pt. 1 is here for context...
also, from the great post "where helmets make no sense"...
empire state building:
and a classic free-climb from dan osman (r.i.p.). it's short, watch it... this guy is amazing... and mind the metal.
omar souleyman. he's apparently huge in syria, having released OVER 500 cassettes. his album last year, highway to hassake is awesome. i heard a lot of synth-pop infused traditional arabic music like this when i was in morroco and turkey. i've really enjoyed this album. i found it by reading the forcedexposure.com employee top ten lists, a decent source of interesting music. the video and mp3 of the big hit are below. the video is amazing, hilarious, and surprising. the synth player is awesome. if anyone can translate the lyrics, i'd love to know what the song is about... i assume from the video it is a love story.
(mp3) omar souleyman - "leh jani (when i found out)" from "highway to hassake"
I'm sure of it. I predicted it before this story went viral, just ask my wife.deborah jeane palfrey served a lot of high-level clients in d.c. (which isn't at all in dispute, even the corporate media is reporting that) she has indicated that dick cheney might be involved (through wayne madson's claims, although i haven't found any transcript with her saying that...
below is a quote from the alex jones story. now i know alex jones is a paleoconservative, and a religious nut sometimes, but just try to focus on HER WORDS... don't let his wonkiness (however correct or entertaining at times) distract from the real facts here.
"If taken into custody, my physical safety and most probably my very life would be jeopardized," she wrote in August 1991 following an attempt to bring her to trial, "Rape, beating, maiming, disfigurement and more than likely murder disguised in the form of just another jailhouse accident or suicide would await me..." she also stated in a radio interview in march with alex that she was not planning on committing suicide.
here is her saying that (4 min)
here is the whole interview (hour +)
dino 5 is a children's hip-hop group made up of prince paul, chali tuna (low-voice guy from jurassic 5), lady bug mecca (the lady from digable planets), scratch from the roots and wordsworth. the have some short videos up at babyloveshiphop.com. i guess it's a cartoon and a stage show, too... can't wait for the candy raver for kids movement!
(mp3) dino5 - "what about 10"
insane in the mccain brain here:
two great whistle blower stories:
morris davis was the "defense" department's former chief prosecutor for terrorism cases. he argued ON BEHALF of plantiffs from guantanamo bay monday with this bombshell:
"Mr. Davis said that Defense Department general counsel William J. Haynes II, who announced his retirement in February, once bristled at the suggestion that some defendants could be acquitted, an outcome that Davis said would give the process (of trying the 275 guantanamo prisoners) added legitimacy. Haynes said, 'We can't have acquittals,' Davis said under questioning from Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, the military counsel who represents Hamdan. 'We've been holding these guys for years. How can we explain acquittals? We have to have convictions.' "
i guess since we already illegally held and tortured these people for several years, we might as well convict them illegally and put the to death or throw them in jail for what morris davis quoted top pentagon officials, including deputy defense secretary gordon r. england, made it clear to him that charging some of the highest-profile detainees before elections this year could have "strategic political value." the whole dirty story here. remember folks, these are the patriots! i guess that makes us...? oh, and obama, when you are president, give morris davis a medal of honor!
also, via wordsoup:
"General Smedley D. Butler not only won two Congressional Medals of Honor and served in the Marines extensively, but he exposed a plot for a fascist coup that originated on Wall Street aimed at giving American industry total control of government (it involved George Dubya's grandfather). The man should be a hero included in every child's textbook, and his speech "War is a Racket," (given in 1933 & based on his book) should be required reading. Instead, he was demonized by industry and the media, marginalized by history, and our trillion-dollar-war-debt ass now belongs to Halliburton, Exxon, and the epically incompetent grandson of a fascist shitheel."
full text of the book in the link above, or just click on the cover below. a quote follows. remember, this is from 1935...
"Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the "war to end all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure."
and finally, an incredibly well-researched timeline of the manipulation of terror threats by the increasingly awesome, erudite, anit-o'reilly of the REAL no-spin zone, keith olbermann. it's 17 minutes, but you'll be amazed at the audacity of the bush spin machine...
it's mayday. (link to funny part of the may day wiki!)
may 1st is famous for being a pagan and labor holiday.
from a labor perspective, may day is a chance to fight for the rights of workers... let's not forget that the workers in this country are still getting fucked over at every chance, even by democrats. on the republican side both bush and mccain are ignorant (willfuly or otherwise) of the facts. remember that this is the government that bailed out the big boys like bear stearns with $30billion and left the forclosed homeowners out to dry with $0... i thought hard-line capitalists didn't interfere with the magic "market forces", i guess they changed the motto to "survival of the fittest and unfit corporations as needed" at the last lobbyist meeting. BTW, mccain is full of shit. don't believe the hype.
