Propaganda III World Tour, San Francisco, July 4, 2007

The Squid List rules my world. If I'm doing something fun, chances are I heard about it from the Squid List. Oddly, of the 100+ Squid Listed events I've attended, I don't believe I've ever seen the same person at two different events.

Regardless, the latest was a pseudo-art show of propaganda posters of all kinds:

On July 4, 2007, the PROPAGANDA III art show opens in San Francisco.

There will be no curation and absolutely NO censorship of any sort. Expressed political viewpoints, be they left, right, or center, will be displayed side-by-side, both online AND in the real world.

PROPAGANDA III will tour the globe through 2008, with dozens of one day art shows worldwide - the current schedule includes stops throughout north america, south america, australia, asia, europe, and the middle east.

NO art will be sold at any of the shows, although copies of the posters will be available for sale directly through the websites of participating artists.

This is NOT a commercial art show, but rather a global celebration of free speech + untrammeled freedom of expression.

SFist chimes in two times.

The posters themselves were very cool, very inspiring, but I was hoping for more controversial/right-wing/communist/authoritarian/uncle-sam-type stuff - instead, it was mostly lefty fare. Nonetheless, cool.

But the scene - the spot - the Phoenix Hotel and connected lounge - what a great spot. This is kinda what it looked like today.



Beers, bbq, rockin art, dj with turntables - what a scene.

I'm also on the mailing list for the Center for the Study of Political Graphics, where all these posters will live when this current art tour finishes. I first heard about CSPG when I was looking for some seemingly-rare Black Panther posters.

Antioch Undergraduate School Closing

Seems like a neat place:

The Chronicle: 6/29/2007: Antioch: an Education in the Real World

At the time, the Selective Service System required colleges to report students' progress toward their degrees as a condition of maintaining their deferments. Armed with misguided moral certainty, I returned to Yellow Springs and organized a successful campus movement to force the college to refuse cooperation with the draft system. Dixon properly felt we could not impose this on individual students, but he never let on, instead complimenting me on my political work and appointing me to a blue-ribbon committee to work out a formal policy. Months went by, and by the time we reached a conclusion, procedures had changed, and the issue was moot. Unlike many of my university colleagues, I am no longer automatically charmed and co-opted by committee appointments.

Antioch Chancellor responds.

I don't ever recall meeting someone from Antioch.

MyAdProfile?

Yahoo is doing some new kind of customized ads:

Yahoo will announce new tools for online advertising today that could pull the company ahead in the race for what is called “behavioral targeting,” that is, the ability to better tailor online advertisements to the people most likely to buy.

Just out of curiosity, would anyone be willing to tell advertisers exactly what they're looking for? I would. Sometimes. This is something I've thought about a lot, but any major advertiser could put together an app overnight and deploy it to their network the next day.

Basically, I want to allow people to decide what types of ads they're shown, at least part of the time. Instead of asking your computers to mind-read what web surfers are thinking and feeling, why not just let the web surfers tell advertisers exactly what they're thinking and feeling? Both parties win.

So, for instance, if I decide I kinda want to think about checking out new cars - just to gauge my own level of commitment, I could tell Google that I want to see new car ads - lots of them - because i just *might* be in the market for a car. I get to see ads for all the new cars on the market and car manufacturers get to pimp their rides to me. Seems simple enough, no?

...adding, the difference here would be that this is passive advertising. Google has no idea right now that I just had my car worked on twice and that it cost me a certain amount of time/money/heartache. I and I alone am in the best position to determine what my level of interest in a new car is. In fact, I could have used some help from advertising to pick out a repair shop. Google had no idea that my car was making some odd noises, one of which was getting progressively worse. As the noise got worse, I could go to my ad profile and ratchet up the level of 'car fixiness' in the ads I wanted to see.

Manowar - Blow Your Speakers

Old school rock n roll:

TechCrunch is "People Ready"; PayPerPost revisited

...and so are a bunch of other folks. Hilarious. Check out the screenshot of all the advertisements/propaganda that Mike and crew put out for Microsoft:



Mike says he was paid for his advertisement/propaganda, but the people who paid him say he was not paid for his non-advertisment/conversation.

PayPerPost.com are the propaganda folks that Mike Arrington used to love to criticize for being, well, propagandists.

I'm just so confused by all this... :)

But check out the actual quotes from the got-caught-red-handed propagandists - here's a snippet from Mike's contribution:

People’s opinions matter, and intelligent debate stimulates the mind. TechCrunch became People Ready.

