Not From Concentrate

Nicholas Carr:

I'd sit down with a book, or a long article, and after a couple of pages my brain wanted to do what it does when I'm online: check e-mail, click on links, do some Googling, hop from page to page.

Carr's inability to concentrate led him to do some research and his subsequent article in The Atlantic - "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" - was expanded into a book: The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.

Carr's problems resonated strongly with me, as my own battles to focus have grown worse in recent years. Near the beginning of The Shallows, he writes:

I used to find it easy to immerse myself in a book or a lengthy article. My mind would get caught up in the twists of the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I'd spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That's rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration starts to drift after a page or two. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel like I'm always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

Two of Carr's friends admit to similar troubles. Bruce Friedman says his thinking has taken on a "staccato" quality:

I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print. I can't read War and Peace anymore. I've lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.

Scott Karp was a lit major and a voracious reader in college, but he confesses that he has stopped reading books of any kind:

What happened? What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because the way I read had changed, i.e., I'm just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has changed?

Carr believes that the Internet has changed the way we read and process information. He cites studies that show the constant (and seemingly natural) interruptions of being online - of checking email, of doing a web search, clicking from hyperlink to hyperlink - has actually led to a re-wiring of our brains, making it maddeningly hard to, for example, lose ourselves in a book.

Recently, I was sitting outside with the dogs. It was a sunny day, and I had several hours of free time. I took a book outside, set up a chair on the patio and began reading. But every quarter-page or so, I would stop reading and look around the yard. I could not concentrate for an extended period of time. I had to actively resist getting up and going back inside to my desk/computer. There was no reason to do so; I wasn't waiting for any mail. And when I was reading, my eyes were often trying to skip ahead to the next paragraph. [This is in addition to my general fatigue when reading, the almost immediate watery eyes and long strings of yawns. But that is other subject for another day.]

Carr, to NPR:

Neuroscientists and psychologists have discovered that, even as adults, our brains are ... very malleable, they adapt at the cellular level to whatever we happen to be doing. And so the more time we spend surfing, and skimming, and scanning ... the more adept we become at that mode of thinking.

And presumably, that means we get worse at concentrating. The Shallows cites studies indicating that online reading yields lower comprehension than reading from a printed page.

Carr argues that as we hop from webpage to webpage, we lose our ability to employ a "slower, more contemplative mode of thought".

Chapter Four of The Shallows is both a short (but extraordinary) history, and a love letter to the act, of reading. Carr notes that developing the mental discipline to concentrate intently on a book was not easy.

The natural state of the human brain, like that of the brains of most of our relatives in the animal kingdom, is one of distractedness. Our predisposition is to shift our gaze, and hence our attention, from one object to another, to be aware of as much of what's going on around us as possible. ... Our fast-paced, reflexive skills in focus were once crucial to our survival. ...

To read a book was to practice an unnatural process of thought ... [Readers] had to train their brains to ignore everything else going on around them, to resist the urge to let their focus sip from one sensory cue to another. ... "The ability to focus on a single task, relatively uninterrupted," writes Vaughan Bell, a research psychologist at King's College London, represents a "strange anomaly in the history of our psychological development."

If the internet is returning us to our "natural state of distractedness"*, if prolonged, solitary thought - the act of "deep reading" - is merely an odd behavioural blip on the evolutionary timeline, then why is our inability to read more than two pages in a book so alarming? If the brain can forge new connections and adapt to new circumstances nearly on instantaneously - and the examples Carr gives of this are fascinating - is it simply a matter of retraining our brains to concentrate? Or does the ubiquity of computers in our life now make that an unconquerable hurdle?

* - A 2009 article in Discover magazine reported that the average mind wanders roughly 13% of the time, "which would be a substantial failure of control if not necessary".

I look forward to seeing if and how Carr answers these questions.

The distractions of the modern age are a popular topic. In addition to Carr's book, I have seen references to Maggie Jackson's Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age (2008) and Winifred Gallagher's Rapt: Attention of the Focused Life (2009).

And there must be a connection between these ideas/thoughts/books and David Foster Wallace's theme of boredom and the hard and constant work involved in paying attention, which I hope to see more clearly as I read on.

Canada-US Border Deal A Threat To Rights And Freedoms

The "Beyond the Border Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness Action Plan" agreement between Canada and the United States for 2012 means that Canada will adopt the draconian (and often unconstitutional) Bush-Obama positions on privacy, security, immigration, and surveillance.

For the first time in its history, the Canadian government will track each time anyone leaves or enters the country. In addition, all airlines will be obligated to divulge personal information on anyone flying out of a Canadian airport - regardless of destination - to Canadian authorities, and the US can receive this information simply by asking for it.

One of the stated goals of the agreements (which were announced on December 7) is to reduce traveler delays at the border. But the increased security measures will likely result in longer waits and harassment, especially for immigrants, refugees and racialized groups. The Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations has denounced the legislation for its failure to protect civil liberties.

Changes to border infrastructure will cost at least $200 million annually. What will move faster across the border is corporate trade. The border deal is not about surrendering Canadian sovereignty to the US, but enhancing the joint ability of both the Canadian and the US state to crack down on the civil liberties of citizens, immigrants and refugees, while promoting the flow of capital. The Canadian Council of Chief Executives enthusiastically supports the legislation for its "impressive range of practical, targeted measures" - which target people, not corporations.

As Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow noted, "the business community was the only sector at the table with government and guided the process from the beginning". Groups concerned about health and safety, security and privacy issues, labour rights, and environmental protection were not consulted.

(Socialist Worker Canada)

Mission Accomplished Jr.

Different president, same bullshit.

George W. Bush, May 1, 2003:

Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. ... [T]he tyrant has fallen, and Iraq is free. ... America is grateful for a job well done.

Barack Obama, December 14, 2011:

I've come to speak to you about the end of the war in Iraq. Over the last few months the final work of leaving Iraq has been done. ... [O]ver the next few days a small group of American soldiers will begin the final march out of that country. ... America's war in Iraq will be over. ... So today, as we mark the end of the war ... [T]he United States military is the most respected institution in our land ... [Y]ou, the 9/11 Generation, have earned your place in history.

Is the U.S.'s murderous occupation of Iraq and the emotional and physical torture of its people actually over?

No.

No.

No.

2014 Afghanistan Deadline "Not Absolute"

In perhaps the least surprising news story of 2011, the United States ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan C. Crocker, said that U.S. troops would stay in that country beyond the White House's 2014 withdrawal deadline if the Afghan government asked them to.

U.S. embassy spokeswoman Eileen O'Connor said Crocker's comment was consistent with President Barack Obama's previous statements. "[T]he possibility of some troops still being here post-2014 is not a change in policy." However, Crocker's comments on December 10 referred to combat troops, a topic Obama has not previously acknowledged.

Crocker said 10,000 troops would be pulled out by the end of 2011 and an additional 23,000 by September 2012. However, that simply reduces the number of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan back down to the number before Obama's 2009 "surge". Crocker said that beyond 2012, "there are no decisions. I don't know what we're going to be doing in 2014."

