drat fink

show off

maxspeaks annotated bennett v. chomsky tete a tete on cnn.

barak2barak

Camp David and After: An Exchange (1. An Interview with Ehud Barak)

Camp David and After: An Exchange (2. A Reply to Ehud Barak)

not butter?

But what Fleischer does, for the most part, is not really spin. It's a system of disinformation--blunter, more aggressive, and, in its own way, more impressive than spin. Much of the time Fleischer does not engage with the logic of a question at all. He simply denies its premises--or refuses to answer it on the grounds that it conflicts with a Byzantine set of rules governing what questions he deems appropriate. Fleischer has broken new ground in the dark art of flackdom: Rather than respond tendentiously to questions, he negates them altogether.

mission creep

"the life and death of pablo escobar"

now hear this

more fucking phone repair nonsense. my expedited service call time between 8 and 10 am came and went. apparently, they came by twice but did not follow the instructions for gaining access to my apartment. that my building has no buzzer makes it difficult but hardly impossible. that they had explicit directions to call my cellphone (the guy on tuesday had no difficulty with these instructions) should have made the task manageable for anyone with a functioning brain. now i realize that isnt a prerequisite condition for the job of telephone repairman. the most ludicrous excuse that the mci rep gave me was that the repairmen 'are not required to call' a customer. so the telephone company wont use the phone to call a customer in order to facilitate a repair even if that is the only way to get at the repair. the guy on the phone kept asking me if they could access the box with a ladder. so they are willing to risk injury and jump through hoops to get to the roof when all they had to do was pick up the phone, which is their fucking business! but they are not obligated to do so. to make matters worse, the rep said that since the service was for an mci customer but the repairman worked for verizon, the verizon subcontractor would not go out of their way to get the job done, but it was the verizon repairman that fucked the line up to begin with. its not my line thats broken (but the roof access is through my apartment), its my upstairs neighbors line, which was fine until the repairman came to fix my line on tuesday. now im forced to wait possibly until six pm. how much do you want to bet this guy fucks something else up, if he even shows at all?

the great uncle

"Saddam is a loner by nature, and power increases isolation. A young man without power or money is completely free. He has nothing, but he also has everything. He can travel, he can drift. He can make new acquaintances every day, and try to soak up the infinite variety of life. He can seduce and be seduced, start an enterprise and abandon it, join an army or flee a nation, fight to preserve an existing system or plot a revolution. He can reinvent himself daily, according to the discoveries he makes about the world and himself. But if he prospers through the choices he makes, if he acquires a wife, children, wealth, land, and power, his options gradually and inevitably diminish. Responsibility and commitment limit his moves. One might think that the most powerful man has the most choices, but in reality he has the fewest. Too much depends on his every move. The tyrant's choices are the narrowest of all. His life—the nation!—hangs in the balance. He can no longer drift or explore, join or flee. He cannot reinvent himself, because so many others depend on him—and he, in turn, must depend on so many others. He stops learning, because he is walled in by fortresses and palaces, by generals and ministers who rarely dare to tell him what he doesn't wish to hear. Power gradually shuts the tyrant off from the world. Everything comes to him second or third hand. He is deceived daily. He becomes ignorant of his land, his people, even his own family. He exists, finally, only to preserve his wealth and power, to build his legacy. Survival becomes his one overriding passion. So he regulates his diet, tests his food for poison, exercises behind well-patrolled walls, trusts no one, and tries to control everything."

brother, can you spare a dime?

i love this blogstory, lets call it "Spare Change, Spare Time."

hold the line

the fun never ends here. looks like my phone line is fixed but in the process the verizon repairman knocked out my upstairs neighbors line. unfortunately he is an mci customer and despite the fact that the verizon guy screwed it up they wont repair it. so now im waiting for mci to come and fix his line sometime between now and the end of time. and all of this (again) because my asshole neighbors have a penchant for fucking up the lines which runs beneath their access to the roof. which reminds me of the time a couple of years ago when they blamed the chinese for breaking the line. they claimed they were trying to steal long distance by tapping into our phones. the repairman and i had a good chuckle over that one. i thought the neighbors were just rude insensitive and boorish, but now im wondering if theyre not more than a bit touched in the head. they could all use a good spanking, preferably with a two by four.

we now return you to your regularly scheduled reprogramming.

now i just got a call from mci. theyre bouncing it back to verizon but they wont come until tomorrow morning. at least they called and didnt leave me waiting all day. is there some version of repairman's stockholm syndrome.

down and outsourcing

my phone is down til tuesday. so i am unofficially on hiatus.

nothing but net

"Bin Laden and his henchmen had hit on a truth about soccer. The sport, which in the U.S. is chiefly a placid entertainment for children, arouses in the rest of the world collective passions that are matched by nothing short of war. And unlike any other sport -- indeed, unlike almost any cultural phenomenon -- soccer is distinguished by its political malleability. It is used by dictators and revolutionaries, a symbol of oligarchy and anarchy. It gets presidents elected or thrown out, and it defines the way people think, for good or ill, about their countries."

