moondance

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Let's moondance.

On 19 March, the full moon will appear unusually large in the night sky as it reaches a point in its cycle known as 'lunar perigee'.

Stargazers will be treated to a spectacular view when the moon approaches Earth at a distance of 221,567 miles in its elliptical orbit — the closest it will have passed to our planet since 1992.

The full moon could appear up to 14% bigger and 30% brighter in the sky, especially when it rises on the eastern horizon at sunset or is provided with the right atmospheric conditions.

This phenomenon has reportedly heightened concerns about 'supermoons' being linked to extreme weather events — such as earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis. The last time the moon passed close to the Earth was on 10 January 2005, around the time of the Indonesian earthquake that measured 9.0 on the Richter scale.

Don't fear big moons. That's just goofy. If there were any veracity to such a notion, we'd've had it nailed down centuries ago and everybody would learn it in kindergarten. Truly. Don't be a sap. Dance.

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love, 99
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i'm gonna fight for you jb

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I am cracked for JBYeats. Alas he is married, but I dream anyway of a warm hearth and him pounding his fist on the arm of his easy chair and leaping up to go yell into his YouTube account.... Odd. I know.

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love, 99
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i wish max would lay off joking about the edge

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He can bash the snot out of Bono and Geldoff. They, like, soooo deserve it, but unless I'm gravely mistaken, all The Edge has ever done is play fantastic guitar.

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I think I'm going to die of not finding the nineteen-minute version of With Or Without You that's mostly The Edge. Bono actually shuts up for most of that. I'm beginning to think 86 looped the guitar on that tape he made for me or something. I never find it. I think it would be best if Bono just hummed softly and let The Edge do it.

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love, 99
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it hurts

[click image — Steve Lukather on guitar]

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I am deeply saddened to hear about the passing of Gary Moore.
Gary was not only a fellow musician but also a soul mate;
ever since he played in my solo band we developed a special bond
and I will miss him dearly. May he rest in peace.

—Greg Lake, February 7, 2011

It hurts.

I can't think of Gary, without thinking of Greg too. It's my whole life. That voice, my whole life because that guy opened his mouth one day and ecstasy sprang out. I bet he's feeling this with us... all of us who have loved them for this long.

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love, 99
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a good death

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One of my heroes went out with a bang yesterday. He picked a nice setting for a heart attack. Agent BB2 has made a playlist so we can contemplate our loss. Damn. He probably had the definitive album still in him when he checked out. I suppose it's too much to hope that he might fill the cosmos with it now instead....

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You know... it just hit me that some astonishing number of my heroes were born in Belfast.... Do you think I better get there before any more of them slip away?

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I ended up making a playlist too, because BB2 is always more forgiving of the vicissitudes of live performances than I am, and I like listening to the produced stuff along with the better live performances....

Many nights I fall asleep listening to a playlist low, and I think this one's going to be it tonight... well... maybe when I get up... maybe I'd rather it were playing low while I'm agape at the perfidies of the day, sipping my coffee, feeling my life crashing up against the impossible and groping madly for it as I'm sucked down the tubes of hell....

Yes. I'll listen again to it then.

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love, 99
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heavy sigh

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Ohmmmmm....

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love, 99
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hey now, hey now, hey now, wachit max!

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Max Keiser just dissed The Edge along with the risibly coarse capitalist/philanthropist, Bono, with whom he has been associated, musically, for decades. That is completely unfair! I demand a retraction.

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love, 99
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my epitaph

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Just a little night music....

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love, 99
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it just popped up

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And it made me think of the song. So I went to hear it, and it was gone. In fact almost every song in the Dylan section was gone. I don't know what possessed me to pile up all that great music and think it was there for posterity. Pfeh.

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love, 99
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chilling with wojb

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This program is aptly named. Lort! Mellowing me the hell out. That's for sure.

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Sigur Rós mp4....

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Darn good cover of When Doves Cry... and not just because it isn't that creepy guy singing it... and despite the vocalist using that stupid nasally thing the kids do to sound as though they can sing... it still seriously works.

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love, 99
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turn it all the way up to eleven

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AND DANCE TO OUR NEW NATIONAL ANTHEM.

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love, 99
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oh, don't ask

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Because it's Kwanzaa, I'm sparing you the ad miseries to hear from Glenn, knowing as I do that some people just don't have the RAM to deal with that crap without crashing.

The government's one-way mirror
BY GLENN GREENWALD
20 December 2010

One of the hallmarks of an authoritarian government is its fixation on hiding everything it does behind a wall of secrecy while simultaneously monitoring, invading and collecting files on everything its citizenry does.  Based on the Francis Bacon aphorism that "knowledge is power," this is the extreme imbalance that renders the ruling class omnipotent and citizens powerless.

