John Thain - MIT and Harvard Grad

Elite Lad Eases Marble Turd Into $35,000 Toilet Bowl

John Thain poses on the floor of America's World's Biggest Toilet Bowl.

Once again, one of the best and the brightest steps forward to remind us that you really have to go to one of the elite schools to prove just how dumb, corrupt, venal, criminal you are. Just how smart do you have to be to spend $35,000 on a toilet, $1.2 million on one office? You have to be Harvard smart. And that is mighty smart, by jimminy. It's George Bush smart, Antonin Scalia smart, Robert Rubin smart. Smart enough to blow trillions and trillions on nuthin' at all. (Trillions and trillions. They got Carl Sagan beat by a mile.) George W. Bush, John Thain, Antonin Scalia, Robert Rubin - Harvard, Yale men all - with a healthy representation of MIT, Chicago, Stanford, etc.

Which comes first? The sheer stupidity or the gross venality? Are these smart people who get too arrogant or fucking morons who have an easy road to privilege. I personally think that most people are fairly intelligent, given the opportunity. Sadly, most of the most never have a snowball's chance in hell. But a rich, white boy sidling his pimply ass into a seat at Harvard? Like, say, William Weld, former Governor of Massachusetts, onetime national contender. Got his political ass kicked and went on and upward to set up a money laundering operation at a diploma mill. Now that's the kind of stupid you really need a Harvard degree for. You need to go to a 'leadership institution' to manage that.

As for John Thain, MIT undergrad and HBS grad (Harvard Business School to those not privy to Cambridge-speak). Well, John Thain, super-genius, wiley bankster, favorite to take the reins at Shitigroup (umbrella logo conceived by elite designer Paula Scher) deemed it essential to blow $1.2 million on renovations to his office, including $35,000 on a toilet bowl.

And you thought it took the Pentagon to spend money like that.

But, hey, things are looking up. Obama's got Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner, Austan Goolsbee & Co. on the job.

Whoops.

And for those who may wonder . . .

Just what does a $35,000 toilet bowl look like? Well, my comrades, my droogs, I still looketh. The best so far? $2,300 for a Kohler contraption. I will update you inquirying types when I have Innnnformation.

As of 4:55pm Eastern Time, Sunday, 1 February, 2009, We Have Struck you-know-what:

Se questo è un uomo

You who live safe
In your warm houses,
You who find warm food
And friendly faces when you return home.
Consider if this is a man
Who works in mud,
Who knows no peace,
Who fights for a crust of bread,
Who dies by a yes or a no.
Consider if this is a woman
Without hair, without name,
Without the strength to remember,
Empty are her eyes, cold her womb,
Like a frog in winter.
Never forget that this has happened.
Remember these words.
Engrave them in your hearts,
When at home or in the street,
When lying down, when getting up.
Repeat them to your children.
Or may your houses be destroyed,
May illness strike you down,
May your offspring turn their faces from you.

Bloomberg Blows Our Wad

We the People have been tapped by the Feds to bail out the billionaires. Now in New York City, Michael Bloomberg, candidate Mayor For Life, will tap regular New Yorkers to bail out the city. Fine. We bear a collective (though not necessarily equal) responsibility to get ourselves out of this mess.

But one group is exempt -- Mikey's peers -- the millionaires and billionaires, the very people at the heart of the maelstrom in the first place.

Bloomberg proposes cutting teachers, cops, firefighters. He proposes raising sales taxes and cutting property tax rebates. But NO increase in taxes for the wealthiest.

What makes this doubly hypocritical is that the wealthiest already enjoy the lowest tax rates. The IRS has released figures showing that the wealthiest 400 Americans averaged $263 million income in 2006 -- most of it as capital gains taxed at a rate of 17%, far below what many average Americans pay. Yet both Mayor Bloomberg and New York Governor Paterson have expressly opposed raising taxes for those most able to pay. Instead they embrace hammering those least able. Brilliant. American democracy at its truest.

An Inconvenient Possibility

Former Vice President Al Gore appeared before Congress to give them the lowdown on what's coming up for our species. Gore predicted a "screeching halt to civilization" if current trends continue. Asked by Republicon James Risch what would happen if we do nothing, Gore said that we don't face the extinction of Homo sapiens.

Weeellll, probably. But there are scientists who have raised serious questions about our survival. Just as most Americans, and certainly most members of the nation's executive and legislative branches, cannot conceive of a world in which the US in not the greatest power, so too are most unable to conceive of a world where humans are gone, or drastically reduced in numbers and to a state more like that of the Stone Age.

How possible? More possible than you might like to imagine. If current trends continue, not just possible but likely. To paraphrase General MacArthur, great civilizations don't die, they just fade away. We have become addicted to a way of life that is grossly unsustainable. Most leaders in both the public and private sectors are unable or unwilling to confront this fact. Most are engaged in simple, irrational denial. George W. Bush was able to endorse policies directly repugnant to the future well-being of his own children and possible grandchildren. So too for the vast majority of members of Congress. And sadly, President Obama, in the search for some mythical Republicon cooperation, seems just as willing to ignore fact.

To quote from that great LBJ advert of 1964, "We must either love each other, or we must die."

Johnson borrowed from the great Auden poem, September 1, 1939:

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
'I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,'
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the dead,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

Another Kennedy Bites the Dust

Caroline Kennedy bows out. We all knew it was probably some leetle beety skeleton biding its time in her closet. The New York Times is reporting she Geithnered.

My second guess was that, with her Uncle Ted in serious decline, that she was opting instead to take the Kennedy seat in the Senate. We are, after all, a whisker's width from instituting our version of the House of Lords -- inherited seats, family seats in government. Kennedy, Murkowski, Stevens, Boggs, Clinton, Bush, and on.

Here's an excerpt from the Times:

Problems involving taxes and a household employee surfaced during the vetting of Caroline Kennedy and derailed her candidacy for the Senate, a person close to Gov. David A. Paterson said on Thursday, in an account at odds with Ms. Kennedy’s own description of her reasons for withdrawing.

The account emerged 14 hours after Ms. Kennedy announced that she was taking her name out of contention for the Senate seat vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton, and as Mr. Paterson, according to two well-placed Democrats told of his thinking, was leaning toward selecting Representative Kirsten E. Gillibrand, an upstate lawmaker in her second term in Congress. Mr. Paterson has scheduled a news conference at noon Friday in Albany to announce his choice.

Hard feelings toward Ms. Kennedy were clearly building among the governor’s staff on Thursday, after a dramatic evening in which she was reported to be dropping out, then wavering, then ultimately, shortly after midnight on Thursday, issuing a statement ending her candidacy.

The person close to the governor said Mr. Paterson “never had any intention of picking Kennedy” because he had come to consider her unready for the job. The person did not describe the exact nature or seriousness of the tax and household employee issues.

But other Democratic operatives and people who talked to the governor disputed that account, and said that he had all but decided to select Ms. Kennedy as senator, and that his staff was arranging a press conference for late this week.

The Myth of the Virtuous Middle

It is more accurately called 'The Middle' — with scare quotes. If "it's all relative" holds any substance in popular discourse, it is in the relativism of what counts as "the middle". This should be obvious and probably is, but "the virtue of the middle" does work for those in that 'virtuous' position — it provides a fig leaf behind which they can hide — and so the myth goes unexamined.

