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February 28, 2006
Eastman Film Company Created First Commercial Motion Picture Ever
On March 26, 1885, the Eastman Film Company manufactured the first commercial motion picture in the world.
I would save this little bit of information to print on March 26 of this year, but I'm putting it up now in case it slips my mind.
Posted by andrewanissi at 01:06 PM
NYC CLUB REVIEW: PACHA
by Paul Nahm
| Pacha |
| 618 W 46th St |
| (between 11th Ave and the West Side Highway) |
| New York, NY |
| (212) 209-7500 |
The diverse lineups that Pacha has to offer appeals to a wide demographic, which is key in drawing a large crowd to any one establishment. People choose where to drop their hard earned cheddar for varying reasons, but again, it is ultimately to have a whooping (or in the words of Boo – a woot woot) good time. As any club director will knowingly admit, appeasing everyone is difficult, and finding that middle path while not dumbing down the music is an arduous task that event coordinators must deal with. With that said, we see Pete Heller spearheading the Producers Series on February 25, 2006, and the following week, Pacha brings the German Maestro Timo Maas, with Sleepy & Boo as openers on March 3rd (for an expanded list of upcoming acts, please see below). Important to note, S & B now host events in the refurbished basement, where local disc jockeys are invited to perform sets. Again, we see the strong local aspect of the club’s intentions and this brings a huge draw from the New York metropolitan area.
Continue reading "NYC CLUB REVIEW: PACHA"
Posted by andrewanissi at 11:27 AM
February 25, 2006
Homestyle Bungalows: Cozy by Design
Americans took these homes to heart and fell in love with their organic beauty
by Lisa Hutchurson
Dated: February 25, 2006
SOURCE: Democrat & Chronicle
|
Built in Pasadena, Calif., it had foundations of boulders and clinker bricks, a ground-hugging profile and a huge front porch. The interior's wooden arches mimicked Japanese joinery, and the open, lodgey layout had a hearth called a "smokery."
The home's twin, built in 1912 in Rochester, is also worth studying, thanks to its owners. For 17 years, James M. and Marie Via have worked to restore it at 70 Bellevue Drive.
"Bungalows are just so cozy," says Marie, director of exhibitions for the Memorial Art Gallery. "It's not a big, expansive space that's sort of nonhuman in scale."
That's just one of the reasons bungalows are so popular. Since the 1980s, when they were rediscovered, there's been an explosion of books on bungalow style, the launch of American Bungalow magazine, and burgeoning communities filled with new bungalows.
"To some people, the word 'bungalow' just means a little house," says Cynthia Howk, architectural research coordinator for the Landmark Society of Western New York. The dictionary would seem to agree, defining it as a one- or one-and-a-half-story structure.
But the bungalow holds a specific place in history. The story starts in the Indian province of Bengal, where the common native dwellings and the geographic area both had the same root word, bangla or bangala. In the 18th century, British soldiers in Colonial India adapted these one-story huts with thatched roofs.
The English went on to develop the style, influenced also by the army tent, English cottage and Persian veranda. Along the way, in the 1870s, English artists such as William Morris ushered in the Arts and Crafts movement by rejecting the Victorian era's fussy ornamentation and mass-produced pieces. Bungalows there manifested these beliefs, with squared and simple woodwork instead of spindles, and casual, open layouts instead of cramped formality.
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 05:59 PM
February 24, 2006
Information Age? More like the New Middle Ages
By Eric Jager
Dated: January 1, 2006
SOURCE: LA Times
IT'S ONLY 2006, and people have already dubbed this new century the Information Age, the Digital Age or the Connectivity Age. I have a more accurate name for the 21st century, and I encourage us all to start using it today: The New Middle Ages.
With the resurgence of legalized torture, rampant religious fanaticism, widespread poverty and illiteracy, the threat of mysterious plagues, fascination with magic and the occult and suspicion of science, what else would you call it?
Nearly 30 years ago, when Barbara Tuchman published her bestselling book, "A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century," her title hinted that we could catch our own reflection in the medieval past. We now live even further from the 14th century's disastrous wars, popular revolts, religious strife and epidemic plague — yet the mirror no longer seems so distant. Tuchman wrote her epochal book after the worst horrors of the last century, including an influenza pandemic that killed millions, two devastating world wars and the Holocaust but before AIDS, Ebola and now the avian flu raised the specter of modern plague, before the fall of communism unleashed civil war and genocide in the Balkans and before religious extremists seized power in Iran and Islamic terrorists began attacking Western cities, giving dangerous new life to medieval words like "crusade" and "jihad."
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 06:04 PM
Watching the Dissolution of Palestine
by Jennifer Loewenstein
Dated: February 24, 2006
SOURCE: Counterpunch.org
For those who haven't noticed, Israel opposes a two-state solution. It has been doing everything in its power to prevent a Palestinian state from emerging and will continue to do so as long as it can count on the complicity of its powerful friends and on abundant popular indifference. Under such circumstances, it is incumbent upon ourselves to ask why Hamas has therefore been ordered - by Israel and its same powerful friends --to accept "the two-state solution" especially when, unlike Israel, it has stated clearly and repeatedly that it would accept a Palestinian state on the lands occupied by Israel in the 1967 war, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Indeed, all of its key spokespeople have said this:Zahar, Haniye, Meshal, and Yassin and Rantisi before they were murdered.
