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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, August 10, 2002

National park attendance is way down

Terrorism fears and airport hassles are starting to take a toll. Yeah, people think the parks are crowded from old news reports too, but the main thing is, people just aren't traveling nearly as much.

Part of the spell people seem to be under -- that every plane is a potential bomb now. And the ridiculous stories you hear about women having to drink their own breast milk etc. sure as hell aren't helping.

Are you listening, Mr. Endless War On Terrorism? Endless War = Perpetually Shrinking Economy.

9:09 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

More insurance news: California town's municipal services lock down after insurance cos. refuse to include coverage for terrorism [drudge]

6:20 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Why war?

6:08 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

PastelNazis strike again
A 3-2 [Fort Pierce, Florida] City Commission vote Monday night tentatively passed a proposal to prohibit indoor furniture from being used outdoors.

A final public hearing and commission vote on the proposal is scheduled for Aug. 19. If it passes a vote at that second hearing, it would amend the city's nuisance ordinance.

It's important for people to visit with neighbors from their porches, but only if they're sitting on appropriate furniture, said Commissioner Bob Benton, who supported the measure with Mayor Eddie Enns and Commissioner Christine Coke.

"If we move forward, we need to use common sense," Benton said. "Certain types of [outdoor] furniture are OK. . . . It's just having the right furniture."

6:02 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Florida women forced to publicly detail sexual history to place babies up for adoption, when father is unknown [u]

5:59 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Dyncorp whistleblower vindicated
A British tribunal has ruled that a former member of the UN police force in Bosnia was unfairly fired after she reported to her superiors that colleagues in the police force used women and children as sex slaves in connivance with Balkan traffickers.

It was at least the third scandal this year involving international aid workers and vulnerable local populations.

The UN officially has not commented on the latest case, in which the whistleblower, Kathryn Bolkovac, an American citizen living in the Netherlands, charged that she was fired in 2000 for sending e-mails to her employer, the U.S. recruitment agency DynCorp, stating that other UN police officers from several countries were linked with prostitution rings.

[...]

The company claimed it had fired Bolkovac for timekeeping irregularities, but the chairman of the tribunal, Charles Twiss, concluded that this was "completely unbelievable."

[...]

Bolkovac was posted to Sarajevo in 1999 to investigate sex trafficking but soon began filing reports that UN officials and international aid workers themselves were involved in it. She said UN workers frequented bars where girls as young as 15 were forced to dance naked on tables and engage in sexual acts with clients.

She also said that UN peacekeepers stood by while girls who refused to take part in sex acts were beaten and raped by pimps and that one police officer paid $1,000 to a bar owner for a girl he kept captive in his apartment.
You remember Dyncorp -- their spyplane fingered the missionary plane shot down over Peru a year ago as drug traffickers.
DynCorp, with 17,500-plus employees, over 550 operating facilities around the world and annual revenues of more than $1.3 billion, is a particularly massive entity. One of the Pentagon's largest contractors, DynCorp's services are also integrated into the Drug Enforcement Agency, Department of Justice, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Communications Commission, Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department.

DynCorp is a master-of-all (information technology)-trades. One of the largest employee-owned high-tech companies in the nation, DynCorp offers technical, managerial, and professional services to customers ranging from the Drug Enforcement Agency to the United Nations. Its Technical Services branch accounts for about half of sales; DynCorp also provides enterprise management and information and engineering technology. Contracts range from providing the State Department with support services in Kosovo to supplying Kuwait with repair and maintenance of military aircraft. The US government, DynCorp's biggest client, accounts for about 95% of sales. [link]
Your taxdollars at work.

