HACK THE BURMESE JUNTA'S WEBSITE

To all hacktivists out there: please deface and run a dos on the State Peace and Development Council website.
WWW.MYANMAR.COM

Images from Burma

From Ko Hitke's blog
The monks and the people are still marching, despite the government's repression.

Update: A summary of the day's events from the Australian.

Arrests, tear gas and beatings in Yangon

According to witnesses, the police used tear gas and arrested 80 monks this afternoon in Yangon.

Update: BBC story.

Update II: The Irrawady has the latest, straight from Rangoon. And a great diary at the DailyKos.

[Picture by Aung Hla Tun, 09/26/07, Reuters]

The barefoot art of war

Beautiful article from Der Spiegel, via Salon.com

And from The Age
Burma sends soldiers to monastries

The picture is from this morning at the Shwedagon Pagoda, released by Burmese democracy activists.

And so it starts

After another round of gigantic demonstrations today, the hated SLORC has imposed a curfew, declared Yangon and Mandalay off-limits and deployed troops in the main cities.

Here's the story (Reuters India): Myanmar government imposes dusk to dawn curfew

Today Bush took a strong stance against the Burmese Generals at the UN. The hypocrisy of the Bush administration is boundless: based on their logic and their bullshit "freedom agenda," they should have sent an expeditionary force to Myanmar a long time ago. They obviously didn't. Because of their catastrophic Middle Eastern adventures, they have lost all the moral authority they could brought to bear on the Myanmar government's patrons (China mostly). So now we're left with principled declarations that are as lofty as they're toothless. Bush, the guy who authorized torture, renditions and surveillance over Americans (all crimes under American law), is now giving lessons on democracy and human rights to the Burmese military autocrats. The thugs that make up the State Peace and Development Council, who've been at it for much longer (it being torture, surveillance and oppression), are shaking in their jackboots. They also know Bush will do like them eventually, and like every other retiring dictator, and have himself amnestied.

A friend noticed that Burma was renamed Myanmar by the SLORC back in 1989. I have no position on the best and most appropriate nomenclature. In the actual Burmese language, the difference between Burma/Barma/Bama/Myanmar is barely audible. The SLORC did it as a public relations/propaganda stunt directed at the West. It was corporate rebranding of the worst kind. A little like cancer peddlers Philip Morris magically turning into altruistic, elevated and very latin high-brow Altria... The wire services use Myanmar, while the BBC has stuck with Burma. So I don't know what to do. And I know that in a political struggle of that sort, semantics are fundamental. So I'll think about it.

I can't help but find some irony and poetic justice in the fact that George Orwell started his career in Burma.

Respect

"You can build a throne with bayonets, but you can't sit on it too long."
Boris Yeltsin (of all people!)

For a few hours, fear and helplessness seem to have changed sides. But the situation is getting extremely tense. The SLORC must respond to the challenge, and quickly, or falter. However, these few days of protest are an unbearable chink in the junta's armor. The fiction that they and their goons enjoy any kind of support or authority is gone. They do not own fear any more. They are left with only violence.

Most likely, this will end in bloodshed.







Free Myanmar!

the latest news (from the BBC) : Burmese monks defy army warning

In support the people of Myanmar

Free Daw Aung San Suu Kyi
Free Myanmar


[Associated Press]

Urban wine

Beautiful story in today's Washington Post, about an exiled Iraqi Jew in New York, Mr. Latif Jiji, who makes his own wine from grapes growing all around his townhouse. It makes me want to do that, someday (and the weather in Los Angeles would be close to perfect).

Bordello

Amazing show tonight at Bordello on 1st Street. First, the amazingly funky Casxio - beautiful songs, beautiful band, superb riffs and deep, deep bass. David Byrne meets Daft Punk. And then, the incredibly charismatic Sam Sparro - the reincarnation of Iggy Pop as a funky beast. More later.

Young Marble Giants

They're so awesome. So minimal. And she's so completely charismatic. Respect.

Perseids

We went to Malibu to watch the Perseids last night. We planned a nice and refreshing picnic with sushi rolls, goat cheese, saucisson, red wine, melon. It was a wonderful evening on surfriders' beach. Didn't see many shooting stars though - but those we saw were spectacular.

LA earthquake

There was a little earthquake tonight - a 4.5 apparently - nothing to write home about. But we felt it around 1 am. We were in the kitchen, finishing up our glasses of Ridge ATP Sullivan Zinfandel 2005. Things kind of shook for a brief moment. No tremors, just a bang! and it was gone. Probably a plate releasing some energy - it turned out the quake centered around Northridge (lots of pent-up seismic energy there...). So it wasn't as big as the last earthquake I experienced, some time ago in Baños, down in Ecuador.

The 'thriller' Filipino jail exercise

I don't know whether this is creepy or hilarious or both? And who the hell is filming this? A guard? The warden? The detail that kills is the cheap blue plastic hair clip in the "girlfriend's" hair...

the tour de france

Incredible piece by the best of all sports writers in France today - in Libération. The one and only Jean-Louis Le Touzet (I reproduce the article in extenso, just for my own sake - Libé won't sue me, I've been buying it since I was 14, and even in the US...)

C’est chose entendue que le cyclisme ne se comprend qu’à la lumière de la triche et du dopage et que le Tour, poinçonné par les scandales, se présente comme un vieux ticket de métro. Pourtant, les règles du jeu n’ont pas été modifiées : la duplicité et sa couronne de lauriers sont toujours les grands vainqueurs. Le Tour de France est fait pour donner des héros comme le pommier donne des pommes. Mais c’est un arbre qui donne des coureurs génétiquement modifiés depuis Indurain et l’apparition de l’EPO, cette molécule qui a transformé le sport en spectacle, car ce qui est excellent pour le vélo l’est tout autant pour le rugby ou le football.

