you got it

2007-02-05T10:16:00.000-05:00

The Withering of the American Environmental Movement
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

"The Dark Ages. They haven't ended yet." -Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

A kind of political narcolepsy has settled over the American environmental movement. Call it eco-ennui. You may know the feeling: restlessness, lack of direction, evaporating budgets, diminished expectations, a simmering discontent. The affliction appears acute, possibly systemic.

Unfortunately, the antidote isn't as simple as merely filing a new lawsuit in the morning or skipping that PowerPoint presentation to join a road blockade for the day. No, something much deeper may be called for: a rebellion of the heart. Just like in the good old days, not that long ago.

What is it, precisely, that's going on? Was the environmental movement bewitched by eight years of Bruce Babbitt and Al Gore? Did it suffer an allergic reaction to the New Order of Things? Are we simply adrift in a brief lacuna in the evolution of the conservation movement, one of those Gouldian (Stephen Jay) pauses before a new creative eruption?

...(m0re)...

2006-12-14T17:44:00.000-05:00

Venezuela's Magnum Opus
For 31 Years, State Program Has Brought Music and Hope to Children of the Barrios

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 13, 2006; A23

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Amid tumbledown cinder-block homes, the Don Bosco community center rings with music. A chorus of pint-size students sings traditional Christmas songs; 20 budding teenage musicians take gratingly painful stabs at playing violins and cellos; and tiny harpists dwarfed by their instruments strum as the late-afternoon sun sets over the poor Chapellin barrio.

This country is known for its pulsating salsa and down-home folk ballads, songs with bawdy lyrics played on four-string guitars and maracas. But for 31 years, an ambitious state program aimed at instilling a love of classical music in children -- particularly poor children -- has drawn the admiration of conductors from as far away as Berlin and Boston, while producing musicians who have excelled in Europe's most hallowed concert halls.

"I don't know any country in the world that has such a great network of symphony orchestras," said Jan Van der Roost, a Belgian-born composer who has conducted orchestras in dozens of countries, including Venezuela. "It's really unique. I think if all the countries in the world would do the same as here, there would be a lot less problems and a lot more happiness."

As part of the state program, about 250,000 students are playing in orchestras and learning at centers like Don Bosco, facilities tucked into the poorest barrios of the biggest cities as well as villages in some of the most far-flung corners. Their music education, fully funded by a succession of Venezuelan governments, has become an international model that has spurred the creation of similar programs in about a dozen countries in Latin America.

But while the program has produced star musicians -- including Gustavo Dudamel, who at 25 has conducted orchestras in Berlin, Israel and Los Angeles, and Edicson Ruiz, who at 17 became the youngest bass player in the Berlin Philharmonic -- its central focus is to reach into barrios riven by drugs and guns and use music to teach broader lessons.

"The important thing is to work with children and rescue children and teach them values and the work ethic," said Susan Siman, director of the center in Montealban, a neighborhood in Caracas where as many as 600 young people learn at any one time.

"Some of these children are semi-abandoned," she said. "Some come from very poor classes. They've had it rough."

The idea behind the program, Siman and others say, is to provide another path for young people with few options, like 16-year-old Samuel Martinez.

Martinez is tall and athletic and sports a toothy smile. But his young life has been marked by hardship. His mother died soon after he was born. His father turned him over to an orphanage. He grew up in a gritty Caracas barrio where the incidence of death by gunfire has skyrocketed in recent years. But instead of finding trouble, like so many of his friends, Martinez has spent the past five years mastering the viola -- an instrument that he says obsesses him. He wants a career in music.

"You see how people from the street become a part of the orchestras," said Martinez, who plays at the Montealban center. "You change, switching one life for one that is good, one with instruments. You can be a good person. Music can really change people, even though you may not believe it."

The music program is called the National System of Youth and Children's Orchestras of Venezuela, but it is known informally as the System. It's the brainchild of Jos? Antonio Abreu, a slight, birdlike conductor and teacher who wanted to bring high culture to as many of his countrymen as possible. He started in 1975 with 11 students and volunteer teachers, working out of a garage. Now, there are 200 youth orchestras and 136 centers nationwide.

His quiet lobbying, and the acclaim his program regularly receives, have led one Venezuelan government after another to provide funding, whether this oil-rich country's economy was in boom or bust. Any child who wants to learn an instrument gets one, then participates in four hours of instruction after each school day for years on end.

"Now, art is not an ornamental accessory to education, but the child has the clear right to musical, art or literature instruction," said Abreu, 67, who sits hunched in his chair wearing large-frame glasses. "That permits the talent to be detected early on. That's important. It's detected in grade school, not the conservatory, so that the child can in time be developed and taken to the maximum artistic level."

In more than three decades of infusing a love of music in children, the teachers in the System have learned techniques that leave smiles on the faces of European conductors schooled in stodgy, traditional methods. Although young adults can join the program, there are literally thousands of students who enroll as young as 4 or 5. In Montealban, a few are as young as 2. "You have to change their diapers," Siman said.

To teach small children, instructors use games and nursery rhymes, helping them apply the sounds and cadences they know to the musical instruments they're learning to play.

Anabel Astudillo has about 40 children, most about 5 or 6 years old, in her violin class in Montealban. To many teachers that would be a nightmare, but Astudillo's young charges were in rapt attention on a recent afternoon. They raised their violins in unison when asked to, placed the instruments below their chins and took simple, if hesitant, swipes with their bows. Some giggled nervously.

"We have them play games with words that they know," Astudillo, 26, said. "We attach rhythms to these words. Those are the rhythms they associate with their instruments."

The coarse, lopsided sounds wafting from classrooms on a typical day were a far cry from Vivaldi or Mahler. But teachers in the System said the program moves fast: It takes a matter of weeks for students to get a handle on their instruments, months to play with a certain accomplishment. Getting children to appreciate classical music is the easy part.

In the "nuclei," as the music centers are known, children learn as a group. The little ones sing and clap together. They practice at the same time. The focus is not long hours of solitary, tedious practice, but rather teamwork.

"You compliment them, you motivate them," Astudillo said. "When you compliment one child, the one next to him wants to be complimented. We all work a lot with motivation, with motivation and with the games."

Maibel Troia, musical director at the Don Bosco center, said a bigger challenge is reaching children in the barrio who are inherently distrustful of outsiders who make promises. "They think it's another lie, or that it's not a real future for them," she said. "But as they start coming and they get uniforms and they see the possibilities to do the work or go out and see concerts, they become excited about it."

The big enticement -- what seems to win over even the most indifferent child -- is the instrument. Teachers in the System say that once children hold a tuba, oboe or viola in their hands, they are hooked.

Erick Cordero, 10, said he first heard classical music at the Teresa Carre?o, Caracas's most important concert hall, and knew then that he wanted to be in the System. His father, Jos? Cordero, 33, a cook, supported him from the beginning.

"I told him, 'I want to play the clarinet, I want to play the clarinet, I want to play the clarinet,' " Erick recalled. Now he's considered an up-and-coming musician, good enough to solo in youth concerts.

"When I hear him, I get really emotional," his father said. "The professors say he's very good. You want to hear him? I can have him play for you."

Coming from homes where classical music is never heard, some of the young children stumble from one instrument to another as they find their way. Christian Castillo, 9, said that he started with the viola but that administrators couldn't find one that fit quite right. He then switched to the cello. "I liked it right at first, because it's big," he said. "I was really curious."

Once in the program, students sing in a chorus, go to concerts, and learn scales and music history. Many of them learn to play instruments such as the cuatro, a four-string guitar, or the Latin harp, which are central to the raucous gaitas of the northwest or the llaneras of the great plains in the south.

But what drives them is classical music -- the challenge of playing with a hundred other musicians, the pomp of dressing in black tie for concerts, the thrill of tackling difficult composers like Bach.

"It's a way of freeing yourself, of expressing yourself," said Samuel Martinez, the teenager who grew up in an orphanage. "Music transports you to another world, a world of happiness and emotions."

2006-12-01T18:43:00.000-05:00

2006-11-26T12:33:00.000-05:00

October 30, 2006 06:52 PM

It is a testament to the power of money that Nicholas Stern's report should have swung the argument for drastic action, even before anyone has finished reading it. He appears to have demonstrated what many of us suspected: that it would cost much less to prevent runaway climate change than to seek to live with it. Useful as this finding is, I hope it doesn't mean that the debate will now concentrate on money. The principal costs of climate change will be measured in lives, not pounds. As Stern reminded us today, there would be a moral imperative to seek to prevent mass death even if the economic case did not stack up.

But at least almost everyone now agrees that we must act, if not at the necessary speed. If we're to have a high chance of preventing global temperatures from rising by 2C (3.6F) above preindustrial levels, we need, in the rich nations, a 90% reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030. The greater part of the cut has to be made at the beginning of this period. To see why, picture two graphs. One falls like a ski jump: a steep drop followed by a shallow tail. The other falls like the trajectory of a bullet. The area under each line represents the total volume of greenhouse gases produced in that period. They fall to the same point by the same date, but far more gases have been produced in the second case, making runaway climate change more likely.

So how do we do it without bringing civilisation crashing down? Here is a plan for drastic but affordable action that the government could take. It goes much further than the proposals discussed by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown today, for the reason that this is what the science demands.

1 Set a target for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions based on the latest science. The government is using outdated figures, aiming for a 60% reduction by 2050. Even the annual 3% cut proposed in the early day motion calling for a new climate change bill does not go far enough. Timescale: immediately.

2 Use that target to set an annual carbon cap, which falls on the ski-jump trajectory. Then use the cap to set a personal carbon ration. Every citizen is given a free annual quota of carbon dioxide. He or she spends it by buying gas and electricity, petrol and train and plane tickets. If they run out, they must buy the rest from someone who has used less than his or her quota. This accounts for about 40% of the carbon dioxide we produce. The rest is auctioned off to companies. It's a simpler and fairer approach than either green taxation or the EU's emissions trading scheme, and it also provides people with a powerful incentive to demand low-carbon technologies. Timescale: a full scheme in place by January 2009.

3 Introduce a new set of building regulations, with three objectives: A. Imposing strict energy-efficiency requirements on all major refurbishments costing £3,000 or more. Timescale: in force by June 2007. B. Obliging landlords to bring their houses up to high energy-efficiency standards before they can rent them out. Timescale: to cover all new rentals from January 2008. C. Ensuring that all new homes in the UK are built to the German passivhaus standard (which requires no heating system). Timescale: in force by 2012.

4 Ban the sale of incandescent lightbulbs, patio heaters, garden floodlights and other wasteful and unnecessary technologies. Introduce a stiff "feebate" system for all electronic goods sold in this country. The least efficient are taxed heavily while the most efficient receive tax discounts. Every year the standards in each category rise. Timescale: fully implemented by November 2007.

5 Redeploy the money currently earmarked for new nuclear missiles towards a massive investment in energy generation and distribution. Two schemes in particular require government support to make them commercially viable: very large wind farms, many miles offshore, connected to the grid with high-voltage, direct-current cables; and a hydrogen pipeline network to take over from the natural gas grid as the primary means of delivering fuel for home heating. Timescale: both programmes commence at the end of 2007 and are completed by 2018.

6 Promote the development of a new national coach network. City centre coach stations are shut down and moved to motorway junctions. Urban public transport networks are extended to meet them. The coaches travel on dedicated lanes and never leave the motorways. Journeys by public transport then become as fast as journeys by car, while saving 90% of emissions. It is self-financing, through the sale of the land now used for coach stations. Timescale: commences in 2008; completed by 2020.

7 Oblige all chains of filling stations to supply leasable electric car batteries. This provides electric cars with unlimited mileage: as the battery runs down, you pull into a forecourt. A crane lifts it out and drops in a fresh one. The batteries are charged overnight with surplus electricity from offshore wind farms. Timescale: fully operational by 2011.

8 Abandon the road-building and road-widening programme, and spend the money on tackling climate change. The government has earmarked £11.4bn for new roads. It claims to be allocating just £545m a year to "spending policies that tackle climate change". Timescale: immediately.

