Dan Feidt's log on Minnesota, Information Operations, spinstorms and latent contradictions.
It occurred to me the other day that a couple song lyrics on this album deserved their own post... This album was among my favorites for a while. In fact, listening to it while writing a paper had a seriously disruptive effect on my thinking. Immortal Technique played Macalester with Jean Grae once and it was pretty good. I said hi. The artwork in 'Revolutionary Volume II', featured above, was indeed pretty goddamn sweet, Secret Service-freakout worthy. The second song here implies that 9/11 was a controlled demolition, and that Bush just takes orders on his cell phone from the same guys that sabotaged Senator Wellstone.
In some ways I used to be more skeptical, but as time has passed, it just seems more and more relevant... Check out this interview, his site is over here. Looks like he'll get another album out sometime this year.
In the cocaine song I always thought the lyric was "these walls have ends," not "ears." That seemed clever, as the war on drugs is basically an ugly joke that arcs right back to the top of power. After all, any real geopolitical player would be involved with the one good that gets them the best arbitrage over geographic space. When I finally get this site over to Drupal, there's going to be a whole section on this...
In the war on drugs, which side is the CIA on?
In the meantime, check out 'Crack the CIA', a 9-minute video posted on the Guerrilla News Network site a while ago, is a pretty good introduction to the Barry Seal and the Iran-Contra-Cocaine nexus, Mena AK, Michael Ruppert's confrontation in a packed, angry Los Angeles community meeting with CIA director John Deutsch with stories of covert operations channeling powder into California during the 1970s and 80s. Good stuff. 9 minutes...
Immortal Technique: Revolutionary, Volume II (2003). Peruvian Cocaine: (f/ C-Rayz Walz, Diabolic, Loucipher)
[Intro: from the film "Scarface"]
Host: I've heard whispers about the financial support your government receives from the drug industry.
Guest: Well, the irony of this, of course, is that this money, which is in the billions, is coming from your country. You see, you are the major purchaser of our national product, which is of course cocaine.
Host: On one hand, you're saying the United States government is spending millions of dollars to eliminate the flow of drugs onto our streets. At the same time, we are doing business with the very same goverment that is flooding our streets with cocaine.
Guest: Mmm-hmm, si, si. Let me show you a few other characters that are involved in this tragic comedy.
[Beat starts]
*Two Men Speak in Spanish*
[Immortal Technique - Worker]
I'm on the border of Bolivia, working for pennies
Treated like a slave, the coke fields have to be ready
The spirit of my people is starving, broken and sweaty
Dreaming about revolution (REVOLUTION!) looking at my machete
But the workload is too heavy to rise up in arms
And if I ran away, I know they'd probably murder my moms
So I pray to "Heso Preisto" when I go to the mission
Process the cocaine, paced and play my position
[Pumpkinhead - Cocaine Field Boss]
Ok, listen while I'm out there, just give me my product
Before we chop off ya hands for worker's misconduct
I got the power to shoot a copper, and not get charged
And it would be sad to see your family in front of a firing squad
So to feed your kids, I need these bricks
40 tons in total, let me test it, indeed I (*sniff*)
Shit, this is good, pass me a tissue
And don't worry about them, I paid off the officials
[Diabolic - Peruvian Leader]
Yo, it don't come as a challenge, I'm the son of some of the foulest
Elected by my people...the only one on the ballot
Born and bred to consult with feds, I laugh at fate
And assassinate my predecessor to have his place
In a third-world fashion state, lock the nation
With 90% of the wealth in 10% of the population
The Central Intelligence Agency takes weight faithfully
The finest type of China white and cocaine you'll see
[Tonedeff - American Drug Distributor]
Honey I'm home, nevermind why our bank account's suddenly grown
It's funny, we're so out of this debt from this money we owe
Woulda ya...mind if I told you I had two governments overthrown
To keep our son enrolled in a private school, and to keep ya tummy swollen
C'mon, our fuckin' home was built on the foundation of bloody throats
The hungry stolen of they souls, of course this country's runnin' coke
I took a stunted oath to hush the one's who know
But CIA conducts the flow of these young hustlers who lust for dough
[Poison Pen - Drug Dealer]
I don't work in the hood (Hit my connect)
Plus what's really good, they supply for the hood
These dudes fucking crack me up, scrutinize like we inferior
Petrified when we meet in my area (calm down)
My dude's'll shoot until I say so, got the loot?
Give me the YAY YAY like Ice Cube, so don't play with my llello
We won't stop for you bastards
Must choose (?), chop it and bag it
[Loucipher - Undercover Police Officer]
Taking pictures and tapping phones
Debating snitches and cracking codes
Past a couple, blast the fo',
Want any hustler stacking dough with probably crack the blow
And my overtime is where your taxes go
I gain your trust
Get you to hand weight to us because we paid up front
On the low with cameras taping ya
Getting pop away? The prison sentence is going to
Make the officer leave with two ki's out the evidence room
[C-Rayz Walz - Prison Inmate]
Out the evidence room (*Said with Loucipher*)
Went my fame, truck, boat or plane, they watching you
You think you got work? They copping too
We control blocks, they lock countries
Ya own companies, we had nice cars and sneaker money
Now there's players out there, talking 'bout the holding
With bugs in they house like they down South with windows open
Your dough ain't long, you wrong, you take shorts and (?)
Feds will be up in your mouth...like forks and spoons
So enjoy the rush, live plush off Coke bread
Soon you'll be in a cell with me, like Jenny Lopez
In school, I was a bully, now life is fully a joke
I keep a flow on a boat for Peruvian Coke
Players do favors for governors and tax makers
Fat Quakers smoke crack and sex acts with bad mayors
The walls got ears, you big mouths probably scared
Not prepared to do years like Javier
[Immortal Technique Speaking]
The story just told is an example of the path that
drugs take on their way to every neighborhood, in
every state of this country. It's a lot deeper than
the niggas on your block. So when they point the
finger at you, brother men, this is what you've got to tell them:
[Wesley Snipes - from "New Jack City"]
I'm not guilty. YOU'RE the one that's guilty. The
lawmakers, the politicians, the Columbian drug lords,
all you who lobby against making drugs legal. Just
like you did with alcohol during the prohibition.
You're the one who's guilty. I mean, c'mon, let's kick
the ballistics here: Ain't no Uzi's made in Harlem.
Not one of us in here owns a poppy field. This thing
is bigger than (Immortal Technique). This is big
business. This is the American way.
"Cause of Death" - same album... with an intro from... Mumia Abu Jamal!
To think about the origins of hip hop in this culture and also about homeland security is to see that there are at the very least two worlds in America. One of the well-to-do and the struggling. For if ever there was the absence of homeland security it is seen in the gritty roots of hip hop.
For the music arises from a generation that feels with some justice that they have been betrayed by those who came before them. That they are at best tolerated in
schools, feared on the streets, and almost inevitably destined for the hell holes of prison. They grew up hungry, hated and unloved. And this is the psychic fuel that seems to generate the anger that seems endemic in much of the music and poetry. One senses very little hope above the personal goals of wealth and the climb above the pit of poverty.
In the broader society the opposite is true, for here more than any place on earth wealth is more wide spread and so bountiful. What passes for the middle class in America could pass for the upper class in most of the rest of the world. They're very opulent and relative wealth makes the insecure. And homeland security is a governmental phrase that is as oxymoronic, as crazy as saying military intelligence, or the U.S Department of Justice.
They're just words that have very little relationship to reality. And do you feel safer now? Do you think you will anytime soon? Do you think duck tape and Kleenex and color codes will make you safer?
From Death Row, this is Mumia Abu Jamal...
[Talking]
Immortal Technique
Revolutionary Volume 2
Yeah, broadcasting live from Harlem, New York
Let the truth be known..
[Verse 1]
You better watch what the fuck flies outta ya mouth
Or I'ma hijack a plane and fly it into your house
Burn your apartment with your family tied to the couch
And slit your throat, so when you scream, only blood comes out
I doubt that there could ever be...a more wicked MC
'Cuz AIDs infested child molesters aren't sicker than me
I see the world for what it is, beyond the white and the black
The way the government downplays historical facts
'Cuz the United States sponsored the rise of the 3rd Reich
Just like the CIA trained terrorists to the fight
Build bombs and sneak box cutters onto a flight
When I was a child, the Devil himself bought me a mic
But I refused the offer, 'cuz God sent me to strike
With skills unused like fallopian tubes on a dyke
My words'll expose George Bush and Bin Laden
As two separate parts of the same seven headed dragon
And you can't fathom the truth, so you don't hear me
You think illuminati's just a fuckin conspiracy theory?
That's why Conservative racists are all runnin' shit
And your phone is tapped by the Federal Government
So I'm jammin' frequencies in ya brain when you speak to me
Technique will rip a rapper to pieces indecently
Pack weapons illegally, because I'm never hesitant
Sniper scoping a commission controllin the president
[Hook]
Father, forgive them, for they don't know right from wrong
The truth will set you free, written down in this song
And the song has the Cause of Death written in code
The Word of God brought to life, that'll save ya soul...
Save ya soul motherfucker...save ya soul..
Yeah, yeah, yeah
[Verse 2]
I hacked the Pentagon for self-incriminating evidence
Of Republican manufactured white powder pestilence
Marines Corps. flat (?) vest, with the guns and ammo
Spittin' bars like a demon stuck inside a piano
Turn a Sambo into a soldier with just one line
Now here's the truth about the system that'll fuck up your mind
They gave Al Qaeda 6 billion dollars in 1989 to 1992
And now the last chapters of Revelations are coming true
And I know a lot of people find it hard to swallow this
Because subliminal bigotry makes you hate my politics
But you act like America wouldn't destroy two buildings
In a country that was sponsoring bombs dropped on our children
I was watching the Towers, and though I wasn't the closest
I saw them crumble to the Earth like they was full of explosives
And they thought nobody noticed the news report that they did
About the bombs planted on the George Washington bridge
Four Non-Arabs arrested during the emergency
And then it disappeared from the news permanently
They dubbed a tape of Osama, and they said it was proof
"Jealous of our freedom," I can't believe you bought that excuse
Rockin a motherfucking flag don't make you a hero
Word to Ground Zero
The Devil crept into Heaven, God overslept on the 7th
The New World Order was born on September 11
[Hook]
[Verse 3]
And just so Conservatives don't take it to heart
I don't think Bush did it, 'cuz he isn't that smart
He's just a stupid puppet taking orders on his cell phone
From the same people that sabotaged Senator Wellstone
The military industry got it poppin' and lockin'
Looking for a way to justify the Wolfowitz Doctrine
And as a matter of fact, Rumsfeld, now that I think back
Without 9/11, you couldn't have a war in Iraq
Or a Defense budget of world conquest proportions
Kill freedom of speech and revoke the right to abortions
Tax cut extortion, a blessing to the wealthy and wicked
But you still have to answer to the Armageddon you scripted
And Dick Cheney, you fuckin leech, tell them your plans
About building your pipelines through Afghanistan
And how Israeli troops trained the Taliban in Pakistan
You might have some house niggaz fooled, but I understand
Colonialism is sponsored by corporations
That's why Halliburton gets paid to rebuild nations
Tell me the truth, I don't scare into paralysis
I know the CIA saw Bin Laden on dialysis
In '98 when he was Top Ten for the FBI
Government ties is really why the Government lies
Read it yourself instead of asking the Government why
'Cuz then the Cause of Death will cause the propaganda to die..
