September 30, 2005
Overheard at Starbucks
"I've been imagining I'm under surveillance. That a few of my neighbors working for FEMA, or whatever part of the alphabet that does that stuff nowadays, are watching me with see-through-the-wall radar."
--"Paranoid?"
"I picture somebody watching me on a screen in bright glowing colors while I'm busy stuffing my face, picking my nose, taking a crap or wanking. It's their sad disgusting job to watch me 24/7, to watch my every move."
--"Who would want to watch you?"
"Exactly! 'What and give-up a job with Homeland Security?'
...'This crap's dedicated to the freak watching out there...the technologically advanced secret eyes and ears of Homeland Defense...ya'll know the service you're providing, the awesome responsibility you bear... this crap's for you!' Isn't it perfect?"
--"I mean who would want YOU watched? Who pays, who benefits?"
"You're saying I couldn't be an enemy of the state? A fabricated but necessary threat to the status quo, the Masons, the Mormons, the sexed-clubbers?
I've seen things. I've seen cops in uniform getting freebies from hookers; I've seen boxes of drugs delivered to the Art Institute's shipping dockin the middle of the day; I've seen pedophile pimps working the City's Zoo. I've seen death squads using ConEds' and the phone company's trucks."
--"Sure you have."
"I could be a witness."
--"You can be a pest."
"Couldn't being a pest be reason enough?"
Did Able Danger Spot Mohammed Atta Through Face Recognition Tech?
Anthony Shaffer, the whistle blower who went public in August, claims lawyers shut down the operation just at the point that it named and identified 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta.
...Of some 80 people interviewed by the Defense Department as part of its Able Danger internal investigation, the Pentagon says that three additional workers remember seeing either a chart with a photo or a reference to Mohamed Atta.
The general in charge of the Special Operations Command, Gen. Bryan "Doug" Brown, also went on the record this weekend telling the St. Petersburg Times that he was "pretty sure" Able Danger did not identify Mohamed Atta before 9/11.
story link | Wash. Post link\archived Politech
~It doesn't matter how many pictures they had of Mohammed Atta with Osama Bin Laden or whoever it was, because no agency was prepared to go to the next step? Following, questioning or arresting Mohammed Atta.
[Mohammed Atta; Logan Airport(?) Boston/ not Able Danger's photo referred to above]
Judge Orders Release of Abu Ghraib Photographs
New York - Pictures of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison must be released despite government claims that they could damage America's image, a federal judge ruled Thursday.
The American Civil Liberties Union sought the release of 87 photographs and four videotapes as part of an October 2003 lawsuit demanding information on the treatment of detainees in US custody and the transfer of prisoners to countries known to use torture. The ACLU contends that prisoner abuse is systemic.
US District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein said terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan have proven they "do not need pretexts for their barbarism."
Blog: Politics, Theory & Photography
“What we need is a critique of visual culture that is alert to the power of images for good and evil and that is capable of discriminating the variety and historical specificity of their uses.” - W.J.T. Mitchell. Picture Theory (1994).
http://politicstheoryphotography.blogspot.com/ | Jim Johnson
thanks Consumptive
New Yorker Cartoon Formula Exposed!
Behold the scientific system—you're familiar, I trust, with the classic Tartaglian intuitionist theorem "one from column A, one from column B, one from column C"—by which New Yorker cartoons are designed, built, and distributed to innocent Americans...
large version | flickr
more from Emdashes
>related New Yorkers Cartoon Collection store
Care Firms Resisting FOIA Disclosure
Connecticut pays four managed-care companies $626 million a year to provide health care for the poor. But many of these low-income people can't get appointments with cardiologists or gastroenterologists today, tomorrow or seemingly ever, according to a Yale School of Medicine assistant professor and the New Haven Legal Aid Society
Dr. Kari Hartwig, the assistant professor, believes the physicians don't want to treat them because the state's four Medicaid managed-care companies' reimbursement rates are too low. To test her theory, Hartwig wants information from these firms that administer the state's Medicaid managed care program. Hartwig and the New Haven Legal Aid Society filed FOI requests with the state Department of Social Services to find out how much these companies pay specialists who treat the poor and how often the companies refuse to pay for patients' prescriptions.
The broader issues are whether managed-care companies with substantial state contracts are exempt from the FOIA because they perform no government function or because divulging the data might give competitors an unfair business advantage.
~Local story with much broader implications as all levels of governments everywhere(?) continue to find ways to privatize services. Corporations answer to their stock-holders and board-members, while governments supposedly have the welfare of all citizens to mind. You can't run a business like you run a gov't.
September 29, 2005
Woman Arrested Over Subway Shooting Leak
A woman has been arrested over the leak of findings about the fatal police shooting of Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes on the Tube, it has emerged.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) leak prompted claims police had covered up details of the shooting at Stockwell station in July.
Scotland Yard was quoted as saying that Mr Menezes' "clothing and demeanour" added to suspicions that he was a suspected suicide bomber.
However, the leaked documents and photographs show the body of Mr Menezes, on the Tube where he was shot dead by police, wearing a denim jacket - not a bulky one as previously described.
story | BBC
~Spin Control UK!
Navy Secretly Contracted Jets Used by CIA
At least 10 U.S. aviation companies were issued classified contracts in 2001 and 2002 by the obscure Navy Engineering Logistics Office for the "occasional airlift of USN (Navy) cargo worldwide," according to Defense Department documents the AP obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Two of the companies — Richmor Aviation Inc. and Premier Executive Transport Services Inc. — chartered luxury Gulfstreams that flew terror suspects captured in Europe to Egypt, according to U.S. and European media reports. Once there, the men told family members, they were tortured. Authorities in Italy and Sweden have expressed outrage over flights they say were illegal and orchestrated by the U.S. government.
While the Gulfstreams came under scrutiny in 2001, what hasn't been disclosed is the Navy's role in contracting planes involved in operations the CIA terms "rendition" and what Italian prosecutors call kidnapping.
"A lot of us have been focusing on the role of the CIA but also suspecting that certain parts of the armed forces are involved," said Margaret Satterthwaite, a New York University School of Law researcher who has investigated renditions.
story by SETH HETTENA |AP via Unknown News
"Seventeen" Magazine Too Vaginal for Grocery Chain
Every Albertson's in Arizona, and 11 other states, will forego carrying Seventeen on the rack for the next several weeks.
A two-page layout called "Vagina 101" is the story provoking the ban. The magazine shows photos of real body parts.
Tucsonans had mixed reactions. "I can understand them saying a website - you can go to this website and find out more... But it's almost like pornography when it's actual pictures," Brandon McLaughlin, a student at the University of Arizona suggested.
"I don't think it's very graphic because anybody can see that anywhere," said another.
The article has a diagram of a vagina and photos of what the body part should look like if a young woman is healthy...what's normal, what's not normal...basically two pages dedicated to sexual education.
story via Unknown News
"...the October issue of the teen stalwart is giving us a horrible flashback to middle-school health classes and the overwhelming fear that someone will imminently wheel in a TV and VCR to show us “The Miracle of Life,” in which that skeevy tattooed couple lets PBS film their delivery.
All that said, “Anus: The opening of the rectum, where feces come out,” is the single best service-journalism sentence we’ve ever read."
scanned page /caption via Your Bodies, Yourselves, Your Scary Magazine | Gawker
Photo-Caption Doggerel
The Sociopath's Lament
"Aren't we supposed to take pleasure in another's suffering?
Shouldn't we enjoy their pain and misery?
Isn't that proof of our superiority?
Or is indifference a better measure of leadership?
Could indifference be the surest sign of blessedness?
...in the heat of the moment I forget."
U.S. Army Investigates Web Shots of War Dead
The U.S. Army has opened an investigation into whether American troops have sent gruesome photographs of Iraqi war dead to an Internet site [http://www.nowthatsfuckedup.com/bbs/forum23.html]
where the soldiers were given free access to online pornography, army officials said.
Paul Boyce, an army spokesman, said Tuesday that if soldiers had posted the images, their actions could violate the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice, which defines conduct unbecoming an officer or enlisted soldier.
Some photographs on the Web site show people in American military uniforms standing around what appear to be dead bodies. Other photos include graphic images of severed body parts and what appear to be internal organs spilling from bodies onto the ground.
