CHOKE (Canada) Lotion 1994
5 minutes ago
Tuesday, 14 September 2010
Is Death the Price of Having a Job? In Some Corporations It Seems Like It
Their names probably won't mean mean anything to you, but these people ought to have some modicum of personal recognition: Jason Anderson, Aaron Dale "Bubba" Burkeen, Donald Clark, Stephen Curtis, Gordon Jones, Roy Wyatt Kemp, Karl Kleppinger, Blair Manuel, Dewey Revette, Shane Roshto, and Adam Weise. These are the 11 workers who were killed when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and sank into the Gulf of Mexico on April 20.Monday, 13 September 2010
Iraq combat over but U.S. troops still in danger
U.S. Staff Sergeant Kendrick Manuel swung his rifle over his shoulder and grumbled about being viewed as a "non-combat" soldier in Iraq.
"When NBC talked about the last combat troops are gone, they made it sound like everything is basically over," he said, after escorting a 19-truck convoy through a part of northern Iraq where roadside bombs and mortar attacks are still a danger.
"To us it was like a slap in the face, because we are still here ... we are still going in harm's way every time we leave out of the gate," Manuel said at a U.S. military base, Camp Speicher, near Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit.
On August 31, the U.S. military formally declared an end to its combat mission in Iraq, 7-1/2 years after the invasion that removed Saddam and led to sectarian warfare and a fierce insurgency in which tens of thousands of Iraqis were killed. More than 4,400 U.S. soldiers have been killed since 2003.
U.S. networks such as NBC showed what the U.S. military labeled the last combat brigade rumbling into Kuwait. Soldiers whooped and shouted on camera that the war was over.
Yet, there are still six brigades made up of 50,000 troops in Iraq, ahead of a full withdrawal at the end of 2011. Their focus is to assist and advise their Iraqi counterparts, not lead the fight against insurgents, but they remain heavily armed and face frequent threats.
On September 7, two U.S. soldiers were killed and nine wounded when an Iraqi soldier opened fire on them at an Iraqi commando base.
The hype around the change of mission, which allowed President Barack Obama to say he was fulfilling a pledge to start ending the unpopular war, set off complaints among some soldiers left behind who were no longer viewed as combat troops.
U.S. military convoys are still shot at and bombed, and bases are mortared, despite a change in the name of the U.S. mission from Operation Iraqi Freedom to Operation New Dawn.
"That doesn't really change a thing, it is still dangerous," said 22-year-old Specialist Byron Reed, on his second deployment in Iraq, as he prepared to escort a convoy to Camp Speicher from Balad air base in Salahuddin province.
Manuel said changing the mission's name meant little if any of his soldiers were to be killed by a roadside bomb.
"If a life is gone, it is gone," he said. "As long as we are going in harm's way, it (the war) is not over for us."
e failure of politicians to form a new government six months after an inconclusive election...
"When NBC talked about the last combat troops are gone, they made it sound like everything is basically over," he said, after escorting a 19-truck convoy through a part of northern Iraq where roadside bombs and mortar attacks are still a danger.
"To us it was like a slap in the face, because we are still here ... we are still going in harm's way every time we leave out of the gate," Manuel said at a U.S. military base, Camp Speicher, near Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit.
On August 31, the U.S. military formally declared an end to its combat mission in Iraq, 7-1/2 years after the invasion that removed Saddam and led to sectarian warfare and a fierce insurgency in which tens of thousands of Iraqis were killed. More than 4,400 U.S. soldiers have been killed since 2003.
U.S. networks such as NBC showed what the U.S. military labeled the last combat brigade rumbling into Kuwait. Soldiers whooped and shouted on camera that the war was over.
Yet, there are still six brigades made up of 50,000 troops in Iraq, ahead of a full withdrawal at the end of 2011. Their focus is to assist and advise their Iraqi counterparts, not lead the fight against insurgents, but they remain heavily armed and face frequent threats.
On September 7, two U.S. soldiers were killed and nine wounded when an Iraqi soldier opened fire on them at an Iraqi commando base.
The hype around the change of mission, which allowed President Barack Obama to say he was fulfilling a pledge to start ending the unpopular war, set off complaints among some soldiers left behind who were no longer viewed as combat troops.
U.S. military convoys are still shot at and bombed, and bases are mortared, despite a change in the name of the U.S. mission from Operation Iraqi Freedom to Operation New Dawn.
