November 30, 2005
Lost Photographs, et al
He (ex-boyfriend) murdered the next girl he dated (pictured here) in a fit of jealousy and spent the rest of his life in mental institutions
more from Jacinda Russell
Art Magazines: Aspect and FlackAttack
Aspect (DVD Magazine)
Flack Attack (Wiki)
via Rhizome
Art: GPS Diary
"In GPS Diary, London-based Thorsten Knaub has combined an interest in tracking bodily movements through space with the traditional artist's practice of keeping a daily sketch book. Knaub produced web-based drawings by carrying a GPS device with him everyday for one year, creating a linear, doodle-like composition for each day that can now be viewed individually, or downloaded as compressed representations of a month or the entire year. Knaub's artist statement points to the dehumanizing effects such technologies can have on our understandings of being in the world, making one's daily movements little more than a series of plotted points, and the drawings revel in that process of abstraction."
link & blurb excerpt via NetArtNews
[jul.-01]
Criticality & Radiation Accidents
There is one class of accident that is unique to the nuclear industry: criticality accidents, where an amount of fissile material accidentally comes together into a supercritical amount. There is a sudden release of energy and deadly radiation.
The Atomic Energy Commission, under its mandate from Congress, reported all criticality and radiation accidents in the following documents. The use of understatement is astounding, as when the "Table of Criticality Accidents" lists the accidents involving Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin, but neglects to include that fact that fatalities were involved. ...note that these reports only relate to direct Atomic Energy Commission installations and do not reports accidents in commercial nuclear power plants nor any accidents that occurred within the military.
http://www.ciar.org/ttk/hew/accident/
[Illustration of Louis Slotin Accident]
Common Visual Design Elements of Weblogs
Weblogs (blogs) have been heralded as a new space for collaborative creativity, a medium for breaking free of the constraints of previous forms and allowing authors greater access to flexible publishing methods. This generalization seems extreme...
A grounded theory approach was used to develop a coding scheme consisting of 23 elements:
CMC (Computer-mediated communication) elements
custom images
color in headings/titles
custom colors
color alteration
custom table borders
custom banner
data representations
color bars
custom font
graphical dividers
color clash
smilies
per-post icons
photo background
text effects
language
too wide
scrolling headers
custom calendar layout
custom cursors
music
video
paper by Lois Ann Scheidt and Elijah Wright
with illustrations, references & comments
thanks Diederik
Queer Theatre Posters
for example...
more from the ApuTheatre Poster Wall
Soldiers Obeying Odors
"The traditional way the army delivers orders to soldiers is by shouting at them. But researchers at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles think the US Army Research Office should consider an alternative – coded smells.
These can be delivered silently, in the dark and when loud noise is drowning out speech. Furthermore, says the USC patent, the immediate reaction to a smell is emotional, rather than rational, so an odour trigger may encourage people to carry out orders without question.
story Barry Fox | New Scientist
~Who knew that huffers and poppers could be models for future military technology? Hashassins i.e. assassins anyone?
[photo from The Glue Sniffers\ by Bruce\ not above]
Bush Game on Padilla May Backfire
The government has changed its designation for Jose Padilla 3 times. When Padilla was arrested, he was called a "material witness," being held to testify against the terrorists. A month later, Bush labeled Padilla an "enemy combatant." Padilla was transferred to a military brig in South Carolina and denied any contact with counsel. Even though a federal judge ruled in December 2002 that Padilla was entitled to have a lawyer to challenge his detention, he was not permitted to consult with counsel until March 2004.
Padilla's lawyers are asking a question that the Bush administration is afraid for the Court to answer: "Does the President have the power to seize American citizens in civilian settings on American soil and subject them to indefinite military detention without criminal charge or trial?"
Bush will argue that this issue is now moot, since he filed criminal charges against Padilla. But, talking out of both sides of its collective mouth, the Bush administration also maintains that even if Padilla is ultimately acquitted of the criminal charges, it can re-arrest him and hold him as an enemy combatant. Thus, Padilla's lawyers are arguing that the issue is not moot and the Supreme Court should decide it.
Ironically, the charges the government brought against Padilla have nothing to do with dirty bombs or natural gas explosions...
If the government had charged Padilla with dirty bomb or explosion charges, the testimony of the prosecution's only "witnesses" would be inadmissible or unbelievable since they were tortured to implicate Padilla. One of them, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, suffered excessive use of "waterboarding," a torture technique that simulates drowning. This was confirmed last year in a report by the CIA inspector general.
The government may offer Padilla a deal like the one it offered John Walker Lindh, who was also facing life in prison. Lindh was allowed to plead guilty to lesser charges on the condition that he not mention the mistreatment he suffered while in custody.
article by Marjorie Cohn | TruthOut
~What's to stop the government from doing the exact same thing to other American citizens a president designates as terrorists? As long as the Supreme Court finds reasons not to hear their cases? It looks like win-win for imperial power to me.
November 29, 2005
Crooks Covet Cops Databases
There is no indication the officer actually identified an informer, or that his prying into the REJIS database led to anyone being hurt. Yet the accusation against St. Louis police Officer Antoine Gordon, who has since resigned, suggests that crime rings can target REJIS or other databases to insulate themselves against investigations.
[The widely used REJIS system, formally known as the Regional Justice Information Service, was launched in the mid-1970s for sharing information between St. Louis and St. Louis County. It evolved to include some 200 organizations, in Missouri and Illinois. Most are police departments, but others include prosecutors, courts and correctional agencies.]
Joe Mokwa, the St. Louis chief of police, said recently that he was unaware of anyone's safety being endangered by any breach of confidential information by Gordon.
Mokwa said officers use REJIS on a daily basis, and tightening security would be burdensome. "You have to rely upon the integrity of officers to use the system properly," he said. "To change it, you would have to restrict their access."
~The number of times in this story we're assured that no one was harmed by this officer's alleged spying for a drug gang got me thinking that in some police departments cops might routinely be "running record checks for friends and family". That record checks coud be one of the perks of being a cop and a way to supplement one's income. All the departments' would need to do is to selectively ignore it's REJIS' password protection alerts? Maybe the feds keep a close watch on who uses those databases? (I don't have a clue.)
Maybe the above excuses are St Louis' way of assuring their undercover officers and informants that no rival drug lords have lists of their names?
I wonder how much former-Officer Gordon's alleged breach of conduct will ultimately cost the St. Louis police department? If we'll ever learn if anyone important was harmed? How many years before stories about hit-lists in St. Louis and So. Illinois disappear?
[illus, not from above]
Google Image Search: Mad Cow
for example
16,799 more google 'mad cow' images
~Via Google there are many more 'mad cow' images then 'dirty bomb' images and some individuals are having fun, if that's the right word, with mad cows. While there's nothing remotely funny about bombs, especially dirty ones. (See link in the post below.)
Here's the 'search within results' of google's 'mad cow' gallery using inurl:uk. In the UK hundreds of people have already died from BSE: areas of the country were put under quarantine for months and tens of thousands of animals were destroyed. Not so much fun here.
There are obvious economic reasons in the USA anyway to make light of mad cow disease, while the benefits if any from dirty bombs come from how seriously we imagine their threat?
Maybe the difference in images is as simple as: animals are funny and cows are among the funniest?
