"The scandal over conservative pundits hawking Bush administration policies in "video news releases" fizzled out weeks ago without much of an investigation into government contracts with regard to PR agencies and the use of faux reporters. But if there's been little consequence for the administration, the fallout has touched journalists on both sides of the political spectrum; a number have been accused of having government agendas, although some of the criticisms appear to have more merit than others.

Last week the New York Times covered the controversy around Mike Vasilinda, a Florida freelance journalist who produced TV stories on Florida's political scene. At the same time, he earned thousands of dollars from promotional films his production company created for Gov. Jeb Bush's office, raising questions about his independence as a reporter."

Full story at salon.com

"In our ridicule of the odd mix of credulousness with wacky skepticism we should not overlook how conspiracy theorizing--which has flourished, via the Internet, into a veritable cottage industry--reveals with glittering clarity the essential structure and purpose of originary narrative. Conspiracy theories are the myths of our age, in which the random and chaotic events of life are retrospectively ordered into a story with an explanatory purpose. (...) Culturally rich narratives are strung together from assortments of details. Therefore, the artist's task is merely to provide the details; the consumers of the art object can be counted on to weave the narrative.

There are "mythopoetic potentialities lurking in contemporary celebrity worship (...) The jumble of evanescent images, publicity, rumor, anecdote, and conflicting eyewitness testimony that surrounds celebrities cries out to be arranged into a story that makes sense, a narrative."

I referred to this brilliant essay already, but I recommend it again: "What matters is the system!" - The Beatles, the "Passover Plot," and Conspiratorial Narrativity" by Matthew Schneider (Anthropoetics 8, no. 2, Winter 2003) A must! It explains a lot!

The map of Springfield is finally available "as a vector-based PDF file. This makes the map searchable with Adobe Acrobat and allows you to make a large print without any loss of resolution."

Interesting column by Brett Stephens of The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page:

"Remember Japan Inc.? If you were a semi-sentient consumer of news in the 1980s, it was hard to avoid the impression that Japan would soon overtake the U.S. in global economic clout, if its corporations didn't just purchase the country outright. They've got Rockefeller Center! They're gobbling up Hollywood! Chalmers Johnson, Clyde Prestowitz and other soi-disant experts pronounced sagely on the invincible Japanese model of industrial organization, while the media supplied a diet of stories about how companies such as Sony or Honda remained world-beaters, year-in and year-out.

Now consider the amazing media about-face in recent weeks on Iraq. Prior to Jan. 30, dateline Baghdad was dateline Götterdämmerung. Now it's dateline Democracy. Bombs are still exploding, but we aren't reading much anymore about how we're losing hearts and minds, or how Iraq is ethnically too fractious to have a meaningful democracy. Instead, the media connect the dots between elections in Baghdad and events in Beirut, Cairo and Ramallah, and talk about 1989.

(...) The cliché is that journalism is the first draft of history. Yet a historian searching for clues about the origins of many of the great stories of recent decades--the collapse of the Soviet empire; the rise of Osama bin Laden; the declining American crime rate; the economic eclipse of Japan and Germany--would find most contemporary journalism useless. Perhaps a story here or there might, in retrospect, seem illuminating. But chances are it would have been nearly invisible at the time of publication: eight column inches, page A12.

The problem is not that journalists can't get their facts straight: They can and usually do. Nor is it that the facts are obscure: Often, the most essential facts are also the most obvious ones. The problem is that journalists have a difficult time distinguishing significant facts--facts with consequences--from insignificant ones. That, in turn, comes from not thinking very hard about just which stories are most worth telling.

(...) Look for the countervailing data. Broaden your list of sources. Beware of exoticizing your subject: If you think that Israelis and Palestinians operate from no higher motive than revenge, you're on the wrong track. Above all, never forget the obvious: that the law of supply and demand operates in Japan, too; that the Soviet Union was a state governed by fear; that Iraqis aren't rooting for their killers; that, if given the chance, people will choose to be free.

Perlentaucher, German for "pearl diver," has long been one of the best-kept secrets of the German Internet. Each day, its editors cull the pages of the feuilleton sections of the country's top newspapers and present the best of the lot. What the heck is a feuilleton page, you might be asking? Imagine a philosopher like Jacques Derrida hijacking the Washington Post "Style" pages and you'd get a pretty clear idea -- you get everything from musings and rants on the Iraq war to meditations on this season's Prada. At times insightful and entertaining, at others simply pretentious and impenetrable, the feuilleton pages play an important part of the national dialog here. Since its inception, Perlentaucher has done a great job of filtering the best of the German feuilleton into small, well-written truffles. This week, Perlentaucher launched Sign and Sight, the latest entrant in the growing English-language media in Germany and the first continental European companion to Arts & Letters Daily, a Web site American intellectuals have long known and loved. The site includes Perlentaucher's respected daily press review along with translations of a handful of editorials from major German media.

