CULTURE BLOG

all art/music/culture links (including music biz/file sharing news), fiction I'm reading and what I'm listening to and watching

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ABBREVIATIONS FOR SITES I OFTEN STEAL NEWS ITEMS FROM:

u = Progressive Review's Undernews





PUBLIC AFFAIRS/HISTORY READING:
(r) = re-reading





amazon wish list

amazon.ca wish list

alibris wishlist



The Buying of the President 2004: Who's Really Bankrolling Bush and His Democratic Challengers -- and What They Expect in Return

The Buying of the President 2004: Who's Really Bankrolling Bush and His Democratic Challengers -- and What They Expect in Return


Arrogant Capital

Arrogant Capital


Great American Political Repair Manual

Sam Smith's Great American Political Repair Manual: How to Rebuild Our Country So the Politics Aren't Broken and Politicians Aren't Fixed


American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush

American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush


Death in the Air: Globalism, Terrorism & Toxic Warfare

Death in the Air: Globalism, Terrorism & Toxic Warfare


The Velvet Coup: The Constitution, the Supreme Court and the Decline of American Democracy

The Velvet Coup: The Constitution, the Supreme Court and the Decline of American Democracy


into the buzzsaw

Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of the Free Press



Amazon Light








Stop Policeware


Campaign for Audiovisual Freedom




Just consider what current events will sound like two thousand years from now -- the greatest nation on Earth bombing some of the smallest and weakest for no clear reasons, people starving in parts of the world while farmers are paid not to plant crops in others, technophiles sitting at home playing electronic golf rahter than the real thing, and police forces ordered to arrest people who simply desire to ingest a psychoactive weed. People of that era will also likely laugh it all off as fantastic myths...

It is time for those who desire true freedom to exert themselves -- to fight back against the forces who desire domination through fear and disunity.

This does not have to involve violence. It can be done in small, simple ways, like not financing that new Sport Utility Vehicle, cutting up all but one credit card, not opting for a second mortgage, turning off that TV sitcom for a good book, asking questions and speaking out in church or synagogue, attending school board and city council meetings, voting for the candidate who has the least money, learning about the Fully Informed Jury movement and using it when called -- in general, taking responsibility for one's own actions. Despite the omnipresent advertising for the Lotto -- legalized government gambling -- there is no free lunch. Giving up one's individual power for the hope of comfort and security has proven to lead only to tyranny.


from Rule by Secrecy by Jim Marrs





You had to take those pieces of paper with you when you went shopping, though by the time I was nine or ten most people used plastic cards. . .It seems so primitive, totemistic even, like cowry shells. I must have used that kind of money myself, a little, before everything went on the Compubank.

I guess that's how they were able to do it, in the way they did, all at once, without anyone knowing beforehand. If there had still been portable money, it would have been more difficult.

It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time.

Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control.

I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen?

That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.

. . . Things continued on in that state of suspended animation for weeks, although some things did happen. Newspapers were censored and some were closed down, for security reasons they said. The roadblocks began to appear, and Identipasses. Everyone approved of that, since it was obvious you couldn't be too careful. They said that new elections would be held, but that it would take some time to prepare for them. The thing to do, they said, was to continue on as usual.


from The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood





By the time Oscar reached the outskirts of Washington, DC, The Louisiana air base had benn placed under siege.

The base's electrical power supply had long since been cut off for lack of payment. The aircraft had no fuel. The desperate federal troops were bartering stolen equipment for food and booze. Desertion was rampant. The air base commander had released a sobbing video confession and had shot himself.

Green Huey had lost patience with the long-festering scandal. He was moving in for the kill. Attacking and seizing an federal air base with his loyal state militia would have been entirely too blatant and straightforward. Instead the rogue Governor employed proxy guerrillas.

Huey had won the favor of nomad prole groups by providing them with safe havens. He allowed them to squat in Louisiana's many federally declared contamination zones. These forgotten landscapes were tainted with petrochemical effluent and hormone-warping pesticides, and were hence officially unfit for human settlement. The prole hordes had different opinions on that subject.

Proles cheerfully grouped in any locale where conventional authority had grown weak. Whenever the net-based proles were not constantly harassed by the authorities, they coalesced and grew ambitious. Though easily scattered by focused crackdowns, they regrouped as swiftly as a horde of gnats. With their reaping machines and bio-breweries, they could live off the land at the very base of the food chain. They had no stake in the established order, and they cherished a canny street-level knowledge of society's infrastructural weaknesses. They made expensive enemies. . .

