http://future-imperfect.blogspot.com/

Interesting premise - Espiocracy

Russia's Espiocrats
(((The plutocrats have been tamed, and replaced by a vast horde of spies. Much as this ominous prospect gives me pause, I have to think that maybe the siloviki are an *improvement* over the former semibankyrshina. Those moguls were a deeply unpleasant lot, and think what you may of Putin's spy petrocracy with its giant bombs, oil blackmail and hideously poisoned dissidents, he is hugely popular with the general Russian population. Ivan Sixpack loves that guy. Even Ivana Winecooler gets all hot and bothered when she sees Putin on vacation half-naked in camo pants.)))

'SILOVIKI' TAKE THE REINS IN POST-OLIGARCHY RUSSIA (Article)

Another link dump...

...I've been too lazy to offer much opinion lately.
It is what it is.
I think we're probably fucked as a whole. Economy, environment, culture.... Individually, I'm cutting costs and becoming more self-sufficient. Not in that crazy, tax resisting, survivalist kinda way.
Living leaner and greener with a hint of Ballardian post-cultural meltdown.

• Disinformation :: CIA 'Blew Chances To Spot 9/11 Threat'
• Boing Boing: Bulletproof school backpacks for frightening children
• Archives for Dave Emory - "Anti-fascist researcher Dave Emory (spelled E-M-O-R-Y) goes into all the hidden truths and details about evil men and their trade practices."
• deviantART: where ART meets application!
• Robot Hut Museum
• How voters are susceptible to politicians who can manipulate their fear of death - Boing Boing - (More Evidence -Snag)
  
• The Cacophony Society > Start-A-Lodge Cacophony Primer
• BaD ADViCe - (Alternative Porn)
  
• Political attitudes may be all in head -- chicagotribune.com - (No wonder right wingers are afraid of science -Snag)
  
• Elderly couple abandons home, moves into Travelodge - Boing Boing
• Police Find Man's Body, Guillotine In Wooded Area - Local News Story - WDIV Detroit - (Ballardian suicide -Snag)
  

Writer's rooms - Ballard

Writers' rooms: JG Ballard

More writer's rooms

Obey!

Milgram later commented, "I would say, on the basis of having observed a thousand people in the experiment and having my own intuition shaped and informed by these experiments, that if a system of death camps were set up in the United States of the sort we had seen in Nazi Germany, one would be able to find sufficient personnel for those camps in any medium-sized American town."(Article)

Or anywhere, I would suspect....


And then there's the Stanford prison experiment conducted by Philip Zimbardo:

Not even "innocent" children are immune to the effects of socialized hate:
Part 1 of Frontline's "A Class Divided"

THEY can get to anyone one of us.

Apologies...

...again for those that check here from time to time (thank you Middle Child, comments keep me writing).
It's been a busy couple of months (I do have very mundane, real world obligations).
With that, a quick thought -

It's not Global Warming...

It's Revenge!

Gaia hypothesis

Fuck this guy

The nation's top spook Michael McConnell told El Paso Times reporter Chris Roberts last week that debating the nation's spy laws in public means "some Americans are going to die" and that companies being sued for helping the government spy on Americans did help the government, an admission that Bush Administration lawyers have repeatedly told courts was a secret that could put Americans at risk. The astounding interview was published on Wednesday. (Debating Spy Laws Kills Americans and Telcos Did Spy on Americans, Spy Chief Says)

What a weaselly mother fuckin' thing to say.
First, more Americans will die crossing the street. Do you think they'll ban cars?
Secondly, there are risks with Liberty. It is not only soldiers who take those risks. Who told the American people that Liberty was all safe and cushy? It's not. We all are at risk. That is the cost. If you are not willing to take that risk then I say you are not an American. You are a gutless pig.

Link dump

I've been a bit occupied lately. It is Summer after all.
Here's a collection of articles and websites that have most stuck me in the past couple of weeks (In no particular order):

• NewsTrust - About this Story - China threatens 'nuclear option' of dollar sales

• Don’t Go There: Top 20 Taboo Topics for Presidential Candidates - 10 Zen Monkeys

• Boing Boing: Court rules US air travelers can't refuse security searches at airports

• Bush adviser: Draft worth considering - U.S. Security - MSNBC.com

• Boing Boing: Guiliani: Freedom is about authority

• How parents can battle power of McBranding - Kids & Parenting - MSNBC.com

• The War as We Saw It - New York Times

• ALEX JONES - Info Wars

• Threat Level - Wired Blogs - DHS Data Mining Program Suspended After Evading Privacy Review, Audit Finds

• Disinformation :: Private Mercenary Armies: A Looming Threat To Freedom

• Science of Magic - New York Times

• Automotive addictions and general tomfoolery

'Nuff said

A figure from my Oi! boy heyday has a couple of things to say about the WoT...

Habitué à négliger les détails

Habitué à négliger les détails et à ne regarder que les cimes, il passait de l'une à l'autre avec une promptitude surprenante et les faits qu'il découvrait se groupant d'eux-mêmes autour de leur centre étaient instantanément et automatiquement classés dans sa mémoire.*

Jules Henri Poincaré (April 29, 1854 – July 17, 1912) (IPA: [pwɛ̃kaˈʀe][1]) was one of France's greatest mathematicians and theoretical physicists, and a philosopher of science. Poincaré is often described as a polymath, and in mathematics as 'The Last Universalist', since he excelled in all fields of the discipline as it existed during his lifetime.

This is the first time I remember hearing of this fellow. It was from a Wikipedia piece about Marcel Duchamp who was interested in his work.

"The things themselves are not what science can reach..., but only the relations between things. Outside of these relations there is no knowable reality," -Poincaré

He also was essential for work on the Three Body Problem.

More at Wikipedia.

*He neglected details and jumped from idea to idea, the facts gathered from each idea would then come together and solve the problem. - Belliver, 1956

PK Dick story on NPR

"Philip K. Dick Collection Aimed at New Generation

All Things Considered, July 29, 2007 · Science fiction writer Philip K. Dick left behind more than 160 short stories and novels when he died in 1982. Many of his tales have become successful films, such as Blade Runner and Minority Report. Now, four of Dick's novels from the 1960s have been bundled into one book to give a new generation the opportunity to discover his futuristic visions.

Novelist Jonathan Lethem, the editor of the collection, speaks with Jacki Lyden."

Breaking up is hard to do

For the sake of simplification, Iraq is primarily made us of three groups who really rather not be forced to govern together. The Shiites in the south would rather associate with Persians (Iran), the Sunni with Arabs (Saudi Arabia), and the Kurds with other Kurds. The latter being divided by a border between Iraq and Turkey. Turkey's a NATO ally although, since we largely dismissed not only the UN but also NATO when invading Iraq, the alliance is iffy. Trying to keep Turkey happy is a major factor in why we can't just chop the country up and be done with it, which probably is the easiest solution for us (it'd particularly suck for the Sunni's who'd have the least amount of oil to control). Division would likely lead to a period of reprisal killings and ethnic cleansings.

Oh wait...

