DRB’s Friends

til the 12th of always - she walks my hallways

nobody@vox.com(karlos) — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 08:37:14 -0700

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voodoo - f13 mix - take a second of me

nobody@vox.com(karlos) — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 08:34:21 -0700

f13 voodoo a

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and beth sings - it could be sweet - like no other

nobody@vox.com(karlos) — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 06:51:49 -0700

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and amy winehouse sings

nobody@vox.com(karlos) — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 05:29:22 -0700

They told me to go to rehab and I said no no no.
But hold on do you have lots of drugs there ?
and they said yeah yeah yeah
Are the drugs all free there ?
and they said yeah yeah yeah
They told me to go to rehab and I said yeah yeah yeah
Can all my mates come with me ?
and they said no no no
Well I don't care if the trips are free so hell, Yeah Yeah Yeah

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Is that gospel, George?

nobody@vox.com(Snowy) — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 02:43:22 -0700

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23974617-12377,00.html

By Kim Christian | July 05, 2008

Blessing to buy papal souvenirs

CATHOLIC pilgrims and the public will be able to buy papal mementos after Sydney's archbishop gave his blessing to indulging in "a little commercialism".

Shoppers will be able to buy World Youth Day (WYD) souvenirs such as special WYD rosary beads, Pope Benedict XVI baseball caps, rugby jerseys and even teaspoons featuring a photograph of the pontiff.

Sydney Archbishop Cardinal George Pell opened one of at least four merchandise stores to be erected in Sydney for the six-day WYDay event.

Cardinal Pell said the church was not looking to make a profit from merchandise sales.

“The church doesn't expect to make a profit,” Cardinal Pell said.

“It was never a moneymaking venture.”

He said he hoped the company established to run WYD merchandising, Event Merchandising Group, made a profit.

“There's nothing immoral with a little commercialism,” Cardinal Pell said.

“Our way of life is built on commercialism, on trade, on industry, on finance and people have got a right to make a living out of doing a good thing, which is spreading Christ's message in a modern way.”

He said he expected merchandise, such as the “WYDGET” token trading bracelet, to be a big hit with pilgrims.

Chief Executive of Event Merchandise Group John Cooper said a “small percentage” of merchandising profits would got to the Catholic Church to help fund World Youth Day.

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Hitchens, you fat fraud, you supported the killing, maiming and displacement of millions of people.

nobody@vox.com(Snowy) — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 02:23:42 -0700

http://www.alternet.org/rights/90292/?page=entire

Warmongerer and neocon Christopher Hitchens just noticed that waterboarding is torture!

Hitchens

Stop the presses! Christopher Hitchens just noticed that waterboarding is torture!

Hitchens announced the news like he'd brought it down from Mount Sinai, in a Vanity Fair article. "Believe me," he told a waiting nation, "it's torture." Well, yeah. It usually is, when it happens to you. When it happens to somebody else, it's "extreme interrogation." I thought everybody over the age of 5 knew that, but as usual, I misoverestimated the media. Hitchens' tame little torture session is the biggest S&M video on the web since "9½ Weeks."

Hitchens' video is totally fake -- there's even soft-rock background music playing on the video, better music than you usually get at the dentist's office, and his "interrogators" treat him more like a client getting a mud pack at a spa than a real suspect in Iraq. That makes it even more disgusting that Hitch caved in after only 11 seconds of having water poured over a towel on his face. Eleven seconds! Think about the timeline here: For five long years he supported this stuff when it was happening to other people. Once it happened to him, he needed exactly 11 seconds to see the light.

Of course if Hitchens had been a real Iraqi suspect, they'd never have had to waterboard him at all. They do that to tough suspects, not wimps like him. In a real torture cell, everything would be a lot tougher from the start. For example, Chris wouldn't be in the nice dress shirt and slacks he's wearing on the video. He'd be naked -- a gross image, what a lifetime of booze and lying does to the body, but we have to be hard-nosed here -- because keeping the prisoner naked is basic interrogation strategy, especially with a culture as horrified of gettin' nekkid as Arabs are. You'll recall that in those Abu Ghraib pictures, the prisoners were naked.

So that's fake already, and the video gets faker as it goes. The guys "interrogating" him are fat, middle-aged, mild-mannered dudes. They don't even yell at him. A real suspect in Iraq would be snatched off the street, smacked around until he passes out, stripped and dumped into a cell with a hood over his head. He wouldn't be able to sleep off his misery, either, because sleep deprivation is one of the oldest, most effective tortures. The interrogators would maintain this schedule for hours, days, weeks, depending on how well and how soon the victim breaks down. When they think he's ready -- like, they notice with satisfaction that he screams like a steam whistle every time he hears footsteps in the corridor -- they drag him out of his cell and strap him onto that waterboarding table.