The images are said to come from Afghanistan as well as Iraq.
story | International Herald Tribune
thanks Diederik
Iraqis Call Lynndie England Jail Term Travesty
They said the sentence would have been more harsh had she been convicted of abusing Americans.
"America should be ashamed of this sentence. This is the best evidence that Americans have double standards," said Akram Abdel Amir, a retired bus driver in Baghdad.
story | My Way
~An e-mail friend regarding this story asks: "Why DO they hate us?"
England Gets 3 years for Abu Ghraib
Soldier apologizes for abuse photos, blames former boyfriend
"I was used by Private Graner," England said. "I didn't realize it at the time."
story | CNN
thanks Joerg
~I was wrong see ~my comments here. I forget that evil men always seduce gullible women into doing wrong.
I wonder if the judge's Abu Ghraib photo ban is still in effect?
[Today at 11:30am a yahoo news-photo search for
"lynddie england" results in one thumbnail link out of 47 featuring Ms. England at Abu Ghraib: From an "Al-Arabiya television broadcast of '60 minutes' show(ing) Lynndie England pointing at nude hooded Iraqi prisoners." The remaining photos show Pvt. England in full dress uniform or being escorted in chains to and from the Ft. Hood Courthouse.]
[Lyndie England (left) being used at Abu Ghraib.
via google\ not above]
Middle School Students Charged in Bus Gropings, Filming the Assaults
Tavares, Florida 9/28/05:
...three boys along with a fourth boy allegedly asked two other girls to pull down their shirts. The boys are accused of pulling them down after the girls refused.
The boys then allegedly used a cell phone camera to take pictures of the girls' exposed breasts and a video camera to tape one of them fondling a girl. Officials said they then showed the video to other boys at the bus loop on campus.
Two of the boys are 14 years old, one is 13 and one is 12.
Manga Publishers See Cell Phones as the Future
Cell phone sites for cartoon strips are booming, as is demand for popular titles. But at the same time, some famous "manga" artists are bypassing publishing houses to offer their works to "keitai" (cell phone) sites directly.
Toppan Printing Co. in April 2003 became one of the first firms to offer cartoon strips via cell phones. It currently offers 55 titles...in collaboration with major publishers.
The cartoons, which are converted to digital form from their original paper edition, cost 30 yen to 100 yen per episode. Company officials said they plan to add 100 more titles by the end of March.
(Tadashi Awano, manager of the firm's e-business division) explained there are basically two ways to display cartoon strips on cell phones -- page scroll and picture card.
For page scroll, users follow the original print layout by scrolling the display horizontally and vertically. For picture cards, each frame is made to fit the handset display, so readers can move to the next frame by clicking a button.
Awano said only about 10 percent to 20 percent of handsets currently in use are equipped to display cartoon strips fully, and he expects readership to increase sharply as more people switch to the latest models. He also said the company plans to expand its manga lineup for women.
According to the Research Institute for Publications, the country's overall magazine and book market peaked in 1996 at 2.66 trillion yen and then started to decline...
... growth in cell phone use is in inverse proportion to that of cartoon strip readership, as mobiles sap the time and money that young people in the past spent on reading printed matter.
press release | Japan Times
~In the USA cell phone use for any published products other than porn will never be profitable enough to attract big name graphic artists (comparable to Japanese Manga creators)?
September 28, 2005
What Happened in Kurdish Halabja?
~A number of links questioning whether Saddam attacked the Kurds with chemical weapons in 1988.
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=-4&bh=2
~This makes my head hurt. If there's any doubts about Saddam gassing the Kurds why are so many of us Americans sure it happened? And if there's absolute proof he did it, what do these people gain from manufacturing doubt? Have Saddam's supporters hired a pr firm to soften his image before his war-crimes trial? Are all the writer's above hired-help? Or is Saddam's gassing of the Kurds just another lie about Iraq the American media is more than happy to perpetuate?
(Yes he did it but he used chemical weapons supplied by the Americans?
Yes Saddam did it with Iraqi manufactured weapons but he was America's ally then against Iran so America's State Dept. didn't condemn it at the time it happened? We waited until Saddam became more of a hindrance than as asset before widely reporting this war crime of his against the Kurds?)
I need an aspirin.
[photo from the site "Bloody Friday"; Halabja 1988]
Cell Phone Porn
~As of today google news search has collected nine stories about
~The flood of do-it-yourself cell phone porn has made it impossible for the media conglomerates to make big money? Or are the corporations simply waiting for dozens of various state and federal regulators to decide who and what they're going to prosecute? Or is cell phone use in the States too expensive to compete with more economical (video tape, the internet) sources of porn?
[photo yahoo 'political speech'\ not porn, not with above]
Fun with Photoshop
looksnewtome
~Is it more or less like art when in the throes of creation, that is while pointing and clicking, I forget to jot down for future variations the particular inspired (accidental) sequence of effects perpetrated on an image, (that I also fail to make note of) which ever so often culminates in something like the above?
Inspiration and documentation are antithetical; or is that just me?
Satellite Tracker Eyed for Students
Smart" ID cards would reveal who's on the bus.
MANATEE COUNTY -- Thousands of students could get a high-tech accessory added to their school ID cards this year to track their travels on the school bus.
The district wants to try out a satellite system that records the time and location each rider steps on or off a bus.
Administrators could use the information to determine whether a student got off at the right stop. Each bus would be equipped with a GPS unit.
Officials could also track where the bus is, how fast it is moving and if it's on schedule.
The main reason for the move is to keep students safe on the way to school, said Terry Palmer, assistant transportation director. The tracking technology could help put parents' minds at ease.
"Students at two middle and two high schools would begin testing the system later this year if the School Board approves $445,500 for the initiative tonight.
Across the country, school districts are using satellite technology to keep an eye on students and buses. Manatee is planning to work with Everyday Wireless, a company that has GPS in 45 school districts in about 15 states.
To track students, officials are looking at using a sensor system, known as radio frequency identification. The technology requires students to carry an ID card with a sensor that automatically registers with an antenna when they board the bus.
Students would not have to swipe the cards. The system is designed to work even if it's in a backpack or wallet.
"It's very quick. It doesn't require the student to do anything other than to have the card with them," Palmer said.
~Are there many students in Manatee County who leave home in the morning and never make it to the school bus or leave school in the afternoon and never make it home? Are there many children anywhere who've disappeared this way? (Wouldn't that suggest a more focused, more urgent law-enforcement rather than student ID solution?)
What exactly does the school-board want to track? Whether latch-key kids are going somewhere other than directly home? Is the school board trying to discourage kids from socializing or working afterschool?
Is this a high-tech teen-pregnancy prevention plan? Don't provide the kids birth-control for God's sakes but suspend them if they get on the wrong bus?
I can almost understand the value of GPS to track school bus locations and speeds but RF-ing every student is an expensive and unproven form of mass birth control.
This press release doesn't mention how much a GPS system for school buses WITHOUT the student ID tracking might cost, but I'm guessing it's less than half of the $455,000. the school board is asking.
[photo google "sex bus"\ not with press release]
September 27, 2005
A Face in a Bucket
~An e-mail friend sent this:
"I've been thinking about what I said... about that war gore site... thinking a lot about this thread: "warning this is some hardcore shit" - did you see it?
It's got a face in a bucket.
I'm just stuck wondering how a face gets into a bucket. How does that happen?"
~To which I replied:
"It might be gay or anti-American to wonder or complain about the misforture of people no better than animals. People no better than you and me certainly. (And I'm not too sure about you .)
Don't forget they hate us for our freedom and they want our women and our stuff. And if they say they don't they're either lying or really nuts which makes them even more dangerous.
(That said, I'ld still like to know): how to do you get them to not want so much from us?
How do you get there...how do you get democracy, justice, freedom, prosperity, grace...from here? From a face in a bucket?"
The Hatebook
"i hate everything equally"
Post something you hate!
>for example
"I hate how I love him, but don't want to be with him. I hate how sometimes I can't even tell if it is love. I hate that I don't want him around so I can go out and pick up random guys. I hate that sometimes I feel that I have to hang out with him opposed to wanting to hang out with him. I hate that I kissed that random drunk guy the other night. I hate that I made out with my ex a few weeks ago. Why do I do some of the things that I do. It's all cause it's easier. Am I that lazy, or is it because I just want to live life in the now, and forget about the future for awhile. Is it because I'm young and have so much ahead of me that I don't want to restrict myself."
