September 25, 2006 New York Times
Connections
A Crunchy-Granola Path From Macramé and LSD to Wikipedia and Google

By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
The pages are yellowed, the addresses and phone numbers all but useless, the products antique, the utopian expectations quaint. But the “Whole Earth Catalog” — and particularly “The Last Whole Earth Catalog,” published in 1971, which ended up selling a million copies and winning the National Book Award — has the eerie luminosity of a Sears catalog from the turn of the last century. It is a portrait of an age and its dreams.

Deerskin jackets and potter’s wheels, geodesic domes and star charts, instructions on raising bees and on repairing Volkswagens, advice on building furniture and cultivating marijuana: all this can be found here, along with celebrations of communal life and swipes at big government, big business and a technocratic society.

Can this encyclopedia of countercultural romance have anything to do with today’s technological world, a world of broadband connections, TCP/IP protocol and the Internet? The Internet, after all, began during the cold war as an attempt to create a network of computers that would be resilient in case of nuclear attack. Its instigator, the United States Department of Defense, was at the very center of the culture being countered by the “Whole Earth Catalog.” How could the romantic, utopian culture of the 1960’s, with its deep suspicions about modernity and its machinery, be closely linked to one of the most important technological revolutions of the last hundred years?

Yet as Fred Turner points out in his revealing new book, “From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism” (University of Chicago Press), there is no way to separate cyberculture from counterculture; indeed, cyberculture grew from its predecessor’s compost. Mr. Turner suggests that Stewart Brand, who created the “Whole Earth Catalog,” was the major node in a network of countercultural speculators, promoters, inventors and entrepreneurs who helped change the world in ways quite different from those they originally envisioned.

Mr. Turner, who teaches in the communication department at Stanford University, is rigorous in his argument, thorough to the point of exhaustion, and impressive in his range. The basic premise, though, is not unfamiliar. A decade ago the cultural critic Mark Dery suggested in his book “Escape Velocity” that the PC revolution could well be called “Counterculture 2.0.” Other writers have also pointed out uncanny overlaps.

And some of the anecdotal evidence is familiar. Steve Jobs created and promoted Apple as a countercultural computer company, most famously in the 1984 television ad that associated it with the demolishment of a totalitarian Big Brother. Even I.B.M., in promoting its first PC, tried to undermine the computer’s association with corporate power, marketing its machine using images of Charlie Chaplin’s tramp, who had twitted the gears of industry in “Modern Times.”

Connections were even made by the participants. Theodore Roszak, whose 1969 book, “The Making of a Counter Culture,” popularized that era’s doctrines, later asserted that computer hackers — “whose origins can be discerned in the old Whole Earth Catalog” — invented the personal computer as a means of “fostering dissent and questioning authority.” Timothy Leary, the psychedelic maestro of that period, declared that “the PC is the LSD of the 1990’s.”

Soon after publishing “The Last Whole Earth Catalog,” Mr. Brand started to write about the computer scene, helped create the “Whole Earth Software Catalog” and, in 1985, became a founder of the WELL — the Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link — a pioneering online community. “As it turned out,” Mr. Brand once explained, “psychedelic drugs, communes, and Buckminster Fuller domes were a dead end, but computers were an avenue to realms beyond our dreams.” By the 90’s, those realms were celebrated by the magazine Wired.

It might be argued that so prevalent was the counterculture, and so experimental and energetic were its most vocal proponents, that it would have been surprising had many of them not found their way to the computer revolution. But Mr. Turner demonstrates something more essential in the continuity.

First, he suggests, we are mistaken in thinking that the postwar technological world was dominated by hierarchies and rigid categories. Under the influence of the mathematician Norbert Wiener, it became increasingly common to think of humans and machines as interacting elements of “cybernetic systems” — organisms through which information flowed. This also led to a different way of thinking about living organisms and their networks of interaction.

Marshall McLuhan wrote in 1964: “Today we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned.” Buckminster Fuller proposed the idea of a Comprehensive Designer, a creator who would embody “an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist.”

These writers were the patron saints of the “Whole Earth Catalog,” their books appearing alongside macramé and carpentry manuals, their ideas presumably brought to life in the commune, where the natural and human world would be bound together, creating a single organism from which new possibilities would unfold.

By the 1980’s, Mr. Turner argues, similar fantasies were inspired by the computer. It had freed itself from corporate control and ownership; it was also capable of connecting with other computers in communities like the WELL (which John Perry Barlow, a former lyricist for the Grateful Dead, called “the latest thing in frontier villages”). The Internet, designed to be inherently nonhierarchical, suggested even more grand possibilities, even a revolution in politics and human consciousness.

In the 90’s, Mr. Turner says, the writers and editors of Wired believed “they would tear down hierarchies, undermine the sorts of corporations and governments that had spawned them” and replace them with a “peer-to-peer, collaborative society, interlinked by invisible currents of energy and information.” Cyberculture was to be the fulfillment of counterculture.

Ultimately, of course, such fulfillment was not to be had. But the consequences of the association were profound. One reason for the heady pace of innovation during the 90’s is that the motivation was never purely abstract, but was often accompanied by utopian passions. Software development occurred not just in the private realm, but also among collaborative communities that objected to corporate ownership. Even today’s Wikipedia — the online encyclopedia continuously being written by its users — can be traced to these ideas.

But there were also limitations of vision and imagination. For a long time, cyberspace advocates were reluctant to take the problem of mischievous hacking seriously and could look askance at the very notion of copyright in the cyberworld. There was even a strain of countercultural romance in the ways in which the corporate monopolist Microsoft became widely portrayed as an Evil Empire threatening the libertarian Internet. (This is also one reason that Google, which has turned out to be Microsoft’s most potent competitor, made its motto “Don’t be evil.”)

Moreover, so messianic were expectations, that many failed to see that cyberspace was not really a different realm from the hard-wired world of ordinary experience, but would become an extension of it: a place where banking, shopping, conversation and business transactions could take place, where the bourgeois world and an imagined frontier would again have to work out their uneasy relations, and would again face an uncertain future.

