I've finally achieved consistency in my life. Any person of average or above intelligence can predict what I will say next with unerring accuracy. And what I say will always be wrong.

Saturday, March 19, 2005

Right on, dude!

This guy is so far ahead of me... I'm trying to grow up too, but it's
hard leaving behind all that stupid hippy shit the enemies of america
pumped into my weak brain...

www.counterpunch.org
Weekend Edition
March 19 / 20, 2005
Nature Isn't Real
Good Material for Material Goods

By BEN TRIPP

Sometimes, when I think about what's going on with the natural world,
I get a little sad. But after the tears have dried and the Rohypnol
does its thing, I remember that God loves me. So everything will be
okay. I'm just too attached to material goods, and that, brothers and
sisters, is not the way to get into heaven, as our savior and
all-around #1 guy Jesus Christ pointed out on numerous occasions.
Probably he said it even more times than the disciples actually wrote
down. I've been working on this hang-up, though. I stopped being
attached to fancy cars and big houses and those stainless steel
barbecues the size of U-boat quarterdecks. But try as I might, I just
can't give up those wide open spaces.

I think it started during the Ford administration, when I was a
schoolboy. Back then we were utterly indoctrinated into materialism.
It was all about the Grand Canyon, the vast reaches of the Arctic
tundra, mighty rivers running through primordial forests of fir and
fern. America was like some gigantic beer commercial, and it all
belonged to us. "This land is your land, this land is my land/ From
Cauliflower, to the Newark Highlands", we would sing. This goes to
show public education was already beyond repair in 1976. We were
warned not to litter on OUR LAND, partly because it would make the
Indian cry, but mostly because it was OUR LAND. Don't throw litter out
the windows of your Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser that gets 8 miles per
gallon, because littering is bad for OUR LAND. So I got the feeling
that I owned America, in a general kind of way, even if I didn't have
the keys. This is a ridiculous attitude, and set me up for
disappointment later on.

Let us look at an example of how my delusional thinking led me abaft:
trees. As the years went by, more and more old-growth redwood trees
were cut down to make patio decks for Sunset Magazine articles. Entire
forests of lesser trees disappeared, as well, probably to build
subdivisions on reclaimed wetlands. I took it personally, because I
thought those were my trees, at least the ones on public land. The
government was selling my trees to lumber companies, and I wasn't
getting a dime of the proceeds. Later on I found out it's crazy to
just have trees standing there doing nothing, when with a little
judicious felling they could create JOBS. And that's what has been
getting me all mixed up.

Jobs, like the economy, or net worth, or God, are real things. You can
measure them. They occupy mass. Things like trees, rivers, and coal
underneath mountains are nothing more than commodities. 'Commodities'
is just a word. It's a mere idea. 'Tree' is just a word. Trees are
mere ideas. If you go around believing that things are 'real', just
because there's a word for them, the next thing you know you're
marching for 'peace'. Can 'peace' blow up a village full of Southeast
Asians? Of course not. So it isn't real. War, on the other hand, is
real. Ask anybody that lives in a country with land mines. So I began
the long, painful process of disengaging myself from the illusory
notion that one can 'own' anything, when after all we're just an
agglomeration of electrons whizzing around in the shape of a human,
and electrons can't own anything.

I'm making progress. Just the other day it was announced that we would
be drilling for oil in some Arctic wildlife refuge. Time was, this
would have bothered me. "Hey, that's MY wildlife refuge, " I would
have said, not realizing what a child I was being (I was probably a
child at the time). Sure it's my wildlife refuge. It's all of our
wildlife refuge, and it's just taking up space. When we're dead, it
will make any difference to us personally if we drilled it or even
hammered a few nails into it? You can't take it with you, people! Your
grandchildren will never even miss the thing. Give up this crazy
materialism and get with Jesus. Either way, it will all soon end when
the Book of Revelations comes true and the world is destroyed, so we
might as well gas up while we can. Did God go easy on the dinosaurs,
just because they were environmentally correct? Let's face it, people:
if we can't really own it, we might as well use it. When the End Times
come, you'll find me praying on my bitchen new gas-powered redwood
deck.

Ben Tripp can be reached at credel@earthlink.net.

His book, 'Square In The Nuts', has been held up at the printers by
thugs but will be released as soon as hostage negotiations conclude.

See also www.cafeshops.com/tarantulabros.

Your program

I haven't been a tv watcher for 31 years. Oh, sure, like 2nd hand
smoke, it's unavoidable, especially at my parent's place, where I'm
currently vacationing.

Tonight I saw you people take a nice looking young lady and turn her
into something that resembled one of those packages of liver under
shrink wrap you see in the meat section of a supermarket. She seemed
happy with the change, but I think her real problem was her
unsupportive family and friends who undermined her self-esteme and
made her feel like she was worthless.

However, I am not writing to you to give you the criticism you so
richly deserve. I'm writing to offer myself up for an extreme
makeover. I'm happy with the way that I look. I am old, fat, bald,
bearded, fat and nearsighted, and I am at peace with that.

However, I need to get myself back into some sort of reasonable
physical shape. I have an open challenge to Toby Keith to meet me in
physical combat. I realize that violence doesn't solve anything. Only
morons like Toby Keith believe something that stupid. However, I just
think it's important that I show the world what a phony and pussy he
really is.