Sep 25 1:16 PM MST in confusion, guys
thanks Diederik
~I love how putting words into grammatically correct sentences is almost as good as knowing things.
[image via internet\ not from Hatebook.com]
~Who knew hate could inspire so many people to put their thoughts into words?
Things you need to become a World Champion
To become a F1 WC you might need to check your vision quite often using anything as a test (the guy on the left is Fernando Alonso, 2005 Formula 1 World Champion).
September 26, 2005
Britain to Pull Troops from Iraq as Blair Says 'Don't Force Me Out'
British troops will start a major withdrawal from Iraq next May under detailed plans on military disengagement to be published next month...
Britain has already privately informed Japan - which also has troops in Iraq - of its plans to begin withdrawing from southern Iraq in May, a move that officials in Tokyo say would make it impossible for their own 550 soldiers to remain.
story | The Observer via TruthOut
~The cheese stands alone.
September 25, 2005
Poem: You Were My Death
You were my death:
you I could hold
when all fell away from me.
--Paul Celan @
[image via google\ not with poem]
Photographers Liz Lock & Mishka Henner
"Working in the tradition of social documentary, Liz Lock and Mishka Henner focus on the lives of people and places undergoing or about to undergo radical change.
>for example
from Say Hello
>also...
"Although taking photographs can be a solitary occupation, activities and exhibitions can bring people together in a forum where their experiences of the local environment and social issues are the main talking point.
Working with all age groups, our process begins by presenting our own photography on a relevant theme or geographical area to local residents. More often than not, this inspires participants to see their environment in a different way and to engage with it in ways they had not thought of before.
The breadth of activities we offer depends on the resources available. Generally, we use Polaroid and disposable cameras to teach participants techniques of composition,lighting and different photographic styles. This is followed by a range of tasks related to their geographical area which participants complete over the course of a week or so.
On their return to subsequent workshops, participants' images are cropped and edited by the group, helping individuals gain confidence in presenting their work and in identifying their own unique style.
Finally, participants are involved in mounting their own work for exhibition at a local venue., offering them the chance to express their own experiences to the wider community as well as using local facilities to promote dialogue between residents.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/yhenner/SO.pdf
via Conscientious
Now, from Hollywood, Visions of Conservatism
The notion that the American film industry is a hotbed of leftist propaganda is a venerable one, and some determined demagogues will cling to it no matter what the studios do. But the studios themselves, especially after the stunning success of Mel Gibson's independently financed "The Passion of the Christ," have tried to strengthen their connection with religious and social conservatives, who represent not only a political constituency but a large and powerful segment of the market.
article by A.O.Scott | NY Times
via Conscientious
[photo from google\ not with above]
Ratemybody.com
for example
disasterpce
"RateMyBody Members have access to FREE Online Dating and Ratings
FREE access to 12 photos per profile, full voting capability and ZERO popups!!"
http://www.ratemybody.com/newest_girls_1.html
~Can be sorted for 'guys' and 'girls and guys' also.
I'm not equipped emotionally or physically to play in this part of the internet (or gene-pool if it ever comes to that). How fearless and ingenious these young women appear to be.
I understand how my time and specialized (hah) skills might be valuable to others, but I never once thought how I look, how images of my body could be used for financial gain (or for fun with strangers).
"The men don't know, what the little girls understand."
It's inconceivable and not just because I'm a bitter festering slug.
'Disasterpce': that cracks me up.
Pictures from Afghanistan & Iraq: Gory
"If you are a U.S. Soldier stationed in Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other combat area and would like free SUPPORTER access for the site, (User Submitted Amateur Wife & Girlfriend Photos) you can post real pictures you or your buddies have taken while you have been deployed.
This section is for the gory ones so that people who do not wish to see that kind of stuff can just not go in here. I also do not want already published pictures that were taken by news people. This is supposed to be an area where we can see pictures posted by the solders themselves.
Just post your pics like you normally would and when I see them I will approve you for free access to the wife and g/f area. There have only been a few people cheat from this but I do now know what kind of pics to expect from the guys over there. So please do not waste my time if you are not a military person by just posting iraq pics you found on CNN or something.*
for example...
What every Iraqi should look like. @
http://www.nowthatsfuckedup.com/bbs/forum23.html
or index page and scroll down
*A blogger asks The Next Abu Ghraib? | Is that Legal?
~I wonder if there's cottage industries in Muslim nations producing postcards and trading cards of images of dead Americans?
An e-mail friend observes: "I find it interesting how so many smart liberal folks always say they don't want to see these things. To see the gore (and they often say they don't want to see the porn too - which this site conflates).
I think a lot of this stuff just remains abstract until you see it. People say to me they don't want that in their life, to see things like that. But then, you know, its part of their life anyway."
>related
'You Can't Wash Your Hands When They're Covered in Blood'
By Hart Viges | The Independent UK via TruthOut
New Reports of Abuse of Detainees Surface
"Some days we would just get bored so we would have everyone sit in a corner and then make them get in a pyramid," ... "This was before Abu Ghraib but just like it. We did that for amusement."
Two soldiers and an officer with the Army's 82nd Airborne Division have told a human rights organization (The Human Rights Watch) of systemic detainee abuse and human rights violations at U.S. bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, recounting beatings, forced physical exertion and psychological torture of prisoners, the group said.
Their statements included vivid allegations of violence against detainees held at Forward Operating Base Mercury, outside Fallujah, shortly before the notorious abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison began.
They also detailed regular attacks that left detainees with broken bones -
And like soldiers accused at Abu Ghraib, these troops said that military intelligence interrogators encouraged their actions...
story | Wash. Post via Truthout
~More bad apples: this is so last year.
[photo not with story\ an Abu Ghraib 'pyramid'; not a Forward Operating Base Mercury or an Afghanistan US military-base pyramid]
~Boredom is torture too?
September 24, 2005
20 Appalling Lies We Were Told About the Iraq War
for example:
3) The Bush administration claimed it had satellite images that showed new research buildings at Iraqi nuclear sites. But when the UN inspectors went there, they found "nothing".
~I wonder what kind of bump the Iraq War is giving to the American economy? All that deficit spending; can we afford to stop spending now? What would unemployment be like if all the soldiers came home tomorrow to reclaim their civilian lives?
IVAW: Iraq Veterans Against the War
~Four more years. (What the emoticon for incredulity; a frowning face :( doesn't quite do it. Maybe :o ?)
We Don't Do That Here
~Here in Midwest America we tend to wear functional clothing when working among our animals. Exposing more of our bodies' orifices than necessary to poultry by-products doesn't seem all that healthy. Plus they've been known to peck.
September 23, 2005
The Earth as a Weapon in 21st Century Wars
"The weapons of war in the new millennium would involve the use of planet earth itself as a weapon, harnessing the power of natural processes for war."
12:56
12:58
These photos attempt to capture the shimmering movement of colorful light and vibration which occurred in these artificial clouds.
What could cause such an energy display?
link to excerpt more photos & book blurb
~From "mother-earth" to "earth as a weapon". (The Grateful Dead playing in the background.)
News: Aljazeera.net
http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage
~This site reminds me that news is a daily invention, a creative collection of facts collaborating a fiction. I forget that more often than not.
from In Pictures "Scenes from Across Basra"
Police view the damage after British forces raided a jail and freed the two colleagues. (23/09/05)
Photo-caption Non Sequitur
Is she doing what she wants to do, or is she doing what they tell her to do?
Is she showing me what she wants me to see?
What do she and I have to do with this anyway?
Students for an Orwellian Society
>for example:
Just like in 1984's Room 101, the Miniluv operations in Guantánamo Bay were authorized to “exploit[] a prisoner's phobias, sometimes using muzzled dogs in interrogations.” Doubleplusgood!
thanks Conscientious
~With hyperlinks throughout!
[illus from Brown U.\ not SOS]
Blackwater Down
The men from Blackwater USA arrived in New Orleans right after Katrina hit. The company known for its private security work guarding senior US diplomats in Iraq beat the federal government and most aid organizations to the scene in another devastated Gulf. About 150 heavily armed Blackwater troops dressed in full battle gear spread out into the chaos of New Orleans. Officially, the company boasted of its forces "join[ing] the hurricane relief effort." But its men on the ground told a different story.
article | the Nation by JEREMY SCAHILL
~An email friend remarked "...this kind of stuff reminds me of Russia."