I know what you're thinking - it's like bad Soviet agitprop - so tacky and pathetic. But not to be outdone in front of his masters, other folks like Fred Wilson really went to bat for Microsoft:

I am in the venture capital business which is all about building relationships with people. And yet many venture firms aren’t “people ready”. That’s why venture capitalists as a group have a reputation as being arrogant, aloof, hard to reach, and hard to talk to. I’ve been struggling with how to build a “people ready” venture capital firm for years. I learned the venture business from some great people who taught me to always respond to every deal that comes in, say no as quickly and nicely as possible, and be attentive and gracious in every meeting. But even that is not enough. We’ve used blogging to make ourselves and our business, Union Square Ventures, even more “people ready”. And it’s been a success in more ways than I could have ever imagined.

Any good propagandist knows that repetition is the cornerstone of an effective campaign, and Fred Wilson really knocks it out of the park with that load of utter nonsense. Have a little dignity, Fred! HaHa. Fred totally reminds me of these guys:



Well done, y'all - the OSP would be proud.

...oh, what the hey - this post couldn't be complete with at least one big, bold propaganda poster:



...Paul Kedrosky has a great defense up - let me paraphrase: 'I fucked up royally, it won't happen again, and if you don't know what i'm talking about, don't sweat it, move along, nothing to see here'.

...parody site. original here.

...speaking of propaganda, here's a cool poster show coming to SF on July 4 - looks like a one-day event. Flickr pix. Official home page.

...a propaganda quote from George himself:

"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."
- George W. Bush

Chelsea to visit Stanford, with Club America

Old news now, but Chelsea are coming!

When English Premier League power Chelsea faces Mexico's popular Club America on July 14, the London soccer club's business chief is certain that every one of the 50,000 seats at Stanford Stadium will be occupied.

"We're expecting it to be sold out for sure," Chelsea business affairs director Paul Smith said Thursday at a news conference officially announcing the exhibition match.

Chelsea is promoting the game but says it won't be pocketing much money because it must pay Club America an up-front fee and split revenues with Stanford.

Smith said Chelsea had another reason for visiting: branding.

The number of Chelsea fans in England, Smith said, "has reached a finite level."

Being Ali or Being Owned

If you haven't read Dave Zirin before, do it now. Check out his open letter to Lebron:

At the tender age of 22, you have the galactic talent to make us wonder if a mad scientist had Magic and MJ genetically spliced. But talent ain't wisdom. In a recent interview, you said that your goal in sports was to become "the richest man on earth." You also told ESPN, "I'm trying to be a global icon...on the level of Muhammad Ali." These dreams are compatible only if you choose to emulate Ali the icon and not Ali the man.

If you're a sports fan, I highly recommend this book.

Bush Fires A Few Good Men

...or at least one man who did lots of good for common soldiers, and lots of evil for Republicans, but it was when he stopped doing evil for Republicans that Bush showed him the door:

We turn to the latest in the US attorney firing scandal. Nearly half of the US attorneys slated for removal by the Bush administration last year were targeted for not doing enough to prosecute voter fraud. According to the Washington Post, of the twelve US attorneys known to have been dismissed or considered for removal last year, five were identified by presidential advisor Karl Rove or other administration officials as working in districts that were trouble spots for voter fraud: Kansas City, Milwaukee, New Mexico, Nevada and Washington state. Four of the five prosecutors in those districts were fired.

...

AMY GOODMAN: And that was the excerpt of A Few Good Men from Greg Palast’s piece. Greg Palast, investigative journalist, his latest book just out on paperback called Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans, Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild. Greg Palast joins us in the studio now.

Greg, I just want to start where you left off and started this film: A Few Good Men. I don't think most people understand this about David Iglesias.

GREG PALAST: Yes, well, Iglesias was the guy played by Tom Cruise in the film A Few Good Men, which is a real story about how a young military attorney stood up to military brass to uncover the truth. And somehow they thought that this -- you know, this Tom --

As Chomsky has mentioned, when the President of the United States can break multiple serious domestic and international laws at will, one has to question whether the phrase 'the rule of law' still has any meaning.

Man, they totally politicized the inJustice Department. I knew that already, but I didn't know it was this bad. I guess I should have.

But...they fired Tom Fuckin Cruise? The Tom Cruise lawyer character in A Few Good Men? The hero of the movie? Shit is bizarre. Which is about par for the course for Bush.

SFist's rita joins jon in the Rape/Murder Cheap Laughs Parade

Let's just say I don't think it's cool make light of someone else's extreme suffering. And SFist has a running policy, it seems, of doing just that. The latest installment comes from 'rita', who had this to say:

And in other clusters of crime news -- not only did Berkeley chalk up its first murder of 2007 this weekend, there was two other incidents early Monday morning in the middle of the city, where a man first stabbed a woman in the arm (on Milvia and Dwight) and then stabbed two firefighters at the firehouse on Shattuck and Derby 15 minutes later. He had gotten into the fire house because the door had been left open by crews going out to treat the first victim. The man was later found, by search dogs, hiding under someone's patio on Milvia and Parker.

