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ABBREVIATIONS FOR SITES I OFTEN STEAL NEWS ITEMS FROM:

u = Progressive Review's Undernews

PUBLIC AFFAIRS/HISTORY READING:
(r) = re-reading

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The Buying of the President 2004: Who's Really Bankrolling Bush and His Democratic Challengers -- and What They Expect in Return

Arrogant Capital

Sam Smith's Great American Political Repair Manual: How to Rebuild Our Country So the Politics Aren't Broken and Politicians Aren't Fixed

American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush

Death in the Air: Globalism, Terrorism & Toxic Warfare

The Velvet Coup: The Constitution, the Supreme Court and the Decline of American Democracy

Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of the Free Press

Amazon Light

Just consider what current events will sound like two thousand years from now -- the greatest nation on Earth bombing some of the smallest and weakest for no clear reasons, people starving in parts of the world while farmers are paid not to plant crops in others, technophiles sitting at home playing electronic golf rahter than the real thing, and police forces ordered to arrest people who simply desire to ingest a psychoactive weed. People of that era will also likely laugh it all off as fantastic myths...

It is time for those who desire true freedom to exert themselves -- to fight back against the forces who desire domination through fear and disunity.

This does not have to involve violence. It can be done in small, simple ways, like not financing that new Sport Utility Vehicle, cutting up all but one credit card, not opting for a second mortgage, turning off that TV sitcom for a good book, asking questions and speaking out in church or synagogue, attending school board and city council meetings, voting for the candidate who has the least money, learning about the Fully Informed Jury movement and using it when called -- in general, taking responsibility for one's own actions. Despite the omnipresent advertising for the Lotto -- legalized government gambling -- there is no free lunch. Giving up one's individual power for the hope of comfort and security has proven to lead only to tyranny.

from Rule by Secrecy by Jim Marrs

You had to take those pieces of paper with you when you went shopping, though by the time I was nine or ten most people used plastic cards. . .It seems so primitive, totemistic even, like cowry shells. I must have used that kind of money myself, a little, before everything went on the Compubank.

I guess that's how they were able to do it, in the way they did, all at once, without anyone knowing beforehand. If there had still been portable money, it would have been more difficult.

It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time.

Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control.

I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen?

That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.

. . . Things continued on in that state of suspended animation for weeks, although some things did happen. Newspapers were censored and some were closed down, for security reasons they said. The roadblocks began to appear, and Identipasses. Everyone approved of that, since it was obvious you couldn't be too careful. They said that new elections would be held, but that it would take some time to prepare for them. The thing to do, they said, was to continue on as usual.

from The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

By the time Oscar reached the outskirts of Washington, DC, The Louisiana air base had benn placed under siege.

The base's electrical power supply had long since been cut off for lack of payment. The aircraft had no fuel. The desperate federal troops were bartering stolen equipment for food and booze. Desertion was rampant. The air base commander had released a sobbing video confession and had shot himself.

Green Huey had lost patience with the long-festering scandal. He was moving in for the kill. Attacking and seizing an federal air base with his loyal state militia would have been entirely too blatant and straightforward. Instead the rogue Governor employed proxy guerrillas.

Huey had won the favor of nomad prole groups by providing them with safe havens. He allowed them to squat in Louisiana's many federally declared contamination zones. These forgotten landscapes were tainted with petrochemical effluent and hormone-warping pesticides, and were hence officially unfit for human settlement. The prole hordes had different opinions on that subject.

Proles cheerfully grouped in any locale where conventional authority had grown weak. Whenever the net-based proles were not constantly harassed by the authorities, they coalesced and grew ambitious. Though easily scattered by focused crackdowns, they regrouped as swiftly as a horde of gnats. With their reaping machines and bio-breweries, they could live off the land at the very base of the food chain. They had no stake in the established order, and they cherished a canny street-level knowledge of society's infrastructural weaknesses. They made expensive enemies. . .

Louisiana's ecologically blighted areas were ideal for proles. The disaster zones were also impromptu wildlife sanctuaries, since wild animals found chemical fouling much easier to survive than the presence of human beings. After decades of wild subtropical growth, Louisiana's toxic dumps were as impenetrable as Sherwood Forest.

from Distraction by Bruce Sterling

and s-integrator

Wednesday, August 13, 2003

More on decentralizing/empowering effect of Dean's netsavvy supporters [u]
One of the many viral colonies of the Dean campaign has mutated into something much more interesting - and potentially more virulent. Welcome to Deanspace.org, the first instance of a political movement 'aerosolizing' into the Internet.

The Dean Space crew is developing complete software suites for individuals and groups supporting Dean, built from open-source software and free for all, including technical support. This goes far beyond organizing and evangelizing. This will allow any reasonably savvy geek with a computer to form a complete Dean campaign communications center, in touch with, moving with, but not of the official Dean campaign.