I don't think that he'll give me a lot of trouble. The big dirtbag is
afraid of his own bald head! This is a pretty common condition with
people in country music - the same can be said about Kenny Chesney,
TIm McGraw, Alan Jackson, half of Brooks and Dunn, etc. But my
argument with them is aesthetic, not political. Jackson at least is
open and honest that his politics are pre-stone age - he says "hey,
I'm a dumbshit and I'm proud of it! Iran? I Iraq? What's the
difference? I don't know! I don't care! coo coo! coo coo!"

Still, despite nothing but a big bloated bag of hot air, Keith does
have a size and a reach advantage. If you guys could work with me to
get me some physical training, a little martial arts skills, etc, Toby
and me could put on a real good show for the poor dumb assholes that
watch reality tv and have no lives.

My folks can be forgiven - my dad is over 90, my mom is over 80. but
people my age watch your show. Shame, shame, shame. It would inspire
your viewers for them to see one of your contestants do something
useful - like kicking Toby Keith's ass, instead of getting some kind
of pansy new haircut. Give them a chance. Give me a chance. Let me
give Toby Keith a boot in the ass. It's the American way!

SIncerely,

Matt Love

Friday, March 18, 2005

Re: [Canadianclassicrocksuckers] Digest Number 335

that's right, be a friend to somebody in the military. Tell them to QUIT!!!!!!!

On 15 Mar 2005 00:42:10 -0000,
Canadianclassicrocksuckers@yahoogroups.com
wrote:
>
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> http://us.click.yahoo.com/pKxVKC/UOnJAA/n1hLAA/9cLolB/TM
> --------------------------------------------------------------------~->
>
> There is 1 message in this issue.
>
> Topics in this digest:
>
> 1. Hi,are there any military lovers, admirers, and military person here?
> From: "avecbetter3000"
>
> ________________________________________________________________________
> ________________________________________________________________________
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 10:42:40 -0000
> From: "avecbetter3000"
> Subject: Hi,are there any military lovers, admirers, and military person here?
>
> This is the dedicated site for making friends, pen pals, and lovers
> in military.
>
> Very specialized, you can meet tons of members there.
>
> What you need to do is write a free profile and then waiting for
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>
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>

What Wrong With People?

I first heard about Northern State - 3 white female rappers, when Anne
got her Oberlin Alumni magazine in the mail a couple of years ago.
One of these young hags is an Obie, wan though she is.

I couldn't believe that these smart people I looked up to could
somehow think that mentioning Chekov in a rhyme that goes like this...

The country's getting ugly and there's more in store
But don't blame me 'cause I voted for Gore
Keep choice legal
And your wardrobe regal
Chekov wrote "The Seagull"
Snoopy is a beagle

... is the same as being literate. but they raved on and on, and the
world has joined them:

The ladies of Northern State fight for their right to party like three
Beastie Girls with liberal arts degrees from good schools and the
smarts to keep it real...
writing sharp-tongued lyrics ...
intellectual messages with pop-culture commentary...
smashingly brilliant...
hilariously deft rhyming skills...

Sprout (one of the three vapid rappers) shows herself to be at least
as smart as a bean or alphapha seed that's been soaked overnight -
says this about her influences: "Joni Mitchell, Ani DiFranco, female
musicians who have done important and very powerful things with
words—something that we do."

Uh huh. She knows what they are doing, that's for sure.

Here's some important and powerful things from Northern State:

I'm free balling,

yeah, I'm free falling,

my cellie blowin' up from the numbers that I'm calling,

go from 9 to 5, then from 5 to 9

I got DJ Sprout on the line

In my other ear I got Hesta Pyrnn and you know that little girl be
wheelin' and dealin'

Prynn up all night tryin to work the plane, me and Sprout stuck again
in a traffic jam

We do it how we do it and we don't need permission, we like it how we rock it

Intuition in our pocket, so please and thank you and don't apgolize

I'm saying what I'm saying looking you right in the eyes, you're dying
in stereo.

There's nothing to left to sy and everything I knew, I knew yesterday,
what's a girl like me supposed to do? get on the mic you know you want
to

what's a girl like me supposed to sy? I'm on the mic cause I like it that way.

It's like you're dying in stereo, can't believe my ears, every single
night, I cast you out, you're serving me capers and you're serving me
papers, and I'm feeling kinda high off of your poisonous vapors, you
can't trash what you don't understand. You can make requests buy you
can't make demands. I'm proud of what I'm doing so don't criticize me.

I knew you all along and you didn' t ever surprise me. I cast you out
and then I cast you in, put that on your tables and spin, in your
mouth or in your hand, the name is not Eminem. The name is Hesta
Prynn, I'm timeless. I write while I rhyme this, turn down the sound
and I'll mime this.

Edmund Hillary couldn't climb this, parsley sage rosemary and thyme
this, step off, your flow is weak, save that talk for Dawson's Creek,
and if you wanna know why I shriek like a banshee? I'm seven eighths
white, one eighth Comanche. What's a girl like me supposed to do? One
step and then another and we're going with the flow, tomorrow and
tomorrow and tomorrow, we learn from the rhythm. We take what we're
given, we do whow we do and that's how we're living. It's like you're
dying in stereo, can't believe my ears, every single night, I cast you
out, my book is full of business and short on rhymes, I'm afraid to
even look at the New York Times, gonna wash my hands off the whole
affair, open the window and breathe the fresh air. I'm tired in a way
that I can't explain, can't remember the last time I felt the rain, I
write in the dark because I don't need to see, I'm not following the
moon - you know it's following me, keep my lips together and my teetha
part, be your substitute teacher write my rhymes on a chart, we're
ready every single night to take the stage and play. I don't have a
job but I work all day. Northern State put the cart before the horse,
we be who we are and show no remorse. What's a girl like me supposed
to do? It's like you're dying in stereo..