Louisiana's ecologically blighted areas were ideal for proles. The disaster zones were also impromptu wildlife sanctuaries, since wild animals found chemical fouling much easier to survive than the presence of human beings. After decades of wild subtropical growth, Louisiana's toxic dumps were as impenetrable as Sherwood Forest.


from Distraction by Bruce Sterling


FREE THE MOUSE


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Saturday, August 23, 2003

shrubco harassing sex education group with 3 audits this year [the null device]

7:38 PM - [Link] - Comments ()


Immigrants skipping over gateway states (NY, Cali) for jobs in Midwest, South

8:44 AM - [Link] - Comments ()


Document gold mine?

The Hutton Inquiry into the David Kelly case allows release of many UK government documents, memos and letters that would have otherwise been withheld for years


Haven't waded through this yet, and the site is slow, but there might be some very interesting stuff here.

8:38 AM - [Link] - Comments ()


Friday, August 22, 2003

US resumes shoot-down policy in Colombia

7:45 AM - [Link] - Comments ()


shrubco's pet wallaby lied too

Aussie gov't re-wrote Iraq "WMD" intel


1:10 AM - [Link] - Comments ()


Thursday, August 21, 2003

Reason #3254 for homeschooling your kids

Total surveillance in Biloxi classrooms
[u]
Hundreds of Internet-wired video cameras will keep rolling all year long, in the hope that they'll deter crime and general misbehavior among the district's 6,300 students -- and teachers.

"It helps honest people be more honest," says district Superintendent Larry Drawdy, who, along with principals and security officers, can use a password to view classrooms from any computer. In an emergency, police also can tune in.


7:58 PM - [Link] - Comments ()


Quakes

4.4 in Wyoming and 7.1 at the southern tip of New Zealand


The geysers have been very active in Yellowstone, so this is not a surprise, but a fair size for the area nonetheless. The quake Down Under was felt over a thousand miles away in Sydney.

6:03 PM - [Link] - Comments ()


Funny piece by Ellen Goodman on America's persistent discomfort with leisure [u]
In the early 20th century a few hard-working researchers declared that a little time off was a good thing. Not surprisingly, they decided that ''brain workers'' needed a rest from days spent laboring in the minds, while physical workers could do without it. The idea of vacations finally caught on in the middle and working classes, but it was never codified into the law.

Now we arrive at the summer of the incredible shrinking American vacation. It's predicted that we'll take 10 percent less time off than last year, and last year was no week at the beach.

Americans have notoriously fewer vacation days than workers in any other industrialized country. While Europeans get four or five weeks paid leave by law, and even the Chinese get three weeks, we average about eight days after a year with one company and 10 days after three years. Thirteen percent of American companies offer no paid vacation at all.


12:14 AM - [Link] - Comments ()


Wednesday, August 20, 2003

Making smart mobs live up to their name [u]
Unlike traditional rallies, which are very effective for other reasons, a distributed protest is more effective as a long-term media campaign. You are better off running a 30-minute protest each day from 6pm until 6:30pm for 8 days in a row, rather than having 1 protest for 4 hours


11:58 PM - [Link] - Comments ()


Your Cellphone is a Homing Device [u]
If you purchased a new cellphone over the past 18 months or so, odds are that one of the features listed in small print on the side of the box was "E911 capable." Or, as in the case of my latest Motorola, "Location technology for piece [sic] of mind." Perhaps you asked the salesman to explain the feature, and he replied that it means that cops can home in on your phone in case of an emergency, a potentially important perk should you ever find your hand pinned beneath an immovable boulder in rural Utah, as Aron Ralston did recently. Assuming he could have gotten a signal, an E911-capable phone might have saved the young backpacker the pain of having to amputate his own arm.

What your salesman probably failed to tell you?and may not even realize?is that an E911-capable phone can give your wireless carrier continual updates on your location. The phone is embedded with a Global Positioning System chip, which can calculate your coordinates to within a few yards by receiving signals from satellites. GPS technology gave U.S. military commanders a vital edge during Gulf War II, and sailors and pilots depend on it as well. In the E911-capable phone, the GPS chip does not wait until it senses danger, springing to life when catastrophe strikes; it's switched on whenever your handset is powered up and is always ready to transmit your location data back to a wireless carrier's computers. Verizon or T-Mobile can figure out which manicurist you visit just as easily as they can pinpoint a stranded motorist on Highway 59.


