Lightning Strikes? Get Used to Them.

The Friday is withering away, and Saturday is another work day. That rhymes, but I don't have enough time to put it into song. And even if I did have enough time, I'd rather jam out a farewell to California, my favorite state on Earth. I spiel onward on the conflagration for my pals at AlterNet:

Lightning Strikes: Get Used to Catastrophic Wildfires and Worse
"This is a specter against which grand inquisitors and wars against terrorism are powerless to protect us," Mike Davis wrote in a 2003 essay titled "The Perfect Fire," which was composed against the backdrop of a massive firestorm that callously rampaged across Southern California, burning thousands of homes and billions of dollars in its wake. "It is, of course," he added, "the right time of the year for the end of the world."

It still is. In late June, an ahead-of-schedule dry lightning event sparked more than 8,000 strikes across California, setting off over 800 fires, many of which are still burning as I write. And if you're the praying type, you might want to start praying they can be put out before the conventional time window for such events arrives in late July and August.

"This doesn't bode well for the fire season," AccuWeather.com meteorologist Ken Clark told the Associated Press in June, shortly after the lightning hit. "We're not even into the meat of the fire season at this point, and the brush is extremely dry. It's not going to get any better," he added. "It's going to get worse."

How much worse? How much time have you got? You might want to spend it packing... MORE @ ALTERNET

MORE @ MORPHIZM

The Real Nigerian Nightmare

[Back on you, Morphizm pals. I get deep on oil, Nigeria and geopolitical clusterfuckage for AlterNet.]

AlterNet: Africa, Victim in Our Quest for Cheap Oil
Whether or not we have fully arrived at peak oil can be left to the nitpickers and bean counters to decide. What we know for sure is that the cost of black gold has exponentially risen in just a few short years, and the global economy it is built upon is currently straddling a razor waiting for the inevitable slice. That final cut may come from Nigeria, where all the major oil companies have done business, dirty and otherwise, for the last five decades, degrading the environment and depressing the general population along the way.

That disturbing feedback loop is the subject of the new book Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta, which juxtaposes the arresting graphics of award-winning photojournalist Ed Kashi with the geopolitical insights of UC Berkeley professor Michael Watts to present Africa's most populous nation as a possible epicenter for the full-blown resource wars to come... MORE @ ALTERNET

MORE @ MORPHIZM

The Fourth Is Over? Let's Kill Iran!

What a way to celebrate American independence. Another lethal war, another nail in the nation's coffin. Seymour Hersh breaks it down. Be afraid. Very fucking afraid.

MORE @ MORPHIZM

Is Google Evil For The Environment?

Doubtful. But I asked them and Treehugger anyway, for AlterNet:

Google: Good or Evil For The Environment?
Now that it has unseated Microsoft as Earth's most recognizable and influential technology behemoth, Google has gone from a crowd-favorite upstart to an octopus multinational beneath the bull's-eye. As such, its innovations in search, advertising, video, open sourcing, communications, computing and beyond have taken a backseat to legitimate concerns over everything from its impossible motto, "Don't Be Evil," to its carbon footprint. And while the former is a terminological chimera, the latter is an increasing problem for a planet that is practically warming by the day, due to a lethal combination of explosive global growth, rampant carbon dioxide emissions and lackluster world policy.

To mangle the cliche, the evil is in the details... MORE @ ALTERNET

MORE @ MORPHIZM

Exxon Drills Alaska In The Ass

[Morphizm homey Greg Palast checks in on the Supreme Court's recent hand-off to Exxon, who really needs the money. Way to go, Supreme Court. Way to stand up for the oil-slicked little guy. -- ST]

Court Rewards Exxon for Valdez Spill
by Greg Palast
Twenty years after Exxon Valdez slimed over one thousand miles of Alaskan beaches, the company has yet to pay the $5 billion in punitive damages awarded by the jury. And now they won't have to. The Supreme Court today cut Exxon's liability by 90% to half a billion. It's so cheap, it's like a permit to spill.

Exxon knew this would happen. Right after the spill, I was brought to Alaska by the Natives whose Prince William Sound islands, livelihoods, and their food source was contaminated by Exxon crude. My assignment: to investigate oil company frauds that led to to the disaster. There were plenty.

But before we brought charges, the Natives hoped to settle with the oil company, to receive just enough compensation to buy some boats and rebuild their island villages to withstand what would be a decade of trying to survive in a polluted ecological death zone.

In San Diego, I met with Exxon's US production chief, Otto Harrison, who said, "Admit it; the oil spill's the best thing to happen" to the Natives.