9 Freeze and then reduce UK airport capacity. While capacity remains high there will be constant upward pressure on any scheme the government introduces to limit flights. We need a freeze on all new airport construction and the introduction of a national quota for landing slots, to be reduced by 90% by 2030. Timescale: immediately.

10 Legislate for the closure of all out-of-town superstores, and their replacement with a warehouse and delivery system. Shops use a staggering amount of energy (six times as much electricity per square metre as factories, for example), and major reductions are hard to achieve: Tesco's "state of the art" energy-saving store at Diss in Norfolk, has managed to cut its energy use by only 20%. Warehouses containing the same quantity of goods use roughly 5% of the energy. Out-of-town shops are also hardwired to the car - delivery vehicles use 70% less fuel. Timescale: fully implemented by 2012.

These timescales might seem extraordinarily ambitious. They are, in contrast to the current plodding pace of change. But when America entered the second world war, it turned the economy around on a sixpence. Carmakers began producing aircraft and missiles within a year, and amphibious vehicles in 90 days, from a standing start. And that was 65 years ago. If we want this to happen, we can make it happen. It will require more economic intervention than we are used to, and some pretty brutal emergency planning policies (with little time or scope for objections). But if you believe that these are worse than mass death, then there is something wrong with your value system.

Climate change is not just a moral question: it is the moral question of the 21st century. There is one position even more morally culpable than denial. That is to accept that it's happening and that its results will be catastrophic, but to fail to take the measures needed to prevent it.

2006-11-22T09:28:00.000-05:00

The movement has ceased to be a traditional struggle or protest and
begun to transform itself into an embryo of an alternative government.

2006-11-19T17:48:00.000-05:00

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The judge challenged Greg Boertje-Obed's decision to take actions that risked a year in prison instead of staying home with his family. "Why would one leave a wife and daughter at home to engage in juvenile acts of vandalism to protest nuclear weapons? I would think your commitment to your family should far outweigh your calling to such actions." Greg's wife, Michelle Naar Obed, was in the courtroom during this exchange. After the sentencing was over, Michelle shook her head and said, "If Greg had left us his for a year and risked his life to go to war to kill people, no one would question him - they would call him a hero! But, because he risked time in jail to act out his convictions for peace, people question his commitment to his family. That is tragic."
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2006-11-14T15:24:00.000-05:00

[not sure what to write. sit with this for an afternoon, and then get up and do something that matters.]

On Saturday the Sun-Times ran a small item about a man who had set himself on fire during rush hour Friday morning near the Ohio Street exit on the Kennedy. His identity has still not been officially determined, but members of the local jazz and improvised music community say they are certain it was Malachi Ritscher, a longtime supporter of the scene. Bruno Johnson, who owns the free-jazz label Okka Disk, received a package yesterday from Ritscher that included a will, keys to his home, and instructions about what should be done with his belongings. Johnson, a former Chicagoan who now lives in Milwaukee, began making calls. Police are still awaiting the results of dental tests, but Johnson says an officer told one of Ritscher's sisters that all evidence pointed to the body being his; his car was found nearby and he hadn't shown up for work since Thursday.

Buried on Ritscher's web site Chicago Rash Audio Potential, a compendium of invaluable show postings, artwork, and photography, are a suicide note and an obituary. Both indicate that he was deeply troubled by the war in Iraq and pinpoint it as a motive for suicide (no method is specified), though there are indications that he may have had other issues as well. "He had a son, from whom he was estranged (at the son's request), and two grandchildren," reads the obit. "He had many acquaintances, but few friends; and wrote his own obituary, because no one else really knew him." Ritscher was a familiar face at antiwar protests, and he was arrested more than once for his involvement, including this time this past May. A note found at the scene of the immolation reportedly read "Thou Shalt Not Kill."

Although Ritscher, who was in his early 50s, had played music off and on over the years, he was best known for his devotion to documenting other people's shows. Several nights a week for at least the last decade he could be found at places like the Empty Bottle, the Velvet Lounge, and the Hungry Brain; by his own count he recorded more than 2,000 concerts. Over the years he invested more money in equipment and as his skills improved, many of his recordings went to be used on commerical releases--by Paul Rutherford, Gold Sparkle Band, Isotope 217, Irene Schweizer, and Ken Vandermark among others. Ritscher was fiercely modest about these pursuits--I once tried to do a piece on him for the Reader but he declined, saying he didn’t want publicity.

[please go and read the comments.]

2006-10-23T08:29:00.000-05:00

[pat robertson coloring book:]

2006-10-05T13:10:00.000-05:00

[from johnny barber, arrested for civil disobediance at the u.s. capitol on sept26. also look at his photos]

i stood in silence in front of a young woman as well as a young man, both members of the Capital police, holding the line, barring our progress to the steps of the Capital. I held the white rose i had been given in the park close to my heart. John Carlo (a poet and gardener from San Francisco) stood next to me, holding the cardboard coffin over his head. The entire time the young male officer in front of me, eyes hidden behind dark shades, stood tensed, ready for confrontation. The young woman officer stood tensed as well, but over the course of the "negotiations" she visibly relaxed. She was short and the white rose i held was very near her face (we were toe to toe, like dance partners). Her face was freckled, she wasn't wearing sun glasses and her eyes were beautiful, green and clear...So in this tableaux, we stood, silent- and the earth roared! For a moment, i wondered where they were at, what they were thinking, but i did not ask. Together, we shared the scent of a rose (what does a rose mean but love, beauty, delicacy, and care) and in that moment, i loved them.... After a short amount of time, and several arrests, John Carlo was left holding the front of the coffin by himself, and actually put it over the heads of the 2 big cops in front of him. He said, "Can you feel it? We are all in this coffin together. Can you? Can you feel it?", he quietly implored, "This coffin is the Iraq war and we are in it together." He words blew me wide open. Me, a white rose, the police barring our way, their arms linked, freckles and clear green eyes, a coffin with the photos of dead children and soldiers, the names of the dead scrawled across it. The ediface of Congress, like an unattainable Oz, or the great city on the hill (equally unattainable), maybe one hundred yards distant. Yet the truth right at hand (God bless the poets) "Can you feel it?", he said.

Can you?

Meanwhile, the arrests continued, there were 4 or 5 of us left. The officer in front of me, tensed like an offensive lineman, hands up, ready to defend the line, seemed unmoved. i looked at him closely and i leaned forward, nearly whispering, "No one is going to try to push past you." "We have to be ready", he replied. i said, "Yes, but we are here non-violently. i am holding a rose. He laughed and said, "yes, i know." "i will not break through the line", i said. After several moments i noticed he relaxed, and unlinked his arm from the officer next to him. John Carlo was led away, but before he moved, he asked the policewoman next to him if she would hold the coffin for him- and she agreed. She took the front of the coffin and held it over her head, and became part of our action! When the person holding the rear of the coffin was going to be arrested, together they placed the coffin gently on the ground, as if they were laying someone to rest. As they looked at each other, he said, "These pictures represent the hundreds of thousands who have died in this senseless war".

As i was handcuffed and led away, i noticed the tourists who had gathered, particularly a father and his two young boys, who watched me carefully and i thought of my son, his kindness and understanding (as much as a 7 year old can grasp these things), as well as his fear of what i do, and i wondered how this young father would explain these events to his sons. Walking to the police van, a supporter said, "God bless you" and i felt blessed. Waiting to enter the police van, i asked the cop holding my elbow how he was doing on this morning, staring straight ahead, he said, "I'm ok." "That's good", i replied, as i broke into a big smile, "Here we are together, both doing what we need to do, what could be better?" He said, "Yeah... I guess so." I continued smiling as I climbed into the van and the doors slammed behind me.

This morning, the white rose is fading to brown, though its fragrance is even stronger than yesterday. i sit with it and embrace my soul mates on the other side of the line- freckles and the lineman, as well as the cops in the coffin, and the beautiful police officer who agreed to hold the coffin as John Carlo was led away in handcuffs. i think of all those who work for peace and justice, and what you are willing to give, and i recognize a beauty that is indescribable, but sustains me like food and water, like breath. And i contemplate a Rumi poem: "In the driest, whitest stretch of pain's infinite desert, I lost my sanity and found this rose."

May this dreadful war end. May all beings be at peace.
May all beings enjoy happiness and the root of happiness.
May all beings be free from suffering and the root of suffering.
May they not be separated from the great happiness devoid of suffering.
May they dwell in equanimity free of passion, aggression, and prejudice.

Blessings, Peace and love, Johnny

2006-09-18T07:38:00.000-05:00

"I will hate Americans for the rest of my life," he said.

2006-09-17T22:52:00.000-05:00

On the way out of the conservatory is Musick’s Story Bush. The artist wrote a 255-line narrative poem onto the leaves of a star-magnolia bush using a water-based paint pen. Musick says he’s concerned with “the poetics of unseen acts,” that is, doing small, beautiful things that are hardly noticed.

The poem started as a piece of prose. “I’m not terribly well versed in poetry but I am a much bigger fan of music and the way lyrics float,” he says. Musick called the Poetry Center for advice and it put him in touch with poet Dan Beachy-Quick. “He read through very generously and started striking lines out.” Musick rewrote the resulting poem in segments on the leaves. But that’s just the first phase. As the leaves begin to fall, Musick will gather them daily and create a new poem determined by the change of season. “I’ll probably check on it beginning the 20th of September,” he says.

2006-09-13T23:06:00.000-05:00

A CALL FOR COLORS FROM:

the blind birds
the roasted flesh
the stars' sound
beirut's sky
and from my tired eyes
...
PLEASE DO NOT POST ANY POLITICAL COMMENTS ON THIS BLOG.
THIS BLOG IS DEDICATED TO ART. AND AS SUCH, IT VOMITS ON ANYTHING CALLED POLITICS.

(please go visit mazen kerbaj's blog. he is an amazing musician from beirut, we played the same show one night last fall, his drawings and writings on this war need to be seen.)

2006-09-13T22:48:00.000-05:00

For Immediate Release

Tuesday June 20, 2006

*WMD Found in North Dakota: Disarmament Begins*

A Roman Catholic Priest and two Veterans went to a Minuteman III silo this morning and began to disarm the nuclear weapon using hammers. Reverend Carl Kabat, OMI, Gregory Boertje-Obed, and Michael Walli entered the E-9 missile silo on the Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara Nation in North Dakota about 75 miles southwest of Minot. Using a sledgehammer and household hammers, they disabled the lock on the personnel entry hatch that provides access to the warhead and they hammered on the silo lid that covers the 300 kiloton nuclear warhead that is targeted and ready to launch. The activists painted DISARM on the face of the 110-ton hardened silo cover and the peace activists poured their blood on the missile lid.

They were detained and arrested by McLean County Sheriffs and are being held in the McLean County jail in Washburn, North Dakota. They have since been transferred to a county jail in Bismark. They are being chargesdwith destruction of government property in excess of $1000 (a felony).

Speaking from jail, Carl Kabat, OMI from St. Louis, Missouri stated, “We now prepare for the nuclear bombing of Iran with the reasoning that only weapons of mass destruction can stop weapons of mass destruction. We bombed and strafed in Iraq based on lies that the Iraqi’s possessed nuclear weapons. We have the weapons here.”

The Minuteman III missile is targeted and on alert for launch. The missile is armed with a warhead that carries 27 times the heat, blast and radiation of the bomb dropped by the U.S. on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945.

The activists say that they are following the nonviolent Jesus, that they are taught by their faith to love their enemies, and that the money used for these weapons of mass destruction is a theft from the poor and should be used for food, housing, medical care and rebuilding the infrastructure of our country.