Judea and Samaria which are, or were, the northern and southern West Bank, have been subdivided and parceled out over decades to hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers for their houses and orchards and gardens. They have been crisscrossed and circled with Jewish-only roads that bind the land, the houses and orchards and gardens, to Israel. They have been manned with guards and gunmen and tanks and blue and white Israeli flags that defend, protect and assure the settlers, their houses and orchards and gardens, that they are in fact Israelis belonging to a single Jewish state.
The settled lands with their settler families, their houses and gardens, shops and schools, clubs and cafes and pools, have been mapped and assigned, seized and secured from the Arabs in the shabby clothes in the rundown! villages who live outside of, or have been forced to leave, the protected colonial zones. The projected frontiers, the future borders, depend on the disappearance of these Arabs, which is anxiously anticipated and actively encouraged. Most of the eastern perimeter of the current state is a concrete wall erasing from view that Other Side, which is unmentionable in polite company. The eastern perimeter wall will soon be the western perimeter wall because the acting Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, has just announced that the rest of the unincorporated West Bank land will soon be annexed to Israel: The Jordan Valley, the West Bank's border with the state of Jordan, now to be Israel's eastern border with the state of Jordan, will also be secured by the wall and off-limits to "non-Israelis," meaning Palestinians, who will then be fully encircled in their stagnant reservations unable to access the outside world.
In the same breath as! he announces this latest unilateral declaration of confiscated lan d for a Jewish State, Olmert announces a sanctions regime against the Palestinians of the occupied territories for refusing to believe that this land transformation in which one society is strengthened and expanded and the other is dissolved into a thousand pieces is actually the two-state solution.
For the full article, click here.
Jennifer Loewenstein is a Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford University's Refugee Studies Centre. She has lived and worked in Gaza City, Beirut and Jerusalem and has traveled extensively throughout the Middle East, where she has worked as a free-lance journalist and a human rights activist.
Posted by andrewanissi at 05:55 PM
February 22, 2006
FILM: Unknown White Male
 |
Friday, February 24, 2006
Loews Village 7
3rd Avenue and 11th New York, NY
1-800-FANDANGO #780
Presented by Shooting People
IMAGINE waking up and
not knowing who you are.
IMAGINE that every memory of your life
had been wiped and no one knew why.
IMAGINE having to meet your family and
closest friends and rediscover your world.
It happened to Douglas Bruce.
And we filmed it.
UNKNOWN
WHITE
MALE
An extraordinary documentary
If you lost your past
would you want it back?
Posted by andrewanissi at 05:13 PM
February 20, 2006
Is Anyone Listening?
by Laurence M. Vance
Dated: February 20, 2006
SOURCE: LewRockwell.com
They should know better. Supporters of this war, apologists for this war, defenders of this war, participants in this war – they should all know better. The evidence is there, but is anyone listening?
Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Objectivists – they should know better. Catholics, Protestants, Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, Jews – they should know better. Ministers, teachers, doctors, managers, fast food workers, housewives should know better. Marines, soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardsmen, and reservists – they should know better. Flag wavers, patriots, veterans, yellow ribbon wearers, "God and country" and "God bless America" Christians – they should know better. All Americans should know better. The evidence is there, but is anyone listening?
They have the word of Pentagon insiders. They have the word of Bush administration insiders. They have the word of the Army War College. They have the word of army generals. They have the word of members of Congress. They have the word of the Founding Fathers. They have the word of war veterans. They have the word of Iraq war veterans. They have the word of the vice president. They even have the word of the president himself. The evidence is there, but is anyone listening?
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 07:55 PM
Free Speech Suffers a Blow as Austrian Sentences Historian To 3 Years in Prison For Researching the Holocaust
Irving case prompts Austria law debate
by Bethany Bell
Dated February 20, 2006
SOURCE: BBC News
| "This is a silly law by silly people for silly people." - Lothar Hobelt, Professor of History, University of Vienna |
The law was enacted after World War II, and was meant to prevent any further Nazi activities.
Austria had been annexed to Nazi Germany in 1938, and was deeply involved in the crimes of the Third Reich.
A few Austrians, such as Lothar Hobelt,
an associate professor of history at the University of Vienna, believe it should never have been set up at all.
"This is a silly law by silly people for silly people," he said.
"In fact, having a law that says you mustn't question a particular historical instance, if anything, creates doubt about it, because if an argument has to be protected by the force of law, it means it's a weak argument."
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 07:43 PM
Cultural Environmentalism
by James Boyle
Dated: February 20, 2006
SOURCE: The Financial Times
Ten years ago, I tried to get an article about intellectual property published in a major US newspaper. It was a hard sell. I mentioned the words “internet” and “free speech” and “access to information.” “Ah,” said the editor, “so you want to write about porn and censorship.”
Not exactly. I wanted to write about software patents and the rules of digital copyright, about proposals that would have made internet service providers strictly liable for whatever their customers did online, about persistent retrospective extensions of copyright term that locked up most of 20th century culture, even if it was commercially unavailable, just at the moment when we could dream of making it digitally available to the world.
“But where is the free speech issue?” the editor asked. “Are these rules part of some covert effort to regulate indecency?” Free speech, it seemed, meant unfettered access to breasts – or at least digital images of them. Intellectual property was dry stuff of interest only to industry hacks. We were writing the ground rules of the information age, rules that had dramatic effects on speech, innovation, science and culture, and no one – except the affected industries – was paying attention.
