charging the canvas

Saturday, September 14, 2002

William Brody, the newest member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board

Hey, I don't know the guy, and he's obviously made a career out of being multi-faceted, but -- what his positions as an "electrical engineer, physician, professor, university medical nistrator, and entrepreneur" have taught him about erm foreign intelligence, kind of begs the question, don't you think? He has been the President of Johns Hopkins University (one John wasn't enough apparently) since '96, and I get the feeling they're pretty tight with the Power Structure in D.C.

Then again the words "shrub" and "intelligence" seem like opposing universal principles, so why should I wonder. . .

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

A Tip o' the Blog to inblognito (or is it DiVERSiONZ?) for the link!

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

BigPharma's aggressive lobbying push in Europe to kill the "natural" competition is on the verge of paying off: Absolutely insane EU legislation threatens to take health supplements off the shelves of countries like the UK [drudge]

They're going to regulate herbal tea (and supplements period) like it's a drug!
A company making garlic capsules, for example, will have to go through many of the same regulatory hoops as a company producing a new pharmaceutical drug. Estimates for the cost of getting these herbal licences vary from �10,000 to several million pounds a product. This would almost certainly deter all but the largest companies from producing remedies such as St John's wort, kava kava, gingko biloba, red clover, rhodiola, evening primrose oil and ginger. There is no prospect of several manufacturers pooling resources to get an ingredient licensed, because each company's formulation will be treated as individual.

Furthermore, to get a licence, a specific product must have been on the market for 30 years, 15 of which must have been in Europe. The effects of that time bar are dramatic. Black cohosh, for example, an oestrogenic herb traditionally used by native Americans, has demonstrated results superior to hormone replacement therapy in the treatment of menopausal symptoms, with women who take the herb reporting fewer adverse events, even than those taking a placebo.

But black cohosh has only been available here for around five years, so, like any product introduced since 1973 - in other words, the most cutting-edge herbal products - it will become illegal. As yet unknown herbal remedies might never even see the light of day in Europe. "This is highly restrictive and racist," says Patrick Holford, founder of the Institute for Optimum Nutrition. "It could wipe out hundreds of really useful herbs, not on the basis of consumer protection or science, but on the basis of geography - herbs that have been used safely for hundreds of years in the Americas, Africa, India and China." In addition, any combination of herbal and vitamin/mineral products that natural medicine practitioners believe work better in synergy than apart, such as vitamin B6 with evening primrose oil, will be banned.
This is a great example of how the noose is tightening under the guise of "protecting the consumer" and "free trade" as well as the conglomeration and monopolization of even the most essential resources by multi-nationals.

There's a good chance the outcry will kill this legislation, but the fact that they've gotten this far is utterly sickening. If you're in the UK, here's the link to the resistance.

1:27 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Stafford Beer's books: if you're interested in Beer's books, US prices are way high ($110 each on amazon) -- even half.com's used prices are higher than ordering from the UK, which by my calculations comes to less than $35 each, including shipping

12:57 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Also check the Sep 1 entry at PR Watch on the hysterical right-wing slander against the NEA (the big teacher's union) for "embracing Islam" on their website

A bit higher on the page (which is worth checking out in its entirety, as usual), PR Watch has a link to a sharp little piece by George Hesselberg on The Current(?) Situation.
We wait and wait for the media to stop showing deference and start showing some defiance.

You want to send soldiers to Iraq? Didn't we do that already? Is it a measure of cynicism if we think that this is an attempt to take everyone's attention away from endemic regulator-ignored corporate criminality?

Or to keep people from noticing that a human-rights-stomping religious fanatic may be running the Justice Department?

Would it be a stretch to use adjectives such as mind-numbingly inept, politically bankrupt, or intellectually vacuous in describing American foreign policy, a policy seemingly cribbed from a collection of Little Golden Books?

More damning, perhaps, is the thought that it's nearly a year later and the administration is still looking not for justice, but for blood revenge, a lust fueled by intentionally vague or false information and a desire to rewrite the Constitution, in secret.

9:53 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Discussion of 9/11 censored in school classroom
The 33-year-old teacher, who is of Pakistani heritage, asked students for their thoughts on the terrorist attacks. Several children said they believed the United States had been targeted because it is a "powerful country" and some countries "don't like us." Iqbal then related a theory, which she said she heard on television, that the United States sent airplanes into the World Trade Center to provoke hatred of its enemies in the Middle East.

