MetaFilter posts by troutfishing.
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"We own you, you don't have any legal rights" U.S. Secret Service agents aggressively interrogate two Bay Area high school students after their teacher reports their remarks on President Bush, made during in-class discussion on the war in Iraq, to authorities.
posted on May-12-03 at 4:31 AM
Dalai Llama muses: meditating monk sets "positive emotion" record : The 14th Dalai Llama, Tenzin Gyatso, muses on new research on the benefits of mindfulness meditation: "A University of Wisconsin-Madison research team has found that a small amount of "mindfulness meditation" results in positive, lasting changes in the brain and immune system." The mainstream medical community in the U.S. has now acknowledge the significant benefits of mindfulness meditatiion - "...a significant decrease in symptoms, both during and after the course."
[ Tenzin Gyatso ] "The calamity of 9/11 demonstrated that modern technology and human intelligence guided by hatred can lead to immense destruction. Such terrible acts are a violent symptom of an afflicted mental state. To respond wisely and effectively, we need to be guided by more healthy states of mind, not just to avoid feeding the flames of hatred, but to respond skillfully. We would do well to remember that the war against hatred and terror can be waged on this, the internal front, too.".....I once was host to Tenzin Gyatso's brother and several other Tibetan monks for a few weeks - and was never again quite the same. So, when Tenzin Gyatso speaks, I listen.
posted on Apr-25-03 at 9:33 PM
I yearn for your tasty flesh
[ Gene Study Finds Cannibal Pattern ] - "Deep in the recesses of the human heart, lurking guiltily beneath the threshold of consciousness, there may lie a depraved craving — for the forbidden taste of human flesh. The basis for this morbid accusation, made by a team of researchers in London, is a genetic signature, found almost worldwide, that points to a long history of cannibalism" (NYT)
posted on Apr-11-03 at 11:10 AM
Gracefull bipeds, miniature robot ballets.... Titled by the BBC as "Humanoid robots wow Japanese", The world's largest robot exhibit this weekend in Yokahama features Asimo by Honda ["Asimo can now recognise individual faces and can understand gestures as well as spoken commands. Meet him once and he never forgets, responding by approaching and calling your name on subsequent meetings."] as well as Sony's newest Aibo accesories and their stunning SDR-4X ll, a biped sporting "fluid walking motion and lifelike gestures." Epson Seiko caught my attention, though, with their dozen tiny Bluetooth controlled 12.5 gram Monsieur ll-P robot prototypes which executed a miniature choreographed ballet.
Pretty soon they'll be scuttling around on our walls like cockroaches, watching us......
posted on Apr-5-03 at 9:26 AM
A Pyrrhic victory in a catastrophic "March of Folly"? - historian Barbara Tuchman asked: why do leaders persist in pursuing catastrophic policies? Regardless of Baath regime executions of Iraqis, the Islamic world will witness mainly "American Atrocities" - and be outraged by gruesome images, on Al Jazeera and elsewhere, of every single child killed by American bombs. Iraqi tactics - of suicide bombing, ambushes, and faked surrenders - will erase the civilian/combatant distinction, leading to more and more incidents like this (to be televised to an appalled Islamic world): and all this merely a foreshadow of what may be urban warfare on a scale seldom seen in the 20th century. Grozny comes to mind. Mainstream US media asserts that the solution for the whole "miscalculation" is just more US troops
But the war is tailor made to provoke tribalistic, Pan-Islamic fury (and corresponding, furiously tribalistic US patriotic support for war). Escalation is in the air: statements by Rumsfeld, Powell, and the US State Dept. indicate an awareness that the current war could spread, drawing in Syria and Iran. Consequences also could include the destabilization or the takeover, of nuclear armed Pakistan, by Islamic militants, and a Nuclear miltarization across a wide region, from Iraq to Japan.
If only this were "South Park: The Movie", where the onset of Armaggeddon can be stopped by an heroic act of sacrifice by Kenny.
posted on Mar-31-03 at 9:19 AM
GW Bush's exploding frogs, a 50" plasma TV, and a "Bend Me Over Baby" DVD - Shoving firecrackers into the mouths of frogs, then tossing them into the air to watch them explode and, later, mocking Death-Row inmates. ...OK, little boys and frogs; nothing unusual here. I used to burn ants with a magnifying glass. And I've tossed off some off color jokes. But then there's this this: according to Amazon.UK.com, shoppers who liked the "Panasonic TH-50PHW3B 50" Plasma Display" also purchased "The Leadership Genius of George W. Bush: 10 Common Sense Lessons from the Commander-in-chief" ", Bend Me Over Baby" ( DVD ), and "Spread Them Wide" (DVD). What does it mean? [via meehawl.com]
posted on Mar-23-03 at 8:48 PM
As one, the students shouted, "Strength through discipline!" - "The Third Wave", A Dangerous Experiment. More disturbing even than the "Milgram Experiment": "When Ron Jones started teaching at Cubberley High School in the fall of 1968, it was considered the most innovative of Palo Alto's high schools. ....His methods were experimental and his goal was to bring social studies to life.....Jones turned his class into an efficient youth organization, which he called the Third Wave. Some students were informers, and some were told they couldn't go certain places on campus. He insisted on rigid posture and that questions be answered formally and quickly....."It was strange how quickly the students took to a uniform code of behavior. I began to wonder just how far they cold be pushed," Jones wrote....But soon the experiment began spinning out of control.... five days into the experiment, Jones announced, "We can bring (the nation) a new sense of order, community, pride, and action. Everything rests on you and your willingness to take a stand." As one, the students shouted, "Strength through discipline!" ". Ron Jones wrote about it in No substitute for Madness, which is out of print in English but required reading in German public schools. As Umberto Eco notes in "Eternal Fascism", this is a timeless tale of human nature.
posted on Mar-22-03 at 8:28 AM
Adopt-a-Pagan-Soldier - No pagans in foxholes? Think again! Meanwhile, the Adopt-a-Soldier movement gains momentum. Heed this well, opponents of the ongoing invasion (or liberation) of Iraq: US troops did not engineer the plan for a "Pax Americana" which underlies the US action in Iraq. No, they were pulled away from their families and their jobs, and lack basic necessities: such as SPF-30 sunscreen, and chapstick. Send them a care package. And while you are at it, why not donate to the UN Refugee Fund set up to cope with an expected 1 millon or so refugees, and a possible humanitarian disaster, in Iraq?
posted on Mar-20-03 at 9:39 PM
Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing : "To offer a psychological explanation for the atrocities committed by perpetrators is not to forgive, justify or condone their behavior. Instead, the explanation simply allows us to understand the conditions under which many of us could be transformed into killing machines." (James Waller) In a Salon interview about his widely acclaimed, pathbreaking book Waller states, "Most people don't understand how easy it is to develop us-them [mindsets]......In our climate of fear in response to terrorism, I think we could pretty easily turn on people who have been our neighbors."
posted on Mar-17-03 at 9:19 AM
"Weapons of Mass Destruction", you say? Question: If Iraq is the vicious rat and North Korea the furious pygmy of WMD threats, where is the 800 pound gorilla? Answer - "...law enforcement officials worldwide have seized 40 kilograms of Russian-origin uranium and plutonium since 1991. Stanford researchers have also estimated that only 30 to 40 percent of the nuclear material stolen from facilities in Russia and other territories in the former Soviet Union are ever recovered by authorities." the collapse of the Soviet Union left vast stores of Nuclear weapons and weapons grade plutonium and uranium, and stocks of chemical and biological warfare agents lying about at dangerously underfunded facillities scattered through the vast expanse of the ex-Soviet realm. "Russian stockpiles of weapons and materials are the most likely source for terrorists attempting to acquire weapons of mass destruction", said US Senator Richard Lugar, Republican chairman of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee. An international effort to destroy these stores of ex-Soviet WMD's is currently funded at a tiny fraction of the estimated cost of a possible US invasion and occupation of Iraq. (more inside)
posted on Mar-16-03 at 6:52 AM
Face Transplants : "...the harvesting or ''degloving'' of a face would take approximately two hours, depending on the depth of the excision. It is possible to remove not just skin and subcutaneous fat and muscle but....part of the donor's bone and cartilage as well. Still, the deeper the cut, the more complex becomes the reattachment."
