Friday, February 28, 2003

Audioblogger only works on USA numbers, so USA based blogdialers please dial with the free trial...
File-sharing advocates often imagine a middleman-free utopia where artists interact directly with fans, but how many fans really want to go through the trouble of buying music one track, one album, or even one artist at a time? Whoever wrote this is a computer illiterate nincompoop. Software is brilliant at bringing together all the files you want (and the files you didnt know you wanted) into one place; that is why Napster was so popular. NO ONE buys or downloads "...one track, one album, or even one artist at a time". That is a straw man argument. I smell a shill. Digital distribution is about abundance, efficiency, and convenience; it needs middlemen like Hugh Hefner needs more Viagra. Some of these middlemen, such as Kazaa, are greedy vultures who make millions off artists without paying them a cent. WTF? Kazaa is not a middleman, it is an aggregator allowing people who are sharing files to contact each other directly. It does not host files itself, in exactly the same way that Napster never hosted a single MP3 file. Once again, this person is completely ignorant about how the internet works and in particular, how distributed file sharing works. Others, like Pressplay.com and Rhapsody, at least license the music they make available. Bingo! This biatch is a shill for the RIAA. Kazzaa and all other file sharing services do not make music available for download they only create lists of what people have on thier hard drives, in the same way that google lists what is on the hard drives of web servers. Home taping is killing music? Ignorant RIAA shills are killing the internet more like! All offer services to fans that individual artists will never be able to match. This is simply a lie. Any individual artist can post her files in one of many places, and then allow the search engines to pick up the pages. They can also put thier files on the file sharing networks. They can also group together under umbrlla organizaitons to concentrate the number of hits they get, and maximize their PR efficiency. What is for certain is that no amount of ignorant shill-words will stop this evolution from taking place. Thus, musicians who successfully use the internet to generate revenues directly from fans will be exceedingly rare, just as writers who do the same already are. The only looser in thie equation is the monopoly "middle man". If you knew what you were talking about, you would realize that it is only the small minority of artists who get paid anything under the current system, and the remuneration proposals of the Monopoly, like paying the artists $0.0023 per download, will not make even mega acts like Madonna any signifigant money. There will always be very huge "winners" and people who hardly make anything at all. At least under the new system of free music, there is no brain dead, tone deaf A&R drone who decides what gets released and what does not. This is the fundamental difference that will change everything. For every internet success story like that of blogger Andrew Sullivan, who recently raised around $80,000 from his readers via a pledge week on his site, there are hundreds of thousands of independent content creators who make nothing. For every artist like Coldplay there are hundreds of thousands of acts that will never be signed by the monopoly because the Monopoly doesnt actually care about music. The small number that do get deals, will never make a penny out of what they sell, even if they sell as many as 250,000 "units". Do your homework! The "war" with the music biz is not a war at all. Even if it were, it should be cast as a liberation struggle. Since you did not do this, we can only assume that you are a bought and paid spokesliar for the Monopoly. Missing from your piece of propaganda were any mention of links to free music philosophy and business model sites, putting across other arguments, or any links to the truth about how poorly artists arre treated under the current slave labor system. Thankfully, no one is listening to these and the other lies trotted out by the propaganda division of the RIAA, and the genie is out of the bottle. File sharing is here to stay, is impossible to shut down, and is exposing people more and more into interesting, non Monopoly music daily. Just who is "G. Beato" anyway? Google cached your pages and let me find your blog Beato. Search engines are useful are they not? In the fall of 1995, I created my first webzine, Traffic. At the time, I was working as a marketing writer at a software company, incredible; how can someone with no imagination as to what software can do write marketing for a software company??? but my work at Traffic led to a few paying magazine assignments, and by January 1997, I quit my day job to become a full-time freelance writer. So, the free webzine you created allowed you to quit your job and write full time on a freelance basis. This is different to releasing music online and expecting the same benefits exactly how? I'm currently a contributing editor at SPIN and a regular contributor to the Washington Post's Book World section. I've also written for Blender, Business 2.0, Inside, Wired, Forbes ASAP, Mother Jones, Newsday, Salon, Feed, Request, The Face, the London Guardian, the International Herald Tribune, SF Weekly, and the San Francisco Chronicle, amongst others. I was also a frequent contributor to the pioneer webzine, Suck.com: from 1996 to 2000, I wrote approximately 100 pieces for it. ??? how is it that such a completely misinformed article could come from someone who has written for Wired??? Most hilariously, at the end of the blog page, he says: "Support Soundbitten If you like what you read here, please consider making a donation." What incredible hypocricy. People putting their music online can be likened to human shields flying to Iraq to protect Saddam, but a journalist putting his words online for free and asking for donations is somehow COMPLETELY DIFFERENT and OK. This blog also has other contributors writing for it, much like several artists getting together to share music on a single site to spread the load. Didnt I just say that?!? For Editors See an article here that you'd like to reprint? Want to assign me something? Please contact me at gbeato@soundbitten.com. Music maker says "Want to use our music in a movie or TV commercial? contact us!!!" Doh! For Publicists Have a book, CD, DVD, or something else you'd like me to consider for review or other coverage? Please contact me at gbeato@soundbitten.com. "Send me free stuff!" Thats the last straw! My lord, that was an easy bit of destruction. And fun! http://www.soundbitten.com/about.html
"British troops on their way to the Gulf are given a choice, and up to half of them have refused to have the shot." ABC Net
Semper Fi, Do it and Die! American Marines refuse vaccination.
Australian troops refuse Antrhax vaccine: Only if you tie me (kangarroo) down sport.

U.S. Diplomat's Letter of Resignation

The following is the text of John Brady Kiesling's letter of resignation to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Mr. Kiesling is a career diplomat who has served in United States embassies from Tel Aviv to Casablanca to Yerevan. Dear Mr. Secretary: I am writing you to submit my resignation from the Foreign Service of the United States and from my position as Political Counselor in U.S. Embassy Athens, effective March 7. I do so with a heavy heart. The baggage of my upbringing included a felt obligation to give something back to my country. Service as a U.S. diplomat was a dream job. I was paid to understand foreign languages and cultures, to seek out diplomats, politicians, scholars and journalists, and to persuade them that U.S. interests and theirs fundamentally coincided. My faith in my country and its values was the most powerful weapon in my diplomatic arsenal. It is inevitable that during twenty years with the State Department I would become more sophisticated and cynical about the narrow and selfish bureaucratic motives that sometimes shaped our policies. Human nature is what it is, and I was rewarded and promoted for understanding human nature. But until this Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world. I believe it no longer. The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America�s most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security. The sacrifice of global interests to domestic politics and to bureaucratic self-interest is nothing new, and it is certainly not a uniquely American problem. Still, we have not seen such systematic distortion of intelligence, such systematic manipulation of American opinion, since the war in Vietnam. The September 11 tragedy left us stronger than before, rallying around us a vast international coalition to cooperate for the first time in a systematic way against the threat of terrorism. But rather than take credit for those successes and build on them, this Administration has chosen to make terrorism a domestic political tool, enlisting a scattered and largely defeated Al Qaeda as its bureaucratic ally. We spread disproportionate terror and confusion in the public mind, arbitrarily linking the unrelated problems of terrorism and Iraq. The result, and perhaps the motive, is to justify a vast misallocation of shrinking public wealth to the military and to weaken the safeguards that protect American citizens from the heavy hand of government. September 11 did not do as much damage to the fabric of American society as we seem determined to so to ourselves. Is the Russia of the late Romanovs really our model, a selfish, superstitious empire thrashing toward self-destruction in the name of a doomed status quo? We should ask ourselves why we have failed to persuade more of the world that a war with Iraq is necessary. We have over the past two years done too much to assert to our world partners that narrow and mercenary U.S. interests override the cherished values of our partners. Even where our aims were not in question, our consistency is at issue. The model of Afghanistan is little comfort to allies wondering on what basis we plan to rebuild the Middle East, and in whose image and interests. Have we indeed become blind, as Russia is blind in Chechnya, as Israel is blind in the Occupied Territories, to our own advice, that overwhelming military power is not the answer to terrorism? After the shambles of post-war Iraq joins the shambles in Grozny and Ramallah, it will be a brave foreigner who forms ranks with Micronesia to follow where we lead. We have a coalition still, a good one. The loyalty of many of our friends is impressive, a tribute to American moral capital built up over a century. But our closest allies are persuaded less that war is justified than that it would be perilous to allow the U.S. to drift into complete solipsism. Loyalty should be reciprocal. Why does our President condone the swaggering and contemptuous approach to our friends and allies this Administration is fostering, including among its most senior officials. Has �oderint dum metuant� really become our motto? I urge you to listen to America�s friends around the world. Even here in Greece, purported hotbed of European anti-Americanism, we have more and closer friends than the American newspaper reader can possibly imagine. Even when they complain about American arrogance, Greeks know that the world is a difficult and dangerous place, and they want a strong international system, with the U.S. and EU in close partnership. When our friends are afraid of us rather than for us, it is time to worry. And now they are afraid. Who will tell them convincingly that the United States is as it was, a beacon of liberty, security, and justice for the planet? Mr. Secretary, I have enormous respect for your character and ability. You have preserved more international credibility for us than our policy deserves, and salvaged something positive from the excesses of an ideological and self-serving Administration. But your loyalty to the President goes too far. We are straining beyond its limits an international system we built with such toil and treasure, a web of laws, treaties, organizations, and shared values that sets limits on our foes far more effectively than it ever constrained America�s ability to defend its interests. I am resigning because I have tried and failed to reconcile my conscience with my ability to represent the current U.S. Administration. I have confidence that our democratic process is ultimately self-correcting, and hope that in a small way I can contribute from outside to shaping policies that better serve the security and prosperity of the American people and the world we share. New York Times
For the record... Condaleeza rice cracker Condaleeza rice paddy Condaleeza ricin Condaleeza riceicles Condaleeza rice paper Condaleeza rice eater