[...]

Prince George's school board member Judy Mickens-Murray said she was satisfied with the way Metts and Tyler handled the parents' complaints. "I talked to the principal. I support the administration," she said. "It is possible that it was taken out of context. I'm going to support the word of the principal until I'm given a reason not to."

But Howard Tutman, president of the County Council of PTAs, said that conspiracy theories about the United States government should not have been discussed with young children on the anniversary of a national tragedy.

"I would want teachers to give a balanced view, but . . . there's no evidence that the government had anything to do with those attacks," he said. "Especially with elementary school and middle school students, especially on that day, this tragedy should not have been discussed this way."
Yeah, I know, it's little kids. But this is an interesting barometer of how deep the spell is -- and how desperately any deviation from the "they're-just-evil-we-didn't-know-why-do-they-hate-us" plotline is snuffed out.

9:32 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Looks like the congressional district we share with the Navajo rez now is going to be a hot little race this fall

9:25 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Second robot attempt to penetrate south shaft of Great Pyramid, poke hole at obstruction and peek around [nando username: canvas password: canvas -- I'll post this in left column]

9:19 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

White House plays the indignant diva with Congress balking at testifying on intelligence failures -- and failures to use intelligence? [drudge]

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

Protests against Berlusconi's consolidation of power mount as the Italian bloodline plots a return after post-Mussolini exile

9:04 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

You think the screws are getting out of hand in American schools - take a look at France: [u]
Under a controversial new law intended to stamp out anti-social behavior, unruly pupils will face fines of $7,500 and a six-month stretch in a "closed educational center" for juveniles.

Should they fail to mend their ways or attempt to abscond, they will be transferred to special units attached to prisons for adults.

The same punishment may be imposed on pupils guilty of outrage--insulting behavior--towards others in the public service such as police officers and railway guards.

Despite a furious response from France's civil liberties lobby and teaching unions, the law has been widely welcomed by the public.
Pretty sick stuff. Now that the right feels vindicated by the LePen thing, France is showing it's true colors.

12:37 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

A good example of how arcane and reactionary rules/mores in government hurt US intelligence capabilities [u]
Computer security experts stress the FBI also needs to upgrade its hiring requirements if the agency really wants to attract experts. Besides the physical specimen specifications, many who are skilled enough to be able to protect a network from sophisticated attacks would probably not be ethically acceptable to the FBI.

"In order to be a good computer security person, you must think like a black-hat hacker and be able to understand the tools and methods of the dark side," Sweeny said. "Right there, you are in a very gray area, in the feds' opinion."

Job requirements for an agent also require an applicant to have a felony-free, just-say-no history.

"One question on the application asked if you'd smoked pot more than 15 times," Sweeny recalled. "Fifteen times? What's up with that? Fifteen is the magic number?"

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

How decentralized, adaptive decision-making allowed a million New Yorkers to escape the WTC disaster by boat -- and why the media didn't cover the story [u]

12:14 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Friday, September 13, 2002

Ahnenerbe
Graves of victims of Nazi genetic and occult experiments uncovered in the Ukraine

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

An unusual look inside Corpus Christi College at Cambridge -- how a 2-bit fascist despot made an already difficult tenure at a challenging school intolerable for students
Dr Kelly is a lecturer and Director of Studies in Classics. He is Australian, although he was educated in Cambridge (Trinity College, I think). Previous to becoming Director of Studies, he was Dean of College, the man responsible for discipline. Here he built up a reputation for over-the-top punishments dispensed seemingly at a whim, such as large fines for minor offences, often given to students in severe financial difficulty. He especially enjoyed exercising his authority to close the college bar, the main social focus of college, for such reasons as 'the jukebox was too loud' and 'one person got too drunk'. Yet the powers that he had as Dean of College became dissatisfactory - he craved for more...

9:20 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Stafford Beer passed in late August

Someone I should know more about; usually I followed up on people Eno mentioned were an influence on his work, but I never got around to Beer.
Professor Stafford Beer, who has died aged 75, was a remarkable figure of British operational research (OR) - the study of systems that emerged from deploying newly invented radar in the late 1930s, and has since found extensive management applications.