posted on Mar-12-03 at 11:06 AM
Laptops transform learning for 7th graders in rural Maine : It "was more controversial than abortion, gay rights or even clear cutting," said former Gov. Angus King. But "Just six months after Maine began a controversial [and first in the nation] program to provide laptop computers to every seventh grader in the state, educators are impressed by how quickly students and teachers have adapted to laptop technology."(NYT)
posted on Mar-11-03 at 10:23 AM
"Toronto flings garbage at Michigan" no no!... - US Courts Canadian Crud! ...Eh?, well, OK: Toronto trucks it's tons 'o trash across the border to dump in Michigan landfills, and some Yanks are eager to buy, although others..."It's so disgusting we don't even talk about it...Why can't they keep their garbage over there?" .....[''We need to put an end to this desecration of our beautiful state,'' fumed Representative Candice S. Miller, Republican of Michigan who also warned that terrorists or weapons of mass destruction could be concealed amidst the rotting food and used diapers.] ......"Relations between the United States and Canada have been souring for two years....Canada's wishy-washy stance on the Iraq crisis...has irked Washington" chides the Boston Globe, clearly piqued that Boston is not in a position to catapult cannisters of it's garbage and toxic waste northward at Canada, towards the "Great Concavity" of David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest". [other shades of "....Jest" loom as "...a reputed haven for terror groups." whispers the Globe...just like in Wallace's book!] .....Toronto can't find any Canadian communities willing to furnish an immense garbage pit, while "Michigan's underused landfills are famous for courting crud from outside the state's borders.": They approached Toronto with the deal. ["Ontario, meanwhile, accepts imports of toxic industrial sludge, low-level radioactive waste, and other dangerous refuse from Michigan and other US states."] Garbage is a protected "free trade" commodity under NAFTA and Michigan may need the 'trash jobs': NAFTA has spurred automakers to shift production away from the US and build new factories in Canada and Mexico. Canada's auto factories are 7% more productive than US ones and have lower health care costs. ["The growth of imports to the U.S. from these factories has contributed substantially to the growing U.S. trade deficit and the related job losses."]. So: Canada sends garbage and shiny new autos south: the US sends radioactive sludge, spittle, jobs and curses north.
Meanwhile, walk across the border and the murder rate per 100,000 (per year) drops from 42.6 (Detroit, USA) to 2.2 (Windsor, Canada): "Are Canadians somehow flinging all their fear and murderous rage into the US along with the garbage?" (asks the Daily Tabloid)
posted on Mar-10-03 at 5:11 AM
US Lets N. Korea Get Nuclear Data (Boston Globe) "Transfer Pact Stays in Effect: WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has not suspended or revoked the authority of Westinghouse Co. to transfer documents related to nuclear technology to North Korea, despite the fact that the Asian nation has admitted that it violated terms of a nonproliferation agreement it signed with Washington in 1994, US Department of Energy documents show."
posted on Mar-8-03 at 8:09 AM
DIVE! DIVE! DIVE! - Markets in free fall. Remember the heady DotCom bubble days, and innocuous scandals - Clinton & Monica,the cigar?! Then, WHAM: 9-11, Enron, Worldcom et. al, the push for invasion of Iraq, ballooning deficits, while a new US neocolonial American ideology of preemption suggests more invasions to come - with a worldwide surge in anti-American attitudes. "Irrational Exuberance" turned to terror, fear, worry, anger, rage. What possible train of events and U.S. government policies could more efficiently send world economic markets into free fall? Hold on: it was a two decade long ride up - the ride down has merely begun. Those among us with a few spare billion lying around will wait until the bottom, and buy on the cheap. For everyone else, it's bankruptcy, frugality, middle class decline, cans 'o beans and darned socks. But cheer up: play, joy, creativity, generosity, indeed love itself - and also the classic "recreation of the poor" are all free.
posted on Mar-7-03 at 7:34 AM
RIFT: in "The madness of empire", American Conservative Magazine breaks with Neoconservatism. Meanwhile Norman Mailer, in Gaining an empire, losing democracy? warns "America is going to become a mega-banana republic where the army will have more and more importance...democracy, noble and delicate as it is, may give way".
What can we say about a nation so powerfull that it can simply bury thousands of troublesome humans with bulldozers?
posted on Feb-27-03 at 5:45 AM
The troll gap - Despite heroic American efforts such as the "Kick/nuke their ass and take the gas" troll, "Each year, the Institute for Comparative Troll Studies publishes a report on the state of trolling vis a vis national security of the United States. This year, the outlook is not good..."(via Kuro5hin)
posted on Feb-25-03 at 7:42 AM
Synthetic Trees could purify the air - "It looks like a goal post with Venetian blinds," said the Columbia University physicist...synthetic trees could help clean up an atmosphere grown heavy with carbon dioxide..."You can be a thousand times better than a living tree...There are a number of engineering issues which need to be worked out," he said. (BBC) Hurry up, then - "Ice dams are blocking Latvian ports, winds and storms are battering Europe, Portugal is freezing, Vietnam has lost one-third its rice crop, and the cold has caused close to 2,000 deaths in usually temperate South Asia."
posted on Feb-23-03 at 9:00 PM
Into the Garden of Good and Evil - Muhammad Iqbal's "THE DEVELOPMENT OF METAPHYSICS IN PERSIA" (first published in 1908 and free online courtesy the Bahai's): "The most remarkable feature of the character of the Persian people is their love of Metaphysical speculation." Strong, bipolar Good vs. Evil distinctions, and the notion of a cosmic struggle between the two, seem to have originated in ancient Persia as Persian Dualism. See Manicheanism here, here (warning-spurious windows), and here. Special bonus - Freepers fulminate over a German theologian's exegesis of Manichean american political rhetoric!
posted on Feb-21-03 at 8:37 PM
War as national therapy- revisiting the Gulf War: (scroll down 5 paragraphs to "Powell and the Persian Gulf War") Some 100,000 retreating Iraqi troops were incinerated, blown to bits, etc. (Schwarzkopf's estimate) with unexpectedly light US casualties (383 from all causes). “Even in Vietnam I didn’t see anything like this. It’s pathetic.“ said Major Bob Nugent, Army intelligence officer. But the stunning victory - and the ensuing US euphoria - were almost sabatoged by a Russian peace plan.... "The President's problem was how to say no to Gorbachev without appearing to throw away a chance for peace"(wrote Colin Powell in American Journey) “We have to have a war,” Bush told his inner circle of Secretary of State James Baker, national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and Powell" (narrates Bob Woodward)...."Fear of a peace deal at the Bush White House [wrote columnists Evans and Novak] had less to do with oil, Israel or Iraqi expansionism than with the bitter legacy of a lost war. 'This is the chance to get rid of the Vietnam Syndrome,' one senior aide told us." Peace threatened, but Colin Powell had a plan......
posted on Feb-16-03 at 2:26 PM
US Bureau of Indian Affairs 'misplaces' about $137 billion "...hundreds of thousands of Indians in the largest-ever class-action lawsuit against the government have put the cumulative total at $137.2 billion owed [royalties due from BIA leasing of Indian land for lucrative mineral, oil, logging, cattle grazing, and other concessions]....Sometimes the checks might arrive for hundreds or thousands of dollars, and sometimes those checks might only amount to pennies on the dollar. On Indian reservations, the problem has reached crisis levels; a check written out for a smaller amount than expected—or no check at all—can mean the difference between housing and homelessness. " ....but we don't have the money, I told you: it must have fallen out through that hole in my pants' pocket... Treaty, what treaty? Oh, that treaty....
posted on Feb-13-03 at 12:35 PM
Thailand launches national "Bust-Boosting" campaign - "In an almost surreal scene, rows of women in shorts and T-shirts massaged and squeezed their breasts in front of the crowd of officials, media and onlookers on a busy Bangkok street....The health ministry said the idea was to show Thai women that there was another, more natural way, of boosting their breast size than plastic surgery. ...Cosmetic surgery is an extremely popular and lucrative business in Thailand....Bangkok is renowned for its inexpensive, but not always reliable, plastic surgeons." (via BBC) Here's a history of the slogan "We must, we must, we must increase our bust"
posted on Feb-12-03 at 10:11 AM
A short, creepy yarn, and easily dismissed... "The loss of the Columbia space shuttle is suffused with symbols begging for attention. Columbia is named, in part, after Christopher Columbus and symbolically points to the very discovery of the American nation. Strangely, on the threshold of America's preemptive invasion of Iraq to eliminate its weapons of mass destruction, the shuttle's hold contained the first Israeli astronaut who in 1981 himself participated in a preemptive attack on an Iraqi nuclear reactor to eliminate its capacity for developing weapons of mass destruction. An uncanny echo, but certainly not the only one...As we are on the precipice of a war with Iraq, the whole Arab world screams that it is not Iraq but America's relationship with Israel and the Palestinian crisis that is the root cause of all Arab anti-American sentiment and certainly all terrorism. Suddenly the Columbia crashes with an Israeli astronaut over George Bush's home state as debris rains down on "Palestine, Texas."