Thursday, March 17, 2005

more evidence

Today was my half-brother's 62nd birthday. My wife and I went and got
the cake my mother ordered for him. As we were checking out, my wife
looked at the receipt. She noticed that it say "Happy Birthy, Cary."

"I hope that they didn't put that on the cake," she joked.

So I looked, and sure enough, on the cake it said "Happy Birthy, Cary."

There was no time to take it back. So we just paid for it and as we
drove back, we marveled that somebody could see that and not say to
themselves "this can't be right, I better ask for clarification."

No, they just wrote it just as it was written.

Proof that people are half as smart every 18 months.

However, tragically, nobody here (not my half-brother, or his wife or
2 kids or their spouces or their children, or my brother and his kid)
noticed. We tipped my folks off, but the four of us kept our mouths
shut, and nobody else noticed at all.

even my own family, a fraction as intelligent as they used to be.

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Robert Blake's Relatives In The News

I'm visiting my folks, and been enduring a lot of toxic TV. I saw one
interesting program about that asshole in Arizona, the self proclaimed
toughest lawman in America, totally entrapped some poor young schmuck
in order to more of the publicity that he craves – you've probably
heard of him – Sheriff Joe Blake. It's interesting how consistent it
is – that the people that are the most gung ho about law and order
have the least respect for it. The sheriff of Thurston County ( where
I lived up until a few months ago), Sheriff Gary Blake, shot a fleeing
suspect in the back, killing him – while he was taking a county
commissioner, a woman he was having an affair with, out with him in
his squad car, showing her how sheriff's work is done – at 2:00 am.
Everybody knew it, but they keep electing the guy, just like his
cousin Joe Blake in Arizona. I've never understood the lust common
people have for a total disregard for the American way on the part of
elected officials.

It's interesting too how much the American people love pretenders.
Blake's acting cousin, Sylvester Blake, made movies about a Vietnam
Vet, Ramberetto, but he spent the Vietnam war teaching phys ed in a
girls school, in one of the French speaking countries as I recall. I
recall a discussion I had over at the anti-bizarro-ultrazine list
where people insisted that John Blake (another actor cousin, who won
an academy award for playing another sheriff, Rooster Cogramberetto)
was a great American hero, despite the fact that he ducked out of
World War 2 (as did Ronald Blake, who showed amazing acts of courage
like calling the state police out on some hippy protesters – an act no
doubt applauded by people who regard hippies, not state violence, as
the 60s gravest threat to democracy). I pointed out that unlike the
Blake cousins, Jimmy Steward actually went to war and faced danger.
They missed the chance to hail him as a great conservative, and
instead used the opportunity to say that the path was made easy for
him as a reservist. Something that could you exiled into social and
political cyberia if you said it about current draft dodging president
George W Blake.

In fact, out of all the presidential candidates of the last four
decades, the one served the most valorously was tarred with the brush
of being a wimp (sound familiar?) I'm referring, of course, to George
McGovern. He was trampled by Richard M Blake, who spent his service
years working on his poker game. By tarring McGovern with the brush of
wimpiness, dirty tricks, and appeals to law and order, the lawless
Richard M Blake won handily, because the American people cannot get
enough of lawlessness wrapped in a flag.

One of the anti-bizarro-ultraziners also, astonishingly, paraphrased
current vice president Dick Blake's comments about "having better
things to do" than serve in the military – send the dupes and suckers,
and let them live in a box on the street after you get what you want
from them. Send Potis Blake over with a plastic turkey and a camera
crew, and the rubes will eat it up, and wrap themselves in the same
flag he soils.

Even if there are only three of us here, thank Courtney Love that we
have more highly evolved skepticism systems than those star belly
Blakes over there on the other side.

Jeez

I'm still at my folk's place. My nephew is sort of like Tarzan...
except instead of raised by great apes, he was raised by various
electronic appliances. He kept communing with mother TV, 24/7, on a
station that was broadcasting Jim Carrey movies, one after another,
around the clock. saw Ace Ventura call of the wild yesterday? No
problem, watch it again today.

I have to say, after all that exposure, I'm certain that Carrey is one
of the least funny people on the planet. The movies - The Mask -
twice - Ace Ventura and the sequel - twice - Dumb and Dumber - twice -
are grotesque insults not only to the intelligence, but the qualities
that make us human, in general. Really appalling crap.

Interestingly, when they said the Truman Show was coming up, my
sister-in-law said "I hated that movie." When my wife asked mildly,
"why?" she back-peddled immediately. "Oh, I guess as a movie it
wasn't bad... it was alright. But it was affecting."

Ah. There's the problem. It makes you feel. It reminds you that you
are human, not just a bag of sugar and alchohol sucking protoplasm. I
can kind of halfways relate to that - I like movies that let me
escape. I don't want a heavy message dumped on my head in a movie, the
world is a tough enough place as it is. But for gods sake, don't dump
a bag of shit on my head and call it april showers, as is the case
with most of Carrey's movies.

The Spotless Mind was good too. but the asshole wasn't trying to be
funny in that one, either.

Monday, March 14, 2005

The CIA's Campus Spies

This article is from the www.counterpunch.org webpage. Dr David Price
is an old friend of mine. I have tremendous respect for his
scholarship. He's doing bang up work in anthropology and in the study
of the compromise of academia through covert government action (I
don't know what the name of that particular academic discipline would
be).

