Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

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TEAM AMERICA? -- ONE SICK MOVIE!, by Charles Carreon

8:28 pm, August 21, 2005

I looked forward to watching “Team America,” a puppet-show satire of American foreign policy by “the makers of South Park,” even going so far as to actually watch the movie the same night I rented the DVD. Usually I’d rather read, and Tara pushes the movie agenda, but on this night, I had something I wanted to see. But having seen it, I must caution you to handle it with care, like a dead gopher your cat brought you. And please don’t leave this around kids. It’s loaded with sick ideas that are insidiously communicated using established techniques of subliminal persuasion. It doesn’t make much difference that puppets, rather than human actors, collapse in their own vomit, engage in sex that culminates with the girl shitting on the guy’s face, hack each other to bits, set others on fire, and are decapitated, detonated and impaled in the course of the movie. Indeed, the effect may be worse than seeing actors engaging in this stuff, because in that case, we’d just turn it off as “too violent.” But with puppets, they’ve got you off guard, and the traumatizing images stun the mind while explicit, implicit, and subliminal notions establish cross-currents of confusion, rendering you vulnerable to the really sick ideas that the creators of the movie want to disseminate.

By using puppets with large heads, about four times larger that a normal adult head, the puppeteers cause us to perceive the puppets as little babies, invoking our instinctive response to find them endearing. Mickey Mouse, Tweety Pie, and Joe Camel also exploit this hard-wired feature of human response to feel protective and emotive toward children. Such characters, that manifest child traits in adulthood, are called “neotenic.” “Neoteny is a term in developmental biology that describes the retention of juvenile characteristics in the adults of a species.” (Wikipedia entry for “neoteny.”) In simpler terms, these puppets are cute. “Cuteness is usually characterized by some combination of infant-like physical traits, especially small size, a large head, large eyes, a small nose, and chubby limbs. … Konrad Lorenz argued in 1950 that infantile features triggered nurturing responses in adults [citing as evidence] that humans react more positively to animals who look like infants — with big eyes, big heads, shortened noses, etc. — than to animals who are less cute. … Another way to phrase Lorenz's point is to say that humans prefer animals which exhibit neoteny.” (Wikipedia entry for “Cuteness.”) It’s traumatic when creatures that we find endearing and worthy of protection are blown up, dismembered, splattered, and burned before our eyes.

However, if we are already laughing when this happens, we may tend to keep laughing even as it happens, telling ourselves that, after all they are just puppets, and it’s all just in good fun. Right, like simulated child pornography would be fun. No, the violence in this film is really pornographic because it is so mean-spiritedly directed at movie-industry peace activists. It’s not actually funny, or in any way connected to reality, to depict Alec Baldwin, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, and Helen Hunt, as murderous terrorists who will kill to establish world peace. It’s demented to depict Michael Moore, smeared with mustard, waving a hot-dog, a slice of pizza, detonating himself in a suicide bombing of Mt. Rushmore. It’s tasteless and disgusting to splatter an effigy of Holly Hunter into a bloody mess, to decapitate Samuel Jackson, and split Alec Baldwin’s braincase open to expose the contents, and to repeat the image three times. Serial imagery of extreme death and mutilation of the brain cavity? How hilarious! Sure they’re just puppets. But if you found a puppet of you hanging from a rope in your front yard, you wouldn’t just think it was a puppet. It would be a threat. This movie is an assault on each of those individuals, an expression of mortal hatred elaborated with millions of dollars of effort to deliver a personal insult and an explicit threat. Shut up, or we’ll kill you.

There is nothing to recommend this movie, and life is too short to spend on a movie like this when you could be doing something really worthwhile, like petting your dog, picking your nose, or breaking wind. The thesis of the movie is far too banal and degrading to be worthy of my recounting. While digital ink may cost next to nothing, your time and mine are worth something. My suggestion is to boycott anything the South Park hoodlums produce. Put these shitbags out of business and send them back to the Home for Retarded Republicans who actually are such nerds they think they’re cool. And for a minute they had me thinking it, too. Until I realized the joke was on me.



Click here for the Team America Screencap Gallery

[admin]

SPOTFIRE, THE CIA'S CYBER TERRORIST-FINDER: CARNIVORE 2.0, by Charles Carreon

4:24 pm, August 26, 2005

Larry Greenemeier for InformationWeek wrote this almost cluelessly upbeat article about Spotfire, a piece of software created by a CIA-funded “VC R&D project,” (wow-we're open about this stuff these days, aren't we?). Doesn't matter what they call it. Once we read the label, it's clearly Carnivore 2.0. You remember Carnivore, the software that let Admiral Poindexter — convicted felon and guru of Total Information Awareness — read all our email. Carnivore evolved from Echelon, and while it was neat to read all that email, the intellibots didn't like spam much, either. Kind of like having your coke cut far below Noriega-quality, spam ate into the data-richness of Carnivore's turf. And they realized, they needed to take it further. Screw raw information — let's digest it, process it, drill down into people's lives and just see the red dots light up blinking “terrorist cell in Omaha.” Once you get to that point, then probable cause can be premised on computer error, and we can blow up anybody like the FBI did the Branch Davidians, and no one can be blamed. It's just a regrettable computer error. At least, that's the ominous unintended consequence of any software that links up political thoughts, speech, identities and geography. You are the target, and the bomber is staffed by a cowboy on a mission.

