Main Entry: sa.miz.dat

Pronunciation: 'sä-mEz-"dät

Function: noun

Etymology: Russian, from sam- self- + izdatel'stvo publishing house

Date: 1967

: a system in the U.S.S.R. and countries within its orbit by which government-suppressed literature was clandestinely printed and distributed; also : such literature

Definition courtesy Merriam-Webster



When Your Zine is Against the Law,
That's Underground Media

"After Stalin's demise, with the rise of the relatively more liberal Kruschev regime, writers became bolder, producing several typewritten magazines which were copied by hand and passed among groups of trusted friends. It was during this period that an unknown Moscow poet coined samizdat to describe his collections of bound, typewritten poems. Short for "Samsebyaizdat", which means "a publishing house for oneself," samizdat quickly caught on."


Higgy gives the downlow on samizdat.

Stop Bush before he makes Nixon look good:

"At least our 37th president specialized in committing outright political crimes, which by their very clandestine nature were necessarily limited in scope. George W., on the other hand, traffics in legal political vice, which, given the rightward turn in this country since the late 1970s, can be practiced on a widespread scale openly and even boastfully. And legal or not, "vice" is the only way to describe the wholesale political indecency pushed by this White House. Behind virtually every move--whether on the budget, an economic stimulus package, the environment, defense spending, you name it--lies the fundamental motive of padding the pockets of its own socioeconomic class. To hell with others and to hell with the future. There either ain't no tomorrow, or if it does come, at least those at the top won't be burdened by today's consequences.
A jaw-dropping $4 trillion of your money in the form of federal budget surpluses has gone up in smoke, or rather, 41 percent of it into the pockets of W.'s friends." History News Network

Wed 29th I had posted the piece discussing the FBI raid at the home site for Raise The Fist, a radical site. Since then, Metafilter, 1/31, has posted the same URL and the following discussion offers this explanation as to the raid:Raid by FBI at Raise the Fist

Good to see that Steve Baum is back to his inimitable yarn-spinning at Ethel the Blog again. His Jan. 25 short piece about some new options in peer-to-peer music distribution is intriguing, especially because I've (finally) arranged for a broadband 'net connection instead of the 56K dialup that's sustained me for so many years (I was an early adopter of the US Robotics Dual Standard modem, back when there were dual standards, and one of the first to upgrade to .v90). By the way, Baum is one of the luminaries who should have been invited to contribute to American Samizdat, IMHO. Dr Menlo??

One in Ten: Adrian Scott and the Hollywood Ten. "...Two days before Halloween in 1947, Adrian Scott was summoned to appear in front of the House Committee on Un-American Activities to answer questions about Communist influence on the motion picture industry. His testimony - or rather, lack thereof - resulted in contempt of court, a year-long prison term, and over sixteen years of blacklisting."

Choking on the Enron Pretzel. a/k/a Clueless in Guantanamo: Wideranging rant from Al Martin takes on all the usual suspects -- Enron ("what's the difference between Enron and an offshore Republican slush fund?"), the pretzel-choking incident, the Cuba detainees, the 'war'. This particularly caught my eye because I've been marvelling at the lack of commentary about the number of fatal equipment failures in Afghanistan:

Another US helicopter has crashed in Afghanistan, a CH-53E Super Stallion, the biggest single-rotor helicopter. Two servicemen were killed and five were wounded. It's interesting to note our material losses in this Afghani campaign now equal the losses of the campaign in Iraq, which were actual combat losses. This latest loss is again being blamed on "mechanical failure due to faulty spares parts and poor maintenance." It's the same reason for all previous crashes of both helicopters and fixed wing aircraft in Afghanistan. It's a pretty sad commentary on the preparedness of US armed forces.

The readiness status of our armed forces during the past ten years from Iraq to Afghanistan has declined enormously. Past GAO reports stated that in Iraq 53% of our fixed wing and helicopter fleets were serviceable. Now this figure has declined to 38%. Part of the problem is that the budgets for normal maintenance procedures have been cut in favor of buying a lot of high tech weaponry systems that don't work. We rush new weapons systems into production -- systems that we know have design flaws because contractors can't meet their deadlines. They're built with sub-standard materials because the budget for inspectors has been trimmed back. And there's no more quality control over the materials being used to make these weapons systems. And there's the problem with spare parts and mechanical problems, which are all ongoing. The commentator in the media calls these new weapons systems that don't work -- "political gravy weapons."

The answer, by the way, of course is that there is no difference between Enron and an offshore Republican slush fund...

