Ignore the post below. It's just idiocy, like usual around here. I am just really out of ideas, due to lack of perspective or anything useful or meaningful to talk about.
But whoever runs (parenthetical remarks) is doing a damn good job, I can tell you that.
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Friday, February 10, 2006
Some Stupid Thoughts
Rarely is addressed the self-consciousness that plagues this blogger. No use of the article "I", nor anymore arrogant pretention, false wisdom and the like.
Knowledge, not what you see and hear, take in and break down and interpret. Instead, what to do with the information and how to do it.
Nothing is certain, though that of itself sounds like a certain thing. Suggesting that, in other words, certainly it's hard to accept uncertainty, certainly when you're certainly uncertain. There's nothing here.
But there's truth somewhere. Our task is to find it, seeking out for justice within and without. But generalities, needless generalizations, are to be abandoned in this space.
The point of ideals, of standards, words in dusty old pages of rotting tomes, our liberty and power ... spinning somewhere unknown. Nice wish to slow down the world.
Don't know anything.
Knowledge, not what you see and hear, take in and break down and interpret. Instead, what to do with the information and how to do it.
Nothing is certain, though that of itself sounds like a certain thing. Suggesting that, in other words, certainly it's hard to accept uncertainty, certainly when you're certainly uncertain. There's nothing here.
But there's truth somewhere. Our task is to find it, seeking out for justice within and without. But generalities, needless generalizations, are to be abandoned in this space.
The point of ideals, of standards, words in dusty old pages of rotting tomes, our liberty and power ... spinning somewhere unknown. Nice wish to slow down the world.
Don't know anything.
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Though the question of how it can be put to action remains, here is another set of Articles of Impeachment drafted against the President and top associates.
So far, the site from which those Articles can be found has amassed nearly 650,000 votes across the country.
Though I do not agree with some of the provisions, overall for the sake of our Constitution and the future of the United States it would be for the better to throw these people out of our government, peacefully and constitutionally.
So far, the site from which those Articles can be found has amassed nearly 650,000 votes across the country.
Though I do not agree with some of the provisions, overall for the sake of our Constitution and the future of the United States it would be for the better to throw these people out of our government, peacefully and constitutionally.
Friday, January 27, 2006
Excuse Me Here One Time
Campaigns are afoot against Wikipedia and file sharing, and have been for some time. The former is a vehicle for democratic knowledge-building; the latter is a people-to-people network.
All of which hints at this: the assault on them is anti-democratic.
The questions, respectively, are about credibility and intellectual property. Starting with the second, file sharing is not theft, nor is it piracy. Record label conglomerates that produce "corporate music" are destroying music, good real music. Not to mention having done their share of fucking over musicians.
To keep it short, the first question goes to Wikipedia. "Credible" means elite knowledge, pre-approved by "expert" opinion. They don't want anybody with the ability to freely register to add to a public encyclopedia.
Keep them alive.
All of which hints at this: the assault on them is anti-democratic.
The questions, respectively, are about credibility and intellectual property. Starting with the second, file sharing is not theft, nor is it piracy. Record label conglomerates that produce "corporate music" are destroying music, good real music. Not to mention having done their share of fucking over musicians.
To keep it short, the first question goes to Wikipedia. "Credible" means elite knowledge, pre-approved by "expert" opinion. They don't want anybody with the ability to freely register to add to a public encyclopedia.
Keep them alive.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Friday, January 13, 2006
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Not some fucking musical expert here, just a consumer with eyes and ears. Picked up the new album by The Strokes, First Impressions of Earth, today. Judging from their debut, the classic Is This It is foolish because they've moved on. Whether that's good or not, another thing maybe.
The first thing I noticed is the impressive album art. "Ask Me Anything"... real strange track. Got nothing to say, again and so on. Enjoying the subliminals. CAN OUR MIND EVOLVE TO BE SOMETHING OTHER THAN AN EXTENSION OF OUR ANIMAL NEEDS? Almost had missed that one.
Function o'th' artwork looks to have the songs as vignettes o'sorts, each own's style. Declares Julian Casablancas, "An entire generation that has nothing to say." Rob Sheffield limitedly praised it, their efforted junior-album with compliments of "ambitious, messy ... forward momentum" to "a killer groove band."
But personally it's the poignant moments of "Killing Lies" and "Evening Sun" that, for whatever reason, take me back somewhere to an unconscious, impossible collective memory, not quite my own, also not quite all of ours. Hard to explain.
The first thing I noticed is the impressive album art. "Ask Me Anything"... real strange track. Got nothing to say, again and so on. Enjoying the subliminals. CAN OUR MIND EVOLVE TO BE SOMETHING OTHER THAN AN EXTENSION OF OUR ANIMAL NEEDS? Almost had missed that one.