Revealing E-Mail's Secrets Aug. 1, 2005 Tool lets analysts create a picture of communicators and can be used to fight terrorists and help businesses

With the threat of terrorism high, the intelligence community is investing in technology that can help analysts quickly examine communications, particularly E-mailed messages, in order to spot suspected terrorists. Backed by In-Q-Tel, the CIA's technology incubator, Spotfire Inc. this week will introduce a tool for uncovering patterns and relationships in information extracted from E-mail messages that will be as useful for anti-terrorism efforts as it will be for analyzing business data.

Homegrown programs and text-mining tools are available from a variety of vendors to extract data about an E-mail and information contained within a message. Spotfire's product, DecisionSite for Email Analysis, goes to work on that data and presents the results in tables or grids with different-sized splotches of color that indicate data patterns. DecisionSite's Email Portfolio feature allows analysts to store and link E-mail addresses and any other attributes to build a detailed picture of communicators and their activities. E-mail messages also can be mapped geographically using a variety of mapping technologies, including ESRI Inc.'s ArcGIS software.

Spotfire is looking to push business intelligence and reporting to the next level for both government agencies and commercial businesses, CEO Christopher Ahlberg says.

In-Q-Tel first approached Spotfire in 2003 when the CIA-backed venture-capital firm was looking to invest in technology that could find critical patterns by translating and analyzing data. “Unstructured information is at the core of the analysis that the intelligence community wants to do,” Ahlberg says.

Although In-Q-Tel is neither part of the CIA nor a government agency, it does receive input from the CIA regarding where it should invest. “We never know if the CIA uses the technology in which we invest,” says Eric Kaufmann, In-Q-Tel's managing partner and senior VP. “They give us a general direction, such as visualization.”

Kaufmann won't say how much In-Q-Tel has invested in Spotfire, but the firm sees the company's visualization technology as a breakthrough for E-mail analysis. “We identified Spotfire as a leader in the visualization” market, he says. That market is important because it's a place where visualization hasn't yet been used. “E-mail has become an increasing part of electronic discovery.”

[admin]

THE POSSIBLE DOUBLE HOMICIDE OF TERRY AND ARIEKA CARR, by Charles Carreon

10:09 pm, August 29, 2005
The attached video records your intrepid reporter collecting direct evidence in Clear Lake Oaks, California, where “On Golden Pond” director Terry Carr and his nine year old daughter Arieka were found dead in Mr. Carr's Jeep Cherokee on August 1st. The Jeep had been parked outside the Tower Market, the busiest place in town, from 4 am until the bodies of father and daughter were discovered lying in their underwear sometime after 1:30 pm. The Lake County Sheriff's office says a Tower Market employee saw movement in the vehicle at 10 or 11 am. Temperatures reached 104 degrees that day. Forensic reports says substance or sexual abuse has been ruled out. The Sheriff says Mr. Carr had a heart attack and collapsed on his nine year old, causing her to expire. Having gone to the location of the father-daughter death, I must register my serious objection to this explanation.

My attention was piqued when Mr. Carr and Arieka vanished from the Market of Choice in my homebase in Ashland, Oregon and turned up dead 270 miles away under circumstances utterly mysterious. In fact, I was a grocery clerk at the predecessor of Market of Choice, Meister's Buy-Rite, back in the late seventies, so the thought that Mr. Carr might have been the victim of foul play that started in Ashland felt like an invasion of my turf. When I learned that Mr. Carr had suddenly disposed of a clutch of personal belongings and files by hurriedly discarding them in a field by side of the road that leads out to the Ashland municipal dump, it seemed that too many strange signs were adding up in the wrong column. After visiting the place of Terry and Arieka Carr's death last weekend, I am even less satisfied by the coroner's explanation that Mr. Carr killed his child by falling on her in the throes of a heartattack. Come with me to the scene of the deaths and judge for yourself whether the police have provided a sufficiently credible theory to close the book on this very suspicious possible double homicide.

Click here to download terrycarr1.wmv.

Click here to download clearlakeoaks2.wmv.

[admin]

POETRY FROM BURNING MAN -- LET IT BURN!, by Charles Carreon

10:17 pm, September 3, 2005

Because I excused myself from going to Burning Man, just down the road from here, whereto no doubt the numerous dreadlocked and footloose creatures seen hereabouts are blowing toward, my friend John Potts, who's going to be there live and in real time, sent me this missive:

From: JP
Sent: Wednesday, August 24, 2005 10:21 AM
To: CC
Subject: How to have the Burning Man experience from the comfort of your own home:

Tear down your house. Put it in a truck. Drive 10 hours in any direction. Put the house back together. Invite everyone you meet to come over and party. When everyone leaves, follow them back to their homes, drink all their booze, and break things.

Stack all your fans in one corner of your livingroom. Put on your most fabulous outfit. Turn the fans on full blast. Dump a vacuum cleaner bag in front of them.

Pitch your tent next to the wall of speakers in a crowded, noisy club. Go to sleep. Wake up 2 hours later in a 110+ degree tent.

Only use the toilet in a house that is at least 3 blocks away. Drain all the water from the toilet. Only flush it every 4 days. Hide all the toilet paper.

Visit a restaurant and pay them to let you alternate lying in the walk-in freezer and sitting in the oven.

Don't sleep for 5 days. Take a wide variety of hallucinogenic/emotion-altering drugs. Pick a fight with your boyfriend/girlfriend.

Pay an escort of your affectional preference subset to not bathe for five days, cover themselves in glitter, dust, and sunscreen, wear a skanky neon wig, and dance close naked;

-- then tell you they have a lover back home at the end of the night.

