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READING

Silent Coup: The Removal of a President - Len Colodny & Robert Gettlin

George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Webster Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin (free online version/download here)

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STOP TERRORISM

ABBREVIATIONS FOR SITES I OFTEN STEAL NEWS ITEMS FROM:

og = J Orlin Grabbe
u = Progressive Review's Undernews
a = Antiwar

amazon wish list

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Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder, and the Mafia

Amazon Light

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

and s-integrator

Saturday, December 21, 2002

Thought Sciences [u]
The Thought Sciences team uses functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), a safe and non-invasive technique, to observe patterns in brain activity that reveal how a person is processing and/or evaluating a product, object or advertisement. Thought Sciences neuroscientists and marketing analysts then use this information to more accurately measure consumer preference and determine whether it has been affected by a particular message campaign. These insights give marketers key pieces of information difficult, if not impossible, to objectively obtain with current research methods which can then be translated into the creation of products, services, and marketing campaigns that better resonate with customers.
Call me crazy, but that sounds like a company Adolf Hitler and Irénée DuPont could love.

Where is Bill Hicks when we really need him?

2:13 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

PA township denies corporations citizens' rights [u]
News Flash from Paul Cienfuegos at Democracy Unlimited

The elected officials of Porter Township, Pennsylvania, have passed a law declaring that corporations operating in that township may not claim civil and constitutional privileges. A unanimous vote cast on December 9, 2002, evolved out of long-time efforts by citizens and public officials to bar corporations from dumping toxic sludge on township lands.

The new law declares that corporations allowed to do business within Porter Township possess none of the human rights that corporations have been wielding to overrule democratic processes and rule over communities. For details, contact the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) in PA at 717.709.0457 or info@celdf.org (www.celdf.org), or contact the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD) in MA at 508.398.1145 or people@poclad.org (www.poclad.org).

2:00 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Friday, December 20, 2002

As if drained by the outcry against it, the TIA website fades into an indistinct Phildickian ubik-quity
As controversy grows over the Defense Department's shadowy Total Information Awareness (TIA) project, the project's virtual presence is steadily decreasing. If fully implemented, TIA would link databases from sources such as credit card companies, medical insurers, and motor vehicle databases for police convenience in hopes of snaring terrorists.

First, biographical information about the TIA project leaders, including retired Adm. John Poindexter, disappeared from the Defense Department's site last month. A mirror that one activist created from Google's cache shows the deleted information included four resumes listing past work experience but no addresses or contact information.

Then, sometime in the last week, the TIA site shrank still more and some links ceased to work. The logo for the TIA project--a Masonic pyramid eyeballing the globe--vanished, a highly unusual step for a government agency. So did the TIA's Latin "scientia est potentia" slogan, which means "knowledge is power."

A spokeswoman for the Information Awareness Office, which runs the TIA project at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), said she had no details on the deletions.

The disappearing documents come as the TIA has become a lighting rod for criticism and as online activists have been turning the tables on Poindexter by reposting his personal information and home telephone number as widely as possible.
Let's hope the whole program disappears completely.

6:21 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, December 19, 2002

There are now 7 military public schools in the US (with the National Guard's help) [Stratiawire]

Interest is high, and results have been far better than in other schools in Oakland, for instance (Mayor Jerry Brown is a big booster).

But I would never send my kid there, if I had one.

The whole idea creeps me out, and seems like the discipline kids should be getting at home is being replaced by the military. Part of this is that people can't afford to be at home with their kids, because of the cost of living. Of course there are other reasons.

At the very least, I'd be very careful about this being the best thing for a child. How many stories have you read in which a kid is fucked up by this kind of school?

For me, school from the 7th grade on was way too much like the military as it was.

10:44 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Referrals
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Tarot death card online Paul Foster Case
"Steel Enterprise" load forecast.
Advertising+and+Illegal+Bait+and+Switch+Tactics+in+missouri
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"hate your neighbor" card game
fort bragg spousal homicides anthrax
felon palast rebuttal
vintage pics of lie detectors

9:16 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

xymphora on new 9/11 commission head Thomas Kean's conflicts of interest
There is plenty of information available on the bin Mahfouz and al-Amoudi families. So Kean, through being a director of Amerada Hess, is tied in to the same Khalid bin Mahfouz and Mohammed Hussein al-Amoudi problem that would have plagued Henry the K. It is possible that a proper investigation of 9-11 will uncover information that will implicate in the financing of bin Laden the owners of a partner of a company of which Kean is a director, possibly making it impossible, due to American laws against the funding of terrorism, for the joint ventures to continue. How can Kean possibly head this commission?