posted on Feb-6-03 at 7:48 PM
Pyongyang's crosshairs on US Capital "A propaganda poster released by North Korea depicts the country's struggle with the United States over the North's nuclear program." - poster shows North Korean soldier with large shells looking at Capital building crumbling from a large explosion. (NYT)
posted on Feb-1-03 at 6:04 AM
"Documenting the orgasm": An interview with Annie Sprinkle : "I have a vision for the future where all the necessary sex education will be available for everyone; there will be no more need for abortion, no more sexually transmitted diseases. No one will ever go hungry for sex because there will be sex kitchens all over town serving sex instead of soup."
posted on Jan-25-03 at 10:42 PM
Media covers massive D.C. (and world) Anti-War protests, discounts numbers - Backflash: NPR and the NYT later issued apologies for their drastic undercounting of the Oct. 26 D.C. Anti-War protest - later admitted to be between 100,000 and 200,000 in size "...It was not as large as the organizers of the protest had predicted. They had said there would be 100,000 people here. I'd say there are fewer than 10,000"(NPR's Nancy Marshall) Last saturday's D.C. AntiWar protest received far more media coverage but a similar discounting of the numbers. IndyMedia (above link) provided numbers more in line with D.C. Police statements. Many media outlets ran the same AP news feed. [NYT, NPR , CNN, ABC, AP] and claimed..."Thousands" or "tens of thousands" of protesters. But in the words of those who witnessed it (as I did - 2.5 times size of Oct. 26 protest, from what I saw): 'D.C. police chief Charles Ramsey said, "It's one of the biggest ones we've had, certainly in recent times." U.S. Capitol Police chief Terrance Gainer said, "I know everyone is skittish about saying a number, but this was big. An impressive number." A C-SPAN cameraman I spoke to spent the entire protest on the roof of a cargo truck just to the side of the stage. He told me that he had covered dozens of protests in his time, and that the crowd on Saturday was the biggest he had ever seen.' (story) and organizers claimed 500,000 marched in DC meanwhile, a new poll shows support for a war on Iraq is slipping in the US and also dropping at the UN
posted on Jan-20-03 at 11:49 AM
US income distribution moves towards 3rd world profile? - US Census Bureau data on growing family income inequality, 1947 to 2001. Also see: The "L Curve" (for a graphic depiction of current US wealth distribution). "The most egalitarian countries have a Gini index in the 20s. European countries like Germany, Austria, Belgium, Hungary, Poland, Norway, and Sweden all fall in that range, according to World Bank figures. Canada and Australia are just over 30. The United States is around 40...Once inequality reaches 50 percent, disparities become glaringly obvious, to the point where they undermine a society's sense of unity and common purpose....Sierra Leone takes the prize. At 63 percent, it offers the world's most extreme example of inequality." By multiple measures, income inequality in the US is rapidly increasing, and a substantial percentage of middle class Americans may be gradually sliding into poverty..
posted on Jan-15-03 at 10:42 AM
Latest cyberbegging: Help 2 nice Boston lesbians make a baby "What we're saving up for is SPERM! That's right ... those little swimmers cost a bundle...the sperm itself, which heterosexual women get for free all the time, intentionally or otherwise, costs a bundle! Upwards of $250 for a single shot." It seems to me that there might be...cheaper methods, but I would sooner give the 2 nice girls $ than this guy: "I don't have love, don't have career, the only thing is to pay more debts. now, I got very bad fever, and I could feel this world is gray. "
posted on Jan-7-03 at 12:14 PM
Proliferation 101: North Korea, included in the Bush Administration's "Axis of Evil" (and cited as a potential target for US attack), revives it's nuclear weapons program. And while the US has stated " 'We will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes and terrorists to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons.'... there is no sign that this new unconditional doctrine will be directed against North Korea." (NYTimes)
posted on Jan-1-03 at 7:16 AM
Betting on Mini-Cows "ROCKWELL, Iowa -- Dustin Pillard is betting his farm on compact cows...Pillard has 50 tiny cows on his northern Iowa farm" MEANWHILE..."In a May dispatch from Cuba, the Wall Street Journal reported that Fidel Castro proposed in 1987 to alleviate a chronic milk shortage by trying to get his scientists to clone the most productive cows, shrunk to the size of dogs so that each family could keep one inside it's apartment. The cows would feed on grass grown inside under fluorescent lights." Now I'd like a mini-polar bear, please, and a mini-elephant, while you're at it...
posted on Dec-28-02 at 10:32 AM
Meet Senator Burns (R-Montana) "...The senator said the rancher asked him, "Conrad, how can you live back there with all those niggers?"...Senator Burns said he told the rancher it was"a hell of a challenge."...The anecdote was published and Senator Burns apologized...in 1991, immediately after a civil rights bill had been passed, Senator Burns invited a group of lobbyists, some of them white and some of them black, to accompany him to an auction....When asked what was being auctioned, he replied, "Slaves."
posted on Dec-19-02 at 7:46 AM
"The mind has no Firewall" A discussion on the development of "Psychotronic" weapons From the US Army publication, 'Parameters': "An entirely new arsenal of weapons, based on devices designed to introduce subliminal messages or to alter the body's psychological and data-processing capabilities, might be used to incapacitate individuals." Ominous? Inevitable?
posted on Dec-16-02 at 9:07 AM
2002 looks like 2nd warmest year on record (since recordkeeping of global temperatures began in 1867, that is) and glaciers are melting faster then ever - 30 years from now, after the great climate catastrophe of '017, when kids ask me what I did to avert it, I'll say - "see, there was this internet blog called metafilter that I'd post bad environmental news to sometimes ...what was the internet? what was a "blog"? why didn't I do more? well, there were these people called "skeptics", and there was this other thing called "the war on terrorism", and it all seemed so distant and speculative and we were all so busy, and it was hard to get around without a car, and the dogs needed to be walked, and I needed to have a cavity filled, and there was all that laundry, and my big toe hurt, and, and..."
posted on Dec-14-02 at 10:56 AM
"Tornado in a Can" "To test their theory, the Vortex folks have thrown in rocks, diapers, tomatoes, sweet potato rejects from the farm down the road, 400 pounds of Oreo cookies, frozen pizza dough, even a dead bird.....The jellyfish, however, are a first." picture of "Tornado-in-a-Can" that sure is a big can. don't try this at home, folks
posted on Dec-13-02 at 7:50 AM
The Perpetual War Fund - First there was the Vice Fund (covered in Mefi Sept. 3). Now, The Perpetual War Portfolio: "an evenly weighted basket of five stocks poised to succeed in the age of perpetual war. The stocks were selected on the basis of popular product lines, strong political connections and lobbying efforts, and paid-for access to key Congressional decision makers." Somebody's going to profit from the machineries of death. Why not you?
posted on Dec-12-02 at 6:26 AM
Toad licking - Ever been tempted? DON'T: read this magisterial blog piece on the dangers of Toadlicking first!. But for a really fun time, look for this hilarious documentary at your local independant video store: "Cane Toads: An Unnatural History": "When the Australian sugarcane crop was attacked by beetles, someone decided to import cane toads to combat the pests. But somebody didn't do their homework: beetles can fly, but cane toads can't. What can cane toads do? Reproduce, big time..." [I'll graciously leave the post on Australian plagues - of rabbits, toads, and so on - for somebody else. Then, of course, there's Kudzu and Killer Bees...]
posted on Dec-5-02 at 8:23 AM
Strange Bedfellows fight tyranny? - Bob Barr, Dick Armey to join ACLU Quoth James Madison: (Federalist Papers #47) - "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." and Benjamin Franklin:"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." William Safire Slammed the Bush Adminstration (Nov 15) over John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness program. NOW: Bob Barr, a gun-rights anti-gay firebrand conservative to join the ACLU? Dick Armey's joining as a consultant? Say that again? And Nat Hentoff reports that the Journal Gazette of Fort Wayne, Indiana ran a broadside called (sept. 8) "Attacks on Liberty" - "In the name of national security, President Bush, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and even Congress have pulled strand after strand out of the constitutional fabric that distinguishes the United States from other nations. . . . Actions taken over the past year are eerily reminiscent of tyranny portrayed in the most nightmarish works of fiction" MEANWHILE...an email of an editorial by right wing radio personality Chuck Baldwin, "Bush Government 'Out of Control' ("The Bush administration seems determined to turn our country into the most elaborate and sophisticated police state ever devised") first published in an online Christian Fundamentalist antiabortion newpaper is making the (right wing) rounds. It asks: "Does that mean one must leave the Republican Party in order to fight for liberty?" [antitroll protection dislaimer: most Democrats signed the Patriot Act, the principle cause of concern behind the statements and editorials linked to on this post]
posted on Nov-27-02 at 10:53 AM
100 year average shows "stock market prefers Democratic presidents to Republicans" - "President George W. Bush inherited the lousy end of the business cycle...[however]...Slate ran the numbers and found that since 1900, Democratic presidents have produced a 12.3 percent annual total return on the S&P 500, but Republicans only an 8 percent return. [from Slate] Meanwhile, deficit spending [NYT reg. req.] is back in fashion -Guess I'm putting my $ in gold.....