Thursday, February 27, 2003

Top 11 Unusual Source Code Comments 11. /* This part doesn't really do any thing yet. It's just here in case we need it */ 10. //** This should never execute **// 9. # This is the second of three impossible errors 8. /* Emergency fix to fix emergency Turkey Day Fix */ 7. # Insert meaningful comments here 6. /* I didn't write this code */ 5. # This code was hard to write. It should be hard to understand also 4. /* Break out the Ragu. The following is spaghetti code */ 3. /* Quiet!!! This is orthogonal code */ 2. /* Ryan don't comment code! */ 1. /* Optimize THIS, code boy! */ http://www.networkcomputing.com/l
Omniglot
What did everyone think of that truely cool® konono link? When I saw the pictures I was surprrised and then when the sound started I was pleasantly surprised. Their gear looks dangerous; they could probably sell custom amplification gear to every electric head in Europe for a premium. I wonder who they are getting to mix the stuff, and what plans they have to get these dudes to collaborate with other people....the Cogolese, the Zairois have been making cool stuff for ages, but this, for me, takes the cake!
M25
Read the monstrous inditements.
Interview with SH.
http://www.waketheworld.org/
Hundreds of thousands of antiwar activists flooded Senate phone lines yesterday as part of a "Virtual March" on Washington aimed at heading off a U.S. invasion of Iraq. Protesters called and faxed senators in an innovative action, billed as a way to influence policy "without leaving your living room." Senators enlisted extra staffers to answer calls and to tally the number of constituents registering their opinions.[...] Washington Post ahem.

Wednesday, February 26, 2003

------------------------------------------------------------------------ You have received this message from the "FIPR Alert" mailing list run by the Foundation for Information Policy Research http://www.fipr.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Astonishing to hear a report on Radio 4's Today programme this morning sounding the death knell for the entire classical music industry because one recording of a Maria Callas performance is about to come out of copyright. An EMI spokesman intones "how can we be expected to invest in the classics of tomorrow if we can't get returns on that investment"... Thanks to Simon Kelley for spotting this. I've appended his complaint to Today below. It's 19.5 minutes into clip 6 (you can press Ctrl+T in RealPlayer to skip through the previous 5 clips): http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/today_live.rpm Subject: 26/02/03 report on European Copyright. Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 10:18:28 +0000 From: Simon Kelley To: today@bbc.co.uk Your report on European Copyright today was totally one-sided. Anybody listening who had no background in this area would have thought that the arrangements in the USA were uncontroversial and the shorter copyright time in the EU was just some sort of bizzare legal oversight. In fact until a few years ago copyright duration in the States was as short and the bill to extend it was hugely controversial and has just undergone a challenge in the Supreme Court. The report used Industry spokespeople/lobbyists with no critical cross examination and they were allowed to use double-speak like "protecting European music" when they meant "protecting media companies" without any challenge. The basis of copyright is that the copyright holder is given a monopoly on distribution of the copyright work _for_a_limited_time_ in return for the investment required to make the work in the first place. Once that limited time protection has expired, the legal prohibition on duplicating the work is removed from third parties. Nobody is stealing from EMI: they won't be lifting boxes of CDs from warehouses in the middle of the night; it is simply that EMI's state-enforced monopoly will expire. For a handle on the campaign against copyrights and IP everywhere, on everything, and for all time start at www.eff.org Frankly, this report sounded like a lazy journalist being exploited by industry PR people. You need to do something much better, and preferably not by your "North America Business Propagandist". Dr Simon Kelley.
If he is essential, let me die tomorrow. If I survive, I'm selling all my fucking records and buying a banjo.

Tuesday, February 25, 2003

Q: What does Bad Vugum mean?
A: It's an expression that we borrowed from Captain Beefheart. You can find it from the track "Sue Egypt" from the album "Doc At The Radar Station" -a marvellous piece of art by the way. Olli Pauke from Liimanarina - completely weird noise band on Bad Vugum - told us that the name sounds like a Bulgarian bath town...
By 'peripheral artist', I guess I just meant parasite. I have to question the need for 'critics', in writing, illustration, whatever. Surely a potent substitute for criticism is actually CREATING SOMETHING that will warm the hearts of your fellow humans and convince them, even momentarily, that their souls are not alone on this planet. Professional contrarian, eternally in opposition, impotent, useless, infertile. Nothing could be closer to death. It is far better that we have people doing good work from the first instance, instead of constantly reacting to the bad work of others; criticism saves us from having to be constantly reacting, wasting our precious and very limited time. To call Savage Pencil a parasite is to say something that is simply not correct, and if he IS a parasite, he is akin to the bacteria that lives in bovine stomachs that helps them to digest thier food. In other words, essential to your LIFE!

Psychological assault led by 'RadioTikrit'

When Iraqi air defence units picked up their phones, instead of a dialling tone, they heard a male voice speaking in Arabic. It told them not to use chemical or biological weapons, not to offer resistance, and not to obey commands to attack civilian areas, the source said.[...] The Guardian
[As I noted in my article, the DEA.gov privacy policy 
allows information like IP addressses collected from visitors
 to be used in criminal investigations and prosecutions.
 --Declan]

---

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-985785.html

   Feds weed out drug paraphernalia sites
   By Declan McCullagh
   February 24, 2003, 4:32 PM PT

   The U.S. Justice Department on Monday said it indicted 11 Web site
   operators for allegedly selling illegal devices including bongs and
   holders for marijuana cigarettes.

   Attorney General John Ashcroft told reporters that the government
   would ask a U.S. district court in Pittsburgh to point the sites to a
   Web page at the Drug Enforcement Administration explaining why they
   were taken offline, a new twist in crime-fighting.

   [...]

---

Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 08:11:56 -0600
Subject: FW:  ALERT: DEA to Redirect Seized Websites!!
From: Jules Siegel 
To: 

-----Original Message-----
From: Ron Bennett [mailto:discuss@WYOMISSING.COM]
Sent: Monday, February 24, 2003 9:08 PM
To: DPFT-L@listserv.tamu.edu
Subject: ALERT: DEA to Redirect Seized Websites!!


State and federal authorities recently conducted raids of various
companies/individuals that sell "drug paraphernalia", such as pipes and
related materials. Pipes, etc were seized along with their websites.

According to a Voice of America article, Mr. Ashcroft says they plan to
redirect the seized websites to to the DEA website.

A frightening quote from the a Voice of America article:
http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=FAAF0B60-2B80-4100-BD255885C43351A6

"Mr. Ashcroft says customers who want to visit some of their favorite drug
paraphernalia websites are in for a big surprise in the days ahead. They
will be automatically redirected to the website for the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration."

In essence the DEA is going to usurp the freedom of speech and expression of
the people who run those seized websites. This would be akin to the U.S.
Dept of Justice redirecting the "aclu.org" website to the "usdoj.gov"
website.

And then there are the serious privacy issues involved if the DEA redirects
the seized websites, since they'll be logging all visitors, obtaining their
IP address and other highly personal information.

I encourage everyone here who values the freedom of speech and expression to
contact their local ACLU chapter (list can be found at http://www.aclu.org/
and/or other organizations that works with such issues.

Bottom line is this is a serious issue and if the DEA is able to do this,
they could potentially redirect *ANY* website - remember that the owners of
the websites seized have *NOT* been convicted of any crime.