While the well-known radical voices of the Znet group--Zinn, Chomsky, Said--continue to berate the Israelis and Americans about the horrors of Israelis in the West Bank occupation, seldom or never do these same articulate spokesmen for freedom mention the Syrian 35 thousand military force that has been occupying Lebanon for yearsSyrian occupation of Lebanon This occupation seldom is mentioned in America political circles either :Syrian occupation of Lebanon issue raised in Congress and America's present policy toward occupation of LebanonIn fact, an important Arab lobby group supports this occupying force: American Arab Group Supports Occupation of Lebanon by Syria even though many Lebanese themselves, individually, attempt to be heard: Lebanese complaint about Syrian occupation andan appeal for help against the occupying force
Of course one could dismiss the occupation by suggesting that since there is no revolt or not much is heard of this situation then it must not be of any significance. How much complaint was heard about the takeover of Germany by the Nazis once they were in control? Or, now, and more locally, look what is beginning to happen to dissent in America.

Enron scandal knows no bounds?

Dr. Cube discloses stake in oil company.

Investing. Dr. Cube, one of the world's most closely-watched investors, said yesterday in a regulatory filing that he holds a 13.5% stake or 1.8 million common shares in USA Oil and Petroleum, a Washington D.C. based oil company. USA Oil and Petroleum recently announced an aggressive campaign to increase the number of its Middle Eastern oil plants from 28 to 83 by the end of 2004.

Though it is by now clear that Enron has given significantly more money to help the GOP than it has the Democrats, nonetheless there are many people of both parties and many members of the pundidtry and media who have been perhaps softened up by the financial handouts, and to focus upon the Bush Mafiosa is to move the spotlight away from the true culprit: Campaign finance reform and putting back those regulation taken away and adding even tougher ones to make the system work. Enron and Our Putrid Campaign Finance System
This piece addresses campaign finance reform. Clearly tougher controls need to be in place and those in power not allowed to soften or to remove them, as has been done.

Sublime Stitching. Outsider embroidery by Jenny Hart of Austin, Texas.

FBI raids home in L.A. and closes down website of politically activist RAISE THE FIST with no statements issued to press and no arrests made. Records, computers, servers seized.

The End of Self-Righteous Conservatives
"EVEN WORSE FOR the ideologues, the Enron scandal makes it clear that the unfettered free market does not work, because human beings are flawed and will act according to their basest instincts if they think they won't get caught.

If regulation were really unnecessary, then laws against, say, speeding would also be unnecessary, because people would realize that the accident rate and the fatality rate increase with speed, and they would behave in their own self-interest and drive a steady 55 or slower when conditions so dictate.

Also, Enron makes that whole Ayn Rand "Fountainhead" thing look a little silly, too. Who is John Galt? Ken Lay."

I love Jon Carroll.

Arguing the pacifist line in an age of war.

"W.H. Auden wrote that you can't tell people what to do; you can only tell them stories. This doesn't stop people from trying, nor does it stop people from asking—particularly in ethics classes, particularly in times of crisis...."

"Where pacifism is a minority position suspected of aiding and abetting the 'enemy,' 'pacifism' is often read as 'passivism.' But pacifism is not passive. Pacifists are often cantankerous, sometimes confrontational, and frequently argumentative—particularly in times of war. Pacifists may be off radar in times of relative peace, but war fever makes us visible. This is a reminder (conveyed most powerfully in life stories of people like Dorothy Day or Mahatma Gandhi) that not all struggle is violent. Violence is never the right choice, but struggle often is."

A worthwhile read, indeed.

Enron Fallout Hits 10 Downing Street

For God's sake, do not kill us! We surrender!

Before dawn in Afghanistan last Thursday, US Green Berets launched a surprise attack on their unarmed allies, storming a disarmament depot with indiscriminate fire, then rounding up survivors only to tie their hands behind their backs with plastic bands and execute them. This according to that America-hating, propaganda-strewn leftist rag, The New York Times. God bless America.

Fear of a Latin Planet: 'An African American's advice to our soon-to-be largest minority group.' AlterNet

Is it a coincidence that the three most essential tools we have in restoring democracy and ending the corruption--a Congress that is REPRESENTATIVE OF ALL PEOPLE, an ELECTED president, and a FREE press--have been stolen from U.S. citizens, one by one, in this last decade? Oil, "free trade," Enron, The Bushes, Carlyle Group, the right-wing--all discussed in this series from Baltimore Chronicle, via Democrats.Com

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My first Bush link here at American Samizdat... George W. Bush and His Family Paper Dolls.

