Sunday, March 28, 2004

READY FOR A HISTORY LESSON?

It’s short and there won’t be a test. (LEB OK?)

In the NY Times, David Kahn gives a fast historical perspective of how Bush and his WMD fantasy, while still mendacious and asinine, are hardly new in the chronicles of lost wars...

In 1941, Stalin disregarded reports that Hitler was about to attack Russia; millions of unnecessary deaths followed. In 1944, a Luftwaffe intelligence officer laid a photomosaic before Hitler showing that the Soviet Union had assembled the greatest artillery concentration of all time. Hitler swept it furiously from the desk. In 1973, Israeli intelligence believed that Egypt, having lost the 1967 war and having expelled Soviet advisers, would not attack. But on Yom Kippur it did. And during Vietnam intelligence reports that the conflict was unwinnable were rejected by President Richard M. Nixon. All these refusals to face facts cost gold and blood. Two centuries ago, Carl von Clausewitz concluded that "most intelligence is false." A century later, the chief of the German general staff, Alfred von Schlieffen, added a psychological explanation for this: “The higher commander generally makes himself a picture of friend and foe, in the painting of which personal wishes provide the main elements. If incoming reports appear to correspond with this picture, they are laid by with satisfaction. If they contradict it, they are discarded as entirely false.”

PLAYING CATCH UP

After Doc’s recent battle with the corporate Borg (TTC, OK?) there is much catching up to do. Where, you ask, are kaymo’s revelations on elk milk? Well, dearly beloved, that’s being edited, so just remember the old Lou Reed line – “First thing you learn is that you’ve always got to wait.” Of course Lou was talking about copping heroin, and all we have here is a weblog but the same applies.

Meanwhile, kaymo does suggest that if you have any complaints, the thing to do is to email the President. (LEB OK?) That’s what he’s there for. Here’s the addresses...
president.@whitehouse.gov

...or if you think Dick Cheney might be of more help.
gov vice.president@whitehouse.gov

and – with the note that Chernobyl is the Ukranian word for wormwood, the active ingredient of absinthe – kaymo also provides us with a link to kiddofspeed’s site that tells the true adventures of a very strange young woman who rides her high performance motorcycle around the ghost town left by the former-Soviet nuclear meltdown and takes photographs. (And if that ain’t sci-fi made flesh...)
http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/

THE SQUARE ON THE LEFT

The Third Page literary site has just been updated and if you follow the link and click the square on the left, you’ll find a newly published Mick Farren poem. http://emptymirrorbooks.com/thirdpage/indexstars.html

SUBLIMINAL CADRES LACKING ONLY SECRET DECODER RINGS

LEB = League of Extraordinary Bushwhackers (or Let’s Evict Bush)
TCC = Thwart The Corp

This are essentially half-formed concepts in cyber-anarcho punk agitprop. What we need is a manufacturer of secret decoder rings as a sponsor. (The revolution will not have sponsorship? Discuss?)

DEBATE

Since I wrote a piece in LA CityBeat (who still haven’t put their lame website to rights, dadnab it) trashing R. Nader as an egomaniac, I’ve been getting all this email from folks like Jay Babcock of Arthur mag telling me that I’m being essentially Stalinist in my unilateral insistence that backing Kerry is the only way to evict Bush from 1600 Penn. I stand by it. Chimp begone and then work it out. On the other hand, if Kerry wins and doesn’t halt the war on drugs tout fucking suit, there will be trouble, as in...

QUOTE OF THE DAY -- Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. – John Fitzgerald Kennedy

CRYPTIQUE Netscape, schnetscape...

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