Ron Bennett


-- 
JULES SIEGEL Apdo. 1764, 77501 Cancun Q. Roo Mexico
http://www.cafecancun.com/bookarts/jsiegel.htm

For free and ample discussion of issues in the news subscribe to Newsroom-L
http://ohio.stageserver.net/mailman/listinfo/newsroom-l_cafecancun.com




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In other words, they want the rest of the world to think that we are the ultimate weaving driver. Not to be trusted, but certainly not to be messed with either. By these terrible means, they will create a world where war conducted by any country but the United States will seem simply too risky and the Great American Peace will begin. Unregulated Global Corporatism will be the only permissible ideology, every human will have access to McDonald¹s and the Home Shopping Network, all ³news² will come through some variant of AOLTimeWarnerCNN, the Internet will be run by Microsoft, and so it will remain for a long time. Peace. On Prozac. Written by an ex Cattle Rancher
Please dont stop posting AK, the links and clearly written context are most informative, and you do not know who is reading blogdial, and where the page is being emailed to. Every word in that BBC link is true. It is often the case that people who "appear to be failing to organize properly" are saying things that are completely true; when someone who you believe to be a liar is telling the truth, the words are nonetheless true , regardless of the source. Truth and true words are separate from man. Dont be fooled by the propaganda about the situation in that country, to its credit, the BBC gives a good account of the background to all these problems.
I just don't want to end up like Savage Pencil. Being able to make people laugh is one of the most crucial powers man has. Being able to look at the world obliquely is also very useful, and its something that is sorely lacking today. And as for not wanting to "end up like Savage Pencil", in every sense that matters, we have ALL "ended up like Savage Pencil". We ALL have to suffer the Badly Drawn Boy, Travises and every other piece of garbage that pollutes the airways day in and day out. Anyone who thinks that they have escaped, please own up and show us the door. Also, what on earth is a "peripheral artist"? Is the truth ever peripheral? I would argue that an illustrator humorist and critic like Savage Pencil is completely central, crucial and very much needed. Without people with his critical ear, the mushification of everything would be as easy as putting a soft boiled egg into a blender set at full speed. People are taught literary criticism. The need for it is well understood. Its about time that criticism of popular music is valued properly; criticisms ability to sweep away illusion and dig the earwax of stupidity out of the ears of the ignorant is extraordinarily valuable. Anyone who read the better parts of the British music press when it actually worked well knows how criticism opens doors and enlightens, even whilst trashing bad work. I can never understand what exactly it is everyone wants; do we want to live in a grey world of opinionless mush headed flesh where everyone just nods along to everything and anything, where every unstimulating stimulation is taken as "valid"? I for one dont want ANY part of such a place, and if I had a button that I could press to destroy them all, I would have long ago broken my index finger pressing it. My great colleagues A&H and I have been discussing this for over two years. "The Constituency" is a worthless mass of flesh, without imagination, a will or any focus, scrambling around in a dream world while "The Blob" closes in from every corner. Now that its too late, they are all running around like deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming 18 wheeler. "In the end, it all comes down to a book written by someone you dont like very much." was one of our mutually evolved conclusions. And this is going to happen again and again. It is not satisfying, it is insufficient and there is no reason why I or anyone else with a brain should put up with it.
The Americans HATE the UN. Has not everyone heard the paranoia (right or wrong) about black UN helicopters, UN troops to be deployed in continental USA etc etc? These fears have been voiced by the religious right for decades, and now that they have the closest thing to one of thier own in the whitehouse, the UN can finally be destroyed. Soverinty is a great power, which must be used responsibly. Each country should have the absolute right to conduct its affairs in the way that it wants, but when this means interfereing in other countries affairs, repression of individuals and other crimes, then it if for the other countries in the world to boycott them, just like South Africa was boycotted into submission. IF (and thats a big if) this war happens, the UN should be moved to Paris. The UK will quickly be reformed if war happens, and will rejoin the brotherhood of nations. Rouge states, that unsettle the UN by constanly vetoing equitable resolutions and using it like a chessboard to bolster the aims of minorities against greater justice, need to be removed from the equation so that at last, the UN becomes a place where people seek and get justice instead of being a running joke. Writing letters is a good idea, but a better idea is for everyone to stick together and strike en masse if the war goes ahead. This is the only message that you need to send, and it wil speak louder than any written word you could possibly write. What an insane world; Russia, Germany France China, Angola all against the USA, with only Bulgaria taking sides with Uncle Sam Missile (a triplet dontcha know)...
Now. These people are smooking from a hookah, in Egypt. A hookah is used by musilms to smoke. Does this now mean that the hookas will be made illegal, and the importers and designers of modern versions will be rounded up and put in jail for three years? Can you say, "Multi Vector Mcarthyism"®™?
Removed from the internet: smokelab.com ghettoweb.com Omnilounge.com http://www.colorchangingglass.com/ is online, but with a protest. www.testingfree.com sold drug test remedies...offline! popesforyou.com offline. Puffpipes.com turns up forbidden. Well, what can i say? This is boom time for anyone in Europe (the free world) that wants to sell hand blown glass to our unfortunate American brothers and sisters. What I want to know is, how much CRACK did they have to smoke to comeup with this plan, and what did they use to smoke it? The bad dream continues®
"With the advent of the Internet, the illegal drug paraphernalia industry has exploded," Ashcroft said. "The drug paraphernalia business is now accessible in anyone's home with a computer and Internet access. And in homes across America we know that children and young adults are the fastest growing Internet users. Quite simply, the illegal drug paraphernalia industry has invaded the homes of families across the country without their knowledge. This illegal billion-dollar industry will no longer be ignored by law enforcement. Today, the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, under the leadership of Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson and Associate Deputy Attorney General Karen Tandy, has taken decisive steps to dismantle the illegal drug paraphernalia industry by attacking their physical, financial and Internet infrastructures." The defendants have been charged with conspiracy to sell and offering to sell various types of drug paraphernalia, in violation of 21 U.S.C. Sections 846, 853 and 863. Federal law defines drug paraphernalia as those products that are primarily intended or designed to be used in ingesting, inhaling or otherwise using controlled substances, and include user-friendly and dealer-friendly devices. Items such as miniature scales, substances for "cutting" or diluting raw narcotics, bongs, marijuana pipes, roach clips, miniature spoons and cocaine freebase kits, among other things, are all considered drug paraphernalia. "People selling drug paraphernalia are in essence no different than drug dealers," said Acting Administrator Brown. "They are as much a part of drug trafficking as silencers are a part of criminal homicide. These criminals operate a multimillion dollar enterprise, selling their paraphernalia in headshops, distributing out of huge warehouses, and using the worldwide web as a worldwide paraphernalia market. With Operations Pipe Dreams and Headhunter, these criminals are out of business and 11 illicit dot.coms are dot.gone." The bad dream continues® http://www.dea.gov/pubs/pressrel/pr022403.html
Instructions For Adding the NO WAR Counter to your site: "Important Security Note: Kelvin Luck was kind enough to inform me that the way the proxies were set up potentially allowed people to access local files on the server. I've updated all versions of the proxy scripts so that this is now not possible. Also, I've added the postfix "_secure" to the zip filenames below, to differentiate them from the first versions. If you've already added the counter to your site, please replace the flash_proxy file with secure version below." Uh oh!

I am the number
13
I am LUCKY

_

what number are you?

this quiz by orsa
ooh yah! No-thing - The silence between words. Pure potential. The gap between the outgoing and incoming breath. It is unmanifest yet, but it contains all. -Osho Zen

Monday, February 24, 2003


How evil are you?

Glad to Oblige...

Before the universe started, there was nothing, from which came everything. Nuff Said. I am Pi. I like Pi. Pi goes on forever. Pi is an irrational number. Yet, you can use it. Thats scary.