The reduced number of troops has no effect on the ever-growing shadow army of military contractors. In August 2010, the Department of Defense stated there were roughly 112,000 contractors in Afghanistan. That number has likely increased in the last year.

In Canada, Steven Harper recently pledged $100 million of taxpayer money to Afghanistan each year for the next three years. Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird could not say how much money would be sent to Afghanistan after 2014.

Canadian forces also view the 2014 deadline as written in pencil. Col. Peter Dawe, deputy commander of the Canadian contribution to the NATO training mission, told Postmedia News in August 2011, "You can't view 2014 as an absolute deadline."

US Air Force Admits Tossing Remains Of Dead Soliders In Garbage

Washington Post, December 7, 2011:

The Air Force dumped the incinerated partial remains of at least 274 American troops in a Virginia landfill ... before halting the secretive practice three years ago, records show.

The landfill dumping was concealed from families who had authorized the military to dispose of the remains in a dignified and respectful manner, Air Force officials said. ...

The Air Force had maintained that it could not estimate how many troops might have had their remains sent to a landfill [claiming it would take too much time and effort]. ...

The landfill disposals were never formally authorized under military policies or regulations. They also were not disclosed to senior Pentagon officials who conducted a high-level review of cremation policies at the Dover mortuary in 2008 ...

Senior Air Force leaders said there was no intent to deceive. "Absolutely not," said Lt. Gen. Darrell D. Jones, the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for personnel. ...

The total number of incinerated fragments dumped in the landfill exceeded 2,700.

I'd call the Air Force officials little more than pieces of shit, but that would disrespect shit, which can be used as fertilizer to help living things grow. I assume that the conservatives who cannot abide any criticism of the US military support the landfill burials, right? What's the saying - if you don't stand behind the military, then go stand in front of them?

Back in April 2008, current Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said the US should allow a terrorist attack to happen every so often to remind the American people how important the government's security measures are.

It's almost like they should every once in a while have allowed an attack to get through just to remind us - I mean, think about, think about, think about the psychology.

And the crowd laughs.

Little Richard - 1966 - Paris

Pure sexual energy and some ferocious rock and roll - from one of the original masters. A revelation.











Willard (one of my favourite music bloggers) posted some studio material from 1957 and 1958 awhile back, subtitling it (wonderfully, and accurately) "So Much Rock, God Was Forced To Step In". The albums are

Little Richard's remarkable debut rock 'n' roll LPs, Here's Little Richard and Little Richard, practically greatest hits albums on their own. Recorded in 1957/58 for Specialty Records, just before Richard Penniman gave up rock 'n' roll to preach and sing the gospel around 1958. This music isn't the stripped down stuff that Elvis was exploring at the same time. Richard's madness was a direct out-growth of late 40s/early 50s group R&B, as evidenced by the full band's horn arrangements. Richard's voice, jamming needles into the red whenever he charges into the choruses, was clearly too much for 50s studio microphones. His screaming flamboyance was too much for TV & Top 40 radio, too. And to think 50s parents were afraid of Elvis. There are some non-essentials here, but Little Richard could turn any nonsense – from "A-Wop-Bop-A-Loo-Bop-A-Lop-Bam-Boom" to the old-timey "Baby Face" - into something unique. It was all so rockin' and so decadent that God himself was forced to step in and handle matters. After a lengthy, soul-searching stint with evangelicalism, Penniman would eventually come back to the dark side in the early 60s... but these albums are where the devil got his due.

touching the third rail - the beginnings of a second civil war?

Down in the land of the free and the home of the brave, there is some scary shit going on.

Not the five (or six? or seven?) countries the United States is currently bombing - or the 120 countries in which it is conducting military operations.

Not the more than $8,000,000,000,000 the government has happily stuffed into the already bulging wallets of the nation's bankers, whose illegal business practices will lead to the repossession of more than 6 million homes by 2013.

This something that would effectively destroy even the lingering pretense that the United States is a democratic country.

The US Senate will cast a final vote this week on a bill that, if passed, would designate the entire nation (including your back yard) as a "battlefield" in the War of Terror™ and grant the president the unquestioned power to use the military to detain indefinitely anyone he chooses - without evidence, without charge, and without trial. In an initial vote, the Senate supported the bill 93-7.

The National Defense Authorization Act (S. 1867) was drafted by both parties and passed in secret, without any public debate. The bill would necessitate the need for permanent concentration camps, like the ones in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (A collection of news articles and discussion is here.)

Barack Obama has said he will veto the bill if it passes, but I have my doubts. Since taking office, Obama has "affirmed, continued and expanded almost all of the draconian domestic civil liberties intrusions pioneered under the Bush administration" – while casually authorizing the murder of American citizens. And being awarded - and accepting - the Nobel Peace Prize, of course.

Why is the government doing this? One reason is the Occupy movement.

This anti-capitalism movement has been articulate, despite media reports to the contrary, listing its concerns in a way that nearly all Americans can understand. The powers that be know that ignoring the movement and allow it to grow would invite a host of problems. The movement may wane in parts of the country during the winter months, but it will likely roar back to life in the spring. Writer Ted Rall says "2012 is shaping up to be our Year of Revolution."

Naomi Wolf, the author of The End of America (a short book; essential reading) recently recounted a number of assaults by police against the Occupy movement and came to a conclusion that echoes what I have been thinking. The Occupy movement, the crackdowns against it, and S. 1867 could be the opening salvos in a second US Civil War.

US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.

But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk." ...

[T]he Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on "how to suppress" Occupy protests. ...

Why this massive mobilization against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? After all, protesters against the war in Iraq, Tea Party rallies and others have all proceeded without this coordinated crackdown. ... I was still deeply puzzled as to why OWS, this hapless, hopeful band, would call out a violent federal response.

That is, until I found out what it was that OWS actually wanted. ...

So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organized suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.

Sadly, Americans this week have come one step closer to being true brothers and sisters of the protesters in Tahrir Square. Like them, our own national leaders, who likely see their own personal wealth under threat from transparency and reform, are now making war upon us.

The political and corporate class is taking no chances, and is attempting to pass legislation under the guise of fighting terrorism - but can also be used against any political movement that threatens the status quo.

Some people have insisted the bill would not apply to Americans, but John McCain was quite clear that it applies to anyone: "An individual, no matter who they are, if they pose a threat to the security of the United States of America, should not be allowed to continue that threat."

The bill, if passed, would allow the president to detain such persons indefinitely without trial, or try them before a military court, or transfer them "to the custody or control of the person's country of origin, any other foreign country, or any other foreign entity".

Please note that last "or" clause. My reading of that - and Matthew Rothschild, the editor of The Progressive, agrees - is that any American citizen could be taken into custody from anywhere in the United Battlefield of America and transferred to any foreign entity in the world, presumably to be "disappeared".

The system is crumbling and the owners of that system are doing whatever they can to keep it standing as long as possible. But, as William I. Robinson writes that:

the immense structural inequalities of the global political economy can no longer be contained through consensual mechanisms of social control. The ruling classes have lost legitimacy; we are witnessing a breakdown of ruling-class hegemony on a world scale.

