on this day 1971: american Lieutenant guilty of My Lai massacre
Lieutenant William Calley was found guilty of murder at a court martial for his part in the My Lai massacre which claimed the lives of 500 South Vietnamese civilians.Lieutenant Calley was in charge of Charlie Company, a unit of the American Division's 11th Infantry Brigade, who were on a mission to root out the communist 48th Viet Cong Battalion fighters.
The Viet Cong were not in the village and instead more than 500 unarmed civilians were brutally killed in an unprovoked attack by US troops.
Lieutenant Calley faced four charges:... the murder of at least 30 "oriental human beings" at a junction of two trails... killing 70 others in a ditch... shooting a man who approached him with his hands raised begging for mercy... killing a child running from the ditch where the 70 died.
The massacre came to light a year after it happened after investigative media reports.
The crimes included murders, rape, sodomy, maiming and assault of civilians.
Charges came after the army commissioned an investigation into the cover-up of the massacre which became known as the Peers inquiry.
The Peers inquiry recommended charges should be brought against 28 officers and two non-commissioned officers involved in the concealment of the massacre.
Lieutenant Calley was the only one to be convicted and he was sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labour. Within three days he was out of prison, pending appeal, on the personal instructions of President Richard Nixon.
He spent the next three years under house arrest at Fort Benning in Georgia. Freed on bail in 1974 his sentence was then cut to 10 years but he was paroled later that year after completing one third of his sentence.
Saturday, 29 March 2003
Friday, 28 March 2003
RELATIVITY
the other night i was talking on the phone with a friend and she was describing her horrible day. she said she had started out with the intention of getting on with doing something pleasurable, but she found herself drawn into doing horrible admin type phone calls that ended up putting her in a miserable mood.
and then she said
that i don't have things like that to deal with.
i pointed out that she mistakes my lack of anxiety, with meaning that i don't have 'serious problems' to deal with.
i mean for starters, as a consequence of personal priorities and choices made throughout my adult life, i exist at a level of financial poverty. i.e. i spend most days with no money at all. there are holes in my shoes and i have overdue bills and debts i can't pay. i'd prefer to pay them, but if i can't it doesn't matter. i'll deal with the consequences if and when they happen. its not worth being unhappy or worrying about it.
it really doesn't matter if the electric gets cut off or i can't buy new clothes this year or i haven't had a 'holiday' this decade. its not the end of the world, its merely the end of normality.
life is just too short and too fascinating to spend it being worried and distracted by prescribed priorities.
the other night i was talking on the phone with a friend and she was describing her horrible day. she said she had started out with the intention of getting on with doing something pleasurable, but she found herself drawn into doing horrible admin type phone calls that ended up putting her in a miserable mood.
and then she said
that i don't have things like that to deal with.
i pointed out that she mistakes my lack of anxiety, with meaning that i don't have 'serious problems' to deal with.
i mean for starters, as a consequence of personal priorities and choices made throughout my adult life, i exist at a level of financial poverty. i.e. i spend most days with no money at all. there are holes in my shoes and i have overdue bills and debts i can't pay. i'd prefer to pay them, but if i can't it doesn't matter. i'll deal with the consequences if and when they happen. its not worth being unhappy or worrying about it.
it really doesn't matter if the electric gets cut off or i can't buy new clothes this year or i haven't had a 'holiday' this decade. its not the end of the world, its merely the end of normality.
life is just too short and too fascinating to spend it being worried and distracted by prescribed priorities.
CONSPIRATORS
dismissively labelling an idea as a 'conspiracy theory' effectively works like a fire blanket, instantly smothering the flames of non-prescribed thought.
yet if conspiracy theorists, aswell as scriptwriters (not to mention 'terrorists'), are capable of imagining clever and elaborate plots, then whats so difficult about believing that some politicians and corporate power junkies are equally capable of devising and colluding in grand conspiracies?
as a starting point, people who crave immense power usually share a base line of commonality with each other. they crave power. they are usually rich. they have often been processed through similar institutions and social networks. they usually share a strong belief in righteousness. they tend to be rightwing. and they tend to be intolerant of diverse human freedoms, especially when those freedoms threaten to turn their positions of power into an irrelevance.
you see i have a real problem with the notion that a cleverly executed strike such as sep 11th, which involved multiple levels of orchestration, simply didn't register as a significant pre-warning in all that surveillance chatter. you know, the electronic monitoring that justifies america currently working its way through a rainbow of alerts and vaporising civil liberties, or the reason tanks pulled up outside airports in the uk, or why we're at war.
and i have the greatest difficulty imagining how anybody in their right mind could ever believe a single word spoken by those psychotic crooks who run the american administration?
and i don't understand why people on the telly keep telling us that "nobody wants war". of course there are people who want war. just as there are powerful individuals and organisations who don't care the slightest about human lives.
