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20040331
"Step 9.(b.) Air transport: Cover the wood casket with a paper casket cover and the metal with a plastic cover. Pull out all of the straps from around the casket and make sure they are straight and not twisted. Get a folded, plastic-covered flag and tape it to the cover on the head end of the casket..."
"Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments
use first to shrink-wrap people's brains and then
as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead."
--Arundhati Roy, 18 September 2002
Do they believe what they're suggesting?
"President Bush and Ms Rice said that her appearance would contravene the constitutional separation of powers. The offer has been made on condition that it would set no precedent."
What?! Man, as soon as she enters that hearing room, the precedent (for her and anyone else in the administration) will be set! This is like the posturing I'd watch first-graders pull in Seattle: "We're just playing a game right now, so we'll pretend that I'm doing this for you or that I'll treat you a certain way."
+
Another Samizdat blogger pointed out to me that separation of powers isn't even a factor. I (along with many people who've commented on this, or who are repeating the administration line) have forgotten that the 9-11 Commission was created by the the president, not Congress.
"Rice's Big Reversal"
"Just last week Condoleezza Rice told Sean Hannity that her decision not to testify in public before the committee was "not a matter of preference. It is a matter of long-standing constitutional principle." She repeated the claim two days ago on CBS 60 minutes. But her statements turned out to be false, with no basis in legal reality. Facing a political firestorm over her refusal, it is now the preference of the White House to have her testify publicly under oath -– and she will do so.
"Her appearance is "conditioned on the Bush administration receiving assurances in writing from the commission that such a step does not set a precedent." But, of course, obtaining such an assurance was always an option. Moreover, no [new] precedent will be set -- national security advisors have already appeared before Congress and the 9/11 commission is an independent committee, whose chairman was appointed by the President, not a congressional committee."
And now this from John Dean...
"I've been watching all the elements fall into place
for two possible political catastrophes, one that will
take the air out of the Bush-Cheney balloon
and the other, far more disquieting, that will
take the air out of democracy."
(quoted by Paul Krugman, NYT, 3.30.04)
Nothing is ever so black and white, of course.
A third option, a strange, mixed-bag middle path exists.
We just need to be attentive, and assert and attune
ourselves as the situation develops.
And it's definitely a developing situation,
made evident when I saw this a few minutes later:
Rice to testify in public under oath
20040330
Opposite ends of the soldiering spectrum:
Mercernaries and troops at medical risk
"Thousands of former soldiers and police officers from Britain, the US, Australia and South Africa are earning wages as high as 600 pounds a day to protect Western officials, oil company executives and construction firm bosses in Iraq."
"With the casualty toll ticking ever upward and troops stretched thin on the ground, the Bush administration is looking to mercenaries to help control Iraq. These soldiers-for-hire are veterans of some of the most repressive military forces in the world, including that of the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and South Africa's apartheid regime.
"The rate of growth in the security industry is phenomenal," said Deborah Avant, a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University in Washington. "If you had asked a year ago whether there would be 15,000 private security in Iraq, everyone would have said you're nuts."
(The author notes that because these "agents" are employed by private firms, their injuries and deaths are not subject to release. The same could be said about their deployment and tactics.)
"In February, Blackwater USA, a North Carolina-based Pentagon contractor, began hiring former combat personnel in Chile, offering them up to $4,000 a month to guard oil wells in Iraq. The company flew the first batch of 60 former commandos to a training camp in North Carolina. These recruits will eventually wind up in Iraq where they will spend six months to a year.
"We scour the ends of the earth to find professionals -- the Chilean commandos are very, very professional and they fit within the Blackwater system," Gary Jackson, the president of Blackwater USA, told the Guardian."
I read this story about worldwide US troop deployment in Sunday's Plain Dealer: "The US has more than 150,000 soldiers and Marines either on combat or other high-risk duty in the far-flung tinderboxes of Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti and the Balkans. Overall, the US military has about 2.7 million active-duty and reserve troops with more than 400,000 of them deployed in various concentrations in 135 countries...
"A wholesale rotation is under way in Iraq, with 100,000-plus U.S. troops leaving while others are rolling in to replace them. As best can be determined the U.S. force in Iraq and environs in coming weeks will total at least 120,000. Unlike the current makeup, which consists overwhelmingly of active-duty GIs, the new force will comprise about 40 percent reserve and National Guard troops."
That last sentence hit me for some reason. Perhaps it was the story I had read in the Cleveland Free Times about the controversial deaths of two Ohio Guardsmen in December. Perhaps it reminded me of the restrained emotion and tears at a farewell dinner for a 40-some-year-old King County Metro driver who was about to ship out to Iraq in November. Or maybe it was a line I read somewhere about how the influx of so many unexperienced reservists could result in higher casualties.
In any case, as I searched for the Scripps story above, I found this one in the SeaTimes: "To meet the demand for troops in Iraq, the military has been deploying some National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers who aren't fit for combat. More than a dozen members of the Guard and reserves said they were shipped off to battle with little attention paid to their medical histories...
"How many soldiers are unfit is unclear. Each soldier interviewed said he or she knew of others who -- like themselves -- were sent to Iraq despite health problems ranging from allergies requiring refrigerated medications to heart disease.
[A medical command] memo said the problem was a "KEY medical issue" and went on to say, "Frankly, we are burning out a lot of time and effort on shipping back folks who never should have come in the first place. Also runs a high risk of damaging folks."
Also: "More than two dozen suicides by U.S. troops in Iraq, and hundreds of medical evacuations for psychiatric problems, have raised concerns about the mental health of soldiers in Operation Iraqi Freedom. An Army Medical Department after-action report obtained by UPI suggests that the Army sent some soldiers to war who were mentally unfit in the first place."
There are so many other ways in which human energy and material resources can be used... and so many human needs that go unmet. This situation in Iraq will not bring more peace or happiness or democracy into the world. We have to be the agents of such change.
Iraqi journalists killed and threatened
from Al Jazeera
"On [Mar 29], a US military official said an investigation into the deaths [of two Al-Arabiya reporters] showed troops were responsible, but they had acted 'within the rules of engagement.'
US soldiers were aiming at a different car, a white Volvo that had driven through the checkpoint at high speed, the investigation said. Al-Arabiya's grey Kia car was 50 to 150 metres down the road, trying to turn when it was accidentally hit, the military said.
Al-Arabiya cameraman Ali Abd al-Aziz died on 18 March from a gunshot wound to the head. Correspondent Ali al-Khatib died from his wounds in hospital the next day. Both were Iraqis."
from Alternet
"While he was interviewing people at the scene, U.S. troops who had previously taken photographs of [Salah] Hassan at other events arrested him, took him to a police station, interrogated him and repeatedly accused the cameraman of knowing in advance about the bomb attack and of lying in wait to get footage. "I told them to review my tapes, that it was clear I had arrived thirty or forty minutes after the blast. They told me I was a liar," says Hassan.
From Baquba, Hassan says he was taken to the military base at Baghdad International Airport, held in a bathroom for two days, then flown hooded and bound to Tikrit. After two more days in another bathroom, he was loaded onto a five-truck convoy of detainees and shipped south to Abu Ghraib, a Saddam-built prison that now serves as the American military's main detention center and holds about 13,000 captives.
Once inside the sprawling prison, Hassan says, he was greeted by U.S. soldiers who sang "Happy Birthday" to him through his tight plastic hood, stripped him naked and addressed him only as "Al Jazeera," "boy" or "bitch." He was forced to stand hooded, bound and naked for eleven hours in the bitter autumn night air; when he fell, soldiers kicked his legs to get him up again. In the morning, Hassan says, he was made to wear a dirty red jumpsuit that was covered with someone else's fresh vomit, and interrogated by two Americans in civilian clothes. They made the usual accusations that Hassan and Al Jazeera were in cahoots with "terrorists."
While most Abu Ghraib prisoners are held in large barracks-like tents in open-air compounds surrounded by razor wire, Hassan says he was locked in a high-security isolation unit of tiny cells. Down the tier from him was an old woman who sobbed incessantly and a mentally deranged 13-year-old girl who would scream and shriek until the American guards released her into the hall, where she would run up and down; exhausted, she would eventually return to her cell voluntarily. Hassan says that all other prisoners in the unit, mostly men, were ordered to remain silent or risk being punished with denial of food, water and light."
from Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders has called on the US Army to open an immediate investigation into the death of Iraqi cameraman Bourhan Mohammad al-Louhaybi, who was shot in the head while working for the American ABC television network. The cameraman was killed while covering clashes between US forces and groups of armed Iraqis in Falluja, 50 kilometres west of Baghdad on 26 March.
ABC News confirmed the death of al-Louhaybi, 34, on its website. The cameraman had reportedly wanted to go on filming the clashes against the advice of some of his colleagues. Four other Iraqis were killed during the combat...
Elsewhere, the US weekly Time Magazine has confirmed the death of one of its Iraqi interpreters, Omar Hashim Kamal, who died in Baghdad on 26 March after being shot in circumstances that are still unclear."
Eight of 16 media professionals killed this (short) year lost their lives in Iraq. Most if not all were Iraqis who were documenting their country's U.S.-managed freedom/occupation. Will it be a surprise if resistance and anger toward Westerners increases, not just in Iraq, but in some of the places where the work of these reporters was distributed?
"Protesters poured out of one school bus after another, piercing an otherwise quiet, peaceful Sunday in Rove's Palisades neighborhood in Northwest D.C., chanting, "Karl, Karl, come on out! See what the DREAM Act is all about!"
Rove obliged their first request and opened his door long enough to say, "Get off my property."
...After about 30 minutes of goading by protesters in English and Spanish, Rove agreed to meet with two members of the coalition [National People's Action] on the condition that the rest of the protesters board their buses and leave his street. The group obliged.
Rove opened his garage door and allowed Palacios and Inez Killingsworth to enter. The meeting lasted two minutes and ended with Rove closing the garage door on Palacios while she was still talking. Palacios said that Rove was "very upset" and was "yelling in our faces" and that Rove told them "he hoped we were proud to make his 14-year-old and 10-year-old cry." A White House spokesman said one of the children was a neighbor.
Palacios, trembling and in tears herself, said, "He is very offended because we dared to come here. We dared to come here because he dared to ignore us. I'm sorry we disturbed his children, but our children are disturbed every day.
"He also said, 'Don't ever dare to come back,' " Palacios said. "We will, if he continues to ignore us."
Oh, for the love of...
And I do mean, The Love... as in, where is it in this dismal, dualistic interpretive fiction?
"[Dr. Tim LaHaye] came up with the idea of turning prophecy into fiction -- "turning prophecy into fiction" -- about 18 years ago, and he eventually teamed with Mr. Jenkins, a prolific and best-selling Christian author, to spin Bible verses into fast-paced, futuristic thrillers."
"Over the last nine years, the "Left Behind" series, which is based on Dr. LaHaye's literal, bloody interpretation of the Book of Revelation, has become one of the biggest surprise hits in American popular culture. The first 11 novels have sold more than 40 million copies. The authors have unseated John Grisham as the best-selling novelists for adults and, in some places where evangelical Christians are common, the books rival the Harry Potter series in sales. Along the way, the "Left Behind" books have drawn sharp criticism for elements like their emphasis on the conversion of Jews and their focus on the brutal rule of the Antichrist, who happens to head the United Nations...
"Some theologians call the novels a dangerous distortion of Scripture. In an interview, Joseph C. Hough Jr., president of Union Theological Seminary in New York, warned that the novels' preoccupation with the suffering that many evangelical Christians foresee for unbelievers "leads people to think that Christianity is about cosmic fire insurance."
Dr. Hough argues that the novels misconstrue Revelation to mean that there are only two sides to every question, God's and the Devil's.
"It's the same sort of vision of the world that is reflected in some of our recent presidential administrations, that there is the world of good and the world of evil, like `the axis of evil' and `the evil empire,' " he said. "The enemies of America are the enemies of God. It is very dangerous, because it leads you to do things in the expectation that everyone who is against you is evil."
Indeed. A few minutes after I linked to this story, via MeFi, I linked to another about violent abuse of African children who've been accused of being evil witches:
"The scale and viciousness of the attacks on so-called criancas feiticeiras, or child witches, (in Angola) confounds even hardened human-rights workers in the war-haunted country, and some said the abuse is one of the most disturbing outbreaks of domestic violence seen in Africa in recent years.
"In Uige, a sleepy hill town near the Congo border, children's advocates said that a teenager accused of sorcery was set ablaze by a mob that included his own relatives. Another boy was buried alive, beneath the corpse of a man he allegedly hexed, rights workers said. The luckier children are merely banished from their homes. They roam the streets like pariah dogs, surviving hand-to-mouth off food scraps from the markets.
