Seat of the Revolution

"The citizen who sees his society's democratic clothes being worn out and does not cry out is not a patriot but a traitor." -- Mark Twain

-----

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. - Nazi Reich Marshal Hermann Goering, before committing suicide at the Nuremberg Trials

UPDATE: This story is a confirmed hoax.

http://www.juancole.com/2005/12/interlibrary-loan-dhs-story-hoax-story.html

Interlibrary Loan/ DHS Story a Hoax

The story of the interlibrary loan request for Mao's Little Red Book that produced an interview by the Department of Homeland Security turns out to be a hoax.

However, it is one of those hoaxes that bespeaks a reality, which is that the level of unwarranted (a pun!) surveillance of Americans and violation of their fourth amendment rights under the Bush administration has skyrocketed to new levels of criminality. And, as I said, I do know of people who have been interviewed when they tried to import Arabic books.

Read more

-----

This morning I caught a recording of James Taylor covering CSNY's Woodstock on Howard Stern. Now I'm not a fan of James Taylor and I never really liked the song Woodstock but I have to admit it really grabbed me. I don't think I've ever really payed attention to the lyrics before.

What ever happened to bombers turning into butterflies?

Woodstock - CSNY

Well I came across a child of God, he was walking along the road
and I asked him tell where are you going, this he told me:
Well, Im going down to Yasgur's farm, going to join in a rock and roll band.
Got to get back to the land, set my soul free.
We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon,
and we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

Well, then can I walk beside you? I have come to lose the smog.
And I feel like I'm a cog in something turning.
And maybe it's the time of year, yes, and maybe it's the time of man.
And I don't know who I am but life is for learning.
We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon,
and we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong,
and everywhere there was song and celebration.
And I dreamed I saw the bombers jet planes riding shotgun in the sky,
turning into butterflies above our nation.

We are stardust, we are golden, we caught in the devils bargain,
and we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

01) G.M.C. - Viktor Vaughn Vaudeville Villan
02) He Got Game - Public Enemy
03) 5-piece chicken dinner - Beastie Boys
04) Bauhaus - Dancing
05) Dry the Rain - Beta Band
06) Dead Prez - Assassination
07) What's the Ugliest Part of Your Body - Frank Zappa
08) Argh Fuck Kill - The Dayglo Abortions
09) Lost & Found - Slug
10) Snap - DRI

* these are the first 10 tracks that came up this morning when I put my mp3 player on random.
-----

http://www.detnews.com/2005/pistons/0511/09/D01-377035.htm

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/sports/13118885.htm

As the Detroit Pistons were introduced, pictures of burned-out cars, abandoned buildings and empty streets were flashed on ARCO Arena's big screen

http://www.news10.net/storyfull2.aspx?storyid=14155

http://www.tsn.ca/nba/news_story.asp?id=142446
-----

11/18 Detroit, MI @ Royal Oak Theatre

I have about fourteen thousand bookmarks spread out between browsers on my home and work computers. Every once in a while I start sorting through them in an attempt to categorize them. I usually get about half way through them before something more interesting happens.

This week I set up a del.icio.us account for a central repository and way to share all my bookmarks. Check out my directory: del.icio.us/scherry

I'll be adding to it steadily so I can clear out some real estate in my toolbar and Bookmarks tab.

UPDATE: My del.icio.us link list is at the bottom of the page.
-----

You may have heard about Bywater neighborhood resident Jeffrey Holmes on NPR's Morning Edition. After the piece aired Holmes was arrested.

via GNN:

A controversial public art exhibit is shut down, artist arrested

Over the past few weeks, artist Jeffrey Holmes (40) has become something of a fixture in the Bywater area of New Orleans 9th Ward. Holmes has the distinction of being the first artist to mount an exhibition in post-Katrina New Orleans. When he and his wife Andrea Garland (34) returned to their house on St. Claude Avenue, the first floor had been flooded by the probably toxic water form the nearby Industrial Canal. They decided to park all its contents, some of their artwork and debris as well, on the median of St. Claude Avenue, and calling the whole thing Toxic Art this exhibition can kill you!

St. Claude Ave. is a main thoroughfare, leading from the French Quarter to the twice-flooded Lower Ninth Ward. So Holmes open air art show had a steady stream of visitors: cops, contractors, relief workers, journalists. Many people would wave, and some would stop. Nobody seemed to mind, Holmes said. The idea was that it would remain there until the garbage collectors got back to this part of the city, and everything would be taken away, Holmes said last week.

