Archive Search

ARCHIVES

03/14/04 - 03/20/04
02/29/04 - 03/06/04
02/22/04 - 02/28/04
02/15/04 - 02/21/04
02/08/04 - 02/14/04
02/01/04 - 02/07/04
01/25/04 - 01/31/04
01/18/04 - 01/24/04
01/11/04 - 01/17/04
01/04/04 - 01/10/04
12/28/03 - 01/03/04
12/21/03 - 12/27/03
12/14/03 - 12/20/03
12/07/03 - 12/13/03
11/30/03 - 12/06/03
11/23/03 - 11/29/03
11/16/03 - 11/22/03
11/09/03 - 11/15/03
11/02/03 - 11/08/03
10/26/03 - 11/01/03
10/19/03 - 10/25/03
10/12/03 - 10/18/03
10/05/03 - 10/11/03
09/28/03 - 10/04/03
09/21/03 - 09/27/03
09/14/03 - 09/20/03
09/07/03 - 09/13/03
08/31/03 - 09/06/03
08/24/03 - 08/30/03
08/17/03 - 08/23/03
08/10/03 - 08/16/03
08/03/03 - 08/09/03
07/27/03 - 08/02/03
07/20/03 - 07/26/03
07/13/03 - 07/19/03
07/06/03 - 07/12/03
06/29/03 - 07/05/03
06/22/03 - 06/28/03
06/15/03 - 06/21/03
06/08/03 - 06/14/03
06/01/03 - 06/07/03
05/25/03 - 05/31/03
05/18/03 - 05/24/03
05/11/03 - 05/17/03
05/04/03 - 05/10/03
04/27/03 - 05/03/03
04/20/03 - 04/26/03
04/13/03 - 04/19/03
04/06/03 - 04/12/03
03/30/03 - 04/05/03
03/23/03 - 03/29/03
03/16/03 - 03/22/03
03/09/03 - 03/15/03
03/02/03 - 03/08/03
02/23/03 - 03/01/03
02/16/03 - 02/22/03
02/09/03 - 02/15/03
02/02/03 - 02/08/03
01/26/03 - 02/01/03
01/19/03 - 01/25/03
01/12/03 - 01/18/03
01/05/03 - 01/11/03
12/29/02 - 01/04/03

Link to old site on blogger (with archive links)

Click "subscribe" for email notification when I publish (including text added)
Subscribe
UnSubscribe

CULTURE BLOG

all art/music/culture links (including music biz/file sharing news), fiction I'm reading and what I'm listening to and watching

planing lakes

Contact

REGISTRATION ALERT:

For New York Times access use:
Username: aflakete Password: europhilia

For LA Times access use:
Username: ridgewood Password: callow

NOW AVAILABLE AT ME-ZINE

ABBREVIATIONS FOR SITES I OFTEN STEAL NEWS ITEMS FROM:

u = Progressive Review's Undernews

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

amazon wish list

amazon.ca wish list

alibris wishlist

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

Saturday, November 01, 2003

If the FBI investigation of Philly's Mayor was politically inspired, it's backfired major

Though if the idea was exacerbating racial tensions, it went fairly well.
The investigation mobilised the mayor's base. It also cracked open a racial divide in a city that is evenly populated by African-Americans and whites.

The FBI investigation turned the race from a listless discussion of urban blight to a full-on debate about power and race. It was hard to dismiss the suggestion that Mr Street was targeted because he was the black mayor of a traditionally Democratic city.

That perception took further hold last week after the FBI admitted that months of investigating links between city contracts and campaign donors had produced no evidence of wrongdoing by Mr Street. "It couldn't have been timed better," laughs the Rev Warner McKnight, pastor at the Nazareth Baptist church. "But I think it's turning to his benefit, especially after all the evidence came out negative."

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

Friday, October 31, 2003

Urban Survival slices up and serves the shrubco horseshit about the "new booming economy"

I knew if I waited I'd find someone who'd done the work on this obvious campaign hogwash.

As he says, the stock market -- and most likely the man on the street -- aren't buying, which is a good sign.