And things are going to get much, much worse before they get better.

Chris Hedges reports that the Arab Spring uprisings had a lot to do with increased food prices. Wheat prices had risen 100% over an eight-month period, making it next to impossible for Egyptians to feed their families. That same concern could spark more unrest in the US in 2012. On the day before thanksgiving, the Financial Times reported that more than 40% of food producers plan on increasing prices in the next few months. A week before that, it was reported that 100 million Americans - one-third of the country - is considered poor or near poor. If there is not already an agreed-upon definition of "third world country", that level of poverty, while the net worth of the richest citizens is skyrocketing - might serve as one.

Jared Diamond, the author of Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, has studied the collapse of societies once thought to be indestructible. In 2005 he wrote:

I drive by gated communities guarded by private security patrols, and filled with people who drink bottled water, depend on private pensions, and send their children to private schools. If conditions deteriorate too much for poorer people, gates will not keep the rioters out.

Ted Rall, on the US's "Fuck You System of Government":

Governments are supposed to fulfill the basic needs of their citizens. Ours doesn't pretend to try.

Sick? Too bad.

Can’t find a job? Tough.

Broke? Can't afford rent? We don't give a crap.

Forget "e pluribus unum." We need a more accurate motto.

We live under a f— you system.

Got a problem? The U.S. government has an all-purpose response to whatever ails you: f— you. ...

Doctors [have] noted a new phenomenon called "Zuccotti cough." Symptoms are similar to those of "Ground Zero cough" suffered by 9/11 first responders.

Zuccotti is 450 feet away from Ground Zero.

Which brings to mind the fact that the collapse of the World Trade Center towers released 400 tons of asbestos into the air. It was never cleaned up properly. Could Occupiers be suffering the results of sleeping in a should-have-been-Superfund site for two months?

We'll never know. As under Bush, Obama's EPA still won't conduct a 9/11 environmental impact study.

Sick? Wanna know why? F— you. ...

When people who lost their homes because their government said "f— you" to them rather than help turn to the same government to look for safe shelter, again they are told: "f— you."

And then, after days and years and decades of shirking their responsibility ... our "f— you" government has the amazing audacity to blame us, victims of their negligence and corruption and violence, for messing things up.

Which is why we are finally, at long last, starting to say "f— you" to them.

Frank Luntz, a leading GOP Strategist:

I'm so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I'm frightened to death. They're having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.

fighting perfectionism and turning off kfkd

[B]ooks are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die. They are full of all the things that you don't get in real life – wonderful, lyrical language, for instance, right off the bat. And quality of attention: we may notice amazing details during the course of a day but we rarely let ourselves stop and really pay attention. An author makes you notice, makes you pay attention, and this is a great gift. My gratitude for good writing is unbounded ...

Anne Lamott says Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life contains "almost every single thing I know about writing". Some snippets from the book (her stuff is indented):

[How do you do it?] You sit down, I say. You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. So you sit down at, say, nine every morning, or ten every night. ...

It is a matter of persistence and faith and hard work. So you might as well just go ahead and get started. ... One writer I know tells me that he sits down every morning and says to himself nicely, "It's not like you don't have a choice, because you do - you can either type or kill yourself." ...

E.L. Doctorow: "Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." You don't have to see where you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice about writing, or life, I have ever heard. ...

[T]hirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird." ...

I finally notice the one-inch picture frame that I put on my desk to remind me of short assignments. It reminds me that all I have to do is to write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame. This is all I have to bite off for the time being. All I am going to do right now, for example, is write that one paragraph ...

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it.

Besides, perfectionism will ruin your writing, blocking inventiveness and playfulness ... Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived. Clutter is wonderfully fertile ground – you can still discover new treasures under all those piles ... Tidiness suggests that something is as good as it's going to get. Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation, while writing needs to breathe and move.

Thinking that you have to write an entire book can be a paralyzing thought. While writing 1918, I often felt like I had to write it all out in finished form. Which, of course, is completely impossible – and was guaranteed to make me feel like crap when it didn't happen.

In On Writing, Stephen King recalls being asked, "How do you write?" He answers, "One word at a time." He wasn't being a smart-ass. That is literally how it's done. It's a variation on the saying, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." There is that first step. And then a second step. And a third step. You cannot take 40 steps at once and get to your destination quicker. There are no shortcuts. Left foot, right foot, left foot ... One thought, one word, one sentence, one paragraph, one page. Do that, over and over – write enough words, take enough steps – and you will reach your destination.

The curse of perfectionism: somewhere in the back corner of your brain, you know how you want the sentence to read. (I have had dreams where I was writing entire articles or reading a finished article. More than a few times they were what I was currently working on. However, once awake, I had no idea what the dream article said.) But I felt that it was in my head somewhere and so it must be possible to get it out. I don't think I believe that anymore.

Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something – anything – down on paper. A friend of mine says the first draft is the down draft – you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft – you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. The third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it's loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy. ... Writing a first draft is very much like watching a Polaroid develop. You can't – and, in fact, you're not supposed to – know exactly what the picture is going to look like until it has finished developing.

For some of us, three drafts is what it takes even before we show it to someone. Then we get some feedback and push ourselves through another draft or three. King also implied that three drafts is the standard amount, though obviously, there is no set number. David Foster Wallace was a "five draft man" – his first hand-written draft, two hand-written rewrites, and two more typed drafts.

Perfectionism goes hand in hand with what Lamott calls "shitty first drafts" (she meant it as a good thing in the quote, above). Getting something down on paper should make you feel good, but, for me, it often reinforces whatever negative feelings I have of not being able to write. My first draft of anything more extensive than addressing an envelope is a mess. Half-finished, simplistic sentences – which "proves" to me that I have no business calling myself a writer, and I should quit now before I waste any more time.

But I have finally learned to tell myself – okay, this is the part where I type a bunch of crap. No one will see it and the second run-through will be immeasurably better – because there is likely a germ or grain of something worthwhile in there, some phrase or sentence that can be built upon. Or I realize the draft is not really writing at all, it's more like evidence of thinking.

If you are not careful, station KFKD [K-Fucked] will play in your head twenty-four hours a day, nonstop, in stereo. Out of the right speaker in your inner ear will come the endless stream of self-aggrandizement, the recitation of one's specialness, of how much more open and gifted and brilliant and knowing and misunderstood and humble one is. Out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self-loathing, the lists of all the things one doesn't do well, of all the mistakes one has made today and over an entire lifetime, the doubt, the assertion that everything that one touches turns to shit, that one doesn't do relationships well, that one is in every way a fraud, incapable of selfless love, that one has no talent or insight, and on and on and on.

The best way to get quiet, other than the combination of extensive therapy, Prozac, and a lobotomy, is first to notice that the station is on. KFKD is on every single morning when I sit down at my desk. So I sit for a moment and then say a small prayer - please help me get out of the way so I can write what wants to he written. Sometimes ritual quiets the racket. Try it. Any number of things may work for you ... Rituals are a good signal to your unconscious that it is time to kick in.