Cut, burn, electrocute, bruise, and sunburn various parts of your body. Forget how you did it. Don't go to a doctor.

Buy a new pair of favorite shoes. Throw one shoe away.

Buy a new set of expensive camping gear. Break it.

Spend a whole year rummaging through thrift stores for the perfect, most outrageous costume. Forget to pack it.

Listen to music you hate for 168 hours straight, or until you think you are going to scream. Scream. Realize you'll love the music for the rest of your life.

Get so drunk you can't recognize your own house. Walk slowly around the block for 5 hours.

Sprinkle dirty sand in all your food.

Mail $200 to the Reno casino of your choice.

Go to a museum. Find one of Salvador Dali's more disturbing but beautiful paintings. Climb inside it.

Spend thousands of dollars on a deeply personal art work. Hide it in a funhouse on the edge of the city. Blow it up.

Set up a DJ system downwind of a three alarm fire. Play a short loop of drum'n'bass fortissimo until the embers are cold.

Have a 3 a.m. soul-baring conversation with a drag nun in platforms, a crocodile, and Bugs Bunny. Be unable to tell if you're hallucinating.

And I might add: Do all that and spend a whole year thinking about doing it all again but bigger.

[admin]

TEXTBOOK PUBLISHERS ARE BLUFFING IN BATTLE WITH GOOGLE, by Charles Carreon

8:49 pm, September 4, 2005

You heard it here first — the textbook publisher associations will be forced to accept Google's plan to digitize a searchable database of books drawn from the Stanford, NYU, and other university libraries. This is because ultimately all publishers will win as Google boosts the value of literacy, increases the ease of scholarly research, and returns serious thinking to its proper place somewhere near the apex of human activity, and distinctly above warfare and stock-car racing. While the paper-pulp-pushers who think of themselves as Publishing's Old Guard prepare to die in the last ditch, the vanguard of the battle has already swept past them. The future is digital. Paper is dust.

Christopher T. Heun for InternetWeek wrote:

Courts Unlikely To Stop Google Book Copying Despite objections from publishers and writers, copyright law appears to be on Google's side, legal experts say. The social value of Google's initiative to digitize library books, including those protected by copyright, will likely weigh heavily in the search engine's favor. Should the growing number of publishing groups, who oppose the plan by Google Inc. to digitize the collections of some of the world’s major libraries, fail to reach an agreement and turn instead to the courts, they may have a tough road ahead of them.

Although Google may appear to violate the law by scanning, without permission, entire copies of books protected by copyright, such an act is not illegal if it is considered “fair use” of the material. How a court interprets that doctrine will decide the fate of the company’s ambitious plans, according to lawyers and law professors with knowledge of intellectual property and copyright statues. They say the most important issues for a court would be the character of Google’s activity, its adverse economic impact on the copyright holder, and the amount of material it uses in proportion to the whole and if that is key to the work. Of lesser concern is whether the company makes a reasonable effort to contact copyright holders before copying their books.

“Google would probably win” a court case, says William Fisher, who teaches intellectual property law at Harvard Law School and is the director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. “Google is a profit-making venture, that counts against it, but what it is doing is a highly socially valuable activity and that counts highly in its favor.”

A potential legal battle is slowly gathering strength. The Text and Academic Authors Association this week joined the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers in publicly stating it is ready to take on Google in the courtroom.

The two sides are playing a game of chicken over who should dictate what works are digitized: Google says it will not scan any titles publishers tell it not to; publishers insist it should work the other way around. “The solution we’d like to see [Google] heading toward is to say here is a list of books we’d like to include, may we have permission to do so,” says Peter Givler, the executive director of the Association of American University Presses. The scanning has stopped temporarily but will resume in November.

One law professor doesn’t think that’s necessary. “The principle that Google should have to ask [for permission] is proving untenable,” says Jessica Litman, a professor at Wayne State University Law School who has published a book on protecting intellectual property on the Internet, “Digital Copyright.” “The opt-out mechanism is pretty reasonable.” The source of the squabble is the Google Print Library Project, which aims to scan and store in the company’s search database copyrighted books from the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, the University of Oxford and the New York Public Library. Google’s ultimate goal, according to its Web site, is to build a “comprehensive, searchable, virtual card catalog of all books in all languages that helps users discover new books and publishers find new readers.”

If a work included in a search query is covered by a copyright, Google limits the amount of text shown to a few sentences adjacent to the search term; the full text is available for any book with an expired copyright now considered public domain – for instance, a novel published in 1905.

Sounds fair enough. But publishers don’t see it that way. They look at the library project not as an altruistic endeavor but a profit-making venture that will harm their own business. As proof they point out that Google, which relies on advertising for the vast majority of its revenue – a record $1.4 billion for the quarter that ended June 30 – allows sponsored links on the search results page for Google Print. It’s enough to make them wonder: if one search engine can appropriate a publisher’s intellectual property, then isn’t it logical to assume that others, like Yahoo! and Microsoft, will be next?

“If copyright law worked the way Google would like to see it working, then everyone in the world would be able to use the material unless the copyright holder explicitly told them not to, and even then it would be OK,” says Allan Adler, the vice president for legal and government affairs for the Association of American Publishers. “That would be a very strange copyright system.”

