nodoctors.com archive september 0006 |
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Looks like I'm doing the radio show this week after all. Elvis's Konspiracy Korner 30 September 0006: I strongly believe that there are nearly as many 'proper' diets as there are people (i.e. way too fucking many). I think that adopting an intensely conscious approach towards the food one eats is immensely beneficial in both materialist & magickal realms. Any specifics beyond that are righteously diverse and for the most part useless to argue over; there are exceptions. I think that when you get into the realm of dietary practices that significantly disrupt other human beings' access to food & water, or disrupt the entire fucking ecosystem, there is reason to cry 'foul'. A lot of the top shelf animal rights folks make a lot of good points, and the ALF offers many valuable lessons to any serious monkey-wrencher, but for the most part I think the animal rights movement misses the most significant angles due to their refusal to operate from a perspective of human chauvinism: essentially, it is ethically indefensible to devote massive amounts of water & grain to cattle rather than human beings. This is because human beings are in every possible sense superior to cows. This is not because cows belong anywhere other than the spot way off the evolutionary map that they would rightfully occupy if they hadn't been 'domesticated' into the "eternal Treblinka" that spits out admittedly good as well as awful food for fat people (this same spot on the map would also be reserved for the post-capitalist "pets" that pour forth glorious "unconditional love" upon millions of people that devote the majority of their waking lives to compromising all that is beautiful, just, and sustainable in this world, but I digress). One step removed, the cattle-animal rights example fits neatly into the entire agrikorp system that dominates USA and is quickly expanding its horizons: it unfailingly acts to maximize profit over a sustainable diet (or existence) for human beings. I'm not pretending that this is news, just that it is a much more valid point to spend one's energy on relative to the horrors of human beings wearing fur, or quality leather goods that far outlast & out-"green" their petroleum based "vegan" alternatives, or successfully applying brilliant and well-designed scientific knowledge that involves sacrificing a few cute li'l rats and saving/improving many, many human lives. The good news re: genetically modified organisms (GMO) in the food chain is that it is still relatively contained, at least on the market. The vast majority of GMO food available to the consumer is essentially soybean, corn, and canola oil. So if you avoid all the processed junk that is soaking in the above, and buy organic soy and corn, then you can avoid actually putting it in your belly. The bad news is pretty awful. Start with former TIH guest Jeffrey M. Smith. I cannot recommend his book Seeds of Deception highly enough. His website has a lot of free information, but it's well-designed to justly frustrate you into buying the book already. This bit sums it up pretty quickly. There is a lot more to the "controversy" over GMOs in the food chain than the abjectly propagandistic notion that the technology is simply "untested". Smith does an excellent job of explaining to the non-scientist what really happens when you forcefully insert foreign genes into a genetic sequence that has evolved over millions of years. Smith also does a good job of covering the classic arch-villain Monsanto, but this recent piece by F. William Engdahl is the real konsp angle to dig into. It's the seeds, man. This is not a new beat; Monsanto has been exposed previously for its aim to essentially "patent" basic foodstuffs and then be able to use the US legal system to "protect" the GMO staples that are carried onto non-agrikorp farms by the winds. But Engdahl digs in and spots a smooth PR move on Monsanto's part, essentially washing its hands of the development of highly valuable & highly evil "suicide seeds" that require the farmer to purchase them anew each season (rather than saving & re-using the seeds, as they have been wont to do since the dawn of agriculture), then waiting a few years and recently purchasing Delta & Pine Land (D&PL), which has been using federal dollars since 1983(!) to develop the exact same "Genetic Use Restriction Technologies" (GURT). Engdahl also pulls up these gems along the way: D&PL's largest shareholder has an interesting history in Arkansas, including formative ties to Wal-Mart and Tyson (processed 'chicken' tycoon) and BCCI (a subject big enough by itself for another Korner), as well as the Rockefeller Foundation, and Bill Clinton and his Secretary of Agriculture stooge Mike Espy. Of course, they were also tied to the current president, bailing out Harken Energy in 1987. This earlier article by Engdahl provides some even nastier perspective on how the neoliberal trade institutions are perfectly conducive to this privatization of basic human foodstuffs. I have not been able to attribute this Henry Kissinger quote outside of fringey sources, but it's a new favorite: "Control the oil and you can control entire continents. Control food and you control people." No cited sources, whatever!! (here is a current news item with some relevance - thanks kevekev.com) posted by elvis I took about 350 photos in Iran this summer, not to mention Turkey and Italy
where I was for about a week after I left Iran. But, for those who
probably are less interested in Iran than me, here's the greatest
hits. posted by kevekev.com "Hierarchy of the Authors of the Kosmos" posted by chauncey CLXPS SPXKS!! I just rec'd this from the Clxps himself via email: All right, I want to set this straight once and for all. Unable to secure the sufficient resources, and with his Mustang ready for pasture, Clops returned to the Northwoods. As he whittled a new pair, and glued his trusty steed, a phoenix rose and knew it was time to commence the Chino-Latino St. Paul style. All right, now you all pass this around and figure it out telephone-style.