A charismatic, even flamboyant, character, Beer founded two major pioneering OR groups; wrote some of the best books about it; and was a world leader in the development of systems ideas. He is widely acknowledged as the founder of management cybernetics, which he defined as "the science of effective organisation".

His thinking on how decisions about complex social systems could best be made went through several phases. As an operational researcher he pioneered the idea of interdisciplinary teams to tackle problems in business, government and society. As a systems guru, he was concerned with designing appropriate feedback loops within social systems. More recently, he worked on participative methods to enable large groups to solve their own problems. What united these aspects of his work was his early and consistent commitment to a holistic approach.

8:59 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Video interview with Hunter Thompson (link at center of page, 2 parts)

It's actually a phone interview (with CBS Marketwatch?!?), with utterly pointless video of this ridiculous florida terrorist scam. But worth hearing for fans anyway.

He has a new book coming out in December, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century. I guess it's not a third volume of letters, but I can't find much on it googling right now.

6:38 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Ah, The Sunshine State: home of terrorist hoaxes and joke elections
with a shrub on top, natch

3:37 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

9 countries still laying land mines -- particularly India and Pakistan, along the Kashmiri border

So are Russia and Burma, and the US and China have refused to sign the ban treaty.

Unsurprising in the fear-mongering aftermath of 9/11, but still . . . 125 countries have ratified the treaty, which makes the ones who haven't look like neanderthals.

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

Leahy says West Nile might be bioattack [drudge]

I think this is utter bullshit.

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

Thursday, September 12, 2002

"...there is not going to be a problem here."
An excerpt from a new book on the health effects of the rush to "get back to normal" in Lower Manhattan after 9/11 -- and how they were hidden by authorities
Given the scale and unprecedented nature of the World Trade Center catastrophe, it is understandable that during the first few days after Sept. 11, everyone, including public health officials, was focused on guarding against any further attacks and on rescuing the thousands of victims buried beneath the rubble. Surely, no American city has ever confronted a calamity of this scale, nor has any nation faced the simultaneous release of such a complex array of toxic substances into a densely populated downtown area.

[...]

A survey of three residential areas near the site, conducted quietly in October by the Centers for Disease Control and the city's own health department, revealed just how widespread ... symptoms were: Nearly 50 percent of those questioned reported physical problems likely to be related to the Trade Center collapse, such as nose, throat and eye irritation, and 40 percent said they were suffering from persistent coughing. Like other disturbing information about the environment around Ground Zero, the public never heard much about this survey. The results were released quietly by the health department in a press release late one Friday afternoon in January 2002 -- three months after it had been conducted -- and received virtually no media attention.

Yet there were too many people getting sick to ignore them all. According to a February 2002 study by the Natural Resources Defense Council, at least l0,000 people in Lower Manhattan suffered immediate health problems from exposure to the air near Ground Zero. Faced with a massive public outcry and growing doubts about the environment, federal and local officials hunkered down and kept repeating the same line: Any respiratory problems were temporary, a result of smoke and dust from fires that would soon be extinguished. While such symptoms were discomforting, the officials claimed, they posed no serious short-term or long-term dangers.

[...]

"What happened here is at the level of Watergate," says Dr. Marjorie Clarke, scientist-in-residence at Lehman College in New York and an expert on dioxin and furan emissions from incinerators. "They covered up important information. It just seems to me that, from the get go, a decision had been made from some high-up government types that there is not going to be a problem here."

Federal health and safety officials were not alone in misleading the public, however. Mayor Giuliani, New York City Health Commissioner Neal Cohen and Joseph Miele of the city's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) abandoned their responsibility to safeguard the public's health and grossly neglected safety issues for thousands of rescue workers at Ground Zero.

11:55 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

12 Things to Do Now About Corporations
2. Three strikes, you're out

Why not a corporate death penalty; three criminal convictions and your corporate charter is history. The town of Wayne is one of several Pennsylvania towns that prohibit corporations with repeated violations from setting up shop. So far, the law has been used to keep out hog farms that have repeatedly broken the law.

11:41 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Researching that last document, I came upon this one, which is kind of a spooky instruction manual for the military's drafting of citizens into a "Civilian Work Force"
C. DEFINITIONS

1. DoD Civilian Work Force. U.S. citizens or foreign nationals hired directly or indirectly to work for the DoD, paid from appropriated or nonappropriated funds under permanent or temporary appointment. This includes employees filling full-time, part-time, intermittent, or on-call positions. Specifically excluded are all Government contractor employees.

