Achewood

Abandoned Places

Rate my gasmask

Bunny Suicides

I've just finished a no-frills chess ladder management program that I wrote in perl. Enjoy!

Human Rights Watch demands independent investigation in to Rumsfeld's role in torture scandal

America outsourcing torture

GasBGon

ChessGraphics

Dabora Gallery in NYC

Deathwatch

Advertisement alluding to famous depiction of Christ banned

Coming soon to a kangaroo court near you!

Carlos Betancourt

Arturo Rivera
more...

Francisco Toledo, "Rabbit Beheading Bean"

Gabriela Morawetz

Scott Treleaven

MailArt Forum
The Commodification of MailArt and MailArt scams

"On July 23, 2002, a skinny, bookish physics professor coughed up th slop of his internal organs and drifted off into a permanent sleep. Surrounding him were mountain men, skinheads, and former commies and anarchists who had given up their lives to hunker down in this godforsaken West Virginia compound. All had discovered him, in one way or another, through the written word: a vast legacy of thousands of self-published pages that with the leader’s passing formed the group's most precious asset.

This was the death waltz of Dr. William Pierce, acclaimed by a tiny subculture of "intellectual" racists, neo-Nazis and Klansmen as a milquetoast furher who would lead the white race to victory in the coming Racial Apocalypse..."

Cali Ruchala in Xerography Debt 13

Lee Bontecou

Ralph Hamilton

Tom Uttech

Beatrice Helg

Eccentric Chess Players

Children's art of the Spanish Civil War

"The White House is defending its practice of distributing government-funded video news releases to TV stations with the hopes that the stations will air the segments as real news.

On Sunday the NYT featured an extensive front-page investigation detailing the extent that pre-packaged news releases, produced by the federal government, are being used by television stations across the country. The Times reported at least 20 federal agencies, including the Pentagon and Census Bureau, have distributed hundreds of TV-news segments in the past four years. Many were then broadcast on local stations without crediting the government as the source of the information.

On Monday White House Press Secretary Scott McLelan claimed the videos are appropriate as long as they're factual. Last month the General Accounting Office, however, ruled that the videos violate laws that ban covert propaganda. But the Bush administration is ordering all agencies to disregard the GAO's directive."

from DemocracyNow

Atomic chess is like normal chess with the following modifications:

Pieces explode, leaving squares empty. After a capture is completed, the capturing man explodes. The square that the capture occurs on is 'ground zero'. All pieces (not pawns) that are on squares adjacent to ground zero (horizontally, vertically and diagonally) are destroyed in the explosion...

You can play Atomic chess on FICS

Chess ratings and titles explained

Chess Tip of the Day: "It is often better to leave a permanently weak pawn untaken. The idea is that sooner or later the enemy will be induced to use his pieces to protect it, and perish by cramp." --C.J.S. Purdy's "Fine Art of Chess Annotation and Other Thoughts" (Volume One)

While looking for the light, you may suddenly be devoured by darkness and find the true light. --Jack Kerouac

I occasionally play works by contemporary composers, and for two reasons. Firest, to discourage the composer from writing any more, and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven. --Jascha Heifetz

My talent as an artist is to walk across a moor, or place a stone on the ground. --Richard Long

Whatever speech I hear, no matter who is speaking nor what he says, my mind is already working to find the musical equivalent for such speech. --Modest Mussorgsky

Of course, to start with, I love all my pupils. Then I find the talented ones. They are always the most arrogant. --Alexandra Danilova

Second and Meta- Moore's Laws

Just what is it that psychedelic experiences reveal?

Manos, the Hands of Fate

Guantanamo prisoners stage mass protest, some by strangling themselves and performing "self-harm incidents"... What, I wonder is the formal function of the "behavioral health services unit"

Satirist of Pope fined in Poland

In May of last year Symour Hersh wrote about a secret Pentagon unit that was responsible for the torture going on in Abu Ghraib and around the world.

Today the government reveals the existence of this unit, and Hersh is vindicated.

Hersh, you'll remember, is that reporter who recently revealed there are US special forces units in Iran, scouting for targets in preparation for another war.

Flu activity from the CDC

More signs America is getting ready to invade Iran next

New chemical warfare

Power of Nightmares author answers questions for the BBC

New reports of strangulation and other tortures by American soldiers...

Support our troops!

Lawyer resigns over terror laws

Another example of the British having more integrity than Americans

120 US doctors condemn White House nominee

More torture allegations

"Detaining foreign terrorist suspects without trial breaks human rights laws, the UK's highest court has ruled"

Some good news for a change

"The ranking Democratic member of the House Judiciary Committee, Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, plans to ask the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a county prosecutor in Ohio today to explore "inappropriate and likely illegal election tampering" in at least one and perhaps several Ohio counties..." (from the NYT)

The mainstream media finally starts to take the possibility of election fraud seriously

That's my Bush!