9:16 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Waxman report details shrubco's distortion of science for ideological agenda [u]
The 40-page document, "Politics and Science in the Bush Administration," was compiled by the minority staff of the House Government Reform Committee's special investigations division. It marks the launch of a new effort by Waxman and others in Congress to highlight simmering anger among scientists and others who believe that President Bush -- much more than his predecessors -- has been spiking science with politics to justify conservative policies in areas such as reproductive rights, embryo research, energy policy and environmental health.

"The Administration's political interference with science has led to misleading statements by the President, inaccurate responses to Congress, altered web sites, suppressed agency reports, erroneous international communications, and the gagging of scientists," according to the report, posted yesterday at www.politicsandscience.org. "The subjects involved span a broad range, but they share a common attribute: the beneficiaries of the scientific distortions are important supporters of the President, including social conservatives and powerful industry groups."

9:07 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Shoot me now

From the redoubtable DefenseTech -- always good for a bead on how close to Terminator-world we are -- the Navy has begun auctioning off hard-to-fill assignments and Northrup Grumman is shilling a laser to arm airports against SAM missiles

2:15 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tuesday, August 12, 2003

Former Intel "chattel" wins email protest lawsuit
Hamidi, who immigrated to California from Iran in 1978, organized a group called Former and Current Employees or FACE Intel (www.faceintel.com), soon after being fired in 1995. The organization claims that Intel's demands on its employees created health problems, stress on families, and even suicide. Using a company email list that he had received from an anonymous source, Hamidi sent six emails to between 8,000 and 35,000 Intel employees, detailing what he claimed were Intel's abusive practices.

Among the practices objected to by Hamidi and FACE Intel were: forced overtime, a ranking system used to routinely winnow the ranks of employees, discrimination against older workers, and unhealthy conditions in the company's fabrication facilities.

In response, Intel first tried to block the emails, then sued Hamidi. Two lower courts ruled in favor of the company. But Hamidi, who now had been forced into bankruptcy and was struggling to support his family of four on odd jobs and disability payments, refused to abandon the case.

Said the chagrined Hamidi: "I worked extremely hard and achieved the 'American Dream'. I was proud of being privileged with my constitutionally guaranteed freedoms as an American citizen ... such as freedom of speech. I lost all of the material side of my 'American Dream' only because I stood up and fought for rights that were taken away from me by Intel."
This article is drawn from Ted Nace's new book Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy, which is available to purchase or download free on its website.

9:40 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

shrubco wants to track every piece of mail you send

8:47 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Institute of Medicine says avoid smallpox vaccine [drudge]

8:45 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

"Intoxicated, deranged, shrill & unstable"

7th Reich channel terrified of Al Franken

Funny how fascists act like neurotic divas when anyone does anything but praise them.

When Al Franken scares you, the train has already left the station.

8:38 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

8000 doctors call for national health insurance

8:28 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

You night want to think twice about buying that house on the edge of a national forest...

Good article on preventing forest fires without killing them
No one questions the value of thinning for fire control around houses and other structures. What is much harder to weigh is the balance of risks and benefits of thinning that has ecological goals. Also troubling is the fact that thinning has come to the fore at a time when neither the White House nor Congress seems inclined to take environmental protection seriously. Indeed, unless great care is exercised, thinning could degenerate into a form of irresponsible surgery that injures the very forests it is supposed to heal.
The upshot is fires are expensive to fight and prevent, money is already tight, and shrubco & their lackeys have no interest except for opening the gates to their logging buddies.

Ultimately, the fires will run free, just as they did centuries ago.

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

"Paradise is a high-maintenance neighborhood" - J G Ballard

21st century Oceania in crisis
For decades, Fiji had a thriving economy based on sugar and tourism. But much of its progress has been eroded by three armed coups since the mid-1980s. Its population of 840,000 is riven by tensions between its indigenous people and ethnic Indians, descended from laborers imported as plantation workers by British colonizers more than a century ago.

Papua New Guinea has some of the richest mineral resources on the planet. Yet tribal violence, corruption and economic mismanagement have sent it to the brink of bankruptcy.

In the lawless Solomon Islands, the government had to call in a 2,300-strong multinational peacekeeping force to re-establish order, curtail warlords and rebuild the crumbling government. Thousands have been forced from their homes during months of mayhem.

2:32 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Another POV

veiled4allah looks like the well-considered blog of a progressive American Muslim (a Kucinich supporter); she posts today about this article on "Muslims who see the world entirely in terms of believers and unbelievers and conflict between them[,] ignoring the broader perspective of their own Islamic tradition"

Also found reference to a book on Sufism in China, which contains a mystical text blending Sufism and Confucianism/Taoism/Buddhism.

And an interesting explanation of the Muslim money "banking" system, hawala ("If hawala transactions were performed according to Islamic law, they would be witnessed and recorded in writing.").