"That doesn't really change a thing, it is still dangerous," said 22-year-old Specialist Byron Reed, on his second deployment in Iraq, as he prepared to escort a convoy to Camp Speicher from Balad air base in Salahuddin province.
Manuel said changing the mission's name meant little if any of his soldiers were to be killed by a roadside bomb.
"If a life is gone, it is gone," he said. "As long as we are going in harm's way, it (the war) is not over for us."
e failure of politicians to form a new government six months after an inconclusive election...
Jon Savage compiles Black Hole: Californian Punk 1977-1980
Jon Savage has curated a new compilation for Domino, Black Hole: Californian Punk 1977-1980.
The esteemed journalist and broadcaster, best known for his formidable 1991 punk tome England’s Dreaming, aims here to pay tribute the first wave of Cali punk, pulling together routinely angry and anti-establishment – if often darkly humorous – tracks from the likes of The Dead Kennedys (pictured), The Germs and The Zeros. There’s a more in-depth explanation of the project’s motivation in Savage’s sleeve notes, which are reproduced below:
“This compilation celebrates the first wave of California Punk that briefly flourished between 1976 and 1980. Before then, there were a few glitter + cuspy street rock/ power pop bands – in Los Angeles, the Pop, Zolar X and the Nerves, in San Francisco, La Rue – while afterwards came the deluge: Hardcore, Rockabilly Revival, Industrial, and mainstream Power Pop.
So there were two to three years where – while admitting a generalised loud and fast punk template – almost anything went. Anyone who visited California in 1977 and 1978 could see that the major labels would never give the new generation of groups access to proper funding, television, radio and supported tours. They existed in a black hole. But in that vacuum they found freedom.
As the co-founder of key LA punk zine Slash Claude Bessy remembered, ‘the record companies and media were all hippies who had made it, and they were very hostile. But that’s when it got really good. We decided it was our party, nobody is interested, let’s go wild. It definitely seemed that we were going to be rejects forever’.
Californian punks were self-starters, creating an infrastructure out of nothing: venues like Brendan Mullen’s guerrilla club, the Masque; fanzines like Slash, Flipside, Search and Destroy out of San Francisco; and of course groups, ranging from sped-up rockers and pure punkers to synth experimenters and agit-prop consciousness raisers, leavened with the theatre of the absurd.
Having experienced a taste of this squalling subculture – I was very disappointed that it got almost no media attention in the UK. I’d get sent the records by Search & Destroy’s V.Vale and I couldn’t believe how good they were: easily as good as anything being produced in the UK, if not better in their black humour and earthy swing.
It was chauvinism of course, and nationalistic chauvinism at that – doubly nauseating. England had become ‘the world’s Punk Rock Centre’ – never mind that the idea, or a variant thereof, had also occurred to the alert and the alienated in New York, Cleveland, Paris, maybe even Chickasha, Oklahoma. And so its music press had to maintain the position. By slagging off the Yanks.
As if it was needed, this compilation should address that historical neglect. It has been gratifying to see Cali Punk given its due by recent oral histories like Brendan Mullen’s “We Got The Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A.Punk” (with Marc Spitz), and “Lexicon Devil – the Fast Time and Short Life of Darby Crash and the Germs” (with Don Bolles and Adam Parfrey 2002).
But the music contained herein needs no further justification than the fact that it rocks; that it contains ideas, tunes, anti-establishment rants, sharp comments about the world, attempts at transcendence and plenty of savage wit. Because it has remained an open secret, it hasn’t become a cliché, and so sounds as fresh as the day it was recorded.”
This is the second compilation that Savage has made for Domino, the first being 2008′s Dreams Come True: Classic Wave Electro 1982-87. It’s due to be released on November 15, on CD and digital download; more info and pre-orders here.