5:30 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

The ten best cities for singles (according to Forbes)
1. Boston
2. Austin, Texas
3. Washington-Baltimore
4. Raleigh-Durham, N.C.
5. Denver-Boulder
6. San Francisco-Oakland
7. San Diego
8. Houston
9. Minneapolis-St. Paul
10. Atlanta

9:24 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Pierre Hadot's new book What Is Ancient Philosophy? looks interesting -- though I still haven't started Durant's old standby
Starting with a portrait of Socrates and his ironic career of awkward questions and luminous silences, Hadot wanders purposefully through the Stoics, Epicurians, Cynics, and Neoplatonists, down to the monk Dorotheus, whose philosophical exercise reduces the egoistic will and encourages acceptance of things as they are. It is an invigorating tour among the monuments, some familiar, some not.

Unlike the theoretical and systematic thought of modern philosophy, ancient philosophy keeps returning to the image of Socrates: "Deprived of wisdom, beauty, and the good, he desires and loves wisdom, beauty, and the good."

For Hadot, "philosophy consists in the movement by which the individual transcends himself toward something which lies beyond him." One's desire for wisdom is in direct ratio to one's detachment from immediate satisfactions.

[...]

This is heady stuff. It is pitched against modern university philosophy, which "always serves the imperatives of the overall organization of education, or, in the contemporary period, of scientific research."

[...]

Like Hadot's hero Socrates, "What is Ancient Philosophy?" is a triumph of irony: a meticulous historical survey that ends by inspiring the reader to actually do philosophy. Handsomely designed, with useful bibliography and chronology, it's a compact text for the "never-ending quest."
The trick is to acknowledge the importance of creating a space for detachment from desires -- without suppressing them.

9:18 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Changes in atmospheric circulation tearing ozone layer, aside from warming effect

Even if ozone-depleting chemicals are reduced, other changes in "large-scale wind-flows" that aren't understood yet are going to affect the Northern Hemisphere for the foreseeable future.

9:06 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

The new public commons: the dump
You might assume that a budget crisis is responsible for largely upper middle-class Americans assuming a task that involves tossing bottles into dumpsters amidst buzzing bees, standing in muck to off-load yard waste, and heaving heavy bags of trash into malodorous dumpsters in summer's heat and winter's chill. But you would be wrong.

About 10 years ago the town survey asked whether residents preferred to switch to curbside pickup or to continue hauling trash to the dump as they had since Needham was a more rural community. It wasn't even close ? 80 percent opted for self-service.

There are private contractors who will relieve you of the burden, yet today 85 percent of Needham households have a $20 dump sticker that provides access to what has become a true center of civic activity.

"People just don't go to the dump," says Charles Laffey, Needham RTS superintendent. "It's a gathering spot and a part of people's established routines that they enjoy. They come here to converse and to talk politics."

8:58 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Portugal's drug decriminalization after a year

Too early tell. Though the new conservative government didn't kill the initiative, there are rumblings of cut funding.

If eliminating drug use is the only measure of success, NOTHING will do that, in terms of legislation or anything else, probably. But at least drug users aren't criminalized, citizens aren't paying to have them incarcerated, and they're not clogging the justice system: cases take less than a week instead of up to two years to be processed.

And Lisbon has not become the haven for new users that some predicted.

8:55 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Congress sics Ashcroft on file-sharers -- "a growing threat to our culture and economy"

Whose culture and whose economy, one might ask?

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

Friday, August 09, 2002

TIPS scaled back, Neighborhood Watch expansion fizzles

Only people like truckers and dockworkers that can monitor public places will be involved in TIPS.

And confusion and indifference dog other citizen-centered anti-terror initiatives.

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

Nevada president of cops speaks truth on pot laws, quickly muzzled

He'd announced the organization's endorsement of state decriminalization initiative. His colleagues kicked him out and rescinded the endorsement.

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

Our local tourist magnet, Sedona, has been hit hard by the media coverage of the big fire last month

2:54 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Malnuturition in occupied Gaza is higher than in Nigeria or Chad.

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

Homeowners' insurance is going up 12% nationally this year. The culprits: mold and the bear market.

Texans pay the most, and their rates have gone up 100-200% in the last year. Investigations loom, wagons circle.