puff daddies

dnArt

"All of these productions, like so much contemporary art, reflect the way we view the power of genetics — for good or otherwise — to create new, extended and possibly transformed lives for us. Yet what underlies these fantasies and fears is a simple and unsurprising fact. As Lisa Vincler, a bioethicist and assistant attorney general in Washington State, put it bluntly, "Our culture just doesn't have an attitude that's very accepting of death." Billions of dollars in new genome-based drugs will be made on the principle that we are impatient with nature's judgments. And for all its wariness, this new gene art now finds itself pulled into the colossal force field that science and money have made."

rich man, porous managers

"But as we need some version of a Warren Commission to get to the bottom of what went wrong, so we need an inverted Manhattan Project (one that will stop a bomb rather than build one) to recruit America's best minds to set things right. Mr. Ridge, a decent politician with no expertise in intelligence or counterterrorism, is a frivolous choice for security czar. Mr. Ashcroft, an aspiring J. Edgar Hoover isolated from reality by a circle of cronies, lacks the intellect and leadership ability to take on an adversary as cunning as Osama bin Laden. What he cares about most is maximizing his own power, and not just over civil liberties. His Justice Department has joined in the effort to block Mr. Ridge from consolidating the four overlapping agencies in charge of watching American borders. Now we learn, with the news of his suppression of the F.B.I. Phoenix memo, that Mr. Ashcroft will even cut the president out of the loop of law-enforcement embarrassments occurring on his watch."

880 oncologists cant be wrong

"Medical marijuana can be a legitimate treatment for cancer patients who are nauseated by chemotherapy, AIDS patients who lose their appetites and other seriously ill people. In cases where a patient is considering stopping treatment because of the agony, or cannot keep food down, medical marijuana can be life-saving. The federal government's attempt to block its use flies in the face of mainstream medical opinion. One Harvard study of 2,000 oncologists found that 44 percent had recommended marijuana to patients undergoing chemotherapy."

two can play at that game

"An experimental remote-controlled fighter jet developed by the US military has performed its first test flight."

"LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- After watching the popularity of video gaming grow into a $9 billion business last year, the U.S. military is launching a video game with an eye toward recruiting."

having visions

"We went last week to a demonstration of television on the sixty-second floor of the R.C.A. Building, where some rather startling images were ending up after being tossed around the midtown district. We sat in a darkened room squarely in front of a receiving set and, as we understand the matter, the persons and objects which we saw were down on the third floor of the same building, where they were first photographed televisually by an iconoscope, thence sent by direct wire to the Empire State Building, and then came back on a megacycle to the sixty-second floor of R.C.A. The magical unlikelihood of this occasion was not lessened any by the fact that a stranger wearing a telephone around his neck was crawling about on all fours in the darkness at our feet. This didn't make television seem any too practical for the living room of one's own home, although of course homes are changing."

denver nuggets

"An advertising firm is handing out signs to panhandlers with a plug for the company — a stunt homeless advocates say trivializes the plight of those on the streets."

"Laminated signs with snappy messages such as, "At Least I'm Not Spamming Your E-Mail," and "Hell, It Beats a Cubicle," have begun replacing cardboard placards normally waved by panhandlers at motorists."

money honeys

"The average net worth of the individual members of the Bush cabinet, including the President and Vice President, was between $9.3 and $27.3 million. That’s nearly ten times the average net worth of the cabinet officials who were their immediate predecessors, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of executive branch personal financial disclosure forms."

tabula rasa

"BERLIN (Reuters) - An irreverent left-leaning German newspaper published a blank front page on Friday under the headline "Bush's historic speech" to mock the U.S. president's address in the Reichstag on Thursday."

the next time you see me coming youd better run

booknotes cruises down highway 61 on bobby zimmerman's 61st birthday.

play misty for me

"WASHINGTON, May 23 — The Defense Department sprayed live nerve and biological agents on ships and sailors in cold war-era experiments to test the Navy's vulnerability to toxic warfare, the Pentagon revealed today."

newspinoff

"pbs introduces frontline/world: stories from a small planet"

duty calls

"For every college counselor at Roosevelt High, there are five military recruiters. "The recruiters prey on students who feel they have no other options: immigrant students trying to get citizenship, seniors lacking credits to graduate, and anyone who they can persuade that the army will train them for the real world," said Lester García, a Roosevelt graduate and youth organizer. Promises of money for college or citizenship are thrown out like candy."

no cheesehead

russ feingold interview from the progressive.

tortured artist syndrome

"Using personality and temperament tests, they found healthy artists to be more similar in personality to individuals with manic depression than to healthy people in the general population. "My hunch is that emotional range, having an emotional broadband, is the bipolar patient’s advantage," said Strong. "It isn’t the only thing going on, but something gives people with manic depression an edge, and I think it’s emotional range."

trade wars

"Most of the victims of the September 11 attack seemed tragically random -- they were just going to work. Not John O'Neill. Until last August, he'd been the FBI's top expert on Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, a lead investigator of the USS Cole and African embassy bombings. Leaving the Bureau in frustration, he'd taken a job he thought of as retirement: World Trade Center security chief. But when he died it became clear: His own life contained as many mysteries as his enemy's."