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 06:20 PM
February 19, 2006
TWO THOUSAND SEX TOUR
| MY LIFE WITH THE THRILL KILL KULT
IN CONCERT IN NEW YORK CITY @ AVALON SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2006
|
Posted by andrewanissi at 01:54 AM
February 18, 2006
Shamanism: Dead or Alive?
by Linden Foxcub
Dated: February 12, 2006
SOURCE: Witchvox
 |
To answer that, we must first look at what shamans really are, and there are some controversial theories on this point. Shamanism cannot truly be called a religion in itself, as it is a part of many religions. One cannot say that the Siberian Natives practise the same religion as the South American Natives, but both have Shamans.
Some conclude that Shamans are insane, deified by their people. Others argue that mentally disturbed people are merely Shamans who have not received the proper training to cope with the calling. Whichever it is, the two have many correlations of behaviour and described experiences.
It is also important to differentiate the Shaman from the Medium. The Medium, for example, the Oracle at Delphi, is a person who allows, or invites a spirit to enter his or her body. The Shaman, on the other hand, sends out his spirit, and claims to be able to travel to other worlds in trance.
Posted by andrewanissi at 02:32 PM
Row over Israeli tolerance museum
by Martin Patience
Dated: February 17, 2006
SOURCE: BBC News
Apparently Israel is tearing up a 1,000 year old Palestinian cemetery and building a Museum of Tolerance on top of it. First of all, haven't these people seen The Poltergeist? And second of all, isn't desecreating a Semitic cemetery an act of anti-Semitism? Not the best way to start a "Museum of Tolerance."
or the last 40 years Mohammed Hamdi Bader has left his tailor's shop in the Old City once a month and taken a short walk to the heart of west Jerusalem where he prayed close to his grandfather's grave.
But the 49-year-old Palestinian father-of-five can no longer reach the grave and he's furious about it.
The Maamam Allah cemetery, which is at least 1,000 years old, has become a building site.
The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre is constructing a Museum of Tolerance on the cemetery. The centre says the museum will seek to promote "unity and respect among Jews and between people of all faiths".
The project has raised the ire of the Muslim community in the city. There have been accusations that exhumed remains have been damaged.
Despite a temporary injunction on work at the site issued by the Islamic Court - a division of the Israeli justice system - Israeli archaeologists and developers have continued excavating remains at the cemetery, says Durgham Saif, a Palestinian lawyer.
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 01:56 PM
February 17, 2006
Israeli family accuses LA area police of wrongful death
by Associated Press
Dated: February 16, 2006
SOURCE: The Jerusalem Post
Two undercover police officers shot and killed an Israeli Jew in 2004 after they mistook him for a Middle Easterner or Muslim, then tried to cover up the wrongful death by raiding the man's apartment in hopes of finding evidence of contraband or illegal activities, the man's parents alleged in a lawsuit.
The complaint filed in federal court Wednesday named the Los Angeles and Burbank police departments and officers Scott Meadows and Jose Duran as defendants. An attorney for Assaf Deri's family said he did not know which departments the officers worked for, suggesting the suit may be amended as he learns more details of the June 25, 2004, shooting.
"The basic fact is, the police targeted this young man simply because he looked Middle Eastern," attorney Browne Greene said.
The suit alleged wrongful death, negligence, civil rights violations, assault and battery and false arrest. It seeks punitive damages.
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 10:58 PM
Who cares about Cheney's Hunting Accident?
by Andrew A. Anissi
Why is the mainstream media so obsessed with reporting on Dick Cheney's hunting accident? Out of all of the thousands of things that Dick Cheney has done wrong, they pick and only report on the one thing that actually seems like an honest mistake. Meanwhile, though, notice that news coverage of Scooter Libby and Karl Rove, and all of the other CRIMINALS that work in the highest levels of our government, has ceased. The news coverage of the President's illegal wiretapping of private citizens, in violation of federal law, has ceased. Where is the moral and idealistic leadership this country needs? Who is left to defend the foundation of our country's ideals: the Constitution? Where is the outrage at the war profiteers and the Katrina Hurricane profiteers and the new American slavery caused by our open borders policy? Who is left to stand up to Republicrats? That's right, no matter what the parties say in their platforms, they keep nominating the same group of liars and cheats to lead us.
Posted by andrewanissi at 03:12 PM
Goodbye New Orleans. It's Time We Stopped Pretending.
by Mike Tidwell
SOURCE: Orion
AS WE REACH THE 90-DAY mark since Katrina hit, it's time we ended our national state of denial. Turns out House Speaker Dennis Hastert had it right all along, though his reasons were flawed. We should call it quits in New Orleans not because the city can't be made relatively safe from hurricanes. It can be. And not because to do so is more trouble than it's worth. It's not. But because the Bush Administration has already given New Orleans a quiet kiss of death now that the story has run its news cycle.
As someone who dearly loves New Orleans and has experienced many of her charms, it pains me immeasurably to call for this retreat. This is not a rhetorical stunt or a shock argument meant to invite compromise talks. I mean what I say: Shut the city down and board it up before thousands more lives are lost.
In the weeks after Katrina, the American media somehow portrayed the catastrophe as a matter of failed levees and flawed evacuation plans. The "What went wrong?" coverage involved autopsies of every breached dike and a witch hunt for those responsible for the Superdome and Convention Center fiascos. But these were just horrifying symptoms of a much larger disease.
