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Sound Check I'm down at Bayview Hall, with my computer, setting up for tonight's show. Robby, the sound guy, is still setting up but I've got a feed from his sound board set up and the phone connection for the RealAudio stream seems to be working jes' fine. I always feel better when that happens. Heard a little of the music during the sound check and it sounded good. The show is partly multi-media, partly recorded, partly live. There may be some visuals missing (this is being webcast audio only) but it should still be plenty entertaining. It starts at 8pm (Pacific), 9:00pm (Mountain), 10:00pm (Central), 11:00pm (Eastern). Click on over to Nursing Revolution. Now to go home and get something to eat. I'll be going home to a house without a computer. How empty it will seem.
It's showtime! I will be streaming (RealAudio) a show from Bayview Hall tonight. This isn't related to my TestingTesting efforts — it's an actual paying gig. A local performer, Loren Churchill, is having a CD release party and one man improvisational show. I haven't heard the CD but I do know some of the local musicians used and it should be worth hearing. The link to the RealAudio stream will be at Nursing Revolution. The show is at 8pm (pacific). Click on in. There won't be the TT guest book but you can email Loren you thoughts. He will read them after the show. I have to do some final tasks for the show and then move my computer down to Bayview Hall this afternoon. See you later.
XXX Fossil find reveals world's oldest penises thanks to Spitting Image
Drum roll please... I have done some updating to my blogroll. Check them out: BertramOnline, Davezilla, enthusiasm, Politics in the Zeros, Spitting Image, Talking Points Memo , and Travellers Diagram.
American Empire I like to group related links by subject. But, while subject labels can let us see how the linked articles relate to a common meme, it may also blind us from seeing a different meme. I have been labeling links related to the war on terrorism as The War Against Some Terrorists. I have been labeling links to articles on domestic issues with different labels. I have then fallen into the trap of seeing these different sets of articles as not related. In the past, I would have labelled the following articles with at least two different labels. I now see that things happening internally and externally to the US are, in fact, are being driven by the same forces — the forces working towards the American Empire. ----------
The Last Emperor There he stood, this unlikely emperor of the world, telling the UN's 190 nations how it is going to be. The assembled nations may not be quite the toothless Roman senate of imperial times, but at the UN the hyperpower and its commander-in-chief are in control as never before: how could it be otherwise when the US army is the UN's only enforcer? This is, President Bush said, "a difficult and defining moment" for the UN, a challenge that will show whether it has become "irrelevant". He pointed his silver-tongued gun with some delicacy and a certain noblesse oblige, but there was no doubt he was holding it to the UN's head: pass a resolution or be bypassed. [read more] ---------- The Anniversary of a Neo-Imperial Moment When excerpts of the document first appeared in the New York Times in the spring of 1992, it created quite a stir. Sen. Joe Biden, now chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was particularly outraged, calling it a prescription for "literally a Pax Americana," an American empire. The details contained in the draft of the Defense Planning Guidance(DPG) were indeed startling. The document argued that the core assumption guiding U.S. foreign policy in the 21st century should be the need to establish permanent U.S. dominance over virtually all of Eurasia. It envisioned a world in which U.S. military intervention would become "a constant fixture" of the geo-political landscape. "While the U.S. cannot become the world's 'policeman' by assuming responsibility for righting every wrong, we will retain the preeminent responsibility for addressing selectively those wrongs which threaten not only our interests, but those of our allies or friends," wrote the authors, Paul Wolfowitz and I. Lewis Libby –- who at the time were two relatively obscure political appointees in the Pentagon's policy office. [read more] ----------