It is very comforting to know that these feelings are universal. Every book on writing addresses them in some way. Now I have to go re-read Art & Fear.

you must not come lightly to the blank page

I have begun work on what I hope, in a couple of years, will be a book. Right now, my job is convincing someone to offer me a contract. As that process crawls on, I've been thinking about writing - and taking some books off my shelf that discuss the writer's mindset, and the many traps to expect and avoid.

The best book I have ever read in this regard is, hands down, Art & Fear: Observations On The Perils (And Rewards) Of Artmaking (1993), by David Bayles and Ted Orland. It was recommended to me years ago by someone I knew in New York. He said A&F got him through many battles with self-doubt, and waves of excessive and unwarranted self-criticism of both his work and artistic processes. The first half of the book is absolutely indispensable.

Other books I will be revisiting are Anne Lamott's Bird By Bird: Some Instructions On Writing And Life (1994), George V. Higgins's On Writing: Advice For Those Who Write To Publish (Or Would Like To) (1990), and William Zinsser's On Writing Well: An Informal Guide To Writing Non-Fiction (1976).

The book I am blogging about today is one I recently read: Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft (2000). Roger Ebert said it "had more useful and observant things to say about the craft than any book since Strunk and White's The Elements of Style". I also heard it compared favourably to Bird By Bird, so I figured I'd check it out (literally: from the library!).

Plus, I have been on some sort of sideways King kick lately. A month or two ago, I grabbed a couple of paperbacks from the communal book area at work. One was Desperation and one was The Long Walk (which King wrote in one week and published under his Richard Bachman pseudonym). I have not read them, but I've read some literary essays on his work and themes. And my life-long attraction to 1,000+-page books has meant wanting to read either It or The Stand (which King republished in full some years ago, adding hundreds of additional pages) off and on for years.

I read a number of King's books in the early '80s: The Shining, Cujo, Christine, Pet Sematary, and the Night Shift and Different Seasons collections. I have skimmed some of his later work but much of it seems thinly-styled and hokey. I read The Green Mile in 1996, because I thought publishing a novel serially was a fascinating project. But it felt like a first or second draft, as though King needed more time to either tighten things up or fill out his narrative. In some corners of the internet, TGM is cited as one of his best works.

King says On Writing is a guide for how "a competent writer can become a good one". Obviously, he focuses on fiction, which I do not write, but I still enjoyed his uncomplicated love and serious respect for the written word:

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut. ...

Reading is the creative center of a writer's life. I take a book with me everywhere I go ... the trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as in long swallows. ... [If you watch a lot of TV], it's time to question how serious you really are about becoming a writer. ... Reading takes time ...

[W]hen you find something at which you are talented, you do it (whatever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head. Even when no one is listening (or reading, or watching), every outing is a bravura performance, because you as creator are happy. Perhaps even ecstatic.

The act of writing, of recording your thoughts, recollections, and opinions, of making them more permanent, fixes them in your mind more concretely than merely thinking about them. Most people have a need to express themselves creatively - writing, painting, cooking, acting, teaching, having a trade, etc. (And I often wonder what works of art we have been deprived of because millions of people have more pressing concerns, like simply living day-to-day.) There is also a concurrent need to be read, heard, acknowledged. But when you write, while you may hope for an audience, you are, at the root, doing it for yourself. Being alone during the creative act - having it play out inside your head - adds to that, I think. And there can be great satisfaction, as King notes, in performing for yourself.

But writing in the hopes of publication can also be shitty. It can resurrect - and/or reinforce - your worst feelings about yourself. It can take serious effort to push those voices aside, and carry on. To show up every day - to exercise what talent you have like a muscle. When writing for yourself, or without a deadline, however, it can be hard to keep showing up. No one is waiting for your work. No one will miss it. There is no punishment if you take the day (or week, or month) off. Even thinking that you have to write in order to be a complete person does not make you immune to these other, seemingly contradictory, feelings.

King talks a lot about his own beginning as a writer, though I would not call it a mini-autobiography. He is quite blunt when it comes to addressing his years of drug and alcohol addiction. The most fascinating (and, honestly, hard to believe) statements is when he mentions four books - 'Salem's Lot, Desperation, Dolores Claiborne, and Cujo - and says, "In no case were they plotted, not even to the extent of a single note jotted on a single piece of scrap paper ..."

A first draft - King calls it "the All-Story Draft"; David Foster Wallace labelled his "Zero Draft" (so raw, it comes before the 1st draft) - is banged out as fast as you can, with as little conscious thought as necessary. Otherwise, there's opportunity for self-doubt or self-censorship.

King strives for 2,000 words a day - roughly six double-spaced pages (this post is 1,428 words). Do that seven days a week and you'll have 180,000 words in three months, about the time King says it should take to get a first draft down on paper. King is a rare specimen in that regard. Or maybe that's about right if you've got a clear idea what you want to do and the sailing is untroubled. If you simply want to write an entertaining story, nothing fancy - which is what King does - maybe that's about right. I have no idea. Outside of game stories of athletic events, I have not written anything for publication in that manner. And those rarely topped 750 words. Usually, there are interview transcripts, or microfilm printouts, or internet searches to conduct. I gather a lot of little parts and then try to connect them in a coherent, pleasing order.

Sudden Thought: In many ways, King is like Woody Allen. He's always working, with another book/movie in the pipeline every year or so. This current one may be good, or great, or bad, or boring, but by the time you are reading/watching it, he's already working on the next one. Just wait a bit and see what comes next, maybe it'll be more to your liking.

Three other King quotes from On Writing:

What Writing Is
Telepathy, of course. ... All the arts depend on telepathy to some degree, but I believe writing offers the purest distillation.

[I]f you don't want to work your ass off, you have no business trying to write well - settle back into competency and be grateful you have even that much to fall back on.

You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair - the sense that you can never completely put on the page what's in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.

Bird By Bird is next.

chill bumps appear and i am frozen in the web they weave

In my recent REM post at JoS, I picked "Voice of Harold" as one of my favourite songs by the band. It was recorded during the Reckoning sessions in December 1983. Michael Stipe reads the back of an old gospel album over the backing track of "7 Chinese Brothers". The song was released as the B-side to So. Central Rain and collected on Dead Letter Office, an odds and sods album released in 1987.

