Rogue Satellite

Americans; I hold you in contempt

2006-11-24T21:52:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: I don't have to live here, I choose to live here.I pay taxes here, I had no rights, then I got a green card and had rights again and now by the inaction of this countries citizenry I have no rights again.
Given i have no rights and can be taken without notice, without recourse and without charge and held indefinitely in whatever conditions the imagination of my American captors manifests for any reason or for no reason at all I'd just like to take this opportunity to address the vast indifferent population of this nation with a 'fuck you!'

Americans, proud, moral, well meaning, polite, optimistic, pathetic.
You give Sheep a bad name, Sheep weren't endowed with brains big enough to revolt, they simply don't know any better. I feel sorry for Sheep. (pass the mint sauce)
But you people are fucking Sheep by choice. You are an insult to cranial activity. Here we are days after Veterans day and you blithely piss on the graves of far better men than you'll ever be. Men (and not just Americans. Australians, NZers, British, Canadian,Fijians, Samoans, French, the list is long but you are no longer on it) gave their lives, GAVE THEIR LIVES! so that you could enjoy your freedoms and yet you sit in your comfortable little cocoons and the best of you, the very best of you are capable of the sacrifice it takes, the breath it takes to utter the sounds "Tut Tut" before going back to whatever facile meaningless tasks you've chosen to give your fraudulent lives meaning.
America is the husk of a dead dream and it's citizenry are ghosts who don't yet know they're dead.
Yeah. "I see dead people"
You create gulags to hold captives without any human rights whatsoever, some as young as 14.
Oh but your Govt assures you they have good reason.
"I see dead people"
Your govt discards the Geneva conventions but assures you it's all for the best.
"I see dead people"
The latest indignity (but you're numb, dispassionate, neutered, beyond hope, dead)
ALL immigrants, each and every fucking one of us, no longer has the right of habeas corpus .
What the hell huh? I'm flattering myself thinking it even concerns me. It's centuries old, an historic stepping stone in humans march toward dignity and the erosion of the absolute right of kings but you'll sit there passively while it's taken away, because you are bred to be selfish or terminally distracted, your TV screens full of adverts for drugs that will anaesthetise you from that creeping despair that is your bodies way of telling you somethings deeply deeply fucked and it doesn't yet truly concern you.
You're probably right, I'm over-reacting.
I should take a pill.
"I see dead people"
On October 6th, 2006, Stephen Lendman wrote:
“On December 8, 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt addressed the US Congress the day after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He said that “date….will live in infamy” because of what the naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan did. Two and one-half months later on February 19, 1942, FDR himself committed an infamous act signing into law Executive Order 9066 which authorized the internment of 120,000 Japanese civilians, two-thirds of whom were US citizens. These Americans committed no crimes and were only “guilty” of being of Japanese ancestry and thus by presidential edict were judged potential enemies of the state. Because of FDR’s action, these otherwise ordinary peace-loving Americans lost all their sacred constitutional protections including habeas corpus and their rights of trial by jury and to own and keep their property. They also lost all their other freedoms and were treated like criminals. They were sent against their will to concentration camps where they were interned for the duration of the war until 1946.
It should be noted no similar action was taken against white German Americans. It seems the Japanese then were more guilty of their skin color and race than their country of national origin. The US Supreme Court agreed in their 1944 landmark Korematsu v. United States decision in which a Court majority ruled military necessity justified their internment. Justice Frank Murphy and two other Justices disagreed denouncing the decision. In Justice Murphy’s dissent, he said this act amounted to the “legalization of racism.” It took until 1988 for the US Congress to undue this presidential act of infamy and High Court approval of it. It then passed Public Law 100-383 apologizing to those internees still living and their families, provided reparations for them (too late and far too inadequate), and created a public education fund to “inform the public about the internment of such individuals so as to prevent the recurrence of any similar event (ever again).”
Dare anyone suggest members of the 109th Congress have an immediate and urgent need for an industrial strength dose of its own re-education program. On two late September, 2006 days of infamy, the US House and Senate passed and sent to President Bush for his certain signature the Military Commissions Act of 2006 appropriately called “the torture authorization bill.” This clear unconstitutional act gives the administration extraordinary powers to detain, interrogate and prosecute alleged terror suspects and anyone thought to be their supporters. The law grants the executive branch (specifically President Bush) the extraordinary right to label anyone anywhere in the world an “unlawful enemy combatant” and gives him the legal right to arrest and incarcerate them indefinitely in military prisons. Persons liable will include anyone who even innocently contributes financially to a charitable organization thought to be associated with any nation or group the US believes supports terrorist or hostile actions against the US. On September 27 and 28, 2006, freedom and justice effectively died in the US, and no one will be secure anywhere in the world as long as this act is the law of the land. One day it will be repealed - if the republic survives long enough to do it which now is very much in question.
US citizens are not exempted from this law with one important exception - for now at least. Because of the June, 2004 Supreme Court Hamdi v. Rumsfeld decision, citizens of this country legally still retain their legal right to file a writ of habeas corpus if arrested and detained. This means they must be charged with a crime, be tried and allowed the right to appeal any conviction in a US court of law. But even this remaining right now hangs by a weak thread as the case of Jose Padilla shows. He’s a US citizen who was seized at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport having no weapons, declared an “enemy combatant” and held in military confinement with no ability to challenge his confinement in court. The Supreme Court refused to hear his case effectively giving the president the power to seize other citizens, subject them to the same abuse with no redress and thereby neutralize anyone’s habeas rights."
What does it take for you people to realise you have been conquered the wars been lost and you'll only actually notice in the late stages of the mopping up operations.
Remember Bush's statement "They hate our way of life"
I have to dredge every ounce of my self defensive and prodigious ability to find humour to create perspective enough for this to be amusing on any level.
I hold a green card, I have no rights whatsoever. Additionally i have a brain and write well.
I travel internationally constantly and the funny thing is, get this, I'm a solo mime, I'm paid to keep my mouth shut and make you laugh.
I'm taking my family out, somewhere we can live free.
Somewhere I can't be taken away and shackled for the rest of my life. Not that at this stage that's a probability but you know, the principle of the thing. Remember principles? There those things you had before you were sub-sheep. They can be painful , principles, but at the end of the day you can be proud of yourself, of your sacrifices, of what you stand for. What do you sad reminants stand for again?
Survival of the fittest?
My wifes family have been here since the 1700's (fallen aristocracy, adds flavour)
Her family has sacrificed quite a few units of their own flesh for the ideals that America adopted as it's own.
What a fucking waste.
At least they died believing in something. You people died during some sitcom and didn't even know it.

Dublin sans spellcheck

2006-01-05T19:23:00.000-08:00

Dublin. Can't remember which year but it was the same year Tom Cruise did his 'far and away ' movie.
Loved Dublin, had been slugging it out in London when i got picked up for a bit part in some Thames TV childrens program and with the dosh from that I flew up to Dublin and almost immediately realised how much time I had been wasteing in London.
I'm more or less immune to over romanticising places and the Irish experience (as she is sold) is ripe for gushy stereotypical reinforcement. But although it was harsh and brutal and pitiless for the unwary it was also warm and wry and philosophical.
I checked it out first in the daytime and looked beneith the surface to see which streetkids mattered and which didn't. I spotted the alpha group led by a very short 14 year old pitbull guy.
i went off and came back in the evening with my gear and sure enough he and his crew were still there. I walked up and told him I was from a place far away and was here to do shows but wanted local help and could pay for it.
The help i wanted was sort of manifactured and political. I wanted someone to retrieve my hat after shows (risky but whatever) and hand me stuff from the ground and generally look out for me and I was prepared to give 8% of my earnings to who-ever did it and pay up to two people that each.
He accepted and chose his most recent adopted waif and recognised it would be an opportunity for the guy to afford a sleepingbag he badly needed. (Its been a while so names escape me, should I invent some?)

The recently adopted waif had just hit the streets having run away from an alchoholic mum and a new boyfriend (who I later got to meet, choice!)
Fuck it lets call him Adamnan - "the timid one"; name of an abbot of Iona.
The leader of the the pack was round 4 foot 7 but built real wide and had a kind of intensity and physicality dispite his hobbit like stature. He had that leaders quality that convinced you he was indeed the right person to be talking to, he was about 15.
Lets call him Doran - "stranger" or "exile."
They were just kids and the crew consisted of round 7 or 8 . Some of them were fairly formidable looking though.

So I did my first show on Grafton with them looking on, then another, then another.
Doran and Adamnan fluttered about between sets, dutifully collecting my hat and passing it up to me. Running down to the shop and buying me cans of fanta and explaining me to the other roving bands of streetkids who passed by , perhaps seeing opportunity but then seeing that I was already owned they either passed on or leaned about watching the proceedings.

I had secured my pitch and established a guard. I would earn between 100 and 200 pounds a night and take 16% of it out and give it to my two helpers. Doran, sometimes on his own and sometimes with company would walk me to the taxi stand usually after I’d spent a couple of hours in a nearby bar that generiously stored my gear in a cubboard and additionally had bouncers as another layer of security yards from my shows, behind me. Doran explained, he took his job seriously, that it was all very well to have someone look out for me while I was working but from his perspective it was prettty obvious that the easiest way to get at my cash was simply to wait until i had finished and grab me and my cash on the way home. So I’d pop out of the bar, find him somewhere on Grafton, (drinking my wages) and have him meet me back at the bar for the walk up grafton to the always populated taxi-stand at the end.

It was interesting being an employer. I had to improvise rules. The first situation to present itself was audience ownership. My guys would lounge about on the corner adajent to me so that the audience were front on to them and early on they started interacting and interjecting at tempting things like pretty girls and passing friends. I was, by my work, creating a playful atmosphere and they were playing too.
But it was distracting and I had to put it to them that i created the audience and they were mine and not theirs to fuck with. They were cool with it and settled down.
The second thing was turning up drunk for work. I told them they could be as stoned as they wanted but not pissed as it reflected on me and made me look bad and lowered the tone and atmosphere of the show area and they knew as well as i did that they were more likely to act like a pillock in front of my audience if drunk and also simply weren’t up to the job half cut.
They were cool with this too.
The only other thing is that i would usually start work shortly after 7pm after the flower cart that was set up all day on the corner packed up and went home.
Some times i’d be a wee bit late.
However they started to lag a bit about turning up at 7. I’d start without them (feeling just a little vunerable)
I had to tell them that I was the boss and they were the workers, I could be late, they couldn’t. If they couldn’t deal with that then cool i’d find someone else. By this time word had got around and we would get visited by other crews who would inspect me like some sort of interesting accessory...
To be cont...

going magpie for more consistant inputting

2006-01-02T19:12:00.000-08:00

in your face... Noel Goden.

2005-12-28T16:36:00.000-08:00

Well I'm cleaning out my files and changing my fonts and text sizes on my website in the writing section because for some demented reason I had thought chunky white text on a black background would be easier for the geriatric readers who I presumed made up the bulk of my readership. (Hi gran)
But she's dead now and never liked me anyway.
And in this mid winter spring clean I've come across discarded pieces and here's one.

Interview originally published in the netly news 14/2/98 What the Dali Lama is to Richard Gere, Noel Godin is to Anti-gravity Theatre.

Until last week, Noel Godin was relatively unknown in the United states. A 52 year old Belgian author, film historian, actor (the Sexual life of the Belgians) writer (cream and punishment) and "entarteur" (a Godin coinage that roughly translates as "encaker" or "pie-er")

Godin led the gang that gave to Bill Gates what so many of us can only dream of. A big wet pie in the face. The attack took place at the entrance of Le Concert Noble on Arlon st in Brussels and was widely reported in the press.

NN:
Who are you, Noel Goden?

Noel Goden :
I'm part of a gang of bad hellions that have declared the pie war on all the unpleasant celebrities in every kind of domain. (slogan: "Let's pie! Let's pie! Nincompoop guys!")

We began to act against "empty" celebrities from the artistic world who were thinking they were the cats whiskers. Then we attacked the TV news business in France, foe instance, Patrick Poivre D'Arvor [a famous French TV presenter]. Then it became political with Philippe Douste-Blazy in Cannes, the French minister of culture, or the other French minister Nicolas Sarkozy last year in Brussels.

N.N:
When did you first pie someone?

Noel Goden:
In November 1969, with French writer Marguerite Duras, who represented for us the "empty" novel.