[Man talking]
He is scheduled for 60 Minutes next. He is going on
French, Italian, Japanese television. People
everywhere are starting to listen to him. It's embarrassing...
You better watch what the fuck flies outta your mouth...
The flash animation of the Liam Lynch song "My United States of Whatever" is pretty funny. Here's a knockoff animation with George Bush and the leadup to the war.
Turns out that YouTube has the official video. Never seen it before - pretty sweet and bonus points for funny stock video clips. And apparently the guys in No Doubt covered it too.
Just got back from Hibbing, where my aunt's documentary, "Tangled up in Bob," screened twice to packed, appreciative crowds of locals and Dylan fanatics. (sign up on the site to find out when the DVD is coming, and for now, distribution is the big question. Listen to the MPR feature)
Like Hibbing's other claim to fame (aside from Kevin McHale), the world's largest iron ore open pit mine, the film is defined by empty space, the negativity of Bob Dylan's ties to this place. It chronicles the early years - starting in Duluth, ending in Dinkytown. The nut of it is the people that grew up with Robert Zimmerman, but then met Bob Dylan.
As one of his old university buddies said to me, he was a "pathological liar" whom they often didn't believe. They didn't buy it when he disappeared for a couple months and reappeared, claiming he'd cut a couple records in New York. He also variously claimed he'd been out west, an orphan and a carnival operator. This blank-slate kid from up north created a person like a jacket (the jackets came about when Rebel Without a Cause opened in Hibbing).
The man today is some kind of distant prince, under layers of grit and stories self-applied, and I guess that's what's so interesting about my aunt's film: it zaps away these layers to a tiny old core that was apparently doomed from the moment he went down Highway 61 to the U.
But then again, casting away the past and fashioning a fresh persona like some ad executive is the lasting boomer legacy – the rolling stones that can't handle the moss.
Dylan Days, a multi-day festival around his birthday, is a weird, ironic event in that particular flinty up-north way. It's basically a stubborn rejection of Dylan's rejection of Zimmerman, and of course a small town's bid for tourist dollars. Hibbing's downtown was strikingly busy and vital, though: several commercial streets of businesses that are usually doomed these days.
"Zimmy's" is the bar around which all social life revolves – it played host to a singer-songwriter contest with generally mediocre results. But the guy singing about the Wellstone assassination was funny, and certainly the favorites were three local dudes under the group "Kevin Garnett" who rapped Hurricane to perfectly selected samples from DJ Mosquito Beats. Their original entry was a well-done "I'm Bob Dylan, You're Bob Dylan, We're all Bob Dylan" rap. It deserved Internet video fame for sure. On the way out, Mary and I were treated to a badass freestyle on the Pat Tillman friendly-fire Army coverup conspiracy, which I really liked.
the childhood home
At the post-screening dinner with my family friends and the "stars" of the film, I sat next to Phil, the first subject, who hung out with him in the Dinkytown days. He was talented, but not some amazing person, Phil and another old scenester told me. They hung out, played at coffeeshops, after bar closing they tapped kegs in basements. Compared to today's local underground, culture goes in cycles, I thought. Who among the musician types I know will turn out to be the star? And how many more are just starry-eyed idolators?
After the screening I sat on a rock in the Hibbing Community College parking lot. Zimmerman's old English teacher came out. His contribution to the film was charismatic, and one experimental interview sparked my aunt's interest in doing the project. Just days after he and the 'star', professor of creative writing Natalie Goldberg, went around town in a moped, he suffered a terrible hip fracture and now requires a walker. Zimmerman sat in the front row of his class.
The cousin of Zimmerman's high school girlfriend (who was a blonde Lutheran vixen in leather) came over and said hi to him before he got in the car. A simple twist of fate – Dylan was Dylan, writing those anthems only two years after he got out of there. Like the chaotic butterfly conjuring a thunderstorm, if the teacher hadn't been there, if the girl hadn't been there, that guy wouldn't have become the Guy. The masters of war, the watchtower and its princes, it was all a crap shoot from a weird kid that played the piano. He couldn't have been Dylan without covering that place up – and in a very peculiar way, my aunt's idiosyncratic, shot-from-the-hip documentary exposes this invisible side – dragging the stubborn troubadour out of his myth.
Outside Zimmy's, the gruff Hibbing guy who claimed he got him stoned for the first time (and of course they say Dylan got the Beatles high for the first time, markedly damaging global civilization), told me, it was a terrible thing he gave up for stardom. "We sit here, bowing to his star, while he can't even go out for a beer with his friends."
My aunt Mary Feidt has worked on documentaries for a long time. Long ago she used to work at the WCCO investigative unit, and since then has been involved with a number of major projects including HBO's America Undercover and PBS Frontline. After quite a few years of painstaking work, the first documentary she's fully produced and directed, "Tangled up in Bob: Searching for Bob Dylan: A Minnesota Story" is going to be aired to Dylan's hardest core of fans at Dylan Days in Hibbing tomorrow, though it was formally released a while ago. It's also going to be screened Friday and I'll probably go up with my dad and Uncle Dan to check that out. Here's the press release.
It was a long slog of a production. They got in a bad car accident at University & Snelling after shooting around Dinkytown (everyone knows that Dylan lived where the Loring Pasta Bar is today. This is below the Witch's Tower that I tend to associate with being all along the Watchtower, but that's just me). I have heard about the production process on a number of Macs, using Final Cut Pro and about 5 portable hard drives.
One of the tough things was that, unlike that p0nk Scorcese, they could not license any of the music for the production, which is a big deal for legal matters and distribution. This meant that a lot of weird and unknown gems that they uncovered from visiting eccentric Canadian guys couldn't go in. However, there was still a bit of Fair Use law to skirt, such as when Dylan's old High School English teacher sings along to a song – that was apparently enough of a critical modification to get by.
The following was featured in StarTribune's ItemWorld on Jan 19 but has since vanished off their site:
Bob Dylan, M.I.A.
I.W. felt right at home in Taos, N.M., last week when author Natalie Goldberg ("Writing Down the Bones") and Minneapolis-bred filmmaker Mary Feidt premiered their mini-documentary on Bob Dylan's Minnesota roots. "Tangled Up in Bob" (www.tangledupinbob.com) follows Goldberg's search for the former Bobby Zimmerman to Minneapolis, where she interviewed buddies Erik Storlie (meditating on icy Lake Calhoun) and John Palmer (serving cheese at the Wedge Co-op). Then off to Hibbing, where she wormed her way into Dylan's childhood home and fell in love with Bobby's high-school English teacher BJ Rolfzen, who called Dylan "the Shakespeare of our time." Musicians Spider John Koerner and Tony Glover also make cameos, but Dylan, per usual, remains elusive. As Glover recalled a 1959 encounter in Dinkytown, Bobby boasted he'd been out West, but "we suspected he'd gone to visit his folks in Hibbing."Tangled" will air May 24 at Hibbing's Dylan Days. -LINDA MACK
On a side note, MPR has a music wiki with a Dylan entry?!?!
The movie has been noted here, and its premiere at the trippy Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos, NM is noted here. And by trippy, I mean that Aldous Huxley, DH Lawrence and the gang probably took a lot of peyote there, and Lawrence painted the bathroom. My family stayed there once and this room was sweet. Odd coincidence. Anyway.
The film is also being screened at a Zen Center in Mary's current home of Santa Fe on May 31. It's been linked to at this Dylan site. In 2004, MPR's Cathy Wurzer did an interview with my aunt.
Oh yah, the bonus thing. I might be related to Bob, actually, via my mom's family. My mom's grandfather was a Zimmerman (or Zimmermann) from Duluth. Bob's family were Zimmermans from Duluth. How man Zimmermans could Duluth have had in those days? (I guess that would make me a bit Jewish too. Shalom!)
Major story in the Duluth News Tribune:
Dylan, revisited: HIBBING: A new documentary on Bob Dylan's early influences ends up as an ode to the Midwest.
BY LEE BLOOMQUIST - NEWS TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
HIBBING - Like many Bob Dylan fans, filmmaker Mary Feidt and her friend Natalie Goldberg, a creative writer, came to Hibbing to learn more about the songwriter's formative years.
They came away with much more.
"We kind of marched around and did things that people would do as a fan," said Feidt, a filmmaker from Santa Fe, N.M. "We went to B.J.'s (Dylan's high school English teacher B.J. Rolfzen) house, and B.J. started talking. After about 10 minutes, I said, 'We have a story.'
"What we found out is that this is an interesting town and an interesting part of the world. This (film) is as much about Hibbing as it is about Bob Dylan. It's about how the place where you grew up affects who you are." "Tangled up in Bob," a 68-minute documentary tracing Dylan's upbringing in Hibbing, gets its first public screening at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Hibbing Community College theater. The screening kicks off Dylan Days -- a music, writing and arts celebration.
This year, the event includes a "Blood on the Tracks" concert, a singer/songwriter competition, literary readings and a bus tour. Dylan was born in Duluth as Robert Zimmerman and raised in Hibbing. His 65th birthday is Wednesday.
"We've been getting a lot of attention every year," said Aaron Brown, Dylan Days spokesman. "We get a lot of Dylan pilgrims who have followed Dylan's career, and we've gotten international attention." Feidt's original film, more than three years in the making, will be the center of attention on the opening day of the four-day event.
Feidt and Goldberg first came to Hibbing in December 2003 to begin filming. Goldberg is a native of Long Island, N.Y., who now lives in Santa Fe. "When we went up there, the idea was believing that Dylan was a genius and the voice of our generation," Feidt said. "We said, 'Let's see if this place has anything to do with what you've become.' We did find out a lot about him. I believe he took a lot of things from Hibbing that were a part of his life."
In the film, Goldberg acts as a guide. She talks to Hibbing residents who knew Dylan, visits local sites linked to Dylan and has a coffee conversation with Rolfzen at his home. "It's just a wonderful film, and ultimately it's not about Bob," said Goldberg, the author of 10 books that have been translated into 14 languages. "It's about all of us. It's really more about Hibbing, place and the Midwest. It's a sweetheart poem to Hibbing."
During filming, Goldberg said she fell in love with Hibbing and its people. "To tell you the truth, I expected them to be more rough," Goldberg said. "What I found were people that are open, warm, intelligent and accepting of us. I just came back from France, and I tell you what -- I'd rather be in Hibbing."
Dylan gained a lot from Hibbing, she said. "If you read 'Chronicles,' he talks about the weather all the time," said Goldberg. "And even now, on his first radio show on XM Radio, his first show was about the weather. I also think he was influenced in that he continued making new songs and not just playing the old ones," Goldberg said. "And that's a Minnesota value."
The film has received a private showing in Santa Fe. After its debut in Hibbing, Feidt hopes to show it at film festivals and release it to the public.
In addition to footage shot in Hibbing, the crew traveled to Shreveport, La., to interview radio personalities who worked at KWKA, an AM station that Dylan listened to as a youth, and from which he ordered rhythm and blues records. Another portion of the film is shot in Dinkytown, a coffeehouse neighborhood in Minneapolis that Dylan frequented. Dylan's fascination with polka music and with his Jewish heritage on the Iron Range also are explored in the film. Iron Range people and local scenes are shown.
"I wanted to go home to Minnesota and tell a story," said Feidt, whose mother grew up on the Iron Range. "It's kind of a valentine to Minnesota."