The Mantra That Means This Time It's Serious How small he looked in the high-backed chair. You had to sit in the auditorium of the UN General Assembly yesterday to realize that George Bush Jr– threatening war in what was built as a house of peace – could appear such a little man. But then again Julius Caesar was a little man and so was Napoleon Bonaparte. So were other more modern, less mentionable world leaders. Come to think of it so was General Douglas MacArthur, who had his own axis of evil, which took him all the way to the Yalu river. But yesterday, two-thirds of the way through his virtual declaration of war, there came a little, dangerous, telltale code, which suggested that President Bush really does intend to send his tanks across the Tigris river. "The United States has no quarrel with the Iraqi people,'' he said. In the press gallery, nobody stirred. Below us, not a diplomat shifted in his seat. The speech had already rambled on for 20 minutes but the speechwriters must have known what this meant when they cobbled it together. Before President Reagan bombed Libya in 1985, he announced that America "had no quarrel with the Libyan people.'' Before he bombed Iraq in 1991, Bush the Father told the world that the United States "had no quarrel with the Iraqi people''. Last year Bush the Son, about the strike at the Taliban and al-Qa'ida, told us he "had no quarrel with the people of Afghanistan". And now that frightening mantra was repeated. There was no quarrel, Mr Bush said – absolutely none – with the Iraqi people. So it's flak jackets on. [read more] ----------
Things We Lost in the Fire "Liberty is the most precious gift we offer our citizens." Could Tom Ridge have said anything scarier or more telling as he accepted the post of homeland security czar? Trying to strike the bell of liberty, he sounds its death knell, depicting government not as the agent of the people's will, but as an imperious power with the authority to give us our democratic freedoms. Which means, of course, that it can also take them away. [read more] ----------
I Hear America Sinking Behind the memorial candles and commercial remembrances lies one of the most astute marketing campaigns in American political history. This week, as the nation marks the first anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, the Bush administration will twist voters' outpouring of raw emotion and patriotic fervor into a launching pad for the inevitable invasion of Iraq. [read more] ----------
 The last link has the above picture. It is a picture that Leni Riefenstahl could have taken. It captures the same elements that Riefenstahl used — the glorious leader up front, arm outstretched in salute, the flag of the Homeland prominently displayed, and the adoring, cheering citizens. The manipulated outpouring of emotion on the recently designated Patriot Day is right out of Triumph of the Will. Goebbels would have been proud.
Maybe it's not all work.
 Zoe and I met Steve, Margie, and Jim at her boat at 10:30. Steve is a TestingTesting House Band member. We call him Mando Man — he does all the fancy mandolin work on the show. Margie and Jim are his parents visiting from Absecom, NJ. I thought we were only going out in the boat for a short time. Really. We ended up going down to Port Ludlow, gassed up, and had lunch. With 5 people and a full tank of gas the motor didn't have enough power to get the boat back up on a plane so we motored back to Lagoon Point at a leisurely pace. Didn't get home until 5. It was hell out there. Smooth water and the temperature was in the high 70s. The picture is as we were just leaving Lagoon Point in the morning. Thats Margie. There are a bunch of people all lined up on the beach above her head. They're fishing. Now it's back to work. Really. Well...maybe I'll take a nap first. Later... It was a nice nap. Zoe has her pictures posted at Ofoto (some registration required). I only had the one picture — my batteries died. She had a link to an event that Margie and Jim told us about — the exploding whale. It has a Dave Barry article and the accopmpanying video. What were they thinking?
work,work, work, work, work, work, work I've been busy finishing up some projects.
Shadowfax Jewelry
Nursing Revolution
TestingTesting I will try to get a some linking in, but it promises to be another busy day.