-found over at spiegel international

"There are historical reasons for the lively culture of debate in the German feuilletons. After World War II, the allies issued newspaper licences to Germans with more or less clean records. "Teach the Germans democracy," they said, "but for God's sake, don't let them express themselves: the breeding ground is still fertile." To this day, political editors have been only too happy to oblige. They have kept a close eye on their commentary pages, allowing only authorised in-house editors to have a say. This has turned the political pages into a sterile preceptory where the same people voice off time and again, leaving the chaos of the world and the miseries and joys of discourse to the feuilletons." -from Sign and Sight - The Manifesto by Thierry Chervel :

"Investigating historical mysteries is, possibly, one the most fascinating and rewarding aspects of the work of a skeptical researcher. Mysteries that appear to have no possible solutions, that could certainly be termed “cold,” can, sometimes, become clearer thanks to a more careful investigation of the original sources and also to the advancements of science. Think only of the many historical enigmas and crimes that DNA-testing techniques have helped to solve, like the riddle of Anastasia Romanoff’s claimed survival (Gill 1994, 1995) or the real origins of Kaspar Hauser (Weichhold 1998).

However, cases are often made more difficult to solve when facts get confused with imagined realities and unfounded conclusions. Eyewitness testimonies and self-styled experts, even in good faith, can alter details and hide important clues that—if untouched—could lead to radically different conclusions. In order to give you some clear examples of what I mean, I will examine one of the great tragedies of the twentieth century."

From an interesting article which has been adapted from Massimo Polidoro’s presentation at the fifth World Skeptics Congress (Abano Terme, Italy, October 8–10, 2004).

Purported “Dirty Bomb” Plot a Hoax, FBI Says

The FBI yesterday said that purported “dirty bomb” plot against Boston was a hoax, according to the Associated Press (see GSN, Jan. 25).

“There were, in fact, no terrorist plans or activity under way,” the bureau said in a statement. “Because the criminal investigation is ongoing, no further details can be provided at this time.”

The Mexican federal Attorney General’s office stated yesterday that Jose Ernesto Beltran Quinones, who had been wanted for questioning in connection to the purported plot, had admitting making the fake threat earlier this month, AP reported. Beltran was under the influence of alcohol and drugs and said the call had only been meant as a “joke,” the statement said (Brian Carovillano, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Jan. 26).

News of the potential threat against Boston created a stir over several days, and raises the question of when it is appropriate for authorities to release such information and when they should remain close-mouthed while investigating reports, the Washington Post

“Every day there comes to the various agencies within the U.S. government hundreds — thousands — of reports of everything from Martians having landed in Nevada to someone who just had a conversation with Elvis to terrorists coming with a nuclear bomb to Boston,” said former Assistant Defense Secretary Graham Allison.

“It’s one of those situations where you’re kind of damned if you do and damned if you don’t," said Allison, now at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (Denise Lavoie, Associated Press/Washington Post, Jan. 26).

copied from that fine blog by Bruce Sterling

-taken from "Punch"-magazine (GB/1938)

»21C3: The Usual Suspects«, December 27-29 in Berlin, Congress Center

HACK'EM ALL!

Die Rechtschreibdebatte als Generationenkonflikt?

Nun also wollen die Chefetagen von Spiegel und Bild feierlich zur alten Rechtschreibung zurückkehren... Man demonstriert geschlossene Bockigkeit gegen die längst vollzogenen Neuerungen, nur warum? Aus bildungsbürgerlicher Ambition, aus Reformverdrossenheit oder aus schlichter Inkompetenz? Immerhin hat Herr Aust am Sonntag in der FAZ (08.08.04) zugegeben, dass ein Großteil seiner Spiegel-Redakteure ihre Texte noch immer nach alter Schreibweise formulieren und sie hernach durchs Rechtschreibprogramm jagen müssen. Als wären diese gutbezahlten Sprachprofis über Jahre nicht in der Lage gewesen, ein paar neue Regeln zu internalisieren?! „Kafkaesk“ – nennt Aust diesen Zustand zu Recht! Einem Freelancer sollte man jedoch was husten, wenn er seine Auftraggeber mit individueller Crossover-Orthographie belästigt. Im Bereich der freien Lohnschreiber wird selbstverständlich verlangt, dass das „daß“ je nach Gusto des Auftraggebers mit oder ohne wilhelminisch „Buckel-S“ daher kommt.