Contingency and emergency planning for contractor employees is covered by DoD Directive 3020.37 (reference (h)).

2. DoD Installation. Any post, camp, station, depot, base, laboratory, or similar activity of the DoD Components that employs members of the DoD civilian work force in peacetime or will employ them in the event of mobilization.

D. POLICY

1. The DoD civilian work force shall be prepared to respond rapidly, efficiently, and effectively to meet mission requirements for all contingencies and emergencies.

[...]

3. Members of the DoD civilian work force shall remain in or deploy to areas of contingencies and emergencies to provide essential support to military operations, as required. Management has the authority to direct and assign civilian employees, either voluntarily, involuntarily or on an unexpected basis to accomplish the DoD mission under provisions of DoD Directive 1404.10 (reference (m).) [my emphasis]
Yikes.

11:34 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Another interesting document from the 90s, even older than the one mentioned yesterday, is the "Defense Planning Guidance for the years 1994-1999", which the New York Times broke the story on in spring of '92, when shrub the Elder was still in office
The document argued that the core assumption guiding U.S. foreign policy in the 21st century should be the need to establish permanent U.S. dominance over virtually all of Eurasia.

It envisioned a world in which U.S. military intervention would become "a constant fixture" of the geo-political landscape. "While the U.S. cannot become the world's 'policeman' by assuming responsibility for righting every wrong, we will retain the preeminent responsibility for addressing selectively those wrongs which threaten not only our interests, but those of our allies or friends," wrote the authors, Paul Wolfowitz and I. Lewis Libby ?- who at the time were two relatively obscure political appointees in the Pentagon's policy office.

The strategies put forward to achieve this goal included "deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role," and taking pre-emptive action against states suspected of developing weapons of mass destruction.

The draft, leaked apparently by a high-ranking source in the military, sparked an intense but fleeting uproar. At the insistence of then-National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and Secretary of State James Baker, the final DPG document was toned down beyond recognition.

But through the nineties, the two authors and their boss, then-Pentagon chief Dick Cheney, continued to wait for the right opportunity to fulfill their imperial dreams.
There's more on it here, with an emphasis on the effect on Africa.
Europe, after all, is to be "bought off" -- through programmes intended to meet the "interests" of these potential political rivals, the Pentagon proposal says. Africa and much of the rest of the developing world, on the other hand, are more likely to be "ripped off," as the new global order requires an unprecedented transfer of resources to the west, and poor nations will offer the least resistance to imperial domination.
And here's a UK Observer editorial form last April that refers to it.
The leak explained the thinking of a part of the Washington establishment with brutal clarity. If America didn't 'stabilise' - to use a verb which seems particularly inapt at the moment - the Middle East, Europe, Japan and China, which have a far greater dependence on Gulf oil, would move in and protect their interests. Although their interventions wouldn't necessarily bother America, in the long term they would grow into powers which would challenge its authority.

[...]

America's friends are potential enemies. They must be in a state of dependence and seek solutions to their problems in Washington.

[...]

The greatest worry a friend of America should have is how its insistence that it can leave no part of the world alone has created anti-Americanism not only in Muslim countries but in regions such as Latin America where bin Laden's theology means nothing. If you dream that everyone might be your enemy, one day they may become just that.

11:02 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

GM crops could be catastrophic for US farmers
But on top of all these concerns, there is an even simpler reason to oppose GM wheat, according to many farmers in the Great Plains, where Monsanto is pushing to introduce genetically modified hard red spring wheat for commercial sale.

Regardless of whether the potential negative health and environmental effects are real or imagined, much of the world is certain that it doesn't want GM foods. Very certain. And this fact could only have devastating economic implications for American farmers.

The European Union and various countries in Asia have all made it clear that they don't want any genetically modified crops, and they test incoming shipments to make sure they don't get any. Given the frequency and ease of cross-pollination, farmers say, virtually the only way for a country to ensure they are not getting any GM foods is to stop buying them from the U.S. all together.

"It's basically impossible to segregate it," said Leake, who is a member of the grassroots farmers group the Dakota Resource Council. "The general consensus is that there will be cross-pollination from neighbors' fields. And it can get contaminated not only in the field, but from the seed stock, from handling the equipment that had GM seeds in it, from mixing in the [grain] elevator."