from a pagan perspective, may day was often associated with the fertility of the land (and the humans), so you could celebrate by planting some seeds or conceiving a child! if you aren't feeling like fatherhood (or motherhood as the case may be), you could vicariously enjoy young'uns by downloading the most recent .zip file of photos of my darling baby, river.
if you can't find awesome events like the ones listed on this page, can't learn some history like this .pdf booklet put together by anarchists, make some art/music or anything that appeals to your sense of freedom.
short bus!
this great movie about sex is something i have wanted to see for a long time... a movie that depicts sex (quite graphically) but isn't pornography. that may be a philosophical point, but it short bus has a complex, rewarding plot, lush character development, non-simulated sex, pointful animation and an up-to-the-second awareness of the complexities of modern sexuality. i really can't reccomend it enough, especially anyone for who wonders at how sexuality fits into our overall expression. while the trailer below is quite PG... don't watch the movie if you can't watch fucking or dark emotions or are homophobic (seriously on that last one... while there is straight sex in the movie it is overall much queerer). oh, and justin bond is AMAZING.
albert hofmann passed on... his "problem child", L.S.D. is easily among the most influential discoveries of the past 100 years.
albert discovered lysergic acid diethylamide while searching for medically useful derivatives of ergot (which coincidentally may have been involved in much earlier strangeness)
during the cold war, the CIA was interested in it as a potential "truth serum" and ordered 100,000,000 does from sandoz, the company that produced LSD while it was legal. a GREAT book documenting this history entirely from documents released through the Freedom of Information Act is Acid Dreams, the complete social history of LSD.
psychiatrists have been very interested from the start, but research was put on hold when LSD was made illegal in late 1966. recently there has been a renewed effort to have the drug studied under scientific circumstances. among other uses, it has shown remarkable potential to combat alcoholism.
most of all it has blown a lot of minds.
let's let the doctor speak for his creation...
"I believe that if people would learn to use LSD's vision-inducing capability more wisely, under suitable conditions, in medical practice and in conjunction with meditation, then in the future this problem child could become a wonderchild."
old lady fires up barrack... "don't pick on hillary, let her do that..." here is a clip from the beginning...
my pal ang from kill the unicorn (highly energetic pittsburgh band) recommended this amazing video of 5 and 8 year old djs... sweet. they're better than me.
"The Bush Administration then moved to dismiss Al Haramain’s case, citing the “state-secrets privilege,” a controversial legal doctrine that can be used to prevent the introduction of evidence that might jeopardize national security. Judges tend to show deference when the executive branch invokes state secrets; courts have rejected the privilege on fewer than six occasions since it was first recognized by the Supreme Court, in 1953. In that case, U.S. v. Reynolds, the widows of three civilian engineers who died in the crash of an Air Force B-29 sued for negligence. The government would not turn over the accident report, asserting that it contained information about the plane’s secret electronic equipment. However, when the report was declassified, in the nineties, there was no mention of secret electronic equipment. It did reveal that the plane lacked standard safeguards to prevent the engine from overheating—the very negligence that the widows had alleged."
also...
"According to a 2005 study by William Weaver and Robert Pallitto, political scientists at the University of Texas at El Paso, the Bush Administration has claimed the state-secrets privilege in recent years with “offhanded abandon.” By Weaver and Pallitto’s count of reported instances, the privilege was invoked fifty-five times in the half century before 2001; it has been used more than two dozen times in the years since. Its heavy use has drawn criticism from members of Congress, including Senator Arlen Specter, the senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee. “We’re going to look back at this period of time two decades from now and see a vast expansion of executive authority,” Specter told me this month. “And a big part of it is done by the state-secrets doctrine. Do I think in some cases that the government uses it inappropriately? Absolutely.”
also...
"In October, Bernabei wrote a letter to the Justice Department. The attorneys representing Al Haramain had been dealing with a novel quandary of legal ethics. If they had a reasonable belief that any telephone conversation with Seda or Buthi might be monitored by the N.S.A., could they talk to their clients without violating attorney-client confidentiality? Bernabei requested confirmation that the government was not intercepting her “written or oral communications” with her clients. Two weeks later, she received a response from the lawyers at the Justice Department. They wouldn’t confirm or deny."
from an interesting article in the new yorker on a vignette in the illegal wiretapping scandal.
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