(From Arthur 24/October 02006)
 
Note: C & D is a dialogue presented as a series of record reviews, and intended to be read straight through.

 
AKRON/FAMILY
“Meek Warrior”
(Young God)

C: [Looking at publicity photo of band] I’m surprised these guys haven’t featured in Arthur yet. They appear to meet many if not all of this magazine’s apparent requirements for coverage.

D: What, they have beards?

C: Yes. I think the magazine is pretty clearly a beards-only policy. It’s pretty clearly where the underground beard was re-born. Or should I say, re-grown. Remember Alan Moore on the cover of Arthur No. 4?

D: That was a beard to be reckoned with. No razors and shaving cream in the Moore household!

C: Total ‘Lord of the Beards.’ On the other hand, Alan’s finger armor stylings haven’t caught on yet.

D: I will keep an eye out for the beard as we check out these records today. I assume there will be ladies, too?

C: Yes, of course.

D: Who presumably are not of the bearded variety.

C: One never knows, does one? [arches eyebrow meaningfully] Anyways, Akron/Family not only have some beardage, they have four-part harmonies, great cascading drumflows, sprawling late Trane skronk, and that’s all on the first track! I saw these guys once in L.A., they were like a devotional Animal Collective…

D: [smiling upon hearing the refrain “Gone, gone, gone/gone completely beyond.”] Ah yes. Beyond. One of my favorite places.

C: [ignoring, continuing] … in Oshkosh overalls, without the echo delays. Like Lubavitchers gone Sun Ra or Ya Ho Wha—

D: Say wha?

C: [snobbishly] Those who know, know. [continuing] They were awesome, in complete uni-mind synch. The audience made backward-and-forward ocean ripples and sounds at their command: ‘Shhh, shhh.’ It was beautiful.

BEACH HOUSE
“Beach House”
(Carpark)

C: Lovely—possibly perfect?—debut album from this girl-and-boy lovebird combo who sound like they’re living down by the sea on some magic moonlit beach that stretches from France to Baja to Bali.

D: [looks at biographical notes and photo] Actually they live in Baltimore. And there is no beard.

C: Waiter, get this man a beard, se vous plais.

D: [ignoring] But Victoria Legrand—

C: Is that a real name???

D: —is definitely a lady. A lady who knows how to wear an aqua dress.

C: [looking at the photo] And a big gold amulet as well.

D: I would say this is late summer music, recorded at the beach house after everybody else has gone back to the city.

C: It’s kind of minimal naturalismo—organ, drum machine, gorgeous female voice: Stereolab, minus le krautrock propulsion. Midway between Brightblack slow-to-stillness, Beach Boys “Pet Sounds” melancholism and Air and another Carpark artist, Casino vs. Japan. Also, what the heck, I’ll throw in that first Bjorn Olson record on Omplatten [“Instrumentalmusik: Instrumental Music…to Submerge in…and Disappear Through,” 1999]. Nordic beaches. As you can see, D, it’s a very particular, yet universal, mood. I see soundtracks in their near-future. [picks up phone] “Hello, Beach House? This is Sofia…”

D: Her voice reminds me a bit of Sigur Ros. Hey, whatever happened to those guys? It’s like they evaporated.

C: She can really SING, when it’s called for, which is in creamy middle of the album on the song “Auburn and Ivory.”

D: Is Auburn the new Ebony?

C: All the songs have some sophisto pop songwriting going on: bridges, key changes, et cetera. And the sounds… when the organ comes in on “House on the Hill,” it’s like Captain Nemo down in the Nautilus playing pipe organ for the octopi. Whew! Can you imagine these guys with a big budget…?

D: Ahoy! Captain Nemo: ANOTHER famous bearded musician.

 
MICK BARR & ZACH HILL
“Earthship”
(5RC)

C: New summit album by underground instrumental speed kings: guitarist Mick Barr of Ocrilim, and drummer Zach Hill of Hella. It’ll tighten yer wig!

D: Well, I won’t need coffee for the next five months.

C: They’re going in for the kill like two old ladies speed-crocheting. Mind the wheedlework.

D: They are the speed criminals who no doubt are under surveillance by the authorities of rock. There’s a NEW MOTHER IN THE TEMPLE if you know what I mean!

C: It does have that High Rise/Mainliner/Musica Transonic thing going a bit. Ah, Japan. Some people may also be put in mind of the Peter Brotzman Octet classic assault album, Machine Gun.

D: That’s a ripping title, “Earthship.” [considers] If you lived there, you’d be home by now.

C: Sometimes they’re against each other, sometimes they unify.

D: I must ask: is there a beard?

C: [looks at publicity photo] Have beard, will rock.These guys are the opposite of Sunn o))): they do as many notes and beats as possible per hour. It’s anti-void music, filling everything with sound.

D: Without the benefit of riffage.

C: There ARE riffs—you just need to adjust your attention to catch them. It’s condensed free rock. Like the instruments are too hot to handle. Except for this one song I keep coming back to… [plays “Closed Coffins and Curtains.”]

D: Whoa! What…is…THAT???

C: It’s like some super-processed symphonic tri-guitar. Like what that weird Godley & Creme instrument was supposed to sound like, remember that? The Gizmo. They made a whole triple-album with it, and Peter Cook too. Bonkers stuff.

D: [playing the 30-second track again] I am totally spooked. [musing] Perhaps if Mr. Ocrilim slowed down and contemplated like this occasionally, he’d get to somewhere really rewarding.

C: Rewarding to you.

D: [laughs] Of course, me! Who else matters?

  
THE HORRORS
“The Horrors” ep
(Stolen Transmission)

D: [Reading song titles] They have a song called “Sheena Was a Parasite”? I worship them already.

C: Frantic organ and guitar-driven psychobilly freakbeat rock’n’roll by five sharply dressed’n’coiffed Dickensian Brits from the belfry.

D: They look like they live in chimneys and spend all day drinking red wine and listening to The Cramps, Tav Falco & Panther Burns…probably the Hives too, and the Birthday Party, and Screaming Jay Hawkins (who they cover here), and Screaming Lord Sutch, and of course the right honorable Arthur Brown. I think they like bourbon and some pretty nasty stuff.