University of Oregon professor's analysis of 2004 Presidential election finds "compelling evidence of fraud"

More on the Power of Nightmares

"The issue isn't whether or not we are the same as the Nazis, the issue is that we aren't different enough." --Avi Schlaim

"A veteran sergeant who told his commanding officers that he witnessed his colleagues torturing Iraqi detainees was strapped to a gurney and flown out of Iraq - even though there was nothing wrong with him...

Over the past few weeks, the number of different account of torture and abuse by the United States has been staggering. Here is a quick run-down of some of the most recent:

- The Pentagon warned intelligence specialists as recently as June not to report the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

- FBI agents witnessed US soldiers abusing detainees at Guantanamo Bay as early 2002 but the Pentagon did little to investigate the complaints.

- New photographs emerge showing U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees as early as May 2003.

- The U.S. government argues it has the right to use evidence gained by torture in deciding whether to detain people at Guantanamo Bay.

- U.S. generals in Iraq were warned more than a month before the Abu Ghraib scandal emerged that detainees were being beaten and abused in Iraq."

More on the new torture allegations here

Another fascist toady selected for Bush's team

How the NYT misreports

U.S. military admits manipulating media

House Judiciary Committee to hold hearings on voting irregularities

Preparations for the Supreme Court fight

"I know you think the fundamentalist triumph is complete. America is going to be just like The Handmaid's Tale now. The Bush Administration will take orders from Christian ayatollahs who command all-glass mega-churches in the suburbs of Denver and Houston. The president will be proclaimed a Protestant Pope, God's infallible messenger on Earth. Roe v. Wade will be overturned. The minimum wage will be lowered to $1 an hour, where it was in the 1950s, when everything was perfect. The FCC will order all radio stations to play Toby Keith, and Congress will so brazenly destroy the wall between church and state that the next federal budget will include $10 million for the 700 Club Pledge Drive.

Stop worrying. I am here to bring you hope. I am here to tell you that the cultural Cold War now wracking America will be won by the liberals, by the forces who want to take this country forward into the 21st century, not backward into the 12th..."

Cheer Up, Liberals

Unembedded, Independent

The Republican Assault on Democracy

Errors in exit polls still a puzzle to many by John Allen Paulos, Professor of Mathematics at Temple University and winner of the 2003 American Association for the Advancement of Science award for the promotion of public understanding of science

Oil for Food Becomes Isolationist Fodder

Liberals in academia?

Radical Reference: volunteer librarians helping activists

UN General Assembly Revolt?

How To Take Back A Stolen Election

Activists Crawl Through Web to Untangle US Secrecy

"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem: they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves" --Brendan Behan

"A German writer whom I love and whom I've translated, Erich Kastne, gives advice, in one of his poems, to a would-be suicide. He tries to give this man various reasons for not blowing his brains out. The man remains unconvinced, so Kastner says, in essence, "All right, the world is full of idiots and they're in control of everything. You fool, stay alive to annoy them!" And that, in a sense, is my function in life, and my consolation. If I can't convince these imbeciles of anything, I can at least annoy them..." --John Simon

Confessions of a Mutual Fund Insider

The Invasion of Iraq: Dollar vs Euro
The War To Save The U.S. Dollar

"The US mass media “reports”, the style, content and especially the language, echo their Nazi predecessors of 70 years ago to an uncanny degree. Coincidence? Of course!"

Nazi vs American propaganda

Making PBS "fair and balanced"

A Democratic candidate for Ohio Chief Justice recieved 257,000 more votes than Kerry

"Statistically, Kerry, as the Democratic presidential candidate, should have more votes than Connally. In a presidential election, most voters have the priority of casting a vote for president and the votes for president are almost always much higher than those of candidates farther down the ticket... Many voters simply don’t vote for Supreme Court justices. It is highly improbable that Connally’s vote totals would be so much higher than Kerry’s"

Re-Vote, Not Recount, in Ohio

I'm Not a Leftist, But I Play One on TV

"In 2002, I was an on-air commentator at MSNBC, and also senior producer on the "Donahue" show, the most-watched program on the channel. In the last months of the program, before it was terminated on the eve of the Iraq war, we were ordered by management that every time we booked an antiwar guest, we had to book 2 pro-war guests. If we booked two guests on the left, we had to book 3 on the right. At one meeting, a producer suggested booking Michael Moore and was told that she would need to book 3 right-wingers for balance. I considered suggesting Noam Chomsky as a guest, but our studio couldn't accommodate the 86 right-wingers we would have needed for balance...

NBC, CNBC, MSNBC are owned by GE. When I worked at MNSBC, some of the constraints imposed on the "Donahue" show were the result of GE ownership and a conservative NBC boss who'd come out of GE Financial and GE's plastics division.

Fox News is owned by the right-wing Rupert Murdoch (and News Corporation), and does Murdoch's ideological bidding.

