Undulating Ungulate

Well, hurrah.

Undulating Ungulate proudly presents Hit’n'Miss Aotearoa #5: Jakob.

It is with great pleasure that we present this installment, most definitely a hit.

Jakob are, in this Moose’s opinion, currently NZ’s finest band. The Napier based three piece operate in perfect harmony: Jeff’s stunningly intricate layered and delayed guitar building from intimate whispers to ferocious crescendoes, Maurice’s wall of bass shifting from melodic to bone melting in a blink, and Jason’s drums anchoring and driving the whole thing. Their epic brooding music captures the raw power of the landscape, and conveys the space and isolation of New Zealand with intense depth and emotion. Live they unleash the full immensity of the sound, lifting the audience to practically religious heights.

The show is the last night of the Low Hum tour, 26 August, 2006, at Indigo.

(The file is WMA audio – ignore the player which claims it is video. You can download it but not stream it. For whatever reason every time I try to upload it as an mp3 it fails. Sounds best for me burned as a normal CD and played on a good stereo.)

Oh, and somewhere in the middle is a new song…

(Many thanks to Jeff, Jason and Maurice.)

Filed by billy at 7:56 pm under culture,new zealand,Podcasts
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Here is a really handy trove of William S Burroughs quotes. The following are the ones that struck me.

“Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. And his hope for other people is that they will also make it exist by observing it. I call it ‘creative observation.’ Creative viewing.”

“In the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. Nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen.”

“In homosexual sex you know exactly what the other person is feeling, so you are identifying with the other person completely. In heterosexual sex you have no idea what the other person is feeling.”

“Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.”

“How I hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity.”

“In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas . . . a cosmonaut of inner space, and I see no point in exploring areas that have already been thoroughly surveyed.”

“The dogma of science is that the will cannot possibly affect external forces, and I think that’s just ridiculous. It’s as bad as the church. My viewpoint is the exact contrary of the scientific viewpoint. I believe that if you run into somebody in the street it’s for a reason. Among primitive people they say if someone was bitten by a snake he was murdered. I believe that.”

“Madness is confusion of levels of fact. . . . Madness is not seeing visions but confusing levels.”

“If you rap your knuckles against a window jamb or door, if you brush your leg against a bed or desk, if you catch your foot in a curled-up corner of a rug, or strike a toe against a desk or chair, go back and repeat the sequence. You will find yourself surprised how far off course you were to hit that window jamb, that door, that chair. Get back on course and do it again. How can you pilot a spacecraft if you can’t find your way around your own apartment?”

“We must find out what words are and how they function. They become images when written down, but images of words repeated in the mind and not of the image of the thing itself.”

“Black magic operates most effectively in preconscious, marginal areas. Casual curses are the most effective.”

“There is no line between the ‘real world’ and ‘world of myth and symbol.’ Objects, sensations, hit with the impact of hallucination.”

–

Fascinating.

Been listening to him read Junky lately. The really enthusiastic and overjoyed way he reads the part where he’s in Mexico and they get legal access to more good quality morphine than ever before for a tenth of the price it would be in the US is something else; an euphoric and emotional break from the usual scratchy death-drawl.

Filed by billy at 9:12 pm under consciousness,language,quotes
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As a Pope of Eris, I am pleased She has been honoured thus.

To make any sense out of this, and possibly to change your life, go read the principia discordia. It’s worth it. Other, nicer editions can probably be found free online, too. It’s definitely better with illustrations.

Filed by billy at 1:12 pm under the world
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Database thingy crashed overnight. Luckily it took d3vo like two minutes to fix it. Yay!

Filed by billy at 8:41 pm under meta
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Project Censored’s Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007. A touch US-centric, but completely fascinating reading. What follows is the headlines.

#1 Future of Internet Debate Ignored by Media
(this I have been following. net neutrality being swamped in favour of a commercially biased net)

#2 Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran
(as recently as Jan 2005. so now Iran is a threat because of it’s nuclear potential and must be invaded?)

