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, December 20, 2003

In case you were confused by the righteous blathering of the judge re the 10 Commandments tablet thingie

America is not a Christian nation [u]
As you can see, from actual quotes with sources, Jefferson was not a fan of religion meddling in the affairs of government. Jefferson and his fellow Founding Fathers were heavily influenced by a European Enlightenment philosophy that also recognized the Creator as being an uninvolved Deist God and not the God of Christianity. Jefferson actually wrote he did not believe in the divinity of Jesus. You can check out his version of the New Testament, called the Jefferson Bible.

The vast majority of American law, including the rules against killing and stealing, was borrowed in whole or in part from the British common law, which itself was viewed either as rising from natural law or from custom, not from the Ten Commandments.

Thomas Jefferson specifically railed against attempts to claim that the common law incorporated the Ten Commandments when he criticized judges for "lay[ing] the yoke of their own opinions on the necks of others by declaring that [the Ten Commandments] make a part of the law of the land." John Adams also questioned the influence of the Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount on the legal system.

At the Constitutional Convention, the Framers looked to the examples of antiquity, the Greeks and the Romans and not to the Ten Commandments. They were a pragmatic lot, and they were not interested in being bound by their religious heritage, despite today's claims to the contrary. Rather, they were searching for virtually any idea, from virtually any source, that would work to create a better government than the failure produced by the Articles of Confederation.

11:56 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Ritalin may cause brain damage [u]

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

Texas teacher arrested for selling a vibrator in medieval Texas [u]

11:48 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Land of Dark Enchantment file:

You mean to tell me Congress actually believed Iraqi weapnory was an imminent threat to the US? When the range was actually a couple hundred miles? [u]

Of course the remarkably credulous American public largely swallowed it whole...

11:46 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Collaborative university networks challenge outmoded copyright hierarchical mindset [u]

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

As Saddam's face was distracting everyone last weekend, shrubco enacted at least part of the highly controversial and most likely unconstitutional PATRIOT II [Urban Survival]

1:44 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Friday, December 19, 2003

Natch

9/11 commission says no recent White House admins to blame for intel failure

Oh Noooo....

2:24 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, December 18, 2003

Group in Israel caters to "terror tourists," equip[ping] ordinary American men and women with military survival skills in the event of a terrorist attack on their homes or neighbourhoods [u]

11:51 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Voter lists on sale for anyone who wants them [u]

11:46 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Good video summary of insidious power of the unregulated Carlyle Group [cryptogon]

48 mins., starts briefly in Dutch then English.

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

White House sanitizing government sites of inconvenient quotes and uncomforatble facts [drudge]

2:14 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, December 17, 2003

A new book sends you on a trip through the rabbit hole with notorious Prankster and proto-Discordian Kerry Thornley: The Prankster and the Conspiracy: The Story of Kerry Thornley and How He Met Oswald and Inspired the Counterculture

Publisher's page with link to Robert Anton Wilson's foreward.

Quite a while back I posted a link to Thornley's testimony before the Warren commission, but my blog search isn't finding it.

Back then this site which is Kerry's own story (supposedly) was unavailable, but it seems to be up now.

10:35 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

End of capitalism as we know it file

Largest US pension fund sues NYSE & 7 trading firms for trading abuses

1:16 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

You can't make this stuff up file

2 Chinese sentenced to life in prison for organizing an orgy last September for 400 Japanese tourists apparently in celebration of the Japanese invasion of China in 1931

I never heard about this, sorry if this is old news, but I just had to post this.

What the fuck?

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

Tuesday, December 16, 2003

Iraqi reaction
Demonstrators took to the streets in almost every major city north and west of Baghdad, where support for Saddam, himself a Sunni, remains strong, and where attacks against U.S. soldiers have been fiercest. The capture of Saddam has churned up strong emotions.

Some Iraqis have expressed delight and have called for an immediate public trial. Others, even those who hated Saddam, describe their disgust at television images showing him undergoing a medical exam and at the fact that he had surrendered without having fired a shot.

And while some Iraqis lauded the Americans for finally catching him, there seemed no palpable increase in support for the American occupation of Iraq.