NN:
Why did you choose Bill Gates?

Noel Goden:
Because in a way he is the master of the world, and then because he's offering his intelligence, his sharpened imagination and his power to the governments and to the world as it is today--that is to say gloomy, unjust and nauseating. He could have been a utopist, but he prefers being a lackey of the establishment. His power is effective and bigger than that of the leaders of the governments, who are only many coloured servants. So Bill Gates was at the top of our list of victims. The attack on him is symbolic, it's against hierarchical power itself. Our war cry was explicit: "Letｼs pie! Letｼs pie the polluting lolly!"

NN:
So you have a whole list of people you want to pie?

Noel Goden:
Yes, we have meetings here in my house. These are funny meetings We have a good time with good drinks and at the same time we plot. We always agree on the target choice and then we have to study how to reach the target.

NN:
How did you prepare to pie Bill Gates?

Noel Goden:
For several years, there's been a new phenomenon. Traitors appear in the entourage of our victims who contact us to give us firsthand information. Our victims, at first sight, are very unpleasant and they are far from being loved in their own circle; this is our trump. For instance, these last years Patrick Poivre D'Arvor, [producer] Daniel Toscan du Plantier and [French minister] Nicolas Sarkozy have been betrayed. In the case of Bill Gates, a member of the staff of Microsoft Belgium contacted us and gave us a mysterious rendezvous. Thanks to him, the operation was a success. Of course we won't give his name. It's a secret; only a few know his identity. But we want to tell it because we would be very amused if there was suspicion in the staff of Microsoft. "Who's the traitor?!"

It happened one week before the arrival of Bill Gates in Belgium. We received, little by little, very precise information about the planning of the Bill. Some Parisian accomplices followed him the day before, step by step, notably when he first met Lionel Jospin [French prime minister]. For instance, we learned that he was always escorted by five armed bodyguards, but no more. In Belgium, he had four motorcycle policemen and he had a very important rendezvous that day. So, to succeed, we only had one solution; our number. We were 30 individuals. That's why we succeeded. We were extremely determined, we were in a good mood. We were a funny commando.

We were divided in ?loupinesquesｾ [from his pseudonym, Le Gloupier] fighting units of three on Arlon street, where people were waiting for him in Le Concert Noble. There was traffic in the street so the plotters were anonymous. When Bill Gates arrived with screaming sirens, he walked outside his car and as he was climbing the steps several of our fighting units gathered and they created a kind of pie whirl that fell on him. The bodyguards were completely distraught. None of them even took out his gun. They were as dazed as Bill was.

NN:
Do you know why there's a traitor in the staff of Microsoft Belgium? What were his motivations?

Noel Goden:
This man told us he really loved Bill Gates in the past, saying that he was very cool and passionate. But little by little he considered that his power had tainted him, and that he was becoming more and more haughty with his own collaborators. So the man who gave us the information considered, and he's not alone, that it wouldn't be bad to teach Bill a lesson, to bring him back to reality. That's how he explained to us why he was doing it, He's far from being a member of our band, he's not an anarchist and he likes his work with Microsoft, but he thought it had to happen.

NN:
So you weren't paid by someone from Netscape or Oracle?

Goden:
Certainly not; I wasn't even aware of their existence.

NN:
Weren't you afraid of the armed bodyguards and the police?

Goden:
This time, yes, we were afraid. We didn't sleep well the night before.

We thought, since the bodyguards of Bill Gates are professional, they won't fire. I told my men, "Be happy and show it's only cream." To be strong , we drank some good Trappist beers. So they were laughing and joking when they went to the front... Of course I wasn't in the commando because the authorities, the press...they know my face. It would have been a mistake, even with a disguise. So I was on an adjacent street.

NN:
How many pies were thrown?

Goden:
Four touched Bill Gates in the face. There were 25 pies in all. One of the secrets of the gloupinesque operation is that you don't have to throw the pies. You must put the pies point-blank in the face of the victim. One of the members of the victorious commando is the filmmaker Remy Belvaux ("Man bites Dog"). He unfortunately lost his papers and so the cops revealed his identity.

NN:
What were their feelings just the second after they touched Bill Gates with the pie?

Goden:
The exhilaration of victory. Exquisite pleasure. The gloupinesque operations have a 95% success rate. But each time we are stressed and each time it's the same pleasure.

NN:
How did Bill Gates React?

Goden:
He had a kind of promotional smile that became a kind of smile made of sand...

NN:
When you touch your victim, don't you have the feeling of being powerful? You had pies, but it could have been a knife.

Goden:
Yes, but that is not our problem. We are comical terrorists and the pie is symbolic. The victim is only injured in his self-esteem. We take a lot of care that the pies can't hurt physically. The pastry is soft and full of cream.

NN:
Do you cook the pies?

Goden:
No, we are very lazy. We buy the pies in a shop nearby the place of the crime. This time, the pies were coming from a little shop called Au Petit Pain Frais, chaussee de Haecht.

NN:
Will Bill Gates pursue your commandos?

Goden:
No, it would be catastrophic for him and his reputation.

NN:
If someone gave you money to pie his enemy, would you accept it?

Goden:
We have never been pie mercenaries. But we've had several offers of a good amount of money. For instance, I had an offer to pie Catherine Deneuve in Cannes and also Sharon Stone. I refused. I love Catherine Deneuve and the movies of Jacques Demy; and that year Sharon Stone was in a western I really liked. So I had nothing against her. We are pie pirates. But if we receive money when we pie someone, we are not puritan leftists. We received money once: in the case of [famous French singer and actor] Patrick Bruel. We offered the money to the anarchist Parisian magazine Mordicus. So if anyone wants to give us money we won't misuse it. I could really enjoy life if I could earn much money doing this job! It's a big game and we have fun together. We want to live fast and to laugh as much as we can. We want to transform our lives just like Oscar Wilde wanted to. Everything is awful around us, so lets try to have fun.

NN:
If Bill Gates had come back in a few months in Belgium, would you pie him again?

Goden
We shall see. But we declare war on all the governments of the world, on Tony Blair, on Bill Clinton, on the Pope...When the pope last came to Belgium, if we had a traitor sponsoring us, we'd have pied him. We had a strategy. For us, the Pope is a dangerous serial killer because he is against birth control. On our blacklist you will also find Demi Moore; Tom Cruise and John Travolta, who are both members of the Scientology; Bill Graham... On the other hand, we have more and more sympathisers everywhere. We had thousands of propositions to help us, even abroad. We also have many enemies. But we are like the characters of a cartoon. We are like Laurel & Hardy, Bugs Bunny, The Marx Brothers, the Yippies of May 1968.

Written by Hugues Henry, lifted by Anti-gravity theatre and transcribed to save you advertisements you so desperately don't need.

Pnet,

2005-12-27T11:54:00.000-08:00

I'm impressed that your curiosity brought you this far.
Very little to see here. Just a vague, sparse, lazy attempt at another outlet.
I'll get back to you after the couple of days Dan Holzman professes to need have passed.
Not that i take him seriously of course. I'm amazed at the earnestness of some of the posters.
To question whether Dans serious or not. Take a bottle of wry pills and see me in the morning.
I'm all set up for a reply but part of the pleasure of being so transparently baited is that what little tension there is available can be inhanced by simply letting it hang.
One line that I'm looking forward to is to gently and mock sympathetically point out the error made by dan (he's done it before, its obviously a failing) in confusing me, my personality, with a fistful of vaseline.
more later.
http://www.performers.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=4127

Post rapture advice for sinners. (You know who you are).

2005-11-28T11:24:00.000-08:00

fright2.jpg

2005-11-28T08:36:00.000-08:00

fright2.jpg
Originally uploaded by winsomecowboy.

I'm starting to miss performing on a daily basis. NY would just shut me down. Its probably just a monday thing.
Worked at a charity thing for the local village library held in the church hall over the weekend and the eclectic potpourri of weekend mansion owning New York old moneys and the transplanted NY permanents and the New england 3 century local valley-owners and their 7 generations of extended family remnants were all there.
I indulged myself and made them all apprehensive and distrusting to begin with then redeemed myself through comic disfunction. (and a little skill)

Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality

2005-11-25T06:25:00.000-08:00

Sorry, I'm weaning myself. There will be at most one political post per week. (unless its diabolically comic)

As you rip holes out of that once noble turkey

2005-11-23T20:58:00.000-08:00

You must ask yourself, ' Could I not help a chicken find a better life?'

Thanksgiving at the whitehouse

2005-11-23T20:22:00.000-08:00

Oh it's very very funny

Epileptic advantages

2005-11-21T07:21:00.000-08:00

I see bunnies. They are my kind of bunnies and I see them shortly before my seizures.

I am the wrongest

2005-11-21T07:17:00.000-08:00

My whole life is an unrelenting parade of mistake.
My mother misunderstood a rather important conversation with a girlfriend concerning fertile and unfertile periods of the menstrual cycle and so I was born.
My entire childhood I believed that anyone who died violently on TV or the movies was a volunteer from prison who was already condemned.
I spent many years convinced that life was a vast conspiracy designed to cheat, deny and humiliate me.
If my parents put me on a carousel or any ride that moved too quickly for a normal kid to get off of once underway I would believe they had probably isolated me so that they could abandon me and go and live in another country. I used to injure myself vaulting off painted ponies at speed.
My parents gave me candy floss which I refused to eat because I thought it was a sick joke to try and get me to eat the inside of a pillow.
If told something was dangerous or fatal I would systematically test it out in case it was part of the humiliating conspiracy. This led to forks being inserted into electrical outlets and many experiments with matches and inflamable liquids.
For some reason I also believed that new sneakers gave you Olympian abilities and would injure myself every time I got a new pair trying to leap over impossible obstacles.
My adult life I learnt to condense all that was mistaken misguided and wrong into what could loosely be called a lifestyle.
I start every day getting up out of the wrong side of the bed and almost everything I do sooner or later results in a dramatic head injury.
I believe my self pity might be my only redeeming feature but experience tells me that eventually this faith too might dissolve into the viscous slurry that is my self deceit.
I am prepared to admit in this public forum that my entire existance is a pale disfunctional sham and merely ask that you all spare me none of the scorn or insult or vitriol I so richly deserve.
Just take care not to give me any good ammunition as i can be particularily vicious when cornered and these periods of humility fade in and out.

mmm spam

2005-11-01T06:26:00.000-08:00

Well i have a great deal more time on my hands after having finished my season and heading into winter. Bought my ski season pass yesterday and looking forward to designing this seasons stilt-ski's (of which i will obviously film footage of)
Just bought a new laptop also.
Other than that it's gym, writing pieces for the skinny german juggle boy, trying my hand at creating 3 to 5 min comic pieces for
the dark but funny puppetry of Mr Zimmerman and flirting with a docomaker who like all independent film people, may or may not produce the funds needed for the project.
Also reinvesting energies into looking at the comfortable and lucrative ren faire market that has fueled me this season as with my paperwork going through I am temporarily unable to continue my existance as a successful international unhappy clown/ disgruntled panto.
Creating a studio for rehearsal of a shadow stage piece for 'lurk'.
And speculatively consulting for someone who owns Gizmo.com and is unsure if they want to use it as a portal or compete with Gizmodo/engadget and a host of others or, as is my suggestion, reposition the whole Gizmo franchise towards a more singular robotic focus. (robots being now what cellphones were in the early eighties.
I've said enough, I have work to do.
I went to a reading the other day, The countryside where I live here in connecticut is salted with big name authors and publishers and ex-NY times and Times people so it's always interesting to blurt out my own lightweight travel stuff in their midst.
Heres what I read.

Vegas is the place least likely to find an Amish in the world and so I thought I’d go there and look for one and though I searched extensively through the bars and Casinos my entire mission was fruitless.
There were 128 slot machines between the plane and the baggage retrieval, so in theory, you could lose all your money by the time you got to your luggage, left only to catch your return flight.
I had no time for feckless folly, I was on a mission, I was in Las Vegas to perform at a gig for a major tobacco company, to dive headlong into the moral vacuum and paddle about the evil, taking sidelong glances at the depravity, and recording what I could, so that my life, at most, could serve as a warning to others.
The airport at Vegas is right in the center of town (no time to waste, holidays in haste)
I caught a $5 taxi to the MGM Grand, which is one of the gargantuan hotels in the area, with casino, shopping center and around 5000 rooms. The hotel is so vast that the in-house prostitutes charge by the mile rather than the hour.
I was sailing blind into this job, having flown myself across America following a 14 day engagement in Chicago on the strength of a couple of e-mails and phone calls, (in the last, I was told with less than 24 hours notice that the theme was middle eastern.)