STATEMENT
Nuclear Weapon Here Plowshares

Please pardon the fracture of the good order. When we were children we thought as children and spoke as children. But now we are adults and there comes a time when we must speak out and say that the good order is not so good, and never really was. We know that throughout history there have been innumerable war crimes. Two of the most terrible war crimes occurred on August 6th and 9th, 1945. On August 6th, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan, killing more than 100,000 people (including U.S. prisoners of war). Three days later the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, Japan, killing more than 50,000 people. Use of these weapons of mass destruction on civilian populations were abominable crimes against humanity. The U.S. has never repented of these atrocities. On the contrary, the U.S. has deepened and expanded its commitment to nuclear weapons. The U.S. built a large nuclear-industrial complex which has caused the deaths of many workers and has resulted in killing many more people by nuclear
testing. Our country built thousands of nuclear weapons and has dispersed weapons-grade uranium to 43 nations. Each Minuteman III missile carries a bomb that is 27 times more powerful than those dropped on the Japanese people. The building of these weapons signifies that our hearts have assented to mass murder. Currently the U.S. is seeking to research a new class of smaller nuclear weapons – demonstrating its desire to find new uses for weapons of mass destruction.

The U.S. is rushing down the path that leads to more death and destruction, ultimately bringing this nation and other nations to ruin. Therefore we issue a call for national repentance. We make an urgent appeal to the people of the U.S. to change course – to place our security in God and not in weapons of mass destruction.

We have chosen to start the process of transformation and disarmament by hammering on and pouring our blood on components of the Minuteman III nuclear missile system. We believe that the concrete that goes into making missile silos would be better used for building homes. We know that total disarmament of our first-strike system of nuclear weapons will require national repentance with a change in the hearts and minds of the people of the U.S. The pouring of our blood is meant to make visible the bloodshed resulting from the production, testing, and use of nuclear weapons. We believe the message in the Bible that after Cain killed his brother Abel that Abel’s blood “cried out from the ground.” We hear our sisters’ and brothers’ blood crying out from the ground. We believe that God hears these cries and grieves deeply over every person whose blood is shed. We call ourselves the “Weapon of Mass Destruction Here Plowshares” to highlight that our nation has thousands of horrific weapons of mass destruction. U.S. leaders speak about the dangers of other nations acquiring nuclear weapons, but they fail to act in accordance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which commits the U.S. to take steps to disarm its weapons of mass destruction. We act in order to bring attention to people’s responsibility for disarming weapons of state terrorism. We can begin the process of exposing U.S. weapons of mass destruction, naming them as abominations that cause desolation, and transforming them to objects that promote life.

We dress as clowns to show that humor and laughter are key elements in the struggle to transform the structures of destruction and death. Saint Paul said that we are “fools for God’s sake,” and we say that we are “fools for God and humanity.” Clowns as court jesters were sometimes the only ones able to survive after speaking truth to authorities in power.

Is there hope for the world? Yes – if people begin to live the truth now. We believe that Jesus reveals who God is, and that God is a God of love and nonviolence, teaching us to love all people, even our enemies. Furthermore, the prophets Isaiah and Micah prophesy that there will come a time when people will learn the ways of God and

“They shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.”

By our plowshares/pruning hooks action we have tried to make visible God’s will for disarmament and peacemaking. By living this truth we hope to shorten this murderous age – closing the gap between the future hope for universal peace and our present reality of endless violence and war-making. We begin to bring hope into the present moment.

MINUTEMAN III – Fact Sheet

A Minuteman III is a first strike Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) nuclear weapon. The current U.S. ICBM force consists of 500 Minuteman III's located in three missile fields: F.E. Warren Air Force Base with 150 missiles covering the corner of Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming; Malmstrom AFB in Montana with 200 ICBMs; and Minot AFB in North Dakota with 150 missiles. These warheads can be launched from a Minuteman III missile silo within minutes and reach any destination within 35 minutes. A nuclear bomb launched from a Minuteman silo produces uncontrollable radiation, massive heat and a blast capable of vaporizing and leveling everything within a 50-mile radius. Outside the 50 square miles -- extending into hundreds of miles -- the blast, wide-spread heat, firestorms and neutron and gamma rays are intended to kill, severely wound and poison every living thing and causing long-term damage to the environment. A Minuteman warhead has the potential to destroy the genetic code of the human race. Current warheads carry 27 times more power than the U.S. nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima August 6, 1945.

The Minuteman III is currently undergoing upgrades to extend its 2020 service limit. Minuteman III is the sole ICBM deployed by the United States. Each Mark 12 or Mark 12-A warhead in a Minuteman III silo can travel more than 6,000 miles at 15,000 miles per hour.

At one point the U.S. had 1,000 land-based ICBMs at a cost to taxpayers of $7 million each. Minuteman IIIs are in transition from having 3 independently targeted warheads to carrying one.

The Minuteman missiles are dispersed in hardened silos and connected to an underground launch control center through a system of hardened cables. Launch crews, consisting of two officers, perform around-the-clock alert in the launch control center. A variety of communication systems provide the National Command Authorities with virtually instantaneous direct contact with each launch crew. Should command capability be lost between the launch control center and remote missile launch facilities, an airborne launch control center dubbed “looking glass” automatically assumes command and control of the missiles.

The Minuteman III system is undergoing upgrades to: replace an aging guidance system; increase payloads; remanufacture the solid-fuel rocket motors; replace standby power system; repair launch facilities; improve communication; enhance accuracy; and improve survivability in a nuclear war.

In January 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, issued by the Bush administration, threatens the use of nuclear weapons to “deter” any attack by chemical or biological as well as nuclear weapons by any non-nuclear state or entity within or sponsored by “the axis of evil.” We now prepare for nuclear bombing of Iran with the reasoning that only weapons of mass destruction can stop weapons of mass destruction.

By any standard of proof, the threat or use of the Minuteman III constitutes crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity or genocide.

2006-09-05T11:00:00.000-05:00

The New Media Backpedal
posted Aug 07, 2006 by Nato Thompson
The fact that radical actions flourished under Clinton but not under Bush is highly bizarre (if not somewhat amazing at the same time). Surely, one must consider the radical political landscape in the United States at this time and attempt to gain a handle on how best to organize radical political action.

Political action is an open-ended concept that for the sake of this discussion, we will break down into two particular modes. There are the classically produced leftist grassroots political actions that work in terms of lobbying, social organizing, banners, street protest, and muckraking journalisms. On the other hand, there are the more, how do you say, theoretical politics. That is to say, the politics of meaning that encompass our everyday experience, often informed by postmodern books, that don't particularly make it onto the front page of the New York Times nor Democracy Now for that matter. Public space, the politics of work, the disciplinary society, the commodification of counter culture, the spectacle, Agamben's camp, ambiguity as a form of meaning production and on and on. These are subjects often written about in lefty art magazines (such as Rhizome) but magically dropped in the left magazines like the Nation, Z Magazine, even Clamor.

There is clearly a divide in these two worlds. It is probably not a new one for many of us as it haunts new media in particular. To clarify the gap a little more: there is a form of political resistance that approach politics in what appears to be a straightforward didactic manner. The framework of analysis runs in conjunction with the tradition of street protest in the United States, Democracy Now is often playing on the radio, there is a mystical tally on the newest heinous action in Congress, lobby groups, the prison industry, and utility is often the guide post for political action. And then there are those that are at times somewhat more aloof. They can discuss the character of resistance available in taking a short cut home, they can discuss the Panopticon and the level of systemic biopower available in the military welfare state, they can critique the manner in which contemporary radical politics buy into the spectacle of counter culture, and utility is often considered a complicated riddle not easily solved. Now, you might chuckle or be angered by such a flagrant forced dichotomy and I realize there is movement between these two approaches. But surely the reader understands this divide. Yet, the ability to bridge the gap vacillates dramatically depending on the political temperature of the times.

I would go out on a limb and say that during the second Clinton administration, art and politics were allowed to be a bit more theoretic. Questions of the commodification of counter culture, movements toward extending public space and the like were embraced and merged into a growing political movement that used the anti-globalization movement as its spine. Theoretical analysis and pragmatic political gestures merged haphazardly into an evolving platform of political process.

Life under Bush is quite different. The disappearance of a coordinated political movement has produced a painful lacuna in the political art scene. The theoretically minded politics of public space, ambiguity and visual culture have in large part retreated toward the academic sub sphere in lieu of a political movement to connect with. Would it be erroneous to place art and technology directly along this path? The radical action leftist magazines have moved back toward embracing a pragmatic politics that utilize typical forms of political resistance (eg. Move.On.org).

Without a pragmatic grassroots political movement to connect the dots of political action, aesthetic micro-resistances (such as most art and technology gambits) ultimately add up to gestures of aesthetic and identity posturing interpretable primarily through the lens of new media social capital. This is not to say the need for this form of politics has dried up, but that it lacks a necessary cohesive political community that brings the utilitarian, the ambiguous and the desirous into a unified sphere.

In the face of this, what is to be done? New movements emerge (such as the growth of the immigration movement) and an infrastructure of meaning (magazines, spaces, organizations, collectives, radio shows) needs to be produced to close the gap. An infrastructure must be produced that manages the tensions between the theoretical needs of ambiguity and skepticism with the pragmatics of didacticism and action. Without considering the manner in which our efforts work toward this end, new media efficacy runs parallel with the naivetÇ and convenient posturing that is the current landscape of identity under spectacle. These are perilous times and the most risky and beneficial thing we can do, is to build bridges. We must reconnect the dots and apply questions of spectacle, ambiguous new media interventions, and theory driven actions on the same platform as the pragmatic politics of grassroots politics. We must work toward getting back on the streets and challenging power head on. Without an accompanying pragmatic approach, new media drifts backward toward gadgetry, conventions, listservs, and geeky obscurity.

2006-06-20T09:40:00.000-05:00

(chomsky)
...
Many indigenous people apparently do not see any reason why their lives, societies, and cultures should be disrupted or destroyed so that New Yorkers can sit in SUVs in traffic gridlock.
...
Though it is natural for doctrinal systems to seek to induce pessimism, hopelessness, and despair, reality is different. There has been substantial progress in the unending quest for justice and freedom in recent years, leaving a legacy that can be carried forward from a higher plane than before. Opportunities for education and organizing abound. As in the past, rights are not likely to be granted by benevolent authorities, or won by intermittent actions - attending a few demonstrations or pushing a lever in the personalized quadrennial extravaganzas that are depicted as "democratic politics." As always in the past, the tasks require dedicated day-by-day engagement to create - in part recreate - the basis for a functioning democratic culture in which the public plays some role in determining policies, not only in the political arena, from which it is largely excluded, but also in the crucial economic arena, from which it is excluded in principle. There are many ways to promote democracy at home, carrying it to new dimensions. Opportunities are ample, and failure to grasp them is likely to have ominous repercussions: for the country, for the world, and for future generations.

2006-05-22T20:44:00.000-05:00

...

We can delete certain texts, erase entire scenes, tone down our “outrageous behavior,” and eventually, when we least expect it, we will have lost our voices and our souls. If we choose to comply over and over again, eventually a tiny crystal (our dignity?) will shatter inside our chests. We will carry the pain silently wherever we go, and it will worsen each time we face yet another warning or humiliating interrogation. One day we will wake to find we have become broken humans, without even realizing it.

2006-05-14T11:32:00.000-05:00

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." The state of the world is always a jumble of opposing ideas, of uprisings and crackdowns, of wonder and horror. Fitzgerald's forgotten next sentence is, "One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise."

2006-05-02T09:52:00.000-05:00

...

This society faces a far harder test than any external threat: that of its own absence, its loss of reality. Soon it will be defined solely by the foreign bodies that haunt its periphery: those it has expelled, but who are now ejecting it from itself. It is their violent interpellation that reveals what has been coming apart, and so offers the possibility for awareness. If French—if European—society were to succeed in ‘integrating’ them, it would in its own eyes cease to exist.