His company offered the Natives pennies on the dollar. The oil men added a cruel threat: take it or leave it and wait twenty years to get even the pennies. Exxon is immortal - but Natives die.

And they did. A third of the Native fishermen and seal hunters I worked with are dead. Now their families will collect one tenth of their award, two decades too late.

In today's ruling, Supreme Court Justice David Souter wrote that Exxon's recklessness was ''profitless'' - so the company shouldn't have to pay punitive damages. Profitless, Mr. Souter? Exxon and it's oil shipping partners saved billions - BILLIONS - by operating for sixteen years without the oil spill safety equipment they promised, in writing, under oath and by contract.

The official story is, "Drunken Skipper Hits Reef." But don't believe it, Mr. Souter. Alaska's Native lands and coastline were destroyed by a systematic fraud motivated by profit-crazed penny-pinching. Here's the unreported story, the one you won't get tonight on the Petroleum Broadcast System:

It begins in 1969 when big shots from Humble Oil and ARCO (now known as Exxon and British Petroleum) met with the Chugach Natives, owners of the most valuable parcel of land on the planet: Valdez Port, the only conceivable terminus for a pipeline that would handle a trillion dollars in crude oil.

These Alaskan natives ultimately agreed to sell the Exxon consortium this astronomically valuable patch of land -- for a single dollar. The Natives refused cash. Rather, in 1969, they asked only that the oil companies promise to protect their Prince William Sound fishing and seal hunting grounds from oil.

In 1971, Exxon and partners agreed to place the Natives' specific list of safeguards into federal law. These commitment to safety reassured enough Congressmen for the oil group to win, by one vote, the right to ship oil from Valdez.

The oil companies repeated their promises under oath to the US Congress.

The spill disaster was the result of Exxon and partners breaking every one of those promises - cynically, systematically, disastrously, in the fifteen years leading up to the spill.

Forget the drunken skipper fable. As to Captain Joe Hazelwood, he was below decks, sleeping off his bender. At the helm, the third mate would never have collided with Bligh Reef had he looked at his Raycas radar. But the radar was not turned on. In fact, the tanker's radar was left broken and disasbled for more than a year before the disaster, and Exxon management knew it. It was just too expensive to fix and operate.

For the Chugach, this discovery was poignantly ironic. On their list of safety demands in return for Valdez was "state-of-the-art" on-ship radar.

We discovered more, but because of the labyrinthine ways of litigation, little became public, especially about the reckless acts of the industry consortium, Alyeska, which controls the Alaska Pipeline.

* Several smaller oil spills before the Exxon Valdez could have warned of a system breakdown. But a former Senior Lab Technician with Alyeska, Erlene Blake, told our investigators that management routinely ordered her to toss out test samples of water evidencing spilled oil. She was ordered to refill the test tubes with a bucket of clean sea water called, "The Miracle Barrel."

* In a secret meeting in April 1988, Alyeska Vice-President T.L. Polasek confidentially warned the oil group executives that, because Alyeska had never purchased promised safety equipment, it was simply "not possible" to contain an oil spill past the Valdez Narrows -- exactly where the Exxon Valdez ran aground 10 months later.

* The Natives demanded (and law requires) that the shippers maintain round- the-clock oil spill response teams. Alyeska hired the Natives, especiallly qualified by their generations-old knowledge of the Sound, for this emergency work. They trained to drop from helicopters into the water with special equipment to contain an oil slick at a moments notice. But in 1979, quietly, Alyeska fired them all. To deflect inquisitive state inspectors, the oil consortium created sham teams, listing names of oil terminal workers who had not the foggiest idea how to use spill equipment which, in any event, was missing, broken or existed only on paper.

In 1989, when the oil poured from the tanker, there was no Native response team, only chaos.

Today, twenty years after the oil washed over the Chugach beaches, you can kick over a rock and it will smell like an old gas station.

The cover story of the Drunken Captain serves the oil industry well. It falsely presents America's greatest environmental disaster as a tale of human frailty, a one-time accident. But broken radar, missing equipment, phantom spill teams, faked tests -- the profit-driven disregard of the law -- made the spill an inevitability, not an accident.

Yet Big Oil tells us, as they plead to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, as Senator John McCain calls for drilling off the shores of the Lower 48, it can't happen again. They promise.

MORE @ MORPHIZM

Is Famine Inevitable?