In The Washington Post today, Dana Priest and William Arkin continue their "Top Secret America" series by describing how America's vast and growing Surveillance State now encompasses state and local law enforcement agencies, collecting and storing always-growing amounts of information about even the most innocuous activities undertaken by citizens suspected of no wrongdoing.  As was true of the first several installments of their "Top Secret America," there aren't any particularly new revelations for those paying attention to such matters, but the picture it paints — and the fact that it is presented in an establishment organ such as The Washington Post — is nonetheless valuable.

Today, the Post reporters document how surveillance and enforcement methods pioneered in America's foreign wars and occupations are being rapidly imported into domestic surveillance (wireless fingerprint scanners, military-grade infrared cameras, biometric face scanners, drones on the border).  In sum:

The special operations units deployed overseas to kill the al-Qaeda leadership drove technological advances that are now expanding in use across the United States. On the front lines, those advances allowed the rapid fusing of biometric identification, captured computer records and cellphone numbers so troops could launch the next surprise raid. Here at home, it's the DHS that is enamored with collecting photos, video images and other personal information about U.S. residents in the hopes of teasing out terrorists.

Meanwhile, the Obama Department of Homeland Security has rapidly expanded the scope and invasiveness of domestic surveillance programs — justified, needless to say, in the name of Terrorism:

[DHS Secretary Janet] Napolitano has taken her "See Something, Say Something" campaign far beyond the traffic signs that ask drivers coming into the nation's capital for "Terror Tips" and to "Report Suspicious Activity."

She recently enlisted the help of Wal-Mart, Amtrak, major sports leagues, hotel chains and metro riders. In her speeches, she compares the undertaking to the Cold War fight against communists.

"This represents a shift for our country," she told New York City police officers and firefighters on the eve of the 9/11 anniversary this fall. "In a sense, this harkens back to when we drew on the tradition of civil defense and preparedness that predated today's concerns."

The results are predictable.  Huge amounts of post/9-11 anti-Terrorism money flooded state and local agencies that confront virtually no Terrorism threats, and they thus use these funds to purchase technologies — bought from the private-sector industry that controls and operates government surveillance programs — for vastly increased monitoring and file-keeping on ordinary citizens suspected of no wrongdoing.  The always-increasing cooperation between federal, state and local agencies — and among and within federal agencies — has spawned massive data bases of information containing the activities of millions of American citizens.  "There are 96 million sets of fingerprints" in the FBI's data base, the Post reports.  Moreover, the FBI uses its "suspicious activities record" program (SAR) to collect and store endless amounts of information about innocent Americans:

At the same time that the FBI is expanding its West Virginia database, it is building a vast repository controlled by people who work in a top-secret vault on the fourth floor of the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building in Washington. This one stores the profiles of tens of thousands of Americans and legal residents who are not accused of any crime. What they have done is appear to be acting suspiciously to a town sheriff, a traffic cop or even a neighbor.

To get a sense for what kind of information ends up being stored — based on the most innocuous conduct — read this page from their article describing Suspicious Activity Report No3821.  Even the FBI admits the huge waste all of this is — "'Ninety-nine percent doesn't pan out or lead to anything' said Richard Lambert Jr., the special agent in charge of the FBI's Knoxville office" — but, as history conclusively proves, data collected on citizens will be put to some use even if it reveals no criminality.  

To understand the breadth of the Surveillance State, recall this sentence from the original Priest/Arkin article:  "Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications."  As Arkin and Priest document today, there are few safeguards on how all this data is used and abused.  Local police departments routinely meet with neoconservative groups insisting that all domestic Muslim communities are a potential threat and must be subjected to intensive surveillance and infiltration.  Groups engaged in plainly legal and protected political dissent have been subjected to these government surveillance programs.  What we have, in sum, is a vast, uncontrolled and increasingly invasive surveillance state that knows and collects more and more information about the activities of more and more citizens.

But what makes all of this particularly ominous is that — as the  WikiLeaks conflict demonstrates — this all takes place next to an always-expanding wall of secrecy behind which the Government's own conduct is hidden from public view.   Just consider the Government's reaction to the disclosures by WikiLeaks of information which even it — in moments of candor — acknowledges have caused no real damage:  disclosed information that, critically, was protected by relatively low-level secrecy designations and (in contrast to the Pentagon Papers) none of which was designated "Top Secret."