So let's examine a case: The New York Times on the Israel-Palestine conflict. The Times, like NPR and CNN and many others, are fond of saying that they are criticized "by both sides". Conclusion? "Since both side are criticizing us, we must be doing something right."

Possibly. Or one side might be right and the other wrong. In the case of the Israeli occupation, major supporters of Israel are convinced that the Times is too critical of Israel. At NPR, to cite a similar case, former ombudsman (equivalent to the Times's "Public Editor") Jeffrey Dvorkin expressly stated that he felt NPR's coverage tended to favor the Palestinian side.

How?

• "Israel has done some not very nice things." I heard these words first from Elie Wiesel. Quite a move for him. He had and has typically exonerated Israel of any wrongdoing of any kind or degree. I later heard precisely the same words from Brian Lehrer of WNYC and Daniel Schorr of NPR. Quite a coincidence. This is as close as you will ever hear any prominent media personality get to actually criticizing, much less condemning, Israeli atrocities.
  The prevailing view of the US and Israel is that neither is capable of committing war crimes. So it is some indication of just how awful things are in Gaza that The New York Times, NPR, etc., can even mention that elsewhere in the world people are calling for prosecution of Israeli war crimes. The worst you will typically hear said about Israeli actions is something to the effect that they are "counterproductive" or "not in Israel's best interests".
  Rarely will you hear mention of "Palestinian rights". So, for example, a January 16th Times editorial stated, "the assault on Gaza has passed the point of diminishing returns." As strong a condemnation of Israeli action as you will ever find in a Times editorial. There, it must be said, a handful of prominent, mainstream American figures who have criticized Israel more harshly. The most notable, of course, is Jimmy Carter, who was rhetorically drawn and quartered for his transgression. Years ago Andy Rooney of 60 Minutes wrote a critical column, as did the former Times legal commentator, Anthony Lewis.

• White Phosphorus [reported by FAIR]. Here is the Times on March 22, 1995:

"[S]ome of the worst chemical weapons were never excluded by any international agreement.

"White phosphorus, for example, is considered to be an incendiary weapon, not a chemical weapon, and under the ambiguous rules of war is acceptable for military use, both for creating smoke screens and for starting fires. But this waxy substance adheres to flesh, and when it is exposed to air, it bursts into flame. The seven allied bombing raids that leveled the German city of Hamburg in July and August 1943 started a firestorm with white phosphorus. Many of the city's phosphorus-smeared residents sought refuge in Hamburg's two lakes, but when they stepped out of the water the phosphorus on their bodies reignited. Some were shot by German troops to end their suffering. Hamburg suffered more than 50,000 killed, many of them victims of white phosphorus. . . .

"Some deadly poisons are not considered weapons at all, yet they have been used to kill and terrorize, and may be used again."

BUT today, the Times takes quite a different tone on white phosphorus [again, as noted by FAIR]:

"White phosphorus is a standard, legal weapon in armies, long used as a way to light up an area or to create a thick white smoke screen to obscure troop movements. While using it against civilians, or in an area where many civilians are likely to be affected, can be a violation of international law, Israel has denied using the substance improperly. On Wednesday, Hamas fired a phosphorus mortar shell into Israel, but no one was hurt.

• Whose word is heard. Because Israel has barred journalists from Gaza, we are hearing from even fewer Palestinians than we normally would. It was already a staple of US coverage that many more Israelis are typically interviewed "on the street" than Palestinians.
  

• Whose dead count. Until the Palestinian death total really soared, the Times and other US media groups were treating fatalities on a 1-to-1 basis, this despite the fact that Palestinian losses greatly exceeded Israeli losses from the very first day. Over the decades of the occupation, the probability that an Israeli fatality goes reported has been vastly greater than the probability that a Palestinian one does. The usual fig leaf here? Newsworthiness. (A sobering, presumably unintentional, admission.)
  

• Suffering. The conditions in the territories are routinely described incompletely or not at all. Those who insist on raising the issue of Palestinian suffering will often find themselves accused of playing the "blame game" or of unfairly claiming that "our suffering is greater than yours." The catch? Palestinians are suffering more. Simple fact.
  

• The buddy system. Leading reporters for the Times and others live in Israel, not the territories, never the territories. Mere association would understandably foster sympathy for those associated with. Israel further fosters this with an exceptionally competent media management, spin control, manipulation system.
  

• Prominent critics of Israeli behavior are downplayed or dismissed. Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu have both described conditions in the territories as apartheid, both have been largely ignored. When President Jimmy Carter condemned Israel behavior, the Times did hatchet job on him, citing the notoriously pro-Israel Alan Dershowitz (without any mention at all of Dershowitz's record on the subject.).

• Israel operates a small army of spin controllers (including "historian" Michael Oren) whose job it is to "guide" western coverage.

• If the Times (or NPR's or CNN's) coverage is consistently pro-Palestinian, how is it that most Americans are not even aware that Israel occupies the Palestinian territories. (Yes, a fact borne out by at least two studies.)

Not conclusive, but I'm only getting started.

MediaLens.org currently has a great piece surveying British coverage of the Gaza attacks with the Serbian attacks on Kosovo in the 1990s.

In '99 Europe and North America rallied to condemn Serbian attacks. Indeed, Serbia was charged with genocide and since then several Serbian figures have been brought to trial in the Hague. Kosovo did attack Serbian forces and in some cases civilians. But this did not stop the charges against Serbia. Casualties rates among Kosovars were then what Palestinian casualty rates are now approaching. And Kosovo had not suffered months of crippling blockades and years of occupation and land theft.

Now, however, nothing comparable to the charges leveled against Serbia is being leveled against Israel.

There was no privileged "middle" in the Serbian-Kosovan conflict. But here there is.

The middle is not the privileged position of "Truth". It is the fig leaf for wrongdoing. For political reasons, among others, neither the US nor Europe will charge Israel with the crimes is unambiguously committing. So, assert the "Virtue of the Middle", assert — tacitly — the equal moral status of the two sides (while arming and funding one and often explicitly asserting the moral superiority of that one) to avoid a costly admission regarding the crimes of the client.


REFERENCES

"Here Comes Kosovo." Roger Cohen. The New York Times. February 14, 2008

[more to come]

Questions for the International Community in the Prosecution of Israeli War Crimes

What is terrorism? This is the core question if we are to address whether Israel is waging a war of terror on the Palestinian people.

It is widely recognized that both Allies and Axis powers engaged in terror bombing during the Second World War. The US, Israel, Britain, and all the other world powers recognize "state terror" — just not by themselves and their allies.

None dispute that a bombing of a bus full of civilians in Jerusalem or flying planes into two towers in New York is terrorism.

BUT the US and Israel routinely characterize attacks upon combatants as terrorism. The US government and the media routinely name as terrorism any attack upon US forces in Iraq.

Moreover, the US and Israel regularly reject any suggestion that either has ever deliberately attacked civilians. In the case of Israel, there is now volumes of eyewitness accounts going all the way back to the 1940s detailing Israeli attacks upon civilians. Yet, it is taken as axiomatic that Israel does not attack civilians, just as George W. Bush asserted as axiomatic that "the United States does not torture."

So US and Israeli claims are two-fold:

1. [Axiom] Neither the US nor Israel deliberately attack civilians — ever.

2. [Assertion] All instances of civilian deaths at American or Israeli hands are either accidental or misidentified attacks by the civilians' compatriots.