Katrina destroyed the Big Easy—and future Katrinas will do the same—not because of engineering failures but because one million acres of coastal islands and marshland have vanished in Louisiana in the last century due to human interference. These land forms served as natural "speed bumps," reducing the lethal surge tide of past hurricanes and making New Orleans habitable in the first place.
But while encouraging city residents to return home and declaring for the media audience that "we will do whatever it takes" to save the city, the President earlier this month formally refused the one thing New Orleans simply cannot live without: A restored network of barrier islands and coastal wetlands.
Tens of billions of dollars have been authorized to treat the symptoms—broken levees, insufficient emergency resources, destroyed roads and bridges—but next to nothing for the disease itself, that of disappeared land, which ushered the ocean into the city to begin with. No amount of levee building or stockpiling of bottled water will ever save New Orleans until the state's barrier shoreline is restored.
Just since World War II an area of land the size of Rhode Island has turned to water between New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico, most of it former marshland. And every 2.7 miles of marshland reduces a hurricane surge tide by a foot, dispersing the storm's power. Simply put, had Katrina struck in 1945 instead of 2005, the surge that reached New Orleans would have been as much as 5-10 feet less than it was.
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 02:01 PM
Global Warming and the Deluge
by Kelpie Wilson
dated February 2, 2006
SOURCE: Orion
Recently, writer Bill McKibben issued a call for artists to grapple with the epoch-making topic of global warming. "If the scientists are right," he wrote, "we're living through the biggest thing that's happened since human civilization emerged." In order to wrap our minds around the enormity, he said, we must engage our most creative and dramatic sensibilities. We must create art.
But we need not create this art out of whole cloth, nor should we. The most transfixing narratives in present-day culture are those that build on old familiar stories—Plato's Atlantis, for instance; or Noah's flood. Tales of ancient sunken cities offer tantalizing clues that human culture may have encountered global warming before, though for very different reasons.
Geologists are finding hard evidence that when the last ice age ended, it created floods of biblical proportions. Sediment cores show that around 7600 years ago a rising Mediterranean spilled suddenly into the Black Sea in a torrent mightier than a dozen Niagara Falls. The deluge raised the Black Sea's water level by six inches a day, quickly displacing the Neolithic farmers who must have inhabited the fertile plains around its shores.
Several centuries earlier, melting ice sheets had raised the global sea level by 5 to 10 meters. Just as today, a large portion of the Earth's human inhabitants lived along shorelines. Is it any wonder, then, that nearly every culture surveyed has myths of a cataclysmic flood?
A theme of many flood myths is that the deluge was punishment for failure to respect the gods and their creations. The Old Testament version speaks of God's desire to end the "wickedness of man," while the Babylonian version says that the god Enlil was disturbed by the overpopulation and "noise of the people." From a completely different part of the world, a myth from the Palau Islands in Micronesia tells of gods who sent the flood to punish a man who stole a star from the sky. The stars were the eyes of the gods.
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 01:51 PM
On CNN The Real Abu Ghraib Scandal is The Photos, Not the Abuse
by Jeremy Scahill
Dated: February 16, 2006
SOURCE: Common Dreams News Center
[Yet again, CNN twists the stories rather than telling the news.]
CNN's Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr should be given some kind of award for the most outrageously off-target reporting on the newly released photos and videos of US torture and abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. In her numerous appearances during the morning news cycle on CNN after the images were first broadcast on Australia's SBS television, Starr described what she saw as the "root of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal" as such:
"Let's start by reminding everybody that under U.S. military law and practice, the only photographs that can be taken are official photographs for documentation purposes about the status of prisoners when they are in military detention. That's it. Anything else is not acceptable. And of course, that is what the Abu Ghraib Prison scandal is all about."
What? Here I thought the "scandal" was that the US military was systematically abusing prisoners. These new photos, with their documentation of violently-inflicted, open wounds, obliterate any notion that what occurred at Abu Ghraib was anything short of torture by all accepted definitions of the term. They reveal some horrifying scenes of naked, humiliated, bloodied prisoners, some with apparent gunshot wounds. In a video broadcast on Australia's SBS, naked, hooded prisoners were seen being forced to masturbate in front of the camera. But, according to CNN's Starr, the real transgression was that some soldiers documented the torture in violation of "U.S. military law and practice."
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 01:42 PM
February 15, 2006
Democrats Force Popular War Veteran Out of Senate Race
Popular Ohio Democrat Drops Out of Race, and Perhaps Politics
by Ian Urbina
Dated February 14, 2006
SOURCE: The New York Times
| The Republican Party has been hijacked by people who "aren't a whole lot different from Osama bin Laden." - Paul Hackett |
Mr. Hackett said Senators Charles E. Schumer of New York and Harry Reid of Nevada, the same party leaders who he said persuaded him last August to enter the Senate race, had pushed him to step aside so that Representative Sherrod Brown, a longtime member of Congress, could take on Senator Mike DeWine, the Republican incumbent.
Mr. Hackett staged a surprisingly strong Congressional run last year in an overwhelmingly Republican district and gained national prominence for his scathing criticism of the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq War. It was his performance in the Congressional race that led party leaders to recruit him for the Senate race.
| "For me, this is a second betrayal," Mr. Hackett said. "First, my government misused and mismanaged the military in Iraq, and now my own party is afraid to support candidates like me." |
"This is an extremely disappointing decision that I feel has been forced on me," said Mr. Hackett, whose announcement comes two days before the state's filing deadline for candidates. He said he was outraged to learn that party leaders were calling his donors and asking them to stop giving and said he would not enter the Second District Congressional race.