posted on Nov-20-02 at 7:44 AM
The Political Graveyard -- It all started innocently enough.....I was reading a piece by a professor of media and journalism studies who wondered: Was Paul Wellstone murdered?" and cited an unusual number of democrats who had died in plane crashes. Was it true, I wondered? -- My search led me to The Political Graveyard, with it's endless categorizations of the details in the deaths of US politicians. Deaths by religious affiliation, politicians killed by poison or gunfights, opium overdoses or car crashes. But was it true? Yes, the site seemed to confirm the deaths (for the last 3 decades or so) of a statistically anomalous number of national democratic politicians (sitting or running for office) in plane crashes....but the site just grabbed me and wouldn't let me leave: Charles Tillinghast James (1805-1862): died while making his own cannon, Richard Ellis (1781-1846): died when his clothes suddenly caught fire, Thomas Caute Reynolds (1821-1887): killed himself by leaping down an elevator shaft, Sidney Theodore Roebuck (1901-1982): died from RAT poison, and MY FAVORITE, Elmer Severson (1922-1999), who died from spinal cord injuries he lost a "tussle with a cow"
posted on Nov-1-02 at 3:01 PM
CIA funds "alternative" media through nonprofit foundations? "The multi-billion dollar Ford Foundation's historic relationship to the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] is rarely mentioned on Pacifica's DEMOCRACY NOW / Deep Dish TV show, on FAIR's COUNTERSPIN show, on the WORKING ASSETS RADIO show, on The Nation Institute's RADIO NATION show, on David Barsamian's ALTERNATIVE RADIO show or in the pages of PROGRESSIVE, MOTHER JONES and Z magazine. One reason may be because the Ford Foundation and other Establishment foundations subsidize the Establishment Left's alternative media gatekeepers / censors" -- heavy claims. A several part report, in considerable detail. My note - the Mexican PRI, when it ran Mexico, used to fund a whole constellation of Mexican Leftist groups - the threat of withdrawing funding $ proved a very effective way of keeping dissent within "safe" limits.
posted on Oct-30-02 at 12:48 PM
"Cops of the World": remembering Phil Ochs -------------------------------------------- Ochs lyrics: “We're hairy and horny and ready to shack. We don't care if you're yellow or black. Just take off your clothes and lie down on your back.'Cause we're the Cops of the World, boys. We're the Cops of the World.”------------ LISTEN to his songs (realplayer/quicktime) Amidst the unilateralist talk of invading Iraq, and the (mostly media ignored) “biggest anti-war protests since the Vietnam War” [quote-Wash.Post,Oct. 27] last saturday, I thought of Phil Ochs......some of his songs [see Ochs lyrics index] haven't aged well, but some are still as searingly acidic as the day he wrote them, as above or in ”Love me, I’m a liberal”:“Once I was young and impulsive, I wore every conceivable pin...But I've grown older and wiser, and that's why I'm turning you in. So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal.” ------- Phil Ochs ------- (born 1940, suicide 1976)
posted on Oct-29-02 at 5:42 AM
A secret industrial plot to curb male aggression? Study shows PCB's, Dioxin are making men into sissies! A secret Republican/industrialist plot? Hang on to your huevos! - A new study reveals that "prenatal exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and dioxins can influence play behaviors that reflect gender differences....Higher prenatal exposure to PCBs was associated with less masculinized play behavior in boys and more masculinized play behavior in girls. In boys as well as in girls, higher prenatal dioxin levels were associated with more feminized play behavior."
posted on Oct-24-02 at 3:50 PM
Hyping the Sniper scared? Are you safely bunkered down at home watching Sniper Network News? Or do you, all spocklike and rational, calculate your risk from sniper fire from CDC mortality tables and conclude that death by sniper is only a little more likely than death by falling coconuts? Or do you decide to make your own 50 caliber sniper rifle in your home workshop to get them before they get you?
posted on Oct-23-02 at 10:03 AM
A new type of Anti War Protest: $ for PACs ”MoveOnPAC.org, an Internet site, has raised more than $1 million in 48 hours for what it calls four "heroes" of Congress who opposed the Iraq resolution.” (Wash. Post article 10/17). Better than marching in DC? I gave.
posted on Oct-19-02 at 1:53 PM
Hubbert's Peak: the impending oil shortage Is this the REAL reason behind the push to invade Iraq? In 1956. M. King Hubbert, a respected petroleum geologist, predicted - to within a year! - the peak in US oil production: 1970. US oil production has declined every year since. Using the same statistical methods, others now predict a world peak in oil production within a decade or even as early as 2006.
posted on Oct-18-02 at 1:38 PM
"I'm not sure which planet they live on" While Wesley Clark stumps for War on Public Radio’s darling station WBUR, “Hawks in the Bush administration may be making deadly miscalculations on Iraq, says Gen. Anthony Zinni, Bush's Middle East envoy.” To answer Zinni’s question: they’re certainly NOT living on planet “accidental armageddon”, or planet “C.I.A. Warns That a U.S. Attack May Ignite Terror” or planet "Butler Fears Israel could Use Nukes". I’d say they’re on planet Shifting rationals for war, planet Pax Americana, planet “Bullish on War”, planet “G.I.Joe’s Forward Command Post”, planet “Universal US Draft”, planet “Blanket immunity for US” and when they’re not thinking about war, they go to planet “upward wealth transfer” and also hang out sometimes at planet “genetically targeted weapons as politically usefull tools and perception reengineering via nanobots, psychedelic drugs and valium” But they stay far away from planet “Origins of Fascism in the US”. And they hang garlic on their beds to ward off planet "Is Bush a commie mole trying to destroy capitalism?" from the Krugman nebula.
posted on Oct-17-02 at 10:29 AM
Elephant in the living room: A radical Islamic Nuclear Pakistan (NYT reg. : name-metafilter password-metafilter) "Hard-line Islamic parties did unexpectedly well in Pakistan's election last week, and Pervez Musharraf's hold on power may be slipping. Do I need to point out that Pakistan is a lot bigger than Iraq, and already has nuclear weapons?...These guys [Bush Adm]want to fight a conventional war; since Al Qaeda won't oblige, they'll attack someone else who will [Iraq]. And watching from the alley, the terrorists are pleased. " -Paul Krugman, once again forced to state the obvious; the US is, effectively, helping with Al Qaeda's goal of radicalizing Islamic populations. In parts of Pakistan, they call Musharaff "Busharaff", and Nick Kristoff notes "Even in Kuwait, where Yankees have the best possible claim on Arab gratitude, a significant minority of men and women regard us as worms" and that "The most common name given to Pakistani boys born after 9/11 in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province reportedly was Osama." What does this have to do with a war in Iraq? Well.........
posted on Oct-15-02 at 9:19 AM
US Dept. of Education to erase website info which "does not reflect the priorities, philosophies, or goals of the present administration." Can you say 1984? Say it now....OVER and OVER and OVER again so you can GET USED TO IT......a brutal, clever strategy of the Bush Adm.to rewrite reality: erase problematic info and then channel money to people willing to produce the right stuff. Samizdat opportunity -- use a website capture program: WebWhacker costs $, but there are freeware site suckers available too. Orwell is turning in his grave.....Download and archive this stuff before it gets erased. Remember, Information Wants to Be Free!...or does it?
posted on Oct-10-02 at 10:46 PM
Reality check from Swiss Re and UNEP "The increasing frequency of severe climatic events...has the potential to stress insurers, reinsurers and banks to the point of impaired viability or even insolvency." "Climate Change and the Financial Services Industry", a UNEP report supported by 295 banks and insurance and investment companies around the world. The report concludes that, worldwide, loses from Climate related disasters are doubling every decade . NOAA generally concurs. Dr. Bob Gagosian, Director of Woods Hole, has even worse news. Should we take the scientific mainstream seriously? Or is it all "Junk Science"according to the industry funded Steve Milloy or the CEI, or even a New Age Pagan Conspiracy? Play on little humans......play on.....
posted on Oct-9-02 at 3:02 PM
"Worst case is modern Armaggedon" Dick Cheney reportedly has ambitious plans to chop Iraq into little pieces but Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham worries that terrorist attacks against Americans were "highly likely" in the event of a war with Iraq, which Graham thinks could escalate into "modern Armaggedon". Also worried or unimpressed by the Bush Adminstration's rational for war (flash) a few Americans protested . The NYT and the Washington Post ignored the large protests in Britain, but nobody could ignore it when 1.5 million Italians hit the streets. Guess it's war anyway, eh?
posted on Oct-7-02 at 2:41 PM
posted on May-12-03 at 4:31 AM
Dalai Llama muses: meditating monk sets "positive emotion" record : The 14th Dalai Llama, Tenzin Gyatso, muses on new research on the benefits of mindfulness meditation: "A University of Wisconsin-Madison research team has found that a small amount of "mindfulness meditation" results in positive, lasting changes in the brain and immune system." The mainstream medical community in the U.S. has now acknowledge the significant benefits of mindfulness meditatiion - "...a significant decrease in symptoms, both during and after the course."