So what account of terrorism exempts what Israel is visiting upon Gazans?

Alternatively, what should we be asking if we are to prepare a charge of war crimes and terrorism against Israel and Israeli forces?

1. Does the sheer number of civilian dead, particularly the ratio of Palestinian civilians to Palestinian combatants and the ratio of Palestinian dead and insured to Israeli dead and injured constitute sufficient evidence of Israeli war crimes?

2. Does the blockade, which began in 2007 and which no person can pretend is 'surgically targeted' at combatants alone, count as evidence of Israeli war crimes? Princeton professor Richard Falk answers "Yes."

3. Is Israel using white phosphorus and does that constitute a war crime?

4. Half of Israeli military fatalities are "friendly fire" cases. What does this say of the much vaunted Israel military professionalism?

5. Has Israel used coordinates submitted by the UN to target the UN? The UN and other relief organizations submitted GPS coordinates of their locations expressly to prevent "accidental" Israeli attacks. Al-Jazeera and others did this for the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not long after, the US "accidentally" attacked al-Jazeera headquarters in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Not to be outdone, Israel has attacked marked Red Cross vehicles and the UN headquarters in Gaza City.

New York Israel advocate Zev Chafets state on WNYC's "Brian Lehrer Show" that the "UN always lies". This is a common sentiment among Israel's most rabid supporters, so it seems perfectly plausible that Israel's conservative warmongers would have targeted the UN.

6. Has Israel blocked journalists to prevent first-hand coverage of war crimes?

The Hidden Hand Hits Again

The BBC reports that rush privatize following the break-up of the Soviet Union brought with it a rise in mortality among men.

The UK study blames rapidly rising unemployment resulting from the break-neck speed of reform.

The researchers said their findings should act as a warning to other nations that are beginning to embrace widespread market reform. . . .

The researchers examined death rates among men of working age in the post-communist countries of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union between 1989 and 2002.

They conclude that as many as one million working-age men died due to the economic shock of mass privatisation policies.

Following the break up of the old Soviet regime in the early 1990s at least a quarter of large state-owned enterprises were transferred to the private sector in just two years.

This programme of mass privatisation was associated with a 12.8% increase in deaths.

The latest analysis links this surge in deaths to a 56% increase in unemployment over the same period.

But privatization is always good! So says Alan Greenspan, Margaret Thatcher, Lawrence Summers, Rahm Emmanuel, Bill Clinton, and on and on.

Sarah Palin — Dead and Lovin' It

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Blamey Whinehouse

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

What the Times or the BBC Will Likely Never Show You About Israel's Occupation

Below is a map of the West Bank (in French, but it's easily read).

The red line — the Wall. Note how most of it runs well inside Palestinian territory.

Yellow squares — permanent checkpoints (there are far far more 'temporary checkpoints')

Black triangles — settlements started after Israel agreed to cease new settlement activity.

Orange — the glaring truth-teller — land barred to Palestinians. Note especially the Jordan River Valley, a crucial source of water. Israel gets approximately 40% of its fresh water from the West Bank. Be assured that Israel has no intention at all of ever leaving the Jordan River valley.

Orange lines — "Jewish-only" roads. Sound like apartheid?

What an Massive Meteor Would Might Do

"We Do Not Shoot At Innocent Civilians"

Israel says, "She's an accident" or "She's a terrorist."

"We do not shoot at innocent civilians." Thus spoke Israeli spokesman Mark Regev, who during the war against Lebanon went so far as to assert that children were terrorists. As for the not-so-innocent civilians — that's their tough luck, in the Regev Insanarium.

The claim that Israel does not attack civilians is the essential lie of the war on Gaza, the essential lie of the Israeli propaganda machine. It is one that American news organizations and political leaders are particularly eager to swallow without hesitation.

The evidence refuting this lie is overwhelming — overwhelming. By any measure employed in science or law, the conclusion is unavoidable: Israel makes war upon civilians. There are decades of attacks upon civilians, beginning with massacres during Israel's struggle for independence and continuing without interruption through to today.

If Israel's onslaught were not so brutal, it might be comical. How does an olive grove threaten Israel? Yet Israeli forces have mowed down thousands of acres of olive trees, a dietary staple, a key element in Palestinian agriculture and economy.

But the greatest point in evidence is not found in the shelling, bombing, shooting, bulldozing. It is found in the blockade that has been forced on Gaza since 2007. There is no pretending that the blockade is an "accident", as is routinely claimed every time civilians are shelled or bombed. There is no way that blockade can be characterized as anything but an attack upon civilians. For months, numerous international observers and aid workers have reported on the terrible effects of the blockade — crippled medical services, near-starvation for many Gazans, inadequate water, inadequate electricity.

The blockade is an attack upon civilians. Americans know this. The Berlin Airlift from 1948 to 1949 was a response to the Soviet blockade of Berlin. The Gaza blockade has brought far greater suffering upon Gazans.

If the US is serious that it supports Palestinian civilians, then it is time for a Gaza Airlift. Fly American cargo aircraft over Gaza and drop medical supplies, food, water. Put the Israeli propaganda to the test.

But the US is a full participant in the Israeli attack on civilians. It is almost certainly providing satellite info to the Israelis. It is most definitely providing most of the war materiel. If the US is not to be as guilty as Israel in the commission of the war crimes in Gaza, it must cease its support and launch the Gaza Airlift.

_______________________

Partial list of Israeli massacres and other attacks upon civilians

• King David Hotel bombing, 22 July 1946, 92 killed
• Deir Yassin massacre, 9 to 11 April 1948, about 110 Palestinian villagers killed
• Qibya, 14 to 15 October 1953, 69 Palestinians killed by forces under Ariel Sharon
• Kafr Qasim, 29 October 1956, 48 Palestinians killed: 6 women, 23 children
• al-Sammou massacre, 13 November 1966, Israeli forces attacked village, killing 18
• Sabra and Shatila, 16 to 18 September 1982, between 1500 and 2000 killed
• Qana, 18 April 1996, 106 refugees killed
• Qana, 30 July 2006, 28 civilians killed, half of them children
• Iain Hook, 22 November 2002, UNRWA worker shot by Israeli sniper
• Rachel Corrie, 16 March 2003, bulldozed by Israeli military
• Tom Hurndall, 13 January 2004, photography student shot at in the head at point blank range

Send in the Clowns!

Now that our Old Glorious Leader is about to be replaced by a New Glorious Leader, it's time for America's History Machine to go into full gear. It goes without saying the America Makes No Mistakes, thus history must be conformed to Truth (capital T). For Truth, people go to Elite Universities, watch Great American Networks, read Great American Newspapers, and heed Great American Thinkers. Thus, no American need ever be burdened by the burden of the Thinking or troubled by fact, fiction, or any other thing beginning with any other letter.

In the great American Tradition of peanut butter, cigarettes, and the Ford Edsel, brilliant American Thinkers and Arbiters of Truth, Tom Brokaw and David McCullough, offer the first Great History of the Bush Presidency — GAP — The Greatest American President.

DTV Transition — NOT!

Remember, Always Remember — The Core Principle of Capitalism Is: EVERYTHING MUST BE OWNED

Someday, perhaps not too far in the miserable future, our sorry civilization will return to owning people. For the time being, it is everything that is not a person.