C: [listening to “Excellent Choice”] They’ve got a good look and a good sound and they seem up for a good party. They’ll come to your town and help you burn it down. And then dance in the ashes.

 
PRIMAL SCREAM
“Riot City Blues”
(Capitol)

C: They’re been around approximately forever. And this is their once-a-decade “rock n roll is dumb fun” concept record, apparently.

[C & D cringe for 15 minutes]

C: Talk about the horrors.

D: Where’s the pooper scooper?

C: Rock n roll should be fun, it can be stoopid, but it should never, ever be tedious. One hates to witness someone failing at slumming. It’s embarassing to all involved. Does [Primal Scream singer] Bobby Gillespie seriously think this band can boogie? Ha ha ha. Poor Mani…

D: [thoughtful] Every once in a while an object is mysteriously withdrawn from stores by its manufacturer shortly after its introduction. That kind of decisive action may be appropriate here.

 
THE USA IS A MONSTER
“Sunset at the End of the Industrial Age”
(Load)

C: You will recall that both members of THE USA IS A MONSTER are members of Black Elf Speaks, which is one of the great band names ever.

D: What did Black Elf have to say?

C: I don’t know, it was this kind of gibberish? But it seemed important. [sadly, as if narration] ‘And Black Elf spoke, but no one could understand what he said.’

D: [helpfully] Maybe he had something in his mouth.

C: ….

D: Or, he might have a speech impediment.

C: …

D: [looking at album cover] Naturally I am wondering, what kind of monster?

C: Probably some kind of troll. On PCP.

D: That’s pretty negative. … Um…. “Idiocracy” got you down again?

C: Yeah… Between seeing that and re-reading Chris Hedges’s “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” last week, I guess I’m feeling more bleh about human life than ever. The idiots don’t know when to stop. And there’s more and more of them. They want war and fast food and spectacle. They’re bad at learning. We’re outnumbered, and it’s only getting worse because the herd never gets culled, since we lack exterior predators.

D: [considers] No more trolls.

C: What are we gonna do? I don’t see a way out. Ah, hell. Maybe that’s why the industrial age is going to end, as it says here on the album cover. [reading from the press sheet] “Of course The USA Is A Monster wants to turn the tide and prepare us for the time after the lights go dim on Western Civilization’s exhaust pipe party.” Sounds good to me! Let’s engage. [starts “The Greatest Mystery”]

D: YEARGH!!! THUNDERAMA!

C: Whoa. [45 minutes later…]Whoa.

D: A shining path indeed! Was that all one song?

C: Unbelievable, just ridiculous. The Who, Bruford-era King Crimson, Oneida, minutemen, Lightning Bolt, Liars, Rush. Homeopathic progrock with a lot of heavy spiritual-political truths and theories (“We are only holograms”) and jokes and accusations (“You’re a liar! And a CROOK!”) and digs (“My favorite subject is…me!”). That last song, the three-section “The Spirit of Revenge”…

D: What a giant marching groover that one is! These guys must be super-fit. I’m guessing it’s a lentil and walnut-heavy diet.

 
WOLF EYES
“Human Animal”
(Sub Pop)

D: [listening to “A Million Years”] This makes me insanely happy but I can’t put my finger on why exactly.

C: I feel like it’s 4am at the docks and we’re hearing the soundtrack to some new-millenium industrial-environmental horror show. To update Funkadelic: Mother Earth is REALLY screaming now. [listening to “Lake of Roaches”] Especially now that these noise dudes have a horn. Yikes.

D: I see scrapheap monsters vomiting spare parts and microchips.

C: Urgh, this is uncomfortable in a really good way, like a good ol’ Khanate death-slog through the bog. It’s the feel-nothing hit of the fading summer.

D: “Rusted Mange” sounds like somebody getting run over.

C: “Leper War” is more queasy listening. I’m thinking of torture gardens and animal abuse science labs. All the atrocities going on behind the curtain. Machines playing with their prey. Angry dogs chomping on kids’ talking playtoys. Trains full of prisoners.

D: [thoughtfully] This is music to blow up Monsanto to.

C: Wolf Eyes: for when you want to detonate your day.

THE THERMALS
“The Body, The Blood, The Machine”
(Sub Pop)

C: Melodic meat-and-potatoes punk rock trio from the Pacific Northwest. Two women and a beardless man. This is a concept album about being on the run from a Christian authoritarian USA of the future.

D: [in Chuck D. voice] Fear of a Christian Planet. Fear, baby.

C: In other words, it serves as science fiction adventure, prophecy and soundtrack for real life in half of this country. It’s okay—I like the sentiment and the ambition—but I’m bored.

D: None of the hooks go in deep enough. It’s probably good to drive to, though.

C: The guy’s voice reminds me of Lee Ranaldo’s, which makes me think I’d rather be listening to “Daydream Nation.” Ha!

D: That should be the new Arthur bumper sticker: “I’d rather be listening to ‘Daydream Nation.’”

 
“Good God!: A Gospel Funk Hymnal”
(Numero Group)

C: Here’s another shining path: Christian funk-soul music from the late ‘60s, early ‘70s, which, let’s face it, that period was insane in every genre, every medium.

D: The first two minutes of this album provide everything I need from music.

C: This makes me love Jesus a lot more than when they come to my door and yell at me. Another Grade AAAA reclamation project from Numero Group, America’s most consistently great record label. No one runs a dig like they do.

D: They live in the crates.

C: They were BORN in the crates.

D: [boogieing] I’m happy as a Christian on the pipe and there’s nothing Bobby Gillespie and the Thermals can do about it! [thinking] If Christian soul is so good why is Christian rock so bad?

C: Well, you know what they say: the The Lord records in mysterious ways. And nu gospel metal is one of the most mysterious.

D: Christian rock has more preservatives and additives and pesticides and weird chemicals in it, which gives it big hair and a nasty sheen. This, on the other hand, is organic soul. Black granola Jesus.

