3 hours before last night's TestingTesting Gideon called to say that he had to return to Portland to be with his wife who was ill. His wife is doing better but we will have to wait until next summer to webcast Gideon. Meanwhile, we are sitting on a live CD we recorded Friday at our show with him at the Bayview Cash Store. (We didn't webcast that one.) Robbie Cribbs did the sound and did an incredible job of recording it to DAT. Gideon has been wanting to release a live CD and, after listening to a little bit of it after the show, thinks this might be it. Robbie mastered it this weekend and I'm listening to it know. Whoo boy! I'm sure Gideon will be pleased.

Gideon builds layers of sound with his electric cello and is very funny too. Robbie ususally only listens to a CD he records a couple of times. He listened to this one 4 or 5 times yesterday afternoon. Great stuff! I hope Gideon releases it.

Now back to our previously scheduled show "Republicans Run Amuck!"

Torture by Proxy

To the French, Kenneth Starr is known as the "Ayatollah sexuelle," but after his recent comments in The Washington Post suggesting that we should cast aside traditional civil liberties in the fight against terrorism, just plain "Ayatollah" seems more fitting.

According to Starr, five justices of the U.S. Supreme Court have signaled that they would give "heightened deference to the judgments of the political branches with respect to matters of national security," and thus, would be willing to bend the constitutional rules in a case involving terrorism.

[read more]

thanks to SmirkingChimp.com

America's hyperreal war on terrorism

The best way to understand "America's new war" is as a convenient legitimizing rubric to extend American economic and military power abroad, and to complete the repressive domestic agenda already set in motion during the post-cold war years in the guise of the "war on drugs."

In both instances, corporate globalization's increasingly intolerant attitude toward dissent of any kind is implicated. This is not so much a war against "terrorism," but a pre-emptive strike against domestic and international opposition to the hegemony of transnational capital in the early years of the twenty-first century.

In this most hyperreal of wars, nothing is as it seems. The most unprecedented repression of dissent and diversity of opinion at home is and will be accompanied by hollow echoes of borrowed liberal endorsement of multiculturalism and identity politics.

In other words, the harassment of Arab-Americans, Muslim-Americans, and dissenters in general, including intellectuals, journalists, artists, and activists, will reach new levels of reach aided by intrusive surveillance and monitoring tools.

[read more]

thanks to Ethel the Blog

America's ups and downs

A conundrum of the Sept. 11 attack has been the honest incredulity of many Americans as to why so many people around the world hate their country.

Explanations for this bewilderment abound -- from poor foreign-affairs coverage in U.S. media to the willful amnesia of Americans about the sometimes brutal realpolitik of U.S. foreign policy.

Rarely mentioned, however, is the possibility that the United States is a highly nationalistic country with a blindness to its own shortcomings that is a frequent characteristic of the nationalist mindset.

[read more]

thanks to Unknown News

Are there two wars?

Pentagon version:

Copter Rescue Goes 'Without a Hitch'

Times of India version:

95 US troops killed in Afghanistan: Taliban

both thanks to Unknown News

And...

4 US soldiers killed as Taliban down chopper