conspiracy or not, (and self censorship amongst journalists certainly resembles a conspiracy) there are important questions not being adressed by the mainstream media: who gains the most from sept 11th? who gains from the restrictions to our liberty? who gains from a consumer population psyoped into a state of anxiety and insecurity? who gains the most from war?
dismissively labelling an idea as a 'conspiracy theory' effectively works like a fire blanket, instantly smothering the flames of non-prescribed thought.
yet if conspiracy theorists, aswell as scriptwriters (not to mention 'terrorists'), are capable of imagining clever and elaborate plots, then whats so difficult about believing that some politicians and corporate power junkies are equally capable of devising and colluding in grand conspiracies?
as a starting point, people who crave immense power usually share a base line of commonality with each other. they crave power. they are usually rich. they have often been processed through similar institutions and social networks. they usually share a strong belief in righteousness. they tend to be rightwing. and they tend to be intolerant of diverse human freedoms, especially when those freedoms threaten to turn their positions of power into an irrelevance.
you see i have a real problem with the notion that a cleverly executed strike such as sep 11th, which involved multiple levels of orchestration, simply didn't register as a significant pre-warning in all that surveillance chatter. you know, the electronic monitoring that justifies america currently working its way through a rainbow of alerts and vaporising civil liberties, or the reason tanks pulled up outside airports in the uk, or why we're at war.
and i have the greatest difficulty imagining how anybody in their right mind could ever believe a single word spoken by those psychotic crooks who run the american administration?
and i don't understand why people on the telly keep telling us that "nobody wants war". of course there are people who want war. just as there are powerful individuals and organisations who don't care the slightest about human lives.
conspiracy or not, (and self censorship amongst journalists certainly resembles a conspiracy) there are important questions not being adressed by the mainstream media: who gains the most from sept 11th? who gains from the restrictions to our liberty? who gains from a consumer population psyoped into a state of anxiety and insecurity? who gains the most from war?
micheal moore at the oscars
Cheryl Seal writes about the reality behind the supposed large chorus of boos and jeers Michael Moore received at the Oscars.
The "liberal" corporate media is playing games in the sound editing room.
When Michael Moore delivered his blast of the Bush Reich at the Oscars, he was, in reality, given a standing ovation and hearty applause. But, to hear the soundbyte presented on the network news, you'd never know it. All you can hear are boos...which, in fact, came from about five people, from eyewitness accounts.
(via ethel the blog)
also worth reading by Cheryl Seal: Smoking Gun
The 9/11 Evidence that May Hang George W. Bush
Cheryl Seal writes about the reality behind the supposed large chorus of boos and jeers Michael Moore received at the Oscars.
The "liberal" corporate media is playing games in the sound editing room.
When Michael Moore delivered his blast of the Bush Reich at the Oscars, he was, in reality, given a standing ovation and hearty applause. But, to hear the soundbyte presented on the network news, you'd never know it. All you can hear are boos...which, in fact, came from about five people, from eyewitness accounts.
(via ethel the blog)
also worth reading by Cheryl Seal: Smoking Gun
The 9/11 Evidence that May Hang George W. Bush
Wednesday, 26 March 2003
The Alternative United States
By: Dr. Edward Said
"to live in a world that is held in the grip of an extraordinarily unbound great power there is a vital need for knowing as much about its swirling dynamics as is humanly possible. And that, I believe, also includes commanding an excellent working command of the language, something few Arab leaders (as a case in point) possess.
Yes, America is the country of McDonald's, Hollywood, blue jeans, Coca-Cola and CNN, all of them products exported and available everywhere by virtue of globalization, multinational corporations, and what seems to be the world's appetite for articles of easy, convenient consumption. But we must also be conscious of from what source these come and in what ways the cultural and social processes from which they ultimately derive can be interpreted, especially since the danger of thinking about America too simply or reductively and statically is so obvious." .....
....."Cultures, specially America's, which is in effect an immigrant culture, overlap with others, and one of the perhaps unintended consequences of globalization is the appearance of transnational communities of global interests, as in the human rights movement, the women's movement, the anti-war movement and so on. America is not at all insulated from any of this, but one has to excavate beyond the intimidatingly unified surface to see what lies beneath, so as to be able to join in that set of disputes, to which many of the people of the world are a party. There is hope and encouragement to be gained from that view."
By: Dr. Edward Said
"to live in a world that is held in the grip of an extraordinarily unbound great power there is a vital need for knowing as much about its swirling dynamics as is humanly possible. And that, I believe, also includes commanding an excellent working command of the language, something few Arab leaders (as a case in point) possess.
Yes, America is the country of McDonald's, Hollywood, blue jeans, Coca-Cola and CNN, all of them products exported and available everywhere by virtue of globalization, multinational corporations, and what seems to be the world's appetite for articles of easy, convenient consumption. But we must also be conscious of from what source these come and in what ways the cultural and social processes from which they ultimately derive can be interpreted, especially since the danger of thinking about America too simply or reductively and statically is so obvious." .....