posted by elvis THE BEINGS OF PULLABLABLA A quick search of blablabla will lead you to many fine unending
posted by cansafis ## “I can honestly tell you he never got tired of playing that song,” said his wife, Sharee. posted by chauncey Beginning a week from today, CansaFis and I will launch "Tankertown Year Two", a serialized comickxs story that will be posted here each Tuesday on a weekly basis. The first year of the strip is archived here. Here is an 'teaser' strip before we kick things off for real next week:
posted by elvis A trusted source just arrived back from Dillingham, Alaska, and assures me that the diabolical giant eagle discussed in this 2002 article is still terrorizing the natives. If you fabricate a simulated photograph, it's as big as a Cessna oh shit. Face it, it hates their way of life!
kevekev.com digs deeper and notes that a bird clearly got as big as a Jim Beam bottle as well:
posted by elvis BOB LOG DOG BLOG Here is my contemplative artists response to sugarbear. More to come in time.
posted by cansafis ## sunday 09/24/0006 Zi Su Ye
Taste: Spicy Function 1: Function 2: Function 3: Function 4: Contraindications: Dosage: 1-3 qian/3-9 grams This herb can be found in any Asian market. posted by michelle For a little over a year, I've been doing a semi-regular "Konspiracy Korner" segment on Chuck Mertz's top notch radio show This Is Hell. They broadcast live from WNUR 89.3FM Evanston/Chicago every Saturday from 0900-1300CST and do streaming, podcasting, etc. at the site. I go on towards the end of the show, currently around 1240CST. The show is severely pre-empted during college football season, because even the dummies running WNUR have their priorities in place. Due to the preemption, I'm doing a piece today, and will then be off until the end of November. During the break I'll be filling in some gaps on previous segments, which you can follow here and/or listen to me attempt to awkwardly straddle the line between 'nervous' and 'hungover' at the TIH archives. Elvis's Konspiracy Korner 23 September 0006: One of the things I was pleasantly surprised to see upon moving to San Francisco were the antique US streetcars from various cities that MUNI regularly uses for the routes. I was also surprised to see the "zero-emission" buses running on electricity, but both maintain the standard of approx. 50% 'pleasant' relative to personal automobile travel that you see everywhere in the current 'What, Me, Peak Oil?' status of this fake economy. Here is what really happens. James Howard Kunstler gets a fair amount of shit slung at him, which is probably a testament to him doing his thing well without having much stomach for fitting things into paradigms that are disagreeable at best, and quite problematic at worst. One of his stronger recent pieces had a great bit in it pointing out that during the peak of the US smokestack-style pollution economic model, everyone was smoking cigarettes like crazy; now that we are at or near the peak of global oil production, and consequently the peak of the US personal-automobile 'dream', we see the NASCAR industry rise to a level of rather impressive economic-magickal mania (perhaps an 'SUV' fits in here as well). Anyway, Kunstler is well on the record re: the horrific collective wrong turn the US took when it moved from a burgeoning national infrastructure based upon a public rail transit system to the current suburb/mid-suburb/far-suburb freeway mess that necessitates massive individual fuel consumption even as the oil supply begins to dwindle into a no-fun MAD MAX twilight. This 'wrong turn' can be pegged many legitimate places, but one of the most interesting is what is commonly referred to as the "streetcar conspiracy", which oddly will turn up many references to it being a pretty familiar concept, but a relatively small amount of direct discussion. Essentially, US Senate Counsel Bradford Snell blew a big fucking hysterical whistle in front of the Senate in 1974 alleging that General Motors, in collusion with National City Lines, Standard Oil, and Firestone, conspired to gut the substantial rail-based public transit in large cities from Los Angeles to New York. This was achieved (roughly between the Wars, but stretching into the Eisenhower White House) via numerous brilliant mercenary maneuvers on all relevant fronts -- Fed-gangster, Korp-gangster, and gangster -- masterminded by GM godfather