ship of fools

"Normal service has resumed. After eight months off the air, American politics is back. Republicans are once more hurling abuse at Democrats, Democrats are slamming Republicans, while Capitol Hill and the White House have returned to their traditional posture: at loggerheads. At long last, the September 11 bubble of bipartisan consensus - in which even to question the Bush administration's war against terrorism was seen as unpatriotic - has burst."

recorder muzak

""We need to start to understand how we're going to have to reach our consumers with this new technology," said Mollie Weston, a product manager for Best Buy's image advertising. "It is going to force us to put advertisements out there that people are actually going to choose to watch.""

c c ryder

dr strangelove

"Dear Secretary Rumsfeld: My wife wants me to talk dirty when we make love, but I've never been able to do it. Any advice? —Joel Brennan, Syracuse, New York"

"Secretary Rumsfeld: Listen, anybody that can talk clean can talk dirty. Dirty talk is just like normal talk, except dirty. Your wife wants dirty talk, so give her dirty talk. Something like, "Those breasts are first-rate," or "I am going to give you a darned good orgasm," or, if she likes the rough stuff, "I'll tell you this, I am about to give you the business and I don't want to hear any guff about it."

open up

"Microsoft Corp. is aggressively lobbying the Pentagon to squelch its growing use of freely distributed computer software and switch to proprietary systems such as those sold by the software giant, according to officials familiar with the campaign."

ease off

"Ecstasy, the dance drug used by thousands every weekend, should be downgraded from the class A status it shares with heroin and cocaine, according to the results of a year-long official inquiry into Britain's drug laws published today...."

"The MPs also call for a radical extension of NHS heroin prescribing in Britain that would undercut the illegal market in class A drugs and drug-related crime, and for the immediate provision of European-style "shooting galleries" - safe-injecting rooms - that would take the most chronic addicts off the street."

newmanclature

another lefty blog worth noting -- nathan newman

new model army

extinction distinction

"The report will identify some 11,046 species of plants and animals known to face a high risk of extinction, including 1,130 mammals – 24 per cent of the total – and 12 per cent, or 1,183 species of birds."

"Human activities, from habitat destruction to the introduction of alien species from one area to another, are listed as the main causes of this dramatic loss in biodiversity. In the report, scientists also identify 5,611 species of plants known to be on the verge of extinction. They say the true figure is likely to be far higher, given that only 4 per cent of the world's known plant species have been properly evaluated."

casting call

"Deaths, defections and interference from the law have taken their toll on New York's mafia in recent years, forcing the families to take a drastic new step - and launch a recruitment drive."

green mountain boy

democrats to laud jim jeffords this week one year after his tipping the balance of power in the senate. now, if they could find a way to appreciate the independent spirit to their left, maybe we could get somewhere. case in point, eric alterman still cant forgive ralph nader for defeating al gore, as if gore needed any help.

a jar jarred

"As a public service to columnists on deadline, we offer the following three quick 'n' easy Star Wars allegories. Take it away, Maureen Dowd!"

everyones doin' it

eric alterman starts an msnbc weblog. but is a weblog a weblog if it has an editor?

dangerous curves

"David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2000) is about an obsessive love affair. In this respect it doesn't have to make sense to anybody else. It's like stepping into the mind of someone who's obsessed. This is a film about the darkness of a woman, the destructive elementof woman. The romance lies in a tragedy. The film narratively depicts the themes of love, impossible love, the boundaries of forbidden love, and the consequences of tragic love."

win some, lose some

"Comets slamming into the Earth may be responsible for both the birth and the death of the dinosaur era, an international group of researchers report."

taking account

"Let me repeat what I said last time: Honesty in corporate accounting isn't a left-right issue; it's about protecting all investors from exploitation by insiders. By blocking reform of a broken system, the Bush administration is favoring the interests of a tiny corporate oligarchy over those of everyone else."

settling out

"BEER SHEVA, Israel — There is nothing that causes as much heated debate in Israel as the future of the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. It is now clear to most Israelis that if there is ever going to be a final political agreement with the Palestinians, it will require that some, if not necessarily all, of the settlements be dislodged and evacuated. A permanent plan would have to create a Palestinian state that is compact and continuous — unlike the disconnected wedges and enclaves of Palestinian autonomy areas that were created by the Oslo accord and that have left the settlements in place. Although this reality is undeniable, the practicality of settlement removal has largely been avoided by all Israeli governments, including those of the left, even as that avoidance makes the eventual uprooting of the growing settler population more difficult."

another 24 hours

fox tv show 24 will be back for another season.

teed off

studly habits

i am shocked by these findings --

"A study released this month by the University of Rochester in New York shows that teen-agers who get anything pierced beyond their ears are more likely than their non-pierced peers to do things their parents disapprove of. Girls with body piercings were about 2 1/2 times more likely than other girls to have had sex, to have used marijuana in the past month and twice as likely to have skipped school in the past year. Boys with piercings were five times as likely to have skipped school and had similarly high risks for smoking and drinking as girls. While body piercing is becoming more mainstream, in a teen it still signals rebellion, says study author Dr. Timothy Roberts. "If your adolescent wants to have a body piercing, it is a reason to talk to them," he says."