Yet French or European discrimination is only the micro-model of a worldwide divide which, under the ironical sign of globalization, is bringing two irreconcilable universes face to face. The same analysis can be reprised at global level. International terrorism is but a symptom of the split personality of a world power at odds with itself. As to finding a solution, the same delusion applies at every level, from the banlieues to the House of Islam: the fantasy that raising the rest of the world to Western living standards will settle matters. The fracture is far deeper than that. Even if the assembled Western powers really wanted to close it—which there is every reason to doubt—they could not. The very mechanisms of their own survival and superiority would prevent them; mechanisms which, through all the pious talk of universal values, serve only to reinforce Western power and so to foment the threat of a coalition of forces that dream of destroying it.

But France, or Europe, no longer has the initiative. It no longer controls events, as it did for centuries, but is at the mercy of a succession of unforeseeable blow-backs. Those who deplore the ideological bankruptcy of the West should recall that ‘God smiles at those he sees denouncing evils of which they are the cause’.

...

2006-04-18T14:04:00.000-05:00

[the best thing i've read in a long time. in addition to thoreau, the other best thing i've read in a long time.]

Network, Swarm, Microstructure

* To: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net
* Subject: Network, Swarm, Microstructure
* From: Brian Holmes
* Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 06:36:38 -0400
* Reply-to: Brian Holmes

...
a certain kind of complexity theory as a possible way to understand emergent behavior in the real world.
...
I am beginning to think that there are two fundamental factors that help to explain the consistency of self-organized human activity. The first is the existence of
a shared horizon - aesthetic, ethical, philosophical, and/or metaphysical - which is patiently and deliberately built up over time, and which gives the members of a group the capacity to recognize each other as existing within the same referential universe, even when they are dispersed and mobile. You can think of this as "making worlds." The second is the capacity for temporal coordination at a distance: the
exchange among a dispersed group of information, but also of affect, about unique events that are continuously unfolding in specific locations. This exchange of information and affect then becomes a set of constantly changing, constantly reinterpreted clues about how to act in the shared world. The flow aspect of the exchange means that the group is constantly evolving, and it is in this sense that it is an "ecology," a set of complex and changing inter-relations; but this dynamic ecology has consistency and durability, it becomes recognizable and distinctive within the larger evironment of the earth and its populations, because of the shared horizon that links the participants together in what appears as a world (or indeed as a cosmos, when metaphysical or religious beliefs are at work).
...
the art of composing mutable worlds, where the goal of the participants is to carry out continuous transformation of the very parameters and coordinates on which their interactions are based (this is also understood as 3rd-order cybernetics, where the system produces not just new information, but new categories of information).
...
Of course, different individuals are involved each time, different groups, differences of philosophy and mode of action; but a shared horizon makes all those differences also recognizable as somehow belonging together. This is the complexity of self-organization.
...
serious attempts were underway to "overcode" and stabilize the dangerously mobile relational forms that had been unleashed by the generalization of the market and its
weak ties.

On the one hand there is an attempt to enforce the rules of the neoliberal world market by military force, and thus to complete an Imperial project which has now shown itself to be clearly Anglo-American in origin and in aims. This attempt is most clear in the book "The Pentagon's New Map" by Thomas Barnett, where he explains that the goal of American military policy must be to identify the "gaps" in the world network of finance and trade, and to "close the gap," by force if necessary. The thesis (on which the Iraq invasion was partially based) is that only a continuous
extension of the world market and of its deterritorializing technologies can bring peace and prosperity, rooting out the atavistic religious beliefs on which terrorism feeds, and in the process, rationalizing the access to the resources that the capitalist world system needs to go on producing "growth for everyone."

On the other hand, however, what we see in response to this extension of the world are market are regressions to sovereignist or neofascist forms of nationalism, and perhaps more significantly, attempts to configure great continental economic blocs where the instability and relative chaos of market relations could be submitted to some institutional control. These attempts can also be conceived as "counter-movements" in Karl Polanyi's sense: responses to the atomization of societies and the destruction of institutions brought about by the unfettered operations of a supposedly self-regulating market. They can be listed: NAFTA itself; the European Union, which has created its own currency; ASEAN+3, which represents East Asia's so-far abortive attempt to put together a stabilized monetary bloc offering protection from the financial crises continuously unleashed by neoliberalism; the Venezuelan project of "ALBA," which is raising the issue of possible industrial cooperation programs for a left-leaning Latin America; and
of course, the "New Caliphate" in the Middle East, which is being proposed by Al-Qaeda and the other Salafi jihad movements....

I think that in years to come, everyone will increasingly have to take a position with respect both to the Imperial project of a world market, and to the regressive
nationalisms and the more complex processes of bloc formation. All these things are contradictory with each other and their contradictions are at the source of the
conflicts in the world today. In this respect, Guattari's perception, at the close of the 1980s in "Cartographies schizoanalytiques," has proved prophetic:

"From time immemorial, and in all its historical guises, the capitalist drive has always combined two fundamental components: the first, which I call deterritorialization, has to do with the destruction of social territories, collective identities, and systems of traditional values; the second, which I call the movement of reterritorialization, has to do with the recomposition, even by the most artificial means, of individuated frameworks of personhood, structures of power, and models of submission which are, if not formally similar to those the drive has
destroyed, at least homothetical from a functional perspective. As the deterritorializing revolutions, tied to the development of science, technology, and the arts, sweep everything aside before them, a compulsion toward subjective
reterritorialization also emerges. And this antagonism is heightened even more with the phenomenal growth of the communications and computer fields, to the point where the latter concentrate their deterritorializing effects on such human faculties as memory, perception, understanding, imagination, etc. In this way, a certain formula of anthropological functioning, a certain ancestral model of humanity, is expropriated at its very heart. And I think that it is as a result of an incapacity to adequately confront this phenomenal mutation that collective subjectivity has abandoned itself to the absurd wave of conservatism that we are presently witnessing."

The question that complexity theory allows us to ask is this: How do we organize ourselves for a viable response to the double violence of capitalist deterritorialization and the nationalist or identitarian reterritorialization to
which it inevitably gives rise? It must be understood that this dilemna does not take the form of Christianity versus Islam, America versus the Middle East, Bush versus Bin Laden. Rather it arises at the "very heart" of the modern project, where human potential is "expropriated." Since September 11. the USA - and tendentially, the entire so-called "Western world" - has at once exacerbated the abstract, hyperindividualizing dynamics of capitalist globalization, and at the same time, has reinvented the most archaic figures of identitarian power (Guantanamo, fortress
Europe, the dichotomy of sovereign majesty and bare life). Guattari speaks of a capitalist "drive" to deterritorialization, and of a "compulsion" to reterritorialization. What this means is that neither polarity is inherently positive or negative; rather, both are twisted into the violent and oppressive forms that we
now see developing at such a terrifying and depressing pace. The ultimate effect is to render the promise of a world without borders strange, cold and even murderous, while at the same time precipitating a crisis, decay and regression of national institutions, which appear increasingly incapable of contributing to equality or the respect for difference.

So the question that arises is whether one can consciously participate in the improvisational, assymetrical and partially chaotic force of global microstructures, making use of their relative autonomy from institutional norms as a way to influence a more positive reterritorialization, a more healthy and dynamic equilibrium, a better coexistence with the movement of technological development and global
unification? The question is not farfetched, it is not a mere intellectual abstraction. Knorr Cetina's strong point is that global unification cannot occur through institutional process, because it is too complex to be managed in that way; instead, the leading edge is taken by lighter, faster, less predictable microstructures. Clearly, nothing guarantees that these are going to be beneficent.
The forms that they will take remain open, they depend on the people who invent them. In his recent book, Lazzarato writes:

"The activist is not someone who becomes the brains of the movement, who sums up its force, anticipates its choices, draws his or her legitimacy from a capacity to read and interepret the evolution of power, but instead, the activist is simply someone who introduces a discontinuity in what exists. She creates a bifurcation in the flow of words, of desires, of images, to put them at the service of the multiplicity's power of articulation; she links the singular situations together, without placing herself at a superior and totalizing point of view. She is an experimenter."

The close of the book makes clear, however, that what should be sought is not just a joyous escape into the unpredictable. The point of this experimentation is to find
articulations [agencements, which might also be translated as microstructures] that can oppose the literally death-dealing powers of the present society, and offer
alternatives in their place. My guess is that in most cases, this can happen not at the local level of withdrawal (though that may be fertile), nor at the level of national institutions and debates (though these will be essential for holding off the worst), but most likely at the regional or continental level, particularly where the core economies overflow into their peripheries and vice-versa. This is the level where the most important policy is now being made, the level at which the major economic circuits are functioning and at which massive social injustice and ecological damage is happening all the time. What's really lacking are all kinds of border-crossing experiments, ways to subvert the macrostructures of inclusion/exclusion and to redraw the maps of coexistence. Ultimately, new kinds of institutions and new ways of relating to institutions will be needed, if there is to be any hope of stabilizing things and surviving the vast transition now underway. But we're not there yet, and it doesn't seem likely that any upcoming election will start the process.

2006-03-29T09:43:00.000-05:00

Judge Barker ruled that “teachers ... do not have a right under the First Amendment to express their opinions with their students during the instructional period.”

2006-03-20T15:20:00.000-05:00

...

It’s Economics 101. The oil industry is run by a cartel, OPEC, and what economists call an “oligopoly”—a tiny handful of operators who make more money when there’s less oil, not more of it. So, every time the “insurgents” blow up a pipeline in Basra, every time Mad Mahmoud in Tehran threatens to cut supply, the price of oil leaps. And Dick and George just LOVE it.

Dick and George didn’t want more oil from Iraq, they wanted less. I know some of you, no matter what I write, insist that our President and his Veep are on the hunt for more crude so you can cheaply fill your family Hummer; that somehow, these two oil-patch babies are concerned that the price of gas in the USA is bumping up to $3 a gallon.

No so, gentle souls. Three bucks a gallon in the States (and a quid a litre in Britain) means colossal profits for Big Oil, and that makes Dick’s ticker go pitty-pat with joy. The top oily-gopolists, the five largest oil companies, pulled in $113 billion in profit in 2005 – compared to a piddly $34 billion in 2002 before Operation Iraqi Liberation. In other words, it’s been a good war for Big Oil.

...

2006-03-02T13:32:00.000-05:00

(in case you were wondering, massachusetts state law stipulates that:)

For the purposes of this section, a Flesch scale readability score shall be measured as hereinafter provided:
(1) For policy forms containing ten thousand words or less of text, the entire form shall be analyzed. For policy forms containing more than ten thousand words, the readability of two two hundred word samples per page may be analyzed in lieu of the entire form. The samples shall be separated by at least twenty printed lines.
(2) (a) (i) The number of words and sentences in the text shall be counted and the total number of words divided by the total number of sentences. The figure obtained shall be multiplied by a factor of 1.015.
(ii) The total number of syllables shall be counted and divided by the total number of words. The figure obtained shall be multiplied by a factor of 84.6.
(iii) The sum of the figures computed under subclause (i) and subclause (ii) subtracted from 206.835 equals the Flesch scale readability score for the policy form.

(b) For the purposes of clause (a) the following procedures shall be used:
(i) A contraction, hyphenated word, or numbers and letters, when separated by spaces, shall be counted as one word;
(ii) A unit of words ending with a period, semicolon, or colon, but excluding headings and captions shall be counted as a sentence; and
(iii) A syllable means a unit of spoken language consisting of one or more letters of a word as divided by an accepted dictionary. Where the dictionary shows two or more equally acceptable pronunciations of a word, the pronunciation containing fewer syllables may be used.

Every policy form filed with the commissioner under this section shall be accompanied by a certificate stating the Flesch scale readability score achieved by such form.

2006-02-11T11:30:00.000-05:00

A renowned Hungarian theatre director with terminal cancer is to lie in state for a week while still alive so he can experience his own funeral.
...
"I'm curious how a funeral looks from the other side," Halasz told BBC World Service's Outlook programme. "I want to take a look at my friends and listen to the eulogies, and the final farewell. "The event itself is very simple, but the outcome will I guess be interesting, because people are rarely confronted with the situation - that there is another angle to look at this gathering, at themselves, and at me."
...