10:30 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

"Hot" vegetables in Moscow aren't what you think
Good news for Muscovites. "There are practically no cases of radioactive watermelons this year," says Andrei Buyanov.

All right. Maybe that is practically good news. Then again, it could be worse. Some of the lingonberries here all but glow in the dark.

[...]

Buyanov displays little pleasure in his increasing haul of radioactive fruit. But it does suggest that he and his inspectors are doing their job, which is to nab edibles rich in cesium and strontium before they reach any of the city's 69 open-air produce markets.

If anyone wonders why Moscow needs a corps of atomic food inspectors, the answer is simple: The city lies a bare 665 kilometers, or 415 miles, from Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear-power station, which belched a Hiroshima bomb's worth of isotopes into the air when one of its reactors blew apart in April 1986.

[...]

Lest this sound alarmist, it should be said that grocery shopping in Moscow is a completely roentgen-free experience (with one exception [--open market produce]), thanks to the vigilance of the atomic food inspectors.

7:12 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, September 11, 2002

With the advent of the Net and capitalism, the Chinese are adopting Western lingo and a more open, casual language is spreading in a country with a historically huge case of cultural chauvinism

9:11 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

The choking fires around Moscow are being blamed on everything from an American conpiracy to careless smokers on mushroom hunts to 1812 battle re-enactments to "forest mafia" who steal lumber after setting fires

8:57 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

HP unveils ("bipolar") molecular chips
The discovery offers the hope of assembling billions or even trillions of molecular-sized switches in an area comfortably smaller than a fingernail, and at a cost far lower than today's computer chips. The advance could lead to immensely powerful and inexpensive computers capable of holding entire libraries of music and movies for the consumer, or calculating scientific problems that are now unsolvable. At the same time, the scientists said they were startled to discover their ultra-tiny switches were behaving in ways not yet completely understood. The switches exhibit swings in electrical resistance that vary by a factor of 10,000. The huge shift is useful for determining when the switches are on or off, but cannot be explained by existing theoretical physics.
Of course my first thought is forget mp3s -- you'll be able to store your whole CD and DVD collection in a iPod or whatever, at no-loss quality. The leaps in memory storage in the last 15 years are potentially a bigger deal than the printing press. Life as we knew it, (if you didn't notice) is over.

5:22 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

The governor of Nagano state in Japan defies local political/contruction business cabal, supported by voters, stops dam construction
...Nagano is also typical of the incestuous ties between local governments and the construction industry. Towns, villages, and the prefecture itself need subsidies from the central government, since they have limited tax powers. Local governments rely on a network of legislators and government officials to get their subsidies. At election time, construction workers are often the foot soldiers who get out the vote on behalf of local and national legislators. In every prefecture, including Nagano, public works are a prime source of subsidies. When times are bad, as they have been for the past decade, public works are the most reliable way to funnel central government money to the prefectures.

Mr. Koizumi has spoken out for reforming budget procedures even if it causes pain to ordinary citizens. Wasteful public works, including roads, bridges, tunnels, and dams, are ripe for cancellation and retrenchment. But for all his rhetoric during the Nagano campaign, Koizumi conspicuously failed to take a position, calling it a local affair.

[...]

If Japan is to enact serious economic reform, many more cancellations will be needed

11:09 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

"threat to world peace" Mandela rips shrub on Iraq plans

9:30 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

9/11 in context:

