‘…(T)here has always been a certain incommensurability between political activities that depend on mass mobilization and the idiosyncratic sensibility of the aesthete—even the public-spirited, politically active aesthete. For every argument that aesthetic concerns are a luxury in the face of political injustice, there is the rebuttal that aesthetic freedom is as necessary for the human spirit as any political right. “It is not the office of art to spotlight alternatives,” wrote Theodor Adorno, “but to resist by its form alone the course of the world, which permanently puts a pistol to men’s heads.” —NewMusicBox

Hymn & Fuguing Tune: “Ten contemporary composers and performers, whose work has intersected with their own deeply held political beliefs, talk about what has inspired their music, and what they hope to achieve with it.”

An extensive interview with Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah about his growing career as a songwriter.

Diamanda Galás in conversation with Edward Batchelder; an interview in ten parts, or a complete .pdf transcript of the interview.

EDWARD BATCHELDER: The first thing I’d like to ask you about is the current project that you’re working on. I know that you have two CDs coming out in November, and one of them directly relates to the issue of music and politics. Could you start by talking about it?

DIAMANDA GALÁS: Okay. The project is Defixiones, Will and Testament. Defixiones means “curse.” Defixios were lead tablets that were placed in certain places, let’s say, on the graves of the dead to either warn people that if they touch the grave, their ancestors would come to a very bad end, or to put curses on, let’s say, circus performers, enemies of any kind, and all sorts of things. A person who has done a lot of studying on this is John Gager at Princeton. The purpose that I use it for is to discuss the graves that were decimated and desecrated by the enemies of the Assyrians, the Greeks, and the Armenians living in Asia Minor, Pontus, and Thrace. These enemies were the Turks. I use this as a basic description of the overall intent of the work, which is that we will not die in peace.

“Trying to eliminate Saddam…would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible…. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq…. there was no viable ‘exit strategy’ we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations’ mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.”

— George Herbert Walker Bush,

from his memoir, A World Transformed (1998)

[via wood s lot]

International Trepanation Advocacy Group (ITAG): “for the first time on this planet you are free to have maximum fulfillment… It is no longer necessary to follow a path and search for your true greatness…” [via bOING bOING‘s list of candidates for the week’s weirdest web links]

“President George Bush’s calls for democracy rang hollow in the Middle East, where many said on Friday they were appalled Washington was preaching liberty for Arabs while occupying Iraq.

The war on Iraq and Washington’s support for Israel in its bloody conflict with the Palestinians have antagonized many Arabs and Muslims who were already seething at the United States’ war on terror, seen by many as a battle against Islam.

And Bush’s sweeping foreign policy speech on Thursday, in which he challenged ally Egypt and foes Iran and Syria to adopt democracy, fueled Arab indignation.” Reuters

The BBC has a site devoted to coverage of Cult TV. How kind of them…

“National Public Radio will announce today the largest donation in its history, a cash bequest from the will of the late philanthropist Joan Kroc of about $200 million.

The bequest from the widow of the founder of the McDonald’s fast-food chain both shocked and delighted people at NPR’s headquarters in Washington yesterday. It amounts to almost twice NPR’s annual operating budget. ‘No one saw this coming,’ said one person.” Washington Post

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Bill O’Reilly.

This is a poll of BBC readers. Of the ten films on the list, I have seen four. Of those four, three do not belong on any ‘worst film’ list, and the inclusion of one of those makes me embarrassed for BBC readers’ film acumen.

“Why are we attracted not only to the biggest version of almost anything but also to the smallest, the weirdest, the first, the last, or the only? Why does something gain value merely because it is rare and authentic—the odd voyeuristic pleasure that comes from seeing on display the salt and pepper shakers from the mess kit George Washington may have clutched as he crossed the Delaware? Is it mere curiosity, or is it something more?” —Discover

“Gordon Graham challenges practically the whole of reigning orthodoxy in political philosophy in his remarkable book. To the bien pensants of political theory, ‘political participation’ and ‘democratic decision-making’ are all the rage, and theorists such as Amy Guttmann, Benjamin Barber, and Ronald Dahl constantly urge us on to more and more democracy. Like Hans-Hermann Hoppe in his excellent Democracy—The God that Failed, though with rather different arguments, Graham sets himself in firm opposition to this dominant trend.1 Graham is principally a philosopher of religion, and he brings to political theory the fresh perspective of an outsider.” —Mises Review

“The world’s largest iceberg has split in two after being pummelled by a powerful storm, it was reported.

