“Collateral Sounds is a response to the Wikileaks phenomenon. . . . Nivehive is here to provide the soundtrack.”
The album includes "People Demand," which features audio of the Egyptians in Tahrir calling for revolution. Hear the tune and find more info here; download the tune here (thanks, NiveHive!)
Here's hoping the concept's as catchy as the tune. (Image right, artist unknown.)
"They weren't murderers or anything; they had merely stolen more money than most people can rationally conceive of, from their own customers, in a few blinks of an eye. But then they went one step further. They came to Washington, took an oath before Congress, and lied about it.
Thanks to an extraordinary investigative effort by a Senate subcommittee that unilaterally decided to take up the burden the criminal justice system has repeatedly refused to shoulder, we now know exactly what Goldman Sachs executives like Lloyd Blankfein and Daniel Sparks lied about. We know exactly how they and other top Goldman executives, including David Viniar and Thomas Montag, defrauded their clients. America has been waiting for a case to bring against Wall Street.
Here it is, and the evidence has been gift-wrapped and left at the doorstep of federal prosecutors, evidence that doesn't leave much doubt: Goldman Sachs should stand trial.The great and powerful Oz of Wall Street was not the only target of Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: Anatomy of a Financial Collapse, the 650-page report just released by the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Democrat Carl Levin of Michigan, alongside Republican Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. Their unusually scathing bipartisan report also includes case studies of Washington Mutual and Deutsche Bank, providing a panoramic portrait of a bubble era that produced the most destructive crime spree in our history — "a million fraud cases a year" is how one former regulator puts it.
But the mountain of evidence collected against Goldman by Levin's small, 15-desk office of investigators — details of gross, baldfaced fraud delivered up in such quantities as to almost serve as a kind of sarcastic challenge to the curiously impassive Justice Department — stands as the most important symbol of Wall Street's aristocratic impunity and prosecutorial immunity produced since the crash of 2008 . . . . "
More at Rolling Stone. This article appears in the May 26, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. The issue is available now on newsstands and will appear in the online archive on May 13.
In 1984, Stahl had produced an extended report for CBS trying to document the contradictions between what Reagan said and what he did. It showed him speaking at the Special Olympics and at a nursing home, and reported that Reagan had cut funding to children with disabilities and opposed funding for public health. I’ll let [Bob] Somerby tell the rest:
Dick Darman clued in Lesley Stahl—it’s all about the pictures. During the 1984 presidential campaign, Stahl aired a lengthy report on the CBS Evening News; it was broadly critical of President Reagan. In her recent book, Reporting Live, Stahl described her thoughts as the piece went to air:
STAHL (page 210): I knew the piece would have an impact, if only because it was so long: five minutes and 40 seconds, practically a documentary in Evening News terms. I worried that my sources at the White House would be angry enough to freeze me out.
But that isn’t what happened, she says. When the piece aired, Darman called from the White House. “Way to go, kiddo,” he said to Stahl. “What a great piece. We loved it.” Stahl replied, “Didn’t you hear what I said [in the broadcast]?” Darman’s answer has been frequently quoted:
STAHL: [Darman replied,] “Nobody heard what you said.”
Did I hear him right? “Come again?”
“You guys in Televisionland haven’t figured it out, have you? When the pictures are powerful and emotional, they override if not completely drown out the sound. I mean it, Lesley. Nobody heard you.”
Stahl’s critical report about President Reagan had been accompanied by generally upbeat visuals. According to Darman’s theory, the pictures registered more with viewers than anything Stahl had said.
1. The Gun and Knife Show, curated by Heyd Fontenot and Julie Webb, at CentralTrak, 800 Exposition Ave. Related panel discussion May 21, 4 - 6 pm, at Cunningham Architects, 918 Dragon St.
2. Play Dead, curated by Willie Binnie & Tamara Coleman, at Bows and Arrows, 1927 Greenville Ave.
"The 'necomimi' . . . hair band . . . features sensors that pick up on brain signals and convert them into visible actions . . . by wiggling the cat ears. . . . [W]hen you concentrate, the ears point upwards . . . when you relax the ears flop down and forwards." More at Wired and Japan Trends; via Gizmodo. (Thanks Ben!)
Facebook in particular is the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented. Here we have the world’s most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations and their communications with each other, their relatives, all sitting within the United States, all accessible to US intelligence. Facebook, Google, Yahoo – all these major US organizations have built-in interfaces for US intelligence. It’s not a matter of serving a subpoena. They have an interface that they have developed for US intelligence to use.
