December 31, 2005
year of the dog
me and maki on our way to pray for a happy new year at the local shrine
akemashita omodeto
December 23, 2005
STARMETER's Top 25 for 2005
These STARmeter™ rankings were not based upon critical assessments or box-office performance, but the actual search behavior of over 30 million users of IMDb.com.
~Vin Diesel?
Note how many of these stars are under the age of 25.
Satellite Database
"Users can find information about a particular satellite; identify sets of satellites having a common characteristic, such as altitude or mission; and sort or aggregate data about the whole population of satellites. Users can quickly answer questions such as
--How many satellites does a given country have in orbit, and what are they used for?
--How many satellites are used for military purposes versus commercial purposes?
--Which countries have earth-observing satellites?
--At what altitudes do most satellites orbit?
For example, the database allows a user to determine the relative numbers of military and non-military satellites operated by the United States and other countries, as is illustrated in the figure below.
[The database includes basic information about more than 800 satellites and their orbits, but does not contain the detailed information necessary to locate individual satellites.]"
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/space_weapons/satellite_database.html
| Union of Concerned Scientists
Fun...
~Cheery enough for y'all?
(Yes I'm aware I'm using appliances 99% of the world's citizens can't afford and spending hundreds of dollars a year on service fees for access via the world-wide web to any corner of the globe inhabited by fellow web-travelers. Yet I do little more than read newspapers, look at photos and make these doodles. So shut-up.)
The Pentagon Breaks the Law (Too)
What is clear about JPEN (the Joint Protection Enterprise Network) database, [the database of "suspicious incidents"] is that the military is not inadvertently keeping information on US persons. It is violating the law. And what is more, it even wants to do it more.
story By William M. Arkin The Washington Post via TruthOut
~When can we expect criminal indictments of the individuals responsible for these crimes? When will we see their names and photos on tv, in the newspapers? When should we expect mass resignations from the DOD to begin? (Psych!)
related on Spitting Image: Is the Pentagon Spying on Americans?
Horrifying
"One of the ghastliest news stories I've read in recent years was Through His Webcam, a Boy Joins a Sordid Online World, a story that appeared yesterday in the New York Times. A shy and lonely 13-year-old boy buys a webcam to try to meet some other teens, and no one shows up but a pervert who asks him to sit in front of his web cam for 3 minutes without his shirt on and he'll send him $50 by PayPal. This goes on for years until he's having sex with prostitutes live on his webcam for a paid audience of thousands..."
Justin Berry reflected in a computer screen this summer. Now 19, he has become a witness in a wide-ranging federal investigation into online child pornography. | NY Times
blog entry w/link to story | Caterina
~Yes people of means can abuse their childen.
Take away the webcam and the big-bad internet and you have nothing that's new(s). It's a pity that outrage craves novelty.
I'm not sure that the child porn described above is an accurate representation of the forms of child abuse indispensable to the everyday business of child prostitution.
December 22, 2005
Cosmology of the Shadow Presidency
If people were planets, and size measured gravity, who'd be the biggest? Dick Cheney.
blog entry | The Apologist
~How many years can we expect American soldiers to be working and dying in Iraq? Until sometime in the next century?
You see what they've done: from the Cold War to the War on Terror Without End Amen.
Pure genius.
Happy Holidays!
[Lyric]
I had nothing to say on Christmas day
when you threw all your clothes in the snow.
When you burnt your hair, knocked over chairs,
I just tried to stay out of your way.
But when you fell asleep with blood on your teeth,
I got in my car and drove away.
Listen to me, Butterfly,
there's only so much wine
you can drink in one life
but it will never be enough
to save you from the bottom of your glass.
Where the state highway starts I stopped my car.
I got out and stared up at the stars.
As meteors died and shot cross the sky,
I thought about your sad, shining eyes.
I came back for my clothes when the sun finally rose
but you were still passed out on the floor.
Listen to me, Butterfly,
there's only so much wine
you can drink in one life
but it will never be enough
to save you from the bottom of your glass.
"So Much Wine" by The Handsome Family
TV
>from an e-mail...
"Baudrilliard ahoy! I just watched the evening news and they were, hold on, announcing the winner of the yearly BEST TV COMMERCIAL OF THE YEAR award. That is: people excitedly voting which piece of consumerist propaganda they THOUGHT WAS THE MOST FUNNY to them! And the evening news reporting the whole GALA! YES, WE LIKED YOUR COMMERICAL THE MOST! WE WERE LAUGHING OUR HEADS OFF!" D.
~Diederick's a consumer of Old Europe's cultural products. This could never happen in America. American consumers are too much in awe of their media. Moreover American news-outlets would never dare offend potential advertisers by reporting something like this.
Diederick again: "That is to say: people vote for being entertained by commercials. They choose the guys that are paid to fool them into buying products for reasons of thinking this is an altogether funny situation.
Baudrilliard I: The product is not hailed but the commercial, the spectacle, the act of tricking the consumer by reducing the product and its consumption to a funny experience.
Baudrilliard II: The news, formerly about products and productivity, now report on commercial envelopment of such things, the total engulfment of such.
Baudrilliard III: the actual consumption is in fact that of the commercial envelopment, the product itself is taken as a bonus, something that runs after the fun but never quite makes it, something that is "also" there, a necessity to keep the show going. Beyond hedonism: The fun precedes the funny. D.
>maybe related AdAge's TEN 2005 ADS AMERICA WON'T SEE (registration required)
Puzzle
"...to love God with the passion a beautiful woman inspires."
A. Why bother...
B. It would be insane...
C. It would be blasphemous...
D. How difficult...
December 21, 2005
"Restive City"
via Yahoo News-Photos 11/05
search results: google news | google web | google images
~Fallujah, Bagaba, Mosul, Sanandaj and Ramadi Iraq are/were "restive cities".
>not related: "toddlin town"
Checklist for Happiness
~I'm setting my sights on happiness. I'm looking at various plans and techniques.
"Create myself spiritually" is that like "mystery achievement"?
Researchers: Barbie Dolls Often Mutilated
"The types of mutilation are varied and creative, and range from removing the hair to decapitation, burning, breaking and even microwaving." (said Agnes Nairn, one of the University of Bath researchers)
While boys often expressed nostalgia and affection toward Action Man — the British equivalent of GI Joe — renouncing Barbie appeared to be a rite of passage for many girls...
press release (scroll)
~Check out Mattels' responses to this study. Why did the writer need a quote/plug from the makers of Barbie? Almost everybody and their sister has an opinion on that particular piece of plastic not motivated by profit.
1-800-CALL-SPY
link to story, etc. | Homeland Stupidity
~Sargeant Friendly of the 902nd Military Intelligence Group is waiting for your call.