It's crystal clear that the Justice Department is engaged in an all-out crusade to figure out how to shut down WikiLeaks and imprison Julian Assange.  It is subjecting Bradley Manning to unbelievably inhumane conditions in order to manipulate him into providing needed testimony to prosecute Assange.  Recall that in 2008 — long before anyone even knew what WikiLeaks was — the Pentagon secretly plotted on how to destroy the organization.  On Meet the Press yesterday, Joe Biden was asked whether he agreed more with Mitch McConnell's statement that Assange is a "high-tech terrorist" than with those comparing WikiLeaks to Daniel Ellsberg, and the Vice President replied:  "I would argue that it's closer to being a high tech terrorist. . . ."  "A high-tech terrorist."  And consider this pernicious little essay from Eric Fiterman — a former FBI special agent and founder of Methodvue, "a consultancy that provides cybersecurity and computer forensics services to the federal government and private businesses" — that clearly reflects the Government's view of WikiLeaks:

In the WikiLeaks case, a fringe group led primarily by foreign nationals operating abroad is illegally obtaining, reviewing and disseminating American intelligence information with the stated intent of hurting the United States (WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange himself made this declaration). That not only meets the definition of aggressive, hostile and war-like activity, but squarely targets America's diplomatic positions and intelligence interests while inflicting collateral damage against our financial institutions and service providers who cut-off their relationship with WikiLeaks. This, folks, is war.

That's the mindset of the U.S. Government:  everything it does of any significance can and should be shielded from public view; anyone who shines light on what it does is an Enemy who must be destroyed; but nothing you do should be beyond its monitoring and storing eyes.  And what's most remarkable about this — though, given the full-scale bipartisan consensus over it, not surprising — is how eagerly submissive much of the citizenry is to this imbalance.  Many Americans plead with their Government in unison:  we demand that you know everything about us but that you keep us ignorant about what you do and punish those who reveal it to us.  Often, this kind of oppressive Surveillance State has to be forcibly imposed on a resistant citizenry, but much of the frightened American citizenry — led by most transparency-hating media figures — has been trained with an endless stream of fear-mongering to demand that they be subjected to more and more of it.

Obviously, every state is necessarily authorized to exercise powers that private citizens are barred from exercising themselves (governments can legally put people in cages, but if a private citizen does that, it constitutes felonies:  kidnapping and false imprisonment).  But the imbalance has become so extreme — the Government now watches much of the citizenry behind a fully opaque one-way mirror — that the dangers should be obvious.  And this is all supposed to be the other way around:  it's government officials who are supposed to operate out in the open, while ordinary citizens are entitled to privacy.  Yet we've reversed that dynamic almost completely.  And even with 9/11 now 9 years behind us, the trends continue only in one direction.  WikiLeaks is one of the very few entities successfully subverting this scheme, which is why — from the view of the Government and its enablers — it must be stopped at all costs.

 UPDATE:  Two related points:

(1) Joe Biden not only voted for the Iraq War, but was Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in 2002 as the Senate authorized that attack, one which resulted in the deaths of well over 100,000 innocent human beings and which was launched under the strategic banner of "Shock and Awe," designed explicitly to terrorize Iraqis out of resisting through the use of a massive display of urban devastation.  Julian Assange has never authorized any violence, never killed anyone, never advocated killing anyone, and never threatened anyone's death.   Yet the former can accuse the latter of being close to a "high-tech terrorist" without many people batting an eye — illustrating, yet again, what a meaningless and manipulated term "Terrorism" is; to the extent it means anything, its definition is this: "those who impede or defy American will with any degree of efficacy."

(2) Of all the surveillance state abuses, one of the most egregious has to be the Government's warrantless, oversight-less seizure of the laptops and other electronic equipment of American citizens at the border, whereby they not only store the contents of those devices but sometimes keep the seized items indefinitely.   That practice is becoming increasingly common, aimed at people who have done nothing more than dissent from government policy; I intend to have more on that soon.  If American citizens don't object to the permanent seizure and copying of their laptops and cellphones without any warrants or judicial oversight, what would they ever object to?

Don't ask!

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love, 99
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i'm blissin' out on a monster thunderstorm

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Makes me go loose and content... makes me go real... makes "me" go....

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love, 99
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nice way to start my day

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I may just pile up links in this post today. I've been doing that a lot lately... so all you unconcerned types on the feed are probably missing many bits... including all the times I go back to make something clearer or flesh out the scene after I've gotten more coffee, amassed more brain cells, or the winds of inspiration blow back through. These are the hazards of just letting the cyber gods deliver up your content. I just think you oughta remember to stop and smell the roses every so often.

Phil left me this song in comments in the middle of the night, and so it was here for me when I got up. This is amazing because Phil is so totally into head banger heavy metal blast yer brains out music. I have to try to put eardrum warnings on his stuff... but this, now this is the kind of music we should all be listening to around the clock, and since it's Festivus, et cetera, I let you in on it.

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Dump BofA....

No... really... do you want a BANK ACCOUNT where they dictate how you spend
YOUR money? It's like I said when my mother first told me you had to put money in
to get money out: That's the craziest thing I ever heard.

This is a GOOD thing....