Greetings, Morphizm diehards. I apologize for the state of disrepair. Things have been progressing too quickly for me to catch up. Kind of like food prices. Speaking of, I spiel for AlterNet on that very issue. What a strange coincidence:

Is Famine Inevitable?
Paul Krugman's "Grains Gone Wild" column may have boasted one of the most hilarious titles ever in the annals of agrichemical economic analysis, but the situation is far from funny: Our food situation is on the precipice of failure. And all it's going to take to get past the tipping point is the slightest of mistakes -- or manipulations.

Much of our current recessionary intrigue has been aided and abetted by market speculation, from the oil and food sector all the way to the White House itself. For the last seven years, the Bush administration has placed climate crisis on the back burner in existential pursuit of resource wars and an "American way of life" that has turned from a dream of Hummers, housing and bling into a nightmare of price hikes, foreclosures and layoffs.

Mission accomplished... MORE @ ALTERNET

MORE @ MORPHIZM

Post Up: Barack Obama's Victory Soundtrack

Good news, this late night. June is here.




Post Up: Barack Obama's Victory Soundtrack
In a refreshing sign that math and hope can actually work together, Barack Obama predictably sewed up the delegate count on Tuesday night and defeated Hillary Clinton in what has turned out to be a very long, deeply contested Democratic primary. And now, for the first time ever, a black man is on track to inhabit the White House, fulfilling Parliament-Funkadelic's dream of turning Washington, D.C. into Chocolate City... MORE @ WIRED

MORE @ MORPHIZM

What Is An Envirogee?

Back from a long, strange trip to NorCal. Wind events, heatwaves, the usual. LA was a trip while I was gone. Tornadoes, mud floods, crazy shit. Hey, I just thought of a word (for AlterNet)!

What Is An Envirogee?
Chew on this word, jargon lovers. Envirogee.

It carries more 21st century buzz than its semi-official designation climate refugee, which is a displaced individual who has been forced to migrate because of environmental devastation. Maybe the buzzword will catch on faster and shed some much-needed light on what will become a serious problem, probably by the end of this or the next decade. That light is crucial, because so far envirogees haven't been fully recognized by those who certify the civil liberties of Earth's various populations, whether that is the United Nations or local and national governments whose people are increasingly on the move for a whole new set of devastating reasons.

In short, immigration is about to enter a new phase, which resembles an old one with a 21st century twist. For thousands of years, humanity has fled across Earth's surface fearing instability and in search of sustainability. But that resource war has kicked into overdrive thanks to our current climate crisis -- a manufactured war with its own clock.

And the clock is ticking... MORE @ ALTERNET

MORE @ MORPHIZM

Hillary Removes Bill Clinton as First Husband

[Morphizm pal Greg Palast checks in with a shorty on the faltering Clinton presidential campaign, and a move that may save it. Or at least make it look less lame. -- ST]

Hillary Removes Bill Clinton as First Husband
[Greg Palast, Morphizm]
n a surprise move meant to reinvigorate her faltering campaign, Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton dismissed William Clinton as First Husband designate.

Those close to the candidate, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Mr. Clinton, also known as “Bill,” had, with press revelations of his business associations with the repressive Colombian regime, plus a long history of support for anti-union causes such as NAFTA, had become a “real drag” on Senator Clinton’s ambitions.

While disappointing returns from Kentucky primary polls flashed on campaign monitors, the Senator’s spokesman issued a tersely worded statement announcing the resignation of the ex-President and thanking Mr. Clinton for “his years of service in support of Hillary’s career and her goals for America” and that the candidate would, “miss his presence greatly.”

Mr. Clinton will retain the title of Former Chief of the Free World.

Meanwhile, Senator Clinton dismissed rumors of her accepting the number two spot on the ticket from Senator Barack Obama, though she appeared to leave the door open, telling reporters traveling with her she would consider the Vice-Presidential nomination if she were also simultaneously appointed White House chef, a comment followed by that weird and frightening laugh of hers.

Campaign insiders said that Senator Clinton will shortly announce that her new designee for “First Lad” will be Kevin Costner who is expected to join her in the final desperate days of the primary season after the release next month of his latest flop, Big Advance in My Pants.

Reached at his office in Harlem, New York, Mr. Clinton, an uncommitted super-delegate, stated that he had not been forced from the Clinton campaign, but had chosen to remove himself so he could “devote more time to [his] family.”

MORE @ MORPHIZM

Naomi Klein: Regime Quake!

[Happy Saturday, Morphizm nuts. Naomi Klein has sent us another stunning peek into our future dystopia, and since I'm away from the home office, it is appearing in its full glory here on the MorphBlog.]