This reporter's a jerk, but an interesting piece nonetheless:

Bush's Turkish Gamble

By Robert D. Novak
Monday, July 30, 2007; Page A15

The morass in Iraq and deepening difficulties in Afghanistan have not deterred the Bush administration from taking on a dangerous and questionable new secret operation. High-level U.S. officials are working with their Turkish counterparts on a joint military operation to suppress Kurdish guerrillas and capture their leaders. Through covert activity, their goal is to forestall Turkey from invading Iraq. (More)

Ballardian

Reports of sabotage and intoxicated astronauts upstaged the US space agency's announcement (More)

You don't say?

The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression. (BBC Article)

Slowly, the adults retake control

"...Brown instructed his ministers that the phrase "war on terror" was no longer to be used..."

"...the Brown approach would be the approach of serious crime fighters around the world these days - community policing in which mutual trust is the cornerstone of crime prevention."
(Article)

Inmates Accused in Name Copyright Scheme

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Forget about digging a hole with a spoon to escape from prison. Four federal inmates are accused of going above and beyond that call.

The four were indicted Tuesday on allegations that they copyrighted their names, then demanded millions of dollars from prison officials for using the names without authorization. (Article)

I understand the abuse of the system part when they bullied the warden, however I don't understand why one can't copyright their own personal information as corporations do.

I consider any information about me to be copyrighted and should I find that data miners use it without my consent and make money off of its use then they're in violation of copyright. My given name and my web name/persona are as much mine as any thing the golden arches lay claim to.

Another one (Amendment) bites the dust

From Boing Boing

White House Kisses Goodbye to 5th Amendment
Todd says: The latest Executive Order from the War Criminal Administration facilitates and sanctions the taking away of property of anyone who is deemed to be "undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people". Left in those terms, it isn't too much of a stretch to envision this Administration deciding that any particularly vocal critic of the Iraq occupation is "undermining efforts" and thus a target for seizure of property or assets, Fifth Amendment be damned.

Big news indeed, and yet it has received scant little attention in the media. Shameful in every regard, but it troubles me even more that this latest criminal act has crossed a new threshold in reckless disregard for the US Constitution, and yet hardly a soul even knows about it.

Isn't this a grand war! Boy, I can't imagine anything that's been executed better. The motivations were so clear.
Can I genuflect now?
(Sorry, I own a home.)

FYI

Fifth Amendment - Rights of Persons
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

"Fear-addicts"

In history, there have been the Hyksos, the Hittites, the Visigoths, the Huns, the Golden Horde, the Crusaders, and countless other unnamed peoples who have arrived with sword and torch to bring devastation to society. Today they use bombs and AK-47s. And in the future, even if education raises up humanity from the gutters of ignorance there will still be those of the fanatic pathology. It is likely there will always be barbarians.

But that won't destroy America either.

You will.



I'm referring to the screeching fear-addicts who have raped the United States so thoroughly that they should be drawn up on charges of treason. The cowards who, unlike their grandfathers and earlier ancestors, want a nanny state to coddle them, hug them, and ultimately contain them in a little crib with bars and monitors and cameras. (Article)

A lot of venom in this piece. I like it. Word for word.

Correspondent Inference Theory

Interesting piece from Schneier, especially as it applies to our perception of terrorism(and ease of manipulation).

Correspondent Inference Theory
Two people are sitting in a room together: an experimenter and a subject. The experimenter gets up and closes the door, and the room becomes quieter. The subject is likely to believe that the experimenter's purpose in closing the door was to make the room quieter.
This is an example of correspondent inference theory. People tend to infer the motives -- and also the disposition -- of someone who performs an action based on the effects of his actions, and not on external or situational factors. If you see someone violently hitting someone else, you assume it's because he wanted to -- and is a violent person -- and not because he's play-acting. If you read about someone getting into a car accident, you assume it's because he's a bad driver and not because he was simply unlucky. And -- more importantly for this column -- if you read about a terrorist, you assume that terrorism is his ultimate goal.(Link)

Lost

I'm all lost in the supermarket
I can no longer shop happily
I came in here for that special offer
A guaranteed personality

I wasn't born so much as I fell out
Nobody seemed to notice me
We had a hedge back home in the suburbs
Over which I never could see

I heard the people who lived on the ceiling
Scream and fight most scarily
Hearing that noise was my first ever feeling
That's how it's been all around me

[Chorus]

I'm all tuned in, I see all the programmes
I save coupons from packets of tea
I've got my giant hit discoteque album
I empty a bottle and I feel a bit free

The kids in the halls and the pipes in the walls
Make me noises for company
Long distance callers make long distance calls
And the silence makes me lonely

[Chorus]

And it's not hear
It disappear
I'm all lost

Further Proof

I've been alternately busy and pessimistic about our species future lately so I haven't had much time to post.

Hope all is as well as can be hoped for in everyone's corner of the world.

With that, I offer another piece of evidence that the U.S. is closer to a fascist state:
Battlespace America @ Disinformation

The article discusses the formation of a new military command group (e.g. CENTCOM) that covers the US. By itself it's not a bad idea. However, considering the assault on basic American Liberties that this group known as the administration has been willing to dispatch, I can easily imagine serious abuses.

A house divided

People like to think class doesn't matter in the U.S. and that with enough pluck you can change your status of living.
Bullshit.
If I've said it once,I've said it a thousand times, THEY constantly pump the American Dream™ to keep people struggling for their Disneyland family and home. It is at the core of modern American Society. The struggle keeps our frail consumer driven economy going. Those that do very little but are in a position to profit from the system, skim from the top as the money wheel turns.
Talk like that will label me a Communist, but I'm not. I believe forces bigger than man are now in control. The systems consciousness comes from the millions of little share holders that keep needling the entity for more profit faster. Never is there a clause "unless it is evil."
With that I find this quite interesting...

Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace
Danah Boyd
June 24, 2007
The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other "good" kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college. They are part of what we'd call hegemonic society. They are primarily white, but not exclusively. They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities.

MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, "burnouts," "alternative kids," "art fags," punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn't play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn't go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. Teens who are really into music or in a band are on MySpace. MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.

Blue/green or green blue?

I still can't decide which, fascist dystopia or dystopian fascism.

"I think what is chilling now, however, is how often 'national security' and 'terrorist threats' are used as an excuse for illegal harassment and abuse. The most disturbing trend I see is when people are asked to present identification when they are not breaking any laws." (Photography Banned in Downtown Silver Spring, Maryland)

And this from Wired via Schneier...

Congress asked Homeland Security's chief information officer, Scott Charbo, who has a Masters in plant science, to account for more than 800 self-reported vulnerabilities over the last two years and for recently uncovered systemic security problems in US-VISIT, the massive computer network intended to screen and collect the fingerprints and photos of visitors to the United States. (DHS Security Chief Dismisses Congress's Hacking Questions)

"They said 'no' and they said it's a national security issue. And I said what about my constitutional rights? And they said 'not at this point ... you

DES MOINES - Cecilia Beaman is a 57-year-old grandmother, a principal at Pacific Middle School in Des Moines, and as of Sunday is also a suspected terrorist. (More)

Shame on us.

Intermission

Apologies to anyone looking here as of late for something new. I've been working on more mundane things that have been consuming much of my time. It also gets a little heavy seeing one's culture flush itself.

The Day America Died
posted by populist

...The spiritual wound was self-inflicted. It was something we chose to do to ourselves. The "real wound" was not a matter of what the enemy did to us, but rather the way we, as a nation, chose to respond to our enemy; the manner in which we willingly allowed the injured pride of a once great nation to bleed into such hate, to transmute into such a frenzied need to destroy our enemy. (More at Disinformation)

Terrorists are idiots...