I though the insurance industry claimed they were "in great shape" after the concerns after 9/11.

Not that I believed them but . . .

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

When anthrax attack suspect Stephen Hatfill was stationed in Zimbabwe in the late 70s, the biggest outbreak of anthrax in modern history broke out (10,000 people). Just a coincidence probably. . .
Now, in the British New Statesman magazine of August 5th, columnist Andrew Stephen has some shocking new information about Hatfill that appears to have been censored by U.S. media. Stephen says, "He was brought up in Illinois but obtained medical and other doctoral degrees in what was then Rhodesia, and South Africa...He claims he worked with the Selous Scouts [an elite military unit engaged in covert activities] and had contacts with South African intelligence too." The Scouts were fighting to prevent black rebels from taking over the government of Rhodesia (soon to be renamed Zimbabwe).

"This leads us to a compelling question," Stephen says. "In his period there (1978-80), why was there the biggest outbreak of anthrax in modern history -- among Rhodesian blacks (affecting 10,000) as they fought for independence?"

Stephen goes on to say, "Were [Hatfill] to be publicly charged, might he have very damaging information to impart about U.S. assistance to the Rhodesian and South African regimes?...About offensive biological warfare programs [at Fort Detrick], even though the military insists it does defense research only? Might he not be a veritable landmine of dangerous, damaging and embarrassing information?"

If the CIA was involved in trying to prop up the white government of Rhodesia against blacks fighting for independence and if we used anthrax as a biological weapon as early as 1978, that destroys much of our credibility--especially now, as we threaten Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda about their potential use of biological weapons. This may be the REAL reason it's taken so long for the FBI to arrest the anthrax terrorist, even after they were forced to admit, with great embarrassment, that he was one of "us."
Just try to find a mention of this in the US press.

10:36 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Satellite pics of big US base in Qatar

1:14 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

This version of Beethoven's 9th stretched to 24 hours reminds me of some of Eno's experiments in the 70s

Kind of hypnotic really. Bad news for those of us in Drones Anonymous. That would be how many CDs? [katy.tk]

12:32 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, August 08, 2002

Caught part of the wideangle show on Argentina tonight and found out that 20% of the country is depending on barter, since they're out of work and can't get their money out of the banks anyway

You can even get plane tickets through the barter system, which may become more common all over, the way things are looking.

Bypass those banks -- I love it.

The tie-in essay at the first link may be less than reliable -- Daniel Yergin co-wrote the corporatocracy puff piece The Commanding Heights: the Battle for the World Economy, also a PBS series. I notice he doesn't mention Argentina's barter system at all.

11:18 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Recalled meat can show up in your Beef-a-Roni or your pet's food dish or the fertilizer you buy -- and it's legal [u]

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

This was around the Net this week but it's important to remember stuff like this when certain folks seem bent on starting a war, no matter what the world says. . .
Thirty-eight years ago Sunday, network television was interrupted at 11:36 p.m. EDT so President Lyndon B. Johnson could tell the nation that U.S. warships in a place called the Gulf of Tonkin had been attacked by North Vietnamese PT boats.

In response to what he described as "open aggression on the open seas," Johnson ordered U.S. airstrikes on North Vietnam.

The airstrikes opened the door to a war that would kill 1 million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans and divide the nation along class and generational lines.

Over the years, debate has swirled around whether U.S. ships actually were attacked that night, or whether, as some skeptics suggest, the Johnson administration staged or provoked an event to get congressional authority to act against North Vietnam.

Recently released tapes of White House phone conversations indicate the attack probably never happened.

9:57 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Surprise surprise Government backs up the pimps
Federal authorities in Miami on Monday announced the dismantling of a nationwide ring of high-priced brothels, loosely organized by entrepreneurial ex-prostitutes, that has been grossing millions of dollars in upscale neighborhoods for more than a decade.

"The Circuit" operated brothels in Miami, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Phoenix, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Washington, according to a 13-defendant racketeering indictment unsealed Monday in Miami.