On arrival, my first cause for misgivings were-- There was no reservation in my or anything approaching my name. I paid myself.

My second cause for misgivings --I had been told that I was working in a club from 8 till 9.
I waited in my room in a pensive administrative vacuum all day.
I received a call from front desk for assistance in a booking 15 mins before my scheduled show time.

Finally, in validation of my misgivings-- the people I confronted at the front desk, I quickly realized, would have collective difficulties negotiating a pedestrian crossing, let alone a gig.
A gaggle of seemingly stunned, Goth gypsies, a sort of spinal tap meets the Adams family meets one flew over the cuckoo’s nest visual scenario.
I began slipping into shock...
Stumbling numbly back to room 18330 to retrieve my stilts and costume, I was accompanied by one vocally hyperactive member of their group, a seemingly endless cascade of gobbledygook issuing in the lift, in the corridor, in the corridor again, in the lift again. I presumed this individual on some deep level had recognized that the pain of reality could be kept at bay via constant vocalization. Or he may have simply been mentally ill.

My impression was darkening.

Back to the lobby then out to the car park where my equipment and I were stuffed into a rare cavity inside an old V dub van that then had to be push started, I noticed that it had no brakes apart from the hand brake.
I still knew nothing, where we were going, when I was performing, how long I was working. I was far from chipper. I asked from the back of the van,
“Could someone please tell me what’s going on?” there followed an eerie silence, I followed up, snarling
“Alternatively you could pretend I don’t fucken exist.”
“Wow--That’s harsh.” mumbled a particularly skeletal Goth hybrid with mystical patterns etched on his cheeks.
Apart from that, silence and darkness for 10 minutes as I fumed, folded into some lightless crevasse in a V-dub full of lost children.

We pulled up and there in the twilight was a perfectly ordinary nightclub.
Grabbing my gear I went in while the others comprehended the car park.

This was the first of three gigs I had for Camel cigarettes.

This benevolent multinational that has given some of us raging additions masking as a lifestyle choice and to the greater public has gifted annoying elderly wheezing in the back of public transport, had looked out over its shrinking domain until it found a source of indifference to health that mirrored its own.
The liquor industry.
And so, with guile reminiscent of Stalin on a heavy-handed day, it had fashioned a scheme wherein a tour was organized with Dj, s, dancing girls and free bar and big name rock acts This was targeted at bar staff. Those minuscule few bar staff, whose work environments already hung heavy with a cancerous vaporous broth, who themselves didn’t smoke, were now invited to an open-bar with scanty cigarette girls brimming with three choices of camel cigarettes.

I walked into the bar staff meeting, the boss was just explaining that there would be two small monkeys walking round on leashes, one was cute and one a little grumpy but not to worry as they’d both had their teeth pulled.
I took a seat.
There were cigarette girls with sparkly high cut Vegas costumes and false eyelashes that could paint an aircraft hangar with half a bat.
There were Turkish belly dancing women, all chewing gum and all on the unkind side of attractive.
There were the bar staff, ironic really that on the only night of the year where bar staff get treated, these guys had to work.
I looked at them and they looked at me and the world shrugged and the boss went on about how this night was strictly no sex, no drugs for the staff, he was sorry about that but that’s the policy, any sex, any drugs they’d be fired.
He then wiped his nose and sniffed rapidly I found his hypocrisy comforting.

At this point my new friends walked in, the morphing gypsy vampiress followed by the generic buff long haired Adonis fire-guy with smirk and leather followed by the hyperactive masseuse followed by an oriental cowboy followed by the anemic henna tattooist followed by a dominatrix wearing token gipsyisms followed by an ingratiating Buddha Goth.
The boss glanced up briefly and continued, “This is an open bar and some of these people are going to hit it pretty hard, there will be security and if you start getting pawed or assaulted let them know and they’ll deal with it,” he then put on his best smile and said, “But most of all remember to have a good time.”
It reminded me of the famous military quotation
“Come-on chaps, they couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist...” The meeting was over.

I quickly double-checked to see if I was having a good time yet.

I looked for a leader amongst the group I’d arrived with and settled for the most comfortably vague one, the ingratiating Buddha Goth.

I tried to convey to him that, while I was mindful of the fact that he had just spent hours careening in a virtually brakeless vehicle from LA to Vegas, in the company of what with grace could be called other multi-celled objects. I had spent the day traveling across the country at my own expense to get to this gig and my mood, at present gangrenous, was not likely to improve until some measure of confidence could be given me that this was actually a job with a beginning, an end and a fee and not some demented projection of my own as a career masochist.
There was a short pause, during which I had a vivid mental picture of this individual and a solitary plankton fighting it out on mastermind.
Finally he spoke, he said “Far out.”
I realized with startling clarity that it couldn’t get any worse.
The morphing vampiress gypsy was close at hand and the ingratiating Buddha Goth called her over. “Do you have his money?” he asked.
I felt so cheap.
She reached under the folds of her gypsy lace and gave me an envelope.
The contents were the relief I’d been seeking, I thanked them and went to get ready.
I still felt cheap but the difference between cheap and a complete loss is what’s made me what I am.
I went to the boss and introduced myself and got permission to focus on the earlier part of the night with its measure of semi-coherence as opposed to later on when brain stems would dictate.
The boss thought I was funny because I wore a t-shirt that read “can’t sleep, clowns will eat me” in repetitive and diminishing type. He cut me some slack.

The venue had three main areas, each enhanced with life-sized glow in the dark plastic camels. There were screens that silhouetted the back lit belly dancers, there was a massage tent where the hyperactive masseuse would basically have an oiled seizure on top of prone off duty barmaids. There was a guy with a couple of hookahs that contained various tobaccos; there was a fire show and myself.
I thought that the evening had the potential to be a little under realized but then relaxed as the punters started coming in.
They were corporate event virgins, you could tell because they all acted cool and just nibbled a little and drank a little for the first hour and a half.
They were dead giveaways, they acted like they thought experienced people acted at these events little knowing that any seasoned corporate has a trained nurse to induce vomiting every twenty minutes and that unless you chain some work mate or competitor to a chair and sexually assault then flay them there is little chance of you embarrassing yourself in a room full of people who make fortunes by differences in decimal points and who are duty bound to exploit for greeds sake, anything offered them for nothing.

I roved about ignoring people and entertaining myself which is my bizarre specialty and it was all comfortably ordinary when my flabber was well and truly ghasted by the sight of the monkeys on leashes.
The monkeys were about the size of a bread box funnily enough and were connected to two obese Americans wearing fez hats and caftan like arrangements.
I couldn’t tell which one was cute and which one was grumpy.

Its 1am, you happen to be a monkey, you happen to be in a nightclub next to speakers that are pumping dub music strong enough to dislodge bananas off trees back where you used to live, you’re a monkey whose idea of a good night is a quick hump and a comfortable branch who is instead strobed and lazor lighted to distraction, yanked round by a lead, patted by inebriates and to top it off your masters have made you a chain smoker. Both monkeys had cigarettes clutched in their cute primate hands and were sucking on them like people do next to greyhound buses when they stop.
Excessively over stimulated drug addicted tooth pulled monkeys - a cruel metaphor if ever I’m short.
(As a self pitiful aside I’d like to say that sometimes I think that it takes scenes of cumulative sadness on this scale to allow me even a chance of comparative self-esteem.)
I was reminded that depravity is often inane, ritual quantifies chaos and that sorrow is the winter blanket of my soul.
I was comforted by the knowledge that under the right circumstances shallow people concepts and in this case even cities can be parsed, computed, digested, understood, fully experienced in short order and that I had been in Vegas for less than half a day and felt already I had experienced it’s essence.
I’ve traveled extensively and I would say Vegas is easily the shallowest city in the world. Unless disneyland counts.
I called it a night, had a stiff night cap, taxied back to my hotel and wondered what tomorrow would bring as I traveled to LA and spent more time with my new performing associates.
--------------------------

Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

2005-09-08T08:13:00.000-07:00

that is all

lethal ineptitude ll

2005-09-08T07:58:00.000-07:00

irst By the Floods, Then By Martial Law Trapped in New Orleans
www.counterpunch.org/brad...62005.html
By LARRY BRADSHAW and LORRIE BETH SLONSKY

LARRY BRADSHAW and LORRIE BETH SLONSKY are emergency medical services
(EMS) workers from San Francisco and contributors to Socialist Worker.
They were attending an EMS conference in New Orleans when Hurricane
Katrina struck. They spent most of the next week trapped by the
flooding--and the martial law cordon around the city.

Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreens
store at the corner of Royal and Iberville Streets in the city's
historic French Quarter remained locked. The dairy display case was
clearly visible through the widows. It was now 48 hours without
electricity, running water, plumbing, and the milk, yogurt, and cheeses
were beginning to spoil in the 90-degree heat.

The owners and managers had locked up the food, water, pampers and
prescriptions, and fled the city. Outside Walgreens' windows, residents
and tourists grew increasingly thirsty and hungry. The much-promised
federal, state and local aid never materialized, and the windows at
Walgreens gave way to the looters.

There was an alternative. The cops could have broken one small window
and distributed the nuts, fruit juices and bottled water in an
organized and systematic manner. But they did not. Instead, they spent
hours playing cat and mouse, temporarily chasing away the looters.

We were finally airlifted out of New Orleans two days ago and arrived
home on Saturday. We have yet to see any of the TV coverage or look at
a newspaper. We are willing to guess that there were no video images or
front-page pictures of European or affluent white tourists looting the
Walgreens in the French Quarter.

We also suspect the media will have been inundated with "hero" images
of the National Guard, the troops and police struggling to help the
"victims" of the hurricane. What you will not see, but what we
witnessed, were the real heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief
effort: the working class of New Orleans.

The maintenance workers who used a forklift to carry the sick and
disabled. The engineers who rigged, nurtured and kept the generators
running. The electricians who improvised thick extension cords
stretching over blocks to share the little electricity we had in order
to free cars stuck on rooftop parking lots. Nurses who took over for
mechanical ventilators and spent many hours on end manually forcing air
into the lungs of unconscious patients to keep them alive. Doormen who
rescued folks stuck in elevators. Refinery workers who broke into boat
yards, "stealing" boats to rescue their neighbors clinging to their
roofs in flood waters. Mechanics who helped hotwire any car that could
be found to ferry people out of the city. And the food service workers
who scoured the commercial kitchens, improvising communal meals for
hundreds of those stranded.

Most of these workers had lost their homes and had not heard from
members of their families. Yet they stayed and provided the only
infrastructure for the 20 percent of New Orleans that was not under
water.

* * *

ON DAY Two, there were approximately 500 of us left in the hotels in
the French Quarter. We were a mix of foreign tourists, conference
attendees like ourselves and locals who had checked into hotels for
safety and shelter from Katrina.

Some of us had cell phone contact with family and friends outside of
New Orleans. We were repeatedly told that all sorts of resources,
including the National Guard and scores of buses, were pouring into the
city. The buses and the other resources must have been invisible,
because none of us had seen them.

We decided we had to save ourselves. So we pooled our money and came up
with $25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the city. Those
who didn't have the requisite $45 each were subsidized by those who did
have extra money.

We waited for 48 hours for the buses, spending the last 12 hours
standing outside, sharing the limited water, food and clothes we had.
We created a priority boarding area for the sick, elderly and newborn
babies. We waited late into the night for the "imminent" arrival of the
buses. The buses never arrived. We later learned that the minute they
arrived at the city limits, they were commandeered by the military.

By Day Four, our hotels had run out of fuel and water. Sanitation was
dangerously bad. As the desperation and despair increased, street crime
as well as water levels began to rise. The hotels turned us out and
locked their doors, telling us that "officials" had told us to report
to the convention center to wait for more buses. As we entered the
center of the city, we finally encountered the National Guard.

The guard members told us we wouldn't be allowed into the Superdome, as
the city's primary shelter had descended into a humanitarian and health
hellhole. They further told us that the city's only other shelter--the
convention center--was also descending into chaos and squalor, and that
the police weren't allowing anyone else in.