Here is the album - The Joy Of Knowing Jesus by The Revelaires -- front and back:

Reverend Bill Funderburk sings "He Cared That Much For Me";
Charles Surratt introduces his own composition
"On Calvary For Me"; "The Joy of Knowing Jesus"
Is a song of pure delight featuring John Barbee;
The pure tenor quality of the voice of Harold
Montgomery gives a special interpretation to the grand
Old hymn "The Old Rugged Cross";
Chill bumps appear and I am frozen in the web they weave
As they reveal their innermost selves with the outpouring of their hearts.
On and on the songs roll on and soon you are caught up
In the sermon in each rendition as you come to feel
The devotion and dedication that is poured forth.
Suddenly, you know they are real, they mean it!
"Let your light so shine" could not be more aptly a-
Pplied as there shines a light from heaven on your heart
Through their singing. As an artist, Rhonda Montgomery
Exemplifies piano artistry. That's Rhonda! An artist!
This album can be the instrument to mend a broken heart
Or to straighten out your life.
Through the sincere testimony in the songs of The Revelaires.
A must!
J. Elmo Fagg (Founder and leader of
The Blue Ridge Quartet
For 23 Years) on Temple Records, LST 390
Planning to make a record?
We are associated with United Music World
Recording Studios, Incorporated,
West Columbia, South Carolina. The finest sound available anywhere
"The Joy of Knowing Jesus" pro-
Duced by Joel Gentry
Cover/Backliner Design/Reesor
The Revelaires. A must.
The Revelaires.
A must. In their home.

Producer Don Dixon (why the song title is given as "Blues" and not "Brothers" is a mystery (even if this was an early title, it clearly was not the title on the day of the recording), but I'll keep it as is):

We were working on the vocal for "7 Chinese Blues," but Michael just wasn't into it. He was down in his stairwell. I hit the talk-back to let him know I was coming through to make an adjustment... This was just an excuse to take a look at him, see if I could loosen him up a little. While I was in the attic, I'd noticed a stack of old records that had been taken up there to die, local R&B and gospel stuff mostly. I grabbed the one off the top (a gospel record entitled The Joy of Knowing Jesus by the Revelaires) and as I passed Michael on the way to the Control Room, I tossed it down to him. I thought he might be amused. When I fired up the tape a few seconds later, Michael was singing, but not the lyrics to "7 Chinese Blues." He was singing the liner notes to the LP I'd tossed him. When Michael began to sing these liner notes, he was much louder than he'd been earlier and it took a few seconds for me to realise what was going on and adjust the levels. He made it all the way through the song, working in every word on the back of that album! I rewound the tape, we had a chuckle and proceeded to sing the beautiful one-take vocal of the real words that you hear on Reckoning. He seemed more confident after that day.

and 2,077 days later ...

I have resurrected this blog for non-baseball stuff.

Stay tuned.

The End.

This will likely be my last post to In Other News... (Although I may use the URL for something else in the future.)

I don't do a lot of analyzing or original writing here -- mostly posting links to items I think are overlooked and/or important -- but even so, it has become a chore. Pushing yourself to write is hard enough. It should never feel like a "job".

Also, continued evidence of the dark evil at the heart of the ruling party in the US, coupled with the noise about an inevitable attack on Iran (and the very real possiblity of another "terror attack" to re-rally the citizenry), has made me pretty depressed. It seems like that feeling has only increased since I left the US for Canada.

I urge you to bookmark some of the news links on the right. If you do, you'll probably find everything I would have posted here anyway. My picks for the best sites:

Attytood
Cannonfire
Cursor
The Huffington Post
Left I On The News
Media Matters
Rigorous Intuition
Unclaimed Territory

and especially the Latest Breaking News forum at Democratic Underground (and don't forget Top 10 Conservative Idiots).

And (naturally) Joy of Sox for all your Boston Red Sox needs.

The American Fascist

US Vice President Henry Wallace, New York Times, April 9, 1944:

The really dangerous American fascist ... would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power. ...

They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.

The entire Op-Ed is fascinating reading. Thanks to uggabugga.

"A Recent Surge Of Violence"

EarlG, one of the administrators at Democratic Underground, has compiled this list of media reporting "a recent surge of violence" in Iraq. Click here for links to each instance:

September 3, 2003: Meanwhile, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac were to meet in Germany on Thursday to discuss ways for the West to respond to the recent surge in violence in Iraq and the Middle East.

October 31, 2003: Ansar is believed to be channelling into Iraq the foreign fighters who are behind a recent surge in violence in the country, officials say.

November 3, 2003: Bush blamed loyalists to ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and foreign terrorists for the recent surge in violence in Iraq.

March 4, 2004: A wave of bomb attacks in Baghdad and Karbala killing at least 171 people earlier this week has highlighted the difficulties in rebuilding the country and restoring peace. But Mr Blair, speaking after a meeting in Rome with his Italian counterpart, Silvio Berlusconi, said the recent surge in violence in Iraq did not constitute civil war.

April 14, 2004: U.S. President George W. Bush held a major news conference at the White House on 13 April in the middle of the deadliest month for Americans in Iraq since Baghdad fell a year ago. He spoke of the recent surge in violence there, but urged his countrymen not to lose faith. He also said he would adhere to the 30 June deadline for handing over sovereignty to Iraqis.

April 15, 2004: Pace said the recent surge in violence in Iraq is being driven by "terrorists" who see the June 30 deadline for turnover of sovereignty approaching rapidly and are petrified by the promise of democracy.

April 26, 2004: Lt. Gen. David Barno, the top American commander in Afghanistan, said Monday that the military has seen a recent surge in violence, but that most attacks were directed against soft targets, such as civilians or isolated Afghan security outposts.

May 12, 2004: Despite the prison abuse scandal and the recent surge in violence in Iraq, a majority of the public (53%) continues to support keeping troops in Iraq until a stable government is established

May 25, 2004: In his speech to the Army War College here, Bush warned that "there are difficult days ahead and the way forward may sometimes appear chaotic." Yet he vowed the handover would take place on schedule and that the US-led coalition would not be defeated by insurgents blamed for the recent surge in violence.

June 24, 2004: Compelled by the recent surge in violence, US Central Command (CentCom) has informally asked Army planners for as many as 25,000 more troops in Iraq, the Baltimore Sun reports.

July 22, 2004: Despite a recent surge in violence, including kidnappings, car bombings and assassinations, senior U.S. and Iraqi officials gave a relatively optimistic assessment on Wednesday of the security situation in Iraq since the transfer of political authority from U.S. to Iraqi authorities June 28.

July/August, 2004: In the short term, ongoing help will be required with the maintenance of security within the country. The response to the recent surge in violence must emphasise political solutions and not be just a simple deployment of military power.

September 9, 2004: "The recent surge in violence has been especially surprising because in the weeks after the transfer of power there was a phase that, for Iraq, felt to some almost like a lull."

September 17, 2004: The assessments, made before the recent surge in violence in Iraq and the US military death toll there topping 1000, appear to conflict with Bush's upbeat description of the US-led effort to stabilise and democratise Iraq.

September 22, 2004: The Iraqi leader also said that despite a recent surge in violence in Iraq, it is "very important for the people of the world really to know that we are winning, we are making progress in Iraq, we are defeating terrorists."

December 18, 2004: Mosul has experienced a recent surge in violence. On Friday, a car carrying Turkish security guards was attacked in the city, in Iraq's far north near the Turkish border, and four people were killed, one of them decapitated.

January 4, 2005: The incident marks the most senior assassination since the death in May of Governing Council president Abd al-Zahra Uthman Muhammad and should be seen within the context of the recent surge in violence ahead of national and provincial elections slated for 30 January.