[ Tenzin Gyatso ] "The calamity of 9/11 demonstrated that modern technology and human intelligence guided by hatred can lead to immense destruction. Such terrible acts are a violent symptom of an afflicted mental state. To respond wisely and effectively, we need to be guided by more healthy states of mind, not just to avoid feeding the flames of hatred, but to respond skillfully. We would do well to remember that the war against hatred and terror can be waged on this, the internal front, too.".....I once was host to Tenzin Gyatso's brother and several other Tibetan monks for a few weeks - and was never again quite the same. So, when Tenzin Gyatso speaks, I listen.
posted on Apr-25-03 at 9:33 PM
I yearn for your tasty flesh
[ Gene Study Finds Cannibal Pattern ] - "Deep in the recesses of the human heart, lurking guiltily beneath the threshold of consciousness, there may lie a depraved craving — for the forbidden taste of human flesh. The basis for this morbid accusation, made by a team of researchers in London, is a genetic signature, found almost worldwide, that points to a long history of cannibalism" (NYT)
posted on Apr-11-03 at 11:10 AM
Gracefull bipeds, miniature robot ballets.... Titled by the BBC as "Humanoid robots wow Japanese", The world's largest robot exhibit this weekend in Yokahama features Asimo by Honda ["Asimo can now recognise individual faces and can understand gestures as well as spoken commands. Meet him once and he never forgets, responding by approaching and calling your name on subsequent meetings."] as well as Sony's newest Aibo accesories and their stunning SDR-4X ll, a biped sporting "fluid walking motion and lifelike gestures." Epson Seiko caught my attention, though, with their dozen tiny Bluetooth controlled 12.5 gram Monsieur ll-P robot prototypes which executed a miniature choreographed ballet.
Pretty soon they'll be scuttling around on our walls like cockroaches, watching us......
posted on Apr-5-03 at 9:26 AM
A Pyrrhic victory in a catastrophic "March of Folly"? - historian Barbara Tuchman asked: why do leaders persist in pursuing catastrophic policies? Regardless of Baath regime executions of Iraqis, the Islamic world will witness mainly "American Atrocities" - and be outraged by gruesome images, on Al Jazeera and elsewhere, of every single child killed by American bombs. Iraqi tactics - of suicide bombing, ambushes, and faked surrenders - will erase the civilian/combatant distinction, leading to more and more incidents like this (to be televised to an appalled Islamic world): and all this merely a foreshadow of what may be urban warfare on a scale seldom seen in the 20th century. Grozny comes to mind. Mainstream US media asserts that the solution for the whole "miscalculation" is just more US troops
But the war is tailor made to provoke tribalistic, Pan-Islamic fury (and corresponding, furiously tribalistic US patriotic support for war). Escalation is in the air: statements by Rumsfeld, Powell, and the US State Dept. indicate an awareness that the current war could spread, drawing in Syria and Iran. Consequences also could include the destabilization or the takeover, of nuclear armed Pakistan, by Islamic militants, and a Nuclear miltarization across a wide region, from Iraq to Japan.
If only this were "South Park: The Movie", where the onset of Armaggeddon can be stopped by an heroic act of sacrifice by Kenny.
posted on Mar-31-03 at 9:19 AM
GW Bush's exploding frogs, a 50" plasma TV, and a "Bend Me Over Baby" DVD - Shoving firecrackers into the mouths of frogs, then tossing them into the air to watch them explode and, later, mocking Death-Row inmates. ...OK, little boys and frogs; nothing unusual here. I used to burn ants with a magnifying glass. And I've tossed off some off color jokes. But then there's this this: according to Amazon.UK.com, shoppers who liked the "Panasonic TH-50PHW3B 50" Plasma Display" also purchased "The Leadership Genius of George W. Bush: 10 Common Sense Lessons from the Commander-in-chief" ", Bend Me Over Baby" ( DVD ), and "Spread Them Wide" (DVD). What does it mean? [via meehawl.com]
posted on Mar-23-03 at 8:48 PM
As one, the students shouted, "Strength through discipline!" - "The Third Wave", A Dangerous Experiment. More disturbing even than the "Milgram Experiment": "When Ron Jones started teaching at Cubberley High School in the fall of 1968, it was considered the most innovative of Palo Alto's high schools. ....His methods were experimental and his goal was to bring social studies to life.....Jones turned his class into an efficient youth organization, which he called the Third Wave. Some students were informers, and some were told they couldn't go certain places on campus. He insisted on rigid posture and that questions be answered formally and quickly....."It was strange how quickly the students took to a uniform code of behavior. I began to wonder just how far they cold be pushed," Jones wrote....But soon the experiment began spinning out of control.... five days into the experiment, Jones announced, "We can bring (the nation) a new sense of order, community, pride, and action. Everything rests on you and your willingness to take a stand." As one, the students shouted, "Strength through discipline!" ". Ron Jones wrote about it in No substitute for Madness, which is out of print in English but required reading in German public schools. As Umberto Eco notes in "Eternal Fascism", this is a timeless tale of human nature.
posted on Mar-22-03 at 8:28 AM
Adopt-a-Pagan-Soldier - No pagans in foxholes? Think again! Meanwhile, the Adopt-a-Soldier movement gains momentum. Heed this well, opponents of the ongoing invasion (or liberation) of Iraq: US troops did not engineer the plan for a "Pax Americana" which underlies the US action in Iraq. No, they were pulled away from their families and their jobs, and lack basic necessities: such as SPF-30 sunscreen, and chapstick. Send them a care package. And while you are at it, why not donate to the UN Refugee Fund set up to cope with an expected 1 millon or so refugees, and a possible humanitarian disaster, in Iraq?
posted on Mar-20-03 at 9:39 PM
Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing : "To offer a psychological explanation for the atrocities committed by perpetrators is not to forgive, justify or condone their behavior. Instead, the explanation simply allows us to understand the conditions under which many of us could be transformed into killing machines." (James Waller) In a Salon interview about his widely acclaimed, pathbreaking book Waller states, "Most people don't understand how easy it is to develop us-them [mindsets]......In our climate of fear in response to terrorism, I think we could pretty easily turn on people who have been our neighbors."
posted on Mar-17-03 at 9:19 AM
"Weapons of Mass Destruction", you say? Question: If Iraq is the vicious rat and North Korea the furious pygmy of WMD threats, where is the 800 pound gorilla? Answer - "...law enforcement officials worldwide have seized 40 kilograms of Russian-origin uranium and plutonium since 1991. Stanford researchers have also estimated that only 30 to 40 percent of the nuclear material stolen from facilities in Russia and other territories in the former Soviet Union are ever recovered by authorities." the collapse of the Soviet Union left vast stores of Nuclear weapons and weapons grade plutonium and uranium, and stocks of chemical and biological warfare agents lying about at dangerously underfunded facillities scattered through the vast expanse of the ex-Soviet realm. "Russian stockpiles of weapons and materials are the most likely source for terrorists attempting to acquire weapons of mass destruction", said US Senator Richard Lugar, Republican chairman of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee. An international effort to destroy these stores of ex-Soviet WMD's is currently funded at a tiny fraction of the estimated cost of a possible US invasion and occupation of Iraq. (more inside)
posted on Mar-16-03 at 6:52 AM
Face Transplants : "...the harvesting or ''degloving'' of a face would take approximately two hours, depending on the depth of the excision. It is possible to remove not just skin and subcutaneous fat and muscle but....part of the donor's bone and cartilage as well. Still, the deeper the cut, the more complex becomes the reattachment."