I am
p

Everyone loves pi

_

what number are you?

this quiz by orsa
I just got an email, dated 1/1/70, 12:00AM, with a blank sender a blank body and a blank subject.
I went on a bus today into central London; it was more like a sunday morning than Monday afternoon; the cars.....were missing. It was dreamlike; the conductor said, "we are going to get into trouble, because we are going too fast". Shocking, far out, wild and about time!
If I was in or near Haarlem I would be bidding on this.
I am all for the French, now more than ever, but honestly, if all the can offer us (in terms of music) is Johnny Halliday, and rappers rapping in French then they offer us nothing. Nature abhors a vaccum. In the absence of European films, something will instantly take its place, especially if it looks good, moves fast...and has shootin! India doesnt have this problem, and sports the largest film industry on earth. If you want to destroy cultural imperialism via cinematic invasion, set the rate of tax on indiginous cinema goers and film making to 0 and put your money where your mouth is. The French have already had sucess in staving off cultural domination by mandating that 40% of all music played on the radio must be French. In my gut, I feel that this is putting a plaster on a gunshot wound. If no one wants French music, then there is something wrong with the music. There is no reason why people everywhere shouldnt love French music (if there even IS such a thing) as long as it is genuinely awesome; take Daft Punk for an example, awesome, and "French". I read an interesting piece in the wsj.com paper version about Johnny Halliday and his new (53rd) "album", but cant find it online...what i DID find is this which is amusing.. Oh yes, and how could I forget teh priceless album by Alizee whose single, most unfortunately is wrapped up with dozens of links to pr0n on Google...yuk!
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness, concerning all acts of initiative (and creation). There is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too, all sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occured. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now. Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Read this and weep.
The ultimate Efnet sanction:

Sunday, February 23, 2003

"Of them all, Rice is the scariest. Chevron Oil named a supertanker after her. Dripping with Ivy League degrees in international relations, an accomplished classical pianist, speaking elegant French, monumentally self-assured, Condy knows everything and nothing. It is utterly beyond her comprehension that the citizens of Baghdad might not welcome a cruise missile arriving in the upstairs bedroom as the instrument of their liberation". smh.com.au
http://www.cafeshops.com/cp/prod.aspx?p=homelandparty.4904876
ClEgS� tested as s|_|p4|~ |_33+ at 9:32 PM!


How L337 are you?

Saturday, February 22, 2003

winter drops the leaves the burning bush sings of war hope covered frozen
http://www.symbolman.com/chickenhawks.html http://www.takebackthemedia.com/flash.html
Communist Synthesis
Its loud, but not painful.
Industry executives say this reality also is beginning to draw attention in Europe and the United States, where music companies face falling revenue from compact disk sales as Internet piracy increases. . "The financial effect is the same for record companies whether people get illegal compact disks for $1 on the street in China or download a song for free from the Internet in Europe," said Jay Berman, chairman and chief executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, a London-based group representing 1,500 firms. "Record companies everywhere find that they not only need to fight piracy, but also develop alternate revenue streams." . Piracy - which accounts for 95 percent of music sales in China, according to Berman's organization - has forced multinational record companies serving the world's most populous country to abandon classic-style album contracts, drop development of formal distribution channels and eliminate any possibility of a top-40 list based on sales. IHT
FINALLY someone has laid it all out!

Friday, February 21, 2003

You and those like you are dedicated to killing and bringing misery to people wherever they are. God blessed you with the capacity to lead and also endowed you with enormous resources. You could have used your influence in Afghanistan to develop it, to bring it out of poverty and show the world what Islam can do for those who believe in it. This approach has been tried and tried again by the enlightened, educated and powerful, and througout the post colonial era, many countries have been sabotaged, alot of them democratically elected. Thier leaders have been assasinated simply because they were not capitalists, thier coutries blockaded, and trade with them made illegal. OBL believes, truely, that the only way to get the progress that his leadership ability and $$ could bring is to fatally injure the people who make it impossible for third worlders to develop in the ways that they feel are correct, without coercion or unreasonable demands that they follow the political structure of other countries. For a man such as him to take his frustration so far is a measure of how deep this problem is, and I'm afraid its words like this editorial, that ignore recent history, either deliberately or through ignorance, that are part of the problem.

Give 'em Helen

I read this in Harper's yesterday and found it archived on the Common Dreams website. It is from a January 6 exchange between White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer and Helen Thomas, a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. Thomas, who is 82, has been covering the White House for 42 years.
I've just been turned on to the work of Harrell Fletcher whose art exhibitions and installations are concerned with real people and stories. I am particulalry fond of his exhibitions Boy and People In Real Life and his public artworks Some People From Around Here... and These Fine People. His work is shown in parking garages and empty stores in malls, on road sides and in schools. He also collaborates with Miranda July on the webproject Learning to Love You More which asks viewers to complete projects with instructions like Make a child's outfit in an adult size or Make a documentary video about a small child or Make a drawing of an image that you find sexually arousing or Recreate the moment after a crime or Recreate a poster you had as a teenager. One then documents the project to be archived on the website, included in a group show or brought to one of Miranda July's performances (which are some of the most imaginative and magical I have ever experienced).
This open letter to bin Laden is really on point: [...]You and those like you are dedicated to killing and bringing misery to people wherever they are. God blessed you with the capacity to lead and also endowed you with enormous resources. You could have used your influence in Afghanistan to develop it, to bring it out of poverty and show the world what Islam can do for those who believe in it. You chose to provoke and bring war to a people who had already been devastated by wars.[...]

Britons face extradition for 'thought crime' on net

By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor (Filed: 18/02/2003) British citizens will be extradited for what critics have called a "thought crime" under a new European arrest warrant, the Government has conceded. Campaigners fear they could even face trial for broadcasting "xenophobic or racist" remarks - such as denying the Holocaust - on an internet chatroom in another country. The Government has undertaken that if such "offences" take place in Britain the perpetrators would not be extradited - but it will be for the courts to decide the location of the crime. This opens up the prospect of a judge agreeing to extradite someone whose observations, though made in Britain, were broadcast exclusively in a country where they constitute a crime. Legislation now before Parliament will make "xenophobia and racism" one of 32 crimes for which the European arrest warrant can be issued without the existing safeguard of dual criminality. This requires that an extraditable offence must also be a crime in the UK. Alongside the arrest warrant, EU ministers are negotiating a new directive to establish a common set of offences to criminalise xenophobia and racism. Countries such as Germany and Austria have crimes such as denying the Holocaust which have no equivalent in Britain. Under current laws, if a British citizen committed this offence in Germany and returned to the UK, he could not be extradited. However, this will change when the arrest warrant becomes law next year. Lord Filkin, the Home Office minister, told MPs: "If someone went to Germany and stood up in Cologne market place and shouted the odds, denying the Holocaust, and then came back [to Britain], they would be subject to extradition under the European arrest warrant." Holocaust denial laws are in place in seven EU countries but they would be a big departure for Britain, where a risk of fomenting public disorder is needed before a thought becomes a crime. A German historian who claimed that Auschwitz prisoners enjoyed cinemas, a swimming pool and brothels was sentenced to 10 months in jail.[...] The Telegraph

Is Hussein Owner of Crashed UFO?

“An UFO-related incident that occurred four years ago poses a troubling question whether any kind of cooperation is possible between Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and extraterrestrials,” UFOlogist Joseph Trainor declared in his review UFO Roundup (issue 51 of December 17, 2002). “On December 16, 1998, during Operation Desert Fox against Iraq, a video clip aired on CNN showed a UFO hovering over Baghdad; it moved away to avoid a stream of tracer anti-aircraft fire. At that time we all thought it was another UFO sighting, although captured on videotape. But now, ufologists think it was much more than a mere incident.” Jack Sarfatti reported that Friday evening, December 6, 2002 “someone called the Art Bell radio show, claimed his connection with the military and informed that a UFO crashed in Iraq several years ago. The USA is currently searching for any pretext to invade Iraq. In fact, the USA is motivated by the greatest fear that Saddam will reverse-engineer the crashed alien spacecraft.” It is allegedly said that the craft crashed during the Gulf War (1990-1991), or more recently (probably in December 1998). This became some kind of Iraq’s Rosewell. The USA is currently reverse-engineering the Rosewell craft and fears that Saddam’s scientists may become even more successful than Americans in this or that sphere. It was said that these researches may give Iraq a considerable advance and even make it a leading super power. UFO Roungup’s Arab journalists failed either to confirm or to deny these rumors. Aiasha al-Hatabi replied to Joseph Trainor that “he heard nothing about a UFO crash in Iraq.” In the words of Mohammed Daud al-Hayyat, “there are talks about extraterrestrials in Iraq, but nothing is said about any crash. It is rumored at a market in Sulaimaniya, to the south of Zarzi, that aliens are Saddam’s guests. Where do they stay then? People mention some underground base. But Saddam has a palace in this valley, an old stronghold Qalaat-e-Julundi. Earlier it belonged to the royal family. After the revolution, the government took possession of the fortress, and now, like every palace in Iraq it is “a summer residence” of Saddam Hussein. The fortress is mentioned here for a very simple reason: it is practically impossible to penetrate into it. The citadel stands on a hill surrounded with vertical precipices on three sides; the precipices plunge down to the Little Zab river. It is said that Saddam lets aliens stay there.” http://english.pravda.ru/main/2003/01/31/42821.html
Bertelsmann sued over Napster A group of songwriters, composers and music publishers has launched a $17bn lawsuit against German media giant Bertelsmann, alleging that it helped Napster deprive them of royalties.[...] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2786573.stm
http://thesmokehammer.com/
W3.org Linkchecker....very useful indeed. Many many links in the French version are broken.
That Saddam is a despicable gangster politician does not make his country a military power. It is all but defenseless against the United States, which has been bombing the place for years without losing a single aircraft or pilot. It even lacks the military capabilities of North Korea, a country which does have a set of sharp little teeth, and you can see the difference in George W. Bush’s approach to Kim Jung Il. Instead of the nailed boot, he gets the pussied foot.[...] New York Observer
DA DVD 5111!! WTF LOL SUROUND MIX ON DA NON RECORD IS TRULY UNBLEIVABLA!!1! OMG I M3AN TEH ALBUM ALON3 IS GREAT BUT TEH SECOND DISC RILLY MAEKS IT A UNIQUA LISTENNG 3XPEREINC3!!!!1 RILLY PHYSICAL!!11 OMG ONLY R3COMANDAD FOR THOSE WIT A NIEC HOME THEATRE OR EQUIVAELNT S3TUP THOUGH - OTHERWIES I SUPOSE ITS KIND OF POINTLAS!!1111 DA ON3 DRAWBAK I NOTIECD (AND THIS CUD B AN 3LEM3NT OF MAH DVD PLAEYR ITS3LF) IS DA FACT TAHT WHIEL DA REGULAR CD IS INDAXED BUT CONTANES NO PAUSES BTWEN TRAKS TEH DVD MIX HAS PAUSES AND THIS GREATLY R3DUCED MAH ENJOYMENT IN LISTENNG 2 TEH ALBUM AS ON3 CONTINUOUS PEICE (HOW IT RILLY SHUD B LISTEN3D 2)!11!1!!1 OMG LOL HOPE THIS GLITCH IN TEH TACHNOLOGY CAN AVENTUALY B REM3DEID!!!11!!! OMG WTF BUT DEFINIETLY GIEV IT A LISTEN NONETHEL3S!!!! OMG LOL RECOMANDAD!1!11 OMG LOL http://ssshotaru.homestead.com/files/aolertranslator.html
Newsmonster is very, very cool.