9:58 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Military/government referrals
dhari al duleimi [OSIS]
lost civilization amazon basin 19 september 2003 [Army DOIM]
robert von goetzman [Gunter AFB]
Warren Zevon Keep me in Your Heart mp3 [navy]
lewis scooter libby bio [Los Alamos NL]
medication distributors in Bangkok [NCTC Pensacola]
Army National Guard "Army national Guard Restructuring Initiative" [Navy intel]
"secret clearance" after bankruptcy [Office Sect Defense]
dynacorp [Army Ft Campbell KY]
+"Dr. Phil" +"rape charges' [HUD]
"patrick riley" army iraq [Marine Corps]
hill [DoD]
energy weapon dew [DoD]
dyncorp investigators [State Dept]
electromagnetic gun spanish american war [Army Armament Research Development and Engineering Center]
noah's ark mt. ararat pictures [Lawrence Livermore]

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

Thursday, October 30, 2003

"I have not seen anything like it in my entire career as a solar physicist. The probability of this happening is so low that it is a statistical anomaly."

Astrophysicist John Kohl on the likelihood of 2 major CMEs being released the same week

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

CBC's the fifth estate website companion to yesterday's show on 9/11 conspiracy theories [Mike Ruppert]

7:13 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, October 29, 2003

Another solar wave released at 1149UT on Wednesday, this one X-11 - smaller than the earlier X-18, but still quite respectable

11:40 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wave from yesterday's megaflare hits

G5 (strongest on scale) storm hit this AM at 630 UT

Earth's magnetic field got hit hard, but the duration was very short because the ejection was pointing north.

Much auroral activity, as far south as New Mexico.

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

German-Czech border has become child sex slave supermarket

12:23 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

New tough regulation on chemicals in EU may not go far enough, but seems a good move toward industry responsibility

12:21 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Insider trading suits against mutual fund giant Putnam underline deeply ingrained Wall St Corruption

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

Arabs seems schizophrenic about the Iraqi bombings
Across the Arab world, opinion toward events in Iraq has taken on a kind of split personality that deepens with each new attack, particularly after gory explosions like those Monday that killed dozens of Iraqis and wounded hundreds more. On the one hand, both governments and people do not really want the U.S. to succeed, hoping Washington will suffer for its perceived arrogance for taking on Iraq alone, for its unequivocal support for Israel and not least due to a certain fear that an easy victory might translate into dispatching the U.S. military to change governments elsewhere.

On the other, many Arabs don't want the U.S. to fail either, fearing the inevitable chaos would unravel the entire region. Failure would open the door in a hugely important Arab country for the kind of war among the sects that plagued Lebanon for 15 years. More important, if it is Islamic militants who are carrying out the attacks and triumph, it could well reignite Islamic extremism.
The best path seems to be Iraqi self-control under UN auspices.

But the threads unravelled by the US invasion are unlikely to sew themselves up so neatly. A fluid and perhaps volatile realigning of interests in the world in general and endemic Arab sectarian animosity will probably ensure that.

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

Tuesday, October 28, 2003

X-17 megaflare released 1110 UT this morning

Coronal mass ejection headed directly at Earth, and it will hit anytime from tonight on. Major auroras, plus who knows what.

Only 2 flares bigger than this in the last 20 years were in April '01 and August '89.

9:47 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, October 27, 2003

Hill & Knowlton PR coach of Kuwaiti girl who testified to apocryphal story on Iraqis murdering babies during Gulf War I now hyping Jessica Lynch yarn [u]

See second post down here for more on the Kuwaiti babies story. The Asia Times link in the post still works too.

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

Secret "Geneva Accords" Israeli/Palestinian peace plan floated, first time in 3 years for this kind of cooperation [u]

This is a couple weeks old, but I haven't seen mention of it prior.
Under the proposals, drawn up after two and a half years of clandestine negotiations, the Palestinians would give up the right of return for refugees who fled or were forced out of what is now Israel in 1948. In exchange, a new Palestinian state would have sovereignty over one of the most fought-over sites in the world: the Haram al-Sharif, or Temple Mount, sacred to Jews and Muslims.

[...]

Under the plan, Israel would withdraw from almost all of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, which would become a new Palestinian state. Scores of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories would be dismantled and their occupants moved to Israel.
Not much chance of Sharon going for it, natch.

