Dear Friends and fellow Wesleynauts,
We are deeply saddened to report that one of our artists, Wesley
Willis passed away yesterday, Thursday, August 21st. Wesley will be
greatly missed by all that had the privilege to know him, as well as
the fans who have been fortunate enough to experience his genius.

...

Rock on Wesley Willis.

R.I.P Wesley Willis

"It was hard to comprehend what I was in fact seeing," said the Skien farmer. He managed to get nine shots of the former policeman he spotted sexually assaulting his pigs.

...

Irony on many levels...

Pig Lovin'

Strange...

Skippy the Goth Kangaroo

Elonka wrote:
] ] A software engineer from Oregon pleaded guilty Wednesday
] ] to aiding the Taleban and now faces the likelihood of
] ] seven to 10 years in jail.
] ]
] ] The Justice Department says Maher Hawash, a naturalized
] ] American citizen of Palestinian descent, pleaded guilty
] ] to a charge of conspiring to supply services to the
] ] Taleban following the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York
] ] and Washington.

He plead Not Guilty three months ago, May 6th. So which is it, guilty or no? Even if he plead Guilty, that doesn't necessarily mean he is. Having been held incommunicado, without habeas corpus rights and in solitary confinement for a month can leave you pretty "open to suggestion" if you get my drift.

The latest plea is here: http://www.freemikehawash.org/0806plea.htm

I think his testimony should be taken with a grain of salt. This was not a trial like we're used to. It's kind of odd how fast it went from "detained as a material witness" to "Guilty" so quickly.

Found a comment on Slashdot that more or less sums up what I think, see below.

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http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=73841&cid=6633119
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This is an important point to remember, and one that is well illustrated by a little history.

In 1930s Stalinist Russia, hundreds of political prisoners were convicted of treason and either executed or carted off to the gulag. What is remarkable about these cases is not the fact that they happened, but the fact that the trials and subsequent convictions appeared to be conducted in accordance with proper forms and procedures. The accused would be afforded access to legal representation, but would then proceed to get up, in open court, and swear on their mother's grave that they were guilty of the most heinous treason when all they had possibly done was express the mildest dissent, often privately, or ended up in the wrong political faction. The Soviet regime was then able to deflect criticism of the suppression of dissent by simply pointing to the apparent fairness of their trial process, often with the assistance of Western apologists such as English QC D. N. Pritt.

The trick, of course, was worked before trial, during a period of a number of weeks (usually) when the accused was held incommunicado and subjected to severe psychological pressure and physical mistreatment (such as food and sleep deprivation, interspersed on occasion with outright physical torture) designed essentially to brainwash the unfortunate suspect into confessing. If necessary, threats were made against the suspect's family to induce a confession. This process was referred to by its architect, Soviet prosecutor Andrei Vyshinsky, as "the conveyor", and it is the twentieth century's greatest testament to the need for access to criminal suspects at all stages of the judicial process, from arrest to conviction.

Until verifiable physical evidence of what Hawash is alleged to have done is produced, this confession convinces me of nothing other than that John Ashcroft, the man who ultimately bears responsibility for Hawash's treatment and prosecution, is just a latter-day Vyshinsky and a disgrace to his profession.

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RE: Hawash was guilty

"The main reason we're still here is to support Brown and Root," said Sgt. 1st Class David Uthe, 45, of Augusta.

...

Probably preaching to the choir at this point, but yes, it was all about oil, and continues to be. Anyone see some of the recently released notes from Cheney's Energy Task Force meetings? They were basically deciding how to divvy up Iraq. Now the troops are working in hostile territory for a Halliburton subsidiary. Oil is such a dirty business.

Reserves wanting to leave Mideast

flynn23 wrote:

] did you see last week's column? look in Old Hat

Yeah, how much of that article was just a verbatim quote of what you wrote? It's hard to tell.

One thing wrong with the Snapster business model: What's the incentive for the artist? People seem to forget the commodity. Sure, buy the whole catalog of recorded works that you can for a little over a million dollars. When the next hot album comes out, the system collapses if the record company isn't moving cellophane like it used to. Where would the money for marketing come from? I think consumer demand is extremely fickle. For this to work as envisioned, a lot of the supposely "prehistoric" systems would still need to remain in place, such as mass media hype.

How would rights revocation work? Suppose an out of print recording is lost from the vault. Would all users in the co-op still have rights to their backups? I don't think they'd be able to continue trading backups. It is an interesting idea though.

RE: I, Cringely | The Pulpit

wilpig wrote:
] ] We all know about the Napster issue, the perfume company,
] ] the lipstick company, the tire makers... Metallica has
] ] sued them all. Rightly or wrongly, no one is judging
] ] that. However, the idea behind this parody was to gauge,
] ] after all that litigation, just how willing America was
] ] to buy a story as extraordinay -- as outlandish -- as
] ] them claiming ownership of a 2-chord progression.
]
] A follow-up on the Metallica lawsuit. It was all made up.
] Now get back to work.

:) I almost wrote "Good satire" when I recommended it but wanted to see everyone's reactions.

RE: Unfaith On Metallica Hoax, 7/18/03

"People are going to get on our case again for this, but try to see it from our point of view just once," stated Metallica's Lars Ulrich. "We're not saying we own those two chords, individually - that would be ridiculous. We're just saying that in that specific order, people have grown to associate E, F with our music."

Metallica Sue Canadian Band over E, F Chords

Been studying oil production lately. All the scenarios I can think of don't look very pretty. Global oil production is expected to peak between 2005 and 2020, depending on whose estimates you concur with. Oilcrash.com has some good resources for studying this, as well as fromthewilderness.com

When you factor oil into the equation, most of the geopolitics during the industrial age make crystal clear sense. I believe the war on terror isn't really about terror at all. It's about controlling the remainder of the oil that isn't declining in production. It's so simple really. It's also frightening.

The Death of the Oil Economy

Bookmarked for future reference

Police State Story