Now, is it the case that Facebook is actually run by US intelligence? No, it’s not like that. It’s simply that US intelligence is able to bring to bear legal and political pressure on them. And it’s costly for them to hand out records one by one, so they have automated the process. Everyone should understand that when they add their friends to Facebook, they are doing free work for United States intelligence agencies in building this database for them.
* * * * *
Our No. 1 enemy is ignorance. And I believe that is the No. 1 enemy for everyone – it’s not understanding what actually is going on in the world. It's only when you start to understand that you can make effective decisions and effective plans. Now, the question is, who is promoting ignorance? Well, those organizations that try to keep things secret, and those organizations which distort true information to make it false or misrepresentative. In this latter category, it is bad media.
It really is my opinion that media in general are so bad that we have to question whether the world wouldn't be better off without them altogether. They are so distortive to how the world actually is that the result is . . . we see wars, and we see corrupt governments continue on.
One of the hopeful things that I’ve discovered is that nearly every war that has started in the past 50 years has been a result of media lies. The media could've stopped it if they had searched deep enough; if they hadn't reprinted government propaganda they could've stopped it. But what does that mean? Well, that means that basically populations don't like wars, and populations have to be fooled into wars. Populations don't willingly, with open eyes, go into a war. So if we have a good media environment, then we also have a peaceful environment.
"This video loop was for the Filtering Failure gallery show at: PLANETART in Amsterdam.
"Filtering Failure investigates (the connections between) the procedural terms ‘filtering’ and ‘failure’ and how in (lo-fi) digital arts these terms are being re-invented and re-used. The exhibition asks how Filtering and Failure co-exist; and how these processes influence each other.
"The exhibition includes new and older works from the avant-garde of glitch artists. These works show the filtering of failure as a generative process, but also to unfold a genre that includes many the different envelopes of personal ways of dealing with failure."
Every Artist Insured: Understanding Health Care Reform
This 90-minute workshop will discuss the federal health care reform law, what it might mean for you, and health care resources and insurance in the Dallas area. The event is organized by Artists Health Insurance Resource Center, which was founded in 1998 with start up costs funded by an NEA grant. Details:
When: Tuesday, May 17 , 7:00 - 8:30 p.m. Where: The McKinney Avenue Contemporary, 3120 McKinney Ave, Dallas, TX 75204. Limited parking available at the MAC as well as on Oak Grove and at City Vet.
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For posts explaining why It's the Derivatives, Stupid (before Planet Money was talking about them), see hereand here; and if you'd like still more, click on the label at the bottom of one of those posts, "follow the money."
Note: I revise my posts. Revisions are made to add info or improve accuracy or allure. If you're interested in my not-best, the Wayback Machine may have preserved earlier versions, or you can e-mail me and I'll see what I've got. If you'd like to quote me, please check back for the most recent version.
You can see a larger version of most of the images on this blog by clicking on them.
Fwiw Re- the Detention of Julian Assange:
Fundamental human rights, perhaps especially of free speech, have been among the concerns of this blog, and I followed the history of Wikileaks and Julian Assange closely from their early days through Assange’s long confinement and eventual release.
WL and Assange made enemies of elites from around the world by publishing leaked info about their crimes, greed, and/or neglect. The U.S., the U.K., and other countries bent their own laws and usual practices almost beyond recognition in their efforts to silence Assange. The U.S.’s decision to take legal action against Assange occurred after the International Criminal Court had announced an investigation into U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan that had been exposed by WL and after Whitehouse lawyers had nixed CIA plans to kidnap or assassinate Assange (which the CIA nonetheless continued to entertain long afterward and possibly still does).
Assange was detained from Dec. 7, 2010 until June 24, 2024, for a total of 4,948 days (more than 13.5 years), by means ranging from an ankle tag while on bail to extended periods of incarceration in solitary confinement in the U.K. under conditions described as “torture and medical neglect” by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture and many others.
What was done to Assange could be done to any of us. He may never be able to resume his former efforts in our behalf, but he's a hero for the ages. Let him never be forgotten.
You can find posts on this blog about Assange and WL here or by searching this blog (see upper left corner of this page).
"Panics do not destroy capital; they merely reveal the extent to which it has been previously destroyed by its betrayal into hopelessly unproductive works." – John Stuart Mill, before the Manchester Statistical Society, December 11, 1867, as quoted in "Financial Crises and Periods of Industrial and Commercial Depression," T.E. Burton (1902). ["Unproductive works": wars, credit derivatives, etc.]