Portrait of the Modern Terrorist as an Idiot
The recently publicized terrorist plot to blow up John F. Kennedy International Airport, like so many of the terrorist plots over the past few years, is a study in alarmism and incompetence: on the part of the terrorists, our government and the press.

Terrorism is a real threat, and one that needs to be addressed by appropriate means. But allowing ourselves to be terrorized by wannabe terrorists and unrealistic plots -- and worse, allowing our essential freedoms to be lost by using them as an excuse -- is wrong. (Schneier on Security)

And so are oil execs...

Yes Men Strike Oil
After noting that current energy policies will likely lead to "huge global calamities" and disrupt oil supplies, Wolff told the audience "that in the worst case scenario, the oil industry could "keep fuel flowing" by transforming the billions of people who die into oil," said a Yes Men press release. (Wired)

Corporate evil

Yahoo shareholders have rejected plans for the company to adopt a policy that opposes censorship on the internet.

Legoland Needs Women!

Help the Chaotic Nipple in his quest to lean on the powers that be to increase the number of female characters in Legos.
I'm actually really for this. While I'm not a Legoist myself, I think it would be particularly good for child development. Legoland is a microcosm of what can be, and if boys don't see women well represented in fantastic societies and girls don't have icons and totems to play with in their toys, they'll devalue the roles of women in Gulliver's world.

• Sign the Petition

"They are likely to be risk-averse, stifled by fears which are more phobic than real."

Very Ballardian article brought to my attention by Schneier

Childhood Risks: Perception vs. Reality

Great article on percieved vs actual risks to children:

The risk of abduction remains tiny. In Britain, there are now half as many children killed every year in road accidents as there were in 1922 -- despite a more than 25-fold increase in traffic.

Today the figure is under 9%. Escorting children is now the norm -- often in the back of a 4x4.

We are rearing our children in captivity -- their habitat shrinking almost daily.

See Ballard's Running Wild.

Links

I've been spending time sipping Blue Hawaiians in the tiki room and ducking all things intense for the past week or so. I have however, been collecting some interesting links.

Key 64 - For the mystical. Articles like "Developing an internal body language.", "Sizing up your magical practice", and "Neon Genesis Evangelion and the Psycho-Shamanic Journey"
I'm more of a practical application, Quantum sorcery kinda guy myself.

If you've been beset by disaster, the Red Cross has their "Safe and Well List." Folks can list themselves as "Safe and Well" and those looking for them can search. Good for the traveler.

If you think we're going to make it, there's the
.

If not, here's "Make your own biodiesel." Here in the north east we use a lot of heating oil. This is a simple process and can be done for as little as 50 cents a gallon. Tap into the oil line with a proportioning valve and you're augmenting your fuel with a cleaner burning material while reducing costs. The trick is to get the grease and actuall process it.

With I leave you with a couple of episodes of Vegas Vic's Tiki Lounge radio show.

SeeqPod Music beta - Playable Search

Ahhh.....

Interesting

Judge Halts Award Of Iraq Contract
By Alec Klein and Steve Fainaru
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, June 2, 2007; Page D01
Brian X. Scott, a 53-year-old Colorado man, filed the complaint in early April. He argues that the military's use of private security contractors is "against America's core values" and violates an 1893 law that prohibits the government from hiring quasi-military forces.

Memorial Day

{moment of silence}

Link

Maybe I mentioned this site before, but I'll link to it again. Right or wrong, it's great for expanding one's Reality Tunnel.
Conspiracy Planet
THE ALTERNATIVE NEWS & HISTORY NETWORK
"Your Antidote to Media Cartel Propaganda"


Read and decide.

"Punk Rock Warlord"

"The Future is Unwritten" are the words written in blood in the "Know Your Rights" logo and is the title of a documentary released on May 18th about Joe Strummer. If you've been a reader of Complex 39 for any length of time, you'll know that Joe's not just a cool guy to me, but a mentor. This film I'm looking forward to. Looks like they even grabbed Martin Scorsese for an interview.

• The Future is Unwritten website

Tom Waits

SeeqPod Music beta - Playable Search

Copyright

It just hit me. Who owns the information about us? Information about us that's handled and traded all the time?
With that...
I'm copyrighting myself, anything about me, all subsequent data and information, all aliases, names, and lives before someone else claims that information as their own.

Me.

Hence forth:
Copyright © 2007 Blank Snag, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Peace

Theater of the absurd

Continuing from Nothing Oils the Gears Like "Sex Offender"

Actually, what it is is an erosion of the Fourth Amendment.

MySpace Reportedly Labels Innocent Woman as Sex Offender (Threat Level)

I don't have a particular desire to protect sex offenders. It's a creepy and usually cowardly crime on the surface. It's a crime of power. However, technically speaking, in some states if you get caught in something other than missionary position, it's a sex crime. No, it's that some states want databases available to them without a crime necessarily being committed. This is what they call a lack of probable cause.
Sex crimes are also some of our own doing, as a society, with the tolerance for the sexualization of children, the infantilization of women, and the promotion of sex as power throughout the commercial world.
I've also heard the argument from parents to the effect that in this case it's ok to be irrational because it has to do with kids. Particularly their kids. No it's not ok! We are a society that teaches our kids to do the right thing, not the knee jerk emotional thing. We teach children that we are a nation of laws, not a nation of reactionary behavior. People who tolerate reactionary behavior implicitly condone others who use terror as a weapon and people who use sex as a weapon.
Part two of this absurdity is that because some AG's want to grandstand and make a name for themselves at the expense of hard won Liberty and centuries of tradition, names of folks are being purged from a database based on some other database which may or may not be accurate. A large enough database and the accuracy drops. A little inconvenience for some, but just one more accepted violation of the Bill of Rights.
Technically not a violation because the government only leaned on a private entity.
The third bit of theater, from two folks swept up the purge:

• "Davis told ABC News that she supports MySpace's efforts, but is worried that the database it built with Sentinel Tech Holding Corp. will start circulating with her information in it."
• "In a sense I can understand why they do that ... But why not (also) do it for identity theft convictions, drug dealing conviction, murder convictions? Because criminals use MySpace for these things as well." (article)
  

Because we are a nation of "innocent until proven guilty" and that the state does the punishing. Does nobody stand up for anything higher than their instant sense of gratification? Scarlet letter anyone?
Lastly, most of these services only require a valid email address, which one can get from Yahoo or Goggle without actually being verified as to who you are. So what happens. Criminals hide their identity, even the stupid ones. At least if you let them operate above ground, the idiot criminals will surface.
Every time some do-gooder wants to prove to the world how great s/he is by chest thumping and sloganeering, investigations get a little harder by driving the bad guys a little deeper into the shadows.
Any half decent investigator knows this, so why does it keep happening when only the regular citizen is impacted in the long run? Aside from the grandstanding, why is their such a promotion of bad detective practices, when only innocent people will end up being investigated...

Oh!

At the end of the day the colors of the flag are a little more faded

.

Soundtrack for Ballard

As many of you know, my "ambient" soundtrack is usually nothing more than a good Rock n' Roll tune from the Clash, Ramones, Jerry Lee Lewis, and such.