The history of the the U of W in this regard is interesting and
shameful (see his book "Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism and the
FBI's Surveillance of Activist Anthropologists" available at the U
bookstore.

It might be interesting to use our information seeking expertise to
try to learn how (and if) the U is involved in the latest wave of this
insidious practice.

Weekend Edition
March 12 / 13, 2005
*** A CounterPunch Special Investigation ***
Exposing the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program
The CIA's Campus Spies
By DAVID H. PRICE
The secrecy surrounding the current use of university classrooms as
covert training grounds for the CIA and other agencies now threatens
the fundamental principles of academic openness as well as the
integrity of a wide array of academic disciplines. A new test program
that is secretly placing CIA agents in American university classrooms
for now operates without detection or protest,. With time these
students who cannot admit to their true intentions will inevitably
pollute and discredit the universities in which they are now enrolled.
There have long been tensions between the needs of academia and the
needs of the National Security State, and even before the events of
9/11 expanded the powers of American intelligence agencies, our
universities were quietly being modified to serve the needs of the
intelligence community in new and covert ways. The most visible of
these reforms was the establishment of the National Security Education
Program (NSEP) which siphoned-off students from traditional foreign
language funding programs such as Fulbright or Title VI. While
traditional funding sources provide students with small stipends of a
few thousand dollars to study foreign languages in American
universities, the NSEP gives graduate students a wealth of funds (at
times exceeding $40,000 a year) to study "in demand" languages, but
with troubling pay-back stipulations mandating that recipients later
work for unspecified U.S. national security agencies. Upon its debut
in the early 1990s, the NSEP was harshly criticized for reaching
through an assumed barrier between the desires of academia and state.
Numerous academic organizations, including, the Middle East Studies
Association and the African Studies Association, Latin American
Studies Association, and even the mainstream Boards of the Social
Science Research Council and American Council of Learned Societies
expressed deep concerns over scholars' participation in the NSEP. And
though the NSEP continues funding students despite these protests,
there was some solace in knowing so many diverse academic
organizations condemned this program.
But while many academics reacted with anger and protest to the NSEP's
entrance onto American campuses, there has been no public reaction to
an even more troubling post-9/11 funding program which upgrades the
existing American intelligence-university-interface. With little
notice Congress approved section 318 of the 2004 Intelligence
Authorization Act which appropriated four million dollars to fund a
pilot program known as the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program
(PRISP). Named after Senator Pat Roberts (R. Kansas, Chair, Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence), PRISP was designed to train
intelligence operatives and analysts in American university classrooms
for careers in the CIA and other agencies. PRISP now operates on an
undisclosed number of American college and university campuses, and if
the pilot phase of the program proves to be a useful means of
recruiting and training members of the intelligence community then the
program will expand to more campuses across the country.
Currently, PRISP participants must be American citizens who are
enrolled fulltime in graduate degree programs with a minimum GPA of
3.4, they need to "complete at least one summer internship at CIA or
other agencies," and they must pass the same background investigations
as other CIA employees. PRISP students receive financial stipends
ranging up to $25,000 per year and they are required to participate in
closed meetings with other PRISP scholars and individuals from their
administering intelligence agency.
Less than 150 students a year are now authorized to receive funding
during the pilot phase as PRISP evaluates the program's initial
outcomes. Beyond a few articles in a Kansas newspaper praising Senator
Roberts, as well as University of Kansas anthropologist Felix Moos'
role in lobbying for the PRISP, there has been a general media silence
regarding the program. The few guarded public statements issued
describing PRISP stress supposed similarities between existing ROTC
programs and the PRISP. For example, the Lawrence Journal World
(11/29/03) published claims that, "Those in the program would be part
of the ROTC program specializing in learning how to analyze a variety
of conditions and activities based on a thorough understanding and
deep knowledge of particular areas of the world." Beyond the similar
requirements that participants of both programs commit to years of
service to their sponsoring military or intelligence branches there
are few similarities between ROTC and PRISP. ROTC programs mostly
operate in the open, as student-ROTC members register for ROTC courses
and are proudly and visibly identified as members of the ROTC program,
while PRISP students are instructed to keep their PRISP-affiliations
hidden from others on campus.
PRISP is an open secret, and the CIA apparently prefers that it stay
more secret than open-as the CIA's website does not maintain an active
link with detailed information on PRISP. Currently PRISP limits its
advertising to intelligence recruiting web sights (such as
www.intelligencecareers.com or the National Ground Intelligence
Center) and to small, controlled recruiting sessions. PRISP recruits
scholars with "advanced area expertise in China, Middle East, Korea,
Central Asia, the Caucasus," with a special emphasis given to scholars
with previous linguistic expertise in "Chinese, Arabic, Persian, Urdu,
Pashtun, Dari, Korean, or a Central Asian or Caucasian language such
as Georgian, Turkmen, Tajik, or Uzbek." PRISP also funds Islamic
studies scholars and scientists with expertise in bioterrorism,
counterterrorism, chemistry, physics, computer science and
engineering.
Inquiries made to Senator Roberts' staff concerning the current size
and scope of PRISP yielded little useful information and Roberts'
staff referred me to Mr. Tommy Glakas at the CIA. Mr. Glakas was
reluctant to discuss many specific details of PRISP, but he did
confirm that PRISP now funds about 100 students who are studying at an
undisclosed number of American universities. When asked if PRISP was
up and running on college campuses Glakas first answered that it was,
then said it wasn't, then clarified that PRISP wasn't the sort of
program that was tied to university campuses-it was decentralized and
tied to students, not campuses. When pressed further on what this
meant Mr. Glakas gave no further information. He said that he had no
way of knowing exactly how many universities currently have students
participating in PRISP, claiming he could not know this because PRISP
is administered not just by the CIA, but also through a variety of