Quite naturally, we asked, "If we can't go to the only two shelters in
the city, what was our alternative?" The guards told us that this was
our problem--and no, they didn't have extra water to give to us. This
would be the start of our numerous encounters with callous and hostile
"law enforcement."

* * *

WE WALKED to the police command center at Harrah's on Canal Street and
were told the same thing--that we were on our own, and no, they didn't
have water to give us. We now numbered several hundred.

We held a mass meeting to decide a course of action. We agreed to camp
outside the police command post. We would be plainly visible to the
media and constitute a highly visible embarrassment to city officials.
The police told us that we couldn't stay. Regardless, we began to
settle in and set up camp.

In short order, the police commander came across the street to address
our group. He told us he had a solution: we should walk to the
Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge to
the south side of the Mississippi, where the police had buses lined up
to take us out of the city.

The crowd cheered and began to move. We called everyone back and
explained to the commander that there had been lots of misinformation,
so was he sure that there were buses waiting for us. The commander
turned to the crowd and stated emphatically, "I swear to you that the
buses are there."

We organized ourselves, and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with
great excitement and hope. As we marched past the convention center,
many locals saw our determined and optimistic group, and asked where we
were headed. We told them about the great news.

Families immediately grabbed their few belongings, and quickly, our
numbers doubled and then doubled again. Babies in strollers now joined
us, as did people using crutches, elderly clasping walkers and other
people in wheelchairs. We marched the two to three miles to the freeway
and up the steep incline to the bridge. It now began to pour down rain,
but it didn't dampen our enthusiasm.

As we approached the bridge, armed sheriffs formed a line across the
foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began
firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in
various directions.

As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and
managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of
our conversation with the police commander and the commander's
assurances. The sheriffs informed us that there were no buses waiting.
The commander had lied to us to get us to move.

We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as
there was little traffic on the six-lane highway. They responded that
the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans, and there would be
no Superdomes in their city. These were code words for: if you are poor
and Black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River, and you are not
getting out of New Orleans.

* * *

OUR SMALL group retreated back down Highway 90 to seek shelter from the
rain under an overpass. We debated our options and, in the end, decided
to build an encampment in the middle of the Ponchartrain Expressway--on
the center divide, between the O'Keefe and Tchoupitoulas exits. We
reasoned that we would be visible to everyone, we would have some
security being on an elevated freeway, and we could wait and watch for
the arrival of the yet-to-be-seen buses.

All day long, we saw other families, individuals and groups make the
same trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be
turned away--some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no,
others verbally berated and humiliated. Thousands of New Orleaners were
prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the city on foot.

Meanwhile, the only two city shelters sank further into squalor and
disrepair. The only way across the bridge was by vehicle. We saw
workers stealing trucks, buses, moving vans, semi-trucks and any car
that could be hotwired. All were packed with people trying to escape
the misery that New Orleans had become.

Our little encampment began to blossom. Someone stole a water delivery
truck and brought it up to us. Let's hear it for looting! A mile or so
down the freeway, an Army truck lost a couple of pallets of C-rations
on a tight turn. We ferried the food back to our camp in shopping
carts.

Now--secure with these two necessities, food and water--cooperation,
community and creativity flowered. We organized a clean-up and hung
garbage bags from the rebar poles. We made beds from wood pallets and
cardboard. We designated a storm drain as the bathroom, and the kids
built an elaborate enclosure for privacy out of plastic, broken
umbrellas and other scraps. We even organized a food-recycling system
where individuals could swap out parts of C-rations (applesauce for
babies and candies for kids!).

This was something we saw repeatedly in the aftermath of Katrina. When
individuals had to fight to find food or water, it meant looking out
for yourself. You had to do whatever it took to find water for your
kids or food for your parents. But when these basic needs were met,
people began to look out for each other, working together and
constructing a community.

If the relief organizations had saturated the city with food and water
in the first two or three days, the desperation, frustration and
ugliness would not have set in.

Flush with the necessities, we offered food and water to passing
families and individuals. Many decided to stay and join us. Our
encampment grew to 80 or 90 people.

From a woman with a battery-powered radio, we learned that the media
was talking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief and
news organizations saw us on their way into the city. Officials were
being asked what they were going to do about all those families living
up on the freeway. The officials responded that they were going to take
care of us. Some of us got a sinking feeling. "Taking care of us" had
an ominous tone to it.

Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking city) was
accurate. Just as dusk set in, a sheriff showed up, jumped out of his
patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces and screamed, "Get off the
fucking freeway." A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its
blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff
loaded up his truck with our food and water.

Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law
enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated into
groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of "victims," they saw
"mob" or "riot." We felt safety in numbers. Our "we must stay together"
attitude was impossible because the agencies would force us into small
atomized groups.

In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and destroyed, we
scattered once again. Reduced to a small group of eight people, in the
dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on
Cilo Street. We were hiding from possible criminal elements, but
equally and definitely, we were hiding from the police and sheriffs
with their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies.

The next day, our group of eight walked most of the day, made contact
with the New Orleans Fire Department and were eventually airlifted out
by an urban search-and-rescue team.

We were dropped off near the airport and managed to catch a ride with
the National Guard. The two young guardsmen apologized for the limited
response of the Louisiana guards. They explained that a large section
of their unit was in Iraq and that meant they were shorthanded and were
unable to complete all the tasks they were assigned.

* * *

WE ARRIVED at the airport on the day a massive airlift had begun. The
airport had become another Superdome. We eight were caught in a press
of humanity as flights were delayed for several hours while George Bush
landed briefly at the airport for a photo op. After being evacuated on
a Coast Guard cargo plane, we arrived in San Antonio, Texas.

There, the humiliation and dehumanization of the official relief effort
continued. We were placed on buses and driven to a large field where we
were forced to sit for hours and hours. Some of the buses didn't have
air conditioners. In the dark, hundreds of us were forced to share two
filthy overflowing porta-potties. Those who managed to make it out with
any possessions (often a few belongings in tattered plastic bags) were
subjected to two different dog-sniffing searches.

Most of us had not eaten all day because our C-rations had been
confiscated at the airport--because the rations set off the metal
detectors. Yet no food had been provided to the men, women, children,
elderly and disabled, as we sat for hours waiting to be "medically
screened" to make sure we weren't carrying any communicable diseases.

This official treatment was in sharp contrast to the warm, heartfelt
reception given to us by ordinary Texans. We saw one airline worker
give her shoes to someone who was barefoot. Strangers on the street
offered us money and toiletries with words of welcome.

Throughout, the official relief effort was callous, inept and racist.
There was more suffering than need be. Lives were lost that did not
need to be lost

lethal ineptitude

2005-09-08T07:57:00.000-07:00

September 7, 2005
Women were Being Raped, Babies were Being Killed, Alligators were Eating People, But Where the Hell was the National Guard?
How We Survived the Flood

By CHARMAINE NEVILLE

This is a transcription of an interview Charmaine Neville, of New Orleans's legendary Neville family, gave to local media outlets on Monday, September 5.

I was in my house when everything first started. When the hurricane came, it blew all the left side of my house off, and the water was coming in my house in torrents.

I had my neighbor, an elderly man, and myself, in the house with our dogs and cats, and we were trying to stay out of the water. But the water was coming in too fast. So we ended up having to leave the house.

We left the house and we went up on the roof of a school. I took a crowbar and I burst the door on the roof of the school to help people on the roof.

Later on we found a flat boat, and we went around the neighborhood in a flat boat getting people out of their houses and bringing them to the school.

We found all the food that we could and we cooked and we fed people. But then, things started getting really bad.

By the second day, the people that were there, that we were feeding and everything, we had no more food and no water. We had nothing, and other people were coming in our neighborhood. We were watching the helicopters going across the bridge and airlift other people out, but they would hover over us and tell us "Hi!" and that would be all. They wouldn't drop us any food or any water, or nothing.

Alligators were eating people. They had all kinds of stuff in the water. They had babies floating in the water.

We had to walk over hundreds of bodies of dead people. People that we tried to save from the hospices, from the hospitals and from the old-folks homes. I tried to get the police to help us, but I realized they were in the same straits we were. We rescued a lot of police officers in the flat boat from the 5th district police station. The guy who was in the boat, he rescued a lot of them and brought them to different places so they could be saved.

We understood that the police couldn't help us, but we couldn't understand why the National Guard and them couldn't help us, because we kept seeing them but they never would stop and help us.

Finally it got to be too much, I just took all of the people that I could. I had two old women in wheelchairs with no legs, that I rowed them from down there in that nightmare to the French Quarters, and I went back and got more people.

There were groups of us, there were about 24 of us, and we kept going back and forth and rescuing whoever we could get and bringing them to the French Quarter because we heard that there were phones in the French Quarter, and that there wasn't any water. And they were right, there were phones, but we couldn't get through to anyone.

I found some police officers. I told them that a lot of us women had been raped down there by guys, not from the neighborhood where we were, they were helping us to save people. But other men, and they came and they started raping women and they started killing, and I don't know who these people were. I'm not gonna tell you I know, because I don't.

But what I want people to understand is that, if we hadn't been left down there like the animals that they were treating us like, all of those things wouldn't have happened. People are trying to say that we stayed in that city because we wanted to be rioting and we wanted to do this and, we didn't have resources to get out, we had no way to leave.

When they gave the evacuation order, if we could've left, we would have left.

There are still thousands and thousands of people trapped in their homes in the downtown area. When we finally did get into the 9th ward, and not just in my neighborhood, but in other neighborhoods in the 9th ward, there were a lot of people still trapped down there... old people, young people, babies, pregnant women. I mean, nobody's helping them.

And I want people to realize that we did not stay in the city so we could steal and loot and commit crimes. A lot of those young men lost their minds because the helicopters would fly over us and they wouldn't stop. We would make SOS on the flashlights, we'd do everything, and it really did come to a point, where these young men were so frustrated that they did start shooting. They weren't trying to hit the helicopters, they figured maybe they weren't seeing. Maybe if they hear this gunfire they will stop then. But that didn't help us. Nothing like that helped us.

Finally, I got to Canal St. with all of my people I had saved from back there.

I don't want them arresting nobody else. I broke the window in an RTA bus. I never learned how to drive a bus in my life. I got in that bus. I loaded all of those people in wheelchairs and in everything else into that bus, and we drove and we drove and we drove and millions of people was trying to get me to help them to get on the bus, too.

Charmaine Neville is a member of the third generation of New Orleans's legendary Neville musical family. She fronts the Charmaine Neville Band.

another comparison

2005-09-06T15:11:00.000-07:00

the government reaction the last time an American city was destroyed - San Francisco, April 18, 1906.

The earthquake struck at 5:13 AM.
By 7 AM federal troops had reported to the
mayor.

By 8 AM they were patrolling the entire downtown area and searching for survivors.

The second quake struck at 8:14 AM.

By 10:05 AM the USS Chicago was on its way from San Diego to San Francisco; by 10:30 the USS Preble had landed a medical team and set up an emergency hospital.

By 11 AM large parts of the city were on fire; troops continued to arrive throughout the day, evacuating people from the areas threatened by fire to emergency shelters and Golden Gate Park.

St. Mary's hospital was destroyed by the fire at 1 PM, with no loss of life, the staff and patients having already been evacuated across the bay to Oakland.

By 3 PM troops had shot several looters, and dynamited buildings to make a firebreak; by five they had buried dozens of corpses, the morgue and the police pistol range being unable to hold any more.

At 8:40 PM General Funston requested emergency housing - tents and shelters - from the War Department in Washington; all of the tents in the U.S. Army were on their way to San Francisco by 4:55 AM the next morning.

Prisoners were evacuated to Alcatraz, and by April 20 (two days after the earthquake) the USS Chicago had reached San Francisco, where it evacuated 20,000 refugees.

Of course, the technology of the day was fairly primitive, and the U.S. was a much poorer country. No doubt we could move more quickly today.

Source for times and dates
www.sfmuseum.org/hist10/06timeline.html

www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/5/134849/2070

From "whisky Bar"

2005-09-06T08:07:00.000-07:00

Here then, are some of the highlights from last year's relief efforts in Florida:

Gov. Jeb Bush sought federal help Friday while [Hurricane] Charley was still in the Gulf of Mexico. President Bush approved the aid about an hour after the hurricane made landfall.
By Monday afternoon, the cavalry seemed to be in place . . . Cargo planes were shuttling FEMA supplies from a Georgia Air Force base to a staging area in Lakeland, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had shipped 11 truckloads of water and 14 truckloads of ice. The first assistance checks to victims were to be shipped Monday night.