B15, an 11,000-square-kilometre (4,400-square-mile) monster the size of Jamaica, was one of the biggest icebergs ever seen until it broke up last month, said the Antarctic Sun newspaper Tuesday.

The title of world’s largest iceberg now passes to C19A, near a French Antarctic base, which at 5,659 square kilometres (2,264 square miles) is about the size of Brunei.” —Yahoo!

Entrancing photo of creature found at 10,000 feet in the Pacific’s Japan Deep. —Yahoo!

“The (Israeli) court ruled the petition was not receivable.” —Sydney Morning Herald

Three drunken Finns in Nov. 2002 disastrous attempt are jailed. —The Australian

“Odin, Thor, Freya and the other Viking gods of yore will soon be providing divine authority for some marriages in Denmark.

Minister for Ecclesiastic Affairs Tove Fergo said Wednesday Forn Sidr will be allowed to conduct legally-recognized marriages.

The group, whose name mean ‘Old Custom’ in old Norse, worships gods from the Norse pantheon, like their Viking forebears from the 8th, 9th and 10th centuries.” —The Australian

“The nearest galaxy to our own Milky Way has been revealed. It is so close that the Milky Way is gradually consuming it by pulling in its stars. But it will be few billion years before it is entirely swallowed up.

The previously unknown galaxy lies about 25,000 light years from Earth and 42,000 light years from the centre of the Milky Way, beyond the stars in the constellation Canis Major. It is twice as close to the centre of our galaxy than the previous record holder, the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy, which was discovered in 1994.” —New Scientist

48 human volunteers —New Scientist

“There’s sweet news about hot cocoa: Researchers at Cornell University have shown that the popular winter beverage contains more antioxidants per cup than a similar serving of red wine or tea and may be a healthier choice.

The study adds to growing evidence of the health benefits of cocoa and points to a tasty alternative in the quest to maintain a diet rich in healthy antioxidants, chemicals that have been shown to fight cancer, heart disease and aging, the researchers say.” —Science Daily

“This week, a respected biologist was led into a Texas courtroom. He faces no fewer than 68 charges and could end up in jail for the rest of his life. Has the FBI finally caught the anthrax attacker?

No. Thomas Butler merely reported that 30 vials of plague bacteria had gone missing from his laboratory at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. Many of Butler’s colleagues believe the justice authorities are making an example of him as part of a wider effort to ensure that scientists take more care with material terrorists might exploit.

Whatever the outcome of the case, that effort is having repercussions that go far beyond the fate of one scientist. New Scientist has contacted more than 20 prominent figures in the US working in bioterror-related fields.

Some refused to talk, and most who did did not want to be named. Their comments paint a disturbing picture. Some scientists, for instance, are refusing to work on projects involving agents that could be exploited as bioweapons, even though the US government is providing massive funding to boost such research.

Others are considering abandoning existing work. Irreplaceable collections of microbes essential for managing and tracing outbreaks, bioterrorist or natural, are being destroyed simply because labs cannot comply with the new rules.” —New Scientist

Why not to be ‘bright’ —Butterflies and Wheels

“Could a single trip on a piece of African rootbark help a junkie kick the habit? That was the claim in the 1960s, and now iboga is back in the spotlight. But is it a miracle cure? Daniel Pinchbeck decided to give it a go. And life, he says, will never be the same again… ” —Guardian.UK

Related: Peru seeks tribal cure for addiction:

Peru is home to the coca leaf, the main ingredient of cocaine.

In the last few years it has also become home to a new way of confronting drug addiction: by returning to Shamanism and traditional Amazonian medicines. —BBC

Among others, they are talking about the indigenous hallucinogen ayahuasca.

Also: Cannabis can help MS sufferers:

“Claims that cannabis can relieve the symptoms of multiple sclerosis have been reinforced by results from the world’s largest ever trial of the medicinal effects of the drug – but only just.

The main improvements seen were in subjective measures of symptoms, i.e. those reported by the patients, rather than in those measured using standardised tests.” —New Scientist Only subjective symptoms?? What could be more important?

