randomWalks

You can watch a bit of video (scroll down) at dc.indymedia and listen to a bit more of the town hall meeting on Pacifica’s PeaceWatch.

The audience — mostly middle-age professionals — broke into sustained applause when the veteran said the nation was being led into war by men who had never gone to war. He thundered off half a dozen names: "George Bush, hawk, did not fulfill his National Guard duty; Dick Cheney, hawk, did not serve; Paul Wolfowitz, hawk, did not serve; Richard Perle, hawk, did not serve."

originally posted by xowie

"I would say I'm probably relatively insane, to an extent," he was quoted as saying. "I take medication for schizophrenia, but I wouldn't say I'm schizophrenic. But I have a bipolar personality, which is strange. I'm my own worst enemy. I have devils inside that fight me."

• These people are a breed apart. We're better off that way
• This Is Your Life, Phil Spector. Phil?
• Beyond the gates
• There is another Hollywood, one Lana knew all too well
• Phil Spector's Ghosts

"Don't move the mikes," Phil would warn if we got up to take our 5-minute break which we were lucky to get. He didn't want anything to touch the "sound-waves" of that room once he had gotten balance. "DON'T MOVE THE MIKES," so we were very careful. The whole band was in the room. Some were playing chess, or throwing darts to naked ladies drawn on the walls. Phil would sometimes dress in outlandish costumes and then use his psychological tricks on us. We were ready for him.

originally posted by daiichi

There is no real evidence. There is no smoking gun. There isn't even a smoking spit wad. There is only, basically, a smoking middle finger.

originally posted by daiichi

Evidence of an electronic cut-and-paste operation by Whitehall officials can be found in the way the dossier preserves textual quirks from its original sources. One sentence in Dr Marashi's article includes a misplaced comma in referring to Iraq's head of military intelligence during the 1991 Gulf war. The same sentence in Downing Street's report contains the same misplaced comma.

originally posted by daiichi

March on Melrose by Judith Lewis.

originally posted by daiichi

>christ this is all so depressing. Isn’t something good happening?

Well I was holding back on this one… ‘A Sea of Fire,’ or Worse? by Nicholas Kristof. (Verrry depressing.)

originally posted by daiichi

Rice for Peace: If we are going to send something to Iraq it should be food, not bombs.

She needed the rewrite by Wednesday. I told her that I’d do my best but that my lover, Walta, was having brain surgery on Tuesday. A shunt was being placed in his cranium to drain fluid that was building up because of an AIDS-related infection. Sarah listened to me. When I was finished, she paused and said, "Well, that excuse might work in Boston, but it won’t fly here in New York."

originally posted by daiichi

originally posted by daiichi

Iraqis and Americans who, doctors say, might die in the next war: 48,000 to 260,000
Additional deaths expected from the civil war within Iraq following an invasion: 20,000
Additional deaths expected from “post-war adverse health effects”: 200,000
Total deaths if nuclear weapons are used: 3,900,000

VV: Blood, Stats, and Tears. Also, Dying for War by Alisa Solomon.

originally posted by daiichi

Why does Bush pronounce it “nuc-yoo-ler”? (fark)

originally posted by daiichi

JPB: I'm discouraged with the role of the Internet in the antiwar movement. Because so far what I see happening is that cyberspace is a great place for everybody to declaim. There are a million virtual streetcorners with a million lonely pamphleteers on them, all of them decrying the war and not actually coming together in any organized fashion to oppose it. It strikes me that existing political institutions -- whether it's the administration or Congress or large corporations -- only respond to other institutions. I don't care how many individuals you have marching in the streets, they're not going to pay attention until there's a leader for those individuals who can come forward and say I represent the organization of those individuals and we're going to amass the necessary money and votes to kick you the hell out of office. Then they pay attention. But not until. And so right at the moment it would strike me that the Internet is counterproductive to peace.

MJ: I'm rather shocked to hear you say that.

JPB: Well, I'm rather shocked to say it.

MJ: Is it that people just leave their anger online?

JPB: You vent online and then you dust your hands off in satisfaction and that's the last you do.

          Let her now take off her hat in summer air the contour
Of cornfields     and have enough time to kick off her one remaining
Shoe with the toes     of the other foot     to unhook her stockings
With calm fingers, noting how fatally easy it is to undress in midair
Near death     when the body will assume without effort any position
Except the one that will sustain it

originally posted by daiichi

Think Outside the Bomb
It's NUCLEAR, not NUCULAR, you idiot!
Anything War can do, Peace can do better.

originally posted by daiichi

After the shock of losing wears off and an unmitigated free-for-all ensues, the Triads go back to talking their usual shit. There's an explosion and a Triad shouts, "Suck it!" Another player laments his own death: "Damn, dude! Fuck, I had, like, no life left! How'd you not die?" His opponent curses back. "Fuck you! Owned!"

originally posted by daiichi

The RIAA has staked out an untenable position that is as unrealistic as it is anti-consumer and anti-artist... Their solutions are not good solutions. They cling unsuccessfully to the past rather than embrace the stunning opportunities offered by the future. They will be unsuccessful in their attempts to criminalize the society, and in their attempts to stretch the drum head of old laws onto the drum of new technology. It is one thing to be unsuccessful, it's one thing to argue a bad position, but it's quite another to be silly and laughed at, and that's where the RIAA has ended up. They appear to be totally irrelevant except as bagmen.

originally posted by daiichi

"I don't want to belong to a country that attacks little countries."

originally posted by daiichi

The Other Face of Fanaticism by Pankaj Mishra.

originally posted by daiichi

Jean Shepherd on mp3; also Greenwich Village, Jean Shepherd & the Web Today by Lorraine McConaghy.

originally posted by daiichi

The rebel speaks for herself, by Ben Ehrenreich. (cf.)

originally posted by daiichi

"It isn't about being drug free," Cowan argues. "It's about being free."

originally posted by daiichi

Take a Newport and dip it into the bottle of Juice and smoke it down. I would be on a Dust cloud floating over Queens. I was in a trance thinking about the fuzzy feeling that surrounds your brain, and then your whole body. I loved the way Juice made me feel like an animal that has just been released from a zoo. How all inhibitions left and I felt wild.

originally posted by daiichi

"They have a communication system that rivals the CIA," Borg said.

originally posted by daiichi

I'll post 150 updates in a day (for my purposes, from 12:01 a.m. PST Tuesday, January 21, 2003 to 12:01 a.m. PST Wednesday, January 22, 2003) to this entry, playing along by bolding the entries' numbers (like so: [#1], [#2] and so on), typing at least two sentences per update and resorting to lists and other content-producing gimmicks on an as-needed basis.

originally posted by daiichi