posted on Mar-12-03 at 11:06 AM
Laptops transform learning for 7th graders in rural Maine : It "was more controversial than abortion, gay rights or even clear cutting," said former Gov. Angus King. But "Just six months after Maine began a controversial [and first in the nation] program to provide laptop computers to every seventh grader in the state, educators are impressed by how quickly students and teachers have adapted to laptop technology."(NYT)
posted on Mar-11-03 at 10:23 AM
"Toronto flings garbage at Michigan" no no!... - US Courts Canadian Crud! ...Eh?, well, OK: Toronto trucks it's tons 'o trash across the border to dump in Michigan landfills, and some Yanks are eager to buy, although others..."It's so disgusting we don't even talk about it...Why can't they keep their garbage over there?" .....[''We need to put an end to this desecration of our beautiful state,'' fumed Representative Candice S. Miller, Republican of Michigan who also warned that terrorists or weapons of mass destruction could be concealed amidst the rotting food and used diapers.] ......"Relations between the United States and Canada have been souring for two years....Canada's wishy-washy stance on the Iraq crisis...has irked Washington" chides the Boston Globe, clearly piqued that Boston is not in a position to catapult cannisters of it's garbage and toxic waste northward at Canada, towards the "Great Concavity" of David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest". [other shades of "....Jest" loom as "...a reputed haven for terror groups." whispers the Globe...just like in Wallace's book!] .....Toronto can't find any Canadian communities willing to furnish an immense garbage pit, while "Michigan's underused landfills are famous for courting crud from outside the state's borders.": They approached Toronto with the deal. ["Ontario, meanwhile, accepts imports of toxic industrial sludge, low-level radioactive waste, and other dangerous refuse from Michigan and other US states."] Garbage is a protected "free trade" commodity under NAFTA and Michigan may need the 'trash jobs': NAFTA has spurred automakers to shift production away from the US and build new factories in Canada and Mexico. Canada's auto factories are 7% more productive than US ones and have lower health care costs. ["The growth of imports to the U.S. from these factories has contributed substantially to the growing U.S. trade deficit and the related job losses."]. So: Canada sends garbage and shiny new autos south: the US sends radioactive sludge, spittle, jobs and curses north.
Meanwhile, walk across the border and the murder rate per 100,000 (per year) drops from 42.6 (Detroit, USA) to 2.2 (Windsor, Canada): "Are Canadians somehow flinging all their fear and murderous rage into the US along with the garbage?" (asks the Daily Tabloid)
posted on Mar-10-03 at 5:11 AM
US Lets N. Korea Get Nuclear Data (Boston Globe) "Transfer Pact Stays in Effect: WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has not suspended or revoked the authority of Westinghouse Co. to transfer documents related to nuclear technology to North Korea, despite the fact that the Asian nation has admitted that it violated terms of a nonproliferation agreement it signed with Washington in 1994, US Department of Energy documents show."
posted on Mar-8-03 at 8:09 AM
DIVE! DIVE! DIVE! - Markets in free fall. Remember the heady DotCom bubble days, and innocuous scandals - Clinton & Monica,the cigar?! Then, WHAM: 9-11, Enron, Worldcom et. al, the push for invasion of Iraq, ballooning deficits, while a new US neocolonial American ideology of preemption suggests more invasions to come - with a worldwide surge in anti-American attitudes. "Irrational Exuberance" turned to terror, fear, worry, anger, rage. What possible train of events and U.S. government policies could more efficiently send world economic markets into free fall? Hold on: it was a two decade long ride up - the ride down has merely begun. Those among us with a few spare billion lying around will wait until the bottom, and buy on the cheap. For everyone else, it's bankruptcy, frugality, middle class decline, cans 'o beans and darned socks. But cheer up: play, joy, creativity, generosity, indeed love itself - and also the classic "recreation of the poor" are all free.
posted on Mar-7-03 at 7:34 AM
RIFT: in "The madness of empire", American Conservative Magazine breaks with Neoconservatism. Meanwhile Norman Mailer, in Gaining an empire, losing democracy? warns "America is going to become a mega-banana republic where the army will have more and more importance...democracy, noble and delicate as it is, may give way".
What can we say about a nation so powerfull that it can simply bury thousands of troublesome humans with bulldozers?
posted on Feb-27-03 at 5:45 AM
The troll gap - Despite heroic American efforts such as the "Kick/nuke their ass and take the gas" troll, "Each year, the Institute for Comparative Troll Studies publishes a report on the state of trolling vis a vis national security of the United States. This year, the outlook is not good..."(via Kuro5hin)
posted on Feb-25-03 at 7:42 AM
Synthetic Trees could purify the air - "It looks like a goal post with Venetian blinds," said the Columbia University physicist...synthetic trees could help clean up an atmosphere grown heavy with carbon dioxide..."You can be a thousand times better than a living tree...There are a number of engineering issues which need to be worked out," he said. (BBC) Hurry up, then - "Ice dams are blocking Latvian ports, winds and storms are battering Europe, Portugal is freezing, Vietnam has lost one-third its rice crop, and the cold has caused close to 2,000 deaths in usually temperate South Asia."
posted on Feb-23-03 at 9:00 PM
Into the Garden of Good and Evil - Muhammad Iqbal's "THE DEVELOPMENT OF METAPHYSICS IN PERSIA" (first published in 1908 and free online courtesy the Bahai's): "The most remarkable feature of the character of the Persian people is their love of Metaphysical speculation." Strong, bipolar Good vs. Evil distinctions, and the notion of a cosmic struggle between the two, seem to have originated in ancient Persia as Persian Dualism. See Manicheanism here, here (warning-spurious windows), and here. Special bonus - Freepers fulminate over a German theologian's exegesis of Manichean american political rhetoric!
posted on Feb-21-03 at 8:37 PM
War as national therapy- revisiting the Gulf War: (scroll down 5 paragraphs to "Powell and the Persian Gulf War") Some 100,000 retreating Iraqi troops were incinerated, blown to bits, etc. (Schwarzkopf's estimate) with unexpectedly light US casualties (383 from all causes). “Even in Vietnam I didn’t see anything like this. It’s pathetic.“ said Major Bob Nugent, Army intelligence officer. But the stunning victory - and the ensuing US euphoria - were almost sabatoged by a Russian peace plan.... "The President's problem was how to say no to Gorbachev without appearing to throw away a chance for peace"(wrote Colin Powell in American Journey) “We have to have a war,” Bush told his inner circle of Secretary of State James Baker, national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and Powell" (narrates Bob Woodward)...."Fear of a peace deal at the Bush White House [wrote columnists Evans and Novak] had less to do with oil, Israel or Iraqi expansionism than with the bitter legacy of a lost war. 'This is the chance to get rid of the Vietnam Syndrome,' one senior aide told us." Peace threatened, but Colin Powell had a plan......
posted on Feb-16-03 at 2:26 PM
US Bureau of Indian Affairs 'misplaces' about $137 billion "...hundreds of thousands of Indians in the largest-ever class-action lawsuit against the government have put the cumulative total at $137.2 billion owed [royalties due from BIA leasing of Indian land for lucrative mineral, oil, logging, cattle grazing, and other concessions]....Sometimes the checks might arrive for hundreds or thousands of dollars, and sometimes those checks might only amount to pennies on the dollar. On Indian reservations, the problem has reached crisis levels; a check written out for a smaller amount than expected—or no check at all—can mean the difference between housing and homelessness. " ....but we don't have the money, I told you: it must have fallen out through that hole in my pants' pocket... Treaty, what treaty? Oh, that treaty....
posted on Feb-13-03 at 12:35 PM
Thailand launches national "Bust-Boosting" campaign - "In an almost surreal scene, rows of women in shorts and T-shirts massaged and squeezed their breasts in front of the crowd of officials, media and onlookers on a busy Bangkok street....The health ministry said the idea was to show Thai women that there was another, more natural way, of boosting their breast size than plastic surgery. ...Cosmetic surgery is an extremely popular and lucrative business in Thailand....Bangkok is renowned for its inexpensive, but not always reliable, plastic surgeons." (via BBC) Here's a history of the slogan "We must, we must, we must increase our bust"
posted on Feb-12-03 at 10:11 AM
A short, creepy yarn, and easily dismissed... "The loss of the Columbia space shuttle is suffused with symbols begging for attention. Columbia is named, in part, after Christopher Columbus and symbolically points to the very discovery of the American nation. Strangely, on the threshold of America's preemptive invasion of Iraq to eliminate its weapons of mass destruction, the shuttle's hold contained the first Israeli astronaut who in 1981 himself participated in a preemptive attack on an Iraqi nuclear reactor to eliminate its capacity for developing weapons of mass destruction. An uncanny echo, but certainly not the only one...As we are on the precipice of a war with Iraq, the whole Arab world screams that it is not Iraq but America's relationship with Israel and the Palestinian crisis that is the root cause of all Arab anti-American sentiment and certainly all terrorism. Suddenly the Columbia crashes with an Israeli astronaut over George Bush's home state as debris rains down on "Palestine, Texas."