Dinosaur secret revealed: “They lumbered cautiously on land. But when the biggest dinosaurs in history hit the water, they floated like giant inflatable pool toys, new Canadian research has found.

‘They were like colossal corks,’ says Donald Henderson, a University of Calgary researcher who says he may have solved a mystery about the long-necked dinosaurs that were the biggest creatures to ever walk Earth.”

“This controversy (over call centers) recently broke out in an unlikely place, the letters column of the Times Literary Supplement. After Susan Sontag praised Indians for putting their English-language skills to work through call centres, a furious professor in New Delhi denounced her for failing to see that ‘These poor young men and women are indeed the cyber-coolies of our global age.’ In the next issue, another Delhi resident wrote that what the professor considers exploitation looks to workers like a way to acquire skills as well as income. He acknowledged that while ‘it isn’t much fun to persuade someone in Detroit to pay his credit card bill’ (yet another function of call centres), it builds negotiating skills.

It is an iron law of international economics that the Exploitation Police will swoop down and denounce anyone who creates new jobs, particularly in relatively poor areas. The common complaint is that call-centre companies set up shop in places (New Brunswick is a good example) where they can find well-educated workers at relatively low wages. The Exploitation Police make this sound almost criminal. In fact, it’s the way capitalism has always expanded and the way that poor regions have traditionally turned themselves into less poor regions. To consider this sort of change deplorable is to miss the fact that business lives by ingenuity and perishes when it ceases to find new and cheaper ways to get its work done.” —National Post

William Mitchell says that networks should become so important to us, we become part of them. “Shot through with post-dotcom sobriety, Me++ describes the move from virtual reality – the old 90s idea of the net as a separate, alternative realm – to ‘augmented reality’ (AR), in which ubiquitous computing and mobile wireless networks are used to reconnect us to the real world.” —Guardian.UK

The Bush agenda behind the ‘partial birth abortion’ ban. —Alexandra Walker, Tompaine.com

The irony of CBS’ wimpy cancellation of the Reagan biography (Tompaine.com) under conservative pressure, it occurs to me, comes when you juxtapose the story with the Terry Schiavo saga in Florida. It has long stuck in my craw that rightwing reverence for the two-bit actor’s machine-made performance as President (in which he gutted decades of social reform and set an ongoing precedent for American cannibalization of the poor and disadvantaged) has led lawmakers to abandon a longstanding precedent and memorialize Reagan by naming airports, highways, buildings, bridges and whatever after him while he is still alive. One way to think about it is as a covert acknowledgement that Reagan’s advanced Alzheimer’s dementia amounts to a living death, that the man they knew is already long gone, even though his body still breathes and circulates blood. Isn’t there some incongruity, then, with the conservative cause celebre of refusing to let go of illusions about Schiavo and fighting dirty to keep her alive at all costs?

The only real discussion of race in today’s America is in a comic strip. “Of course, the real funnies are on the front pages of most papers these days. That’s where you can see a lot of black faces. The media love to cover black people on the front page. After all, when you live in a society that will lock up about 30 percent of all black men at some time in their lives and send more of them to prison than to college, chances are a fair number of those black faces will end up in the newspaper.

But to be honest, the newspapers don’t just show bad black. They have ‘good’ black people they cover too! Like Clarence Thomas. And Condoleezza Rice. See, they care.

Oops. There I go playing the race card. You see, in America these days, we aren’t supposed to talk about race. We have been told to pretend that things have gotten better, that the old days of segregation and cross-burnings are long gone, and that no one needs to talk about race again because, hey, we fixed that problem.” —AlterNet

Everyone is covering the report in Lynch’s ‘authorized biography’ that she was raped by her Iraqi captors. This is the story that should get more attention from a public with less prurient interest: “Former prisoner of war Jessica Lynch has accused the military of using her capture and dramatic nighttime rescue to sway public support for the war in Iraq.

Lynch said she’s bothered by the military’s portrayal of her ordeal in Iraq. She said the U.S. military manipulated the story of her dramatic rescue — and shouldn’t have filmed it in the first place.” —Omaha Channel News

This is bizarre. (BBC) The British press is legally barred from specifying what the allegation against the Prince is, but offers bountiful coverage of his denials. The Guardian did, at least, win a court battle allowing it to say who made the allegations against the Prince, a former royal aide. The fact that the claims cannot be specified has not stopped Royal spokespeople from smearing the witness’ credibility with suggestions he is psychiatrically unstable. The Guardian said:

This newspaper is not publishing the actual allegations. Not only do they differ from the highly coloured rumours about royal affairs which have surfaced recently in the tabloids, but we also have no reason to believe the allegations are true. The saga shows the extraordinary lengths to which both sides are going in the bitter battle between scandal-hungry tabloids and an increasingly bruised royal household.