The Toronto Sun's Eric Margolis on "one year later"
President George Bush claimed America was attacked because the assailants "hated" democracy and America's way of life. He describes terrorism as pure evil, unrelated to any specific political events. This is nonsense. The U.S. was attacked because of its deep involvement in Mideast affairs, and total backing for Israel's iron-fisted repression of the Palestinians.
This is the reason -- providing the al-Qaeda members advertised actually did the work -- that young Muslim males could be enlisted. I think there are other reasons this happened, for which evidence the astounding restrictions on civil liberties (none of which would have stopped the alleged scenario that resulted in the WTC and Pentagon attacks), the stoking of the war machine, the obvious money/oil issues, the murky connections between the Israeli and US governments, the "crusade" subtexts and the implication of Afghanistan and Iraq in an action that was not an act of war by any nation, and that certainly was not hatched solely in those countries (and not at all in Iraq, according to most sources).
Bin Laden arrogated to himself the right to champion revenge against the United States for the bloodbath in Palestine. "There will be no peace in America," bin Laden warned, "until there is peace in Palestine." These frightening words were never widely reported in the North American media, which is filled with uninformed commentators explaining why Muslims are inherently bloodthirsty or anti-western. America's virtual military occupation of Saudi Arabia, its punishment of Iraq that caused at least 500,000 civilian deaths, and Bush's planned jihad against Iraq have enraged the entire Islamic world against the United States. There is little doubt more attacks against American targets will be coming. Such is the cost of empire.
There is also the matter of the tie-ins between the far right in Israel and the far right in the US. Read "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm", a position paper presented to Benjamin Netanyahu before his first trip to the US in '96 for the purpose of manipulating US policy. It was written by Richard Perle (now Chairman of the Defense Policy Board, an advisory group that reports to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz), Douglas Feith, (the present Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy), David Wurmser (now special assistant to State Department chief arms control negotiator John Bolton), Meyrav Wurmser (currently director of Mideast Policy at the Richard Mellon Scaife-financed Hudson Institute), James Colbert (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa) - a bastion of neo-conservative hawkery whose advisory board was previously graced by Dick Cheney, John Bolton and Douglas Feith), Charles H. Fairbanks Jr. (Director of Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies' (also given money by Scaife) Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, and an early advocate of retaliating "against the governments that supported the [9/11] attack" instead of just the terrorists) and Robert Loewenberg (Founder and President of the big Scaife recipient Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS) which funded the report). Read more about it here.
For the hawks, disorder and chaos sweeping through the region would not be an unfortunate side-effect of war with Iraq, but a sign that everything is going according to plan.

In their eyes, Iraq is just the starting point - or, as a recent presentation at the Pentagon put it, "the tactical pivot" - for re- moulding the Middle East on Israeli-American lines.
Then read how Clinton resisted these overtures and think about the notoriously Scaife-financed campaign against him.

Finally, read this timeline toward military action in Afghanistan.

Drop 9/11 in the mix.

It's all about context.

1:57 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tuesday, September 10, 2002

Ray of Hope

9:59 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Pictorial essay on Portland, Oregon Bush protests [bb]

This is by Noah Brand, Stewart Brand's son and you haven't heard much of this on the news probably. Not Cokie Roberts' "people that matter," I guess.

Note the Starship Troopers-style gear of the riot cops, the distracting macho of the "anarchists," and the casual use of pepper spray and rubber bullets.

8:07 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Cheap WiFi network in Prague bypasses BigTelco [bb]
These days, a guy on a rooftop carrying an unwieldy metallic object probably isn't interested in your chimney. More likely than not, he's trying to connect to the nascent CZfree.net network, which aims to bring broadband to residential users.

It's a quiet, grassroots rebellion in a market where everyone must pay an ISP for Internet connection, where broadband connections are fairly costly, and where dependence on the main residential connectivity provider, Czech Telecom, has been unavoidable. And if it gets government support, it could become a force to be reckoned with.

7:42 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Nice one: Kodak digital cameras shock users, recalled

9:59 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Polish SF author Stanislaw Lem's drawings [Bruce Sterling's redoubtable Schism Matrix]

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

Also from MeFi, the NYT lowdown on the WTC from it's inception on

Seems essential reading from the posts, haven't taken the time yet. One of the posts mentions how New Yorkers never really identified with the Towers as a NY landmark, which was my impression too.

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

The Blue Man Group's tribute to 9/11 [Metafilter]

Nicely done.

I was listening to Robert Fripp's "2000 II" and Kiln's "mono" when I found this, and it created an honest ID with the event, which hasn't been easy for me, because of my questioning of what and who was behind it.

It also occurred to me that in 10 or 20 years, this event will have a drastically different meaning.

Very curious malaise and unease around this week, with the anniversary and hoopla, full-bore Warspeak from shrub & co, and a deflationary depression rustling in the shadows.

1:04 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, September 09, 2002

Jim Kunstler has been blogging all along, though I thought I had spyonit and then watchit tracking his site, it was an old page I guess
September 2, 2002
For many of us, September is the real start of the new year. School is beginning (and even those of us long out of it still feel the urge to buy new pens and notebooks). From the height of summer we commence a gentle slide into winter's cold and darkness. Burned into the national imagination, though, is the ominous new sense that September brings horror and tragedy. I'm not one of those in favor of rehearsing the shock over and over and over again, but I do recognize that 9/11/01 represents a defining moment in US history -- the moment when American imperial power began a steady descent toward darkness.