Regime-Quakes in Burma and China
[Naomi Klein, Morphizm]
When news arrived of the catastrophic earthquake in Sichuan, my mind turned to Zheng Sun Man, an up-and-coming security executive I met on a recent trip to China. Zheng heads Aebell Electrical Technology, a Guangzhou-based company that makes surveillance cameras and public address systems and sells them to the government.

Zheng, a 28-year-old MBA with a text-messaging addiction, was determined to persuade me that his cameras and speakers are not being used against pro-democracy activists or factory organizers. They are for managing natural disasters, Zheng explained, pointing to the freak snowstorms before Lunar New Year. During the crisis, the government “was able to use the feed from the railway cameras to communicate how to deal with the situation and organize an evacuation. We saw how the central government can command from the north emergencies in the south.”

Of course, surveillance cameras have other uses too—like helping to make “Most Wanted” posters of Tibetan activists. But Zheng did have a point: nothing terrifies a repressive regime quite like a natural disaster. Authoritarian states rule by fear and by projecting an aura of total control. When they suddenly seem short-staffed, absent or disorganized, their subjects can become dangerously emboldened. It’s something to keep in mind as two of the most repressive regimes on the planet—China and Burma—struggle to respond to devastating disasters: the Sichuan earthquake and Cyclone Nargis. In both cases, the disasters have exposed grave political weaknesses within the regimes—and both crises have the potential to ignite levels of public rage that would be difficult to control.

When China is busily building itself up, creating jobs and new wealth, residents tend to stay quiet about what they all know: developers regularly cut corners and flout safety codes, while local officials are bribed not to notice. But when China comes tumbling down—including at least eight schools in the earthquake zone -- the truth has a way of escaping from the rubble. “Look at all the buildings around. They were the same height but why did the school fall down?” a distraught relative in Juyuan demanded of a foreign reporter. “It’s because the contractors want to make a profit from our children.” A mother in Dujiangyan told The Guardian, “Chinese officials are too corrupt and bad….They have money for prostitutes and second wives but they don’t have money for our children.”

That the Olympic stadiums were built to withstand powerful quakes is suddenly of little comfort. When I was in China, it was hard to find anyone willing to criticize the Olympic spending spree. Now posts on mainstream web portals are calling the torch relay “wasteful” and its continuation in the midst of so much suffering “inhuman.”

None of this compares with the rage boiling over in Burma, where cyclone survivors have badly beaten at least one local official, furious at his failure to distribute aid. Simon Billenness, co-chair of the board of directors of U.S. Campaign for Burma, told me, “This is Katrina times a thousand. I don’t see how it couldn’t lead to political unrest.”

The unrest of greatest concern to the regime is not coming from regular civilians but from inside the military – a fact that explains some of the junta’s more erratic behavior. For instance, we know that the Burmese junta has been taking credit for supplies sent by foreign countries. Now it turns out that it have been taking more than credit—in some cases it has been taking the aid. According to a report in Asia Times, the regime has been hijacking food shipments and distributing them among its 400,000 soldiers. The reason speaks to the deep threat the disaster poses. The generals, it seems, are “haunted by an almost pathological fear of a split inside their own ranks…if soldiers are not given priority in aid distribution and are unable to feed themselves, the possibility of mutiny rises.” Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK, confirms that before the cyclone, the military was already coping with a wave of desertions.

This relatively small-scale theft of food is fortifying the junta for its much larger heist—the one taking place via the constitutional referendum the generals have insisted on holding, come hell and high water. Enticed by high commodity prices, Burma’s generals have been gorging off the country’s natural abundance, stripping it of gems, timber, rice and oil. As profitable as this arrangement is, junta leader Gen. Than Shwe knows he cannot resist the calls for democracy indefinitely.

Taking a page out of the playbook of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, the generals have drafted a Constitution that allows for future elections but attempts to guarantee that no government will ever have the power to prosecute them for their crimes or take back their ill-gotten wealth. As Farmaner puts it, after elections the junta leaders “are going to be wearing suits instead of boots.” Much of the voting has already taken place but in cyclone ravaged districts, the referendum has been delayed until May 24. Aung Din, executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Burma, told me that the military has stooped to using aid to extort votes. “Rainy season is coming,” he told me, “and people need to repair their roofs. When they go to purchase the materials, which are very limited, they are told they can only have them if they agree to vote for the constitution in an advance ballot.”

The cyclone, meanwhile, has presented the junta with one last, vast business opportunity: by blocking aid from reaching the highly fertile Irrawaddy delta, hundreds of thousands of mostly ethnic Karen rice farmers are being sentenced to death. According to Farmaner, “that land can be handed over to the generals’ business cronies” (shades of the beachfront land grabs in Sri Lanka and Thailand after the Asian tsunami). This isn’t incompetence, or even madness, as many have claimed. It’s laissez-faire ethnic cleansing.