Well, Chris is a busy man and didn't have time for all that background research, so what you see in this video is a guy who hasn't been so much as slapped or yelled at. Who probably just finished a 10-martini lunch at some upscale restaurant. That's ridiculous enough, but the interrogators make it even more ridiculous with their little introduction to the torture session. One guy says, "All right, listen up, I'm going to give you some instructions ..." Then he tells the fat man on the table, "We're going to place metal objects in each of your hands," and if he feels "unbearable stress" at any time, all he has to do is drop the objects and they'll stop.

I've had dentists who did root canals on me without being that nice; they stuck to "this is going to hurt." More to the point here, putting the victim in "unbearable stress" is, uh, the whole point of torture, or "extreme interrogation," or whatever you want to call it. The last thing you'd ever do is give the victim a sense of power, like he can stop the process by dropping a "metal object" on the floor.

That kind of etiquette is what you get from those expensive dominatrixes English dudes like to get whipped by, or those nerf BDSM sites that talk about "consensual power exchanges." What reminded me most of those BDSM sites is the "code word" they tell Hitchens he can use to stop the waterboarding: "That word is red, R-E-D." They ask him if he understands and he says, "Yes, sir." That "sir" only added to the ridiculous porn feel here, like Hitchens was paying a hundred pounds an hour to have Baron Whipsong or Lady Cruella, whichever way he likes it, wear out their riding crop on his eager little bum.

The real thing isn't nearly so nice. After you've been beaten on bruises (which hurt more each time) for a few days, they slam the cell door open, screaming abuse at you, kick you to your feet and take you down the corridor, slamming your head into the walls as often as they feel like it, and strap you down. And all the time they're screaming: "OK, you worthless (Arabic obscenity here) -- We're through with you! We don't even want you any more! Ever drown before, (obscenity)? Ever go swimming head-first, (obscenity)?"

If you remember "The Big Lebowski," you can get a better idea of what waterboarding is like by remembering the scene where the Dude walks into his bungalow, where Jackie Treehorn's yuppie thugs are waiting for him. The blond one grabs the Dude's hair and runs him headfirst into the toilet, screaming, "Where's the money, Lebowski? Where's the money, shithead?" See, the point is to show overwhelming, terrifying power over the suspect, not give him little safety words.

But all that niceness doesn't matter once the torturer's helper takes a plastic milk container full of water and pours it, bit by bit, over a towel covering Hitch's face. The "metal object," whatever it is, drops after 11 seconds. And of course these fake interrogators are all over Hitch, making sure he's OK. That's also totally fake, but why bother listing any more fake features of this nonsense? The truth is that anybody who's been through as much dentistry as I have knows that nobody holds out under torture. It's not just the pain, it's the fear of the pain. I used to try to be a hero like the ones in my war books every time I went to have a root canal from the mean old Armenian who did our dental work. He scrimped on the Novocain, so I had plenty of scope to practice. And I learned the same thing any sane person knows by the time they grow up: Nobody can resist torture. Just like anybody knows what having water poured over a towel on your face is like: It's like drowning. Duh. Anybody who wanted to know that already knew it.

So why does Hitchens make such a big show of just realizing it now, after five years of supporting it? To me, the answer's easy: He's withdrawing from Iraq, making a big Jesus-on-the-cross demonstration, like a public punishment, for supporting the war all this time. By getting himself tortured in this half-assed way, he gives himself a reason to see the light, desert from the Neocon forces before it's too late. Karl Rove won't be happy, though, because the last thing the GOP wants is for people to start realizing what we're actually doing in Iraq. Reminds me of the debate about abolishing flogging with the cat-o'-nine-tails in the British Navy. The first time the bill was introduced, everybody laughed at how ridiculous a notion that was. Then somebody thought of having a real cat-o'-nine-tails introduced to the House of Commons, a bloody old Exhibit A. Nobody said a thing; they just voted unanimously to forbid it.

That's all it takes to change anybody's mind about torture, getting one little 11-second whiff of it, even if it's nowhere close to the real thing. The interesting thing is not that Hitchens changed his mind; it's the strategic thinking that made him decide to do it now. The timing of this little martyr is the key here, and what it tells you is that Hitchens is declaring martyrdom and getting out. He just unilaterally withdrew from Iraq, and in only 11 seconds.