10:52 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Corruption and hopelessness in Israel

Allegations of underworld extortion schemes and vote-buying in Likud primaries and Sharon's grip on power [The Global Beat]

10:42 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Flagstaff (70 miles away) is the nearest civilized outpost (or city of over 10,000) to where I live. The City Council just OK'd -- by the narrowest margin and after 4 text revisions -- a fairly mild-mannered resolution against the PATRIOT Act [Sassafrass]

Go um Arizona. . .

Flag (as it's usually called by the locals) is the home of Northern Arizona University. It at 7000 feet, and the air's pretty thin up there.
Lovely area surrounding, used to be the largest Ponderosa Pine forest in the country, til the recent pine bark beetle infestation (no end in sight, many acres lost) and the Rodeo/Chedeski Fire last summer (seems like a long time ago).

2:33 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Someone accessing this site through the Army Directors of Information Management (DOIM) searching for "Proactive Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)" led me to some neat sites, which I've also added to the right column
cryptogon
The Global Beat
What Matters
Careful you read the disclaimer at the bottom of the DOIM site above before proceeding past the home page. They're watching you.

2:00 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, December 18, 2002

Junkie Santa a Fake

"Santa" robs VA pharmacy of oxycontin stock; police confirm culprit was impostor, Christmas out of danger

The thief's ties to Iraqi Intelligence are "being thoroughly explored," said a livid Donald Rumsfeld.

Security advisor Daniel Perle claimed only "Satanic Muslims" could hatch such an "obvious plot to discredit all that Christians hold dear." "A declaration of Holy Nuclear War To Recover Rightfully Christian Natural Resources, now seems inevitable," Perle added in baleful tones.

Vice-President Cheney's comment was drowned out by the daily blasting beneath his Washington residence. Rumors of a "Sauron-inspired" palace being constructed underground were dismissed by Press Secretary Fleischer as "this fantastic rumor, probably started by some bitter, demented, out-of-work Wellstone campaign worker with a Muslim surname and a penchant for conspiracy theories."

In a related story, unconfirmed reports of a "giant, yellow flaming eye with a vertical iris" over the Washington area were attributed to "unscheduled testing" of an Air Force holographic projector by Pentagon officials. "Sorry about the confusion," said a spokesperson.

2:02 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tuesday, December 17, 2002

First major victory against DMCA

ElcomSoft not guilty
The DMCA makes it a crime to offer for sale products that circumvent digital copy protections, including encryption schemes, the issue at stake in the ElcomSoft case. Other provisions create penalties for creating and distributing such tools, raising protests from programmers that the law could, among other things, bar academic research and inhibit open discussion of encryption technology, including in news reports. Last year, in a major ruling favoring the film industry, a federal appeals court ordered a Web site to remove links to code capable of cracking encryption on DVDs, citing the DMCA.

Lawyers not involved in the case said the ElcomSoft verdict boded ill for future criminal prosecutions under the controversial copyright law. A "not guilty" verdict in a criminal case comes without the ability to appeal, unlike the civil copyright cases targeting Napster and other companies that have bounced through federal court in recent years. Future courts won't be bound by Tuesday's verdict, which will stand untouched.

"It is troubling for enforcement of the (criminal provisions of the) DMCA," said Evan Cox, an attorney with the San Francisco firm of Covington & Burlington. "This was the kind of case that the DMCA was meant to prevent. If this enforcement led to a not guilty verdict, you have to wonder what would lead to a successful case."

6:36 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Afraid of the GOP being "misperceived" as racist and thus losing votes and Congressional clout, shrubco cuts Lott loose
White House officials tried to discourage the impression that they were orchestrating Lott's downfall. Fleischer said the call by Nickles to Rove "was described to me as a notification call and nothing more."

Despite persistent efforts to persuade minorities to drop their hostility to the Republican Party, Bush has winked at the more racially angry politics of the South. During the campaign, he spoke at South Carolina's Bob Jones University, which banned interracial dating. During a primary debate in South Carolina, he refused repeatedly to say whether the Confederate flag offended him.

"I believe the people of South Carolina can figure out what to do with this flag issue. It's the people of South Carolina's decision," Bush said to cheers from the local crowd.

1:05 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

BigPharma continues its pathetic attack on herbal remedies it can't patent

I've made echinacea a part of my immune system support for years, and it does help.

But don't believe my "anecdotal evidence": try it yourself -- before it disappears from the shelves like kava largely has in Europe and (from what I hear) the US (here in central AZ you can still find it, but one or two brands instead of 7 or 8).