However, if you dig disturbing (albeit a bit cliché) ambiance to contemplate the J.G. Ballard you just read, here's a pretty nifty link:

• cousin silas - ballard landscapes 2

Here's a list of the track titles which in of itself I find disturbing. I find relief in the fact that I can still be troubled - but that's the point of Ballard, isn't it?:

The Sands Of Shepperton
Crumbling Infrastructures
Cloud Sculptor
Dawn - Utah Beach
Rusting Gantry
Love And Bullets For Bobby & Jack
Motel Architecture
Concrete Islands
The Sign Of The Radar
Abandonned Motorway
Vermillion Drift
Drained Swimming Pools
Burning Wreckage
Schematics For Terminal Seventeen
The Death Of Reagan
Capsule Retrieval
Island Gardens
After The Hurricane

While searching for a disturbing, Ballardian illustration to add some eye candy to this little post, I ran across the above disturbing picture associated with this article:

Designer terror-porn now in vogue
The horrific images of abuse at Abu Ghraib have been recycled in the name of fashion. (Article)

"CIVPOL"

I've long argued for an American equivalent of GSG9 rather than disastrous, irrelevant war expeditions in our quest for dealing with political actors that use the illegal tactic of terror in an effort to forward their cause.
Philip Carter mentions that a colleague who is "a leading theorist in the field where crime and warfare converge", Lt. John Sullivan agrees...

Constabulary operations, such as these, are the "missing mission" in the United States security structure. The U.S. has no national police service (the FBI is a non-uniformed investigative agency) and state and local police address these functions internally. Few if any local U.S. Forces could field or contribute to an on-going expeditionary capability without straining their ability to perform their home mission. The U.S. also has no standing constabulary or EXPOL force and relies upon scarce or ill-fitted military units (and ad hoc civilian police units) to fill expeditionary needs. The same is true for NATO and the U.N.

(More at Intel Dump)
I've actually met one of Lt. Sullivan's people at an law enforcement intel seminar. Probably one of the most informative speakers at the conference.

I don't get paid enough...

Intel Analysis

Here's a level of sophistication that I haven't seen reported up to this point.

Tankers for U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan attacked in Pakistan (Article)

A fairly organized effort is usually represented when you see a coordinated attack on logistics. The article mentions missiles were fired remotely. TOW possibly?
Talk about a tight rope act. Musharraf is single handedly keeping the lid on the conflagration that's in that pot. Unfortunately, I think it's only a matter of time before Islamic extremists get to him.

Brain Tip

Echo from Lifehacker

Solve Tough Problems with a Brain Reboot
I'm not big into the fancy mantra’s and religious overtones often associated with meditation. Instead I like to focus on practical meditation to focus your thoughts and cut out distractions. (Article)

Counter Program

The psychology of banner ads
The research concludes that repeated exposure to a product via banner ads generates a positive feeling towards that product. (Article)

It's not just that one has to DEProgram, but with the ubiquity of one needs to actually continuously counter program. Knowing that THEIR ads make a positive subliminal impression, one has to actively develop a program to undo the input.
"What's the harm of a little positive feeling toaward THEIR product?"
It's not you making the decision is what.
Advertisements do a few things that we take for granted today, but are absolute bullshit if you think about them:

• Ads lie to you about THEIR product - Regardless of the quality of product, they will tell you theirs is the best. Even when their product is sub par and THEY know it, they will dress it with colors and catch phrases to convince you otherwise.
  
Decide based on your own experience.

• Ads lie to you about reality - Imagine your perception of the world outside of your home. Imagine success and happiness. Imagine a happy family. Does it resemble an ad? Now think of your life. Does it compare? The reality is that no one lives like they do. The reality is that we all are a little less clean, a little less smiley, a little less pure. Embrace it.
  We're all in this together.
• Ads demoralize you - THEY do not want you happy. THEY convince you that you're unhappy. But they have the solution. Buy their fabric softener and your kids will have white teeth, your body odor will smell like flowers, your spouse will be nondescriptly attractive, and every weekend you will get away with guys hunting and fishing or gals in the spa after a fantastically fun day of shopping.
  Who lives like that?!?
  
• Ads invade your mind constantly, without your consent - On the side of a bus. The top of a web page. In the background TV. Subliminal programming works best when the subject is unaware of the message. When you think you're not subject to the message, that is when you are most vulnerable. No one is immune.
  
Admit and be aware of THEIR ability to crawl into your headspace; this is the foundation of your psychic self-defense.

We wait for the signs of mind control that we've learned from the movies, but the reality is that programming is more pedestrian in nature. Image impression isn't like Alex strapped in a chair with his eyes pried open. Nor is the chemical reinforcement some super-compound concoction dreamed up at Edgewood.
No, THEY don't need to focus so intently on you. THEY can be patient. THEY can hit you when you're first looking around as an infant, seeing colors, making associations. THEY can use the chemistry of desire...fats, sugars, caffeine, phenylethylamine (PEA)...to reinforce THEIR message.
THEY tell you that "You deserve a break today" because nobody "understands" you but THEM. THEY know what you've been through and do THEY have the pick me up for you. And it's only 99 cents on the value menu. THEIR signs are all bedecked in the Reds, Yellows, and Oranges designed to stimulate the impulse reaction in the optical regions of the neural cortex. THAT familiar clown that was your friend as a child and beckons you back to that safe time and promises comfort because you're having a tough time.
And when you do the right thing...

Ron English

When you make that decision to reward your toil and troubles...
When you act as THEY knew you would...
You consume. You give over the little tickets known as money that represent life energy spent acquiring the little tickets.
Yes.
Very good.
Very good indeed.
And to make sure the cycle is completed, the chemicals are ingested. Those chemicals that stimulate the endorphins. Those chemicals that satiate the fundamental cravings for high energy food. Sure, THEIR stuff will kill you in the long run, but that doesn't matter as long as you have the brief illusion of happiness through THEIR product now. THEIR stuff doesn't actually provide long lasting energy and why should it. THEY want you back as soon as possible to consume again.
And again.
And again.
More.
Faster.
And when all is said and done...you get to consume Big Pharma's meds. Nothing that will cure, just keep you going until the next refill.

No, THEY don't have to inject you. THEY don't have to kidnap you and hook you up to machines. THEY don't have to look like aliens or men-in-black.

All THEY have to do is quietly get into your head and make you feel just a little...
bit...
unhappy...
:(

Links

• Propaganda: The Art and Crimes of Ron English
• Virtual Hypnotist - Write your own scripts to rewrite your internal software
• Download your own subliminal software to take the edge off

Nothing oils the gears like "Sex Offender"

So you want unfettered access to those databases, but you don't want to be bothered with a pesky warrant. The owners of the Db don't buy the "terrorist threat" line because it's been beat to death and they're getting wise. What to do?
Trot out the "sexual predators online" angle. Nothing gets people moving like the idea of some sicko hassling their little Jean Bonet Ramseys.

MySpace Says Come Back With a Warrant
Doormat The Electronic Communications Privacy Act forbids MySpace from handing over the names of sex offenders on its site to the attorneys general, unless someone comes up with a subpoena, the company says. (Threat Level)

Why wouldn't THEY get a warrant in the first place?!?

In reality, when THEY're not threatening us, THEY're threatening the kids.