Photo-caption Non Sequitur
"An Iraqi boy peers through a bullet-riddled gate as US marines from the 2nd Battalion, 6th Marines Regiment, patrol the restive city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad. US Vice President Dick Cheney visited Iraq for the first time since the 2003 US-led invasion, following an election that many hope can ease sectarian tensions despite a return to deadly violence.(AFP/Mauricio Lima) |Yahoo News
~I don't think Vice-President Cheney was anywhere near the restive city of Fallujah during his recent visit to Iraq do you?
December 20, 2005
Geist Caught Mapping
>for example
'Apocalypse How': The Doomsday Map of Canada
(requires Adobe Acrobat)
~Clever.
>somewhat related:
USGS' Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) Feature Query Results for doom. There's a "Doom Cemetery" in Kentucky. (Try it yourself.)
Manitoba Man Finds Record Number of Meteorites
(Derek Erstelle of Winnipeg) ...used binoculars, a metal detector and a map that showed how glaciers melted during the last Ice Age to focus his most recent search .
There could be thousands of meteorites in Manitoba's Whiteshell area, near the province's southeastern border with Ontario...
~It's harder to do than it sounds.
Would Russia also have dumping grounds for meteorites that fell during the last Ice Age? Western Europe being too developed since then to survey?
Serbia Cleans-up Depleted Uranium from 1999 Bombing
Nuclear experts and clean-up teams removed 3,468 cubic meters of contaminated soil from the Borovac site, 280 kilometers south of Belgrade, where 44 depleted uranium shells exploded.
Serbia's authorities have previously cleaned up two similar locations in southern Serbia following recommendations by United Nations experts, who analyzed samples of water and soil from the targeted areas.
The ministry said one more site remains to be cleaned up next year.
press release | Serbianna.com
~What a diabolical weapon's depleted uranium; it can inflict casualties for years and years.
I wonder if the American military occupying Iraq from now until(?) will be as fastidious? (How many US troops still in Germany? Korea? Japan?)
American soldiers in Iraq drink bottled water? What do they wash themselves in?
44 shells, that's just busy-work?
I imagine DU could be used by the authorities to explain many unspecified medical and psychiatric problems. Let's pray the terrorists never use it here.
[photo of Kosovo cleanup via
Is The Pentagon Giving Our Soldiers Cancer? 2003]
Before I started surfing the internet, I didn't know nukes were ubiquitious. I knew where the nearby nuclear power plants were, but nothing about depleted uranium or radiological medical devices.
Family Court Chronicles Las Vegas
"These are the TRUE stories (more or less) of the denizens and clients of the Clark County Family Courts and Services Center in Las Vegas. This is where government tries to pick up the pieces — or at least stop the bleeding — of thousands of troubled families and failed relationships."
A typical custody matter in Family Court
http://www.familycourtchronicles.com/
| Glenn Campbell via Secrecy News
Poem: Found in the Free Library
[excerpt]
For when they saw we were afraid,
how knowingly they played on every fear--
so conned, we scarcely saw their scorn,
hardly noticed as they took our funds, our rights,
and tapped our phones, turned back our clocks,
read the poem by Eleanor Wilner
How Bush Created a Theocracy in Iraq
article by Juan Cole via Shlonkom Bakazay?
>related Power of Pride
also
Join Jimmie Johnson and Lowe's in supporting America and it's troops. | Jimmie Johnson Fan Club
~OK, so there's no relationship between (pride in) the power of America's military institutions and the War in Iraq... to speak of?
Photo Walls
>for example
Elvis with Bob's puppets in the film "GI Blues." He sang "Wooden Heart" to them. courtesy Bob Baker @
http://www.npr.org/programs/day/features/2005/jun/photowalls/index.html#
| Jennifer Sharpe
Cartoon: Adventures of Confessions of St. Augustine Bear
>related: "Check out this message from The Smithsonian Institute of Internet History...
"We have recently added four important pieces to our collection: A series of classic internet infomercials featuring Adventures of Confessions of Saint Augustine Bear. You can watch them for FREE because you pay your taxes."
December 19, 2005
Art: Dalziel+Scullion
Sawyers from 'Aura A', 2002 | Artnet
http://www.dalzielscullion.com/
December 18, 2005
Photoshop Realism
>for example
@ |Stefano Basso
~From marketing ploy to genre? (Are we there yet?)
TV
Diamonds She'll Pretty Much Have Too
["There is a spoof of the DE BEERS DIAMOND commercials. The ads feature men giving women jewelery, but only their sillouettes are shown, though the jewelery is always visible. In the gag, we see a man and woman kissing after he gives her a ring, then she begins to go down on him to perform oral sex. The screen then shows - DIAMONDS SHE'LL PRETTY MUCH HAVE TO. Of special note: Seth and the censors actually went frame by frame trimming to get this gag on the air - apparently there is "too far down" for Network TV." @ | Family Guy Reference Archives]
Idyll
As I watched the sluggish young buck scratch at the snow, the sounds of traffic and the nearby power-plant put me in mind of the values of self reliance, the madness of everyday living.
TV
"What would you do for love this Christmas?"
---from a commercial for diamonds
December 16, 2005
Google Video Blog
http://googlevideo.blogspot.com/
~Google's official video blog. Very pr (public relations) and pc videos.
If you like that sort of thing...not that there's anything wrong with it.
>Categories of videos:
Accidents
Amazing Skills
Animal Videos
Car Chases
Car Videos
Cartoons
Celebrity Videos
Commercials
Dancing?
DIY
Fashion
General
Google Video News
Movies
Music Videos
On The News
Places
Reviews
Sports
TV
All
Advertisement
Quiz: Art or Porn?
The Nun's Story, 1959?
Have a look at the[se] ten pictures, and for each case answer one simple question: art, or porn?
link | The Guardian
thanks Conscientious
~I got 9 out of 10.
Abdication of the Artists
>re Woodstock's The 5X7 Show
"152 artists were given an opportunity to show a small piece of work. Each and every one of them, individually, made a decision not to be political, social, religions or scientific."
blog entry w/50+comments
ChomskyTorrents.org
"The purpose of this site is to provide a gathering place for torrents with progressive and radical content. As for now, it preserves a special place for the work of American dissident Noam Chomsky, as the domain name suggests."
http://chomskytorrents.org/Torrents.php
via RobotWisdom
[dissident tee-shirt available from Aryanwear, not above links]
Whole Earth Review Special Collection
"...authors and idea(s) relevant to the Revolution in Intelligence Affairs (RIA). All of it remains relevant because both government and industry have chosen to remain on an industrial-era path that over-stresses centralized control, corporate copyright, and technology instead of thinking.
>for example Teleogeography: Mapping the New World Order
by Hugo Dixon | WER Summer 1992
more links to pdf articles | OSS.net
~"You say you want co-evolution, well we all want to change the world "
December 15, 2005
Art Games: An Emerging Genre
"What makes them art and not just games? For some, the fact that they were made as art, for others the fact that they are exhibited as art - it can all be boiled down to the intention behind them, originating from either the curator or the artist."
http://www.artificial.dk/articles/artgamesspecial.htm
~Are there other professions in which intentions matter? Where the intentions of the e.g. producer/technician/cobbler/writer adds 'value' to an object or event? (Besides crime?)