posted on Feb-6-03 at 7:48 PM
Pyongyang's crosshairs on US Capital "A propaganda poster released by North Korea depicts the country's struggle with the United States over the North's nuclear program." - poster shows North Korean soldier with large shells looking at Capital building crumbling from a large explosion. (NYT)
posted on Feb-1-03 at 6:04 AM
"Documenting the orgasm": An interview with Annie Sprinkle : "I have a vision for the future where all the necessary sex education will be available for everyone; there will be no more need for abortion, no more sexually transmitted diseases. No one will ever go hungry for sex because there will be sex kitchens all over town serving sex instead of soup."
posted on Jan-25-03 at 10:42 PM
Media covers massive D.C. (and world) Anti-War protests, discounts numbers - Backflash: NPR and the NYT later issued apologies for their drastic undercounting of the Oct. 26 D.C. Anti-War protest - later admitted to be between 100,000 and 200,000 in size "...It was not as large as the organizers of the protest had predicted. They had said there would be 100,000 people here. I'd say there are fewer than 10,000"(NPR's Nancy Marshall) Last saturday's D.C. AntiWar protest received far more media coverage but a similar discounting of the numbers. IndyMedia (above link) provided numbers more in line with D.C. Police statements. Many media outlets ran the same AP news feed. [NYT, NPR , CNN, ABC, AP] and claimed..."Thousands" or "tens of thousands" of protesters. But in the words of those who witnessed it (as I did - 2.5 times size of Oct. 26 protest, from what I saw): 'D.C. police chief Charles Ramsey said, "It's one of the biggest ones we've had, certainly in recent times." U.S. Capitol Police chief Terrance Gainer said, "I know everyone is skittish about saying a number, but this was big. An impressive number." A C-SPAN cameraman I spoke to spent the entire protest on the roof of a cargo truck just to the side of the stage. He told me that he had covered dozens of protests in his time, and that the crowd on Saturday was the biggest he had ever seen.' (story) and organizers claimed 500,000 marched in DC meanwhile, a new poll shows support for a war on Iraq is slipping in the US and also dropping at the UN
posted on Jan-20-03 at 11:49 AM
US income distribution moves towards 3rd world profile? - US Census Bureau data on growing family income inequality, 1947 to 2001. Also see: The "L Curve" (for a graphic depiction of current US wealth distribution). "The most egalitarian countries have a Gini index in the 20s. European countries like Germany, Austria, Belgium, Hungary, Poland, Norway, and Sweden all fall in that range, according to World Bank figures. Canada and Australia are just over 30. The United States is around 40...Once inequality reaches 50 percent, disparities become glaringly obvious, to the point where they undermine a society's sense of unity and common purpose....Sierra Leone takes the prize. At 63 percent, it offers the world's most extreme example of inequality." By multiple measures, income inequality in the US is rapidly increasing, and a substantial percentage of middle class Americans may be gradually sliding into poverty..
posted on Jan-15-03 at 10:42 AM
Latest cyberbegging: Help 2 nice Boston lesbians make a baby "What we're saving up for is SPERM! That's right ... those little swimmers cost a bundle...the sperm itself, which heterosexual women get for free all the time, intentionally or otherwise, costs a bundle! Upwards of $250 for a single shot." It seems to me that there might be...cheaper methods, but I would sooner give the 2 nice girls $ than this guy: "I don't have love, don't have career, the only thing is to pay more debts. now, I got very bad fever, and I could feel this world is gray. "
posted on Jan-7-03 at 12:14 PM
Proliferation 101: North Korea, included in the Bush Administration's "Axis of Evil" (and cited as a potential target for US attack), revives it's nuclear weapons program. And while the US has stated " 'We will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes and terrorists to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons.'... there is no sign that this new unconditional doctrine will be directed against North Korea." (NYTimes)
posted on Jan-1-03 at 7:16 AM
Betting on Mini-Cows "ROCKWELL, Iowa -- Dustin Pillard is betting his farm on compact cows...Pillard has 50 tiny cows on his northern Iowa farm" MEANWHILE..."In a May dispatch from Cuba, the Wall Street Journal reported that Fidel Castro proposed in 1987 to alleviate a chronic milk shortage by trying to get his scientists to clone the most productive cows, shrunk to the size of dogs so that each family could keep one inside it's apartment. The cows would feed on grass grown inside under fluorescent lights." Now I'd like a mini-polar bear, please, and a mini-elephant, while you're at it...
posted on Dec-28-02 at 10:32 AM
Meet Senator Burns (R-Montana) "...The senator said the rancher asked him, "Conrad, how can you live back there with all those niggers?"...Senator Burns said he told the rancher it was"a hell of a challenge."...The anecdote was published and Senator Burns apologized...in 1991, immediately after a civil rights bill had been passed, Senator Burns invited a group of lobbyists, some of them white and some of them black, to accompany him to an auction....When asked what was being auctioned, he replied, "Slaves."
posted on Dec-19-02 at 7:46 AM
"The mind has no Firewall" A discussion on the development of "Psychotronic" weapons From the US Army publication, 'Parameters': "An entirely new arsenal of weapons, based on devices designed to introduce subliminal messages or to alter the body's psychological and data-processing capabilities, might be used to incapacitate individuals." Ominous? Inevitable?
posted on Dec-16-02 at 9:07 AM
2002 looks like 2nd warmest year on record (since recordkeeping of global temperatures began in 1867, that is) and glaciers are melting faster then ever - 30 years from now, after the great climate catastrophe of '017, when kids ask me what I did to avert it, I'll say - "see, there was this internet blog called metafilter that I'd post bad environmental news to sometimes ...what was the internet? what was a "blog"? why didn't I do more? well, there were these people called "skeptics", and there was this other thing called "the war on terrorism", and it all seemed so distant and speculative and we were all so busy, and it was hard to get around without a car, and the dogs needed to be walked, and I needed to have a cavity filled, and there was all that laundry, and my big toe hurt, and, and..."
posted on Dec-14-02 at 10:56 AM
"Tornado in a Can" "To test their theory, the Vortex folks have thrown in rocks, diapers, tomatoes, sweet potato rejects from the farm down the road, 400 pounds of Oreo cookies, frozen pizza dough, even a dead bird.....The jellyfish, however, are a first." picture of "Tornado-in-a-Can" that sure is a big can. don't try this at home, folks
posted on Dec-13-02 at 7:50 AM
The Perpetual War Fund - First there was the Vice Fund (covered in Mefi Sept. 3). Now, The Perpetual War Portfolio: "an evenly weighted basket of five stocks poised to succeed in the age of perpetual war. The stocks were selected on the basis of popular product lines, strong political connections and lobbying efforts, and paid-for access to key Congressional decision makers." Somebody's going to profit from the machineries of death. Why not you?
posted on Dec-12-02 at 6:26 AM
Toad licking - Ever been tempted? DON'T: read this magisterial blog piece on the dangers of Toadlicking first!. But for a really fun time, look for this hilarious documentary at your local independant video store: "Cane Toads: An Unnatural History": "When the Australian sugarcane crop was attacked by beetles, someone decided to import cane toads to combat the pests. But somebody didn't do their homework: beetles can fly, but cane toads can't. What can cane toads do? Reproduce, big time..." [I'll graciously leave the post on Australian plagues - of rabbits, toads, and so on - for somebody else. Then, of course, there's Kudzu and Killer Bees...]
posted on Dec-5-02 at 8:23 AM
Strange Bedfellows fight tyranny? - Bob Barr, Dick Armey to join ACLU Quoth James Madison: (Federalist Papers #47) - "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." and Benjamin Franklin:"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." William Safire Slammed the Bush Adminstration (Nov 15) over John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness program. NOW: Bob Barr, a gun-rights anti-gay firebrand conservative to join the ACLU? Dick Armey's joining as a consultant? Say that again? And Nat Hentoff reports that the Journal Gazette of Fort Wayne, Indiana ran a broadside called (sept. 8) "Attacks on Liberty" - "In the name of national security, President Bush, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and even Congress have pulled strand after strand out of the constitutional fabric that distinguishes the United States from other nations. . . . Actions taken over the past year are eerily reminiscent of tyranny portrayed in the most nightmarish works of fiction" MEANWHILE...an email of an editorial by right wing radio personality Chuck Baldwin, "Bush Government 'Out of Control' ("The Bush administration seems determined to turn our country into the most elaborate and sophisticated police state ever devised") first published in an online Christian Fundamentalist antiabortion newpaper is making the (right wing) rounds. It asks: "Does that mean one must leave the Republican Party in order to fight for liberty?" [antitroll protection dislaimer: most Democrats signed the Patriot Act, the principle cause of concern behind the statements and editorials linked to on this post]
posted on Nov-27-02 at 10:53 AM
100 year average shows "stock market prefers Democratic presidents to Republicans" - "President George W. Bush inherited the lousy end of the business cycle...[however]...Slate ran the numbers and found that since 1900, Democratic presidents have produced a 12.3 percent annual total return on the S&P 500, but Republicans only an 8 percent return. [from Slate] Meanwhile, deficit spending [NYT reg. req.] is back in fashion -Guess I'm putting my $ in gold.....