2005-11-21T18:48:00.000-05:00

latest entry, directory of a.t.w.:

hey now, hey now, don't dream it's over

2005-11-21T18:46:00.000-05:00

Democrats: Vegetarian Between Meals

"At the right time, we will have a position."

2005-11-01T09:46:00.000-05:00

I say forget about New Orleans and build a new city, in a new American place, maybe in Iraq, where at least the imbecility is out in the open and not hidden in the barrio waiting for a hurricane to uncover it. Now that would be honest. Infinite casinos in the desert - we specialize in that, no?

2005-10-26T14:10:00.000-05:00

Let us not be disconsolate over the increasing control of the court system by the right wing.

The courts have never been on the side of justice, only moving a few degrees one way or the other, unless pushed by the people. Those words engraved in the marble of the Supreme Court, "Equal Justice Before the Law," have always been a sham.

No Supreme Court, liberal or conservative, will stop the war in Iraq, or redistribute the wealth of this country, or establish free medical care for every human being. Such fundamental change will depend, the experience of the past suggests, on the actions of an aroused citizenry, demanding that the promise of the Declaration of Independence-an equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness-be fulfilled.

2005-10-20T16:46:00.000-05:00

...the case that I saw for 4 plus years was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberration, bastardizations, [inaudible], changes to the national security [inaudible] process. What I saw was a cabal between the Vice President of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the Secretary of Defense and [inaudible] on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.

And then when the bureaucracy was presented with those decisions and carried them out, it was presented in such a disjointed incredible way that the bureaucracy often didn’t know what it was doing as it moved to carry them out.

...Under Secretary of Defense Douglas [inaudible], whom most of you probably know Tommy Frank said was stupidest blankety blank man in the world. He was. Let me testify to that. He was. Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man.

And yet, and yet, after the Secretary of State agrees to a $400 billion department, rather than a $30 billion department, having control, at least in the immediate post-war period in Iraq, this man is put in charge. Not only is he put in charge, he is given carte blanche to tell the State Department to go screw themselves in a closet somewhere. That’s not making excuses for the State Department.

That’s telling you how decisions were made and telling you how things got accomplished....

2005-10-15T08:33:00.000-05:00

(via nettime)

http://suicidegirls.com/members/RealSuicideGirl/

A bit about me written by Mika Minio-Paluello:

Hanadi Jaradat, a 29-year-old lawyer from Jenin, blew herself up in the Haifa
Maxim restaurant in early October, killing 21, including four children. Her
younger brother Fedi was executed by an Israeli undercover unit in front of her,
despite her trying to protect him. On June 12th, three days before Fadi's wedding,
the family was in the courtyard of the house. Salah Jaradat, Fadi's cousin and a
member of Islamic Jihad, came to visit his pregnant wife, Ismath, and their
two-year-old son, who were living with the family.

(more...)

MEMBER SINCE: October 2005

AGE: 30 (Sep 22, 1975)

LOCATION: Palestine

HOMETOWN: Jenin

SIGN: I've seen it.

OCCUPATION: Law, until that proved insufficient.

STATS: Don't commodify people.

BODY MODS: A few.

FAVORITE BANDS: Chrissy Hynde.

FAVORITE FILMS: Battle of Algiers.

FAVORITE BOOKS: The Qur'an, The Bible, Give Me Liberty: The
Uncompromising Statesmanship of Patrick Henry

FAVORITE TV SHOWS: Xena the Warrior Princess.

VICES: Deadly revenge.

CURRENT CRUSH: Mordechai Vanunu.

INTO: Fighting oppression.

MOST HUMBLING MOMENT: You have to ask?

5 ITEMS I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT: I only wanted two: My brother and justice.

MAKES ME HAPPY: Family. The Act of Sacrifice.

MAKES ME SAD: Israeli colonial aggression. Your imperialist government.
Your lying media. Your passivity. The need for sacrifice.

GETS ME HOT: You have a very crude culture, the way you talk of such things.

I LOST MY VIRGINITY: Not.

FAVORITE SEXUAL POSITION: My mother – who I actually talk about these
things with – tells me she really enjoys something I can hardly wait to
try – oh, no, I guess I'll have to…

FANTASY: For you to understand.

CURRENT THOUGHTS ON SG: I hate it

WEBSITE: http://www.aztlan.net/women_martyrs.htm

2005-10-14T08:14:00.000-05:00

(rather beautiful, i think. anyone else getting this kind of spam? a collection from the past few weeks)

automat see ammonia try petrifaction in capistrano be mosaic ! algorithmic or gregory try attack the stool on checkerberry it cedric not bullhead or duke and bankruptcy not mint some reinstate may vice some conflagrate on cell , alsop on cycad be haphazard a locomotive may moss it moose , corrugate be discussion it's chunky be equatorial on layup be lawbreaking it intelligible on hemorrhoid a despond some conley , coronado try. Not, go here

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(and then the monkeys made a breakthrough in concision, they have never gone back...)

! maine be consonant it folly a hostelry try bluefish try hulk see isochronal and redemption may delouse may romantic ! curran or putt it eat may futile Or maybe not

in athlete it's rococo but bourbon or exigent a suction ! crutch see psychophysiology be cocky the equipoise it ditto try committing ! standpoint not coma in betsy Or maybe not

, diffract but chelate a decant it's demagnify some cdc it gallstone not diaper not name see mcnulty some systematic and candlestick and deluge the transmitting a samba Or maybe not

in provocation a gain may flourish the thrift but riboflavin it's conduct a cradle in facilitate be needn't it's zen may orphan , celandine be clink be sober Or maybe not

on polaroid it's embedder on cit the colander not io some shaven may pitman ! kenyon it's gunky in dingy try madhouse be assimilate be argentina not nanette Or maybe not

2005-10-14T00:42:00.000-05:00

(from greg, old - but timeless - news from cnnnn.) 'we'll make a big glass crater out of the fucking middle east, for all i care.' brilliant.

2005-10-12T13:56:00.000-05:00

A clock with no hands - that's my kind of thing.
-agnes varda
(next entry in directory of all things wonderful. varda's les glaneurs et la glaneuse.)

2005-10-10T10:02:00.000-05:00

DC Festival Opens with 10,000 despite Rains
Sunday, Oct. 9, 2005 Posted: 11:30:05AM EST

WASHINGTON – Some 10,000 people pulled out their raincoats and umbrellas Saturday to attend the opening day of the much-anticipated DC Festival on the wet grounds of Washington, D.C.’s National Mall....

Saying he did not know why God brought down rain on the festival day, Palau told the crowd that God "makes no mistakes" and that "Jesus is alive today and ... here at the mall." (oh no, wait, that's just some hippie - the war protests were last weekend, dude)...

In between the musical acts, Palau preached the good news and invited the thousands to make their life more than a mist that only exists for a moment....

"You and I will have a party that will never end," said Palau.

2005-10-07T11:07:00.000-05:00

Thresholds, switches, amplifiers, chaos -- contemporary geophysics assumes that earth history is inherently revolutionary....

An ice-free Arctic Ocean has not existed for at least one million years and the authors warn that the Earth is inexorably headed toward a "super-interglacial" state "outside the envelope of glacial-interglacial fluctuations that prevailed during recent Earth history."...

for the time being, at least, research on global change is pointing toward worst-case scenarios.

All of this, of course, is a perverse tribute to industrial capitalism and extractive imperialism as geological forces so formidable that they have succeeded in scarcely more than two centuries -- indeed, mainly in the last fifty years -- in knocking the earth off its climatic pedestal and propelling it toward the nonlinear unknown.

The demon in me wants to say: Party and make merry. No need now to worry about Kyoto, recycling your aluminum cans, or using too much toilet paper, when, soon enough, we'll be debating how many hunter-gathers can survive in the scorching deserts of New England or the tropical forests of the Yukon.

The good parent in me, however, screams: How is it possible that we can now contemplate with scientific seriousness whether our children's children will themselves have children? Let Exxon answer that in one of their sanctimonious ads.

2005-10-06T22:21:00.000-05:00

Never touch, remove, or disturb any munition or suspected munition items!

3 “Rs” of Munitions Safety : Recognize, Retreat, Report

1. Recognize it: Munitions come in many shapes and sizes:
Some will look new while others will look old and rusty.
Some will look like bullets or bombs and can be small or large in size.
Some will look like pointed metal pipes, soda cans, small balls, or even an old car muffler.

2. Retreat from it: If you found something that could be a munition, leave it alone and leave the area. It does not matter how old, rusty, new, or shiny the item may look, munitions are dangerous and could injure or kill you. Don’t take any chances – leave it alone.

3. Report it: If you found something that could be a munition, report what you saw and where you saw it to Shaw (303-690-3816) or Arapahoe Sheriff’s Department (303-785-4711). Reporting it can save another person from injury or death. Report anything you think could be a munition.

Leave the handling of munitions to the trained experts who can assess the item and make the area safe.

2005-10-05T23:38:00.000-05:00

(exhibit 'a' in a new directory of all things wonderful. ok, exhibit 'b' right after that wendell berry poem. a recurring cycle for me, making lists of wrongs and then one day realizing it is time for the other...)

Directions--
Janet Cardiff
Words drawn in water

As part of the Hirshhorn’s ongoing "Directions" series, the museum has commissioned a new artwork by Janet Cardiff (b. 1957), a Canadian-born artist known for her inventive use of binaural sound technology. Cardiff has developed a 33-minute multisensory audio walk artwork, "Words drawn in water," in which the artist’s layered sound effects merge to evoke a blending of history and memory. The audio walk debuts Aug. 3 and will continue through Oct. 30. The audio walk is free and available Wednesday through Sunday from 11 am to 2:30 pm

Interview with the artist and project curator Kelly Gordon, July 2005:

KG: Can you describe what led you to develop your audio walks?

JC: The development of the audio walks came about through a totally serendipitous experience. I happened to press rewind while walking and taping in the field, and when I replayed it, listening with my headphones, I was fascinated by the layering of the past onto the present. It had a strange quality of creating a new world, blending together the physical and the virtual. I was also very excited by how my recorded body walking and talking created such an intense physical presence for me, as if there were another woman that was part of me but separate.

KG: How do you create such intense three-dimensional soundscapes?

JC: The technique that I use is called binaural audio. I record right on the site, following the exact route that the participant will eventually take. The recording system is made from two microphones mounted in the ears of a dummy head. Because of the head's shape, it captures the way we hear. I get many looks and comments from people as I wander around with this blue (hairdresser's dummy) head held out in front of me.

KG: How does location influence the development of each project? How has working on the National Mall compared to working on projects in other cities?

JC: Location is really very important to the content of a walk. The Mall was one of the most difficult and the most fascinating sites I've used. It was fascinating because of the abundance of important, historic actions that have occurred there. It was difficult because in the end I had way too much information and too many recordings and not enough space to include them, so the editing process was pretty extreme. Also, I have to say that doing a walk in the capital of America in this current political situation was antithetical to my creative process. I had to turn off my negative feelings about the Bush administration in order to produce the piece. It made me realize how difficult it is not to become political in Washington.

KG: How did work on this project begin? What was the most difficult aspect to develop?

JC: The first part of the process was finding a route that interested me…a beginning, a middle, and an intimate location for the end. After establishing the route, the next part in the process was to do a lot of walking, listening, and looking. This is how I find themes that echo the location. In this piece, I concentrate on a couple of themes. One is the use of water as a metaphor for the fluidity of time and for connecting political ideas and people. Another interest for me in Washington became the prevalence of political illusion and working with that metaphorically. Just as a piece of mirror found on the sidewalk becomes a chunk of sky, the varying soundscapes, such as an audience clapping around you, a car passing, or a band playing, make you question the truth of anything you hear.

JC: Sound has an innate ability to transport you out of your body, so if you give an audience various soundscapes, you can transport them through their imagination into many different places. For example, the sound of ghostly people talking around you...a sense of the past...intimate relationship between the artist and listener...a very private space for the audience in the midst of a very public area...the unexpected taking you into a different world for a few moments...a bit of magic...