individual intelligence agencies like the NSA, MID, or Naval
Intelligence. He stressed that PRISP was a decentralized scholarship
program which funds students through a various intelligence agencies.
Mr. Glakas said he didn't know who might know how many campuses had
PRISP scholars and he would not identify which campuses are hosting
these covert PRISP scholars.
The Intelligence Scholars Program did not spring forth out of a
vacuum. Like the Patriot Act, the germs of PRISP were conceived years
ago and were waiting for the right rendez-vous of fear with
opportunity to be born. PRISP is largely the brainchild of University
of Kansas anthropologist Felix Moos-a longtime advocate of
anthropological contacts with military and intelligence agencies.
During the Vietnam War Moos worked in Laos and Thailand on World
Bank-financed projects and over the years he has worked in various
military advisory positions. He worked on the Pentagon's ARPA Project
Themis, and has been as an instructor at the Naval War College and at
the U.S. Staff and Command College at Fort Leavenworth. For years Moos
has taught courses on "Violence and Terrorism" at the University of
Kansas. In the months after the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center
and Pentagon Moos elicited the support of his friend, former CIA DCI,
Stansfield Turner to curry support in the senate and CIA to fund his
vision of a merger between anthropology, academia, intelligence
analysis and espionage training.
Professor Moos initially proposed that all PRISP students be required
to master two foreign languages and use anthropology and history
classes to learn the culture history of the regions they are studying.
Moos's vision for PRISP was more comprehensive than the current pilot
program and it included classes on topics such as bioterrorism and
counterterrorism. Moos proposed having an active CIA campus presence
where PRISP students would begin training as freshmen and, "by the
time they would be commissioned, they would be ready to go to the
branch intelligence units of their choice." If the pilot phase of
PRISP goes well, this may be the direction in which this program
develops-though it is doubtful that PRISP would expand in any way
which openly identified participants.
It is tempting to describe Moos as an anachronistic anthropologist out
of sync with his discipline's mainstream, but while many
anthropologists express concerns about disciplinary ties to military
and intelligence organizations, contemporary anthropology has no core
with which to either sync or collide and there are others in the field
who openly (and quietly) support such developments. Moos is a bright
man, but his writings echo the musty tone and sentiments found in the
limited bedside readings of Tom-Clancy-literate-colonials, as he
prefers to quote from the wisdom of Sun Tzu and Samuel Huntington over
anthropologists like Franz Boas or Laura Nader. Two years ago at an
interesting and confrontational panel examining anthropological
connections to intelligence agencies at the annual American
Anthropological Association (AAA) meetings, I watched an angry Moos
strike an action pose and rhetorically ask, "Have anthropologists
learned so little since 9/11/2001, as to not recognize the truth-and
practicability, in Sun Tzu's reminder that: 'unless someone is subtle
and perspicacious, he cannot perceive the substance in intelligence
reports. It is subtle, subtle." From the dais I could see not so
subtle anthropologists in the audience employed by Rand and the
Pentagon nodding their heads as if his words had hit a secret chord.
Moos was clearly onto something.
Felix Moos' notion of scholar-spies in part draws upon an imagined
romantic history of anthropologists' contributions to the Second World
War, which, while this is a widespread notion, it is one increasingly
undermined by FOIA and archival-based historical research of the
complexities (both ethical and practical) of anthropologists plying
their trade in even this "good" war. Back in 1995 Moos testified
before a commission modifying the AAA's code on anthropological ethics
that anthropologists should be allowed to engage in secretive
research, arguing that, "In a world where weapons of mass destruction
have become so terrible and terrorist actions so frightful,
anthropologists must surrender naïve faith in a communitarian utopia
and be prepared to encounter conflict and violence. Indeed they should
feel the professional obligation to work in areas of ethnic
conflict.But, as moral creatures so engaged, they would of course have
to recognize the necessity of classifying some of their data, if for
no other reason than to protect the lives of their subjects and
themselves."
It is this devotion to secrecy that is the root problem of the PRSIP's
presence on our campuses as well as with Moos' vision of anthropology
harnessed for the needs of state. Moos' fallacy is his belief that the
fundamental problem with American intelligence agencies is that they
are lacking adequate cultural understanding of those they study, and
spy upon-this fallacy is exacerbated by orthodox assumptions that good
intelligence operates best in realms of secrecy. America needs good
intelligence, but the most useful and important intelligence can
largely be gathered openly without the sort of covert invasion of our
campuses that PRISP silently brings.
The claim that more open source, non-classified intelligence is what
is needed is less far fetched than it might seem. In Cloak and Gown:
Scholars in the Secret War, 1939-1961 historian Robin Winks recounts
how in 1951, the CIA's Sherwood Kent conducted an experiment in which
a handful of Yale historians used nothing but declassified materials
in Yale's library to challenge CIA analysts (with access to classified
data) to produce competing reports on U.S. military capacities,
strengths and weaknesses focusing on a scale of detail down to the
level of military divisions. This written evaluation of this contest
was known as the "Yale Report," which concluded that over 90% of
material in the CIA's report was found in the Yale library. Kent
further estimated that of the remaining 10% of "secret" materials,
only half of this could be expected to remain secret for any length of
time. President Truman was so furious with the results of the Yale
Report that he suppressed its distribution, arguing that the press
needed more restrictions governing the release of such sensitive
materials, while Republican pundits joined the furor claiming that
Yale liberals were trying to leak state secrets.
Evidence of the power of open intelligence is close at hand, consider
only how American scholars' (using publicly available sources)
analysis of the dangers for post-invasion Iraq out-performed the CIA's
best estimates. As one who has lived in the Middle East and read
Arabic news dailies online for years while watching the expansion of
American policies that appear to misread the Arab world I wonder if a
repeat of the Yale Report experiment focusing on the Middle East might
not find another 10% intelligence gap, but with the academy now
winning due to the deleterious effects of generations of CIA
intellectual inbreeding. Perhaps the Agency has become self-aware of