What he didnt expect was that he would have to go to jail for his art. On Monday night at 4 a.m., Holmes said, National Guard soldiers pulled up at the house. I went out to talk to them, and one of them said that some people had taken offense at some of the art work, specifically a number of spikes with black heads on them. After Holmes spent some time arguing with the soldiers about the First Amendment, the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) was called in, and Holmes was arrested for disturbing the peace and intoxication, although he said he hadnt been drinking.

Holmes ended up in New Angola South, the makeshift jail at New Orleans Amtrak station, where more than four hundred people have been jailed since Katrina. He was released after five or six hours, and given a January court date, which he feels sure will be thrown out of court. But he is upset at the arbitrary character of his arrest. It is all part of the corporate takeover of New Orleans, and this should be a warning to people everywhere in America. They can just come in and take the city over. They dont want people to come back here. They want to have their hands free to raze the Lower Ninth Ward, and bring in the condos.

During an earlier visit to New Angola South, where Holmes was jailed, more than a dozen people were sitting inside the Guantanamo-like fences that have been erected on one of the stations platforms to make a makeshift jail. The facility gets its name from the Angola State Penitentiary, a former slave plantation northwest of Baton Rouge that houses some 5,000 inmates. After Katrina, it was Angolas chief warden, Burl Cain, who got the job of evacuating some 6,000 inmates from the flooded prisons of New Orleans.

Actually, were not supposed to call it New Angola South anymore, said Maj. Troy Poret, a warden from Angola State Penitentiary. There have been some complaints. Officially, we are now Camp Amtrak. Poret was part of the initial operation, which involved guarding the inmates on an Interstate overpass during the first days after Katrina hit. Now he is in charge of jailing people who are arrested by any of the dozens of law enforcement agencies, including the FBIs Hostage Rescue Team and the DEA, that have been roaming the streets of New Orleans for the past three weeks.

Among the arrestees were seven black teenagers from New Orleans East, who had been arrested the day before on looting charges. The all claimed to be innocent. We had come back to get clothes from our houses and some of our friends houses, said Allen Taylor Tezon, 20. We were changing a flat tire at a gas station when the NOPD showed up. The gas station had previously been looted, and Taylors girlfriend, who was sharing the womens pen with a friend, admitted that they had at one point gone inside to look for a soft drink. For the NOPD, it was enough reason to book all seven of them for looting, a felony charge.

Yeah, I have 5,001 prisoners in Angola who all claim to be innocent, Maj. Projet said dismissively, before spitting out his tobacco on the tracks. But he seemed sympathetic to the teenagers plight, and appeared to be making a call on their behalf.

The law enforcement community appears to be bracing itself for the return of the citys citizens in the coming days and weeks. Business is going to pick up pretty soon, said one guard at the jail. And on Bourbon Street, where more and more bars have been opening up over the past few days, catering mostly to police and contractors, James McGee, a police psychologist and FBI negotiator from Maryland, warned us to be very careful. This has always been a very dangerous city. And the cockroaches, they have never really left. They are about to come out again.

Exercpt from Olivia's blog at SG:

Sep 24, 2005 07:44 PM

Hello,

I just wanted to let you know that, thanks to the "War on Porn," SG will be taking down a bunch of photosets and individual photos today.

Even the FBI agents paid to surf for porn find this ridiculous, but apparently sending people to jail for pictures of two consenting adults enjoying a little rope bondage is more fucking important than.... I dunno, pick any one of the million of better causes out there that the government could be focusing on.

So, I apologise heartily for having to do this, both to the SuicideGirls whose art is being fucked over and the members who are being treated like babies, but we really don't want to get shut down and sent to jail. As soon as legally possible, the photosets and pictures about to be taken down will come back. Until then, bid a fond farewell to your favourite blood-bathing beauties, rope-bound babes, and handcuffed honeys. Apparently they've no place in today's society.

If you want to help stop this stupidity, feel free join SG in donating to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Free Speech Coalition. If you live in the US, you can also send a letter to your representative in Congress.

-----

No I don't believe in Jesus Christ
My mother died of cancer when I was 5
No I don't believe in religion
I was forced to go to church, I wasn't told why
No I don't believe in the police force
Police brutality isn't a dream
No I don't believe in the system
Cos Nothing it does makes sense to me
Don't worry you'll get over it
You'll grow up, you'll calm down
Another youth, another fashion
You'll get over it, you'll calm down
You don't really mean what you say
You've had too much to drink
Don't be so full of hated
It's not as bad as you think
No I don't believe in what you say
You're just part of what I despise
Yes you're part of the fucking system
I ain't blind, I can see your lies
Cos the system thrives on ignorance
What the public don't know, they can't reject
In the face of you all I stand defiant
The rest of the people, they wanna forget

-----