If the Burmese junta avoids mutiny and achieves these goals, it will be thanks largely to China, which has vigorously blocked all attempts at the United Nations for humanitarian intervention in Burma. Inside China, where the central government is going to great lengths to show itself as compassionate, news of this complicity could prove explosive.

Will China’s citizens receive this news? They just might. Beijing has, up to now, displayed an awesome determination to censor and monitor all forms of communication. But in the wake of the quake, the notorious “Great Firewall” censoring the Internet is failing badly. Blogs are going wild, and even state reporters are insisting on reporting the news.

This may be the greatest threat that natural disasters pose to contemporary repressive regimes. For China’s rulers, nothing has been more crucial to maintaining power than the ability to control what people see and hear. If they lose that, neither surveillance cameras nor loudspeakers will be able to help them.

MORE @ MORPHIZM

Pawns In The Hedge Funds Chess Game

Sorry for the late post, Morphizm pals. I've been stuck in neutral for days now, and logistics and administration have taken over my life. But I'm almost out of the woods, so look for more content in the next couple of weeks, with a dramatic relaunch perhaps in June. Speaking of drama, here's some I wrote for your mama and her devalued dollars:

Hedge Fund Titans Are Treating Us Like Pawns in Their Economic Chess Games
Recently, two important and related events occurred. The first is that hedge fund kingpin Cerberus Capital Management was considering buying Blackwater, the notoriously Orwellian security contractor that has become the scourge of Iraq and America alike. And the second event? As soon as the news was reported, the deal was killed.

Neither company, you see, likes the publicity. Plus, with Blackwater in its portfolio, Cerberus would have more than lived up to the origin of its name, which comes from Greek mythology. Yes, Cerberus is the three-headed demon dog that guards the gates of Hell.

"We do our best to avoid the spotlight," secretive Cerberus founder Stephen Feinberg reportedly told his staff in a memo earlier this year, "but unfortunately, when you do some large deals, such as Chrysler and GMAC, it is hard to avoid."

True, Stephen, true. When you bail out two of the worst environmental and economic offenders in the automotive business (and subprime debacle, in the case of GMAC), and then follow that up by looking into acquiring what passes for a private army with itchy trigger-fingers and a suspicious habit of corruption and cost overruns, well yeah, people will talk... MORE @ ALTERNET

MORE @ MORPHIZM

The Roots Dig Into Danger

Bottom of the morning, Morphizm fans. Today is going to be the grind. But it's a good thing I have a badass soundtrack on hand. The Roots have a new, visceral disc out, and it could be the best thing they have ever made. My review for Metromix explains the rest:

The Roots
Rising Down
Whereas their most recent efforts have widened the Roots' portal into the mainstream, Rising Down is a defiant, agitated classic that might thankfully shake off the weaker bandwagon-jumpers. The title track throws down the gauntlet on geopolitical strife, from blood diamonds to climate crisis, with the help of conscientious virtuoso Mos Def. Dice Raw, Peedi Crakk and DJ Jazzy Jeff stop by to bring staccato danger to the visceral "Get Busy," while the Roots' rapper-in-residence, Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter, uses his militant, machine-gun delivery on "75 Bars" to remind us why rap used to actually scare some people. (Ah, the good old days!)... MORE @ METROMIX

MORE @ MORPHIZM

Don't Try This At Home!

Favorite line? "We are absolutely confident he will be found alive and well, floating somewhere in the ocean." From the LA Times:

A Roman Catholic priest who floated off under hundreds of helium party balloons was missing today off the southern coast of Brazil. Rescuers in helicopters and small fishing boats were searching off the coast of Santa Catarina state, where pieces of balloons were found. Rev. Adelir Antonio de Carli lifted off from the port city of Paranagua on Sunday afternoon, wearing a helmet, thermal suit and a parachute."

MORE @ MORPHIZM

Spurlock + Swift = Bin Laden Trackdown

I turn over today's morning Morphizm post to pal Rob Swift, who has some good news about Morgan Spurlock and bad news about Osama bin Laden:



Remember that documentary Super Size Me? The one where film maker Morgan Spurlock addresses Americans eating habits by using himself as a human guinea pig by strictly dieting on McDonald's for 30 days, just to see what the affects of eating McDonald's for breakfast, lunch and dinner would have on his health.