Tracklist:
1. The Germs – Forming
2. The Dils – I Hate The Rich
3. The Screamers – Peer Pressue
4. Crime – Murder By Guitar
5. The Zeros – WIMP
6. The Avengers – We Are The One
7. The Consumers – Anti Anti Anti
8. The Randoms – A-B-C-D
9. Black Randy And The Metro Squad – Trouble At The Cup
10. The Alleycats – Nothing Means Nothing Anymore
11. The Weirdos – Solitary Confinement
12. The Zeros – Beat Your Heart Out
13. X – We’re Desperate
14. The Offs – 624803
15. The Sleepers – Seventh World
16. The Middle Class – Situations
17. The Bags – Survive
18. The Germs – Media Blitz
19. The Middle Class – Love Is Just a Tool
20. The Flesheaters – Pony Dress
21. Urinals – Black Hole
22. The Aurora Pushups – Victims of Terrorism
23. The Avengers – The American In Me
24. The Dead Kennedys – California Uber Alles
25. The Dils – The Sound of the Rain
26. The Sleepers – Los Gatos
1. The Germs – Forming
2. The Dils – I Hate The Rich
3. The Screamers – Peer Pressue
4. Crime – Murder By Guitar
5. The Zeros – WIMP
6. The Avengers – We Are The One
7. The Consumers – Anti Anti Anti
8. The Randoms – A-B-C-D
9. Black Randy And The Metro Squad – Trouble At The Cup
10. The Alleycats – Nothing Means Nothing Anymore
11. The Weirdos – Solitary Confinement
12. The Zeros – Beat Your Heart Out
13. X – We’re Desperate
14. The Offs – 624803
15. The Sleepers – Seventh World
16. The Middle Class – Situations
17. The Bags – Survive
18. The Germs – Media Blitz
19. The Middle Class – Love Is Just a Tool
20. The Flesheaters – Pony Dress
21. Urinals – Black Hole
22. The Aurora Pushups – Victims of Terrorism
23. The Avengers – The American In Me
24. The Dead Kennedys – California Uber Alles
25. The Dils – The Sound of the Rain
26. The Sleepers – Los Gatos
What I found in my inbox today
An old friend sent me an email this morning. In it were pictures (e.g. the above picture is one) of Muslims praying on Madison Ave in New York city. Here are some snippets of the text:
- This is NYC on Madison Ave This is an accurate picture of every Friday afternoon in several locations throughout NYC where there are mosques with a large number of Muslims that cannot fit into the mosque
- This is in New York City on Madison Avenue, not in France or the Middle East or Yemen or Kenya.
- Is there a message here???? Yes, there is, and they are claiming America for allah. (sic)
- if we don't wake up soon, we are going to "politically correct" ourselves right out of our own country!
Can you spot the Obama reference?
This is actually an annual event that is planned and has a permit. Snopes details it here. Seeing my friends and countrymen embrace this fear and loathing is unsettling, but sadly I have to say it is also not surprising. It is campaign season again and the din of hate will only grow loader as we near November. Now, with large media outlets and talk radio fanning the flames we will all be awash in it. Joe Canason writes, "Paranoia and prejudice have long been instruments of right-wing politics in America, from the Red Scare and McCarthyism to the Nixonite Southern strategy. The current outbreak of Islamophobia represents the latest product of the same old manufacturing process." Indeed it does.
Joe Canason @'Salon'Second Soldier Alleges Former Tillman Commander Ordered "360 Rotational Fire" in Iraq
(Photo: Staff Sgt. Liesl Marelli / DVIDSHUB; Edited: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t)
Another former soldier of Bravo Company 2-16 (2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment) has said in a radio interview that a controversial battalion commander ordered soldiers to open fire on civilians in an indiscriminate pattern of "360 rotational fire," upon being hit by an improvised explosive device (IED). The interview took place last month with Scott Horton of AntiWar.com Radio. The commander in question is the same commander who led the first of many investigations into the death of NFL football star Pat Tillman in Afghanistan, in 2004, and was one of Tillman's commanding officers. A documentary on what the Pentagon has said was a "friendly fire" incident has just been released, "The Tillman Story." In the interview with Horton, Spc. Josh Stieber said that he witnessed the street massacres, which resulted when the order was carried out "maybe five to ten times."
The first soldier to reveal the order, Spc. Ethan McCord, told World Socialist Website News reporter Bill Van Auken last April that the commander, Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, told his men in different settings and at various times that they were to have a new "S.O.P." (standard operating procedure) whenever an IED went off. At that time, in early 2007, the Bush "surge" was just getting underway, and IED attacks and troop deaths had risen sharply. McCord told Van Auken: "He [Kauzlarich] goes, 'If someone in your line gets hit with an IED, 360 rotational fire. You kill every motherf*cker on the street.'" McCord said that he had also witnessed the order carried out, saying: "I've seen it many times, where people are just walking down the street and an IED goes off and the troops open fire and kill them."