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 04:45 PM
Senate Republicans and Democrats Unite Their Voices Against Neocon Administration's Foreign Policy
Republicans Criticize Bush Mideast Policy
by Anne Gearan, AP Diplomatic Writer
Dated: February 15, 2006
SOURCE: Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republican senators criticized the Bush administration Wednesday over its policies in Iraq, Iran and the Palestinian territories, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's first testimony on Capitol Hill in months exposed her to a tough grilling from some members of her own party.
"I don't see, Madame Secretary, how things are getting better. I think things are getting worse. I think they're getting worse in Iraq. I think they're getting worse in Iran," Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., told Rice as she appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Rice also had a tense exchange with moderate Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., over the pace of progress toward Israeli-Palestinian peace and the implications of the Hamas victory in Palestinian legislative elections last month.
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 01:10 PM
February 14, 2006
4000 Year Old Sumerian Love Poem Preserved at Istanbul Museum of the Ancient Orient
by Sebnem Arsu
Dated: February 14, 2006
SOURCE: The New York Times
 |
The 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablet is on display at the Istanbul Museum of the Ancient Orient.
The ancient Sumerian tablet was unearthed in the late 1880's in Nippur, a region in what is now Iraq, and had been resting quietly in a modest corner of the museum until it was brought back to the limelight this year by a company that made it part of a Valentine's Day promotion.
The poem sits among Sumerian documents such as a court verdict from 2030 B.C. breaking an engagement, a property sale and documentation of a murder. Despite the tablets' ancient lineage, they had gone relatively unnoticed by most museum visitors until the company provided the money to make it the centerpiece of a special exhibit.
"It must be written by a man desperately in love with the rich princess," guessed Choi Na Kyoung, 27, a tourist from Korea, examining the love poem on clay on a recent day. But she was mistaken.
The tablet in fact contains a daring — and risqué — ballad in which a priestess professes her love for a king, though it is believed that the words are in fact a script for a ceremonial re-creation of a fable by the priestess and the king, Su-Sin. The priestess represents Inanna, the Goddess of Love and Fertility, and the king represents Dumuzi, the God of Shepherds, on the eve of their union.
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 03:14 PM
Europe's Free Speech Double Standard
Holocaust denier's trial resumes amid cartoon protests
by David Crossland
Dated: February 10, 2006
SOURCE: The Washington Post
BERLIN -- The trial of an author charged with denying the Holocaust resumed in a German court yesterday, coming at an awkward time for Europeans citing freedom of speech to defend the publication of cartoons that have enraged the Muslim world.
Ernst Zuendel, 66, in jail since he was deported by Canada last year, faces charges of inciting racial hatred and denying that the Nazis killed 6 million Jews. Saying the Holocaust didn't happen is a crime in Germany, Austria, France and several other European countries.
Mr. Zuendel's work includes a book called "Did 6 Million Really Die?" Another Holocaust denier, British historian David Irving, faces trial in an Austrian court beginning Feb. 20. He was arrested during a trip to Austria in November and is in jail in Vienna.
The cases could provoke accusations of double standards by Muslims offended by cartoons of the prophet Muhammad first published last year in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and reprinted in several papers across Europe in defense of free speech.
Publication of the cartoons, one of which showed Muhammad wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a fizzing fuse, has led to often violent protests in which at least 11 persons have been killed.
Muslim clerics and politicians have accused the Western press of hypocrisy in refraining from lampooning Jews while denigrating Islam. Iran's top-selling newspaper this week announced a competition for cartoons about the Holocaust.
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 02:53 PM
February 13, 2006
Bringing Democracy to the Federal Reserve
by Ralph Nader
Dated: February 11, 2006
SOURCE: Counterpunch.org
Federal Reserve Chairmen have long had a habit of dropping pithy little phrases into their speeches—most couched in hazy Fed speak and subject to a multitude of interpretations. But there are times when the money czars are actually delivering a message.
In 1974, Fed Chairman Arthur Burns traveled to Hawaii to warn the American Bankers Association about what he dubbed “competition in laxity”, a poorly disguised complaint about banks switching charters in search of easy regulation. For financial insiders, Burns’ message was clear—“the Federal Reserve should be the dominant regulator.”
Now there is a new man on the Federal Reserve block—Ben Bernanke—and he has been using a word—transparency—freely as he moved into Alan Greenspan’s chair. That’s a word that has been on the “subversive” list at the Federal Reserve since 1913. Members of the Federal Reserve who rushed to their dictionaries for a definition of “transparency” must have felt an artic chill when the words “readily understandable, obvious, without guile” popped up.
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 12:33 AM
A Letter to the American Left
by Bernard-Henri Lévy
Dated: February 8, 2006
Source: The Nation
[I'm not sure what the "Left" means anymore, and I'm no Bolshy, but I thought this letter was right on in pointing out the incredible cowardice and lack of purpose of the Democratic Party, apart from Howard Dean whom I respect. - AAA]
Translated from the original French by Charlotte Mandell.
Nothing made a more lasting impression during my journey through America than the semi-comatose state in which I found the American left.
I know, of course, that the term "left" does not have the same meaning and ramifications here that it does in France.
And I cannot count how many times I was told there has never been an authentic "left" in the United States, in the European sense.