"Why Angolans are turning with such horrific ferocity against their young, especially at this relatively benign point in their wounded history, is a question few experts can answer with certainty. Some blamed the recent proliferation of fire-and-brimstone evangelical churches in Angola, whose apocalyptic vision of the universe -- and profit from exorcisms -- meshes nicely with an epidemic of witchcraft. Others cited the spread of particularly noxious beliefs in magic from neighboring Congo, where the phenomenon of child sorcerers also is taking root in an atmosphere of economic and political lawlessness.
"The final ingredients in Angola's sad and baffling epidemic of child persecution are the men who profit from it, men like Papa Matumona. Sporting immaculate white pants and a colorful shirt stenciled repeatedly with the face of Marilyn Monroe, the most powerful kimbandero, or faith healer, in Uige runs an evangelical treatment center for child witches. Others call it a torture chamber. Matumona, 51, denied this.
"I cure with love," he said, clutching a Bible at his Provincial Center for Traditional Psychiatry, located in a war-ruined former pastry factory.
Matumona said his services were free but later admitted that he put his stream of young patients to work in his vegetable gardens to pay off their treatment fees -- a commercialization of suffering that makes witchcraft one of the few profitable ventures in postwar Angola aside from oil."
-+-
Now let me be clear about something. I am not a Christian, but I am neither anti-Christian nor anti-church. I recognize and support modes of thought and faith and communion that provide people with solace, strength and a sense of vibrancy and blessing. I DO NOT have a high regard for fundamentalist, literalist philosophies and the oppressive, narrow and, in some cases, violent behaviors that they promote. That has little to do with religion and Spirit, in my opinion, and a whole lot do with fear, control and ambitions toward dominion.
To bring harm, hardship, anxiety and death to your enemies -- who are in fact your human + natural relations -- in the name of a deity, or with a notion of divine guidance + supremacy, is an act of utmost ignorance and an affront to all of that which is our true nature and purpose.
Exhibit C: Actors Whip Easter Bunny at Church Show
20040329
Who owns the rights to this man's struggle?
Yesterday afternoon I clicked over to Amberglow and noticed a mixed-up, tiled version of the painting, Molotov, above. That blog's author mentioned legal action that PepsiCo had brought against the painter, one Joy Garnett, after her "Riot" series was shown at a NYC gallery.
Scores of freedom-minded, art-savvy, anti-corporate bloggivists have since risen in (virtual) solidarity with Ms. Garnett, posting either the same image or variations thereof (this is my favorite) in order to assert artists' rights. This collective action has been called JoyWar.
I was excited by all of this, and I decided that I too would take up the fight against Pepsi and its heavy-handed intellectual-property bullying. But that would have to wait until after I bought a couple of birdfeeders and tidied up the back patio.
So... those tasks completed, I sat down to stick to it The Cola Man. Only to find out that Pepsi was not the litigant at odds with Ms. Garnett. It is, in fact, the photographer whose image Garnett had downloaded and used as the source for her painting (typical for the content of "Riot"). I discovered this little wrinkle in the Molotov story after -- say it ain't so! -- taking the time to read the backstory. One particular comment on another blog -- in regard to attribution that Garnett didn't give to this unnamed, world-famous female Magnum photographer -- left me wondering "So who is it?"
Susan Meiselas. Very attentive readers of nmazca.blog will recall the bit that I posted about her book, Carnival Strippers, back in October. Meiselas' photo of a Sandinista fighter was made during her coverage of the armed struggle against the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua... which later turned into a struggle against the Reagan-sanctioned, CIA-backed Contras.
"This is obviously not a case of an artist protecting [her] speech rights but of one artist using [her] copyrights as a way to censor another artist." Is that so? I would say not, and I'm fairly liberal with access and use of my own images. The major factor is attribution, if not permission. It can't be assumed that a grainy photo from a not-so-long ago war is in the public domain. Is it sufficient to make a general statement about the use of others' images, make comments about reinterpretation and altered contexts, and then present the work for sale (again, without credit given to the original creator)? Garnett uses found images, also, and it would be too much to expect attribution with those. But this other bit is tricky, and I wouldn't be so hasty to dismiss Meiselas' assertion... although her bit about never showing the painting again, come on.
I'm concerned about originality on one hand, and freedom to adapt on the other.
Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to burn a copy of The Grey Album.
"Terrorists don't need states."
"Afghanistan housed Al Qaeda, and thus it was crucial to attack the country. But that was less a case of a state's sponsoring a terror group and more one of a terror group's sponsoring a state. Consider the situation today. Al Qaeda has lost its base in Afghanistan, two thirds of its leaders have been captured or killed, its funds are being frozen. And yet terror attacks mount from Indonesia to Casablanca to Spain. "These attacks are not being directed by Al Qaeda. They are being inspired by it," the official told me. "I'm not even sure it makes sense to speak of Al Qaeda because it conveys the image of a single, if decentralized, group. In fact, these are all different, local groups that have in common only ideology and enemies."
"This is the new face of terror: dozens of local groups across the world connected by a global ideology. Next week [Fareed Zakaria] will explain how best to tackle this threat. But first we need to see it for what it is."
from MeFi
20040328
Immaculate Conception, 2001
I think that I saw this painting last May at The Gallery of The Senses (1402 E. Pike in Seattle), but somehow I forgot about the image until I saw it again 15 minutes ago.
Let me back away from Intelligate for awhile
a-STOUND-ing watercolor and pen work by Rio Nanami
There is N33N to be seen, as well.
"In the heart of the Amazon rainforest, Pablo Amaringo, a former vegetalista (Amazonian shaman) discovered painting as a way of expressing his visionary experiences while using the fabled plant medicine, ayahuasca. Inspired by the brew, he developed techniques to teach painting to others, especially children, and established the Usko-Ayar school.
Usko-Ayar (Usko in Quechua means 'spiritual' and Ayar means 'prince') was set up in the summer of 1988 with some financial aid from the Finnish Government when Pablo Amaringo decided to transform his home into a painting school. Here, several dozen young people and children receive instruction on painting, drawing, speaking English and an appreciation of the rich botanical diversity of the jungle."
Citizen Kubrick: Jon Ronson was invited to the Kubrick estate and let loose among the fabled archive
"Somewhere else in this house," Tony says, "is a cabinet full of 25,000 library cards, three inches by five inches. If you want to know what Napoleon, or Josephine, or anyone within Napoleon's inner circle was doing on the afternoon of July 23 17-whatever, you go to that card and it'll tell you."
"Who made up the cards?" I ask.
"Stanley," says Tony. "With some assistants."
"How long did it take?" I ask.
"Years," says Tony. "The late 1960s."
Kubrick never made his film about Napoleon. During the years it took him to compile this research, a Rod Steiger movie called Waterloo was written, produced and released. It was a box-office failure, so MGM abandoned Napoleon and Kubrick made A Clockwork Orange instead.
"Did you do this kind of massive research for all the movies?" I ask Tony.
"More or less," he says.
"OK," I say. "I understand how you might do this for Napoleon, but what about, say, The Shining?"
"Somewhere here," says Tony, "is just about every ghost book ever written, and there'll be a box containing photographs of the exteriors of maybe every mountain hotel in the world."
T.O.U.C.H. Samadhi trance music from Asheville NC
...and some jazz trance from Poland
...plus all sorts of new music from Stellar Regions
which reminds me of the official John Coltrane site that I just found out about.
Farm Security Administration + Office of War Information photos, 1935-45
Marion Post Wolcott, who had worked as an FSA photographer
...and a decent list of contemporary and historic photographers, just for perusal
And then there was the apple that I ate this morning. Contemplating its texture and recursive speckling, I thought of how we need to treat the things of the Earth well... because they will treat us (sustain us, nourish us) in a similar fashion.
20040327
Mindy Kleinberg, who lost her husband in the attacks, poured scorn on the idea that terrorists who hijacked the four planes that day just got lucky.
"The 9/11 terrorists were not lucky just once. They were lucky over and over and over again," she said, outlining the many warnings ignored and procedures not followed. She said that had the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the State Department "followed the law, at least 15 of the hijackers would have been denied visas and would not have been in the United States on September 11th, 2001."
"Bush put on a slide show, calling it the 'White House Election-Year Album' at the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association 60th annual dinner, showing himself and his staff in some decidedly unflattering poses. (Related video: Bush gets humorous)
There was Bush looking under furniture in a fruitless, frustrating search. 'Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere ... nope, no weapons over there ... maybe under here?" he said."
As of yesterday, 607 US troops had died in this "fruitless, frustrating search."
And how is it that the government sends soldiers into harm's way, and those soldiers have to buy their own body armor?
20040326
from the wires
"NASHUA, N.H. (Reuters) - President Bush insisted on Thursday he had no advance warning of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and challenged the assertions of Richard Clarke, who accused him of not placing a high enough priority on pursuing al Qaeda prior to the tragedy."
from Salon
"'President Bush said they had no specific information about Sept. 11, and that's accurate,' says [Sibel] Edmonds. 'But there was specific information about use of airplanes, that an attack was on the way two or three months beforehand and that several people were already in the country by May of 2001. They should've alerted the people to the threat we're facing.'
"Edmonds testified before 9/11 commission staffers in February for more than three hours, providing detailed information about FBI investigations, documents and dates. This week Edmonds attended the commission hearings and plans to return in April when FBI Director Robert Mueller is scheduled to testify. 'I'm hoping the commission asks him real questions -- like, in April 2001, did an FBI field office receive legitimate information indicating the use of airplanes for an attack on major cities? And is it true that through an FBI informant, who'd been used [by the Bureau] for 10 years, did you get information about specific terrorist plans and specific cells in this country? He couldn't say no,' she insists."
Read more here
Also:
"Documentation of Plans to Crash Airplanes Into Buildings that Bush and Condi Claim They Knew Nothing About"
"Report Warned Of Suicide Hijackings"
"Pre-Sept. 11 Reports Warned of Major Threat"
"We do not know the process by which bin Laden and his lieutenants decided to hijack planes with the idea of flying them into buildings in the United States, but the idea of hijacking planes for suicide attacks had long been current in jihadist circles."
Federal sanctions on ideas, formulas and creativity
There's little reason to think those who make these laws will want to stop here. So we have to stop them. And then work toward the meaningful exchange that we need to have with the rest of the world.
"Under a policy the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control developed over a year ago, publishers and others who edit manuscripts from nations under U.S. trade embargoes -- including, at the moment, Iran, Libya, Sudan and Cuba -- may face criminal penalties, including fines of up to $500,000 and 10 years in prison, unless they are working under special licenses from the government.
As word about the new rule spreads to academic institutions, reactions vary from dismay to outrage. Some are baffled, too, because it's not as though there's big money to be made from the publication here of works rooted in Islamic culture -- and if there were, as UMass-Amherst Islamic studies professor Mohammed Jiyad pointed out, the rule would be relatively easy for a publisher to get around by having the editing done in Europe. As it is, many older books of the type that could not be edited here now under Treasury's regulations were produced in Britain, which gives Britain an edge on the Islamic studies market in publishing.
It's also hard to see how the rule makes the nation safer. As David Johnston, a lecturer in Islamic studies at Yale, put it, "What does this have to do with the national security?"
And in a democratic society, Johnson added, a rule like this is "a contradiction in terms."
"It's a very troubling development for the spread of ideas," he said. "Unless we can demonstrate that democracy is a lifestyle of sharing and cultural exchange, we're going to lose the battle for people's minds."
"The U.S.'s reputation as a center of culture and higher education is based to a large degree on the eagerness of talented people from around the world to participate in our society," said Elias. "As we make it more difficult for good graduate students in the sciences to come to our universities ... and foreign scholars to publish in our magazines and journals, they will turn elsewhere.
"There is proof they are doing this already," Elias added. "Countries such as Canada and Germany have actively increased their attempts to court scholars and students who would previously have gone to the U.S."
The rule seems likely to set off a guerrilla war among freelance writers and editors of small journals. Stefania Heim and Jennifer Kronovet, the editors of Circumference, a poetry journal based in New York, have just announced that they will devote a "substantial portion" of their summer issue to translations from the countries on the Treasury Department's list.
Dan Mahoney is a poet and a guest lecturer in the English department at UMass. On a trip to Cuba five years ago, he picked up a small book of poems typed on paper towels by an author forced to keep a low profile under the Castro regime. Mahoney and a co-translator have translated 50 of the poems and are looking to publish them here complete with a preface, which would almost certainly be considered an editorial enhancement under Treasury Department's rule.
But if a publisher was willing to bring out the work, Mahoney said, he would defy the government.
"I would do it," he said. "I would make the book as presentable and as accessible to the bookbuying public as possible. If that included illustrating or adding a preface -- which one would have to do -- I would take the risk, if for no other reason than to call attention to the great disservice this rule does to a supposedly free and open democracy."
What's all this then?
