"Nature is somebody's science project"
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Repression as State Strategy
The second issue of A MURDER OF CROWS is out, and features an important essay about repression of dissent. This is a must read for anyone who still thinks that "peaceful" protests are meaningful. This is an excerpt.
...In July 2006, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California released a detailed report in which they documented a variety of instances in which local police departments, along with the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center, placed officers into anti-war groups. First and foremost they infiltrated the groups in order to gather information, but more insidiously, the police hoped to steer the organizations in a direction more useful to the state. When asked why officers had been placed in the San Francisco group Direct Action to Stop the War (DASW), Captain Howard Jordan of the Oakland Police Department stated: "if you put people in there from the beginning, I think we'd be able to gather the information and maybe even direct them to do something that we want them to do."3Clearly the state's perspective is one of infiltrating in order to undermine...
Pentagon as "the world's largest landlord"
"...Even without Jordan, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the more than 20 other nations that, Arkin noted in early 2004, were "secretly or quietly providing bases and facilities," the available statistics do offer a window into a bloated organization bent on setting up franchises across the globe. According to 2005 documents, the Pentagon acknowledges 39 nations with at least one U.S. base, stations personnel in over 140 countries around the world, and boasts a physical plant of at least 571,900 facilities, though some Pentagon figures show 587,000 "buildings and structures." Of these, 466,599 are located in the United States or its territories. In fact, the Department of Defense owns or leases more than 75% of all federal buildings in the U.S..."
http://aep.typepad.com/american_empire_project/2007/07/planet-pentagon.html
Bush seeks expansion of "Protect America" spy bill
"President Bush appeared Wednesday at the National Security Agency’s (NSA) headquarters to call on Congress to make permanent and expand provisions of the “Protect America Act of 2007.” The bill—passed with bipartisan support in August just prior to the Congressional recess—grants vast powers to the government to carry out spying against the population of the US and the world.
Speaking at the NSA’s National Threat Operations Center in Fort Meade, Maryland, Bush argued, “Without these tools, it will be harder to figure out what our enemies are doing to train, recruit and infiltrate operatives into America.” Under the act’s provisions, the government can conduct warrantless wiretapping of electronic communications so long as one end of the communication is “reasonably believed to be located outside the United States.”
The law amends the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which governs surveillance of domestic communications. Before its passage, agencies such as the NSA and CIA had been required to obtain a warrant from a special FISA court. The government can now carry out such warrantless wiretapping for up to a year following certification from the attorney general and the director of national intelligence (DNI).
The vague provisions of the law would allow the government discretion to monitor, without a warrant, the electronic communications of US citizens, effectively violating the ban on “unreasonable searches and seizures” inscribed in the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution.
The Democrats provided the votes necessary to ensure the bill’s passage in August, following a high-pressure campaign by the White House that branded anyone opposed to the bill as “soft on terror.” The only token concession made by the Bush officials was a “sunset provision” that called for the law to expire in six months, on February 1, 2008. The Bush administration has waited less than two months to resume its campaign to make the law permanent and expand it..."
Speaking at the NSA’s National Threat Operations Center in Fort Meade, Maryland, Bush argued, “Without these tools, it will be harder to figure out what our enemies are doing to train, recruit and infiltrate operatives into America.” Under the act’s provisions, the government can conduct warrantless wiretapping of electronic communications so long as one end of the communication is “reasonably believed to be located outside the United States.”
The law amends the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which governs surveillance of domestic communications. Before its passage, agencies such as the NSA and CIA had been required to obtain a warrant from a special FISA court. The government can now carry out such warrantless wiretapping for up to a year following certification from the attorney general and the director of national intelligence (DNI).
The vague provisions of the law would allow the government discretion to monitor, without a warrant, the electronic communications of US citizens, effectively violating the ban on “unreasonable searches and seizures” inscribed in the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution.