Continue reading "A Letter to the American Left"
Posted by andrewanissi at 12:18 AM
February 12, 2006
A genius is often one step in the direction of schizophrenia
I believe a problem geniuses experience is that every ounce of their soul is attached to their passion in their purpose, and they lack any emotional attachment to consequence, except occasionally in retrospect, but never in advance.
Posted by andrewanissi at 11:59 PM
Anti-Pagan Religious Discrimination in Delaware
Retailer accused of discrimination after canceling courses
by Randall Chase, Associated Press
SOURCE: CentreDaily.com
[What the Christians don't seem to realize is that the central ideals and culture of the United States are based on the United States Constitution, not the Bible. A primary American ideal is the right to self-determination, and our nation was built primarily on that principle, as evidence by our 1776 Declaration. - AAA]
DOVER, Del. - Candle making is OK, but not candle magick. You can study "Communication from Beyond," but not tarot cards. Reflexology is in, but numerology is out - at least in Dover.
The Delaware Human Rights Commission has been asked to settle a dispute between Boscov's and a group of people who claim the Pennsylvania-based department store chain discriminated against them by canceling classes they planned to teach at the company's Dover store.
The commission will meet Monday night in Dover to resume a hearing on the complainants' argument that Boscov's discriminated against them for religious reasons, in violation of the state's equal accommodations law.
The teachers argue Boscov's canceled the "spiritual awareness" classes, which included instruction in tarot cards, numerology, psychic readings and herbs, after a local Baptist preacher complained.
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 04:59 PM
Charge of the Light Brigade
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
1.
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
"Charge for the guns!" he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
2.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Their's not to make reply,
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
3.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.
4.
Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.
5.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
6.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.
Posted by andrewanissi at 02:03 PM
Winter
by Andrew A. Anissi
The real reason I love winter is that it forces humanity to come face to face with Nature and respect its power and beauty. Maybe people do that anyway, but not in Manhattan, where all natural aspects of the island were flattened out and replaced with total artificiality. On a winter weekend in Manhattan, snowy as it is today, only the brave and strong are confident enough to venture outdoors, while the weak and the lacking in spirit huddle together crying for Nature to relent and provide an atmosphere of total comfort so that they can go back to ignoring it.
Posted by andrewanissi at 01:46 PM
Live Not By Lies
by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
As printed in The Washington Post, p. A26
Monday, February 18, 1974
available HERE.
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At one time we dared not even to whisper. Now we write and read samizdat, and sometimes when we gather in the smoking room at the Science Institute we complain frankly to one another: What kind of tricks are they playing on us, and where are they dragging us? gratuitous boasting of cosmic achievements while there is poverty and destruction at home. Propping up remote, uncivilized regimes. Fanning up civil war. And we recklessly fostered Mao Tse-tung at our expense-- and it will be we who are sent to war against him, and will have to go. Is there any way out? And they put on trial anybody they want and they put sane people in asylums--always they, and we are powerless.
Things have almost reached rock bottom. A universal spiritual death has already touched us all, and physical death will soon flare up and consume us both and our children--but as before we still smile in a cowardly way and mumble without tounges tied. But what can we do to stop it? We haven't the strength?
For the full essay, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 01:03 PM
February 11, 2006
Poetry From the American Northeast
Stormbringer
by Ellin Anderson, of Vermont
I. Dusk
Wrapped in a soft sea-haze the wind has peppered
with flies and blown sand,
the white sun forms a pearl.
Then, falling back down
into the late-day sky's
upwelling bed of mackerel cloud,
she nods off, hides her head, as if to say,
“Bye, folks, you’re on your own.”
But when the pumping storm begins to brag
in its revolving monotone,
“I’m going to kick your tires for you,”
I can shoot back, “I’ve seen all this before.”
There’s movement in the water,
there are voices off shore.
Storm-hungry souls
dance to the spreading surf,
huffing a gaze of salt. They look and look.
One has a tripod, a mother and child to snap.
A single shoe floats up, and I think of the man
who met his only maker here last night.
He trotted back and forth, nimbly as we,
then, suddenly,
he found himself sucked out five hundred feet
and fifty fathoms down!
This weather can rewrite a barrier beach
as shadows write the light.
Insect-veils drape the reeds,
while busy swallows pivot in the heat.
Meanwhile, in town,
the market swarms with eager folks
hoarding breadloaves, candles and water.
The gulls fly funny. Someone’s tossed them badly.
They wobble like frisbees over the circling cars,
laze in midair, like gyroscopes on wires,
or sit and freeze,
til someone drops her groceries.
Wandering, I watch while men remove
the parliament of chairs beside the pool.
The air’s sweat-thick.
Tomorrow the yard will be an Escher trick:
patched sky and detritus, the wet wind’s map.
Say your goodnights now,
and hunt out some safe lap —
Any storm means darkness for somebody.
For the full poem, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 01:23 PM
February 10, 2006
Neo-Con War in Iraq Costs Americans $2 Trillion, Says Nation's Experts
Bush's Con Jobs
by Paul Craig Roberts
Dated: January 10, 2006
SOURCE: Counterpunch.org
Will the US Need an IMF Bail Out?
 |
Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University budget expert Linda Bilmes have calculated the cost to Americans of Bush's Iraq war to be between one and two trillion dollars. This figure is 5 to 10 times higher than the $200 billion that Bush's economic adviser, Larry Lindsey, estimated. Lindsey was fired by Bush, because Lindsey's estimate was three times higher than the $70 billion figure that the Bush administration used to mislead Congress and the American voters about the burden of the war. You can't work in the Bush administration unless you are willing to lie for dub-ya.