Auch mehrere Jahrgänge künftiger Literatur-User wurden bereits durch die Grundausbildung geschickt. In den Schulen schreibt man halt so, wie es die Kultusminister beschlossen haben. Anders würde es wohl Probleme geben mit Versetzung und späterem Numerus Clausus. Der Pisa-Schock erhöht den Druck auf die rückverdummte Jugend. Wie soll denn ein Zehnjähriger nachvollziehen, warum sich alle fünf Jahre die Grundlagen seiner Leistungsbemessung ändern? Und wer möchte diesem Zehnjährigen erklären, wieso es wieder einmal teure Neuauflagen sämtlicher Lehrbücher geben muss, während an baufälligen Berliner Schulen sogar die Klotüren fehlen?

Springer-Vorstand Mathias Döpfner macht sich Sorgen um die abnehmende Schreib- und Lesefähigkeit der jungen Generation. Die junge Generation sollte sich Sorgen machen um die Medien- und Technikkompetenz der älteren Generation. Ob nach alter oder neuer/alter Rechtschreibung - längst haben Tastaturen größeren Einfluss auf das Schreibverhalten als alle Regelwerk-Bastler zusammen. Welche Kids nutzen Buchstaben, die beim SMSen erst an fünfter Stelle erscheinen? Groß- und Kleinschreibung macht das Chatten sowieso zu langweilig. Fortgeschrittene digitale Kommunikation nutzt nicht mal mehr den schönen deutschen Umlaut. Wie sollte der auch in einem globalisierten japanischen Internet-Café wiederzuerkennen sein?

Ob das Update besser oder schlechter war als die Diktion der letzten 50 Jahre sei dahingestellt. Es ist nun einmal da. Und jene Kulturschaffenden, die an liebgewonnenen Schreibgewohnheiten festhalten, erscheinen zunehmend als Dinosaurier. Einflussreiche Dinosaurier. Denn die konservativen Kultusminister berufen willfährig neue Gremiensitzungen ein. Es ist ja auch ein zu attraktiver Sommerlochfüller zur Ablenkung von gravierenderen Reformen. Hartz nimmt den Kindern ihre Sparbücher weg, Studiengebühren werden künftig nicht billiger, Bildungseinrichtungen jedoch schlechter ausgestattet ... als sei es den heutigen Entscheidern nur daran gelegen, einen ganz neuen Aspekt von „white trash“ und unqualifizierten Arbeitslosen zu generieren. Hauptsache die Kinder schreiben dabei so, wie ihre Großväter es gelernt haben??!!

Während unserer ärmlichen Schulzeit kursierten noch die verschiedensten Goethe-Ausgaben. Es hat niemanden gestört, dass der Weimarer Lektor anders korrigierte als ein Reclam-Bürohengst aus den 60ern. Man las den Text als Dokument seiner Zeit - und sei es in Fraktur. So wird es auch den Kempowskis und Grass’ ergehen und nicht zuletzt den Redaktionen: Spiegel, FAZ und Bild als Dokumente ihrer besten Zeiten?! Welche Jugendlichen konsumieren überhaupt noch solche Altherren-Blätter? Letztlich ist Sprache ein Mittel zum Zweck. Nur mit der Rücknahme der Rechtschreib-Reform wird das gebildete Abendland der 68er-Generation wohl kaum zu retten sein. Also wird weiter gezetert: Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam!

"President Bush doesn't spend much time poring over news coverage because it would just muddle his thinking and bring him down, he told the author of a new, admiring book about his presidency. (...) "Mr. Bush thinks that immersing himself in voluminous, mostly liberal-leaning news coverage might cloud his thinking and even hinder his efforts to remain an optimistic leader," Sammon writes.

'I like to have a clear outlook,' Bush told Sammon, who is also a political analyst for Fox News. 'It can be a frustrating experience to pay attention to somebody's false opinion or somebody's characterization, which simply isn't true. . . . (...) I don't watch the nightly newscasts on TV, nor do I watch the endless hours of people giving their opinion about things. . . . I don't read the editorial pages; I don't read the columnists."