Alfred P. Sloan. The nuts and bolts are very briefly & nastily outlined in this article by Snell. I saw a decent amount of unsubstantiated sniping at Snell, pegging him as a nut that was oblivious to the reality that "the suburbs made the automobile ascend and the rail system decay", which to me is a pretty no-brainer fake 'chicken & egg' with an easy answer. One piece that actually engages Snell is this piece by Guy Span that begins by essentially calling Snell out as a 'limited hangout' type but then proceeds to quibble with a couple small points and actually add quite a bit to the general case of a concerted conspiratorial effort spanning multiple industries and Federal & local government. I suppose Span effectively casts doubt on any sole responsibility resting upon GM, but to me these are irrelevant questions relative to the probable & sensible collusion among automotive, oil, and associated state interests committed to diverting the eventual evolution of the US transportation infrastructure away from mass rail transit and towards the individual "easy motoring" madness we currently enjoy. It's not that an late-industrial economy based on oil isn't efficient or really fucking profitable - it's both; it's also apocalyptically unsustainable. And observe the effects when you interrupt one pay check, a quick gas-up at the station, or air conditioning in August, let alone the entire non-negotiable way of life 'enjoyed' by many armed and miserable Americans. I don't pretend to be either unbiased or sensible. See above motto & look elsewhere for that. (It is notable that this general conspiratorial angle has been supported by establishment lefties Noam Chomsky and THE NATION.) posted by elvis On the old anti-blog, I periodically bootlegged the excellent "Findings" page from HARPER'S. I encourage everyone to subscribe to this fine magazine, it is ridiculously cheap. Although it leans lefty, it doesn't offend my lefty-meter, which is pretty easily tickled these days, so I recommend it far & wide. I continue to tip my hat to this anonymous master of NOISE!! Here's another:
posted by elvis The pigeon This pesky motherfucker of a creature has no wings, tail or beak. posted by chauncey testing...
posted by kevekev.com ## This typically superficial 'wacky boffin update' article on a study examining the good & bad kinds of hearing voices in your head (how does one not hear voices?) makes me think of the serious heavy lifting that Terence McKenna did during his studies of psilocybin and its potential to invoke & transform the Logos, or what we currently understand as rational consciousness (perhaps even contributing to its original invocation at some point in human history).
posted by elvis We are playing a show tonight in Oakland at 21 Grand 416 25th St. @ Broadway . It will be an unique evening with No Doctors doing a brief opening set, then Experimental Dental School playing a set, after which we will return for a few more songs before being joined by USAISAMONSTER for a Sharkskin mega-jam that will transition into their headlining end timers. We should be opening by 9:00PM sharp, try it out.
posted by elvis I think I found my tour costume:
posted by cansafis ## The idea behind this redesign towards a straighter infrastructure is to facilitate "post-blogging" by all members of the band. The idea behind "post-blogging" is an significant emphasis on original content, defined loosely as anything that isn't already available on the internet. One typically unrepresentative and very strong example of this approach can be found at Craig Gernhardt's The "Broken Heart" of Rogers Park aka morsehellhole. This gentleman is right around the corner from where we used to live on the far north side of Chicago (see the ERP SAINTS EP) and has a decidedly different take on things than we did! That said, you can't argue with dick-work of this caliber: original reporting including photos & videos, a serious vendetta against the rock, and a serious arch-nemesis in Alderman Joe Moore. Boring? Not if you lived there, trust me! posted by elvis One of the new songs on our forthcoming third LP is "Lost in the Fog". We haven't published it yet, but we've been playing it live quite a bit and it seems that our most hardcore fans are taking note. That is fucking awesome that they have a teleconference afterwards. NOISE!! posted by elvis monday 09/18/0006 posted by elvis |