What kind of darkness??

I believe that the potential for domestic strife is huge and that it will largely grow out of the economic implosion we have invited by creating an infrastructure for daily life that can't be sustained.
Good stuff.

Also check Jon Rappoport's site, which I added at the right under "NEW".

1:19 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, September 08, 2002

Could Canada be growing some balls?
Canada will not back the United States if it decides to launch a pre-emptive strike to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Deputy Prime Minister John Manley said on Sunday in an interview during CTV's "Question Period."

Manley said Canada was not willing to become involved in a U.S.-led strike on Iraq because there was not sufficient evidence that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction or of any link to al Qaeda.

4:06 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Rumsfeld's advice on The War Against The Media [u]
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for a few pointers before going before reporters yesterday at the Brookings Institution.

"You handle the press pretty well," Mr. Wolfowitz told his boss. "Is there anything I should keep in mind over at Brookings? There might be a few media types around, you know."

"Here's how you deal with the media," replied Mr. Rumsfeld. "Begin with an illogical premise and proceed perfectly logically to an illogical conclusion. After all, they do it all the time. But if you do it first, they'll be eviscerated."

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

Freedoms you've already Lost [u]
* FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION: Government may monitor religious and political institutions without suspecting criminal activity to assist terror investigation.

* FREEDOM OF INFORMATION: Government has closed once-public immigration hearings, has secretly detained hundreds of people without charges, and has encouraged bureaucrats to resist public records requests.

* FREEDOM OF SPEECH: Government may prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they tell anyone that the government subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation.

* RIGHT TO LEGAL REPRESENTATION: Government may monitor federal prison jailhouse conversations between attorneys and clients, and deny lawyers to Americans accused of crimes.

* FREEDOM FROM UNREASONABLE SEARCHES: Government may search and seize Americans' papers and effects without probable cause to assist terror investigation.

* RIGHT TO A SPEEDY AND PUBLIC TRIAL: Government may jail Americans indefinitely without a trial.

* RIGHT TO LIBERTY: Americans may be jailed without being charged or being able to confront witnesses against them.

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

"Look, we're not an alternative news medium; we're an alternative advertising medium." Sam Smith on bogus peer approval of candidates for alt.weeklies
SOME YEARS BACK, Jack Shafer, then editor of Washington's City Paper, explained alternative weeklies this way: "Look, we're not an alternative news medium; we're an alternative advertising medium." Since then the medium has - with a few striking exceptions - become even more corporately conglomerated, less interesting, and far less alternative as it aims for a market of young liberal consumeristas and would-be hip conservatwerpts. But even your editor - who has been an alternative editor longer than almost anyone in the country - was surprised to learn that there are now membership requirements to become an alternative paper and that this year the ABA of alternative journalism - the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies - admitted only one of 14 papers that applied for membership.

Why would any self-respecting, free-thinking journal seek such ratification of its independence? Well according to AAN's Richard Karpel, "They covet more elusive rewards like peer approval and critical acceptance. And for that we can thank the folks who serve on the admissions committee, because without their work those intangibles would have no meaning."

The idea that one must get approval to be properly alternative is worthy of the Bush White House. Even the more traditional corporate media avoids such arrogant judgment of its cohorts. Certainly in the days when America had a real alternative press, all you had to do was get the damn thing out to belong to Underground Press Syndicate. It worked, changing history rather than merely selling sex, entertainment, and health club memberships.

1:52 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Deeply ingrained hierarchical attitudes by doctors exacerbating nurse shortage

1:43 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Native artifacts returned to natives from Anglo museums etc. have been sprayed with pesticides and perservatives which can be toxic [u]
Federal law compels institutions to return artifacts only if they are used in religious ceremonies, leaving tribal leaders like Hostler in a conundrum: Their regalia, after being stolen by whites, contaminated in museums, and returned at great expense to the tribes, are too poisoned to use and too precious to pack away. If they bury the items, they risk contaminating the soil and poisoning their ground water; if they burn them, they risk scarring their lungs by inhaling the pollutants. In short, Hostler's initial excitement about repatriation, envisioned as a means to reopen long-lost connections with his most sacred beliefs, has been displaced by the fear that communicating with his God could wind up killing him.
Nice one. Very elegant.