"For days now, the job at Eisenhower Park in Nassau County has been to follow the order from the White House through the Secret Service and down to the park workers:
"The president's feet are not to touch the dirt."
blatantly copied from Dr. Menlo
A good overview of the 9/11 Commission proceedings is available at the News Dissector blog.
And from that site came this story about the families who pushed for the commission's creation... and their thoughts on its investigation.
20040325
Julie Sirrs' story: An example of what happened before Sept. 11
"'The Northern Alliance was a significant force that was engaged on the ground against Al Qaeda–sponsored fighters,' Mrs. Sirrs learned. 'But it was discounted by the U.S. policy-making establishment. The Taliban’s brutal regime was being kept in power significantly by bin Laden’s money, plus the narcotics trade, while the resistance was surviving on a shoestring. With even a little aid to the Afghan resistance, we could have pushed the Taliban out of power. But there was great reluctance by the State Department and the C.I.A. to undertake that.'
Unocal, a California-based company, had been courting the Taliban to build a massive pipeline system across Afghanistan that would connect the vast oil and natural-gas reserves of Turkmenistan to ports in Pakistan. The American energy giant partnered with a Saudi company, Delta Oil Co. Ltd., and promised the Taliban that it could expect up to $100 million in transit fees from the proposed $4.5 billion project.
"'[Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Alliance commander who was killed on Sept. 8, 2001] told me he had proof that Unocal had provided money that helped the Taliban take Kabul,' Ms. Sirrs said. Among Afghans, this was popularly believed. It didn’t take much imagination: State Department officials openly promoted the pipeline, and Unocal brazenly hired former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as consultant. He would later be President Bush’s first choice to head the supposedly independent 9/11 commission.
"All fired up after two weeks in the country, Ms. Sirrs couldn’t wait to get back to her job to share her new maps, photographs and interviews, and to give briefings on Afghanistan. But when she arrived at Reagan National Airport, an agent from the security office of the D.I.A. demanded that she hand over all of her films and tapes. When she tried to go into her office the next day, a Saturday, to type up her notes, she was barred from the building and had her badge confiscated.
"'She had gotten the proper clearances to go, and she came back with valuable information,' said a senior colleague who spoke with me on the condition of anonymity, 'but her trip had caused a serious row involving several government agencies. The undersecretary of state and the C.I.A. had been exchanging high-level messages. They were so intent on getting rid of her, the last thing they wanted to pay attention to was any information she had. Everybody was quick to turn on her.'
"'To be treated like I had done something wrong when I thought I was just doing my job was pretty shocking,' she recalls in a voice by now drained of emotion. 'The D.I.A. gave me a list of charges, including going against the wishes of my husband. The charges tried to make me look like Mata Hari, having a crush on the Afghan resistance fighters -- it was extremely insulting. They were playing like the Taliban.'
"Ms. Sirrs said she believed that her information was discounted because it was damaging to the Taliban. 'The State Department didn’t want to have anything to do with Afghan resistance, or even, politically, to reveal that there was any viable option to the Taliban,' she said.
"At the operational level of the C.I.A., there were agents who argued that they needed operatives down around the campfire with Massoud’s men. But higher-level officials, both at the C.I.A. and the State Department, were vehemently opposed.
"The senior colleague verified that the State Department was furious that Ms. Sirrs had showed up as a private citizen with her own entrée to Massoud and the resistance forces.
'The State Department called the director of D.I.A., repeatedly, demanding her "execution,"' the colleague said, echoing the agency parlance for firing.
"A month after her return, Julie Sirrs’ security clearance was revoked. Even after hiring a lawyer and struggling for a year to regain her security status within the agency, Ms. Sirrs remained out in the cold. She left the D.I.A. in the fall of 1999.
"After she left the agency, Julie Sirrs continued to follow the Afghan resistance movement. She made two more trips to the country, in 1999 and shortly after the terrorist bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in October 2000. Still, the C.I.A. wasn’t interviewing the Northern Alliance’s Al Qaeda prisoners.
"Ms. Sirrs tried to drive home the idea that not only was Mr. bin Laden building a terrorist network in Afghanistan, but also that Dr. al-Zawahiri was there, along with Saudi militants and other groups. 'All of these people we really needed to be worried about were right there in Afghanistan, being given safe haven by the Taliban,' she said.
"Ms. Sirrs is only faintly encouraged by the efforts of the independent commission looking into the failures that led up to 9/11.
"'I don’t get the sense they’re really interested in getting to the heart of the policy problems,' she said.
"Like many other early-warners and whistleblowers, Ms. Sirrs would [have liked] to testify before the commission. She [sent] her biography and written reports to the commission’s investigators. She [never] heard back." (Sheehy, NYO, 3.15.2004)
Julie Sirrs' story: An example of what happened before Sept. 11
mr damon 19:01
Sibel Edmonds' story: An example of what happened after Sept. 11
So... I read the following paragraph on MetaFilter several hours ago*:
"FBI translator Sibel Edmonds was offered a substantial raise and a full-time job in order to not go public that she had been asked by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to retranslate and adjust the translations of [terrorist] subject intercepts that had been received before September 11, 2001, by the FBI and CIA.
"'My translations of the pre-9-11 intercepts included [terrorist] money laundering, detailed and date-specific information enough to alert the American people, and other issues dating back to 1999, which I won't go into right now.' [[3.26 - Edmonds goes into it a bit more with Salon]]
"Edmonds said, 'The Senate Judiciary Committee and the 9-11 Commission have heard me testify for lengthy periods of time time about very specific plots, dates, airplanes used as weapons, and specific individuals and activities.'
"'I appeared once on CBS 60 Minutes (10.27.02), but I have been silenced by [Attorney General John] Ashcroft, the FBI follows me, and I was threatened with jail in 2002 if I went public.'
"'Ashcroft told me he was invoking state secret privilege and national security when I told the FBI I wanted to go public with what I had translated from the pre 9-11 intercepts.'
[When asked] where the term "state secret privilege" was derived, Edmonds was reported to have said: "The term came from an October 18, 2002, DOJ memo to me from DOJ spokesman Barbara Comstock."
The last 'graph reads: "9-11 family member Kristen Breitweiser arranged to have Ms. Edmonds address the gathered media right after the Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, testified."
Breitweiser is one of the Four Moms from New Jersey, a group of widows whose husbands died in the World Trade Center. Their lobbying and research helped to bring the 9-11 Commission into being, so that fundamental (and lingering) questions about security and intelligence before Sept. 11 could be answered. Their story has been told quite well by Gail Sheehy for The New York Observer (see below). Sheehy published a story about Sibel Edmonds on January 26.
But I've gotten ahead of myself. The first information I read after Flocco came from The Memory Hole: "FBI Employee Blows Whistle on Suspicious Activities by Coworker." This resource includes a chronological series of articles and correspondence about Edmonds' case.
First, there is a link to a June 19, 2002, article from The Washington Post. Edmonds and a South Asia intelligence manager for the FBI, John Cole, were featured because of their whistleblowing charges against the Bureau. Edmonds' allegations concerned another FBI translator, Jan Dickerson, who -- by Dickerson's own admission, Edmonds has said -- had ties with a Turkish group that the FBI had under surveillance. Cole had spoken out against what he called "poor management" and "what he believed was a security lapse regarding the screening and hiring of translators."
Edmonds also asserted (in interviews with the Post, Observer and CBS) that she was instructed to delay her translation work, despite calls for urgency from field agents, so that her division could use the backlog as a way to request more funding and staff from Congress. "We were told by our supervisors that this was the great opportunity for asking for increased budget and asking for more translators."
Edmonds is fluent in Turkish, Farsi and Azerbaijani, according to Sheehy's article. She was responsible for translating emails, documents and real-time wiretaps for the 9-11 investigation. It was Edmonds' interaction with and observation of Dickerson, detailed in the Observer, that initially prompted her to make reports to her superiors:
"Ms. Edmonds discovered that Ms. Dickerson had managed to get hold of translations meant for Ms. Edmonds, forge her signature, and render the communications useless.
"'These were documents directly related to a 9/11 investigation and suspects, and they had been sent to field agents in at least two cities.' By accident, Ms. Edmonds discovered the breach -- up to 400 pages of translations marked 'not pertinent' -- and insisted that those classified translations be sent back so she could retranslate them.
"'We discovered some amazing stuff,' she remembered.
"The first half-dozen translations were transcripts from an F.B.I. wiretap targeting a Turkish intelligence officer working out of the Turkish embassy in Washington, D.C. A staff-member of the Judiciary committee later confirmed to [Sheehy] that the intelligence officer was the target of the wiretap Ms. Dickerson had mistranslated, signing Ms. Edmonds’ name to the printouts. Ms. Edmonds said she found them to reveal that the officer had spies working for him inside the U.S. State Department and at the Pentagon -- but that information would not have reached field agents unless Ms. Edmonds had retranslated them. She only got through about 100 more pages before she was fired [on March 22, 2002].
"'I didn’t go out and blow the whistle,' Ms. Edmonds said. She said she first reported these breaches both verbally and in writing to a supervisor, who assured her that the F.B.I. had done a background check on Ms. Dickerson, and the matter was put to an end.
"Her further inquiries to counterintelligence agents raised a small alarm. Ms. Edmonds was told that Ms. Dickerson hadn’t disclosed any links to the Turkish organization in her employment application. But nothing happened. Ms. Edmonds, despairing to another superior in the counterintelligence squad, remembers the agent saying: 'I’ll bet you’ve never worked in government before. We do things differently. We don’t name names, and we usually sweep the dirt under the carpet.'
"She said another special agent warned: 'If you insist on this investigation, I’ll make sure in no time it will turn around and become an investigation about you.'" (Sheehy, NYO, 1.26.2004)
From the same article: "Shortly after her dismissal, F.B.I. agents turned up at the door of Ms. Edmonds’ townhouse to seize her home computer. She was then called in to be polygraphed -- a test which, she found out later, she passed. A few months after her dismissal, accompanied by her lawyer on a sunny morning in May 2002, Ms. Edmonds took her story to the Senate Judiciary Committee. As her high heels glanced off the marble steps of Congress, she sensed two men ascending right behind her. Turning, she recognized the agent walk, the Ray-Bans, the outline of a weapon, and the deadest giveaway of all -- a cell phone pointed straight at her, transmitting.
"'They weren’t secretive about it, they wanted me to know they’re there,' she said. After being shadowed in plain sight many more times, she said with dark humor, 'I call them my escorts.'
"After her meeting, Senator Chuck Grassley, the Republican vice-chair of the Judiciary Committee to whom Ms. Edmonds appealed, had his investigators check her out. Then they, along with staffers for Senator Patrick Leahy, called for a joint briefing in the summer of 2002. The F.B.I. sent a unit chief from the language division and an internal security official. 'None of the F.B.I. officials’ answers washed, and they could tell we didn’t believe them,' Sheehy quoted a participant from that meeting.
"'I think the F.B.I. is ignoring a very major internal security breach,' Sen. Grassley said [to Sheehy], 'and a potential espionage breach.'"
"Unlike those whistleblowers whose cause is redress of personal grievances, Ms. Edmonds impressed Grassley as passionately patriotic.
"'The basic problem is, heads don’t roll,' Sen. Grassley said. 'The culture of the F.B.I. is to worry about their own public relations. If you’re going to change that culture, somebody’s got to get fired.' He is not optimistic, however, that Congress will act aggressively. 'Nobody wants to take on the F.B.I.'"
[Sens. Grassley and Leahy addressed a letter to AG Ashcroft on August 13, 2002, requesting follow-up and transparency in regard to Edmonds' statements. See excerpt below.**]
Edmonds filed a complaint with the Justice Department, the Attorney General, the FBI and its director, Robert Mueller, on July 22, 2002. Sheehy reported: "(Edmonds) was told then that an investigation would be undertaken and she could expect a report by the fall of 2002. Twenty-one months later, she is still waiting. She also filed a First Amendment case against the Department of Justice and the F.B.I., and a Freedom of Information case against the F.B.I. for release of documents pertaining to her work for the Bureau, to confirm her allegations. The F.B.I. refused her FOIA request. Their stated reason was the pending investigation by Justice, which, her sources in the Senate tell her, will probably be held up until after the November election.
"When Ms. Edmonds wouldn’t go away or keep still, F.B.I. Director Mueller asked Attorney General John Ashcroft to assert the State Secrets Privilege in the case of Ms. Edmonds v. Department of Justice. Mr. Ashcroft obliged [on October 18, 2002].
"The State Secrets Privilege is the neutron bomb of legal tactics. In the rare cases where the government invokes it to withhold evidence or to block discovery in the name of national security, it can effectively terminate the case. According to a 1982 Appeals Court ruling. "Once the court is satisfied that the information poses a reasonable danger to secrets of state, even the most compelling necessity cannot overcome the claim of privilege."