the lone cathode ray gunman

malcolm gladwell believes philo t farnsworth should have sold out to rca.

bombs away

the most damning bit of evidence that "bush knew" is still underreported in the press. why did it take so long even after the wtc attacks for the airforce to scramble planes over washington. andrews air force base is 10 miles from washington dc. the third plane did not hit the pentagon until 40 minutes after the second plane hit the south tower. you could have towed a plane through dc rushhour traffic jams in that amount of time. the faa know almost immediately when a plane deviates from its flight pattern. so there is no rational explanation other than that they wanted it to happen or that the military is manifestly incompetent. neither option is particularly comforting.

paralegal

columbia warmongering posing as news.

blog happening

chris matthews has a weblog and msnbc has a weblog tab in their opinions section. cant get much more mainstream than that.

fear is our friend

talking points smells a rat with todays spate of bogeyman warnings. is someone trying to change the subject?

national insecurity

"If Hollywood has made one concrete contribution to democracy, it's the strong but little understood impact that movies have had on the U.S. intelligence community. A prime example is Oliver Stone's JFK. Denounced as fast-and-loose fiction by many historians, the movie nonetheless indirectly forced the CIA and other secretive agencies to fork over documents that had been hidden for decades. Incited by the film, constituents flooded Capitol Hill with letters and phone calls demanding full disclosure of government records on the president's death. As a result, in 1993 Congress mandated the mass declassification of files that might have a bearing on the assassination. The millions of secret papers that were made public didn't reveal Kennedy's killer or killers, but they did detail covert operations in Cuba, Vietnam and other early 1960s hotspots."

chindi lha-cha-eh

even when hollywood takes on a noble unheralded subject like the navajo codetalkers from world war 2, they manage to turn it into paternalistic jingoistic pyrotechnic nonsense. todays abject lesson is Windtalkers.

profiles in scourge

"executive summary: mindset of mass destruction"

unconscious party

"What Professor McFadden realized was that every time a nerve fires, the electrical activity sends a signal to the brain's electromagnetic (em) field. But unlike solitary nerve signals, information that reaches the brain's em field is automatically bound together with all the other signals in the brain. The brain's em field does the binding that is characteristic of consciousness."

left handed compliment

blog left: critical interventions

beat happening

"Binaural beats are auditory brainstem responses which originate in the superior olivary nucleus of each hemisphere. They result from the interaction of two different auditory impulses, originating in opposite ears, below 1000 Hz and which differ in frequency between one and 30 Hz (Oster, 1973).For example, if a pure tone of 400 Hz is presented to the right ear and a pure tone of 410 Hz is presented simultaneously to the left ear, an amplitude modulated standing wave of 10 Hz, the difference between the two tones, is experienced as the two wave forms mesh in and out of phase within the superior olivary nuclei. This binaural beat is not heard in the ordinary sense of the word (the human range of hearing is from 20-20,000 Hz). It is perceived as an auditory beat and theoretically can be used to entrain specific neural rhythms through the frequency-following response (FFR)--the tendency for cortical potentials to entrain to or resonate at the frequency of an external stimulus. Thus, it is theoretically possible to utilize a specific binaural-beat frequency as a consciousness management technique to entrain a specific cortical rhythm."

dog eat dog

"So it all boils down to snobbery. Poshintang is not haute cuisine. Even in Korea, where a bowl is quite expensive, dog soup exists at the margins, associated with older traditions, both culinary and medical. In its postwar struggle to make a place for itself at the global table, Korea has left poshintang behind. Countryside culture is popular in Seoul, with restaurants serving makkoli (rice liquor) and country-style pancakes, but it is a carefully sanitized version of the countryside, not unlike Cracker Barrel's appropriation of down-home cooking in the United States. The poshintang restaurants, unregulated and unrepentant, provide a glimpse of an older Korea that has somehow managed to survive Japanese colonialism, World War II, the Korean War, several dictatorships, and the latest wave of globalization sweeping Korean culture. I ate poshintang in a small restaurant on a tiny side street in Seoul. Around the corner, on the main thoroughfare, young Koreans favored Dunkin' Donuts, Japanese fast food, and Korean hamburger and pizza joints, all considerably hipper by Seoul standards than something associated with Chinese medicine and questionable slaughtering standards. In the long run, poshintang's greatest enemy is not Brigitte Bardot but Colonel Sanders."

coming around

"Call me a simple soul, but it could surprise me. The Jews that I see gathered in Times Square are howling at Nazis in Mel Brooks's kick lines. Hentoff's fantasy is grotesque: There is nothing, nothing, in the politics, the society, or the culture of the United States that can support such a ghastly premonition. His insecurity is purely recreational. But the conflation of the Palestinians with the Nazis is only slightly less grotesque. The murder of 28 Jews in Netanya was a crime that fully warranted the Israeli destruction of the terrorist base in the refugee camp at Jenin, but it was not in any deep way like Kristallnacht. Solidarity must not come at the cost of clarity. Only a fool could believe that the Passover massacre was a prelude to the extermination of the Jews of Israel; a fool, or a person with a particular point of view about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If you think that the Passover massacre was like Kristallnacht, then you must also think that there cannot be a political solution to the conflict, and that the Palestinians have no legitimate rights or legitimate claims upon any part of the land, and that there must never be a Palestinian state, and that force is all that will ever avail Israel. You might also think that Jordan is the Palestinian state and that the Palestinians should find their wretched way there. After all, a "peace process" with the Third Reich was impossible. (Even if Chaim Weizmann once declared, about his willingness to enter into negotiations with Nazi officials, that he would negotiate with the devil if it would save Jews.) So the analogy between the Passover massacre and Kristallnacht is not really a historical argument. It is a political argument disguised as a historical argument. It is designed to paralyze thought and to paralyze diplomacy."