Google Image Search: Dirty Bomb
for example:
Figure 6. A simulated effect of detonation of dirty bomb (3,500 curie of cesium-137 with ~50 lbs of explosive) at the lower tip of Manhattan Island (Scientific American, November 2002, page 76) @
more google "dirty bomb' images
~Do you get the feeling stories about dirty bombs sell newspapers & magazines? (If I'm not scared at least once a week by something vaguely scientific I don't quite understand, I feel uninformed, out of the loop, lost.)
November 28, 2005
Exhibition: Physics, Poetry + Photography
>for example
prism
Some Photographs by Peter Fraser\ The Poems by Ian McDonough
Dirty Bomb Redux
...if uranium is actually the "radiological agent" that Zubayda suggested Padilla use, then Zubayda doesn't know diddley-squat about nukes – "dirty" or otherwise.
Shortly after 9-11, the dirty bomb "experts" at the Federation of American Scientists told the world how to make one that would work.
The FAS "dirty bomb" was a "coffee jar" containing about a thousand curies of a true radiological material such as Cobalt-60.
[That's about the radiological source-strength of a medical radio-therapy unit used to irradiate cancer patients.]
A successful bomb would have to be designed with great sophistication, first to break open the "coffee jar," then to gradually heat the radioactive source so that it vaporized, and finally to scatter it to the winds.
~So Padilla's dirty bomb was never a WMD? More to the point are dirty bombs as weapons of terrorism too complex to be bloody likely?
Did Padilla have access to the uranium? Addresses of medical supply wholesalers?
Are dirty bombs the stuff of tv dramas and bad movies, something to frighten the rubes?
Did the Bushies use terrorist talk of improbable dirty bombs to scare us and to imprison an American citizen for three years without due process?
>related
Padilla indictment silent on 'dirty bomb'
On Padilla's arrest by FBI agents in 2002, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft described him as a "known terrorist who was exploring a plan to build and explode a radiological dispersion device, or 'dirty bomb,' in the United States."
But the federal court charges against Padilla, a U.S. citizen, make no mention of any such plot. The words "dirty bomb" do not appear in the indictment, unsealed Tuesday, nor does any specific mention of al Qaeda. Instead, it speaks of his involvement in a North American terrorist "support cell."
...remarks by former U.S. Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who said the challenge of charging Padilla in federal court would be that prosecutors "obviously, can't use any of the statements he's made in military custody."
["Dirty Bomb" digital print by Nigel Ayers]
Art: The Miniature Long March
During the three months between July 1 and October 1, 2002, tattoo a map showing the route of the art project, "Long March - A Walking Visual Display" on my chest (or back, depending upon technical issues).
2. Keep constant contact with the Long March main contingents. For instance, if they arrive to Ruijin on July 1 and reach Jingganshan on July 8, I will tattoo the route from Ruijin to Jingganshan from the 1st to the 8th in Beijing. A "Small Red Flag" will be tattooed on every site. With this analogy, I will complete the Long March with a "steel needle" on my body on October 1st, also noting the completion of the tattooing process. Document the process.
3. About twenty photographs and video documentations will comprise the exhibition.
4. Keep in contact with the Long March detachment to adjust the actual time of progress and the route to be tattooed. @
for example
Site 5 Kunming
images | The Long March Space.com
~I wonder if anyone in the States has a tattoo map of the Appalachian Trail? The Trail of Tears? Route 66? The Indy 500? Iraq? Afghanistan? Their home (southern) state? Here's a photo of a tattoo map of Brasil. Here's a henna tattoo shaped like the map of a city.
The Wrongs of Passage:
Inhuman and Degrading Treatment of New Recruits in the
Russian Armed Forces
http://hrw.org/reports/2004/russia1004/russia1004.pdf
| Human Rights Watch Report
thanks Diederick
~Comrades!
November 27, 2005
Boom chaka-a-laka laka boom
thermobaric bombs: Marines quiet about brutal new weapon"
English 101: The Buying & Selling of Your Body
Getting Started with your Research
>for example
1. Identify the key concepts in your research topic.
2. Identify the synonyms and variations of your key concepts. Some article databases have a thesaurus, subject headings, or controlled vocabulary that you should use.
culture, branded life, ethics, product placement
body image, brands in schools, television advertising
3. Separate keywords with AND. Only combine terms if widely recognized phrases. Do NOT type sentences.
more from this database | Emory University Library
Emory U. Database Index\Search
[illus not from Emory databases]
Fuss and Feathers
Pandemic panic over the avian flu.
"It's practically a state secret that the discovery of H5N1 in poultry dates back not to 1997 but rather to 1959, when it was identified in Scottish chickens. Perhaps haggis had a protective effect on the farmers, but there was a terrible outbreak of the related H5N2 among both chickens and turkeys in Pennsylvania in 1983-85 (17 million birds were destroyed) that appears to have originated as H5N1 in seagulls. So H5N1 has been flying around the globe for over four decades and hasn't done a number on us yet. That doesn't mean it won't ever; but there's absolutely no reason to think it will pick this year or next.
Still, there are those of great influence who would have us think a pandemic is just around the corner. Reassuringly, their explanations are unscientific. One is that "we're overdue" for a pandemic. Google "avian flu" and "pandemic" and "overdue," and you'll get over 40,000 hits."
article by Michael Fumento
~One of the H's at Unknown News reflects: "I've grown weary -- is that the right word? --perhaps 'impatient' with the plague we're constantly on the verge of dying from. It all seems very unnecessarily alarming... except mad cow, which actually worries me but seems underplayed in the media.
Then again, what the fuck do I know? Maybe hiccups is the deadliest threat ... "
['Cul De Chicken' photo from Hareline Dubbin Inc.\ not above]
November 26, 2005
There Is No God
"I'm not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it's everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more."
commentary by Penn Jillette | NPR
[photo not from above]
November 25, 2005
Porn: No Fauxxx.com
"No Fauxxx means "No Fakes." Most of our models are not professional
adult models or sex workers, although some are. Either way, they are normal people interested in expressing their sexualities. They are all sizes, all genders, all sexual orientations, all races, and from all sorts of places, doing all sorts of things.
There's nothing fake here - what you see is what you get. The models are in charge of their content and their representation.
No Fauxxx is for models who are sick of not seeing people like them in mainstream porn, and for members who appreciate real bodies, real people, and a variety of genres.
...we will strive to break down all sex stereotypes and typecasting, providing an in-depth analysis of the porn industry while creating HOT HOT HOT HOT PORN."
take the free tour: http://www.nofauxxx.com/
~Growing Up Sexually Diederik muses: "Hm..."real porn", I don't buy it...sex is so overdetermined by the erection industry and managerialist psychotherapy propaganda and no-touch sex ed apparatus, how can videotaping it in an as-if-not-commercial air be "no fake"? Isn't the thing in porn that you are faking all--sex, you, me, the world? Isn't fake always already there?"
[Cieciel] I like the idea, the maketing ploy, that sex acts performed by unattractive people are more "real" then the sex attractive people are having. There should be something extra, besides gratitude, for all the time & effort we put into finding a willing sex partner. Reality as an inverse function of beauty?
[photo not from above links]
Rock & Roll: "Prussian Blue"
Lynx & Lamb the neo-nazis' Olsen twins.
