~ it appears that there is a large group of people congregated at our neighbor’s home. they have filled the rooms and have moved onto the balcony; the volume of the stereo set which is playing recorded music has been increased accordingly. at irregular intervals, empty glass bottles marked ‘miller lite’ are thrown and clatter into the plastic container on the sidewalk. it is curious that they are not adding features to their work websites [w] at this hour.
~ what was bush’s little lecture on undercutting allies in the war on terror? our great friend the dictator of pakistan must not have heard it, as he was busy talking to cnn:
cnn: “Is the world a safer place because of the war in Iraq?”
musharraf: “No. It’s more dangerous. It’s not safer, certainly not.”…
cnn: ” Was it a mistake to have gone to war with Iraq?”
musharraf: ” Well, I would say that it has ended up bringing more trouble to the world.”
–cnn
~ like total sellouts, we used a line from ‘fahrenheit 9/11’ in an argument today. the problem isn’t that we mentioned a fact that appears in the movie ; the evidence is fact regardless of whether or not it is featured in a michael moore movie. our problem is that we sourced our argument to something so sensational; the angry red planet endeavours to stay above the fray of popular culture. our only excuse is that it was more likely that the people whom were logically circling had seen the movie and would be able to nod accordingly than it was they had read the proper issue of the new yorker or article from the washington post. at least they may have seen a poster for the movie as they walked in to ‘white chicks’.
~ there is nothing but hollowness in bush and cheney”s latest desperate attempts to slag kerry by saying that he is unfit to lead because he did not “respect” iyad alawi. their words are hollow because alawi deserves no respect; he is a ruthless killer picked from iraq”s secret police to serve as our strongman. americans shouldn”t think for a moment that this guy is a respectable ally*; the guy is a blood-stained dirtbag and everyone in iraq knows it; the moment our troops and mercenaries aren”t propping him up, expect to see that guy hanging from a bridge over the tigris.
*we will not note the irony of bush”s contrived indignation at the unkind words towards alawi, considering the treatment that real allies like france and germany have received from the bush administration.
~ furthermore, bush is continuing to lie:
“Fewer Iraqi security forces will be fully trained by the end of this year than cited by President Bush…according to Pentagon documents. The documents show that of the nearly 90,000 currently in the police force, only 8,169 have had the full eight-week academy training.” –Reuters
~ as if to drive home our point that they* will say any crazy thing to make us believe that night is day and that cats are dogs, our secretary of defense spins this web:
“We had something like 200 or 300 or 400 people killed in many of the major cities of America last year. Is it perfectly peaceful? No. What’s the difference? We just didn’t see each homicide in every major city in the United States on television every night.” –donald rumsfeld
what is the punchline here? that there is a difference between random urban crime and methodical mechanized killing of 1,040+ dead american troops and 10,000+ iraqi civilians? or is it that if we shouldn’t be concerned about the death in iraq then by extension we must also think it acceptable that “200 or 300 or 400” citizens are killed in our cities each year?
remember when we used to employ eunuchs to guard our harems? a similar tactic should be used for secretaries of defense; it is not necessary that they be castrated, but rather they need to not be deranged psychos who don’t let death weigh heavily on their consciences.
* republicans, conservatives, evangelicals, neocons, fundamentalists, right wing are not always the same thing; we need a term than encompasses all of them, the way ‘liberal’ has been reconstructed to mean anything that ‘the right’ thinks is bad.