St. Petersberg Times
Unlike Andrew, aid's right on Charley's heels
August 17, 2004

__________________________________
Just weeks after Hurricane Charley tore through Florida, Hurricane Frances aimed for the Sunshine State Saturday morning [September 4, 2004] packing winds of 105 mph and bringing the potential for up to 20 inches of rain.
CNN
Hurricane Frances weakens slightly
September 4, 2004

__________________________________
FEMA has positioned a powerful list of disaster response personnel, equipment and supplies to help those who are displaced or suffer losses after Hurricane Frances continues to move across Florida. The advance preparations include:
FEMA's [national and regional operations centers] are operating around the clock, coordinating the pre-positioning of assets and responding to state requests for assistance.
FEMA has deployed an advanced emergency response team to the Florida State Emergency Operations Center in Tallahassee to facilitate state requests for assistance. In addition, three rapid needs assessment teams have been pre-deployed to Florida.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, at FEMA's request, is coordinating the staging of 100 truckloads of water and 100 truckloads of ice at operational centers in Florida.
A first shipment of 30,000 tarps is en route to Atlanta, Ga., to be pre-staged for delivery to areas affected by Frances once the storm has cleared.
FEMA is working to provider 10 trailers of generators at the request of Florida that will be used to provide power to critical facilities affected by the hurricane . . .
Four urban search and rescue teams are deployed to Florida -- two in Miami and two in Jacksonville. Four teams are on alert.
Two disaster medical assistance teams (DMAT) have been deployed to Florida to support medical facilities and hospitals that are not fully operational following the storm . . .
Five pharmaceutical caches, containing emergency medical supplies, are being pre-positioned, and are currently en route to Atlanta and Tampa.
FEMA's Mobile Emergency Response Services (MERS) communications staff and equipment are available to provide telephone, radio and video links in support of response and recovery efforts . . .
. . . FEMA is working with the General Services Administration to analyze vacancy rates of various safe housing options . . . as part of pre-planning temporary housing strategies for those whose homes are severely damaged or destroyed.
FEMA
Press release on advance
preparations for Hurricane Frances
September 4, 2004

__________________________________
As of noon Monday [two days after Frances made landfall] FEMA and other Federal response agencies have taken the following actions:
About one hundred trucks of water and 280 trucks of ice are present or will arrive in the Jacksonville staging area today.
900,000 Meals-Ready-to-Eat are on site in Jacksonville, ready to be distributed.
Over 7,000 cases of food (e.g., vegetables, fruits, cheese, ham, and turkey) are scheduled to arrive in Winter Haven today.
Disaster medical assistance teams (DMAT) are on the ground and setting up comfort stations. FEMA community relations personnel will coordinate with DMATs to assist victims.
Urban search and rescue teams are completing reconnaissance missions in coordination with state officials.
FEMA is coordinating with the Department of Energy and the state to ensure that necessary fuel supplies can be distributed throughout the state, with a special focus on hospitals and other emergency facilities that are running on generators.
The Army Corps of Engineers will soon begin its efforts to provide tarps to tens of thousands of owners of homes and buildings that have seen damage to their roofs . . .
The Departments of Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, and Defense together have organized 300 medical personnel to be on standby. Medical personnel will begin deployment to Florida tomorrow . . .
White House
Responding to Hurricanes Charley and Frances
September 6, 2004

__________________________________
The Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency . . . is preparing for Hurricane Ivan’s landfall, which could affect multiple states, including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi.
Intense planning and immediate actions are underway today in anticipation of Hurricane Ivan, including:

FEMA personnel remain in Florida working with the victims of the two previous hurricanes. However, some staff has been repositioned to respond to state requests for assistance with Hurricane Ivan.
In addition to the supplies provided for the two earlier hurricanes, the Army Corps of Engineers is standing by with 100 refrigerator trucks of ice and 500 trucks of water to meet immediate needs as part of the Hurricane Ivan response.
FEMA is using every available means to move supplies to where they are most needed, including pre-positioning supplies and using alternative means of transportation such as ships, air transport, and railroad.
FEMA
Hurricane Ivan Preparations Underway
September 14, 2004

__________________________________

As I'm sure you can imagine, this display of the good old American can-do spirit didn't go unnoticed by the people of Florida -- nor did the millions of dollars in disaster relief and damage insurance checks that were cut by various federal agencies with record speed. FEMA officials must have been deeply gratified to see the effect their heroic efforts had in the place where they were most desperately needed -- Bush's poll numbers:

Hurricanes Charley, Frances and Ivan may count as some of the biggest political contributors to President Bush's reelection campaign, according to a poll.
The post-hurricane survey shows Bush surging ahead of his Democratic challenger by 49 to 41 percent -- an about-face from August, when Bush trailed Sen. John Kerry 41-47 percent, Quinnipiac University reported Thursday.

''The ill winds of the hurricanes have blown some political goodwill for President Bush,'' said Clay F. Richards, a pollster for the independent Connecticut university.

''You can't underestimate the impact of a president coming down and promising all this federal aid to people who need it,'' said Richards, noting that Bush toured hurricane-ravaged parts of Florida three times.

"It's like Rudy Giuliani at ground zero on 9/11. The commander in chief is there, on the ground, saying help is on the way.''

So you can see that when the chips are down, and the need is absolutely dire, this administration can still deliver the kind of coordinated emergency response that once made the U.S. government the envy of the world -- just as it cooly and capably protected the Iraqi Oil Ministry from the chaos and looting that trashed every other government office in post-invasion Baghdad. As is usually the case in public service, it's just a matter of having the right incentives.

The comparison between the TLC showered on Florida last year and Bush's initial "What, me worry?" response to this year's disaster no doubt will go unnoticed by the amnesia patients in the corporate media. And since I'm lucky enough to live in a swing state that is also coveted by GOP political strategists, I probably don't have to worry about it either -- that is, as long as any future disasters around my neck of the woods happen in one of those years divisible by two.

But for the citizens of staunch, deep red Mississippi and slightly less staunch but still red Louisiana, the lessons are painfully obvious. If you're going to insist on living in a hurricane alley, then you need to take personal responsibility for your own actions, stop whining about government incompetence, and embrace the free market solution to your problems -- by moving to Florida.

I have a new thing-a-me

2005-08-05T17:40:00.000-07:00

There at the right, down at the side, is a dynamic list of my latest links stored at delicio.us.
This is interesting as it saves me from putting links up as the basis of a post when I'm lazy and have nothing to say.
In a more disquietning way it also means that I now have to actually say something when I post. Something unmagpieistic.
As someone pointed out I do have a lot of material. I will begin plonking down what will eventually amount to a chapter of performance nightmare injury stories tomorrow.
In the mean time check out some of the links down at the right.

It was a dark and stormy night

2005-07-30T14:43:00.000-07:00

Very funny 2005 winners of the worst first lines of a Novel

How to frustrate strangers far away, quick boys moving

2005-07-30T13:37:00.000-07:00

By linking here I help put this guys complaints about a Toronto moving service called 'Quick Boys Moving' ahead of the actual company on google. Read the story then link to me or the original (if you link to me they might go one further down and they can hassle me here in Connecticut. I'm so impowered

killing time

2005-07-29T13:15:00.000-07:00

http://www.bornmagazine.org/projects/whystayup/project.html

Take your time

2005-07-28T18:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.theircircularlife.it/frameset.htm

Brave Czech comics

2005-06-24T03:33:00.000-07:00

This is darkly hilarious in a kind of profoundly and scary way

even more seriously

2005-06-22T08:55:00.000-07:00

Response to intelligent design

On a more serious note

2005-06-17T19:03:00.000-07:00

It's a long read but facinating.
One of Saturns moons is actually an ancient deathstar-like spaceship.
As I say it is a few pages and lot of data (with pics!) but makes a change from the grinding reality.

wonder if this could work

2005-06-17T18:58:00.000-07:00

Imagine the sound of A MILLION WHISTLES BLOWING.
Many of us who read and talk about the evil that exists in high places are afraid. We are paralyzed with fear. We know of the awesome power, or seemingly awesome power, that is arrayed and brought to bear against those who speak out.

With that thin thread of fear, the Powers That Be have kept a sleeping giant tied down.

But that is only because the giant doesn't realize he's a giant. Because the millions, and billions, of individuals comprising the giant haven't yet realized how to act as one. If they ever did -- if even a fraction of them ever did, they could rise up and brush off the threads like so much spider web and utterly crush the tiny band of Liliputians who now seem so powerful.

What if everyone in a position to know anything were to come forth, at one time, and blow the whistle loud and clear?

What if, on one day, tens or hundreds of thousands of people in a "position to know" were to come out and tell the world what they know?

They can't find, murder, torture, fire, demote, threaten, or imprison a million whistleblowers at once!

The only kind of dissent they can crush is isolated dissent. Never before have the sayings been truer that we have nothing to fear but fear itself--and that if we cannot all hang together, we will all hang separately.

I hearby proclaim that July 4 of this year shall be known as National Whistleblowers Day. (July 4 because -- to take back the phraseology from the neocons -- I believe we Americans owe it to the world to spread freedom and destroy evil.)

I call upon everyone in any position to have "the goods" on the leaders, the elites, the powerful institutions; to expose fraud, corruption, theft and propaganda; to come on and spit it out! Secrecy oaths and laws do not matter, especially if the actions being protected are unlawful. Soldiers, officers, operatives--your primary duty (at least in the USA) is to uphold the Constitution, not some bogus "National Security" law.

It doesn't matter how. Come out and show your face, or do it anonymously. Contact the press or put it out on the Web, or on your own blog. The important thing is to lose your fear and get the truth out.

Likewise, I call upon every pro-liberty/truth-activist site and group to launch a "Blow the Whistle This July 4" campaign.

The moment this happens -- the moment Fear is defeated and Truth is released -- the party is OVER for the evil bastards who run this world!

Readers, feel free to copy this message to any bulletin board, blog, e-mail group or other forum!

The least you could do is purchase a whistle as fashion and political statement

Part of the cure

2005-06-07T18:47:00.000-07:00

I want this to be copied and put somewhere else by at the very least the 2 or 3 people who visit this blog so that I, and them, can be part of an attempt at cleansing and redignifying a country who's individuals I have found to be uncommonly friendly and generous but who's representitives are venal, ugly and murderous.

Bring It Down. Now.
by David Michael Green

The Downing Street Memo is the gift that just keeps on giving. And well it should. It is the smoking gun which proves that the gravest possible crime was committed by the Bush administration, and among its victims were the American people.
I am more hopeful about American politics than I have been in a long time, though still cautious. For nearly five years now, the Bush administration has gotten away with murder - literally and figuratively - with seemingly immutable impunity, always defying the laws of political gravity, at least as they are known in this universe. So I've come to be tentative and rather pessimistic about the possibilities of ending this national nightmare of reaction, thievery and militarism, and bringing these criminals to justice.

But Downing Street seems to have legs, and I feel a critical mass building now. It is different this time, in part, because this is the first true insider smoking gun, set down in black and white. But it is also different, in part, because the context has changed. Unlike previous revelations, from the Clarke or O'Neill (Suskind) books, for example, the evidence this time comes against the background of growing discontent at home with the disaster of Iraq, and the diminished credibility of a president and the movement of regressive politics he leads.

Generally content or frightened people will forgive a lot, sometimes even murderous lies of this magnitude. But angry, deceived people will not. Bush has built himself a credibility gap of which Lyndon Johnson could be proud, which probably accounts more than anything for his inability to sell the bundle of Social Security deceits he's been peddling. He said he was going to get Osama 'dead or alive'. He didn't. He said his tax scheme would revive the economy. It didn't. He said it wouldn't add to the national debt. Boy, did it.

He and his minions said Iraq was a necessary war, in response to an urgent threat, and that American 'liberators' would be greeted with flowers and chocolate. None of that came true, of course, and now the public no longer supports George and Dick's Excellent Adventure in the Cradle of Civilization. Fifty-seven percent of Americans perceive the war as going badly. Only forty percent think that it's been worth it to remove Saddam from power given the costs in troops and dollars. And only thirty-eight percent approve of how Bush is handling the war.

