The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It's over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now: the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Vietnam. - J.G. Ballard
Life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality. - John Ruskin
By TODD LEWAN, AP National Writer Sun Apr 8, 7:20 PM ET
ORLANDO, Fla. - It was a balmy night, the sort that brings the homeless out from the shelters, when the police were summoned to America Street. On the driveway of a condo, just a few paces from the gutter, lay a man. A dying man.
He looked to be 50-ish, and a resident of Orlando's streets, judging by the moldy jacket. And he'd been bludgeoned — so badly bludgeoned that he could hardly move.
Before being rushed to the hospital, where he died of his head injuries, the man, August Felix, described his attackers. Young fellows did it, he whispered to the officers who got to him first. Kids. (More...)
The practice seems endemic
...stereotyped victims, offenders who act on latent prejudices, offenders who seek thrills or feel superior to their victims, and a mob mentality that sweeps away caution.
Here's a basic, no nonsense, and easy to understand tutorial/guide for the electronics beginner. I haven't gone all the way through it, but it looks as if it focuses on low voltage circuits rather than wiring the home (higher voltage AC). We should all master tech before it masters us.
And number 2 You have the right to food money Providing of course you Dont mind a little Investigation... Humiliation... And if you cross your fingers... Rehabilitation!
Know your rights These are your rights
-Know Your Rights The Clash
From the Boston Globe
Taunton schools this spring could become the first in Massachusetts to have students pay for lunch by scanning their fingerprints, a plan that is triggering an uproar among parents and ACLU officials worried about privacy and possible identity theft.
No shit (or know shit), it's causing an uproar. But it's only a matter of time when some jerk-off thinks this is a good idea before it's implemented. And once your data's in the system , then it's easily accessible by other government agencies. THEY've ID'd you before you even get a chance to run.
Malvern, Pa.-based identiMetrics, a leading vendor, said hundreds of schools nationwide use its system, including nearly a third of the school districts in West Virginia and a private enrichment center for children in Wellesley. (More...)
And Wellesley...that fucking fru-fru, uppity, ineffectual...Ah!...don't get me started. They've even banned out-of-towners from picking through their dump. What the fuck is a private enrichment center. That's one spooky sounding program It reminds me of Pangbourne Village in Ballard's Running Wild.
Apologies to those that have taken the time to check in and see if I have anything interesting to say, if ever. Several personal matters have kept me preoccupied as of late and will require a couple more weeks before I'm back in form. Thanks...
Colorado to use inmates to fill migrant shortage Tough laws passed last year against illegal immigration have created a need for farmworkers. By Nicholas Riccardi, Times Staff Writer March 1, 2007
..."Prisoners who are a low security risk may choose to work in the fields, earning 60 cents a day. They also are eligible for small bonuses." (More...)
We just gotta think up some more laws for folks to break, then we'll be able to compete with China's growing economy.
I'm still working on that wall. My hands have gone from mincemeat to ground beef as I have a habit of not wearing gloves, I'm working with 100 year old lumber, and I just don't pay close enough attention.
Some of Blank Maxine's photography from our most recent week in FLA. The whole landscape down there is a bit unreal and has always reminded me of several different J.G. Ballard works.
Many years ago, from reading Toffler, Gibson, Dick, Ballard, et al I had a sense that in the future we would no longer ask "Where are you from?" but "Who do you work for?". And who enforces the policies and protects the interests of the MDC's?...
From the website...
Blackwater USA is the most comprehensive professional military, law enforcement, security, peacekeeping, and stability operations company in the world.
Blackwater USA comprises nine separate business units to offer the most comprehensive professional security, peacekeeping, and stability operations company in the world.
VISION To support security, peace, freedom, and democracy everywhere.
MISSION To support national and international security policies that protect those who are defenseless and provide a free voice for all with a dedication to providing ethical, efficient, and effective turnkey solutions that positively impact the lives of those still caught in desperate times.
Blackwater is committed to the foot soldiers -- the men and women who stand on the frontlines of the global war on terror and who believe in a peaceful future for their communities and nations. Whether serving in or out of uniform, Blackwater is committed to providing these men and women with the very best in training and tactical support to ensure they are fully prepared to meet current and future global security challenges. (Website...)
I don't have to say how evident that Blackwater, by their very existence, represents the U.S.'s slow demise at the hands of corporate power. THEY have been trying to figure out a way to undermine that pesky Constitution without overtly overthrowing the government. Just keep repeating the mantra "Money good! Government by the people, for the people bad!" Outsourcing war to those that fight for money is ++ ungood. Blackwater at WikipediaAnd soldiers' hostility towards merc's are just jealousy.
The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control - "indoctrination," we might say - exercised through the mass media.
I can't say I've seen him wandering the streets of Cambridge yet, but here's a selection of quotes from neighbor Noam Chomsky.
Personally, I'm in favor of democracy, which means that the central institutions of society have to be under popular control. Now, under capitalism, we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control. Thus, a corporation or an industry is, if we were to think of it in political terms, fascist; that is, it has tight control at the top and strict obedience has to be established at every level--there's little bargaining, a little give and take,but the line of authority is perfectly straightforward. Just as I'm opposed to political fascism, I'm opposed to economic fascism. I think that until the major institutions of society are under the popular control of participants and communities, it's pointless to talk about democracy.
All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.
If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.
If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.
Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony.
The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.
From Sex Workers to Restaurant Workers, the Global Slave Trade Is Growing By David Batsone, Sojourners. Posted March 15, 2007
Twenty-seven million slaves exist in our world today. Girls and boys, women and men of all ages are forced to toil in the rug loom sheds of Nepal, sell their bodies in the brothels of Rome, break rocks in the quarries of Pakistan, and fight wars in the jungles of Africa. (More at Alternet: Rights and Liberties...)
If anyone has any leads for a Private Investigator/Research/Intel Analyst position to help stem human rights violations, particularly the slave trade, let me know.
The following list of links are the collected flotsam and jetsam of Snag's travels. Intended for both my intellectual and physical survival, they are grouped in roughly these categories:
By TODD LEWAN, AP National Writer Sun Apr 8, 7:20 PM ET
Malvern, Pa.-based identiMetrics, a leading vendor, said hundreds of schools nationwide use its system, including nearly a third of the school districts in West Virginia and a private enrichment center for children in Wellesley. (