[Cieciel] I don't care how many cops or lawyers you know or have in your family, you ain't nobody until some foundation, corporation or the taxpayers are paying for your own private army. Punk-ass bitch.
Blackwater employees practice reacting to a car ambush in February at the company's North Carolina property. Four Blackwater private security employees were killed in Fallujah, Iraq, in early April (2004)
[photo/caption via google\ not with article]
Rita According to Google Images
"A meteor hits earth, everything is gone, and some alien, after 100
years Googles "babes", and sure as hell, Google gives babes."
http://images.google.nl/images?q=rita&hl=nl&lr=&sa=N&tab=wi
from Diederik
for example
@
~Here in the America the same search finds fewer ritas. As of 12:30pm 7,000 fewer rita images.
Should we assume Netherland's google images searches more sites than American google? Are there that many ritas on sites in languages American google images ignores that Netherland's google doesn't? (I'm probably missing something really obvious?) It's a time thing?
Wait until Hurricane Rita hits land.
Similar searches with senorita (USA) and senorita (NL) skew the other way.
Go figure.
September 22, 2005
Military Judge Bars Release of Abu Ghraib Photos
...Which Have Already Been Published Around the World.
Because the Abu Ghraib photos are so widely known, the order barring their release will have a limited impact. They will not be shown to the public attending the trial, but rather will be shown on computer screens to the officers on the jury.
"They'll be sealed until an appellate court says they won't be sealed," said Capt. Cullen Sheppard, a spokesman for the prosecution.
[(Judge Col. James) Pohl's order could however affect what is released under a 2003 lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union to obtain information on the treatment of U.S.-held detainees.]
Some photos have not been made public. For example, one charge since dropped against England alleged she had been photographed engaging in fellatio with Graner, the abuse ringleader who is serving a ten-year prison sentence.
[one of the now barred Abu Ghraib photos/ not with this story
England's mental agility and compliance to authority was at issue as Pohl decided that he would allow a statement she made to military authorities in January 2004 soon after they learned of the abuses.
Pohl asked how England was able to finish high school and function in society if she could not understand that she could decline to talk to investigators.
"By turning to and leaning on authority figures around her," [lead defense lawyer Capt. Jonathan] Crisp responded.
story | Reuters via Truthout
~By this ruling this judge is insisting on trial decorum in and out of his court-room. I'm guessing the ban also extends to (American) newspaper and tv news-coverage of the trial?
This woman is going to get ten years in prison, barred photos or no barred photos. The judge's ban is simply a matter of house-keeping or media-control, (circus-circumscription?). It will have no affect on the verdict, the officers on the jury will have the photos-streamed on computer monitors, but it may prove helpful for another judge's ruling on the ACLU's request for release of the Abu Ghraib photos not seen by the public. Neatness now and a legal precedent for later: that's a good day's legal work!!
Will there be one monitor for each officer of the jury or will jurors need to buddy-up to see Ms. England's photographic evidence?
Decorum will decide?
Blog: Consumptive
>for example
/there's a foot bridge near my work in shinagawa that spans a canal flowing off tokyo bay. i wait there if i'm early, sipping canned coffee and peering into the deep black water, comforted by the silvery spines skipping across cresting waves of current.
the other day, as i approached the bridge, i noticed another man intently watching the water, lost to his thoughts. what struck me as odd was that he was leaning against the opposite side of the bridge from where i always stand. i remember thinking, why would he do that? it's not so beautiful that direction; that view is towards a factory.
the moment i stood in my familiar place, facing the bay, the light and space before me, i immediately noticed what previously was never so clear: i've always looked at where the water has been, where it is coming from and my thoughts too are on the things that i've done.
so i turned away toward the other side and walked over to see how things might look from a different perspective - a focus on the future, on what must be done or on what could be.
but I couldn't take it more than a few seconds. honestly, watching all that water flow out from me made me nauseous.
September 21, 2005
Google Blog Search
>for example:
compare and contrast the search results for "overheard at starbucks"
~14 out of 65 ain't bad?
http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch
~Atom Grid notes: "Needs a filter that allows one to eliminate from appearing in the search results all blogs that never got beyond the first post."
Sony Admits Using Fake Reviewer
Sony Pictures has admitted using fake quotes to promote its films.
press release | BBC
~Write your own joke.
Europe: Radiation Law to Block Doctors Work
European regulations on MRI scans too strict, experts say.
The European Union Physical Agents Directive, set to become law in April 2008, is aimed at protecting workers in telecommunications and the electricity industry from possible health risks caused by exposure to electromagnetic radiation.
Strong fields can induce a current within tissues, which heats them up and may cause damage. Some controversial studies have suggested that such fields may also damage DNA.
But the rules will also keep doctors away from MRI machines, which are another source of electromagnetic radiation. This will prevent nervous patients from being accompanied during scans, and may even restrict proper cleaning of the devices.
~When nannie-states use junk science they produce laws like this? Here in the USA no main-stream health organization would (dare?)hint at a connection between electro-magnetic fields and tissue or DNA damage let alone suggest regulations as strict as these.
Sex and Erotic Magazines
links from Adultfinder through Zecrets
[film frame via google\ not from above]
Gay/Lesbian Magazines
links from 365gay.com through Zet
[film frame via google\ not from above]
| Metagrid
My American Nightmare
To get away with putting her on the cover, Vanity Fair had to make an executive decision that Paris Hilton is somehow empowering. And, instantly, post-feminism becomes pre-feminism, like the hypothetical point where communism meets fascism.
Paris's unwavering confidence in her position as hottest in the room is matched by her and her followers' belief that everybody wants to be American.
Just as the Bush administration's tactic of 'say it often enough and it becomes true' has worked, so the phenomenon of Paris is: 'See it often enough and it becomes relevant.'
article by Emma Forrest
thanks Conscientious
"It is not surprising to learn that Paris Hilton recently gave away Tinkerbell for growing too big."
[illus. via google not from above\ caption from the article]
September 20, 2005
Call for Papers: War and Terror: Raced-Gendered Logics and Effects
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society invites submissions for a special issue titled "War and Terror: Raced-Gendered Logics and
Effects," slated for publication in Summer 2007.
"In war time, only men matter," claimed Mary Sargent Florence and C.K. Ogden, two British antiwar suffragists during World War I. Writing in Jus Suffragii, the newsletter of the International Woman Suffrage Association, they noted that hostility to feminism was a deliberate, sustained, and central project of nations involved in war-making.
More recent studies of women and war, as well as feminist studies of war suggest the intensification of deep-seated cultural, racial, and gender stereotypes during war time.
Peace is commonly associated with "feminine virtues" and war with regimes of masculinity. Rape in war seems to reinscibe violent subjection as a "normal" facet of racial, ethnic, sexual, and gender relations.
The logic of "feminization" appears to structure practices of terror deployed to induce helplessness, dependence, fear, and compliance. As "the enemy" is feminized, the "warrior-hero" mythos reestablishes linkages between citizenship and military service, as well as leadership and presumed male superiority in managing national security, remasculinizing the domestic politics of warring nations.
Although proponents of democratization optimistically predict the
elimination of war, the specter of war continues to haunt the global
community.
Depending on the definition of war, there are between sixty-five and two thousand sustained armed conflicts on-going in the twenty-first century.
The once inviolable boundaries of the nationstate have become permeable to terrorism, transnational policing, and international peacekeeping forces, as state and anti-state terror refigure space, hierarchies, and freedoms.
Taking on the mantle of the national security state, some liberal democracies have joined their authoritarian counterparts in violating the rule of law.
How do contemporary armed conflicts and terrorist engagements challenge received views about the dynamics of race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, and sexuality in violent conflicts?
Are feminism and feminist scholarship becoming casualties of growing militarism? Do feminist analyses of war and terror offer unique insights into these phenomena?
For this special issue, we invite submissions that address the complex
dynamics of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality in war, war making, and in the uses of terror against and by states in the prosecution of civil wars, ethnic conflicts, nationalist and imperialist military interventions.