January 17, 2005: The area around Kut has seen a recent surge in violence. In a separate attack, two Iraqi provincial government auditors were shot to death late Sunday after armed gunmen stopped their car in Suwaira, about 25 miles southeast of Baghdad, an official at a Kut hospital said.

March 2, 2005: Most of the victims were Shiites, the targets of a recent surge in violence, most notably a series of suicide bombings and other attacks that killed nearly 100 people during the Shiite religious commemoration known as Ashoura.

April 27, 2005: But he added it was too early to say if a recent surge in violence amounted to a concerted campaign, and insisted that US-backed forces were "winning".

May 10, 2005: The most-recent poll, conducted by CNN, USA Today, and Gallup, interviewed 1,006 adults between April 29 and May 1, 2005, before the recent surge in violence.

May 16, 2005: The insurgents' choice of adversary is unusual. But the recent surge in violence, at least, follows a time-tested pattern.

May 19, 2005: A senior U.S. military official told reporters Wednesday that the recent surge in violence in Iraq followed a meeting in Syria last month of associates of the Jordanian insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi.

May 20, 2005: It's unclear how much of the recent surge in violence stems from tribal leaders, but as Metz points out: "Local elites recognize that in a secular, modernized Iraq, their power would be challenged."

May 23, 2005: Even despite the recent surge in violence, in some areas -- downtown Mosul, for example -- Iraqi forces have begun limited independent operations.

June 17, 2005: It is also believed to be the main hideout of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant whose al Qaeda-linked group has carried out many of the deadliest attacks in Iraq and who U.S. forces believe is behind a recent surge in violence.

June 20, 2005: Mr. President, we were told that you planned to sharpen your focus on Iraq. Why did this become necessary? And given the recent surge in violence, do you agree with Vice President Dick Cheney's assessment that the insurgency is in its last throes?

August 4, 2005: His comments came as the 15-nation council unanimously adopted a U.S.-drafted resolution condemning a recent surge in violence in Iraq that has killed hundreds, ...

August 12, 2005: But a recent surge in violence and reports of growing public hostility to the Japanese presence are prompting many to question the prospects for continued humanitarian assistance there.

September 13, 2005: It's unclear how much of the recent surge in violence stems from tribal leaders, but as Metz points out: "Local elites recognize that in a secular, modernized Iraq, their power would be challenged."

September 17, 2005: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, has reportedly said the recent surge in violence is in retaliation for a coalition offensive against the group's stronghold in the northern city of Tal Afar.

October 31, 2005: The fresh U.S. effort to crack down on insurgents followed a recent surge in violence caused by the passing of the new Iraqi constitution in a referendum held earlier this month.

January 7, 2006: US officials have sought to downplay a recent surge in violence that on Thursday alone claimed the lives of more than 115 Iraqis and 11 US servicemen.

January 8, 2006: The recent surge in violence is "an anomaly" and Iraq is not on the verge of civil war, the top US commander there said yesterday, after one of the country's bloodiest days since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

February 1, 2006: Recently, five other members of Congress and I sat on a C-130 transport plane surrounded by soldiers going from Kuwait to Baghdad. The backdrop is a recent surge in violence.

February 4, 2006: Dozens of bodies have been discovered in various parts of Baghdad gagged, bound and shot repeatedly in the past week, amid recent surge in violence, which analysts have repeatedly described as initial stages of an open-ended civil war between Iraq’s ethnic groups.

March 1, 2006: AP reports that he was giving an unusually frank assessment of the stakes in the country's recent surge in violence.

March 4, 2006: The top U.S. commander in Iraq said yesterday that he hopes to make an assessment this spring about whether to reduce the number of American troops in Iraq. But Pentagon officials speaking anonymously said a recent surge in violence there has dampened hopes that force levels can be cut anytime soon.

I love that January 8 clip: "an anomaly"!

Yup, those "insurgents" -- those straggling dead-enders -- are in their last throes. And we're "turning a corner". Obviously.

Note: Here's a new one with some slight editing:

March 6, 2006: Pressure mounted Sunday on Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari to give up his bid for a new term amid anger over a recent surge of sectarian killings that has complicated already snarled negotiations on a new Iraqi government.

What A Moron

In a televised speech in New Delhi, George Dubai Bush referred to Pakistan as an Arab country.

A White House spokesman had to quickly explain (for the umpteenth time) that Shit-for-Brains simply "misspoke" -- like when he used the term "Pakis", called Greeks "Grecians", claimed that Africa was a country, referred to the "Great British" (which was actually cleaned up for WaPo readers), asked Brazilian president "Do you have blacks too?", etc., etc., etc.

He also called Pakistan -- whose president came to power through a military coup -- "a force for freedom" in the world. Which actually helps explain a few things about his characterization of the US.

In preparation for Bush's visit, the Pakistani government rounded up and imprisoned hundreds of people to prevent them from protesting. Freedom is on the march!

Toons

US Has Tortured Thousands To Death In Iraq

From the Times of Malta:

The US is "aware" of torture taking place in Iraqi prisons, according to the outgoing Maltese UN human rights chief in Iraq.

"Yes, torture is happening now, mainly in illegal detention places. Such centres are mostly being run by militia that have been absorbed by the police force," says John Pace, who retired last week as human rights chief for the UN assistance mission in Iraq.

In a frank interview with The Times, Dr Pace says photos and forensic records have proved that torture was rife inside detention centres. Though the process of release has been speeded up, there are an estimated 23,000 people in detention, of whom 80 to 90 per cent are innocent.

He says the Baghdad morgue received 1,100 bodies in July alone, about 900 of whom bore evidence of torture or summary execution. That continued throughout the year and last December there were 780 bodies, including 400 having gunshot wounds or wounds as those caused by electric drills. ...

The Memory Hole has graphic pictures of Iraqis being tortured by US troops (recently aired by Australia's public broadcasting station).

$1,600,000,000

That's how many taxpayer dollars the Cheney administration has spent since 2003 on domestic propaganda.

The Department of Defense spent another $1.1 billion on media contracts.

Huffing

Crusader Bunnypants visited the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. He knocked over some samples and then decided to get high.

From the AP:

"You're doing great work here," said Bush, who picked up a bottle of clear-colored ethanol and smelled it.

Later on, after Bush found some ether, he had to take a nap.

Bill O'Reilly Hearts Hitler

November 30, 2005, NBC's Today:

It's a disaster for the world if we don't do well [in Iraq]. These pinheads running around going, "Get out of Iraq now," don't know what they're talking about. These are the same people before Hitler invaded in World War II that were saying, "Ah, he's not such a bad guy." They don't get it.

February 20, 2006, "The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly":

...[H]ere is the essential problem in Iraq. There are so many nuts in the country -- so many crazies -- that we can't control them. And I don't -- we're never gonna be able to control them. So the only solution to this is to hand over everything to the Iraqis as fast as humanly possible. Because we just can't control these crazy people. This is all over the place. And that was the big mistake about America: They didn't -- it was the crazy-people underestimation. We did not know how to deal with them -- still don't. But they're just all over the place.