11:55 PM - [Link] - Comments ()


"Quick, incremetal, economical"

Undernews had a section back on the 8th (delayed post) on Bus rapid transit

11:43 PM - [Link] - Comments ()


Summer means fun?

As many as 13,500 people have died from the European heatwave in France alone

August is often a bizarre month, but not usually as volatile as this year -- the biggest blackout in North American history, the Cali recall, escalating violence in the Mideast (Israel, Afhganistan & Iran), and the general sense of shrubco backpedalling fiercely as the Iraqi quagmire gapes wider every day. Plus the dreadful killer weather in Europe and elsewhere.

11:39 PM - [Link] - Comments ()


DeLay even crazier than Ashcroft
The office of Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, pressed the Justice Department in May to determine whether federal officials had the authority to intervene in a legislative redistricting standoff in Texas, but senior department officials dismissed the idea as "wacko" and inappropriate, a Justice Department report said today.


11:24 PM - [Link] - Comments ()


BigPharma moves to patent nature [u]

11:22 PM - [Link] - Comments ()


Brother of Reuters cameraman killed by US troops says he'd found mass grave of US soldiers killed in Iraqi attacks [xymphora]

11:20 PM - [Link] - Comments ()


World Bank/IMF pull out of Iraq after UN bombing

11:16 PM - [Link] - Comments ()


Looks like I'm back

Blackout knocked us out since Wednesday.

Slowly rolling back to post-mind.

3:26 PM - [Link] - Comments ()


Wonder if this'll make BigMedia today?

Gulf War I vets sue banks, corps. for supporting Iraq's chem warfare program in the 80s [drudge]

3:23 PM - [Link] - Comments ()





REVIEWS

from Sassafrass (9/23/02)
"Unconventional viewpoints at 'charging the canvas'

Opinions that will ruffle feathers, from someone who clearly knows their way around information and the blogosphere."


Blog of the Day
1/18/02




WEEKLY QUOTE

In the eyes of posterity it will inevitably seem that, in safeguarding our freedom, we destroyed it; that the vast clandestine apparatus we built up to probe our enemies' resources and intentions only served in the end to confuse our own purposes; that the practice of deceiving others for the good of the state led infallibly to our deceiving ourselves; and that the vast army of intelligence personnel built up to execute these purposes were soon caught up in the web of their own sick fantasies, with disastrous consequences to them and us.

-- Malcolm Muggeridge



Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

-- Mark Twain





NOT IN OUR NAME
(link to list against Iraq War)




CULTURE LINK

Philip K. Dick


DEEPER NEWS LINK

PR Watch


The Link Section

NEWS

The Global Beat
Buzzflash
Scoop
AntiWar
Progressive Review's Undernews
googlenews
cursor
Guerrilla News Network
newshub top 25
Narco News
AP
BBC World
L.A. Times
Christian Science Monitor
Unknown News
The UK Guardian
Int'l Herald Tribune
AlterNet
The Smirking Chimp
Tom Paine.com
media channel.org
Spin of the Day
Islamicity
USGS Earthquake update
Nando NewsWatch
cryptome
Unknown Country
CounterPunch
Project Censored


alt.9/11
questions, questions...
Serendipity WTC page
xymphora (also Mid East)
Mike Ruppert
Matt McVeagh's summary of theories
Propaganda Matrix



RESEARCH

Namebase (Public Information Research)
FAS Intel Index
CIA Pubs
Cointelpro
J Ransom Clark US Intel Bibliography
Carnicom Chemtrails
ARAP TWA 800 page
Bilderbergers
Securitate.org
Pair
Gnostic Liberation Front
Freedom Portal
Philidelphia Experiment/Montauk Project
Freemason Watch
Military Intelligence by John Patrick Finnegan



BLOGS WITH A BULLET

Aron's Israel Peace Weblog
Eschaton
skimble
IncuBLOGula
Technoccult
cryptogon
/agENDacide
The Unbound Writer's Online Journal
Temple Furnace
DiVERSiONZ
nomorefakenews
The Mink Dimension
leptard
Hari Kunzru
The Asylum Eclectica
erisfree
Witold Riedel
fluttergirl



VINTAGE BLOGS, DIVERSIONS

Schizm Matrix
boing boing
J. Orlin Grabbe Sassafrass
Yeah,Totally
the null device
fark
new world disorder
Blather
Invisible Jet
formica
a dam site
This Modern World (the blog)
moon farmer
a bright cold day in april
AstroPic
one.point.zero
davezilla
bifurcated rivets
Metafilter
wood s lot
Ethel the Blog
caterina
Alamut
rebecca's pocket
follow me here
dle
memes.org
robot wisdom
Orwell Today


