| 270403
21:25
see john pilger's
recent article on how 'the unthinkinable' is 'becoming
normal' : "if, as milan kundera wrote, 'the
struggle of people against power is the struggle
of memory against forgetting', then we must not
forget." ::: zmag.org
260403 11:51
everyone loves a history : publicity
material for STRANGE, OZONE BREAKDOWN, THE SOUND
CLINIC and DATABASS have been added to works,
along with cover scans of all issues of THEE DATA
BASE
::: CLUBS (89-96)
::: THEE
DATA BASE (92-97)
sideline:
madonna decided that she was
going outsmart the mp3 freeloaders and flooded
the likes of kazaa and other file-sharing utilities
with fake mp3s. these files were designed to look
as if they were from her new album, but instead
featured a recording of madge saying "what
the fuck do you think you're doing?". obviously,
she fucked with the wrong people, as shortly thereafter
her official site was hacked - the home page was
replaced with a plain html page linking to free
madonna mp3s, and headed up with the message "this
is what the fuck i think i'm doing". madonna.com
was closed for 15 hours while webmasters wept
into their gaultier cones. full story with screen
grab at thesmokinggun.com
::: hear the 'what the fuck' mp3 at network-error.com/wtf/wtf.mp3
230403 08:20
sad to hear that nina simone
died yesterday, aged 70. the term 'legend' is
banded around too often for it to hold much cache
these days, but a legend she was - an incredible
voice, a beautiful piano player and a truly innovative
composer and arranger. richard harrington notes
in today's washington post :
"Simone was a crucial voice in the civil
rights era, when some of her most striking work
addressed the horrors and injustices attending
blacks in the South, incendiary tracts like "Mississippi
Goddam" (inspired by the 1963 Birmingham
church bombing that killed four black girls),
"Old Jim Crow" and "Backlash Blues"
(based on a poem written for Simone by Langston
Hughes). Like jazz artists Abbey Lincoln, Max
Roach and Charles Mingus, Simone used her populist
platform to shine a bright light into ugly corners
of American society."
::: ninasimone.com
::: washington
post.com
210403 13:26
mtv have rejected adbusters latest tv
turnoff week ad camapign. the ad itself
is not particularly challenging, however the yoof
station said "as a network that makes its
money on commercials, that kind of goes against
MTV in general". now adbusters are calling
for a jam mtv action ::: adbusters.org
a quick search on google was all it took for intrepid
web bods to find cnn's private
stash of premature obituaries - pre-prepared pages
just ready and waiting for people to die. they
offending articles have since been removed from
cnn's servers, however the smoking gun was good
enough to archive them for us. see how cnn will
report the deaths of cheney, reagan, bob hope,
the pope and other rhyming couplets ::: thesmokinggun.com
apparently the iraqi elite torture unit liked
nothing better than to hum along to george
michael while they worked ::: arabtimesonline.com
michael moore on how the
supposed 'oscar backlash' is doing him nothing
but favour after favour ::: alternet.org
210403 11:12
i've added three new pieces to the articles
section in works: CROYDON, FUCKING
CROYDON speaks largely for itself; WHAT ARE YOU
LOOKING AT? is the start of a possible project
subtitled zero-g versus the art world
and NOTHING IMPORTANT HAPPENED HERE TODAY is the
story of what occurred when zero-g interviewed
gillian anderson (insights into
gilly's personal life not guaranteed) ::: works
170403
08:10
the war on iraq - as far as i can see
- was carried out to provide (a) some public 'payback'
for 9-11, even though the target was wrong, and
(b) a great investment opportunity for the good
ol' u.s. of a.
going in without the u.n. has of course allowed
bush to do whatever the hell he likes both in
terms of installing an interim government and
awarding contracts for the re-building of the
country. those contracts will be paid for from
the pockets of the coalition, under the banner
of 'international aid', and will ultimately come
directly from the taxpayer - i.e. us.
so where does the money go to? yesterday's sydney
morning herald (from an article that
originally appeared in the guardian) spells it
out:
the biggest contract - for fighting oil-well fires
- worth $AUS 12billion, goes to kellogg, brown
& root, a division of halliburton, the company
once run by vice-president dick cheney. ray hunt,
a director of halliburton, is
on the president's intelligence advisory board.