Regardless, there is a clear legal precedent for any potential court battle between publishers and Google, and it favors the Mountain View, Calif., company. In Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corp., a 2003 case in which a photographer sued a search engine, claiming copyright infringement for displaying thumbnail images of work originally posted on his site, the Ninth Circuit found in favor of the search engine: the act of copying the material, even though it was for commercial purposes, was not exploitative and therefore was fair use. “Everything the Ninth Circuit stated with respect to Arriba applies with equal force to the Print Library Project,” Jonathan Band, a copyright lawyer in Washington, D.C., who represents Internet companies and library associations on intellectual property matters, wrote recently in a copyright analysis of the dispute. Google’s copies of books will not replace the originals, and the company does not profit from the sale of any books it scans, he wrote. Band does not represent any entity with respect to the Google Print project.

“The Google Print Library Project will make it easier than ever before for users to locate the wealth of information buried in books,” Band concluded. “By limiting the search results to a few sentences before and after the search term, the program will not conflict with the normal exploitation of works nor unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of rights holders. To the contrary, it will often increase demand for copyrighted works.”

For further legal precedent, David Donahue, an associate at Fross Zelnick Lehrman & Zissu, a New York firm that specializes in trademark, copyright and unfair competition law, cites two cases involving the distribution of photocopies of articles from scientific and medical journals.

In American Geophysical Union vs. Texaco Inc., the Second Circuit Court of Appeals found in 1994 that a private company did not have the right to photocopy entire works and hand them out to its research staff. But in Williams & Wilkins Co. vs. The United States Records, an equally divided Supreme Court affirmed a lower court’s decision that it was fair use for a library to photocopy research journals and distribute them. “Google lies somewhere in between those two cases,” Donahue says.

Complicating the debate over copyright is the fact that publishers often don’t even know who has it. Their records can be incomplete, particularly if an author is deceased, in which case an estate or family member could hold the rights. A book with an unknown copyright status is known as an “orphan work.” Most works published prior to 1923 are now in the public domain, because the term of protection, the life of the author plus 70 years, is likely over. Conversely, works published in the last 30 years or so probably have an ISDN number and are tracked through a database, “so there should be little question about who holds the copyright,” Adler says. The tough part is determining the status of books published in those five decades in between. “Were talking about millions of books,” he says. “Orphan works are not in the public domain.”

The Copyright Office, at the request of Congress, has studied the “orphan works” issue and should publish its recommendations later this year, which will likely be passed into law. Publishers believe that copyright holders of orphan works, should they eventually make a claim, are entitled to a reasonable compensation, but Google using their works in the meantime shouldn’t be treated as infringement, as long as the company makes an honest effort to find them.

By now, lawsuits shouldn’t faze Google. Agence France-Presse, angry that its content appears in search results, filed a $17.5 million copyright infringement in March; adult magazine publisher Perfect 10 Inc. is asking a federal court in Los Angeles to prevent Google from displaying pictures and links to the company’s copyrighted photos; and two companies have sued Google over its practice of keyword advertising.

In the end, winning a fair use argument against Google could be tough, since its entire business model revolves around the principle. “Google couldn’t exist at all without making copies,” Litman says. “It’s a search engine. It makes copies in order to index content.

[admin]

CELINE DION CUTS THE CRAP & PRAYS FOR NEW ORLEANS, by Charles Carreon

4:13 pm, September 5, 2005

Now I understand why Celine Dion is called a great singer. She is a great human being. See this video from CNN, where she rejects excuses for the continuing neglect of suffering people in New Orleans, and compares the US military's ability to kill “all the people in an entire country” with the government's gross inaction and mis-action in New Orleans. Larry King, the interviewer, tries to interfere with her outpouring of real sentiment, but she just mows him down. Her acapella prayer at the end of the interview is very beautiful.

Click here to download CELINE.wmv.

[admin]

BUSH ASKS NEW ORLEANS: "WHAT DIDN'T GO RIGHT?", by Charles Carreon

5:40 pm, September 5, 2005

Bush's handlers are eager to show that their boy is not “out of touch.” This becomes more difficult daily, as it becomes apparent that the handlers are also out of touch. The raft of stories coming out of New Orleans shows that FEMA and the Dept of “Homeland Security” are completely out of their element when dealing with a job that demands pasting your ass to a chair, sitting at a desk, and manning the phone lines to direct an enormous logistical effort.

On the issue of the top dingleberry being out of touch, I guess it's a matter of “like mother, like son.” For real, orbital, out-of-touchness, Barbara Bush can't be beat — listen to the sound clip of her below, expressing the opinion that the evacuees are really quite fortunate to be flooded out of house and home, have their relatives drowned, and be treated like drowning rats — better off in the drink. But her son the president is not far behind, as Nancy Pelosi made clear when she reported his delivery of an amazing Bushism, as reported in the Houston Chronicle quote below.

Houston Chronicle

At a news conference, Pelosi, D-Calif., said Bush's choice for head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency had “absolutely no credentials.”

She related that she urged Bush at the White House on Tuesday to fire Brown.

He said, “Why would I do that?” Pelosi said.

I said, “Because of all that went wrong, of all that didn't go right last week.”

And he said “What didn't go right?”

You can play a very short video of Nancy Pelosi relating Bush's statement using Winamp. There are many other Katrina-related videos at Katrina Little Movies (You have to sign up to join this website, but it is really worth it for all of the incredible material there.)

The reason this boondoggle is going to blow up in Bush's face is simply because it is so damned obvious that no only do they not give a flying fuck about New Orleans or its people — they also view this as an opportunity to prove that you can, in fact, fool all of the voters all of the time. The media has spun this story six different ways from Sunday, but regardless of the spin, the atrocity of contemptful neglect that Bush has demonstrated toward the injured Southerners should chap hides all across America. With Senator Mary Landrieu threatening to punch Bush's lights out if he criticizes Louisiana authorities one more time, Bush could be in for the celebrity death match of his life.