The film isn't a Dylan biography, she said. Instead, it's designed to leave viewers pondering how their childhood affected their adult life. "There's a story of a Dylan childhood everywhere," Feidt said. "In the last scene, she (Goldberg) goes home to her hometown. It's all sort of about what she learned about Dylan and herself. What we learned is you can go looking for Bob Dylan in Hibbing, but you won't find him -- you may find somebody else."
One cool facet of life in Minneapolis that I've checked out since moving here last October are the underground venues sprinkled around the city, in basements, apartments and the backs of shops. I hesitate to write very much about this, because the police play a bit of cat-and-mouse with these venues. Some have names, some don't. Some have MySpace pages, some don't. Just after my first visit to one venue, (either just minutes or the day after I left), the police busted them up and reportedly said that they couldn't have any more shows. Ironically, it's located about four doors down from the police station, and it only took them about two or three years to notice all the loud anarcho-punk music playing just off their alley.
According to rumor, some young teenager emailed their friend that they were going to get wasted there, which in turn was intercepted by their evil mother, who consequently called the cops, who trumped up the situation and claimed everything was out of control. For the record I have not seen anything illegal happening at any of these places, and it seems that the folks running them are responsible and law-abiding. Really.
Last night I was at a show featuring Harlequin, Faggot and some other noisy rock in an apartment at an undisclosed location somewhere in the middle of South Minneapolis, a show which would have been done at the first place, had Evil Mom not ruined everything. This venue had no discernible name, therefore it should remain anonymous. The show went late, well after midnight. I threw in a few bucks for the bands and everyone had a really good time. The shows are often free, people don't hassle you. Sometimes the groups there are kind of cliquish but the people-watching is usually pretty good. There were triple mohawks three feet in diameter and punkish kids wearing 3-D glasses. I'd never seen moshing in an apartment before. These locales are a great place for bands just starting out to get a gig and figure out how to make it work. Basically, it's your authentic twin cities youth culture at its most granular level.
The Alamo House is one that does have its own MySpace site. It is worth noting that a lot of shows are organized using MySpace.
Also the Playhouse Studios are more of a slack hip-hop-oriented venue/recording studio that keep a MySpace site as well (formerly known as the Wookiefoot Mansion). The Kremlin is another venue that is apparently doomed to evaporate at the end of May, as the landlord didn't want to let them keep the lease. Their last show will be on May 28, I'll let you try to Google that for details. Here's a video on YouTube from the Kremlin.
(We have added the category "Kulturny" to the site, which is the Russian term for culture. In the new version of Hongpong.com, Kulturny is going to be one of the main top-level categories)
I got a raise at my other part-time job yesterday - while driving down Nicollet with A. Cheng, who returned from China for a few days to deal with immigration matters (such timing). Anyhow this is good news but it means I have stuff to do right now.
I am listening to Unknown Prophets' latest CD, 'The road less traveled'. There is a lot of weird stuff going on right now. HAMAS and the Fatah/Old Guard Palestinian factions are locked in a weird conflict as Abbas tries to set up 'parallel structures', according to a HAMAS guy. Bush authorized Libby to leak, Homeland Security guys are internet child molesting freaks, Carl Pohlad is at CostCo.
MPR had a really good lineup today. Religion, oil, debt and American politics was the subject of a recorded talk from Kevin Phillips (author of American Theocracy and the author of 1969's Emerging Republican Majority) at the Edina Barnes & Noble. He took head-on the financial-services-debt complex, the moral delusions of empire across history, the estimated 55% of Bush voters that believe in the apocalypse, and the weird sense that God speaks through Bush doesn't bother these people (idolators?!). Also mentioned how more extremist Jewish sects like the Lubovitch folks are voting for Republicans - and this is intertwined with Christian apocalyptic views of the West Bank. Reminded us that the Southern Baptists refused to reunify after the Civil War, but have since then taken over Union southern states like Missouri. He talks about the symbolic antichrist and how the Antichrist in Pop Apocalyptica (Left Behind especially) ties into Iraq and oil, thus providing a 'message problem' between the wartime White House, pursuing the oil, and the base, who needed to hear a quasi-apocalyptic or near-eschatological kind of message to rationalize the war.
Which is what we've been saying out here on the internet for a while now... But Phillips really brings it together. With a broad historical scope of the patterns of declining empires, crossing lots of really excellent currents, and a cynicism towards religion that I found extra nice, this one was damn sweet. (RealPlayer stream here)
Midmorning had a segment on the hip-hop nation I heard part of. And of course they were all over the Libby thing today. Thumbs up for another fine day for Minnesota Public Radio.
Lastly the Book of Judas - a testament discovered on papyrus in Middle Egypt - is apparently out and about, turning a good chunk of Christianity sideways. Should he be the most revered disciple because he set the spirit free from the body (which is apparently in this text)??
Oh yeah, Apple is releasing a system called Boot Camp ("enter the Alt Reality" they say) that allows people to boot between OS X and Windows on Intel-based Macs. Suddenly the Windows foundation is missing a pillar. Apple:
More and more people are buying and loving Macs. To make this choice simply irresistible, Apple will include technology in the next major release of Mac OS X, Leopard, that lets you install and run the Windows XP operating system on your Mac. Called Boot Camp (for now), you can download a public beta today.
As elegant as it gets
Boot Camp lets you install Windows XP without moving your Mac data, though you will need to bring your own copy to the table, as Apple Computer does not sell or support Microsoft Windows.(1) Boot Camp will burn a CD of all the required drivers for Windows so you don't have to scrounge around the Internet looking for them.
Ah I gotta take care of stuff now. We'll get some more substantive goodies up sooner, rather than later. :-/
I am invoking my powers as guest editor-at-large of Hongpong.com to change directions on a dime and write music reviews now. Today's review is the Kings of Leon with their album Youth and Young Manhood.
This album was recommended to me by a friend of mine, who shall be known only as Sad Sack. Sad Sack felt that the Kings of Leon would be an intersection between The Strokes and The Libertines, my favorite bands of the last ten years or so (The Strokes second album excepted- shiver) and Creedance Clearwater Revival, a great southern rock band of yore. Sad spoke of a high-energy band with the get-down and southern stank necessary to sate my thirst for Rock with a capital R. He urged me to listen to several songs in particular. I did- and then I listened to the whole album.
M'eh
Listening to the Kings of Leon is definitely more fun than a colonic. Being mangled in a fiery car wreck would definitely suck compared to listening to Kings of Leon. Front-row seats at a live-fire reenactment of the storming of Omaha Beach would be a way less desirable offer than front row seats to the Kings of Leon show. Hell, maybe they kick ass in concert, idunno- I only listened to their studio album.
And it was definitely NOT bad. In fact, some of it is quite good. There is some trilling, growling southern vocals. The band drives their songs with insistent bass lines and guitar riffs, and lays a few face-melters in over the top of the track just to make sure that we know they do not drive Volvos. Unfortunately for them, they had been introduced to me as the equals of a band fronted by Pete Doherty, who is pictured here high as kite with former girlfriend Kate Moss on his arm:
Look at him- the glazed eyes, the jaunty hat, the electrical-taped pants and the shrunken maternity shirt clinging to his bony frame. This man is a complete junky god rock jock with a gloriously-dazed Kate Moss clutching him in order to stay upright. Say what you will about his being a pathetic pile-of-shit scagfreak ne'er-do-well, a flaming re-entry is the price one pays for those kind of heights. Now, I do not want to suggest that rock is about the grinning drugged-jackal walking corpses that it creates, it is merely one of the many ingredients that are required to make Rock God Pie. On top of being a waster of the greatest magnitude, Pete is also an amazing rock songwriter and vocalist, with a fantastic range of imagery and allusion to build his songs from. Or he was, until he started in a death spiral- that's neither here nor there. The operative point is that he is, undeniably, rock-and-roll. Now, the lead singer of the Kings of Leon looks like this:
See a supermodel hanging on his arm?
Yes, he is not Pete Doherty. Nor are the Kings of Leon The Libertines. What they are, though, is a band of brothers and a cousin, in a southern band that, though it takes too many queues from the rock of New York and Los Angeles, is still unmistakably a good-ol-boy southern rock band, and conveniently free of the latent racism that keep hits from groups like Lynnard Skynnard off the set list at NAACP mixers. On a couple of songs, like "Joe's Head" and "Trani", insistent guitars, cigarette-scarred vocals and honky-tonk pianos conspire to deliver the goods- a younger, rawer, more diversely-influenced sound in the spirit of C.C.R. Developing such a style is an admirable goal, and the best of this CD shows it to be an attainable one, as well. However, this album falls under a proto-genre of the more expansive 'American Rock' category- the Play Our Singles Please Album, or POSPA. You see, when a southern honky-tonk rock band puts out a song like "California Waiting", with only the lead singers rabies-infected yaps to keep one from concluding that some shithead teenaged pseudo-rocker dating some shithead teenaged actress/singer whose career developed rapidly from child star to stumbling nincompoop recorded the song. In fact, the heavy hand of the hitmaker LA producer can be help on the entire second half of the disc, with the moment of peak crappiness being their widely-played single "Molly's Chambers". The crappiness of this song is probably well-documented, but I must add that the song is flat and lifeless enough to dissuade me from trying to determine just what, in fact, Mr. Caleb Followill (that's this duder's name) wants to do to Molly and her Chambers- it is the plural, chambers, after all...
A second listening helps this disc out a lot, as the points of continuity become more evident. I guess I am just not convinced that this is the album they would make without the input of whatever LA pop culture consultant was flown in for the task. The wussification of rock has become the overwhelming trend not seven years into its revitalization, and I am afraid we must resign ourselves to this fact. However, the Kings of Leon would seem poised to use their newfound popularity to do what they want- let's hope they do.
BTW- Is the guy behind Mr. Followill (pretty good rock name) wearing a plus-size model's blouse?
Paulo (at right) is up to stuff down in Brazil these days. His group Fujimo has been around for a while, and they like to whip up kind of ethereal-sounding electronic rock that sounds sort of like bits of old Radiohead, Squarepusher, Death Cab for Cutie. Sort of. In other words way modern. They claim Wu Tang as an influence. Crucial.
So there are some new Fujimo tracks out right now and you should download them, so they can boost their ranking on this Brazilian music distribution/label site. To get the music, log in at www.tramavirtual.com.br using a username from BugMeNot.com (just type tramavirtual.com.br in the box). Then go to this site: http://urlx.org/com.br/8137 . You can download the music with the 'down arrows' listed at right.
Tip: Note that for some reason on Mac OS X the files' titles have a quotation mark, like .mp3" that confuses iTunes. Just delete the quotation mark to change the file extension and it works just fine.
Fujimo's other website is here: http://seasac.webhop.net/UglyByNow/fujimo. Right on. Why are they having so much fun in Brazil? Must be because it's the middle of summer there.
Another Tip: BugMeNot.com is an awesome website that has fake logins for every news site, and other sites, that require registration. So use BugMeNot and you'll never have to give away personal data to read a damn site ever again!!
There is talk on local hiphop site D. U. Nation about the shootings at the Quest the other night. Citypages staffer Peter Scholtes just posted an interesting account of the concert & incident. Forum member Tanqueray_Loccsta adds the improbable MySpace + Gangsta fusion:
Man they aint gonna close the quest, they got Mark Webster back. He's gonna clean it up just like he had it when I was a bouncer there. I was gonna work there with him but I got my own drama, Anyway I only got time for my Muzic from now on.