The Caspian Sea scramble. You will know many of the names of key players in this huge oil and natural gas wheeling and dealing, including James Baker (Bush the First, and Florida recount); Enron, Israel intelligence and on and on. pipelineistan, part 1
part two: pt two via Bushflash.

The Coup: "Let's make health-care centers on every block/Let's give everybody homes and a garden plot/Let's give all the schools books/Ten kids a class/And give 'em truth for their pencils and pads."

No POW Status for Guantanamo Bay Detainees
More word games by the administration to avoid following any rules that would require it to treat human beings by even the most basic international standards of treatment. First, the military tribunal idea, now refusing to call the Taliban fighters and accused al-Qaeda members POWs so we don't have to follow the Geneva Convention (which provides for such things as respecting basic human dignity). Now, as Molly Ivins says, either this is a war (which we are repeatedly told it is), or it isn't. If the administration insists on using the very legal term "war," it has to follow the rules associated with it. If we're having a war, and we've taken these people prisoners, they should be considered prisoners of war.

And this is the party which slammed Clinton for splitting legal and syntactical hairs by questioning the definition of "is"? At least there was no human life at stake.

Machine-Mind's Eye? WordsEye -- "a Natural Language Understanding system that converts English text into three-dimensional scenes that represent that text. WordsEye works by performing syntactic and semantic analysis on the input text, producing a description of the arrangement of objects in a scene." [via synthetic zero]

Here you will find a version of events that took place on Sept. 1 that may at first seem just another conspiracy story. Recall this: When a lady Congresswoman (Dem) asked the govt to release the plane's black box recording, she was told that the recording would be too emotionally disturbing and therefore the govt would not release it. More disturbing than what many had heard from the cell phone calls made public by families of the victims? This is, I believe, the first time that a black box recording has not been made public. And further, I heard the vice president's wife remark during a TV interview dealing with the stress her husband and all Americans were under that "we can not afford to have another plane shot down." Not her exact words though in quotes but a fair representation of what I heard her say. Soon after Sept 11 it became standard operating procedure, announced to the public, to shoot down any plane hijacked if they could not get it to land. Was flight 93 shot down by an American jet?

See, too:Accuracy in Media and Federal investigators said on Thursday that they have not ruled out the possibility that United Airlines Flight 93 was shot down over Pennsylvania, after three other hijacked airliners crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

See also: Buzzflash: three-mile Island terrorists's target? and Evidence indicates Flight 93 shot down by U.S. fighter (via Idaho Observer), and UPDATE UPI report excerpt: "The employee also told the newspaper that FAA air traffic controllers in Nashua learned through discussions with other controllers that an F-16 fighter stayed in hot pursuit of another hijacked commercial airliner until it crashed in Pennsylvania."

See also: Timeline of jet fighter(s) from Langley. And finally: Congresswoman and flight 903 widow denied access to flight recorder box information.

Spinning The Facts:
Why The Public Doesn't Hear The Truth About Global Warming

MUST READ: Wall Street, the CIA and 9-11
Michael Ruppert, October 17, 2001
Although uniformly ignored by the mainstream U.S. media, there is abundant and clear evidence that a number of transactions in financial markets indicated specific (criminal) foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the case of at least one of these trades -- which has left a $2.5 million prize unclaimed -- the firm used to place the “put options” on United Airlines stock was, until 1998, managed by the man who is now in the number three Executive Director position at the Central Intelligence Agency. Until 1997 A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard had been Chairman of the investment bank A.B. Brown. A.B. Brown was acquired by Banker’s Trust in 1997. Krongard then became, as part of the merger, Vice Chairman of Banker’s Trust-AB Brown, one of 20 major U.S. banks named by Senator Carl Levin this year as being connected to money laundering. Krongard’s last position at Banker’s Trust (BT) was to oversee “private client relations.” In this capacity he had direct hands-on relations with some of the wealthiest people in the world in a kind of specialized banking operation that has been identified by the U.S. Senate and other investigators as being closely connected to the laundering of drug money.
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Register as a Patriot Now!

"As part of the Bush Administration's ongoing efforts to obliterate all traces of terrorism in the United States, the Department of Justice has commenced registration* of each and every American Patriot. By registering all non-terrorists within our borders, it is our intention to make use of the process of elimination to identify the evil ones who walk among us. If you are a non-terrorist (American Patriot), your participation is required. Please register below.

- John Ashcroft

United States Attorney General"

Fairvue Central >> Features >> Second Annual Weblog Awards: time to vote... The Samizdat, alas, isn't on the ballot yet...