 
THE BYRDS
“There Is A Season” boxset
(Sony Legacy)

C: Four CDs and a DVD for you, the gracious few. Their sound really sounds good right now. It must be those harmonies. In the book McGuinn talks about how none of the three of them had a distinctive enough voice for pure lead—but together the three made one beautiful voice. Then you’ve got those great jazz drums, that guy’s got interesting stuff going on all the time, and is willing to stop it all when it’s called for. And the guitar solos are completely nuts. People always think about the Byrds and the chiming 12-strings, band there is that, but the guitar solos are these wonderful jagged raga/jazz stop-start-scatter runs, if that makes any sense. I guess I just never had ears to hear it before. Music for golden hours in the forest, by the river. Pretty good for cleanly shaven gents. They were always tasteful ‘til they got shaggy in the ‘70s—played folk songs, played contemporary stuff (Dylan covers), some beautiful originals.

D: [sings along to “5D (Fifth Dimension”] “I opened my whole heart to the whole universe and I found it was loving/and I saw the great blunder my teachers had made/Scientific delirium madness…” Still one of the best descriptions of the spiritual side of an LSD trip I have ever encountered

C: David Crosby’s extremely gentle three-way plea “Why Can’t We Be Three” is pretty astonishing in its brazenness. You want to know how it will be/me and you/or her and me?’ Etc. And their version of “Wild Mountain Thyme”—“we’ll go gathering mountain thyme across the wild purple heather”—with harmonies and orchestra is as goosebumpraising as that Ravi Shankar at the Kremlin album.

D: Live cuts on disk 4? Not so happening.

 
TRAINWRECK RIDERS
“Lonely Road Revival”
(Alive)

C: Really good cosmic country-tinged Bonnaroo-ready indie rock from San Francisco by dudes who can write hooks. Shit, I bet they can jam it out too.

D: I don’t know why I’m filing it under “guilty pleasure,” but I am.

C: No need to feel guilty. But yeah I can already hear the hacky sacks being hacked, or kicked, or whatever it is they do. Still, you can’t judge a band by who you think their fans will be…

 
THE BLACK KEYS
“Magic Potion”
(Nonesuch)

C: I guess their fan Robert Plant didn’t end up joining the band on bass after all. Maybe he forgot to file for his post-beard exemption.

D: Excellent! The Black Keys. They take this stuff so seriously. There’s axle grease on their denims at all times.

C: So, after their tremendous levee-busting EP of Junior Kimbrough covers, here’s their major label debut. Are diminishing returns setting in?

D: It’s already a cult classic with me! And that’s the only one who matters.

C: You know, I hate to say it, but this is really underwhelming material from an incredibly talented band. I’m not hearing a single one of those choogling grooves that they used to mine so effortlessly. Sometimes low fidelity does not equal authenticity, it just means it sounds like crap.

D: Well it’s good enough for me to want to fire up the grill and have a cookout.

C: I’m hungry for something more.

 
“Ed Rosenthal’s Big Buds Calendar”
(Quick American Archives)

D: The best month is the Dutch still life with the other herbs and stuff:

C: It’s called “after the harvest” of course. [laughs] They totally have this calendar hanging by the desk at all the farms up in Humboldt. [Reading] Ha, “Slacker Thanksgiving” on Nov. 23, that’s a funny one. “As the bud ripens.” Heh.

D: To paraphrase AC/DC: Ed Rosenthal has the biggest buds of them all.

BUFFALO KILLERS
“Buffalo Killers”
(Alive)

C: Trio from Cincinnati—stomping ground of Bootsy Collins and Afghan Whigs—with two lumbering looking beard brothers who make a sweet racket that recalls the Black Crowes, Mountain, Hendrix, Screaming Trees. Definitely some Beatles on the first two songs.

D: From the same label that first signed the Black Keys. They must have scouts all over Ohio.

D: My main concern is why don’t they call themselves The Buffalo Lovers. [suspiciously] Were any buffalos harmed in the making of this album?

C: I love an album that builds and starts hitting its stride by the halfway point. All “River Water” needs, if it needs anything more, is P.P. Arnold singing backup. Then they destroy you with the next tune…

D: [listening to “With Love”] Now THAT is a ballad.

 
BLIND FAITH
“London Hyde Park 1969” dvd
(Sanctuary)

C: Well this is pretty cool. They’ve issued the DVD of this great film of this short-lived supergroup playing for free to 100,000 at London’s Hyde Park back in 1969.

D: It was so weird living through the decade called the ’80s and witnessing Steve Winwood wearing a leather trenchcoat and making sterile radio pop. And now to see Winwood here, looking so young. [The band kicks into “Sea of Joy”] He really was a great soul singer. Whoa check it out, they pan the crowd and there’s is Kenneth Anger himself in epaulets and sideburns and black lips waving his wand of joy.

C: Did you ever notice that every object or action is suddenly improved if you add “of joy” to the end of it?

D: Let’s see…I think I’ll grow a beard of joy. Shitbonger, you’re right!

C: Nice to see that bearded Ginger Baker brought along his handpainted drums on this occasion. Ginger in the ’60s was the equivalent of Gary Young from Pavement in the ’90s: a wild older dude who’s really good, but may not mix well with the others.

GRAHAM COXON
“Love Travels at Illegal Speeds”
(Parlophone/EMI)

C: Here comes the resolute ex-guitarist from Blur with just a corking great solo album, his best one so far.

D: Blur? I did not appreciate that bloodless dress-up party called Britpop.

C: Well between this and that Dirty Pretty Things single I’m ready to get out my Fred Perry shirts again. 

D: Yet if you hadn’t told me about the Blur connection, I would simply be feasting on this short spiky guitar nugs. He sounds like a long lost friend of Wreckless Eric, which makes him a friend of mine.

C: Listen, Graham’s even written the essential tune addressing the new beard conundrum. Dig this song, where he’s watching a guy and girl get off together, it’s kind of an thematic update of Joe Jackson’s “Is She Really Going Out With Him?” [puts on “What’s He Got?” and turns up the lyric “He’s got a lot of hair on his face and on his head/ So why I get my hair cut so short instead?”]

D: Apparently in cleancut Graham Coxon’s world, the beard gets the girl.