Every Bedroom is a Porn Studio
An analysis of how gay-porn site Amateur Straight Guys indulges fantasies not of indulgence or sexual abandon but of control and revenge
"The cameraman tells a joke, and the boys laugh and throw cautious looks at each other for the first time since the camera started rolling. Caution and anxiety are key to the erotic encounter about to unfold. The scene slows, each movement agonized over before execution. No smiles or any indication of enjoyment are permitted to pass over the faces of these "straight" guys having gay sex. The scene cuts ahead to Ben and Tom lying side by side. Ben lifts his head up off the pillow to continue watching the straight porn, a self-conscious half-crunch that ripples his abs. The camera floats across the bed as the boys hover over each other's bodies without purpose or desire. Occasionally the cameraman asks them to do something, and the boys silently try, though they appear narcotized, lacking in fine motor skills. The scene goes on and on, so we have time to take in the generic hotel prints hanging on the walls and the furniture cluttering the background and listen to the voices of the women moaning on the straight porno out of view, continually drawing attention to the cluster of signifiers that make this scene convincing.
article by Jason Weidemann
thanks Diederik
~Sex, it's not just about orgasms (or blow[job]s against the empire!) anymore. Porn can educate while it titilates, shocks or grosses you out?!
Wisconsin Radio Station Sells Newsroom Naming Rights to Bank
A radio station has sold the naming rights to its newsroom, sparking some concern that advertisers had crossed a line that could influence news coverage.
The WIBA newsroom in Madison will be known as the Amcore Bank News Center... “What listeners will hear on air is something like, ’Now from the Amcore Bank News Center'...
story via Unknown News
~Now from the Cieciel News Bunker: This makes perfect sense. Sometimes on AM radio whole seconds can pass while brand names are not being broadcasted.
As for possible confusion about the news being an advocate for corporate rather than the publics' concerns, why deny the obvious?
December 14, 2005
Is the Pentagon Spying on Americans?
story | MSNBC via Truthout
~The article doesn't say but it looks like the Pentagon's sending their spies to meetings and rallys, combing web-sites, taking names, license plate numbers (the descriptions of vehicles at those protests,"..."On the domestic level, this is unprecedented,"), photos? and most disturbing there's this:
"Two years ago, the Defense Department directed a little known agency, Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, to establish and "maintain a domestic law enforcement database that includes information related to potential terrorist threats directed against the Department of Defense." Then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz also established a new reporting mechanism known as a TALON or Threat and Local Observation Notice report. TALONs now provide "non-validated domestic threat information" from military units throughout the United States that are collected and retained in a CIFA database. The reports include details on potential surveillance of military bases, stolen vehicles, bomb threats and planned anti-war protests. In the program's first year, the agency received more than 5,000 TALON reports.
One of the CIFA-funded database projects being developed by Northrop Grumman and dubbed "Person Search," is designed "to provide comprehensive information about people of interest." It will include the ability to search government as well as commercial databases. Another project, "The Insider Threat Initiative," intends to "develop systems able to detect, mitigate and investigate insider threats," as well as the ability to "identify and document normal and abnormal activities and 'behaviors,"
Too Much Data?
[Some Pentagon observers worry that in the effort to thwart the next 9/11, the U.S. military is now collecting too much data, both undermining its own analysis efforts by forcing analysts to wade through a mountain of rubble in order to obtain potentially key nuggets of intelligence and entangling U.S. citizens in the U.S. military's expanding and quiet collection of domestic threat data.]
Punishment & Society
All free PDFs for the time being
for example:
Capital Punishment & American Culture
by David Garland
INTRODUCTION
This is an essay about capital punishment and American culture. Its point of departure is the recent publication of several books and articles suggesting that the USA’s retention of the death penalty is an expression of an underlying cultural tradition that creates an elective affinity between American society and the execution of criminal offenders.
The implicit – and sometimes explicit – claim of this new literature is that today’s capital punishment system is an instance of ‘American exceptionalism’, an expression of a deep and abiding condition that has shaped the American nation from its formative years to the present.
I want to take issue with this idea. I want to reject this culturalist version of American exceptionalism and to resist the notion that there is something deep and abiding about American culture that propels its judicial system towards capital punishment. In taking issue with these specific propositions and the books in which they are developed, I suggest an alternative way of understanding the continuation of capital punishment in the USA after 1972. In the course of this discussion, I also raise some more general issues about concepts of ‘culture’ and their use in the sociology of punishment.
link to article \ link to references
many more articles http://pun.sagepub.com/archive
thanks Diederik
We Don't Do That Here
~Most of the women around here don't have scars until after giving birth.
[photo Chris Ranier via WAMU]
True Confessions of an 8 Year Old Warrior
Childhood fantasies and enactments of violence and destruction in the playing of war games and football are juxtaposed with print media accounts of "real war."
Keywords: autoethnography; violence; culture; war making; U.S. foreign policy
Qualitative Inquiry, Oct 2004; 10: 706 - 714
http://qix.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/10/5/706.pdf
by Ken Cunningham
via GUS' Topica List
Child Warrior from the Lost Children Series
by Karen Thompson
(via google)
Harpers Index for Nov. 2005
>for example:
Rank of the FBI among ideal employers, according to U.S. undergraduates polled in spring 2004: 138 [Universum Communications (Philadelphia)]
Its rank in spring 2005: 10 [Universum Communications (Philadelphia)]
December 13, 2005
US Terror Watchlist 80,000 Names Long
A watchlist of possible terror suspects distributed by the US government to airlines for pre-flight checks is now 80,000 names long, a Swedish newspaper reported, citing European air industry sources.
The classified list, which carried just 16 names before the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington had grown to 1,000 by the end of 2001, to 40,000 a year later and now stands at 80,000, Svenska Dagbladet reported.
Airlines must check each passenger flying to a US destination against the list, and contact the US Department of Homeland Security for further investigation if there is a matching name.
story via Harpers Weekly
~Is there any chance this list will be shorter next year? What would need to happen, in security measures? in world events? in the economy? to reduce the number of names? (I don't have a clue.)
How about this as a plot device for a suspense novel, tv drama: one day terrorists flood airports in various cities with dozens of people (unsuspecting illegal immigrants!) carrying fake passports with names from the list. As Homeland Security computers strain to handle the requests for further info., and the airports' security officers dutifully follow procedure on these ringers, checking their baggage by hand, strip searches, interviews, holding for further questioning, etc., the real terrorists slip through to hijack planes, plant dirty bombs, grab hostages, destroy gift shoppes whatever, after only cursory checks due to the system's overload? Tentative title: "Default"?
