Disinfotainment Today

The Only Daily That Comes Out Weekly

Issue #202
is brought to you by...
Flying Lasagna
Robert Anton Wilson & Paul Krassner


Google
WWW Disinfotainment Today



FREEDOM AND WEEP
Posted January 28, 2007


Open links in new window

Literary Loss
by Paul Krassner


    Mainstream media have yet to acknowledge the death of Robert Anton Wilson, prolific futurist author and countercultural icon who passed away early yesterday (January 11). He had been suffering from post-polio syndrome. Caregivers read all of his late wife Arlen's poetry to him at his bedside and e-mailed me that "he was quite cheered up by the time we left. He definitely needed to die. His body was turning on him in ways that would not allow him to rest."
    On June 19, 2006, Wilson sent this haiku (with one syllable missing) to his electronic cabal:
Well what do you know?
Another day has passed
and I'm still not not.
    We originally became friends in 1959, when his first published article graced the cover of my magazine, The Realist. It was titled The Semantics of God, and he presented this suggestion: "The Believer had better face himself and ask squarely: Do I literally believe 'God' has a penis? If the answer is no, then it seems only logical to drop the ridiculous practice of referring to 'God' as 'he.'" Wilson then began writing a regular column, "Negative Thinking."
    "In 1964, I ran another front-cover story by him, Timothy Leary and His Psychological H-Bomb, which began: "The future may decide that the two greatest thinkers of the 20th Century were Albert Einstein, who showed how to create atomic fission in the physical world, and Timothy Leary, who showed how to create atomic fission in the psychological world. The latter discovery may be more important than the former; there are some reasons for thinking that it was made necessary by the former....Leary may have shown how our habits of thought can be changed...."
    Wilson took that process as his own marching orders, altering the consciousness of countless grateful readers of his 34 books - from Sex, Drugs & Magick to the Schrödinger's Cat trilogy to Everything Is Under Control: An Encyclopedia of Conspiracy Theories - all written with the aid of that good old creative fuel, marijuana. He once told me about his process: "It's rather obsessive-compulsive, I think. I write the first draft straight, then rewrite stoned, then rewrite straight again, then rewrite stoned again, and so on, until I'm absolutely delighted with every sentence, or irate editors start reminding me about deadlines - whichever comes first..."
 
    "Various medical authorities swarm in and out of here predicting I have between two days and two months to live. I think they are guessing. I remain cheerful and unimpressed. I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying.
    "Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd."
- Robert Anton Wilson: Do Not Go Gently Into That Good Night (RIP 1/11/07, bye pal) -
 
Collectable of the Week
 
Who wouldn't want the actual rope used to hang Saddam?
 
Good Idea
 
Libya has declared 3 days of mourning over the death of Saddam and Qhaddafi is planning to build a statue of him in the capital.
 
The Egyptian Journalist's syndicate did a commemoration for Saddam, where he was declared "in rank with the greatest leaders and the national symbols of the Arab nation; those who live eternally in the minds and hearts of the Arab people like Saladdin, Omar Al-Mukhtar and Saad Zaghloul. He is one of those who sacrificed for the good of the nation and it's liberty."
 
Contest of the Week
 
The Great American Think-Off releases the 2007 question: "Which Should you Trust More - your Head or Heart?"
 
    Are we at war in Iraq today because of an emotional response to 9/11 or because the facts warranted our involvement as a correct course of action? As free thinkers in a free society each decision we make and act upon is weighed carefully between our head and heart. In the past have you made a choice based on one or the other and regretted it? Has your life been saved because you trusted your instinct and not your logic or the reverse? Which then should you trust more? Would you like to be named America's Greatest Thinker? If so let the 2007 Great American Think-Off know your opinion.
    Entering the competition is easy. Just submit an essay of 750 words or less by April 1, 2007 (postmarked date). You may send your essay in one of three ways, if through the mail send to New York Mills Regional Cultural Center, P.O. Box 246, New York Mills, MN 56567 or email to nymills@kulcher.org (no attachments) or submit on-line.

Everyone's a Comedian

The following are a sampling of REAL answers received on exams given by the California Department of Transportation's traffic school.

Q: Do you yield when a blind pedestrian is crossing the road?
A: What for? He can't see my license plate.

Q: Who has the right of way when four cars approach a four-way stop at the same time?
A: The pick up truck with the gun rack and the bumper sticker saying, "Guns don't kill people. I do."

Q: What are the important safety tips to remember when backing your car?
A: Always wear a condom.