what she said

"CAMBRIDGE - Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created the first realistic videos of people saying things they never said - a scientific leap that raises unsettling questions about falsifying the moving image."

mothers little helper

"The reason for Celexa's stunning success is not science but marketing. Drug-industry consultants Scott-Levin say U.S. pharmaceutical companies spent about $10 billion last year on drug promotions. Most of that -- $9 billion -- went toward marketing to doctors (about $12,000 for each doctor in the U.S.). Drug makers command an army of more than 68,000 salespeople, one for every eleven doctors in the U.S. While pharmaceutical companies justify high drug prices by pointing to astronomical research and development costs, many who study the industry say drug companies spend more on marketing and promotions, especially for drugs like Celexa."

go leafs

"Ground-breaking stuff. But this report, and Canada’s willingness to allow people to use marijuana for medical purposes, also seems to have raised the ire of the U.S. in a significant way. We’ve learned tonight that its drug czar is pressuring Canadian authorities not to loosen Canadian law and he's carrying a very big stick -- threatening trade sanctions if we don't do what he wants. Global National's Carl Hanlon has the exclusive details." (watch the report)

preoccupatience

Jews Against the Occupation

war cries

"Bush has declared it's war time all the time. After the massive bombing in Afghanistan, the escalation of intervention in Colombia, the brutal U.S.-backed Israeli invasion of the Occupied Territories of Palestine, the Bush administration has now declared they are preparing for a major ground and air war against Iraq. Tens of thousands will die unless we act now. The people of the world can stop this war before it starts. Join us Saturday, June 1 in New York City for a national day-long conference of panels and workshop discussions to plan a comprehensive anti-war strategy."

togetherness

"Shoshanah Wolf, an organizer of the group from the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, was asked by a man in his 80’s with a European accent whether she really believed the other side was capable of honoring a just peace. Yes, she said, she really did. The man said she was naïve and wrong and a traitor, and shouted at her over and over, "You ugly bitch!" Ms. Wolf (who, by the way, is very pretty) felt that it was her duty as a young woman with an elder to hear him out. Also, she sensed that he was a Holocaust survivor."

pandoras boxing

some lids are better left uncracked.

stratocaster

"It became an annual rite of my boyhood. Each spring, I'd anticipate the arrival of a package from a Long Island company called Strat-O-Matic, makers of a classic dice-based baseball simulation board game. Inside the mailing was the newly minted set of cards representing the real-life statistics of most every player to don a uniform the prior season."

pocket lining

"Afghanistan hopes to strike a deal later this month to build a $2bn pipeline through the country to take gas from energy-rich Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India."

"The World Bank, the United Nations (news - web sites) Development Program and the Asian Development Bank believe $10.2 billion is needed for the reconstruction of Afghanistan over five years, of which $4.9 billion will be needed within the next 30 months."

crimes and demeanors

"CANNES, France (Reuters) - Woody Allen rejected on Wednesday a call by American Jews to boycott France's Cannes film festival, saying that was the kind of protest the Nazis used before the Second World War."

territorial pissings

the nirvana wars

sterling sliver

"Star Wars" is like science fiction, but freed of the future. And yet it is America, all over: flaming, tumbling aircraft; huge enterprises collapsing before they're built; earnest, rich young princesses pretending to be democrats; a corrupt and inept Senate. As entertainment, it's full-speed sideways into a fun-house mirror, as Mr. Lucas's youthful aspiration is methodically replaced by an endless, brilliant, consumerized torrent of guns, gowns, clones and plastic figurines."

marketable commodity

fits of print

looks like the nytimes did away with their large super annoying ads within the text of their articles which appeared after the first paragraph so they were impossible to ignore. recently, i heard that the online venture was already turning a profit so it was just another case of whoring for dollars. meanwhile, i had started to read the articles in the printer friendly version which was ad free but apparently if you do that enough the times puts ads on that page too. ditto, for their "text only" version.

its almost enough to make me wish i didnt despise andrew sullivan.

keyed up

"The FBI set up a bogus computer security company named "Invita" in downtown Seattle and let it be known they needed hackers as consultants on computer security. In an elaborate scheme, FBI agents posing as Invita employees made phone and e-mail contact with Gorshkov and Ivanov, and offered them consulting work as Internet security experts."