Making Too Little of Plutonium Load
The space agency intends to launch an Atlas rocket carrying a space probe with 24 pounds of plutonium fuel in January.
NASA calculates the chances of a successful mission at 94 percent. As to the release of plutonium -- long-considered the most deadly radioactive substance known -- NASA puts the odds at 1-in-300. These figures are contained -- and repeated -- in NASA's "Final Environmental Impact Statement for the New Horizons Mission." If people knew they had a 1-in-300 chance of winning the Florida lottery, there would be lines miles long at every store selling lottery tickets from Daytona Beach to Key West.
The plutonium could spread far and wide -- up to 62 miles from the launch site at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, according to the NASA impact statement.
"Should a release of radioactive material occur in the launch area," states the impact statement, "the state of Florida, Brevard County and local governments would determine an appropriate course of action for any off-site plans -- such as sheltering in place, evacuation, exclusion of people from contaminated land areas, or no action required."
You think Hurricane Wilma was a problem.
And if this storm is radioactive, it wouldn't be a matter of people with chain saws, roofers and carpenters cleaning up the mess. The impact statement says the cost to decontaminate land on which the plutonium falls would range from "about $241 million to $1.3 billion per square mile."
In "addition," says NASA, "costs may include: temporary or longer term relocation of residents; temporary or longer term loss of employment; destruction or quarantine of agricultural products including citrus crops; land use restrictions which could affect real estate values, tourism and recreational activities; restrictions or bans on commercial fishing; and public health effects and medical care."
As to the death toll, NASA projects that the dispersed plutonium could result in 100 people dying from cancer.
"I suppose if immediately everybody in the direction to which the wind is blowing was evacuated, that could hold the numbers down but that's impossible. It's totally unrealistic," he (Dr. Ernest Sternglass, professor emeritus of radiological physics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine) says. "If there's an explosion, that stuff will come down within minutes. How do you prevent people from inhaling it -- even while evacuating."
The last time NASA launched a space probe with plutonium onboard from Florida was 1997 on a mission called Cassini.
NASA is planning a series of additional launches of plutonium-fueled space probes and other shots involving nuclear material. Under its $3 billion Project Prometheus program, the agency is working on nuclear reactors to be carried up by rockets for placement on the moon and building and launching actual atomic-propelled rockets.
Of the 25 U.S. space missions using plutonium fuel, three have undergone accidents, admits the NASA impact statement on New Horizons. That's a 1-in-8 record.
(The taxpayer cost of New Horizons: $650 million, not counting data analysis.)
complete article by By KARL GROSSMAN author of "The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program's Nuclear Threat To Our Planet."
~Nukes in the News.
[illus. from Thursday's Classroom\ not article]
Money Shot
Banana Boy Arrested
Banana Boy, (a fictional TV Crimefighter for a Glens Falls (NY) Cable TV Station) who in real life is 20-year-old Chris Phelps, was filming a segment in a Hudson Falls parking lot. A Sheriff's Deputy drove by and saw another actor holding a fake plastic knife that the officer thought was real.
Within minutes, the actor, the camerman, and Banana Boy were handcuffed at gunpoint and arrested. excerpt
~A local news anchor commenting on the photo of Banana Boy used to illustrate their televised story said something like: "How would you like your money shot to be taken while wearing a banana costume?"
She was directing her remarks to her co-anchors but we viewers were of course being included.
I liked that she understood we all knew what a money shot was; that all of us anchors and viewers alike were involved in making news. That one day anyone of us might be in or produce our own money shots, more advantageous than Banana Boy's certainly!
Even though I need to pay for a website to foist the images I produce on people and no longer bother making hard copies I can't give away, I find popular acceptance of the concept of a "money shot" somewhat democratic and almost inspiring.
Here's Google Images Search results for money shot. There's a few photos of money. More photos of people basically posing. This photo View image comically illustrates the original meaning of the term 'money shot'?
weapons of mass instruction
anti-war books for young people
via woods lot
The photographer did not approach this enormous undertaking as a scholar, or with the advice of ethnographers and sociologists, but, as the publisher says, "from direct observation." It was assuredly a very impartial, indeed bold sort of observation, but delicate too, very much in the spirit of Goethe's remark: "There is a delicate empiricism which so intimately involves itself with its object that it becomes true theory." [...] The more far-reaching the crisis of the present social order, and the more rigidly its individual components are locked together in their death struggle, the more creative--in its deepest essence a variant (contradiction its father, imitation its mother)--becomes a fetish, whose lineaments live only in the fitful illumination of changing fashion. The creative in photography is its capitulation to fashion. The world is beautiful--that is its watchword. In it is unmasked the posture of a photography that can endow any soup can with cosmic significance but cannot grasp a single one of the human connections in which it exists, even when this photography's most dream-laden subjects are a forerunner more of its salability than of any knowledge it might produce. But because the true face of this kind of photographic creativity is the advertisement or association, its logical counterpart is the act of unmasking or construction. As Brecht says: "The situation is complicated by the fact that less than ever does the mere reflection of reality reveal anything about reality."
- Walter Benjamin
December 12, 2005
Israeli Airstrike (Drone) Kills Militant
Witnesses and hospital staff in Rafah (near the Egyptian border) said that in Wednesday's (Dec. 7) strike, an Israeli drone fired a missile at (Mahmoud) Arkan's car shortly after nightfall, killing him, wounding three passengers and injuring six bystanders.
story | Chicago Tribune/Seattle Times
~No mention if women and children were among the nine injured in the strike. No reports suitable for American newspapers on the passengers and bystanders wounds?
Are these nine people casualties?
Art: Sue Coe
Arms Merchants from War 1, 1999 | Winton Bell Gallery
more links to Sue Coe's drawings & prints | Art Cyclopedia
~The "radical militant communist" (see these comments below)
Sue Coe.
Book: "Everything Bad is Good for You"
Imagine an alternate world identical to ours save one techno-historical change: videogames were invented and popularized before books. In this parallel universe, kids have been playing games for centuries –– and then these page-bound texts come along and suddenly they're all the rage. What would the teachers, and the parents, and the cultural authorities have to say about this frenzy of reading? I suspect it would sound something like this:
read excerpt comments, trackbacks
(from April '05) | Steven Johnson
~I'm making an effort to get on the pop kulture pep squad. (You first have to admit you're powerless.)
FBI Agents Lament "Radical Militant Librarians"
story NY Times via Truthout
>not related:
~There are no google news search results for the phrase "radical militant librarians", yet.
There are some 294 googled WEB sites using the phrase "radical militant muslims" while 169 websites use "radical militant muslim". 224 web sites write about "radical militant Islam".
The phrase "radical militant Christians" can be found today on 63 web sites; "radical militant Christian" on 27 sites and "radical militant Christianity" is mentioned on 8 sites.
"Radical militant Communists" get no mention while "radical militant communist" is used one time. To describe cartoonist Sue Coe.
