Friday, February 28, 2003

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?

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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'. [...]

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

BLOGDIAL (The Archives)