But for those that dont Know this street shit is real it no movie or t.v shit its mufuccas out here like myself that really lived this shit or still are living it now. And most beef that happens aint about someones shoes getting stepped on, or getting bumped into.
Its about real shit that took place in the streets and then you so happen to see the mufucca that fucced you over and its on right there. aint no fuccin talkin just drama.
The only fucced up part about it is it makes it hard for niggaz like me to do shows cuz they be scared of the type of crowed that will come. so the only cats that get the good venues are backpack rappers. no offence to yall...
but the streets are real.. shit My big bro O.G K-Wood just got murdered july 31st 2005 over north. check out his muzic at
http://www.myspace.com/murda4hire
this shit is real man mufuccas is gangstas 4 real man...
and it aint all superficial like ppl think it aint about being cool or tuff only ppl think that is on the outside looking in.
Tanqueray Loccsta says he's performing on Dec 13 at Minnesota Snipe's CD release party. I'd never seen a MySpace site in memory of a slain guy from the North Side -- complete with some of his tracks. It seems like a good idea, to make sure there's a spot on the Internet where their loss is marked, with music that celebrates them.
DailyKos says today that there are rumors that Bush has considered a jolt of Joementum to replace Rumsfeld. Yes, Joe Lieberman could run the Pentagon. It doesn't really seem plausible. I can't believe they would go Joe rather than find someone more tough-looking. Lieberman is horrible, and kos points out it would free Senate Democrats from his the grip of his nasty faux-centralism, but I don't know.
Given the circumstances I would really like a SecDef who was A) competent and experienced B) not murderously senile. I actually believe that the Republicans could come up with someone like that, but sadly they probably won't.
Speaking of the DKos, the site went down for a while when the server was being moved in a van, and a dog sniffed an apparent bomb that was actually cologne or something. So the government got them down for a while on a false positive.
Everyone's on a hair trigger?
ExplodingDog comic says it all. "I knew the answer in the beginning." The poor stick figure works through it now, too late -- the war was rationalized in terrible ways, turned now to mist. The righteous American stands alone, confused, as the world smolders with conflict, blood all around. The US has apparently introduced White Phosphorus chemical weapons into the arena of Iraq, apparently using them around Fallujah to kill targets and surrounding people:
White phosphorus results in painful chemical burn injuries. The resultant burn typically appears as a necrotic area with a yellowish color and characteristic garliclike odor. White phosphorus is highly lipid soluble and as such, is believed to have rapid dermal penetration once particles are embedded under the skin. Because of its enhanced lipid solubility, many have believed that these injuries result in delayed wound healing. This has not been well studied; therefore, all that can be stated is that white phosphorus burns represent a small subsegment of chemical burns, all of which typically result in delayed wound healing.
..... Phosphorus burns on the skin are deep and painful; a firm eschar is produced and is surrounded by vesiculation.
White Phosphorus shells apparently react with human flesh by sort of melting it, giving victims a carmelized, melted appearance while the clothes remain intact. There are reports that it's a developed Marine tactic, used in Fallujah.
The US Army itself admitted that it uses WP in Iraq, in their own "Field Artillery Magazine", as a DKos diarist pulled it together. The military said (PDF):
"WP [i.e., white phosphorus rounds] proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE. We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out."
When Paula Zahn introduced the exciting Suicide Bomber Woman Video the other day, they couldn't resist throwing in this horrible theatrical music, that kind of "Islamic Threat" theme, heavy with throbbing drums and synth strings, the stuff that keeps FOX News so jazzy and amusing. The thrill of the chase! Vicarious pursuit! Who can stop these Arabs before they come down the street!?
For some reason there are tornadoes ravaging the country today - the atmosphere is weird right now. Why are there so many Lockheed-Martin and Boeing feelgood promotional ads on CNN? What are they even selling?
"The End of News?" by Michael Massing - as rightwing dominance settles over much of the news landscape. This pretty much sums up the toxic information swamp we're in:
Through the Internet, commentators can channel criticism of the press to the general public faster and more efficiently than before. As became plain in the Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry, to cite one of many examples, an unscrupulous critic can spread exaggerated or erroneous claims instantaneously to thousands of people, who may, in turn, repeat them to millions more on talk radio programs, on cable television, or on more official "news" Web sites. This kind of recycled commentary has become all the more effective because it is aimed principally at a sector of the population that seldom if ever sees serious press coverage.
On the other hand, there's been this change in the political wind over the last month or so, with Libby's indictment, Harry Reid's recalcitrance -- forcing the long-suppressed investigation into the spoofed intelligence. It's been a treat to see Wolf Blitzer asking everyone about it, over and over, while Cafferty cackles. It seems the elite crew finally smell blood.
James Fallows runs through the basic points of the whole case. When every chattering head on TV claims "the Senate Intelligence report PROVES this intelligence manipulation never happened", and yet, that's pretty much their only firm point, it signals that a great many pillars of the pro-war case have finally been knocked away.
Another major defense of the war was the National Intelligence Estimate on October 1, 2002 that the CIA produced about Iraq - which they claim showed that the CIA and other intelligence agencies was dumb as anyone about the matter. There was a classified version that only a limited circle of politicians could read, and the unclassified version. The classified one had lots of things like "The State Dept thinks this WMD is not really certain", while the version that they deigned to permit Congress to read lacked the statements of doubt. Small catch. Lots of details on the NIE here and here.
RUMSFELD STRIKES BACK read the CNN title bar today, as he cited the Dems who'd talked about Iraq's threat in the past. He says that the decision to invade was based on the same stuff they had, they were all seeing, before 2000. He implies that the quality and quantity of information available to the Dems in 2002 and 2003 was the same as what the President saw, as 'everyone knew.' But even the Washington Post can't take that seriously anymore:
But Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material. And the commissions cited by officials, though concluding that the administration did not pressure intelligence analysts to change their conclusions, were not authorized to determine whether the administration exaggerated or distorted those conclusions.
Rummy even trotted out the Orwellian classic "Islamofascists: we just gots to kill 'em!"
Nothing quite as handy as merging political identities for a quick & lazy ethnic demonization -- see 'Judeo-bolshevik' for how these things work out.
They keep saying, "How dare we have this discussion now, when the war is still happening and the troops need moral support?" Well, three arguments:
First, the American public ought to see the difference in Iraq intelligence between what Democrats in Congress, Bush himself, the various intelligence agencies, and the shady guys around Cheney and Rumsfeld saw. The stuff from Chalabi should be on the public record, one piece at a time.
Second, because I believe that things were willfully manipulated (and aggressively defended when attacked - the Plame case a key symptom), the people who did that shit should lose their security clearances and go play golf with their devious friends. They don't have some intrinsic right to government paychecks, even if firing them would embarrass or fragment Bush's sad White House more than it has already. It has been widely said, especially in recent weeks, that people like Michael Ledeen were running around in 2002, helping move the specific Niger forgeries that scared the hell out of the American people. Some of this was dug up by Josh Marshall and Laura Rozen in "Iran Contra II?" Larry Franklin and the AIPAC scandal fold right into this stuff, as well.
Third, it is plenty patriotic to believe that the American people should pressure the government to have a realistic, honestly weighed and "not murderously insane" view of the world. The Bush Administration has no short-circuit to infallibility or the Wisdom of God. The embattled ranks of the U.S. military need to know that the pencil-pushers in DC will actually have to pay a price for their nonsense, and their evasion of disasters like the torture policy. The blame here resides near the top of the chain of command -- we have to help out the lower rungs by getting them out of the system. The armed forces have to know that we are going to protect them from being forced to commit such terrible acts as torture.
From an article in the Miami Herald, Leonard Pitts:
In the name of fighting terror, we have terrorized, and in the name of defending our values, we have betrayed them. We have imprisoned Muslims in America and refused to say if we had them, why we had them, or even to provide them attorneys. We have passed laws making it easier for government to snoop into what you read, who you talk to, where you go. We have equated dissent with lack of patriotism, disagreement with treason. And we have tortured.
Meanwhile, Lindsey Graham attempts to suspend Habeus Corpus for people detained as terrorist suspects. (If you permit yourself to believe that they're all known, proven terrorists, well, that just isn't true of any jail or shadow detention network - sorry)
Fortunately there are lots of military veteran Democrats, many from Iraq, who are getting into the elections less than 12 months from now. While I can't demand their politics align with my own perfectly, they'd be a hell of a lot better than the chickenhawks at understanding the terrible price of war and violence (as well as treating veterans decently).
The blowback against the Right is reaching far and wide.
Jordan bombing: Juan Cole reflects on the death of Moustapha Akkad, a Syrian movie producer who was involved with the Halloween movies, among others. Akkad was on track to produce a film about Saladin, but now it won't happen:
The guerrilla war in Iraq has claimed a unique cinematic voice of transnational modernity, who had explored the terror of psychopathology and the angst of alienation, as well as the history of anti-colonial movements.
The Iraq conflict has become a bad horror film. It has killed the grandfather of the "Halloween" movies. And it has snuffed out the man who wanted to bring real Muslim heroes such as the Prophet Muhammad, Omar Mukhtar and Saladin to American film-going audiences. Now, his last project will remain unachieved. Saladin was a Kurd from what is now northern Iraq, and he defeated the Crusaders with a legendary chivalry that inspired their respect.
Zarqawi's henchmen inspire only horror, not respect. They have no chivalry, only bloodthirstiness. They are Michael Myers, not Saladin.
Moustapha Akkad was an American voice as well as a Muslim one. We needed his ability to communicate one culture to the other. His death diminishes us all, and signals the nightfall of a decade-long "Halloween" of the horrific sort for Iraq and for the United States.
New Israeli Labor Party leader wants to pay settlers to leave West Bank: Condi Rice managed to cut a deal to fully open the Gaza-Egypt border for the Palestinians, a major step forward towards independent operations. This is good, but also the new leader of the Israeli Labor party, Amir Peretz, said that he wants to compensate settlers who want to leave the West Bank.
Peretz, who accuses the government of neglecting the poor and wants to restart peace talks with the Palestinians, also told Israeli television on Saturday he would back any bid "to give back parts" of the West Bank.
Wegner said Peretz agreed with Sharon that Israel should keep large Jewish settlement blocs in the occupied land. But, Wegner said, Peretz wanted the "billions" Israel spends on building those enclaves to be diverted to help the country's poor.
.....Wegner said Israel was in effect holding settlers not protected by the barrier as "political hostages".
This is true. It is unethical to force Jewish people to live in an occupied territory when they simply can't afford to move out. Perversely, market forces keep impoverished Jewish settlers trapped there, deprived of the choice to leave -- trapped by tax incentives and poverty, they're hapless pawns in the Israeli right-wing's absurd land game.
I recently found this interview posted on Anarkismo.net - from "Beating Fascism: Anarchist Anti-Fascism in theory and practice." Interesting stuff about a sort of hidden battle between organized fascists in the UK and US against the punk/anarchist groups. (more on racist vs. anti-racist music: tolerance.org, National Socialist black metal on Wikipedia, and of course, the white power bands of northern New Jersey). The subject of the interview, 'Three Way Fight' their alias, also has a group "insurgent blog on the struggle against the state and fascism." Sounds about right.
So at the Anti-Flag/Pennywise/Bad Religion show last night, Alison was in one of her favorite places in the world, bouncing around in the mosh pit whirling around that esoteric star in the middle of the Quest. She spied some guy with a shaved head - then saw his shirt featured the SS - the Nazi Schutzstaffel symbol - with some German words. A true racist skinhead punk. So Alison punched him in the back of the head a couple times. Call it anti-fascist direct action.
