant); but his Bob Marley bio Catch A Fire is definitive and really caught Marley's spirit and milieu. One of the best music bios ever.

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

R.I.P. "Boris".
Entwistle released a half-dozen eclectic solo albums that revealed his wry sense of humor, and he also dabbled in art. He had spent the last dozen years writing a novel, though he noted in a recent interview that "at the current rate of writing they're gonna have to engrave the end on my tombstone."

The 2000 pic of him on all the obits shows a man looking older than 55.

I saw the Who in '74 at MSQ, and it was one of the best shows I 've ever seen. Thay rocked like few do anymore.

Thanks, John.

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

Wednesday, June 26, 2002

Pledge of Allegiance ruled unconstitutional. By God.

Supreme Court for this one, you bet. [NYT username: aflakete password: europhilia]

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

Greed corruption and terror -- the Bush Decade
There's no doubt that the bull market is long gone. The bear market is sticking around longer than even pessimists thought possible. And U.S. stock indexes are struggling to stay above their post-Sept.-11 lows.

Investors are experiencing a gut check that ranks right up there with the 1973-74 mauling, the trio of down years during World War II and the four consecutive wealth-destroying years that defined the Great Depression.

[...]

[Enron] set in motion a wave of scandals, ranging from crooked accounting to CEOs allegedly trading on inside information, that undermined the integrity of the financial system. Business pages now read like the police blotter. Xerox. Adelphia. Tyco. ImClone. Global Crossing. Even the maven of taste, Martha Stewart, is under suspicion in an inquiry into alleged illegal stock trading on inside information. And late Tuesday, news broke that WorldCom had uncovered what appears to be one of the largest frauds in corporate history.

A culture of distrust has infected investors' minds with the power of toxic mold. "There is still a profound suspicion among investors that there are more skeletons in the closet," says Charles Pradilla, market strategist at SG Cowen. [link]
No doubt the 90s were a bubble and Clinton and much else is behind what's happening now.

But shrub just seems like the Poster Boy for Bad Times, doesn't he? Which is why he's Johnny-On-The-Spot investigating WorldCON. No "Kenny Boy" there, eh, George?

11:57 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Arizonans step up in the face of disaster.

Have to say, makes me glad to live here. People usually keep to themselves pretty much here. But this fire has shifted things quite a bit.

4:39 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Impressive shots of the fire approaching Show Low.

4:20 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

WorldCon

WorldCom admits to fudging their books (done in that hip Andersen stylee) just a wee $3.8 billion.

That's six times what Enron tried to get away with.

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

Fondling Fridaness

The recent adulation of Frida Kahlo: an example of how female artists are reduced to icons, idolized and ultimately marginalized.
Feminists might celebrate Kahlo's ascent to greatness -- if only her fame were related to her art. Instead, her fans are largely drawn by the story of her life, for which her paintings are often presented as simple illustration. Fridamaniacs are inspired by Kahlo's tragic tale of physical suffering -- polio at six, grisly accident at 18 -- and fascinated with her glamorous friends and lovers, among them photographer and Soviet spy Tina Modotti and Leon Trotsky. It's the stuff that drives Hollywood, and the kind of story that has become de rigueur for entering the pantheon of "great" artists.

But, like a game of telephone, the more Kahlo's story has been told, the more it has been distorted, omitting uncomfortable details that show her to be a far more complex and flawed figure than the movies and cookbooks suggest. This elevation of the artist over the art diminishes the public understanding of Kahlo's place in history and overshadows the deeper and more disturbing truths in her work. Even more troubling, though, is that by airbrushing her biography, Kahlo's promoters have set her up for the inevitable fall so typical of women artists, that time when the contrarians will band together and take sport in shooting down her inflated image, and with it, her art.
Of course most artists or politicians who become popular icons are transformed into airbrushed versions of themselves. Subconscious or conscious misogyny simply amplifies the tendency.

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

Tuesday, June 25, 2002

FBI psy-ops on whistleblowers
The first stop on the whistle-blower's roller coaster to ruin is discreditation. . .

"Anonymous news leaks always come first," he says. Fellow agents may peek into Rowley's personnel file, quiz her colleagues about her habits, and find something to feed the press, and already rumors are being whispered on the Hill. The gossip: Rowley once punished a whistle-blower herself.

Next, say those who've taken the ride, comes a gamut of retaliatory tactics: harassment from supervisors, the loss of office allies, a stripping of security clearance, the monitoring of activities, inter-office relocation -- one Department of Agriculture informer was moved to a desk in the hallway outside the bathroom -- demotions, psychiatric or medical referrals, or "administrative leave," to put it euphemistically.
Something mentioned in the article I didn't know: Colleen Rowley's colleague Robert Wright accused the FBI of obstructing his investigation of international terrorist accounts, but got far less press than she did -- though his testimony seems more damning and disturbing than hers even. His 500-page manuscript was suppressed by the FBI and he's filed suit with Judicial Watch.