...all children pretty much espouse their parents' attitudes," she (April Gaede) said. "We're white nationalists and of course that's a part of our life and I'm going to share that part of my life with my children."
story thanks Conscientious
~The more publicity they get, the more they'll earn and the more assets can be awarded via the inevitable civil trial after a crazed fan pulls a "jodie-foster" and assaults or kills one of us mud people in their name. Jaja 1st Amendment!! (Within two years?)
One of the H's at Unknown News noted: "That's top notch journalism from ABC News: Before they ran this piece on 20/20, a Google search yielded three mentions of Lamb and Lynx on-line. Now there are 348,000. Trendsetting journalism at its finest."
Overheard at Starbucks
"He makes about $300.00-an-hour. Your comparisons of the 'Lord of the Flies', 'The Lord of the Rings' and the tv show 'Lost' obviously wasn't worth his time.
In your defense there isn't much anyone can say that's worth $5.00-a-minute to him. He's a lean, mean, earning-machine."
--"Maybe if I had simultaneously given him a hand-job?"
thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons to be shit out through wholesome american guts
uncle William Burroughs and his thanksgiving day wishes
November 24, 2005
TruthOut Multimedia
http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm
~I don't want to download iTunes6. But you might.
November 23, 2005
Wax Figures Highlight Dangers of Drug Use
A mirror reflection explains that a drug dealer is Death itself, while a youth buying drugs faces forthcoming ageing
Painting: World Literature in Painting Notes
>for example
'Leda and the Swan' by Matisse
more literature in painting notes at Olga's Gallery
Overheard at Starbucks
"What got into her?!"
--"Don't you mean WHO got into her?
...Ever hear of 'Leda and the Swan'?"
"Layla and the Swan?"
--"Exactly."
More than 80,000 Held by US Since 9/11 Attacks
story | The Guardian
X 80,000
[photo/caption not with story]
November 22, 2005
Illustrated Bible Verse
"Deliver me from the workers of iniquity, and save me from bloody men."
White Phosphorous, Daisy cutters, Depleted Uranium, Thermobaric bombs, Clusterbombs, Napalm...
...The US uses WMD against civilians
~According to this article America's been using white phosphorous, cluster bombs and napalm in Iraq since April 2003. "The United Nations banned the use of napalm against civilians in 1980... The United States, which didn't endorse the convention, is the only nation in the world still using napalm."
When will we hear America's military experts explain how we didn't use enough of these weapons? "If only we were permitted to use all the weapons at our disposal; to burn to the ground Fallujah, Tikrit, or Baghdad, we wouldn't have the problems we have now? We could've won this war!"
[photo defense link\ not from above (not napalm or cluster bombs)]
Eyeballing: US-Made Suicide Bombs
>for example
"These are by US military, law enforcement agencies or commercial security firms -- whether for training or marketing or spooking the public via release on the Web."
http://cryptome.org/suicide-bombs.htm
November 21, 2005
Books: Amazon's Sex Stash
"Hidden deep within the stacks at Amazon.com is a wonderful selection of smut. Start at Amazon's home page. Click on the Books tab. Click on Nonfiction in the Browse menu. Click on Social Sciences in the menu that follows. See it? Between the Popular Culture and Reference sections? It's a list of Amazon customers' favorite porn.
Actually, most of the books are about porn. To find the explicit stuff, you have to visit lists such as Health, Body & Mind / Sex and Literature & Fiction/ Genre / Erotica. "
Meet the New Interrogators: Lockheed Martin
...these contractors will work side-by-side with military interrogators conducting question-and-answer sessions using 17 officially sanctioned techniques, ranging from "love of comrades" to "fear up harsh." Their subjects will be the tens of thousands of men thrown into United States-run military jails on suspicion of links to terrorism.(*)
...Lockheed is supplying the U.S. war in Iraq with a vast range of both personnel and materiel. In addition providing interrogators, it is currently seeking retired Army majors or lieutenant colonels to develop short- and long-range planning at the biggest U.S. base in Iraq: Camp Anaconda, in Balad, northern Iraq.
On the material side, Lockheed's Keyhole and Lacrosse satellites beam images from the war back to the military; its U-2 and the SR-71 Blackbird spy planes, F-16, F/A-22 jet fighters, and F-117 stealth attack fighters were used to "shock and awe" the Iraqis at the start of the US invasion; and ground troops employed its Hellfire air-to-ground missiles and the Javelin portable missiles in the invasion of Fallujah last year.
The company's reach and influence go far beyond the military. A New York Times profile of the company in 2004 opened with the sentence: "Lockheed Martin doesn't run the United States. But it does help run a breathtakingly big part of it."
Spy Cameras Meet Lie Detectors
Peter Rosenfeld designs technology that allow computers to interpret what a cameras "sees." Now, robotics expert for Advanced Technology Labs, a division of Lockheed Martin in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, is turning this expertise to the imprecise science of interrogation.
His latest assignment is a three year project with Professor Dimitris Metaxas of Rutgers University to use cameras and a special computer program to track subjects' eyes, lips, shoulders, and hands movements to determine if they are lying.
Metaxas and Rosenfeld's work is paid for by a $3.5 million grant made in August by the Department of Homeland Security, which runs the U.S. immigration and border security system among a myriad other tasks. Lockheed Martin's Rosenfeld is supplying three-dimensional sensor technology for the project, while Rutgers is supplying student volunteers.
The government has used polygraphs for more than 50 years to track blood pressure and heart rate, but most experts believe that these "lie detectors" are inaccurate at least 50 percent of the time and that a trained liar can easily fool the machine.
The next steps in lie detection draw heavily from the work of psychologists including Paul Ekman, a professor at the University of California medical school in San Francisco, who has spent more than 40 years tracking the facial and body signals that people make when they answer questions. Early studies indicated, for example, that people looked to their left when recalling the past but to the right when making up a story about prior events.
Today Ekman and Metaxas are getting millions of dollars from the multiple military agencies to study the fleeting facial expressions and casual gestures that many observers do not notice, but that the scientists hope can help them develop more sophisticated lie detectors. "Micro-expressions and micro-gestures are a lot harder to mask and they do not vary among cultures and races," Metaxas told the Daily Targus, the Rutgers campus newspaper. "This gives interrogators tools to do their job confidently.
article By Pratap Chatterjee | Corp Watch & Jihad Unspun
*(as heard on Harry Shearer's "LeShow")
More Work for Mother, More Commercials on the DVR
...to understand technologies, you've got to pay attention to how technologies fit into people's lives, and how they affect patterns of behavior-- not just what they're intended to do... apparently, while DVR (digital video recorder) users fast-forward through commercials, they watch more hours of TV, so it may all be a wash.
Even though nine out of 10 people with digital video recorders say they usually fast-forward through commercials, broadcast executives argued...that doesn't mean the death knell for advertisers.
People with DVRs watch more television, and even if they zip through ads, they notice them...
blog post | Institute for the Future
~Wishful thinking by the broadcast executives?
But I liked the reminder by the IFTF blogger of how inventions have unintended consequences.
November 20, 2005
US Torture Described
1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him.
2. Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.
3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.
4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.
5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.
6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.
According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaeda's toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess.
"The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law," said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.
story | ABC News
~An e-mail friend observes: "Torture is still torture regardless of how you describe it. It's probably for the first time in history that a democratic country openly admits torturing people; and the lack of outrage by large number of the population teaches yet another lesson about how, for example, Nazi Germany worked: After all, under the Nazis, Germans were also made to believe their enemies were a terrible threat."