"While demonstrating their hacker skills, the Russians also took time out to use an Internet connection to tap into their server in Russia. What they didn't realize was that the keystroke logging program was copying everything. FBI agents used those passwords to tap into the Russian server and copy what was there."

dope finds

antiquated but still relevant: The Consumers Union Report - Licit and Illicit Drugs from the DRCNet Online Library of Drug Policy

color bind

"At George Washington Carver Elementary School, poll workers asserted that Newark police officers were standing near the entryway of the polling site, patting voters on the shoulders and telling them to "do the right thing." Darnell White, 32, a volunteer for Mr. Booker's campaign said the police threatened to arrest him when he complained."

standard oil

nothing terribly new in this screed about us oil imperialism but an illuminating read nonetheless especially in light of the failed venezuelan coup and our recent rapprochement with russia and todays un sanctions reversal for iraq. and it would seem the last two items are related as one of the prime beneficiaries of the sanctions overhaul is russia which according to the article had lost $700 million in business as a result of the sanctions.

sinicism

"What is not so well known across the left, not to mention elsewhere, is that this radical criticism of the limitations of a capitalist sponsored journalism is not a recent phenomenon. In fact, it dates back to the birth, at the beginning of the twentieth century, of both modern monopoly capitalism and modern commercial media, roughly one hundred years ago. Radical criticism of the press was an integral component of the many large social movements of the Progressive Era, which sought to resist the effects of accelerating capitalist development. It was a time of striking similarity to the present, mirroring in particular the corruption of democracy by political and economic elites whose control over the media strangles public awareness, debate, and activism. However, unlike today, radical criticism of capitalist journalism was a dominant theme on the left during the Progressive Era, particularly in the socialist, anarchist, and progressive press. This was the Golden Age of radical press criticism, and Upton Sinclair was at its epicenter."

bonjour tristesse

"In the late 1960s, Jean Seberg took more roles in Hollywood, most notably opposite Warren Beatty in "Lillith". She also became increasing active in left wing political groups. Her support for the anti-racist movement the Black Panthers, along with that of Jane Fonda, was well known. But such was Seberg's influence, esspecially in Europe, that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover considered her a genuine liability, and, in 1970 when she was seven months preganant, issued instructions that Seberg be "neutralised". Thus it was that a fake letter was "leaked" to the Hollywood gossip columns, suggesting that the father of the child was not Gary, but a member of the Black Panthers. The reaction so traumatised Seberg that she gave birth prematurely, and the child was stillborn. The next day Seberg called a press conference, where she presented shocked journalists with the body of her dead white child. The measure, though extreme, put an end to the rumours, but the FBI continued to hound Seberg until she eventually moved back to Paris."

refusenik

lauryn hills new album came out today. apparently its not commercial enough for corporate america which means it may only sell two or three million copies versus her last monster effort. what was she thinking? next youre going to tell me that mtv wont play her videos because she doesnt show enough skin. what kind of values is she trying to impart? is she some sort of pro-palestinian maoist rebel?

general occlusion

first of five part article on tom delay.

formula one

"The research reveals that while the built-up areas of the settlements constitute only 1.7% of the land in the West Bank, the municipal boundaries are over three times as large: 6.8%. Regional councils constitute an additional 35.1%. Thus, a total of 41.9% of the area in the West Bank is controlled by the settlements."

spare squares

"Splitting up the screen has slipped into movies and TV shows so deftly that almost no one has pointed out what a break it makes with the past. Except for a brief, astonishing moment in the late '60s, with movies like Richard Fleischer's "The Boston Strangler" and Norman Jewison's original version of "The Thomas Crown Affair" and, of course, "Woodstock," edited by the brilliant Thelma Schoonmaker (among others, including a then-unknown Martin Scorsese), the history of film has been a history of the single screen: one image, one shared moment in time. An artist once insisted to me that you couldn't have it otherwise; the moment you break up that screen, you destroy the illusion that allows you to carry off your audience."

boy wonder

"This is a copy of a bizarre six-page manifesto, of sorts, written by Luke Helder and sent last week to a college newspaper in Wisconsin. In the rambling letter, Helder, who has been charged in connection with the recent mailbox bombings, writes, "I'm taking very drastic measures in attempt to provide this information to you...I will die/change in the end for this, but that's ok, hahaha paradise awaits! I'm dismissing a few individuals from reality, to change all of you for the better, surely you can understand my logic." The letter, the first page of which is imprinted with the initials LH, was signed "Lucas Helder" and postmarked May 3 in Omaha, Nebraska."

oil slicks

"The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, had advance warning of last month's coup attempt against him from the secretary general of Opec, Ali Rodriguez, allowing him to prepare an extraordinary plan which saved both his government and his life, an investigation has revealed."

stack snacks

blackmask online -- online book listings

taking your hacks

"Major League Baseball (MLB) has begun offering Condensed Baseball, which reduces the length of a given game to about 20 minutes. How, you may ask? By eliminating every pitch that doesn't result in a play. In other words, you'll see pitches that result in a hit, run, or out, along with wild pitches, pick-offs, passed balls, stolen bases, and the like. Basically it's baseball for those suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder."

bite me

smoke out

"The Cannabis Consumers Campaign asserts that marijuana prohibition is based on the false presumption that pot smokers are a detriment to society who lack a moral compass and fail to achieve their potential. The Campaign is conducting a survey that intends to clarify who cannabis consumers are and how they use the plant. Norris says the Campaign will culminate in an advertisement featuring 100 prominent cannabis smoking celebrities who will "come out" together."