This isn't to say these remedies are right for everybody -- nothing is. But the campaign against them smells like corporate oligarchy to me.

The same people who are buying the rights to the world's water so they can sell it to you -- if you can afford it.

12:35 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Venezuela

The OAS stands behind Chavez and shrubco backpedals on unconstitutional elections while the Washington Post complains corrupt institutions were undermined by Chavez

But then, the curious "similarities" of stories filed by different US reporters in different cities -- and the well-hidden bias in both accounts -- shows how the OneBigNetwork and its collaborators are skewing the story the way the Venezuelan elites, shrubco and the CIA want them to.

12:25 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, December 16, 2002

Paranoid-schizophrenics running the White House

John Pilger reminds us the "Project for the New American Century (PNAC)" needed "a new Pearl Harbor" a couple years ago and now their dangerous fantasy of "total war" is on the verge of becoming a reality
One of George W Bush's "thinkers" is Richard Perle. I interviewed Perle when he was advising Reagan; and when he spoke about "total war", I mistakenly dismissed him as mad. He recently used the term again in describing America's "war on terror". "No stages," he said. "This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there. All this talk about first we are going to do Afghanistan, then we will do Iraq... this is entirely the wrong way to go about it. If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war... our children will sing great songs about us years from now."

Perle is one of the founders of the Project for the New American Century, the PNAC. Other founders include Dick Cheney, now vice-president, Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, deputy defence secretary, I Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, William J Bennett, Reagan's education secretary, and Zalmay Khalilzad, Bush's ambassador to Afghanistan. These are the modern chartists of American terrorism. The PNAC's seminal report, Rebuilding America's Defences: strategy, forces and resources for a new century, was a blueprint of American aims in all but name. Two years ago it recommended an increase in arms-spending by $48bn so that Washington could "fight and win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars". This has happened. It said the United States should develop "bunker-buster" nuclear weapons and make "star wars" a national priority. This is happening. It said that, in the event of Bush taking power, Iraq should be a target. And so it is.[My emphasis]

4:19 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Do you believe this?

Hatred and fear of US only option against terrorism/Arab/world resistance to US hegemony

Endless global instability, generations of resentment against the US in friendly and unfriendly countries, loss of who knows how many lives, no resolution to the long term energy crisis -- too bad.

The Angry Beast needs a Sacrifice.

4:07 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Rumsfeld frustrated US can't hypnotize rest of world into unthinking pro-American trance, will find a way [a]
The Defense Department is considering issuing a secret directive to the American military to conduct covert operations aimed at influencing public opinion and policy makers in friendly and neutral countries, senior Pentagon and administration officials say.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has not yet decided on the proposal, which has ignited a fierce battle throughout the Bush administration over whether the military should carry out secret propaganda missions in friendly nations like Germany, where many of the Sept. 11 hijackers congregated, or Pakistan, still considered a haven for Al Qaeda's militants.

Such a program, for example, could include efforts to discredit and undermine the influence of mosques and religious schools that have become breeding grounds for Islamic militancy and anti-Americanism across the Middle East, Asia and Europe. It might even include setting up schools with secret American financing to teach a moderate Islamic position laced with sympathetic depictions of how the religion is practiced in America, officials said.

3:51 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Guardian update on Venezuela

12:24 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

(Darkly) hilarious Mark Morford on the State of the Union [u]
Let's see: The barnacle-crusted, black-eyed Henry Kissinger, he of countless unspeakable war crimes in Vietnam, North Korea, Cambodia, Chile and East Timor, master of mass-murderous secret bombings and democracy-toppling conspiracies, dark souled and understandably thought by millions to be long dead, has been defrosted and resurrected to head the "independent" commission to investigate 9/11. Ahh, feel that cultural colon spasm.

It is a commission whose creation, by the way, Bush resisted to the end, but which he finally had to give in to what with all the, you know, social bitterness and sadness -- so, hey, why not make it easy on himself and choose a notorious backroom figure of vile wars past to look into who knew what when and why? Perfect.

Do you hear the screams of protest? The howls of citizen complaint and general aghastedness and media outrage? Of course you don't. The media is simpering and misled and Pentagon-whipped. The Dems are emasculated and gonad-free. The populace is fear pummeled and exhausted and just wants a job and maybe a nice bottle of Bactine for Christmas.

In related news, Bush also appointed a squad of those evil hooded dark-rider things from "The Lord of the Rings" to look into the thousands of civilian deaths in Afghanistan. They promise complete unbiased reportage, as soon as they remove the skulls from between their teeth.