>related:
What Is Torture? --An Interactive Primer on American Interrogation
>for example: Water Boarding
Source: Guantanamo commanders requested permission to use "wet towel and dripping water to induce the misperception of suffocation" in an Oct. 11, 2002, memo to the Pentagon. Rumsfeld denied permission in his memo of Dec. 2, 2002. The New York Times reported in May 2004 that water boarding was used by CIA officials to interrogate "high value" detainees like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh, held by the United States at secret locations.
Description: According to University of Wisconsin history professor Alfred McCoy, this technique was first developed by the French and published in a 16th - century interrogation manual. Practitioners of "water torture," or "question de l'eau," placed a piece of cloth over the victim's mouth and nose, and then poured water into the mouth to force the cloth down the victim's throat. The effect was to make breathing impossible, thus creating the psychological perception of drowning.
Physical, Psychological, or Other Effects: Severe mental suffering; no physical effects unless the tactic results in suffocation.
Locations Used: Unknown secret locations
Legal Opinion: The Geneva Conventions surely prohibit this method as torture and as a form of cruel or degrading treatment. The ICCPR and CAT also forbid water boarding because it inflicts severe mental suffering, as does the UCMJ and federal criminal law.
article By Emily Bazelon, Phillip Carter, and Dahlia Lithwick | Slate
~Slate's defense of US torture with links to Whitehouse legal memos, their dates and authors; a "taxonomy of torture" (example above) and military reports also with links to articles and sources.
Truth, it has been said, is the first casualty of war. In the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, official truth died months before the bombing of Baghdad began. Unembedded bears witness to the enduring power of independent journalism. In their unflinching look at war-ravaged Iraq, four freelance photojournalists show that life there is brutal yet poignant; that compassion co-exists with anger, hatred and fear. By gaining the confidence of Iraqi civilians and insurgents, these photojournalists have brought back images of life in wartime, from beauty parlors and joyful wedding scenes to the carnage of civilian casualties, the heartbroken faces of grieving parents, and the glassy-eyed shock of parentless children.
This is not the view from a Marine base. These photographers were on the streets of Baghdad when it fell, amid a crowd of civilians under aerial attack, and in the holy Imam Ali shrine with the Mahdi Army during the siege of Najaf. Their images document issues often underrepresented: the insurgency as seen from inside the separate resistance movements, civilians affected by the battles between U.S. and insurgent forces, growing conservatism and fundamentalism and their effects on women, and the devastating effects of ongoing civilian casualties.
Working outside the U.S. military’s official “embedding” program, the authors bring us face-to-face with the people of Iraq. They combine photographs and essays with excerpts from two years of personal letters, journal entries, and feature stories to take us across front lines and cultural barriers into the lives of a nation in crisis. Theirs is a path to understanding the cost of war.
November 19, 2005
Lyric: A Living Wage
Sally is eleven, goes to St. Clements
Back of the railway tracks
With assorted refugees from DSS, B and B's
At the school gate they sell crack
Here they steal her thunder, crucify her wonder
Can she get out alive and grovel gratefully
On the eternal 9 to 5
A living wage is all that we demand
From a government sworn to uphold that cause
Not betrayal of precious right, bought with precious lives
In the course of two World Wars
Now Sally is sixteen sits in history class
Reading what Churchill said
About a living wage for all the poorly paid
The basis of our welfare state
but her friend Sue left school last year
For a job in a shoe shop
Now she's back home, signing on the dole
The pay weren't worth a crap
In the ivory tower high on the hill
Far from the street and trash
Sit the privlaged few, our future rulers
Learning bought with cash
In the afternoon doom of her classroom
Sally's waiting for the bell
She carves a desperate plea on her desktop
Get me out of this frigging hell
A living wage is all that we demand
From a government sworn to uphold that cause
Not betrayal of precious rights, bought with precious lives
In the course of 2 world wars
By Ron Kavana @ as heard on Hard Ca$h
[money tree via @\ not above]
Video: Conversations With History
[requires Real Player] OR click on name for transcript.
~There must be other universities who corral their experts and visiting lecturers for similar programs?
Book: America Right or Wrong:
An Anatomy of American Nationalism by Anatole Lieven
Review:
"In this provocative and scholarly work, Lieven, senior associate at Washington's Carnegie Endowment, argues that normative American patriotism — an optimistic 'civic creed' rooted in respect for America's institutions, individual freedoms and constitutional law — contains a monster in the basement: a jingoistic, militaristic, Jacksonian nationalism that sees America as the bearer of a messianic mission to lead a Manichean struggle against the savages. Since 9/11, the Bush administration and its Christian-fundamentalist 'base' have invoked the nationalist tradition in waging the struggle against the 'evil-doers.' The result, Lieven argues, has been catastrophic for the war on terror. Rather than rally to America as the beacon of liberty, other nations (particular European and Muslim ones) feel repelled and threatened by the cavalier and unilateral superpower."
more | Powell's Books thanks Conscientious
>related Interview | Asia Source
another Interview | UC Berkeley's Conversations with History
[photo not from above]
Paper: Penal Excess and Surplus Meaning:
Public Torture Lynchings in Twentieth-Century America
by David Garland
The most notorious lynchings that occurred in the United States between 1890 and 1940 involved publicity, crowds, ritual, and abnormal cruelty. Several hundred of these ‘‘public torture lynchings’’ took place, most of them in the Deep South. The author develops an interpretation that takes seriously the specific forms and discourses that lynchers and their supporters used to describe and justify these events characterizing them as criminal punishments, albeit summary, informal ones that were shaped by a white supremacist culture and a politics of racial domination. An interpretation of the penal context and meanings of these public torture lynchings helps us understand their specific forms and their claims to legitimacy. The penal character of these lynchings increased the probability that they would be tolerated by local (and even national) audiences and thus made them a strategic form of violence in struggles to maintain racial supremacy.The author argues that a consideration of these events should lead us to revise our standard narratives about the evolution of modern punishments.
In the early 1890's nearly 30 years after Emancipation, 20 years after the end of Reconstruction, and at precisely the moment when Progressives elsewhere were establishing a new reformist penology Southern crowds began to torture and burn alleged offenders with unprecedented ferocity and public ceremony. These new kinds of lynching continued in small towns and rural areas throughout the South until the end of the 1930s. The exact number of these ‘‘public torture lynchings’’ is uncertain, but of the nearly 4,000 lynchings that were recorded in newspaper reports..."
Download pdf file (42 pages) thanks Diederik
~Try 'save target as' then open file with 'portable document' reader?
>related Lynchings in America \ About Lynching
~All good people hate crime and criminals, terror and terrorists, sin and sinners.
Obscenity Crimes.org
http://www.obscenitycrimes.org/ | Morality in Media Inc.
>related: links
thanks Diederik
[Camp X-ray: the old Guantanamo prison\ not with above]
~Why deny the obvious?
November 18, 2005
USA: Work Environment Index
INCLUDES
FIRST EVER NATIONAL INDEX TO RANK EACH STATE ON
HOW WORKERS ARE TREATED
press release w/links
[Living wage is the amount needed to lift a family of four above the federal poverty line. @]
[illus via google: happy work\ not from above links]
Raid on Torture Dungeon Exposes Iraq's Secret War
story By Kim Sengupta | Independent
~Reminiscent of El Salvador during the Reagan era.