Six more.

Paul Krugman: “What Howard Dean meant by his flag remark was that Democrats must make the case to working Americans of all colors that the right’s elitist agenda isn’t in their interest.” —New York Times op-ed. I agree with Krugman that Dean’s remark could have been better phrased, but that his Democratic rivals should be ashamed of themselves for the way they are going after him. The pundits on the talk shows have focused on Dean’s unusual integrity for not excusing or retracting his statement under fire. I think Dean is proving himself to show grace under fire despite innuendoes about his non-Presidential volatility. But more importantly, he is keeping his ‘eyes on the prize’ — Dubya and the Republican abuses of the worst administration this country has seen int he post-war era — rather than descending to the level of politics as usual of several of his hack rivals.

Review of The Matrix Revolutions: “Everything that has a beginning has an end.’ This sentence appears on the front page of the production notes handed out at press screenings of ‘The Matrix Revolutions,’ which opens worldwide today. It is also uttered by the Oracle (Mary Alice) in response to a question from Neo (Keanu Reeves). ‘Where is this going?’ he wants to know. ‘Where will it end?’ Neo may be the One, but he can hardly be the only One posing such questions. The talk of endings in this, the third and ostensibly final movie in the series, is so insistent that you may wonder whether the Wachowski brothers, who wrote and directed it, felt the need to reassure the audience, and perhaps themselves, that it was really, finally over. There are still a few loose ends that might be spun into future sequels ” —A.O. Scott, New York Times

While the news about the confession in the Green River killings has been prominent, I am (peripherally) involved in another criminal justice story. One of my closest co-workers at the hospital was a 9-year-old girl out for a bicycle ride with her parents in a state forest in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1977 when her mother took a fork in the trail and was brutally murdered. Despite intensive efforts, no leads appeared in the case until the late ’90’s, due to dogged efforts by a detective in the Massachusetts Cold Case Unit who was fascinated by the case since he was a little boy and his father was the police chief of Plymouth when the murder occurred. The stuff of television, and in fact the case was featured in a 1999 CBS 48 Hours (scroll down to the last case). It took nineteen years to identify a suspect, two further years to charge him, and then five more years before the suspect came to trial. Today the prosecution wraps up the presentation of its case and it goes to the jury (the defense is not calling any witnesses). My friend and her family have had to endure reliving the events, confronting the depravity of her mother’s accused murderer, hearing grisly forensic testimony reconstructing the crime and her mother’s injuries, all with the knowledge that they may have to find from this some other closure than a conviction. Here is what she says as she heads to court today:

Please know that I am not expecting a guilty verdict. I am hoping people will keep their hopes and expectations reasonable. The DA and all those involved have certainly shown they have done the absolute best job they could do. There just may not be enough evidence to convict him, but we got this far and mom has had her days in court. For me, the verdict is a formality. It is for society. I know in my heart and mind what I feel and believe. My primary goal from this process was to get information as to what happened and I am getting so much more info than I ever thought I’d get…and so for me the process has worked.

My heart is with you and your family, Pam…

“The Moon slides through the Earth’s shadow this Saturday night / Sunday morning (November 8/9)

giving skygazers in the Americas, Europe, Africa, and western Asia a chance to enjoy a total lunar eclipse. As lunar eclipses go, this will be a brief one though, with the total phase lasting only about 25 minutes. The orientation and relative size of the Earth’s shadow and the Moon’s trajectory are illustrated in this thoughtful animation showing the full Moon moving up from the lower right, entering the penumbra or outer portion of the shadow region, and then passing well below the center of darker inner shadow region or umbra. The total eclipse phase begins at 1:06 Universal Time, November 9 (8:06pm EST Nov. 8) when the Moon is completely within the umbra. While the off-center passage guarantees a short total phase, it also makes it likely that this November’s eclipsed Moon will be dramatically visible and colorful with a brighter rim along the southern edge.” —Astronomy Picture of the Day