Q: When driving through fog, what should you use?
A: Your car.

Q: How can you reduce the possibility of having an accident?
A: Be too shit-faced to find your keys.

Q: What problems would you face if you were arrested for drunk driving?
A: I'd probably lose my buzz a lot faster.

Q: What changes would occur in your lifestyle if you could no longer drive lawfully?
A: I would be forced to drive unlawfully.

Q: What is the difference between a flashing red traffic light and a flashing yellow traffic light?
A: The color.

Q: How do you deal with heavy traffic?
A: Heavy psychedelics.

Q: What can you do to help ease a heavy traffic problem?
A: Carry loaded weapons.

Q: Why would it be difficult to be a police officer?
A: It would be tough to be a dickhead all day long.
 
Gallery of the Week
Surely you know a cat who needs a suit of armor.

I Feel So Much Safer Now
 
"The FBI held the first in a series of workshops for Hollywood screenwriters to help them create a realistic portrayal of the FBI... They focused on the Islamic radicalism that has had the strict attention of FBI and the Department of Homeland Security since September 11, 2001... The FBI then discussed what they do; profiling terrorist organizations, dissecting the hundreds of daily terrorist threats, and what areas in Los Angeles are constant targets for terrorist activity."
 
    "The Wall Street Journal, in a profile of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Tuesday, quoted one of his aides saying that part of Maliki's motivation in speeding Saddam to the gallows was that he feared a secret deal sparing Mr. Hussein's life in exchange for a halt to attacks on U.S. troops. Although some reports, and some of my sources, say that precisely that deal was considered by more sensible administration officials - and why not? why not give Saddam a life sentence as part of a ceasefire agreement with the resistance? - it was never a serious option. Indeed, since the very start of the insurgency in late 2003, the United States has repeatedly rejected the idea of peace talks with the main force of the resistance, including Baath party officials, former army and intelligence officers, the clergy tied to the Association of Muslim Scholars and resistance groups like the 1920 Revolution Brigade and the Islamic Army of Iraq. Now, and so utterly predictably, virtually the entire Sunni population of Iraq is likely to line up foursquare behind the insurgents, making it immeasurably more difficult to ease sectarian and communal warfare.
    "Now, any chance that Saddam could be used as a bargaining chip to help ease a deal with the insurgents is gone, forever...
    "Last week, the army and Marines invaded the compound of a top Iraqi leader, Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the man behind some of Iraq's most feared death squads, to arrest several Iranian diplomats. The still-unexplained incident resulted in the Iraqi government taking control of the seized diplomats - who may, indeed, have been terrorist-inclined spies from Iran's Revolutionary Guard corps - and packing them off to Iran, safely. Incredibly, the assault, involving a raid on the home of the commander of Iraq's Badr Brigade, the 20,000-strong SCIRI militia, came only weeks after the turban-wearing Hakim met Bush in the Oval Office.
    "Then, like a matching bookend, on Monday U.S. troops raided and demolished the offices of Saleh al-Mutlaq, whose Iraqi National Dialogue Front is a leading Sunni political party with 11 seats in parliament. Several of Mutlaq's aides and bodyguards were killed, amid nonsensical assertions from U.S. commanders that the offices were an al-Qaeda safe house.
    "So, in about a week, the United States managed to conduct ham-handed raids on the offices of two of the biggest Iraqi political parties. In four years, it is hard to imagine anything more stupid and clumsy. Certainly, there is no plan or strategy behind any of this. By the same token, the United States meekly stood by and allowed a Shiite-led band of thugs to conduct the atrocious hanging of Saddam - knowing that it was a shameful process that could only inflame the sectarian divide even more. (And it has. Not only that, but Saddam's grave in his village near Tikrit, deep in the heart of the insurgent's base in the so-called Sunni triangle, is guaranteed to become a shrine and an inspiration to all those Sunnis who are determined to expel the United States from Iraq.)
- Robert Dreyfuss: Saddam's Death Squad Hanging -
Actual Good News