#3 Oceans of the World in Extreme Danger
(hey, this could be important…)

#4 Hunger and Homelessness Increasing in the US
(remember they are morally superior and thus may dictate to the world)

#5 High-Tech Genocide in Congo
(millions dying in western sponsored proxy war for resources…shh)

#6 Federal Whistleblower Protection in Jeopardy

# 7 US Operatives Torture Detainees to Death in Afghanistan and Iraq
(but we’re keeping you safe)

#8 Pentagon Exempt from Freedom of Information Act
(cos they’ve not nothing to hide)

#9 The World Bank Funds Israel-Palestine Wall
(WTF!?)

#10 Expanded Air War in Iraq Kills More Civilians
(this was news to me… any troop pullout will be matched by an increase in air power used.)

#11 Dangers of Genetically Modified Food Confirmed
(no surprises, but how is this not news?)

#12 Pentagon Plans to Build New Landmines
(Princess Di will be rolling in her grave…)

#13 New Evidence Establishes Dangers of Roundup
(“New studies from both sides of the Atlantic reveal that Roundup, the most widely used weedkiller in the world, poses serious human health threats.”)

#14 Homeland Security Contracts KBR to Build Detention Centers in the US
(Halliburton’s subsidiary KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown and Root) announced on January 24, 2006 that it had been awarded a $385 million contingency contract by the Department of Homeland Security to build detention camps in the United States.)

#15 Chemical Industry is EPA’s Primary Research Partner
(“EPA scientists claim that corporations are influencing the agency’s research agenda through financial inducements.”)

#16 Ecuador and Mexico Defy US on International Criminal Court
(interesting… another sign of loosening grip in S.America.)

#17 Iraq Invasion Promotes OPEC Agenda
(“In December 2003, says Palast, the State Department drafted a 323-page plan entitled “Options for Developing a Long Term Sustainable Iraqi Oil Industry.” This plan directs the Iraqis to maintain an oil quota system that will enhance its relationship with OPEC.”)

#18 Physicist Challenges Official 9-11 Story
(I think I posted about this guy a while back)

#19 Destruction of Rainforests Worst Ever
(“New developments in satellite imaging technology reveal that the Amazon rainforest is being destroyed twice as quickly as previously estimated due to the surreptitious practice of selective logging.”)

#20 Bottled Water: A Global Environmental Problem
(Worldwide, some 2.7 million tons of plastic are used to bottle water each year.)

#21 Gold Mining Threatens Ancient Andean Glaciers

#22 $Billions in Homeland Security Spending Undisclosed

#23 US Oil Targets Kyoto in Europe
(“Documents obtained by Greenpeace reveal a systematic plan to persuade European business, politicians and the media that the European Union should abandon its commitments under the Kyoto protocol, the international agreement that aims to reduce emissions that lead to global warming.”)

#24 Cheney’s Halliburton Stock Rose Over 3000 Percent Last Year
(“Vice President Dick Cheney’s stock options in Halliburton rose from $241,498 in 2004 to over $8 million in 2005, an increase of more than 3,000 percent, as Halliburton continues to rake in billions of dollars from no-bid/no-audit government contracts.”)

#25 US Military in Paraguay Threatens Region
(“While U.S. and Paraguayan officials vehemently deny ambitions to establish a U.S. military base at Mariscal Estigarribia, the ICC immunity agreement and U.S. counterterrorism training exercises have increased suspicions that the U.S. is building a stronghold in a region that is strategic to resource and military interests.”)

Interesting patterns.
#2, 14, 24 and 17 – Iraq war as mechanism of private profit.

#3, 19, 20, 21, and 23 – ecological crisis and its corporate causes

#3, 11, 19 and 20 – long term food security and biodiversity risks

#1, 6, 7 and 8 – power is all about controlling access to information

#4 and 22 – no money being spent here, all the money being spent somewhere over here

For the ones which strike your interest, the articles are well worth reading in depth.