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

Right-wing lifestyle eugenics and filling the coffers of Big Pharma

The shrub AIDS plan benefits multinationals and the unborn, but not adults with the disease or the poor in other countries. And the only new money allotted won't be available til 2004. By then 6 million more will die from AIDS.

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

River complex

The mind-boggling political, economic and environmental boondoggle that is the Missouri River
For a dozen years, the US Army Corps of Engineers has looked for solutions. In the latest twist, the corps proposed six possibilities: the status quo, a water-conservation measure that would change flows upstream, and four proposals that would alter releases from Gavins Point, which would mimic somewhat the old river's natural spring rise and summer decline.

When the corps solicited public comments, it was deluged. Of 55,000 comments, 54,000 called for some kind of change.

Unfortunately, there's little agreement on exactly what to change. Upstream communities, shocked by a long drought in the late 1980s and early '90s, want to retain more water in the reservoirs during dry periods. Barge operators downstream prefer the status quo, which calls for the corps to release enough water to maintain a barge channel on the lower Missouri. Lake recreationists also want to keep water in the reservoirs. River enthusiasts, however, side with the barge operators. Farmers and environmentalists both call for wise stewardship of the shoreline, but their solutions differ wildly.

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

Italian police indicted for evidence fabrication at last year's Genoa summit.

6:30 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

"...how eager they are to be slaves"

Vidal on the US , the TerrorWar, and "why they hate us":
The idea of a supine Congress, the best that corporate money can buy, is allowing this to go past them without any question, puts me in mind ofmy favorite Emperor - and I always talk about Emperors when I do Pacifica, at least on the West Coast - Tiberius, who was a very brilliant man, and a patriot in his way. When he became Emperor, the Senate passed a bill, assuring him that any legislation that he sent them would be automatically accepted, and become law. He sent back word and he said, "You're crazy. Suppose, suppose the Emperor is mad, suppose he's ill, suppose there's a palace coup and somebody else is
sending things in his name? How can you be so certain that what you're passing is really his, or should be passed?" They sent it back: "Anything your Imperial Majesty sends us is law for us." And Tiberius said, "How eager they are to be slaves."

And this is more and more my view of the American people in general. They've allowed an election to be stolen in November 2000. They made no fuss. We have perpetual war for perpetual peace. We have the Enemy-of-the-Month Club: one month it's Noriega, one month it's Saddam Hussein, one month it's Khadafy, currently it's Osama bin Laden. . .

[...]

I'll make you a bet that we are at war in Iraq in October, and Bush will be conducting that war in order to get more Republicans elected in a wartime atmosphere, so he can remove more of our liberties.

[...]

So there we are, embarked upon a great adventure, with one billion Moslems hating us, and the contempt of all of Europe, the hatred of most of Latin America - for very good reason, we can't blame that on George W. Bush, we've had two hundred years to make them hate us down there. And we're making trouble in China, we're looking forward to a war in China. If I could find a way to get to the American people and say, "This junta that is governing us, this Enron/Pentagon junta, dedicated only to enrichment through the oil business, as all the Bushes and Cheneys and so on are oil people, they are going to destroy, for personal profit, the United States. We are going to be destroyed by the hatred of the rest of the world."

6:17 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

hee hee.
El Paso, Texas (SatireWire.com) Unwilling to wait for their eventual indictments, the 10,000 remaining CEOs of public U.S. companies made a break for it yesterday, heading for the Mexican border, plundering towns and villages along the way, and writing the entire rampage off as a marketing expense.

CEOnista Martha Stewart (Martha Stewart Omnimedia) was one of the few executives captured. Her mask is made from recycled Christmas paper wrapping.

"They came into my home, made me pay for my own TV, then double-booked the revenues," said Rachel Sanchez of Las Cruces, just north of El Paso. "Right in front of my daughters."

Calling themselves the CEOnistas, the chief executives were first spotted last night along the Rio Grande River near Quemado, where they bought each of the town's 320 residents by borrowing against pension fund gains. By late this morning, the CEOnistas had arbitrarily inflated Quemado's population to 960, and declared a 200 percent profit for the fiscal second quarter.

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

The EFF does a breakdown of The New Intrusiveness in The Name of Security.
After September 11, the U.S. government enacted sweeping legislation that diminished privacy rights in the name of domestic security. In response to bills like the USA Patriot Act, the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act, and the proposed Driver's License Modernization Act, EFF is providing the public with factual data on these laws and the technologies they employ.

"High-tech systems are not a quick fix for terrorism," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Lee Tien. "For the most part, these technologies are dangerously unreliable, and even the best of them are highly invasive."