The Democrats provided the votes necessary to ensure the bill’s passage in August, following a high-pressure campaign by the White House that branded anyone opposed to the bill as “soft on terror.” The only token concession made by the Bush officials was a “sunset provision” that called for the law to expire in six months, on February 1, 2008. The Bush administration has waited less than two months to resume its campaign to make the law permanent and expand it..."
CIA, Raytheon's place at Notre Dame debated
"...I am also concerned that Ponzio, and perhaps others, do not understand the depth to which both the CIA and Raytheon contradict our University's mission. Ponzio would have us think that the manufacturing of deadly weapons only constitutes a "small aspect" of Raytheon's work. Unfortunately, this assumption could not be further from the truth. The Army Times Publishing Company, a leading military and government news publisher, found that 96.1 percent of Raytheon's revenues came from military contracts with the Department of Defense. Last year the company's revenues came to $20.2 billion. Consequently, Raytheon received over $19 billion in one year alone in arms production - hardly a small aspect by any stretch of the imagination..."
Monks lead huge protest in Yangon
About 10,000 Buddhist monks and 150 nuns have marched in Yangon, Myanmar's largest city, after setting off from one of the country holiest sites.
The monks left the Shwedagon Pagoda calling for national reconciliation and the release of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
As the procession continued they were joined by 10,000 residents.
The monks left the Shwedagon Pagoda calling for national reconciliation and the release of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
As the procession continued they were joined by 10,000 residents.
For a second day, hundreds of monks also marched to the home of Aung San Suu Kyi. Having met the Nobel-prize winner on Saturday, this time they were turned away by police.
Sunday's demonstration was the biggest protest against the military government for two decades...
Sunday's demonstration was the biggest protest against the military government for two decades...
Critique of 'The Israel Lobby'
"...the real problem is not whether The Israel Lobby pleases this Grand Kleagle or that, or the one-sidedness of its depiction of Israel and its supporters, so much as the profound failure of the moral imagination that the book reflects. A failure to connect with the historical experience of Jews that motivates their support of Israel. A failure to empathize with the real danger the 6 million Jews of Israel face: the threat of a second Holocaust..."
"...As Omer Bartov, the widely respected historian, wrote in the New Republic (yes, the New Republic) in 2004, speaking of contemporary Jew-haters such as those who wrote the exterminationist language in the Hamas charter: "These are people who mean what they say." And "there are precedents for this."
Precedents: The world's willingness to permit one Holocaust gives cause for concern that it will stand by, if not enable, another.
On the cover of the New Republic—almost as if deliberately counterposing it to Wieseltier's "Hitler Is Dead" piece—the magazine billed Bartov's article: "Hitler is dead, Hitlerism lives on."
Exactly my point in my "second Holocaust" piece. It demonstrates how unbalanced things have become that one has to make an argument in favor of opposing Hitlerism, its goals and potential consequences (i.e., a second Holocaust). That one has to make the point that opposing Hitlerism is not the parochial concern of Jews alone or their allegedly insidious lobby, that opposing Hitlerism may even be more important, in fact, than opposing the Israel lobby, and should be the concern of all moral human beings. Just as preventing Darfur from becoming another Rwanda should be. What's at stake is not just a failure of the moral imagination but of historical memory..."
Gonzo for Beginners: A Hunter S. Thompson Reading Guide
Okay, let's assume that you're late to the party on this one. Maybe you've seen Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas movie, or you've read bits of Hunter S. Thompson's stuff here and there. You need a heads-up on how to get into the good stuff. Here's what we recommend, in order:
The Great Shark Hunt (1979):
The Great Shark Hunt (1979):
This classic collection of Thompson's work is the gateway drug: it leads to harder stuff. Shark Hunt contains some of his earliest, relatively-straight stories from the mid-'60s as well as his watershed "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved" (one of his first experiments with gonzo journalism) and his first two pieces for Rolling Stone -- including his account of running for sheriff of Aspen, Colorado.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)....
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