Interesting interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (former Dutch MP and now a resident scholar at the neocon American Enterprise Institute) from The Spectator. I'm really conflicted aabout her, but nonetheless it is definitely enlightening to hear her insight considering she is coming from a very informed point of view.

‘Yes, I am at war with Islam,’ she says, as she gets up to leave, ‘but I am not at war with Muslims.’ It’s a crucial difference.

Sudan police throw teacher in jail for teddy bear named Muhammad



Oh my God. I don't think the Qu'ran is tripping off teddy bears and if it is, too bad. There are people dying in Sudan and we are wasting our time on teddy bears called Muhammad? Ugh, when will the world just tell these nitpicky people to fuck off?

I'll be the first.....

Fuck off with this crap.

Don't get it twisted. I don't give a crap about this fat English lady teacher. She can go to hell. I just don't want us to keep bowing to the illogic of all this crap. The worldwide response to this kinda stuff should be a big fat NO and a laugh in the face. Believe what you want but do not expect us to happily go along with it because we are trying to have a functioning sensible world, OK?

Hope you slept well....



If you give average Iraqis electricity right now it will be enough. This is the most important thing. Give them power for seven days in a row and there will be no fights.

After the US came and Saddam fell they earned 3 dollars a month. Now they earn between 100 and 700 dollars a month.

Giving them electricity would reduce violence. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself what would happen to this Army base if the power was cut off forever and the soldiers had to spend the rest of their lives in Iraq. Do think think these soldiers would still behave normally?

Iraqis are paid to set up IEDs. They do it so they can buy gas for their generator and cool off their house or leave the country. Their hands do this, not their minds.

From a very gnarly insider account of things, found here.

I'd like to do something, but I'm also afraid and paralyzed by it. What to do?

73 bodies recovered at end of mosque siege

· Al-Qaida deputy threatens Pakistani president
· Total death toll put at 106, including nine soldiers

Bush, Blair (now Brown) and those others clowns of the willing can keep on taking these jokers on the jokers' own terms if they wanna, but I, for one, have had enough. I'm more than ready to start mocking and taunting them. Can we send them videos where we are saying things like:"Dude. Seriously. Chill. We're trying to clean up a couple of dead bodies here. Can you either click off the video camera and give us a hand or just, like, y'know, get outta here?

I would like Seth Rogen to star in these videos and be exasperated and sweaty with arms and clothes covered in soot and blood and be frantically rolling a blunt for posterity.

From Kaiser Foundation Daily HIV/ AIDS Report

Former Surgeon General Carmona Says Bush Administration Blocked Him From Speaking About Certain Issues
[Jul 11, 2007]

Former Surgeon General Richard Carmona on Tuesday in a hearing with the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said the Bush administration routinely blocked him from speaking about or issuing reports on certain issues -- including human embryonic stem cell research, abstinence-only sex education, emergency contraception and other sensitive public health topics -- while he was serving in the position, the Washington Post reports. Carmona, a former professor of surgery and public health at the University of Arizona, was nominated by President Bush to serve as surgeon general from 2002 to 2006.

"Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is often ignored, marginalized or simply buried," Carmona said, adding, "The problem with this approach is that in public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds" (Lee, Washington Post, 7/11).

( the rest )

Two really compelling media matters this week.

First off, Mika Brzenzski standing up to report real news instead of pop fluff on Scarborough Country (see video).



Second, journalist, Ken Silverstein, who went undercover to cover unethical foreign lobbyists and is now being attacked by his peers for HIS "lack of ethics"and "subterfuge" .(Thanks, pdanielson)


Chuck Lewis, a former "60 Minutes" producer and founder of the Center for Public Integrity, once told me: "The values of the news media are the same as those of the elite, and they badly want to be viewed by the elites as acceptable."
*
I'm willing to debate the merits of my piece, but the carping from the Washington press corps is hard to stomach. This is the group that attended the White House correspondents dinner and clapped for a rapping Karl Rove. As a class, they honor politeness over honesty and believe that being "balanced" means giving the same weight to a lie as you give to the truth.

I'll take Nellie Bly any day.


What would be the best way to show my support to these journalists and the few others who have actual journalistic integrity? Is there a fund or should I just send in a letter of support? This behaviour must be encouraged.

"The creative personality does not seek to shock or entertain the rich, but to destroy them."