Americans need to ask themselves if the White House is in competent hands when a $70 billion war becomes a $2 trillion war. Bush sold his war by understating its cost by a factor of 28.57. Any financial officer any where in the world whose project was 2,857 percent over budget would instantly be fired for utter incompetence.
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 08:04 AM
Rapist Disguised As Cop Kidnaps Girl ... Right Outside My Apartment Building! WTF?
Fake Cop Kidnaps Med Student
by Jen Chung
Dated February 8, 2006
SOURCE: The Gothamist
A woman who had just picked up coffee from an East Village Dunkin' Donuts [on 2nd Ave. by 11st Street - AA] was forced into a car by a man posing as a police officer. She managed to escape when police pulled over Richard Padilla's car - he had cut off their car at 119th Street and 2nd Avenue - yelling that he had raped her. Padilla had told the woman he had a gun and kept her captive in his car from 6AM - 8:30AM Monday morning as he drove to a number of spots to sexually assault her. While he was charged with kidnapping, committing a criminal sexual act, sexual abuse and criminal possession of marijuana, Padilla was also wearing a sweater that the letters "NYSP" - New York State Police. The lawyer for Padilla, who was convicted to sexual assault in 1987, said, "He hasn't been arrested for 19 years. He's entitled to some bail." - alas, he was not. [Good. I hope they execute him. - AA]
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 01:08 AM
February 09, 2006
What is on trial in the United States is not just George Bush, but also his God
By Lee Salisbury
Jan 24, 2006
SOURCE: Axis of Logic
A recent Zogby poll found that 52 % of Americans believe President Bush should be impeached if he violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) using warrant-less wiretaps. Of those surveyed in this poll, 25% identified themselves as “very conservative.” A Republican Congress is unlikely to consider an impeachment trial. Nevertheless, a significant number of Americans seriously consider impeachment appropriate. But, what is really on trial?
Let us consider the values of George Bush.
Bush lied to America and to Congress to justify the Iraq war. Colin Powell regretfully admits he was duped into false misrepresentations about Iraq’s WMDs to the UN. Bush’s invasion of Iraq violated international law. The numbers of dead, maimed, and wounded are in the tens of thousands. An estimated $1 trillion will ultimately be poured into Iraq, 80% of whose citizens want America’s military to leave now.
Bush ignored the known deteriorated condition of the New Orleans’ levees long before Katrina struck. Bush cut funding for levee construction, watched New Orleans drown, and then trusted his incompetent crony Brownie (“you’re do’en a heck of a job”) to manage the chaos.
Bush's No Child Left Behind program has overburdened our national educational system and nearly gutted state budgets.
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 07:49 PM
Strong Convictions?
by Andrew A. Anissi
I'm sitting here at Cafe Pick Me Up in the Eastwich (11th St. and Avenue A in Manhattan) trying to read Google News, and I overheard a bit of the conversation of the two girls sitting next to me. They were talking about convictions. The girl in the red sweatshirt told her friend that people with strong convictions scare her. The friend, with her legs crossed, and twirling her hair with one hand, agreed, saying, "Yeah, fuck convictions." The two young ladies went on to elaborate their belief that convictions block discussion, and that it's better not to have convictions and to always leave room for debate.
While their argument is valid, I disagree on the following ground: Strong convictions are the basis of all passion. Without any strong convictions, we might as well be dead. If you're analyzing this paragraph logically, I'll have to throw in the following axiom:
One is only truly living life when one is living it passionately. The rest of the time, one is merely watching one's self going through the motions of life, like a robot.
To disagree with me on valid grounds, you must believe that a life without passion can be worthwhile. I would counter by saying that unpassionate acts are not your own acts, but merely the acts of your physicality. However, I only say that because I'm a dualist.
Monists will put everything in terms of physicality, which typically leads to a certainty of doom, which the monist uses as an excuse for a life of self indulgent hedonism. But if I were a monist, and believed in inevitable doom, I would still insist that passionate action is the only meaningful aspect of life, and is, under monist existence, even more important because the opportunity for such action is so much more limited.
Posted by andrewanissi at 05:48 PM
February 08, 2006
Fossett takes off to break record
by Irene Klotz
Dated: February 8, 2006
SOURCE: The Washington Post
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett took off in an experimental plane on Wednesday on an 80-hour flight that he hopes will set a nonstop distance record.
The GlobalFlyer aircraft, which has a wingspan as wide as an 11-story building is tall, lifted off around 7:20 a.m. after rolling ponderously down a rented runway used by NASA's space shuttles at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Fossett, 61, had initially planned to start the record-breaking attempt on Tuesday but had to delay by a day due to a fuel leak.
Fossett is out to break by 700 miles the 26,366-mile nonstop distance record set in 1986 by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager in a nine-day flight.
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 08:46 AM
February 06, 2006
Perpetuating the Neo-Con Worldview
"Stuff Happens" Rumsfeld Comes to NY
by Katrina Vanden Heuval
Dated: February 6, 2005
SOURCE: The Nation
On February 17th, Secretary of Defense Donald "Stuff Happens" Rumsfeld will visit the Council on Foreign Relations, the citadel of America's foreign-policy establishment. The topic of his talk is one Terry Southern, father of "Dr Strangelove," could have devised: "New Realities in the Media Age." (The meeting starts at 12:15 and the Council is located at 58 East 68th Street in Manhattan.)