The CHALLENGE, my little droogs:

NAME A THING ON THIS EARTH THAT
(1) IS NOT A PERSON AND THAT
(2) NOONE CLAIMS OWNERSHIP OVER.

The case that has me grinding my teeth. Nina Paley, distinctive, alternative, unusual animator has created out of sheer love and determination an animated film: Sita Sings the Blues. A couple of times over the past few years, I've seen little tiny portions of this — totally unlike any animation you've seen. And there is a lot of animation out there that is unlike any animation you've seen because it is done outside Pixar and Dreamworks and Hollywood by people who sweat blood for years in groups of one or two or three.

That's the great thing about animation like this — animation on the fringe, outside the mainstream: It is NOT A SLAVE to the Hollywood damned demand for photorealism. THE WHOLE POINT OF ANIMATION is that YOU CAN GO ANYWHERE YOU WANT. It's NOT limited by the constraints of the "real world" — whatever that is.

So, Nina Paley creates this great animation (and you don't have to like it, just chew on this). She animates to an audio track comprised of 80 YEAR OLD recordings. 80 YEARS. The actual recordings are now in the public domain (though Disney and others are trying to change this). BUT the scores are not. So the owners of the original music are hitting her up for tens of thousands of dollars for a project done with no intention of profit — a purely artistic endeavor (to the extent that any endeavor is "purely artistic" . . . who knows).

Needless to say, Paley does not have millions in studio backing. So the film — winning awards left and right — is stalled.

How many great artistic endeavors depended, were intimately tied to, past work. And how many can we just think of — great or otherwise — that depend on pre-existing and, potentially, "pre-owned" content? Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Laurie Anderson, Mozart, Shakespeare, The Rennaissance, Greek Revival. We stand on the shoulders of giants. It's the very essence of civilization. Later work proceeds from earlier, in an infinite variety or ways.

Maybe some boner-buster at Harvard will try to patent BLUE EYES, or HAVING SKIN, just as they patented the "Harvard nude mouse" (yes, it's for real).

Beethoven, in some of his work (like many many other composers) used existing, traditional music in the course of his composition. NOT ANY MORE.


ADDENDA

Herewith my comment on Paley's blog. I should be more angry or angry about other "more important" things, I guess. Well, never fear my droogs, I am.

This is _exactly_ the kind of problem that thousands of artists and legal scholars have been warning about. Two people who come to mind: Cory Doctorow, who wrote about this on boingboing, and some legal eagle at Berkeley or Stanford whose name I can’t remember. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has also been good on this.

Unfortunately, since artists are “just” artists, the idiots and moneygrubbers in Congress won’t get their heads out of their asses for a case like this. BUT sooner or later, there will be a case where some great innovation is lost, some new medicine, some new scientific discovery (and I’m thinking of copyright issues broadly here) and people will die or something terrible will happen. Then finally, this shites will figure it out. Still . . . I wouldn’t count on it. These are the same kind of people who tried to patent “clicking a button”.

Fight the good fight, be angry, be mellow. Send it to China, India. Some place where the billionaire fucks don’t yet control everything down to how we sit on the can. And may those bastards some day meet me in a dark place.

Roland Burris — Egopuniac

Roland Burris, appointed by the slimy toad aka Rod Blagojevich when the Senate seat sale was busted, was forced to eat some humble pie today when he was turned away from the Senate. More than a little hypocritical of the other slimy shites who mark the enamel of that body, but let's face it: Just because Blagojevich was more brazen doesn't make him or his choice any more palatable.

Meanwhile, back at the fort, we have Burris himself. His tombstone — already bought and erected! — strongly suggests this guy needs some help. Seen it? It looks like a giant granite resume for the afterlife. This poor little prick. He's been trying so hard for so long, and he alway gets the blowoff.

Ultimately, he's just another one of us. Those of lives of quiet desperation. But, damn, a granite tombstone the size of a bus that lists, among other things, experience as an exchange student in the early 60s.

WTF! Papa Dub Votes for More Bushes!

Turkey knows one when he sees one.

In the midst of the awful events in the Middle East, the growing economic cluster-fuck, and the total annihilation of Earth's environment, we do have to maintain a sense of humor.

Papa Dub George H. W. Bush, 41st President of the United States and now 84 years old, is setting an example:

"I'd like to see him run. I'd like to see him be president some day," said Papa Dub of his son Jeb.

We the People have some bad news for you, Papa Dub: Baby Dub pretty much shot the whole Bush family wad for the next thousand years — assuming there are still any humans 1,000 years from now, after WALT — the War on All Living Things.

I figure it'll be at least 200 years before anybody with the name Bush can even get elected dog catcher (though in New York State, they could probably get elected to the state legislature or governor).

Papa Dub also had some choice words regarding Baby Dub:

"The fact that everything that's a problem in this country should be put on his shoulders, that's not fair.

"He ran a clean operation, having kept this country strong and free after unprecedented in history attack, 9/11, and he'll have a lot to be proud of . . . . He'll come home with his head high."

And his tail between his legs.

And then he'll get his orange outfit for his life term in a super max prison for crimes against humanity.

And I for one do not blame Baby Dub for everything that's wrong in this country. The laundry in my building just plain sucks . . . nothing to do with Baby Dub. (But I know if Al Gore had been prez, we'd have some kind of newfangled, Gore-invented, laundry-washing-and-folding robot by now, dammit.)

Facts You Won't Find In the New York Times or on NPR

Relatives mourn the death of 4-year-old girl Lama Hamdan.
Americans may find it difficult to remember that Palestinians are human beings,
since the Times and other American sources
rarely print photos of Palestinian civilians suffering.

As Israel turns from genocide by blockade and starvation to just plain old brute force, Americans may be surprised to learn that it is Israel that occupies Palestine, not the other way round. [1] This is just one of a vast array of facts about which Americans are ignorant thanks to a grossly biased (or timid) media, government and academe.

Here are some more:

Number of Israelis killed by rockets and mortars in the 2001-2008 interval: 23 (433 injured)

Number of Palestinians killed in the same interval: nearly 5000 (1000 under 17 years old)

On the BBC (Tuesday, Dec. 30), Benjamin Netanyahu equated Palestinian rockets with German V1 and V2s fired on London during the Second World War.

Number of Britons killed by V1 and V2 rockets: 8938 (25,000 injured seriously)

In one day, Saturday Dec. 27, Israel killed 230 Palestinians (5% of all the people Israel has killed since the beginning of 2001). 70 of that 230 (30%) were civilians.

From the ceasefire Hamas (not Israel) announced on June 2008 until Saturday, Dec. 27, no Israelis had been killed by Hamas by any means.

This one should go without saying: Palestinians have no tanks, no fighter/bombers, no helicopters, no heavy artillery.

Palestinians in Gaza have been deprived of food, water, fuel, medical supplies since Fall, 2007

Collective punishment of civilians is a war crime under international laws to which both Israel and the United States are signatories.

Israel has been charged with crimes against humanity by Richard Falk (UN special rapporteur for human rights in the Occupied Territories), Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu, and former President Jimmy Carter.

Activists trying to bring medical aid to Gaza by boat on Tuesday, Dec. 30, were attacked by Israeli gunboats while in international waters. Among the 15 people onboard was former Representative Cynthia McKinney.

Despite claims by Israel that it "pulled out" of Gaza in 2005, Israel has controlled land, sea and air access continuously (with the exception of the land crossing with Egypt, where Egyptian authorities have carried out Israeli policy).