While France Smolders: Here's a statement from the "Federal Secretariat of Alternative Libertaire" via Anarkismo.net:
People in working class neighbourhoods live in constant fear, both for themselves and for their children. They are afraid of humiliating identity checks, arbitrary arrests, unpunished police violence, and spurious convictions for “outrage and rebellion,” all in order to meet some police quota. Even recent official reports have called attention to this increasing lawlessness on the part of the police.
And what can one say about provocations of the Minister of the Interior, and even worst about the policy which sees the suburbs as territory that needs to be reconquered, all of which increasingly resembles colonial and military “peacekeeping.”
And so yes, we are sorry that this violence – this answer to the illegitimate violence of those in power – is so often paradoxically directed against the very people who are forced to live in these neighbourhoods, who already have to deal with State and ruling class violence. The logic of this spontaneous rebellion is somewhat understood by the population, but its legitimacy is hurt by the destruction of cars, schools and buses.
[.......]
We support the rebellion against injustice, the sense of mass solidarity, the elements of political awareness amongst most young people. As such, we understand and are in solidarity with both the necessity and the reasons behind the direct action now taking place throughout the working class areas.
This week or riots expresses the hopelessness of the most marginalized section of a generation with no future. Yet it should also be seen as being connected to the government’s strategy of tension and current repression of the social movements (transportation, postal workers, students, anti-GMO activists…). All of these struggles bear witness to the same social insecurity.
We are not going to demand a return to “community policing” or building new sports centers so that young people can work out their frustrations in silence. Does anyone seriously believe that this will solve the social tension caused by the political and social violence of those in power?
We are not even going to demand that the Minister of the Interior resign, as has a section of the left. This is a side-issue, a politician’s issue, and it is scandalous when we remember that the Plural Left [1] also passed security legislation and even today has not broken with the dominant liberal-security model.**
There are certain to be more explosions of anger unless there is a redistribution of work and wealth, all the more certainly so if social regression, inequality, racism and marginalization continue unchecked.
“Prevention,” religious recuperation and repression will all be useless. Only justice and social and economic equality can solve things.
There's a certain logic there. Like Hunter said about another time, you could strike sparks anywhere. But with that 21st century twist.
There is a big punk show at the Quest tonight (not that the Quest is really the 'correct' place for punk, but what can you do?) Anti-Flag, Pennywise and Bad Religion are playing... My favorite Anti-Flag song is probably Anatomy of your Enemy. (image link)
10 easy steps to create an enemy and start a war:
Listen closely because we will all see this weapon used in our lives.
It can be used on a society of the most ignorant to the most highly educated.
We need to see their tactics as a weapon against humanity and not as truth.
First step: create the enemy. Sometimes this will be done for you.
Second step: be sure the enemy you have chosen is nothing like you. Find obvious differences like race, language, religion, dietary habits fashion. Emphasize that their soldiers are not doing a job, they are heatless murderers who enjoy killing!
Third step: Once these differences are established continue to reinforce them with all disseminated information.
Fourth step: Have the media broadcast only the ruling party's information.
This can be done through state run media. Remember, in times of conflict all for-profit media repeats the ruling party's information. Therefore all for-profit media becomes state-run.
Fifth step: show this enemy in actions that seem strange, militant, or different.
Always portray the enemy as non-human, evil, a killing machine.
CHORUS: THIS IS HOW TO CREATE AN ENEMY. THIS IS HOW TO START A WAR.
THIS IS HOW TO CREATE AN ENEMY.
Sixth step: Eliminate opposition to the ruling party.
Create an "Us versus Them" mentality. Leave no room for opinions in between.
One that does not support all actions of the ruling party should be considered a traitor.
Seventh step: Use nationalistic and/or religious symbols and rhetoric to define all actions.
This can be achieved by slogans such as "freedom loving people versus those who hate freedom."
This can also be achieved by the use of flags.
Eighth step: Align all actions with the dominant deity. It is very effective to use terms like, "It is god's will" or "god bless our nation."
Ninth step: Design propaganda to show that your soldiers have feelings, hopes, families, and loved ones. Make it cleat that your soldiers are doing a duty; they do not
want or like to kill.
Tenth step: Create and atmosphere of fear, and instability and then offer the ruling party as the only solutions to comfort the public's fears. Remembering the fear of the unknown is always the strongest fear.
CHORUS (repeat); We are not countries. We are not nations. We are not religions.
We are not gods. We are not weapons. We are not ammunition.
We are not killers.
We will NOT be tools.
I'm not a fucker
I will not die
I will not kill
I will not be your slave
I will not fight your battle
I will not die on your battlefield
I will not fight for your world
I am not a fighter
I'm in UNITYYY!!!
I missed the Green Day concert in St. Paul on Friday. It sounded like a hell of a good time, made particularly special by Billy Joe Armstrong's connections to the area: his wife is from New Brighton, and I have heard on reasonably good authority that he purchased a house on Summit Avenue. Star Tribune reported Saturday:
St. Paul was where he wrote some of the songs for the politically charged "American Idiot," the Grammy-winning album that is the best-selling nonrap CD of the past year, with more than 4 million copies sold. In the summer of 2003, he had walked around the track at Macalester College in St. Paul, writing the songs in his head.
This also tracks with what I've heard, that Armstrong was spotted a few times around the track - a more interesting celebrity sighting than that time Josh Hartnett came into the SuperAmerica and Grand and Cleveland when Alison was working. It would also explain why much of the album has a perfect rhythm for running. This song always made a lot of sense to me - it must have been because I was living down the street when he wrote it! :-)
So what's my real point today? The image of Senior Demon Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is an essential element of the Bush Administration's strategy to manage perceptions of their disastrous war - diverting blame and creating an attractive 'negative image'. Zarqawi is one of the principle Hollow Lies of the war.
Say, Hey!
Hear the sound of the falling rain / Coming down like an Armageddon flame / The shame / The ones who died without a name
Hear the dogs howling out of key / To a hymn called "Faith and Misery" / And bleed / The company lost the war today
I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies / This is the dawning of the rest of our lives / On Holiday
Hear the drum pounding out of time / Another protester has crossed the line / To find / The money's on the other side
Can I get another Amen? / There's a flag wrapped around the score of men / A gag / A plastic bag on a monument
I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies / This is the dawning of the rest of our lives / On holiday
Meanwhile, in the Information Age of Hysteria, we have perhaps the underlying principle of our government in a nutshell, as Ron Suskind put it before the election:
The [White House] aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
Enter the Demon of our Times.
Let me offer a theory: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may actually exist, but his "existence" in the media is an essential element of the Bush Administration's Public Relations strategy to manage perception of the war. He is a personification of malevolent intent: if he wasn't around, we are told to believe, things would sort themselves out, so our motive has to be to crush him instead of confronting the Pentagon's essentially racist, disastrous policies. The Star Tribune carried a Washington Post/AP story on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's latest pledge to kill all the Shiites. Consider the following:
More bombings push Baghdad deaths near 200: Ellen Knickmeyer, Washington Post
BAGHDAD -- Insurgents believed to be allied with Al-Qaida in Iraq kept up bombings in the capital on Thursday, launching strikes that brought the two-day death toll close to 200.
The chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, said the surge in bombings represented the kind of occasional spikes in attacks that the military has been expecting "around certain critical events that highlight the progress of democracy."
In this case, an Oct. 15 referendum on Iraq's new constitution is only a month away.
"Remember, democracy equals failure for the insurgency," Lynch said. "So there has to be heightened awareness now as we work our way toward the referendum."
Police targeted
In the violence Thursday, suicide bombers killed at least 31 people in two attacks about a minute apart that targeted Iraqi police and Interior Ministry commandos, officials said. Insurgents also managed to land a single mortar round inside the Green Zone, the base for U.S. officials and Iraq's government. There were no casualties and only minimal damage, U.S. officials said.
A day earlier, at least 14 car bombs across Baghdad killed 167 people, the majority of them Shiite Muslim civilians -- the highest one-day toll of the war inflicted by insurgent attacks in the capital. Seven of the victims died overnight of their wounds.
An audiotape released on a website linked to Al-Qaida in Iraq after Wednesday's attacks said Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group had opened "all-out war" on Iraq's Shiite majority.
Attacks linked to Al-Qaida also hit the city of Ramadi, capital of the western province of Anbar, a stronghold of foreign-led fighters. Witnesses said Al-Qaida-allied fighters rocketed and shelled two U.S. military installations at Ramadi and traded fire with U.S. patrols in the city. The U.S. military reported one Marine killed and said a would-be car bomber also died. Iraqi emergency medical workers said Marine snipers killed six Al-Qaida fighters.
The two-day barrage of attacks attributed to Al-Qaida in Iraq, and the increasing control of towns in the west along the Euphrates River being asserted by foreign-led insurgents, intensified the U.S. military's focus on Al-Zarqawi.
U.S. commanders often have publicly denigrated his role in the insurgency to little more than that of a media-fostered figurehead. On Thursday, however, Lynch discussed Al-Zarqawi in some of the sharpest terms yet, calling him the Americans' main target and saying the United States was winning the fight against him.
"We believe we are experiencing great success against the most crucial element of the insurgency, which is the terrorists and the foreign fighters. The face of that is Zarqawi and Al-Qaida in Iraq," Lynch said.
"We've got great intelligence which tells us where he's moving to and where he's trying to establish safe havens. As soon as we see him trying to establish a safe haven, we will conduct operations," such as the one underway against northwestern insurgent strongholds in Tal Afar, Lynch said. "We're using all assets under our control in conjunction with the Iraqi security forces to find him and kill him."
Now let us refer to a little bit from Orwell's 1984... As WikiPedia summarizes the teachings of Emmanuel Goldstein:
...the state of war creates a mentality that suits the Party well. A Party member should be "a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war." Though "the entire war is spurious...and waged for purposes quite other than the declared ones", even Inner Party members who potentially could know better passionately believe that the war is real and will "end victoriously, with Oceania the undisputed master of the entire world". .... There can never be any large-scale invasion of enemy territory, so that citizens of one superstate would come face to face with citizens of another and discover that conditions there are very much the same as in their own superstate: Even the prevailing ideologies are almost identical. To maintain the image of the enemy as a monster whose ideology is a barbarous outrage on common sense, all sides realize that "the main frontiers must never be crossed by anything except bombs"!
Since the war is a sham and each superstate is unconquerable, the ongoing "conflict" has no sobering effect on the oligarchies ruling the three superstates: .... "The rulers of such a state are absolute, as the Pharaohs or the Caesars could not be. They are obliged to prevent their followers from starving to death in numbers large enough to be inconvenient, and they are obliged to remain at the same low level of military technique as their rivals; but once that minimum is achieved, they can twist reality into whatever shape they chose." [Paging Mr Suskind...]
Thus, the war is actually "waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact". As far as the lack of any genuine outside threat is concerned, the superstates might just as well agree to live in permanent peace; then they would still be "freed for ever from the sobering influence of external danger" (the kind of danger that might force the rulers to behave somewhat responsibly). This, according to the author, "is the inner meaning of the Party slogan: War is Peace."