Suiveur. La presse sportive n’est au fond pas si éloignée de la presse du cœur. Le lecteur toqué de sport est comme la femme de ménage qui a passé sa journée à frotter les cuivres : elle a besoin qu’on lui raconte des histoires d’amour adultérines sous le mail, à l’ombre des grands ormes. Le suiveur est comme Anatole France : il ne croit plus au ciel mais supporte mal qu’on touche à la liturgie de juillet. La France de juillet est une France en sandales romaines. Ainsi le pied respire mieux. Le Tour, qui s’observe à travers le vitrail d’une église romane, nous démontre chaque jour le délicieux Jean-Paul Olivier, notre Chateaubriand du cyclisme. C’est parce qu’il aime l’inouï dans le grandiose que le suiveur vagabonde à travers le pays avec sa machine à écrire. Le mensonge est moins intéressant que le démontage du mensonge.

Vinokourov s’est-il dopé avec le sang de Léon Tolstoï ? A l’UCI de nous le dire. Le suiveur lui-même a cherché la vérité pendant douze ans. Il a mis une fausse barbe pour enquêter, mais il a été vite démasqué avec sa cape de Fantômas, ses collants noirs et sa cagoule en feutre. Sous la chaleur de juillet, il a plus d’une fois failli perdre connaissance. Le Tour l’a plusieurs fois ranimé, ramené à la vie, et l’a supplié de ne plus recommencer à faire l’enfant. Le petit suiveur a écrit 13 200 fois le nom de Lance Armstrong, 8 797 fois le mot dopage, 243 fois le mot félicité et 54 fois Rasmussen. Il est bien avancé, car le Tour prône maintenant «la révolution».

Myrtilles. Mais que fait l’homme de juillet ? Il s’assied à l’ombre, dans un virage, et mange des chips. Dans une assiette en plastique. Il est sous l’influence du vin rosé et du fromage de tête. Il a le mollet nu. Il est heureux. Que fait la presse ? Elle vient lui parler de coureurs qui trichent à l’heure où il engouffre une tarte aux myrtilles. L’homme de juillet veut regarder les coureurs sur l’asphalte brûlant. Le suiveur restera toujours ce serviteur invisible du Tour, celui qui met la table, la débarrasse et ainsi de suite jusqu’à l’étape suivante. Mais tenter de corriger les dérives du Tour, c’est comme tenter de corriger une faute de grammaire sans en faire trois soi-même dans la même phrase. La machine à fabriquer du rêve fait une fumée bleue et le suiveur au fond de la salle de presse tousse affreusement. Le Tour nous dit que la probité est la base de tout ordre établi. Le Tour prend les Français pour des imbéciles. Le grand parti cycliste est éclaboussé par les scandales. Va-t-il passer ? Ça serait un crève-cœur pour le suiveur qui adore son Tour et ses gros mensonges.

L’empire du Tour ne survivra que s’il réduit le réel à de nouvelles lois, nous disent Messieurs Clerc et Prudhomme, les nouveaux marxistes-léninistes du Tour. Pour autant, on remet toujours le prix Jacques-Goddet au plus lyrique des suiveurs. Mais c’est le prix Feydeau qu’il faudrait remettre. Pour le moment, le Tour essaie de concilier le ciel et l’enfer. Le cyclisme est le dernier sport religieux, et c’est pour cela qu’on lui pardonne toutes ses offenses. Le Tour, cette nature copieuse qui récidive sans cesse et qui pourtant jamais ne lasse.

Joost test drive

Today I received an email invite to download JOOST. The name sounds weird, it has a kind of Amsterdam feel to it. It's one of those silly, meaningless words like SKYPE, for instance. It also comes straight from the same crew that built Kazaa (another silly name) and yes, Skype. Apparently the ghost in the machine is the same - an incredibly complex peer-to-peer, load-balancing, bandwidth-throttling core application developed by Janus Friis and Niklas Zenstromm. It's a very good idea, and just like Skype, if done right it has the potential to profoundly rearrange your daily routine.
The app itself is not even beta. It's like, alpha. The version I downloaded (for MacOSX) was 0.1.xx or something. So it basically quits if you jerk it around too much. I run it on a mac mini with a core duo @ 1.6 GHz and 1 Gb of RAM. Basically, a middle-of-the road set-up.

So what of Joost? It runs ok. Image quality is fine, but TV-resolution, so a little blurry at times. I understand they also serve HDTV programming, but I haven't really tried it because accessing channels is a fairly involved process. There are so many of them, and most of them are useless. I understand that as they reach public release, they will sign on big, major content providers. For now, the prospect of watching Paramount's Clockstoppers in low-res - as we say in French, bof.

This capture shows the basic interface - sort of mac-ified. It looks good, the branding's great.

The content is organized by channels - nothing really special here. But you pick a show to watch, so it's like a big video-on-demand site. It's like the big magical jukebox in the heavens (except that it is not: it's more like the big tuner that only picks up the shitty off-brand knock-off satellite - I mean, no offense but Porto Rican soccer? do they seriously expect a serious soccer fan be interested in that?). I think they are still in demo mode. I'm sure once they're up and running for real, they'll offer to charge us $30 for one evening of Premier League...

The channel navigation is easy and intuitive. There ain't much to navigate though. Big media conglomerates have signed on though - Viacom in particular, hence all the international versions of MTV are available. Yayyyy. And Comedy Central (sans Daily Show, so what is it good for?). It is showing promise though.

I started to watch an old Starsky and Hutch episode. It was sort of bumpy (but I'm on a building-wide wireless connection, so that's to be expected). I also checked out a random CNN documentary on Norway.

There's no CNN live feed. No live feed for that matter - it's more like a big TiVo - except that it's not stuff you chose to record. In the end. that' the main problem. Sure there's all this (legal) content I can stream onto my computer and it looks like TV and... and... well, not much. To me this is kind of a deal breaker. Great idea, but frankly, if I'm gonna watch TV on my computer, I'd rather use my little Miglia HDTV USB connector. With the appropriate software, I can actually use it like a TiVo.

In a way it feels that Joost comes too late. You can't really watch it casually (like TV) - at least not yet. But then again, if you'd like to do that, why not use a USB tv tuner? it's pretty cheap, and will save you a lot of hassles. Now if you want to use Joost as a VOD type of site, they'll really need to beef up their offering before it's of any interest. But I wonder, how will Joost be any different from a trip to the video store, when you don't know what you want to rent? And contrary to the video store, if you get bored you can just click it away and go back to youTube. On top of that, if I want to watch a Pixar movie in HD on my computer, I think I'll buy it from iTunes, of even better, I'll get it from Blockbuster's and rip it (and no, I will not us a Torrent client with a TOR proxy).