NOTES

1. A 2004 study found that only 29% of Americans university students did not know that Israelis are both the occupiers and the settlers in the West Bank (and at the time Gaza). http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/18/opinion/fenton/main630386.shtml

Five sisters killed in Gaza.

America is Shovel-Ready!

Shovel-ready. What the fuh does that mean? Man, I hope Obama is more than a mouth full of words. Shovel-ready.

Let us consider. What do we shovel?

Maybe too few Americans have ever even seen a picture of a farm. Plenty there to shovel. Get my drift?

I used to live in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn. Before the super-duper new sewage treatment facility — making the neighborhood safe for overpaid Wall Street type pole-up-the-ass Manhattanistas — you could smell all that was shovel-ready on a 'nice' summer day. (Actually, those Manhattanites need a hose up the ass to ship everything that was 'shovel-ready' to us dumbasses in the outer boroughs. And with the new Bloomberg-Paterson proposals, we're going to get plenty more 'shovel-ready'.)

And Greenpoint, so aptly named, was also ground zero for the largest oil spill in human history, still going after 50 years. Couldn't shovel it, but you sure as hell could smell it and drink it — in Greeeenpoint.

Shovel-ready. Lawrence Summers. Timothy Geithner, Rahm Emanuel. Eric Holder, Robert Gates — all shovel-ready.

What else do we shovel? Coal into the furnace. The way the government and corporate leaders have been treating We The People, I guess We are shovel-ready. Bailout the billionaires. Shovel the rest of us into the economic oven. Ouch. But, daaaamn, that's what they're doing. Can anybody deny it?

But let's just take the shovel Obama and Company have in mind. The Shovel of Progress! The Shovel of Economic Renewal! Onward, Through Difficulties, to the Broad Sunlit Uplands of The Future. Future, heaven of the poor [and 1, 2]. Our finest hour is at hand. . . . or at least, their finest hour.

This is the Culture of They. They make decisions for us. So it is around the world. Billionaires decide for 300 million Americans. Five million Israeli Jews decide for four million Palestinians. One billion Chinese decide for six million Tibetans, nine million Uighurs. European Australians decide for aborigines. European Guatemalans decide for Mayans. On and on.

We the People are Shovel-Ready. God help us.

"These are the stakes:
To make a world in which
all of God's children can live,
or to go into the Dark.
We must either love each other,
or we must die."

— LBJ, 1964

And the days are not full enough

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
        Not shaking the grass.

— Ezra Pound

Whispers of Heavenly Death, Whitman

WHISPERS of heavenly death, murmur'd I hear;
Labial gossip of night — sibilant chorals;
Footsteps gently ascending — mystical breezes, wafted soft and low;
Ripples of unseen rivers — tides of current, flowing, forever flowing;
(Or is it the plashing of tears? the measureless waters of human tears?)

I see, just see, skyward, great cloud-masses;
Mournfully, slowly they roll, silently swelling and mixing;
With, at times, a half-dimm'd, sadden'd, far-off star,
Appearing and disappering.

Some parturition, rather — some solemn, immortal birth:
On the frontiers, to eyes impenetrable,
Some Soul is passing over.

Harvard Teaches By Example

Or "Harvard Blows Its Wad"
Caroline Kennedy takes her cue as author from Alan Dershowitz, "borrowing" other people's work and calling it original. (You have to be a student at Harvard to be punished for plagiarism, as Kaavya Viswanathan learned the hard way.) Kennedy, it must be admitted, is smarter than Dershowitz: She called her grade-school caliber work an "anthology". Fair enough. And she also had the example of daddy's Profiles in Courage for the 'right' way to pass off another's work as one's own.

Similarly, Wall Street execs, no small number of whom 'studied' at the Harvard Business School, follow the example of their alma mater when taking massive bonuses even though they suck as businessmen.

Thus The Financial Times reports the newest development in the continuing saga of well-rewarded failure among America's elite:

Harvard’s top money managers paid $26.9m
By Rebecca Knight in Boston
Published: December 19 2008 23:34 | Last updated: December 19 2008 23:34

Harvard, the world’s wealthiest university, said on Friday it paid six senior investment officers a combined $26.9m (£17.5m) this year to manage its endowment.

The fund has lost $8.1bn since the summer [four months].

US college heads accept voluntary thrift - Dec-10

The Harvard endowment earned 8.6 per cent during the last fiscal year but has since taken a big hit.

Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard’s president, said in a letter to university deans this month that the endowment lost about 22 per cent of its value between June 30 and the end of October, bringing it from $36.8bn to roughly $28.7bn. . . .

The endowment funds about 35 per cent of Harvard’s annual operating budget. The university is preparing for a 30 per cent reduction in its endowment by the end of the year.

Yale's endowment, second largest in the world, has lost 25% of its value. So much for the nation's 'best and brightest'.

Look for some special earmarks — a privileged bailout — directed Harvard's way by Sen. Chuck Schumer (darling of Wall Street, Bernie Madoff, and other money-grubbing, cretinous vermin).

Likewise, look for revelations about Harvard, Yale, and other universities' ties to everybody's favorite whipping-boy conman — Bernie Madoff, who like Gov. Blagojevich, only made the mistake of being excessively brazen in the practice all the nation's money-grubbers were indulging in.

We Don't Need No Friggin Dynasties

Caroline Kennedy has offered her account of why we she should welcome her as an appointed senator. (But do we really need to speculate about the real reason ^ ?)

• She can raise mountains of money. (The un-stated reason, but she could run as Republican or Dem on this one.)

• Mother, lawyer, author, education advocate. (She lumped these together.)
  

• Family with generations in public service.

Let's start at the end: family with "generations of public service". I can think of another such family. Do I need to name it? But let's just consider this on its merits. How about this: "I haven't been to medical school, but I come from a family with generations of doctors. Mind if I perform open heart surgery on you?"

I'm a father, designer and justice advocate. Want to vote for me?

Author? Let's review:

• A Family Christmas. An anthology of other people's work. I understand that Alan Dershowitz has established the Harvard Standard for originality with his entirely plagiarized "Case for Israel", but, Caroline, you're not at Harvard anymore.

• A Family of Poems. Again with the family and another anthology. Check above.

• The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Jeeez.

• The Right to Privacy. Finally something she might claim to have written, or co-written — a popular-audience casebook.

• In Our Defense. Another casebook, also co-written with Ellen Alderman.

• Profiles In Courage For Our Time. Well, at least book publishing hasn't come to Moby Dick 2.

Okay, you're an author Caroline. Too late to just keep that your little secret.

Money. Money. Money. Sounds vaguely like Mr. Blagojevich. To Mr. B's credit, we was up front about his motives. As for Charlie Rangel and his brand of Democrat (or Republican), they're in the same game. They just stay within the lines better. As for Caroline Kennedy, she's surely better than most, but frankly, we tried to get rid of dynasties in 1776. It's about time we actually finished the job.

Confirmation that Arctic Ice Decline Accelerating

Scientists in the US have confirmed that "warming in the Arctic is accelerating," according to the BBC:

Scientists say they now have unambiguous evidence that the warming in the Arctic is accelerating.

Computer models have long predicted that decreasing sea ice should amplify temperature changes in the northern polar region.

Julienne Stroeve, from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center, told a meeting of the American Geophysical Union that this process was under way.