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Very, very interesting read. Not another anti US rant, but telling it like it is from (gasp) Murdoch

nobody@vox.com(Snowy) — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 01:21:23 -0700

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23968711-7583,00.html

Nirvana out of American reach

Paul Kelly, Editor-at-Large | July 05, 2008

THE energy, financial and political woes that grip the US signal a decisive shift in world power, mocking the liberal delusion that Barack Obama or John McCain can return American prestige and power to its pre-Bush year 2000 nirvana. There is no such nirvana. There is instead a new reality: the greatest transfer of income in human history, away from energy importers such as the US to energy exporters; the rise of a new breed of wealthy autocracies that cripple US hopes of dominating the global system; and demands on the US to make fresh compromises in a world where power is rapidly being diversified.

Far from the Obama-McCain contest being America's saviour, it has another dimension entirely: evidence of the generic failure of the US political system. The US struggles but seems unable to confront the world that exists. It slips into pessimism while fooling itself another irresistible revival is just around the corner. But the structural trends offer a different conclusion.

Despite cyclical fluctuations, world oil and energy prices will stay high, driven by long-run changes in supply and demand. This provokes a global wealth redistribution without precedent to oil exporters, mainly in the Middle East and Russia, that marches in tandem with China's export-driven current account surplus. It is an extensive transfer of economic power away from the US to nations that are not mainly democracies, a dynamic that is the subject of agonising review in seminars and debates in the US.

Flynt Leverett, former director of Middle East Affairs on the National Security Council, says: "The international economic position of the United States has deteriorated substantially since the new millennium. The big trends in global finance and energy markets are working against the US. There isn't any solving this problem in terms of making it go away. These are ongoing realities. The energy picture is not going to change: it is here to stay."

World oil prices have risen from $US16 a barrel in 2001 to $US140 ($145.50) a barrel today. No respite is in sight. This week the International Energy Agency warned that the oil market would stay tight for the next five years, with the capacity to expand supply severely restricted. Non-energy-rich developing nations will be crippled and confront recessions, dislocation and violence; giants such as the US will face deep political and economic adjustment. Australia is both a winner and a loser as its coal and gas export prices rise and it pays more for petrol; but it is a big winner overall from the broad-based commodity boom likely to run for decades.

Writing in the May-June issue of Foreign Affairs, US strategic analyst Fareed Zakaria, whose new book The Post-American World is reviewed in The Weekend Australian Review today, puts the oil trend into a wider context, arguing that the third great power shift of the past 500 years is under way.

The first was the rise of the Western world that began in the 15th century; the second was the rise of the US in the late 19th century; and the third is what analysts call the rise of the rest. This is the shift in power to parts (but not all) of the developing world that are "experiencing rates of economic growth that were once unthinkable" and whose total gross domestic product surpasses that of the industrialised nations. Countries driving this structural change are China, India, Brazil, Russia, the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Gulf nations, and parts of Southeast Asia.

This points to a more complex global power structure, unlike the duopoly of the Cold War or the brief US unipolar period post-1989 that so deceived US President George W. Bush. For Zakaria, "on every dimension other than military power - industrial, financial, social, cultural - the distribution of power is shifting, moving away from US dominance. That does not mean we are entering an anti-American world. But we are moving into a post-America world."

Opinions are divided about the strategic consequences. In his new book The Return of History and the End of Dreams, US analyst Robert Kagan argues that "the world has become normal again" with the smashing of hopes for a post-1989 liberal international order based on democratic values and US dominance. Instead, Kagan argues, the future will witness a range of powerful nations aspiring to be global or regional powers - Russia, China, India, Japan, Europe and Iran - working in various forms of co-operation and competition with the US.

Energy and financial trends are reinforcing. Sovereign wealth funds from nations with a current account surplus have more than $US3trillion in assets and this figure will grow to $US12trillion by 2015. The biggest funds are those of China and the Gulf Co-operation Council. This technique, in one form or another, is followed by China, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Singapore, Brazil and Russia. Leverett says the GCC will surpass China to "become the world's most important investor".

Western oil companies own only about 8 per cent of proven oil reserves. Energy-rich governments and national oil companies own more than 80 per cent, a significant structural shift since the 1970s. As demand for energy continues, the cash reserves of oil exporters and their sovereign funds will expand dramatically. This drives a transfer of global financial power and creates huge imbalances.