Interesting Times These are the most interesting times that I have lived in. I was born in 1944 — I've seen some interesting times. I would really prefer not to live in interesting times but I don't seem to have much of a choice. This blog has been my way of dealing with these interesting times. I don't watch TV — not since May of 2001 when I moved into this house on Honeymoon Lake. (There is no TV reception here and I would rather pay for DSL than cable TV. I am also one of those terrible zombie TV viewers. My family laughs about it but it's true. When I am in a room with a TV on I immediately turn to it like a deer caught in headlights — then I start drooling. Not watching TV is self-preservation.) So, although I did watch the appointment of the pResident on cable TV (leaving permanent mental scars), I pretty much have missed everything else on TV since May of 2001. I did watch the endless tape loops a year ago on 9-11 at Zoe's, but that has been about it. That has helped immensely with my mental health. The linking to political and world events, in this blog, increased dramatically a year ago as I turned to the web papers, journals, and blogs for information and explanations. Doc, Dave, Craig, Mark, and Steve led me to other blogs and sources until my head was ready to explode. Taking all that I was reading, synthesizing it, and putting it down in this blog has kept me saner than I might otherwise be. I don't read Doc and Dave much anymore but I always check in on Craig, Mark, and Steve, along with many others. As a writer (or at least as an organizer of information that I feel no well educated person should be without), creating something for others to read, I am always surprised when I find out that someone else actually reads what I put together — I mean, at least I know I can count on my sister and her anarchist son (Thanks Madelane and Cameron!) to check in. It was with surprise, and some sense of validation, when Craig and Mark added me to their blogroll. (I just checked, I'm still there.) Wow!, someone actually reads what I put together and comes back for more. And they don't have to! Cool! And then, when I started to check Daypop, Google and other blogs I started to find gordon.coale listed in other blogrolls. Wow! I didn't know there were so many discerning bloggers out there! And then, a couple of days ago, I found enthusiasm. I was in his blogroll. He had a couple of items I liked and posted them here. Then, Tuesday, he posted: "Also, I've had visits from at least two of my very favorite bloggers, riley dog and gordon coale, both of which have linked back here, which pleases me even more." Now I'm a favorite blogger! When is this insanity going to end? The pressure! Actually, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone that comes by here. It's an honor to read a blog I admire and find that they were able to use something I've found. The linking of all these little blog/soap boxes provides so much more information and insight than we had during Vietnam. It gives me hope. I’m proud to be a teensy voice amongst a myriad of other teensy voices. So, thanks again for your time. I hope that what you find here will continue to inform and amaze, along with the occasional smile. These are interesting times.
 thanks to Liberal Arts Mafia
A picture and an observation from this blog a year ago.
War Against Some Terrorists "There's more combat experience on the 7th floor of the State Department than in the entire Office of the Secretary of Defense," quipped the high-ranking State Department official to a room filled with senior military officers last month. The statement "generated riotous applause," according to an eyewitness quoted in the Nelson Report, a private newsletter subscribed to by foreign-policy heavyweights and embassies in Washington. [read more] ----------
Bush is Intent on Painting Allies and Enemies in the Middle East as Evil Just as Americans are recovering from the harrowing television re-runs of the 11 September attacks, their President is going to launch the biggest reshaping of the Middle East since the British and French parceled out the Arab lands after the 1914-18 war. When he addresses the United Nations on Thursday, George Bush will be threatening not only Iraq – which had absolutely nothing to do with the crimes against humanity in New York and Washington – but Syria, Iran and, by extension, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. [read more] ----------
Cheney's Warped Perspective on the Need to Attack Iraq Contrary to the myth propagated by Cheney, there were no "smoking gun" revelations made by Hussein Kamal regarding hidden Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Throughout his interview with UNSCOM, a UN special commission, Hussein Kamal reiterated his main point--that nothing was left. "All chemical weapons were destroyed," he said. "I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons--biological, chemical, missile, nuclear--were destroyed. There is not a single missile left ... they [Iraq] had kept blueprints and molds for production, but all the missiles were destroyed." [read more] ---------- Iraq War Hawks Have Plans to Reshape Entire Mideast As the Bush administration debates going to war against Iraq, its most hawkish members are pushing a sweeping vision for the Middle East that sees the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq as merely a first step in the region's transformation. [read more] ----------
The End of Empire The imperial ambitions of the Bush Administration, post-9/11, are founded on quicksand and are eventually sure to founder, but for fundamental reasons not currently under discussion. Bush's open-ended claims for US power--including the unilateral right to invade and occupy "failed states" to execute "regime change"--offend international law and are prerogatives associated only with empire. But Bush's greater vulnerability is about money. You can't sustain an empire from a debtor's weakening position--sooner or later the creditors pull the plug. That humiliating lesson was learned by Great Britain early in the last century, and the United States faces a similar reckoning ahead. [read more] ---------- All of this reminds me of little poem I read in high school. Ozymandias
I met a traveler from an antique land
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Experiencing Schizophrenia
The Sights and Sounds of Schizophrenia The textbook description of schizophrenia is a listing of symptoms: delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech and behavior. But what does schizophrenia really feel like? NPR's Joanne Silberner reports on a virtual reality experience that simulates common symptoms of the mental illness.(...) Dr. Sam Keith, medical advisor on the virtual reality project, is a veteran psychiatrist who’s heard thousands of patients describe schizophrenic episodes. Still, after trying the simulation, Keith said, “When it’s real, it’s different -- it’s very frightening, it’s very scary." Streibig said that’s precisely the effect he hoped to achieve: After years of the illness being misdiagnosed, mismanaged and stigmatized, he says, “People should understand what it’s like to go through this." Even though schizophrenia patient Frey consulted on the project, he found the simulation too disturbing to sit all the way through. When Silberner tells him she was terrified by the experience, Frey responds, “Yeah, you ought to be… Imagine not being able to take off the goggles, the helmet." [read more] thanks to follow me here...