Full story in the Washington Post

The story of Michael Moore's new movie continues after opening in Cannes last night. This whole thing tells you a lot about freedom of the press and artistic rights in the corporate controlled USA. Go, Mike, kick their asses! Here is the latest scoop:

"Miramax chiefs to buy Michael Moore's documentary from Disney (AP)

"Los Angeles-AP -- The heads of Miramax Films are planning to buy back a controversial documentary the company was blocked from releasing. Bob and Harvey Weinstein plan to buy back filmmaker Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit Nine-Eleven" and distribute it themselves.

Under the deal, the brothers, who have a thorny relationship with parent company Disney, would not be able to distribute the movie through Miramax. They would have to find a third-party company.

Moore's film criticizes President Bush's handling of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and connects the Bush family with Osama bin Laden's.

Disney chief executive Michael Eisner said last week that the company did not want a film in the middle of the political process'' because he believed that theme park and entertainment consumers do not look for us to take sides.''

Miramax co-founder Harvey Weinstein spent about $6 million on the film. He and his brother would have to repay Disney for the investment, and would likely insist on a deal that cuts Disney out of any future profits.

A similar deal was worked out in 1999 when Disney forced Miramax to give up filmmaker Kevin Smith's Dogma,'' which took an irreverent approach to Catholicism with modern prophets, angels and apostles in a bid to stop the end of the world. Lions Gate Films eventually picked up Dogma.''

We're very happy that Disney has agreed to sell `Fahrenheit 9-11' to Bob and Harvey,'' Miramax said in a statement. Bob and Harvey look forward to promptly completing this transaction.''

Eisner confirmed the planned deal Wednesday afternoon in a conference call with financial analysts. He also lamented the negative press he and Disney received by refusing the film. ``There's not much that we can do with Miramax that's not carried in the press,'' he said.

In France, ``Fahrenheit 9-11'' was making its world premiere Wednesday as one of 18 films in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, where many new movies find business partners for distribution.

Moore did not immediately return a call for comment.

The confrontational director won an Academy Award for his 2002 documentary ``Bowling for Columbine,'' about the Columbine High School shooting and U.S. gun control policy. The film earned $21.5 million at the box office, making it the highest-grossing documentary ever."

(c) by Associated Press.

MORE AT MICHAELMOORE.COM

"The administration's cynical approach to damage control was on display at the second Senate hearing on the prison abuse scandal." Full story in the English edition of the infamous german news-magazine Spiegel which has just started a cooperation with the New York Times.

"Blog-Tracking May Gain Ground Among U.S. Intelligence Officials" at yahoo.com

Sharpeworld is back and the new mascot, a gigantic hamburger, fucking rocks.

"Lately I've seen a few TV ads for Sony's upcoming movie, Underworld. My main thought was really goth-like scenes reminiscent of the Matrix, but apparently its a vampires vs. werewolves film. And that plot, my friends, has the folks at White Wolf pissed -- according to a lawsuit they filed against Sony, White Wolf invented the idea of vampires and werewolves fighting each other, as well as a host of other horror film ideas."

Fully story in Brian Carnell's weblog

Simon Waldman posted scans of various pages from an issue of "Homes and Gardens Magazine" published in November 1938. .

Then he had to take them down because the magazine didn't want to be associated with the story anymore. Nonetheless, the story called "At home with Hitler" is an interesting piece of history.

I always forgot to mention arbeiterring, the publishing house of John Saxon who also plays in The Weakerthans if that makes you buy more of their fine books.

Dem Ameisenhaufen seine Videoabteilung mit verrückten Clips.

Here's an interesting site about the media coverage of american history. Some rare clippings from the 19th century and all that. Read about the moon-hoax or about that martian astronaut from 1897. I didn't know that Edgar Allan Poe was a prankster..

Here's a new site which translates any website doggy-style. Just Ask Snoop!

The fans of Battlestar Galactica, one of the worst series ever, are on the barricades to protest against the new series. Why do people bother to create shitty sites like this for some Bonanza in space-crap? Why do people write stuff like this:

"Mr. Ronald D. Moore, recreating the cataclysmic events of human kind's destruction on Battlestar Galactica is deplorable considering the tension over 9/11, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, fighting in other countries and warcomingsoon for Iraq, the U.S. And the U.K. Why are you choosing to retell the story of Battlestar Galactica instead of continuing it?