While I quietly alluded to this earlier, other people have been making this point for a while, but damn it, even the newspaper admits this "media figurehead" phenomenon is partly true. There's probably a real Zarqawi figure out there, but basically, these days I generally believe he is a media construction designed to provide a narrative that Joe Six Pack can understand. The exciting Zarqawi Chase (with, say, captured laptops and narrow escapes) is the kind of story that the NASCAR dad needs to stave off cognitive dissonance. The insurgency is not a failure of policy, it's not Rummy's and Myers' fuck-ups, it's this damn Zarqawi always trying to throw monkey wrenches in the system AKA "building democracy". Some might say it's a Leo Straussian Noble Lie to provide succor for the Bronze Masses. Let me throw in a Billmon post on this matter from a year ago:
The problem here is not with the Fallujans, the problem here is not with the coalition. The problem here is with foreign fighters, international terrorists, people like Zarqawi, who we believe to be in Fallujah or nearby.
Coalition spokesman Dan Senor: Press Briefing April 13, 2004
The security situation in Fallujah, Iraq, remains stable, and coalition forces there are engaged in a "robust hunt" for al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, believed to be in or near the city, coalition officials said today.
American Forces Information Service: 'Robust' Manhunt for Zarqawi Under Way April 13, 2004
Former regime elements can be former Ba'athists, they can be Iraqi extremists, they can be outside jihadists, they can be Zarqawi network folks as well.
Gen. Dick Myers: Press Briefing April 7, 2004
The terrorists, assassins are threatened by the Iraqi's people's progress toward self-government, because they know that they will have no future in a free Iraq. They know, as al Qaeda associate Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi put it in his letter recently, that we intercepted: "Democracy is coming"...
Donald Rumsfeld: Press Briefing April 7, 2004
A statement circulating in Iraq and signed by anti-U.S. groups last month claimed al-Zarqawi was killed earlier by American bombs in northern Iraq. A senior U.S. official denied the report of al-Zarqawi's death.
Associated Press: Al Qaeda tape takes credit for Iraq attacks April 6, 2004
The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party's purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters, perhaps even -- so it was occasionally rumoured -- in some hiding-place in Oceania itself.
George Orwell: 1984
And let us not forget Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's entry into the universe of the News Cycle came with the notorious Nick Berg decapitation video. This video had a number of strange anomalies in it, and I have suspected for quite a while that it was fake. My favorite alternate explanation was that the video was actually shot by US personnel inside Abu Ghraib prison (aside from the "Lawn Chair from Hell" connection) to distract attention from the exploding torture scandal.
Too conspiratorial? Such a video could never be fake? Then why does the great Zarqawi appear to have Two Legs, not One? Try the WikiPedia Nick Berg conspiracy theories page for even more! This WikiPedia paragraph essentially sums up my point:
There are rumors that Zarqawi is dead because no sightings of him have been confirmed since 2001. In one report, the conservative British newspaper Daily Telegraph described as myth the claim that Zarqawi was the head of the "terrorist network" in Iraq. According to a U.S. military intelligence source, the Zarqawi myth resulted from faulty intelligence obtained by the payment of substantial sums of money to unreliable and dishonest sources. The faulty intelligence was accepted, however, because it suited US government political goals, according to an unnamed intelligence officer.[14] The Zarqawi myth has also been purported to be the product of U.S. war propaganda designed to promote the image of a demonic enemy figure to help justify continued U.S. military operations in Iraq[15], perhaps with the tacit support of terrorist elements wishing to use him as a propaganda tool (a sort of Al-Qaeda Ronald McDonald).
I'm just going to wrap this up with a chunk from iconoclastic researcher Michel Chossudovsky, who wrote "Who is Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi?" at the Centre for Research on Globalisation:
War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, but the Chase keeps it Interesting. Hedges:The US intelligence apparatus has created its own terrorist organizations. And at the same time, it creates its own terrorist warnings concerning the terrorist organizations which it has itself created. In turn, it has developed a cohesive multibillion dollar counterterrorism program "to go after" these terrorist organizations. Counterterrorism and war propaganda are intertwined. The propaganda apparatus feeds disinformation into the news chain. The terror warnings must appear to be "genuine". The objective is to present the terror groups as "enemies of America."
The underlying objective is to galvanize public opinion in support of America's war agenda. The "war on terrorism" requires a humanitarian mandate. The war on terrorism is presented as a "Just War", which is to be fought on moral grounds "to redress a wrong suffered." The Just War theory defines "good" and "evil." It concretely portrays and personifies the terrorist leaders as "evil individuals". .....To reach its foreign policy objectives, the images of terrorism must remain vivid in the minds of the citizens, who are constantly reminded of the terrorist threat. The propaganda campaign presents the portraits of the leaders behind the terror network. In other words, at the level of what constitutes an "advertising" campaign, "it gives a face to terror." The "war on terrorism" rests on the creation of one or more evil bogeymen, the terror leaders, Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, et al, whose names and photos are presented ad nauseam in daily news reports.
.....Al Zarqawi is often described as an "Osama associate", the bogyman, allegedly responsible for numerous terrorist attacks in several countries. In other reports, often emanating from the same sources, it is stated that he has no links to Al Qaeda and operates quite independently. He is often presented as an individual who is challenging the leadership of bin Laden. His name crops up on numerous occasions in press reports and official statements. Since early 2004, he is in the news almost on a daily basis.Osama belongs to the powerful bin Laden family, which historically had business ties to the Bushes and prominent members of the Texas oil establishment. Bin Laden was recruited by the CIA during the Soviet-Afghan war and fought as a Mujahideen. In other words, there is a longstanding documented history of bin Laden-CIA and bin Laden-Bush family links, which are an obvious source of embarrassment to the US government.
In contrast to bin Laden, Al-Zarqawi has no family history. He comes from an impoverished Palestinian family in Jordan. His parents are dead. He emerges out of the blue. He is described by CNN as "a lone wolf" who is said to act quite independently of the Al Qaeda network. Yet surprisingly, this lone wolf is present in several countries, in Iraq, which is now his base, but also in Western Europe. He is also suspected of preparing a terrorist attack on American soil.
.....In Iraq, he is said to be determined to "ignite a civil war between Sunnis and Shiites". But is that not precisely what US intelligence is aiming at ( "divide and rule") as confirmed by several analysts of the US led war? Pitting one group against the other with a view to weakening the resistance movement. (See Michel Collon [1], See also [2] )
......What is the role of this new mastermind in the Pentagon's disinformation campaign, in which CNN seems to be playing a central role? In previous propaganda ploys, the CIA hired PR firms to organize core disinformation campaigns, including the Rendon Group. The latter worked closely with its British partner Hill and Knowlton, which was responsible for the 1990 Kuwaiti incubator media scam, where Kuwaiti babies were allegedly removed from incubators in a totally fabricated news story, which was then used to get Congressional approval for the 1991 Gulf War.
What is the pattern?
Almost immediately in the wake of a terrorist event or warning, CNN announces (in substance): we think this mysterious individual Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi is behind it, invariably without supporting evidence and prior to the conduct of an investigation by the relevant police and intelligence authorities.
In some cases, upon the immediate occurrence of the terrorist event, there is an initial report which mentions Al-Zarqawi as the possible mastermind. The report will often say (in substance): yes we think he did it, but it is not yet confirmed and there is some doubt on the identity of those behind the attack. One or two days later, CNN may come up with a definitive statement, quoting official police, military and/or intelligence sources.
Often the CNN report is based on information published on an Islamic website or a mysterious Video or Audio tape. The authenticity of the website and/or the tapes is not the object of discussion or detailed investigation.
Bear in mind that the news reports never mention that Al Qaeda is a creation of the CIA and that Al Zarqawi had been recruited to fight in the Soviet-Afghan war (This is in fact confirmed by Sec. Colin Powell in his presentation to the UN Security Council on 5 February 2003) (see details below). Both Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi are creations of the US intelligence apparatus. The recruitment of foreign fighters was under the auspices of the CIA.
.......
Colin Powell's Address to the UN Security Council
In the months leading up to the war on Iraq, Al Zarqawi's name reemerges, this time almost on daily basis, with reports focusing on his sinister relationship to Saddam Hussein. A major turning point in the propaganda campaign occurs on February 5, 2003. Al-Zarqawi was in the spotlight following Colin Powell's flopped WMD report to the UN Security Council. Powell's speech presented "documentation" on the ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, while focusing on the central role of Al-Zarqawi: (emphasis added):
Our concern is not just about these illicit weapons; it's the way that these illicit weapons can be connected to terrorists and terrorist organizations...
But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network, headed by Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda lieutenants.
Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan War more than a decade ago. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he oversaw a terrorist training camp. One of his specialties and one of the specialties of this camp is poisons.
When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp, and this camp is located in Northeastern Iraq. You see a picture of this camp. Graphic, above. [there were no WMDS at this camp according to ABC report, see below]
The network is teaching its operative how to produce ricin and other poisons.... Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq, but Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization Ansar al-Islam, that controls this corner of Iraq. In 2000, this agent offered Al Qaeda safe haven in the region. After we swept Al Qaeda from Afghanistan, some of its members accepted this safe haven. They remain there today.
......
The Nicholas Berg Video
Barely a couple of weeks later (11 May 2004), Al Zarqawi is reported as being the mastermind behind the execution of Nicholas Berg on May 11, 2004. Again perfect timing! The report coincided with calls by US Senators for Defense Sec Donald Rumsfeld to resign over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. It occurs a few days after President Bush's "apology" for the Abu Ghraib prison "abuses" on May 6. The Nicholas Berg video served to create "a useful wave of indignation" which served to distract and soften up public opinion, following the release of the pictures of torture of Iraqi prisoners. (See the intelligence assumptions underlying Operation Northwoods, a secret Joint Chiefs of Staff plan to kill civilians in the Cuban community in Florida, and blame it on Fidel Castro. (More: [3]))
..........
Extending the War on Terrorism
Are "we winning or losing" the war on terrorism. These statements are used to justify enhanced military operations against this illusive individual, who is confronting US military might, all over the World. Al Zarqawi is used profusely in Bush's press conferences and speeches in an obvious public relations ploy.
You know, I hate to predict violence, but I just understand the nature of the killers. This guy, Zarqawi, an al Qaeda associate -- who was in Baghdad, by the way, prior to the removal of Saddam Hussein -- is still at large in Iraq. And as you might remember, part of his operational plan was to sow violence and discord amongst the various groups in Iraq by cold-blooded killing. And we need to help find Zarqawi so that the people of Iraq can have a more bright -- bright future. (Press Conference, 1 June 2004, emphasis added)
We become the embodiment of light and goodness. We become the defenders of civilization, of all that is decent. We are more noble than others. We are braver than others. We are kinder and more compassionate than others -- that the enemy at our gate is perfidious, dark, somewhat inhuman. We turn them into two-dimensional figures. I think that's part of the process of linguistically dehumanizing them. And in wartime, we always turn the other into an object, and often, quite literally, in the form of a corpse.
A couple interesting things reflect how it's becoming easier to come up with original content and offer it up. First I found a link to a video by some young guys at Systm.org (not to be confused with the pretentious System.net 'global aesthetic conditioning'). They released a short video about 'warspying,' or modifying a wireless video camera receiver, putting it in a cash box, with a little LCD screen on it. The guys drive around town and capture other people's unencrypted video transmissions.