We welcome innovative analyses of women's involvement in war and terror (as combatants, military and political decision-makers, interrogators of military captives, providers of logistical support, medical personnel, sex workers, hostages, political prisoners, UN peacekeepers and peacebuilders, human rights workers, NGO activists, and activists in resistance to occupying forces);
--the impact of war on women (as direct casualties, as mothers, as war refugees, as victims of sexual violence by militants, combatants, and domestic partners, women's experiences of loss in relation to families, communities, nations);
--factors that contribute to women's support for and resistance against specific wars and terrorist campaigns;
--particular racial and gendered processes and effects associated with specific kinds of war (civil, ethnic, nationalist, imperialist);
--the gendered and racialized logics and rhetorics of war;
the production and reproduction of gender, race, and sexuality in and through war and terror;
--unintended racial and gendered consequences of war and of terrorism;
--cultural representations and cultural productions of and about race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality in war and in terror, historical approaches to these complex questions.
Analyses that encompass transnational and comparative perspectives are particularly welcome.
Please send submissions to Signs between March 1 and July 1, 2006.
Guidelines for submission are available at
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/Signs/instruct.html.
thanks Diederik
[photo via Defenselink\ not from above]
British Soldiers Free Two From Basra Jail
BASRA, Iraq - In a major show of force, British soldiers used tanks to break down the walls of the central jail in this southern city late Monday and freed two Britons, allegedly undercover commandos, who had been arrested on charges of shooting two Iraqi policemen.
A British force of more than 10 tanks backed by helicopters attacked the central jail and destroyed it. This is an irresponsible act,” al-Waili (the governor of Basra province) said, adding that the British force had spirited the prisoners away to an unknown location.*
story/ *also | AP via Truthout
~The Brits are teaching the newly democratized Iraqis that the rule of law is not universally applicable. Exceptions should be made for alleged crimes committed by members of occupying armies; especially those in possession of tanks and gunships, eh wot?
Basra "is the second largest city of Iraq with an estimated population of c. 1,377,000 (2003)." [Wikipedia]
In the USA the cities of San Diego, San Antonio and Dallas all have populations similar to Basra's 1,200,000+. [InfoPlease]
Central jails are usuallly located in the older, more densely populated parts of a city.
The populations of San Diego, San Antonio and Dallas are probably not as familiar with seeing tanks on their city's streets as the people of Basra.
A British soldier jumps from a burning tank which was set ablaze after a shooting incident in the southern Iraqi city of Basra September 19, 2005. Angry crowds attacked a British tank with petrol bombs and rocks in Basra on Monday after Iraqi authorities said they had detained two British undercover soldiers in the southern city for firing on police. Two Iraqis were killed in the violence, an Interior Ministry official said. (Atef) | Yahoo @
~Molotov cocktails can stop tanks.
Will Basra now be slated for destruction like Fallujah?
September 19, 2005
Drug Enforcement Agency Plays Key Role in Door-to-Door Searches of New Orleans Homes
Forbidden to break down doors, (National) Guard troops banged on doors and forcefully announced themselves. The 109th (MP company from Kennesaw, Ga.) later joined volunteer agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, authorized by Washington to forcibly open doors. Drug agents used a crowbar and a black battering ram - "the black key that opens all doors," as one agent noted.
story w/comments | Unknown News
>for example
"In the rubble of New Orleans, the National Guard isn't supposed to break down doors looking for survivors ... that job falls to the DEA -- the Drug Enforcement Agency? This is wildly inappropriate, and blatantly unConstitutional.
~[Cieciel] I wonder if this is the first time the DEA's been snooping around evacuated homes in disaster areas?
Do they bring their drug-sniffing (not cadaver-sniffing) dogs?
Do they visit the little towns that get hit by tornados, forest fires, and earthquakes too or do they confine their post-disaster "black key" drug searches to ethnically diverse areas?
[illus. via Blue Hats of Bravery by Vanmark\ not with story]
Memory's Revenge
The Pentagon's recruitment crisis is only the latest evidence that the authors of Operation Iraqi Freedom forgot something on the way to war: the adamant memory of Vietnam, and not in the usual sense. There's a truism among military strategists that "the war before" colors the one you're fighting. World War II corporatized the military, in everything from management style to procurement to the seemingly permanent draft, even as it helped make the middle class and valorized combat experience as the ultimate manly credential. The Vietnam War was born of all that and then convulsed on it, transforming the draft into political dynamite and restructuring the Army to make wars like the one in Iraq unthinkable, or so almost everyone on up to Colin Powell once thought. Now retired Army officers will say openly that there's no precedent for running a full-scale war with a volunteer army; they will cite the Powell Doctrine-prescribing war only on condition of mass public support, swift and overwhelming force, and a clear exit strategy-as the lost lesson of the war before, the thing that Bush and Cheney, with no experience of Vietnam, were mindless of, and that Powell, whether too weak, too ambitious, or too loyal, failed to impress upon them.
article | Mother Jones via Truthout
[photo via The Thaths'\ not with article]
Ten Points to Consider Before You Sign
also 8.5X11 broadsheet here:
http://www.afsc.org/youthmil/Military-Recruitment/10pts.pdf
American Friends
~Children!
I guess if you're old enough to make babies you're old enough to die before you have a serious go at it.
I wonder how many teenagers thinking about becoming an army of one understand the relevance of these 10 points?
I wonder for how many teenagers the military with it's 'room and board' and benefits is the best paying job they can find?
The only job around?
(The best job they'll ever find?)
Friends don't let friends get turned into cannon fodder until they have some idea what they're getting into.
I wonder if any Armed Forces Recuitment offices have this hanging on their walls?
September 18, 2005
The Potemkin President (Contd.)
Friday morning (power) line
"...there was rejoicing (well, there would have been without the curfew, but the few people I saw on the streets were excited) when the power came back on for blocks on end. Kevin Tibbles was positively jubilant on the live update edition of Nightly News that we fed to the West Coast. The mini-mart, long ago cleaned out by looters, was nonetheless bathed in light, including the empty, roped-off gas pumps. The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out. The entire area was plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans. It's enough to make some of the folks here who witnessed it... jump to certain conclusions."
item | Brian Williams MSNBC
POPPY SATELLITE PROGRAM DECLASSIFIED
Information about the POPPY intelligence satellite program, which operated from 1962 to 1971, was declassified this week.
"POPPY was the successor to the nation's first ELINT [electronic intelligence] satellite, known as 'GRAB' (Galactic Radiation and Background)," according to a September 12 press release from the National Reconnaissance Office.
"The POPPY system was designed to detect land based radar emitters and support ocean surveillance."
POPPY's mission was to collect radar emissions from Soviet naval vessels.*
*http://www.fas.org/irp/nro/poppy.pdf via Secrecy News
Mammatus Clouds
Spectacular Mammatus Clouds over Hastings, Nebraska
link to more photos | UNL-High Plains Regional Climate Center
via Aberrant News
Overheard at Starbucks
"In a metropolitan area this size there's a party going-on somewhere every minute of every hour of everyday.
How do they know not to invite you?
You're not violent. There's no ring on your finger or in your nose.
Who tells them all you're not the one for today?
Who tells them everyday?"
September 17, 2005
Photo-book Tease: Athlete/Warrior
for example
link a few photos | Anderson & Low
thanks Joerg
~In these photos I'm struck by how much of the person is secreted through their uniforms. Not simply cloth, more like tattoos or a new government issued skin, they wear who (the photographer wants you to see) they are. I never before sensed, for example, how charged camo-fatigues might be for those inclined to the trials and orders of a military existence. (The more authoritarian an organization the more fetishistic it's members?)
I've the image of a wine-press squeezing the juice from the grapes. Life is short and some grapes and years are better for wine then others.
The Accidental Video Game Porn Archive
>for example
The bomb of my loins has been defused, SIR!!
thanks Diederik
~I don't get most of these. Then again I'm almost certain I could convince Katie Holmes to run away with me, if I could only meet her for coffee or a smoothie. Who am I to question what anyone thinks they see?
Sex Offenders Rally for Rights
Sex offenders are rallying against growing restrictions on where they can live and work in Central Florida...The group calls itself the Sex Offender Support and Education Network
~There's a lot of discrimination against people who've done their time (or if you prefer "ex-cons") and their wives and children. Imagine if they organized? Another civil-rights movement in the making? (NIMBY!)