[...]

The splits varied from brothel to brothel, but most women were paid 50 to 60 percent of their gross at the end of the week, and the balance stayed with the madam of the local brothel, sources said.

At those prices, no pimps were necessary. But by moving the women from city to city the madams were able to make sure that the workers weren't stealing away the best repeat clients, Gregorie said.

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

The American Death Industry finally gives some back, sort of. . .
It could be a pretty luxurious ride. In a nonpartisan, get-out-the-vote effort, the National Funeral Directors and Morticians Association plans to drive up to 500,000 Americans to the polls this year using funeral limousines.

"It's a way to use the limousine at a positive time, instead of a sad one," Baltimore funeral director Hari P. Close II told the Associated Press yesterday.

The program started six years ago in Maryland as a partnership between the association's 2,300 members, the Urban League and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Last year, about 376,000 people in 45 states got rides from participating funeral homes. This year, organizers will offer the service for primary elections in August and September and for the Nov. 5 general election.

For a lift, voters need only call their nearest Urban League or NAACP office -- or a participating funeral home.

9:42 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

More on the world-wide water deficit
The world is incurring a vast water deficit. It is largely invisible, historically recent, and growing fast. Because this impending crisis typically takes the form of aquifer overpumping and falling water tables, it is not visible. Unlike burning forests or invading sand dunes, falling water tables cannot be readily photographed. They are often discovered only when wells go dry.

The world water deficit is recent--a product of the tripling of water demand over the last half-century and the rapid worldwide spread of powerful diesel and electrically driven pumps. The drilling of millions of wells has pushed water withdrawals beyond the recharge of many aquifers. The failure of governments to limit pumping to the sustainable yield of aquifers means that water tables are now falling in scores of countries.

[...]

Water-scarce countries often satisfy the growing needs of cities and industry by diverting water from irrigation and importing grain to offset the resulting loss of production. Since a ton of grain equals 1,000 tons of water, importing grain is the most efficient way to import water. World grain futures will soon in effect become world water futures.

[...]

The two keys to stabilizing aquifers are raising water prices and stabilizing population. The first step is to eliminate the pervasive subsidies that create artificially low prices for water in so many countries. The next is to raise water prices to the point where they will reduce pumping to a sustainable level by raising water productivity and reducing water use in all segments of society. Low-income urban consumers can be protected with "lifeline rates" that provide for basic needs at an affordable price. Prices of underground water can be raised by installing meters on pumps and charging for water as Mexico has done or by auctioning permits to operate wells. Either way, water prices rise.

The second key is to quickly stabilize population in water-short countries. Most of the 3 billion people projected to be added worldwide by mid-century will be born in countries already experiencing water shortages. Unless population growth can be slowed quickly by investing heavily in female literacy and family planning services, there may not be a humane solution to the emerging world water shortage. [u]

9:35 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, August 07, 2002

Jim Hightower on the privatization of water
The World Bank predicts that two-thirds of the world's population will run short of adequate water in the next 20 years. You might think that the sheer scariness of this scarcity would prompt policy makers to focus on such goals as protecting the purity of the aqua we have, pushing rational conservation, and promoting the long-term public interest in this irreplaceable resource.

Whoa there, Pollyanna! You forget greed. Speculators look at the looming scarcity of a substance that no one can do without and think: "Wow, if I could control that, I could make a killing." Suddenly, the unsexy task of piping in water and piping out sewage became a hot prospect.

This coincided nicely with the corporate right wing's ideological zealotry for the mumbo-jumbo of deregulation and privatization. Not only can conglomerates do everything better than a democratic government can, goes their religious mantra, but they firmly believe that today's global corporations are magical kingdoms run by new-economy wunderkinds.

[...]