There are some 342 uses of the phrase "radical militant feminist" while "radical militant feminists" are described on 23 web sites.
Incalculable Pain
The Pentagon is underreporting the number of American soldier casualties in Iraq.
"The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a casualty as "a military person lost through death, wounds, injury, sickness, internment or capture or through being missing in action."
"We don't do Webster's," Jim Turner, a Pentagon spokesman told me in 2004 as I was reporting on counting casualties. In a written statement, the Department of Defense told me that the casualty reports describe casualties to fit the "understanding of the average newspaper reader."
story By Mark Benjamin | www.salon.com
~More hidden costs of Bush's War on Iraq.
Thousands of people cross the Potomac River on the Memorial Bridge during the America Supports You Freedom Walk in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 11, 2005. The walk was held in remembrance of the victims of Sept. 11, 2001, and to honor our servicemen and women working to preserve freedom around the world. [photo&caption defense link @\ not from above]
>By the way searching Defense Link New Photos for 'iraq casualty' has no photos of American military casualties in Iraq... or elsewhere.
The same search on Google results in a variety of photos and illustrations.
Here's the link to a google image search for casualty+military+iraq where you might notice that the DOD is not the only news-source shy about printing photos of injured US service people.
Governor Terminator is the ony politician in the world (in recent months?) who's photo with an hospitalized soldier can be accessed through google?
Maybe other politicians are doing bedside photo-ops with their wounded/injured-soldier constituents here in the US or Germany? Traveling around Iraq is expensive.
December 11, 2005
US Denies Red Cross Access to Detainees
...a very small, limited number" of prisoners who are held in secret around the world...
story NYTimes via Truthout
[2002 Guantanamo photo\ not from above]
~One of the "terrorists (still) being kept incommunicado for reasons of national security and... not guaranteed any rights under the Geneva Conventions"?
December 10, 2005
Overheard at Starbucks
"Not that it ever happens but a police officer is someone who can throw you in jail for buying sex, drugs or stolen goods from people he gets sex, drugs or stolen goods from for free."
--"With or without guns drawn."
"A police officer is also someone who could arrest you for buying sex, drugs or stolen goods from A but not B."
--"Not that it would ever happen."
Sensor Uses Qdots to Detect DNA
Using tiny semiconductor crystals, biological probes and a laser, Johns Hopkins University engineers have developed a way to find specific sequences of DNA by making them light up beneath a microscope.
The technique involves an unusual blend of organic and inorganic components.
Quantum dots, or qdots, are crystals of semiconductor material that are in the range of a few nms across. They are traditionally used in electronic circuitry. In recent years, however, scientists have begun to explore their use in biological projects.
When a laser shines on a qdot, it can pass the energy on to a nearby molecule, which in turn emits a fluorescent glow visible under a microscope.
But qdots alone cannot find and identify DNA strands. For that, the researchers used two biological probes made of synthetic DNA. Each of these probes is a complement to the DNA sequence the researchers are searching for, so the probes seek out and bind to the target DNA.
To create their nanosensor, the researchers mixed the two DNA probes with a quantum dot in a lab dish containing the DNA they were trying to detect. Then nature took its course.
[illus. of Qdot not from above\ see qdot google search results for a variety of qdot illustrations]
~I'm not sure how I feel about microscopic organic and inorganic materials 'blending' in unique ways. It's just chemistry on a very small scale?
December 09, 2005
Harold Pinter: Art, Truth & Politics
In his video-taped Nobel acceptance speech, Harold Pinter excoriated a 'brutal, scornful and ruthless' United States. This is the full text of his address
>excerpts:
Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America's favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as 'low intensity conflict'. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued - or beaten to death - the same thing - and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed.
The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.
Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it. It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest.
I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road.
The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honourable exception of Sweden, of course. We don't quite know how they got there but they are there all right.
The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile insanity - the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons - is at the heart of present American political philosophy. We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing it.
thanks Conscientious
The prime minister gets a kiss from a young Iraqi in Basra.
[photo & caption BBC\ not from above]
Dr. Bondage's Negotiation Form
Here's a useful form for learning what play partners are into (for actual play, for fantasy enactment, or just discussion).
The list is not necessarily "complete," nor indicative of scenes that can be done for real!
There are many good negotiation forms on the Web. This list contains a more detailed bondage section than most.
Both players should complete the checklist.
>for example:
CROSS OUT UNACCEPTABLE ACTIVITIES AND/OR CIRCLE FAVORITE ACTIVITIES:
BONDAGE POSITIONS
RECLINING: classic spreadeagle, turned spreadeagle, eiffel, jackknife, strappado, one leg up, two legs up, frog, crossankle, diagonal
STANDING: post tie, spreadeagle, eiffel, jackknife, strappado, one leg up, frog, crossankle
CHAIR/SEATED: classic, crossankle, legs apart, feet apart, feet up, backward on chair, sideways on chair, strappado
BENT OVER
BALL TIE
FOLD TIE: classic fold, lotus fold
CLASSIC/DETECTIVE/BASIC: wrist, ankle, chest, knee
HOGTIE: classic, cross-ankle
FROGTIE
SUSPENSION: in swing, by wrists, by ankles, inverted (upside-down), by thighs, frog, spread-eagle, eiffel
KNEELING
HAND POSITION: in front, behind, above, sides
ANKLE POSITION: parallel, crossed, lotus, apart
ORIENTAL/JAPANESE: torso-web, leg-web
MUMMIFICATION: plastic wrap (kitchen wrap), duct tape, sheet, cloth, rug, immobilization, sensory deprivation
SPECIALTIES: elbows together, crotchrope/genital bondage, breast bondage, hair bondage
~The idea that sex is negotiable, can be negotiated, and that one's partner(s) is (are) as cognizant and as respectful (or not as the case may be) of your limits and desires, let alone their own is a big part of the reality or fantasy of BDSM? Utopia in the bedroom (bathroom, basement)?
Talk about setting oneself up for a rude awakening.
eternal floating happiness
[photo not from above]
Eyeball Cameras...
Can be chucked in for remote surveillance
The rotating spheroid camera weighs less than a pound and is protected by rubber and polyurethane...
press release | Engadget
December 08, 2005
Grandma's Little Helper
"The following are among the 1,200 statements in the repertoire of “Yumel,” a talking doll for sale in Japan. The doll is marketed as a “healing partner” for nighttime use by the lonely elderly. According to Tomy, the doll’s manufacturer, over 8,000 have been sold to date."
>for example...
Something smells good!
Did you warm yourself up in the bath?
I like soft ears.
I like soft voices.
I give you my treasure.
I want to have a secret that’s just between us two.
I want to go to the inside of a whale’s mouth.
Someday I want to go over the rainbow.