Function o'th' artwork looks to have the songs as vignettes o'sorts, each own's style. Declares Julian Casablancas, "An entire generation that has nothing to say." Rob Sheffield limitedly praised it, their efforted junior-album with compliments of "ambitious, messy ... forward momentum" to "a killer groove band."
But personally it's the poignant moments of "Killing Lies" and "Evening Sun" that, for whatever reason, take me back somewhere to an unconscious, impossible collective memory, not quite my own, also not quite all of ours. Hard to explain.
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Walter Reich wrote in the Washington Post about Spielberg's new film, "Munich". Having seen the film last night in a sort of advance screening, I can say it is a heavy work that grapples hard with the 1972 massacre of the 11 Israeli athletes and the retributive killings that follow.
Not a ponderous investigative documentary of any kind, "Munich" is drama to a not-so-provocative caliber. Of course, denying its impact would destroy the complex emotional web that such times exploit. Spielberg appears to have intended to avoid a simplistic portrayal, with a clear delineation between good and evil. But none of it excuses terrorist criminality.
Avner, the protagonist, is assigned by Mossad with four other agents to track down and kill the Arab terrorists and their orchestrators. The agents are nameless, their mission secret. The words of one agent (Ciaran Hinds), onto their first target in Rome, is worth heeding: speaking of the Pharaoh's armies who drown in Sea of Reeds, he says God told the Israelites not to rejoice, for they had smote "a whole multitude of [His] children."
Another agent, their bombmaker (Mathieu Kassovitz), ultimately cannot live in their line of work without his soul, as he tells Avner. The greatest strength of "Munich" is how it demonstrates that taking life, however just, psychologically brutalizes you. Reich, in the Post, rejects Spielberg's "protestations" that his film is only asking questions for the audience. "Munich" is instead "a very strong political statement" because we are made to rethink the logic of how we are fighting terrorism. What Reich felt excluded from Spielberg's film was, of all things, the history of the Zionist movement. Okay, maybe that's too simplified, but Reich does feel that the director seems to suggest that the Israeli state has no history prior to the Holocaust. But I disagree with Reich if he is presuming that Spielberg is historically ignorant.
David Edelstein, in Slate, feels obligated to explain that he does not "consider a movie that assigns motives more complicated than pure evil to constitute an apology." Referring to "commentators" like, perhaps, renowned huckster Jack Cashill (who excoriated Spielberg in a recent column), Edelstein argues that "an expression of uncertainty and disgust is not the same as one of outright denunciation."
It is that ambiguity which bothers me about the picture. The ever-reputable Roger Ebert describes it as "an act of courage and conscience." He traces the parallel Spielberg not too overtly presents to today's geopolitical climate, and the unending cycle of violence that plagues the Holy Land. Borrowing a paraphrased line from Golda Meir, in which Ebert writes that she said "civilizations must sometimes compromise their values," he asks about costs versus benefits. The real question is about the line between vengeance and justice.
Manohla Dargis, in the New York Times, discusses the character of Avner in particular -- whose "humanity, however compromised ... gives 'Munich' the weight of a moral argument," which is to its core a statement that "blood has its costs, even blood shed in righteous defense." So the film "is as much a mediation on ethics as a political thriller," Dargis writes.
Yet again we see the defensive nature in reviewing this film: " ... 'Munich' has already been strafed by op-ed attacks. The accusations might make sense if the filmmaker took us into the terrorists' homes for some moral relativism. But Mr. Spielberg is doing nothing more radical here than advancing the idea that dialogue ends when two enemies, held hostage by dusty history and hot blood, have their hands locked around each other's throats" (some emphases). Don't understand it.
(Below is an excerpted portion of the Post's LiveOnline chat with Mr. Reich, where one of my questions is posted.)
"Munich" has been labeled controversial and provocative, and there is little doubt to the powerful impact the movie delivers, but hasn't its central point, that retributive killing breeds a cycle of violence, been shown to be all too obvious?
Walter Reich: I think the "cycle of violence" formulation is more a formulation than a reality. Terrorists like it because it takes the onus off them--they didn't start the process. But anyone who wants to believe that this formulation is true should be able to prove that if you don't respond then terrorism will stop--that terrorism is caused by the attempt to stop terrorism. This doesn't make sense, either logically or in real life.
Not a ponderous investigative documentary of any kind, "Munich" is drama to a not-so-provocative caliber. Of course, denying its impact would destroy the complex emotional web that such times exploit. Spielberg appears to have intended to avoid a simplistic portrayal, with a clear delineation between good and evil. But none of it excuses terrorist criminality.