Moreover, Iraq echoes the tragedy of Vietnam in every salient way, from the lies going in, to the 'everything's just fine' detachment of the political class, the international opprobrium, the inability to effectively fight counter-insurgency warfare, and the lack of any sort of remotely appealing exit scenario. And on the Nam trajectory, it feels like we are at 1970 or so in terms of public disenchantment. (In part, we should note, that is precisely because of the lessons learned from that war, which produced a healthy increase in political skepticism among the American public.) But in Vietnam, the Tet Offensive had already occurred by 1970, and so, for many years, had the draft. Imagine what will happen to already low and falling support for the Iraq debacle if in the coming months there is a single, highly demoralizing reversal for the US military in Iraq, a la Tet, or if a starved military is forced to reinstitute the draft.

This is the context in which the damning evidence of the Downing Street Memo arrives, and it is part of the explanation for why the Bush administration may now finally find itself in the deep trouble it so richly deserves.

The Memo itself lays out in clear text the game of deceit played by the Bush and Blair gangs in the run-up to the Iraq War. Among its highlights, the DSM confirms that the war had been decided upon well before Congressional or UN Security Council action, and before weapons inspectors were inserted and then removed because of the 'urgency' of Iraq's threat (of course, the real urgency and real threat was that the absence of WMD would kill Bush's pretext for war). The Memo then goes on to show, most significantly, that the war planners knew their case was "thin", so they distorted - "fixed" - the intelligence and facts in order to market the war. (For a more complete discussion of the Memo itself and the wholesale failures of the mainstream media to treat this earth-shattering story with anything approaching the coverage it deserves, see www.commondreams.org/view...3-20.htm.)

Eighty-nine members of the House sent a letter to the president asking for clarification of the ominous implications of the Memo, and White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan soon began getting questions about it. It will hardly surprise attentive readers that his response to these questions was smug, condescending, and maximally disingenuous. Without addressing the content or implications of the Memo (and, most absurdly of all, while claiming not to have read it), McClellan refers us to the president's statements of the time, which he says provide a clear record of Bush's honest and very public diplomacy on the Iraq issue. It turns out, however, that if one examines that record just as McClellan suggests, one finds anything and everything but honesty from Bush and his team. Instead, precisely as the DSM prescribes, we were given a boatload of knowing lies from the administration, often in the most visible of fora, like the State of the Union address (see www.commondreams.org/view...9-30.htm).

Since these initial developments, much has happened in just a short time. First, knowledge of the Memo's existence is becoming more widespread. As of this moment, I doubt more than one percent of Americans are aware of the story, but that number is increasing rapidly, especially through the alternative media. More and more articles written on a variety of subjects make reference to it, even in passing, and it is flying across email networks with accelerating rapidity. Google "Downing Street Memo" and about 267,000 hits are returned at present, with that number rising fast. The story feels at this moment like a virus about to kick into the exponential phase of its growth curve, or a pregnant cloud about to burst showers over the parched land.

The mainstream media is addressing the DSM, but still only in bits, and - it would appear - only reluctantly. No doubt the experiences of CBS and Newsweek have been precisely as intimidating as the White House intended them to be, and no doubt fears of lost profits prove even more sobering. Just the same, there is movement, and some of it has been forced by us. Two weeks too late, for example, the New York Times finally ran a brief single-column story. Of course, they buried it on page 10, and they gave the story the wrong emphasis.

Its first paragraph reads "More than two weeks after its publication in London, a previously secret British government memorandum that reported in July 2002 that President Bush had decided to 'remove Saddam, through military action' is still creating a stir among administration critics. They are portraying it as evidence that Mr. Bush was intent on war with Iraq earlier than the White House has acknowledged." The article goes on to develop this theme of timing, which is by far the lesser of the two main deceits proven by the DSM. Almost no mention is made in the article of the much more egregious crime of lying about the necessity of the invasion for American security needs, and willfully constructing an entire campaign of disinformation to market the war.

The Times also felt the pressure of its readership on this issue to such an extent that the new Public Editor, Byron Calame, was compelled to publish an online response to the "flood" of angry email from readers expressing disappointment and worse at America's so-called newspaper of record. Mr. Calame writes "My checks find no basis for Ms. Lowe's [a sample incensed correspondent] concern about censorship or undue outside pressures. Rather, it appears that key editors simply were slow to recognize that the minutes of a high-powered meeting on a life-and-death issue - their authenticity undisputed - probably needed to be assessed in some fashion for readers. Even if the editors decided it was old news that Mr. Bush had decided in July 2002 to attack Iraq or that the minutes didn't provide solid evidence that the administration was manipulating intelligence, I think Times readers deserved to know that earlier than today's article [Calame is referring here to the article discussed in the previous paragraph]."

Again, this goes to the lesser issue raised by the DSM, but Calame then interviews Phil Taubman, the NYT Washington Bureau Chief, who addresses the more salient question of the manipulation of intelligence to sell the war. Says Taubman: "It is mighty suggestive that Lord Dearlove, the chief of MI6, came home with the impression, or interpretation, that 'the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.' However, that's several steps removed from evidence that such was the case. The minutes did not say that Mr. Tenet had told that to Lord Dearlove or that Lord Dearlove had seen specific examples of that. The minutes, in my estimation, were not a smoking gun that proved that Bush, Tenet and others were distorting intelligence to support the case for war."

There are two huge problems with this alibi for the Times' obscene failure. First, by any reasonable standard, the Memo absolutely does provide such 'evidence' that the facts were being fixed. It says so itself. And, remember that it is an internal British government document, leaked to the public. As such, and since it was never intended to see the light of day, there would be no reason for it to be dishonest or distorted for the benefit of its original readers. Remember also that Tony Blair has in fact commented briefly on the Memo, but never denied its veracity in any fashion. Recall that a member or former member of the Bush team who was privy to these discussions has confirmed, off the record, the accuracy of the Memo. And remember that the Memo's blueprint fits precisely with what are now established facts from the period, namely, that the Bush people told lie after whopping lie about Iraq's WMD capabilities, and did so knowingly. All told, this amounts to an extremely powerful case, one which would certainly prove highly persuasive in a criminal case, where the standards of proof are far higher than they are for a public's evaluation of their political leaders in a democracy.

But, even if this extremely persuasive evidence were not on the table, the second problem with the Times' lame excuse is that unassailable evidence of a crime (do we ever have that?) is hardly necessary for publication of a news story, anyhow. We don't 'know' yet whether Tom DeLay is guilty of the accusations which have been made against him, but those accusations are themselves highly newsworthy, and have been treated, appropriately, as such. We don't yet 'know' definitively whether John Bolton is a 'kiss up, kick down' sort of fellow, but the fact that there is some evidence suggesting that might be the case deserves, and got, plenty of media coverage. And I sure don't remember a lot of media hesitation over Whitewater or Monicagate. Me, I'm just one guy out here in the hinterlands, but where I come from, very powerful evidence of a president lying to sell a war - evidence which has not been disputed, evidence which has been independently corroborated in multiple ways, and evidence which has caused deep concern among a large portion of Congress - well, that's worthy of a wee bit more coverage than we've seen to date. Indeed, apart from 9/11, what story of the last decade is bigger than this?

The arguments proffered by the Times for its poor coverage of the DSM render this news blackout and associated coverup distortions looking very much like a case of disingenuousness of which the White House would be proud. Together, they would constitute a crime on top of a crime, but for the fact that it is not, alas, the first episode in this ugly story. By its own (very late) admission, the Times betrayed its responsibility to the American public during the run-up to the war - precisely the period described in the Memo - by failing to question the 'evidence' and claims offered by the administration for the necessity of going to war, serving instead as a virtual government stenographer. That makes the current fiasco - at best - a perfect trifecta of botched journalism from America's paper of record. But it also makes that 'at best' interpretation seem increasingly implausible. Far more likely with such a series of failings, all in the same direction of massively favoring the administration, is that the Times is purposely abdicating its duty as a government watchdog. Whether that is because of cowardice, profits, both, or some other explanation is as yet unclear.

My, how far we've traveled. In this week full of Watergate reminiscences, the irony of our present condition could not be more complete. Three decades ago, two cub reporters with the backing of a great patriotic paper struggled to uncover, bit by painstaking bit, information which saved the republic from a highjacking. Today, the story is out there in plain sight, and yet the no-longer-remotely-great journalistic organs not only fail to present it, they conspire to cover it up, adding their own special contribution to the current unraveling of constitutional government. Increasing numbers of Americans are coming to realize that learning the truth about their country requires going to foreign sources like the BBC, or to alternative electronic media. Fortunately, however, American journalism still exhibits a pulse in a few parts of the country. Most significant so far has been a stunning cri de coeur out of Minneapolis, deep within America's heartland and hardly a Havana, Falluja or even Berkeley. In a devastating Memorial ('Memo'rial?) Day editorial, the Star Tribune called the president what he is, a liar who has committed the gravest sin any commander-in-chief ever could, "spending [American soldiers'] blood in an unnecessary war based on contrived concerns about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction".

Wow. One can only imagine the shivers running down the spines of Rove, Bush, Cheney and the rest as they read those words and consider the (very mainstream) source. Already unpopular and no longer trusted, the Memo has the capacity to devastate if not destroy this White House, and potentially even to sentence its occupants to financial ruin and long prison terms. (If this were to get any sweeter, more deserved, or more ironic, those jail cells would turn out to be in The Hague, rather than Leavenworth. Nobody pinch me yet, please, this is too good.)

Indeed, the ironies which may ensue from this point forward are exquisite to contemplate. Those who have recklessly dismantled American democracy over the last two decades in a naked pursuit of power may well in turn become victims of several of the destructive precedents they themselves have established.

For starters, consider Karl Rove's dilemma right now. He is in precisely the position he has long loved to place his opponents (such as Democratic members of Congress over the Iraq war vote just before the elections of 2002, to choose just one example). If he says nothing about the DSM, he risks it continuing to proliferate exponentially, with more and more mainstream, heartland, media hurling devastating and unanswered body blows at the Bush administration, until ultimately a tidal wave of rage crests over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But if he addresses it head on, he risks making tens of millions of Americans aware of something they presently are not, with most of them likely to then see the plain message of this evidence for exactly what it is.

Hobson's choice or not, at the rate things are progressing, the White House will have to respond, and likely soon. Just this week a chorus of impeachment calls has echoed across the alternative media, including even one (at least) from a conservative source, Paul Craig Roberts of the Hoover Institution, who accuses Bush of "intentionally deceiving Congress and the American people in order to start a war of aggression against a country that posed no threat to the United States". He goes on to note, quite accurately, that "As intent as Republicans were to impeach President Bill Clinton for lying about a sexual affair, they have a blind eye for President Bush's far more serious lies".

To get a sense of how frightened and vulnerable the Bush team is, consider McClellan's response to a reporter's question about the letter sent by 89 members of the House calling for an explanation of the Downing Street Memo. McClellan said the White House saw "no need" to answer the letter. This tells us three things, right off the bat. First, the Bush administration is blocking Congress from performing its constitutionally mandated duty of oversight of the executive. Well, no surprise there. Second - and, again, absolutely no surprise - this White House has once more demonstrated its seemingly inexhaustible capacity to break all prior records for arrogance. Napoleon couldn't touch this stuff, and neither could Nero. Imagine believing that you're above answering basic questions posed by Congress about the single biggest issue of our time. Imagine seeing "no need" to explain to the country why documentary evidence exists showing that you lied your way into a war which continues to consume American soldiers by the thousands, with no end in sight. Now, that's how they do it in the big leagues.

But experience reminds us that arrogance and bullying behavior almost always serve to mask massive insecurities just beneath, bringing us to the third revelation which can be extrapolated from McClellan's non-comment. Think about it. The gravest possible accusation has been made against the president and his team, emanating from, among others, one-fifth of the House of Representatives. In addition to its moral implications, it has the political capacity to topple the presidency and perhaps kill the entire regressive right movement of the last quarter-century. It is, in short, some very serious business. Knowing what we know about how these folks viciously attack anyone who besmirches them in the slightest, what are we to make of their silence on this most lethal - this most existential - of political attacks? No doubt they are completely trapped by the evidence and can only hope and pray the Memo just goes away. But ever true to form, McClellan, Bush, Cheney and the whole lot of them would be strewing carnage across the landscape on this issue if they could get away with it. Just ask CBS, Newsweek, Amnesty International, Paul O'Neill, Richard Clarke, John McCain or John Kerry. Get in their way, and the attacks come hard, fast and personal. That they are not now in full assault mode further affirms the accuracy and power of the Memo, as well as suggesting that the White House is strategically trapped between a rock and a hard place. Perhaps they even find themselves in shock and awe.