Plant Art A couple of plant artist sites thanks to enthusiasm.
 CrashBonsai is the creation of John Rooney, an artist who is torn between the desire to create and destroy. Recently, he has been making bonsai plants, and combining them with model cars and trucks which he has creatively smashed and melted, to create "CrashBonsai," little living car crash sculptures. [read more] ----------
 [read more] There are some serious plant artists out there.
Religion isn't nice. It kills This is about confronting religion at a time when it threatens global Armageddon. It is there in the born-again Christian fundamentalism demanded of every US politician, turning them all into "crusaders". It drives on the murderous Islamic jihadists. It makes mad the biblical land-grabbing Israeli settlers. It threatens nuclear nemesis between the Hindus and Muslims along the India-Pakistan border. It still hurls pipebombs on the Ulster streets. The Falun Gong are killed for it, extremist Sikhs die for it too. The Pope kills millions through his reckless spreading of Aids. When absolute God-given righteousness beckons, blood flows and women are in chains. Ah, apologists say, religion is only used as a battle flag for other causes - tribalism, nationalism or ancient racial hatreds. Islam is only used (or abused) as the underdogs' banner for all those oppressed by the west. That may be so, but religious certainty is what gives other grievances their murdering edge. True, Stalin and Hitler's secular dogmas mimicked religious fervour horribly, but that only adds to the warning against any absolutist belief. [read more] thanks to follow me here...
9-11
Remembering Sept. 12 Who on Sept. 12 would have imagined that one year later a vital Homeland Security bill would be bottled up in Congress -- stalled by partisan bickering? That the most talked about initiative of our new Homeland Security czar would be his laughably lame color- coded terror warnings? That our airports would still be as porous as the S.S. Minnow, with security screeners routinely failing to detect guns, knives and simulated explosives smuggled onboard by undercover investigators? That a grand total of one person would have been charged in connection with 9/11? Or that business leaders would be marking the anniversary of the attacks by lobbying the White House to back off on heightened security procedures at ports and border checkpoints implemented in the wake of 9/11 because of their negative effect on corporate America's bottom line? "Any more is going to kill us," bleated a vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last week -- a turn of phrase I doubt he would have used last Sept. 12, when the bodies were still being pulled from the smoldering rubble. [read more] ---------- How has my life changed since September 11? My life goes on much the same--except that I'm not living in America anymore. In America, people are not disappeared. In America, cherished constitutional rights are not abolished with the stroke of a pen. In America, disagreeing with the government doesn't make you a terrorist. In America, ordinary citizens don't have to wonder whether their e-mail is being read and phone conversations taped by government agents. In America, there is no Ministry of Truth (for telling lies) or Ministry of Love (for making war). America doesn't wage unending war. America doesn't casually threaten first-strike use of nuclear weapons. I see the nation I love, in its fear and rage, stinging itself to death like a scorpion. [read more] thanks to the bitter shackzilla of resentment
Photography
The Parnassus Album
 Most of these lost family pictures were uncovered at fairs and barns and antiques malls across the Midwest, mostly in southeastern Michigan near where I lived at the time. As this quirky little collection grew, it began to typify the lost albums from which it evolved. These pictures might have been kept by a single family, over four or five decades, in one American town -- in my mind, a town called Parnassus. As I assembled the Parnassus album, I began making up stories. Living with them, studying their images, nearly a hundred lost people came alive to me. To their photos I added bits of this fiction, and, if I knew them, used their real names. This site contains portions of that collection. [read more] thanks to consumptive.org ----------
HOWARD R. DUNHAM, 1912-1980
 During the summer of 1932, Howard Dunham toured the United States with fellow members of the Milwaukee State Teachers College singing group. The group left from Milwaukee on June 18, stopping in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Idaho, before arriving at their northernmost stop in Bellingham, Washington on June 30. From there, the group traveled south through Oregon and California, then journeyed northeast through Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois. They arrived home on July 21. Along their route, the group sang at various state teacher colleges. [read more] thanks to plep