>related: Negroponte's death squads up and running in Iraq?
[photo via The Salvador Option\ not above]
~Low intensity warfare is fought on a number of 'fronts'.
Targeting teenagers
It's well known that propaganda makers (either institutional or commercial) often target children and teenagers as they are easier to convince and they tend to keep the ideas they have assimilated while young all over their life. It's also true that we usually associate the word 'propaganda' with communist regimes, though most countries, either commies or not, use it.
Ethan Persoff has compiled some American comics writen with different purposes, for example keeping teenagers away from drugs
or making them support the invasion of Grenada.
Via: El blog ausente
November 17, 2005
Admitance after denial (or the nth Iraq tale)
Saint Peter denied knowing Jesus three times, the USA denied several times the use of white phosphorous bombs (napalm like devices) in the raid for Fallujah but has been finally forced to admit they employed this chemical weaponry.
Sometimes we know the truth only when witnesses and proofs are too evident to be hidden, and this is the case.
Take a look at the video that started everything: here.
~ If Clinton's childlish lie was enough for Americans to dissaprove him, why do they still support the current President after all these lies? Call me dumb but I cannot understand it.
Previously discussed here
Photographs: Jan Saudek
>for example
Brothers 1986
more than 450 photos: http://www.saudek.com/en/Jan/Fotky.html
via RSC
~Painterly tableaus; plenty of nudity.
I can see these as stained glass windows in the Existential Church.
(Nudity implies a greater awareness of, a complicity in, one's nakedness?)
TV: "Making Slough Happy"
Six specialists are putting their reputations on the line as they embark on a uniquely ambitious social experiment. Can they improve the happiness levels of people in the much-maligned town of Slough - home of The Office?
It's the first week of the experiment and 50 volunteers are issued with a happiness manifesto..
The 10 steps to happiness:
Plant something and nurture it
Count your blessings - at least five - at the end of each day
Take time to talk - have an hour-long conversation with a loved one each week
Phone a friend whom you have not spoken to for a while and arrange to meet up
Give yourself a treat every day and take the time to really enjoy it
Have a good laugh at least once a day
Get physical - exercise for half an hour three times a week
Smile at and/or say hello to a stranger at least once each day
Cut your TV viewing by half
Spread some kindness - do a good turn for someone every day.
press release | BBC2
thanks Devin
[photo not from above]
November 16, 2005
Interactive Ads+Children
Disney Balks at Kidvid Rules for DTV
Kid-friendly Disney wants the FCC to ease up on its new children's TV advertising rules, which would ban cross-promotion of programming and related Web sites during children's shows... Disney and like-minded networks are reportedly worried that the FCC rules will hinder their ability to promote through interactive advertising--featuring characters that mention Web site that kids can visit...
>related: Playhouse Disney
[illus google: interactive disney]
Ads More Likely to Sway Gays than Straights
Gays and lesbians are more likely to be motivated into buying a product because of its advertising than are straights according to a new marketing study.
The study also found that gay men and lesbians believe ads "rarely" shows people like themselves.
~So tv shows like "Will and Grace" are not Gay Agenda attacks on the "traditional" American family? They're a marketing inspired "outreach" to a susceptible demographic?
Toxic Nanomaterials
Scientists at Rhode Island's Brown University have been awarded the US$1.8 million grant by the American National Science Foundation to test the toxicity, and ecotoxicity, of existing nanomaterials and see how they interact with human and animal cells.
~These are the first tests that will be used to set "nano-industry health standards"?
>related on Spitting Image: various links to recent 'nano' news-stories.
["nanotube" via VUchem\ not the press release]
~Just for fun compare and contrast the above graphic with google image results for wormhole. William Blake would be proud?
November 15, 2005
Clucking Points
From the casting specs for the voice-over on a series of television commercials for KFC. Auditions for the part were held last winter. Originally from Harper's Magazine, September 2004.
1. The voice should be confident.
This is a confident, progressively thinking brand. The voice should project that confidence. There should be some authority in the KFC voice. Some bass notes.
2. The voice should be fun.
Chicken, relatively speaking, is a fun food to eat. The voice should have a playful, positive quality to it—and perhaps a touch of the irreverence and sass that the Colonel himself had.
3. The voice should be inclusive.
The voice should have broad appeal. It should elicit a sort of instant universal head nod. It should sound like someone anybody would want to hang out and eat some chicken with.
4. The voice should be young and male.
The brand personality is male. It’s genuine. It’s honest. It’s Middle American. It’s young. It’s even a little brash.
5. The voice needs to sell.
There is a lot of quick, price-point copy, and it needs to hit.
~Yes, "the voice should be confident"! I think I'll use this phrase as a daily affirmation in front of my morning mirror.
Spacecraft's pocket guide
So you want to be an astronaut? Then this might be useful for you: Ariane 5 User's Manual.
Ariane 5 is the ESA's (European Space Agency) most advanced launcher, until 2007 at least when Vega is planned to make its first launch, and is also the launcher that can put the highest payload in orbit, 6 tonnes.
~ I suppose it's not the only user manual as my car's one has almost the same amount of pages.
Global Public Intellectuals Poll Results
According to UKs Prospect Magazine
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/intellectuals/results
~It couldn't hurt to know who these people are. (They really should have an MTV- broadcasted awards banquet.)
Priapo notes: "Having short names can lead to confusion. If some Spanish reader that doesn't hear music reads that list he/she would think that 23 people would have voted for the current Spanish Minister of Defense, Bono to be included in the list of the public intellectual poll."
[Cieciel] Celebrities with one name is (sic) a marketing invention, a branding ploy, we media whores should no longer tolerate! So 1980's. I prefer the hyphenated or those who for generations could afford three names.
Manuel de Landa @
EPA Proposes Rollback on Toxic Pollution Reporting
~Less paperwork for business; more poisons for you and me!
[illus via google\ not with above]
November 14, 2005
This Is Beautiful.org
>for example
more photos of female nudes by Amanda Koster
~How very Woodstock Nation (sans mud). Cellulite is not all that frightening. I liked being reminded that this is how most of the women's bodies I see clothed everyday look naked.
I'm not sure if the photographer worked at downplaying skin tone and texture in order to highlight shape and volume or if that's just what happened.
Gaze Following
When it Comes to Babies Learning Language, the Eyes Have it
University of Washington psychologists Rechele Brooks and Andrew Meltzoff have pinpointed this developmental step as beginning somewhere in the 10th or 11th month of life, and have found that infants who are advanced in gaze-following behavior before their first birthday understand nearly twice as many words when they are 18 months old.
FIGURE 3 Gaze following in a five-year-old chimpanzee in response to eyes and head condition. @
Sexually Satisfied but Feeling Frumpy: It's Body Image Not "The Change"
The success of Viagra for men has created a heightened interest in marketing hormones and other medications to midlife women to insure sexual functioning and satisfaction. Our results suggest that 'treatment,' via medication, of menopausal effects for this purpose seems unwarranted in light of the findings that menopausal status did not have a significant impact on the sexual responding of the women in this study.
Analysis of the survey results showed that, regardless of the woman's specific age, she was more likely to consider herself more attractive when she was 10 years younger whether or not she had been through menopause. In addition, there was no significant statistical relationship between a woman's perception of her own attractiveness as she aged and her current sexual satisfaction.