Avner, the protagonist, is assigned by Mossad with four other agents to track down and kill the Arab terrorists and their orchestrators. The agents are nameless, their mission secret. The words of one agent (Ciaran Hinds), onto their first target in Rome, is worth heeding: speaking of the Pharaoh's armies who drown in Sea of Reeds, he says God told the Israelites not to rejoice, for they had smote "a whole multitude of [His] children."
Another agent, their bombmaker (Mathieu Kassovitz), ultimately cannot live in their line of work without his soul, as he tells Avner. The greatest strength of "Munich" is how it demonstrates that taking life, however just, psychologically brutalizes you. Reich, in the Post, rejects Spielberg's "protestations" that his film is only asking questions for the audience. "Munich" is instead "a very strong political statement" because we are made to rethink the logic of how we are fighting terrorism. What Reich felt excluded from Spielberg's film was, of all things, the history of the Zionist movement. Okay, maybe that's too simplified, but Reich does feel that the director seems to suggest that the Israeli state has no history prior to the Holocaust. But I disagree with Reich if he is presuming that Spielberg is historically ignorant.
David Edelstein, in Slate, feels obligated to explain that he does not "consider a movie that assigns motives more complicated than pure evil to constitute an apology." Referring to "commentators" like, perhaps, renowned huckster Jack Cashill (who excoriated Spielberg in a recent column), Edelstein argues that "an expression of uncertainty and disgust is not the same as one of outright denunciation."
It is that ambiguity which bothers me about the picture. The ever-reputable Roger Ebert describes it as "an act of courage and conscience." He traces the parallel Spielberg not too overtly presents to today's geopolitical climate, and the unending cycle of violence that plagues the Holy Land. Borrowing a paraphrased line from Golda Meir, in which Ebert writes that she said "civilizations must sometimes compromise their values," he asks about costs versus benefits. The real question is about the line between vengeance and justice.
Manohla Dargis, in the New York Times, discusses the character of Avner in particular -- whose "humanity, however compromised ... gives 'Munich' the weight of a moral argument," which is to its core a statement that "blood has its costs, even blood shed in righteous defense." So the film "is as much a mediation on ethics as a political thriller," Dargis writes.
Yet again we see the defensive nature in reviewing this film: " ... 'Munich' has already been strafed by op-ed attacks. The accusations might make sense if the filmmaker took us into the terrorists' homes for some moral relativism. But Mr. Spielberg is doing nothing more radical here than advancing the idea that dialogue ends when two enemies, held hostage by dusty history and hot blood, have their hands locked around each other's throats" (some emphases). Don't understand it.
(Below is an excerpted portion of the Post's LiveOnline chat with Mr. Reich, where one of my questions is posted.)
"Munich" has been labeled controversial and provocative, and there is little doubt to the powerful impact the movie delivers, but hasn't its central point, that retributive killing breeds a cycle of violence, been shown to be all too obvious?
Walter Reich: I think the "cycle of violence" formulation is more a formulation than a reality. Terrorists like it because it takes the onus off them--they didn't start the process. But anyone who wants to believe that this formulation is true should be able to prove that if you don't respond then terrorism will stop--that terrorism is caused by the attempt to stop terrorism. This doesn't make sense, either logically or in real life.
Friday, December 30, 2005
King Kong is a tremendous work of film. It's why the great Peter Jackson wanted to do what he does. In short, to counter the length of the movie, it's a stellar achievement, a spectacle of light and sound. But enough raving and ranting. I wish America a giant ape to destroy all of the world's monsters, especially those fiendish ptaeradactyls and massive worms. And may that ape-beast scale the highest tower... oh, well that's where he gets a run in with prop planes' machine-gunned bullets.
Good night. Happy New Year, at last.
Good night. Happy New Year, at last.
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Monday, December 05, 2005
The final report by the 9/11 Public Discourse Project (PDP), whose key members headed the September 11 Commission, was released today. It’s a shocking report card on the federal government’s actions — that is, lack of actions — on actual homeland security, in terms of how closely it followed the Commission recommendations.
To summarize, the nominal appointment of a central director of intelligence was just about the only substantial achievement. Five initiatives, encompassing “adequate radio spectrum for” police and firemen, “homeland security” funds allocation, “pre-screening” at airports, and “the overall intelligence budget,” were given failing grades. The only A given, not including potential ones upon passage in Congress, went to our fight against “terrorism financing,” though the report notes that “the State Department and Treasury Department are engaged in unhelpful turf battles, and the overall effort lacks leadership.”
