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Big Brother is Watching. Again.

Operation CHAOS

In late October of 2001, President Bush signed the USA Patriot Act, giving broad new powers to both domestic and international security agencies and kicking many basic concepts of "privacy" in the teeth. The Patriot Act provides for much more domestic surveillance, including pulling library records and individual records from ISPs, easier wiretap approvals and widespread monitoring of web surfing.

While some argue that the Patriot Act is unconstitutional (at least, in part) and look forward to challenging it in court, the history of domestic spying by US intelligence agencies is pretty rich. One of the most infamous cases was the Operation CHAOS.

You can trace the roots of Operation CHAOS to Castro's takeover of Cuba in 1959. The Eisenhower administration wanted to monitor the Cuban exiles flooding into the US, both to look for criminals and to find allies for a Cuban counter-revolution. The FBI originally spied on the Cubans, but the CIA had already infiltrated other foreign groups in the US, so it was no great stretch for them to take over the operation.

Eventually, the CIA was burglarizing foreign embassies, "interviewing" US citizens who'd traveled to strategically sensitive parts of the world and monitoring travel by foreigners and US citizens. When Vietnam War protests escalated and sent the Feds into a paranoid frenzy, their domestic spying broadened to include anyone that could be considered a threat to national security, and by a threat they meant anyone who openly disagreed with the government. This is how someone like Martin Luther King ended up under constant surveillance. This kind of domestic spying went on into the 1970s.

Fear is a great tool to convince people to go along with actions they would never normally consider. Terrorism is a tool, too. It creates random fears of shadows, of the unknown, of the foreign. The terrorists win when we learn to reflexively run from these things. The worst parts of our own government win, too. The parts that want us to march in lock step and not ask questions. The agencies and shadow men who find all individual thought and action suspicious and dangerous. If you’re reading this now, if you’re on this site, you’re probably already in some suspects' database. Do you feel less afraid of Al Qaeda? No, I didn't think so.

Samuel Johnson once wrote that "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." Don't be scared into buying into the Patriot Act. The same draconian laws scoundrels put in place to "protect" can be used to silence and destroy. Just look ta the history of the groups in charge of these laws.

http://serendipity.magnet.ch/cia/lyon.html

Posted by Kadrey at 08:25 PM | Comments (0) December 24, 2002

Track the Fat Man

NORAD tracks Santa's progress across the sky because he might really be a, you know, North Korean nuke. Happy Holidays!

http://www.noradsanta.org

Posted by Kadrey at 06:21 PM | Comments (0) December 18, 2002

Luddites

You hear the word "Luddite" every day on the news and in conversation. But do you really know what it means and who the "Luddites" were? Really?

Check out this essay by Robert Rossney and you will, and you'll know exactly what ignorant little creeps and jargon posers most journalists and allegedly learned people really are.

The New Old Luddites: What's So Funny About Staying Alive?

Posted by Kadrey at 02:18 AM | Comments (0) December 13, 2002

The Future of Tissue Engineering, or I'll Cook You A New Ass In My Easy Bake Oven

"The Thickness of Tissue Engineering: Biopolitics, Biotech, and the Regenerative Body"

"TE (tissue engineering) is . . . very much about an engagement and re-negotiation of the 'natural' as a historical and social concept with very real, material effects in its varied applications. It is in this sense that TE is involved in the medical, philosophical, and political production of what will be defined as a body by biomedical science. One of the basic issues with TE will be this re-negotiation of norms, the natural, and health, with respect to the biomedical body of the patient-subject. Another will be the implications for the traditional separation between the body and technology as separate and ontologically distinct categories."
—Eugene Thacker

I don't know about you, but I love these long-winded and extruciatingly earnest postmodern cultural critiques. They're like shooting smack: At first, it's weird and you don't understand anything that's going on around you. Then, you can't live without it.

Kids, this stuff is more fucked up than Naked Lunch.

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_&_event/v003/3.3thacker.html

Posted by Kadrey at 02:28 AM | Comments (0) December 10, 2002

Chernobyl: Disaster's Disneyland

Sure you've climbed the Eiffel Tower and seen The Sphinx, but when's the last time you toured a radiation "exclusion zone?" For between $70 and $270, Olymp Travel of the Ukraine can arrange a car or bus tour of Chernobyl, site of the world's biggest and most infamous nuclear accident. Not only can you ogle the empty houses of the 76 towns and villages left empty in the wake of the nuclear plant's near meltdown, but you'll see the monument to the 28 firefighters who first fought the fire. Of course, you get to see the Chernobyl plant itself, though only through three layers of barbwire fences. Lunch is provided. Helicopter tours are available for around $600.

http://www.olymp-travel.kiev.ua/incoming/tours/spec_inter/in_tour_chernobyl.htm

Posted by Kadrey at 03:07 PM | Comments (0) December 06, 2002

Genomic Art

Genomic art uses an organism’s genetic material as inspiration for and as a tool to produce art. Genomic art isn’t about us, it is us, at the most fundamental organic level. What’s a more personal subject, or more human material to work with than our own biology?

On the Genomic Art site, you’ll find links and examples of work in styles that vary from documenting the process of genomic research to abstract images inspired by biological processes.

http://www.geneart.org

Posted by Kadrey at 07:03 PM | Comments (0) December 03, 2002

Found Magazine

When I worked at a used book store years ago, one of the best parts of the job was finding secret messages left in books by their previous owners. The messages came in many forms, mostly personal notes, shopping lists, bus transfers, business cards and photos. These lost items were little glimpses into lives we'd otherwise have known nothing about. The pictutres and notes were seldom profound, but always human and sometimes touching in their intimacy.

Found Magazine, a combo web and print zine, celebrates these lost and forgotten objects, crib notes to the big book of Life.

http://www.foundmagazine.com

Posted by Kadrey at 03:05 PM | Comments (0)