Arctic ice cover in summer has seen rapid retreat in recent years.

The minimum extents reached in 2007 and 2008 were the smallest recorded in the satellite age.

"The sea ice is entering a new state where the ice cover has become so thin that no matter what happens during the summer in terms of temperature or circulation patterns, you're still going to have very low ice conditions," she told the meeting.

MORE >
As a result, there can no longer be any doubt that polar bears and other species (beluga whales, seals, the arctic fox, etc.) are at grave risk.

Big Investors Get a Dose of Their Own

Bloomberg reports that "The Securities and Exchange Commission hadn’t examined Madoff’s books since he registered the unit with the agency in September 2006."

Meanwhile, some of the investors who were dumb enough to trust the goose have been identified. (We must always remember the American dogma that wealth is a virtue and that the wealthy must be more intelligent; else, how would they get welt

• Director Steven Spielberg
  

• Publishing and real estate tycoon Mortimer Zuckerman
  

• New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon

• GMAC (GM financing arm) Chairman J. Ezra Merkin

• Philadelphia Eagles owner Norman Braman

• French bank BNP Paribas

• Tokyo-based Nomura Holdings Inc.

• Spanish bank Santander, possibly $3 billion in losses
  

• Britain-based bank HSBC, possibly $1 billion in losses
  

• Zurich-based Neue Privat Bank

• Yeshiva University in New York was an investor
  

And hedge funds (which have historically taken only investments from the very rich):

• Fairfield Greenwich Group, possibly $7 billion in losses
  

• Tremont Capital Management of New York

• Maxam Capital Management LLC reports a loss of $280 million

• Sandra Manzke, Maxam's founder and chairman: "I'm wiped out."

Senator Charles Schumer was one of the larger Congressional beneficiaries of Madoff campaign contributions. So too was New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg.

Bush Ducks Thrown Shoes in Baghdad

How to Make Money and Screw People

Forthcoming from Rotting Ideas Press: How to Make Money and Screw People, from the gliterati who brought you The Bonus, The Crash, and The Bailout. Pre-order your copy and get a free t-shirt!

Partial contents to include:

Better Business Advisory Boutique by Dick Fuld. The former chief executive of Lehman Brothers plans a comeback with a small advisory firm to harness his contacts in US companies once the dust settles on Lehman’s bankruptcy.

Fall and Fall Again. Robert Rubin tells how you too can be called on as an advisor to presidents even after conceiving one of the greatest financial disasters in economic history.

Effective Toadying on the Way to the Crash. Timothy Geithner, Neel Kashkari and others offer advice on Wall Street's most time-honored practice: saying yes clearly while having one's nose buried in the boss's ass.

How to Get into Harvard. An essential entry guide to the university key to destroying whole economies (even more than the Chicago School of economics!) Greatly enhance your odds of getting an advisory role in the new and improved Obama Administration.

How to Be a 'Brilliant' Criminal. Henry Kissinger, while not an economist, can provide unique insight into committing monstrous crimes while remaining a darling of universities, news media and governments around the world.

Stay Rich! Rob Others! Bernard Madoff shows the cost-effective way to the tried and true method of American corporate criminality. Commit crimes with tiny penalties while netting yourself billions! This is the finest instance of the law and economics thesis we've seen. Learn how to profit legally through criminal activity with minimal costs to yourself and friends.

And more more more! The best insider info on how to rob from the poor and give to . . . yourself!

The Cult of Money

The rich have conned themselves. Decades of the pseudo-science, the dismal delusion — economics — had the Milton Friedmans, Alan Greenspans, Robert Rubins believing their own lies and the money-grubbing toads of Wall Street likewise believing while inventing further cons to deceive us out of our savings. Billions were made, now billions are lost. Sadly, the principle losers will not be the architects of the con but us. The bailout is just the beginning.

The newest development in Wall Street's Comedy of Errors — Bernard Madoff's ponzi scheme conning people out of some $50 billion. According to the BBC and other news organizations,

Some of the world's wealthiest private and corporate investors are reported to be victims of an alleged $50bn fraud by Wall Street broker Bernard Madoff.

Mr Madoff is alleged to have confessed to a huge Ponzi scheme (pyramid fraud).

Reports say the main owner of the New York Mets baseball team, Fred Wilpon, and former American football team owner Norman Braman are among the victims.

Others facing losses reportedly include French bank BNP Paribas, Japan's Nomura Holdings and Zurich's Neue Privat Bank.

The rich fall prey to their own con.

Again according to the BBC, Madoff has also said, "that he planned to surrender to the authorities but not before he used his last $200m-$300m to pay 'selected employees, family and friends'."

But here is the best part. Madoff ran a pyramid scheme that burned $50 billion. But, "If found guilty, US prosecutors say he could face up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $5 [million]."

So, if were not for the fact that he is now 70 years old, he might very well conclude that robbing $50 billion is cost effective. This pales when compared to the Wall Street conmen who, like John Thane of Merrill Lynch, are still seeking bonuses in the millions.

This is the nature of American justice. Steal a car, serve 5 years. Steal tens of billions, as Wall Street has done, get a bonus.

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab Director Next Secretary of Energy?

What to make of this one? The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

President-elect Barack Obama is expected to nominate Nobel-laureate physicist Steven Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a renowned expert on alternative fuels and climate change, as the nation's energy secretary.

Alternative fuels. Smarts. And . . . weapons research, nuclear weapons.

Blagojevich — Business as Usual

All who pay any attention to the news have now heard about Illinois Governor Rob Blagojevich's trolling for payment in return for appointing so-and-so to Barack Obama's now-vacant Senate seat.

Much shock expressed in Washington, the news media. Yadda yadda yadda.

Come on, let's not act so surprised. American politics is largely about how much a candidate or supporters are willing to pay for office. The only distinguishing feature is legality — and that's a pretty gray area.

On one side we have Ted Stevens, Tom Delay, Rod Blagojevich, William Jefferson, and on and on. The politicians who glaringly, stupidly, cravenly grub for money.

On the other side, we have cases like Michael Bloomberg, who spent almost $69 million of his own money to buy the 2001 New York mayoral election — $92.60 per vote. He is the respectable extreme. Respectable because this is the way "Washington," broadly taken, does business from day to day. Other "respectable" businessmen have taken the same approach — Ross Perot, Steve Forbes, Jon Corzine, Ronald Lauder. (Billionaires are willing to spend a lot to reassure themselves that someone likes them.)

Less extreme but no different in kind are Charles Rangel, with his special rent-stabilized million dollar apartment. New Yrok Governor Paterson is also a member of that club.

Whatever Obama's merits, whatever he has done or will do, he has unambiguously established one new standard — raise raise raise money and dismiss federal funding. Howevermuch Republicans may wave their hands over Obama's "broken promise" to take public funding, we can be sure that they respect his example. And by gum, they'll follow suit. And if they can't, because the people are sick and tired of right-wing idiocy, then Republicans will just turn to the tried and true oldies — PAC money, etc. The Democrats are little better.