Sept. 24, 02006 New York Times

Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat

By MARK MAZZETTI
WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.

The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.

More than a dozen United States government officials and outside experts were interviewed for this article, and all spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were discussing a classified intelligence document. The officials included employees of several government agencies, and both supporters and critics of the Bush administration. All of those interviewed had either seen the final version of the document or participated in the creation of earlier drafts. These officials discussed some of the document’s general conclusions but not details, which remain highly classified.

Officials with knowledge of the intelligence estimate said it avoided specific judgments about the likelihood that terrorists would once again strike on United States soil. The relationship between the Iraq war and terrorism, and the question of whether the United States is safer, have been subjects of persistent debate since the war began in 2003.

National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative documents that the intelligence community produces on a specific national security issue, and are approved by John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence. Their conclusions are based on analysis of raw intelligence collected by all of the spy agencies.

Analysts began working on the estimate in 2004, but it was not finalized until this year. Part of the reason was that some government officials were unhappy with the structure and focus of earlier versions of the document, according to officials involved in the discussion.

Previous drafts described actions by the United States government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, and some policy makers argued that the intelligence estimate should be more focused on specific steps to mitigate the terror threat. It is unclear whether the final draft of the intelligence estimate criticizes individual policies of the United States, but intelligence officials involved in preparing the document said that its conclusions were not softened or massaged for political purposes.

Frederick Jones, a White House spokesman, said that the White House “played no role in drafting or reviewing the judgments expressed in the National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism.” The estimate’s judgments confirm some predictions of a National Intelligence Council report completed in January 2003, two months before the Iraq invasion. That report stated that the approaching war had the potential to increase support for political Islam worldwide and could increase support for some terrorist objectives.

Documents released by the White House timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks emphasized the successes that the United States had made in dismantling the top tier of Al Qaeda.

“Since the Sept. 11 attacks, America and its allies are safer, but we are not yet safe,” concludes one, a report titled “9/11 Five Years Later: Success and Challenges.” “We have done much to degrade Al Qaeda and its affiliates and to undercut the perceived legitimacy of terrorism.”

That document makes only passing mention of the impact the Iraq war has had on the global jihad movement. “The ongoing fight for freedom in Iraq has been twisted by terrorist propaganda as a rallying cry,” it states.

The report mentions the possibility that Islamic militants who fought in Iraq could return to their home countries, “exacerbating domestic conflicts or fomenting radical ideologies.”

On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee released a more ominous report about the terrorist threat. That assessment, based entirely on unclassified documents, details a growing jihad movement and says that “Al Qaeda leaders wait patiently for the right opportunity to attack.”

The new National Intelligence Estimate was overseen by David B. Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats, who commissioned it in 2004 after he took up his post at the National Intelligence Council. Mr. Low declined to be interviewed for this article.

The estimate concludes that the radical Islamic movement has expanded from a core of Qaeda operatives and affiliated groups to include a new class of “self-generating” cells inspired by Al Qaeda’s leadership but without any direct connection to Osama bin Laden or his top lieutenants.

It also examines how the Internet has helped spread jihadist ideology, and how cyberspace has become a haven for terrorist operatives who no longer have geographical refuges in countries like Afghanistan.

In early 2005, the National Intelligence Council released a study concluding that Iraq had become the primary training ground for the next generation of terrorists, and that veterans of the Iraq war might ultimately overtake Al Qaeda’s current leadership in the constellation of the global jihad leadership.

But the new intelligence estimate is the first report since the war began to present a comprehensive picture about the trends in global terrorism.

In recent months, some senior American intelligence officials have offered glimpses into the estimate’s conclusions in public speeches.

“New jihadist networks and cells, sometimes united by little more than their anti-Western agendas, are increasingly likely to emerge,” said Gen. Michael V. Hayden, during a speech in San Antonio in April, the month that the new estimate was completed. “If this trend continues, threats to the U.S. at home and abroad will become more diverse and that could lead to increasing attacks worldwide,” said the general, who was then Mr. Negroponte’s top deputy and is now director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

For more than two years, there has been tension between the Bush administration and American spy agencies over the violence in Iraq and the prospects for a stable democracy in the country. Some intelligence officials have said that the White House has consistently presented a more optimistic picture of the situation in Iraq than justified by intelligence reports from the field.

The broad judgments of the new intelligence estimate are consistent with assessments of global terrorist threats by American allies and independent terrorism experts.

The panel investigating the London terrorist bombings of July 2005 reported in May that the leaders of Britain’s domestic and international intelligence services, MI5 and MI6, “emphasized to the committee the growing scale of the Islamist terrorist threat.”

More recently, the Council on Global Terrorism, an independent research group of respected terrorism experts, assigned a grade of “D+” to United States efforts over the past five years to combat Islamic extremism. The council concluded that “there is every sign that radicalization in the Muslim world is spreading rather than shrinking.”

“The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation Northeast Regional Laboratory (Tahlequah) recently received a 135 exhibit submission that included 37 liquor bottles with green plant material suspended in the solutions, suspected marijuana (see photo). The exhibits were seized by the Cherokee Nation Drug Task Force pursuant to a search of a residence in Cherokee County (details sensitive). There were many different varieties of liquor in the seizure. Intelligence indicated that the suspects would take the bottles to various events in the area and sell shots of the liquor; these were referred to as “Pot Shots.”* Analysis of the plant material by microscopy confirmed marijuana, while analysis of the solutions (total net volume 29.75 liters) by GC and GC/MS confirmed delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC; quantitations not performed). Not surprisingly, liquors with higher alcohol concentrations also had higher THC concentrations. This was the first submission of this type to the laboratory.
 
[* “Microgram Bulletin” Editor’s Note: These solutions are also known as “Green Dragon.”]”

COURTESY HENRY KISSINJAH

Audit Finds Education Department Missteps

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: September 22, 2006
Filed at 2:18 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) — A scorching internal review of the Bush administration’s reading program says the Education Department ignored the law and ethical standards to steer money how it wanted.