I think that Joost misses the mark not so much technologically but philosophically. TV is both immediate and awful. You don't watch most of the stuff on TV. There is a reason for that. But at the same time, TV is a unique medium for its immediacy. Live TV is geared to captivate you - it's not the same as watching a movie or a show. It's something unique. If you can't have that on Joost, then frankly it is of little use, precisely because the rest of the stuff, that is, shows, documentaries, films, etc etc. is mostly uninteresting. It's like the difference between a live soccer match and a recorded one when you know the result. Not as exciting.

Individual consumers are increasingly becoming their own media micro-niches. And the internet empowers them to build their own from the ground up. The days of aimlessly scanning the channel lineup for something , anything are basically over... That is, content producers and advertisers cannot dictate what you will watch as easily. They have lost some of their grip on our eyeballs and minds.

Joost claims it can deliver the lost eyeballs to the big conglomerates. They will let you IM other people who are watching the same thing all over the world. I can see the bull session with the code monkeys and the marketing dorks. TV. Social networking. Yoohoo.

Joost is a great app. It is just too late. Nobody likes TV anymore. TV is so last century. The only time people watch TV is for the FIFA world cup (or other live sporting events), the elections and 9/11. Otherwise, people watch shows, discrete units of content across a range of instruments. And you can't take Joost on your video iPod. So what's the point?

Technorati Tags:Joost

Great moments in Kazakhstani sports history

Finally, another idiot has replaced Borat as the most famous Kazakhstani in the world: Alexander Vinokourov, who left the Tour de France in disgrace today. It must be noted that the guy was still pedaling like crazy through the Alps and the Pyrénées, after crushing both knees in a fall seven days ago or so. A little like that American dude who managed to finish the race with a broken clavicle, and thanked Bayer for his otherworldly performance... rriiiiighhht.


Borat Vinokourov

Technorati Tags:Borat, Vinokourov, Tour de France, cycling

LA County Coroner

One can search the unclaimed persons database at the LA County Coroner website. The search will return pictures - it seems like a good idea, but at the same time it is extremely disturbing.

Technorati Tags:death

The effulgence of the North

Last night I went to the grand unveiling of the Velaslavasay Panorama. The invitation came to me by way of the Museum of Jurassic Technology, which is the inspiration behind Sara Velas' wonderful project.

Subject: THE EFFULGENCE OF THE NORTH
Grand Unveiling & Alpine Spectacular
July 21st, 2007, 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.

An Evening of Alpine Spectacle and a 360-degrees Arctic Panorama.

At The Velaslavasay Panorama
1122 West 24th Street
Los Angeles, California 90007

At Hoover & 24th Streets, Three Blocks North of Adams Boulevard.

Tickets: $12 general admission
$10 Panorama members and students

Available at the door or online .

It is with great excitement and only a little trepidation that the Velaslavasay Panorama announces the Grand Unveiling of The Effulgence of the North, an Arctic panorama taking the visitor to frozen heights to bear witness to the mysterious phenomena of the Aurora Borealis.

This evening of Alpine Spectacle will feature the yodeling talents of Tony Hartenstein and the melodic alpenhorn tones of Loren Marsteller. Professor Erkki Huhtamo will present an illustrated lecture on the most successful moving panorama of all time -- Albert Smith's Ascent of Mont Blanc, which was performed at London's Egyptian Hall no less than two thousand times throughout the 1850s. Outside in the Gardens will be an Alpine Photo Studio, Bavarian refreshments, and Janie Geiser's work of live projections entitled Stolen Archives of the Vanished Ice-World.

From July 27th and thereafter, Effulgence of the North will be on view weekly -- Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 12 noon until 6pm at The Velaslavasay Panorama.

Besides the Panorama itself, the event was absolutely spectacular! There was some serious yodeling going on, and a few wonderful performances in the gigantic garden behind the theater. An acquaintance of painter and lady of the house Sara Velas, explained to us that she had indeed built the gazebo from scratch. You can see her gazebo, and other wonders here. The Union Theater, where Sara Velas relocated the Panorama, served as headquarters for the Tile Workers Union back in the 60s (hence the name). As a result, wonderful abstract mosaic decorates the exterior of the building.

The huge crowd was very Getty-UCLA-USC-Silver Lake, what Bourdieu would call the "cultural capital (+)." A lot of very eccentric characters. It was also refreshing to see kids hanging around the artists. Another quintessentially utopian LA moment.

We had a group picture taken at the Alpine Photo Studio, shared a pretzel and a boiled München weisswürst dipped in Heinz grain mustard (straight from Costco, as the people behind the makeshift bar assured us), admired Janie Geiser's silent movie stylings artfully projected on a suspended white sheet besides a luscious banana tree.

On the way there, as we were idly cruising for a parking spot around 25th Street, we passed by two police cars.They had their big spotlights on, trained on the officers conducting some kind of business on the doorstep of a Church. The street was completely quiet and empty, so we couldn't really figure out what the trouble was. Until we turned the corner. We saw a white sheet on the sidewalk, covering an amorphous outstretched bump, something underneath. We didn't quite realize it at first. And then it hit us. It was a dead body. Random. Anonymous. Dead.

[The church is located at 1177 W. 25th St., and according to the Google, it is the Ward AME Church - I will try to call tomorrow to figure out what happened]

Technorati Tags:Velaslavasay Panorama, Museum of Jurassic Technology

Porn and the developing world

Hilarious (via Yahoo News and /.):

ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigerian schoolchildren who received laptops from a U.S. aid organization have used them to explore pornographic sites on the Internet, the official News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported Thursday.

NAN said its reporter had seen pornographic images stored on several of the children's laptops.

"Efforts to promote learning with laptops in a primary school in Abuja have gone awry as the pupils freely browse adult sites with explicit sexual materials," NAN said.

A representative of the One Laptop Per Child aid group was quoted as saying that the computers, part of a pilot scheme, would now be fitted with filters.

The OLPC is actually a beautiful Linux-based machine, and I'd love to snag one for myself. Now, put a free computer with free internet access into the hands of kids, and yes, they will find porn. What do you expect? that they will surf the web for Shakespeare ebooks and math problems? C'mon...