Pride cometh before the fall, and certainly pride has been the Ace up Bush's sleeve in one surprising deal after another. This time, though, being out of touch can be terminal, as when he joked that New Orleans would rise again and become a place where rich kids can “have too much fun.” Yes, and all of the manicured lawns and beautiful golf courses will be restored, and then he'll come back.

I have often thought to myself, “What will Bush's Falklands be?” You'll remember that it was the misbegotten adventurism of an Argentine junta at its wits end for further distractions that led to its destruction. The future history might read like this:

Encyclopedia Liberalica

”By September 2005, Bush had destroyed the nation's financial solvency, declared war on Islam internationally, sent the entire National Guard to depose Iraq's government, alienated the European nations by feeding the fires of international warfare, invited a trade war with Canada over softwood, and directed his proxy Pat Robertson to announce a jihad against Venezuela. Then G-d decided to open yet another front in the worldwide conflict, and directed his armies of wind and waves to destroy the entire Biloxi staging base for the Iraq war, to destroy New Orleans in one day, to create a huge demand for the absent National Guard, to choke off the nation's supply of crude and refined oil by devastating Louisiana and Mississipp, and killed the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, all in just over a week. G-d also saw fit to assure the destruction of the Bush junta by hardening the hearts of the Pharaoh's men, so that their TV messages were not at all reassuring, and their sound bites were like stones, and broke the teeth of viewers who sought to consume them. So a great wave of anger rose up in the hearts of the people, and like a tsunami of rage, destroyed the Bush junta."

Click here to download Nancy Pelosi Speaks.wmv.

Click here to download barbarabush.mp3.

[admin]

MATT WELLS' BBC OP-ED PIECE IS A LITTLE TOO SANGUINE 4 ME, by Charles Carreon

12:28 am, September 6, 2005

Matt Wells, of the BBC, has his own optimistic take on the media situation, in the article quoted below. He thinks the media is going to redeem itself by getting a grain of social conscience and learning to talk back to the Bush spin machine. Somehow I doubt it. Rove and his double-dealers will be calling in every favor, threatening every troublesome newsperson with exposure for small or large crimes, endangering their jobs, grabbing short hairs and whispering soft threats. Soon the media will remember its place.

I mean, I like Matt's article, but the idea that FOX is gonna come to Jesus over this issue is quite fanciful. They'll be blasting away at Cindy Sheehan, and supporting Pat Robertson, and hefting the Grand Inquisitor Gonzales into his Supreme Court seat in short order.

Matt has other fantasies, like how there'll be so many new Louisiana voters in Texas after this exodus from Louisiana, but I hate to tell you, after they register in Texas, they're all going to turn out to be felons!

Matt believes that the Bush administration's true colors have been revealed, and that is going to rock the corporate kleptocracy to its foundations. That is all too optimistic. Right, and the supply of suckers being born every minute has recently been reduced to a trickle. I think not. People remain as stupid as ever, and if the worst fears of the Libertarians take shape, and large internment camps are set up to hold the evacuees under military guard like the INS interned the Haitian boat people for years, who will stop that? The media hasn't even rebelled over the mistreatment of prisoners in Guantanamo and at Abu Ghraib.

Now that the civil rights violations are happening here on home turf, it will take tremendous intelligence and dedication for the nation to use this opportunity to unseat the hegemonic forces that have settled astride the people of the nation. Haliburton has already got its snout into the feedbag for the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast, and ultimately we are going to see a land grab so big it will make the theft of California from Mexico, the purchase of Alaska from Russia, and the Louisiana Purchase itself, seem like small change. Trump is already waiting to start firing people. This will be reality TV like you never imagined.

Matt Wells

Viewpoint: Has Katrina saved US media?

BBC News, Los Angeles

As President Bush scurries back to the Gulf Coast, it is clear that this is the greatest challenge to politics-as-usual in America since the fall of Richard Nixon in the 1970s.

Then as now, good reporting lies at the heart of what is changing. But unlike Watergate, ”Katrinagate“ was public service journalism ruthlessly exposing the truth on a live and continuous basis.

Instead of secretive ”Deep Throat“ meetings in car-parks, cameras captured the immediate reality of what was happening at the New Orleans Convention Center, making a mockery of the stalling and excuses being put forward by those in power.

Amidst the horror, American broadcast journalism just might have grown its spine back, thanks to Katrina.

National politics reporters and anchors here come largely from the same race and class as the people they are supposed to be holding to account.

They live in the same suburbs, go to the same parties, and they are in debt to the same huge business interests.

Giant corporations own the networks, and Washington politicians rely on them and their executives to fund their re-election campaigns across the 50 states.

It is a perfect recipe for a timid and self-censoring journalistic culture that is no match for the masterfully aggressive spin-surgeons of the Bush administration.

'Lies or ignorance'

But last week the complacency stopped, and the moral indignation against inadequate government began to flow, from slick anchors who spend most of their time glued to desks in New York and Washington.

The most spectacular example came last Friday night on Fox News, the cable network that has become the darling of the Republican heartland. This highly successful Murdoch-owned station sets itself up in opposition to the ”mainstream liberal media elite“.

But with the sick and the dying forced to sit in their own excrement behind him in New Orleans, its early-evening anchor Shepard Smith declared civil war against the studio-driven notion that the biggest problem was still stopping the looters.