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

Shakespearean scholar and smartguy Harold Bloom trippin' on Wesley Clark [u]
"We need, at just this time, a military personage as president, one who is more in the mode of Dwight Eisenhower than of Ulysses Grant. In Wesley Clark, we have a four-star general and former NATO commander who is a diplomatic unifier, an authentic hero, wise and compassionate."

" -- the time and the person have come together in Gen. Clark. There is potential greatness in him: Realism and hope intricately fuse in his character."
OMFG.

11:17 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Mike Davis (City of Quartz, Ecology of Fear) on the Great Fire
The best preventive measure, of course, is to return to the native-Californian practice of regular, small-scale burning of old brush and chaparral. This is now textbook policy, but the suburbanization of the fire terrain makes it almost impossible to implement it on any adequate scale. Homeowners despise the temporary pollution of "controlled burns" and local officials fear the legal consequences of escaped fires.

As a result, huge plantations of old, highly flammable brush accumulate along the peripheries and in the interstices of new, sprawled-out suburbs. Since the devastating 1993 fires, tens of thousands of new homes have pushed their way into the furthest recesses of Southern California's coastal and inland fire-belts. Each new homeowner, moreover, expects heroic levels of protection from underfunded county and state fire agencies.

Fire, as a result, is politically ironic. Right now, as I watch San Diego's wealthiest new suburb, Scripps Ranch, in flames, I recall the Schwarzenegger fund-raising parties hosted there a few weeks ago. This was an epicenter of the recent recall and gilded voices roared to the skies against the oppression of an out-of-control public sector. Now Arnold's wealthy supporters are screaming for fire engines, and "big government" is the only thing standing between their $3 million homes and the ash pile.

9:38 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

FDA finally admits "possibility" of link between antidepressants and suicide in young

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

Either Edwards or Clark would beat shrubco among soldiers polled [The Ruth Group]

1:53 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Local news

Execution-style killing of vacationing couple in Bumble Bee, AZ (Pop.: 15) unnerves community

I hear Bumble Bee's name once or twice every monsoon season, as it's on a path roaming storm fronts take.

But I never knew it only had 15 residents.

We're 100 miles from Phoenix and Bumble Bee is just off the interstate halfway there. It's still in our county, Yavapai.

1:01 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

The Ruth Group

Mainstream but newsy progressive site.

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

Selected search referrals
North Carolina anti hog confinements group
unrewarding+slow+expensive civil law in pakistan
history of security during the earliest days of bartering
implants through handshakes chip
hummer psychoactive
summary of spiteful animals in africa
Market for canvas repair in Bermuda
free wireless radio control diagrams for a grown up kid
Portland Aladdin Zimbabwe October Saturday
art efect Contamination on memory
why does voting get so complicated in nigeria only
"private military companies" wildlife
totemistic hordes
cia irs nbc freemason 33
childfree whippings
true confession of older women and younger guy love affairs
bethlehem barracuda torches

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

Sunday, October 26, 2003

Cali fires merge into monster

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

Arthur Schlesinger on the constitutional crisis of the Bush Doctrine [xymphora]
Schlesinger traces the new doctrine of American global hegemony through unilateral action back to the suppressed Cheney/Wolfowitz Pentagon draft Defense Planning Guidance of 1992, the neocon/Israeli 1996 paper entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" (a document which grows more scary with each passing day, and the probable blueprint for the military future of the United States), and the 1998 PNAC open letter to President Clinton advocating an attack on Iraq. The Bush Administration intellectuals have tried to force the doctrine of U. S. global hegemony under the international law rubric of preemptive war, where it doesn't fit, and tried to claim that the Iraq attack was a legitimate preemptive war, when it was clearly an illegitimate preventative war. Bush himself, who we are coming to see as essentially a religious fruitcake, has managed to justify the neocon/Zionist nonsense under the idea that he has a mission from God to preserve the United States and rid the world of terrorism. Since he is on this mission, he is allowed to use U. S. power to assert American hegemony over the world in pursuit of what God wants him to do.

1:12 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

shrubco lied file:

Iraqi nuclear threat officially bogus

9:02 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

"We need to make Mr. Bush understand: He's not the owner of the lives of our children"

Antiwar/occupation protest in DC draws 50-100 thousand

8:58 AM - [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