Granted - upon first reading, without prior knowledge of SFist's "watch how cool I can be by acting crudely in the face of some person i don't know getting raped and/or murdered" ways - this particular 'chalk' statement is not so bad, but read a few days and you'll see a trend. And it is not as if all moral conscience has left the authors of SFist - on the contrary, it seems they go out of their way to lampoon the suffering of others.

Anyone can say whatever they want, of course, but we all have to decide what type of society we want to live in. If you think white supremecy is a good thing, by all means say it loud and proud. If you are into getting over on the victims of rape and murder, go for yours and congratulate the authors of SFist.com for their good work. And if you don't approve of these things - do you part and publicly condemn them.

I submitted a comment and am quite certain it will not survive. I think the appropriate characterization is 'bent':

the way you fuckin losers talk about rape and murder, one could easily be led to believe that you are celebrating. what fuckin assholes you all are. are even Republicans that fucking sadistic?

chalk that up, bitches.

[2] Posted by: Peter | May 8, 2007 2:27 PM

$100 laptop adds Windows; now $175

Well what'd you expect from the brother of a war criminal?

...folks are already selling very decent refurbished laptops for $400. Right now.

This price increase to earn Microsoft more profits while at the same time protecting Microsoft from Linux is a massive scam - a massive fraud committed against all the people who have been pushing for this project to be a success. To have the price of the laptop shoot up 75% is disgusting. Who knows what kinds of things kids around the world would have done with Linux and other operating systems - in particular, the kids in Africa. Now they're going to have Microsoft and its shitty Windows operating system forced upon them just like colonialism has been forced upon them for decades. Can't believe I ever bought into the idea that Nicholas Negroponte would actually attempt to do something decent. No wonder the Media Lab kicked his ass out.

...good for them.

Dae Han Min Guk!?

So, went to Korea to see some World Cup action in 2002 and did a lot of 'Dae Han Min Guk!' chanting, and it was really fun and exciting. But a new Foreign Policy article has me thinking again. Primarily related to the Virginia Tech massacre, committed by a South Korean citizen, the article touches on Korean nationalism:

South Koreans like to boast that theirs is the world’s most ethnically homogenous country. Fending off invaders for thousands of years—first the Chinese, then the Japanese, and most recently, one another—Koreans have fought hard to defend their distinct identity. The result is a scrappy, sometimes chauvinistic national character that is often shorthanded as han minjok, meaning “one race, one bloodline.”

'Han minjok' seems to be the same thing as 'Han Min Guk' - it's just a variation on the transliteration from the Korean alphabet. The whole 'one race, one bloodline' thing is a bit, uh, what's the word I'm looking for...racist, no? Seems that way to me. And the "world’s most ethnically homogenous country" boast (if true) would fit in well in America, on any of America's right-wing/racist hate speech radio programs/stations.

And it doesn't seem to be the same thing as chanting 'USA! USA!' - as fascist and horrible as that is, too - but at least it's not racist, or not outwardly racist. There's kind of a built-in bigotry that nationalism brings - say, where white American folks chanting 'USA! USA!' think they're inherently better/smarter/stronger/faster/etc than white French folks - but bigotry, while horrible, is not racism. Racism is saying that your race - your bloodline/color/etc - is inherently better than another. This is my dispute with the 'Dae Han Min Guk!' chant.

I don't like thinking I could be in the same company as the Rush Limbaughs of the world.

Am I wrong on this?

Suicidal Tendencies - Send Me Your Money

Atheism is hot these days. Just ask this guy.

I just ran across an old-school Suicidal video that was too good to pass up:

More suicidal here, and here.

Stanford Living Wage CommUNITY Day 2007

Let's go:

On April 15th, Stanford will celebrate "Community Day," inviting the broader community to come and witness the variety of organizations, programs and resources that make Stanford the rich and diverse place it is.

At the same time, we will hold "CommUNITY Day" to express that the "Stanford Community" includes the workers!

CommUNITY Day will be an opportunity to recognize and celebrate the role of workers in sustaining and contributing to our community.

CommUNITY Day will also express that Stanford must not just recognize the workers, but respect them. This means following through on its promise to provide a Real Living Wage to all campus workers.

Come join us for games, food and performances that will be fun for the whole family! Bring your community organization or religious congregation!