Thursday, February 20, 2003

The Return of Savage Pencil If you get a chance to see this months Wire magazine, right at the end, there is a strip by the flawless and brilliant Savage Pencil.
for josh carr - the dvd 5.1 surround mix on the NON record is truly unbelievable. i mean, the album alone is great, but the second disc really makes it a unique listening experience. really physical. only recommended for those with a nice home theatre or equivalent setup, though -- otherwise i suppose it's kind of pointless. the one drawback i noticed (and this could be an element of my dvd player itself) is the fact that while the regular cd is indexed but contains no pauses between tracks, the dvd mix has pauses, and this greatly reduced my enjoyment in listening to the album as one, continuous piece (how it really should be listened to). hope this glitch in the technology can eventually be remedied. but, definitely give it a listen nonetheless. recommended. cheers, ken
I actually remember a review in TimeOut this summer of NON's Children of the Black Sun CD which comes packaged with a DVD 5.1 surround mix of the album. from a review: And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the bonus disk that comes with the album. It's a 5.1 audio DVD mix of Children of the Black Sun, the first DVD release ever for Boyd Rice and NON. Let me just say that this DVD will crush you to a fine powder. It's like the sounds on the CD taking tangible form -- imagine music as a tactile rather than a sonic experience. Beware. Boyd Rice has proved himself here a master craftsman and manipulator of the very stuff of life itself. has anyone heard this?
I wonder if anyone has any experience with these audio DVDs that have 5.1 surround sound. I have been making quadraphonic sound/music for a couple of years now, really tweaking things for a four channel environment with sound movement and headfuckery, what. But my only option for output has been two stereo CDs or two stereo cassettes. Put two stereos in one room with the four speakers in the four corners and press Play on both at the same time... Now these audio DVDs offer up quadraphonic sound and I would like to exploit it. Does anyone know of any DVD burning programs that are geared towards audio? Would you mix down to two stereo .wav files or keep the four channels seperate until the burn? Have any releases begun to really use quadraphonic sound through audio DVDs?
Congratulations, your RSS source is valid. Good work!
IT is getting closer and closer!
Check out the headlines....
Dress Code violation!
MP3s are banned here!
What was Irdial doing in 1981? I'll crack open an old tape, rip it and let you suffer it.
i'm such a wannabe geek That, my friend, is bullshit. You are a dyed in the wool 100% "full on" geek, and l33t for that matter.

Wednesday, February 19, 2003

E-Mail Floods France's UN Office After Iraq Plea

Tue February 18, 2003 04:38 PM ET UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - France's U.N. Mission was flooded with electronic fan mail after Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin urged the Security Council to "give peace a chance" in Iraq, French officials said Tuesday. Some 5,000 e-mails -- overwhelmingly favorable and the vast majority from Americans -- were logged Friday, the day de Villepin delivered a speech stressing that use of force was not justified at this time against Baghdad, the officials said. Another 12,000 messages were received over the weekend, the officials said. While President Bush has warned that time was running out for Baghdad to dispose of any weapons of mass destruction, de Villepin drew a rare burst of applause from the Security Council gallery when he said U.N. inspections were showing results and force was not yet justified. "What is at stake here is war and peace and our common responsibility," de Villepin said. "We are willing to try to give peace a chance." The responses included: -- "I have watched France's foreign minister's speech yesterday at the U.N. Security Council and was very proud of France's position which was based on principles," wrote a man from Irvine, California. -- "Merci merci merci. Thank you thank you. Remain firm. Continue to oppose the Bush administration. PLEASE!" a Los Angeles woman wrote. The letters were shown to Reuters on condition their authors would not be identified. -- "THANK YOU for your courage and conscience in opposing the war criminals of Washington. Your hard work will make all of us safer in the long run. Hold fast just a little longer," wrote a man from Elora, Tennessee. -- "Please stand strong and do not allow the United Nations to be used as a puppet for my so-called government," wrote a Chicago, Illinois, man. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=2247992
Anti war demonstration at the South Pole, McMurdo Station
Was that aired on Fox? You bet. "FoxNews" is becoming an adjective (prejorative) [actually, its also being used as a verb: to be "foxnewsed"; turned into a lie] quilaifier for bad journalism. The O'Reilly Facor, Fox & Friends are crucial viewing; its the single most powerful source of information for Americans at the moment. When you watch it, your hair stands on end, especially with "The Factor" because you do not know WHAT that man is going to come out with next.
>akin >> >> just saw this: >> >> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2779069.stm yes! there was something in the Guardian also...incredible, its like a bad dream. >> >> does it not remind you of the bully at school? >> he might take everyone's >> sweets, but eventually he ends with nothing. but in this case, "nothing" means death; ceasing to exist. >> >> you know i think we should let bush continue >> with his strategies - hopefully >> it will come full circle and he'll realise that he's causing so much grief >> around the world he'll launch pre-emptive strikes >>against himself. Actually, I love America very dearly, and it hurts me to see it changing and being torn apart so. > don't get wrong I didn't mean USA itself - just > these wazacks who pretend to I know...its just me being emotional...America is such an excellent place, its people awesome, just and decent; It hurts me to see them mislead and hurt for no good reason!
Wow, I finally got around to watching the Jeremy Glick interview with O'Reilly (thanks to it being reposted in the Irdial-List email). Jeremy was a grad student at Rutgers while I was an undergrad, and I never knew that he had a connection to the Jeremy Glick aboard the hijacked aiplane (I did some internet research about the name similarity immediately after the 11th but came up flat). He was always an outspoken person around campus, giving insightful interviews to publications, holding heated conversations outside of class, and conducting quite an informed postion as a lecturer in English classes. The interview with O'Reilly was on point, and it was terrific to see Jeremy hold his cool among the bullshit rhetoric pouring out of O'Reilly's hole. Was that aired on Fox?
I thought that it was XHTML, but its not declared in the doctype....I wonder why?
BBC News has had a re-design. Look at the source of one of the new pages; what are all the trailing / for in some of the html? hmmmmmm
"Congestion Charge" shirt (not shown). There are too many fools following too many rules, and too many fools releasing records. We have created a Congestion Charge t-shirt, to restrict the release of pointless vinyl and CD. In this way, there will be more space for the /important/ releases, that are currently stuck in the traffic jam of dozens of useless releases. Someone had to do it. You know it makes sense. If its not hurting its not working.