"Governments justify overreaching surveillance on vulnerable targets such as aliens and dissenters, then inevitably try to extend its use to the rest of society," Tien added.

3:45 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

The half-life of your reality, and Samantha Morton

Nice short piece on the place of Phil Dick in the History of Paranoia in Literature and how we still haven't seen the true Dick onscreen.

I probably will see Minority Report, though, if only because Samantha Morton plays a key role. I happened on her in Pandaemonium, where she played Coleridge's dutiful wife in a thankless role, and then Jesus' Son, a surprising good slice of drug-drenched 70s life in midwestern America, in which she kicked bloody ass as a self-destructive junkie (opposite the equally fine Billy Crudup).

Young lady has quite a career in front of her, I suspect. Now I guess I have to rent Sweet and Lowdown. . .

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

Monday, June 24, 2002

The Anthrax Case: What the FBI Knows by Barbara Hatch Rosenberg. [jog]

11:28 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

American history lesson
"The world as I knew it before this semester no longer exists. It's like a dream, as if I had been living in wonderland, but then I woke up. The reality of our society hit me right in the face. Although what I learned in this class has disappointed me, I'm glad to be given the opportunity of looking beyond my own personal life-to be given a choice to care for what happens to all of us as a nation. The rule of law may not prevail, but we as individuals still have the freedom to make choices, and those choices can help to weaken those who are still seeking total control."

. . . These words were written by one of my U.S. history students in a survey course covering the period of 1865 to current time, after she had viewed Mike Ruppert's video documentary "The Truth & Lies of 9-11." I have designed this course, which explores the events following the Civil War known as Reconstruction, through the end of the 20th century, to culminate in an alternative examination of the events of Sept. 11.

[...]

Having never lived through the Red Scare of post-World War II America, it was difficult for my students to grasp anti-Communist hysteria. I tried to explain that in the early- 1950s, being, or being suspected of being a Communist in America, was somewhat equivalent to being suspected of being a child molester in the 21st century. Nevertheless, they could not grasp the blatant violations of civil liberties during the '50s by the CIA, FBI and congressional committees investigating Communist activities. Particularly horrifying to them was the History Channel documentary, "Mind Control: America's Secret War," which outlined devastating CIA mind control experiments in the 1950s, done on unsuspecting civilians without their knowledge. Especially difficult for them to understand was the National Security Act of 1947 which created the CIA. Having been taught from grade school that our government is just, fair and that we have a functional balance of power in Washington, they found the CIA's level of power in America and the world, almost incomprehensible. As we examined the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the viewing of Oliver Stone's "JFK" film, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the Vietnam War and Watergate, I watched the innocence drain from their 20-something faces. I told them it would get worse.

[...]

The most valuable and workable image I have found for giving students an authentic map for understanding U.S. history and the world in which they live is the image of the five-headed monster in which corporations, the stock market, the intelligence community, organized crime and government function not as separate entities, but as one predatory organism which devours and does not sustain either humanity or the Earth. One of my beloved mentors of history, professor Peter Dale Scott, refers to what I have named the five-headed monster as "deep politics," that is to say, a "process which habitually resorts to decision-making and enforcement procedures outside as well as inside those publicly sanctioned by law and society."

11:05 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

And the Daffy Duck "Shoot me now!" award goes to . . .

The FBI has been asked by the Congress to spy on Congress to find out who's been leaking information about intelligence pre-9/11.

Which is against the rules of Congress, not to mention a horrible -- never mind unconstitutional -- precedent. Let the FBI spy on the people who are responsible for overseeing the FBI? Reeeal good idea.
Experts called the move extraordinary if not unprecedented, and pointed out that it raised the prospect of FBI agents investigating the very Members and staff who are charged with overseeing the agency and its handling of the terrorist threat. An even more serious constitutional question would arise if the investigation fingers a Member of Congress for the leak.

The rules for both the House and Senate specifically provide that leaks of classified information should be investigated by the Congressional ethics committees. That was the procedure used in 1995 when the House ethics panel investigated allegations that then-Rep. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) leaked sensitive material dealing with CIA activity in Guatemala while he served on the Intelligence Committee.

But the question of whether to have the Congressional ethics committees conduct an internal probe apparently was not considered before the public announcement of the Justice request, according to people familiar with the matter in both parties. The House General Counsel's office only began to look at the question Friday, a day after Goss and the other leaders appeared before the cameras.

[...]

"Inviting a Justice Department inquiry means using FBI agents and FBI methods, and it potentially creates FBI dossiers on the Senators and Representatives and staff of the intelligence committees," noted one person familiar with Congressional oversight who did not want to be named.