Vegas underbelly - literally

This is a picture of the "art gallery" in Vegas flood control tunnels. Strange and intriguing stuff by CNET's Daniel Terdiman. I don't see how this article has anything to do with technology, but it sure is cool!

Oh yeah

Miles motherfucking Davis.

In Montreux - '73 - I believe it's the Pangaea band plus Dave Liebman, and they're playing some version of Gondwana. So heavy...
[nice piece about the music at funkierthanthou - also the young guy with a hat who plays guitar is Reggie Lucas, who went on to produce Madonna's debut album a few years later...]

Isaac Hayes at the Hollywood Bowl

It was billed as Stax' 50 years anniversary, but basically we came to see Isaac Hayes perform. Angie Stone was there and belted a few, that was cool. Booker T. walked us down memory lane with an infectious rendition of Green Onion. The lukewarm William Bell sang a few tunes, doing a competent impression of David Alan Grier's brother with no soul in Amazon Women on the Moon...

Then, after an intermission, the Black Moses himself walked onto the stage in a big shimmering black and gold boubou. He started his set with Walk On By, sort of tight - although the mix was horrible at first. Then he managed to assassinate I Say a Little Prayer with one of the backing singers, mashing it with By the Time I Get to Phoenix. Yes. He sort of mumbled through the Phoenix chorus while the white chick unwittingly deconstructed Prayer. There was another duet with another one of the singers, but by that time he had kind of lost me (I guess the wine and the wacky tabacchi helped too.) He finished that 20-25 minutes with - what else? - Shaft. But a lackluster, slurred and uninspired Shaft. He stood up and kind of conducted the house band in a very tentative way. Thank god theses guys are the pro-est of pros and could stay in time, in tune and deep in the groove forever.

Then the whole Stax crew reunited and sang Dock of the Bay and that was it. Lights out onstage. Kind of a sorry affair. One of my friends mentioned quite justly that Isaac Hayes had sang all but 5 minutes or so. Although it seems that live performance was never Isaac Hayes strong suit, we felt somewhat disrespected.

[The music, so precise, so produced, is definitely studio music. I was wondering what Isaac Hayes would sound like with just piano, congas and a few vocal overdubs (like, say, Marvin Gaye's I Want You vocal and rhythm outtake on the deluxe re-issued album...Probably, the most awesome performance by Marvin, even tops Anger on Hear, My Dear. 99c of incredible soul on iTunes...)]

The performance could have been a notch better but hey, it was another utopian night in the Hollywood hills. Wine, cheese and good company under the starry skies... This is why I moved to LA (as the song goes...)

ps: oh yeah and that absolute crétin Randy Jackson (of Idol infamy) mc'eed the whole proceedings like a cheery Ronco infomercial, as if trying to oversell the performance, and whip up the crowd - you set it and you fo'get it... This is great and wholesome when applied to all the hilarious implements that come out of Ron Popeil's fertile mind, but for Memphis soul...


Fuckin Genius.

house cleaning

I realize that local politics is becoming a central topic of this blog. That wasn't the original intent, and therefore I have decided to move my political blogging to another venue. I just got the www.concerntroll.com domain, and I will soon start posting political stuff over there.

Vitter speaks

Via Talkingpointsmemo.com:

Here's my question: which stories aren't true? the Canal Street brothel stories? the diaper stories? I mean, talk of non-denial denial...

Technorati Tags:David Vitter, Republican Party, conservatism, christianists, fetishim

Diaper Vitter Picture

The face of the Southern Christian conservative movement...


(courtesy of wis.dm)

Update:
from my friend Paul

An old girlfriend of mine worked at a sex library (that's to say the library of a sex institute). One day came across her desk a survey that the adult diaper industry conducted. It appeared that some incredible percentage of users (around 20% if I remember correctly) classed themselves as "recreational" adult diaper users. Ah, the never ending fecundity of the human mind...

Technorati Tags:Conservatism, David Vitter, Picture, Humor, Republican Party, fetishism, sex, hookers, politics, election 2008

Diaper Vitter about to resign

According to these guys, the Louisiana Republican Party is negotiating with Gov. Blanco for a replacement.

Breaking CLG Exclusive: La. GOP officials negotiating with governor for Vitter replacement appointment By Lori R. Price 13 Jul 2007 Citizens for Legitimate Government (www.legitgov.org) has learned that Louisiana Democratic Party insiders say that Republican officials are attempting to negotiate with Governor Kathleen Blanco (D) for a possible replacement appointment for Senator David Vitter (R), should he suddenly resign.

Citizens for Legitimate Government has also received information that Vitter is in the Ochsner Foundation Hospital in New Orleans.

I don't know, maybe, maybe not, who knows? At this point, the best thing Diaper Vitter can do is to follow in Ted Haggard's footsteps and check himself into some Christian rehab program... Now, once the dust settles and the jokes are forgotten, think of his family. This guy's public career is basically over, and so is his marriage (most likely). He probably won't get to see his kids very often after that. And the kids, well, I ache for them. He's gonna spend the rest of his life in shame, he will probably have to relocate because finding a job will be undoubtedly complicated - ah yeah, y'know, Vitter, the diaper guy... Horrible.

Technorati Tags:David Vitter, Diaper fetish, Republican Party, Conservatism, Christianists

David Vitter Diaper Fetishist

OK. I never thought I'd ever write something like that. This is so fucking funny. For some reason it always seems to happen to sanctimonious right-wing Christian authoritarians. I mean if this turns out to be even 10% true, we are officially entering J. Edgar Hoover territory.

Your Right Hand Thief has the story. Wonkette and Jay Leno went national with it:

"The darling of the religious right, conservative Senator David Vitter of Louisiana, not only admitted to having sex with prostitutes, he would pay them $300 to make him wear diapers. And today that crazy astronaut called him 'my dream guy, he's got my vote!" --Jay Leno

To be perfectly honest, it seems that there are somewhat contradictory accounts - obviously, it will be hard to establish the entire truth here, given the shady characters involved (the Madam, the Senator and the prostitute). And perhaps goons will be sent to make everyone shut up. This is the Bayou after all.