Tuesday, February 18, 2003

The most interesting aspect of Google buying Blogger is the one of censorship. Google censors its Adwords; does this mean that it is going to h00k any blog that posts content that google thinks is evil? Surely they cant have one rule for adwords and another for "Blooggler"...Lets hope that they dont opt for cutting off the blogs that they dont like, because a 100% reliable Blogger which runs at the speed of Google would be a very wonderful thing indeed, not to mention the complete integration with the other aspects of Google. I respect and deeply admire Google as much as the next geek, but the instant that I hear that Google is going to police Blogger, I am moving every blog that i run over to Movable Type. My love of Google is great, but I love Freedom of Speech more than I love Google.
Unbelievable! US to punish German 'treachery' America is to punish Germany for leading international opposition to a war against Iraq. The US will withdraw all its troops and bases from there and end military and industrial co-operation between the two countries - moves that could cost the Germans billions of euros. The plan - discussed by Pentagon officials and military chiefs last week on the orders of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - is designed 'to harm' the German economy to make an example of the country for what US hawks see as Chancellor Gerhard Schr�der's 'treachery'. [...]
More Kuro5hin Linkage.
What I am sure people find to be utterly insulting is the dimunition of the numbers of marchers. The fat pig alan boulton of sky, a sneering swine of a "man" takes every opportunity to ridicule and belittle the protests. TB used the descriptor "Thousands" to quantify the number of marchers. That is simply a lie, and frankly, these rent-an-iraqi psi-ops troups that he is parading around the TV stations are utterly irrelevant, unconvincing and untrustworthy. We have seen this sort of thing before: remember Nayirah, the " a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl" who shocked Congress with her testimony in October 1990, when she told of invading Iraqi soldiers throwing babies from incubators onto the cold hospital floor to die? Her testimony was a lie. She was part of an $11.5 million public relations campaign by the Hill and Knowlton, a well-known public relations company, to build backing for a war. The money came from the Kuwaiti government, laundered through Citizens for a Free Kuwait. The public relations campaign included lots of phony evidence. ... 'Nayirah,' it was revealed more than a year later, 'was not a simple hospital worker, but the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the U.S.' And that's why our hand-wringing ilk question everything." (SOURCE: Wisconsin State Journal, February 6, 2003) These people who are being trotted about are no doubt, also PR created fakes. Even if they ARE real, no country should go to war with Iraq at the behest of some of Iraqi refugees. We didnt go to war over South Africa, or any of the other countries suffering under a "dictatorship" and this situation is no different. What is so awesome is the rapid spread of information; the edited transcripts, the lies, the serial hypocricy; it is now impossible for these people to lie and get away with it, thanks to the vigilance of people on the net. News of the altered/propagandized transcript came to me from two different sources. Excellent work spotting it, and also excellent common sense in posting it.
Trapped and commodified, hermetically sealed... rendered harmless?
Directly from snopes: "Claim: Imitation see-through skirts are the latest fashion fad in Japan. Status: Undetermined. " [...] We're skeptical that such items of apparel exist and are "the current rage in Japan" for a couple of reasons: * We have yet to find a Japanese source (or any source other than the message quoted above) containing information about -- or even mention of -- these supposed "see-through" skirts. * In all the example photographs provided above, the images of the panties line up perfectly with the actual positioning of the skirt-wearers' derrieres and legs, indicating at the very least that these pictures were very carefully posed. Lacking any evidence to the contrary, we'd guess that these pictures have been manipulated, taken from some other source and used out of context, or deliberately concocted to lend credence to a fabricated story. Last updated: 15 February 2003 [...]
"What you see in the attached pix are not see-thru skirts. They are actually prints on the skirts to make it look as if the panties are visible and the current rage in Japan. Huh ???"
Wow... http://www.panoramas.dk/fullscreen/fullscreen17.html
http://humanshields.org/

Central London webcams go dark for anti-war demo

Conspiracy theories, anyone? Yesterday at least a million people took to London's streets to mount the UK's biggest ever anti-war protest. And yesterday, webcams along the marchers' route were down "for operational reasons." Operational reasons, old lags will recall, is British policespeak for 'I'm not going to tell you,' while one milion is policespeak for two million. But before we leap to the conclusion that the authorities specifically had the plugs pulled we should note a strange coincidence; tomorrow, London's congestion charge will come into force, phalanxes of traffic cameras will be fired in anger for the first time*, the route of the march lay within the central charging zone, so the webcams really could have been down for engineering. Transport for London, which operates the congestion charging scheme, has a large network of traffic cameras, which can be seen via BBC Radio London's 'jamcam' page, here. Yesterday and today the site was reporting that TfL was carrying out maintenance, but earlier today the central London cameras all seemed to be working again. You can tell this because they show you pictures of cars not moving. At time of writing, however, many were out again for "operational reasons."[...] The Register

Monday, February 17, 2003

Jam Cams
http://www.kingdomcomeinstitute.com/
Don't know how many of you (us?) are aware of this ... pretty curious! Google Buys Blogger Related Materials: Six Apart - Ken
Any ideas? This sounds like X is misconfigured. You could try to manually tweak your xfree86.config but thats a pain in the ass. Since you havnt got it set up, you should try another distro, like Red Hat. Its not as "friendly" as Mandrake, but I have found the installer is much more solid. Whatever you do, during the install, try and set X to run in the most basic mode possible, least amount of colors and lowest resolution. That might solve the problem.
"sometimes i don't know who's worse, us or them. you don't see them fucking each other over for a percentage" Charging interest is forbidden in sharia law. Thats why you dont see that. :]
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_1771.shtml
[...]With his back against the wall, belatedly aware of the depth of his difficulty, and surrounded by the empty shell casings of a defeated polemic, Blair played his last card in Glasgow at the weekend. Action was a moral imperative, he declared. If Saddam remains in power, he warned emotively, there will be "consequences paid in blood". The moral case for intervention was overwhelming. Those who opposed it, he implied, were themselves acting immorally. In many respects, this is an outrageous statement. It reeks of condescension. In his wisdom, it seems, the prime minister is suggesting that millions of weekend marchers and all those in the European, Arab and Muslim spheres who disagree have failed to think through the ethical ramifications of their stand. But since Blair can be sure to repeat his moral message in the two or three weeks that remain before Bush is expected to press the button, it must be answered. How moral is it, to take one aspect, to wreck an inspections process unanimously agreed by the UN? Blair and Jack Straw endlessly stress the exact terms of resolution 1441. But this document sets no time limit on inspections. It makes no mention of the regime change that Blair now advocates. Nor does 1441's text authorise the conquest, indefinite occupation and forcible remaking of Iraq under US military auspices. Exactly how moral is it, as is now the US-British plan in the next fortnight, to gerrymander UN backing for war by buying votes with US financial largesse? Blair's new concept of the "unreasonable veto" and the quaint idea of claiming a "moral mandate" from a simple majority UN vote has no base in international law. Nor, for that matter, does the concept of an offensive war, as opposed to collective, defensive action. The US and Britain have no moral right to try to reinterpret and thus subvert the UN charter in this way. The onus is surely on Blair, not his opponents, to explain the morality of rejecting Blix's provisional conclusion that his inspections are beginning to work. It is not "moral" to turn to the "last resort" of violence when Iraq has conceded many of the UN's demands and when South Africa, for example, is offering its good offices and experience in assuring nuclear disarmament. The onus is surely also on Blair to show the Vatican and, say, Britain's Anglican and Muslim leaders, why and on what grounds his moral authority exceeds theirs. [...] The Guardian
Wilbert Smith Speech. http://www.disclosureproject.org/WilbertSmithSpeech1958.mp3
I just heard on Fox news that the military deployment in preparation to attack iraq is costing One Trillion Dollars a month. That cant be right, they must have meant Billion!
Holy shit:
Organization:
      Microsoft Corporation
      Carolyn Gudmundson
      One Microsoft Way
      Redmond, WA 98052
      US
      Phone: 425-882-8080
      Fax..: 425-936-7329
      Email: domains@microsoft.com

   Registrar Name....: Register.com
   Registrar Whois...: whois.register.com
   Registrar Homepage: http://www.register.com