The government audit is unsparing in its review of how Reading First, a billion-dollar program each year, that it says has been beset by conflicts of interest and willful mismanagement. It suggests the department broke the law by trying to dictate which curriculum schools must use.

It also depicts a program in which review panels were stacked with people who shared the director’s views and in which only favored publishers of reading curricula could get money.

In one e-mail, the director told a staff member to come down hard on a company he didn’t support, according to the report released Friday by the department’s inspector general.

”They are trying to crash our party and we need to beat the (expletive deleted) out of them in front of all the other would-be party crashers who are standing on the front lawn waiting to see how we welcome these dirtbags,” the Reading First director wrote, according to the report.

That official, Chris Doherty, is resigning in the coming days, department spokeswoman Katherine McLane said Friday. Asked if his quitting was in response to the report, she said only that Doherty is returning to the private sector after five years at the agency.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, in a statement, pledged to swiftly adopt all of the audit’s recommendations. She also pledged a review of every Reading First grant.

”I am concerned about these actions and committed to addressing and resolving them,” she said.

Reading First aims to help young children read through scientifically-proven programs, and the department considers it a jewel of No Child Left Behind, Bush’s education law. Just this week, a separate review found that the effort is helping schools raise achievement.

But from the start, the program has also been dogged by accusations of impropriety, leading to several ongoing audits. The new report from the Office of Inspector General — an independent arm of the Education Department — calls into question basic matters of credibility.

When the department fails to follow the law and its own guidance, the report says, ”it can only serve to undermine the public’s confidence in the department.”

The ranking Democrat on the House education committee was furious.

”They should fire everyone who was involved in this,” said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif. ”This was not an accident, this was not an oversight. This was an intentional effort to corrupt the process.”

About 1,500 school districts have received $4.8 billion in Reading First grants.

PRESIDENT CHAVEZ DELIVERS REMARKS AT THE U.N. GENERAL ASSEMBLY
SEPTEMBER 20, 2006
TRANSCRIPT

“Representatives of the governments of the world, good morning to all of you. First of all, I would like to invite you, very respectfully, to those who have not read this book, to read it. Noam Chomsky, one of the most prestigious American and world intellectuals, Noam Chomsky, and this is one of his most recent books, ‘Hegemony or Survival: The Imperialist Strategy of the United States.'” [Holds up book, waves it in front of General Assembly.]

“It’s an excellent book to help us understand what has been happening in the world throughout the 20th century, and what’s happening now, and the greatest threat looming over our planet. The hegemonic pretensions of the American empire are placing at risk the very survival of the human species. We continue to warn you about this danger and we appeal to the people of the United States and the world to halt this threat, which is like a sword hanging over our heads. I had considered reading from this book, but, for the sake of time,” [flips through the pages, which are numerous] “I will just leave it as a recommendation.

It reads easily, it is a very good book, I’m sure Madame [President] you are familiar with it. It appears in English, in Russian, in Arabic, in German. I think that the first people who should read this book are our brothers and sisters in the United States, because their threat is right in their own house. The devil is right at home. The devil, the devil himself, is right in the house.

“And the devil came here yesterday. Yesterday the devil came here. Right here.” [crosses himself]

“And it smells of sulfur still today.”

Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of the world.

I think we could call a psychiatrist to analyze yesterday’s statement made by the president of the United States. As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world.

An Alfred Hitchcock movie could use it as a scenario. I would even propose a title: “The Devil’s Recipe.”

As Chomsky says here, clearly and in depth, the American empire is doing all it can to consolidate its system of domination. And we cannot allow them to do that. We cannot allow world dictatorship to be consolidated.

The world parent’s statement — cynical, hypocritical, full of this imperial hypocrisy from the need they have to control everything.

They say they want to impose a democratic model. But that’s their democratic model. It’s the false democracy of elites, and, I would say, a very original democracy that’s imposed by weapons and bombs and firing weapons.

What a strange democracy. Aristotle might not recognize it or others who are at the root of democracy.

What type of democracy do you impose with marines and bombs?

The president of the United States, yesterday, said to us, right here, in this room, and I’m quoting, “Anywhere you look, you hear extremists telling you can escape from poverty and recover your dignity through violence, terror and martyrdom.”

Wherever he looks, he sees extremists. And you, my brother — he looks at your color, and he says, oh, there’s an extremist. Evo Morales, the worthy president of Bolivia, looks like an extremist to him.

The imperialists see extremists everywhere. It’s not that we are extremists. It’s that the world is waking up. It’s waking up all over. And people are standing up.

I have the feeling, dear world dictator, that you are going to live the rest of your days as a nightmare because the rest of us are standing up, all those who are rising up against American imperialism, who are shouting for equality, for respect, for the sovereignty of nations.

Yes, you can call us extremists, but we are rising up against the empire, against the model of domination.

The president then — and this he said himself, he said: “I have come to speak directly to the populations in the Middle East, to tell them that my country wants peace.”

That’s true. If we walk in the streets of the Bronx, if we walk around New York, Washington, San Diego, in any city, San Antonio, San Francisco, and we ask individuals, the citizens of the United States, what does this country want? Does it want peace? They’ll say yes.

But the government doesn’t want peace. The government of the United States doesn’t want peace. It wants to exploit its system of exploitation, of pillage, of hegemony through war.

It wants peace. But what’s happening in Iraq? What happened in Lebanon? In Palestine? What’s happening? What’s happened over the last 100 years in Latin America and in the world? And now threatening Venezuela — new threats against Venezuela, against Iran?

He spoke to the people of Lebanon. Many of you, he said, have seen how your homes and communities were caught in the crossfire. How cynical can you get? What a capacity to lie shamefacedly. The bombs in Beirut with millimetric precision?

This is crossfire? He’s thinking of a western, when people would shoot from the hip and somebody would be caught in the crossfire.

This is imperialist, fascist, assassin, genocidal, the empire and Israel firing on the people of Palestine and Lebanon. That is what happened. And now we hear, “We’re suffering because we see homes destroyed.’

The president of the United States came to talk to the peoples — to the peoples of the world. He came to say — I brought some documents with me, because this morning I was reading some statements, and I see that he talked to the people of Afghanistan, the people of Lebanon, the people of Iran. And he addressed all these peoples directly.