On other networks like NBC, CNN and ABC it was the authority figures, who are so used to an easy ride at press conferences, that felt the full force of reporters finally determined to ditch the deference.

As the heads of the Homeland Security department and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) appeared for network interviews, their defensive remarks about where aid was arriving to, and when, were exposed immediately as either downright lies or breath-taking ignorance.

And you did not need a degree in journalism to know it either. Just watching TV for the previous few hours would have sufficed.

Iraq concern

When the back-slapping president told the Fema boss on Friday morning that he was doing ”a heck of a job“ and spent most of his first live news conference in the stricken area praising all the politicians and chiefs who had failed so clearly, it beggared belief.

The president looked affronted when a reporter covering his Mississippi walkabout had the temerity to suggest that having a third of the National Guard from the affected states on duty in Iraq might be a factor.

It is something I suspect he is going to have to get used to from now on: the list of follow-up questions is too long to ignore or bury. And it is not only on TV and radio where the gloves have come off.

The most artful supporter of the administration on the staff of the New York Times, columnist David Brooks, has also had enough.

He and others are calling the debacle the ”anti 9-11“: ”The first rule of the social fabric - that in times of crisis you protect the vulnerable - was trampled,“ he wrote on Sunday.

”Leaving the poor in New Orleans was the moral equivalent of leaving the injured on the battlefield.“

Media emboldened

It is way too early to tell whether this really will become ”Katrinagate“ for President Bush, but how he and his huge retinue of politically-appointed bureaucrats react in the weeks ahead will be decisive.

Government has been thrown into disrepute, and many Americans have realised, for the first time, that the collapsed, rotten flood defences of New Orleans are a symbol of failed infrastructure across the nation.

Blaming the state and city officials, as the president is already trying to do over Katrina, will not wash.

Black America will not forget the government failures, and nor will the Gulf Coast region

Beyond the immediate challenge of re-housing the evacuees and getting 200,000-plus children into new schools, there will have to be a Katrina Commission, that a newly-emboldened media will scrutinise obsessively. The dithering and incompetence that will be exposed will not spare the commander-in-chief, or the sunny, faith-based propaganda that he was still spouting as he left New Orleans airport last Friday, saying it was all going to turn out fine.

People were still trapped, hungry and dying on his watch, less than a mile away.

Black America will not forget the government failures, nor will the Gulf Coast region.

Tens of thousands of voters whose lives have been so devastated will cast their mid-term ballots in Texas next year - the president's adopted home state.

The final word belongs to the historic newspaper at the centre of the hurricane - The New Orleans Times-Picayune. At the weekend, this now-homeless institution published an open letter: ”We're angry, Mr President, and we'll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry.

“Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been, were not. That's to the government's shame.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/w ... 214516.stm

Published: 2005/09/05 16:48:01 GMT

© BBC MMV

[admin]

FEMA HEAD KNOWS HORSESHIT, BUT WHAT ELSE?, by Charles Carreon

6:07 pm, September 5, 2005

The New Orleans Times-Picayune has called for FEMA to get the hell out of their city, and for Bush to fire FEMA Director Mike Brown and all of his blunderlings. One thing we know is that Brown knows shit from Shinola, based on his past employment as the head of the International Arabian Horse Association, where he got into so much horseshit they fired his ass. Now he can swim in shit up to his eyeballs and not notice.

FEMA head takes heat in spotlight

By John Biemer and Howard Witt Chicago Tribune staff reporters Published September 4, 2005

For the decade prior to joining the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Director Michael Brown was commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association, a Colorado-based group that organizes breeders and horse shows. Then he was asked to resign.

“He didn't follow the instructions he was given,” then-IAHA President William Pennington confirmed Saturday.

Less than five years after that dismissal, Brown, 50, finds himself heading the federal agency charged with responding to one of the nation's worst disasters.

Brown has been one of the leading public faces of a federal response sharply criticized as too little and too late. His statements and sometimes even his demeanor under the camera's glare have been questioned by critics--and often divergent from the grief-stricken reality on the ground.

During one of his first televised news conferences Wednesday, when violence and chaos were spreading in New Orleans and bodies were beginning to be seen floating in the water, Brown laughed and joked as he took reporters' questions.

At points last week, he described security in New Orleans as “pretty darn good.” He said he had received no reports of “unrest,” nor any information about uncollected corpses. And on Thursday night, he told CNN the agency had just learned that thousands of people had huddled at the New Orleans Convention Center, even though the city had directed them to go there, and journalists had been reporting their plight.

The frustrated New Orleans mayor, C. Ray Nagin, lashed out last week, saying federal officials “don't have a clue” what was going on in his city. And the top Democrat on the House Committee on Homeland Security, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, was quoted in The New York Times as calling on President Bush to fire Brown.

Seeking her own expert, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco on Saturday hired James Lee Witt, the widely praised FEMA director under President Bill Clinton, to advise her.

Still, even though Bush has called the federal response to the disaster “not acceptable,” he praised Brown Friday during a tour of Alabama, saying, “Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job,” the AP reported.

FEMA DIR. MIKE BROWN FIRED FROM PRIOR JOB AT HORSE ASSOC.
by Goldy at HorsesAss
by Daily Kos.com
Fri Sep 2nd, 2005

[editor's note, by Goldy at HorsesAss] Revised title

"An unmitigated, total fucking disaster." That's not a quote from Mike Brown, but rather, a quote describing him. And most disturbingly, it's not even a reference to his dismal performance as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This blunt critique was emailed to me from a regular reader who was apparently attracted to HorsesAss.org by her passion for politics and her love of Arabian horses.