1:39 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

The new TV version of The Lathe of Heaven is on A&E tonight

I loved the book and the PBS version with Bruce Davison that aired way back in the 80s and then disappeared. It was unearthed (though apparently an inferior version duped from video masters since the original had been lost) and shown again on some PBS stations (not KAEZ-Phoenix unfortunately, despite my imprecations) and released on VHS/DVD.

The reviewer at the latter link thought the new version less faithful to the book but worth seeing, which sounds about right.

Davison co-produced the new one, which stars James Caan, Lukas Haas, and Lisa Bonet and was directed by Philip Haas (no relation).

(What are the chance of 3 people on the project having "aa" in their last name?)

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

David Sterritt rave for new Godard pic In Praise of Love

11:07 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Food banks swamped
"Service-industry jobs, minimum-wage jobs just don't pay a living wage," says Rachel Bristol, executive director of the Oregon Food Bank.

As a result, many food-assistance organizations are changing how they look at their mission and the services they provide.

"We used to call it emergency food assistance, but it's not emergency any more. It's supplemental, week in and week out, month after month," says Pat Barrick of City Harvest, a leading emergency food distributor in New York.
We visited the local FB a week or so ago and picked up some stuff. We're caregiving for Susan's mom now, so things are stretched pretty thin.

This is the other thing besides the rush to war that Americans seem to be most enspelled about: the drastic increase in wage inequality in the US in the last 30 years.
MARK ERLICH, BOSTON GLOBE - In 2000, American CEOs earned 531 times more than the average worker compared with 42 times more in 1980. In fact, since the mid-1970s, the richest 1 percent of the population has captured 70 percent of all earnings growth . . . America's dirty little secret is not simply the excesses of the super-rich, but the underlying shift in economic inequality across our entire society over the last 30 years. Since 1973, average hourly earnings have actually dropped by 0.4 percent despite boosts in productivity and periods of economic boom. The majority of the work force has seen incomes stagnate or decline, and the only reason families are slightly better off is that it now takes two wage-earners to stay ahead of the previous generation's single head of household's earnings. [u, a while back]

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

CSM makes wild assertion that because US lied during Gulf War etc. it just might be lying now too
John MacArthur, publisher of Harper's Magazine and author of "Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War," says that considering the number of senior officials shared by both Bush administrations, the American public should bear in mind the lessons of Gulf War propaganda.

"These are all the same people who were running it more than 10 years ago," Mr. MacArthur says. "They'll make up just about anything ... to get their way."

10:48 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Office Depot kiosks in amazon

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

Dead peasants rise again: I linked to an article about WalMart's life insurance policy scam on it's employees back in April (link's buried in the Houston Chronicle's archive$ now), but I see boing boing just referred to it with a fresh link
Jane Sims always knew her husband was a valuable employee to Wal-Mart. She just didn't know how valuable.

Sims discovered recently that Wal-Mart, the company her husband, Douglas, worked for before he died, had taken out a life insurance policy in his name.

When Douglas Sims died in 1998 of a sudden heart attack, Wal-Mart received about $64,000. She got nothing from that policy.

"I never dreamed that they could profit from my husband's death," said Sims, whose husband worked in receiving at Wal-Mart's distribution center in Plainview for 11 years.

Companies routinely take out secret life insurance policies on the lives of their low-level employees and collect thousands of dollars when they die. The families never know the policies are in place and typically receive none of the money.

The policies are called corporate-owned life insurance policies or COLIs for short. But they're better known in the insurance industry as "dead peasant" and "dead janitor" policies. [fresh link]

The shit companies get away with.

1:35 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Mailer Interview on post-9/11 patriotism in London Times Sunday Magazine

Went to the site to track this down after Drudge's teaser, but you apparently have to register to access the paper articles. And I think you have to subscribe too -- £40/year!

But the registration link wouldn't work anyway.

If anyone has access or knows a link to this, please comment or email me.

12:20 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

A short picture gallery of Iraq under sanctions

Nothing surprising here, though it is interesting that the privations have swelled the numbers in mosques.

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

charging the canvas

The Link Section