posted on Nov-20-02 at 7:44 AM
The Political Graveyard -- It all started innocently enough.....I was reading a piece by a professor of media and journalism studies who wondered: Was Paul Wellstone murdered?" and cited an unusual number of democrats who had died in plane crashes. Was it true, I wondered? -- My search led me to The Political Graveyard, with it's endless categorizations of the details in the deaths of US politicians. Deaths by religious affiliation, politicians killed by poison or gunfights, opium overdoses or car crashes. But was it true? Yes, the site seemed to confirm the deaths (for the last 3 decades or so) of a statistically anomalous number of national democratic politicians (sitting or running for office) in plane crashes....but the site just grabbed me and wouldn't let me leave: Charles Tillinghast James (1805-1862): died while making his own cannon, Richard Ellis (1781-1846): died when his clothes suddenly caught fire, Thomas Caute Reynolds (1821-1887): killed himself by leaping down an elevator shaft, Sidney Theodore Roebuck (1901-1982): died from RAT poison, and MY FAVORITE, Elmer Severson (1922-1999), who died from spinal cord injuries he lost a "tussle with a cow"
posted on Nov-1-02 at 3:01 PM
CIA funds "alternative" media through nonprofit foundations? "The multi-billion dollar Ford Foundation's historic relationship to the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] is rarely mentioned on Pacifica's DEMOCRACY NOW / Deep Dish TV show, on FAIR's COUNTERSPIN show, on the WORKING ASSETS RADIO show, on The Nation Institute's RADIO NATION show, on David Barsamian's ALTERNATIVE RADIO show or in the pages of PROGRESSIVE, MOTHER JONES and Z magazine. One reason may be because the Ford Foundation and other Establishment foundations subsidize the Establishment Left's alternative media gatekeepers / censors" -- heavy claims. A several part report, in considerable detail. My note - the Mexican PRI, when it ran Mexico, used to fund a whole constellation of Mexican Leftist groups - the threat of withdrawing funding $ proved a very effective way of keeping dissent within "safe" limits.
posted on Oct-30-02 at 12:48 PM
"Cops of the World": remembering Phil Ochs -------------------------------------------- Ochs lyrics: “We're hairy and horny and ready to shack. We don't care if you're yellow or black. Just take off your clothes and lie down on your back.'Cause we're the Cops of the World, boys. We're the Cops of the World.”------------ LISTEN to his songs (realplayer/quicktime) Amidst the unilateralist talk of invading Iraq, and the (mostly media ignored) “biggest anti-war protests since the Vietnam War” [quote-Wash.Post,Oct. 27] last saturday, I thought of Phil Ochs......some of his songs [see Ochs lyrics index] haven't aged well, but some are still as searingly acidic as the day he wrote them, as above or in ”Love me, I’m a liberal”:“Once I was young and impulsive, I wore every conceivable pin...But I've grown older and wiser, and that's why I'm turning you in. So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal.” ------- Phil Ochs ------- (born 1940, suicide 1976)
posted on Oct-29-02 at 5:42 AM
A secret industrial plot to curb male aggression? Study shows PCB's, Dioxin are making men into sissies! A secret Republican/industrialist plot? Hang on to your huevos! - A new study reveals that "prenatal exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and dioxins can influence play behaviors that reflect gender differences....Higher prenatal exposure to PCBs was associated with less masculinized play behavior in boys and more masculinized play behavior in girls. In boys as well as in girls, higher prenatal dioxin levels were associated with more feminized play behavior."
posted on Oct-24-02 at 3:50 PM
Hyping the Sniper scared? Are you safely bunkered down at home watching Sniper Network News? Or do you, all spocklike and rational, calculate your risk from sniper fire from CDC mortality tables and conclude that death by sniper is only a little more likely than death by falling coconuts? Or do you decide to make your own 50 caliber sniper rifle in your home workshop to get them before they get you?
posted on Oct-23-02 at 10:03 AM
A new type of Anti War Protest: $ for PACs ”MoveOnPAC.org, an Internet site, has raised more than $1 million in 48 hours for what it calls four "heroes" of Congress who opposed the Iraq resolution.” (Wash. Post article 10/17). Better than marching in DC? I gave.
posted on Oct-19-02 at 1:53 PM
Hubbert's Peak: the impending oil shortage Is this the REAL reason behind the push to invade Iraq? In 1956. M. King Hubbert, a respected petroleum geologist, predicted - to within a year! - the peak in US oil production: 1970. US oil production has declined every year since. Using the same statistical methods, others now predict a world peak in oil production within a decade or even as early as 2006.
posted on Oct-18-02 at 1:38 PM
"I'm not sure which planet they live on" While Wesley Clark stumps for War on Public Radio’s darling station WBUR, “Hawks in the Bush administration may be making deadly miscalculations on Iraq, says Gen. Anthony Zinni, Bush's Middle East envoy.” To answer Zinni’s question: they’re certainly NOT living on planet “accidental armageddon”, or planet “C.I.A. Warns That a U.S. Attack May Ignite Terror” or planet "Butler Fears Israel could Use Nukes". I’d say they’re on planet Shifting rationals for war, planet Pax Americana, planet “Bullish on War”, planet “G.I.Joe’s Forward Command Post”, planet “Universal US Draft”, planet “Blanket immunity for US” and when they’re not thinking about war, they go to planet “upward wealth transfer” and also hang out sometimes at planet “genetically targeted weapons as politically usefull tools and perception reengineering via nanobots, psychedelic drugs and valium” But they stay far away from planet “Origins of Fascism in the US”. And they hang garlic on their beds to ward off planet "Is Bush a commie mole trying to destroy capitalism?" from the Krugman nebula.
posted on Oct-17-02 at 10:29 AM
Elephant in the living room: A radical Islamic Nuclear Pakistan (NYT reg. : name-metafilter password-metafilter) "Hard-line Islamic parties did unexpectedly well in Pakistan's election last week, and Pervez Musharraf's hold on power may be slipping. Do I need to point out that Pakistan is a lot bigger than Iraq, and already has nuclear weapons?...These guys [Bush Adm]want to fight a conventional war; since Al Qaeda won't oblige, they'll attack someone else who will [Iraq]. And watching from the alley, the terrorists are pleased. " -Paul Krugman, once again forced to state the obvious; the US is, effectively, helping with Al Qaeda's goal of radicalizing Islamic populations. In parts of Pakistan, they call Musharaff "Busharaff", and Nick Kristoff notes "Even in Kuwait, where Yankees have the best possible claim on Arab gratitude, a significant minority of men and women regard us as worms" and that "The most common name given to Pakistani boys born after 9/11 in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province reportedly was Osama." What does this have to do with a war in Iraq? Well.........
posted on Oct-15-02 at 9:19 AM
US Dept. of Education to erase website info which "does not reflect the priorities, philosophies, or goals of the present administration." Can you say 1984? Say it now....OVER and OVER and OVER again so you can GET USED TO IT......a brutal, clever strategy of the Bush Adm.to rewrite reality: erase problematic info and then channel money to people willing to produce the right stuff. Samizdat opportunity -- use a website capture program: WebWhacker costs $, but there are freeware site suckers available too. Orwell is turning in his grave.....Download and archive this stuff before it gets erased. Remember, Information Wants to Be Free!...or does it?
posted on Oct-10-02 at 10:46 PM
Reality check from Swiss Re and UNEP "The increasing frequency of severe climatic events...has the potential to stress insurers, reinsurers and banks to the point of impaired viability or even insolvency." "Climate Change and the Financial Services Industry", a UNEP report supported by 295 banks and insurance and investment companies around the world. The report concludes that, worldwide, loses from Climate related disasters are doubling every decade . NOAA generally concurs. Dr. Bob Gagosian, Director of Woods Hole, has even worse news. Should we take the scientific mainstream seriously? Or is it all "Junk Science"according to the industry funded Steve Milloy or the CEI, or even a New Age Pagan Conspiracy? Play on little humans......play on.....
posted on Oct-9-02 at 3:02 PM
"Worst case is modern Armaggedon" Dick Cheney reportedly has ambitious plans to chop Iraq into little pieces but Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham worries that terrorist attacks against Americans were "highly likely" in the event of a war with Iraq, which Graham thinks could escalate into "modern Armaggedon". Also worried or unimpressed by the Bush Adminstration's rational for war (flash) a few Americans protested . The NYT and the Washington Post ignored the large protests in Britain, but nobody could ignore it when 1.5 million Italians hit the streets. Guess it's war anyway, eh?
posted on Oct-7-02 at 2:41 PM
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