I stifle my brewing rant about the media. Grr.

Filed by billy at 2:30 pm under consciousness,the world
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There seems to be an amazing polarity in the name calling going on in world politics, somehow worse than the cretinous oversimplification of Good vs Evil. It smacks of desperation.

Islam is not even a religion in the conventional sense of the term. It is a transnational political and ethical movement that believes that it holds the solution to mankind’s problems. It therefore holds that it is in mankind’s own interests to be subdued under Islam’s rule.

This is a remarkable statement, both surreal and innaccurate, from an article by a guy who seems kind of far right and thinks the West is in danger of being defeated by Islam.

Now, for an accurate one, switch the word Islam for capitalism. Allow me.

Capitalism is not even a religion in the conventional sense of the term. It is a transnational political and ethical movement that believes that it holds the solution to mankind’s problems. It therefore holds that it is in mankind’s own interests to be subdued under Capitalism’s rule.

Cos the invisible hand will make it all sunshine and fucking roses.

Meanwhile, of late it seems the powers that be are attempting to introduce a new buzzword to obfuscate reality in favour of the desired spin: “Islamofascism”.

Thus fusing (or equating) the concepts of Islam and Fascism, which at cursory glance appear very different.

As an antidote, we present this quote from Corporate Rule = Facism by Vandana Shiva on August 8, 2006.

The Emergence of the Corporate State leads to the emergence of facism

The partnership between corporations and Governments is leading to the emergence of a corporate state – with the state using its political power to help corporations appropriate the wealth and property of citizens, and corporations using their economic power to help politicians who have helped them to crush democratic dissent. This gives a few people such power that they can rob people of all freedoms. Monopoly markets lead to quasi-military authority. The corporate state becomes a facist state. Facist dictatorship is an inevitable outcome of market dictatorship. This is what the atrocities in Bajhera Khurd in Dadri symbolize. Every village is being made a concentration camp. Every home is being turned into a torture chamber.

Now, obviously, one of these slants, while still harsh, seems at least to have be an accurate description of reality, while the other seems to be hysterical unthinking name calling, demonising something feared but not understood.

Some days I wonder if this is just a result of my own conditioning and belief systems, and wonder if it is even possible to know anything about what’s going on.

Filed by billy at 1:37 pm under politics,quotes
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Just rediscovered thisexcellent webcomic, parts of which have been living on my wall for the past few years.

Worth the read.

Filed by billy at 7:26 pm under culture
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In 2003 a documentary called the Origin of Aids was made and broadcast for the first time. It is going on the theory that AIDS developed from contaminated vaccines used in the world’s first mass immunisation for polio. That link will take you to a site summarising the argument, with many links.

Here is a direct link to the documentary, the showing of which is under legal challenge from the people implicated by it.

(via American Samizdat)

Filed by billy at 2:27 pm under the world
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This is a pet interest I have been following idly for the past few years, and a fine example of spin.

from Opium Harvest at Record Level in Afghanistan (3/9/2006)

He said the increase in cultivation was significantly fueled by the resurgence of Taliban rebels in the south, the country’s prime opium growing region. As the insurgents have stepped up attacks, they have also encouraged and profited from the drug trade, promising protection to growers if they expanded their opium operations.

“This year’s harvest will be around 6,100 metric tons of opium — a staggering 92 percent of total world supply. It exceeds global consumption by 30 percent,” Mr. Costa said at a news briefing.

He said the harvest increased by 49 percent from the year before, and it drastically outpaced the previous record of 4,600 metric tons, set in 1999 while the Taliban governed the country. The area cultivated increased by 59 percent, with more than 400,000 acres planted with poppies in 2006 compared with less than 260,000 in 2005.

From this it appears poppy growth in Afghanistan is the Taliban’s doing. (Drugs are BAD. The Taliban are BAD. America is GOOD.)