2:25 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, August 11, 2003

shrubco armtwists non-profits "that challenge the party line on such matters as health care for poor children and HIV prevention" [u]
Even though causes of the right have their own tax-exempt advocates, conservatives have long reviled nonprofits in general for "supporting the welfare state," according to Bass. He points to the major efforts to defund nonprofits and restrict their advocacy during the Reagan administration in the '80s and in Newt Gingrich's Congress in the '90s.

But those were head-on, equal opportunity offensives, going after an entire genre. Under obvious attack, "the nonprofits really rose up like a firestorm" and survived, says Bass. The selective, stealthy approach of today is "unprecedented," he says. His organization had wanted to put out the alert months ago, but piecing together the scattered developments took time. "Almost every example we have here, there's a link to the Bush administration directly, not just ideologically," says Bass.

11:21 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

"Security risk"

Veteran labor reporter denied room at hotel hosting AFL-CIO meeting for calling union undemocratic [u]

11:13 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Dan Gillmor on the Dean campaign's pioneering use of the Net [Twin Cities Babelogue]
There's still a traditional hierarchy at the center of the Dean campaign, here at his national headquarters. But the profound insight in the campaign's Net-working -- which raises huge risks along with opportunities -- is in trusting people out at the edge to become the campaign, too. The campaign tries to give them some additional online tools, but the people out at the edges are not under anyone's orders but their own.

"What's going on in Austin?" Trippi asks rhetorically. "We don't have a clue. We're just assisting."

Trippi is a self-professed techno-junkie who attended San Jose State University and has close ties to Silicon Valley and the tech industry. He's also a longtime heavyweight political operative, having worked many local, state and national political campaigns. (I first encountered him in Iowa in 1988, when I was covering U.S. Rep. Richard Gephardt's first presidential contest and Trippi was deputy campaign manager.)

Serendipity pervades the entire Internet effort. Dean's blunt style and positions have inspired a remarkable number of regular folks to get involved, frequently using emerging Internet services to self-organize. Trippi and his colleagues noticed the activity early, then encouraged and took advantage of it. Crucially, they haven't even attempted to control it.
I'm not a Dean fan, but this is an important precedent.

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

UK inquiry into validity of published scientific studies

10:03 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Cartoonists criticized (and censored) for daring to criticize the government in a country that allows you to criticize the government

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

"There is a very troubling pattern in the industry that is systemic and not aberrational"

Healthcare gangsters defraud in billions since '86

Surely the fines -- often in the hundreds of millions -- will stop it too.

Surely.

12:40 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Moribund economy liberalizing drug laws by default

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

"Intelligence doesn't necessarily mean something is true."

A list of shrubco WMD lies [xymphora]

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

The recent release of 6 Britons charged with the November 2000/Chris Rodway bombings rang a bell, and it didn't take me long to track down the Gordon Logan piece on cryptome where he blames MI6 for the bombings
In Saudi Arabia, five low-level MI6 operatives, as well as a Glasgow-born Canadian and a Belgian, are awaiting sentences for five bombings that took place in the cities of Riyadh and Khobar between November 2000 and March 2001. The first bombing was designed to make an impact on the Saudi government, and a British engineer, Chris Rodway, had an arm and a leg blown off and died of his injuries. Having made a powerful initial effect, a second bomb - which was not designed to kill - was exploded a week later. At this point the Saudi authorities arrested two of the culprits. This placed the British military attache in a difficult position, and he decided to recruit a second group of bombers, mainly in order to create the impression that those already arrested might be innocent. Three weeks later a third bomb, although small, blinded David Brown, a customer relations manager from Edinburgh, Scotland. Several curious features to these bombings were evident. The variety and sophistication of the devices used is less surprising than the fact that only the first was meant to kill someone quite untypical of terrorism in the Arab world, which is generally spectacular when it takes place, with no half measures. The combination of technical sophistication and relative ineffectiveness is very curious, as is the fact that only British citizens were targeted, although American expats are perfectly easy to find in the Kingdom.

Why then did MI6 set about blowing up Brits in Saudi Arabia? Since the role of MI6 in the bombings is an open secret in the Western diplomatic community there, and Sir Richard's [Dearlove, Director-General of SIS] patrician brutality is not approved of, it proved to be fairly easy to find out. The MI6 bombings were intended to address a problem that had arisen a month earlier...
Seems like it was something to do with convincing the Saudis to stop financing the Palestinians. It's a pretty convincing argument, but hard to corroborate, as I mentioned in January's post.

What it means that they were released now I don't know.

12:09 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, August 10, 2003

100,000 rally in France against trade liberalization talks the WTO is holding next month in Mexico

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

Forest thinning initiative is thin pretense for campaign stop, pitch to loggers

Empty PR gesture in AZ puzzles observers
Environmental groups say the Healthy Forests plan will make it easier for logging companies to cut down trees in national forests and will limit the public's input in forest management decisions.

