Month: November 2002

On This Site: Nothing Happened

Nothing happened here.

It’s long been a tradition in Paris to mount a plaque on a building where a noteworthy tenant – a war hero, major writer or other luminary – lived or died.

But recently, the tradition has taken a curious turn.

Take, for example, a plaque that appeared mysteriously on a facade in eastern Paris stating: “On April 17, 1967 – nothing happened here.”

Or one in the garment district paying homage to a former resident identified as, “Karima Bentiffa – civil servant.”

[via New World Disorder]

The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy Against Mike Davis

A new Mike Davis book, a new completely over-the-top lengthy histrionic attack on Davis from the establishment.

Until recently, the sperm of UC Irvine professors was not among the many subjects covered in the pages of The Guardian, one of England’s leading daily newspapers. But there it was in John Sutherland’s Sept. 30 column: “Tell Me Lies About Iraq: Politicians, generals and authors are all fighting the fiercest battle of all-to make us believe their side of the story.”

Despite the column’s title, no politician’s statements are scrutinized. No general is mentioned. And the examination of authors is limited to one: UC Irvine history professor Mike Davis.

Sutherland accuses Davis of aligning himself with the forces of darkness by using his new book, Dead Cities: And Other Tales, to poison the public debate in the U.K. over a “preemptive” war against Iraq. “The Iraqi lie factories are in full production,” Sutherland writes. “Davis has his product out early.”

This is strange because Dead Cities isn’t about Iraq. But then Sutherland isn’t actually attacking Davis for anything he has written about Iraq. Instead, he’s infuriated by something Dead Cities reveals in passing about the late, great Winston Churchill in a chapter on the U.S. Army’s Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. Sutherland is so upset he uses 14 of the column’s 15 paragraphs to attack Davis as a scholar and a person, in a way that is remarkable for its sneering disregard for the truth and for its incompetence.

Davis says Dead Cities is a study of “‘the radical contingency of cities,’ as well as the Urban West.” One of the book’s “dead cities” is the German Village, whose remains still stand at the Dugway Proving Ground. The U.S. Army Air Corps constructed the German Village during World War II to determine the best way to bomb Germany. “Best” in this context means “most destructive,” and “Germany” means “German civilians.”

And this is where Churchill enters the story.

Winston Churchill was an enthusiastic proponent of bombing civilians, as Davis amply documents. Specifically, Churchill was a proponent of bombing poor and working-class neighborhoods. The “mansions of the Nazi political and industrial elites” were off-limits because, as Davis neatly puts it, “this risked retaliation against Burke’s peerage”-that is, the British aristocracy and landed gentry, including Churchill’s own family. Middle-class neighborhoods were considered poor targets because the space between the homes made it harder for bombs to produce maximum damage. But the crowded conditions of working-class neighborhoods were perfect.

You Are A Suspect

Everyone is linking to William Safire’s column today. And yes, it’s that important:

If the Homeland Security Act is not amended before passage, here is what will happen to you:

Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend – all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as “a virtual, centralized grand database.”

To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you – passport application, driver’s license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance – and you have the supersnoop’s dream: a “Total Information Awareness” about every U.S. citizen.

This is not some far-out Orwellian scenario. It is what will happen to your personal freedom in the next few weeks if John Poindexter gets the unprecedented power he seeks.

[via everyone]

The Best Record Review of the Month

Julian Cope reviews Comets On Fire’s Field Recordings From The Sun…

A press release that kinda grabs you by the PooPoo, huh? Almost beats Keith Altham’s ‘Narcissus in Metamorphosis’ note of SCOTT 3. Make ya wanna listen? Yup, me too. And, like Les Rallizes Denudes, it doesn’t disappoint. Comets on Fire stuck a 4-track TEAC cassette machine in one room like Donald Ross Skinner did with DROOLIAN, but these suckers came out with the loudest record this side of the Cheer’s ‘Song Cycle’.

Next thing we know, they’z flagged down a passing hearse and supped on the dead remains of our lately passed and beloved Lord David Sutch, got themselves well bombed out on that goon’s pills, and speedily delivered an even better 2nd album, faultlessly-named (and itchy-with-self-understanding) FIELD RECORDINGS FROM THE SUN.

Wakka-wakka, as Fozzie Bear would say.
Be expectant, be very expectant.

Because gone is the extreme-just-to-be-extreme Ibiza sunburn of the first LP, to be replaced with the choicest melange of FUNHOUSE and HALL OF THE MOUNTAIN GRILL. Those first album turds on a bum ride have, by this second album, become spectral starchasers with Pausanius’ ticket to ancient truths. In just a few months, they’z gone from three foot six inch Austrolecipethicus types to divine six foot temple builders. Sonically, it’s a distance thing, like they’ve moved the horizon several miles back and parked a fjord in front of the microphone. But emotionally and psychically it’s the difference between UNKNOWN PLEASURES and CLOSER, and it’s the daring action of forward-thinking Motherfuckers.

So there you go. Obvious, immediate, totally absorbing – buy them, steal them, burn them, both albums are a Must Have. Anyway, I figured I’d better push FIELD RECORDINGS FROM THE SUN because it’s newer, easier to find, and MUCH better. But I thought I’d better at least inform you of the presence of that first one because you still need it and it’ll only get re-issued on CD if irate heads berate those involved. So, here goes on the description, and I’ll keep it as minimal as I can without frothing at the mouth too much…

If you like God in government, get ready for the Rapture

I don’t know which is scarier. Bill Moyers’ warning or the ferocity of the attacks against him in PBS’ discussion forums.

Way back in the 1950’s when I first tasted politics and journalism, Republicans briefly controlled the White House and Congress. With the exception of Joseph McCarthy and his vicious ilk, they were a reasonable lot, presided over by that giant war hero, Dwight Eisenhower, who was conservative by temperament and moderate in the use of power.

That brand of Republican is gone. And for the first time in the memory of anyone alive, the entire federal governmen – the Congress, the Executive, the Judiciary – is united behind a right-wing agenda for which George W. Bush believes he now has a mandate.

That mandate includes the power of the state to force pregnant women to give up control over their own lives.

It includes using the taxing power to transfer wealth from working people to the rich.

It includes giving corporations a free hand to eviscerate the environment and control the regulatory agencies meant to hold them accountable.

And it includes secrecy on a scale you cannot imagine. Above all, it means judges with a political agenda appointed for life. If you liked the Supreme Court that put George W. Bush in the White House, you will swoon over what’s coming.

And if you like God in government, get ready for the Rapture. These folks don’t even mind you referring to the GOP as the party of God. Why else would the new House Majority Leader say that the Almighty is using him to promote ‘a Biblical worldview’ in American politics?

So it is a heady time in Washington – a heady time for piety, profits, and military power, all joined at the hip by ideology and money.

Don’t forget the money. It came pouring into this election, to both parties, from corporate America and others who expect the payback. Republicans outraised democrats by $184 million dollars. And came up with the big prize – monopoly control of the American government, and the power of the state to turn their ideology into the law of the land. Quite a bargain at any price.