"The FBI would like nothing better than, under the guise of perfecting Hill security, to thoroughly control the intelligence committees' own activity," this person said.
FBI fucks up. Congress and the White House gives them more money and the mandate to spy on the Congressmen who are supposed to oversee them.

Makes perfect sense to me. dododeeohdo woooooooooooo....

10:49 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

2nd death penalty ruling in a week

The Supreme Court has ruled that the death penalty can only be applied by juries, not judges. That affects people here in Arizona -- in fact it was an Arizona case that brought up the issue.

Nice to see some good news. Looks like the US may be pulling ahead of Saudi Arabia in one area anyway.

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

Sunday, June 23, 2002

Jon Hassell in Montreal

If you live near Montreal, or are going to be there July 6-7, Jon Hassell will be performing at the Jazz Fest. Tickets are here. [Thanks to Malcolm on NerveNet!]

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

Prosecutors to FBI: show me the evidence.

6 out of 10 terrorism cases sent to federal prosecutors by the FBI are turned down.
"You have to have an understanding of how the FBI does its business," says Bill Carter, an FBI spokesman in Washington. "We open a case on every report of a terrorist threat. The primary purpose is to gather intelligence to prevent a terrorist attack. [But] 19 out of 20 do not result in prosecution because they were opened as an intelligence operation."

Stanley Twardy, a former U.S. attorney for Connecticut, confirms Carter's analysis. "Yes, the FBI does refer matters up" to U.S. attorneys because the case is open and they want someone to review it," he says, "or for informational purposes."

But in half of the terror cases declined since Sept. 11, U.S. attorneys around the nation told the FBI there would be no charges because the cases under review showed no criminal intent, or no evidence of any crime, according to the data.

[...]

"It seems to me it's d�j� vu in a lot of ways -- it's the agency covering their ass," says former New Haven Police Chief Nick Pastore, now a fellow with the non-profit Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. "They're rushing to judgment so they can make their numbers." Pastore said the situation reminded him of legendary FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover's long-time use of FBI agents to gather information about political dissidents.

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

Greed is killing capitalism.

Watched the Frontline on Enron et al, which was pretty good.

Bottom line: I don't see much reason for investors to trust the market at all. And I don't see anything changing soon.

1:13 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Venezuela on the edge

Despite dubious claims to the contrary, Chavez isn't taking any chances that a US-sanctioned coup isn't in the works.

1:02 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Chinese discover frogs are part of the ecosystem.

The Chinese province of Hebei has banned the export of wild frogs -- a delicacy at home and abroad -- because thet're natural predators of locusts, and they're finally getting a clue.

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

Rodeo Fire

Very weird that this huge fire is happening so relatively close by (100 miles east of us), and yet seems so far away.

Broke as we are, we put together a box of household items for one of the families that lost their home (there are a lot more today) and brought it down to Basha's, the supermarket that's the local dropoff point. Even the people whose homes aren't destroyed -- what do they have to go back to? Neighbors without homes, a blackened landscape -- and 3 more months of hot weather, hopefully broken by the monsoon rains next month into September, but there's no guarantee.

It's so sad watching folks on TV, just overwhelmed. Officials who've done their best, but who talk about fires like this as if they can be stopped by controlled fires to clear away the ground fuel, like it's a War they can win...

Truth is, nature is still bigger than we are, and there's some things you just have to accept, especially if you want to live on the edge of a National Forest -- which we've been warned about over the last few years.

This War meme's days are numbered.

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

The Courts stand up to the Putsch again.
In his 19-page ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Robert M. Takasugi found that the process by which the State Department designates groups such as MEK as terrorist organizations deprives them of their constitutional due process rights. That, the judge said, is in part because the groups are not allowed to challenge the evidence against them before they are declared terrorist organizations.

"National security is certainly a matter of grave concern and responsibility," Takasugi wrote. But, "the argument for national security should not serve as an excuse for obliterating the Constitution."

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

Head of Sept. 11 Probe Allegedly Obstructed Danforth's Waco Inquiry

surprise surprise. Will Congress fold again?

12:05 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Some blogs I've sloblinked to that I like:
Witold Riedel

fluttergirl

sex & sunshine

thinkhaze

4:02 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Neuron sterilization from pakistan velvet paxil.

Fewer cool referrals than there used to be. Got 6X more hits the day after I linked to NPR linking page. heh.
bathroom disney borders
first amer home buyer
pictures of people with smallpox
six-arms man pictures
Cynthia McKinney boyfriend
korean american blog
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The SM movie of the not summit to restrict downloads
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microbiology jobs in pharma pakistan
WHERE IN THE WORLD DID RUDI BAKHTIAR GO
moron city map cuba
angel and video and and friend and dc and dildo and black and entertainment
paxil available in pakistan

1:55 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