Continue reading
Ralph Lopez @'truthout'
Houellebecq vs. Wikipedia
French writer Michel Houellebecq has always loved to pepper his novels with long encyclopedic descriptions of personalities, locations, and scientific concepts. In his new novel, the excellent La carte et le territoire (The Map and the Territory), which is the toast of the French literary scene, Houellebecq launches into tedious digressions about topics as varied as the housefly and the city of Beauvais. Some of the passages seemed so much like Wikipedia entries that Slate.fr, Slate's French sister site, decided to check, and—surprise!—discovered that at least three passages from the book are borrowed from the online encyclopedia.
On Sept. 2, I published an article in Slate.fr, under the headline "Houellebecq, the Possibility of a Plagiarism," in which I revealed the author's copy-and-pastes from Wikipedia and noted that the technique was a logical extension of his literary style. (For side-by-side comparisons of three passages from La carte et le territoire and the Wikipedia entries, see this page.)
Writer Dominique Noguez once called Houellebecq "the supermarket Baudelaire." He has always described society using the clinical language of marketing- and advertising-speak. Wikipedia, where the cold, unemotional writing is based on the soft consensus of its contributors, is a perfect match for Houellebecq's prose.
Plagiarism also has a long literary history. In 1869, in Les Chants de Maldoror (The Songs of Maldoror), Comte de Lautréamont's description of his character Maldoror is partly based on an entry from L'Encyclopédie d'histoire naturelle (The Encyclopedia of Natural History), by Jean-Charles Chenu. Scholars didn't discover Lautréamont's borrowing until 1952. Thanks to Google, we needed five minutes rather than 83 years to track down Houellebecq's sources.
The use of the term plagiarism in the Slate.fr article set off a heated controversy in France. (The author was already a polarizing figure.) The anti-Houellebecq side found new proof of his work's vacuity, while the pro-Houellebecq camp complained of a witch hunt against him. Plagiarism has become the Godwin's law of literature, the word that shouldn't be said, that curtails all further discussion.
Houellebecq's response to the controversy was one of weary resignation. He rejects the use of the word plagiarism, but he doesn't deny copying and pasting from Wikipedia. In a video interview, he calls his style "[a] patchwork, weavings, interlacings" He went on:
Lots of people have done it. I was especially influenced by [Georges] Perec and [Jorge Luis] Borges. Perec could do it even better than me, because he doesn't rework the fragment at all, which always creates a very strong linguistic discrepancy. Me, I can't manage that kind of discrepancy, so I rework the text a bit to make it closer to my own style. … I'd like to be able to modify them a little less than I do.
In other words, Houellebecq is apologizing for not copying Wikipedia more directly. A spokesman for Flammarion, his publisher, told us, "If some passages appear to be verbatim from other work, they can only be very short quotes." But Houellebecq doesn't care if they're short or long; Wikipedia is a literary source like any other.
Indeed, Houellebecq praises the online encyclopedia in La carte et le territoire by creating a fictional version of a Wikipedia entry: He imagines the page of iconic French TV anchor Jean-Pierre Pernaut as it might appear in the near future. In his video interview, Houellebecq claimed, "I manage to write fake Wikipedia pages. I think the one about Jean-Pierre Pernaut is totally believable." In fact, though, the pastiche was not successful, completely failing to capture the essence of Wikipedia-speak by being too grandiloquent.
Beyond any literary consideration, Houellebecq and Flammarion are theoretically in breach of the law. Wikipedia may be published under a free software license, but quoting from the encyclopedia is controlled by the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA licence. By publishing entries under that license, Wikipedia allows commercial reproduction, but only with clear attribution: "To quote an excerpt from Wikipedia in a book, you would need to identify it as a quote (with quotation marks for example) and source it with a footnote or an endnote as 'Wikipedia, article X, version read on the XX/XX/XXX' with the URL to that precise version," Adrienne Alix, the president of Wikimedia France told me.
Houellebecq never cites Wikipedia when he copies from it, so could the encyclopedia sue him for plagiarism?
Probably not. Wikipedia is not the author. Each article is a collective work, with each contribution signed with the pseudonym or IP address of the contributor in the History tab. For Michel Houellebecq to get into legal trouble, one of the contributors would need to feel particularly wronged, which is unlikely to happen. Not to mention that Wikipedia sometimes borrows from other texts.
Ironically, a smart-ass contributor found it funny to rewrite Wikipedia's definition of the housefly with the slight alterations Houellebecq added in his book. Houellebecq is not (yet) a member of the French Academy, but he has earned a spot as a Wikipedia contributor. He must like that a lot.
Vincent Glad @'Slate'
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