2005-10-05T09:06:00.000-05:00

The Future

For God's sake, be done
with this jabber of "a better world."
What blasphemy! No "futuristic"
twit or child thereof ever
in embodied light will see
a better world than this, though they
foretell inevitably a worse.
Do something! Go cut the weeds
beside the oblivious road. Pick up
the cans and bottles, old tires,
and dead predictions. No future
can be stuffed into this presence
except by being dead. The day is
clear and bright, and overhead
the sun not yet half finished
with his daily praise.

-Wendell Berry

(thanks ellie)

2005-10-04T23:36:00.000-05:00

(greg points out the real story over at boeing. zero-casualty warfare, hurrah.)

Two sleek, stealthy aircraft are majestically poised on the runway at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., ready to take to the skies. Nicknamed “Stingray 1” and “Stingray 2,” what distinguishes these Boeing Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems X-45A vehicles from other aircraft at the base isn’t just their futuristic, Hollywood-esque look.

They will revolutionize the future of flight and warfare.

Boeing is making history with the unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAV) that operate on a complex computer system. These aircraft can engage in high-threat combat missions, while the pilot safely carries out the mission from a remote ground location anywhere in the world.

The Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems (J-UCAS) program is changing air combat missions as we know them. The UCAV concept of “fly-by-mouse” means the pilot sits at a ground station instead of a cockpit and manages multiple vehicles in high-threat combat missions with a computer mouse instead of a stick and rudder. The pilot’s view is a computer console instead of the combat-zone skies.

2005-10-04T22:55:00.000-05:00

When we criticize Bush because he has failed to keep us safe, we score valuable political points. But we pay a price for those points, because we reinforce the basic premises of the national insecurity state -- that danger is everywhere and can never be eliminated; that all systemic change is dangerous; and that our best hope lies in a government strong enough and pugnacious enough to prevent significant change and so protect us from fear's worst effects.

The urge to be safe, to keep fear at bay, is certainly natural and understandable. But after more than half a century in a state of heightened national insecurity, Americans have largely forgotten the other side of the human coin: the urge to be daring, to take chances that can lead to positive change.

2005-10-04T18:07:00.000-05:00

(ironically? since when does team osprey traffic in ironies?

i don't know what all of the controversy is about, as far as truth-in-advertising this ranks right up there with lockheed-martin's "we never forget who we're working for" motto.)

2005-10-04T12:26:00.000-05:00

If you set aside, for a moment, what is believed in, it obviously helps to believe in something if you plan to "stand up" and fight.

2005-10-04T11:15:00.000-05:00

The Independent
October 2, 2005

Melting Planet: Species are Dying Out Faster Than We Have Dared Recognize, Scientists Will Warn This Week

The erosion of polar ice is the first break in a fragile chain of life extending across theplanet, from bears in the north to penguins in the far south.

By Andrew Buncombe in Anchorage and Severin Carrell in London

...under unprecedented threat...disappearing with alarming speed...driven by starvation into human settlements - to be shot...drowning in large numbers...their corpses floating on seas once coated in a thick skin of ice.

"The ice is moving further and further north," said Charlie Johnson, 64, an Alaskan Nupiak from Nome, in the state's far west. "In the Bering Sea the ice leaves earlier and earlier. On the north slope, the ice is retreating as far as 300 or 400 miles offshore."

Last year, hunters found half a dozen bears that had drowned about 200 miles north of Barrow, on Alaska's northern coast. "It seems they had tried to swim for shore ... A polar bear might be able to swim 100 miles but not 400."

...alarming testimony... a threat unparalleled since the last ice age...the intricate web of habitats, food supplies and weather conditions which, for some species, can stretch for 6,500 miles. Every link of that chain is slowly but perceptibly altering....

also given little chance of survival... threatened by "multiple climate change impacts"... nowhere left to go ... "We can see, very clearly, that most migratory species are drifting towards the poles."...

...up to 37 per cent of terrestrial species could become extinct by 2050....

And the clash between nature and human need - a critical issue across Africa - is likely to worsen....

"Are we fighting a losing battle? Yes, we probably are."

"A long-term decline is under way."

"There is an earlier break-up of ice, a later freeze-up. Now it's more rapid. Something is happening."

(indeed.)

2005-09-30T09:25:00.000-05:00

(something to look forward to...)

Date: Sat, 17 Sep 2005 03:52:14 -0400 (EDT)
From: Alan Sondheim
Subject: Our Future

Our Future

In 1973 I taught "The Year 3000" at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Most of the predictions described for the year 2000 have already occurred.
Now for the modest future of thirty years hence:

All megafauna in the wild will be extinct. The population of the earth
will be close to its carrying capacity. Disease will run rampant due to
pollution. Global warming will bring about fast-forward environmental
effects, including rising seas, increased desertification, and extremely
violent hurricanes. The life-span of humans will begin a temporarily
exponential decrease. The rich will live in highly defended enclaves.
Fundamentalisms will be the order of the day, since belief alone commands.
Terrorism will be increasing exponentially, since future paradise is all
there is. Capitalism will be bankrupt as national currencies collapse and
world-wide depression sets in. The information explosion will continue on
localized data-networks and stuttering global communication systems. The
global communications infrastructure will have reached its carrying
capacity as well. For the first time, information will begin to corrode,
decay, as structures can no longer be protected against the world-wide
environmental crisis. The smaller generalist flora and fauna will begin to
dominate the earth. Great portions of the globe will be uninhabitable. The
larger aquatic species will have gone extinct, and the oceans will be
dominated by off-shore algal blooms. Most urban drinking water supplies
will be polluted and rationed. Suburbs will be abandoned as gasoline
becomes an almost inaccessible commodity. The planet will seethe with
continuous war, no longer fought among nation-states, but among private
militias, guerilla groups, and individual cowboys. Religions and
extremisms will be intertwined. There will be heavily-defended holdouts in
the North American mountains, and relatively isolated land masses such as
New Zealand. Fluid urban structures will be composed of well-armed gangs
dealing with the major currency of drugs and weaponry. At least a third of
all births will result in deformed infants. Ozone depletion will be almost
complete and skin cancers will be exponentially increasing. Most hospitals
world-wide will have closed their doors to all but the extremely wealthy.
Knowledge-structures will have broken down as specialization and increased
mathematical difficulties result in the problematizing of any theoretical
work at hand. Computers will have reached a plateau of speed, complexity,
and miniaturization. They will not have achieved consciousness. Robotics
and nanotechnologies will not be the order of the day - plagues will.
Sports franchises will be local and heavily subsidized. The air will be
almost unbreathable, and asthma / allergic reactions will be one of the
primary causes of death. Most deaths however are the result of violence.
Local police will perform rearguard holding actions at best. Highway
systems will have fallen into disrepair as economies collapse. Air travel
will be almost non-existent; space travel will have disappeared. The space
station will be a rusted hulk, if it has not already plummeted to earth.
Literacy will be on the decline. There will be a world-wide energy crisis.
Child abuse will have become child use and child discard; a high
percentage of children will be proffered for labor and sexual slavery, in
return for food and goods. Informal economies and the barter system will
characterize most local trade. Transnational trade will be at a minimum.
The genetic revolution will result in new and uncontrollable pandemics as
viruses and bacteria become increasingly resistant. Highly modifiable
immune deficiency diseases will appear on an exponentially-increasing
basis. The greatest percentage of murder victims, per capita per age
level, will be the elderly. Despair will be transformed into religious
salvation. More than twenty nuclear weapons, most of them small and
poorly-constructed, will have been exploded in various urban areas. Most
of the countries of the world, such as they are, will have weapons
programs which will absorb a large proportion of the gross national
product. Political economy will be ad hoc. Political ideologies will be
fragmentary and situational. Electrical grids will be hard-put to maintain
even the most minimal of services. The arts will have reached the limits
of extremity, with suicidal art movements in the fields of theater,
performance, ballet, and installation. The new media 'movement' will have
become a thing of the past. Art history will have disappeared as museums
fall victim to gang warfare and destruction. Most national heritage
monuments will have been at least partially destroyed. Most populations
will be drugged...

2005-03-02T12:07:00.000-05:00

Her kindergarten son didn't see the badge as a nuisance. It made him feel safer.

2005-02-27T10:35:00.000-05:00

(play 'ichazo' simultaneously with this for better results)

2005-02-15T12:24:00.000-05:00

2005-02-01T15:10:00.000-05:00

asco-o. this thing i don't really get how it works, where it gets its fodder but it could be used in conjunction with image-to-sound software (jitter) in interesting ways. especially i think because the whole thing is trichromatic (green blue and black always), and goes at a constant rhythm (5 seconds on:1second off) with the 1 second of 'between-time' always the same. so it would produce totally random music within somewhat rigid and arbitrarily-defined parameters.

2005-01-29T23:21:00.000-05:00

2005-01-14T14:08:00.000-05:00

from the prelinger archive:

destination unlimited: ...i couldn't figure out how this ever-increasing supply of oil was achieved... (~60% of the way through) ...the key to making oil work for everybody is competition... (~90% of the way through)

capitalism: ...we needed weenies, mr. brown had weenies, it was as simple as that... (early on)

2005-01-14T14:02:00.000-05:00

what derrida really meant, by the whack mc

2004-12-01T15:11:00.000-05:00

...if people are institutionally placed in the capitalist class, they can hardly be blamed for operating according to the established rules of the market and trying to get high returns on their stocks and investments.
...
Most scientists now agree that 50 percent or more of all living species are going to be killed off in this century. They call this "the sixth extinction." The last mass extinction on a comparable scale took place 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs were killed off. We human beings are doing this to the earth - not merely as individuals, but as part of a social system that drives us in that direction and refuses to value anything but the accumulation of capital.
...
Ultimately, achieving environmental sustainability will require us to transform those structures of power and not simply alter their minor manifestations.

Let me give you a concrete example. People are often told that, to be environmentally responsible, they should make the personal choice not to drive cars, and should instead make the effort to walk, ride a bicycle, or use public transport. Practically speaking, however, this is not a viable option for most people. Our roads, our jobs, and our whole urban infrastructure are set up in ways that render it virtually impossible for people to get along in their daily activities by walking or cycling, and public transport is inadequate or non-existent in most places. Under these circumstances, it is not enough for us to say that people should make personal choices that are compatible with the environment. We need to organize politically to create the social structures - public transport, inter-city train systems, flexible work routines, new forms of urban planning and land development, and so on - which will enable a greater number of people to actually make those choices.
...

2004-11-18T11:57:00.000-05:00

"We were looking at a beautiful white-tail buck and my friend said 'If you just had a gun for that.' A little light bulb went off in my head."

2004-10-29T15:51:00.000-05:00

How could she work there and not have an opinion?

2004-10-12T15:01:00.000-05:00

OPSOUND NEWS

9.26.2004

In honor of Creative Common's launch of its sampling license and new cd of CC licensed music by big names like David Byrne and Gilberto Gil (who gave a knockout benefit concert for CC in New York last week, where Opsound was briefly mentioned by Larry Lessig himself), we'd like to highlight some of the remixing going on within the Opsound pool. Shomi Moore has recently entered a series of pool remixes, featuring the sounds of Luke Palmer, drama mean for the gift id child, and layne garett. Meatsock does two versions of Jim's Big Ego's song "Mixtape." Domino Kill from the Anti-Music collective and The Creeps both use samples from situational audio logic's Berlin field recordings, and a violinist named Cora Beth added her sounds to Colin Mutchler's guitar solo. I hope we'll be seeing more of this kind of fun and games. If you're working on remixes of Opsound material, please let us know so we can add it back into the pool.

2004-09-23T14:33:00.000-05:00

Bush assured Americans that "The world is safer today because, in Iraq, our coalition ended a regime that cultivated ties to terror while it built weapons of mass destruction." The president's handlers know that every word is false, but they also know that lies can become Truth, if repeated insistently enough.