As for the Republican party, it's really turning into the Kinky Party (hey, now that's my kind of party). If anything, it gives a whole new meaning to the Daddy Party.

Let's see here, we've got the pathological narcissistic cross-dresser, Frederick of Hollywood, and Vitter the Diaper.



I've seen the future of white male patriarchy in the US, and it's wearing pantyhose and diapers.

Technorati Tags:David Vitter, diaper fetish, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Republican Party, election 2008, patriarchy, conservatism, white trash, christianists

On a lighter note: Rudy vs. the Ferret guy

You need help! It's your shield, it's your whatever... Rudy knows a creep when he hears one...


And tomorrow: Argentina meets Brazil. This is a dream match. Lionel Messi, Carlos Tevez, Hernan Crespo (possibly) and Juan Roman Riquelme against a young Auriverde squad featuring the amazing Robinho. WOW. Oh and let me commit that to the hard drive: 3-2 Argentina.

Technorati Tags:Rudy Giuliani, ferrets, creepy, politics, Republican Party, Election 2008

Iraq Vets speak out (WARNING: GRAPHIC MATERIAL)

Incredible article in the Nation by Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian. I am quite surprised - no, not really - that no major US media outlet has mentioned it so far. It is already hitting the international press (as in France for instance) and it is further annihilating whatever was left of the US reputation abroad

Dozens of those interviewed witnessed Iraqi civilians, including children, dying from American firepower. Some participated in such killings; others treated or investigated civilian casualties after the fact. Many also heard such stories, in detail, from members of their unit. The soldiers, sailors and marines emphasized that not all troops took part in indiscriminate killings. Many said that these acts were perpetrated by a minority. But they nevertheless described such acts as common and said they often go unreported--and almost always go unpunished.

These testimonies remind me of the controversy around www.nowthatsfuckedup.com - in the end the war/porn site was forced to shut down by US authorities. One of the reasons given for such swift action was that the Geneva Convention forbids showing pictures of dead enemies. This coming from those notorious sticklers for international human rights law Rumsfeld, Cambone and Douglas "dumbest fucking guy on the planet" Feith. [These unsavory characters, geniuses in their own rights - I mean Cambone holds a down-market Ph.D. from a notorious conservative outfit - are not just ridiculous, they are also war criminals of the the worst kind, the self-righteous type.]

The sick pictures from nowthatsfuckedup.com were all true. Random killings of civilians, goofing around with exploded skulls and dismembered bodies, it's all in the Nation's interviews.

One photo, among dozens turned over to The Nation during the investigation, shows an American soldier acting as if he is about to eat the spilled brains of a dead Iraqi man with his brown plastic Army-issue spoon.

"Take a picture of me and this motherfucker," a soldier who had been in Sergeant Mejía's squad said as he put his arm around the corpse. Sergeant Mejía recalls that the shroud covering the body fell away, revealing that the young man was wearing only his pants. There was a bullet hole in his chest.

"Damn, they really fucked you up, didn't they?" the soldier laughed.

THESE CRIMES WERE KNOWN AND DOCUMENTED BACK IN 2005. You don't need to go very far, it only takes a google image search to find those pix. The wanton killing of Iraqi civilians seemed widespread, especially after a US convoy hit an IED.

"One example I can give you, you know, we'd be cruising down the road in a convoy and all of the sudden, an IED blows up," said Spc. Ben Schrader, 27, of Grand Junction, Colorado. He served in Baquba with the 263rd Armor Battalion, First Infantry Division, from February 2004 to February 2005. "And, you know, you've got these scared kids on these guns, and they just start opening fire. And there could be innocent people everywhere. And I've seen this, I mean, on numerous occasions where innocent people died because we're cruising down and a bomb goes off.
[...]
Sergeant Flatt was among twenty-four veterans who said they had witnessed or heard stories from those in their unit of unarmed civilians being shot or run over by convoys. These incidents, they said, were so numerous that many were never reported."

This is why the 'war' and the occupation are lost, and have been for quite a while. Granted, based on the stated goals of war, winning was always going to be a difficult proposition. But losing was not necessarily inevitable - that is, had the US government actually planned for a lengthy occupation, etc. etc. Well. On second thought. No, there was no way this could have been not lost, not with that crew in charge.

The crimes committed by US forces are just the sad, inevitable outcome of the lies, deceptions and disregard for the law that trickled down from the upper echelons of the chain of command. The sense that this war of election was shrouded in ulterior, questionable motives and hidden agendas, the sense that the legitimacy and indeed, legality of this enterprise was at best doubtful, weighed heavily on the chain of command. It is not very difficult to see how the necessity to dissimulate the lies and deceptions at the heart of this fateful adventure encouraged criminal behaviors all the way down. And don't get me wrong, I support the troop. But my support is conditional on them acting lawfully. And it is very difficult to act lawfully when the ultimate legality of the war is in doubt, and when the chain of command, by constantly pointing at other people, anyone but themselves, shifting blame and looking for scapegoats and bogeymen (the liberal media! the dead-enders! Iran!), very much acts like they know they have committed a crime. Case in point:

"During the summer of 2005, Sergeant Millard, who served as an assistant to a general in Tikrit, attended a briefing on a checkpoint shooting, at which his role was to flip PowerPoint slides.

This unit sets up this traffic control point, and this 18-year-old kid is on top of an armored Humvee with a .50-caliber machine gun," he said. "This car speeds at him pretty quick and he makes a split-second decision that that's a suicide bomber, and he presses the butterfly trigger and puts 200 rounds in less than a minute into this vehicle. It killed the mother, a father and two kids. The boy was aged 4 and the daughter was aged 3. And they briefed this to the general. And they briefed it gruesome. I mean, they had pictures. They briefed it to him. And this colonel turns around to this full division staff and says, 'If these fucking hajis learned to drive, this shit wouldn't happen.'"

Technorati Tags:George W. Bush, Iraq War, War Crimes, US Army, US Occupation, Douglas Feith, Stephen A. Cambone, Donald Rumsfeld, Geneva Convention, Nowthatsfuckedup.com

Bisphenol A, endocrine disruption and the silencing of science

Molly pointed me to the following article in June's PLoS Biology:
The Toxic Origins of Disease
Absolutely chilling. Reminds me of how big business consistently muddied the waters on global warming. Same Nazi propaganda techniques, different objects (you know, repeat a lie enough times, people will end up believing it).