Labor This autumn is the centenary of the "great strike" of 1902, the five-month shutdown of the anthracite coalfields which threatened to paralyse the country. Theodore Roosevelt's biographer, Edmund Morris, described it as "the greatest labour stoppage in history". A visiting British economist, Alexander Lowen, predicted that if the strike were not settled, it would cause "such social consequences as the world has never seen". There is a two-day conference being organised by some museums in Pennsylvania next month. Apart from that, no one seems to have noticed. [read more] ---------- http://www.behindthelabel.org/ ----------
The Bay View Tragedy at Rolling Mills May 5, 1886 Consider the conditions that workers endured over 100 years ago, such as the 16- hour days. That was about the age of free enterprise. You hear much about the age of free enterprise and that we mustn't interfere with workings of the free enterprise system. When they're talking about the free market, they're talking about the market where people are helpless before those who run the corporations and those who make the decisions. And that's why people worked 16 hours a day and why people worked for virtually nothing, because that was the free market. There was no interference...the government did not interfere. You didn't have wage-hour laws, you didn't have Social Security, you didn't have unemployment compensation, workers compensation, you didn't have the Wagner Act. you didn't have anything like that. You had the wonderful operation of the free market which enabled corporations to do whatever they wanted, to work these people with nobody interfering. Those conditions produced the movement for the eight- hour day. [read more] ---------- Sweatshop Watch is a coalition of labor, community, civil rights, immigrant rights, women's, religious & student organizations, and individuals committed to eliminating sweatshop conditions in the global garment industry. We believe that workers should be earning a living wage in a safe and decent working environment, and that those who benefit the most from the exploitation of sweatshop workers must be held accountable. [read more]
Wombs in the service of the state Israel has decided to tackle its "demographic problem" head-on. Last week, after a five-year hiatus, Shlomo Benizri, the minister of labor and social affairs, convened the Israel Council for Demography. There were two items on the agenda, reports said - the need to encourage families to have more children, and the problem of foreign workers in Israel. On the face of it, this is just another committee. But the reconvening of this particular body, and the total indifference with which the event was greeted, is cause for serious concern. In the present public mood in which outbursts of racism are considered politically correct, Benizri's move - as a representative of the increasingly nationalist ultra-Orthodox Shas party - is no surprise. Nevertheless, one can only express astonishment at the people who have agreed to sit on a committee that evokes appalling historical connotations. (...) The Arabs in Israel will be neither a "problem" nor a "demographic demon" if the attitude toward them is fair and egalitarian. This is a country in which the streets are plastered with posters calling for a population transfer and no one bothers to remove them or to indict those who put them up. (It is not difficult therefore to guess what would happen if posters were put up calling for the expulsion of the Jews). A commission on demography is just another bad omen. [read more] ---------- Ethnic Cleansing by Starvation A US-financed assessment of the overall malnutrition level among Palestinian children, released this month by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), found that one in five Palestinian children under the age of five now suffers from chronic or acute malnutrition. This astonishing statistic is on par with impoverished nations such as Chad and Nigeria, and actually surpasses rates of child malnutrition in Somalia and Bangladesh. Such figures, the report noted, are "considered an emergency by most humanitarians and public health officials." The report points to Israeli- imposed closures and sieges of major civilian centers as the direct and primary cause. [read more]
War Against Some Terrorists