The previous rules required environmental studies for nearly every logging project.

Now, logging projects affecting 1,000 acres or less will not need such studies if the acres are deemed at-risk for fire. Controlled burns, where fire is used to burn excess trees under certain circumstances, could be done without environmental studies for projects up to 4,500 acres.

Neither of these "categorically excluded" projects would be subject to administrative appeals, but they could be challenged in court.

Some critics also said Summerhaven was a curious place for Bush to pitch his initiative. It was lack of money, not bureaucratic hurdles, that prevented critical thinning in the area, they say. Moreover, the legal obstacles to thinning that Bush wants to remove have been almost nonexistent on Forest Service lands in the area, experts say.

[...]

"It's a nice gesture, but it doesn't affect the significance of the fire or the recovery efforts," said Donald Barton, who owned a summer home in the mountaintop community of Summerhaven for 30 years but lost it in the Aspen fire.

[...]

Edward Carlson, whose cabin burned in the fire, said Bush should have come sooner. "He wasn't around when the forest fire was raging," he said. "This is a campaign stop."

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

Afghanistan's downward spiral [u]
Playing down the security problem on a recent visit, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said provincial reconstruction teams, or PRTs -- military-civilian teams of 50-100 people deployed to rebuild infrastructure -- would play a key role in improving security. Four are working, independent of ISAF, and eight are planned.

Lt. Gen. Norbert van Heyst, the German commander of ISAF forces in Kabul, described the city as a "safe island" because of ISAF's presence, but expressed concern that militant attacks in the south and east could spill into the capital. However, he said, extending ISAF beyond Kabul was unrealistic.

"For the entire country you would need 10,000 additional troops, and nobody is willing to do that," he said, adding that PRTs were a more realistic first step. "I'm convinced that this concept can improve security."

It's a view contested by many in the humanitarian sector. Barbara Stapleton of ACBAR, the coordinating body for Afghan relief, said the military should focus on improving poor security, not duplicate the role of humanitarian agencies.

PRTs "have neither the mandate nor the resources to have a significant impact on either reconstruction or security," she said, adding that the teams eroded Afghan confidence in the neutrality of humanitarian agencies. "In a highly complex security situation, they further muddy the waters."

Stapleton said some U.S. military anti-terrorist forces had conducted crude searches in a village in southern Afghanistan, bursting into homes and offending cultural sensibilities.

"Then they went in later with sweeteners and built wells. And the people refused to use them. It's actually a crude way of dealing with a highly sophisticated and very intelligent people."

6:33 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

The military industrial taxpayer sinkhole [u]
Analysts say defense giants such as Boeing routinely spread work to subcontractors in as many congressional districts as possible to generate support on Capitol Hill. The practice is known as "political engineering."

Franklin "Chuck" Spinney, a retired Pentagon reformer who made the cover of Time magazine in 1983 after challenging the Reagan administration's huge defense buildup, has written extensively on the subject. He argues that defense contractors "paralyze decisionmakers at all levels by carpet bombing Congress with jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs."

[...]

In "Anatomy of Decline," a Pentagon briefing document, Spinney says that when it comes to procurement, the Pentagon regularly downplays future costs, exaggerates potential threats and uses accounting trickery as well as scientific studies to bolster its position.

The idea, Spinney writes, is to "overload the layman's mind with complex information having the appearance of scientific authority."

Even critics praise the strategy as smart business and note that it's perfectly legal.

"It's a very savvy strategy, no doubt about it," said senior defense investigator Eric Miller of the Project on Government Oversight in Washington. "And it works."

6:23 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

"Oh my God. He has no products!"

Queer Eye -- which I have yet to see, to be honest -- seems to be all about how fresh your brand is [u]

Perhaps the date on "queer is cool" has expired...

6:11 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

REVIEWS

from Sassafrass (9/23/02)
"Unconventional viewpoints at 'charging the canvas'

Opinions that will ruffle feathers, from someone who clearly knows their way around information and the blogosphere."

Blog of the Day
1/18/02

WEEKLY QUOTE

In the eyes of posterity it will inevitably seem that, in safeguarding our freedom, we destroyed it; that the vast clandestine apparatus we built up to probe our enemies' resources and intentions only served in the end to confuse our own purposes; that the practice of deceiving others for the good of the state led infallibly to our deceiving ourselves; and that the vast army of intelligence personnel built up to execute these purposes were soon caught up in the web of their own sick fantasies, with disastrous consequences to them and us.

-- Malcolm Muggeridge

Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

-- Mark Twain

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

CULTURE LINK

Philip K. Dick

DEEPER NEWS LINK

PR Watch

charging the canvas

The Link Section