Forget "Promise Keepers"; how about "Parole Keepers"?
A remake of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" with an ex-sex offender in the Sidney Poitier role?
"Say it Loud, I'm Paroled and I'm Proud!"?
A remake of "Jungle Fever" ("Short Eyes Takes Another Look")?
Ex-criminals from the 'private-sector' elected to public office? Paroled-Pride Day?
FEMA Outsourced Katrina Body-Count to Texas "Body Dumping" Firm
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has hired Kenyon International to set up a mobile morgue for handling bodies in Baton Rouge, Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina...
Kenyon is a subsidiary of Service Corporation International (SCI), a scandal-ridden Texas-based company operated by a friend of the Bush family. Recently, SCI subsidiaries have been implicated in illegally discarding and desecrating corpses.
SCI paid $100 million to settle a lawsuit filed by outraged family members of the deceased.
A secretary at the lawfirm that sued SCI over the Florida cemetery scandals gasped when informed that FEMA had outsourced handling of Katrina victims' bodies to an SCI subsidiary.
"Oh, good lord!" she said.
story w/links
~Classic yellow journalism.
The dead (at least until they're hygienically tucked away or sufficiently oxidized) belong to all of us. Which is why stories like this resonant?
Police Blow Up Stranded Whale
The 10m whale was still alive early today, but Marine and Coastal Management officials made the decision to euthanase the animal, which they said could not be saved.
Police... used explosives to kill the Southern Right whale stranded on Mnandi beach (Cape Town S.A.)
... Nan Rice of the Dolphin Action Group said it was a humane way to put the whale down.
The blast destroyed the top part of the whale's head, bloodying the water.
~I wonder why explosives aren't used for capital punishment? Save all the executions for the 4th of July. Put a little napalm in the mix and "it's showtime". Whoom.
[photo via Martin Daly| not with story or remarks
(napalm burns differently)]
~"Photography has destroyed the image." --Elias Canetti
O'Reilly & Rice: "It's the Coffee, Stupid".
"...on the deadliest day of violence in Baghdad since the U.S.-led invasion two years ago...O'Reilly remarked, "The truth of the matter is our correspondents at Fox News can't go out for a cup of coffee in Baghdad."
Rice replied, "Bill, that’s tough. It's tough. But what — would they wanted to have gone out for a cup of coffee when Saddam Hussein was in power?"
item with link to video | The Raw Story
thanks Conscientious
September 16, 2005
The Reconstruction of New Oraq
In the decade before September 11th, 2001, "globalization," a word now largely missing-in-action, was on everyone's lips and we constantly heard about what a small, small world this really was. In the aftermath of Katrina, that global smallness has grown positively claustrophobic and particularly predatory. Iraq and New Orleans now seem to be morphing into a single entity, New Oraq, to be devoured by the same limited set of corporations, let loose and overseen by the same small set of Bush administration officials. In George Bush's new world of globalization, first comes the destruction and only then does one sit down at the planetary table to sup.
article by Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse
~And people wonder why an incompetent leader like Bush hasn't yet gotten the "Swift-boat treatment" from corporate media? When unprecedented billions of tax dollars go to the same corporations year after year after year? I don't think any previous administration ever had such a windfall of contracts (for doing nothing) to award.
Case-in-point Homeland Security's delayed response to Katrina. Four years after 9/11 and how many billions of dollars spent on "disaster preparedness" later?
Bush knows who his friends are. And his friends obviously know how much to spend to keep the press fat and happy.
Blog: Greg.org
the making of movies, art, etc, by greg allen
>for example from Sept. 5, 05
Maybe Scott Sforza Should Be Running FEMA
GWB: 'Only you Republicans get to see
these here 6-day-old maps.'
Wes Anderson did it with Bottle Rocket, and it's since become a classic indie scenario: you shoot the short in order to get funding for the feature. Turns out White House producer Scott Sforza's latest short was Friday's George W. Bush Does Too Like Black People, See?. German television crews reported that Potemkin food & aid distribution centers Bush visited were dismantled and abandoned soon after the mediapack following Bush moved on. And LA Senator Landrieu reported that Friday's hive of emergency repair activity at the 17th St. levee was gone the next day.
But it tested well, and with the studio in desperate need of a hit, Sforza got the greenlight to make the feature--it's more accurate to call it a mini-series, since it goes on all week, beginning yesterday. The cast includes all the usual suspects [sic], plus the biggest, blackest Republican they could find, Condoleeza Rice, who replaces little known HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson, who originated the role in the short [above]. Karl Rove and Dan Bartlett are writing the script.
this post with links
September 15, 2005
Nukes in the News: Japan Stockpiles 43 Tons of Plutonium
20 Times More Than 2003
This surprise announcement is more of a shock to China’s military establishment. Just last year the amount was only 2.4 tons. Of the 43 tons 29.3 tons are believed to be fissionable, available to become nuclear weapons and experts say it requires only several kilograms of fissionable plutonium to make one bomb.
item | Newsblaze
~This item via Google's News Alert (?!) plays up the military benefits of plutonium ownership. (Aren't there warlords in the Phillippines and elsewhere who threaten the locals with tiny vials of the stuff?)
It doesn't say how much of those 43 tons might be used to produce energy or if there's a world market in plutonium.
I'm guessing America's neo-con 'Pre-emptive War Against Oil-producing Nations Policy' has the rest of the world scurrying for alternate energy sources.
It's odd how plutonium is somewhat a neutral material when possessed by us or our friends and how ramped-up the media gets when the word 'bomb' is mentioned.
Plutonium in all its forms scares the crap out of me.
I've seen the future, and it glows.
Overheard at Starbucks
"Saying that you 'love humans but hate humanity'...
...that you love individuals but hate what they do in groups...
Isn't that like saying a lion without teeth is a pussycat?"
--"Love me: hate my infrastructure. Hate my self-organizing controlling systems."
"The whole is greater than the sum of it's parts."
--"Greater"?
September 14, 2005
Beauty Products from the Skin of Executed Prisoners
"A Chinese cosmetics company is using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe...
...the use of skin and other tissues harvested from executed prisoners was not uncommon. "In China it is considered very normal and I was very shocked that western countries can make such a big fuss about this," (an agent for the firm told the 'researcher' for the Guardian)"
story | Guardian
~Shocking, grisly revelations but note the products "cannot be identified for legal reasons"! You can't make this shit up.
Queer Anthropology and Archaeology
thanks Diederik
~When a thief meets Buddha in the road he sees only the buddha's package?
Photo of Dead Dad Teaches Middle Schoolers Not to Drink & Drive
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- A 12-year-old middle school student saw the remains of her father in a gruesome photograph of a drunk-driving crash during a presentation by police meant to educate teenagers about the dangers of driving under the influence.
The mother, who works as a drug awareness educator for Think Drug Free America, said she appreciates the message of the presentations, but questioned its delivery. An attorney representing the mother and daughter sent a letter Thursday to the Knox County Law Director's office calling for an investigation.
The police showed the presentation at the request of school officials and in the past it has been received well, Knoxville Police spokesman Darrell DeBusk said.
The department uses photos from drunk-driving crashes in Knox County. "It really drives home the point that (drunken driving) happens in this community," DeBusk said.
Cabbage (the father) was shown lying in a pool of blood with a crushed skull and mutilated face and torso, ...The family didn't know his accident involved alcohol, she (the mother) said.
story | Unknown News
[file photo with story\ not Mr. Cabbage?]
Doctors: Taser Stopped Teen's Heart
A 14-year-old shocked by a Chicago Police stun gun has become the first Taser-linked cardiac arrest to be documented in a medical journal, two doctors from Children's Memorial Hospital say.
The doctors, in a letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine last week, say the electricity delivered from the Taser stun gun led the boy to suffer "ventricular fibrillation,'' in which the heart stops beating.
In the boy's case, paramedics already on the scene immediately used a defibrillator to restart his heart. The doctors argue that police who deploy Tasers should carry such medical equipment just in case.
The conclusion was made by Paul Kim and Wayne Franklin, two heart specialists at Children's Memorial, where the boy was treated after the incident in February.