So these guys made a short video, complete with custom circuit diagrams, and distributed it over BitTorrent (high quality Quicktime / Windows Media torrents). Related links: Kevin Rose's blog (or this), one of the guys on the video, a very rich Technorati tag, review of the show on O'Reilly's Makezine.com, also randomculture.com, an earlier project called thebroken.org, switcherman.com is their project blog, they got the /. and CNet stories the lucky bastards.
So this would be an example of putting yourself in the right spots for a PR offensive online.
Stuff like podcasting is becoming increasingly popular and sites like podnova and ipodderx provide a constant source of these home brewed audio broadcasts. The idea is that such content might finally fulfill the promise of the internet etc etc.... Meanwhile people can hook into streams of links like those at Make Magazine put onto del.icio.us.
Looking around at this led me to some interesting sites. Digg.com is sort of like MetaFilter for geeks. Fromtheshadows.tv is another crew that put together some videos including another one about the fun of hacking into wireless data connections ("0wning 2.4GHz" is a great name for an episode)
Meanwhile military guys are starting to release rap music, such as the guys featured in Gunner Palace. There was a major feature on MetaFilter about this with many links.
Hackermedia.net gets points for the obvious name, and links to many other little internet TV shows. My favorite title is "Teh Scene" (not a typo). Good luck to all these kids.
Meanwhile such operations as Guerrilla News Network are still rolling along, and let's not forget the classic video they released some time ago, "Crack the CIA" about the links between cocaine trafficking and intelligence agencies.
Google has gotten this insane three-dimensional flyover map thing... not available to the public yet. Or is it some kind of 3D mapping truck scheme where lasers measure the dimensions of buildings to generate maps. Wow.
I just learned today that there is a peace-based organization down the street @ 1045 Selby Ave., Friends for a Non-Violent World and a buddy of mine is interning there.
You can take CEH (certified ethical hacker) exams now. and practice for them.
Hollywood paid for video cameras in LA to catch bootleg DVD vendors. No comment necessary. Located here to be precise.
Oh great, a 'Minnesota court takes dim view of encryption' as they rule that having PGP software on your computer can be seen as part of malicious intent, in this case against some kiddie porn guy.
Your misc blogs: brainwagon.org , mckinneysucks (discontinued since last January, and I don't agree, but it's funny) freedomhater, israelpundit, neocon-insanity, Sabbah's blog. It's the info age and it's all gravy.
Technorati Tags: cia, google, minnesota, encryption, rap, warspying
The funniest thing to come through lately came from Dan Schwartz, the "Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries," such as the Communist Manifesto, Chairman Mao's little Red Book, the Kinsey Report, the Feminine Mystique, and why not, Nietzsche and Keynes. Those fine people at Human Events, a batty rightwing journal, have done it again with their panel of righteous judges. Darwin, Mill, Nader, Gramsci and Adorno were also noted as dangerous writers.
Lebanon: Robert Mayer on PubliusPundit.com has a good summary of the complexity of Lebanese electoral politics. I am a little sketched out by the wave of 'pro-democracy' talk purportedly coming from Lebanon, but nonetheless I like the picture at the top of their site because like mine it features riot police and people showing the victory sign. Also reported on the voting. Not sure who Mayer is or what his political orientation is. ok.
So something about the filibuster: FilibusterFrist.com hails the compromise as a victory. When discussing the vote, an anchor at FOX was caught referring to the Republican Party as "we" (see the FOX Freudian slip in a Movie!) James Dobson calls down hellfire.
Random blog: Security Awareness, angry about something in OS X.
Local Music: A friend of mine named Dave is starting up a record label called The Firm Records. He's working with his friend Jared to get an album released under the name "The Beckoning." You can hear some cuts on their site.
Media makes me cry: A Pie Fight that you can edit yourself on a site promoting "The Real Gilligan's Island." I don't understand what the hell this is.
Piss-Off-Nixon Dept. Deep Throat is out and about in his walker. It is marvelous to hear G Gordon Liddy and Patty Pat Buchanan tell us about what a bad deed it was to harm that paragon of virtue Richard Nixon. On a somewhat related topic, the intelligence analysts responsible for the aluminum tube nonsense got rewarded! Of course, people made fun of this. Who will be the deep throat for this Pentagon? Does Karen Kwiatkowski have to do everything around here?
Misc: A Republican congressman attacks Bill Maher. Shocking. "What a social security deal might look like." The left's fear of money?
Stand at the Apocalypse: Who knows what's happening with Bolton? Steve Clemons at TheWashingtonNote.com. Sen. Reid comments on it. But of course, we still got Jesse Helms: ""John Bolton is the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon, if it should be my lot to be on hand for what is forecast to be the final battle between good and evil in this world."
Peak oil: There's a lot about the Peak Oil problem from Kevin Drum at WashingtonMonthly.com. This Matthew Simmons character is some sort of expert as featured in this Agonist post (or this one).
GWOT Part III... Oh great, the lens of the War On Terror is going to be widened, because, believe-it-or-not, Al Qaeda is not really a concrete organization and there are many other people the government would like to kill. Apparently Bush's top terrorism advisor is named Frances Fragos Townsend. Sounds like an alias. Thomas Friedman says "Just Shut it Down" as Guantanamo is rapidly corroding America's values and generating legions of people who hate us even more for our crazy policies.
...but Part II isn't over! The vaunted "Operation Lightning" that coincided with Memorial Day is not getting a lot done. Raimondo has a funny column about his confrontation with Nancy Pelosi, the winged goddess of victory. Of course she is caught up in trying to appear mega-Super Tough in the War Against Evil, and this is leading to a certain moral erosion... And don't forget her exciting speech to AIPAC!
We need whistle-blowers: It is said that Coleen Rowley, the Minneapolis FBI agent who performed some painful whistleblowing upon the FBI, may run for Congress in Minnesota against the rightwinger John Kline, most well known for being trustworthy enough to carry the nuclear launch codes at some point in his military career. Sibel Edmonds has a strange case, the translator who tried to stop craziness inside the Department of Justice at least has herself a website.
Star Wars projects into the Real World: A whole freakin lot of people commented on how Star Wars fits into the national debate. Orson Scott Card of the "Ender's Game" sci-fi series commented that Jedi-ism is not a very good religion: "in the new movie, the knights are elitist, dictatorial, and unconvinced that good is an absolute." (although he is surprisingly anti-media as well) I don't really feel like writing more on this subject now, even though I went to go see the movie a second time with Cheng Diggity last night.
Rat Race Status: This NY Times article about how people chase elusive class status symbols in America today really hit home for me. Alison sent it to me, noting its connection to what we learned about Marcuse's theories of the one-dimensional man, propelled by the false needs of a society designed to appear as if it catered to his every desire, while actually trapping him. A related very interesting "info Marxist" column by the generally senile Mr. Brooks. At the least, this proves that neo-cons are still old leftists.
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle. Freeman and slave, lord and serf, capitalist and proletariat, in a word oppressor and oppressed, stand in opposition to each other and carry on a constant fight. In the information age, in which knowledge is power and money, the class struggle is fought between the educated elite and the undereducated masses.
The information age elite exercises artful dominion of the means of production, the education system.
[.....]
The information society is the only society in which false consciousness is at the top. For it is an iron rule of any university that the higher the tuition and more exclusive the admissions, the more loudly the denizens profess their solidarity with the oppressed. The more they objectively serve the right, the more they articulate the views of the left.
Periodically members of this oppressor class hold mock elections. The Yale-educated scion of the Bush family may face the Yale-educated scion of the Winthrop family. They divide into Republicans and Democrats and argue over everything except the source of their power: the intellectual stratification of society achieved through the means of education.
More than the Roman emperors, more than the industrial robber barons, the malefactors of the educated class seek not only to dominate the working class, but to decimate it. For 30 years they have presided over failing schools without fundamentally transforming them. They have imposed a public morality that affords maximum sexual opportunity for themselves and guarantees maximum domestic chaos for those lower down.
I agonized about making a record, but I wouldn't have wanted to make singles, 45s?the kind of songs they played on the radio. Folksingers, jazz artists and classical musicians made LPs, long-playing records with heaps of songs in the grooves?they forged identities and tipped the scales, gave more of the big picture. LPs were like the force of gravity. They had covers, back and front, that you could stare at for hours. Next to them, 45s were flimsy and uncrystallized. They just stacked up in piles and didn't seem important.
I had no songs in my repertoire for commercial radio anyway. Songs about debauched bootleggers, mothers that drowned their own children, Cadillacs that only got five miles to the gallon, floods, union hall fires, darkness and cadavers at the bottom of rivers weren't for radiophiles. There was nothing easygoing about the folk songs I sang. They weren't friendly or ripe with mellowness. They didn't come gently to the shore. I guess you could say they weren't commercial.
Not only that, my style was too erratic and hard to pigeonhole for the radio, and songs, to me, were more important that just light entertainment. They were my preceptor and guide into some altered consciousness of reality, some different republic, some liberated republic. Greil Marcus, the music historian, would some thirty years later call it "the invisible republic."
Whatever the case, it wasn't that I was anti-popular culture or anything and I had no ambitions to stir things up. i just thought of popular culture as lame as hell and a big trick. It was like the unbroken sea of frost that lay outside the window and you had to have awkward footgear to walk on it.
I didn't know what age of history we were in nor what the truth of it was. Nobody bothered with that. If you told the truth, that was all well and good and if you told the un-truth, well, that's still well and good. Folk songs taught me that.
As for what time it was, it was always just beginning to be daylight and I knew a little bit about history too?the history of a few nations and states?and it was always the same pattern. Some early archaic period where society grows and develops and thrives, then some classical period where the society reaches its maturation point and then a slacking off period where decadence makes things fall apart.
I had no idea which one of these stages America was in. There was nobody to check with. A certain rude rhythm was making it all sway, though. It was pointless to think about it. Whatever you were thinking could be dead wrong.
--Bob Dylan, Chronicles Vol. I (34-35)
We all know about John Ashcroft's musical talents, as "Let the Eagle Soar" perched at the top of the Billboard charts for months on end last year (lyrics)... but wait, there's more!
That's right, now you too can experience Missouri state auditor John Ashcroft and his arm candy Bacon singin about God and stuff. Via the site whitehouse.org you can download recordings and they're damn funny. Check out this candid in-studio album art:
Also Nick posted a rather shocking picture of Big Vice Man. I think it may have been faked in PhotoShop, but maybe not.
Thanks to Big Poppa Peter Gartrell for the Ashcroft recording link... I know Pete's way into this folk stuff.
Well, first off, a little in memoriam:
RIP Russell Jones a/k/a "Ol' Dirty Bastard a/k/a "Osiris" a/k/a "Big Baby Jesus a/k/a Dirt McGirt. As you may have heard, the dirty passed away this weekend, dropping dead in a recording studio at the age of 35. While his death was obviously due to a breathtaking history of drug consumption, it is sad nonetheless. No one captured the kind of brainless senseless FEEL for Hip-Hop tha tall rappers need in order to bring something that isn't cliche and effete into their rapping style. ODB had the kind of unglued loopy energy that all great rappers (do you hear me Slug?) possess in some quantity, be it the irreverant wordplay of Jay-Z, the ludicrous political screeds of Nas or the sheer, well, ODB-like loopiness of early Eminem. Legend has it that Russell once ran out of a recording studio to help a 4 year old girl pinned under a car. May this good deed and others never witnessed weigh heavily enough against the much-publicized bad that Russell committed in his lifetime to ensure him a place on the 'good' list.