   Domain Name: THREEDEGREES.COM

      Created on..............: Sat, Jan 19, 2002
      Expires on..............: Wed, Jan 19, 2005
      Record last updated on..: Thu, Dec 05, 2002
Does anyone know what http://www.threedegrees.com/ is about??
Tony Blair refused to blink last night in the face of the biggest anti-war demonstrations ever held in Britain and worldwide. Ministers and officials insisted the protests - which saw more than 1 million people march in London on Saturday - would not delay military preparations for war next month. One well-placed source said: "It changes nothing at all. The quicker it is done, the better. To back down now would be the worst result possible. We would have no credibility if Saddam Hussein was still in place." My emphasis. From The Guardian.
The march was astounding. The speeches were also superb, except Mr. Jackson, who, with his mindless feel-good doubletalk just made me sick. The atmosphere was very powerful and optimistic, and as the reports of the numbers went up and up, a swell of an almost palpable relief/excitement was in the air, because "surely it would be impossible for such a gathering to be ignored", something would have to happen to address such a show of displeasure. What was interesting, infuriating and really not very surprising was the way that the speeches were misreported. There was, for sure, a concerted effort to dampen down the information that came from that stage. Every news channel failed to correctly and fully report the speeches. Ken Livingston�s congestion charge heckler interruption was repeated again and again, and Jackson�s empty repetitive rhetoric was overly highlighted. The first president of Algeria's speech (in French) included a cry of "Vive la France" in response and recognition of the noble opposition that France is putting up. The trade unions speeches were genuine and well said, none of these were transmitted in the news reports the night of the march and the next day. As was to be expected, Fox news behaved as if nothing at all had happened on the day; an extraordinarily poor reaction. CNN repeated sound bites from more speakers, but they were the shortest of excerpts. ITN, BBC, and all the UK channels repeated both Blair�s speech in response to the march and then Gordon Brown's totally insincere speech, ad nauseum. It felt like the news channels were repeating these speeches to counteract the energy of the mach. Euro News was more balanced. What was also superb was the general understanding and plain speaking about the Israel/Palestinian problem. No one held back in roundly condemning Israel, and the hypocrisy of the UN and its uneven enforcement of its resolutions. The exception was once again Jackson, who made sure that he offended no one. Only CNN showed a small amount of this aspect; the BBC came out with the incredible line of "This march was very political" well duh!!! The best speech of all was from the organizer of the march and rally, who declared that on the day that war starts, a general strike will be called. If I remember correctly the union of communications workers representative wants to go back to its members to vote for a strike if war starts. The placards and punters were awesome; "Bush is another word for Cunt" was my favourite, a man with a Mohican held a pretzel aloft to my left. Children were everywhere, the old the young; every kind of person, from everywhere. This was pure untapped power in the form of human rivers. The last march that I went on was the big anti apartheid march years ago. This one felt completely focused, coherent, and energized. Apartheid was utterly destroyed by years of sanctions and boycotts. The promised bloodbath of revenge that was predicted thankfully never materialized, and whilst SA today has its serious problems, they can now build on an intact infrastructure in peace. It is clear that economic punishment is the way to convince people to "live right". It is clear that the only way to stop the war machine is to choke off the supply of money that keeps it fed. Tony Benn said that the people in the arms trade should be made to account for what they are doing, that the trade should be outlawed. This may or may not happen, but what is for sure, the thinking behind these words strikes directly at the problem. As exhilarating and reaffirming as this march was, unless there is some kind of subsequent direct action on a long term basis, this war, if it happens, will not be the last one. And that is a Bad Thing® Tony Benn said that this was the beginning of something big, and for all of us to keep up the momentum. He is right about many things; lets hope that this is the case. What is for sure, you will not hear about this on the TV. You will have to read your email, keep in contact with your friends and be ready to act when the call is given. And DAMN it was cold; my feet turned into stiff blocks. What were your impressions?!

Sunday, February 16, 2003

Friday, February 14, 2003

Hello loves, I am hoping that the cause of the server being down is from the immense amount of activity you all are up to, as opposed to the possiblity that someone has busted into our home and taken it while we are on our ski vacation. Thus I will not be in any march on Saturday, we have been planning this trip for a while, and I really needed to get away. What would the action be? I don't know. I posted this the other day, and then took it down, but here it is again. I think the answer lies in some country's (ies') willingness to adopt a non-violent approach to conflict resolution, making it the model for their society, and upholding that model through any global situation, without question. I think people respond to gentleness, and I am not seeing any of this in the current situation. Conflict Avoidance and Resolution The Gallery is committed to the development of programs that reduce or eliminate acts of violence towards gallery employees. The table below outlines some of the actions you should employ and some that you most certainly should not do. De-escalation Do's Maintain eye contact. Listen attentively. Listen for the emotion that caused the anger. Adopt a defensive listening posture. Allow the person to save face. Take a "time out" if you are frustrated. Make slow gestures with palms open. Nod or confirm statements. De-escalation Don'ts Mirror anger subconsciously. Feel you must win an argument. Cross your arms. Yell or raise your voice. Move of walk behind the person. Block exits. Interrupt. Challenge. Accuse. Threaten. Touch the person.
that's what i was hinting at ... we are as one... check this out: Electric Family member Ben Rymer at the ICA, with his Fat Truckers
The organism that we are mere cells of won't allow us to not do anything about it. Actually, I think that the way we operate in large groups (societies) is more analogous to the way cellular automata work. We each have a small amount of things we can do, physically and economically, and a small number of adjacent cells (other people) that we can interoperate with. This is enough to generate extremely complex emergent behaviour. If you have ever played with a cellular automata kit, you will know that the smallest of adjustments to any of the paramaters of the unit behaviour can cause a system to become unstable, to grow uncontrollably change its state of equilbrium or wither and die. This is what I am talking about when I say that there are distributed ways to stop war and other undesirable government policy. A small action, on a cellular level, can stop just about anything, as long as the conditions and individual behavoiour is set correctly. I will leave it to you to look on google for some cellular automata software. Look up "the game of life", "glider guns" and you should also look up the "zhabotinsky reaction"...for the beauty!
This is where BLODGIAL lives for the moment, the page is being sucked from another site whilst freakypeople is dawn.
I have a dream - MLK Some musings about dreams Captain Sensible Ummm, the musical "South Pacific"? No, but it saves human lives. Stay on topic, we are talking about stopping this particular war, right now. Intellectualizing is the new demonstrating. Dreaming is the new intellectualizing. "Sleep is the new self awareness." day dream weaver sleep walker(s) crisps narcoleptic tac toe arms race relations make peace dividend wage slave riot jarrow march madness bad day dream three dog nightmare crack pipe dream wake up call center open wide awake fat cat nap sleepy headcase sleeper car crash slumber party pooper blanket policy failure ugly beauty sleep slumberland invasion bed time out silence is golden slumbers eyes wide shut eye get the sack time war is oversleep nuclear power nap night night night demo.comatose sedated ideas crash land of nod So, shall I take that as a 'No' then? No, you should not. The poll tax riot was unplanned. you think? Will you be annoyed if something similar occurs and you miss being there? I will be annoyed if a war starts.
It's a beautiful, frosty, golden morning here in London...streaming 128k from http://www.wfmu.org after having had my breakfast, Pink Floyd "Us and Them". Can you imagine?
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First notes for 639-year composition

The first notes in the longest and slowest piece of music in history, designed to go on for 639 years, were played at 1800 local time (1700 GMT) on a German church organ on Wednesday, February 5, 2003. The three notes, which will last for a year-and-a-half, are just the start of the piece, called "As Slow As Possible". Composed by late avant-garde composer John Cage, the performance has already been going for 17 months - although all that has been heard so far is the sound of the organ's bellows being inflated. The music will be played in Halberstadt, a small town renowned for its ancient organs in central Germany. It was originally a 20-minute piece for piano, but a group of musicians and philosophers decided to take the title literally and work out how long the longest possible piece of music could last. They settled on 639 years because the Halberstadt organ was 639 years old in the year 2000. "We started discussing: what is as slow as possible for the organ?", Swedish composer and organist Hans-Ola Ericsson told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "We, a group of theologians, musicologists, philosophers, composers and organists, met during a couple of years solely to discuss this question. It was rather wonderful to have one topic to discuss at length. We came up with the answer that the piece could last for the duration of the organ - that is the lifetime of an organ." Cage composed the original piece before his death in 1992, and Mr. Ericsson said Cage would have liked what they had done with it. "It's a sound that we give to the future to take care of, and hopefully the aesthetics and the ideas of John Cage will manage to survive." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2728595.stm The real question is, will this John Cage piece be out of copyright when they finish playing it?