....."Cultures, specially America's, which is in effect an immigrant culture, overlap with others, and one of the perhaps unintended consequences of globalization is the appearance of transnational communities of global interests, as in the human rights movement, the women's movement, the anti-war movement and so on. America is not at all insulated from any of this, but one has to excavate beyond the intimidatingly unified surface to see what lies beneath, so as to be able to join in that set of disputes, to which many of the people of the world are a party. There is hope and encouragement to be gained from that view."
former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter
The United States does not have the military means to take over Baghdad and will lose the war against Iraq, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter said.
"The United States is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated. It is a war we can not win," he told private radio TSF in an interview broadcast here Tuesday evening.
"We do not have the military means to take over Baghdad and for this reason I believe the defeat of the United States in this war is inevitable," he said.
"Every time we confront Iraqi troops we may win some tactical battles, as we did for ten years in Vietnam but we will not be able to win this war, which in my opinion is already lost," Ritter added.
Ritter resigned in August 1998 after accusing both Washington and the United Nations of not doing enough to support the weapons inspectors.
Since leaving the UN weapons inspectors team he has become an outspoken critic of US policies towards Iraq.
The United States does not have the military means to take over Baghdad and will lose the war against Iraq, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter said.
"The United States is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated. It is a war we can not win," he told private radio TSF in an interview broadcast here Tuesday evening.
"We do not have the military means to take over Baghdad and for this reason I believe the defeat of the United States in this war is inevitable," he said.
"Every time we confront Iraqi troops we may win some tactical battles, as we did for ten years in Vietnam but we will not be able to win this war, which in my opinion is already lost," Ritter added.
Ritter resigned in August 1998 after accusing both Washington and the United Nations of not doing enough to support the weapons inspectors.
Since leaving the UN weapons inspectors team he has become an outspoken critic of US policies towards Iraq.
The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA
"You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month." CIA operative discussing with Philip Graham, editor Washington Post, on the availability and prices of journalists willing to peddle CIA propaganda and cover stories. "Katherine The Great," by Deborah Davis (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1991)
"You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month." CIA operative discussing with Philip Graham, editor Washington Post, on the availability and prices of journalists willing to peddle CIA propaganda and cover stories. "Katherine The Great," by Deborah Davis (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1991)
We were censored
by FIRAS AL-ATRAQCHI
Somebody doesn't like hearing the truth. Okay, for a second, lets scratch that and choose a slightly less politically charged term. Someone doesn't like to be disputed with alternative views, counterclaims, research and fact. Someone wants you, the reading public, to only gather one-sided, monotone, Orwellian dispatch. News the way they "fashion" it. Or as CNN will have you believe, the "most reliable source for news."
And so, once again, the staff at YellowTimes.org was threatened with a shutdown:
"We are sorry to notify you of suspending your account: Your account has been suspended because [of] inappropriate graphic material."
Within hours, the [YellowTimes.org] site was shut down.
by FIRAS AL-ATRAQCHI
Somebody doesn't like hearing the truth. Okay, for a second, lets scratch that and choose a slightly less politically charged term. Someone doesn't like to be disputed with alternative views, counterclaims, research and fact. Someone wants you, the reading public, to only gather one-sided, monotone, Orwellian dispatch. News the way they "fashion" it. Or as CNN will have you believe, the "most reliable source for news."
And so, once again, the staff at YellowTimes.org was threatened with a shutdown:
"We are sorry to notify you of suspending your account: Your account has been suspended because [of] inappropriate graphic material."
Within hours, the [YellowTimes.org] site was shut down.
Voltaire
"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices," Voltaire wrote in 1767. The quotation is sometimes rendered with different wording: "As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities."
Lillian Hellman
In May 1952, the playwright Lillian Hellman wrote in a letter to the House Un-American Activities Committee: "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions."
"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices," Voltaire wrote in 1767. The quotation is sometimes rendered with different wording: "As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities."
Lillian Hellman
In May 1952, the playwright Lillian Hellman wrote in a letter to the House Un-American Activities Committee: "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions."
FAKE TERROR - THE ROAD TO DICTATORSHIP
"In 70 BC, an ambitious minor politician and extremely wealthy man, Marcus Licineus Crassus, wanted to rule Rome. Just to give you an idea of what sort of man Crassus really was, he is credited with invention of the fire brigade. But in Crassus' version, his fire-fighting slaves would race to the scene of a burning building whereupon Crassus would offer to buy it on the spot for a tiny fraction of it's worth. If the owner sold, Crassus' slaves would put out the fire. If the owner refused to sell, Crassus allowed the building to burn to the ground. By means of this device, Crassus eventually came to be the largest single private land holder in Rome, and used some of his wealth to help back Julius Caesar against Cicero."