School Bus Drivers On Terrorist Watch

From the AP:

The war on terror has a new front line - the school bus line. Financed by the Homeland Security Department, school bus drivers are being trained to watch for potential terrorists, people who may be casing their routes or plotting to blow up their buses.

Designers of the School Bus Watch program want to turn 600,000 bus drivers into an army of observers, like a counterterrorism watch on wheels. Already mindful of motorists with road rage and kids with weapons, bus drivers are now being warned of far more grisly scenarios. ...

The program demands strong oversight, said John Rollins, a former senior Homeland Security intelligence official now with Congressional Research Service. Otherwise, he said, some bus drivers could think of themselves as undercover agents. ...

Animal Farm

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, is urging the UN Human Rights Commission to take legal action against the United States -- possibly through the International Court of Justice at The Hague -- if it fails to close Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay.

Sentamu's report states that the US's actions do not "appear to coincide with that of most civilised nations". And who could disagree with him?

The American Government is breaking international law. The main building block of a democratic society is that everyone is equal before the law, innocent until proved otherwise, and has the right to legal representation. If the guilt of the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay is beyond doubt, why are the Americans afraid to bring them to trial? ...

The US should try all 500 detainees at Guantanamo, who still include eight British residents, or free them without further delay. To hold someone for up to four years without charge clearly indicates a society that is heading towards George Orwell's Animal Farm.

Salon has recently obtained "more than 1,000 photographs, videos and supporting documents" from the Army's investigation into the torture at Abu Ghraib. And the Guardian says the leaked report includes "1,325 images of suspected detainee abuse, 93 video files of suspected detainee abuse, 660 images of adult pornography, 546 images of suspected dead Iraqi detainees, 29 images of soldiers in simulated sexual acts".

A Pentagon spokesman said (predictably) that the release of these pictures and videos "could only further inflame and possibly incite unnecessary violence in the world". .. Yeah, it would be alright if it wasn't for those pesky cameras!

Also: "Iraq's prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, while condemning the abuse at Abu Ghraib, noted that US soldiers had already been punished for it." ... Unbelievable.

Meanwhile, the US is building more torture chambers and concentration camps in Cuba.

Cheney Shooting: Lies, Contradictions, And Bullshit

Check out these threads documenting the delays, contradictions, lies and plain ol' bullshit, thanks to many DU posters/researchers. Some of the topics:

Cheney's companion at fault in shooting, White House says

Texas shooting: was Cheney drunk?

This gets better - Cheney doesnt even HAVE the proper hunting license!

Smoking Gun has First Cheney Accident Report

The guy Cheney shot was involved in Funeralgate (gravedumping by Bush pal)

The Reason For the Cheney Coverup: He's Guilty of a FELONY under TX Law!

Cheney Shooting scandal hostess -- over $20 BILLION business w/ Bush admin.

MSNBC scrubs "beer or two" comment from its story...

Also videos threads with footage from Keith Olbermann, Jon Stewart, David Letterman, etc.

Uggabugga has links to more, including:

Cheney was out hunting with his girlfriend-on-the-side. (That's actually pure speculation, but it's a part of the overall story mix.)

Cheney had a liquid lunch, and was blotto that afternoon. (Had "only one beer" mid-day and a cocktail after the shooting).

He was sloppy and shot Whittington at close range.

Cheney was pretty detached afterwards, and instead of being closely focused on the accident, had a leisurely dinner that evening.

Because he was drunk, he hid from deputies that showed up that evening.

Rove was brought in to decide how to do the PR.

That meant putting out a bogus story that Whittington was merely "peppered". ...

Whittington has heart attack. Things get serious.

Cheney finally decides to talk about the incident in the ultra-friendly environment of Fox News with Cheney-supporter Brit Hume.

Was Cheney Drunk?

Possibly.

Gone Shootin'

Jeff at Rigorous Intuition on Dick Cheney's shooting of fellow hunter Harry Whittington.

The comments, which are also good, include these points: there was an odd 18-hour delay in reporting this story -- indeed, some have wondered if the White House planned to report it at all -- and the men were hunting from a car (which is illegal).

Also, how can a man with a shotgun sneak up on the Vice President with the Secret Service around?

What The Domestic Spying Scandal Means

Glenn Greenwald at Unclaimed Territory has written an amazing overview (also here) of how and why the government's spying on American citizens is so dangerous. Here is some of it:

[The Administration's] argument is that they have the right to use all war powers –- of which warrantless eavesdropping is but one of many examples -– against American citizens within the country. And not only do they have the right to use those war powers against us, they have the right to use them even if Congress makes it a crime to do so or the courts rule that doing so is illegal.

Put another way, the Administration has now baldly stated that whatever it is allowed to do against our enemies in a war, it is equally entitled to exercise all of the same powers against American citizens on American soil. ...

The "war powers" which a President can use in war against our enemies are virtually limitless -- they include indefinite detention in prison with no charges or access to lawyers, limitless eavesdropping, interrogation by means up to and perhaps including torture, and even killing. ... Without hyperbole, it is hard to imagine a theory more dangerous or contrary to our nation's principles than a theory that vests the President -- not just Bush but all future Presidents -- limitless authority to use war powers against American citizens within this country.

Critically, these claimed powers are not purely theoretical or, as Gonzales claimed in response to questions from Sen. Feinstein, "hypothetical." Quite the contrary. Not only has the Administration claimed these powers, they have exercised them aggressively -- not just against Al Qaeda, but against American citizens.

In my view, the single most significant and staggering action of the Bush Administration -– and there is an intense competition for that title, with many worthy entries -– is the fact that the Administration already has detained an American citizen on American soil (Jose Padilla), threw him into a military prison indefinitely, refused to charge him with any crime, and refused even to allow him access to a lawyer, and then kept him there for several years. Then, the Administration argued that federal courts are powerless even to review, let alone limit or restrict, the Government's detention of American citizens with no due process.

And to justify this truly authoritarian nightmare -– being detained and locked away with no due process by your own Government -– the Administration relied upon precisely the same theory which Gonzales advocated on Monday to justify the Administration's warrantless eavesdropping on Americans. Like warrantless eavesdropping, indefinite detention is a "war power," and the Administration therefore claims that it has the right even to detain American citizens with no charges, and nothing can limit or stop that power. ...

Under the Bush Administration, that is the country we have become. Alberto Gonzales spent 8 hours on national television the other day justifying why we must be a country which lives under a system which operates in that manner. That is a system of government wholly foreign to how Americans understand their nation and how our nation has always functioned. There is no more important priority than making as clear as possible to Americans just how broad and truly radical are the powers claimed by this President.

The question now is how can a majority of Americans get this essential information? The Democrats aren't going to tell them.

Foiled Terror Plot -- Another Bush Lie

On Thursday, the Chimp said that an alleged al-Qaida plot in late 2001 to use shoe bombs to blow open a cockpit door and steer an airplane into Los Angeles' Library Tower was foiled when Asian authorities captured the four men allegedly involved.