Where do such funds go? They finance America's excess of consumption over savings. The US needs about $US2 billion each day to finance its trade deficit. These funds are coming, increasingly, from the energy and export-strong developing nations courtesy of their governments, which control sovereign wealth fund strategies. Going into US bonds and securities, such investments constitute a heavy US dependence on the developing world's trade surplus nations.

In his comments this week to the Carnegie Council workshop in New York, Leverett said that when US politicians talked about achieving energy independence, "either they don't understand how stupid that is or they do understand and say it anyway". He argued that the classic remedy to confront the US's declining currency was to raise interest rates and balance the budget, but there was no sign "that either McCain or Obama will do this". The US debate "was about some other planet from where we are now".

In the current issue of The American Interest, Gal Luft, from the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, argues that "perpetually high oil prices will undoubtedly transform the existing world economic order". Even below today's prices, OPEC could potentially buy the Bank of America with two months' worth of production and General Motors with six days' worth. This dictates only one sensible response: non-petroleum fuels must become the US's top strategic economic priority, to be introduced over a generation.

The US is tied to interdependence with sovereign wealth funds. In the present US crisis, Bear Stearns has disappeared but other US financial institutions would have sunk without the operation of these funds.

The US is hostage to global oil markets, for years having refused to embark on radical reforms to break its consumer oil addiction. The price of such refusals will plague the present generation of politicians and consumers.

Addressing the same Carnegie Council workshop, Nikolas Gvosdev, editor of another publication, The National Interest, said the idea that the US could determine the global order has been terminated. It is not clear whether the US Congress grasps this reality. The alternative world order to the liberal internationalism favoured by the US is that defined by state-to-state negotiations and agreements. This is the favoured model of Russia and China and many other emerging countries.

This model gives priority to state sovereignty and non-interference; it asserts the international system is for states, not individuals; it contradicts New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman's theory of globalisation based on the rise of individualism via technology; and it means that the rise of the rest equates to a growing premium on state power as more countries feel able to assert their national interest.

This is the threat that dominates Kagan's book. "Chinese and Russian leaders are not just autocrats," he says. "They believe in autocracy. The modern liberal mind at 'the end of history' may not appreciate the enduring appeal of autocracy in this globalised world."

The logic of Kagan's position is that the UN Security Council is paralysed not just by different interests, it is paralysed by rival ideologies about the international system.

Kagan quotes Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying that "for the first time in many years a real competitive environment has emerged in the market of ideas" between different "value systems and developments".

China puts it bluntly: the selection of whatever social system by a country is the affair of the people (read government) of that country. This strikes at the deepest orthodoxy of US strategy and ideology. The first sentence of the 2002 National Security Strategy signed by Bush says: "The great struggles of the 20th century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom and a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy and free enterprise."

This claim is now in doubt. Such doubts will be reinforced by the shifts in global energy and financial power during the next decade. US analyst Steven Weber, who has written for The National Interest on the fracture between the West and the rest, says of Bush's declaration: "These are powerful sentiments, powerfully expressed. But they are simply not factual representations of today's operational global reality. The world doesn't look like that."

Zakaria remains an optimist. He says the choice for the US is between adjusting to a world of more diversity and viewpoints and watching a process of "greater nationalism, diffusion and disintegration" that rips apart the post-World War II order shaped by the US. He argues that the trend among emerging nations is still towards markets and some form of democracy.

In its presidential season, the US, far more than Australia, is caught with a political system unable to respond to challenges. The Obama-McCain contest is a cosmetic that conceals the nature of the US's difficulty. The downturn reflects problems in the financial system and the real economy.

For the US there is no easy solution to the structural forces driving oil, energy and financial markets. Yet much of the political debate remains in denial of these forces.

The task for the next president is to reform US economic and energy policy - to strengthen the US at home - and to conduct a foreign policy that recognises a more diverse world defined byinterdependence.

www.foreignaffairs.org
www.the-american-interest.com
www.nationalinterest.org

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kitchen fun!

nobody@vox.com(Katie) — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 00:20:33 -0700

The newest video of G4!

kitchen fun

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vox - the cookie monster invasion

nobody@vox.com(karlos) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 23:40:50 -0700

Vox cookies are seriously slowing my mac down, too many tracers and counters and stat stuff going on. My web data log displays a cookie invasion from this platofrm ; ] They could just ask us all [lmao]

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musik - just cant get enough of the sonic stuff

nobody@vox.com(karlos) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 23:38:35 -0700

Music styles 01b

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