Move ahead to 2003. Edmonds saw the article about The Four Moms and contacted them, with the hope that they might take her story before the 9-11 Commission. Sheehy wrote that Edmonds' attempts to contact commission chair Tom Kean "had gone unanswered for a year." The widows brought this matter to the attention of commission members, and the staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee, but with little success. Sheehy reported that they met with Director Mueller and brought up Edmonds' case:
"Mueller said he had handed it over to the Inspector General’s office. Pressed, he said, 'I can’t investigate myself.' Yes, but, the Moms nudged, had he looked into problems in the translation department? Mueller appeared to brush off the matter as anything but important.
"'Then, I don’t understand why you asked that State Secrets Privilege be asserted here?' [Mindy] Kleinberg piped up. 'If her case was that important, why isn’t it important enough to deserve a report?'
"For the first time, the director did not look cordial. So Breitweiser switched back to an earlier subject -- his cooperation with a Senate hearing on the translation issue. 'So, Director Mueller, I just want to get you on the record,' said Breitweiser. 'If the Senate asks you to testify, we have your word you’ll go?'
"The square-jawed chief spook smiled at the girls’ grasp of strategy. 'You have my word,' they all remember his saying, 'if Senator Hatch invites me to testify, absolutely I will be there.'"
So... the 9-11 commission's public hearing on law enforcement and intelligence is in three weeks. I don't know if a list of witnesses has been decided upon, but Mueller (and certainly Ashcroft, even if they need to wheel him in) needs to testify. If you've read this and felt there are substantive questions that still need to be answered, then please contact your representatives and the commission itself.
If you've read this and still have doubts, then read about former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst Julie Sirrs (the link's below; an excerpt is in the posting above).
"Four 9/11 Moms Battle Bush," Aug. 25, 2003
"Whistleblower Coming In Cold From the F.B.I.," Jan. 26, 2004
"Bob Kerrey Says 9/11 Group Meets With Condoleezza," Feb. 9, 2004
"Ex-Spook Sirrs: Early Osama Call Got Her Ejected," Mar. 15, 2004
"Four 9/11 Moms Watch Rumsfeld And Grumble," Mar. 24, 2004
"We should have had an orange or red-type of alert in June or July of 2001," Mar. 26, 2004
* Unfortunately, I haven't seen anything else (yet) that backs up Flocco's lead-in about the FBI offering Edmonds a raise or a job to keep her quiet. Edmonds' comments on Wednesday were reported in one other story I can find -- all the way at the bottom:
"A former FBI translator said Wednesday that the bureau had 'real, specific' information relating to the Sept. 11 attacks before they happened. Sibel Edmonds worked for the agency working from Sept. 20, 2001 to March 2002.
"Edmonds said she was hired to retranslate material that was collected prior to Sept. 11 to determine if anything was missed in the translations that related to the plot. In her review, Edmonds said the documents clearly showed that the Sept. 11 hijackers were in the country and plotting to use airplanes as missiles. The documents also included information relating to their financial activities. Edmonds said she could not comment in detail because she has been under a Justice Department gag order since October 2002.
"Edmonds has testified before the Sept. 11 commission, the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Select Intelligence Committee."
** "Ms. Edmonds has made a number of serious allegations, some of which the FBI verified were not unfounded during an unclassified briefing for Judiciary Committee staff on June 17 [2002]. First, Ms. Edmonds has alleged that a contract monitor in her unit chose not to translate important, intelligence-related information, instead limiting her translation to unimportant and innocuous information. The FBI has verified that this monitor indeed failed to translate certain material properly, but has attributed the failure to a lack of training as opposed to a malicious act.
"That conclusion is directly related to Ms. Edmonds' second allegation. Ms. Edmonds alleged that the same contract monitor once worked for an organization associated with a counter-intelligence investigation and that the monitor had contacts with a foreign national who was a member of the target institution. Additionally, Ms. Edmonds states that some of the mistranslated recordings on which the monitor actually worked contained conversations by this same person with whom the monitor had such contacts and concerned matters pertinent to the investigation.
"Even after verifying some of these allegations, the FBI downplayed the importance of this matter and seemed to imply that it had ceased looking into the complaints as a security matter until after the Inspector General finished their investigation. Anyone who remembers the long-time treachery of former FBI Supervisor Robert Hanssen, would be concerned at this reaction. For years, Hanssen's bizarre actions were also written off as minor security breaches and unworthy of serious consideration. If even routine diligence had been exercised earlier, Hanssen could have been stopped from doing untold damage. The FBI needs to learn from its mistakes." (Sen. Patrick Leahy, writing with Sen. Charles Grassley, to Attorney General Ashcroft on August 13, 2002)
Sibel Edmonds' story: An example of what happened after Sept. 11
mr damon 18:58
Age of Empire
"Empire or not, there is a growing sense around the world that America's unrivalled power is in some sense a problem."
The logical conclusion
Oregon county bans all marriages
from Blogdex
Rain, rain, go away
Half the system's swung our way
At the moment, I am sitting beneath an homogeneous layer of clouds near Lake Erie. So it seems unlikely, at the moment, that I will be able to see tonight's close conjuntion of Venus and the waxing moon. Fortunately, because this evening's pairing is but one stage of a prolonged interplanetary dance, I think that I will soon be able to take in another view of the inner-system planets, the moon, Jupiter and Saturn.
I did have the fortune to see the moon and Mercury descend toward the western horizon on Monday. I thought it was a bit unlikely that the bright object in the rush-hour haze was, indeed, Mercury -- it's often a hard object to locate, even when it's well-placed. However, a check of an online chart confirmed that I had seen the innermost planet.
Venus was halfway between zenith and horizon, shining with an almost piercing light. I took in a few views of the sister planet when I was under the clear skies of New Mexico a few weeks ago. What surprised me was that, as bright as Venus has been for several weeks, the planet is only half-lit. A view through a telescope revealed an almost gibbous aspect. The planet's roiling, cloudy atmosphere is the source of its reflectivity -- so bright that some have been able to see the planet during the daylight.
Mars -- a story and setting all its own -- is situated a few finger-widths above Venus, between the Pleiades and the horns of Taurus. The planet has definitely receded since its close approach during the summer, but if you look for a steady orange glow to the left of the Pleiades' upside-down question mark, then you'll have found it.
(Another tip for differentiating planets from stars is that planets don't blink)
Saturn is best sought out after twilight because it is situated near the feet of the symbolic twins in Gemini. That constellation's star are fairly bright and in parallel; the main stars Castor and Pollux represent the twin's heads; Saturn is at the opposite end of the "body."
Lastly, Jupiter can be seen toward the east, almost opposite from Venus. It is currently situated below the sphinxlike pose of Leo. The planet is the second-brightest object after Venus. Very powerful binoculars or a small telescope are necessary to resolve Jupiter's four largest moons, which shift around -- and sometimes cast shadows on -- the largest planet each night.
And now that I've reached the end of this update, I notice that the clouds have thinned and some blue is visible through the grey. The interplanetary show will go on, and perhaps I'll be able to see it after all.
"Mr Jaglom, whose partner John Goldstone produced 'The Life of Brian,' said trailers for the comedy would start to appear in cinemas on Good Friday."
"By invading Iraq, President Bush has greatly undermined the war on terrorism."
Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism advisor for Lil' Bush, 30 seconds ago during his testimony before the 9-11 Commission
Actionable intelligence
"Not only did we not know what we didn't know, the FBI didn't know what it did know."
Former national security advisor Sandy Berger, 30 seconds ago during the 9-11 Commission hearings.
20040324
Selections from four pages of queries that led to nmazca.com:
al queda vs. taoism
angelic robot
calendula/ calm (these were back-to-back)
cliff notes on isabel allende's of love and shadows
devon/ dharma
(a novel set in chicago that simply needs an author. brandon?)
dreampool
easter prayers for soldiers in iraq/afghanistan
energy painting
entelechy
everlasting happiness psychology
farm robot
infinity or infinite deep or dark or glowing or mind
[oh lord, i'm going to love this site]
mandala make
messages written on bombs
moon clouds
night new mexico
pleiades pictures ancient
sacred geometry neon genesis evangelion end
sakura view/ samadhi
space negro
stained glass/ starlight
video wingspan pentagon fractal
where is shakyamuni
who made the speech generally referred to as 'i have a dream'
why doesn't all the planets crash into the sun
wounded knee/ wtc
"People, people, we are the same"
No, we're not the same
'cause we don't know the game
Muslim Women and Social Change in Egypt
...which I found just minutes after reading...
Italian school bans Muslim woman
"...school authorities feared her headscarf
might scare children..."
Clandestine contingencies
I found this odd story about a shadow government that was devised by Eisenhower on the Space.com website.
The interviewee is Frank Stanton, former president of CBS, who Ike asked to head the FCC in case the Soviets (who'd just launched Sputnik) wiped out the capital. Fear was a major commodity in the 50s (how things have changed, eh?). Of course, the governments of both countries were trying their hardest to outstack and threaten each other with atomic weapons (the most absurd and fearsome folly of them all), so perhaps anything was possible in their minds.
Anyhow, the article continues:
"Besides Stanton, the appointees included George Baker, a Harvard Business School professor who was tapped to oversee transportation; Harold Boeschenstein, president of Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp., in charge of manufacturing and production; Aksel Nielsen, president of the Title Guaranty Co., housing; J. Ed Warren, senior vice president of the First National City Bank of New York, energy; and Theodore Koop, vice president of CBS, to oversee an emergency censorship agency. Koop would have had 40 civilian staff members to monitor and control wartime information about the devastation.
The selections were based as much on the appointees' geographic location and personal relationships with Eisenhower as their expertise. Nielsen, for example, was Eisenhower's regular fishing buddy.
'The people Eisenhower chose, while they were his friends, they were also the captains of industry of his day. People like Bill Gates today,' said Bill Geerhart, editor of a Web site called CONELRAD. That was the name of nation's first emergency broadcasting system, established by President Truman."
And of course I thought: What's with the notion that a CEO ought to know how (or should be the first one to approach) to determine policy? Are we lowly rabble supposed to be dazzled and awed by the stature of the Big Man in the suit? And is it a given that anyone who runs a business can guide a nation? I mean, good lord, look at the situation that Bob McNamara got himself into, as he told it in The Fog of War.
Or is it simply just about having a figurehead to run the board meeting of state? Let's go to the last 'graph:
"During the Reagan administration, then-Rep. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who was chief executive of the pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle & Co., were key players in a secret program to set aside the legal lines of succession and install a new president in a catastrophe, The Atlantic Monthly reported this month."
Ah yes. These are just plans to hold onto The Power, to maintain Control, however you and your fishing buddies can.
20040323
Liberated...
...of her family, a leg and her home.
With the tears drying on my face, I can say that I'm glad that this girl is alive.
When I and others saw this photo last year, we assumed she was dead.
But I cry because that's so much pain and loss to have been visited on someone so young. Was it worth it? Well, remember my fellow Americans, your money helped to pay for the bombs.
In what other ways could the energy, resources and intelligence of this country have been used? There are always alternatives to violence. Deferring to the language and methods of domination and fear will only result in more scenes like this... and not just with dark-skinned people in distant lands.
I just remembered another image I saw earlier today, while making the collage below:
I read a brief story about Rachel Corrie's death just before I left to attend a peace rally in Seattle last year. A gentleman affiliated with the group she belonged to handed me the flyer reproduced here. Several months later, I went to an art show + performance at the Capitol Hill Arts Center, and I noticed a large portrait of a woman (the same as the one at left, above) surrounded by candles and flowers. It wasn't until later that I read the literature on the table and learned that the photo was of Rachel. I was jarred.
I hadn't seen the photo of her broken body until today. Accompanying assertions about her "real role," or "what really happened," in Rafah -- along with all of the photos of bloodied and mangled corpses of Israelis and Palestinians, and Jews in the death camps -- had me feeling more incensed and sad about what happened today, and what people will decide to do from tomorrow onward.
We need to stop.
Dehumanization and assassination won't solve problems
“Because dehumanization is a distortion of being more fully human, sooner or later being less human leads the oppressed to struggle against those who made them so. In order for this struggle to have meaning, the oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity, become in turn oppressors...”
Paulo Freire in "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"
20040322
"Mel Gibson looks... to make a film about the story behind the festival of Hanukkah. 'The Maccabees' family stood up and made war,' said Gibson, speaking on a US chat show last week.'They stuck by their guns and they came out winning. It's like a Western.'"
And speaking of shekels,
which I had to find out how to spell...
"Who is 50 Shekel?"
20040321
La langue
100 Most Often Mispronounced Words
"Barbiturate?" Really? OK then.
But card shark will always be better than "cardsharp."
___
Hark ye! The age of the metrosexual flexitarian is upon us!
both from Blogdex
"Last month, [NYPD detectives] went to Boston to either (choose your own word here) observe, attend or spy on a group of political demonstrators. The NYPD was apparently concerned the group might demonstrate at the Republican National Convention here in August and September.