Whose "new realities" will Rumsfeld talk about? The realities of a White House in which a key aide told a reporter that this Administration has scorn for the "reality-based community"? ("We're an empire," the aide told the reporter, "and when we act, we create our own reality.")
Maybe Rumsfeld will tell us how the "new reality" foreign policy is devised by a "cabal" in this White House--a "cabal" which, according to Colonel Lawrence Wilkinson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell's top assistant, has hijacked our foreign policy. Or perhaps he'll explain the "new realities" of the worldview held by Vice-President Cheney, Rumsfeld and a handful of top staffers, including the indicted Scooter Libby, which has led us into a disastrous war, set the stage for torture at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, and encouraged the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame?
For the full article, click HERE.
Posted by andrewanissi at 07:55 PM
The End of the Internet?
by Jeff Chester
Dated: February 1, 2006
SOURCE: The Nation
The nation's largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online.
Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are developing strategies that would track and store information on our every move in cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope of which could rival the National Security Agency. According to white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the deepest pockets--corporations, special-interest groups and major advertisers--would get preferred treatment. Content from these providers would have first priority on our computer and television screens, while information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out.
Under the plans they are considering, all of us--from content providers to individual users--would pay more to surf online, stream videos or even send e-mail. Industry planners are mulling new subscription plans that would further limit the online experience, establishing "platinum," "gold" and "silver" levels of Internet access that would set limits on the number of downloads, media streams or even e-mail messages that could be sent or received.
For the full article, click HERE.
Posted by andrewanissi at 07:49 PM
February 03, 2006
France to Legalize P2P
Inquiry set for French file-sharing plan
Published: February 3, 2006
SOURCE: C-Net News
The French government is moving ahead with plans for a controversial law that would legalize file-sharing of music and films, a move that could undo years of antipiracy work by the entertainment industry.
France's Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres is set to be questioned about the draft on Wednesday by the parliamentary commission for cultural affairs and the commission for economic affairs.
The project has worried the music, film and television industries because it would make France the first country to allow unlimited peer-to-peer downloading for a flat fee of several euros a month.
For the full article, click HERE.
Posted by andrewanissi at 08:26 PM
One Party
How can one party, the Republican Party, encompass libertarians AND nationalists AND neo-cons. The interests of these factions are each so different and contary to one another, yet somehow the Republican Party is held together. What could possibly connect these people? Is it simply the fact they're united in their disgust of the Democrats' cowardice and inability to take a stance on anything? That's probably part of it. What the Republicans' laughable claim to moral superiority (e.g. Bush's insistence that we must NOT allow genetic testing with human cells, and that abortion MUST be stopped). That's the other part. But how can people not see through such a scheme? I believe people ARE starting to see through it, and that the Republican Party will be fractured. But likely, the Democrats will return to power and people will be so disgusted that they reunite the fractured Republican Party into one strong group that will be again re-elected. It's the same story again and again.
Posted by andrewanissi at 01:45 PM
February 02, 2006
Knowledge of Good and Evil
What separates man from animal is our knowledge of Good and Evil, where Good is what godly and divine, and Evil is base and filthy. Good is the behavior that makes us progress to godhood, and Evil is the behavior that makes us more wretched. The New Testament is interesting in demonstrating an example of a man (Jesus Christ) becoming indistinguishable from a god, and provides an example of man living according to his knowledge of Good and Evil to choose Good over Evil. I don't beleive this is the only method or form of Goodness, but the example can inspire people to Goodness. The Old Testament, on the other hand, tells mankind to ignore his own knowledge of Good and Evil and to instead follow a set of rules and orders obediently. Following the rules because they're rules can only serve to eliminate man's knowledge of Good and Evil, and thus that sort of blind obediene is itself Evil.
Posted by andrewanissi at 04:59 PM
NYU Law School Grad Fired Over Copyright Beliefs
By Jake Dobkin
February 1, 2006
SOURCE: The Gothamist
Oh, to be young and naive! The president of the Free Culture chapter at NYU got fired from her clerk job at a Manhattan intellectual property law firm. Her crime? Holding beliefs that were incompatible with the work of the firm: namely, that draconian copyright protection is bad for consumers, bad for the economy, and bad in general. Read Inga's whole story at the NYU Free Culture blog:
First, my taking a job in an IP firm was neither a subversive attempt to wreak havoc “from the inside”, nor a hypocritical denial of my Free Culture values. I was, and still am, a student interested in the scope of copyright law, and determined to pursue a career in the field. I wanted to gain an understanding both of the theory of copyright, which my work with FC provided, and its practice. The firm exposed me to the day to day operations of an IP lawyer, and I was nothing if not receptive to these lessons. I was baffled that someone saw fit to fire me over an expression of dissenting views. Doesn’t the field become richer when the wider spectrum of legal thought is explored and encouraged? Certainly, it is wrong to eject someone from their field of interest simply for exercising her first amendment rights and speaking out against the current.
For the full article, click HERE.
Posted by andrewanissi at 02:37 PM
February 01, 2006
President panders to anti-manimal lobby! Dr Moreau flees country in rage!
January 31, 2006
Source: Pharyngula
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"Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research, human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments, creating human-animal hybrids, and buying, selling or patenting human embryos."
It's pure political calculus. He throws away the mad scientist and pig-man vote, and wins the religious ignoramus vote…and we know which one has the majority here.
For the full article, click HERE.
Posted by andrewanissi at 06:42 PM