It is crucial now for progressives and patriots of all stripes to push this opportunity as hard as possible, down multiple paths.

The mainstream media is the most significant avenue for advancing this initiative which has the potential to take down Bush. We must continue to exert unrelenting pressure on media outlets simply to do their jobs, so that the public may be informed of this gravest breach of its trust. Members of Congress, led by John Conyers, have also played an important role so far by providing legitimacy to the critique, a rallying point around which other vectors can agglomerate, and an important angle the media can exploit should they ever decide one day to earn their salaries. We must do more to pressure Congress, particularly vulnerable Republicans (and I predict there may be quite a lot of them in 2006) to take this question seriously or explain to their constituents why they do not.

Impeachment is completely warranted for the crimes committed by the Bush administration, and we must relentlessly demand this outcome. As mentioned above, there are potentially exquisite ironies in this case, and this is one of them. Having impeached Clinton for lying about oral sex, how ridiculous would Republicans now appear trying to argue that there is no impeachable offense here?

Another example of sublime irony might be produced by a court case, perhaps over a wrongful death charge. Cindy Sheehan (bless you for your sacrifice, and for your tireless work to save others from the same fate), are you reading this? History is calling your name. And once again, imagine the patently obvious hypocrisy of Republicans trying to prevent the president from having to testify in such a case, after they just got through establishing a legal precedent for the same by forcing Clinton to do so, while in office, over the far less harmful allegation of sexual harassment.

And, in yet another example of exquisite irony, imagine how unsympathetic the judiciary is likely to be toward them, after the radical right has excoriated judges who don't bend to their will, to the point that GOP senators have offered justifications for recent violence directed against judges.

The regressive movement of the last several decades has provided a vicious spectacle, to the extent that internal cannibalization always seemed one likely avenue for its ultimate demise, with, for example, the far right running a nearly successful primary candidate against sitting Republican Senator Arlen Specter last year.

But this is better. Lots better. After a quarter century of scorched earth politics, I could not have designed a more appropriate fate for these destroyers of democracy than to be hoisted by their own petards, and then taken out by their own destructive precedents.

America has gone seriously astray due to the regressive right movement that began in earnest with Reagan, incubated under Gingrich, and blossomed full-blown in the era of Bush, Scalia and DeLay. This political cancer has yielded death, destruction, environmental wreckage, massive debt, wholesale violations of human rights, diminishment of national security, dismantling of constitutional democracy at home and widespread hatred for America abroad. And that's just the first term. It is difficult to imagine that one could ruin a country so thoroughly in just four years, but the Bush team has succeeded famously (with a good deal of help from the press, the Democrats and the public). Finally, it appears that we have in the Downing Street Memo a weapon, and with it the proper context, to end our long national nightmare.

Impeachment. Now.

David Michael Green (pscdmg@hofstra.edu) is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York.

Staying true

2005-05-30T12:49:00.000-07:00

Anthony Livingspace turned his back on society 25 years ago and has been in its face ever since. His neck aches. Nobody seems to care. Out of this frustrating void Tony pulls laughter.
He’s adopted the junctions of two bars and a church on banked cobbles on a hill in the south of Spain.
His show is built on pain so Tony has to build up sorrow misfortune and woe in useable quantities to even consider going through the agony of comedy.
Tony’s genius is that he provides industrial quantities of sorrow misfortune and woe and many other, equally sterling qualities by the use of a simple tool that is his lifestyle.
To put it bluntly, he’s a bum.
A bum with a free apartment, his own pitch and nuns who lock up the church (with them inside for the night) in the middle of his show to play with.
He puts a cloth over his head and in Spanish pleads to be let back into the nunnery, “It was only one movie”, “ The people were only pretending”,”It wasn’t real love.”
He skips up to the church with soccer ball underarm and shouts out for Mary at the door, he waits then loudly asks if Jesus can come out to play soccer, starts kicking the ball against the steps.
He’s walked in the church clothed and out the church naked.
He’s been experimenting for years.
Originally Australian and a dishwasher
Anthony confronted his own boredom in public places as a young man, and in this self induced retarded state he has carved a small career consisting of his trousers. amp,mike,drum kit and suit. (plus change)
In small part, Pepe, Lee Ross and Jamesons have been influences.
However no-one else to my knowledge has spent time consistently getting obese men to take off their shirts in public and vamp.
Or eats a flower so wistfully.
Still fully bald with the french collaborator haircut he’s made his own, the new Spanish Tony has the beginnings of a handlebar mustache. Its funny but a little scary and holds bread crumbs baked weeks before, and curdled milk foam from countless cafe con leche’s.
This horizontal dreadlock encapsulates Tony. Its crusty.
If you were to imagine the outskirts of society and from there walk a day and a half, then have on hand a very powerful set of binoculars, you may, in the distance make out what looks to be a putrid swamp. Tony lives just on the other side of that.
He has a rare full instinctive sense of comedy coupled with that second sense of where the crowd can be taken and innate timing, all counter balanced by a romantic disdain for success or safety.
He has a home here, the establishments round his pitch fuel him till he’s ready to perform.
Rooms are provided.
He’s fluent in spanish, his only impediment is that his eyes are getting redder and smaller and shrinking back into his head

If sausages could talk

2005-05-24T15:17:00.000-07:00

Germans have droll cornered

Cybernetic parrot sausage

I have a German friend called Hilby who’s professionally funny, he’s also very absentminded and forgetful and seeds his cars interior and exterior with spare car keys that he ends up successively losing and replacing every few months.
He also loses a lot of mobile phones, leaving them on the roof of his car or at truck stops or simply having them vanish .
Here's a great link for working out which mobile phone to buy.

Just pop in your post code and make your choices

My Grandmother was not German and so this Grandma story has little to do with anything
BUT
One weekday morning she initiated a fight with my Granddad and told him she was leaving him. She packed a few things, secretly pocketed the spare keys to the house and left vowing never to return.
My Granddad went to work shortly afterwards and my Grandmother snuck back in.
For the next 3 days she stayed in the house unknown to my Granddad and whenever he came home from work she’d go and hide under their bed until he left to work the next morning. On the third evening she staged her return to his vast relief and their relationship continued.
That is all.

International relations

2005-05-23T19:56:00.000-07:00

Paris is in France. Which is a country at the northernmost border of Europe where civilization ends. (Near where Britain begins). I had driven up after working in Barcelona and Ibiza, a lovely drive except the one night spent low on gas parked outside a closed gas station in the middle of the Pyrenees (mountains between Spain and France). It was very cold and being the wide-eyed optimist I am I owned nothing but thin shirts to stave off the temperature which to put it mildly, was a tad frosty.

That in itself would have been problem enough but the hitchhiker I had with me was some Latin dude who had the strangest affliction in that as soon as he fell asleep every ounce of viscous fluid in his body immediately made its way to his sinus and the back of his throat such that hideous unearthly mind-bending noises burst from him at volume. I’d wake him up, he’d apologize go back to sleep and, seconds later the imitation of close quarter military jets taking off and landing would resume.
It was a measure of my desperation as I sat there next to the most horrifying snorer in the world while shivering uncontrollably that I tried to knock myself out by bashing my head against the steering column. The first blow was definitely committed and stars swum but sadly I was still among the living so before I could regain what miniscule sense I originally had I mustered my stupidity and had another go…..It was unsuccessful and now I had added a raging headache to the twin discomforts of noise and temperature to create a memorable French trinity of woe.

The rest of the trip was comparatively uneventful. Arrived in Paris, earned the hotel money the evening I got in and resumed my Paris pattern of daytime pitch a block from the Pompidou and nighttime pitch in the Latin Quarter.

The daytime pitch was my own; a series of arches with apartments above formed the entrance into a large square. The edge of the square used to be a lane as was still labeled with a street sign. (More about that later) In the middle of the square was a dry fountain where junkies hung out and the arches themselves formed a passage for locals and tourists to pass to and from a nearby subway entrance, various lanes and side roads towards the square and a large underground shopping center beyond. It had a good flow and I would work there a couple of hours a day, the crowds impeded no one and all was well.
I would do my thing, which consisted of outfrenching the French in the distain dept and being for all intents and purposes just a wee bit dour.
They lapped it up and one of my better memories was an old woman on the 3rd floor of the apartments above me opening her window after a show and lowering a 20 franc note that she had stuck on a peg and tied onto the end of a long string.

This was towards the end of the season, round October and what I didn’t know then was that many European countries do immigration sweeps about this time to clear their cultures of summer straggling cling-ons who would otherwise add demands to their socialist but finite social welfare systems.

Over the heads of my audience, approaching in the distance I spotted a gaggle of French Guardia, 8 in all with a couple of muzzled dogs and a guy hanging behind wearing a Clouseau overcoat who was obviously the semi-singular half-brain behind the operation.
The Guardia are the utility overalled Dobermans of the French police force who are selected for their single-minded zeal and unquestioning obedience. (Much like low-level gangsters or Orks)
I suspect that at the training academy they hang bright shiny objects at the entrance on recruitment day and select for the Guardia those found transfixed by them who additionally have ‘HATE’ tattooed on their knuckles. ADD and amphetamine addicts are especially prized.

They were darting about snorting and peeing on posts, the junkies scattered, still they caught some, handcuffed them and made them sit on the ground. They were a bit of a distraction actually as my audience kept glancing over at the competitive drama.

From about 100 yards away they turned and looked at me then as one turned to their over coated keeper who nodded.
They rushed towards me, their knuckles bleeding as they dragged at their feet, the audience parted with an indignant distain and they surrounded me barking a threatening gibberish I could only presume was French.

‘Gibber gibber’ they barked…I stared at them…’Gibber gibber gibber growl’ they barked louder, (one of them had dropped to all fours and was licking another’s testicles while whining)

Remember earlier I mentioned that where I was working had been a road and still had the street sign? Well the sign was just feet away so I tottered over to it and smiled and pointed.
‘Avenue du Innocents’

Well I thought it was funny and so did my audience but unfortunately it sent these guys into a furious apoplectic rage.
Howling, they surrounded me and in a stunning piece of improvisation pushed me over.
Two got in front of me and four got behind and the two in the front pushed and the four at the back caught.
(It was like being back at clown school doing a warm fuzzy trust exercise accept it was half a world away from home and being done in public by evil intentioned state Orks)
Mercifully the four at the back actually caught me and lowered me roughly to the ground.

They still had a couple of problems; I was 12 foot long and couldn’t understand a word they were saying.
Inaction to these people is like sunlight to Vampires however so one of the catchers stomped round in front of me and grabbing a stilt, tried to simply yank it off.

I moved about 3 feet. He tried again. I moved another 3 feet. My audience were muttering darkly. I obviously speak no French but remembering how much is shared by common cultures I tried saying ‘Impossible’ with a heavy French accent, ‘Empossaabeelle’ I cried as he pulled at my leg a third time. (With diminishing enthusiasm I had to note.)
The audience had at this point become brave and abusive having had to watch their clown being dragged around the pavement by morons.
The semi-singular half-brain Clouseau-clone now entered the fray in a sort of “try and nip this surrealism in the bud” way and in halting English asked me for my passport.
Now that’s a simple enough request but unfortunately I lead an impossibly complicated life.
I did in fact have my NZ passport on me but I had entered the country with my British passport.
Therefore my NZ passport would have no record of me having ever entered Europe and as such I thought it best to answer, ‘No, It’s at my hotel.’ Which it was.
So I was encouraged constantly and quite vocally to get my legs off.
As I was unwrapping the gaffer/duct tape one of the Guardia pulled out an evil blade and slashed at the top of my stilts helpfully.
Carrying my shoes (no time to put them on apparently) my stilts, my gear and still with my makeup on I was led, surrounded by my honor guard to a grill windowed bus parked round the corner that was now almost full of what looked like Algerian refugees.
We headed off to the main Parisian police station where I was first put into a single cell and searched. They found my NZ passport and told me that if I’d shown that to them they would have left me alone but now as I had already entered the system they were obliged to process me and having got my hotels ph number they would ring them and put me in a holding cell till a copy of my English passport was faxed to them.
(At least I think that’s what they said)
So I was then chucked into a room full of swarthy, Algerian, junkie neer-do-wells still with smeared whiteface and shoeless. A few of them recognized me and tried to chat but sadly we had nothing in common but our criminal records. Still I was unmolested and sat quietly which was probably one of the best things to happen to me all day.
Eventually it was all resolved, the police said that the hotel had stuck up for me sending a copy of my passport and additionally giving me a bit of a character reference. I put my shoes on and left went straight to my night pitch to make up for loss of earnings and the next day I was back at the Avenue du Innocents.