metal heart

"WASHINGTON, May 12 (UPI) -- A new ballistic technology that can fire burst rates in excess of one million rounds per minute from a 36-barrel weapon was one of the reasons Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld canceled the $11 billion Crusader artillery system."

terrortorial

the israeli likud party makes it official; they oppose any reasonable palestinian state. its nice to know theyre working so hard to bring about a peaceful solution to their problems. can we start calling them extremists now?

walk on by

"MIAMI (AP) -- Singer Dionne Warwick was arrested Sunday when baggage screeners at Miami International Airport said they found 11 suspected marijuana cigarettes inside her lipstick container."

you know the drill

"A year ago, the Hebrew University sociologist Baruch Kimmerling observed that "what we feared has come true - War appears an unavoidable fate", an "evil colonial" war. His colleague Ze'ev Sternhell noted that the Israeli leadership was now engaged in "colonial policing, which recalls the takeover by the white police of the poor neighbourhoods of the blacks in South Africa during the apartheid era". Both stress the obvious: there is no symmetry between the "ethno-national groups" in this conflict, which is centred in territories that have been under harsh military occupation for 35 years."

take this god and shove it

"The 3.5 million Jewish residents of New York City are quite diverse, from ultra-Orthodox to radically secular humanist, Buddhist and New Age, said Steve Fenchel, a church planter there. Although Southern Baptist work in New York City began in 1957, work with the Jewish people is just getting started, he said. Prayer walks, canvassing of colleges and universities, as well as street evangelism provide avenues for outreach by volunteers."

flagging interest

pollar winds

"More than half of Israelis believe withdrawing troops from Palestinian territories and dismantling most Jewish settlements there will help put the peace process back on track, according to an opinion poll."

op politics

group ugh

not nearly as important or deserved as jims blastoff into the bloggerati, dratfink is less than ashamed to reveal his acceptance into the reprobates club of america (and associated colonies). now if only the link actually pointed to my page, im sure a flood of traffic would come my way and then recede with even greater haste.

the eyes have it

"What that means, basically, is that it's hard to speak and think at the same time. Shneiderman says researchers in his computer science lab discovered through controlled experiments that when you tell your computer to "page down" or "italicize that word" by speaking aloud, you're gobbling up precious chunks of memory -- leaving you with little brainpower to focus on the task at hand. It's easier to type or click a mouse while thinking about something else because hand-eye coordination uses a different part of the brain, the researchers concluded."

live evil

"The uncovering of these proposals for an offensive biological weapons program comes at a critical political juncture. The US has rejected a legally-binding system of United Nations inspections of suspected biological weapons facilities. At the same time, the Bush administration is aggressively accusing other countries of developing biological weapons and expanding its so-called "Axis of Evil" based in large part on allegations of foreign biological weapons development."

wailing wall

"Building a fence to keep out Palestinian terrorists: It's a beguilingly simple idea that continues to gain currency in an Israel tormented by Hamas and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. Indeed, as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon hastens back from Washington after yet another suicide bombing, his government is already starting to demarcate land for barriers and quietly thinking through what's euphemistically known in Israel as "separation." But a fence is a counsel of despair. While the idea has clear appeal for Israeli politicians, it's dubious security policy and rash diplomacy."

smells like destiny

"Songs like this one, which combine different hits without adding any original music, may represent the first significant new musical genre to be lifted out of the underground, developed and then spread, mostly via the Web. The songs, called mash-ups or bootlegs, typically match the rhythm, melody and underlying spirit of the instrumentals of one song with the a cappella vocals of another. And the more odd the pairing the better."

learning curve

"We insist that Palestinians and Israelis are equally precious in God's eyes and that the loss of life on both sides is equally tragic and unnecessary. The Planetary Consciousness which we proclaim recognizes that the well-being of each of us depends on the well-being of all of us. These themes, developed more fully in the State of the Spirit address (in this issue of Tikkun on p. 33), must be applied to the crisis in the Middle East. In doing so, we approach both sides in a spirit of compassion for the terrible pain that both have suffered, and a passionate commitment to alleviate that suffering. Yet compassion requires speaking with honesty and integrity, even when that forces us to confront difficult truths. This is what we mean by Prophetic Witness."

cold cache

"A huge diamond discovery has turned a remote corner of the Canadian tundra into a modern-day Sutter’s Mill, where prospectors rush to stake their claims."

new dawn

"Martin and Brigitte also make a claim about one of the most famous discoveries of all time: "Lucy," a hominid from just over 3 million years ago in Ethiopia. Donald Johanson, who discovered her in 1974, claimed her to be our direct ancestor."