Right now, I want socks.
more from Yumel's repertoire | Harpers
~I would want an animal-Yumel and not just a dog or a cat. How about a dolphin, giraffe, squirrel or anteater? My animal-Yumel with these same phrases wouldn't need to be any more realistic then this human version.
Air Marshall Guns Down Man at Miami Airport
The passenger, who indicated there was a bomb in his bag, was confronted by air marshals but ran off the aircraft...
The marshals pursued and ordered the passenger to get on the ground, [the air marshals asked the passenger twice to drop his bag and put his hands on his head] but the man did not comply and was shot...[ “The air marshals discharged their weapons” when the man failed to comply with them a second time...]
“Thanks to the efforts of an alert air marshal, an individual was prevented from causing a potentially dangerous situation on the American Airlines flight that could have harmed passengers and crew members.” (Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., a senior member of the Homeland Security Committee, said)
[Passenger Mary Gardner told WTVJ in Miami that the man ran down the aisle from the rear of the plane. “He was frantic, his arms flailing in the air,” she said. She said a woman followed, shouting, “My husband! My husband!”]
[There is no nexus to terrorism,” (James) Bauer, (head of the Miami Federal Air Marshal field office) said.]
[illus.@\ not NBC]
Passengers: Shot suspect mentioned no ‘bomb’
MIAMI - The airline passenger shot to death by federal marshals who said he made a bomb threat was agitated even before boarding and later appeared to be desperate to get off the plane, some fellow travelers said.
One passenger said he “absolutely never heard the word ’bomb’ at all” during the uproar as the Orlando-bound flight prepared to leave Miami.
“The first time I heard the word ’bomb’ was when I was interviewed by the FBI,” McAlhany said. “They kept asking if I heard him say the B-word. And I said, ’What is the B-word?’ And they were like, ’Bomb.’ I said no. They said, ’Are you sure?’ And I am.”
Added another passenger, Mary Gardner: “I did not hear him say that he had a bomb.”
David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association, said he thinks the shooting may prove more “reassuring than disturbing” to the traveling public his organization represents. “This is a reminder they are there and are protecting the passengers and that it is a seriously deadly business,” he said.
Armed police boarded the aircraft after the shooting, with some passengers in hysterics. McAlhany said he remembers having a shotgun pressed into his head by one officer, and hearing cries and screams from many passengers aboard the aircraft after the shooting in the jetway.
story Updated: Dec. 10, 2005
~Was this killing "euthanasia by cop"? Check out in the earlier story how the eyewitness reports were ignored (or edited i.e. Mary Gardner's) while praise from a congressman, "a senior member of the Homeland Security Commission", was duly noted and recorded.
Who called the congressman: the reporter, the airline or Homeland Security? Who dictated that first story?
As for the SWAT team hijinks, that'll teach those travelers never to board a plane with an obviously disturbed individual, "b-word" or no "b-word".
>related: How to Hide a Murder
Deaths from International Terrorism Compared to Road Crash Deaths
"In the 29 OECD countries for which comparable data were available, the annual average death rate from road injury was approximately 390 times that from international terrorism.
The ratio of annual road to international terrorism deaths (averaged over 10 years) was lowest for the United States at 142 times. In 2001, road crash deaths in the US were equal to those from a September 11 attack every 26 days...
http://press.psprings.co.uk/ip/February/332_ip8979.pdf
| Injury Prevention
~Why can't we allocate tax revenue fairly? Why don't pigs have wings?
[photo from Flying Pig Sightings not Injury Prevention]
>maybe related:
As of this hour Google News Search has collected 10,400 newstories that mention 'terrorism death' and 1,730 stories about 'road crash death'(s).
Fun with Photoshop
sloppy mandala #50
I'm ready for my enlightenment now.
Remember Jean Charles Menezes
~Xymphora thinks Mr. Arm Pinner (Was) Surprised
December 07, 2005
Thesaurusizer
Translating your normal sentences into smarter sounding jargon.
http://www.writtenhumor.com/smarter.html
thanks Diederik
Figure 1. Nine-month-old male with severe brachycephaly who routinely spent 10 hours a day in a car seat, swing and bouncy seat. A, Anterior view reveals an increased parietal width and bulging at the squamosal sutures. B, Lateral view exhibits a superior-posterior sloping of the occiput and increased posterior head height.
Journal of Prosthetics and Orthotics
US Drone/Missile Used in Pakistan
Shrapnel that appeared to be from an American-made missile was found Sunday at the house where Pakistan said a top al-Qaida operative was killed in an explosion, although President Bush’s national security adviser declined to confirm the death.
Sources told NBC that Rabia was one of five men killed ...
via Unknown News
~Within the last three(?) years American & Israeli pilotless drones have killed dozens of people. Some were high-value targets.
More CIA Secret Prisons
...the CIA's secret prisons have existed since March 2002 when one was established in Thailand to house the first important al Qaeda target captured. ...the approval for another secret prison was granted last year by a North African nation.
... U.S. intelligence also ships some "unlawful combatants" to countries that use interrogation techniques harsher than any authorized for use by U.S. intelligence officers. They (sources) say that Jordan, Syria, Morocco and Egypt were among the nations used in order to extract confessions quickly using techniques harsher than those authorized for use by U.S. intelligence officers. These prisoners were not necessarily citizens of those nations.
"Rendition is a vital tool in combating transnational terrorism," she (Condileeza Rice) said.
story | ABC News
>related on Spitting Image: Primer on American Interrogation
also related:
"According to Douglas Jehl of the New York Times, "The restrictions that the White House has imposed on briefings about the CIA detention program" for high-level terror suspects "were described by Republican and Democratic Congressional officials as particularly severe". This, in turn, appears "to have had the effect of limiting public discussion about the CIA's detention program".
from War Crimes Made Easy
By Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smit | Asia Times
~An e-mail friend notes: "...it's utterly disgusting to hear Mrs Rice basically tell people that due process doesn't apply for "terrorists". So you only have to call somebody a terrorist and then you can do whatever you want. Soviet-Union-style justice."
[Cieciel]: God Bless President Bush or President Hilary Clinton or whoever is authorized to lead America, the beacon of freedom for the world!
[photo via Ogrish\ not ABC]
Overheard at Starbucks
"Haven't you ever been unconscious in a room with strangers?"
--"I wasn't in a fraternity... I haven't had surgery."
CRS on Space Policy
for example: U.S. Space Programs: Civilian, Military, and Commercial
link to other recent space policy reports pdf required
Good vibrations 2006
That's the title the French fashion magazine Jalouse has decided to use in their last number.
Let's see if you guess the reason:
- They want to wish a Happy New Year to their readers?
- They give (at a cost of 1 euro) a vibe with the issue?
- Both?
Answer: NouvelObs (French) and Cadena Ser (Spanish)
Pentagon's Black Budget Veils Contracting Fraud
Could a defense company stuff a Pentagon contract with enough overhead to hide bribes to a congressman?
story BY DAVID WOOD Newhouse News Service via Secrecy News
~Well, duh.