Drain the swamp and there will be no more mosquitoes It is also the merest sanity, if we hope to reduce the likelihood of future atrocities. It may be comforting to pretend that our enemies "hate our freedoms," as President Bush stated, but it is hardly wise to ignore the real world, which conveys different lessons. The president is not the first to ask: "Why do they hate us?" In a staff discussion 44 years ago, President Eisenhower described "the campaign of hatred against us [in the Arab world], not by the governments but by the people". His National Security Council outlined the basic reasons: the US supports corrupt and oppressive governments and is "opposing political or economic progress" because of its interest in controlling the oil resources of the region. Post-September 11 surveys in the Arab world reveal that the same reasons hold today, compounded with resentment over specific policies. Strikingly, that is even true of privileged, western-oriented sectors in the region. [read more] ----------
In war, some facts less factual When George H. W. Bush ordered American forces to the Persian Gulf – to reverse Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait – part of the administration case was that an Iraqi juggernaut was also threatening to roll into Saudi Arabia. Citing top-secret satellite images, Pentagon officials estimated in mid–September that up to 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks stood on the border, threatening the key US oil supplier. But when the St. Petersburg Times in Florida acquired two commercial Soviet satellite images of the same area, taken at the same time, no Iraqi troops were visible near the Saudi border – just empty desert. "It was a pretty serious fib," says Jean Heller, the Times journalist who broke the story. [read more] thanks to Red Rock Eater Digest ----------
The Anti-war Speech That Earned Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. In the Middle Ages when the feudal lords who inhabited the castles whose towers may still be seen along the Rhine concluded to enlarge their domains, to increase their power, their prestige and their wealth they declared war upon one another. But they themselves did not go to war any more than the modern feudal lords, the barons of Wall Street go to war. The feudal barons of the Middle Ages, the economic predecessors of the capitalists of our day, declared all wars. And their miserable serfs fought all the battles. The poor, ignorant serfs had been taught to revere their masters; to believe that when their masters declared war upon one another, it was their patriotic duty to fall upon one another and to cut one another's throats for the profit and glory of the lords and barons who held them in contempt. And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose--especially their lives. They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people. [read more]
Food
sack. armed with just a couple of plastic bags and some rock salt i will transform this fruit juice into a refreshing sorbet in just minutes. its the perfect snack after a busy day of play, work or adventuring! thanks to Thumbmonkey ---------- More delicious recipes from monkey
War Against Some Drugs The Brutal War on Medical Marijuana The war on drugs is making a comeback -- with a vengeance. Six days short of the Sept.11 anniversary, D.E.A. agents put federal tax dollars to work by raiding the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana (better known as WAMM), a Santa Cruz County, Calif.-based cooperative and one of the most successful medicinal marijuana programs in the nation. At 7 a.m., Sept. 5, a dozen camouflage-clad agents showed up at the Davenport home of Valerie and Michael Corral, who founded WAMM a decade ago. Pointing their weapons, the agents told wheelchair-bound WAMM member Suzanne Pfeil to stand up. "I can't stand up. I told them I was sorry," said Pfeil, who suffers from post-polio syndrome. DEA agents then arrested a pajama-clad Valerie Corral, along with her husband Michael. [read more] ---------- Pot smokers from U.S. seek asylum in Canada Four decades ago, a wave of American draft dodgers fled to Canada rather than fight in Vietnam. Some turned to planting marijuana seeds to make a living and spurred an underground industry that is booming across British Columbia. Over the past year or so, a new generation of Americans has flocked into western Canada, fleeing the Bush administration's crackdown on the clubs that say they provide marijuana to sick people, particularly in California. A few who face drug charges and convictions in the United States have applied for political asylum. Hundreds more live underground existences in British Columbia, local advocates say. [read more]
Books