But as seems to be their modus operandi under Intelligence head David Cohen [ex-CIA], the detectives did not inform the local authorities of their plans. Because of this, the Intel detectives were unaware that the meeting was being monitored by the Massachusetts State Police, who were concerned the group might demonstrate at the Democratic National Convention in Boston in July.
When the detectives arrived in a car with New York license plates, the state police became suspicious. After the meeting, they followed the NYPD detectives' car, eventually stopping it for speeding."
from Cryptome
Now, what's obvious in all of this is that if they spent their time looking at known terrorists instead of American citizens who have organized to redress the policies that _encourage_ the terrorists... or if they just tailed Dick Cheney for a couple of days... then they'd probably stop crimes.
20040320
Yeah, I'm not tryin' to hear it. I waited all day (and night)
to try the balanced-egg-on-the-equinox thing.
I pulled one out of the carton and had it in place at 1:47 a.m.
Duly recorded the feat with the digicam. And then I thought,
"Why stop with one?"
Perhaps the doubters might say, "Well, you can still do that
on any day," but I wasn't interested in proving or disproving
a theory or probability. This was a little ritual, an observation
of the magic that comes with spring, and that's enough for me...
"That was all it took for the people of Spain to become impatient, to pressure their government for the truth. When they did not get it, they threw that government out on its ear. For America, a nation approaching the 1,000th day in which their government has not provided the truth of September 11th, this is a lesson to be taken deeply to heart."
20040319
Obviously, Gen. Garner didn't garner much support with this view.
"My preference was to put the Iraqis in charge as soon as we can, and do it with some form of elections ... I just thought it was necessary to rapidly get the Iraqis in charge of their destiny."
"Though the profile of the religious militant is gradually changing (a number of al-Qaeda operatives, for example, are educated and middle class), the stereotype of the average suicide bomber is still frequently that of a lonely, poor, unemployed youth with no real prospects who feels that he or she is at the end of their tether, and who finds comfort only at the local mosque. There, the youth is then spotted by, say, Hamas "recruiters" and promised a more rewarding afterlife. The level of interest in youths sacrificing themselves for their "cause," however, has reached such unparalleled levels in recent years that, as the author explains, "Hamas no longer needs to recruit suicide bombers; they are swamped with volunteers requiring little indoctrination." By sacrificing themselves as martyrs, their impoverished families also stand to benefit both financially and socially as the religious militant groups with which their children are affiliated offer financial assistance and promote the respective family as honored members of the community.
Inside the US, Stern focuses on the hard-core pro-life Christian groups who kill abortion doctors and destroy abortion clinics in their efforts to "save the babies." With their beliefs firmly grounded in the Bible, these militants justify their violence with claims that they are destroying those who murder unborn children. As part of her research, the author met with two of the movement's leaders, Michael Bray and Paul Hill. Hill, a former minister currently serving a sentence in prison, claims that "the abortionist's knife is cutting edge of Satan's current attack on the world," and that all unborn children must be saved. Though vehemently religious, the anti-abortionists seem to feel no remorse or guilt for their own attempts to kill. Again, as is the case with most religious militants, they excuse their actions as payback for the evil that is being promoted by evil-mongers (in this case, abortion doctors and clinics) and has to be stopped. Violence, often frowned upon by most religious doctrines, becomes, oddly enough, the most important tool with which militants can convey their views in a manner that requires serious attention."
from AlterNet
Terror in the name of God (Killing to purify. It's all wrong.)
mr damon 00:20
Man, none of you so-called Americans aware.
"Do I dare: Speak my mind, teach the blind,
Lead you to the truth that you seek to find?
Like who's behind all the madness: The drama, the bombers;
Runnin' game, tryin' to blame the common Islamists.
Worldwide homicide -- All them fools tied together.
'Conspiracy theory.' Y'all ain't tryin' to hear me."
"A controversial new book that casts a critical eye on the three-decade-old relationship between the Bush and Saud families, "House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties," by Craig Unger, has been dropped by its British publisher just weeks before it was scheduled to arrive in stores. Making its decision in the shadow of the aggressive use of the British legal system and its plaintiff-friendly libel laws by wealthy Saudis, the publisher has backed down from issuing the book.
"'We've had to withdraw it for legal reasons,' says an editor at Secker & Warburg, a U.K. division of Random House. 'We expected we would be able to publish it with a degree of risk. But regrettably in the final analysis we decided we could not.'"
20040318
Two comments
"Politics is the shadow cast on society by big business" John Dewey
"Politics is the art of controlling one's environment" Hunter Thompson
Hussein's imminent threat to the U.S.? "Folklore."
?
"The American declaration of a 'war against terror' in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks played into Bin Laden's strategic goal of creating a pan-Islamic empire harking back to a medieval caliphate. The war in Iraq has presented a new opportunity for a battered al-Qaida to swell its depleted ranks with new recruits and new offshoot organisations. In many Muslim minds it has aggravated the already festering sore of the Israel-Palestine conflict with its bloody television images of funerals and Israeli tanks confronting stone-throwing youths. And now the Madrid bombings have given al-Qaida its biggest political coup to date - the power to swing an election in Europe. That could well alter the course of events in Iraq and the Middle East -- something Bin Laden has long desired."
?
mr damon 03:18
20040317
"The crisis is not out there. The crisis is in here, and we are unwilling to face it."
"...We are responsible for this colossal chaos in the world, we are responsible for the disorder, for the war that [was going at the time] in Vietnam... As human beings living in this world in different countries and societies, we are actually responsible for everything that is going on. I don't think we realize how serious this responsibility is. Some of us may feel it and so we want to do something, join a particular group, or a particular sect or belief, and devote all our lives to that ideology, that particular action. But that does not solve the problem nor absolve our particular responsibility. So we must be concerned first with understanding what the problem is, not what to do; that will come later.
Most of us want to do something, we want to commit ourselves to a particular course of action, and unfortunately that leads to more chaos, more confusion, more brutality. We must, I think, look at the problem as a whole, not at a particular part of that problem, not at a segment or a fragment of it, but at the whole problem of living, which includes going to the office, the family, sex, conflict, ambition and the understanding of what death is; and also if there is something called God, or truth, or whatever name one might give it. We must understand the totality of this problem. This is going to be our difficulty, because we are so used to acting and reacting to a given problem and not to seeing that all human problems are interrelated.
So it seems that to bring about a complete psychological revolution is far more important than an economic or social revolution... because the problems are much deeper, much more profound than merely becoming an activist, or joining a particular group, or withdrawing into a monastery to meditate, learning zen or yoga...
You know, wherever one goes in the world, human beings are more or less the same. Their manners, behavior and outward pattern of action may differ, but psychologically, inwardly, their problems are the same. People throughout the world are confused, that is the first thing one observes. Uncertain, insecure, people are groping, searching, asking, looking for a way out of this chaos... We want to find a way out of this trap in which we are caught, without realizing that we, as human beings, have made this trap -- it is of our own making and nobody else's. The society in which we live is the result of our psychological state. The society is ourselves, the world is ourselves, the world is not different from us. What we are we have made the world because we are confused, we are ambitious, we are greedy, seeking power, position, prestige. We are aggressive, brutal, competitive, and we build a society that is equally competitive, brutal and violent. It seems to me that our responsibility is to understand ourselves first, because we are the world.
You Are The World: An Authentic Report of Talks and Discussions in American Universities, Jiddu Krishnamurti, 1972, pp. 29-31
"Our deepest needs -- for truth, sincerity, love -- are in fundamental collision with the logic of business. We cannot be genuinely sincere, honest, loving and have maximised profits as our ultimate priority! There's no room for compromise here -- profits must come first -- as Noam Chomsky points out: 'The chairman of the board may sincerely believe that his every waking moment is dedicated to serving human needs. Were he to act on these delusions, instead of pursuing profit and market share, he would no longer be chairman of the board.' (Necessary Illusions -- Thought Control in Democratic Societies, Pluto Press, 1991, p.19)
My sense that society somehow manages to subordinate life and truth to some allegedly 'higher' goal -- an idea that initially concerned me as a personal problem -- was revealed as an overwhelmingly political problem during the 1980s when I began learning about the gathering environmental storm. It was astonishing to me that clear, rational warnings of approaching environmental collapse were not being reflected in the media and wider culture.
Again, just as everyone took it for granted that happiness was rooted in conformist production and consumption -- even though almost no-one seemed to achieve happiness that way -- so business was presented as a progressive force for good, even though the natural world could clearly not, as a matter of logic, withstand its endless foot-to-the-floor economic growth...
Joseph Campbell argued that when individuals subordinate what they truly are to what society says they are supposed to be -- in the name of king, country, power, profit, and so on -- their world becomes a "wasteland." What was so important about Campbell's argument was that he was referring to both the inner and outer worlds. First, there is the inner wasteland:
'The profession of views that are not one's own and the living of life according to such views -- no matter what the resultant sense of social participation, fulfilment, or even euphoria may be -- eventuates inevitably in self-loss and falsification... "Out there" we are not ourselves, but at best what we are expected to be, and at worst what we have got to be.' (Creative Mythology, Penguin, 1968, p.86)
Mythology also teaches that when enough hearts are reduced to this barren desert of "dry stones" -- when enough of us subordinate the life and truth inside us to some purportedly higher goal -- the world around us is also reduced to a wasteland. Karl Marx pointed out that capital, ultimately, is a dead thing. And so a society that serves dead capital, rather than life, generates a kind of deadness in both the hearts of its citizens and in the world around it.
To serve greed is to serve the forces that destroy life. To serve the unrestrained, limitless greed of corporate capitalism is to serve limitless death and destruction. The servants of profit commuting to work in their black suits with their dead hearts are creating the conditions for death in the world around us. It is only because we are willing to suffocate the life in ourselves that the great engines of greed can transform the environment around us into a wasteland.
It is only because a million of us have dead hearts that a million Iraqi civilians can be killed by our sanctions in the name of oil. It is why death squads can be returned by U.S. Marines to the streets of Haiti without anyone batting an eye. It is why one-quarter of all living animals and plants will be committed to extinction by 2050. It is why corporate journalism pours the death of lies and deception into the world.
Campbell insisted that the antidote to the personal and political wasteland lies in rejecting what we are supposed to do and be, and instead discovering what it is we really love to do and be, because this is where we are truly alive...
In our society, we are presented with essentially two alternatives when it comes to living our lives: we are told we can pursue personal happiness by attempting to satisfy our needs and wants. On the other hand -- and this is called the 'moral' alternative -- we can, to a greater or lesser extent, sacrifice some of our self-interest in attempting to help other people. The choice, we are told, lies essentially between selfish happiness and moral self-sacrifice. Unsurprisingly, not many people choose the latter.
What is so astonishing to me is that this set of choices excludes a vitally important third possibility. Despite its importance, and despite the fact that it lies at the very heart of some of the most sophisticated systems of thought in all human culture, it is almost completely unknown to our society. This is the assertion: 'When your attitude is transformed so that you do everything for others, to pacify their suffering and obtain their happiness, there is real satisfaction and peace in your heart.' (The Door to Satisfaction, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Wisdom Books, 1994, p.111)
It seems to me that many of our problems, both personal and political, are firmly rooted in an almost religious faith in the power of greedy self-concern to deliver happiness -- the harder we try, the more we succeed, the happier we believe we will become. Because this is exactly wrong, and because our corporate system depends on our believing that the fault lies in us and not in the strategy we are pursuing, we respond by pushing ever harder. And so we work longer, consume more, accumulate more, seek out ever more extreme 'highs', with consequences that are devastating to us all.
As a teenager I wondered about basic principles of human happiness. I now believe there is a clear answer to the problem of human happiness and freedom -- it lies in exchanging concern for our own happiness with concern for the happiness of others.
This is no simple matter. Our selfishness is deeply, stubbornly, spectacularly entrenched. If the attempt begins, it begins in critical thought, in questioning, in tentative experiments. But even in making these flawed, stumbling, all-too-human attempts, I believe we begin to serve life and to rein in the forces of greed, hatred and ignorance that are killing our world.
The problems facing us as individuals and as a society are so complex, so bewildering. But perhaps, finally, the solution to all of them is astonishingly simple: 'On this depends my liberation: to assist others - nothing else.' (Path Of Heroes, Zhechen Gyaltsab, 1995)"
-- David Edwards in the March 11 Media Lens Cogitation
20040316
The invasion of Iraq was carried out in order to assert dominion and control... and it was promoted with purposeful omissions and lies.