    "Two UK-based academics have devised a way to invent new medicines and get them to market at a fraction of the cost charged by big drug companies, enabling millions in poor countries to be cured of infectious diseases and potentially slashing the NHS drugs bill. Sunil Shaunak, professor of infectious diseases at Imperial College, based at Hammersmith hospital, calls their revolutionary new model 'ethical pharmaceuticals'.
    "Improvements they devise to the molecular structure of an existing, expensive drug turn it technically into a new medicine which is no longer under a 20-year patent to a multinational drug company and can be made and sold cheaply.
    "The process has the potential to undermine the monopoly of the big drug companies and bring cheaper drugs not only to poor countries but back to the UK.
    "Professor Shaunak and his colleague from the London School of Pharmacy, Steve Brocchini, have linked up with an Indian biotech company which will manufacture the first drug - for hepatitis C. Hepatitis C affects 170 million people worldwide and at least 200,000 in the UK.
    "Multinational drug companies put the cost of the research and development of a new drug at $800m. Professors Shaunak and Brocchini say the cost of theirs will be only a few million pounds. Professor Shaunak says it is time that the monopoly on drug invention and production by multinational corporations - which charge high prices because they need to make big profits for their shareholders - was broken.
    "The team's work on the hepatitis C drug has impeccable establishment credentials. But the professors' ethical pharmaceutical model is unlikely to find much favour with the multinational pharmaceutical companies, which already employ large teams of lawyers to defend the patents which they describe as the lifeblood of the industry."
Sophistimicated Doowacky of the Week
Click on any dot in this chart at No Fake News and find out who to complain to about this travesty of journalism.
 
Watch This
 
My personal choice for the best rock video ever made - Artists United Against Apartheid doing Sun City. The song by Steven van Zandt (Bruce Springsteen's band, The Sopranos) is a rocking indictment of South African politics in the '80s, the video (directed by Jonathan Demme) is spectacular, full of rapid fire editing and dozens of heartfelt performances from one of the greatest line-ups in the history of music: Peter Gabriel, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Bono, Pete Townsend, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Joey Ramone, Jimmy Cliff, Kurtis Blow, Daryl Hall, John Oates, Lou Reed, Jackson Browne, Ringo Starr, Keith Richards, Bonnie Raitt, Clarence Clemons, Nona Hendryx, Gil Scott-Heron, Afrika Bambaataa, Peter Wolf, Ruben Blades, Pat Benatar, Run DMC, George Clinton, Stanley Jordan, Ron Wood, and lots more.
 
Play This
 
The faster you type, the more enemies you kill in this excellent game.
 
Satan Doesn't Want You To Know
 
Don't Take My Word For It

"I hate good taste. It's the worst thing that can happen to a creative person."
- Helmut Newton -
 
"Washington intelligence, military and foreign policy circles are abuzz today with speculation that the President, yesterday or in recent days, sent a secret Executive Order to the Secretary of Defense and to the Director of the CIA to launch military operations against Syria and Iran."
 
"For the third consecutive day, the main corporate media units in the US-EU have not published news about the US war in Iraq, no attacks on US forces, no so-called Shi'i-Sunni sectarian violence or civil war... In fact, it has become a pattern for observers to record and analyze. Every time President [sic] Bush announces a new policy or plan in Iraq, news coverage of the war would not include any attacks for two or three days following the announcement."
 
    "At the heart of George W. Bush’s new way forward is the plan already under way to expand the US civilian presence across Iraq and complete the world’s largest embassy in Baghdad.
    "Construction of what critics call Fortress Baghdad has led to arguments inside the State Department amid fears that the overwhelming diplomatic presence will perpetuate a sense of US occupation and become a focus of local anger. 
    "US diplomats say that just as the armed forces are being stretched to breaking point, the US foreign service is suffering from low morale and operations in the rest of the world are being damaged by the diversion of resources to Iraq. 
    "Officials are also questioning why the Bush administration is sending more civilians into a deteriorating war zone, and the effectiveness of the work they can do. 
    "The embassy compound being built inside Baghdad's Green Zone covers 104 acres, making it six times larger than the United Nations compound in New York. A city within a city for more than 1,000 people, it will have its own water, sewers and electricity, six apartment buildings, a Marine barracks, swimming pool, shops and some walls 15 feet thick.  
    "The State Department has told the Financial Times that the US civilian presence in Iraq has grown considerably beyond the numbers projected for the new embassy compound, which is scheduled for completion by September 1 at a cost of $592,000,000."
 
"I fully understand they could try to stop me from doing it. But I've made my decision. And we're going forward."
 