these limits brought on by the internal reproduction of its own
limited institutional culture, and in its own misshapen view it sees
PRISP as a means of supplying itself with new blood to rejuvenate
under cover provided by public classrooms. But such secrecy-based
reforms are the products of a damaged institutional mind trying to
repair itself.
Some might misread my criticism of the CIA's secret presence on our
campuses as contradicting my critique of the need for more outside and
dissenting (even informed hairbrained dissenting) input in
intelligence circles, but such a reading would misunderstand the
importance of openness in academic and political processes. The
fundamental problems with American intelligence are exacerbated by
secrecy-when intelligence agencies are allowed to classify and hide
their assumptions, reports and analysis from public view they generate
self-referential narrow visions that coalesce rather than challenge
top-down policies from the administrations they serve. Intelligence
agencies do need to understand the complex cultures they study, but to
suggest that intelligence agencies like the CIA are simply amassing
and interpreting political and cultural information is a dangerous
fantasy: The CIA fulfills a tripartite role of gathering intelligence,
interpreting intelligence, and working as a supraconstitutional covert
arm of the presidency. It is this final role that should give scholars
and citizens pause when considering how PRSIP and other
university-intelligence-linked programs will use the knowledge they
take from our open classrooms.
The CIA makes sure we won't know which classrooms PRSIP scholars
attend, this is rationalized as a requirement for protecting the
identities of intelligence personnel. But this secrecy shapes PRISP as
it takes on the form like a cell-based covert operation in which PRISP
students study chemistry, biology, sociology, psychology, anthropology
and foreign languages without their fellow classmates, professors,
advisors, department chairs or presumably even research subjects
(creating serious ethics problems under any post-Nuremberg
professional ethics code or Human Subject Review Board) knowing that
they are working for the CIA, DIA, NSA or other intelligence agencies.
In a decade and a half of Freedom of Information Act research I have
read too many FBI reports of students detailing the deviant political
views of their professors (These range from the hilarious: As
anthropologist Norman Humphrey was reported to have called President
Eisenhower a "duckbilled nincompoop"; to the Dadaist: Wherein former
Miss America, Marilyn van Derbur, reported that sociologist Howard
Higman mocked J. Edgar Hoover in class; to the chilling: As when the
FBI arranged for a graduate student to guide topics of "informal"
conversation with anthropologist Gene Weltfish that were later the
focus an inquiry by Joseph McCarthy) to not mention the certainty that
these PRSIP students are also secretly compiling dossiers on their
professors and fellow students. Of course I would be remiss to not
mention that students are the only ones sneaking the CIA onto our
campuses. There are also unknown thousands of university professors
who periodically work with and for the CIA--in 1988 CIA spokeswoman
Sharon Foster bragged that the CIA then secretly employed enough
university professors "to staff a large university." Most experts
estimate that this presence has grown since 2001.
The quiet rise of programs like PRISP should not surprise anyone given
the steady cuts in federal funding for higher education, and the
resulting pressures for more mercenary roles for the academy. In the
post-World War Two decades, scholars naively self-recruited themselves
or followed classmates to the CIA, but increasingly those of us who
have studied the languages, culture and histories of peoples around
the world have also learned about the role of the CIA in undermining
the autonomy of those cultures we study, and the steady construction
of this history has hurt the agency's efforts to recruit the best and
brightest of post-graduates. For decades the students studying Arabic,
Urdu, Basque or Farsi were predominantly curious admirers of the
cultures and languages they studied, the current shift now finds a
visible increase in students whose studies are driven by the market
forces of Bush's War on Terrorism. If the CIA can use PRISP to
indenture students in the early days of their graduate
training-supplemented with mandated summer camp internships immersed
in the workplace ethos of CIA-the company can mold their ideological
inclinations even before their grasp of cultural history is shaped in
the relatively open environment of their university. As these PRISP
graduates enter the CIA's institutional environment of
self-reinforcing Group Think they will present a reduced risk of
creating cognitive dissonance by bringing new views that threaten the
agency's narrow view of the world. Institutional Group Think can thus
safely be protected from external infection.
But while PRISP protects and intensifies the inbred-limited-thinking
at CIA and elsewhere, it threatens the academic integrity of
anthropology and other academic disciplines that unwittingly become
complicit partners with these intelligence agencies. The CIA has long
recognized that anthropology, with its broadly traveled and culturally
and linguistically competent practitioners has highly useful skill
sets. And while we should not read too much into published reports
that the CIA-directed torture techniques at Abu Ghraib were fine-tuned
for high levels of culturally specific humiliation by the reading of
anthropologist Raphael Patai's book The Arab Mind (Patai's scholarship
is stained with Orientalist stereotypes and it doesn't take an
insider's knowledge that Arabs generally abhor dogs and sexual
humiliation to presume that tormenting bound naked men with vicious
dogs would be an effective means of torture), anthropologists have
long had their work pilfered by American intelligence agencies. To
cite but two documented examples, in 1951, the CIA cut a covert deal
with the AAA's executive board providing the CIA access to data on
anthropologists' cultural and linguistic specialties as the CIA
secretly produced a roster of AAA members for the AAA on the CIA's
computers; and, in 1962 the U.S. Department of Commerce illegally
translated Georges Condominas' ethnography, We Have Eaten the Forest
on highland Vietnamese Montagnards for use as a counterinsurgency
tool. Though no scholar can control the uses of information they make
public, there does need to be an awareness of how any knowledge can be
abused by others--and as awareness of the presence of PRISP spreads,
many scholars may find themselves engaging in new forms of
self-censorship and doublethink.
Healthy academic environments need openness because they (unlike the
CIA) are nourished by the self-corrective features of open
disagreement, dissent, and synthetic-reformulation. The presence of
the PRISP's secret sharers brings hidden agendas that sabotage these
fundamental processes of academia. The Pat Roberts Intelligence
Scholars Program infects all of academia with a germ of dishonesty and
distrust as participant scholars cloak their intentions and their ties
to the cloaked masters they serve.