"We hope that the Americans will put Saddam on trial, form a free and democratic Iraqi government, then end the occupation and leave us alone," said Muhammad al-Majedy, 32, who attended a rally in Baghdad on Tuesday in support of Saddam's capture.

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

"$110,000 in illegal contributions"

Ashcroft's 2000 Senate campaign violated federal election laws
The National Voting Rights Institute yesterday charged that the $37,000 fine was inadequate, amounting to a "tax" on illegal activities.

"The Federal Election Commission's action in this case is a farce," said Bonnie Tenneriello, an attorney with the Institute. "John Ashcroft's political committees, and possibly John Ashcroft himself, engaged in serious violations of federal campaign finance law during the 2000 election. The FEC's fine is merely a slap on the wrist."

10:44 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, December 15, 2003

Remember that King of the Hill where Hank & Bobby go "hunting" where you can walk up to the animal and shoot it?

Vice Emperor Cheney slaughters dozens of fowl captive-bred for canned hunts

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

Palast on The Capture
Former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein was taken into custody yesterday at approximately 8:30pm Baghdad time. Various television executives, White House spin doctors and propaganda experts at the Pentagon are at this time wrestling with the question of whether to claim PFC Jessica Lynch seized the ex-potentate or that Saddam surrendered after close hand-to-hand combat with current Iraqi strongman Paul Bremer

10:37 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

shrubco Good Buddy SSA Marine and the plundering of Umm Qasr
In 1958, Iraqi nationalists and radicals threw out the king imposed on them by the British after World War One. Over the next five years of relative freedom and democracy, Iraq began putting together a nationalized, planned economy, based on its oil wealth. Hundreds of factories were eventually constructed, making it the most industrialized country in the Middle East. A new deepwater port was built on the Persian Gulf, Umm Qasr, which became a lynchpin in that plan. From its piers Iraq began to ship the goods from those factories to buyers in other countries throughout the region. The port became a symbol of progress and independence, an achievement of the Iraqi revolution.

Today Umm Qasr, under the US military occupation of Iraq, has become war booty. It was the first Iraqi enterprise to be turned over, not just to a private owner, but to a foreign one. Even before US troops had reached Baghdad, in Washington DC the Bush administration gave the concession for operating the port to Stevedoring Services of America, a politically-connected firm handling cargo around the world that has a long history of anti-labor policies. To Iraqis, instead of a symbol of national pride, Umm Qasr now represents the new era of foreign domination. And as a foreign corporation has taken over the operation of what once was a crown jewel of the Iraqi economy, the status of the people whose living depends on the jobs the port provides hangs in the balance.

10:34 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sam Smith on Gore/Dean
The Dean campaign has raised a serious challenge to the insider losers of the Democratic party. Whereas Clinton was selected by a small group of Washington establishment figures after scores of private meetings - at which Gore was interviewed as well - the Dean campaign is the product of what some cyber theorists call a stupid network (or what the non-technological would call a movement), one that, like the Internet, forms and reproduces itself without a strong hierarchy. There is simply no Pamela Harriman calling the shots behind the scenes as there was in the case of the Clinton selection.

The Dean campaign is also different because it may revive a sort of populist Democratic politics not seen since the Lyndon Johnson era. On Fox News, Dean asked, "Why can't we talk about jobs, health care and education which is what we all have in common, instead of allowing the Republicans to consistently divide us by talking about guns, God, gays, abortion and all this controversial social stuff that we're not going to come to an agreement on?" It is the question that the conservative copycat Democrats have been afraid to ask for years and so have driven the party into being a pale imitation of the very thing it wants to defeat.
Undernews also has a special report today on the suppressed story of negligent construction being more to blame for WTC deaths than the planes' effect.

Providing you don't believe there were explosives planted in the buildings as well, which I'm far from convinced there weren't.

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

Microbiologist studying cruise ship sicknesses killed in a hit and run [Urban Survival]

Background on series of suspicious microbiologist deaths since 9/11.

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

Sunday, December 14, 2003

Nice Zippy

12:31 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