Senate Republicans on Saturday doomed an effort that would
have given hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants a path to legal status
if they enrolled in college or joined the military.
It would have given them a limitless supply of cannon fodder for
conquering the world.
[I know, I know, they've got it anyway, but THERE AREN'T ANY JOBS and the continued lure
for more immigrants keeps driving wages ever lower.
IT'S ONLY DRIVING US ALL FURTHER DOWN.
Come up with a better idea. The whole world is turning third.
Wrong direction.]

Got out of the tub just in time....

"The repeal of 'don't ask, don't tell' will be implemented in a common sense way,"
said Ohio Republican Sen. George Voinovich. "Our military leaders have assured Congress
that our troops will engage in training and address relevant issues before instituting this policy change."
This sensitivity training for hardened old Marines ought to be loaded with giggles.
My formal congratulations to queers everywhere! You are nearing "normal" at last.

Latest update on the perennial Biden vs. Biden thing....

Antiwar's antiwar Horton holds forth....

Heavily-recommended listening for all too frightened proto-flakes....

Florida definitely seems to get the most visits from space aliens....

[That would be about Jebby for sure.]

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

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Do not help them. Do not support them. Do not spend your energy and passion and intellect on earnest analyses of the twists and turns of their political fates. They are doing evil. Do not be part of it. Support instead those who try to speak the truth. Stand with them. It is their fate — not the fate of the petty, brutal power-seekers — which will determine the meaning of our times and the future of our species.

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love, 99
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perspective

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I wish there were a pill for perspective, for keeping the actual in mind and having a lucid perspective.

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A perspective pill from this last summer....

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And if THIS perspective pill doesn't do it for you, well, yer probably past helping....

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Yes, I'm making the people on the feed suffer....

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I just wrote to Amazon to tell them that if I didn't see a vivid and public act of contrition for their spineless and unAmerican behavior, I ain't buyin' nuthin from them again.

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ATTENTION ATTENTION SAM!

THE OTHER DAY YOU WERE ASKING WHAT USE COLEEN ROWLEY HAS BEEN. HERE'S PART OF YOUR ANSWER.

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Remember when you pitched a purple spotted hissy over Ashcroft's snitch hotline idea? Contemplate now how many orders of magnitude worse THIS is. Think of all the guys rotting in Gitmo and Bagram because a neighbor didn't like them. Then go nuts with paranoia and cower in your bedroom closet... since you won't stand up....

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While Chossudovsky hedges, bobs, and weaves to please the conspiracy crowd, Pilger remains immovably supportive of decency, of all living things.

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Fraud is America's business model....

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Uhhhm, I'm pretty sure Genghis Yoo and Groucho Holder are aware of this already.

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I will be driving all day tomorrow, Wednesday, and will try to check in as soon as possible.

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HERE, have a little Gilad Atzmon while I'm out going nuts.

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love, 99
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i've lived through changing my bandage

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It was not as inelegant as when I was bleeding the plumbing scarlet some nights ago, but it was still a fairly shaky proposition. I rock in such an inside out way. Not a trace of infection, and this time I could get all the excess blood off the skin around the horrific wound. All kine Hibiclens and hydrogen peroxide and silver bandage AND fancy antibiotic ointment, the frickin' works, padded and wrapped with gauze and sticky stretchy wrap AND paper tape... listening to BB2's show the while and having to run over to my machine to skip the too excitable numbers... and right in the middle of it all my nose started running water as hard as I was bleeding the other night... ridiculous... but nothing is falling off the shelves, my coffee has been going into my mouth and down my throat... oh... AND DID I MENTION NOT A TRACE OF INFECTION?

I ROCK!

... inside out and with my right big toe wiggling out my left ear. I haven't gone back to check but I think I mangled myself the first night after the WikiLeaks release and have not had the stomach to face this—preferring my finger fall off—until just this very now. Neither have I bathed, not wanting to get the bandage wet, and I can barely stand to sit next to myself... so a spit bath with surgical scrub is next.

I WILL BE FRESH AS A DAISY WHEN THEY COME TO HAUL ME OFF.

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I mean, that bread knife is some kine seriously serrated and so—no shit—so is the whole top of my left index finger. It still makes my insides hop to look at it, but it's flippin' gorgeous right now compared to the carnage the other night. There is a possibility I may live... which, right now, doesn't sound that appetizing, but, hell, maybe I will wake up from this coma in some hospital somewhere and the Age of Aquarius will turn out to have been in full swing all these terrifying years....

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love, 99
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past is prelude

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Just let go... stop thinking what you think and watch what is....

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love, 99
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sounds

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99 is at the bullhorn....

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love, 99
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hey hey

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Are you scared to answer me?

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love, 99
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i don't think so

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I might be bumping into walls, having trouble waking up, but I still don't think so.

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love, 99
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