"We're waste deep in the big muddy
and the big fool says to push on.
- Pete Seger -
 
"Habits of Thought
    1. Sturdy professionalism
    2. Make yourself hard to kill
    3. No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy
    4. First, Do No Harm
    5. The Iraqi People are not our enemy, but our enemy hides among them.
    Corollary 1: You have to look at these people as if they are trying to kill you, but you can't treat them that way.
    Corollary 2: Be polite, be professional, have a plan to kill everyone you meet."
- Sign on the wall of Sparta Base Marine camp in Iraq, from Vanity Fair, Nov. 2006 -
 
"It is the duty of the Patriot to protect his country from his government"
- Thomas Paine -
 
    "On December 19, 2006, you wrote: 'Iran held a conference to examine whether the Holocaust happened.' It would be more accurate to say '... to examine WHY the Holocaust happened.' The attendees of the conference, dubbed 'Review of Holocaust: A Global Vision'(December 11-12) concluded that, 'The genocide of Jews during the World War II aimed to justify the formation of the Zionist regime," which Ahmadinejad himself called, for apparently sound reasons, 'a fake Zionist regime.'
    "There is an excellent speech delivered by Rabbi Aharon Cohen, an Orthodox Jew, that explains 'the opposition by Orthodox Jewry to the idea known as Zionism' at the Neturei Karta website.
    "I think the conferees have some legitimate concerns and if Iran is the only place where it is legal to explore the facts then they ought not be slandered with the same old tattered Anti-Semite label, an obvious oxymoron.
    "United Press International, Dec 14, says much the same: 'Ahmadinejad says Zionists are criminals' and 'the ultra-conservative Neturei Karta Jewish sect ... doesn't believe there should be a Jewish nation until the Messiah appears.'
    "Ditto Reuters, Dec 12, 2006: 'Iran says it organized the conference to shed light on the reasons behind the formation of the state of Israel after World War Two and to allow researchers from countries where it is a crime to question the Holocaust to speak freely.' I am not reading anything about people doubting 'whether the Holocaust happened.'
    "Does Iran's President deny the Holocaust? What is this assertion based on? It is based on dispatches of 2 days - Dec. 14 2005 and Feb. 11, 2006. Both mistranslated.
    "It seems that Ahmadinejad has not gone far enough. Why not explore the present? How did the loon right get into White House Bible study groups? (What are Bible study groups doing in the White House?) And why is White House, Homeland Security, and Pentagon policy being set around Ezekiel, chapters 38 and 39?
    "At a time when organized religion has been shrinking world-wide for the past 20-30 years - attendance is flat, and collection plates are dry - how come Evangelism is running record profits and booming numbers? Where do they get their money? Where do Christian Zionists get their money? Does it have anything to do with the $2.3 trillion missing from the Pentagon or Jack Abramoff or AIPAC? Just curious.
    "How can anyone question Iranian integrity when the highest offices of the US and Israel are crawling with heavily armed, batty Holy Warriors, Dominionists, End Timers, and Armageddonites?"
 
    "On Sept. 10, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared war. Not on foreign terrorists, 'the adversary's closer to home. It's the Pentagon bureaucracy,' he said.
    "He said money wasted by the military poses a serious threat. 'In fact, it could be said it's a matter of life and death,' he said...
    "'According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions,' Rumsfeld admitted. $2.3 trillion that's $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America."
- BenFranklin2006: Rumsfeld Sept 10, 2001: The Pentagon cannot account for $2.3 TRILLION (The day before 9/11. Yep, watch the video) -
 
    "Early this year the Bush administration is to ask Congress to approve an additional $100bn for the onerous task of making life intolerable for the Iraqis. This will bring the total spent on the White House's current obsession with war to almost $500bn - enough to have given every US citizen $1,600 each. I wonder which the voters would have gone for if given the choice: shall we (a) give every American $1,600 or (b) spend the money on bombing a country in the Middle East that doesn't use lavatory paper?
    "Of course, there's another thing that George Bush could have done with the money: he could have given every Iraqi $18,700. I imagine that would have reduced the threat of international terrorism somewhat. Call me old-fashioned, but I can't help thinking that giving someone $18,700 brings them round to your side more quickly than bombing the hell out of them. They could certainly buy a lot of lavatory paper with it.
    "In 2002 the house budget committee and the congressional budget office both guesstimated the cost of invading Iraq at approximately $50bn; $500bn seems a bit wide of the mark. What's more, with over half a million dead, it means that the world's greatest military superpower has spent a million dollars for every Iraqi killed. That can't be value for money!"
 