"War is generally crafted and pursued for political reasons, but the reasons given to the Congress and to the American people for this one were inaccurate and so misleading as to be false. Moreover, they were false by design. Certainly, the neoconservatives never bothered to sell the rest of the country on the real reasons for occupation of Iraq -- more bases from which to flex U.S. muscle with Syria and Iran, and better positioning for the inevitable fall of the regional ruling sheikdoms. Maintaining OPEC on a dollar track and not a euro [I knew I had read that last year -- DT] and fulfilling a half-baked imperial vision also played a role. These more accurate reasons for invading and occupying could have been argued on their merits -- an angry and aggressive U.S. population might indeed have supported the war and occupation for those reasons. But Americans didn't get the chance for an honest debate.
"President Bush has now appointed a commission to look at American intelligence capabilities and will report after the election. It will 'examine intelligence on weapons of mass destruction and related 21st century threats ... [and] compare what the Iraq Survey Group learns with the information we had prior...' The commission, aside from being modeled on failed rubber stamp commissions of the past and consisting entirely of those selected by the executive branch, specifically excludes an examination of the role of the Office of Special Plans and other executive advisory bodies. If the president or vice president were seriously interested in 'getting the truth,' they might consider asking for evidence on how intelligence was politicized, misused and manipulated, and whether information from the intelligence community was distorted in order to sway Congress and public opinion in a narrowly conceived neoconservative push for war. Bush says he wants the truth, but it is clear he is no more interested in it today than he was two years ago...
"Now we are told by our president and neoconservative mouthpieces that our sons and daughters, husbands and wives are in Iraq fighting for freedom, for liberty, for justice and American values. This cost is not borne by the children of Wolfowitz, Perle, Rumsfeld and Cheney. Bush's daughters do not pay this price. We are told that intelligence has failed America, and that President Bush is determined to get to the bottom of it. Yet not a single neoconservative appointee has lost his job, and no high official of principle in the administration has formally resigned because of this ill-planned and ill-conceived war and poorly implemented occupation of Iraq.
"Will Americans hold U.S. policymakers accountable? Will we return to our roots as a republic, constrained and deliberate, respectful of others? My experience in the Pentagon leading up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq tells me, as Ben Franklin warned, we may have already failed. But if Americans at home are willing to fight -- tenaciously and courageously -- to preserve our republic, we might be able to keep it."
-- Retired. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, in an article called "The New Pentagon Papers"
(full text here and here)
"With reasonable guidelines and adequate funding, {the timetable for adjustment outlined by No Child Left Behind} might have been a prudent course of education reform. But as the first sanctions are just now begininng to kick in, people across the country are belatedly discovering that NCLB is being structured and implemented as a punitive assault on public education, designed to throw the system into turmoil and open the door to privatization."
Well, it's time to slap on sanctions and then invade in order to promote freedom, right?
Oh, yes, I got a bit overexcited and forgot that the United States only attacks countries that can't possibly resist.
Meanwhile, pre-election mind-pimping is underway in the U.S.
What's all this then?
NASA Schedules News Briefing About Unusual Solar Object
Ah, here we go...
Sky & Telescope News Briefs: March 15, 2004 | Today three astronomers from Caltech and Yale announced their discovery of the most distant solar-system object ever found [to date]. It's presently about 13 billion kilometers (8 billion miles) from the Sun, roughly three times farther away than Neptune or Pluto and twice that of any known Kuiper Belt object.
"Designated 2003 VB12 — and provisionally named Sedna by the discovery team — the body was spotted last November using the 48-inch Oschin Schmidt telescope on Palomar Mountain in California. Subsequent observations (including a peek by the Spitzer Space Telescope) suggest that this object is no more than 1,700 km across, about two-thirds the size of Pluto. That makes it too small to consider a 10th planet. [Yeah, well, many say Pluto isn't the ninth. When I visited the Rose Center for Earth and Space last year, Pluto wasn't included in a number of diagrams and models]
"Sedna is fascinating nonetheless for its unusual, highly elongated orbit, which averages some 500 astronomical units (75 billion km) from the Sun and takes roughly 11,000 years to complete. It's too far away to be considered a member of the distant Kuiper Belt, notes team leader Michael E. Brown (Caltech), and it's unlikely to have started out in that orbit. Conceivably, he says, 2003 VB12 may occupy the innermost fringe of the Oort Cloud, a vast reservoir of icy objects stretching out to perhaps 1 to 2 trillion km from the Sun."
Astronomers discover 'new planet'... though I'll mention that no researchers have claimed Sedna has that status. What's the metric, anyway?
Distant object could be 'tenth planet.' OK, let's call it a planet and have a party.
20040314
There were 911 days between the terror attacks in the United States and Spain.
"I've always thought the same about terrorism -- in Madrid as much as anywhere else in the world. And that is that it's meaningless. When you use force to make a point, there will be a backlash against you, and that will be either as big or bigger than the problem was to begin with."
"The scientists, who will remain on display (at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC) until Sunday [tomorrow?], certainly make for an arresting exhibit in a museum best known for its dioramas of carefully taxidermied animals.
Working in front of a 16-by-9-foot backdrop of the spectacular new Hubble image and surrounded by racks of computers, the scientists frantically input data, crunch numbers, gaze into the distance and ponder their theories, while occasionally bursting into brief displays of classic alpha male behavior as they vigorously debate their interpretations of the data with each other."
20040313
"The economic 'law of comparative advantage' does indeed prove that trade benefits both parties to an exchange. But the economists don't tell you about the 'law of factor-price equalization' which says, just as definitively, that foreign trade and investment will force American wages down and raise Mexican, Indian and Chinese wages up until they are all equal. And profits will go up as wages and jobs go down.
Since 2000, U.S. manufacturing lost 2.8 million jobs or 15 percent of the total. Total U.S. employment dropped by 1.7 million jobs. America is losing jobs, and they are not coming back with the recovery. The loss of jobs to outsourcing is now receiving the full media treatment but only because it is new and is likely to affect the next election...
Our jobless recovery brought all this to our attention, but it also hid some of the trends. The unemployment rate of 5.6 percent is seen as acceptable. [White House Council of Economics Advisers] Chairman Mankiw would say that it is close to the 'natural rate.' But a realistic number should include the discouraged workers who have dropped out and the part-timers who would like to be full-time. The numbers for both of these groups have soared in this recession. Their inclusion pushes the real unemployment rate to more than 11 percent."
from Outsourced America
Early one morning in the autumn of 1999, I ambled over to the parking lot at the Salem Mall
I had risen before the sun, and when I looked through the window I saw that the whole sky was veiled by thin, pale fuchsia clouds. Behind the cloud layer, I was able to see a last-quarter moon floating in the brightening blue. I left the apartment in order to photograph the clouds as they shifted from red to gold to yellow. When the sun rose, I wanted to take a few minutes to check out the sunspots on its surface.
I had been standing in the empty lot with my equipment -- a Canon and a gargantuan 400mm lens on a tripod, a 3.5-inch telescope and various filters -- for about half an hour when a pickup rolled up to my right. Mall security, no doubt curious about this person taking photos at 6:30 a.m. I just kept my eye on the viewfinder and waited for that sometimes curious, sometimes suspicious question: "What're you doin'?/What're you lookin' at?"
Instead, the driver asked "Hey, can you see into the future with that?"
"No, only the past." That threw him off until I explained the eight minute commute that light has to make from the sun to Earth. We bantered for a bit and then they drove off. The sun had fully risen, so I went back inside for breakfast.
Thinking about this episode -- the day before another last-quarter phase, no less -- it occurred to me that while our emotional and conceptual interest in space is future-oriented, most of what is studied and observed is from the past.
Just in the last couple of weeks, headlines were made about observations of the oldest known galaxy (followed several days later by news of some that might be even older). The rovers on Mars, and the American and European probes around that planet, transmit information of a quality and a breadth that has never before been attained. Upcoming missions and research will further expand this knowledge, which will be critical for interplanetary forays by humans.
But that's the future. And as I said, all that can we study from the cosmos is the past. By so doing, we will come to understand the processes that shaped our planet... and hopefully gain insight (and wisdom) that will carry us forward, on this planet and any others.
20040312
Pure politcal theatre; I love it.
The week of planning that led to Seattle's entry into the gay marriage arena
Kaze no Tani no Naushika
I have to mention the 20th anniversary of the
release of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind,
(Kaze no Tani no Naushika) what I still consider
to be the crown jewel among the anime produced
by Hayao Miyazaki, creator of Spirited Away, Princess
Mononoke and more.
I saw the film for the first time in 1985 (I was 13).
Only recently did I learn that the U.S. version,
Warriors of the Wind, is something that Miyazaki
has told fans to "dismiss from their minds" because
of poor sub-standard production. I saw a full-length,
full-frame version (in Japanese) on the summer solstice
last year. Striking differences, yet as pleasing as ever.
When the owner of a comics store in Seattle
gave me the opportunity to take anything that
I wanted in exchange for my '80s comics, the Viz
Perfect Collection was the first and only thing
that came to mind. That four-volume set is a true
epic; the film is an adaptation of the first volume.
Anyhow, before I continue to shellac nostalgic, I will
mention that a new trade paperback collection
is on sale. Nausicaa is also said to be set for re-release,
but if this will be on screen or video (or both?) is not
yet certain. Oh, and there's this bit also:
Jet-powered Nausicaa glider project
20040311
Topic: Surveillance, US police put hip-hop under
Miami Police Spying On Hip Hop Stars w/ NYPD Help
NYPD Training Other Cities How To Spy On Rappers
and from last year (with some sage advice):
Is the NYPD at war with hip hop?
"'Some of us are stupid enough to still ride around with unlicensed weapons,' DMC (partner of Run) added. 'Either get a bodyguard or get your life together -- you don't need to be out there still doing that stupid shit.'
Method Man agreed that rappers shouldn't be surprised by police scrutiny when the content of their lyrics refer to violence and gunplay. 'It ain't even a lot of heat,' Meth said. 'Boom, a cop is gonna sit outside the club, knowing that some rap dude be performing. What he talk about in his songs all day? "Oh, we got a million guns... " Come on! Don't talk about you carrying all these weapons and you won't get followed.'"
Topic: Surveillance, US police put hip-hop under
mr damon 15:40
"From what I gather, it used to be that the president would go out to the area to meet the [deceased] soldiers coming in. They would drape the caskets and they would actually watch and give a moment of silence as the coffin came by. The Bush Administration felt that was too much for Americans to handle, so they secured that part of the ceremony so that no one knows when that fallen soldier comes home. It’s an injustice to the military, because you gave your life to the country and the country should give something back to you. Even just a moment of silence. Every day that someone dies, the flag should be lowered to half staff. Not just because a politician died.
Those guys are good people. They work hard. They do anything and everything that is asked of them. And they gave the ultimate sacrifice. It should not be that you have to go to a website to find out who died."
from AlterNet's War on Iraq section
"While this site is not about Republicans, it is about Republican strategists who target fundamentalist, Pentecostal and charismatic churches as a way to expand the base of their party, and about a very specific group of religious leaders who are using the Republican Party as a way to gain 'dominion' over society. The ultimate political goal of the Religious Right is to make the United States a Christian nation. The ultimate legal goal is to make the U.S. Constitution conform to Biblical Law."
from this specific MetaFilter entry
20040310
Deus ex machina
I was (and at this moment, still am) listening to Coltrane's A Love Supreme when I casually clicked over to MetaFilter and read this item at the top of the page.
"I can only imagine what my father, who died five years ago, and who taught for 25 years, might have thought of an inflammatory assertion such as the one made by this so-called Secretary of Education.
Obviously, Rod Paige has no respect for his position or for the institutions and educators whom he is meant to serve.
His comments against teachers seem to represent the dismissive and divisive attitudes that many people believe are at the heart of this administration's agenda. If you want to prove otherwise, then I suggest that you take swift, decisive and public action to demonstrate that this administration wants to serve the citizenry... or else, history books (and the teachers who use them) will mention this administration in a most unfavorable manner."
The view from the womb / Il lato ad ovest
When I noticed the white space beyond the Big Bang in this Hubble press release image, my imagination flared and I thought, "Ooh, now come to think of it, what would one find beyond that curve of spacetime?"
I stared at the gelatinous mass of galaxies, as it's depicted in the graphic... and then I flipped out. "Placenta! That's cosmic placenta! And we're inside of it!" The bulging shape that the artist chose to use just reinforced my notion. And then I remembered the image of a magician sticking his head out of the worldly sphere to stare into the vibratory expanse. The way that these three mental images/metaphors linked up was a trip, so I patched together the image below:
It took all day to find the last image -- "Peering through the cosmic sphere." It was after I made the ID here that I was able to finish this little juxtaposition... by which time I'd also slapped together the next two images.
So what kind of rims did they roll on in 15th century Italy?
"{Centuries ago}, only men learned to read and write Chinese, and bound feet and social strictures confined women to their husband's homes. So somehow -- scholars are unsure how, or exactly when -- the women of this fertile valley in the southwestern corner of Hunan province developed their own way to communicate. It was a delicate, graceful script handed down from grandmother to granddaughter, from elderly aunt to adolescent niece, from girlfriend to girlfriend -- and never, ever shared with the men and boys."
from crystalinks
20040309
Intervention and the Return of the Same Ol' Same Ol'
The Lone Supercracker goes on Spring Break in Haiti
to restore order in a country that it helped to destabilize.