I think I've told you that I'm into Arab horses. Well, for 3 years Michael Brown was hired and then fired by our IAHA, the International Arabian Horse Assoc. He was an unmitigated, total fucking disaster. I was shocked as hell when captain clueless put him in charge of FEMA a couple of years ago.

Goldy at HorsesAss's diary :: ::

He or the WH lied on the WH presser announcing him to FEMA. IAHA was never connected to the Olympic Comm, only the half Arab registry then and the governing body to the state and local Arabian horse clubs. He ruined IAHA financially so badly that we had to change the name and combine it with the Purebred registry.

I am telling you this after watching the fucking shipwreck in the Gulf. His incompetence is KILLING people.

Yes, that's right ... the man responsible for directing federal relief operations in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, sharpened his emergency management skills as the "Judges and Stewards Commissioner" for the International Arabian Horses Association ... a position from which he was forced to resign in the face of mounting litigation and financial disarray.

New Hampshire Arabian Horse Association

I am headed to the IAHA convention in San Antonio after Thanksgiving. It should be a hot time down there this year. A complete counter slate of officers has been offered from the floor of convention. There is a lot of unrest in this industry right now. There are 17 resolutions pertaining to Resolution 5-90 (The office of the Judges and Stewards Commissioner) i.e.; the $3.00 fee. Mike Brown who was commissioner was requested to resign after all of the controversy regarding the number of lawsuits that are pending transpired.

AWhiteHorse Equine Industry Articles, Editorials and Opinions Page

From Tom Connelly to the Board of Directors:

As the Board directed during our recent conference call, negotiations have been ongoing with Mike Brown in relation to his resignation.

Attached is the final agreed upon separation agreement which Mike has executed and presented to us. He realized that this matter was going to go to the Board and he wanted to have signed it before it was actually presented.

I plan to sign the agreement Monday at 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time, but in the meantime, if you wish to make any comments, please forward them to Joleen White and she will make sure we all see them.

SEPARATION AGREEMENT

I. PARTIES

The Parties to this Agreement are:

A. International Arabian Horse Association, a Colorado non-profit corporation, which is located in Arapahoe County, Colorado ("IAHA"); and

B. Michael D. Brown, an individual who is a resident of Boulder County, Colorado.

II. RECITALS

A. Mr. Brown is employed as the Judges and Stewards Commissioner of IAHA.

B. Mr. Brown and IAHA are currently involved as co-defendants in litigation.

C. Mr. Brown desires to resign from his employment with IAHA, and IAHA desires to accept Mr. Brown's resignation. However, in an attempt to accomplish an orderly transition for IAHA, the parties desire a gradual disengagement of the relationship so that Mr. Brown can complete his pending work and continue to assist in the defense of the pending litigation.

III. COVENANTS

In consideration of the mutual covenants set forth herein, and for other good and valuable consideration, the sufficiency of which the parties hereby acknowledge, the parties agree as follows:

A. Upon execution of this Agreement by the parties, Mr. Brown will resign from his position with IAHA, effective January 31, 2001.

B. Mr. Brown will employ his best efforts to conclude his work on pending matters during the month of September, 2000, and will assist in an orderly transition, and will continue to assist in the defense of litigation against him and/or IAHA relating to his work as Judges and Stewards Commissioner.

C. Prior to January 31, 2001, Mr. Brown will use all of his accrued vacation time.

D. IAHA will continue to pay to Mr. Brown his full salary, including benefits, through January 31, 2001.

E. During the months of February, March and April, 2001, IAHA will pay Mr. Brown his full salary, as severance pay.

F. Mr. Brown will continue to assist in the defense of litigation against him and/or IAHA relating to his work for IAHA as Judges and Stewards Commissioner, as reasonably requested by counsel for IAHA, unless reasonably objected to by counsel for Mr. Brown.

G. IAHA will pay to Mr. Brown a consulting fee of $100 per hour for time he spends assisting in the defense of litigation after April 30, 2001, such fee to be paid within 30 days of the date services are billed to IAHA by Mr. Brown.

H. IAHA will continue to provide and to pay for health insurance for Mr. Brown and his wife through October 31, 2001.

I. By October 1, 2000, Mr. Brown will cause to be contributed from the Michael D. Brown Legal Defense Fund Trust to the IAHA Legal Defense Fund the sum of $25,000.

J. IAHA will, without limitation and to the fullest extent allowed by law, continue to indemnify Mr. Brown and to hold Mr. Brown harmless from all liabilities, obligations, claims, causes of action, or expenses of any kind, including reasonable attorneys' fees and costs, that may arise or be incurred by Mr. Brown arising out of the performance of his employment as Judges and Stewards Commissioner of IAHA, including his duties under the terms of this Separation Agreement.

K. Mr. Brown further agrees to abide by the provisions of Paragraphs 17 and 18 his Employment Contract and the confidentiality requirements of Resolution 5-90.

L. This Separation Agreement shall not in any way be construed as an admission by either party of any acts of wrongdoing whatsoever. The parties recognize that, due to the nature of Mr. Brown's duties as Judges and Stewards Commissioner, he has been the subject of numerous personal attacks, and that there have been numerous allegations made during the course of his employment that Mr. Brown engaged in conduct that would constitute cause for the termination of Brown's contract with IAHA. IAHA specifically acknowledges, however, that no cause exists to terminate Brown's contract with IAHA.