lawrence eagleburger, secretary of state in the
first bush presidency, is also a halliburton director.
kenneth oscar, the vice-president of fluor,
one of the six bidders for another $AUS 4 billion
worth of contracts, is a former army secretary
and oversaw the pentagon's $60 billion procurement
budget. its board also includes bobby inman, a
former CIA deputy director.
bechtel employed the former defence
secretary caspar weinberger, and the former secretary
of state george shultz is on the board. jack sheehan,
a senior vice-president with bechtel, is on the
defence policy board, a pentagon advisory group,
one of many apparent conflicts among its 30-strong
membership.
::: smh
article, see also the
guardian "jobs for the boys: the reconstruction
billions"
plus yahoo
story on the looting of iraqi libraries.
120403 15:14
this weekend's planned series of demonstrations
'against the war' have obviously lost some of
their urgency following this week's events. whilst
the situation has by no means stabilised, the
concept of the iraqi 'war' has now altered and
with it the means to perpetuate a clear polarity
of opinion. any 'call to arms' now needs to be
more subtle than some basic 'stop the war' rhetoric.
let us not forget that western leaders flew in
the face of popular opinion and invaded a country
based on a 'potential' threat - a pre-emptive
act of agression that defies all international
laws. the justification used was weak and mis-directed
('weapons
of mass destruction'? 'links to al-qaeda'?),
yet the images flashed across our tv screens over
the last few days would seem to suggest that the
'liberation of the iraqi people' was always no.1
on the agenda. bush and blair surely can't believe
their luck.
and let us not allow a so-called 'victory' to
blind us to the fact that the west (especially
the u.s.) supported saddam's regime during the
1980s - the era of some of his worst atrocities.
1982: iraq begins using chemical weapons against
iranian troops. u.s. removes iraq from its terrorist
list making saddam's goverment "eligible
for U.S. dual-use and military technology"
(source: casi.org.uk)
1983: reagan approves the sale of helicopters
to iraq which are later used in the 1988 chemical
attack on halabja.
1984: the cia gives information to iraqi intelligence
to help them "calibrate" poison gas
attacks against iranian troops (source: washington
post). the poison gas is later confirmed as mustard
gas.
1985: the u.s. begins exporting 'biological cultures'
to iraq that were "precursors
to bioweapons: anthrax, botulism, etc" -
70 such shipments told place over the next four
years (source: senate banking committe, 1994).
1987: amnesty international estimates that over
100,000 kurds are killed or disappear during 1987-1988,
in an iraqi operation known as the anfal campaigns
(source: the
iraq foundation, human
rights watch)
1988: reagan approves the export of scud missile
components and, in the same year, votes against
a u.n. resolution condemning saddam's use of biological
weapons (source: ithaca
college). that year, the regime uses chemical
weapons against the kurdish town of halabja, killing
over 5,000 civilians.
1989: the cia reports that iraq is now the largest
prodcuer of chemical weapons in the world. bush
snr responds by giving saddam a $1billion loan
guarantee
(source: ithaca
college).
1990: the bush administration approves $4.8 million
in "advanced technology sales" to iraq's
weapons ministry.
more detail can be found in 1989
human rights watch report and in this article
by nathaniel
hurd.
120403 10:12
i caught howard zin on the radio
yesterday (on the excellent sydney station 2ser).
hadn't previously heard of him, but felt a certain
synchronicity as the presenter name-checked him
as a contemporary of mr chomsky. the broadcast
gave me the clearest picture thus far of u.s.
foreign policy over the last 100+ years. zin made
a clear point when asked about the concept of
'weapons of mass destruction'. he referred to
the u.n.'s sanctions on iraq (imposed in 1990)
which - according to a 1999 unicef report - had
contributed to the deaths of some 500,000 iraqi
children under the age of five. what are these
sanctions, asks zin, is they are not weapons of
mass destruction? alternativeradio.org
sell packages of zin's broadcasts along with others
from the likes of jonh pilger and, of course,
chomsky himself.
a
campaign is under way to have bush, blair and
howard brought before the international
criminal court to explain their part
in the 'illegal' invasion of iraq ::: syndey.indymedia.org.