...I was just... tickled to read such a straight-laced summary about this segment of hopdom. Speaking of: The entry on hip hop music has three sections?! I'll have to read Wikipedia more often.
I ended up here because I'd been rooting around for info about the awards-show clip at the end of OutKast's "Chonkyfire" (last track on Aquemini). No luck, but the general entry was an interesting read. Up-to-date, also, since the poorly conceived, buckskin-and-booty-shakin' performance at the Grammys is mentioned.
20040308
Heh? Did I read that?
"There's no way you can talk about George W. Bush without talking about September 11," said one campaign adviser. "It's like talking about Franklin Roosevelt without mentioning World War II."
Wow. Well, that's fair... Both men are said to have had prior knowledge of the attacks that opened the door for the country's entry into a wider war. So, to repeat:
"There's no way you can talk about George W. Bush without talking about September 11," said one campaign adviser. "It's like talking about Franklin Roosevelt without mentioning World War II."
Oh, wait! I didn't even get to the second 'graph:
"Another less-publicized aspect of the ad flap: the use of paid actors—including two playing firefighters with fire hats and uniforms in what looks like a fire station. 'Where the hell did they get those guys?' cracked Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, which has endorsed John Kerry, when he first saw the ads. (A union spokesman said the shots prompted jokes that the fire hats looked like the plastic hats 'from a birthday party.')"
from blogdex
Trifling business in Haiti AGAIN
This comes from Pravda (yes, Pravda); it's a transcript of an address Aristide made to his supporters with the help of Pacifica Broadcasting.
DN! broke the story that Aristide had been taken from the country under duress. One of their stories goes into the background of Aristide's US-trained security detail, which was withdrawn just as the usurping forces (also trained by the U.S. military -- typical!) reached Port-Au-Prince.
Full moon anthem: "Kashmir"
I was home alone after my hosts went to Penn State yesterday. I dug through the CDs late last night, wanting to hear a particuar song (which I later realized was by Pink Floyd). I skipped through most of Physical Graffiti, but when Kashmir started... yeah, that's the stuff. I've always been mesmerized by this song, going back to high school -- or maybe longer, in some unconscious manner, since the album was released in '75.
The song's not one that I've ever recorded or read the lyrics for (until now). I've only ever heard it on the radio or, once, in a supermarket (a benefit of late-night shopping in Seattle).
I caught a segment of Led Zeppelin Unplugged on TV in '95, and I was just transfixed. Sure, I was intoxicated at the time, but that's beside the point.
I read about Robert Plant's latest album, Sixty Six to Timbuktu, a few months ago in The Stranger. The impression I got was that Plant was throwing everything to the wind and surrendering himself to the region's music.
Which reminds me... Just a couple of days ago, Ramesh and I were in his preferred music shop on the West Side. I noticed "Festival in the Desert," a concert recording from an annual gathering of the Tuareg tribes. In 2003, their festival was in Mali. Plant performed, as did Ali Farka Toure. His music stirred up all sorts of business in me -- and made me crazy to get to Mali -- when I found it in the cheap-o bin at a store in Gallup NM in '98... when I last lived with Ramesh.
I couldn't find a link to The Stranger review; found something much richer instead: "Robert Plant Finds Blues' Roots in the Sahara"
He hasn't the been the first to make the connection, of course. Before I left Albuquerque last month, the guy running the book shop I visited had this next to the register: Savannah Syncopators by Paul Oliver. Connects (by instrument, rhythm and region) Delta blues with traditional music from West and Central Africa. Published in 1970.
Speaking of delusion...
"Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade… More things are tradable than were tradable in the past, and that's a good thing."
Eckhart Tolle in the Truth and Illusion issue of Parabola. Thank you Luciana
"The mind-made self tends to be in opposition to the present moment, to what "is." The present is not enough or it's not right, it shouldn't be as it is; and since the present moment is all there ever is, one is never aligned with life. One is basically against life. The mind-made self also defines itself through opposition to other "selves": this is the "me," and he is the other who is "not me." To uphold the sense of seperate "me," this conceptual self needs to be in conflict with other selves, because that strenghtens the boundary around this bundle of thought forms, this "me."
"Also, the mind will manufacture conceptual identities for everybody one meets, a bundle of concepts that you mistake for who that human is. We
believe we are relating to another human being, but we are actually relating to our thoughts about that human being. It becomes a screen that separates us. And so we are trapped in an existence with a built-in need for conflict and enormous emotional need to be right. When one mentally complains about something -- a person, situation, place -- behind that complaint is the need to be right. The need to be right derives from identifying with a thought, an opinion: one's sense of self is in that thought. When anyone questions the accuracy of that thought, in my delusion -- my illusory identification with thought -- unconsciously I interpret that as an attack on my existence.
"Seeing it is the beginning of becoming free of that patern, the beginning of the unconditioned consciousness arising. It is the ability to perceive reality without the compulsive need to interpret or label that which we are perceiving. We are perceiving, then, from a deeper place."
20040307
"The slave system in America was unique in human history. Sometimes slaves were treated cruelly; at other times with kindness. They were more often used as a sign of affluence, a way of displaying one's wealth and of enjoying luxury, rather than as the means for the systematic accumulation of wealth. Previously, slavery had existed in hierarchical societies in which the slave was at the bottom of a social ladder, the most inferior in a society of unequals. While each society normally preferred to choose its slaves from alien people, it did not limit its selection exclusively to the members of any one race. Slave inferiority did not lead necessarily to racial inferiority. In contrast to this, slavery in America was set apart by three characteristics: capitalism, individualism, and racism."
And let me follow that with:
[Shemia Miller]: Where is the LOVE? I mean in our music, in our interactions with one another. We are posturing in such a defensive manner!
[Chuck D]: We still have that slave mentality. We are a HATE TO LOVE Generation. This is post-slavery. This is a post-slavery mentality. In the 90s there was an investment in people. The older cats would teach the youngsters the game. Now there is an investment in machines. We are detached as a people. And we Hate to Love.
Slavery as Capitalism
(Capitalism as slavery these days, yes?)
mr damon 14:35
"One of the most important, yet chronically neglected, sectors of education in our society today is that of media literacy."
"Teachers and parents acknowledge that their children require guidance in learning to read, but not in understanding the implications of what they read. They stress the need for students to comprehend algebra, but not the need to comprehend what they see on television. Considering the fact that the average American child aged 2-17 watches nearly 20 hours of television per week , and that the average American has, by the age of 65, viewed over 2 million television advertisements , this seems a shameful lapse.
"When one also considers the increasing presence of advertising on billboards, park benches, public buses, and even in schools themselves, plus the heavy consumption of movies, comic books, websites, video games, etc, by young people, it is a potentially dangerous oversight. Fortunately, many are realizing the growing importance of media literacy education, at all levels from primary school through post-graduate education. In this article, we will try to outline some of the basic problems that many children (and even many adults) face when bombarded by the information overload that exists in this culture, and how media literacy education can help people to have a deeper understanding of the media that they consume."
See also:
Center for Media Literacy
New Mexico Media Literacy Project
Media Education Foundation
Media Literacy Review
From the notebook of Sy Safransky, the editor of The Sun
"My watch stopped working. Just like that. No warning. No letter advising me that time was about to stand still. I took it as a sign, or what Carlos Castaneda called a "gesture." The universe gestures to us all the time, he said, and if we learn how to read those gestures, we become, in a way, more literate, more able to follow the signs that really matter. Since it was an inexpensive watch and not worth fixing, I've hung it on the wall next to my calendar: a reminder that it's unwise to take refuge in all those tidy little squares, lined up like soldiers ready to do my bidding; that, for each of us, 'next week' is merely a hypothesis.
If President Bush paid attention to certain signs, perhaps there wouldn't be nearly 500 U.S. soldiers dead in Iraq, and thousands of others injured, and who knows how many tens of thousands of Iraqi lives destroyed. Last February, when the Columbia space shuttle disintegrated while trying to land, killing all seven crew members aboard, the moment rippled with symbolic significance. Camille Paglia wrote: 'So many times, in antiquity, emperors went to the oracles to ask for advice about going to war. Roman generals summoned soothsayers to read the entrails before battle... Kings throughout history have been shaken by signals like this from beyond... If there was ever a sign for the president and his administration to rethink what they're doing, this was it.'
Still, two days after the tragedy, the president announced that it wouldn't deter him from going to war with Iraq -- even though the shuttle fell over the president's home state of Texas, strewing its parts over a town called Palestine; even though one of the astronauts on board was an Israeli who had bombed Iraq 20 years earlier; even though Columbia is what many colonists wanted to name this country (after Columbus). It's no surprise, I suppose, that a president who admits he doesn't read newspapers -- preferring to get his news from the people who work for him - wouldn't be bothered by the writing on the wall."
20040306
Stephanie Hummer was murdered on 6 March 1994
She was 18 years old.
I was a first-term reporter for the Ohio State Lantern at the time. I heard the news about the discovery of a female student's body late that Sunday night. I arrived at the newsroom early the next morning to begin making phone calls.
This was not the first time I had to write about a student's death. One month earlier, a male student jumped from the roof of a 13-story dorm (the same one in which I'd lived two years earlier). That news came through late in the day, and we ran a brief. I volunteered to write a longer piece the next morning, but I didn't know where to start. Our advisor told me that I had to call the family, which I did... not having any idea how to begin that conversation...
With that experience in mind, but still as uncertain, I dialed the first Hummer I found in the book. Stephanie's mother answered the phone and the conversation probably grinded along -- I can't remember what we said now. I have (half of) the story that ran on March 8th in front of me. The one quote before the jump reads "she loved being (at OSU), she loved being in the Evans Scholars program. She was having so much fun." The next sentence relates that her parents (from the Cincinnati area) saw her last about a week before she was killed.
The basic story is this: Stephanie and a few companions were on their way from the off-campus dormitory where she lived, to a friend's home four blocks away. The group tried to climb a wire fence, someone cut a hand, and that person and a friend ran off to the destination. The person with Stephanie decided she didn't want to keep going, but Stephanie did. They separated, Stephanie went to catch up with the first two. This was sometime after 3 a.m. Later that morning, her friends called her dorm and other acquaintances, wanting to know where she was.
Stephanie's body was found near a Conrail railroad line north of Mt. Carmel Hospital at 1 p.m. She had been bludgeoned with some sort of heavy object. I went to the site a day or so later and found a depression in the ground, with a circle of leaves encrusted in blood. Stephanie was found only in her underwear; the rest of her clothes, as well as the weapon used to kill her, still have yet to be found. Initial statements from the Columbus Homicide Bureau didn't indicate whether or not she had been raped, but I seem to think that this was confirmed by a local TV station some time later.
(Oh lord, deja vu just rushed over me)
A number of people have been regarded as suspects -- I remember one investigation from 1995; a man who lived south of Columbus had his home searched, and it came out that police thought he might have had a connection to this case. But nothing turned up. An article from the Cincinnati Enquirer stated that DNA testing ruled out several other suspects in 1998 and 1999. Other than articles about added safety measures around the campus, and the dedication of a park and programs in Stephanie's name, there's little else to mention. Except, for my own part, the rush of emotion when I see Stephanie's photo, or when I recall the gravity -- the dissociation -- of standing where she was killed.
I also think about what a reporter who I assigned to do a follow-up that summer told me: One of Stephanie's friends was very displeased with me and the second story I wrote, in which she is heavily quoted. I have that one in front of me, also, and I can't say that I understand why. The article consists of many quotes, generally expressions of disbelief and loss, but certainly nothing libelous, invasive or unduly provocative. I think I just had the tape recorder on and transcribed what was said... I just let her talk.
If anything, I would think that people needed to (and probably did) criticize the first story, which ran under the headline: "Screams might have come from abducted OSU student." That embarrasses and bothers me, and not just because of the tabloid tone of the head. It reminds me of how I let myself be swayed by other people and what they thought the angle should have been. The situation was that a woman who lived just off of the alley where Stephanie was last seen called the newsroom, saying she awoke to horrifying screams around 3:45 a.m. on the 6th. The police stated that Stephanie had been abducted between 3:30 and 4:30. This other woman's story -- she'd been interviewed and photographed by another reporter, a guy who had lots of experience with hard news (and harder experiences) -- that became the frame because I relented to his pressure to put it up front. I forget what the rationale was; I just felt put upon and wasn't able to assert myself.
And so it reads like a TV news script about screams and this woman's reactions and "what-ifs," but the actual case -- and the person lost -- didn't get mentioned until middle of the second column. Sue Hummer's quotes don't get in until the end of the third, before the jump. It just... it's not what it should have been. "Unseemly" is a good word. And to Dan and Sue, Stephanie's family and friends, I apologize for that (even if no one's asked me to). Ten years on, I want to acknowledge the impact of this young woman's death, even though I never met her.