"In 70 BC, an ambitious minor politician and extremely wealthy man, Marcus Licineus Crassus, wanted to rule Rome. Just to give you an idea of what sort of man Crassus really was, he is credited with invention of the fire brigade. But in Crassus' version, his fire-fighting slaves would race to the scene of a burning building whereupon Crassus would offer to buy it on the spot for a tiny fraction of it's worth. If the owner sold, Crassus' slaves would put out the fire. If the owner refused to sell, Crassus allowed the building to burn to the ground. By means of this device, Crassus eventually came to be the largest single private land holder in Rome, and used some of his wealth to help back Julius Caesar against Cicero."
Tuesday, 25 March 2003
Synapse chip taps into brain chemistry
"A microchip that uses chemicals instead of pulses of electricity to stimulate neurons has been created. It could open the way to implants that interact with our nervous system in a far more subtle way than is possible now."
(via my analog life)
"A microchip that uses chemicals instead of pulses of electricity to stimulate neurons has been created. It could open the way to implants that interact with our nervous system in a far more subtle way than is possible now."
(via my analog life)
Another Poster for Peace
"Another Poster for Peace is a group of designers who are commited to the peaceful and just resolution of the current crises in the Middle East. Our goal is to help create a grassroots campaign for patriotic dissent as a counter to the onslaught of fear and warmongering currently in the media.
If enough of us voice our dissent, we can raise the level of public engagement and concern to a point at which politicians will have to sit up and pay attention. If enough of us voice our dissent, we will be heard."
Oxfam America
"Oxfam America is an international development organization dedicated to creating lasting solutions to hunger, poverty and social injustice around the world.
Oxfam provides financial, technical and networking assistance to grassroots groups to support their self-help community development initiatives. Oxfam also advocates among national and international policy-makers, suggesting humane public policies that address structural impediments to ending poverty and hunger.
In addition, Oxfam educates Americans about the causes and solutions to world hunger and poverty. A major component of our educational and policy work is campaigning throughout the U.S. to get Americans actively behind the important policy issues that we believe will make significant differences to poor communities."
(via my analog life)
"Another Poster for Peace is a group of designers who are commited to the peaceful and just resolution of the current crises in the Middle East. Our goal is to help create a grassroots campaign for patriotic dissent as a counter to the onslaught of fear and warmongering currently in the media.
If enough of us voice our dissent, we can raise the level of public engagement and concern to a point at which politicians will have to sit up and pay attention. If enough of us voice our dissent, we will be heard."
Oxfam America
"Oxfam America is an international development organization dedicated to creating lasting solutions to hunger, poverty and social injustice around the world.
Oxfam provides financial, technical and networking assistance to grassroots groups to support their self-help community development initiatives. Oxfam also advocates among national and international policy-makers, suggesting humane public policies that address structural impediments to ending poverty and hunger.
In addition, Oxfam educates Americans about the causes and solutions to world hunger and poverty. A major component of our educational and policy work is campaigning throughout the U.S. to get Americans actively behind the important policy issues that we believe will make significant differences to poor communities."
(via my analog life)
Vegetable-Based Fuels Steam Ahead
"Altering the chemical structure of vegetable oil could make the molecule more resistant to temperature changes and increase its use as a supplement to petroleum-based motor oil in automobiles, scientists said on Monday."
Bio-battery runs on shots of vodka
"An enzyme-catalysed battery has been created that could one day run cell phones and laptop computers on shots of vodka."
(via my analog life)
"Altering the chemical structure of vegetable oil could make the molecule more resistant to temperature changes and increase its use as a supplement to petroleum-based motor oil in automobiles, scientists said on Monday."
Bio-battery runs on shots of vodka
"An enzyme-catalysed battery has been created that could one day run cell phones and laptop computers on shots of vodka."
(via my analog life)
The Sound of Things to Come
(new york times via plastic bag
"Through the magic of transmitting sound to directionally precise co-ordinates the HyperSonic Sound Amplifier enables really specific and clearly defined parts of the 3-D real-world to be exposed to noise in such a way that people a couple of feet away can't hear it at all."
tom adds: "The most depressing part of this otherwise fascinating story is that the best thing they could come up with as an early application was a Coca-Cola machine that suggested you buy one when you went past... "Wouldn't a Coca-Cola feel pretty good about now?""
(new york times via plastic bag
"Through the magic of transmitting sound to directionally precise co-ordinates the HyperSonic Sound Amplifier enables really specific and clearly defined parts of the 3-D real-world to be exposed to noise in such a way that people a couple of feet away can't hear it at all."
tom adds: "The most depressing part of this otherwise fascinating story is that the best thing they could come up with as an early application was a Coca-Cola machine that suggested you buy one when you went past... "Wouldn't a Coca-Cola feel pretty good about now?""
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