America Sucks

Hang around me long enough and you'll hear me express sentiments to this effect. Most people are at least surprised, if not completely taken aback - even people who have traveled. I can't understand how they don't see what I see. Well, Chris Hedges sees what I see:

The Gilead Baptist Church, outside Detroit, is on a four-lane highway called South Telegraph Road. The drive down South Telegraph Road to the church, a warehouse-like structure surrounded by black asphalt parking lots, is a depressing gantlet of boxy, cut-rate motels with names like Melody Lane and Best Value Inn. The highway is flanked by a flat-roofed Walgreens, a Blockbuster, discount liquor stores, a Taco Bell, a McDonald's, a Bob's Big Boy, Sunoco and Citgo gas stations, a Ford dealership, Nails USA, The Dollar Palace, Pro Quick Lube and U-Haul. The tawdry display of cheap consumer goods, emblazoned with neon, lines both sides of the road, a dirty brown strip in the middle. It is a sad reminder that something has gone terribly wrong with America, with its inhuman disregard for beauty and balance, its obsession with speed and utilitarianism, its crass commercialism and its oversized SUVs and trucks and greasy junk food. It is part of our numbing assault against community and connectedness.

Portovert, Pervert, etc.

If you were going to start a new magazine, what would you name it?

How about, something that sounded strikingly similar to the word 'pervert'?

The Boston Marathon is Pathetic

At least, the people who run it are. They couldn't even get it on a national tv station - like ESPN2. I mean, there are how many millions of runners in the U.S.? 10? 20? 40? more?

Even soccer games are televised on tv these days!

The race happens on a Monday morning. Worker bees are dying for an excuse to not start working until Monday afternoon. And The Boston Athletic Association sells the broadcast rights to the marathon to Versus. Seriously - don't ask, because I can't tell.

WTF?

Josh Wolf is Out!

He had to give up his video, which has nothing on it, but he doesn't have to testify. Glad he's finally out.

Blair uses sailors as bait

Bush needed some pre-summer tension-building from an outside partner - and Blair delivered perfectly - he gave a dozen or so of his troops to Iran:

Iranian state television aired new video Sunday showing two of the 15 captured British sailors pointing to a spot on a map of the Persian Gulf where they were seized and acknowledging it was in Iranian territorial waters.

Britain's Foreign Office immediately denounced the video, saying it was "completely unacceptable for these pictures to be shown on TV."

Bushco will stay cool for the summer, then the propaganda blitz will crank up again in late August, just like how they delivered the Iraq War.

What I'm more curious about, though, is what commander sacrificed his own men 'for the greater good'? Those orders had to come down from on high. Maybe they were typed or written somewhere, but probably not - at least, not explicitly. Still, someone knowingly put those men in a compromised position. Who is the British commanding officer responsible for sending those men into captivity? We deserve a name.

...would like to add that use of the term 'hostage' in referring to those held by Iran is completely illegitimate, unless we also refer to the thousands held by the U.S. in Iraq as hostages. And the folks we got locked up in that other torture haven, Gitmo. And the thousands of Palestinians that Israel has locked up in its torture chambers.

Not to mention - and this is a big one - the U.S. kidnapped an Iranian diplomat. That person is an official member of the Iranian government, and the U.S. kinapped him and had held him hostage for two months already, by the time this new hostage crisis occurred. On the scale of seriousness of breach of international law, if kidnapping an unarmed civilian is a '1', then kidnapping a diplomat is a '10'.

Bush decided to let the diplomat go - Blair had done his duty - we don't need to kick this thing off for another few months. In fact, if it happened too soon, the American public wouldn't buy it. We need a few more months of CNN/Fox/MSNBC/CBS/NBC/NYTimes/USAToday/WaPo/WSJ propaganda to prepare our minds for the next invasion.

...fixed typo.

SFist tries to be relevant

What would possess a website to have a little laugh at the expense of a murdered young woman?

Scandal galore on Houstonist this week: Killer Barbecues Ex-Girlfriend's Remains! Senator Offers Women Cash for Their Babies! Man Fakes Kidnapping To Slip Ball and Chain! Antique sofa miraculously preserved! Hard-Working City Bloggers Get Screaming Drunk!

Is there something funny about a young woman getting strangled, chopped up, and then barbecued?

Gitmo Justice

The Gitmo tribunals are a joke:

The first Gitmo trial has ended, but not before the defendant was stripped of two of his attorneys. Detainee #002 entered a guilty plea and will serve 9 months in an Australian prison. In return, he signed a statement stipulating that he had never been tortured or mistreated by the Americans -- despite previously reporting being beaten and deprived of sleep during his more than five years at the prison. The agreement bars him from suing the U.S. government for alleged abuse, forfeits any right to appeal, and imposes a gag order that prevents him speaking with news media for a year.

And the U.S. government is full of sick, evil bastards.