12:15 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

North Carolina's extensive 20th century eugenics program [u]
-- More than 2,000 people 18 and younger were sterilized in many questionable cases, including a 10-year-old who was castrated.

-- The program was racially balanced in the early years, but by the late 1960s more than 60 percent of those sterilized were black; 99 percent were women.

-- Doctors performed sterilizations without authorization, and the Eugenics Board backdated approval.

-- Major eugenics research at Wake Forest University was paid for by a patron who had a racial agenda that included a visit to a 1935 Nazi eugenics conference and extensive efforts to overturn key civil-rights legislation.

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

"Research" links

Added some links at the right for those interested in intel info and behind-the-scenes speculation.

A pleasant diversion.

1:19 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, December 15, 2002

BJP fascist wins in Gujurat province in India
Analysts said the BJP had successfully preyed on Hindu fears of the Muslim minority to win the election, breaking the taboos of a secular tradition established at independence in 1947.

Modi's unabashed Hindu revivalism had prompted his enemies to compare him to European fascist leaders of the 1920s and 1930s, while his admirers saw him as the hero of the Hindu right-wing.

But analysts were doubtful that the BJP, which also heads the national coalition government, would extend such tactics into a string of state elections and a national poll due by 2004.

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

Nickles and McConnell likely successors if Lott steps down from leadership in Senate, or so says WP

11:51 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Good editorial distinguishing between Zionism and Jewish identity [a]
It owes nothing to anti-Semitism that Israel is the subject of more critical scrutiny than are the neighbouring Arab autarchies, dictatorships and pseudo-democracies. No one mistakes the true nature of those regimes. No credible voices are raised in their defence, nor do the abhorrent Palestinian suicide bombings have any serious apologists. Only Israel's relentless and ultimately self-destructive expansionism, militarism and state violence find many supporters.

1:45 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Is the surging anti-US response in South Korea to the acquittal of 2 US soldiers in a local double homicide making it to the OneNetworkNews Here?

1:40 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

VR Allah appearing over Baghdad was proposed by the USAF in '91 to spook Iraqis into submission [Sassafrass]

1:18 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

I see Caroline Casey has a show on Pacifica radio, and RealAudio archives of the most recent shows (the latest one with Mark Crispin Miller) -- including one with Daniel Sheehan of the Christic Institute on the string pullers in the White House, which should be interesting, despite its being a year old [Sassafrass]

There are tapes of earlier shows you can purchase too.

I have her book Making the Gods Work for You: The Astrological Language of the Psyche, which I haven't read all the way through, but she's a unique and powerful astrologer, along the lines of Rob Brezsny. Another Brown University semiotics graduate, like Todd Haynes, for what that's worth.

I had the graphic "novel" Brought to Light : Thirty Years of Drug Smuggling, Arms Deals, & Covert Action, which Sheehan did with Bill Sienkiewicz and others back in the 80s. I must've lent it out to someone. Damn.

Here's a page with much info on the CIA/drugs/contra/Christic nexus, including a short interview Sheehan did with Gary Null (about 1/4 of the way down, it's a big page) on CIA infiltration of the mass media. The page is kind of thrown together, but it looks like there's some meat there.

1:06 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

That's one of the great things about living in America: moral superiority is so damned cheap.

-- James Crumley

This country is going so far to the right you won't be able to recognize it.

-- John Mitchell, 1973

Those who think history has left us helpless should recall the abolitionist of 1830, the feminist of 1870, the labor organizer of 1890, or the gay or lesbian writer of 1910. They, like us, did not get to choose their time in history but they, like us, did get to choose what they did with it.

-- Sam Smith

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

They tell us it's about race, and we believe them. And they call it a "democracy," and we nod our heads, so pleased with ourselves. We blame the Socias [gangsters], we occasionally sneer at the Paulsons [latest crop of craven pols] but we always vote for the Sterling Mulkerns [good old boys]. And in occasional moments of quasi-lucidity, we wonder why the Mulkerns of this world don't respect us. They don't respect us because we are their molested children. They fuck us morning, noon, and night, but as long as they tuck us in with a kiss, as long as they whisper into our ears, "Daddy loves you, Daddy will take care of you," we close our eyes and go to sleep, trading our bodies, our souls, for the comforting veneers of "civilization" and "security," the false idols of our twentieth century wet dream. And it's our reliance on that dream that the Mulkerns, the Paulsons, the Socias, the Phils, the Heroes of this world depend upon. That's their dark knowledge. That's how they win.

-- Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

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

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

charging the canvas

The Link Section