ABC is owned by Disney. You'll remember that CEO Michael Eisner said that Disney wouldn't distribute "Fahrenheit 911" because Disney "didn't want to be in the middle of a politically-oriented film during an election year." Eisner's comment was allowed to pass only because so few people realize that Disney is one of the biggest purveyors of political opinion this election year and every recent election year -- almost all of it right-wing political opinion. Each day in major radio markets nationwide, Disney radio stations serve up hour after hour of Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Laura Ingraham, Matt Drudge, etc. etc.

CBS News, owned by Viacom, got taken in by forged documents -- and then censored accurate reporting critical of Bush, apparently at the behest of Viacom's CEO, Sumner Redstone. Six weeks before the election Redstone endorsed Bush on behalf of Viacom: "From a Viacom standpoint, the election of a Republican administration is a better deal. Because the Republican administration has stood for many things we believe in, deregulation and so on."

The Media and the Election

"If two groups are locked in argument, one maintaining that 2+2=4, and the other claiming that 2+2=6, sure enough, an Englishman will walk in and settle on 2+2=5, denouncing both groups as extremists."

argumentum ad temperatiam

Democrats Commit Suicide

"The Swiss novelist and playwright Max Frisch tells the story of an ambassador's visit to the Hermitage in Leningrad: 'He wanted to see the art known to be hidden in the Hermitage and not shown to the public. Works of the old Russian avant-garde. The museum functionary -- a woman who is a connoisseur -- showed him this and that. His last wish: The Black Square of Malevich. Why that? Because it exists, said the ambassador, and it's here, in the Hermitage.... And the two of them stood, thrilled, before Malevich. Why don't you go and hang it right next to the paintings of soial realism in which the Soviet people recognize themselves at work for society, and people would see -- Malevich is baloney! The woman listened. Seriously, though, said the ambassador, you don't have to hide Malevich in the cellar; nobody would look at it. The woman laughed: You're wrong, she said. People wouldn't understand the point of a black square, but they would see that something else exists beside the society and the state.'" --Joyce Carol Oates

Blair impeachment proceedings start next Wednesday

"If I were president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United states in a few days. Permanently.

I would first apologize—very publicly and very sincerely—to all the widows and orphans, the impoverished and tortured, and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism.

Then I would announce to every corner of the world that America's global military interventions have come to an end.

I would then inform Israel that it is no longer the 51st state of the union but—oddly enough—a foreign country.

Then I would reduce the military budget by at least 90 percent and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims and repair the damage from the many American bombings, invasions, and sanctions. There would be more than enough money. One year's military budget in the United States is equal to more than $20,000 per hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born. That's one year.

That's what I'd do on my first three days in the White House. On the fourth day, I'd be assassinated." --William Blum

Doubting the kidnappings and executions

Another Noam Chomsky blog

Anti-Bush protest in Chile

Not What You Think claims the US is in Iraq because of Israel, not oil
While Iraq and the hidden euro-dollar wars argues that it is about the oil after all, through which the US influences the rest of the world and keeps the dollar strong

How I Stole Your Election by George W. Bush

Fallujah in Pictures

"What's the difference between Aunt Jemima and Condoleeza Rice?

One is a 2 dimensional fictional character, used to sell a product, a play on stereotypes in order to allow the consumer to feel safer because their "black mammy" would never lead them astray...

And the other is Aunt Jemima."

Wow

Carnegie Military University: How the Pentagon Funds Universities to Contribute to War

Before a recount can be started in Ohio the vote must be certified, but it looks like the Ohio Secretary of State (coincidentally a zealous Bush campaigner and notorious minority vote suppressor) is dragging his feet on certifying the vote:

"Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, co-chair of President Bush’s 2004 Ohio Campaign Committee had told the press recently that certification of the vote would not take place until around December 6th, leaving only a week for the recount before the Ohio members of the Electoral College convened on December 13th.

“What’s the point of having a recount if it won’t be completed in time? Everyone knows what happened in Florida in 2000 and no one wants to see that happen again,” said Blair Bobier, Media Director for the Cobb-LaMarche campaign"

"For 40 years, the Dayton Daily News reports this morning, Shirley Wightman has worked at polling places on election days. Two weeks ago, she says, turnout was high - 611 voters.. in Washington Township, Ohio... Yet when the votes were tallied, 168 of the 611 voters had made no choice for president. Unless these were the famed undecideds we heard so much about in the closing weeks of the campaigns, something went terribly wrong..."

Ohio undervotes

"To be sure, Candidate X is a mass murderer, but it's worth keeping in mind that Candidate Y is a serial jaywalker."

The media and false equivalence

Florida votes questioned by Berkeley study

Antiwar activists targeted in terror probe

New case of Mad Cow Disease in the US

On Media Bias

"It’s the right debating the far right," said Amy Goodman of mainstream American media in an interview on the Tucker Carlson show.

She's also "concerned about a right-wing takeover at PBS,", referring to the recent departure of Bill Moyers and the addition of a show featuring The Wall Street Journal editorial board and also Mr. Carlson’s show.

Here's a transcript of the show itself