~One reason why no women's viagra.
Cigarette Manufacturers Target Youth Market
With Candy Flavoured Cigarette Brands
New research from the Harvard School of Public Health finds that cigarette makers are targeting young smokers with candy and liqueur-flavored new brands that mask the harsh and toxic properties found in tobacco smoke, and in one case, embedding a hidden flavor pellet within the filter. Despite assurances from cigarette makers that they no longer target the youth market..
Gregory Connolly, senior author of the study and a professor of the practice of public health at HSPH noted:
"Tobacco companies are using candy-like flavors and high tech delivery devices to turn a blowtorch into a flavored popsicle, misleading millions of youngsters to try a deadly product. Adding candy flavors to a toxic product (cigarettes) isn't any different than adding sugar to contaminated meat a century ago. The only difference is that today one is regulated by the FDA and the other is not."
press release with link to HSPH
~Should we expect any less from an industry like tobacco with its unique federal regulations? A cigarette is not a "food-stuff" nor is it a drug (It's more like a kazoo or whistle? Free market my ass.)
Orthorexia Nervosa:
A New Eating Disorder?
--"Cutting edge concept alert: It is characterized by the pathological obsession for biologically pure food, which leads to important dietary restrictions."
thanks Diederik
Hazard in Hunt for New Flu:
Looking for Bugs in all the Wrong Places
~If you're frightened by government warnings of a bird flu pandemic there's this:
"Some experts like Dr. Peter Palese of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York say the A(H5N1) flu viruses are a false alarm. He notes that studies of serum collected in 1992 from people in rural China indicated that millions of people there had antibodies to the A(H5N1) strain.
That means they had been infected with an H5N1 bird virus and recovered, apparently without incident.
story by Gina Kolata | NYTimes
[sign-in/register with unknown/unknown] thanks Devin
>related from the Congressional Research Service:
PANDEMIC INFLUENZA: DOMESTIC PREPAREDNESS EFFORTS
(linked to pdf)
groundling
[photo from Consumptive\ not NY Times]
"We Do Not Torture" and Other Funny Stories
"...when you watch the president stand there with a straight face and say, "We do not torture" - a full year and a half after the first photos from Abu Ghraib - you have to wonder how we arrived at this ludicrous moment. The answer is not complicated. When people in power get away with telling bigger and bigger lies, they naturally think they can keep getting away with it."
article by Frank Rich NYTimes | TruthOut
Mobile Film-Makers Get Their Own Emmys
The Daytime Emmy Award organisers are to honour the creators of films for phones, computers, and devices like the video iPod and PlayStation Portable.
The new award categories recognise "outstanding achievement in content for non-traditional delivery platforms" of less than 20 minutes in length.
press release | BBC
~As heard on NPR.
November 13, 2005
Frist Urges "Germ Spies"
Bill would cloak war on bioterror
Washington — A bill moving rapidly through the Senate would create a secretive national research center to respond to bioterrorism threats and natural disease outbreaks.
The agency, commonly referred to as BARDA, would be given a first-year budget of $1 billion and some unusually strong powers.
It would have authority to shield drug manufacturers from liability lawsuits in the event a drug used to counteract a bioterrorism event or disease outbreak caused death or injury.
It also would be granted a blanket exemption from the federal Freedom of Information Act.
~This was the most complete non-subs link I could find for this story today. The comments and context here (scroll down) further "human-sizes" it.
>for example: "So in a hypothetical state of emergency, all citizens are forced to use their product, yet exempt from any damages caused by their product (vaccine) but they do keep all profits made off the forced use." --linger @ 11/06/05 14:27:01
~Note also that the promised FOIA exemption makes it difficult for "follow-up" research on health injuries that could result from BARDA's vaccines, treatments, etc. Not only making it difficult to prove liability in the first place, it'll be harder to get useless or bad-drugs discontinued. Promising more mysterious mystery-syndromes for US soldiers, emergency workers, et.al..
One of the H's at Unknown News testifies: "God I hate these bastards.
So now we're being told we need a super-secret agency -- immune to the Freedom of Information Act and presumably shielded from any public scrutiny -- with "some unusually strong powers."
We're told that we need this agency, to hurry up and create a vaccine that may or may not protect Americans from some real or imagined threat of bioterrorism.
We're told we need a rush-rush vaccine that we may be 'required' to take, or that we may be merely pressured and coerced to take with threats of quarantine ... while the companies that develop or make these best-selling panic-driven vaccines are shielded from any and all liability, but soak up any and all possible profits.
And we're told that we need all this, for a mere billion bucks the first year, with (count on it) increases in its batty budget every year thereafter.
A billion bucks the first year ... to protect us ... by injection ... with no legal recourse ...
America, your nation is being run by lunatics. Bela Lugosi lives, he is the Republicans' Senate Majority Leader, and we're all living in a bad science fiction movie. I don't know whether it's LOGAN'S RUN or SOYLENT GREEN, but whatever it is I want my money back."
["wedding quarantine" photo from the Shanghai Star/ not above]
November 11, 2005
US Military Sets Laser PHASRs to Stun
The US government has unveiled a "non-lethal" laser rifle designed to dazzle enemy personnel without causing them permanent harm. But the device will require close scrutiny to ensure compliance with a United Nations protocol on blinding laser weapons.
The Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response (PHASR) rifle was developed at the Air Force Research Laboratory in New Mexico, US, and two prototypes have been delivered to military bases in Texas and Virginia for further testing.
Laser weapons capable of blinding enemies have been developed in the past but were banned under a 1995 UN convention called the Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons. The wording of this protocol, however, does not prohibit lasers that temporarily dazzle a foe.
press release | New Scientist
~From James: "So this: "In the past, the problem with lasers of this type has been that they often permanently blind human targets," says Tobias Feakin, an expert at Bradford University's Non-Lethal Weapons Research Project in the UK.
So they tried it on people in the past, who are now blind?"
The PHASR may attempt to address safety concerns by automatically sensing its distance from a target (Image: US air force.)
[photo/caption with press release]
Bobfan's Bob Page
"here you will only find photos of bob hairstyles !"
for example
more http://bobfan.de/index.html
YAF's Top 10 Conservative Colleges
Young America's Foundation's recommendations:
http://www.yaf.org/2004-2005_top10.asp
>somewhat related YAFs Talking Points
~Chances are I'll never meet an alumnus or alumna from any of these schools.
It's been a dream of mine to be a 'dollar-a-year' employee of "The Cieciel Foundation".
large
[more YAF popular poster wallpapers]
~"The official ideology abounds with contradictions even when there is no practical reason for them....It systematically undermines the solidarity of the family, and it calls its leader by a name which is a direct appeal to the sentiment of family loyalty. Even the names of the four Ministries by which we are governed exhibit a sort of impudence in their deliberate reversal of the facts. The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy; they are deliberate exercises in doublethink. For it is only by reconciling contradictions that power can be retained indefinitely. In no other way could the ancient cycle be broken. If human equality is to be for ever averted -- if the High, as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently -- then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity."