The PDP report caps several months of “recommendations” papers: ‘Homeland Security, Emergency Preparedness and Response’ (Part I), ‘Reforming the Institutions of Government’ (Part II), and ‘Foreign Policy, Public Diplomacy, and Nonproliferation’ (Part III).
Whether what went wrong can be placed with “bureaucratic molasses” (George Will’s term) or the PDP’s “turf battles,” or the sort of ‘pork politics’ that directly underlied the failure to fund state anti-terrorism efforts based on “risk and vulnerability,” is not as important as figuring out why we have failed so dramatically and how to remedy it. All the while, our soldiers continue to be ordered to fight a war that does nothing to help our security, and has in fact greatly undermined it. These failures of our government, in what amounts to a colossal dereliction of duty to protect the American people, constitute impeachable offenses. Or, at the very least, a nation-wide referendum in lieu of a Congressional no-confidence vote.
Objections to this idea would center on the charge of politicizing September 11. This is ridiculous. My very point is that no real substantive actions are being taken at the federal level to protect us at the least, much less prevent another attack, while in the name of the atrocities we have been responsible for a host of new ones, with our troops made into worms for Pentagon fishermen. So who is doing the exploiting? It is too late to clear our name; talk is cheap. The best thing for all of us now is as definite a close to the White House’s war as possible in the fastest possible time. That is not immediate withdrawal, as such an option is out of the question because we’ve already fucked up so much. But I’m sick of this talk about “indefinite” deployment, and “enduring” bases. Our soldiers are sick, they’re dying, they’re maimed and brutalized. They want to come home; they deserve the honor our government has denied them.
Our failure has no one point of blame. But one man does preside over the government, and a lot of the responsibility ultimately rests with him. And if that is politicization, or some unfair cheap shot, then the words “democracy” or “republic” might as well be stripped out of public consciousness, burned and forgotten, for it would have meaning no longer.
To summarize, the nominal appointment of a central director of intelligence was just about the only substantial achievement. Five initiatives, encompassing “adequate radio spectrum for” police and firemen, “homeland security” funds allocation, “pre-screening” at airports, and “the overall intelligence budget,” were given failing grades. The only A given, not including potential ones upon passage in Congress, went to our fight against “terrorism financing,” though the report notes that “the State Department and Treasury Department are engaged in unhelpful turf battles, and the overall effort lacks leadership.”
The PDP report caps several months of “recommendations” papers: ‘Homeland Security, Emergency Preparedness and Response’ (Part I), ‘Reforming the Institutions of Government’ (Part II), and ‘Foreign Policy, Public Diplomacy, and Nonproliferation’ (Part III).
Whether what went wrong can be placed with “bureaucratic molasses” (George Will’s term) or the PDP’s “turf battles,” or the sort of ‘pork politics’ that directly underlied the failure to fund state anti-terrorism efforts based on “risk and vulnerability,” is not as important as figuring out why we have failed so dramatically and how to remedy it. All the while, our soldiers continue to be ordered to fight a war that does nothing to help our security, and has in fact greatly undermined it. These failures of our government, in what amounts to a colossal dereliction of duty to protect the American people, constitute impeachable offenses. Or, at the very least, a nation-wide referendum in lieu of a Congressional no-confidence vote.
Objections to this idea would center on the charge of politicizing September 11. This is ridiculous. My very point is that no real substantive actions are being taken at the federal level to protect us at the least, much less prevent another attack, while in the name of the atrocities we have been responsible for a host of new ones, with our troops made into worms for Pentagon fishermen. So who is doing the exploiting? It is too late to clear our name; talk is cheap. The best thing for all of us now is as definite a close to the White House’s war as possible in the fastest possible time. That is not immediate withdrawal, as such an option is out of the question because we’ve already fucked up so much. But I’m sick of this talk about “indefinite” deployment, and “enduring” bases. Our soldiers are sick, they’re dying, they’re maimed and brutalized. They want to come home; they deserve the honor our government has denied them.
Our failure has no one point of blame. But one man does preside over the government, and a lot of the responsibility ultimately rests with him. And if that is politicization, or some unfair cheap shot, then the words “democracy” or “republic” might as well be stripped out of public consciousness, burned and forgotten, for it would have meaning no longer.
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
After three years in detention, Jose Padilla (a.k.a. Abu Abdullah Al Mujahir) has been charged of his crimes against the United States. This victory for justice and the constitutional system that the government - with our backing - has tried to tear to shreds for these past few years gives me hope that we have finally begun to fight terrorism after all.
A copy of the indictment can be found here.
A copy of the indictment can be found here.