Nikki Sudden 1956-2006

Vocalist from the Swell Maps, one of the coolest bands ever, and numerous other cool bands and projects. An archive of one of Sudden's last performances, recorded live a week before his death at WFMU, is available here on Real Audio and here on 128k MP3.

Man what a bummer, Nikki Sudden was great. The Swell Maps were a big influence on many of us.
C7

Half a million in L.A.

You're looking at half a million people in L.A. yesterday 3/5/06 speaking out against immigration and border policy. Half a million. Mirrored by similar events all over the nation.

A huge huge voting block, hispanic people.

This is how it looks when we speak out against the Bush administration.

This is Phoenix Friday 3/24, as thousands protested against Republican senator John Kyl's attempts at border policy. There was a protest in Tucson too, and protests across the nation too, according to this story in the Arizona Daily Star.

What's interesting to me is the massive opposition to Republicans and republican policy in general right now, which this photo demonstrates (pun acknowledged).

I've always hated Kyl, he's been around since the Reagan/Bush the 1st days. Kyl was immediately identified as the kind of Republican that doesn't acknowledge constituents that are not right wing fundamentalist morons. For example, when I argued against cutting overtime pay, since this move pretty much makes slaves out of us- and treating people like slaves should never be tolerated- Kyl's office sent a letter back that was loaded with the most moronic business-speak drivel I've ever seen. Kyl doesn't really serve the rest of us or represent us in Washington- although he supposed to. Kyl serves people like Dick Cheney and represents the kind of idiotic policy that is ruining our country.

Another thing interesting about this story and photo is the contrast with another story published in the Star Friday morning. The headline?

Cheney: Keep Kyl in Senate
Vice president's visit raises $500,000 for re-election bid and Arizona GOP

Great.

Cheney's motorcade came right up the main boulevard in my neighborhood. Riding home from work Thursday there were police positioned up and and down the street- I wondered what that was all about. I figured it was a VIP since they looked so bored.
Anyway the story was basically the Star pissing all over itself giving a pep talk about old Dick. A strong contrast to the massive public opposition to the Bush administration.

To quote Cheney:

"As democracy advances, ideologies that stir anger and hostility lose their appeal," he said.

Exposing Diebold and election fraud

An office temp and out of work actor in the L.A. area exposed Diebold's role in allowing the use of uncertified and defective voting machines in California 2 years ago. Now two years after the fact he's being charged with theft of data, burglary and receiving stolen property.

Because of Stephen Heller's actions in exposing Diebold, California sued Diebold for 2.6 million dollars and temporarily banned Diebold's machines from use in the state. Diebold has been linked to slimey doings wherever it does business in electronic voting machines. Time and time again Diebold's name comes up in connection with innacuracies in vote tallys. Now Diebold is jumping up and down with glee as a whistleblower is prosecuted.

Articles in the Merc are here and in the L.A. Timesand here.

Blog post here in the Obfuscation Report includes a link to a site where contributions to Heller's legal defense fund can be made.

private companies and domestic spying

In my disturbing vision of the future, private security firms would snoop on U.S. citizens and get paid millions and millions in tax money for doing it. The U.S. military would enforce civilian laws. Private security companies and the military would join together in collaboration, the security companies doing the dirty work, hiding behind hard to trace corporate accountability, and the military would do the brute force stuff, coordinate the data collected, and keep everything secret crying National Security all the way.

But the future is here according to this story from Knight Ridder. The story was picked up by papers all over the country today and yesterday.

I somehow missed out on the story's background, which includes a Republican congressman in California getting 8 years in prison for involvement in a bribery scandal, a shadowy private contractor, MZM Inc, the briber, which was also hired by the Whitehouse and the Pentagon for "intellegence services," and yet another secret branch of the U.S. military, "CIFA," AKA the Pentagon's Joint Counter-Intelligence Field Activity. And this is wrapped up with high tech surveilance and spying on peaceful anit-war protesters. The whole shebang was intended to help prevent attacks from foreign adversaries- but was of course used to spy on U.S. citizens. Oh yes and the owner of the private security contractor, a Mitchell Wade, may get upto 20 years in prison for bribing the CA congressman, Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Oh yes, and our pal Bush in Washington has been doing business with this scum all along paying our tax money for unkown "intellegence services."

BushCo and Consequences and Mark Danner

When there are never any consequences, the scandals cease to exist

From the intro to this Salon.com article by Tom Englehardt about journalist Mark Danner, entitled When Facts Fail.

Taking-the-wind-out-of-your-sails primo argument: No consequences.

Other quote, by the author of the article:

If you can torture, you can do anything.

Other quote credited to a senior administration official and originally reported by Ron Suskind:

"We're an empire now and when we act we create our own reality."

Heads up- Salon.com will want a registration to read the whole article- I was able to read 2 out of 4 pages before getting bumped.