Author's posts
Oct 16 2007
NSA Program Conceived Under Clinton
The project was described in the ATT sales division documents as calling for the construction of a facility to store and retain data gathered by the NSA from its domestic and foreign intelligence operations but was to be in actuality a duplicate ATT Network Operations Center for the use and possession of the NSA that would give the NSA direct, unlimited, unrestricted and unfettered access to all call information and internet and digital traffic on ATT’s long distance network. […]
The NSA program was initially conceived at least one year prior to 2001 but had been called off; it was reinstated within 11 days of the entry into office of defendant George W. Bush.
Oct 15 2007
Pelosi needs to quit labeling things.
From The Hill:
Pelosi labels herself:
The speaker, in an interview aired on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” stated it was ironic that, as an outspoken opponent to the Iraq campaign, anti-war activists are targeting her now.
She not only labels herself as an opponent to the war, but as an opponent of the war who speaks out about her opposition, presumably because speaking is acting, and actions talk louder than words.
Oct 14 2007
Monkey see, monkey do, I see a monkey just like you.
Is the American psyche terminally fucked up? Prolly. I’m sick of it. Here’s an old poem, mostly an Italian sonnet by construction, on something about cognitive development, not that that was the original intent; there was zero intention, except to describe someone. The rest happened like a bad car accident. I found the extreme collision with the pun unavoidable at the time. Whoever said I could drive? Not me. If you want Wallace Stevens, go read Stevens, or Snoop Dogg. I did like the idea of putting words into the container of a specific meter and rhyme, because otherwise, “it’s like playing tennis without a net.” Once upon a time, deigning to write in metered verse was pretentious, if not tendentious. Piffle, poffle. If you can’t have a dreary slide into nostalgia now and again, what’s the point?
Oct 14 2007
Dubai Arms Bazaars: Shop ’til you Drop!
This weekend, buyers from across the Gulf states and the Middle East will descend on a huge arms fair in Dubai. Sheikhs, emirs, princes and kings will be buying anything from specialised sniper ammunition by the ton, to the highest-tech surveillance gear and even the odd British Aerospace gunboat or Eurofighter.
The Arab world will use the International Defence Exhibition (IDEX), to tool up for a coming confrontation with Iran, and to arm Sunni insurgents to fight Iran’s allies in Iraq, the Shia militias.
Oct 09 2007
When the hangover strikes.
When the hangover strikes
And I open my post
And the coffee is on
And I’m burning my toast
I let the battle commence
I see a sun in the trees
And a draught at the door
With my head in my lap
There’s a day to explore
But I’m left without sense
Oct 08 2007
Hitchens: Macbeth on the Oregon Strand.
Christopher Hitchens discovers from the LA times that his war-mongering influenced a now dead soldier to take up arms in Iraq:
Somewhere along the way, he changed his mind. His family says there was no epiphany. Writings by author and columnist Christopher Hitchens on the moral case for war deeply influenced him … “
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Oct 07 2007
Brian Eno’s Soundscape in Shrillville: The Vertical Colors of Shrill!
The British are coming! The British are coming! Wow. I thought artists were supposed to talk about airy nothings, like Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, “making a brick, not building a wall,” and the vertical colors of sound, you know, talking about things not related to concrete objects, but expressing something that can only be appreciated intellectually, based on general principles or theories rather than on specific instances, not aiming to depict an object but composed with the focus on internal structure and form, describing music that is intended to have no programmatic content, decorated with irregular areas of color that do not represent anything concrete, emotionally detached or distanced from something. You know, drifting clarifiers floating ideas in the air of abandoned churches, and shit. Boy, was I mistaken. Brain Eno has gone unmistakably thoughtless, vulgar, and insensitive as to lack all refinement or delicacy, extremely so, and flagrantly.
If we have lost Brian Eno to the anti-war movement, then who can we look to salve our flaming souls? Follow below the fold into the absurd reality of an artist banging his head on the political abutment that is Iraq!
Oct 02 2007
2008 is too late.
Over the weekend, I was watching some footage, presumably shot from the tailgate window of a Blackwater humvee, wherein some highly-paid mercenary sitting in the back of the vehicle occasionally, repeatedly, and randomly opens fire with an automatic rifle on the traffic that follows them. The passenger vehicles taking the fire, for no apparent reason other than the mercenary’s sadistic boredom-the vehicles were seldom close enough to even see the passengers slump over in death, or writhe in their wounds–would come to a stop, veer off the road, or crash into other vehicles. Repeated, random, senseless death from the bored machine-gun of a mercenary. That is Iraq, in a nutshell. Let’s end this war.
Sep 30 2007
The Top Tier on the Near-term Future of Geopolitics: I Got Nothin’.
Clinton:
I really can’t say what we’ll inherit. Sure, I spent 8 years in the White House with Bill, but I wasn’t really paying attention to geopoliltics and shit. And that was a while ago, anyway. Besides, my head is full of rocks. You saw my vote on the AUMF. That Iran vote was pretty mindless, too. [Cackling noises].