This is a remarkable memory lapse from the NY Times. Or we can just call it propaganda.

To point out how disengenuous this is, let’s compare this with a few years ago. All the following quotes are from the New York Times. Note the dates and progression.

“Taliban Poppy-Growing Ban Will Measure Afghans’ Fear
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
KHOGIANI, Pakistan, Nov. 15, 2000— Zulmai Khan has planted wheat
instead of poppies this year, and expects his income to plunge to
$400 from $10,000. [...]
If the fields are awash with crimson poppies next spring, the reclusive Mullah Omar’s claim of absolute authority will be debunked. But if his edict is obeyed, the world’s biggest source of heroin will be cut off, reinforcing the Taliban’s hold over a country ravaged by 21 years of war and lawlessness.”

” A U.N. Aide Says Taliban Is Reducing Poppy Crop
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 8, 2000 — The United Nations’ top antinarcotics official said today that the Taliban government in Afghanistan appears to be succeeding in slowing significantly the cultivation of opium poppies for the first time since the radical Islamic movement seized power four years ago.”

“Taliban Seem to Be Making Good on Opium Ban, U.N. Says
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 6, 2001 — Initial
results from a survey of opium-growing
areas of Afghanistan in recent days indicate
that the Taliban may have succeeded in
sharply reducing the annual poppy crop,
astonished United Nations narcotics-control
officials say.”

” Taliban’s Ban on Growing Opium Poppies Is Called a Success
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
UNITED NATIONS, May 18, 2001 — The
first American narcotics experts to go
to Afghanistan under Taliban rule have
concluded that the movement’s ban on
opium-poppy cultivation appears to have
wiped out the world’s largest crop in less than
a year, officials said today. ”

Note further that Afghanistan had been a centre of poppy production since the 1970s, producing about 80% of the world’s poppy.

(It is also worth noting that in 2000 the fact of the Taliban’s “governing” of Afghanistan was far from certain to the UN, while in 2006 the NYT is happy to ascribe them governance and responsibility for the opium crop of 1999.)

So, entirely left to their own devices, the Taliban effectively ended decades of opium/poppy production in one year . They did this – destroying the countries prime cash crop – during a several years long drought.

The Taliban have some hard-assed morality. They took their war on drugs seriously.

Meanwhile, there are pretty well documented strong and important links between covert US forces and the illegal drug trade (see for example The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, or Gary Webb’s Dark Alliance.)

So the Taliban destroyed poppy production over 2000/2001, presumably disrupting the CIA’s drug trade, among other annoyances. (Those annoyances were largely rectified by placing the puppet leader Hamid Karzai in power. Karzai was formerly an advisor to Unocal, the company who wanted to put a gas pipeline through Afghanistan, which the Taliban refused to allow. Under Karzai, it’s all go.)

They were invaded by America in late 2001, as the first largely unrelated target of opportunity of America’s post 9-11 “war on terror” carte blanche on unjustified invasions, ostensibly to capture ex-CIA operative Osama Bin Laden.

Could it perhaps be that the Afghani people are returning to grow poppy because it is the number one cash crop available to them in an unstable war torn region? Could the actions of the invading US imperial forces be contributing to the resurgence?

Yup.

“”By focusing aid funds away from development and poverty relief, failed counter-narcotics policies have hijacked the international community’s nation-building efforts and undermined Afghanistan’s democratically elected government. Poppy cultivation is a food survival strategy for millions of Afghans, and the United States’ and the United Kingdom’s poppy eradication policies are fuelling violence and insecurity.”- (from Opium war jeopardising Afghan future, report says,Guardian, 5/9/2006) (moose’s emphasis)

I have no pithy conclusion. Question everything.

Filed by billy at 8:52 pm under language,politics,the world
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This is a research question for my book, so I would like to tap the collective(un)consciousness.
Anything you have to say will be of interest.
Cheers.

Filed by billy at 1:46 pm under consciousness,research
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