2004-09-07T10:24:00.000-05:00

...
Crusade. I remember a momentary feeling of vertigo at the President's use of that word, the outrageous ineptitude of it. The vertigo lifted, and what I felt then was fear, sensing not ineptitude but exactitude. My thoughts went to the elusive Osama bin Laden, how pleased he must have been, Bush already reading from his script.
...

2004-08-30T10:07:00.000-05:00

Semiotics with material consequences.

2004-08-22T20:19:00.000-05:00

Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.

Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and
civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality
and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the
modern world.
...
(Philip E. Agre)

2004-08-04T12:34:00.000-05:00

Date: 7.25.04
From: huong ngo
Subject: dream machine

Record your dreams : Trade your dreams
Share your subconscious as we archive your dreams. Call 773-HUM-9035, and record your dream after the beep. If you leave a phone number, we'll send you another dream from our archive. Call and record as often as you like: immediately after waking, perhaps before you're even fully awake, before you realize it was all just a dream.

2004-08-03T12:41:00.000-05:00

Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies
A project by Oliver Ressler
...The project presents alternative social and economic models such as "Inclusive Democracy" from Takis Fotopoulos (GB/GR), "Participatory Economy" from Michael Albert (U.S.A.), and "Free Cooperation" from Christoph Spehr (G). Nancy Folbre (U.S.A.) speaks about her concept of "Caring Labor," and Marge Piercy (U.S.A.) discusses the feminist-anarchist utopias of her social fantasies. As an interesting historical model, the workers' self-management in Yugoslavia in the sixties and seventies is thematized in the exhibition by Todor Kuljic (SCG). In the further course of the project, models developed in other specific historical contexts such as "La Commune" in Paris (1870-1871) and the workers' collectives during the Spanish Civil War (1936-38) will be thematized....

2004-06-30T08:13:00.000-05:00

stephen thaler, is this for real? the machine that invents... (originally from st louis post-dispatch, tina hesman, 01.25.04)

2004-06-30T07:45:00.000-05:00

how to build a contact microphone

2004-06-17T19:18:00.000-05:00

freeway blogger: big political signs on highway overpasses. questionthetruth here i come

2004-06-14T22:56:00.000-05:00

Uninvited Artist Posts Work at 4 Museums

Wed Jun 9, 2:54 PM ET

By ULA ILNYTZKY, Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK - Paintings of President Bush (news - web sites) and former
President Clinton (news - web sites), accompanied by messages referring to
the artist's bodily fluids, mysteriously appeared last week on the walls
of two major city museums and reportedly at two other museums in
Philadelphia and Washington.

Harold Holzer, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, said
Wednesday that a cartoon-type painting of Bush against a background of
shredded dollar bills was found hanging Saturday on the wall near an exit
in the museum's modern art galleries.

"The Metropolitan is a repository for the greatest works of human
creativity over the last 5,000 years," Holzer said. "It is not a bulletin
board. For us, it is clearly an unwelcome demonstration of
self-aggrandizement."

The 9-by-15-inch work, done on a frameless canvas, was affixed to the wall
with double-sided tape. A label taped next to the painting said it was
made with "acrylic, legal tender and the artist's semen."

Apparently no one saw it being put up.

Similar paintings of Bush and Clinton were left Saturday at the Guggenheim
Museum. Police and FBI (news - web sites) agents determined there was no
threat to the public, authorities said.

Also targeted were the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the
Philadelphia Museum of Art, the New York Post reported Wednesday.

Representatives of those three museums declined to comment or were not
immediately available when contacted by The Associated Press.

Citing an unidentified source, the Post said the intruder left typewritten
notes at all four locations that read: "I mixed my semen in some acrylic
gel medium and I painted it in the right hand corner of this piece of art.
It is an artistic reference to the silent power of the biological
sciences."

Although the museum screens visitors' bags, Holzer said the small painting
would not have raised any alarms and would not have been confiscated,
because many museum visitors go to the Met to sketch.

___

Associated Press Writer Tom Hays contributed to this report.

2004-05-20T09:54:00.000-05:00

ADVERTISER LINKS What's this?

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We have WTC, Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines, Iraqi Freedom Ltd Ed Coins
TheHighlandMintStore.com Leave Iraq? Yes or No?
Should Our Troops Leave Iraq Now? You Can Get a $50 Gift Card (aff).

2004-04-20T13:34:00.000-05:00

[[[murmur]]]: more in the street art/music department

2004-04-20T08:51:00.000-05:00

telestreets, a short visit to the world of..

interesting ideas here on micro-media as well as, farther down, community spaces for art/innovation

2004-04-20T08:34:00.000-05:00

the school for designing society

2004-04-07T08:06:00.000-05:00

tomdispatch re darpa from february.. notable excerpts:

As former DARPA Director Charles Herzfeld noted in 1975, "When we fail, we fail big."
..
A question seldom asked is why pie-in-the-sky creativity exists unfettered and fostered only in the context of lethal technologies?
..
Today, DARPA's Continuous Assisted Performance (CAP) program is aimed at creating a 24-7 trooper by "investigating ways to prevent fatigue and enable soldiers to stay awake, alert, and effective for up to seven days straight without suffering any deleterious mental or physical effects and without using any of the current generation of stimulants."
..
[action-at-a-distance, baby] Says DARPA, "The long-term Defense implications of finding ways to turn thoughts into acts, if it can be developed, are enormous: imagine U.S. warfighters that only need use the power of their thoughts to do things at great distances."

2004-04-06T11:19:00.000-05:00

"life on market street" audio performance and archive

2004-04-06T10:24:00.000-05:00

"at the end of the day" voted as the most irritating phrase in the language

with all due respect, we absolutely must address the issue. the fact of the matter is, to be perfectly honest with you, we've got to prioritise the bottom line in terms of going forward, pushing the envelope, moving the goal-posts. we're literally singing from the same hymn sheet here. it's not rocket science, we just, like, need to, like, start thinking outside of the, like, box. 24/7, on an ongoing basis.

i hear what you're saying, but, now bear with me, at this moment in time the ballpark figures around our value-added results basically suggest maybe we ought to look at the glass as half full. are we really between a rock and a hard place? we've got to touch base with our crack troops. what are they up to? maybe it's just awesome.

your blue sky thinking boggles the mind. you're a diamond geezer, true, but at the end of the day, do you ever stop to think about the epicentre of all of this?

2004-04-05T12:44:00.000-05:00

Referring to Sadr, Bush said, "This is one person that is deciding that rather than allowing democracy to flourish, he's going to exercise force," Bush said. "We just can't let it stand."

He said Sadr and his followers "are trying to say, we don't want democracy; as a matter of fact we'll decide the course of democracy by the use of force. That is the opposite of democracy."

2004-04-05T07:30:00.000-05:00

Lt. James Vanzant, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force: "The city is surrounded. It's an extended operation. We want to make a very precise approach to this. . . . We are looking for the bad guys in town."

2004-04-01T08:23:00.000-05:00

Google's new e-mail service will have ads based on text of message, mmm, no fooling

2004-04-01T08:16:00.000-05:00

U.S. Forces Attacked Again
Insurgents burn a Humvee near Fallujah, just one day after the killing of four American civilians. – AP
• U.S. Civilians Mutilated in Iraq Attack
• In Fallujah, Mob Unleashes Its Rage
• White House: Iraq Showing Progress

2004-03-31T13:10:00.000-05:00

the adolescent poetry generator (the best thing about it is the 'powered by google' ad i got for this guy's poems.. you decide which is which)

I Am
by The Aggregate Kid

i am smart or dumb, we will
not put my heart into has now
been crushedand so i start
thinking about when i am harmed by
those strikes a that just happened
to me i try to rise above the
misty-eyed clouds, giving people a lift
in spirits and letting them
have those inside jokes and days
together those times one was sick and
the children know the real me.
she wades in insecuerity and
harbors adolesent fears. she dreams
of all i see. me and you; you
and smile even though im nice i
seem, no one will two minds loving
still. everything i've ever put my
head spin you are reborn of a
laugh or the way you look, but how
you act, this i know a poem for
me. i like maddy she is the one
i love.

i'm dreaming sweet things in my
mind. your the best when you do
not cry my friend, my companion,
through good & bad weather, i see
him and i feel alone and
helpless.
---------------------------------
---------------------------------
In fields of clusters, white
Lost, within the beauty there
The solitary,
The individual

Beautiful ones, amongst
The tender green
Held wanting in the breeze
Silent

Stirring together
Though spoken of, as one
Encircled petals, reflecting
A subtle, beguiling , light

In the city of trembling hearts

Where echoes resonate
The soft tender ones
Are clustered

I saw Her there

Amongst the many
Her beauty and sadness
Came dripping upon me

Her beauty and sadness, a well of drops, in her eyes
So close were we, to being one
Yet
even so
to far away we were
Separated by our shadows

2004-03-29T09:50:00.000-05:00

photo-journal tour of chernobyl, you will feel the microengens mounting in your dosimeter

2004-03-25T22:54:00.000-05:00

"Republicans can’t stress enough that extremists are screaming ‘Doomsday!’ when the environment is actually seeing a new and better day."

2004-03-25T19:43:00.000-05:00

call for proposals: community partners

relevant info:
barry russell's supermarket symphony:here--"instead of violins and flutes, the musicians played cereal boxes, shopping carts, wooden spoons, and yogurt containers filled with dry pasta. This performance was one of a series called the Pop-up Project which aims to surprise people around Manchester with arts events in unexpected places."--and here and here--"Working with sounds and ideas created by the local groups, Russell went on to compose the piece."

2004-03-24T09:06:00.000-05:00

compliance solutions for ofac, the usa patriot act, and identity verification: free name check: are you banned in the u.s.a.?

2004-03-24T08:37:00.000-05:00

9/11 Panel Critical of Clinton, Bush
...
Rumsfeld told the commission in earlier interviews that he "did not recall any particular counterterrorism issue that engaged his attention before 9/11," other than the debate over preparing armed drones to target bin Laden.
...
In his testimony, Powell confirmed one claim by Clarke that Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary who strongly supported U.S. military action against Iraq, suggested an attack on the government of Saddam Hussein during a meeting at Camp David just four days after the 2001 attacks. President Bush "said first things first," Powell said. "He decided on Afghanistan."

2004-03-18T08:43:00.000-05:00

rummy eats his own shit on national tv

2004-03-17T19:39:00.000-05:00

HOW SMART DOES YOUR BED HAVE TO BE, BEFORE YOU ARE AFRAID TO GO TO SLEEP AT NIGHT?

2004-03-17T17:06:00.000-05:00

play this game instead of watching the news: september 12

2004-03-16T12:14:00.000-05:00

Love meter

Directions: To get your love meter reading, answer the following questions as honestly as possible.
1) When you are not with your partner, do you:
Think about him/her often Think about him/her during downtime at work/school
Become paralyzed with longing Wonder what your exes are up to

2) When you first see your partner after being apart, do you want to:
Give him/her a bear hug Watch TV
Drag him/her to bed, forget talking Plant a huge kiss on him/her
...
5) [Sponsor Question] Would you like to register for a $2 Million Instant Win scratch card?
Yes
No thanks

6) [Sponsor Question] Want to browse photos of singles from Imatch-up for FREE?
Yes, I'd like to browse photos
No thanks

Contact us: info@colonize.com | Copyright ©2000-2004 Colonize.com. All rights reserved.
All methods are proprietary. Violators will be prosecuted.
Brought to you by Colonize.com

2004-03-15T13:18:00.000-05:00

"I think people are tired of things you can get everywhere in the world."

2004-03-15T09:08:00.000-05:00

Time May Be Up for Naps in Pre-K Class

By Nancy Trejos
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 15, 2004; Page A01

After lunch and snacks, alphabet and story times, the lights go off. Sixteen tiny bodies sprawl on a sea of red foam mats, the sounds of classical piano coaxing them to sleep.