Echo

Biong Boing echo

Spying on the Home Front: PBS domestic surveillance doc

Anonymous Digital Rights Crusader says,

Last night, PBS Frontline aired Spying on the Home Front (Link), devoted to all the ways our government is spying on us outside of normal lawful processes. With extras not included in the televised version, the episode is available in either Quicktime or Windows Media (Video Link).

President Bush described his anti-terrorist measures as narrow and targeted, but a FRONTLINE investigation has found that the National Security Agency (NSA) has engaged in wiretapping and sifting Internet communications of millions of Americans; the FBI conducted a data sweep on 250,000 Las Vegas vacationers, and along with more than 50 other agencies, they are mining commercial-sector data banks to an unprecedented degree.

Semantics of terror

Still no fucking definition.

Abortion clinics have been bombed with people in them...not terrorism.
Labs conducting animal research burned...terrorism.
Lite-brites garner 140 hours and apologies.
Real fake bombs get...two weeks suspension.

Feds push terrorist label on arsonists
A federal judge was to hear arguments Tuesday on a motion by the government to add a so-called terrorism enhancement to their sentences. (Article)

Create a bogeyman and you can lock up anyone.

Terrorism is designed through the use of violence to intimidate non-combatants into complying with ideological and/or political goals. It's not that I advocate the destruction of labs necessarily. It is that by confusing the two types of attackers is to not be prepared to defend against different types of attacks.

If we start thinking of a group like ALF as being a terrorist organization, we put ourselves at risk by misunderstanding actual terrorists. We also dilute the nastiness that is real terrorism. It also makes for bad analysis. Knowing that ALF does not want to commit acts of violence against people necessarily and is more interested in destroying apparatus instead, we can then assume that they would attack at night or on the weekend. A terrorist on the other hand, is interested in horrific carnage (not necessarily massive) therefore would be more inclined to attack during the week and during the day.
I'm not saying elements of radical groups might not eventually commit an act of terrorism. I'm not saying they're innocent; they've committed illegal guerrilla attacks against the corporate research community. I'm saying that they haven't yet comitted a terrorist act and it is to the detriment of the intelligence community, law enforcement, the courts, and most importantly our civil liberties if we allow this sloppy, opportunist use of the word terror for corporate/political agendas.
Hold everyone accountable for the proper use of the word.

Oil and Water II

Back when I had posted about a build-up of force in the Persian Gulf to intimidate Iran, but had warned about the fact that they had Silkworms missiles that I believe they got from China (Oil and Water).
I then read this with interest

CENTCOM Commander’s Veto Sank Bush’s Threatening Gulf Buildup
by Gareth Porter
Admiral William Fallon...vowed privately there would be no war against Iran as long as he was chief of CENTCOM, according to sources with access to his thinking. (Article)

If true, it would represent a pretty severe break between armed forces and the administration. I'd like to see more sources for confirmation, but I really wouldn't be surprised. There's a big gulf between talking shit and real fighting and I think the military is getting tired of them running big mouths while they do the fighting.

Archibald "Harry" Tuttle - Ghost in The Machine

Harry Tuttle: My good friends call me Harry.

OK. Here's the gig. They collect and collate data that we all volunteer without actually thinking about what they can do with that data. It's your information, but they sell it to as many processors as they can who then use that data to fine tune the advertisement (rather than fine tuning the product) to convince you that you need it. They also sometimes give it or sell it to the government, who is in turn breaking no laws in acquiring the information about you. Mix that with your communications records and standard government files and THEY've got you by the balls.
I've been trying to come up with a good common name that everyone could use to confuse the data miners. A ghost in the machine. Of course we won't win, but for your own quiet amusement when you sign up for that discount card at your favorite grocery store. Then the name came to me...Archibald "Harry" Tuttle or just Harry Tuttle.
Trow all your old cards out and start over. Every time you get a discount on that loaf of bread, just image how many boxes of feminine hygiene products and beef jerky Harry's buying at the very same instant.
Central Services won't know what hit them.

NAME: ARCHIBALD TUTTLE T47/215
OCCUPATION: HEATING ENGINEER
STATUS: BELIEVED DECEASED

EYES: Brown
HAIR: Brown
DISTINGUISHING MARKS: None
SMOKES: Yes

KNOWN ALIASES: Harry Tuttle, Harold Tuttle, A. H. Tuttle, A. Harry Tuttle, A. Harold Tuttle III, Harry S Tuttle, Terry Huttle

KNOWN ACCOMPLICES: Gillian Layton (deceased), Samuel Lowry (inoperative), "Pluto," "Father Christmas" (real names unknown)

CHARGED WITH: Freelance Subversion, Deconstructive Behavior, Reckless Creation of Suspicion Among the Greater Public, Stealing Work from Qualified Personnel, Practicing Heating Engineering without a License, Failing to Complete Necessary Work Orders, Wasting Ministry Time and Paper(From Brazil@PythoNET)

Harry Tuttle: Bloody paperwork. Huh!
Sam Lowry: I suppose one has to expect a certain amount.
Harry Tuttle: Why? I came into this game for the action, the excitement. Go anywhere, travel light, get in, get out, wherever there's trouble, a man alone. Now they got the whole country sectioned off, you can't make a move without a form.

Tuttle in action


A suggested alias (each piece of data references something in Brazil):
Harry Tuttle
27 Archibald Street Apt. B6
Yourtown, ST
47215

Fun with magnets

Gauss gun/Coilgun - A coilgun (not to be confused with a railgun) is a type of magnetic accelerator gun (MAG) or magnetic accelerator cannon (MAC). It uses one or more electromagnetic coils to accelerate a magnetic projectile to high velocity. (Wikipedia)

Here's a fun little site - Science Toys You Can Make With Your Kids
And an article for making a nifty device - The Gauss Rifle: A Magnetic Linear Accelerator

Knowledge is power - Bacon

"It's that we're doing it ourselves"

Bruce Schneier on Big Brother:

The fear isn't an Orwellian government deliberately creating the ultimate totalitarian state, although with the U.S.'s programs of phone-record surveillance, illegal wiretapping, massive data mining, a national ID card no one wants and Patriot Act abuses, one can make that case. It's that we're doing it ourselves, as a natural byproduct of the information society. (Essay)

...and consumer society. I'm all for free market, but so are THEY and THEY're not our friends.

Whiplash segue.

THEY are the Artificial Intelligence entities that are the institutions that feed off of our toils known as a corporation. It's the entities that when viewed as a whole are functioning single "beings." These beings exist to feed the multi-neural (shares of stock) impulse to generate profit and revenue in the shortest amount of time as possible. Everyone wants huge returns on their investments while abdicating their responsibility to understand the consequences of the actions that their companies take in the effort to satisfy the maximum profit condition. This creates an organization that behaves like a being with all sub-sets having to behave more-or-less how the whole entity wants them to behave or else be purged. With limited liability, each sub-function is able to function with less conscience than might normally be employed.
This creates a whole that can be considered a psychopath.

From Wikipedia's article on the 2003 documentary The Corporation (available in 23 parts at YouTube):

The Pathology of Commerce

Dr. Robert Hare, a consultant to the FBI on psychopaths, draws parallels between a psychopath and the modern corporation. His findings corroborate the following behavior:

• Callous unconcern for the feelings of others
• Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships
• Reckless disregard for the safety of others
• Deceitfulness: Repeated lying and conning of others for profit
• Incapacity to experience guilt
• Failure to conform to the social norms with respect to lawful behaviors

And think about it. These entities spend billions of dollars every year trying to BELIEVE or researching how to get you to BELIEVE. They spend billions to influence human behavior. They spend billions to influence human laws.
No, the alien entitiy that threatens human existence won't be in the for of Arnold Schwarzenegger in a leather jacket and chasing some tween. It won't look like a green slime from space chasing a theater full of kids.