Update: Andrew Leonard wrote a post about it in Salon.com

Technorati Tags:science, Bisphenol A, big business, politics, toxic chemicals, food chain contamination, endocrine disruption

Firefighters vs. Rudy Giulani

Someone I know who left New York once told me that most New Yorkers positively hate Rudy Giuliani. Some of this might explain why.



Update:
A few quick remarks. Although the whole video is supposed to be for members of the Union, they really could have dispensed with the long, drawn-out preamble.The most devastating moment is the snippet of his appearance before the 9/11 commission. I hope someone splices the thing down to 50 seconds - defective radios, no bid contracts, couldn't hear the evacuation order, and then Rudy claiming that firefighters decided to stand their ground.

In light of that I thought the shot of Rudy running was perhaps not that necessary. It's as if they weren't sure they had enough stuff with the no-bid contracts for defective radios, the successful evacuation of NYPD people vs. the 141 firefighters who didn't hear the order, and the gold vs. firefighters' remains. I mean they really did not need the cheap shots of Rudy running.

Besides, the fact that Rudy was outside should have been emphasized more - there's only one mention of NYC emergency HQ being in the general area. The fact that Rudy was running around outside with members of the press is precisely because he had nowhere to go - since he had ordered the emergency HQ to be located in the WTC, against the advice of the NYPD and the FDNY. So they could have done a better job with that.

Rudy really, really gets on my nerves

Technorati Tags:Rudy Giuliani, Firefighters, politics, Republican Party, presidential election 2008, 9-11

Family values, Republican Style

The whole thing is really creepy and exploitative. I hope he resigns in shame (he probably won't, precisely because all his recent actions demonstrate that he has no sense of shame at all). Another sanctimonious family values Southern conservative pig has just been nailed.
Also, at times he kind of looks like a strange cross between George Felix "Macaca" Allen and Dr. Phil. Especially when he rolls his eyes.
I wonder what he's gonna tell his perfectly nice daughter. Not to mention his wife. (thanks TPM)

Technorati Tags:Republican Party, Family values, Christianity, Faith, Rudy Giuliani, David Vitter, Conservatism, Gay marriage, Macaca, George Allen, Dr. Phil

Will it blend?

No, for real, it does.
http://www.willitblend.com/videos.aspx?type=unsafe&video=iphone

Technorati Tags:Iphone, will it blend?

the lawn chair balloonist

From the Seattle Times:

BEND, Ore. — Last weekend, Bend gas station owner Kent Couch settled down in his lawn chair with some drinks and snacks — and a parachute.

Attached to the lawn chair were 105 balloons of various colors, each 4 feet around. Bundled together, the balloons rise three stories high.

Couch carried a global positioning system device, a two-way radio, a digital camcorder and a cell phone. He also had instruments to measure his altitude and speed and about four plastic bags holding five gallons of water each to act as a ballast — he could turn a spigot, release water and rise.

Destination: Idaho.

Nearly nine hours later, Couch was short of Idaho. But he was 193 miles from home, in a farmer's field near Union, having crossed much of Oregon at 11,000 feet and higher.

And of course, the inevitable mention of Darwin Awards special prize nominee Larry Walters, who just wanted to have a beer or two while watching the sunset.

Couch, 47, is the latest American to emulate Larry Walters — who in 1982 rose three miles above Los Angeles in a lawn chair lifted by balloons.

Walters surprised an airline pilot, who radioed the control tower that he had just passed a guy in a lawn chair with a gun. The weapon was to shoot balloons and descend. Walters paid a $1,500 penalty for violating air traffic rules. Eleven years later, he committed suicide at age 44.

This is awe-inspiring. Congratulations Mr. Very-aptly-named Couch. (I did not know that the great Larry Walters committed suicide - kind of sad - perhaps, like many, he could not handle fame.)

Technorati Tags:lawn chair, lawn chair balloonist, Oregon, GPS, stupid stunts, extreme flying

Roswell vs. Physics

Apparently the public relations officer at the Roswell base just died. He left behind him a sworn affidavit regarding the very strange events at the Roswell AFB. From the Daily Mail:

Last week, the text was released and asserts that the weather balloon claim was a cover story, and that the real object had been recovered by the military and stored in a hangar. He described seeing not just the craft, but alien bodies.

And then this:

Haut then tells how Colonel Blanchard took him to 'Building 84' - one of the hangars at Roswell - and showed him the craft itself. He describes a metallic egg-shaped object around 12-15ft in length and around 6ft wide. He said he saw no windows, wings, tail, landing gear or any other feature.

He saw two bodies on the floor, partially covered by a tarpaulin. They are described in his statement as about 4ft tall, with disproportionately large heads. Towards the end of the affidavit, Haut concludes: "I am convinced that what I personally observed was some kind of craft and its crew from outer space."

And finally this:

Another military witness who claimed to know that the Roswell incident involved the crash of an alien spacecraft is Colonel Philip J. Corso, a former Pentagon official who claimed his job was to pass technology from the craft recovered at Roswell to American companies.

He claims that discoveries such as Kevlar body armour, stealth technology, night vision goggles, lasers and the integrated circuit chip all have their roots in alien technology from the Roswell crash.

Hmmm. Let's forget about Kevlar and lasers for a moment and let's try to concentrate on basic physics. And this is where the following post by Charles Stross comes in handy - read the whole post, it kind of puts the whole 'boldly go where no one has gone before' routine into stark perspective...