>related: POGO
[photo from www.usmc.mil/ via google search
'defense contractor']
December 06, 2005
US Command Declares Global Preemptive Nuclear Strike Capability
"...a new strike plan that includes [a] pre-emptive nuclear strike against weapons of mass destruction facilities anywhere in the world,”
Global strike attacks could be launched from U.S. long-range bombers, nuclear submarines or land-based ballistic missiles, according to the STRATCOM Web site.
~Nukes in the news.
Libya 'Jammed' Satellite Broadcasts
British and US diplomats have protested to the Libyan government after two international satellites were illegally jammed, knocking off air dozens of TV and radio stations serving Britain and Europe and disrupting American diplomatic, military and FBI communications.
Among stations hit were digital broadcasts by Five, BBC World, CNN International, US sports channels, cable TV networks and 23 radio stations...
Eros Guide London Erotica Magazine
>Search results: gallery i.e. 160 articles, glossy fashion fetish photos (fetish-fashion photos?), illustrations, reviews, etc.
>for example:
~It would cost me hundreds of dollars in model fees alone to attempt to duplicate this one photo. Thousands of dollars more if police and lawyers were to get involved in the creative process.
Students Trade Bibles for Porn
A group of atheists at the University of Texas at San Antonio is putting a novel twist on the toys-for-guns programs run by many urban police departments. But instead of toys, they are handing out porn in exchange for bibles.
“We consider the bible to be a very negative force in the history of the world,”
~Porn like faith should be free. (Not through one's effort but by the grace of God alone?)
Nukes in the News: Plutonium Missing; DOD Staking Out Science Fairs
~It could happen.
blog-entry w/links&comments | Hammer of Truth
>related: this Spitting Image post
December 05, 2005
Americans Let Contractors Do Decorating
Short on time, leery of ladders and lacking expertise for sometimes-elaborate lighting displays, homeowners are opening their wallets and hiring others do the work.
This is the third year that (John) Gendron has hired Lucas Tree Experts, a Portland tree service company that installs Christmas lighting and decorations for homeowners and businesses during the holiday season.
"These people are professionals at what they do, much like we're professionals at what we do," said Gendron, who owns a commercial real estate firm. "We're not able to do what they do as well as they can do it."
Lucas Tree is a franchisee for Christmas Decor Inc., a Texas-based company with 375 franchises in 48 states and Canada that will put up holiday decorations for 40,000 customers this year...
thanks James
~I enjoy stories showing the trickle-down economy at work, especially around Christmastime. Do you think there're "christmas decor professionals" who dress as Santa's elves when they're hanging lights and decorations? As characters from Dickens' "A Christmas Carol"?
I wonder how much you need to earn before you're never again expected to use a ladder?
James on the other hand finds that:
"Time in general is worth more than money. And yet in contexts like this, "Their time is worth more than their money," just pisses me off. Probably because those people's ideas arent worth shit. I loved the guy who started justifying the thing by talking about how the wreath hangers were professionals like he was a professional. Like somehow it made sense to pay an unnamed price that was "good value for the money"; as if putting that sort of spin on it justified the fact that he'd outsourced the celebration of his hallmark holiday which was as plastic as his new hairline and his wife's boobs. Maybe instead of stenciling graffiti onto buildings a better move would be stenciling it directly onto fuckwits like that. Maybe the paint fumes will kick over the under-utilized brain cellls that aren't involved in selling more toilet paper to Indonesia and an actual spark of personality will occur.
As for worth/paid. I was talking to a cousin of mine once. We were driving through some expensive suburb. He said , those houses are worth 425,000 dollars. Then he corrected himself, people pay that much for them.
Why don't these people just go on vacation or something? Not calvinist enough.
The thing is... can't I just go to Target and see a professionally hung wreath? Isn't the whole fucking shopping mall so well hung?
Like who are they trying to outdo? It's really another show of money. I just have money. And so I have everything. Without doing anything.
Whatever.
We gave up on Christmas long ago. My Japanese students ask me, what are you getting your wife for Christmas, and they are shocked, when I say "nothing." What are you going to do? "Nothing."
They are even more shocked when I explain that we prefer Shogagtus, the Japanese New Year celebration. 5 days of eating and drinking and welcome the goodness of the year to come. Makes sense to us, but totally boring to young Japanese."
Trek Earth Galleries
http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/
thanks Priapo
~Many travel photos: landscapes, 'manscapes' and people from around the world.
[That's 'manscapes' as in landscape ideology NOT what you're thinking.]
[photo\manscapes.com not trek earth]
Harper's Index
>for example:
Number of toilet seats at the EU Parliament building in Brussels that a TV station had tested for cocaine: 46 [Institute for Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Research (Nuremberg)]
Number that tested positive: 41 [Institute for Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Research (Nuremberg)]
http://www.harpers.org/MostRecentIndex.html
Strategy of Tension
"There is enough evidence and personal testimony to suggest, at best, casual links to right wing terrorist groups active throughout the '70s and '80s, and at worst that this network was itself responsible for implementing the so-called 'strategy of tension'; that is the deliberate use of terrorism to scare the voting population of a given country into a rightward shift politically, towards a 'law and order' style government."
article | Three Monkeys Online
>also Operation Gladio @ Wiki
thanks Consumptive
@~'Stategy of tension' is what I learned this week.
God Bless President Bush, President Condileeza, or whoever they choose to lead us!
(In the USA until recently assassinations and the media kept the country on the right course?)
December 04, 2005
December 03, 2005
CIA Sabotage Manual
In the 1980s the CIA produced a small illustrated booklet in both spanish and english designed to destabilise the nicaraguan government and economic system.
Drugs+Torture?
Monday, October 22, 2001
Terrorism suspects won't say a word
Law enforcement officials talking about sidestepping civil liberties
Walter Pincus, Washington Post
More than 150 people rounded up by law enforcement officials in the aftermath of the (Sept. 11) attacks remain in custody...
FBI agents have offered the prospect of lighter sentences, money, jobs and a new identity and life in the United States for them and their family members, but they have not succeeded in getting information from them, according to law enforcement sources.
"We're into this thing for 35 days, and nobody is talking," a senior FBI official said, adding that "frustration has begun to appear."
One experienced FBI agent involved in the investigation said: "We are known for humanitarian treatment, so basically we are stuck. . . .
DRUGS CONSIDERED
Among the alternative strategies under discussion are using drugs or pressure tactics, such as those occasionally employed by Israeli interrogators...
04/26/2002
Ex-CIA chief revitalizes 'truth serum' debate
Former CIA and FBI director William Webster said Thursday that the United States should consider administering "truth drugs" to uncooperative al-Qaeda and Taliban captives at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere...