And you can wonder, just as the president of the United States addresses those peoples of the world, what would those peoples of the world tell him if they were given the floor? What would they have to say?

And I think I have some inkling of what the peoples of the south, the oppressed people think. They would say, “Yankee imperialist, go home.” I think that is what those people would say if they were given the microphone and if they could speak with one voice to the American imperialists.

And that is why, Madam President, my colleagues, my friends, last year we came here to this same hall as we have been doing for the past eight years, and we said something that has now been confirmed — fully, fully confirmed.

I don’t think anybody in this room could defend the system. Let’s accept — let’s be honest. The U.N. system, born after the Second World War, collapsed. It’s worthless.

Oh, yes, it’s good to bring us together once a year, see each other, make statements and prepare all kinds of long documents, and listen to good speeches, like Abel’s (ph) yesterday, or President Mullah’s (ph). Yes, it’s good for that.

And there are a lot of speeches, and we’ve heard lots from the president of Sri Lanka, for instance, and the president of Chile.

But we, the assembly, have been turned into a merely deliberative organ. We have no power, no power to make any impact on the terrible situation in the world. And that is why Venezuela once again proposes, here, today, 20 September, that we re-establish the United Nations.

Last year, Madam, we made four modest proposals that we felt to be crucially important. We have to assume the responsibility our heads of state, our ambassadors, our representatives, and we have to discuss it.

The first is expansion, and Mullah (ph) talked about this yesterday right here. The Security Council, both as it has permanent and non-permanent categories, (inaudible) developing countries and LDCs must be given access as new permanent members. That’s step one.

Second, effective methods to address and resolve world conflicts, transparent decisions.

Point three, the immediate suppression — and that is something everyone’s calling for — of the anti-democratic mechanism known as the veto, the veto on decisions of the Security Council.

Let me give you a recent example. The immoral veto of the United States allowed the Israelis, with impunity, to destroy Lebanon. Right in front of all of us as we stood there watching, a resolution in the council was prevented.

Fourthly, we have to strengthen, as we’ve always said, the role and the powers of the secretary general of the United Nations.

Yesterday, the secretary general practically gave us his speech of farewell. And he recognized that over the last 10 years, things have just gotten more complicated; hunger, poverty, violence, human rights violations have just worsened. That is the tremendous consequence of the collapse of the United Nations system and American hegemonistic pretensions.

Madam, Venezuela a few years ago decided to wage this battle within the United Nations by recognizing the United Nations, as members of it that we are, and lending it our voice, our thinking.

Our voice is an independent voice to represent the dignity and the search for peace and the reformulation of the international system; to denounce persecution and aggression of hegemonistic forces on the planet.

This is how Venezuela has presented itself. Bolivar’s home has sought a nonpermanent seat on the Security Council.

Let’s see. Well, there’s been an open attack by the U.S. government, an immoral attack, to try and prevent Venezuela from being freely elected to a post in the Security Council.

The imperium is afraid of truth, is afraid of independent voices. It calls us extremists, but they are the extremists.

And I would like to thank all the countries that have kindly announced their support for Venezuela, even though the ballot is a secret one and there’s no need to announce things.

But since the imperium has attacked, openly, they strengthened the convictions of many countries. And their support strengthens us.

Mercosur, as a bloc, has expressed its support, our brothers in Mercosur. Venezuela, with Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, is a full member of Mercosur.

And many other Latin American countries, CARICOM, Bolivia have expressed their support for Venezuela. The Arab League, the full Arab League has voiced its support. And I am immensely grateful to the Arab world, to our Arab brothers, our Caribbean brothers, the African Union. Almost all of Africa has expressed its support for Venezuela and countries such as Russia or China and many others.

I thank you all warmly on behalf of Venezuela, on behalf of our people, and on behalf of the truth, because Venezuela, with a seat on the Security Council, will be expressing not only Venezuela’s thoughts, but it will also be the voice of all the peoples of the world, and we will defend dignity and truth.

Over and above all of this, Madam President, I think there are reasons to be optimistic. A poet would have said “helplessly optimistic,” because over and above the wars and the bombs and the aggressive and the preventive war and the destruction of entire peoples, one can see that a new era is dawning.

As Sylvia Rodriguez (ph) says, the era is giving birth to a heart. There are alternative ways of thinking. There are young people who think differently. And this has already been seen within the space of a mere decade. It was shown that the end of history was a totally false assumption, and the same was shown about Pax Americana and the establishment of the capitalist neo-liberal world. It has been shown, this system, to generate mere poverty. Who believes in it now?

What we now have to do is define the future of the world. Dawn is breaking out all over. You can see it in Africa and Europe and Latin America and Oceanea. I want to emphasize that optimistic vision.

We have to strengthen ourselves, our will to do battle, our awareness. We have to build a new and better world.

Venezuela joins that struggle, and that’s why we are threatened. The U.S. has already planned, financed and set in motion a coup in Venezuela, and it continues to support coup attempts in Venezuela and elsewhere.

President Michelle Bachelet reminded us just a moment ago of the horrendous assassination of the former foreign minister, Orlando Letelier.

And I would just add one thing: Those who perpetrated this crime are free. And that other event where an American citizen also died were American themselves. They were CIA killers, terrorists.

And we must recall in this room that in just a few days there will be another anniversary. Thirty years will have passed from this other horrendous terrorist attack on the Cuban plane, where 73 innocents died, a Cubana de Aviacion airliner.

And where is the biggest terrorist of this continent who took the responsibility for blowing up the plane? He spent a few years in jail in Venezuela. Thanks to CIA and then government officials, he was allowed to escape, and he lives here in this country, protected by the government.

And he was convicted. He has confessed to his crime. But the U.S. government has double standards. It protects terrorism when it wants to.

And this is to say that Venezuela is fully committed to combating terrorism and violence. And we are one of the people who are fighting for peace.