Art to the People. Prints, cartoons, and posters by Walter Crane, Albert Hahn, Frans Masereel, Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen, and Gerd Arntz. "...They depicted daily life, social problems and the struggle for a better society. Their best work is as valid today as when it was created, from the 1880s to the 1930s. For some artists, political involvement, aiming at comprehensibility and the use of cheap printing techniques are no restraints but stimuli."

"Don't we run drug tests on interns?" -- Bill Gates

Virus Responsible for Gates Security
Memo: 'An embarrassed Bill Gates admitted today that a memo outlining Microsoft's new focus
on security called Trustworthy Computing was sent out in error when an idealistic intern sent him
the fanciful, pie in the sky report in a virus infected e-mail."I forgot to patch my Outlook Express
and it went out to my entire address book," said Gates. "You would think that if anything were to
get us to focus on security in our software that it would be a gaffe like this. To ensure security in
all our software, however, would mean dropping half of our product lines and I have a fiscal
responsibility to shareholders." ' BBSpot [thanks, David]

Charles Krauthammer sez the al-Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are not and should not be protected as prisoners of war by the Geneva Convention because they weren't in uniform when captured.

From the Mixed Media Wing of the Art Stamp Gallery at the Rubber Stamp Museum... Art Stamps by P.J. Dutton and others.

On dozens of separate occasions since the Second World War, biological weapons have been used against innocent U.S. civilians. These actions were perpetrated not by foreign terrorists but by the U.S. Army during secret "open-air" biowarfare experiments that used the American public as guinea pigs.

One of the main sources of information on this history is an unclassified Special Report to Congress by the U.S. Army called: "U.S. Army Activity in the U.S. Biological Warfare Programs, 1942-1977. Vols 1 and 2," that was published on February 24, 1977.

In quotations from four sources excerpted below, you'll see that:
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Corporate Greed and the Terminator

Well, well, well- a good conspiracy shouldn't be without at least one "suicide".

The Others by Howard Zinn
"Then it occurred to me: What if all those Americans who declare their support for Bush's 'war on terrorism' could see, instead of those elusive symbols--Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda--the real human beings who have died under our bombs? I do believe they would have second thoughts."

Paa Joe and Fantasy Coffins

The evidence of Fifty Years Of Drug Trafficking By CIA and Other Government Operations

In Personal Anecdote, Some See New Distance Where Others See New Strategy: '...(P)eople close to Mr. Bush said his mother-in-law, Jenna Welch, served as a convenient device for him to distance himself from the Enron debacle and to appear more empathetic to its investors and employees than to the wealthy business executives who escaped the Enron collapse with flush bank accounts." NY Times And: Why Bush deserves his share of the 9/11 blame -- Aaron Marr Page: "Did Bush, at a key moment, dismantle the Clinton administration's increasingly effective anti-Al Qaeda apparatus (which, though hardly flawless, was far better than nothing)?" The American Prospect

Enough to make you weep... proposed law to teach creationism, and NOT evolution in schools. Sick joke? Probably not.

Was Enron a Cult? Of course.

The nasty stuff of totalitarianism this capitalism becomes.

the entire private domain is being engulfed by a mysterious activity that bears all the features of commercial life without there being actually any business to transact. All these nervous people, from the unemployed to the public figure liable at any moment to incur the wrath of those whose investment he represents, believe that only by empathy, assiduity, serviceability, arts and dodges, by tradesmen’s qualities, can they ingratiate themselves with the executive they imagine omnipresent, and soon there is no relationship that is not seen as a ‘connection’, no impulse not first censored as to whether it deviates from the acceptable.
--Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia

What we knew, did not know, should have known about al Qaeda

The First Six Months of George W. Bush: "Whatever your beliefs, know what your president is doing."

Have you seen this man lately?

Dick Cheney's multi-million revolving door

Photographs by Abby Gennet at Photobetty. "...A few years ago, the surge of surveillance cameras entered into our society. All kinds of people were buying these tiny hidden cameras: concerned parents watching over their children's caretakers, store owners checking up on their employees, perverted voyeurs spying on their guests, etc. They were in our parks, subways, malls, bathrooms, dressing rooms, elevators -- they were everywhere. Although the majority of these spy cams were meant to protect us and make us feel safer, I didn't feel safe at all. I felt spied upon. My privacy had been invaded. I couldn't even walk through Washington Square Park without feeling as if some tightwad in a suit was kicking back at his desk watching out for hot girls in short skirts (and the occasional pickpocket or pot dealer!). This was when I began shooting my Surveillance Stills series."