Well it was nominated for an Academy Award in 2004 and Spurlock's new movie Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden? might land him another nomination. Spurlock's second film revolves around his search for the world's most wanted man and that's where I come in. There's a scene in the film that contains an excerpt from a song I composed entitled "Terrorism."

Yes, Morgan Spurlock licensed one of the tracks off my last solo album War Games.

It's been roughly three years since I dropped War Games, an album (coupled with a DVD) that tackles my thoughts on social/political issues like 911, Terrorism, the Iraq War, police brutality and poverty with the turntable as my microphone and scratches as my voice. So it definitely feels good to know the hard work I've invested into WAR GAMES is being recognized by someone like Morgan Spurlock. Big thanks go out to Barry Cole for submitting "Terrorism" for placement in the film. Thank you Barry!!!

Many of you have already heard "Terrorism" but if you haven't, just visit my MySpace page and check it out. It's the first song on my player. And please go see Spurlock's new film. It's been seven years since 9/11 and unfortunately, it feels like a lot of Americans have pushed the entire event into the back of their minds. Almost as if the fear of surviving another terrorist attack has gave way to the fear of surviving our current economy. They caught us sleeping on September 11, 2001 and I swear it feels like we've been gradually dozing off the last few years. So for those that need a wake up call, set your alarms to this Friday (April 18th) and GO SEE IT!!

Rob Swift, April 16

MORE @ MORPHIZM

It's Happening: Global Warming Kills Australia's Rice

It's been awhile since I've been down that dystopian road, but evidently my Hyperhighway to Hell is getting crowded with data. Global warming has taken hold of Earth, and tipping points have been reached. Ask Australia, who can no longer grow rice thanks to a drought that will probably never end:

Drought has already spurred significant changes in Australia’s agricultural heartland. Some farmers are abandoning rice, which requires large amounts of water, to plant less water-intensive crops like wheat or, especially here in southeastern Australia, wine grapes. Other rice farmers have sold fields or water rights, usually to grape growers.

Scientists and economists worry that the reallocation of scarce water resources — away from rice and other grains and toward more lucrative crops and livestock — threatens poor countries that import rice as a dietary staple.

The global agricultural crisis is threatening to become political, pitting the United States and other developed countries against the developing world over the need for affordable food versus the need for renewable energy. Many poorer nations worry that subsidies from rich countries to support biofuels, which turn food, like corn, into fuel, are pushing up the price of staples. The World Bank and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization called on major agricultural nations to overhaul policies to avoid a social explosion from rising food prices.

MORE @ MORPHIZM

Fed Increases Fed Conspiracies By Being Lame

Sorry for the delay, peoples. Been working out with Wired, and I forgot to stretch. Catch-ups to come later, but for now I'm back on the AlterNet attack. Cash it in!

Over the Top Fed Actions Feed Conspiracy Thinking
Given the fact that it is the target of more than a few conspiracy theories since it was created in 1913, the Federal Reserve System, more commonly known as the "Fed," in media and finance parlance, could be acting with a bit more prudence during these dark economic times. But no, it's gone ahead and damned the depression by doing what the New York Times described as the "unthinkable": bailing out Bear Stearns while giving away hundreds of billions to banks and other institutions whose labyrinthine securitization of our debt economy started this whole mess in the first place.

In other words, rewarding the criminals and screwing the victims.

That kind of behavior is only going to make the conspiracy theorists even cozier. When you already think the Fed has made a serious living from doing everything from transferring public wealth to private hands to signing off on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, you're not going to start thinking better of them when they offload billions onto Bear Stearns, which is a securities firm and not a bank at all. You're not going to get the opposition to stop parroting the usual party lines about the Fed being a privately owned bank that screws Americans by charging interest or compromises the overall interests of the United States by unconstitutionally printing up money like it was going out of style. You're only going to further invigorate them... MORE @ ALTERNET

MORE @ MORPHIZM

Meat Beat Manifesto Immunizes Ears, Brains

Rejoice, left-leaning multimedia jam fans. Meat Beat Manifesto is back with a bracing new effort called Autoimmune. I covered the release with a double-shot of love on Wired. To wit:



Meat Beat Doses the World With New Manifesto, Autoimmune
Two decades ago, Jack Dangers co-founded Meat Beat Manifesto, a band that delivered an explosive mashup of performance, multimedia and head-trip soundtracking that teased brains as ably as it packed dance floors.

Today, the synth collector and sonic experimentalist is hobbled by psoriatic arthritis and, he jokes by phone, he's "walking around like Howard Hughes." The autoimmune disease hits you hard in the joints and digits -- the worst possible places for a guy who makes a living pounding on synths and sequencers.