It follows a similar conclusion in July by the Cook County medical examiner's office in a case that happened the same week. The medical examiner ruled the death of Ronald Hasse was a homicide, occurring after Chicago Police used a Taser for nearly a minute to subdue him.
That ruling was the first in the nation that listed a shock from a Taser as the primary cause of death, even though more than 129 people had died following such shocks, Amnesty International said at the time.
Taser International, the Arizona company that makes the weapons, disputes the medical examiner's claim and challenges the Children's Memorial doctors' conclusion.
If someone's heart stops as a result of a stun gun, there often isn't enough time to call paramedics. "The risk of surviving goes down 10 percent for each minute elapsed,'' Franklin said.
story | Sun Times via Unknown News
~Next can the media stop pretending that tasers do no permanent injury?
The Uses of Disaster
Notes on bad weather and good government
Posted on Friday, September 9, 2005. This essay on the relationship between disasters, authority, and our understanding of human nature went to press as Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. The excerpt below is followed by a postscript, available only on the Web, that specifically addresses the disaster in New Orleans. Originally from a forthcoming issue of Harper's Magazine, October 2005. By Rebecca Solnit.
“This place is going to look like Little Somalia,” Brigadier General Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard's Joint Task Force told the Army Times. “We're going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.”
~A motivational quote for the volunteers, relief workers and for people everywhere contemplating donations.
(When a thief meets Buddha in the road he sees only the buddha's pockets.)
New FEMA Boss is "Duct Tape Man"
"...the man President Bush immediately named to succeed “Brownie,” proves to have been the same FEMA official who, two-and-a-half years ago, suggested that Americans stock up on duct tape to protect against a biological or chemical terrorist attack."
~As they say in the halls of academia, "You can't make this shit up."
Judge Denies Police Cell-Phone Tracking Request
"...a federal judge chastises the U.S. Department of Justice for trying to constantly track a cell phone user's location without providing any proof of criminal behavior."
story via/achieved @ Politech
~The first victory in many court battles to come.
September 13, 2005
Potential Toxic Chemical Sites in New Orleans
This page has been put together for disaster responders, media, activists, and anyone else interested in an initial list of known, major sites that store, use, or produce toxic chemicals within New Orleans, LA. This list only covers the three parishes (counties) of Orleans, Plaquemines, and St. Bernard. This is simply a list of all sites within these three counties that were tracked in several major EPA databases before the flood. We do not know whether any of these sites have in fact been affected by the Katrina hurricane or the flood.
link | OMB Watch
~We don't need to be reminded that sites like these are part of every American City?
>related: Infectious Disease Research In and Around New Orleans
"At the very least, there are two Level-3 biolabs in New Orleans and a cluster of three in nearby Covington. They have been working with anthrax, mousepox, HIV, plague, etc. There are surely other labs in the city.
Here's a great tip for all reporters looking for a completely new - and extremely important - angle on the situation in New Orleans. As far as I can tell, no one has yet mentioned the biological research labs located in and around NOLA.
link | Memory Hole
via/archived Secrecy News
~CNN today reported that Al Qaeda was taking credit for the devastation in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. They claim Katrina was an answer to their prayers.
[image google\ not with anything]
~What do Americans need to know about terrorism, when there's so many other threats to life and limb?
Distorted reality
The federal response to Katrina was not as portrayed "Mr. Bush's performance last week will rank as one of the worst ever during a dire national emergency," wrote New York Times columnist Bob Herbert in a somewhat more strident expression of the conventional wisdom. But the conventional wisdom is the opposite of the truth.And continues:
So they libel as a "national disgrace" the most monumental and successful disaster relief operation in world history.
Full story: Post-Gazette
---
~ Don't you also have the sensation that some 'journalists', like this Jack Kelly, must have something that blurres their mind (call it money or ignorance or ...)?
Date 9/11/2001 - Location: Baghdad, Iraq
- “How long do you think before they bomb us?” - “But it wasn’t us. It can’t be us…” I rationalized. - “It doesn’t matter. It’s all they need.”And it was true. It began with Afghanistan and then it was Iraq.
Four years later and the War on Terror (or is it the War of Terror?) has been won:
Score:
Al-Qaeda – 3,000
America – 100,000+
Congratulations!
This is a rip-off the story I have just read at Baghdad Burning. Follow the link to read the full story as I'm sure it will make you think.
Photo-Op
Firefighters say they want to brave the heat, the debris-littered roads, the poisonous cottonmouth snakes and fire ants and travel into pockets of Louisiana where many people have yet to receive emergency aid.
But as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday (Sept. 5) morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas." (emphasis added)
thanks Conscientious
~Note the date (He hits the ground running!): Bush is rolling up his sleeve. However I haven't seen any photos of him with a shovel or garbage bag. Do you think the President has a stage or tv-director on his staff who composes these tableaus for our edification?
Isn't Bush like the most photo-opportunistic US President ever? (Or I'm paying too much attention?)
Blog: The Otter Side
A doctor writing from New Orleans
via Consumptive-D
Federal DNA Database of Anyone Detained by Police Advances in Senate
(AN) amendment, (to the Violence Against Women Act) introduced by Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), on behalf of Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), would create a national registry of DNA taken from any person who has been detained by the police, even if the person is not arrested or convicted. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) tried to include a secondary amendment to link the DNA index only to violent felonies, but it was defeated on a straight party-line vote.
story vi/archived Politech
~Because Republicans and Texans especially are all about getting BIG Government off-our-freedom-loving, self-reliant, States-rights- backs? (Nevermind.)
September 12, 2005
Lifestyles of the Rich & Powerful: Renquist's Drug Addiction
"...for the nine years between 1972 and the end of 1981, William Rehnquist consumed great quantities of the potent sedative-hypnotic Placidyl.
The Rehnquist story deserves a third airing today if only to illustrate the ugly double standards that excuse extreme drug use by the powerful, especially if their connection is a prescribing doctor, and condemns to draconian prison terms the guy who purchases his drugs on the street. Reviewing Rehnquist's tale one more time also demonstrates the reluctance of the Senate—and some members of the press—to grade the mental competency of judges and judicial nominees."
story by Jack Schafer
~Renquist's jones
An e-mail friend observes: "I heard some story long ago on npr that a lot of really successful people have sleeping issues and hyper- activity issues, suggesting that with some becoming a doctor or lawyer is more a happy way of life than a study-ambition issue. Like they can't help themselves."
It also said that not a few doctors prescribe themselves downers."
~[Cieciel] A physiological basis for ambition? There's a pill for that.
[photo with article]
~When my father looks like this, we cut back on his medicine.
Photo Rorschach
~Am I supposed to notice how strong this woman looks?
As I get older and softer, women get stronger. (Not in a bad way.)
Men get weirder.
>related: Real Women 2004 Olympic Volleyball Photos
Nukes in the News: Pentagon Plans 1st Strike Nuclear Policy
The Pentagon has drawn up a new strategy, built on the 2002 "Bush doctrine" of pre-emptive military strikes, that would allow the United States to make first use of nuclear weapons to thwart an attack using weapons of mass destruction against the country.
Under the scheme, developed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff but yet to be ratified by Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, commanders would be able to request permission from the President to use nuclear weapons in a variety of scenarios...
~Let's run it up the flagpole and see how many duck and cover?
New Orleans Recovery: "White Collar Looting"
The Rev. Jesse Jackson suggested...that the federal government was encouraging "white-collar looting" by awarding no-bid contracts to favored companies to rebuild hurricane-ravaged areas, rather than giving those displaced by the disaster priority for jobs.
"The disaster victims should have first priority on the jobs and the contracts," Jackson told The Associated Press as he visited a disaster relief center here...
"We still got families that don't know if people are dead or missing. While the disconnected and the needy are running from shelter to shelter, the connected and the greedy are getting FEMA contracts," he said. "It's completely unfair."
He said many reconstruction jobs involve cleaning up, moving tree limbs, hauling lumber and trucking, basic jobs that could be carried out by people displaced by the disaster.
Instead, the jobs are going to corporations in sweetheart deals, he said.
"It's almost like white-collar looting," he said. "The wealthy are getting government contracts, no-bid contracts. That's a fundamental violation."
Because there was no federal plan for such a mass evacuation, many people ended up far from home and unable to return to find work even if it is offered.