David Price teaches anthropology at St. Martin's College in Olympia,
Washington. His latest book, Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism and
the FBI's Surveillance of Activist Anthropologists has just been
published by Duke University Press. His Atlas of World Cultures has
just been republished by the Blackburn Press. He can be reached at:
dprice@stmartin.edu

imbd

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Matt Love
Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 20:52:32 -0800
Subject: imbd
To: bizarro_ultrazine@yahoogroups.com

How can you guys say you hate the internet movie database? Oh, I know
why Klaus said it - because they ultimately agreed with my
(overwhelming evidence) and agreed that Plan 10 From Outer Space and
Shakespeare's Plan 12 From Outer Space are different movies.

That episode caused Klaus to lose a $60,000 bet to me. I invested
the money into my own armpit porn empire, and was doing really well
until President Ronald Wilson Blake appointed Mickey Meese to head an
armpit porn commission. even though they found that armpit porn
increases longevity and brightens your teeth, they suppressed the
findings and put out a bogus report that says that armpit porn causes
blindness. I was ruined.

But anyway, I don't know what Tim's beef is. Does that other outfit
you were talking about provide great services, like listing the bottom
100 movies of all time?

A fascinating mix of cult classics and recent mainstream releases like
"From Justin To Kelly."

100 is Dumber and Dumberer. The original really should be in the
bottom 100 also, I can't figure how people can decide "Dumb and
Dumber" is a good movie, and "Mystery Men" is a bad movie. Oh, yeah,
maybe they would have gotten it right 18 months ago.