"The fossils from Orrorin have led Martin and Brigitte to the revolutionary conclusion that Lucy and her type, the australopithicines, were not our direct ancestors: rather, they were a branch that became extinct."

hes such a cut up

kid 606 "rebel girl" clip

singled out

all songs considered

turkey shoot

"Specifically, the court will review whether two controversial third-strike sentences violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The primary case involves Andrade, who twice fled a Kmart store six years ago with a handful of stolen videos, including "Snow White." He is serving 50 years to life for the thefts because he had several prior convictions for a rash of home burglaries and marijuana possession. The second case involves a felon named Gary Ewing, who is serving 25 years to life for stealing three $400 golf clubs. He, too, had been convicted repeatedly for burglary."

courtesans

ruth bader ginsburg v. sandra day o'connor

its not safe

segway: easy rider or menace2society?

sound it out

cache of poetry (and thensome) mp3s from ubuweb

the hills are alive

"When I first arrived in California, I was cruising the Strip in a '63 white Corvette, later on, I was driving a black Lincoln Continental with a "Groupies" bumper sticker in the back window, and later, I bought a '54 silver Jaguar sedan that had flames coming out of the headlights. My cars were well-known on the Strip."

"A lot of people knew me as Dixie's sister, and I was sometimes known as Cooker's girlfriend, but for awhile I was seeing John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. Later I moved in with Denny Doherty, the other papa. I was also going out with Taj Mahal for awhile, and Keith Carradine."

incensed and myrrh

"A man without a wife to puncture his pomposity, without children to challenge his authority, in relations carefully structured to make him continuously eminent, easily becomes convinced of his superior wisdom. Since many priests have been only sketchily educated outside their formal subjects, they feel that the source of their wisdom must be their supernatural powers, not their intellectual development. It is generally easy for religion to move from the numinous to the antinomian, to the idea that believers are above the rules that bind others. This is where religion and sex slide easily into each other."

hand in glove

"Driven by police from their longtime haunts on street corners and massage parlors, prostitution rings are setting up shop in suburban strip malls, medical plazas and business parks--often using chiropractic offices as a cover."

"Perth prostitutes were reeling from exhaustion following an influx of United States sailors stressed from a stint in a war zone, a well-known madam said today."

"Sitting in a brothel bedroom in Velesta, a town synonymous with forced prostitution that police and experts consider one of the most dangerous places in Europe, Olga said that her “owner” would kill her for telling a reporter about her state of captivity. But the cruel conditions under which she is held, and her deteriorating mental and physical health, compelled her to speak out."

blue by you

"LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A federal magistrate has ordered SonicBlue Inc. to modify its digital video recorders to track what television viewers watch and share the information with the movie studios and TV networks that are suing the company for alleged copyright violations."

talent pooling

"How do you build a truly creative community---one that can survive and prosper in this emerging age? The key can no longer be found in the usual strategies. Recruiting more companies won't do it; neither will trying to become the next Silicon Valley. While it certainly remains important to have a solid business climate, having an effective people climate is even more essential. By this I mean a general strategy aimed at attracting and retaining people---especially, but not limited to, creative people. This entails remaining open to diversity and actively working to cultivate it, and investing in the lifestyle amenities that people really want and use often, as opposed to using financial incentives to attract companies, build professional sports stadiums, or develop retail complexes."

whack a mole

"Of course, there are many pundits--thousands, even. In Washington, you can spot them easily. They look much like ordinary people, but their heads are much larger. And when they pontificate, which is almost always, their heads visibly throb. During the Great California Power Crisis, plans were made to harvest this near-constant throbbing to power factories and homes, but then oil was discovered in ANWR--a close shave for the pundits. Since then, many have taken to wearing berets."

id like to thank...

national magazine award winners

causality

my aunt whos been active in progressive movements for 25 years (i think she was even arrested along with "the anarchists" in a post 9-11 march in dc) has mistaken me in her email list for someone else. i sent her an email last time "explaining" her mistake. i add the quotes because the email i sent her could have been misunderstood but i thought that by signing it '(your nephew) david' that would be sufficient to clarify. apparently not, or else she is a closet df fan. ill post the email in comments.

mediamente

"With a wary eye on technological developments, the newspaper industry is preparing for change, and even if some of the accompanying rhetoric isn't entirely convincing, convergence with broadcast and online media is the shape of things to come for newspapers."

news hounding

"Now Adelman is locked in a battle against the Belo media corporation, owner of The Dallas Morning News, which sent him a legalistic letter this week demanding that BarkingDogs.org remove all "deep links" to the DallasNews.com site."

never happen

"Former President Bill Clinton met with NBC executives Wednesday in Los Angeles to discuss hosting his own talk show, according to several television sources.

Although the talks are only preliminary, one source said Clinton's interest was serious and said he was demanding a fee of $50 million a year and had aspirations "of becoming the next Oprah Winfrey."

sunnyside up

james fallows and ralph nader are at slate's breakfast table this week.

swallow tales

"John Dean, the White House counsel whose revelations about the Nixon presidency were the first flames in the volcano of Watergate scandal, is about to turn up the heat again by revealing the identity of Deep Throat." via spike

human nature

"Scientists for the first time have managed to remotely direct the movements of rats by using implanted electrodes to control their behavior -- in effect transforming living animals into robots."

deep dish

get down with your bad self

"R&B star R Kelly has been hit with a third lawsuit which says he had sex with an underage girl who then became pregnant."

Kelly has been called to the Vatican for a special meeting where he will be presented with this months Cardinal Sin Award which is quite an honor considering the competition these days.