"You get used to it," Dangers says of the disorder. And perhaps you morph the experience into a banging effort called Autoimmune, Meat Beat Manifesto's 20th anniversary release due Tuesday. Autoimmune, Meat Beat Manifesto's 20th anniversary release due Tuesday... MORE @ WIRED

Sonic Immunity: Q&A With Meat Beat Manifesto's Jack Dangers
Wired: You've always mashed sound and video in interesting ways. I get a kick out of the samples, especially that classic Pinback line from Dark Star.

Dangers: One of the tracks were playing is "Nuclear Bomb" from Subliminal Sandwich, and we're cross-referencing a lot of imagery for it. We're superimposing Bush speeches over the banjo scene from Deliverance.

Wired: Oh man, that's hilarious.

Dangers: Exactly. If you just play the audio, you wouldn't get the same song. The visual adds much more impact: A creepy close-up of him licking his lips. Ben Stokes plays the Bush sample and I play the Deliverance sample... MORE @ WIRED

MORE @ MORPHIZM

R.E.M.'s Accelerate Brings the Noise

Sorry for the extended radio silence, Morphizm pals. Many new developments to discuss. Later. It's been a blur.

But at least it's been a noisy one, since I've been hard at work on R.E.M.'s newest effort, the bruising classic called Accelerate, out today in America. I'll kick off the proceedings with the Metromix review, and follow up with a Michael Stipe interview on Morphizm tomorrow. For now, let's bring the noise.

R.E.M.
Accelerate
Put simply, Accelerate is easily one of the band's finest releases, and certainly the loudest. Stipe's growling, urgent vocals are a jarring departure from some of his more recent downtempo deliveries, and socio-politically charged barn-burners like "Living Well Is the Best Revenge" and "Man-Sized Wreath" are rants on war, media and the vacuum otherwise known as American pop culture. Even when he stumbles, on the power balladry of "Hollow Man" for example, his heart is so firmly screwed to the right place that the song flies by. R.E.M. diehards will appreciate the fire, and late adopters will bang for the rawk, especially Peter Buck's axe shredding on the stunning "Sing for the Submarine"... MORE @ METROMIX

MORE @ MORPHIZM

The B-52s Bomb The Funplex

Top of the morning, Morphizm pals. The B-52s have been out of the new release game for 16 years, believe it or not. But the doomed pop culture they left behind is in serious need of cheering up, and mobilizing for the future. Hence, their new effort, which I recently reviewed for Metromix:

The B-52s
Funplex
When guitarist Ricky Wilson, brother of Cindy, died of AIDS in 1985, the B-52’s went introspective. But they transformed into the party-starters of “Love Shack” soon after, and "Funplex" is one of their horniest, bounciest efforts to date. Whether it's the addictive title track or the G-spot theatrics of "Ultraviolet," the B-52’s want to energize your sex drive as much as your desire to vote. Even the thoughtful but overwrought "Too Much to Think About" steps aside for a sick surf solo from guitarist Keith Strickland, who built the crowded sound of "Funplex" with an eye on the beer keg... MORE @ METROMIX

MORE @ MORPHIZM

Noam Chomsky: Let's Get Essential

Morphizm pal and Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal author Anthony Arnove is one busy dude. He's been working with Howard Zinn on translating their Voices of a People's History of the United States compilation into a PBS mega-documentary. But he's also compiling the wisdom of another interested public intellectual into another collection. This time around, it's Noam Chomsky, who gets assembled by Arnove into an accessible exercise in brain augmentation called The Essential Chomsky.

It's already got a positive blurb from Hugo Chavez, so it's sure to be a thorn in the side of those in the mainstream, which is why Morphizm is such pals with Arnove and Zinn in the first place. If you're not a thorn, then you're on the wrong side, people. Chomsky, for his part, hasn't been: He's applied the rigors of math, science and linguistics to Everyday Life, and found abuses of power everywhere. So the mainstream can cry all they want, but the little people understand. They understand just fine.

MORE @ MORPHIZM

Arthur C. Clarke 1917-2008

UPDATE: This post has found a home on the pages of our pals at the Huffington Post and Yahoo Buzz, which is nice. For more on Clarke, visit the eulogy I created for Wired, which features testimonials from DC Comics, George Lucas, DJ Spooky, that cranky bastard Harlan Ellison and more.

On March 18, the science and sci-fi legend Arthur C. Clarke died, which is a sad passing for us all. Clarke codified the future through a series of scientific and literary experiments that will never pass as he has. They will endure, mostly because they realize the utter singularity of the human race over time, from its earliest manifestations to its later, terrorized forms.