Thursday, February 13, 2003

The lives of humans beings are not "nothing", and I have never met anyone who would not give up a days wages to save a human life. Please ask everyone you've met to donate today's salary to Oxfam. Oxfam doenst stop wars. No analogies. I think your analogy is wrong. You think what your analogy is supposed to be analagous to is wrong. OK. Not while people are going to be needlessly slaughtered, and tensions pointlessly inflamed, no, its not "OK". On Saturday night I will have done something which I believe may have an influence on British politics. May I recomend the following groups / songs / lyrics: The Everly Brothers, "Dream; dream dream dream, dream; dream dream dream." Or Bread, "Dreams, they're for those who sleep, life is for us to keep" Or Lennon, ... no doesnt work! To generalise: | $group, "$group_lyric_which_ncludes_the_word_dream
"please close it up pal, im calling another plumber". The plumber is STILL a shit analogy. Plumbers, cisterns, loos.."shit analogy" hmmm maybe! However. 1. It implies a choice of plumber. 2. It implies you have some control over him. 3. If I am the boss, marching throught the plumbers house shouting at him that I don't like his work is justified. 3 depends on 1 and 2. put down the crack pipe before you post! In reverse order: re: 3, You are not "the boss marching through the plumbers house" that is crystal clear. You are a homeowner that has a leak who has called a plumber. Homeowner = citizen Duh! re: 2, If you pay a plumber you have the absolute right to control what he does in your house. Come on! re: 1, in a Democracy, the right to govern emanates from the people. Under (or more rightly, IN) such a system, you have the right to "choose the plumber". The analogy works. Can you deal? Lets have a different analogy. Go for it. You live in 'democracy'. No we dont, we live in a Democratic Monarchy. Your elected representatives decide to start a war. Because They Can® which is precisely what I am talking about. They use every opportunity to push pro-war propaganda. A majority of people still oppose the war. There is no impending vote to kick them out. hence, the system is hopelessly broken. Your options as a group to make known your opposition are 1. Demonstrate en masse. 2. Moan. 3. Call a plumber. Dont be silly. Options such as a General Strike will not occur. because the sheeple are all habituated to this absurd marching lark, which is propagandized as a "democratic right" but which actually does nothing at all. Why do you think that the plan to stop the march was reversed? Because it would have left no avenue for the pent up sheeple steam to escape, and there might have been some real, effective ACTION planned and taken. Greenpeace/CND/Stopthewar would never get support for that; it means people giving up money. I don't know many people who would give up a days wages for 'nothing', let alone a week or more. The lives of humans beings are not "nothing", and I have never met anyone who would not give up a days wages to save a human life. If people dont care enough just to stay home then they should not be spending money to go on a useless feel good march that will achieve nothing. Better that they wrote a letter and sent a fiver to an organization instead of literally throwing away thier time in a fruitless exersise like herded sheep, barriers coralling them & all. Anyway, are you saying you won't be there? We live in London. It'll be amazing to see so many people on the streets. Will you come but not demonstrate? Will you sit at home and watch on TV news, smugly gloating at those 500,000 people doing 'nothing'? Nice try you toll lamah! You've got to provide a better challenge than what is essentially "will you bow down with the other sheep?". "It will be amazing to see so many people in the streets"; yes, yet another Spectacle to dazzle your eyes and make you feel a false sense of power. How can you come but not demonstrate? being there IS the demonstration there is nothing more to it, no direct action, no result, save millions wasted and Hyde Park's grass nibbled to the mud by 500,000 + bleating sheep!
I'm losing patience with my neighbours, Mr Bush -- Terry Jones (yes, of Monty Python).
President George Herbert Walker Bush.

Bush is a former CIA Director and was reportedly a member of the secretive UFO research group, Majestic. He was one of the few Presidents privy to the supremely classified information which the Top Secret group had on hand. In a television interview, Bob Lazar, a proclaimed UFO engineer in Area 51's S-4 at Groom Lake in Nevada said Bush was very knowledgeable of the studies of flying saucers at S-4.

Bush was the head of the CIA when President Jimmy Carter was denied further information on UFO activity. Although Carter was the President, Bush found that he did not have sufficient clearance to access such information.

In 1976, a Senate committee headed by Frank Church proposed revealing size of the country's black budget -- intelligence spending that, in contradiction to the Constitution, is kept secret even from the Hill. According to journalist Tim Weiner, George H.W. Bush argued that the revelation would be a disaster and would compromise the agency beyond repair. By a one vote margin the matter is referred to the Senate. It never reaches the floor.

Stop the War marches are not supposed to (literally) stop the war (there is no war, yet), they are supposed to influence those in control of the war to stop/prevent/limit the war. If they dont work, they should not be done. Period. It is a waste of money, and Ive already done the calculation. Over 5 Million pounds is going to be spent on Saturdays march. Thats insane. Blair is, quite visibly, shitting in his pants about how things could turn out (globally and personally. He could lose his job). or maybe not.... The govt is doing all it can to persuade people to support war ergo it wants/needs that support (to some extent). Non Sequitur. HMG doesnt need your consent or support for anything. Remember "If it isnt hurting, it isnt working"? Its like that. There is nothing you can do if UK Limited wants to go to war. Parliament doesnt even have the right to vote on wether it should happen or not, thanks to the usurped Royal Perogative. The anti-war protests are trying to persuade people not to support war/govt. How can this be bad or pointless? Because it will not directly make war impossible. Because its been tried before and failed miserably. To return to bad analogies, if you can see the plumber is about to fuck up your pipes you would be stupid not to shout STOP! before he actually fucks them up. You dont shout "STOP", you quietly say: "please close it up pal, im calling another plumber". You are PAYING the plumber to fix your problem. While he is being paye by you, YOU ARE THE BOSS, not THE PLUMBER. That is another perfect analogy, and is absolutely central to the war and foreign policy problems all western countries face. I say again. When water is flooding your house, you choke off the pipe that is feeding the flood. If you sit there and shout at the water, it wont go away. If 500,000 people trample through your house and shout at the pipe, the water will still gush and your stuff will be waterlogged and ruined. Go to the basement, and turn the stopcock, until you call a competent plumber to fix the leak. Do you finally get me?! Thankfully, the message about this is leaking (!) out slowly. The eureka lights will go on shortly; watch out, its going to be VERY bright.
http://www.kraftwerk.com/
http://technotourist.org/
"Go! Iraq! Go!" is pronounced authentic by the US 'experts' within milliseconds. And did you know that in this very same tape, OBL says (very loose quoting) that, "...they (the govt of Iraq) are Socialists and Infidels...but it is better to fight against the usa than fight amongst oursevs" There is NO LINK between these two groups, that is clear to anyone who listened to the whole tape.
False analogy? Let me be more clear for you. People who go on demonstrations to stop war are behaving like monkeys who sit in the rain instead of taking shelter under nearby trees. If you keep doing something that doesnt work, and suffer because of it, you are EXACTLY like a monkey who stays in the rain getting soaking wet instead of taking shelter and being dry, comfortable and happy. You keep going to demonstrations to stop war, but they dont work. War still happens again and again, yet you still go. You keep voting, knowing that who you are voting for is sub optimal, and you never get the government that you really want. This is not an analogy, but a comparison (and an accurate one) of the behaviour of chimps (close to humans so the SCIENTISTS tell us :] ) and people who will not stop taking actions that do not work to solve problems. What is worse about this is that these demonstrations dont stop YOUR government hurting OTHER people. If these demonstrations didnt stop bombs dropping on your own head, its your problem, sadly this chimp behaviour is KILLING people in OTHER COUNTRIES.
http://www.zoebeloff.com/
Here is a puzzle for you. There is a shell script called "poop" (without the quotes) that runs a command on a linux box somewhere. You can run this script by saying "./poop" (without the quotes), and it does what it is meant to do. When you try and execute this script with a cron job, cron returns: /bin/sh: /home/users/vhtstuff/yoursite/scripts/poop : No such file or directory When you execute that script, you do so in /home/users/vhtstuff/yoursite/scripts/ where it runs fine. That means that the directory exists, and the executable file exists. Now wtf is up with that?
Using a photograph from Michael Jackson's youth, computer experts produced an artificially "aged" image showing what he might have looked like at the age of 44. ABCNEWS.com

Britain boosts war chest

Britain has almost doubled the amount of money it has set aside to fight a war in Iraq. British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown told parliament �1.75bn ($2.83bn) was available this year to cover military costs, up from the �1bn he set aside in November. "Nothing should prevent us from equipping and supporting our armed forces," Mr Brown said. He also acknowledged the economic instability caused by the talk of war. "This is a time of great risk economically and geo-politically," he said. The extra funding was announced as the Bank of England scaled back its growth forecasts after warning of the impact a possible war was having on Britain's economic outlook. War costs The UN's chief weapons inspectors are due to deliver their latest report to the Security Council on Friday on Iraqi cooperation. Britain has committed about 42,000 military personnel to a war. The cost to Britain of a war has been put at between �3.2bn to �3.5bn by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), about the same amount as the last Gulf War. In 2002, the UK defence budget was �24bn. The US estimates its costs will be about $33bn, or 40% of the Gulf War in 1991. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2753369.stm The magic tree gets picked again; will someone, somewhere wake up and ask where this magic tree is, and why its leaves cant be picked for the teachers, nurses, hospitals, doctors, $proper_usage ?