Meanwhile, in Tripoli: An example of how things work out for the best
Libya declares mustard gas stockpiles
My contact in Fog City was impressed by this turn of events. But he added this observation:
"Look at how CNN's visual portrayal of Gadhafi changes over time in the above articles. Gimme a break... CNN is still McDonald's for your mind."
"The United States tops the world in terms of military expenditure, and is the largest exporter of arms. Its military spendings for the 2004 fiscal year reached 400.5 billion US dollars, exceeding the total amount of defense budgets of all other countries in the world in summation [Total global expenditure in 2002 was US$784B]. The New York Times reported on September 25, 2003, that the United States' export of conventional arms accounted for 45.5 percent of the world's arms trade volume in 2002, ranking the first in the world. And according to a Capitol report, the United States sold 8.6 billion US dollars worth of conventional arms to the developing nations, or 48.6 percent of all the arms procured by the developing world in 2002."
So basically the government extorts its citizens to fund and arm the military. The surplus is sent around the world so that crackdowns and conflict can continue on schedule -- Israelis and Nigerians and Colombians and Indonesians beating in the skulls and shooting through the homes and bodies of their neighbors and relations.
Inevitably, some faction or nation ends up in combat with the forces that receive U.S. support. Or, perhaps some faction or nation -- even if it isn't all that keen on this country -- accepts U.S. support in order to fight a supposedly common enemy. Or, the U.S. gives opposing factions weapons (on the down-low) so that they can kill each other with the best gear that money can buy.
Coverage of these conflicts and assaults adds to the relentless current of video violence that shows people how dangerous things are Out There (whether it's Karbala or around the corner), and how we need to be prepared for the time when these merciless heathen arrive on our Golden Shores.
Anyhow... if the faction or nation that is set against a U.S.-backed force -- or The Lone Supercracker itself -- also controls a resource or landmass that the government (acting as a real estate agent for corporations) has decided to grab... then here come the declarations about protecting freedom, ending aggression, delivering justice and -- whoo-ha! -- combating evil. This invocation signals the time to shut up, stop thinking, and wave those 99-cent plastic flags.
People'd buy pricier ones, of course, but the rest of the money got eaten up by medical bills and the schools that the government used to pay for.
link from spitting image
"A full generation has passed since the end of the draft. What had been a rite of passage for American men -- the draft was in force from 1940 to 1973 -- is now largely forgotten.
But a simple look at the numbers should give pause. Between 1964 and 1973, during the Vietnam War, 1.86 million American men were drafted. With U.S. forces now more than 20 percent below that level and American ambitions perhaps never more fully asserted, the demand for bodies in uniform is sure to grow.
This is how it works. If Congress passes a law restoring the draft, a lottery would assign a number to each of the 365 days of the year. Yes, it's easy as that; someone in Washington will pick a number from a tumbler to decide if you have to join the armed forces -- that is, put you in the position of having to kill or be killed.
The law proposed by Rep. Charles Rangel (D - NY) and Sen. Fritz Hollings (D - SC), the Universal National Service Act, would expand the draft in ways never before seen in the United States. First, it would include women. Second, it would require two years of national service, but not only in the military. Draftees could also be assigned to work in conservation, health care, education, child care or elder care. The draft bills pending, respectively, in the U.S. House Total Force Subcommittee and the Senate Armed Services Committee would essentially force citizens to contribute two years to the federal government."
20040305
Well... there it is. Thank you, Andrew
TO: Mel Gibson
FROM: Jesus the Christ
RE: My Passion
"Your hymn to bloodlust, despite the unconvincing sops you throw to my true message -- that clunky love-your-enemies scene on the hilltop, for example -- is driven by the same terrible force that underpins all prejudice, that dark energy of the collective id that can in a nanosecond flip from self-hatred to unstoppable, brain-dead inhumanity. It's that raging Nietzschean hormone that floods through mind and muscle, making horrific brutality look like personal redemption, the one that fuels Sturm und Drang and blood and fire and the Cult of the Sang Real, all the deadly old rubbish you'll find in The Da Vinci Code and, yes, even that sweaty éclat of release and relief that finds salvation in a tent in Texas, supposedly in my name but really in a delicious vision of the horrific destruction and eternal torment of other human beings.
Call it what you like: conversion, revelation, the last days, jihad, the final coming of the messiah (or my second one, which I can assure you will not happen anytime soon) -- it's a vision of, and a yearning for, faith-based genocide. The truth is, Mel, your treatment of my passion is profoundly fascist. This is a film Osama bin Laden would (and may) thrill to.
That's because there's only a hair's breadth between fascism and fundamentalism. Both gloat over the bloody death and torment of their enemies. Both long for the earth to be cleansed of them to snowy whiteness. Both interpret with brutal literalism myths and symbols that, even when they first came to the cultural surface, were never meant literally. Both are precisely what I came to overthrow; it's their message of justifiable hate I sought to counter in everything I said and did -- including refusing to defend myself against deadly force. Because it is the fundamentalists of every major faith who are pushing your world toward yet another vast and murderous cataclysm, whatever your good intentions may have been, Mel, the last thing that world needed was another hymn to bloodlust."
And while you're Prospecting...
"Republicans warn that gay couples will undermine the sanctity of marriage -- unlike straight couples who, of course, show only respect for the institution."
20040304
"Ohio has become one of the President's most trustworthy sources of campaign contributions. Bush-Cheney Inc. currently has 10 "Rangers" (those who raise $200,000) and 15 "Pioneers" (those who raise $100,000) from Ohio. Compare that to other comparable battleground states -- Michigan has just three Rangers and 13 Pioneers, and Pennsylvania has only five of each. Only Florida surpasses Ohio as a state that is critical from both a fundraising and electoral standpoint.
When you look at three Ohio mega-fundraisers for Bush -- W.R. Timken, CEO of Timken Company; Anthony Alexander, president of FirstEnergy Corporation; and Walden O'Dell, CEO of Diebold Corporation -- a delicious microcosm emerges: In these three examples of special interest fundraising, we have three of the recurring themes of Bush's administration.
1) Tax cuts for the wealthy (Timken) that have produced job stagnation and cuts for the common folks; 2) Paybacks to corporate polluters (Alexander); and 3) Support from well-positioned, powerful players (O'Dell), which has created the appearance of rigging the game to aid his success."
20040303
Accelerating toward the present
> Then again, I believe we're peaking in our desire and our interest of this numbing nothingness being offered... I really do. <
It's coming to its conclusion, certainly, because the mechanism (or what might be called a variable) of novelty has almost reached its limit. I say this because of the temporal-cultural implosion that I began to notice 14 years ago. One aspect of it can be seen in media.
When I first went to college, 1990-91, the nostalgia gap was about 20 years. "Classic rock," affections for disco and early punk, and Woodstock reminiscence (culminating with WSII in '94 and WS+30 in '99). Another high point of this nostalgia came by way of the films of Quentin Tarantino, whose ouevre invokes (heavily depends upon) the sounds and stylings of the early 70s.
Anyhow, it was by the end of the decade that novelty/nostalgia began to accelerate. Funk and disco had already been regurgitated; punk had its next moment (either with old bands, or new bands trying to put on the same show); and all I began to hear about were the 80s. This has continued apace for some time, and now (having burned through that tired backcatalogue), people are rehashing and repackaging the 90s. Somewhat typical discourse has people refer to "the early 90s" as if it were some by-gone period like the Prohibition era. Any number of bands like Pearl Jam, No Doubt (even my boy Richard James, The Aphex Twin, whose album, Surfing on Sine Waves, I have on right now) have retrospective recordings that don't date back before 1992. Reservoir Dogs just came out in a special collector's set and it was treated as some cultural milestone. There's a certain absurdity to all this, and I sometimes think "People are trying to milk this period -- these people -- for all they can, before things hit the wall."
Another thing that's tweaked my sense of novelty is reference to films within films (or TV shows and films within TV shows). Tarantino's work provides an example again, with the cut-tos in True Romance (1993) to The Streetfighter (1974) and A Better Tomorrow II (1987). Characters are made more "real" by interacting with the media that we in the audience are familiar with. This really isn't that new of a thing, but the span of reference has diminished here as well... so that mentions of current shows or last year's movies pop up in today's fictional media.
As I've thought since '91, the gap will disappear soon and society will find itself out of material to recycle or to derive reference, because we will have reached the temporal "now." Like looking at oneself in a mirror from 20 feet away and walking up to it until your nose touches the glass... and then going "through the looking glass." What I've been waiting to see is what will happen, what forms and melodies and modes will emerge, at this metaphysical moment, the confluence of these waves of time, society and expression. Perhaps everyone will --finally ;) -- listen to drumnbass... but hear it and dance to it (because of an accelerated ability to process stimului) as meandering waves of sound; hearing "the music between the notes," to paraphrase Thelonious Monk.
These are just my unrefined thoughts. As I proceeded with this writing -- and had similar sentiments voiced by Dr. Masala a few minutes ago -- I thought to mention Novelty, the Timewave, and our approach to the Omega Point (12.21.2012), as discussed by the late psychonaut Terence McKenna and his peers. I came across this information when I took up residence with Dr. Masala on the Colorado Plateau in 1998. That I come back to it now (and in similar circumstances) is no coincidence.
"While rural organizations like Mexico's Zapatistas and Brazil's Landless Movement have much to teach us, there is a limit to the practical usefulness of such groups as organizing models here in the US. In the global north, we need to find modes of organization that are applicable to a highly urban, modern, partially de-industrialized country, where much of the population has historically had relatively high living standards. As globalization's "race to the bottom" pushes down on these living standards, progressives and radicals in the United States hoping to turn dissatisfaction with corporate power into a mass movement would do well to consider another "downsized" nation that has recently seen a prolonged nationwide uprising: Argentina."
"The ugly truth which never even occurs to most Americans is that Jesus looked a lot more like an Iraqi, like an Afghani, like a Palestinian, like an Arab, than any of the paintings which grace the walls of American churches from sea to shining sea. This was an uncomfortable fact before September 11. After the attack, it became almost a moral imperative to put as much distance between Americans and people from the Middle East as possible. Now, to suggest that Jesus shared a genealogical heritage and physical similarity to the people sitting in dog cages down in Guantanamo is to dance along the edge of treason."
20040302
"Star-struck teens are generally emotionally well-adjusted and popular, with their celebrity interests forming a healthy part of adolescent development and bonding, say psychologists from the Universities of Leicester and Coventry.
"However, those with extreme celebrity fascination, are likely to be lonely children without close attachments to friends or family, suggests the new study.
"John Maltby and David Giles surveyed 191 English schoolchildren between the ages of 11 and 16. They found that those who avidly followed celebrities' lives were the most popular.
"For about 30 per cent of the children, gossiping about favourite celebrities with their peer group took up much of their social time. These children were found to have a particularly strong and close network of friends and to have created a healthy emotional distance from their parents.
"'As children grow up, they start to transfer their attachment from parents to their peers. Celebrities start to take on the hero status role that their parents formerly fulfilled when the children were younger and it seems to be a healthy part of development,' explains Maltby, who led the study.
"'The main function of celebrity attachments in adolescence may be as an extended social network - a group of 'pseudo-friends' who form the subject of peer gossip and discussion,' he told New Scientist. 'The ongoing subject of celebrities' lives can provide a valuable bonding tool among their friends, while enabling them to be emotionally autonomous from their parents.'
'Evolutionary psychologist Francisco Gil-White, from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, says humans have a biological predisposition towards recognising prestigious individuals and acting sycophantically towards them [Eh, what? Is it time to nut up now? Isn't prestige a social or conceptual value? If high prestige = higher class, does that mean people are hard-wired to be socially stratified (and like it)?]
'In the ancestral environment, prestigious individuals would be followed by people who wanted to gain information about successful living,' he says." [ Uhh.. 'Get Rich or Die Tryin'?' ]
What about media effects? What about the content (or the character) of the celebrity presence? Is it then OK -- simple predisposition -- for the minds of youth, who then raise their own ilk, to be caught up w/ all that goes on with Hollywood Justice, the E! True Life Story, the B-teams on American Idol or Next Top Model, and the ongoing and ever-increasing broadcast chatter about where and with whom Charlize Theron scratched her left armpit?
Or am I simply maladjusted?
"In the book, 'Burning Down my Master's House,' Mr Blair admits the long running deception of his editors and pretending to report from places he had never visited and interview people he had never spoken to. The New York Times eventually found errors and fabrications in three dozen of his reports."
20040301
Of course, maybe this is exactly the reason why it would be a good time to go.
Oh hell. Did I just read this?
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"Don't tread on me, either."
HST 1937-2005
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