"When you're in Minnesota and Utah and Montana, you can't get them," Jackson said.
A plan is needed to provide permanent housing to people who are moving from place to place, sometimes aimlessly, he said.
"At some point, the local people that are the hosts grow weary and the victims want a family-friendly living condition that has individuality," Jackson said. "People are living two weeks later under fear of being expelled while the rich are getting these contracts."
press release | San Jose Mercury (registration required)
>related: Pelosi Supports Anti-fraud Commission on Katrina
"The Bush Administration has eased contracting quotas for small and minority businesses to funnel lucrative no-bid contracts to Halliburton, Bechtel and other large companies, the same firms that received no-bid contracts in Iraq, some of which have been found to shortchange taxpayers. Just as we cannot tolerate this wasteful spending and corruption overseas, we must not allow it here at home."
FEMA for Kidz Rap
Disaster . . . it can happen anywhere,
But we've got a few tips, so you can be prepared
For floods, tornadoes, or even a 'quake,
You've got to be ready - so your heart don't break.
Disaster prep is your responsibility
And mitigation is important to our agency.
People helping people is what we do
And FEMA is there to help see you through
When disaster strikes, we are at our best
But we're ready all the time, 'cause disasters don't rest.
Written and performed by Scott J. Wolfson
link [requires real audio] via After the Future
9/11 and Manipulation of the USA
Long after September 11, 2001, most U.S. reporting seemed to be locked into a zone that excluded unauthorized ironies. It simply accepted that the U.S. government could keep making war on "terror" by using high-tech weapons that inevitably terrorized large numbers of people. According to routine news accounts, just about any measures deemed appropriate by Washington fit snugly under the rubric of an ongoing war that might never end in any of our lifetimes.
>related website: Coldtype
[guantanamo tower via google\ not with links]
September 11, 2005
Eyeballing Katrina Dead
>for example
A dog continues a vigil, now into several days, near a dead body lying outside a gas station in New Orleans, Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2005. (AP Photo/The Statesman-Journal, Thomas Patterson)
** EDITORS NOTE GRAPHIC CONTENT **
link | Cryptome
via Consumptive
~The dead can speak to us; here they speak volumes.
Blackwater Mercenaries Deploy in New Orleans
Some of the mercenaries say they have been "deputized" by the Louisiana governor; indeed some are wearing gold Louisiana state law enforcement badges on their chests and Blackwater photo identification cards on their arms. They say they are on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and have been given the authority to use lethal force.
The company, according to news reports, has...begun taking private contracts to guard hotels, businesses and other properties. But what has not been publicly acknowledged is the claim, made to us by 2 Blackwater mercenaries, that they are actually engaged in general law enforcement activities including "securing neighborhoods" and "confronting criminals."
That raises a key question: under what authority are Blackwater's men operating? A spokesperson for the Homeland Security Department, Russ Knocke, told the Washington Post he knows of no federal plans to hire Blackwater or other private security. "
~I heard that Louisiana law enforcement badges are thrown along with beads from Mardi Gras floats.
Overheard at Starbucks
"If women are as visually stimulated as men..."
--"Being primates, having eyes."
"...what would porn be like if women were producing images for as long a time as men?
--"Porn as we know it wouldn't exist."
"Without the centuries of men-only input, porn would be something unique and wondrous."
--"Or sleazy in a different way."
"How about activities like baseball, football and war?"
--"Henry of Troy"?
Soldiers, Cops Muzzle Reporters in Wake of Katrina
"While we were attempting to take pictures of the National Guard (a unit from Oklahoma) taking up positions outside a Brooks Brothers on the edge of the Quarter, the sergeant ordered us to the other side of the boulevard. The short version is: there won’t be any pictures of this particular group of guard soldiers on our (MSNBC) newscast tonight. Rules (or I suspect in this case an order on a whim) like those do not HELP the palpable feeling that this area is somehow separate from the United States.
There are automatic weapons and shotguns everywhere you look. It’s a stance that perhaps would have been appropriate during the open lawlessness that has long since ended on most of these streets. Someone else points out on television as I post this: the fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome) is a kind of perverse and perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history.
story | Brian Williams
September 10, 2005
THE PRESS AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
"Without the media the Civil Rights Movement would have been a
bird without wings," said movement veteran Rep. John Lewis in a
tribute published yesterday.
"Without the media's willingness to stand in harm's way and
starkly portray events of the Movement as they saw them unfold,
Americans may never have understood or even believed the horrors
that African Americans faced in the Deep South."
"That commitment to publish the truth took courage. It was
incredibly dangerous to be seen with a pad, a pen, or a camera
in Mississippi, Alabama or Georgia where the heart of the
struggle took place," Rep. Lewis said.
His remarks, a timely reminder of the importance of a free press,
also carried an implicit suggestion that the summit of
journalistic achievement may be something other than the
Watergate-style expose.
See "On the Contribution of the Press to the Civil Rights
Movement," by Rep. John Lewis, entered in the Congressional
Record, September 8, 2005:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2005/h090805.html
| Secrecy News
~Part of the refrain from the song "Big Yellow Taxi" is playing in my head. In falsetto.
US Can Detain "Enemy Combatant" Indefinitely
or President Can Imprison US Citizens Indefinitely Without Trial
President George W. Bush was handed a major victory on Friday in his effort to assert sweeping presidential powers in the war on terrorism as a US appeals court upheld his authority to imprison indefinitely a US citizen captured on American soil.
On the eve of the fourth anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks, the US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that José Padilla, a suspected al-Qaeda operative who US officials say was planning to carry out a terrorist attack inside the US, could be detained as an “enemy combatant” without any review by US civilian courts.
The detention of Mr Padilla has been sharply criticised by US civil liberties groups, who argue the president does not have the authority in the struggle with al-Qaeda to suspend the basic right of US citizens to a court hearing before they can be imprisoned.
But the court's ruling, written by Judge Michael Luttig, who is considered a potential Supreme Court nominee, said definitively that Mr Bush had been given such powers by the congressional declaration authorising military force following the September 11 terrorist attacks.
That resolution, the court said, “provided the president all powers necessary and appropriate to protect American citizens from terrorist acts,” including the power to detain committed enemies even if they are US citizens.
press release\ also here | Guardian
>related:
"Contrary to the court's opinion, there is very little reason to believe that Congress either anticipated or endorsed the military detention of U.S. citizens arrested in the United States when it authorized a military strike against Afghanistan following 9/11."
"So long as the civilian courts are open and functioning, American citizens arrested in the United States are entitled to due process protections provided by a traditional criminal trial."
ACLUs press release
Free Jose Padilla!
~Can you sense the ground-swell of support for this man? Feel the righteous anger of the media and the masses in solidarity with a fellow citizen, albeit "gang member", imprisoned by a directive of the president without due process? Me neither.
Nonetheless it's a dark day Homelanders. Lady Liberty's lamp has been dimmed.
Tight Constraints on Pentagon's "Freedom Walk"
The march, sponsored by the Department of Defense, will wend its way from the Pentagon to the Mall along a route that has not been specified but will be lined with four-foot-high snow fencing to keep it closed and "sterile," said Allison Barber, deputy assistant secretary of defense.
Officers are prepared to arrest anyone who joins the march or concert without a credential and refuses to leave, said Park Police Chief Dwight E. Pettiford.
The event, the America Supports You Freedom Walk, is billed as a memorial to victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks and a show of support for those serving in the military, topped off with a concert by country singer Clint Black, known for his pro-troops anthem, "Iraq and Roll." Organizers said they expect 3,000 to 10,000 participants.
Barber said that organizers would rather not have such stringent measures on their event but that police had requested them.
~"Sterile" is the DOD's term. Will there be a float honoring the Pentagon's use of depleted uranium in Afghanistan and Iraq?
[photo: American Memory \ not with press release]
Global Stocks of Nuclear Explosive Materials
This update is a set of reports, tables, and charts that detail (2003)inventories of nuclear explosive materials throughout the world. With this update, the inventories have been expanded to include estimates of neptunium 237 and americium holdings by country. This update also includes the new report "Civil HEU Watch," which breaks down civil HEU holdings by country, and a study of China's military plutonium and HEU holdings. Resources limited ISIS's ability to compile this information into a book or comprehensive report.
table of contents via Secrecy News