Water privatization doesn't work because its fundamental promises are lies. Far from bringing "market forces" to bear, these corporations are handed a monopoly and face no competition. Wielding monopoly power, they slash staff, lower wages, compromise service, cut corners on quality, skimp on long- term investment, raise rates -- and call this "efficiency." Any savings derived from these tactics are routed into extravagant executive-pay packages, luxurious corporate headquarters, bureaucracy for the parent conglomerate, lavish advertising and lobbying budgets, and profits. All of this is done behind closed doors, for these private empires are not subject to the open-access and disclosure rules of public agencies. Then, when the peasants rebel, the faraway CEO dispatches an army of PR flacks and lawyers, overwhelming the financial resources available to local citizens and governments.

11:43 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Top choices for dorm room walls
Women

1. "Starry Night," Vincent van Gogh
2. "Hotel De Ville," Robert Doisneau
3. "Cafe Terrace at Night," van Gogh
4. "Dance Me to the End of Love," Jack Vettriano
5. "Gargoyles," Michael Parks

Men

1. "Scarface" movie poster
2. "Spider-Man" movie poster
3. "Ullswater," Mel Allen
4. "La Persistance de la Memorie," Salvador Dali
5. Sports images [from CSM email Aug 1]

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

Post-Satire Files: If you decide to snitch for shrub by calling in, you'll get America's Most Wanted, not the FBI

8:43 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tuesday, August 06, 2002

Here's a good one. The Codex Alimentarius is a UN food standards program with an interesting rider:
The Codex will (1) prohibit dissemination of health-related information concerning vitamins, amino acids, minerals and other natural products for prevention and treatment of illnesses, and (2) (b) prohibit distribution of vitamins and other natural products which exceed the guidelines of the Codex Commission. Countries failing to comply will be punished by WTO with economic sanctions.
Basically, BigPharma doesn't want to lose its monopoly on health products. So far the US has bowed to consumer pressure and refused to vote for it.

I love the Old Roman Empire feel of the title too, don't you? Yes, that is Latin, and no, Rome didn't fall. [disinfo]

11:35 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wayne Cunnigham of cnet on updating Windows
I like Windows 2000 for its stability, and now that it runs most software, it's a reasonable option. Windows XP is another story. I find a lot of people online complaining about software compatibility issues, and I witnessed these problems firsthand when I installed and ran XP myself. I suppose someday the general momentum of Windows will carry me along into it, but not until the general software market catches up.
I only wish W2K was cheaper. Damn Micro$oft. . .

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

George Monbiot on shrub's insistence on attacking Iraq
There is something almost comical about the prospect of George Bush waging war on another nation because that nation has defied international law. Since Bush came to office, the United States government has torn up more international treaties and disregarded more UN conventions than the rest of the world has in 20 years.

[...]

But the US government's declaration of impending war has, in truth, nothing to do with weapons inspections. On Saturday John Bolton, the US official charged, hilariously, with "arms control", told the Today programme that "our policy ... insists on regime change in Baghdad and that policy will not be altered, whether inspectors go in or not". The US government's justification for whupping Saddam has now changed twice. At first, Iraq was named as a potential target because it was "assisting al-Qaida". This turned out to be untrue. Then the US government claimed that Iraq had to be attacked because it could be developing weapons of mass destruction, and was refusing to allow the weapons inspectors to find out if this were so. Now, as the promised evidence has failed to materialise, the weapons issue has been dropped. The new reason for war is Saddam Hussein's very existence. This, at least, has the advantage of being verifiable. It should surely be obvious by now that the decision to wage war on Iraq came first, and the justification later. [last 2 posts from Bush Watch]

10:59 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

The government has plans for itself if there's a terrorist attack -- but what about the rest of us?
In a closed meeting recently in Manhattan, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly fielded a question about the city's evacuation plan in case of biological, chemical or radiological attack.