Now, let's say we want to deliver our canned monkey to Proxima Centauri within its own lifetime. We're sending them on a one-way trip, so a 42 year flight time isn't unreasonable. (Their job is to supervise the machinery as it unpacks itself and begins to brew up a bunch of new colonists using an artificial uterus. Okay?) This means they need to achieve a mean cruise speed of 10% of the speed of light. They then need to decelerate at the other end. At 10% of c relativistic effects are minor — there's going to be time dilation, but it'll be on the order of hours or days over the duration of the 42-year voyage. So we need to accelerate our astronaut to 30,000,000 metres per second, and decelerate them at the other end. Cheating and using Newton's laws of motion, the kinetic energy acquired by acceleration is 9 x 10¹⁷¹⁸ Joules in round numbers for the entire trip. NB: This assumes that the propulsion system in use is 100% efficient at converting energy into momentum, that there are no losses from friction with the interstellar medium, and that the propulsion source is external — that is, there's no need to take reaction mass along en route. So this is a lower bound on the energy cost of transporting our Mercury-capsule sized expedition to Proxima Centauri in less than a lifetime. Joules, so we can call it 2 x 10

To put this figure in perspective, the total conversion of one kilogram of mass into energy yields 9 x 10¹⁶ Joules. (Which one of my sources informs me, is about equivalent to 21.6 megatons in thermonuclear explosive yield). So we require the equivalent energy output to 400 megatons of nuclear armageddon in order to move a capsule of about the gross weight of a fully loaded Volvo V70 automobile to Proxima Centauri in less than a human lifetime. That's the same as the yield of the entire US Minuteman III ICBM force.

I guess that is why I seriously doubt there are aliens out there who can actually visit us. Remember the Fermi paradox - if they exist, where are they? - well, here's a possible answer, they do exist and very much like us, they are stuck on their own little piece of rock.

Technorati Tags:Science, Roswell, Aliens, Star Trek

fascinating stuff

From Sunday's WaPo: "Research Links Lead Exposure, Criminal Activity"

Although one should be mindful of naive environmental determinism, this sounds really, really intriguing.
The article opens by saying that Dr. Nevin's research undermines Rudy Giuliani's claim that he singlehandedly cleaned up New York. That might or might not be so - in the end the putative accomplishments of Giuliani are inconsequential. This research kicks ass: Dr. Nevin correlated the rise and fall of crime with exposure to lead. He found similar trends in 9 other countries, over a century. I can't wait to hear Stephen Leavitt's opinion on this.

Technorati Tags:Rudy Giuliani, freakonomics, environmentalism

the New York Times editorial board grows a brain and a conscience

Those geniuses are finally coming around to acknowledge the obvious.

"It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit."

And that one:

"While Mr. Bush scorns deadlines, he kept promising breakthroughs — after elections, after a constitution, after sending in thousands more troops. But those milestones came and went without any progress toward a stable, democratic Iraq or a path for withdrawal. It is frighteningly clear that Mr. Bush’s plan is to stay the course as long as he is president and dump the mess on his successor. Whatever his cause was, it is lost."

Duh.

Could have told you all that 4 years ago, New York Times editorial board. And believe me, I am no genius myself. Besides the whole nebulous concept of the invasion and regime change, you only had to take one look at the crew - you know, the Nixon/Iran-Contra/Project for a New American Century/Halliburton gang to know it wasn't gonna work. These guys always loved to play big and tough while the best of them were merely delusional International Relations types (and everyone with a PhD knows that International Relations is where Political Science rejects park their asses.) The worst of them, Rumsfeld and the Vice are alpha male authoritarian bureaucrats - exactly the kind of people old-line corporate America rewards (you know, the real business, banking, defense and oil, not the fruity internet stuff).

As for Georgie boy, he wished it all could go away like it used to - you know, when daddy's buddies would swoop in to bail him out whenever he found himself in a jam... Only 19 months left, Georgie.

Technorati Tags:Iraq war, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld

Fred Thompson, not so pro-life

Check out this article in the LA Times, dealing with Fred Thompson's go-go years as a big time Washington lobbyist :
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-thompson7jul07,0,54260.story.

Hilarious. Sheds light on Fred's core principles - or lack thereof. This will not play out very well with the Christianists. I kind of like Thompson on some level - the guy is a complete opportunist, never met a client he wouldn't bill, loves a good, hearty meal (esp. when he doesn't have to pick up the tab), and well, plays older, tough guys in silly movies and TV shows. Not to mention that he initially thought Nixon was innocent. Oh yeah, and he used his PAC money to pay his son fat 'consulting fees.'

And that guy is the Republican Party's last, best hope for 2008?

Technorati Tags:Fred Thompson, election 2008, Christianists, Conservatism

Boycott the New York Times

It's B-S stories like these (US Says Iran helped kill 5 G.I's) that make you want to put the old gray lady to rest. This is exactly the same thing as the infamous Judy Miller pieces. If I remember correctly, Gordon, who penned that latest piece of propaganda, was crazy Judy's collaborator. Glen Greenwald so aptly debunks it here.

I can see four possible explanations for writing such an article (besides the editors' not-so hidden neocon agenda):

1) Gordon is lazy - he recorded the briefing, called a couple of his usual high-level administration sources (Addington? Hadley), slapped this thing together in about an hour and then went out for a whisky.

2) Gordon is a government psy-ops asset - he probably doesn't work for CIA, because CIA seems to be squarely against an Iranian adventure. He probably gets his marching orders from a flack in the Vice's office (Addington?).

3) Gordon is a true believer. He is convinced - just as Miller was - that he's doing the country a service by spreading neocon propaganda. This is not mutually exclusive with reason #2. And besides, thanks to the Libby trial, we know how Judy and Gordon were happy to get played by the Administration.

4) All of the above.

It is beyond me that the New York Times would publish such dreck. Because of the Judy Miller/Iraqi WMD debacle, the Times' reputation is not what it used to be. Very few people seem to take Gordon's piece seriously, precisely BECAUSE IT WAS PUBLISHED IN THE NEW YORK TIMES.

Still, the Times' editors haven't learned anything, and are still willing to carry water for the Administration. I angrily cancelled my print subscription back in early 2003. Now I think it is time to go beyond that and boycott the Times' print and online properties altogether (they operate many websites, including About.com). Let's send a message. Propaganda can't be tolerated in the so-called newspaper of record. And even though I do like and respect Bob Herbert, Paul Krugman and Frank Rich, I think I can do without them. From now on I will not read the Times in print or online, until they print an apology and ship Gordon to Fox News.

And yes, Frank Rich, it's time to move to another outfit.

They hate freed'm

I couldn't say it better than Glenn Greenwald today:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/06/22/water_electric/index.html

"We continue to prop up the Middle East's most brutal dictators and support those leaders who lose in democratic elections, while righteously pretending that our invasions, occupations and bombing campaigns are about spreading democracy (we're delivering "God's gift to every man, woman and child"). And the raging debates in our country are over the extent to which we should torture people and how many more Muslims we should lock away for life with no charges of any kind.