Just a magpie

2005-05-20T17:13:00.000-07:00

You flit about collecting baubles,
Political of interest.

This is ironic, China supports Palestine while lending lifethreatening amounts to the US to support Israel
and

Hey Democrats. Listen to Galloway (and look at the video in the article if you have the time, he's one tough talker

But its not all fun and games.We performers often have long periods between shows holed up in hotels.

Heres an idea!

Cunningly padded

2005-05-16T17:49:00.000-07:00

Native Americans once used woodpecker scalps as currency.

On average, four people a day call Graceland and ask for Elvis

It is illegal in Pacific Grove, California, to threaten or kill a butterfly

A rat can tread water for three days straight.

If you ever need a bit more range on your cell phone, find a late model Mercedes. Little known feature on Mercedes built after 2001 is that the built in cell phone system also acts as a booster for handhelds. Using any cell phone within 5-10 feet of the vehicle will cause the car's system to act like a repeater and boost the signal.

It's only supposed to work inside the car, but there's some leakage. They don't tell anyone officially because they don't want people trying to use Mercedes cars as boosters.

If you have problems with ants coming into your house, place dryer sheets near where they are coming in. Ants avoid dryer sheets like the plague.

Camels have thin eyelids that they can see through. When walking in the sand, they have their eyes shut to protect them but can still see where they're going.

Candles kept in the freezer burn longer and drip less. When the power goes out you know where they are.

A pig's orgasm lasts 38 minutes.

The first episode of "Joanie Loves Chachi" was the highest rated American program in the history of Korean television. "Chachi" is Korean for "penis."

The REAL reason ostriches stick their head in the sand is to search
for water

If you attach a buttered piece of bread, butter side up, onto a cat's back and then drop them both, you will go back in time.

The word 'gullible' is not in the dictionary.

I had a dream

2005-05-13T12:28:00.000-07:00

The Life Of The Poet Is A Fun Filled Carnival

7 O-clock
Watched TV
Got all existential and antsy
Made coffee
Had a flashback
They're getting shorter
This one was yesterday
7 O-clock

You know you have those dreams and you're in deep shit.
You’ve committed murder and everyone hates you or your legs
fallen off and your trapped on a cliff ledge or your cars totaled
All your possessions burst into flame and the entire cast of Bonanza,stand, point and laugh hysterically at your naked genitalia.
I wake from bad dreams feeling only slightly relieved,
That sweaty palmed anxiety followed by mild apprehension.
Rituals quantify chaos
Coffee, a computer.
And a career in Street Theatre.

Its not all buffoonery

2005-05-12T20:44:00.000-07:00

B&W 10
Originally uploaded by Hey Jack Kerouac.

OK here's a summary of my attempts to keep pace with the input/output dichotomy.
Nothing I’m thinking is fully thought out yet, the pace of my information ingestion if anything is increasing. I see far more reasonable people simply doing those things which need/have to be done and don’t get me wrong, I don’t envy them but I’m driven by the feeling that I’m but a hairs breadth away from some large imminent revelation that would marry all my loose ends and have practical applications and I could catch up and overtake these people in the pragmatic lane that I’m grateful surround me.
Admittedly I’ve felt like this for years, I’m more than a little detached, I have to be reminded to eat.
So that's the introspection out of the way.
Websites started out being little self contained containers filled with content.
Those that made it easy to purchase things blossomed exploiting a whole new economy of scale.
They also used their customer bases to provide valid content, Ebay has a rating system maintained by its user base, so does Amazon with reviews happily provided by people overjoyed that their opinions mean anything. Slashdot has a form of hive-mind moderation that people love to complain about, but generally works.
So websites were used to display cultural, personal and commercial content and also, kind of organically, certain societies formed to be used for various cultural, personal and commercial purposes. Those that calculated a balance of these elements prospered.
The commercial made money but also developed communities and impacted on our culture. The cultural made money enough to sustain themselves through various fairly simple secondary means and the personal successes created their own cultures.
Lately there have been some developments that have been small in their own way but I believe profound and potentially far-reaching.
Whereas until recently there was a certain loyalty towards certain conduits of content and people browsed through
The New Zealand Herald or
BBC or
Slashdot,(um.. slashdots a web contrivance but it serves as an example of an early focal point nevertheless) all flocking in large numbers towards the familiar, now we are seeing an emergence of a change of balance with sites being repositories of a more active online culture.
Websites like
Flickr, where people share photos and
Delicious where people share their bookmarks and then developing from that
populicious which collects the most popular newly discovered bookmarks over 24 hours. (and if you need that dry list explained as you go then you go
Here.

So the webs population seem to becoming more familiar with it to the degree that they are starting to impact and steer its collective direction increasingly confidently, whereas previously they used it more as a place to be investigated rather than actively utilised.

Firefox , initially a reaction and cure for Microsoft's sluggish response to a need for further browser development has now, along with a host of other empowering tools it offers to its users (not bundled but available so the end user can decide what tool is best), become the only browser currently able to go one huge step further with an extension called
Greasemonkey Which, by you selectively downloading various ‘tweaks’, allows you to modify webpages you visit so that YOU are in control of how they look in your browser and not the original designers.
We now have the capacity to manipulate the content of pages as they appear in our browsers. You grow tired of advertisements all over the pages you visit? Find the particular script on
this page and,,,no more ads.
Think for a moment what the implications are for sites that generate all their revenue from advertisements. The internet’s too young for any business model to be called anything close to traditional. The pace is quickening and change is a constant and content being king is the other constant which is why you are reading what I write and why I’m still thinking of ways to make it pay in the same way street theatre does. Based on the quality of the content and what it evokes.

Damascus redux

2005-05-11T07:42:00.000-07:00

I was working in Copenhagen when I got my first nun. I'd been after a nun for ages and had narrowly missed a couple over the years. They would walk past as I was putting my stilts on or taking them off but in retrospect it was worth the wait because this nun was perfect.

I hid behind a corner as she walked past. I stalked her from behind, I blessed her and mimed sprinkling holy water over her and then I went back to my wall and crucified myself. Some of the audience were crying with laughter.

The next day some guy came out of the audience and gave me this photo. It was all I ever wanted in a nun--then some. I made posters for my friends with my motto "Who Dares...Grins". This one image described who I am and what I do.

Goodbye existential angst--Hello fun with a nun

After having lived overseas for a decade I returned to New Zealand and moved back to my hometown. It was unsettling, there was my kindergarten, and there was my primary school with the convent behind it. The convent had been sold and was now in private hands.

I was in the city stocking up on make-up remover and I mentioned to the woman that I was the nasty man on stilts. She said that she was pleased to meet me and what I did was marvelous and clever. She said that she and her husband had bought a convent in Lyttelton and were converting it into a conference centre and that they would keep me in mind for entertainment.

I told her I had been inside the convent as a child. A nun had dragged me inside by my tongue as a six year old and had taken me to the kitchen and applied soap to a toothbrush and scrubbed my tongue and mouth out.
I gave her a picture on the condition that she frame it and hang it above the sink.
It's there,
I've seen it.
It's beautiful.

Good Clowns create and manage anxiety.

2005-05-10T13:09:00.000-07:00

This is Fraser Hooper, an utterly charming clown with an impeccably nuanced mean streak. He often uses young cute children to participate in his show, sometimes he just brings kids up to use them as coat hangers, or to eat a banana one bite at a time at his command during the course of his performance. I am awed by the way he structures his show around the use and abuse of power. (Imagine Mussolini running a daycare center)
He has a wonderful gentle goofy yet overconfident persona that he uses expertly to gain the audience’s trust. Once he has it however he takes the permission he’s been lent to ridiculous lengths. He’s very funny and one of my very favorite clowns.
I’ve noticed, first in myself as a teenager and then by watching others, that people by and large desire small doses of anxiety. Why else do predominantly young males inset coins into machines (or stay at home in front of the computer) to be given a limited number of lives and increasingly difficult environments until their eventual annihilation?
Clowns often exploit this need for anxiety by evoking trust (people offer them their children!) and then introducing an element of doubt, which they surf at their leisure.
I love watching Fraser work because, as a performer myself, I can look behind the distractions of his superficial performance structures and marvel at his seemingly effortless sub textural wit. Plus he simply makes me and everyone else, laugh.

Surround yourself with interesting props

2005-05-09T08:15:00.000-07:00

brady2
Originally uploaded by winsomecowboy.

One method street performers use to draw a crowd and arrest it's attention is to take a variety of strange objects with intriguing latent potential and arrange them in a calculated manner about their projected stage.
I thought I might set down a few of my more eccentric friends and co-workers, placing them down here on my new stage as a first step in creating an audience.
Bobarino Gravitini (Brady) is a master craftsman of the "High social risk, calculating idiot, clown immunity, destroy-one-social-barrier-destroy-them-all, investigative clown." school of street theatre.
He has various set piece components with which to construct his shows including ping pong mouth juggling, balls, clubs, flaming tennis rackets, lasso, flaming lasso, balancing a wheelbarrow on his chin while on a rola bola on top of a 6 ft platform.
But what makes him more facinating still is the ongoing thought processes involved in each shows construction. He gauges how far any particular audience will allow him to go and usually always stretches them by taking them a little further than they might be comfortable with before bringing them back. He deliberately gains an audience's trust and attains a level of goodwill that many performers would be more than happy to sustain, only to do or say something that punctures the atmosphere and introduces a sudden element of anxiety that he then sets about rescuing himself and the audience from.
He consciously creates mood sump holes in his street show for the challange of recovering from them.
He takes his audience on a risky adventure and entertains them thoroughly.
He is an American who works predominantly in Europe and does his fair share of corporate and international festival work which he professionally modifies to soften his audience's experience.
Typical quote; (while wearing a tu tu, a yellow wig and dancing with a male from the audience) "Ladies and Gentlemen, I know what your thinking. I'd just like to say that I am in fact not gay. I know this for a fact because I've experimented....Thousands of times."

Parallels between street theatre and blogging.

2005-05-08T12:39:00.000-07:00

Street theatre is an ancient hack. Equipped with the right tools practitioners would go out into a public place and create a stage, an audience and then using a particular skill-set combined with a compelling personality they would engage strangers in their own contrived sphere of enthusiasm. The performer could then steer this enthusiasm towards gaining a small stipend from individuals watching in a measure of gratitude for services rendered. This, if done well, could amount to a sustaining income as well as a measure of goodwill that itself was a currency in a community. It was often a passport into otherwise closed defensive communities ("heres the guy who made us laugh..sit down and share our bread.")
Blogs are a new public place. Many rules are identical. You have to create a stage, create an audience, entertain them/ stimulate them, evoke their gratitude then give them the means to reward you in relation to THEIR approximation of your worth.
This commerce was called 'the honour system' and was used by artisans and their clients beginning I think in the 17th century in France (Please if you know anything at all about the honour system of commerce leave me a link as I have little to no real idea of its origins) and the only surviving practice of it throughout the 20th century was street theatre.
But now with networks being all pervading, individuality manifest in content becoming increasingly prized and the means to publish content so simple to master it strikes me that blogging has many parallels with street theatre. In its infancy it is still experimenting with its form which is exciting.
As a 20+year veteran of international street theatre with all the variation and stimulation that comes with both performing and meeting other curious and likeminded creators of idiosyncratic content in what was once known as 'the real world' I am interested and exited in experimenting in transposing certain elements and structures to see how similar the two forms are and what the advantages this form has over street theatre in terms of artistic freedom, audience size, audience response etc.
This is my first post and in it I am beginning to set a stage.....

"There's value in being exposed to things you didn't know you want. When you walk down the street, you have experiences that are unplanned and accidental that may expose you to new ideas, new things... it isn't just a matter of running an errand, or achieving a specific goal. It's about the accidental things that happen to you along the way."
David Byrne