"He took a long sip of his tea, and put it down, and said, 'What evacuation?' " recalled one participant, whose employer forbids him to be quoted by name. "He said, 'This is a city of 8 million people. It can't be done.' "

To someone choosing between shelter and flight when contaminants are in the air, that would be valuable information. National models show that a sudden exodus from nearly any big city would leave people gridlocked and exposed, while safe rooms they could make at home could offer life- saving protection.

But President Bush and local elected leaders are not providing this information to the public. For political and bureaucratic reasons, governments at all levels are telling far less to the public than to insiders about how to prepare for and behave in the initial chaos of a mass-casualty event.

[...]

Thomas A. Glass, principal investigator in a National Science Foundation study of public behavior during emergencies, said the research found that planners consistently forecast panic that does not take place and misconceive the reasons for unsafe behavior. In 10 calamities over seven years, the public responded rationally, he said, but "will do all kinds of [unsafe] things because they haven't been prepared." The widespread assumption "that if you talk to the public about what can happen they will panic is borne out by nothing." After examining hundreds of government contingency plans, Glass said they commonly treat the public in the manner "of animal husbandry."

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

Despair in Once-Proud Argentina
Word spread fast through the vast urban slums ringing Rosario. There was food on the freeway -- and it was still alive.

A cattle truck had overturned near this rusting industrial city, spilling 22 head of prime Angus beef across the wind-swept highway. Some were dead. Most were injured. A few were fine.

A mob moved out from Las Flores, a shantytown of trash heaps and metal shacks boiling over with refugees from the financial collapse of what was once Latin America's wealthiest nation. Within minutes, 600 hungry residents arrived on the scene, wielding machetes and carving knives. Suddenly, according to accounts from some of those present on that March day, a cry went up.

"Kill the cows!" someone yelled. "Take what you can!"

Cattle company workers attempting a salvage operation backed off. And the slaughter began. The scent of blood, death and fresh meat filled the highway. Cows bellowed as they were sloppily diced by groups of men, women and children. Fights broke out for pieces of flesh in bloody tugs of war.

"I looked around at people dragging off cow legs, heads and organs, and I couldn't believe my eyes," said Alberto Banrel, 43, who worked on construction jobs until last January, when the bottom fell out of the economy after Argentina suffered the world's largest debt default ever and a massive currency devaluation.

"And yet there I was, with my own bloody knife and piece of meat," Banrel said. "I felt like we had become a pack of wild animals . . . like piranhas on the Discovery Channel. Our situation has turned us into this."

The desolation of that day, neighbor vs. neighbor over hunks of meat, suggested how profoundly the collapse has altered Argentina. Traditionally proud, Argentines have begun to despair. Talk today is of vanished dignity, of a nation diminished in ways not previously imaginable.

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

The Manifestly Renewable Ever-Receding Frontier

Ben Ehrenreich on the new hobos and the persistence of the American myth "of movement and self-reliance, of mythic vastness and silence, of discovery, escape, rebellion. It's an America that was offered long ago and never delivered, that we're all supposed to love but not allowed to look for, that's just around the corner and always out of reach"

Which is closely related to the dependence on expansion into foreign markets that has kept American corporations and the economy afloat since the Louisiana Purchase. [u]

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

How FHA blacklisting of urban neighborhoods pulled down cities and black neighborhoods in particular while it helped create the huge middle class and suburban sprawl -- starting with the FDR administration

10:42 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Brits starting to choose poptones over dirges at funerals

I actually think about this from time to time, even though I have no intention of anything but a quick burn-n-blow. Lately Kiln's "radius" or Eno's "The Big Ship" are the favorites.

Though a traditional Dixieland set would be nice too.

10:22 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Missile defense program fails again
Speaking at length for the first time about the test results, military officials insisted many of the problems were attributable to bad luck, citing Murphy's Law that if anything can go wrong, it will.

Geez, and I was so sure it would work now . . . but it was just bad luck . . .

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

Signs that Washington's (since there is effectively no division between Congress and the White House on these issues) attitude on Saudi Arabia's "ally" status is about to turn around
"The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader," stated the explosive briefing. It was presented on July 10 to the Defense Policy Board, a group of prominent intellectuals and former senior officials that advises the Pentagon on defense policy.