"The most popular tulip species were scarce and demanded huge prices, peaking with the 'Semper Augustus', which was worth 5,000 Dutch Florins, the same price as a canal-side house in Amsterdam."
Re- this blog:
I mostly do this when I should probably be doing something else, so it's hit-and-miss. Please don't think anything of it if I don't cover your exhibition or issue.
I welcome corrections and comments but reserve the right not to publish those that threaten bodily harm, that consist mainly in name-calling or personal attacks, that dispute well-supported facts without offering credible substantiation, or that appear to be spam or designed to drive traffic to other URL's.
Coalition military deaths in Iraq since March, 2003: 4,766(as of April 22, 2011; click here to update). At least 467 contractors have also died, based on only partial information. Total U.S. military wounded as of as of January 14, 2010: 31,882.
Coalition military deaths in Afghanistan since October, 2001: 2,416 (as of April 22, 2011; click here to update.
Thoughts for the year or whatever, in no particular order:
What a huge debt this nation owes to its "troublemakers." From Thomas Paine to Martin Luther King, Jr., they have forced us to focus on problems we would prefer to downplay or ignore. Yet it is often only with hindsight that we can distinguish those troublemakers who brought us to our senses from those who were simply troublemakers. Prudence, and respect for the constitutional rights to free speech and free association, therefore dictate that the legal system cut all non-violent protesters a fair amount of slack. – Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Papineau v. Parmley, 465 F.3d 46 (2d Cir. 2006).
I can hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half. – Jason "Jay" Gould, per Philip Sheldon Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States Vol. 2: From the Founding of the A. F. of L. to the Emergence of American Imperialism, P. 51 (1998, 2d ed.).
On the one hand, information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. – Stewart Brand to Steve Wozniak, at the first Hacker's Conference in 1984, per Roger Clarke.
A modern economic system demands mass production of students who are not educated and have been rendered incapable of thinking. – U.N.E.F. Strasbourg, On the Poverty of Student Life (1966).
A balance of power requires a balance of knowledge. – moi (pre- 2000).
. . . Napoleon . . . said that it wasn't necessary to completely suppress the news; it was sufficient to delay the news until it no longer mattered. – attributed by PRWatch to Martin A. Lee & Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1991), p. xvii.
The infowar is the new class war; and information is the new wealth. – moi (2010).
Nothing is inevitable, except defeat for those who give up without a fight. – "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" (1961), script by Irwin Allen & Charles Bennett.
Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? . . . But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. . . . All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. – Hermann Goering, per Nuremberg Diary (Farrar, Straus & Co 1947), by Gustave Gilbert
The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous. – George Orwell, 1984.
Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders . . . . and millions have been killed because of this obedience . . . . – Howard Zinn, Failure to Quit (South End Press, 2002; originally published 1993).
Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love. – Julian Assange, IQ.ORG, "Witnessing," Wed 03 Jan 2007.
I used to be concerned about this mass audience thing . . . not anymore. There are overlapping circles of activity and . . . . It doesn't matter what the volume is . . . These circles are not sealed off from each other, they affect each other. – Yvonne Rainer, in an interview by Lyn Blumenthal for "Women with a Past," Program Six from the series, What Does She Want (VHS 1987, Video Data Bank).
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.' – John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1919).
In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. – James Madison, Independent Journal, Wednesday, February 6, 1788, The Federalist.
[W]e forgot that the question is NOT, how do we get good people into power. The question is, how do we limit the damage the powerful can do to us? – Chris Hedges, "The Failure of the Liberal Class in the United States," address to the Poverty Scholars Program, April 10, 2010.
They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. – Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1977).
In all history, there is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare. – Sun Tzu, The Art of War, ca. 500 B.C.
The opposite of good is not evil; it's apathy. – Cindy Sheehan in her speech to the Veterans for Peace on August 5, 2005, just before she began her first vigil outside of Pres. G.W. Bush's ranch in Crawford, TX; see vimeo; see also HuffPo.