Wired had a look too.

"The New Censorship does not work by keeping things secret. Are our leaders liars and criminals? Is the government run by wealthy corporations and political elites? Are we all being slowly poisoned? The answer is yes to all of the above, and there's hardly a soul on these shores who doesn't know it. The reign of George II practically revels in this perverse transparency. Oil policy created in backrooms with lobbyists from Enron and ExxonMobil. Naked pandering to the electricity industry in rolling back clean-air mandates. Accounting firms such as Arthur Andersen buying even "watchdog" liberal senators such as Christopher Dodd. Elections rigged with brother Jeb's connivance in Florida. All of the details are utterly public, reported in newspapers, television newscasts and books, yet it's perfectly safe for this stuff to be known. The genius of the New Censorship is that it works through the obscenity of absolute openness. Iraq-gate wasn't a secret. The real secret is that it wasn't a secret, and certainly wasn't a scandal. It was business as usual. The betrayal of a public trust is a daily story manipulated by the media within the narrative confines of "scandal," when in fact it's all a part of the daily routine and everyone knows it. The media makes pornography out of the collective guilt of our politicians and business leaders. They make a yummy fetish of betrayed trust. We then consume it, mostly passively, because it is indistinguishable from our "entertainment" and because we suspect in some dim way that, bad as it surely is, it is working in our interests in the long run. What genius to have a system that allows you to behave badly, be exposed for it, and then have the sin recouped by the system as a resellable commodity! I mean, you have to admire the sheer, recuperative balls of it!!!

outtake from "The New Censorship", an essay in "The Middle Mind, Why Americans Don't Think for Themselves" by Curtis White

Tons of postcards! I liked this one and that one and....

Then we got those Lesbian Paperbacks and the covers of them Vintage Paperbacks. Check out this fanzine if you want to know more.

"Concerned that information about your file-sharing username may have been subpoenaed by the RIAA? Check here to see if your username or IP address is on one of the subpoenas filed with the D.C. District Court." Brought to you by the mighty Electronic Frontier Foundation

Bitwaste also started a weblog to report experiences with the RIAA.

"Original dated collectible vintage magazines and promotional advertisements. Ads for automobiles to movie stars, vacuum cleaners to cigarettes. Magazine listings for Life to Saturday Evening Post from Fortune to Time. Old magazine covers, cards, coins, hot wheels, spoons and much more."

Spend an afternoon over at Paperboynews!

Turning Tables is the blog of one of them soldiers from the US who seems to have too much time in the desert.

<a href="www.popcultmag.com< collected some <a href="www.popcultmag.com>weird old girlie-mags with interesting ads like this one.

S-11 Redux has made the Sundance Online Filmfestival too. Here is what the producers from Guerilla News Network had to say:

"GNN presents S-11 Redux: (Channel) Surfing the Apocalypse. Culled from over 20 hours of television footage recorded over a one month period and across 13 networks, S-11 Redux is a sound-bite blitzkrieg that challenges the messages we have been fed from our mainstream media and the government it serves. Be warned - this video moves quickly and will require at least two viewings to digest its full impact. You may never be able to look at S-11 and its post-impact coverage the same way, ever again."

And the guys will also appear in public:

"Sundance-award winning producers Guerrilla News Network bring their controversial new documentary, AfterMath: Unanswered Questions from 9/11to the Washington, DC and Berlin, Germany:

Washington, DC

DC Indymedia presents... Questioning Events of 9/11: Forum and Film Showing Friday, June 20 @ 7 -9 pm Flemming Center, 1426 9th St NW @ P St (Howard/Shaw Metro) Featuring the Film: AfterMath, Unanswered Questions of 9/11

Description

Including speakers: John Judge, Washington Peace Center, 9-11 Citizens Watch Jared Ball, Organized COUP,  Khalid Rosenbaum, WPFW Volunteer Suggested $5 donation; nobody turned away for lack of funds

AND

Berlin, Germany Sunday, July 6th, 11 AM - 3 PM Eiszeit cinema in Kreuzberg, Berlin

AfterMath participant and author Nafeez Ahmed will attend and speak afterwards. The film program will include GNN's Crack the CIA and SGTV's "Bush at Booker" video. There will be a repeat the next evening, in a double feature with "Heaven on Earth" by Berlin's own Rick Minnich, a film on Branson, Missouri, the Christian fundamentalist Las Vegas. Info will be up on site soon at americansineurope.org. "