And get this -- Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was never told about the alleged attack or its disruption. "I'm amazed that the president would make this [announcement] on national TV and not inform us of these details through the appropriate channels. I don't expect a call from the president — but somebody."

Capital Hill Blue quotes a longtime CIA field operative as saying Bush is living in a fantasy world. Several intelligence officials wonder whether the plot "was ever much more than talk."

Keith Olbermann nails it:

My stomach is queasy as I ask this. In the context of this today and what you have seen, are we far enough removed from that component of the novel "1984" - the part where the government turns a kind of terror faucet on and off to scare the public in to acquiescing to whatever wants to do?

The whole thing sounds like bullshit to me. If it's true, why would Bush wait more than four years to crow about it? You'd think they'd be glad to report some actual success for a change. ... And these four guys who were arrested -- why haven't they been charged with anything?

Why should we believe anything Bush says?

Time Magazine: Unapologetic Bush Propagandists

From Media Matters:

Summary: At least three reporters involved in an October 2003 Time magazine article that suggested Karl Rove was no longer under suspicion of outing Valerie Plame, and that contained Scott McClellan's denial that Rove was involved, knew at the time of the article that Rove had, in fact, outed Plame.

On October 13, 2003, Time magazine ran an article that included a quote from White House press secretary Scott McClellan insisting that White House senior adviser Karl Rove had nothing to do with outing undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame. As Media Matters for America has previously noted, at least two Time editorial employees involved in the article knew McClellan's denial was false: correspondent Matthew Cooper and Washington bureau chief Michael Duffy. Cooper knew the denial was false because Rove had outed Plame to him. Duffy knew the denial was false because Cooper had sent him an email relating what Rove had told him.

Former Time White House correspondent John Dickerson, in a first-person account of his knowledge of the Plame matter, now acknowledges that he, too, knew that Rove was Cooper's source well before the October 2003 article -- an article on which he, like Cooper, received reporting credit. ...

[I]n July 2003, Time reporters Cooper, Duffy, and Dickerson all knew that Rove had outed Plame. But three months later, all three of them helped produce a Time article (Duffy received a byline; the others were credited with having contributed to the reporting) that falsely suggested that Rove had nothing to do with it.

Dickerson has been trying to defend his deceptions.

Right Out In The Open

Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, has received a contract worth up to $385,000,000 from the Army Corps of Engineers to build "temporary immigration detention centers" in the United States.

According to its press release, KBR is building the centers for the Homeland Security Department to provide

temporary detention and processing capabilities ... in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs.

I don't know what could cause a huge influx of US immigrants; the country certainly is not encouraging anything like that. And, naturally, left unsaid is what these "new programs" might be.

Anyone else remember Rex 84?

Let's Spend Some Time Together

ABC felt obligated to bleep words in two of the three songs the Rolling Stones played yesterday evening at Super Bowl XL.

The deliciate sensibilities of the viewers apparently would have been offended by the word "come" in "Start Me Up" (as in "you make a dead man ..."), although you can hear the ribald, unexpurgated version umpteen times a day by surfing rock radio.

For "Rough Justice", we were denied the last word in the first verse:

One time you were my baby chicken
Now you've grown into a fox
And once upon a time I was your little rooster
Now am I just one of your cocks?

No bleeping sound, just dead air. ... The Stones agreed to the censorship ahead of time.

It was a decent performance* -- Ronnie Wood's guitar was inaudible at first (they probably wanted to make sure he was playing the correct key!) -- although it didn't take off until the finale, "Satisfaction". Good for short-sleeved Mick showing a bit of flab on his arms (he's 62, for christ sake). Plus, our halftime parents at ABC felt we could handle hearing "tryin' to make some girl".

Keef was Keef and Charlie Watts re-solidified his position as one of the coolest men on the face of the Earth.

*: Hoping for "Sweet Neo-Con" was likely asking for too much.

Female Soldiers Dying Of Dehydration In Iraq; Fear Being Raped by Fellow Soldiers

Naturally, the US government is doing everything it can to cover it up.

Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, has this report. Here is the beginning of the article, but you should absolutely read the whole thing.

In a startling revelation, the former commander of Abu Ghraib prison testified that Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, former senior US military commander in Iraq, gave orders to cover up the cause of death for some female American soldiers serving in Iraq.

Last week, Col. Janis Karpinski told a panel of judges at the Commission of Inquiry for Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration in New York that several women had died of dehydration because they refused to drink liquids late in the day. They were afraid of being assaulted or even raped by male soldiers if they had to use the women's latrine after dark. ...

Karpinski testified that a surgeon for the coalition's joint task force said in a briefing that "women in fear of getting up in the hours of darkness to go out to the port-a-lets or the latrines were not drinking liquids after 3 or 4 in the afternoon, and in 120 degree heat or warmer, because there was no air-conditioning at most of the facilities, they were dying from dehydration in their sleep."

"And rather than make everybody aware of that - because that's shocking, and as a leader if that's not shocking to you then you're not much of a leader - what they told the surgeon to do is don't brief those details anymore. And don't say specifically that they're women. You can provide that in a written report but don't brief it in the open anymore."

For example, Maj. Gen. Walter Wojdakowski, Sanchez's top deputy in Iraq, saw "dehydration" listed as the cause of death on the death certificate of a female master sergeant in September 2003. Under orders from Sanchez, he directed that the cause of death no longer be listed, Karpinski stated. The official explanation for this was to protect the women's privacy rights.

Sanchez's attitude was: "The women asked to be here, so now let them take what comes with the territory," Karpinski quoted him as saying. Karpinski told me that Sanchez, who was her boss, was very sensitive to the political ramifications of everything he did. She thinks it likely that when the information about the cause of these women's deaths was passed to the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld ordered that the details not be released. "That's how Rumsfeld works," she said.

"It was out of control," Karpinski told a group of students at Thomas Jefferson School of Law last October. There was an 800 number women could use to report sexual assaults. But no one had a phone, she added. And no one answered that number, which was based in the United States. Any woman who successfully connected to it would get a recording. Even after more than 83 incidents were reported during a six-month period in Iraq and Kuwait, the 24-hour rape hot line was still answered by a machine that told callers to leave a message. ...

My partner Laura writes:

Of all the hypocrisy and lies perpetrated by the US government, for me the worst, the absolute lowest, is the shameful treatment of the armed forces. Lie to these people, betray their trust, cut off their options so the military is one of the only ways to get an education, use them for propaganda - then spit them out. Cut funding for the ongoing medical treatment they'll need long after their dues have been paid, give their families only partial benefits because they were reservists, deny them even proper protection in combat - it's a long list.

It's hard to treat a human being more like a piece of shit than the US government treats the members of its military (and, sadly, that has been the case since the founding of the republic).

$100,000 A Minute

That is (at a minimum) what the Iraq invasion is costing US taxpayers.

That's $144,000,000 every single day.

(Remember Paul Wolfowitz's infamous comment about Iraq's oil reserves? "We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction.")

Just another lie.

But it's worth it 'cuz some Iraqis (well, the alive ones) got purple ink on their fingers.

Addicted To Oil

From Attytood