--George Orwell @
Profiles: Porn Models.dk
>for example:
Jessica Darling
This cute, young blonde has sparkling green eyes, perky boobs and slender body that make Jessica Darling a porn fan's dream cum true. Originally from Florida, Jessica Darling was a dancer and after meeting a few industry folks, moved out west to pursue her own carnal career. It wasn't long before Jessica Darling was stoking industry studs on camera. Jessica Darling is bisex in her personal life and enjoys lunching on ladies almost as much as she gets off on her many male partners. Her Wicked Pictures debut was in the Nic Cramer feature Jealousy in which she takes on two meaty studs in an outdoor scene that sizzles. When Jessica Darling is not getting nasty for the cameras, Jessica enjoys horseback riding, shopping and Italian food. Jessica Darling likes Country music and prefers her men tattooed and athletic. Above all, Jessica enjoys keeping all her horny fans happy.
more http://www.pornmodels.dk/
~Light on links to free photos, I thought the breezy-writing style noteworthy. If you can't find your semi-glamorous girl of your dreams here you're just not looking hard enough?
There this too: "Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments . . . and of being bored and repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity." ---George Orwell @
Napalm Photos from Iraq
for example
slideshow : http://www.rainews24.rai.it/ran24/inchiesta/slideshow.asp?gallery=1&id=8 | Inchiesta (Italian TV)
thanks Conscientious
~An email friend remarked: "this is colloquially called "shake 'n bake" by military authorities. Sweet."
Rumsfeld Can Authorize Torture Under New DOD Directive
The new directive lays out broad policy governing interrogations of detainees in Defense Department custody, but leaves the definition of "humane" to a separate, yet to be released directive that is still being debated within the administration.
A little noticed loophole in the directive, which was made public Tuesday, gives the secretary of defense or his deputy authority to override the policy.
"Intelligence interrogations will be conducted in accordance with applicable law, this directive and implementing plans, policies, orders, directives, and doctrine developed by DoD components and approved by USD (I), unless otherwise authorized, in writing, by the secretary of defense or deputy secretary of defense," the directive states. "USD (I)" refers to the undersecretary of defense for intelligence.
[image not from above]
Anti-War Button Pin & Ribbon Collection
for example...
browse 1462 items | Triptych (Bryn Mawr)
November 10, 2005
Photo-caption Doggerel
Angels Watch Over Me
They're better dressed then me.
Better looking, infinitely smarter with engaging personalities;
They eat at the best restaurants.
Because they know what everyone wants,
They know what's good.
Pain is their greatest evil.
"Pain is what happens when you do wrong."
In the past they'ld try to get me dates with perfect strangers.
I couldn't tell if I was being rewarded or punished;
If I'd won or lost.
To think like this is against the rules:
Maybe she was being punished.
The angels never mention the Creator,
Or his/her/its creation.
Their existence is proof enough.
They serve to remind us of the divine order of things,
The certainty of perfection.
They ignore what they can't change.
In time everything they won't acknowledge seems unworthy of effort,
Animal-like, even wrong.
Angels come from above.
CIA Veteran Lets Secret Budget Slip
At an intelligence conference in San Antonio last week, Mary Margaret Graham, a 27-year veteran of the CIA and now the deputy director of national intelligence for collection, said the annual intelligence budget was $44 billion.
Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, expressed amused satisfaction that the figure had slipped out.
"It is ironic," Aftergood said. "We sued the CIA four times for this kind of information and lost. You can't get it through legal channels."
Only for a few past years has the budget been disclosed. After Aftergood's group first sued for the figure under the Freedom of Information Act in 1997, George Tenet, then the CIA director, decided to make public that year's budget, $26.6 billion.
"Maybe there's a fear that if the American people knew what was being spent on intelligence, they'd be even more upset at intelligence failures," (Loch K. Johnson, an intelligence historian who worked for the Church Committee investigation of the intelligence agencies by the Senate in the mid-'70s) said.
story by way of Unknown News
November 09, 2005
Masonic References in Cinema
>for example
from Lara Croft: Tomb Raider @
more: http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/fiction/cinema.html
Wasps Create New Sniffer Sensor
Five wasp hounds are placed into a clear, ventilated, disc-shaped cartridge. The cartridge is placed into the bottom of the Wasp Hound canister, near an air hole. A fan at the top of the device pulls air into the canister through the air inlet.
If the air contains the chemical signature of the odor the wasps have been trained to recognize, they congregate near the air hole.
A tiny Web camera affixed to the top of the canister records their movement and transmits it to a nearby computer, which analyzes the goings-on and initiates an alarm when the wasps gather around the air inlet.
press release | Discovery Channel
~Will wasp-wranglers soon be as ubiquitous in law enforcement as dog-handlers? E.O. Wilson will be proud.
November 08, 2005
Oops, they did it again
No, it's not the new Britney Spear's song. If the information RAI News, the public Italian TV channel, is correct the USA would have used chemical weapons during the Fallujah raid.
The USA army supposedly used the white phosphorous bomb named MK77-5
It's not the first time we hear news about the use of napalm in Iraq March/2003, August/2003 or March/2005.
--
View or download the video: here (either in English or Italian).
Full article: here.
--
Previously discussed at Spitting-Image: here.
France is burning, vive la France!
Almost six thousand cars torched, hundreds of people arrested, buildings and schools burned down and having this riots spreading across France tell us one thing: the French model of an illustrated society has collapsed.
A lot of European countries (Belgium, Germany, Spain, Italy, ...) usually took France as a reference in how to handle inmigration, this situation, which was predicted by several people like Polanyi, and now they are witnessing the situation in France without hiding their fear of the revolts crossing the unexistant borders.
Photographs: Thomas Karsten
for example
Katharina, Janine, Elena und Carola (89)
aus: Love me
1996
Silver Gelatine Abzug
30 x 24 cm
more female nudes:
http://www.andreasbaumgartl.de/Karsten1.html
~Wery Weimar Republic?
Photos: US Navy Seals Torturing Iraqis
>for example..
from Dec. 2004 AP news story
more:
http://ancapistan.typepad.com/photos/navy_seals_torturing_iraq/index.html
A Deadly Interrogation:
Can the CIA Legally Kill a Prisoner?
After September 11th, the Justice Department fashioned secret legal guidelines that appear to indemnify C.I.A. officials who perform aggressive, even violent interrogations outside the United States. Techniques such as waterboarding-the near-drowning of a suspect-have been implicitly authorized by an Administration that feels that such methods may be necessary to win the war on terrorism. (In 2001, Vice-President Dick Cheney, in an interview on "Meet the Press," said that the government might have to go to "the dark side" in handling terrorist suspects, adding, "It's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal.")
Senior Administration officials have led a fierce, and increasingly visible, fight to protect the C.I.A.'s classified interrogation protocol. Late last month, Cheney and Porter Goss, the C.I.A. director, had an unusual forty-five-minute private meeting on Capitol Hill with Senator McCain, who was tortured as a P.O.W. during the Vietnam War. They argued that the C.I.A. sometimes needs the "flexibility" to treat detainees in the war on terrorism in "cruel, inhuman, and degrading" ways. Cheney sought to add an exemption to McCain's bill, permitting brutal methods when "such operations are vital to the protection of the United States or its citizens from terrorist attack."
article by Jane Mayer; The New Yorker | Truthout
>related
wife and son holding photo of Manadel al-Jamadi
and Sabrina Harman
How Manadel al-Jamadi was killed in Abu Ghraib
| Unfairwitness
November 07, 2005
Call for Papers: The War Body on Screen
Closing Date: Monday January 9th 2006
"This proposal, for an edited collection of new essays on the war body on screen, emerges from what the editors see as a new (post 9/11) concern for bringing into view the troubling image of the ruined body, or the body that is absent from vision (as in dead and gone, or captive and hidden). The corporeal figure of the suicide bomber, the hostage, the soldier, the terrorist, and the innocent victim, appear as cultural and ideological vehicles of meaning for the way one is meant to understand conflict, war and terror in the modern age.