    "Canadian wildlife officials are looking for a brave driver prepared for a 3,500-kilometre trip to take a stinky stowaway skunk back to her home in California. But the skunk, who survived a seven-day journey across the United States and into Canada without food and water, after being accidentally locked away in a transport truck, is having a hard time finding someone to give her a ride home. 'We can never give a no-spray guarantee, of course,' said Nathalie Karvonen, executive director at the Toronto Wildlife Center, which has been caring for the skunk since January 5, referring to the black-and-white striped animal's foul-smelling defense mechanism. 'It would have be somebody who would be prepared for that possibility.' Releasing her into the wild in Canada is out of the question, Karvonen said."
 
"A car engine will be destroyed when sugar is put into the fuel tank. Busted. The engine ran even better than without the sugar."
 
"Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony."
- Noam Chomsky -
 
"The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself."
- Archibald Macleish -
 
"There are men - now in power in this country - who do not respect dissent, who cannot cope with turmoil, and who believe that the people of America are ready to support repression as long as it is done with a quiet voice and a business suit."
- John Lindsay -
 
"We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder 'censorship,' we call it 'concern for commercial viability.'"
- David Mamet -
 
    "During a press conference at the Crawford Peace House on December 31, Dr. Alan Northcutt, of the Waco Friends of Peace, delivered a summary and explanation of the Johns Hopkins study published in the Lancet Journal documenting that over 650,000 Iraqis were sacrificed in America's thirst for oil. Dr. Northcutt is a pathologist who practices in Waco.
    "Northcutt said, 'The cluster survey technique used in the study is the standard and best method for assessing deaths in war situations, and is utilized by the UN, UNICEF, and the US government.' Northcutt said the study revealed that since March 2003, an additional 2.5% of Iraq's population have died above what would have occurred without conflict. 'The results of the Johns Hopkins study have been largely concealed because they reveal the magnitude of the tragedy of Bush's war in Iraq,' he said.
    "The report also estimates an additional 53,000 deaths due to non-violent causes, most of them in recent months, suggesting a worsening of health status and access to health care."
 
"And my aim in my life is to make pictures and drawings, as many and as well as I can; then, at the end of my life, I hope to pass away, looking back with love and tender regret, and thinking, 'Oh, the pictures I might have made!'"
- Vincent van Gogh's 338th letter to Theo -
 
    "You may choose, if you wish, to parrot the line that Watergate was a 'long national nightmare,' but some of us found it rather exhilarating to see a criminal president successfully investigated and exposed and discredited. And we do not think it in the least bit nightmarish that the Constitution says that such a man is not above the law. Ford's ignominious pardon of this felonious thug meant, first, that only the lesser fry had to go to jail. It meant, second, that we still do not even know why the burglars were originally sent into the offices of the Democratic National Committee. In this respect, the famous pardon is not unlike the Warren Commission: another establishment exercise in damage control and pseudo-reassurance (of which Ford was also a member) that actually raised more questions than it answered. The fact is that serious trials and fearless investigations often are the cause of great division, and rightly so. But by the standards of 'healing' celebrated this week, one could argue that O.J. Simpson should have been spared indictment lest the vexing questions of race be unleashed to trouble us again, or that the Tower Commission did us all a favor by trying to bury the implications of the Iran-Contra scandal. Fine, if you don't mind living in a banana republic."
 
"The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity - much less dissent."
- Gore Vidal -
 
"Bloody George, the lamest duck in US history, has announced to the nation that he will be sending 21,500 more troops into Iraq, which some call a 'surge,' some call an escalation, and I like to refer to as Operation Increasing Cannon Fodder."
- Cindy Sheehan: Insanity Surge -
 
"Each of the Iraqi children killed by the United States was our child. Each of the prisoners tortured in Abu Ghraib was our comrade. Each of their screams was ours. When they were humiliated, we were humiliated. The U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq - mostly volunteers in a poverty draft from small towns and poor urban neighborhoods - are victims just as much as the Iraqis of the same horrendous process, which asks them to die for a victory that will never be theirs."
 
"Think truly, and thy thoughts Shall the world's famine feed. Speak truly, and each word of thine Shall be a fruitful seed. Live truly, and thy life shall be a great and noble creed."
- Horatius Bonar -
 
"Imagine a steer in the stockyards hollering to his fellows, 'We need a phased withdrawal from the slaughterhouse, starting in four to six months.'"
- Alexander Cockburn: Head for the Exits, Now! -
 
    "Almost half the countries in the world can be classified as democratic but only 28 'full democracies', which are mostly developed nations with the exception of Uruguay and Costa Rica from Latin America according to the latest report from The Economist.
    "In 'The World in 2007', the British weekly magazine