The Way the World Ends

Let us count the ways, my droogies. Let us be analytical, or anal-ytical. First,

Animate versus Inanimate
In today's lesson we will not consider rocks, ice cubes or exploding stars. No meteors, comets or novas. No changes in the Earth's orbit, etc. It has to be our fault or somebody else's. Somebody is to blame, dammit! Second,

No Homefield Advantage
In the battle for Planet Earth, there is no homefield advantage. The visitors always have the upper hand. Third,

Smarts versus Dumb Luck
A tough one. Do we want to lose out to a foe which can play 3D chess with eyes closed, or are we okay with plain old fashioned brute force? Bear in mind that a repeat-appearance will be made by Dumb Luck on our side. And,

We Have Met the Enemy, and You Know the Rest
Yeah, we can defeat ourselves. Tens of thousands of years of humans piling on humans tells us this again and again. Fifth,

The End is the End
It's not apocalyptic if their isn't a pretty much all-consuming disaster. We have to be done for. . . . Mostly. Not completely done for, just mostly, pretty much. So, either Washington or New York has to be destroyed.

Reality vs. WTF?!
Some films actually take the end of the world seriously, especially if made during the reign of murderous maniacs like George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan. But this can wear on one, so most take the entertaining road of unreality, antireality, fantasy, delusion, illusion, denial. Finally,

The Suck Veto
I reserve the right to pass over films that just plain suck, as opposed to suck in a fun, late night camp way. Tim Burton's Mars Attacks just plain sucks.

Let us begin.

1. The War of the Worlds
Tom Cruise. No big victories, we just get lucky.
And nobody has a clue. Nice.
Weakened by the rosy ending with a near-perfect
Boston street, but for badly parked cars. (In some
sense understandable, who would bother
attacking Boston?) Cruise might join our classic heroes
noted below.

2. The War of the Worlds
The original. Scientist knowing
it all detracts from doom and gloom.
Screaming dimwit woman sidekick is a downer.

3. Children of Men
Now this is the way to end
things. Nasty, brutish, and drawn out.
And a good post-apocalyptic hero has
a nice cynical realism. (Witness two of
our heroes below.)

4. The Blob
That blob is best of the dumb luck, brute force brigade.
But not good enough to beat Steve McQueen.
Excellent camp factor. (Sorry, the cast of
the remake sucks so massively, I cannot
take it seriously.)

5. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
The original.

6. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Donald Sutherland, Leonard Nimoy,
Jeff Goldblum, Brooke Adams,
Veronica Cartwright. Has that great
70s Stalinist gloom quality.

7. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (aka Invasion)
Uggh.

8. 28 Days Later
Night of the Living Dead, but with
less camp, more stamp.

9. Omega Man
Charlton Heston takes on the end thing
and blows away . . .

10. I am Legend
This could have been so much better.
How did Will Smith get that James Bond
house going, anyway? And just how dumb
can a person be and make it through 3 years
of apocalypse?

11. The Planet of the Apes
The original. One of The Great Three
Charlton Heston apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic
movies. The third being . . .

12. Soylent Green
What a dystopia here. And in each of the
Big Three, Heston has that great
resigned cynicical realist vision. He
just toughs it out.

13. Battlestar Galactica, Revelations
Just that one scene at the end earns this
episode a place on the list. I never thought
the producers would have the guts for a
plot turn like that.

14. Independence Day
Windows spammers can't even write a good virus for the Mac.
How did Jeff Goldblum write code to hack the aliens here?

15. Road Warrior
The rip-roarin-est best of the
post-apocalypse chase.

16. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
Delicious vision of post-apocalyptic tribalism.
And Mel Gibson is the third of the just
tough it out lot, with Heston and Owen
(and maybe Cruise in War of the Worlds)

17. Threads vs. The Day After
Threads is the brutally bleak British answer
to the picnic nuclear apocalypse, The Day After (1983).
Day After is so sunny, you half expect it turn into a
musical midway through.

And forthcoming: The Road
I don't think there's a snowball's chance in hell
that Hollywood can get this one right.

And the awful that shouldn't be mentioned but must be lest we forget:
Battlefield Earth. How did Travolta get work after this?
Waterworld. How did Kevin Costner get work after this? Would have been better as Wayne'sWaterworld.
The Postman. And how did Kevin Costner stay on the roster to strike out again?
Signs. Had some nice touches, like the sense of isolation. But what the hell are the aliens up to? They're just making crop circles? What about leveling something?!

And what have we learned today, my droogies?
If you're going to survive the End of the World, you better have that don't-grin-and-bear-it attitude. Plus, running or racing, be fast. And watch out for people who have got religion.

A Heap of Humans

This courtesy of entomologist and great biodiversity E. O. Wilson:

Take all humans on earth — all 6.5 billion of us — and log-stack us, we humans would fill a cube just 1 mile on a side. One cubic mile of humans on the whole earth. So few humans in many senses, yet each of us, on average, now requires roughly 24 acres of Earth's surface to support our consumption (much more than 24 acres for those of us in the US and much much less for those in the poorest nations).

That entire cube could fit into the Grand Canyon.

This little mass of humanity is annhilating life at a rate greater than any natural disaster in the history of the planet.

No Shame At All, Pt. 2: The Spirit of Christmas

ABC television's version of the spirit of christmas. Broadcast "A Charlie Brown Christmas" with 4 minutes of advertising for every 3 minutes of program. That's the real timing, plus or minus 30 seconds. Thanks for the memories, ABC.

No Shame At All

John Thain, head of Merrill Lynch and graduate of MIT Sloan School of Business, is seeking a bonus of 10 million dollars. Assuming that Thain worked 50 weeks at 50 hours per week (both overestimates, we can be sure), that bonus adds up to $4000 per hour.

Merrill Lynch is merging with Bank of America after being an early headliner in the current economic collapse. But John Thain's miserable excuse for management hasn't taught him humility.

Fortunately, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is opposing the bonus, calling it "shocking".

My suggestion: Imprison Thain and his Wall Street cohorts. With the collusion of Congress, they are bankrupting the United States, robbing us blind. Try them for treason and imprison them.

Good News! Dow Chemical Cuts 5,000 Jobs!

My thesis for some time has been that one key feature of the American financial landscape is that We the People are irrelevant. How we suffer, how little we make, how long we go without work altogether — none of this matters. We the People are The Other. The decision-makers in Congress, on Wall Street, in boardrooms, know that they are exempt, immune to whatever befalls us.

Thus, news like today's from Dow Chemical is common. Dow announced that it is slashing 5,000 jobs — 11% of its labor force. Wall Street loved this news, Dow's stock soared.

Scan the past 20 years of labor news and you will find that, more often than not, Wall Street responds well to news of job cuts. It takes something really drastic, like the news of 533,000 job losses in one month, to dismay investors.

Why? Well, the easiest short-term way to improve the bottom line is to cut jobs. And the bottom line is all that matters. Needless to say, just as corporations are bemoaning the terrible state of things and laying people off, they are still finding ways to compensate executives. AIG, one of the leading recipients of bailout money, promised to cut bonuses — then reintroduced bonuses with a new name . . . a rose by another name.

So it goes. With 'globalization' (of profiteering, not of labor), it is increasingly possible for corporations to profit without employing people domestically. The illogical, irrational extreme of this trend is a nation with an elite class of millionaire and billionaire owners and investors and a vast underclass of people underemployed, unemployed, poor.

533,000 Jobs Gone in One Month

Two million jobs lost so far in 2008.

Biggest job losses in over 30 years.

Some will say that 10% unemployment is the "defining point" of depression.

"Today's employment report begs the question of whether the meltdown we're experiencing should be called a Depression."