No, THEY look entirely different

Link to The Corporations website.
The movie trailer...

"Harry" Tuttle Lives!

Significant

I thought this was important enough to echo Boing Boing.

Have you seen any nuclear material?
Pakistan places advertisements regarding 'misplaced' isotopes.
"Pakistan has never lost nuclear material per se, but it has a poor track record of protecting its nuclear technology." (article)

They say it's for material that may from medical waste and the like before Pakistan was a nation.
I give a 9.9999999999% chance that that's the case. 85% chance loose nukes and show up in some bomber's hands, but they're caught. 4.9999999% chance there's an attempted detonation in Iraq.
.0000001% chance loose nukes detonate in Britain and .0000000001% chance make it in a cargo container and detonate in the U.S.
It's still shitty we even have to think in these terms.


Now that I've hit on some keywords, I bet you this'll get a glance from the TIA, ADVISE, and ECHELON.

Note to Intel: If you're looking here you're wasting taxpayers money. Hit the bricks. The most effective intel comes from old fashioned investigation techniques.

Don't forget me...

Image from http://berlin-wall.org/

..when they place the last brick in Fortress America's wall.

From the What The Fuck?!?! department (but then again, I'm not surprised).

ACLU Says Government is Excluding Foreign Scholars Because of Political Views

NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union announced today that it filed a new legal complaint challenging the federal government’s continued exclusion of prominent Swiss scholar Tariq Ramadan. The complaint also challenges the Patriot Act’s “ideological exclusion” (emph. mine - Snag) provision, which authorizes the government to deny visas to foreign citizens on the basis of their political views.

Ideological Exclusion?!?! I didn't agree to that! Nobody put that to a vote! My representatives surely wouldn't have allowed that bullshit!
Joliet Prison, Illinois
To think, you can't come to the U.S. because of what you think.
To my fellow American's remember this...a wall works both ways.

Funny little graphic

I've seen this kicking around the net for awhile now. It's so...well...identifiable. Disturbing, but a there's truth there.

This fits somewhere

In the whole big schema of things to come, this is foreshadowing something...

Japanese find sleep, shelter in cyber cafes

Like Yamashita, the freeter, many of the cyber homeless fade into this colorful crowd, finding anonymity as well as shelter.
"The younger ones don't look any different from other young people," said Kazumasa Adachi, a manager at one of the more elegant net cafes where staff wear suits and receive customers with the polite efficiency of hotel receptionists.
He recognizes cafe dwellers by the heavy bags they lug around.
"They are different from the real homeless because they belong to the working poor, so they do have some money, whereas the ones on the street have no money at all," he added.

Lawn Order Cult Attacks U.S. Women, Children

A gathering of citizens and foreign supporters who were engaged in their patriotic duty of exercising First Amendment rights were sprung upon by a south-east U.S. branch of the Lawn Orders. The Lawn Orders was originally formed in as a citizen aid society in 1829 in London, but has over the years degenerated into a cult-like group of authority worshipers. While Law Enforcement organizations still contain members who "Protect and Serve" and enforce Constitutional protections for the citizens of the U.S., the Lawn Order cult was born out of generations of recruitment among society's most afflicted with self-confidence issues and authority complexes leading to a "siege" mentality among it practitioners.
More on the terror inducing attack...

Los Angeles Police Response to Immigration Rally Probe (NewsHour - PBS)

Members of LAPD Lawn Order cult

Members of the press corps were also attacked while attempting to document the events.

TV Crew Caught In Clash Between Protesters, Police

Self sufficiency

Self sufficiency is a concept that's learned, the skills follow. Thinking more about Penn Jillette's thought that "living within your means offers an immense amount of power" and Mr. Jalopy's "if you can't open it, you don't own it" I realized that this applies to my own self. I went back to exercising (my body) this morning and it dawned on me that lifting weights and cardio is a form of hacking. It's a form of ownership. With all the crap food and the ubiquitous enticements out there destined to kill you early, one way to get back at "the man" (of whom I refer to often as THEY or THEM) is to take control of your body's health. This thinking ties in nicely with mind/body connection of the RE/DEProgramming I did on myself to quit smoking of which I'll recount my method another time.
Some thoughts I won't elaborate on. Just spitballing...

• Fast food is a form of chemical warfare. It uses carefully designed chemistry to keep you desiring the fats, sugars, and salts. Fast food is unhealthy and at the rate the average American consumes it, shortens their lifespan.
• Fast food advertisement is psyops (mil jargon for Psychological Operation). It is designed to appeal to one's conscience, sub-conscience, emotional, and psycho-chemical systems.

One drawback to quitting smoking, of which I did for 2/3's of my life is that the weight hit me pretty good. I went from about 215lbs to 245lbs. It's coming off on its own slowly, but getting back into my routine should put me back at my fighting weight of 205-210 in a couple of months.

With that, I highly recommend (and am no way affiliated with) ExRx.net - "ExRx.net (Exercise Prescription on the Net) is a free resource for the exercise professional, coach, or fitness enthusiast." ExRx.net consists of nearly 2000 pages, most of which are found in the Exercise and Muscle Directory. The content of this web site is available on CD-ROM."

On the topic of self sufficiency, I turn to termites. Now I had a guy come out and quote me $1200-$1500 to spray for the little buggers then come back every now and again to check and see how they're doing. Screw that.
Through a little research here's what I've found:
Boric Acid - I've know about this very low-tox shit for a long time as a way to kill roaches. Turns out it's effective on termites too. But how to deliver it to them???
Propylene Glycol - Low-Tox anti-freeze of which I use in the Fairlane in case it ever pukes from overheating. Animals, particularly dogs, like the sweet taste of coolant, but the regular stuff will kill them.
Heat one to two pounds of Boric Acid into one gallon of Propylene Glycol below boiling. When ready for use mix another gallon of water and spray on wood. Second treatment if needed. The wood will wick the shit right up and when the termites come for dinner, they die. Keep away from plants though.
Total cost: An afternoon and $25 for 5lbs of Boric Acid and $8 for the coolant.
Added bonus, the mix also prevents dry rot.

Chompin' at the Bit

I've got to get out to the garage and start tweaking, tuning, and modding the Fairlane soon. I'm jonesin' for the grease fix.
To hold me for a while, here's a fairly well done montage of Mad Max chase scenes set to one of my favorites Ace of Spades by Motorhead.

And a link to part 1 of a 12 part dice of the whole Mad Max 2/Road Warrior flick. About 9 minutes a day before work to make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside...

Links

Another link dump.
Compiled from my travels:

ARTIFICIAL SYNCHRONICITY, LANGUAGE MANIPULATION, KUNDALINI AND THE CORNERS OF REALITY: HOW THEY'VE TURNED YOU INTO A MENTAL SLAVE & SOME TOOLS TO HELP YOU DECONSTRUCTING THIS BRAINWASHING AND GETTING FREE FROM THIS CIRCUS

I forgot how I came across this and I haven't had time to read it through, but that's a kick ass title.