IMDb Bottom 100
Rank Rating Title Votes
1. 1.6 'Manos' the Hands of Fate (1966)
7,527
2. 1.7 From Justin to Kelly (2003) 6,897
3. 1.7 Future War (1997)
1,505
4. 1.7 Tangents (1994)
663
5. 1.8 Space Mutiny (1988)
1,720
6. 1.8 Girl in Gold Boots (1969) 834
7. 1.8 Troll 2 (1990)
1,829
8. 1.8 Hobgoblins (1987)
1,932
9. 1.8 Eegah (1962)
1,225
10. 1.9 Son of the Mask (2005) 1,214
11. 1.9 You Got Served (2004) 6,362
12. 1.9 Santa with Muscles (1996) 2,530
13. 1.9 Backyard Dogs (2000) 1,241
14. 1.9 Ator l'invincibile 2 (1984) 658
15. 2.0 Night Train to Mundo Fine (1966)
1,025
16. 2.0 SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (2004)
2,104
17. 2.0 Daniel - Der Zauberer (2004)
2,549
18. 2.0 The Wild World of Batwoman (1966)
1,085
19. 2.0 Alone in the Dark (2005) 1,962
20. 2.0 Glitter (2001)
5,762
21. 2.0 Werewolf (1996)
973
22. 2.0 Going Overboard (1989) 1,281
23. 2.1 Nuevos extraterrestres, Los (1983) 1,043
24. 2.1 Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie (1997) 1,212
25. 2.2 Uomo puma, L' (1980) 855
26. 2.2 Police Academy: Mission to Moscow (1994) 5,173
27. 2.2 Gigli (2003)
11,531
28. 2.2 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain (1998) 670
29. 2.3 Kazaam (1996)
3,334
30. 2.3 Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)
1,810
31. 2.3 The Giant Spider Invasion (1975)
894
32. 2.3 Stjerner uden hjerner (1997)
936
33. 2.3 House of the Dead (2003) 3,600
34. 2.3 Leonard Part 6 (1987) 2,128
35. 2.4 Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 (2000)
15,323
36. 2.4 Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace (1996) 2,239
37. 2.4 Robot Monster (1953) 688
38. 2.4 Baby Geniuses (1999) 3,029
39. 2.5 It's Pat (1994)
2,549
40. 2.5 Cool as Ice (1991)
1,229
41. 2.5 Hercules in New York (1970)
2,532
42. 2.5 2001: A Space Travesty (2000)
1,923
43. 2.5 Jaws: The Revenge (1987) 5,913
44. 2.6 Dis - en historie om kjærlighet (1995)
709
45. 2.6 Bolero (1984)
1,264
46. 2.6 Simon Sez (1999)
698
47. 2.6 The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1994)
2,519
48. 2.7 Police Academy 6: City Under Siege (1989) 4,967
49. 2.7 Mitchell (1975)
1,214
50. 2.7 Rollerball (2002)
5,927
51. 2.7 Steel (1997)
1,532
52. 2.7 Marci X (2003)
672
53. 2.7 Vercingétorix (2001)
1,414
54. 2.7 Teen Wolf Too (1987) 2,112
55. 2.7 Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 (1983)
1,384
56. 2.7 Shanghai Surprise (1986) 794
57. 2.8 The Master of Disguise (2002)
4,515
58. 2.8 Police Academy 5: Assignment: Miami Beach (1988)
5,685
59. 2.8 Captain America (1991) 1,318
60. 2.8 Piranha Part Two: The Spawning (1981) 703
61. 2.8 Mannequin: On the Move (1991)
1,189
62. 2.8 Ringmaster (1998)
1,444
63. 2.9 Bride of the Monster (1955) 820
64. 2.9 Spice World (1997)
8,221
65. 2.9 Tarzan, the Ape Man (1981) 1,212
66. 2.9 Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)
6,354
67. 3.0 Rhinestone (1984)
882
68. 3.0 Street Fighter (1994)
7,791
69. 3.0 Problem Child 2 (1991) 3,419
70. 3.0 Plump Fiction (1997)
702
71. 3.0 Mr. Nanny (1993)
1,517
72. 3.0 Out for a Kill (2003)
749
73. 3.1 The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962)
899
74. 3.1 Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie (1995)
2,113
75. 3.1 Double Dragon (1994) 1,423
76. 3.1 Barb Wire (1996)
5,855
77. 3.1 Torque (2004)
3,745
78. 3.1 The Smokers (2000)
646
79. 3.1 Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992)
6,232
80. 3.1 Cop & 1/2 (1993)
1,591
81. 3.1 Son of the Pink Panther (1993)
656
82. 3.1 Crossroads (2002)
8,190
83. 3.1 RoboCop 3 (1993)
5,122
84. 3.1 An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn (1997) 1,223
85. 3.2 Jaws 3-D (1983)
4,792
86. 3.2 The Foreigner (2003) 844
87. 3.2 Soul Plane (2004)
2,001
88. 3.2 Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice (1993)
867
89. 3.2 The Mangler (1995)
1,178
90. 3.2 The Cat in the Hat (2003) 4,670
91. 3.2 FearDotCom (2002)
4,850
92. 3.2 Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) 6,735
93. 3.2 Mac and Me (1988)
1,264
94. 3.2 Universal Soldier: The Return (1999)
3,343
95. 3.2 Cyborg 2 (1993)
669
96. 3.2 Silenzio dei prosciutti, Il (1994)
807
97. 3.2 Iron Eagle II (1988)
1,181
98. 3.3 Children of the Corn III (1995)
638
99. 3.3 Bats (1999/I)
2,933
100. 3.3 Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd (2003) 4,453
In order to appear in the Bottom 100 Titles chart the title must have
received at least 625 votes.

Sunday, March 13, 2005

Seeking Demographic Information About Harvard Students

Dear Sir or Ms

I hope this fine day finds you in good health. I am doing well. I'm
currently visiting my parents in their home in Wenatchee Washington.
My folks, despite one being in his 90s, and the other in her 80s, are
doing relatively well. They spend a good deal of their time watching
TV these days, which of course is their right; they have done their
part and now it is time for them to reap the rewards of a lifetime of
toil. If only the popular media paid them back better. I personally
have not owned a TV since I left this home in 1974. Therefore, it is
quite likely that I have an immature and incomplete understanding of
How Things Really Are, inferior to my peers who have spent a lifetime
suckling at the glass teat. This is why I am writing to you.

I saw an advertisement (during a presentation of the second
installment of the the Ace Ventura franchise, surely one of the
towering achievements of western civilization) for a movie called
"Legally Blonde." The announcer, speaking in a deep and also deeply
authoritative voice, informed me that the subject of the movie was
about to go to a place where no Blonde had gone before - Harvard.

This astonished me. While I have never actually set foot on Harvard
soil, my understanding is that it has been around a good long while.
Perhaps even longer than there have been a United States. Yet nobody
of the Nordic (or perhaps albino?) persuasion has ever been admitted
to Harvard? That would be astonishing indeed.

I have thought about this until my brain hurts. I am doubly
handicapped - in addition to being televisionally challenged, I did
grow up in Wenatchee, where at birth we are basically set loose in the
orchards to fend for ourselves, eating apples and being tended over by
cows in a desultory fashion. I have only ever known one person who
went to Harvard - my high school girlfriend Kate Duey. I hasten to add
that she did not grow up in Wenatchee, but rather just inexplicably
appeared among us one day, like Venus composing herself out of sea
foam - and later just as mysteriously departed from our midst.
Kate's hair is in fact dark. My current wife (I do try to upgrade
regularly) tells me that an N of 1 is not a large enough sample size
from which to draw a valid conclusion. Since she too grew up far from
the arsenic, nicotine and lead-poisoned soil of this quaint little
valley, (and has a doctorate in health systems research, a topic she
teaches on from time to tome) I defer to her on this one.

However, I still have the assurances of my television that no Blonde
set foot at Harvard before the subject of this documentary arrived
there. Rather than dilly-dallying around with this any further, I'm
writing directly to you for assistance. Please tell me the truth, I
can handle it.

SIncerely,

Matt Love