Intolerance: The Bestseller Nicolae Carpathia, the man who turned the United Nations into a one-world government with himself as dictator, has just decided on genocide. In his palace in New Babylon, capital of the world, Carpathia -- alias the Antichrist -- barks instructions to his top aide. "I will sanction, condone, support, and reward the death of any Jew anywhere in the world," he says. "Imprison them. Torture them. Humiliate them. Shame them. Blaspheme their god. Plunder everything they own. Nothing is more important." The aide rushes to obey, not knowing that he's fulfilling one more divine prophecy about the final days of history before the Second Coming. But as readers of this scene in The Remnant, the Rev. Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins' latest novel, soon learn, many Jews will survive the new Holocaust by becoming born-again Christians. As a rabbi-turned-pastor explains later in the book, Jews need to make up for the "national sin" of rejecting Jesus. Their choice in the last days therefore comes down to an old one: convert or die. Such classic religious intolerance might matter less if The Remnant hadn't levitated to the top of The New York Times bestseller list immediately after publication in July (with an initial print run reported at 2.75 million copies), or if the previous nine installments of LaHaye and Jenkins' Left Behind series of thrillers hadn't already sold 33 million copies since they first appeared in 1995. Literary quality doesn't explain Left Behind's popularity; the writing makes Robert Ludlum look like William Shakespeare. Rather, the books sell because they base fiction on fundamentalist theology, and they've succeeded in spreading that theology far beyond its original audience. Nor is contempt for Judaism the books' only disturbing message. They promote conspiracy theories; they demonize proponents of arms control, ecumenicalism, abortion rights and everyone else disliked by the Christian right; and they justify assassination as a political tool. Their anti-Jewishness is exceeded by their anti- Catholicism. Most basically, they reject the very idea of open, democratic debate. In the world of Left Behind, there exists a single truth, based on a purportedly literal reading of Scripture; anyone who disagrees with that truth is deceived or evil. [read more] thanks to wood zilla lot
Music Re-Release of Gould's Two Goldberg Recordings Mark the Pianist's 70th Birthday Year Johann Sebastian Bach wrote what became known as the "Goldberg Variations" at the request of the Russian ambassador to the court of Dresden in 1741. According to biographer Johann Nicolaus Forkel, the ambassador suffered insomnia from an illness and asked Bach to write something that would be "of a quiet and at the same time cheerful character, that would brighten him up a little on his sleepless nights." The ambassador had his keyboardist, Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, play it again and again. Today, we can hear the Goldberg Variations played again and again by the eccentric genius Glenn Gould, whose career was bracketed by the piece. Marking the 70th birthday year of the late Canadian pianist, Sony Classical and Legacy Recordings have re-released Gould's two vastly different depictions of what Bach called "Aria with Different Variations." The three-CD set, "A State of Wonder," also includes an insightful interview by critic Tim Page — Gould's last before his death on Oct. 4, 1982, at age 50. [read more]
Fire!
Fight Fire With Logging?
 [read more]
Better Living Through Clear Speaking
The Complete Bushisms "There's no doubt in my mind that we should allow the world worst leaders to hold America hostage, to threaten our peace, to threaten our friends and allies with the world's worst weapons."— South Bend, Ind., Sept. 5, 2002 [read more]
War Against Some Terrorists White House: Bush misstated report on Iraq Seeking to build a case Saturday that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction, President Bush cited a satellite photograph and a report by the U.N. atomic energy agency as evidence of Iraq’s impending rearmament. But in response to a report by NBC News, a senior administration official acknowledged Saturday night that the U.N. report drew no such conclusion, and a spokesman for the U.N. agency said the photograph had been misinterpreted. [read more] thanks to MetaFilter "Misstated" is a polite way of saying he lied. ----------
US pours arms into Gulf region ---------- Albert Interviews Chomsky On Iraq thanks to DANGEROUSMETA! ---------- Uncertainties abound in pinpointing the real enemy A year after the 9/11 attacks on the United States, we know remarkably little about the attackers, or about who really organized the complex operation that seems well beyond the capabilities of amateur terrorists. Among the major questions: [read more] thanks to SmirkingChimp.com
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