WEB DESIGN

Pod Designs


USEFUL LINX

Watch It! (site update notifier)
Ask Now (24/7 reference help)
The Virtual Acquisition Shelf & News Desk
Chilling Effects (online rights)
EIA Environment Consumer Education Initiative (Computer recycling)
Refdesk
stock market
The Center for Justice and Accountability


SUBTLES

Earth Alchemy
Astrodienst (free charts)
Astroworld
Morgan's Tarot
Paranormal News
Institute of Noetic Sciences


ACTIVISM/ALT COMMUNITY

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
Fully Informed Jury Association
childfree.net
Why War?
Poclad
Commercial Alert
Privacy Rights Now
Peaceful Tomorrows
Contacting the Congress
WITNESS
Amer. Booksellers Found. Free Expression
Critical Resistance (prisons)
Working for Change
Contract with the Planet
Unmarried America
NRDC
Physicians for a National Health Program


SHOPPING

insound (music and mags)
half.com (books & music cheap)
Web Source Sales (ink carts cheap)



SEARCH ENGINES

ez2www.com
vivísimo
Invisible Web search


ALT BROWSERS

[Get Opera!]


K-Meleon







They were past the motels now, condos on both sides. The nicer ones, on the left, had soothing pluraled nature-names carved on hanging wooden signs, The Coves, The Glades, The Meadowlands. The cheaper condos, on the right, were smaller and closer to the road, and had names like roaring powerboats, Seaspray, Barracuda's, and Beachcomber III.

Jackie sneezed, a snippy poodle kind of sneeze, God-blessed herself, and said, "I bet it's on the left, Raymond. You better slow down."

Raymond Rios, the driver and young science teacher to the bright and gifted, didn't nod or really hear. He was thinking of the motels they had passed and the problem with the signs, No Vacancy. This message bothered him, he couldn't decide why. Then Jackie sneezed and it came to him, the motels said no vacancy because they were closed for the season (or off-season or not-season) and were, therefore, totally vacant, as vacant as they ever got, and so the sign, No Vacancy, was maximum-inaccurate, yet he understood exactly what it meant. This thought or chain of thoughts made him feel vacant and relaxed, done with a problem, a pleasant empty feeling driving by the beaches in the wind.


from Big If by Mark Costello


*       *       *       *


Bailey was having trouble with his bagel. Warming to my subject, I kept on talking while cutting the bagel into smaller pieces, wiping a dob of cream from his collar, giving him a fresh napkin. "There's a pretense at democracy. Blather about consensus and empowering employees with opinion surveys and minority networks. But it's a sop. Bogus as costume jewelry. The decisions have already been made. Everything's hush-hush, on a need-to-know-only basis. Compartmentalized. Paper shredders, e-mail monitoring, taping phone conversations, dossiers. Misinformation, disinformation. Rewriting history. The apparatus of fascism. It's the kind of environment that can only foster extreme caution. Only breed base behavior. You know, if I had one word to describe corporate life, it would be 'craven.' Unhappy word."

Bailey's attention was elsewhere, on a terrier tied to a parking meter, a cheeky fellow with a grizzled coat. Dogs mesmerized Bailey. He sized them up the way they sized each other up. I plowed on. "Corporations are like fortressed city-states. Or occupied territories. Remember The Sorrow and the Pity? Nazi-occupied France, the Vichy government. Remember the way people rationalized their behavior, cheering Pétain at the beginning and then cheering de Gaulle at the end? In corporations, there are out-and-out collaborators. Opportunists. Born that way. But most of the employees are like the French in the forties. Fearful. Attentiste. Waiting to see what happens. Hunkering down. Turning a blind eye.


from Moral Hazard by Kate Jennings


*       *       *       *


HANKY PANKY NOHOW

When the sashaying of gentlemen
Gives you grievance now and then
What's needed are some memories of planing lakes
Those planing lakes will surely calm you down

Nothing frightens me more
Than religion at my door
I never answer panic knocking
Falling down the stairs upon the law
What Law?

There's a law for everything
And for elephants that sing to feed
The cows that Agriculture won't allow

Hanky Panky Nohow
Hanky Panky Nohow
Hanky Panky Nohow
mmmmmmmm

-- John Cale



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