[...]

One administration official said opinion about Saudi Arabia is changing rapidly within the U.S. government. "People used to rationalize Saudi behavior," he said. "You don't hear that anymore. There's no doubt that people are recognizing reality and recognizing that Saudi Arabia is a problem."
I see no mention here of the fact that SA is the spiritual center of Islam. It's hard to see how shrub & co's scorched earth approach to world affairs will work effectively when faced with this kind of diplomatic challenge.

Or else this is the unfolding of an agenda which wants a war of civilizations. . . [a]

9:39 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Days like today the manipulation of the markets is pretty obvious

I wouldn't trust these numbers anymore, would you?

9:22 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, August 05, 2002

The Mississippi River is clean enough to bring back the mayflies in force now. A LOT of mayflies. . .
In an unheralded and sometimes annoying consequence of cleaner waterways, mayflies are mating and dying in greater numbers than they have in half a century. The insects have been swarming in such volumes this summer that they have to be shoveled from riverside streets and scraped from bridges with snowplows.

[...]

With layers of slippery, dying mayflies on the streets, people here say an evening stroll can be perilous. The dead flies coat the decks of boats. In the morning after a big swarm, merchants have to power-wash the corpses from their windows.

"They build up, layer upon layer," said resident Cathy Corpian. "They're greasy. They stick to you. They stink. They smell like dead fish." But Corpian added, "They're good." [link]

9:12 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Funny send-off to ABC's This Week co-host Cokie Roberts
Call me sentimental, but I'm going to miss the old gal. With no discernible politics save an attachment to her class, no reporting and frequently no clue, she was the perfect source for a progressive media critic: a perpetual font of Beltway conventional wisdom uncomplicated by any collision with messy reality.

[...]

Cokie came to public attention at NPR, where she developed some street cred as a Capitol Hill gumshoe, but apparently grew tired of the hassle of actual reporting, which only helped her career. With no concern for the niceties of conflicts of interest, she and her husband accepted together as much as $45,000 in speaking fees from the very corporations that were affected by the legislation she was allegedly covering in Congress. Moreover, she claimed something akin to a royal prerogative in refusing to address the ethical quandary it obviously raised.
My favorite Cokie quote -- when asked if there were any opposition to the war on Afghanistan: "None that matters."

I found the quote in this nice piece on the 9/11 Spectacle from October.

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

The New Stupidity file: 2" GI Joe gun replica confiscated at LAX
Judy [Powell], from Walton-on-the-Hill, Surrey, added: "I couldn't believe it."

"I can understand them wanting to ban weapons or things that look like weapons, but surely common sense has to take over at some point."

[...]

Airport security has been tightened since the terrorist attacks of September 11, and airlines can now ban anything resembling a weapon.

Security chiefs at Los Angeles airport said: "We have instructions to confiscate anything that looks like a weapon or a replica."

"If GI Joe was carrying a replica then it had to be taken from him." [u]

1:25 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Scriptygoddess looks like a good resource for bloggers [blogsnob]

10:18 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, August 04, 2002

If you're into haunted places (in either sense of the word), check out this site on the abandoned and now demolished Essex Mountain Sanatorium in Verona NJ

As if NJ isn't haunted enough as it is; the energy stored up in this place must have been quite something.

It was about 25 miles west of NYC.

The ghost pics are pretty good. [u]

5:29 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Like shrub (and WarLord leaders everywhere), Sharon's Achilles' Heel will be the economy

Israelis and Americans will put up with all kinds of things in the name of "freedom" and "security."

But hit their wallets and look out. . .

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

Bush ready to declare war

Anyone not have a bad feeling about this?

10:25 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Kartoo is a new cartographic search engine

Something different anyway. It's a Flash page but loads pretty quick (I have a dialup). [refdesk]

10:10 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