In fiction and factual formats, and across a range of diverse, formal and informal media sites, conflict and warfare is played out in and through the body that has been, or very soon will be, marked by violence. This war body leaks, weeps, defecates, bleeds (sometimes copiously), and unravels. Or, alternatively, this body (that is often visualised both before and after the harm of war) is hard-bodied, virtual, hi-tech, robotic, resistant to damage, and capable of great damage."
more: http://cfp.english.upenn.edu/archive/2005-10/0167.html
| Sean Redmond
thanks Diederik
~Is there anyone who hasn't imagined, if only for a moment, what it was like to be inside the WTC when it collapsed?
[abu ghraib photo of Sabrina Harman with the body
of Manadel al-Jamadi from Mindprod\ not above]
The FBIs Secret Scrutiny
The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, according to government sources, a hundredfold increase over historic norms. The letters - one of which can be used to sweep up the records of many people - are extending the bureau's reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans.
Issued by FBI field supervisors, national security letters do not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge. They receive no review after the fact by the Justice Department or Congress. The executive branch maintains only statistics, which are incomplete and confined to classified reports. The Bush administration defeated legislation and a lawsuit to require a public accounting, and has offered no example in which the use of a national security letter helped disrupt a terrorist plot.
article By Barton Gellman The Washington Post | TruthOut
Hand-Held HIV Sensor
The sensor measures the quantity of key immune cells called CD4+ cells in the blood. A gradual depletion of CD4+ cells... is a sure sign that HIV is damaging a person's health.
... researchers from Cornell University in Ithaca and the University at Albany coated electrodes with antibodies specific to CD4+ cells. When a small sample of blood is put onto a chip bearing these electrodes, the antibodies grab hold of the CD4+ cells.
The captured cells then impede the flow of current across the electrodes, allowing the density of CD4+ cells to be calculated.
To check that only CD4+ cells were sticking to the electrodes the team added a label to blood samples consisting of a fluorescent dye tagged to a further set of antibodies specific for CD4+ cells.
They then used an electron microscope to check which cells had been captured. By counting the captured cells, the researchers devised a scale linking electrical resistance with the density of cells in the blood.
"It is the first step towards a hand-held, simple, inexpensive device..."
press release | NewWindPress
November 06, 2005
Israeli Missile Kills Two
The missile strike, carried out using pilotless drone firing on a car in which the two men were riding, incinerated an auto carrying Hassan Madhoun, 32, of the brigades group, and Fawzi Abu Kara, 37, of Hamas, in Gaza's Jebaliya refugee camp. Hospital officials said six bystanders had been wounded in the attack.
~So far Israeli and USA pilotless drones in various countries have killed more than six and less then 12(?) people.
>related on Spitting Image Unmanned Drone Kills' remarks
Decades of Dumping Chemical Weapons... Legacy
The Army... admits that it secretly dumped 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard agents into the sea, along with 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, land mines and rockets and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste - either tossed overboard or packed into the holds of scuttled vessels.
A Daily Press (Newport News, Va.) investigation also found:
These weapons of mass destruction virtually ring the country, concealed off at least 11 states - six on the East Coast, two on the Gulf Coast, California, Hawaii and Alaska. Few, if any, state officials have been informed of their existence.
The chemical agents could pose a hazard for generations. The Army has examined only a few of its 26 dump zones (... knows the rough nautical coordinates of only half) and none in the past 30 years.
The Army can't say exactly where all the weapons were dumped from World War II to 1970. Army records are sketchy, missing or were destroyed.
William Brankowitz, (a deputy project manager in the Army Chemical Materials Agency) who's worked for more than 30 years on chemical weapons issues for the Army, "I'm very much convinced there are records at the National Archives that have been misfiled. Short of a major research effort that would cost a lot of money, we've done the best we can."
story thanks Consumptive
A barge is loaded with mustard gas canisters that later were thrown somewhere into the Atlantic in 1964.
Photo courtesy of the U.S. Army @
chemweapons photo gallery | The Daily Press
Overheard at Starbucks
"She better pray she's not home when I go postal."
--"Is that a country-western song?"
Movie Review: "Blowing in the Wind"
"Blowin' In The Wind" (http://www.bsharp.net.au/) was produced by New South Wales, North coast film producers, David Bradbury and Peter Scott, who, together with a team of very talented technicians, have put together a most powerful expose, on the manufacture and widespread use of Depleted Uranium weapons, with special emphasis on U.S. and Australian Defence Forces use of the miserable material.
article by Lynn Stanfield | www.rense.com
November 05, 2005
shanghai(d) life
Gao Ming (Jilinese, Unemployed)
Every day I'm thinking about some philosophical questions? I want time to go backwards and I want to know whether this society is square or round. Painting and cultivating flowers are my two hobbies. I express my thoughts, my beliefs and my feelings through painting while by cultivating flowers, I can communicate with nature. In a narrow sense, I'm satisfied with my present life because I'm living in the way I want; in a broad sense, I have nothing to complain. My wife works and supports this family and I'm just doing unpractical things all day long. My pains are my imperfection in spiritual life, my lazy character and my weak viability.
高鸣（吉林籍 无业）
我每天在家里思考一些人类精神层面上的问题，希望时光能够往回倒流，我不知道社会是方的还是圆的。绘画和养花是我的二大爱好。通过绘画可以表达我的思想，信仰和情感；养花可以让我与自然交流。狭义地说，我对自己目前的生存状态感到还可以，每天能够按照自己的方式生活；广义地说，我没什么可以说不满意的，妻子挣钱供养着我，而我整天干着不务实的事（苦笑）。我为自己精神上不够完善，性格上较懒散，生活能力不太强而感到痛苦。
do people really live like their photograph?
is there anything actually, really exotic?
do we all dream of dissipation?
or is it just the wanting?
97 photographs by Hu Yang
Photo-caption Non Sequitur
"I now have a theory that our existence, as a whole, is an organism that is very old--a globular thing within a starry shell, afloat in a super-existence in which there may be countless other organisms--and that we, as cells in its composition, partake of, and are ruled by, its permeating senility. The theologians have recognized that the ideal is the imitation of God. If we be a part of such an organic thing, this thing is God to us, as I am God to the cells that compose me. When I see myself, and cats, and dogs losing irregularities of conduct and approaching the irreproachable, with advancing age, I see that what is ennobling us is senility. I conclude that the virtues, the austerities, the proprieties are ideal in our existence, because they are imitations of the state of a whole existence, which is very old, good, and beyond reproach. The ideal state is meekness, or humility, or the semi-invalid state of the old. Year after year I am becoming nobler and nobler. If I can live to be decrepit enough, I shall be a saint.'' --Charles Fort @ | Anomalist [photo\ cieciel]
Terrorist Attacks Symbolism
~These kabbalistic (and dyslexic) symbols (they're dates!) reminded Priapo of this Neo-Capitalism symbol copied from Flags of the Wo