avril lavigne stockpiles weapons of mass
destruction! or at least the profits
from today's pop monkeys seem to be going directly
towards building the bombs of tomorrow ::: justablip.co.uk
"avoid slippery floors" : advice
to iraqi women is a new theatre text
by martin crimp that was performed this week at
the royal court. full transcript online at guardian.co.uk
"contrary to earlier utopian theories of
the internet, it takes very little effort for
governments to cause certain information simply
to vanish for a huge number of people." (seth
finkelsetein, censorship
researcher).
and there's no better way to control popular thought
online than to tinker with google's
search results. thus "googlewash"is
born - whereby a radical concept is given an uber-conservative
makeover and pushed to the top of the google search
list ::: theregister.co.uk
050403
i remember many years ago that i stopped
buying french products when france was carrying
out their nuclear tests in the pacific. not that
i ate regularly at delifrance or bought a great
deal of boursin, but the idea of taking a practical,
individual action against a mighty nation remained
quite appealing. i'm sure evian never even blinked.
however, adbusters are promoting a campaign to
do much the same thing in these troubled times
- boycott brand america. over
36,000 committed individuals have already signed
the pledge - hurry on over there and have a look
for yourself. if you haven't already binned starbucks,
then now's probably a good time ::: adbusters.org
/ and fuck 'freedom
fries'!!
from arundhati roy in wednesday's guardian
/ "Bush's tactless imprudence and his brazen
belief that he can run the world with his riot
squad, has done the opposite. He has achieved
what writers, activists and scholars have striven
to achieve for decades. He has exposed the ducts.
He has placed on full public view the working
parts, the nuts and bolts of the apocalyptic apparatus
of the American empire."
from the same article / "According to a New
York Times/CBS News survey, 42 per cent of the
American public believes that Saddam Hussein is
directly responsible for the September 11 attacks
on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. And
an ABC news poll says that 55 per cent of Americans
believe that Saddam Hussein directly supports
al-Qaida. What percentage of America's armed forces
believe these fabrications is anybody's guess.
It is unlikely that British and American troops
fighting in Iraq are aware that their governments
supported Saddam Hussein both politically and
financially through his worst excesses. "
::: guardian.co.uk
+ get the facts @ war-times.org
saul williams, coldcut
+ dj spooky are the latest in
the long line of musicians who are distributing
free anti-war mp3s ::: notinournamemusic.com
the centre for economic and social rights
has released a document which shows that bush's
pre-emptive strike on iraq is "unequivocally
illegal". download their 'tearing up the
rules' pdf for more info ::: cesr.org/iraq
::: quoting from the summary:
"war against Iraq cannot be justified under
any reasonable interpretation of international
law. U.S. and U.K. arguments in support of attacking
Iraq are based, in essence, on the unilateral
right of powerful states to preempt even the possibility
of future threats from other states, no matter
how speculative or remote. This position is manifestly
illegal, and constitute an act of aggression within
the legal definition of a crime against peace."
this originates from a different source / "To
initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not
only an international crime; it is the supreme
international crime differing only from other
war crimes in that it contains within itself the
accumulated evil of the whole." / the source
being the 1946 nuremberg trial
which "rejected German arguments of the necessity
for preemptive attacks against its neighbors and
instead outlawed preventive war as a crime against
the peace". trying the so-called "coalition
of the willing" as war criminals is unlikely
to ever happen, and certainly not through the
u.n. ::: news.yahoo.com
020403
following on from the political
art blog entry recently, see also the
chapman brothers new "piece"
which aims to show "the inadequacy of art
as a protest against war" ::: guardian.co.uk
had the good fortune to re-watch noam
chomsky's manufacturing consent
at the weekend. currently reading his new book
power and terror - the film is
also doing the rounds. it makes for unsettling
reading in so many respects - both depressing
and infuriating, it serves to show the role the
U.S. has played in civil rights atrocities across
the world. it also clearly shows, in no uncertain
terms, how unjust + immoral the war in iraq truly
is ::: chomsky
resources
war times' Q&A sets out the
facts clearly, answering questions such as 'is
it just about oil?' and 'would a president really
lie?' ::: war-times.org
++ article on america's return to mccarthyism
::: guardian.co.uk
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