Chilling Effects of Anti-Terrorism
"National Security" Toll on Freedom of Expression
The right to free speech faces the strongest challenges during times of crisis. Whether or not any of us agree about each particular decision made to prevent public access to sensitive information, it is the Electronic Frontier Foundation's responsibility to chart any such efforts so that we as a society are at least aware of what is no longer available to us.

This page attempts to convey the chilling effect that responses to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have had on information availability on the Internet as well as some sense of the effect on people trying to provide this information.

Currently, this page tracks the following:
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"King is not a legend because he believed in diversity trainings and civic ceremonies, or because he had a nice dream. He is remembered because he took serious risks and, as the Quakers say, spoke truth to power.

" . . . we don't see arrests for fighting segregated housing in Chicago, or the generations of beatings and busts before he won the Nobel Peace Prize. We don't hear about the mainstream American contempt at the time for King, even after that Peace Prize, nor his reputation among conservatives as a Commie dupe.

"We don't see retrospectives on his linkage of civil rights with Third World liberation.

" . . . If the King of 1955 or 1965 were alive today, he would be accused of treason for his pacifism."

The Other King by Geov Parrish

Note in this expose how the various key players interlock and move about from public to private sector, enriching themselves and their sponsors as they do so. Enron, Carlyle group, and the Bush Family

A | More | Perfect | Union ... Japanese Americans & the U.S. Constitution. "...examines the events surrounding Japanese American internment during World War II. Topics include prewar Japanese American immigration and culture, detention camps and the internment process, Japanese American wartime service, and postwar court cases and eventual redress."

Palast: Well, first of all you hit a good one. Woodward and Bernstein, which everyone comes back to, was three decades ago! What has happened in thirty years? When have we had a story in thirty years that has come close to that? I gave a talk with Seymour Hersh, who is one of the guys who broke the My Lai story. That was thirty years ago. He cannot work for an American newspaper. He writes for the New Yorker magazine. Think about that. One of our best investigative reporters in America, he has won at least two Pulitzer prizes, can’t even work for an American newspaper. What is going on?

Greg Palast talks about Bin Laden and the Saudi connection: how it was shoved aside by Bush oil interests and the truth behind what happened in Florida election BEFORE the voting began

I've been spending a lot of time at Graphic Witness lately. "...dedicated to social commentary through graphic imagery by artists working from the turn of the 20th Century to the present."

INSTITUTE FOR THE ADVANCED STUDY OF INFORMATION WARFARE

Patty Hearst and the history of the SLA

drugs,police and inelligence services source: bilderberg.org

come out, come out, wherever you are

Hi, I'm Dr. Menlo! You may remember me from such weblogs as "Dr. Menlo Blogs From Space!" and "Sensual Liberation Saves the World!"

Now, we wanted to create a new group blog over here at Dr. Menlo, so here it is!

If you have been invited and are not sure what this blog is about--let's just say it's an experiment. The basic theme is underground--which doesn't mean necessarily political . . . so let's just see what happens . . .

People, so far, who have already accepted the invite: Fred Pyen of Metascene, Andrew Aab of gmtPlus9, Kirsten Anderson (founder, owner and curator of Seattle's first and best alternative art gallery, the Roq La Rue), Brooke Biggs (formerly purveyor of the Bush Files over at Mother Jones, who now does the highly recommended Bittershack), and Seattle relative blogging unknown Vincent Meanie . . .

Now, I sent the invite not to everyone I like or admire, but also to those I thought might be interested in a side project like this--so if you want to participate, please email me (drmenlo@well.com).

Now, if you have a blog already I'm not asking for any more time to be spent on this one, but say, if Helen and Harry Highwater of Unknown News finish their 20 or 30 links for the day and have a couple stories they are particularly incensed about--they can post them over here for added coverage. If City Lights Bookstore has a new writer they particularly want to champion, or want to advertise an upcoming reading in their bookstore, or any news at all about Lawrence Ferlinghetti, they are free to do so. If Albert Giordano of Narco News has any new news about what's going on with his valiant anti-drug war efforts, he is free to post them here. One of the former employees of the Jim Hightower show "The Chat n' Chew" will be arriving soon under a pen name . . . and you don't have to use your real names, remember! All the participating blogger links will be in the left hand column (where it currently says 'links'), so you can also look at it as increasing your web of influence . . . there will also be a few unknowns, like teen graff enthusiast and skateboarder "T" . . . as well as . . . R.U. Sirius? (well, he was invited anyway) So, I have to run along to work . . . good luck, kids!

From Osaka
testing testing

test 1.. 2... 3?