~ during a round table discussion in which we were recently engaged, it was mentioned that the daughter of the head of the Christian coalition in georgia is a lesbian. this was deemed remarkable as it was emblematic of hypocrisy. the question was about how a mother could simultaneously promote family values whilst condemning her own daughter as a hedonist.
it was mentioned that the excuse used by people like this mother is that she promotes the ideal rather than the reality. this dovetails with the ‘do as i say not as i do’ homily, which parents have made more famous every time their kids drink and curse.
this interests us because it helps make clear how the right—evangelicals, republicans, conservatives—can make unflinchingly a statement that contradicts factual evidence and/or previous statements—for example, bush referring to iraq and afghanistan, which have not had elections since we toppled their governments, as ‘democracies’ while he berates the united nations. it seems to us that the right has found a loophole in which they are absolved of responsibility.
it is one thing for bush to refrain from holding press conferences and to refuse to answer questions at his rallies, as it keeps from being ‘under the spot’, but the very excuse that he should not be expected to think on his feet is frightening considering the responsibilities of a commander-in-chief in a nuclear armed world. if you always hold an ideal and a plan, then you should never be afraid of a question as it means you will always have an answer. some answers might make you unpopular, but then you at least should know what those answers would be and how to avoid them. by offering no answers, you reveal that not only do you not know what is going on; you don’t have an idea about what should be going on.
the republicans have made some amazing statements over the past couple of weeks, such as g.norquist saying the Americans who fought in World War 2 ‘defended anti-American policies’ or d.hastert asserting that g.soros has gotten his billions from ‘drug groups’ or d.cheney telling us that kerry’s criticism of the mistakes in iraq ‘encourages more violence’ or that bibles will be banned if kerry becomes president. if anyone ever bothers to ask them how they can say such nonsensical things, they are able to confidently shrug or snort and convert the listener into the one who is making a mistake.
this would be a quaintly amusing trait, if it were not leading to needless violence and deaths. bush is telling us that the cia is ‘just guessing’ that there are problems in iraq, despite senators from his own party warning us of the danger of the current strategy—or lack thereof—while the u.n. is repeating that there can not be elections in january if the current situation persists. as long as the administration is grinning on tv and saying that everything is going great while we ‘march towards’ …something, the problem is not so much that americans are tricked into thinking that everything is going well as much as it is that bush and company think that tricking americans is the only job at hand. rather than address the cause of the danger, they will merely cover the symptoms. as long as they tout the ideal as reality, they will avoid looking at the situation of soldiers being shredded and dismembered by roadside bombs while they drive around waiting for…something. looking at the original excuse, it might not be a loophole at all; it could be what they truly believe.
~ perhaps it is best that an unqualified partisan is placed at the head of the cia. we had figured that after the next terrorist attack on american soil, most people would rally around dear leader w. on the other hand, the late demonstrations that the administration is not serious about making any of the reforms that the 9/11 commission has recommended might increase the likelihood of a spain or yugoslavia style response.
~ we doubt that cat stevens is complaining too much about the shabby treatment he received from our inept department of homeland security, as the sales rank for ‘The Very Best of Cat Stevens’ on amazon [w] has moved up to #19 today.
~ regardless of my righteous bloviations on certain message boards, i do believe it is appropriate to use the term ‘stupid’ when describing political actions in this country. some days there are multiple occurrences that are so stupid that you don’t know which is the most stupid:
~ the first two balance out, we suppose; as long as we are keeping threats like the ex-cat stevens out of the country, we can afford to have an incompetent man like porter goss head the c.i.a.
~ as to the third issue, our ex-pat readers may use myvotewillcount.com [w] in order to cast their ballots from agentina, angola, and the azores. then send us a postcard.
~ today is the day that john kerry has made his big “coming out” speech, where he makes it clear that he has learned from his advisors that he needs to speak plainly and attack the president for leading us to defeat in iraq. it does not seem like this is his first coming out speech, and it doesn’t hold with us that he is going to assume another position on the entirety of the war. it’s alright for him to admit that the cause is lost along this course, but unless he declares that he was personally misled by the bush administration – likening his story to that of the majority of americans who also fell for their lies – he will once again be painted as indecisive, regardless of the content of his speech. nevertheless, his assessment is accurate, and his luck with a similar position recently stated publicly by republican senators is uncanny. still, the shifting sands of the whirlwind of the campaign’s final six weeks forbids us from brimming with excitement over this most recent revelation; instead, we will chortle at the latest dadaist ad lib from the u.s. secretary of defense.