Luis Posada Carriles is the name of that terrorist who is protected here. And other tremendously corrupt people who escaped from Venezuela are also living here under protection: a group that bombed various embassies, that assassinated people during the coup. They kidnapped me and they were going to kill me, but I think God reached down and our people came out into the streets and the army was too, and so I’m here today.

But these people who led that coup are here today in this country protected by the American government. And I accuse the American government of protecting terrorists and of having a completely cynical discourse.

We mentioned Cuba. Yes, we were just there a few days ago. We just came from there happily.

And there you see another era born. The Summit of the 15, the Summit of the Nonaligned, adopted a historic resolution. This is the outcome document. Don’t worry, I’m not going to read it.

But you have a whole set of resolutions here that were adopted after open debate in a transparent matter — more than 50 heads of state. Havana was the capital of the south for a few weeks, and we have now launched, once again, the group of the nonaligned with new momentum.

And if there is anything I could ask all of you here, my companions, my brothers and sisters, it is to please lend your good will to lend momentum to the Nonaligned Movement for the birth of the new era, to prevent hegemony and prevent further advances of imperialism.

And as you know, Fidel Castro is the president of the nonaligned for the next three years, and we can trust him to lead the charge very efficiently.

Unfortunately they thought, “Oh, Fidel was going to die.” But they’re going to be disappointed because he didn’t. And he’s not only alive, he’s back in his green fatigues, and he’s now presiding the nonaligned.

So, my dear colleagues, Madam President, a new, strong movement has been born, a movement of the south. We are men and women of the south.

With this document, with these ideas, with these criticisms, I’m now closing my file. I’m taking the book with me. And, don’t forget, I’m recommending it very warmly and very humbly to all of you.

We want ideas to save our planet, to save the planet from the imperialist threat. And hopefully in this very century, in not too long a time, we will see this, we will see this new era, and for our children and our grandchildren a world of peace based on the fundamental principles of the United Nations, but a renewed United Nations.

And maybe we have to change location. Maybe we have to put the United Nations somewhere else; maybe a city of the south. We’ve proposed Venezuela.

You know that my personal doctor had to stay in the plane. The chief of security had to be left in a locked plane. Neither of these gentlemen was allowed to arrive and attend the U.N. meeting. This is another abuse and another abuse of power on the part of the Devil. It smells of sulfur here, but God is with us and I embrace you all.

May God bless us all. Good day to you.

(APPLAUSE)

Time Magazine on “Idiocracy”

Sunday, Sep. 10, 2006

Dude, Where’s My Film?

This man gave the world King of the Hill and Office Space. So why is Fox squashing his new movie?
By JOEL STEIN

Movies aren’t banished straight to video because they’re bad. A reasonably smart marketing exec with a splicing machine and a decent song can make a huge profit out of bad. If some guy at home could cut together that YouTube trailer where The Shining is a touching father-son comedy, then the Fox marketing division can make Date Movie look good in a 30-sec. TV spot. That’s why studio marketers are better at hoodwinking the customer than those two guys Huck and Jim picked up on the river. The biggest sin a director can commit isn’t making a bad movie, it’s making one that doesn’t make a good ad.

That helps explain the strange fate of Idiocracy, a sci-fi comedy starring Luke Wilson and directed and co-written by Mike Judge, the guy whose spotless track record includes Beavis and Butt-head, King of the Hill and Office Space. Idiocracy may not be a bad movie, but every ad and trailer the studio put together for it tested atrociously. After sitting around finished for almost a year, the movie opened two weeks ago–sort of. Fox released it in a few theaters in seven cities (not including New York City), with no trailers, no ads, no official poster and no screenings for critics.

The problem is, Idiocracy is so aesthetically displeasing–its vision of the future so purposely, gaudily, corporately ugly–that even showing a second of it made people refuse to see it. Judge’s unslick look might work for hand-drawn cartoons of hicks or a movie that takes place in poorly lit cubicles, but it’s not so great for a sci-fi action comedy. It just doesn’t look or feel like Talladega Nights or Dodgeball. Even though Fox probably made a million dollars’ worth of trailers and ads, they empirically knew from testing that every dollar they spent on ad time for Idiocracy would be wasted.

So they dumped it, which happens more often than you think. Last year Fox took The Onion’s sketch movie, which has been in development for several years, out behind the studio barn and put it to sleep. They also dumped the $50 million film Stay, starring Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts, in a few theaters with almost no marketing. Ever wonder where all those old, bad movies suddenly come from when a guy like Ashton Kutcher becomes famous?

Still, abandoning Idiocracy seems particularly unjust, since Judge has made a lot of money for Fox. Plus, Idiocracy isn’t a bad movie: a lot of the reviews are actually positive. The idea is an extension of Judge’s previous work mocking the dumbing down of society: perfectly average Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph are frozen until 2505 and awaken to a world so degraded by mass consumerism that they are now the smartest people in the world. Crops are dying because they’re being irrigated with an electrolyte-filled sports drink that has “the taste plants crave.” Costco takes up miles of space and has greeters emotionlessly repeat, “Welcome to Costco. I love you.” The movie is packed with top-shelf versions of the dumb-guy jokes that have sustained sitcoms for years, which you’d think would be great stuff for a trailer.

A desperate Fox last fall even considered shooting Idiocracy ads that wouldn’t show any of the movie at all. But the big studio marketing departments don’t work well with high-concept campaigns and grass-roots marketing. They’re designed to blast radio and TV into the mass consciousness. Stranger still, they seem not to care that marketing a movie’s theatrical distribution can boost its eventual DVD sales, which Idiocracy is very likely to score on. (After a modest theatrical run, Office Space went on to sell 6 million DVDs and videotapes.) That may be because DVD marketing comes out of the DVD division’s budget, and why help those guys? They’re over in a different building.

Not that anybody will talk about any of that–you’ll notice there are no quotes in this story. That’s because Fox doesn’t want to bad-mouth Judge, not even off the record, and Judge doesn’t want to complain about Fox. Judge knows he works in an Office Space world with dumb bosses who can’t market an offbeat movie and an Idiocracy world where audiences react mainly to CGI bells and whistles. The best he can hope to do is quietly keep making fun of those facts, and hope it plays a lot on cable.