Another RIP follows: Ted Rall and Gary "Doonesbury" Trudeau have been removed from the Washington Post's stable of editorial cartoonists. Perhaps in the wake of another Bush win the lefties are being culled from major media outlets in an effort to "centralize" themselves politically and not jeopardize their access to those in power or alienate themselves and lose ad revenue. This would seem more true for Rall than Trudeau—I assume Doonesbury was dropped because it is probably expensive to carry and anyone can look at it free on the internet or in their local paper. Rall may very well have gotten the axe over his caricature of the Bush administration. I would argue that it is hardly even a caricature, but there you have it. RIP freedom of speech, inch by agonizing inch. We here at Hongpong use the Internet, as we are taking back what is rightfully ours. I hope you all do the same.
Next: This will not be a link-laden entry, with source material not included, or perhaps not even existing. I would link this next article, however, but it isn't available online anymore. Reading the New Yorker this morning on the bus, I ran into an article that explains an economic theory that I find both fascinating and staggeringly obvious, the kind of intellectual posit that is difficult to properly phrase but so obvious that it hardly needs explanation, the kind of bread-and-butter duh that keeps half of the faculty of American universities in the money.
The theory of the principal-agent problem is simple: in an era of increasing specificity in expertise, large corporations, government agencies and any institution of significant size undoubtly employs "agents," experts in a field, to negotiate for and advise on matters relating to institutional business. Insurance brokers, defense corporation lobbyists, and even buyers for department stores would all be considered agents. The problem, as outlined by economists, is that these agents oftentimes have a vested interest in the outcome the dessemination of their expertise has on the bottom line of their company, their future job prospects or their immediate financial gain.
For example, a real-estate agent looks for a quick turnaround on a home owned by a client, but will wait and get the highest possible price by using all the tools at his/her disposal to sell their own home. Likewise, a stock analyst for a major financial house like Bear Stearns or the like may give a more favorable analysis of a certain corporation's stock on the basis of that corporation's relationship to his house, as evidenced with Enron and their high ratings in major financial houses that had significant investments in the company.
This notion is an important even politically; military officials may be bullish on particular weapons systems because of hopes of employment in the manufacturing corporation upon retirement or because of its political expediency (i.e. Dick Cheney's reference to specific weapons systems that John Kerry voted against as being "instrumental in winning the Cold War") and their corresponding pull with politicians on The Hill.
Conflicts of interests are complicated, but when a middle man is involved, it could be for the very simple reason that the directness of said conflict is diffused when it is complicated. The loser, almost everytime, is the consumer, as the costs are almost always born by those consuming the product or being affected by the policy in question. I am filing this one under Military-Industrial Complex, but it really applied to any business.
All for now, stay cool.
UPDATE: Continuing on the matter of disappearing voices, William Safire will be stepping down as an opinion columnist at the NYTimes in January. I love Safire—not because I agree with him, but because I think he's a smart motherfucker. He will be missed. Perhaps the Times knew about this ahead of time, though, well ahead of time. It would seem Brooks is the replacement conservative voice. A poor replacement, says I, and a little douchebag, says Leroy. At least it's not Novak, I guess, or Will. I never really considerd Safire a true conservative, more of a Likud Libertarian. Ah well, he's preparing to write his memoirs, I would imagine. I'll buy it.
A Perfect Circle is popular music around here. Something appealing about being more ethereal than Tool, but just as despairing. Personally, my favorite songs are from a live concert last Halloween in San Antonio that someone taped and put on the Internet. The excellent recording shows how skillfully the group uses reverberations to build a sonic masterpiece.
With that in mind, the band has released a couple music videos to the Internet, highly critical of Bush etc. One, a deceptively simple looking cartoon-style "Counting Bodies like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums" (RealMedia & Quicktime available) features a hypnotizing Bush channeled through tons of television screens. Beautiful imagery.
A more disturbing video, "Imagine" covers the John Lennon classic (RealMedia only, sorry) in the most scathing way possible, subverting the happy happy joy joy stuff with unfiltered images of the horror of war.
On Election Day, A Perfect Circle is releasing their next album, eMOTIVe, about "WAR, PEACE LOVE AND GREED," according to their website, which has all kinds of goodies, including more tracks from the album, for free. The album art for this one looks excellent: a battered concrete peace sign in the foreground, torched city in the back. What more do you want?
Crucial:
With your halo slippin' down,
I'm more than just a little bit curious
How you plan to go about making your amends
To the dead
-- A Perfect Circle, The Noose
Eminem's new video, and not the funny one, has been getting a lot of attention lately. All about the election, war and everything.
It's called Mosh and you can see it online.
HURRAY fall break... time to freak out!!! WHOOO
UPDATE Oct. 30: A review of the Eminem video via The Nation.
Right now, doing the endless elections project, but its easier listening to Arthur Cheng's radio show at the University of Puget Sound, "Midnight Love," which sounds like him and about six of his friends. International hip-hop night coming out, Chinese and Canadian stuff so far. Nicely done, Mr Cheng! He's on from 11 to midnight Pacific, which would be 1 to 2 AM Central.
You can get UPS's radio broadcast streamed via their website. Sounds good. Someday Macalester will have it too.... I had my show tonight, but I sense the audience was not as grand as Cheng's. Also they are allowed to air music with swearing. Bastards!!!!
Now it sounds like insane Russian rappers hollering at each other. WTF?
I saw Eyedea & Abilities with Dan Schned and Jitla last night. That was an excellent show, and it let out just as the T-Wolves beat the Lakers. We went storming around the packed downtown bars, and it was really one hell of a time.
Today, inside during this endless rain, I am bringing together the elements of the new server "tarfin", poking around, adding mod_perl to Apache2 (a slightly tricky proposition) and helping move some furniture around for people, and cleaning the room a little bit.
Oddly enough in the last 3 days two people have each given me CRT monitors—three, if you include the one that Eric let me use with the Compaq—and now I am in a world of Cathode Ray riches.
Then again, we should take a reality check here and look at a recent piece in the Times:
Studies show that gregarious, well-connected people actually lost friends, and experienced symptoms of loneliness and depression, after joining discussion groups and other activities. People who communicated with disembodied strangers online found the experience empty and emotionally frustrating but were nonetheless seduced by the novelty of the new medium. As Prof. Robert Kraut, a Carnegie Mellon researcher, told me recently, such people allowed low-quality relationships developed in virtual reality to replace higher-quality relationships in the real world.Wisconsin's senator Russ Feingold has put together an advertising campaign on the blogs. My dad recently sent me a Feingold 2004 bumper sticker, which has a certain geographic symmetry across the car bumper from my Wellstone! sticker.
........
Marcus is a child of the Net, where everyone has a pseudonym, telling a story makes it true, and adolescents create older, cooler, more socially powerful selves any time they wish. The ability to slip easily into a new, false self is tailor-made for emotionally fragile adolescents, who can consider a bout of acne or a few excess pounds an unbearable tragedy.But teenagers who spend much of their lives hunched over computer screens miss the socializing, the real-world experience that would allow them to leave adolescence behind and grow into adulthood. These vital experiences, like much else, are simply not available in a virtual form.
For those of you deeply saddened by the lack of news tidbits, well, I have been keeping looser tabs on the news than usual, but I have been saving a lot of news bookmarks, and you can expect that things will be parsed again more closely this coming week.
Since I got back from Europe, I have felt oddly unsettled. This weekend I felt exhausted and twitchy, much to the chagrin of those around me. Sorry about that. I am not sure if it is the radical, public disintegration of the President's credibility, the waves of terror attacks sweeping more sectors of the world, writing a report on Richard Perle's wretched book, or the fact that many of my friends are acting weird. Maybe it's the willful collapse of Twin Cities public transit and the disarray caused in the light rail project. Maybe it was finally seeing a NadeRedux voter.
On Friday there was a great hip-hop show at the campus center. It opened with some spoken word from Suheir Hammad, then came Immortal Technique and Jean Grae. I haven't gotten hardly any music lately, so I made a choice and picked up Revolutionary Vol. I and Bootleg of the Bootleg, which I haven't listened to yet. Grae signed my CD to "the really tall guy." I appreciate it!
My only criticism would be on Grae and I.T.'s stage costumes. By some coincidence they both sported Che shirts, while I.T. also wore a military fatigue type hat and pants. I saw Technique at a peace concert benefit with Atmosphere and the Coup last year, just prior to this horrible war. He was also sporting the Che shirt then, if I recall.
Some drunk jackass hollered "cliche" several times. I wasn't sure if I should have decked the guy or argued with him. Our society today whittles down, flattens, the experiences of colonial people and the disenfranchised. From within, looking out at the Che's and Allende's, they cannot look like anything but cartoon characters. If a Latino dares to hold up Che, it can't possibly hold real meaning. Only Sean Hannity's casual dismissal of the whole reality makes sense to them anymore.
The character Fez on That 70s Show is a perfect representation of how the media, FOX in this case, bulldozes the entirety of subjective experience into one friendly, fuzzy, ignorant outsider. Really, I don't see how they could have written an actual South American from the 1970s without bringing forth all the ugly ghosts. Instead, only an unreal Latinoid can fill the role.
If Che is a "cliche," what is "real?" Where does this cultural authority of "the real" begin? Does it have its own cable network?
The good news is that I have gotten tickets for Cheng diggitay and myself. The Roots and Atmosphere are playing Northrup Auditorium on next Saturday, the 28th. Advance tickets are a relatively steep $30 for non-University students--how weak. They are $20 for Gophers. There would be more information on the Rhymesayers website but it's messed up right now, apparently.
Right now I've just sat down to write this major midterm paper for International Politics class, but I thought I ought to update the site quickly before I dive in. Fall break is coming right up, fortunately, and we are going to see Atmosphere at First Ave. this Friday, which should be excellent.
A significant event: Atmosphere makes a music video! You can see it here on Quicktime or via links on their site.
The big deal for me this week has been my Mac Weekly interview with Middle East expert, Columbia history professor and occasional Palestinian diplomat Rashid Khalidi, who presented his paper "The Past and Future of Democracy in the Middle East" at this year's Macalester Roundtable. I thought that he was an excellent and informed speaker, and it rather made my day when he spoke at length about the significance of that neo-con document, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," and how for him, it described a "template" for American-Israeli hegemony over the Middle East. This is decidedly a minority viewpoint today but I strongly believe it. When the history of the neo-con parlor game which produced the Iraq war is written, Khalidi's angle will be profoundly valuable. He also told me that Ahmed Chalabi is trying to purge Sunnis in Iraq and provoke a civil war. Also he told me that the Revisionist Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky provides much of the philosophical basis of neoconservatism. Want more?
Please look at my interview with Khalidi and the Roundtable story, which due to space had to be too short to provide details on his talk.
Also look at this collection of Iraqi children's drawings, which I found profoundly moving. (link Schwartz :)
Additionally there is Josh Marshall's review of "America Unbound," with an extensive critique of the neoconservative foreign policy experience, online now.
Soo now it's back to work. Damn midterms.
Today Atmosphere released what will be one of the biggest albums of the fall, sounds like. I went down to Fifth Element, where they started selling the record at midnight. However there was only one cashier so the big line was really damn slow. Fortunately our friend Holly was already inside so she got her CD (and also they were selling copies of Sad Clown Bad Dub II). Holly's CD was signed by Slug and Ant. Very nice. We went back this afternoon to get my copy.
I will have more on this whole album in a bit. I think I might write a review for the Mac Weekly.