I am reading Ian Bone's book Bash The Rich: True Life Confessions of an Anarchist in the UK. It was part of the magnificent pile of books Christina gave me on Monday and though it is a little overstuffed with confusing Britishisms I am enjoying it. Ian Bone was once named "the most dangerous man in Britain", good times.


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Last night I went to the Madsteez opening. It was just OK. To be honest I was weirded out to be in a room full of people my age group and not run into anyone I knew or even recognized. Slightly unnerved, I left and met up with Sarah who it turns out wanted to check out the show. So I walked her back over there and we each grabbed a cup of Coke Zero, peoplewatched, art-oggled, and talked. The experience was much more pleasant than the first time, which goes to show that things are always better when you're with a friend.

Tonight I am going to Thor/miraclejackson's launch party for his new graphic novel.

Oh, and apologize for not getting in anything cultural last week. I've got some things doing on Friday and Saturday so I'll make up for it a bit. I'm glad I set the weekly quota (two cultural events a week) even though it is a pain to go out and do stuff in the cold.

Lots I wanna talk about but busy catching up on a bunch of other things. So here's somewhat briefness.

Gonna buy tix to Slovenia this week. Very excited!

Had a great going-away dinner with Christina (who's moving to Bristol, England today) last night at the amazing Roy's for the restaurant week prix-fixe. Neither of us had spent that much money on food in one sitting in quite a long time but it was all really good. Christina gave me a bunch of great books like Contingency Hegemony Universality (the Judith Butler/Zizek/Laclau collection of essays) and some Spivak and some other incredibly great stuff. I gave her a copy of The Body by Hanif Kureishi and the new GBQ CD. We tried to get our heads around the basics of autonomist Marxism and whether either of us should approach these things from the academy or some other location.



A few weeks back Christina loaned me her copy of Re/Search's Angry Women (1991) which is a collection of interviews with badass feminists like Diamanda Galas, bell hooks, Wanda Coleman, Susie Bright, and Kathy Acker. I only just properly picked up the book yesterday and read it on the way to/during/after jury duty yesterday. The first interview was with Diamanda Galas who is just so fierce and angry and knows how to HARNESS her anger and fire it off like bullets. She carries a gun, she cuts men. She is interested in sodomizing them. Just brazen tough lunatic genius. At jury duty, the case they were trying to get me on was of a man who'd resisted arrest when some cops tried to arrest him as he was leaving the premises of some projects where he did not live. Apparently the projects have a curfew after which point non-residents are not allowed to come and go. I really should've told them at the start that I hate all police but it was cold outside so I sat around for a while and waited my turn to tell them that I hold the firm believe that calling police is a waste of time at which point they hustled to get me out of there. I don't understand how a person can be tried by a jury of their peers of they can just bounce you out like that. Almost everyone on the starting panel was a poor person of color, I'm sure if it got down to it we'd have let the dude go. I mean how dare they pull this crap so soon after that Shawn Bell shooting? On my way down the elevator a bunch of people were complaining about being cited by the cops recently for no reason.

The rest of the day I felt angry and conflicted as to whether I should have said what I said to get kicked off jury duty. Thought I felt sorta like emboldened by reading all those interviews, I wondered what I could do to work on something, address the system. Affect more change. This year, I want to work on more ways to do mayhem, exact vengeance, display anger, create theory and artwork all as a cohesive body of political behaviour.

In other news, I'm beginning to question democracy again. I don't think it is the logical political system to bring about a just society. I have a LOT more reading to do, but that thought is floating around.

Hey Everybody!

Remember the Republican's Contract With America? I was just listening to good old Al Franken and he brought it up. I'd forgotten all about it and I bet you did too!

Here it is again for your amusement and perusal....

Contract with America (1994)

As Republican Members of the House of Representatives and as citizens seeking to join that body we propose not just to change its policies, but even more important, to restore the bonds of trust between the people and their elected representatives.

That is why, in this era of official evasion and posturing, we offer instead a detailed agenda for national renewal, a written commitment with no fine print.

This year's election offers the chance, after four decades of one-party control, to bring to the House a new majority that will transform the way Congress works. That historic change would be the end of government that is too big, too intrusive, and too easy with the public's money. It can be the beginning of a Congress that respects the values and shares the faith of the American family.

Like Lincoln, our first Republican president, we intend to act "with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right." To restore accountability to Congress. To end its cycle of scandal and disgrace. To make us all proud again of the way free people govern themselves.

( and a blah, blah, blah )

California might be getting Universal Health Care soon!
I'm not saying I'm going anywhere, but this makes a difference. A HUGE difference.