“At some point the Iraqis will get tired of getting killed and we’ll have enough of the Iraqi security forces that they can take over responsibility for governing that country.” -Donald Rumsfeld
fabulous. maybe we will get tired of being poor and now we are rich! we are tired of limited mobility and now we can teleport! we are tired of being disgruntled pissants upstaged by asymptote and now we are building shit to critical acclaim!
“…Many friends of architecture showed up simply for a weekend of schmoozing in style and swapping appraisals about how new the “new” really looked while downing cocktails and olives at Harry’s Bar or on the waterfront terraces of the outrageously luxurious Hotel Cipriani and Gritti Palace.
‘The biennale is a good predictor of the near future,’ said Terence Riley, the chief curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. …
This year, earnest talk of ‘fluid form’ and ‘structural solutions’ was ramped up by star sightings — Nicole Kidman! Scarlet Johansson! — since the opening overlapped with the Venice International Film Festival….”-nytimes.com
~ this intellectual decadence has recently been touched on at sisyphean.com; whilst the above absurdities serve as inspiration from some of the abstract text, the following pissy and petty invectives might not belong in the offices of the work.group. we post here, though, so you may see precisely the kind of shit we are up against. even this phrase is misleading; we don’t intend to be against this shit, we plan to step over it in disregard. we won’t fight you as you are dead to us.
also, mr riley, as the work.group was not represented at the biennale, you will soon find that it is a failure as a predictor of any future; you will learn this as we make it clear that a new century is underway, and that your merit-starved model is as much of a fossil as you are.
“…Almost every project in the show bears the look of buildings made newly possible by a sophisticated grasp of computer technology. ‘We’re all part of the post-digital age who were trained in predigital methods,’ said Lise Anne Couture of the New York firm of Asymptote, who, with her husband, Hani Rashid, designed the exhibition displays. ‘We’re on both sides of the coin, but we have learned how to use these new technologies firsthand, and we understand how to manipulate and use them at every stage in the process, from conception to construction.’…”-nytimes.com
now your hand is shown. you fail because you allow technique to engender theory; how would you fare 84 — or 216 or 500 — years ago? it appears that your goals and your work would be unrecognizable. your reliance on the alteration of technical methods to drive your practice displays the mental vacuum that resides in the brain of an automaton; like an ape, you beat whatever is before you into the same pulp that the previous ape beat. some of us live outside your prison; we hold our practice to a timeless ideal and we strive to achieve it by any means warranted, available, and necessary. the angry red planet and, by extension, work.group would always shatter the same parameters at the dawn of the perspective in italy or at the americans’ first split of the atom. you remain craftsmen whilst we serve as prophets.
~ we would like to get the election over with right now. we aren’t looking forward to sucking up a bush win or to listen to the right wing and ignorant gloating. what we are excited about hearing is the numerous excuses and apologies given by the democrats, the leftists, and the media for kerry’s loss. we already know that every day since the dnc has been wasted on talk of what kerry and bush did or did not do during the vietnam war. there have been no surprises here for over a year, and nothing has contributed to prospects for the future. it is doubtful that anything shocking will appear within the remaining seven weeks; george w bush’s incompetence and imbecility can’t be made more plain than it has already during the past 3.5 years, so what else could be said by the kerry campaign?
what we can’t wait to hear is kerry and his apologists spreading the blame for his defeat. we wonder if he will admit his mistakes, or will people like nader get the credit for kerry’s piss poor campaign? will he tell us why he had to collude with the dlc to keep candidates like dean and kucinich from winning the nomination if he had no intention of winning the presidency? will we learn that ‘at least i ain’t him’ isn’t a sensible way to topple an incumbent? will kerry confess that it is irrational to declare that, knowing what he knows now about a clusterfuck in iraq, he would not act any differently in his role in bringing us to it? will kerry point out that his own vanity trumped the interests of the rest of us? we know the next bush term will be more dismal than the last, let us at least contemptibly scoff at the democrats’ spin.