The next time there is a terrorist attack, we can all sit around bewildered, scratching our heads and solemnly asking: "Why do they hate us?" And the only answer that will be allowed -- a rule to be piously enforced by the Owner of 9/11 himself, Rudy Giuliani -- will be the extremely honest and illuminating: "They hate us for our freedoms."

F*cking Genius

Check out the Romneys. They are so wholesome. Ann is particularly cool: she marvels at the fact that had it not been for Mitt's presidential campaign she'd never have set foot in 'some of the Southern States...' And all these Republican activists who are 'amazing' because they 'really care.' She truly speaks like the country club society lady she is: her disdain for the political activists is both completely genuine and refreshingly unselfconscious. The whole production is so weirdly off it is hilarious. Like that shot of the Romney men playing hoops. And don't forget: Mitt's all time favorite book is... Battlefield Earth, by Lafayette Ron Hubbard (yes, that L.R.Hubbard).
I'm telling you, this crop of Republican candidates is a comedic masterpiece. After the balding tough guy who loves stiletto heels so much he can't stop himself from wearing them, we've got the Romneys who are, well - how to say that delicately? - whiter than white bread?

the end of Rudy Giuliani's presidential bid?

Let's hope. Let's hope he gets hell for ditching the Irak Study Group so that he could make a few bucks. That's Rudy for you. Respect for the troops. Leadership. Concern for the national interest. Not surprising for the guy who tried to have New York City's mayoral elections postponed in the wake of 9/11. It's all over the internets already. Let's see how this plays out in the MSM.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/014692.php

And the original story in Newsday is there .

more on Sarko

See this excellent article by B. Chazelle at Rootless Cosmopolitan. This is as strong a rebuttal as you will find of George Will's column in today's WaPo. Will's views are so wrong on so many levels, and rehash the old saws of intellectual conservatism (Burke, Daniel Bell), that one does not know where to begin... At least, Chazelle's views are pretty useful in that regards.

White Nights

Growing up in Paris I used to listen to a lot of Marvin Gaye. What's Going On in particular. I must have been 10 or 12 when I came across the tape at a music store. I know I must have been that young because the movie White Nights came out in 1985. In the high-concept cold war movie - James Bond meets Nutcracker in Hollywood parlance - there was a passing allusion to What's Going On. In an establishing shot in Gregory Hines character's shabby apartment, one could catch a glimpse of the album's cover, pinned on the grey, dreary, wall. I noticed it right away. I remember thinking that perhaps Marvin Gaye was much more famous and significant than I originally suspected.

The music itself was very intriguing - I kept listening and listening late into the night on my walkman, trying to figure out what exactly was he singing about. Make me wanna holler - what could that mean? The deep bass, the vocal harmonies, the orchestra, the soulful horns, the layers of lyrics. Completely enthralling.

Back in the DPRK

Or Pyongyang Calling. Pyongyang, Pyongyang. Pyongyang woman on the avenue. I love Pyongyang in June, how about you?.. By the Pyongyang Dolls...

Via Salon.com. Apparently, all the bands there were started by the Dear Leader, and he probably wrote and produced all the records too. Not too mention the video clips. Kim Jong Il rocks.

fuck you Jerry Falwell

"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"

Jerry Falwell, 700 Club, 9/13/01

The collection of molecules known as Jerry Falwell has gone back to its in-itself state (and yes, you faith-based biatches should get some real education, like Hegel for instance). And by the way, this is when I almost regret that there is no hell to go to. Come to think of it - nahhh.

they're good burgers (no really)

My B-day, at the In-N-Out on Sepulveda, watching the heavies land on runway 24R. Only in LA.

Double-double with fries, before and after... And Donny is right, they are good burgers...


The heavies are landing...

Sarkozy wins

It's not like it's such an exciting news, but yes he will win. My best guess is something like 53%-47%. Could be even higher. The votes are just not there for Royal, and Sarkozy is very, very good at retail politics. He made a lot of promises to many different constituencies, and he was convincing enough to get the support of both the disenfranchised and the upper class. He will abolish the inheritance tax AND lower the exchange rate of the Euro. Guess which one he will be able to accomplish. But as we say in France, promises only bind those who believe in them... Even if I find the whole thing baffling, I must admit that the alternative was not exactly thrilling either.

In the grand scheme of things, it does not matter that much. It is only France after all. It's a very nice vacation spot, especially for all the foodies and other wine enthusiasts out there. Ahh, Anne Gros, Bernard Pacaud and Joël Robuchon... Culture and all that - not so hot. Great indie filmmakers. Awesome trains, too. And Manu Chao.

the previous post might disappear soon

We'll see. The lawyers come to work at 8 AM eastern.
One last for the hell of it...

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

What the hell is this? I wonder. Hmmm. Let's google it.

Update: Actually, this series of letters and numbers is the hexadecimal decryption key for HD-DVDs. Someone posted it earlier on Digg.com (or rather, linked to a story/site online which cited that key). The people operating Digg started to delete the entries containing the hex key, for both legal and commercial reasons. Digg users, who are by and large techno-libertarians (if not consciously, at least in practice), found ways to alert the whole blogosphere. The story spilled over to Slashdot (the precursor to digg.com - almost made irrelevant by digg until today at least). As a result of this online revolt, the hex key has been made de facto public domain (check out the hit count on google, and it even has a myspace page now). Digg relented and stopped blocking the posts mentioning the decryption key (and Kevin Rose, the founder, wrote a defiant post on digg.com 's blog). There are now 280,000 instances of the key on the internet. The cost of serving DMCA notices to all the hosting websites (including Google) will be so enormous that the usual enforcement through intimidation won't work. Beyond the PR disaster for media conglomerates, the story will inevitably surface on mainstream news outlets - thus letting everybody know about the encryption scheme and its trivial crack. Not so good.

This is a classic example of technology revolutionizing conditions of productions and upending entrenched social forms. Very heady stuff.

In short, this May 1st might very well mark the old media's Haymarket riot. This is the beginning of the end for DRM.