I'm sure I must have gotten this from Boing Boing. For the computer hobbyist -
[Photoshop Tutorial] Creating fake 'Miniature' environments



Here's a link to build your own, inexpensive 120,000 Volt Van De Graaff Generator

A blogger who filters what he sees through the works of Philip K Dick.
Which PKD Story Are We In Today?

Lastly, a blog that pulls together a lot of stuff that interests this blog and does it more consistently - futurismic

Return

I've been busy, damnit!

When life conflicts with art.
A death of a cat/friend/family member, a construction project, and a wedding in Canada.

While driving, I had some podcasts to pass the time. Boing Boing had a great interview with Mr. Jalopy of Hoopty Rides. Check it out the site for some great...um...projects. Hard to explain.
A good quote from Mr. Jalopy "If you can't open it, you don't really own it."

REpurpose
I've tried to keep political commentary to a minimum, but every week I get more and more indignant. It's all I can do not rip the heads off of twittering idiots who want to continue to debate the rightness of the current American administration. There's nothing to debate.

THEY'RE A BUNCH OF LYING, ANTI-AMERICAN, NEO-FASCIST, CORPORATE CRIMINALS WHO WILL SAY ANYTHING TO PROVOKE YOUR BASEST, MOST VILE INSTINCTS TO MAINTAIN POWER AND BLEED THE COUNTRY OF ITS CAPITAL! THEY DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOU, YOUR FAMILY, YOUR COMMUNITY, OR YOUR COUNTRY!
THEY WANT YOUR MONEY!

Complex 39 envisions a not quite post-apocalyptic future in which the world is controlled by corporate mechanizations and the few highest placed profiters of the system. I think we've turned a corner that we're not coming back from. In the U.S., citizens are programed for consumption compliance and socio-political ambivalence. As with a frog in a pot, it's all about being slow enough so the frog doesn't know he's being boiled alive.

To paraphrase Penn Jellett, "living well beneath your means gives you an immense amount of power." Cut costs, live well, get off of the credit-go-round. Almost everything THEY offer is to keep you enslaved to the system. There's no end to it in their world. There's no real retirement from it.

With that, I also use this space to organize the myriad of sites/ideas/points-of-reference that support my own blend of living art in that aesthetic frame of reference.

Coming soon - Our attempt to augment home heating oil with Biodiesel. It's cleaner and costs about fifty cents to a buck a gallon to make.

"Knowledge is power" - Sir Francis Bacon

Last Word
First off, to make it clear, the rest of the world is at best thinking we (U.S.) as a nation are nuts. So many think we're just evil, arrogant, hateful bastards. At the wedding I attended recently, the Canadians were very gracious, but it was clear that there was a deep disappointment with our "War on Terror."

What I really want to say is that the war wasn't/isn't lost.

The war in Iraq was over in about a week or so.

The occupation, Operations Other Than War (OOTW), Low Intensity Conflict (LIC), counter insurgency operations, and/or civil war will last generations. The violence on the streets off Baghdad is nothing new nor unforeseen unless one is unschooled in basic history or if one is in the government and charged with protecting the nation, criminally incompetent. So if someone is yammering about someone saying "soldiers lives wasted" or "the war is lost", tell them to shut the hell up. They don't know shit about war if they're claiming we're at war. We're at a simmering pot of bullshit. We're at a never ending occupation of a former "country" that's sucked down $500 billion thus far. We're presiding over a region of disparate peoples who really don't want to live together.
We're there because the boomers wanted SUV's in their aging hippy-dippyness rather than wake up after the first major oil crisis. The boomers ignored their responsibility to stay alert and vigilant to the same forces that got us into the likes of Vietnam. I don't ignore the responsibility of the coming generations to do something, but they were there first and they're massive in numbers. They're a political and economic powerhouse and they could have done something in the 70's that would have helped avoid all this.
I digress...

The fact is, right or wrong, the war is over and we won.
But then we stayed there and an occupation is not war.

1984

By The Surveillance Camera Players

The Surveillance Camera Players website

Tip from Penn and Teller's Bullshit! - Big Brother
Check it out if you've got a half hour to kill. Should be required viewing.

More Diesel

Rudolf Diesel

Diesel Engine
An engine that operates on diesel fuel and principally relies on compression-ignition for engine operation. The non-use of a throttle during normal operation is indicative of a diesel engine. - EPA


Here's an interesting take on the genre of Dieselpunk.

The term Dieselpunk was first coined by Children of the Sun game designers Lewis Pollak and Dan Ross. A subgenre of Steampunk, the Dieselpunk world is one with an industrial level of development and informed by Cyberpunk sensibilities. The term was probably born out of a necessity to label the Steampunk-like works of fiction set in an era that is usually considered post-Steampunk, e.a. from the end of the First World War up until the 1980s or so which typically is the domain of Cyberpunk, though fiction that takes place in the decades upon World War II may also be labelled “atomicpunk”. (More from OTTENSteam.)

Atom Tan

Now the corporations stopped! Stopped pushing fast food Been a multiple shooting Downtown at the bank Reluctantly the panic begins To catch fire But it did not affect The steady sale of junk The state office looked It looked like Hollywood With make-up bleeding all over the cracks Wo he blew his lines Facing the cameras He suffered the first All live heart attack Oh you've caught an even atom tan The motor-cyanide Cyanide suicide He finally found the brick wall in his life Shining up his engine He dressed right up for it At the top of the speedo He crumpled the bike There's plenty people runnin' runnin' for cover- Hoping at best to hold off all the rest Once last stand at the bunker fire Machine gun and pitchfork at breast Oh you've caught an even atom tan But it isn't so easy So easy for lovers Chained in love stained at the top of the tower The pink hearse is leaving at funeral speed Driving your heart Away with the flowers All night I waited I waited for a horseman His ever faithful His Indian friend I'm not the only one Of the caped crusader fan club watching the sky For mankind's prayers Oh you've caught an even atom tan Calamine

Gunman kills 21 on Virginia Tech campus By SUE LINDSEY, Associated Press Writer BLACKSBURG, Va. - A gunman opened fire in a dorm and classroom at Virginia Tech on Monday, killing 21 people and wounding another 21 before he was killed, police said. I actually trained at a Military Ops/ Urban Terrain (MOUT) site near there once. Added 4/16/07 I may be the only one who thought about this, but I want to make clear that I intended no connection between the shootings and MOUT training. It was just odd that of all the places I've traveled, the one place I can recall being in VA was near Blacksburg, of which I saw none of. I can't even remember the name of the post.

Dieselpunk

Ok...it seems that anything of a genre now has to have punk embedded in its description to maintain its edgy edge. In the literary sense, punk refers to speculative reality. On might say it is a fiction based on science and technology. A "science fiction" if you will. I guess it's required as the term Science Fiction has been so abused and broadened it means very little now. The fantasy of Star Wars, however good the story is, has very little science in it. You've got Steampunk, Cyberpunk, and now Dieselpunk also know as Atomicpunk. Fair enough. I'm glad I could find a term to group my aesthetics around. Funny thing is, the Wikipedia article actually hits on a lot of aesthetics that I appreciate under the banner of Dieselpunk. I was a punk in the third wave of it (loosely known as the "Hardcore" years, pre-Grunge).
So I'm into Dieselpunk. I favor the post-apocalyptic flavor, but I like to mix the aesthetics from Art Deco to Brutalism to Modernism.
Before anyone goes off on that "label's being confining" jag, I've been thinking about this. There is nothing completely new. Creativity is a conglomeration of prior experience. To express one's self means to attempt to communicate with others. If you speak a language only you understand, then you don't communicate. Expression is approximation.