"I hope that we have learned something from the most barbaric century in history -- the twentieth," he said in his last recorded message to his home planet Earth. "I would like to see us overcome our tribal factions, and begin to think and act as if we were one family. That would be real globalization."

Instead, we have panic in the streets from globalization of another kind, and our eyes are more glued to our inner spaces than our outer ones. But even Clarke had hope we would pull out of it, as Clarke's friend Harlan Ellison told me by phone, in his own patently cranky way. (I wrote more on that conversation at Wired.) Clarke knew the human race would realize how absolutely lucky it is to be living at all in the void of space, much less living together in harmony on Earth.

From his prescience on satellites to the immortality that is 2001: A Space Odyssey and beyond, he always had his mind and art on something bigger than all of us -- and himself, the ever-gracious but still droll wit, who never wanted to stop growing. We could learn lessons from his work that would last us centuries. And we could start learning them tomorrow, days after he died.

We better. Or else.

MORE @ MORPHIZM

Deep Spitz!

Back again on the Spitzer tip. (Nasty!) According to Morphizm pal Greg Palast, Eliot's mess and the Fed's recent ahistorical cash handouts are connected. I'll be writing more on that issue, with scathing quotes from Palast, for AlterNet tomorrow. But for now, here's Greg's take on the cash and ass grabs:

Getting Intimate: Eliot Spitzer and The Fed Bailout
While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an ‘escort' $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush's new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators.

Both acts were wanton, wicked and lewd. But there's a BIG difference. The Governor was using his own checkbook. Bush's man Bernanke was using ours.

This week, Bernanke's Fed, for the first time in its history, loaned a selected coterie of banks one-fifth of a trillion dollars to guarantee these banks' mortgage-backed junk bonds. The deluge of public loot was an eye-popping windfall to the very banking predators who have brought two million families to the brink of foreclosure.

Up until Wednesday, there was one single, lonely politician who stood in the way of this creepy little assignation at the bankers' bordello: Eliot Spitzer.

Who are they kidding? Spitzer's lynching and the bankers' enriching are intimately tied. How? Follow the money... MORE @ MORPHIZM

MORE @ MORPHIZM

A FARC-ing Fake

It's been a minute since Greg Palast hit Morphizm up. But he's hit us up nicely in the last week, with a couple eye-opening articles and even an interview for an article on Federal Reserve Bank conspiracies that I'm writing for AlterNet. Down below, he tackles the Bush administration's head-fake on FARC and Hugo Chavez, and how the Democrats might play it for fear of looking like pussies on national security:

A FARC-ing Fake
[Greg Palast, Morphizm]
Do you believe this?

This past weekend, Colombia invaded Ecuador, killed a guerrilla chief in the jungle, opened his laptop – and what did the Colombians find? A message to Hugo Chavez that he sent the FARC guerrillas $300 million – which they're using to obtain uranium to make a dirty bomb!

That's what George Bush tells us. And he got that from his buddy, the strange right-wing President of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe.

So: After the fact, Colombia justifies its attempt to provoke a border war as a to stop the threat of WMDs! Uh, where have we heard that before? MORE @ MORPHIZM

MORE @ MORPHIZM

Monsanto's Recombined Milk Turns Sour

Greetings, Morphizm pals. So, last week and the one before, I spent too much time investigating some bullshit by Monsanto, who have been trying to crush the movement to label their recombined milk because of the well-founded fear that smart consumers would avoid it like the plague. What I didn't realize was that Monsanto more or less invented the plague. With that, I'd like to introduce my AlterNet piece in all its ragged glory, wherein a volatile discussion over the agrichem titan has broken out. Tune in, join up, get sick:

Frankenfoods Giant Monsanto Plays Bully Over Consumer Labeling
[Scott Thill, AlterNet]
Since 1901, Monsanto has brought us Agent Orange, PCBs, Terminator seeds and recombined milk, among other infamous products. But it's currently obsessed with the milk, or, more importantly, the milk labels, particularly those that read "rBST-free" or "rBGH-free." It's not the "BST" or "BGH" that bothers them so much; after all, bovine somatrophin, also known as bovine growth hormone, isn't exactly what the company is known for. Which is to say, it's naturally occurring. No, the problem is the "r" denoting "recombined." There's nothing natural about it. In fact, the science is increasingly pointing to the possibility that recombined milk is -- surprise! -- not as good for you as the real thing.

"Consumption of dairy products from cows treated with rbGH raise a number of health