— Robert Reich, former secretary of labor, professor at Berkeley

"The threat of a widespread depression is now real and present."

— Peter Morici, professor, University of Maryland

The real unemployment rate is certainly over 10% now. (The real unemployment rate is significantly higher than the official rate, now at 6.7%, because the government cooks the numbers.)

Finally, it begins to sink into the glitterati of Wall Street. The masters of Congress. The pundits, the academics. It's bad. We the People, who have to live with Their Decisions — the decisions of The Immune, The Exempt — already knew this.

We must ask what kind of "science" economics is if so many "economists" predicted the opposite of what we are now seeing, or at least got it drastically wrong. Is economics a science in the way Physics was in, say, 1700? Or is economics just no science at all?

If We the People are ill-equipped to do economics ourselves (though we can now reasonably ask whether we are just as well equipped as the so-called economists), we are perfectly equipped to judge the public assertions of economists. They have, with the exception of a small, progressive or liberal minority, been dead wrong.

So is economics just so poisoned by the self-serving interests of economists that it cannot realize its scientific potential? Or is it simply not a science? (And that raises the question of what makes Physics or Biology a science but not economics.)

Things We Need That We Don't Really Need

Sabretooth Mouse. I put this on the need side. Mouses jess don't have enough protection against cats.

Leaf blowers. Definitely a NO NEED. We have a leaf blower . . . wind. I see the guys blowing leaves into the street. Fifteen minutes later, it's back on the sidewalk. People worry about saving energy. Leaf blowers?

Things with more than 4 legs. Four legs is plenty. Ya got balance. Speed. Stability. What's six legs for? Eight? A thousand? That's crazy talk.

Cars. The world is too fast anyway. Then we give millions of people multi-ton murder machines. No cars.

Dinosaurs. On the need side. We need something that is really scary and big. I don't like scary and small. I can't hide from a spider.

Neanderthal people. On the need side. We need smart alternative hominans, somebody who "thinks different" for real.

Sea monkeys. Why don't we have any pets that really can take care of themselves? Dogs. Cats. Very nice. But they need care, attention.

Bamboo paper clothing. I hate doing laundry. Really hate it. But trees grow slow slow slowly. Bamboo is fast fast fast. Makes great paper. Let's have disposably bamboo paper clothing. Recycle the clothing to make paper.

On-writable desks and tables. My desk is covered with little sticky notes. People write on their desktop, placemat calendar. Let's make the desk on-writable, eraseable.

Britain's DNA Highway

There is a peculiar kind of highwayman in Britain — the run-of-the-mill cop. In Britain, upon arrest, a person is instantly swabbed for a DNA sample. The British practice has been to keep all such samples. Those eventually released, eventually not charged, eventually found not guilty, nevertheless can count on the DNA remaining in the system.

Currently, the UK has some 4.6 million DNA samples on file. That is, more than one in every fifteen Britons has DNA on file. Moreover, 860,000 of those 4.6 million have no criminal record at all.

This in country which is also distinguished for having the most extensive video surveillance system in the world and whose labor government has sought to mandate an national ID card for every citizen.

So bad as the US is on many counts, Britain may well come nearer to being a police state.

Now the European court of human rights has intervened, The court, affirming a fundamental human right of privacy, criticized “the blanket and indiscriminate nature” of the British practice.

If It Walks Like a Duck . . .

Remember AIG? Got over $100 billion in government handouts because it was the "world's biggest insurer" and "too big to fail". Then there was a big stink because execs were having big, expensive shindigs in swank locations.

Then the sky fell. Andrew Cuomo threatened legal action. The AIG mongrels backed off — even said they would forgo their bonuses.

Now it turns out they are getting "cash awards" — up to $3 million per person.

Solution? Tax away all of their income and most of their assets. Try them on charges of treason and put them in prison. After all, the possibility of Dubai Ports World taking over management of an American port was widely called a threat to national security. The vile money-grubbing execs at AIG, Goldman, Citigroup have done far more to damage, even destroy, the United States.

The World In Collision!

This from the BBC:

World 'must tackle space threat'
By Julian Siddle
Science reporter, BBC News

The international community must work together to tackle the threat of asteroids colliding with Earth, a leading UN scientist says.

Professor Richard Crowther's comments come as a group of space experts called for a co-ordinated science-led response to the asteroid threat.

The Association of Space Explorers (ASE) says missions to intercept asteroids will need global approval.

The UN will meet in February to discuss the issue.

In the ASE report, the group of scientists and former astronauts point to the historical record to highlight the dangers of asteroids; an impact 65 million years ago may have wiped out the dinosaurs, and the Tunguska impact in 1908 produced a 2,000 sq km fire in Siberia, big enough to engulf a city the size of New York.

They say the next major threatening event could occur in less than 20 years. Asteroid Apophis is due to pass close to the Earth and analyses suggest a one in 45,000 chance of a collision.

An impact by Apophis would generate the equivalent of a 500 megatonne blast, at least 100 times more powerful than the Siberian event. [The most powerful thermonuclear weapon ever tested by humans had a yield of about 50 megatons. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs probably had a yield of about 15 kilotons. So an impact by Apophis would have a yield about 30,000 times greater than Hiroshima . . . 30,000 Hiroshimas. (HES)]

Republicans Broke Law to 'Guard' Convention

The ACLU of Minnesota, following on the discovery of a document by Wikileaks.org, reveals how the Republican Party used federal forces in efforts to "protect" the 2008 Republican National Convention from such threats as anti-war protesters, free speach advocates, etc.

Revealing RNC document leaked
For Immediate Release
November 21, 2008

The American Civil Liberties Union recently came across a revealing RNC Homeland Security Document. This official document was uncovered by the website Wikileaks, which according to its website "We help you safely get the truth out". This document outlines the planning leading up to the Republican National Convention and how security forces would be working together during the RNC. Many federal, state and local organizations were mentioned in this document, a number of which the ACLU did not know were involved. A number of these agencies are military based, which may directly conflict with Federal law that prohibits the military from engaging in domestic intelligence gathering.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), is one of the organizations that is mentioned in the report that is particular cause for concern. NGA provides mapping tools and imagery intelligence that are obtained from the United State's military spy satellites which are controlled by the National Reconnaissance Office. In other words during the RNC, these top spying tools could have been utilized to gather intelligence on the homes of activists and media workers who were a part of the demonstrations. That information could have then been relayed to local officials.

A second agency that was involved in the planning is the Pentagon's Northern Command, NORTHCOM. Having NORTHCOMM at the table, assisting in the planning is troubling because it could mean that the military was involved in the crowd control strategies and dealing with potential civil unrest. According to a report in Army Times, it said that an active military unit has been deployed by NORTHCOM in the United States. This deployment marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment within U.S. Borders.

Furthermore it appears that the FBI may have been using a station faking technology that would allow them to locate an individual through their cell phone. The ACLU is concerned with how this technology is used and if there was proper judicial oversight. In the USA Patriot ACT, this process for obtaining a track was made easier, and could allow for little to no judicial oversight. This tracking via cell phones could have been used during the RNC without the knowledge of even the phone companies.

"These behaviors are a radical departure from separation of civilian law enforcement and military authority, and could, quite possibly, represent a violation of law," said Teresa Nelson, ACLU of Minnesota. The ACLU-MN will continue to investigate and will use their findings in future lawsuits against law enforcement officials.

Fuuuunny mooooovie