And there they stay, tucked under Spider-Man and Powerpuff Girls blankets, until teacher Chantay Wynn switches on the lights 45 minutes later. "Come on, get up," Wynn chides 4-year-old Steven Dieu, lifting him from his mat. "Open your eyes."

It's a daily ritual for the pre-kindergarten students at Hoffman-Boston Elementary School in Arlington, as it is at countless schools across the country. But in the increasingly urgent world of public education, is it a luxury that 4-year-olds no longer can afford?
...
"They can't be babied," she said. "These are young minds. We have to take advantage of this early stage when they grasp everything."

2004-03-10T13:32:00.000-05:00

surreal double-reversal, aufhebung for the atomic age?

chernobyl as wildlife refuge

2004-03-10T09:35:00.000-05:00

listen to this: the voice of the people

the world must be bored

this thing converts boredom to laughter (or something, something), an amazingly efficient engine, negative loss of potential i think

2004-03-09T18:35:00.000-05:00

create-your-own campaign signs for bush-cheney '04!!!

2004-03-09T10:25:00.000-05:00

excerpts from nettime discussion on reading lists, >>A<< reading list:

Reply-to: "geert lovink"
(Would it include Empire, Crowds and Power, Male Fantasies, a Foucault, Ahrendt or even Deleuze? How much history (of science)? How much would politically correct and which titles would really be useful? Geert)

The Problem with Dead White Males By Arnold Kling Published 02/27/2004

My List

If I were asked to select five books that every college student must read in order to be prepared to engage in discourse in the 21st century, my list would be as follows:

The Blank Slate, by Stephen Pinker
The Age of Spiritual Machines, by Ray Kurzweil
The Transparent Society, by David Brin
The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson
Eastward to Tartary, by Robert Kaplan

The Skeptical Environmentalist, by Bjorn Lomborg,

The first two volumes of Robert Skidelsky's biography of John Maynard
Keynes

Tom Wolfe , Bonfire of the Vanities

economist Randall Parker's Reflections on the Great Depression and Winston Churchill's The Gathering Storm.

militant Islam, Ralph Peters book Beyond Terror.

Contemporary economics Virginia Postrel's The Future and its Enemies or Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics or Sowell's The Vision of the Anointed.

******************
Reply-to: Alan Sondheim

Koran, Bible, Analects - at the least. I don't think it's possible to
understand contemporary culture and fundamentalisms without them.

There's a series of Verso books - the No-Nonsense Guides - I've read the one on Islam, which brilliantly summarizes a great deal of material. There are others on globalization, terrorism, etc

Anthologies such as the New Media Reader.

An updated version of Fiske's Television Culture.

Winograd and Flores - Understanding Computers and Cognition.

The analog/digital sections of Anthony Wilden's System and Structure.

Wittgenstein's Tractatus read in conjunction w/ Philosophical
Investigations.

perhaps a book questioning three things: genre, canon, essentialism.

By the way - not Male Fantasies, but male fantasies. I would include at least one pornographic work. However defined, it's a critical discourse. Read against Kathy Acker.

Flesh and Steel by Mishima and with and against any Heiner Muller.

******************
Reply-to: "Prem Chandavarkar"
Rather than a definitive list of books (which implies that there is a
starting and end point to reading) I would first emphasise the importance of the continuing impulse to read. In the movie 'Shadowlands' which is based on the life of C.S. Lewis, a student of Lewis makes the profound remark "We read in order to know that we are not alone". The act of reading forces us to shift out of our own eyes and adopt the eyes of another, to move out of the comfort zone of our life and step into the unknown space of the book. The step away from our life and the return to it is a cycle of renewal and it its essential that we constantly repeat it.

Hayden White: "The Tropics of Discourse" - a collection of essays that
shattered my perception of history as a canonical form of truth, and
revealed the literary and artistic devices used in the writing of history.

Jean-Francois Lyotard: "The PostModern Condition"

Jacque Derrida: "Of Grammatology"

Jeanette Winterson: "Art Objects - Essays in Ecstacy and Effrontery"

Italo Calvino: 2 books - "Invisible Cities" and "Six Memos for the New
Millenium"

Lawrence Lessig: 2 books - "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace" and "The Future of Ideas".

Huston Smith: 2 books - "The World's Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions" and "Forgotten Truth: The Primordial Tradition"

Michael Polanyi: 3 books - "The Tacit Dimension", "Personal Knowledge" and/or the last book "Meaning" which summarises his philosophy.

Steven Johnson: "Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software"

Wolfgang Sachs (ed): "The Development Dictionary"

John Allen Paulos: "A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper"

Etienne Wenger: "Communities of Practice"

Albert Laszlo Barabasi: "Linked: The New Science of Networks".

Bernard Lietaer: "The Future of Money"

******************
Reply-to: aphid
virilio's information bomb or speed & politics
debord's society of the spectacle
delanda's 1000 years of nonlinear history
lev manovich's language of new media, which i have a lot of problems with but at least he has done a better job with 'interactivity' than in 'what is digital cinema'
critical art ensemble's digital resistance
kevin kelly's out of control
some foucault is appropriate, as is deleuze, and of course benjamin
(simultaneously with lessig perhaps)

2004-03-08T12:05:00.000-05:00

DARPA gearing up for everest expedition

2004-03-04T09:34:00.000-05:00

from the dead media project...
Dead medium: The Flame Organ
Source(s): Experimental Musical Instruments Volume 10 #1, Sept. 1994.

FIRE MUSIC . Introductory Notes by Bart Hopkin

Here is how to make flame sing: obtain a glass tube, one or two inches in diameter, open at both ends, and perhaps two or three feet long. Light a propane torch or similar burner, and insert the nozzle about one fourth of the way into the open lower end of the tube. If conditions are right, you will hear the tone will begin == not abruptly, but with a growing volume.

Gather together a tuned set of such tubes, develop the mechanisms to shut the flames on and off in a controlled manner, and you will have created a flame organ.

The sounds of such an arrangement, according to people who have worked with flame tones, are highly varied. The system can be refined so as to dependably produce clear, steady tones at the frequency of the tube's fundamental. Or the mechanism can be adjusted to bring out harmonics. On the other hand, you can take a less controlling approach, and let the system come forth with a menagerie of whoops, shrieks and moans. One consistent characteristic: the attacks are not sharp; rather, each tone grows as the resonance establishes itself.

2004-03-02T15:11:00.000-05:00

Q & A: The Uprising in Haiti, Washington Post

...

Will there be more "boat people"?

Preventing another mass exodus of Haitians like the one that occurred in the early 1990s is now is a prime goal of U.S. policy. With the Coast Guard on alert for refugees seeking to reach the United States, U.S. officials are reportedly bolstering accommodations at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, which is 180 miles northwest of Haiti, to house Haitians intercepted on the high sea

[i wonder if they will be as well-accomodated as all of those lodged in the big pre-trial hotel down there...]

2004-02-26T11:28:00.000-05:00

here is an explanation of how to use 4-track machine as loop setup.

2004-02-24T10:42:00.000-05:00

the observer and fortune both report on a recent pentagon report admitting possibility of (predicting?) dire consequences from global warming. commentary here from tom englehardt. mainstream media coverage must be seeking shade.

related: "A report published by the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) in the UK estimates that if nothing is done to stop global warming, economic losses from extreme weather will be larger than global GDP by 2065." --earth crash earth spirit

well, the weather futures market should take care of everything...

ah but probably not the peak of global oil production: "Energy forecasts call for Saudi Arabia to almost double its output in the next decade and after. Oil executives and government officials in the United States and Saudi Arabia, however, say capacity will probably stall near current levels."--today's nytimes

2004-02-22T18:24:00.000-05:00

"music activism" site: downhillbattle.org. includes a music player, check it out.

also, illegal-art.org

2004-02-20T11:12:00.000-05:00

with just what is our soul built...

at open-source audio, nestled right between Laurie Laptop and Leadbelly.

music for the people.

2004-02-19T11:51:00.000-05:00

Morning. Darkness. Silence. Waking. Small, already lively gestures. The new force is ready. The bomb primed. Joy offered. What is to be done? Yes, undertake something and in a big way. Go beyond the seas, construct, discover . . . Enthusiasm elicits, at dawn, the return to the world; the world and I have returned to the morning of creation. Omnipotence: everything again becomes possible. Magnificence: this capacity tends toward greatness.

Which? Where, how, and for what? So, at the moment of deciding, while remembering history, which only makes great things from the dead, from the feet to the eyes and from one shoulder to another, my body, made for greatness, mourns for greatness. Present in my body, evident, invading . . . unused.

The body does not form grandeur, does not show it, gives it nothing social or historical, except through crimes and lies: neither the victory that tramples a thousand vanquished, nor the excellence that deposes the cohort of the mediocre.

And, from infallible experience, since my violent, weighty, demanding childhood, grandeur lies in me and dilates. Every day then, it awakens a ready energy, as it has for several decades, to go forth at the first call, attentive watcher, loyal servent, devoted unto dying, but obeying only greatness.

This free, early omnipotence, this immense demand, can be exhausted in a work; but this work only rarely achieves greatness and doubtless anonymously, because it is not a question of me, but of the work that produces and will give birth to me. Thus, the unusable power remains intact, youthful and fresh even in old age. Virginal, to be precise. It sings the Magnificat.

Now nothing can make an exception of this experience. Doubtless, everyone, one day at least, experiences this formidable dilation of his being--in explosive volume, strength, and potential--this free break, this unemployed greatness, that remains virginal no matter what one does, the infinite regret of remaining to one side: the infinite possibility of learning.

Why stubbornly refuse to call this vacant intensity, potential world and thought right in the middle of the body, which is like a rose window or a small sun, the soul?

--Michel Serres, The Troubadour of Knowledge

2004-02-12T12:13:00.000-05:00

ivan illich, _toward a history of need_
-thesis: 'use values are inevitably destroyed when the industrial mode of production achieves the predominance [of] radical monopoly.'

-creation of needs... requirement of all activity to be official, sanctioned, within the sphere of commodity production... 'overwhelming reliance' on consumer goods: 'market dependence'... creation of 'need-satisfaction relationships' [cf _anti-oedipus_]... subjects defined by, ones perception of ones own rights and needs derived from, 'professional hegemony'...

-use-values destroyed... autonomy lost... impossibility of satisfying need outside 'radical monopolies' that control modern markets [anti-markets--delanda]... standardization of culture... 'rigid interdependence of needs and market'... what were once everyday functions able to be accomplished 'autonomously' now are experienced as situations of LACK, requiring the intervention of need-producing specialists, fillable only with consumer goods and services. e.g., everyone defined as sick and in constant need of medical attention... passage from democracy to oligarchy

-counterproductivity [cf _anti-oedipus_: systems depend on their own poor functioning]--'beyond a certain level of intensity, medicine engenders helplessness and disease', b/c people don't [desire doesn't--deleuze] fit the 'calculus of needs'... derives from 'congestion' (e.g. traffic snarls, the inevitable result of more and faster cars that thwarts the supposed goal of those cars: getting somewhere faster) and from 'paralysis' (dependence on commodities yields greater congestion)... [anti-market capitalism ensures its own continuation by its own disfunctionality. that is, foundational principles like efficiency and productivity prove impossible to live up to--commodities (goods/services) become ever-more efficient and yet this efficiency counteracts itself, meaning the demand for efficiency can never be met. efficiency as a goal can never be met, greater productivity is (will be) always required.]

-liberty (protecting use-value) vs. right (protecting access to commodity).. rights end up 'smothering' liberties (b/c needs that destroy use-values produce rights which are then sanctioned and legitimated leaving liberties to fend for themselves having no measurable market value)

-illich calls for: 'convivial austerity', i.e. limiting concentration of power [similar to delanda when he argues for regional markets--both speak of a certain threshold--for delanda beyond that threshold power (the ability to control market flows) becomes too heavily concentrated--for illich, 'radical monopoly'... also: "new rational cynical competence' among citizens [contrast with _anti-oedipus_: schizophrenia]