M. The Parties hereby and forever release and discharge each other, their heirs and assigns, from any and all causes of action, actions, judgments, liens, damages, losses, claims, liabilities and demands whatsoever, whether known or unknown, which arose prior to the date of this Separation Agreement.

N. Any dispute arising under this Separation Agreement shall be submitted to arbitration before the Judicial Arbiter Group in Denver, Colorado. In the event any arbitration is held pursuant to this Agreement, the arbitrator shall award the prevailing party his or its reasonable attorneys' fees and costs.

O. This Separation Agreement sets forth the entire agreement between the parties hereto, and fully supersedes any and all prior agreements and understandings between the parties hereto pertaining to the subject matter hereof.

P. The parties have each been represented by counsel in connection with this Separation Agreement and have read the entire Separation Agreement and understand each of the terms hereof.

Q. Colorado law shall govern the interpretation of this Separation Agreement and the resolution of any dispute arising in connection herewith.

R. No modification to this Separation Agreement will be effective, unless such modification is made in writing and signed by each of the parties hereto.

S. In the event that any part of this Separation Agreement and General Release is determined to be void, or otherwise unlawful, the remaining portions hereof shall remain in full force and effect.

Date:

Michael D. Brown

International Arabian Horse Association

Date: By:

And what of that misleading White House press release?

The White House

Nominations

President Bush to Nominate Two Individuals to Serve in His Administration

The President announced his intention to nominate two individuals to serve as members of his administration.

The President intends to nominate Michael D. Brown to be Deputy Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Brown was appointed FEMA General Counsel in February, and Acting Deputy Director in September, where he has served as the Chairman of the Consequences Management Working Group. From 1991 to 2001, Brown was the Commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association, an international subsidiary of the national governing organization of the U.S. Olympic Committee. From 1988 to 1991, Brown was General Counsel to Dillingham Insurance, Suits Drilling, Suits Rig, Latigo Energy, Dillingham Ranch and Dillingham Enterprises, and from 1980 to 1988, he was an attorney in private practice. In 1978 to 1980, he worked for the Oklahoma State Senate Finance Committee, and from 1975 to 1978, Brown worked for the City of Edmond, Oklahoma, overseeing the emergency services divisions. Brown is a graduate of Central State University and Oklahoma City University Law School.

The President intends to nominate Ruth Lewis Griffin to be a Commissioner of the International Joint Commission for the United States and Canada. Griffin is the Executive Councilor for the Third District of New Hampshire and has been a member of the Executive Councilor since 1987. She was a Member of the New Hampshire State Senate, the New Hampshire House of Representatives and has served New Hampshire in elected office for a total of 35 years. Griffin is a member of the Governor's Commission on Intermodal Transportation which is the architect of the New Hampshire Highway Plan and the New Hampshire Health Services Planning and Review Board. She has served on the Portsmouth Board of Education, the Portsmouth Police Commission and is currently the Portsmouth Housing Authority Commissioner. A registered nurse, she is a graduate of the Wentworth Hospital School of Nursing.

I can't even begin to fact check the dates or IAHA's alleged relationship to the US Olympic Committee, because of course, the IAHA doesn't exist anymore, so there's nothing to Google. But it begs the question ... how the hell did his prior job experience prepare Brown to head FEMA?

Well, judging by his agency's performance over the past few days ... it didn't.

[Cross-posted at HorsesAss.org]

[admin]

AMSTERDAM IS BELOW SEA LEVEL, BUT NEVER FLOODS, by Charles Carreon

7:17 pm, September 5, 2005

A lot of folks are thinking that you had to be stupid to live in New Orleans, but my daughter Maria lived there for a while in summer 2001, and I'm sure glad she moved back to Manhattan in time for the WTO disaster! As one of the world's most beautiful cities, founded by the French colonials and filled with beautiful architecture, stately neighborhoods, and cultural history, it might have received some respect, and its people some protection.

Protection from nature? From disastrous tropical storms? From flooding we knew could happen? Yes, like the Dutch provided for Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and the entire Dutch nation — half of which lies below sea level.

Welcome To the Netherlands wrote:

The Netherlands is best known for its tulips, windmills and clogs. And for its low altitude and vulnerability to flooding.

The Netherlands lies on the delta of three major rivers: the Rhine, Maas and Scheldt. It owes its existence to feats of hydraulic engineering.

The Dutch are proud of their conquest of water. Their struggle to keep dry has helped them develop a can-do attitude. And since controlling water requires many parties to meet and plan together, it has forced them to learn how to work as a team. That is why their European partners and the broader international community regard the Dutch as bridge builders and often ask them to serve as such.

Floods

The Netherlands’ many bridges, dykes, windmills and pumping stations give it a unique appearance and illustrate its long struggle against the sea. The crowning achievement was the Delta Project, a chain of dams protecting Zeeland and South Holland from the North Sea.

Work on the Delta Project began after the 1953 floods, and it ended in 1997 with the completion of a storm surge barrier in the Nieuwe Waterweg. The barrier has two enormous hinged gates that can be lowered in severe weather to close off the 360-metre-wide waterway. It protects greater Rotterdam’s one million inhabitants from flooding without harming the environment.

A quarter of the Netherlands’ land area lies below sea level. The low-lying areas consist mainly of “polders”, flat stretches of land, surrounded by dikes, where the water table is controlled artificially. From the 16th century, windmills were used not just to keep the land dry, but even to drain entire inland lakes.

http://www.minbuza.nl/default.asp?CMS_ITEM=MBZ300136