One sits and beats an old tin can, lard pail. One beats and beats for that which one believes. That's what one wants to get near. Could it after all Be merely oneself, as superior as the ear To a crow's voice? – Wallace Stevens, The Man on the Dump(1923). It's class warfare, [and] my class is winning, but they shouldn't be. – Warren Buffet, CNN Interview, May 25 2005, suggesting we need to raise taxes on the rich. The past is never dead. It's not even past. – William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun, Act I, scene iii (1951). Cui bono (To whose benefit)? – attributed by Marcus Tullius Ciceroto Lucius Cassius Longina Ravilla, ca. 125 B.C.
When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it .– Frédéric Bastiat, Economic Sophisms, 2nd series (1848), Ch. 1 "Physiology of Plunder."
The higher the buildings, the lower the morals. – Noel Coward (1899-1973) (numerous sites attribute this to Coward, but I've found none that provides a more precise citation).
He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future. – George Orwell, 1984 (1949).
[Y]ou always have to ask yourself: Why do I get this specific information, in this specific form, at this specific moment? Ultimately, these are always questions about power. – Dr. Konrad Hummler, Swiss banking and media executive, interview 2011-07-11 retrieved 2021-08-15 from NZZ.
Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity. – attributed to Marshall McLuhan, http://www.marshallmcluhan.com/poster.html. "Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can't stop them from doing."
– Joseph Heller, Catch 22, Ch. 39, P. 407 (Simon & Schuster, 50th Anniversary Ed., 2011).
They'd rather some people die for your mistake, than that they lived, but that they lacked a leader.
It was too late to prevent the great Fall, but it was still possible, at least, to cut short the intermediate period of chaos. – Isaac Asimov, Second Foundation, P. 87 (ed. Bantam June, 2004; first published 1953). You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time. – Abraham Lincoln (1805-1865). My heart rouses thinking to bring you news of something that concerns you and concerns many men. Look at what passes for the new. You will not find it there but in despised poems. It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there. – William Carlos Williams, "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower" (1883-1963) (I don't own this and find no online source that mentions where it was published; pls help if you can). All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. – Edmund Burke (1729-1797; see link re- variants and possible misattribution).
I consider it completely unimportant who . . . will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this: who will count the votes, and how. – Joseph Stalin (1878-1953), per the Memoirs of Stalin's Secretary.
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.
HECATE: And you all know, security Is mortals' chiefest enemy. – W. Shakespeare, Macbeth(ca. 1606), Act II, scene v, MIT's Moby Ed.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. – Frederick Douglass, "West India Emancipation" speech, Aug. 3, 1857.
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. – Margaret Mead
The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall. – Che Guevara, Intercontinental Press (Vol. 3 January - April 1965); also in Che Guevara speaks: Selected Speeches and Writings (1967). The United States is the only nation in history to go from barbarism to decadence without any civilization in between. – Norman O. Brown, Closing Time (described as a graffito in Paris, May 1968; p. 29, ed. Vintage Books, 1974).
Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything; That's how the light gets in.
– Leonard Cohen, "Anthem" (1997?)
Let's do something, while we have the chance! It's not every day that we are needed. . . . Let us make the most of it before it is too late! – Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (1949).
If, one day, a people desires to live, then fate will answer their call. And their night will then begin to fade, and their chains break and fall. For he who is not embraced by a passion for life will dissipate into thin air,
* * * * * Then it was earth I questioned: "Mother, do you hate mankind?" And Earth responded: "I bless ambitious and aspiring souls, Who do not flinch at danger. I condemn those out of step with time, People content to live like stone." – "If the People Wanted Life One Day," Abou-Al-kacem El-chebbi (also spelled other ways, such as Abu Al-Qasim Ash-Shabi), known as the "poet of the Tunisian Revolution." Hatred never ceases by hatred; But by love alone is healed. This is an ancient and eternal law. -- "Dhammapada," Ch. 1, theTwin Verses5, as quoted by Maha Ghosananda.
There is no responsibility, without freedom; No freedom, without power; No power, without knowledge; No knowledge, without love.
– moi (1976).
A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias. – Oscar Wilde, Collected Works of Oscar Wilde: The Plays, the Poems, the Stories and the Essays Including De Profundis, p. 1051 (Wordsworth Edition, 1997).
. . . and in the morn I'll bring you to your ship and so to Naples, Where I have hope to see the nuptial Of these our dear-beloved solemnized; And thence retire me to my Milan, where Every third thought shall be my grave. – W. Shakespeare, The Tempest (ca. 1611), Act V, scene i, MIT's Moby Ed.
“Collateral Sounds is a response to the Wikileaks phenomenon. . . . Nivehive is here to provide the soundtrack.”
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