Webster suggested that using "truth serum," a mild, short-term anesthetic, might not be physical abuse. Former FBI criminal profiler Clint Van Zandt said he has questions about such an idea but said it might be worth exploring. "When it came to interrogation ... we took pride in winning psychological chess games" with suspects, Van Zandt said. "But sometimes the good guys finish last. In cases of life or death, I would like to see another tool in our toolbox."
story | USA Today
October 24, 2003
...a conference on "Torture in the Age of Terrorism" at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice Center
"The idea of the conference is to examine the troubling ways in which torture has changed ethically for some as its technology has evolved so that one can extract information without basically harming the body... The new technology of psychotropic drugs completely alters the discourse of torture, whether at the federal level with the military, the CIA and the FBI, or at the more local level of police enforcing counter-terrorism in New York and elsewhere. Those of us at our center remember our Pentagon guest, Alysa Stack-O'Connor, in one of our fall seminars acknowledged the United States use of such drugs with the detainees from Afghanistan in Guantanamo, Cuba.. The conference will examine the ethical, political, and legal issues of the new torture in a historical context in light of the new technologies. We will have presenters from human rights groups with special knowledge of torture, scholars who have examined the topic from many angles, and scientists who really understand the rather highly technical issues of the drugs involved.
Torture After 9/11 | Google-cache re: Alysa Stack-O'Connor
~Drugs+Torture American-style is NOT newsworthy because:
A) We don't use drugs to torture our detainees. (Alysa Stack-O'Connor was fibbing.)
B) Early on in our War on Terrorism we used drugs in Guantanamo but learned they don't work. (Old news and no photos.)
C) We use drugs but only those that "ease inhibitions" and the media agrees not to give America's enemies a heads-up. (Security issues & no photos.)
D) We've been torturing detainees with all sorts of drugs and the media agrees not to give America's enemies a heads up. (Serious security issues.)
I was wondering why there're few reports on the use of drugs as torture.
He's a superstar intellectual
SLAVOJ: But back to your question — this will give you a hint of my private totalitarian spirit. My five-year-old son and I play military games — with tanks, and so on. On one occasion, a soldier had to be shot. My son said to me, "Father, let's kill him so it looks like an accident." What a Stalinist — and only five years old! I particularly loved him at that moment.
Slavoj Zizek interviewed by Wolfgang Tillmans
“Open sources often surpass classified information..."
Reexamining the Distinction Between Open Information and Secrets
December 02, 2005
Art: 'Beyond Green': Fruit
Exploring our city and its connections to the world via fruit.
"One aspect of everyday life in cities that is often overlooked is the procurement of food. FRUIT, a new project by the international art collective Free Soil, looks at one of the most basic food types, raw fruit, and challenges its audience to become engaged in knowing just where it comes from. Currently exhibited in the University of Chicago's Smart Museum exhibition, 'Beyond Green,' FRUIT is a multifaceted work that utilizes a website as a portal to distribute information about the global and local system of fruit production."
http://www.free-soil.org/fruit/
link & blurb via Rhizome
Google News Search: Anti-American
~While channel-surfing today I heard Fox's O'Reilly use the term "anti-American". I didn't stop to hear the rest of the sentence. "Anti-American" is not a word every American can use with the same authority.
As of this hour 'anti-american' occurs in some 4,530 news stories collected by google.
'Anti-british' appears in 33 stories collected by google news UK. 'Anti-canadian' occurs in 2 news stories.
'Anti-republican' appears in 87 googled news stories while 'anti-democrat' is mentioned twice.
'Anti-christian' is news in 341 stories, while 'anti-muslim' appears 345 times.
'Anti-war' is making news in 6,840 papers or editions while 'pro-war' is news-worthy 983 times.
[photo from google search 'anti-american']
~While looking at these googled photos I began to see that anti-American might not simply be a knee-jerk right-wing response to silence critics. Outside the States 'anti-American' might be being used to describe something or someone very different...or not.
Pro-War Liberals Frozen in the Headlights
"...the whole neo-con notion of “shocking” the Arab and Muslim worlds onto the true and only path of “democracy” parallels the merciless Bolshevik mentality of 1917 more than it follows on the tolerant ruminations of Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau.
So what if tens of thousands of bystanders get killed in the wake of the overwhelming historical forces of progress? Like Lenin and Trotsky, the neo-cons want world revolution, not slow evolution."
article by John R. MacArthur
~A 'fun read' for some of us and for others: can you see the enemy now?
[illus.from Automated Redemption's postcard gallery\ not above]
December 01, 2005
USA's Wealthiest County
The median income nationwide is $43,318.
~James wonders: "Ever been to New Mexico? Imagine nothing. That's what is there. Some parts of the highway the right hand white line isn't even drawn.
Yet Los Alamos county is the American's average richest: $93,000.
And you have to wonder, is that all it takes for someone to put the
world in perpetual jeopardy."
[Cieciel] "What and give up the house on the mesa?"
[photo taken from Flickr\ not above]
Plutonium missing from Los Alamos
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Nov. 30 (UPI) -- Some 661 pounds of plutonium is unaccounted for and may be missing from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, an activist group says.
There is no evidence the plutonium -- enough to make dozens of nuclear bombs -- was stolen or diverted, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research said.
The Takoma Park, Md., institute said its report used documents from 1996 to 2004 to reach its conclusions, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
"The University (of California) obviously has a responsibility in this," said report co-author Arjun Makhijani. "It should be a grave embarrassment for the university to be sitting on numbers like this and discrepancies like this, and not have resolved them."
A university spokesman said the lab tracks plutonium "to a minute quantity."
The university has joined industrial partners including Bechtel National in a bid to keep its Los Alamos contract against a consortium that includes Lockheed-Martin and the University of Texas.
The activist group said it is not taking sides in the competition.
| UPI
Cheerleading at Annapolis
Midshipmen catch naps as they wait for more than an hour for U.S. President George W. Bush to deliver an address on the war in Iraq at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland November 30, 2005. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
~Ah, the things young people do to please the old farts. (Goodtimes, goodtimes.)
Poem: Young Poets
Write as you will
In whatever style you like
Too much blood has run under the bridge
To go on believing
That only one road is right.
In poetry everything is permitted.
With only this condition of course,
You have to improve the blank page.
Nicanor Parra | @ Poem Hunter
>for example "The Vices of the Modern World"
via the WayBack Machine
Nowhere to Run
article by Brian Whitaker
~Reviews a military historian's take on Bush's War in Iraq. Here's the link to Martin van Creveld's article referenced above.
Thanks Conscientious and Unknown News
[photo via yahoo news not from above links]
Art by Nigel Ayers
for example:
"Gun Boy"
Digital print.
Archive quality waterproof ink on acid-free art paper.
Edition of 20.
Image size is 210mm x 285 mm (8 inches x 11 inches approx)
Paper size is 270mm x 385mm (11 inches x 15 inches approx)
From "The War Against Terror” and "The War on Drugs" series
mini gallery of digital art by Nigel Ayers
thanks Diederik