Some Dieselpunk thematic inspiration:

• Mad Max
• Sin City
• Batman Begins
• V for Vendetta
• 1984
• Metropolis
• Brazil

Wikipedia link to Piecraft/Dieselpunk. While I was expecting a list of Electronica as being the musical representation of the genre, I was pleased to see that the "Music would mostly be defined by the fusion of the popular genres of the time, anthems, jazz and blues, classical and chamber music as well as early rock and experimental or musique concrete."

With that, I've been loosely kicking around ideas for the ride lately. My car is one of my "art" pieces. It's an ongoing creation process to appeal to my aesthetic yet have function at the same time. In it, I'm trying to incorporate a retro muscle rat-rod meets post-apocalyptic/mad max meets WWII armor.
As it is the car was a 1963 Fairlane 500, until I installed a built automatic transmission, disc brake conversion, and a 335hp 351w that came from a wrecked Highway Patrol car. I spent a winter modifying and rebuilding the engine. It moves. I'm also looking to maybe drop a Diesel motor in and see if I can't hot rod a grease car. If you don't know, grease cars are able to burn used cooking oil once they're brought up to temperature.
Lastly, I have to take up welding. It's a vital skill that I haven't managed to acquire yet. I'll be posting more technical discussions regarding the machine as I go.

Some inspirational pics for the ride:

The Call Up

To the Right Face!
Hup 2 3 4 Hup 2 3 4 Hup 2 3 4
Hup 2 3 4

It's up to you not to heed the call-up
'N' you must not act the way you were brought up
Who knows the reasons why you have grown up?
Who knows the plans or why they were drawn up?

It's up to you not to heed the call-up
I don't wanna die!
It's up to you not to hear the call-up
I don't wanna kill!

For he who will die
Is he who will kill

Maybe I wanna see the wheatfields
Over Kiev and down to the sea

All the young people down the ages
They gladly marched off to die
Proud city fathers used to watch them
Tears in their eyes

There is a rose that I want to live for
Although, God knows, I may not have met her
There is a dance an' I should be with her
There is a town - unlike any other

It's up to you not to hear the call-up
'N' you must not act the way you were brought up
Who give you work an' why should you do it?
At fifty five minutes past eleven
There is a rose...
Yeah!

Paper Dragons

Over the coming years the China/Taiwan issue will cease to exist. The Chin will neither liberalize nor remain totalitarian. As a people, the "Cultural Revolution" could never have lasted there. It's not that they can't be egalitarian, but culturally they are a patient people not given to whiles and whims of modern politics.
Now a middle class grows in China as America's shrinks and U.S. companies (among others) are finding ways to profit of off a dying superpower. Corporations are not interested as to where their profit comes from, as long as it comes.
As I've always said, if you want to stabilize a nation/region, don't bomb it into submission...encourage a large middle class. People are less likely to die for something if they have something to live for.

Incoming!

Another salvo against Americans.

Spy Chief Seeks More Surveillance Power
National Intelligence Director Is Pushing To Expand Government's Eavesdropping Authority
WASHINGTON, April 11, 2007

The changes McConnell is seeking mostly affect a cloak-and-dagger category of warrants used to investigate suspected spies, terrorists and other national security threats. The court-approved surveillance could include planting listening devices and hidden cameras, searching luggage and breaking into homes to make copies of computer hard drives.

The argument has been presented that lacking these authorities, they can't go after the bad guys. I say if you've got such good evidence that you would like to completely fuck the 4th Amendment, then as an investigator you should have the balls to do it illegally and if you're right and you save the fucking world...I'm sure all will be forgiven.
I would also like to see a legal definition of terrorist and "other national security threats" before I give any more authorization.

Low Flying Aircraft

“I gotta visit this place, the Salton Sea. Absolutely Ballardian. I'm picturing Low Flying Aircraft.

Coming in May is what looks to be a neat documentary, Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea, narrated by John Waters.

Salton Sea
Accidentally” created by an engineering error in 1905, reworked in the 50’s as a world class vacation destination for the rich and famous, suddenly abandoned after a series of hurricanes, floods, and fish die-offs, and finally almost saved by Congressman Sonny Bono, the Salton Sea has a bittersweet past.

Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea trailer

Rights and wrongs of Asia's 'war on terror'

It's about feeding a massive and growing military industrial complex...

Rights and wrongs of Asia's 'war on terror'
By Michael Vatikiotis

SINGAPORE - If there is one lesson to be learned from the "war against terror" as it has been waged in Southeast Asia, it is that good intelligence and careful police work rather than brute military force are the best counter-terrorism strategy. And some of the best police work has been conducted in Indonesia, where many so-called terror experts once believed the government would be least effective in countering the terrorist threat.

My favorite part...

Careful intelligence
In Indonesia, meanwhile, careful intelligence has helped pinpoint bomb-making centers in remote corners of Java and uncovered explosives and equipment that could have been used in terrorist attacks. Many of those groomed by JI's alleged al-Qaeda-trained operatives to carry out these attacks have been flushed out and captured or killed. Importantly, Indonesia has tried wherever possible to use legal methods of interdiction, bringing suspects into custody with the intention of putting them on trial, and using lethal force only if unavoidable. (More...)

Robert Anton Wilson in Prometheus Rising cited the work of an anthropologist (who's name escapes me at the moment) who had noticed civilization's westward trend in knowledge and power, from China to Rome to Britain to the U.S..

Luftwaffe scuffles with Allgemeine-SS

By the end of WWII, there was a growing distinction and animosity between the military of the nation and the politically inspired "special" combatants of NAZI Germany. (See Waffen-SS: The army and the Waffen-SS) Leadership of the Luftwaffe and Wehremacht where ripped from their Edwardian wars of nobility fantasies and thrust into 2nd/3rd Generation/Industrial war and forced to play second fiddle to a group of opportunists and psychopaths.
So it is with historical interest that I come across this:

Even though they won't face a court-martial, two Air Force officers involved in a road-rage incident with a Blackwater USA contractor in Afghanistan have been slapped with administrative sanctions.

The discipline was meted out by the same general who dismissed criminal charges against Lt. Cols. Gary Brown and Christopher Hall.

Brown's civilian attorney has fired back with an angry letter, calling the sanctions a "laugh-out-loud joke" and suggesting that the general bowed to pressure from Blackwater, a private military company based in Moyock, N.C.

It's the latest turn of events in an escalating clash between uniformed military personnel and private contractors on the battlefield.

In a letter of reprimand, Lt. Gen. Gary North, commander of the 9th Air Force, wrote that Brown acted with "unreasonable force and intimidation" in a confrontation with the Blackwater contractor after their vehicles collided on a busy Kabul road Sept. 19.

"Specifically," North wrote, "while in uniform you shoved, kicked, pointed your loaded M-4 rifle at, and threatened the life of Mr. Jimmy Bergeron, a U.S. civilian contractor employee who did not pose a reasonable threat to you or others.... I find your conduct reckless, undisciplined and a discredit to the armed forces." (More...)

Tip from Danger Room - Officers, Mercs Brawl